Issue Seven
May 2010
Guilty
By Isabelleann Newbill
I see poetry the way I see life, exceptional,
without rules that oppose curiosity in its
most basic form; and if you whispered to
me softly, passionately, about the ominous
and vindictive repercussions of advertising
such a thing, I would laugh without reservation,
remarking that I find myself guilty of all
allegations, secretly reveling in the subtle
provocativeness, forced and recognized in me
without merit by the assuming.
It is most interesting when those who profess
to know and love me, get it all wrong. I must
confess that while it momentarily hurts, I am
most thankful for the idiot natures of their
hostility, the horrible scandals only serve to fuel
my creativity that much more. And what of those
that see the gentle quality in my voice even when
I’m being snarky? In any case, nothing, they too
have their own judgments when daybreak comes,
and my reputations, all of them,
are already firmly in place. I’m in my early thirties,
no, late thirties, quite possibly forties and maybe
even fifties; I’m a lesbian, I’m straight, I’m bright-
eyed with a snouty face; I wear cut off jeans, no, a
pant suit, zoot! Care to double the odds while you
play along? I’m an easy listener, a hard lay. Should
I bill you later or right away? Come on now are you
keeping pace? I think this horse’ll be favored by the
end of the race. I’m a writer, no, a poet, and those
who can actually see me, know it.
Do I really matter that goddamn much? Will you ever
be sensitive to my touch? You think me mad, I think
you mad, the way you can disengage from your own
emotions, putting everything on evil me, yeah, I’m
channeling your own inferiority. “I’ve heard all about
you,” presumably you speak, accentuated by the
swarthiness of your speech. “Pleased to make your
acquaintance,” I’ll pencil you in; wonder what will be
my next popular sin. It’s not the concealing animosity,
for my life’s objectivity,
it’s the way your mortality raptures, alone, restrained
within the scrutiny and ultimate betrayal of my free spirit
that I pity. You’ll never know life without hesitation,
or feel the emerald green ribbons of grass that shape
little feet against frozen dirt expelling the crimson
nightfall’s with angels that offer their guidance by the
patience of example. And while your emphasis will
forever be devoted to destinations mine will be realized
by the inconvenience of beautiful diversity
in the unconventional, where waterfalls, moon and mandolin
dance the hours away aligned with those who utter the simple
words, “I understand, I understand, I understand”…
The effects of white heat will be just as formal, and they will
go unnoticed by many, as they usually do, barely adequate,
too feminine in nagging voice, too masculine in accuracy
and influence, unrhymed, without the fluidness of admirable
skill, yet, I prefer it this way; when my prose arrives in the hands
of those who understand, and who will unmistakingly
make it their own.
*
Piece Of Work writt
By Isabelleann Newbill
I watch your words of love unfold upon the page,
“You are ever my goddess,” is what you say, is
what you always said when we first began. I try
knitting together knowledge with syntax, following
it though at my own risk yet trusting the progression
without analysis.
Embedded in my mind is the rhyme and assonance
that tantalizes, rising at random over the blueprint
of the plans you’ve constructed for our future.
There’s a photograph of a poet in the frightened
ivory moldings of our home, she emerges often
on good terms, making up her mind to leave well
enough alone. I feel her in me, in the temperamental
level of her psyche that is always unconsciously waiting
for the fall, the crash, which will render her helpless,
immobile. Your smile and sweet demeanor give me
happiness and courage against incalculable loss, the
kind of loss that offers you a snapshot
in a photography book, where nothing else happens.
Even as I trust the intimacy that led to us becoming a
couple I feel the call of the poet in me that writes her
stanzas with characteristic self-belittlement. Please do not
misunderstand; my feelings are deeply rooted in mutual
protectiveness,
and my faith and gratitude in you has me believing that we
shall prevail against all odds. The confessional elements
of this write are not your fault; they are the result of a
handful of memories stemming from the past, from my
childhood, that breed insecurity in the solitary realm of
nightmares and lucid distances.
I love the texture of your writing, the way your inner tension
escapes, making its way into my soul. I love the way you
love me, the way you see everything around us with irrevocable
commitment in a kind and easygoing way that nourishes
and shapes both pleasure and confidence. I love you without
reason, without meter,
and there's nothing that I look more forward to
than becoming your wife and hearing you play and sing
the beautiful song you lovingly composed for me, on our
wedding day. I just hope to God that you know what
you’ve gotten yourself into, because sweetheart, with all due
respect, I can be one possessive and demanding piece of work.
***
Larry Remembers When He Was Poor
By Daniel Gallik
Potatoes are for blue-collar people.
Jay Gould was giving a lecture on
“The Depravities Of Man.” The wife
and I were at Lakeland Community
College. Dr. Gould was telling us
about poor people, and their purpose.
I looked over at Jan, said, we were
once very poor. She took my hand.
She squeezed it hard. I knew she
was telling me to hush. Jay kept at it,
the purpose of the lower class
was to do jobs we did not want
to do. At a lower cost. Again, I
looked over to Jan. She squinted,
quiet now, you aren’t poor anymore.
*
Life Became A Dill Pickle
By Daniel Gallik
The west side is the best side. Hank
was in a happy mood since his Mom died.
He would say poetic phrases
every time he didn’t want to talk about it.
The East contains the least especially
if you don’t like yeast. Esther was mean.
She would yell just to yell.
Hank lived at home. He was sixty five.
His Dad laughed a lot more now that Mom
was gone. Big Lou didn’t used glue so he
cooked himself some stew. Esther
was a big, big woman. And she knew karate.
Lou and son double dated now. Hank
was even thinking about marriage this year.
Lou thought that cool. Hank sank
into a prank when he yanked his Dad’s crank.
*
Never Making An Error
By Daniel Gallik
She always sat in the back of the room.
Of course, everybody tries to do that.
But she always succeeded. Her teachers
never asked her any questions. Yes, she
would slide by in every class. Get A’s
in gym. She got to college, did the same
thing. Her major. elementary education.
She ended up teaching in the inner city.
She did okay. The kids did okay. Hubby
was happy. They had two kids. Kids did
okay. After 30 yrs. she retired. Got a job
selling women’s clothes at Dillard’s.
Did fine there. Worked thirty years
there. Retired at the age of eighty two.
Worked 30 hours a week at her church.
Just died ten minutes ago in her sleep.
Her hubby had passed 10 yrs. ago. He
was happy. They lived well. Kids got
a load of money. You may say they were
the only ones who remembered her.
One said to herself, I am glad I told Mom
to write about herself. And she did.
So, I am going to a publisher so he
can tell the world about a woman
who worked and worked, and worked
And in the preface I will write,
“Mom maybe had more than two careers.
And sure, another was she was a mom,
and she was a glorious wife, but also, she
was a quiet historian. And that’s okay.”
***
'silenced spring'
By Levi Wagenmaker
one foot in the grave and
the remainder of my body kept
not on ice but
chilled by weather pouring cold water
on the illusions of astronomical as well as
meteorological spring
(the former having caught up with the latter)
the hair on my fore-arms stands up
to be counted or possibly to give spring
a standing ovation yes
putting an arm to one ear I can just about
hear applause and yells of
bravo
encore
the inside third of my wrist is a wasteland
where nothing not even hair will grow
leaving it bare to the chilly cutting edge
of spring
and here comes that nurse
with that falsely cheerful spring in her step
already twisting
the thin plastic high hat off
the syringe's needle
ready
to plunge my fore-arm hair
into another sedate
lie-in
***
Dawn Tomorrow
By Donal Mahoney
Another letter may come today
from the same editor at Poetry Paradise
telling me he'll pass on the poems
I sent a year ago because
they aren’t a good fit for his pages.
But this time, he says, he'll give my poems
to his brother, the skywriter,
who will emblazon them in snow
against a sky so blue
millions of people will love them
almost as much as I do.
*
Marlboro Man
By Donal Mahoney
Autumn's over.
Wheat cake odors flood
the wood front porch. Andrew Block,
in mackinaw and overalls,
tamps first tobacco of the day
and estimates his morning.
In an open field
beyond McDiver's Creek
Andrew Block can see his colt,
palamino apricot and snow,
nip grass between great gallops
and the shock of trees.
***
72nd Birthday
By Robert Demaree
It’s midnight
So my birthday has begun,
No great number ending in zero,
No fraction or percent
Of anything,
And another year has already begun,
Which is good, of course—
Calls from grandchildren.
Cards from neighbors,
An insurance agent
We never actually knew—
But you wish time could wait
Just a moment
To see the flowers I bought her
Yesterday for Valentines,
Since no one else is coming by.
*
Durham, North Carolina
By Robert Demaree
A weathered bungalow, too close to the busy street,
Braiding salon, fast food warren close by,
Fried grease hanging heavy in the air;
A damp, overstuffed chair on the porch,
The content of its arms spilling, sagging,
Like the breasts of an obese woman.
People sometimes joke about this place,
Although inhabited by learned folk,
A fall guy of towns beside
Its insulated, self-absorbed neighbors,
And I might have smiled at these snide jests
Until not long ago:
My daughter lives there now,
It is where our grandsons go to school.
***
Groceries
By Parker Tettleton
Your son is six feet tall in the sixth grade. By his sophomore year of high school, he outweighs you by a hundred pounds. He’s been offered four football scholarships and one for a sport he’s never played. Every morning his mother, your ex ex-wife, makes his breakfast of a half dozen eggs, three strips of bacon and an English muffin alongside your cup of coffee.
Your son has his permit. He has started driving his mother’s, your first and second wife’s minivan to school where he parks in the back row in order to not be seen driving a minivan with his mother, your beloved, renewed wife in the passenger seat. Of course, you leave earlier than they do so you’ve rarely seen his head scrape the roof as his black-haired hands cover half of the steering wheel.
His mother, your wife of ten years total and three running, is out buying your son’s groceries, your coffee grounds while your son lifts weights you spot in your garage. Your son, he knows about sex. You’re pretty sure several of your private dvds are missing from the golf bag. He’s never asked, not that you want to know that he knows what you aren’t telling him. He looks up, sweat running down his forehead and pooling onto the tuft of black hair peeking out of the top middle portion of his muscle shirt. You can tell he’s curious. You could be quick, say something about how things have changed since you grew up. How his mother, your wife before she was your wife then ex and wife again waited, or didn’t, if you can’t sell the story. You could hug him, bring his head to your chest and tell him his size is a gift, he’ll grow out of the awkwardness surrounding his man-child frame and girls, a career, millions will follow one after the other like ducks on a pond. You clear your throat and the garage door begins to fold; your recurring wife, his mother needs help with the groceries.
***
Star Bright
By KJ Hannah Greenberg
From my perch on the park bench, those other suns looked lovely. Their intermittent flashes cast my world in mottled shadow. A nearby walking path reflected that broken light transformed it into an assemblage of glassy shards. Chipmunks and hedgehogs danced on those slivers.
A skunk, equally glamoured by that fractured radiance, made smelly tracks across the park’s lawn. It stared at those other small animals and at the splintered luminosity. Somewhere in that area, an owl, too, weighed in on that patterning.
I inhaled musk and exhaled a week’s worth of duties. Alongside of those irregular bits of brilliance, next to a menagerie of tiny citizens, I found it possible to shroud myself in dreams.
In one case of those midnight imaginings, I was approached by two dark-visaged men, whose faces, in terms of color and of expression, imitated none of the qualities of the distant rays, in which the wee inhabitants of the park frolicked. Rather, those persons, like the large stones encircling the park’s parameter, were impassive cuts of humanity. I wondered, not too quietly, if they ever experienced interpersonal joy, ever harmonized with otherworldly music, or ever glistened with happy sweat.
I called them to me and to my small, furry friends. The night was rich with interstellar brilliance and with color. There was enough goodness for all beings.
I pointed to our common, celestial ceiling, to the pulsing lights, and to the innocent creatures. Next, I opened both of my palms to the men and gestured to them to join us in the wonders of the evening.
Perhaps my meaning was misunderstood. All that those two grunted to me, as they reached for my shoulders, heedless of the number of little beasts that they crushed underfoot, was “take her.” Having secured me, they marched us so far underground that it became impossible to discern whether or not the sky continued to twinkle fellowship.
In that dim, barren catacomb, my guides became vociferous. There were places where feet needed to go, rules for arms to obey, and ceiling heights of which noggins need be aware. Far into that transport, those men shoved me into a dark room. As the door between us slid, they hissed that “the professor’s busy.”
Under the earth, in that windowless chamber devoid of ceiling apertures and of any distinguishing marks, built, from wall to wall to floor to roof, of regimented gray tile, only a single, diffused light, emitted from an indiscernible source, made it possible to see.
I viewed a table in the room’s center. Around it sat what appeared to be four, school-aged boys, a woman in a white lab coat, a man holding tightly to that woman’s hand and a child grasping the shirttails of that man.
I sat with them. We spoke in tongues. Though my escorts were long absent, the nature of that hall called for measured diction.
As we spoke, the child shifted from one foot to another. I wondered if she needed the bathroom.
A span passed. One by one, the boys laid their heads on the table. They disappeared. The man clutching the girl and the woman, similarly, vanished. Understandably, the child screamed. Thereafter, she, too, went missing.
The door to the room opened. An elder, protected by armed ushers, walked in.
“Welcome. Welcome both of you.”
“I want to go home. I don’t like it here.” The women opposite me spoke in precise syllables.
“Please return us,” I addended.
“Silence. You’re part of my project. Your continued existence depends on your cooperation.”
The woman across from me mumbled some algorithms a loud. The two burly sorts morphed into smoke. In response, she began to cry hysterically.
I countered with words like “hibernaculum” and “salubrious.” Carefully, I wrapped my mind around the phonemes in “pugnacious.” The professor turned to mist.
The woman stopped sobbing. “Like coffee?” she inquired.
“Espresso, really,” I answered, “but I’m happier sipping bottled water and watching the local wildlife dance in the starlight.”
She rose from the table and offered me her arm. Together, we ascended.
I cleared my head from my reverie. A squirrel wearing a gilded crown and a billowing cape winked at me.
***
Laos
By David Whitehouse
My sinusitis saps my will to live, and pushes me
into my stock of Chinese proverbs;
four sufferings, eight sufferings.
The way of the world, and the Laos kids know it,
their parents bombed every few seconds for 10 years by the USA.
What did the snotty generals sniff during this plucky effort - to
say nothing of naughty: fighting off the Reds!
Four for being world's most bombed country,
and half the little bombs unexploded -apple, orange colours!
takes us neatly up to eight.
***
May 2010
Guilty
By Isabelleann Newbill
I see poetry the way I see life, exceptional,
without rules that oppose curiosity in its
most basic form; and if you whispered to
me softly, passionately, about the ominous
and vindictive repercussions of advertising
such a thing, I would laugh without reservation,
remarking that I find myself guilty of all
allegations, secretly reveling in the subtle
provocativeness, forced and recognized in me
without merit by the assuming.
It is most interesting when those who profess
to know and love me, get it all wrong. I must
confess that while it momentarily hurts, I am
most thankful for the idiot natures of their
hostility, the horrible scandals only serve to fuel
my creativity that much more. And what of those
that see the gentle quality in my voice even when
I’m being snarky? In any case, nothing, they too
have their own judgments when daybreak comes,
and my reputations, all of them,
are already firmly in place. I’m in my early thirties,
no, late thirties, quite possibly forties and maybe
even fifties; I’m a lesbian, I’m straight, I’m bright-
eyed with a snouty face; I wear cut off jeans, no, a
pant suit, zoot! Care to double the odds while you
play along? I’m an easy listener, a hard lay. Should
I bill you later or right away? Come on now are you
keeping pace? I think this horse’ll be favored by the
end of the race. I’m a writer, no, a poet, and those
who can actually see me, know it.
Do I really matter that goddamn much? Will you ever
be sensitive to my touch? You think me mad, I think
you mad, the way you can disengage from your own
emotions, putting everything on evil me, yeah, I’m
channeling your own inferiority. “I’ve heard all about
you,” presumably you speak, accentuated by the
swarthiness of your speech. “Pleased to make your
acquaintance,” I’ll pencil you in; wonder what will be
my next popular sin. It’s not the concealing animosity,
for my life’s objectivity,
it’s the way your mortality raptures, alone, restrained
within the scrutiny and ultimate betrayal of my free spirit
that I pity. You’ll never know life without hesitation,
or feel the emerald green ribbons of grass that shape
little feet against frozen dirt expelling the crimson
nightfall’s with angels that offer their guidance by the
patience of example. And while your emphasis will
forever be devoted to destinations mine will be realized
by the inconvenience of beautiful diversity
in the unconventional, where waterfalls, moon and mandolin
dance the hours away aligned with those who utter the simple
words, “I understand, I understand, I understand”…
The effects of white heat will be just as formal, and they will
go unnoticed by many, as they usually do, barely adequate,
too feminine in nagging voice, too masculine in accuracy
and influence, unrhymed, without the fluidness of admirable
skill, yet, I prefer it this way; when my prose arrives in the hands
of those who understand, and who will unmistakingly
make it their own.
*
Piece Of Work writt
By Isabelleann Newbill
I watch your words of love unfold upon the page,
“You are ever my goddess,” is what you say, is
what you always said when we first began. I try
knitting together knowledge with syntax, following
it though at my own risk yet trusting the progression
without analysis.
Embedded in my mind is the rhyme and assonance
that tantalizes, rising at random over the blueprint
of the plans you’ve constructed for our future.
There’s a photograph of a poet in the frightened
ivory moldings of our home, she emerges often
on good terms, making up her mind to leave well
enough alone. I feel her in me, in the temperamental
level of her psyche that is always unconsciously waiting
for the fall, the crash, which will render her helpless,
immobile. Your smile and sweet demeanor give me
happiness and courage against incalculable loss, the
kind of loss that offers you a snapshot
in a photography book, where nothing else happens.
Even as I trust the intimacy that led to us becoming a
couple I feel the call of the poet in me that writes her
stanzas with characteristic self-belittlement. Please do not
misunderstand; my feelings are deeply rooted in mutual
protectiveness,
and my faith and gratitude in you has me believing that we
shall prevail against all odds. The confessional elements
of this write are not your fault; they are the result of a
handful of memories stemming from the past, from my
childhood, that breed insecurity in the solitary realm of
nightmares and lucid distances.
I love the texture of your writing, the way your inner tension
escapes, making its way into my soul. I love the way you
love me, the way you see everything around us with irrevocable
commitment in a kind and easygoing way that nourishes
and shapes both pleasure and confidence. I love you without
reason, without meter,
and there's nothing that I look more forward to
than becoming your wife and hearing you play and sing
the beautiful song you lovingly composed for me, on our
wedding day. I just hope to God that you know what
you’ve gotten yourself into, because sweetheart, with all due
respect, I can be one possessive and demanding piece of work.
***
Larry Remembers When He Was Poor
By Daniel Gallik
Potatoes are for blue-collar people.
Jay Gould was giving a lecture on
“The Depravities Of Man.” The wife
and I were at Lakeland Community
College. Dr. Gould was telling us
about poor people, and their purpose.
I looked over at Jan, said, we were
once very poor. She took my hand.
She squeezed it hard. I knew she
was telling me to hush. Jay kept at it,
the purpose of the lower class
was to do jobs we did not want
to do. At a lower cost. Again, I
looked over to Jan. She squinted,
quiet now, you aren’t poor anymore.
*
Life Became A Dill Pickle
By Daniel Gallik
The west side is the best side. Hank
was in a happy mood since his Mom died.
He would say poetic phrases
every time he didn’t want to talk about it.
The East contains the least especially
if you don’t like yeast. Esther was mean.
She would yell just to yell.
Hank lived at home. He was sixty five.
His Dad laughed a lot more now that Mom
was gone. Big Lou didn’t used glue so he
cooked himself some stew. Esther
was a big, big woman. And she knew karate.
Lou and son double dated now. Hank
was even thinking about marriage this year.
Lou thought that cool. Hank sank
into a prank when he yanked his Dad’s crank.
*
Never Making An Error
By Daniel Gallik
She always sat in the back of the room.
Of course, everybody tries to do that.
But she always succeeded. Her teachers
never asked her any questions. Yes, she
would slide by in every class. Get A’s
in gym. She got to college, did the same
thing. Her major. elementary education.
She ended up teaching in the inner city.
She did okay. The kids did okay. Hubby
was happy. They had two kids. Kids did
okay. After 30 yrs. she retired. Got a job
selling women’s clothes at Dillard’s.
Did fine there. Worked thirty years
there. Retired at the age of eighty two.
Worked 30 hours a week at her church.
Just died ten minutes ago in her sleep.
Her hubby had passed 10 yrs. ago. He
was happy. They lived well. Kids got
a load of money. You may say they were
the only ones who remembered her.
One said to herself, I am glad I told Mom
to write about herself. And she did.
So, I am going to a publisher so he
can tell the world about a woman
who worked and worked, and worked
And in the preface I will write,
“Mom maybe had more than two careers.
And sure, another was she was a mom,
and she was a glorious wife, but also, she
was a quiet historian. And that’s okay.”
***
'silenced spring'
By Levi Wagenmaker
one foot in the grave and
the remainder of my body kept
not on ice but
chilled by weather pouring cold water
on the illusions of astronomical as well as
meteorological spring
(the former having caught up with the latter)
the hair on my fore-arms stands up
to be counted or possibly to give spring
a standing ovation yes
putting an arm to one ear I can just about
hear applause and yells of
bravo
encore
the inside third of my wrist is a wasteland
where nothing not even hair will grow
leaving it bare to the chilly cutting edge
of spring
and here comes that nurse
with that falsely cheerful spring in her step
already twisting
the thin plastic high hat off
the syringe's needle
ready
to plunge my fore-arm hair
into another sedate
lie-in
***
Dawn Tomorrow
By Donal Mahoney
Another letter may come today
from the same editor at Poetry Paradise
telling me he'll pass on the poems
I sent a year ago because
they aren’t a good fit for his pages.
But this time, he says, he'll give my poems
to his brother, the skywriter,
who will emblazon them in snow
against a sky so blue
millions of people will love them
almost as much as I do.
*
Marlboro Man
By Donal Mahoney
Autumn's over.
Wheat cake odors flood
the wood front porch. Andrew Block,
in mackinaw and overalls,
tamps first tobacco of the day
and estimates his morning.
In an open field
beyond McDiver's Creek
Andrew Block can see his colt,
palamino apricot and snow,
nip grass between great gallops
and the shock of trees.
***
72nd Birthday
By Robert Demaree
It’s midnight
So my birthday has begun,
No great number ending in zero,
No fraction or percent
Of anything,
And another year has already begun,
Which is good, of course—
Calls from grandchildren.
Cards from neighbors,
An insurance agent
We never actually knew—
But you wish time could wait
Just a moment
To see the flowers I bought her
Yesterday for Valentines,
Since no one else is coming by.
*
Durham, North Carolina
By Robert Demaree
A weathered bungalow, too close to the busy street,
Braiding salon, fast food warren close by,
Fried grease hanging heavy in the air;
A damp, overstuffed chair on the porch,
The content of its arms spilling, sagging,
Like the breasts of an obese woman.
People sometimes joke about this place,
Although inhabited by learned folk,
A fall guy of towns beside
Its insulated, self-absorbed neighbors,
And I might have smiled at these snide jests
Until not long ago:
My daughter lives there now,
It is where our grandsons go to school.
***
Groceries
By Parker Tettleton
Your son is six feet tall in the sixth grade. By his sophomore year of high school, he outweighs you by a hundred pounds. He’s been offered four football scholarships and one for a sport he’s never played. Every morning his mother, your ex ex-wife, makes his breakfast of a half dozen eggs, three strips of bacon and an English muffin alongside your cup of coffee.
Your son has his permit. He has started driving his mother’s, your first and second wife’s minivan to school where he parks in the back row in order to not be seen driving a minivan with his mother, your beloved, renewed wife in the passenger seat. Of course, you leave earlier than they do so you’ve rarely seen his head scrape the roof as his black-haired hands cover half of the steering wheel.
His mother, your wife of ten years total and three running, is out buying your son’s groceries, your coffee grounds while your son lifts weights you spot in your garage. Your son, he knows about sex. You’re pretty sure several of your private dvds are missing from the golf bag. He’s never asked, not that you want to know that he knows what you aren’t telling him. He looks up, sweat running down his forehead and pooling onto the tuft of black hair peeking out of the top middle portion of his muscle shirt. You can tell he’s curious. You could be quick, say something about how things have changed since you grew up. How his mother, your wife before she was your wife then ex and wife again waited, or didn’t, if you can’t sell the story. You could hug him, bring his head to your chest and tell him his size is a gift, he’ll grow out of the awkwardness surrounding his man-child frame and girls, a career, millions will follow one after the other like ducks on a pond. You clear your throat and the garage door begins to fold; your recurring wife, his mother needs help with the groceries.
***
Star Bright
By KJ Hannah Greenberg
From my perch on the park bench, those other suns looked lovely. Their intermittent flashes cast my world in mottled shadow. A nearby walking path reflected that broken light transformed it into an assemblage of glassy shards. Chipmunks and hedgehogs danced on those slivers.
A skunk, equally glamoured by that fractured radiance, made smelly tracks across the park’s lawn. It stared at those other small animals and at the splintered luminosity. Somewhere in that area, an owl, too, weighed in on that patterning.
I inhaled musk and exhaled a week’s worth of duties. Alongside of those irregular bits of brilliance, next to a menagerie of tiny citizens, I found it possible to shroud myself in dreams.
In one case of those midnight imaginings, I was approached by two dark-visaged men, whose faces, in terms of color and of expression, imitated none of the qualities of the distant rays, in which the wee inhabitants of the park frolicked. Rather, those persons, like the large stones encircling the park’s parameter, were impassive cuts of humanity. I wondered, not too quietly, if they ever experienced interpersonal joy, ever harmonized with otherworldly music, or ever glistened with happy sweat.
I called them to me and to my small, furry friends. The night was rich with interstellar brilliance and with color. There was enough goodness for all beings.
I pointed to our common, celestial ceiling, to the pulsing lights, and to the innocent creatures. Next, I opened both of my palms to the men and gestured to them to join us in the wonders of the evening.
Perhaps my meaning was misunderstood. All that those two grunted to me, as they reached for my shoulders, heedless of the number of little beasts that they crushed underfoot, was “take her.” Having secured me, they marched us so far underground that it became impossible to discern whether or not the sky continued to twinkle fellowship.
In that dim, barren catacomb, my guides became vociferous. There were places where feet needed to go, rules for arms to obey, and ceiling heights of which noggins need be aware. Far into that transport, those men shoved me into a dark room. As the door between us slid, they hissed that “the professor’s busy.”
Under the earth, in that windowless chamber devoid of ceiling apertures and of any distinguishing marks, built, from wall to wall to floor to roof, of regimented gray tile, only a single, diffused light, emitted from an indiscernible source, made it possible to see.
I viewed a table in the room’s center. Around it sat what appeared to be four, school-aged boys, a woman in a white lab coat, a man holding tightly to that woman’s hand and a child grasping the shirttails of that man.
I sat with them. We spoke in tongues. Though my escorts were long absent, the nature of that hall called for measured diction.
As we spoke, the child shifted from one foot to another. I wondered if she needed the bathroom.
A span passed. One by one, the boys laid their heads on the table. They disappeared. The man clutching the girl and the woman, similarly, vanished. Understandably, the child screamed. Thereafter, she, too, went missing.
The door to the room opened. An elder, protected by armed ushers, walked in.
“Welcome. Welcome both of you.”
“I want to go home. I don’t like it here.” The women opposite me spoke in precise syllables.
“Please return us,” I addended.
“Silence. You’re part of my project. Your continued existence depends on your cooperation.”
The woman across from me mumbled some algorithms a loud. The two burly sorts morphed into smoke. In response, she began to cry hysterically.
I countered with words like “hibernaculum” and “salubrious.” Carefully, I wrapped my mind around the phonemes in “pugnacious.” The professor turned to mist.
The woman stopped sobbing. “Like coffee?” she inquired.
“Espresso, really,” I answered, “but I’m happier sipping bottled water and watching the local wildlife dance in the starlight.”
She rose from the table and offered me her arm. Together, we ascended.
I cleared my head from my reverie. A squirrel wearing a gilded crown and a billowing cape winked at me.
***
Laos
By David Whitehouse
My sinusitis saps my will to live, and pushes me
into my stock of Chinese proverbs;
four sufferings, eight sufferings.
The way of the world, and the Laos kids know it,
their parents bombed every few seconds for 10 years by the USA.
What did the snotty generals sniff during this plucky effort - to
say nothing of naughty: fighting off the Reds!
Four for being world's most bombed country,
and half the little bombs unexploded -apple, orange colours!
takes us neatly up to eight.
***