December 2001 | back-issues, poetry
a short story by Joni Hendry
(caddis11 [at] hotmail [dot] com)
I rub the sleep from my eyes and wish I could laze in bed all day long. I snuggle deeper into my covers, but the sun keeps spilling through my window, bright and warm on my face. From down stairs I can hear the fireplace hissing and my mother in the kitchen fixing breakfast. It’s Sunday morning.
Misty, the family poodle, jumps on my bed and starts licking my face urging me out of bed. He wakes me up this way every morning since I got him as a puppy. A birthday present I received when I was six. At the age of seven he still acts like a puppy sometimes. I finally get up and go downstairs. Misty traipses behind me, tail wagging, barking to be let out. I can smell the pancakes and hear the sizzle of bacon frying.
I let Misty out and stand in the doorway, watching big fluffy flakes of snow falling, transforming the yard into an imaginary place as if someone had turned a snow-globe upside down. From here I can hear my father in the garage, sharpening his axe, the screeching sound of metal on metal. Today is the day we get our Christmas tree. As a family we decided, no taller than five feet and a tree with short needles. They last longer, my Mom says. After breakfast, we bundle up and dash into the yard letting the big flakes melt on our tongues. We laugh as the snow clings to warm cheeks and tickles our eyelashes. Mom and Dad urge me to hurry before the snow gets too high to walk in. We hike a mile from the edge of town, deeper into the thick woods, searching for the right tree.
In an open meadow we decide to make snow angels. All three of us, plopping down on the soft mattress of white, fanning our limbs, jumping up, our bottoms are wet and the outlines of angels quickly fill in. I shake the wet snow off my yellow jacket and see the tree we should bring home. Its arms full with bright green needles and the top branch perfectly straight. We all agree this is the one to take home. Dad removes the cover from the ax. The sharpened ax makes good time. The tree falls with a creak and a whoosh; the sap dripping off the edge of the trunk. Carefully we wrap the tree in a tarp for the trip home.
Uncomfortable being out so long in the cold, Misty yaps urgently at Dad’s feet, wanting to go home. Dad trips over him and falls flat on his face. Embarrassed, he jumps up and grumpily exclaims its time to go.
Arriving home, Mom mixes sugar water to prolong the tree’s life. Dad props the tree into a stand. Mom prepares hot chocolate with colored marshmallows floating on top. Silent Night serenades us from a record as we place ornaments. Carefully the tinsel is put on, and an angel is placed on top. We stand back and admire our work. The tree is stunning to look at with all its holiday clothes on, but something happened inside me.
I’ll never forget that year, that tree, as I put the final touches, the frail heirloom angel, on my aluminum Christmas tree. Glowing on metallic needles the image of that long ago day returns. I turn away and walk to the window. The snow is still falling. In my mind, I see the tree again, standing tall and green and hear the whacking sound of my father’s ax, and the sap weeping into the snow.
December 2001 | back-issues, fiction, Michael W. Giberson
What if we daisy-cut
Bin Laden to bloody mush
And stuff his corpse
Into the deepest cave in
The White Mountains
And bulldoze it into
A place so secret that
Even we can’t find it
Again?
What if we smash Al Qaeda
Into pieces so small
That Brownian motion
Will be enough to prevent
Even the hope of
Them ever talking to
Or even smelling
Each other
Again?
What if we cruise missle
The Taliban so precisely
That any possibility of
Understanding
The consequences of the
Slightest act of defiance
Against us
On their part
Is so far beyond their
Comprehension that they
Can only hunker down
And go insane
Again?
What if we wage war
So technologically clever
That in three months the
Relative body count
(from enemy action only,
Mind you, not Friendly Fire)
Is Us ten thousand, Them zero
(Not counting Alliance
Casualties, of course)
And the couch potatoes
Back home
Can keep score cards via
Satellite phone and CNN
Like it was a football game
Or Desert Storm
Again?
What if they dream up a plan
So simple and beautiful
That with a thousand dollars
They massacre a couple
Of million of us with Weapons of
Mass Destruction
Like
Sarin or Ebola or Ricin
Or a Parcel of dirty nukes
Aboard a holiday Boeing 757
Cruising over Manhattan
Again?
What if we devise
A Weapon of Mass Destruction
So diabolically complex
As to strip
From them
For our own use
Every non-renewable resource
Tucked by God into
the bowels of their desert
And preserved
For the hope of a future
That their nomadic
Stone-age little minds
Don’t even yet know exists –
Again?
What if they smack us
With a Pearl Harbor
So devastating
That our leaders are
Instantly smitten
With a perspicacity
Never possessed
By any such august body
Before or
Since Vietnam,
And will probably never
Possess
Again?
Here we go
Again.
December 2001 | back-issues, fiction, Michael W. Giberson
They say that to be a poet, or even to read poetry, one must be slightly insane.
Which is not to say that the poet, or the reader of poetry, is to blame
For his or her own circumstance, predicament, or condition
Because it is really a matter of fruition.
Many a man or woman have I fervently but distantly esteemed
For the cut of his or her jib or the mire of his/her mud or the bite of her/his spleen
But whose poetic facility ranks right up there with The Best of Dick and Jane
Or Who’s Who in the World of Business, or a matchless tract on how to explain
The inner workings of ovaries or some other obscure but highly important organ,
And to listen to their patter for longer than 0.5 minutes I consider to be very borgan.
But, ah! The others, those rare bards peeking shyly out from behind their little tin shields
Who are equally at home yelling, “Grab a hunk of curb, asshole!” or yodeling odes about Elysian Fields.
There is no doubt that you are one of those not-so-closet poets that color the midst of us mortals,
And you are blest or cursed with a rare perception of what is right and good perhaps more than you ortal.
The fact that you choose to spill it all over everybody’s personal landscape, and make a few pea pickers of our acquaintance a tad disconcerted,
Doesn’t make your lyrical notions wrong or unwelcome in the minds of those of us with whom you have poetically flirted.
For it is plain as the nose above that cookie duster you call a mustache,
That poets, like everyone else, like to make a splache.
Fruition, you see. The favored friends you have carefully chosen to share the wit and wisdom of your sonnet
Are no less burdened to the task than is your ode-spreading head with the powerful urge to create laid onnet.
In other words, Screw it!
You’re constitutionally compelled to do it.
And those of us, who that one little fact doth realize and comprehend,
Consume your canticles with gusto, even if them we don’t always fully understand.
Disparaging trolls may piffle at what they consider the mawkish cutes you and I artlessly dispense,
But we sagacious souls turn our gaze to the stars and away from fools sitting on a mud fence.
If simple minded gherkins call us banal,
The are welcome to osculate the bitter end of my alimentary canal.
I like your stuff as much as you like mine, and if there is one thing I will always treasure
It is watching a man who unquestionably and wholeheartedly thrives on the pleasure
Of expressing his entire ethic in verse so that planet earth may as a place be a little bit better.
Even if he thinks it is ok to say farewell by means of a form letter.
(This poem was written in 1998 and presented to John the day after I received his form letter announcing his retirement)
December 2001 | back-issues, Jack Swenson, nonfiction
I had a doctor’s appointment the day the passenger jet lost its tail and made an unscheduled stop in Queens. My wife called from work to tell me about it. Sick to my stomach, I searched the online news websites for details. Nobody had much information.
I went outside and smoked a cigarette. The sky above the hills to the east was a wash of pink and gold. To the west, behind the house, rain clouds the colors of ashes were bunched like fists.
Later it began to rain. The water pounded on the roof, sending the cats flying for the bedroom, where they huddled cheek to jowl beneath the bed.
My appointment was a routine matter. I go in every six months to have my blood checked. I think my doctor feels the need to lecture me on the evils of smoking every once-in-a-while as well.
After the checkup, I went to lunch with my wife, who works in the clinic, and one of the other nurses. Later the doctor joined us. Nobody said anything about the tragedy in New York. The conversation was office gossip and chitchat.
The medical folks, knowing what was what about calories and cholesterol, ate lightly. Without apology or a twinge of conscience, I wolfed down a ham and egg salad sandwich and a piece of pumpkin pie.
The next morning the news was better. The Northern Alliance had waltzed into Kabul, and the guys in black hats were heading for the hills.
Weekdays I go for a walk in the morning with a friend. Our walking trail is a par course that winds through a business park on the southern edge of the city. On our walk that day, my friend told me that the Baptists were up in arms about the Harry Potter movie. According to them, it was satanic. I pointed out that the Bible has some wild and crazy stuff in it, too. My friend said that our religious nuts were as bad as the Muslims. My friend believes in God, but he doesn’t care much for religion.
Wednesday morning I read a story on the CNN Website about the rebels taking over a radio station in the Afghanistan capital and hiring women to read the news. Oh boy, I thought. Maybe we should hire the cowboys to do our public relations, too!
I checked my e-mail, and there was a message from my cousin in Minneapolis. It was a joke about a veterinarian, a cat, and a Labrador retriever. I had heard the joke before. I wrote back and told him that I was cheered by the fact that the good guys were winning the war. I also told him that I wasn’t going to fly on airplanes anymore.
My cousin replied that travel by air was safer than driving. Also he said he worried that the guys in the white hats would turn around and become the guys in the black hats.
I wrote back that you have to have faith in something.
That night I went to an AA meeting. The meeting secretary had dark smudges under his eyes; he looked like he hadn’t slept in a week. I asked him what was wrong, and he said that he had been in a car accident that afternoon. The car was a rental. His truck was in the shop because somebody had broken into it and stolen the radio the week before.
The meeting topic was gratitude. The secretary said he wanted talk about that because he was feeling pretty sorry for himself when he walked into the meeting.
A man who had been sober for nearly thirty years said that he was grateful for the things he did not have. He didn’t have a bail bondsman anymore, he said. And he didn’t have to get his financial advice or marriage counseling in bars.
When it was my turn to talk, I said that when we talked about gratitude in an AA meeting, I always thought about the pamphlet titled “Why We Were Chosen.” I don’t know why I was picked to get well, I said, but I was. I guess I just got lucky, I said.
My wife and I get up early in the morning, my wife because she has to go to work. I get up early because that’s when I wake up. I’m an early riser. Thursday morning I was up at five o’clock. I fed the cats, and then I went into the room in our home that we call the office, and turned on the computer. I went online and checked the latest news. There was a story about a plan in the works to destroy the United States. Mullah Omar was quoted as saying that “America will fall to the ground.” This wasn’t about weapons, the Mullah said. The extinction of America will come about if God is willing.
For some reason this story cheered me. I told my wife that I would be very surprised if God were on the side of the Taliban.
Thursday is the day the trucks pick up the garbage in our neighborhood. The sun was still below the foothills to the east of our house when I went outside to get the empty saucers and other containers that we use to feed the stray cats. An Oriental woman carrying two bulging plastic sacks was raiding the recycling bins, picking out the aluminum soda cans, I surmised. As I watched, she went from bin to bin up and down the street. Then she got into her car and drove away. As she left, I noticed the logo on the rear of the car. It was a Mercedes.
Holy Moses, I said to myself. Is this a great country, or what?
December 2001 | back-issues, Bill Wunder, poetry
No neon glare
on the plains of Africa,
no streetlights
in the Serengeti,
only night,
black as espresso.
Parched earth revived
by generations of tears;
Lazarus land.
Hopelessness
of hunger closes in like hyenas.
Dream of them.
Dawn renews despair,
a second language here.
Red dust swirls
its death dance
with seeds of faith,
mere wishes upon the wind.
Children dressed only
in distended bellies,
adorned with flies.
I do not look them in the eye.
Tears Of Africa first appeared in [i]Snow Monkey[/i].
December 2001 | back-issues, fiction, Michael W. Giberson
There is no one such as I…
God’s own juices flow here.
The plain upon which I falter is my hell…
Peace is not an accord,
But a gift discourteously declined.
Why do you ask what I have done?
The past does not suit you, nor me.
Had I been purple at the proper instant,
I would not now be gray.
Seekers whisper wry imaginings
In front of my shoulder blades.
My only sin is distraction;
My only vice, reputation;
My only virtue, absence.
Empathy dances from spire to spire,
Futile cerulean St. Elmo’s fire.
Muse, muse, where are youse?
My lips are pinned I cannot bestir the frost.
My blood is black, my heart a cavern
I cannot fill even with a howl.
You do not feel my kiss on your lips;
I steal your shoes and you bless me.
Grace is a sham and
God is left-handed.
His embrace is less than endocrine,
More than smile.
The passing days are instant.
There is no one such as I….
