August 2001 | back-issues, fiction, Michael W. Giberson
Up! Get up, young man, there’s nothing wrong with you
That I can tell. You’ve no call laying sunken still
Three days dead in the evening heat and morning dew,
The jungle creeping in on you to work it’s green-eyed will.
Him I understand, laying slack against the wall,
No head, no legs, no arms, a bloodless shredded sack.
He grappled with a satchel charge, left nothing else at all.
A tattered scrim of dusky skin informs me he is black.
But you, sir, get you up! There’s naught in you infirm
Save a certain languid pallor and a dusty, dreamy stare
Coupled sorely with a stillness that forebodes the end of term
Of your likely twenty-two that should have never ended there.
Sifting through the wreckage, noting dutifully each
Reason each dead man is dead, what each dead man can teach
Us the living, us the frightened. We who here have yet to die
Garner mute and awful testimony, for we must know why.
Threadbare camouflage and boots, accouterments in place,
No scrape nor bruise nor puncture there to certify your fate.
Lily-colored, silken, waxen, beard ungrown upon your face,
Up, sir, up! You are not broken. Bid you hearken and you state
Why you lie there veiled in tears, ringed by comrades welling grief,
Never touching, never touching, but despairing of relief
From the enigmatic answer to that cryptic question, “Why?
“Why is it that you are chosen, and not he, nor she – nor I?”
August 2001 | back-issues, fiction, Michael W. Giberson
God’s gift of
bilateral symmetry:
we may, if we dare,
sample the adhering ether
outside the scrim
expanding
like thought,
slow as time,
purple cabalism.
one eye
one thought
one hand, one hook –
aural –
glimpse, a flick –
flash vision – Tantalus
frustrated
multiple internal
reflectance…
August 2001 | back-issues, fiction
by Jerry Vilhotti, from his collection of literary precis
([email]vilhotti [at] peoplepc [dot] com[/email])
When Tom was searching for Christ in Northshredder New York, where he and his third wife, a Boston “blue blood person”, had spent a year at [i]The Society of Followers[/i] to get rid of the dirt they felt within themselves which was making the dark shadow on their souls grow, he reasoned that indeed Christ had feigned a limp, something like the one he had due to the polio that had ravaged his baby body to leave its affect on a twisted shrunken leg with a million pimples to colonize the upper area which would be a mark he would carry with him for the rest of his life and actually capture great heaps of pity from those who could not tolerate deformity, escaped to Rome where He settled down with a woman who resembled Sophia Loren, Gina Lollobrigida, Anne Bancroft and Verna Lissi all at the same time and had sixteen children with the four of them just as the church fathers were killing His brothers and sisters and all of His other Relatives to begin their new better religion on the shoulders of other religions which stood on yet others, that would garner billions and billions of dollars from those who felt guilt at having thrown stones at innocence and as Tom was being taken to a place of “rest” by four large attendants – he emitted an agonizing scream that could almost be heard in the land He had walked: speaking of love along with all the other prophets, drowning in tears at all the hate still existing there, representatives of all the other religions that had attempted to lead human kind into a semblance of compassion – with all their sincere efforts eaten by sham.
July 2001 | back-issues, fiction, Jack Swenson
Doc came prepared. He was wearing a parka and a heavy sweater when he got off the airplane. He had two big carry on bags and a huge duffle. Why did you bring all this stuff? I asked him. Doc looked puzzled. I left half of it at home, he said.
The next morning, we got up early and drove up to the property that Jake and I owned in the foothills of the Sierras. Our cabin was on the edge of the forest high above a lake. From the deck, we had a panoramic view oft he lake and the surrounding hills.
I had borrowed Jake’s truck so that I could transport several four by eight foot siding panels to replace the ones on the north end of the cabin that the porcupines had chewed up. Doc asked what porcupines found that was good to eat in wood siding, and I said it was the glue.
We worked all afternoon getting the old siding off and the new panels up. When we finished, it was getting dark. We drove into town and had dinner, and when we came out of the restaurant, it was raining. We got in the truck and headed back to the cabin, and up the grade a few hundred yards the rain had turned to snow. A mile or so out of town, the Highway Patrol had set up a road block. They weren’t letting anybody go through. I stopped and talked to one of the troopers. I told him where the cabin was. We had to go back and shut off the water or the pipes would freeze, I said. The trooper didn’t like it, but he moved one of the saw horses aside so we could pass.
It was snowing hard, but it wasn’t cold, and the snow flakes melted as they hit the surface of the highway. At the roadhouse, five miles north of town, I turned onto a gravel road. At the end of the road, by the lake, I parked the truck. The logging trail that led up the hill past the cabin was a crease in a blanket of snow.
When we got to the cabin, I was muddy and wet. Doc peeled off his rubber boots. He was wearing heavy woolen sox. He was wearing long underwear, too. I could see the hems of the white leggings when he turned up his cuffs to pull up his sox.
Doc built a fire in the Franklin stove while I changed clothes. When I came downstairs, he was making coffee. He pulled a chair up to the fire and put his big feet on the bricks in front of the stove.
I brought a chair over and sat down. I told Doc that there was a bottle of brandy in one of the cupboards in the kitchen. Doc got the bottle and poured some of the brandy into his coffee cup. The brandy smelled like apples and cough syrup.
I went into the kitchen to get the coffee pot. I put the pot on top of the Franklin stove and sat down again. I picked up my coffee cup and held it in front of me with both hands.
It’s cold in here, Doc said.
Fifty degrees, I said. I had looked at the thermometer on the wall by the door when I was in the kitchen.
It’ll warm up, Doc said. This old stove throws a lot of heat.
I shuddered. I hate cold weather, I said.
You have to dress for it, Doc said.
Doc took a sip of his coffee. You look better, Doc said. You’ve got some color in your cheeks. When we got stuck, you were shaking when you got back in the truck.
I should have let you push, I said.
It’s stress, Doc said. You get beat up, and after a while, your body quits. You feel like you don’t have any skin.
Doc wanted to talk. He talked and I listened. I wasn’t listening carefully, though, because after a while, Doc asked me what I was thinking.
I smiled. I was thinking about Mona, I said.
Forget about Mona, Doc said. Put her out of your mind.
No, it’s okay, I said. I told you what she said, that she liked me better when I was drinking. Well, that’s the way I feel, too. I liked her better when I was drinking.
Mona’s a twit, Doc said.
Mona’s Mona, I said.
Let’s talk about something else, Doc said.
What do you want to talk about? I asked.
Tell me about the meetings.
I told Doc what the meetings were like. People sit around and talk, I said, and then everybody stands up, holds hands, and says the Lord’s Prayer.
Is it boring? Doc asked.
Sometimes, I said. Some people don’t know when to shut up.
What about the women? Doc asked. I’ve heard that there are a lot of good looking women in AA.
I told Doc that you got a little bit of everything in AA.
Doc sighed. He didn’t say anything for a while. I didn’t say anything, either. Doc looked as if he had something on his mind. Finally, he spit it out.
I’ve been thinking that maybe I should quit, too, he said.
Drinking? I asked.
Yes, Doc said.
I was surprised. Why would you want to do that? I asked.
I think I’m an alcoholic, Doc said.
I asked Doc what made him think he was an alcoholic, and he said that when he started drinking, he couldn’t stop.
Look, Doc said, we don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to.
I said it was all right, that I didn’t mind. I told Doc that sometimes I thought that talking about not drinking was almost as much fun as drinking.
Doc said he thought he would be a good alcoholic. He smoked cigarettes, he liked coffee, and he didn’t like to do what he was told.
I asked Doc how he knew so much about AA, and he said that half his friends were in some kind of program.
An hour later, Doc was telling war stories. The bottle of brandy, half full to begin with, was nearly empty. Doc was telling about the time that he and Ed had picked up a girl in a bar in Minneapolis. I had heard the story before. I got up and wandered around the room while Doc talked.
Doc had put some books on a table in one corner, and I picked them up and looked at the titles. One was a book about geology, and the other was about the first world war.
I went over to a window and looked out. The snow was coming down every which way, like confetti, as if someone were tearing pieces out of the sky.
So then I asked her to do something else, Doc said, and she said, ‘Oh, no. I’m saving that for my husband.’ She was going to be married in two or three weeks!
Doc laughed and laughed.
I told Doc that I was going to bed. Doc looked at his watch. What time is it getting to be? he asked.
Upstairs in the loft, I lay on my back and watched the shadows cast by the fire on the angled ceiling. I wondered if I would be able to sleep. If not, I would lie there and rest. Before, I had worried about not sleeping. Then I had learned that the way to fight it was to stop fighting.
I shut my eyes and listened to Doc downstairs poking at the fire.
July 2001 | back-issues, fiction, Jack Swenson
Wanda here. I’m the director of Social Services at the Lutheran Home. I do a little bit of everything around here. I’m the chief cook and bottle washer, so to speak. Mainly I’m in charge of patient welfare. I see to it that the gals get new undies when they need them and that the guys get to the grocery store when they run out of oatmeal or prunes. It’s a good job. Busy, busy. But that’s the way I like it. And George and Ida are good people to work for.
If you have to be in a nursing home, this is a good place to be. Nobody volunteers to get in here, I suppose, but we take good care of the residents. We go the extra mile. The food is good, and we give the seniors lots to do. There’s something going on all the time. Talks, music, Bible study, exercise classes, bingo. Nobody gets a chance to sit around feeling sorry for himself.
Did I see trouble coming when Mack and Archie moved in? No, I didn’t. Mack was okay until Archie showed up. Mack got along with people, and he didn’t complain. It was the two of them together that caused the problem. They egged each other on.
Oh, Mack had an eye for the ladies, so I should have seen that coming, I suppose. But when he started mooning over Rose, it seemed innocent enough.
About the other, I didn’t have a clue.
Mack was popular with the other residents, especially the ladies. He was a tall, lanky fellow with a full head of white hair. “The Silver Fox” was a nickname that one of the women gave him. They didn’t call him that to his face, of course. Archie was tall and bony, all arms and legs. He had kind of a gloomy personality, whereas Mack was more upbeat. Archie got along well with the others, too, once he settled in. Both of them liked to talk, and they were both good listeners.
Mack and Archie hit it off right away. After a few weeks, they were the best of friends. Every day they would have coffee together in the afternoon, and they’d sit for hours in the day room arguing about politics and talking about the old days.
When Rose moved in, and Mack started acting like a love-sick teenager, I thought it would put a crimp in their friendship, but Archie seemed amused by his friend’s behavior. If anybody asked, he’d just shrug and explain that Mack was “twitterpated.”
It’s my fault that the two old boys got in trouble, I suppose. One of the other residents, Otto, came into my office one day. He wanted to have a party, and he wondered if the staff would help him set it up. I asked him what the occasion was, and he said he had won some money. “Oh, yeah?” I said. “How much?” “Two thousand dollars,” Otto said. I whistled. “That’s a lot of money,” I said. Otto nodded. He was all excited. “I won it betting on the horses,” he said. Otto said that Archie had made the bet for him.
When I talked to Archie, he was perfectly honest about it. Yes, he made the bet. He made bets for a lot of the residents, he said. Mack was helping him. Mack collected the money, and Archie called in the bets. A friend of his in Minneapolis made the actual wagers. Or if the race was in another state, he’d call another friend who lived in Reno, and he would buy the tickets at a sports book.
Then it hit me. I had been wondering why the residents had taken such a sudden interest in football! In the past, during football season, three or four of the men might sit in the day room and stare at the TV during the Vikings game, but this year there were fifteen or twenty people in there every Sunday. They were a noisy bunch, too! One day the weekend charge nurse had to go in there and tell them to pipe down.
We all thought it was pretty funny. The staff, that is. All of those old Norwegians and Swedes suddenly becoming football fans!
Silly me.
I asked Archie if they were betting on football, too, and he said yes. Football, basketball, hockey. Whatever anybody wanted to bet on.
Well, I had to tell Ida about it because I knew that if George found out that there was gambling going on in his nursing home, I’d be in trouble–we’d all be in trouble. Ida, George’s wife, is a very sweet lady. When I finished telling Ida the tale, she clapped her hand over her mouth to keep from laughing.
Ida had to tell George, though. I could see her point. If the state got wind of what was going on, they could close the place down. And it would be bad for business if people in town found out. Very bad.
So George had a talk with Archie and Mack, and the upshot of that was that the two old men had to move out. Archie went back to California, and Mack moved into one of the new apartments down by the river.
I had a talk with Mack before he left, and he didn’t seem too upset. “Hey,” he said. “We’re lucky. We’re walking out of here. Most people leave this place in a box.”
I told Mack that it was none of my business, but I was curious how they got started betting in the first place.
It grew out of an idea that Archie had, Mack said. One day Archie said that some of them ought to get together and bet on which one would live the longest. They could all throw some money in the pot and buy a bottle of good booze, and the last one to go would get to drink it.
The idea just took off from there, Mack said. They started talking about how they used to bet on the horses, and on football and basketball games, when they were younger, and one day they said, why not? So they asked around to see if there was any interest, and there was, so Archie made the call to his friends, and they were in business.
Some of the folks around here were pretty down in the mouth when Mack and Archie left. Mack stops by to have coffee with his old friends every once in a while, and he always gets a big welcome.
Yesterday I got a card in the mail from Mack. It was in a fancy envelope, and I knew right away what it was. It was a wedding invitation. Mack and Rose were getting married the week after Christmas. Mack had written in black ink at the bottom of the card, “Honeymoon in Vegas. Tell the boys.”
June 2001 | back-issues, fiction
a novel excerpt by Jeffrey Allen Walker
([email]jallenwalker [at] netscape [dot] net[/email])
MY APARTMENT’S MAGIC WINDOW (WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 1994)
Please let this be the last day. Let me get hit by a bus or shot or vaporized. Just don’t let me have to come back here again. When I was a planner in Minneapolis I wrote a couple of articles that were published in some trade magazines and had a few guest columnist pieces in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, we called it the Strib. I never complained about seeing my name in print, but I wanted more. I wanted to write a great novel that criticized the American way of life and moral system. But in order to write, I had to understand. What better way to understand than to participate? But being an active member cuts down on writing time. It’s a very mild catch-22. No bloodshed. Nobody’s feet get cold. Nobody’s guts spill out. As a result of internal debate between going out to experience and staying in to write, I did nothing except write a few guest columnist pieces for the Strib. No great novel, no critical acclaim.
I spent a lot of time in my new apartment on State Road doing nothing. Sometimes I wrote letters I never meant to send. Sometimes I began writing stories about my friends. Mostly I thought.
My apartment was quite charming for the decor I chose. I brought my guitar and milk crates which held the archaeological treasures of my college years. My parents gave me the guitar when I was seventeen. I salvaged the milk crates from the basement of my home. They were the only effects preserved from my marriage. I sold all the furniture and paintings and appliances and donated the casual clothes. I kept pictures of Dayona and our children, but I hardly looked at them anymore. I viewed their leaving as a chance for me to start over again. I kept the milk crates and the albums and books because they were points of light along the path of my life.
Everybody walks a path and when we get lost we look behind us and see those shiny rocks that glimmer like little lights along the path we walked. Sometimes we retrace our steps to a place that is familiar and comfortable and create another path. Sometimes we just turn around and keep trudging through. I wasn’t particularly happy with the course my life took my last few years of college or after I moved to Minneapolis. I felt I sold myself short on the entertainment and austere aspects of life. I devoted my prime party years to getting the good job, making the good money and having the nice stuff. So I back stepped and made a new path.
In between my graduation and marrying Dayona I forgot about the time in life that’s meant for screwing around. Just hanging out and looking at sunsets and drinking beer and maybe going to work with a hangover. I had a kick-ass stereo system hooked up to a 46″ television that I watched on my gorgeous teal, tope and mauve sectional couch which I placed under my modern Scandinavian design floor lamp which was right beside some painting by a funky up-and-coming artist I don’t remember. Everything in my first apartment in Minneapolis was smooth. Simple lines, soft, pastel colors. Like a scene from Miami Vice. All the latest and hippest CDs and albums (before albums disappeared and made a small comeback). I was ghetto-city highbrow. But I never just sat around with friends and listened to records. Everything was important.
The colonial house Dayona and I shared on Dupont South was equally impressive. Large picture windows. A bay window in the master bedroom. Lots of closet space. A skylight in the attic. Bright yellow and burnt orange walls. A big house with a front porch. Every room was big. Dayona loved it. I loved it. We loved it in every room the first week after we moved in. We made the walls sweat.
My current digs were a little more common. Two 10′ x 10′ bedrooms. A 12′ by 14′ living room. The bathroom may have been 4′ x 5′. The bathtub big enough for one. It was situated in a small complex of eight-unit apartment buildings just south of I-480 in Parma. From my living room window I saw the neon pink glow of a furniture store sign. When the noise from the street calmed down enough I could hear the attendant at the gas station tell customers their pumps were ready to use. Go ahead, pump three. Everything was the common color of the middle-class apartment. The walls were eggshell. The hollow particle board door was eggshell. The trim was eggshell. The carpet was renter-brown. I could hear the buses squeal to a stop in front of my new home. Home? This wasn’t my home. This was where I stayed. I felt more at home crashed on the couch of a stranger’s apartment after a big college party.
The few things I did buy didn’t make it feel much like home. Plates, silverware, a small floor lamp for the living room and a futon to sleep on. That was it. No fancy paintings, no expansive music collection. I was mostly devoting myself to becoming a better version of what I was before. I often sat in front of the window and watched the traffic zip by. I bought a small TV after the second week so I wouldn’t miss Homicide. But most nights I preferred to watch traffic rather than television. I became bored with the selection of comedy shows and dramas. Bullshit dramas that purported to be realistic but couldn’t say fuck or shit. Why go for reality on television? Isn’t it supposed to be an escape? I worked with a Sipowicz-like guy in Minneapolis. I dated a Roseanne-like girl in college. I wanted something to take me away. I watched Homicide because after reading the book I was fascinated by the characters and the setting. I also liked it because there weren’t any pretty-boys or supermodels in the cast. I almost moved to Baltimore because of that show.
Sometimes I found myself awake at four in the morning. On those occasions when it was impossible to return to sleep I sat by the front window and wondered where everyone was going at such late hours. I tried to imagine their lives. Were they going to work? Were they returning from a lover’s bed? Which ones were running from the law? Which ones were running from bad memories? I watched the early drivers gently swerve down the road. I watched the six-in-the-morning crowd struggle their way to soccer practices and store openings and shift changes.
In the morning darkness the street was black except where decorated by the white dashed lines and the yellow stripes that divided the center lane. It almost seemed to glow a florescent gold under the amber streetlights. On this morning I awoke early and stayed in front of the window while time crashed into itself causing the past and future to merge for what seemed like hours. With my eyes closed I watched the sky turn from its silent blue into rose into mauve into day-blue. I felt the first rays of the sun caress my face and I dreamed I was whole again. I dreamed my boys were tugging on my pant legs and wanting to do pull-ups on my arms. I felt Dayona’s breath on the back of my neck. I could smell her perfume. I could hear her describe true happiness. Jordan and Lewis spoke to me, Lewis was speaking! He told me he loved me and couldn’t wait to hold my hand and wrestle with me like Jordan could. My family danced and played with me. They comforted me against the harsh winds of reality. I could feel the light brush of Dayona’s hand on my cheek wiping away my tears.
I opened my eyes and stared into forever. In this world, I hoped one of those cars whizzing past my small, typical apartment would sound like her car. I listened, hoping that one of the people departing the bus would have her laugh. But nobody laughed when getting off the bus. The only voices were the gas station attendants’ and they didn’t laugh.
It had been over a month and I still hadn’t hung anything on the walls. No artwork whatsoever. Not even a poster of my favorite athlete. My bright orange and red milk crates were the only furniture in the living room. I sat on the floor and used them for a table when I ate and for a desk when I wrote. The television sat on another stack of crates. There was one column by the window facing the street. That was it. A stark, empty apartment lived in by a man who wanted to recreate his past. I put a small photograph of Dayona and the boys on the refrigerator.
I had hundreds of pictures of the three and four of us, but this picture, taken the first day that Lewis was home from the hospital, captured everything that was right with my life. Jordan, excited over this wrinkled creature that looked distantly familiar, held his brother’s hands in between his lips. It was very hot that day so Jordan had decided he wanted to be topless. His bone thin arms and huge head glistened with summer sweat as he stared at this new…thing…with total fascination. Dayona was wearing a loose-fitting tank top so she could easily feed Lewis. Her breasts were looking damn good. Her shoulders and arms were well defined. Her hair was cut short and framed her face with flat baby-hair curls. Lewis had finished feeding a few minutes earlier and let out a huge milk-free burp. Jordan was surprised at the volume coming from such a small toy. Dayona’s family was visiting and her brother was lucky enough to catch the four of us in a moment of pure hysteria. Dayona: mouth open wide, eyes shut tight, anybody looking at the picture can virtually hear the laughter; Lewis: happy old man face after releasing the pressure in his belly; Jordan: glistening chocolate-brown alien eating his brother’s hands with a look of disgusted wonder. Me: nibbling on Dayona’s ear. It was the first picture of my family. Of Dayona’s family. Of Jordan’s family. Of Lewis’ family.
If I had one thousand pictures before Lewis was born, and one thousand pictures after Lewis was born, none of them could compare to the first picture of the four of us in our home. To look at my place one would think I had been single all my life. No one would have thought I produced anything as wonderful as one little man or inspired a woman to dream beyond her boundaries.
