Chilled earth rasps over the shovel's tongue, then is spat into the silver cemetery air. The digger grunts and splits a white bead into the mud. Under the gothic arch-ribs of the church lies the duchess, laid in her inlaid bronze box, its lid frosted with white roses, frozen in the hallowed breathlessness of the space. The digger drops his shovel, peels his tipless gloves, then blows from the bellows of his belly on a handful of frozen sausage fingers. His spiny cheeks are raw, red, and round—an untempting fruit. In her box (more snug than the one in which she perched for her last Thursday night opera), the duchess's well-exercised jaw is locked, complexion firming to that of a soft green cheese. She clutches her ancient talons at her waist, never again to finger pearls, skim for mantel dust, or pinch a crystal wine-glass stem. The digger, his earth pocket almost deep enough, cracks open a whiskey cap, slugs a fiery sip, tosses the bottle into the fresh cut loam and resumes his digging motion. The duchess would disapprove of his taste in drink, but she holds her tongue this time. |
Dream. And so it begins this way. Chickens in Physics. Stained glass Tupperware. In a cathedral, you hold the rosary; you are my salvation. I'm so afraid to open my eyes and let this dream go, the red velvet of this reality, I'm so afraid I'll slip out of your arms this time and wake between cold sheets. Nightmare. It catches me every night. A vision so real it hurts. Spinning colors, vivid and loud, you in all hues. Sound is indistinguishable in the cathedral; phantoms or shadows, which are less real? Paralyzed with nighttime terror, I can only move my eyes. You hold an axe and ask me for theorems. I can only move my eyes. I slip on a postulate and find myself awake before the axe has fallen. Dream. And so it begins this way. Caesar has planted pear trees in his orchard and I am to collect the red ones and toss them into the volcano. You hand me a net of Godiva's golden hair. You say it was nothing. I give you a pear. Nightmare. It catches me every night. Caesar has planted pear trees in his orchard and I am to be thrown into the volcano for collecting the red ones. You take pleasure in carrying me off in a net of Godiva's golden hair. I ask, "How can you do this to me?" You say it is nothing. Dream. And so it begins this way. It is the pathway to Elysion; we eat grapes along the way. I ask, "How cam'st we to this strange world?" You tell me that we've died. I do not mind that. I like grapes. Nightmare. It catches me every night. You are Charon and you ask me a riddle. I drop my coin into the putrid lake and when I reach to get it, my skin is wrinkled like a raisin. I ask, "How cam'st we to this strange place?" You tell me that I've died and that you've come to ferry me to Tartaros. You laugh at my ignorance. I fear three-headed dogs. Dream. If once I could speak truly to you, it would elate me. Nightmare. I do not have the courage to speak to you. |
Joe started the day like any other. He got up at 8 and left for work around 8:30. On the drive to work traffic was moving slower than usual, so he decided to listen to some music. About to pop a cassette tape into the stereo, he was struck by the fact that his car didn't have a tape deck. He set the tape down and laughed at himself for making such a silly mistake. As he reopened his briefcase to put it away, his laughter began to grow louder. He picked up the tape again only to find that the object had never been a tape, but a fruit of some sort. He couldn't remember what the curved yellow fruit was called. Now his laughter had grown loud and maniacal. His hands tightened around the wheel of the car as the vein in his forehead began to make its presence known. Joe began to jerk the wheel violently left and right. He watched out the front window as all the other cars just sat there, unmoving. Traffic was at a standstill. He remembered the colorful plastic ice-scraper that had appeared in his car one day. He remembered. Joe turned to unbuckle his seat belt only to find that his seat belt was not on. The seat next to him had the seat belt fastened instead. Picking up the ice-scraper, he started to scratch at the colorful letters on it. The red and the blue and the other color. How could he get the colors off? They weren't supposed to be there. He needed it to dig for treasure. Stabbing at the seat next to him, he began his excavation. Joe was unhappy with the shovel, but pirates worked with what they had. Deeper and deeper he dug into the sunny beach. The roar of the sea was loud, but it was being drowned out by the honking of a strange bird. As a pirate he was always seeing strange new animals on the far-off islands. But he had to focus, focus on the treasure. It had to be there somewhere. Then he struck something hard: his treasure. Joe tried to pick it up, but it was too heavy to pick up alone. He would need some help to bring his pirate treasure aboard his ship. But he was in his ship, with the treasure. He was sitting at the helm ready to set sail. The birds had stopped honking now and the sea was flat. Joe fastened his seat belt and looked at the clock. It was almost 11:30 and the traffic was gone. He had to get to work. Where did he work? He began driving again. At the next exit he turned off the highway and drove towards a tall office building. Maybe he worked there. He drove his car up to the building and into the front. He probably worked somewhere upstairs so he drove towards the giant lobby stairs. Joe liked the building. It was big and he had no trouble maneuvering his car as the people scurried out of his way. He looked at the passenger seat. It was all torn up, and the fuse box casing from underneath was exposed. No, it wasn't a fuse box casing, it was his treasure. His pirate treasure. He was a pirate, and pirates don't work, they plunder! He started to cackle again, raising his ice scraper high in the air out of the sun roof. The people aboard the vessel all ran as Joe swerved left and right through the huge ship, cackling and waving his cutlass high in the air. But it wasn't a cutlass, it was his shovel. How stupid he must have looked. Suddenly it hit him: Pirates don't know how to drive cars! He tried to get out, but there was something across his chest. Starting to panic, he searched for his cutlass. In the back seat, that was not his tennis racket, it was a lawn flamingo, no, it was his cutlass. Joe grabbed his mighty cutlass and tried to free himself. The bindings would not be undone! Unable to slash the bindings, he squirmed his way out of the seat and out the sunroof as the car coasted towards another window. He stood up and held his cutlass forward, making pirate noises as the car broke through the window and fell into a pond. His treasure was gone, sunk to the bottom of the briny deep. Joe was alone now. Alone in the middle of the ocean. |
The morning tears through the mind like an awl. Through coffee shop windows the young, the perfectly coiffed can be viewed like the whores of Amsterdam—long-haired and supple, begging from between masterfully curled eyelashes for the chance to be seen. |
Photograph by Emma G.
Woman on a Nude Beach, July 1999 You ought to be painted here from this angle, with leaves framing your hair framing your face and your small smooth solid body stretched on the wet sand only parts of it covered by colors. Someone ought to paint you in a picture with sound, with the echoes of wave after wave after water and your near-silent sighs surrounded by the water's whispers on the wet sand only parts of them entering your earlobe. Somebody should paint you now in this moment, on this beach without motion without creation just your simple shallow inhalations shaking your slenderness on the wet sand only parts of you aware of the world. You ought to be painted here. You look so happy. |
The trip through the Keys was a long one. I long for a scenic performance We would sit on the back porch With chicken legs Ground into the ancient mud Up; she plays, forte on the serenity Gracelike, Almost sophisticated But still prevented from loveliness She bites like a striper (Dawn's fools) The tiny Thread and feathers Struggle against the hollow mouth of a fish Plunging through grass She has yet to discover the selfish independence Which eventually consumes us all Looking up, the moon used to seem out of place here, In her immaterial mind Peeling off that intangibility, we will Fall back Into the sunlit poinsettias And again that old, contingent Mozart wastes me away |
Charles Denby needed a jolt. After turning thirty-seven, three years ago to the day, he took a moment to evaluate his life and decided that this would be the dawning of great times. So many of the books that lined the shelves of his comfortable two-bedroom house told of men who suddenly realized they needed more. Individually, they came upon some great truth about the nature of man, the world, or even the universe, but regardless of the variety in their eurekas, there was one constant: a woman. A woman, or better yet, a younger woman, a wispy girl with flesh swelling in all the womanly places; all the pure things of children stirred with the racing appetite of seasoned lovers. That was certainly Charlie's definition of more, and honestly he felt deserving of some angel, something of a birthday birthright. Additionally, Irene bought him Veralux lenses this year, expensive bifocals to laymen of aging. Wrapped in her solemnly practical silver paper that worked as well for birthdays as it did for births, weddings, or the holidays, Charlie received his pleasantly pragmatic gift, and upon tearing it open, looked into the face of his wife for the forty thousandth time, and yearned for something more. On his way to work, Charlie focused on appreciating the scent of morning, but try as he might, he wasn't stirred. There was a subtle desperation in his quest for enlightenment. He thought long and hard about finding a new line of workhow much time before coffee shops were swallowed up by oxygen bars anyway? He couldn't own the store forever. Perhaps he could go into advertising; he had three clever milk commercials on hand at any given moment. Swinging open the front door, the oppressive odor of beans, ground until they were little more than dust, jarred him back to reality. Conveniently, the heroes of his books knew nothing of whining mortgages and steep mothers. Slightly discouraged, Charlie began to arrange pastries in the display case. As he fiddled with the staples of his trade, cookies and bagels and muffins of the standard variety, he tried to imagine one hobby he would find some solace in pursuing. But even as the last blueberry was tucked into place, he had come up with not one saving grace. Just as a wave of quiet hopelessness made its way through his countenance, Charlie Denby suddenly looked up and beheld his muse. Lindsey Terhagen was disgusted by her peers. Having spent two years trapped in high school without so much as one decent friend to sweeten the blow of adolescence, Lindsey thought her sixteenth year of life would be different. So what if she portrayed a gravity her classmates unanimously lacked? Surely there would be someone interested in a remarkably tall skeptic with a searing wit and strong sense of justice. But strangely enough, Lindsey had not a single suitor. And while this fact was disheartening most of the year, never did she feel quite so undesirable than around Homecoming. During these past two weeks it was as if a lens had been switched, and Lindsey was 40x the social failure she was in March or July. Her only consolation was that this time tomorrow the dance would be over and she would be able to suppress the memory of this lonely day until she was older and thus confident of her assured state in the social world. But for now, all she could do was order a cafe au lait and hope the morning would hurry by. Realizing it was her turn to order, she looked up from her downcast state, and suddenly caught the eye of the cafe owner. Charlie was charmed by the way the girl had rolled up the waist of her plaid uniform skirt so that the hem grazed the middle of her thigh. Smooth, pink cheeks popped up and down to the motions of gum chewing. Drumming her fingers against an algebra book, Charlie noticed nail polish more chipped than painted on. She was a vision. Lindsey had frequented this very coffee shop since she was twelve, when the trend had wafted over from Seattle. Yet in all her years she had never noticed the man who oversaw the dashing, young employees at the register. In her mind everyone over forty or so took on a grayness that made them somewhat invisible, and certainly interchangeable. But there was something in the way that this man was looking at her that made Lindsey stop and take notice. He had probably been quite attractive as a young man, and taking into account his cool blue eyes, sharp jaw, and thick brownish hair, Lindsey decided that he still had something. Charlie, looking into her green eyes with yellow specks, decided she was something else, and so half-an-hour later he got up the nerve and approached her at the table by the window. If you disregard the time her mother persuaded cousin Arthur to take her to dinner after the matinee of Cats, no one had ever asked Lindsey Terhagen out on a date. And while an evening with the owner of her favorite coffee shop wasn't her first choice for her first true date, Lindsey couldn't have been more excited. While her childish and naive peers in rented tuxedos and taffeta gowns sneaked vodka and cigarettes, pretending to take the form of mini-adults, she would be partaking of the real forbidden fruit, with a genuine adult. And so sharply at eight she lied to her parents and met Charles at Lahiere's. Under his anxious gaze, the second hand of Charlie's watch slowly spun. Two minutes past eight, Lindsey, his angel, his vision in purple tights and a pink tank top, entered the restaurant, and they were seated at a table by the kitchen. Charlie had brought her roses for the occasion, and for him Lindsey had given up her gum. Over the course of the evening the mismatched pair made a noble attempt at filling silence. Once they even stumbled upon a movie they had both seen. But while they could not be on more dissimilar cultural wavelengths, when dining was done and the check came and was paid, they locked eyes and regarding their ensuing fate, wordlessly agreed. With Irene at her sister's, on the overnight visit she had so long desired to make but until today couldn't persuade Charles to sponsor, the two ended up at the Denby house. His keys made a crashing noise as they fell into the metal bowl by the door, and when the sound echoed, Charlie noticed that the house had never before seemed so still. Lindsey was impressed by the order of the dwelling; the magazines on the coffee table were perfectly stacked, and from the atmosphere of the place she sensed that the Denbys carefully separated their disposables for recycling. It probably wasn't a reflection of her man, however, and for a moment Lindsey thought of Mrs. Denby and was sad. In an attempt to set the scene for his moment of reawakening, Charlie led Lindsey into the living room and lit a fire. Before they built their house, Irene's sister had informed her that a mirrored wall tricks the eye into thinking there is more space, and so Charlie and Lindsey sat together in one warm room that seemed like two. This being her moment, her revenge upon the pitiful, blotchy-skinned fellows of eleventh grade, Lindsey leaned forward and brushed her hand against the slightly creased face of her admirer. Charlie felt the cool, soft fingers of his muse and braced himself for the dawning of a new age. Only for a fleeting moment did he think about Irene and his nymphet's muddy shoes upon her salmon rug. What would she say, he wondered? Lindsey imagined the bright red punch and the crowning of the queen. Wordlessly she rose from the couch and slowly undressed. As if in a trance, Charlie followed, unbuttoning his shirt. After a moment they felt the fire heat on all their bare flesh. But before the two beheld each other in all of their rawness, something, perhaps a fleck of light, drew their attention to the mirror. In the end, Charlie and Lindsey never saw the other nude. Instead, in Irene's freshly vacuumed living room, they stared at the full-length reflections of their own nakedness. It would take Charlie some time to get over the surprise at the sight of himself. Stacked on top of the hard athlete's body of yesteryear, like a dune of sand over the stretch of desert rock, his belly protruded full and pink. In the place where his love might hold, love handles held, and from his belly button a trail of gray led to his manhood. For the first time since she was a child, Lindsey stared at herself buck naked. Firelight clung to the swells of breasts and hips and buttocks. Her pale skin seemed to soak in the color of the light, as her cheeks reddened and her nipples blushed. She seemed to have been born for nudity. Her school uniform had done her form no justice. When Charlie shivered, his flesh trembled. He thought of Irene and how she must have seen him this way a hundred times and never said a word. In all fairness, the reflection would have been cruel to her as well, but somehow her company would have softened the light for him, and him for her. She had known him young, and she knew him now. He saw now that then was then, and this is now. Though she lacked a sparkling plastic crown and every other adolescent commodity, in the glow Lindsey got a glimpse of what would be. Under the polyester plaid of her uniform lay a landscape in which she and the man of her choice might one day dwell. She saw herself then as someone else would years from now, and that was fine for now. Charlie turned his back to her and silently dressed. Lindsey slipped on her purple tights and tied her shoes. She asked if she could keep one of the flowers, as some sort of souvenir, and Charlie told her to take them all. Lindsey only wanted one, and when Irene arrives home she will find eleven in a crystal vase on the table and be glad. |
The tiny chatter of honey heard through the smear of a sunny day. |
"The old believe everything: the middle-aged suspect everything: the young know everything." —Oscar Wilde Smashing Grandpa And his conventions, His outfits, His outlets, And most of all his rules The young are Transfixed Carving Dead pop stars Into their arms, They are not foolish They see life is fleeting Anarchy in the UK one day, Puppy love the next The old are Fixed In their ways They see moments in context, They are in context Stuck They go back To church, temple, Every month, Every week In the middle, however, Nothing is true And all seems Ridiculous |
We consider ourselves, discover inferiority. When I come down to breakfast and look into my cup of tea— circular and vast, round and flat—images rise from it and over me, I give them up because I'll never manage to make them tangible for others. Inferiority starts my day. I go through the actions of living, knowing only anxiety and that there is something lacking but I don't know how to say it. |
We struggle and work with the words that refuse to help us, and are yet supposedly our medium. We use their meanings to add to our own and only anxiety gets in our way. She ashes on my paper, her criticism curling above us and combining with the smoke and those things intangible. We dropped muses long ago, now we rely solely on the wit god granted us at birth and the help of grumpy old ladies, who smoke and criticize and bash the gift we thought we had. |
Ed felt her presence the moment his careful foot touched the floor of the room. His surroundings rushed to his eyes sloppily, the scene too much for Ed to decipher: plates of food, holiday decorations, and people, oceans of strange people. And there she was. Standing in a red suit, tapping her foot. Obviously nervous, adorably nervous, bathed in a sugary, twinkly gleam and waiting to be approached. Ed was short. Not boy-short, but man-short, four feet tall, the proportions of his body utterly absurd. He looked as if a giant thumb and forefinger had squished him together like a piece of earthy clay. Not fat necessarily, but wide. Legs like humongous logs. Ed worked at a soap company. Actually, they had recently expanded their line of products to include shampoo and other shower elements, and the company was now called Emerson Bathwares. His uncle was friends with the company's founder and had gotten him the job. Ed was a reliable worker. Not exactly bounding toward the top of the food chain, but reliable. He wasn't well liked by his co-workers, but he wasn't disliked, either; his presence was an easy one, his work completed quietly. Ed had not been happy for a long time. He spoke with his mother often over the telephone. She was concerned for her Edmuffin; nine years since he graduated from Eastern Michigan University and finally in his first real job, after all. And all alone. His father left when Ed was sixteen and though Ed's mother had long since settled into her destined marital cliché, she had always suspected that Ed somehow hadn't. She knew little Eddie had missed him terribly. The man had left a vacancy deep within Ed, a hollow as evident as his unusual height. So she worried, sat in their house and worried, about her cholesterol intake and the weather and her only son, incomplete and small in his cold city and corporate career. The company of his mother irritated Ed. He wanted a friend, a fellow man to connect with. And a girl... oh how he wanted a girl, a mistress, his own sweet drop of honey, a bona fide womanly woman. These coveted female entities seemed to be everywhere Ed looked; passing by on the street, next to him on the subway, smiling down on him from their lofty billboards. Lips and eyes and chuckles. But none for him. Ed stood in the doorway of the room, frozen. He glimpsed a cheerful plate of vegetables and started to close in on them, but stopped. His eyes darted back to the woman. She sipped a drink, expertly avoiding the hunks of ice, her lips closed just enough to let the liquid smoothly pass. He was hypnotized. She stopped, scratched her nose, blinked. He turned his body toward her. He took a step. He was aware of this woman only, every shape, every part, every ingredient. The floor creaked under his second step. She was bright red dawn across the room, she was a mystery, she beckoned to him. The woman tapped her shoe. It was a red heel, pointy and strange. Ed clenched his fists together and forced his feet to move, to take him to this woman. She smoothed the invisible wrinkles of her pants. Ed walked. His steps were hesitant, his legs unsure. He forced them. Take me to her, he said to them, take me to her. |
sunlight on buildings color of sand lit by eyes illuminated sorry stares from the Pont des Arts its wrought iron frame weeps I cross the Seine Notre Dame shines like a fox in the snow below in the water the Place Saint Michel extends into infinity and Thomas Paine jumps out of his statue to stroll on the Avenue Jourdan a smile on his face as he descends the hill his boots full of water |
Time on the atlas of your body Inspired by Pablo Neruda I cannot seem to refold the map of your body As you sprawl out before me I suffer to find the creases. I trace my own withered fingers across your tired face, The valleys of your cheeks, the watery crags beside your eyes, My fatherland whose own wrinkles tell the story of my maturation. I press my lips to catch the salty canals running down your chin. As I look at you unfolded before me I know that you are mine. Each swell and tuck turned to pucker and wrinkle As if I myself loosened the skin. This is my body. I have marked it with tongue and tears. I have marked the atlas of your body with time, our time. You unfold before me Expansive slopes, winding paths Gently trodden and soft against my hands. |