Road Signs

I have often found myself stacking sugar cubes and absentmindedly stirring sequential cups of coffee while they get cold, while I wait at this table, while I wait in this café, wait for at least an hour. It has never quite occurred to me that if I must be on time for such a meeting, I should bring a book or download Snood onto some electronic device and remember to bring it with me and, if I am hungry upon arrival, not bother to wait for my brother but rather order my meal and eat in the subtle company of my own crunching. And when he gets here, if he gets here (he usually does, eventually), I will seem patient (no longer hungry) and ready to listen to his misadventures, his metaphorical banana peels, which he slips on, falls on, and then beats to a pulp with much shouting and with much obscene language. My brother has trouble staying employed. As far as I know, that is, since the last time I met him here, when he was a full two-and-a-half hours late, he had become a florist and had presented me with some roses that looked almost too fresh. I later got it out of him that these beauties were not from his shop but snatched out of some overly floral, overgrown front yard in Carroll Gardens. It made me laugh just to imagine him holding these on the F train coming to meet me with a sheepish yet determined look on his face, while some slightly less Adonis-looking men observed him out of half-closed eyes, observed this bedraggled looking Romeo on his way to meet his sister (the mature one, the older one, the sensible one, who truly appreciated the flowers but could not help the embarrassment of waiting interminably and then being made the unwilling Meg Ryan in a wackily coincidental sugar-escapade).

And then I see him coming, crossing the street at a dangerous diagonal against the oncoming traffic, and I see that he looks better than usual, almost jaunty. If I am not mistaken, I believe he is wearing a bowler, a double-breasted pinstripe suit, and black penny loafers. At least there is no cane, Gaulois cigarette, or Poirot moustache. I come to an immediate conclusion: it could be monumentally worse. The one thing that doesn’t sit right is the eminent bulge in his jacket pocket, which catches my eye and confuses me until he gets closer, and it becomes quite clear that this mysterious item is an electric screwdriver. I am not at liberty to comment, not able to comment, not willing to comment until he puts the thing down squarely on the table in front of me as if he were almost proud of it. My guess this time? Andy’s Cheepies is the new Gap, and the screwdriver is one or all of three things: a minidisk player, a carpenter’s tool, and/or a cell phone. My follow-up questions: Does it have Snood? Does it have coverage in Omaha, rural Texas, or, for that matter, Marseille, Budapest, or Nairobi? After two minutes I cannot bear the sight of the screwdriver next to my coffee cup. It reminds me too much of someone’s “artistic” photography. What is the hidden meaning of this sexual tension here? What this is, if I must be the analyst of this theoretical art in my mind, is a portrait of my family. I am the coffee: round, feminine, caffeinated and consequently neurotic, but in control. My brother is the godforsaken electric tool: direct, almost too perfectly a phallic symbol of some esoteric masculinity, loud, and completely out of place on the table. In this picture, a parental unit table has reared this strange, unendurable duo. I set myself en garde for anything that might come my way from other end of the table, be it a wilted tulip or a box of bolts with a ribbon around it.

I hear that he has lost his job again. I hear about the lady with the poodle named in some franglais pretension he can no longer recall, a lady with connections and a catering business who had made do with daisies for a funeral and carnations for a wedding because my brother, the fiend of disorganization, had switched the orders. The shop had lost this affluent client and therefore a great number of sales. My brother was undeniably the culprit in this mishap and was fired by the proprietor, with a consolation prize of another week’s pay (it wasn’t really his fault, it had been a busy week, but they just couldn’t risk it happening again with another frequent client, such as that blond trophy wife with the Irish wolfhound who hosted heavily pollinated luncheons every Wednesday). The check had stayed warm in my brother’s hand just long enough for a cab to get him to Barney’s and for a saleslady to coax him into the pinstripe suit he now sports with the panache of a decorated official. I am puzzled, but I do not dare complain. I do not dare complain because compared to a week ago, which was the last time I met him here and he was late with the stolen flowers, when he was wearing bellbottoms “borrowed” from our father’s mothball closet, he looks fantastic. I tell him this, and he beams. I buy him a turkey club because, through his pride and through his proud outfit, I think he is crying.

My brother works for the antiquities dealers on Houston Street right off Broadway. His job, and he is well paid for this, is to steal street signs. My brother, the stop sign thief. I am told this in a self-conscious whisper, as if anyone would take him seriously anyway if they heard. I, on the other hand, have learned throughout my years as the sister, the pragmatic complement to this raging tidal wave of a brother, that truth is stranger than fiction. I have given up my skeptical looks in exchange for sympathetic glances and the occasional whimper here and there. I surf on the tsunami. I paddle backwards like an unfortunate duck. I lose my acute sense of the fine line between a diary entry and an embellished story told over too much wine at dinner. I cease to interrupt this boy, and I do not stop listening.

He had been on his feet dragging “right turn on red ONLY” signs away from the desperate taxi traffic on Atlantic Avenue at two in the morning. Last night, while the police were sleeping, he was climbing up traffic light poles with the electric screwdriver in the pocket of his double-breasted suit and had waited there, panting and nervous, as the thing buzzed and turned around, and then he had slunk down to his feet when the sign fell. I perceive this as organized crime at its silliest, at its zaniest; I imagine my brother as its pawn, and the image is complete. Then I see that his hands are slightly swollen, red in both guilt and in ache. I sit back, and since I lack means of condolence, of reassurance, of anything, I order him an egg cream.

It begins to snow outside, and since we are sitting in the window, we watch the steady accumulation and the fogging of the windows as the afternoon progresses and the winter makes the sky darken at some unhealthy hour. I still plan on returning to work at this point, even though it will be meaningless; my eyes will glaze over at the sight of the pages of reading that await me, and I will need ten more cups of coffee to retain any degree of concentration. I will work because even though I will not accomplish anything remotely useful, I will be awake and aware, and I will not dream of the screwdriver, or of bowlers, or of bowling alleys without their neon lighting….

Julia F.

Terrorist on the L Train

There goes a guy in his pajamas.

Where’s the terrorist?
Next car.
Bombing.

Will my big toe be left intact?

Pajama man left to the next car,
he’s the terrorist.

High alert.

Pajama terrorist is getting ready,
he is fixing the bomb and placing it

my body will be lost in the endless
sub-New York labyrinth,
cold, vomiting urine stench,
digested by flooded
tunnels of melting
ash, coughing walls,
endless dreams lost
to the third fearless rail.

Pajama terrorist is pushing the button,
I close my eyes,
5 4 3 2…

“No!”

A baby whispers.
He is staring at me,
eating a clementine,
hugging it,
he doesn’t know how to deprive himself.

He swallows it whole,
not thinking about the pits
or the pulp
or the white silicon lace
that could choke him.

It is sweet and he smiles.
Bits and pieces fall out of his mouth in
saliva canals.

What’s Pajamas waiting for?

The baby swallows the spherical sweetness with little fear.
I missed my stop, and
nothing blew up.

Jacob E.

Scrambled Hates

Things start from scratch, you know?
You scratch things from the start, no?
No things start you scratching like poison ivy.
Poison nothing, ivy starts you scratching.
Scratch no ivy, nothing poisons you.
You poison nothing, ivy no scratch.
No things know you, ivy, from poison.
Poison ivy knows you, and other things.
Things you know, others, no. Ivy.

Starting with others poisons, things like hate.
Hate poisons other things, nothing like you.
You hate poison, ivy, and other things.
Like you, poison hates ivy.
Ivy hates knowing nothing like you.
You, like poison, hate.
Things from nothing, ivy from poison, you from scratch.
Start with nothing, you poison hate.
From start to scratch, like you and ivy.

You hate poison ivy, from the start of things.
Hating starts poison, scratches like ivy.
Poison that thing, hate that ivy.
You know nothing like poison.
Nothing you like knows.
No, scratch that.
I know.

Diana D.

Folktale

This is why my tongue is heavy in my mouth
tripping over names
and nouns, pronouns
and adverbial phrases
This is why my lips are distended
and sloppy
This is the cause
This is the man
This man
Oh, this man
My eyes are raw
scraped raw from the sight of
his face
beautiful as any I’ve seen
This is cause for alarm
This is cause for panic
Send in the fire chief to steady my knees
to put out my burning ears
to close my tearing eyes

Morning broken,
I lie beside him, listening
to his breathing
stinging like nettles
He is a prince
and I am still unused to the glow
of my own renewed face

I had angered him
I had made a pastry doll to look like me
filled with sweet cream with a heart of honey
Secretly stabbing he tasted
my counterpart’s sweet blood
and oh, how he cried
mourning the loss of a bride so sweet
when I revealed myself
open-armed

Long and unbroken a life lived they,
But nary to me a word did they say.

Hallie C.

Counting

Fear of flying had propelled Annabelle to take a Greyhound bus back to California, and now she sat, clutching her Prada bag, eating a box of chocolate chip cookies. She stared out the window. Every time she saw someone wearing green, she took a bite of cookie. Small bites, mostly.

Green hat. She took a cookie out of the bag. Green sweater; one nibble. Dark green pants; second nibble. Ugly green shoes; third nibble. Green hat; a man walked into her.
“Excuse me,” he said.

“You know, you’ve totally ruined everything,” she said. “I was about to take my fourth nibble.”

“Sorry, ma’am,” said the man.

Annabelle put down the cookie box and brushed the crumbs off her dress. She re-buckled her black shoes. She fixed her stockings so that they didn’t bunch around her ankles. Opening her travel-size Tropicana carton, she took a sip of orange juice.

“Orange juice and chocolate chip cookies?” a voice asked. Annabelle looked up. It was the same man who had bumped into her. That was exactly what her mother always said, Orange juice and chocolate chip cookies? with the same mix of disapproval and dismay in the voice. And if it wasn’t that phrase, it was “oranges are not the only fruit,” which Annabelle had never understood.

“Not a good combination,” continued the man. “And besides, oranges are not the only fruit,” he coughed, “that make a nice juice.”

Annabelle looked him up and down, from his disheveled hair to his shiny shoes. He had on an odd-colored gabardine suit, something between olive and vomit.

“Now, mango, that makes a superb drink. And peach nectar, have you ever had peach nectar? Mmm, it’s delicious, very thick and sweet. Or passion fruit, that’s the best. Passion fruit juice. My God, have you ever tried passion fruit juice?”

Annabelle re-capped the container, then opened it again and drank a little more. “No,” she said and looked out the window. A middle-aged woman in a spandex running suit passed by the bus window. Annabelle wondered if the outfit was too yellow to qualify as neon green.

“No?” the man said, “Never tried passion fruit juice? Well, let me tell you, you’re missing out. It’s excellent.” Annabelle bit a cookie. “You know, in Greece you can never get just plain apple juice. They don’t sell it. They have plain orange juice, don’t worry, but it tastes like iodine.” He paused. “Ever been to Greece?”

She put the cookies back in her bag. “No,” she answered. She put on her sweater and zipped it all the way up. She re-buckled her black shoes. She pressed her lips together and looked at her reflection in the window.

She turned to face the man. He gazed out into space, then closed his eyes. He wore a very nice suit and very nice shoes, but he had a strange bow tie with maroon polka dots spread like eyes over its surface.

Annabelle leaned back in her seat and looked out the window again. She watched as an old, light blue Chevy sped in front of them. In the other lane was a red sedan, the back seat filled with children. She counted the cars—three red, one blue, two brown. In her peripheral vision she noticed a black Cadillac. That made seven…

“Where you going?” asked the man.

“What?”

“Where are you going to?”

“California.” That made seven cars.

“California? All the way from New Jersey? You should take a plane. Much faster. Much more expensive too, I guess,” he said. “How many days is it going to take?”

“I don’t remember. Not too many.” She turned around, leaned on her shoulder, and fell asleep.

* * * * *

“Annabelle, Annabelle,” Tom said, “Annabelle! It’s me, wake-up!”

A man in a rumpled, light brown suit had just boarded the bus. He shoved a tattered tan suitcase into the space above his seat.

“What?” Annabelle said sleepily and closed her eyes again. He shut the overhead bin with a bang.

“Annabelle,” he said.

“Oh!” She sat up, rearranged her dress, smoothed her hair, pinched her cheeks, and smiled.

“Oh, hi, Tom,” she said. “How are you? Is the bus on time? What time is it? Did you have to wait long between connections? I’m sorry you had to change buses. I’m lucky that I get to stay on the same one. How—how’s the weather been…”

“Annabelle, lower your voice,” he said. He put his hand to her lips. “The connection was awful,” he muttered. “I had to wait in that station for over two hours. What’s more, the terminal was dirty and full of little obnoxious children. You can’t imagine what a drag it was.”

“I’m sorry, Tom. Are you hungry? You must be hungry. I have some cake. Would you like some cake? Or wait, I think Mary put—”

“Annabelle, stop. I’m fine,” he said, then looked at her and frowned. “I thought that you went to New Jersey to see that famous doctor. Didn’t he do anything? You don’t look any better.” He pushed his eyebrows together. His lips bunched and folded on each other. His eyes gazed into hers, then lost their focus and glazed over. “My mother’s losing her hearing,” he said, “and probably you will, too, with my luck.” He closed his eyes.

Annabelle examined the lashes. She started counting them but it was difficult. He sighed.

“I won’t go deaf, Tom,” she said. His chest rose and fell, rose and fell. His breath came deeper and deeper. She watched him sleep, then turned to look at the other man still sitting across the aisle. He must have woken up when she hadn’t noticed.

Annabelle took the cookies out of her bag and started nibbling. As she leaned down to buckle her shoes she heard the man say quietly,

“Want some milk?”

She sat up. He held a small milk carton out to her, yellow, with a picture of two smiling children on its side. She stood up, sat down next to the man, and took the carton. Her eyes traveled from his eyes to his bow tie, back and forth, back and forth. What are they, she thought. What are those small strange shapes? They reminded her of olives or of some kind of fruit. Mango or pomegranate? Papaya or passion?

The man bent over and fiddled with his socks, then straightened up in his seat. Annabelle took a sip from the milk carton. She leaned down to re-buckle her shoes—and stopped.

“Well,” he said, “you look better already.”

Soula H.

The day before is not a day anymore
the day before is no block of time
the day before is right here sitting next to me
through years of the carry on carry on carry on life
with its computer-animated hearts and fast eyes that think they know what they see

I woke up in an auditorium with a Red voice speaking words I thought I understood
my hands clapping, my sight seemingly locked
on the speaker

When I looked they were clapping
when I felt them they stung, my hands
“we have come here today”
Red palms and Red voices
“we have come here today”
the rubber neck I own is bent all the way down—
without my consent

There are more trees than people
so the space is all Green
where their faces should be
if I was here with my eyes to focus
and in the Green I see the day before
the guitarist on West Broadway
with tap dancer shoes
whose life I made up while dropping a quarter
who was perfect for me
who had a life where pain
lived only one door down and was known for its name
He even joined the circus
but only stayed backstage

That day could be today
when I fell in love so many times while dropping a quarter
with everything
strange to my days
with everything
that takes a world for understanding
but I was told three times already
that it is not that day
and when you’re told so many times that it isn’t
it just never really is

So the space is all Green
again, where their faces should be
the day before is not my day anymore

“We have come here today”
the hands on my wrists are still clapping
and I’m here now with my parts, the pupils and nails
my hands should not clap, hands don’t clap at funerals
now the next Red voice is speaking
into the mechanics
“I knew Mark Colliyo since 1986”
so the space is all Green
where the chairs, boxes, and eyes should be
and I don’t know how to start living for these dead

“I knew Mark Colliyo since 1986”

And when there are no more trees and
no more people
the space will still be Green and he will have known Mark Colliyo
since 1986

So I’ll leave my hands clapping

And take the day before with my guitarist in shoes
and maybe the year 1975, which I never knew
but the hours and parts put this raw mind in its box
and these eyes become focused on Red voices
and Red palms
and although it feels as if the Green of the sky has covered my functions in wax
my feet stand me up, my palms start to pulse so hard I think maybe all the blood
has just moved there from heavy places
and he knew Mark Colliyo since 1986

Sandra Z.

You and the forest, or the forest and You

A slippery rain drums outside the threshold of windowpane and cold enclosure,
the world outside is washed of image,
sleepless and sticky and entirely void of color—
the sky is smothered and nameless and altogether black,
smelling of frost and water and deep shade
I watch you peel Chinese pomegranates in the sour wind by the lake
a stale, soft odor clings damply to the shore and intermingles with your hair—
the refracted, lunar light of a vacant sky reflects in the
water’s glassy-black ice membranes—
and I stand examining you from the warmth and silence of my kitchen

plump white plumes of cloud daub the pale-green horizon
and we are shadowed by lilac, crab and pine trees on a boundless translucent morning—
your lips are marbled and Delphic, and your eyes are flooded with the
deep water that gleams down beyond the reach of light—
I want to pull you back from the ivory and bones into a heavy humid existence—
yellow with buttercups and shine spills on silk
I miss your thick, warm sounds
that even the sheer liquidity of water and imageless light
cannot provide me

night is like the pressure of water against your eardrums, too close to you—
yet soft and shifting, I continue to observe your milky breath and cold air
as I chop onions for dinner—the Babylonian multitude of stars sting the darkness
like sparks of hail, small desolations in our vast and buoyant universe—
the hollows and sockets of earth beneath your feet seem to pulsate
along with you and the faint lullaby you whisper—
I gaze as you sing of the untenable altitude of unreality, and your eyes smolder
with the soaking relic of fire and roses—and when we used to share them—
and as time passes the north wind sweeps in, rich and crisp with the cold brown liquors
of decay and regeneration

the vapors begin to soak up the light like a stain across the sky, and
against the daylit moon the Paleolithic sounds of bees and
grass and blossoms surround me,
as intimate as a taste for mud or the odor of homemade soap—
you move with calligraphic delicacy and raw affinity for deep earth,
sweet and sad like rain and parchment and leaves in wind

I see you resting there in the cracking beachgrass and antiquated clutter of ordinary life
and I just want to pull you back with the sheer force of honeydew and
murky-transparent smiles—and yet there’s a dim old incessance coming over me,
like the movement in the air right before the wind comes—
and I stand up and smell your hair
(dully clean like chalk or a sun-warmed cat) and I turn in the billows of bright air,
splashing my hands in the cold pear leaves as I cross the verandah of sun stripes
and into my dim and drifting woodland

the forest skyline is blue-black with residue and the bulbous remnants of you and me
it smells of death and exposed feet, of a darkness that is coextensive in the night air
as in your bones and bowels—and yet it is not a solvent
the images outside are stripped and warped awash in mud and rain and deep dusts,
but there are two in my kitchen now—and you’ve got the tomatoes under control
and with quiet, wide sounds I feel you back in my senses—and I sense
the peace of cold night and fruit peels left on the earth floor

you are alone in the meadow now, I will be many miles away maybe when you rise
from the savage solitude and solemnity of incipient transfiguration
in the noonday nonchalance—the rosebuds are dewy and
the crickets are falling into sleep—
you wait in contemplation, eyes damp with an even, luminous film—
like a sheet of clouds
brought in from a tropical storm, and you’re still waiting
blanched and throaty and expectant of my call to bring you in—but I am gone
I will be far in the forest when you sip the sweet south breeze and begin once again
picking bayberries for the new year

Laurel D.

apples.

plaid babies scream for leather

mama cooches them and says yesssh goo goo …which shuts them up

I bag items at check-out and hum delicious songs
Casey the girl in aisle four loses balance and collides with cereal boxes
stupid ce.real

eating is passionless
especially. while driving.
I drive daily and ripen plums insparetime
nobody. is safe from my plum-ripening p.layti.me (open 24-hours)

good money makes its way into my friendly cash register
all Happies smile at me when I .hand over the change.

tHey don’t kNow the truth

that i KNOW

yeh i won
supermarket scholarship to fantastic soup college
I’ve always wanted. to go
to soup college
major in lentil studies

‘til. stud.(ent) body. destroys me’

i fashion big banks
and i will throw fashi.on at t.he world
and watch it fall shutting down 2-bit bodegas and all
communist-run delis, dutch SwimWear Palaces
five&dime at .the4corners
I ask ya PLEASE
co.m.e back to my dotIng comPany

anyway

when I go, just say,
just say: he ate his apples, and drank milk every day

Marc J.

Here the mountains seem to be constantly changing
For I have now seen this place in three different lights

She will smile at him, showing him her perfect, small, white teeth. He will not notice her teeth; that will happen later on. He will have already pulled his car over to the curb. She will walk over to the passenger-side window. She will run her hand across the smooth black exterior of his car. He will not lean across the seat towards her. She will not lean in through the window. She has never leaned in through a car window. She never will. He will not notice that she has a perfect smile, not now, not yet. His eyes will lead themselves up her legs. His eyes will stop at her hips; everyone’s eyes get caught at her hips. She will unstick his eyes by letting herself into the car. He will watch her back press itself against the tan interior. The leather will make a noise as she sits down.

She will look at him. He will drive from the curb, slowly, carefully. He will try to make her uncomfortable. He will not turn on music. He will close all the windows. He will run his hand up her thigh. She will look at him and smile. He will not see. His eyes will move from the road to his hand. He will enjoy the way his hand looks on her smooth, tan thigh. He will light a cigarette and will not offer her one. He will smile at this. They will arrive at a familiar spot, tall, gray, unclean, undirty. Have they been there before? She has been there. He has been. But have they?

He will follow her up the stairs. He will watch her hair tied neatly back in a pink ribbon. He will watch her waist twist as she takes each step. He will grab hold of her waist. He will untie her pink ribbon and push away her long hair. He will place his head in her neck. They will go inside. Together. She will watch him smile; his smile has never been perfect. But she will get used to it.

She will go into the bathroom. She will soon wonder how many times she is going to see this bathroom again. She will look down at the sink; she will see the same silver soap dish she has always seen. She will smile (she will stop shaking now). She will return to him, smiling. Now. He will now see. He will not notice her legs or hips or breasts. She is standing before him, and he will only see her smile. He will feel awful about the car. He will wish he had offered her a cigarette. It is too late now. She will notice that he has changed. She will have to leave him now, before she changes too. She will kiss him lightly. He will hand her his money. She will count out his nine thousand lire and put it in her bag. She will realize, when she walks out the door, that she has won. She will smile at this.

She will notice, as she leaves, that her pink ribbon is lying on the floor. She will pick it up and tie her hair back with it.

Elissa G.

It happened sometime that morning while I slept, wrapped around Anita’s outstretched arm, breathing in the dewy springtime air and dreaming of something I can’t remember; my next door neighbor was awake a few blocks away, lying in the backseat of his car, hosing exhaust in through his window while his cat dozed placidly on his chest. When the sun rose fully, the ambulances roared by my open window. Mumbling “This fucking city,” I slammed it shut and stumbled back to bed. I awoke truly hours later to see Anita curled in the window frame, watching. Red lights flashed around her rumpled hair.

“Accident?” I yawned, patting her head.

“Mm. Make coffee, would you?” she said. She answered the door minutes later while I watched the coffee filter through the machine. I walked out to see who it was.

“I don’t live here,” she was saying, leaning against the doorframe, ankles crossed. A young, nervous policeman was fumbling with his hat in his hands.

“What is it?” I asked, coming towards him. He told me Mr. Greeves had killed himself and seemed relieved that he didn’t have to talk to a bare-legged woman about these matters. I could see acne scars on his cheeks. I said something like “that’s too bad” and wondered what this had to do with me.

“We’s asking, sir,” the policeman said after bowing his head quickly, “if you had the extra keys to his apartment.”

“No, sorry.” He looked disappointed, then composed his face and smiled weakly. He thanked me, nodded to Anita’s legs, and walked away. Anita slammed the door.

“Huh, well ain’t that the shit,” she said and sauntered into the house for her coffee.

The funeral was a week later, and I showed up late with a bouquet of dahlias. I’d wondered when I paid the flower-selling Russian man on the corner who I’d really bought them for. There had been a sign in the elevator, informing the reader of the date, place and time of the service. Anita had refused to come with me, claiming preserved bodies frightened her. All I’d known about James Greeves was that he was a quiet, bespectacled painter. On Halloween a few months earlier I’d passed a wide woman in the lobby who nodded at me, and on my double take I’d realized that she was James. I had been trying to remember, with little help from Anita, if I’d ever really spoken to him and had concluded that I had, but only once while waiting for the elevator. He had asked me if my shoes were real leather and added, before I could answer, that he disagreed violently with the practice of slaughtering animals. He spat on the floor in disgust. I told him that I didn’t think the shoes were genuine because they had been cheap. We’d ridden down in the elevator in silence, and as he got out he smiled at me and told me that he had been joking and that I shouldn’t lie to make other people happy. It irritated me. I’d come to the service a good hour after it started, planning to bypass the eulogies and arrive in time to leave my flowers on his coffin. So when I walked in to meet a packed crowd shoved into the corners of the hall and spilling out into the lobby, I was surprised and wondered why the hell I was there.

People slouching against the walls, people sitting on the floor. People in different colors, creating a mass of bright and violent stimuli for my eyes, which expected black and shades of gray. A man’s megaphoned voice filled the air, yelling through speakers on the ceiling, “IT WASN’T HIS TIME! NOT his FUCKING…oh, oh God.” He breathed heavily and broke into a torrent of loud sobs that vibrated the floor. Almost everyone looked nonplussed, talking to each other in soft whispers. A few were sniffling soberly into napkins. I sat down as the speaker regained his voice, though he had screamed and cried himself hoarse. The woman beside me was in purple and dabbed at her eyes with a lacy handkerchief.

“Gary is so emotional,” she squeaked, nodding upwards. “Doesn’t know when to stop, does he?” She glanced at me intently with prying eyes. I smiled slightly and asked her if the service had really started at nine, as it had said on the sign in the elevator.

“Indeed,” she told me, and Gary blew his nose into the microphone. It was 10:30 then, and the service lasted until one, to my great surprise and irritation. Nearly a dozen people spoke after my arrival, in a variety of manners. A man with an Irish accent sang the theme song to Titanic, which was received well by the crowd which applauded him politely. A young woman spoke of James teaching her to ride a skateboard on the Santa Monica pier and buying her a Papaya hot dog when she crashed headlong into a dumpster. The last speech was James’s high school drama teacher, a woman called Thadia.

“It works, doesn’t it, his death?” she’d begun. “An artist, pompous and self-involved as all the rest. The glamour of suicide, the eccentricity of including his cat in the whole ordeal, and the time, near Easter, stealing the spotlight from Jesus.” She’d laughed slightly, though not in a self-conscious, self-deprecating sort of way. She seemed confident. “James used to keep a safety pin in his pocket, and when he felt ignored he would open it up and ram it into his thigh until he started to cry. He got attention that way, though at the sacrifice of his leg. I think this is along those same lines.” Then she’d walked away. After some scuffling and murmurs, an old woman came to the microphone and asked us all to go into the lobby for “complimentary crackers and juice.” People stood up in a wave all around me. The woman in the purple dress stretched her arms and yawned loudly. I sat, waiting for the crowd to thin and watching them walk through the doors I had come through some two hours earlier.

Picking up the flowers, I stood and made my way in the opposite direction and into the ceremony hall. The dahlias had wilted in my sweaty hands, their vibrancy dulled to limp pastel. The paper was ripped and jagged from my boredom. Faces swept past me, wearing a variety of expressions. They surprised me, just as their clothing had, with their smiles and occasional tittering laughter. They seemed like a relatively cheery lot, considering the circumstances, which bothered rather than amused me. The room was still rather full, and a broken line was defining itself, weaving through the crowd toward the coffin. I glanced at the polished wood, anticipation thudding in my heart, but I couldn’t see James’s face. Walking toward the back of the line, I saw a woman in a pink suit sitting on a window seat and chain smoking. Her face was lined and leathery, and her hair was jet black, set in thick structured curls and manipulated by a couple of enameled butterfly clips. An ashtray and a pack of thin Capri cigarettes lay in front of her legs, which were crossed and covered in red stockings. She noticed me watching her, smiled, and beckoned me over. Since the line to James was still long, I obliged and went to her.

“Hello, dear,” she said, her voice surprisingly young-sounding, though smoke scarred. “Would you like a smoke?”

“No, thank you,” I replied. She observed me cautiously with dark, deep-set eyes. “My name is Charlie. I was James’s next-door neighbor.” I extended my hand.

“Thadia Creedem,” she accepted it limply.

“So, you were James’s teacher at school?” I asked, recognizing her name from her speech.

“Why, yes,” she said, a smile spreading over her face. “Quite a fellow, wasn’t he?” I nodded knowingly, not wanting her to know how stupid I felt in her presence. “Interesting the way things ended up. Not that it doesn’t make sense. It does.
Everything about this has James’s name written all over it.” She laughed throatily,
throwing her head back. “Everything from the orange lilies to the crackers and juice. I’m sure he included it all in the note he left. Leave nothing that concerns you for anyone else to decide, he’d say, because they’ll botch it. And I daresay he was right. They will.” She waved her cigarette through the air while she spoke, punctuating.

“So you knew him well after school?”

“Of course! He would come over almost every week to see if I was dead yet.” She giggled. “But I outlived him, I did. I outlive most of my students.” She eyed me appraisingly, then beckoned me closer. “I have a secret for you.” I leaned forward. “You see my stockings, these lovely scarlet ones?”

“I do.”

“Seem a little festive for the occasion, don’t they, dear?”

“Uhm...”

“You know why I’m wearing them?” She skated over my awkwardness skillfully. I shook my head. “Because they were the very ones that James wore in our production of Robin Hood and His Merry Men twenty years ago!” She looked elated. “And I’ll be damned if I let anyone else near them after he was through! Knew I wanted to wear them today, see?”

“Huh,” I mumbled. “Well, I’d better get going.” Thadia patted my arm conspiratorially and tossed her ash out the window. I got up quickly before she could throw another bizarre story my way and walked up towards the coffin. The line was no longer there, and I looked worriedly over my shoulder at Thadia to make sure she hadn’t followed me. She was lighting another cigarette. Not watching where I was going, I hit my knee hard on the wood of the coffin. I winced, bending over slightly. Suddenly, I found myself inches from the powdered face of my neighbor, pale and pasty, eyelids light and delicate as tissue, mouth slack but closed like a gash pinned shut. I breathe hard for a few moments, staring at his dead white skin. I felt I should say something, anything, to him, but I didn’t. I dropped the dahlias on his chest and left.

I arrived home an hour later, surprised to find myself in front of my apartment so soon, and opened the door to see Anita standing on the kitchen table scrubbing the ceiling. She glanced down at me, blew me a kiss, and continued her work. I sat on the bed, jacket still on, and went to sleep without realizing it. I awoke to passing headlights, now bright against the darkened window. Anita walked into the room, stripping off her yellow rubber gloves and coughing.

“God,” she exclaimed, plopping down next to me, “that cleaning crap couldn’t smell worse if it were made of dead animals.” I rubbed my eyes, considering her lack of prudence for a moment, but was suddenly reminded of something. Where had the cat been? It must have died as well. A policeman had informed me of its presence in the car as I had passed the scene later on the morning of James’s death, but it wasn’t in the coffin. Anita was now scratching her left ear with her right hand, resting her forearm on the top of her head while she did so, and staring at the wall with a furrowed brow.

Samantha M.

In Memory of My Uncle

“Oh Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling…”
his face
feeble stained glass angled and translucent
classical profile
my Uncle Danny worn fragile, a ruined temple,
fused with his soft hospital pediment,
bed like a white raft
stranded in the sanitary gloom.
Gears, monitors, hum, drone-like,
red and green eyes blinking,
IV bags, bulging chemical sustenance, dangle
from wiry skeletons.
Sheets crest and fall
about his still legs,
knob-kneed as though branches
clattered from an alien tree in some foreign wood.

“…from glen to glen, and down the mountain side
the summer’s gone and all the roses falling…”
I never knew this uncle in full bloom,
but remember him caught in the sheen
of an old summer photograph.
On a river dock with my honey-maned mother,
he stands, fresh with smile.
That lively golden moss of curls that used to gleam,
smile, a pleasant crescent crevice as though carved,
his boat bouncing on her tether,
his arm strongly, proudly strained
under the weight of his prize:
fresh catch glimmering silver-bellied,
a trout, waxy, limp from its struggle
conquered.

Now his feverish lips quiver slightly,
probe the air as though searching.
Uncle Danny’s once sun-baked, youthful scales and fins
are waxy, succumbing, glossed with disease.
Summer forever is drained from his features, cheeks, eyes, temples.
I wonder,
clutching my nine year-old knees,
if gills might help
this frozen, breathless creature,
open him to more air, more world, more life.
But here air is recycled one too many times,
filtered maliciously of vitality, combed by gray teeth of vents,
a perfume of fermenting flesh.
My mother sketches him.
Pencil rasps on page,
fine wisps of lines define
the silhouette like a distant mountain range,
alive yet inanimate.

“It’s you it’s you must go and I must bide…”
Death wafts near,
when heads will be lowered
and coughs muffled in white memorial service,
songs will be sung in brittle emotional strain.
Then cold noodles, bread, cheese,
family conversing
a pudding with cousins and cousins of cousins.
They’ll murmur memories,
sketch with words a faint outline of Danny.
The sketch remains…
of passed-on phrases, objects left.
The mug he used
crouches in the shade of my grandparents’ cabinet,
Danny on its lip,
footprints sunken in their carpet,
notes still tingling on their Steinway,
the one he stroked, tamed in boyhood.

We brought him popsicles on request.
I watched as my mother
Gently slanted the frozen raspberry to his mouth.
He smiled foggily.
“But come ye back when summer’s in the meadow,
Or when the valley’s hushed and white with snow
It’s I’ll be here in sun and shadow…”
When Danny has faded, dissolved from view,
my path will sweep me back to my grandparents’ hill-perch,
to the Steinway,
my link to the soundest memory of my uncle.
There in its curve I listened,
his music pooling about me,
rich and flowing as the Rock River
surges at the foot of the hill.
Lamplight a soft tangerine on warm faces,
I chirped notes,
sang as he played,
“Oh Danny Boy, oh Danny Boy, I love you so.”

Christina Porter

Super-Market Picnic

1. Maple Syrup
You are cool and watery
to the touch
(though you stain my
fingers with stick).
Masterfully deceptive,
you taste like
diluted honey.
You are insignificant against my
tongue, internally textureless.
Sly, foxy one,
you form domes on my
paper plate that
hold their shape like
solidified muddied raindrops.

2. Ginger
You are fishlike
in feeling,
as you sit on my palm,
camouflaged.
I find it hard to
distinguish my hand-skin
from your skin:
you are flesh-like
in color,
with your
violet vertical veins.
Your smell and taste
linger in my nostrils
and on my tongue.
You are sharp and sweet,
sex-vixen,
and readily release spice
when you wish to
add to your act.

3. Cool Whip
You carry Ginger’s
sexual charms,
but without her
allure:
You are a tramp.
Where you lack
spice,
you overflow with
sweet
(in a trashy way).
You reek of saccharine,
trailer-trash,
and if you had
limbs to clothe,
acid-wash would be
most appropriate.
You have negative weight;
is that why you are so
stupid?
You are pumped with air,
like hollowed-out
marshmallow fluff.
You are so fake.

4. Lemon
You cleanse me.
You sit smoothly on my
tongue, resting with weight
I do not associate with you.
Your rich citrus smack
bursts within my mouth
immediately upon
contemplation;
initially familiarly sour,
but then you are sweet.
Divine intervention?
You are almost holy
in your purification;
you could easily be
the new wafer
(Christ now comes as citrus).
You come in bits this time,
classy zinger,
and I cannot distinguish
your characteristic
sections.

Maia G.

LAF

My first attempt at art was a 10’ x 10’ canvas covered in evenly spaced painted red polka dots with a large pink bow in the center. I had pretentiously tried to symbolize the innocence of a woman experiencing premenstrual syndrome with this monotonous piece of crap. I knew that my message had not gotten across when my family members viewed the canvas with insultingly perplexing gazes—ones that I knew did not appreciate how esoteric a man could be, but instead wondered how I had gotten to be such a self-righteous fool at twenty-four.

Since then, I have given up on my attempt at what the common man may call “art.” I have moved on. At thirty-six, I know what art is and I have surrendered to it. Art is the cycle in which the great man fosters himself. Art is the way we nourish ourselves and what we are lucky to digest. Art is no other than what you may know as food. Oliver Twist was correct and concise when he called our gorgeous creatures “Food, glorious food.” Perhaps orphans are worth a try after all.

Food, however, is not life’s only art. One cannot forget the driving force on this planet, the engagement of the brain with the heart, the heart with the genitals: love. Food cannot outweigh love as love cannot outweigh food. For what is food without love and love without food? And how can either of these things exist without the expression of art?

And that’s where my journey began. My collection LAF (Love Art Food) has lined the walls of galleries and lofts alike. I am very successful due to my brilliant epiphany. And I am thankful to the lovely women who have made it possible for me.

Laura Highammer, my first real woman, my sweet, thin, innocent love. We met in Vermont at the Russell Mayhem Arts Festival and spent years together making love. I found myself looking into her camel eyes for hours. After we chased each other in the woods of the Maple Leaf Lodge, laughing as she coyly escaped me time after time, I knew I had to portray her as maple syrup. I nearly classified her as honey, but her essence did not give way to a stubborn, sticky spread. She was syrup, slid quickly off the fingers before you could lick her, but once you did, you tasted her light and delicious. After fishing on Canaby Lake, I brought forth my oak tag plaque (a far more original medium than canvas) and created a maple syrup masterpiece of dear Laura. Circular transparent puddles lay sweetly on the plaque and have remained there ever since, gaining much praise from art critics around the world. I remember Jacques Couteau, a sculptor from Quebec, particularly admired the shape in which I construed Laura into maple syrup. It has always been my hypothesis that he appreciated the syrup, not the piece, for Canadians are far fonder of their beloved maple than you might ever imagine.

My next muse was Salvadora Diamente, the Spanish dancer. She and I were a spicy pair, she with her jalapeno-pepper-green eyes and long black hair and I with my naughty philosophies. We met at her padre’s restaurant, just a block away from my hotel, where I had been sketching avocados. Salvadora smelled so strong I almost couldn’t handle her, that green fresh pickle odor that numbed the roof of my mouth and the length of my tongue (ah, the tongue), but once I had tasted Salvadora, I succumbed to her bitter lizard vegetable aura. I had been afraid of women like her when I was a child, just as I had been afraid to taste my mother’s favorite salsa, Desert Pepper Salsa Del Rio Medium. And so my spicy, intimidating Salvadora was pepper salsa on the page.

Cynthia Starlyle was a poet I saved from choking on a Tuna Roll. She was incredibly tall and pale, and her poetry was so alive it had veins. She smelled of lemon perfume with a hint of spice. Cynthia was my most honest lover, and she became my most honest portrait: Cynthia Starlyle was a two-inch piece of sliced ginger in the exhibits. The curators had to adjust the temperature of the museum to ensure that “Cynthia” never looked too gray. It was imperative that the veins and flat circular collection of arteries be highly visible to the eye. I achieved this feat with unmatched artistic precision. MOMA paid me an extra million to extend the exhibit three days past the date we had agreed upon. MOMA has never known an artist like Jeremiah Frank.

Jennifer Doyle, or “Jendo” as I nicknamed her, was the ice queen fairy. She spoke germanely, and I doubt she ever experienced any true feelings. Jendo was severely Arian. She had, and I imagine still has, the lightest blond hair I have ever seen on a woman and baby blue eyes that would pierce me with their sharp and volatile beauty. Jendo’s only attribute was her coldness. She was horribly ignorant when she spoke. However, she smelled like cupcake-white frosting and wore the softest skin of all the women I have loved. And so my Jendo became my largest piece, a seven-foot Coolwhip mountain. “Jendo” ran for a limited time, unfortunately. She was destroyed by a sweet-toothed seven-year-old beast at the Art Institute of Chicago.

I met the quick-witted Zetta Gretsby in Chicago, at the Art Institute, in fact. She talked my ear off about her love for my Laura Highammer. I enjoyed the praise and agreed to a cup of coffee that afternoon. Zetta was disorganized and a great lover of fruit, though not a great lover. She was, however, perhaps the most insightful of my women, the smartest, the one whose words could splatter from her tongue to yours, invigorating the mouth with rejuvenation and the facial expression with a twinge of discomfort and bewilderment. Plaudits to a woman with intelligence. She was the lemon of the fruit family and became my famous sculpture composed of a lemon sliced in half juxtaposed with a whole lemon framed in oak tag plaque. “Zetta” was especially popular in Florida, which I speculate was due to the Floridians’ love of citrus fruit.

And most recently there is Genevieve Finklebaum, my eternally moisturized, manicured, made-up half-Parisian, half-Long Islander princess with a sweet, smooth, deep soul unlike that of any other woman I have encountered. Genevieve has flaws: she is uncertain and breaks out on her back before she gets her period. But she satisfies me with her simple and addictive genuine sweetness. She is my milk chocolate kiss. And “Genevieve” (a thirty-foot tall, twenty-foot wide rubber Hershey kiss) has landed herself a spot on the front lawn of the Hershey hotel in Hershey, PA. Doug Hershey, the original Mr. Hershey’s grandson, and I often enjoy cocoa body wraps in the hotel’s spa. And Genevieve and I enjoy a cocoa steam bath when the sun sets.

To all these women for their inspiration I am grateful. May love not starve those with large appetites just as the art of inner nourishment has fed the brilliant man for years. Bon appetit à l’artiste!

Emily W.

The Minstrel of Snails

And he found out if you water the ground at night the worms will rise,
rise up from the earth.

There was always a fascination that night held for him;
if you stare out your window time after time
you can see the skeletons merge from trees
and sway in the wind;
you can see the worms wiggle out.

Even a snail is a king in the dark.

There were certain shadows always beneath the bed, but
there were certain mysteries mouthed when sleep lent dreams to waking, and
he thought of the night in waking dreams
so when he woke,
his lips ringing in yawns,
he had the song of many worms on them.

What songs do worms make? The song of night-change.

The same song as nightcrawling snails
stuck in the curve of a delicate mud-shell; even that has a streak of jewel
caught in the moonlight
pearled in the dirt. In the night worms have menace
fingers borrowed from a darker death
enveloped in the earth
reaching for the moon.

The night was his Halloween,
and maybe his fairytale.

And he stole—borrowed—the ballad of the night
with the snails that sang
and the worms that wriggled;
and he lent this dusk to the breaking of the light
to sing on the corners of cobblestone streets.

A minstrel of snails
with frozen feet.

“Come one and come all to the rosy song
hidden in mist and hidden in thorn
what comes to light when the sun is set
what bursts and blooms when the dirt is wet.”

And he learned: if you sing long and hard enough of snails
they will sing with you.

And he knew: if you watch long and hard enough you can see the bent fingers
of the trees
curling together in the wind;
you can pretend as they sway they are clapping
for you.

Hannah J.

Horse Chestnuts

Autumn fruit, how strange that you rest all summer
in your spiny nutcasing
Green and far away on high branches
(Amid those papery leaves)
You wait

Do you hide from the blatant colors of the fuchsias?
Those flowers fade and fall before you deign to descend, and flowers have
Ceded to foliage, brown and leisurely
And your pockmarked husks all greeny-yellow, brown holes
Sticking out on the sea-urchinlike shells

Finally, fall.
Split by a chance encounter with a rocky patch the nut winks

A bull’s eye a buckeye a chestnut a weed

The husks that did not split I opened myself
My sister and I ran in nightly circles
Barefoot in the prickly grass, looking for the perfect one
(Twin chestnuts were best, though their shells were no different)

We’d stick our fingernails under the hairline cracks
Miniature faultlines traversing the faces of the shells
Pick one of the three lines to begin and
Pry until whiter flesh
Peeked through our grimy fingers
Then on to the second line and the third and the chestnut popped out
Still covered in its fuzzy white coat

The juices from the shell stung our cuts and we didn’t bite our fingernails for weeks

In the fall I’d bring them to school, my pockets stuffed with gleaming, rounded burls
I swore they were lucky
Helped on tests, papers, public speaking
I rubbed them to make them shine, tried wrapping them, heating them,
leaving them alone
but they lost their newborn luster

In the spring I still find wrinkled old nuts, wizened and queerly knotted, behind dresser
drawers, in handbags
Their surfaces sculpted by chance
I used to throw them away once they’d lost their shine
But I’m not sure I don’t prefer them now

Alisa B.

Reception

It is too flowery.

Even the flowers are too flowery,
peony-skin unfurling on the tablecloth
in tulle-skirt seduction, exploding
into the gold and cream room.

The icing on the cake
is heavy like time isn’t supposed to be,
sticky and slowing and resigned.

She’s got icing on her dress.
It’s sealing each little aperture in her veil,
creeping white
like the contracting roses in her bouquet
into her thin hair,
slipping from ephemeral barrettes.

Maggie W.