Literary as hell.
Characters
Jack 30-40, male, tall, overweight artist with tattoos
Miranda (Jack’s ex-wife) 30-40, female, dark haired, pretty and strong
Jack’s mother (played by same actress cast as Miranda)
Magda 25-30, female, beautiful and voluptuous, Polish
Irv (Magda’s husband) 50-60, male, grey haired business man
Lupe 25-50, female, housekeeper, Hispanic
I once read that most people cannot tell the difference between pâté and cat food when it’s presented to them. I’ve seen the Fancy Feast commercial, so I don’t doubt it. Particularly bored scientists have done experiments and usually get the same results. A lot of people think they would be able to tell, but it seems like such a simple experiment I’m not certain people aren’t doing it all the time. Maybe there is a vast conspiracy of people serving cat food instead of pâté, just because they can. I sometimes get the sneaking suspicion that I could eat pâté a million times until I was sure I knew what pâté tasted like. Then I’d get another opportunity to eat pâté (or alternatively cat food), and my world would come crashing down. I’d be just another victim of the pâté-cat food schemery.
I feel much the same way about overhearing people having sex. I’m never really convinced I’ve overheard people in the throes of passion. It always happens the same way. I’ll be sitting there, minding my own business, and I’ll hear a sound. Usually a female sound. And after my reaction, saying, “Oh… well… hmm,” and clasping my hands for no reason like I’ve suddenly got to break bad news, I dismiss it. I laugh nervously. Surely, I’m not really overhearing sex, I think. A ton of things sound like people having sex: fight scenes in movies, songs with high pitched notes, really jovial laughter, or even people making awkward sounds in order to make eavesdroppers uncomfortable. And it feels awfully rude for me to assume a stranger is having a private moment when they might be doing something innocuous, like watching tennis or porn.
You see, I know it’s my ex-husband. He moved to Beirut a number of years ago to teach and to direct theater at a university there.
We’ve been divorced since the early 90s and have only made efforts to talk twice. In 1998, we ran into each other on line at Starbucks in LaGuardia airport; both of us were waiting for the same plane to Toronto, heading for the same academic conference, and as it ended up, staying in the same hotel. We drank coffee (he also ate a plain bagel with butter), sitting across from each other outside the gate. We chatted for an hour about Dino, our Siamese cat. The second time, we communicated by email. I wrote to let him know my father passed away. That was in April, 2006; “Give your mom and sisters my condolences,” he wrote back.
What have I eaten?
(Inspired by Sylvia Plath)
In response to my mother’s nagging question,
“What have you eaten today, Annie?”
What have I eaten?
Lies and smirks.
My diet calls for uncertainty,
I’ve got a hunger for what hurts.
Breadcrumbs of grumbles,
And bits of anxieties unsung,
Tastes that sit familiar on my tongue.
(I think I am made of dust and thirsty for your rain.)
All I have eaten for 13 months
Are leftover scraps of stale hope
And heaping portions of quiet patience.
My big eyes for love left unfulfilled,
My stomach full of deprivation.
***********************
Annie is a writer/poet named after her mother’s favorite book, Anne of Green Gables (so it’s spelled Anne-with-an-E!). She’s obsessed with poetry, stargazing, antiques, & animals, and she’s always on the lookout for unusual and/or beautiful words to record in her notebook, which she never leaves the house without. For more of Annie’s poetry and writing, follow her on Twitter (@Beannie129) or email her at aturn139@gmail.com.
What you thought was the future disappears, all faith and belief vanishing like these swirls of smoke that roll into the distance and fade out. You knew so deeply the things that would happen, expected them like you expect the sun to rise tomorrow, with zero doubt, with zero uncertainty.
There are things you have always known would happen and these were some of them: the sun would rise and set, clouds would bring rain, air would enter your lungs if only you inhaled, water would enter if you were submerged, drowning, and you were going to get married soon. Your girlfriend was going to become your wife within the next year, no question, no doubt, just a fact of life. It was inevitable. None of your friends ever spoke any different; none of your family ever had a worrying word to share. And, if they did, they kept it silent, too sorry for you to speak out.
Everything from there on would mean something, would incorporate her into it. Anything you would ever do or anywhere you would ever go would have her injected into the very veins of these events like medicine. You have never believed in much but you believed in this, and now that belief is gone. And what does one do in a crisis of belief? How do you rebuild from this? How do you find the desire to want to? You have spent so long knowing in your heart that you would have this to count on, and now you do not, and what does that say about you? How much else might you believe in that is worth nothing? When do plans and certainties become lies and fantasies?
But she isn’t in love with you anymore and you are going to face this, you are going to suffer through the long empty spaces and pass through the hallways drained of life, the white walls looking no longer clean and bright but empty and clinical, because there are no other options.
The Size of Fruit
When I was born
with disappointing body parts,
Mother cried in tears
the size of full green grapes,
did her best to hide their shapes,
make me smile like slices of a cantaloupe.
They hired surgeons by the herd,
combed the country for a plan
to help me walk, certain it was just a dream.
Because they didn’t quit in
centers of that prayer, I’ve stood
and walked for many years.
When Father read the fatal slide—
Leukemia with all the dots,
he couldn’t, wouldn’t try to talk.
Mother’s death at 33 left him there
in kitchen nooks with tart green olives
in a jar, martini glasses empty, clean
and put away, nothing left to celebrate.
He cried in plums, but kept them all away from us,
like pit bulls famous for their teeth.
Silence robbed so many years.
I told him straight I wanted some
acquaintance with her countenance,
the size of sweaters in her drawers,
the way she touched piano keys,
filled the room with sweet ballets inside his ears.
He played deafer than he was
the times I asked, punched his stomach
way too hard with question marks.
When death took him,
I wandered through a wilderness—
no figs on trees, no leaves on hope,
no corn beneath the stalks and strings,
no avocado under skins;
what scraps were there were bruised by then.
Desperate is desperate. I learned too late
dumping grief is not the goal—
you follow ivy to a grave and sit with it—
let the weeping willow weep.
My tears the size of coconuts,
I shook the tree and set one loose,
broke it quickly on a rock,
drank the milk, then found a plum,
seeded it, chewed the meat,
squeezed the juice and guzzled it.
If only I weren’t thirsty still—
I suck on ice all day long.
Give Me Grace I Do Not Have
The only thing that’s green today,
a heavy tank beside the bed.
He sucks on borrowed oxygen—
I bring him ice cream, watch it melt.
The final day of Father’s life,
a catheter runs his leg like caterpillars
up a branch, his fingers scratching
at the tape. I lotion skin around the edge.
I’m listening to piercing screams,
crows inside a muted glimpse
of Hitchcock films in black and white.
Pills will yield a scrap of rest,
but not for long. The real scuffle is with God
and what he says will happen next.
I pace the floor, leave the room,
return when I can breathe again.
His eyes are closed like sleeping owls.
I hear some noise, a vacuum sticking to a rug;
it’s sucking dust I want to stay,
anything to cover this.
“I want to die at home,” he says.
I sit up straight—a Blue Jay startled from a fence.
To steer myself away from wrecks,
I scribble on a notepad just inside my purse.
A poem smells old—mothballs in a dresser drawer—
all I own for coping skills, shaking stilts.
I’m not standing tall enough.
Times like this are not for kittens
whining for their mother’s milk.
I hold his hand, wishing it were mine, not his
inside this tome, between the shale
and blooming poppies in a field.
The quilt I was to keep him warm,
losing stitches one by one.
The hospice nurse suggests
we sing “Amazing Grace.”
A eunuch in the land of love,
I have no voice.
Mugs of Tea with Hemlock Leaves
I’m here to place the last
of yellow marigolds to keep
the insects off romaine.
Here to water what is left.
The hose is crimped, its rubber
far too hot to touch.
An August sun that comes in June
could fry a slice of bacon
spread on lids of garbage cans.
I raise the blinds, stretching
out what sight is left.
Pods of lilies pop and bloom.
Their stems are 8 ft. tall at least.
I beg my husband: “Please buy stakes,
some sturdy rope.” He doesn’t see
our garden shows how seasons walk,
trip and fall. Dirt to daisy, then
to petals dropping off.
Embedded rocks along the grass,
once a trail to pleasantries,
mutate into shale and cairn.
Our neighbor has a hemlock tree.
Trumpets vines along the trellis
just outside our windowpane,
one deceased or getting there
in shrinking, melancholy strings,
the other wears a symphony.
The screen and view
insulted by a cobweb’s map.
Black widows or a brown recluse—
either way, the bite is sitting,
waiting there—
some stray arm will come too close.
Empty Answers—Empty Drawers
Liver Cancer started this.
Spreading fast like poison ivy—
lymph nodes to her burning ribs.
A prayer chain and a team of doctors
working hard to build a bridge to promised health
are not enough to calm me down.
Sending gifts—this fruitless fruit
of 13 scarves, sweaters for the trips to church,
all that tea, quiet music making noise
when rest is all she dreams about—
this isn’t very practical, when someone
spends entire weeks curled beside a toilet bowl.
Someone on the prayer chain types: “God is Big!”
Well, I am small, cannot sleep, lost inside a queen-sized bed,
twilight comes, then all the hours attached to moons
grow thick like building calluses.
I suck on pens, guzzle tea, notice that I haven’t touched
our black remote since March arrived
and this is June. Dozing off, head first into dinner plates,
I wipe the oil & vinegar, mashed potatoes off my face,
thank my husband for the towel.
It’s 2 a.m.—I haven’t hit the pillow yet,
grabbed a shower, answered e-mail, paid my bills.
I open windows, gulp the air to wake me up,
eavesdrop as the crickets sing, their clicking slippers
made of glass and fairytales.
I throw my laptop on the mattress, pick it up,
try again to write about what should not be her destiny.
It could be a Hallmark card or putting down
a facile pen, pinning ears to baser truths
that halted sterling symphonies. I don’t know.
She doesn’t say. Both of us are weak and tired
from tragic times divided only by their themes.
I’ve Googled every niche and corner
matching roads where this might lead.
When she calls, we listen to the silences
longer than we ever have—
breathe and sigh, a quick duet.
She’s got the guts to call it Cancer;
I’m the one who calls it IT.
We’re two birds that fly by strange
coincidence down chimney flues,
end up in the kitchen nook—
no idea where to go, losing feathers,
running into furniture and painted walls.
A whistling kettle on the stove
is making sounds I cannot hear.
I want to be a marching band
that hurries ‘cause it’s raining hard.
All she says is: “Aren’t you tired
of playing strong no matter what?”
We agree like matching socks.
I will sit until a fleet of hummingbirds
comes tapping at the window glass, self-assured
that nectar’s still inside a Calla Lily in a vase
poised upon the dresser’s wood.
Empty answers. Empty drawers.
Full of stuff, too much to move and organize.
I carry crystal with both hands to water
what is still alive. My husband turns the faucet on,
tells me that I need some sleep. Of course he’s right.
She’ll need me in the breakdown lane.
Hustle, Hustle—Hurry Up!
On this one day, I hated the shapes
of both our phones. Even tore one
off the wall, then put it back.
Stared at my insanity — until one rang.
Vomited beside the bed
before I ever answered it.
I have Cancer in my liver,
in my lymph nodes, in my bones.
My best friend’s voice hit me
like five olive pits thrown inside
disposals in the kitchen sink.
The silence gap—Grand Canyon style.
Then I can tell by listening,
she’s fighting hard, hard enough
to win some war, busy in a distant land.
She lives too far away to touch;
since all the gifts I mail off
aren’t medicine and she has that,
I stand between the shale and cairn.
She’s been a living, breathing angel
all her life. Every move is hurting her.
I understand why Rimbaud
scratched upon a brick on Paris streets:
Merde a Dieu! Artists try to be polite—
sometimes life destroys a clause.
Never certain when to call—don’t
break minutes when she sleeps—
they’re weak saltines. Don’t crush a second
in the day, where Cancer isn’t
what begins a sentence rolling in her head.
Pitch the stupid pansies in their pony packs;
buy perennials in bloom; grab the shovel,
move the dirt. Hustle, hustle, hurry up—
find that God-damned Northern Star,
cradle it in bubble wrap,
double check your address book—
ship it Fed-Ex Overnight.
Janet Buck is a seven-time Pushcart Nominee and the author of three full-length collections of poetry; her work has won numerous literary awards and she has published roughly 4,000 poems and non-fiction essays in print and internet journals around the globe during her 18 year writing career. Buck’s most recent poems are scheduled for publication in forthcoming issues of The Milo Review, Mistfit Magazine, The Ann Arbor Review, Antiphon, River Babble, PoetryBay, and other journals worldwide.
MUNICH ’65
by Alan Stolzer
My friend swept an undamaged arm toward others in the room, several wearing wehrmacht (army) campaign hats (as he did) muddled in their thoughts or conversations. At any rate, it served as barrier against an ice-tinged, pre-sunrise morning in Munich, 1965. The ex-soldier didn’t seem to care my German wasn’t anywhere near his nor up to par for that matter. Consequently, I couldn’t begin telling him I was between jobs and without lodging for, hopefully, this night only.
His gestures and talk, some to me, the rest for the room, were easily absorbed by the erratic hum of voice and smell familiar to contained space peopled by crowded bodies; no time or inclination to wonder how one arrived here but surrender to inevitable need for warmth and companionship – desirable or otherwise.
I wanted to find out where he had served. Was it North Africa, France or most disastrously the Russian Front where I’m sure he was as ignorant of that language as I was of German – save a few necessary phrases. Was he hospitalized for long? If so, where? What about his family? Did they ever exist beyond a certain point in time? What was his name come to think of it?
“Zu namen” I asked meekly, unsure of grammar or meaning (to him) for that matter. “Namen?” he straightened and showed me the good eye.
“Ja” I replied securely using a word everyone knew.
“Namen, namen” he went on, beginning to walk about the room, tripping on an extended foot, then shoved away by one whose lap he’d fallen into. No one queried him nor tried communicating: Here, civilized hostility seemed the norm.
He spun around room center, ended his whirl and addressed me again. “Meister!” unsteadily approaching, his nose having begun to drip, the tattered Wehrmacht overcoat open, its lining shredded, the outer part witness to who knows how many abuses or horrors.
For a wild moment I thought he was going to dance – here in this living grave of memory and reflex. How many dead had he seen? How many created by him and others? No, there was no dance, only energy that had no purpose or intention anymore. I knew he wouldn’t cry, sure whatever moisture for that outlet dried up years ago. Instead he was part of a celebration of lost souls not quite ready for last breath but acknowledging that event with the confidence of being, at last, right about death and welcoming that eventuality as one would submerge in endless ocean, warm to the skin, peaceful in benevolent introduction to forgetfulness.
I became even more frustrated knowing I was unable to even find out what his unit was, where he served and what the hell did he think of the war in the first place? There was one after all and now he was latter day victim, condemned by forces that controlled his thoughts to their own insane end. Did he, in any way, feel this? If he did, was he able to communicate what he wanted? I’d never known a shell of a human being before which aroused fascination as well as apprehension.
He was making drinking motions now, perhaps wanting me to buy him a beer. I’m sure I had a particularly stupid grin on my face as I, with difficulty since I was hemmed in, tried pulling my pants pockets out to inform him of my present state of affairs; insulted, he leapt into the stale air, pulled his pockets out then turned his back bending over to show me what he thought of my response.
Embarrassed, I huddled back into my place trying to sever whatever contact was left. But my companion would have none of that: Energized, he pointed at me and bellowed something to the uncaring room. It appeared he was trying to shame me to his world, or welcome a stranger (foreigner?) to their privacy, usher him into their present and dubious future. I couldn’t shrink any further back and couldn’t possibly dare the cold for the balance of the hostile night. Did he know he had a captive audience? Did any of it matter? Maybe he was telling them I was going to buy drinks, that an interloper had the price of relief after all. But I couldn’t say this wasn’t so and kept uneasy silence and waited for whatever came next.
Now his oration got louder. Whatever he was saying was apparently sincere. A face, here and there, rose from its previous place on its chest, some smiled, recognition of something in their eye – of what I couldn’t begin to guess. Here arose a shorter man on his feet trying to stand at attention, weak kneed but ridiculously willing. Another tried following suit and another pulled the short man’s pants down instead. Anger flared and I thought a fistfight was sure but the half dressed ex-soldier only flopped back into the lap of his undresser both laughing uncontrollably.
All jammed into this space must have been military since after a glance around the room there were clearly no civilians other than me; no civilians of 1965 nor years before. It was as if this room was reserved for those passing through all right, through a life best and deliberately forgotten by everyone in 1965. Indeed, the sooner the room was empty the better – even at 3am.
My thoughts, of course, didn’t affect my one-eyed and possibly neutered friend as he stayed on his feet not even seeking a seat among comrades. I wondered if this exhibition of resiliency would be his last and if he knew it. He certainly didn’t care and might be welcoming that waiting sea of eternity forever warm as might have been promised by a friendly prophet or two. Would he sing “Lili Marlene” as others might? Would he stiffen a good right arm in fascist salute, memory functioning mechanically as reminder of headier days?
At last he turned to me again and I saw fatigue, for the first time, exercise its will. He panted a bit, his grizzled face whiter than before. A step away he collapsed on his knees, his arms flung into my lap. Now what, I wondered? I can’t stay this way all night and who was there to help?
His face slipped down between my legs almost to the floor while he withdrew his arms to my legs, hugging them for all he and they were worth. “Meister, meister,” he moaned, now unconcerned over what friends and comrades might think.
**********
It would be some time, I don’t know how long before a crack of light entered this tomb but one did. Two policemen, clearly alerted by someone, had entered and began pulling my friend off. I could see his death even as its remaining teeth protruded through a dark mouth, frozen crookedly forever. No one murmured a syllable as the cops carried him out with his past probably only known to him – if that was the case in the first place.
**********
Alan Stolzer was born, raised and educated in New York City. After completion of military service, he traveled throughout Western Europe working odd jobs while writing freelance journalism for International Herald Tribune, Mallorca Daily Bulletin and various other European dailies (translated articles). Alan has been published in El Sol de Mexico and El Heraldo de Mexico. He continued writing upon return to U.S. and have written for the stage since. He studied with playwright John Ford Noonan, and served as dramaturg at St. Clements Theatre, New York, NY.
Berkeley attracted fugitives, Katie was beginning to realize, whether from the law, from failed relationships, or from the person one had once been. A young couple, Brigit and Tony, had just moved into the flat across the hall in the gray Victorian where Katie lived with her roommate, Cherie. Cherie believed in getting to know one’s neighbors, so she had invited Brigit and Tony to dinner. In the course of their conversation, Katie learned that Tony had done prison time in Georgia for robbery, burglary and car theft, and that Brigit had run away from her studies at Georgia State with this prize catch.
Brigit wore a short black skirt, scuffed loafers and no hose, revealing perfect legs, a grimy band-aid clinging to one knee. Though her ratty blue angora sweater had come from a Salvation Army bin, it did not conceal the fact that God had paid close attention when he put her together.
Tony was about thirty, a tall, lanky blond redneck with amused, larcenous blue eyes, an immaculate dresser and pathological liar who had also developed the bad habit of bigamy. For Tony, the law just kept breaking like a rotten shoelace. Neither Tony nor Brigit had any source of income, but masterful shoplifting kept them well provisioned.
At sixteen, Katie was on her own for the first time. Two months ago, she had arrived in Berkeley on a busload of Vietnam antiwar protestors from Santa Monica. When she called home to announce that she was staying there, her mother had not tried to dissuade her. Katie had joined a crowd at school that drank, used drugs, and had sex. She was truant and had been caught forging attendance excuses. Time and again, she stayed out all night. Her best friend, Erin, carried on with a married man. After school, Katie and Erin would get into Erin’s alcoholic mother’s vodka and call up boys and men, even teachers. Like her absent, errant father, Katie was tall and blue-eyed, curly-haired, and argumentative. The very sight of her seemed to infuriate her mother.
From day one, Berkeley had burst upon Katie, overwhelming and embracing her. This was not “another Berkeley,” or “a little Berkeley.” This was the real thing. Standing before Sproul Hall in a crowd of protesters, Katie had looked up the stairs to its Greek colonnades with a euphoric premonition that her life was at last beginning.
i keep the
universe
in my
knees
the ground
is hard
and
cold
this night will
never
have a
day
my mouth is
wide
and has no
name
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