Evening Street Review Number 28

Number 28 Spring 2021
EVENING STREET REVIEW
Published by Evening Street Press

Sacramento, CA
Marcello Gibbs, incarcerated in Texas
NUMBER 28, SPRING 2021
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https://eveningstreetpress.com/diy-prison-project
PUBLISHED BY EVENING STREET PRESS
NUMBER 28, SPRING 2021
CONTENTS
EDITORIAL COMMENT Occasional Notes:

JOHNNY L WOOTEN Non-Traditional Morality 6
POETRY
MARCELLO GIBBS Isolated from the real World inside front cover
JAMES ADAMS Bodyguard 21
Rice Water 21
PAULA YUP My Friend’s Book 27
Once upon a Time 27
ANN BRACKEN Paint Chips of Memory 38
STEPHEN J KUDLESS Stress Test 43
J T WHITEHEAD Blue Eyes 46
January 12, 2019—another day 47
VINCENT J TOMEO High Tea with My Dog Grandma 50
AL MAGINNES America 65
JOAN MAZZA Enumerator 75
MILT MACHÁLEK Gentle Gestures 83
RICHARD WEAVER A fish momentarily considers
a shining object 92
MICHAEL SALCMAN Mortality’s First Tingle 101
Cordon Sanitaire 101
The Hours 102
ROBIN GREENE Failing the Kindness Test 118
Goodbye 119
Salt and Sand 120
BRAD G GARBER Nacho 132
ROBERT ROTHMAN November 137
RICHARD LEVINE This is Not About You Not Being
Afraid to Die 149
The Limits of Science 150
Allegory 150
MARGUERITE BOUVARD The Last Word 159
Perspectives 160
REBECCA BAGGETT In Germany, White Swans 162
Guilt 163
JOEL SAVISHINSKY Summertime Blues 167
FICTION
MARLENE S MOLINOFF The Big Idea 10

ARTHUR DAVIS Time Is All I Need 23
J SALER DREES The Levels of Suffering 28
JONATHAN FERRINI Brown Shoe 44
JANE SNYDER Lunch 48
DIANE LEFER What Did You Bring Me? 51
WALTER B LEVIS Recommended with Enthusiasm 76
LENNY LEVINE To Your Hurt’s Desire 93
TARA MENON The Waheedas of Syria 111
LAWRENCE F FARRAR Only the Cicadas Will Cry 121
PATRICK JOHN FLOOD The Banshee 137
MARY NEWTON A Requiem for Agnes Weems 151
RILEY SIMMONS Soul Searching 160
KENNETH M KAPP Three Etudes 164
RICHARD C RUTHERFORD From the Window Box 169
NONFICTION
DANA STAMPS II Mercenary Poet, a Memoir 39

JUDITH FORD The Mountains are Home 66
GREG VARNER A Beautiful Woman 83
RYAN M MOSER How to Spin Straw into Gold 133
CONTRIBUTORS 169
6 / Evening Street Review 28
OCCASIONAL NOTES:
NON-TRADITIONAL MORALITY
While a person is incarcerated, they are faced with moral

dilemmas every day of deciding what is the right thing to do. In this
non-traditional setting (prison), there is a non-traditional morality that
exists where an action may be right in one setting but considered
wrong in another. While there are activities that are strictly forbidden
by laws such as murder and theft, there are other moral decisions that
are based on opinions, cultural norms and societal rules and
regulations, a morality where a dilemma arises that a person may have
two options contradicting each other, but both can be considered
morally correct. It is only then that individual situations have to be
examined in order for a morally correct decision to be made.
This non-traditional morality theory is inspired by a story from
Lawrence Kohlberg’s Conventional Morality Theory. Kohlberg
theorized that “people progressed in their moral reasoning through a
series of stages.” Non-traditional morality does not expound on
Kohlberg’s theory but uses one of his examples, in different form and
character, to prove that morality has to be based on more than an
accepted standard of right and wrong. Kohlberg used a story-telling
technique in which there was a choice to be considered where there
was not always a specific right or wrong answer. The answer a person
gave, Kohlberg believed, would show how an individual’s moral
reasoning changed as they grew older.
The illustration used to define Non-Traditional Morality is
adapted from one of the best known of Kohlberg’s stories. It has been
changed in form and characters to fit incarcerated individuals. Here is
the illustration:
There are two offenders, one is indigent and the
other is not. The indigent offender does not receive money
from family or friends, nor does he receive money for the
work he performs while incarcerated. The other offender
does receive money from family along with books and
other gifts. When the financially able offender goes to the
commissary, he spends the maximum amount he is allowed
2021, Spring / 7
to spend. He includes in this purchase hygiene for the

indigent offender including an ice cream for each other.
When he returns to his cell, both offenders enjoy their ice
cream and the financially able offender gives the indigent
offender the hygiene purchased at commissary. While
enjoying their ice cream, the officer on duty comes over
and gives the financially able offender a disciplinary case
for trafficking and trading because it is against the policy
of the institution to give another offender anything.
Something that would be considered polite, kind and moral in

a normal societal setting is deemed against the rules in a group within
that same societal setting. We are taught that it is right to take care of
the poor and needy, but when does helping the poor and needy become
wrong? In this Non-Traditional Morality, it is not about whether it is
moral or immoral. The definition of immoral is “violating moral
principles” according to Webster’s Dictionary, so doing what is
considered right in one setting but not right in another setting within
that same group is not immoral. When two morally correct decisions
contradict each other, which do you choose to do? Being moral in a
normal society is defined as walking through life doing what is right
according to the laws, rules and regulations of the government that is
in power at that certain point in time. We have a set of checks and
balances to make sure they all coincide. The lowest organizations’
rules have to agree and abide by the highest federal laws and
Constitution. When one of those do not conform to the others, then
through a set of judicial procedures all of the laws, rules and
regulations can be brought into alignment.
So, when a group considers an action to be of good conduct,
then it is considered that a person who abides by such conduct is a
moral person. But is the code of conduct for that group always
considered moral? And can an action within that group be deemed not
moral? Let’s explain our illustration a little better.
In the state of Texas, it is okay and lawful for you to give
someone hygiene and an ice cream. Vou would be considered a decent
and moral individual for helping the poor and needy. But in the Texas
Department of Criminal Justice system, it is against policy for you to
give your commissary to another person because of extortion reasons.

So, can a group have one code of conduct that is considered morally
okay, but a group within that group can deem the same action as not
morally okay? Can both groups be morally correct according to
society’s standards? What happens when you are in both groups?
Which do you abide by to be a moral person? We are taught all of our
lives to obey those that are over us, honor our father and mother, obey
the governing authorities, and we are to hold each other accountable
to civil laws. But when two groups’ morals collide and are
contradictory to each other on a subject, which one do we follow, and
do you break one in order to abide by the other? How do we live
morally when we don’t know which morals to live by? Do I honor the
rules of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, which are good and
just, or do I honor the set of moral guidelines for living that, let’s say,
a Christian lives by? To give or not to give, that is the question.
How do we decide which is the morally correct thing to do?
In this non-traditional morality, there is a set of questions that
needs to be asked of each individual circumstance that we come into
contact with. Just because it is legal, or moral, does not always make
it the right thing to do. If a law is changed, let’s say the legalization of
marijuana, does that make it morally okay to use marijuana? If you
said yes, then what happens when they legalize something that goes
against your morals? Then do you have to consider it morally okay?
Even more importantly, does the court system have a role in
deciding what is morally correct? We have to decide what is most
important in each circumstance in this non-traditional setting. Some
questions that we must ask ourselves are:
1. Does anyone get hurt in my decision?
2. Do the benefits outweigh the costs?
3. Is there a law or rule against it?
4. What do the majority in that group agree about it?
5. Does the institution get hurt by the action?
6. Does it cause embarrassment?
When doing the right thing conflicts with doing something else
that would also be considered right, which should you do? In this non-
traditional morality, we have to look at what laws apply, the
consequences of each action, and how each choice we make reflects
2021, Spring / 9
the type of person we want to be.

Sometimes the choices that we make are no-brainers, but some
choices we have to make require us to look beyond what we want and
we must become aware that while rules/laws might exist for the greater
good, there are times when they will work against the interests of
particular individuals or groups.
Kohlberg’s theory says most people take their moral views
from those around them and only a small fraction think through moral
dilemmas for themselves. The issues are not always clear cut, and we
must decide based on each individual circumstance whether the basic
issues of life are more important than a rule or policy. Sometimes we
have to take ourselves out of the picture and do what is right for others.
For sure, only two things will always correspond with each
other: what we say and what we do. There is going to be a link between
thinking and acting. If you say you are moral, then you have to act
morally. You cannot do one without the other. An old saying goes like
this, “Your actions are speaking so loud that I cannot hear what you
are saying.”
If we are going to talk about the right thing, then we must do
the right thing, no matter what anyone else says.
Johnny L Wooten
This issue features, in addition to our editorial writer, a number

of other prison writers who have responded to our DIY Prison Project.
https://eveningstreetpress.com/diy-prison-project.html
BB
MARLENE S MOLINOFF
THE BIG IDEA
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, products, places, events, locales,
and incidents are either the work of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner.
Doriane woke up in a tangle of sheets. As she opened her eyes,

awareness and dread dawned in rapid sequence. Blinds were drawn all
around her, but she could see gray light pushing through. She was naked and
alone in an absolutely unfamiliar bedroom. She sat up and took in the chaos
of her scattered clothes. Her bra was draped over the bedside lamp beside
her, and her lace panties adorned a dresser drawer pull nearby. She bolted
into the adjoining bathroom, stepping on the coil of her abandoned pantyhose
and grabbing the rest of her clothing along the way. The harsh halogen light
over the sink mirror showed dark hollows under her eyes and the smeared
wreck of last night’s makeup. As she splashed water on her face, she could
smell coffee and hear the sound of someone whistling. She was horrified.
She had no idea who was out there. Reaching for the hand towel, she dabbed
at the rivulets of rouge and mascara, feeling waves of nausea and anxiety.
She threw the lock and sat down on the toilet. Her head was pounding. She
struggled to remember last night’s victory celebration and jumping into a cab
with a bunch of people from the ad agency to continue partying. There was
nothing after that. She got up and rifled through the medicine cabinet. No
telltale names on prescription bottles. She’d have to pull herself together and
face whoever it was. This was not her first rodeo.
“Hey there, Dorrie,” someone called out as she approached the
kitchen. “Feeling a little rough, are we?”
Good God. It was Andrew Fischer, a senior-level art director from
the agency. Of all the people she could’ve ended up with, he was probably
the worst, a notorious womanizer with a mouth the size of the Grand Canyon.
He was tall and blond, fortyish, and handsome, but he was the kind of guy
women instinctively shied away from. She must have been stupid drunk.
“Hey there, Andy. What’s with the nickname?” She looked squarely
at him. “We must’ve gotten pretty cozy last night. It’s a shame I can’t
remember.”
“Yes, it is.” He put his hand on her shoulder and steered her to the
kitchen counter. “Here. Sit down. Have some coffee. A little breakfast. Then
we can talk about it.”
He handed her exactly what she needed—a double espresso, freshly
brewed from his trendy machine, followed by a plate of bacon and eggs. Then
he returned the frying pan to the stove and joined her at the counter with a
plate of his own.
2021, Spring / 11
She stared out the enormous wraparound window at the fog of

Tribeca below.
“So what do you remember?” she heard without looking up.
“Remarkably little,” she said. The she looked at him. “I remember
leaving the party with you and a bunch of other agency folks. That’s about
it. Fill me in”
“So you don’t remember slow-dancing with me at Pasha?”
“Nope. I’m drawing a total blank.” She feigned a little-girl look. “I’m
really sorry. I’m sure we had a great time. Did we…ugh, you know….”
“I think that’s pretty obvious, don’t you, Dorrie?”
It wasn’t her imagination; he was playing her. “Cut the Dorrie crap,
will you?” She got up and dumped her plate in the sink.
“You didn’t seem to mind it last night.”
His look was not at all simpatico. She’d have to choose her words
very carefully. “As I said, I’m sorry. I get it that I did some things last night
I shouldn’t have. I’ll give you that. And, I think you’re a great guy. But I
hope you understand that I need you to keep this quiet.” She couldn’t afford
for this to get back to Don. As the recently appointed president of LEMOS,
she didn’t need her CEO doubting her judgment.
“How very crass of you. You’re hurting my feelings. I’m not the type
to kiss and tell.”
“Great. So, I can count on you to be discreet?”
“I’ll think about it.”
“OK. Now I’ve got the message. What do you want?”
“I don’t know. Let’s just say, I’ll get back to you.”
“Yeah, well listen you little shit….” Her face was red and she was
perspiring in spite of the effort to control her rage.
“Oh. Did I forget to mention that I might have some incriminating
photos to substantiate our new relationship? My bad. I’m sure Don would be
interested in seeing how his new president spent the night after her first major
win.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said. “Let’s see them. I can take
the heat.” She was pretty sure he was bluffing.
“Let’s hope you never have to. Dorrie.”
***
A few days later Doriane was still anxious every time she thought
about Andrew. She’d pegged him right as a womanizer, but she didn’t know
what to make of the photos. Even more disturbing and freaky was the
blackout. She couldn’t remember anything beyond that taxi ride. She hoped
to God the photos were a bluff, but she had to admit she wouldn’t put it past
him. She’d been drinking too hard lately. She’d have to be more careful. She
tried not to think about the vulnerability she’d exposed. It was not as if this
was the first time. On her last road show, alone in her room, she’d had too
much wine before a team rehearsal and slept right through her iPhone alarm.
The only thing that saved her was the kindness of her creative-copy director.
They’d sent Margie up to check on her, and Margie had put her to bed, and
told her team that Doriane was down with a migraine. By the time of the
client meeting the next day, she was fine. But it had been a close call. She’d
get the drinking under control again. She always did.
Her more immediate concern was how to deal with Andrew. She
hadn’t seen him since the morning she woke up in his apartment, but she was
getting feedback from her people that he wasn’t denying any of the rumors
circulating around the agency.
It didn’t take long for him to overstep. A few days later, he showed
up in her office at closing time when her lieutenants typically gathered for a
nightcap. “Hey there, Dorrie,” he said, barging in and kissing her on each
cheek—a signature greeting of hers—before taking a seat in one of the easy
chairs at the foot of her desk. She turned bright red and stiffened. They all
looked around awkwardly.
It was Don Lanino, the CEO and the “L” in the LEMOS name, who
shocked them out of it. “Excuse me, Doriane,” he said, leaning in through
the open door. “Sorry to interrupt, but I think you’ll want to hear this right
away. I just got off the phone with Phoenix. We’ve made the cut for the
Symfonica pitch! Your RFP was right on target!” He said this as he walked
briskly toward Doriane’s desk. Then he pivoted and spoke energetically to
all of them. “This is the one we’ve been waiting for. Three indications for
one product. You know what that means? Three mega launches in one. It’s a
bonanza!” Then he pivoted again and spoke only to her. “I want the best team
you’ve got. And I want to win big!”
A collective shout went up in the room. They were all out of their
chairs, hooting and high fiving. Doriane jumped up and raced over to Don,
who caught her in a bear hug. She disappeared into it. When he let her go,
she straightened up to her full 5 feet 4 inches and spoke over the thrum.
“You’ve got it, Don! We had a good feeling about that RFP.” From the
sideline, she saw Andrew leering at her. She had to hope she could handle
him.
“All I can tell you is this one makes our recent win look like
nothing,” Don said. “You want my job as CEO? Then reel in Symfonica.”
He said this while striking the pose of a deep-sea fisherman with a monster
on the line. Then he chuckled, turned abruptly, and went back down the hall
2021, Spring / 13
to his office.
“Holy crap! Did you all hear what I just heard? Or was it my
imagination?” she had to ask.
Franco, chief creative director of art and longtime agency veteran,
spoke up for all of them. “You heard right. The French’ve been leaning on
him pretty heavy to bring in a global pharmaceutical account. And I think
Don’s really tired of all the hassle. Time for him to play some golf and ride
that cigarette boat of his around the Keys.”
She copied Don’s fisherman’s stance, completely aware that she was
mocking him and the whole macho culture she was part of. “Let’s get this
thing cranked up,” she said, tightening up on the imaginary reel and yanking
in on the line. They all laughed. Then she turned to Franco. “I know it’s late
and we’re facing weekend work, but I’d like you to set up an all-hands
meeting for tomorrow morning.” She draped her arm around Margie’s
shoulder. “I need you and Franco to think about creative teams. Can you also
contact Stefan and get him to crunch the science so he’s ready to spoon-feed
it to the creatives?” She walked back toward the desk and faced the group.
“I’ll start brainstorming strategy. I want us to think outside the box, bring in
people who’ll approach this pitch in an unusual way.” She stopped and
looked around. “Let’s give Papa exactly what he wants.” She yanked up on
the fishing line again. “High fives all around!” Her hand was already in the
air. Then she cleared them out as fast as she could, deliberately ignoring
Andrew, who was lingering near the doorway.
She sat down at her desk, her back to the door, and opened the RFP.
In no time at all she was completely focused and had begun delegating roles,
when she sensed that Andrew was still in the room. Without taking her eyes
off the screen or her fingers off the keys, she addressed him: “What do you
want? I’m kind of busy right now.”
“You know exactly what I want, a chance to lead the creative team
for the Symfonica pitch. How else do I jump over Jeff and the other hotshots
gunning for Franco’s job? Everybody knows he’s on his way out. Let’s just
say I think you’ll find a way.”
The sound of his voice made her cringe. When he’d barged in on her
earlier in the evening, she’d been surprised by her reaction. He had caught
her off guard. But now she felt the same knot at the pit of her stomach. She’d
expected to feel anger, not this. She turned slowly to face him and held her
hands together in her lap so he wouldn’t see her trembling.
“Choosing the creative lead for a pitch is Franco and Margie’s call,”
she said. “I can’t change that.”
“Yeah. But you can influence it.”
The bastard was right. That was the problem. Or was it? she thought.
“We’ll see.”
***
Early Wednesday morning, the entire staff of LEMOS was crowded
into the main conference room when Doriane made her triumphant entrance.
For the first time she could remember, she was nervous as she surveyed the
room and caught a glimpse of Andrew in the corner. She looked away and
regrouped. This was her crowd. Their enthusiasm was palpable, and she
knew exactly how to play it. At thirty-eight, she was one of the youngest
agency presidents on Madison Avenue. She’d worked hard to get here. And
she’d fought hard too. She knew people in the industry referred to her as the
Ice Queen: she could shoot them down, step over them, and move up, all the
while batting her eyelashes. But it was also true that she never forgot any of
the people who contributed to her success, and for that reason, she knew she
was a clear agency favorite. Not only was she a hands-on president who knew
the name of every person in the agency (and their kids’ names) and who kept
close track of every piece of business, but she also had their backs at client
meetings when they needed it. Best of all, she made it fun to win; she was
ready to party as hard as she worked. The bottom line was that these people
were her people. They would go to the mats for her to win Symfonica.
“Is there anyone in the room who hasn’t guessed yet why we’re
here?” she asked.
A resounding “NO!” filled the room.
“Are we going to land this baby?”
“Yes!” came the collective response.
“OK, then. Let’s get started….”
***
Doriane showed up at Margie’s office minutes after the briefing. She
knew Franco would be there in the visitor’s chair, with Margie at her
computer. Without knocking, she walked in on the two old maids already
collaborating on the creative plan, bouncing ideas off each other.
“Have you thought yet about your teams?” she asked them, picking
up one of the rubber toys on Margie’s desk and giving it a squeeze for
emphasis. “I’d like to shake things up this time. Do everything a little
differently.”
Margie and Franco looked startled. While she was frequently a
partner in choosing concepts, Doriane never meddled in managerial
decisions. They’d watched, then championed her meteoric rise within the
agency. She was one of the few executives from the account side whose
judgment they truly valued.
2021, Spring / 15
From across her huge desk scattered with the detritus of tchotchkes,
Slinkys, and squeeze-toy mascots of past advertising campaigns, Margie
stared at her over the top of her tortoiseshell half-frames and said, “You know
as well as I do that the creatives like to choose their own partners. Some of
these guys have been working together for years.”
“What sort of thing did you have in mind, Doriane?” Franco asked.
The dark rings beneath his eyes and the marionette lines, which made his
Roman nose even more prominent, gave him a world-weary appearance that
belied his passion for the craft and oiled the rumor mill that Andrew had
alluded to.
“Breaking up usual partnerships. Challenging the creatives to work
with new people. Take Andrew, for example. I’d like to see him working
with a copywriter who can stimulate him to do something different for a
change, something more than a flashy design. He’s been working with
Juliette for too long. Their product’s stale.”
“That’s pretty risky,” Margie said. “He’s not going to like it. They’re
not going to like it. And I’m not sure I do either.”
“It’s just a suggestion,” Doriane said, putting the squeeze toy down
and getting up to leave. “But I’ve noticed lately that even though we’re
winning, our concepts are too predictable. And I wasn’t kidding out there
when I said this is a creative shootout.”
She’d planted the seed, and she knew as she left them that they were
already chewing it over. It killed her that they were probably also wondering
what the hell was going on between her and Andrew. She didn’t like it, but
she needed time to figure out how to win the pitch without the stress of him
breathing down her neck. Negotiating with a terrorist wasn’t particularly
easy, and she knew it wasn’t necessarily smart. She had to hope she could
pull it off.
***
Monday morning, Doriane was sitting at the conference room table
having coffee with Margie and Franco when the first of twelve creative teams
came in to present. Apparently, they’d asked Jeff Hansen, an experienced
senior-level art director with lots of Rx Awards under his belt, to partner with
two young, very savvy copywriters. Doriane was pleased. This meant they’d
taken her advice.
By late afternoon, the three of them had reviewed nearly fifty
concepts and eliminated over half. There were some interesting possibilities,
but they still hadn’t seen the “big idea,” the concept with the weight to
support an entire creative strategy.
Next up was the most unlikely team of the day. Margie and Franco
had paired Andrew with Catherine Sicconi, a drab novice copywriter known
around the agency as Ms. Science-head. They usually threw her the sales aids
to write when there was tough data to chart. Nothing conceptual. Doriane
was annoyed. This wasn’t at all what she had in mind. Either Margie and
Franco had it in for him, or this was their way of sidelining her attempt to
interfere.
At first, Andrew’s obvious discomfort seemed justified. There were
some real dogs, which he managed to present with characteristic dramatic
flair. Then Catherine took over. Sheepishly she explained that she’d had an
off-the-wall idea. “Andrew doesn’t really like this one,” she said shyly, “and
he can’t seem to find the right images for it. But I wanted to show it to you
because I think it’s a way to make sense of a very complicated product with
three very different indications for use.” As Catherine spoke, Andrew rolled
his eyes and mouthed boring. She persevered.
“I’ve chosen the word hyperexcitability to explain the overreaction
of nerves that’s common to all three of the conditions Symfonica will be used
to treat—neuropathic pain, anxiety, and epilepsy. And I’ve described the
effect that Symfonica has on these conditions as quieting the overly excited
nerve cells that cause them, literally calming nerves down and making the
symptoms go away. The tagline I’ve written is a kind of umbrella that brings
the three indications together. It’s very simple: Welcome to calm!”
When she heard it, Doriane immediately understood that Andrew
had totally missed the elegance of the idea. She could tell that Margie and
Franco recognized its strength too. In spite of the awkward and inappropriate
visual analogies Andrew had chosen (he was trying to capitalize on the
borrowed interest of things like traffic jams and jangling horns to illustrate
agitated nerves and calm Sunday drivers, relaxed nerves), Doriane knew it
was the concept they were waiting for. She also knew she’d have to fight for
Andrew to be part of the team. He certainly hadn’t earned it.
***
The next morning, Margie and Franco gave the entire art department
the job of finding the right imagery for Catherine’s concept and selected five
other creative platforms to move forward in development as backup.
Grudgingly, they also announced that Catherine and Andrew would be the
creative team representing the agency at the pitch. Doriane had persuaded
them that they needed the polish of Andrew’s presentational skills to balance
Catherine’s relative inexperience.
“Nice work, Dorrie,” Andrew said. The team had just been
announced. “I knew you’d find a way.” He touched his hand to his forehead
2021, Spring / 17
in mock salute as they brushed past each other in a tight back corridor of the
agency.
“Fuck you,” she managed, but she felt cornered and queasy. He
seemed to be feeding off her anxiety. She had to find a way to give him what
he actually deserved.
As it turned out, she didn’t have long to wait. The competition was
on, and by afternoon several other hotshot art directors (wasn’t that his
word?) were already making Andrew look bad. He didn’t get the
hyperexcitability idea and couldn’t find a way to visualize it. Unfortunately
for him, several of his colleagues could. In the end it was Jeff Hansen who
came up with the imagery that gave the science behind the idea visual
meaning. He presented a concept board with bands of glowing golden arrows
around a molten center radiating rays of light to suggest an exaggerated nerve
response to stimulus and a closed golden sphere of arrows to represent treated
nerves. His imagery with Catherine’s simple lines about calming revved-up
nerves was the perfect solution. It was the clear winner, and everyone in the
agency knew it belonged to Catherine and Jeff.
For days afterward, Doriane enjoyed Andrew’s embarrassment.
However, his discomfort during rehearsals in having to present Jeff’s concept
instead of one of his own was beginning to worry her. The entire strategy
was being built around the hyperexcitability idea. It was the centerpiece of
the pitch, and it had to be presented in just the right way. Under ordinary
circumstances she wouldn’t have let things go this far. She tried to remain
confident that Andrew could do it; she’d seen his showmanship in pitches
before.
***
When she got back to her office late one afternoon, Andrew was
waiting for her. This time his surprise visit didn’t feel so much like an
ambush. She was ready for him.
“What’s up?” she asked. She decided to keep it brisk and upbeat.
“I don’t like the way things are going.”
“What are you getting at?”
“You know what I’m talking about. You’ve got to help me. Unless
you sit down with me and talk the science in a way I can understand, I can’t
really romance the art when I present it. This is a big deal. We’ve got a lot at
stake. You and I both know Catherine’s an amateur. She can’t make it sing
the way I can.”
She had to hand it to him. The guy had some cojones.
“This may come as a surprise to you,” she said coolly, “but I’ve had
it. I did what I could to get you into this thing. The rest is up to you. I’m sure
as hell not sitting down with you. Ask Stefan for help. Or Catherine. Now
get the hell out of here.”
Andrew paled.
Doriane cut him off before he could say anything else. “Don’t even
go there. I’m done.” She sat down at her desk and went back to work.
***
By now the entire agency was in high gear. With Doriane directing,
the Symfonica story was building toward its climax. The orchestration of
roles and deliveries was pitch-perfect, with one glaring exception: Andrew
was getting worse, not better. There was no energy in his presentation of the
golden sphere imagery. He wasn’t invested in it.
Days before the pitch, Margie and Franco approached Doriane at the
end of a rehearsal.
“We’re thinking about replacing Andrew,” Franco said. “We’ve
already asked Jeff to get up to speed.”
“It’s awfully late in the game to be making a change like that.”
Doriane knew they were right. She’d had the same idea. She’d
already checked in with Stefan and Catherine and encouraged them to work
with Andrew. Stefan had reported back that it was a lost cause.
“We want to win this pitch, right?” Margie said. “He’s not
contributing anything. We need someone who can help the audience
understand how the art is a metaphor for the science. We think Jeff’s the right
person.”
Franco chimed in. “Besides, Catherine’s a lot more comfortable
when Andrew’s not around. She’s pretty green. She could get nervous and
blow the whole thing.”
“Can you give me until tomorrow to decide?” Doriane asked them.
Her back was to the wall. Usually that was when she was at her best.
***
That evening Doriane was home watching Colbert and catching up
on e-mails when her buzzer rang. She wasn’t expecting anyone, and when
the doorman announced Andrew, she was really annoyed. “Put him on the
house phone,” she said.
“What on earth do you want from me at this time of night?”
“I have something to show you, Dorrie; something I’ve been saving
in case you needed a little reminder.”
When he arrived at her door minutes later, he was holding an
envelope. She took it from him without a word and examined what was
inside. The photos were devastating. He had posed and arranged her in
submissive shots that made her look like a ridiculous drunk. Jesus. She
2021, Spring / 19
couldn’t stand the sight. It was like watching herself being raped.
“I don’t want to use these,” he said as she stared down at them. “But
you can bet your pretty ass I will if I have to.”
At first, she said nothing; then her anger kicked in. “Go ahead.” She
looked right at him. “I’d sooner bring us both down than let you win.”
He was smiling in disbelief as he backed away. “We’ll see about
that.”
She shoved him out the door and slammed it. Then, as she looked
down at the photos again, her expression changed. This would not be easy,
but she thought she knew how to spin it.
***
When Andrew showed up, late as usual, for rehearsal the next day,
Doriane could feel his cockiness. He really thought he had her. Her demeanor
betrayed nothing as she interrupted the commotion in the room.
“Listen up, folks,” she said. “There’s been a change in plan.”
Everybody looked at her. “Margie and Franco don’t think the art is coming
through enough in the presentation. And I agree with them. So we’re going
to do things differently.” She turned and spoke directly to Andrew. “We want
you to present the entire hyperexcitability story—art and copy—to bring the
whole thing to life.” Then she turned to Catherine. “I know you’ve got a lot
invested in this, but it’s not working. Let’s try having you set up with the
background science the way you just did, and Andrew’ll take it from there.
Ready, Andrew?”
The effect of what she had just said was astonished silence. Scanning
the room, she saw that Margie and Franco were in shock at her betrayal, and
Catherine stared at her feet, obviously holding back tears. There was little
she could do at this moment to save their feelings. She just had to hope that
things would move quickly and turn out as planned.
All eyes turned to Andrew. He was frozen in place. She watched him
pull himself together. Showman like, he swaggered to the front of the
conference room. When he got there, he bowed, cleared his throat, and said
in his most dramatic voice, “Can I have the first board, please?” He held it
facing toward him for one—two—three—four impossibly long seconds as
they all held their breath. Finally, in the way of a lead-in, he said,
“Sometimes, there’s a single word that can explain many things and a single
image that’s worth a thousand words.” Here he flipped the board around to
reveal the concept. “Hyperexcitability,” he read, and then he dropped the
board to the floor. “This is bullshit! I’m not prepared for this. What the fuck
were you thinking?” He directed this tirade at Doriane, glaring at her as he
collected his things and stormed out of the conference room. She was right
behind him, and the rest of them were right behind her, all of them heading
for the exit. At the threshold, Doriane stopped short, and the others strained
to see what was going on.
Don Lanino was standing just outside the doorway, waiting for
Andrew in the corridor. “Hey! You!” he shouted. “That’s right. You! I’d like
to have a word or two with you. In my office. Now.”
“You’ll pay for this, you bitch!” Andrew shot out at Doriane as he
passed by her.
“Better not say anything incriminating.” She smiled broadly, turned,
and led everyone back into the conference room.
The door closed behind them.
***
After the pitch, the story emerged in bits and pieces. She knew it
would; there was no stopping it. In no time, it would become industry lore,
part of the magic of her mounting reputation. Apparently, Andrew was in
Don’s office for under five minutes. Only one voice could be heard through
the closed door. People reported hearing Don shout things like “what kind of
a prick?” and “annihilate” and “you’ll wish you’d never been born” before
Andrew was seen running out of there. He scrambled to his office, threw a
few things into a canvas sack, and walked quickly to the elevators, where he
pressed every available button and fidgeted nervously before one of the doors
mercifully opened and swallowed him up. From what she picked up after
that, nobody knew exactly what, but they suspected that Andrew had had
something on her, which he’d attempted to use to blackmail her. They’d
heard that whatever it was, it was too big for her to handle alone and too
close to pitch time to run the risk. She’d been forced to go to Don Lanino for
help. No one but Don would ever know exactly what it was. All they knew
for sure was that Don had sided with her and fired Andrew on the spot,
making it painfully clear to him that whatever career he had left was in the
toilet if “those damned photoshopped images,” as Don had been overheard
calling them, ever surfaced.
***
Meanwhile, the LEMOS team won the Symfonica pitch hands down.
After Andrew’s blowup, they’d brought in Jeff Hansen, and he and Catherine
dazzled the client. There was one hell of a victory party, and Doriane was at
the center of it. “Mañana, baby!” she thought out loud as she brushed off
her latest resolution and ordered another round for the entire team. She
couldn’t help herself. She got totally wasted and danced on the table all night
long in celebration of her double victory.
2021, Spring / 21
JAMES ADAMS
BODYGUARD
He had on the usual gear

black leather coat, pants
heavy boots, a late model
Glock in hand and Makarov
bulging at armpit,
short shinned, buzzed head
tough lips, Slav eyes.
“You szhould be aff-rade,”
he stated drily.
I came here to help

I told him.
“Zhat’s vhy you

szhould be aff-rade.”
Adams
RICE WATER
It looks like rice water,

he said.
It’s cholera, I told him.

The Blue Death.
Everybody’s down, he answered.

And we are out of everything.
Be quick about it, I ordered

shifting to command
—look for people with cramping legs.
The refugee village had a rainwater cistern.

But someone had poked nail holes in it.
(cont)
Wait—chew these.
And I handed him sticks of gum
from my magic green bag.
We need flame, I said.

But what wood there was was wet.
I walked to a sweet banana tree,

and snapped off two bunches of tiny, yellow
potassium commas.
He returned.
Half of them, he reported.
We watched the rain start again.

Plug the holes with the gum, I told him.
The green bag produced

a small bottle of 5% chlorine
a glass dropper
a hot water cup
two spoons.
When the rain really started,

we used the cup to measure the rate
then droppered the bleach.
One drop every other cup.

Eight drops a gallon.
We gruelled the bananas

with the fresh water.
Cup by cup.
Up all night
spooning sips every five minutes.
Fighting off the vomit and bacteria.
Keeping at it until one of us broke

for help.
And almost saved everyone. Adams

2021, Spring / 23
ARTHUR DAVIS
TIME IS ALL I NEED
My name is Jordan Ainsley Rogers. I’m a British travel writer.

Several of my guidebooks have spent an undeserved eternity on the New York
Times bestseller list.
Fact is, I’ve never been to any of the places I’ve written about. My
travel books are complete fabrications—prevarications of every historical,
geological, and topological fact. I love that word “topological.” Never took
the time to look up what it means. I’m uncommonly lazy that way.
Strangely enough, no one but my husband Myles seemed to mind.
They buy my books, and we got to live in a quite comfortable small manor
house near fashionable Notting Hill in London.
After a while, my publisher was forced to turn a blind eye to my total
lack of authenticity and warn readers with what turned out to be a brilliant
device. He designed and placed a red wax stamp on the cover of my books
declaring, “Heed At Your Own Risk.”
That simple attempt at honesty increased demand and my titles have
so far been picked up in twenty-six languages around the world.
The castles, rivers, violent storms, suspicious moons,
unapproachable mountains, and lush valleys teaming with the most exotic
fruits and blood-thirsty natives which the reader “absolutely must visit” don’t
exist, the endless human-interest stories of war and survival, of thousand-
year-old tribal conflicts, all an engagingly woven fabric of falsehood.
“You’ll never get this published,” Myles warned when he read an
early draft of my first guide book.
Yet somehow that first crude fiction found its way to a publisher’s
wife, who fell in love with it and told her husband that if he didn’t publish
Rufus’ Guide to Hunters and Tap Dancers of the Amazon, she would divorce
him.
Myles always wanted to visit the Amazon, frightened of every
crawling and slithering creature as he was, but of course I was the one who
condemned his tentatively adventurous nature to that of a spectator. Not by
purpose mind you, but, nevertheless, the blame was entirely mine.
My beloved finally relented and let my imagination fly.
Transcending reality, I created an entire world that fiction readers eagerly
embraced. In the deepest, most secreted cells of Myles’ heart, I knew he
would rather have had me be less successful and a more genuine author of
fact, not amusing fiction.
My latest travel book is about Greece. I learned about that country

in high school, and what little I recall is the basis for this iteration of
absurdity. The endless high mountain ridges, the unending monsoons, the
uninhabitable coasts populated by vast herds of sea lions hunted almost to
extinction by great swarms of hammerhead sharks has caused many an
unwitting tourist to rethink their Greek adventures.
When the Greek Travel Administry vigorously protected, sales of all
my travel guides exploded.
“You’re public enemy number one now,” Martin Chase, my agent,
said over the phone a few months after Rufus’ Guide to Glacier Climbing in
Botswana was released.
“Martin, it’s three in the morning. Calling me at this time better mean
that you finally got laid, or whatever!”
It was originally going to be titled Rufus’ Guide to Cliff Diving in
Botswana, but I couldn’t decide which one I liked more for this landlocked
nation, so I let Rufus take a shot at it.
He’s better at critical thinking than I am.
I set out two pieces of paper with the title of each guide clearly
written and watched Rufus agonize over each from his corner vantage point
in my kitchen. He turned to me, thinking, probably, that it was time for his
lunch which was nowhere to be found. Finally, he walked toward the Cliff
Diving title, stopped, turned again in my direction, and plopped himself
down on Glacier Climbing a few feet away.
“You let Rufus pick the title?” Martin said when I confessed my
inspired methodology. “Please don’t mention this to anyone with more than
a two-digit IQ.”
“That would have been great advice this afternoon.”
“Oh, shit, who did you tell? Please, dear God, let it be a mute.”
“My mailman, the gardener, the dry cleaner delivery guy, and Elsa.”
“Not Elsa, your publisher’s admin?”
“No, Elsa Lanning the assistant secretary of defense for the United
States.”
“Oh, her. Then we’ll be okay. I mean, seriously, how bright can she
be?”
When Rufus’ Guide to Glacier Climbing in Botswana came out, I
was instantly blackballed by nearly every travel and guide association in the
world, to Martin’s utter delight.
I haven’t given up on the Cliff Diving guide, and Martin hasn’t
mentioned it either. Too much work. Too many fevered fans who line up
around the block whenever I can get myself to a reading or book signing.
2021, Spring / 25
“Have you been feeding Rufus more treats?” Elsa asked, coming into
the kitchen after I finished spoiling a creature more capable of discipline than
I am.
“No, it wasn’t me. I suspect someone came in through the patio doors
while I was in my study and gave Rufus some treats and just as quickly
vanished. Maybe we should call the police? What do you think?”
“...through the locked patio doors?”
“What other explanation could there be?”
“I think your cat is better behaved than you are,” she said—her
Lebanese accent now hardly noticeable thanks to my sending her to language
school—as she pushed my wheelchair back into my study.
Elsa returned about an hour later with my lunch and set it up on the
smaller desk on which she serves me all my meals. She handed me a
shopping bag full of fan letters that I usually read after lunch and afternoon
nap. When you get to sixty-eight, it’s all about the afternoon nap.
“Elsa, what do you think of a Guide to White Water Rafting in
Egypt?”
“It’s about time you wrote it, what with all those deadly Egyptian
mountain rapids.”
“Well, then, that’s my next project.”
“You’re not going to ask for Rufus’ advice?”
“No. I’m getting the feeling that he’s developing a real celebrity
attitude.”
“You’re just jealous because he gets almost as much fan mail as you
do.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. Now go away. Putting up
with him is one thing. Putting up with the two of you is just too exhausting.”
Elsa giggled, rolled her eyes, and closed the door to my study.
One look at Rufus contently coiled up on Myles’ old leather chair
and I could tell he was already looking around for his own agent.
And can you blame him when, if there is blame to measure, it would
begin and end at my doorstep?
My agent and publisher are amazed at my choice of locales I choose
to “visit” and I don’t discourage their praise.
Fact is, I never chose a site, not after I stumbled upon Myles’ journal
several years after we were married and exactly a year after a car accident
set me in a wheelchair for life.
It was Myles’ journal that inspired me, the places he longed to visit
with me at his side, and with the children he always wanted, tagging joyously
along behind us.
From his journal, from his humanity I found a way to do his dream
justice, and to his remarkable sense of whimsy, and wrote my first travel
book as though it would amuse him more than his compulsion for
authenticity.
I turned his fantasies into my fiction and hoped that would delight
him, since while he left this earth, he never left my heart or my side. He found
Elsa for me, and through her compassion and patience I was able to take my
first awkward steps into the world of being a literary celebrity. Without her
at my side and Myles’ visions dragging me around the world, I would have
been a sad recluse and spent the rest of my life bemoaning the tragedy of my
own making.
Someday I will write Myles a letter and send it to myself explaining
how the financial fruits of my fabrications anonymously financed his favorite
local British charities.
I don’t need attention. I need to complete the list of Myles’ lifelong
destinations to visit. He, we believed, as do many newlywed couples, he had
many years left to live, when it was far less.
These last few years have been a rewarding, but a terribly costly
journey. I’ve written about places Myles wouldn’t recognize as if that trip
would make up for the crippling loss and loneliness from his absence that
haunts me.
I sit at my old oak desk Myles refurbished for me before we were
married and pretend he is at my side and with each stroke of the keyboard,
nodding his approval and maybe gifting up the slightest twinkle of a smile at
the fantasies his beloved has created.
Time is all I need now.
I’m in a race my soul needs to win.
What put me in this wheelchair has taken on a new life of its own. A
gift when you get old are the wounds you suffered early in life and learned
to live with. Except they have an excellent memory and all too often,
according to my physicians, have begun to compromise other innocent
organs.
I’ve almost completed the list of cities and exotic locations my
Myles longed to visit, read that day in his journal and those entries that
followed, and with Elsa’s patience and Rufus’ manic rascality, I just might
cross the finish line ahead of time.
And, if I do, that will be my final and most relished tale, an ode to
the adventures never authentically experienced by the love of my life.
Still, it does little to lessen my homesick ache for his embrace, for
the adoring way he looked at me before we were married, for his outspoken
2021, Spring / 27
pride in us as newlyweds, and the love he was able to maintain long after the
car accident that crippled me and killed our firstborn, which we both knew
was my fault.
PAULA YUP
MY FRIEND’S BOOK
a Christmas gift
I’d only ever borrowed
from the downtown library
and although Nancy’s book

on ocean acidification
not a fun read
much less an easy read

it’s a swift read
we live on an ocean planet

Yup
ONCE UPON A TIME
I was a little girl

longing for grey hair
my own life
away from my father’s
groping hands
if only I knew
adulthood isn’t all it’s
cracked up to be
but I survived
my childhood
although flashbacks
the gift of terror
my father’s rich
inheritance
Yup
J SALER DREES
THE LEVELS OF SUFFERING
Every evening in August, when the sun set slant across the hide
of the Cascade Mountains, the bears came out of the woods and up to
Samson’s porch where he’d be waiting. He held either slabs of meat
wrapped in parchment paper under his arm, or a few brown trout he
caught down at Elk Creek, or a basket of apples, or, like today, a big
Costco-sized bag of tortilla chips. They’d come, the four bears: Big
Honey, the largest and the dominant bear; Vírusur, the boy with the
shiny black coat; Àvax, the red-mud sister; and Cheeto, the smallest
bear, named Cheeto because she fancied Cheetos. The sight of the four
lumbering out of the ponderosa always made Samson forget the
arthritis that stiffened him into an old man, and he momentarily
suspended out of time, like the sun would never leave, like he floated
in the hot breath of a dream and in this dream, permanence did exist;
it was an eternal song between only him and the bears.
Yet, this evening, Samson worried. Jonny said he’d come by
to discuss this year 2002’s salmon fall-run, but he hadn’t. Samson
looked forward to the lad’s visits as much as the bears’ but in a
different way. With people, there was no magic. Rather, there was a
sense of logic and a search for answers, and depending on who you
were, you found either stability in not having the answers, or insanity.
Jonny was a young man on the fringe, a born rationalist with
tendencies to crave escape. What was rational about Jonny: he didn’t
feed the bears. What was not rational about Jonny: no matter the
progress of sobriety, he continued to relapse back on
methamphetamines.
Thus, as the light slipped away, revealing a husk of moon,
Samson had two concerns, first that Jonny would arrive and discover
the secret bear feeding, second that Jonny wouldn’t arrive at all,
something wrong, perhaps he was over at Took-Took’s, getting high
again after the ninety-six-day recovery, perhaps his jeep broke down,
perhaps he got in a fight, was arrested, why, the possibilities were
endless and mostly harmful, given Jonny’s recent history.
A rustling in the trees, dark forms merging, rambling forth,
2021, Spring / 29
gaining shape the closer they neared the porch, their dry noses lifting
expectantly for their evening snack. Their muddy wet eyes, small and
beady in their big skulls, peered at him with intelligence, bred into a
cunning laziness, a laziness Samson knew. These bears could go down
to the Klamath, wade into the river and wait for a fish to bump into
their mass. But now the fall salmon-runs had dwindled over the years,
so it was much easier for the bears to come here and he feed them, feed
them like the government gave many of his people food stamps since
they were not allowed to hunt and fish, not anymore, not like he had
as a boy with his ákah. And now he was too old. The world was not
permanent. How old did he have to be to accept that?
“Here, bears, here you go,” Samson said, dipping his hand into
the bag and tossing chips into the bears’ outstretched jowls, their long
snouts cracked open revealing jagged lines of teeth, strands of saliva.
They snuffed and swatted at each other. He stood above them on the
porch. He threw more chips farther out, and Vírusur was the first to
chase after the scattering of chips only to have Big Honey swat him
away; he always got first dibs.
Samson divvied out the chips into four groups: chips by his
truck, chips by his tool shed, chips by the dogwood tree and chips by
the willow reed patch. The bears then traded off these four places,
some secret language between them that Samson would never figure
out. Big Honey first claimed the dogwood chips, but only to chase
Cheeto away from the truck chips. Cheeto chased off Àvax, and Àvax
waited until Big Honey chased off Vírusur. Round and round the bears
traded off their places, giving Samson a satisfying sweat, the
inflammation in his wrists ignored as he tossed and tossed handfuls of
chips
And then he heard the car engine, the rush of tires on the gravel
driveway. The bears turned their heads toward the noise and stiffened.
Bright headlights cut through the trees and then across the bears, the
fur on their backs awash in white, their eyes glinting that nocturnal
green. A horn blared. Startled, the bears bumbled and bounced into
each other, their masses dangerous in such quick flight. Nothing teddy
bear about bears. Despite the soft fur, stalky build, rounded ears and
dog-like muzzles, they were still three-hundred-pound unpredictability
with claws and teeth and divine strength, known to overturn half ton
rocks with a single foreleg, tear off car doors, knock over trees. Even
though they naturally wouldn’t attack humans, let alone eat a person,
the black bear, when feeling threatened, could lash out.
The jeep burst into the parking lot, bass music blasting. The
tires ran over tortilla chips, and the engine shut off, along with the
music, the lights.
Jonny leaned out the driver’s window, and shouted, “Jesus, you
feeding them bears?”
“You been over at Took-Took’s?” Samson snapped back.
Jonny hopped out of the jeep, looked off into the woods where
the bears had run. He shook his head, said, “You know better than to
feed the bears. That’s no service to them, just tossing them treats.”
“Better than the town dump,” Samson said, not bothering to
turn on the porch light, or welcome Jonny into the cabin as he usually
did. He suspected the lad of regressing back to old habits but wouldn’t
ask. No, it was up to Jonny to admit.
“A bear no longer wary of humans is a dangerous bear,” Jonny
went on and kicked at the gravel, some tortilla chips fluttered. “And
junk food? Jesus Christ. Soon, they’ll be expecting McDonald’s.”
Samson folded his arms across his chest and didn’t speak,
standing on the porch in the thickening dark. Jonny must’ve sensed his
silence, and, for a moment, only the oncoming night could be heard:
crickets, the rustle of a black breeze in the oak trees, an owl’s hoot,
bats’ wings. The two men didn’t move, as if hypnotized by the unseen
world.
But then, Jonny walked to the back of his jeep, leaned into the
jeep bed to gather something up, saying, “I went down to the Falls,
caught you a steelhead, thirty pounds, a wild one. Sure, not a chinook,
too rare to keep anyways, but not bad compared to them stockies.”
Such were the ways of Jonny, always bestowing gifts on others
as if he had a penance to pay for his past. And it made Samson soften,
even if Jonny skittered around where he really was, at Took-Took’s,
getting high, no?
Samson threw up his hands, said, “You scare off my bears and
now offer me fish? I won’t take it unless you got some tobacco.”
Jonny rummaged around some more. “I only got Golden
Virginia shag here.”
2021, Spring / 31
“Bah, son, you disappoint me,” Samson said. “Me and my boys
used to grow our own ihêeraha, right back behind the shed there.”
He pointed out into the darkness. “I’ve been lagging these
days. My boys don’t come ’round no more.”
He stopped himself. He didn’t like talking about how his boys
moved to the city, leaving him alone. Had he raised them that way? To
disregard their elders?
In Jonny, he saw hope. While other members of the tribe were
fed up with Jonny and his antics (not helping with the Big Foot parade
float like he said he would, volunteering to set up the Annual Council
dinner and then getting strung-out sick instead, embarrassing his sister
at the Klamath Preservation Fundraiser with a ridiculous bomb-the-
dams speech). Samson saw this desperation for forgiveness, something
his sons did not feel was needed. It seemed they, in their sky-high city
apartments, could care less whether they were forgiven or not, or
maybe they even believed they were right and their father, the old
curmudgeon, merely held onto knowledge and grudges no longer
useful for anyone. Jonny, on the other hand, was here, cracked-out or
not.
Samson flicked on the porch light. Jonny stepped up holding
the gutted fish, his index and middle hooked in its lower jaw and
through the gills, and in his other hand, a bag of shag. He said, “Isn’t
he a sight.”
The fish’s eyes looked smoky, scales dulled from the salt water
and then tinged with rust when re-entering spring water.
After Samson didn’t say anything, Jonny shrugged, “Alright,
he’s not like they used to be, but he’s got meat. I’ll build the fire pit.
Steak this fish up quick and you’ll be sucking trout bone before the
moon is in the center of the sky.”
“Tonight?” Samson said. “Jonny boy, stop being so sorry.”
“Sorry?” He lowered the fish, so that its tail touched the porch
boards, something you don’t let happen. The tail shouldn’t touch the
ground once caught; it meant the meat would spoil. Jonny added,
“What’s there to be sorry about?”
“Your fish tail, for one,” Samson said, grabbing the half-empty
bag of tortilla chips and turning to go back into his cabin. His knees
were acting up bad, and he limped a little.
Jonny followed, asking if he could at least boil the head and

innards for stew, or maybe, hey, let’s just roll up some smokes, go sit
out on the porch.
Samson held up a hand. “Not tonight. I need to rest.”
“Jesus, is this about the bears?” Jonny asked. In the cabin light,
he looked too thin, face sallow, black hair dulled, nothing like his
father, a great man, one of the last who performed the First Salmon
Ceremony, one who died too young of a brain hemorrhage. Samson
couldn’t say the same of volunteering to be priest of the First Salmon
Ceremony, although he wanted to. The First Salmon Ceremony was
part of Pikyavic, a renewal ceremony preformed in the month of
March with the intent to bring back a good year of salmon. Every year
a new priest and assistants could volunteer to lead the ceremony. Once,
when he’d just turned twenty, he vowed to be the next priest. He dried
out tobacco, the ihêeraha, and collected mah’ánav root, practiced
fasting, drinking only boiled acorn mush. He even built a sweat lodge.
But by the third day, he felt weak, cramped, defeated, his body
shooting out diarrhea and his mind seeing bears. Yes, that’s when he
saw the bears. Not a hallucination, the bears (out of hibernation early)
rummaging through the dump yard. He’d wandered up there, to the
town dump and stood on the ledge looking down upon mounds of trash
and bears picking out chicken bones, moldy bread, candy wrappers
scattered among microwaves and beer bottles and rubber tires. After
that, he ran home and gorged on potato chips. He was no priest of
ceremony, but since then he often spotted plastic bags, metal screws,
shoe laces and shards of glass in bear poop.
“Tomorrow,” Samson said. “Tomorrow, we’ll build a fire pit
and eat all the trout on a stick we want. Soon as sun’s up though, you
hear.”
Jonny nodded. “I should’ve come over earlier.”
“Stop doing things that make you sorry,” Samson said and left
the room.
That night he couldn’t sleep, his joints burning into brittle
charcoal, but he refused to take medication. He kept seeing Jonny, thin
and sorry, with the fish tail dragging on the ground. And he saw his
sons drowned in lights as they sat drinking in bars with live music and
solicitous women. And he saw the bear, Big Honey, on that night three
2021, Spring / 33
years ago, tearing through the shed where he had carelessly thrown out
a bag of fish intestines. Big Honey had torn the shed apart and strewn
guts and trash across the driveway. Samson, when discovering this,
realized: The new generation isn’t like you.
But this realization hadn’t pleased him. Instead, when his sons
told him they both weren’t moving back, that they were staying in
Reno to work as a bouncer and a blackjack dealer at the casinos, he’d
shouted, “Traitors, you’re both traitors like your mother.”
Had he been too hard on them? Expected too much?
I should be easier on Jonny, he thought and fell asleep.
A loud crashing noise woke him up, the sounds coming from
the kitchen. A crack and then a thud. Shuffling noises. Crinkling
noises. Crunching noises. Shadows folded around him, but the cabin
was so familiar, he had little difficulty (other than his stiff right knee
and cramping hands) grabbing his rifle, locking the already loaded
magazine in and quietly hobbling down the hall toward the kitchen,
holding the rifle at the ready.
The stilted moonlight crept through the kitchen window above
the sink, framing a hulking black form of a bear sitting on its hunches.
When it lifted its head, the moon caught its face unashamed. Samson
lowered his rifle. His eyes adjusted. The small bear: Cheeto.
A wind blew through the kitchen, ruffling the bear’s fur. The
back door, behind the bear, had been torn off completely opening into
the wild beyond. Cheeto sniffed the air, aware of Samson’s presence,
but went back to dipping her paw into the torn bag of tortilla chips
pressed against her stomach, like that children-story bear with his pot
of honey. Samson leaned against the wall and watched Cheeto chomp
away on the rest of the tortilla chips as if she had all the time in the
world, and perhaps, to a bear, there was all the time in the world.
Didn’t they die and come back every year.
The next morning, Jonny arrived with a black eye. Samson

didn’t mention it. Instead, he led the lad to the side of the cabin,
opposite the one with the torn-off door, to build a fire pit. But Jonny
said it’d be too windy for a fire, that on the other side, the cabin would
block the wind, which was true. How Samson begrudged the wind as
Jonny discovered the gaping doorway, the door itself flopped over in
the weeds, claw marks near the doorknob and hinges. Bears were
surprisingly dexterous.
“Aw, Jesus,” Jonny said. “Them bears broke into your cabin?
Some respect that is.”
“You want two black eyes?” Samson asked, not needing a
lecture.
Jonny laughed. “How you think I got the first.”
Samson didn’t want to think about it. He didn’t want to think
Jonny relapsed; it’d only make him believe in no one young again, and
then what good was the future?
In silence, he watched Jonny cut up the fish, stab bright-red
steaks on sticks, build a fire and jab the sticks in a circle around the
fire pit. The lad was efficient, even if a little tired, something lulling
in his attitude opposite of the night before, and Samson speculated it
was the crash of crystal but said nothing, as if silence could protect
him, could protect them both from reality.
He sat on the pine log, chiseled flat on top, and painfully rolled
cigarettes with his stiff, bumbling fingers, Jonny’s Golden Virginia
shag flittering everywhere, smelling faint and sucked dry, but it’d do,
was better than his withered patch behind the shed.
Soon, the fish smoke began to drift through the air and Samson
remembered hunger. Jonny plucked two steak sticks from the pit and
handed one to Samson.
“Enjoy this sweetness. I can’t keep anymore,” Jonny said.
“You reach the head count?”
Jonny nodded and heaved a large sigh before saying, “I still
like to go down to the river with my dip-net to catch and release, but
that Jenkins warden threatened to arrest me, talking like I’m some
poacher. Man, I’ve done a lot a shit that makes me want to cover my
face, but poaching isn’t one of them.”
Samson chewed the trout slowly, sucking out the juices, and
holding them on his tongue, trying hard not to imagine the days when,
if you were hungry, you just went down to the river with your dip-net
and caught a fish. No regulations. There didn’t need to be. The salmon,
trout and eel were abundant. Chinook. Coho. Steelhead. Sturgeon.
Lamprey.
Could Samson even imagine it anymore? So far away those
2021, Spring / 35
days were with his ákah, when they called the Klamath “Ishkêesh”,
when fishing was about ceremony, about survival. Jonny never had
this way of life and what did that absence feel like? Was it worse than
loss? Samson wanted to reassure the lad something like: you hang in
there, the salmon always return.
But if he said that, it could be a lie. There were two types of
chinook. The spring and the fall. The springer, the first salmon of the
year, were fatter, more sustaining, but now they were becoming
extinct. The spring salmon liked to hang out in shallow pools, building
up there before making the journey up north to mate and lay eggs.
However, due to the dams, the Klamath had become sluggish, the
tributaries stagnant, and the water heated up under the sun, boiling the
spring salmon and cultivating a new habitat for parasites and
ammoniac algae. And by fall, less fish swam up the river. Would there
be a year no fish came back?
Samson stayed silent, only stared across the fire pit at his torn-
off door, no longer hungry, no longer comfortable, his inflamed knees
cramping, sitting on the log beside this mourning young man, deprived
of a rich past. The two of them remained quiet for a while. The light
crackle of the fire and the faint hiss of juices seeping from the trout
meat the only sounds among the morning bird calls.
Jonny wiped his nose with the back of his hand, said. “Want to
know the truth?”
Samson waited.
“I went to Took-Took’s yesterday,” Jonny said. “And after I
left here, I went over to Lumberjack Saloon where I ran into Jenkins,
and I dared him to call me a criminal, and he did, so we fought.”
“Are you nuts?”
“Yeah. A little.” Jonny laughed once.
Samson, though, found no reason to laugh. “Jenkins could snap
his fingers and, slam, you’re in the pen. People like us, we need to be
careful. Not go over to Took-Took’s and start fights with wardens.”
Jonny leaned over, massaged his temples, then lifted his head
up, gazed over at the torn-off door, said, “Jesus Christ, those bears are
going to be back here this evening, aren’t they? See, they’re getting
too brave, but I can scare them off for you.”
“No.” He stood up, looking down on Jonny. “You need to go.”
“You serious, hold on— “

“Now. Get up. Get moving. And go get some damn rest.
You’re driving me batty.”
The lad rubbed his eyes with thumb and index finger, muttering
something inaudible, then pushed himself up from the log, dusted off
his pants, gathered up his knife, his tobacco and papers and lighter,
and shuffled toward his jeep.
He paused by the torn-off door, ran his finger along the
splintered wood of the door frame, shook his head.
“You know,” he said, “Me and you, we’re quite the same. We
try our best, but it’s not enough.”
Samson spat out a slivered fish bone, said, “We aren’t the
same.”
With that, Jonny left. The jeep rumbled to life and sped off,
leaving Samson alone with all the fish. He lit a smoke, let the dry nasty
taste fill his mouth, his lungs and give him a slight dizziness as he
doused the smoldering wood fire and kicked ash over it. Several raw
steaks and a bucket of fish guts (the head, heart, throat, stomach and
liver) for fish stew were waiting to be stored in the freezer, but Samson
left them, and the remaining smoked meat on the sticks. He then went
to his shed, now protected by several locks and two beams across the
door and opened the door. His freezer hummed in the corner. He
unlocked it and took out Costco-sized packages of raw chicken breast
and legs, a gutted brown trout and ham bone.
After unwrapping the packages, he took the frozen meat and
placed it around his cabin, a chicken breast on top of his tube TV, a
ham bone by the microwave, the trout in the bathroom sink, a trail of
chicken legs leading to his dusty desk where he used to write many
letters to FERC about a Klamath River Restoration project.
Out of meat and feeling achy yet restless, Samson got in his
truck and drove the two hours up to Medford where the nearest Costco
was located. Here, he bought pork chops, a fifteen-pound turkey, a pre-
cooked ham, a block of cheddar cheese, a flat of mammoth muffins, a
crate of strawberries, sack of apples, two new bulk bags of tortilla
chips, and last but not least, Cheetos. The check-out lines were long,
and he waited with his full cart, his year membership courtesy of his
Social Security check. He purchased it solely for the bears in the
2021, Spring / 37
waning summer before they returned to hibernation.
On the way back, along I-5, a big rig had capsized and there
was a forty-minute traffic delay. Samson’s wrists and knees became
agitated and he had to keep pulling over on the side of the road to
stretch. By the time he was driving up his own driveway, it was
evening. Before he reached sight of his cabin, he killed the truck and
got out. Dragging his right leg, his knee unable to bend, he approached
his cabin and, in the dusky light, saw who he knew he’d see: the bears.
All four of them. Big Honey hit the fish jackpot in the fire pit.
Vírusur’s head peeped above the kitchen window as he pulled down a
chicken breast. Ajax had knocked over the TV tube and was chowing
down on the ham bone. Cheeto stood on her hind legs, forepaws on his
desk, head dipped down, jaws gobbling up chicken legs.
“Eat up bears, eat up before anyone catches you,” he said. It
was then, he remembered that he’d wanted to be easier on Jonny, but
he’d shown no mercy to the lad. Instead of telling Jonny that he didn’t
want to see him in trouble, he had a future, there was hope, he’d shooed
him away.
Damn, maybe we really are alike, Samson thought. Both
feeling like we’ve failed each other.
Back by the truck, he waited while the bears took their sweet
time ransacking his home, and dusk settled to night. Soon they would
come for him. He opened a bag of Cheetos.
ANN BRACKEN
PAINT CHIPS OF MEMORY
Baltimore Burning 1968 and 2015
Rust
pits the borders of the old Reads Drugstore sign
gaunt as a man’s cheeks hollow from hunger.
No one strolls the aisles leafing through magazines,
No one sits on the chrome lunch-counter stools.
A national landmark on a once grand street now bears witness
to homeless veterans and nodding runaways.
Pilgrimage foliage
The color of the brick walls surrounding my high school
as National Guard troops patrol Gay Street.
Pilgrimage foliage
the color of the brick homes we called projects
a chain-linked fence surrounding the dirt yard
where girls jump rope and boys ride raggedy bikes.
Athenian Brick
The CVS neon sign blinking in the night,
the color of the flames licking the police cars
the night charged with the dynamic blue energy
of police armored and shielded.
“We gave them space to destroy,” the mayor says,
and stands unapologetic when asked to recant.
I watch at home on television now
to see history repeating itself
like a Greek Chorus in endless lament.
Bracken
2021, Spring / 39
DANA STAMPS II
MERCENARY POET, A MEMOIR
(for Joel)
The Red Wheelbarrow
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain

water
beside the white

chickens
— William Carlos Williams (1923)
Poetry chose me. The first time I ever heard there was such a
thing as poetry, I was eight years old and in the third grade. The teacher
wrote the poem “So Much Depends” by William Carlos Williams on
the chalkboard, and said that this was a great poem. I thought it was
stupid, and the teacher crazy. If that is a good poem, I could do much
better, I remember thinking. She probably thought that the simplicity
of the imagery would be a good way to introduce poetry to her class.
She was wrong. I raised my hand and said that “The Rhinestone
Cowboy” had much better words, and argued that songs were better
than poetry. She said that I couldn’t write a poem—or a song—as good
as this great poet’s work, and that song lyrics were inferior to great
poetry like the one on the board.
I took her up on the dare, and wrote my first song lyric while
in the shower. Usually, I tried to remember song lyrics, and sing those
in the good acoustics of the bathroom, but I had trouble remembering
the words. Making my own up was much easier. I can still remember
the first song lyrics that I created. They went: “Gunshot, duh nun duuh,
calling the cavalry, and even the army, too, just to watch me fire my
itsy-bitsy pistol off in the wild blue yonder!” A masterpiece, right? I

kept ad-libbing song lyrics, but didn’t think to write any of them down
because thinking them up was easy, and I just kept singing in the
shower, making up lyrics for years.
I didn’t think about poetry again until high school when I was
assigned “The Bells” by Edgar Allen Poe to write an essay on. Again,
I thought poetry was stupid, especially the dull repetition of “The bells,
the bells, the bells.” I could do better than this, my young naïve mind
concluded. But my dream at the time was to be in a rock band, so a
few of my friends formed the band “Armada” and I was going to write
the lyrics to our songs. My first efforts went as follows: “Everybody
knows the way to fame and glory. They all claim the price is too high.
Well, I don’t know but that’s sure not my way. I’d give my all to be
flying high. Look at me now, I’m heading for that rainbow. I can see
it now, so near but yet so far, o oh o oh, to the pot of gold.” Needless
to say, the band didn’t last long, and we never even managed to be able
to play a song.
When I went to the local community college, San Bernardino
Valley College, I took an intro to literature class. Lo! the poem “So
Much Depends” was the first poem we were asked to read. Again, the
teacher wrote the poem on the chalkboard. I still thought it was stupid.
Surely, I could do better than that. I began to write my first poems, and
I guess all that practice singing in the shower was not a waste, because
the professor liked them, and he said I should submit them to the
college literary magazine called Phineas. They accepted three poems,
my first publication credits, and my favorite was a haiku that went: “A
custodian, / trash sack hunched over shoulder—/ the Anti-Santa.”
When I saw my work in print, I knew that this was the work that I
wanted to do with my life. How easy, I thought. Sylvia Plath, a favorite
poet I was introduced to in the class, said: “I write poems to avoid the
real work of writing fiction.” Short was good for me, too.
The real world of earning a living to eat and pay the rent soon
intruded on my writing ambitions. I decided to major in psychology (I
have a BA obtained in ’98) and eventually become a therapist. I didn’t
try to write poetry again until I was thirty-seven years old. I wouldn’t
have started writing again if it wasn’t for fate. I had a mental
breakdown, and I started to hear voices. Bi-polar was my diagnosis,
2021, Spring / 41
and ultimately a psychiatrist said that I would be a danger to myself

and others if I went back to work. This initially devastated me, and my
self-esteem plummeted. Ultimately, I needed to work to feel good
about myself. But what could I do? Defy the doctors? I couldn’t pass
a physical, which was necessary to do the job I was trained to do: work
with troubled children in group homes. I tried, but when I got the job,
the doctor giving me the mandatory physical asked me if I was taking
any medications. “Zyprexa, Klonipin, and Effexor,” I said. “Do you
hear voices?” he asked. “Yes,” I told him. “Sorry, but you’re going to
have to get your psychiatrist to say you can work.” So I went to him,
and he paused long, and then said: “I can’t do that. We are going to
have to get you on Social Security.” I thought my life was destroyed.
After a tough couple of years in and out of psychiatric hospitals
for suicidal ideation, I saw a listing in the newspaper for a poetry
group, the Inland Empire Poets. I went, thinking that I might be able
to start writing poems again. I had plenty of time now, I thought. After
about a year of practicing, I got my first poem published since college.
It felt good, but the only payment was a contributor’s copy. I soon
learned that there was no money to be likely made writing poetry. Most
poets had other jobs to pay the bills, even the leader of the poetry group
was a professor of English at the same community college that I
attended in my 20s. But soon I had an epiphany that would change my
attitude about life. Poetry could now be my job because I didn’t have
to make money. I was in a unique position, and I intended to get
published as often as I could.
As it turns out, getting published often was not easy for me, for
I got rejected most of the time. But occasionally, after submitting
shotgun style, I did get published. I then read my contributor’s copy,
learned what quality was necessary to get into that particular journal.
I would write for the editor’s taste, and my chances improved.
Plainsongs, for example, favored poems about the visual arts and art
history, so I wrote poems about that just for them; I have fifteen poems
published in Plainsongs and counting. Soon I got the idea to buy
sample copies of the journals that I wanted to get published in. The
taste of each editor varied considerably. For example, some editors
favored free verse narrative poems exclusively, others liked to include
forms like sonnets and villanelles, and still others had a penchant for
left wing politics, etc. I started to write poems aiming at the editor’s
taste, not my own opinion of what makes for a good poem. It was like
playing cards with a stacked deck. I didn’t always win, but my odds
increased considerably. My favorite thing to write for is theme issues.
Journals occasionally advertise for themes ranging from the general to
the specific. It is a challenge. Still, I don’t always succeed, but when I
do, it feels like work well done. This is my job, and I work hard at it.
A new poet arrived in the group, Jack Liskin, and we became
fast friends until a fateful Wednesday night when the question came
up in the poetry group, “Why do you write?” He noticed that my poetry
had widely varying themes that sometimes contradict poem to poem.
I told him my modus operandi, and he freaked out. He said that I
lacked integrity, and that my writing was illegitimate. Normally a non-
smoker, he broke out a cigarette, clearly upset. The leader of the group,
Joel Lamore, didn’t necessarily think my motive for writing was
illegitimate, but he called me a “mercenary poet” and thought that a
better reason to write would be for intrinsic values, and that getting
published was not the most important goal for writing poetry. I took
both of them seriously because I respect them as writers and readers
of poetry—and as sophisticated people.
After thinking about this, I decided that something Walt
Whitman said in “Song of Myself” would be apropos to lead me
forward: “Do I contradict myself? / Very well then, I contradict
myself. / (I am large, I contain multitudes.)” I would write for any
reason that suited me, sometimes for editors, sometimes for myself
with no specific publication, or any publication, as my goal. I was not
going to be small, at least to my way of thinking. The writer who
questioned my integrity stopped being my friend, but we are kind to
each other, and I think honest and helpful as possible when we
contribute to the critiques of our poems in the group. The leader of the
group respects my success, despite my motivations. He has asked me
to eventually speak to his students on writing and especially on the
subject of how to get published. I look forward to doing this, and
hopefully I won’t corrupt them. I honestly love writing poetry, and I
wouldn’t want to limit my prolific output. But I admit that it does
trouble me not to be considered completely respectable by these two
peers. I try to write more intrinsically motivated poems than I had
2021, Spring / 43
before the fateful confrontation. They were right to say that getting
published is not the most important thing. I am grateful for their
honesty.
In fact, for me, making writing social is the greatest benefit of
submitting to editors, belonging to a writing group, and reading to an
audience. The romantic ideal of a lone genius spewing pure words is
replaced by a foremost concern for communicating effectively to
others. Not the unique, often obscure, expressions of the innermost self
on a pedestal, but entertaining, thought-provoking writing that has
been through a gauntlet of opinions before it reaches publication. Not
art by committee, but art by a “poet auteur” who directs the words, and
like a movie director, makes the final cut. Emily Dickenson might have
left the majority of her work in a drawer to be discovered after her
death, relying on fate to get them into the world, the eyes of readers,
but I choose to write for my contemporaries, not for posterity.
Consequently, I have over 400 poems published since 2004,
and I see no end in sight. Poetry chose me. “So much depends,” wrote
WCW a century ago. I now understand how much small things matter,
how the small things are the big things.
Yes, his poem is great.
STEPHEN J KUDLESS
STRESS TEST
Wired and connected,

He plods along,
Getting nowhere.
Faster and faster, legs propel him
Up artificial hills
And over long stretches of synthetic terrain.
His breathing deepens and burns his lungs
And he counts the remaining minutes on the clock
In front of him.
(cont)
Dials pulse and record the heart’s changing rate,

The pressure in his veins and arteries,
And his laboring respiration.
His face reddens and glazes over with sweat
As the big muscles in thighs and calves
Drive him farther along the invisible path.
Clenched hands grip the rails
And slippery palms slide now and then
Threatening to let loose and set him tumbling.
And then, the white coat beside him
Fingers a button and he slows, slows, slows
And finally comes to rest.
Pronounced healthy,
He steps out now on sore limbs
To the train going “Uptown.”
Exiting, the short walk down the street
ls easy and his gait is sure.
He finds the door
And fumbles the key to open it
To the droning voice inside.
“Hello” receives no response except a shrug
And, while he tosses his coat on an empty chair,
The test begins.
Kudless
JONATHAN FERRINI
BROWN SHOE
What has befallen you and led you to the center of a busy
intersection, alone, at the peril of being crushed by racing cars? You remain
erect and proud, as if standing at a counter of an expensive boutique, or
dancing in the moonlight at a lavish cocktail party. What was your journey
to this perilous intersection, brown shoe?
You resemble a fashionable, early twentieth century, woman’s,
ankle-high shoe, with elaborate brogue design and brown, silk laces. You’re
made of beautiful, polished, brown leather, which has aged gracefully. Were
2021, Spring / 45
you lovingly hand-made by a master cobbler in Europe for a wealthy matron,

or mass produced by immigrants for upscale shoe stores?
Were you worn by a wealthy socialite, or a beautiful debutante?
Your size suggests you were worn by a petite woman, perhaps, a blond,
brunette or a redhead? Was a man fortunate to have married you, or, did you
simply date handsome suitors for your amusement?
Perhaps you were an entrepreneur, a professional woman, corporate
chieftain, or a loving homemaker?
How many exotic travels did you enjoy, and romantic encounters did
you relish? What were your heartbreaks and disappointments? Did you have
children?
What has befallen you, beautiful brown shoe? Did you fall off the
back of a thrift store truck, or return to visit your former neighborhood of
stately Victorian homes, now replaced by skyscrapers? I pray you weren’t
struck in the intersection as you traveled to your afternoon tea with friends,
and I shudder to think you might have been an elderly woman, slowly
crossing the street, not making it through the crosswalk in time, before being
hit by a careless driver.
As I fight rush hour traffic to present my grandmother’s eulogy, you
remain in my thoughts, brown shoe. My grandmother lived to be 103 years
old. She was a tireless, progressive trailblazer in business and politics. She
was active in the civil rights movement, fought for equal pay and justice for
women, and was an ardent environmentalist. Until the last few years of her
life, she had a busy social calendar which included her beloved ballroom
dance classes. My grandmother was a “global citizen,” and was concerned
for the future of the planet. Her credo was, “Everyone and everything has
value and purpose in life.”
I want to rescue you from being crushed in the intersection, so I may
cherish you as a valuable family heirloom, or provide you as a gift to my
daughter who might research your history. Alas, I’m already blocks away,
too late to retrieve you from the perilous intersection.
I pray a kind soul will recognize your beauty, retrieve you from peril,
and you will find a home in an upscale vintage thrift store, clothing museum,
or become a prized addition to a woman’s shoe collection.
As I peer into the rear-view mirror, I see an old, homeless woman,
pushing her shopping cart neatly packed with her life’s possessions. She
stops, picks you up, and gently polishes you, as if finding you in a fine
boutique. She carefully places you in her shopping cart with her other prized
possessions.
You reminded me of lost loves, revered, departed relatives, and
inequities in our world my beloved grandmother would work tirelessly to

resolve. My remarks at grandmother’s eulogy will have new meaning.
Thank you, brown shoe.
J T WHITEHEAD
BLUE EYES
I was looking at a photograph

Of you, staring at your eyes.
Their peculiar blue.
I couldn’t recall where I had seen it

before. I asked myself about it.
Asked myself about all my memories.
Air? No. Ocean? No. Boy Scout fishing

trip river? No. I asked myself,
Bruise? Definitely no.
Baby’s room as an uncle? No.

As a dad? No. First car? Really?
I ask myself. Ocean? Again. No, again.
Lake Michigan? No. A forgotten lake?

No. Lake Erie? No. Not those lakes.
The Salt Lake? No. But it was something.
Enough to make you want to set up

Camp there, stay, and start a whole
New religion and have many wives.
My brother’s eyes? Close, but no.

My father’s eyes? No. No. Close, but no.
What’s the deal with these blues?
(cont)
2021, Spring / 47
I remembered being a child.

I remembered looking at photographs
Of the Earth, which you love. Clearly.
The pictures were taken

In outer space. Out by the Moon.
Or something. Maybe farther out.
The whole planet, that was it.

That was in the picture.
And it was blue. The same. Clearly.
Whitehead
JANUARY 12, 2019—ANOTHER DAY
Snowed in with my imperfect girlfriend,

whose imperfections I adore,
whose imperfections make me love her more,
with eight inches outside and in
a warm and inviting solace once unknown
to either of us, I slice the aged Gouda
and smoked Havarti while she chops onions
for the soup on the stove whose steam
mingles with the growing heat from the fireplace
I stoke. She’s wearing my favorite flannel shirt.
Her toenails are painted a bright cherry red.
Her calves are round from so much running
though neither of us are running much now
except for my mouth.
Classical music plays at a low volume.
I make the bed. I lie down. I read
a tragic Russian novel about a nihilist who
invades a country estate like a spiritual plague.
It happened a long time ago.
If it happened.
Right now, everything that has happened,
to the uncle, to the father, to the son,
to me, and to her, it all happened a long time ago.
Every other woman, every other man,
every thief, every capitalist, every taker of souls, (cont)
every amoral, reckless, narcissistic intruder

into our lives, or the lives of any other man or woman
who simply wanted to work hard first and then play
and to do so by some set of rules, written
or tacitly understood,
is dead to us now.
The smell from the heat from the register
matches the smell of the book’s brown pages.
Dust to dust.
She sits down on the edge of the bed
with two cups. We use a kitchen chair for a table.
We eat. We tell jokes. I take off my shirt.
I turn down the lights. I unplug the clock.
I turn off the phones. I turn down the sheets.
The fire does not go out. The fire goes home.
Whitehead
JANE SNYDER
LUNCH
Your wife suggested you ask your daughter to pick the restaurant but
it isn’t Anne’s place to dictate terms. This is your treat and, anyway, what
objections could she have? This place is a compliment to her, a reflection on
the importance you assign to the occasion, your daughter’s 35th birthday. And
it is so pleasant here, the basket of warm bread, the goblets of water, with the
small ice cubes, not too full, the cutlery laid out on the thick white cloth. The
sense of everything done exactly as it should be adds to your own sense of
well-being.
At least your daughter doesn’t eat the bread, you think, when you
see her lobster bisque is nothing but cream stained an orangey pink. As you
sprinkle vinaigrette on your salad, she pours the entire contents of the little
pitcher of Roquefort dressing on hers. All you allow yourself to say is that
she’ll be thirsty this afternoon.
If, instead of continuing to chew steadily, rhythmically, a cow in the
field, she’d defend herself, you’d have an opening. Of course, her husband
2021, Spring / 49
won’t say anything, because now is the time to be gentle, but you know he
minds, any man would, seeing the soft, blurred lines of her body. Not fat,
you won’t use that word, but she isn’t putting her best foot forward, is she?
Kris Pennington comes over to your table then. When you introduce
your daughter as Anne Mueller, she corrects you. No, she says, my last name
is still Withycombe. I didn’t change it when I married.
Well, you tell Kris, the takeaway message here is Anne is actually
married which is fortunate because the Muellers have a four-year-old son.
Mark, our only grandchild to date. You pull out a chair for Kris, ask her to
join you. Oh, I wish I could, she says, only I’ve got to get back. But it was
lovely meeting you. I’ve heard so much about you, Anne.
She’s quite a gal, Kris, you tell your daughter after Kris leaves.
Started as a clerk typist at Mother Cabrini’s fourteen years ago and now she’s
director of Human Resources. And wasn’t that a smart suit she had on. This
is offered as conversation and not intended as a comment on your daughter’s
own accomplishments or taste.
“You know, Dad,” she says, “I’ve been married for six years now.”
You express mild surprise.
“We told you when we got married what we were going to do.”
You’d wanted to say you wouldn’t pay for the wedding unless she took her
husband’s name, but Violet, your wife, had been dreaming of a big wedding
for years, was afraid Anne would dig in her heels and refuse to go through
with it.
You smiled during the reception to let everyone know you didn’t
care your daughter did not respect you or her mother enough to follow your
example, smiled like a dog baring its teeth.
“I haven’t changed my mind. I’m not going to change my mind. Why
not let it go, use this as an opportunity to make a few points with me?”
What she’s saying doesn’t seem fair. “You knew about the
miscarriage,” she says in a tone you don’t care for, find challenging, in fact.
Violet had told you. She’d known Anne was pregnant. You had not.
Miscarriage is a common occurrence, certainly not a blanket tragedy,
especially in the first trimester, certainly nothing that should keep her from
trying again, giving Mark a little playmate.
“Couldn’t you care more about me than being right?”
Is she that simple? Does she really believe you would make a study
of pleasing her? “Right is right,” is what you’ve told her. “I can’t make it
wrong to please you.” The waiter comes then and you are glad to look away
from your daughter’s tired face to examine the dessert menu.
“My,” you say, “this looks intriguing.”
Your daughter tells the waiter you never eat sweets.

She didn’t need to say anything. “You may, though,” you tell her.
“This Gateau St. Honore looks intriguing.”
“Like a symphony on a plate,” the waiter says. That’s the way your
daughter wants you to be with her, you think. Truckling.
“Well, then,” you say. “Have that.”
She smiles at the waiter, stands up and you stand too as she thanks
you for the lunch.
You don’t want her to go. You don’t know how to make her stay.
VINCENT J TOMEO
HIGH TEA WITH MY DOG GRANDMA
Grandma always said,

“When I die, I will come back as a dog.”
Grandma died!
Named our dog Grandma.
Served Grandma high tea.

She just ate the scones.
Spoke of The Wall.

She put her head in her paws.
Spoke of North Korea.
She rolled over.
Spoke of President Trump.

She got up and walked away.
Heard her howl.
Perhaps, it was the echinacea tea!

Tomeo
2021, Spring / 51
DIANE LEFER
WHAT DID YOU BRING ME?
“You don’t remember me,” said her grandmother—the new one,

“but I remember you.” The lady leaned down for a hug, a cross around her
neck dangling so Desma kept her face turned away so it wouldn’t hit her in
the eye. Her real grandmother was being moved from the hospital to home
for hospice care, which meant she was dying. Her mom said I’m going to
have my hands full ’til we get settled but even so Desma couldn’t believe her
mother was going to leave her here.
“You held my hand,” said the new grandmother, “and you took me
up the stairs.” They stood on the steps of the porch where there were
geraniums in pots and a deflated basketball. Desma nudged it with her foot.
“You opened the closet door,” her grandmother said. A dog in the next yard
was barking and throwing itself against the chain link. The woman took her
hand. “You said, These are my daddy’s ties. These are my daddy’s shoes.
These are my daddy’s shirts.”
She didn’t remember saying all that, but she was sure she had never
said anything with a Spanish accent.
“Look,” said her grandmother.
Inside the house, there was a framed picture on the wall, the same
photograph of her father in uniform that was on the wall at home, except this
one had a shelf underneath with candles and flowers.
There were a lot of people. Grownups. Noise. Pots and casseroles
and steam and smells. Kids and dogs running around and banging into
people’s legs and making noise. Sit. Stay. A big black dog obeyed. The little
kids didn’t. A great big blanket over the couch with a great big white tiger.
“This is Desma,” said her grandmother.
“That’s a weird name,” said a weird-looking girl. “Can we call you
Destiny?”
No, she said. Her name was Desma Campbell.
Once it was Desma Arriaga but just before she started school her
mother went to court and changed it. For some reason, Campbell was
supposed to be easier. She thought Arriaga was easier because it started with
an A which is what you learned first and the R repeated twice and A three
times.
Look, she has his eyes. Something around the mouth. She’s so pretty.
She has her mother’s chin. Her hair.
“What did you bring me?” asked the stupid-looking girl. Kind of
cross-eyed, maybe because her glasses were on crooked. Those had to be her
grownup teeth, but they’d come in crooked too. Her hair was no real color at
all and on one side she had it sloppily held by a pink barrette, a big gold one
on the other.
Desma stared at her.
A grownup boy came in with a puppy and everyone said Pee-ooo.
What’s that stink? Put it outside.
The stupid-looking girl said, “Are you stupid? That’s a blue-nose.
We’ve got Bloods next door and you bring a blue-nose?”
A lot of people hugged her. Someone told her this kind of house is
called a California bungalow.
“When you come to visit, you have to bring a gift,” said the cross-
eyed girl.
“Cassandra!” said the grandmother.
“It doesn’t have to be a money gift,” said Cassandra. “It can be a
smile.” Her head waggled when she spoke. Something’s wrong with her,
Desma thought. “It can be word about what’s going on wherever you come
from.”
She had told the kids at school she was going to California. They go
to Barbados and Hawaii and the South of France. All the time. Her mother
had given her the cell phone to call home every night. Don’t use their phone,
her mother warned her. They don’t have money and anyway it may be the
long distance is blocked.
The dog next door was barking. The puppy smelled bad. Someone
was shouting and someone was laughing. It was crowded and noisy, the radio
on in the house and blaring from cars outside and there were a lot of sirens.
Her grandmother asked her mother, “Is it OK if I take her to see her
uncle?”
Cassandra said, “It can be friendship.”
Homemade tamales! Someone gave her a plate and fork but it was
just a lot of goop. No, give her a piece of chicken. Here, sweetheart, have
some chicken and rice.
Her mother was watching her. You need to be a good guest, she had
said.
Desma gave a big phony smile showing all her good teeth and the
gaps, too. They’re your family, too, her mother said, and they don’t want to
lose you. She would urge herself on to courtesy and eat a piece of chicken,
but she was not going to be friends with a stupid-looking girl.
His eyes. His mouth. Her mother’s chin. Maybe these people were
just like her. Desma saw people in parts. The rest of their bodies like fog.
2021, Spring / 53
Hazy, a green mist. Green was her favorite color. No, said her mother, it
makes you look sallow. She didn’t know what that meant—dead, maybe.
Their lips hung in the air. She saw their hands clearly and sometimes the
shape of the teacher’s head looming over her. She knew her mother’s smell.
The mole with a single hair on her mother’s upper arm when she leaned in
to her. Now that she was six, she was beginning to see whole people some of
the time and she wondered whether seeing parts was normal.
“Mom,” she said, “I’m afraid of that dog.”
Her mother marched her away from the people and into the
bathroom. It was a regular bathroom with a seashell design on the shower
curtain. At home the curtain just had stripes. Her mother set her down on the
closed toilet seat and then knelt, her hands hard on Desma’s shoulders.
“Your father worked very hard so we could live in a nice house in a
nice neighborhood so...” blah blah blah.
So, he could get killed, she thought.
Her mother said, “These are good people It’s time you got to know
them,” and then she gave her all the no’s again. “No playing outside.”
“Even in the backyard?”
“Not after the sun goes down. Your cousins are probably very nice,
but I don’t want you doing anything you don’t do at home. Don’t eat or drink
or try anything new. Anything.”
“I’ll take good care of her,” said the grandmother.

“Do I have a grandfather, too?” she asked.
“Yes, you do,” said the grandmother. “He’s not here because he
drives a truck,”
“Do you have a job?” Desma asked.
“When people have parties and want me to bake cakes,” she said. “I
baked one for you for tonight.”
It was very sweet and gooey and with strawberries on top. The piece
her grandmother gave her was way too big.
“Look, Grandma.” Desma opened her backpack. “I kept this.” One
black shoe. “I kept it, Grandma.”
Her grandmother was slightly blurry.
Words stuck in her head more than faces.
These are my daddy’s shoes.
At home she had her own room. Here, there were two small beds
with an aisle between like in a bus. One was for Cassandra and one for the
big girl but tonight they would sleep in one bed and Desma and her mother
in the other.
“I can still get a motel,” said her mother.
Her grandmother said, “Family.”
Desma put her backpack and her daddy’s shoe under the bed.
“How far along are you?” her mother asked the big girl.
“Seven months.”
The room shook with noise.
“Is it an earthquake?” Desma said. Her mom held her.
“No, fool,” said Cassandra. “Earthquakes don’t go bang bang
thwacka thwacka thwacka.”
Fool yourself, thought Desma. She didn’t hear any thwacka thwacka
but what sounded like a mosquito the size of a dinosaur.
Her mom held her under the covers and talked to her as if she were
telling a story. “I fly home tomorrow and then they’ll bring your gran home.
Just a few days so you can get to know your father’s family because they
love you very much.” How many times is she going to tell me that? Desma
thought. “And then you can take the plane alone like a big girl.”
“I am a big girl,” said Desma.
The room shook again and light came in the window and in the other
bed someone laughed.
“I’m not supposed to go outside,” she said, but after pancakes and
hot chocolate in the morning her mother was gone and Cassandra and the big
boy whose name was Alex took her out to where the puppy was tied to the
porch. Her grandmother joined them, so it was probably safe, and kept
punching numbers into her cell phone. The puppy was very calm and quiet,
not like the angry mean dog next door, so even though it smelled bad, Desma
talked herself into petting one of its ears, only once. Her mother said she
could have a pet someday, when she was older.
“I’ll bet you got it from that ugly girlfriend of yours,” Cassandra
said. She was wearing a shirt with some green in it that she called jungle
camouflage. Alex fake-punched her and took a skip-step off the porch. “If
that’s where you going right now, take the stinky dog with you.” But he
zipped up his jacket and zipped away on a skateboard. Desma thought he was
polite. He could have told Cassandra she was the ugly one.
Her grandmother sighed. Punched the number again.
Down the street, Desma could see palm trees, but it still didn’t look
like a vacation. The front yard was dirt but there was grass in the crack in the
driveway.
“Hey, it snow where you live?” Cassandra asked.
2021, Spring / 55
“Tons,” Desma said.

Two boys were coming down the block, prancing around in the
middle of the street.
“Ignore them,” said Cassandra. “They’re only nine and they drink
beer.”
“My mom drinks beer,” said Desma.
The boys hooted and gave the drivers the finger when cars swerved
around them. They wore stocking caps but the smaller one had curly hair
long enough to poke out over his forehead and below his ears. He took a
mouse from his pocket, dangled it and pretended to gulp it down.
“Ignore him,” Cassandra said, but Desma couldn’t take her eyes
away. At the Academy, her class was all girls.
Her grandmother handed the phone to Cassandra and said, “Keep
trying,” and then she went inside.
The mouse was just a toy. Desma watched the boy wind it up and let
it run around at his feet. When he pulled out a flashlight and climbed the
steps to the porch, Cassandra put an arm around Desma and held her close.
“Hey, Miss B.J.,” said the boy. He pointed the light right into
Cassandra’s eyes. “Miss Blow Job.” He pumped his closed hand in front of
his mouth. “Come on. Talk to me. You have to tell me everything.” He stuck
the flashlight in front of Desma’s mouth. “Eyewitness News! Why your
friend wearing all that green? She a Marine? A cadet? You have to answer.
Eyewitness News!”
“Ignore him,” whispered Cassandra. She punched numbers. “You
can only call Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, 11:00 to 1:00. And it’s always
busy.”
“What is?”
“To visit someone in prison. Otherwise, you just go up and wait.”
The boy spun around and tossed the flashlight to his friend.
“Your grandma visits your uncle.”
“My daddy was a police officer,” Desma said because her mother
said maybe I’m old-fashioned but I don’t like the word cop.
“That sucks,” said Cassandra. “Your uncle was in the wrong place
at the wrong time.”
Desma took out her own phone and called her mother. She got voice
mail. “It’s me, Mom,” and hung up.
“Duh,” said Cassandra. “She’s still in the air.”
The taller boy climbed the chain-link fence of the next-door house.
The pit bull growled and barked and threw itself against the fence until a very
big black man came out of the house and yelled at the dog and at the boys.
The tall boy got down from the fence and everyone was quiet until the man
went back inside.
Then, “I’ve got a laser beam,” said the curly headed boy. “If I point
it in the sky, it can shoot down a plane. Land right on your house and kill you
cracker bitch daid.”
“Listen to him. He thinks he’s black,” said the tall one.
“I am black,” said the boy. He had light skin, curly hair, high
cheekbones and Chinese eyes. Very cute, Desma thought. She said,
“President Obama is black.”
He pointed the flashlight at the house next door. “Is that guy your
relative?”
Cassandra said, “I’m a foster.”
Desma said, “Me, too.”
He laughed and reached into an inside pocket and pulled out another
mouse. This one was alive. He let it run up his arms before grabbing it and
dangling it by the tail. When he threw it into the neighbor’s yard, Desma
screamed. The pit bull barked and lunged, but it looked like the mouse got
away.
A woman came unsteadily down the block pushing a shopping cart
decorated with filthy stuffed animals.
“You’re my relative, right?” said the boy. “Where you from? Africa?
Or the shelter?”
The boys laughed and followed the woman to the corner.
Cassandra said, “When they bring those boys in to Emergency, I
won’t even try to save them.”
Desma sat on the toilet with the lid down because she didn’t have to
go. She thought about her mother and she thought about how she felt staying
here and whether she even liked it a little. People seemed to like her here.
They said she was pretty. So many people and the only name she could
remember was Cassandra. At school, other girls got out of cars together and
walked in together, but after her mother dropped her off, she always walked
in alone. Some of the girls had parents who didn’t live together, but they
were alive. She flushed so no one would know she was just thinking.
When she came out, Cassandra said, “You didn’t wash your hands.
And who were you talking to? I heard you, Destiny. About girls and cars.”
“I wasn’t talking to anyone, Cashew Nut.” She hadn’t realized she
was thinking with her mouth. And she realized Cassandra’s skin was exactly
the color of a cashew nut. Exactly. And her hair was the exact color of her
skin which is why it looked like no color at all.
2021, Spring / 57
“Do you remember me?” asked the big girl. She sat on the bed up
against the wall under the poster of Shakira as a blond. “I was at the funeral.”
I was only three years old, thought Desma.
“Shakira’s a sellout,” said Cassandra, “but I love her.”
“I’m Kamali,” said the big girl. “I was going to name the baby
Desirée but now I think I’ll name her Desma, after you.” Don’t, thought
Desma, please don’t. “Your mother took your father away from here and then
he got killed.”
He wasn’t shot. He was standing on the street, talking to some boys,
inviting them to play basketball and a truck went by, the street shook, the
building with the scaffolding came down and he was buried. The landlord
had been cited many times and had done nothing. Her mother got the police
pension and there was a lawsuit and a settlement and her mother had a job.
We have money too, her mother said, but she knew they weren’t like the kids
at school. And she knew her daddy wasn’t a hero. It was just an accident. Her
mother said he was a crime victim, the crime of greed.
“I don’t think anyone hates her,” said Kamali.
Desma pictured her father’s hand reaching for help, like the people
in Haiti, A blurry shape amid the dust, her father’s lips calling for help.
“Do you remember? You said, You be Daddy. Then you lay down
on top of me.”
Desma didn’t remember and she didn’t want to. On the other wall,
over the bed she was going to share now with Cassandra, there was a poster
of a skeleton, from the science museum, Cassandra told her, “so I can study
amatomy,” and there was a big pennant that said Go Army! Cassandra said
the army would pay for her to be a doctor.
“You said, Daddy, please get better,” said Kamali. “Please come
home. You said, Daddy, I want to help you. And I said, Sweetheart, you
always help me. I can’t come home, not anymore, but I love you more than
anything and you did everything right. Do you remember?”
Doctors are stupid, Desma thought.
She remembered someone saying, Here, you can hold this. A black
shoe. Someone’s hands gave it to her and she never let it go.
Now she’s in first grade in Ms. Rutherford’s class at the Academy.

But her kindergarten teacher in public school was Belkis who said it’s easy
to remember. She moved her hand in the air as if shaking a Bell, she said.
And smacked her lips in a Kiss.
Ridiculous, said her mother. Miss Ding Dong. That’s not how you
spell it.
But Bellkiss understood that all Desma could see were hands and
lips.
I’ve had it with public school. You’re going to private school. You
may not have a father, but you’re going to have the best.
Campbell ends with bell, like Bellkiss.
“What are you doing?” said Cassandra.
She’d caught Desma ringing the imaginary bell in the air, her lips
puckered in a kiss.
“Did you ever see people all foggy and green?” Desma asked. “Or
just parts?” She needed to know if it was normal and she didn’t trust any of
the kids at the Academy enough to ask them. She didn’t trust Cassandra
either, but that was OK because she hoped she’d never see her again.
“That’s how cats see,” said Cassandra.
“What’s a foster?” she asked.
“That’s when you live with someone like they’re your family only
they aren’t.”
“So, are you a real granddaughter or a foster?” Desma asked.
“I’m a real foster, I think,” said Cassandra. “Been here a long time
and I don’t know anyone but Grandma.”
“My daddy was a foster,” said Desma, hopefully.
After lunch, her grandmother had baking to do and Kamali said they
could go see Avatar which Desma had wanted to see but her mother said it
was too violent.
Kamali drove and Desma sat in the front seat next to her. “Are you
real or a foster?” she asked.
“Real as this.” Kamali put Desma’s hand on her round belly.
The blue people were weird and kind of beautiful but the movie was
very long and even though it was noisy, Desma fell asleep and the popcorn
fell off her lap.
“That’s OK,” said Kamali. “You probably needed it.”
At the house Kamali stayed on the porch to talk to a boy. Inside,

Desma looked at the photograph of her father.
“We have the same one at home,” she said, and her grandmother
kissed her on the top of her head.
Then Desma and Cassandra were alone in the bedroom.
“Hey, Cashew Nut,” she said. “If I see things like a cat, how do I
know I’m a girl? Maybe I’m really a cat? Maybe I’m a boy and my mother
has been dressing me wrong.”
2021, Spring / 59
“Ha ha,” said Cassandra. “I can tell. Take off your pants. And
panties.” Desma hesitated, then pulled them down. “Yes, you’re a girl. You
can get dressed,” Cassandra said. “Now let me feel your head. This is the
supraorbital arch. If your forehead goes backwards, you’re a monkey.”
Cassandra pinched Desma’s nose, not very hard but she still said Ouch!
“Internal angular process,” Cassandra said. And then a lot of other weird
words. “Hey, I forgot to tell you. Don’t let anyone check you except your
mother, doctors, and nurses.”
“You checked me,” said Desma.
“I’m going to be a doctor,” said Cassandra, “so it’s OK.”
Before she went to sleep, she phoned her mother. When you lie in
bed before you fall asleep, you can make any story you want. Dreams don’t
work the way you want them to and sometimes you don’t remember them
anyway. Desma lay with her eyes closed. Cassandra kept squirming as
Desma tried to picture her father’s face. She made him talk. Love you,
sweetie. The bad dog jumped over the fence and was going to bite Cassandra,
but Desma grabbed a rock and threw it and it hit the dog right in the head.
You saved her! Everyone cheered and hugged Desma and no one knew how
scared she’d been. There was a cake with ice cream and her mother was there
and everyone said what a hero her little girl had turned out to be just like her
father and then Chloe’s mother says that cops….
Not cops. Police officers, said her mother.
Except Chloe’s mother did say cops and she said they’re no different
from bad guys. They like to drive around and scare people and they have
guns.
Bad guys go to jail, like Uncle Mike.
In the morning, she helped Kamali.

“Future-oriented people are the most successful,” Kamali said.
“That’s why I don’t shave my legs on Wednesday.” There was no PE on
Thursdays, she said, and so no one would see the hairs sticking out. “If you
pluck often enough, the follicles die,” she said, “and the hair won’t grow
back.” She figured by the time she was old, eyesight fading, hands shaking,
unable to bend or reach, her legs would no longer need shaving.
“That’s kind of sick,” said Cassandra, “that you’re already thinking
of yourself all old and fucked up.”
Kamali’s belly was so big, she couldn’t reach her legs anymore so
she gave the tweezers to Desma.
“No,” said Kamali, “I’m optimistic...in this neighborhood? to
imagine I might live long enough to get old?”

“We’re destroying the planet,” said Desma.
“Not me,” said Kamali. “But your grandfather is with his truck.”
“They’re not going to let him drive it anymore,” Cassandra said.
“For the clear air.”
“Then we’ll really be poor,” said Kamali. She told Desma to pull the
hair out from the root, don’t just break it off.
“Temporary tattoo!” said Cassandra. She wrote on Kamali’s leg with
a black marker. Two letters, R and X.
“You’re getting in the way,” said Desma, and when Cassandra tried
to write on her hand, she jerked it away so all she got was a smudge.
“Your father used to send money,” said Cassandra.
“The girls at school are rich,” said Desma. “We aren’t,” and she held
Kamali’s leg with one hand and plucked hair.
“I got my plan,” Kamali said. “I have this baby when I’m young and
healthy. Not like these gabachas who wait so long they can’t get pregnant
and have to go all over the world to adopt someone else’s. Anyway, hey, I’m
only sixteen. I’m not a serious person. When my daughter grows up and goes
to high school, or maybe middle school, I study for my G.E.D. and go to
college. I’ll be mature then and I won’t get so distracted. I’ll be the right age
to study hard and learn something and make my baby proud. But first I have
to have another one. It’s not good to have just one.”
“I’m an only child,” said Desma.
Kamali said, “Keep plucking. You need to have two in case the first
one dies.”
“Have twins,” said Cassandra. “Be the Octomom.”
“I take my time,” said Kamali. “Ms. Rivera says you have to practice
deferred gratification.”
“What’s that?” said Desma.
Cassandra said, “It means you’ll see your daddy in Heaven.”
In the backyard, she picked lemons and avocados off the trees. Being
here was more interesting than school. She went around to the front and
stared at the little puppy tied to the porch and she thought it looked sad. A
man came up the walk. He was supposed to be her other grandfather. He
didn’t say anything. He just took off his cap and nodded his head at her and
smiled. He seemed very shy and she was glad because she was tired of being
hugged by strangers. They walked inside together and he laughed at her
grandmother. “Drive, drive, drive.” Then he smiled at Desma.
“It’ll be cold up there,” said her grandmother. “Cassandra’s old
2021, Spring / 61
sweaters will fit you.”

“It’s snowing where I live,” Desma said.
They all ate leftovers for dinner. Her grandmother heated up the
chicken so she wouldn’t have to eat it cold. Then her grandmother dressed
her in Cassandra’s leggings and her purple sweat pants and a heavy sweater
with unraveling sleeves. Kamali and Cassandra stayed behind. No one knew
if Alex would come home.
I’m just getting used to this place, Desma thought, and she wasn’t
supposed to go outside after dark, but she did and then on the porch she
crouched beside the puppy and stroked its fur while her grandfather honked
the horn—not of a truck but an ordinary gray car with stickers on it. One was
the Stars and Stripes and other one Desma knew was the Mexican flag. The
mean dog barked and her grandmother said Come! Come!
She touched the phone inside her pocket and thought of her mom.
They drove a long time, probably as long as she had to sit still on the
plane where the flight attendant gave her Coca-Cola in a plastic cup and
pretzels in a little bag. Her grandmother reached over the seat to give her a
whole bag of chips and a whole bottle of Coke. And said, “Try to sleep.” Her
mother always said so much sugar would keep her up, but it didn’t.
She woke in the dark wrapped in blankets. The car wasn’t moving.
Someone was snoring and she needed to pee. “Grandma,” she said.
Her grandmother wasn’t awake, only her grandfather, but he shook
his wife awake. She opened the car door and helped Desma out. It was
freezing outside but the stars were very bright. Your daddy is up there
watching you. See, there’s the twinkle in his eyes. They were parked by the
side of a little road and there was a long driveway and a building with the
lights on. That’s where your uncle is. They stood in a ditch and her
grandmother helped her pull down Cassandra’s sweats and leggings and
panties and showed her how to crouch. It was too cold to pee but after a while
she did. I think I splashed some, she said. It’s OK, niña, and she wiped her.
And then she was still cold and she ached everywhere and there was
light coming in the windows and her grandfather had the window down and
a man in a uniform was handing him a slip of paper. Then he went to the next
car. There were more cars than Desma could count, all by the side of the
road.
They didn’t go to her uncle. They drove some more, all the cars in a
line, past some cows in a field, and to a place with buildings and a
McDonalds. In the bathroom, her grandmother helped her wash her face and
brush her teeth and rubbed with soap at the pee spots on her pants.
“Cassandra will be mad,” she said.

They had breakfast and her grandparents knew everyone.
“Number Three,” said her grandmother.
“You were early!” said a woman with two little kids. “When did you
leave LA?”
“Nine,” said her grandmother. “This is Desma. She’s going to meet
her uncle.”
“We didn’t get here till 2:00. We’re Number Eight.”
Her grandmother told Desma this is what we do every weekend
when we can’t get an appointment and when your grandfather’s working, I
have to get someone else to drive me.
Desma didn’t want to eat her Egg McMuffin. Her tummy hurt and
so did her head.
“How was the hearing?” her grandmother asked an old woman.
“He’ll never get out,” the woman said. “They went all the way back
to high school. His truancy record. Forty years ago. He missed school and
they’re still holding that against him.”
School was out this week, but Desma hadn’t gone on Friday because
that was when they had their flight. She put her head down on the sticky
table.
They drove back the way they came and this time the gates were
open and they drove a long driveway to the prison which was a lot of gray
buildings with light poles and razor wire. They parked and went to wait on a
line in the cold. Desma sneezed.
“Salud,” said her grandfather.
“Your father was the hope of this family,” her grandmother said,
wrapping her close in her bulgy arms. “Be careful who your friends are. Your
uncle had some bad friends. One night they did something bad and he was
there so he got blamed too.”
Her grandfather said, “You’re brown, you go down.”
Her grandmother said, “Be careful with friends.”
Desma thought she didn’t have any because you couldn’t count
Chloe so she was safe, though she’d missed school on Friday. Maybe only if
you miss high school?
A man in a uniform stood in a doorway and called out “One through
Ten.”
Then they got to go inside and wait on a lot of lines and finally they
went to the front and she could see people going through screening like at
the airport where they’d taken her daddy’s shoe out of her backpack and put
2021, Spring / 63
it through the x-ray twice.

“I’m her grandmother,” said her grandmother. The guard asked to
see Desma’s birth certificate and something else signed by her mother. Her
grandmother said her mother said it was OK. Then she started to cry. “Don’t
cry, Grandma,” Desma said. “See,” her grandmother said to the guard. “I
am.” The guard blew air out of his mouth and called the next people.
“I’ll go see him. They’ll wait,” said her grandmother and she took
off her shoes and put them in the bin.
Her grandfather said something in Spanish, and then he said to
Desma, “Come,” and they went outside and back to the car and this time
Desma got to sit in the front seat with him.
“Did my daddy speak Spanish?” she asked.
He nodded his head and reached in his pocket and handed her a
peppermint.
A guard knocked on the window. “Prohibited to wait in the parking
lot,” he said. “Your visiting privileges are terminated.”
“We terminated already,” her grandfather said.
“I want to see my uncle,” said Desma. “Let me see my uncle! I want
to see my uncle!”
“Control your child. Get her out of here,” said the guard and her
grandfather looked down at his hands and then started the car.
“Can we go where the cows are?” Desma asked. She wondered if
she would end up in jail for missing school and whether her father the cop
had been as mean as the mean guards.
They parked near the field and her grandfather stayed in the car while
Desma stood at the fence and watched the cows. It was cold out, but not as
cold as where she lived, and she stood and watched until the wind sliced
through Cassandra’s quilted jacket and Cassandra’s ugly sweater with the
ratty sleeves. Then she yelled at the cows You’re gonna end up hamburger
meat and then they went back to McDonald’s.
Her grandmother cried on the way back and Desma cried too. She
tried to phone her mother but she couldn’t get a signal. She was cold and
bored and they stopped for gas and so she could pee and she felt ashamed
again about splashing pee on her pants and her grandfather offered to get her
a Slurpee but she was too cold to drink something like that and she was too
young for coffee so he got her a KitKat bar.
There were a lot of trucks on the road and they saw trains and cows
and horses and billboards and the sun went down and they drove in the dark
with just the headlights and taillights and for a while you could see the shape
of the mountains.
When the car pulled up at the house, Cassandra threw the door open
and was hopping up and down on the porch. “The puppy died!” she hollered.
They went inside. “It had parvo!” Cassandra said. “That’s a dog
disease! It died!”
Her mother wanted her to be polite but Desma thought she couldn’t
stand it not for one more minute. I hate it here, she thought. She said, “Why
didn’t you take it to the vet?”
“What vet?” said Cassandra. “You see a vet around here? Anyway,
we’re poor!”
I’m never going to be poor, thought Desma. I hate being poor. I hate
California.
“We’re not poor,” said her grandmother.
“Maybe I’ll be a vet when I grow up,” said Cassandra.
Kamali stood leaning in the doorway sucking on a RedVine.
“Next time, I’ll visit you,” said Cassandra.
Never.
She flew home all by herself carrying homemade tamales. She hoped
her mother would eat them because she didn’t want to and anyway Security
took away the extra sauce.
Her mother met her at the airport and covered her face with kisses.
They held each other so tight, they just stood there for a long time before
they went to find the car in the parking garage.
“Did you have a good time?” said her mother.
“They’re nice,” Desma said. “Everyone said I’m pretty.” But now
she had missed another day of school. “Uncle Mike is in jail,” she said.
Her mother stopped walking. “She took you to see him in jail?” her
mother said.
“I didn’t see him,” said Desma. “I saw Avatar.”
At home her mother’s office was now a room for her real
grandmother who lay quiet and small under a white sheet. There was a
wheelchair and also an armchair where a very dark woman sat reading a
magazine. She looked up. “This is my daughter,” said her mother, “and this
is Destiny who’s going to help us.”
Her mother took her backpack and pulled the zip open. She took out
the tamales wrapped in foil and she took out the plastic bag of dirty clothes.
Desma watched her mother’s eyes. Would she notice?
I’m never going back there, she thought. Never ever.
Here, you can have it, she told Cassandra. I brought you my daddy’s shoe.
2021, Spring / 65
AL MAGINNES
AMERICA
Like all poets raised in this country trained to breathe

chalk dust, or now the dry marker fumes
of public schools, who stood to pledge allegiance to
the handkerchief-sized flag in the classroom’s corner, who

memorized states by classroom rote and inherited
the biases that make our map of this land, I’ve wanted
to write my ode to America, but she remains a changing target,

neither untarnished as teachers told us or the worm-eaten fruit
the most suspicious among us might claim.
Sometimes when I think of America these days, I recall

the used car where I stood one afternoon, looking deep
into the unknown land of an old engine, seeking the source
of a strange noise I could hear but could not name.

The car I own today couldn’t carry me to oceanic forests
or long-extinct herds of buffalo, black as thunderheads,
moving slow as continents across the plain. Now they lie

behind fences. And it’s a tricky wicket to tie our dwindling
tree cover to a plot to murder the Kennedys or to believe
a GPS administered by vaccine might track us through

every stop in our lives. It’s easy to believe you would die
for free speech as long as you can drive to the mall
and order shoes from Amazon. Somewhere, a man with

our flag on his uniform is shooting at another man.
Drones are delivering bombs. A buffalo’s tail twitches
at the flies that never stop swarming in summer.

A new history of the Illuminati was just published on the web.
And I remember leaping from the steps of school on the last day.
I knew I could sprain an ankle, tear open a knee. I knew

in a few weeks baseball and the pool would leave me bored shitless.
But for a wild moment, I had freedom to make that long jump
and taste the flowers of exhilaration before I hit the hard ground. Maginnes
JUDITH FORD
THE MOUNTAINS ARE HOME
Mountains are giant, restful, absorbent. You can heave your spirit into a
mountain and the mountain will keep it, folded, and not throw it back as some
creeks will. The creeks are the world with all its stimulus and beauty; I live
there. But the mountains are home.
—From Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard
The night before she died, my mother, Mary Marks, age seventy-
four, gave me instructions about what to do with her ashes. She’d suffered a
massive stroke five years before and had lived ever since in a nursing home,
paralyzed on her left side and mentally diminished but cognizant enough to
hate her reduced life. She’d told me more than once she was ready to die,
that she wanted to be done.
“I want my ashes to be in the mountains,” she said.
“I’ll be glad to do that for you,” I answered. “Does it matter which
mountains?”
“My mountains. You remember.”
I did remember. Every time we’d taken a summer vacation when I
was a child, we’d gone somewhere in the Rocky Mountains. And always, on
the first day of our stay, my mother would sit weeping in a rocking chair on
the porch of whatever dude ranch cabin we’d rented, accumulating a mound
of damp, wadded-up Kleenex in her lap. When one of us would ask her what
was wrong, she would invariably reply that nothing was wrong…for once.
She was just relaxing.
I’d watch her with fascination, the way I’d have watched a snake
shedding its skin. I knew that when the process was finished, the mother I
loved the best would emerge. The mother who sang while she sat rocking
and knitting; who’d go to the horse corral with me to pet the horses, sharing
2021, Spring / 67
with me the pleasure of their horsey smells; the one who packed lunches and
took us on daylong hikes up to waterfalls or alpine meadows. My mother had
always been happiest in the mountains.
“Yes, of course I remember,” I told her. “I’d be happy to take you
back to your mountains, Mom.”
My mother died in her sleep at 6 am the following morning.
The following October, three months after her death, I flew to
Colorado Springs with my son, nine-year-old Nic, and a box containing my
mother’s remains.
I’d chosen Colorado, not just because it contained more than enough
mountains to please my mother but also because my daughter Jessie was a
sophomore at Colorado College in Colorado Springs. She’d had lots of
opportunities to explore the mountains that filled the sky to the west of her
campus. She’d found, she told me, a great place to leave Nana.
It was eight o’clock at night and dark when Nic and I landed. On our
way to our motel room, we stopped at Jessie’s dorm so she could show us
her room. Crowded with books, cosmetics, scented candles, two desks, and
a bunk bed, the upper bunk covered with an Indian print bedspread, it
reminded me of my own dorm room in Madison many years ago.
Nic immediately climbed up onto Jessie’s high bunk and flopped
down with his feet flat against the ceiling. “This is cool,” he said. “I want a
bed like this.”
“You can see Pikes Peak out there,” Jessie told us, pointing at the
picture window across from her bed. I looked out, beyond the lawns and
buildings of the school, to the distant lights of the foothills, the subdivisions
that crawled up the lower slopes, the sets of moving specks that were
headlights. And beyond that, flat, uniform darkness. No sign of the line of
peaks and ridges I knew were out there.
“I’ll have to take your word for it,” I said. “I can sort of sense the
mountains out there. Maybe. But I really can’t see them.”
“That makes no sense at all,” Nic piped up. “You can’t sense a
mountain.”
“Sure you can, Nic,” Jessie said. “You know the way you can feel it
when someone’s in a dark room with you even if you can’t hear or see them?”
“No,” Nic said.
“Okay, Mr. Literal,” said Jessie.
I wasn’t thinking about the mountains when I walked out to our
rented car the next morning, but there they were, filling half the sky,
monstrous and beautiful. The sky itself was a miracle of turquoise. The
massive peaks of the Front Range lay against all that blinding blue. Sunlight
flowed over them, sinking into the rock faces, making the white patches of
snow glow. And there was Pikes Peak, 14,000 feet high, just a little taller
than its mighty comrades: Cheyenne Mountain, Mounts Manitou, Rosa, and
Arthur, Eagle Mountain, and Cameron Cone. I remembered their names from
some brochure I’d read last year, although I couldn’t remember anymore
which one was which.
These gigantic mountains would have been more than enough to
please my mother.
Nic and I picked up Jessie, and the three of us drove for about an
hour west on Colorado Avenue, through Manitou Springs, up past the Pikes
Peak Highway, through Woodland Park and Crystola, thirty-eight miles
outside of Colorado Springs, to a dirt road marked by a small sign: “Eleven
Mile Canyon.” We stopped briefly to buy coffee, a Coke for Nic, and to
stretch our legs.
Nic took his time unbuckling and getting out of the car. He’d been
mostly silent during the hour drive. He trailed me into the little grocery store,
complaining that he didn’t feel well.
“You’ll live, Nic,” his sister told him when we were back in the car.
He glared at her. Nic didn’t have much tolerance for teasing. Jessie was ten
years older than he was and had been more like a parent appendage than a
rival sibling. Nic hadn’t had many opportunities to develop the calluses that
siblings raise in each other. He had the sensitivity and the self-importance of
an only child. And because he had a cold, his resilience was particularly thin
this morning. I’d thought it would be good for him—and for me—to have
him come along on this trip. Now I was beginning to think I was wrong. This
might well turn out to be one of Nic’s unpleasantly needy days.
“Hey, Nicster, how about a hug?” Jessie leaned over the car seat and
held out her arms to her little brother.
Nic testily refused.
“Yeah, like that’s going to help.”
Jessie tried to engage Nic in conversation. Nic refused to answer. He
sat with his arms crossed tightly over his chest, face averted, puffed up with
tears.
We drove on in silence for a while. Then Jessie asked, “Is Nana in
the trunk?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Did you have her in your suitcase?”
“No, my carry-on bag.”
“Weird.”
It took about an hour on the dirt road to reach Eleven Mile Canyon
2021, Spring / 69
itself. The road ended at a small parking lot and picnic area. Two other cars
were already parked here, although the only people we saw were four
climbers, crawling lizard-like high up on a vertical rock face. At the edge of
the parking lot, there were a few unoccupied wooden tables accompanied by
grills on posts. Pine trees and aspens encircled the picnic area and rose up
the slope beyond it. A narrow, roiling river flowed alongside the road. A
brown national park sign identified the river as the South Platte.
Nic groaned as he dragged himself out of the car and drooped against
the trunk. “I’m dizzy,” he complained. “I can’t breathe way up here.”
“It’s not much higher than Colorado Springs, honey,” I told him.
“The air is thin, though, right?”
“A little bit, I guess,” I said. And then I realized what this was about.
Last night, lying in bed in our motel room, we’d watched a documentary
about the Mt. Everest disaster of 1996. Nic had been impressed to hear that
Mt. Everest was 26,000 feet above sea level and its air so depleted of oxygen
that climbers needed to carry oxygen tanks on their backs. He’d paid close
attention to all the details about altitude sickness.
Great, I thought. He thinks he’s got altitude sickness. I was losing
patience with Nic’s miseries.
I wanted to say, “Hey, Nic. This is about my mother dying and about
my wanting to do this one last thing for her. This is about her and about me.
I need you to get with the program or shut up.” But he was only nine and he
was a little sick. And, to be honest, wasn’t it a bit my fault that he was so bad
at sharing? I should have taught him. My mom guilt made me try to corral
my irritation. I failed.
“You haven’t got altitude sickness,” I snapped before I could stop
myself.
“How do you know?” he shot back. This was not going well.
While I was trying to construct an on-the-spot remedial lesson about
sharing and compassion, Jessie stepped into the gap. “Do you know what
makes dizziness better, Nicster?” she said, sounding very like the camp
counselor she’d been the previous summer.
Nic shook his head and slumped against the car.
“Water. Water makes everything better.” Jessie led Nic to a picnic
table bench and handed him her Nalgene water bottle. “Just sit over here a
minute and rest. Here.” Nic fumbled with the lid of the bottle, got it open,
drank, and, to my amazement, smiled.
“Better?” Jessie asked him.
“I guess water fixes altitude sickness,” he said. “I didn’t know that.”
While Nic was recovering I opened the trunk and pulled out the
heavy cardboard box that held my mother’s ashes. A label pasted on the
outside contained the following warning: “The remains inside contain fine
ash, and bits of bone and tooth. Scattering these remains would best be done
by someone other than a close family member as the reality of those hard bits
among the ashes could be emotionally upsetting.”
I pried open the box. Packed inside were layers of wadded-up paper
towels. As if to keep something from breaking. As if my mother’s ashes
couldn’t tolerate a little bouncing around. I pulled out the towels and then a
clear plastic bag that contained what looked like gray, grainy dust. Sure
enough, among the fine, sand-like ashes, I could see tiny flecks of hard-
looking white. Not a big deal but good to be forewarned.
“Hey, Jessie, Nic. Would you like to see this? It’s kind of cool.” Both
of my children looked horrified. “No? It’s really not gross. It’s like sand and
tiny rocks.” Jessie made a face.
Then Nic recognized that this might be an opportunity for him to
best his sister. “I want to do the scattering,” Nic called out as he ran to my
side, his hands reaching. “I’ll do it all. Jessie doesn’t get to do any of it.” He
had clearly recovered.
“We’ll each have a turn, Nic,” I told him.
We began to walk up the steep trail that led above the picnic grounds
and were soon surrounded by tall spruce and juniper trees and giant-sized
rocks.
Nic trailed a few steps behind us, pouting again. He was wearing
sandals, not the best footgear for walking a steep, rocky slope. He
complained that he would have stayed home if he had known we were going
to hike. His lungs hurt again, he told us, and he was very, very tired. Did we
know how tired he was? His feet hurt. His knees hurt. “I’m not going any
further,” he told us at least three times before we located a suitable level spot
beneath a tall, moss-covered boulder. We did our best to ignore him.
“This is it,” I announced. Nic flopped down onto the ground at my
feet. He lay on his back, panting dramatically. The air was clear with a soft
but steady breeze. Sunlight fell in patches through the pine needles above us,
warming the ground and releasing the smell of drying and decaying leaves.
The river roared below. The only other sounds came from nearby birds
calling out to each other. The distant rock climbers doing the same thing.
The three of us sat down cross-legged in a circle, the bag of ashes in
the middle. “Nic, would you like to read?” Jessie asked. Nic took the book
of essays that Jessie had brought along and began to read a mythical story by
Terry Tempest Williams, about a woman dancing in the night with Bear,
Raven, and Wolf. He read very well for a nine-year-old but read too fast and
2021, Spring / 71
gave up quickly. “This is stupid,” he said, and handed the book back to Jessie.
“It’s about being one with the wild things,” Jessie explained. Her
brother made a face. He poked at the hard ground with a stick, drew a circle,
and began etching math symbols inside it. At least he was quiet.
I read a poem that ended with these words:
May Grandfather give you feathers

all is forgiven
down here.1
“May Grandfather give you feathers,” I repeated the line. Of course,

I wasn’t thinking my mother needed feathers; what I thought she might need
was my forgiveness, something she’d never asked me for despite her many
stays in rehab, despite Step Nine of the Twelve Steps, about making amends
to those you’ve harmed. I was the youngest and arguably the one most
affected by the things she did and said after five in the afternoon: the time
she violently trashed my bedroom when I was ten, the time she called me a
“gutter tramp” when I was a seventeen-year-old virgin. She never
remembered what she’d done the next morning after one of these bad times.
During her final years, the last twenty of them sober, she and I had created
an easy friendship, although we never talked about her drinking or what it
had cost me.
“Whose grandfather are we talking about?” Nic asked.
“It means the great spirit, I think, Nic. Or God,” Jessie said.
All is forgiven down here, I said to myself while Nic rattled on about
how his grandfather didn’t have feathers and there wasn’t really a god.
“All is forgiven down here,” I said out loud. I could see Jessie had
some idea what I meant. Nic didn’t care.
Next Jessie read Mary Oliver’s poem “In Blackwater Woods.” It
ends like this:
To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal
to hold it
against your bones knowing
1
From “Hands” by Mark Turcotte, The Feathered Heart
your own life depends on it;

and, when the time comes to
let it go,
to let it go2
I handed Nic the bag of ashes. He pulled out a fistful of gray ash and
swung his arm in a small arc, abruptly opening his hand. The ashes dribbled
onto the ground. The hard white bits made a pattering sound. Rather like
scattering gravel on a driveway.
“Hmm,” I said. “This isn’t quite what I had in mind.”
“Maybe,” Jessie said, “we need to be up higher.” She looked up at
the boulder towering above us. “That looks like a better ash-throwing place.”
“I don’t think I’m up for a climb,” I told her. The boulder was
surrounded by smaller rocks, but all of them looked slick and sharp-edged.
And I was feeling a little shaky.
“How about Nic and I going up?”
“Sure. Okay.” They weren’t shaky. They’d be fine.
Jessie took Nic’s hand, and before he’d had a chance to object, she’d
jollied him up to the very top of the boulder, some fifteen feet above my
head. I shaded my face with my hand and peered up at them. Jessie was
gripping the back of her little brother’s shorts as he wobbled in his slippery
sandals at the edge of the rock. One of his hands had remained inside the
plastic bag of ashes while he’d slid and trembled his way up the rocks. As if
he were holding onto his grandmother for safety. I watched my children from
below and tried not to picture them toppling over the edge to their deaths.
“You know, Nic,” Jessie said, “you can just pour that stuff out of the
bag. You don’t have to keep touching it.”
“I want to touch it. I like it,” Nic answered. He pulled his fist out,
drew another arc in the air with his arm, and opened his hand. The wind
caught the dust this time and lifted it sideways, creating a gauzy curtain that
hung motionless for an instant. The thin October sunlight picked out the
white bone particles and made them sparkle as they twirled and then fell out
of the dust cloud, which thinned a moment later and then fell too—onto the
hard dirt, into my hair, and all over my clothes.
“Hey, look!” Nic shouted. “It’s raining Nana on you!”
“Mom,” Jessie called down. “Do you want us to keep doing this? Is
this okay with you?”
“It’s fine,” I called back up. “More than fine. I like it and Nana would
2
From “In Blackwater Woods” by Mary Oliver, American Primitive.
2021, Spring / 73
have liked it too.” And she would have, I thought. She would have loved all
of it: her grandchildren planting these tiny pieces of her into her beloved
mountains, the pine needle smell, the sound of the river, our laughter, the
way the bits of bone rattled against the dry soil and the granite boulders,
making a sound like falling rain. She’d have loved the way the air came clear
after the ash cloud settled. The quiet that followed.
“Save the last little bit,” I called up to Nic. “I think we should put
some into the river.”
The kids climbed down off the rock. We followed the sound of the
river, climbing slowly, sideways, down the steep slope. Nic lagged behind
again, picking his way down in his unreliable sandals.
“Mom!” he suddenly shouted. I turned to see him toppling over a big
rock at the side of the trail. He hit the ground below the rock, rolled, and slid,
gaining speed as he fell. He was doing nothing at all to try to break himself.
This was not an outdoor child. This was a boy who loved nothing more than
spending an entire sunny summer afternoon reading. Indoors. With the
windows closed. And nothing in his books had taught him what to do in a
situation like this.
“Grab something and stop yourself,” I yelled. He reached out and
caught a clump of sturdy grass with one hand, a bunch of low branches with
the other. He came to an abrupt stop, balanced on his back with his feet in
the air like an upended turtle. I scrambled to where he lay, uninjured but
badly frightened. I helped him to his feet, and he wrapped his arms around
me and held on tight, trembling, while I patted his back. Looking down the
hill from here, I could see how little danger he’d actually been in. If he hadn’t
stopped where he had, he would have rolled against a rock or two, maybe
gotten scratched and bruised, but he would have arrived quickly and basically
unharmed at the level spot below.
“I could have died,” he told me.
“Probably not, Nic,” said Jessie. But she patted his back too and
unhooked him from my waist. She took his hand and walked the rest of the
way down beside him, down to the riverbank, shooting one riddle after
another at him so he wouldn’t think about the steepness or the boulders or
the bristly sagebrush that scratched at his bare ankles.
The three of us sat on rocks beside the river. The water was dull
green and frothy. A true mountain river, created from snowmelt and nearly
as cold as ice. I wouldn’t want to put a toe into it, I thought to myself. But
my mother would have. It was what she’d always done when meeting up
with a river like this, found a way to get to its edge and dip her toes into the
water. I pictured her on some family trip we’d taken—to Wyoming, maybe,
or the Black Hills in South Dakota.

In my mind she was young again, her dark hair pulled back with a
twisted red bandana, a pair of big round sunglasses, red lipstick, rolled-up
jeans. I saw her taking a giant step out onto a huge flat rock surrounded by
foaming rapids. She sat down, pulled off her shoes, and plopped her feet into
the frigid water. And kicked and splashed, laughing, sending sprays of icy
drops onto her jeans, her T-shirt. I imagined my father calling her, once,
twice, again, until she finally heard and with obvious reluctance left the river
and returned to the car.
If she were here, I thought, she would have had her shoes off long
ago. She’d be sitting right here, splashing. Looking up into this amazing sky.
Filling her lungs with the fragrant air. She’d be absorbing these mountains,
drawing them in through her eyes and making them part of every cell of her
body. Carrying them away with her. Taking them home.
“I’ll do this part,” I said. Nic handed me the nearly empty bag, and I
poured what was left of the ashes into the water. There you go, Mom, I told
her in my head. Now you don’t ever have to get back in the car.
The ash mixture vanished the second it hit the water, the heavier
pieces sinking to the river bottom. From there, I imagined, they’d be pulled
downstream, worn down to silt, lodging eventually against the river’s banks,
joining up with the soil, getting sucked up by the roots of trees and grasses.
Ending up in water lilies and reeds. Ending up in the bellies of fish and the
gizzards of birds.
The sun was sliding down below the line of the mountain ridge,
casting its shadow along the slopes, across the road and the river, to where
we sat. The temperature was dropping. I shivered.
“Time to go,” I said and stood up.
“Look at us,” Nic said as we walked toward the parking lot. “We
have Nana all over us.” And it was true. Nic’s hair, his shirt sleeves and
shoulders were powdered with pale gray dust. Jessie was similarly dusted as
I assumed I was too. As if we’d been caught in a storm of ashes. Jessie
brushed at her arms as we walked; Nic shook clouds out of his thick blond
hair.
I felt no inclination to brush or shake off.
“I think,” I said, “Nana intends to stick with us for a while.”
That night I had a dream. I saw my mother and Geraldine, her
favorite nursing assistant from the nursing home where she’d lived her final
years. They were walking together across the parking lot at the Colorado
Springs airport, heading for the terminal. This was not the Mary Marks of
the past five years, the woman who’d suffered a devastating stroke that had
2021, Spring / 75
destroyed her ability to walk and to think like an adult. This was Mary in her
mid-fifties. Her eyes were clear; she walked with energy and determination.
She and Geraldine were talking animatedly and laughing. Mary flipped open
an old cell phone without missing a step. The wind was blowing her dark
brown hair across her eyes. She pushed it back with one hand and pressed
the phone to her ear with the other.
“I’m going to the mountains,” I heard her say through the cell phone
that had suddenly appeared in my hand.
“But, Mom,” I said, “you can’t do that. You’re dead.”
“Silly girl,” she said, with a laugh. “I’m already there.” She clicked
off her phone, tucked it into her purse, and, without looking back at me, kept
on walking.
JOAN MAZZA
ENUMERATOR
for F.B.
He approaches the trailer past the No Trespassing

sign, on the lookout for anyone making threats
or waving a shotgun. A cased laptop and a badge say
Census Taker, but a government man is never

welcome. The trailer lists toward a small flowerbed
with zinnias in profusion. A woman holds
a small white dog and lets him in, neither one afraid.
She doesn’t balk at his questions, not even the one
about income. Hard to get by on that, she adds.
I grow some food. Chard, cukes, squash, tomatoes.

I know where blueberries grow wild. He looks up
from his keyboard though there’s no space
for this information. She grins. He smiles back,

continues down the page. A shy and quiet man,
he turns down her offer of sweet tea and biscuits.
(cont)
The trailer’s hot without air-conditioning, the dog

snorting. He’d rather be reading in his quiet yard,
rather be taking a nap, but needs the income from this
part-time summer job that stretches and tires him.

He thanks her. Thank you for your questions, sir.
It’s nice to know that someone cares.
Mazza
WALTER B LEVIS
RECOMMENDED WITH ENTHUSIASM
Gray-haired, a slight paunch around his middle, pure sentimentality

threatened to overwhelm Christopher Columbus. Gone were the days of
chalkboards and chalk dust. Obsolete was the classroom smell of books on
bookshelves. On the last day of his official duties, Mr. Columbus—a straight,
white, cisgender, male teacher at an elite, progressive, expensive private high
school—sat at his desk fighting a feeling of nostalgia. It tightened the back
of his throat. He swallowed hard, then inhaled the faintly propane scent of
magic marker. A blank white smartboard hung on the wall in front of him.
He stared at it and inhaled slowly. A June heat wave had thickened the air.
His breathing felt labored. In the distance he heard the rumble of the
commuter train rolling in from the suburbs just north of the city. At least that
hadn’t changed—his commute on public transportation. The quaint little
station near the school was nothing really but a tiny indoor waiting area with
an electronic ticket machine and two metal benches. But antique windows
with thin brass bars remained behind a thick wooden counter, and
Christopher Columbus sometimes wondered if the small alcove that now
contained three vending machines had once been a room for the train
conductors? Allll aboard! Ah, trains. How he loved his train ride! Would he
cry? No, stop it, he thought, I’ve made a decision, a firm decision. Today my
life as a teacher—my life—ends.
He cleared his mind and sat up straight and pulled on the collar of
his plain white button-down shirt, then he gazed into his blank blue computer
screen. Nothing on the “desktop.” All files and folders in the “trash.”
Emptied. Done. Finished. He ran his hands along the top of his actual desk.
2021, Spring / 77
The smooth sensation was pleasing, a cool tingle in the center of his clammy
palms. He’d once considered it so special—this desk, a sacred object, a shrine
to the Mystery of Education. That was his phrase, which he’d always used
without irony. But now? The Mystery bit felt absurd. And the desk? It was
an aluminum base with a fiberboard top covered by a wood-grain veneer.
Store-bought, requiring assembly. The two drawers often got stuck,
especially, like now, in the warm June weather.
But this was it—the last time he’d sit at his desk. And the last time
he’d write a student recommendation. It was over. All that remained: brutal
honesty. That’s what he wanted to achieve right now. This would be a
different kind of student recommendation because this was a different kind
of student. He didn’t simply teach this student—this student taught him. This
student changed his life! And, yes, today it ends.
Ignoring the dull ache between his shoulder blades—teacher
posture—he leaned over his keyboard and began to complete the
recommendation form:
***
STUDENT INFORMATION:
NAME OF STUDENT: KJ. That’s it. KJ does not use a surname, which is
a conscious act of protest because “they” (KJ’s preferred pronoun) believe
surnames are used to sort, categorize, and, ultimately, rank individuals into
a hierarchical order based on the grand narrative of patriarchy—a tool of
oppression. KJ explained all this to me, and I am grateful. I will die “woke.”
SCHOOL: Midwood Academy of Moral Progress. This private, tuition-

based high school is located in a fantastically affluent corner of the city,
which in spite of its obscene wealth claims to be one of the most liberal
neighborhoods in the entire state. KJ, who lives directly across the street
from the school, helped me to understand and wonder: how do these so-
called liberals measure and define the meaning of their liberalism? “It’s
hypocrisy,” KJ explained to me. “Reform is the enemy of revolution. The
liberals in this neighborhood don’t want to change society—they just want
to feel good about themselves for thinking about changing it.” Yes, KJ has
shown me the truth. Although I commute from the suburbs, I have always
identified myself as “liberal” and appreciated the school’s neighborhood,
particularly the independently run coffee shop just a few blocks from campus.
But, alas, I am woke and see the shallowness of “fair trade” coffee. Today
my hypocrisy ends.
RECOMMENDER INFORMATION:
NAME OF TEACHER: Christopher Columbus. Please note that this is my

real name, and I wish to acknowledge that my corrupt ancestry traces back
directly to the famous fifteenth-century explorer. This might not be “factually
true,” but what is truth except a matter of interpretation? And what is
interpretation except a matter of politics? Power relations determine what
one believes. Today, I understand this. Today, I sacrifice my power.
EMAIL ADDRESS: CColumbus@MHMP.edu. Please note that if you wish

to contact me—well, you can’t. To verify the contents of this
recommendation, talk to KJ directly. But be prepared to lean into your
discomfort and end the life you’ve known. Today, the life I’ve known ends.
HOW LONG HAVE YOU KNOWN THIS STUDENT AND IN WHAT

CAPACITY? I have known KJ for four years as a student in my classes.
Midwood High School of Moral Progress boasts a unique and
comprehensive high school ethics curriculum, a program in which I have
taught for the past thirty-one years. After earning an “A” in “their”
freshman year, KJ worked independently with me during “their” sophomore
and junior years, and I currently serve as advisor to “their” senior project,
a proposal to de-center whiteness from MHMP’s current school-wide
curriculum, which, under the guise of objectivity, is an extension of white
supremacy, imperialism, capitalism, ableism, and a cis-sexist
heteropatriarchy. I do not know, of course, what the final outcome of KJ’s
work will be, but as “they” once put it: “One can study history, or one can
make history.” KJ makes history. Indeed, today I hope to make history too.
PLEASE COMMENT ON THE STUDENT’S ACADEMIC WORK

AND CAPABILITIES. KJ is brilliant, but how does one evaluate a
revolutionary? The very concept of “evaluation” is an ideological construct
fostered by (and, in turn, reinforcing) the existing power structure. If
oppressors evaluate, the evaluation is corrupt. So—instead of me evaluating
KJ, consider the moment “they” evaluated me:
On the first day of my Moral Philosophy class (a Junior-Senior one-
semester elective), KJ walked into the room and positioned “themselves” at
the front of the class and spoke directly to “their” peers.
“Objectivity and knowledge are a myth,” “they” said, holding
“their” voice steady, calm, and strong. “Knowledge is identity. Your gender,
your ethnicity, your race—these shape everything you experience. It’s
impossible—impossible!—to isolate knowledge from power structures, as if
you could know the ‘truth’ from some disembodied, pure point of view.”
2021, Spring / 79
KJ then turned to me. I was sitting at my desk. Our eyes met.

“The curtain of oppression,” KJ began in a voice surprisingly adult-
like for a teenager, “can be torn aside only by those willing to open their
eyes—to be woke.”
And then it happened: a thunderbolt struck the crown of my head,
exploding my brain. I experienced a hot, stinging sensation behind my eyes
and felt as if I were staring out of the dark, cold cave of my ignorance and
looking directly into the primordial fireball. KJ’s words, KJ’s message:
power, power, power. Yes, it’s impossible to isolate knowledge from power
structures. I understood: I had been sleepwalking through my life, oblivious
to the ways my privilege had blinded me. Where there is oppression, there
must be an oppressor. Behold, it is I.
I almost broke into song: Amazing Grace.
Meanwhile, KJ just stood there gazing at me. “Their” eyes glowed
from a delicate, oval-shaped face that featured the high cheekbones typical
of a woman; “their” body, however, contained the stereotypical shape of a
man’s wide, muscular shoulders tapering to a narrow waist. “Their” skin
complexion, too, struck the perfect ambiguity of dark white/beige. The color
of almond milk, I recall thinking. Tall, “they” held “their” lean, strong,
teenage frame erect, neck straight, the posture of a dancer, radiating both
brute force and grace. “They” wore tight black yoga pants and a black T-
shirt with a gray “Black Lives Matter” fist on the front, “their” purple-dyed
hair shaved at the sides and curled to look like a small horse’s mane. Also,
a silver ring decorated the tip of “their” nose, and a shiny stud glistened on
the outside of one nostril. The overall effect of their physical presence: a
statuesque glory.
PLEASE COMMENT ON THIS STUDENT’S INTEGRITY AND

ABILITY TO WORK WITH AND LEARN FROM OTHERS. To
question KJ’s integrity is impossible. Indeed, to question KJ at all is
impossible. Inequality is the root of all suffering. Only a privileged person
would question this. In terms of KJ’s ability to work with and learn from
others? There’s very little for KJ to learn. Society is broken—“they” know
what’s wrong and how to fix it: destroy the power structure, produce a
fundamental transformation.
WHAT IS THE QUALITY OF THIS STUDENT’S RELATIONSHIPS

WITH PEERS AND WITH ADULTS? KJ leads. Students, peers, adults—
“they” lead. “They” once explained to me a flaw in my teaching: “These are
extraordinary times, Mr. Columbus. What’s required is leadership that
inspires action. Reflection and analysis—these are luxuries of the

privileged.”
WHAT KIND OF ATTITUDE AND APPROACH DOES THIS

STUDENT BRING TO CHALLENGING SITUATIONS? KJ
approaches challenging situations with confidence. “They” seek conflict as
an opportunity to interrupt oppression. Consider this example:
An offensive video involving one of our students appeared on social
media. KJ intervened, confronting the student directly.
“Let’s talk about race,” KJ said to the white girl who had been
filmed using the “N” word while singing along to a rap lyric.
“What about it?” the white girl answered. “I was just singing along
to the song.”
KJ said nothing. “They” simply crossed “their” arms. Then “they”
leaned slightly to one side, shifting “their” weight to one hip.
“What? It’s not like I—I—I didn’t…” the white girl stammered. “I
didn’t do anything wrong. I was just singing! The N-word is in the song! You
can’t be mad at me! I didn’t write it—I—I just—the word is—it’s in the
lyrics—I didn’t—”
KJ remained silent. The trap had been set. White people—and
American institutions overall—are racist until proven otherwise. This is
obvious. This country’s history of white supremacy cannot be denied.
Therefore, the stammering white girl was unquestionably guilty. Conversely,
KJ, taking the side of the oppressed, was unquestionably innocent. And so,
of course, KJ needed to say nothing. The innocent always stand above the
guilty.
KJ waited patiently. Finally, the great power of white guilt
descended upon the girl, who lowered her eyes and dropped her chin and
collapsed her shoulders into her chest as she cried out through her tears,
“I’m not racist, am I?”
“Yes,” KJ answered. “Yes, you are. But you can change. You can
learn to be better.”
IN COMPARISON TO OTHER STUDENTS WHOM YOU HAVE

TAUGHT, HOW WOULD YOU RECOMMEND THIS APPLICANT?
(Please check one)
Without enthusiasm
Fairly strongly
Strongly
✓ With enthusiasm
2021, Spring / 81
IF YOU HAVE ADDITIONAL COMMENTS OR ANECDOTES,

PLEASE INCLUDE THEM HERE OR ATTACH AN ADDITIONAL
DOCUMENT. KJ is the student who taught the teacher how little he knows.
My additional comment concerns the nature of this irony. To be ironic means
to use incongruity and paradox to reveal what’s true beneath the surface.
The police station gets robbed; the marriage counselor files for divorce, etc.,
etc. Mocking pretense for the sake of truth—that’s the basic formula of irony.
But what happens if there is no truth? KJ “woke” me to the political story of
how we come to hold our beliefs. It’s a story of power. There is no truth apart
from the structures of power. But if there is no truth, there’s nothing to be
ironic about. And there’s nothing to teach.
***
He could have written more, but Christopher Columbus suddenly
experienced an overwhelming eagerness to get to his quaint little train
station. He clicked to send the recommendation, got up from his desk, and
walked out of the classroom without looking back.
A few minutes later, he stood on the far edge of the train platform
and considered the dark tunnel a short way down the tracks. His train would
soon come speeding out of that tunnel. The rattle and roar of metal, the flash
and spark of blue-tinged light, a massive structure of power. The train’s
brakes would screech and whistle like fireworks about to blow as the
machine slowed and slowed, until it finally came to a stop. In some parts of
the city, he knew, stations even older than this one have tunnels that are no
longer in use but stand vacant, and entire communities exist in the shelter of
the darkness. Squatters, the homeless—nature’s victims? No—casualties of
inequality.
He climbed down a small metal ladder attached to the lip of the
platform and walked in the gravel along the side of the tracks. He’d seen
workmen in their bright orange vests walk this way. The memory made him
smile, and he paused, then pushed on. His footsteps made a soft crunching
sound that seemed to echo. He wondered if his ears were playing tricks on
him. Maybe. He felt a little dizzy too. No lunch, he realized. But no matter—
he pushed on. In the heavy, humid air, a steady breeze blew through his plain
white button-down shirt, chilling his skin.
When he reached the edge of the tunnel’s opening, he hesitated, then
stepped into the darkness and pressed his back against the wall. The concrete
felt cold against his shoulders, and its roughness seemed to catch the fabric
of his shirt. A dusty mildew smell hung in the heavy, dank darkness. He
waited for his eyes to adjust.
Reliable statistics were difficult to find, but there seemed to be a 90
percent mortality rate for jumping in front of a train moving at a high speed,
but only 67 percent if the train is slowing down as it reaches the platform.
Yes, it was much better to position himself like this in the tunnel, he thought,
although it concerned him that post-traumatic stress disorder is a common
complaint for train drivers, particularly those who lacked even the chance to
execute an emergency braking maneuver. Also, passengers witnessing the
suicide could be traumatized by viewing such a gory method of death. Then
there will be those who must attend to the body. And lastly, and most
regrettably, his wife (or maybe his brother will fly in from Denver?) must
identify the body, which no doubt will be badly disfigured. Thank goodness
he’d never had children.
His mind cleared as he heard the rumble of the approaching train.
Then, as if he were having second thoughts, instinctively he took a half step
toward the light, out of the tunnel, but quickly he stopped himself. The
ground where he’d stepped was muddy, and now his feet were wet. He peered
into the darkness toward the sound of the oncoming train. Something
flashed—two small red dots, darting, appearing, then disappearing. A rat?
Some other kind of rodent? A different animal altogether? The rumble and
roar of the train grew louder. He felt its vibration as he leaned his head back
against the concrete. Then he pressed his palms against the wall too. An idea
came to him. Yes, he would use the wall of the tunnel to push his body
forward like a swimmer diving off the side of a pool.
He turned his head to look one last time at the bright light of the
summer’s day, and that’s when he spotted KJ standing on the platform. He
recognized “them” immediately—“their” lean, erect, long-necked posture,
the signature black outfit. “They” seemed to be looking at him directly, but
of course he was hidden in the darkness.
Still, just knowing KJ was there, he couldn’t prevent his mind from
wondering: what would happen if he stepped out of the darkness of the tunnel
and waved? Would KJ wave back? Would “they” call to him? Would “they”
scream in horror as “they” realized what was about to happen? Would KJ try
to save his life? He really wondered about this. And then wondered: what
was KJ doing here anyway? This wasn’t “their” train—it was his.
2021, Spring / 83
MILT MACHÁLEK
GENTLE GESTURES
growing up in Central Texas,

I recall, as we would drive
thru the rural countryside,
when we would meet
another vehicle,
on some sparsely traveled road,
as we would pass,
one going one way,
the other the other,
we each would greet the other,
nothing excessive,
left elbow
characteristically planted
in the driver's window
and right hand
atop the wheel,
each driver would lift
their index finger,
in simple acknowledgement
of the existence
of the other,
...I miss those gentle gestures
Machálek
GREG VARNER
A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN
My mother was beautiful. I know lots of little boys think their mother
is the most beautiful woman in the world, but this is different—my mother
really was beautiful. When I was a kid, walking down a street with her
holding me by the hand was like being in a forest thick with wolves, all of
them whistling at her.
“Don’t look!” she’d say, staring straight ahead as we made our way
down the sidewalk, her high heels clicking.

My mother’s beauty was heartbreaking and brave. Heartbreaking
because she had no accurate sense of it, and no faith in it; brave because it
was a performance she gave mostly for herself. In her self-image, she was
always the gawky, uncertain girl from rural West Virginia, with an alcoholic
father and a mother too worn out from having babies to help her oldest child
grow from girl to woman. Mom suffered painful bouts of shyness and self-
consciousness about her body.
“I remember needing a bra,” she told me, “and there was nobody
who could help me, and no money, anyway.”
She knew there was something more to life, even if she wasn’t sure
what it was, exactly, or where to look. When she scrambled her way north to
Ohio, she was able to find at least a piece of it, through a combination of hard
work, intelligence, and luck. She was fortunate to have two beloved aunts as
models of sophistication for her to emulate. Both of them built lives far more
comfortable than my mom had previously known. She looked up to them,
and she also pored over fashion advertisements and spent time at cosmetics
counters and in clothing departments at stores. Making herself acceptable in
her own eyes, first, was more important than appealing to men.
On those rare occasions when a compliment penetrated her armor,
she remembered and repeated it with pleasure. She told me about one
admiring comment, in particular, that had delighted her.
“A colored man I know said something that tickled me,” she once
said. “He told me, ‘I wish to God either you was black or I was white!’” The
remark was unusual enough—and sweet enough—to lodge in her mind. To
a would-be flower child, like me—I wasn’t quite old enough to express my
hippie self as I would have liked—the comment was sad proof of adult
corruption. Her attractiveness was a given, but her fear of crossing racial
lines in love struck me as a defining failure of the older generation.
When I got older and went out in public with my mother, people paid
me compliments. She kept her youthful beauty into her sixties, and I felt
proud of her good looks, despite being conscious of the absurdity of such a
feeling. That’s the magic of glamour—we always think it will rub off on us
somehow. And there was more than a touch of glamour about my mother,
though she scoffed when I told her so.
“I’m nothing but a mule,” she said, repeatedly. She would have had
a hard time convincing anyone of that. An acquaintance of mine once passed
by our table at a restaurant and when I introduced her to my mom, she nearly
fainted.
“That’s your mother?” she asked, almost shouting in disbelief. “I
2021, Spring / 85
thought she was your date.”

Another woman, my landlady at the time, made a similar comment
one day when my mom was visiting, saying she had assumed Mom was my
“girlfriend.”
For most of her life, my mother was no one’s “girlfriend.” We were
talking one day a few years before she died about the place of regret in our
lives. When I said I regretted nothing I’d done so much as some things I
haven’t, I added that I wished I had come out sooner. Having reached sexual
maturity on the cusp of the AIDS epidemic, I was frightened and nearly
paralyzed by the deaths of many of my more courageous and adventurous
peers. I opened my closet door and took a few tentative steps outside it, then
went back in. As a result, fewer opportunities for love presented themselves,
and I failed to respond to some that did. If I had it all to do over again, I told
her, I would have more sex.
“Me too!” she said.
In her working-class world, a whiff of scandal trailed my beautiful
mother for much of her life. She had married three times. Her first husband,
my dad, was ten years older; she was barely sixteen, working as a waitress
when they met. The story goes that she made up her mind to marry him when
she looked out the window and saw his new yellow Mercury pulling up
outside the restaurant.
“I’m going to marry whoever’s driving that car,” she supposedly told
a girlfriend. I wish I could ask her if it really happened that way.
My father came from a West Virginia country background, too.
Mom told me later that most of their arguments were about raising my sister
and me. My dad made a mistake often made by young policemen: When he
came home from work, everyone was a criminal to be apprehended, made to
confess, and to be punished.
They argued about money. She was good at managing her limited
budget; he was downright cheap. They fought when she wanted to buy things
that, strictly speaking, were luxuries. She had suffered enough deprivation in
her short life, she reasoned, so if she could afford something she wanted, she
bought it.
But there were no real luxuries. Money was tight. More often, she
probably bought a nicer piece of furniture or a more expensive appliance than
he would have thought necessary. Her good taste was the enemy of his thrift.
He was not a drinker. After coping with her father’s alcoholism, she
wasn’t about to tolerate it in a husband—yet. The one time Dad got drunk,
she woke Sis and me up late at night and took us to stay with a friend. He
rarely touched a drop after that.
She woke me up again one night, standing beside my twin bed in the
mixed moonlight and streetlight shining through my window. She looked
beautiful and even a little ghostly in her white nightgown.
“Do me a favor,” she said. “Go and sleep with your father and let me
sleep here.”
I would have done almost anything for her. I walked barefoot down
the hall to their room. Their bed was like another country, especially with
him in it alone. I crossed the border and climbed in. My father slept naked; I
hoped and feared he would throw a heavy arm over me as I lay beside him.
When I woke up, he was gone—off somewhere in his blue uniform, keeping
our city safe.
I never doubted that he loved my sister and me, or that he loved my
mother. I know he was jealous. Mom said she wanted to name me Michael,
after a boy she had admired, but my father forbade it. I know he did not want
to divorce her, but she insisted. Trying to persuade her not to go through with
it, he told her she could not afford the cost of raising us on her own.
“You want to bet?” she said. She had made up her mind. She was
going to night school to earn her diploma, and had gone to class one evening
when Dad summoned my sister and me to enlist our aid.
“Your mother wants a divorce,” he told us. “She wants me to leave.
Do you want me to leave?”
No, we assured him through tears, we did not.
“Then tell her not to make me go,” he said.
Of course, we became willing advocates on his behalf, tearfully
confronting our mother as soon as she came through the door.
“Don’t get a divorce!” we pleaded. “Don’t make Dad go!”
She responded with what I can only describe as nobility. I saw the
mask of composure form on her face; I could read on her body—the slight
downturn of her mouth, the set of her jaw, the way her shoulders pulled
back—how sadness and weariness and regret coalesced to become
determination. She would do battle if she had to, but she wouldn’t retreat.
“Your father and I made an agreement,” she said, in measured tones.
“We weren’t going to involve you kids in this divorce. And I’m not going to
discuss it with you.”
He betrayed her. That was the thought that surfaced in my mind—
that he didn’t honor their agreement. Everything changed for me in that
instant. I understood that adults had to do things their children might not like,
for reasons that might not seem fully clear. Life wasn’t necessarily fair, and
endings weren’t always happy.
In retrospect, I suppose she could have gone ahead and had the
2021, Spring / 87
painful conversation with us. But to explain, she must have thought, would
have been to enlist, to pit us against one parent or the other. It was important
to her that we remained neutral in their split, and staging it above our heads,
so to speak, was the best way she knew to make that happen.
In public, I didn’t immediately give up my role as the grief-stricken
child of divorcing parents. I knew that I was expected to be sad about their
breakup, and that I could score points with other adults—neighbors and
teachers—by playing the part. It was as if I could press a button and a nice
helping of pity and concern would appear on a platter just for me.
But secretly, I understood that it would be foolish for my parents to
stay in a marriage that wasn’t working. I expected that if my mother and
father lived apart, their lives would be less stressful, and in consequence, so
would mine.
Still, I felt bad for him. I wrote a genuine, if solemn, note in a card I
gave him the day he moved out, in which I sought to reassure him that I
would never consent to changing my surname if any potential stepfathers
came along with adoption in mind.
My father was happily remarried within months, and it wasn’t long
before my mother announced that she too was getting married again. She
gathered us around the kitchen table for a family conference and informed us
that she would be marrying one of her teachers from night school, a man
named David who was also recently divorced.
“Do you have any questions?” she asked. We would not be excluded
from the conversation this time around.
At the age of ten, I certainly did have a question.
“Are you going to have sex with him?”
Her response was a model of reasonable parenting.
“Of course,” she said calmly. “All married couples have sexual
relations.”
I remain grateful for the matter-of-factness of her answer. Imagine if
she had fielded my question not with honesty and common sense but with
lies or hysteria. She taught me that it was OK to talk about sex in an
unemotional, no-nonsense way—even if my own sexuality was a subject I
couldn’t bring up with her until many years later.
David treated us decently, but their marriage ended within two years.
They had both been on the rebound, Mom explained, rushing into a second
marriage out of loneliness, but they weren’t really compatible.
Her next husband was a man named Ted. This is where my mom
turns into a version of Rosemary Woodhouse—although she doesn’t become
pregnant, the realization slowly dawns that her husband is, if not the devil
himself, at least on friendly terms with him. Ted was a letter carrier too, her
co-worker, and something of a man about town, but he had a drinking
problem and he could be very mean.
“I always wanted a husband who would take me to parties and go
dancing,” my mom told me later. Ted did that for her, but she paid a heavy
price. When they came home from those nights on the town, the mask of
sociability came off to reveal a more devilish side. He treated her and my
sister and me abusively, and she made a mistake that haunted her for the rest
of her life in putting up with it—for a while.
She couldn’t bring herself, at first, to go through another divorce.
That would have meant admitting to herself and everyone else that she was
a failure, and adding another notch to the belt of her slutty reputation. In my
mother’s circle, divorce was seen as a taint—and the more divorces you had,
the more you were tainted. She couldn’t fail for a third time to make her
marriage work. And my sister and I were growing up and would soon be
leaving the nest. She would try to tough it out.
“I should have shot him,” she told me later.
It ended after she had an affair with another man at work. I’ll call
him Hal. This was in small-town Ohio during Ronald Reagan’s second term
as president. It was bad enough that my mother was beautiful, thrice-married,
and having an affair—but all three points of their love triangle worked
together at the Post Office. And on top of that, Hal was black!
“Hal was the only man I’ve ever been with who could talk with me
as an equal,” she said later. When I met him, I liked him immediately, though
I sensed his wariness. I’ve often wondered if he was the one who made the
remark she loved about wishing she was black or he was white. In the end, it
shouldn’t have mattered—but demons came after them. Hal’s wariness was
justified.
Their love affair began when I was in grad school at the University
of Virginia. My mom helped bankroll me there, as she had done earlier at
Oberlin. At the end of my two-year master’s program, she drove to
Charlottesville to fetch me back to Ohio. We had planned to meet at my
apartment on Jefferson Park Avenue at three o’clock in the afternoon.
Knowing her frequent tardiness, however, I was in no rush to be there at the
appointed time. When I got home an hour later, I was sorry to find her waiting
in the parking lot at my apartment complex. She didn’t complain, and we
made small talk for a while until she said she really needed to use my
bathroom.
“I’ve had to pee for hours,” she said.
I’ve never known anyone to deny bodily needs the way she did. Why
2021, Spring / 89
did she so often refuse to listen to the inner voice calling for food, or drink,
or rest, or a toilet, or any other kind of relief? She tried to live above all
personal needs, perhaps as a means of forestalling disappointment when her
needs weren’t met.
“Why didn’t you say something sooner?” I asked. She answered with
a shrug.
After loading her car with my few possessions—clothes, books, a
few things for the kitchen, stereo and record albums—we were on our way
back to Ohio. We stopped a few times for food or bathroom breaks—she was
solicitous of my comfort, if neglectful of her own—and enjoyed each other’s
company.
Somewhere along the way, she told me about Hal. They had an
apartment together, she said. She told me how much she liked talking with
him, “about all kinds of things,” and what he had shared about what it was
like for him to grow up in small-town Ohio. His father told him he had to be
twice as good at everything as his white peers, just to be considered equal—
and even that much wasn’t guaranteed. She told me Hal’s dad had drilled
into him to be respectful, especially when interacting with white people,
because the absurd truth was that his life might some day depend on a
courteous word.
He listened to her when she talked—really listened—and engaged
with her ideas as most men couldn’t, or wouldn’t. He was an all-around nice
guy, she said, and their love had taken both of them by surprise after they
had been co-workers for several years. Hell was starting to break loose at the
office.
Their apartment was only a mile or so from the house she had shared
with Ted, to whom she was still married. Mom and I were sitting at the
kitchen table, talking and smoking cigarettes, when Hal walked in.
She introduced us; he was aloof, but pleasant. He was carrying an
ashtray he bought for their apartment. She immediately began to put the new
ashtray to use, pushing the one we had been sharing across the table toward
me.
“Isn’t this ashtray beautiful?” she exclaimed. To me, it looked
functional and nondescript, but that’s love for you. “Thank you, dear! Oh,
what a pretty ashtray!”
We made small talk for a bit and then said goodnight. I slept on the
couch. I would be returning to Oberlin the next day, leaving them to enjoy
one another in private. Hal left early the next morning; later, she and I had
coffee together.
“That’s an ugly ashtray, isn’t it?” she said.
“If you don’t like it,” I said, “why did you make such a fuss over it?”
“I didn’t want to hurt his feelings,” she said.
“Couldn’t you just say, ‘Honey, I love you, but that ashtray is ugly?’”
“No, I couldn’t do that,” she said. “Most men wouldn’t even think
of buying something for the house. I’m thrilled that he thought to do it.”
She sipped her coffee and flicked her cigarette above the hideous
ashtray. She told me that their love affair had been discovered, though she
wasn’t sure how, and that they were facing stern disapproval from all corners.
A married woman! Shacking up with a black man! And how dare he become
involved with a white woman? Steeling herself, she asked for my opinion.
“So, what do you think about all this?”
“About what?” I knew what she meant, of course—she was asking
what I thought of her and Hal as a couple. I was happy for her, but I wanted
to make a show of my nonchalance, as an attempt to balance the overreaction
and distance myself from the censure of people with small minds.
“All this,” she said. She moved her hand to indicate the apartment.
“Me and Hal.”
I should have simply said that I thought it was wonderful. I suppose
I wanted to impress upon her that in the scheme of things, this was nothing
significant. How foolish I was!
“I hope you fuck each other’s brains out every night,” I said,
shrugging.
“Greg!” she said, stamping her cigarette out in the ugly orange tray.
I had shocked her a bit, but I could tell she was pleased. Her grimace was at
odds with her smile, and the smile won out.
I wish I had been more sensitive, but I remain proud of my
response—perhaps more proud of it than of anything else in my life. I’m
proud that I gave my mother, a woman to whom so much was denied,
permission to have pleasure. I’m proud of suggesting that this should happen
as a matter of course, just as a part of everyday life. Of course, you should
have love and pleasure in life, I could have said, and I’m glad you’ve found
some! You deserve nothing less, and I’m happy for you. But maybe my
words, because they were vulgar, carried more force. I hope so.
It wasn’t long before their pleasure came to its end. She and Hal
couldn’t withstand the pressure exerted to break them apart. The disapproval
became more vociferous, and Hal was the victim of racist terrorism. A
Tootsie Roll was found hanging from a noose in his locker at work. Both he
and my mother received hateful, anonymous messages. Death threats were
made. Those warnings his father had given him, which he had wanted to
disbelieve, were true after all. The harassment reached such a pitch that Hal
2021, Spring / 91
eventually had a breakdown. He never recovered from his emotional

collapse. My mother tried to reconnect with him after she and Ted were
divorced, but it was too late. Hal’s health was failing; he couldn’t risk his life
further. Their love affair was brought to a premature end by bigotry. My
mother was forced to leave the island of care she had come upon after
swimming for so long; Hal died too young a few years later.
Among her papers, I found a love poem she wrote for him. It’s the
sort of thing she might have tucked into a card for Valentine’s Day. As
poetry, it fails, but it was a sincere attempt to express her newfound sense of
profound connection with Hal—the idea that their affair represented a fusion
of seeming opposites, along with the simultaneous recognition that they
would remain two separate beings.
Black is black
White is white
Black is white
White is black
You are the waves

I am the wind
You are the wind
I am the waves
Four more stanzas continue in that vein. She would have agreed with
Rilke’s definition of love as two mutual solitudes, bordering and protecting
each other.
My mother’s beauty remained untouched for many years, but I don’t
think she ever truly thought love was possible for her after that.
I remain stupidly proud of her beauty. When I was a child, it had
pleased me when strangers whistled at her on the street. I liked it when some
of the older boys in the neighborhood said she was pretty. As one of the
youngest boys on the block, I had less knowledge of sexual matters than they
did, and little prurient interest in women, in any case. They laughed at me
when somebody stole his dad’s girlie magazines and turned his garage into
an all-male sanctuary where we could admire the forbidden material. We’ve
got my dad’s magazines, one of them said, with pictures of naked women!
“Does it show their butts?” I asked. They laughed and told me that
butts weren’t what should interest me. It pleased me when one of these boys
said he had admired the sight of my mother in a bathing suit.
Decades later, when she had knee replacement surgery, I went to
Ohio for a couple of weeks to give her a hand, and felt the old absurd pleasure
when she came home from the hospital and told me about a nurse who had
kissed her the night before her operation. The nurse had promised she would
come through the surgery in fine shape, and told her, “You’re beautiful.”
“That was nice,” I said.
“Yes, I suppose so,” my mother said, “but she kissed me on the lips!”
“How did that make you feel?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
I loved having a beautiful woman for a mother. And I’m still proud
to have been a source of support for her when everyone else offered
punishment and censure.
Not quite everyone, it turns out. Among her papers, I found a letter
from her mother, postmarked during the time of her affair with Hal. My
weary, backward grandma’s letter, written not long before she died, is vague
and portentous, as if alluding to scandalous matters.
“I know all the details,” she wrote. Her letter ends with a tacit
blessing: “Remember, a friend is a friend regardless of creed or color.”
RICHARD WEAVER
A fish momentarily considers a shining object,
two, actually, with something orange dangling

and smelling of sand fleas. Now, any fish knows
sand fleas never smell orange. Beige maybe, closer

to a Laura Ashley Taupe 1. A nice color for sand
or a beach shoreline. A moment’s confusion

between its eyes, a hesitation to hunt, to go against
instinct and try something untried. What the hell.

You only spawn once they say. What’s the worst
that could happen? Pain? Not a problem for an insentient.

More likely another fish or a stingray will dart in,
(cont)
2021, Spring / 93
gulp and run with it. Not hesitating. Not wasting time
with an internal debate about colors and silly smells.
Unconcerned that it might be too salty. It’s the ocean

after all. There are rumors though, mythic ones,
about shiny objects, colored with scents. Myths passed along

from school to school like a skin condition. In the strangest one
you lift from the water, after being jerked and dragged
and pulled all over, and hover perpendicular in brightness
with a different shade of blue shimmering all around.

And then suddenly you are back in familiar currents and waves
slapping each other above and the overwhelming smell

of ghost shrimp burrowing beneath the sand all around you.
Daring you to catch them. Waving goodbye with an arrogant tail flip,
you are back in the vastness, wondering if it happened at all.
Curious for a second about the hole in your lip.

But moving away from the shore towards deeper, safer waters.
Until one day you will lift again, and never return to tell your tale.
Weaver
LENNY LEVINE
TO YOUR HURT’S DESIRE
“Please, please, Rob,” Judy begged me as she drove through

Bridgehampton, “don’t screw it up for me this weekend.”
“And how would I go about doing that?” I asked from the passenger
seat of the silver Mercedes E Class sedan she’d rented.
“I don’t know,” she said impatiently, “by insisting they let you watch
some ballgame.” She made the last word sound like a beheading.
“Ballgame? You mean there are ballgames on?”
I’m not usually this sarcastic, but, really, the only reason I was in
that car was because Ford Kingsley, senior partner at the prestigious law firm
she worked for, had casually suggested she bring her husband along to their
“working weekend” in the Hamptons. To my wife, Ford Kingsley’s casual
suggestions were the commandments Moses forgot to bring down from
Mount Sinai.
“I’m sure there’s some damn game you’re dying to watch,” she said.
“Is Michigan playing this afternoon, by any chance?”
“I don’t know,” I mumbled. “I thought I heard somewhere that they
were playing Illinois.”
She groaned. “Well don’t bring it up, okay? Just be polite and go
along with whatever Ford and his wife have planned.”
“I also heard somewhere that game seven of the World Series is
tonight.”
She groaned again, louder.
“Don’t worry,” I assured her, “it’s really only game three. And I
promise you, I am here in total support of your ambitions. Me and this
obscenely expensive car you rented.”
“It would look pretty chintzy if we showed up in some Chevy
compact,” she said.
“Is he really going to think we own this car?”
“It doesn’t matter; it’s the first impression.”
“Right. For all we know, his gardener drives up in a car like this.
Besides, won’t it raise a few eyebrows when they look at your expense
account?”
“It’s not on the account. I paid for it with my own personal money.”
“Which is to say, our own personal money.”
Judy glanced over at me and smiled. “Think of it as an investment in
our future.”
I leaned back against the plush leather and watched the dunes on
Montauk Highway go by for a few minutes.
“In a just world,” I opined, “sixth-grade public school teachers
would have houses in the Hamptons and corporate lawyers would live in one-
bedroom apartments.”
She laughed softly. “Well, you’re already living with a corporate
lawyer in a one-bedroom apartment. And if you ever want to be that sixth-
grade teacher with a house in the Hamptons, you’ll be nice to Ford and his
wife this weekend and behave yourself.”
I said nothing.
***
2021, Spring / 95
Our entire apartment could have fit into their entrance hall, several
times. It was three stories high and made entirely of marble, except for the
mahogany banister running down the grand staircase. On the walls were what
at first looked like Rembrandt paintings, but later, close up, I saw that they
were mosaics, like the ones on the interior walls of St. Peter’s Basilica.
Ford and Diana Kingsley greeted us at the door, a modest term for
such a massive, oaken, fortress-worthy structure. They were wearing tennis
shorts. He looked to be in his fifties, tanned and robust, with thick, salt-and-
pepper hair. She was blonde and pretty, equally tanned and probably ten
years younger.
Ford shook my hand with just the right amount of warmth and
firmness and introduced us to Diana, who smiled and took each of our hands
in turn.
“Rob,” Ford said, as they guided us through several opulent rooms
toward the patio, “I want you to relax and enjoy yourself this weekend. Do
whatever you want. You just tell Diana, and she’ll make it happen.” We
reached the patio, which was half the size of a football field. “All right, then,”
he proclaimed, “let’s have some lunch!”
And “some lunch!” pretty much said it. They’d set up a buffet that
could have fed a few dozen people. Carvers in chef’s hats stood, knives at
the ready, next to slabs of ham and turkey. We loaded our plates, then sat
down around a glass table, while a maid hovered nearby in case our drinks
needed to be refreshed.
As I munched on a turkey sandwich with the best Dijon mustard I’d
ever tasted, Ford started to bring Judy up to speed.
“In case you wondered why the class-action suit we’re facing this
time is a private one, why Magna Cola isn’t being sued by the town of
Watahawken, New York, it’s because the town has, essentially, ceased to
exist.”
“What would you like to do today?” Diana asked me.
I pulled my attention away. “I don’t know. What did you have
planned?”
“What I have planned,” she said, “is whatever you’d like.”
“We usually reframe their terms, early on,” Ford was saying. “If they
use a phrase, for instance, like ‘near-total depletion of the groundwater,’ we
say ‘the natural settling of the water table.’”
I realized Diana was waiting for me to speak. “I don’t want to take
you away from what you’d normally be doing,” I said.
She laughed. “Some people would say there’s very little that’s
normal in what I’d normally be doing, but never mind me. You’re the one
calling the shots this weekend, Rob. And I’ll bet you’d like nothing better
right now than to be watching the Michigan-Illinois game. Am I correct?”
I must have blinked several times. “How did you know that?”
“You went to Michigan, didn’t you?”
“Well, yeah, but.…”
“Ergo, the Michigan-Illinois game,” she said with the flicker of a
mischievous smile.
“Likewise,” Ford went on, “when they claim there are high levels of
arsenic, cadmium, and lead in the remaining groundwater, we say they have
to show us why it wasn’t caused by their own pesticide use.”
“Come on,” she said, “it’s probably halftime by now. Bring your
sandwich.”
I glanced over at Judy, who was staring raptly at Ford Kingsley.
“Never mind them,” said Diana, tossing her long, blonde hair as she
stood up. “Folks,” she announced, “if you’ll excuse us, we’re going into the
den to watch the Michigan game.”
Judy shot me a look that would have liquefied rock.
“It’s her idea,” I muttered lamely.
“Enjoy,” Ford said, abstractly.
Diana was already heading in the direction of the house. With one
last hopeless look of apology at Judy, met by another lightning bolt, I picked
up my plate and followed.
Their den featured a movie-sized screen. “Please sit anywhere,”
Diana said, indicating several couches and reclining chairs. She moved over
to the bar and turned on the TV with a remote that was sitting on top of it.
“Fix you anything?” she offered, moving behind the bar.
“Maybe just a Perrier. It’s still kind of early,” I said, sitting down on
one of the couches as the game burst onto the screen. It was as if she’d
already preset the station that carried it.
“I’d call you a wimp,” she said, “but you’re the one in charge today.”
She took down a bottle of Cutty Sark and poured herself a double. It
was indeed halftime up on the screen, with Michigan down 13-7. Not good,
but not too bad.
“You sure you wouldn’t prefer a Magna Cola?” she asked. “It’s the
number-one cola in the world, you know, and it’s bottled locally. I
understand they use only the best New York State groundwater.”
“Perrier is fine. And now that you brought it up, I couldn’t help
overhearing what your husband was saying. Did they really destroy that
town?”
“Ah, yes,” she said, bringing my glass around and depositing it on
2021, Spring / 97
the side table next to me, “that is indeed the question.” She sat down at the
other end of the couch and curled her bare legs beneath her, facing away from
the screen and toward me. “You could make the argument that Watahawken,
New York, destroyed themselves. They thought that inviting the fox to live
next to the henhouse was in their best interest, with jobs and economic
expansion and such. People are always acting in their best interest, right up
to the moment they destroy themselves.”
The third quarter was starting, and my eyes were drawn to the screen.
Michigan was kicking off. The ball settled into the arms of the Illinois kick
returner on his own three-yard line. Five missed tackles and ninety-seven
yards later, he high-stepped into the end zone. I moaned softly.
Diana had not changed her position. She still had her legs curled
under her and was looking at me, not the screen. “Ford thinks very highly of
your wife,” she said. “You should know that.”
I was still trying to recover from the trauma I’d just witnessed.
“That’s great to hear,” I replied automatically.
“Yes,” she said, regarding me with what seemed like amusement,
“you should definitely know that.”
Something about it rubbed me the wrong way. I was already kind of
upset at the prospect of Michigan getting their asses kicked.
“How did you know I went to Michigan, by the way?” I asked her,
the words unintentionally coming out sounding slightly annoyed.
“Just like I know that you’re twenty-eight years old, teach sixth
grade at P.S. 67 in Brooklyn, and you’ve been married for five years with no
children, although I bet you’ve been trying.” Again, that amused look.
“This is flattering,” I said, forcing myself for the sake of Judy’s
career not to be offended, “taking all that trouble to research someone like
me.”
She laughed. “It wasn’t any trouble, and I didn’t do it; Ford did. Or
rather, one of his staff. But I’m a quick study.”
“Okay, but why bother?”
“Partly,” she said, “because I want to be a good hostess.”
On the big screen, Michigan had just fumbled on their own 30 and
Illinois recovered. I winced.
“What else do you know about me?” I asked.
“Oh, lots of things. You’re a big Yankee fan, which is why I assume
you’ll want to watch the World Series tonight. You and your dad used to
have season tickets, but he died when you were seventeen and your mother
gave them up.”
“Boy, you really did do a lot of research.”
“Not me.”
“Right, not you,” I said, as the Illinois quarterback lobbed one into
the end zone to a waiting receiver, easy as pie.
“Shit!” I yelled, before I could stop myself. “Sorry about that,” I said.
“No, no.” She regarded me with concern. “What happened just now
must have been really painful.”
“I wouldn’t go that far. Let’s say I didn’t like it very much.”
“But you should go that far,” she said. “For a moment there,
something so bad happened, it made you cry out. You can’t just disregard
that.”
“I guess.”
“Your dad played football at Michigan, didn’t he?”
I had to smile, even though there was nothing funny about people
prying into your life. “You nailed it, doc,” I told her. “My passion for sports
is because I’m trying to find my father. How much do I owe you for the
session?”
Her serious expression didn’t change. She regarded me from the
other end of the couch. “I lost my father when I was a teenager,” she said,
“just like you did.”
“Oh,” I said, “I’m sorry.”
“Unfortunately, in trying to find him, my passion wasn’t for sports.
It was for Ford Kingsley.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“Even more unfortunately, Ford’s passion was for young women,
and it still is. That’s why he’s going to sleep with your wife.”
“What?!”
I thought I couldn’t possibly have heard right.
“Come on,” she said and, suddenly, there were tears in her eyes.
“You can’t tell me you haven’t thought of it.”
And, of course, I had. The way Judy talked about him, the near
worship she had for him. She’d never spoken about anyone that way before.
But I wasn’t going to admit anything to this woman.
“Judy would never do that,” I said.
“No? Even for a very lucrative career? And the end of one if she
didn’t?”
And, actually, I had no idea whether or not she’d do it. Judy was, if
nothing else, a pragmatist to my idealist. She could figure things out way
ahead and be ready for them. It was why she was such a good lawyer, and I
was someone who tries to teach a roomful of kids on Ritalin. I’d always
kidded Judy about her ambitions, but what were they, really?
2021, Spring / 99
“Why are you telling me this?” I said.

That’s when she started to cry. “I don’t know, Rob; it’s either
because she’s the latest one or you’re the last straw.” The tears were running
down her cheeks. “I hate him for doing this to me. I hate the way he twists
things around until right is wrong and everything is mixed up. Wait, before
he’s through, those poor townspeople are going to seem like the greedy
bastards and Magna Cola’s going to look like a victim.
“And I hate myself for going along with it, for sharing in all this.”
She swept her arm derisively at the sumptuous room we were in and all that
lay beyond. “But I can’t help it.” Her eyes seemed to be pleading with me.
“I wasn’t always this way. It’s like, little by little, I’ve been giving away my
soul.”
Unaware of it, I’d been moving closer to her along the couch. Now
she moved closer to me and there we were.
“What am I going to do? How can I live with myself? I…I’m sorry!”
She seemed to melt into my arms. I held her, as she wept softly against my
shoulder.
“Hey, come on,” I said, feeling incredibly awkward. “Hey, come
on.”
And then we were kissing. I don’t know how it happened. Maybe it
was because this sexy, confident woman had become so scared and helpless,
but I wanted her.
And in the back of my mind, I knew I deserved her. My wife was
about to have an affair with her husband; there was no doubt about it. I was
fooling myself if I thought Judy would make any other choice. And that was
as far as I cared to think about it, as we tore off our clothes, fell back onto
the couch together, and made desperate, clinging love.
When it was over, I lay there in shock at what I’d just done. She got
up and began looking around on the floor for the various parts of her tennis
outfit. “Well,” she said, as she gracefully stepped into her shorts, “I did say
you could do whatever you wanted.”
I tried to catch my breath while fighting the nausea building up inside
my stomach. “What happens now?” I asked her.
She picked up her top from the coffee table. “Oh, I imagine you’ll
watch the end of the Michigan game if you can stand it, and I hope the
Yankees do better for you tonight. I’ll come in and watch it with you, if you
want me to, but, of course, we won’t be doing this again.” She slipped into
the top.
“As for Ford, I’m afraid he’ll still sleep with your wife at a time of
his choosing, but unfortunately, you’ll have to live with that, knowing what
we did just now was captured by the security cameras and is on several hard
drives. Aside from that, who can say?”
She picked up her glass of Cutty Sark and finished it off, as whatever
breath I’d regained went out of me.
“I lied when I said I hated myself for this lifestyle. I love it and I
need it. But I do hate Ford; that part was true. No reflection on you, because
you were very good just now, but I’m getting tired of doing this sort of thing
for him.”
She moved toward the door. “I hope Michigan rallies, but if it
becomes too much, the library is in the next room and you’re welcome to use
it. If you need anything at all, just ask any member of the household staff and
they’ll get it for you. It might sound grotesque at this point, but make yourself
at home.”
She blew me a kiss and left me sitting there.
***
“I thought it went very well,” Judy said, as she inched the Mercedes
forward in the Long Island Expressway traffic. “This case looks very
winnable, and I’m going to be an important part of it.”
“Great,” I said dully, as I gazed empty-eyed at the minivan next to
us, the little kids making faces at me through the window.
“You’ve been unusually quiet,” she observed. “Did all that sports
watching wear you out? I thought they were extremely gracious, by the way,
to let you do it. But they didn’t seem to mind, thank God, so I guess we both
got what we came for.”
“That we did,” I said.
She reached over, put her hand on top of my thigh, and gave it a little
squeeze. “Thank you for doing this for me, honey. I know Ford and Diana
aren’t your type of people, but I think they really liked you.”
“Are they your type of people?” I asked.
She gave my thigh another little squeeze. “You’re my type of
people,” she said. “Don’t you know that by now?”
I wondered. About that and about what type of people I am, after all.
And as I sit here in our apartment at 2 a.m., watching ESPN Classics
and waiting for her to come home from yet another strategy session with Ford
Kingsley, I still wonder.
2021, Spring / 101
MICHAEL SALCMAN
MORTALITY’S FIRST TINGLE
This is what goes through your mind

when an intermittent pain enters your side
and you should know, you know
because you’re a brain surgeon:
You poke and prod your belly and nothing hurts.

You work on your core in the gym; ditto.
You take Tums for your tummy and nothing improves.
But the pressure of your seat belt across your waist
makes it worse.
It’s probably not an ulcer
or a premonition of a cholecystectomy.
It’s not a kidney stone or appendicitis for sure.
Right away you think it’s a tumor—all that fancy whiskey

and the rare contraband cigar.
They’re drawing blood—required before you can get a CT:

Shakespeare was right about the lawyers
and covering your ass.
Tomorrow I say Kaddish for my father.

Salcman
CORDON SANITAIRE
The British folk of Eyam erected the first sanitary “wall”

against the plague in 1666, a hapless ring of stones
that killed off eighty percent of those who built it.
A fancy name for an old strategy, in medicine and politics
or sex, a barrier or quarantine against the spread
of a contagious disease or ideology. In youth I ran into
my first tampon in a desperate attempt to get inside
when a string struck my finger and passion deflated
at once like a tired balloon. You never forget the pain
of reaching across for treasure and getting nothing
but love’s absolute refusal. (cont)
Back then there was nothing more to say,

shy and eager teenagers in search of pleasure defeated
by technology, the door on a future together shut with a snap.
I couldn't get in and she couldn't or wouldn't explain why,
no chance my appeal for reversal would succeed against
this classic feint of a military nature in sex,
in which an endless series of eager attempts was met
by certain failure. Of course the sanitary napkin was not

the origin of Cordon sanitaire, a term dating back to 1821
when Duc de Richelieu put 30,000 troops in the Pyrenees
to block the spread of yellow fever from Spain,
a number equal to those who had died in Barcelona.
In a fight against cholera, Proust’s father proposed
an international quarantine of Asian ships bound for Europe,
an idea Clemenceau famously applied to diplomacy:
getting border states to stop Red hordes invading from
Russia and Germany; as usual a sanitary cordon failed to protect
what was from what was to come. We hate what separates us,
most of all those walls that fail against books or people or thoughts.
Salcman
THE HOURS
6 AM:
The cat starts howling at four.

A brisk tail of cooling wraps the house in darkness.
Someone has misplaced the sun. It’s fall.
The day starts later and ends sooner.
The world leans over like a drunken top.
It would be nice to see the planet wake up sooner
And go to bed a bit warmer
Not to be rolled in the cerements of grief, frozen,
My alertness stolen moment by moment
As the planet tilts away from the sun’s embrace.
And a new year comes for one or the other.
(cont)
2021, Spring / 103
7 AM:
Silent sex at seven is heaven

Even if I must spread my creaky legs too wide
To take you, my groins strained and torn ligaments
Crying. We begin with your furtive search
For a small tube of jellied lubrication
And me pretending not to notice
Though it makes everything feel as good as the old days
Of our youth. Growing older together
Is responsible timing, new wrinkles yoked
To weakening vision. Everything evens out as it fails,
What you don’t want me to see I can’t see,
What you don’t want me to do I can’t do.
8 AM:
The city traffic unrolls on its asphalt carpet,

Symphonic noises, steel plate percussion,
Fluted suspensions and angry trombones.
I can almost hear the concrete crumble
Beneath their wheels, the roaring squadrons
Of autos racing to jobs they mostly hate,
Hoping to get there on time
For a quick coffee and chocolate donut.
America inflates every minute, rush hour stretches
Another hour or two, contracting what’s left of life.
9 AM:
Soon this hour will be the hour of lost identity,

The office closed and my bloody uniform returned.
It will be just me, thinning hair and potbelly me
No longer the semi-hero of patients
Nor any attorney’s contrary devil, I’ve escaped
From mountains of unfilled regulatory forms,
Have cut the line to untranslatable phone calls
And uncoil with an anytime breakfast of French toast
And pancakes, hooked on cinnamon and maple syrup,
Depressed by the morning papers of New York
And Baltimore, writing a warrant to find the real me.
(cont)
10 AM:
In the Gymnasia of either mind or body—

Weight room or desk—I gain as much muscle
And burn off fat working my core or writing it down.
A surgeon has a diurnal rhythm I tell friends,
Better to have your surgery done when everyone’s in
A really good mood, especially the man with the knife.
I should know, no longer at work in that valley of anxiety
I pump steel rods and roll wheels on rubber mats
With my trainer DJ, pull TRX cables towards my chest
Made from parachute cords not anchors,
The brain burns more sugar than chopping wood with an axe.
11 AM:
Redbooth data tells us this is the most productive hour

When ten percent of the day’s tasks are done
So I must write now, in the hour of least anticipation,
Waiting for lunch at my desk, burning holes in screen glass
Or staring at my empty sheets of paper.
Most days eleven AM is a dry fuck, nothing useful comes
Either hoped for or even unwanted. Then I think
How hours and ours are deadly homophones,
Only the second can run out of the first, not the reverse;
All that belongs to us, whether people or things, must vanish.
At the end of time, all who write become unwritten.
12 Noon:
Every hour speaks of memory. I’m on Greene Street again

Near the churchyard with Poe’s grave if not his body in it.
I used to brown bag lunch with peanut butter & jelly
On rye at my big desk or lounge outside the hospital
Inhaling a frank and bun in the bright light bouncing off
Pebbled food carts with aluminum sides before going back in.
Now I’m chained to a more domestic desk waiting for inspiration.
The sun seems high for winter—the seasons can change over
An hour many times. There’s no cinder of an idea in my eye,
No memory that convinces. The self is the deepest mystery
Even as life shortens and my envious eye grows dim.
(cont)
2021, Spring / 105
1 PM:
The hour when the second case started on most busy days—
Operating on someone’s spine or through their nose—
The scheduled brain always the morning case already done and closed.
My god I loved that organ like a junkie smoking crack.
Instead I’m getting ready to put the mind’s gentler tools away,
Paper and pencil, the computer and its printer spitting out pages
Of half-finished poems and a memoir I’ve been writing for ten years.
I remain neither one thing nor another, my father or my mother,
Artist or scientist or none of the above. Still me two hours past
My first pack of six hours, drunk on my beery theme as the day goes on.
2 PM:
The worst time for the brain is early afternoon; a little coffee
Or a power nap may help one snap out of it. On a two-brain day
My students open the head without me, first scalp, then bone
Primping up the field for their professor. I wonder if
The scalp edges bleed too much, is the exposure large enough
To attack a torn vessel or bad tumor? Where are my students anyway?
They are here at the edges of this paper doing the best they can
Without CT or MRI. My sharpened pencil cuts at verbs and nouns;
You can see them cauterizing arteries and veins.
Beneath the microscope you can even smell the burning flesh
Of infinitesimal black threads crossing miniature caverns.
3 PM:
By three o’clock my residents got ready to close the second head

Or I this poem. Not likely with fifteen hours left to write.
On my first day and night of training, the operation took sixteen hours!
The charge nurse warned I should put a Foley catheter in my bladder
Before I scrub with the slowest surgeon on the staff at Neuro.
Entranced by his sluggish but gentle movements I watch him closely
Remove a tumor almost cell by cell as my bladder filled
With anticipation. The caution of an armadillo
Would remain my watchword through the decades:
Never hurry, never make a mistake you can’t erase,
Never touch the healthy brain, there’s no putting it back together,
His method almost the same as writing one letter at a time. (cont)
4 PM:
The hour of the imposter, the afternoon slump gets serious now
For either the one who moves his pens around his desk
Daydreaming about leaving early
Or the medical gunner scrunched down in his foxhole
Anticipating another late evening at the office.
In this hour of transition which track will take hold of him,
The train running home to a funeral
Or back to wife and child? My brain grew wild with romance—
The poem or painting or girl I loved more than daily life,
The cocktail that calmed me and turned off the stress.
5 PM:
As the saying goes, it’s always five somewhere in the world—

This most mutable of hours, the eternal hour of the dry martini.
As Churchill prescribed, place glass and gin in the freezer
Hours before you pour, penultimately swipe the lip with lemon pith.
Then carefully step across the room as far as possible
From the dry vermouth because it’s never dry enough.
Most of all, must not be on call, must not be caught drinking
With the office staff, must not be in the O.R. at all that day or next.
But writing with a glass on the desk at any hour thereafter is best.
6 PM:
In the old days I was often home by six if not making rounds
On the wards or meeting with my staff.
Not any more—I’m home all day stuck on a preposition
Or a proper word for passing gas.
A thin leaf of paper separates the surgeon and the poet—
It’s called a mask. Now I hide behind the metaphor,
The thing I tie up with string;
It’s the hope of being understood in the present,
That which Emily bound in feathers with a swear
And dropped from an Amherst tower.
7 PM:
In the winter’s dusk seven is the darkest hour—

(cont)
2021, Spring / 107
Impossible to banish without headlights pointing

Where I’m going—someone must know or suspect the answer
Of who I am. One by one the lights come on,
The moon in the east and a single planet costumed as a star.
I’m coming home for dinner before my phone rings again
Breaking the spell of repeating my words over and over
In the car until lines and rhythm sit on my tongue.
8 PM:
We had a beeper back then and not a phone.

It called me like a dog to his bone, made me jump if it rang too often.
Sometimes I turned back for a fractured spine or broken head
And finished by midnight if lucky.
If my residents were closing the skin, I wrote poems on a patient’s cot
Outside the O.R. door until something flamed up and caught.
Or if I couldn’t scrub out sang the words to myself under my breath
Until I stripped off my gown and found pencil and paper.
Not everything survived until then—
I could always remember the art I saw but not the words I had sought.
9 PM:
With morning rounds and surgery in the offing

I couldn’t stay up late; back then it was time for bed at nine,
Watching the news and one detective story after another
While I read. My wife always out cold by ten,
But now I stay up alone as long as I am able,
A noctua or night owl who can’t enjoy the lateness of the hour
Because of age. I keep a journal at the bedside
But almost never awake to scrawl a poem rather than peeing.
Still the lines I steal from sleep are among my best
And the ones that come during drowsing even better.
Poincaré used beauty as a test to solve equations while he slept
Or walked with Newton on a beach and found a perfect shell.
(cont)
10 PM:
At the wolf’s hour I grow accustomed to doubt;

There are no plans to hang me though many have their reasons,
Among them former students, publishers and lawyers.
They hate my surgical certainty, the way I whisper
At the top of my lungs or worry how loud I sing
In the synagogue, how dramatically I read my poems.
I go to Beth Am, The House of the People,
Where all congregants think they know better than the rabbi
And the rabbi believes he’s smarter than Solomon.
I don’t wish my life to look like others,
Have no patience with the hoi polloi. No one mistakes me for a goy.
11PM:
I tremble as if the blade’s hour has come. But it was dawn

Not midnight when beheading before an audience was done
In Revolutionary France and Nazi Germany. Two families served
As executioners, the Sansons from 1792 to 1847 and the Deiblers,
Louis and Anatole, chief headsmen from 1879 to 1939.
More than 16,500 people were killed by guillotine before 1945.
The Angel of Death is famous, so why not his henchmen? Myself,
I’ve never seen the head of a chicken cut off by a farmer’s wife.
The National Razor of France was scrubbed in 1977. With the head
In a basket, brain activity in rats lasts four seconds more—
This doesn’t mean sense, just a stupid reflex in a dumb beast.
Aren’t we like rats huddling in our cages; don’t victims always think
They’re safe? This was the science the Germans knew before killing us.
12 Midnight:
Sleepless in the blackest hour of the night I sometimes take out

A special book or think with regret about the one I’ll never see
In life, the Duke of Berry’s Very Rich Hours, two hundred
Calfskin pages, a foot tall each, locked away in Chantilly’s vault.
The majority of leaves are painted with ruby red, aqua-blue
Or bright gold on ermine white, complete with calendars and prayers
For the canonical hours, also Bible stories and David’s psalms,
As perfect and incomplete as any sacrifice made by Abraham:
(cont)
2021, Spring / 109
The project ended when the Limbourg Brothers and their sponsor
Died with Plague, their deep devotion unrewarded but for fame.
1 AM:
The last hour in the scholar’s study, I am reading:

The declension of French verbs, the plural nouns of animals in herds,
Atoms and molecules, and the secrets of the benzene ring
And the gene I first met in a bar like a bad date,
Facts like worms encysting in my brain. And even worse—
Philosophy goes home with the exhausted student.
Will I be found at two, my still warm body lying on the floor?
That too much knowledge can kill is a mystery without a plot.
In his famous novel The Hours, Cunningham links Virginia Wolf,
Her Mrs. Dalloway and HIV, choosing close observation over suicide
As a way to defeat the tyranny of time. As for us,
The poet and his reader are always alone adjusting their clocks.
2 AM:
By two or three I make the first of several trips to the head

And holding myself in one hand dribble so slowly
There’s plenty of time to think of a younger me in the nightlight’s shadow.
This is no time for regret; I can’t see the faces of the past
Even with my eyes closed and must make it back quickly
Before the rest of me wakes up or worse, I hit a shin on the bed frame
And tumble in waking my wife. Two was the worst of all hours
For an emergency call from Shock Trauma, when I was in REM,
The residents and I discussing our plans for the morning,
The darkness filling my veins with so much drama
I could never return to dream again.
3 AM:
It might seem an ordinary thing

Not to be able to see the bathroom light at three in the morning,
My eyelids closed as if sleep were death,
My eyelids thicker than thin.
Where to begin a little understanding, catecholamines roiling
The antipodes of feeling, appalling both stomach and brain.
(cont)
The next day I’m taken for an eye examination,

No retinal tears or buckling seen, just arteries and veins.
In the bright slit of a retinoscope my doctor looks at the center
Of my world and I feel the first or last moment of life exploding.
4 AM:
The next darkest hour, a final absolute obliteration of light

Before the world scrambles back with its diurnal high
Of cortisol and your grumbling stomach wakens you
With worry about the first case you’ve posted
On the O.R. schedule and all the ways it might go wrong.
Or else some other matter frightens you more
Than ordinary nightmare, the sale of a beloved plaything,
A car or boat or home, a first meeting that evening
With a potential daughter- or son-in-law,
A dinner with your spouse and the lawyer she’s screwing.
There’s no poison more powerful than imagination.
5 AM:
The hour of hanging in the subcontinent; I wake up on my own

Like a prisoner marching out to meet his fate.
At cock’s crow the alarm goes off, the starter’s gun for another race.
I reach my hand out to shut it down but it’s too late,
The hours have begun their ordinary run from dawn to darkness,
The numbers steadily climbing up the day, the most of us waiting
Breathless at our job, whatever it might be, a line of sutures
Or a line of poetry, for the judgement of others as to how we rate.
Why do we care? Is not the work hard enough without the pain?
But we are social animals who must die, our glory and our fate.
Salcman
2021, Spring / 111
TARA MENON
THE WAHEEDAS OF SYRIA
Suju was elated when she received an email informing her that her
short story, “Waheeda Wears Red,” would be included in the next issue of
Muslim Women. The tales she’d written before had been published in a few
small literary journals and had reflected Indian-American experiences like
arranged marriages, the problems involved in looking after elderly parents
without extended family to lend support, prejudices encountered in the
workplace, and children who didn’t care for their heritage. She hoped
“Waheeda Wears Red” would be the turning point of her career and that
she’d be contacted by an impressed agent. Her story was about an amazing
Muslim woman who’d immigrated to Pakistan in the throes of its birth.
Before 9/11 Suju had barely known anything about Islam except that the
followers of the faith had desecrated many Hindu temples during different
periods of Indian history and that their influences on architecture, clothes,
and cuisine had enriched Indian culture. Contemplating her unsuccessful
attempts to write novels, the newfound euphoria she felt vanished. She’d
turned the three drafts into confetti and floated the pieces into her trashcan.
None of them had that magic she believed fiction should possess.
Her thoughts kept wandering. Muslim Women would be published in
Syria, a country where civil war was going on. Still it wasn’t just a place
where rebels were trying to oust Assad. There were editors trying to cultivate
writers while, at the same time, they were letting citizens escape into the
haven of literature. This was before the destruction of Palmyra, before the
mass exoduses began, before Suju cried reading about capsized ferries and
the demise of entire families.
“Waheeda Wears Red” wouldn’t have been written if she hadn’t
been serendipitously assigned a new hairdresser, Mumtaz, at the salon she
went to. At first Suju assumed she was an Indian-American like her before
she found out she was a Pakistani-American. The first few times Mumtaz cut
or styled her hair, they chatted about books and movies. Once when there
was no one within eavesdropping distance, the hairdresser confided about
her life and the lives of her relatives to her client. Mumtaz had an American
boyfriend who’d been in prison for selling drugs. As her parents didn’t know
she was going out with him, they were actively searching for a bridegroom
for her from their community. She didn’t yet have the nerve to tell her parents
she had a boyfriend. Currently, the family had more than they could handle
as her grandmother, or nanu as she called her, had died. They were also
worried about her cousin, who had been diagnosed with cancer and was the
mother of two young children. Knowing the prognosis was bad, Mumtaz’s
youngest sister had flown to Pakistan to look after her.
The hairdresser said she missed Nanu, the matriarch of her family.
“If I’d been a writer like you, I’d have written a biography about my
grandmother,” she added. The next two hours sped by as her client listened
to her breathtaking story, which chipped away at Suju’s stereotypical image
of Muslim women deferring to their husbands. The women in Mumtaz’s
family were heroines of their own lives, but none were as admirable as
Fatima, her grandmother. She’d been a hafiz, a person who knew the whole
text of the Quran by heart.
That night after Suju’s hair had been elegantly coiffed, she was
inspired to use Mumtaz’s grandmother as the model for her protagonist. She
plucked books about the partition from her bookshelves, spread them out on
a table, and ensconced herself in a brass-studded leather chair in her study.
Suju mentally evoked the blessings of Ganesh, the elephant-headed, pot-
bellied Hindu god, something she always did before she started researching
material for a new story. The struggles of the Indian independence movement
to end two hundred years of British rule in India fascinated her. Jinnah, the
leader of the Muslim League, wanted Muslims to have their own country
because he didn’t think they would be safe in Hindu-majority India, but
Gandhi and Nehru were against the idea. The British drew up boundaries --
Pakistan became a country with two wings on either side of India. Fifteen
million people made a decision to travel to the country where they wouldn’t
be attacked for the religion they belonged, but the journey was fraught with
danger, and a million people, both Hindus and Muslims, died in the biggest
mass migration of the twentieth century.
Suju also immersed herself in books about Islam to understand the
religion of the protagonist she would create. Every half hour, she gazed
through the window at the glittering stars and the crescent moon, a respected
symbol in Islam and a character in Hindu mythology. The next few weeks,
her research continued at a hectic pace. When she had enough confidence to
begin an authentic story laced with historical details, she started writing,
effortlessly wielding her pen to release words onto the sheets. She sculpted
the tale so readers would empathize with the protagonist, Waheeda, feel her
terrors, cry over her disappointments, rejoice in her triumphs. Suju was
pleased she’d pushed her boundaries to dip into another culture and era.
After the editor of Muslim Women accepted her story, Suju asked
Mumtaz if she’d show her a picture of her nanu. Her hairdresser retrieved a
sepia photograph of her grandmother from a drawer in the salon. She stuck
2021, Spring / 113
the picture to the edge of the mirror in front of Suju. Fatima was stylishly
draped in a brocade sari. No one who saw the picture could have guessed the
lady had been traumatized by a river of blood during the partition of 1947.
Fatima’s features collectively imparted charm to her face. Her figure, which
had yo-yoed over the years, looked slender. The hairdresser snipped Suju’s
hair and some of her dark coils clung to the white towel wrapped around her
while others lay in clumps on the hardwood floor. “I have something to tell
you that will surprise you. I wrote a story about a woman modeled after your
grandmother. An editor in Syria wants to publish it,” Suju said. Thrilled,
Mumtaz clapped her hands and told her she couldn’t wait to read it.
The black strands on her towel seemed to turn red as Suju thought
about a certain section in her story, “Waheeda Wears Red.”
Waheeda saw faces she knew in the river of blood. Cousins, friends, and
neighbors lay motionless, their miens expressing torment and their limbs
twisted into grotesque positions. She saw corpses that had been mutilated
in humiliating ways. Waheeda was only sixteen. She closed her eyes and
prayed to Allah to keep her safe as she fled from the mobs with her
husband of two days. (He was a blood relative, a cousin once removed,
but she hardly knew him. Her brother had hastily married her to him so
that her husband could protect her honor. She’d met him once when
she’d been in the third standard.) She’d witnessed more than her mother
had before she’d died.
If only she could resume her normal life, but Waheeda and her husband
needed to escape. Her memories of her education were special. She had
biked to the convent every day. The nuns had instilled a love of learning
in her and she’d excelled in her classes at the convent. Her math teacher
had considered her to be exceedingly gifted. When the other students had
been unable to understand him, he’d asked her to explain what he’d tried
to teach them. After her father had died, her mother had been on the verge
of pulling her out of school, but her father’s Hindu friend had insisted
that Waheeda should continue her studies.
Waheeda and her husband embarked on a train to get to the border. The
unlucky migrants were those who reached Pakistan as corpses;
sometimes there wasn’t a single survivor in any of the compartments.
Waheeda’s husband heard that the passengers in the previous train had
been doused with kerosene and burned, but he knew he and his wife
desperately needed to take a chance. He decided not to reveal the tragedy
to her. Unfortunately, a co-passenger blurted out the truth.
“How do you like your new hairstyle?” Mumtaz asked Suju. Looking
into the mirror, Suju felt she appeared younger. She glanced at her
hairdresser’s reflection, then the picture of Fatima in front of her and
took in their similarity. “Just wait till I blow dry your hair. You’ll love
it,” Mumtaz said, fluffing her client’s hair with her fingers. “Nanu could
never have imagined she’d be the heroine of a story” Suju couldn’t help
thinking of a scene in her story.
Waheeda looked desperate, wondering whether life would be worth

living in the left wing of Pakistan. There was another kind of partition
besides the geographical lines—the divide between the living and the
dead. She didn’t belong to either because she didn’t feel alive or dead.
The first three days of her married life she’d witnessed death. She hadn’t
known if she could ever love her husband. Nor had she known if she
could ever take pleasure in the scent of flowers or wear red again.
Every week Suju checked the magazine’s website impatient to see

the new issue of Muslim Women, but it was always unchanged, showing
somber-faced children studying in a basement. She was afraid the editor and
her staff had become victims of the civil war; she wondered whether they’d
had a miserable end like some of Waheeda’s relatives. Perhaps her story had
brought them bad luck.
Months passed with the same picture of sober-faced children on the
website. Receiving an email from Malika, the editor of Muslim Women, Suju
clicked her mouse and as she scrolled down, the surprise she felt was etched
onto her face.
As salamu alaykum, Suju

Any minute, I’ll die. I’m hiding in an apartment building that has
been retaken by Assad’s men in Aleppo. The neighborhood is grey with all
the shelling and destructio that has been going on and yet it is the red you
evoked that colors my mind. Any minute the soldiers will barge into this
rooom and my life will be over with a bullet in my head. The reason I’m
writing to you instead of the other subscribers and more importantly my
loved ones is because there was something in your story tha resonated with
me. I felt Waheeda was a flesh-and-blood person and that yer story deserves
to be told. Women like her, brave and terrified at the same time, kept me
2021, Spring / 115
alive for weeks while I was hiding. I hope you will turn your powerful story
into a novel This is my dying wish. Best of luck with your writing. I have
one last question—who was rhe inspiration for Waheeda? I hope the world
wil one day pay homage to her.
Warmest regards,
Malika
She reread the message that, other than a few typos, was a perfect
letter for someone close to death. Suju sent her an email, not knowing
whether Malika would be alive to see it. Perhaps it would be the last words
she’d read.
Dear Malika,
I was shocked when I read your email and learned about your
predicament. I pray you’ll survive somehow. Yes, Waheeda was a real
person. I based my character on my hairdresser’s grandmother. She was
born in Uttar Pradesh, India, and she fled to Pakistan during the partition. I
will take your suggestion to make “Waheeda Wears Red” into a novel. If I
find a publisher, my book will be dedicated to you because I wouldn’t have
gotten the idea without you. May Allah protect you.
Best regards,
Suju
Once again she buried herself in books that dealt with the era of
partition, and the giants of Indian history, Gandhi, Nehru, Jinnah, became
her companions. Their eloquent words played in her mind. “Long years ago,
we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem
our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially,” said Nehru,
the first prime minister of India, just before the famous stroke of midnight
that gave birth to the country. When Suju wrote her novel, she showed the
leaders as amazing heroes, but she also took care to portray them as human
beings with flaws. She created villains who butchered innocent people for
belonging to a different religion and she depicted the callousness of the
British colonizers who created animosity between the Hindus and Muslims
so they could hold on as long as possible to their “jewel in the crown”—
India.
Suju wove a family legend about her great-grandfather into the

novel. He had joined a group of protesters shouting anti-British slogans.
Police officers, carrying out the orders of their white superiors, had turned
up at his house to put him in prison. Fortunately, his father, a judge, grateful
for the English rule of order and their court system, had been informed they’d
arrive to arrest his son. The young man was already out of the state, after
hiding in their car’s trunk until the chauffeur thought it would be safe for him
to rest in the backseat. It took Suju a couple of years to bring the historical
and fictional characters to life. That magic, that spark she couldn’t create in
the drafts of the novels she’d written earlier was present in this one. Waheeda
seemed so vivid Suju felt she would shimmer off the page and talk to her
creator.
She was thrilled when the acquisitions editor of a small company
published her novel. Waheeda Wears Red garnered good reviews and was
nominated for a literary prize. Mumtaz and her mother came to her reading
in Boston, and they cried when she read about how Waheeda saved her own
life and the life of an infant from a mob by grabbing the baby from the arms
of a dead woman and hiding behind a bush. “You brought my mother back
to life,” Fatima’s daughter said as Suju signed a copy of her novel for her
and drew a little crescent moon next to her name. A line of people waiting to
get her signature inched toward her. She wished Malika would miraculously
be one of them. She didn’t ever find out what happened to the editor, but
Suju thought she must have died. She imagined Malika reading her email as
a soldier burst into her room and fired shots.
If only the Arab Spring hadn’t unleashed so much suffering and
misery onto the world, thought Suju. Unfortunately, history can’t be reversed
nor can the dead be resurrected. She hoped brave women like Fatima—the
Waheedas who remained in Syria and the Waheedas who fled to other
nations would read her book and feel that her novel resonated with them and
that they’d be aware that women, irrespective of what countries they live in,
suffer in similar ways during times of upheaval and that they, too, can heal
over time and become heroines. She guessed Malika had wanted to publish
her short story in her magazine to let Syrian women be inspired by her
protagonist.
Waheeda wore her favorite color red for the first time since she’d left
India at her youngest daughter’s wedding. Life had been good to her,
good enough for her to heal and flourish, even if occasionally something
triggered her memory and caused her to break down. A few months after
her marriage, she’d found out it was possible to love again. Her husband
2021, Spring / 117
was not just her best friend and confidante, but her lover as well. They’d
rebuilt their lives in Pakistan. Each child that had been born to them was
like a jewel, a gift from Allah.
A superb cook, Waheeda had once prepared a hundred ducks for a large
party she’d thrown. She became one of the first female drivers in
Karachi, chauffeuring her children around town. She wore glamorous
clothes and donned stylish sunglasses. She sewed garments for her
children and taught them how to stitch and cook and she emphasized the
importance of getting an education. She was careful to set aside a portion
of her household budget for any need that might arise. She narrated
events from her early childhood that would impart moral lessons to her
children like the time she opened a desk in school and discovered a cache
of chocolates that she resolved to resist and return to the rightful owner.
She told them her father had participated in a partition conference
held in England. Could he have imagined the splitting of their country would
lead to the greatest mass migration in twentieth- century history and that his
own family would worry about their survival as they tried to reach Pakistan?
Could he have foreseen that Pakistan, the new nation geographically
separated into two wings, would break off into separate countries?
(Bangladesh emerged after the early 70s civil war in Pakistan.) He wouldn’t
have dreamed that someday one branch of his descendants would immigrate
to America.
Waheeda’s sons and daughters became successful professionals:
two doctors, a lawyer, a principal, and a teacher. She hadn’t been able to
harbor any hatred for Hindus. She knew Muslims had also committed
atrocious crimes. Besides, she was grateful to the Hindu man she’d regarded
as an uncle who’d encouraged her to continue to attend school after her
father’s death.
Everyone in the bridal party was getting ready. When she looked in
the mirror, she saw the reflection of a tall bouquet of crimson flowers on a
table. She studied her own image—that of a plump woman with eyes that had
learned to sparkle. Waheeda considered herself a fortunate woman who’d
overcome more than any person should have to. Suddenly the terrors of the
past gripped her mind as she viewed the dupatta she wore sliding to the floor
like a river of blood. She didn’t bother to retrieve it. Her husband entered
the room, chiding her for her tardiness until he saw the look on her face and
the dupatta pooled at her feet. He told her to change into her second-best
salwar kameez, a blue garment. He attempted to improve her mood, telling
her they were lucky their youngest daughter was going to wed a kind and
successful man. Waheeda wished her parents had been alive to witness this
day. A thought occurred to her that twisted her lips upwards. Her family was
now larger than it had ever been. Her first grandchild would be born in two
weeks. There was so much to forget, so much to mourn, so much to celebrate,
so much to cherish and remember, and so much to look forward to. Waheeda
pushed aside the blue salwar kameez her husband held out to her. She picked
up the fallen dupatta and draped it over her shoulders, imagining red
blossoms instead of blood. It wasn’t hard to do as she looked at the crimson
flowers on the table that gave off such a soothing, soothing scent.
At Suju’s last reading, a young woman, sporting a beige scarf over

her head, wiped a tear with a finger. When the writer autographed a copy of
her book for her, the scarf-clad woman told her she’d felt a lump in her throat
as she’d listened to her speak. “I’m a scientist at Vertex. I don’t usually get
so emotional, but your story really touched me. You revealed the truth about
humanity. We all bleed in the same color. We have the same emotions. I
could connect to Waheeda,” she said in a pure American accent. In a
coincidence, Suju wouldn’t have dared include in a novel, the scientist
informed her that her name was Malika. A tear from her eye splashed onto
Suju’s signature. The last letter of her name turned into an “o” that to the
writer symbolized wonder.
ROBIN GREENE
FAILING THE KINDNESS TEST
At nine, I’d lie on the hardwood floor

of our Queens apartment, in
darkness, without covers on a winter
night to punish myself for
a harsh word to a schoolmate—
“clumsy” I’d called her as she tripped
with her cafeteria tray
on the way to our table.
I’d shouted it at her, in front
of friends, and they laughed while
(cont)
2021, Spring / 119
she went silent, picking up her

carton of milk, plastic-wrapped tuna
sandwich, and cookie, both of which
she ate. Clumsy I called myself
that night—because I’d failed
the kindness test, having given in to
judgment and cruelty, newly discovered
within. I write this from five decades
into that girl’s future and five days shy
of Yom Kippur, getting ready
to atone again, not for all my year’s wrongs—
a list too long for a single poem,
and not by sleeping without a blanket
on my bedroom floor, but by holding
myself accountable in the palm
of this poem as if it could unclench
and open.
Greene
GOODBYE
Now, in my sixth decade, thinking that luck

has run its course, that the ample sky
might fold like fitted sheet around me,
I’m saying goodbye. Goodbye to the mountain
I hike today, to its bald and implacable face,
to the wood spider climbing the rough bark
of this oak, beside me in a forest I’ve come
to love, alone here, this summer day turning
evening, with its deep light and breath
containing birdsong, wind-rustling leaves,
smell of damp riverbank, among beech,
maple, and longleaf pine, among spiders
and ants, beetles and ground wasps—
to the place where I sit now on a moss-covered
log, where I understand that aloneness
is a misnomer, that effort can come
to nothing, can become nothing,
or can become a sacred thing
in an enormous, widening circle.
Greene
SALT AND SAND
So much loss, there’s nothing

to say, nothing to see but the sun
descending behind the rooftops
in my neighborhood—after this,
a busy day. I look out my study window
to find shadow—and it’s this
that interests me. When my father
died in a Florida hospice years ago,
a Buddhist nun took care of him,
or so I was told. My family didn’t want
me there, and obedient, I only heard
about his dying a thousand miles away.
This said, out my window now,
I imagine his ashes as salt and sand,
his human particles perhaps cast
onto a beach where waves breach
the shore like memory breaches grief.
I see my father—young, tall, standing
in the kitchen, singing “Impossible Dream,”
to my mom, as she cooks our dinner
of pot roast and potatoes. It’s 1963,
I’m eight, and my dad will continue
to sing to her for decades, until disease
takes his voice. He’ll continue to watch
her until he can no longer see.
And he’ll stand by her until he can
no longer stand. My neighborhood
is dark, and I’m very sad now—
grief like night, darkening.
Greene
2021, Spring / 121
LAWRENCE F FARRAR
ONLY THE CICADAS WILL CRY
The first time I saw her, I was sitting in a wicker chair on my parents’
front porch. I’d come home from college, and it was one of those perfect June
mornings we treasure in Wisconsin. The early summer world showed itself
lush green in all directions, and cool air wafted up from the Big Pine River
two blocks away. Early risers, the cicadas were making a racket with their
shrill, buzzing chirps. Today, it seems a half-remembered dream.
A car pulled into our neighbor’s driveway. Brad Durham, whose
driveway it was, climbed out of the driver’s side and went around to open a
back door. His wife, Eunice, got out. Then the Japanese girl came out. She
moved with small, tentative steps. Her winsome manner struck me as
modesty come to life.
The Durham children, Sally and Frank, came down the steps from
their porch, welcoming the foreign girl. Short, bespectacled, and a high
school senior, Sally had a plain face, framed with curly blond hair. She wore
slacks and a short-sleeved summer blouse. Normally taciturn, Sally exhibited
unusual vivacity as she greeted their guest that day. Frank was a tall, husky,
eighteen-year-old college sophomore. Outfitted in jeans and a t-shirt, he was
a good-looking guy, with buzzcut brown hair. His sunburned face signaled
extended time on the tennis court. Unlike his normally reserved sister, he
regularly exuded confidence.
I liked his parents and sister, but Frank and I had never been friends.
Early on I’d detected an ill-concealed mean streak. I have to admit, however,
I envied him one thing—the old ’36 Ford I frequently watched him wash and
polish in the driveway. I had no car. I knew he often cruised around the town
at night with his buddies.
My father, a hard-working lumber salesman, was gone most of that
summer. I think his forebears came from somewhere in England. I got my
name from him; he, too, was a Michael. My mother, a librarian, read a lot.
So, did I. She was a good-hearted woman, the daughter of Norwegian
immigrants. I suppose she was responsible for my light-colored hair, pale
skin, and blue eyes. I had no siblings and liked it that way.
We had lived next to the Durhams for years. Like our place, set
among a stand of oaks, the Durhams had a white, two-storied house, with a
screened porch, dormer windows, and a shingled roof. Hanging baskets of
flowers lined the upper edge of the porch.
In his mid-forties, Brad Durham taught high school history. A soldier
back from Korea, with close-cut graying hair, even in chinos and sport shirt,
he carried himself with a military bearing. A straightforward man, people
described him as someone you could trust. His wife, Eunice, was a thin
woman with a pretty face, who wore her dark hair pulled back. Regularly
outfitted in skirt and blouse, like her husband, she exhibited an unpretentious
demeanor. And, like her husband, she sought to do the right thing.
Durham had also been stationed in Japan. So, people thought it
unsurprising his family would host the visiting student, especially because
Brad also had a reputation as a person brimming with good intentions. Those
intentions included efforts at building relations with foreign countries
through people-to-people contacts.
Today, such a visit would go unremarked. But, in Riverton, open-
mindedness made no purchase as a defining trait. Nothing different passed
long without scrutiny, and perceptions counted for as much as reality. Even
though the war had opened our eyes to the outside world, it is only a bare
exaggeration to say, for many of our townspeople, stepping across a state line
seemed like foreign travel. And their lessons from the war had much to do
with the cruelty and suffering it produced. More than one family displayed a
small white banner with a gold star in their window. It meant they’d lost a
son. In retrospect, perhaps the introduction of a young Japanese girl into our
community came too soon. But Durham characterized it as the kind of thing
that needed doing.
As they made their way to the house that first day, Sally spotted me
and waved. I saw her speak to the Japanese girl, who then glanced up in my
direction. Mariko Yamamoto was a petite eighteen-year-old, her black hair
cut short. She dressed in a dark skirt and a beige summer blouse with a white
ruffled collar.
A scrim of mystery embraced her. Fascinated, I could only wonder
what terrible things she had experienced during the war, now barely seven
years behind us. Perhaps because she was different, especially in the eyes of
this young Midwestern man, she seemed especially attractive. More than
pretty, she seemed exotic. The whole-souled feeling I experienced for her
that summer day persists as a memory, however faded, that has never left
me. And, although I never crossed the borderline of discretion, I suppose that
emotional response involved a certain amount of sensual daydreaming.
However imperfectly, memory stores what matters.
The following morning, Frank flagged me down as I trudged along
behind our power mower. Like a marker of seasonal authenticity, the aroma
of new-cut grass saturated the air.
“Dad wonders if you can’t put off the mowing until later,” he said.
2021, Spring / 123
“Our guest had a long trip, and she is still sleeping.”

I apologized for my lack of consideration “How’s it going?” I said.
It saw this as an opportune moment to interrogate my neighbor about
the girl.
Frank retrieved a pack of Luckies from the sleeve of his t-shirt. He
fished a Ronson lighter from his pocket, lighted up, and took a long drag.
“She’s quiet. Hasn’t said a whole lot since we picked her up in Minneapolis.
Right now, she seems overwhelmed.”
“Yeah. Probably so.” I could not imagine what a trans-Pacific flight
might be like.
“Her parents died in the war,” Frank said. “She’s been living with
her aunt. The aunt works as a maid for an army general. The general’s wife
is involved with an exchange program, and she thought this girl would be a
good candidate.”
“Why here?”
“My dad worked for the general at the Zama base. I guess he seemed
like a logical host. That’s about all I know.”
“Is she going to be here all summer?”
“Three or four weeks. Somebody from the exchange organization
will pick her up later on. Then she heads to another host family. In New York,
I think.”
“What’s the plan?”
“You sure have a lot of questions,” Frank said. “Anyway, my dad
has worked up a schedule. Showing her around town, going over to the
school, a baseball game, maybe a band concert, movies, watching our new
television, a picnic at the lake, and naturally, the summer festival. Stuff like
that. Time with our family, too. The full treatment: small town America.
Quite a treat, huh?”
“Yeah. A real treat.”
“My dad claims it’s important for ordinary people to know each
other the way they really live. You know how he is.” Frank’s endorsement
of the notion seemed less than enthusiastic.
“She looked sort of shy,” I said.
“Yeah. Kind of cute, too,” Frank said. He delivered a smirky smile.
I nodded. But I thought of her as a lot more than “cute.”
“Sweet, real sweet,” Frank added.
I didn’t like the way he said sweet.
-----
That afternoon, my mother asked me to go over to Hanson’s Grocery
to pick up some sweet corn for dinner. Working my way through the produce,
I overheard Mrs. Hanson chatting with Edna Severson. Mrs. Hanson had
been behind that counter as long as I could remember. A severe looking
woman, she was actually very nice. On the other hand, Mrs. Severson, a
pleasant looking woman, was not very nice. And she considered herself the
moral arbiter of our town.
It hadn’t taken long for news of the girl’s arrival to get around.
“They say she’s an orphan,” Mrs. Hanson said. “Probably had a hard
time after the war.”
“If they hadn’t bombed our ships out there in Hawaii, things would
have been better for her. That’s all I’ve got to say,” Mrs. Severson said.
“Well, Edna, I think it’s real nice of the Durhams to show her around
for a few days. She didn’t bomb any ships. Besides, it isn’t like she’s going
to live here.”
Mrs. Severson smacked her lips in disapproval. “Say what you want.
I don’t see any need for her to be here at all. There’s others feel that way,
too.” She scooped up her bag of groceries and strode to the door. At that
moment, I could think of nothing less attractive than a self-righteous person
with a mean heart.
“She’s a visitor to our town,” Mrs. Hanson called after her. “I think
we ought to show her some of that niceness we’re always claiming to have.”
I stood there wondering if I should say anything. By niceness did she
mean politeness? Politeness didn’t always translate into kindness.
The next morning, I was back on the porch when the Durhams and
the girl came out of their house. Mr. Durham beckoned me over.
“Time for you to meet our visitor, Mike. She’s come here all the way
from Yokohama.”
“Hello,” I said. “I’m Mike.”
She delivered a little bow. “How do you do?” She had a sweet voice,
soft and kind.
“I hope you will have a nice stay.” I could think of nothing else to
say.
“Thank you very much. I hope to make some American friend.”
We both studied our shoes.
I sensed an innocence about her. It occurred to me that, perhaps she
was a person too vulnerable for overseas travel of this sort.
“Well,” Mr. Durham said. “We’re off for a drive around town, then
up to Thayer’s Crossing for lunch. You’d be welcome to go, Mike. But five
is the capacity for this buggy.” He patted the hood of his car, a baby-blue,
bullet-nosed ’51 Studebaker.
Mariko smiled and nodded through the window as they drove away.
2021, Spring / 125
Frank seemed to be sitting awfully close to her.

That evening our phone rang about seven o’clock. My dad had gone
to Eau Claire on business, and my mother answered. I picked up the
extension.
It was Gerde Torgerson. Her husband, Berger, ran the local Phillips
66 gas station.
“Do you know there is a Jap girl staying next door to you?” she said.
“Yes,” my mom said. “The Durhams told us she would be visiting
for three or four weeks. Some sort of international exchange.”
“You didn’t say anything to them? Like she shouldn’t even be here?”
“No. Nothing like that occurred to us.”
“I guess you forgot all that happened in the war. Well, we haven’t.
And we can’t. Never. It’s an insult to our dead sons and other boys from this
town that somebody brought her here.”
My mother’s lip trembled. She had no ready reply. Everyone knew
that both Torgerson boys had died in the Pacific. One had succumbed to near
starvation and maltreatment in a prison camp after the fall of the Philippines.
His younger brother had been shot though the head at Tarawa.
“I’m trying hard to understand. But the war has been over for a long
….”
“You haven’t heard the last of this. Berger and I won’t accept it.”
Before my mother could answer, her caller hung up.
The Torgersons were not the only family to have lost sons in the war,
but they seemed most determined to pursue their hostility toward the
Japanese. Gold stars hung in the windows of eight houses in our small town.
The call came as no surprise. Several more households heard from her that
night.
The next day, Sally introduced Mariko to three of Sally’s friends.
One of the girls had let Sally know Mrs. Torgerson had contacted her parents.
They told their daughter to ignore the call, because “we are good-hearted
people.”
Sally told me later they gathered at Roth’s Ice Cream Parlor for
sundaes. The girls “couldn’t have been nicer.” They asked lots of questions
and praised Mariko for her “really good English.” The girls chatted for more
than an hour in a booth. Sally pumped some coins into the juke box, and Bill
Halley and the Comets blasted the room with Rock Around the Clock. Mariko
said she’d never heard such music. They kept time to the beat, giggled and
laughed. She’d been a little worried. But, all in all, Sally said, things went
well.
Then, out on the street, when Sally and Mariko started home, Sally
looked back to wave goodbye. It saddened her to see Cynthia Wilson pulling
back the corners of her eyes with her fingers. The others laughed and
mimicked her. Mariko asked, “Why are they doing that?” Sally had no
answer, but realized Mariko knew the behavior had been directed at her.
When Sally told her dad, he said he was disappointed but not
surprised. That’s why people had to get to know each other. To overcome
their stereotypes and prejudices. That sounded fine, but good intentions don’t
always produce good results. I guess he thought just spending time together
could change attitudes.
The smiling June weather continued, and I heard that Mr. Durham
described the rest of the week as “smooth sailing.” Jane Peterson came by
with chocolate chip cookies. Pastor Ingebrigtsen’s wife called to invite their
guest to a meeting of the church women’s club. (They passed on that.) On
one day, Eunice Durham took Mariko and Sally shopping at the Bon-Ton
Ladies’ Apparel Shop. On another day, they had lunch at Wilma’s Homestyle
Restaurant, and on Friday night the family and their guest munched popcorn
while watching Shane at the Bijou.
On Saturday afternoon, the Durhams offered drinks and snacks at a
backyard gathering for friends and neighbors. My folks and I showed up, and
quite a few others did, as well. Although I tried to decipher her expression, I
couldn’t determine what Mariko made of it all. She smiled and nodded a lot.
People would try to bow, and Mariko would hold out her hand. Then the
Americans would hold out their hands, and Mariko would bow. It was a
happy kind of confusion. I had the impression that, while our townspeople
came across as reserved, they displayed a friendly curiosity toward the young
woman.
The yard hummed with a burble of talk and occasional laughter. Two
or three men mentioned they’d been in Japan after the war. Their talk of
cheap goods and the availability of almost anything you could want seemed
well-meaning, if a bit tone deaf. Jack French from the Chamber of Commerce
tried to discover if Mariko had any business contacts. She didn’t. Maureen
Elbert, a home economics teacher, wished the school hadn’t already closed
for the summer. She’d like to have Mariko visit her class. Gift shop owner
Liz Clifford and her husband George hovered around Mariko. At one point,
Liz said, “My husband and I think you look just precious, like a China doll.”
Some invitees failed to show up, mostly friends of the Torgersons.
Mrs. Torgerson had not been idle. She’d intimated, to anyone who’d listen,
that this seemingly innocent girl was likely engaged in some unspecified,
dark practices. There had also been a buzz of gossip that the girl had not been
properly screened and her presence posed health concerns. “Cholera,
2021, Spring / 127
malaria; we don’t know what all.” Nonsense. But it was one of those rumors
the gossips, like a squadron of harpies, loved to pass along. Two or three
stores had posted “No Japs” signs in their windows. But the great majority
of our business community had refused to follow suit.
More troubling for me, Frank and three or four of his pals, arms
folded, lounged around near the garden trellis. Every once in a while, they’d
look over at Mariko. One of them would nudge Frank, and snickers would
escalate into bursts of laughter. I couldn’t hear what they said, but suspected
it came at Mariko’s expense. Their behavior struck me as repulsive. Frank’s
father, however, seemed oblivious to his son’s deportment.
I finally had a chance to steer Mariko over to a garden swing where
I offered her a soft drink. A radio blared from the house, and some people
were dancing.
She seemed quiet. I asked how she was doing. I assumed she must
be fatigued from so much activity.
“I was happy to come to America. I think I can learn much. Some
people are nice. You are nice. But some people are not nice. Even they seem
friendly, I think they not like Japanese people.”
“For a lot of people,” I said, “it just takes time. They don’t know
how to show it, but I’m sure people like you.” I could not imagine how it
could be otherwise.
“I hope we talk more,” she said.
I hoped so, too. I wondered what she might have on her mind. But
before I could answer, Mr. Durham showed up. “Someone I want you to
meet,” he said to Mariko, and they were gone.
-----
I woke up early on Sunday morning. My parents had gone off to
church, something I had long refrained from doing. I’d settled in on a porch
chair, when I spotted Mariko at the end of the Durhams’ yard, walking
toward the river. I got to my feet and trailed after her. When I caught up to
her, she’d seated herself on a bench and was watching the blue-green water
flow by. Here and there glimmers of orange-yellow morning sun played on
the surface.
“May I join you?” I said.
“Please. I have quiet time. They all went to church.”
Silently dipping his paddle into the water, a man in a canoe glided
by. A pair of kayakers followed. Otherwise, the river seemed deserted.
We chatted for a few minutes about the previous day’s gathering.
But Mariko seemed disengaged. I could not miss the look of pain in her eyes.
And, at times, she looked as if she might cry.
Words failed me. “Can I help you?”

“Mr. and Mrs. Durham very nice. Sally is very nice.”
“Yes, I’m sure they are.”
“I cannot say to them I want to go home. I worry about my auntie.
She is very sick. She is my only person.”
I knew she had no other relatives. “I think she will be proud of you.
She will want to hear about your trip.”
“I do not want to go to New York.”
“Have you told Mr. Durham?”
“No. Do not want to say hurtful thing to him.”
“I’m sure he will understand. Do you want me to…?”
She shook her head. Then she asked, “Mike-san, do you know
Japanese words mono no aware?”
I said I knew no Japanese.
“It is kind of feeling. Nothing stays the same. Life just keeps going
by. Sad feeling.”
I shook my head, not understanding she referred to the transient
nature of all things.
“I feel so alone.” She turned away and gazed at the river. She began
to hum, then to sing.
Emotion and sadness permeated her voice. When she stopped, she
closed her eyes as if in deep meditation.
“What are you singing?”
“It is called, Only the Cicadas Will Cry. All Japanese people know
this song. Hard to translate words. It is kind of lullaby from Kyushu. Singer
is little girl sent away from home as servant for rich people. She is very
lonely. If she dies, no one cares. No one will miss her. Only cicadas will cry.
No, not even cicadas. This how I feel. If I die, no one will miss me.”
Mariko seemed consumed by utter loneliness. Why she chose to
unburden herself mystified me. Perhaps there was no one else.
I suspected her unhappy feelings predated her trip to America. But
the travel and exposure to a different place and society had likely intensified
them.
Whatever the reality, I did not know how to comfort her. “I’m sure
plenty of people care about you.” I did not know who they might be. “I think
you are very special,” I said.
She blinked back tears and delivered a saturnine smile.
Once more, we sat in silence, the only sound the fluttering of
chickadees among the tree branches. When words came to her again, she
mentioned the Durhams and their daughter several times, but said nothing
2021, Spring / 129
about Frank. Recalling his behavior at the reception, I struggled to find the
right words. Finally, I said, “Has Frank done something you do not want to
talk about?” It was an inartful question.
She simply looked at me and said, “We must go back now. You are
a nice boy.”
I assumed she’d resolved to go on with the visit. Yet, she seemed
like an actor in a performance not of her choosing. I should have told
someone about our conversation. At the time, it seemed it would be an act of
betrayal. To my everlasting regret, I said nothing.
-----
On Saturday of the second week, the Future Homemakers Club
hosted a late afternoon picnic at Fred Miller Municipal Park. Named for a
local boy lost at Midway, the park occupied a promontory with a nice view
out over Blue Heron Lake. Groves of aspens surrounded the park. Sunlight
filtered through green-yellow leaves and illuminated their greenish white
bark. The area also benefitted from an extravagance of wild flowers—
oranges, yellows, and pinks—all in full bloom.
The Dunhams had arrived earlier. When my mother and I pulled in,
I saw the ’36 Ford and the Studebaker already in the car lot. I assumed Frank
had delivered Mariko and Sally. The Dunhams sat in a shaded area, greeting
guests. Mariko sat with them, greeted, in turn, by well-wishers. She had on a
flattering, soft yellow sundress.
Girls from the high school, the organizers, came under the
supervision of Maurine Elbert and a crew of parental chaperones. They’d
made a sincere effort to welcome their visitor, and they’d strung Japanese
lanterns above the tables in the picnic area, “to make the Japanese girl feel at
home,” according to Maurine Elbert.
The wooden tables were laden with food; potato salad, burgers,
brats, hand-churned ice cream, pies, and more, “a real American picnic,”
Sally said. Oily cooking odors and smoke drifted from two or three grills and
thickened the air. Someone turned up the volume on a portable radio, and
Hank Williams wailed away on Your Cheatin’ Heart. No doubt about it. It
was a genuine small-town American summer picnic. We were even treated
to the calls of yodeling loons.
Mr. Durham, like a kind-hearted puppet-master, pretty much kept
Mariko under his wing during the course of the late afternoon. She seemed
to be animated and enjoying herself as he presented her to local folks. Still,
I could not help recalling our conversation by the river. Had I exaggerated
her unhappiness? Or was she now simply doing a good job of pleasing her
hosts?
When Mr. Durham gathered the picnickers for a group photo, he

asked Mariko to say a few words. Her words were few indeed, but she
managed to thank everyone for the “nice party.” She clapped enthusiastically
for skits by a group of grade-schoolers. She hummed along during a group
sing, mixed laughter with polite smiles, and generally behaved in a buoyant
manner. My concerns seemed unwarranted.
The picnic had been underway for two hours when a mean wind
suddenly picked up, sending kids trying to catch tadpoles scurrying away
from the water’s edge. Waves that had earlier lapped at the dock splashed
with increasing energy. Black clouds roiled in across the lake, the sky
became ominously grey-green, and premature darkness settled over us.
Thunder rumbled in the west.
The picnic ended. People rushed to clear tables, collect belongings,
and pile into cars. Sally and two friends, whose parents had departed earlier,
joined the Durhams in the Studebaker.
Meanwhile, I watched Frank lead Mariko to the Ford. She appeared
reluctant. I thought I heard Frank say, “You came with me. You’re leaving
with me.” When someone is treated unfairly, our inclination should be to
offer help. Yet, uncertain I’d heard him correctly, I hesitated, just as I had
when Mariko expressed her unhappiness by the river. While I dithered, they
clambered into the Ford and drove off in a pell-mell race with other cars to
avoid the coming storm. Rain drops splattered on the parking lot asphalt.
Moments later, the storm smashed down.
-----
A chaotic night followed.
They found Mariko first. Martha Harrison and her husband had
swung back to recover a favorite casserole dish. A mile or so from the park,
a near-spectral figure appeared in their headlights. Drenched by the falling
rain, her sundress in disarray, Mariko stood hunched over among wet, black
tree trunks. Unable to communicate in any way the Harrisons could
comprehend and shaking uncontrollably, the girl initially resisted getting into
the car.
The Gazette quoted Mrs. Harrison as saying, “Thank God we were
going slowly because of the rain. Otherwise, we might have missed her.
Something bad had happened, and we headed for the first house we could to
notify the authorities.”
Soon after Mariko’s discovery, on a different stretch of road, another
motorist spotted Frank’s car, headlights still on, upside down in the lake.
Deputies rushed to the scene, but there was nothing they could do. Frank was
dead. The sheriff delivered the tragic news to Frank’s parents, who were
2021, Spring / 131
already trying to make sense of reports Mariko had been found by the road.
The sheriff concluded that, under the circumstances, they’d have to find a
different place for Mariko to stay. The Ingebrigtsens agreed to take her in.
Meanwhile, my mother and I went next door to see how we could help the
Durhams.
Early the next morning, the sheriff and a local crew towed the Ford
out of the water. As the effort progressed, Frank’s father reportedly sat in a
police car staring at his hands. He said nothing. A hearse delivered Frank’s
body to Gifford’s Funeral Home.
The Gazette reported it as the second fatality at that place in two
years. As best the sheriff could determine, probably a little after seven, Frank
lost control on a tight curve about a mile from the park. Tire tracks indicated
the Ford careened down a thirty-foot embankment and rolled over into the
lake. The county coroner could not determine with certainty whether the
impact killed Frank instantly or not.
Theories and conjectures abounded: the car’s accelerator stuck;
Frank touched the accelerator instead of the brake; unnatural darkness and
rain impaired his vision; speed was a factor. A long week followed. Even
though it was a straight-forward accident investigation, information emerged
with terrible slowness. Given the sequence of events, investigators concluded
Frank had likely pulled off the road, where he left Mariko after ten minutes
or so. In the end, however, the sheriff and the coroner determined Frank’s
death had been accidental. Whatever had transpired between Frank and the
Japanese girl did not appear to have been directly related to the accident.
Nonetheless, reactions critical of the girl were rife. Why hadn’t she
stayed with her own kind in the first place? A chorus of anger and blame,
urged on by the likes of Mrs. Torgerson, Mrs. Severson, and others, declared
Frank would still be alive had it not been for the presence of the Japanese
girl. Rumors marched with heavy tread implying she had to have done
something to upset Frank in such a manner that his good sense failed. In the
midst of accusations and innuendo, Frank’s devastated parents did not blame
Mariko, but neither did they exonerate her.
The tragedy left Mariko shattered and of little help to the authorities.
Describing the events of that evening seemed beyond her ability. We could
only speculate. The people who picked her up that night said she had been
muttering incomprehensible things to herself. Emotionally distraught,
overcome by language limitations, alone among strangers, she either locked
away the events of that night or erased them altogether. The only certain
thing is that, at some point, Frank left her beside the road and drove off. She
could not or would not say what passed between them. She remained
secluded in the minister’s house.

I saw Mariko one more time. I’d served as a pall bearer for Frank
days before, and my feelings swirled. We sat in the minister’s living room
waiting for the organization sponsor who’d arrived to escort Mariko back to
Japan. As much as I wanted to, I did not ask what had happened that night
between her and Frank.
“I wished to be good friend in America,” she said. “But I only make
trouble.”
“That’s not true. Unfortunate things happened. But they were not
your fault.”
“Mike-san, do you think I make Frank crash?” She looked at me, her
expression stitched with pain. It was as if she had no idea of where she was
or where she was going.
“It’s nothing you did,” I said.
A knock came at the door. A tall woman in a suit stepped into the
room. “Are you ready to go?” she said. “Our car is waiting.”
“Goodbye,” Mariko said.
“Goodbye,” I said.
We never heard from her again. Indeed, other than that she’d arrived
in Japan, we never heard of her again. People come into your life and then
leave. She went from nowhere to nowhere, gone as if she never was. I
struggle to recall more, but she exists only as a persistent whisper in my
memory.
BRAD G GARBER
NACHO
Ignacio (Nacho) comes from Toronto

guides tourists to freshwater caves
(cenotes) of the Yucatan peninsula
where death once rained down
destroying the Earth once again.
Nacho knows his geological shit
about the ebb and flow of oceans
slow evolution of stalactites
how subterranean rivers feed forests
how Mexican corruption creeps.
(cont)
2021, Spring / 133
Nacho knows where bats live

and the size of catfish and eels
heartbeats of spiritual hollow trees
from which the Mayan crafted boats
to take them to the underworld.
Nacho sings while he drives his bus
knows all the words in English
and Spanish. Canadian. Mexican.
Mana. Shakira. Bee Gees. Prince.
knows how to bribe the policia.
Nacho wants to leave with his dogs
before glacier melt floods the cenotes
driving jaguars and immigrants
toward unwelcome border walls
taking his love for music with him.
Garber
RYAN M MOSER
HOW TO SPIN STRAW INTO GOLD
“It’s never too late to become who you might have been. ”
quote on a prison library wall
I was ten years old when my inquisitive mother walked into my

bedroom to see me lying on the carpet, hand-copying the text from
“Rumpelstiltskin” onto construction paper. I was in complete wonderment at
the folktale in front of me.
“What are you doing, honey?”
“I’m writing a book,” I replied. “I’m going to be a famous author.”
She laughed gently and sat down next to me on the floor. “That’s
someone else’s book—you can’t rewrite it. You have to learn how to create
your own stories.”
“How do I do that?”
My mom walked me downstairs to her modest bookshelf in the den,
filled with novels and short story collections and eighties self-help books,
and pulled down Stephen King’s Pet Sematary. “You have to read as much
as you can, and then you can become a storyteller too. You have to read
before you can write.”
I looked at her like she’d just solved a mystery. “All I have to do is

read and I’ll be a famous writer?”
***
And so my epic journey through the fantasies of many great minds
began. I traveled to Castle Rock, Maine and lived in V. C. Andrews’s attic;
searched the Rue Morgue and crossed Cherokee country to find a sacred red
fern. I survived a plane crash in the Tibetan mountains with “Glory” Conway,
kidnapped and whisked off to the valley of the blue moon and Shangri-La.
Ponyboy was my best friend when I felt like I didn’t fit in anywhere. I melted
into tall tales and beloved imagery and fantastical myths. Each new book I
read was a chest of gold I’d found on the Isle of Monte Cristo. The Celestine
Prophecy scroll. Every character a version of someone I’d like to meet.
As I grew older, I would read to become submerged into the larger
alt-reality of life, not to escape. I tried to glean lessons from Holden
Caulfield’s disillusion; to learn deductive reasoning from Holmes. In The
Alchemist, Santiago sets out on a journey in pursuit of magical treasure and
realizes that it was with him all along. I was following my own Personal
Legend; my treasure was my ability to write. The residents of Alice’s
Adventures in Wonderland were my eccentric neighbor or a madhat
schoolteacher or the wise beer store owner. Every pretty girl I wooed was
Juliet.
“0, speak again, bright angel!—for thou art
As glorious to this night, being o’er my head
As is a winged messenger of heaven
Unto the white-upturned wondering eyes
0f mortals that fall back to gaze on him
When he bestrides the lazy, puffing clouds
And sails upon the bosom of the air.”
I recognized that books could provide me with all the advice,
knowledge, mentoring, and wisdom that I would need in life—even if I didn’t
heed the warnings of gods or learn from a protagonist’s mistakes. I was a
wayward teenager breaking all the rules, and I felt like nobody understood
me except the authors of these numinous books. Rilke said that a true poet
writes poems in a jail cell that no one will ever read; I began a journal with
abstract angst all over the pages, hidden from the judgment of adults. I started
writing novels with no idea how to write a novel.
***
Years later, when I was sent to prison for dealing in stolen property
to support my addictions, I didn’t think that I could possibly learn anything
worthwhile in that environment. Prison is bleak and devoid of growth or
substance. It’s not a place conducive to education. The first day I stepped
2021, Spring / 135
into the general library at Walton Correctional Institution, I was immediately

reminded of this fact when I was accosted by a junkie hooked on K-2
synthetic marijuana, begging for “toochi” to get high.
“Come on, dog...I’m sick.”
“You got two seconds to get out of my face,” I replied swiftly.
A prison library could be a precarious place—like the chow hall or
rec yard—especially for the timid or uninitiated. The Department of
Corrections is understaffed with underpaid officers who don’t give a shit
what we do, as long as it doesn’t make them work more. The library is
normally guarded by one officer sitting behind a desk, feet up and eyes
closed. Drug deals go down in the Classics section. Homosexual “punks”
meet up in the Thriller/Suspense aisle, gossiping and concocting homemade
makeup with various items from the canteen. I saw at least two gang
meetings being held—the Bloods in the Sci-Fi area were huddled up in a
tight circle; the Unforgivens stood in the row of romance novels, swastika
tattoos inked on bald heads shining under the fluorescent lights.
I ventured to the library each week for a short reprieve from the
nonstop violence and insanity on the compound, hoping to rediscover the joy
I once knew through the words of the literati. My yen for knowledge and
vibrant stories had been dormant, but not deceased. I began to immerse
myself in new genres and follow unknown writers. It didn’t come easy and
it took a long time, but eventually, I was able to use the library for good. I
found a little niche of my own behind the Reference shelves, away from the
arguments and bathroom trysts, and blocked out the entire din. I began to
seek the lessons again. I soon discovered that I was wrong—I could learn
something during my incarceration. Those same life lessons I grew up
reading were still there on the yellow. crinkled pages of the battered novels
and poetry books around me. All I had to do was get in the trenches again;
to float across the thought-clouds of the sage guides before me—Didion.
Franzen, Homer, and Burroughs. Basho and Keats and Hirshfield. The
immortalized Jung.
After a while, I befriended one of the library clerks named Jeff. He
was serving time for fraud and always had a current magazine or cool
autobiography for me when I came to the counter. The other clerks charged
some inmates a fee to check out books (by the laws of jailhouse economics,
the weak white boys had to pay a tax), but Jeff warned them not to mess with
me—he’d seen me defend myself.
“The Best American Short Stories of 2012. I thought you might like
this one.”
"Thank you. my friend." I tossed Jeff some smokes; tipping earned
respect, and respect was everything in prison. “Can you keep an eye out for
the new Atlantic Monthly?”
“Of course.”
Some days the library was closed due to a shakedown or restricted
movement because of a stabbing. Other times we would be locked inside the
spacious building for security reasons, choking on mace after a brawl near
the Urban Fiction or Fantasy sections. The one place that I expected some
civility was actually a breeding ground for decaying minds and
confrontations. As tears rolled from my red eyes, snot dribbled from my
nose, and the taste of cayenne pepper burned my tongue, I oddly recalled that
in the past, many masters had worked from behind the same walls that
surrounded me now. O. Henry and O. Wilde. Viktor Frankl and Reginald
Dwayne Betts. Dante. Defoe. Sir Walter Raleigh in the Tower of London.
Did they also sit in a broken chair and read the handwritten notes inside of
worn tomes? Or stare at the same red property stamps adorning weathered
spines? Did they pull old bookmarks like gambling tickets or love notes or
canteen receipts from novels donated by the Bradford Community College?
Watch two grown men fist fight over a copy of Harry Potter and the
Sorcerer’s Stone?
***
Prison taught me that if I keep an open mind, I can learn something
from anyone in here—even another convict in blue. But I still rely on my
books as my sanctuary script. The lessons I pull from those pages are
monumental and my true north. I’ve experienced moments of satori in my
life through reading—I was introduced to Zen Buddhism by Salinger and
Fight Club; fell in love with a Bohemian girl I’d only met in paragraph;
traveled into outer space and beyond….
"Perhaps your name is Rumpelstiltskin? ”
”The devil has told you that! the devil has told you that! ” cried the
little dwarf, and in his anger, he plunged his right foot so deep into the earth
that his whole leg went in; and then in rage he pulled at his left leg so hard
with both hands that he tore himself in two.
***
I understand now that I can be like the Mistress Queen, searching the
countryside for an answer to her problems until she found a way to survive,
or be like the defeated dwarf, so incensed to have been beaten that he
forfeited his own life.
2021, Spring / 137
ROBERT ROTHMAN
NOVEMBER
Not a day not to remember the snow

coming down like a bender from
the mountain full of itself wild
windblown and wobbly and skunk-drunk
as I meeting midway on the street
what a how-do-you-do blowing
my cap off and lost to view in
the pelting pushing me over
like a bullyboy down on my back
can’t stop laughing so besotted in
my bespoke suit of white the storm tails
off into a soft flurry these eyes
big as moons as the flakes fall like
a rain of stars so gentle and quiet
I could lie here forever not care
where the cold takes me maybe better
than here what talk lug up to the
vertical zigzag down the street
all mine this night of white November.
Rothman
PATRICK JOHN FLOOD

THE BANSHEE
Paul O’Brien was struggling with the broken armchair in his rented
Cape Cod cottage when he first heard the banshee’s howl.
He had arrived at the rental cottage two nights ago, expecting a
peaceful winter solitude but instead finding intense and immediate physical
loneliness, and now possible auditory hallucinations. The howling was
musical and distant and impossibly loud, like a church organ, or rolling
thunder, or the mating call of a dinosaur-sized cat two towns over. A picture
frame fell off the wall.

Paul went to the basement to check that the water heater wasn’t about
to explode.
The water heater was fine. He tiptoed back upstairs. All the hair on
Paul’s arms was standing straight up. Maybe the old man next door was
watching a nature documentary at maximum volume. He went to the window
in the front door and turned on the outside light.
A woman in a white nightgown stood in his driveway, knee deep in
swirling snow. She was wailing and looking straight at him.
Paul dropped to the floor. He crawled on his stomach to the center
of the room, his face pressed to the rug. She must be crazy. He should call
911—and say what? There was a ninety-pound woman screeching in his
driveway?
Paul crawled back to the front door and rose to look back out. The
woman was still staring right back at him. He ducked down. She was
crying—now it seemed that was the sound. It was no longer a haunting moan,
but a sniffling, pathetic cry.
He waved cautiously. The woman waved back and wiped her nose
with the inside of her wrist.
Paul put on his jacket and boots and opened the door a crack.
“Are you all right?” he shouted into the blizzard. “Shouldn’t you be
wearing a jacket?”
“I don’t know,” the woman replied, looking around as if she’d just
realized she was knee-deep in snow.
“Do you live around here? Does your grandfather live next door?”
“I don’t think so?” She sniffed and began once more to wail.
Paul looked up and down the dark street. He didn’t see any cars
wrapped around trees, or tire tracks, or even footprints in the fresh snow. A
pile of snow had formed atop the sobbing woman’s dark hair.
He rushed the woman inside and locked the door behind them. He
sat her in the musty non-reclining reclining chair and gave her a blanket and
a mug of hot chocolate, which she held to her face but didn’t drink. She was
wearing only a tattered nightgown but seemed lucid. Her hollowed eyes
darted about the room with curiosity and she played with the fringed end of
the blanket.
“Were you sleepwalking?” he asked. He sat on the couch across from
her.
“I must have walked, so I think.” She hovered her face over the steam
of the hot chocolate and inhaled. “I think I came over the water—imagine
that.”
2021, Spring / 139
“Did you fall off a boat?” Paul asked.

“I don’t remember that,” she laughed. “Might I ask where I am?”
“You’re in Orleans, Massachusetts. You’re on Cape Cod.”
“Oh?” she said. “Where’s that?”
Paul crossed and uncrossed his arms.
“Are you dying?” the woman asked suddenly, lifting her face.
“No—what?” Paul said.
“Hmm.” The woman was silent for a moment. Wet hair draped her
face. “Someone is dying.” She let out a mournful howl.
Paul shoved his fingers into his ears and doubled over until her
wailing slowed. The poor woman—an opera singer with amnesia, maybe?—
must have escaped the hospital and couldn’t remember she was the one
dying. It explained the nightgown and her confusion, although it didn’t
explain why it now seemed to be misting inside the cottage.
“Is it possible that you’re sick?” Paul suggested.
“My, this tea is sweet,” the woman said, wiping away tears and
taking a sip.
“No, that’s—it’s hot chocolate.”
“Hot chocolate?” she said.
The amnesiac opera singer curled over the mug and took another sip.
Paul decided not to press her for answers. He wouldn’t be able to get rid of
her tonight, not with the snow and no cell phone service. He told the woman
she should wait out the blizzard on the couch, if she wanted, and they could
figure out where she belonged in the morning. He showed her how to work
the TV—although she seemed terrified of it—and he took extra sheets and
blankets from the closet. And then he went to his bedroom and locked the
door.
Paul woke up with his eardrums ready to explode. He fell out of bed
and stumbled to the living room, ready to find the woman strangling a stray
cat. But she was wrapped in blankets on the couch, crying and watching a
knife infomercial on TV.
“What’s wrong?” he shouted.
“The knives get sharper as they wear—I’ve never heard such a thing.
How could they get sharper?”
She started to dry heave.
Paul glared at her for a long time. He offered her coffee and toast.
She refused both, enraptured by the shouting pitchman on TV. Her hair was
somehow still wet but he hadn’t heard her run the shower. He checked the
cabinets to make sure all the knives, large spoons, and other potential
weapons were where he left them.

“I thought I could take you into town?” he shouted from the kitchen.
“See if we can find someone who knows who you are?”
“I suppose that’d be best.”
Paul went to the window to check whether the snowplows had come
through yet.
He jumped back at the sight on his lawn.
Two hundred yellow-eyed seagulls were squeezed around the
cottage. Most faced the front door as if waiting for him to come out.
Paul looked at the woman. She stared at the television. He looked
back at the hundreds of seagulls, who squinted collectively with mean, dumb
eyes.
It must be the blizzard. Animals act strangely when there’s a storm.
Paul went to his bedroom get his jacket. When he came back to the living
room, the woman was gone.
Paul checked the bathroom and the bedroom. The front door was still
locked. The blankets and his clothes were folded neatly on the couch.
Nothing was missing but her.
He ran outside. The seagulls flapped and scuttered out of his way,
scowling like old drunks. Sleeping owls snuggled together on every branch
of the pitch pine whose branches hung over the cottage. He couldn’t find any
human footprints in the fresh snow.
He knocked on his neighbor’s door.
“What?” said the old man when he opened up. He was a salt-worn
Cape Coder whose house smelled like wet, second-hand wool.
“Did you see someone outside last night?” Paul asked.
“What?” said the old man, pointing to his ear.
“Did you see a woman last night?” Paul shouted.
“Christ, no, I’m ninety-three years old. Why are you asking me
something crude like that?” he said and slammed shut his door.
Paul chased off the seagulls as best he could. He drove to a coffee

shop in town. He wrote his reports and emailed them.
He deleted an email from his soon-to-be ex-wife without reading it.
Anything important would come by the mail. Could he get mail? He wasn’t
sure the cottage had a mailbox.
The thought was appealing.
In the afternoon he walked on the beach alone until his face burned
from the wind and the salt. Maybe it was some kind of scam he’d fallen for,
homeless women conning themselves a couch for the night. He went to bed
2021, Spring / 141
early.
Paul woke to rattling windows.

“Where did you go this morning?” he said, bringing the woman in.
She looked at him without recognition. Her face seemed older,
thinner, her cheeks sunken and the bone structure more prominent.
“I’m back?” she said, before nodding confirmation. “I think
someone is dying still—that’s why I’m here. Someone is dying.”
“And you don’t remember who?”
“I don’t think so. Maybe? I’m not very good at this. Where am I?”
He made more hot chocolate. When he handed her the mug, he poked
where her shoulder should be, as if by accident, just to see whether she was
real. He felt cold flesh beneath her damp nightgown.
She raised an eyebrow through her stringy hair.
“Sorry,” he said.
He tried to keep watch but fell asleep in the semi-reclined armchair,

and when he woke up, she had vanished again. The dirty mug was the only
sign she’d been there at all. That and the damp curtains.
The birds were back too. He even couldn’t see the bayberry bushes
poking out above the snow with all the birds. Twitchy sandpipers stabbed
their beaks into the snow, skittering between the ruffled seagulls and a flock
of sparrows. Paul opened the front door to shoo them all.
“Why are you putting out birdseed?” shouted his old neighbor,
shoveling his walk. “My car’s covered in bird shit.”
“I’m not putting out birdseed.”
“Bah,” the old man said.
The woman returned to the cottage that night, and the next night, and
the next. Paul would hear her animal wailing and then bring her inside, calm
her down, and sit with her long into the night. Sometimes she would wail in
the morning too, but she’d always disappear before the winter sun rose over
the water. He couldn’t figure out how she was escaping the house without
leaving the door unlocked, or where she went during the day, or why her hair
was always wet, or how someone so small made such loud cries.
He had a brief, absurd thought that she might be a ghost or a banshee
or a spirit. But he decided this was irrational, because none of these things
exist.
The woman complained often of hunger. Paul offered her all kinds
of food but she would eat only fatty strips of bacon or potatoes in various
forms: mashed potatoes, baked potatoes, French fries, potato chips, potatoes
au gratin, gnocchi, hash browns. He tried giving her a baked sweet potato,
but she spat it out and threw it into the trash.
Besides the sobbing, her pallid appearance, the mist, the frogs that
leapt from the folds of her nightgown and took up residence in the bathtub,
and the fact that she appeared to be actively decaying, the only thing that
Paul found disturbing were the woman’s answers to some of his questions:
“Why are you here?” he’d ask.
“Someone is dying,” she would say.
“Is it you?” he’d suggest. “Is it me? Am I going to kill someone?”
She would shrug her shoulders before giving in to giggles and
assuring him that she didn’t think he was going to kill anyone. But someone
was dying, she’d repeat. Someone was dying, and then she’d begin to
moan—horrible, animal moans that made Paul want to curl with despair.
The birds grew in number. His neighbor left notes on his car telling
him to stop feeding them. The seagulls cracked open clamshells on his roof.
The brief, possibly imagined appearance of puffins caused him some alarm,
but only because he didn’t think they came so far south.
“Who do you think is dying?” Paul asked her one night. He had spent
the day at the coffee shop researching local news stories about missing
people and frog species that liked to live inside, instead of doing his actual
job.
“I’m unsure,” she said. “Have you any more mashed potatoes?”
“Do I know the person who’s going to die?” he yelled from the
kitchen.
“I think,” she said, “I think that you do. That must be why I keep
coming back here to you.”
Paul stood stiff. Had she just threatened him?
“Oh, maybe not,” she said. “I’m quite bad at this. Maybe it isn’t
anyone. But then I wouldn’t still be here, would I?”
The next morning Paul chased off all the birds with a broom. He
shooed the seagulls, the sandpipers and the half-dozen puffins. He threw
snowballs at the snowy owls in the tree. When he went around back to throw
out the trash, he found the cans knocked over and, rooting through the torn
open garbage bags, a small penguin.
He dropped the garbage bags where he was standing, drove into
town, and called the owner of the cottage, who didn’t pick up. He tried animal
control. The man on the phone told him to secure the lid of his garbage can
2021, Spring / 143
with a bungee cord to keep out pests.

“But what is a penguin doing here?” Paul said.
“Are you sure it’s not a racoon?” the man asked.
He hung up. He noticed his hand was shaking.
He called his parents. They were both fine, neither of them felt ill at
all, no one was following them or had tried to break in. He had a sister in
Ohio, with a husband and a son, and he called her too. He encouraged his
sister to go to the dermatologist just in case, and maybe get a breast exam
too.
“Uhh,” she said. “I know you might not be ready to talk, but are you
all right, Paul? Do you want me to come out there?”
“What?” he said. “No, no. I know you’re worried, but I’m fine, I
promise.”
He was being paranoid. It’s just a crazy opera singer with amnesia
who also thought she was a banshee. Perhaps if he played along a bit longer,
the woman would stop pretending to be a spirit. That could be his good deed.
Three glasses shattered inside the cupboard before Paul could calm
the woman enough to bring her inside.
“Don’t you think that’s a little much?” he said, annoyed.
“The death,” she said, blowing her nose with snotty honks. She
grabbed his jacket collar. “Can’t you feel it?”
“I feel a little damp,” he said. “And wheezy. I think the curtains are
moldy from all the mist.”
“Sorry,” she said.
Later, as they watched TV, the Celtics game went fuzzy.
“It must be the seagulls breaking open clamshells on the roof,” Paul
said, tugging on the TV wires. “Are these birds yours? Did you bring that
penguin?”
“What’s a penguin?”
“If you look out the back you can see it.”
She went to the kitchen window and peered out.
“You think I’m carrying that around under me dress?” she laughed.
“No, I don’t bring the birds. Maybe the same thing brings us both. Maybe it
brings you, too.”
“I’m not going to tell the police about your secret animal zoo,” he
said. “But that penguin shouldn’t be allowed to wander. It’s not safe.”
The next morning Paul decided it was, in fact, time for the police.
He put on his best clothes, the ones that made him look least like a kidnapper.
But when he opened the cottage’s front door to go to his car, he found himself
face to face with a wild-eyed emu.
The emu paraded about the front yard, flicking snow with its feet. It
was as tall as Paul, with a fuzzy, jerky neck and feet like an evil duck. Even
the imperturbable seagulls scurried from its path. Paul opened up the rear
window, threw the empty boxes of instant potatoes at a tree, and waited for
the emu to investigate the ruckus.
But the emu was on to him. The second Paul stepped out the door,
the emu sprinted back to the front yard as if to keep him in the cottage. He
dove inside and slammed the door shut, scattering a startled cloud of birds—
that, had Paul stopped to notice, looked suspiciously like passenger
pigeons—from the roof.
That night, as the woman wailed for him outside, Paul turned the
volume of the Celtics game as loud as it could go. She would get bored and
go back to whenever she went during the day, he told himself. It was his fault
she was here—he was always making poor decisions with women and
getting himself into complicated situations he couldn’t get himself out of. He
would just have to ignore her. This was the best solution, even thought it was
cruel.
An avian squawking woke him. The sound was annoying but

different from a scream.
Daylight. She must have given up and gone home. It was like a stray
cat—once you took away the food, they went somewhere else.
Outside two new, squat and ugly birds were pecking stupidly at his
car’s tires. He rubbed his eyes. They were the size of small dogs, fat, with
bald faces.
They looked like dodo birds.
He grabbed the snow shovel to chase them off, whatever they were.
But the birds were too stupid to run. They just gawked as he waved the shovel
inches from their beaks. He feigned a swing and bopped one on the head by
accident.
The dodo fell to the ground and didn’t move.
Paul dropped the shovel in horror. He had killed it. A mating pair of
extinct birds, and he had killed one. He approached the body where it lay
under his bumper. Its partner watched from the street, cooing mournfully.
The dodo sprung up, pecked his hand, and scurried off with a squawk
to rejoin its mate.
Paul threw the shovel at the fleeing bird.
2021, Spring / 145
He went to town and bought a bigger snow shovel, another trashcan,

and a deadbolt chain. He had asked whether they had bird traps but the
salesman informed him, with a concerned stare, that they were illegal.
That night, the woman wailed an unbroken funeral dirge outside.

Paul felt an overwhelming and paralyzing sadness. He turned the TV louder.
He sat in bed and stared at the walls. He felt self-pity and then disgust at
feeling self-pity. He heard a sharp tap on the glass.
He went to the window. The woman was throwing seashells at the
house.
He stomped to the front door and opened it a crack.
“Please stop,” he said. “Just stop.”
“I need to warn you,” she said. “It’s here.”
“Go away,” he said, and shut the door. He turned the TV as loud as
it’d go and paced the living room.
A half hour later he heard a rapping at the front door.

Paul undid the chain and the deadbolt and threw open the door just
in time to yell “stop throwing goddamn seashells!” into the face of his ancient
neighbor. The old man was bundled so that only his lipless mouth showed in
the whirling snow.
“What the hell are you doing?” the old man said. “I can hear the
music you’re playing from inside my cottage.”
Paul pulled the old man inside. He brushed the snow off him and
hung up his jacket and shoved him onto the sofa. It was when he placed a
mug of steaming tea before the frightened old man that Paul realized the man
hadn’t wanted to come inside.
“Do you want me to walk you home?” Paul asked.
The old man grumbled and took the tea. He looked around the
cottage and then at Paul, his bushy eyebrows still raised.
“Sorry about the music,” Paul said.
“Why do you need to play your music so loud?”
“To drown out the….” Paul said, waving his hand in the direction of
the outdoors, where the woman wailed on the street. “The crazy woman who
just screams out there all night.”
“Sounds like my wife.”
Paul realized this was a joke—but that the old man really did not
know about the woman. Paul told him about the wailing and the sobbing, and
the misting and the frogs, and her shroud-like clothing, and the way she
would sneak away before dawn without unlocking the doors or windows.
“Sounds like a banshee,” the old man interrupted. “My grandmother

used to tell me about hearing the banshees as a little girl in Ireland. Serious
business. Serious business.”
“Yes, I think she is pretending to be a banshee,” Paul said.
“Why would you let a banshee into your cottage?”
“Well she’s not a real banshee,” Paul laughed.
“How would you know she’s not a real banshee?”
“Banshees aren’t real.”
The old man picked up the scalding tea and chugged it, to Paul’s
horror. “Who told you that?”
“No one had to tell me.”
“So how do you know?” the old man said.
Paul had trouble coming up with an answer. “They can’t exist by
definition. They’re like the fourth side of a triangle.”
“So no one told you banshees aren’t real. But my grandmother told
me she heard the banshee howl.”
“I’m…not saying anything about your grandmother,” Paul said.
“Don’t you think you’d know the difference between a real banshee
and the wind? Or a real banshee and a crazy woman?”
“I don’t know that I would,” Paul said. “The wind could sound a lot
like a banshee.”
“Well if you can’t tell the difference, maybe it is a banshee. That
noise you say you heard.”
The old man flicked the rim of his mug and gestured to the kitchen.
Only when he repeated the action did Paul realize this meant he wanted a
refill.
“What about the birds?” Paul asked, handing him the refilled mug.
The neighbor had long white hairs on his neck that he must not realize he
missed when shaving. “You can see all the birds in my yard, can’t you? How
do you explain those?”
“Everything has an explanation,” the old man shouted. “Do you
think that means I know it? I don’t think we should be stupid or listen to
hocus pocus. Preachers on TV. But do you think that thing”—the old man
pointed at Paul’s laptop—“has the answer to everything somewhere in there?
In a hundred years they’ll be laughing at how little you knew, and a hundred
years after that they’ll be laughing at those people, the way you’re laughing
at me. I used to sell encyclopedias door-to-door. All the world’s knowledge
in a dozen books. When’s the last time you saw an encyclopedia?”
“It’s all online now.”
“What we know is online. Used to be in encyclopedias and libraries.
2021, Spring / 147
But what we don’t know remains out there, howling at our doors.” He drained
the tea and wrinkled his nose. “What’s the answer to that racket you say you
hear? My wife used to make a racket. Never shut up. Haven’t heard that
racket in twenty years and I miss it every day. Where is she now? I’d love to
know that.”
“I don’t know,” Paul said.
“Warm tea in small rooms, and then oblivion. Everyone I know is
dead. Figure that out.”
Paul felt himself to be puppyish and stupid and lonely.
“Can you turn on the basketball?” the old man asked.
After the Celtics game was over, he walked the old man home and
ran back to his own cottage. He did not see or hear the woman, although he
hoped he might. He lingered for a moment at his door before shutting it.
And then he heard it. The woman was outside his door, howling and
wailing and pulling at her hair. She was as loud as she’d ever been. Paul
hurried her inside. He sat down in a chair across from her and just stared.
Now he felt only wonder.
“Who is dying?” he tried. “Is it me?”
“I don’t know. I just know I can feel it coming.”
“When?”
“Tonight.”
Paul rubbed his hair. He thought he should feel a religious
awakening, like a shiver down his spine, as if his flesh might feel the ghost
inhabiting his body and he would know the full measure of life here on earth.
But all he felt was a day-old popcorn kernel stuck between two
molars. He felt old and tired and that everything moved too fast.
The seagulls kept dropping clams on the roof, so he went outside for
a moment and chucked snowballs at them until they fled. He felt bad and so
opened a can of tuna and tossed it out back for the penguin and its new friend,
the emu. He and the woman feasted on instant mashed potatoes until Paul
drifted off.
But he woke up.

The woman was gone.
The windows were frosted over and through the ice he could see a
hint of opaque dawn and the outline of the pines and the movement of the
birds on the lawn.
He put a hand to his warm chest. He was alive.
The old man was wrong—of course the woman was not a banshee.
There are no such thing as banshees.
He decided to pay the old man a visit. His doubt was gone. He
wouldn’t tell the old man he was wrong—but he wouldn’t not tell him either.
He wanted to make his case. Everything could be found and solved and put
back in its right place.
Paul put on his boots and his jacket and his hat. He waited until the
emu was safely in the backyard and kicked snow at the dodos just for fun as
he ran past. He was alive.
He knocked on the old man’s door and rang the doorbell.
He waited.
The ambulance came and went and with it the old man’s body. The
driver asked Paul whether he knew the next of kin. Paul said he did not. The
old man had had a wife, he told the driver, but she had passed. The steam
from the driver’s Styrofoam cup danced out the cracked window of the
ambulance.
“Is that your emu?” the driver asked.
There was no howling that night—only a gentle tapping on his front

door.
Paul opened. The woman stood, kicking at the snow and flattening
the hem of her nightgown.
“Do you want to come in?” he asked.
“Does this cottage have a number?” she asked.
Paul brushed the packed snow to reveal numbers that hung next to
the door.
“Ah,” the woman said. She checked it against the small book in her
hand and frowned. She looked to the dark and empty cottage next door. “Oh
dear. And to think he had no warning.”
“Are you real?” Paul asked. “I mean, will I see you again?”
The woman gave him a freezing, swampy kiss on the cheek. Icicles
instantly formed on Paul’s eyelashes.
“Sorry,” she said, and brushed them away with clammy thumbs. She
wandered into the snow and the dark.
Paul shut his door. He lay flat on his back on the floor and ran his
hands along the scratchy wool rug and took in the low, blank ceiling, until
finally he was startled by a great rush of feathers as all the birds flew off at
once.
2021, Spring / 149
RICHARD LEVINE
THIS IS NOT ABOUT YOU NOT BEING AFRAID TO DIE
When I heard him say, “I’m not afraid to die,”

I thought, he’s never lived. Knowing I had
volunteered to go to war as a young man,

his parents asked me to speak with him.
I told them it would make no difference,

but because I care about them I talk with him.
I tell him about war, which, as I expected,

makes him curious and more enthusiastic,
even when I tell him that it never ends,

never leaves you alone. I know nothing,
as I told my friends, that could change his mind,

anymore than anyone could have changed mine.
I tell him “Go sit alone on a mountaintop

for a few months before signing up.” “What?”
he asks, laughing. I say, “I suppose you won’t

believe the world speaks to us, but it does and it will
tell you that this is not about you not being afraid
to die, it is about you being afraid to live.” “What?!”
Then, I went back and told my friends, his parents.

My friend, the mother, cried on the shoulder of my friend,
the father. Being a good man doing what good men do

because they believe it’s what good men do, he tried hard
to hold back his tears, just as soldiers do in war – one of many

small practices by which war teaches us to be inhuman.
Levine
THE LIMITS OF SCIENCE
You can count strata in a quarry,

ages of hunger some still consume,
thousands of years of struggle packed
tight in a few inches of stone.
Doesn’t look like our history, though.

Just a layer cake of rock to an untrained eye.
But scientists say they see us –
then, now, tomorrow – in colors
and compression. They don’t need

to look beyond the rings of trees
being clear-cut or dispossessed
by mountain-top mining,
to tell us why climate is changing faster

than we can adapt. But they can’t point
to a stripe and say, here is where greed
overwhelmed, and there is where we failed
to be kind and take the time to try

to understand in lieu of genocide.
Levine
ALLEGORY
It is a tragic truth: We read

allegories as adventures
we can’t wait to see in special
effects movies. The more subtle
the sign the less we see it rise

like tides and water in houses
where floods are driving people
to wave from their roofs, praying to be
rescued from stories they grew on

and just last night read to their children.
Levine
2021, Spring / 151
MARY NEWTON
A REQUIEM FOR AGNES WEEMS
The wheels on the old suitcase squeaked, and its broken handle had
been mended with tape. My mother had bought it thirty years ago. She’d
taken it with her when she left my father, so it seemed appropriate that I was
taking it now, as I left my own husband. There. I’d said it. I was leaving my
husband. After two weeks away from him, at my aunt’s house in the Sierras,
where there was relative calm, I’d made up my mind.
I began to take my clothes out of the bureau. First the one nightgown,
which I zipped into the compartment in the lid. And then I heard Virginia’s
rap at the bedroom door.
“Are you coming?”
“I don’t think I’m up to it.”
Go, go. So I can get out of here without being seen lugging a
suitcase. I dropped the luggage onto the hardwood floor on the other side of
the bed, where she wouldn’t see it.
The door opened a crack, and Virginia peered in. Her white jeans,
red tee, and blue tennies reminded me that she was going off to a Fourth of
July picnic and parade.
“Don’t hang around in the dark, honey. Getting out in the sunshine
will help your state of mind.”
“I plan to. In a bit.”
She walked toward the bed, where I now lay with my eyes closed,
pretending I’d been trying to nap.
Damn.
“Carolina, did I say something wrong this morning? I just meant that
I think this depression will pass. And that therapy would help. You
understand that, right?”
“I know it will,” I said. “Pass, that is.”
She made a couple more tries to mobilize me toward the picnic,
saying what a beautiful day it was. I demurred, claiming I had a headache. I
turned over, as though to prove the validity of my words. Virginia backed
out, closing the door gently.
I knew that, once downstairs, she’d pick up a container she’d left on
the counter by the sink. A large Tupperware bowl full of her familiar potato
salad, with deviled eggs on top in a spiral pattern. As a child the sight of it
had sent me running for a spoon. My own children loved my variation, which
contained paprika, among other things. But that was part of a world I was
leaving behind.
When I heard the front door slam, I rose and looked out the window.
She was walking toward her car, carrying the container.
I hauled the suitcase back onto the bed and packed my two pairs of
jeans. Then the dress I’d bought myself to wear at Tara’s high school
graduation.
I’d moved through the crowd, and into the auditorium, as though
sleepwalking, smiling like a doll. I’d sat next to Buckley inside, as if nothing
were wrong. I’d looked at the program he held in his hands because I’d lost
mine. Even held his hand. At the end of the day, I’d seen Tara staring at my
feet, and realized I had on two different color shoes. A navy pump and a
black one.
I placed the black pumps on top of the dress. Then the navy pumps.
It was Buckley’s fault. That was clear. Because of him I ended up wearing
two different color shoes. I ended up packing a suitcase with trembling
hands. I ended up sick to my stomach.
When I arrived at her place in the Sierras two weeks ago, with my
mother’s battered suitcase, all Virginia had asked me was whether I’d left
him. And honestly, I didn’t really know. And in trying to figure it out, I’d
told her the story, the whole story, of why I’d gotten depressed and come to
stay with her. Her jaw dropped.
***
“You’re pregnant again?”
“No, no. I had a miscarriage.”
“You’ve gotten pregnant five times? What’s wrong with you, girl?
Are you out of your freakin’ mind?”
“It was an accident,” I mumbled. “Obviously. They all were. Not
that I don’t love them.” We sat in silence, thinking of beautiful, brilliant Tara,
the result of a diaphragm that didn’t fit right eighteen years ago. Blake, who’d
taken advantage of a cheap condom to force his way into the world two years
later. Eli, conceived after a New Year’s Eve party when his brother was a
year old. And Cress, the eleven-year-old. My baby. I don’t know how Cress
got into the world. I’d been on the pill for a short time when I heard about
her. I went out of my mind at the time. And I tried not to think of her now,
because when I did my eyes teared up.
I avoided looking at Virginia, ashamed that I’d done something so
reckless, and grotesque, as to get pregnant five times. At thirty-eight I should
really have such things under control.
Partly in self-defense, I explained that, this time, I’d made
arrangements with an abortion clinic. But then I’d miscarried, so it turned
2021, Spring / 153
out I wouldn’t be needing to use the appointment after all. I ended my story
with what Buckley said when I told him I was pregnant this last time, the
fifth time. About forgiving me. Not for the pregnancy, but for making an
appointment at a clinic.
“He said it was really a good thing, after all, that we only had four
kids. As though there could be some sort of doubt. Even though we can
barely afford the ones we have. And having them delayed my education and
made it harder to get the teaching job I now help support them with. He said
he forgave me for what I’d wanted to do. So I packed a suitcase.”
“You left him for saying he forgave you?”
“Yes, Virginia. Because it just showed how far from the same page
we were. He kept asking me what I was doing, why I was packing my stuff,
and I couldn’t answer. I didn’t really know. All I could say was ‘I have to get
away.’”
***
I’d figured out I was pregnant, the first time, the day before
Thanksgiving. I was twenty years old. The test from the free clinic had come
back positive, causing me to miss a deadline for my college English class.
“We have to get married,” Buckley had said.
We sat together in the very old armchair that had once belonged to
his grandparents, with the shiny green-blue upholstery and the little palm
trees. I watched dust motes revolve slowly in a shaft of light, thinking it was
like hearing we had to undertake a voyage, suddenly and with no warning.
To, perhaps, Jupiter. With no supplies but a pair of dark glasses and a
penknife.
“We don’t really have to,” I said, in a very small voice. “I could go
to—one of those clinics.”
“An abortion?” His body tensed. I felt the hand that had been
stroking my hair withdraw. “No way.”
“We didn’t plan this,” I tried.
“No one plans to have kids.”
“Some people do.”
“Name one.” It was strange but, when called upon, I couldn’t think
of anyone. I just sat there, abashed by his heat. “Did your parents plan you?”
I was silent because they hadn’t. “Did my mother plan me?”
***
But I’d never regretted having any of them, once they were here. It
was just that I’d never had a chance to say yes or no to any of it. I placed my
bathrobe on top of the dress and the shoes. Then snapped the suitcase shut.
When I opened it again, I’d be with Terry, who was giving me a
choice to live differently. This rope ladder had been dangled down to me just
yesterday, in an ice cream parlor down the road from Virginia’s house.
***
I don’t know one kind of car from another, so I can’t name the kind
Terry drove, only that it was small and red. When the scarlet flash of it
appeared in the parking lot, with Terry at the wheel, warmth started to spread
through me. Something like the first sweet sip of cocoa during intermission
at the ice rink when I was, maybe, thirteen.
“Hey.” In a minute he was through the door, in jeans and a sky-blue
T-shirt, turning the other chair at my table around so he could straddle it, the
back against his chest. It was one of the kind made of black, twisty metal. He
smiled like he was smug about some secret.
“So how are you holding up?” Sadness came into his eyes, but it was
there on my behalf; I’d told him I’d left them all.
“I seem to be holding up.”
“I’m euphoric,” he said, his eyes still sad. “Trashing my marriage
was the best thing I’ve done for myself in the last five years. By the way,
how’s the coffee?” He pulled my cup toward him and peered into it, like I
might be some Gypsy reading coffee grounds.
“Lukewarm and very burned. I don’t recommend it.”
Terry ordered a Coke. He also asked if I wanted anything, but in the
last two days, I’d managed to get down only a bowl of soup.
“That’s the whole problem.” I searched my purse for lipstick. “I can’t
seem to get to a place where I want anything.”
“Isn’t that supposed to be good?” Terry glanced at the solitary
employee, a girl with pinkish-purple hair and a Celtic tat who was getting his
soda. “Isn’t desire supposed to cause all the world’s suffering?”
I laughed for the first time in two weeks. The eighteen-year-old
waitress prepared a glass of ice for him to pour the cola into. And I said that
my lack of desire had no spirituality about it whatsoever.
“Listen, Carolina.” He scooted his chair back from the table a little.
“It gets better. It really does. That’s why I had to come see you. And tell
you.”
“You came all the way up here, to this funky mountain town, just to
see me? In my self-imposed exile? I thought you were on vacation.”
“I came here to see you. I rented a room, even.”
“Okay. So tell me how it gets better.”
“Well, you remember what a mess I was a year ago. When I first
figured out what was going on with Roxanne.”
“I remember.”
2021, Spring / 155
I’d morphed from colleague to confidante, and then to intimate

friend, while holding Terry’s hand through his wife’s affair.
He gazed into his Coke, his fingers caressing the outside of the glass.
“For the first month I thought I was losing it. I had fantasies of—
honestly, I don’t even want to tell you. But now that the divorce is final? And
I just bought my own place? I actually feel pretty damn good. I’m free to see
anyone I want. And to notice how much I really hate Roxanne.” He looked
up at me, wondering if I hated Buckley.
“I don’t know if it’s the relationship itself,” I said. “In my case. I
think I just wasn’t designed to be a mother of four.”
“Exactly,” Terry went on. “I wasn’t designed to be a father at all. It
was one of the things Roxanne wanted that I didn’t. Which is why she took
up with—hell, I still can’t say his name. Anyway, I had to think about what
I really did want. And that’s something you should be doing yourself. It’s the
beginning of finding your way out. What did you want, way back when,
before you were married?”
“If I’d been asked,” I said, “I might have opted to be an agoraphobic
spinster. Who wrote a lot of poems, like Emily Dickinson.”
“I get that. And what I’m trying to say, Carolina, is that I’d love it if
you’d come live with me.”
I almost choked on my coffee.
“Right now?”
“When would be a better time?”
***
He’d called again, at ten in the morning, asking if I’d made up my
mind.
“Where are you?” I could feel a sense of hope taking root.
“Motel I told you about. The Pine Cone Lodge. I know you’re
undecided, so I’m advising you to think about it. If you want to come with
me, throw some stuff in a suitcase. And meet me here at one o’clock. If I
don’t see you by one, I’ll go without you. But damn, I hope you come.”
***
It was 12:15 when I accomplished the first leg of my journey: from
the bedroom down to the living room. There was no sound but the thudding
of my suitcase on the stairs and its creaky wheels on the floor.
Outside, I could hear firecrackers in the distance. My dusty Toyota
waited in the shade of a tall pine. I’d driven Tara to pediatrician appointments
in this car, with its battered seats and archaic dashboard, when she was still
a toddler. I’d taken Blake and Eli to Little League practice, Cress to
Brownies. All that, often, after driving it home from the rough, noisy high
school where I taught English.

I threw my suitcase into the trunk. Nothing stood in the way of my
driving down this road to wherever it led. No one knew where I was right
now. It seemed almost a shame to mess it up by joining Terry.
“The road’s blocked,” I heard someone say.
A couple across the street gazed down the hill in dismay. And now,
for the first time, I noticed people in the distance, lining the one road that led
out of Virginia’s tiny mountain town. The parade was about to start. My brain
filled with Terry, waiting in a motel lobby. It was now 12:25.
The sun, through the windshield, lit up my wrinkled road map. It still
lay on the dashboard from the day I’d driven up here, desperate to confide in
Virginia. I slipped onto the roasting driver’s seat. It was a good thing I hadn’t
worn shorts today. The steering wheel burned my fingers.
I started the car, ready to move my foot to the gas as soon as the road
was clear. I turned on the air conditioning.
Ahead, people stood waiting to watch the parade. The man with the
bolo tie I’d seen in the corner store was there with his wife. The girl with
pink hair from the ice cream parlor. The couple who ran the secondhand shop
and their kids. But I didn’t belong among them.
I was an “adulteress” now. Or anyway, about to become one. I’ve
never thought of myself as the type to have the word adultery echo in my
head when planning to leave my husband for another man. As though I were
religious. Of course, I had never planned to leave my husband either. But
then again, I didn’t remember ever exactly planning to get married in the first
place.
The parade started with two teenage girls in red, white, and blue,
twirling batons. People cheered and whistled. In a few years Cress would be
that age. Where would she be, and what would she be like? Would she hate
me for leaving Buckley? For abandoning her? Was I abandoning her?
It was 12:30 now. How many more floats were there?
A pickup truck from a roofing company came along with two guys
in the back, giving the peace sign. Then, strangely, a woman riding a donkey.
“Kids just happen,” Buckley had insisted. Twenty-year-old Buckley,
that day in the armchair. “No one knows when they’re going to happen. You
can try to stop them. We did. You used a diaphragm. Did it help? Kids come
to Earth from outer space. When it’s time for them to come.”
“Outer space?”
“Wherever. You know what I mean.”
“They come from people having sex,” I said. “There are billions of
people walking around this planet right now. All of them started with
2021, Spring / 157
somebody missing their period. Even terrible people. Like Hitler and Charles
Manson.”
“That’s got nothing to do with me. This is my girlfriend. And my
kid. Not Hitler or Charlie Manson.”
“And what do you mean they come from outer space?”
“You know. You’ve looked up at the Milky Way. Out in the desert,
where billions of stars are up there, glittering. And you get that feeling like
you’re being watched. Someone up there decides when people are going to
have a kid.”
“Someone up there? But you’ve said, many times, that you don’t
believe in any gods.”
“I don’t,” Buckley said. “Under normal circumstances. But when
something like this happens, it makes you wonder if there really is somebody
out there.”
“Things like what?”
“Like a baby boy. Or girl. That’s mine.”
We were quiet while I absorbed this. He wanted the baby. A lot. To
him it wasn’t a calamity. It was some kind of miracle. And Buckley holding
something sacred was rare.
We were married on a Saturday morning in January. Our breath
turned to steam as we stood outside the chapel, waiting for the minister to
unlock the door.
***
At 12:40 a Chevy convertible went by, full of white poodles, and a
classic truck, carrying a bowling league in retro ’50s garb. The last item was
a gray-haired man with several llamas. A five-year-old girl rode one of them,
dressed as a gaucho. The kid looked confused, and the man himself looked
confused, as he waved one hand at the crowd and led the llama with the other.
The whole parade seemed to symbolize humanity in my overheated
brain. One generation following another confusedly. And I wasn’t in my
expected place among them, walking next to my husband, our kids all around
us.
I was one of those bad women. One who would live in infamy, like
Salome, or this woman I read about in the newspaper who strangled her
twelve-year-old son. In the picture she looked desperate, with her hair in a
flyaway topknot and a crazy look on her face. It was clearly the face of
someone that bad things had happened to, things she had never managed to
work through. Some of them probably a result of her own actions. Her name
had been Agnes Weems.
I’d absorbed Agnes’s story from a scrap of yellowed newsprint
which I’d used to wrap the old glass star we always put on top of the
Christmas tree. I’d trimmed the tree, and placed the star, and was poised to
throw out the paper that had protected it, when the headline “Mother Murders
Own Son” leapt out at me. The article described Agnes Weems as “troubled”
and “an alcoholic.”
I was deep in the story when Buckley came home and fell onto the
couch next to me, tired from his work helping disabled veterans. I found
myself not wanting him to see the story about Agnes. Prompted by some
impulse to protect her, and maybe him, I crumpled her shocked, staring face.
Then chucked the balled-up paper in a brown bag I was using for broken
glass bulbs. It was weird that I still remembered her name.
It was 12:50 now, according to the car clock. I had ten minutes to get
to Terry, and away.
The man leading the llama was the last item, and then the crowd
began to break up. Gradually, the street cleared of animals, and of motor
vehicles. The people milled onto the sidewalks, in small clumps, while I sat
with my foot on the brakes. I could still make it to freedom if I tried. So why
didn’t I step on the gas? Mesmerized, I watched the man with the bolo tie
help his wife onto the curb. I watched others, holding hands, drift down the
walk and out of sight. It was as though the generations had petered out.
I wondered if the end of humanity would be like that. No apocalyptic
flash, after all. Just people wandering off the planet in small groups. I
pictured Tara, Blake, Eli, and Cress drifting along with Buckley. And I’d
be—where? I envisioned walking with Terry, hand in hand, on some
unknown street.
“Don’t look so dismal. It’s not the end of the world.”
It was Virginia, in the passenger-side window.
“How do you know it isn’t?” I managed a laugh. “The apocalypse
could come any minute.”
“True.” For some reason Virginia laughed at the thought of the
apocalypse. She still held the Tupperware container, balanced on the palm of
one hand. It was round, diaphanous, and sky blue. I could see leftover potato
salad in it. “I’m glad you made it out of the house anyway,” she said. “Hey,
I saw your friend just now. That Terry. Passing by, in his car. I’m surprised
he didn’t stop and say good-bye.”
“I’m not,” I said. “He has a lot on his mind right now. And so do I.
Anyway, let’s get home. I’m starting to get hungry.”
2021, Spring / 159
MARGUERITE BOUVARD
THE LAST WORD
In England and the United States

people hunt as a sport, but in the U.S.
guns are part of our culture.
But what do we mean when we say
our culture? In El Paso and Fort Bend

Texas, a county of 118 languages,
where people mingle with Mexicans
across the border, where according
to the President A wall will protect us

from Mexican rapists and dirty criminals,
a gunman from "our culture" killed
22 people, and wounded 24 who were
rushed to a distant hospital. But the grief,

sorrow and shock created a language that
encompasses us all, a steeple of love; the pain
belongs to all of El Paso, and a woman prayed
for the gunman, We don't want to be

hateful, we want to forgive people.
Prayer circles came together, there was
music, dancing, flags of the U.S. and Mexico
fluttered together reminding us that we are

one family, like the man who lost his wife
and had no one else was comforted
by hundreds of people. There were flowers, candles,
but no borders, no walls, just a handwritten

poster, Through the darkness light will prevail.
Bouvard
PERSPECTIVES
In a world of vast cumulus clouds,

warming seas filled with the sting
of jellyfish, in a world of deeper stings
when a policeman shoots an innocent
black man, and then claims that he was just

protecting himself, where we do not see
ourselves in the "other," and are blinded by
hatred and a twisted version of history,
there is another world, a drawing of flowers

made by a four-year-old child, the hand
reaching out to another, the scent of a hidden
garden; sage, basil, thyme, the spurt
of bushes growing out of ancient

volcanic rock, green feathers growing
out of destruction, nature talking back
to us, love sliding through crevices.
Bouvard
RILEY SIMMONS
SOUL SEARCHING
“Oh, oh, Riley, look! A shooting star!” Jess squeals with giddiness.
“Jess,” I begin to laugh, the good kind of laugh that comes from deep
down in your belly and is fueled by tequila. “We’re in Boston and you’re
drunk. That’s an airplane.”
I join my friend and roll over onto my back to stare up at the night
sky. It’s nearly 11 pm but the light from the skyscrapers makes it look like
dusk is just settling in for the night. Nights like these make me love the
perpetual energy of the city and miss quiet nights in my hometown just the
same.
The two of us are lying down in a small patch of grass that could
2021, Spring / 161
only be ever called a “park” by urban standards. It’s a humid mid-August

night, but the salty seaport breeze gives my skin the slightest reprieve from
the summer heat. Or maybe the alcohol is just making my blood simmer a
little.
If we were back home instead of Boston, we’d be lying in a real park,
the kind that has a playground and baseball field. Instead we’re surrounded
by concrete and chaos. In the land of suburbia, lying down in the grass would
result in a symphony of peeper frogs engulfing us on all sides rather than a
cacophony of clashing voices. And when we look up at the sky, we could
easily find the Big and Little Dippers.
But this is Boston, and trying to find a single star is more difficult
than any Where’s Waldo picture book.
***
Until then, I didn’t realize how much I missed seeing the stars. After
living here for four years, you start to forget the sky in most places is not
solely dark, blank, and sad. Most places have constellations or the northern
lights or maybe a real shooting star if you’re lucky. When I was younger my
mother used to tell me that every star in the sky was the soul of someone who
passed away. But only the brightest stars were the souls of our family, only
the most radiant ones belonged to us.
“One day,” my mom would tell me. “One day, I’ll become your
North Star. You’ll always know where I’ll be, all you have to do is look up.”
We could spend hours in the front yard, sitting on the stone wall and
staring into the glimmering abyss, appointing stars. Over the years, the
glistening collection grew. Searching for souls in the sky became easy. That
one belongs to Grammy, this one to Grampy. That one over there? Belongs
to Nana. One for Aunt Laurie and Jimmy and even one for the old family
dog. Everyone that has ever loved me is a star.
It’s hard to tell if they’re still watching over me when disguised by
the city lights.
Do they miss me? I miss them.
***
I always feel energized in the city, but never quite reassured. Being
somewhere different has always been what I wanted, and I don’t regret any
of it. I love the bonds I’ve shared and the connections I’ve made. But it never
completely felt like home. Home is the cul de sac where Grampy taught me
to ride a bike and the gardens where Nana would play hide-and-seek with
me. I can’t help thinking about the strangers surrounding me, and how sad
the souls in the sky probably are because they can’t see their people. I’d like
to be somewhere with an open sky when finality comes for those closest to
me. I want to be able to have the best view of my people up there, and I like
to think they want that too. I don’t want to miss the North Star.
“Okay, I swear I found one this time, look.”
The sound of Jess’s voice snaps me back into reality. Cocking my
head to the left, I tilt my chin up to meet the direction of her finger. I stare
up into the sky. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing… oh wait! Something! I squint
as hard as I can and when my gaze focuses there is the slightest sparkle of a
star attempting to outshine its many rivals.
“Who do you think it is?” I ask.
Jess pauses before saying, “Riley, what the hell are you talking
about?”
I laugh and explain it the same way my mom did to me all those
years ago. She looks at the sky inquisitively before confidently affirming that
the star is in fact her beloved pet tortoise. She turns to look at me, softly this
time, as though all the alcohol has evaporated from her bloodstream. “That
one over there though,” she says. “I think that one’s my grandfather. We
called him Bumpy and he was pretty great.”
We continue naming the stars, each one harder to find than the next,
until we are absolutely completely positive there are just no more stars left
in Boston.
REBECCA BAGGETT
IN GERMANY, WHITE SWANS
skim surfaces of lakes and rivers

in medieval villages with their houses
painted like children’s blocks,
in gray centers of industry throughout
Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg.
Serene and elegant, a wisp of cloud
traversing a winter sky. No one here
talks of the war—the one everyone
thinks of—omitted from museum displays
and plaques on historic buildings.
No one talks of the bombings, the years

my country bombed this city that may
have birthed my German ancestors,
(cont)
2021, Spring / 163
this city where our daughter begins

her new life, this city with its factories,
its opera house and palaces, delicate pastries
and beaming bakers, its cobbled plazas
and winding trails.
I wonder about the swans in those terrible years,

whether they flew and where, if the pull of home
proved irresistible, if they returned, gliding
over the craters, the rubble, the smoke of the camps,
the hastily-dug graves, folded their snowy wings
like the gentle closing of a door between one room
and another as they settled back onto the rivers
where they were born. What did the swans see,
what do they remember, skimming so lightly
over these dark waters?
Baggett
GUILT
Guilt, you raggedy hag,

riding my back like a hump,
what did I do to earn
your wretched company?
I was so quick to take on blame

at home or school, for what,
I never was sure, but, oh,
I lugged you in my backpack,
tucked you in suitcases

when packing for camp,
heard you cackle with glee
when I despised my mother,
felt your breath sear my neck

when I abandoned wailing toddlers
so I could scribble all day and flirt
over dinner at writers’ retreats.
(cont)
Some days I can scarcely write

in the shadow you cast, dark
as octopus ink. You’re
a carbuncle seething under my skin,
a bloated tick – here, here’s a poem,

inscribed in your favorite black-penitent
ink. Will it do, or do you require
a chunk of my flesh, my heart
on a skewer, barbequed just for you,

my familiar, my shrew, the lifelong
screech in my head, my nemesis –
will this pacify you?
Baggett
KENNETH M KAPP
THREE ETUDES
1.
First Steps
Karen and Henry opened the door to the nursery. The late afternoon
sun streaked through the blinds, casting bars of light over the crib. Karen
started to shake; Henry turned and hugged her tightly. She began to sob, “He
was just learning to walk. It was so funny watching him lift one foot and then
wondering what he should do next. It’s just not fair!”
Henry’s tears fell on her head. “They said not to worry. ‘Kids are
fine; if they get sick, it’s like a cold and they’re better in a couple of days.’
They didn’t even want to test him, said it wasn’t necessary.”
Karen stepped back, wiped her nose with an already wet
handkerchief. “Mom said that’s because they didn’t have enough tests. She
blamed Trump. ‘That orange freak killed my baby. He claimed those 15 cases
would disappear.’ I’ve never been so mad. It’s my baby he killed!”
Her hands became white fists and Henry had to stop her from
punching the wall.
“I’m so sorry, Karie, I’m so sorry. The doctors said they did
2021, Spring / 165
everything they could to save him. Claimed it wasn’t like anything they’ve
seen before. I asked if it would have made any difference if we had brought
him in right away. He said that even if he had tested positive, most likely
they would have sent him home since they were short on just about
everything including nurses.”
Karen sighed and then pulled him to the crib.
She put her hands on the railing and started to shake it. “Not fair, not
fair!”
Henry put his arm around her shoulders. “Ssh, shh. I know it’s not
fair. Our pastor says time heals and maybe it does, but now it does shit-little
for the pain. And to think how we prayed all that time to have our baby born
healthy….”
His voice tailed off. Anger boiled out, “I can’t believe they gave us
that discharge certificate as if it was something to frame and put up on the
wall. ‘Christopher Jonathon Snelling, cause of death—pediatric multisystem
inflammatory syndrome.’ You’re right, it’s just not fair."
Karen sobbed, “He was just getting ready to take his first steps.”
2.
Scooby-boo
Scott organized The Great Goth Graduation Party at the old cemetery
behind The Little Church on the Hill. “My Dad’s got a shit-load of scotch in
the basement; the way they drink he’ll never realize two bottles are gone.”
Kevin said his older brother was going to give them a couple of cases
of beer. “Dan says we got screwed; it’s the least he can do.”
There weren’t more than a dozen Goths in their class and as Suzie
said, “We’ll have snacks and snacks (marijuana) but not smack. That stuff
will kill you as sure as lining disinfectant.”
Scott, aka Scooby-boo, said the moon would be full June 7 and the
date was set, “So, good people, it’s black and rattling chains in the cemetery
on the hill.”
Scott was always swooping down on his skateboard, frightening
friends with a sudden “Boo”—hence the name. And he promised one
awesome haunting scream down the hill whenever the party broke up.
“People will think it’s some kind of mutant rooster.”
Everyone was thoroughly wasted by the time the beer ran out at 2
AM. The bottles were arranged in the lanes between the headstones as if for
tenpins. Someone wrote a note on the empty cases: “Will be back later, forgot
my bowling ball.” I.B. Crane.
Hugs all around and the graduates gathered to the sides of the
cemetery gates as Scooby-boo ran down the lane, jumped on his board and
went into a crouch. As he gained speed, he began howling, which
unfortunately, masked the siren of an emergency vehicle rushing an older
man to the hospital. They met head-on at the intersection. Scott was dead by
the time another emergency vehicle arrived at the scene. The man in the first
vehicle was admitted and put into the special COVID-19 unit. He died two
days later.
At Scott’s funeral. his father blamed the fake news for his son’s
death. “It’s the liberals that killed him with their fake news. Got that old guy
all worked up, worrying about not being able to breathe. He should have
listened to President Trump, gotten some of that Clorox-quinine medicine.
Never would have panicked and needed to rush to the hospital. Scott was a
good kid. Damn democratic governor was the one who closed the schools.
Otherwise, Scott would have been at a regular graduation and prom. I blame
them. Going to make sure Trump wins again!”
3.
Carpe Diem
Ed rolls over onto his stomach and lets the song run through another
chorus. He hadn’t thought about the Fugs for over 50 years. Yeah, now with
COVID-19 knocking at every door, the song comes in loud and clear—
followed me from Brooklyn to Scottsdale. Fuck all! Damn right “Death is
coming in!”
He gets out of bed, picks up his shorts from the corner where he
tossed them the previous night. On the way to the bathroom he mutters to the
empty house, “I get sick, die—who gives a flying fuck? Kids can’t come out
even if they wanted to. Can’t blame them. Airplanes are a cesspool full of
the virus. Always about the buck. Promised to keep the center seat empty—
yeah, who’d believe that? Surprised they don’t stick passengers in the
overhead. Right, and they’ll get billions from the Republicans while the little
guy goes belly-up!”
Washed, teeth brushed, but still unshaved, Ed fills his mug with iced
coffee from the refrigerator, splashing oat milk up to the rim.
He takes a few quick gulps, the song still going strong in his head.
“Going to see if it’s on YouTube. Best way to get rid of it is to listen to it
played live, at least that’s what I’m told.” He decided long ago that muttering
was one of the chief advantages of being a widower.
He goes into his den, searches the internet, and finds several FUGS
2021, Spring / 167
selections on YouTube. “Damn, If I didn’t get lucky, I thought they’d all be

dead by now and here they’re playing at the Lincoln Memorial for the 50 th
anniversary of their exorcism at the Pentagon. Trying to get the devil out of
the White House. Hysterical! Ironic too, considering Lard Pants had a town
hall meeting there with Fox News three years later. Can’t believe the bull
coming out of his mouth. Going from 15 people getting sick to now over
80,000 dead. Damn!
“Going to clip this YouTube site and send it to my kids. Don’t know
if they’ll remember I told them about the FUGS, but now they can hear for
themselves.”
Ed clicks and listens to a couple of numbers before returning to the
kitchen for more coffee. He’s not feeling well. Tells himself he’s OK, “Been
keeping socially isolated and wearing my mask when I go out; hands never
been so clean. It’s those MAGAs who don’t give a shit. Don’t see them
signing a waiver not to go to a hospital if they get sick. Probably laugh their
heads off if a New York liberal got sick and died. Better they should drink
gallons of bleach like Killer Don the Con suggested.”
He looks at the clock over the stove; it’s just after 8. He puts his cup
down, deciding a little sunshine and a brisk walk would be a good idea.
He no longer hears “Death is a coming in” but as he turns at the end
of his drive another FUGS song begins—“Sometimes I Feel Like Homemade
Shit”—and later the sounds of a yodeling cowboy chase him down the street.
JOEL SAVISHINSKY
SUMMERTIME BLUES
It is what the parents could afford:

a defunct summer camp in
the Catskills, its musty cabins
rented and restored, home
for a season for 94 children,
the remnants, transplants like
themselves, survivors of other people’s
dreams, of all the burnt offerings
made from Europe’s madness.
(cont)
On the
warm August weekend of Family Visiting Day,
mothers and fathers arrived in their taxis,
old Pontiacs, and delivery trucks, carrying
boxes of chicken and salads, baskets of challah,
thick accents, rolling up their sleeves in the heat,
laying out lunches, while history’s silent numerals
mutely watched in blue from their forearms.
On that
morning, a miniature museum, a plywood shrine
the size of memory, a walk-in closet, was nailed
together, grew on the Chaverschaftplatz –
the Place of Comradeship—its walls lined with grainy,
blown-up photos of fighters, tanks, cattle trains
and crowded stations, the Warsaw Uprising,
the artilleried buildings, the real last supper
of the Passover seder, in front of which
one or two of the struggle’s aging veterans,
up from New York and the sewers of history,
would tell their story, question the silence,
suffer to find the words once more for
the last time…until the next one…
if there was one.
On other
visits, made some thirty summers later by
yesterday’s parents, the graying guests discovered,
on the granite and columned campuses, that
the New World’s buchers, their studious grandchildren,
had now also been tattooed. The elders shook
their heads, shutting their eyes and lips, miming
what the young had done to the past
and the other camps.
Savishinsky
2021, Spring / 169
RICHARD C RUTHERFORD
FROM THE WINDOW BOX
From the second-floor window box, pastel flowers hang on stems

fine as twists of hair. Sunlight through the trees dapple a pale orange wall.
Below, breathing loudly through their laughter, two girls chase each other
around patio furniture. The clap-clap of sandals on tile applauds.
Moving slowly, an old woman lays out sliced tomatoes, bell peppers,
purple onions, cheese and meat. A clear bowl holds macaroni salad with
black olives and shredded carrot. She puts her hands on the cool, sweat-
covered pitcher of tea, jostling the ice cubes and sliced lemon. On a hot day
like this, the icy cold brings back not a specific memory, but a category of
satisfying sensations.
She moves silverware onto the paper napkins as weight against a
breeze, and mindful of the girls, slides the glasses toward the center of the
table. Tempted by the smell of watermelon, she thinks better of it. After
smoothing minor wrinkles on the tablecloth, she takes a padded chair—
handy, but not in anyone’s way.
This woman, whose husband drinks but doesn’t speak, who’s had no
son come home from the war, knows simple pleasures.
Daughters with husbands and surly boys call back and forth within
the house. Folding her hands in her lap, her fingers like chicken feet, she
opens her mouth to scream, but only mumbles. Turning her attention to her
granddaughters, she watches them, pixie and ponytail, then closes her eyes.
Once again, a girl.
CONTRIBUTORS
JAMES ADAMS was nominated in 2007 for a Pulitzer Prize for his
collection, Noble Savage: Poems. His poems have appeared in or are
forthcoming in Rattle; Light: A Journal of Photography & Poetry; The Muse
(India), and other publications. His work has been translated into Chinese,
Dutch, French, German, Russian, Spanish, and Ukrainian.
REBECCA BAGGETT’s first full-length collection, The Woman Who

Lives Without Money, will be published by Regal House Publications in
Spring 2022. She is the author of four poetry chapbooks, and individual
poems appear in numerous journals and anthologies. Recent work appears in
Atlanta Review, Miramar, Southern Poetry Review, and Tar River Poetry.
She lives in Athens, GA.
MARGUERITE GUZMAN BOUVARD is the author of ten poetry books,

two of which have won awards including the MassBook Poetry award. She
has also written a number of books on social justice, human rights and
women's rights. She is a former professor of poetry and political science.
ANN BRACKEN, an activist with a pen, has authored two poetry

collections, No Barking in the Hallways: Poems from the Classroom and The
Altar of Innocence, serves as a contributing editor for Little Patuxent Review,
and co-facilitates the Wilde Readings Poetry Series. Her poetry, essays, and
interviews have appeared in anthologies and journals, including Women
Write Resistance, Mad in America, Fledgling Rag, and Gargoyle. She has
had two Pushcart Prize nominations. Her advocacy work centers around arts-
based interventions for mental health, education, and prison reform.
www.annbrackenauthor.com
ARTHUR DAVIS is a management consultant who has been quoted in The

New York Times and in Crain’s New York Business, taught at The New
School and interviewed on New York TV News Channel 1. Over a hundred
tales have been published and he was nominated for a Pushcart Prize,
received the 2018 Write Well Award for excellence in short fiction and, twice
nominated, received Honorable Mention in The Best American Mystery
Stories 2017.
J SALER DREES was born in and has lived all over California, currently
residing in San Diego. Previous works have been published in Bitterzoet,
Bridge Eight, Change Seven, Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, Spark: A
Creative Anthology and West Trade Review. Forthcoming works can be
found in OxMag and Blue Lake Review. And to all you readers out there:
much love, thank you!
LAWRENCE F FARRAR, a Minnesota resident, is a former US diplomat,

with multiple postings in Japan, Europe, and Washington, DC. Short-term
assignments took him to more than thirty-five countries. Including earlier
stories in Evening Street Review, his work has appeared seventy-five times
or so in literary magazines. Farrar's stories often involve a protagonist
2021, Spring / 171
encountering the norms and customs of a foreign society.
JONATHAN FERRINI is a published author who resides in San Diego. He

received his MFA in motion picture and television production from UCLA.
PATRICK JOHN FLOOD is a writer living in New Rochelle, New York.

He is a graduate of City University London's Creative Writing program. His
work has previously appeared in New Haven Review and Narratively. He is
currently working on a first novel and a collection of short stories.
JUDITH FORD’s work has appeared in many literary journals and has won
prizes for both poetry and fiction. After retiring from a long career as a
psychotherapist and educator, she earned her MFA in writing from Vermont
College of Fine Arts in 2016. She is currently finishing a memoir, Fever of
Unknown Origin. She, her husband and their two small dogs live part-time
in Milwaukee, WI, and part-time in Santa Fe, NM.
BRAD G GARBER has degrees in biology, chemistry and law. He writes,

paints, draws, photographs, hunts for mushrooms and snakes, and runs
around naked in the Great Northwest. Since 1991, he has published poetry,
essays and weird stuff in such publications as Edge Literary Journal,
PureSlush, Front Range Review, Tulip Tree Publishing, Sugar Mule, Third
Wednesday, Barrow Street, Black Fox Literary Magazine, Barzakh
Magazine, Ginosko Journal, Junto Magazine, Slab, Panoplyzine, Split Rock
Review, Smoky Blue Literary Magazine, The Offbeat and other quality
publications. 2011, 2013 & 2018 Pushcart Prize nominee.
MARCELLO “RELENTLESS” GIBBS. is a 37-year-old Black male from

Corsicana, TX. He is an author and poet. He has multiple books in different
genres coming out soon. “My goal is to connect with as many poets, writers,
authors, magazine companies, and organizations as I can.”
ROBIN GREENE teaches writing and yoga, and is the author of an Amazon
best-seller, Real Birth Women Share their Stories (nonfiction) and The Shelf
Life of Fire (a novel). Greene has published two collections of poetry,
Memories of Light and Lateral Drift, and regularly publishes essays, short
fiction, and poetry. Her essay “The Winter of East 81st Street” was recently
nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Currently, she is working on a new novel.
KENNETH M KAPP was a professor of mathematics, a ceramicist, a

welder, and an IBMer until downsized in 2000. He taught yoga until COVID-
19 decided otherwise. He continues writing, living with his wife and beagle
in Shorewood, WI. He enjoys chamber music and mysteries. He's a
homebrewer and runs whitewater rivers. Please visit www.kmkbooks.com.
STEPHEN J KUDLESS is a poet and playwright whose work has appeared

in the US and abroad: The Country and Abroad, Light: The Journal of Light
Verse, Inverso (Italy), Freefall (Canada), The New York Times. And on
stages: Beds and How Fish Breathe, All Souls Players, NYC and Killing
Time: What We Do, Gallery Players, Black Box Festival, NYC, 2020. His
poem “The Color Hazel” won first prize in The International Lawrence
Durrell Society’s poetry competition. He retired from the English
Department of Touro College and lives in Staten Island and Manhattan.
DIANE LEFER is in stay-at-home mode with a lovely cat who does not
respect social distancing. She continues her work, via videoconferencing,
with survivors of torture and persecution as they seek asylum, and begin to
heal and rebuild their lives in California. Her most recent novels are
Confessions of a Carnivore (Fomite Press), inspired by her relationship with
a baboon at the LA Zoo, and Out of Place (Fomite Press).
LENNY LEVINE has written songs and sung backup for Billy Joel, Peggy
Lee, Diana Ross, Barry Manilow, the Pointer Sisters, Carly Simon, and
others. He’s also composed many successful jingles, including McDonald’s,
Lipton Tea, and Jeep. His short stories have been widely published in literary
magazines and journals, and he received a 2011 Pushcart Prize nomination
for short fiction.
RICHARD LEVINE is a retired NYC teacher, and the author of Richard

Levine: Selected Poems (FutureCycle Press, 2019), Contiguous States
(Finishing Line Press, 2018), and five chapbooks: The Cadence of Mercy, A
Tide of a Hundred Mountains (winner, 2012 Bright Hill Press Chapbook
Competition), That Country’s Soul, A Language Full of Wars and Songs, and
Snapshots from a Battle. He was co-editor of BigCityLit.com, and continues
to serve as an advisor. richardlevine107.com
WALTER B LEVIS, a former crime reporter, now teaches and works

freelance. His nonfiction has appeared in The National Law Journal, The
Chicago Reporter, The Chicago Lawyer, The New Republic, Show Business
Magazine, the New York Daily News, and The New Yorker. He is author of
2021, Spring / 173
the novel Moments of Doubt (2003). His short fiction has been widely
published and includes a 1991 Henfield Prize and a 2006 Pushcart
nomination. Complete info: http://www.walterblevis.com/
MILT MACHÁLEK’s first life was from Texas farm boy to Harvard and
then PhD in nuclear physics, followed by research in fusion energy at Los
Alamos and Princeton. His second life was international high-tech business,
dealing in Russia and Kazakhstan and then CEO of a domestic high-tech
company. His third life of the past two decades is metal sculptor and writer
of poetry. He lives in Lititz, PA, “coolest small town in America.”
AL MAGINNES is the author of eight full-length poetry collections, most

recently Sleeping Through the Graveyard Shift (Redhawk Press, 2020) and
The Next Place (Iris Press, 2017). He has new poems appearing or
forthcoming in Plume, Terrain.org, Tar River Poetry, and Lake Effect, among
others. He lives in Raleigh, NC where he has recently retired from teaching
and wonders what comes next.
JOAN MAZZA worked as a medical microbiologist and psychotherapist,

and taught workshops focused on understanding dreams and nightmares. She
is the author of six books, including Dreaming Your Real Self. Her poetry
has appeared or is forthcoming in Rattle, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Prairie
Schooner, Adanna Literary Journal, Poet Lore, and The Nation. She lives in
central Virginia. www.JoanMazza.com
TARA MENON is a freelance Indian-American writer based in Lexington,

MA. Her writing often focuses on Asian-American experiences. Her fiction
and essays have been published in several journals. She is a published poet
whose work has appeared in many magazines and anthologies. She has
written book reviews for various publications.
MARLENE S MOLINOFF splits her time between New York City and
Kiawah Island, SC. She is completing a novel about a late-life romance
between a woman and a much younger man and working on a collection of
short stories about people in transition. A former literature teacher and
marketing strategist, she has traveled and photographed extensively. Her
short fiction has appeared in, among others, Forge, The Alembic, Amarillo
Bay, The Edge, Crack the Spine, Steam Ticket Journal, Good Works Review,
and Ducts.
RYAN M MOSER is a recovering addict serving a ten-year sentence in the

Florida Department of Corrections for a nonviolent property crime. Previous
publications include Evening Street Review, Storyteller, Santa Fe Literary
Review, The Progressive, Muse Literary Journal, Iconoclast, december,
themarshallproject.org, medium.com, thewildword.com, thestartup.com, and
more. In 2020, he received an Honorable Mention for Essay award from PEN
America, including publication in PEN Literary Journal. He is a Philadelphia
native who enjoys yoga, playing chess, and performing live music. He is a
proud father of two beautiful sons.
MARY NEWTON is a writer and retired teacher. She holds a BA in creative

writing from UCLA, and an MA in English Literature from San Francisco
State University. Her work has appeared in Westwind, UCLA’s literary
magazine, and in The MacGuffin. A California expatriate, she lives in
Oxford, OH, with her linguist husband and oversized cat.
ROBERT ROTHMAN lives in Northern California, near extensive trails

and open space, with the Pacific Ocean over the hill. His work has appeared
in Atlanta Review, Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, Tampa
Review, Willow Review, and over seventy-five other literary journals in the
United States, Canada, Wales, and Ireland. Please see his website
(www.robertrothmanpoet.com) for more information about him and his
work.
RICHARD C RUTHERFORD raised cattle at the edge of the desert for

thirty-seven years. He retired, but his cattle were not freed. He has daughters,
h ’ f i it H t l lb k t d it d Hi
2021, Spring / 175
JOEL SAVISHINSKY is a recovering academic, unretired grandfather, and

unrepentant activist. An anthropologist and gerontologist, his books include
The Trail of the Hare: Life and Stress in an Arctic Community and Breaking
The Watch: The Meanings of Retirement in America, which won the
Gerontology Society’s book of the year prize. His poetry has appeared in
Blood and Thunder, Cirque, From Whispers to Roars, Metafore, Passager,
Raw Art Review, The Pharos and Windfall.
RILEY SIMMONS is a recent graduate of Emmanuel College where she

obtained degrees in writing, editing, and publishing and communications.
Riley has been an avid reader since childhood and tends to draw inspiration
from wherever she can, whether that be exploring foreign places, navigating
adulthood, or reflecting on the past. When she's not writing or reading, you
can find her drinking coffee and avoiding her responsibilities from the
comfort of her favorite cafe.
JANE SNYDER’s stories have appeared in Across the Margin, The Writing
Disorder, Lunate, Bull, Men’s Fiction, X-Ray Lit, Cobalt Weekly, 5x5, Rue
Scribe, and Summerset Review. She lives in Spokane, WA.
DANA STAMPS II. has a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Cal State
University of San Bernardino, and has worked as a fast-food server, a postal
clerk, a security guard, and a group home worker with troubled boys. Poetry
chapbooks For Those Who Will Burn and Drape This Chapbook in Blue were
published by Partisan Press, and Sandbox Blues by Evening Street Press.
VINCENT J TOMEO i t hi i t hi t i d it
RICHARD WEAVER lives in Baltimore where he volunteers with the

Maryland Book Bank, and is the poet-in-residence at the James Joyce Irish
Pub. He is the author of The Stars Undone (Duende Press, 1992). And wrote
the libretto for the symphony Of Sea and Stars (2005), performed 4 times to
date. Recent pubs: FRIGG, Mad Swirl, Spank the carp, Triggerfish, Dead
Mule, and Magnolia Review.
J T WHITEHEAD spent time between schools on a grounds crew, as a pub

cook, a deliveryman, a bookshop clerk, and a liquor store clerk, inspiring
four years as a labor lawyer on the workers’ side. Over 200 of his poems
have been accepted by 100 journals. He won the 2015 “Margaret Randall
Poetry Prize,” and his collection, The Table of the Elements, was nominated
for the National Book Award.
JOHNNY L WOOTEN is currently serving three sentences totaling 165

years, without parole, on the Eastham Unit in Lovelady, TX. He has written
for The Breakthrough Intercessor, Spotlight on Recovery, and Tyler County
Booster. He is reporter for the ECH0 Newspaper that is delivered to over
100,000 offenders in the state of Texas.
PAULA YUP returned to Spokane, WA, after a dozen years in the Marshall
Islands. In the past forty years she has published over two hundred poems in
magazines and anthologies including those put out by Outrider Press. Her
first book of poetry is entitled Making a Clean Space in the Sky (Evening
Street Press, 2011).
ISBN 9781937347628
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Evening Street Press

Sacramento, CA
9 781937 347628

Evening Street Review Number 28

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Number 28 Spring 2021

EVENING STREET REVIEW

Published by Evening Street Press

. . .all men and women are created equal in rights to life,

PUBLISHED TWICE (OR MORE) A YEAR

Founding Editor: Gordon Grigsby

Cover: Taisia Eltsina

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020952722

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© Copyright 2021 by Evening Street Press

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NUMBER 28, SPRING 2021

EDITORIAL COMMENT Occasional Notes:

MARLENE S MOLINOFF The Big Idea 10

DANA STAMPS II Mercenary Poet, a Memoir 39

While a person is incarcerated, they are faced with moral

to spend. He includes in this purchase hygiene for the

Something that would be considered polite, kind and moral in

give your commissary to another person because of extortion reasons.

the type of person we want to be.

This issue features, in addition to our editorial writer, a number

Doriane woke up in a tangle of sheets. As she opened her eyes,

She stared out the enormous wraparound window at the fog of

He had on the usual gear

I came here to help

“Zhat’s vhy you

It looks like rice water,

It’s cholera, I told him.

Everybody’s down, he answered.

Be quick about it, I ordered

The refugee village had a rainwater cistern.

We need flame, I said.

I walked to a sweet banana tree,

We watched the rain start again.

The green bag produced

When the rain really started,

One drop every other cup.

We gruelled the bananas

Fighting off the vomit and bacteria.

Keeping at it until one of us broke

And almost saved everyone. Adams

My name is Jordan Ainsley Rogers. I’m a British travel writer.

My latest travel book is about Greece. I learned about that country

and although Nancy’s book

much less an easy read

we live on an ocean planet

ONCE UPON A TIME

I was a little girl

Jonny followed, asking if he could at least boil the head and

The next morning, Jonny arrived with a black eye. Samson

“You serious, hold on— “

waning summer before they returned to hibernation.

The Red Wheelbarrow

glazed with rain

beside the white

— William Carlos Williams (1923)

itsy-bitsy pistol off in the wild blue yonder!” A masterpiece, right? I

and ultimately a psychiatrist said that I would be a danger to myself

Wired and connected,

Dials pulse and record the heart’s changing rate,

you lovingly hand-made by a master cobbler in Europe for a wealthy matron,

inequities in our world my beloved grandmother would work tirelessly to

Thank you, brown shoe.

I was looking at a photograph

I couldn’t recall where I had seen it

Air? No. Ocean? No. Boy Scout fishing

Baby’s room as an uncle? No.