Cabildo Quarterly. Cape Cod; Bangor ME. Issue #14. Pandemic Summer 2020. We're going far beyond the spoken world. State of Nature by Wade Fox
Santa and the Carolers by BettyAnn Lauria Every Christmas Dad and Mom lugged the life-size wooden Santa and the three carolers down from the attic. They put Santa on the front porch where his lights dazzled everyone, his hand forever raised in greeting. “Oh, that’s your house? The one with Santa?” people always asked. We nodded yes. “Our dad made it.” Their jaws dropped. The cardboard carolers stayed in the foyer, visible from the porch, since Mom left the light on. There were three carolers, one each for me, and my two sisters. When my brothers were born, no new carolers were added. Dad was not tackling creative projects anymore. He came home from work, sat in silence at the dinner table, and pushed the food around his over-filled plate. He glared at anyone who dropped a fork or chewed loudly. Afterwards, he retreated to the den where he fell asleep in front of the TV. Years later, after Mom passed away and Dad had been alone for a while, we sold the house. It was practically crumbling, one of the first pre-fab homes of the 1950s. Dad watched us haul stuff out, including Santa and the Carolers. No one wanted the moldy, cracked dinosaurs after all that time in the attic. Dad only shook his head. Then we saw him trying to drag the husk of a console TV back into the house. The guts were lying in the garage. “You have a nice portable TV,” we said. We moved Dad into assisted living, and filled his tiny apartment with new things. But sometimes we found broken toasters and lamps in the kitchen cabinet. Dad wouldn’t admit that he took them from the discard pile at the end of the hall. He said, “They’re still good. I could fix them.” We shook our heads. Soon, every surface was covered with unfinished projects, cards from the grandkids and sugar packets from the communal dining room. The cleaning staff complained. Dad usually spent Christmas with one of us. While we all chatted over dinner, he pushed his food around an over-filled plate. Later, he sat in the corner watching us tear the wrapping off gifts, making a mess. “Here’s another present for you, Dad.” He carefully opened his gift, so that the paper came off in one piece. He smoothed it out and folded it neatly. He looked at us, smiled and said, “Love, love, love.” BettyAnn Lauria is a poet, writer and EFT practitioner, and has lived on Cape Cod with her husband Tom for the last 26 years. Two Fish by Fin Sorrel To sew the night together, we need a rewinding hat, with an operating rodent on board, to get inside of the machine -- We will need (among other hanging objects) a heating device, in which long strands of egyptian time may be pulled, thumb piano players all around the curtain room are playing Mozart, Bach, and Schopin -- Zeppelin, AC/DC, and Megadeth -- their masks blur at the edges of the room -- glowing ribs, and skulls, and spines -- We may need (among other, hanging objects, two double long bicycles, stacked with working (and yet glued together) radios, with antenna. The sea will be our music (in at once,) splashing so forth, a mist of shanties along the glass bottle, and a ship for us inside -- hinges -- and door frames, wall paper, and galoshes for everyone aboard -- those who entertain the idea will be offered great woolen blankets, and a new pair of garments: shoes, and socks, powdered, first. Included are the radio bicycles ________________________________________ (among other hanging things) which will spin the tale of the fish, and the water bearer -- the love entangled web of their story, to the sea together -- A dress -- a rabbit -- masks-- a russian hat -- ties -- wool shirts -necklaces -- and a harp -- Orchids -- sprays -- acrylic paints -- blankets -bracelets, and jackets, and shoes! All will march in a parade of misguided watches! To sew the night together, we will need to gather a bit of chalk for an overall outline of the moons slight, and subdued cubes, those sugars that drop, and dissolve near my boat in the lakeside -- by watching the curve of the swamp, and move of the frog, we will sew the night together at last -- Galoshes, and Russian hats for this night -- naked, amidst the neon making legs and arms and handles of napes and necks out of knees and with neon tube, the whole lot of the night floating boating, and glowing every surface lined in color. Green to be blue, and sewing with Sewing Bee Orchestra on the barge, buried behind us, lovemaking neon lights -- all sewing together the edges, and fabrics, and colors of the night at last -- In the beginning of the shape -- of an elongation -- a fleur de lis, a lock of hair spinning -trying to make clouds out of trumpeting horns and shattering drums -Fin Sorrel is the author of Caramel Floods (pski porch press, 2017) and the founding editor at MANNEQUIN HAUS (infii2.weebly.com)
The world was made of luminous plastic and breakfast cereal the sky was a dome of exhaust fumes through which a pixelated haze of primary colors shone to love was to own to hold to entrap to keep as your own forever a silent and perfect modeled and molded mannequin a machine without sensation made of pistons fueled by ambition our heaven was a night of eternal credit at the Sears and Roebucks Santa Claus taught us to be empty of everything except desire the world was ours to consume gnawing around the edges until we too were consumed like bright bits of marshmallow drowning at the bottom of the bowl Wade Fox lives in Denver and teaches writing at the Community College of Denver. A writer of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, he has published poems in Occam’s Razor, Littoral, and R.K.V.R.Y, and short stories in Occam’s Razor, The Corner Club, and Minimus. Mr. Oatley by Amy L.C. Wilson Now might be as good a time as any to tell you about Mr. Oatley. My father would call this sort of thing a digression. He says I have diarrhea of the mouth. That I free associate too much. It drives him crazy. But I want to tell you this, because it might explain a thing or two that I hope only to have to mention this one time. The fact of the matter is, I don’t just have a step-mother. I also have a step-father. I don’t even like to call him that, but technically he is. He might still be married to my mother. He lived with us for a while. They married two summers ago, but he still feels new. They met Spring Fling Weekend at my Mom’s Singles Club in New Jersey. After that, she stopped dating the other guys and just dated him. Generally speaking, I didn’t really like my Mom’s dates. I mean, I liked when she was happy and looked good, but I didn’t like when she had her dates at home. She put red light bulbs in the living room lamps. They slow danced to Freddy Fender records and she acted so weird. My Mom let me bring the TV to my room on those nights. I wasn’t supposed to but I watched her from the stairs. That was all back when we still lived with her, and just saw Dad on weekends and for part of the summer. I got the letter while we were on Cape Cod with Dad and Diana, my step-mother, the summer I took Woods Ponds and Fields at Science School. I was coming back from the beach, nibbling the skin off a rosehip when Diana brought me the envelope. I’m telling you, the sight of my mother’s loopy handwriting while we were away was a jolt. There was no escape from my mother. Even four states away, in a blank rental in a tiny town on Cape Cod, she found us. My heart went cold. I knew: no good could be in that enve-
lope. Me and my sister Becca each got our own, which somehow made it worse. We slunk away to different rooms so we each were alone when we opened it. “My Dearest Margaret,“ she wrote. “I’m writing to tell you...” Enclosed was a photograph, fake like a school picture. Her and Mr. Oatley in matching light blue outfits. His was a tuxedo, like Lawrence Welk’s. Hers just looked like one of those filmy night gowns with a matching robe she liked to wear. The pose was corny, of course: they held both hands, looking into each other’s eyes, each of them with one foot up on a little carpeted stair behind them with a stiff flower arrangement poking up in the background, like at a funeral. That’s how we learned she’d gotten married. Like, she couldn’t tell us ahead of time, but she couldn’t wait a few days until we were home, either. It all felt weird. Weird that she knew exactly where to find us. Weird to not be invited, or told about it. Guilty that I wasn’t there. Guilty that I was glad I wasn’t there. Guilty that I never wanted to go back. And then this: “We’ve moved. When you come back we’ll be living in our new house, in Clifton Heights.” Moved? Why? Who packed my things? Now, don’t get me wrong. When she first started dating him, Mr. Oatley was the answer to all our prayers. They’d been together a few months by the time we got that letter. Mom was happy! She had new clothes, and some lipstick. She looked pretty, possibly normal. She wouldn’t do the things she did anymore, because now Mr. Oatley would take care of her. When she first found him, we were so happy. Fear I didn’t even know was there evaporated as Becca and I jumped up and down with excitement. Mom would drop out of the Singles Club. No more Mr. Bentley, Mr. Richley, Mr. Borne, or Mr. Vasquez. I could see how relieved Becca was. My joy was as much for the look on my sister’s face as it was for my mom, and for me. Everybody could be okay now. As soon as we got back home from vacation with my dad that summer, we had to go away on the honeymoon. Why they couldn’t have done that while we were gone, especially if we weren’t even at the wedding, I don’t know. But they wanted us to all get to know each other. Me and Becca, with our new step-brother and step-sister, jammed into the back of my mother’s station wagon, pulling a rented pop-up camper, and went to Nova Scotia to honeymoon with Mr.Oatley. Amazingly, Mr. Oatley had three kids, and she had three kids—almost exactly like the Brady Bunch. I imagined us all in our squares, looking up and down at each other and smiling, with Alice the housekeeper in the middle. Also amazing was the coincidence that both bride and groom were not on speaking terms with their oldest children. In fact both had run away, which somehow added to them seeming like a perfect match. Mostly what I want to tell you is this: the whole thing was gross. A) The water in the Bay of Fundy is brown as rust. You can walk into the water forever and still not get past your ankles and have to turn back before you can swim because supposedly some tide could come in from nowhere and sweep you away. B) Mr. Oatley whistles when he snores and makes other weird helpless sounds in the dark. My mother’s sleeping bag smelled like old canned tuna. I know because it was my job to roll up the sleeping bags. It stunk up the whole car, I swear. C) My new step-sister was stupid. She also had a lisp and a tacky name (Tammi). She was only thirteen but she had the zits of an eighteen year old and she wore lots of make-up. Her hair was dyed bright yellow like margarine. Her mother helped her do it which meant her mother was stupid, too. D) My new step-brother was pale and hunched over with yellow teeth and cut off jean shorts that were too tight, with fringe and strings hanging off. He only laughed if someone else, like me, did something wrong, like spilling my Slush all down my front. Plus, he drank all the Fresca. Nobody cared about visiting mowed lawns with old cannons from some battle. We did more driving than anything else. My thighs kept sticking to Becca’s in the car, I couldn’t help it, but she just stayed mad the whole time, which for Becca meant keeping her face turned to the window, fuming and silent. In situations like that I usually act like a goof-ball, bouncing in my seat and whipping out one-liners from Mad Magazine which makes Becca more ticked off, but once in a while, just once in a while, she cracks up. She’s like that last Brazil nut left in the bowl at Thanksgiving. The one nobody can crack so everyone leaves it alone. But I keep trying. Mr. Oatley is just like his name. Bland. The color of oats: His comb-over. His glasses. His short sleeve button down shirts, his teeth. Anything about him that’s not light brown is just regular brown. His pants and shoes, his pocket protector, his wallet. I told my Mom that Mr. Oatley reminded me of Lurch, the creepy butler on the Addams Family and she shriek-laughed and told
him right away. I was so embarrassed. But he went with it, and started calling my Mom Morticia, which I had to admit was a good fit. He started laughing in that creepy way Lurch does, just for fun. Things seemed to be off to a good start. You might ask, why did I keep calling him Mr. Oatley? You might ask, because everyone else asked. For two years, it’s been the question of the century. My father found it quite amusing. “Please,” my Mom said. “Please call him Papa. Pepere? Pep for short?” Obviously, none of those would work. “Margaret,” she said. “You’re hurting his feelings. He thinks you don’t like him. Calling him Mr. Oatley is so formal. At least call him by his first name.” It was unfortunate that he took it personally. I did not mean to put a strain on their marriage. I’m afraid that what ended up happening to them was somehow my fault. If I had called him by his name, or one of the idiotic names my mom suggested, maybe they could have made a home together that lasted. Maybe if his name was something like Sam, or Frank, or Roger, things could have gone a different way. I know they could have. Maybe if those Super-8 movies he shot on the honeymoon were pointed at something else. I didn’t like the way he shot me climbing on that cannon. Whatever it was, something about him that was just creepy enough, that his actual name put it over the edge and I refused to say it out loud. So, maybe it’s mixed up somehow with what happened with that man in the car today, who claimed he needed directions to 63rd but really just wanted to show me his you-know-what. I don’t know why else I would be thinking of Mr. Oatley right now but for some reason I still am, which is exactly the reason why now is as good a time as any to tell you about all of this: His name was Dick. Amy Wilson Sanger is the author and illustrator of The World Snacks Series, books for babies with over one half million chewed up copies in circulation. When not a stressed out healthcare worker, she is at work on her first novel, Roof Girl. Old Man in Bar: A Still Life Circa 1979 by Steven M. Smith He is adrift in a kind of laggard hubbub, hunkered Down and wheezing in the dingy corner of a corner bar— Intoxication swirling in the ceiling fan of cobwebs. A fly is docked in the plastic rose in the waterless vase Pushed to the edge of a seasick table. His teeth shipwrecked in a rock glass of bargain scotch. A lost treasure map of broken blood Vessels zigzag all over his face. He gags on Lucky Strikes and unlucky lungs. His life now rolled up in a T-shirt sleeve. His life now held by an anchor tattoo on his forearm. He swabs ashes from his gray beard with a faded neckerchief. What battles forced him to abandon ship? What foreshadows float in his draft beer? What premonitions reek in his pickled eggs? What sadness simmers in his spittle? Whose goodbye kiss left him with a seaward scar? Steven M. Smith’s poems have appeared in publications such as Rattle, Poem, Old Red Kimono, Plainsongs, Poetrybay, Ibbetson Street Press, Studio One, The River, and Mudfish. Smith resides in North Syracuse, New York. Excerpted from Low April Sun by Constance Squires This excerpt from the in-progress novel Low April Sun includes two short chapters from a character named August P., not the main line of the novel, but a thread that intersects with the main characters’ actions throughout. While researching the novel, I read testimony from an FBI agent who had been undercover at Elohim City, a white-supremacist compound in northeastern Oklahoma. According to numerous eye-witnesses, Timothy McVeigh, the terrorist responsible for the Murrah Bombing in Oklahoma City, was seen there on more than one occasion during the months leading up to the bombing on April 19, 1995. In describing the compound, she mentioned children. This stuck with me, and August P. arose from thinking about what life might have been like for one of those kids. I’ve changed the name of Elohim City to Adonai Township. Chapter FIVE: August P. What if I’d never met the bomber? Some other life would’ve been mine, I’d have gotten away from Adonai Township on my own some way, or, who knows, I might have been worn down smooth and become one of them. They’d take you in if you said the right things, probably even me, and we’d really got off on the wrong foot because of the stories my mom confessed to them—about how when I played Star Wars with my friends in Fayetteville, we were all manner of children, until my mom married Gary and he wouldn’t let me hang out anymore with any of them. Why couldn’t she have married someone normal? Some guy who likes to bike or barbecue or whatever, even the kind of guy who never got off the couch and was always asking me to grab a beer from the fridge, anything but what I got, which was Gary, who sat at his computer muttering about Ruby Ridge and Waco and griping about America Online and America in general. At Adonai Township there was an elder, slicked back hair,
heavy jawed, whose granddad was one of the founders of the Nazi party back in Germany—that old boy never liked me, actually kicked me out of the way one time, like I was a dog. He was coming through the door of the meeting room where everybody was waiting for him, and I think I blew his entrance. My mom just stood there with her hands clenched at her sides and smiled at him like she was sorry she had in fact given birth to a dog. I feel kind of sorry for myself when I think about that stuff, but that fact is, I did meet the bomber, late in summer of ’94, and although it weren’t my fault I was living there at Adonai Township, it was my actions, my desire to get away from that compound and to set myself apart that made me think, when I saw McVeigh, with his military buzz cut and the stories that he’d been in Desert Storm, that he had something to offer me in the first place. I sought him out, so this fate is my own. I had cast my eyes around Adonai at the weird little igloo-looking houses the color of dust and told myself I was living on Tattooine, like Luke Skywalker. I was waiting for the video message hidden in the droid, for the old Jedi master to tell me I’m special, for a princess in a wavering projection to tell me I was her only hope. Maybe even for the scene where the hump-back houses were burnt to the ground with everybody in them. Not that I wanted anyone dead, not even those folks there at Adonai Township, but you know, when you’re a fifteen-year old kid, you can’t get very far with your fantasies of freedom until you can figure out some way to move the grown-ups out of the way. That’s all I wanted. I just wanted them gone. Or, no, that’s not right. They could stay right there in their camp, their mean fortress at the Oklahoma/Arkansas border, if only they’d let me out. I wanted to go back to my friends in Fayetteville, my bike and Walker and his Nintendo and the 7-11 near our house where we did donuts in the parking lot and bought Big Gulps. I’d been thinking on it, how to skedaddle, the first time I saw Timothy McVeigh walking yonder in front of the church, sidewinding along the patches of scrub oaks that always made me feel like the forest one night would reach over Adonai Township like a giant hand and cover it over. No, wait—I’d seen him before, a time or two—I remember him in winter. He wore a coat, plaid lining showing when he walked—I’d seen him, just never sort of lit on him, focused like. But that day I did. I’d heard he’d been in the military. Not the military as we knew it there at Adonai, which was more like training for robbing banks, something the Township men ran around and did from time to time, since by their lights US currency wasn’t real so it wasn’t wrong to steal it, but the United States military. That’s right, their enemy. This fellow had been in the army of their enemy, and yet here he was on this hotter-than-hell afternoon in the star chamber of the Aryan Nation, not just accepted, but I’d say kind of revered, like the way a normal town would treat the boy who’s going to be a college football star and maybe have a chance at the NFL. Like they knew he was going to make them proud. And I guess he went and did, but I didn’t know a thing about what was coming on April 19th or who he’d turn out to be. Me, I just wanted to hear about joining the Army. Like I said, I figured he was like my Han Solo, my older dude who could tell me about the world. But he weren’t no Han Solo. Chapter ELEVEN: August P. I was collecting cicada shells in the woods behind the compound. I spent a lot of time out there, as much as I could get away with, and knew it to be where anything the elders disapproved of went to stay safe. Whiskey, dirty magazines, marijuana, and me. The cicada shells I used as evil aliens in the battles I staged with my action figures. I had a Lando Calrisian, a Boba Fett, a one-legged C3P0 and some guy with blue skin from a different movie. Cicada shells are scary if you look at them up close, and they stick to things, like curtains and pillow cases, great for battle staging, plus they give the most satisfying crunch when you squash them, so I favored them and tried to get as many as I could during the summer months. I was fairly covered in them, had eight or ten stuck to the front of my shirt, when I heard the creak of a car hood come up and noticed the yellow of McVeigh’s car through the trees. I saw my chance to talk to him about the Army. McVeigh was bending over the open hood of his yellow sedan parked on the side of one of the round-roofed houses lining the main road. I was nervous to come up on him out of the woods, so I snapped some branches and scuffed the dirt real loud with my boots, making plenty of noise to let McVeigh know I was there. I didn’t know much about the fellow, but enough to know that there was an air of danger about him—the stiff, protective body language of Gary and some of the other men when I saw them talking to him told me to use caution, especially since McVeigh wasn’t a scary–looking guy. The source of whatever it was that made the elders look a little wary was something in his person that was hard to see but easy to feel. McVeigh glanced up. He squinted, wiping his hands on a rag. “You changing the oil?” I asked. I peered over the open car like I could tell what I was looking at. “Transmission fluid,” McVeigh said. Up close McVeigh barely looked older than me, and he was kind of goofy looking, with jug ears and squinty little eyes. In the sun, all the hairs on him glowed red— head, eyelashes, arm hairs. I got tongue tied. I smiled and nodded, nodded and smiled. “You’re the liberal kid?” I felt like a hand had just squeezed my heart. I didn’t know what it meant, but for Gary and my mom, “liberal” was the dirtiest word you could hear so I knew to back away from it. “Shit no,” I said. “I ain’t a goddamned liberal!”
“Liberal’s a town in Kansas. You ever been there?” “No, no I haven’t.” “I could’ve meant you’re from there.” “Yes, sir. Is that what you meant?” McVeigh’s lips kind of smiled but his eyes didn’t. “Nope.” I shook my head. “Not how I took it, either.” I was staring down at the car engine like it was the most fascinating thing I ever seen, but I was just scared to look up at him. “Did you know you’re covered with critters?” “Oh!” I looked down at the army of brown translucent shells glowing in the sunlight. They gripped my shirt with their brittle arms and legs like I was their daddy. It did look weird. I can see that it did. “They attack you all at once?” He grinned and reached for my shirt. He plucked one off and smashed it between his thumb and forefinger. “I used to play with these,” he said. “Aren’t you a little old for that?” “I suppose,” I said. He smelled like cigarette smoke. I remember smelling that smoke and thinking how a lit cigarette over a car engine was hazardous, and even though he wasn’t smoking right then, I saw a conflagration in my mind, saw him going up in flames, I swear I did. He said, “What can I do for you, boy?” “My name’s August.” “Why’d they name you after the month that’s hot as the inside of an asshole?” What do you say to that? I kind of smiled at him. He laughed and told me his name and I was so relieved. “Well, hey, “ I said. “I was just wondering if you could tell me about being in the Army. Like, if you’d recommend it.” McVeigh relaxed into one hip and squinted his snake eyes at me. “You thinking of joining up?” I was, of course, someday when I was old enough, but it crossed my mind that he might be as anti-government as the rest of them. I didn’t know the right answer to that question and I’d learned, being around there, that these old boys didn’t really believe in everybody having their own ideas. If I said the wrong thing, God knows. So I sensed that the best way to keep my balance in the conversation was to commit to nothing and get out of it as soon as I could. “Weighing my options,” I said. “I don’t know much about it—just curious.” I stop the picture here again and again. Had I picked up anything about McVeigh then? Had I felt he would commit mass murder? Had the shadow of what he would do within months cast backward over that time and chilled the air between us? Sometimes, in the days and weeks after the Murrah bombing when McVeigh’s face and news of the bad, bad things he did was everywhere, it seemed to me I had felt something, had known something. But I doubt that now. When it happened, I had run off and was staying with my dad and his new wife in Las Vegas, in an apartment with the desert sun bleaching the rug, my dad’s empties on the coffee table, and the fridge covered with casino coupons, as different from Adonai Township as a place could be. Living on the compound felt unreal, like, did that really happen? When they arrested him and I saw him on TV coming out of that courthouse squinting into the cameras like he’d squinted at me, I told my dad and stepmom I met him. They were so pissed off at my mom, it was like more proof that they were better parents, although they were no prizes themselves. We sat in that cold, air conditioned apartment and watched the search and rescue and the body count climb and I was caught up in the emotion, wanting to claim some sort of special understanding of the man, which was pride, you see? Pride at knowing him because he was on TV. If there is a more shameful admission, I don’t know what it is. What a loathsome boy I was. My whole soul winces in shame every time I think of it still. I think of it all the time. And I didn’t know nothing special about him, anyway. I only noticed McVeigh was a lot like the other grim, tightly-wound old boys I seen around the compound. Maybe there was a stillness, a flatness about him, but how could I say? Really say? Constance Squires is the author of two novels and a short story collection. More info at www.constancesquiresofficial.com. final_version.jpg by Stephanie Athena Valente in this rented universe, everything is ethereal spinning holographic glitter, dizzying rhinestones with a libra’s strength we trade secrets: gold, women warriors, foxes, blood from wine. the myth is, you and i tell each other we are beautiful, precious, rare creatures, we are beholden but we are scarred, i only have one gift: surviving a horror movie with my song you are grace, and most gems: a ram, rational you asked death if it was real once, and yet both of you prevailed. i don’t know if that’s winning. my sacred horse, i can tell you it’s not losing. Stephanie Athena Valente lives in Brooklyn, NY. Her published works include Hotel Ghost, waiting for the end of the world, and Little Fang (Bottlecap Press, 2015-2019). She has work included in Reality Hands, TL;DR, and Cosmonauts Avenue. She is the associate editor at Yes, Poetry. Sometimes, she feels human. stephanievalente.com
Cabildo Quarterly #14. Michael T. Fournier, cheese; Lisa Panepinto, macaroni. Pull quote lyrics: Jim White. First press of 1000 copies printed Memorial Day Weekend 2020 by the fine folks at thee Razorcake/Gorsky Press. (This quarter: twelve months.) In addition to our print issues, we also publish on cabildoquarterly.tumblr.com, where you can find our back issues and current webonly contributions. CQ is best found in a bookstore, laundromat or bus, but/and additional copies of this one (and the other thirteen, except for issue two) are available for a buck each/five bucks for a stack. Hit us up at cabildoquarterly@gmail.com. Similarly, hell yes we want your submissions: send your short fiction up to 3500 or so words to the aforementioned address, and/or 3-5 poems to lmpanepinto@gmail.com. Simultaneous submissions 4-lyf, khed. Hang in there. It’s a tough time, but keep being kind and creative, balms against the howling fantods. Thanks, as always, to Ryan and Bec and the cats, to all the contributors this time around -- this issue slaps! -- and to you for reading all this tiny print. Until we meet again, stay safe and LISTEN TO DEAD TREND!