Crack the Spine
Issue Sixty-Four
Crack The Spine Issue Sixty-Four May 14, 2013 Edited by Kerri Farrell Foley Collection copyright 2013 by Crack the Spine
Contents
Gay Baines Pradisuss Kris Price Writing in Tongues Politician’s Logic A. Anupama From Caramel David Vardeman Inside a Person Shelby Stevenson Country Allison Grayhurst For Here Mark Burr Losers
Cover Art By Mark Oet Mark Oet is a rising junior at Phillips Exeter Academy, a boarding school in New Hampshire. He loves spring, dislikes the cold and hopes for the sun to stay sunny. Mark enjoys playing chess, acting in musical theater, running track, and of course, taking photographs.
Gay Baines Paradisuss
Aunt Kate started taking art classes in 1950, when Uncle Reg went off to the Korean War. Maggie, her sister and Jen’s mother, rolled her eyes. At first Aunt Kate sketched Main Street in the snow. As the snow melted and maple sap made cloudy spots on the sidewalks, she drew more: the county building with budding trees a haze of dots on each side. Then the Minisink Monument, with the Olde Englishe Inne in the distance. Then the library, its crazy pavement and sycamores detailed with smooth watery lines. Her drawings became more precise, her lines more sure, bold yet restrained. By the time the Episcopal Ladies held their August fair, Aunt Kate had over a hundred sketches and drawings, and even a few watercolors—all of which she contributed for sale. Maggie thought Aunt Kate should have held some of her oeuvre back for her own favorite charity, the Stable Hill Hospital. She didn’t understand that Aunt Kate had become impatient with her work and had signed up for an adult education course in oil painting at the high school. By November she was taking the train to New York every week for classes at the Museum of Modern Art. One of the instructors invited her to lunch. She declined politely but asked to see his studio. Eventually, through a process Jen did not understand, Aunt Kate became a student of this man. His name was Luigi Bicciamo, but he called himself Lew Beach. One Saturday in March Aunt Kate took Jen to New York, ostensibly to shop and see a show. They took the 8:17 a.m. Erie train to Hoboken, then switched to the tube under the Hudson River. Jen held her breath most of the way. She tried to imagine Lew Beach: a romantic figure, tall, long-faced, bearded, with a rich accent. They got off the train at Christopher Street and went to West 11th Street, where Lew Beach had his studio. Lew was short, pudgy, nearly bald, clean-shaven. His accent was unmistakably New York, with no exotic overtones. He regarded Jen with his black eyes and said “Here’s my advice, kid. Keep yer eyes open. The mind will follow.” They walked through the studio. Jen had expected a mass of canvases leaning against dirty walls, a clutter of furniture, easels with unfinished works resting on them, a litter of squeezed paint tubes and ruined brushes scattered about. The studio was, in fact, nearly bare. The tall windows to the north were uncovered, polished clean to admit all the spring light. One canvas was propped on an easel, a few lines sketched on it. In the corner sat a small table and four chairs. On the table were a fresh white cloth, a
bowl of apples, a Thermos, and a box of Holland rusk. The floor, except for the area near the easel, was swept clean and dry. In an adjoining room were Lew Beach’s finished canvases. Jen found them alarming. They were quiet, almost peaceful, with a touch of menace. Aunt Kate talked to Beach about his paintings. Jen listened, surprised. She had imagined a scene in which the great artist was modest and self-deprecating, with Aunt Kate playing the part of the knownothing secretary, full of awe and innocent praise. Instead, Lew Beach boasted of his great vision, his mastery of color, his intricate brushwork. Aunt Kate responded with sharp criticisms. “What brushwork? I can hardly make out this thing in the corner. What is it―a Mack truck?” When Beach proudly showed off a great study of cacti with thrusting arms against a curve of sky, she said, “That looks pretty derivative to me.” Lew roared in response. “Look who’s talking! Miss Bushwah from upstate!” Aunt Kate’s icy reply was “Mrs. Bourgeoise,” the French word pronounced with precision. To some of her other acid remarks, Beach responded mildly. “Yeah. Maybe you’re right.” Lew invited Jen and Aunt Kate to lunch, but Aunt Kate said no, they had shopping to do. In Bergdorf Goodman she let Jen select a gift for herself, not too expensive. The trick was not to look at the price tag. Jen picked out a sterling silver pin in the shape of a horseshoe. It cost nine-fifty. “Good,” Aunt Kate said. She bought the pin for Jen, then took her to B. Altman’s, where there was a sale on winter coats. Aunt Kate bought herself a marked-down camel-hair polo coat. Jen bought a pair of Kislav leather gloves. Bearing their packages, they went to Schrafft’s for lunch and then to Radio City Music Hall, where they saw the Easter show and All About Eve. They came out of the theater into the black rectangular shadows of a late-spring afternoon, then descended into the subway to catch the train back to Hoboken. As they rode the Erie through the darkening villages of Rockland County, they discussed Lew Beach. “He is teaching me to paint,” Aunt Kate said. “Like him? I mean, will your paintings look like his?” “I hope not! I like his use of color though. He says that I might just as well say I like his frames―but he is just kidding.” *** Jen’s friend Bridget had heard a rumor that Lew Beach was Aunt Kate’s lover. She couldn’t ask anything so blunt, so she asked, “Do you like him?”
“Of course,” Aunt Kate said. “Despite his bluff, he’s really a very kind man and generous to other artists.” During April Aunt Kate, with Jen’s help, cleaned out the former spare room so that she could use it for painting. They had searched all over Goshen for a small office or studio that she could rent, but there was none. There were offices and one-room apartments that might have sufficed, but the owners became uneasy when they learned that Kate wanted it for a studio. Jen’s mother finally offered the spare bedroom. “Just take the curtains down is all I ask,” she said. “It’ll be perfect, Mags,” Aunt Kate told her sister. “The windows face north; there’s a sink in the corner for cleaning up. You won’t regret it.” She painted every day except Tuesday, when she went to New York to study with Lew Beach. This weekly jaunt was permitted by Sickel, Van Hoesen and Downey, the law firm where Aunt Kate was chief secretary and office manager. On Saturdays she painted all morning. If the afternoon was fine, she went for a drive in her Plymouth coupe, tossing a sketchbook and pencils in the backseat. Sometimes Jen went with her. If the weather was gloomy or damp, they stayed in and read novels or played Casino. On baking Saturdays they helped Maggie in the kitchen. If Jen had to write a term paper or book report, Aunt Kate let her type it on her Underwood. Jen found it curious that Aunt Kate could be an artist yet have such a mundane life. “It’s all in how you look at it,” Aunt Kate said. “I put on my old slacks and smock and Poof! I’m a painter.” “Is that how Frans Hals started?” Jen asked. *** One day in the following winter, Aunt Kate got a special note from Uncle Reg. He was coming home. It had been discovered that he had a heart murmur and must be discharged from the Navy. Aunt Kate quit her job at Sickle, Van Hoesen and Downey, packed a suitcase, and took a train to New York. She went not to greet Uncle Reg, but to learn more about painting from Lew Beach before (as she told Maggie in a despairing voice) “it’s too darn late.” While Aunt Kate was in New York, Jen went down to visit her. Aunt Kate met her at Christopher Street, wearing the polo coat she had bought on their last visit to the city. The weather was warm for March. She wore the coat open over old slacks and a sweater, a bright scarf knotted carelessly around her neck, her auburn hair, uncurled, falling to her shoulders. “Hi, Suze,” she said, using the old nickname they had used for years. Jen felt out of sorts. She wished she did not have to make a weary journey by train under a river in order to visit an aunt who so recently had slept in the next bedroom.
On the way to Lew’s apartment, Aunt Kate smoked one Camel after another. They did not go uptown but stayed in the apartment, two blocks away from his studio, where he was still working. His loft was spacious enough to allow Aunt Kate room to work there by herself. Her small canvases, bright landscapes and still lifes, more simple and cheerful than Lew’s, leaned against the wall. When Lew came back from his studio, he welcomed Jen with a hug. “Remember my advice?” he said. “Keep yer eyes open, gal. The mind will follow. Then comes happiness.” When Uncle Reg came back from Japan, he brought Aunt Kate six silk kimonos. For Jen’s mother, with whom he did not get along, he brought a set of enameled boxes. To Jen he gave a fan painted with images of cranes and ferns. It was a sad time for Jen because Aunt Kate and Uncle Reg were moving to the Southwest. Aunt Kate had sent her belongings back home, as well as all her paintings. She met Uncle Reg at the airport in New York. They ate at the Oyster Bar and saw South Pacific. Nothing was said about her month in Greenwich Village. After Aunt Kate and Uncle Reg had settled in Phoenix, Jen decided to find out more about Lew Beach. She went to the Public Library and Historical Society, but the lady in charge was not a librarian and could not help her. The next day, on a shopping trip to Middletown, she stopped in the Thrall Library and found that they had a current biographical directory of artists on the reference shelf. Here she found an entry for Lew Beach. “BEACH, Lew, (Luigi Bicciamo), NYC 1908. Educ.: B.A.(Ed.), NYU, 1929. M.A. UChic, 1936. Social worker NYC 1930-31. Studied in Paris (Necker Atelier) 1932–34, 1937–39. Galleries: MoMA, Art Inst. Chic, Bost MFA, Gr. Plains Mus., Galena FA Inst. Exhibits: Paris, 1933; Amsterdam, 1948, Natl Gallery Wash. 1950, 1951, MoMA 1943, 1947.” When photographs of Lew Beach’s paintings appeared in Life, and when his famous mural Heartland Dusk was included in the Museum of Modern Art calendar for 1955, Jen felt a thrill. She knew this man, had been in his studio, in his apartment. “My aunt was his student,” she said in the college student lounge, and a caesura of awe halted the conversation. During her junior year at college, Jen saw Lew Beach for the third and last time. She went to New York with her French class to see Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme performed by the Comedie Française. After the matinee, most of the group went to Champs d’Herbes on West 54th Street for dinner. There she saw Lew Beach, looking very much older and leaning on a cane. “Look!” Jen whispered to Angela, her roommate. “That’s Lew Beach!”
“The artist?” Angela said. They hid behind their menus and watched Lew Beach move slowly past them to a table in a back corner. “Why don’t you say hello to him?” Angela asked. “He won’t remember me,” Jen said. “He can’t be that dumb,” Angela said. Jen got up and approached Lew Beach’s table. He sipped dark wine as he peered at a folded newspaper through half-glasses. “Mr. Beach?” she said. He looked up at her with a sharp expression that tempered slightly when he had studied her for a full minute. “Oh,” he said finally. “I thought it must be the waitress. College girl, eh? Art student?” He said “ott” for “art.” “I don’t know if you remember me,” she said. “I’m Jen Beckman. My aunt used to study with you. Kate Simon.” He smiled. “Of course. Titian hair. Bette Davis face. Lovely gal.” “She lives in Phoenix now,” Jen said. “I know,” he said. “She writes to me; I call her now and then. Christmas cards, like that. You visited me a couple times. You remember what I said to you, first time we met?” Jen, surprised, said “‘Open your eyes. The mind will follow.’” “Bright gal. The mind will follow and the heart. Don’t forget the heart.” Hot. “Happiness too, you said.” “Happiness. Yeah. That too. Good seein’ ya, kid. You’ve grown up nice.” As she turned to go, he added, “You know, I’ve always called her Kat, not Kate.” Jen looked at him blankly, and he said, with a note in his voice that she could not interpret, “Just a little thing. Between us. Your aunt and me.” One day ten years later while home on vacation, Jen read in the New York Times that Lew Beach had died. The long obituary described his contributions to modern American painting. It named Raphael Soyer, Chirico, Hopper, Magritte, and the Group of Seven among the artists who had inspired him. Jen read the notice aloud to her parents as they ate Sunday breakfast on the back porch. “‘Though a close friend of Hilla Rebay and others of the non-objective school, Beach remained firmly committed to his own brand of realism that combined elements of―’” “Skip all that art stuff,” her father said.
Jen looked ahead for the paragraph that described Lew’s birth to immigrant parents in New York, his education and early career. She read it aloud. The article went on: “‘Beach was known for his bohemian lifestyle in Greenwich Village. He was a friend to artists in many fields, including Edna St. Vincent Millay, Jean Stafford, Walter Huston, George Balanchine―’” “Does it mention Kate?” Maggie asked. “Of course not,” Jen said. “But it does say he taught at the Museum of Modern Art, NYU, and the New School―” “The New School!” Maggie said. “I like that!” “‘He inspired many young artists, including―’” “Never mind that,” her father said. “When and where did he die?” “‘Beach died at his summer home in Sag Harbor,’” Jen read, “‘where he has lived in seclusion since suffering a mental breakdown three years ago. He had―’” She stopped reading. “Go on,” Maggie said. “It says he’s been blind the last six years,” Jen said. “Hear that?” Maggie said, looking at her husband. “Yeah,” Dad said. His expression was gloomy. “Didn’t I tell you?” Maggie said. “Go on, Jen. Is there anything else?” “The funeral arrangements. You planning on going?” They laughed. But then Dad looked serious and said, “Better call Kate. She might want to go.” Aunt Kate flew in from Phoenix to attend the memorial service two weeks later. Then, she rode the train back to Goshen, took a cab to the house, and headed for the kitchen. She wore a black faille suit with a fitted jacket, a crisp black straw hat, black leather pumps. Without even taking off her hat, she drank tea with Jen and Maggie. “Who was there?” Maggie asked. “Nobody we know, except to read about. Actors, musicians, tons of artists. All in dreadful clothes. Hilla Rebay wore a lovely crushed-velvet suit. Two sizes too small, with egg down the front.” “What about Lew’s family?” Maggie’s tone was unreadable. “His wife died years ago. I met his son Brendan. Nice guy. He’s a lawyer in Connecticut. Lew left me a painting.” “You’re in his will?” Maggie asked. “No. He gave stuff to Brendan, with names tacked on. They’ll ship the painting to me.”
Jen saw the painting when she visited Aunt Kate a few years later, after Uncle Reg had died. It was small: only forty inches wide and twenty-five inches high. Aunt Kate hung it over the fireplace. Her living room had few furnishings and only two artifacts: a wrought-iron horse and the Beach painting. It aroused in Jen the same sense of alarm she had felt viewing his other paintings. There was a sky as high as Rousseau’s Carnival Night, an emptiness as deep as a Chirico, yet the painting was full of people. The scene depicted was real in gorgeous detail; yet it was not real. Jen looked at the birds flecked into the upper-right corner and wondered if they were vultures. Aunt Kate saw her glance. “You spotted the birds. There is a bird, or a group of birds, in every one of Lew’s paintings. You ever notice?” “No,” Jen said. She stepped back, then said, “Banality and misery. That’s what it represents. I don’t mean that the painting is banal. The subject is. It’s―” “Ordinary,” Aunt Kate said. She opened her mouth and with a delicate motion lifted a fleck of tobacco from her tongue. Jen had seen her make this same gesture hundreds of times. “The ordinary, that’s what he liked. Plain people doing plain things. Drinking coffee around a salamander in the early morning, the sun coming up. Trucks with their lights on at dusk. People eating fried eggs and toast. Men sitting on girders.” Jen searched the picture. She could see distant buildings, a small shack in the foreground. The tiny human figures did not communicate with each other but seemed to appeal silently to the person viewing the painting. Dominating the whole scene was landscape and sky, in near-equal portions. The sky was especially terrifying. Jen shivered. “What’s the title?” she asked. “Paradisu,” Aunt Kate said. “It has to do with simplicity. Aloneness.” “Nature looks so frightening. As if it could sweep all those little figures away.” “Nature has a habit of doing that,” Aunt Kate said in her cigarette voice. *** Aunt Kate achieved some fame on her own after moving to Phoenix. She acquired a following in outdoor art festivals, taught painting and drawing, had a few paintings bought by banks and small galleries, and even a one-woman show. She never knew fame as great as her teacher’s, but like him she had a brief listing in the most recent edition of the same art directory in which Jen had looked up Lew Beach years before. When Aunt Kate died, Jen inherited Paradisu. Maggie, visiting Jen and her husband for the Memorial Day weekend, looked at the painting with suspicion in her green eyes. “What does it mean?” she asked.
“Come on, Ma. You’re the one who always says you don’t want to know what a thing means,” Jen said. “That’s when I’m reading a book or a play,” Maggie said. “Art is different.” “What does this painting look like to you?” “A lot of people standing around in the wind.” “You know there’s more to it than that.” “I know nothing of the sort. Except that it’s depressing. Why do art and literature have to be so depressing all the time?” “It’s all in how you look at it,” Jen said. “That picture you have over your piano―the Maxfield Parrish―” “The Garden of Allah. Yes, I always liked that.” “This may surprise you, but the world isn’t made up of lazy women in filmy garments lying around next to a pool somewhere in Araby. I call that depressing. Those women Parrish painted so carefully―they’re slaves, Ma. Concubines. Worse than that, they’re fake. They’ve no nipples or pubic hair.” “Rubbish,” Maggie said and looked away from her. “What’s the title of this painting, anyway?” “Paradisu.” “Paradise? That?” “Maybe the title’s ironic. I’m not sure yet.” “Let me know when you figure it out. You know what he died of?” Maggie had a look of triumph in her eyes that made Jen wary. “Lew Beach? No.” “Paresis. Syphilis. That’s what you’ve inherited. And Kate―” After a pause, Jen said, “Died of a pulmonary embolism.” “Ha! Well, she did smoke too much―and she was always frail―but I wonder. Remember the trouble she had with her back?” “Arthritis. That’s why she and Uncle Reg moved to Phoenix.” “Maybe it was arthritis. It―the other thing―never goes away, you know.” Maggie’s eyes were stones. “And remember she lost her baby―” “Wait a minute. That was before she met Lew Beach. You’ve got your wars mixed up.” Maggie sighed. “I always worried after she took up with that man.” “You worried when she took up with Uncle Reg.”
“Why couldn’t she have married Oz McDonnell?” Maggie said. “He was prosperous, owned a feed store―she’d be alive today―” “Don’t rewrite history, Ma,” Jen said. Later, Jen looked at Paradisu more closely. The birds, Aunt Kate had said. There are birds in every painting. Keep yer eyes open, kid. Some day, she thought, I’ll look up all his other paintings and hunt for the birds.
Gay Baines lives in East Aurora, New York, and is a member of the Roycroft Wordsmiths. She has been writing since age eight. Her poetry has appeared in Poet Lore, Rattapallax, Cimarron Review, Slipstream, and other journals. She is co-founder and poetry editor of July Literary Press in Buffalo. In 2002 she published her first novel, “Dear M.K. A.” A book of her selected poems, “Don’t Let Go”, was published in 2010. She is working desultorily on a chapbook, “The Book of Lies,” and a short story collection, “Ancestor Worship,” is under construction.
Kris Price Writing in Tongues Clarity is an opaque cage, filled with empty intros and pale bodies. Conclusions wrapped up in coil of nonsense, connecting a railroad to Nowhere.
The building is clay that cannot be formed. I contemplate and contemplate how to proceed or fail. My brain swings like a pendulum around jumbled words. The darkness of my reading blackened by ink I don’t understand. Can I save myself from this white story with no form? Analysis stares at me like a doll with no eyes. Fragments are pieces of my body that can’t be rejoined.
Unable to carry the burden of connecting to a reader, my writing burns out like every ash of the back space button. Don’t know how to fix this like a dead critic’s voice. My teeth chew on grammar until I puke out sentences that create vague forms of rhetoric, that no one will read.
Kris Price Politician’s Logic If Obama is related to president Bush, I am a genius of classroom politics, The opposite of a dumb tree. Because money swims in a wealthy man’s pocket, You are no glorified suit. If Hitler was Jewish, I am a slave to the white aristocracy, The opposite of a rich tobacco owner. Because green sprouts from the trees of tax payers, You are a jobless man hanging by a thread. If the White House could talk, I am a chimp that does sign language, The opposite of a fish with wings. Because lies, promises, and speeches are a one-way road, You are the king, president, and a dirty little sock, no one can find. If the moon was a politician, I am the sun of a nation, The opposite of a knight saving his princess. Because no earth can hold your weight, You are the single most hated man with the power of a baby.
If you were a white collared snake, I am a blue collared car, The opposite of a catholic priest at mass. Because having this position means freedom, You are a slithering, sweet talking mouth that burns holes into other people’s ideas.
Kris Price has an A.A. in Behavioral and Social Sciences from Modesto Junior College. He is currently attending University of Montana, Missoula where he is studying Creative Writing and Film Studies. Kris was an assistant editor for Quercus Review, and Snail Mail Review. He is working on his first chap book. His work has appeared in Penumbra, Emerge, The Fine Line, theNewerYork Press, Diversion Press, PressboardPress, and the Modesto Poetry Anthology, More than Soil, More than Sky. He was awarded second place in Kay Ryan's Community College Poetry Project contest that she held during her term as the United States Poet Laureate.
A. Anupama From Caramel the quickness of silver to melt startled me as much as the willingness of cavity to take, with little pushing from metal dental instruments, curved staffs for herding little, white sheep in the mouth worth the hourglass’s silk salt sand
A. Anupama is a U.S.-born, Indian-American poet and translator whose work has appeared in several literary publications, including The Bitter Oleander, Monkeybicycle, The Alembic, and NumĂŠro Cinq Magazine. She received her MFA in writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2012. She currently lives in the Hudson Valley of New York, and she blogs about poetic inspiration at seranam.com.
David Vardeman Inside a Person What are those? Eggs? Scoop those things on up out of here, Wanda. Fry me on up some hamburger. I’m not having those things. Scoop them on up. What? Are you trying to kill me? Well, God isn’t having me just yet. We’ve got this agreement going. He’s having me one day, but not today. He’s got other people on His list today. That’s right, shove them on over there to Gus’s plate. If you haven’t got hamburger, I’ll take a steak. And if you haven’t got a steak, I’ll take shrimp or a lobster. Anything. Just not those eggs. My eye. You know where those things come from? Out of chickens. And they peck their dung too. I’m not eating those things that came out of chickens that peck their dung. Gus here’ll eat anything. That’s been proven. It all flows to him. He’ll eat things that come out of chickens. He’ll eat all kinds of things that come up out of the ground, including things no human hand did plant. Things that ooze and swarm and form colonies and run around like chickens with their heads cut off. And you! You look like you haven’t eaten in a year, Wanda. Your face is all caved in. Your nose is down in your chin. Your eyes are sucked down in sink holes. That expression on your face. You look like it’s all taken you by surprise from behind. Like somebody stabbed you in the back and you didn’t know it was coming. Well, that’s you all over, let yourself be taken by surprise all the time, fail to be adequately prepared all the time. Where are your teeth? You’re letting yourself go. Eternally gumming yourself. Some of us like to see our wives looking pretty. Some of us like to see her looking more like herself than a corpse. We like to greet the day with a vision of loveliness. I suppose you heard my old woman went out on a date three nights after she found my old man hanged in the garage. My God. The way some people live. Makes your hair stand on end. You ever hear that story, Wanda? You Gus? I ever tell you it? My old lady. What a cut. Three nights later. Must have been the night of the funeral itself. Maybe somebody she met at the funeral. Or the guy that sold her the casket or the wreaths and garlands. Even maybe the minister maybe. Somebody in the business. That knew the widow wouldn’t have much to do that night. Time on her hands.
Or maybe, to give her the benefit of the doubt, she and him’d the date the week before. Had no idea what would happen in the meantime to make it look in questionable taste. Could be it was one of those “the show must go on” situations. One of those “come hell or high water” situations. Who am I to judge the old can? The old cut. I’m just a person, right? I’ll be judged myself one day, right? Maybe if I’d been a person with a chicken’s morals, I’d’ve done the same thing in her shoes. Maybe it was an “offer you can’t refuse” situation. We’ve all been there. We’re all just human and bound to err on occasion. If she had a few drinks, a few dances, it could have been with a heavy heart. You never know what’s going on inside a person. How much the heart weighs. Oh, it was fun being a kid, except for those times your old scud missile of a momma with the morals of a chicken went out on a date three nights after your daddy hanged himself in the garage. Still, we’re all human. You let bygones be bygones for all that and try to appreciate the good memories you find scattered around in the spare room. You ever have the feeling your old woman pushed it too far, Wanda? The old grinder, the old ax? How about you, Gus? Ever have that feeling about the old fracas, the old heavyweight pro, your momma? Because I sure did. I sure had occasion to have the feeling my old grease ring of a momma took it too far. Can’t remember who looked after me that night. Course I was only four. Probably her old rummer of a mother. Probably fed me cake from the funeral for supper. I seem to recall cake. And raspberry sherbet punch. It’s enough to make you sick thinking about it. A little innocent babe like me being fed cake from his hanged daddy’s funeral by his old rummer of a fanny-grinding granny while his slag of a momma has a date, a few drinks, a few dances, with maybe a heavy heart weighing her down so maybe she’s no good for the fast dances, has to stick to the slow. Just can’t get the legs to going like she’d like to. Maybe thinking of me there at home in my PJs with the feet in them and the Peter Cottontail music box that played as I wound it and wicked old Grandma saying, “You crank that thing one more time, I’ll smack you, Boy.” And I did and she did with icing all over her hand because she’d been eating cake with her fingers. She ate with her fingers all the time, that old cavewoman did. Maybe Momma was at her slow dance thinking of all that and wishing she was home with me instead of being held tight by that brown-armed muscleman whoever he was. Thinking of me, her little consolation prize, while that coppertone bruiser with big feet and a grizzly belt buckle held her like a roll of carpet, dragged her around the dance floor to where he could lean her in the corner. Where she could show him how little her wrists were and where she’d been forced to slit them a time or two because my daddy made life so hard for her and practically suffocated the life out of her. Any of those times she could have been
permanently successful at slitting her wrists and dying, but thank God she wasn’t. She’d survived to realize life was still worth living. But as worthwhile as life still was, how the hell was she going to pay for that big expensive exaggerated funeral? Roy had left them practically destitute with nothing in the bank and her barely twenty-five. Oh, but she wouldn’t think about that now, not now that she felt so worn out with it all. Les, we haven’t got any hamburger. We haven’t got any steak. Are you sure, Wanda? Have you checked? I’ve looked everywhere I can think of. Well, what the hell have you done with all the hamburger and steak? We’ve got liver. I don’t want liver for breakfast, Wanda. Do I look like I want liver for breakfast? Have I got liver in my eyes? What do you think, Gus? Do I look like I’m pleading for liver? Do I have “liver” written all over my face? How about some grits? I could fry you some grits. I haven’t got grits written all over my face, and I haven’t not got grits written all over my face. Go ahead and fix some grits, then, if you’re bound and determined. Just don’t let any part of them touch anything that has had anything to with an egg or a chicken. I’ll have some with you. So it was to satisfy yourself you offered me grits in the first place. You’ve got a great skill for always making it look like it was for the other person when your name was on it all along. I don’t have to eat any if you don’t want me to. I want you to. I want you to. You need some meat on your bones. It’d be better for you all the way around if you’d eat something that required you put your teeth in. But I’ll settle for you eating mush. I’m not very hungry. I haven’t been hungry for a long time now. I’ve fixed too many meals in my day. Fed too many mouths. I’m tired of cooking. It’s like shoveling dirt. As long as it still tastes right, you can have all the private feelings you want about fixing food, but keep them to yourself. It’s enough of an appetite killer to see your nose resting on your chin. So, like you might have heard me say, the old hot pants hoofer fixed herself up and went out on a date three nights after my old man hanged himself in our garage. Gus, did you hear that? It’s not like it made the papers. But it got around the neighborhood. This little backwater down here. Rompot’s a byword anyway, and the people that live down there considered in a class by themselves. White trash. We got known as white trash down here coming up. Well, at least we were white, you know? You know what
I’m saying here? My momma was white. Daddy was white. The whole line white. One hundred percent white meat. We might have lived down by the dump, but we had breeding when it came right down to it, OK? My momma might have been a slut on the make from daybreak to daybreak, going from truck to truck, but she kept me white. I can say that for her, God rest her soul. By God, she kept me white. Gus, you’ve been chewing that same bit of egg five minutes now. Have you forgot you’ve got it in your mouth? You’re going to want to swallow one of these days. Good God, Wanda, what’s he staring at? The wall, it looks like. Why’s he staring at the wall? Because he sees something else. What else? Here’re your grits. They look nasty. I’m not eating those. Here, Gus, eat these. Don’t wave your hand in front of his face, Les. You’ll upset him. He’s got to learn. He’s got to come back to himself and remember to swallow, or he’ll have it all over himself. It’s going to come out the corners of his mouth next. Lord. Lord is right. I don’t think there’s nothing wrong with these grits. They look all right. I’m glad you like the looks of them. Have at them. Gray old mush. Like a plate of you, Wanda. Here you are Gus, you finish Lou’s grits when you’re done with your eggs. Finish them for me? I never even started them. Wouldn’t touch that gray mush with a ten-foot pole. They don’t taste like steak, I bet. I’d like to know what you’ve done with all the steak and hamburger in the house. From the looks of you it looks like you haven’t been eating it yourself, but what have you done with it? Give it to the poodle? You been feeding Nicole Renee all our steak and hamburger? Nicole Renee died, Lou. Died? Nicole Renee died? What are you telling me? Nicole Renee died? When did Nicole Renee die? Day before yesterday. Why didn’t you tell me? I was afraid you’d be upset.
Well you were right. It did upset me. I am upset. You’re damned right. I’m upset. Poor poor Nicole Renee. What happened? She didn’t wake up. Damn. I’m shocked. I’m heartbroken. Damn. Damn. That poor poor baby. I’m going to cry. I think I’m going to cry. Excuse me. *** I heard you crying, Les. Yeah. Yeah, Wanda. I cried. The tough guy went out there and cried. Go on and on about it, why don’t you? I was going to say I’m sorry. I poured you a cup of coffee while you were out there. It might be cold by now. The tough guy cried. Make the most of it. Have your laugh. Tell your cronies about the day Les cried. Bring it with you to the wake when it’s my time and tell the packed house Les bawled like a baby the day he heard Nicole Renee died two days ago. You could have told me, you know. You could have told me the day of. It would have been nice to have known the day of. What did you do with her? Buried her. Where? Side of the shed. Which side? McBurneys’ side. We’ll put some of the flowers from this afternoon on her grave. We’ll bring some of the biggest flowers home and put them on our little baby’s tomb. Those are you mother’s flowers. They’ll go on her grave, Les. What are you saying, Wanda? That my mother’s flowers from the grave of a lady hustler that went out on a date three nights after her husband hanged himself are too good for the sweetest dog in all the world that died? A dog that never did and never would have gone out on a date three nights after her husband hanged himself in the garage? Is that what you’re saying to me? No. Well, it better not be. It sure as hell better not be that. Because that dog was an angel that never did the first selfish thing in her life, and then there you went and buried her in secret in some kind of private selfish ceremony while the whole world will turn up to my scuzzied old momma’s funeral this afternoon like she never did what she did, when they should boycott her.
We kept Nicole Renee in the house all the time. She couldn’t have gone out. That’s not what I’m talking about, Wanda. In her heart she was pure. In her heart she wouldn’t have wanted to do what old pucker buns did, would she? She was pure in heart. That dog was pure in heart. She might have done what she’d wanted if she hadn’t had us to keep her home. She might have gone off with someone she shouldn’t. She might have taken the bait. Not if her heart was truly broken. She wouldn’t. That’s my point. A dog knows how to grieve. My old woman knew how to let her skirts fly. That’s where her heart lay in, in letting her skirts fly up. I don’t know anything about it. This is quite a blow. A blow to my system. Nicole Renee. Dead. Two days now. Were her eyes open or closed? Open. God, Wanda. Tell me you didn’t pile dirt on her open eyes. I didn’t. I put her in a bag. What kind of bag? A white plastic bag. Used? No. It was fresh out of the box. Good. Our baby deserves the best. She got the best I could give her. I put her bowl on top to make the grave. Soon as this thing’s over today, I’m going to seat that bowl in some good hard cement. I’m going to see our Nicole Renee gets a permanent monument with her little bowl stuck in it and put flowers, fresh flowers in it every living day. Fresh flowers every day for the best little angel dog that ever lived, soon as this hash is off my plate this afternoon. Soon as we’ve sent the old trick deck floating down the river. Well, you were married to her, Gus, these last dozen years. She ever tell you about the time she went out on a date with some pick-up truck three nights after my daddy hanged himself in our garage? That ever form any part of your pillow talk? What’s he staring at, Wanda, do you know? Can you figure out why he keeps staring at that wall? Gus! Gus! Look alive! You’re going to have to step it up if you’re going to finish your breakfast by lunch time. And then the funeral’s at two. So you won’t be having your nap today unless you can sleep sitting up. What’s wrong with him, Wanda? He’s chewing like a machine. He’s been chewing that one glob of eggs for forty-five minutes. I don’t think it’s really been forty-five minutes. Here, Gus. I don’t think I’m going to finish my grits either. Why don’t you finish them for me if you want?
Nicole Renee’s gone, Gus! You hear that? Best little precious poodle dog in the world went home to be with God two days ago. Breaks my heart. Damn near finishes me off. Otherwise she’d eat all these leftovers. But it’s up to you now. You can do it. Come on. Start swallowing some. Wanda, look. He’s got tears in his eyes. Gus has got tears in his eyes. Those aren’t medium tears either. Those are whoppers. God! Look at those whopper tears he’s got at the news of poor sweet dear Nicole Renee going to see God. Those could be tears for your momma. Those aren’t tears for my ash pit of a momma. Those are tears over the news of Nicole Renee’s passing from this world. Where’ve I been for the past two days I didn’t know the most perfect dog that ever lived had slipped away from this life? You were drunk for one thing. Not beyond comprehending. I could have comprehended if you’d cared to tell me. But you kept it from me. You’ve got a sneaky way of keeping grief for yourself, Wanda. I knew you were suffering already with the loss of your momma. I only suffered from her by looking at her, that’s all, and now I only have to suffer her one more time and be done with it. Halleluiah. Whoopee. Here. Take this and get those tears off Guy’s face. They’re running everywhere. He’s staring like crazy on that wall over there. He sees something sad on that wall. What do these old people think about but something sad and in the past they see written all over the walls? Maybe we shouldn’t talk so much in front of him like he’s not here, Les. He marries a certain dead end who shall remain nameless when he’s sixty-eight and she’s sixty-eight and over a period of a dozen years has the wits and morals sucked out of him. She babbles like a brook for the last two years of her life while we look after her night and day in our own house, practically dead and out of our own wits ourselves from the stress and strain of it. And now that it’s all over and we can have a return to blessed peace and order around here, he stops off talking and sits around in a trance night and day, meanwhile our beloved Nicole Renee dies. It’s God’s punishment. His judgment on us for harboring that wickedness under our roof. Maybe when she’s buried and settled under stone things can return to normal. “Put the sinner away from you.” Isn’t that what the good book says? Something like that, in so many words. No grass will grow on that plot. “Cursed be the ground the sinner is buried in.” I don’t think it says anything like that in it, Les.
You read between the lines, I think you’d find it does. It should. The good book always says what it should. And the ones that read it do what they should. I made sure the minister that does her service today is a good forty years younger than her so the service could be sure to be done by someone she didn’t go out on a date with three nights after my daddy did himself in in the garage because he couldn’t stand the sight of her. I think you should not talk anymore about this. I think it might be upsetting Gus. I think it might be why he can’t stand to do anything but chew. My momma made Rompot live up to being the by-word it is. The neighborhood of low class white trash. It doesn’t matter now, Les. Your momma has bowed to God by now. They’re having their talk, and whatever you say doesn’t matter or have any bearing on that. I can’t even remember who the specific guy was. He didn’t hang around for long. None of them did. Till Gus. My daddy might have hung around, no pun intended, if he hadn’t wound up like he did, from finding out what she was at bottom. It makes for something hard to come up with to say at the service today. I could stand up there and look them all in the eye and say, “You all know what kind of woman she was. Enough said,” and point to the pallbearers to come get her. They’ll want to talk about her Christian soul, Les. Nothing before that. Oh yeah. They’ll want to hear all about how she splashed around in a tub in front of the whole congregation when she was seventy when she heard the hoof beats of the apocalypse bearing down on her. Called it getting clean, getting saved. Too little too late they should have called it instead of letting seventy-year olds when they’re seventy take a bath in front of the whole church that went out on a date three nights after the man she drove to it killed himself. They should say, “Sorry, you’ve been dirty too long. That’s a permanent stain, and if it’s not a permanent stain, then how come your boy hasn’t forgotten? That’s pretty permanent.” They should say if it’s going to wash, it’s going to have to come off within such and such a period of time. That’s what an honest church pastor would say. What any honest garment manufacturer would say, any church worth its honey buns would say: must wash within such and such a period of time or we’re not responsible for condition of the garment. What? What’s that you said, Gus? Swallow! Swallow so then we can hear you. We can’t understand you with all that mess in your mouth. Come on. I said, I said, Les, can we be expecting to have more steak ourselves now that Nicole Renee is gone?
What? You’re asking about steak at a time like this? Nicole Renee, sweetest girl in the world is gone, and you can’t even get your eggs down for staring at something that’s not there, and all it means to you is you hope there’ll be more steak in it for you? If you weren’t so old, I’d almost hit you for that. And if I weren’t so old, I’d hit you back. Hey! Hey! Whose house is this you’re living in? You’d better watch it. The old tanker’s gone. I’m not related to you. You never adopted me. I’m not legally responsible for you. I could haul you on out of here. Unless you start showing the proper respect for the dead. Unless you start not thinking of Nicole Renee’s passing in terms of how much more steak you’ll get. What happened to those tears you had for her? Were those crocodile tears? Were those fake tears? Those were tears for your momma. Those were tears for my Dorothy. How do you like that? You hear that, Wanda? Nicole Renee’s dead and gone to heaven, and he’s sitting here with egg on his face crying for the queen of mixed drinks. Did I ever tell you, Gus, about the time my momma went out on a date three nights after my old man did himself in in our garage? And it wasn’t for medical reasons she went. It was purely on social grounds. That never happened. That was a rumor someone started. That what she told you? You ask anyone. Ask Wanda. Ask anyone that shows up at that funeral today and tries to pretend it never happened. They’ll tell you behind their hands it really did happen. That’s the kind of woman you married when you were sixty-eight and convinced to take a bath along with you in front of the whole church. She sold you a bill of goods. She sold you down the river. Twelve years you lay in bed next to a woman that went out on a date three nights after her husband killed himself. Night of the funeral, as a matter of fact. The man she was married to when he died. Would you go out on a date tonight? And what would you think of yourself if you did? And what would you expect me to think of you if you did? You going to meet eyes with some powdered widow over the casket today and get all flamed up and pass her a note? Because that’s what the woman whose casket you’re meeting eyes across and passing a note to a powdered widow across did to my father at his funeral fifty-six years ago. You made him cry, Les. You made Gus walk out of here and cry. And all those eggs gone to waste. And all those grits sitting there useless. And no Nicole Renee to clean up after us. What a day this is turning into. Can’t be helped. He needs to think about these things. He might be ancient and nearly dead himself, but that doesn’t excuse him from thinking about these things and looking them right in the eye. You’ve got no right to put anybody in the ground unless you’ve got a clear understanding of who they
are and what they’ve done. I’ve got every right to put my momma in the grave this afternoon. But Gus doesn’t. He might as well stay home and think about not whitewashing her. So should everybody else. I want a good honest funeral. I don’t want any whitewash showing up at that funeral home. I’ll say my piece. I’ll say my piece for sure. Oh, you’d better not. I’m going to get up there, and I‘m going to say, “If you don’t want to hear the truth about Dorothy Sims when she was Dorothy Dvorak, then you’d better leave right now or plug your ears for a few minutes. You can’t do that, Les. You can’t talk about her like that. She’s having it all out with God right now. You can’t talk about it while they’re talking about it. Baloney. Listen. Nicole Renee’s in heaven. Nicole Renee’s the one that lived the life of a saint, not my old sump pump of a momma. Those two don’t belong in the same place. They lived down here together. They can live up there together. Don’t tell me you actually believe that, Wanda. Did you bathe the babe before you buried her? I did. I dressed her up nice, don’t worry. I dried her on the steps. I put her in the sun. I stayed with her the whole time while she dried. I dried her on both sides. I petted her and sang to her while she dried. I tied her favorite ribbon round her neck. I stayed with her the whole time so nothing could get at her while she dried. It took her four hours to dry. I slid her in the bag, and I set her in the wheelbarrow while I dug the grave. Then I put her down in the grave, and I said a prayer and sang a song. Then I put the dirt on her and her bowl on top of that. And there she sits to this very hour. Say it to me, the prayer you said. You know it. It’s the Lord’s prayer. Did you make it specific to her? Did you make it specific to our baby? You know I did. I’m not putting our little lady in God’s hands in the ground and not saying Nicole Renee this and Nicole Renee that, am I? I hardly think so. Hardly. What song did you sing her, Wanda? Sing me the song you sang to her. Sing it out. You know what it is. It’s her favorite song. I sang it to her while I bathed her, and I sang it to her while she dried, and I sang it to her while I put her in the ground and threw the dirt in on her. Sing it.
“You are the poochie of my life. Forever you’ll stay in my har-har-har-heart. You are the apple of my eye …” And listen to this, Les. You know how Nicole Renee hated wind. Well, there’d been that wind all night, but there was no wind the entire time I was bathing and drying and burying her. And then no sooner had I got her in the ground and her bowl with a brick on top of her than a big wind blew up and blew one of the McBurneys’ chickens against the fence. The weather cleared so our Nicole Renee’s soul could take off. And no sooner had it flown than the weather closed in again. All souls grounded. I think I’m going to have a heart attack from missing her. That little dog’s left a big hole in my life, Wanda. It’s a wound, I tell you. It’s a wound. I bathed her good. She arrived smelling sweet. They pumped some stinking formaldehyde into Momma. She’ll arrive smelling like a buck-toothed lab rat, which is good enough for the occasion. Les, I never knew your momma to be anything but a kind and gentle soul these last dozen, ten years. A meeker and milder soul never lived. That was all a put-on, Wanda. Were you taken in by that act? You don’t take one bath and smell like a gardenia for the rest of all time. You don’t take one bath and get fixed for life forwards and backwards. Your whole life doesn’t come off with one bath. And what if it did? Did it come off me? Didn’t I get stained by her reputation? Didn’t the whole neighborhood get stained by her, that’s now known as a by-word for common white trash because that’s where the women live with hearts of stone that go after sex with other men three nights after their broken-hearted legal husbands kill themselves over them? Do you wash that off with an “Oh, excuse me,” when you’re seventy? I don’t know what you want from her. She’s dead. I want her to stop having anything to do with me. I want her to stop leaving me with her old heifer of a mother when I’m four. And I want her to stop stumbling in from the garage one day when I’m four, with her jaw all stuck out stiff and screaming at me not to go into the garage because there’s a huge chicken out there that’ll pick my eyes out like it just tried to do hers. Can you do that, Wanda? Can you possibly get her to stop coming into this house looking like that and screaming at me? I’m not sure, Les. But I’ll see what I can do. Tell her to stop messing around here and fixing herself up. Tell her to throw herself down on the bed and sob like it’s never going to get any better. Like old Gus is doing in there now. Listen to that. You’d think he was crying over Nicole Renee. And for godsake don’t forget to put your teeth in for the funeral, Wanda. I want to see them pop out when you hear what I’ve got to say this afternoon.
Just remember, Les. She and God’ll stop to listen. They’ll be up there and pause in their conversation and be looking down at you to hear what you’re saying. Stop to listen, my eye. Like they’re having tea together. She’s just been waiting till nobody’s looking to head into a bar where all the dead truckers hang out. Ask her to stop coming in this house. Ask her to stop going out at night. I’d greatly appreciate it.
David Vardeman’s fiction has appeared in Crack the Spine, Glint Literary Journal, Life As An [insert label here] and will soon appear in Little Patuxent Review and Menacing Hedge. He currently resides in Portland, Maine.
Shelby Stevenson Country Nin and I are going to buy a trailer to haul the Tiger Cat Scag on: I picture Paul unloading his baby John Deere: he’s on the seat, daydreaming of writing songs, his life full of money from selling fishing worms, plants, barbecue, and watermelons: neglecting to undo and let the tilt down on the trailer − oh he could just back his little JD off the slanted tail-gate − he backed the tractor off into air! All he said was Humph! I be dog! If he were a country he’d be Northwest, Southwest, Northeast and Southeast: he could grab a chunk of territory right out of the air and make precious and divine things: he could conquer Blue Mold − did − and the crop recovered and flourished to serve the public: that’s called Inspiration: he loved music too: first guitar I ever saw was his, an F-hole SS-Stewart: Ernie Ashworth’s a guitarist, songwriter, born same year as Paul, 1928, Huntsville, Alabama: while Paul “put in” tobacco, Ashworth scrounged to play music, working at Redstone
Arsenal and singing on the side, his one big hit-a-roo, written by John D. Loudermilk, “Talk Back Trembling Lips (Don’t Just Stand There)”: Ernie’s publicity photo? Wiry guy dressed in a pale blue Nudie suit embroidered with big red, red lips: cheeky: Ashworth kept kissing the mike until he couldn’t: that might have been his talent: I love the song he recorded early in his career: “You Can’t Pick a Rose in December”: Leon Payne wrote it: what a songwriter he was: “I Love You Because,” “Lost Highway,” “They’ll Never Take Her Love from Me,” “Things Have Gone to Pieces,” and “You’ve Still Got a Place in My Heart”: his writings always hit the mark: Atcher! Melvin Goins: fronting the Goins Brothers, Melvin would say Ray and me got a album out and I want you to buy It − we don’t need the money but the people we owe does: Ray Goins played banjo − when he died, Melvin Goins formed Windy Mountain. Now Atcher never worried about the wind rolling ribbons up around fame when he left Hardin County’s prominent economy around Ft. Knox Military Installation: like many Kentucky musicians, Atcher left Kentucky for Chicago. So did Shelby Jean Davis, Karl Davis, Hartford (Harty) Connecticut Taylor,
Clyde Julian “Red” Foley, and John Lair. Merle Travis, too, left Muhlenberg County, Kentucky, for Chicago, WLS, later moving to Cincinnati, WLW, before settling in Hollywood. Atcher, like Travis, was a prodigy, setting his eye on pre-med at fourteen, abandoning that thought for a singing career: I’m talking about the 30’s, 40’s, and 50’s. He kept dear the songs we Americans love to hear, tunes close to the bone, ones to make us look forward to a real good sleep: “Money, Marbles, and Chalk,” “Tennessee Border,” “Foggy, Foggy Dew”: Bob Atcher was about as
good at making money as Gene Autry: I court the dew first thing in the morning; it’s a long way to my feet: Little Jimmy Dickens says he’s so short he pulled up his socks and just about choked his-self; wore his pink Nudie suit to a concert: a woman turned to the man beside her as I paraded on stage: “John, look! There goes a walking Pepto-Bismol bottle.” During a break Little Jim said he wanted to put some toilet water on his hair: I lifted the lid and it fell down on my neck. When I rise and sit on the side of the bed, I love to hear Cricket’s snores separate from the
sounds of sizzling hashed-browns: I am not alert as Nin: she’s from Buffalo, New York, and hits the floor running, if she can, while Mockingbird does his 4-trill chill and rill: my eyes open to glean darkness: Grumman’s outside my window: toddling down the hall to the bathroom, I hear Cricket nail nail scratch from her Bean bag to my side of the bed where she’ll wait for me to pretend I am a squirrel or deer, making sounds before sunup: I take her in my arms and hold her like she has been held before: all the little worries displace the floaty-feeling which I love to dominate, you know, that musical quotidian that lays down on its side like a dog in heat as breakfast concludes on a note of coffee brewing. What do you do? I’ll bet Atcher sang the tar out of “Red River Valley”: think of that: country music history, upright, active as Time’s Moiling Hounds: I’m a red on the head:
rhyme truth; time heals; Ruth reels; beauty heels; hands deal: Trudy − truly: I’m getting tired of the big-city life: it’s rife with wives, husbands, and children on a roll. Give me autoharps − girls whose hair hangs in the strings: I’m ready − ready for you and me and John and Jesus,
John cradling in his palms the Savior’s face, while instruments synthesize an agricultural culture: Appalachia: Maybelle Carter: the Seegers: I met Mike once at Bean Blossom, Indiana, Bill Monroe’s annual bluegrass festival: Mike asked me to start a Square with him: I was too shy, my mind revering dances I played growing up: oh the autoharp: a rare one might have more or less than the usual thirty-six strings: the basis of the autoharp’s a box: bars for chording attach to the lower frame and the player plucks the strings, usually with picks.
Shelby Stephenson's “Family Matters: Homage to July, the Slave Girl” won the 2008 Bellday Poetry Prize, Allen Grossman, judge, and the 2009 Oscar Arnold Young Award from the Poetry Council of North Carolina, Jared Carter, judge. From 1979 until his retirement from the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, Shelby Stephenson edited Pembroke Magazine, an international literary journal.His most recent publication is “Play My Music Anyhow” a chapbook from Finishing Line Press, 2013.
Allison Grayhurst For Here For here the bough breaks and dreams collapse uncushioned like the smile that forsakes me and the wonderful illusion of things past but never lost. For here I cut my antennae down and kiss the pyramid on my grass, blessed by the end result but never by the happening: I know the world and it needs forgiveness. For here the smell grew toxic and the glass filled to overflowing but the grime inside never got better, though polished every day. For here I cradle my body to sleep, the long way down is the only way down and we are sold by the scars upon our throat, by the longing discarded that never knew it could end and by the only relationship we are all bound to have – our stronghold with or not with God.
Allison Grayhurst has had over 200 poems in more than 140 journals, magazines, and anthologies throughout the United States, Canada, Australia, and in the United Kingdom, including Parabola (summer 2012), South Florida Arts Journal, The Antigonish Review, Dalhousie Review, The New Quarterly, Wascana Review, Poetry Nottingham International, The Cape Rock, Journal of Contemporary Anglo-Scandinavian Poetry, poetrymagazine.com; Fogged Clarity, Out of Our, Quantum Poetry Magazine, Decanto, and White Wall Review. Her book “Somewhere Falling” was published by Beach Holme Publishers, a Porcepic Book, in Vancouver in 1995. Since then she has published nine other books of poetry and two collections with Edge Unlimited Publishing. Prior to the publication of “Somewhere Falling,” she had a poetry book published, “Common Dream,” and four chapbooks published by The Plowman. Her poetry chapbook “The River is Blind” was recently published by Ottawa publisher above/ground press (December 2012.) She lives in Toronto with her husband, two children, two cats, and a dog. She also sculpts, working with clay.
Mark Burr Losers
We lose when I put another dollar in the slot machine and make it sing. We lose as you tap the lucky meerkat on the screen, you read its mechanical mind. We might win a dollar or two. We lose our worry when the waitress waltzes by, short skirt, short shirt, guilt and gold. “Whiskey sour—the girl, Hennessey for my enemies, and a green Heineken for me.” I tip her a dollar. “Hey brother, holler at me when you need another.” Then we lose the walls built between you and me when the dark drinks hit our heads and the shadows start to swim and sink along the whispering windowless walls. We lose sight of the time passing as
our senses fail in this infinite night among the whispering of windowless walls and I lose my paycheck to the house when the beer makes me too brave and then you lose your mind yelling when I slide in my last dollar, another dollar. Another one hundred pulls before the machine starts to flash “Losers.�
Mark Burr is a current creative writing student at the historic Mississippi University for Women under the poet Kendall Dunkelberg, author of Time Capsules and Landscapes and Architecture. His interests include J.D. Salinger, Squirells, Sylvia Plath, and movies about weird people. He loves his mom a lot and thanks her for supporting him despite having no intentions of going to medical school. His real dream is to be a rapper but realized stage fright was something too difficult to overcome, at least at this moment. He loves poetry and hanging out with all the great writers and artists in his community of Columbus, MS.
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