The Road to 129
RUSTY TRUCK PRESS Scot Young, Editor http://rustytruck.wordpress.com rustytruckzine@gmail.com © Original Authors 2010
This road began in Atlanta when a homeless man followed me up to Peach Street and asked for $1.29 for his wife’s operation. What followed was an anthology by America’s underground poets entitled Poems for $1.29. Yes it sold for $1.29 and no, it didn’t make any money. Then the idea was picked up by the Writers Place in Kansas City, expanded to include anything related to ―129‖ and used it as the theme in a poetry reading to benefit the Crystal Field Scholarship. It did however make some money for a creative writing student at UMKC and that is a good thing. Scot
The Heaven that Leads Us to This Hell An unhappy number is a number that is not happy, i.e., a number n such that iterating this sum-of-squared-digits map starting with n never reaches the number 1. The first few unhappy numbers are 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, ... (Sloane's A031177). The expense of spirit in a waste of shame/Is lust in action William Shakespeare Sonnet 129
The Royals are losing again one to nine. I answered physics problems one to nine on page 129, and still you haven’t called. Maybe you are writing her the 129th love letter or calling her the 129th time. Was that you loping past her house last night: 1129 North Holly, other end of town? I flipped through 129 satellite stations, waiting, searched night sky for asteroid 129 Antigone, waiting, but I cannot think of 129 reasons why I should keep waiting or why I once loved you and barreled down M-129 to see you before Friday night was over. It seems so long since your West Aurora days. Tomorrow you can watch the 129th episode of Seinfeld with her and later remember how, like the LZ 129 Hindenburg, I went up in flames during the 129 minutes it took you to watch a movie with someone else. The Sum of the first ten prime numbers is 129. Some call it a happy number. The sum total of 129 is 12, an unhappy number, my number. In London, buses run along route 129. I am going. It’s the bottom of the ninth. The expense of spirit is a waste of time. *West Aurora is in school district 129 *The Title is the last line of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 129 *129 is a happy number Maryfrances Wagner
Clyde’s House On 1-2-9 Vine
The gossip on the streets was that nasty things go down in his basement at 1-2-9 Vine. But on the first floor Clyde cut Black men’s hair in his brass barber chair. People whispered, smiled, pointed at Clyde like he was a clown performing for them. Everyday his barber chair was filled with laborers, policemen and gangsters. None of them seemed to care that nasty things go down in his basement at 1-2-9 Vine. Clyde greeted his customers with a warmth most men never show in public to one another. He shaved and lined up hair like a painter in the middle of his Vine Street masterpiece. With ease he quoted the Bible and Langston Hughes but he couldn’t stop the talk of the nasty things that go down in his basement. Stanley Banks
129
January 1929: A couple shares a drink at a table outdoors on a dark night in Paris. She wears a fur hat, and they laugh, clinking their glasses—their wine, their communion until the October Crash. The 129th day of the year is May 9, except for a leap year, when it’s May 8th. This year, on January 29, The Haiti militia arrested Laura, a Christian missionary, for arranging to send thirty-three orphans to the states. Today, on May 17, she was arraigned. Her sentence: ―time-served,‖ not quite 129 days.
Lindsey Martin-Bowen
Jenna’s Sterling Sam bought her a fork or spoon or knife for every birthday, every anniversary. One piece all he could afford in those early years after he returned from Viet Nam. Jenna felt comfortable using mismatched pieces to fill gaps in her set. Like temporary crowns, she’d say. Jenna was convinced Sterling made her food taste better. She stroked the puzzle of curves on each piece as if she were calming a skittish kitten before she placed it in its velvet bed. The couple’s teenaged daughter discovered that the pieces weren’t Sterling at all. She laughed with her friends about how dumb her parents were, found 129 web sites that listed the pattern under ―Silver Plate.‖ Sometimes a relative was tempted to reveal the lie. ―She should know the truth and can afford better now.‖ Jenna flinched at her daughter’s laughter, kept what she knew hidden under a floorboard that creaked but never revealed its secrets. Tina Hacker
1 + 2 + 9 = 12
Crushes, puppy love, pecks on the lips hormones freaking out, confused and confined. She liked a boy in her sixth grade class with curly hair, cute, a would be handsome cute, not girly. The playground at recess with its jungle gyms, and concrete courts were a place to hide to grind, break apart embarrassed and cuddle again. They were in like, didn’t know what love was yet. They walked from corner to corner of their lovers lane watching the girls in their class jump double-dutch, play patty-cake, ―step-on-a-crack, break your momma’s back,‖ boys with skinned up knees and bloody noses from falling. When recess came to an end, they looked at each other as if it were the last time. A practice for real love. They shared a chemical reaction, her stomach churned, and he looked captivated, an awkward moment, and the spell was broken until the next day in the cafeteria -Their eyes locked while eating fish sticks. Janet M. Banks
Holding On
He supposes most people have holes in their childhoods, but he’s misplaced whole years— like small boats set sail in a storm without even a teacher’s name to anchor them. He remembers trivial things—a brown corduroy armchair, a cowboy Santa, but can’t match them to a time or place, doesn’t know if they belonged to him or were borrowed from a book or neighbor. He’s lived in Akron, Memphis, Springfield, Dallas, Richmond. Even cities have moved away, leaving him in storage till adulthood, where he unpacked himself at 129 Main Street. Been there 30 years. Lined every shelf with jars of screws, pennies, paper clips, filled each room with baskets of magazines, umbrellas, old clothes. Might need them someday.
Alarie Tennille
With Apologies to Washington Irving One day, Rip Van Winkle met two of Henry Hudson’s men, Who invited him to play a game of nine-pins. Rip didn’t stand a ghost of a chance Once the crew offered him some of its liquor. After one, two, maybe even nine swigs of the mystical brew, Rip promptly fell asleep for 20 years. And we think kids today waste time playing video games! Michelle Pond
January 29th In the year of our Lord, 1814, the Battle of Brienne, in which seven thousand soldiers died, began. Emperor Napoleon claimed victory. 1834, Andrew Jackson, as President of the United States, authorized military force to suppress a labor dispute. 1863, Colonel Connor and the California Volunteers massacred 523 Shoshone at Bear Creek in Utah. 1886, Karl Benz patents the first gasoline driven automobile. Polar ice caps melt and crack loose. We still spill blood for oil and spill oil into the sea. 1916, zeppelins bombed Paris for the very first time. 1940, three trains collided Osaka. The explosions burned all passengers to death. 1943, the Battle of Rennell Island began, Japanese dive bombers torpedoed the USS Chicago. 1944, the battleship USS Missouri launched, the Battle of Cisterna began in Italy, 38 people died in the Korniuchy Massacre in Poland, and the Allies bombed Bologna’s Anatomical Theatre, killing all inside. 1979, Brenda Spencer, 16, using the rifle her father bought her for her birthday, killed two adults and wounded eight children at the Grover Cleveland Elementary School across the street from her home in San Diego. When asked why, she replied, ―I don’t like Mondays.‖ The Boomtown Rats wrote a song about it. 1996, after decades of underground and atmospheric detonations, Jacques Chirac issued a moratorium on French nuclear weapons
testing but not in time to prevent the increase, forever, of the entire planet’s ambient radiation levels. People ask me why I refuse to pray. Why bother? No one is listening anyway. Shawn Pavey
Sonnet on Sonnet 129 Defined in Shakespeare’s Sonnet 129, Is lust as sordid, sinful, evil, bad. A voice denounces from each line That base desire that drives men mad. Unclear the tone in Shakespeare-speak That likens man to a captured fish, If all is meant as tongue-in-cheek, When baited, trapped by an obsessive wish To commit a crime of vile impurity, A selfish act for a moment’s relief, Brief pleasure begetting no surety, Only pain, regret, remorse, shame, grief. Thus man is warned of the anguish from sex By Shakespeare’s Sonnet CXXIX.
Trudie Homan
LZ 129 On May 6, 1937, the German passenger airship LZ 129 known as the Hindenburg exploded and burned at the Lakehurst Naval Air Station. What kind of scaffolding holds up the sky? What type of skin is stretched tight over the giant cells of air and clouds that keep it high; this great airship that retraces its steps year after year, powering discreetly through the dark, passengers gathered at the observation windows pointing out a tiny ship on the ocean and the brash green line of the coast slipping by below the star-pixilated night above that draws the eye so deep into the past where the bulky metal box of the movie camera doesn't exist against the glass and there are no lips to mute. There are orders to be issued, maneuvers to be made. Out on the field, one can see the ground crew running to the ropes and cables to haul us down to decamp from this fable of struts and tissue airborne like escapees from some isolated rock beneath the red volume of the sun whose filaments suddenly leap across the black water and melt the weak proxy of wax and feathers. The ship and its fantastic apparatus become a ball of fire. All its occupants can do is bite the apple's heat, kiss and fall.
Greg Field
129 West Aurora School District 129 Sonnet 129 – Shakespeare ―the expense of spirit in a waste of shame‖ The expense of spirit in a waste of shame Is lust in action; and till action, lust Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame, Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust, Enjoy'd no sooner but despised straight, Past reason hunted, and no sooner had Past reason hated, as a swallow'd bait On purpose laid to make the taker mad; Mad in pursuit and in possession so; Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme; A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe; Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream. All this the world well knows; yet none knows well To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell. Eve Ott
Day 129 Journal entry. It came back to me suddenly! Sweet love rising from the dead And buried to my conscious soul In forms of sweet memory. As love overwhelms hearts unseen Into touching depths beyond The six years of six feet under, When work decides it needs a rest. An epitaph of pure honor To masters of living souls, Singing out sounds of sweet letters Ring Day 129 tolls: Undeniably the most blessed of souls Delivering life into the world we live, Understandably the most burdened of souls Defending love as the means to forgive; Sacrificing on behalf of the souls unknown Bearing the life of the one distressed, Standing on behalf of the soul atoned Beloved in this life; the soul of mother dearest!
By Dexter M. Gunnels
One to Nine Words and music By Jim Abel
(Click here) http://www.filefreak.com/files/180734_srkux/One%20to%20Nine.mp3
129 Contributors
JANET M. BANKS has worked at Hallmark Cards, Inc. for 30 years. She has been a featured reader in New York and the Midwest. She has been published regularly in literary magazines and newspapers. In her first book of poetry titled *STEWED SOUL, she is attempting to share, through her life's journey, her examples of struggling and surviving. STEWED SOUL can be found at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Arts Bookstore and others. STANLEY E. BANKS is an Assistant Professor & Artist-In-Residence at Avila University in Kansas City, Missouri. His awards include *The Langston Hughes Prize for Poetry and the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship/Grant for his Poetry. His four books are BLUE BEAT SYNCOPATION (2003), RHYTHM AND GUTS (1992), COMING FROM A FUNKY TIME AND PLACE (1988), ON 10TH ALLEY WAY (1981).
EVE OTT: After a promising beginning during which her fiction and poetry appeared in Redbook, was reprinted in Great Britain and Sweden, anthologized in Rebirth of Power, published in various campus and literary magazines, life happened and Eve Ott worked, raised two children, finished raising one grandchild, and, did I mention worked? Recently retired in Kansas City, Eve is active in the writing community as a member of the Riverfront Reading Committee and Business Manager of Helicon Nine Editions. She has had recent publications in The Same with others pending in other magazines. She plans to prove the adage that it is never too late to become what you might have been. MICHELLE POND is a native of Buffalo, N.Y. but has lived in Kansas City for more than 20 years. Most of her poetry has been written since the summer of 2009. She is a member of The Writers Place and enjoys reading at open mic nights. One of her poems was part of the Johnson County Library’s ―Poem-a-Day‖ promotion for National Poetry Month. She started a blog, MAPoet (mapoetpoems.blogspot.com), in March 2010.
DEXTER M. GUNNELS ia a Kansas City area resident beginning to write poems in Las Vegas, Nevada and San Diego, California before returning to Kansas City to learn poetry. Dexter earned a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from National University (1991) in San Diego, where he was employed in fast foodservice management, sales and market research after serving in the United States Navy from 1976 to 1980. Currently, Dexter is a Writer’s Place member since 2008, and working to publish first manuscript entitled; Silly Little Girls. TRUDIE HOMAN is retired from a career in accounting which was actually not as dull as it sounds. She supports the arts and occasionally writes poetry. Several of her poems have appeared in The Kansas City Star. She divides time between Kansas City and Chicago, enjoys the grandchildren and travelling with husband Fred. JIM ABEL is a singer/somgwriter that can be found here http://www.wordsandmusic.us MARYFRANCES WAGNER has published five collections including Tonight Cicadas Sing, (MidAm) Salvatore’s Daughter (BkMk) Red Silk (MidAm) and Light Subtracts Itself. (MidAm). Salvatore’s Daughter was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and Red Silk won the Thorpe Menn Book Award in 2000. Her poems have appeared in many literary magazines including New Letters, Midwest Quarterly, Laurel Review, Beacon Review, the anthology Unsettling America: An Anthology of Contemporary Multicultural Poetry (Penguin Books) and The Dream Book, An Anthology of Writings by Italian American Women (winner of the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation). Work from that book was chosen for American Audio Prose and was translated into Italian for Trapani Nuovo in Italy. She has been president of the Writers Place. SHAWN PAVEYShawn Pavey is the author of Talking to Shadows (Main Street Rag Press, 2008), Co-founder and former Associate Editor of The Main Street Rag Literary Journal, Host of The Main Street Rag Poetry Showcase every third Sunday at The Writers Place, and Vice President of The Writers Place Board of Directors. He was named as one of the Poets In Residence at Present Magazine.com for 2010. His first book, Talking to Shadows, is available for purchase at www.mainstreetrag.com/store/books.php. His poems, essays, and journalism appear in a variety of national and regional publications. A
graduate of the University of North Carolina's Undergraduate Honors Creative Writing Program, he likes his Tom Waits loud, his bourbon single barrel, and his basketball Carolina Blue. Greg Field is a writer, artist, and musician living in Independence, Missouri.