Anamesa Fall 2010 by Anamesa Journal

anamesa an interdisciplinary journal

anamesa an interdisciplinary journal Volume 8 · Number 2 · Fall 2010

editor in chief Julie A. Baumgardner editorial director Alex Ponomareff art + design director Alex Teplitzky managing editor Greg Wersching contributing deputy editors Myong Yee Chin Adrian Versteegh assistant editors Phillip Arnone Nicholaus Gutierrez Beatriz Olivetti Chrstine Olson Cara Ryan Leila Shaheen Jacqueline Simonovich Rose Simons Simone Stewart Homa Zaryoni editorial associate Louis Gulino editorial assistants Ariel Sheen Ben Kampler Christine Stepanek James Matthew Michael Kathleen Reeves Kimberly Lambright Tina Sade Williams special projects Christopher Cappelluti Special thanks to Catharine Stimpson and Robin Nagle for their continued support; to Larissa Kyzer, Georgia Jelatis-Hoke, and Jen Lewis for their invaluable assistance. Anamesa is a biannual journal funded by New York Univserity’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the John W. Draper Interdisciplinary Master’s Program in Humanities and Social Thought, and the Office of the Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

www.anamesajournal.org q anamesa.journal@gmail.com an·a·me·sa: Greek. adv. between, among, within 2 Anamesa

Anamesa is a conversation. From its inception in 2003, the journal has sought to provide an occasion for graduate students in disparate fields to converge upon and debate issues emblematic of the human condition. In doing so, Anamesa provokes scholarly, literary, and artistic innovation through interdisciplinary dialogue, serving New York University's John W. Draper Program and the graduate community at large.

Anamesa encourages submissions from graduate students and graduate faculty across all disciplines for our next issue. Academic essays, creative nonfiction, reportage, interviews, short fiction, poetry, photography, drawings, paintings, film stills, and prints are welcomed. Please visit www.anamesajournal.org for more information.

3 Fall 2010

Table of Contents

NONFICTION

Contributors

Editor’s Note

Gold’s Fool and the Question of Narrative Louis Bury

POETRY

Argyle J u l i a G u ez

POETRY

Harvest Samuel Slaton

NONFICTION

Visibility Meaghan Winter

ART

Permission To Name Style Matthew Burgess

ART

Permission To Drift Matthew Burgess

ART

Untitled Ti f f a n y M i n a re t S a k a t o

ART

Contrast Ka r i D i e t r i c h

4 Anamesa

ART

Luoco B e a t r i z O l i ve t t i

ART

Untitled Ti f f a n y M i n a re t S a k a t o

POETRY

Dominican Republic For Sale I n e s R i ve ra P ro s d o c i m i

FICTION

The Cornuto Triumvirate Christopher Cappelluti

POETRY

Spaces Between E l i z ab e t h S h a r ro c k

FICTION

The Secret W i l l i a m To r g e r s o n

POETRY

Sonogram of an Apartment Building M a r y a m M o n a l i s a G h a ra v i

NONFICTION

Exquisite Patterns and Sympathies April E. Bacon

POETRY

Still Life With Frogs Samuel Slaton

FICITION

The New Kid A l ex a n d e r Te p l i t z k y

POETRY

Rough Seas Ahead E l i z ab e t h S h a r ro c k

FICTION

Calle Bruja Alberto Daniels

5 Fall 2010

cover image: Kiss Me on the Mountains 1 & 2

photography

Shifa Ali

ART

Permission To Pet Snowball Matthew Burgess

ART

Ways To Escape A p r i l E l i s ab e t h P i e rc e

ART

Untitled Catherine Lee

ART

Mina Polina B e a t r i z O l i ve t t i

ART

Untitled Ti f f a n y M i n a re t S a k a t o

ART

Untitled Catherine Lee

NONFICTION

Shower of Gold Matthew Burgess

POETRY

109

On the Airstrip at Tambor, En Route to Monteverde J u l i a G u ez

6 Anamesa

Contributors

Shifa Ali is an MA student in Near East Studies with a focus on Tangier, Morocco, where she worked as a Fulbright Fellow for Creative Writing. Her writing and photography attempt to evoke the various layers of representation of an urban space and she works primarily with “polaroid films.”

April E. Bacon is a 2009 NYU Draper program graduate.

Her recent fiction appears in Prick of the Spindle, deadpaper.org, and Outsider Ink. She is the Editor-in-Chief of Fiction Fix, the literary journal of the University of North Florida.

Matthew Burgess teaches literature and composition at Brooklyn Col-

lege. He has been a poet-in-residence in New York City elementary schools since 2001, and he has lead creative writing workshops for high school students traveling abroad in Cuba, Spain, England and Italy. He is currently pursuing his PhD in literature at the CUNY Graduate Center, specializing in twentieth century poetry and autobiography. Matthew’s poems, essays, and photographs have appeared in various publications, including Hanging Loose, Lungfull!, Boog City, and Teachers & Writers Magazine. You can see more of his photographs online at www.weathereyeout.com.

Louis Bury is an English Ph.D. candidate at the CUNY Graduate Center, where he is at work on a constraint-based dissertation about constraintbased writing. He teaches literature at NYU and is a part-time professional poker player.

7 Fall 2010

Christopher Cappelluti is a Brooklyn native and an ex-officio and

laborer for the Organic Cornucopia, his family’s farm located on Seneca Lake. He has worked throughout Europe as a travel writer and managed to evade deportation three times. Christopher is currently a master’s student in the Draper Program at New York University. Watch for his forthcoming review in American Book Review.

Alberto Daniels is a writer born in New York City to Panamanian par-

ents. Currently, he is at work on a collection of short stories and enrolled in the Brooklyn College M.F.A. program in creative writing. He and his wife Melissa live on Staten Island with their dog Ella, where Alberto is employed full-time for an insurance agency.

Maryam Monalisa Gharavi was born in Iran.

She has contributed poetry and critical writing to various publications. Her films have screened at the Townhouse Gallery of Contemporary Art, Harvard Film Archive, Pacific Film Archive, and elsewhere. She is a doctoral candidate in comparative literature with a secondary field in film and visual studies at Harvard University. She is translating Algaravias by Syrian-Brazilian poet Waly Salomão.

Julia Guez

After five years of service with Teach For America, Houstonian, she is now living in New York, finishing a Masters in Fine Arts at Columbia University and working part-time at The Academy of American Poets. New verse is soon to appear in Court Green and Western Humanities Review.

Catherine Lee inherited her love for photography from her father. As

an undergraduate at the University of California, Irvine she studied studio art and photography. Currently, she is an NYU student at the Robert F.Wagner Graduate School of Public Service

Beatriz Olivetti is a graduate student in the John W. Draper Master’s

Program at NYU. She has a special interest in the history of art and philosophy. She is also a drawing artist with a surrealist inspiration.

April Elisabeth Pierce is a second year Draper student. She is currently working on a play, some poems, and several essays. She likes Wallace Stevens

Ines P. Rivera Prosdocimi

received an M.F.A in Creative Writing from American University. Her work has recently appeared in the AfroHispanic Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Bor8 Anamesa

derlands: Texas Poetry Review, Kweli, Pterodáctilo, Poet Lore, and The Caribbean Writer.

Tiffany Minaret Sakato was born and raised in the California Bay

Area. In 2007, she received a BSJ in journalism and a BA in art theory and practice from Northwestern University. Her artwork has been featured in various publications including Abroad View and Helicon. She is currently a graduate student at New York University, and an intern at the Grey Art Gallery and the National September 11 Memorial Museum.

Elizabeth Sharrock

lives in Alaska with her family. Motherhood drives her poetry as well as Alaska, being Indian, sex, and art. Her B.A. is in art and she attends an M.F.A. poetry program at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. Elizabeth drove from California, north, as soon as she had the means. She parked in Fairbanks ten years ago. Now she nests and writes.

Samuel Reaves Slaton was born in Little Rock, Arkansas and re-

ceived his B.A. in creative writing and philosophy from the University of Arkansas. He won the 2009 Felix Christopher McKean Award for Poetry and is the cofounder/editor of The Wolf Review. He has lived in Ireland, France, and Sénégal and now resides in Brooklyn. He considers himself halfway smart.

William Torgerson is an assistant professor in the Institute For Writ-

ing Studies at St. John’s University in New York. His novel Love on the Big Screen is about a college freshman whose understanding of love comes from late-eighties romantic comedies. William has an M.F.A. degree in creative writing from Georgia College and State University, and he writes about writing and teaching on his blog at TheTorg.Com. He’d love it if you looked him up online in order to begin a writing-related conversation.

Meaghan Winter recently earned an M.F.A. in nonfiction writing from

Columbia University. She blogs for a new art and politics site, www.mischiefandmayhembooks.com, and is at work on a book about the human hair trade.

Alexander Teplitzky currently attends the Draper Program at NYU. He occasionally writes fiction and nonfiction. At the moment, he is working on a children’s book. q

9 Fall 2010

Editor’s Note

John Dryden once wrote “Second thoughts, they say, are best”, a remark rather fitting for what we in the academic community strive to produce with our work. Reflection is the crux of analysis and critique; from the inception of Anamesa, we here at the journal have been committed to being both a mirror of these reflective values and an open space to display provocative thought. It goes without saying that as an interdisciplinary journal, we collect and diffuse works across all disciplines, as well as in styles and evocation. To best achieve this, the journal no longer adheres to a fixed theme; we believe that allowing the format of the journal to be shaped by the content of our submissions, rather than the other way around, will better provide the graduate community with an occasion for meaningful reflection -- as Dryden put it-- for those ever-vital “second thoughts”. In the same vein, we now are a global journal, truly; as the world tightens in its interconnectivity, we saw fit to open up our submissions to the work from the extended graduate network. And in a tickling coincidence, as Anamesa entered this new incarnation, we witnessed the emergence of a theme. It is funny how that happens, yet around here we aim to fuse practice with theory. As our global culture becomes increasingly smaller and more intertwined, so too it seems are shared concerns about the status of thought and existence. Across the many differing regions and cultures that we academics examine, it seems that in these dizzying times of late we are particularly compelled to take a moment and assess the temperament of thought. When the pressing concerns in discussion are issues of a global nation, distance, and boundaries, 10 Anamesa

it may not come as surprising that the works weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve selected dwell on themes of transience and travel. Long has there been a tradition of movement and travel amongst thought-producers in order to experience other cultures and to learn about oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own. There is a pervasive idea that seeing the world lends to greater insight about oneself, and knowledge in general. Yet, nowadays with so many reimagined and redrawn understandings of the self, community, and nationhood, these time-honored methods to push boundaries may have been rendered incomplete. It is fair to say then that we, as academics, thinkers, and civilians of this global sphere, are in a period of transition. All transitions mark a change, whether that be for better or worse, for what is set in motion must come to rest and a return home declares the end of a journey. Yet, along the way, measuring change through calm reflection is a way to embrace that which is to come. The works we have chosen to offer you implicitly augur the horizon of change. Some pieces achieve this through their sheer reinterpretation of medial format, some in their subtext, and some in their overt admonitions. These questions of how to perceive and where to direct our global thoughtscape seem to inspire the work emerging from the academy today. Hindsight may not lead to insight, nor does distance guarantee clarity, but having a space in which to display and preserve collected reflections is itself an opportunity to incite change. With these goals in mind, we present the Fall 2010 issue of Anamesa.

Julie A. Baumgardner Editor in Chief

11 Editorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Note

Nonfiction

Gold Fools and the Question of Narrative Louis Bury

here did Gilbert Sorrentino come up with the idea for a novel written only in questions? What effect do the question marks have? Can we move beyond dust jacket answers to the question? Does the constraint “force the reader to answer the very question of the narrative itself?” Does the previous question leave any doubt as to what I think is the answer? Does any question? Must questions always beg themselves? How many people know what it actually means to “beg the question?” Why are the people who do know what it means to “beg the question” so eager to correct those who don’t know what it means? Is it because they have studied philosophy? Are they fond of fine distinctions and right reason? If a question begs, does that therefore mean it is poor, impoverished? To return to the question at hand, what effect do the question marks in Gold Fools have? Are they weighty? Jocular? Sly? Do they function as invitations? Envoys? Koans? Are they as unnecessary – as ugly – as Gertrude Stein feels all questions are? Where does Stein feel this? In her texts? In her gut? In her ear? Can one feel in the ear? If so, why do we never speak as though it were possible, except to denote pain? Is there really anything so tricky about interrogatives? What do they force a critic to do? What do they force a novelist to do? Approach a scene differently? Suggest rather than describe? Foreground the assumptions of form? Of narrative?

12 Bury / Gold Fools

When we speak about a novelist “approaching” a scene, what exactly do we mean by that? Is that the type of question Ludwig Wittgenstein would have asked? Which Wittgenstein, late or early? Why do we speak of two different Wittgensteins? What does that indicate about Wittgenstein? About us? Is it the business of criticism to raise questions or to answer them? Is it necessarily an either-or proposition? Necessarily a business? Would it be more pleasant if it were in fact an either-or proposition? Can you think of anything so pleasant as disjunction? So rigidly lax in its standards? So unphilosophical? So sneaky and devious? Is it true that disjunction misleads the witness? That it begs the question? That it is a nasty drunk? That it assumes a false identity, goes incognito through customs? That it maintains only the faintest toehold on truth? That it slaloms through the slender gates of logic? That it abets hypotheses? Continues ad infinitum? Where is Wittgenstein in all this? Where is Sorrentino? What can we say Gold Fools is about? And why isn’t the title itself in question marks? Does that constitute a clinamen? What are the boundaries for the application of a constraint? Where can a constraint be properly said to begin? To end? Does it much matter, so long as we know it is operative somewhere? Must a constraint always announce itself as such lest it be mistaken for something else? Or worse yet, overlooked? Ignored? Does having knowledge of the constraint enforced in a given text alter our phenomenological experience of that text, much in the way that knowing (or not knowing) there are anchovies in Caesar dressing alters our experience of the salad? If so, does it alter the experience for better or for worse? Does the answer come down to a matter of taste? Do questions naturally lend themselves to binaries? Do they beg for them? Does criticism lend itself to questions more readily than narrative? Isn’t it odd that we speak of criticism or narrative as “lending” themselves to something, as if these abstractions could be checked out of a library? What, though, about the question of Sorrentino’s story? Is it precisely a question? That is, does a series of questions produce one giant, cumulative question mark at its end? Or something else? What would that look like? And what effect would it produce? A familiar one? A novel one? In a story comprised entirely of questions, can anything be said to have taken place? Other, that is, than the questioning itself? Does the answer depend on how we frame the question? For example, if we say, “In a story expressed in question form, can anything be said to have taken place?,” are we not implicitly assuming that a 13 Bury / Gold Fools

story exists? Does the idea of an actual story comfort the reader? Or is the real story the story of the pesky questions? The way they beg and shimmy? Would it help further my thesis if I quoted from the text itself here? If I pose my thesis in the form of a question, does that mean that I myself don’t know what it is? Or that there isn’t a thesis? Or that the thesis is about the nature of theses themselves? Or that the thesis is about Gold Fools but only insofar as the novel can tell us something about theses? Can novels tell us something about theses? Do we not we often speak as though novels make arguments? Is this a bad way to speak? To think? Can novels make arguments? If so, what do they look like and how do we know they are being made? Do they look like discursive prose? Like an expository essay inserted into the narrative? Wouldn’t that put a nice little bow on the problem? And wouldn’t that bow – the closing of the question – be disappointing? Even if the problem were in fact solved? But can problems ever be solved? Or merely addressed? Patched over? Postponed, until someone comes along and re-opens the question? Is there an ethic implicit in these questions? Implicit in form in general? Has this question been asked before? Has it been answered? Solved? If a novel of interrogatives can be said to talk around a story, can a criticism of interrogatives be said to talk around a thesis, to delimit and encircle it? Isn’t the act of delimitation exciting? Much more exciting, no, than the actual thing being delimited? Can we agree that the fence is infinitely more titillating than the field? Than even the horse? Can we agree, too, that the construction “Can we agree” bucks at the limits of the interrogative constraint? Yet even then remains corralled within it? Is there not something inherently self-conscious about the act of questioning? Something retiring? Guarded? An avoidance of the absolute? Are the questions prodding against the grain of surety? Against what does Gold Fools prod? Certitude? Narrative? The declarative sentence? How can we begin to think about the relationship of the question to narrative? Can a narrative function as a question? A giant, cumulative question mark? A querulous thrust in a certain direction? Perhaps, but does a narrative customarily welcome questions? Isn’t the function of narrative to blot out questions, to tell it like it is? Even an experimental narrative? What, then, does that make Gold Fools? q 14 Bury / Gold’ Fools

Poetry

Argyle Julia Guez

If ever you despair, first flirt with verbotenâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; a Gauloise, yes, a blonde. Don nothing but mascara and galoshes. Down one or two capfuls of peppermint Schnapps. Then drop your head between the legs of a bookâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; bobbing as if for apples, find coral, find pearl.

15 Guez / Argyle

Poetry

Harvest Samuel Slaton

Abdou Aziz Seck read Whitman in French from scraps stowed under his mattress. The Francophone Ghost of the Good Grey Poet wandering humid in rags through the fields of Keur Sedaro. It was morning and bright, a yawn awash over the dusty world. Après le petit déjeuner, I broke up a knife-fight between a tomboy and a pack of assholes, boys—they had just slaughtered a lizard with a machete. I took a picture with them anyway. Sweat poured off Abdou’s face as he read. Crushed limes and sugar cane an allusion to Eden. Blots on the dirty Leaves, he spoke with the voice of a zealot. You have to understand this. Each line so urgent you thought he was reading the palm of God, 16 Slaton / Harvest

lines of scripture radiating aureate heat ripples from the ancient Hand. I heard later that the fields burned down. Some kids playing with fire on the outskirts. I remember it all as outskirts. The okra ruined, limes immune to their own citrus burn now scorched and steaming. Sizzling lizards the size of cats. What would’ve survived: the machetes, the unburnable dust — maybe a kid died, I don’t know. The way that grown man dripped with sweat and sweet syllables, I can’t imagine he’d let his Whitman wither in flames. But not everything is up to the letting.— He could’ve been away. In Kaolack or Dakar: salted Leaves cracking into plasma, curling into smoke the color of a poet’s beard.

17 Slaton / Harvest

Nonfiction

Visibility Meaghan Winter

alter Benjamin had very small handwriting. In her portrait of Benjamin, Under the Sign of Saturn, Susan Sontag finds significance in his tiny print: miniature lettering, a stamp collection and a love of snow globes become evidence of a “microscopic gaze” that skillfully renders Benjamin’s subjects “portable,” “useless,” “outstanding,” or “liberated from meaning.”1 Benjamin’s method of harnessing the relationship between his solitude and the material world and then writing into creation his own universe was by nature unseen and complicated, so Sontag needed for her essay visible anchors. Handwriting is both individual and completely ordinary. Trace what’s visible and we’ll find ourselves in the unseen, the internal. In Six Memos for the Next Millennium, one of the five qualities Italo Calvino considers essential for literature is visibility. He describes “the ‘mental cinema’ of the imagination” where “images acquire form.”2 Calvino explains that Dante believed fantasy came down from God; sacred art transmitted a message chosen by the Church rather than imagined by the audience.3 Sontag’s description of a young, contemplative Benjamin is a portrait, and like sacred art it projects a constructed message, infused into Benjamin, who passes it on to his audience. Sontag portrays Benjamin as a saint not to convince her audience of God, but as the human bearer of something inherent, eternal and larger than he (for which he suffers). “He was what the French call un triste,”4 she explains. His melancholia was his transcendent quality, the bridge between his solitude and the page, between his solitude

18 Winter / Visibility

and the solitude of so many other “artists and martyrs, those who court ‘the purity and beauty of a failure.’”5 Before Sontag can argue about Benjamin, she must place him before us. She begins her essay, one that presents Benjamin’s inner life as a melancholy labyrinth, by describing a photograph. In the image, he is youthful and handsome, but Sontag chooses to focus for Benjamin, and for us, on his gaze. “He is looking down,” she describes, with the “soft, daydreamer’s gaze of the myopic.”6 For Sontag Benjamin’s sadness is profound and almost divine. Calvino writes that Dante had “no scruples about proclaiming the direct divine inspiration of his visions,” but as a modern writer Sontag must trace Benjamin’s inspiration through “earthly transmitters” that, “even if they do not originate in the heavens, certainly go beyond our control” and deliver “transcendence.”7 In the post-Enlightenment, post-Freudian world, what makes a better screen through which to chart the inexplicable than personality? To convince her readers that his melancholia was his chief characteristic and the channel through which he funneled both “the world soul”8 and knowledge, Sontag must make his melancholia visible. To prove the power of the Saturnine, Sontag must move in on her subject with that microscopic gaze that she so admires in Benjamin’s work. Benjamin’s solitude was “the busyness of the idle stroller”9 in the bustling city. He condensed his world to fit the space of a page, drew maps and diagrams of his life, and wrote that each of his relationships was “an entrance to the maze.”10 Sontag takes his maps as hard evidence that for Benjamin “an act of the mind is the same as a physical act.”11 She interprets his repeated use of maze imagery as allusions to his melancholia. With his diagrams, he literally makes the complications of his inner life visible. Place figures in all of Benjamin’s metaphors (“the only pleasure the melancholic allows himself is allegory,”12 he wrote), and in turn Sontag emphasizes his preoccupation with charting and condensing space. Sontag writes that Benjamin’s work is successful because he digests the past and “collapses time.”13 His blueprints must turn time into space, because time constrains but space frees. According to Sontag, “space is broad, teeming with possibilities”14 and within those possibilities even someone born under the Sign of Saturn can escape himself. In his lecture on exactitude, a virtue necessary to achieve visibility, Calvino says that the human mind “cannot conceive of infinity” and so focuses on the “indefinite.” He extols the idea that the universe is composed of innumerable finite worlds.15 Similarly, Sontag says that “the book is the miniaturization of the world, which the reader inhabits.”16 She portrays Benjamin’s collecting and making miniature replicas as his means of control, even survival—as transcendence of the self— which confirms Calvino’s belief that only hope and imagination can console after the sorrow of experience. Benjamin did withdraw into his examinations of photographs, folktales, stamp collections, drawings of maps. When small 19 Winter / Visibility

and finite enough, worlds become things, and Benjamin wrote his childhood into a transportable story. He planned an essay about miniaturization as a device of fantasy. For Sontag, it was his melancholia that motivated a desire to cherish and invent little things. According to Sontag, thinking is collecting and history is only understandable when it is “fetishized in objects,” for “only because the book is a world can one enter it.”17 The foremost impulse of the writer born under the sign of Saturn is to “cast down one’s eyes,” says Sontag,18 suggesting she believes that looking downward is inherently linked to the significance of “things.” For writers living in Benjamin’s time, the words “thing” and “fetish” were steeped in Marxist connotations, and it would’ve been easy to analyze his intentions through a variety of prisms. Sontag ignores these possible frames of analysis, and chooses temperament instead. In one of the personal anecdotes in the essay, Benjamin’s old friend, Scholem, describes a scene from his own “mental cinema,”19 remembering Benjamin as a young man staring at an empty space on the ceiling, speaking passionately in words “ready for print.”20 From inwardness and empty space, images, then words. q Notes 1

Susan Sontag, “Under the Sign of Saturn,” in Under the Sign of Saturn (New York: First Picador USA, 2002), 123.

Italo Calvino, Six Memos for the Next Millennium (New York: Vintage International, 1993), 83.

Ibid., 81.

Sontag, Under the Sign of Saturn, 110.

Ibid., 117.

Ibid., 109.

Calvino, Six Memos of the Next Millennium, 87.

Ibid., 90.

Sontag, Under the Sign of Saturn, 112.

Ibid., 113.

Ibid., 124.

Ibid., 115.

Ibid., 117.

Calvino, Six Memos of the Next Millennium, 113.

Sontag, Under the Sign of Saturn, 126.

Ibid., 126.

Calvino, Six Memos of the Next Millennium, 83.

Sontag, Under the Sign of Saturn, 110.

20 Winter / Visibility

Permission To Name Style photography

Matthew Burgess 21 Burgess / Permission To Name Style

Permission To Drift photography

Matthew Burgess

22 Burgess / Permission To Drift

Untitled photography

Tiffany Minaret Sakato

23 Sakato / Untitled

Contrast photography

Kari Dietrich

24 Dietrich / Contrast

Luoco ink, charcoal on cotton-paper

Beatriz Olivetti

25 Olivetti / Luoco

Untitled photography

Tiffany Minaret Sakato

26 Sakato / Untitled

Poetry

Dominican Republic For Sale Ines Rivera Prosdocimi

We believe in objects. Tiny pebbles smooth in the hand. Plastic and metal pocket-sized talisman we rub for luck. What if you believe in Cigua birds never disappearing, or that touching a mother’s hand can revive your belief in amulets, as the god in a boy’s eyes takes off your cross and there’s nothing but insects calling? This country is one big stained glass window. Each of us a faceless man with peacock feathers on our backs; our extra pair of eyes preparing to dodge the next grenade.

27 Prosdocimi / Dominican Republic For Sale

Fiction

The Cornuto Triumvirate Christopher Cappelluti

e was the only kid on the block who knew Santa Claus was a big bearded lie and, though privy to this information, never let on that he knew the truth. In his Sunday’s best, wrinkled khakis and black button-down shirt, he appeared much older than a person of such diminutive stature. This ten-year-old, being the only son of an only son, had an elder’s mien and mannerisms. His given name, which he thought to be quite sophisticated, was Gaspare. He was known commonly, however, as Charlie, or to the locals in Bensonhurst as the neighborhood boy who liked to stare out of his window like a gargoyle. “Come on, Charlie, we’re late.” Marie knocked on his open door. “What do you want for breakfast?” Charlie stepped into the kitchen as his mother took his grandfather’s plate to the sink. “Toast and goat cheese, please.” He placed his order with a politely raised index finger. Grandpa Cornuto sat slumped in pajamas at the kitchen table, playing three-card solitaire before a cup of espresso. He was wrapped in a black bathrobe with satin trim. A golden crucifix hung around his neck and brown-tinged glasses straddled his 28 Cappelluti / The Cornuto Triumvirate

beak. On the wall above him was a photo of Pope John Paul II. He tapped the edge of the king of spades on the table. “That rat bastard Spino really gets my goat!” Pietro watched Marie wash his dish. “Took my money and disappeared.” “What are you gonna do?” Marie asked without turning around. Charlie eyed his grandfather, slowly pulling out a chair across from him. “Listen to me, Charlie.” Pietro’s eyebrow crooked. “Never trust people with your money.” “Never?” Charlie asked. “Never.” Pietro glanced at Marie from over his glasses. “Especially women.” “Pop,” she replied severely. “Don’t listen to him, Charlie.” “I’m just kidding.” Pietro playfully slapped the table. Marie carefully buttered a piece of toast as Niccolo walked in the side door. He stamped the snow from his loafers and unhooded a handsome, albeit grimly carved, countenance. Charlie put his palms flat on the table. “I want goat cheese, Ma.” “Tuck your shirt in, Charlie,” Marie replied to the piece of toast. “DeVille’s warmed up,” Niccolo informed them. “We should go.” “I know, Nick,” she answered, slightly annoyed. “Let me finish buttering Charlie’s toast.” Niccolo jingled the change in his pocket and pensively strolled outside. “Goat cheese!” Charlie interjected. “Ma?” “You’re going to be late, Ma,” Pietro said, slowly standing up. “Alright, let’s go.” She handed Charlie the toast wrapped in a napkin. “Just don’t get butter on the leather.” “But,” Charlie exhaled, dangling his breakfast, “I wanted goat cheese, Ma.” “There is no more.” She delicately gripped his shoulder. “You ate it all.” Charlie pushed his chair from the table and stood erect. “Didn’t you, Grandpa?” “Sorry kid, you weren’t quick enough.” Pietro winked. “Besides, it’s my cheese.” “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Charlie clicked his tongue and walked away. “Bye, Pop,” Marie replied. “Your pants need ironing, Charlie.” She spoke to the back of his head. Charlie put on his jacket and stepped into the frozen Christmas Eve morning. A record-breaking blizzard had hit Brooklyn a week ago and the powder kept piling on incrementally; it must have come down another six inches overnight. White mounds covered with black filth were everywhere. Charlie studied the mammoth oak tree, dark and saturated, and the enormous white load held aloft along its limbs. He followed his father down the path beside the Virgin Mary statue, decorated with a string of white lights, and 29 Cappelluti / The Cornuto Triumvirate

hopped inside. When they were all in the ’79 white Cadillac DeVille the family left for worship. Charlie ate his buttery breakfast and stared out the window. The houses and trees were lit up with red and green, and “Buon Natale” was posted in the windows of several shops. Charlie brought his forehead close to the cold glass as his face rested on the red leather interior, absorbing the shock. He watched a few neighbors shoveling driveways and sprinkling rock salt over their steps. Then he silently exhaled a cloud over the window and with his index finger wrote: C-H-A-R-. “Please, don’t do that, baby,” Marie pleaded over her left shoulder. “It leaves streaks.” Charlie sighed deeply and with his napkin mechanically rubbed the writing away like a windshield wiper. Only after pocketing the napkin did he notice the butter smeared over the glass. He immediately glanced sideways at Marie, who didn’t appear to notice, as Niccolo rolled into the church parking lot. Though it was the same building where Charlie attended school, with his parents he operated under a different authority. Heat and incense greeted them on the other side of the arched oak door. Red candles flickered in the gloom as the organ reverberated in the walls. A nativity scene, surrounded by enormous poinsettias, was on display. Charlie approached and rubbed the waxen figures, admiring the detail of the Three Kings of the East, and though he knew it was worthless, an urge came over him to take the gold offered to the baby. By Niccolo’s lead, they paced down the aisle to the front, genuflected, and sat near the end of the pew with Charlie between his parents. Moments later the recently widowed Lupita Sessegreta approached, draped in a lush brown fur, arm in arm with a man sporting a sharp blue suit. The couple exchanged festive salutations with the Cornutos, taking seats in the pew directly in front of the family. Sessegreta’s spicy perfume infused the air, drowning out the incense, making Charlie sneeze into his hands. Niccolo, stirring in his seat, bobbed his leg up and down. The bell tolled and everyone stood. Father Messaggio appeared from a hidden chamber followed by two altar servers, Louis and Michael, Charlie’s friends. Their albs flowed as they ceremoniously bowed before the crucifix and floated to their positions. Father Messaggio’s white robe fell in folds from his extended arms as he greeted the multitude before him. “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” Father Messaggio drew an invisible cross before himself. “Amen,” was collectively returned. “The Lord be with you.” “And also with you.” 30 Cappelluti / The Cornuto Triumvirate

“Let us pray.” Father Messaggio raised his leathery hands and read. Charlie stared, his mouth a bit open, at the flames dancing atop the candles at each side of the altar. He tuned out the familiar words and swam in the motions, with Marie helping him along, tugging his arm. He mostly watched the people with noses in hymnals, either singing, faking, or standing dumb. Everyone at mass still had sleep in their eyes, some even a bit disheveled. Charlie felt himself slip into a sluggish, forgetful current that carried him sitting, standing, and kneeling. “Please be seated,” Father Messaggio announced. “Thank God,” Charlie muttered. Marie shushed him. Niccolo chuckled. “…Take this wine and drink it, this is my blood…” Father Messaggio elevated the silver chalice of transubstantiation while Michael rang the bell. The ominous organ in the balcony directed the procession as all partook in a communion of flesh and blood. While Charlie waited for the lines of people to make the circuit, sandwiched between his parents, he meditated on the crucifix hanging over the altar. Charlie studied the life-size, snow white effigy nailed to the dark wooden cross. He wondered: how could a man that big be pinned up like that? He puzzled over the sign (I.N.R.I., in bold red letters) hanging above the savior’s thorny crown. An enigma it was. Charlie ruminated over these matters. After all were finally seated, digesting, Father Messaggio mentioned the broken church bell and the necessity of a second, totally optional, collection basket. Charlie watched Niccolo fish another crumpled fifty-dollar bill from his pocket and drop it into the basket. Father Messaggio approached the pulpit. “Thank you. For last-minute shoppers, the Christmas Fair is still on and will be until midnight. Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.” “Thanks be to God,” the congregation replied in unison. The priest and altar boys bowed and glided down the aisle to the exit. Niccolo hung his head as he walked, resting a hand on Charlie’s shoulder. Marie thanked and complimented Father Messaggio as he said his goodbyes in the foyer, while Niccolo walked by without a glance. “My God,” Marie hugged herself, “it is freezing. Give me the keys, Nick.” After Niccolo handed them over, he flipped on his hood as Marie trotted away. Charlie squinted at the sun sparkling off the surrounding snow. “Charlie,” Father Messaggio beckoned. “Come here, son.” Niccolo turned about face before Charlie did. He led his 31 Cappelluti / The Cornuto Triumvirate

son by the shoulder as they approached the priest through the dispersing crowd. “Lovely service,” Niccolo said. “Thank you, Mr. Cornuto.” The priest smiled warmly. “Mind if I ask Charlie a question?” “Not at all.” “Gaspare,” the priest looked downward, “Father MacGuire can’t find the envelope from the wedding you served at last Wednesday. Any idea where he could find it?” “What’re you saying here, Father?” Niccolo narrowed his eyes. Father Messaggio raised a gentle palm. “With all due respect, Mr. Cornuto, I’m just asking if Charlie knows where Father MacGuire should look for his misplaced money.” “How much are we talking about?” “The groom said it was a hundred dollars.” “Well, he wouldn’t know anything about that.” Niccolo looked at his son. “Would you, Charlie?” “Nah.” Charlie cocked his head. “I have no idea, Pop.” “Now, Charlie,” Father Messaggio looked at the boy, “let’s say you were Father MacGuire. Where would you look for the money?” “I’d check my pockets,” Charlie answered straight-faced. “Is that all?” Niccolo asked. “It’s cold and my wife’s waiting.” “Yes, Mr. Cornuto,” the priest replied. “Thank you and Merry Christmas. Good bye, Charlie.” “And if I find any c-notes,” Niccolo winked, “I’ll put a ten in the basket.” The priest let out a slight laugh that turned into a cough, like his body couldn’t make up its mind. “Goodbye, Father,” Charlie smiled. As the two followed Marie’s prints, Charlie watched steamy breath escape the opening of his father’s hood. After hopping into the warming DeVille, Charlie rested his head beside the buttery streaks and stared at the slushy parking lot. Minus the hum of the heater, the car was silent. Marie turned to her husband. “Is something wrong, Nick?” “Nah,” he replied, fiddling with the heater. “How about Lupita?” she blurted. “Miss Sessegreta, sitting in front of us?” Niccolo stopped fiddling and stared out the windshield. “What about her?” “My God,” Marie scoffed,“you could smell her coming a mile away.” “I know!” Niccolo agreed. He shifted gears, backed out, and drove away humming Ave Maria. The Cornutos went directly home after church. Charlie padded the pavement to the kitchen door, meditating on the oak 32 Cappelluti / The Cornuto Triumvirate

that sprouted from snowed-over, cracked pavement. He worried it might collapse under the weight of the snow that saved him from school and extended his Christmas. As he passed, Charlie thanked his white, sparkling savior—the mass of cold crystals frozen into the flesh of the steadfast oak. When he was inside the warm duplex, Charlie stared out his window like a gargoyle, watching tires spinning fruitlessly and pedestrians walking slowly and slightly slower, only to slip anyway. At around eleven o’clock, after he watched Niccolo furtively back out of the driveway in the DeVille, Charlie decided to investigate. Roaming into the kitchen Charlie saw Pietro scurrying about in his black robe, whistling “We Three Kings” while making espresso in the large silver Moka pot. Passing the framed photo of J.P. II, Pietro kissed his fingertips and tapped Il Papa’s face before setting the espresso down. Charlie tore off a chunk from the loaf of Scala and docilely munched, not realizing the sesame seeds he sprinkled as he wandered into the living room. The star-crowned evergreen towered high above the boxes of all shapes and sizes strewn about its base. No doubt “Santa” would bring more. Charlie yearned to tear the wrapping paper off everything. As temptation imbued his small body, Charlie became rapt by the rustic crucifix hanging on the wall by the front door. It was a small, black, metal piece, complete with the dead savior and the sign: I.N.R.I. Small fleurs-de-lis were soldered on each end of the four shafts, and through the top and bottom flourishes thin finishing nails held it fastened to the wall. The nail at the top of the crucifix jutted out at a precarious angle. Charlie turned away and knelt beside the tree, touching the red and silver ornaments that dangled from the illuminated limbs. He fingered a golden wrapped box with his name on it and, after checking over his shoulder, slowly slipped his finger inside the slit. “You want a pick-me-up?” Pietro poked his head in the doorway. “Sure,” Charlie pulled his hand back slowly, unflustered. In the kitchen, he noticed Marie’s key hook was vacant along with Niccolo’s. “Where is everybody?” Charlie asked. “Pop’s at the office and Ma’s shopping for tonight’s dinner.” Pietro fetched two espresso cups. Charlie rubbed his chin. “Can I have some of this?” He pointed to the bottle of Sambuca. Pietro blinked his eyes at Charlie. “You’re only ten years old!” “I’ve had it before,” Charlie lied coolly. Pietro pressed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, smiling. “Can’t stop you from doing what you’ve already done. Besides, who knows how long I’ll be around? Might as well enjoy it together.” Charlie nodded with frowning lips and smiling eyes. Pietro sat and poured the late-morning drinks. The first sip made Charlie 33 Cappelluti / The Cornuto Triumvirate

cringe, though imitating Pietro’s steadiness he slowly acquired the taste. The second cup made his face red. He grabbed the deck of cards and began shuffling, looking to Pietro in a silent invitation to play. Pietro tapped the table with his fingertip and was dealt seven cards. The Cornutos played rummy as the clock’s three hands ticked long into the afternoon. They ate bread and drank liquor in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Pietro picked up from the discard pile and laid down three kings and three sixes, then discarded, ending the round. As Pietro hunched forward to tally the points, Charlie watched the suspended crucifix swinging from his neck. Charlie noticed it did not have a sign on it like the others he had studied that day. When he asked his grandfather what I.N.R.I. stood for, Pietro replied in deadpan fashion, “I’m nailed right in.” Charlie nodded as he assimilated this information. “Your Pop tells me you want to be a lawyer.” Pietro sipped his coffee. “Or the president,” Charlie answered. “Smart kid,” Pietro laughed. “Politics and law, huh?” “Yup,” Charlie nodded severely. “Either that or a goat farmer.” “Oh sure,” Pietro shrugged a shoulder, “there’s plenty money in that.” “I’d get all the goat cheese I want.” Charlie sipped. “What else do you spend your money on, Grandpa?” Pietro knuckled the stubble on his chin. “I can think of a few things.” Charlie nodded with his mouth open. Pietro poured some Sambuca in his cup and tipped the bottle towards his grandson in offering. Charlie winked, and Pietro poured him another. As Pietro gathered the cards and shuffled, Charlie finished his spiked espresso. Pietro laughed as Charlie poured another stiff serving, but encouraged moderation to the youngster. The spirit made Charlie’s forehead perspire and his speech sloppy. “What a good kid—wants to be a shepherd like Jesus.” Pietro kissed his crucifix. “Though, you’d really be a goatherd, raising kids and milking nannies. Makes me think of my Papa’s farm in Sicily. I told you about him before, right? Haven’t I, Charlie?” Charlie had heard the story before, but, too lazy to interrupt, let his grandfather continue, as Charlie knew he would anyway. “My Papa had a little farm many years ago. Olives and tomatoes and squash—a nice little farm. But he mainly raised goats, him and his brothers. I remember one time, for my birthday, Papa picked a big healthy billy and slaughtered it.” Pietro looked far away. “I watched him. He hung the goat up and slit its throat with a big knife—I mean,” he demonstrated with his hands, “like that—it was almost a sword, Charlie. It kicked a bit and bled out. Splashed all over Papa’s pants, but he didn’t care. That one goat made a great 34 Cappelluti / The Cornuto Triumvirate

feast. Delicious kid, carne di capra.” He spiraled the tip of his index finger into his cheek. “Just delicious.” Charlie didn’t interrupt. Then Pietro started laughing. “And your father, little Nicky— he ate so much of it, the little cafone. Boy oh boy, did he love goat. Papa cut the goat’s head off and kept it on a stick, away from the rest of the food. That way the flies stayed away from us, see. And little Nicky—ho, ho!—he took the head by the horns and ran all over the farm with it. What a hell of a time chasing him down. Blood everywhere.” Pietro laughed heartily, slapping the table. “Where is Pop anyway?” Charlie asked. “At work, kid.” Pietro peered down his nose over his glasses. “Cu nasci tunnu, un mori quatratu.” “What’s that mean?” Charlie asked. “Proverbio Siciliano.” Pietro smiled wickedly. “It roughly means: If you’re born round, you don’t die square.” Just then, Marie entered the side door with groceries. “Hey boys,” she said. “How are you, Ma?” Pietro replied. He winked at Charlie, sliding the bottle to his own side of the table, whispering, “Omertà…” “Guess what I bought for you, baby.” Marie lifted the bags onto the counter near the sink. “Drunken goat cheese.” “Ho, ho, ho!” Charlie slammed the table with a gleeful fist. “Formaggio di capra!” Marie wondered at the boy. “Where’d you learn that?” Pietro pointed at his grandson with a tight-lipped frown of astonishment. “That’s the spirit speaking through him.” He grabbed the bottle of Sambuca and poured himself another splash. Marie hung her car keys back on the hook, glancing at the empty space. She scanned the kitchen. “Where’s Nick?” she asked. “At the office,” Pietro answered instantly over his shoulder. “On Christmas Eve?” she sighed. “Oh, for Pete’s sake!” “Not for my sake,” Pietro slapped the table, stood up, and approached her. “For your sake, Marie—probably a last minute gift I bet. My God!” he exclaimed rubbing her shoulders. “You’re freezing! Want a little pick-me-up?” “No thanks, Pop.” Marie smiled. “I plan to take a hot shower.” Marie kissed Charlie on the cheek, walked through the living room and into her bedroom. Charlie and Pietro heard the water running through pipes moments later. They had settled back into their lazy game when Niccolo snuck in quietly through the front door. Pietro tipped his chair backwards, surveying the living room, and then capriciously hopped up to corner Niccolo beside the Christmas tree. Grabbing his son by the jacket, Pietro pulled him close. “What’s doing, Pop?” Niccolo feigned innocence. “Hey, it’s Saint Nick!” Pietro’s histrionic smile quickly faded. 35 Cappelluti / The Cornuto Triumvirate

“What’s the matter with you?” he grumbled. “What?” Niccolo said. Pietro sniffed his mute son like a bloodhound. Then he pinched his five fingertips together, shaking them in Niccolo’s face. “You smell like a woman!” Niccolo looked away from his fuming father and stared at the black crucifix hanging on the wall. Charlie heard the hushed exchange, back and forth, like a ping-pong match. Finally, Pietro threw his head back laughing, bleating to the ceiling as he took off his robe. He held it to his son’s chest, ushering him to the basement door. Niccolo grabbed the black robe and scrambled down the steps, leaving behind him a pungent trail of spicy perfume. “And Nicky,” Pietro cocked his head, “go to confession.” Niccolo descended the steps, calling up, “I already did.” Pietro sauntered back into the kitchen in his pajamas, biting on the temple of his glasses, softly cackling. He looked down at Charlie, who sneezed violently. Then Pietro looked long and hard at the bottle of alcohol. Putting his glasses back on, he scratched his chest. “Madonna mi,” he exhaled while sitting. “You hear what we were talking about?” “Nah,” Charlie replied. “What were you talking about?” “Nothing important, kid,” Pietro said. But, he knew Charlie’s ears picked up everything. Instead of speaking, they shared the silent realization that sunlight was completely drained at such an early hour, and the darkest days were upon them. Shortly thereafter, Niccolo appeared in the kitchen, robed, with a hand on his waist. He pointed to the pot of espresso. “You like that stuff, Charlie?” Niccolo asked. “Yeah, Pop,” Charlie blinked slowly. Pietro laughed. “He’s a Cornuto.” “Damn, Charlie! That’s my boy.” Niccolo sat and poured a double shot of Sambuca. “To the Cornuto Triumvirate,” he raised his glass to each in turn, “In Nomine Patris et Filii et Bambino Sancti.” Niccolo downed the shot. “Salute!” Pietro interjected and finished his splash. Charlie smirked mischievously with closed eyes. When the invisible sound of water ceased, Niccolo stood and patted Charlie briskly on the back before jaunting to his bedroom. The pat sent Charlie swaying, and he rested his head in folded arms upon the table. He felt himself get pulled into a deep, sluggish current (among his first of the kind) and swam in a desert of dreams for what seemed eternity. Two hours later, he awoke at the table surrounded by a spread of veal cutlets dripping with mozzarella and wine-infused goat cheese, penne rigate, and a bubbling pot of Marie’s sauce flavored with sweet pork and hot sausages. After filling his gut, 36 Cappelluti / The Cornuto Triumvirate

Charlie went back to sleep in his bed and, for the first time in his short life, snored. Traditionally up before dawn, Charlie arose that Christmas morning long after his parents. Rubbing his head with lackadaisical spirit, he rested it on the cool pane of glass, bearing witness to the thaw that had finally come upon Bensonhurst. The sun made the mercury rise, the dark oak was released from its weighty burden, and the twitching sparrows balanced like black Christmas lights along the dripping wires. In the twilight of dream reality, Charlie staggered into the decked out living room and found that his kingdom had come. He gloated over the moat of unexpected presents surrounding the glimmering evergreen. “Merry Christmas!” he yelled at the top of his lungs, raising both arms. There was a clatter of silverware in the kitchen, and Marie walked into the living room in pajamas and slippers. “Merry Christmas, Charlie,” she sang in a moony coo. “Look at what Santa brought you.” “Santa may have brought me this, so what?” Charlie huffed. “Look,” he hunched over to grab a small box with a red bow and extended the gift excitedly. “I got this for you, Ma.” Speechless, Marie opened the box. Niccolo and Pietro shuffled in from the kitchen to watch. They looked like two chips off the same rustic block. Even their hair, Niccolo’s black and Pietro’s white, was neatly parted in the same manner. Charlie combed his hair in kind as his mother opened her present. “Oh my God,” she gasped, “it’s beautiful!” She flashed a silver, diamond-studded broach to Niccolo and Pietro before scampering off to her bedroom. “I have to see how it looks!” When Marie was out of sight, Niccolo nudged Charlie backward a step. “Where’d you get the money for that?” he asked. “I had it,” Charlie replied. Pietro crossed his arms, observing smugly. “Charlie, look at me,” Niccolo demanded. “Did you take that money?” “What money?” Charlie asked. “That money Messaggio was talking about,” Niccolo answered. Charlie squirmed, staring away at the black crucifix on the wall. Then, looking at his father straight-faced, answered, “What do you think?” Pietro snickered. “I think you did,” Niccolo replied. Charlie looked to his smirking grandfather then at his concerned father. He nodded slowly, but said nothing. Niccolo sighed in disapproval, shaking his head. He silently appealed to his father, who raised both eyebrows and looked away. Just then the 37 Cappelluti / The Cornuto Triumvirate

doorbell rang. Pietro strolled over the carpet to the front door and opened it, revealing a uniformed police officer standing outside the storm door. An NYPD prowler was parked outside the driveway, and another officer faced the house, resting his folded arms on the car’s roof. “Mr. Pietro Cornuto?” the officer asked. “That’s me.” Pietro straightened his stance. As the two spoke, Marie walked back into the living room, her broach fastened to her pajama top. She stood next to Niccolo, who put his arm around her, and Charlie snuck securely between his parents, listening. “It’s Christmas morning,” Pietro grumbled. “We’re all in our pajamas for Chirstssakes. Can’t we do this some other time?” “With all due respect, Mr. Cornuto,” the officer flipped open a notepad, “can you tell me your whereabouts as of yesterday?” Frustrated, Pietro garbled a sigh. “’Scuse me, sir,” Charlie stepped up. “We played cards all day yesterday.” “Listen, son,” the cop looked down at Charlie, “let me speak to your grandfather.” “There’s no secrets between Charlie and me.” Pietro grasped his grandson’s hand. “This kid knows my whereabouts as good as I do.” “Grandpa was with me yesterday,” Charlie calmly insisted. “Is that right?” the cop asked. “Yeah,” Pietro replied. “Played cards all day. And he won! What makes you ask anyway?” “Frankie Spino,” he said. “He was found in the tub with his wrists slit.” “Davvero!” Pietro looked down at Charlie and clicked his tongue. “Did himself in, huh?” The officer cleared his throat. “We were informed you two did business together and he stiffed you.” “That’s right,” Pietro answered. “Sonofabitch stole a bundle from me. So I’m your scapegoat?” “Look, coroner says this went down yesterday,” he continued, “and we’re just asking around. Don’t want to waste any time.” “I told you,” Charlie spoke up, “Grandpa was with me—all day— he couldn’t have done it.” “Alright, well,” the officer procured a card from his inside jacket pocket, “you think of anything else we ought to know, give us a call.” “Sure thing.” Pietro took the card. “And Merry Christmas.” “Merry Christmas,” the cop replied. He waved to Charlie and took off. Pietro slammed the door so hard it shook the walls. He crumpled the card in his fist, cursing under his breath. Something about “New York’s 38 Cappelluti / The Cornuto Triumvirate

finest.” Niccolo and Marie disappeared into the kitchen, muttering to each other with animated gesticulations. Then Charlie squinted towards the wall, seeking out the source of a strange, scraping sound. When Pietro slammed the door, he jarred the finishing nail loose from the top fleur-delis, leaving the crucifix swinging upside down from its bottom nail—back and forth—like a black pendulum. “Nothing like an honest alibi.” Pietro gripped his grandson’s shoulder. “All I did was tell the truth.” Charlie rubbed his aching head. “But Grandpa, look at me. You know anything about all that?” Pietro glanced at the upside-down crucifix. “You’re a smart kid, Gaspare.” He looked at his grandson straight-faced. “What do you think?”

39 Cappelluti / The Cornuto Triumvirate

Poetry

Spaces Between Elizabeth Sharrock

I dreamt of colliding storm fronts

the spark of the edges

woke me

His absence is that space

between wrong ends of magnets But the children are here holding the ends of anchoring ropes One child pulls milk threads from my breast and another

sleeps downstairs in tangled sheets Temper

tethered Morning I wring

thick tongue awake with bitter mix of coffee and too little sugar 40 Sharrock / Spaces Between

I listen to the pluck of strings coming from the radio

beat just out of sync

with the clockâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s second hand My fingers tap a notebook

His daughter yawns clutches

her knees to her chest

Shhh I point to the baby scratch a penâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s dark matter across the white surface

until it tears

then ponder the void

Open it wider work my way

around the wound 41 Sharrock / Spaces Between

Fiction

The Secret William Torgerson

n the night I want to tell about, my sister was staying at a friend’s house, my mom was at this local bar called The Bloody Bucket, and I was up fairly late for a thirteenyear-old watching Friday Night Videos. When I first saw the little black and white kitten push its pink nose into the glass of our sliding door, Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” was playing on the television. I was very glad to see that kitty’s face in the window, and even though I knew my mother wouldn’t like it, even though I knew I would have to keep it a secret from her, I brought the kitten right into our run-down apartment and named it Hope. I was glad for the company. An hour or so later, when I heard the front door open and close signaling my mother’s arrival home, I was setting up Hope in my bedroom, arranging for her a rump of blankets in the skinny place between my bed and the wall. Cold and shivering in the sleeting rain outside, Hope had already seemed to warm up and was on the verge of falling asleep. It made me feel good to be this little thing’s savior. I’d been so excited about my new pet, that I’d left the television and most of the lights in the kitchen and living room on. Mom bitched about that right away; from toward the front door I heard her hollering something about us not having money to burn. She was right about that, but I noticed that our shortage of money did not extend to a reduction of her clothes or booze budget. About

42 Torgerson / The Secret

a year before, my mom left my father for a guy who turned out not to want us after all once we became available. This was before I didn’t know people tended to want what they thought they couldn’t have. My dad was—and still is—an accountant for this dumpster plant in the little town where we live, Horseshoe. Dad makes a lot of money now, and he made quite a bit of it then. We had a nice house, a boat for fishing, a basketball court, and a swimming pool, but my mom thought my dad was boring, that he didn’t talk about his feelings enough. So that Mom wouldn’t catch me with Hope, I hurried out of my room and ended up meeting her in the hall. She had a new dress on. The top half was black and strapless, the bottom section suede and fashionably frayed around the edges, and she wore it over black tights. My mom is a tall woman who colors her hair blonde, and back then she was in a skinny phase, a physique she reached by smoking, drinking, and not eating much of anything. She was the sort of woman who probably looked very good in the twinkling lights of a bar. Her arms jangled with silver bracelets, and she smelled like whiskey and cigarettes. This was a big change for me then, that my mom had transformed from being the sort of woman who tucked me in at night to the kind of person who, at least three nights a week, stayed out till after I was in bed. Quite a few mornings a week I had the new responsibility of getting my younger sister fed, dressed, and both of us onto the bus. I braced myself in Mom’s presence and readied my arm to block any aggressive move she might make. Earlier that week she’d come home and slapped me, saying that I was in league with my father, and although I thought maybe she’d do that again, she was very sweet to me. “Hi, Baby,” she said. She’d never called me baby when she’d been with my father. “What have you been doing tonight?” For a second I thought she might have been playing a trick on me, that somehow she’d learned my secret, that I’d snuck Hope into our lives, but then I realized I was just being paranoid. I reported to her that I’d ordered Pizza King for dinner just as she’d instructed. She made a joke about me sneaking some of my girlfriends over and even reached into her purse and pulled out a three-pack of condoms. It was the first time I’d ever seen a condom outside from the pictures on the machines I occasionally encountered in gas station restrooms. Mom didn’t know it, but I’d never even kissed a girl. “Let’s go for a drive,” Mom suggested. “I feel like getting some air.” I didn’t see how driving had anything to do with air, but going for a drive was something my father had loved to do, and it would be different to do this at night. When my mom, dad, and I 43 Torgerson / The Secret

were still a family, our drives had always been Sunday after church, but following the divorce neither of my parents went to church anymore. Me neither. On our way out the door, Mom grabbed a prescription bottle from the windowsill above the kitchen sink and popped a handful of pills. I wasn’t so sure about the drive, but she was my mom, and she wanted to go out, and I still trusted her, still, even though she’d left my father. I’d been eyeing my dad especially close since the divorce, looking for his interminable boring streak, this fatal flaw that had caused my mother to eject him from our lives. My mother had upended it, and I thought surely, for the love of God, she must have had a very good reason to do it. The parking lot of the apartment complex was well lit, and off in the distance, on the edge of illumination, I could see two kids that I thought were my classmates sitting on the dark silhouette of the rusty swing set. One of them was Angel Boardman, who lived right at the end of my street, and the other kid was Joe Cushing, Angel’s secret high school boyfriend, a guy who would eventually shoot himself under the chin with his father’s shotgun. There were rumors that Angel and Joe met in the night and sometimes did it right there in the tube slide of the apartment playground. I didn’t say anything to Angel or Joe, and I was sort of embarrassed when my mom asked me to get in the backseat. Upon leaving my father, my mom bought a used 1979 Mustang, the one that had a silver body with orange and black trim, the one that had been the Indy Pace Car. I asked Mom if we were going to pick somebody up—that had happened a couple times—but she didn’t seem to hear me, and instead argued with somebody I couldn’t see. “Brainwash him for what purpose!” she demanded. I got in the back and as Mom buckled her seat belt she asked me do the same. That my mother wanted me to buckle up seemed a good sign, a sign that she still cared about me. We hadn’t gone a quarter mile along Riverside Drive when my mom took a left at the Russell Mortuary and drove down the short and steep hill to where there was a boat ramp and the swinging bridge crossed over the river into the town park. On one side of the river Horseshoe sat up high on a steep bank and on the other where the park was the land was very low, so low that nearly every spring it became completely submerged by the river. Although my mom only had her window cracked, going down the hill it was as if we’d dropped into a cloud of the most foul-smelling stench you ever set your nose to. Back then, the artesian well in Horseshoe was still functioning, and it smelled like rotten eggs. The smell was of sulfur I suppose. Legend had it that the water had some sort of magical 44 Torgerson / The Secret

healing power, and people came from all over to crank on the hand pump and fill Ball canning jars with the stanky stuff. Once I tried a sip of it, and it tasted as bad as it smelled. Mom came to a stop right at the bottom of the hill. The area was too large for what it was used for, and probably had the square footage of a football field even though it was rounder than that in actual shape. It was all gravel down there and while sometimes at night there’d be a few people smoking or drinking, on this night the place was desolate. In the summer it was often crowded, littered with trucks and trailer hitches for boats, and sometimes people liked to hang out and picnic after a day on the river. “What are we doing?” I asked my mom. Most of the lights on the telephone poles had been shot out, and any light there was came from the Mustang’s headlights, and the shafts of moonlight that were able to cut through the trees like the fat prongs of a pitchfork. Ahead of us the moon shone bright on the surface of the river. “Are you sure?” my mom asked. What she said didn’t seem to have anything to do with what I’d asked. She was looking out her window. My seat was on the passenger side, and I leaned up so that I could peer out and see if I could spot anyone. “You’re right,” my mom said shamefully, as if she’d been savagely rebuked. “I trust you. This way, Todd won’t be able to get to him.” Todd is my father’s name, and when my mom and dad first separated, my mom had made a big deal that if my father ever showed up someplace that he wasn’t supposed to be, that I was under no circumstances to go with him. Upon hearing “get to him,” I thought maybe Mom had found out that Dad was coming for me that night, and although it eventually happened for reasons different than I’d imagined, my hopes that I would never spend another night in my mother’s house came true. I hoped that if my father did show up, he’d make time to stop by the apartment so I could get Hope. There must have been something about me sticking my head between the gap of the front seats that drew my mother to me because she turned away from the window and told me that she loved me. This was something that I never remembered her saying; not to me, not to my sister, and not to my father. This wasn’t anything I thought odd about my mother; dad didn’t tell me he loved me either. My family always possessed that old Midwestern stereotype of silent stoicism. From the backseat I watched Mom roll down her window all the way. For a moment I thought that I’d finally see the face of whoever it was that she’d been speaking to. Better yet, I thought maybe my dad had come. But in reality, Mom intended to drown me 45 Torgerson / The Secret

in the river, and she’d come up with a not-very-likely plan to succeed. The Mustang was a two-door hatchback and its rear windows were very small and didn’t open. She had put me in the spot farthest from where the open window would be, the window from which she planned to swim to safety. And then what did she think she’d do after that? I suspect she hadn’t thought that far ahead. I asked her again what we were doing, and she didn’t respond. Mom tromped the gas pedal down and I heard a rain of gravel pelt the wheel wells and spray along the sides of the car as it lurched forward. The Indy Pace Car replica was a V-8 and Mustang aficionados will tell you that it could do 0-60 in nine seconds. We were on gravel, had a good fifty yards to the boat ramp, and as we began to near it we started to fishtail a little. Had my mother wanted to kill us both she should have been on the other side of the river, outside of town, where she could have gone straight through one of the S-curves that snake along the Tippy and launch us from a height of several stories down into the water. But we were already at water level and the boat ramp would send us down into the shallows rather than up into the middle of the river where it was deeper. What flashed through my mind as we sped toward the water was that right there under the footbridge, fishing out of the family boat, my mom had once caught a seventeen pound carp. My dad said carp were no good for eating, but we took that monster down to the local bait and tackle shop, had it weighed, and a picture of all of us had appeared in the Horseshoe Sentinel, my mom smiling and holding her big catch. When the front of the Mustang hit the water, nose angled down by the boat ramp, we flipped up into the air as if the car were attempting some sort of aerial somersault. The rev of the engine whinnied in my ears and there was a moment of peaceful floating before we smacked upside down onto the surface of the water. I was jolted hard, felt some crunching of my neck and spine bones, but mostly felt unharmed. There was another softer impact. The car had flipped into a shallow part of the river and although we must have bounced and floated a few yards, the Mustang came to rest gently against a boulder just under the surface of the water and slightly downstream. As soon as we’d gone under my mom had begun to scream frantically and wave her arms around as if she could push away the drowning torrent that rushed through the driver’s side window from which she planned to escape. This had not been her plan. I think she thought her speed would place the car in the middle of the river, sinking into the depths, but not so fast that she wouldn’t have time 46 Torgerson / The Secret

to unbuckle her seatbelt and get out before the car went completely under. Had that been what happened, I think I still would have been able to escape. “Oh no, oh no, oh no,” my mom said over and over, her voice muffled under the sound of the brown water of the Tippy rushing over her and into the interior of the car. That night, at the bottom of the river, in the faint glow of the interior lights that were still working, I learned something about myself, that my spirit goes completely numb in life’s worst moments. Today, after whatever near-tragedy has loomed but been averted, once it’s clear the choking child’s airway has been cleared, once the bone that came poking through the skin of a broken arm has been set by a doctor, my friends and family tease me that I have the heart of a cold-blooded killer. It’s what helps me do my job today, and when others say this about me, laughing, they don’t realize the truth of their observation. With my mom hanging upside down and her head beginning to submerge, I pushed my feet into the roof, braced one hand against the glass of the hatchback, and created enough slack in the seat belt that I could unbuckle it. I crawled through the space between the front seats to where there was still a pocket of air, and as soon as I got near my mother, she grabbed for my waist. Thinking that she meant to hold me unto death, I knocked her hands away. I suppose the water was very cold, but I don’t remember that at all. I think it might have been television that taught me what to do next. Growing up, I had always wanted to be a fireman, so much so that as a child I wrecked my voice for quite a few pitches from my habit of making siren noises. My favorite show was Emergency!, a television drama that was set in a fire station, and I was a great admirer of the paramedics that worked there. It seems reasonable to me now that there might have been an episode where a car was submerged. At any rate, so that I could avoid the same high pressure flood that my mother faced, I knew to let the car mostly fill up with water before I rolled down the window on my side so that I could swim out. My mother was really thrashing around, and the seat belt kept her from raising her head above the water. With the intent of saving her, I put my head between her legs and felt around on her hip for the seat belt. What I was thinking was that it might have become jammed, maybe even smashed to where it wouldn’t come loose. With my feet again pushing on the roof of the car, I bent over and pushed my back into Mom’s legs and waist, and when I mashed my thumb into the button of the seat belt I could feel it click and release. She 47 Torgerson / The Secret

fell onto my back and I slipped away to the passenger side of the car. She’d been under the water less than ten seconds but came up coughing and sputtering, her face very close to mine. Completely panicked, she wrapped both of her arms around my head. Maybe she did this determined to finish what she’d set out to do, but I’d rather think that she had become a scared woman who faced death and was looking to her son for help. I forced my arms up through hers, broke free of her grip, rose over her in the car like a wolf, and screamed at her to stop. I remember that in my rage we slammed our front teeth together. I, in fact, still have a little chip in mine from where the dentist’s drill couldn’t quite even it out. Under my fierceness I saw the murderous spirit in my mother replaced by the sorrowful gaze of a woman who had intended to kill her child. She dropped her head on the windshield and her body went limp. With only a little sliver of air left for us, I began to roll the passenger side window down as quickly as I could and I yelled for my mother to take a deep breath. She responded to that. I took one for myself, and then telling her to “swim and kick,” I grabbed her arm and ducked under the water. It wouldn’t have mattered if it was noon instead of the middle of the night. The water of the Tippecanoe is chocolate brown and to be under it is to be enveloped by darkness. Keeping a firm grip on Mom’s wrist, I grabbed the door and pulled myself through the window, dragging Mom with me as I went. Ready to swim for it, I was surprised to feel the rocky bottom of the river under me. I stood and pulled up on Mom’s wrist. In the car it had felt as if we’d soared ten yards, but mostly we’d just turned over on the nose and landed upside down on the edge of the river. The wheels of the Mustang poked up out of the water. Mom stood with me, and with the water up to about our necks we were able to walk hand in hand across the gentle current to the boat ramp. A squad car—blues whirling—came carefully over the ridge of the hill near the Russell Mortuary and down to where my mom and I were, me standing on the rise of the boat ramp. I let go of Mom’s hand and she moved over to the painted-white concrete ledge that ran along the edge of the swinging bridge. The police had received several calls about a loud noise down by the artesian well, and when I looked up to the flats of Horseshoe, where Riverside drive ran parallel to Main Street, I could see the back windows of houses shining with light, the silhouettes of their inhabitants moving around and peering down at our commotion. Mom sat on the ledge shivering and sobbing and I again thought of my little kitten, that little wet fuzz ball I’d brought in from the cold. I hoped very much that Hope was sleeping peacefully 48 Torgerson / The Secret

beside my bed. I hoped that I would be able to see her that night; in fact, I felt as if I needed to see that little kitten, warm and safe. The officer driving the car—his last name was Dillman—parked at the top of the ramp and came running down asking us if we were alright. Both of my parents’ families have been in Horseshoe for generations, so I guess Dillman knew, at least in general, who my mom was. Probably on any given night he could name just about everyone who bellied up to the bar in the Bloody Bucket, and so he probably knew my mother and knew her behavior was becoming increasingly erratic. If so, his conduct did not reflect any judgmental attitude. Officer Dillman was very patient and kind, even when the facts started to come out. Another police car came down the hill and an ambulance trailed it. In the two decades that have passed since my mother tried to kill me by driving her Mustang into the shallow water of the Tippecanoe River, I kept a secret about that night. No, I never lied about my mother’s actions; I didn’t have to. She freely offered the truth of her intentions to Officer Dillman as soon as he got to where we were. He glanced at me when she told him, and I nodded an affirmation, relieved from the pressure that I wasn’t going to have to go through the pressure of sticking to a story that didn’t make any sense. In the seconds that I had been trying to imagine a lie nothing plausible had come to mind. Why would I have been driving the car? What could have caused my mother to make such a mistake as driving into the river? I had just been thinking that maybe I would say she’d hit the accelerator when she’d intended the brake, but we hadn’t had time to corroborate anything. You might wonder why it is that a boy whose mother had just tried to kill him would so quickly be racking his brain for a story to save her. Perhaps, you guess, this is a boy’s natural love for his mother, an impulse of character like the one that propelled me to haul her from the body of the submerged Mustang. But from my experience, this maxim about a boy’s character, that he will always carry the impulse to save his mother, does not ring true. Believe it or not, my desire to tell a lie to save my mother came from the powerful guilt I felt standing on the boat ramp. My secret, the one I did not tell my mother over the two years she was kept in Longwood Mental Hospital, the one I did not tell my father over the years I lived with him before college, and the one I have never even told my sister, not during all those joint therapy sessions, is that on the night my life was threatened at bottom of the Tippecanoe River I fought off the instruction of a terrible impulse. It was an impulse from which I barely escaped, an impulse whose yellow eyes I stared into and drew 49 Torgerson / The Secret

the rage with which I filled my soul and cast out my mother’s desire to hug me until the water suffocated us. That night my mother tried to kill me I yanked the hook of this impulse out of the center of my meaty heart, painfully so, the prongs of it tearing into my flesh and scarring it permanently. My mother was not the only person to hear a voice that night. I heard a voice too, and it was a screaming driving voice, one which urged me to leave my mother hanging there, hanging upside down, panicked and flailing, thrashing around in the water unto death. The voice urged me to leave my mother under the water to die. I almost did it, and if I had been able to keep quiet about it, no one would have ever known. The people of Horseshoe can’t understand how it is that I have forgiven my mother. I have been able to forgive her because I know that sometimes life has to be survived, because I know how close we might all come to doing terrible things, that because I know that it is only the width of a kitten’s whisker that separates all of us—whether we realize it or not—from sanity and insanity, from life and death. “End”

50 Torgerson / The Secret

Poetry

Sonog ram of an Apartment Building Maryam Monalisa Gharavi

Carioca apartment, Japanese walls, the neighbor’s intoxicated hands jangling a key into a hole, a mother’s bellow (‘abre a boca!’), a drill or a gimlet, a kettle at boiling point, the hysteric clamor of football highlights and car accidents, the yelping noise of sexual exchange, the repetitious synth-pop of North American chart music, the monotonous response of porn videos (‘isso! isso!’), the aspirated bursts of air puffing out of a game show host, flatus, the shrill honk of a forced laugh, a mother’s yowl (‘cala a boca!’), the vibrato-less hum of a television monitor turned on, whispers into a pillow, the elevator’s petered grunting, a child’s shriek to its mother (‘nãooooo!’), the rude bray of California English, sing-song radio Portuguese, a woman vocalizing orgasm (‘isso!’), slapped flesh, sighs, filho-da-mãe expletives spewed into a landline telephone, the taut violin strings of a detective movie soundtrack, voices elongated in the entertainment of company, the maudlin overture of a cheaply dubbed foreign movie, high-pitched titters of laughter at a baritone male’s lampoon, ceaseless labor of row and reverb, a circus cacophony, a marching band battalion engineering sonic nightfall ad perpetuum.

51 Gharavi / Sonogram of an Apartment Building

Nonfiction

Exquisite Patterns and Sympathies April E. Bacon

nimals were increasingly the subject of human fascination in the Victorian Era. Zoos were relatively new and increasing in popularity. “The first animal protection and welfare organizations emerged…the domestic pet became a central figure in the bourgeois family life…and there was an increase in…sport hunting expeditions in Africa and India, and in the fur and feather trades spurred by the Victorian fashion industry.”1 Victorians thought about animals extensively — dogs, for example — were used metaphorically to exemplify “the appropriate relationship between masters and subordinates,” and some speculated that “peoples that had not yet domesticated the dog might not be fully human.”2 Perceiving animals as inferior to humans, and using them as a means to understand humans are common threads that bind most Victorian (and pre-Victorian) thinking. It was in this context that Darwin developed his notion of the modification of species through descent and through the mechanism of selection. Although the idea that species are transmutable — that one can change into another over time — was not new in the Victorian era, Darwin’s theories changed the relationship between man and animal forever. Darwin wrote, “it is absurd to talk of one animal being higher than another,” and his theories make clear just how connected humans are to non-human animals.3 Without the tools of modern genetics at his disposal, Darwin supported his theories

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with empirical evidence gathered from countless animal encounters. He interpreted these observations through the rhetorical and poetic tools of analogy and anthropomorphism. Anthropomorphism, the attribution of human emotions and motives to animals (and other, non-human entities), was a tool with particular explanatory power for Darwin, and he used it in many important ways to develop and support his theories of natural and sexual selection. In his autobiography, Darwin says, “all sentient beings have been formed so as to enjoy, as a general rule, happiness.”4 Darwin makes this claim because, seen through the lens of natural selection, every emotion in man and animals must be beneficial for the survival of the species: “an animal may be led to pursue that course of action which is the most beneficial to the species by suffering, such as pain, hunger, thirst, and fear — or by pleasure, as in eating and drinking and in the propagation of the species, &c. or by both means combined, as in the search for food.”5 The belief that animals demonstrate complex emotions, drives, and desires is the philosophical framework through which Darwin, along with some of his contemporaries and predecessors, views the world. The philosopher William Paley, for example, also anthropomorphizes animals to argue for intelligent design in his work Natural Theology: If we look to what the waters produce, shoals of the fry of fish frequent the margins of rivers, of lakes, and of the sea itself. These are so happy, that they know not what to do with themselves. Their attitudes, their vivacity; their leaps out of the water, their frolics in it …all conduce to shew their excess of spirits, and are simply the effects of that excess.6 For Paley, the characterization of animals as having human emotions like happiness is evidence for a divine creator. The animals themselves, however, do not claim the abilities nor the knowledge of their bodies. For example, Paley argues that a hen’s egg “is as much a secret to the hen, as if the hen were inanimate….If there be concealed within that smooth shell a provision and a preparation for the production and nourishment of a new animal, they are not of her providing or preparing: if there be contrivance, it is none of hers.”7 The intimate and central experience of hatching an egg is, to a hen, an empty one. Because the skill with which her body nourishes her developing progeny is not hers, because the excess of spirits that the fish exhibit are empty, Paley’s use of anthropomorphism is unconvincing — the happiness of the fish is not the same happiness 53 Bacon / Exquisite Patterns and Sympathies

that a human being feels; a hen to her egg is not the same as a human mother to her child. Darwin also likens animals to humans through their emotional experiences, but differs from Paley and other contemporaries in two critical ways. He does not attribute the animals’ demonstration of emotion to the divine. His analogy runs much deeper — the animals’ emotions are on par with human emotions. In The Descent of Man Darwin compares the similarity of human and other animal minds directly. In a remarkable move that removes man from his place at the zenith of creation, Darwin reasons that animals, at least the “higher” animals, have the same mental capabilities as man. A dog’s jealousy over his master’s affection proves that “animals not only love, but have the desire to be loved. Animals manifestly feel emulation. They love approbation or praise; and a dog carrying a basket for his master exhibits in a high degree self-complacency or pride.”8 He also attributes other feelings to dogs, such as shame, modesty, wonder, and curiosity. Based on his empirical observations, Darwin believes that animals are able to imitate, direct their attention, and have memories. He even grants them some powers of imagination, and as for reason, notes that “animals may constantly be seen to pause, deliberate, and resolve. It is a significant fact, that the more the habits of any particular animal are studied by a naturalist, the more he attributes to reason and the less to unlearnt instincts.”9 Darwin applies the rigor of a natural historian to conclude that the emotions and intellect of animals are complex, deliberate, and of the same emotions and intellect found in man. Early in The Descent of Man, Darwin states without apology, “my object in this chapter is to shew that there is no fundamental difference between man and the higher animals in their mental faculties.”10 This notion of the underlying similarity of all life is at the core of Darwin’s theory of natural selection, and is a point of difference between him and his contemporaries. For example, the naturalist and academic Lamarck, who believed that species progressed gradually over time towards perfection and that intelligence was more complex than emotion, saw humans as the pinnacle of existence: “For in ascending the animal scale, starting from the most imperfect animals, organization gradually increases in complexity in an extremely remarkable manner.”11 In formulating his theory of natural selection, Darwin has an almost pragmatic reason for insisting on the essential similarity of living beings: his theory of natural selection is based heavily on analogies to domestic selection. Since natural selection occurs over geological time in incredibly minute increments, it was not directly 54 Bacon / Exquisite Patterns and Sympathies

observable for Darwin and his contemporaries. Darwin therefore looked to domestic selection — the immediately and obvious changes that result from breeding animals such as dogs, horses, and hybrids like mules — for evidence of his claims. In order for this analogy to succeed, animals must be shown to be synchronically — that is, presently and at the same time — analogous to other animals and humans to non-humans. His use of anthropomorphism rhetorically completes this action of binding together all life. Darwin’s theories also argue that living beings are linked together diachronically, through time. Although two species may seem extremely divergent in their present state, if they are traced back through deep time, there will be a point at which they were very similar, and perhaps even the same: We can understand how it is that all the forms of life, ancient and recent, make together one grand system; for all are connected by generation. We can understand, from the continued tendency to divergence of character, why the more ancient a form is, the more it generally differs from those now living. Why ancient and extinct forms often tend to fill up gaps between existing forms, sometimes blending two groups previously classed as distinct into one; but more commonly only bringing them a little closer together. The more ancient a form is, the more often, apparently, it displays characters in some degree intermediate between groups now distinct; for the more ancient a form is, the more nearly it will be related to, and consequently resemble, the common progenitor of groups, since become widely divergent. 12 In this paragraph, Darwin rhetorically and logically binds together all life, animal and human alike. Through lineage, “Darwin could now explain these great gaps between, say, mammals and birds, when it came to humans and apes he was not averse to squeezing them closer.”13 In order to avoid controversy, when writing in the early days of his popularity Darwin was cautious of overtly implicating man in his theories. Therefore, after visiting the London Zoo, he sympathetically talks of the orangutan’s, “‘expressive whine’ and ‘intelligence when spoken [to]; as if it understood every word’, and ‘its affection,’” but he does not have to offer the logical conclusion of his argument, that man and ape are closely related.14 Anthropomorphism implicitly illuminates this close connection for him. 55 Bacon / Exquisite Patterns and Sympathies

The areas in which Darwin’s theories are in most danger of failure are in characteristics that appear to be exceptions to the rule — namely secondary sexual characteristics, hybrids, and monsters; if even one example can be found that does not fit within natural and sexual selection then these theories fail as universal laws. Darwin argues that these exceptions do fit within his theories; he treats them in the same manner that he does more typical characteristics and individuals (viz., anthropomorphically), and in doing so he brings them into the fold. Darwin’s use of anthropomorphism is perhaps most critical in his theory of sexual selection, because it allows him to explain secondary sexual characteristics, which cannot be understood through natural selection alone because they have no practical use for the survival of the animal, and can even be detrimental in some cases. Sexual selection describes and explains traits acquired through intra-specific competition — that is, competition within the same species for mates. According to sexual selection, secondary sexual characteristics contribute to success in mating, and are therefore preserved in the species across generations. Anthropomorphism provides reason for the attraction to “beauty” that leads to the continuation of secondary sexual characteristics: “If female birds had been incapable of appreciating the beautiful colours, the ornaments, and voices of their male partners, all the labour and anxiety exhibited by the latter in displaying their charms before the females would have been thrown away; and this it is impossible to admit.”15 Instead, ornaments, songs, and other displays, serve to “excite, attract, or fascinate the females.”16 Thus, in the Argus female: Many will declare that it is utterly incredible that a female bird should be able to appreciate fine shading and exquisite patterns. It is undoubtedly a marvelous fact that she should possess this almost human degree of taste. He who thinks that he can safely gauge the discrimination and taste of the lower animals may deny that the female Argus pheasant can appreciate such refined beauty; but he will then be compelled to admit that the extraordinary attitudes assumed by the male during the act of courtship, by which the wonderful beauty of his plumage is fully displayed, are purposeless; and this is a conclusion which I for one will never admit.17 Although Darwin does not have access to the internal lives of animals in order to say with direct proof that they are experiencing beauty, desire, and love, he challenges the unconvinced reader to apply their 56 Bacon / Exquisite Patterns and Sympathies

reason to any alternative. Sexual selection offers an explanation for the beautiful colors, displays, and sounds demonstrated by males (and some females) to the opposite sex: to attract a mate. Anthropomorphism also serves Darwin well in dealing with hybrids and monsters; individuals that exhibit exceptions to usual species characteristics. While on his voyage on the Beagle, Darwin says of the mule, “that a hybrid should possess more reason, memory, obstinacy, social affection [my italics], powers of muscular endurance, and length of life, than either of its parents, seems to indicate that art has here outdone nature.”18 He uses anthropomorphism to show how hybrids can actually be more successful than non-hybrids, despite the fact that they are peculiarities to human understanding. Darwin’s theories therefore preclude the possibility of a dichotomy of exclusion/inclusion: “monstrosities cannot be separated by any clear line of distinction from mere variations.”19 Hybrids and monsters, identified as abnormalities by many of Darwin’s contemporaries, are actually part of the normal evolution of species, and may even be the start of a new species if they are successful. The “beginning” in Darwin’s phrase “from so simple a beginning” applies not just to humanity, and not only to more easily understood species, but also to all and “endless forms most beautiful.”20 Although terms like hybrid and monstrosity are convenient tools, in reality, there are no hybrid forms, no monstrous forms, and no others that can be excluded from the universal laws to which all life is subjected; there are only and always, by law and through time, variations. Anthropomorphism came naturally to Darwin, who was known to be highly sympathetic towards animals and to despise animal cruelty. As he states in The Descent, “The all-important emotion of sympathy is distinct from that of love,”21 and the more refined an individual, the more advanced his ability of sympathy will be: As [man] acquired sufficient knowledge to reject baneful customs and superstitions; as he regarded more and more not only the welfare but the happiness of his fellow-men; as from habit, following on beneficial experience, instruction, and example, his sympathies became more tender and widely diffused, so as to extend to the men of all races, to the imbecile, the maimed, and other useless members of society, and finally to the lower animals, so would the standard of his morality rise higher and higher.22

57 Bacon / Exquisite Patterns and Sympathies

Darwin, unlike his predecessors, did not believe in endowed characteristics from God, which place man on the top of a hierarchy of creation. For Darwin, to understand other animals as similar to ourselves and to sympathetically understand their actions, motives, and feelings, is to be — through choice if not through endowed characteristic — among the best and most moral of living beings. Darwin’s theory of natural selection is formulated with reason, one of the human faculties that he considers foremost in man’s moral progression. But at the foundation of Darwin’s theories is an imagination fueled by an intensely sympathetic and humble nature. His theories are imbued with these characteristics, and they have a direct consequence on the status of animals in Darwinian thought. In 1838, just a year before the first portion of Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle was published, he wrote the following “breathless dash”: “Animals — whom we have made our slaves we do not like to consider our equals. — Do not slave holders wish to make the black man other kind? Animals with affections, imitation, fear. Pain. Sorrow for the dead. — respect.”23 His profound sympathy for animals and other human beings goes hand-in-hand with his ability to understand their shared heritage. While he focuses much of his argument on perceived exceptions like hybrids and monsters, his focus towards them has the greater purpose of revealing that, after all, they are similar to all other life — that they are included. Darwin, who had encounters with animals of every variety and kind, and studied animals intently for many years, holds these views based on substantial empirical evidence — based on his deep science. What he finds is that, just as the same force, “rusts iron and ripens corn,”24 so too does that same force produce desire, fear, pain, and happiness in humans and other animals alike. q Notes 1

Jed Mayer, “Ways of Reading Animals in Victorian Literature, Culture and

Harriet Ritvo, The Animal Estate: The English and Other Creatures in the Victorian

Science,” Literature Compass 7, no. 5 (2010): 348. Age (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987), 20. 3

Adrian Desmond and James Moore, Darwin’s Sacred Cause (New York: Houghton

Charles Darwin, Autobiographies (New York: Penguin Classics, 2002), 51.

Ibid., 51.

Mifflin Harcourt, 2009), 122.

58 Bacon / Exquisite Patterns and Sympathies

William Paley, Natural Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 238.

Ibid., 33.

Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man (New York: Penguin Books, 2004), 92.

Ibid., 92.

Ibid., 86.

J. B. Lamarck, Zoological Philosophy (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,

Darwin, The Descent of Man, 275.

Desmond and Moore, Darwinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Sacred Cause, 124.

Ibid., 124.

Darwin, The Descent of Man, 115.

Ibid., 444.

Ibid., 449-450.

Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle (New York: The Modern Library, 2001), 282.

Darwin, The Origin of Species, 18.

Ibid., 384.

Ibid., 129.

Ibid., 149.

1984), 1.

Ibid., 115.

Walter Pater, Studies in the History of the Renaissance (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 118.

59 Bacon / Exquisite Patterns and Sympathies

Poetry

Still Life with Frogs Samuel Slaton

A (maybe) crazy (possibly just Zen & content) Chinese man, whom I fear can hear me see me writing this, sits lotus to my left on bubble wrap, flipping tourist-tract origami frogs into paper canoes. There are moments in a dayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s living that are good beyond argument, worthy of a few meditative lines: Now with closed eyes He does meditate ;then pulls out a phone, speaks soft Chineseâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;

60 Slaton / Still Life with Frogs

(Mandarin, citrus groves) each syllable a stem, leaf, branch— his voice a blossom of verdure, so unlike the industry of the Fung-Wah bus driver en route to D.C., seemingly screaming into his Bluetooth, his own ear, fuck you! Frogs & canoe now safely stowed away, a man sits down, and he says to him in English: “My mother is sick—” And the world compresses, folds in on itself, blooms into newness— now with closed eyes

They meditate

and

darkness is light, both particle and wave to be waded thru; folded paper a delicate frog, a mother a hinge, voice a garden, air a throne, stillness a movement.

61 Slaton / Still Life with Frogs

Fiction

The New Kid Alexander Teplitzky

n our town there was this kid. He dressed much nicer than the rest of us, almost like an adult, but it was very honest, like he really knew what he was doing, you know? It wasn’t like his mom dressed him every day. Not that my mom dresses me or anything. Sometimes she picks out my clothes. But anyway, this kid, his name was Theo and he transferred late in the year to our school. I remember the first time I saw him. People followed him around because they liked him a lot. He was kind of like a hero. He ran across the street and the kids shouted to each other that Theo was leaving. As I approached the crowd, a bus sped past, between us and Theo across the street. When it passed, Theo had vanished. “He’s magic,” said one of the kids from elementary school, as though that sufficed for an answer. Later, I found out what should have been obvious to everyone: that he would run alongside the bus for about a mile. I think we all wanted to be enchanted by these departures. On certain days, everyone would come to watch him magically disappear behind the passing bus, but only a few of us knew him personally. This is how I met Theo. All throughout high school I had one single best friend, Jules. Jules and I were known as best friends. We did most things with each other, and what we did not do with each other, we consulted one another about beforehand. Jules was tall and wore his hair in his eyes. It was like the older we got, the longer his hair got and the more it seemed to be in his eyes. By senior year, no one could ever see his eyes at all. Jules was said to have run into a few walls that year.

62 Teplitzky / The New Kid

I remained unaware of this because midway through high school, one summer day, Jules and I were at the pool. He saw this girl, though not so clearly because of his hair. Well, I don’t think I have to explain much more other than that, do I? After that she was always brushing his hair, that bitch, taking it out of his eyes. He always had his eyes closed and his head in her lap as though he were dead. At least to me he was dead. So for weeks I ate lunch by myself contemplating what to do next. It was too late in high school to make a new friend. Our high school was big, see? To find that one friend whose personality suits yours like Jules did mine, like a glove slides on your hand, well, that was pretty much impossible. “Theo, he does the impossible all the time,” Bernardo said to me one day during lunch. I was surprised Bernardo was speaking to me. He was always too cool for me. “What do you mean?” I asked him. “I mean Theo can do what others can’t, you know that,” he said slowly as he examined his chocolate pudding. “But, I mean, why are you telling me this?” I watched him as he slid the spoon of pudding into his mouth and slowly pulled it out. “Well, everyone knows you lost your Jules.” I squinted my eyes to let him know I did not appreciate his pun. “I’m just saying Theo can help you is all.” We ate in silence after that as the sound of Bernardo’s “Theo can help you is all” bounced in my head like the sound a dodge ball makes on the playground. Two days later some little kid ran up to me and handed me a note and ran away: Yum-Yum’s Fine Chinese Restaurant Tuesday, 4:05pm – 4:30pm “It’s over on South Alvarado,” Michael told me later that day. “Right next to Long’s.” “What kind of name is Yum-Yum’s? Is it the name of the owner?” “All I know is it has made me go ‘yum yum’ on several occasions,” he said. Just before 4 p.m. I heard the rocks of the rock garden outside of the Yum-Yum’s crunch underneath my feet. The place was pretty much empty, covered in a sea of red carpet. Theo sat at the third booth on my left. I saw him sitting with his back to the door. He had a number of plates before him, some partly finished and some full. “Welcome to my office,” he said. “This is where I come most of the time after school.” He began stacking the empty plates beneath the full ones. “How come?” “All-you-can-eat buffet. I just sit here and eat whenever I 63 Teplitzky / The New Kid

feel like it,” he told me. “Want something?” he asked, as if he sensed that I was suddenly perturbed. “They have excellent shrimp chow mein.” “I’ll just have some green tea,” I said. He poured me some tea into a small cup. “Jules Talence, right? He left you for one Silvia Green I have here,” he said, looking at one of his notebooks in front of him. He looked up at me having said this and smiled, “Green, like the tea, huh? That’s great, just great.” And he began chuckling as he scribbled something in his notebook. “Did she invent green tea or something? What a bitch.” “No, but her dad…” I began. “No, I know she didn’t invent green tea. It was a joke. Listen, this is really a job Jules has done to you. It says here you don’t have any other friends. It also says you have a likeable personality. Is that so?” “Who told you that?” “Listen, I have another appointment at 4:35,” he said looking at his watch, “so if we could make this quick. The chow mein is getting cold, don’t you think?” “Well, I guess I would categorize myself as ‘likeable,’” I said after thinking a while. Theo took a few bites of chow mein. He was adroit with chopsticks. “That’s good—that’s really good,” he said as he began writing something else in his notebook. I leaned over the table to see what he was writing. He was just making little scribbles and random circles. “It’s secret code,” he said without looking up at me. “So listen, I’ll have to see your parents about all this and I’ll see what I can do, ok?” He poured himself some water and began crafting a roll of mushu pork. “Don’t expect any miracles,” he said to me, concentrating on his roll. I got up as he continued, “…but don’t be surprised either.” I said “Thank you” as he silently handed me a fortune cookie. I opened it in the rock garden. It said, “Life is full of changes. Embrace them.” “That’s a good fortune,” I thought to myself. The cookie crunched in my mouth as the rocks crunched under my feet. “That’s not a fortune at all,” Michael said. “I don’t know what happened, but fortune cookies have been getting a lot worse these days.” “What do you think Theo is going to do?” I asked. “I don’t really know the guy. Have you seen him with a yoyo? He’s really good at it, man. I’m not too impressed with this fortune though.” “Enough about the fortune, it’s just a fortune cookie.” “They used to be something, you know?” 64 Teplitzky / The New Kid

“But it’s not like Theo can do anything really unless somehow he breaks up Jules and his asshole girlfriend.” “Hey, you obviously didn’t read the fortune, man. Embrace change, that’s what it says. I mean, it’s no fortune, but…” “Hand me that dish soap, will you? The only thing I can foresee Theo doing is somehow getting Silvia out of the picture,” I said. “It wouldn’t be the same anyway. Have you seen Jules’s hair lately? It’s long.” “No, I haven’t seen it lately.” A long pause followed. This always made me wonder why Michael came to my house to hang out with me. It was clear that I did not care for him too much, and if it wasn’t clear, I made it clearer by always doing the dishes when he came over. By the time I had finished them he had taken the hint and left. “Is it ok if I take this fortune?” he asked. “Be my guest.” Five minutes after Michael left, Theo walked in the door. He was nicely dressed as usual. He had a tie on and a short-sleeved collared shirt as if he were going to the office. Under his arm he carried three notebooks, one blue, one red, and one white. “How did you get in here?” I asked. “I let myself in with the key under the mat. Can I use this?” He picked up one of the plates I had just cleaned. “Yeah, but it’s…” He put it into a leather briefcase. “Is your mom in the living room?” “Yes,” I said. He walked through the kitchen without a word more. As the door swung back and forth after he had passed through it I heard, “Hi Mrs.…,” and when it finished swinging, I heard nothing else. For the next twenty-five minutes I sat in the kitchen and wondered what they would be talking about. What could Theo possibly already know about me? What could my mom already know about me? He opened the door to the kitchen. “Thank you Margot, and thanks for the cookies,” he called out to the living room. “We don’t have any cookies,” I said. “Mar—your mom made them for me.” I wondered how she could make cookies in twenty five minutes. “What did you talk about in there?” “I just need to ask you a few questions, is that ok?” “I guess so.” “Have you seen West Side Story?” Theo asked. “No, but I read the script.” “Did you like it?” “No.” 65 Teplitzky / The New Kid

“Ok, good, so I…” He scribbled a bit of nonsense. “Blur your eyes hard,” he said while holding up three notebooks. “No, harder. Focus them a little. Ok, good. Now, what do you see when I put my notebooks in this order?” “A Russian flag.” “And like this?” “Holland flag.” “And, like this?” “French flag.” “And one more.” “An ocean during sunrise,” I answered. “It’s a foggy morning.” “Interesting. That’s what I thought too. But I liked West Side Story.” “It’s campy.” “Hm.” He chuckled while shaking his head and scribbled some more and then brushed some cookie crumbs off his shirt. “Do you happen to know of where I can get scissors in bulk?” he asked me after he had put the last dot on his red notebook. “Try the hardware store.” “Hm, ok.” He reopened the notebook and added two more circles and what seemed to be a square. “Listen, I have to get going, but I’ll see you Tuesday?” “Ok, Tuesday.” He left. I went into the living room. My mom was just putting away a plate of cookies. “Can I have one?” I asked her. “No, they’re for the Stewarts.” “What did Theo ask you?” “He is such a sweet boy, isn’t he? Dresses nicely too.” She looked up at the ceiling at some imaginary figure and smiled. “I should start dressing you the same.” “Mom! What did he say to you?” “Who, Theo? He wanted to know about the day you were born.” The weekend was miserable. I didn’t dare go out of the house much, and whenever I did, some kid would come up to me and tell me how Theo just saved some girl from getting hit by a train or how he miraculously cured Jesse the Gimp of his juvenile arthritis. “How did he cure Jesse?” I asked. “He’s a masseuse,” Michael told me. “Legally?” “Of course. Not everyone can give massages, you know, that’s dangerous.” It was one of those humid weekends. Humid to the point where you can’t stand it. And at the same time it was awfully cloudy, dreary, no 66 Teplitzky / The New Kid

color in the sky whatsoever. Water vapor clung to everything. Even my mind felt weighed down. Monday was even worse. All throughout class I thought about nothing. The teachers’ voices rapped upon my ears and pricked the sensitive spots in my body. Even when they were talking quietly it felt like they were yelling. I felt like a stake hammered into the fresh soil that would eventually be my long-standing grave. I was better off dead. School does that to you sometimes. Tuesday morning I focused on shading three-dimensional shapes in the margins of my notes. I had just finished shading in a tetrahedron along the sides of a test marked C- when a little girl, probably in the second grade, came up to my desk. She was dressed in a red dress with white polka dots. She had a yellow headband in her hair. Her hair was perfectly curly and so brown it shone under the fluorescent light of the classroom. She said to me, “You know the lights are constantly blinking, but so fast that we can’t see it?” “Can you read minds too? How did you get in here anyway?” I asked, looking around. No one seemed to notice her. “Here.” She handed me another note. “Yum-Yum’s, 3:35 p.m.,” it said. I crumpled it up and threw it toward the garbage can. I was five minutes late to Yum-Yum’s and as an excuse I was going to say that it was too humid for me to get here on time. At the time it made sense to me. When I plunged into the red sea of YumYum’s Theo was not there in his booth. Some kids were hanging out in the front of the restaurant clumsily practicing their yo-yos. They told me to ask Bernie where Theo was. They didn’t know. Bernie was the supposed “Yum-Yum,” the owner of the restaurant. I found him in the kitchen where he was sitting around a table in a white t-shirt, smoking cigarettes with his buddies. They were all speaking Chinese rapidly as smoke haphazardly spilled from their mouths. “He’s in the back,” Bernie told me. I passed a number of refrigerators and dirty stoves. There was a screen door. A sign over the door said, “The Back.” My feet felt a soft cushion below them; perfectly kept green grass. In front of me was a small garden—small but wealthy in vegetation. I felt like I could have been in the Garden of Eden. “It’s no Garden of Eden back here, but Bernie does a good job.” Theo said from behind a giant plant with seemingly exploding violent petals. “Hydrangeas need a lot of water,” he said, nodding to the plant, as I pushed a big flower to reveal Theo sitting on a small brick wall that looked like it had been there since the Middle Ages. He kept watering the hydrangea. 67 Teplitzky / The New Kid

“Listen, I found someone for you to be friends with,” he said to me, a little quieter so that I could hear the softness of the afternoon, the silence of the garden. “I sent you a letter to inform you of his name and his address. He’s really a good guy. Doesn’t clean the dishes as well as you, though.” Theo looked up and smiled at me. “Do you know who it is?” he asked me. “Is it you?” “No, it’s not me. I don’t have any friends.” “How come?” “I just don’t.” After a long pause where I could hear nothing but a sound that seemed as though the hydrangea were slurping water from the hose that fed it, Theo broke the silence. “Have you seen me disappear behind the bus?” “Yes.” “I just run alongside it.” “Oh.” “‘Oh.’ Yeah, well said. I wonder why no one ever looks on the other side of the street. Anyone could see me plain as daylight over there.” “I guess we just want to believe that you’re magic.” He paused again and stopped watering the hydrangea. “Yes, I know that. Just because I run alongside a bus doesn’t mean I’m not magic though.” He stood up as he squinted at me in the sunlight that suddenly lit up his face. “Well,” I said, “I don’t care anymore if you are or you aren’t.” “Yeah, I know that too.” “It was pretty cool the first time.” “That’s why I told you my secret. You’re the only person who I’ve told that to. Aside from your mom. She’s a very nice lady. Had a hell of a time giving you birth. Do you know that?” The way he said “hell,” it was as though it pained his inner organs and he closed his eyes in saying it. “Wish I had a mom like that,” he added, looking forlornly at the soil. “She never told me that.” “I felt like I was there watching you come out when she was telling me.” I became slightly embarrassed and dug my feet into the ground. Still, I wanted to laugh when he said it. “Well, you’ll get your letter in a week, I think. You’ll like this guy. He’s really a good guy. Would you like some whiskey?” He handed me a flask and I smelled it. “No thanks. Do you really drink that stuff?” “Yes, it’s good for you. The hydrangeas like it too.” He poured a little into the soil and then tilted it into his mouth. “I guess that’s it between you and me,” he said, screwing the top back on his flask. “I’ve finished with you.” 68 Teplitzky / The New Kid

“That’s it? Really? Aren’t you hungry?” I began to feel sorry for the guy. Theo, drinking whiskey behind Yum-Yum’s. Maybe I even liked him after all. “No, I ate all I could.” “I thought…” my voice cracked, “I thought it would have been you.” “It would have made the most sense, wouldn’t it have? My father, he died two years ago, whenever he decided to be friends with someone, he would talk to their mother and find out how they were born. It made him feel like he was really good friends with that person, as if he had been there throughout his entire life.” “So it is you?” I asked hopefully. “No, it’s not me. I just told you. I don’t have any friends. I don’t really need them.” “Everyone needs them, don’t they?” “No, everyone needs to be happy. I don’t need friends to be happy. You know what I do. All this, this makes me happy. I don’t need friends.” “But…” I nearly felt like crying. I wanted it to be him despite everything. He was my friend now, wasn’t he? He had been there since my birth! “But people just need what they need to get by. People like to believe I disappear behind buses. So let them. They need someone to look up to. Let them believe what they want. I just do what I can and when it’s all over I’ll be dead… beneath this hydrangea maybe.” He looked up at it admiringly. “No, I don’t need any friends.” “Ok…” My knees began shaking. They gave out and I found myself kneeling before him. Neither of us looked at each other. I listened to the stillness of the garden, a stillness which almost seemed echo in my ears. I felt the humidity on me like a veil. I felt the soft soil beneath my knees. When I got up I felt like Theo and I had just had an extended conversation. Suddenly I understood him completely, as if I had been there from his birth and would be there to his death. “So, I’ll see you…” I said with a last bit of hope. “No,” he interrupted. I could hear the smile in his voice. “Goodbye.” “Goodbye,” I said. Even though I would not see him again, I was not as disappointed as five minutes before. A week later Theo died. I received his letter in the mail. It had the address and the name of the kid whose friend I was to be. I crumpled up the paper and threw it away. I didn’t need any friends. And if I was going to have one, it wasn’t going to be some random kid like this. No, never mind that. It was over. 69 Teplitzky / The New Kid

Theo had supposedly died of exhaustion. He didn’t show up to school the day after I met with him in the garden. The day after that there was an obituary in the newspaper that explained how he died. Kids in our school asked to see the body, but there were no traces. School was let out early that day. Some kids—the most devoted to Theo—sat in the desks that he had sat in, placed flowers around his locker. I ran into one devotee on my way out of school, through the locker room, feeling free and light despite the ever-increasing humidity. “Hey kid, no school!” I said to him as I shoved him against the wall. “Theo’s dead,” he murmured. “Yeah, that means no school, idiot!” He hung his head and I saw that he was actually crying. There were kids like him all over campus that day. “Listen,” I said to him, “did you ever actually speak to Theo?” “Yeah, well, once… What do you mean by ‘speak to him’?” “Like, you said something to him, and—” “Yeah!” He looked at me triumphantly. His eyes gleamed behind his tears. “—and he said something back.” “Oh,” his head fell in sadness. “No.”

70 Teplitzky / The New Kid

Poetry

Rough Seas Ahead Elizabeth Sharrock

Still waiting, growing in my rocking chair. A day will come when arms are full of child, when fingers move through his fine wisps of hair. The timbre of my song will draw his smile. We sail â&#x20AC;&#x201C; two boats, one sea. Our open skies once spun together, drift, alas, alone. All hardships are unknown. His compass cries, too far to hear or see what flag is flown. Until the day we wait. In womb he lies. His blood is my blood â&#x20AC;&#x201C; sown in me, his bone. He prepares his journey outwards, we strain. A seagull screams. Eyes follow where he flies. Must dock here, says captain. The storm has grown. Prepare to separate, prepare for pain.

71 Sharrock / Rough Seas Ahead

Fiction

Calle Bruja Alberto Daniels

rnesto knew Mama was the strong one, but she was always in the hospital. On Tuesday, the X-ray results showed the cotton gauze that the doctors had left in her lung. On Wednesday, she refused to undergo another surgery to have it removed. It hurt her when she inhaled. On Thursday, she put the rice to boil and sent Ernesto to the store for some meat. He left crawling through the large hole in the front door, down the steps to Calle Once, the grocery store, passing the neighbors across the street on their balconies who he had known to frequently point at his mother. They talked about her even when no one was home. They had renamed her La Bruja, the witch. It was rare that all twelve members of the family, except for his father Mario, were not home. He was on a boat for months at a time; then heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d return with chocolate for Ernesto and his nine brothers and sisters. He imagined his father in the places he worked: Morocco, Cape Verde, the Ivory Coast, straddling barrels as heavy as Buddha statues. While he was away, Ernesto watched his baby brothers press soft fingertips against the stovetop to find crumbs. Outside on Calle Once, Ernesto crossed the street with his little friend Juan. Juan had discovered a way to make a few dollars and Ernesto was curious that he would return with a few cents. The Bodega Boys always gathered in front of the grocery store, but from time to time, Chich or Sergio or another Bodega

72 Daniels / Calle Bruja

Boy walked down Calle Once and Ernesto could see them from his balcony. Ernesto had a private affection for the Bodega Boys and watched as some of them sat outside of the grocery store smoking reefer and whistling at the women who walked down the street. He tried not to let them see that he was watching them. His eyes moved up and down and every which way, trying not to catch their attention, and he knew he looked very strange. It was Rolondo he admired the most, always bare-chested, never without the pick in his curly afro. He looked like a straw in a snow cone to a person like Mama, who was convinced the Bodega Boys were silly, but Rolondo would say otherwise. They strapped knives to the insides of their socks, kept razors handy and spit them from their mouths. Ernesto and Juan walked carefully around them. Down the street, Cuna women adorned the sidewalk with gigantic crates of produce—their black hair glistened silver in the sun. Little boys and girls moved shirtless on Calle Doce, kicking balls in the air for soccer play. Calle Once smelled of fish, a stench that was toxic and necessary. Folks sold the day’s catch from icefilled buckets. Fried blue fish, catfish, and clams right from their apartments. Often, when there was not a good catch, the smell left the neighborhood and somebody starved. Ernesto was scared. Juan had brought him much further from Calle Once than he anticipated. He closed his eyes thinking that he’d better make up a good excuse to tell Mama. After all, she’d expect to know why it took him so long to return. He remembered the thick strap she’d use to teach him a lesson; the look that let him know she was serious. The further they got from Calle Once, the more he felt that something terrible was going to happen. Some force, some disastrous act. Perhaps a vehicle would jump the curb on Calle Doce, or maybe something might shoot down like rockets onto him or, even worse, he would not be able to find his way home. Ernesto saw El Balboa’s orange sign in the distance. The plan was to hide in the lot behind the restaurant so that when the maintenance men threw bags of garbage over the fence, the boys could collect the bottles and turn them in for a few dollars. When Juan explained the plan to Ernesto he didn’t hold back the smile on his face and Ernesto walked the rest of the way looking as though he had been hypnotized. “Hey, we’re finally here,” Juan said. “Yeah, but it’s late and I’m hungry,” answered Ernesto. “Me too,” Juan said. “I don’t know why it’s taking them so long to throw out the garbage. But just think about all the money we’ll make.” 73 Daniels / Calle Bruja

“I don’t know if they’ll throw bottles out today,” Juan said. Ernesto was confused. He was sure that today was garbage day in Calle Once, but the look on Juan’s face made him feel like he was all by himself. He didn’t like that feeling. He stared at Juan suspiciously and waited for him to finish explaining himself. “It might not be garbage day until tomorrow in this town,” Juan said softly. Ernesto became annoyed and gave Juan a hard shove in the chest. “Why would you bring me here if you knew that?” Ernesto asked. “Because the man that’s gonna pay us is paying us by the ounce, and he said it was garbage day. I figured it was worth a try.” Ernesto was taken with thoughts of having money all his own, and at that moment he wasn’t sure that he had ever held a dollar bill (only coins), let alone used one to buy anything he wanted. He was thrilled and hopped several times on one leg, then on the other, thinking about all the great things he’d buy with it. His mind was set on an Eskimo pie. Only once before had he tasted one. A neighbor, Graciela, had whipped up a few in her apartment one day and gave the last one to Ernesto. “What is this?” He poked at the peculiar white center. “It’s good, eat it,” she ordered. “It’s dessert.” Ernesto ran home dripping white dots of ice cream on the sidewalk. When he got there, Mama snatched the pie from him, cut it into ten tiny cubes, and then made him share it with the rest of the children. With a whole dollar bill, he could strut into the bodega past the Bodega Boys, then purchase twenty Eskimo pies if he wanted, and at least three Spiderman comic books with the left over change. Despite the very hot day, there were goose bumps on Ernesto’s neck as he thought of the frozen pie, its cool milk down the sides of his sweaty fingertips; he would lick his fingers clean. Now, there were loud noises coming from El Balboa’s locked back door. It sounded like a heavy machine was being dragged or scraped, and the two boys didn’t know whether to run, cry, or hide. “I think I’m just gonna go home. Let’s go home,” Juan said. “We’ve been here for more than an hour.” “No, let’s just wait a minute, stupid,” Ernesto ordered. There was a real hard lump in Ernesto’s throat, and he felt that there was too much at stake to go back without at least a few cents to show. He stared at Juan for a long time, thinking he might have to punch or kick him. After all, it was Juan’s idea to walk to the end of town. And now Ernesto was nearly twenty blocks from home, when Mama had only sent him across Calle Once for some meat. The possibility that he would let Juan leave was dependent upon a 74 Daniels / Calle Bruja

brawl between the two boys. He imagined himself and Juan walking down Calle Doce without a thing to show for the long, forbidden walk. The two of them silent and sad, the sun on their brown faces. The thought of Eskimo pies shot to pieces, and worse—what would he tell Mama? The door swung open and the boys lowered themselves to the ground, so excited, sweat beaded up on their backs. A short white man emerged and held the door open while the Cuna, clad in a beige uniform, dumped just two bags of trash. Ernesto was disappointed. The door slammed shut, and the boys ran across the lot to where the bags were dumped. “Seven, eight, nine, twelve, fifteen bottles in this bag,” Ernesto said. “There’s a lot in this one too. We’re rich!” Juan cried. “Rich! Big time rich, man!” Ernesto said. He was tapping a glass bottle on the asphalt, pretending to check if it was real. “Okay, hurry, let’s go before the man goes home and isn’t there to pay us,” Juan said. “Wait! I have an idea. He’s paying us by the ounce, right?” Ernesto asked, as though he didn’t already know the answer. “Right,” Juan said. “Well, I have an idea,” Ernesto continued. Let’s go down to the beach and throw a little sand in the bottles. More weight, more money.” “I guess, but we should go now.” Juan said. On the way back, it wasn’t long before Ernesto began to think of Mama. She had been sick lately. Just a few days ago she had started to cough violently, leaving her unable to finish dinner. Cautiously, they had moved Mama to the bed. Then they heard the sounds of the ambulance that was summoned. Outside on Calle Once, they hauled Mama out of the building in a stretcher. She already looked dead. The neighbors called after her. “Bruja! Esa bruja vive con solo un pulmón!” That witch lives with a single lung! The people had forgotten that in their weakest moments, it was to her door that they genuflected. She had prayed to the saints for them. Now they sat in their balconies overseeing her disaster, thrilled. “Dirty Bruja!” they called. Calle Once was Calle Bruja to most people who lived in the town. It was rumored that if you didn’t know who La Bruja was, it was because the witch had put a curse on you. The neighbors called the police on La Bruja every time one of their children wandered away. The police would come shining flashlights in the dark apartment, but they always left after realizing, once again, that there weren’t any stolen children. For the most part, folks from other places loved La Bruja, and they came from miles 75 Daniels / Calle Bruja

away seeking her guidance. Yet she never thought she was doing anything special. She was just luchando like everyone else, luchando. If you came for her help, she couldn’t resist saying a prayer in the way that her mother had taught her, willing unlikely things to happen. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t. One night after curfew, the parents of a missing child arrived, peeking humbled eyes through the hole in the front door. In their hands, the bag of fowl La Bruja required as honorarium. Ernesto snuck in and saw her take them into the room, showering them with oils. He stayed behind the bed skirts, under the torn pieces of mattress. La Bruja had never told him he couldn’t watch, but he felt it was dangerous. From within the depths of her came smoke as she waved her arms and spun around. She prayed to the saints. The husband had convinced his wife to visit La Bruja, and it was easy to see that she was terrified. She sobbed long, melodious cries that formed an echo in the tiny room. “How many days has she been gone?” La Bruja asked. “More than two months,” the woman managed. “Even the police have stopped looking,” the man said. “How old is the girl?” La Bruja asked. “She’s six,” the man replied. Mama took the woman into her arms. They formed a gigantic, wavering shadow on the wall. She assured her that the child would return. But the child would never return. It was not long after that night, though, not long after La Bruja cooked the last of the chickens, that the mother discovered she was pregnant. That was a woman few people knew of, Ernesto thought. You either loved La Bruja or you hated her, and the ones that hated her did not know Mama. Ernesto could see that there was a tear in the bag Juan used to store the bottles. “What are we gonna do about that now?” he said in a voice that he could tell was bothersome to Juan. “We’ll use your shirt.” “No!” “Take it off, Ernesto.” “My mother will beat me and then she will beat you. This shirt doesn’t even belong to me really. It was my brother’s. He gave it to me when he got a new one,” Ernesto said. “Listen, if I had a shirt I would use it to store the bottles. What’ll happen when the man sees that we put sand in them? We should cover them somehow,” Juan explained. 76 Daniels / Calle Bruja

Juan laid Ernesto’s shirt on the sand and placed a few bottles in the center of it. He rolled the bottles in the shirt, then twisted the ends so that they wouldn’t fall out. He tied the cargo around Ernesto’s waist and grinned. Juan was pleased; Ernesto looked like a soldier. They walked hurriedly along the beach, with long skinny shadows in the sand. “Who’s this man we’re going to see?” Ernesto asked. “You’ll see. He collects things. One time I found some old fishing rods in the garbage. He took me to the store and bought me some ice cream.” “Is it your uncle who lives in Calle Once right near the canal?” asked Ernesto “No, that uncle doesn’t live in Calle Once anymore,” Juan said. “My brother told me he moved back to Bocas Del Toro because of woman problems.” “Is it your brother then?” Ernesto asked. “No. It’s not my brother. This man is much older, older than your father,” Juan said. Ernesto sighed. Who could this man be? It was okay. He would find out sooner or later. He was ten now, almost eleven. He had to be more brave. Everyone knew each other in Calle Once, and he was certain that he would know the man. And the man would pay them. And everything would be just fine. Juan reached for something in his pocket. “Look, I’ve got this just in case.” The knife was mostly rusted, but there was still enough shine in the evening sun for it to gleam. “You are crazy!” “Yeah and so are you,” Juan teased. “Bodega Boys right?” Ernesto smiled. “Bodega Boys!” The boys were starting to get closer to town, and they came upon the great St. Ignatius Cathedral. It had been the place where they both were baptized, but neither of them had been inside the church in years. Ernesto sat down on the steps. “Tired already? Don’t worry, this is where we’re meeting the man,” Juan said. It was almost dark, and the boys walked up the cathedral’s long steps, three stories high. The steeple was nearly half the size of the structure itself. The building was suspended in air, Ernesto thought. They watched the clouds blow past the steeple, the moon shining behind them. Ernesto wished he could magically appear before the man that would pay them, then appear before Mama. He left once before for a similar adventure, but she never noticed. He prayed she was too busy to notice this time, too. He wished he could 77 Daniels / Calle Bruja

go home to the bed where he was warm next to his brothers, and where he would sleep and not wake till morning. No sooner than he thought this, a voice yelled from the bottom of the stairs. It was Hernan Borbua. He was quite a staple in Calle Once, a man who had taken to the church some years back, and often preached on the streets of Calle Once. Where he slept, nobody knew because he went from house to house. Maybe four times in Ernesto’s short life he had come home from school to find Mr. Borbua asleep on a bed of sheets in his family’s one-room apartment. “Boys, I am here! You guys look like you have been building a house!” he laughed. “God bless you.” Ernesto was happy that it was Mr. Borbua. No one else would be so easily duped by their bottles. And even when he did find out, Mr. Borbua would never come after them. Juan handed him the bottles. “Oooh,” he said, feeling the weight of them. “You guys really have been working hard. You little boys carried this for twenty blocks all by yourselves?” “No, we had some help from Mother Mary,” Juan said. “Oh, God bless you.” Mr. Borbua gave them two dollars each. It was a Calle Once fortune, and their pupils danced in their eyes like wagging tails. The boys split up. Juan went home, telling Ernesto that he was going to hide his money in a mouse hole he found. Ernesto headed straight to the grocery store to buy the meat he was sent to get nearly three hours before and, of course, to buy Eskimo pies. One for each person in the family. Even though his father was on a ship clear across Panama, he bought one for him also, thinking that they could break it into pieces for everyone, just like the last time. But when he got home there was not the usual chatter, nothing steaming on the stove, none of his siblings played with plastic beads. He was alone in the room and as he walked toward the balcony, he could only hear the occasional car drive fast down Calle Once. Everyone was at the hospital. Everyone was watching Mama’s chest struggle to rise and fall, as she lay nearly unconscious. His mother’s three sisters had come from Portobello, and a few loyal patrons from the neighborhood had gathered along with them. Ernesto pushed through the bodies of people in front of him to get to her bedside. Three hours had aged Mama thirty years. “Mama,” he called. Her head was a mask of plastic tubes. “Hi, Papa. I looked for you. I waited for you for as long as I could. You upset me,” La Bruja said. Despite the warm room, she drew the covers closer to her, and Ernesto saw her little fist show through the sheet in frustration. 78 Daniels / Calle Bruja

He began to sing to her El Angel. It was a song about one bad boy, and one good boy. The bad boy is clever, but the good boy will live forever with God in Heaven. Ernesto sung this to her as he climbed into the bed and adjusted her pillow. He pulled the sheet so that it was tucked in at her shoulder. He placed a pillow under her legs. He gave her a small kiss on her feet and then tucked them in as well. The nurse came into the room and said something he didn’t hear, and within seconds people began to clear the room. Visiting time was now over. Ernesto didn’t want to leave. He continued to hum his song, beginning to cry. At home his siblings devoured the unmelted pieces of Eskimo pie. But Ernesto didn’t want any. He wanted only to be left alone, and though he knew this was impossible in their one room apartment, he retreated to the balcony and closed the door behind him. The next day he woke to the robust morning sun in his face. He welcomed the warmth of it, after sleeping on the cool concrete balcony all night. Ernesto wanted nothing more than to know if Mama had made it. He found his oldest sister, Selena, by the stove. She was the one the doctors spoke to about Mama’s condition. Though she had an intelligent face, she was the most indecisive of the family. “Let’s go see Mama right now Selena.” Ernesto didn’t care that everyone else was sleeping. He continued, “She mustn’t stay alone for too long.” Ernesto searched her face for some clue about Mama’s condition. He knew she didn’t want to leave everyone else behind, and somehow this angered him even more. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea, Ernesto,” Selena said. “Let’s go now,” he demanded. She quickly put on her cap and paced around the apartment as if she was looking for something else but couldn’t find it. She was easily swayed and Ernesto usually got his way with her despite the fact that she was old enough to be his mother. At twenty-four, she was considered an old maid on Calle Once, and Mama worried that she would end up unmarried and childless which, despite her hand in raising nine children, would’ve been a Calle Once tragedy. Suddenly Selena stopped pacing, and looked at Ernesto. “I don’t know how to tell you this, but Mama died, Ernesto. By the time we got home, she was dead. I found out last night, but when I walked out to the balcony and saw you sleeping there, I didn’t have the heart to wake you.” All this time, he never thought this would happen. He had seen her worse than this. She was supposed to hang on so that he could sing to her until she was well. 79 Daniels / Calle Bruja

Ernesto retreated to the balcony where he struck his head again and again. He stopped crying, especially since his brothers were starting to wake in the other room. The morning heat and humidity sustained his unique feelings of hurt and rage. When he was done he sat in the corner with his bruised head in his lap and his skinny black arms wrapped around his legs. Why had it been his mother? Why not Sergio’s, Chich’s, or Juan’s? What had he gained by leaving the house for so long? He could’ve spent more time with her. He could have been there when she had started to cough violently. He could’ve been the one to find her collapsed on the kitchen floor. Instead he had wanted nothing more than to have something sweet for dinner, an alternative to the same old rice. If only he had waited. Hours later, Mama’s body arrived at their front door. Two men in white polos with the word CORONOR on their backs carried her inside the small space. Once they had left, Ernesto lifted the latch on the box just enough to let a sliver of light in. But he couldn’t see anything. His brother Maxi coerced him into a game, and the two of them flicked plastic beads on the hard wood, careful not to get too close to the box. People started to arrive, and the breeze from the balcony, which had once blown plenteously into the room earlier, grew hot and slow, so he decided to leave. Among the usual things Ernesto saw whenever he left the house was the out-of-place and dreamy presence of his father, Mario, far down on Calle Once. His ship had been about to leave for Cartagena when a relative informed him about his wife. The next day, Mario stayed home, yet he never got any real rest. He was a superstar in his own house. The children were always climbing on him, or playing with his hair, kissing him and then running off. The girls fought for who would get to sit on his lap, and he’d smile and joke with them about having more daughters than he had limbs. The boys wrestled each other while he played referee. But no one tried to impress Mario more than Ernesto. He would do anything to win a wrestling match, even taking to measures that were strictly against the rules, like biting his brothers till he drew blood, or punching them in the ribs. He even badly scratched his brother Emilio’s forehead which caused Emilio to be fearful of him the whole night. The older siblings had just taken to letting him beat them in the matches, since they knew Ernesto wanted to win more than they did. The word on Calle Once was that the Calle Bruja kids were going to be split up. People stirred with talk of which child they wanted, and how having one would bring them luck beyond their wildest imaginings, but Ernesto did not want to go anywhere, and he secretly wished that the people in the town who wanted him would just die. Soon, he started to realize that he could not relate to his 80 Daniels / Calle Bruja

siblings the same way anymore. With one less person in the house it now seemed more crowded. He’d woken up several times in the night gasping for air as though everyone else in the room had used it all up. It hadn’t been as it was in the past, where there was an irreplaceable role just for him, something he had never fully been aware of, and so never felt the need to question. Ernesto didn’t come home straight from school anymore; instead he wandered the streets of Calle Once. No one kept an eye out for him, and he stayed out as late as he wanted. The day they buried Mama, he didn’t go to the cementerio. It would be too sad, and he had been teaching himself not to cry. So instead, he followed a group of Bodega Boys down to the precinct. The police had arrested Rolondo. Ernesto had never known that there were so many Bodega Boys. They were like a small army. There were even some his size and his age. Some he had seen come to his mother’s house for help, and others he had never seen in his life. There were over seventy Bodega Boys in the large mob headed for the police station, and Ernesto was right in the middle of it. One Bodega Boy kept looking at him, smiling but shaking his head, and coming over to him. He wondered what he had done wrong. “Doesn’t anyone in your house comb your hair?” he said to him. The man whose name was Beltran pulled a pick from his back pocket and handed it to Ernesto. “No,” he said, running the pick through his matted locks. It got stuck in places and it hurt. He gave the comb back. “Thank you,” he said. “So, any idea why the cops arrested him?” “They’re always arresting him and we always have to bail him out. They say he stabbed some old man and put him in the hospital.” The Bodega Boy was quite tall and his black beard covered all of his jaw, cheeks and lips, making it impossible to see his lower face. Yet Beltran’s eyes were round and friendly. He was more man than boy. Ernesto marched with him for a little while, most of the time wondering why Beltran wanted to talk to him. After all, he was only a kid. He didn’t know whether to feel privileged or suspicious. The mention of the viejo, the old man, had bothered Ernesto. He couldn’t move his eyes to blink. He felt hot and nervous and cupped his hands tightly as though he didn’t want to drop the weight of something that was burning him. Yet he also did not want to burn. “They say Rolondo stabbed a viejo?” Ernesto asked, trying to understand. “Yes. What is your problem? He didn’t do it,” Beltran said looking away. Then in the next moment, rising in his face, was a Bodega Boy smile. And he offered, “The viejo tried to fool us with 81 Daniels /Calle Bruja

some bottles he collected, cheat us out of money. We had no choice. If you ask me, that sick viejo got what he deserved.” In Calle Once, there weren’t too many old men. There was Blackie Bonito, Juan’s grandfather, and the town drunk. El Cholo was the other one Ernesto could remember. There were a handful more who stayed in. You only saw them at their windows, old and nearly dead. Of course, it had to be Mr. Borbua. Of course! And it had to be the bottles Ernesto gave him. Bottles he had likely been collecting for Rolondo. Ernesto and the Bodega Boy were walking passed the public hospital where Mr. Borbua had cuts in his body. Ernesto couldn’t stop looking at its windows, at the stillness in the entrance way, at the palm trees in the front making a noise in the breeze. It was the same hospital his mother was taken to. “What do you care, kid? What’s done is done. Not even La Bruja could save him now. That viejo is going to die in that hospital. They haven’t cured anyone in years,” Beltran said. Ernesto stopped marching and let the crowd go—Bodega Boy after Bodega Boy—passing him like trains, as he stood in front of the hospital not able to walk, not able to think about anything except his mother, the old man, and the things that were unchangeable. This very moment, his brothers and sisters were gathering around a hole in the cementerio, his father was trying to stay strong. If Ernesto went, he too would’ve pretended nothing was happening, as though his mother had only been a pet to him. But she was not a pet, she was La Bruja. She had stood on their balcony at dusk, sipping spiked Spanish coffee, looking fiercely upon Calle Once, when the moonlight was the only thing lighting the street. She could silence all of the neighbors with her presence there, and then laugh about it when she went back in. Oh La Bruja! Ernesto felt a noise coming from inside his ears, his name! Someone was calling his name, Ernesto, calling him to come back. It was far, but it was present, and he felt held by it. He felt the warmth around his face and shoulders like a scarf. “Are you coming?” the voice yelled. “Are you coming or should we leave you?” It was Beltran, waving his arms wildly in the crowd a few blocks away. And when Ernesto saw this, he cried. q

82 Daniels / Calle Bruja

Permission To Pet Snowball photography

Matthew Burgess 83 Burgess / Permission To Pet Snowball

Ways To Escape photography

April Elisabeth Pierce

84 Pierce / Ways To Escape

Untitled photography

Catherine Lee

85 Lee / Untitled

Mina Polina ink, charcoal on cotton-paper

Beatriz Olivetti

86 Olivetti / Mina Polina

Untitled oil on canvas

Tiffany Minaret Sakato

87 Sakato / Untitled

Untitled photography

Catherine Lee

88 Lee / Untitled

Nonfiction

The Shower of Gold Matthew Burgess W.B.

R.B.

M.B. Sergei Eisenstein, Ivan the Terrible, 1944 “The word transports me because of the notion that I am going to do something with it: it is the thrill of a future praxis, something like an appetite. This desire makes the entire motionless chart of language vibrate.”

—Roland Barthes, Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes (New York: Hill and Wang, 1977), 129. “The transformation of a shattering experience into habit—that is the essence of play.”

—Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings Volume 2.1 (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2003), 120. “Alongside each utterance, one might say that offstage voices can be heard.”

—Roland Barthes, S/Z: An Essay (New York: Hill and Wang, 1974), 21. “Blank spaces hovered before him, and into these he inserted his poem.”

—Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings Volume 4, 318. 89 Burgess / The Shower of Gold

I. “Thus, let start the game”1 I am the young tsar because I said so because I was born under said star because “I said to I. today”2 My mother married the man who is the son who kisses “the queen’s big toe”3 “Spruced up, smoothed out, angelized”4 I summon two “courtiers… (it doesn’t matter whether I recall the story’s details exactly)”5 and prepare to receive the shower of gold: “A sound rises up from somewhere down below. Is it a barking dog, some falling rocks, or a person calling from afar”6— a voice I recognize as “the indolent pasha in the caravanserai of otiose enchantment”7 “preposterously swathed in whatever sways and frays”8 summons me thus: “To be the phallus… to have it…to have it and not to be it… not to have it or to be it”9 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Roland Barthes, The Neutral (New York: Hill and Wang, 2005), 86. Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings Volume 2.1 (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2003), 501. Barthes, The Responsibility of Forms (Berkeley: University of California, 1985), 51. Barthes, The Eiffel Tower (Berkeley: University of California, 1979), 22. Barthes, The Responsibility of Forms, 41. Benjamin, Selected Writings Volume 2.2, 665. Benjamin, Selected Writings Volume 1, 447. Barthes, Incidents (Berkeley: University of California, 1992), 15. Barthes, S/Z (New York: Hill and Wang, 1974), 35.

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“An abyss opened before me, which I sought to bridge with a laconic protest:”10 I want to be it of course and to have it of course to have it and not to be it of course not to have it or to be it of course of course alas “I am caught in the weariness of the paradigm”11 My desire exceeds my skin the vicinity’s intolerable— “for me, enough means not enough”12and “the yearning is to be without yeaning”13 Vexed, crushed, abashed I wrestle with impossibles and lift my pen as “the world shrinks to a single Sunday afternoon”:14 in its innermost recess a depressed graffito: “Myself: desiring, and not a guru”15 P.S. “I always want the material to be ‘racy’”16 so it shall be— 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Benjamin, Volume 2.2, 602. Barthes, The Neutral, 56. Barthes, Lover’s Discourse: Fragments (New York: Hill and Wang), 54. Benjamin, Volume 1, 265. Benjamin, Volume 2.1, 234. Barthes, The Neutral, 32. Barthes, The Neutral, 9. 91 Burgess / The Shower of Gold

the young tsar’s unsolemn decree.

II. “But do we see, in dreams, or do we know?”17 “Amid a landscape in which nothing was the same except the clouds and, at its center, in a force field of destructive torrents and explosions, the tiny, fragile human body”18 “Suddenly, the full moon up in the sky began ever more rapidly to expand…the funnel created by the moon’s approach sucked everything in. Nothing could hope to pass through it unchanged”19 The young tsar awakes with a wet face, tremulous, examines a Spanish figurine beside his bed, the one his mother brought back: “the torero’s arched stance which summons the bull to the bandilleros”20 Nice ass he thinks but “the grey penumbra of dream persists and, indeed, in the solitude of the first waking hour, consolidates itself”21 “I counted the ringlets of sunlight that danced across the ceiling… and rearranged the rhomboids… in ever new groupings”22 17 18 19 20 21 22

Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography (New York: Hill and Wang), 66. Benjamin, Volume 2.2, 732. Benjamin, Volume 4, 406. Barthes, S/Z, 22. Benjamin, Volume 1, 444. Benjamin, Volume 4, 362.

92 Anamesa / Poetry

He lingers in his chamber with the door locked looks out: “the great stone bridge is shallowly suspended above the river, like a hand stroking it”23 “Whoever wakes as Heinrich von Ofterdingen must have overslept”24 “I will have [to] start in a tiny nook”25 the young tsar says to himself— his past “a freshly swept, empty racecourse on which a field of sixday cyclists hastens comfortlessly on”26 He mounts his bike pedals away from the pack toward a vague distance— a brother, a bedroom, a father’s clicking ankle in a hallway “He who seeks to approach his own buried past must conduct himself like a man digging”27 Maybe, maybe not thinks the young tsar, for I ply my shovel “between what and what?”28 No: “time is jerked forward (catastrophic predictions flood to mind) and back (I remember certain ‘precedents’ with terror)”29 “I choose drifting: I continue”30 Benjamin, Volume 2.1, 65. Benjamin, Volume 2.1, 3. Barthes, The Neutral, 190. Benjamin, Volume 2.1, 1. Ibid., 576. Barthes, Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes (Berkeley: University of California, 1977), 94. 29 Barthes, Lover’s Discourse, 200. 30 Ibid., 62. 23 24 25 26 27 28

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With this utterance “an autonomous will [made] itself felt in the handlebars. Every bump came close to robbing me of my balance”31 but didn’t: Shock of the thought: “I am nowhere gathered together”32— “I am my own theater”33 “Sunshine flooded the spot where I stood”34 before “a jagged mountain with all the inner gold of beauty gleaming from the wrinkles, glances, features…”35 “I wink, I blink, I close my eyes”36 “Several episodes of prepubescent sexuality occurred here”37

31 32 33 34 35 36 37

Benjamin, Volume 4, 368. Barthes, Lover’s Discourse, 11. Ibid., 161. Benjamin, Volume 4, 354. Benjamin, Volume 2.2, 675. Barthes, Lover’s Discourse, 65. Barthes, Roland Barthes, 10.

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III. “In the child, I read quite openly the dark underside of myself”38 “Children are not ashamed, since they do no reflect but only see”39 …but they perceive eventually “a blur, almost a blotch, a negligence”40 “under the very device of the Mirror and its Image: Me, myself, I”41 The young tsar’s lefthanded, left out, less than, bereft: the alligator’s jaw opens right …thus their “abyss is starless,”42 thus “Eternal Sunday surround[s] them”43 with the fantasy “Everyone Except Me”44 with reveries of H-Edouble hockey sticks the red-hot pitchfork what the priest said “This was an illusion buttressed by a widespread opinion badly in need of revision”45 “This is the reason eyes may be sad and translucent like blackish swamps, or their gaze may have the oily inertness of tropical seas”46

38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46

Ibid., 22. Benjamin, Volume 1, 51. Barthes, Responsibility of Forms, 158. Barthes, Roland Barthes, 105. Benjamin, Volume 4, 97. Ibid., 349. Barthes, Lover’s Discourse, 45. Benjamin, Volume 4, 277. Ibid., 340. 95 Burgess / The Shower of Gold

Sailing off the young tsar sees himself absently fingering “the glistening candy-icing flower beds on cakes”47 at a great-grandfather’s wake: “Why is there anything in the world, why the world?”48 Since “scissors are not made for [my] thumb”49 “the world…is my rival”50 and “me, me, what am I doing in all that?”51

IV. “When the child writes, its hand sets off on a journey”52 Here I am wrestling with a boy “with blue eyes and a pensive elbow”53 (who’s like me but not like me) inside the tsarina’s cabinet when my brother storms in— forever after little faggot: “In other words, my body is not a hero…”54 No: it is not to be trusted drawn as it is in pink outside the lines on loose leaf “representing clouds and sky in drawings is a risky venture”55 Yes: we must “concoct the most implausible alibi 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55

Benjamin, Volume 2.1, 34. Benjamin, Volume 4, 383. Barthes, Roland Barthes, 98. Barthes, Lover’s Discourse, 110. Barthes, Pleasure of the Text (New York: Hill and Wang, 1975), 29. Benjamin, Volume 2.1, 285. Barthes, Roland Barthes, 19. Ibid., 60. Benjamin, Volume 1, 84.

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to save [our] own skin”56 Still the sketch betrays its origin: “The truth of red is in the smear and the pencil’s truth is in the wobbly line”57 We weren’t kissing, we were running in circles, see? “and finally, to make our shame complete”58 (“which, moreover, is what God does”)59 construct a set “complete with touched-up moon”60 “Let us imagine the peaks of the High Alps silhouetted not against the sky but against folds of dark drapery”61 “so close, so purple…”62 diorama dire rama die aura o mama “Let us talk about it as though it existed”63 and livid, the lie turns into “a lived trajectory”64 and “redemption depends on the tiny fissure in the continuous catastrophe”65 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65

Benjamin, Volume 2.1, 194. Barthes, Responsibility of Forms, 180. Benjamin, Volume 2.2, 515. Barthes, Roland Barthes, 47. Benjamin, Volume 2.2, 518. Benjamin, Volume 1, 453. Barthes, Roland Barthes, 5. Barthes, Pleasure of the Text, 66. Barthes, Incidents, 4. Benjamin, Volume 4, 185. 97 Burgess / The Shower of Gold

“You suppose that the goal of the wrestling match is to win? No, it is to understand”66

V. “I thought: how much like a movie!”67 A clay cock held out in a brother’s fist: this is what happens when a girl walks by— “The so-called inner image of oneself that we all possess is a set of pure improvisations from one minute to the next”68 this is what happens when a boy walks by— “that’s it! And further still: that’s it for me!”69 But the Virgin holds out her hands, looks down sidelong…as Commissioner of Religious Affairs, I crown the statuary! “Nothing is so bad that you cannot live with it for a time”70 66 67 68 69 70

Barthes, Roland Barthes, 83. Barthes, Incidents, 52. Benjamin, Volume 2.1, 271. Barthes, Pleasure of the Text, 13. Benjamin, Volume 2.1, 302.

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“and even where there is only a rustling of plants, there is always a lament”71 The young tsar’s motto— a secret to himself such an “enormous expenditure of energy to say no”72 so “I say yes to everything (blinding myself)”73 yet “I can make out, in the undergrowth of myself, the cave where it opens and deepens”74 “It I quite simply there that I should like to live”75 “and bath in shame as if it were dragon’s blood”76

VI. “The nerves are inspired threads”77 Few velvet Jesuses haunt the last ditch rendezvous after a card catalogue decimates his illusion— young tsar peers past pay-per-view static: you get an apt analogue for false confusion— 71 72 73 74 75 76 77

Benjamin, Volume 1, 73. Barthes, The Neutral, 205. Barthes, Lover’s Discourse, 24. Barthes, The Neutral, 12. Barthes, Camera Lucida, 38. Benjamin, Volume 2.1, 270. Benjamin, Volume 2.2, 736. 99 Burgess / The Shower of Gold

but give it a shot (“the way one tries all the buttons on a radio one doesn’t know how to work”78) Sevilla or Kansas drink up drink up or go downtown Julie Brown O mercy me “I was fascinated by the temptation of thinking something else”79 in the midst of the “amorous apostrophe”80 “We do not always proclaim loudly the most important thing we have to say”81 but misses pile high much janked-up riffraff in a woof/warp clash or a false mustache

“(yes…no…uh)”82

“(because my ‘silence’ is not necessarily received as ‘silence’!)83 “if I withdraw from its usual blah-blah”84 “(yes…no…uh)”85 Maybe “there is no such thing as ‘saying what you think’”86 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86

Barthes, Roland Barthes, 74. Ibid., 33. Ibid., 114. Benjamin, Volume 2.1, 240. Barthes, The Neutral, 205. Ibid., 24. Barthes, Camera Lucida, 55. Barthes, The Neutral, 205. Benjamin, Volume 2.2, 471.

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“But: Walt Whitman?”87 VII. “An adult relieves his heart from its terrors and doubles happiness but turning it into a story”88 The young tsar’s shaman floats him back to that room with a recalled swatch, a snippet’s carpet into “the realm of sleep without sleepiness…this is the moment for telling:”89 “I am that Flying Dutchman; I cannot stop wandering (loving) because of an ancient sign which dedicated me, in the remote days of my earliest childhood, to the god of my Image repertoire, afflicting me with a compulsion to speak which leads me to say ‘I love you’ in one port of call after another”90 Yes yes yes but a thumb in shoulder blade says not so fast (sometimes stone protests its story) a knot is a foyer he enters a corridor lit with the light a coral snorkeler swims through “You would have known what the Sea of Marmara looks like”91 87 88 89 90 91

Benjamin, Volume 4, 185. Benjamin, Volume 2.1, 120. Barthes, Lover’s Discourse, 104. Ibid., 102. Benjamin, Volume 2.1, 359. 101 Burgess / The Shower of Gold

“at whose end a lovely resting place afforded a view of…apparitions moving across the curtain of flame behind my closed lids”92 “as if it summons the Other to enter my voice”93 “I can waken in myself the rumpled softness”94 I have a heart that works—

VIII. “A scene of embarrassment often goes unnoticed as the source of a successful enterprise”95 Supernumeraries resume the position: our young tsar is ready for the shower of gold: behold: “the good that is there (open your eyes) right before you”96 and “also, sometimes—how to put it?—love”97 “Once the alternative is rejected (once the paradigm is blurred) utopia”98 “could, even in part, drop conveniently, thing-like, into 92 93 94 95 96 97 98

Benjamin, Volume 4, 364. Barthes, Responsibility of Forms, 282. Barthes, Camera Lucida, 65. Benjamin, Volume 2.1, 123. Ibid., 4. Barthes, Camera Lucida, 94. Barthes, Roland Barthes, 133.

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mankind’s lap” “We boldly skip”99 “a certificate of presence”100 in our mitts “for there is no truth that is not tied to the moment”101 “I myself was a public square… through me passed words”102 “from whose…bull’s-eyes the world shines back”103 “and that shock made crystallization possible”104 i.e. bliss— “Only where we are so besmirched are we unconquerable”105

“So we’ve done that one now”

106

99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106

Barthes, Pleasure of the Text, 11. Barthes, Camera Lucida, 87. Barthes, The Neutral, 13. Barthes, Pleasure of the Text, 49. Benjamin, Volume 2.1, 233. Benjamin, Volume 4, 50. Benjamin, Volume 2.1, 271. Benjamin, Volume 4, 412. 103 Burgess / The Shower of Gold

Untrue Interview with Ventriloquist Plagiarist Q: What justification can you offer for lifting quotations from these texts to construct your poem? A: “Considering that the very task of love and of language is to give to one and the same phrase inflections which will forever be new…”107 Q: Yes, but you often move from one fragment to another without apparent regard for the contextual meaning of the appropriated language. A: “Yes…no…uh…”108 Q: Was that a conscious choice on your part? A: “I choose drifting: I continue.”109 Q: How did you go about choosing the quotations you’ve included in this poem? A: “…constantly on the lookout for turns of phrase or striking expressions, and the meaning is merely the background on which rests the shadow that they cast, like figures in relief…”110 Q: Your excerpts are lifted from many texts. What do you think prompted you to choose some over others? A: “I realized that some provoked tiny jubilations.”111 Q: Much of the attributed material has a whimsical, imagistic quality. It’s almost as if you strolled through these texts like a reader-flaneur. A: “…what he looks for. Namely, images, wherever they lodge.”112 “That is to say…those images that, severed from all earlier associations, reside as treasures in the sober rooms of our later 107 108 109 110 111 112

Barthes, Roland Barthes, 114. Barthes, The Neutral, 205. Barthes, Lover’s Discourse, 62. Benjamin, Volume 2.2, 736. Barthes, Camera Lucida, 16. Benjamin, Volume 2.1, 264.

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insights—like torsos in a collector’s gallery.”113 Q: And yet it also seems almost like you’re playing games… A: “Games of chance, flanerie, collecting—activities pitted against spleen.”114 Q: So you enjoyed yourself? A: “To be sure, play is always liberating.”115 Q: But have you considered that you are somehow imprisoning these fragments in the semi-autobiographical narrative of the young tsar? Are you concerned that you constrain the fragments by placing them within this narrative frame? A: “The blanks and looseness…will be like footprints marking the escape of the text”116 Q: Where do these snippets escape to—should we follow their footprints? A: “The words have come to the masked ball, are joining in the fun and are whirling around together, like tinkling snowflakes.”117 Q: You suggest these fragments were somehow attracted to each other. Was there an aleatory element in their arrangement? Do you see the connections as forced, artificial? A: “Words…are cruisers: they follow what they meet up with.”118 Q: Yet you chose the words included. A: “Then the lover is merely a choosier cruiser.”119 Q: How autobiographical is the young tsar?

113 114 115 116 117 118 119

Benjamin, Volume 2.2, 576. Benjamin, Volume 4, 171. Benjamin, Volume 2.1, 100. Barthes, S/Z, 20. Benjamin, Volume 1, 433. Barthes, Roland Barthes, 126. Barthes, Lover’s Discourse, 34. 105 Burgess / The Shower of Gold

A: “Am I allowed to mention my personal experience?”120 Q: Of course. A: “I am the one who has the same place I have.”121 Q: And the bulk of the poem seems concentrated on his? your? youth and adolescence… A: “From the past, it is my childhood which fascinates me most.”122 Q: Are you concerned that a reader of this poem would see little more than a collage of decontextualized quotations? Do you think readers will understand this experiment? A: “People who understand quickly frighten me.”123 Q: What are you afraid of? A: “There is always someone to sock me on the jaw.”124 Q: Are there any excerpts you wished to include that didn’t make it? A: “Busby, chaperon, fontange, Sevillan comb, schapska, pschent, etc.”125 Q: Anything else? A: “Curl like the dewlap of a mighty bullock.”126

120 121 122 123 124 125 126

Barthes, The Neutral, 38. Barthes, Lover’s Discourse, 129. Barthes, Roland Barthes, 22. Barthes, The Neutral, 37. Ibid., 186. Barthes, Responsibility of Forms, 110. Barthes, The Neutral, 34.

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“A kind of Franciscanism invites all words to perch, to flock, to fly off again: a marbled iridescent text”127

“To write by fragments: the fragments are often so many stones of the perimeter of a circle: I spread myself around: my whole little universe in crumbs; at the center, what?”128

r 127 Barthes, Pleasure of the Text, 8. 128 Barthes, Roland Barthes, 93. 107 Burgess / The Shower of Gold

Poetry

On The Airstrip At Tambor, En Route to Monteverde Julia Guez

But I can be unhappy anywhere, George.

108 Guez / On the Airstrip at Tambor