Sixty Years of Chanter: An Anthology (1957-2017)

Sixty Years of Chanter

an anthology 1957-2017

We made our best efforts to contact all copyright holders. If we somehow missed you, we thank you for your contribution and please contact us at chanter@macalester.edu if you have any questions.

Anthology Staff Zeena Yasmine Fuleihan Claire Grace

Originator Xander Gershberg

Contributors

Lara Avery Peter Bognanni Anitra Budd James Dawes Amy Elkins Daylanne English Ema Erikson Julia Fritz-Endres Venessa Fuentes

James Hartzer Marlon James Andrea Kaston Tange Elizabeth Loetscher Miriam Moore-Keish Taylor Schey Theodore Twidwell Benjamin Voigt Bram Wang

Special thanks to President Brian Rosenberg, Ellen Holt-Werle, Ginny Moran, Matt Burgess, Jan Beebe, Neely Heubach, and Macalester Alumni Relations for their tremendous support.

Literature Forward, Anthology Staff.................................................................................................................... 9 A Welcome To The Chanter, Dr. Charles J. Turck............................................................................. 10 A Welcome To The Chanter, 60 Years Later, Brian C. Rosenberg...................................................... 11 Sweet Words and Scented Roses, Carol Kisby (Schlaeppie)................................................................ 12 Excerpts, Lorraine Christiensen (lcm)................................................................................................ 13 Byways, Thomas E. Critchett............................................................................................................ 14 Cairns, Ann Miller............................................................................................................................15 Two Poems for Writers Inspired by the Art Institute of Chicago, Katy Jacob.................................... 16 You Are Not Wired So Correctly, Benjamin Voigt............................................................................. 18 Summer of Nothing Written, Lara Avery......................................................................................... 19 Two Poems, Zeena Yasmine Fuleihan................................................................................................ 20 Two Poems, Claire Grace................................................................................................................. 22 Editor Forward, Mary Hale Meyer, Tamera Noble............................................................................. 24 Teach Us To Sit Still, Karlyn Kohrs Campbell................................................................................... 25 Returning (for Basho), Paul Wadden................................................................................................ 28 Finger Lickin’ Good, Susan S. Holmes.............................................................................................. 29 The History of Women in Space, Kate Cell...................................................................................... 30 Mười Hai, Charlie Pham................................................................................................................. 32 The Grove, Jack Scott Cain............................................................................................................... 34 eighteen hour bus trip poem, steve burmeister.................................................................................. 35 Witness Protection, Mark Doten...................................................................................................... 36 A Possible Disowning, Jane Neathery Cutler..................................................................................... 37 Ruth to her parents, Lucy Harris...................................................................................................... 38 In Envy, Karen Baker....................................................................................................................... 39 The Dream of Marco Pulver, William Truesdale............................................................................... 40 Two Poems for the Beat Generation, Anonymous............................................................................. 41 God Retreats from Alabama, Glenn A. Allen.................................................................................... 42 On The Road Back Home, Jonathan Amezquita.............................................................................. 43 Cuando empieza el invierno, Juanita Garciagodoy............................................................................ 45 Love Poem, Lars Hunter.................................................................................................................. 46 Love Poem, Karintha Lowe.............................................................................................................. 47

Gloria Wonders: Is This Mr. Right, Kathryn C. Betts........................................................................ 48 Julie’s Coffee, Dave Keith................................................................................................................. 49 In Between Our Lives, Nick Herman............................................................................................... 51 everything is disappearing, Kathy Whitcomb..................................................................................... 52 Light and Shadow, Mary Hale Meyer............................................................................................... 53 Please, Nancy Peregrine (Ring).......................................................................................................... 56 Coming from the Market, Kate Cell................................................................................................ 57 Winter Begins, Charles Baxter.......................................................................................................... 58 good dreams or milk, Deborah Keenan............................................................................................. 59 Haiku, Wayne Potratz...................................................................................................................... 61 The Song of the Escaping Youth, Will Robinson Sheff....................................................................... 62 That Rushing Star With Russian Name, Larry Teien........................................................................ 65 Palestine, Jane Buchwald.................................................................................................................. 67 Themba, Sisonke Msimang................................................................................................................68 Washed Storms, Nancy Peregrine (Ring)........................................................................................... 71 Giovanni’s Room, Jong Kwon........................................................................................................... 72 Loving letter of past, Veronique Bergeron.......................................................................................... 73 Let Us Begin Again, Roy McBride.................................................................................................... 74 The Battle, Cortlandt H. Frye........................................................................................................... 76 Journey to America, Yuko Nii.......................................................................................................... 78 Careful Not to Touch the Lilacs, Tim O'Brien................................................................................. 79 Two Poems, Freya Manfred ............................................................................................................. 88 A Broken, Half-Buried Statue, Charles Turner.................................................................................. 90 Mare, Max Guttman........................................................................................................................ 91 Sonnet VI, Jennifer Mark................................................................................................................. 92 After the Bombing of an Abortion Clinic, Martha Roberts............................................................... 93 After the Last Supper, Burke Strickland.............................................................................................94 Poem of Kansas City, Martha Knapp................................................................................................95 Poem for Surya, Ironelly Mora.......................................................................................................... 96 Two Mornings, Becky Cochrane........................................................................................................ 97 This birch tree and I were young together, Buff Bradley.................................................................... 98 The Off Season, Ann Miller............................................................................................................. 99 Pace, Craig Scherfenberg................................................................................................................. 100 All My Life, Elizabeth Humphries...................................................................................................101 Nature, Rodger Blakely................................................................................................................... 102

Mostly Shadows, Mary Hale Meyer................................................................................................ 103 God's Country, Cay Adams Kimbrell.............................................................................................. 105 Foreplay, Dana Kokubun................................................................................................................106 The Things I Wish I Could Tell You When You Cry The Most, Celeste Prince.................................107 Strong Still the Oak, Porter McNeil.................................................................................................109 when I was nine, Freya Manfred......................................................................................................111 The Court, Charles Baxter...............................................................................................................113 Black Man’s Burden, Yolanda Louise Ridley.................................................................................... 114 Rificolone looking for grandfather, Ann Miller.............................................................................. 117 Grass Is Greener, Theodore Twidwell................................................................................................118 Aye, and Gommorah, Charles Sheaffer............................................................................................120 Across the Player’s Bow, Joshua Blatter........................................................................................... 121 Rex Regoris, Jack Scott Cain.......................................................................................................... 122 The First Gift, Anne Marie Wirth-Cauchon.................................................................................... 124 My Land Lord and I hit it off, Willie McDonagh............................................................................125 Eulogy for Malcolmb and Me, Jane Neathery Cutler...................................................................... 126 Museums, Megan Elliott.................................................................................................................127 The Responsibility of Joseph, Jane Colville Betts............................................................................. 128 The Fountain, Katy Jacob................................................................................................................129 The Drive Home, Lora Lee Polack.................................................................................................. 131 Routes, Ellen Perry..........................................................................................................................133 Mrs. Barber Is Dead, Charles Baxter...............................................................................................134 Conversations In Black, Julia Fritz-Endres..................................................................................... 136 eden revisited, Paul Coleman......................................................................................................... 137 Removed, Katie Fowley.................................................................................................................. 138 Save the Words for Some Other Time, Ann Scales.......................................................................... 139 The Day After the End of the World, Will Robinson Sheff...............................................................140 7 Takes on Photogenics, Susannah Bielak........................................................................................141 On Being Adopted by a Geneticist, Nancy Hebb.............................................................................142 The Line of Women, Nancy Hebb.................................................................................................. 143 Your Umbrella, Kitty Elmer-Dewitt................................................................................................ 144 The Remembered Dark, Jeffrey Shotts............................................................................................. 145 Graft, Parlier, CA, Katie Tsuji........................................................................................................ 146 oneironaut 19, Emma Törzs........................................................................................................... 147 Pére Tanguy, Brenda Pearson...........................................................................................................148 poison, Kokoro Lee......................................................................................................................... 149

The sky is breathing, Juanita Garciagodoy....................................................................................... 150 To Think Does Not Make It So, Jack Patnode.................................................................................151 Bagpipe Music, Jeffrey Shotts...........................................................................................................152

Art Untitled, Jessica Wade....................................................................................................................... 15 Fear of Falling, Jenny Schmid........................................................................................................... 18 Cover Art, Unknown........................................................................................................................27 Untitled, Martha Eidmann...............................................................................................................31 Color de cafe, Jenny Schmid..............................................................................................................35 Anonymous Man Grows Up, Greg Prickman....................................................................................39 Cover Art, Charlie Fuller..................................................................................................................44 Bleached Bone, Enid Shaw.............................................................................................................. 55 Gary, Ben Chapman..........................................................................................................................61 Graduation '81, Enid Shaw..............................................................................................................64 Cover Art, Unknown........................................................................................................................72 Cover Art, Unknown........................................................................................................................80 Saint Croix, Ilana Budenosky............................................................................................................ 81 Mermaid Postcard, Juliette Myers..................................................................................................... 82 Cover Art, Unknown........................................................................................................................83 Danica, Emerald Thole..................................................................................................................... 84 Look at Yourself, Maja Søndergaard Bendtsen................................................................................... 85 Cover Art, Unknown....................................................................................................................... 86 Hask, Ema Erikson...........................................................................................................................87 In Between, Yevtushenko, Wayne Potratz..........................................................................................94 Cover Art, Unknown......................................................................................................................100 Current Chanter Logo, Zeena Yasmine Fuleihan, Alex Coppins, Kyoko Peterson ...............................105 Chanter Logo, Unknown................................................................................................................105 Strange Love, Two Arms, Alia Benedict ..........................................................................................112 Untitled, Jennifer Lipscomb............................................................................................................ 123 Cover Art, Ben Chapman................................................................................................................130 Kneeling, Joanna Curtis..................................................................................................................135 Untitled, Mayim Alpert.................................................................................................................. 146

8

Forward

Anthology Staff

2017

Sixty Years of Chanter: an anthology celebrates the incredible tenacity that Chanter has shown through the past sixty years of maintaining its mission and presence even as its member and leadership composition constantly evolves. Beginning in 1957 as The Chanter, Macalester’s longest-running student literary magazine aimed to provide a space for a group of students to consistently write and share their work with the Macalester community. Throughout the years, this primary goal has molded to the interests and needs of Macalester students. Today, Chanter accepts submissions from beyond its own staff to feature the creative impulses that undergird the campus community.

Upon discovering that our sixtieth anniversary would arrive in Fall of 2017, former Editor-in-Chief Xander Gershberg ‘17 proposed the idea of an anthology to the enthusiastic Chanter editorial board.

Although leadership shifted partway through the process, current Editor-in-Chief Zeena Yasmine Fuleihan ‘18 and Literary Editor Claire Grace ‘19 created the anthology in your hands. After welcoming selections from various English faculty, alumni, and current members of Chanter, an intensive period of final reading during the summer of 2017, and months of reaching out to Chanter alumni whose work we hoped to include, anthology staff approached layout with near 200 pages of content. While we would have loved to include all of this work, in order to meet our 150-page limit we had to make final selections. The resulting book in your hands features an array of creative writing and art from the beginning days of The Chanter to the most recent Chanter issue.

On the pages of Sixty Years, we aimed to represent the various styles of Chanter throughout its history. In its beginning years, Chanter used indents for new paragraphs and integrated art onto pages with writing; towards its later years, the practice of line breaks instead of indents and separating art into its own section became more popular. We also included a few cover images from Chanter’s archives to display samples of how the magazine marketed itself to the community.

When perusing this anthology, we hope you see the incredible diversity of creative output and passions of Macalester students. It has been beyond amazing to delve so deeply into the history of our magazine and college, and we have found the experience enormously humbling as we consider ourselves one part of an ever-changing organization that yet persists despite the swift turnover of leaders and students at Macalester. We are honored to present Sixty Years of Chanter: an anthology.

9

A Welcome To The Chanter

Dr. Charles J. Turck President, Macalester College, 1939-1958

Originally published in 1957

I am happy to see a new literary publication begin its career on our campus. One of the puzzles that I have not solved in nineteen years on this campus is why Macalester College has produced so few writers of distinction.

We have a Department of English which probably draws as many visitors interested in communication as any other department. We have departments in foreign languages of wider scope and with larger personnel than any nearby private institution. Yet we do not have prose and poetry published by the students and young alumni as many other institutions can boast.

Perhaps the reason is that our only literary magazine until now is one that was published at the end of the college year, when the interests of students were centered on events connected with graduation and not on literary achievements.

The Chanter will be published four times a year, and thus our essayists, poets, and other writers will have a medium through which they can reach their friends, establish a following, and express their ideas and convictions several times in the course of each academic year.

Imaginative writers are nearly always critical of the economy which produces them. If they were satisfied with their society, they would not bother to write. Consequently we should expect more jeremiads than eulogies in The Chanter. Nevertheless, ours is a free society and ours is a free campus, and it should be anticipated that the writing in The Chanter will be bold and sharp and clear.

Dos Passos in his youth explained in a single sentence the aim of nearly all youthful writers in America, “We must strike once more for freedom for the sake of the dignity of our man.” The young writers of Macalester can espouse no finer task.

The present administration welcomes The Chanter and will listen with eager anticipation to the chants.

10

A Welcome To The Chanter, 60 Years Later Brian C. Rosenberg President, Macalester College, 2003-Present

2017

More than half-century ago, President Charles Turck, near the close of his nineteen-year tenure, welcomed Chanter to campus and wondered why “Macalester College has produced so few writers of distinction.”

Times change.

In the ensuing years, “writers of distinction” who have attended Macalester have included Tim O’Brien ’68, Charles Baxter ’69, Mary Karr ’76, Dave Zirin ’96, Peter Bognanni ’01, and Danai Gurira ’01, along with a long list of others.

I have no idea if there is a causal relationship between the creation of Chanter and the success of these writers, but I do know that having a literary magazine has been an important and enriching part of the college culture. The literary community on and around the Macalester campus is thriving at a time when it is essential that such communities keep our minds, hearts, and spirits alive. Our faculty and students are extraordinary, and our alumni are making their voices heard in publications of every kind.

A college literary magazine provides an opportunity for nascent writers to test and sharpen their skills and to speak to an audience beyond the walls of the classroom. It is as necessary to young writers as is a laboratory to young scientists or a studio to young painters. The quality of the work is of course important, but the act of creation—the trying and the willingness to be vulnerable—may be more important still.

This anthology of Macalester student writing from the past sixty years provides much of both aesthetic and historical interest. I hope you enjoy it, and I hope that, sixty years from today, students will still be editing, publishing in, and reading Chanter.

11

Sweet Words and Scented Roses Carol Kisby (Schlaeppi)

Originally published in 1957

A little bit of love

you give to me.

All wrapped around with flatt’ring words

and roses sweet.

A little bit of love,

Perfumed and scented; And placed majestically

on a golden platter.

Then, with a little kiss,

you hand it to me.

And wait for me to stretch out my arms,

and pluck it greedily

from your grasp.

This I cannot do.

The wrappings are tied too tightly to be opened.

And upon that golden platter, the little love lies insignificant.

You laugh and call me foolish Perhaps.

But this one thing I know.

I shall wait Until I find a greater love That can entwine itself around Sweet words

and scented roses.

12

Excerpts

Lorraine Christiensen (lcm)

Originally published in 1967

☐There is a sidewalk passes by a house of home, And lying on its belly in the sun A purple pool The sicle gone.

I am come, eighteen, too late. ☐The girl was on the right, a young, red-headed girl; she bounced with her hand on the shopping bag handle, supporting less weight of the load than her mother. The woman spelled patience with her steps; one foot followed the other down. The shallow skin clung to the bone of her cheek and her hair set firmly under her net like time. The girl’s voice spoke with tense spontaneity, as if almost visible cords fastened into the energy under her words, holding them taut. “Tonight we’ll have pepper and salt in our soup!” The woman looked at the girl and then on ahead. “And salt in our soup,” she said. ☐Cars pass in the rain Breaking night and hydro-carpets on the street Whispering.

Pass on; and then again is night and rain.

The wet leaves watch. ☐It was speaking in silence

Like a movie without words — The blue man striding off,

The two lads running after.

On he went and never slowed his gait

Swinging arms in pseudo-friendliness Too buoyant, too impatient to be true.

The two kept on beside

Importuning figures to the corner of the street Then sudden nonchalance and back to skates

Right angles from the man.

13

Byways

Thomas E. Critchett

Originally published in 1977

Our way is strewn with stones Cobbling our being, Forming diverse avenues: Two often parallel So one shall be used While the other lies untrod.

Though once the surveyor’s hand shakes, The plot is tangled Or the lanes transposed, Our unchosen paths Lead to streets not much wanted As leading away from the crowd.

One alley meant for me Does open to the thoroughfare Of contacts, collisions, Or riding in tandem; Not many use my road Although it can suffice.

My mode and scene of travel Differs little in essence But more in style.

Yet the way I am headed Appears on the map Supposed the worst part of town.

14

Cairns

Ann Miller

Originally published in 1987-1988

Dry wall crumbling in the second growth full of trinkets the builders left a shard of glass a whittled toy a small smooth stone. I am in the dry wall. My teeth grow dark green moss smudges of earth pattern my skull that is about to crumble about to collapse about to be picked up and thrown against the wall. My bones mingle with the dead: rat and pregnant deer, infant bones tangled in my ribs. Children jump over loosing rocks playing games among my bones. My arm for a tomahawk.

Untitled

15

Jessica Wade Originally published in 1991

Two Poems for Writers Inspired by the Art Institute of Chicago Katy Jacob

Originally published in 1997

1. On Viewing “The Old Guitarist” When Wallace Stevens saw it he wrote about things as they are and things as they seem and imperfection.

When Rafael Alberti remembered it, his written recollections were all of blue.

But when I stood in front of the surprisingly small painting on my day off from work in June, I thought of making art about artof the way we create worlds from a walland I wondered if I could do it.

I don’t think I will ever know now, because I don’t know how things are, and I can’t imagine what exists outside of imperfection and colored memories.

All I can recall of the Picasso is the way it made me want to know if there was ever such a man so tattered and bent and blue, if his fingers were really so long, and where it was that he was sitting.

I can’t get to the metaphor for the obstacle of wondering if he was real.

16

2. For the Poet Delmore Schwartz I’m sorry, sir, but you left out what really matters.

You forgot to mention the size of it, the way it takes up an entire wall.

Perhaps that was part of some sort of cover-up to set you apart the rest of us, who don’t see “hope itself ” or “the miracle of love” in Seurat’s “Sunday on the Ile de la Grande Jatte,” but rather spend our time trying in vain to pronounce its name, admiring the dusty colors, and feeling we can lose ourselves in the seemingly life-sized shadows in a room with no natural sunlight.

It is the painting you forgot, the unrealness of everything, the way it makes us think of crayons, the way we stop to think about light, the way we crowd around it and become subjects in ourselves, the way we quietly mutter, “My God that man must have been out of his mind” as we attempt to connect the dots.

17

You Are Not Wired So Correctly Benjamin Voigt

Originally published in 2008

And if I press against you right here, along the length your arm, just like this, a rhythmic jab with one finger, what do you feel. Would it not be unlike a touch of willow, the press of a pen, or, even, a push of lips. And are they not at all different, these thousand things my symmetrical raindrops make, and if I drum this into you long enough, do you forget what each press means, like a word said over and over again, feeling only the thing itself. And when I stop, and there is nothing but the air against your arm, I will press against my own and does your brain reach across the room. Do you try to feel for me, to be my body, forget who you are and all the particles between us. Are you not wired so correctly that we are at once connected by the bent psychology that feints for us to live.

And is it not only these words that count: the nervous meridians stretch past the ends of fingertips as we make the mind the mimic.

Fear of Falling

Jenny Schmid Originally published in 1990

18

Summer of Nothing Written Lara Avery

Originally published in 2008

snail snail in the canyon and he’s wasting time because he is very slow and doesn’t make enough money for everyone else to accept him he had an odd job a few summers ago when a toad friend needed to carry a banana up the ledge. but that was a few summers ago. poor snail. dirt poor. good for nothin’ snail.

Alone, by myself, drinking a lukewarm Hefe Weizen, listening to Blonde on Blonde. I tried to eat Easy Mac, which is the easy version of macaroni and cheese, I don’t know what that’s all about.

Then again there such things as Segways. People need an easier version of macaroni and cheese, and they also need an easier version of walking. I boiled the water and that went all right. Then it came time for the powdered cheese. I opened it and the air around me filled with a rancid smell, telling me that the evaporated milk had gone sour. I ate it anyway then dry heaved for about ten minutes but that didn’t make it better. Things are also getting worse on the romantic front. Chet feels as uncomfortable on top of me as a cloud full of goose feathers. Yesterday I attempted to get pissed off that I was in a relationship that would probably end anyway, and also about earlier when he told me I should dress him because it was my job, and maybe because he always gets to lead when we ride bikes. What am I doing, following him around, I thought as he coasted past me again and again. He makes at every intersection like the next forward movement will be the most important of his life.

He was coasting past me over and over because whenever I tried to pass him like he wasn’t there I ran into a lot of joggers and he would pass me anyway, looking at me, but I kept my eyes straight forward and squinted poker-like.

I knew everything was going to be all right when he couldn’t make me orgasm that afternoon. Later, however, sitting on the roof, I was reading my book about a hermit and I became so glad I was normal person with female genitalia I went inside and sat on Chet’s lap while he was playing his keyboard and squeezed one out. It was fantastic, except I kept hitting the automatic song buttons.

Have you ever come while listening to a French horn version of “Tiny dancer”? It’s quite beautiful.

19

Mesmerize Me

Zeena Yasmine Fuleihan*

Originally published in 2015

What is under 36,000 feet curled beneath a liquid quilt sewn apart by pressurized remains decomposing out of sight like broken tree roots Take me to the ocean floor I want to see electric teeth and bodies the geometric shapes I never drew in my textbooks Surround me in deafening black fold wet molecules into the crevices behind my eardrums, submerge me I want my skeleton to shift, the sediment of my bones will form one more bottom-feeding mirage.

20

Regardless

Zeena Yasmine Fuleihan*

Originally published in 2015

I am leaving coals with laundry blackened burnings still blushing while these clothes will never grace a skeleton.

There are flecks of heat trapped in mesh woven fibers, no amount of soap will staunch the smoke.

I am leaving your ashes with fabric soft-worn collars still aching for a neck but my shoulders, they crave a breeze.

*Zeena Yasmine Fuleihan is the current Editor-in-Chief of Chanter 21

Iniquitous

Claire Grace*

Originally published in 2016

I met God at an alcoholics anonymous meeting in May. Said he hadn’t been sober since he cast Lucifer from Heaven.

No matter how often he drowned the skies in rain, only drunkenness dulled such potency.

God sits in a garden of metaphors empty.

I met Adam in between drunken slurs of temptation won.

He snapped my fingers like twigs so he wouldn’t be the only arthritic hands at the bar.

Told me ancient Baltic battleships sank when I was born.

I now know loss cuts deeper than bone.

I can no longer pray to those I knew as a child For Adam and Eve grew up drowning in cigarette smoke and watered down sherry and God tied rocks to his ankles and let himself sink down down as he whispered over and over jesus christ, now aren’t we living?

22

house imagined Claire Grace*

Originally published in 2016

The night you confessed your mistress: her dark curls, the dimples of her smile, how you learned them the way you only learned mine from zoomed-in photographs, I saw love in you for the first time.

Your flushed cheeks, kind eyes: intruders in my home; you were no longer Husband, love, but something drowned in the pool of the imagined house where we would raise our daughter.

That night I prepared steak; left so much blood in the kitchen you asked what had happened.

You slunk to bed and did not call me in when I drifted to sleep, tears dried on velvet couch cushions.

The cat always knew better than I, knew to hiss, run, bite long before I learned how to fear you.

On days I don’t know how to stay away from you, I pull her to my lap, bait her with spoiling dinner for two, beg her not to let me crawl back to you.

When I found a torn image of another woman bookmarking a verse in your Bible, I shook your favorite novels by their spines like a child urging coins from her piggy bank until pages fluttered to the ground around my feet.

The night you confessed you no longer loved me I stared at shattered glass and a wedding photo on tile and wished I could say it too.

The last night you reached for me, I closed my eyes and imagined it was the first time we'd met. *Claire Grace is the current Literary Editor of Chanter 23

Editor Forward

Mary Hale Meyer Tamera Noble

Originally published in 1959

It has been said by some long-prophet of doom that only idiots and egomaniacs have the gall and guts to look at their own works in print. (It has been said that only the selfless can truly create, but that is another notion.) If the saying has any truth at all it is easily seen that this business of publishing magazines is a dangerous business. By the very nature of the task all of us–authors, poets, editors, illustrators–are immediately suspect. (We have seen proof of The Chanter’s susceptibility in the recent journalistic furor centered on bearded bards in cellar barrooms–vaguely reminiscent of the irate poet’s complaint about English bards and Scotch reviewers.)

Fortunately for the future of what we grandly title Macalester’s Literary Enterprise, we are all foolhardy souls. Refusing to see the alleged folly of our ways, we maintain that there is some virtue in gathering these bits of idiocy, hopefully remembering that Shakespeare’s fools were often wise men in disguise. (Not that we–any of us–claim to be Shakespeares or Eliots or Hemingways. We don’t even claim to be artists. We are apprentices, and the best of our exercises are gathered here.)

Our exercises take many forms according to the bias of the apprentice-author. They range from the cover design, Medieval in traditional and symbol yet possibly modern in its portrayal of our condition, to a scholarly and humanistic defense of art, to an ironic and moving story inspired

by Samuel Beckett’s despairing and desperate play Waiting for Godot. Strangely enough, though it is rumored that only unhappy people write, few of these works are thoroughly unhappy. (This may indicate widespread acceptance of radioactive fallout as a means of population control; on the other hand it may indicate nothing at all.) Nevertheless most of these works contain a prevailing note of hope. Like the cover knight we may be bound by an earthly serpent, but we may also see angels; we may hate, but we may also love. In our folly there may be some wisdom.

We have said we are apprentices. We have implied we are either idiots or egoists. But we maintain that we have tried to be honest, at least to ourselves. We have put forth our best exercises, but not as an exhibit of the blind leading the blind or the bland leading the bland. We know The Chanter cannot be a college image study, but we think it is a college literary magazine.

24

Teach Us to Sit Still

Karlyn Kohrs Campbell

Originally published in 1959

The pounding sound of jazz in the background and the voice of a poet reading–a San Francisco poet–Rexroth perhaps. A bare room with a candle flickering in a Chianti bottle, girls in black leotards, men in Bermudas, bearded, discussing existentialism. A restaurant with naked light bulbs, students sitting cross-legged on the floor listening to long-haired philosophers playing guitars off-key.

The Beat Generation.

The unmistakable rhythm of rock ‘n roll shuffling feet tight levis and leather jackets and the words, “Yakkety-Yak,” “Tijuana Jail,” and “Great Balls of Fire.”

The Beat Generation.

A man in a gray flannel suit–single-breasted, three buttoned–wearing a narrow-brimmed homburg and a narrow tie, carrying a briefcase, conspicuously clean fingernails whose mind is filled with IBM computers, brain-storming and togetherness on his way to a cocktail party at which he will drink the right number of garlic-olived martinis and say the correct thing.

The Beat Generation.

Or, what newspaper reporters, magazine writers and the general public have come to believe is the Beat Generation. These groups can justifiably be called the lunatic fringe, but such a fringe implies a much larger, more moderate group who feel think and act in ways that are similar but not so extreme, and it is this ostentatious group who are the real members of the Beat Generation. The Beats are everywhere.

A lecturer in a senior seminar says, “In this age of cynicism and pessimism, art is something positive.”

During the week following the launching of Sputnik 1, the dean of Macalester College sent notes to the faculty because of his concern, not for the academic standing of the students, for their morale.

In Nation magazine of March 9, 1957, college professors all over the country were asked, “What are the artistic, intellectual and ethical influences on this generation of college students?”

Their answers were these: “McCarthy taught this generation to keep its mouth shut.” One quoted a student saying, “If our revolt seems mild, it is because we have not found anything to promote.”

Another told of a student’s words in praise of a writer, “He taught me not to be indifferent.” Others said, “This generation has no gods, no heroes of its own.” “They are conventionalists and critics, cautious and conforming.” “They are the brainwashed generation of private seekers, wary of passion.”

“They are the Brain-Washed Generation.”

25

Ridiculous?

Why? Why a generation that “knows the price of everything and the value of nothing?”

The answers to this question can be found in looking at the world in which we live and in examining a sincere philosophy of life which realistically and pragmatically views the problems of modern existence and answers, “There is nothing you can do.”

The international situation is a series of ineffectual attempts to carry lukewarm war. We removed the man of action from Korea and spent years of negotiating to regain our original boundary; the Aswan Dam was finally built with Russian money and the Arab block is a continual brink of war; Geneva is a hedging ground for the Summit Conferences and Berlin is a blowtorch fed with oil and water at the same time. We are engaged in an arms race which may lead to war as it has in the past and, in all probability, will lead to annihilation. The strontium 90 bomb is malignantly high and continued nuclear testing in both the basis of our protection and our death. We can discontinue testing; then if predictions of Russian military capability are correct, we can expect to live under communism. There is no evacuation route, no possible shelter in a hydrogen and cobalt world.

On the national scene, our political science professors assert the necessity of voting and the importance of being an active member of a political party. But the prospect of choosing between two father images created by Madison Avenue “hidden persuaders” serves to dampen the enthusiasm of the most ardent citizen. Leone Baxter, a California manager-ad man, when asked if he could have been successful in the seventy campaigns he managed if he had been on the other side asserted, “I think we could have won almost every one of them.” The complexity of modern government prevents most citizens from a clear understanding of its functions, and bureaucracy has all but obscured the concept of a popular sovereignty which is briefly revived at election time with the emphasis on the popular. A Minnesota senator asserts that so much information on radioactive fallout is classified that it is impossible to make a decision on nuclear testing with adequate evidence.

Government officials believe the public cannot be told the facts about radioactive fallout or they will panic.

We graduate from college and what is the society into which we move? A society which demands the gray flannel suit (“and no argyles, please,” says one Twin City firm), the right sized home in suburbia with 2½ children, church once a week–any of the moderate denominations will do–the wife who makes the right impression getting into the right social group. Oh, not all of us will have these demands but the chances for individual action, effectiveness, individual life, become fewer and fewer. You and I will fight in small ways. Perhaps we’ll buy an old house or refuse to wear a hat or work for a smaller salary, but by and large we will accept and join and try to be “successful.” Are we so childish, is our desire a mere caprice, to want a home in suburbia and $25,000 a year?

But the irony of it all is Charlie–the hero of John Marquand’s book, Point of No Return, who fights with a rival feverishly and fervently for a position as vice-president of a bank and who is happy only for the moment when he thinks he hasn’t got the job. He dreams of the country of a life outside the feverish technocracy of the city. But he gets the job and has reached the point of no return; he is caught in the meaningless web he is powerless to resist. For in the groups which society demands, there is little, if any, meaning for one as an individual. There is no way back for any of us.

26

Alone, in the automated treadmill of our society, can our traditional faiths offer us any group relief? Which of us can find any real meaning in religion? Can we follow the fervor and the enthusiasm of Billy Graham or the positive thinking Norman Vincent Peale? Shall we live our moderate Christianity during the week, or must business ethics operate from Monday to Saturday?

Which of us can live and die for IBM or Minnesota Mining or Minneapolis Honeywell? Which of us will find the meaning of a close-knit family group? What has happened to group meaning? Joseph Campbell in his book, Hero With a Thousand Faces, says, “It is not society that is to guide and save the creative hero but precisely the reverse. And so every one of us shares the same ordeal–carries the cross of the redeemer–not in the bright moments of his tribe’s great victories but in the silences of his personal despair.” Faced with the dilemma of society’s demands and the loss of group meaning, is it so surprising that this generation should be inactive and unenthusiastic?

The philosophy of the Beat Generation may not be positive, or pragmatic; but it is, in a very real sense, practicable. There is nothing we can do and we know this, and we care about it. We have faced all the alternatives and there is no course of action. We are nihilists, perhaps; but nihilists in the face of annihilation. We are honest about that. You can abhor this philosophy if you are willing to criticize the young for being young, the educated for being realistic and the escapist for running from the impossible. For my part, I can never call this philosophy indifferent or irresponsible when I hear my generation, in confusion and despair, crying with the speaker of T.S. Eliot’s “Ash Wednesday,” “Teach us to care and not to care. Teach us to sit still.”

Cover Art

27

Unknown Originally published in 1959

Returning

(for Basho) Paul Wadden

Originally published in 1976

1.

As I walk up the hill in the late twilight, trees seem to move and merge together.

Across the valley a whole grove drifts quietly.

The late azealas have bloomed, faded and withered, fallen into the folded-over grass and the dry thistles.

A few crickets chirp to the lowering darkness.

2.

Man-Who-Abides-Illusions where are you tonight?

The deer mice scurry in your empty shack, the fox and badger come down to the clearing in the starlight.

Is it your shadow that watches from near the fir grove, eyes filled with waiting and silence, seeing the one who looks for you, letting him wonder where you are, letting him wander and look further?

3.

As I come down the hill in the darkness, rustling the field grass, the trees are half-hidden.

And a light breeze rises-ah, the coolness.

28

Finger Lickin’ Good Susan S. Holmes

Originally published in 1980-1981

Just look at ‘em all. Standin’ there with vacant grins on their faces cheering me like I was a hero or something. Hey fools — I’m the Chicken King, the Fowl Colonel. Horses asses, th whole lot of ‘em. I’m 90 years old today and instead of lazing on my porch in the sun with a bottle in my hand, the Comp’ny insists on havin’ this asinine gathering. “It’ll be great P.R., Colonel”, “The people need to know you’re with them, C.S., they want you.” Bullshit, boys. They just want to see me swaying on this cheap platform high on my cholesterol pills. Which I forgot to take this morning.

No wonder I feel so foggy. Just like that time I smoked one’a Texie’s cigarettes by mistake. Lookout that kid down there—I think he got a hold of one of Texie’s cigarettes, too. He’s—what? O.K., o.k., I’ll smile and wave like the charming old geezer I’m supposed to be.

Lord, I’m tired. I’m a hero, a dictated hero, dictated by the Comp’ny puppeteers. Or a hero dictator. Only one I dictate to is Texie. Mmmmm.. Lexie Waterman. She’s a good girl, Texie. Been how many years now she been takin’ my notes, handling my phone, putting up with my nasty tempers and giving this pathetic old mathat sultry wink that still lets me know I’m, that I’m, hehheh-heh, still finger lickin’ good. Ah, Texie. Thought you’d be movin’ on after a few years of angelic toleration, but nope—you’re a feisty woman willin’ to take care of a rich old coot who’s yellowbellied as a fat chicken turned insides out. You’re also a damn fool, passing up the ripe years of your life when you coulda been dancing and prancing your way in and out of those hordes of panting sweethearts.

Need a smoke real bad right now. Wish this foolish idiot convention were over. I’m the King Idiot, and I say get on home you jackasses and drink, drink, drink to the chickenshit that invades your homes, your intestines, crawls through you kids’ bloodstreams coating them extra rich batter browning them in the American Way and making your day extra crispy.

So tired, so thoroughly tuckered out. I remember days—way beyond this senile got that holds me together—when I weren’t so tired, so nasty,…so old. Is that what makes me so damned bitter?

The more bitter the batter your vomit will splatter…what kid sang that to me? I hurt when I see kids. I want to be one again. I want to be thrilled with the dreams of my fortune. I want to be on the road to fame and fortune, not at the crumbling end of it, hitching a ride to my stop. Mama, your chicken is famous. Question is, who’s the real chicken? I left a girl a long time ago. Tried to go back but I was too scared to crawl. So, Miranda with the teary eyes and the swollen belly, I’m crawlin’ now. On my belly like a reptile.

Good, all those slathering fools down there are clapping and cheering. Now’s my chance to hurl drumsticks at ‘em and plug their squawkin’ mouths. Couple more smiles, wave a bit—yep, little girl, bet you’ll never wash that hand again. Not everyone gets their hand shook by a chicken, and a finger lickin’ good one at that.

29

The History of Women in Space Kate Cell

Originally published in 1991

Crossing the Atlantic in my 747 I got lost.

I was five. Coming from the bathroom I couldn’t find any parents, so the steward led me to the cockpit, walled with dials and knobs and men who knew where they were even over water. The pilot’s voice crackled over the speakers.

In grade school I learned the litany: The Wright Brothers, Lindbergh, Glenn, Aldrin, Armstrong.

The only woman was Amelia and she got lost in an airplane just like me.

Men in filling stations and directories in department stores all lie to me. You can’t miss it.

You Are Here.

But I can.

And I’m not.

Like a demented grandmother I wander through strange neighborhoods, through housewares and lingerie, miles of concrete car park.

My psychology professor says it’s feminine, it’s psychobiology. He says loin-clothed hunters charted the forest, but the bare-breasted women stayed with the hut and the fire and the kids and that part of their brains just atrophied.

I think he was flirting with me.

I know I was flirting with him: I want to lead this Atlas to bed, this walking A to Zed who has maps of London and Haifa and Brooklyn in his head, this man who knows I’m always lost and blames it

30

on evolution.

I am always lost, irritated By my incompetence, by freaks like Sally Ride, and by Amelia’s atavistic faith.

There’s no mystery in what happened to Amelia.

She ran out of fuel turning her map around and around, circling, tapping on gauges, looking for landmarks in air, and thinking as I do: I’m young, I’m pretty, someone will find me.

Untitled

31

Martha Eidmann Originally published in 1977

Mười Hai

Charlie Pham

Originally published in 2017

Two weeks ago, I read on Facebook that in December, Hanoi Cinematheque will be demolished and replaced with a shopping mall. Hanoi Cinematheque is on a crowded street in the centre of the city, inside an alley squeezed between a sushi restaurant that advertises real Japanese chefs and another shopping mall. It maintains the French colonial architecture, with a spiral staircase and balcony decorated with florals. The walls are yellow and peeling. It shows films not found in any other cinema in the city, from black-and-white silent flicks that shake and blur, to experimental documentaries about recreational drugs in Southeast Asia. Gerry, the founder and owner insists on keeping Hanoi Cinematheque non-profit. So for nearly 12 years since its beginning in 2004, Hanoi Cinematheque subsists on meagre membership fees and the money Gerry earns from selling lunches to office workers from the nearby mall. He has been negotiating with Vingroup, the corporation that owns the new mall for over a month, but one doesn’t exactly earn much selling lunchboxes.

Because of its hidden location and the kind of films it shows, Hanoi Cinematheque attracts only the hipster population of Hanoi and no one else. It only has about a hundred seats and is almost always half empty. The vacancy becomes a part of the experience at Hanoi Cinematheque. There were no crunching popcorn noises to distract you from the films. The sticky sugary smell that pervades other cinemas was absent too. Whenever I went there, I would linger behind in the dark quietness even when the film was over. Eventually, I would step outside into a pungent cloud of stale cigarette smoke that made my eyes water. I would stand inside that haze and inhale the menthol-scented carcinogens for as long as I could before walking back into the roaring traffic and flashing signs of late night Hanoi.

Ever since the announcement was made, the audience of Hanoi Cinematheque have been voicing their anger and sadness. They accuse gentrification. They mourn the death of artistry at the hand of corporations blinded by profit. One even drafted a letter to the head of Vingroup, pleading him to come and see for himself that Hanoi Cinematheque is a cultural gem in need of preserving. I felt a responsibility to say something, but I could not seem to articulate my feelings. English was awkward and inappropriate when writing about something in my home country, addressed to my own people. But after four straight months of communicating only in English, I struggled to articulate in Vietnamese that described how I felt. I found myself translating English words into Vietnamese, only to be frustrated by the incompatibility between the two languages and the meanings lost in the process. We have a word for that. “Mất gốc.” Uprooted. Definite sign of wither.

Among my stack of college textbooks is the only book in Vietnamese that I have with me, a 300-page autobiography of a man living in Hanoi. The book is “Thương Nhớ Mười Hai.” “Thương.” Like love, but more tender. “Nhớ.” Miss. “Mười Hai.” Twelve, or December. We don’t have fancy names for the months. It’s all about practicality. Is it Month Twelve already? It’s still really hot, isn’t it, said my grandfather as he wiped the sweat from his brows and tossed the rice in the frying pan. The smell of fish sauce and oil invaded the 3 meters by 3 meters kitchen – dining room hybrid and soaked into my hair. In a city that seems to be forever expanding, my grandparents’ house seems to be shrinking, 32

or wilting, held up only by the two buildings on the side. Is it Month Twelve already? We are visiting your grandfather’s grave next month, said my father. I remember walking between rows and rows of graves like crooked and decayed teeth to find my grandfather’s name, and in a small tidy corner, my little brother’s. Yellow chrysanthemums for the old, white for the young and stillborn. Is it Month Twelve already? Shit I’m not ready for finals, said my friend Châu as she skipped across piles of debris from yet another demolished cinema. Why pay to go to that old cinema covered in mildew and spider webs when you have cable TV? she said. Do know that Châu and Ngọc both mean jewel? I always thought her name made more sense than mine, because her family lived in a four-storey house with a garden while my family lived in an apartment that leaked on every wall.

Here people call it December. Do you guys really just call it Month Twelve? people ask. Also, how do you pronounce your real name? N-G-O-C, with a dot underneath the O, I answer. No? Nyooc? Ah, I give up, they say. You can just call me Charlie, I say. Nice to meet you, Charlie. Nice to meet you too. Here in December it snows. Actually, it seems to snow for half a year. It doesn’t snow in Hanoi in December, or in any other month. The trees don’t turn red and gold before they drop leaves. They just shed during the Northeast monsoon and one morning you look out the window and they will all be bare. The streets don’t get caked with snow and crunch under your feet, but splash from the perennial rain. In December, Hanoi Cinematheque will be demolished and replaced with a new shopping mall. It is only one of the hundreds of buildings every month that are destroyed to make place for shopping malls, complexes, offices, skyscrapers. They just collapse, disappear, with hardly a warning. Like leaves in Hanoi in December.

I don’t miss it. “Miss” is not enough. “Miss” is too short: four letters and one syllable. Once the word escapes your mouth, you have already forgotten. “Miss” doesn’t linger in your hair like the smell of fish sauce from your grandfather’s cooking. “To miss” is also “to let slip away.” “Thương nhớ” is the right word. Missing, losing, but also regretting. Also yearning. Also loving.

33

The Grove

Jack Scott Cain

Originally published in 1967

for my father We had been here before, you and I; perhaps hunting earnestly for squirrels or rabbits; or just walking down the bright leaves, scattering noise in every direction, the shotguns broken, the shells in our pockets.

Something led me back to this same place, alone.

Somehow I knew the way but not the reason for coming.

Some inner map has drawn me here this bright day, but has left me without an answer.

I know this small woods well; off to the left is a pile of crumbling logs, cut long ago for some purpose; to the right the brush thickens, and the rabbits will run that way if they are flushed.

Towards the end this grove thins out into slender, spaced birches, and I can see their whiteness through the last few leaves.

I have known this woods well, but I must pause here among its bent old trees to try to remember your face.

34

eighteen hour bus trip poem steve burmeister

Originally published in 1970

an old lady got sick on the bus and the stench was terrible i held a girl’s hand and she asked me why i said she probably threw up and the girl took her hand away

Color de cafe

35

Jenny Schmid Originally published in 1990

Witness Protection Mark Doten

Originally published in 2001

You have been Mr. Schaffer. Also Drs. Boyd and Zebriskie. You have been a vagrant, rock star, math teacher, short order cook. Now you are the CEO of of AOL/Time Warner. You dictate a memo w/r/t declining market share in the Cincinnati metro area, tear the shrink wrap from your binoculars and swivel to window, refusing all callers. The last leaves fall on an overcast, blustery November afternoon. They skitter through the branches and whirl to the street, sweeping up insects, condom wrappers, lottery tickets, then tumble into a parking lot where they scrape the bumper of a black sedan. You gather what you can—cigarettes, AA batteries, knowing perfectly well even these things will be stripped away—scribble a note to your wife and pad down fifty flights of stairs.

Treasure the witness stand, the betrayal, the bullet that will one day tear through your neck; they are your possessions. For love, fugitive, is a telephone ringing five minutes after you’ve left the office. And your secretary, pulling on her raincoat, watches it, and does not answer, and closes the door.

36

A Possible Disowning Jane Neathery Cutler

Originally published in 1980

I am not your mother I took no lover Accepted not one of tens of thousands of tiny sperm For my egg Did not carry you full term or on any terms Within my body I never bore you in an aching bath of blood and placenta In any stark delivery room You have never been suckled by this woman I am not your mother.

I am not your wife Teams of psychiatrists will confirm That we are not bound through law of consumption I did not choose you Yet you are mine I do not owe you I am not your wife.

I will not be a martyr Hang upside on a cross I’m too far from my longed for sainthood Madonna’s in the kitchen Hail Mary’s pushing the hoover I cannot save you.

I am an afflicted matriarch Who shares your dying daily Knows your needs, your suffering silence So routine That binds like barbed wire around my ankles I cannot run I cannot run with you on my back Acquit me daddy I am your only daughter

37

Ruth to her parents:

The unseen letter from Bethlehem to Moab Lucy Harris

Originally published in 1997

I have a son, now.

He sleeps during the hot hours when my husband and I are at work on

the threshing floor, and when the sun is low over the gilded barley fields we sit, tell him stories, and hold him, like a precious scroll.

When I still woke earliest to be the first girl to sling the water pump’s handle and still didn’t dare to thrust my head under its icy fingers, Mahlon began to walk the long road to temple past our stone house.

You looked at me each day with tired eyes over steaming barley, urging me to to turn and smile thinly for him as I gathered fuel.

I leaned underneath your stone eyes and I washed and anointed myself

for him, relaxed my stiff spine, and let him take my hand in front of the Temple when I was sixteen.

A year later, when we buried him, tears cut like glinting knives across your cheeks, not for my wilting shadow, but for the ghosts of grandchildren buried

under the sandy soil.

When I kneaded the bread for the long walk Naomi and I would take to Bethlehem your faces flattened with bitterness, and when I kissed your taught cheeks—embracing you as I was reaching

for a tight hold in Judah— you turned away, your eyes stones smoothed by unshed tears.

I slid from your embrace, bent my spine to fit Naomi’s shrunken frame

and walked the dry desert road to Bethlehem.

Don’t blame Naomi.

Before we left she knelt and begged me to stay.

But I chose to bend my spine to fit her withered frame and age with her.

38

In Envy

Karen Baker

Originally published in 1959

You must lead the perfect life Along the wide and quiet streets Sipping lemonade and staring into space.

But I, though trudging by your side, Live intermittently With garbagemen and angels.

Anonymous Man Grows Up 39

Greg Prickman Originally published in 1991

The Dream of Marco Pulver William Truesdale

Originally published in 1964

Deeper they dug and deeper, Three hundred feet below the swamp.

And Marco Pulver dreamed their death.

Above, the great spring gathering, The snow, the ice loosened, Seaward bound over dam and cataract, The swamp swollen, A fine rich summer promised.

And Marco Pulver dreamed their death In the ore loose as flowers And stained vermillion.

The dream went deeper in his head— They thought him queer But he was a tuned man, The weight of fear upon The thin shell of bone, The terrible song of the earth Swelling in his dreams Until his veins were cataracts and chutes And he woke gasping for air And crazy as a bird.

When it came, When the picked rock gave way Among their digging, They ran in the dark all bloody.

All drowned save one And he upon a spine of timber Down chute and drift and shaft Shot like a fool through the dark Upon some wild unbroken horse Or maddened shark, Was born again And gasped and cried, bent-double, The dream of Marco Pulver On his lips And the green fury of the swamp Coursing in his veins.

40

Two Poems for the Beat Generation Anonymous

Originally published in 1959

The Beat Genneration I Aloof and lost, we children In the quietude of our final desperations Strive amid the larkspur For an Utopia we find only fragmented.

Oh, purge us from this opalescent debasement: Make acceptable our fatiguing renascence.

Oh! Harass us gently!

The Beat Generation II (The Angry Young Men) The versatile periodics of the angry Are susceptible to a vain frequency.

Lacking the narcotic kick of courage, The hypochondriac, detecting an obstinate heart, Seeks in the examination of his psyche A substitute.

41

God Retreats from Alabama Glenn A. Allen

Originally published in 1983-1984

“Third Jolt Kills Evans as Lawyer Pleads” — Headline A guard shaved his head, so the flame could dance up from his temple without the smell of burning hair.

Buzzz-Hisss.

One for the warden who pulled the switch.

The electrode on his left leg fizzled out, a burnt fuse the electrician couldn’t foresee and the fried skin opened—smoked calf.

Buzzz-Hisss. Buzzz-Hisss.

Two for the justices who denied the pleas.

He shot a pawnbroker, clean through the heart, under unusual circumstances seven years ago in Mobile. He said he bore no malice when they put him in the chair.

Finally they turned up the dial increased the heat—impatient bachelors hurrying a meal.

Buzzz-Hisss. Buzzz-Hisss. Buzzz-Hisss.

Three for the minister who gave the blessings.

42

On The Road Back Home Jonathan Amezquita

Originally published in 2016

Bottle caps fall carouseling,

while we finish our discussion

about fate. About what it means

to be 20. Next year we’ll be forty.

Retracting my steps,

set foot in bumblefuck Lehigh to caress

the breath of the best degenerates this

world has to offer.

We’ll share our story,

cock matchtips whose lights granted greenhouse

an herb that only grows in the grooves

seeded with adolescence Louie did have a knack for greenthumbs.

Passing the remote as,

we flick through beer caps and old memories

Do you recall the time Black Betty

got us lost in the woods?

That old jeep couldn’t get you

to Orlando; only flash joyrides

and souveniring tickets.

Remember how’d we spend his time

waterwaist deep, sifting through sand

took us years to determine he was

on the wrong shore. Now Stan’s

somewhere on the West Coast.

Smokeboxed tents and crystallized skies, nights

spent listening to bonfires and

Charlie dying. Time threaded truth tying,

weaving us into this sulken town.

Now home I travel between,

the roads among us

trying to determine which, won’t bring me back.

43

I hear the murmur, the shifting

shadows of myself in stories.

YOUR stories. Those of which,

I’ll never get to be a part.

A whole world where

my name’s an idea.

A reminiscence away,

I’ve raced back to dislocation.

Plead with them to come. Though

the room’s already empty. I pack up.

I tell them, I’ll be right back. I will only be gone a second.

Cover Art

44

Charlie Fuller Originally published in 1991

Cuando empieza el invierno Juanita Garciagodoy

Originally published in 1983-1984

la luz viene tierna por las nubes Delicada se posa en el cesped Toca las hojas desmayadas y se despide sin prometer sol

45

Love Poem Lars Hunter

Originally published in 2001

In 1611, Galileo made the telescope famous.

Late at night, in 1999, dark country Road. Mosquitoes/moths Hurtling themselves at my windshield— A vain attempt (we were going 65).

Highway signs, presbyopia I Saw the aurora borealis.

Grumbling giant battlefield Distant glazed sky.

Spilling over slow burned fields Eye thought of you, and squinted.

When Galileo stood on his roof, Wee hour, bad breath, his eye Intermediate, fixed in a disk around Venus.

Geocentrism drained into history.

Levitating a small metal rod Out into the vast blackness Enveloped into space. Reading, gathering, Stars, trembling naked I, encapsulated, Seeing for the first time.

46

Love Poem

Karintha Lowe

Originally published in 2015

The tractor lies forgotten, submerged in a browning river.

He feels the dust collecting at his rusting brow, and the water thick as ink, pressing against his flaking thigh.

No one notices how the sun chips his steel back or the way the wind whips his face with the grace of a trout’s tail— Only the river knows him, feels his calves dig into the muddy depths of her body and his breath, the mechanic humming, beating a path through her heart.

47

Gloria Wonders: Is This Mr. Right Kathryn C. Betts

Originally published in 1976

A man waits for Gloria outside by his flaming bush.

His eyes flash and crinkle.

She thinks she is in love with the top two inches of his face.

“Gloria--your lyric wings really move me--come fly this way down the hill and down.

Insight and hindsight, you’ve really turned me on!” Gloria is not even wearing a coat; she hesitates, but then thinks, Experience, that’s what I’m in need of! Looking at the man, she can almost taste his soulful mouth. But how literally should I take him? she worries.

Stepping closer, she gracefully pats his shoulder with a wing tip: “Promise never to distort this first encounter?” The beautiful man doesn’t answer. He is banding her slight ankle.

48

Julie’s Coffee Dave Keith

Originally published in 1958

Highway 70, a slab of concrete that stretches across the hot, dry prairie lands of the western United States, with straight stretches that go clear to the horizon. At a point along the slab, which just happens to be a place, an old pullman car sits about seventy feet back from the highway. The pullman car is now a truckstop. It doesn’t look like much from the outside—it’s that nondescript color that things seem to get from sitting long days, months, years, decades in the hot prairie sun; in the gritty prairie winds. Nobody knows how it got there, but that’s where it is, and nobody cares too much

At night when it’s dark, the pullman car stops being a nondescript pullman car in the middle of hot prairie. It’s just a place in the dark, like any other place. Outside a red neon sign blinks JULIE’S COFFEE. A big trailer truck rests in the darkness giving forth a quiet, deep-throated rumble.

The driver sat at one of the tables along the road side windows, gazing intently with expressionless face into his half-emptied cup of coffee, turning it slowly on the saucer. His green twill uniform was shiny from sitting long hours on the truck’s hot leather seats.

Julie, young, middle-aged, old, too much rouge on her face, her hair too red brown, stood behind the counter polishing the great stainless steel coffee urn. A slimmer, younger woman in a light yellow waitress-type dress leaned against the stainless steel sink and thumbed through a True Romance magazine looking frequently at the clock. It was late—time to close.

Julie stepped to the sink to rinse her cloth.

“Tell him to pull out so we can get home,” the younger woman said quietly out of the side of her mouth.

“He’s all right,” said Julie.

“Yeah, he might be, but when I get home late Frank starts gripin’ about what a hell of a wife I turned out to be workin’ all night and sleeping all day.”

The driver sipped a bit of coffee, a pair of headlights shot by and were swallowed up in the darkness.

“You can’t hustle drivers out, they keep us in this business.”

“Who wants to be in business at this time of night?”

“You know what I mean.”

“I know that Frank’ll kick my fanny all over the house if I get home late again.”

“How d’ya know Frank’ll be there if you get home too early?”

“What d’ya mean by . . .”

“Just kiddin’ dearie.”

“You’re not too funny. What difference does one driver make?”

“Look, you’re young, you’ve got everything, the drivers are just about all I’ve got.”

“What d’ya mean, you’ve got everything I’ve got and maybe more—except for Frank.”

“Listen, sweetie, you’ve got it all ahead of you. For me I kinda feel like I can only look back.

The time the ol’ man ran out on me, I gotta dye my hair. Sometimes I feel like it’s all bein’ poured right out of me and I can’t stop it.”

“Yeah, I see what you mean I guess, but Frank sure’s going to run out on me if I don’t get 49

home.”

“Sure, probably, you go ahead and leave. I’ll close up.”

“I’ll stick around a little longer.”

“No—go ahead and leave. See ya’ tomorrow.”

The back door closed quietly, the driver finished his coffee and stood up to leave.

“How much do I owe ya’?”

“Nickel.”

“He dug into his change pocket, picked out a nickel and dropped it on the counter, “Night,” he said.

“Hey Mac, care for another cup of coffee? I’d have to throw it out anyway.”

He turned, smiled, “Sure.”

“It’s on the house,” she said, “Guess I’ll have a cup with ya’.”

She put the two steaming cups of coffee on the counter.

“There ya’ are.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re new on this run aren’t you?”

“Yeah. Heard guys mention Julie’s place, and I was kinda’ feelin’ like a break when I saw your sign.”

“It’s nice to know they think about me once in a while.”

They finished in silence.

“Well it’s gettin’ late, guess I better be wheelin’ on. Thanks again.”

He waved to Julie who was still sitting on the stool, as he walked out.

The screen door banged shut. A dull thud as he slammed the door of his truck. The diesel engine barked, clanked into gear and roared onto the road and into the darkness.

Julie sat on the stool for a couple of long, still minutes. A pair of headlights shot by, and were swallowed up in the darkness.

Julie got off the stool, slammed the inner door shut and locked it. Flipped the switch and the neon sign went off. She put on her sweater, turned off the lights in the place and stepped out the back door and locked it. Now there was no place to go, just the dark.

50

In Between Our Lives Nick Herman

Originally published in 1998

I rock my father back and forth held in my arms like a baby his newborn body fresh, open like a bundle of just picked flowers abundant, full of life my father, the blossom, the baby in my arms rocking my hands hold his waist curl around his buttocks support his soft neck his weight is caught in my arms, a bundle of lost and still forming memories he fills my lap, he fills me and I hold onto him and we rock together.

My father looks in my eyes, he asks me what what we are doing, what what is the next dream, song to follow my father asks me where we are and I answer we are together, together rocking embraced in blood and time generations of babies and fathers rocking back and forth.

This rocking is the outline of our dance in between our lives a passage from father to son, shoulders poised, countenance once angry, now desperate between pursed lips clinging to air, my father choreographs my movement, unknowingly.

51

everything is disappearing Kathy Whitcomb

Originally published in 1981

“It should have been a caution to you To listen more carefully to the words Under the wind . . .”

—John Ashbery Our ages may have been seven and seventy-five.

My grandfather’s body had decayed enough to frighten me with its deaf wrinkles, and I was young enough to hold no automatic love for him after my family’s five year hiatus away from relative-laden Boston.

All the loud lineage were clustered on the porch saying good-bye after a picnic or Christmas.

Confronted, I stalled in front of Grandpa, and in the confusion of my vague affection I tried to shake his hand.

He growled my name in dismay, and hugged me to his musty sweatered waist.

I had expected time slow as syrup, so gradual that I should still resemble the third grade photograph on his mantle, but patina cracks and dust collects.

I am desperate to complicate the linear progression of time into gnarled involvement; a tangled ten car pile-up, instantly stock still with a shock as calculated and relieving as the removing rip of Band-aids or curler tape, and on my nightstand my grandfather smiles from his picture frame next to the alarm clock, which with every waking bleat echoes

“pay attention

now everything is disappearing.”

52

Light and Shadow Mary Hale Meyer

Originally published in 1960

Mother was not home that afternoon when I got back from school. My grandmother was in the kitchen peeling potatoes at the sink. She looked up when I came in, and smiled with that queer smile people have when they have false teeth. I didn’t like to see my grandmother smile. It wasn’t really a smile at all—more of a grimace.

“Your mother had to go to the cities with Bart,” she said. “They won’t be back until late.”

Bart was my stepfather. My mother and father had been divorced when I was very small. My father lived in San Francisco and I had not seen him for four years, but before that I used to spend Christmas with him and his wife Jean. It always surprised me that Jean was pleasant and not at all like a witch. She had a tinkly laugh.

My grandmother and I ate supper together and did the dishes. I wiped the glasses very carefully because I liked to see them sparkle. Then I went upstairs to do my homework. I was supposed to study geometry because there was going to be a test, but I had my English book and I wanted to read Hamlet. Finally, though, I took the geometry book and worked out the theorems.

Then I read for a while and went to bed quite early.

Very late that night my mother came into my room and woke me up. She held my hands in the darkness and said, “Your father died this morning.” She said more too, but I did not hear her.

She led me downstairs and made me drink some tea and said I should cry, but I couldn’t. The brightlighted kitchen was blurred and hazy, but I could not cry. It was not real. It was like the winter evening when it was thirty below and I had walked a half mile home from the school bus through the snow drifts. I had wanted to lie down in the snow and sleep; and when I reached the house I was numb from cold and I couldn’t feel anything but a tingle in my toes. There in the kitchen I felt numb again. Not even my toes were tingling.

We talked and talked but the talking rambled, and then Mother took me by the hand again and led me back upstairs as if I were a child, and tucked me into bed.

Mother said I didn’t have to go to school the next day, but I saw no reason not to. I had a note for the principle so he would excuse me to go to the funeral. He gave me a pass to show my teachers. The typing teacher laughed when I showed him the excuse.

“Going to skip school again?” he teased.

“I have to go to my father’s funeral, Mr. George,” I said. He turned very red, and fumbled for something to say. I should have said something else, but I couldn’t think of anything, and besides I felt as if I’d swallowed a lump of ice and it hurt my throat, so I went back to my seat and typed

aaa bbb zzz the fox

the quick brown fox the quick brown fox jumps

the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog

The funeral was Friday. Jean, my father’s wife, had brought him back from San Francisco to be buried in Minneapolis. It was a beautiful day, bright with sun. The lakes as we drove past them shimmered in the light and the trees were a deep blue-green. We shopped and ate lunch downtown before going to my grandparents’ house. We ate lunch at Charlie’s because Saturday was my birthday, and there was pate de foie gras on the relish tray.

My mother said I would have to sit with my grandparents during the funeral. I didn’t want 53

to, but I didn’t feel like arguing, so I said okay, and it was settled.

My grandparents’ house was full of flowers. We sat stiffly in the front room and drank warm orange juice and talked about the heat. Someone had send them a star of Bethlehem. It as beautiful, but it wasn’t friendly like the other plants. It seemed aloof, with its waxy flowers cool and very distant, and I decided I would never sen a Star of Bethlehem to a funeral.

Everyone was still talking about the weather. We had to wait for Jean, and it seemed she would never come. Bart took out his cigarettes, but Mother frowned at him and he put them back in his pocket.

Finally Jean came. She was small and dark and wore a veil for a hat. Her eyes were red and puffy, and she stretched out her arms for me to come to her. So I did. She held me very tightly, and whispered, “He’s happy now, dear,” and I could tell she was crying for her cheeks were warm and wet against my face. So I held her very tightly too, because that was what she wanted, but I didn’t cry. I could still feel the lump of ice in my throat, only it was larger and some of it had slipped down and was boring a hole in the pit of my stomach. It ached, but still I couldn’t cry.

Jean and my grandparents and I went to the mortuary in a long black limousine. A beaglefaced man who smelled of gardenias met us and showed us to alit room reserved for the chief mourners. We sat in stiff, high chairs and my feet didn’t quite reach the floor, but of course I couldn’t change chairs or pull my legs up under me.

Somewhere an organ was playing bits from The Messiah. I could almost hear the words and I closed my eyes and began to say them to myself. I wished they would play the Alleluiah Chorus, but they didn’t. I almost cried, the words and music were so beautiful, but then I remembered where I was and sat up straight and tried to concentrate. The rector came in, wearing his long black robes, chanting and swinging an incense burner. The sweet smell tickled my nostrils and I had to sneeze but didn’t dare. I told myself I must cry, because everyone could see me and would know I wasn’t crying over the closed box that held the man that was my father. But no tears came. Jean was kneeling on the floor, following the service in her prayer book. I wished I were Episcopalian and could kneel because my feet wouldn’t reach the floor where I sat in the chair, and I was beginning to fidget. Then the service was over.

The next day, Saturday, was my birthday. Mother told me my friends had planned to give me a surprise party, but they didn’t think it was proper so they had called it off. I would have liked a party, but instead Joanne, my best friend, came over. She gave me the Rubaiyat and a box of stationery. We sat by the lake looking at the water and read the poems aloud. The lake glistened and the waves hammered and the September sun was hot on my back. But I shivered in the heat though I was sweating in my jeans and flannel shirt.

Late that night when I was supposed to be asleep, I took out Khayam and read him again.

Read aloud, and the beauty of word sounds surrounded me. I couldn’t understand them all, but I didn’t need to. Then suddenly I remembered how my father always used to read to me before I went to bed. He always read me Winnie the Pooh, and I remembered one poem we always liked. I could remember part of it, so I said it aloud too.

“I’m talking to a dragon

I’m talking to the sun

I think I am a hundred I”m one.

I’m lying on my left side

54

I’m lying on my right

I’ll think a lot tomorrow

I’ll play a lot tomorrow . . .

I’ll

laugh

a lot

tomorrow . . . . .

(Ho hum)

Good night.”

The words were warm and penetrating as camphor, but part sweet, and somehow I felt warm too. It seemed like the lump of ice in my throat wasn’t so big anymore and then it wasn’t there at all, and suddenly my cheeks were wet and then I threw myself across my bed and cried.

Bleached Bone

55

Enid Shaw Originally published in 1982

Please

Nancy Peregrine (Ring)

Originally published in 1980

daddy look, i can graduate on one foot, marry on one wing, hold my umbrellas all alone, if i must, sit on the bus to work unafraid, raise a couple kids, all without one smile from you. i remember you carried me sleeping, fat and flanneled over your shoulder to bed, i woke to keep you there you broke my holding arms to go back downstairs to watch the news. but look i can do all right now; men don’t leave me alone; they stay till morning, and the kids never cry for a father. look. you’ll find me happy, look quick, look.

56

Coming from the Market Kate Cell

Originally published in 1991

For my unborn daughter I’ve bought fish wrapped tight in waxed paper, tender leeks, fresh basil, carrots with their tops on, cut daisies for the table, a gallon jug of spring water. I have too much food for a meal, too much for one person. Walking home, I am stirring like soup. I am laying down hope in sturdy racks in the cool cellar.

There is yet a shyness to speak of such things: still I can love you before you have first name or last, while all my eggs keep safe in their good little baskets.

57

Winter Begins Charles Baxter

Originally published in 1968

On your island, you watch the darkness of winter intrude on your senses, and legions of an ice lay siege to all your outward paths.

Your only provisions against a fear have been thrown in dusty corners.

You reach out to touch your friend who has stepped away darkly weeks before.

The wood on the hearth catches no fires, though you light it numberless times.

As the room darkens, your friends gone, fires out, all music forgotten, chill and winter beginning to touch the very edge of your sense, you know you are not dying but you begin to pace the room in desperation.

58

good dreams or milk Deborah Keenan

Originally published in 1982

“Still impossible to kiss the child, and not see the child explode.”

from “Cantata At Midnight”

Charles Baxter private retreats and public disorders are in full view now; after a long season without new life babies ride inside my friends or burn whole into lives, altering paths we’d been lingering on. there are mouths to feed. my children’s faces are private candles i sometimes worship at, the touch of their skin is private, an implicit blessing that comes when children are desired, and children are being born again, while the world lurches in disjointed orbit, tampering with private pledges made in the night by new lovers, and with lullabies sung all over town:

pony boy, pony boy, won’t you be my pony boy? and:

sweet and low, sweet and low, winds of the western seas. the hush hush words about mockingbirds, rings without stain, soft words before sleep, the comfort of new skin and old songs. such privacy by gold light cannot outshine the polished guns, the accomplished liars, the diplomats flaming at the last gates in every city, easter won’t stay, palm fronds fade and children’s new clothes are put away with trembling hands by lovers who bend to kiss the faces of children or to hear the daughter’s voice: “oh, i’ve needed you so much today,” weary as if laying claim to some sin.

59

and the big world’s chapter and verse drone on, and children are flying apart and hands cannot reach fast enough to stop their small, quiet disintegration. we are here again, we say to each other, while the children tangle in sheets, call out for good dreams or milk, and we pull the blankets up, hungry for them to wake up alive.

60

Haiku

Wayne Potratz

Originally published in 1963

Mounds of mute driftwood, The stillness of a windless morning . . .

A carp jumps!

Gary

61

Ben Chapman Originally published in 1999

The Song of the Escaping Youth Will Robinson Sheff

i.

People stand in lots behind the theaters in small towns across

america flicking cigarette tips into day-old pools of water.

Gone are the days of fireworks, candy-apples, uncle Sam, the

burst of bottle rockets and hand grenades, if those days ever existed at all.

And you can stand in the windows of the historic Windsor Cornish bridge crying “Hey man, this aint Paris.

So go home, go home, little kid, untussle your hair.”

Scatterings of uncomplaining ash behind the seven dollar lots seven dollars to see a cavalcade of tits, gaping bullet wounds, tough guys with frown lines, bad guys with laugh lines, girls with no lines at all except one liners.

A tour of tired checkers, each one, black or red, could

have been a king. ii.

The rain, clutter of water.

Your voice over the telephone is a small stream, whiz of air, dissipation of sound across the din of the tumultuous terminal “im gone now dad,” your stories still on my breath, looking for some girl who will hold me, hold me in her large arms and sing rockabye, oh rockable my little boy rockabye.

The rain, splatters in ditches.

I unroll the first sandwich from a brown bag, where are you. Everybodys eyes are closed in the bus; its three or so, and the light hasnt dared come from behind the mountains yet. iii.

King of everything lost his friends

when they found out he was king.

You hold your cards so quietly, youre not sure what your friends will bring.

Imagine—hes out in the parking lot behind the stations,

emptying crumbling memories onto the street - thin

transparent sheets of plastic, falling mustardy crumbs, bread 62

Originally published in 1996

he cut himself from the giant loaf mom made. the giant crumbs of her thighs, veins that stretched out like huge

purple trumpets announcing his birth, oh the pipes, the

cigars are falling from his fathers hands into mouths

topped with crimson mustaches, and eyes that held a

secret anger, like a tiger chained up, even its honest

desire smothered, not wanting to admit, when they see black

boys on the trains of common memories, different

perspectives . . . .

iv.

I thought i was a poet

its allright its allright

i thought i was a poet

its allright

sight, sound, fading the gaping mouth of the tunnel is opening, opening voracious

accepting, oh the terrible mouth of desire, oh the

terrible digestion of dreams . . . in crashing strokes the music strikes, in dissonances, cadences

and decadences, falling and rising, in the language of

libido and blind stupid rage. In the language of betrayal,

the language of small mother-mouths sucking on strings.

v.

Dolls stand in the red light behind movie theaters, their eyes

are burning down their heads, quietly a flame consumes their bodies, fiery tears drop into the puddles.

Its allright.

As im finishing a second sandwich, all those friends and girlfriends and boyfriends i forgot to greet and hold and kiss their smiling at me, the movement is again engulfed in dark.

A leering in tunnels, we pass through neighborhoods of waiting, and more smoke winds around hands that have a kind of patience to them, a kind of despair, a kind of crazy hope, oh, i

don’t know . . .

vi.

There is a passing in the dark, and there is a day that had no

days before it, or years.

You unroll your third sandwich from its clear plastic.

63

An affluence of reds,

a triumvirate of greens,

a collusion of yellows,

complaining violet, reassuring ochres, all outside the window, and colors you never saw before, im traveling, and even the last thing i saw was far away. vii.

Oh, anywhere you go, anywhere you go, im sorry, and im

forgiven, but the sorry remains, the stories, the colors,

and its too late now. wonderfully, magnificently too late.

Graduation '81

64

Enid Shaw Originally published in 1983

That Rushing Star With Russian Name Larry Teien

Originally published in 1957

The temperature was 28 degrees with a faint whisper of a breeze on the clear, nearly silent air early one November morning. I shifted from foot to foot to keep warm where I stood in the alley near my house, scanning the twinkling stars of the southeastern sky.

Suddenly a bright moving star caught my attention one third of the way up the sky in the southeast. Travelling parallel with the pre-dawn silvered horizon in a northeasterly direction, it reminded me at first of the steady running light of a jet plane a mile high.

Within 20 seconds it dimmed almost to invisibility, in 20 more brightened, and dimmed in another ten nearly straight east of me. For two seconds it brightened when in the east northeast.

Then dimly, anti-climatically, the second Russian artificial satellite drifted behind the trees low in the northeast, and winked out.

A thousand miles above the sleeping heads of most Americans, delicate instruments and a tiny dog were slowly spinning in the metal cylinder which caught the sunlight just before dawn or after sunset and reflected it in irregular, tantalizing shafts into the darkness on its circle of the world.

I suddenly remembered I was very cold, and jogged home. There was over an hour before I had to rise for school. I could not get back to sleep. * * * In a way I am glad I could see that moving star. It is reassuring to note that the Russians thought they were only a little ahead of us in missiles. Otherwise, they would have sent their long range missiles in death-dealing arcs, not research and propaganda satellite-or-bits. Their goal is still world domination, and we had better not forget it.

Yet that moving star will mean great changes . . . As Prof, Arnold Holtz, at the November 7 Citizenship Forum on this problem, phrased the main consequence of the man-made moons, we are realizing that we must “apply scientific procedures to all the problems of living.”

How about the scientific procedures taught in Carnegie science hall? Will Mac liberal arts science grads be left behind by science specialists in the shuffle for technical employees? Not by a long shot, say three science department chairmen with whom I talked.

Chemistry Dr. Chester Shiflett feels it is important for the scientific specialist to have a sense of obligation to humanity, and that Mac is in a unique geographical and educational position to offer liberal arts at its best.

Biology Dr. O. T. Walter stresses our actions by saying we must get a mental and moral perspective of society as a whole, in addition to our specialty, to make our contribution more meaningful. Training by itself is not creative, he explains, but liberal arts frees the mind to search for truth through critical thinking, and for the development of right human relationships—which he calls the highest art of all.

Physics Dr. Russell Hastings points out that the liberal arts background and sense of social responsibility is given increasing importance in top engineering schools, with Yale and MIT recently requiring social sciences of their engineers. This tendency to broaden the training of science majors must find its counterpart in the training of non-science majors, he says. The recent achievements with space satellites suddenly jolt us into the realization that scientific illiteracy is no longer acceptable.

65

The responsibility is on the young people, all right, and from a few discussions I have had with college students and college age people, I think we may fail!

That’s right! Look around. How many of you or your acquaintances, frustrated and confused, were about ready to give up after the reports of the great Soviet achievements? I met many who were on the verge. Are we the “silent generation” because we are afraid? Are we so PROUD of our American heritage, or just darned glad most of us didn’t have to sacrifice for it personally?

Democracy is a way of life that must be EARNED, not just LEARNED. In the long run it is unlikely the Communists could beat the world forces of democracy, because we are slowly building a pyramid while they are rapidly erecting a ladder. But with this “crash” program there is a chance they could take us. By now we should realize that peace is only for the strong. History is filled with examples of “good” people going down before the stronger arm and the sharper sword.

No, we certainly do not want war. But speaking softly while carrying a big stick is one way to insure temporary peace WHILE WORKING JUST AS HARD FOR THE MUTUAL, PERMANENT KIND. The Communists do not have to beat us through warfare, of course. Especially if the next-tovote citizens develop their “liberal arts sense of responsibility” as some have. “Yes, but what can WE do about it?” many merely misguided Macites say. “This is all so far away from us.”

Oh, brother! If we are ever going to take Macalester liberal arts and “apply them to the problems of living” this is the time! You begin in your seemingly unimportant bull sessions. You carry them through your classes, the organizations you belong to, your CHANTER and Mac Weekly, your participation in R-in-L and PE and Fine Arts and all the other weeks. You let the Community Council know what YOU want. These are only the start.

You carry your liberal arts training to the grass roots of local, state, national, and international politics and thought. Are higher taxes for better schools, a different-race family in your block, giving advice to younger friends, door bell ringing for charity drives, handling unethical business competition, or church-expansion committee work too far away? They do not remake the world—and yet they do.

The activities which seem to lack action are really laying the groundwork for later action, when there is no time for discussion. Our basic responsibilities in EARNING democracy are to SPEAK UP for, and VOTE for, what we believe in!

If our “silent generation”—well trained, we hope, in the use of scientific achievements as tools for earning spiritual values—does not let itself collectively be heard through its individual voices, the way of life called democracy shall disappear from the sight of man as the second Russian satellite that heralded its downfall faded from my sight that chill November morning.

66

Palestine

Jane Buchwald

Originally published in 1979

Windbreath clatters through the bone bells, tingling, Clinking deadness and a storm-past quiet.

Flute-voiced children call-on the commingling, Where red earth reminds of carnal riot.

The bloody sun is silent as he’s hung, And men stand wrung, jewels on their lashes.

Mutely lips move where inward hearts have sung so new fires burn to follow old ashes.

All null, dull, and evacuate hollow — — — — Wind and the flame must sing till all follow.

67

Themba

Sisonke Msimang

Originally published in 1993

You followed me home from the train station one day, remember Themba? It was getting dark and Soweto was half hidden by the settling night and the heavy clouds. You were the blackest man I had ever seen and I wanted to touch you. I kept looking over my shoulder and seeing you there, teeth flowing in the dying day. I stopped and turned to look at you, hands on my hips, daring you to take another step. Remember you laughed Themba? A big, deep laugh. Then you told me you wanted to know me because you liked my smile and I pursed my lips and kept walking even though I wanted to smile. And there was the day Nelson Mandela was freed and we danced in the street together, surrounded by thousands like us, black and happy, and you kissed me on the lips. For the first time.

And your room. Remember that? Small, dark, perfect. And there was this feeling, this incredible feeling that I wanted to tell you so much that I couldn’t say it….

“Sometimes I want to surround myself in you; to curl into my original form and be held by you, melting easily into your Blackness; trying to remember who I am and how I came to be. I want to engulf myself in the shiny warmth of your black soul that reminds me of loam after the ancestors have shed their plentiful tears and drenched us with their fertile sorrow, mourning what has become of their children….”

I wrote that for you one morning after you had left on dusty roads, calling to girls walking home from school in their short uniforms; legs firm and full, black shoes brown from the dirt.

Township life. And yet it is so much the same. Our townships are America’s projects. That’s what they call them here. You wouldn’t like it here Themba. You would be angry all the time. Our families are dying here like they are at home. Dying young, dying brutally. Dying steadily.

So I’m here, receiving an education so that I can go home, back to the hatred and the laughter; to a “new” South-Africa. So that I may help build a future. It’s the right thing to do. The only thing to do. I haven’t forgotten you Themba. I never could. But I met a man. His name is Micheal and he looks like you. Strange isn’t it? Another world. He sat behind me in a lecture one day and I turned and saw you sitting there grinning at me, and I grinned back. But it wasn’t you, it was Micheal. I knew it wasn’t you because he asked my name and I told him, Mandissa, and he smiled and said: “Pretty name for a pretty lady.” You would never have said that.

I told him about you and he cried. He buried his head in my lap and cried and I knew he was embarrassed but I told him that I wanted him to cry, to feel safe in my arms. He smiled through his tears and said he was going to love me for the rest of his life. I didn’t want to believe him. You told me that Themba, remember? Your mouth played with my ear and you said you would love me forever.

I haven’t spoken to Micheal for a month. I’ve seen him but he turns away, shoulders squared, tense, hurting. I refused to tell him I loved him Themba. I was thinking of you so I closed my eyes and told him to leave. He stood in front of me for a long time screaming at me to open my eyes, to acknowledge him. I wouldn’t. So he said slowly, clearly, hurtfully, He’s dead Mandissa. Dead,” and walked away.

But you’re not dead Themba. You’re not dead because I can see you now…. Your lips part and capture me; enrapture me, and I gasp because it is there suddenly and irrevocably, lying between us.

And I begin to cry, “I need you,” you breathe, so low that the words have to fight the darkness to find me.

68

But I’ve been waiting too long not to hear, so I cry. Because you need me, because you are Black: strong, laughing, fearless. Assaulting the world with your brave, brash, Blackness; loving the shocked inhalation you command and relishing the hate. But returning always to me….

I’m leaving for home in two days. I have January off. It will be hot and beautiful and sad.

Home is always sad. I still haven’t talked to Micheal. I want to share my excitement with him. I want to tell him how scared I am. I want to wish him a happy new year and kiss him and tell him I love him. But I can’t because I can hear you humming in my head. You’re crowding my brain Themba, you’re choking me but I can’t tell you to stop. You’re hurting me and I’m starting to hate your intrusion on my life. Intrusion? When did you become an intrusion? I welcomed you. Where are you Themba? Are you watching me, wanting me to be happy? Are you wondering if I still love you? Are you wandering? Are you here? I love you Themba. I love you but you’re making it hard.

Shaunda is talking and I’m nodding my head, agreeing with her, not knowing what she’s saying; trying not to think.

“Did you hear me Mand’? I said Micheal came by around three, I told him you’d call when you get back.”

“What? Micheal called. Oh.”

“Oh?! The way you’ve been moping around for the past month, you can say more than ‘Oh’!!

Girl, please! Call him!” Shaunda doesn’t mess around. That’s why we get along so well. I could never say or do half the things she does.

“I can’t call him.” My voice is quavering.

“Why not? Stop being a fool and call him. You know you want to.”

“I want to but I can’t. I can’t do it.” I’m about to break down and I don’t want to, so I leave.

I’m sick of crying. “Two more days,” I say to myself.

I’m home. My brothers were at the airport. All four of them. Tall, lanky, handsome; crowding around me, shielding me, protecting me, just like always. Mama was there too. Shorter than I remembered her, rounder, and even more beautiful.

The house hasn’t changed at all Themba. The street hasn’t changed, but Soweto has. The old people are scared now. Scared of the world their children are building. Nothing is safe anymore. I can’t take the train. Do you remember the train Themba? Too dangerous now; there are killings.

There is so much anger here. So much bitterness. I can taste it Themba. I can smell the fear. The white people walk with their heads to the ground, trying not to attract attention. They are silent now, creeping through the streets and hoping we’ll forget what they did to us. Hoping we’ll tear ourselves apart and that our rage will not spill over into their neighborhoods. And I’m hoping it does. I’m really hoping that we stop killing ourselves and start killing them. I know it’s wrong but I feel it so strongly that some days I feel that I just might do that. This is the new South-Africa Themba. This is what it does to you. It’s not the South-Africa we spoke of in your room. Is this it Themba?

It’s my last night in Soweto, Themba. I’m walking to your room. It’s raining in big drops the way it rains when the gods are weeping. I’m on the street where you live Themba. I’m walking slowly because I want to get as wet as possible; I’m walking slowly because I want to see your room, our room. I’m thinking about that room and everything I learned in it. Everything you told me.

I saw your brother a week ago. He was drunk as usual. Staggering, stumbling, eyes glazed; shouting at the world. Hurling obscenities at all of us who are stupid enough to be sober. He recognized me though. I was surprised. It made me so sad Themba, so incredibly sad. He repulsed you so much.

Even the sound of his name. I used to nod my head, agreeing with you, but I can’t anymore. It’s 69

not that easy anymore. And besides, who am I to judge him for choosing to be drunk? Who am I to condemn him for coping with this strange place in the best way he knows how? I don’t live here anymore. I am from another world. And in this world, this strange hateful world, you do what you can to survive and if you can’t you die. You die, Themba. Bongane shot himself six months ago. Did you know that? He told all the kids to get out of the house and shot himself in the living room. He’s dead. He’s dead and I don’t understand. Have we been gone that long Themba? We had hope. But I’m losing it Themba. I’m trying to hold on to it but this trip is killing it.

I can’t believe I’m standing here. This is it. I’m walking up the stairs and trying not to run. I’m knocking and now the door is opening. This is the place, but you’re not inside. I knew you wouldn’t be. Micheal was right. She says I must have the wrong place. I don’t Themba. This is it, and you’re not here anymore. I knew you wouldn’t be. I’ve turned around and gone down the stairs, and I’m standing in the rain and watching the sky.

I can feel your hand on my shoulder Themba. Just like that night. You’re pushing me and making some horrible sound that I can’t understand. A sound I’ll never understand. Are you alright Themba? Don’t fall Themba… get up Themba, you’re not trying, I’m screaming but no one wants to help us. Blink Themba! Blink. Your eyes aren’t like that Themba….your eyes talk to me….they always have… stop staring Themba just blink. Please blink.

You didn’t smile Themba. You tried to say good-bye. But you couldn’t. I just sat there with your head in my lap, growing cold. I don’t even remember that much blood but when I tried to kiss you, you wouldn’t move. You couldn’t move. And your eyes never closed.

I’m back in the other world now. Back to classes, back to the cold, back to Shaunda. I turn twenty-two in a week. Do you remember? I wonder where Micheal is. I wonder if he’ll understand.

I call and he’s home. He doesn’t even sound surprised to hear my voice. He says I should start walking and he’ll meet me halfway. I put on my coat and boots, smile when Shaunda says, “You go girl!” and I cross my fingers. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know if I’ll touch him when I see him.

If I’ll laugh, cry, smile.

He’s walking towards me grinning like a fool. Grinning like you Themba. I can feel myself grinning too and we meet. His boots touch mine, my face is in his chest and I’m afraid to move. Afraid to look up, afraid to see you Themba, and I look up and see Micheal….only Micheal. I can feel his tears falling; melting snowflakes on my face; he’s shaking and I’m shaking. I hold on to him and we rock slowly as I tell him that his skin reminds me of the midnight sky over Soweto in the summertime; soft, smooth and black. He nods and says gently, “Themba’s gone.” And I don’t bother to answer because I know and you know Themba; you’ll never be gone.

70

Washed Storms

Nancy Peregrine (Ring)

Originally published in 1979

I think of you writing at the half cleared kitchen table, with the new white light of washed storm windows reflecting cool, on clean page after clean page, In silence, past the humming refrigerator, I see you huddled, nursing your coffee, harvesting emotions, like clouds pulled from the sun, gluing mist to metaphor.

71

Giovanni’s Room Jong Kwon

Originally published in 1992

Hands grope through the dark for a lover’s pressure, find none, but naked walls, embarrassed by the incessant rubbing of hands, perspire, rivulets drain into desert mouth, canyon lips suckle, then erode into the wall — bitter stones drop, as you would drop from the sky in a dream never to land but to wake, thrown deep into your body, in this room — to walls made delirious by spilled wine, still on the floor, that smells sweet and warm, like dead roses, rotting, like the yellow light, erect and diseased, confined to the center of the room, while the sun wakes and bleeds into the cotton haze of Paris dawn, and clots in the corner of the room, made important by yellow newspapers, and your life, discarded last night.

Cover Art

72

Unknown Originally published in 1977

Loving letter of past Veronique Bergeron

Originally published in 2006

Dearest Darling of caprice and callous, Many a night spent in abbreviation: legs cut, arms lame, separation a paralysis.

A memory struggles upon my lips like a bird perched in a nest of cool red clay: The plumes and fissures that bore us in dazzling headdresses, peacocked jewels, emerald and sapphire, have closed, smoothed.

I have no trace of them left for the book I’ve written for my mother, entitled “How to Hunger in Paris.”

I would have liked a picture of us, carrying our little phonograph in gloved, white hands, ridiculed on our march from the cave; only the laughs uttered on pillowcases seams rendered valid then.

I present to you an original, not of my own descent, to be tracked in moccasins on a Saturday reenactment of this and that love for ourselves.

Otherwise, I expect not to feel of you, not to wake at the change of breath on my neck as air shrinks and fails you in a dream.

I expect your last breath will shake the ground and call to me then alone.

A frenzied sigh, impossible save attempted.

A flock of winter whites descend from migration on the winds of that which fills your delicate ribs.

73

Let Us Begin Again Roy McBride

Let us begin again again God of love Love of God My dreams are waking waking Mirrors full of eyes ears and mouths a pain of myself sit and watch sit and watch Let us begin again again again and no dream is no answer call the only one who knows mirror again mirror again mirror again mirror again mirror again some answer in flowers some answer in birds and bees some answer in rocks—lying on the ground—carried away in acts of building some answer in fire some answer in ice some answer unanswered dream I am afraid of you afraid afraid of you afraid afraid of you afraid afraid of you afraid Let us begin again again again again Away United States of America Away Away USA Away Away America Away Away White Man Away Away Black Man Away

Originally published in 1970

74

Away Homo Sapien Away away again away again away again away again away again Where can we go Where can we go Where can we go Where can we go We know We know We know Let us begin

75

The Battle

Cortlandt H. Frye

Originally published in 1959

The shallow ditch was still black in the first light of the day. In the mud at the bottom, he pressed himself close to the huge boulder, the barrel of his carbine an icicle in his hands. His eyes were open now, but it was too dark to see. He crouched motionless, hugging the smooth, hard hide of the boulder, staring at nothing, not comprehending, only feeling; feeling the deep aches the cold and rain had brought to his bones, the snapping pains of too tight muscles, and the thick, incipient ache of fatigue.

The light began to spill into the ditch and he looked about still not comprehending; the glassy mud, clumps of damaged grass, slick-skinned puddles of mud water and near his feet a single, delicate leaf; fine-veined, green and perfect. He felt the weight of the steel helmet and he discovered the carbine in his hands. Far off in his mind something started to move. He looked at the carbine, touched the front sight, ran his fingers down the barrel across the receiver and felt the oiled wood of the stock against his palm. Part of it came back then with a rush, and he felt dizzy and naked and tried to look in all directions at once and finally threw himself flat beside the boulder and lay shivering. Slowly, carefully, he worked the carbine in front of his eyes and saw the yellow-orange smears of new rust on the steel. He could not understand. Suddenly he jerked and brought up his watch too close to his eyes so that he could not read it; then backed it off slowly. It was two minutes to five. Five! That was it; the order...move out at five to the hill...move out!

He inched up the side of the ditch and looked toward the hill in the distance “I’ve got to make it,” he thought. “Oh God! Let me make it!” His eyes begged the hill to move closer.

Unconsciously, he checked the clip and worked the bolt of the carbine. “There’s a machine gun nest out and to the left and there are two on the right and they must have mortars by now; mortars! I’ll be right in the middle; right in the rotten middle; a criss-cross...Oh God!” His mouth worked hard gulping great draughts of air and his face was the whitest thing in the world.

He slithered over the edge of the ditch and lay still a moment waiting for the small arms fire to start. Finally he hunched to his feet and charged forward, his running slow-motion in the mud.

He came slip-sliding, dashing headlong, now falling, fighting to his feet, bowling forward, spinning, ducking, cutting back listing, lurching and always firing the carbine with great jerks of his body. His eyes danced like a runaway metronome, but they did not see the tiny puffs of smoke the carbine made or the torn trees or the copper-bottomed clouds. Then he stopped; stiff, straight. The explosion in his chest vibrated through his frame; his legs poked at the ground and he was a marionette, his arms and legs flopping at impossible angles until he pitched down, his helmet breaking loose and coming to a rest near his head and looking like some green and monstrous toadstool. The sun broke free of a cloud with a cymbal crash and a soundless sob put his last breath into the bright light and it mixed with the soft fickle breeze that ruffled his yellow hair like the tattered banner of permanent defeat.

The mop-up squad was a wide-stretched, motley line probing across the plain. One of them, a skinny soldier, spotted the figure welded to the earth and cried, “Here! Over here!” The Sergeant winced at the call. He signalled the line to stop in place, then hurried toward the spot, cursing as he came. He no longer cursed the war; he cursed things; the mud, broken roots, his aging legs.

When the Sergeant came up, the skinny soldier was lounging against a boulder and singing 76

in a loud careless voice “When a body, meets a body, lying in the mud…”

“Knock it off!” the Sergeant growled. “Knock it off, damn you!”

The soldier started to protest, then shrugged. “He’s still warm, Sarg, but he’s dead.”

When the Sergeant had examined the dead man he said, “We’ll take him up the hill and bury him in the mud.”

“Cripes, Sarg, he ain’t stiff yet,” the skinny soldier whined. “You know how hard it is to carry ‘em when they ain’t stiff. Why don’t we make a cup of Joe and have a smoke and…”

The Sergeant’s snarl cut him off. He shrugged and went to the dead man and started to turn him. When he saw the man’s face he dropped him and jumped back. “Jesus! Holy Christ!” He moved his head from side to side and the skin around his eyes looked tight as a new drum head. “Lordy Sarg, he must a got it bad. Awful bad.” He started to shake.

The Sergeant stepped in front of the skinny soldier and put his face close to his. His voice was a hard whisper. “Go look at him.” It was a guttural scream, “Look-at-him! There’s not a mark on him! Not a mark!” He steadied. “There hasn’t been a battle here for two days.”

The sun warmed the backs of the two men as they carried the dead man up the slope. The skinny soldier walked in the lead carrying the man by his knees and the Sergeant followed holding the man’s shoulders. The Sergeant cursed steadily from the nameless hate in his heart. The skinny soldier tried to get a tune out of his tight throat; first a croaking noise, then he licked his lips, and hummed. Then weak surer sounds, “When...a...body…” The Sergeant cursed but said nothing. Then stronger, “When a body, meets…” The sun was crusting the mud and it was hot on their backs.

Louder and careless, “When a body, meets a body, lying in the mud…” The sun was bright behind them and they were always walking into a shadow.

77

Journey to America

Yuko Nii

Originally published in 1965

Crossing the wide world With a young traveller’s mind — I will ask this stone.

Only one white yacht And black shadows on the sea— The moon’s quietness.

Afternoon nap.

Reality or dreaming?

Sound of a pine tree.

On the way, alone.

Gazing at the frosty sky— Pale, a lonely moon.

Continuing wind, The changeless waves of the sea Sound without pity.

This rim of the world: One vast blue stretch of ocean And one white bird at play.

At night waves lapping Softly at the ship’s great side Put me fast asleep.

A letter from my parents.

How long since I’ve thought of them?

Remembering, I weep.

78

Careful Not to Touch the Lilacs Tim O’Brien

Originally published in 1966

The backyard apples grew red Beside lilacs breathing purple In sunlight of yellow summer.

In summer airplanes were built and Dad would smile at the tear-streaked plea, Come on, just a measly engine.

It won’t fly without one, will it?

And it wouldn’t fly without one, So I guess he laughed (and wished that He could touch the father-wand to Find or make that engine to fly) Crossed two-by-fours and old nails.

Careful not to touch the lilacs,

For they were young and delicate, Kids would play in the scented yard — Favorite on the block and street; Catching August butterflies Bott’ling the feared July bee.

Sparklers on the Fourth of July Blazed against the nighttime blackness Of daytime colors — red, purple.

Careful not to touch the lilacs.

Careful not to touch the lilacs For they were young and delicate, Summertime princes slayed dragons Which barked and yipped out stinging flame.

Slayed with two crossed boards — blood red sword, now — Which would someday, with Dad’s new engine, Soar from the backyard, lift to the sky, With proud and laughing me aboard, Overlooking purple and red, Sweeping down to land, being Careful not to touch the lilacs.

79

Cover Art

Unknown Originally published in 1959

80

Saint Croix

Ilana Budenosky Originally published in 2016

81

Mermaid Postcard

Juliette Myers Originally published in 2015

82

Cover Art

Unknown Originally published in 1960

83

Danica

Emerald Thole Originally published in 2017

84

Look at Yourself

Maja Søndergaard Bendtsen Originally published in 2015

85

Cover Art

Unknown Originally published in 1970

86

Hask

Ema Erikson* Originally published in 2017 *Ema Erikson is the current Art Editor of Chanter 87

Two Poems

Freya Manfred

Originally published in 1966

Buffalo Night On a prairie swell of matted grasses I sat, and silent sweat of earth in May pricked my nose, flowed to my nested fingers, and joined me and earth and the near-leaning bull of buffalo in one scent; snorting in his throat, rumbling in his heart, he mumbled massive under the moon; feathered moon moths swept the grasses, stung the buffalo eyes to a golden gleam; I, taut with words I wished to whisper to the wonder of his breathing:

Oh buffalo, oh buffalo, buffalo,

great and moody horn-hooded eyes

struck with moon,

rolled brown in prairie love,

here is my joy of this night:

for one length of moon-greyed sky

I feel why I am one breath:

to be in vast grasses

by a final buffalo.

88

Poem After I knew you, up from my warm skin stomach I drew a thing, a flower thought, a golden oriole wing, across my breast onto my neck into my head and rested it there; watered with crying and chased by laughing it painted itself across the white bone walls of my head until a mural spread, great green-blue but mostly red and with long silver reeds; and my body knew, my mind could see, my strange face showed more love than I could hold.

89

A Broken, Half-Buried Statute

(At the Ruins of the Temple Priene at Miletus) Charles Turner

Originally published in 1963

To Wm. F. Silence as the sun arises.

Over there the sky slips open.

Sallow mist creeps from the shadows.

Then no more I can remember.

How long I have lain in darkness,

Knowing the approach of morning

Only from a morbid spider

That goes climbing out my nostril.

Why return into the brightness And there look on mindless patterns Ever grinding at the temple, Doomed for having excess beauty.

Why have sight to see this thing that

Scurries through my mouth, and brain place,

Guided by some insect motive,

Building webs torn down by evening.

90

Mare

Max Guttman

Originally published in 2015

This field swallows difference. Child has not known the grass of cloud. Child breathes deep flowers, strokes soft petals, tiptoes do not wake them. Mother picks flowers, mother’s touch, mother takes flower, not just a cuddle. honey hon fun fawn fondle feel my love feel me cover mouths, they will stop, mother stop mother what no what. Knew never, thought never, now is never. Mother Mary mother mine took my flower, please tell me that wasn’t real it will never grow back.

Pink, yellow lilies once was how I grew, but she planted red thorns, run pack up get up eyelids leaden. laundry follows, all of it, make it on time, before the others. Early is on time. Pull down look please stay here pull down open open stay alert don’t get pulled down pull down.

Up with the door the stare don’t look at me please please don’t look at me.

New what? old new is still but old old is new what kind of auto-upgrade is this? Give it back a light box it holds escape from this jailmind. the path is burned, need years to grow back see you then.

In bed, who? mindblock meds no, none of this could be. But the one too good and true. This one’s real.

91

Sonnet VI

Jennifer Mark

Originally published in 1962

I read your letter; funny how I feel When you have written: I am there with you; I think what you think, do the things you do, Laugh at our private jokes; it’s just as real As if we were together; and I steal More moments of this friendship so true In writing back my thoughts for your free view While tighter seems our bonded friendship’s seal.

But when the letter’s mailed, and days go past Before you answer, I’m no more in tune With what you felt; the channel’s blocked; and cast How hard I may find it, night or noon, Something has made the distance once more vast, And we’re apart in earnest. Write me soon.

92

After the Bombing of an Abortion Clinic Martha Roberts

Yes, you stand outside and jeer, shove bloody babies into women’s faces, wriggling hands and squirming feet, full color photos plastered on cardboard, showing dismembered heads and umbilical cords, dead meat filling abortion clinic garbage dumpsters.

You claim the right to hold her life no different than a rapist sticking the cold end of a revolver into her face, rubbing his violence into every inch of her body space, invading, leaving her no privacy, no place.

You would leave her alone in a motel room, squatting on elbows and knees, swollen abdomen pressing into a greasy rag rug, hysteria muffled in a crinkled bedspread, clutched against a naked body, her quivering buttocks dripping blotched blood.

Ivory petalled flower, casually plucked, then left to wilt in the trash.

The back door swings open, a coat hanger rusts in the mud next to fresh tire tracks.

93

Originally published in 1986

After the Last Supper Burke Strickland

Originally published in 1968

We have killed Him and the man in black serves a substitute course in the cosmic restaurant Concoction of the usurper the Word is spoken by another whose golden lips spread to partake of what is left As Deity for a day or two spending loose change on delectable remnants we hope will sustain us

In Between

Yevtushenko

Wayne Potratz Originally published in 1963 94

Poem of Kansas City Martha Knapp

Originally published in 1975

somewhere in the center of this country, America a housewife-yawn in stillness, the morning stretches its arms, awakens and always I have wondered why when my mother yawns deep from her belly, the sounds of birds escape like coffee reach into the upstairs belly of the house where my father rolls his nose toward morning coffee stretches his ears toward the birds of breakfast-making in the kitchen, with his yawn embraces my mother’s mouth; breathes in the dawn.

95

Poem for Surya Ironelly Mora

Originally published in 2000

today i found you like days when the cataract eyes of the sky held back its tears to give me hope today I found peace climbing the himalaya valleys of your brown hair molding the warm clay of land with my hands walked over bodies nestled in the thighs of a mountain over steep hills of fuzzy grass today i found you hanging thangkas above me blowing wind through silky red curtains in the Norbulingka Palace prostrating before the Jokhang temple rebuilding ruins crossing the Mighty river that runs dry today i found you like days when God squeezed the sun in his hands like an orange over the dead sky of night to give me stars February 15, 2000

96

Two Mornings Becky Cochrane

Originally published in 1970

Snow cements the cracks in the sidewalk.

A cold wind packs it tight around the edges.

Remember a morning by the ocean in Oregon.

The sunrise like this--Salmon clouds and the promise of fair weather.

Breakers rolling in, sea high after the storm.

The salt splashed boat, and the smell of fish.

I sunrise like that--The wind blows cold and the sky is turning dark.

A storm is coming and the clouds are red.

97

This birch tree and I were young together Buff Bradley

This birch tree and I were young together.

I remember So many years ago When they planted it.

We weren’t friends Or anything poetic like that— I didn’t sit here every day and tell it my problems Or discuss life with it.

We were just young together.

The time came that I left.

I worked and traveled Made money and friends.

Now I’m back And the tree is still here— Never did anything or went anywhere— I didn’t come back to see it, In fact, I had forgotten it Until now.

We’re just here together And old together. *** A childhood ago On very hot summer nights— Too hot even for the wind— I sat Underneath the moon And on top of Great-Uncle William’s grave Pretending I was a crippled saint Loving humanity, And singing poems about rain Because it was the very least, And the very most, I could do.

98

Originally published in 1965

The Off Season Ann Miller

Originally published in 1990

The bell tower rings at ten minutes past the hour in this town closed by the season, closed under a swift gray sky. I’m late. I turn, turn away and awake.

Take the first step away from the click of the clock tower through the flap of zucchini fields and grape arbors turning red around the edges. You will be arching your back, feeling better perhaps than yesterday. I can hear your bones click and echo to me through the Dolomiti.

I follow a rift for runoff listening from the lip of rock to waterfalls fall through cracks in the stone.

There is no peak to these mountains only echoes can reach. I move to a heavy moon ahead and the arched back in the beam. We will echo again.

99

Pace

Craig Scherfenberg

Originally published in 1963

Neon, Triplicate, Chrome and shine, The ever quickening pace, Not for me the Walden pond, Nor poet’s peaceful glen.

Give me the controversy, The blur of motion.

Let me grow and know and feel, Not just myself, But all that motion, Speed and pace can show.

Forget the cliche hearthside warm And dallying and wasted time.

For I am far freer than most, With concert, newsprint, actors’ show, And sleeplessness, Imagination, Deadline, Pace.

Cover Art

100

Unknown Originally published in 1980

All My Life

Elizabeth Humphries

Originally published in 1984

to my mother All my life I planted the begonias under the birches in your yard and you say you can not imagine me kissing the lips of this woman I love.

All my life I played Motzart sonatas for you until they ran like honey from my fingertips and you wonder how I can touch the body of this woman I love.

You raised me naked on the Lake Michigan beach in full view of the crowd You let me run barefoot through the snow on my 14th birthday because I felt so brave You taught me to ride a bicycle in my longest nightgown without getting it stuck in the spokes and I rode laughing through the streets laughing at you laughing at me.

You carried me to bed and held me in my nightmare until it melted off my back.

In your arms I learned to love sincerely and you can only wonder why I sleep with this woman I love.

101

Nature

Rodger Blakely

Originally published in 1965

Ripe trees, felonious blackbirds, wrens, magpies, All carolers from fenceposts, worms, rabbits (Willful and bawdy), a cat’s unwinking eyes Fixed on a secret mouse; and hunger things— Pigs, speechless cows, horses bred for use (Luxurious now); and far-off things — hyenas, Crocodiles, three-toed sloths, skates, rays, Balloon-fish, barracuda keeping laws Unlike or all too like our own, zebras, Pythons, spirochetes; and defunct things With lazy shuffle burying football eggs Or stepping on them:

cheerful, murderous, Worthwhile, of no account, this unblessed plenitude Suggests much energy but nowhere rectitude.

102

Mostly Shadows

Mary Hale Meyer

Originally published in 1958

Jeff, pink and white and clean in his pajamas, carefully selected his favorite green truck from the toy corner, picked up Orange Bear, then slowly climbed into bed. He wished the Rules of the House would allow the bedroom door to be open. His room was awfully dark. “Maybe if I keep my eyes open,” he thought, “then the men on the window shades won’t come tonight.” He opened his eyes very wide and stared fixedly at the ceiling. But the men on the window shades were tricky.

Suddenly one of them was there, glaring at Jeff, big and black and leering, with a huge floppy hat and a pointed beard. Why were they always there? Jeff couldn’t even remember a night when they hadn’t come.

“O.B.,” he said to Orange Bear, “you be brave, and I’ll hold your hand, and then I’ll be brave too.” So he and O.B. made a tent of the blankets and crawled inside. And Jeff squinched his eyes tight, and was safe, because the men on the window shades couldn’t find him there.

The next morning it was Sunday. Jeff stayed in bed for as long as he could, listening, in the grey silence of January dawn, to the creaking of the house and a loose storm window rattling in the wind. At last very quietly since it was Sunday, he collected his truck and he and O.B. went downstairs, Jeff hitching up his too-long pajama bottoms as they went.

He was hungry. He carefully cleared a place for himself at the kitchen table, spilling the butts from a full ashtray. He wondered if he should wipe them up, then decided they wouldn’t be noticed.

There was milk on the shelf, and some crackers, but the milk was warm, and not very good.

"Maybe I’m not very hungry,” Jeff said. And neither was O.B., so they took some crackers and went into the living room to look at the funnies.

His father was the first person up. Jeff heard him muttering in the bath room, his big bare feet padding overhead. Then the water ran for a long time, and bottles rattled in the medicine chest.

“You’d better be very still,” Jeff told O.B., “and sit here and don’t say a word.”

Then his mother was up, and almost immediately his father was downstairs, large and wooly in his robe, looking growly and dark, not smiling. He hunched down in an armchair, behind the sports section, not moving except now and then, when he would gingerly turn a page.

Suddenly there was his mother. She moved quickly through the living room, pausing to kiss Jeff, gathering glasses and last night’s paper, skirting the fortress where Jeff’s father was barricaded, humming to herself.

Jeff’s father growled.

“David, remember your promise!”

And so the house became very bright and sunny. Dishes rattled in the kitchen, and bacon sounds and smells floated out into the living room.

His mother talked a lot at breakfast, and made little jokes, and his father smiled, and ruffled Jeff’s hair, and pretended to give O. B. a piece of toast. But it wasn’t right. It was like the lake last summer—always so warm when you floated on the top in an inner tube, but if you stuck your feet down deep, suddenly it was very cold.

Jeff excused himself, and with O.B. carefully balanced on his head, went up to his room. He dragged his bag of blocks from their corner and dumped them gently on the floor.

“What’ll we build, O. B.?” Jeff asked. “I know—a house.”

A little house, or a big house, Jeff wondered. A big house, probably—so big that you couldn’t 103

even hear from one end to another. And with lots of rooms—one especially, way up at the very top, all by itself, with lots of windows. He set to work, laying out the long blocks first, and piling in separate piles the round ones, the tall thin ones, and the triangle ones for tops of doors.

The door to his room was closed, but he could hear sounds from downstairs. The dishes were rattling louder now and weren’t friendly anymore. One of them clattered and broke, and his father barked The sound of voices thudded and dinned like a way-off thunder storm.

“It certainly is noisy out, O. B.,” said Jeff.

Then there was a loud crack, and Jeff’s mother’s voice rose: “Damn you!”

“Damn,” said Jeff, tasting the word and finding it bitter-sweet. “Damn, damn, damn, damn.”

The television set was on very loud, and underneath was still the storm, trying to hide under the TV noise.

Jeff stuck his tongue out of the corner of his mouth, and neatly laid the foundation for his house. The line of blocks squiggled, and Jeff frowned, and made them straight. The house began to grow, and pretty soon it was as high as the two upright blocks that marked the door. Then it was almost finished. Jeff sat back on his heels and admired the work.

“We can play in it when it’s done,” he explained to O. B. “I can have the room on the top and you can come and stay with me.”

Just then the TV set could no longer hide the storm. The voices cracked and burst and suddenly exploded. Jeff heard the click of his mother’s heels, and the hall closet door opening and closing, and then the front door slammed.

Jeff looked at his house. It wasn’t a house any more, just a pile of blocks, and the triangle over the window in the little room at the top was cracked. He pushed it gently with his finger and it fell to the floor.

“Let’s not play no, O. B. Let’s get dressed and go find something to eat.”

Downstairs, Jeff’s father was still in the big armchair, staring straight ahead and not seeing anything.

“Where’s Mommy?”

“Out.”

“When will she be back? O. B. and me are hungry.”

Jeff’s father held out his arms and pulled Jeff close to him. He smelled of old shaving lotion and cigarette smoke and faintly of beer, and Jeff buried his face in the wooly robe and sniffed the comfortable smell, and felt warm and comfortable too.

Then Jeff’s father began to talk in a strange new voice, that sounded very small and far away, and jerked and stopped, and had trouble starting again. He said things about “too much too soon,” and “letting luck go to your head,” and “always remembering to love, and be a real person,” and Jeff didn’t understand, but he knew his father was crying, and he felt his throat aching and wanting to burst, so he said, “Please Daddy, let’s you and me and O. B. go find some dinner.”

It was dark in the room when Jeff pushed open the door. He could see the block house on the floor where he had left it, looking very small and crooked in the shadows.

He crawled into bed and wiggled way down under the blankets, keeping his eyes closed very tight.

“Then men on the window shades can’t follow us here, O. B.,” he said. “We’re safe.”

But somehow the men on the window shades knew where he was, and they wormed their way beneath the blanket-tent, and slithered their way under Jeff’s eyelids and wouldn’t go away. Jeff held tight to Orange Bear, and bit his pillow hard to keep from crying. And finally he fell asleep.

104

God’s Country

Cay Adams Kimbrell

Originally published in 1994

where naked earth redeems its self; flesh and bone unscathed and uncut, stands fierce.

Lay down and ask forgiveness.

Stroke her body softly.

Nuzzle your nose in her hair.

The small of her back will dip gently while she rocks you to sleep.

Current Chanter Logo

Zeena Yasmine Fuleihan, Alex Coppins, Kyoko Peterson Originally published in 2014

Chanter Logo

105

Unknown Originally published in 1970

Foreplay

Dana Kokubun

Originally published in 1977

“My bed is too narrow for two tonight, my dear” you say, pushing yourself diplomatically between pillow and wall.

Teasing red tassles hang over my head as I silently grind teeth into bullets.

“Bear the load you’re a mule,” mother advised.

(She must have been the donkey.)

What a pair!

You in the double, fondling your dreams; me on the floor, trapped in a scratchy blanket, watching the clean sheets crease your back slowly through the night.

The red tassles tickle the insides of my thighs, And I, indifferent as any whore, hide pay in a slipper and hate in a drawer.

106

The Things I Wish I Could Tell You When You Cry The Most Celeste Prince

Originally published in 2008

You are just a black boy in an all white school,

Caught in the wrong place all your life, you could say.

They – you know who they are-pretend your skin is not the issue, but that your attitude, your manner of speaking, your inability to follow directions causes “concern.”

Concern, your mom asked, how so? What is he doing that is so much more concerning than the other 798 moody teenage students in the school?

They said this was not about the other 798 kids in the school but about the one, her one, you, who keeps making things difficult.

You are just a black boy in a white school, fighting constantly – but not to prevent yourself from killing a white student like the administration secretly believes, but to keep from killing yourself. You beat others and pretend every staccato blow hits your own darker skin, instead of the pastier one beneath your palms because suicide is never one of your options. The product of successful integration, third world immigration, British colonialism, West Indian values and spankings-you can’t be blamed for harboring some angst.

Each morning you trudge to school, your narrow figure towering over your peers, eclipsing their shadows. You don’t go looking for trouble, but it sneaks up on you in the hallways, in the staircases, in between bookcases in the library, outside on the playground. White boys, who claim to be your equal during history class when everyone rehearses the stories of slavery and civil rights, seek you out as you hide in plain sight on the benches in the school yard. They don’t act like their Southern ten-times-removed cousins who wore hoods and masks.

They know better, they tell themselves. They’re so much better than that actually. Racism and bigotry and discrimination and being mean to people just because they’re different from you is wrong. They know that much.

And so if they pick on the black boy at recess, it isn’t because he’s black, obviously. It’s because . . . well, he hates white people. Doesn’t he, Chad?

Yeah, all of ‘em hate whites cuz of slavery and stuff. But, I mean, I never owned any slaves, so, like, what’s your problem?

Yeah, seriously, you guys are the ones killing and stealing and shit. So stupid, you got what you wanted but now you gotta mess it up by killing and gang banging.

They continue their blind justification, these boys who believe themselves upholders of history, leaning threateningly towards you sitting on the bench, staring at them. You have not yet reached a point in your academic career where you can refute these ignorant statements with facts, figures, color-coded flowcharts, and quotes from esteemed scholars and reputable books to show how they are all bastards. You’re only a twelve-year-old boy who gets the Itis after lunch in math class and keeps your hands in your pockets when teachers call for volunteers. You’re only twelve but you already understand how undervalued your opinion and participation are.

So while you watch the white boys jeer at you during recess, mouths twisted with indulgence, you contemplate two things. First, you reflect on how satisfying it will be when you corner the leader after seventh period in the boys’ locker room, naked and alone, ashamed. You smile inwardly at how 107

un-bruised your knuckles will be as you continuously insert punch after punch into the white jelly rolls of the preteen punk. Your toes will curl and flex as you kick the boy’s solar plexus until you break through to his spine. You imagine how the coward will plead for you to stop, please, God, stop, stop, ah, ow, ow, owww, help, somebody!

And in between the screams and moans for mercy, you will bend over and tell the boy, I’m not doing this because I hate white people; I’m doing this because I hate your lies.

Yeah, that’s what you’ll say. Damn that’ll sound good.

Your second thought is more forward thinking, reaching towards the vague future because you realize that these stupid foul-mouthed pink boys will grow up to be even stupider foul-mouthed pink men in your graduating class as well as your workplace. You can beat them upside down and sideways from now until they get their diplomas, but it will never take away their dominance of your world. You know that they have been imbibed since birth with the milk of privilege, and no one, especially not one black boy in an all white school, not you, can change that. In a few years, you will graduate middle school, high school, and go on teo college where kids with the same blood alcohol level of self-righteousness will drunkenly tell you about your people, your history, your destiny, all the while smiling in your face.

These thoughts click by in your head as you sit outside the principal’s office for what your mom and the administration hope to be the last time. But you shake your head as you calmly stare down at your scuffed sneakers and wonder how long it will be until they realize that it’s not you who causes the problems? The door opens and the secretary says, They’re ready for you now hun.

No they’re not, you mumble, as you shuffle inside.

108

Strong Still the Oak Porter McNeil

Originally published in 1977

Dusk. A dying red sun turned the tiny Ukranian village of Ramisk into a collection of streaking gray shadows. With a sure, quick step, eighteen-year-old Alexi Rabinov approached a small wooden cottage near the edge of the village. He felt the front of his uniform as he walked, making sure each button was fastened. He stopped, glancing down at his shiny black boots. The extra ten minutes he had spent polishing them had paid rich dividends. They gleamed in a final ray of the sun.

And then he saw it, twisted and gnarled like an octopus, the ancient oak tree where it had been standing for hundreds of years. Yes, the old oak. As a boy, Alexi had made it his ship, his airplane, his hiding place, his playground. How often he had climbed the oak, entering a new world as he went higher. Without fail the old oak provided comfort, escape and adventure–away from the emptiness of his life.

Suddenly Alexi heard the slamming door. That, too, had not changed. Quickly he ran toward the frail brown cottage and a shed around the back. There he found her taking down clothes from a weather-worn line. Time had turned her once smooth face into a spiderweb of wrinkles. Spindly fingers pried the clothespins from the line.

“Grandma?” Alexi whispered, his voice trembling. “Grandma, it’s I, Alexi.”

The old, hunched woman turned, her face twisted in confusion. She cupped one hand over her coarse eyes and moved closer.

“Alexi?” she said softly, “Is that you?”

She clawed out in front of her, grasping for her grandson. Alexi only nodded. Then he moved his body in place so the woman could admire the strength of muscle before her. But the woman only saw his face, the blue eyes she had known from years past and the warm, sensitive mouth, bordered by the firm, youthful chin and cheeks.

“Alexi,” she repeated, her voice shriveling frail as her thin, blue veined hands reached up to stroke the boy’s jawbone. “You have come back to us?”

“For a night,” Alexi answered. “I leave in the morning.”

“Good. At least we will have some time together. Your grandfather has gone to a meeting in the village.” The old woman turned, stopping to lift the filled basket of clothing. “Come inside, Alexi.”

His grandmother had lost none of her culinary artistry. The salted pork and noodles seemed a king’s feast. The glass of tea mingled perfectly.

Alexi’s grandfather made a late entry. Although his handshake was firm, he was somehow distant. The wiry old man seemed more intent on eating his food than on recognizing the grandson who had just returned after five long years. Alexi could not understand is grandfather’s attitude. True, the old man had not been happy when Alexi had entered the Junior Party Service Corps. But surely by now, Alexi thought, all of Russia realized the greatness of the party.

“You have been happy?” Alexi asked, tossing a log onto the fire after supper.

His grandfather and grandmother exchanged quick looks. The old woman smiled. “Of course, my boy,” she said. Alexi’s grandfather only grunted.

“What meeting made you so late this evening?” Alexi asked. “Are the peasant farmers still complaining about not being able to keep their produce? Sixty, seventy years–have they not learned?”

109

Alexi’s grandfather shook his head. “It is not right. We farmers work only for the party. We give up all our profits. The merchants give all their goods to the government for free. The chairman, the party know not our needs, our wants, our pride.”

Alexi’s mind whirled and dazed at his grandfather’s speech. What had happened, he wondered. What had changed his grandfather? His words were treasonous. Traitor. The word had an ugly sound. “Traitors must be punished!” a recess of his mind called out. He reeled with emotional uncertainty but then caught hold. “Punished. They must be punished. Nothing must stand in the party’s way.”

Springing from his chair, Alexi moved toward his grandfather. “You are wrong, you speak treason. The chairman is our savior. He will show people all over the world that our system is good, better than all else. Some day all nations will seek our guidance.”

“Alexi, do not be angry,” his grandmother whispered. “It is just–” The grandfather, standing up, interrupted. “Do not waste words, old woman. Can you not see this is not the boy we raised? He is a robot, a machine like all the other youth this system has changing. Did you not hear him at supper? He is no a longer a part of us. His mother and father are good to be in their graves where they cannot hear this boy. He has–” Instinctively Alexi’s hand rose and slapped his grandfather’s face. The old man said nothing.

Alexi stood up, turned, and walked to the door, mumbling “Fools, what fools.” He slammed the door shut, leaving his numb grandparents alone. With a sure, quick step, Alexi walked around to the front of the cottage. There was the old oak. He gave it a strong kick. His foot writhed in pain. His face twisted.

110

when I was nine

Freya Manfred

Originally published in 1964

When I was nine I dreamed I was flying hollow and high With dragonfly’s wings Above the golden-white plum tree.

When I was nine I knew That deep in the grass caves Lived a grey-faced lady Selling thimbles and hazelnuts.

Oh, when I was nine I could smell lilacs On the beams of the moon; I could bury a day’s dime in a holyhack leaf And find a ruby dripping there that night.

Oh, when I was nine I could eat a pail of plums; I could climb a splintered ship’s mast Branch to branch And sleep in veiling leaves.

Yes, when I was nine I limped With dusty knees and hands Back to sit the round, red mare With the white wall-eyes.

111

Yes, when I was nine Leaves fell on my mouth I cried at a broken bird; An oriole — still warm, Would not rise up and fly away all-yellow.

And now I am heavier than dragonfly’s wings, Taller than grass-leaning caves, Richer than dimes and ruby dew, Older than trees, Slower than white-winking mares, And colder — Colder than a warm oriole all-yellow Beating away his heart.

Strange Love, Two Arms

Alia Benedict Originally published in 2017 112

The Court

Charles Baxter

Originally published in 1968

In white she (not quite breaking with beauty) rises, her arms surrounding the sphere, it glides over the net.

Gathering each nuance, he judges her aim follows her motions, returning as she waits within light.

She resumes.

Now she will open her swing, the ball rises beyond the net’s height to the very edge of his side, he bends, striking each time harder, he breathes and water begins to run into his sight, the water is in her eyes, she moves back and forth and her hands continue moving, moving, in the air.

113

Black Man’s Burden Yolanda Louise Ridley

Originally published in 1963

When I was a little girl living in the South, we moved into a white neighborhood. (This isn’t unusual. White people and black people live close to each other in the South in a strange — and offbeat — melody.) My father was a young assistant professor of psychology at Virginia State College.

The people living on either side of us were white. They were older, ordinary people.

They disliked our being this close, but we stayed there without major incidents. My little brother (who is not little anymore) was an infant, and my parents knew that playmates for me would be scarce. They got me a kitten.

At the age of five, color was a word that referred to the crayon I selected for my coloring book.

Nothing more. Nothing less.

One day my kitty wandered over onto the porch of the man next door. I ran over eagerly — pigtails flying — to capture the creature. Just as my pet was within an arm’s length of me, the man who lived there emerged from his house. I expected nothing; feared nothing. He picked up my kitten. I opened my arms to receive her. He removed his shoe. He beat my kitten until it lay lifeless in his hand. He thrust it at me and snarled, “That’s what you get for being a little nigger girl.”

I don’t remember anything more. The psychologists call it repression. I call it a blessing.

Surely there was confusion, broken-hearted tears, absolute, incomprehensive awe. This was my first experience as an American of color. The seeds of bitterness and hatred and disillusionment had been planted irrevocably.

One day my mother was downtown shopping. A white man nearly backed his car into ours.

Mother honked the horn in her usual ladylike fashion. The man — red-necked, rough and dirty — shouted to my mother in the streets of our town, “You goddamn black bitch! Why don’t you watch where you’re going?”

A Negro girl whom I know was elected Homecoming Queen at a Northern college that prides itself on being liberal, Christian and cosmopolitan. But on the night of the Homecoming dance, over which she was to reign, there was no young man to escort her. The college chaplain and his wife escorted her. During the dance no white boy danced with her. She danced that night of her glorious reign with the chaplain, the college president and one colored boy.

Things like this happen to black people all over the world: things without rhyme or reason, that rip mercilessly into the very fiber of one’s being and dignity, leaving one strangely empty and lonely and bewildered and defenseless. How does one defend oneself?

It often occurs to me that it is the very capacity which makes the man the supreme earthly being that will probably destroy him: his adaptability. Negroes adapt just like everybody else; and this has been our defense. We have rationalized ourselves into a hatred of white people that is every bit as ugly, as all-prevailing, as all-consuming as the hatred that the white man feels for us.

And, just like the white man’s hatred, it is often disguised and polished over. The white man’s world is psychotic in respect to race. It is guilt-ridden and it is inconsistent. So is the black man’s world. The white man toots his horn about liberty and justice for all and he describes eloquently how he loves his Negro gardener or the guy who works at the next desk; or he explains that the only reason that his government stays in a country belonging to black people is that the black people 114

cannot take care of themselves. He explains patiently that the white and the black people get along beautifully and will continue to do so if not pushed too far. (“Too far” varies from going to school together to marrying each other.)

The black man toots his horn about his burning desire for equality of opportunity and nothing more. He doesn’t want to be liked, he says. He only wants his opportunity to make a fair and decent living or to own the land that is rightfully his.

It is to this point that I must speak. Black people all over the world have something deep within their breasts that is an ugly reality, I fear, and that must be faced. It is the desire to collect the debt, to thumb our noses, to have our turn.

There is no question that there is a debt to be paid, that white people have been merciless, heathen and indisputably callous to black people all over the world. There is no question that white people owe a goodly portion of their empires to the sweat and blood of black people; and there is no question that if one wishes to keep a miser’s tally sheet of damages received, then white people may expect a very uncomfortable existence for the rest of time. The fact is that black people outnumber white people on this earth of ours. And we know it.

I feel a new undercurrent among black people which is something more than the “new Negro” or the newly formed African nations. And what I feel frightens me. I don’t know. Perhaps the only way we can — individually or collectively — survive life’s knocks and bumps is to become sophisticated and hardened. And perhaps this is what the world’s dark-skinned people have done.

There is not only a new dignity (which is as it should be) and a new determination to be free (which is as it had to be), but there is a grim, cold, too logical way of thinking and acting among us. The hideous irony of it all is that the new thought is just like the distorted, miserable thought of the hypocritical white man who has been so long criticized. Only the colors have changed.

I talked recently with a bright young man who is working on his Ph.D. I was horrified at his bitterness. I understood. In psychological terms, it was exactly the type of reaction which could be expected of an ambitious young man who has a better mind than most people, white or black, but who has been refused opportunities that a duller white man would have been handed on a silver platter. He told me that white people are prejudiced because “they want to be.” I asked, “And are Negroes ignorant because they want to be?” He didn’t see the connection. He felt that white people aren’t quite human. They aren’t the victims of their environments that Negroes are.

Finally he asked me if I cared whether or not white people liked me. When I told him that I did indeed, he looked at me contemptuously. I was, in his mind, a “cracker lover.” A low, crawling, Uncle Tom of a cracker lover.

Are we coming to the day when black people of conscience will have to fight for the rights of white people and suffer for it? Many white people were horrified at the events in Algeria. Few black people were. I was horrified. Yes, the whites there paid a comparatively low price for the less-thanhuman existence they imposed on the blacks. Yes, historically and sociologically the uprising could be expected. And I guess the stubbornness and bute selfishness of the French made it practically impossible for the blacks to achieve freedom and dignity any other way.

Dignity? Have we forgotten the meaning of the word? We who have shouted and prayed for it for so long?

Freedom? Our writers have always said that the white man would never be free until the black man was. Are we about to re-chain ourselves? Are we about to throw away our self-respect? Are we about to begin to wallow like ravenous dogs in the miserable, ugly illusion that might makes right 115

and that some people, because of their color, are less human (or worse yet, “white devils,” as the Black Muslims have put it)?

Are we, God forbid, going to make the same damnable mistake that Pharaoh and Caesar and Faubus made?

We say that we don’t want to be liked. I hope that’s a lie. I can remember when it was. But now I’m not so sure. One of the most basic of human needs is the need for love. And when one denies this need, one becomes something less than human. White men have been less than human on this issue for centuries.

Black men all over the world are emerging in new positions of authority and prestige. One day the balance-of-power will be in black hands. It can be argued that if black people turn the tables and destroy the dignity of white people, it would be exactly what white people have ad coming to them for centuries.

But it seems to me that it is too late to think in such adolescent terms. This is no high school spat between kids who have had an argument. I think white people all over the world realize this. I don’t think black people do. I think we are still fascinated by what we have achieved, and obsessed by what power we might be able to wield over the minds and lives of our very oppressors. Vengeance.

We want vengeance. And we might very well destroy ourselves and everybody else in the process.

There would be no military power or bomb in this destruction. It would be something far worse and twice as hideous. And the black man, whether he likes it or not, has a burden. One day he will probably hold the fate of the world in his hands.

Black people have marvelous capacities for endurance and patience. Hopefully, what I feel in the air is only a passing thing. Hopefully, one day we will be able to teach the white man how to live a decent life, for we have many wonderful examples. We’ve managed for years to live without luxury and gaudy materialism. (Africans have outdone their American brothers in this.) We have cultures in which delinquency and crime don’t exist. Perhaps the black man will save the world. Perhaps we can combine the best elements of both cultures and work together with white men to make a world fit for human habitation.

But I am afraid. I am afraid that as African countries westernize and American Negroes modernize, we are all getting demoralized. I’m afraid that we’re accepting the ugly aspects of western culture as well as the beautiful. I’m afraid that we’re learning too well how to wield power and how to be bitter and how to conjure up theories of race supremacy. I am afraid that we’re forgetting simple and uncomplicated loving and forgiving — the very qualities that have kept us alive and that might keep the human race alive.

116

Rificolone looking for grandfather Ann Miller

Originally published in 1990

Children spit, spit. Balls of clay whistle through shooters at the lanterns. The lanterns burn. a man on stilts waves a burning lizard, paper legs curl up and around, around waves it over the heads of the children.

Then I remember: in the dark slide room a naked man in the projector beam: click skin of stone click limbs of water click eyes.

I think: that is what death is like, look for my grandfather, listen for his whistle that echoed here years ago, listen for his whistle. Look at marble muscles, the dark pattern on the back like sweat from a gutter hole. Mouth open like the face of a lover with a stream of water whistling through the spout of gut into the fishpond, the fish reflections of lemons. I listen for his shuffle in gravel, for a whistle of his among the watching gypsies that etch the arteries of this city.

I see cats on walls chasing lizards, lizard skin spotted, glistening like balls of beads, disappearing into the cracks.

117

Grass Is Greener

Theodore Twidwell* It’s hard to explain What it’s like To be on the outside Of your own coffin.

It feels oddly— Incomplete.

Like nights on which You yield To the stormy sea Of TooMuchGin And can’t piece together Why you woke up On the floor, Like finally catching That yellowed shadow That lurks in the corner Of every mirror Only to lose it Seconds later; A shadow prowling in The grass above which My body floats At shoulder-height; The blades hissing.

How is it grass Can even feel?

It seems pompous To thrive in a graveyard.

So vibrant and vengeful— Feasting On those below; It should have Some damn’d Respect.

Originally published in 2016

Suddenly, the grass Crescendos A screeching static; As if I care that Behind my glorified Fed-Ex I see only one Of my ungrateful spawn.

(Wasn’t that close With the others Anyway) His head held high Surveying the grass, (Without the disdain I justly hold) My son pulls his kid close His wife’s hand clasped In his shaking one— As if he’s got something to prove; I get it!

You’re a better father than me!

A better husband!

Good job for meeting that low bar.

He’s crying!

Goddamnit he’s crying Can’t he see his son watching!

If he has his way That kid’s gonna end up A college-educated sissy Living in The Castro With an impossibly tiny dog And a latino lover.

118

Instead of crying How about you give a damn eulogy!

Anyone! Anyone!

My ex-wife looks oddly peaceful And my current wife Is already moving on.

How about you give a damn eulogy first!

My son marches slowly As if he hears me Screaming in his ear; Refusing to move an inch, Rivulets as eyes.

I stumble to him Stop fucking crying!

I shriek.

He picks up his son And holds him as they walk.

Grabbing his head in my hands Man up, damnit!

The tears pass through My trembling fingers And he straightens his son’s tie.

People flit as shadows Through the yard Laying theirs to rest Ignoring me, awake.

As I stare At the pitying moss Creeping ‘cross my name, I am become The yellowed shadow-Filled to the brim With empty gin, And I feel the coffin Close ‘round me As roots slowly drain No one knows I tried.

How should I have known That grass Can feel?

I fall to my knees Trying in vain To clutch his hand Don’t you know I tried!

Hugging his son tight He lies: “Grandpa loved you So very much” STOP I’m alone: I haven’t seen a soul Since the day mine left, And my grave Is already worn.

119

*Theodore Twidwell is the current Submissions Manager of Chanter

Aye, and Gommorah Charles Sheaffer

Originally published in 1976

after Samuel Delany And went up from that land and came down on bedrock, brown and dead-yellow, my face and skin scraped to bone, sand-blasted.

If we had moved along the zodiac, the fever might have radiated quietly, and died.

We winded beer over and beneath the brown, stained bar and harsh yellow light.

Heat pressured from marrow; and after crashing glasses to dry splinters we escaped into a colder night.

Darkness lay on us heavily ringing at our feet.

Tiresias from the stars huddling on my breath with nowhere to stand, lust and ashes, until the silence of our feet took us.

And came to where fever dances with macabre gaiety, skeleton on blistered rock, your bony fingers caught in mine, yellow air breaks with the clatter of our teeth, wind whistling from jaw and eye socket.

120

Across the Player’s Bow Joshua Blatter

Originally published in 1993

When the mischief moon ascended, captive waves stirred the shore, stealing four grains of sand from your arched, furrowed sole; then three points of sand tumbled from the salt-spiraled lock across your forehead; You led: Once we fell together, I found, Shattering, scattering our crowns, I ceased to be able to see, Among us two, which one was me.

Then the sea wind drew closed your two opaque eyelids; your palm bled three pink shells, favors I had unearthed from this crumbling beachhead; skimming clouds shrouded our crux, joined the seeping wind, and tucked the flapping four edges of earth’s brocade away from the moon’s meddling hands.

121

Rex Regoris

Jack Scott Cain

Originally published in 1966

It is time that I am writing. I had thought many times that I should perhaps write, but stopped after gathering the materials on the consideration that my writings would not be received as well without my own personal appearance. At that time, of course, I could have hardly made myself known to the world in person, but perhaps, yes, perhaps now the time has been fulfilled. I will be able to tell when the time has arrived, I assure you of that. I have waited long, indeed, I have waited eons.

My name is Zoa. I am he who came before you all. I live in the second cellar of a large continental church. I have lived here for many years. Before the church there was some other place, even I do not remember now. That age must have gone.

Despite myself I have made my eternal home comfortable; but do not misunderstand me, its decorations are anything but frivolous. My cellar is fitting for one of my future and responsibility.

In one corner I have made a bed of litter and rat droppings, covered with a piece of sackcloth taken from one of the tombs. The bed is sufficient for me; throughout the years I have slept little. Much of my time has been spent in calculations. You understand, of course, that everything must be precise.

It must be perfect, but more of that later. First you should know me. But then, that too is absurd, for who could ever grasp the scope, the magnificence, the intellect of one such as I, as one such as I have become. I can only trust you are worthy to hear of it. Later it shall all be explained to you.

There is no light down here. There has been none for these many years. Once in every king’s reign do I see light, and then only from a distance, from hiding, when they bring his body down to lay it in its place on the shelves. You see I am a keeper of kings, I am a king among kings.

Because I am strong and wise do not think that I have not suffered, for suffering must be part of my work. It is very cold in my cellar always, but in the winter the very walls and rooms mock even the thought of warmth, and the rats, who make intricate paths that my feet find, die from the cold.

I have found as many as a dozen huddled dead in corners, dead from the cold. I have lain sick and shivering with my bare feet pulled under me while the walls and rooms shouted the coldness over my face and chest, until finally I could stand it no longer, and I bandaged my feet and my face in rusty, moldy graveclothes that had never held heat before. And I survived, which is a measure of what my strength has become, to survive the purity of the cold. But then it must be written that I cannot die, that is unthinkable, for I have lived so long, and waited so long, and prepared for so long.

It is surprising how many things my cellar provides me. There is nothing I want that I cannot glean from my cellar. When I needed writing materials I searched among the old kings’ graves and found paper. In a past age paper was used extensively to insulate the coffins, but it would not have mattered, for I could have used the shrouds. Ink was more difficult to obtain. I gathered the water that always clings to my cellar’s walls in a cup, and found that by mixing in some of the fine dust that covers the floor and some blood from freshly-killed rats I could achieve that right consistency. Of course I am without light, but then I have nothing to read. When I entered my darkness ages before, I brought nothing to read, but there was nothing that had been written that I would have wanted to read. It is probably the same still.

I have more food in my cellar than I could ever eat. Besides the rats there are many more animals, and mushrooms and plants growing on the walls, and, of course, always the cold water that 122

drips from the walls. I fast frequently to show myself that I, Zoa, do not have need of such things, but it is wise that I eat, for it keeps me closer to those whom I must go among someday when the time is fulfilled.

There are times when I could have wanted a clock or a calendar to look at and rejoice in; but in darkness I could have seen no timepiece of any kind, and a calendar would be useless also, especially when age after age had confounded its markings. And I am too busy for such things. Time means nothing to me, only its ending has meaning.

Would you ask whether anyone has ever known of my plans, or my very existence? Only once have I been seen since I recognized my worth and my power and exiled myself from time. A madman, he must have been a madman, stumbled upon me in my cellar once. What he could have been doing in my cellar I cannot understand. My only explanation is that he was lost in here after the burial of one of the kings; or else in a fit of madness he had decided to hide in my cellar. I felt his hot, foul breath on my face, his strugglings like a weakened animal as I held him. There was nothing I could do. The time had not yet come, and he had trespassed into my kingdom. Conferring the magnitude of my mercy and my justice upon him, I killed him with a rock. That is the one time that I really desired something from the outside world. I wanted a light so that I could have seen his face. I would have seen the serenity and the complete acceptance of his purposeful death in it, but of course there could be no light, so I laid the body in a room, and have not entered the room since.

The man deserves the peaceful resting place; he is the first martyr to my cause, and perhaps the only one. There will be little need for martyrs when my reckoned time comes.

There is little else that can be told at this time, very little else that would be understood. I am always in calculations, preparing my mind, so that I will know every question, every answer, every thought that might be put to me. Indeed, I will know them before they are even spoken. And so I live on, preparing. I am in training. I am in storage for the time when the world, having succumbed to its own ice and darkness, will be ready for me to step from my cellar, ready for my leadership, ready for my reign, my godship. But, of course, that time may not be here. I have waited long, and I can wait longer. The time I speak of will be fulfilled.

Untitled

123

Jennifer Lipscomb Originally published in 1991

The First Gift

Anne Marie Wirth-Cauchon

Originally published in 2003

Florescent bulbs, supermarket, a tendril of hair.

She is buried to her elbows, Deep within the crate of avocados.

Rounds them, smoothes their tough ridges As she will soon be rounded and smoothed beneath his palms.

She plucks one at last.

It is most like her own soft shoulder, full calf.

Twilight, lamplight, and kitchen table.

Her cut lips bleed drops of flesh beneath his ears.

She places the avocado bare before his ribcage.

It is as hard and dark as the accumulation of night about the moon.

He cracks the skin.

A bitter knife-edge, and the flesh is seen.

He sucks the sweetness from the seed.

They share six salted slices, placed as petals And sleep with the soles of their feet met for prayer.

124

My Land Lord and I hit it off Willie McDonagh

Originally published in 2015

There’s a squirrelly young guy who comes by early in the morning on the weekends and fixes my pipes. It’s been years and days since my pipes have broken, and it is because of him that I have some of the best plumbing around, but the fact remains that vigilant maintenance by the homeowner is absolutely essential. I must agree.

He says I’m his only tenant left, but I’m inclined to doubt this. The fact is I have seen other people around the lobby and some of them live in condos near me and I’ve even been inside some of them and have seen their rugs and dish sets and I know the young man doesn’t own the building because he doesn’t live here and he lives across the street where he looks at me funny all night long and throws his tools at my window but he has bad aim and I have strong windows.

My coworkers sit in silent rapture while I inform them of the latest developments during the morning meetings. Well, of course they are interested. In fact, just this morning they pursued me about what effect my guy thought the winter weather would be having on the new copper pipes he installed. I gave them my coy smile as if to say, “I guess we’ll see, now won’t we?” and they relaxed a little because my guy knows his stuff. I left to a chorus of approving fingers wags and a contented throwing-up-of hands. “Why, I need know no more!”

It never seemed pertinent in those conversations to mention his plot for me. I haven’t got it figured out myself, either. I’m well-sure by this point that he is unpredictable, but just as most of the wildest, craziest friends are, he assures me. Last week he dropped by while I was still at church and fixed a trouble spot he had been talking about for the longest time. I wrote out his check and he packed up his things, but then he lingered for a while. He made a few attempts at kicking my legs out from under me, but I think my bemused look discouraged him from further action. “Next time then, yeah boss?” “Not this week, guy.”

On his most recent visit, he set his stereo down and turned on his messed-up disaster music before starting to paint the walls red. Sitting up in bed, I asked him what about the pipes and he said he had checked them out earlier that morning and all was well (“Just slipped right through the window, boss!). Too tired to analyze the situation or make sense of the shattered glass on my bedsheets, I let up my interrogation. Now, looking at his feet, he explained, “I could try to be big in the eyes of the world / What matters to me is what I could be to just one guy.” I heard his slash mark and realized that he was stealing lines from Brian Wilson. “You god-damned thief! You can’t take wholesale like that! What sort of explanation is that, anyway? For your behavior?” “Was it the slash?” he asked and that’s when I lashed and tossed the tea tray across the sitting room. He ducked and picked me up by my back, then tossed me out the broken window. Just a two-story dive, I had the time to think about him before stopping on the dirt. A priest out for a jog saw me on the sidewalk, where he says that I whispered, “Guess some guys just aren’t cut out for a big friendship” and unstuck my arms from the pavement to throw them up in the air.

125

Eulogy for Malcolmb and Me Jane Neathery Cutler

Originally published in 1980

Malcolmb’s gone again

Tumbled down, down, down

He slumps, an everlasting specter

On a bar stool Like so many friends Drowning Malcolmb’s gone again

But this time for good

The voracious ventriloquist Who spawns loquacity

Somewhere beyond the top shelf

Where the mirror meets the mirror Malcolmb’s crystal scribbling

Hatched from a bottle of mescal

A friend to himself sometimes

He prescribed a falling Falling down

Dangerously necessary in order to see Malcolmb ol’ boy, mí amigo

Que dices?

I hear your voice on the extradited wind

Singing that same old sufferin' song

I know that you know

I shall visit my grave often Before we both die

126

Museums

Megan Elliott

Originally published in 1999

Thursday afternoon at the Field Museum of Natural History we roamed through ancient Egypt, the Pacific islands, extinct mammalia lingering under the tusks of the stuffed woolly mammoth and the dry bones of the dead lizard-bird.

We have been mostly quiet, murmurs of small facts, the tongue click of approval, admiration of the replicas of priceless gems have sufficed for conversation.

It is like this always, through the ages wherever we go.

In the Jade Room you open your mouth.

The clamor of field-tripping children drowns out your mild comment.

But what we have chosen not to say, our unspoken thoughts, Silurian and fossilized or rolling solitary and aimless in our heads like marbles in a shoebox, are louder than anything; a habit we cannot abandon, speaking dead languages, forgotten words ripple across silence.

127

The Responsibility of Joseph Jane Colville Betts

Originally published in 1961

I meant to hire the best room in the inn; A woman needs a bed to lie on in the hour Of her delivery. And how I tried as the thin Wail rose to feel that God had seeded this flower!

I led a flight across the wastes of sand And, strangely father to my chaste wife’s child, I could not doubt she actually felt this planned

By God, since even through the desert heat she smiled.

Then am I step-father to the promised Word?

Must my life prop the zealot innocence Of these two people who want only to borrow My name, honor, and love? The answers I’ve heard In dreams. I truly ask no recompense Except God’s mercy if I voice my human sorrow.

128

The Fountain Katy Jacob

Originally published in 1994

For a few hot moments we sat watching it, the fine-tuned unspringed action of water sliding into place like hands or some other flawless machine, and I wanted to be like that someday— I wanted my mouth and legs and eyes to be that weightless color, continually opening and shutting again, circling and making sound.

I knew that if there had been no sun, if we had sat in endless shadow instead, it never would have occurred— that liquid wish to be continuous with more of myself, if only briefly, on the hour.

The night would have distracted me, made me tense and sore with brightness, and my mind would have kept itself to thoughts of solid matter.

129

But we were to meet again, I might think on it— on the possibility of the night-fountain, on what exquisite could read like in the dark.

And if we did not go back to that particular place, our meeting would still be as some glittering and knowledgeable thing had set it there for us, the universe for the sake of us, and in that case— I would promise for it to be perfect as shadows hidden against silver like one single arc of water-light.

Cover Art

130

Ben Chapman Originally published in 1999

The Drive Home Lora Lee Polack

Originally published in 1978

“That,” said his wife, clenching her hands tightly in her lap, “was a cat you just ran over.”

The man glanced casually over his shoulder.

“So it was.”

“You did it on purpose. You swerved out of your way to hit that cat.”

“So?” He tapped his pipe on the ashtray, trying to dislodge his tamped down ashes. His finger bumped the radio dial and music blared out suddenly. She reached over and turned it down, but it remained as a presence between them, a third guest in the car, chattering and singing to itself in happy oblivion.

He lit up his pipe. His wife cleared her throat quietly and turned toward the window. Perhaps it would rain. The sky had clouded over since the morning. It felt a little bit cooler too. Perhaps it would. Rain would be welcome. It cleaned and freshened everything, even the highways turned out to sleekly clean after a rain. She thought that a good rain could even wash a bloodstain off concrete.

“Did it get blood on the car?” Her fingers knotted the strap of her purse.

“What, for God’s sake!”

“That cat you killed.” His pipe smoke drifted above her head. She cleared her throat again. “I wouldn’t want anyone to see blood and to… to guess.” She began twisting her purse strap in the opposite direction. “It must be illegal, I mean, running over a cat.”

“Oh, f ’Chrissakes!” He threw her a disgusted look. “It was the cat’s own damn fault! There was no way I could have missed hitting him and still avoided an accident. Damn animal shouldn’t have been in the street anyhow. Now, just shut up about it and let me drive!” He re-assumed his concentration with a vicious thrust of his shoulders and riveted his eyes on the road ahead. “Goddamn woman,” he muttered into his pipe.

Only now did she dare to turn her eyes toward him. He sat stiff and unmoving as a plaster cast of a man, with only the puffing of his pipe and slight motion of his fingertips on the steering wheel to show that he was still alive. She bit her lip and looked back out the window.

They passed a farm with a white house, a red barn, and two pickup trucks in the driveway. A little girl with a collie nudging her knee stood on the lawn, staring out over the highway. The woman put her hand to the glass as she watched the girl, and was surprised to see the child wave back. She sat like that, one hand over her nose pressed to the window, till they rounded a curve and the farm 131

disappeared.

Now she turned on her husband, the vision of the girl and her dog still before her.

“We should have stopped, you know. It might have had a collar with its name and its owner’s name on it. We could have called them, we could have told them we were sorry. Now they’ll never know what happened to their pet. They’ll go out at night and call its name and set out a saucer of milk, but it’ll never come, and they’ll never know why.”

The man pulled off to the side of the road and stopped the car with a protesting skid from his tires.

He leaned over, reached across his wife, and opened her car door.

“If you don’t like my driving, will you kindly get out?”

She looked up and down the deserted country highway, slumped down in her seat, and shook her head. He smiled, tight-lipped and closed the door. He re-started the engine, and they drove off again down the long road.

132

Routes

Ellen Perry

Originally published in 1966

And now the heave of earth and sky: dawn sighs and signs to me.

Some silent, claw-clipping dog snuffles in my wake and follows shyly.

I cannot shut him out today — none of it — the itching, grumbling old house, squeak of my sneakers across the grass, and my Mother snoring lady-like, third bedroom on the right.

My brother had a paper route.

He set out to be our renaissance man: encyclopedia in hand, he ran and tossed and turned his page and tossed and ran again.

He delivered in the company of aardvarks and cheetahs; but his knowledge-fling stopped short with Dawn and the commandment, See Also: the Sunne Rising.

Now I follow silently in dawns he blazed.

For encyclopedia I have my dictionary of days begun early and new, of dogs wary of noise, and of the one small child who crept out to share the view.

133

Mrs. Barber Is Dead Charles Baxter

Originally published in 1968

After a long illness, whose every variation was watched anxiously by her large number of friends, Mrs. Charles Barber expired yesterday . . . . Born of affluence, of aristocratic tastes and tendencies, she was sociable . . . to those fortunate enough to enjoy the pleasure of her acquaintance. She was the center of the social circle in which she moved.

— Fragment of a newspaper obituary (1892) You were the center of your wedding’s circle.

You said, “The smilax wreathed the chandeliers and wound about the pyramid.”

These were remembered: the french provincial clock, an olive spoon, a plaster of the graces.

Milwaukee sent ice cream. The gifts were set on tables the servants could not reach.

You stepped lightly as a bride to stroke the coin silver in your name.

Your husband watched you as you walked.

Eleven years your home became a court, the air was conscious of its pleasure. To guard your own, you gave the slightest motion of your wrist that harmed the undeserving. Each loyalty was grave.

You did not become the future.

Perhaps you rehearsed your death-scene for close friends, and at the skillful rattle waited for applause.

And then encores: a tissue hand, pulled by strings, reaches for an atomizer, finds a vase instead.

A paper-white narcissus trembles to the floor.

134

The funeral was exclusive, and no one swayed.

Your family asked for elegance in the pastor’s robes, the procession slow, and all grandeur.

You were your age’s mannequin.

They hurtled you to God without a doubt.

Servants pulled the curtains in the mourners’ rooms.

You were not there. Dust fell on the china set.

Rejected friends found passage through the windows, night animals ran across your bedroom floor.

Your husband thought he saw your visage everywhere.

Kneeling

135

Joanna Curtis Originally published in 1994

Conversations In Black Julia Fritz-Endres

Originally published in 2016

My mother bent inward leading with the shoulders then curling her wrists to clench a fist against her temple.

In the church, all is quiet, within these coiling winds that pry and lift the dark ripples of cloth that hold us to the earth and cover our skin, the wrinkled elbows, the dust-clogged pores.

My aunt, unfurling her blouse like an orchid’s lips flutter in the rain.

“Isn’t it fun?”

She smiles, wistfully, at her little, hidden luxury, opening her arms to show red, and gold embroidered beneath the black.

Is it wrong to laugh at a funeral?

The priest could not decide to scold or pretend that he heard nothing at all.

The rest of us, with nothing bright inside our clothes must crumple and swallow the giddy breathlessness as addicting as sorrow in our lungs— both shuddering and dying like folded cranes on a bright red string.

136

eden revisited: the first night Paul Coleman

Originally published in 1996

let us rest upon our molded hands and curve the night into clouds.

and listen to a cricket’s limbs. our light will slowly climb

into a hover. close your eyes and taste the skin of floured kisses, breathwraps in mind.

fingers cradle our moods and swallow the lap— pulse of wings. inside the windows, we touch the shades

of sharpness and rain.

and our souls

gesture out the blindness.

137

Removed

Katie Fowley

Originally published in 2005

I remember clinging but not the viewthe sheer repetition of steps.

Down in the moldy wet of the catacombs the bones were designed in the shape of hearts of maybe fleurs-de-lis.

A string of photographs without subjects indiscriminate old towns cobble-stone, stone, stone jig-saw Provençal landscapes or the half-obscured garrets of a castle the name of which is lost on me.

My un-hemmed map unravels at its seams.

I stopped in the Loire valley once stayed in Angers three weeks visited the local castle five times.

I saw the Bayeux tapestry the unicorn tapestry the end-of-the-world tapestryI even tried to make a tapestry, the strings caught and confused.

I know that writing is ineffectual even as I press down wordsmouthless turtles perpetually flipped upside down.

But Provence was no dream.

This dress was made in Nice.

Tags replace towns; memory fails the cold mistral reeling around cypress trees.

138

Save the Words for Some Other Time Ann Scales

Why grab your sportscoat off my bed where it lay, hiking the collar around your neck indicating your inherent relationship to the pages of G.Q. Magazine that dresses your showy morals, which clearly heard say ‘Stay in your place woman?’

While I sit muffled in my silence that’s strangling me gently with maudlin decay and staring at my own words which run across a wall— too far off to see.

To speak.

And you! Always certain that I’ll be still in this big empty chair waiting like a watched telephone for a call coming in three hours when I can’t use no voice in my ear.

No voice in my ear.

139

Originally published in 1980

The Day After the End of the World Will Robinson Sheff

Originally published in 1997

The day after the end of the world, a dog lifted his leg against a tree, a thin marionette hung in the toy store window, a drunk collapsed, lurching, in a rancid alley.

A fish beneath the ice heard Mrs. Hett emptying the trash, making a small bang as an empty can hit a plastic spoon.

Greasy particles floated in the dog water, broken glass cut a raccoon in the ditch across the road from Tom Brent’s house, as he warmed up his car.

Caleb brought the dead body of a squirrel to school, a paper bag full of heavy fur.

Water lay in pools on the stoops, fires filled the rooms, and smoke rose like a dirge from the chimnies.

The day after the end of the world, the beer foamed in the glass, Susie skinned her knee playing tag, steam stuck out of the kettles in the towns, and a chair broke during lunch.

Tina found out she was pregnant, And Alex threw up twice, and curtains filled the windows, blue and fat.

A dead tree was chopped into firewood and a buck’s blood ran, melting the snow.

Bicycles choked the walkways, and chewing gum stuck to the rug, a balloon popped in Haverhill, and Max sold three magazines.

The day after the end of the world, two men shot each other over a border dispute.

A four-year-old boy flew over the town, peering at the heads of unsuspecting adults.

Mrs. Valentine didn’t have enough milk, and Mr. Johnson, smoking, screamed to an invisible cat.

Michelle watched her breath steam, rubbed her hands, and Jason slicked back his hair, shaved his face, and went outside, slipping in the snow, his grandfather laid out like a carpet in the morgue.

140

7 Takes on Photogenics Susannah Bielak

Originally published in 1998

1 towards the back of every matte or glossy paperback a diminutive tulip gaze or daunting stare finds itself.

2 clever child asks why the poet chose this shot— the lighting’s all wrong.

3 impure airbrush jobs and filtered shots only elicit veinflushed laughter.

4 sometimes the face jars— its sallow skin intrigues. sometimes the head’s precocious— accessories absurd. ostentatious glasses dissuade.

5 cleft chins all promise the same: attempts at intimate articulations, treacherous bouts of fervor, inadequate bedroom tours.

6 reticent boys falling out of chairs offer visions of vehicular passion. my fingers succumb to gaps in teeth, splayed knees, intentionally awkward affects.

7 The one I liked best was the line drawing: Poet as a sliced watermelon.

141

On Being Adopted by a Geneticist Nancy Hebb

Originally published in 1979

You feed me words, dry apples dropped from the tree. Mouth-fed, I never touch your breast.

Testing my own voice, offering the seeds to you, you say “Poets are complex to make us think they’re smart.”

You scared me, naked after my bath, your dark hands plucking at my navel, laughing “Belly-button soup!”

“No one can make you happy but yourself.”

So I smiled at your teeth and tongue, pretending mothers never nursed or kissed.

“There’s no fault in not understanding.”

I wonder how your eyes so pale can hide what lives behind.

You are a geneticist, knowing I am not yours forever. Yet Something binds me to your barren belly and I swallow apples, trying to learn What.

142

The Line of Women Nancy Hebb

Originally published in 1979

Acrobats clowning for some Crown we balance one atop another, the weight of feet upon shoulders one-way, bearing down.

Your weight, Mother, makes me slump-shouldered and should I bear some day some one must bend Beneath me. raise to this line

Eve alone

stood straight under her sin.

But now mud between my toes I grasp a world without shoulders.

Curved under the weight, clutching a world of bones beneath, locked between talons trapped above we balance one upon another

143

Your Umbrella

Kitty Elmer-Dewitt

Originally published in 2008

Leaning in the doorway, a gaunt old grandfather dripping skin, all legs and nose and the smell of wet rotsweet and sick. Shake it open, move tendons and knees.

Cracking knuckles, stretching bones: a gangly bat tests his wings, shudders, and flaps, then extends, reaching and stretches taught, a hoop skirt or the sticky black lashes of a wealthy Auntie Drunk, slipping off your couch on Sundays. (Also the broad black moustache of her husband: “Sir.”) Later, leave it mangled on the corner of Wet and Defeated, a flicker of something animal crawling, tumbling, down a slushy city street.

And in the city, in September umbrellas bubble up and down the streets in polka-dots and we dart around, clutching a canopied sky of Teflon and tin.

144

The Remembered Dark Jeffrey Shotts

Originally published in 1996

At last night is pulled out across the sky, a backdrop to the binged clouds heaving in the heavy air. At last, the purge. The bulbous drops on my car and on the highway sound like my father tapping on his old Royal manual typewriter, rattling off real estate appraisals and estimates: bang-bang-bang-bang-bang and the sharp ting at the end of the line.

His dad I never knew, but he was a shop owner, where he braided leathers and was a metal worker.

My car laid down on the side of the road over an hour ago, before the shower that drenches my back, hunched over the engine with a flashlight, scanning over the metal gauges and filters and carbo-whatzits.

The rain has put a veil over everything, and my fogged glasses only allow a blur.

Dad would know what to do.

My father could do anything, just like Granddad— men that knew everything, calluses and blisters.

145

Graft, Parlier, CA

Originally published in 2017

Katie Tsuji

Grandma Teri married him in March, too early for nectarine blossoms, though it was a dry year. From the kitchen window she watches Bill on the ladder, his work gloves and hat. He sees her watching and holds up a hand. His head hidden in branches. A timer goes off behind her, and she turns away.

Grandpa Bill keeps the twigs in damp sand for weeks. Until the weather’s right, and he notches each tree, slips cutting under bark, to root. He paints wax over wound. It will heal within months. Runs a hand over the trunk of the old satsuma. Feel. Scar, knotted over by bark. Slight crook in her spine.

Untitled

Mayim Alpert Originally published in 1999 146

oneironaut 19 Emma Törzs

Originally published in 2006

There is a sleep study at the local hospital where they put you, the subject, in a dark room for 9 days. No one tells you the hour and you never know when it’s morning but each time you awaken, they shine a light on your face and try to persuade you it’s the sun.Then, while you sleep, they monitor your dreams for steeples, prairie fires, and glimpses of Hawaii.

147

Pére Tanguy

Brenda Pearson

Originally published in 1982

Mon chér Vincent, welcome to my modest shop.

Regardér, regardér. Examine my new rich blues and greens. Gaugin bought many pinks, perhaps for those fond natives he so often paints.

Quoi, of course I will try to be still.

Mon ami, unhappiness is spread from your every gesture. The little creases of your eyes are wrinkled where should be taut. If ever one expelled a heavier sigh than yours.

Each despondent word adds to the sad harmony.

Do you now care for my Japanese prints?

They are masters of the understatement, Non? Yes, that transient volcano frightens me at times. Are you afraid of erupting?

Vincent, do you not think my hair is more brown, perhaps?

Did I tell you of mon nouveau petite fille that works en Montmartre? She is a bubbling spring in which an old man can drink.

My wife, you ask, she is fine. Still waiting for the money owed. I tell her these are my friends, money is not most important. Look about you, paintings from Gaugin, Signac et Cezanne. Cézanne is troubling you, Vincent?

Non, I am quite sure you do not paint like a Madman. What does he know about art?

148

poison

Kokoro Lee

Originally published in 2006

Night, you are an ideal.

You are trouble and I like it dense, and practice words on me.

Someone in a world full of someones fulfilling the role. bitten, tossed, my saladbones break against yourhips There is always the paper bag

between us but you walk me to my door and continue to be economics.

Maimed for myself, Titus. you know me best and I am stumped and mute leaking all my blood.

149

The sky is breathing Juanita Garciagodoy

Originally published in 1972

The sky is breathing.

Its rhythms stir my windchime.

Into my eyse steps a nude man.

His back is long and to me.

With one hand he lights a match.

He likes the blue breese in his hair.

He likes the light song in his ear.

He offers me his cigarette, before he remembers I don’t smoke.

He perfects smokerings.

He’s cut off his full beard.

He sits on my bed.

Brown suns perfect his eyse.

His slightly carpenter hand finds me warm.

Our mouths kiss.

150

To Think Does Not Make It So Jack Patnode

Originally published in 1960

… we receive but what we give, And in our life alone does Nature live;

The mind grasped the world and makes of it a world of its own, a world of idea. The diseased mind grasps the world too, grasps at it, tears its images rough and jagged from the world. The garments mix in that diseased jangle of mind with other ideas and the hurried images strangely torn from nature mass with the old worn pieces of the world. Torn from books, from people, from nature, that confused tangle of mind is reality to the madman, his mad inner world.

All of us sane ones stand in relation to the world as the diseased mind stands. But our clearly perceiving, beautifully cared-for thinking mechanisms excise neat chunks of reality. Things come into the mind as images and we form ideas about them. We can stand in no other relation to the things of the world. We arrange and re-arrange our images of them and in this way we possess the world. From a height of images possessed we look out at the world and fit the new pieces in their places. Normally I do not see that the world I view is only my world. It seemed to be others’ too. Are not these types going about doing my kind of thing, living in my world, eating my dinner, wrapping their bodies in my clothes? So in the mind relaxed, off-guard as it usually is, we do not take account of imagemaking. But all the time it is my world. It is your world. It is never our world.

Happy minds adjust their images. They are charitable toward the world and receive from it a flood of beneficient new impressions to erode the bluntness of the old ones, to lave their toodecided fixity. But those little images have a firmness not entirely destructible and they confound the view. Reality outside has a weight and decisiveness too, heavier than those tough images. We are predisposed to accept this reality, though we adjust it.

Now Pirandello’s mad ones invert the predisposition. They are predisposed to turn their backs on the weight of reality. Their fountains are within. From outward forms they do not win the passion and the life. But we do, we sane ones. We know our inward patterns for what they are, subjective. Their seeming tough integuments are expandable and contractile because they contain the world outside an insubstantial show, then we have entered the play and we too are in search of an author.

I do not believe that for man madness is a relative matter. It may be for God. When we make of ideas our only world, then we are surely mad. To compound from the unreal, that is from ideas, a reality, is to create mad worlds. The problem of “Henry IV” is not the madness but the coming back from the world of madness. He must once accept what we sane ones all know. Ideas are unreal.

If we do not admit this we forfeit our sanity and with it our humanity. We dehumanize ideas by derealizing them.

The expressionists of one sort or another, the cubists, the surrealists, the playwrights of the grotesque have turned away from the painting of reality, preferring to paint ideas and making of them their only reality. They have forfeited their humanity. Pirandello, more in Six Characters in Search of an Author than in Henry IV, is following, or leading them. There he expects us to take his personages as real people who have wandered into a play. They are real of course in a different sense to Pirandello than they can be to us for they are his ideas. They are detached ideas looking for the mind of a playwright. But in Henry IV too Pirandello is chipping away at our precious naturalism.

Does he not say to us, “Who is mad?” This is an intolerable question.

151

Bagpipe Music Jeffrey Shotts

Originally published in 1996

The bagpipes drone their dream-dead drone, as if they could drown the marital slap of Orangemen’s ordered drums, as if cease-fire! would be the sweetest word followed by the silence only sea and bog have heard before.

No such peace is played. Instead, the trim ships in from fishing slip into the harbor’s mouth, with meager nets.

Chugging shovels scoop and lug clumped peat into wagons for mulching drying crops.

The sea and bogs smell like transcience: the sky deepens and solidifies, hesitating to be named twilight or evening.

A wheezing note sinks into water and moss.

Some old lay or song says that bagpipes plead spirits into waking.

The ships limp out to sea.

The shovels drudge into sod.

The ghosts have heard this song before.

152