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The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
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VOLUME: 1 - ISSUE: 6 - August - 2016
Columns: Sotto Voce -Indira Parthasarathy 04 Musings Of An Axolotl -C.S.Lakshmi 07 P&P - Yonason Goldson 63 Talespin - Era.Murukan 19 Flash Fiction: Jeff Coleman 17 Gene Hines 40 Paul Beckman 67 Book Excerpts: Ron Koertge 79 Poetry: Veronica Aldous 12 Kariuki wa Nyamu 37 Kalyanee Rajan 41 Richard King Perkins II 58 Deepalakshmi 70 Fiction: Terry Sanville 28 Valentina Cano 75 Bobbie Groth 84 Book Review: Einstein’s Beach House: Jecob M Appel/ John Looker 46 Author Interview:Emily Ramser/ Scott Thomas Outlar 51
THE WAGON MAGAZINE KGE TEAM 4/4, FIRST FLOOR, R.R.FLATS, FIRST STREET, VEDHACHALA NAGAR, KODAMBAKKAM, CHENNAI - 600 024 Phone: +91-9382708030 e-mail: thewagonmagazine@gmail.com www.thewagonmagazine.com The deeper a well is dug, the more the water that springs; the more one learns, the more the wisdom it brings - Thirukkural -396 The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
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PRASAD'S POST Was it raining the other day? I don’t remember. But I recall the ‘Chai pe characha’ I had with my poet friend Dr.Vyjayanthi Subramanian. After poetry and other topics, discussion turned to the prevalent violence in society. She was pointing out that children today are exposed to more violence than any generation in recent memory. And she continued the topic in her mail stating, ‘I am deeply against personal or inhuman attacks on any one based on their language, colour, religion or linguistic bias’ and she quoted a poem by the British poet Patience Agbabi. Seeing Red Black mum parts my continent of head with glazed black cotton begins to wind each division so fiercely my mind bleeds black. I can’t close my eyes in bed White mum uses fading navy thread the tension less cruel, more kind but the vision colour blind So I see red. I read instructions for shocking-red dye (freedom has given me the green light) yet bury the evidence under a head-tie like the insight that I see the world through a red eye where blood and heart mean more than black and white.. While Dr.Vyjayanthi reacted thus, Mahesh Shantaram of Bangalore, a subjective-documentary photographer reacted in his own way, reckoning the increasing number of racial attacks in India in the recent past, and particularly the shocking attack of a young Tanzanian woman by a mob in January 2016, in Bangalore. Off he went, with his photographic equipments, to Jaipur, Delhi and Manipal. The result is a photographic series that documents the lives of Africans living in India through a series of intimate portraits and Tasveer launched its eleventh season The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
4 of exhibitions from 27th August - 23 September 2016 at 26/1, Kasturba Cross Road, Tasveer Gallery, Sua House, Bangalore. Here, due to page restrains, I place only a couple of photographs. Please visit http://thewagonmagazine.com/ for more or at http:// www.tasveerarts.com/exhibitions.
The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
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SOTTO VOCE INDIRA PARTHASARATHY
Art and Competition A serious Tamil writer of once told me that he wrote for himself and not for others. He wrote short stories and novels and I wondered whether he could have said this if he had been a playwright. Even in the context of one being a short story writer or novelist, can it be a genuine statement to declare that he is least concerned about the readership. Writing, any kind of writing, be it an article, short story or a play, is, in my opinion, a social act. Like a kite needing the opposition of air to fly, a writer of fiction, poetry and essays needs a reader and if he writes plays, a spectator. Drama or a dance performance demands an audience- an audience seated immediately before its executants. Some people argue that there are two categories of plays, one, for reading and the other , for performance, Bharata’s ‘Natya Sadtra’ clearly indicates that all plays are written only for the stage. The playwright has definitely the audience in his mind when he writes the play. Kalidasa’s ‘Malavikagnimitra’ and ‘Sakuntala’ illustrate this point. Kalidasa was totally aware of his spectators and he always wanted a favorable review from them. Who constituted the audience those days? If it was a court performance, the audience comprised The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
6 the king, his officials and courtiers, inmates of the harem, members of the royal entourage and a select gathering of scholars and connoisseurs , who were, in fact the cause of the dramatist’s concern and anxiety. This group of uncompromising eggheads, who were noted for their critical fastidiousness, just like some of the press-reviewers of today, could make or mar the career of a young dramatist. The success or failure of one of his pieces was a matter of vital concern to him. It is not, therefore, surprising to note that in almost all the ancient Sanskrit plays, the dramatist puts the audience on the pedestal by showering praises on them through the character Sutradhara. This Kalidas does in his play ‘Sakuntala’ because it looks as though he had a bad experience in his earlier play, ‘Malavikagnimitra’. ‘Malavikagnimitra’ was, perhaps, according to some of the scholars, was written by him when he was quite young. In his play, he boldly addresses the audience in his Prologue to tell them that everything was not good because it was old and a play should not be condemned because it was new. In other words, he was addressing those die-hard critics, who were likely to compare him with the earlier playwrights like Bhasa, Saumilla and Kaviputra, to shed their nostalgia and develop an attitude of contemporariness to face the new. He further adds that his production would excel those of the old masters and win applause which is its due. It is likely that the response from the critics was not as much as he had expected that the Sutradhara in ‘Sakuntala’, undoubtedly his masterpiece, starts eulogizing the audience in no uncertain terms. He says: ‘This is an assembly of learned men. I would not consider my play great until it satisfies the profound scholars here. My gaining confidence entirely depends upon you.’ This leads us to think whether there were competition among the producers of the plays those days. That Bharata muni in his dramatic manual gives an account how the disputes between the actors should be resolved and in what way the contests should be conducted illustrates that rivalry between the various dramatic troupes did exist and, perhaps, this paved the way for a The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
7 healthy development of good plays during the classical period. May be, this could be the reason why Kalidasa introduced the theme of dispute between two dancing teachers in Malavikagnimitra. The portrayal is not only humorous but realistic. The competitive rivalry between the two teachers is subtly and cleverly kindled by the Vidushaka, which provides immense amusement and entertainment to the spectators. ‘Art flourishes only in a competitive atmosphere’ said Samuel Johnson. A Buddhist Jataka tale sums up the matter. There were two competing musicians equally proficient called Bodhisattva Guttila and Musila. The interesting aspect of this situation was Musila was the disciple of Guttila. It was Guttila, the court musician of Kasi, who had recommended his disciple’s name to be included among the royal musicians. The king appointed him for half of the salary the Guru got from the royal treasury. The disciple became popular and famous and he demanded that he should be paid the same salary his master got from the king. Guttila raised objections as this would put the guru and disciple on equal status. The king, who was now more disposed toward the disciple decided to settle the issue by organizing a competition between the master and the student. Guttila, who now knew who would win appealed to Indra to decide and the divine intervention was in his favour. Human nature has not changed from time immemorial.
Indira Parthasarathy is the pen name
of R. Parthasarathy, a noted Tamil writer and playwright. He has published 16 novels,10 plays, anthologies of short stories, and essays.He is best known for his plays, “Aurangzeb”, “Nandan Kathai” and “Ramanujar”. He has been awarded the Saraswati Samman (1999), and is the only Tamil writer to receive both the Sahitya Akademi Award (1999) and the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award (2004).He received Padma Shri in the year 2010. The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
8 MUSINGS OF AN AXOLOTL
C.S.LAKSHMI
Marching on the Roads I was recently in Singapore and Malaysia and often while going from one place to another we would walk and someone would always ask, “Is it okay to walk?” In Malaysia I went to Batu caves with young friends, where there are caves in a limestone mountain with a Murugan temple atop the mountain. One had to climb 274 steps and then some 50 more to reach the sanctum sanctorum of the temple. My young friend Yogi Sandru who happily volunteered to come with me asked a little hesitantly, “Can you climb the steps?” “Sure I can,” I said. After every 50 steps she would put a bottle of water in my hand and since she is a photographer, I thought she was asking me to hold the bottle for her. Actually, she thought I may need the water every now and then to make it to the top of the hill. I finally went up and came down without drinking the water. Once in the car, ably driven by Manimozhi, to do some more sightseeing, I began to think about the amount of walking I had done in my life. When I had just joined college my father had bought me a bus pass for three months. I took it happily but lost it the very next day. My parents were not exactly tyrants but losing a pass meant asking for bus fare in addition to the pocket money of four annas that I got once in a way. I was afraid to tell them I had been careless. They may have just admonished me a little and given me another pass but I felt too guilty to face them. So I got up every morning very early to walk The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
9 to the college to attend the first lecture which began around 8 or 8:30 a.m. I had to leave home by 6:45 a.m. and came home late giving the excuse that there were some special classes in the morning and evening. I walked for about fifteen days I think when my father thought something was amiss and questioned me and I blurted out the truth. My legs were swollen by then. Of course, I got another bus pass and some real scolding for not mentioning it earlier. Little did I know that those long walks I did all by myself, when I could think deeply about my small life and the world and other matters, had prepared me for the long marches I would participate in, in future. Marching has been so much a part of the women’s movement and other movements. We have marched against dowry, against price rise, for the nation and its unity, for communal harmony, against violence and atrocities against women, against police atrocities, for worker’s rights, rights of backward classes, rights of adivasi women, against obscene posters, against sex determination and sex pre-selection, against man-made disasters like the Bhopal Gas Tragedy and for proper relief after natural disasters like earthquakes and cyclones, against slum demolitions, against beauty contests, against exploitation at
The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
10 work place, anti-nuclear weapons marches and even marches for sufficient drinking water. And then there were those solidarity
marches on International Women’s Day every year. It was a lot of walking all of us did to bring attention to many issues and to seek justice for many problems. Not all of them were successful but it brought all of us closer and there was a time in the eighties when we signed letters saying ‘In sisterhood’. Some of the marches left deep impressions (read scars) on the mind. I particularly remember the long march for communal harmony that many of us went on, along with Asgar Ali Engineer. We went to an area in Mumbai with burnt and twisted cars, broken walls, shattered pieces of household things and people who looked at us locked inside their houses refusing to come out. Standing by a little square there Asgar Ali Engineer spoke without a mike, in a voice laden with emotion. It was a speech none of us recorded. We stood there in rapt attention for one thing and for another there were no cell phones then to take photographs or record. It was a speech on the need to learn to love and respect other human beings. It was a speech that would have been relevant in any part of the world then and would be relevant even now. The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
11 Another march I joined many years later, by accident, was an anti-war demonstration in London in 2003. I was in London when the biggest anti-war demonstration took place on February 15, 2003. I had just landed and reached my friend’s house when she asked me if I would like to join the march against war. It was a march to Hyde Park where there were going to be speeches. My friend and I joined the marchers but could not enter Hyde Park. It was reported that there were more than a million people there protesting against war. There were old and young people, little boys and girls, teenagers and babies in prams. There were people in wheel chairs, people with walking sticks and crutches and people with guide dogs. They were all there protesting against war. Watching so many people who had come to say no to war was an exhilarating experience. SPARROW (Sound & Picture Archives for Research on Women) the women’s archives I founded along with Dr Neera Desai and Dr Maithreyi Krishna Raj, has been involved with the work of alternative methods of narrating women’s history. Throughout the history of the nation, women have been out there on the roads fighting for the nation, demanding their rights, raising their voice against injustice, fighting for human dignity and demanding a world without war. We felt that unless constant efforts were made to remember this history, it would be forgotten, hidden and ignored. We decided to have a non-gallery based photo exhibition of various marches of women from early thirties as an attempt to bring women’s history to the public sphere. So in March, 2006, SPARROW decided to celebrate 8th March, International Women’s Day, with an unusual celebration. On four double-decker buses running on four important routes through the city of Mumbai, SPARROW put up a photo exhibition of women marching on the streets from 1931 onwards, fighting for various rights. The exhibition was entitled Marching on the Roads: Making Oneself, Making History. SPARROW also printed one lakh photo posters with the same photos and distributed them along with newspapers in Mumbai. It did not exactly take Mumbai by storm but we did get some excited calls from people saying they had travelled in a The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
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women’s bus. It is going to take many more marches to set the world right. And it is possible some marches will be futile but after every march when one returns tired and exhausted, there is the hope that one would have changed something, someone, somewhere. Photographs -Source: SPARROW Collections, Sound & Picture Archives for Research on Women, Mumbai.
C S Lakshmi is a researcher and a writer
who writes in the pen name - Ambai. She is one of the founder trustees of SPARROW (Sound & Picture Archives for Research on Women) and currently its director.
The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
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POEMS- Veronica Aldous A Tribute to Bart Wolffe:
I had the privilege of first meeting Bart Wolffe in 2015. He was one of the most extraordinary, gifted and lovable people I have ever met. Bart was born in Zimbabwe in 1952. He was adopted by a couple who gave him his name; George Barton Wolffe. His autobiography Bastard of the Colonies recounts his upbringing and his life up until he lived in Germany after having to flee Zimbabwe. I suggest readers may like to buy a copy from Lulu, for he tells his life story for himself, very clearly and wonderfully. We met at a café in Surrey, England. I was writing in a book with my fountain pen. I looked up when an incredibly tall and distinguished looking man gave me a radiant smile and asked me if I were a poet. ‘I am a poet,’ I replied, ‘but on this occasion I am writing a shopping list!’ I loved it when he laughed… He showed me his masterpiece, Growls and Utterances and I was completely knocked out! We sat there in the sun for several hours as I read through the book and he listened and talked. He was the most marvellous poet and had a beautiful speaking voice memorising his work and using his considerable skills as an actor to deliver it most potently and movingly… The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
14 Jointly we put together several books. Bart edited my poetry anthologies Moon Cinema and Mortal which are available on Lulu. Whilst I knew him, Bart wrote the Pebble Hunters; a wonderful collection of poems which charts our relationship and the last year of his life. Additionally, my poems in Mortal are testament the inspirational effect he has had on my life. Poems were at the heart of our world, this was a deep source of expression which we able to share. Bart was a marvellous character and a real gentleman; he had friends all over the world and a huge following for his writing. His work is especially respected and loved in Zimbabwe, his beloved homeland. -Veronica Aldous 12/08/2016
Familiarity For beloved Bart Wolffe
Playwright, actor, painter and poet 1952-2016
We noted the similarities, breathed that same air I sketched differences as if you were a wilder creature Although you would have said the same of me- and often did! Some sense that we were connected as long lost family Hugs the happy semblance to the self as if in glee – All of us seek to see the same in others, the colour Does not detract from unity, so much under the same stars We gazed upon, you marked the constellations that were hidden The blazing African dream theatre that sparked my mind That lived within you, my counterpart The lovely otherness that walked with me and spoke to me As if the sea had brought us shipwrecked on the same terrain To commune together and heal what we recognised In each other… Two minds in astonished recognition – A woman and a man. The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
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She Dreams of Three Guitars Along the Unpath, covens whisper of the caves Reaching up to grasp the olive groves Mouths ready for the unripe harvest Strum the guitar number 1, maja For amber colonnades Reaching back to violet skies… Here on the market, thieves sell honesty It’s a heavy basketful, they lean On consciousness, dead weighted eyes Strum guitar number 2, duende Above chasms and gorges A bright bird drops red cherries… A dark field where she wanders Which door is hers, which door? Where did she leave her fine ambition? Vaquero, guitar number 3 porfavor. In the magenta sunset When the green ray hits the ocean floor Three gold bodied senoritas For you Cortez, for you… The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
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What is it like to lie in the attic concealed with the covering of dust upon the dust cover? I’ll tell you: the nights come one on one the little stars rise their eyes alight on the whitening shape of me up there with the spiders and the carcasses of moths but I’m quite happy with my lucubration, my stump of candle the scratchy pen, the torn up cloth I use for writing, drawing you won’t see my art- it’s all invisible, except the scrap I’m working on, it takes me years to get the details right but line on line and word on word the pieces come together I’m making it slowly, there’s cosmology in my fingers the stiller I lie and the smaller my movementsthe better the outcome if you come up those wooden stairs, you won’t find me there I am not discernible, I am wrapped in shrouds, I’m ectoplasm shadows of shadows and beetles on the window pane you’d think I was a worn out chairI ‘m up here waiting for moulds to erupt into flower the cracks in the walls to whisper some secrets I’ve got so little and I only want you and you’re so slow coming, I wish you were here sometimes I whine and whimper because I love you that’s quite annoyingespecially for the visitors who are downstairs sometimes I sing and that’s much better then they knock upon the ceiling shout ‘shut up, shut up!- o you noisy crow!’ The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
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crazy zealot clockwork beast Under a bright blue hammock of cloud, small squatting creature Plays on the windscreen, miraculously apple green, swart pinprick eyes Thin legs like violent springs, apparatus for repeating The same slight head turn, the same high bounding The same monotonous muezzin shreeshreeshree lime juice meadow fingernail jerky mechanism hardly more alive than a bending stem‌. I forgot whatever it was that made me shake my head thoroughly as if my brain was full of replicating fractal visions.
Veronica Aldous is a poet and writer. She was trained at Ravensbourne College in Fine Art and film making. Her work is published in HQ and Orbis and other literary journals. She is also an artist and published illustrator specialising in mixed media, watercolour and assemblage. She lectures in Creative Writing and Fine Art . Her work is published in Moon Cinema and Mortal , now available on Lulu books. Her website is www.veronicaldous.wordpress.com The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
18 FLASH FICTION
JEFF COLEMAN
Journey’s End
It was big; World-sized big. It towered over her, blocking her path. So, this was what her journey had come to. Centuries of trudging through desert and mountains, sea and jungle, space and time, only so that minutes from her journey’s end, a stone wall could block her path. It shot up into the sky and out of sight, extended to the left and right for as far as the eye could see. She crumpled to the dusty ground, bowed her head and cried. She could remember when she’d first set out, how young and beautiful she was, so full of ambition and drive. She cleaved to her mission with almost childlike devotion. Then she aged. Her features weathered, until she was like many of the deserts she’d passed along the way. Youthful optimism yielded first to caution, then to exhaustion. In the end, only gritty persistence and determination saw her through so close to the other side. She’d faced many obstacles, pushed through quite a few toils, trials and dangers. There were times when she was convinced she couldn’t go on, when she thought in long bouts of despair that she The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
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might as well lay down to die, letting her dry bleached bones adorn her incomplete path to serve as a warning to others who might dare follow in her footsteps. Then she reconsidered, thinking perhaps she should encourage rather than frighten fellow explorers. After all, more were setting out every day for the same reason she had, to be a part of something larger, something transcendent and everlasting. So instead she let the struggle bear witness to the fact that anything was possible, that if you wanted something badly enough you could seize it by shear will-power alone. And that’s all this was, she realized, another obstacle, one more test before she could finally indulge in the fruit of her labour. She only had to be strong, to pick herself up from the ground one last time. She rose. Beat the dust out of her shirt, pants and boots; Wiped away her tears. She stared at the rock face before her, until a grim smile pushed past her ancient features. “Okay,” she said to the wall, “Let’s do this.” She launched herself at it, pried, picked and climbed for as long as she could. But the hard granite surface was unyielding. It dug into her skin, scratching, tearing, and bleeding. Then, just when she’d given all her strength, when she felt she had no blood left to shed, a harsh baritone rumble swallowed the world. The wall moved downward, sucked into the Earth. She watched, mesmerized, until first the sky, then the mountains beyond became visible. An entire vista opened before her eyes, a glittering otherworldly refuge of gold, silver and crystal. It was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. When the last of the wall had disappeared beneath the ground, she stepped forward. She’d done it. She was on the other side.
Jeff Coleman, Modern Literary Fantasy Author http://blog.jeffcolemanwrites.com/ The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
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TALESPIN Era.Murukan
Fast enough to reach, slow enough to preach Years ago, I was running around and across cemeteries. I was then a young and supposed to be upcoming techno banker, working for a bank at their New Delhi operations, as a back office executive. The said uncertainty about my future sprang up from my job description as a techno banker. A horde of well meaning friends wryly observed it all sounded sinister like binary existentialism. I told them it is in fact akin to Chinese Metaphysics. Like what a character of a small town newspaper in Charles Dickens’ ‘The Pickwick Paper’ observes, you blend the data in Encyclopaedia Britannica on metaphysics and any sensible writing therein about China and there emerges a well written newspaper article on the unusual subject. Two searches on the internet, one for technology and the other for banking would ferret out the necessary information to define my assigned role, playing which to the bits and bytes would take me on a promising career path strewn with elements of rigor, risks, rewards and recommendations. At the threshold of the information revolution of the nineteen eighties, unwilling to spend a fortune on recruiting thoroughbred technocrats to manage the digital show, regular bankers like me already in service were reoriented by our bank as technologists and rendered useful again. We were trained for a month and a half on programming computers and were declared as those with special skills. I was a techie by compulsion and a banker by profession. The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
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The bank transferred me on a miniscule promotion to Delhi to do whatever that could be done with my newly acquired knowledge, on the newly installed computers. So I, promptly rented a sparsely furnished first floor apartment in Lajpath Nagar area of New Delhi, to anchor myself and get going in the wilderness that is Delhi. My landlord happened to be a retired army major, as more than half of the house owners in Delhi are. Observing that I come from down south, a few thousand miles away from the capital of the nation and am still a confirmed bachelor, my landlord without losing further time went on to play his self assumed role of my benefactor and mentor with a missionary zeal, to guide me on how I should ‘regementalize’ my existence to make my productivity optimal, fine tune and groom my behaviour as a bachelor, be a survival instinct driven Delhiite and what not. Alcohol was a strict no-no for me to consume anywhere in the residential premises and coming home late after 10 PM was an uncivilised act not easily pardoned. Physical well being was a must and I had to keep a check on what I eat in the neighbourhood dabha, the roadside restaurant serving leavened bread, butter chicken, grilled red meat and spicy Madras curry. Anything oily or with enormous unsaturated fat was to be outright shunned according to the major sahib. To economize my monetary outflow, I was also nudged to use to the maximum, the office canteen serving subsidized food, opting for simpleton fare like dhal chawal (rice with lentils) which usually make the standard diet of infants down south. That drove me to go for my own cooking which would be nothing more than a minimalist breakfast of bread and hot milk. The burnt toast I was skilled enough to make with remarkable consistency was from the Government manufactured and sold as ‘Modern Bread’. Toasting was done on a Nutan stove, manufactured and mass marketed by the Government owned Indian Oil Corporation. Kerosene, the fuel to keep the stove burning was also made available by the same Government undertaking. Not stopping at that, the Government with a motherly care for the citizens especially the teetotaller bachelors from down south, also made it a point to deliver through The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
22 the state run Mothers’ Diary, pasteurised rich creamy milk through automatic milk vending machines installed at most street corners. Thus with the retired major and the Government of India taking due parental care of me, it would become my prime duty to abide by their regulations as a token of gratitude. Though I could once in a while forego the regulations of the Government, it would be important I should not drift away from the benevolent control regimen of the retired major. I knew I heavily ran the risk of getting thrown out of the residential premises in that case. Marriage was a pipe dream those days as the elders in the family had much important things to do like attending music concerts, standing at the tail end of serpentine queues to buy a state lottery ticket and being on ‘fasting on snacks’ requesting the blessings of specific deities, perhaps for winning the lottery. You don’t consume rice on these ‘fasting’ days and can contently settle upon a diet of high on carbohydrate refreshments like idly, dosa and vada, thrice a day! At office, my role definition again underwent a change. When there was not much work to do at the information front, I was supposed to play the role of a front desk executive as well. Both reckoned together, would require an immense capacity for endurance and a lot of stamina to interact with the customers and the computers. My landlord, the retired major declared in all solemnity that it would be in order for me without losing further time to take a plunge into a daily routine of running, to keep me fit as a Stradivarius fiddle. That indeed set the tone of my morning marathons. Every morning pat at 5 AM the retired major would keep banging on the doors of my apartment to wake me as well the entire neighbourhood up. Then, I had to take to my heels without fail, in his august company. As we would start running beneath the then newly constructed Defence Colony Flyover at a stone’s throw from our place, for a warm up run, he would pull up and goad me to proceed further, run upto and into Lodhi Gardens and duly return without any respite in between. Lodhi Gardens are the resting place for a considerable number of Delhi sultanate rulers of the 15th Century and their kith and kin. The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
23 More than anywhere else in Delhi, they are there in eternal slumber in ornamental tombs. That would explain my running in the land of the dead as the day was born in all its splendour. The Government appeared to have gone a step or a few laps further. In addition to making available to me all Governmental goodness as nutritiousbread, tasty milk, subsidised kerosene and best of the breed stove to take care of myself, I also had a sort of Government company during my daily walks. The Deputy Prime Minister of the then predecessor Government who was a humility-personified septuagenarian, used to take a stroll at the same gardens where I was running for good. Being one with plain simple rustic manners, he never failed to impress me with his benign smiles and unassuming demeanour. If not for my landlord or the then ruling Government, it was for the pleasure of smiling back at him and for the occasional exchange of pleasantries, I would not mind running or jogging around all time in the gardens, provided my office approved of that. As the elderly statesman would take slow strides not necessarily because of age but also due to his presumably making mental notes on how to manoeuvre his next political move, I would be reckoning when I could conclude my run and proceed right away to the dinky south Indian eatery in Lodhi colony. Of course, on Sundays, I made it a point not to cook at home, Major willing or not. At half past seven, that modest eatery would often open to serve hot idly and vada for breakfast along with a small cup of strong filter coffee. Thirty minutes after, the eatery would commence serving upma cooked in a haste and tepid coffee with the second extract of the coffee decoction cajoled out of an already drained coffee filter. A timely entry at the eatery for a sumptuous breakfast would set the tone of my return run homewards as well. Those cemetery runs made me what I am now – running ever since. After a stint in the Capital of India that lasted for four years, I was transferred to Mumbai then called Bombay, again with a small promotion to go along with the transfer. From a simple techno banker I had turned into a senior techno banker, though I am still clueless as The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
24 to what kind of expertise and experience I had accumulated to qualify for the senior tag. It was my first day in Bombay. The runner in me activated the biological clock sharp at 5 AM at my Matunga residence and I, feeling fresh, sprang up and darted into the Gymkana Club grounds near my place, as it was still dark everywhere, the metro waiting for day to break. The vast expanse of the playground was not deserted on the wee hours of the day, as I thought. As my trainer clad feet felt something on the ground, I slowed up my run and then abruptly pulled up utterly shocked as rows of men and women rose from the ground, wriggling out of their blankets, men hastily pulling up their pajamas and women tucking into their waist their sarees and covering their bare chest with their hands. They started shouting at me in a medley of languages that I guess was with choice cuss words as I had intruded into their privacy and slumber. They all used the playground for their respite at night under the open sky and were reluctant to be woken up at the early hours by an itinerant jogger quite new to the city and its ways. I walked down the path, mentally counting all those underprivileged I could spot in that vast space when I was hit on my forehead by a projectile. It was a kookaburra cricket ball bowled at an appropriate pace to bend in search of me and hit me hard. Benumbed with pain I stood there massaging my temple when a chorus of distant voices demanded I throw the ball back to them immediately and clear off. The neighbourhood cricket team had earnestly started their Sunday morning practice with no knowledge about my interruption, as I came to know a little while later. A regular Bombayite foe of mine on being told of this aborted attempt to keep fit in Bombay casually observed – ‘in any case you will from tomorrow start running up and down all the foot over bridges and meandering your course through crowded rail platforms to catch the 9:17 Dadar Fast VT, 9.48 Brwli slow Chgate, 9:21 Chmbr Fast Dckyrd Rd, 18:03 VT Slow Thane…’ He went on merrily like a control tower admonishing a trainee pilot for flying too close to the airport, expressing strong sentiments The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
25 about his altitudinal and attitudinal issues before providing navigational guidance. He was a walking suburban railway time table with awareness of all short and long names and in-depth knowledge of how the local train life line of Bombay operates through all the three major routes. He had a point, after all, I understood. Enlightened thus, I became voluntarily oblivious to the bite by the runner’s bug, developing a thick skin and packed my trainers back in the wooden box, pushed deep into the attic. Having quit the bank’s services a few years thereafter, I commenced my stint at San Jose, California as a banking project manager for an Information Technology major. This major is not a friendly human being like my erstwhile landlord in Delhi but a corporate who would expect me, anointed as a banking project manager, to know in depth about a thousand and three hundred and eighty seven aspects of retail, corporate, private, commercial and all other types of banking and banks except Blood Bank. Based in California, I and my small team of Japanese senior citizen workmen had to touch base with a group of Japanese in Tokyo and stay in touch with another two in Yokohama and Kyoto. These groups constituted mostly of pretty young women who kept uttering ‘moshi, moshi’ and smiling both in Japanese and in English throughout the daily long haul and long-drawn video conferences. I know it all sounds inappropriate to touch base and stay in touch with these charming ladies, but, corporate jargons being corporate jargons, we could do nothing about that. The Japanese are work horses who never tire of working at desk for twenty hours a day or more and through seven days a week. They appeared to view going home at the end of the day a carnal sin and were fully convinced that the very purpose of existence is for working at office till one faints down dead. Appropriately sensitized culturally and imbibing the Japanese work culture, I plunged headlong into work, reducing effectively the time available for all other pursuits in life with my daily exercising routines of running and jogging becoming the major causalities. It was then I commenced walking to office, a task that would have been earnestly carried out by only two persons in the whole of The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
26 USA at the turn of the present century. The second individual was one of my Japanese colleagues impressed and influenced sufficiently by me, who joined me in the last mile of my walk, discussing nothing else except the project in progress in terms of application widgets produced, tested, certified and integrated. He sometimes walked all the way from the neighbourhood town of Fremont, where he stayed. Departing from the USA, I travelled to Europe as the call of duty came from there through an email instructing me to land forthwith in the United Kingdom. To start with, I was having my lodging at Cromwell Road in London, near the Earls’ Court tube station. Like a fish taking to water, on a beautiful English summer morning, I pushed myself into my pair of jeans and canvass shoes, ready to run all the way to Kensington Gardens. My friendly Pakistani innkeeper told me to tread with caution in pre dawn London metropolis, especially while in parks and other public enclosures. ‘While jogging at Kensington Garden, every now and then, stop, turn around and make sure no one is following you’, he suggested. He explained that such caution is necessary to be exercised as these are the times when joggers are waylaid and walkers are mugged even in the mother of all cities. I abided by his words of caution and on reaching Kensington Gardens, conducted a peculiar routine like the comedian in an Indian mythological film who appears as the side kick of the villainous magician – I ran with gusto a few yards, stopped abruptly, did a ninety degrees smart right turn, cast a hawkish look at both sides, turn another right angle clockwise, look at the path I have traversed, turn 180 degrees again and resume running. The calamity extended further, I have to say. An aged baroness looking British lady who could be a wealthy resident of the posh Kensington neighbourhood was taking her little poodle for a walk, on leash. The dog on looking at my gyrations was somewhat terrified and though seemingly house trained, eased itself well ahead of entering the ‘Pets’ Toilet’ area. The lady with the dog with a downcast look of she having committed a heinous offence, walked fast past me, admonishing the dog in whispers. The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
27 Last week, when dawn broke in Chennai, I sprang up from my bed and imbibing a mug full of hot and strong filter coffee, I set out on my running routine. The problems started erupting even as I began searching for my shoe laces beneath the bed. August is one of the months in Chennai when it is sultry even atearly morning and the weather becomes unbearably hot during the day. Of course it is so for eleven out of twelve months of the year and Chennaites are perfectly tuned to this, sweating it out nonchalantly while engrossed in all types of pursuits. So, I changed to my pair of jeans and pulled up the socks. As I had the trainers in place and the laces tied up snug, I was drenched in sweat from head to toe, looking like a Hippopotamus amphibius out of water. Do I take my mobile phone for my jogging? Being a corporate entity at the one up the bottom rung of the career ladder and with many more steps to go, our customers and clients would always be willing to pounce on me and reduce me to a piece of excreta for some perceived bug in the software or for a week’s delay in making the deliverables as committed. Not to disappoint them, I pushed the mobile phone deep into my trouser packet. My sixth sense warned me that the smart phone may fall down while on the run which would be the best thing to happen in the short run but would definitely be bringing in more problems in its wake, strategically. The phone was then clipped to the waist belt along with the lengthy chord terminating at a pair of tiny interconnected head phones, making me look like a trainee astronaut about to practice his moon walk. Time to run, my senses signalled. What about my pair of spectacles? Without it will I be able to spot the hindrances big and small on the way? These would be in the form of trenches created by stealthily removed manhole covers, the steep speed breakers to be negotiated like going up and coming down a hill and shallow pits dug out by the electricity, telecom and water supply departments of the Government for maintenance of supply lines or for sheer fun. Overnight rains would convert these dug outs into micro reservoirs perfect for breeding all exotic species of mosquitos. Without the The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
28 glasses, I would be easily entrapped anywhere down the road. The glasses were duly picked up, worn and securely fastened. And the wallet too got in. I started in right earnest with my trouser pockets bulging at the seams. I ran wherever the footpath was laid and was available for jogging without any squatter or a parked vehicle blocking my way. Where there was an encroachment on the pavement, I took to the road braving a traffic menacingly building up bi-directionally as speeding buses, water tankers, fish carts and recklessly driven rickety three wheelers painted yellow and two wheelers occupying every inch of the roadmoved at breakneck speed. I deftly negotiated my way away from the diesel and petrol monsters racing on the bitumen and reached the park. A huge gathering of people was moving at fox-trot, two in a row and one row closely following the other, looking very much like the official delegation accompanying a minister of state on an official visit from another nation, walking with all respect, dignity and solemnity to place a wreath at the cemetery of a national leader. They were supposed to be the joggers and walkers and the park won’t be accommodating one more. I turned and ran away from the urban crowd back into the concrete jungle.
Murugan Ramasami • Techno banker and project management professional heading large banking IT projects in UK, Thailand and USA • An author with 28 books to his credit, novelist, short story writer, poet, tech-travel-humor columnist (Tamil and English) • Playwright in Tamil • Movie script - dialogue writer • Translator from Malayalam, English to Tamil The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
29
FICTION
Terry Sanville
City Hall On Monday morning of his third workweek, small arms fire
echoed throughout the office, a sharp popping, four quick blasts. George grabbed at thin air for his imaginary helmet and dropped behind the desk. The fluorescent lights hummed, telephones buzzed, computer keyboards continued clacking. He peered over the desktop. Outside his cubical, people walked along the passage as if nothing had happened. Jennifer passed his opening, then turned and strolled inside. “What are you doing?” she demanded. George pulled himself up and smoothed his necktie. “I…I thought I heard something. It sort of freaked me out.” He felt his face burn. “You’re…you’re not having one of those PTSD attacks, are you?” He scowled at his supervisor. “No! I’ve been back from the Sand Box five years. I passed my last psych eval with–” “What did you hear?” “This sounds crazy, but…I heard something that…nah, it was too sharp to be an M9.” The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
30 “What’s an M9?” “An Army handgun.” Jennifer’s eyes widened and a grin stretched her pretty face, “So you’ve heard it too? Welcome to the Planning Department where all hell can break loose.” “You never told me I’d be working in a combat zone.” “There’s more than one type of those. Come on, I’ve got something to show ya.” He followed her out a frosted glass door into the polished terrazzo hallway. Her high heels cracked like pistol shots against its hard surface. He watched Jennifer descend the stairs in front of him, her mid-thirties body nicely wrapped in stylish civvies. George had felt out of place in college after the Army; all the women seemed too young and clueless. But blonde-haired Jen had real potential. At the bottom of the stairs, she swiped her ID Card through the reader, opened a heavy door, and clicked on the lights. A dim glow reflected off enormous puddles that spotted the concrete floor. Against the basement’s far wall, shoulder-high stacks of banker boxes occupied a dry area. Jennifer stepped inside and motioned for him to follow. The sweet dank smell of mold tickled his nose. Their footsteps echoed as they walked toward a massive steel door that looked like a bank vault’s entrance. “This basement leaks like a sieve every time it rains.” She tugged on the door’s handle and it swung open to reveal a huge room with map tubes and file cabinets. She pointed across the dark space. “They had their firing range set up against that wall.” “Firing range? Who?” “When this place first opened, the Police used it as a pistol range. After it shut down in the early ’60s, people upstairs kept hearing shots. At first the cops would respond. But after all these years they just kiss it off to City Hall ghosts.” George scowled. “Hey, I know what I heard…and I’ve heard plenty.” “Relax, I’ve heard it too. The maintenance guys claim it’s the heat pipes coughing, but ghosts make a better story.” George grinned. “I thought planners were supposed to steer The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
31 clear of the supernatural.” “You really are a newbie.” She laughed. “Wait till you’re dealing with the mayor and his cronies. You’ll need every angle you can find.” “Yeah, what’s his story?” George had met the mayor his first week on the job, a short guy with a broad grin and flowing gray hair. But the man’s black eyes had cut him cold. Jennifer shuddered. “He got elected about six months ago but hasn’t quite arrived in the 21st Century…and he’s one creepy womanizer.” “Huh,” George grunted. He admired Jen’s profile. I’ve never worked for a woman before. But I’m sure she can handle the mayor. “So what should I do if I hear pistol shots?” he asked. “Ignore them. Convince yourself that it’s just the pipes. I haven’t been down here in almost two years. All the staff stays away.” “Why’s that?” “I’m not saying anything more. I don’t want my new associate screaming to the horizon.” George liked her calling him her associate. He continued daydreaming as they climbed the stairs back to the topsy-turvy world of city planning. *** Jennifer picked up the telephone receiver. The voice on the line made her shiver and she took a couple slow breaths before speaking. “How can I help you this morning, Mayor Sanchez?” “I can think of lots of ways,” he said, but hurried on. “I got a call from Maldona Enterprises. They want to set up a meeting with you and I to talk about their Cherry Canyon project.” She groaned to herself. She and George had already met with Maldona’s reps and the developers had gone away steaming. Jennifer waited a few heartbeats before answering. “You know, Mr. Mayor, I’ve already gone over what they need to do. A full environmental report must be prepared before they can–” “I know all that,” he snapped. “I just want us to get off on the right foot with these guys. If we hassle them too much they’ll take their project somewhere else. Think of all the tax revenue we’d lose.” The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
32 “So why the meeting?” she asked. “To make sure you and your staff understand the importance of what they’re trying to do. The longer the processing drags on, the more we lose.” “I understand that, but–” “I’m not sure that new planner of yours does. He’s sort of a ‘head in the clouds’ guy. Not much experience.” “George Sanders is one of my best. He and I are teaming up to make sure that it’s–“ “Look, I’m not trying to interfere…but as Mayor, I need to be involved. Maldona already has a battle on its hands with the neighborhood groups. I don’t want them fighting City Hall as well.” She heard the impatience build in his voice. “How about Thursday afternoon at two here in the Planning Department?” “No!” the mayor barked. “I told them we’d meet at their offices. They want their engineer to go over the plans and other stuff.” “Mayor Sanchez, if they have information, they should submit it to us with their application and–” “They have a big conference room where we can spread everything out.” “We have the entire basement,” Jennifer countered. “I’ll set up some tables. We can–” “Good, just do it. I want to keep a low profile on this. I’ve never been down there… but the basement sounds perfect. I’ll see you and, ah, George on Thursday.” The dial tone buzzed in her ear and she slammed the receiver down. Pushing herself back from the desk she sprang from her chair, walked to George’s cubical and peered through the opening. He had his back to her, his hands flying over the computer keyboard. She liked the way he’d let his chestnut-brown hair grow out over the past six months. Soft curls hid the collar of his white shirt. She wrapped on the partition and George spun around, taking her in with green eyes. “Clear your calendar for Thursday afternoon. We’ve got a meeting with Maldona and the mayor.” The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
33 George shook his head. “I figured that would happen. I talked with their engineer this morning and he’s really ticked.” “Look, Cherry Canyon’s a big project that the mayor’s already pushing. We’ve got to walk the razor’s edge on this one.” “I know, I know,” George said and sighed. “One of their reps told me how much Sanchez supports them. I tried telling him that they’d need more than that but…well, it got kinda ugly.” Jennifer frowned. “How ugly?” “Oh, ya know, he threatened to get me reassigned, get me fired, maybe worse.” “Worse?” “You really want to know?” George asked softly. “Of course.” “Well, the word ‘disappear’ was used along with our names.” Jennifer gasped. “You’ve got to be kidding. I’ve worked at this ten years and that’s a first.” He grinned. “Maybe I should pack my piece for this meeting.” “Your piece?” “Yeah, I’ve got this nice little Beretta that I picked up after Iraq.” “No…no…don’t do that. But are you sure you heard him right?” “Oh yeah. They’re about ready to take us out if we play hardball.” “Maybe you should sit out Thursday’s session.” “No way.” George chuckled. “I’m not leaving you alone with those sharks.” Jennifer smiled and turned to go. “Just leave your pistol at home and set up some tables in the basement map room.” “Hey, who needs guns when we’ve got ghosts.” *** To George, they looked like Mafioso from the 1930s, wearing classic double-breasted suits and wingtip Florsheims. He and Jennifer sat under banks of yellowed fluorescent lights, across a battered table from two of Maldona’s hulking reps. George noticed a bulge under one of their coats and caught a glimpse of a shoulder holster strap. His stomach tightened. The developer’s chief engineer droned on about their project’s The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
34 benefits. He and Jen stayed quiet. The mayor made his own pitch in support. “You guys are crazy if you think we’re going to pay for flood protection for the existing neighborhood.” The project engineer pointed angrily at Jennifer. “Mr. Duran, you’re aware that grading the hills and rerouting the creek will worsen downstream flooding.” “Those people have had problems for years. Why should we have to pay…” “You need to install safeguards so that your project doesn’t make their problems worse.” “But the cost of that will blow our budget.” “Well then, who do you expect to pay?” George asked. The engineer turned and glared at him. “Now hold on, George,” the mayor said. “The City has a flood control program we can use to solve these kinds of problems.” “You’re correct, Mayor Sanchez,” Jennifer said. “But the City money is used to help solve existing problems and not those caused by new development. One of the Mafioso growled, “Do you know how many millions we’ve invested in Cherry Canyon?” His partner added, “I’ll tell ya what. I think you guys are trying to kill this project.” “We’re not trying to kill anything,” Jennifer said. “Good, ’cause I’m so pissed, I’m about ready to cap somethin’.” The room quieted. George reached for his sidearm instinctively but found empty air. He glanced sideways at Jennifer, at her pale face with its dusting of freckles, wide eyes and trembling lips. The mayor cleared his throat. “Now gentlemen, and, ah, ladies, we’ve discussed this for some time. Why don’t we take a break and collect our…our thoughts?” “Great idea,” George said and stood. Leaning over Jennifer’s shoulder he whispered, “Let’s grab coffee upstairs and let ’em blow off steam.” She nodded and the two left the map room and hurried across The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
35 the concrete floor, dodging the puddles and barely controlling their nervous laughter. “Did you hear that guy?” George asked. “I thought I was in some sleazy gangsta film.” “Yeah, I saw you reaching for your firearm. Just how long were you with the MPs anyway?” “Four years. Still haven’t broken old habits.” Jennifer sighed. “I think we should call the cops. These guys are taking ugly to a new level… and we’ll probably need a mediator to–” “Why don’t we let them cool off for a couple of days. I’ll set up a meeting first thing next week and ask the Police to send a detective to sit in. The cops look like engineers anyway.” “That’s a good idea. It’s time to call in the Cavalry and–” Four rapid blasts cut her short. The roar bounced off the hard floor and walls. Jennifer screamed. George pulled her behind a support column. The mayor charged from the map room and ran for the exit. Maldona’s men followed close behind. The stairwell door boomed shut behind them. George tightened his arm around Jen’s waist. He felt her body tremble and gave her a squeeze. “It’s all right, just the heat pipes.” “Yeah, sure. That’s what I keep telling myself.” “Wait here, I’ll turn off the lights.” George made a move toward the map room. Jennifer pulled him back into her arms. “Let maintenance do it. We’ve gotta get out of here.” “Yeah, those pipes can get really nasty…” *** When George arrived at work Monday morning, Jennifer pushed him into her office and shut the door. She sat in her swivel chair behind an oak desk strewn with paperwork, hands clasped, eyes blinking rapidly. “Are you okay?” George asked. “Have a bad weekend?” “Somebody had a bad weekend. Have you caught the news this morning?” “Nah, I don’t like getting angry before I start work.” The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
36 Jennifer opened her top desk drawer, removed a newspaper and laid it before him. He stared open-mouthed at the headlines. Mayor Sanchez Dies of Heart Attack topped the page while farther down, Three Maldona Employees Drown in Boating Accident. George quickly scanned both news reports. He looked at Jennifer. Her lips quivered and began curling upward. “Hey look, Jen. I had nothing to do with any of that, honest,” he cracked. “I don’t even like boats.” “I know that, silly. But it’s time I showed you the whole story. Come on, we have some filing to do.” She snatched the newspaper and headed for the basement. The map room remained as they had left it the week before. She moved to a cabinet, opened the second drawer from the bottom and removed a folder. Sitting at the table, she slid it in front of him. “Here, look at this.” “What am I supposed to be looking for?” “Just start at the beginning and read everything.” The folder contained a half dozen newspaper clippings beginning with a report from 1961. Two policemen shot and killed each other at the basement firing range in City Hall – a love triangle cited as the cause for violence. A couple news clips reported gunfire but no evidence of foul play. Three others described the unexpected deaths of local developers, real estate magnates or City officials. George finished reading and shook his head. “So what’s this supposed to mean? I get that the dead cops are the City Hall ghosts that take target practice every now and then.” Jennifer smiled. “What the news clips don’t mention is that the people who died had all met in this room shortly before they gave up the ghost, so to speak… and each time, shots were heard.” “You think the cop ghosts are taking out the bad guys?” George laughed. She glared at him. “No. Why would they? But something else is using their legacy as a cover.” “Something else?” George continued laughing. “City Hall.” The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
37 “What the hell you mean, City Hall? This leaky old building is just…just–” “It’s not just the building, it’s the institution that’s supposed to serve this town.” “An institution that kills people? That’s crazy. That’s…that’s beyond crazy.” “Yeah, well why do you think none of the staff holds meetings down here? They’ve heard the stories and are too scared to tempt fate. Remember, this is one place ya can’t fight.” The smile faded from George’s face. “You really expect me to believe that some force…” “Believe what you want, I’m just saying.” George pushed his chair back and stared at the far wall. “You knew about this when you scheduled the meeting with Maldona’s men and the mayor.” Jennifer grinned. “Let’s just say I was testing a theory.” She tore the front-page articles from the newspaper, laid them in the file and returned it to its hiding place. George shook his head. “Well, I’ll never go to another meeting down here.” “Ah come on,” Jennifer crooned. She slipped an arm around his waist and planted a quick kiss on his lips. “What’s wrong, can’t handle a little City Hall justice?” “Maybe not,” he said, rising. “Who knows when I’ll end up on the wrong side?” Terry Sanville lives in San Luis Obispo, California with
his artist-poet wife (his in-house editor) and one skittery cat (his in-house critic). He writes full time, producing short stories, essays, poems, and novels. Since 2005, his short stories have been accepted by more than 220 literary and commercial journals, magazines, and anthologies including The Potomac Review, The Bitter Oleander, Shenandoah, and Conclave: A Journal of Character. He was nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize for his stories “The Sweeper,” and “The Garage.” The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
38
POEMS
Kariuki wa Nyamu
WANTED, DEAD OR ALIVE! Hey, what wrong did we execute? So that you hurl artillery that would shatter lives of compatriots old to young, rich to poor! Why would you wish misfortune to benign neighbours? How dare you haughtily spark a vicious gun skirmish! Even when you are on the bloody trail? Oh heck, must you unremittingly contemplate evil? Hmm, tell us how much pleasure you obtain when you disgust humankind to the bone marrow or do you think history will crown you a champion in honour of your atrocious days on earth when you’ll certainly be no more? You, whose undertaking is to solely petrify civilians! Traumatizing even street urchins in the guise of your cowardice The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
39 but, will you candidly let us know Must you blanket our beloved land with ferocious scars? Look, when you lose control of your craving to slay We see you raid from bus stops to prayer gatherings from restaurants to rescue camps from sports motels to schools from city malls to downtown stalls from security posts to State offices seemingly, the location matters not When you are thirsty of blood! Oh heck, we’ve successfully failed to understand what you really want? Hey there, if truth be told, Does our peace and accord itch you? Hmm, what gratification do you really derive? When you make our hearts bleed profoundly and trouble our minds? Won’t you ever end your tribulations? What deity do you really pray? That would permit pitiless bloodbath of guiltless wananchi* But hey! Reckless one, Are you aware that you are WANTED, DEAD OR ALIVE?
*Kiswahili word for citizens. The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
40
HELA*
Money, the comptroller of mankind the necessary evil one sweet to chew, yet bitter to spend the silent whore from pocket to pocket the sole sire of greed, tyranny and thievery mother of wickedness and transgression the daring combatant in times of war and famine firm pillar of delinquency in public offices you who excites the youth and tortures the aged the greatest enemy of paupers and bosom companion of the wealthy Dear Hela, If only I could turn you upside-down and dissect you inside-out I’m sure I’d see nothing else apart from the fierce face of a true Miser, an Oppressor, quite Nagging and an Enigmatic York!
*Kiswahili word for money
Kariuki wa Nyamu is a passionate Kenyan poet, radio playwright, editor and high school teacher. He is a graduate of English, Literature and Education from Makerere University, Uganda. He is published in A Thousand Voices Rising (2014), Boda Boda Anthem and Other Poems (2015), Best New African Poets 2015 Anthology, Jalada Africa 04: The Language Issue, Bonus Edition (2016), Love- A Collection of Poetry and Prose on Loving and Being in Love (2016) He is presently pursuing a Master of Arts in Literature at Kenyatta University, Kenya. The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
41 FLASH FICTION
Gene Hines
Holocaust
I found her in the city. She was sitting on a park bench, a shriveled up old woman. I sat down beside her and said, “Hot, ain’t it?” She didn’t move her head to look at me or nothing, didn’t say anything. “Hot ain’t it,” I said again. She still didn’t answer. I watched a bird scrabbling in the dirt, trying to find something to eat. It didn’t find anything and flew off. The old woman didn’t move, say anything, or act like she knew I was there at all. Fuck it, I thought. I stood up. I noticed a piece of paper in the old woman’s lap. I picked it up, she still didn’t move or say anything. The paper said; My name is Olga, I came from Poland in 1946. I was in the camp at Birkenau. Funny thing to write, about going to a camp. I touched the old lady and she still didn’t move. She was dead. “Wo!” I said and backed away. I decided to go on downtown and check out what was happening. Wasn’t any need to worry about the dead old lady, somebody would find her. The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
42
POEMS KALYANEE RAJAN
REMUNERATIONS it refuses to leave me alone. simply forgetting how happy i was, always. forcing me to think otherwise. driving me to ride on tides. i forget that this is not what i desired. i forget that i am not ready, not yet. not ready to face the impending reality. not ready to pay the imposed price. thus, comparison doomed contentment (however unreal that was). but not so soon, awoke and quoth the reason, history shall not repeat itself. not henceforth peace dawns.
The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
43
CHARITY (By Flaubert’s Emma) You do not deserve Me. My dreams or my memories, My wisdom or my reveries, My touch or my healings, My thoughts or my feelings, My poems or my tales, My frightened midnight wails, My insecurities or my fears, My smiles or my tears, My sincerity or my faith, My never-ending wait; And most certainly, Though you do not deserve, Yet, as you may observe, That the Writer, that is I Has honoured you once more, Pouring out with frenzied ease, Delicate verses such as these, In one last act of clemency, Before I cast out as I please, You and your crooked fidelity. The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
44
URBAN HIGHWAYS Elsewhere, people slip away, one after another like a half-open box of premium face tissue– to be used once and, only once. Here, despite multiple good-nights, they fail to drift apart, tenuously hanging on to nothingness… Scented flowers, of no more use than addressing accidental acquaintances, those, never to be met again. Tender memories, turned into baroque adornments of the bustling, bursting living room; plentiful words, sumptuous, engulfing completely the nuanced art of silence. Menacing fingers displace the subtly beckoning kohlrimmed eye. He offers, once again: Let us go explore, the uncharted annals of opaque terrains… She steps up her brow, peers, only to acquiesce. The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
45
REDRAFTING LOVE
Parting, seems sweeter, forsaking, even more so, than the sharp crests and troughs, of your love and unlove, my dear. With your mystifyingly quick swings, the heart bleeds as swiftly, beating on, the clashes turning even harsher, and forceful, with each knowing look of piety, and deceit. Come darling, let’s now call a truce Come, let’s decide, to pick and choose, which method and what weapon to use to neutralise the past, but not put out the fuse of this rare togetherness, quite seldom together, and forget all scheme and method for, love doesn’t need a ruse.
The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
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THE WRITER’S BLOCK Why should you always write about love you ask me, rather nonchalantly. My talent for everything else is wrapped around your black Louise Philippe coat, stays captive in the starched collar of your blue Zodiac shirt hangs listlessly from the bow of your trendy striped tie and lies tightened around your shapely waist knotted by the glittering buckle of your brown rexine belt. My thoughts bounce off randomly, thanks to your glossy patent leather shoes. ‘You’ will have to (un)dress, more casually, for ‘Me’ to be unravelled gradually, and for ‘Us’ to begin naturally... KALYANEE RAJAN teaches English language and Literature at Shaheed Bhagat Singh Evening College, University of Delhi, India. She is a polyglot and her areas of interest range from Shakespeare Studies, Translation studies, Indian Writing in English, Classical Indian Poetics, English Language Teaching, to Dalit Literature. She completed her M.Phil from Jamia Millia Islamia and is currently exploring sociological implications of radical literature in the Indian context. She is currently involved in the “Translating India: Understanding Diversity” project of Katha-IGNOU. She can be reached at kkrajan15@gmail.com. She tweets as @KalyaneeRajan. The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
47
Book Review John Looker
Einstein’s Beach House a collection of stories by Jacob M. Appel
An Ordinary Kind Of Wonderful The short story form has many masters – and of course mistresses too, for the twentieth century brought us among others Eudora Welty in the United States and Katherine Mansfield from New Zealand. Between these two geographical poles, India and the British Empire gave us the unforgettable (if not unforgiven) Rudyard Kipling. Writers such as these set the benchmark. They form our expectations for a short story. In his mid-thirties, Kipling was renowned for the vigour and freshness of his writing and yet found to be failing his own talent: in 1909 in a review of his latest volume ‘Actions and Reactions’ the Times Literary Review had this to say: The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
48 “He can still plunge into a story, set the scene, create the characters, and start the action, while the reader is preparing to turn the page. He can still in four words turn a flood of light on to the background which will make every least detail stand out by the time it is shut off at the fifth. He can still move from point to point of his narrative without a false step or a wasted gesture. Only with it all, his art has naturally lost, not its force, but its freshness and glow. The manner is stereotyped; it no longer surprises, it leaves us cold enough to make a new demand.” Now, in the twenty first century, while blockbuster novels still tumble off the book racks in railway stations, it is good to see that the short story remains in demand. The form evolves, but at its best the short story today can also move from point to point without a wasted gesture and four words can still turn on a flood of light. Jacob M. Appel, writing today in the United States, has won awards for his first novel (The Man Who Wouldn’t Stand Up in 2012) and a collection of stories (Scouting for the Reaper also in 2012). His short stories have been published in a wide variety of journals. He has qualifications in medicine and law, has taught at Brown University in Rhode Island and is a licensed guide in New York City. His volume of short stories under the title Einstein’s Beach House was first published with a copyright date of 2014 but is being reissued in September 2016. How, then, do Appel’s eight stories in this collection measure up against the demanding criteria of the TLS’ review of Kipling? The title story is thoroughly entertaining. It does not however plunge the reader into the middle of the plot, preferring to enjoy the shallows, slowly inching into deeper waters. If readers are patient with the opening fact-filled eight lines, they learn how Albert Einstein spent his summers by a beach in New Jersey, that more recently the narrator had lived as a child in a house not far along the shore, that her family of four were cash-strapped. By page two we understand that an error in a guide book “brought curious tourists to our door that summer by the carload”; by page three we have the basic scenario with all its comic potential as the father, an irrepressible optimist and opportunist, sets up a sign and offers house tours for The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
49 twenty-five dollars. After that, we are away. The characters include Mama, who rolls her eyes at her husband’s antics and whose whispers “resounded through the musty, cedar-paneled corridors like thunder”, the children, the Spanish tenants and – at the turning point in the tale, and to the dismay of the family – Einstein’s niece. A slow and circuitous entry into a short story is well-precedented among modern writers. What matters to the reader is that he should be led ineluctably down the slope into the story, that he should find delights along the way. And this is the case in Einstein’s Beach House. Eight lines in, the narrator introduces herself as having been “an elevenyear-old girl named Natalie Scragg who planned on becoming the nation’s first female astronaut”. The next paragraph brings us the first two tourists: “We’re looking for the Einstein cottage.” “Well,” Mama called back, “you’ve come to the wrong place.” The men showed my mother the address in their guidebook; she had them back inside their vehicle thirty seconds later. My father, engrossed in the blueprints for his latest invention, didn’t even glance up until they’d departed. As the story gets going, and as the father elaborates upon his scam, we meet some of those tourists who, later, pay up to be shown around. It’s an easy read, full of conversation which reveals the personalities of the characters and develops the plot even as it entertains. There are students whose knowledge of Einstein well outstrips that of their tour guide and whose visit, unbeknown to him, triggers events that later will be decisive. Moreover, in due course, there is Einstein’s niece who turns up at the door. But to tell you about her, and her vivid personality, would be to spoil the fun if you buy the book. Most of the stories are amusing. La Tristesse des Hérissons involves a young woman who longs for a baby but who for the time being has to be content with a pet hedgehog. Caring for it, she turns up the heat in the apartment until even minor tasks like taking off a raincoat feel like hard labour to her partner: “I’m really worried,” said Adeline. “Mental illness is all too common in hedgehogs. I read an article online this morning.” The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
50 I tapped the glass. Orion cocked his snout. “We could take him back and get another one,” I proposed. This is a tale about a hedgehog that is taken to a veterinary psychologist, given anti-depressants and put on a regime of bedtime stories and darkened rooms. Superficially. At bottom it is the story of a young couple and their love. By contrast, Hue and Cry is not amusing. Its themes are darker, showing a family adjusting to the imminent death of the father and a local neighbourhood reacting to the presence of a sex offender released from prison. The tone is muted, sombre. With no commentary intruding from the writer, we are shown some of the varieties in human attitudes: prurience, fear (in the sex offender himself), intolerance in the mob, compassion towards strangers and the bonds of love possible within a family. There is something universal for us to think about here, whichever modern society we live in. If I have a reservation about the book, it might be that the stories vary considerably in tone. There is a happy silliness in the tale of a divorcée who has an unsatisfactory custody arrangement with her former husband over a tortoise, while a fast-moving plot about a man bent on murderous revenge against the medical profession could be read as a mini-thriller but, given its air of unreality, is better taken as black humour. The story of a child’s imaginary friend (or is she imaginary?) itself engages with fantasy. There are painfully realistic undercurrents in a portrait of a boy’s adolescent crush on a wild and troubled young girl, but relief through gentle humour. Elsewhere, we have a wife who is reeling after outrageous pleas for help from a former lover; in vexation she almost lashes out at her husband but then, pulling back, is able to see something to be treasured: Her husband was smiling at her, his face open and innocent and loving. Not the look of a dreamer, by any stretch, but an ordinary kind of wonderful. This, perhaps, could be taken as a leitmotif for the collection of stories themselves. The simplest reason for reading fiction from another country and culture is to be diverted, and Jacob Appel’s stories are highly The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
51 entertaining. Another is to look through a window on to human life in another part of the globe. Rudyard Kipling knew his audience: he was writing for people of the British Empire, even if most living within Britain would never set foot in India, or vice versa. That has long gone of course, replaced by a cultural hegemony with Europe and, especially, North America at its heart. Anywhere in the world people might feel that they know America rather well. They don’t. Hollywood and television specialise in vast homes where beautiful people have time to deliver whole paragraphs while crossing from the bar to a sofa; that or shoot-outs on bleak streets. Readers of an international literary journal turn to books for something more. Jacob Appel’s stories, although set mostly in one corner of North America, present us with ordinary folk getting up to far-from-ordinary things within the world’s most heterogeneous society. They show us the messiness of ordinary lives, emotions that are found in we misguided humans anywhere, but with values and attitudes that belong to a particular time and place. His writing has freshness and a glow. His stories amuse and they travel well. The reissue deserves to be widely read. ‘Einstein’s Beach House’ – stories by Jacob M. Appel. Published by Butler University/Pressgang, distribution through Ingram, original publication dated 2014, reissue September 2016. 179 pages. Price $15.95 US dollars for the paperback.
John Looker lives in southern England. He has written poetry all his life and now, in retirement, draws on the experience of a long career in the British civil service, on family life and on international travel.In his book The Human Hive, John Looker explores our common humanity, down the ages and round the globe, by looking through the lens of work and human activity. The Human Hive by John Looker, published by Bennison Books in 2015, available through Amazon. The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
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AUTHOR’S INTERVIEW BY SCOTT THOMAS OUTLAR
Emily Ramser Emily Ramser is an undergraduate student currently pursuing her Bach-
elor of Arts in English and Creative Writing, and is expected to graduate in May of 2017. Editor in Chief, Incunabula; Assistant Editor, Weasel Press; Design Editor, Sights and Insights; Arts and Entertainment Editor, The Salemite; Assistant Editor, Vagabonds Creative Anthology; Assistant Editor, Visceral Uterus; Editorial Assistant, Change Seven; Some of her inspirations include: Thornton Wilder, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Bhanu Kapil, Andrea Gibson, Gabriel Gudding, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Matt Nielsen, and Alfred Lord Tennyson.
I first had the pleasure of meeting Emily Ramser last year while she
was working as an editor at Visceral Uterus. We began talking after she published a recently accepted poem of mine there. The formatting at the site required her to completely type up my poem from scratch before posting it, so I knew straightaway that this was someone who truly cared about poetry and was willing to give her time, energy, and passion to the small press world. Ramser is set to release her fourth collection of poetry soon through Weasel Press, and so I thought it would be a good time to reach out and ask her a few questions about the forthcoming chapbook‌ - Scott Thomas Outlar The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
53 Scott Thomas Outlar: Firstly, I’d like to say thank you, Emily, for taking the time to do this interview. Let’s dive right in! I’m sure you must be excited about your forthcoming poetry book from Weasel Press. Could you tell us a little about the collection and how it came about? Emily Ramser: So to answer your question the book is titled UHaul: A Collection of Lesbian Love Poems. It is, as the title says, a collection of love poems. However, it’s also more than that. In a way, it’s a coming out story. It is me coming out to the world, saying as a woman, I love women. It’s me saying that I am proud to love women and not afraid to say it. It’s funny because my mom told me the other day that I shouldn’t keep writing poems or books about women, but really this book isn’t about any one particular woman, though a lot of the poems were inspired by a certain person. It is about me. It’s about my relationship with women and my own kind of literary coming out as queer. I actually started writing the poems in this book last summer when I made a Tinder account in order to meet women. On there, I met a nineteen-year-old who told me that when she was sixteen she had given herself a small stick and poke tattoo of the word queer on her abdomen. This encounter provided the inspiration for the opening poem of the chapbook ‘Queer.’ I eventually met a lovely woman on Tinder named Meagan who I began dating. When I was first talking to her, I wrote her poems in an attempt at classical wooing, which is where a few of the poems such as ‘Let Me Write For You’ came from. I continued writing poems throughout the year inspired by my relationship with her. Outlar: Sounds as if it’s safe to assume that your wooing worked. Good to know that courting and romance are still in style. The power of the written word wins again! Do you feel that this, your The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
54 fourth collection of poetry, is a continuation of your earlier books, or have you taken the content to another level with the ‘coming out story?’ Has the process of writing such thoughts down for the world to read helped you feel more liberated? Ramser: This book is a quite different from my other books in my opinion. Toast is Just Bread That Put Up a Fight is the closest to it, but that chapbook is not quite a coming out story like this one is. ‘Toast’ is more of a fighting against and never standing down kind of story. That said, it wasn’t quite as put together with a purpose as UHaul. I specifically chose the works in UHaul with a purpose. UHaul came about in a time when I was a lot more confident in both my sexuality and my general person. I knew more who I was by the time I started writing the poems in this book. The process of writing these books, though, made me feel even more confident in myself and my writing. I’d be lying though if I didn’t say I was nervous about publishing this book. It’s a ‘coming out story’ in many ways, but my coming out publicly could come back to bite me. You can be fired in 28 states for being gay or transgender. So, this book says I’m gay and proud, but it gives employers a reason to not hire me or to fire me. As nervous as I am with publishing it, I won’t back down from publishing it. Heterosexual love poetry has been published for ages upon ages. I think it’s time to show that homosexual love poetry is just as valid as heterosexual love poetry. It’s okay to be gay, and it’s okay to write about being gay. I sent my girlfriend a copy of Elizabeth Barret Browning’s Sonnets ‘From the Portuguese’ for Valentine’s day, but it didn’t feel quite right. It had male pronouns. It removed my female partner from the equation, as it focused on male qualities. So, I started writing my own love poems for women because there weren’t love poems for me to send these women I was interested in. There weren’t poems about women for women. There are plenty of poems that are for men by women or for women by men, but there are so few gay love poems in comparison. I wanted to tell my partner that I loved her and there were no poems that did so, so I wrote my own. The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
55 Outlar: Sometimes in life when there is not a path laid out clearly before us, we must act as trailblazers and create a new one. That’s the sense I get from your efforts with this collection. What type of reaction has the work garnered so far from those who have had a chance to read it? Are you happy with the feedback? On that note, being an editor yourself, how do you react to critiques of your own work, and what do you feel the appropriate role of an editor should be? Ramser: I like that turn of phrase. I agree. That’s certainly something that I’ve thought some during my work on this chapbook. I’ve only gotten one real response so far and that is from Matthew David Campbell. I’ve included it below: The poems in Emily Ramser’s ‘Uhaul’ are irrevocably human while living in the intimacies of new love. Uhaul is a book of devotional poems that is forthright in its convictions, whether those convictions are romantic, carnal, or obsessive. Ramser comes out in declaration in the title poem ‘Queer,’ as she ‘almost gagged on my own tongue’ in an almost denial of her own ‘queerness’ to her lover, only then to dive right into acceptance of self and love as the ‘writing’ of ‘all these poems about caressing your hipbones and cheekbones’ begins with a ‘hickie in the shape of a heart is left on my breast’ by her muse: as the searing burn of love melts any remaining doubts as to where this is going. From here the poet feeds her lover, ‘decorating her mouth with chocolate crumbs’ as a way of understanding love and carnal joys, or in the poem ‘I give you my body for your own’ Ramser dismantles her physical self in offerings to her muse. Love in the book takes shape as poems take shape: always differing in form, but ever aspiring towards art. Uhaul, an earthy book, dwells in Eros with grace, through tension, doubt, faith and utter charm. —@Matthew David Campbell, Author of Harmonious Anarchy, and The House of Eros.
Matthew’s feedback almost made me cry because I was so surprised that someone liked my work that much. This project has been intensely personal, so good feedback is a godsend. A few of my friends have read the individual poems, as I was working on them, but overall, I’ve kept this collection pretty close to my chest. It’s a little scary to let it out into the world. The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
56 As to my being an editor, my editor-self honestly helps me to better accept critique. I understand the purpose and need of it. I want to know what will make my poetry better and, as the assistant editor of an indie press, what will sell more books. That said, my editor-self steps back in this situation. I am not an editor here, I am a writer. Weasel is my editor with this. He’s the one I trust to look over and suggest edits and the like. Overall, editors in these situations are meant to assist writers with publishing the best work for themselves and the press. Outlar: That’s one hell of a good review from Campbell. I can see why it put a smile on your face. That’s great that you have that type of trust in Weasel Patterson where you can rely on his advice to steer you in the right direction if necessary. That type of writer/ editor relationship is certainly a nice ace to be holding in your hand. How do you manage your time between your editorial duties, writing your own work, going to school, teaching, hosting readings, etc.? I’m exhausted just thinking about all the hats you wear. Do you have a specific time of day set aside for writing, or is it more of an anytime inspiration hits sort of thing? Ramser: Oh god, time management is my worst enemy. ‘Keeping all the hats on’ usually means wearing multiple hats at the same time and multitasking. It’s a never ending cycle. There are some days where I might get only three or four hours sleep because I stayed up until 4am writing an article after a day of internship and homework. So far, I’ve been able to make it work, but I’m curious to see how my schedule and duties will change following my graduation in December. I also am starting a graduate program in the summer (hopefully), so it will be an adjustment when it comes to relearning how to keep all my hats on my head. As for writing for myself, I try to set aside time during the day to write, but it doesn’t always happen on schedule. It tends to happen sporadically and often at night. My partner, Meagan, always laughs because I tend to get up randomly at night, usually when I’m half asleep, and start writing. She works nights and there have been a couple times when she’s The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
57 come home at 6am and I’m sitting on the bed, typing away, never having realized that the night has flown by. I also tend to carry a journal around with me to write down ideas and pieces, but I’ve been known to use receipts (I have an entire chapbook of blackout poems done on receipts actually). I also use a note app on my phone to write down ideas or poems. When the inspiration happens, it happens. I remember this one time where I was talking to her outside while she was smoking and I got struck with an idea after fiddling with a piece of grass that had been growing through a crack in the concrete. I pulled out my phone and started writing on the app while she was still talking, by the time she’d finished her cigarette, I’d written an entire poem. I put my phone in my pocket, and she looked at me and asked, ‘Did you just write a poem?’ to which I nodded and she laughed. Luckily for me, she takes my moments of inspiration in stride and loves me all the more for them. When I’m working, my schedule changes a little though. I try to write when my students are writing and do the exercises they are doing. It serves a dual purpose; it makes me write and works as an example for my students. Obviously, these writing moments aren’t always the most ideal, as I still have to supervise and sometimes as such don’t get to write as much. However it helps to get this kind of built in time. All of that said, all the work and balancing acts are so worth it. It keeps my mind and hands occupied. I can’t ever seem to sit still normally, so always having work to do works for me as a person. I enjoy working. It’s what drives me. Writing is my life. I couldn’t be me without having a list of things to write or five billion projects to work on. Outlar: I just had several memories of writing poems on napkins or in notebooks while speeding down the highway flash through my mind. Would that be considered a worse offense than texting and driving? Well, hell, when inspiration hits, it must be seized! As the release date for Uhaul moves ever-closer, what are your hopes for the book? Are you planning any sort of launch event where you live? When it comes to promotion, how important do you believe social media is in this day and age? On what platforms can people follow your work? The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
58 Ramser: When inspiration hits, it hits. You got to take advantage of the opportunity when it strikes. Oh goodness, my hopes for the book. My biggest hope is that it speaks to people. I want it to mean something to readers. I could give a shit less how many copies it sells as long as it strikes a chord in someone at least once. Though some sales would certainly be nice as it would help in supporting the Press. As for launch events, I’m tentatively planning to have one, but nothing for sure yet. I’m getting ready to start social media promotion of the book soon, though, waiting until July to really get it started. I think social media is important, but I also think more traditional routes such as interviews and reviews are as well. I think a mix of them is necessary. Use social media to review books or publicize reviews. Etc. I like that kind of mixture of traditional pollicisation and social media pollicisation. As for my presence on social media, my Instagram is emramser, my twitter is @ChickadeePoems, and my facebook page is Emily Ramser. My blog is also another option: www.authoremilyramser.wordpress.com. Also email: emily.r.ramser@gmail.com. Outlar: I’m confident your book will do well. I can tell it was written from your truest sense of self, and that, ultimately, is what resonates with readers. Truth is the most powerful force in the end. Thanks again, Emily, for taking the time to do this interview. It’s been a pleasure from my end. Are there any final thoughts you’d care to leave us with, or anything you’d like to add that I might not have brought up? Ramser: I appreciate your compliment, Scott. Coming from an author like you that means a lot. I cannot think of anything else to add other than a thank you to any readers for sticking through my ramblings and a thank you to you, Scott, for interviewing me. Reproduced from Scott Thomas Outlar’s 17numa. wordpress.com: Prose-fusion poetry dedicated to the Renaissance Revolution of the Phoenix Generation. He also serves as an editor at The Blue Mountain Review; Walking Is Still Honest Press; The Peregrine Muse; and Novelmasters. The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
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POEMS - Richard King Perkins II
Moments of Comic Unity So much less than expected had been delivered even the boxes you dropped off were empty of almost everything but vapour. I’m not sure what I thought they’d contain— mementos of us; the Tiki mug from a night out with your cousin or the shard of rose quartz we found on a walk past the site of the new library but the containers held only stale newspapers and books without dust-jackets that were never mine, my mangled, worn slippers and the pants to my college track suit. Sometimes I imagine you walking around in the darkness of a house I’ve never seen wearing the hoodie of a team you never ran for and that makes me shake my head and roll my eyes in a sad way that’s actually good. We were never right for each other was your summation of those struggling, pathetic years but there were moments of comic unity or even cosmic unity and maybe that’s what you left room for in those mostly empty boxes. The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
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Pomegranate Explosion Golden copper descends from the latest sunset indirectly upon you lighting contours indescribably seen. Someday, we’ll dissociate like the forgotten tail of a falling star but tonight, our moisture circulates without resistance, petals on pond water, drawn together with the ease of ghost attraction and subtle enchantments. Smiles and your eyes begin so many things; fingers curl to secure them and then— a pomegranate explosion luminesces on the endless horizon and a new sun appears beside us or perhaps, with the wish of a lover’s whisper, we have made it suddenly appear. The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
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Emergence
An age of cocoons and canopic jars reveals shouting acacias and the return of dead languages. Great pyramids fall to earth inviting the scorn of felines, an unexpected glint of prisms spinning. We reflect on light as the first tragedy, omniscient thought-crime, a faith of low necessity in the center of our existence. The first utility; an abstinence of reason, is a ragged bloom, our cytospore. Give full credit: meaning is in the demi-pause; the builder retrieves her ingenuity and something polyhedral appears— the otherness we are compelled to embrace. The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
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Forward Bend You choose not to consider the future; the earth gives night to our enclosure forgets to breathe— uneasily the chest that expels the darkness a Nehru blazer in velvet paisley blue fitted— neck loosely collared like guilty fondness in the backyard you discover directions the first thoughts of consideration footprints of giants permanently cast such creatures retreat/to later skulk back; don’t mention the condition of dirt— foreign lands may sometimes obscure your vision temporarily removing surest eyes events dismiss the greater requirements of oxygen and outside the oppression of water the world speaks more loudly the curl and forward bend of your intimate body maintained by rejecting the wanderings of rogue surface waves running deeply. The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
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The Last Rays of the Sun Pastel outcrops dusted in macabre glow and the lute of a diabolical bird— you were born in a lascivious position a consequence of your creation, the original state of matter and you’re my punishment for lust and gluttony. My kisses cause strawberries to rise from your body as light penetrates your pigment, blending affections. Richard King Perkins II is a state-sponsored advocate for residents in long-term care facilities. He lives in Crystal Lake, IL, USA with his wife, Vickie and daughter, Sage. He is a three-time Pushcart nominee and a Best of the Net nominee whose work has appeared in more than a thousand publications.
We’re attracted to the idea of infinity— the last rays of the sun, a lurid rift accentuated by the edge of night’s profane— a gilded chandelier, irredeemably risen.
The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
64 PROVERBS & PROVIDENCE
YONASON GOLDSON
A Stranger Among Us Few Americans ever make it to Colombo, the main port of Sri Lanka and the hottest place I’ve ever been in my life. Within ten minutes of setting foot on dry land I felt as if I was going to literally melt and disappear between the cracks in the sidewalks. But the coastal heat serves to make escape from it that much more liberating. Once you head up into the hills, the air turns deliciously cool and you find yourself in a sea of luminescent green, surrounded by resplendent tea plants stretching to the edges of the horizon. The local bus, on which I had bought a ticket for one dollar (only to discover later that I’d overpaid by 500%), lumbered slowly up the mountainous roads, passed by everything with an engine while barely passing pedestrians and donkey carts itself. After an hour and a half, we pulled over and everyone started filing out. “Are we there?” I asked another passenger. “No,” he replied. “We are stopping for tea.” 15 minutes later, the passengers slowly began wandering back. No one was in a hurry. We sat calmly on the bus a while longer before it started plugging back up into the hills. My bus the next morning was scheduled to leave at 8:00. While we sat waiting to depart, vendors selling snacks and knick knacks from boxes suspended around their necks climbed in through the front door, drifted down the aisle, and disappeared out the back. They reappeared moments later, an unending stream of local entrepreneurs hawking their wares. Thinking that I must have misread the departure time, I asked the man beside me what time we were supposed to leave. The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
65 “8:00,” he replied. I showed him my watch, which read 8:10. “That is wrong,” he declared. After another ten minutes, the bus finally began to move. I got off the bus in Nuwara Eliya, where I boarded a train. My plan was to visit a place called “World’s End,” the famous overlook atop a 4000 foot sheer cliff in the Horton Plains National Park. What I didn’t plan was the effort it would take to get there. When I stepped off the train I found myself quite literally in the middle of nowhere. I was standing at the intersection of the train tracks and a single-lane asphalt road. On one side of the tracks was a fruit stand, seemingly unoccupied. On the other, a large sign pointed into the mountains and proclaimed: 7 MILES TO THE FARR INN THIS WAY TO WORLD’S END
Apparently, the end of the world was farther away than I’d anticipated. With no real option, I headed up the steep road. The hike wasn’t bad, I began to feel the early warning signs of the intestinal malady that afflicts so many westerners in the Third World. With no The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
66 facilities along the way and a very long row to hoe, my prospects for the afternoon were growing decidedly grim. Before desperation set in, I was overtaken by one of the locals, a young man brimming over with friendliness. What was my name? Where was I going? Why did I want to go such a long way to such an expensive place? Why didn’t I come stay with him? It was 1981, two years before the Tamil separatists brought violence and terror to the serendipitous island, and long before “war on terror” was part of the lexicon of world politics. There was nothing suspicious about the invitation and, given my worsening condition, any alternative to my original plan was a Godsend. I wasn’t prepared for what I found. Raj lived in what anyone from America would call a hovel, a concrete shell with a corrugated aluminum roof and a curtain for a door. He and two other tea plantation workers shared the tiny space, furnished with three beds, a small table, and one chair. The mattresses were burlap sacks filled with who-knewwhat. There was no electricity, and there was no plumbing. Raj gave me his bed, then disappeared for a while before reappearing with a large plate piled high with local cuisine. It looked like more food than he probably ate in a week, and it was all meant for me. His English was rudimentary, so conversation was limited. His housemates beamed at me, and small children arrived to look upon the curiosity of a stranger from a strange land. I guessed that little changed in their lives from one day to the next. I made them paper airplanes as gifts. I don’t know where my host slept that night, whether curled up on the floor or sharing a mattress. But from the first moment we met until the next morning when I went on my way, he never stopped smiling, unable to contain his pleasure at having the opportunity to invite a guest into his home and share whatever was his. I never did make it to World’s End. But I did end up someplace better. King Solomon tells us that “The benevolent soul will be made rich, and the one who refreshes will himself be refreshed.” The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
67 From the time we’re old enough to understand, our parents and teachers tell us that it’s better to give than to receive. But I discovered something even better that evening: the pleasure of giving someone else the opportunity to give. It was a real education, seeing his face filled with joy -- the joy of a simple laborer, apparently content with his humble existence, elated that he had found another human being whose lot he could improve. On the way back down from the hills, I passed a wizened old woman standing on the stoop of her modest little house. Our eyes met. I smiled at her, and she smiled at me. “Good morning,” I said. “Good morning,” she said. “Would you like to come in for a cup of tea?” “Thank you,” I replied, and stepped into her home. We sat at the table, she and I and her granddaughter, I supposed. I sipped my tea and we said nothing, since there was little to say and little way to say it. After a few minutes I finished, stood up, thanked her, and went on my way. Three decades later these memories have barely faded. Without much common language, we connected in a way more enduring than if we had talked long into the night, a connection built upon a foundation of kindness, strengthened by mutual respect and caring, and sealed by the relentless exchange of smiles. It’s sad that we often fear to make that connection - because of race, because of politics, because of social status or, simply, because we’re too wrapped up in ourselves. The smallest act of kindness can build bridges across a continent. And a smile can span the universe - if we simply set it free. And once we do, there’s no telling what might happen next.
Rabbi Yonason Goldson, a talmudic scholar and
former hitchhiker, circumnavigator, and newspaper columnist, lives with his wife in St. Louis, Missouri, where he teaches, writes, and lectures. His latest book, Proverbial Beauty: Secrets for success and happiness from the wisdom of the ages, is available on Amazon. Visit him at http://proverbsandprovidence.com. The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
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FLASH FICTION
Paul Beckman Father Panic Village
Father Panic Village in Bridgeport, Connecticut, the worst
of the worst in the failed projects experiment was scheduled to be demolished and I wanted to see my old home one last time. It was gloomy then and gloomy still when I arrived. Razor wire fences across from Panic, for two long desolate blocks, were the closed factories that spewed their pollution into the river they faced were shuttered with large For Sale signs nailed to them. The police had stopped patrolling it on a regular basis years earlier for fear of getting shot. There was no official gang but other gangs from different parts of town and other projects learned long ago not to enter. Drug sales took place in the open. Now the windows of the vacant units were boarded, graffiti was everywhere. I drove on to the parking lot where we huddled to shoot craps or play black jack. Good memories and bad The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
69 Yet the people who were being made to move protested about being thrown out of the only home some had ever known. Many were third generation Father Panic people. In the place of the ninety apartments the city was going to build ten small houses that would go by lottery to dispossessed families. I drove the parameter and then cut through the side streets slowly seeing for the last time the ugliness of these three-story brick buildings once vibrant with kids playing and the aged and unemployed sitting around smoking and playing tonk for pennies. I saw the triangle of concrete where we held our wiffle ball games, and our kick the can tourneys but I heard that stopped when the drug dealers started claiming sections as their “offices”. I saw a young girl leaning against a building and I pulled to the curb. I walked over to her and said, “Hi. You’ve got to be the last person in Panic.” I offered her a stick of gum. She took two and said, “One’s for later.” “How come you’re still here? What are you fifteen, sixteen?” “Fourteen and my man told me to stay here til he calls for me.” “How long ago was that? “Couple of days.” “Hungry?” She didn’t answer me but her look said yes. “C’mon. We’ll go to the Hot Top Diner and get a good meal. Have you back in no time.” She tentatively walked to my car and got in. I drove towards the diner when she said, “Ella.” “Pretty name.” “My momma liked Ella Fitzgerald.” “I’m Ben,” I said. “What would you like to eat? Hot Top okay?” “No. No. He’ll be at the diner. I’d like a Happy Meal.” We went through the drive-through and Ella didn’t order a Happy Meal. She asked if she could order extra for later and I said sure and she ordered enough for three grown-ups and ate fries all the way to the Seaside Park where I stopped the car facing the water and took out my own small bag of fries and a Coke. The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
70 “Do you live with your parents?” I asked her. She didn’t answer. “Where are you going to go when they bulldoze Panic?” She shrugged and that’s how our meal went. I told her there were places that would take her in and send her to school. Places that were clean and she’d have friends and her own room but she didn’t respond. Finally, she folded her bag and put it on the floor. “That was good, Mr. Ben, I still have enough for a good meal tonight.” I started the car. Ella slurped the last of one of her Coke and then reached over and put her hand on my crotch, grabbing the zipper with practiced hands. I pushed her hands away. “Put your seat belt on,” I said. She began to unbutton her blouse. “I’m woman enough for you.” “Button up, that’s not why I bought you lunch.” In the quiet we reached Panic and I stopped the car. “Here’s my phone number.” I gave her a business card. “Call me if you want to go to one of those nice places I told you about.” “Listen,” she said. “Gimme twenty dollars, would you, or he’ll be angry. Please.” I gave her two tens and she opened the car door. “Don’t forget your food,” I said and she took the bags and ran towards the building. I watched her holding them out as an offering, opening her arms wide to Panic as well as her man. I drove off, my business card lying where Ella sat minutes ago.
Paul Beckman was one of the winners in the Queen’s Ferry 2016 Best of the Small Fictions. His stories are widely published in print and online in the following magazines amongst others: Connecticut Review, Raleigh Review, Litro, Playboy, Pank, Blue Fifth Review, Flash Frontier, Matter Press, Metazen, Pure Slush, Jellyfish Magazine, Thrice Fiction and Literary Orphans. His latest collection, “Peek”, weighed in at 65 stories and 120 pages. His published story website is www.paulbeckmanstories.com and blog is www.pincusb.com The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
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POEMS
Deepalakshmi Spring cleaning Staying up through the night I vouch myself to eliminate before dawn every single lie to the very last one that the night keeps on whispering; so I can handover a pristine morn to the very first bird that chirps; Not many nights left, contrary to the lies, which breed in multitudes I am tired, exhausted, and sick that the best I shall have to give, could only be a well-worn mop with an unfinished task... The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
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Dystrophy Accidentally I stumbled on to the other side of my heart, and now really can’t tell one from the other; I mistakenly looked over the forbidden wall, to find that it doesn’t exist anymore now; I disturbed the serene flow of the hour glass to get stranded in time for what seems like an eternity; Discovering reasons and deducing logic for what was once outright crazy, I doom myself to rational insanity.
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Card Building Nimble fingers numb with fatigue refuse to toil anymore eyelids weighing down with ennui lose focus insidiously the soul however, is unforgiving crying loud for its want to fit in, to concord, to belong, it dreads being left out, being out of place an old obsession that just dies hard a quenchless thirst teased by mirage daring not the swiftest blink nor the tiniest whiff of breath the soul sets to work with zeal; even a fleeting sigh of relief or respite could spell nothing but decisive doom slowly but surely rises the tomb the epitome of normality and calm the soul delights, at last! at last! only to dread the slightest jolt The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
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The Black Hole It was only a tiny little spot, neatly cleared up, no mess at all totally empty, staring at me... not for long, I was smug and easy took to feeding it slowly but surely, as it grew greedily, to enormous stature; no hope of satiation, whatsoever; I went on relentlessly pooled in every resource I owned and borrowed; what was just a poor little void is now a panoptic hungry black hole; Dreading me from deep within, Waiting for absolute usurpation; Matter, nothing to it Light, never to return
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A house on fire The house is on fire; a sudden raging, raving fire! the tongues teasing most cruelly, raring to devour once and for all! struck with shock and grief, feet glued to the ground you knew dearly yours once it was; the earth underneath now giving way, crumbling, ready to suck you into oblivion; there’s no way you can save the house, no way you can stop its end; so shut your eyes and flee, don’t bother to pack, Lest gruesome ravages start filling the eye; tarnishing every single speck of the beauty past.
Deepalakshmi is a business and marketing
content writer in the field of Information and technology. She writes poetry and prose for pleasure and personal fulfillment.Translated articles have been published in leading dailies. The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
76
FICTION
Valentina Cano
The Devil’s Trumpet
The idea to kill Tom came to me on a Wednesday, in the space it took me to pick up his coffee cup and walk to the sink. A cigarette soaked, half-submerged in the dregs where he had put it out as he did every morning. And I did ask him not to do that every morning because it nauseated me to see. It wasn’t just the cigarette. It would have been psychotic of me to want to kill a man, my husband, someone I was supposed to love until the end of my life, or until he went hunting for a shinier version of me, for a cigarette squelching with coffee. It was an accumulation that had, all at once, broken something inside me. Like one too many pieces of furniture cracking a floor. I sat at the kitchen table. My options were limited. I had no access to a gun, no desire to get my hands and clothing soaked in blood as would invariably happen be if I tried a knife, and no car with which to run Tom over. The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
77 That left only one plausible way to get rid of him: poison; which opened up more options. The easy to obtain, like rat poison and the ones that would take more planning like arsenic. I also needed to decide whether I wanted to take it slowly, like my great-grandmother had when she poisoned her husband or all at once. She had done it one meal at a time, grains of rat poison sprinkled like garnish over her hand-rolled gnocchi, but I wasn’t that patient. I couldn’t… wouldn’t, spend another night with Tom. I refused to look at another cigarette in coffee or hear another wet snore. It would have to be quick for me. A heavy-handed dose of something. That was when it came to me. I had the perfect thing in the backyard. Datura. The Devil’s Trumpet. White petals rimmed in purple, almost obscene in its unfurling. All parts of it were poisonous but the seeds were the most potent. Just one could send a grown man to a hospital. The problem was masking the taste. Nature had made the plant bitter, a warning against potential predators, so I would have to find a dish that had enough natural sharpness to enfold Datura’s taste in its layers; perhaps a spicy meal. I stood and headed out the back door, to the sun-drenched corner where the bush-sized plant squatted. The delicate scent of its flowers, a pastel yellow of odor, reached me on a hot breeze. It was in the midst of its violent growth, soaking in the mid-summer’s sun, the scorching heat, like a reptile. I smiled and slipped on the gloves I used to tend to it, not that it needed much help. It was a wild, violent plant that could manage itself. There were plenty of flowers but only a few of the spiked, green fruits that held the seeds. It was more than enough for what I had in mind, though. Using my gardening scissors, I snipped the fruit off the thin branch and palmed it. The pieces of chorizo rose to the surface in the bubbling sauce, the smell of meat and peppers, red wine and tabasco, filling the kitchen with its furry warmth. The bruise on my wrist twisted as I stirred the contents in the deep pan with one of my wooden spoons and the The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
78 ones in the flatter pan with a regular spoon. Tom wouldn’t notice the two pans, wouldn’t notice anything but the drink in his hand and the television in front of him. And that was fine. By the time I served the food, he’d be half-drunk, his taste buds dulled enough that whatever chance he might have had at noticing the ribbon of bitterness in the food would have slipped from him. I smiled down at the deep pan; the crushed, powdered seeds hidden in its thick interior. I would have to toss it all out. The pan, the wooden spoon, the mortar and pestle I’d used. The leftovers dropped into a garbage bag instead of given to the ducks and crows that roamed the neighborhood in gangs. A first! I considered pouring myself a glass of wine, but I found I didn’t need it. My heart wasn’t racing as it always did an hour or two before Tom arrived. It’d kept its steady pulse as I crushed the seeds and stirred them in and it kept it now. Was this how my ancestor had felt the first time she’d added the grains of rat poison into her husband’s food? Had she felt relief cool her like a splash of water or had fear flooded her flesh with heat? It was curious to think that this instinct, freedom earned from cooking, had traveled down through the bloodlines, through my grandmother and mother and into me, where it had simmered; and boiled. Living heritage. It wouldn’t matter today how Tom closed the front door. It wouldn’t matter if he slammed it so hard it rattled the dishes in the cabinets or if there was a second of hesitation before its opening and closing, which would mean he had stopped by for a drink after work. One or two extra drinks I would have to swerve through. I stirred and stirred and stirred. And, I waited for the key in the lock. The door slammed. I’d long ago learned to time the moments between Tom placing his briefcase on the floor and walking to the kitchen so that I would have his drink ready. The less he spoke to me, the better the evening would go. The TV was on already, the remote on the table next to his armchair. Tom grunted a greeting and took his drink from the counter. The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
79 He swallowed. “Nice,” he said. I’d poured half the vodka bottle in there. “Dinner will be ready in five minutes.” He didn’t even look at me but turned his attention to the hundreds of channels we had, flipping through them just long enough for the voices to blast out and disappear, blast and disappear. I grit my teeth. It’d be the last day of this. Tomorrow night I’d be able to choose what I wanted or I’d be in custody. Either way, I would never again hear the way Tom slurped his drink, the way his hands turned into paws that swiped at everything after a few hours. I ladled in the stew from the deep pan onto a plate and placed it where he always sat. “The food’s ready, Tom,” I said. “You don’t do shit the entire day, so it better not be leftovers.” I smiled, a ball of warmth sprouting like a flower in my chest. “No, I think you’re really going to like it tonight. It’s an old recipe. My great-grandmother’s.”
Valentina Cano was born in Montevideo, Uru-
guay but now makes her home in the swampy land that is Miami. She is a student of classical singing who spends whatever free time she has either reading, writing, weaving, or spinning wool on her antique spinning wheel. She first began writing poetry to combat severe depression and has continued on to push her own personal boundaries of comfort and truth. Her works have appeared in numerous publications and her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Web. She has two chapbook out, Winter Myths, and Event Horizon, as well as her debut novel, The Rose Master, which published in 2014 and was called a “strong and satisfying effort” by Publishers Weekly. The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
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BOOK EXCERPT Ron Koertge
Vampire Planet by: Ron Koertge Publication Date: April 2016 $17.95 ISBN: 978-1-59709-760-4
Backstreet Books Some customers claim the comfortable chairs, others settle on the floor in the lotus position. One young man lies on his side, dreamily turning the pages in front of an imaginary fire place. I find the Poetry Corner where Frost puzzles over that fork in the road and Shakespeare regrets his Dark Lady with bitter, voluptuous half-rhymes. A fly buzzes, a boy falls from the sky, herons rise and leave the red pavilion until I hear the clock adorned with three bespectacled mice. I am almost the last one out, leaving only a child with her arms around an obliging bear, the child’s tired mom, and the sagging shelf of autobiographies shouting, ‘Look at me!’ The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
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Boyfriend And in from curbside he comes, leaving his impetuous ride all red as hearts-blood, red as the pomegranate Persephone stained her mouth with as she chose the under-world like this girl he’s come for chose him. So he braves the cold faces of mums beside the muchswept walk and after that a lamplit porch and looming there that door with its muscle-bound lock and nearby the lighted button toward which his eager finger dives. Immediately the footsteps begin heavy as Ozymandias on the prowl. It’s the father whose loins once rattled and shook and propelled a daughter now waiting, her hair a silken skein but first there’s the tight-lipped greeting the checking of credentials, the small talk, “She’ll be right down,” that blessed chord, that shibboleth, her cue to try the stairs in silver shoes as those below in vaguely air conditioned air gaze up as she gazes down and there they are – Dad in his noisy pants, Mom with a plate of fudge, and he who rose from the slush of other boys to stand out like red oxide. “Hey,” he says. “You ready?”
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82
Congratulations
You have been selected. Yes, you. Out of many, you’re the one. Kudos to you. A slap on the back. Kisses on the cheek and perhaps elsewhere since everyone loves a winner. Someone like you. A cut above. Non pareil. Unique. Please accept our many good wishes. We on the committee are thrilled. You are truly exceptional. That is the reason there is no monetary award. Being sui generis is its own reward, n’est pas. These days everyone is rich. What is a pile of filthy lucre to someone like you. We are not notifying the news media. We do not want you to be famous the way everyone is famous. Your selection by us endows you with a kind of purity. During the winnowing process, we eschewed photographs We would not want to recognize you on the street one fine day and fall at your feet. Neither did we solicit documents of approbation, those flimsy ships on a sea of superlatives. Mere ratification is not for you. The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
83 You are not just a corker or a peach. You are not just the right stuff. You are beyond concepts like right and stuff. You are approaching divinity. We ask only one thing. Keep this under your hat. Mum’s the word. We want you for ourselves. Shining brightly in our minds only. Should you, however, insist that a commemorative medal be struck, we understand and can oblige. Send your check or order for $29.95 to the New Jersey post office box indicated below and indicate pewter, silver, or gold.
First Grade Until then, every forest had wolves in it, we thought it would be fun to wear snowshoes all the time, and we could talk to water. So who is this woman with the grey breath calling out names and pointing to the little desks we will occupy for the rest of our lives?
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What She Wanted was my bones. As I gave them to her one at a time, she put them in a bag from Saks. As long as I didn’t hesitate she collected scapula and vertebrae with a smile. If I grew reluctant, she pouted. Then I would come across with rib cage or pelvis. Eventually I lay in a puddle at her feet, only the boneless penis waving like an anemone. “Look at yourself,” she said. “You’re disgusting.”
Ron Koertge is the author of over thirty books of poetry and fiction for Young Adults. A prolific writer and a member of the Los Angeles poetry scene for over forty years, his latest book of poems is Vampire Planet (Red Hen Press). His latest novel-in-verse for Young Adults is Coaltown Jesus (Candlewick Press.) His website is this: ronkoertge.com. The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
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FICTION
SIGNS OF SUICIDE Bobbie Groth
I’ve always hated Natalie’s ghost. I really only saw her three
times when she was alive. She was slender and dark-eyed, and her hair sprayed out in jubilant mahogany curls. Her movements, quick and birdlike, made her fine nose jut sharply out before her startled eyes. When I first saw her she was leaving the apartment with him. Her sleek legs were encased in skin-tight blue jeans. Everything about her spelled an elegance lacking in excess, an intensity of spirit that pared her body to the bone. And that hair. Every time she turned her head it was like an explosion of Mozart into the Universe. They walked away, their backs to me, and I, in my eighth The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
86 month with the child, was beached in all my blubber on the sofa, my chin just over the windowsill looking out onto the city sidewalk in front of our house. I hated her slender ass and her beautiful hair, and most of all I hated her walking with him that way. And I hated wondering what they had been doing in that second floor apartment next door, before they came down. He was dark. My visions conjured up all his various evil intelligences and the little sparks in his black eyes were straight from the Milky Way. I didn’t see much of him, just his comings and goings, and occasionally martial arts practices in the back yard. I was fascinated. I took him as my lover for years in imagination. We were at the heights of passion, beyond imagining. Thus I was able to stay married far longer than the union warranted. Once when my husband accused my imagination of breaking our relationship apart, I longed to scream to him how much this elegant creature and my insatiable imagination for him held our marriage together. Truth is not at all like imagination. From the time I was very small I thought people got married and lived happily ever after. I did end up married. I had a wedding shower put on by my husband’s mother’s friends. None of them knew me, I knew none of them, but for each flashy present I opened I had to hold it up and smile while someone took a picture. I was informed by my husband-to-be that his mother had gone to showers for all these women’s progeny for the last 20 years, and now it was their turn to pay her back for all the money she had spent. ‘Hurry up and open your presents’, said my husband’s aunt, ‘these ladies want to go home’. I wanted to stand up in that room full of gaggling geese in ghastly make-up to scream I’m four months pregnant, you fools. I’m only getting married to this druggie because I’m knocked up. An unplanned kid is no reason for getting married anymore. But back then, deep in my mind, more solid in myself than my bone structure, was the idea of living happily ever after. Somebody had to love me in order for me to be alive. Having a kid is very hard, physically, but it’s more like workThe Wagon Magazine - September -2016
87 ing very very hard than being unredemptively painful. I think you really need something that excruciating to bring a kid into your life. It’s that important. Once he was here, most of the time I would have rather been with my baby than my friends. I knew who he was before he was born. His name was in my mind when he was no more than a seed. His personality moved after he was born in the same way it had as a fetus. I was an animal mother. I bit the fingernails from his tiny fingers when no scissors were small enough to do the job. I chewed food for him when we forgot the baby food grinder. I licked his hands and face clean in an emergency. If he cried with a babysitter, miles away in the department store where I shopped, the milk burst through the pads and drenched the front of my shirt. Every mother, I think, raises a baby alone. The chemicals in a woman’s body force her out of bed even when she is sick, to care for her child. Something gets her up night after night at the merest whimper—to arrange bedclothes, change diapers, comfort a nightmare. The father, if he is even there, sleeps on. Something, sometime, screams to go free, but not forever. Mothers always trod back to the barnyard gate, lowing, their udders full. Even now, when I see a sleepy little one, I long to nurse. But I have other things to deal with now. I can’t let those people get to me. They sit around in their pressed clothes or white uniforms dispensing meds and structure. Or talking behind their hands into the phone—personal calls, I bet, because they’re not supposed to make them from work. The element of cure is to get us the hell off the ward once the insurance runs out. But as soon as someone goes, someone else comes in. I laughed when one guy escaped down the back stairwell and home the other day. He slipped a card between the cracks in the door, flipped the latch and was gone. No bells around here, its part of a ‘humanization’ program. Hah. They brought him back because he still had more insurance. Most of the patients here are from right in this neighborhood. Some of them are crazier than shit and I never noticed them on the The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
88 outside. I guess you don’t notice us on the outside because it’s two different worlds. No matter what they say, once you are insane, you are separate. There’s a Plexiglas divider all around you that you can’t see, but it’s there, and people who aren’t crazy can see in; they know you are. Outside sounds and demands are muffled for us. Inside, it’s uproar. It can be innocuous enough, coming in. Please, they say, taking your coat and put it on the chair, we want to help you. That’s if you’re not in a rage. The ones that come in screaming are latched down and shot up and generally hated. But if you come in quietly, you get all the amenities and are promptly forgotten about. Of course, there are some ‘aids’ who are human--really nice, try to talk patients down and find out what’s wrong. But they get tired fast, and they get grouchy, and soon they are putting you off too. No, I’m sorry, I can’t get you soap now. No, you know there’s no smoking. Get in bed. I don’t care. You can iron it tomorrow. Get in bed. Get away from the nursing station door. How many phone calls have you made? That’s enough. No, we’re going to dinner now. You should have gone to the bathroom before. Get away from the nursing station door. Most days there’s something—occupational therapy—in the morning. Once a week the art therapists come in and we do a project; anything neutral. Keep us busy, that’s all. It’s that or TV. I guess it serves me right. It’s not like I don’t know what’s crazy and what isn’t. You can feel miserable inside and just be left alone, or you can break down and tell someone and take the consequences. I’ve been seeing the smoke things since the baby died. They’re ghosts, you know. But people don’t want to believe in that, and I should have kept my mouth shut. And the second thing is, you can tell when the day is different. I don’t know, something happens and the world is different that day. Things happen, there are animals in the corners, and black things dart through the air above you. Fast enough that you can’t quite tell what they are, but you know they are there. I saw a rabbit under the desk, a really big white one, and I went The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
89 back and said to Michael, ‘hey, there’s a rabbit under the desk’. He said ‘OK’. He was the first one I really told. I figured, hell, he listens, and he lives here, he’s got to know that this stuff is going on. When I went back the rabbit wasn’t there. But later I was lying in bed with Michael and shadows began crawling across the ceiling… undulating. That’s the word for it, how the shadows move. ‘Michael’, I said, ‘there are black things on the ceiling now’. ‘OK’, he said, ‘but I can’t see them’. Well, I guess I got to enjoy telling Michael because I could have my black things and animals, and I could have him too. It wasn’t that separateness that I talked about. It was loving Michael, at least then, and also not pretending not to see those things. I don’t know why the rage and fury came. It just started one day when I was folding up the baby’s little gray flannel blanket, because Michael said it was time to pack the things away, and I was crying. He got mad at me finally, Michael did. He said, ‘cut this shit out, cut this shit. I’m sick of it. I’m sick of you slipping and sliding all around here, snapping at me, making life miserable. If you can’t get yourself together, then fuck, get away from me’. I said, ‘but you saw the things, you said they were there’. And he screamed ‘FUCK …just fucking cut this shit out.’ He smashed the glass he was holding onto the floor and stamped into the bedroom, probably to toke up. I lay there on the couch quiet for a minute, and then this rage came out from nowhere. It welled up in my throat and burst like a hot oil bubble that just wouldn’t stop coming. All of a sudden I was in mid-air, screaming like hell. I ran past the TV and crashed it to the floor. I smashed through the door into the bedroom and was across the room tearing out Michael’s hair and screaming and clawing him. I didn’t even think about who I was… I just wanted to kill him. He punched me back and had my arms at my sides on the bed and I was still screaming and then crying, but nothing made sense. It all just slipped away from me. I screamed and cried till I got too tired. I couldn’t even answer him; sleep came over me so fast. Later I woke The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
90 up and he was still there. He made me get out of the bed and drink some coffee and he made me go somewhere with him, and I don’t remember where, it was so hard to walk. Everything was so heavy, I felt like I couldn’t carry myself. I just wanted to sleep again. After that I got scared, because I think he did. Things started rushing then, rushing away from me, I couldn’t keep track of them. I stayed in the apartment because if I went outside the panic might begin. There were a lot of people on the streets and I knew I’d probably get attacked. They like to kill you, especially at night. I could see their eyes laughing in the corners. They said, ‘come on, bitch, just try it, just come on out here, we’ll show you.’ In the day, though, I walked along the lake. That was beautiful, especially when the waves were huge and crashing, and flowed along the shore until they broke on the rocks. The sky was so big, so big and all these clouds, and the wind was cold and I could feel my skin freezing on the outside. I sat on the park bench watching those waves until I was stiff. Thoughts moved in my head like the lake—back and forth in shimmering colors. The water understands; it knows what I’m thinking and it’s right there calling to me. I quit going to work. Sitting there typing, and the other women talking about their husbands and all that crap about kids. I lost interest. Anytime I ever said anything, they’d look at me and I’d realize I’d said the wrong thing and then I couldn’t remember what I’d said, so I couldn’t change it. It was embarrassing. It wasn’t all that much money, either. Michael said I had to go, and started yelling at me, but I told him there was a lot more to the whole thing than he thought, so what was the point of getting mad? That was the second time I blew my fuse, because he was pissed and threw his coffee across the room at me and screamed ‘how do you expect to eat?’ It wasn’t hot, so it wouldn’t have hurt me, but it could stain the rug. All of a sudden I had my superman suit on again and I was screaming over by his chair and tearing his hair out and punching him. The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
91 He said I punched him in the eye three or four times, so he bit me and punched me in the stomach, but I don’t remember. I just remember I was down and he was smashing my head against the floor and I was screaming ‘enough’, ‘enough’ because I couldn’t breathe. My head was sideways cutting off my air, and I realized any minute he was going to kill me. He let me up and I sat down again because I was shaking, but he said one more thing and I don’t know what it was but I kicked the coffee table across the room and started to run for the bedroom, but before I got there I picked up this stoneware jug and heaved it at the wall. It made a big hole and fell down, but it didn’t break and Michael was coming after me so I ran to the bedroom. He caught up with me and threw me on the bed and I screamed ‘get away from me, get away from me’, and then I got paralyzed like the last time. The next morning everything was breakable and I didn’t know if I was going to be able to make it from one end of the day to the other without dying. It was dark everywhere, and what I could see was taller and skinnier than usual. I hung onto my breath but not too well. The air was cold glass and any warm breath might cause it to shatter. I went to the store to get some soda or something and when I got back Michael’s friend Tom was there. He is a doctor, and I could tell they had been discussing me because they stopped talking and were quiet and looked at me from the backs of their eyes when I came in, sort of secretive. Later Michael went out and Tom talked to me, and I told him about the lake, and how it changed. I thought it was pretty neat, but the way he looked at me, his eyes shining, almost like glittering, I realized that he thought I was weird too. I don’t know how they convinced me to go to the hospital, but I think it was Tom. I think he told Michael he thought I was crazy, and since he was a doctor, well, that settled it. I know how mad Michael was, he was sick of me not working and he was sick of the rabbits and the black things and the birds, and me saying there was a baby crying in the night. The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
92 It all came pouring out and there was no way to stop it. It wasn’t even part of me now, it was pouring out my ears and nose too, and even other parts. I was just a receptacle now, for all those signals from the outside. Once you let those things in, they take over, and they take you over, and there’s nothing you can do but get crazier and crazier. You keep telling yourself I’m only thinking about it to keep from doing it, but it’s beyond your control, like killing someone or something, and you can’t stop. You slip into it, and it goes faster and faster. And that’s it. The hospital is right in the neighborhood and we went down there with some clothes for me and my toothbrush, and Michael told me to take something to do like read, but I hadn’t done that in a long time, because the words got blurry around the edges and changed places. That’s just another thing it does to you to fool you. Michael talked to the people at the desk and they asked me my name and all this shit, half of which I forgot because I kept looking around at all the weirdoes. They took me upstairs, it was pretty late, and told me to get into my pajamas and go to bed. Michael disappeared down the hall and was talking to the nurse or something. I thought he was going to come back and say goodbye. So I sat up in the bed and waited for him. I must have waited a long time because the nurse came in and asked me what was I still doing up. I told her I was waiting for Michael to come kiss me goodbye, and she said ‘get down in the bed and go to sleep, he left a long time ago’. I cried into my pillow so they wouldn’t hear me. I was sorry for the things I had done. I went and told the nurse that I was sorry, that I would go back to work now. I told her to call Michael and have him come take me home, but she snapped ‘get in the bed’ or else she would give me a shot to put me to sleep. I lay awake all night and the next morning they got us up and told us to put our clothes on and wash. Everybody was up walking around and I didn’t know who was who and which ones were patients, even. The doctor came to see me, took me in this bare room and asked The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
93 me all these questions and told me they would give me some tests. I went back on the ward, and there was nothing to do. Sometimes the aids would come and ask me some questions, but mostly just tell me when it was time to eat and I would see that the trays had come. Some people were blowing their fuses every so often, and there would be a fight with the aids, and they would put the person in a room by himself, strapping him down and stuff. It was scary, these big dudes screaming and cursing and punching the aids, and the aids had such horrible looks on their faces, like they were scared too or even mad at the guy like they wanted to kill him. When it was a woman she mostly shrieked. I waited all morning for Michael to come, but he didn’t. The TV was on, but I never watched it. I just kind of wandered around, but it was hard because I didn’t know if I wasn’t allowed in some places. I thought I heard the baby crying and when I opened the door, there were some mops in there, and the aide yelled at me and locked it. This young woman came down, and took me back in the conference room where I had seen the doctor. She asked me, like he did, if I knew where I was, what day it was, etc., who was the president. I answered her and I asked her when I could go home. I had already decided to change. She said, you will go home when we feel you are ready. I said I was ready now, that I would go back to work; I just wanted to go back. I told her that I was afraid Michael was mad at me, and I didn’t know what to do, now that I had changed I should go back home and see if he was all right. She just got out her things and began to give me these tests. The first was for intelligence, with questions and math problems, and things. I wasn’t too interested in answering and sometimes when I went to give an answer I would look out the window in back of her, and forget what I was saying. I would just be staring out the window until she made some noise or something, and I’d have to have her repeat the question. She showed me some pictures and told me to make up stories The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
94 about them. I hated those black and gray ones, reminded me of the black things I’d seen flying and I just wanted to put them out of my mind. I told her I didn’t really want to look at them, so she glared at me. Then I had to put some shapes together. Later she told me to finish some sentences; they were proverbs and I was supposed to tell her what they meant. She said, a stitch in time saves nine, and people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. Then she said the tongue is the enemy of the throat. I laughed because that was so ridiculous. I asked, is this a joke? She said it was not a joke, that she didn’t expect me to have heard all of the sayings. I told her it was a trick question; there was no saying like that. She said to answer it, so I made up something, but it was hard to imagine what the right answer was. When I was done I went back on the ward. I asked if Michael had come while I was gone, and they said no. I started crying and told them I thought he had forgotten where I was, maybe I better call him. They said I couldn’t use the phone yet, until the doctor said I could. I cried some more and asked again and again until the nurse screamed at me to get away from the nursing station door and if I didn’t shut up I would have to be restricted to my room. I went and sat down by the TV and kept crying. There was this old bag there. She started to mimic my crying so I went back to my room and got in the bed. I wanted to get out. I couldn’t because Michael wouldn’t come get me, and they wouldn’t believe me that I could go home. I knew the way; it was just a few blocks. I had already told them so many times I had changed and I was ready to go back to work, but it didn’t seem to do much good, so I went through the evening routines and tried to sleep for the next day. Hospitals make too much noise at night. You can hear everyone breathing in their sleep, and these noises come out of everywhere, eerie, like animals shuffling in the dark or maybe masturbating or strangling in their sleep. I kept smelling all these smells that I only half remembered what they were. The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
95 I stayed awake looking up at the wall. This horrible headache started in my neck and went halfway down my back and all over my scalp. I squeezed the pillow over my eyes, pressing harder and harder to stop it, but it wouldn’t go. I finally got up and went to the nurse and told her I had a headache could I have some aspirin. She said go back to bed; she couldn’t give out aspirins then. She would ask the doctor in the morning what I could have. I told her I couldn’t go to sleep because of my headache, and I was worried about Michael, where was he, why hadn’t he come? I had this idea that he had never left the hospital, that he had gone out to get me something and hadn’t been able to find his way back. I told the night aid what Michael looked like, and asked if he would go look for him. But the aid said that nobody stayed in the hospital overnight unless they were a patient or worked there. I couldn’t stay in my bed with that headache and not sleeping so I kept going back to the nurses’ station door until they took me back and tied me in my bed. I starting crying again but they just shut the door and left me in there. I fell asleep sometime. When I woke up it was the morning and they were telling me to get out of bed for breakfast, and they had taken the ties off. I guess after breakfast I realized my period started and that was why I had the headache. I had bad cramps then, and I told the nurse to get me some tampons, and she said wait. I stuck tissues in my pajama pants but they kept working loose and I bled on my underwear. I was afraid to get up and walk back down to the station to ask them again, for fear I’d have an accident. Finally one of the aids came on rounds, but it was a man and I didn’t want to tell him. I asked him if the nurse could come. He said she was very busy. I told him I needed to see her; I couldn’t walk back up there. I swear it was an hour before she came. Finally I at least had the tampons and I could get a shower and clean up, and I lay in the bed because I felt so lousy. Michael came that afternoon. I guess from worrying about him I forgot what his face looked like, because when he came in it was a The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
96 shock. It took me a while to realize it was him, and then I had a panic, like I was going to fall apart when I saw him. I asked him why he hadn’t come all day yesterday and last night. He said ‘you know I had to work all day and my final exam was last night. You don’t have a number here. Didn’t the nurse tell you I called?’ I said ‘no, no one had told me that’. He shrugged and said that he had. Michael didn’t talk very much and he finally went away. Natalie’s ghost came in after awhile, and we had a long talk about what Michael was doing when I wasn’t home. She told me he said I was the one who killed the baby, that I smothered the little thing in my breasts. I had choked it to death on all my beautiful warm white milk. She told me that I was very wrong to do that—look at her; she had never been able to have a baby. The cancer had started in her uterus, and had spread into her breasts and all over her body. She was just a skeleton when she finally died. She told me I should have been grateful to have such a beautiful baby, and should not have wasted it. I tried to tell her I was, I had been so grateful, but he died anyway. She wouldn’t listen to me, and flounced away down the hall, her bride-of-Frankenstein hair billowing out around her. I sat for a while and I was really mad, because Natalie was lying. But then I began to think that she might be right. I couldn’t even remember the name we had given to the baby, it seemed so long ago, and that proved I didn’t care. I remember once I read in the paper about this judge. Everybody thought he was so nice, and I guess maybe he was to some of the people around him. But, he had also taken some bribes. Then they found out and they were about to put him on trial for it. He might have been really ashamed, or maybe he didn’t think he did anything wrong, as if that was part of the job. But anyway, he took all his favorite things and he put them in a little altar in his private judge’s chambers, and there, one day, he blew his brains out. Everybody acted so surprised, as if they hadn’t seen the signs. I mean, he’d been telling everybody for a while that he felt lost. He’d been gathering his things together, and saying, ‘I love you,’ and all that stuff. The Wagon Magazine - September -2016
97 This is the thing, when you make such a waste of your life. When you’re not careful, sooner or later you will have to do what’s right. I thought very hard about what was the best thing for my baby, and so tonight I will start saving pills. One by one they will give them to me, and I will pretend to swallow them while I tuck them in my cheeks for later. When I go home I am going to have to find the little gray blanket, and the bonnet that Michael’s aunt knitted. I’m going to put them all together in one place. After a while, there should be enough pills. I can go back to nursing my baby again. That’s what I’ve lived for, and that’s the right thing to do. I’ve seen the signs.
Bobbie Groth was a spiritual counselor to victims and perpetrators of violence for over twenty-five years, spending winters in the Midwest and summers on the coast of Maine, USA, writing and publishing nonfiction pieces in the service of her profession. Fairly new to writing fiction, her stories have found a home in Mused, The Crime Factory, and Rosebud Literary Magazine and are slated for two upcoming anthologies, one of dark fiction and one of humor. She has signed a publishing agreement for her first historical novel. As a former expert witness in murder cases, Bobbie lightens her spirit by playing fiddle in a pan-Celtic band and keeping very large dogs next to her at all times. Follow Bobbie at https://www.facebook.com/bobbie.groth.7 https:// twitter.com/Gooseknoll and her blog https://bobbiegroth.wordpress.com/ FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION ONLY Published by Vel.Kathiravan, K G E TEAM, Chennai, India - 600024 Printed by Print Process, Chennai- 600014 / Phone: +949176991885 The Wagon Magazine - September -2016