Spectrum Magazine: Summer 2000

o o o z

Spectrum Magazine Summer 2000

A Northeastern University Publication

Spectrum Magazine.

Copyright

Š by Spectrum

and respective authors/artists. All rights reserved. No part or this publication may be reproduced without the permission of Spectrum and/or respective authors/artists.

Spectrum

reserves the right to edit submissions for layout as well as grammar and spelling, unless explicitly intended by the author/artist.

The Editors would like to thank the NU News, Azelle Murphy Cavaan,

and Andrew Karaptis.

All Members or the Northeastern community are encouraged to submit works or original poetry,

prose,

and visual art.

Submissions

should be placed in the Student Activities Office, 228 Curry Student Center, or email to spectrum_magazine6Yhotmail.com.

Undergraduate students are welcome to join the editoralstarr which meets on Wednesday nights at 7:00PM in 430 Curry Student Center.

We are also looking for students interested in web design and layout. For questions and information, please call us at 617 377 7334

The age demanded that we sing And cut away our tongue.

Ernest Hemingway

Staff List Co Editors

Jeanine Plant Jacquelyn Benson Design and Layout

Jeanine Plant Jacquelyn Benson Tay Arrow Sherman Keith Jordan Starr

Evan Wein Eric Fischman Maggie Beetz Annette Fantasia Jessica Marshall Amanda Martino Keith Jordan Tay Arrow Sherman Ehren Frank

Table of Cont ents Keith Jordan Give to Take

11

Maggie Beetz Undressing With Company

12

To Justin as Another "If Only I Had Known"

14

Name

15

William Stevenson Restaurant Scene

!6

Hungarian Rap

17

Issam Zineh Sacred Texts

!8

Ehren Frank Unlearn

20

Pretending to Sleep

21

Tay Arrow Sherman

22

Artwork David Katz A Penny For Your Thoughts

28

Shelby Dole

36

Artwork Jacquelyn Benson [Abbey was a building}

48

To a proponent of John Berryman

49

Persephone

50

Eric Raanan Fischman I Am Again - A Vision The Destruction of Winter A Winter Sunset in Battery Park

51 52 53

Caitlin Wrobel Haiku Series Tay Arrow Sherman Sonnet 2:

Eating Away

The Beginning of Things That Counted

55 56

Intr-oduction It all began rather innocently.

A deadline

was set. A provocative flyer with the ominous tag line,

"They missed the deadline.

You?" was made.

Will

Meetings were marked on our

new Harley Davidson calendar.

Photos and a

bulletin board were actually secured to our cinder block wall.

Jack and I shook on it.

We were not going to be flakes.

But here we are.

At the top or the

Curry Student Center, at 2:35 am, finishing up this eclectic,

je ne sais quos issue.

The

first goal was set: finish the issue by tomorrow.

But a few hours ago, a second and

equally important goal was set: Don't get caught in the Curry Student Center at 2:40 am.

That means reading by the light or the

computer monitor, and using the telephone for communication between offices that are two doorways apart.

Going to the lavatory

becomes a mission, and an exciting one at that.

It takes a lot or coordination and

good timing and companionship.

Tay Sherman just left about three hours ago and we owe her big time.

Luckily,

the English High Tea was today and she attended.

We talked.

She non chalantly men足

tioned that she would maybe stop by after an NUBiLAGA meeting and help us out with Photo Shop. By 9:00 pm we were really hoping she would show. entire cover.

She ended up designing our She worked diligently and

flexibly with our ideas or what the cover should look like and proved herself to be worthy or some kind or Spectrum exaltation.

So here we are.

We've just slapped on the

page numbers and perused the magazine, noting the horror movie ambiance or the cover. It looks like we just might make it out or here alive and unreprimanded.

If Jack can get her

eyes to stop crossing, she'd probably have to admit we've put together a damned good issue.

Jeanine Plant Curry Student Center

05/26/00 2:52 am

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Give to Take

He looks if watching makes her cry with eyes, absurdly taut, like globes or soap in search or freedom fly, on breezes high, to burst alone.

A fool whose fingers snag their tips on trails or tears like grooves in wax she scratched to reel the needle's skip forever on her wounded track.

His skin begins to char and crack as her cold cinders start to glow.

She smiles as slowly he steps back distracted by his heavy load, and when it cuts he hears her laugh as roses rot beneath his toes.

Keith Jordan

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Undressing with Company

I'll take orr my coat" as she stripped to the bone since apparently gin ger has quite an arrect on her lawless ly circling suffragette city girls dancing like someone that I used to know Robert and Clayton and well I guess Casto too spreading her open like 24 stores spreading her swiftly like jelly on gin gerbread softly em bracing I ran orr his clothes covered with kisses now tickled at friendly sites sober for once and its happening now goodbye to the TVs goodbye to the movies goodbye to pornography having done well

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softly encircling the brief night

sh did you hear that?

I think he's awake I could go to

allotted us

Baltimore check on the hash again check if the orioles flew all away or stay and be pummeled with his domination invited most wel coming into my clothes undressing with company stir ring in tickling massaging my loyal ty begging for more

I

could use some gin now or ginger or gin gerbread could use a drink now but no time to spare massaging my loyalty loyalty's loose now what loyalty loose now his buttons my hair.

Maggie Beetz

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To Justin as Another 'Ir Only I Had Known'

I saw him walking with green petals And a rew less tears in his head, And dividing the bracelet that held him to my leg, And dividing the book letter by letter, I was like a dear bird eating oranges again.

I saw him making love to his guitar With mother or pearl birds soaring up and down the neck, And dividing the song from something or this world, And dividing the plug from the wall, The silence and I wanted to hear him mourn again.

I saw him three days after talking like one does And I let the images run behind my eyes or dividing the needle from your arm, And dividing resentment into pie, I pictured how you look now in your coffin once again.

Maggie Beetz

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Name

My breast can fit into my hand And I have two And I have two Someone else was holding them this morning And

I didn't know where to put my hands.

Maggie Beetz

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Restaurant Scene No

higher than her daddy's knee

she reaches for the coat hook with her jacket hood like Huckleberry Finn snagging an apple off a tree.

-William Stevenson

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Hungarian Rap

clouds tapped tin roofs tingle clouds burst a thousand hearts beat triumphant reet pound down drain pipes somer saulting accordions and mugs or beer.

William Stevenson

17

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sacred Texts Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins, which feed among the lilies. omon -Song of Sol

4:5

Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe; breasts

satisfy

thee at all times;

and

let her

be thou ravished

always with her love.

-Proverbs

5:19

He that is wounded in the stones, member cut

off,

the Lord.

-Deuteronomy

or hath his privy

shall not enter into the congregation of

23:1

For she doted upon their paramours, flesh of asses, horses.

-Ezekiel

whose flesh is as the

and whose issue is like the issue of

23:20

When the child has gone from zero to mid-30s And has left her lover behind, she recalls the red Backed buck who sped away at the slightest snap or sanity. She stokes the holy book superstars Who testified on her behalf, supported her In her way of life not knowing the half.

In the guts of matter and the gutters of all That matters, most things can be relegated To skin: fore , for example, or the new Covenant of blonde hair against the shapeless Legs of the small boy who seems to be telling The small girl not to go, then turns to grass.

These things are like memory and leave us Stunned. There is the sudden realization that all The boys who loved you were holy. They Were also idiots to hurt that way as if it had Never been written, or could not be predicted.

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For the most part, it is there in black and white.

That whatever the body, it is land and will Be scorched for the sake or the first grape.

That once we have entered places as lowly And blessed as a woman's belly we are sentenced To sackcloth and supplication and the seedy Splendor or wings. It would be our pleasure.

The young man next to you speaks in his sleep.

Dear God, he says, I collapsed under m,y love, Again.

The body's breath unbearable wave.

I swore on golden light the single vow, The gold ring:

heaven's blown o.

Let it be seen,

me into you and,

You onto me.

sweet God,

I will forget her silver kiss,

Forget the moon's silver and the sliver Of a tree,

that Christ died slowly with three

Warm sets of lips His, And Iscariot's; And even this:

his mother's,

that I am here asleep with you the endall to all of this.

We are not the same as we used to be.

We never expected to be serene. Or beautiful.

But we are both, like almonds without skins, Resilient as fishing lines, and ready as hooks.

As you begin to mouth some promise or eternity, Your legs become an exaggerated alpha.

Your eyes are names too difficult to pronounce.

Your lips are sacrificed rams. Eventually, you Will open me like text and we will be spent.

The sanctified night will forgive us our devotion And we will fall asleep as children, dreaming or the place where salvation lasts until morning.

-Issam Zineh

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unlearn

(contents serve force swat morality) Passion's atmosphere won't suffer this hymn, pain got to be reinvented that obvious.

Think I'm in her for the sin.

The delights or damnation can be much deeper.

To reach for that hell, free will, well dammed.

Miserly is the bluest flame.

Cobalt feeds the heart I don't own, wit greedy hots, mistaken for stone.

I am slave to baptism, earmarked for sin.

Mock not obscured purity I aim for.

Know this purging by fire, costly desire.

Crisp skin ambitions thrust & retire.

I smell or heresy, heavy fumes that soak us.

No, use letting on souls laden with decay.

I will roast in silence.

To keep the visionaries jealous, love got to be reinvented that obvious.

No, use throwing orr bestowed human laws.

Light a match to unlearn.

See how nicely I burn?

-Ehren Frank

20

21

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Pretending to Sleep

One evening in suspended's moment something swung to stir, Slithered, stretched, smooth rose in silky yawn to steel my friend.

Whisper small I weakly watched her arch and scream, ark and dive into the noise.

The serrated sound was too whole to notice.

I couldn't see my shrinking hands in the thickness, I couldn't grow enough to think, my small self in its engulf, I couldn't move slow enough,

swift enough or pure

enough to be right to.

Meaning,

couldn't move my heart to want to save her.

Even now there is no awe.

I herd her sound more perfectly than any music.

It twinned, matched, melded, and became what came to claim her.

There is no awe; even now i t just is, the pang or notice quiet tears and just this, the exact size, my heavy little hands.

Ehren Frank

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Tay Arrow Sherman

23

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Tay Arrow Sherman

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A Penny For Your Thoughts

I can't remember anything that truly frightened me as a child, but I am an adult now, filtering adoles足 cent memories through the experience of nearly forty years, knowing that things which scared me then no longer have the same effect. Instead, I remember the fears that shouldn't matter but do. I remember being twelve years old, afraid that I would never grow up and that I would never be brave if called upon to do so.

My biggest fear was Kenny Pratt, who, at the age of fifteen, was the consummate villain. To describe him as cruel to those weaker than him is not to say enough. I acutally saw him spray a cat with lighter fluid and set it ablaze. He laughed maniacally as the poor creature ran screeching to an unspeakably painful death. Why didn't I try to stop him? If I had interfered, he probably would have torched me as well.

Because Kenny was bigger and stronger than every other kid on the block, he was the Tsar of Coburn Street. He hated Blacks (of whom there were a few in the neighborhood) , disliked Jews (at least those he didn't know personally) , and took nearly every opportunity to oppress anyone whom he viewed as being different. As for me, I sought to avoid him whenever possible but sometimes that was a diffi足 cult prospect.

On one such occasion, I left my house - anticipating nothing more than a pleasant summer afternoon of play with my best friend, Matt Lasker. I ran down the back stairs, unlocked the garage and grabbed my bike. By the time I had pedaled to the end of the driveway, Matt was there waiting for me with his

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bike, a black and chrome, three-speed, light-weight Royce Union identical to mine.

"Hey Dave, you wanna go down to the tracks and flatten some pennies? The 3:15 is due in about twenty minutes." " I don't have any pennies," I said.

"No problem. I got four of 'em."

I started to mount my bike again when I saw Kenny Pratt driving up on his Schwinn.

"Hey, boneheads, where ya gain'?" he asked.

I froze, but Matt spoke up, trying to act noncha足 lant. "Just down to the tracks."

"Oh yeah? What's down there?"

"Nothing much, Kenny," I said. "We're just going to flatten some pennies."

Matt glared at me.

"Cool," Kenny said. " Flatten a couple for me."

Matt said, "O.K." and stuck out his hand.

Kenny just looked at Matt's upturned palm and laughed. " I don't got any pennies. How many you got?" " I've only got four," Matt said. "Two for me and two for David."

Kenny's mouth extended in a subtle grin that belied the underlying menace of his voice. "No, you don't.

One for you, one for David and two for me. Better hurry. You don't want to miss the train."

Matt glared at him with pure hate in his eyes.

Not wanting Matt to get decked, I mounted my bike and said, " It's O.K., Matt. Let's just go."

He hesitated, and Kenny balled his hands into fists.

Still, Matt didn't move.

"Come on, Matt," I said. "We don't want to miss the train."

"Yeah, right," Matt said, "Let's go."

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we both pedaled down Coburn Street and turned left onto Almont without exchanging a word. We could hear Kenny laughing almost until we turned the corner. As we coasted down the steep incline of Almont Street, Matt started cursing.

"Fuckin' asshole! What a cheap, no good fuckin' ass hole! " That was Kenny, all right - a cheap, no good, fuckin' asshole, and at that moment, I wished that he were dead. Gone, Vaporized. Out of my life for足 ever. As soon as I had formulated my wish, however, I recanted it. Although I couldn't then articulate my feelings, I can now recall a vague belief that

every wish carried with its fulfillment Faustian consequences.

At the end of Almont, we turned right onto Franklin Street and crossed Eastern Avenue. The Saugus Branch of the Boston & Maine Railroad ran parallel to Eastern Avenue on one side and Haskins Creek on the other. We cruised over the crossing and deliberately spun out our bikes on the gravel roadbed. After we dismounted, Matt reached into his pocket and took out the four pennies.

"Here," he said, handing them all to me. "You take 'em. Take 'em all. I don't wanna do this anymore.

Kenny took all the fun out of it. He takes the fun out of everything."

"Come on, Matt. Forget about Kenny."

He just shook his head. "Nah. You do it. I'm gonna ride over to the park and see if I can find my brother."

"Why don't you wait until after the train comes and we can go together."

"Nah. I don't want to give that prick the satisfac tion." He got on his bike and started to go. "Meet me at the park," he called over his shoulder. Before I could respond, he was pedaling away.

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I was pissed off, mostly at Kenny, but a little at Matt, too. I couldn't just take off without flatten 足 ing the pennies or Kenny would kick my ass. Matt knew this. Matt was a less likely target, not so much because he was bigger than I was (he was still a lot smaller than Kenny) but because he had a big brother, who, while not nearly as tough as Kenny, could give him a run for his money. So I was stuck.

I set the kickstand on my bike and placed the four pennies on the near track. Then I scooped up a hand足 ful of pebbles and sat on a flat topped boulder. As I waited for the train, I pitched the stones one at a time at a half-submerged baby carraige in the oily water of Haskins Creek. Every so often, I glanced west and listened for the sound of the 3:15. After I had gone through three handfuls of pebbles, the warning bell sounded, the red lights began to flash and the crossing gate descended across Franklin Street. I watched as the train slowly approached from the west and listened as the click clacking wheels became louder and louder in their rhythmic beat. I covered my ears as the engineer sounded his klaxon horn to warn the waiting cars at the cross ing.

Soon, the train came abreast of me, its ancient cars with their washed-out B&M emblems swaying back and forth over each rail junction as their wheels merci足 lessly crushed four graven images of the Great Emancipator into wafer thin copper ovals. I smiled in anticipation as I waited for the last rail car to pass.

As the last set of wheels rolled over my pennies, I leaped from my perch and scooped them off the rail.

They were shiny, incomparably smooth and warm to

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the touch. I jingled the bounty in my hand, never minding that half of it would be paid to Kenny Pratt in tribute. I resolved then and there to give both of the remaining tokens to Matt. They right fully belonged to him anyway, and having both might make him forget about Kenny's extortion.

I stood up and was about to slip the flattered pen nies into my pocket when I glanced across the tracks and saw four denim-clad pairs of legs stand ing less than three yards away. I shifted my gaze upward and beheld the ape-like face of Pete Cronin and three of his goons staring at me. The auburn haired simian was the leader of the Cronin Gang, the most feared group of teenage thugs in town. " Hey, Jew-boy," he said, " Did you know that it's a federal crime to deface American currency?"

I just stood there, frozen in fear, unable to move or speak. The four horsemen of the apocalypse guf fawed and yucked it up, slapping each other on the back and cackling with malevolent glee.

Cronin walked across the tracks, extended his hairy arm and curled his fingers around the handlebars of my bike. His rictus grin displayed a set of teeth badly in need of othodonture. " I'm making a citizen's arrest, Jew-boy. And as arresting officer, I get to confiscate your proper ty."

As I watched him swing his leg over the saddle of my bike, my lower lip trembled and tears began to well up in my eyes. I felt like the Arkansas Fiddler cornered by the grizzly bear: He couldn't climb a tree,

he had no gun.

he was scared to run.

He couldn't f'ly away,

" Please don't," I croaked. "My dad'll kill me. Don't take my bike. Please."

"Hey, Pete," one of the goons said. "The little shit's cryin'!"

Cronin looked at me and laughed. "Tough shit, ass足 wipe."

He grabbed me by the front of my tee shirt and was about to knock me down when I heard a set of bicy足 cle tires grind to a stop in the gravel behind me. I looked over and saw Kenny Pratt bounding off his Schwin.

"Let him go, Cronin!" Kenny shouted as he strode over the tracks. Ignoring the Three Stooges, he walked right up to Cronin and said, "You touch that kid and I'll crush your skull."

Cronin held on tight. "What's it to you, Pratt? He's just a little sheeny."

Terrified, I swallowed dryly, my fate at the hands of one bully in the hands of another. I wasn't sure which one I hated more. Kenny was an unlikely John Wayne. He was certainly a match for Pete Cronin in a fair fight, but Cronin had his three buddies with him.

"He's a friend of mine," Kenny said. "Now let him go or your pals here will be carrying you home." " It's four against one," Cronin replied, correctly ignoring me as a potential contributing factor in any fight.

In response, Kenny turned on the Three Stooges and flashed them a look that telegraphed an impending explosion. When he spoke, it was in a low growl that frightened even me. "Get out now," he said, "while you still can."

They instantly stopped laughing.

"Run," Kenny shouted at them.

In an instant, they turned as one and ran down the

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tracks without looking back.

Kenny turned back to face Cronin. "Now let him go," he said.

Cronin released his grip on me and dismounted from my bike. Suddenly, he reared back, raising his fist for a roundhouse punch at Kenny. Anticipating the sneak attack, Kenny deftly stepped to one side and simultaneously pushed on Cronin's chest while strik足 ing his ankles with a sharp kick. The result was Pete Cronin lying flat on his back in the gravel.

Kenny jammed one of his black Converse sneakers into Cronin's throat.

"Listen to me good, you fuckin' Irish Mick. Get your ass outa here. If I ever see you around here again, I'll kill you and dump your ugly body in Haskins Creek. You got that?"

Cronin just nodded. Kenny signaled me to mount up and go. He removed his foot from Cronin's throat and we both got on our bikes and rode away, leaving Cronin on the ground.

I didn't say a word all the way back until we round足 ed the corner onto Coburn Street and stopped in front of Kenny's house. I stared at him, trying to fathom what he was thinking. His face was ruddy and his eyebrows were arched. I don't know what I saw in his blue eyes at that moment. Kenny was an enigma to me. Why had this bully, this cold-hearted barbar足 ian, rescued me? Had he changed somehow? I think that I actually expected him to look like the redemption of Scrooge on Christmas morning.

"Thanks for saving me," I said. It wasn't much more than a whisper.

"That's O.K. No sweat."

"Why'd you do it?"

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Kenny looked at me with genuine puzzlement on his face.

"Whadaya mean, 'why'd I do it?' It's like I told that shit-heel Cronin, you're my friend."

I was his f'riend? I just said, "Oh." Kenny stuck out his right hand, and, thinking that he wanted to shake, I extended mine, too.

"Nice try, Dave. Just give me my two pennies."

David Evans Katz

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Shelby Dole

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Shelby Dole

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Shelby Dole

45

Shelby Dole

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Abbey was a building with one door and many fattongued daughters.

The poor slut is still hiding from lecherous Boniface, wily kings,

even

her shaved brothers.

Each night,

in her shadow,

withering girls convulse under dreams of the godhead.

-Jacquelyn Benson

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To a proponent or John Berryman: Now I

cross to I reland.

Henry I I

If I

find

will eat him.

will bite his ears fat

with waiting noise jammed by the static shriek within; I

I will dissolve.

lay my body a continent

he has passed over.

I

am the same.

I

am the shadow

in his doorway.

Like Jane, Henry shrivels,

I

am

heavy footed in his closet.

I

Emerging,

will dot his hands with blood,

raise them up.

-See,

Henry? Holy Thou Art.

I

will wash him in my Shannon.

I

will swat him home.

03/05/2000 -Jacquelyn Benson

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Persephone As a woman,

my hours

are chosen. I

feed

my children sandwiches of whole fruit, warn them against biting.

I

must leave the box garden spilling

seeds on concrete,

leave

the hiss of open oven.

As I

burn down

the sibyllic hallway,

I hear the weeping

mother. My labor is the dust I

chew.

Past the closets where the infants lie in dark and breathless sleep,

waiting

the explosion of dawn, Our room is black with endings. I

crawl through your moist,

slack

maw to my place in your rib. (you have always been dreaming.)

-Jacquelyn Benson

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I Am Again - A Vision

I've remembered everything before. My present and past pull out from the backside of my eyes (right and left respectively) swirling 2 am with 6 pm. My present pulls faster and stretches my retina like a ram's horn in a sensuous and brilliant yinyang Harmony.

This whirlwind cloud of Eternity opens out into the world like an iris under heavy light, like the radiowaves of God. 2/6/2000 -Eric Raanan Fischman

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The Destruction of Winter There's a heaviness to Spring air that fills you like a sauna with all the sweet thickness of molasses and love, and it makes you lonely for molasses and love, like it's the last day of the everything and what have you done?

It's the aftermath fly-air that breaks you at the heart where snowpiles,

like carcasses

rot with the battlefield, casualties of Spring and the destruction of Winter.

They're twisted,

and broken

and emptier than you.

-Eric Raanan Fischman

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A Winter Sunset in Battery Park The trees dress down to purple veins and thickly barked unshaven legs.

Their bald skulls

grope for cloud toupees

and shameless cirrus co mbovers.

A depressed frenzy of Maple kneels in midlife crisis at the little white line, a New Jersey dusk fills out the branches of his frayed reflective scalp while an ironstained

40 yr old Oak

with attache and paisley tie staples his eyes to the citibus floor and a schoolgirl's little virgin thigh.

-Eric Raanan Fischman

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Haiku Series i I had a weird dream about fat people screwing.

I

need therapy.

ii When I

look at you,

a special feeling inside I'll rape a chipmunk. iii I think that your pants are big enough for a tent.

Want to go camping? iv I

stare into space

and dream sweet visions of you ...

Damn,

I'm so horny.

v I f the plane crashes, I'll eat you and you and you, but not you,

leper.

vi A lone burrito standing at the gates of hell probing the devil.

-Caitlin Wrobel

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Sonnet 2: Eating Away

Is it for fear to find me cold and dead You tiptoe 'round like cat upon a stair, And do succumb to every little dread, And pity me with every little fear, And every hour succumb to loathsome force, And fall into my every evil snare?

For only my demise could rip me forth From iron hold of you, innocent hare.

I'll clutch you 'til you bleed out holy wine, And sink dear talons through beneath your fair Compulsive flesh whose mercy I seek not, But only plot to keep you in my lair.

For how is it that we could ever part 'Til you can skin my world in bloody art?

-Tay Arrow Sherman

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The Beginning of Things That Counted

I suppose the reason I was travelling was that there isn't much of anything in Liberty, Tennessee.

Come to find out there's even less everywhere else.

Liberty has a bunch of farms, a Bible camp, a com mune of weird anarchist drag queens, a gas station, and a used clothes store. There's mountains every足 where. I guess it's okay. I visited New York City and found a greater variety of things that don't interest me much, if you catch my drift.

I met Ben while I was travelling. He was kind of famous among the kids at school, owing to the fact he'd come through town once. They all loved Ben, but Ben just likes weird hats and roller coast足 ers. I guess he must have been through town the time I had scarlet fever, because I never met him until I went up north.

Ben's the one interesting thing I've found while travelling. He has this hat made of out taxi足 dermy owls. You might imagine a hat made out of more than one entire owl would be huge but it wasn't. Whoever made it had left the owls completely intact, but put them together just right so they weren't too much bigger than your hand.

I thought this was interesting because just one owl is already bigger than your hand. I guess the guy who made it knew what he was doing. You can't get a hat like that in New York; you have to go to the bayou.

That's where Ben's from.

Ben's main job is that he's a circus geek.

That means he eats nails and glass and sometimes live animals, but he never gets hurt or sick. He can eat some pretty large things whole, too. He likes his job because he gets to go on the rollercoaster for free and because the circus he works with will not go into the big cities. He told me one time that

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big city folks don't really appreciate the freak show.

They think it's a scam or something.

"Sometimes, " Ben says,

"they get all riled up

'cause they think the circus freaks oughter be allowed to live like regular folks,

but I just can't

allow as to how a mermaid or a frog-boy would go about that.

They all like their jobs anyhow. "

I know this last part is true because I talk to the mermaid a lot and she agrees with Ben.

I've

been travelling with the circus for a while. I thought for some time how I'd like to be in the show,

too,

but I'm a pretty normal,

down to earth

kind of kid and have no special talents,

so I

changed m y mind.

Like I said, ling.

I met Ben while I was travel

I was up in Maine at the national park.

I was wandering around town, crazy hat. bayou,

While

I saw this guy with a

I could tell right away he was from the

and he was cooking snake in a sterno right

in the middle of Town Square. eating snake, "Say,

I have always loved

so I walked right up to him.

mister,

any chance of you selling a

bite of that snake to a fellow traveler?" the guy.

I waited for him to respond,

kind of laughed this creepy laugh. starting to get edgy, ing with a maniac.

I asked

but he just

By now I was

because I was obviously deal

Then all of a sudden he looked

up.

"Kid, for free.

you can have the whole fucking thing

I figure as I just m ight eat the sterno

instead. " "Well,

how you gonna do that?"

I asked him,

squirming in my shoes.

"I'll be fucked in Hell if I don't, watch." He always talks like that, cuss words. sterno,

you just

with all those

So I ate the snake and he ate the

can and all.

Like I said,

he had all these weird hats.

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That day he was wearing this beanie with a helicop足 ter thing on top. It was pretty much a normal one, except instead of helicopter blades it had pirhanas that spun around just like the blades would have.

Other than that, he was wearing this thick asbestos suit that covered his body from the neck down. I couldn't even see his feet because the legs of the suit were so long and thick that he could wear them as shoes. I didn't know what to think of that, because I get most of my first impressions from shoes. There's only about ten or twenty kinds of people and there's an equivalent number of shoes, so you always know who you're dealing with. But I figure a man who eats a sterno can't be categorized like that, because he will most likely treat his feet differently from anyone else on the planet.

I sort of saw him around town a couple of times after that. We talked a little. One night he invited me to the caravans for a barbecue. There are no buses around in this part of Maine, 'specially through the woods, so I had to walk four miles to get there. I didn't mind so much because Liberty's like that, too. Since Ben is crazy, he told me to arrive in the middle of the night and they would just start when I got there. I guessed then that he meant that they would start the barbecue when I arrived, and that turned out to be partly true. I left to go meet them around eleven at night.

The woods and mountains in Tennessee are warm and friendly. Of course they're also full of copper heads and scorpions, as well as weird crazy rednecks, but a kid can get used to that. I discov足 ered that night that the woods in Maine are very different. There's a presence in those woods like you're being followed. It makes you think all hazy and confused. It feels like swimming to walk through those woods. Worst part is after five steps

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in you're lost. That's more or less what happened to me, and I wandered around what seemed like half an hour before I reached the place where the caravans were at. I finally found them because I could hear these weird animal .noises and someone singing and I could see a fire off in a big clearing in the dis足 tance. They were dancing around a bonfire, those who had legs, and there was that singing and the carny was playing an organ.

I can't tell just what happened that night. I remember that I was surprised to see those real old looking gypsy caravans, all painted bright colors like that. At each one, the back was wide open and facing a firepit. The clearing was big enough as you could see the sky and the stars, and down below everything was happening. There were fire eating gypsy girls in long blue skirts and they were whirling around the fire. Closer in a man with bright, slimy hands and skin like a salamander who had a little fire of his own. He had no hair and was sort of glistening and colored all over, with a slippery look to him and completely black eyes like a shark. I saw he was making a stir-fry or some thing in one of those woks, like what they use in China. I don't take much stock in foreign food but I took a peek anyhow and saw he was cooking cicadas.

You know, those big old bugs that make that hum ming, buzzing sort of noise all summer. I figured that was all right with me and I was about to turn away, when he looked at me.

"Are you looking for Ben?" Asked the Salamander Man. " I was told Ben had a friend coming by for dinner." His tongue was very weirdly shaped, so I could barely make out what he was saying. " I guess that's me. Do you know where he is?"

I was feeling pretty awkward, seeing as the man I was talking to was not quite human and the man I was looking for was practically a stranger and ate

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60

glass for a living.

"He's right over there, by the Tanks. He thought you'd be here by two or so, but he's not angry of course. Would you like some cicadas?"

"Sure, okay," I replied. "Say, what time is it, anyhow?" ''A little before three. Go on, take these," he said as he handed me a striped popcorn bag with a few of the bugs in it.

"Thanks," I said, and wandered off towards the fishy smell that could only come from a place called The Tanks.

As I got closer to the smell, I realized that the music I'd heard before was getting louder. Then I saw Ben. He was talking to a thin boy that looked about my age, who had these backwards looking legs like a deer or a goat has in the back. I sort of didn't want to interrupt them, so I went and looked at some of the other fish tanks, always following the singing voice.

As I kept walking I found myself more and more curious about the voice. It came to where I was not paying attention to much else, and just following that voice to wherever it seemed to be coming from. I suppose that's how I met the mermaid, because of course it was her singing. She was half lying across a rock, just like a picture book. When she saw me down there staring up at her she stopped singing and smiled. I got kind of nervous then, like I got caught doing something bad. Then she called out from her rock to me.

"Who are you, hey? Who brought you? I'm the mermaid, I'm Selene! Come talk to me. I'm bored of singing all the time. Come tell me a story." Her voice sounded like a normal but very, very young girl's voice. She was like a little girl, too, even though she looked more like fourteen. She jumped in the water with her fish tail flipping, and swam

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right over to me. She came up to the edge and put her hands on the rim of the tank.

So I told her about Peter Pan. As that's the only story my parents read me ever it was the only story I could tell her back. She bit her bottom lip and splashed her tail around in the water and smiled. I think she just liked how there was mer足 maids in the story so I kind of tried to embellish their role. Originally they just save Peter Pan from drowning and that's the end of it. But she liked those mermaids so much, I couldn't help but tell her more about them. By the time the story ended they were the main characters. A whole flock of them were the ones who really beat Hook, as it turns out.

As soon as I was done, Miss Selene started talking. " In the very bottom of the ocean there's really mermaids, just like me. There's about a mil足 lion of them. Most people don't know because mermaids are good at being secret and imaginary seeming. My mother is there and my father is there and they are the queen and king and they sent me up one day to see how it's going with the legs on the ground people. But I was mad at them and I ran away and then one time I was by a pier a few miles from New Orleans and I saw the show. And then the show saw me. And then I was the show. But I bet the mer maids are still waiting. They are always waiting for the fairy tale to come back again."

Well, I didn't rightly know what I should say to Miss Selene. What she said seemed just like a big heap of nonsense to me, and there wasn't any way I could figure it out. I guess that surprised me because most people you know right away they are either stupid or crazy. Miss Selene might have been stupid or crazy, but I just couldn't tell.

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The worst part was, she had no feet. I mean, Ben had no normal kind of shoes and that had been throwing me off this whole time. But Miss Selene didn't even have feet. That made her a big question mark in my life right away. My whole being got all dizzy then and I leaned against the glass. I could hardly breathe, right then.

Then I thought something to myself. I thought, "You been travelling all over this country looking for something that would throw you sideways and take your sense away, and this here is it. It don't matter no more what anyone ever told you about the world because you can believe there's mermaids and maybe you'll turn out crazy or they'll turn out real, but even crazy is better than bored and miser足 able like you always been. So right then the whole world melted and I believe in mermaids. I was always a kid with a lot of common sense, see, and anyone else with any common sense would have done the very same thing. You want life to be an adven足 ture, that's the main thing, and it's not right to grow up and waste your life on taxes and mortgages and whatnot. If you could get to where I had just got you wouldn'tve been able to go back to no ordi足 nary living neither.

So I straighted up and that was that. Miss Selene was floating there at the edge, waiting for me to say something. I looked up at her and she laughed. " I knew you'd believe me, too. I knew, I did!

Selene knew," and she dove under that murky water and swam out of my sight.

"Hey, kid! Come to the fire. The show's on.

Hurry! " It was the Salamander Man, and Ben was with him. As I turned around, Selene's tank started rolling away from me, pushed by invisible hands towards the warm, pitchsmelling wind to my left.

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At the fire, the gypsy girls were spinning more wildly than ever and there were sword-swallow ers now, as well as the fire-eaters in their brightly patched rags. Everything was this hazy blur of color, what with the flashing blue swords and the gypsy skirts and the explosions of fire and the Salamander Man's glowing skin. Behind the blind足 ing light, I saw cages and tanks filling in the night, like teeth popping up all around us. Some tanks were blue-green with murky water, and some were lit with a purple light, and the cages were full of moving things I couldn't make out. From above it would have looked like the devil's eye; bright glowing pupil, eerie green iris, and the white filled in black with blood and evil. From inside it felt like poison and your parent's funeral and your birthday and Christmas all at once. That was how the show began.

-Tay Arrow Sherman