The Meadowland Review
Summer 2013
Cover Image Stormy Weather By Pete Madzelan
Megan Duffy
Poetry Editor, Photography and Art Editor
Jennifer Walkup
Fiction Editor
For submission guidelines please visit www.themeadowlandreview.com Questions or comments: contact@themeadowlandreview.com Copyright Š 2013 by The Meadowland Review. All rights are one-time rights for this journal.
Poetry Nikoletta Nousiopoulos Rich Ives Jenn Monroe Zara Raab Jenny Root Joey Nicoletti Ben Goluboff Jesse Millner Yvette A. Schnoeker-Shorb Molly Sutton Kiefer Judith Barrington George Bishop Nic Sebastain
Olive Trees of Delphi The Parable of the Falling Pebble This Isn’t “Just An Expression” His Absence Crow Brand New Cadillac Contact Hours My American Gospel Imagining Sweden Vantage Point Printmaking Pulling Over My Sister, Who Used to Be a Concert Pianist Secrets Cellar Wolf Girl
3 4 5 7 8 9 11 12 13 15 16 17 18 19 21 22
Steam
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Sunflower and Spider Bench Red Brick Building with Blue Door Hushed Antiquity Quiet Ocean Gateway Behind the Scenes
2 6 10 14 20 23
Fiction Andrea Jackson
Photography John Gifford K.Carlton Johnson Ira Joel Haber Pete Madzelan Jennifer Powers
Contributors
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Poetry
Sunflower and Spider by John Gifford
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Nikoletta Nousiopoulos olive trees of Delphi i. my mind spins so my core is a series of senses in disarray; it’s midsummer. i watch scents exit curves of poppies. their aromas belly dance. at sunset, olive trees change shape & silver feathers grow; their branches reach cloud level. tonight, i'll leave the hotel & sleep under an olive tree. when it takes flight i can pretend slumber, and shoot that miracle down so it squirms and releases at my feet. after I bless the ground where the olives die i'll bury whats left of it in my heart for you ii. Nike shakes off her marble wings quietly, she weeps on the Temple of Apollo, where stray dogs ravage crow & goat bones iii. the groove a giant dreamed erected when you slept next to me i too, was asleep and the bus drove along the mountain’s edge. you must believe me when i sing: you could get drunk off that air you could bleed like sheep in a dog’s teeth
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Rich Ives The Parable of the Falling Pebble come down from the clouds my lovely pebble says the man climb the lonely pine tree to find me says the woman throw me a little rain while you’re up there says the tree I have no coins I’m illegally tender says the charming man your compositional value is apparent fertilize something tall says the tree it’s not for you that I hold so still says the rock trapped in the building my love is a rock my love is a tree reaching ever higher says the naive man my love is a slingshot my love is a delicate buzzsaw says the teasing woman my love is always traveling complains the imprisoned floating cloud my love is made from office pebbles and cellphones says Denver that’s my love give it back says Seattle but buildings and cellphones can’t give love back it just turns to ghostly voicemail I think I’m falling for you says the man disguised as the pebble and the building phones itself for assistance as the woman tries to save her marriage with a little rain and a lovely ancient cloud
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Jenn Monroe This Isn’t “Just An Expression” Facebook tells me 116 friends posted on my timeline to say happy birthday. I like good wishes, but I do not have 116 friends. Clicking “like” is not expression. It is reflex, like saying bless you or how are you or fine. We need to reclaim expression. Make the tactile tactical, breath to breath, skin to skin. Physically offer and receive connection. Our genes express through transcription—create records—like I record the way her hair smells after a bath, the pressure of your hand slid underneath my thigh— and genes express through translation—like you translate this look as I love you and this one as I need you, and this one as forever.
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Bench By K.Carlton Johnson
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Zara Raab His Absence Though we’re both, thank God, very much alive, though I’m the one (not he) who left, still, he is gone, gone as if he died, as if I had shot him with a gun that Sunday morning in our driveway, leaving him to stand there, looking stunned. No matter that I left, he’s the absent one, so close to me, then suddenly not.
Casting off widow’s weeds, opening the gate, I go to his room under the gable as if there never was a divorce like an autopsy upon a table.
No reason for grief. He looks up and smiles, a sutured interchange, pleasant, brief.
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Jenny Root Crow sleek and keen, she preens with death, faint gleam of meat and maggot in the eye shadow crow black hole crow dark matter flying by and you, little crone late to the feast in the road feathers frizzled, milky eye who shudders for you?
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Joey Nicoletti Brand New Cadillac —after the Clash
Afternoon sun shaving the back of my sore neck. The LIE slippery beneath the round, radial feet of my father’s brand new Coup de Ville, circa 2002. The glued face of Jesus beams with sterling silver gleam on the dash as we pass sound walls freshly signed in muddy ink, like my father’s name on his divorce papers. The radio speaks, and I’m taken aback: Joe Strummer is dead. He ain’t never coming back. Streetlights bow their heads as if in prayer to the late December air.
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Red Brick Building with Blue Door By Ira Joel Haber
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Benjamin Goluboff Contact Hours It’s like stepping, you’re tempted to say, into the same river twice. The Stacys and Jennifers become Peytons and Madisons. The looseleafs become laptops. The anthology is revised on a more inclusive plan. And yourself are grown stouter and slower. But here in this hour, in the view from this lectern, you’re tempted to say, time has had a stop. The bodies change but the types persist, eternally recurrent: the nervous note-taker, the active listener, the lotus eater, subtly fragrant. Like citizens of El Dorado, they are forever young. They are a fixed point from which you recede down a vista of diminishing returns toward darkness. Or maybe not. For here in this hour, in the view from this lectern, time, you want to say, is in remission. Your studied asides go as their forebears have gone. The laughs all come in their time-honored places. The kids say what the kids always say. And as they speak her stanzas, Dickinson may not rise, timeless, from the anthology to dance upon her toes among the modular seats. But she does breathe a little in the country of the young.
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Jesse Millner My American Gospel Love your neighbor. Jesus was a good guy. But he never rose from the dead. My Christian friends hate this period, but I can’t reconcile memory and myth, the way the disciples told their stories and the witnesses told their stories, then eventually someone wrote them down, then somebody else copied them, before someone else copied them again, ad infinitum. Let’s not forget the King James translation, how a typo in the first edition implored believers to commit adultery. Beautiful book full of stories that are ever-changing, ever-reconciled with the latest notions of whether or not He was with God before He wasn’t, or if He was human, then Spirit, or Human Spirit birthed by Virgin, who became a spiritual human or a Christ, depending on whether you’re heretic or not. But even heretic was a winner’s word for the losers in the supernatural story-telling contest, the one that still goes on, that still rages between true believers and those unfortunates like me who were never struck by lightning on the road to Damascus, who never saw the empty tomb, who never spoke with the risen one who came back to sew new meanings over what He had reaped. I can’t remember where this poem began. Memory is like the dream I had last night, which seemed so bright and true until I tried to translate those beautiful, terrifying bits of sleep into a story. I know there were birds and stars, a road with a Chevy or two, bright lights whispering into the breathing of those oak trees, the ones that leaned into the barbed-wire fence from which a dreamer might have gathered a crown of rusty thorns.
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Jesse Millner Imagining Sweden When I was ten-years-old, my mom bought a cheap painting at K-Mart that showed a lake surrounded by snowcapped mountains. I imagined it was Sweden and quite often in my childhood I wanted to crawl over the couch and launch myself into that alpine landscape, leaving my loneliness behind and starting a new life in a world filled with blonde, large-breasted Nordic women. I knew they would love me, pimples and all. I knew they would accept all my sorrow and translate it into long afternoons where one of the girls would hold my hand as we stared into the lake, until I’d forget I was merely a boy who’d crawled into a picture--and everything would become real: the soft hand of the girl, the lake sparkling in all that afternoon light, the wind a little too warm for the altitude, but, hey, I’d never complain as the sweet night darkened the water and the stars scrawled their wistful calligraphy in syllables of silver and white
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Hushed Antiquity By Pete Madzelan
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Yvette A. Schnoeker-Shorb Vantage Point Last night I ate steak—rare and bloody. This morning I walk to a vantage point, climbing the hill to watch Angus, Hereford, Charolais, and you below— your camera capturing the grainy grass of pasture. Also attempting to engage the landscape, so pastoral and aesthetic, I focus on the distance. I try hard to be the graceful gentlewoman, but the dry, rocky slope is slippery, and I am concerned about the clouds. They come and go like hunger, like acceptance, like contradiction. The cows continue to graze aggressively as they slowly form into a linear herd headed your way behind you, their soulful eyes curious as they shadow the steps of a two-legger. I once read that beef cattle were the first livestock to have their genome mapped, that they have about 22,000 genes, and 80 percent of those bovine genes are shared with humans. Our ancestors, rising in groups over ridges, eyes prospecting for signs of food—greenery, water, motion, were spared the subtle guilt of domestication. In Paradise, the whole world was raw, and the goal, if you could, was to eat before darkness fell and filled the earth. Civilized with reflection, I wonder what it was exactly that I ate last night, then watch the shifting sky as one lone heifer, branded and perhaps carrying her first calf, turns her ear-tagged head to gaze my way.
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Molly Sutton Kiefer Printmaking Twelve geese scudding across blue and white, clouds are sand after waves have passed. Two dozen webbed prints line mud, bits of bracken. I know them by the triangled wedges. When crouched, I pull you closer in to me, feel less waddle, and more savage stance. I defend, kicking thing. You’ll squall and I’ll know nothing but the dark walls of winter, quiet but for the crows. Long gowns and precious feet, whorls I run my fingers along, ridges barely showing, your heel and toe leaving prints in the fine air.
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Molly Sutton Kiefer Pulling Over Because it is routine, I begin the sequence instinctively: kneel in a patch of grass that swallows me, clear an empty nest, my stomach a gentle ferris wheel of no, then—yes. In waiting, watch as that world re-emerges: a daddy longlegs’ slow approach, brush of katydid against bare skin. It is quiet, save the murmur of highway, somewhere beyond the field, whispered response of long grass, oblivious and continual birdsong. I louver myself up on raw knuckles, flecked with the impression of stones.
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Judith Barrington My Sister, Who Used to Be a Concert Pianist What I will remember is how she sat there a little hunched over, watching the birds, pointing suddenly at a crow or the cows that wander up to the fence dividing lawn from pasture. She had grown not old but ancient in my absence. While I flew north or down to San Francisco, while I walked my dog up Tabor on unsteady painful legs, solid chunks of her memory were falling out, leaving spaces like doorways or window squares in the crumbling walls of a ruined cathedral. What happened to the urge that used to propel her into the forest or up the path to the beacon with Humbert who bounded as eagerly as she strode in those shoes she still called plimsolls? What I will recall is her back view nothing visible except dirty gray hair shorter than it was in its wildly tangled days, chopped off by an impatient social worker one Wednesday afternoon. She might be any very old woman smiling I know, even though I can’t see her face, the smile that used to reveal her joy at the hound pointing his nose towards a bird or the smell of a briny wind– an old woman who now waves her hand at a black and white cow reaching over the fence to sweeter grass— a revenant who, when she was young sat me on her long thighs and taught me to read. “About,” she would say, “is not a boat. Look at the vowels” but I squirmed away shouting “a boat, a boat!” so she returned to those meticulous Bach phrases spelled out by the touch of her long fingers. What I will see when I’m home again, is not the violence of the haircut but the elegant hand lifting wrist first, as if flourishing up from the keys, her perfect fugue complete. Page 18
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Judith Barrington Secrets Secrets spiral up like thermals in air— invisible yet often leaving a clue, for example those frigate birds with forked tails who rise until they’re a crowd of specks up there climbing the hidden current stair by stair and all but disappearing into the blue. It takes no effort to glide when the updraft’s as true as a secret that’s never been told—a secret that’s rare. But silence is not always light; I’ve felt the weight of bad deeds pressing down: harsh words I’ve thrown so carelessly, and the shame that tied my tongue for too many years playing carefree, playing straight— always a lover pretending to be alone. I held my secrets close when I was young.
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Quiet Ocean Gateway By Pete Madzelan
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George Bishop Cellar The rain’s found a weakness in the block and soon the sump will wake, then me as some unimagined dream-fear flows through the sheets like nitrogen oozing out of a pre-dawn shower. I’m awake, imagining potatoes in the dark pressing against their soiled skin, the pump snapping from silence. The washer and dryer wait to be shocked into preset cycles, ready to fill, agitate, spin. I’m thinking—we were all given different copies of the world when we were born and on this damp page of mine with potatoes and appliances, I’m glad the cellar’s being kept from sinking, I feel safe somewhere in the eye of a potato. I know I’m blessed to be far from the haunting shift of beams falling from boxes in the attic. I’m grateful for being surrounded by these inhabitants, blindly leading me back to the broken sky of my sleep, to the sun of a past freshly packed with opposites.
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Nic Sebastain wolf girl She packed a small bag with rain, high wind and a dozen words. She stepped into a reed coracle and set off down the bruised and swollen river. The coracle sped downstream, past the wolf families on the river bank. Wolf babies like fresh cinnamon, wolf teens like spring hail, wolf mothers like hot blood and oboe song. The beauty of wolf pierced her and she wept, but already her bones had become hollow. Her lungs had thinned and packed themselves against her spine. She breathed through her stomach now. She was ready. She released the rain and the wind, loaded the words from her bag onto her crossbow. Now the coracle raced over violent water under blue-dark cloud. Her aim was steady through the rain, fixed on the Wolf Mogul, who watched her from the far bank with yellow-black eyes. Had he cared to, he could have reached her in one bound. She fired the leaden words at him in quick succession, heard twelve blood-thuds, saw the Mogul fall. The coracle shot over the falls into a thousand-foot drop and she heard a root-cracking behind her, as if a sky pillar had fallen. She heard the voices of the wolf mothers and wolf children rise in terror behind her. Have I done a good thing? she asked herself, in the last moment she could ask anything at all. As she fell, a thick life curtain dropped and new breath flared. She skimmed out of the waterfall mist on a storm petrel's cry, wheeled mindless on an updraft, set course for the open sea.
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Fiction
Behind the Scenes By Jennifer Powers
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Andrea Jackson Steam
On May 5, 1768, at the Watt residence in Glasgow, Scotland, Margaret “Peggy” Watt threw a small glass saltcellar the length of the table at her husband of five years, narrowly missing his head. The implement shattered on the wall, leaving slivers of broken glass on the painted floorcloth and expressions of shock on the faces of her husband, James, and their dinner companions, who were as much appalled at the waste of a perfectly good saltcellar, along with its expensive and highly taxed contents, as they were at the uncharacteristic violence of the gesture. 1759-1765 steam (stēm), n. 1. water in the form of an invisible gas or vapor. —Random House Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary, 2d Ed. John Robison was a tall and brilliant man whose thoughts resembled a great bonfire, wherein every idea would spark a dozen others. James Watt, sturdy and serious, had little schooling but an inborn aptitude for mechanical devices, and Mr. Robison was an academic who worked mostly with his mind. They shared a passionate interest in mechanical problems, and each had talents and experience the other lacked, so they enjoyed spending time in each other’s company whenever they could arrange it. The conversation took place in James’s lodgings at Glasgow University. He had invited Peggy there especially for her to meet Mr. Robison. James was, at that time, employed as instrument-maker to the University of Glasgow, which meant that he fixed mechanical devices that weren’t working properly and created new ones as needed, often of his own invention. The position didn’t pay enough to support him entirely, but a humble apartment was provided in one of the University buildings, and associated with it was a small workshop in which he did his work and conducted experiments. Page 24
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James and Peggy were both nervous that evening. James, it seemed, was anxious for his friend and his fiancée to like each other. Peggy was simply eager to meet James’s friend. She expected to like him, from what James had told her, and she wasn’t concerned about whether he would like her. Peggy had rarely been disliked by anyone, while James’s peculiar personality, his fits of irritability and anxiety and his “black moods,” sometimes caused him to answer curtly and to look away from others instead of directly at them, which created, at times, a dubious impression. Peggy was, however, eager for Mr. Robison to see that she, as well as James, had a keen interest in and understanding of mechanical concepts. Fortunately, he did see it; and the three of them conversed on such subjects for several hours with mutual respect and enjoyment. The particular point that caught Peggy’s fancy that evening was Mr. Robison’s suggestion that it might be possible some day to power carriages by steam!
“Don’t marry him, Peg,” her older sister Bess said. “You are too much alike.” Oddly enough, Bess’s doubts had not turned on James’s moody temperament and the cruel headaches that confined him to his bed for days at a time. Bess knew that James depended on Peggy to guide him through his hours of despair. James himself said that Peggy was the only one who could lift him out of his anxiety and sadness. But comforting was one thing, Bess pointed out, and marrying was another. As Peggy recited the vows on that warm day in July, 1763, the suspicion that the relatives gathered behind her in pews approved of her, in general, more than they approved of James, was in her mind and pleased her, although she would have denied it as unbecoming and sinfully proud, as well as not being grounded in fact, or not entirely so, because while James was certainly lucky to have her, she, too, counted herself lucky to have James – ironically, for the very reason that her sister Bess found objectionable; namely, their shared interest in experimentation. Peggy and James had been known since childhood for their mutual delight in tinkering with mechanical things. Her sister Bess had urged against such an unladylike preoccupation. But
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Bess cared only for pious, womanly duties: child care, needlework, and running a smooth household with, perhaps, a bit of drawing or singing for relaxation. Peggy had been confident, even as a little girl, that she would not be satisfied with such a life. Arguing against the union, Bess had urged: “Husband and wife must bring different gifts to the marriage. Else they will be rivals to each other. How will it be when one of you proves to be cleverer than the other in the cause in which you are both engaged?” “You are wrong, Bessie,” Peggy insisted. “In the first place, a husband and wife are not rivals; at least they shouldn’t be; because they are joined in a shared enterprise, the improvement of the condition of the family, to which end neither is in competition with the other. In our case, the opportunity to continue our experiments together, pursuing a particular goal that interests the both of us, brings us closer. There is no animosity between us at all in that regard.” What was special about James was his driving impulse to fix things, repair things, change them and make them better. With Peggy by his side to save him from his black moods, surely they would be able to solve the problem that fascinated them both.
The steam engine that was in use at the time of her marriage had been invented some time before by a Mr. Thomas Newcomen, and was so wasteful in its operation that it was not good for much except pumping water out of mines, and then only in locations where wood for fuel was plentiful. Ever since their conversation with Mr. Robison, James and Peggy had dreamed of an engine that would waste no steam at all – or almost none, as close to none as they could get it. But the more they experimented, the more they learned and the more daunting the project came to appear. It took a lot of heat, more than one would think, to bring water up to boiling temperature. One would expect it would then immediately boil, but it turned out that it took even more heat, again a surprising amount, to make the hot water actually boil. In a Newcomen steam engine, this Page 26
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water was in a cylinder, and some of the heat would go into the walls of the cylinder, because they had to be hot, too, so the steam would stay hot. But when the cylinder was finally filled with steam, alas! it was necessary to cool the steam down again so that it would condense back into water, which filled less space and so left a vacuum above it. It was the vacuum that made the engine work. But when they condensed the steam in the cylinder, they lost the extra heat that was in the steam, and the extra heat that was in the water, and the extra heat that was in the walls of the cylinder. And then they had to heat it all up again to make more steam, in the course of which more fuel had to be used to bring up the water’s temperature and the cylinder’s temperature and to turn the water to steam. James and Peggy did experiment after experiment, varying the makeup of the cylinder, the amount of heat they applied, varying everything they could think of. It was simply not possible to do these things without an astonishing amount of waste.
April, 1765 steam (stēm), n. …2. Water changed to [an invisible gas or vapor] by boiling, extensively sed for the generation of mechanical power, for heating purposes, etc. —Ibid. One fine Sunday in April of 1765, less then two years after their marriage but six years into their experiments, James and Peggy set out after church for a stroll on the Glasgow Green. The Green was Peggy’s favorite place to walk, flat and open, and as usual, she set a rapid pace. James was usually more deliberate in his movements than she, but as he had learned that she was incapable of walking slowly, he kept up with her, and they were soon perspiring in the spring breeze. At that point, Peggy asked, as if she had just thought of it, “James, when shall we resume work on our experiments?”
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As she had refrained from mentioning the subject for more than a month, she was surprised when he responded angrily, saying, “Woman will you never stop yammering on about the steam engine?” “Why? What is the matter?” she asked innocently, although she knew and could hardly blame him. He thrust his hands deep into his coat pockets, and she suppressed a smile, thinking how much he looked like Bess’s youngest boy when forced to admit to some misdeed. “It is time,” he said, “to call a halt. We must face the facts. It cannot be done.” “James, I know we can succeed. I am convinced that a way will appear to us.” “You have nothing on which to base such confidence. You live in a dream world, Peggy. You see only the good that might come to pass, and spend your days in wishful imagining.” “And you see only the bad, and lose your days in fret and fear.” “I see things as they are. The waste-less steam engine is a hopeless impossibility. All our experiments in pursuit of it have only taken time away from the shop, and the shop is what brings in the money.” By this time, James had come to employ sixteen workmen in his shop, producing and repairing mechanical devices and musical instruments for general sale as well as helping him invent and repair equipment as needed by the University. It was the success of that enterprise that had given them the financial security to justify marrying at last. But Peggy shivered at the thought that their cherished experiments were to be abandoned. “Well, then,” she declared, thinking she had found a solution, “I shall continue the experiments by myself, while you put your efforts into the shop.” “No, Peg.
I don’t want you in the workshop any more.
Your presence there is a
distraction to the men.” “What whimsy is this, James? I do believe my appearance is quite passable” –she paused, but the appropriate response was not forthcoming – “but surely I lack the sort of beauty that Page 28
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would be likely to distract any man, least of all one of your workers, most of whom are married men who would have no business looking in any event.” She was pleased with this coy speech, but James countered in all seriousness, “The problem is not your appearance in particular but the mere presence of a woman where no woman ought to be.” Before she could dispute further, as she was inclined to do in view of the foolishness of the assertion, he said abruptly: “It is because of John Robison that we have been pursuing this hopeless business for all these years. And all the while he has made no sacrifice. He has had his University position to support himself and to lead the world to think well of him.” “James, how can you blame Mr. Robison? You and I both thought the idea could work.” All this time she and James had been walking briskly, but now James became distraught and picked up his pace still further so that she had trouble matching it. “I knew it,” he said. “I was a fool.” “What do you mean, James?” “I mean that your tender feelings for Mr. Robison have clouded your judgment.” “What tender feelings? I barely know the man.” “I am a practical man. I work with my hands. But Robison, now. A fine talker he is. And maybe it is just such a fine talker that you have wanted all along.” Peggy was amused at the picture they must present – James, ordinarily the soul of restraint and common sense, racing across the Green, making wild accusations and waving his arms in the air, while she trotted along behind him like a child. She was appalled, too, to think that he might have been harboring such suspicions for years, though he had kept them to himself. Her habit of honest conversation with James led her now to note: “It is true that I have always enjoyed Mr. Robison’s energy and quick wit. Indeed, the man has an intellect like a bullet slicing through a stand of grass.” Reflecting, too late, that this was not a helpful observation to
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make, she continued: “But James, there is nothing to what you are saying. It is you who have always been my soul-mate.
You, who are my other half. James, dear, your fears have no
foundation at all.” He paid no attention to what she said, but continued to rant about Mr. Robison, and how James knew it was a mistake to bring Peggy to see him, but that it was better to learn their mistake now than later, after they had wasted more years in pretense; and after a time she became impatient with his foolishness. His anger was unpleasant enough, but she feared that if left unchecked it would turn to despair and self-pity, and she thought how inconvenient it all was just then, when they had an important decision to make. Especially since she was sure that when he became calm, he would be able to see reason and know his suspicions were groundless. She thought: I must find some way to distract him from this subject and give him a chance to cool off, before he plummets into one of his black moods. Suddenly, she stopped walking and stood stock-still. “That’s it!” she exclaimed. “James, I have it! I know what we must do.” The sudden change of subject caught his attention as her protestations had been unable to do, and he stopped and turned to face her. “What might that be?” he said wearily, with no trust in any quick idea of hers. “Get the water out of the cylinder to cool down!” she cried. “Put it in a separate cylinder! That would solve everything!” “Two cylinders?” “A hot one and a cold one. A pump between.” He thought a few minutes, his brow furrowed. Suddenly he laughed. “A separate condenser! I think it would work!” he said. His anger forgotten, they fell to discussing the details.
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February, 1768 steam (stēm), n. … 3. The mist formed when the gas or vapor from boiling water condenses in the air. —Ibid. While Peggy’s idea continued to seem sound in theory, James encountered many technical difficulties in bringing it to fruition. It happened also that some good business opportunities came his way, and when Peggy complained that he neglected the steam engine, he referred to the aforementioned difficulties and pointed out: “I cannot, on an uncertainty, refuse every piece of business that offers,” which, she had to concede, made perfectly good sense. So she surrendered to necessity and busied herself with domestic occupations, which she found pleasant enough, although not particularly interesting. Meanwhile, James hustled about Scotland, building canals and designing steam engines of the old, wasteful kind, because that was what people wanted, and who could blame them? A wasteful machine that worked was to be preferred over a perfect engine that was but a dream. When she was honest with herself, she had to admit that those many months since James stopped working on the steam engine had been hard on her. Not only did James refuse to talk of their ideal engine for months at a time, but he seemed entirely happy not doing so, and was so absorbed in his canals and other business opportunities that he barely had time to chat with her at all. Then, in February of 1768, with no prompting from Peggy, he resumed the experiments. He had managed to gain the use of a fine workshop owned by a wealthy man named John Roebuck, whom Peggy had met once or twice. He was not a particularly cultivated man, she judged, but he was eager to make money by investing in something new and different, and he was able to see the possibilities inherent in the improved steam engine. The workshop was a small stone cottage on the grounds of Mr. Roebuck’s mansion, Kinneil House, and James was given free use of it.
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The availability of that workshop was the cause of some irritable words between James and Peggy. She thought that since the work was to be done in Mr. Roebuck’s workshop rather than in James’s, he should have no objection to her assisting in the enterprise. “Although I lack your technical knowledge,” she said, “I am a quick learner and have a flexible intellect that has already proven itself useful, I believe.” But James absolutely refused to allow it, or to discuss the latest experiments with her at all. “I am beginning to suspect,” she said, “that you wish you had not such a clever wife.” They had been since childhood accustomed to speak frankly to each other, or so she had thought; but instead of responding to this accusation, he launched one of his own. “And I am beginning to wonder why we have no children. Why are there no bairns in our home?” he asked. “James, how can any one answer such a question? It is in the hands of God.” But she was beginning to wonder herself. She knew how much it meant to him to have an heir and hoped she could provide him one. “Bessie,” she wrote to her sister, “do you suppose he is right, that a Woman with Mannish interests becomes less of a Woman? And if that is so, is there any Place in the World for one such as myself? Oh Sister, I am in a despairing Way indeed. Missing you most painfully, (Signed) Margaret Watt”.
May, 1768 latent heat, coined by Joseph Black for the heat hidden, or ‘latent’, in a substance when it changes its state from solid to liquid, or from liquid to gas, without any change of temperature being registered on a thermometer. —Marsden, Ben, Watt’s Perfect Engine: Steam & the Age of Invention For several days prior to the eventful dinner party of May 5, 1768, James had been skulking about, not looking straight at her, going to bed early; running away, almost, when she approached in the evening, candlestick in hand, wanting to talk as they always had used to do. Page 32
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And then, to inform her practically at the last minute that a dinner party was to be held in her own home, hastily arranged with barely time for the cook to prepare a special meal, and without consulting her at all as to the date, the hour, or the guests, as if she were a servant girl instead of the mistress of the house! She afterward believed that had it been in his power he would have locked her in the barn or other safe place where she could not upset his plans, so unthinkable it seemed to have become to simply talk to her and tell her what it was about. In spite of all the secrecy, it was obvious that the subject for discussion was to be the steam engine, because the guests, whose names James grudgingly disclosed, were to be John Roebuck, who had allowed James to use his workshop; John Robison; and Joseph Black, another friend who had been involved in the project from the beginning. The air that evening was cool, outside and in, and the fog that had hung over the city for several days had condensed to a slow, steady, dreary rain. As they dressed for dinner, had James chosen to look at Peggy, he would have seen her sour expression. A perverse trouble-making impulse, which had manifested from time to time during her childhood, flickered wickedly about the edges of her mind. “Why ever did you invite him?” she asked, with respect to John Roebuck. “I don’t like him. He is not a thoughtful man. He moves too quickly. His waistcoats are too bright.” “You find much to complain of,” James said, with a mildness that irritated her still further. “Have you forgotten that this man has been letting us use his workshop and his equipment for months now? Don’t you think it would be Christian to offer him a meal now and then?” “Indeed, I might well have forgotten,” she rejoined, “since you have barred me from the workshop during all that time.” “I have told you before, you are a distraction to the men.” “And I have told you that I don’t believe you, James. I was not a distraction in your own workshop when we did all those experiments side by side. I was not a distraction on Glasgow Green that Sunday when I solved the problem of designing a perfect steam engine, now was I?”
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“Do you think you solved the problem, then? Can you explain for me, in that case, why I have been trying for three years to produce one that actually works?” “Perhaps that is because you keep me out of your workshop, James, when you know I could help. Perhaps it is because you stay away from it yourself for weeks at a time, working on your canals and building Newcomen engines for the mines.” “It is the canals and the Newcomen engines that support this household, Peggy. I can’t be throwing away my time on a dream.” “That dream may make our fortune, James. If you let me, I could work on it while you’re away.” “I can’t, Peg. It would be an embarrassment to me. You should be home taking care of the house and bairns.” “What bairns? There are no bairns.” “Yes, and I am telling you, something is the matter with us. People are starting to wonder whether it’s me. Whether I am man enough.” “We both know you’re man enough, James.” He blushed. “Just stay home, Peg. Be a wife.” John Robison and Joseph Black arrived early and the three men went together into the library. When Peggy tried to follow them, James closed the door in her face. Filled with indignation and curiosity, she was tempted to wait by the door to hear what she could hear, but was embarrassed to do so where the servant girl, Cecelia, might see her, and so she wandered into the kitchen and busied herself with giving a needless extra polish to the dessert glasses. In due course, Mr. Roebuck arrived, wearing an orange waistcoat in which he resembled a pumpkin. It would have made Peggy want to laugh, had she not been already so dangerously angry. He pushed into the house, arrogant and inconsiderate as always, and swiveled his dark bullet-shaped head in all directions, looking for James.
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With his arrival as her excuse, she opened the door to the room in which the other men were closeted, and heard Mr. Robison say, “He’s nervous. He will demand too much.” Mr. Black said, “I’ll talk to Boulton.” “Ssh!” James said suddenly, on seeing Peggy, and the other two turned to face her. She waited a moment, to let the embarrassing silence be fully felt, before saying quietly, “Mr. Roebuck is here.” She could see that James, alone among them, sensed her anger. He looked a bit frightened, thinking, no doubt, of her trouble-making impulse; and it made her glad. Mr. Black had at least the grace to greet her when the men emerged from their private conversation. He taught medicine at the University, and it was he who had given James the words to describe what James and Peggy had discovered through their experiments: “heat capacity,” “latent heat.” When he asked after her garden, she made no answer but smiled politely. Her anger muttered that surely Mr. Black did not know how much of the thinking was hers; James would not have told him, with his stubborn ideas about what it meant to be a man. Mr. Robison, she knew, understood her abilities and had always included her in his conversations with James. But that night, he scuttled past her with a nod and rushed to Mr. Roebuck’s side. Perhaps, she thought wryly, he was attracted by the orange waistcoat, for the three men buzzed about Mr. Roebuck like bees around a brightly colored flower. Then they were at the table: James at the head, Peggy at the foot, and between them the three guests, the white linen cloth ironed that day by Cecelia, and the wedding silver and china. Lightning flickered outside the window, and dangerous looks flashed between James and Peggy whenever by accident they caught each other’s eyes, which happened more often than one might expect for two people trying so studiously not to look at each other. Mr. Robison sprawled in his chair as usual, with his head thrust forward and his close-set dark eyes focused intently on first one, then another, of his male companions. “Tell him your news, James,” he said.
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Everyone looked at James, who smiled in a way that showed he was pleased, excited, and anxious all at the same time. The three guests seemed to move a bit closer to him, leaving Peggy alone at the foot of the table. “I have put together a small test engine,” he said. His smile grew broader. “It works?” asked Mr. Roebuck. “It works,” said James, Mr. Robison and Mr. Black together. Mr. Roebuck smiled, rubbed his hands together. “Well, well.” Whereupon Peggy’s trouble-making tendency, long concealed under her customary cheerful disposition, poked its nose out, so to speak, and sniffed the air. “James, you have not told me of this,” she said, and enjoyed hearing her voice cut through the jovial mood. The other men looked puzzled, as if they had forgotten her presence. James looked down in embarrassment. Later she thought that had she been quite alert, had she been herself, she might perhaps have stopped at that point. She might perhaps have laughed and said something light, something like: “But of course I know nothing about it.” And then excused herself, claimed a sick headache, and left them to it. Instead, she persisted. “When did you complete it?” she demanded. “When did you test it? Why have I not been told?” James shifted in his chair. As he showed no sign of responding, Mr. Robison spoke. “Mrs. Watt,” he said, in a tone of unusual formality. His voice was filled with meaning, some code that she was apparently supposed to decipher. “I’m sure James simply assumed that you would not understand the significance of this most recent accomplishment. As you may know, James has been working for several years, with the valuable assistance of Mr. Roebuck, here, on a new form of steam engine. How many years is it, James, since you had the break-through insight?” “I had, of course, been working on the project for some time before then,” said James, “and had performed a great many experiments, which had served to bring me to a clear understanding Page 36
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of the difficulties. Then in April of 1765, I finally saw how to solve the problem. The idea came to me as I was strolling on Glasgow Green.” It was at this point that Peggy picked up the saltcellar that happened to be on the table in front of her and hurled it at his head. A true account must reveal that as she began the motion, she intended actually to hit him with it; but fortunately, at the last moment enough good sense was restored to her that she altered her aim to avoid that result, for which she was, afterward, deeply grateful. She did, however, give him a fright, which was quite satisfying, though she hoped she would never again see such shock and dismay as appeared on the faces of their guests. She proceeded to give further proof of her childishness (as she later described it to Bess) by bursting into tears; but she remained at the table, thinking: they would not drive her from her own table. “Gentlemen,” said James, “I must apologize for the behavior of my wife. She has had much on her mind of late. Shall we continue our discussion in the library?” Whereupon, the men all got up and left without giving Peggy another look. There was nothing for her to do but rise also and go up to bed, leaving Cecilia to clear up the mess and to pass the story along to her fellow servants, who would no doubt have it all over Glasgow within the week, so that Peggy would be obliged to put up with whispers and odd looks wherever she went.
The purpose of the sudden dinner party, as Peggy came later to understand, was to break the good news – the fact that James had at last developed a working model of the improved steam engine – to Mr. Roebuck and thereby persuade him to invest money in the venture. A part of James’s strategy, then, was to impress Mr. Roebuck with his competence, which perforce required him to avoid any suggestion that he owed any clever insights to Peggy. For if a man were to appear less clever than his wife, how could he persuade other men that he was cleverer than they?
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And how could they admit to being so persuaded, since they would then be seen as less clever than a woman? Much as she disliked that strategy, on reflection and with hindsight she could see the sense in it. She continued to think, however, that, reasonable as such a strategy might have been, James and his friends should have shown better judgment and more kindness in the manner in which they carried it out. But by the time James finally came up also, two hours later, she had come to understand what had happened and achieve some contrition, so that they were able to apologize to each other and be friends again, or at least appear to be so. The evening had grown late, but the thought of preparing herself for bed while James remained downstairs discussing important business had been abhorrent to her. The two of them sat down at the little round table in their bedroom and he made his report. “Mr. Roebuck did agree finally to support my efforts,” he told her, “though on terms which are very unfavorable to us. He wants two-thirds of the invention.” “It’s all right, James. Beggars can’t be choosers. The important thing is that you have a backer at last.” He smiled and covered her hand with his. “Peggy, it’s going to work.” “Yes, I know.”
After a dozen hours of solitary walking on her beloved Green, Peggy determined that her problem was none other than the sin of Pride, which still clung doggedly to the hem of her spirit despite all efforts to shake it off. “Just because I had one clever idea before James did,” she told herself, stepping quickly as if to escape her sinful arrogance, “an idea that required, to be fully realized, his expert mechanical knowledge, how can I pretend to myself that I am more clever than he? Why do I cling to my one foolish scrap of cleverness, as if it could undermine the mountain of cleverness on which my James stands the whole time – what harm is done if I let him take credit for the one small thing I did?” Page 38
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Yet, goose that she was, the sin remained in her heart, for even after such earnest reflection, she did wish the world could know what she – she and not James – had done. It was Pride and nothing else that so twisted her thinking. There was but one solution. She must endeavor through prayer and sincere repentance to free herself of the sin and restore her attention to its larger and more proper aim, which was to strive, together with James, to improve the position of their family in the world and to further the progress of knowledge.
Epilogue: Margaret “Peggy” Watt gave birth to a son, James, on 5 February 1769.
She bore three
subsequent children and died in childbirth in September 1773. James Watt obtained a patent for his improved steam engine on 5 January 1769. Watt’s steam engine became a key component of the Industrial Revolution.
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Contributors Judith Barrington recently won the Gregory O’Donoghue Poetry Prize and gave a reading in Cork (Ireland). She has published three poetry collections, most recently Horses and the Human Soul and two chapbooks: Postcard from the Bottom of the Sea and Lost Lands (winner of the Robin Becker Chapbook Award for LGBT poets). Her memoir, Lifesaving won the Lambda Book Award and was a finalist for the PEN/Martha Albrand Award. She has taught for the University of Alaska’s MFA Program and at workshops across the USA, Britain and Spain. George Bishop is the author of five chapbooks. His full length collection, “Expecting Delays”, was published by FutureCycle Press in January 2013. Recent work appears in New Plains Review and Commonline Journal. Forthcoming work will be featured in The New Poet and Cold Mountain Review. Bishop attended Rutgers University and now lives and writes in Saint Cloud, Florida. John Gifford John Gifford served with the U.S. Marines during the Persian Gulf War and later received his MFA from the University of Central Oklahoma. A lifelong angler and nature enthusiast, he is the author of two books on fishing and has written for many of North America's leading angling publications. His creative work has appeared recently in Saw Palm, Written River, The Christian Science Monitor, Orion, and The Arkansas Review. He lives in Oklahoma. Benjamin Goluboff teaches English at Lake Forest College. Aside from a modest list of scholarly publications, he has placed imaginative work -- fiction, poetry, and essays -- in Hayden's Ferry Review, Ascent, Dead Flowers, Anobium, Misfit, and elsewhere. Ira Joel Haber was born and lives in Brooklyn New York. He is a sculptor, painter, book dealer, photographer and teacher. His work has been seen in numerous group shows both in USA and Europe and he has had 9 one man shows including several retrospectives of his sculpture. His work is in the collections of The Whitney Museum Of American Art, New York University, The Guggenheim Museum, The Hirshhorn Museum & The Albright-Knox Art Gallery. His paintings, drawings, photographs and collages have been published in over 100 on line and print magazines including Rock Heals, Otoliths, Winamop, Melancholia's Tremulous Dreadlocks. He has received three National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, two Pollock-Krasner grants, the Adolph Gottlieb Foundation grant and, in 2010, he received a grant from Artists' Fellowship Inc. Currently he teaches art at the United Federation of Teachers Retiree Program in Brooklyn. Rich Ives has received grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Artist Trust, Seattle Arts Commission and the Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines for his work in poetry, fiction, editing, publishing, translation and photography. His writing has appeared in Verse, North American Review, Dublin Quarterly, Massachusetts Review, Northwest Review, Quarterly West, Iowa Review, Poetry Northwest, Virginia Quarterly Review, Fiction Daily and many more. He is the 2009 winner of the Francis Locke Memorial Poetry Award from Bitter Oleander. In 2011 he received a nomination for The Best of the Web and two nominations for both the Pushcart Prize and The Best of the Net. He is the 2012 winner of the Creative Nonfiction Prize from Thin Air magazine. His book of days, Tunneling to the Moon, is currently being serialized with a work per day appearing for all of 2013 at http://silencedpress.com.
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Andrea Jackson has an MFA from the University of Missouri - St. Louis. She has received two Pushcart nominations and one nomination for the Best of the Net anthology. Recent fiction publications: Alligator Juniper; Thema. Recent micro-poetry: The Citron Review; Marco Polo Arts. K. Carlton Johnson has published many photos in small journals, including Rattle. He has been an artist for some 40 years and lives in Northern Michigan. Molly Sutton Kiefer’s chapbook The Recent History of Middle Sand Lake won the 2010 Astounding Beauty Ruffian Press Poetry Award. Her second chapbook, City of Bears, will be published in 2013 by dancing girl press. Her work has appeared in Harpur Palate, Women’s Studies Quarterly, WomenArts Quarterly, Berkeley Poetry Review, you are here, Gulf Stream, Cold Mountain Review, Southampton Review, and Permafrost, among others. She is a member of the Caldera Poetry Collective, earned her MFA from the University of Minnesota, was selected for the Loft Literary Center’s Mentor Series, serves as poetry editor to Midway Journal, and runs Balancing the Tide: Motherhood and the Arts | An Interview Project. She currently lives in Red Wing with her husband, daughter, and newborn son. She is at work on a manuscript on (in)fertility. More can be found at mollysuttonkiefer.com Pete Madzelan resides in New Mexico with his wife and cat, Manny. He has had fiction and poetry in The Dying Goose and Cigale Literary Magazine; forthcoming in Poydras Review. Photography in Epiphany-epiphmag.com, Pachinko, Aperion Review, BRICKrhetoric, Foliate Oak, Cactus Heart, Convergence and Vine Leaves Literary Journal; forthcoming in Bellingham Review, San Pedro River Review and Petrichor Review. Jesse Millner’s poems and prose have appeared or are forthcoming in the Florida Review, upstreet, Conte, River Styx, Pearl, The Prose Poem Project, Tinge, The New Poet, Cider Press Review, The Best American Poetry 2013 and numerous other literary magazines. He has published six poetry chapbooks and two full-length collections. Jesse teaches writing courses at Florida Gulf Coast University in Fort Myers, Florida. Jenn Monroe is the author of Something More Like Love (Finishing Line Press, 2012). A Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared in a number of print and online journals, most recently The Mom Egg, MiPOesias, Radius: Poetry From the Center to the Edge, The Rusty Nail, and The Bookends Review. She is the executive producer of Extract(s): Daily Dose of Lit and executive editor of Eastern Point Press. She also teaches poetry and public writing courses at the New Hampshire Institute of Art. Joey Nicoletti is a graduate of the Sarah Lawrence College MFA program. The author of Cannoli Gangster, his work has appeared in Waccamaw, Jet Fuel Review, Aethlon, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and other ‘zines and journals. He currently teaches at SUNY Buffalo State College. Nikoletta Nousiopoulos is a Greek-American poet, who gathers inspiration from her family and cultural background. Her first book all the dead goats was published by Little Tree Publishing in 2010. Her poems have also appeared in Harpur Palate, The Henniker Review, and elimae to name a few. Jennifer A. Powers has stories published or forthcoming in The MacGuffin, Folio, Linden Avenue, Prairie Wolf Press Review, Wild Violet, Hawai’i Pacific Review, Diverse Voices Quarterly, and Foliate Oak. She has photography published or forthcoming in Foliate Oak and Josephine Quarterly.
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Zara Raab’s books are Swimming the Eel and The Book of Gretel. Rumpelstiltskin, or What’s in a Name?, finalist for the Dana Award, will be published by Finishing Line Press. Fracas & Asylum will come out early next year. Her poems, reviews, and essays appear in Evansville Review, River Styx, Crab Orchard Review, The Dark Horse, and Poet Lore. She is a contributing editor to the Poetry Flash and Redwood Coast Review and lives near the San Francisco Bay. Jenny Root’s poems have appeared in numerous literary journals including basalt, Cloudbank, Edge, Windfall, and Elohi Gadugi Journal. Her work has been anthologized, most recently in What the River Brings: Oregon River Poems and New Poets of the American West. She lives and works in Eugene, Oregon. Her first collection will be out this fall. Yvette Schnoeker-Shorb’s work has appeared in The Broken Plate, Spectrum, Epiphany Magazine, Dark Matter: A Journal of Speculative Writing, Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built and Natural Environments, Pedestal Magazine, Wilderness House Literary Review, Poydras Review, Red River Review, Entelechy: Mind & Culture, Concho River Review, The Blueline Anthology (Syracuse University Press), Midwest Quarterly, Spillway Magazine, The Fine Line, Foliate Oak, and many other journals, with work forthcoming in 200 New Mexico Poems (scheduled for publication by University of New Mexico Press). She holds an interdisciplinary M.A. from Prescott College and is co-founder of Native West Press--a 501(c)(3) nonprofit natural history press. Nic Sebastian's work has appeared in Valparaiso Poetry Review, Anti-, MiPOesias, Salt River Review, Eclectica, Avatar Review and elsewhere. Nic blogs at Very Like A Whale (http://verylikeawhale.wordpress.com). She founded and voiced the now-archived audio poetry journal Whale Sound (http://whalesound.wordpress.com).
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The Meadowland Review www.themeadowlandreview.com
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