Xavier Review 39: 1 & 2

R XAVIEREVIEW 39.1-2, Spring-Fall 2019

XAVIER REVIEW

Xavier Review, a journal of literature and culture, is published twice a year. Š Xavier University of Louisiana.

Ralph Adamo Editor Katheryn Laborde Managing Editor Thomas Bonner, Jr. Editor Emeritus Thomas Bonner, Jr., Biljana Obradovic, James Shade, Oliver Hennessey Robin Vander, Mark Whitaker, Nicole Pepinster Greene Contributing Editors Bill Lavender Graphic Design Editors, Xavier University Studies, 1961-1971 Rainulf A. Stelzman, Hamilton P. Avegno, Leon Baisier Editors, Xavier Review Charles Fort, 1980-1982 Thomas Bonner, Jr., 1982-2002 Richard Collins, 2000-2007 Nicole Pepinster Greene, 2007-2011 Managing Editor Robert Skinner, 1989-2010

Unsolicited manuscripts may be submitted in typescript or by email attachment with a brief letter of submission and a self-addressed envelope for reply to the Editors, Xavier Review, Box 89, Xavier University of Louisiana, New Orleans, LA 70125. Essays should conform to the MLA Handbook for Writers with parenthetical citations and a list of Works Cited.

Manuscripts accepted for publication will be requested as electronic files. Subscriptions are $20 for individuals, $25 for institutions. Editorial inquiries may be addressed to Ralph Adamo at radamo@xula.edu. All other inquiries may be addressed to Katheryn Laborde at klaborde@xula.edu. Xavier Review is indexed in the MLA International Bibliography and the Index of American Periodical Verse, as well as other indices.

Xavier Review is supported by the Xavier University Endowment for the Humanities. www.xavierreview.com www.xula.edu/review ISSN 0887-6681

Leah Chase 1923-2019 Toni Morrison 1931-2019

Editor’s Note

In the year since I’ve written an editor’s note (our last issue was guest-

edited superbly by my colleagues Drs. Thomas Bonner Jr and Robin Vander), many extraordinary books have been published, and a number of indispensable writers have left us. This forum is too brief to speak of all of those books and writers; a few are noted in this issue with reviews. Among the literary losses were well-known poets including W.S. Merwin, Mary Oliver, Linda Gregg, and poets perhaps less well-known, but who leave behind works of great power and beauty, like Steve Cannon and my friend Leon Stokesbury, as meticulous a craftsman who ever made a poem, and one whose work proves the emotional power of the well-chosen word. In the next issue our mutual friend R.S. (Sam) Gwynn, an exceptional poet himself, will write an elegy/review for XR, part of a larger retrospective on this poet, who wasn’t exactly neglected but whose work never received the recognition it merited.

Most recently, in New Orleans—in addition to the towering musical figures Dr. John, Dave Bartholomew, and Art Neville—we have lost a writer of unequaled facility with the art of story-telling, though he did not write fiction but rather the stories of little people, small events, the forgotten, the unwanted, the un-important; Ronnie Virgets—technically a journalist, I suppose, as we need to have a category for everything—was uniquely gifted at finding the heart and the vital complexity in any person and thing he turned his attention and his great, unamplified writing gifts toward. Virgets wrote the way the most gifted musician plays or the most mesmerizing poet writes, using familiar materials to make things happen that seem to be beyond explanation or easy understanding. Some eulogizers called him a poet, which became a kind of shorthand for not being able to articulate his gift of being able to make us feel the people and things he wrote about; I don’t quibble with calling him a poet, but even that doesn’t catch his elusive but entirely present magic. I can’t describe it either. I wanted to note these things here because I do not want his work and memory to fall into easy categories, or him either, for that matter. His famously raspy, locally accented voice and iv

his casual everyman-ness too easily invite the stigma of cliché (much as the amazing poet Everette Maddox’s work and life is often reduced to some sort of caricature of the ‘drunken poet;’ Maddox may have liked his scotch and he certainly wrote poetry, but the complexity of the man and of his work defies such simplifications.) Virgets never sought fame or fortune; he rarely swung for the fences. But every stroke was at least a base hit, a double, a triple, time after time, masterfully; he never missed, never struck out, never had a season in which he was not the most valuable guy on the field. Luckily, several books of his short pieces were published in his lifetime and can be found with a simple search.

Elegies aside, this issue contains more than forty writers from all over the world, some—like poet Brad Richard and novelist Maurice Ruffin -- from right here in the difficult hometown of New Orleans. Richard has just published a complex book of poems and Ruffin a delightful and dark work of fiction (one that bears reasonable comparisons to both Confederacy of Dunces and the wry dystopian novels of Walker Percy). We decided that they should interview each other, an idea that produced the compelling conversation published here.

Having gladly accepted a new story by the prolific novelist/journalist/ television writer Robert Ward, we were offered the opportunity to publish part of a much longer interview and ultimately a second story from the new collection he is writing. Ward has had a storied career: novelist turned journalist turned television writer and eventually show-runner, but he never abandoned the first love of story-telling in print, the characteristic than binds his diverse work into a coherent whole. (Television for him included writing for ground-breaking programs such as “Hill Street Blues” and “Miami Vice” among others.) The interview brings us not only choice moments from this writer’s life but stories of many of the famous people with whom he worked and whom he interviewed (generally spending days with his subjects, sharing their lives as he mined them for his story). Ward was also an early (1960s) graduate of the University of Arkansas MFA program, a fellow student with the notorious Barry Hannah.

There are too many writers in the issue for me to speak of each, but what most pleases me is that a reader will find a wealth of different styles, points v

of view, locales and themes in this special double issue, not a compendium of the like-minded or the predictable. I also have to thank the writers whose work Xavier Review accepted more than a year ago for their patience; among them is Jim Hilgartner, a fabulous story teller, whose tale begins the issue, in recognition not only of its excellence but of its having been the first piece in the building of number 39, volumes 1 & 2. Similarly, Mark Statman’s moving elegy for his father has by now been included in his latest book, though the long-ago plan was for XR to publish it first.

Shout outs to some publishing ventures that deserve wider recognition: John Patrick Travis and Portals Press for the special issue of Maple Leaf Rag (six issues so far, tracking the progress of the reading series) that commemorates fifty years of the reading series begun by Everette Maddox and continued by Nancy Harris.

Philip Kolin, Sue Owen and Negative Capability Press for the illuminating anthology The Night’s Magician: Poems About the Moon.

Catherine Savage Brosman, Olivia McNeely Pass and The University Press of Mississippi for Louisiana Poets: A Literary Guide, which offers critical essays on poets with Louisiana connections, forty altogether from the 20th and 21st centuries, with an appendix noting a number more.

Aidan Ryan, Max Crinnin and Foundlings Press for Constant Stanger: After Frank Stanford, an anthology of work about or influenced by the poet.

Megan Burns and Skye Jackson and Boog City Press for Boog Reader 12: An Anthology of New Orleans and New York City Poetry.

Shadow Angelina Starkey, Aime SanSavant, and Sapiosexual Publishers for their Esoterotica anthologies, most recently Longing.

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Xavier Review 39.1-2, Spring-Fall 2019 Editor’s Note — iv Jim Hilgartner The Darkness in the Corners — 10 Terese Coe The Bumbly — 18 Carol Lorenzo Illusion — 20 J. D. Duff James Valvis Before You Speak Too Badly of Death — 32 Britny Cordera Upon Realizing There Are Ghosts in the Ceiling — 34 David Craig Stealing Third Base — 36 Mark Statman Green Side Up — 37 Robert Ward The Boy Who Hung With the Greeks — 49 Robert Asahina Here to Set the Record Straight: An interview with Robert Ward — 65 Robert Ward The Snowball — 90 Aidan Ryan A Personal Day — 111 Nathaniel Klaung Two Poems — 121 Bronwen Tate Two Poems — 124 vii

Benjamin Aleshire Arrivederci Sestina — 125 Monty Jones A Tree in the Wind — 126 Dewayne Keirn Living with Intruders — 128 Jesse Lee Kercheval Isle de Brehat — 130 Javier Etchevarren City Bird — 132 Fabián Severo from Night in the North/ Noite du Norte — 133 Noémia de Sousa Two Poems — 134 henry 7. reneau, jr.

Two Poems — 136 Brad Richard Surviving on an Unjust Planet: A review of We Cast a Shadow by Maurice Carlos Ruffin — 140 Brad Richard “And Yet, The World Has Not Been Destroyed”: Maurice Carlos Ruffin and Brad Richard in Conversation — 147 Benjamin Aleshire Host of Hosts: A Review of Brad Richard’s Parasite Kingdom — 162 Sonnet Mondal Strange Meetings — 166 K. Eltinaé Two Poems — 167 Tom Andes A Review of Louis Maistros’ The Sound of Building Coffins — 169

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Nicole Green A Review of Creole Echoes: The Francophone Poetry of NineteenthCentury Louisiana — 172 Jonathan Bracker Left Behind — 176 Jack Kennedy The Oyster Show — 177 Shane Crosby Skate — 190 Marley Stuart Asset — 197 Jared Pearce Ark — 198 Jack Harvey His Fifty-Sixth Birthday — 199 Ron McFarland The Poker Players — 201 Louis Gallo Clearing the Attic — 214 David James Can’t Buy Me Love — 219 C. L. Cummings The Calling — 220 Don Stoll The Friend — 222 Katheryn Krotzer Laborde “Bring[ing] into Focus Two Quite Disparate Lives”: Patrick Samway on O’Connor and Giroux — 229 Ralph Adamo A Review of Five New Books of Poetry — 238 Contributors — 245

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Jim Hilgartner

The Darkness in the Corners For the Record Mark got his orbital bone broken by a guy who mistook him for someone else. He went down like a tree, toppling slowly, the sound of timber bending and tearing loud in his jangled brain.

The asphalt went soft to receive him, and gravity grew stronger. Mark wanted rest; he would rest soon. But now he saw the guy draw back a booted foot to start kicking. He tried to curl into a protective fetal ball and discovered the air had turned viscous around him. It was so hard to move, and so slow.

Yet the blow never landed. More boots appeared—on the pavement— and the feet they were tied to scuffled, and gradually, with much cursing and some substantive communication—It’s not him, asshole! Dude! We got to go!—the crowd of soles and laces and pants-cuffs moved away.

Then Mark rested, snuggling down into the gutter beside a shiny, enginesmelling smear.

He might have slept, but for a distant voice—a woman’s—calling, “Tony?

Jesus, Tony! Are you all right?”

“I’m not Tony,” Mark whispered. He shifted to look up from the black sneakers to the woman herself, but he couldn’t see her. She was wreathed in refracted light that wavered and throbbed with his every movement. Shards of scattered light obscured things wherever he looked; bright needles impaled his brain. He closed his eyes.

He heard the woman crouch down beside him, felt her gentle hands shaking his shoulder. “Don’t do this, Tony!” she shouted. “Stay with me!”

He opened his undamaged eye, hoping she would see it and be reassured.

There was less light-noise this way; he could make out her youthful features, an etched and faded scar above one eyebrow.

“Tony.” She patted his shoulder. “Hang in there. I’m going to call nineone-one.”

“Yeah. Do that.” He felt the ground softening all around him, himself

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sinking into it. “But tell them,” he said before the asphalt closed over his mouth. “My name is Mark.”

Bronwyn Goes Home Bronwyn watched the ambulance out of sight, then started up the street the other way. This was not the Boston she’d grown used to.

There was a crowd outside Mahoney’s, and in her present state she considered walking out beyond the parked cars to get by. She didn’t, of course, though she put a hand on the pepper spray she’d bought to appease her mother. This thing with the guy who wasn’t Tony had really affected her.

She wished she’d seen it more clearly. She’d heard the shouting, then the blows. When she looked over, there was Tony, falling, and a bunch of guys pulling someone off, and away into the night. When they were gone, she’d run to help.

What do you do when the world rears up like that, just goes crazy and leaves someone half-conscious on the pavement? What, beyond calling nineone-one and asking for an ambulance? She’d tried to comfort the guy (who wasn’t the new bartender from her restaurant) but he’d been pretty well out of it. She hadn’t tried to comfort herself.

The crowd outside Mahoney’s had gathered in response to a performance piece: a couple of art students waltzing in silent slow motion. One wore black tie and tails, her blonde hair slicked back, a penciled-on moustache. The other was in a peach-colored backless prom dress and matching flats. Bronwyn paused long enough to note that their act was pretty good, and to hear ominous mutterings from the crowd. She wondered about this poor choice of venue.

Perhaps these two had been run off the Common, or had used up their time there before they were ready to quit. In any case, she was relieved to see a squad car at the curb, an officer leaning against it. She got back underway; behind her someone in the crowd said loudly, “You bitches want any of my spare change, you better start making out.”

At the trolley stop, someone had puked all over one end of the platform.

From the other end Bronwyn could see, across the tracks, an old guy leaned up against the kiosk, holding a cell phone to his ear, his other hand deep in 11

his pants pocket jangling coins and keys.

Bronwyn clutched the pepper spray, her thumb on the trigger. What had happened to nighttime in Boston?

On the ride out to Allston, she watched a heavily made up, pierced, and black-clad girl riding the trolley like a surfer, her knees bent, arms outstretched, while her bird-of-a-feather companion stared at her own reflection in the window, alternately lifting and releasing her fat breasts.

For the walk from the trolley, Bronwyn took the pepper spray from her jacket and let her hand hang along her thigh. In the middle of the first cross street, a rat crushed by a car held a delicate bouquet of entrails between its teeth. Farther down the block, an old Volvo wagon across the street rocked jauntily on its springs, the backboard for a pair of rutting youths.

In front of her own building, finally, Bronwyn got out her keys and started up the walk. She held the pepper spray the way the man in the shop had shown her, aimed forward, close to her chest. She unlocked the door, climbed the stairs. When she had locked herself in to the apartment, which her two roommates had deserted for the weekend, she lowered herself onto the sofa and wept.

See It Coming DiRosa didn’t see it coming. One minute he was unlocking his apartment in the dark and cursing the portugee kids upstairs for breaking the hall light bulb. The next he was pinned face down in his front room with a knee in his kidney and his neck locked in a choke he couldn’t break. He tried to call for help, but his airway was clamped shut.

His assailant spoke quietly, so close that his lips brushed DiRosa’s ear.

“I will kill you if you struggle. Tap the floor to show you understand.”

DiRosa tapped. He could hear blood rushing through his body and see shadows gathering in the corners of the room.

“I will kill you if I ever see you in my workplace.”

DiRosa did nothing. The man squeezed his throat tighter, and DiRosa tapped.

“You’re kind of stupid, aren’t you?” the man said, over the roaring in 12

DiRosa’s ears.

DiRosa tapped.

“Better.” The man didn’t loosen the choke. “I will kill you if you ever mess with me again.”

DiRosa tapped. He understood the what, if not the who and why.

“I’m going to let you up in a minute. And then we’ll talk like civilized human beings.”

DiRosa started to tap, but the man locked the choke in tight. The roaring in DiRosa’s ears became unbearable, and the darkness in the corners surged forward to claim him.

He came to sitting in a wooden chair in the kitchen, his hands cuffed to the chair back, his ankles bound to its legs with strips of the shirt he’d been wearing. His assailant sat slapping at his cheeks with the flyswatter from under the sink.

“Ah, you’re awake.” The man smacked DiRosa hard with the flyswatter, as if to make sure.

“I’m awake.” DiRosa sat up straighter and looked his assailant in the face. “Christ. You’re that fucking bartender.”

“I am.” The bartender tossed the flyswatter onto the dishes in the sink.

He got out a black folding knife and took his eyes off DiRosa long enough to trim a torn cuticle on his thumb.

“So you got a knife. Big deal. If you were gonna kill me, I’d already be dead.”

“If I were going to kill you, why on earth would I do it quickly?”

DiRosa blinked.

The bartender put his knife away. “Are you beginning to figure this out, Vinnie?”

“I could yell for help.”

“I’ll bet your neighbors get a lot of practice not hearing you yell.”

It was coming home to DiRosa that this might really be pretty bad. “What do you want?”

The bartender left the kitchen and returned a moment later, a pillowcase 13

draped over his shoulder. He turned his chair around to straddle it. “So, I heard about your shenanigans with that tourist. Some rube from the Berkshires?”

“He looked just like you. I thought he was you. We all did.”

“You bushwhacked this poor bastard because he looked like me?”

“I got a goddamn right,” DiRosa raised his voice. “You been fucking my girl.”

“Ah.” The bartender got up and opened DiRosa’s fridge. “Wow! Vinnie, I’m impressed. You’ve got a lot of stuff in here.” He dropped a head of iceberg lettuce into the pillowcase.

DiRosa couldn’t help himself. “You’re stealing my produce?”

The bartender sat again. He set the pillowcase on the floor with the open end over his knee. “Just for the record, can you imagine what would have happened if that had been me you jumped?”

DiRosa allowed that jumping the bartender might have been a bad idea.

“I don’t know, Vinnie. I don’t guess that you, dead, is the worst idea going.”

DiRosa said nothing.

“One more thing, Vinnie.” The bartender leaned in slightly. “If you harm that girl of ours in any way, they will find you castrated, disemboweled, and hung up to cure.”

DiRosa swallowed.

“Have I given you any reason to doubt me?”

DiRosa shook his head.

“Are we clear?”

DiRosa nodded. “Clear.”

The bartender stood and slung the pillowcase over his shoulder. “I’ve enjoyed this conversation. But I’ll be needing my cuffs back.”

This time DiRosa did see it coming. The bartender shifted back and swung the iceberg lettuce in the pillowcase, with all his weight behind it, into the side of DiRosa’s head.

When DiRosa came to, lying sideways across the linoleum and still tied at the ankles to his chair, he found that, sure enough, the cuffs were gone.

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Monkeys When You Needed Them Waking, Mark looked out through the frost-feathered window and saw monkeys in the treetops, and bright-colored tropical birds. He watched, astonished, as one of the monkeys grabbed a branch and shook snow down on himself and his companions. A macaw flew up, all raucous indignation, and lighted on a higher branch. An older monkey, gray hairs sketching a goatee around his muzzle, loaded up and flung a pine cone at the glass.

The window rang with a percussive musicality, and Mark recognized the sound that had wakened him. He stared through the glass, bewildered by such incongruity and concerned for these poor displaced creatures, their prolonged exposure to unaccustomed cold. At length he decided to go to the window for a better look. And thus he discovered that his arms were restrained; he was strapped to the bed.

Mark looked around the room and recognized the faded fleur-de-lis wallpaper, the steam radiator in the corner, the guillotine windows’ gauzy curtains. “Grandma?” he tried to shout. “Grandpa?” But now there was a problem with his voice; even he could not hear himself.

As he lay wondering what to do next, another pine cone struck the window.

It rang a brief, brittle note this time, and a tiny spiderweb of shivered light appeared in the upper right-hand corner of the glass.

The next time Mark woke he was in a cinderblock room with doubleglazed windows designed never to open and a heavy blue privacy curtain. A nurse—Bridgette, according to her ID badge—stood at the end of his bed, reading his chart on a tablet computer. She was perhaps his mother’s age, thin and leathery, and she jumped when he asked, “So, Nurse Bridgette, how bad am I hurt?”

Nurse Bridgette got her composure back, then said, “We think you’re going to live, though it was touch and go there for a while. The doctor will fill you in.”

“But this is real,” Mark asked. “I’m in a hospital in, like, Boston?”

Nurse Bridgette made a note on his chart. “It’s real, as far as any of us can say. Do you know the date?”

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Mark gave her his best guess. He was off by a couple of days, but she seemed to find this acceptable. “You just woke up, after all.”

“I woke up once before, actually.” In his mind, Mark saw pine trees against a cold blue sky, bright sunlight on fresh snow. And, of course, he saw monkeys and birds. “But it wasn’t here.”

“I’m not sure that counts.” Nurse Bridgette moved toward the door. “Sit tight. I’m going to call the doctor.” She went out.

So, what does count, Mark wondered. He lay back on his sketchy hospital pillow and looked out the window, which was streaky and filmed with grit.

Beyond it, across a narrow airshaft, stood another gray wing of the hospital, as austere and unrevealing around its dark-tinted windows as the bone around sockets that once held eyes. Nothing to watch out there—not even a pigeon or a rat.

Where were monkeys when you needed them?

Cat in the Wind When Bridgette left the hospital, she’d been working for twenty-two hours, scrabbling through the rough spots on caffeine pills and coffee. Still, what struck her as the doors hissed closed behind her and she gazed out across the still-dark city was not her immense fatigue but the monumental loneliness of the empty predawn streets. It was, she remembered, Sunday.

She’d caught the shift change: the bar-and-brawling crowd gone from the stage, the coffee-and-croissant set still in the wings.

She crossed the avenue. Wind eddied between buildings; in one alley, an empty snack bag sketched faint circles among the dumpsters. Bridgette thought of tumbleweeds, parched and gritty, and her heart misgave her.

The sky had lightened to charcoal, revealing in darker wisps the smoke rising from burning dreams. Such profligacy, to set one’s dreams on fire.

Bridgette slept hard and dreamless; she called it death on the installment plan.

Rushing up toward the horizon, the sun pressed the wind forward. Wind bellied down the avenue bringing hints of low tide and mud. Bridgette mused.

If she didn’t have to go sleep all day, get rested up and start again tomorrow, she might drive out along the shore and look at where the water met the sky.

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She had not gone deliberately to the ocean for years. That was something one did with friends.

At the next corner, a three-legged cat came sliding through a broken basement window and stood staring as she drew near. It was gray, like the air around them, and Bridgette knew it would run off before she got there, but the poor creature was bone-thin, and she wished she could help it in some way. No nearby stores were open, and she had nothing consumable in her purse except for cigarettes and NoDoz. The cat stood its ground, regarding her, not unkindly, with calm blackand-emerald eyes. Bridgette felt her inability to help as a catch in her pulse, a fleeting pain down her arm. “I’m sorry, baby,” she told it. “I’ve got nothing to give you.”

“You have a lifetime of unshared love,” the cat told her, its slow voice resonant as a cello. “You might spare me a bit of that.”

Bridgette stared, touched to wonder. “You know,” she said, as the sidewalk rearranged itself to receive her, “I might have, at that.”

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Terese Coe

The Bumbly After Edward Lear

He ran the State in a daze, he did, In a daze he ran the State, In spite of howls and obnoxious jeers And those who said it would end in tears In a daze he ran the State: And when the daze became a rout That turned the country inside out The Bumbly cried, I’m much too big!

I’m Alpha male, I’m never-fail, I own the gig and vig!

In a daze I’ll run the State!

So vast and vain, so vast and vain Is the bog where the Bumbly brays; His face is green, to think a strain, And he ran the State in a daze.

He carried on in a daze, he did, In a daze he carried on, With carrion eaters on his staff, Perpetual sneers and snickery laughs, And predators stalking prey.

And though they said they’d legislate They knew too little and much too late, And worse, they could not stand up straight!

For in their skin was a powerful hate That chewed them up till dawn.

So vast and vain, so vast and vain

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Is the bog where the Bumbly brays; His face is green, to think a strain, And he ran the State in a daze.

And while he ran the State, he did, And flew far over the seas He incurred great debt and was bought by a bro With a host of spies and some quid pro quo And a hive of slithery sleaze.

And he bought a city or two, and some laws, And when he was fitted with monkey claws His climbed a tree, shrieked Chee-chee-chee!

And his arms reached down to his knees.

So vast and vain, so vast and vain Is the bog where the Bumbly brays; His face is green, to think a strain, And he ran the State in a daze.

In twenty years they all were dead, In twenty years or less, And the people said, How good they’re gone!

For they’d been through the muck of the Swamp-a-Thon, And the dung of Fakery Cess; And they feasted and drank at the Bumbly grave With homemade wine and a weeklong rave, And everyone sang, We shall live in chalets!

If only we live! We’ll attack and raze The ruins of Fakery Cess!

So vast and vain, so vast and vain Is the bog where the Bumbly brayed; His face was green, to think a strain, And he ran the State in a daze.

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Carol Lorenzo

Illusion

Alone together—my mother and I.

This spring into summer is flat.

There is a taste of metal on my tongue.

I’m back. A grown-daughter, someone’s ex-wife, starting my life over, come home to heal and begin again. My mother holds the power of place.

We sit in the dark, only the moon is on. The moon is white ice, half melted in a dark warm mouth. I wish on it. The man in the moon is a god with a dark side, or a missing father, or my first missing husband, or my lover to come. Last night, when we were under a cloud cover and I was bathing away another day in time, I wished on my worn down bath soap, white as the moon, instead.

My mother has raised the windows on the other side of the house to cool us down. She is powdered by pollen and a thin layer of soft garden soil gloves her skin—all but her carefully rinsed hands. She has given me dessert; she won’t eat any. She’s given me the biggest piece. She can give but she doesn’t know how to share.

She knows the garden by heart. If she hasn’t finished when night has come, she will work on in the dark. Strange sounds; someone gardening in the dark. The night breeze lifts my hair like curtains.

My mother has learned she will die of disease, not live with it. It cannot be borne. “Dying fast takes a long time to finish,” she tells me. At first she hid it, as if it were a form of weakness—such as needing to take a nap, catching the flu, caring about my careless forgetting of her birthdays, or wanting something she couldn’t have.

Finally the embarrassment of pain made her tell. An operation and recovery before I was home. But now, at the doctor’s, our knees against his desk, my mother sits with her mouth ajar, dressed in her best. My heart pounds so hard, I think it has hit me in the face. The doctor’s all bad news.

No more operations, no recovery, no time, medicine only to mask pain. The

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enemy is here, carried by my mother. The percentages are in death’s favor, it sits with us now.

In the parking space under the doctor’s office, I make up new curses, insects of words fly from deep inside me. “What are you yelling at yourself for?” my mother says. “This is not about you. This is mine. You always had such a temper. You break things.” In my pain, I hurt her.

This night, we are still stunned stiff by her news. My divorce left behind— where I was loved, he’d said—and my return to home. Home is not here now and not north a thousand miles away. She keeps her shoes on, she cannot walk barefooted. She walks faster than I, my shadow strings along behind.

For the first time I can remember, she latches the screen door, she locks us in.

A few days of gardening and reflection, digging on her knees, protective gloves and hat on, she decides she wants to get closer to her mortician. He’s invited over and he shakes my hand wrong. He is left-handed and wears rings, and in the middle of the day, is beautifully tailored. Personal and private in the yard, their shoulders touch, their feet fall together walking out arrangements.

I’m the one left to watch them and see beside his suit, summer-weight black, past the blinders of my hair grown too long my mother says, his private car so carefully parked in the drive is white, a Legend by Acura.

“I’ll go the way I want,” she tells him so I can hear. “I’ll die at home with my only child, my daughter.”

I turn shocked. She knows I don’t know how to take care of anything.

Though I’m her size, small enough and thin, I break even flowers. “She’ll try and learn,” my mother adds little dots of laughter. My mother is a tease, though you can’t tease her.

In my side sight, my hair flies like a startled bird at this news. Nerve endings at the crown of my head. I think I’ve shed hair, dropped it in her garden, so I laugh, too.

The mortician leaves. We sit on the porch. How round the earth feels in the garden, how flat it feels here. The screen sifts warm air at us. My mother’s tongue, short as a cat’s, shows. “Today is the day I set things in motion. What date is it?” Only mother’s tongue is breathing. “Now we 21

know how but not when he will return.”

The days move backward. “Dying by disease is not an accident,” my mother says. “You must spend time.”

I hide the calendar in the closet, and do not reset the clock to Daylight Savings. Now I’ve learned to drink coffee, a late bloomer, tinting my insides darker. I think my tongue has turned as dark as that of a fierce chow.

For the first time, my mother—a light sleeper—now sleeps more often.

Afternoon is filled with cat naps, some of them disturbingly long. 4:00 in the afternoon, my mother, dozing, dying in the big bedroom, should I wake her?

“Asleep all that time,” she says when I do. “Where have I been?”

Which day it is doesn’t matter—visitors, hospice nurses—“They take up too much room in my room. Why do they have to talk to me? Do they want something?”

The garden takes its head, grows as uncombed as my hair, long-legged like me, over-flowered, out of order. Colors cut like light straight through the white drawn curtain.

My mother tries not to change. But her shoes hurt to wear anymore.

Meticulous taste, naked feet shame her. She falls trying to walk with the help of the hall walls on which she’s hung framed photographs of my old successes, when I was once pretty, polite, and promising.

She fans me away from helping her. Finally she flags me in. “Help me,” she says. The defeat she feels is followed by her anger at my father for letting her divorce him. It still galls her. He has been dead for years.

The fear is she may be joining him in heaven against her will. What if he is waiting for her there?

Her pulse climbs out of her heart. It was in her neck under her skin and now it is in her left nostril; I see it beating. The new metal sides are up on the bed, the sheets aren’t rough enough. “I’m falling from the bed,” she says at its center. “Why isn’t this bed flat?”

We are routine addicted now. But she no longer fits behind her face.

Her skin stretches tight, gone thin. Sometimes I think she’s phosphorescent.

“Give me a mirror. My glasses don’t work, they are too heavy. I’m too far 22

gone to get a new prescription filled, aren’t I?” I take the mirror and turn it the wrong way just before she looks in. She decides to stop opening her eyes. “The glare,” she says in the coffee dark of the bedroom. “Help me seal them shut.” We stop cleaning them with warm water.

At the table, the pillowed wheelchair bites her she says. We use bowls, her food is mashed down to a paste. Outside the birds are drinking their songs.

One day she gets her nose and chin stuck in a glass. “Unscrew me from this thing.” Her voice calling me through glass sounds like a horn. We laugh and laugh, loving this impossible miracle she’s made. I’m praying that the glass doesn’t break and she gets hurt. When something is broken, she always throws it away. No hesitation. Out of the house it goes. No repairs. Finally we slip her free. We laugh until the shooting odor of pee fills the room. I can’t help it, my body pees in sympathy and we laugh more. I remember even when she was well she liked to pee only at home, and had to go running head down, serious, for the bathroom after trips anywhere. She did not like using bathrooms she didn’t know.

Her best friend arrives with what we’re unprepared for—a Cheshire Pie. The best friend prides herself on never following a recipe. The pie is a pretty thing but the custard of it has never set. The center sloshes like a tide. My mother wants it. I get my old baby spoon with the big bowl and feed her.

When her friend leaves, my mother makes a face. No more. She ate it for her friend. “She is so polite, you never know how she really feels,” this is said about my mother.

My mother tried to teach me not to want so much and how to share. She made me practice how to do that by taking things away from me.

“I want something,” she says, over full bowls at the next lunch’s end. “I don’t know what, since I won’t need anything more than water.”

My mother’s eyebrows have disappeared. Her mouth opens with words, “I’ll miss knowing who your next husbands will be.” Her eyelids change shape. She peeks at me through keyholes. Her sight blisters me.

The hospice nurse plugs herself in my path in the hall to ask her professional question. “No,” I say, “I don’t think caring for someone actively makes me feel good about myself. It opens up all the contraries.” I’m doing 23

this and seeing what’s inside me for real. I am jealous of her professional intimacy with my mother. She calls her ‘sweet’ rather than her name. Nurses steal.

My lightest touch leaves a dark shadow on my mother’s skin, bruised no matter how tender I am. “Help me stand up,” she says, pushing off the bottom of somewhere that seems farther than the bed or chair. Fierce, we struggle like two small cats, thin claws drawn, locked. I dig into the carpet to lift her, my heels are sore. It looks like we are dancing. I start the rhythm and she will follow, learning for a minute to walk and then forgetting again.

She is tiny, fragile, but somehow she’s swallowed stone.

Her tongue swells, I watch it roll in place. Past this, she says, “There’s something wrong with the air. Stir it!”

The a/c is on. Never mind. I wheel an old awkward fan into the bedroom, set it going pointed up so it won’t suck the breath from us.

“Breathe for me,” she says.

I hope for her God. I can feel Him in the room. He has sent the terrible fierce fan.

I hold tight to my knees in its noise waiting on the edge of her death, on the edge of a chair in her bedroom.

“Well, well, well,” she says to everything. Then. “Isn’t this the silliest thing.” Suddenly she says, “Where are we? Why are we stuck? I want to know both.”

We begin to move, we are walking backwards. “Why are you here?” she asks me. I answer, “He didn’t want me. He sent me back, though I told him I’m not returnable.”

She says, “Of course, that’s not it. Before you got here, hitch-hiking I’d guess, he called and called for you until I told him to stop it or I’d call the police. Why must you make a joke and call it the truth. You know the best way to hurt yourself. You jump to illusions,” she says. “I mean conclusions.”

Then I am down the hall, recovering from hearing her say what she means, carrying soft cloths toward her. She calls. A fast alarm, calls again 24

and again. I’m running knees high, spilling soft cloth, running on them when I recognize the name is not mine. “Theresa! Theresa!”

Theresa. That is her dead sister’s name.

“Mother? It’s me you mean. Call my name. I’m here. Theresa is dead.”

“Theresa.”

“I’m alive, Mother.” My body grown, my voice back to a little girl’s, speak up daughter or no one will ever hear you. “What’s my name? You gave it to me.” She is leaving me behind. Struck foolish, I hold tight to my same little child’s needs. “I’m here,” I say.

“You’ve slipped my mind.” Her face fades, her nose whitens as if pressed against cool air like invisible glass.

The fan sounds like wooden paddles.

“Theresa is making me butter,” she says. “She’s waiting.”

“That’s backwards,” I say. “Remember? She’s dead. It’s me who’s living. Who’s rubbing your hair, Mother?”

“You can stop now,” she says. “You haven’t even been born yet.”

Sisterly ties are so strong and I have no sisters.

“Mother, wait for me just a little longer. What’s my name?”

“Longer is too long. I can’t think,” says my mother.

The hospice nurse says, “She’s not misplaced you. It’s what often happens.

The dying have to leave the living. She has to let go of you before she can go on. She has to leave you behind.”

I push tears under my lips with my tongue. “I don’t care what’s often for the dying.”

The hospice nurse, ‘sweet’ as they now call each other, says, “Like your mother told me, you’re stubborn.”

“Determined is the other word,” I say. Death is at my mother’s side. I am grateful to have the hospice nurse to hate. It takes the edge off impossible.

“Think of your mother. At this moment, it’s easier on her to be close to a stranger—me.”

I change her subject and warn her, “Don’t pull the curtain. We can use the sun.”

25

The light switches its angles. Outside the flowers’ colors burn.

“Why are wings beating in this room?” my mother says.

“It’s a flock of flowers and trees,” I say. The garden is flying in the wind.

This night I am up all night like when I ran from my husband and came home again. The phone rings at 1:21 a.m. I pick it up and don’t say a word.

On the other end no one speaks. I peek into my mother’s room. The lead moon’s light presses down on the top of her eyes. She is alive and looking at me, her sight silver, hypnotic, searing.

Morning comes, early light moves on its knees. A slow while later, my sense of forever is gone. The fan paddles and death beats the glass air in my mother’s room. The nurse puts it into words. I call the mortician. He says quickly he will slide into the right clothes, warm up the business van to not alarm the neighbors and come over. Make sure the drive-way is clear. He will back up it.

The nurse can’t talk to me, can’t get a word in edge-wise. I whisper my mother’s name over and over. An only child calling for the moon, wishing to deserve the biggest piece.

I cannot touch my mother. I fail to close her eyes. She will see the mortician coming.

The places where I’ve touched her in my lightest way look like soft dark seeds. Death fuses her into one solid piece. It takes me apart and does not put me back together. The mortician’s hand helps me into the hall. I feel nothing but his rings. He binds my mother into her sheets. Swaddled, no face or flesh, shape only of a hard cold curl in white cloth. She leaves her house on a carrier, which can roll either forward or backward. The hospice nurse leaves with the wheelchair, its jaws shut, folded. I throw the medicine away.

The bedroom turns to ‘spare.’ The fan keeps breathing. I snatch the plug from the wall and stand changed. I am no one’s daughter.

Later in the night, I wake from sleep, trapped in bed in my street clothes.

I need to walk and plunder things my mother valued, a different taste. I want 26

to taste my mother again.

I was never allowed in her room without supervision. The bed is undone down to its ticking. My hands touch many things on her dresser, open lids of cosmetics with their so personal perfumes, things that won’t be private anymore. I stop at a high drawer and unseal an old box turned cream and closed so tight that I have trouble. Inside I find what I shouldn’t—a baby’s present never given—a light chain, a drop of silver pendant barely shaped into a heart, it’s so little. There’s not a scratch on it. A wrong present, never risked to be given and worn?

In confusion strong as nausea, I step back. What baby could wear such a fragile thing, so easy to be broken. Then I see the chain is not complete—it’s lost a catch to hold it together. She’s said I could want, but never appreciate.

Did my mother, angry, snatch it from me? So delicate and fine, I can’t even feel it curled in my palm.

The only way to leave is to go toward something. Backing up has many surprises. My mother said, “An only child always wants to have the moon and eat it, too.”

On my own breath, it comes to me. This is what children do, pull at any chain until it breaks. The present flies from my hand. I’ve arrived—jumped to my illusion.

Death seals up expectations. In deep relationships, we act in confusion.

The answer to any question always is yes and no.

27

J. D. Duff Who You Callin’ Boy? A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.

—Marcus Garvey

I am a man, the prince of lush African crops rooted in the foamy mouth of Kongo’s cosmic river, swallowed by ivory fists, traded for cowry shells in the dense bustle of captured ports I am a man, spit onto schooners, a coast of inmates crammed like cattle, smallpox seeking shelter in the raw flesh of marred skin, billowed squalls looting on an endless jagged sea I am a man, choking through mercury lungs in golden mines of Hispaniola, drowned in shallow lakes of the Mexican plateau among bony remnants of a slain Aztec king

28

I am a man, dumped unto gusty shores of Chesapeake’s virgin bay, transported to penal fields where blistery fingers pick thorny rows of summers’ boundless crops I am a man, father of your plantation, ripped from the gripping arms of wailing kin, posed on your Auction block where I’m displayed like beef, greased skin searing in the spiteful August sun I am a man, the sunder of revolt plotted in dim hues of bowed moons, hatching tyrants with slick blades before reaching the Amory where months later I hang in Jerusalem’s feral square like a shined trophy, my hide thrown like jerky to crowds of angry hogs I am a man, veteran of your Continental Navy, master of your 54th, a grand army of Black men 29

digging trenches on that Wagner beach while sovereignty staggers in the shaky promise of scattered acres and absent mules I am a man, buried at the bus’s rear in the damaged coffin of Jim Crow, confined to your shabby schools until that famed Topeka morn when Brown rejoiced on spikes of the Santa Fe and promise bellowed from blooming hilltops across divided plains I am a man, trapped like a child in the muddy hue of Tallahatchie, berry breeze masking smells of night’s dismembered corpse, jellied skin submerged in the savage crest of Money’s restless bank I am a man, the steady voice of a timed crusade, songs of freedom rocking the glib Greyhounds of Montgomery, rolling over Selma’s 30

bloody bridge, rejoicing in dawning hymns crooned by a King at a crowded D.C. mall I am a man, leader of your nation, rising from the dark cinders of a slave’s misty quarters to the big white house on top of a teeming hill, the dream of my ancestors ascending from the weary resolve of a stifled, stolen past.

31

James Valvis

Before You Speak Too Badly of Death Before you speak too badly of death, let’s sit down and think this thing out.

Consider the moon is moving away by about an inch each and every year.

Let’s sit down and think this thing out, think of what that would mean for us.

By about an inch each and every year surely we too are growing separate.

Think of what that would mean for us, our vow to love each other always.

Surely we too are growing separate though not so apart we now notice.

Our vow to love each other always: possible only because drifting is finite.

Though not so apart we now notice, in time we’d be as distant as the moon.

Possible only because our drifting is finite, the moon never turns her face away.

In time we’d be as distant as the moon.

In time the moon would attach to another.

The moon never turns her face away.

I never want to turn from you.

In time the moon would attach to another.

So let me die before that happens.

32

I never want to turn from you.

Consider the moon is moving away, so let me die before that happens, before you speak too badly of death.

33

Britny Cordera

Upon Realizing There Are Ghosts in the Ceiling (after Leila Chatti) ––in memory of my family’s matriarch, c. 1770, Opelousas Post, LA

Like scars from a past life, all of Marguerite’s history hides in the pockmarks of the porch ceiling, but the acacia sky that only goes so high failed to reveal her story.

Haint lips locked after swallowing the truth, after an abandoned sugar cane plantation gave in to the spiders & humidity of Louisiana’s breath. It licked my eyes like a hurricane. Know the heavens never begged to be mimicked; even the crackling lye gleams where the day don’t shine. Dust grows on the portico when left and forgotten. Night is like this; violence towards my people, too. *** The robin’s-egg-blue keeps ghosts at bay but they were never fooled. I shiver & the haint possesses me with the blood of my ancestors. A little firmament riles the outside to inside with its own mad shadows. *** For a summer I became the ceiling, wore its cool blue like Mardi Gras feathers & rhinestones. The rosemary grows wild for heavy remembering: how my grandmother’s grandmother, bound to chains, keeper of the ghosts

34

painted the haints on the ceiling, her grave filled with the wasps who wouldn’t make a home in the sky ––her bones, a keepsake I would have kept if I stayed where I was meant to be.

35

David Craig

Stealing Third Base It was a grand bit of chicanery. Missed by those too timid for the graced line of crime––no sense for the preparation, technique involved. We had it, a gift.

Some of us kept the clippings, most what we could of the ride. But when the horses went lame, we were left on a dusty road––we had to change our names.

The same thing happens most times we open our mouths.

Eager flashbacks gather at the pearly gates, but the conductor has far too many scores to settle.

Sign language would help us to slow down our mission (or we could insist on a commerce of Anglo-Saxon–– though that wouldn’t bring back Beowulf, the honest beot.)

We could reduce our expectations, of course, get some lambs to gambol, maybe hawk some aperitifs.

(We might get a papal blessing, buy a frame!)

But we dance with the only person who ever brings us, dress him up as best we can. He can puppet with the best.

(Don’t let his wink fool you. He’s a prisoner of wayward desires!)

36

Mark Statman

Green Side Up for my father, Al Statman (1933-2018)

1. that was the joke the saying to look out the window to think the green side is up there’s the sun there are the mountains dry and bright in the Arizona sun

2. take with you your stickball memories Brooklyn Bronx you wake up from a hospital dream you’d hit two sewers something won

3. on the phone you’d say it’s another DIP day in paradise

37

waking early enough there were no sounds of morning only birdsong breeze the meaning of paradise that first moment alone and taking in coffee and sunlight

4. growing up I would sit with you at the kitchen table pre-dawn you ate cereal it was before you were off to work I thought I should sit with you someone should sit with you I would then you’d go off to work I’d go for a run or back to sleep who remembers what we said I remember silence

5. a kiss and a bop on the head it’s what you gave us

38

then that last kiss no bop you were already too weak you couldn’t move your hands but you could kiss you could smile that smile that split your face the world in two

6. what did you say that for breakfast your father had a shot of whiskey an onion then off to the bakery ready for the work of the day

7. water one of your elements watching you from the shore as you dove into one wave after another like some water god

39

8. but one day we were swimming across a boat channel in the Florida Keys you said I’m in trouble who was always there to save us from trouble I hailed a passing boat they pulled us in your first heart attack your first trouble the many troubles the gods fall gods always fall they are meant to fall they are meant to give us stories and disappear

9. and Mom is crying is angry is grief she wanted to be the first to go she wanted you to be the one to live alone that isn’t how she means it but the loneliness you’ve left her you hid your cancer

40

you did this to everyone never wanting to be thought as sick never wanting to be the problem

10. when you turned forty you joked well now I guess I’ll never play centerfield beloved DiMaggio beloved Mantle beloved Yankees

11. my sons my legacy my history you said to the doctor have you met my son the poet? there dying you let me know you knew

12. singing lines from musicals movies Broadway the night they invented champagne

41

13. your voice was made for radio or we imagined so I imagine I can hear it now going out across the airwaves Al Statman here good morning

14. nothing ahead and nothing behind which is to say present which is to say nothing at all except this holding your hand holding you hold onto life a little longer

15. you opened your eyes you were in so much pain you said did you ever think your father was such a baby?

16. it didn’t matter 42

the story you just loved to tell a story or maybe it was all the stories maybe you were saying here is your inheritance

17. driving through Canada on the way to Montreal you bought a beret and sang Frere Jacques one time ten times a hundred times a secret happiness that wasn’t secret

18.

I’d call your phone you’d say hello and ask me how I was doing then you’d say here’s your mother and I’d say but dad I’m calling you

19. who goes rock hunting? we go rock hunting driving along

43

Long Island back roads looking for boulders we’d heave into the car to decorate the yard

20. when you were a boy davening in shul an old man behind you smacked your head because in your broken Hebrew, he said, you’d called God a son of a bitch

21.

I don’t want to forget anything not your anger not your love I don’t want to forget maybe I disappointed you Sunday mornings growing up you made pancakes we listened to NY football Giants games names like Ron Johnson Fran Tarkenton Spider Lockhart

44

22. we asked you what you did at work you said I sharpen pencils

23. you talked about your golf game but I never saw you play you were proud of the athlete me once I overheard you say to a friend have you ever seen Mark run?

24. when you decided you’d had enough you said you wanted to go home to leave the hospital no more tubes no more machines no more beeping sounds you were going to die in the sounds of your own house the familiar the loved you had the voices there of your family who had come to say we love we love we love 45

who had come to say please and stay and then goodbye

25. you told me the story of Becky under the stairs the first girl ever kissed

26. in the hospital I shaved you you hadn’t shaved in days gray stubble gray skin and you looked somehow better almost ready to live I cleaned your glasses filthy when you came home I fed you strawberries blueberries later David did the same the last food you’d eat on earth

27. what worried you you wouldn’t say except finally in your final days

46

take care of your mother take care of your mother it had been your job more than sixty-five years and now could you trust your sons? but how could we the way you could? how could we manage her suddenly empty life?

28. you loved having been Air Force you never talked about it but when all your sons were small you would lift us up lift us high you’d sing: into the air junior bird man into the air upside down

29. to see your coffin to touch your coffin to spill earth on your coffin to see the row after row

47

of graves to see the rolling green of this military cemetery to know your green side is above to know I think each day green side up I mean I think of you

48

Robert Ward

The Boy Who Hung With the Greeks

Tommy was into the Greeks. They all hung out together on the West

Wall at lunch, smoking Luckies in defiance of the school rules, laughing and listening to Gene Vincent on their smuggled-in maroon plastic, Philco portable radio.

Tommy wore a black short sleeved tee under his leather motorcycle jacket. And biker denims, with the cuffs turned up.

Now all he needed was a motorcycle. A Triumph 650. Like Jack Anthes had.

Jack was the leader of the Greeks, a handsome guy with a lot of tight curly hair. Tom thought he kind of looked like Victor Mature in Samson and Delilah, but he’d never tell him that for fear that Jack would think that Victor Mature looked like a fag. Then he would kick the shit out of Tommy and not let him be in the Greeks’ Auxiliary Group.

Jack had started the Auxiliary Group for people like Billy Wilson, Johnny Weaver, Speed Creighton and Tommy, all of whom were fans of the Greeks.

A couple of them even went out with Greek girls. Like Speed, who dated Evonne Pillas. Man, she was one fine-looking chick. He saw Speed with her on the back of his Harley. Davidson Sportster, a four stroke 45 degree twin engine. It made a hellish noise but that was the whole point, wasn’t it? At least Evonne thought so. The Greek guys all dug Speed; they knew he’d back them if they had a gang fight with the Hampden Stompers, or the Hamilton Wild Cats. When the Auxiliary Brigade got up and running Tommy knew Speed would be in for sure. If he only had a cycle. Then there would be no doubt he’d make it too. Anthes told Speed that the big decision would be made this weekend. Five guys wanted in but they could only accept three.

Since Speed was all but in there were really only two open spots.

Tom felt a pressure in his chest and neck. He wanted in so damned badly, but you could never let them know that. You had to play it cool.

If there were only something he could do to show them that he belonged.

49

Something big, dramatic, something they couldn’t forget.

But what the hell could it be?

Kicking the ass of one of the Four Aces. Yeah, that would be cool.

Except Tommy couldn’t think of any Aces he could beat down.

The truth is Tommy was a slight boy with fine features. His eyes were soft, expressive. He looked in the dust covered mirror in his mother’s room and cursed his eyes. Those dreamy freaking eyes. Like…like a girl’s. And his lips…they were full and so perfectly formed. Guys shouldn’t have lips like this. He folded his lips under, made them half as big as they were.

He wished he could get plastic surgery, like he read about in his mother’s Photoplays. If he was a rich and famous actor, he’d make his lips thin, not so damned full. Guys should have thin lips and their eyes should be hooded by their eyelids, so you could never divine their true intentions.

A teacher had called him “sensitive” once and he wanted to kill him.

Sensitive! Jesus Christ.

He went to bed in an empty house. His mother worked nights at Anderson’s Restaurant in Waverly. His dad was out somewhere, doing his “night work”.

Probably boosting shipments from the cargo ships down at Pier One. Boxes with shoes in them, or shirts, which he then sold to independent clothing stores on the down/low.

His father, Billy Walker, the small time hood.

Tommy recalled how he’d used to laugh at his old man. Back when he was crystal sure he’d never end up like him.

How that had changed. Now he wanted to be one of the Greeks. What was it about them? They were different than the other gangs in the Tenth Ward.

Take Anthes, for example. He drove a Black Prince bike and he talked about doing a “Fred Astaire” on a guy’s head but it was a kind of open secret that he was going to go to college.

College. Tommy had never known anyone who went to college.

College was for squares, and rich kids who lived uptown. People in Mt. Washington and Roland Park.

He thought of the time Jason Bell had invited him to a party out there.

50

Bell was a rich kid but he’d been thrown out of Boy’s Latin and now he was at City, drinking and doping his way through school.

Jason had invited Anthes, Speed, and Tommy to a party at a rich guy’s house in Roland Park. They drove out in Jack’s old Ford, out where the streets were wide and there were these big trees like…maples and oaks, and well Tommy didn’t know many tree names…in The Bottom where he lived there were damned few trees.

They’d parked Jack’s old Ford in the driveway right behind this amazing looking foreign car. Like something you saw in a movie. And they went up to the giant wood door and knocked. Inside they could hear music and happy chatter, sort of like animals chattering in a super-green glen in a Walt Disney movie. Finally, the door opened and lo and behold, there was a real, live butler: A middle aged guy with gray temple wings. He was jammed into a formal butler’s suit with a little bow tie and a cutaway coat.

He spoke with a perfect aristocratic accent: “The Van Leer Residence and whom shall I say is calling?”

Jack, who was such a wiseass, had to say, “Tell them The Marx Brothers are here, my good man!”

“Yes and be jolly well quick about it, old dickhead,” Speed added.

Things had gone downhill fast.

The butler might have looked like a fool but he knew his job. When he spoke again he had more than a little of a Baltimore accent.

“You are not welcome here, assholes, and if you do not leave at once I will be forced to call the Baltimore City gendarmes , who , I might remind you, patrol this area each and every night. Indeed, they should be along in about five minutes, so if you are wiser than you fucking look you would do well to leave at once.”

With that, he slammed shut the door. And all the riches of Ali Baba’s Cave disappeared.

“Fuck his ass,” Jack said.

“We got a fucking invitation, “Speed said.

They looked at Tommy, waiting for his rebel jive, but he said nothing.

Tommy wanted to talk but the thing was he felt sleepy now.

51

As his hope dwindled down to an ember his energy just dissipated.

Because…because he used to think things like “Yes, getting the shit beaten out of me down on Baltimore Street was really the pits but it will make all my accomplishments in life seem that much better. I’ll look back on this rotten day and I’ll see how far I’ve come.”

A thought as distant as his hope for the Baltimore Orioles.

What had they done next? He strained to recall that night. But instead had a thought: As hope for the future dies even your past fades into nothing.

But, suddenly, the scene lit up in his tormented brain again: Jack had walked over to the foreign car, a beautiful black Mercedes. It gleamed in the moonlight. And then the car spoke to Tommy. He could hear it say, “Get out of here before I call the gendarmes, asshole.” It seemed funny.

The car said what the butler said and the house said it as well. The great stone house with its window eyes and mouth like-door and all of it thundering the same message.

“Get away you fucking Ward 10 scum. Get back to your rat holes.”

Which is what Tommy wanted to do. Get away now. Before the cops came. Before they were handcuffed and beaten with billy-clubs.

But they stayed. Instead, Jack opened the driver’s side of the door. It wasn’t even locked.

After all, who would try to steal a Mercedes right out of the castle drive way?

Then Jack took his dick out and pissed into the driver’s seat, and right behind him Speed did the same and Tommy felt it was a terrible thing to deface such a beautiful machine and yet he had his prick out as well and was pissing into what was now a pool in the soft, brown leather.

“I say old bean,” Jack said, zipping up his pants. “Let’s jolly well go down to Captain Harvey’s Sub Shop, what ho?”

“Yeah. What fucking ho, sir,” Speed said.

“What fucking ho, indeed, my good men,” Tommy said.

He hadn’t felt like saying that at all, but it was easier to go along with the others, and after all, didn’t the rich bastards deserve it?

52

And then they were in Jack’s wreck rolling back down Charles Street into their rat’s corner, where they lived and where they belonged.

Rats, caged rats, but if you were with the Greeks you were somebody.

A girl he knew, Karen, a smart but plain girl, asked him why he wanted to be a Greek. What was it about them?

“After all you can never really be one,” she said.

When she said that, he wanted to hit her in the face.

But when he answered, his voice was calm, steady: “I like them. They’re wild but not like the other gangs. Jack Anthes is smart. They know things.”

He realized he sounded like a pretentious idiot. But it was the best he could do. He was given to strange affectations and unexplainable surges of need.

“The Greek Auxiliary.,” Karen said, sipping her cherry Coke down at Doc’s. “It sounds ridiculous.”

He felt another surge of furious anger.

“No, it doesn’t. Girls don’t understand.”

“Of course girls understand,” Karen said. “Eastern High has sororities.

Good ones, bad ones but the worst thing of all is not to be asked to pledge any of them.”

She looked down at the counter; he waited for her to sob, but she quickly raised her head and laughed.

“Fuck ‘em all,” she said. “I don’t need Sigma Chi and you don’t need to be a Greek.”

He wanted to laugh with her, to be brave but the thought of not being anywhere, of not being aligned with anyone made him cold inside.

He knew the dead got cold, so maybe that’s what it was like. Not belonging anywhere was like a trial death.

His chance came the very next day.

Jack Anthes came up to him on the wall at lunch. Offered him a Lucky.

He had never done that before. What did it mean? God, maybe…

“You do want to be in the auxiliary, right?”

53

Tommy started to answer in a forceful way but all he could say was, “Yeah, sure I do.”

“Ok,” Anthes said. “Here’s your shot, Tom. The North Avenue Boppers have challenged us to a chain fight tonight up at the East End of Patterson Park. You show up at eight, and we will kick their asses!”

“A chain fight?”

He had heard about “chain fights” before. About guys getting hit in their faces with a sharpened link of chain, which tore away their flesh, left terrible scars. There was a boy, Carey Forrester, who caught a link in his eye in a fight with the Hamilton Wild Cats. His eye…his right eye…had been torn from his skull. He fell to the ground with nerves hanging out of his head. His eye was caught on the hook and the kid who lashed him took it home with him.

People said he kept it in a jar by his bed, floating in alcohol. Maybe it was true.

“You do have a chain, Tom,” Anthes said.

“Oh yeah, I got one. Down the cellar. My old man used it for you know… hauling stuff. Listen, aren’t the Boppers Neg…” “Niggers. Call ‘em what they are, “Anthes said. “Yeah, and they want to move into our territory. Which is why we gotta kick their asses right now, you dig?”

“I dig,” Tommy said. But he had to swallow hard and force himself not to shake. Fighting Negroes? It was not only scary but he –and he had never told anyone this-he liked Negroes. He liked their music, rhythm and blues.

He liked Little Richard, and Lloyd Price and all the doo wop groups. He liked Jimmy Fuller, a Negro he had played basketball in the park. He didn’t like racist people either, and was surprised to hear that Anthes used the term “Nigger.” Had he always used it and Tommy just hadn’t been able to hear it? He couldn’t remember. His head was swimming…a chain fight with Negroes. Jesus…

“You gotta be there at eight. You do good and you are going to be the President of the Auxiliary, Tom.” The President! The top guy? Holy shit.

“I’ll be there,” Tommy said, putting his right hand in his pocket so Jack couldn’t see it shaking.

54

Jack nodded, gave him a stern look.

“Don’t be late,” he said.

The rest of the day Tommy walked around in a happy, terrified daze. It was all so spooky/wonderful. He would get to be in the Greek s frat almostafter-all, and he’d be the president. Maybe after he worked the Auxiliary into shape they would see that their gang needed him in the major leagues, not just triple A. He shut his eyes and felt like he was floating in air. For a while.

But as the day grew cold and gray, he wasn’t floating anymore. It was more like he was tied to a giant greasy hamburger bun which was cooking over a low but endlessly, simmering flame.

The chain. He had to get the chain. Down in the basement, over in the corner. Under some old fruit boxes on which was printed, Oranges Are From Florida!

There it was, about five feet long when he laid it out on the cold basement floor. A steel snake.

The chain that would be his weapon. He picked it up, and began whirling it around the room, a barbaric scream coming from his lips.

He would show them. Show them all. He was a badass.

As he screamed, twirling it about him, he thought of a dead North Avenue Bopperlying in the neon light of the A and P sign. A dead …Negro. Killed by none other than himself! Tom the badass! Baaaaaad!

Then he saw the dead Negro’s face twisted, terrified and he felt like throwing up.

He wondered if it was ok to wear his old scooter helmet. Or were they considered chicken-shit?

The next night. Twenty minutes to eight. The time had come. His old man was home upstairs watching wrestling. Rocca Vs The Beast. His mother was home too, upstairs in the bedroom, knitting.

He wanted to rush up the cellar steps and tell them goodbye, but gang 55

members, even auxiliary members, couldn’t do that.

No, he had to curl up the chain as best he could, wearing it under his silk jacket, (the cool one with Japan on the back) and he had to walk up ten blocks to the Medic, and meet the other Greeks and Auxiliary Members …

And he had to look at the terrifying North AvenueBoppers who would undoubtedly be big black guys, and have so many scars on their faces from other chain fights and knife battles outside the Eastern Avenue Bowling Alley, that a few more wouldn’t even matter.

Plus, they were such chain fight vets that they would probably know how to protect their eyes. There might be some way to turn your head as the fatal link swooped down and gouged out your retina.

Or maybe there was a perfect time to blink.

The idea filled him with a sort of hopeless laughter.

The words “The Well Known Blink Defense’ floated through his hysterical mind.

Why was he here?

Why was he doing this?

So he could almost be in the gang…a gang based on a race he could never be.

Swarthy, fun loving guys…who fought with chains like Ulysses!

Guys who drank “mead”…if it still existed. (And what the fuck was it?

He imagined it was some thick liquor that went down like tough-guy tapioca.)

A mead drinking Greek (almost) outlaw, not a nerdy kid who collected old horror comics, and liked to watch birds feed.

As he reached the corner he told himself to start hating birds. Blue Jays, sparrows, robins, all birds were what wimpy guys liked.

Fuck birds! Their horrible little birdsongs. God, their incessant singing.

Singing! They called that singing?

Come on!

He didn’t know one fucking bird who could carry a tune.

He looked across the avenue and saw the Medic up on a hillside, with weeds growing all around it. It had been a small shopping corner only a few 56

years ago but the area was rundown and now people drove to a new super mall called Mondawmin.

The only thing left here at the Medical Center was a dentist named Herman Brown, an A and P, the Medic, a small, poorly stocked drug store and Oriole Liquors, a dump with a few cheap wines, liquors and beers.

Behind the stores was a tufty, weedy hill with one flat muddy spot at the bottom, where guys sometimes rolled by and revved their engines.

He headed over there, slowly unwinding his chain.

He wondered if the chain fight would start at once or would there be officials to explain the rules to them all. Then he realized the absurdity of such a thought. It was a battle till death, not a sporting event! Anything went.

Still, he wished with all his heart for kindly referees.

He rounded the corner of the A and P slowly, getting ready to see the two sides already lined up, waiting to sling their chains at one another.

He wished he had sharpened his chain-end after all.

Just before he passed the point of no return at the end of the A and P store he had another terrible thought: Maybe he would be as bad at chain fighting as he was at bowling. He thought of his old bowling nickname: Gutter Ball Tom! Did bad chain fighters get crummy nicknames too: “One Eye Norman” ,or “Dead Eye Tom?” The kind of guy people spat on as they passed by him to Damascus. Until a Good Samaritan showed up.

But Tommy knew that there weren’t going to be any Good Samaritans in the Tenth Ward.

He wanted to turn and run, not home but away, somewhere clean and nice with tall green hedges where no one could hurt you. Like Roland Park.

But only the rich had hedges.

He couldn’t turn back now. There was no way.

He looked down at the weedy hill, and below that to the level ground and he saw…he saw…he saw nothing.

No one was there. No Greeks. No chain wielding Stompers.

57

He looked down at his Timex watch. 8:15. Well, that explained it. The Greeks, at least some of them, lived a few miles away from here. They might have gotten caught in traffic.

But that seemed odd too. Honking your horn and yelling at people: “Hey, move that heap. We’re late for our fucking chain fight!”

He unleashed his killer chain. And began to snap it around in the moonlight. He had to be careful because a couple of times it snapped back and almost hit him in the crotch.

He suddenly imagined that the chain knew he was a rookie and was hazing him.

Mockery from your own chain.

He crossed the thought off from his teeming mind. Swung again and again.

It was pretty exciting for about five minutes but then he felt tired and he worried some local people in the row-houses across from the lot might call the Baltimore City Police.

He found an old Royal Crown wooden carton, and sat down on it.

Where the hell were the gangs? Maybe Anthes had said 8:30. Yeah, that had to be it. He was nervous when Jack told him about the battle so he got the time wrong.

But, really, he didn’t think so. The one thing people like him never did was get the time wrong. People who liked birds singing, people who collected stamps…Jesus, he had almost forgotten about that.

Stamp collecting!

He vowed to go home as soon as the chain battle was over and burn his stamp collection. But the thought of losing Costa Rica, France and Germany almost made him cry.

He waited until it got deadly dark, clouds covering the winter moon, and he felt sleepy and hopeless. It had taken all his energy to get up his courage and now he was like a big balloon with the gas hissing out of it.

But, then, just as he was about to nod off, he saw someone moving toward him.

He tightened his grip on his chain. Was the guy black?

58

He squinted his sleepy eyes and saw him plain now.

It wasn’t one of the Greeks. And it wasn’t one of the black Boppers sneaking up on him.

But it was a black guy. It was Old Dave Hill, an ancient alcoholic who hung around Oriole Liquors. He delivered booze in the neighborhood and also bought underage boys like Tommy bottles if they would buy an extra one for him. His favorite wine was Mookie Fookie, a disgusting, syrupy tasting, overly sweet red wine with happy, multi-colored balloons featured on the label.

A wine, Tommy thought, that is supposed to start a carnival in your head. But the one time he had tried a bottle he had thrown up into the sticker bushes in his front- yard.

Dave looked at him now, with a certain confusion in his bloodshot eyes.

“Hi ya Tommy. What chu doing back down here?”

“Meeting some guys, Dave,” Tommy said. He tried to make his voice sound low and raspy, like his vocal chords has been soaked in prison dust for twenty years or so.

“Who?” “Can’t say.”

“Oh,” Dave said. “It be a secret, like?”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“Well, what time you meeting ‘em?”

“That’s a secret too.”

He felt a blush break out on his cheeks. He had known Old Dave for ten years and hated lying to him.

“Well, is it O.K. if I hang out witcha for a few minutes. ‘Om waiting for some guys to come by and use my services, know what I mean?”

“Sure,” Tommy said.

Actually, he thought now, it was more than O.K. Suddenly, he felt that if Old Dave left he would maybe die of fear and loneliness.

They sat there not speaking for a while, the chain sitting there in between them like a third person no one wants to meet.

Finally, Old Dave broke the silence.

“What ‘chu got that thing for, Tom?” 59

As he spoke Old Dave’s arm began to shake and spasm a little.

“Ah, nothing. I was carrying some boxes up to a guy’s house and now they are all delivered so I am taking it back home.”

He knew old Dave would never buy it but would be too polite to call him a liar.

“Hmmm.”

Dave’s neck jerked and he gave out a small cry.

“What’s wrong, Dave?”

“Needs me a drink, Tommy. Been nearly half a day.”

“Wish I had some money Dave.”

Dave nodded and sighed.

They sat there for a while more. Tommy told himself not to let down. If he was too tired the Stompers would jump out of the darkness and skin him alive.

They would take his eye home in a mayonnaise jar, where it would sit on some black dude’s T.V. set next to his rabbit ears.

They waited, and waited some more.

It was ten to nine and Oriole Liquors would close soon. Tommy looked down at his lonely chain.

A terrible feeling had come over him.

That it was all a joke. There was no chain fight. Jack and the Greeks just wanted to mess with him.

Then another thought came over him. The very worst thought.

There was no Auxiliary Greek Chapter either. The whole thing was a joke.

How dumb could this non-Greek stamp collecting bird- lover be?

He looked around….to see if any of the Greeks were parked somewhere nearby watching him as they drank National Boh and whiskey in their cars.

Maybe some of them had Brownie cameras and were taking pictures of the dumb ass, non-Greek who thought he could be in some fictional non-Greek chapter of the Greek gang. Boy, would this be a good laugh at one of their Greek circle dances.

He felt tears come to his eyes. But he wasn’t going to cry. No, No, No… The moon hung over them like a curse. He wished it would go black, 60

that the world could be wiped away forever.

“Well, I gotta roll Tommy. You sure you ain’t got a buck so’s I can have me a little taste?”

“Yeah, O.K.,” Tommy said. “I got it. I was going to get some ice cream but I don’t need it. Two bucks, ok?”

“Oh man, yeah….” Dave said. He reached out his hand to receive the money, but Tommy shook his head.

“Not yet,” he said. “First you got to do me a little favor. O.K.?”

“Sure. What ‘chu need?”

Tommy slowly took off his Japanese silk jacket, and then his black Baltimore Oriole tee. Then he reached down in front of him and picked up the chain. Old Dave’s head jerked back, like a scared rooster’s.

“I want you to take this chain and whip me across the back.”

There was a long silence.

“Say what?”

“You heard me. You want the two bucks or not?”

“Man, you crazy,” Old Dave said.

Tommy picked up the chain and placed it in Dave’s leathery, shaking hand.

“You do it,” Tommy said. “Four times. Hard. And every time you say these words: ‘You like birds. You love stamps. And you aren’t Greek.’”

“What? Shit you already know them things. I see you get a whole package of stamps up at Woolworth’s one day jest this year. You don’t need none of…”

“Do you want the fucking money, Dave?”

“Yeah, but…”

“Then do it, Dave. Do what I tell you. Improve my fucking memory. Do it now, Dave!”

He turned his back, and felt the cool night wind pass through him. He heard Dave suck in his breath, and the chains jingle a little as Dave readied himself. .

“You like birds. You like stamps. You ain’t Greek.”

The chains lashed his back so hard that it nearly knocked him off the bench. He did not cry out, but somehow hissed at Dave.

“You ‘love stamps’, Dave,” Tommy said. “You ‘love’ stamps.”

61

“But Tom,” Dave said, “This ain’t right. I don’t need no more of this, man.”

“Dave,” Tommy said, as he pulled the two dollars from his pocket and slowly waved them in front of Dave’s open mouth.

Dave made a groaning sound and said: “You love stamps, you love bird’s singing. You ain’t no Greek.’

This time the chains burned into his skin so deep that he fell off the bench onto his knees.

“Tommy, you ain’t got to do this…”

“Shut up, Dave. Shut up now. Tell me again.”

And Dave did; he was louder and clearer. As though he had found his true voice.

“You love stamps, you love bird’s singing, you ain’t no mutherfucking Greek.”

His voice rose and he sounded like he was doing something he had always wanted to do his whole life long.

Tommy felt the chain lash open what felt like a canyon sized gash in his back. Blood escaped the confines of arteries and ran swollen and free down his spine. He fell to his knees again, crying out like a dying animal. Then Tommy turned and gave old Dave the two bucks.

“Thank you, Dave,” he gasped. “Go get your wine before the Oriole closes.”

Dave dropped the bloody chain, stood staring at Tommy for a moment, as though he was composing a plan of action. Some way he could help Tommy but it occurred to him that even though he had participated in this hideous act it was somehow none of his business. He turned and hobbled up the weedy hill in the moonlight.

Tommy crawled over to his shirt.

It took him quite a while to get to his feet, and almost an hour to walk home.

What would he say in school tomorrow if Jack and the Greeks asked him how the chain battle went? He could almost see them getting ready to laugh at him, maybe push him around.

62

Tommy, the President of the Non-Existent Greek Auxiliary Unit.

They would expect him to mumble some lame bullshit about how no one showed up.

But now, at last, he would have the upper hand.

He would look at them seriously and say that it been a hard, dangerous battle. That many of his men had been lost. But, in the end, as the sound of the cop sirens wailed in the near distance. he had killed the last Bopper.

He had won.

The thought of this confrontation kept him upright as he staggered down the narrow, dark alley.

Probably, they would still laugh at him, thinking he was bullshitting them.

But that would be his moment of triumph.

As they screamed and fell out laughing at him, Tommy would would take off his shirt and show them his back.

The rivers of blood, the ripped and torn flesh from Old Dave’s chain.

They wouldn’t laugh anymore.

Because none of them had ever been in a real chain fight.

The thought of their surprised and horrified faces made him laugh, gasp in pain and laugh again.

He would show them the bloody stripes. Tell them how he kicked ass.

How the Boppers still standing had run back to North Avenue, screaming in horror.

What would they think? What could they say?

And who the fuck cared?

Not him. No, not him.

Though his back was ripped to shreds Tommy found himself still laughing as he staggered up the back alley, leaving a bright little blood trail all the way to his back yard and his unlocked screen door.

He would clean up, he thought. Pour Peroxide on his wounds. Then steal some of his old man’s whiskey, lie on his stomach in his bedroom. His head on the yellow stained pillow, and if he couldn’t sleep, maybe he would take out his stamp collection, and look at the bright colors waiting for him in Costa Rica, Jamaica or some island he had never, ever known. One made 63

of volcanic ash, from the shores of the cool water’s edge, across a hundred miles of black, striated plains. Stretching onward and upward until it towered above him, towered above all of the natives as they looked up in worship at the fiery towers which stretched to the black and purple skies.

64

Robert Asahina

Here to Set the Record Straight: An interview with Robert Ward

Robert Ward’s hearty laugh and big personality barely fit within the

solid walls of his house in the Hollywood foothills. Though he has lived in the area for more than three decades, he still seems an unlikely presence here. Maybe that’s because his home—an English manor revival built nearly a century ago—is so far removed, in so many ways, from the row houses in Baltimore, where he was born in 1943. Or maybe it’s because Baltimore, not Los Angeles, remains the focus of so much of his storytelling—most notably in his prize-winning novel Red Baker.

He and I became friends in Manhattan during the late ’70s, around the time he also met Celeste Wesson, whom he would marry in 1985. It was an interesting time to be young in New York City, which was just beginning its long, slow climb out of urban decay. It was also a crucial period in Ward’s career. After stints in academia in Ohio and upstate New York, he had made a name for himself as a journalist in Manhattan. But fiction remained his passion, and he spun his wheels for five years before writing Red Baker. He didn’t know it at the time, but that was a major turning point in his life, which would point him toward the West Coast.

— Here you are in Hollywood—from Baltimore! Who would have thought it?

— Definitely not me. But I always liked movies as a kid. As soon as I was old enough, I went to every movie you could see in Baltimore.

Saturday morning—just saying that now, I can remember the feeling I had of unbelievable excitement, knowing I would go in when it was light and come out in the dark.

But I think storytelling was in me before I even went to the movies.

It was something I got from my grandmother Grace, who was an amazing person. She only went to the eighth grade, but she read Thomas Mann. Her favorite book was The Magic Mountain. I was about eight or nine. She was 65

reading me parts of it, and I was like, “Wow, they’re in these sleds that are going down the hill. And these corpses!”

When I was in the fifth grade, my mother gave me a book, Jules Verne or something. I really liked it, and I said, “You know, I’m going to be a writer when I grow up.”

And she said, “Isn’t that cute?”

Well, I didn’t even know the word “condescending,” but I knew I was being condescended to. So I said, “Don’t talk to me that way! I am going to be a writer.”

My father was quite a good painter and caricaturist. But he couldn’t make a living at it, so he gave it up. And he would mock me and say, “Oh, Mr. Hemingway, they can’t wait for your work.”

And I would scream, “I am going to be a writer no matter what you say, you failure!”

My parents didn’t want me to go to college. They didn’t want to pay for it, and my mother didn’t want me to leave home. So I went to Towson University, which was right across the street. I just walked over and applied, and they let me in.

I had one teacher there, Don Craver, who was a brilliant guy. Another was Frank Guess, a very good-looking guy who had a crew cut and always wore herringbone jackets. Frank taught literature, and he’d graduated from North Carolina, where there were people like Randall Jarrell, who wrote so many great poems and essays. But they had a very conservative viewpoint there—the New Critics believed that it was all textual, that biographical criticism was out. Still, in a lot of ways that was good …

— Because you actually had to pay attention to what was on the page.

— Exactly. College really woke me up. It was like real reading.

Then I had this teacher, Ray Franke, who was different from the others.

He had gone to Wisconsin for his graduate studies, and he was a radical. He introduced me to ideas about socialism and capitalism.

The New Critics didn’t get into any of that. I remember Frank Guess taught Henry James, which was amazing. I learned a tremendous amount.

But it was all about art. In the Ambassadors, Strether goes to Europe and 66

meets these refined people. But the novel didn’t say how he got his money.

Now I was suddenly reading Jean-Paul Sartre and Camus. And Ray Franke was turning me on to The Wretched of the Earth. He said, “Have you ever read Native Son by Richard Wright?”

So I read that, and I felt much more sympathy for Bigger Thomas than I did for Strether. Then Franke said, “I took a seminar on Henry James once. It was good, but I wondered what I was doing there amongst all those teacups.”

And I thought, “That’s exactly how I feel.”

You know, Fitzgerald talked about the “hot struggles of the poor” that Gatsby wanted to rise above, but found he never could. That’s why The Great Gatsby is a great book. It’s a very Marxist book, and Fitzgerald considered himself a Marxist. But the term Marxist was never used by Frank Guess or my other teachers.

Still, they were great teachers. I was in advanced exposition class with Don Craver, and I said, “I’m going to be a great writer.” By that time I was starting to brag. This was my second year of school. I had a girlfriend named Diana. I was playing on the lacrosse team, and I was reading Henry James and Frantz Fanon. But Don Craver said, “Well, Bob. It would be good if you could learn to write one good sentence.”

I said, “Well, that’s a given.”

He said, “No, Bob, it’s not a given. And then you have to learn how to put that sentence with another sentence, and then we work up to a paragraph.”

And I was like, “Holy shit. I guess it’s going to be a lot harder than I thought.”

— Were you writing anything at the time?

— I wrote a couple of short stories. One was about my grandfather, who lived above us in the house across from Towson. And I wrote about him up there being alone and lonely. But it didn’t have any real dramatic turns or anything. It was just a character sketch, like Sketches by Boz. I loved Charles Dickens. Great Expectations blew my mind. It had everything, all the Henry Jamesian discussions of high art and high literature, but it also had this other, much more important, thing to me: how the poor were treated.

67

— And at the center was this kid who’s lost …

— Exactly! Why would I possibly identify with that?

In my second year I drove across the country with my friend Johnny Brandau. We went down to New Orleans first. I thought I was in another world. We went to the French Quarter, where there were all these people of different races talking to each other.

Then we went through Texas and across the border to Nuevo Laredo. I had this vision from Humphrey Bogart movies that we would sit at the bar and order tropical drinks, perhaps with little umbrellas in them. Then these sexy girls would sidle up and say, “Hi, big boy.”

Instead, there were girls who looked to be about 15 saying, “You like fucking?” It was nightmarish.

From there we drove up to California, first Long Beach, where I had friends, and then Los Angeles. When we got to San Francisco, I was knocked out. The hills, the trolley cars … it was overwhelming. Then we went to North Beach, and I went right to City Lights. I looked at all the poetry books, but Johnny said, “Why do we have to do this stuff? Let’s find some girls.”

So we went to a place I had heard about called the Black Cat Cafe. There was nobody in there at five o’clock, so we ordered a couple of beers and sat around talking. And we waited. Then we had a hamburger, the music started playing, and a few guys came in. And after a while, a lot more guys came in.

Then these two guys came over to our table and said, “Hi, would you mind if we sat down with you?”

And we said, “No, great.” And I thought, “People are finally being friendly.”

One of them was named Terry, I still remember that. After a while, they invited us to their apartment. Somehow Terry took me off into one room, and the other guy took Johnny off to another room. And I got it suddenly.

Just then, I heard the guy in the other room go, “Ow! You hit me!”

I rushed into the other room and said, “Johnny, these guys thought we were coming back here to have sex with them.”

He said, “Oh, gosh, I’m sorry I hit you.”

And Terry said, “It’s okay, kids. So, is this your first time out of Maryland?”

68

That was pretty much our experience in San Francisco. When Johnny and I drove back across the country, the car broke down two or three times.

So our friendship was kind of on the rocks by the time we got back.

But that trip had a huge influence on me. I saw people who had different kinds of lives than people did in Baltimore. And when I first went to New York with the lacrosse team from Towson, I saw another world there, too, of people hustling and being upbeat. It didn’t seem like a battered and beaten place, like Baltimore, and neither did Los Angeles or San Francisco. And I thought, “Someday I have to get to these places.”

I was a social worker after I got out of school, and I started going down to the projects. And I got I got a big dose of reality when I went down there.

I was suddenly with the poor, and I liked them a lot better than a lot of the rich people I met.

But I didn’t want to be a social worker permanently. I wanted to get out of Baltimore, to do something different. One day I came back to Towson to visit Don Craver. On a bulletin board right near his office was a flyer that said, “University of Arkansas Creative Writing Program now taking applicants.”

If you got accepted, you’d get an assistantship to teach freshman English.

And you’d learn from Bill Harrison, who had gone to Iowa and had his first novel published, and Jim Whitehead, who had also been to Iowa.

By that time, I’d written a short story about my trip across the country, sort of an anti-Jack Kerouac story. It was about a guy who had all these things in his head about how people were. But when he got out in the real world, there were poor people in Mexico and whorehouses. The veil of bullshit was completely going away. I didn’t think I had to go to Europe to be to be educated and to be refined. In fact, I felt like diving into the real world, no matter where it was.

So I gave the short story to the Towson literary magazine, and it won a prize from the Homeland Arts Festival—which is still in existence. I sent that story to Bill Harrison at Arkansas, and they gave me a scholarship. I was in the program. I couldn’t believe it.

— This was at a time when MFA programs were new. It wasn’t like today, when every school has one. There were only a few in the United States then.

69

— It’s a miracle they accepted me. The program had actually been in existence just one year.

And then I went back to San Francisco for a little while. I was starting to really grow up, and I felt like I should have stayed there. But I didn’t have any money.

So I came back to Arkansas. And then in the second semester, this girl named Lake came to Arkansas from San Francisco. Even though she was married to this guy out there, the minute we met was like dynamite exploding.

And that changed everything.

By the spring, I wanted to go back to San Francisco. I hadn’t written shit on my book, which was sort of an extension of my story about traveling around. I had a couple of chapters that were good, but I didn’t know what to do with them. So I thought, “I have to go back to where this whole new world is happening.”

I went to San Francisco with Lake and a couple of other people. The night we got there, “Sergeant Pepper” had just come out. And on the same night, the Grateful Dead was playing on the street. There were 15,000 people on Haight Street. We were in that mob. I didn’t usually believe such things, but I wanted to believe in the possibility of a totally new world. I thought I was hip, but I was pretty naïve—what did I know?

Later I went through a place called the Greta Garbo Hotel for Boys and Girls. All these people were camped out there, and everybody was a speed freak. It was like being in hell. In the rooms were people tying off, shooting up, falling down, covered with sores. And I thought, “This is not the dream I had in mind at all.” So much for the Summer of Love and wear a flower in your hair.

So I began to hate this scene. And then one day I saw the Hells Angels stomp the living shit out of a kid. I mean, they kicked him, crushed his arms with their boots, and just left him lying in the gutter. I told Lake, “It’s over for me. This place is finished.” And this was way before Woodstock or any of that.

But before I went back to Arkansas to finish my second year, I went to Baltimore for about four months. And I wrote about 250 pages of short scenes.

I didn’t know where they were going. I thought I’d figure out a plot later.

70

I got an apartment above this place called the Bu-D-Salon. And Jack Hicks, John Waters, Elia Katz, and I started this underground newspaper called the Baltimore Free Press.

Jack was teaching at Catonsville College, and he became the editor of the paper—from just force of personality. He was really a tyrant. Jack and I were old friends, and I’d have to say, “Now, calm down.”

John was the art director. When I was still at Towson, he was going to Maryland Institute, where my father had gone on a scholarship.

Elia was the youngest guy on the Baltimore Free Press. He was one of the funniest guys who ever lived. He had this beautiful girlfriend, and he put her breast on the cover of the Johns Hopkins literary magazine. He changed the title to Deathburger, with her nipple being a pickle and the rest of it looking like a hamburger.

I was the arts writer. For the second issue, we had a picture of Richard Nixon on the cover with a target on his head. It got us a lot of heat from the Feds.

By then it was the Spring of 1968. My friend Richard Moss had come down from Buffalo to stay for a few days over Easter.

And then Martin Luther King was shot.

That morning all the black people had come out for Easter, dressed in their finery. It was kind of festive, but then it turned ugly. I walked out of my apartment and looked down Harford Road. It was filled with people, as far as the eye could see. I don’t know what I was thinking. I thought somehow they would understand that I was with them. So Richard and I decided to go out into the crowd and interview people. He would take pictures, because he had a camera and was a very good photographer.

The crowd was surging, and people were screaming. As we walked farther, we saw this white guy with a suit on. He had a big red sore on his forehead and scrapes on his cheeks. He said, “What are you guys doing here?”

I said, “We’re from the Baltimore Free Press. We’re getting information about the riots here.”

He said, “They’re going to fucking kill you. Look what happened to me. I’m with the Sun. They’ve heard of that. They don’t know who the fuck 71

you are.”

I said, “No, you’re wrong. We’re with them. We’re like them. I live here.”

He said, “You’re out of your fucking mind, kid. Good luck.” And he just kept running back to North Avenue. On the corner was a Sears Roebuck, with lines of troops around it. They all had rifles with bayonets.

All of a sudden we heard yelling. “You shouldn’t have killed Martin!

You shouldn’t have killed Martin!”

Richard looked at me and said, “Who are they yelling at?”

Then this black kid came up and said, “I like that camera, motherfucker,” and he grabbed it out of Richard’s hand. And Richard, being crazy, said, “Give me that,” and grabbed it back.

Richard said, “You think we should leave?”

And then the crowd started throwing rocks and bottles at us. We started running through this mass of humanity. Most of them were nice and didn’t try to hurt us. But there were 30 or 40 people chasing us. So we just ran right across the street to Sears, where the National Guard was.

I said, “My shit is in that apartment right over there. I have a novel I wrote, and my guitar, and all my stuff. Could you help me get it out?” So the Baltimore cops got in their car, drove over and did a u-turn, stopped in front of the building, and waited while I went upstairs, got my guitar, my novel, and some of my shit, and came down and got in the car.

The next day it was still crazy. People were running around with tear gas all around. It wasn’t that mass of humanity like the day before. But half the block was burned down. The Bu-D-Salon stood. A black lady owned it.

Sears was untouched. I went into my pad got the rest of my stuff and jumped into Jack’s car and got the hell out of there.

Man, I was down and out. I stayed at Hicks’s for the next couple of weeks, sleeping on his couch. At least I had rescued my novel.

Then I went back to Arkansas. Harrison had arranged for me to get my scholarship back. He said, “Well, you had quite an experience.”

I said, “Yeah, it was heartbreaking.” I was very confused. I realized that no matter what I felt for black people, I was still white. It was strange. I’d learned lessons the hard way, like I always seem to.

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So I handed Harrison this giant pile of scenes I’d written. I still didn’t see how they connected. And he called me the next day and said, “I read all of it, all night. It’s fucking good. You basically have written a Bildungsroman.

You just don’t see how it all connects, but there it is.”

The next day, we sat down in his office with piles of paper arranged into early, middle … you know. And I saw it. Instantly. I had a lot more to do, but I could see where it all went.

So that year I finished it, and I was teaching again. And then I met this girl Bobbie and her two young kids, and we got married. It was probably the greatest mistake of my life …

— Except for Shannon and Kevin!

— Yeah, except for the boys, who still love me and I love them. I probably saved their lives, because she was a wild and crazy person. I was pretty nutty myself, but I was also kind of out of it. I was so battered from all the stuff that happened, the chaos and insanity, and almost getting killed.

— So you finished Arkansas in ‘69?

— Yeah. At Arkansas, if you wrote a book, that was your written exam.

I had what would become my first novel, Shedding Skin, and everybody loved it. Now I had to pass the oral exam. I had this guy Ben Kimpel on my committee, a brilliant Medieval and Renaissance scholar. There was another academic. And then there were Harrison, Whitehead, and Jim Crumley, who had just come to Arkansas.

At my exam, everyone was seated around a table facing me. They asked a couple of questions, and I answered them. And then the phone rang. Maggie, Crumley’s wife, picked it up and said, “Hey, how are you?” It was Jim’s agent calling, right in the middle of my exam.

So Jim went into the other room to talk. And then he came back and said, “Hey, I just sold”—I think it was One to Count Cadence, his first novel—“for $150,000.” Nobody had ever sold anything down there for anything like that amount of money. “I guess I’m pretty damn rich all of a sudden.”

Everybody said, “Well, hell!”

And then Crumley said, “Ah, Ward knows all this shit. He passes!”

Everybody just went, “Yeah, he passes! Congratulations, Bob!” 73

Five minutes later, Crumley and I were in his truck, driving to Dickson Street Liquors. And we decided to buy one of every thing we could find there. We just kept piling it up in the back of the truck. We took it back to his house and called everybody in town. The party lasted all night. People were madly falling in love and out of love. There were fistfights. It was one of those wonderful Fayetteville parties, and I’d gotten my master’s degree.

Crumley and Maggie and Bobbie and I had a great time that summer. In fact, such a great time, I didn’t want to leave.

By that time, I had published parts of Shedding Skin in the Carolina Quarterly, which was being edited by none other than Jack Hicks. He had gotten a scholarship to North Carolina, and he ended up running the magazine.

He took three chapters of Shedding Skin, along with the first published work

by Don DeLillo, a short story called “Uniforms.” And earlier, Elia Katz had put part of Shedding Skin in Deathburger.

I found out that there was an opening at Miami of Ohio. But it wasn’t at the main campus, in Oxford. It was at the junior college campus, in Hamilton.

When I went in for an interview, they asked me if I’d published any criticism.

So I just made up, on the spot, a piece called “Vanishing Point,” which I thought was a pretty clever joke, since I hadn’t written anything. I said it was about Nelson Algren as the vanishing point of realism into post-modernism.

“Very interesting,” they said. “Do you have a copy of it?”

I said, “Yeah, it’s in my pile of stuff up in the attic.”

I got the job. But they kept asking me about that piece. And I kept saying, “I’ll bring it in any day now.”

The school was just two buildings, built on a former trash dump. Every day the trash smell would waft through the campus. The first time, I thought it was just something in the cafeteria. Then people told me it was actually the earth underneath and the Great Miami River, which ran right by the school.

Bobbie and the kids and I had moved to College Corner, beyond Oxford on the Indiana side of the Ohio/Indiana line. It was like something out of a Hitchcock movie. The people there looked like they’d been inbred. There was a woman at this horrible place where you could buy a few items of food.

One day she asked me, “Where do you live?”

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I said, “Down here on Main Street.”

She said, “Oh, you’re those crazy hippies. Yeah, we have ideas for you.”

— Who were your students?

— I was teaching working-class kids. Some of them were bored, but a lot of them were excited to learn, and I became buddies with quite a few of them. But it was very hard because my wife and I weren’t getting along.

Then, in 1970, I was teaching when we heard about the killing of students at Kent State. The students were all getting crazy, and they were planning to hook up with people at Oxford who were planning a big protest. There was this teacher at Hamilton who was married to the president of the bank, or something like that, in the town. She got up and talked to the crowd in the meeting area on the first floor. She said, “One of the reasons these kids got shot is because they didn’t play athletics. If they had, they would have gotten rid of their anger.”

I was in a state of shock. I had to hold back a couple of the kids who were so angry, they just wanted to punch her in the face.

That year I was putting the finishing touches on Shedding Skin. I wrote the ending over and over again. I couldn’t get it right. But one day I got a letter in the mail from Harper & Row: “Dear Mr. Ward. I read your chapters in the Carolina Quarterly. They are wonderful, hilarious, brilliant. If you haven’t published this book yet, please send it all to me. Fran McCullough.”

So I lashed it all together and put it in the mail. And about a month later, I got a letter back saying, “Everybody loves your novel here. We want to publish it, and I’ll pay you $2,500 for it.”

Now I had a novel soon to be published, and they couldn’t ask me any more about “Vanishing Point.”

Then my two years at Miami were up. My marriage was on the rocks.

Everything was falling apart. At the Modern Language Association, I interviewed with somebody at Hobart, in upstate New York, who asked to see Shedding Skin. So I had the publisher send a copy to them. Then I got a letter back from Jim Crenner saying, “It’s one of the best novels I ever read in my life. We’d love to have you come up here for an interview.” They flew me up to Geneva, and I hit it off with everybody in the English Department.

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And they offered me a job.

I was stunned. I didn’t expect to get a job at a school like that. The faculty was smart, and so were the students. It was on Lake Seneca, where the girls wore summer dresses and you’d drink a martini out on the deck as the sail boats cruised by.

I didn’t realize that they had me up there during the two weeks before it started raining and snowing. It was like moving to Russia. It rained or snowed every day for nine or 10 months.

And I couldn’t come up with a second book. I had become a solid Lefty by that time. I had realized that the hippie thing wouldn’t work. So I was going to write this big political novel. I was influenced by Sol Yurick, who had written this wonderful book called The Bag. I had gotten his address from Fran McCullough, who lived six blocks from him in Brooklyn. I wrote him a long letter saying how much I loved The Bag, and he wrote back a seven- or eight-page letter, single-spaced, about the Revolution, the meaning of life, etc. He said, “Come up and see me.”

So I went to see him in Park Slope. He was a wonderful guy, smart as a whip. And so was his wife, Adrienne. And through them, I met Marge Piercy, Pete Hamill, Joe Flaherty, Dave Markson. I felt very at home with all of them, much more than I did with a lot of the literary people I met in Manhattan, who were richer and slicker and obviously more entitled.

When Shedding Skin was published, there was a party for me in a little restaurant in SoHo. It got a good review from Thomas Lask in the New York Times. It won a National Endowment for the Arts award as best one of the best novels of 1971. I thought I was going to be Thomas Wolfe or somebody, and everybody would love me forever.

Well, of course, the book probably sold about 12 copies.

Meanwhile, I was trying very hard to write this serious political novel, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t make the characters real. One day I was in Brooklyn visiting Sol again, and I saw this picture book of the Wild West.

There was a photo of these two little girls from Oklahoma with cowboy hats and mean looks on their faces. And they had these big guns. They were called Cattle Annie and Little Britches.

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By this time, my marriage was falling apart. I moved out of our house— Bobbie kept it—and I went down to Fayetteville and lived with Miller Williams for a month. While I was down there, I went to the university library and Iooked up Cattle Annie and Little Britches. Arkansas is right next to Oklahoma, and it has a cowboy culture, too. I found out they wanted to be in the DoolinDalton Gang. Bill Dalton said, “You could hang out with us in our hideout if you clean up for us.” So they did, and pretty soon they were running the whole gang because they were smarter than any of the guys.

When I read all this, I thought this was exactly what I should be writing.

I could hear the voice. I could see this pathos in it, and also the excitement.

So I just went home and started writing. It was great after struggling so long with that other book.

I wrote the book as if Little Britches had written it as a diary. I got to be somebody else. I got to be fictional rather than autobiographical. It was so liberating to write something set in another century. I thought they were like groupies for outlaws. And the story was already there. I knew they would join the gang. I knew they would rob some places. I invented the fact that their friendship would fall apart because Little Britches would realize they were going to get killed. And Cattle Annie didn’t care, as long as they got famous. She wanted to be a legend. Little Britches wanted to be a legend at first, then she realized, “Legends die—at age 19.” And so their friendship gets ripped apart, which is the pathos of the story.

The whole story was so great. The modernists always say that plot doesn’t matter. But it’s the hardest thing to do. A lot of the academic stuff that I learned was crap. Yes, you have to make the characters real. But it’s hard is to make those characters do things that you believe they would do …

—And that you care about.

— Exactly. At Arkansas, Jim Whitehead tried to write a novel for 20 years after writing his first one. He died before he ever finished it. He would just write scene after scene, like I did with Shedding Skin. But he never learned how to plot.

— Around this time you met Tom Wolfe, right?

— Right, but before that, I’d started writing a few articles. I thought, 77

“What would I write, living here in Geneva?”

I saw the cops all the time wandering around. And I wondered, “What is it like to be a small town cop?” So I went down to the police station, and they said, “Well, who are you writing this for?” I said New Times, but they didn’t hear it right. They kept telling people, “Bob’s writing this for Time magazine.”

When I hung around with these guys, I started to see how funny it was.

They would get all their guns and stuff to go out, and then they would have to take a cat down from a tree. And one day we were driving right by the college, and these two beautiful girls came walking by. And one cop said, “You don’t have money, you can’t even talk to a girl like that.” It was such a great detail, I put it in the piece.

So it came out in New Times, and I thought the police wouldn’t see it.

Who got New Times magazine up here? Then one day I was walking down the street, and a car stopped next to me. It was the two cops I wrote about, Ed and Jimmy. And they said, “Get in the car. You’re coming with us.”

And we started driving out past the school. Then past all the fast food places. After that, there was only woods. I thought, “Okay, I’ll never be seen again.”

Instead, before we got to the woods, they pulled into Amy Joy Donuts and said, “What kind do you want?”

I said, “What’s going on?”

Jimmy said, “This is what’s going on,” and he held up my piece. He said, “Ed and I started reading this fucking thing this morning. We were crying laughing. You got us completely right.”

I said, “Thank you. I’m sorry I wrote that shit about the girls.”

He said, “Yeah, that was the only part that wasn’t too good. But even that’s pretty funny.”

— So you were leading the academic life at Hobart, but you were also writing journalism. You had an idea for a novel that was totally different from what you had done before. You were exploring different genres, fiction and nonfiction, and you were moving away from the autobiographical.

— Well, I realized I had to do it. I think getting away from my marriage was a huge help. I was so excited about having these new projects. And then 78

Tom Wolfe came up. He had seen Shedding Skin, and he said, “You should be writing journalism full-time. Why don’t you just come down to New York and join the party?”

I had been thinking about doing that anyway, but his belief that I could do it made me feel sure. Then New Times called me and said, “We want you to do Larry Flynt.” I had no clue who he was. So they sent me a bunch of Hustler magazines in the mail. They were like the lowest form of slime I’d ever seen. But I knew what it was—hillbilly humor. I knew a lot of people like that in Baltimore.

Larry saw himself as a Horatio Alger story. Well, I saw him quite differently. When anybody I interviewed asked me, “Is this going to be a positive or negative piece?” I would say, “I’m here to set the record straight.”

I made that up on the spot. Anybody who was an egomaniac would take it to mean I was going to write a positive piece. But if you thought about it, you’d think, “I’d be a little wary of this dude.”

When my piece finally came out, it showed just who Larry Flynt was.

And he couldn’t believe it. He called two or three times to my apartment in Geneva, threatening me. “I’m gonna kill you! With a ball bat!”

— All of this was happening at an interesting time. If it had been 10 years earlier or 10 years later, you would not have had the chance to write feature pieces for magazines like New Times, which had just started. There were opportunities for writers that didn’t exist before and haven’t existed since.

— That’s true. It was amazing. Nobody ever gave me a word limit. I just wrote as long as I wanted, and if it was good, they would publish the whole thing.

It was exciting. Academic people believed that if you weren’t writing literature with a capital L, you were nothing. But Tom Wolfe, Hunter Thompson, and the other New Journalists changed that whole attitude. What they were writing was better than most of the novels that were being written.

But I was starting to get people pissed off at Hobart, because I’d be gone for three or four days on assignments while friends took over my classes.

And I was sick of teaching. I just wanted to get out. I didn’t want to have any sinecure to back me up. Being on campus and analyzing things from 79

an academic point of view was ruining my process of discovery as a writer.

That’s one of the problems with being a teacher. You’re in an ivory tower even if you don’t think you are. You can get drunk and act like the enfant terrible, but you’re still in a university. That’s why I quit. I knew if I stayed, I would end up being one of those guys on campus who never wrote a book in 25 years.

If I couldn’t make it on my writing alone, I wouldn’t do it any more.

— Where were you with Cattle Annie and Little Britches at this point?

— I was writing the novel and the script simultaneously. Marty Bell, at New Times, said he knew an agent named Karen Hitzig, whose husband, Rupert Hitzig, was just starting a production company with Alan King. And they were looking for material. So I gave her the script. She loved it and said she’d give it to Rupert.

This was in 1976, the year of the Tall Ships. I left Hobart and moved to Manhattan. And I thought, “I just have to have to get something every month, or else I won’t be able to make it.” And I did. I got assignments from Sport constantly and from New Times. And I picked up a few here and there from Penthouse and other magazines.

The next spring, I wrote a piece on Reggie Jackson. After I turned it in, there was a three-month lead period before it appeared. It was summer, so I went out to the Hamptons. I was rewriting the script, working my ass off on it. And I had the phone off. You couldn’t reach me; there were no cell phones then. At the end of the summer, I took the train back to Penn Station, and the first thing I saw on a newsstand was the New York Daily News turned backwards, so the sports section was displayed. And it said, “Furor on the Yankees.” I picked it up and read the first line: Robert Ward’s piece in Sport Magazine has caused a furor on the Yankees.” My piece, which I had almost forgotten I wrote it had been so long ago.

I ran to a pay phone and called Sport. Berry Stainback, the editor, said, “Jesus, where the fuck have you been? Everybody in America is calling you, and you’re not even here.” It was just an amazing time. Reggie was screaming he was going to kill me. Everybody I wrote about seemed to end up wanting to kill me.

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I then sold Cattle Annie and Little Britches to William Morrow. And right after that, I got a call from Rupert that the script was going into production in Mexico. And they owed me $150,000.

I couldn’t believe it. I’d never had any money before, and that was pretty great.

—So you made a name for yourself in journalism. You published your second novel, and your screenplay was being produced. And you met your future wife, Celeste. It looked like you were on top of the world. And then … the next five years of your life you were struggling. What happened?

— I was victim of the big book syndrome. Everybody would say, “Now you’ve got to do the one that will cement your reputation forever.”

So I had an idea for a book called Baltimore, which was going to be all about this journalist who goes home to see his ex wife and kid and gets involved in … some kind of … well, that’s what I had a problem with.

— I remember you had this idea that there was going to be a scandal about corruption and the building of a new stadium.

— That’s right. And I went down there and hung out with architects and talked about what it would be. But I couldn’t decide if it was going to be a serious book or something with elements of bestsellerdom. At that time there were a lot of disaster movies and books like that. But when I started researching that stuff, I was bored. And the bigger the ideas got, the weirder they got. I had this character, Buck Poe, who was related to Edgar Allan Poe, and he pitched for the Orioles. It was going to be part Thomas Pynchon, part Arthur Hailey. It was going to be every kind of book. And the more I wrote, the weirder it got, and the worse it got.

— At the same time, the magazines you had been making a great living at started disappearing, like New Times.

— Plus I was getting burned out. One article a month sounds easy until you have to do it, and I did it for eight years. And the money from Cattle Annie started running out, too. So by the time I was done with the fifth or sixth draft of Baltimore, I was pretty depressed. After I worked on it for five years. I thought, “It’s never going to work.”

One night I went out and ran into somebody who had some cocaine. I 81

snorted it, and that made me paranoid. I thought, “If I don’t get something going, I’ll kill myself.” I felt like this seedy bum who’d written this book of endless beginnings that never went anywhere. And I fell into bed with that horrible sweaty feeling you have when you’ve done too many drugs and too much drink.

And then suddenly the shackles were taken off my brain. This voice came into my head. “My name is Red Baker, and the story I’m about to tell you is how I almost lost everything …” I just ran into the other room and started typing. I typed all night, and the characters were coming to life without me even thinking about it. I didn’t do any planning, and I didn’t do any gigantic architectonic plot, which I wasn’t very good at anyway. I just wrote about a guy who lost his job and was miserable … just like I was. It was easy to identify with him.

I read something once about sculptors. They would be sculpting something consciously, and then it would turn into something else. All the other stuff would fall away. The real sculpture underneath wasn’t even what they had in mind when they started. And that’s what happened. It was like the other book, Baltimore, was all the stuff that had to be lost.

That’s the whole thing about being a writer. You have to find what you really care about.

And then suddenly the book was done. I had Red Baker.

Then my agent made a huge mistake. He sent it out to 30 publishers in an auction. At the end of the day, I didn’t get a phone call from him, so I was starting to get hysterical. When I called him, he said, “Well, nobody bid. I’m sorry.”

I was shattered. I called Celeste. We had being having a four- or five-year long-distance relationship. She had gone to Washington, D.C., after she got an offer to work on NPR and “All Things Considered.” And we had been having some tough times, because we were both really, really stubborn.

I told her on the phone that I felt defeated. “If I can’t this published, and I know it’s good book, I’m finished.”

She said, “Aw, just come down here.” So I went down, and Celeste took care of me. I lay in bed for three days. But then my agent called and told 82

me he had sent the book to Joyce Johnson at Dial Press, one place he hadn’t tried—James Baldwin’s publisher, Norman Mailer’s publisher. He said, “She loves it. They can’t offer much for it, but they want to do it.”

In the end, for five years work, I made $2,000 a year. 10 grand. But I didn’t care.

When the book came out, it got a rave review from Michiko Kakutani in the New York Times. Jonathan Yardley wrote about it twice in the Washington Post. We got great reviews all over the country. We had a big publishing party in Washington at Kramer Books.

By that time I had decided to move to D.C. to be with Celeste. And we got married in a beautiful ceremony in Washington.

I was still doing magazine features. I had interviewed James Garner in Vancouver, when he was shooting The Glitter Dome, from Joseph Wambaugh’s novel. Stuart Margolin was the director. I had really hit it off with him and his wife, Pat. She had asked me if I had a book coming out, and I told her about Red Baker.

When the book came out, Stuart called me up and said, “I want to buy it and do it as a movie. Would you like to write the script with me?”

I said, “Of course, it’ll be fun.”

By that time, I had fired my agent. Later, I went around to see Esther Newberg at ICM. And she said, “Your book is great. You should be with us.”

I gave her the script I’d written with Margolin, and about a week later she called and asked, “What would you think about working on Hill Street Blues?”

It was the greatest show on television then. I said, “Yeah, I’d like to do that. But I’d also like to play center field for the Orioles.”

She said, “Well, it might happen. I’m meeting with David Milch and Jeff Lewis. These guys are taking over from Steven Bochco in the fifth year.

They’re looking for a guy who could write gritty kind of street stuff. And you’re the perfect guy. So I’m going to give them your script.”

She had dinner with them at Elaine’s, one of my old hangs in New York.

They called me and said, “If you can come up with a good story, we will give you a job. Do you have any great ideas?”

I said, “I have so many ideas, but I can’t think of them all. They’re in my 83

head but they’re bouncing around, jostling with one another. “ They both started laughing and said, “Well, Bob, we only need one.”

I said, “I’ll have an idea for you in two days.” I hung up in a panic. I had no ideas, zero. I wasn’t used to writing like that, just coming up with an idea. I was used to spending five years on it. So I called the Baltimore Police Department and said, “Look. I’m a writer. I have a chance to work on Hill Street Blues, but I don’t have any ideas. Can you guys help me out?”

And they said, “Yeah, come over. The homicide guys will come up with an idea for you.”

I went over and this big swarthy cop came out. Handsome guy with huge hands. Somebody you definitely wouldn’t want to fuck with. I looked at his nametag and it said Detective Robert Ward. I swear to god.

I said, “Is your name Robert Ward?”

He said, “Yeah.”

I said, “Me, too.”

He said, “Cut it out.” I showed him my license.

He said, “Holy shit. Well, I guess I got to help you then.”

He was the greatest guy. We went out to this cop bar and drank Jack Daniels and beers. And he told me this fantastic story right off the bat, about a cop who falls in love with a girl. She has a kid, and she wants to cop to marry her so the kid will have a father. And the cop says he will, but then he starts to get cold feet. It’s all happening too fast. So they have a horrible fight, and the kid hears the fight and shoots the cop in the back to protect his mom.

I called Jeff Lewis and said, “I got something great.” They flew me out to LA, and we met at a French bistro. It was about 105 degrees in the Valley, and the sweat was pouring off me.

So Jeff said, “What have you got?” I told him, and his mouth dropped open. He said, “That’s the best story we’ve ever heard from a freelancer.”

David said, “If you can write that as well as you just told it, we’re in.” We went back to their office and put in some scenes left over from another show.

I worked up a beat sheet, which I’d never even heard of before.

And then I flew back and wrote the script in about three days. It seemed to write itself, because I knew all the scenes ahead of time. And I didn’t 84

go off into any subterranean tunnels under stadiums haunted by ghosts of Christmas Past.

I sent it out to them and thought, “This will be something I’ll hear about in a month or so.” I was used to the glacier speed of book publishing. Well, I got a call back from David and Jeff in two days. “We just read it. It’s the best freelance script we ever had. You’re hired.”

I said, “By the way”—I was afraid to ask— “how much will I make?”

David said, “Well, you start off at $250,000 a year.”

When I didn’t say anything, David said, “If that’s not enough. I can give you another 50 …”

I said, “No, that’s enough. Don’t give me any more. I can’t take any more money. I’m having a heart attack as it is.” I was afraid if they gave me more, they’d fire me.

So I called Celeste at NPR, and she said, “I can’t talk. I’m on deadline.”

I said, “Forget that, because we’re moving to Hollywood.”

And she said, “What?”

I said, “I got that job on Hill Street Blues.”

And she said, “Oh my God!” Then she yelled out, “Bob got the job on Hill Street Blues as a writer!” By that time I was friends with everyone at NPR, Noah Adams and Bob Simon, Nina Totenberg, Cokie Roberts and I could hear them all cheering.

So a couple of days later I was on the plane to Hollywood. The whole thing was seriously unreal. I mean I was down to about a thousand bucks, and hear I am on my way to a whole new world.

And man, was it an education. The people I worked with were flat out amazing. At the Hill Street offices in Studio City, Dick Wolf, who would go on to create Law and Order and lots of other series, was in one room. Then there was a Walon Green, who had written The Wild Bunch. And then Jacob Epstein, whom I knew from New York. We would all meet in Jeff’s or David’s big office and discuss what the main story would be. Jeff and David usually took the lead. We would start outlining the main story. It had to have a certain number of beats (scenes) per act. There were four acts, in between which were the commercials. We would figure out the story from the beginning to 85

the place where we got stuck. The hardest part often was the middle, because we knew the beginning was a crime. So then sometimes we would start from the back, because we knew the bad guys had to be caught. And then we would move backward until we would go, “Ah hah. Well, this could go here, and then this can go here,” and then we had a bridge.

— How did they break down the responsibilities for the storyline?

— Once you learned what the beats were, you would try to fill in the personal stuff. The big story was usually a crime story, but other things intersected with it, like Furillo’s breaking up with his wife and starting off with Davenport, the attorney played by Veronica Hamel. And those stories would be parsed out. I would do one. Sometimes I would do one with Jacob, or one with Walon, or one with Dick. We’d team up in every way you can think of. We broke them up so people wouldn’t get stale.

— What was it like working with collaborators?

At first I was terrified. I’d never worked with anybody. Plus I figured they all knew so much more than I did. And they did. I felt like I was going to be fired any day. I would be nervous all the time, but then I’d be excited too.

But I was a fast learner, and I loved it. It was really good when I worked with people like Walon. I learned so much in no time. How to create a story— how to create suspense, for example, or how to have people meet. Davenport and Furillo, for example, knew each other, but we hadn’t shown how they met. We had one scene where they were thinking back to how they met, so we had to figure it out. They could have had some kind of a legal encounter.

You know, he’s a cop, she’s an attorney. But we tried to think of something that would be fun. So we had their cars crash into each other in a parking lot. Then they had to exchange numbers. And pretty soon they were talking about other things besides their cars … in bed.

Anyway, when I got in the room with those guys and I started hearing them talk, I realized, “I can think that way …” Fast. Boom. Back and forth.

You didn’t have time to get worried or scared. You just did it.

— After just starting out in TV, within a couple years you became an executive producer …

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— Of Miami Vice. By the second year at Hill Street, they had given me a big raise and moved me up from story editor to co-producer, skipping a couple of steps in between. They told me nobody had ever done that before.

That was pretty great, and I made quite a bit more money.

When the show ended, Dick Wolf said, “My agent told me that when you get off Hill Street, it’s like you left the Wharton School of Business.

Everybody’s going to want you.”

Then Kerry McCluggage, who ran TV at Universal, asked me to lunch. He said, “So I really have you here for a reason … I want you to run Miami Vice.”

I said, “I’ve never run a show before.”

He said, “I know, but I’m sure you can do it. And Michael Mann’s leaving.”

I said, “But you know, I talked to Michael briefly about this, and he says he’s choosing this other guy. I’ll make an enemy of Michael Mann.”

He said, “Do you want the job or not?”

And I went, “Yes! I want the job.” I was stunned. I couldn’t believe it.

Michael was really a genius. He made that show what it was. I had just entered the business two years earlier. And now I was running the most important show for Universal.

We had a great staff. Ken Solarz wrote great stuff for us. Scott Shepherd was the plot king. Tell him two elements, three elements, the next thing you know he had the entire story worked out.

But this was a different kind of show from Hill Street because you didn’t have all the personal stuff. The two cops, Crockett and Tubbs, didn’t even have personal lives, for the most part. Or if they did, Michael Mann’s thing was, “Meet ‘em, greet ‘em, love ‘em, leave ‘em, kill ‘em.” Those were all the scenes you had in any love affair for Crockett, so he could have another affair with somebody else later.

When you work with other people on this kind of writing—genre writing— it’s so much faster. I’m not saying it’s better. It might be better if you had a year to work on it. Well, you don’t have a year. As executive producer, you have to get all the scripts in, weeks ahead of time, so they can prep, find the locations, cast the actors. You’ll be writing one script, and then the second script comes in. You have to stop writing and read that, make all your notes, 87

meet with the writers, give them the notes, and go back and forth about the changes. They have 10 days to finish it. You meet with someone else who is pitching the next episode. People would come in with good ideas. But they needed work, so you would help them with the beats. Because you’re the boss, everything has to go through you. And that’s far different from when you only had to write a script.

You don’t know what’s going to happen from one minute to the next. You get calls from the set about five times a day. Dick Brams was running the set on Miami Vice. We talked every day, over and over again. “Okay. I got a little problem here. Remember those scenes on the boats. We can’t get a boat.”

“What do you mean? There are plenty of boats. Get another boat.”

“We can’t. We can get a train. We can move it all to a train.” That meant a total re-write.

There were 22 shows a year, and at about show 16, you were just wasted.

But there were still six more, and you just had to push through. Guys had drinking problems or died young on some shows, just because of the pressure of doing it.

And on the next show I worked on, New York Undercover, there were some people who just didn’t want to work. I had some young kids who did not know how to write at all. The guy who created the showed didn’t even want to work on it. So that was really a hard year. The show got renewed, but after that, I was burned out.

I did three shows in four years, and then after that I did a few pilots and TV movies. I had made a lot of money. But I got depressed by the whole thing.

So I went back to writing novels. I wrote three thrillers, which were really fun. And then I finally wrote another book that took me years to finish, Four Kinds of Rain, which was, I think, one of my best. But it started off a whole lot different than it turned out to be, you know. I had to trim away tons of stuff before I found the kernel of it.

My general belief is not out but in. Not bigger plots, but more inward stuff, with a smaller cast of people. That’s what I’m really good at. I’m not one of these guys who can write these massive historical novels, and I have no interest in it. So I finally learned to stay with characters who have deep 88

relationships that are troubled and messed up but are real.

I think all the stuff I felt I’d failed at, political dreams and the like, was made up for by my love of my kid and my family. Because those are what matter the most. And I didn’t know that because my mother was screaming all the time and fighting. And my father was so distant, though he and I became closer over the years.

— When I look back at the transcripts of the interviews we’ve done, I see these concentrated periods in your life. From Arkansas to Hobart.

Freelancing in New York. The dark period ending with Red Baker. And then there was Hollywood. Somehow you managed to make all these transitions through a lot of different personae. It’s like you’ve been shedding skin every five or six years.

— That’s why I wrote Shedding Skin! I can’t believe I made all these transitions. When I started out, I was just trying to survive. I was just trying to survive teaching. I was just trying to survive as a journalist. And when I started writing for TV, I felt it would be amazing if I could just learn how to do it. But I think learning’s the thing. It was one of the things I didn’t quite understand until I became a journalist. New stuff keeps you young and fresh.

And so does fear of failure. Being stuck in a school…that was no good for me. I needed the fear and the sense of excitement that journalism brought and I think my book Renegades, which has all my best pieces proves I was right. I loved writing in the new journalism mode. Now it seems to be dead.

But it was great and I think someday it will return.

As for my fiction, I have a new book coming out next year. It’s called The Stone Carrier, set in New York in the ‘70s. It’s about my journalism career and it’s a thriller too….but I can’t say more.

Now I’ll try to write my memoirs, and this interview will be the beginning of it. It’ll be a totally different trip to look at my life and say honestly what it’s all about.

— You’ll be there to set the record straight.

— On myself! Oh, god ...Help me now.

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Robert Ward

The Snowball

The world was white, all white, as Eddie Richardson, age 12, walked

out of his Baltimore row house on a Wednesday morning on December 12, 1957. Bundled up in a toggle parka, complete with a snug hood, he trudged down his snow-covered block of Winston Avenue and felt exactly like a spaceman on another planet.

The snow had fallen all night, endless flakes dropping from the sky. Jack Gale, Eddie’s favorite disc jockey, said that there were 18 inches of snow already and it might be falling all day. That meant that school might be closed for the whole week. And that also meant he would spend the day sledding down the Herring Run Hill with his buddies. All the other guys in the neighborhood would show up, too, Mike Thomas, Bruce Dunmeyer, John Boring, and John Littman. He couldn’t wait to get out there, cutting through the white powder which lay over the ice underneath, speeding down toward the run itself. The Herring Run was ordinarily just a stream, but today it would be all iced over so when you hit it you would skid toward the far bank, where you would turn the handles sharply and skid almost out of control, downstream, coming to a sudden and violent stop up against two frozen boulders which sat in the exact middle of the run. It was a risky proposition. Eddie’s buddy, Johnny Brandau, had broken his arm there last winter.

It wasn’t all that risky, of course. Nobody had ever suffered a lifethreatening injury swerving down the run, but that didn’t stop Eddie from elaborating on his own crashes, while they drank hot chocolate and played Monopoly down Johnny’s basement later that afternoon.

“I came close to falling off the sled and going over the waterfall,” he would say, leaving out the small detail that the waterfall was only three feet high.

His buddies would all smile as they threw their dice. They enjoyed Eddie’s penchant for melodrama. It gave a color to their lives, made them feel like movie heroes fighting implacable forces of evil.

And today, Eddie saw the heavy, wet snow and knew it was going to be

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a great Run Day. Except, first, he had to walk up to the Medical Center Shopping Center, five long blocks away from his home, to get some pills his father took for depression. His dad had kind of been sad a lot lately because he’d gotten laid off from the plant. He’d begun drinking too much again, staying up and watching late night movies.

He was testy, irritable, and he and Eddie had fallen into one of their usual beefs just last night. Eddie really wanted a new sled, a Flexible Flyer; he had asked his dad for it for the past three years. But, per usual, his dad said that his old American Flyer (the el cheapo version of the Flexy) was still “plenty good enough.”

Eddie countered quickly: “Oh yeah, dad, it’s good enough to go down the hill, but when we race I can never win. “ His dad had been totally unmoved by this argument, and told him if he wanted to go faster, he should go downstairs with the knife sharpener and file the rails.

“I did that last year. The trouble is, Dad, the old sled is just worn out.

Come on, this will be the fourth year I’ve had it.”

His old man rolled his eyes and shook his head.

“Eddie, my entire childhood I had one sled. That was good enough for me.”

Eddie knew the argument was over but couldn’t help himself, as he mumbled under his breath.

“You mean, cheap enough for you. That’s this whole family. Cheapskates unlimited.”

His father came across the room then, fast, and slapped Eddie in the face.

Hard. Eddie fell back over a foot stool and landed in front of the TV set.

“That cheap enough for you?” his dad said. “You always have to push things. You never know when to quit.”

“I’m sorry, dad,” Eddie said. “But it’s just that the other guys all have better sleds than me and I can never…”

But Eddie’s rejoinder was again interrupted by his father, who grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him like a doll.

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“Listen to me, Ed. The subject is closed. And when it’s closed, know when to pack it in. You hear me? Am I getting through to you?”

Eddie wanted to go on, to scream back at his dad, but, instead, he took a deep breath and retreated to his bedroom. But, God, how he hated to give up. Didn’t Dad always tell him to keep fighting, to never give in? Yeah, that’s what he said. But he must have meant never to give in unless Eddie was fighting him. He’d just left that part out.

Eddie fell down on his bed. And fell asleep with his cheek still stinging.

On top of everything else, his old man had insisted he go up to the Medic Drug Store and pick up his pills for him. So now Eddie found himself on the massive snow drifts on the Loch Raven Boulevard, when he should be out with the guys speeding down the hill toward “Imminent Doom,” as he liked to think of it.

It was so unfair. But as he trudged up the snow-covered grass plot in the middle of the Loch Raven Boulevard, he found himself forgetting his anger.

He even forgot where he was, only a block from home. Instead, he pictured himself on another planet, one made entirely of ice and snow. As the swirling, raging wind whipped the flakes across his face, he suddenly knew he was on the planet called Icetopia. It was a terrifying feeling, yes, but it was a grand feeling, as well.

Eddie was an explorer sent to this planet to send whatever data he found back to HQ Earth. And this wasn’t just any exploration. Oh no, Earth was in big trouble. The whole planet had been devastated by nuclear war with the Commies. Three-headed cobra-like monsters prowled the Earth for the remaining humans. People were sick and dying, their skin blackened, many of them blinded by the terrible flashes from the nuclear bombs.

How would those who remained alive live? Where would they go?

Maybe…maybe…he thought as he trudged along through the growing piles of snow…maybe they would come here. To Icetopia. Yes, it was cold and icy and snowy but it couldn’t be that way all the time, could it?

They could build homes and office buildings and movie houses and baseball stadiums with glassed-over domes, and all of Earth’s remaining people could move here and somehow survive.

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That might work.

But maybe, Eddie thought now, as he stopped walking for a second and stooped down to retie his boot…maybe the snow and ice and stuff wouldn’t be the only problem.

No, maybe the Icetopians (cool name) wouldn’t want them in their world.

Crazy, desperate, half-burned-up humans coming to their planet. Maybe they wouldn’t want that at all. Maybe they would try to make slaves out of them.

Maybe they would drive great armored cars and tanks and have flying saucers that were far in advance of humanity, and they would see us as slaves.

Man, that would be terrible.

What would we do?

As Eddie asked the question, he found himself making a snowball, and he said out loud, “Fight back. Conquer them. Never give in.”

No, humanity wouldn’t get down on its knees and cry. Humans would fight back, hurl grenades and use ray guns. Yes, his men would be equipped with the best weapons in the galaxy. No expense spared.

He packed the snowball and made his eyes into slits ,like he had seen Tom Corbett Space Cadet do so many times on Saturday morning TV, and he looked toward the frozen Cold Spring Lane. He felt brave and even kind of noble, a fearless warrior of the future.

It all made a kind of sense. He, Captain Eddie, had to get the medicine for his dad, the General…so the General could beat his depression about the end of Earth.

No time to be depressed when they had to get ready to battle the Icetopians.

He packed the snow hard into a serious snowball, then put it against his cheek. Whoa, it was so cold. Not a snowball at all, really. No, an ice ball…or more like an ice bomb…yeah…his own little ice bomb. Haha…that was what his teacher had pointed out as Irony. Icetopians attacked by Ice Balls. As he started to get up and trudge forward, he realized he would need at least two, maybe three more ice balls. They could be put in his space suit pockets and he would be ready for anything that came at him. Anything at all.

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Though the wind was now howling down his snowsuit, he got down on his knees and quickly compacted two more ice balls. Half frozen, he put one in each pocket and held the first one in his mitten.

He was ready now. Ready for any Icetopian Tanks which came his way.

And a good thing, too. For, suddenly, from the south side of Loch Raven Boulevard came an Icetopian vehicle, headed right toward him. He hid behind a battered elm tree in the middle of the frozen tundra and waited as the beat-up yellow tank came rolling over the snow-covered road toward him.

Eddie put his hand up to shield the icy snow from blocking his view.

Yes, there was no doubt about it. The Icetopian Tank was moving toward him now. Slow but steady. Bearing down on him. Soon it would be even with him.

And that’s when he would be in maximum danger.

The Tank moved closer and now he was able to see that it had picked him up on its Space Screens. Because the tank had disguised itself as a harmless Yellow Taxicab.

But Eddie knew better. He peered out from the tree. And saw the windshield wipers on the cab working hard. Maybe two short blocks away from him now. Moving really slowly, but coming right toward him.

They were on a collision course. One that could decide the fate of Earth.

He felt the ice balls in his pocket. He had to defend himself, defend his planet. He had no other choice.

Chester Flood couldn’t see a damned thing. Jesus, the snow was like… like…a blanket. Yeah, he’d heard that line all of his forty-two years but this was the only time snow really had turned into a goddamned blanket. One which covered his windshield; his old battered wipers barely made a dent in it.

He really should stop and wait it out. But stop where? He’d come all the way out from downtown to get this call. And he couldn’t stop now.

Because about ten blocks from here, down Woodbourne Avenue there was this guy, Roy La Salle, who had to get to his daughter’s house. Donna lived 94

half way out to Towson on the York Road, in Rodger’s Forge, and the guy just wanted to get there and calm her down before she had a heart attack or something. She went kind of crazy whenever it snowed and she couldn’t get her car out. She’d hide under her bed and become totally hysterical. When she had these…what were they called, panic attacks, she could hardly walk, sometimes barely breathe.

It was crazy. All on account of snow, for God’s sake.

There was a word for it, Chester knew…what was it…chionophobia. That was it. Roy LaSalle had told him all about it. All the guys at the cab company knew about this guy and his crazy snow-fearing daughter.

But today nobody else wanted to go all the way out there, man. Nobody but him. ‘Cause Chester was smart enough to call old Roy, and tell him that if Chester came out in the snow storm, Roy would have to pay double. And wealthy old Roy La Salle went right along with it.

Which was perfect for Chester, because to keep his wife Lydia, a stripper, he needed money. He thought of her now, doing her act down at Blaze Starr’s Two O’ Clock Club. She used her burlesque name down there, Tempest Drake.

And, oh man, she constantly had guys hitting on her, some of them big time executives who gave Lydia presents all the time, expensive necklaces with real diamonds in them, and even some kind of fancy French watch to replace the crummy Timex Chester had bought her last Christmas.

He had to make more money, maybe get out of cab driving altogether, become one of the rich guys, but how? He thought about going back to his old “profession,” which was armed robbery. That was something he had been good at. Took in over fifty grand in one bank heist, and had more lined up, when he got jammed up in a dope deal and ended up doing five years at The Cut, which was the nickname for Jessup Prison, a real hellhole. Yeah, if he wanted to keep Lydia, maybe he’d have to go back to good old bank shots, only he’d have to be a lot more careful from now on.

But, meanwhile, he had to try and gouge a double fare out of Roy La Salle. So here he was heading out through the blizzard, and the truth was he was sort of feeling kind of chionophobic himself. He couldn’t see jack shit… and the heater wasn’t working in his crummy old cab. And man, he just hoped 95

he didn’t freeze to death before he got out to Roy’s place.

He took a deep breath, and told himself not to worry. He was a pro, he was like an Indy guy when it came to driving. He was the best and nothing like a little blizzard was going to…

And then it happened.

Whap, something hard and icy like a big rock smacked into his windshield…

He looked out at the white madness outside.

And saw nothing.

But there it was again. Whack, and again whack…

Oh hell, someone was shooting at him.

There were all kind of lunatics who liked to ambush people in the snow.

Worse than snipers.

Insane snow freak mutherfuckers…

He tried to turn the wheel away from the incoming bullets but it was no use. It was just like Pork Chop Hill in Korea.

Whack whack…

He turned the steering wheel hard and ended up on the sidewalk and then something was fast coming toward him and he screamed in fear.

It was a light stanchion…one of those new kinds …all neon and towering over you, like some kind of Martian gunship from War of the Worlds, and he smashed directly into it. Heard a terrible sound and was thrown backward, then forward, his head hitting the windshield.

Out cold.

But only for a few seconds. When Chester awoke, he felt hot blood running down his face.

He stared into the rear view and saw a nasty gash in his forehead.

Started to wipe it off with some tissues he had on the seat next to him.

But then he saw someone in the rear view, right through the back window.

A kid, a kid running behind him, up toward the Cold Spring Lane.

Chester felt an intense shame. All the stuff he’d been through in Korea, guys dying all around him, and here he was panicking because some little bastard threw fucking snowballs at him.

The little son of a bitch.

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He rubbed the blood off his forehead and pushed the crumpled-up door open and fell out into the snow.

And then leaning on his wrecked cab he stood up, screaming: “Hey, you! You, kid!”

The boy was at least fifty yards away, but for some reason he stopped and turned around.

“Yeah, I know it was you, you rich little bastard. And when I catch you, I’m gonna mess you up so even your own daddy won’t know you!”

And then Chester started running toward the little son of a bitch.

Eddie Richardson felt a cold enter his heart and lungs which had nothing to do with the snow.

The Alien was going to kill him.

So “his own daddy wouldn’t know him.”

He saw the big man moving toward him. Not all that fast, but steadily gaining on him.

He turned away from the insane killer and headed toward the first structure he recognized.

Northwood Appold Methodist Church.

“Help me, Jesus,” he said under his breath. “Help me, please!”

As he ran, he felt that his boots were stuck in the snow. He wasn’t moving forward at all. God, help me.

But, then, almost as if by magic, he was there at the church’s side door.

Before trying door knob Eddie gave a little prayer to Jesus Christ.

“I promise I will never cut church again, Jesus. Please let me in.”

He turned the knob slowly and, as though a miracle had been granted him, the door opened. Before he went inside, he looked back and saw the insane cab driver about thirty yards away from him, still coming, his face a mask of fury.

The little son of a bitch. Thinks he can just disappear into that church after what he done?

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Oh no, kiddo.

Forget that.

Jesus ain’t saving you now.

Inside the church, Eddie Richardson began to feel warm. Warm and safe.

What could happen to him in here? He had gone to Sunday school here in these very lower rooms. He had sung hymns with his parents and his grandmother.

Nothing could happen to him here, could it?

The cab driver wouldn’t do anything to him here.

He couldn’t.

Eddie was like in a knight movie, right? The church was his Sanctuary.

Yeah, he had seen Maid Marian go to a church in a Robin Hood movie. And once there no one could touch her. Not even that evil shitball, the Sheriff of Nottingham.

It had to work like that.

He would be fine there. Then, why didn’t he feel fine? Why didn’t he feel safe?

Because what if…what if the cab driver was a lunatic who didn’t acknowledge the idea of Sanctuary?

Like you said “Halt, asshole. I claim Sanctuary” and the fucking Sheriff of Nottingham said, “Uh, no. Sorry, Ed. No sanctuary for you, kid. You die now.”

He wandered through the bottom floor of the church, and kept waiting for the sound of the door opening behind him.

Oh God, let him find the minister, Dr. Walker.

He must be here somewhere, writing a sermon or something.

Why wasn’t there some one here? Why weren’t there a few choir members who came up to practice, in spite of the snow?

Did snow…did it stop people from practicing their faith?

He had read how ancient Christians fought lions in the arena just to prove to the Romans they were serious.

But now, now a little snow…and the whole place was empty.

Oh Christ…where are you?

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Chester was at the door. He started to turn the handle but suddenly froze.

It wasn’t like he actually went to church anymore. That shit was over when he was eight years old and his parents split up. He went with his mother when he was a kid, but when he got older, she was usually too hung over on Sunday morning to go anywhere but the toilet.

Even so…following a kid into a church seemed weird. The kind of thing a real lunatic might do. It was too strange. Like he was breaking some taboo, something essential in his already broken life. It was just flat out wrong, wrong in a deeper way than robbing a bank was.

It was an offense to God. If he existed. Sort of. Wasn’t it?

Or was it?

Think of it this way…The Kid throws a snowball just for the hell of it, to fuck up someone he doesn’t even know.

He’s a rich person anyway, or kind of rich coming from these new row houses.

And so, he figures he can get away with wrecking Chester’s car and also losing Chester’s fare, for which he was going to be paid at least two times the going rate. And off of this ride he was probably going to have the eternal gratitude of Ray La Salle, and his crazy, snow-scared daughter, which meant lots more rides and double and triple fares, and all of that is fucking gone now, and this kid, this little bastard thinks he can just run into a church and it’s like you can’t touch him.

He could just see the kid up there at the altar laughing at him.

‘Cause God is on his side.

But why should God be on his side? ‘Cause he’s a kid? ‘Cause he’s from rich people? ‘Cause God likes assholes?

No, no, no…that shit is not right.

Chester ain’t buying any of that. He’s going to have his face to face with the little bastard.

Oh yeah. He is. And when he does…when the kid is standing there trembling before him, he’s going to…well, what is he going to do? He doesn’t know for sure. But something fucking memorable. For sure!

And God? 99

God will just have to lump it!

Eddie ran down the hall and then upstairs toward the main chapel. There had to be somebody here to help him. The janitor, Old James. But there was no trace of Old James or anyone else. In the foyer, now, Eddie started to go right, out the main doors. If he could make it back across the boulevard to the Medic, maybe he’d be ok.

There would be people inside. People who would realize what a maniac the cabbie was.

But then again. There was a long way to go over the snow and the crazy cab driver might see him. Then he thought of something else: a lot of the Baltimore cab drivers carried guns. What if the lunatic had a pistol? He wouldn’t have to catch up with Eddie. No, he could just shoot him. Right in the back. He could almost feel the bullet tearing through his spinal column.

But even if the guy didn’t have a gun, he could be waiting outside the front doors of the church. Waiting for Eddie to come out. Eddie felt panic sweeping over him. No, he had to take a deep breath and think.

He looked to his left and saw the doors to the chapel itself. There would be some place to hide in there, wouldn’t there? Like under one of the pews.

But what if the guy came in and looked under all the pews? Oh, Jesus.

Then it occurred to him. He could hide in the raised area, where the choir sang, just to the right of the pulpit.

Yeah, the choir had benches up there where they had to sit while they waited for the sermon to be finally over and they could sing a couple of hymns. That might just work. The jerk cabbie wouldn’t think to look up there, under a choir bench.

He started to open the door to the chapel when he heard someone coming down the hall below him. Oh God, the cabbie was in the building.

Jesus help me.

Chester clomped down the hall. He had always been heavy footed and now with his boots and the mud sticking to them he sounded like a rhino. And felt like one too. The more he had to chase this little brat the more furious he got.

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The little bastard had wrecked his cab and just run away. That was how people were out here in Northwood. Rich people who felt they could get away with anything.

Well, he was here to show the little squirt that it wasn’t going to be that way. Oh no, that kid was going to pay. As he headed up the steps toward the chapel, he envisioned smashing the little bastard’s head in.

He’d use the butt of the gun he had in his pocket. The evil little brat wouldn’t be so high and mighty then, would he?

Eddie ran down the aisle. hustled up on the stage and took a quick look around. Yeah, the best place to hide was behind the three-foot partition which separated the choir from the rest of the stage. He could get down behind there, make himself very small, crawl under a bench, and pray that the crazy nut-job wouldn’t come up and find him there.

He started to crawl behind the wood wall when he saw something. There was a cross on the wall, with good, old Jesus hanging off of it. It looked about three feet tall. It was suspended there by wires. Looked like it was made of steel. A steel Jesus. That was just what he needed.

He reached for it, and found that if he lifted it quickly and gently it came right off. For some reason the hymn, “Onward Christian Soldiers” came into his mind…and the words, “With the cross of Jesus going on before.”

The cross in that song had always seemed like a sword to him. He remembered the first time he’d heard it in Bible School and he could just imagine a Christian soldier heading into battle with the cross in his hands.

But it wouldn’t be just a symbol. No, in his little fantasy the cross had a sharp point at one end, so the Christian soldier could stick it through some evil Roman’s breastplate.

Well, there was no pointed end to this cross but it was lighter than it looked, thank God, and he was pretty sure, if it came down to it, he could smash in the cabbie’s head with it.

Yes, he could and if the bastard came up here to the stage that is exactly what he would do.

Except that he wouldn’t lie down and hide like a terrified little dog. No, 101

he would wait behind the black felt curtain where the choir assembled before they walked out to sing, and if the jerk came up there, he would step out and, in one swift motion, brain the moron with the cross. Oh, yes, he would.

And then he would run like hell.

Chester came to the foyer and cursed his luck. Of course, if the kid was smart, he would have run right out of the front door and gone over to the little shopping center across Loch Raven. There he would tell people how this crazy cab driver tried to catch him, and he would get all their sympathy ‘cause they lived in this neighborhood and the cab driver was from down in Sparrows Point near the goddamned steel mill, and of course they would side with the kid.

Chester looked at the doors which ran into the chapel. The kid wouldn’t go in there, would he? ‘Cause if he went in there and Chester followed him inside, well, there would be no way out.

Or maybe that is exactly what he would do. Go in there and hide counting on dumb, moronic Chester to think the obvious thing and rush out the front door.

Meanwhile, as Chester headed to the shopping center, he’d go back down the way he came, slip out the side door and get away.

But Chester was going to outsmart him.

Oh yeah. The evil little asshole was going to get a big surprise.

He opened the chapel door and went inside.

The chapel was quiet, so very much quieter than the raging storm in his brain. Horrible little shit thinking he could just wreck a man’s cab ‘cause he wasn’t from his neighborhood. Oh man…

He walked down the pews. Quickly glancing under them. The little bastard might be under there, like the rat he was.

But no sign of him. Of course not. He wouldn’t be that dumb.

Where then?

Chester’s gaze moved up to the stage, and the pulpit. It wasn’t that hard to figure. If he wasn’t under the pews, then the stage and the choir area was 102

the only place left for him to hide.

He held the pistol tightly and headed up the aisle to the stage.

Behind the fake velvet curtain Eddie dared to peek out. And saw the cabbie coming toward him. Oh Jesus Christ…the guy was headed right up to the pulpit. Eddie held the cross tightly, and waited…waited…and tried to envision himself stepping out and swinging the cross of Jesus into the guy’s head.

He hadn’t actually thought about that part so much before.

Using Jesus to kill a guy or at the very least give him brain damage. (Even more than the asshole already had, chasing down a 12-year-old kid because of a snowball attack. Fuck, man.)

Was it right or wrong to hit a guy with Jesus on the cross? Wasn’t Jesus’ whole deal something about sacrificing himself so he’d pay for all the sins of the worlds and maybe the world could start all over and people would be kind to one another? And here he would be smashing a guy’s head in with Jesus himself, or his replica, which was almost the same thing, since the real Jesus lived up in Heaven near Mars or something.

Chester came closer. And held the gun tighter. There was this little wooden partition which they’d built to show off the choir, or maybe it was to separate the choir from the minister.

He moved quickly, looking behind the wall.

He said: “Come out, you little fucker,” But there was no one there to come out.

Hell, where had the kid disappeared to? He quickly looked under the choir benches but there was no one. There was no other place he could hide in here. He must have run out the front door and got away, after all.

Chester started to turn and head back down the steps when he noticed the black curtain which hung just behind the choir stage.

Taking the gun from his pocket, he moved toward it, slowly.

Eddie had watched him turn away from the choir seats. And now he was walking closer, closer still. But with the black velvet curtain in front of him 103

Eddie couldn’t see him; he could only tell from the trudging sound of his boots.

How could he know exactly when to strike?

He couldn’t know. He could only guess.

And so he stepped out from behind the curtain with the cross raised above his head.

He wanted to say something dramatic, like in a film he’d seen a year or so ago. A knight played by Tony Curtis had been fighting a bad guy, and Tony had screamed, “Die, Saracen dog!” before he plunged a sword into the creep’s guts.

But the cabbie wasn’t a Saracen. And, in fact, Eddie had never been sure what a Saracen was.

Still, the overall scream sounded good and terrifying. So, as he leapt from behind the curtain he screamed: “Die, Cabbie, die! You Saracen asshole!”

He had the cross above his head and he started to bring it down full bore on Chester’s skull, but as he did so, the cabbie pulled out a gun, started to shoot, but then flinched away to avoid to prevent steel Jesus from smashing in his head.

Something about the way the cabbie fell back and threw up his arm in terror made Eddie drop the cross.

As the cross hit the ground Jesus broke into half and fell there on the floor between the two men.

Half of him, the upper half, dangled from the cross on a velvet-upholstered choir bench. But his feet and lower half lay twisted on the wooden floor.

Eddie looked down at the broken figure and felt a horror worse than that of his own death.

Chester did the same and said: “Oh man, you broke fucking God.” “I know,” Eddie said. “But better God than you.”

They both stared at one another as a cloud passed by and the light changed in the stained-glass window.

“You dropped your gun,” Eddie said.

For reasons unknown to either of them, Eddie picked it up and handed 104

it to Chester.

“If you want to shoot me,” Eddie said, “it’s O.K. I mean, I wouldn’t blame you if you did.”

Chester held the gun on him, aiming it at his waist. Eddie closed his eyes, and waited for the bullet to rip through him. He waited a long time, then, terrified, opened them again. The cabbie was standing in front of him. The gun was in his pocket. The grip sort of hung out, sagging toward the floor.

Chester cleared his throat before he talked: “I don’t think I’m gonna shoot you, after all. But don’t think I’m a wimp or something. I wanted to shoot you bad just a few minutes ago. But now, I just don’t know. You sorry?”

Eddie realized he had been holding his breath and let it out all at once.

“Christ, yes,” Eddie said, looking at Jesus’ broken body dangling over the chair.

“I mean. I am so sorry. I never thought I would hit you. I’ll work it off if you want? Do something for you? Clean the snow out of your driveway, maybe?”

Chester laughed.

“I live downa Point, son. We don’t have no driveways.”

“Me neither,” Eddie said. “Well, cut your lawn then…”

“No lawns, neither,” Chester said.

“Oh…I’m sorry. I could…”

“You don’t have to do anything. Cab company has insurance. “ They looked at one another and for a second Eddie was sure that Chester almost started to laugh.

“You can do one thing,” Chester said.

“Yeah. Anything.”

“Help me push my cab out. Caught in a drift.”

“Sure,” Eddie said. “Glad to.”

He looked down at broken Jesus, and then tears came streaming down his face.

“Hey, it’s okay, kid,” Chester said. “It’s ok. Say, what’s your name?”

“Eddie. Eddie Richardson.”

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` “Chester. Chester Flood.”

He put his arm around Eddie’s shoulder, as they walked down off the stage and down the aisle of the empty church.

“You believe I was on my way to help this woman who is afraid of snow?”

Chester said, as they trudged toward his cab.

“Really?” Eddie said. “I never heard of that before.”

“Me neither. But I gotta take her dad over to her place so he can help her calm down.”

“Wow,” Eddie said. “That’s weird. How do you help someone who is afraid of snow?”

“I’m not sure,” Chester said. “I heard they help people who are afraid of rain by letting them get out a little in it, a little bit at a time, until they realize it’s harmless.”

“That makes sense,” Eddie said.

Together, they walked the two blocks down to the snow-packed cab.

As Eddie went around to the front of the cab to begin his push an idea came to him. He leaned down in front of the cab. And made an ice ball.

“Hey, he said. I know something that might work,” he said, as he stood up.

“What’s that?” Chester said. He smiled at the kid. Maybe he wasn’t such a rich little asshole after all. Actually, he seemed kind of nice.

“Well, you could try this,” Eddie said.

He cocked his arm back and threw the speeding ice ball at Chester’s head. The second the missile left his hand Eddie wanted to take it back.

What had he done?

But it was too late. The ice ball smashed into Chester’s head. His head snapped back and he had a flashback to Pork Chop Hill, when his buddy, Scotty, had taken a bullet which destroyed his handsome face in a flash.

An enormous anger rose inside of him, and he took out his gun once more.

“Hey, wait a minute,” Eddie said, across from him. “I didn’t mean it.

Really, I was just kidding.”

“Oh yeah?” Chester asked. “Is that right?”

106

He aimed his gun and fired.

Eddie groaned like a dying Marine and fell back into the snow.

Chester got into his cab, slammed it into reverse, and fought a furious battle with the snow. It took a couple of minutes but he finally gained some traction and managed to back out onto the Loch Raven Boulevard. Then he shifted into first and made his way north toward Woodbourne Avenue.

It was tough, really. Now that he’d had a chance to calm down a little, he knew that the kid hadn’t meant it.

He should have forgiven him, he thought. They had come so close to becoming friends. But how many things can a guy actually forgive in this world?

You forgive your father for being a drunken prick.

You forgive your buddies for not backing you up and letting you get sent away for five years.

You forgive your wife for cutting out on you with one of her high roller fans.

How much can you forgive before you lose your mind?

Maybe he shouldn’t have pulled the trigger. Maybe he’d gone a step too far.

Maybe his whole life had been a step too far.

Well, maybe not, too. Maybe he shouldn’t worry about Eddie. Maybe that was over and done. Maybe now he had to worry about his next fare.

Eddie felt something horribly cold creeping down his back. He couldn’t move. Oh shit, he was dying. The term “icy hand of death” popped into his mind. He’d read it somewhere on a movie poster.

And now it was on his spine.

But how did that work? Did you take a bullet in the brain and then the splattered mess sent messages down to all your nerve endings and you began to get all cold and icy and you felt the “icy hand” shutting you down one by one?

Oh hell. Oh shit. The icy fucking hand.

He raised his right arm and felt the side of his head.

He knew there would be “massive damage” there. Hair, and bone and 107

brains and pieces of ear. That was “massive damage.” The kind the Icetopians would give you with their ray guns.

No, get real, Ed. The kind a crazed cabbie would do with his real revolver, the kind of gun that shot real Earthman bullets into your stupid, overly impulsive brain.

He rubbed the area, expecting chunks of flesh and blood and maybe some seriously damaged blood vessels.

But all he got was a very frozen temple which otherwise seemed amazingly intact.

And also, he thought, how could I move my arm up to my head if all my brain messages were cut off from a speeding bullet to the brain? And also, he thought, as he sat up, how could I even think these thoughts if my brain was a splattered mess?

Question: How could I? Answer: I couldn’t.

He looked around and looked out at the snowy world, swirling, whirling snow, right here on wonderful planet Earth.

Chester, the cabbie, had missed. He had actually missed. How could he…

But another question popped into Eddie’s perfect brain: Did he know he had missed?

Did he know?

Did he miss on purpose?

Did he? Could he have tried to miss? Did he forgive Eddie twice? Once for throwing the initial snowballs and wrecking his cab, and two, for throwing the snowball right into his face from only a few feet away?

Eddie got up and thought about going directly home. But he risked the wrath of his old man, who would never forgive him if he didn’t bring back the pills.

No, though he was still shaking from his near-death experience, he realized that he had to soldier on, make his way back up to Cold Spring Lane, cross over Loch Raven Boulevard and head to the Medic Pharmacy where his dad’s anti-depression pills were waiting.

It was as though none of it had happened. No Icetopia. No cabbie, no 108

chase, no bullet almost to the brain.

He would go home and he would hand dad the pills and he would go out sledding down to the Herring Run with his pals.

They would play “Best Crash” and “Best Death” and laugh and go play Monopoly at Johnny’s house. And Mrs. Brandau, who looked like a movie star herself, would bring them down hot chocolate.

And that would be that. The same old same old.

But maybe he wouldn’t go today. Maybe he would just go up to his room and write some stuff about all this in his journal.

Maybe he would ask himself a question.

Did Chester miss on purpose?

Did he forgive him?

Was he even worth forgiving?

Maybe he would write some of that, and maybe, then, he would fall into a deep sleep. Yeah, maybe all this was enough for one day in the world of wind and snow.

Chester turned into the circular driveway of Roy La Salle’s old Victorian house on Woodbourne and parked his cab. He felt a little numb inside, a little shaky too.

He had almost…almost…done something from which you could never return.

Suddenly, there were tears running down his cheeks.

Jesus, he had almost…he had almost made pals with the kid and he had almost shot him in the head.

A kid, only a few years younger than the kids he had gone to war with.

Only a few years younger and he had almost shot him….

His hands were shaking and his lip was trembling and how could he go on hustling Roy after that?

No, man. He should just turn the engine back on and head home. It was all too much…so close…way too much.

And then he had a thought. A very pleasant thought out of nowhere.

The kid, Eddie, was right. They could make Roy’s daughter Donna get 109

over her fears by throwing some snowballs at her.

Soft ones. Light ones. Nice powdery ones that exploded like cotton candy on her arms and body and face.

Ones that were kind of peaceful, friendly snowballs. Yeah, little by little she would get to be able to withstand them, and after that, maybe even to like them. And after that, maybe she would lose her fear and really like snow.

Wouldn’t that be something?

What a kid. Maybe tricky little Eddie was right after all.

Anyway, what the hell, it was worth a try. And wouldn’t it be a laugh if it were true.

Chester got out of the cab, walked up to the door, and rang the bell.

110

Aidan Ryan

A Personal Day

Hartman could not find his goddamned Tide-To-Go. He hadn’t used it

since dropping it into the digital Amazon Pantry box he’d bought himself to celebrate the job. Post-It notes, Cliff Bars for late nights, a pad of graphing paper for he didn’t really know what, a pump jug of generic sanitizer in case adulting turned him into a germophobe. Duke had used most of the Post-Its for some lighthearted workplace sexual harassment that had maybe taken a wrong turn, and slowly but steadily Shel, he was sure, had eaten all the Cliff Bars, Hartman didn’t know how, because his filing cabinet was locked, he thought. The other shit? The Tide-To-Go? Untouched.

It was a really tiny stain anyway. A red dot no bigger than one of those alien-bright bugs that come out in the summer, that you notice only up close on patios and driveways and then they’re everywhere. No bigger than that, just one, on his abdomen, left side of his white linen button-up. Only $29.99 in a J. Crew Factory Labor Day deal online, so not exactly Ragnarok if he ruined it. But still, he’d been on Photoshop all morning, only touched a pen when he thought to write “queef balloons” on a Post-It with a little cartoon for Duke, but they weren’t even doing that so much anymore, the dirty Post-Its, ever since some misplaced illustrated Odd Future lyrics ended up laminated and tacked to the tack board in the Chill Room above a printout of the State Labor Dept’s policy statement on sexual harassment, done up in four shades of highlighter, just sort of accusing anyone who played Foosball. So Hartman had capped the pen and just used Snapchat, flipped the camera to selfie mode, grabbed one of the birthday balloons between his thighs and took a crotch shot. Duke said “LOL.” And anyway it had been a blue pen.

Or maybe it had been a black pen but it definitely wasn’t red. And before that all he had done was go on a Starbs run for the Bossman Jenkins, which was great because he got to sip his own cup on the way back, before it cooled.

No brown stains—just the red dot. Everything else considered, it had been the start to another bomb-ass Tuesday. It was Stacy’s birthday—she had her

111

hair up in a birthday bun and was wearing new glasses instead of her contacts, looked like Warby Parkers—which meant there’d be cake later. So regarding the red dot he was flummoxed.

It was probably the same size but now had a little pink aura, faint, and like little soap bubbles around that, or little sanitizer bubbles, because Hartman had used the pump jug of Purell, not soap, which is probably why the whole attempt at washing hadn’t worked. Same dot, pink ring, little antibacterial bubbles, plus about another inch of wet around that, that made his shirt stick to his stomach. The kitchenette was out of towels and the bathroom hadn’t had any in the first place. He’d just sort of expected the bathroom to have paper towels, because what bathroom doesn’t, as a backup, but no, just Dyson AirBlades. Dyson. The Edison of Suck. And blow. That was great and all, but Hartman couldn’t exactly keep dipping the front of his wet shirt in and out of the AirBlade. Every bathroom function, nowadays, was touchless, he thought, except for wiping your ass. At least in America, which was, he guessed, centuries behind on the touchless ass functions, though ahead in other areas. Which gave him another thought: the toilet paper. But one of the men’s stalls was Caution Taped and the other was locked—what looked like Duke’s brown brogues underneath the door. And then he felt really dumb about using the Purell in the first place, kind of knowing it wouldn’t work, because antibacterial properties were probably irrelevant to stain removal, but sticking with the stupid plan anyway, squirting some antibacterial on his finger and just kind of trying to rub it into his shirt, getting that feeling you get when you choose to do something stupid and futile and recognize it as stupid and futile but keep on doing it because you’re basically just a stupid, futile person. Character Is Destiny is something he’d seen once tattooed on a girl’s back.

Hartman gave himself a good searching public bathroom mirror stare. He was looking well-slept and not much older than the day he’d left college, but the whole “futile, stupid” thing didn’t really project confidence or millennial derring-do. But: he’d find the Tide-To-Go. Or Amazon could probably deliver it via drone by the time he got home.

112

“Fuck it,” he said.

“Fuck you.”

It was Duke, sounding echoey from the last stall.

Followed by an echoey “plop.”

Running, he felt the wind and realized his armpits were wet. Damp. It wasn’t that hot and the shirt was linen so it must have been stress-sweating.

Because of the stupid dot. Which had grown. Which had grown to more of a mark.

Hartman had tried to focus on picking the dopest burrito shots for the new Neu-Mex chain’s new Instagram account, which had a pathetic number of followers. Which was his problem, that he was paid to fix. As a Marketing Professional. But the pictures made him hungry for Buff-Mex food, and the under-flanks of his tongue tightened and watered at the thought of hot sauce, which because it was red also made him think of the ink-dot, which made him try hard not to look down at the ink dot. So he left the pics and started researching hashtags used on the most-liked major hip small-chain taco shop social media posts. He was about to jot down #chillantro and #quesoporn on a Post-It when holding the pen made him think of the stain which made him look at the stain and he saw: It had grown. The formerly pink part was red, and even though it was still pretty small, the whole thing was clearly fucking with his mojo and seriously hampering his ability to Convey Messages, Create Solutions, and Bring Ideas to Life! so he had to get the fuck out of there and lose the shirt. Purell = what the fuck was he thinking.

He’d passed Stacy on her ergonomic sit-up ball, just bouncing and picking her ear.

“Stace—happy birthday!” he’d said, clutching one fist around his midriff, like Napoleon. “Cake later?” And he was gone.

Wistalgia was too expensive but it was right around the corner and Hartman kind of liked the idea of turning a bad day into an imprudent indulgence. Plus he had biked to work and somebody would notice if he was gone for an hour and came back sweaty. Like, wet-sweaty.

“Can I help you with anything?”

“You don’t even know,” he said, booking it, giving the voice an awkward 113

over-the-shoulder look but not actually seeing her, the girl who’d spoken, because he was booking it and his neck was not that flexible. “I mean, I’m just browsing.”

“Uh huh.”

He gave the sales girl a better glance as he sailed into the jackets.

Why had he said that? She was cute, one of those 20-something teenagers cryogenically frozen in the moment before departing for senior year spring break on Martha’s Vineyard, a.k.a. probably not the kind of girl who’d date a customer, at least not if he was the customer. Normally he’d have tried to capitalize on the serendipitous Freudian slippage, but not today. The Patagonia vests were heavy with quality and he tried to imagine some longsuffering factory worker, a Kinh or Rohingya, paid a livable wage if Patagonia’s Chief Corporate Responsibility Officer had anything to say about it, handling the fabrics with desensitized fingertips. He imagined the Martha’s Vineyard girl mechanically hiding the price tags deep in the inner pockets, then buttoning the inner pockets, to remind Hartman of how far he still had to go. His hand hesitated, the lapel peeled back, price tag’s plastic line still burrowing deep into the pocket.

He smiled when she fumbled at the button to find the tag and scan it, and fixed the smile there for when the sticker shock came. And it did. But he held steady, fingering first debit, then credit.

She didn’t notice the red stain, either.

Hartman didn’t even have to keep it zipped—the vest hid the mark even when he plopped back down onto his sit-up ball and tried to start catching up on messages. He had emails from The Connecticut St. Prosperity Project about a pot plant found in the Sister Frances O. Buszka Memorial Peace Garden, which was totally not his wheelhouse. That was PR, obviously, not Social.

He sent them to Chet the Press Guy. Then some DMs of HD burrito bowls from Neu-Mex which again sent his hand to check the spot on his shirt, as if he could feel an ink stain (he couldn’t), just patting at his belly, not looking down, as he checked the data on when burrito pics generally get the most interactions, and found peak times at 4 pm and 11:20 pm, weekdays. He sent 114

this info to Choo at Neu-Mex. Choo said “Thx!” “Hart-babe?”

It was Chet, who’d rolled up behind him on a spare exercise ball. Hartman turned, and tugged his new jacket with him.

“About the CPP.” “Yeah?”

“Do they hate me? Do they think I’m a tuchis?”

Chet was always using Yiddish words, nobody knew why. His last name was Van Cleeve, he was blonde, and when Hartman had referenced Woody Allen Chet asked if he meant the guy who voiced the cowboy from Toy Story.

“No, Chet, they don’t think—” “I don’t mean to kvetch about this again, but like why would they keep sending you these emails? You haven’t, like, responded? Your sig still says ‘Phil Hartman - Social Media Specialist’?”

“I just forward whatever I get, dude.” Chet looked insufficiently comforted. “Like this pot thing? What would I even do? Tweet something?

Like ‘hashtag-sry’?”

“So like I’m still confused, then, why they’d be sending you all these emails and basically refusing to acknowledge my existence.”

“Hmm,” said Hartman. He watched Chet’s eyes. Chet was bouncing, lightly, his virginal brow fjorded with the existential crisis of inexplicable digital snubbing. But his eyes were on Hartman. Hartman’s torso, it looked like. Hartman looked down.

The stain was on the vest. The stain was on the vest. It had, like, migrated somehow. Or it had been impressed the way he used to make faint copies of the Sunday comics, as a kid, by pushing Silly Putty into the print. The sweat or the Purell must have done it, or whatever, that didn’t really make sense, but the point was it was there, the point was the stain was now on his new gray fleece Patagonia vest, red turned purplish on the wool but definitely the same stain, red ink, bleeding straight through to the front.

The weirdo Chet was probably about to say You’ve got some schmutz, a bissel …

“I—” 115

“Your erg-ball’s plug’s coming out,” Chet said, and bounced to his feet.

“You’ll be ass-up in a minute. Looking out for you, buddy. I hope you have my back, too.”

He gave a sort of papal salute and was gone. Hartman tapped the erg-ball plug, which was coming loose, more firmly into the plug-hole, then shoved his fingers into the pocket at his ribs and felt the wet on his fingers.

Why why why had he bought a fucking vest when he could have bought a new shirt? Why had he tried to hide the stain when he could have gotten rid of it? Hartman didn’t exactly think these thoughts as he ran back into Wistalgia, grabbed a shirt (from the sale rack this time), black (just because like obviously), swiped his credit card, totally not making eye contact with the cashier, and dashed out and into the alley behind the block of laundromats and boutiques, clutching at the stain the whole time like he had pangs from cirrhosis. But he did pound-punch the top of the recycling totes several times which expressed more or less the same thing. He muscled out of the vest and held it up to the now afternoon sunlight. The stain had gotten even bigger, thick and more red than purple. The wet made the fleece seem thinner, letting some of the sunlight through, casting a red filter over Hartman’s sight. It was thicker on his shirt, too—when he touched it his fingers came away inked.

It had been a dot no bigger than the tip of an extra-fine ballpoint, and now it resembled the impression of a baseball, if a baseball had been whipped through a carton of raspberries and into his ribcage. It was like the ink capsules that he heard about exploding over bank robbers and shoplifters. It was like the first mark had really been a little bit of powder, a speck of the just-add-water stuff that, when combined with H20 (or Purell, or nerve-sweat), turned into gallons of dye. He tossed the jacket over the top of the dumpster, to dry out in the sun. Tide-To-Go would probably not take care of that.

And it had gotten on his skin, too. He wasn’t surprised. If it had gotten on the jacket it would have bled the other way onto his chest and stomach.

It leapt out in the sunlight against the paleness of his skin. Hartman felt the damp under his arms again, cooled off in the alley breeze, as he balled up the shirt and tried to scrub the stain from him. He scrubbed until he’d turned 116

the shirt inside and out, seeking white, too many times, and the whole thing was flecked with red, even the arms. The skin-stain was impossibly stubborn.

He’d need to use something to get it off. Soap, at home—maybe turpentine.

Hartman didn’t know what turpentine was or where besides Home Depot he could find it, but knowledge that it might cleanse him dropped into place after the manner of similar revelations regarding tax write-offs, polling places, and salting pasta water, things he never learned but somehow knew how to do as an adult, whenever confronted with a new need. He’d get turpentine and get clean, get clean of this fucked up day. He started to button up the new black shirt—this one wouldn’t show anything—but he paused and pressed two fingers up against the red mark on his skin. It was damp. He pressed harder.

The red welled up, stood out, was viscoid. He pressed harder. It covered his two fingernails, cool. A bead broke and ran faintly down to his waistline.

Hartman sweat a cold nervous sweat. He’d take a half sick day. Half a personal day. Wouldn’t even need to tell the Bossman Jenkins. He’d ride the elevator up and grab his phone and his laptop for later, bike home and feel better biking and maybe wrap up the burrito campaign from bed. After a long, long bath. With maybe one of the Lush bathbombs Lisa’d left. Although as the elevator doors shut and made a murky metal mirror he saw himself in the tub, at home, soaking in cold red ink. Some horror movie shit. Stop, he thought.

“Fucking stop,” he said. He’d just majorly fucked up by not having the Tideto-Go ready when the stain was just a little dot and he hadn’t smudged it with hand sanitizer etc. etc. etc. ETC! Maybe Duke had taken the Tide-To-Go. The elevator was cold and he was sweating from his hairline and he thought he might actually be getting sick. From the stress. Like legit sick-day sick.

He wiped at his forehead. The edge of his pointer finger was smudged red. It was dark, but must have been from before, from touching his side. Holding the white shirt, balled up, scrubbing his bare cool skin with it in the alley, had left both of his hands bloody-chicken-pink.

“Fart-babe!” Chet called from the turn in the hallway. “Just in time!”

Shit. Stacy’s birthday. She was framed in the doorway of the Chill Room, looking cute with her glasses and hair and all. He wondered if she’d 117

be making the switch to glasses or if this was a one time thing on account of her being up late wildly, beautifully fucking somebody who deserved it and subsequently forgetting the contacts. He needed his cell and his laptop and to get the hell out of there.

“Cake, Hart!” said Shel with an ass-pat as he passed him. Duke was close behind.

“I’m … maybe sick or something,” Hartman said.

“Dude,” Duke said, turning. “Don’t be a …”—and mouthed Queef Balloon, made a lip-fart, laughed, and spun around.

OK. Hartman was standing at his desk when he heard the Bossman Jenkins talking unmistakably to him.

“Philip, whoa there, hold up, halt, it’s time for some much needed recharge-the-batteries time, if batteries ran on Dessert Deli red velvet cakes.

It’s your good friend and colleague Stacy’s birthday if you haven’t forgotten.”

Jenkins was leaning with one arm on the edge of a cubicle, left leg bent—in khaki shorts and a pale blue polo from some Caribbean golf club—wraparound Oakleys pushed up into dyed brown hair. ‘Bossman’ was a nickname he had given himself.

“Yeah, I—” “So if you catch my drift, drop the chimichangas for a minute and come be positively unproductive with the team. The family. The squad.”

“OK, B.J., I’m—” “Ten-four, Phillip, ten-hut. Over.”

And Hartman was left alone in the office.

He couldn’t leave without cake. Big social no-no. He’d have just one piece.

He’d have just one piece because it would look weird if he ditched now and things between him and Stacy were already kind of weird, with her probably the one who’d laminated and tacked up the last Post-It, and her probably suspecting him, and plus everything from the Winter Party. So one piece and skedaddle. His shirt was black and he was sweaty and faint and could feel the wet on his chest, feel his hands pink and rough with ink, maybe no one would notice. And then: skedaddle.

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Stacy was near the cake, nodding at pleasantries. Duke had hooked into an iHome and was trying to troll everybody with Joy Division but Chet was leading a “Waterloo” singalong that seemed only to be picking up momentum.

Mick and Stu were playing Foosball against Shel, the champ, and the clack and rattle were like, really loud.

“Hurry up and cut the cake!” someone said, and Stacy picked up a knife from the Casual Conference Table. She met Hartman’s eyes, and he wondered if she could see the stain, however big it was now, even through the blackness of his shirt. She pressed the knife into the white frosting, down into the Dessert Deli famous red velvet. He felt the back of his neck dampen. The new shirt hung heavier on him.

“Who’s next?”

It was the cuffs. His arms felt weighted, and it was all in the cuffs, he thought. He wasn’t used to wearing clothes this nice. But it was … dampness.

They were damp, too. Damp with his sweat. A trickle of red ran out and traced his pointer finger to the tip, and fell.

“Fartman!”

He looked up, wildly. They’d seen, then. The impossibility of explaining, of finding any words to tell the story of his suffering, of its significance, of uttering anything that might start off sympathetic sparks in another’s eye, so stunned him that he felt he might never speak again. Red ran down his arms in a sheet. He was covered.

“Hart-babe,” said Chet, “You’re next!”

Stacy was holding the knife out to him, gingerly, blade pointing down toward her navel and her two fingers pinching near the top of the handle. He looked at her for a long time and did not know what she would ask of him.

“You’re the next birthday boy! Or birthday person,” Stu said. “Aren’t you a Gemini?”

The knife was not in Stacy’s hand.

He’d like, mis-seen, or something.

The knife was in the cake, still. Of course. For him. Tradition and good luck or something.

He was only being asked to do what was always done.

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But didn’t they notice? Wouldn’t they?

Hartman stepped up to the Casual Conference Table, smiled at Stacy, waiting for her to frown, and she smiled back at him. The ink was cold all over him. It dripped from his hairline into his eyes. All the faces, the walls, went red—but he blinked the film out and his sight returned. This took the tremble out of his lips, his smile. He held the handle of the knife, and pulled, and it came up without any resistance.

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Nathaniel Klaung

Two Poems Excerpt from the Diary of a Gull There is a feeling beneath prayer that feeling is oil, then water; the words Baruch Atah Adonai & I don’t remember the rest.

I leak oil, like a bad engine–– my mother strung up like a scarecrow in the ICU if it is a question of belief––, yes god, un-bloat her.

This wasn’t worth my father’s cigars–– The deep smoke in the woods. I’d remark the graves of old dogs, out of tenderness, out of boredom the wind licked & pushed me, I stumbled through a squatter’s camp the smell, the brilliant smell of the teeming & unwashed, excited me. A live-smell made me feel alive and nauseous. Death smells that way too.

I scattered nothings out there, wrote nothing down. I’d dip my hands in the flooded bag of sky. A hospital is like a city near a lake, a tangle of worms thrust against a wet grey canvas. A field of grey stretching absence. Of all the times God thought of killing & didn’t, he let us know he thought of leaving first.

If it is a question of belief ––, look, the sea, lightless a sea of oil. The sea has a face

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The Secret Tooth I was assailed by my fans, those many voices singing shy gossamer music to an old radio.

The mosquito’s rusted pipes sing I am deceit, dressed in a t-shirt.

A hammer says hello through a mouth full of math.

The language of deviant algebra repeats If you follow me, You will see the last line of the note I pinned to your fridge, before I went away to steal your mail, and stuff the stars In my pocket The secret tooth sleeps in the mouth of a man.

The slur of deviant algebra repeats “Thank you, I’m sorry I stole your mailbox.”

A hammer says hello through a mouth full math And I show the hammer my face.

I say, I am 6/8s of a wish I say, enough, not quite, divide.

I took the stars from my pocket I could not find the sky.

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The language of deviant algebra repeats I stole your mail, and tore out the sky.

A hammer says hello.

The stars pick up the hammer.

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Bronwen Tate

Two Poems For the Joy of Specificity My son says give me as many peas as a wolf has teeth and so I do: forty-two

Amulet Little daughter Vesper be somber cedar incense be tart like citrus

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Benjamin Aleshire

Arrivederci Sestina Bologna, Italy

The storming river swum, she fixes him with a stare as he shivers bare over tea and crumbs, finally forming in morning’s numb air the will to leave her, flee the slivers of plums they share, hours born of would-be & forgivers & thrums of the care-free, torn.

A mourning believer that night’s affair succumbs eventually.

Morning comes: a river dare she.

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Monty Jones

A Tree in the Wind There is a line in Keats about the trees making a screen, “trees of every clime,” and then he names six or seven of them and talks about the roses and the bells “like floral censers, swinging light in air.”

That’s Keats. He goes on with a story, but I think his greater interest lies in that screen of trees and scent of flowers, the world and not what happens in it, the scenery rather than the story’s arching plot.

Or what he has to say about the world is just the world itself. I was thinking of this under a cedar elm that has grown old in my presence, on a morning when the wind roared across the hill in gusts, falling away then gathering itself again for another burst.

I heard it shaking the upper branches, making an uncommon music, as might be heard in Fez or Samarkand, songs funneled into the aromatic air from some unlikely instrument I could not name.

Well, Keats and I have been known to fall into precipitous sleep, and so I did, and then dreamed of that same tree growing all around me, its green limbs circling me, the tapering finger-like strong stems laced together at my shoulder and wrist and knee, innumerable small rough leaves scraping me,

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until I felt my life grow thick with the life of the tree, my flesh roughen and strain and my blood turn pale as the tree’s own slow sap.

I woke and stood up and walked away and stood far enough across the hill to see the entire tree swaying, thinking I was swaying, and watched the light fall through the leaves thinking of them having become yellow so the tree will appear lighted from within and so anyone standing before it will glow, then thinking of it without its leaves and with its leaves again, and twice a year the small bright birds flying in and out of it endlessly.

And I watched as if I were dreaming again and went on watching unable to know how I might separate the tree from its leaves, the tree and its leaves from the tossing wind, or from the small birds and their music and the roses and bells wild on the hillside, or the world from each thing in the world and my own life too, held fast in the world, as if entwined in the life of that tree as I go on growing old in its swaying presence.

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Dewayne Keirn

Living with Intruders Adventure like illness is better as a memory, as in the home intrusion I now have.

I guarantee you, there’s a nut in my house.

He answered the ad for the back bedroom and bounced up the stairs to the attic.

He insisted it was vacant and more to his taste.

Well, it wasn’t vacant of dust, cobwebs, and centipedes.

His name is Ike Ring, he says in a guttural accent, like speech is for clearing the throat.

Then, he asks for a propane torch.

Perhaps he is a flame swallower by trade.

He has a fire whistle that he blows vociferously when he wants something.

He wants wood-grilled lobster on Fridays.

Sometimes he blows it for recreation.

I ask why he’s not using the downstairs bathroom.

He marvels at how good the roof is for ablution.

It’s not too steep to walk on, to answer the call of nature, to watch the city grow crimson at sunset.

I smell smoke and race up the stairs to rescue him.

There in the center of the floor, he sits roasting marshmallows

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with a fire fed by heirloom furniture and a huge, hairy man on his haunches, tossing a marshmallow onto his stuck out tongue.

“Meet Smits,” Ike says, “and bring us some Pinot Noir, and while you are at it, wine glasses too.”

So, as you can see, this is an adventure I could do without.

I’m tired of hearing I should call the cops.

Those guys! They ask too many questions.

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Jesse Lee Kercheval

Isle de Brehat In this garden enclosed by a stone wall on this stone island where the stone houses have stone roofs— my son twists on a wooden swing In between cold rock shore & cold rock shore, this garden bleeds w/ roses the bruised kiss of fuschia Beyond the wall, in the low & marshy land sheep crop the sweet salt grass This could be my stone house—Kercheval in the land where ker means home, It could be my parents in the cemetery close inside the church yard walls—my father grandfather lost at sea lost to war

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their faces still young in the enameled photographs that grace the cemetery walls or hang in honor in the Chapel of the Rescuers— resting place for those who died searching for neighbors/other islanders lost in the slate grey sea Who have I saved lately?—a Breton 300 years gone from this stone land— long ago set sail across the wide and salty sea?

No one, I admit at least not lately & catch my son in my arms, hoping love—mine or God’s— will be enough save him First him, then my husband & then me

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Javier Etchevarren

City Bird Translated by Jesse Lee Kercheval with precarious nest on the cornice disinherited from the foliage grey as the smog it is protected by the arteriosclerosis, the fruit of the garbage and the puddles with the nectar of automobiles,. noise snatches away its song precocious epitaph cadence of its decadence city bird fugitive from the children unnoticed by the passersby who prefer to admire the planes brutal emulators of original flight

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Fabián Severo

from Night in the North/ Noite du Norte Translated from the Portuñol by Jesse Lee Kercheval and Laura Cesarco Eglin Forty-five We often had nothing to eat.

We went with my mother to the store and she offered a piece of clothing in exchange for food.

She took off her sweater and gave it to the Brazilian so his wife would give each of us a glass of milk and a sandwich.

Other times Silvia went to beg for offal at the slaughterhouse or Tato would grab a burlap sack and went out to hunt armadillos.

Then Fito would get some wood and we’d have a barbecue.

But there were many days many days that we had nothing to eat.

Everything was hope and hunger.

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Noémia de Sousa

Two Poems Why? Translated by Joana Araújo and Zack Rogow Why did acacias suddenly bloom flowers of blood?

Why aren’t the nights calm and sweet anymore, why are they charged with electricity now and long, so long?

Why don’t black people moan softly anymore all through the night?

Why are black people screaming, screaming in broad daylight?

Song for a Brother Translated by Joana Araújo and Zack Rogow Black brother with the warm voice and that wounded look in your eyes, tell me what centuries of slavery formed that sad voice?

Who put secrets and pain in every word you speak?

And the humble resignation

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in your song of lamentation?

And the well of melancholy in your eyes?

Was it life? Despair? Or fear?

Tell me. I can keep a secret, black brother.

Because your song is suffering and your voice is infused with feeling and magic, it holds nostalgia for lost freedoms, for suffocated emotions, and longing for everything that was yours and is yours no longer.

Tell me, black brother, what made it that way‌ Was it life? Despair? Or fear?

But even chained, brother, yours is a strange spell!

Your mournful voice cried out pain and longing, screamed of slavery and whispered to my wounded soul that your doleful song is not just yours, brother with the velvet voice and eyes of moonlight.

Softly you whispered to me that your song is also mine.

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henry 7. reneau, jr.

Two Poems Fast Black in Ferguson, MO We die too easily.

We forgive and forget too easily.

—George Jackson to Angela Davis 6/4/70

Our skin the stereotype of super predator & gangsta’ rap adrenaline boom-boom booming our hearts serpentine coiled about the bloodied taste of our spit our blackness an anger packing umbrage with gunpowder salting the festering wound grown resentful of tread softly evading the odds stacked against us too often clenched in the soul-crushing gravity of “stop & frisk” the multiple gunshots inflaming the U.S. of living while black struggling somehow / but somewhere we can’t belong but as metaphor of menace & mayhem chalk-outlined within the ballistic reference to Molotov cocktail & riot & rampage revving to revolutions of rampant brooding plunder & shattered constellations of bullet-ed bottles of frustration signifyin’ dissent so burdened livid & our mercenary composure of freight train velocities speeding the same old mile in the same old broke-ass / stepped-on / scuffed-up & waiting-for-the-other shoe to plummet—the speed at which it drops—repetition falling brick-like from a swollen thundercloud history of bigotry & most often blackness with congealed blood blooming from the side of our face & could really care less about come136

to-blue-eyed-Jesus like a long wait for a train don’t come & why? should we obey the terrorist threat of “protect & serve” / the po-po “die nigger” lies claiming they “feared for their lives” that justified lethal force deemed Law & Order that racial profiles disproportionately into the Panopticon of mandatory minimum mass incarcerate our ass & ankle monitored probation or parole of blackness labeled criminal thud of thugs & outlawable become a confluence of disobedience with defiance: the black body’s statistical capacity for crawling on our knees in proportion to in-just-us like broken glass mining an alleyway of tried-our-las’-nerve soon the reciprocal release of rage become bust-a-cap-in-that-ass venting spontaneous discharges of righteous fury will topple ivory thrones & blacken the sky with chickens come home to roost.

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Atlas 1.

The Berlin Wall torn down piece by piece by piece, the palm-sized rubble of atrocity removed as souvenir.

Memento mori bequeathed to glass-topped display.

The now profitable subcontracted molecules of post-Iron Curtain restraint that walls a topless bar in Cleveland. The littered corpses of repetition, a sound like a rumour without any echo of History: Auschwitz-Birkenau like Manzanar or Abu Ghraib like Guantanamo Bay revised to cautionary tale, well past the statutes of limitation the guilty can be punished for.

2.

How can I dream while they shout through the face of falsehood?

3.

To know is not enough protest

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when dignity shoulders the falling sky.

It’s the quiet suffering, spider-webbing from a muted conscience, that mars the soul. That cannot make a sound for fear of.

The magnitude of destruction contained therein, crushing slowly, but with precision.

(Note: Italicized fragments from “The Sea is History” by Derek Walcott, and a line quoted by Dustin Pickering.)

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Brad Richard

Surviving on an Unjust Planet: A review of We Cast a Shadow by Maurice Carlos Ruffin (We Cast a Shadow, One World, 2019, $27.00, 320 pages)

From the start of Maurice Ruffin’s extraordinary debut novel, We Cast

a Shadow, the narrator dexterously manipulates us to make sure we have a good time and will keep following him as he takes us into territory that quickly turns weird, funny, scary, and dark. Well, if that’s the way things are going to go, why shouldn’t we enjoy ourselves while we can?

The novel opens in the midst of a costume party at the home of Octavia Whitmore, a partner in the Seasons Ustis law firm, where the narrator works as an associate. (The City in which most of this takes place is never named, but it’s a wonderfully re-imagined New Orleans.) He’s gone all out for this event, renting the most extravagant Roman centurion costume he could find, knowing that his performance on this night could determine whether he gets the promotion, raise, and bonus he desperately wants, so he can pay for a medical procedure for his son. He’s not just here for fun: this is work, and he knows it. Compounding his anxieties and confounding his ambitions is one immutable fact: his blackness. As it turns out, this party is really what the firm’s shareholders call Elevation Night, and the narrator is directly competing with two other black male associates, Franklin, dressed like a waiter, and Riley, in orange prison garb. Winner takes all, and the losers—well, as Riley says, “You know how it works. It’s up or out.” Add a lot of alcohol, a designer drug (the fictional Plum), a costume change for the narrator (an African chief’s headdress and loincloth), and guests including “a zombie pilgrim, a cheerful Madame LaLaurie [19th-century New Orleanian, notorious for murdering her slaves], and a diminutive Honest Abe,” not to mention a slew of other historical and literary allusions, and you have one of the funniest and most

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anxiety-ridden parties since The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie.

This is all prelude to horror. The procedure the narrator desperately wants for his mixed race son, Nigel, is a demelanization treatment to halt the dark birthmarks that keep spreading on his otherwise passably fair skin.

Not fair enough for dad, though, who, in addition to making the boy wear baseball caps and slather on sunscreen, keeps plying him with pills and applying quack ointments, including one bleaching agent that burns horribly.

The narrator (“My name doesn’t matter,” he says in the first sentence, thus erasing himself and making him seem substanceless, without matter, a being that can’t or doesn’t want to cast a shadow) has to hide all of this from his white wife, Penny, who is deeply opposed to these treatments. Even though white supremacy has, if possible, become an even more powerful force in the novel’s vaguely futuristic setting, Penny wants her son to be proud of who he is. Indeed, her love for Nigel, combined with her unacknowledged white privilege, is tragically in conflict with the narrator’s love for Nigel, for whose future he, as a black man, is very afraid.

As he should be. This is America, after all, and Ruffin has done a brilliant job of showing us what the pathology of our racist history has done to all of us, and particularly to black men. Ruffin uses his narrator’s double consciousness in extraordinary ways. Self-effacing and eager to please, he also sees how he is seen and what’s expected of him. In the party scene, he reflects: The shareholders wanted entertainment. They wanted a good time.

They also wanted subservience. They did not want to feel threatened.

If I was going to win, I would have to demonstrate I was willing to give them exactly what they wanted.

He’s under no delusions, either, about his place in the much larger American scheme, present and past. In a later chapter, he visits the Musée du Nubia du Africq, which is owned by the Blind Equality Group. “The BEG, as it was sometimes called, believed in creating a completely color-blind world. Their ongoing fight was against those who would divide the citizenry by race, even if that meant ignoring history, statistics, policy, and rhetoric.

They just wanted us to all get along.” The BEG has a hall in the museum,

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where the narrator’s father used to bring him for lectures and sermons, “always ready with a word of support for the cause, even when he wasn’t sure what the cause was. After all, what was equality other than a typographical error in the Constitution?” This leads to a merrily cynical attack on our founding legal document.

Through sloppy copyediting, our illustrious forefathers set off the human rights skirmishes that would beset the nation all the way to the present. If any of the seventy-plus delegates at the Constitutional Convention could have bothered to bring along a gray-wigged man of letters or even a lowly print shop owner, the document would have been clearer, so generations of people wouldn’t have spent their lives dreaming of rights they were never meant to have, wrongheadedly attending protests, getting beaten or killed.

Boy, howdy, so much for some cherished assumptions and myths! As with all good satire, the truth of this cuts. (Speaking as a white reader, it keenly cuts the privilege I mostly have of not thinking about how deeply embedded inequality and racism are in this country’s founding documents.) The sarcasm at the end may make us chortle, but there’s something that troubles the humor.

The narrator may really believe what he’s saying: as a black man who has seen that fighting white supremacy hasn’t worked, his strategy is not just to avoid making a fuss, it is to make his son and ultimately himself as white as his wife, most of his colleagues, his superiors. This strategy may, in fact, be a logical response to the fears he faces—especially logical in a fictional world in which such Michael Jackson-like transformations are more prevalent, bringing back the color line in a way that even further marginalizes non-whites.

But even that doesn’t get at what’s most troubling in the narrator’s cynicism—and this gets to the dark side of the narrator’s double consciousness.

As deeply rooted as he is in his city’s black community—he grew up in the Tiko (the housing development where most of the City’s black citizens are now confined), he used to work in his mom’s fried chicken restaurant, he’s close to his very Afrocentric cousin Supercargo—his aspirational whiteness drives him to disdain for black people who don’t share his aspirations. This is particularly true when his son becomes friends at school with a dark-

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skinned and very assertive girl named Araminta. The narrator distrusts her and the feeling is mutual; in typical fashion, the more he tries to discourage the friendship, the stronger it becomes, and the more full of secrets. She’s a terrific character, and an important part of the plot—and I don’t want to give too much away. Let’s just say that a series of terrible losses ensue, the causes of which are all traceable to the narrator’s conflict between his love of his family and his fear of losing the safe, secure life he’s trying to assure by making his son white.

I haven’t even touched on many of the narrative strands of this densely plotted novel, but, first, you should dive in and enjoy them for yourself, and, second, I must tip my hat to Maurice Ruffin for managing so much action in such a relatively short space. It moves quickly, and, especially in the novel’s second half, the rapid progression makes it deliberately unclear at times if what the narrator is describing is “really” happening or is only a dream or hallucination. (Vladimir Nabokov, in his afterword to Lolita, says “reality” is “one of the few words which mean nothing without quotes.” I’m pinning this here because, well, you’ll see.) Much of the novel feels nightmarish, fevered.

The opening chapter resembles any anxiety dream you’ve had about school or work in which you ended up inappropriately naked. Space become unstable: a tour of a plantation leads into mazes and dark woods and a panicked search for a lost Nigel. A blanket behind a car conceals a hole in the street leading to the sewers, which resonates with a memory of a cave the narrator visited with his family as a child, all foreshadowing a later fall into a cavern. The further we go in the book, the less certain things are, the more unreal. And yet some of the realest moments, emotionally, come near the end.

Lending to this general sense of artifice containing truths is an astonishing network of allusions. One day, it will be some happy scholar’s task to catalogue and trace every allusion in this novel’s pages. We’re clued to a few key ones early on, with epigraphs from Ralph Ellison, Herman Melville, and, interestingly, Vladimir Nabokov. (Pinned, and fluttering.) Even based on the little I’ve offered here, I’m sure a knowledgeable reader has guessed that Invisible Man looms large in this book, from the nameless narrator to the chthonic references and in many, many other ways. I’m also reminded 143

of another nameless narrator, that of James Weldon Johnson’s 1912 novel, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, and I’ve been thinking about the relationships among these three books. What strikes me most is how pessimistic they are, especially Johnson and Ruffin’s books. Ellison’s narrator, after the chaos of the final chapter, retreats into hibernation as Br’er Bear, and muses on the meaning of his story: “Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?” Ellison offers a glimmer of hope in that last line, based in his radically hopeful vision of American democracy. But Johnson’s narrator, who has passed as white, then chosen to live as a black man, but, after witnessing a lynching, reluctantly returns to New York to pass as white, is left with “a vanished dream, a dead ambition [...] I cannot repress the thought that, after all, I have chosen the lesser part, that I have sold my birthright for a mess of pottage.” And Ruffin’s narrator ends fearing that he will be “nothing but the ghost of an angel in mossy chains, haunting the endless grasslands in search of a spear tip sharp enough to finally cut this knot.”

There are many other direct narrative connections between Invisible Man and We Cast a Shadow, Ruffin parodying Ellison in beautiful ways that create a conversation across time between these two books and these two writers.

Most surprising and enlightening to me, however, were the ways in which We Cast a Shadow deliberately parodies Lolita. For readers who know Nabokov’s novel well, there will be many shocks of recognition. It’s amazing, but at first it seemed strange to me. Why, of all novels, Lolita? Yes, it’s super creepy that the father here is in a sense grooming his son in a way that’s somewhat analogous to how Humbert grooms Dolores, and that both this dad and that would-be dad have to keep this secret from the child’s mother. But why do this book’s plot and language, in some key places, closely track Nabokov’s?

To start, I think it’s genius to juxtapose Invisible Man and Lolita. Published within a few years of each other—1952 and 1955, respectively—they both added to and changed American literature profoundly, and yet they seem to exist in different literary universes. It’s very hard to imagine Humbert crossing into Ellison’s fictional Harlem or Ellison’s narrator hanging out at the bar of the Enchanted Hunters hotel—Jim Crow would have made that impossible.

And yet the story of a black American man whose existence is “invisible, 144

understand, simply because people refuse to see me,” and who struggles to succeed and do good in the world, alongside the story of a shady European trying to camouflage himself in his new American habitat in order to catch his preferred prey, his love, the nymphet—the story of racial injustice and the story of criminal perversion—yes, these two stories have a lot to tell one another.

This is a review and not a critical essay, so I’ll keep this brief and offer one example. One of the most moving moments in We Cast a Shadow comes just about midway through, when the narrator makes Nigel strip and get in the tub, in preparation for an application of “J.B.’s Whitener. It was the skintoning equivalent of acetone.” The build-up of their conversation and Nigel ‘sundressing is intensely uncomfortable; after telling us that he “stretched a latex glove onto my hand and let go with a snap,” the narrator directly addresses us (as do Nabokov and Ellison’s narrators at key moments): Now, I’m perfectly aware of the judgmental thoughts running through your head as you read these words. I suspect your pupils have dilated, your lips are agape, your heart filled with venom toward me. But let me make an attempt to clarify my position as this is neither the time nor the place for the mincing of words or slightest prevarication of any kind.

I am a unicorn. I can read and write. I have all my teeth. I’ve read Plato, Woolf, Nikki Giovanni, and Friend. [Note: according to the author, Friend is his invention: “A future beloved author.”] I’ve never been to jail. I’ve voted in every election since I was eighteen.

I finished high school. I finished college. I finished law school. I pay my taxes. I don’t have diabetes, high blood pressure, or the itis. If you randomly abduct a hundred black men from the streets of the city and deposit us into a gas chamber, I will be the only one who fits this profile. I will be the only one who survives. Is it because I’m better than the other ninety-nine? No. It’s because I’m lucky, and I know it.

Somehow the grinding effects of a world built to hurt me have not yet eliminated my every opportunity for a happy life, as is the case for so many of my brethren. The world is a centrifuge that patiently waits to separate my Nigel from his basic human dignity. I don’t have to tell you that this is an unjust planet.

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The first paragraph echoes the substance and tone of Humbert’s words to us as he begins to describe his first night with Dolores. Humbert, who throughout the novel plays on the idea that he is on trial and that we, the readers, are his jury (we, or the seraphs in heaven, since he knows his book will only be read after his death), often offers us justifications for his behavior, manipulatively acknowledging our discomfort and leaning on our sympathy, all in the name of a dubious honesty. The second paragraph, however, echoes elements of the opening paragraphs of Invisible Man, in which the narrator, first with dry humor and then with great passion, asserts his humanity. Ruffin’s narrator is doing something horrible to a child, who, pathetically, acquiesces, because his father loves him; the father’s justification is that he wants to preserve that child’s human dignity. And that’s one of the most heartbreaking things I’ve ever read.

We Cast a Shadow deserves all the acclaim it has thus far received, and more. It is one of those rare novels that speaks urgently to its moment and yet will almost certainly be read and talked about decades from now, and that also engages with our literary past in ways that bring it back to life in fresh and surprising ways. Please, if you haven’t already, read this book. Laugh, cry, be astounded and uncomfortable. And let’s talk about it. We really need to.

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Brad Richard

“And Yet, The World Has Not Been Destroyed”: Maurice Carlos Ruffin and Brad Richard in Conversation I have known Maurice Carlos Ruffin for about ten years, when his work began to earn him a reputation as a New Orleans writer whose career would be worth watching. He is a founding member of an important New Orleans writers’ group, the Peauxdunque Writers Alliance, many of whose writers have gone on to see success and which now has its own literary journal, The Peauxdunque Review. Maurice’s story “The Ones Who Don’t Say They Love You” was selected by Rachel Kushner for the 2014 Iowa Review fiction award.

An earlier version of We Cast a Shadow, his highly acclaimed debut novel, won the gold medal for a novel-in-progress in the 2014 William FaulknerWilliam Wisdom writing competition. His full list of awards and publications is extensive and extraordinary, and this fall, he will join the creative writing faculty in the M.F.A. program at Louisiana State University.

Whether he’s writing fiction about characters I recognize as New Orleans archetypes or essays about food or landscape, Maurice’s writing impresses me with its attentive precision, critical thoughtfulness, and un-romantic lyricism.

Essays of his in Virginia Quarterly Review and a collaborative essay, “Kings of the Confederate Road,” with fellow Peauxdunque writer Tad Bartlett and photographer and writer L. Kasimu Harris, in The Bitter Southerner, have deepened and broadened my understanding of New Orleans and the South.

There’s a wisdom in his work that sets him apart from many of his peers, and that has already made him a force to be reckoned with in American letters.

By one of those weird coincidences that realists loathe and poets love (to paraphrase Vladimir Nabokov), Maurice’s novel and my fourth collection of poems, Parasite Kingdom, came out close to the same time, in the spring of 2019. Reading Maurice’s book, I was struck by the ways in which our imaginations, in very different projects, were working in very similar ways.

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He wrote a dystopian literary novel about race in an ingeniously disguised and marvelously transformed (maybe “costumed” is the right, carnivalesque, word) New Orleans; I wrote a books of poems (tied with a loose and somewhat disjointed narrative) set in a dystopian kingdom with strong resemblances to our own current political and environmental distress. Other coincidences abound: we are both interested in the line between what’s real and what’s not; we both deal with the effects of violence and trauma; our narrators (mine plural, Maurice’s singular) are full of anxiety, fear, and, impossibly, hope.

When Ralph Adamo asked if I would review We Cast a Shadow, I immediately knew that I also wanted to sit down with Maurice for a conversation, or mutual interview, and I am very grateful that Ralph liked the idea and gave me the green light to go forward with this. I am also, of course, grateful to Maurice for agreeing to participate.

We met at my house on May 25, 2019. My cats were very interested in the goings-on, and one of them, Monkey, inserted himself into the conversation, as you’ll see. The discussion starts with pessimism and ranges from the significance of pop culture to the wisdom of a schizophrenic uncle, from H.G. Wells to why we needed Mardi Gras and the Saints after Katrina. In the end, I felt even closer, as a writer and a friend, to someone I greatly admire.

This has been edited lightly for repetition and clarity, but is mostly verbatim.

Brad Richard: Welcome, Maurice.

Maurice Carlos Ruffin: It’s good to be here.

BR: I’ve been thinking a lot about your book [We Cast a Shodow], which strangely made me think about my book [Parasite Kingdom]. I say strangely because in many ways, our books could not be more different. But one thing I want to throw out there to get us started is thinking about pessimism. I feel like both of our books end in what could be read as a very pessimistic place.

But I know you and I know how you think about things, and I don’t think of you as a pessimist.

MCR: Well, I consider myself an optimist. I love people. I love the future.

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I love cats. I love life. I think with this book, however, what I was doing was taking this man who was dealing with a problem that is bigger than any one person and he is determined to try and, not defeat the problem, but deal with it on his own terms. I think maybe one of the things I was thinking subconsciously is that we talk about white supremacy and the problem of race in America, and there’s no single person who can solve it, and there’s no perfect solution for. So, you can call it pessimism. You can call it realism.

I just think that it sort of is what it is.

There’s a sort of practical response to be had to this problem. So it gets pretty dark, but I think in his mind, he’s just like a good solider, soldiering on.

BR: Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, that makes me think of all of the ways in which he copes, all of his hustle that he has going on in various ways, throughout the book.

MCR: Well, I think about your book, also. I mean, you have some of that going on as well in Parasite Kingdom. One of the poems that really stuck out to me was the one with the man who was a priest and he’s being interrogated about somebody who apparently had priest’s clothing on. A younger man who attempted—well, I guess succeeded in an attack against authoritarian officials. He’s in the interrogation room and I thought about how in this person’s universe, he’s telling a story that is both true and false at the same time. It’s both optimistic and pessimistic at the same time.

I think that there’s some relationship there because I think that my narrator’s thinking, “You know what? This is horrible. The situation is horrible, my response is horrible, but there is some hope for my son in the future that maybe he is stronger than I was.” I think that your persona in that poem is saying, to me at least, “Wouldn’t it be a blessing to have a son like that?” And of course, we know he’s telling the truth. He is saying an honest thing and the bad guy is just missing that point completely. I just find it to be brilliantly done— BR: Thank you.

MCR: In the poem.

BR: Thank you. That’s one of the poems in there I have thought about a lot. I also like—I’ve sort of wondered if the interrogator himself knows— 149

MCR: Yeah.

BR: You know? And is just being complicit— MCR: Yeah.

BR: And just doesn’t care at this point.

MCR: Yeah, right. Doesn’t want to cause a stir. I mean, what’s the point?

BR: Exactly. So there’s been a wave of dystopian of literature for a while— You can take that cat down from you any time you want. Monkey! He is aggressively affectionate.

MCR: Oh, boy.

BR: Monkey, come here.

MCR: You little monkey.

BR: Come here. All right.

MCR: That was a good cuddle, though.

BR: So getting back to what I was trying to say. So, there’s been a wave of dystopian literature for a while. Some of it dreadful.

MCR: Mm-hmm.

BR: But I think some of it really, really interesting. I feel like so-called mainstream literature has responded— MCR: Yeah.

BR: in all kinds of ways. What do you think? I mean I can think of some answers, but what do you feel like is leading so many of us to go there in our imaginations?

MCR: Yeah, well I think it’s just the duality of human experience. I mean, you know again, we all get to experience the sun, experience love, and experience just the joy of eating a good piece of bread or pizza or whatever like that in our lives, but I think that throughout history, people have had this sense of foreboding, that it can all end at any moment because of a plague, or a weather catastrophe, or a bomb.

Today it’s no different. I do think that it kind of goes in ebbs and flows, you know, cycles. It seems like in the past two decades, we have The Hunger Games, and Divergent, and all these different sort of... the earth is going to have this post-apocalyptic future even to the point where in big budget movies... People talk bad about the Marvel franchises, but I find that they’re 150

sort of a way to understand what the culture thinks about itself. The last one, Avengers: Endgame, really the one before that, Infinity War, spoiler alert, at the end of Infinity War, the good guys lose and lose terribly. I can’t think of any top-of-the-pyramid action popcorn movie in which the good guys just lost completely.

I remember sitting there in the audience when I sat it about a month after it came out, and people were just sort of silent and stunned. They didn’t seem upset about it. They seemed like they were responding as though this were a true experience. Maybe it’s related to the Great Recession, maybe it’s related to the fact that regardless who is president, half the country is going to hate that person. Maybe they’re just feeling that because nobody has savings any more. Or because wages have stagnated. There’s something going so wrong within the system that seemed to work well for a while.

Now you can question whether it ever really worked very well, but I think that people because of their education and because of their sort of nostalgia, just feel really sort of bummed out. That’s why you have television shows about zombies becoming so popular and Game of Thrones, just people with swords, hacking each other for no apparent reason, over a throne. It’s just part of the culture, I think.

BR: Mm-hmm. That’s making me think about so many things. Your point about whoever is president, one half of the country is going to hate that person, and thinking about super hero movies and other stuff in the culture—can we even agree on what a good guy or a bad guy really is?

MCR: Apparently, we can’t. I mean, in your book, I’m sure that half of the people love the king and hate the wasp. The other half, people love the wasp and hate the king. That’s sort of the central tension in the entire narrative that underlies the poems for me. You can see there’s sort of a static affection for the wasp and the magic that people feel when they think about the wasp.

Then there’s the king who nobody in this narrative really loves, and yet you can tell that he has his own crew, his own constituency. He couldn’t have won the war, he couldn’t have built the castle. He wouldn’t have retainers and people taking care of him without having his own people who like what he’s been doing.

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I just think... I find it amazing that the book reflects both the present and the possible future of America, as well as the world in general, because a lot of the things that are happening here are happening throughout the world. The rise of authoritarianism, and the shrinking of the middle class, these issues are things that are pinching all of us as a species, right now.

BR: It’s interesting hearing you talk about the king and the wasp because when I first started this project, the idea that I had of those two was kind of cartoonish, and it really was kind of a classic comic book, good guy, bad guy, set-up. But the more I stayed with it, the more the king became very much a flat character and the people surrounding him were clearly the ones who really were in power now.

MCR: Oh yeah, absolutely.

BR: Maybe once upon a time he was a real warrior or whatever.

MCR: Oh, yeah.

BR: But again, he was modeled a little bit after George W. Bush and then that morphed into Trump. Then with the wasp, she was originally inherently good because associated with nature. But gosh, that whole thing about infesting people with her larvae so that she can reproduce and create a wasp army is kind of terrifying from our perspective. I think that that has a lot to do with thinking about our screwed-up relationship with nature now and that we are...

Yeah, we are way past the ability to romanticize nature— MCR: Mm-hmm.

BR: and we have to deal with what we have done to it and the effects that that is having, and it’s complicated.

MCR: Yeah, totally. I totally take your point of the people around the king.

I saw that throughout the book and it really made me think a lot. There’s the one with the astronomer explaining the new sky to the king, and I just thought that was astounding.

BR: Thank you.

MCR: I couldn’t put my finger on it, but absolutely thinking about now, George W. Bush to some extent, Trump, and just this idea of this... You know, I also thought about that movie Toys with Robin Williams— BR: Oh, yeah.

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MCR: —and LL Cool J and a few other people, and the sort of main figure in the background was this retired general who they all revered and yet he couldn’t talk, couldn’t walk, couldn’t lead, couldn’t do anything, and people around him were sort of carrying out what they thought were his orders and destroying this toy factory and replacing it with a military production factory.

I had those thoughts as I read it, too.

[Opening the book] Yes, “The Palace Astronomer Explicates the New Sky.” I thought that was amazing. So many of the interrogators and the king’s staff are like that. I mean, they seem so more much resonant and threedimensional in comparison to the king because they’re taking the action.

They’re arresting people, torturing people, telling lies, spreading all these ideas about reality that are unreal, and causing a bad result for the citizens of the kingdom.

BR: Yeah. It is not a nice place to be.

MCR: I kept thinking, “Do I want to live above ground or underground in this kingdom?” I just couldn’t decide.

BR: Yeah. Yeah. Oh God, that’s making me think about HG Wells’ The Time Machine and— MCR: The Morlocks?

BR: Yeah. And that seems so quaint, in a way. You know, it’s a beautiful book, I love that book, but that thinly disguised social commentary and its assumptions and almost its prescription for what should be done— MCR: Oh, that book. I mean, that book is very disturbing.

BR: Yeah.

MCR: I mean, the movie’s disturbing too.

BR: Yeah.

MCR: I think to a certain extent I was thinking about that in my book, where Nigel ends up at in the end. And the idea of going to a commune where things are theoretically perfect, and avoiding the problems of regular society because now you have this utopia where people can just be themselves and not be influenced by race and ... I mean I actually had some deleted scenes in the book that took place in the commune, and I didn’t really need them so I got rid of them. But I think what made it into the book was this idea that 153

he’s going to this place to be safe. And yet obviously he’s not safe, his dad finds him there.

I mean, the characters don’t get to show you whether they’re happy or not in this place. They’re just sort of living their lives. You know? And I think about this one poem in your book, “Four Photographs of a Man Carrying a Child.” It’s strange to me that in some people’s eyes this is almost like a paradise type image. Like we’re destroying the bad guys and we’re dropping bombs on them and we’re destroying our enemies. And I could imagine the King’s people thinking that this is a wonderful thing, but of course the way it’s described, I mean, in almost atomic detail from different angles—I feel like I’ve seen this photo in real life. Maybe dozens of times, whether it’s Syria, or in Bosnia, or in places in Africa. It makes me wonder, why do we keep doing this? What is it about us that makes us just want to carry on with these attacks? I mean, even Philadelphia in the MOVE bombing, you know?

BR: Yeah.

MCR: We do it time and time again.

BR: Yeah. It was Syria. The New York Times ran ... I think this must have been after the bombing of Ghouta. And they realized that their photographers had been sending them image after image of a man carrying a child out rubble.

And so they ran four of those together, with very little commentary. And it was heartbreaking. And yes, I felt many of the things that you just described.

And I felt a little strange about putting that into a fictional universe, but in speaking with friends of mine who do various kinds of poetry of witness, they were like, well, kind of what you were saying. It is an archetype. And it is a trope of our horrible times.

MCR: Well, it’s so necessary. I mean, I think you have to just describe what is actually happening in the world. And there are people who might read a poem and think, “This is fantasy.” Maybe they haven’t seen the photo, or maybe they’ve seen it and didn’t pay attention to it. To them it was just a picture on a page, and these people didn’t seem real to them. But in a place like Syria where the leader is literally treating a big part of his population like they’re parasites, just trying to exterminate them.

BR: Yes. 154

MCR: With the highest level of extreme prejudice against them. I think it’s important to have this kind of explication of that idea in writing.

BR: Once I came back to really work on the book and spent that last year really diving in and just pushing myself through, yes, I realized I needed to use my imagination in order to cope with reality. I had to. Which is also making me think about something that didn’t really end up in my review of your book.

It was the phrase, “internalized dystopia.” I got to that from thinking about your narrator’s paranoia, which is entirely justified. Like many paranoiacs who are not, say, pathologically ... Yeah, it’s not some extreme disorder that is making them delusional. You know, many people have paranoia that is based on something real. And then he has coping mechanisms for that. Obviously one of them is his drug use.

MCR: Right.

BR: And the other one is his very complicated obsession with his son, and his son’s skin. And then I love, as the book goes on, how the reader becomes less sure at points—you know, is this real? Is this not? Is this a hallucination?

He’s not sure sometimes.

And yet throughout the book he is the person who sees things more accurately than the people around him. And somehow the phrase “internalized dystopia” captured some of that for me. It’s like he’s projected his fears, but then they’ve gotten reabsorbed in a way.

MCR: Yeah, that’s a great point, I never thought of it like that. But as you were saying it I was thinking about how in society people that we look at as somehow either less intelligent or less trustworthy often have the best take on what’s happening. So you know the wisdom of babes, for example. Kids saying the darnedest things. Children can just see what’s going on, just say it directly.

BR: Yes. MCR: They won’t lie and give you a subjective interpretation that’s designed to make you feel better about it, you know, just say it. And I have a lot of friends in their 60s and 70s and 80s, and hearing them talk, it took me a long time to figure out that they had accumulated so much wisdom in their lives, 155

and that they weren’t surprised by almost anything that they experienced because they had already seen it many times. And made their own mistakes.

And yet often young people are kind of like, I don’t want to talk to that old person, they don’t know what they’re talking about.

My uncle has schizophrenia. I think as a child I was ultimately amazed and fearful of him because he has a very difficult disease. It expresses very obviously in him. But he said things throughout my life that I would just be amazed by because they were either poetry or they were this deep insight into himself, or myself, or people in my family.

And so I think with this narrator, like a jester in a king’s court, he’s the one person who’s allowed to see what’s going on and tell us what he is seeing.

As opposed to trying to hide it. I had never read The Remains of the Day, I just read it like a month ago. And I was amazed at the way that Ishiguro manages to have this character who somehow doesn’t even talk about what he’s seeing, what is bothering him so much in society.

The character is emotionally and factually shielded from his own reality, which to me seems like an impossible trick, but he does it. Whereas I think my narrator, he just sort of says what he sees. He’s not trying to put on a show, he’s just saying, “I saw this thing and it made me feel this way. And here’s what it is.”

I think that it’s interesting that you have a lot of your personas in your poems that give us this sort of kaleidoscopic vision. Some of the people are resigned, some of the people are insane, clearly. Some of the people are fighting against it like the father of that son, the priest.

People turn to us as writers and artists to give them some true version of what’s going on. Some way to cut through the clutter and say, “Hey, this is the actual thing that you’re looking at.”

BR: Yup. The truer truths.

MCR: Yes. BR: I know, in some cases really well, some of the literary inspirations that you had for this book. You put some of them right up front for us in the epigraphs. So, Ellison, Nabokov, with Lolita being key to the whole book. And Melville a little bit. Any others? Any secret ones that you want to divulge?

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MCR: Oh, there’s so many of them. There’s so many I actually forget sometimes, then I a read passage, and, oh that’s what I was thinking about at that part. Certainly I have to give credit to Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Between the World and Me. BR: Oh wow, yes.

MCR: That book was so integral to this book that I almost forget I read it.

But the idea of a father talking to a son, you know? And some people criticize that book for being too pessimistic. People would say that his writing didn’t express the sort of power of the black struggle, or the joy associated with black culture. I just think that he was doing what I ended up having my narrator do. He’s saying, “No, sure, we can talk about all of those things. But here is the truth of the matter, that my son is in danger and I have to tell him how bad it is. I can’t ever sugarcoat it for him under any circumstances because I would be abdicating my duty as a father.” So that book was hugely important to me in developing this.

The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander, as well. I mean I’m a lawyer and I consider myself schooled on so many things, but when I read that book, and the way she put it all in one place at one time, in such a clear and compelling way, it really made me think. She’s a lawyer, also. I was astounded by it. So certainly that as well. Many other books. The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao [by Junot Diaz] was a part of it. A Confederacy of Dunces [by John Kennedy Toole] is probably one of my seminal texts in terms of me as a New Orleans born and bred writer, figuring out what is the New Orleans sort of feeling, you know?

BR: Hard to escape.

MCR: Yeah. I mean just that feeling of it’s not really satire, but there’s a sort of zaniness to it. And I’d have to say I think both of our books have this sort of hidden wackiness to them. I mean, I love your “Waspocrypha.”

BR: [laughing] Oh, thank you! That was fun.

MCR: And your Dream Editor at the beginning of the book who is trying to tell us what’s going on. [both laughing] I mean I just think that it’s just a wonderful thing. I think playfulness, sort of that whistling past the graveyard, is something that people in New Orleans are really good at.

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BR: Oh, yes.

MCR: We just have this feeling that, you know, death is a thing that we all experience. It doesn’t mean that you can’t enjoy death also, death could be fun. And funny. [both laughing] BR: Yeah, I was talking with Anne Gisleson the other night about Mardi Gras. And just how insane it is that we, as a city, we have this event that every year completely transforms reality here. And you have to give in to it.

There’s really not much of a choice. And then it’s over. And I was thinking about Mardi Gras 2006, and how if we had not had that Mardi Gras, I don’t know if I could have stayed in New Orleans.

MCR: I totally feel that. The celebrations are so important to the culture.

For me, it was that first Saints game in the Superdome after it reopened.

BR: Mm-hmm.

MCR: I think I was there, but it feels like Woodstock now where everybody says they were there. I think I was actually there though. I feel like between Mardi Gras and that Saints game, there’s the idea of this community that was devastated, but people came back to just have a good time. And be in one place at one time. I think it was really important for us to sort of re-establish the city, re-found the city if you will.

BR: Oh god, yeah. I came back in October of 2005 and Tom Piazza’s book [Why New Orleans Matters] had just come out and I happened to be in town for the launch at Preservation Hall, which was open for the first time for that one night.

MCR: Holy smokes.

BR: And because people were craving things to go to, the place was packed and it was so surreal. When I think back to that space, it’s like I was walking through some kind of crazy fun house. Which is probably me remembering what it was like to drive in New Orleans at that time.

But you’re making me realize that probably my experience with Katrina is behind a lot of what’s going on in my book because even though I wasn’t here during that weekend [of the storm] and even though our place was fine, the trauma was real.

MCR: The devastation.

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BR: And powerful. And I think having had that experience, I mean, I can’t say that it literally gives me a sense of what it’s like to live in a war zone, but it certainly makes me a hell of a lot more humble and sympathetic in thinking about those kinds of experiences.

MCR: Well, if you don’t have any power and you don’t have any food, there’s military troops wandering around town, tanks and Humvees, and over a thousand people die, for all practical purposes it’s a lot like a war zone.

Or what’s the point of making the difference when that is the sort of state of play at that time?

I think that in some strange way, both of our books allow for the possibility of that Mardi Gras after Katrina, or that Saints game after Katrina where there’s a lot of devastation and catastrophe, and yet, the world has not been destroyed. People are still around and as long as people still exist they’re going to keep fighting, through art and culture and love to rebuild a better version of their lives. And that’s going to hear poetry or listening to music in the French Quarter after Katrina or something like that.

BR: Even though I started this by saying I feel like my book ends in a pessimistic place, or it could be read as a pessimistic place, I also know that I was careful about leaving some things ambiguous. So the final poem in which we see The Wasp, she’s just being a wasp. She’s just digging a hole.

It’s the human narrator who has lost his mind at the end. I feel like there’s a possibility for some hope and I do want to write a sequel for this, so I was kind of pushing myself toward that. Have you thought about following this [We Cast a Shadow] up in any way?

MCR: Oh, boy. One of my very best friends was like, “You have to write a sequel to this.” I think her argument was now we’re used to these cinematic universes where the characters have their own books or their own movies but they’re in the same universe. She was like, “Show us what Nigel’s life is like in the future. Ten years after this happens.” There’s a part of me as a writer that’s kind of like, “Oh, I want to move on.” But I totally understand it. And I am curious about what else is going on with him. And I even think I could imagine writing a story that’s set 50 years after this. Or 100 years after this.

Although I have to say I was a little jealous when I read Parasite because 159

that whole “Waspocrypha” part where you had the various representation of wasps, I really wanted to have that in my book. Because Melville does it [in the “Extracts” section of Moby-Dick]. He did it. Dadgummit, he actually did it.

BR: Yeah, that was the ballsiest literary prank that I played in this entire book.

MCR: Oh, I enjoyed it so much.

BR: Thank you. So what are you working on? Can you talk about anything?

MCR: Oh sure. I mean, there are the more ongoing projects. I review nonfiction books for VQR [Virginia Quarterly Review]. I typically write three review-essays per year for them. So I’m reading a lot of books for that as well. And I recently sold my short story collection. Which will probably be calledBR: Fantastic! Congratulations.

MCR: Oh, thank you. The working title is the title of one of the short stories, which won the Iowa Review fiction prize, “The Ones Who Don’t Say they Love You.” BR: Yes, I remember it.

MCR: I’m trying to figure out how many of my existing stories I’m going to use, and also writing new stories. Started one about a month ago that may be a novella that I’ll just put into the collection. It was a 40 or 70 page story. I’m not sure what’s going to happen to it yet. So I’m really excited about that. And I’ll even tell you, the main character in that is a middle-aged African-American lady who was totally against Airbnb and how the city is changing as a result of that, and yet, to save her house she lets out half of it to short-term renters. So she’s in this conflict. This internal conflict. She drives Uber at night. Delivers food at night. Does catering, like serving at night. And I think, I haven’t decided, but I think she’s also a teacher in day time. And she’s trying— BR: Why do I feel like I know this lady?

MCR: Yes. And so I’m trying to get into her life and how she feels and how she deals with it, with her daughter who left New Orleans and moved to Japan, saying, “Ma, just sell the house and get out of there. Taxes are going up. You can’t stay.” And other people being like, “Well no, this is your home, 160

you have to stay here.” And dealing with that. So that collection.

And then figuring out my next novel, I’m working on that as well. But that’s going to be a longer process. So I’m excited. So many things that I want to write and that will get written.

BR: Likewise.

MCR: Of course. This is your fourth book, right?

BR: Yes. MCR: And you have several chapbooks on top of it?

BR: Chapbooks on top of that. And as I said. I seriously want to write a sequel for Parasite Kingdom.

MCR: PK2.

BR: It’s going to be Parasite Pilgrim.

MCR: Oh you know already?

BR: Yes. MCR: Okay.

BR: And the wasp will be on the throne. So, consequences, shall we say.

What’s that going to be like? And one of the first poems, which I’ve already written, involves an adolescent boy who emerges from a burrow. And he’s going to be on a quest. So, some of my reading over the next several months is going to be reading the classic quest narratives. I’m going back to the crusade literature, all that stuff. And I have a New Orleans and Louisiana-based project that has been sitting around almost as long as that one [Parasite Kingdom] sat around. It’s tentatively called Reconstructions. Post-Reconstruction New Orleans and Louisiana and post-Katrina.

MCR: Well, I can’t wait to read all that and see the movie based on it as well.

BR: I can’t wait to see the movie based on We Cast a Shadow.

MCR: Well, anything is possible, I think, for both of us.

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Benjamin Aleshire

Host of Hosts: A Review of Brad Richard’s Parasite Kingdom (Parasite Kingdom, winner of the Tenth Gate Poetry Prize, The Word Works, 2019, 103 pages, $18.00)

B rad Richard’s new collection of poems, Parasite Kingdom, is a

metafictional denunciation of America’s astonishing capacity for cruelty in the 21st century. Rather than recite the litany of our nation’s recent crimes, Richard has ingeniously constructed multiple realms which oscillate between absurdism and frighteningly accurate depictions of daily reality. The result is a blend of science fiction, horror, and social commentary, wrapped up in sumptuous Nabokovian riddles, yet remarkably direct and readable. The book articulates a collective dread, like an insect trapped in amber as the world lurches further towards fascism and eco-collapse.

The text of Parasite Kingdom, we learn in the introduction, has been unearthed from a barbaric ancient civilization that closely resembles our own. À la Nabokov’s Pale Fire, the poems have been scrutinized by a professor from “Greater Global University”—an academic who innocently ponders what the words Capitalism and Paradise might have meant to a people so greedy and cruel that “to imagine them as real people strains credulity.” As readers, then, we must imagine ourselves as members of this Utopian future to whom the book’s introduction is addressed, looking back at the sins of the distant past—that is, our own present. Oh, and a frail, nostalgic King is locked in battle with a gigantic blue wasp who tunnels beneath his palace.

Does this sound over-complicated? Somehow, it’s not—perhaps because Richard’s absurdist twist allows us to metabolize the real absurdity surrounding us. What could be more absurd than our two political parties haggling over the semantics of what to name our new concentration camps? What could be more absurd than our military sodomizing prisoners with florescent light tubes?

“And yet the horror, never so distant as they may have believed, permeated 162

their psyches and weaponized their comforts,” the professor explains, a startlingly accurate description of the American zeitgeist.

Richard’s fictional editor divides the book into 4 sections, complete with an increasingly pupating illustration of larvae. The poems themselves are narrated by an unnamed speaker, whose identity seems to shift—at times appearing to be a refugee or exile from the “other” kingdom, a wasp-infected place ringed by mountains. The speaker could be a stand-in for Richard himself, navigating a nightmarishly heightened version of reality that exists already in places such as Palestine, but transposed onto an American landscape—or, the speaker could simply function as an archetypal poet-as-prophet, while also invoking Isaac Babel and Lorca and all the other poets forced to hide their work or be tortured and killed for it, as their regimes grew more monstrous.

However, at the beginning of the book, the “I” takes the form of a state librarian, with the curious charge of “making sense of what was left of the world.” That kingdom seems to be crumbling—bombs fall outside the library as the sulking relic of a King dreamily leafs through old archives and books.

Looking for what? We never learn, which adds another layer of surreal nuance to the book. It suggests that just as the members of the Utopian future puzzle over this “Tunnel-Bundle” artifact of records from the past in order to understand and prevent some dormant larval evil from waking and burrowing through them, the King appears to be searching for an answer to how things could have ever become the way they are in the first place. This sensation evokes, say, re-reading news articles about the 2016 Democratic Convention.

Or for that matter, the liberal cheerleading for the invasion of Iraq.

“How the Torturers Come to Truth” anchors the first section, a magisterial sestina that manages to encompass both the “We” of the torturers and the tortured: On the wall the sergeant writes a word you’ve never heard before we tell its story: “‘We come to truth as you first learn a sentence.’

Can you explain the meaning of this passage?”

The word sinks through you, leaves a hole to bury not the meaning but the body.

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Subtly, the quote within the quote echoes the structure of the whole book—truth as strata, an accumulation of a host of voices. History as droning hive, including history as recent as the Abu Ghraibe torture scandal.

There are hints that the speaker could be a wasp—“Asylum: all my language offers me/is burrow or cell”—or perhaps one of the Queen’s cultlike followers. Driving home this ambiguity, the speaker’s caseworker/ interrogator says, “Be patient. Given where you come from/and what you claim, we’re not entirely sure/you exist.” The final line of “Asylum” adds yet another layer to this dreamscape. Tortured and finally released to return home, the speaker crosses the heavily armed frontier only to discover, “There is no other side”—an unpunctuated fragment that hangs, indented and adrift, itself functioning as a form of punctuation for the first section.

If any reader might yet remain in blissful doubt about the connotations of the book, “Making It Great Again” opens the third section, an ingeniously unfolding poem that immediately tacks away from the title, speaking through the persona of a young millennial on social media. Richard makes the poem eerie where it might easily have been flip: Making it Great Again Yesterday was amazing. The sky bled, so we took a picture, added cloud-bandages, and captioned it “me saving the sky ☺.”

The lilies of the vacant lot were choking on their own vomit, so we took a picture: “I ♥ lilies .” It felt good to be doing something.

It felt good to be saying we felt something.

Then our lamps and streetlights, our phones and laptops started choking on their vomit, and darkness slimed. Through the goo, we watched video of the good old days—not ours, I guess, but still, nice to see nice people smiling over a man who fell black on his head, and police whitely walking a girl to school while crowds cheered.

Today, we’d have to shoot her. Did I say that?

Sorry, I meant we love one another so much.

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Too much, maybe. Gives me a headache. My head hurts, where is it? Who has it? Who stole it and dropped it in this septic tank in this unclean bed where it saw things and tasted all the uncleanness all your uncleanness it was you it was you it was you— Tomorrow’s gonna be amazing. Wait and see.

The absence of a clear “villain” character in the poems also serves to sharpen their edge and provoke the reader into deeper consideration. The wasp Queen is no pat stand-in for anonymous evil, or fear of “the other”—and the King is no George Bush, and certainly not Trump. If anything, he faintly resembles Obama, struggling to keep the ship of state afloat while ramping up the wars he promised to end, helpless to the tide of hate swelling beneath him. All three, by the way, are acknowledged at the end of the book as sources for the poems, when Richard’s voice finally emerges from his host, and his host’s host of hosts.

At a time when Nazi sympathizers have been appointed to the highest levels of our government, Parasite Kingdom’s publication feels prophetic, urgent, and masterfully controlled. The book resists fist-shaking. Its fists unclench to sculpt something far more terrifying.

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Sonnet Mondal

Strange Meetings Sometimes we run into someone just for once in our lives and our bones refuse to fit inside the skin the same way.

Plans proceed as waves and recede as doubts.

A fleeting joy with gnawing pangs of apprehension the stretch between experience and fear seems like the time taken by a fish to reveal and conceal itself in front of a fish hook.

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K. Eltinaé

Two Poems d.n.a (drifting.nowhere.always) You beg for the secrets of my skin I wonder if you have ever walked barefoot through a river.

You return to the night of my arms to hide from the world promised to you.

The one I cannot save you from because there, I am invisible as you are.

Lost, as the gold of my people, exiled, as the belly of stones strewn by rivers human, as hatred taught by men torn, between glories I cannot return to.

‘I’m from the land of burnt faces,’ when you reach to console me I’m nowhere like ashes and the truth.

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waif I didn’t tell you about it because somewhere some faraway distant third cousin removed is on the other end of the receiver sinking

the fantasy of

h o m e with so many secrets I can never open up about.

Because that iceberg in my throat makes me and everything I love sound homesick and foolish when all I want to feel is my own sweat drying on those temporary countries that map a body while it is running away.

All I want is to sit on benches stretch my bridges celebrate freedom in a house near a river with no telephones.

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Tom Andes

A Review of Louis Maistros’ The Sound of Building Coffins Crescent City Books, 410 pages.

F

or all its potential richness as a setting, New Orleans can be a baffling place to write about. In few other places are the contradictions that shape American history as palpably raw as they are here. Moreover, though the population of the city is less than half a million, its cultural prominence is such that it has a larger than life sense of itself, often to the point of absurdity. Yet for all that many of its citizens want to see New Orleans as a quintessentially un-American city, when one maps the way race and gentrification have shaped New Orleans historically and in the present day, it seems typical, hardly exceptional at all. Especially to the outsider, the place seems full of contradictions: magical, yet utterly mundane.

Rereleased in a slightly revised edition in paperback from Crescent City Books ten years after the original was published, Louis Maistros’s The Sound of Building Coffins is a classic of contemporary New Orleans literature. A work of magical realism, historical fiction, horror, supernatural fiction, and a mystery novel, it skillfully weaves together apocrypha and arcana, history real and imagined. The plot is labyrinthine, yet the prose is simple and accessible.

The new edition restores a sizable parcel of material (maybe ten percent of the book) that was cut from the initial publication.

Set in the brothels of Storyville, the Treme neighborhood, and the swampy recesses of the city near Bayou St. John, the novel tells the story of a cycle of violence that originates with an actual historical event, the March 14, 1891 lynching of eleven Italian Americans suspected of murdering police chief David Hennessy. The violence quickly outgrows any semblance of mere retribution, spinning out of control into senselessness. Seemingly possessed by a demon, Dominick Corolla, who goes by Jim Jam Jump, and who is the son of one of the lynched men, begins indiscriminately enacting various 169

forms of sadistic, cruel revenge on the other characters in the novel, many of whom don’t deserve it.

Menaced by Corolla, the novel’s cast of characters are forced to deal with the grudges, feuds, and legacies of violence in their own histories. The novel revolves around the Morningstar family, an African American family living on Bayou St. John, whose members are (literally) haunted by the loss of a father. The other intersecting subplots involve intergenerational curses, an abortionist whose assistant brings fetuses back to life in the Mississippi River, dreams, early jazz, and the dead speaking. Yet for all that the novel deals in the macabre, despite the unremitting bleakness and the violence of the world they inhabit, its characters manage to find an uneasy and often difficult redemption.

The Sound of Building Coffins is a masterful novel, one that balances multiple point-of-view characters and timeframes and richly evokes a particular era of New Orleans history, the period around the beginning of the twentieth century, when the city was arguably at the height of both its economic and cultural prominence. The book is beautifully plotted, and Maistros’s prose style grounds the reader, even during his flights of lyricism. And flights there are. Jazz cornetist Buddy Bolden features as a minor but significant character, and many passages capture the freewheeling, improvisatory quality of the genre that might well have originated with Bolden.

Like any good mystery novelist, as the plot moves forward, Maistros excavates the past. Indeed, as in many books in that genre, in The Sound of Building Coffins, the past threatens always to erupt into the present. In that respect, it’s a quintessentially New Orleans book: few places are so obsessed with their history, and in few places is that history seemingly so riven with contradictions, and so ready to spill over into the present. Yet, while for many of the characters in the book, life is indeed nasty, brutish, and short, Maistros’s sympathies ultimately lie not with the powerful, but with the powerless.

Given the original publication date of 2008, one might read The Sound of Building Coffins as a post-Katrina novel. In the foreword to this edition, writer Gary Krist (Empire of Sin) tells us that Maistros had started writing the novel before Hurricane Katrina. Nevertheless, considering Maistros’s preoccupation 170

with cycles of violence, the geography of New Orleans, and the historical 1906 hurricane that occurs at the climax, The Sound of Building Coffins seems suffused with a dread particular to the years immediately following Katrina.

That attests to the novel’s prescience, its visionary qualities, and to the fact that especially in New Orleans, history repeats itself. Indeed, that’s another of the novel’s themes.

In 2019, the sunny patina of post-Katrina recovery might make Maistros’s themes in The Sound of Building Coffins seem less of the moment. Yet considering the ways in which post-Katrina gentrification has replicated centuries old cycles of racial violence by continuing to displace African American residents of New Orleans and considering also the shadow of fascism falling over the entire country under Trump, who has so effectively played on American racism, the novel seems no less timely, its vision of the city no less real for being unreal. Indeed, three hundred years into a history wracked by natural and unnatural disasters, New Orleans seems more perched on the verge of environmental catastrophe than ever. Likewise, as the furor over the recent removal of four prominent Confederate monuments suggests, the meaning of the city’s history is still being litigated, and probably will be for quite some time.

Maistros’s novel therefore speaks to us as urgently in 2019 as the original did ten years ago. Yet for all the mythologizing people in New Orleans like to do, the fact remains that it isn’t so different from any other American city: culturally distinct, yes, yet not exempt from the legacies of racial injustice that seem more and more to define America. As the writer Moira Crone once said, New Orleans is the canary in the coalmine: “a threatened, fragile environment.” Given the potential for New Orleans and the Gulf South to be predictive for what ails America, perhaps Maistros’s novel has much to say about our present American moment, too.

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Nicole Green

A Review of Creole Echoes: The Francophone Poetry of Nineteenth-Century Louisiana (Translated by Norman R. Shapiro; Introduction and Notes by M. Lynn Weiss. New Orleans, LA: Second Line Press, 2016. Foreword, Preface, Introduction, Suggestions for Further Reading, 238 pages, paperback. $19.95.)

Creole Echoes is a bilingual (French/English) collection of selected

poems by thirty-three, nineteenth-century Louisiana poets, Creoles, Creoles of color, and French émigrés from France, whose work has been translated

by Norman R. Shapiro, Distinguished Professor of Literary Translation at Wesleyan University. Among these thirty-three poets, the volume includes eleven “gens de couleur libre” and eleven women. Arranged in alphabetical order by the poet’s last name, their dates range from 1777-1938; a short biography of each writer precedes each selection. M. Lynn Weiss, Associate Professor of American Studies at the College of William and Mary provides a 26-page introduction explaining the literary, social, and cultural importance of these Francophone poets, some of whose work has been largely overlooked in the literary history of American, French, Southern, and Louisiana literature.

The collection merits attention in this journal as it combines both creative and literary analysis and focuses on writers of New Orleans and the Gulf South, bringing particular attention to those who have been marginalized either on account of their language and culture, or in some cases their race, class, and gender. On a personal note, Weiss begins her introduction by noting her indebtedness to the work of a former colleague and good friend of mine, the late Dr. Frans Amelinckx, Professor Emeritus at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. In her very first sentence, Weiss highlights the importance of his essay “La Litérature Louisianne au XIX Siècle,” Présence Francophone,

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43 (1993):11 (xxxvii, note 1). Amelinckx’s research demonstrates that many Creole writers of color published in newspapers and magazines and were thus omitted from the important 1845 collection of seventeen “grands Creoles,” Les Cenelles: choix de poésie indigènes and from the first scholarly essay on Francophone literature by Alcée Fortier, Professor of French at Tulane University published in 1886. This collection redresses those omissions, and any reader interested in the construction of a literary canon will find Weiss’s introduction illuminating.

Influenced by French Romanticism, which developed later than English and German Romanticism, and writers such as Victor Hugo, Alfred de Musset, and Gerard de Nerval, the poets in this collection are characteristically Louisiana writers, their poetry reflecting the specific time and place of composition. Their Romanticism is, of course, influenced by the ideals of the French Revolution. For the Creoles of color, these ideals are expressed in poems which expose the injustices of a republic which granted them few civil rights. In “Au Père Chocarne” (111-112) published in 1867, the poet, who went by the pseudonym “Pierre l’Hermite” and about whom little is known, reflects upon the Church which itself imposed society’s segregation on its congregation. Written from the third-person point of view, the speaker clearly identifies with the poem’s subject, “Un nègre obscur et méprisé,” “A black—poor nobody!”

Car il se rappela que, que même dans cette église, Les apôtres du Christ souffrent que l’on méprise Que l’on relègue, en certain bancs, Non pas de grands pécheurs, non pas d’impurs tyrans, Mais de pauvres gens Dont le seul tort, dont le seul crime, Est d’avoir Le teint noir.

“To Père Chocarne” For even here he realized That shame prevails: here in Christ’s temple, whose

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Apostles suffer some to be despised And sent in scorn, to sit in separate pews; Not sinners vile, nor tyrants of the yoke, But simply poor and wretched folk Whose only sin Is their black skin. (110-111)

In this translation, Shapiro is able to retain some of the original’s rhyme and versification, but he freely and effectively translates the original as in, “Un nègre obscur et méprisé” “A black—poor nobody!” and “Le teint noir” “their black skin.”

In “Amour et Dévouement,” “Love and Devotion,” (148-151), VictorErnest Rillieux, also a Creole of color, celebrates Ida B. Wells, the noted African American journalist, co-founder of the NAACP and leader of an early anti-lynching campaign. He compares Wells to two other formidable and legendary female leaders from Judeo-Christian tradition: Joan of Arc and Judith of the Old Testament. In the eighth and final stanza, the poet invokes these women, noting also that Wells’s anger will inspire fear into the cowardly “White Hoods.” Although this poem was composed in the nineteenth century, it did not appear in print until its 1945 publication in Maceo Coleman’s Creole Voices (149).

Influenced as they are by the French Romantics, many poems focus on nature and its relation to the poet. Yet again in these nature poems, we find characteristics that are particular to the South or to Louisiana itself. So the wealthy Louis Allard writes “Au Moqueur” “To the Mocking Bird,” a bird unknown to Europeans but one whose song can cure his woes (4-5). In “Souvenirs du Désert” “Memories of the Wilderness” (57-58), Charles-Oscar Dugué salutes the cypresses of “fair Louisiana.” This is the “New World,” an “Eden undefiled, Land of the Savage” where he hears the “Choctaw’s distant song” and sees “a tender Indian lass.” The Choctaw Native Americans were indigenous to Louisiana and neighboring states; celebrating these native people regarded as “noble savages” is yet another characteristic of Romanticism.

Most of the nature poems in this collection, however, are fables, often political, with such titles as “Le Lièvre et la Tortue” “The Hare and the

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Tortoise” which has a final stanza labelled “Morale” “Moral” (25-28) or “La Cigale et la Fourmi” “The Cricket and the Ant” (83-90); Joseph Dejacque’s poem “L’Huitre et la Perle” “The Oyster and the Pearl” is even subtitled “Fable” (44-45). Clearly in the tradition of the seventeenth-century French writer, Jean de la Fontaine, these fables form a large part of the collection.

The most interesting of these are the humorous fables written in black Creole dialect, for example Jules Choppin’s “Le Chêne et le Roseau” “The Oak and the Reed” (22-23). This three-stanza poem also ends with the “Morale” “Moral”: “Pas fair gros vente, ain jour ta vini plat; / Gros papa lion ça peur ain ti dérat.” “Don’t go make boast, one day you go lay flat: / Big papa lion, him scared of little rat.” Also numerous are the love poems which Weiss notes are “frequently sexual in nature” (xxxiii), but with their predominant religious imagery, they resemble the courtly love tradition of the French medieval troubadours as in this sonnet by Adolphe Duhart, a member of “the Creoles-of-color literati” (67).

The naïve pleadings of a troubadour; Christ’s prayer on Calvary; and, even more, His sigh of pardon from the cross professed; And heaven’s promise when our pent hearts pine…

All these, Madame, charm less, are less divine, Than your sweet, gentle voice, the loveliest. (71)

This bilingual collection of 108 poems of different genres and thirty-three poets, most of whom were born or lived in New Orleans, in addition to its analytical introduction, makes an important contribution to our understanding of nineteenth-century Louisiana literature and, should it ever be doubted, to the Creole and Francophone identity of this region and most notably, the city of New Orleans.

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Jonathan Bracker

Left Behind Atlee is my closest friend, Shorter and younger than I; We joke about being Mutt and Jeff.

Visiting Paris several years ago, Whenever we entered a Métro station Atlee walked three or four or five steps ahead Down the stairway. I begged him not to: “What if I were to trip and fall?”

Each time, he stopped, Turned, and looked back smilingly.

But, eager to keep walking down, he did.

Now at home and in my eightieth year, Knowing I may never see Atlee again I want to issue an injunction: “Do not go on ahead and out of sight.

Stay nearby – If need be, behind – Where I can turn around And see you.

I am not content yet With us proceeding at our own paces, Or at Life’s.”

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Jack Kennedy

The Oyster Show

“No one’s come up with a world-changing idea over halibut.”

Jack just looked at the prompt screen.

He thought about the cave. Standing in the opening, a tablet in each hand. Waiting. I-Ching in the wall. Rock in mountain.

“Hey Mr. Man of Little Words.”

“Hi.” The Oyster Bar in Grand Central sits between levels of tracks and Grand Concourse on a marble stair. He drank there in the summer, when it was so hot.

“Water is not good for you,” he’d tell the bartender. “Look what it does to your shoes.”

The storms increased in intensity until no one wanted to live in the City anymore. How many times can you rebuild a life? Then the oceans rose, and at low tide the City was under sixty-six feet of water.

The People Upstairs, living in the old cottage communities on the Catskill tips, had decided to produce a television series about a detective in ‘Old New York’ when survivors of the storms still were trying to make a life there. Using subway tunnel building equipment from the 20th Century, they’d sealed off Grand Central Station and created a production facility for the show.

Julie took him to the interview. They pretty much hated him, but it was her plastic. So what the hell. They found him “authentic.”

Each morning they came down the tube and set up the scenario for the day.

Each evening, they left him to himself—for ‘atmosphere’—but occasionally Julie stayed a little later than the rest. They’d have dinner at the bar and walk the concourse holding hands. That was about the extent of it.

This morning she was dressed in period costume for a cameo on the show. One of the perks.

“I’m mad at you, Jack.” She looked up at him from her seat in the MG, top down. They were shooting in the “parking lot of Grand Central”—the kids had a kind of distorted view of the ‘20-teens. They didn’t get that a lot

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of UTube clips of that time were pranks. Jack remembered someone trying to sell shares in a parking lot that was ‘being built under Grand Central.’

“Why?” “You didn’t ask me out again.”

“You wouldn’t let me kiss you.”

“You know I can’t. I just don’t have those feelings for you, and it would make me feel guilty.”

Julie was wearing camo fatigues and wearing a shoulder holster, her “urban outing outfit.”

“By the way, that ‘halibut’ thing was a line from a Domino’s Pizza commercial, not a newscast,” Jack said.

Jack felt like he was 100 years old—and they were all 9. ‘Don’t worry, 80 is the new 60 in 2051,’ she’d told him more than once. He remembered 50—that was the hard one.

Now, when he could scrape enough together, he’d buy liquor and cigarettes, which were illegal, from one of the crew. He had to go up the tube occasionally to get it. She’d give him a ride. He liked being out in the open on the water, stretching forever in every direction. Like another dimension.

He met her on Twix, the last dating site.

He’d written, “I don’t know if you are familiar with the I-Ching (Book of Changes); You throw three coins six times to build hexagrams (like in the old South Korean flag) of broken and unbroken lines. I have a copy I’ve been carrying around since the 00’s.”

She’d had nothing to add, so he went on: “Anyway, it was raining steadily this morning & I threw the I-Ching coins, getting a lot of water imagery. The sequence of ideas was interesting. The first hexagram was the Abysmal changing to Holding Together: ‘the principle of light enclosed in the dark; water fills every depression before it moves on, but like a spring it must abide in one place for some time first - water flows to unite with water because all parts of it are subject to the same laws.”

Jack remembered reading on the old Nautilus website that the differences between screen and page were more than tactile. Readers develop, it had said, 178

a mental map of the printed text as if its argument was a voyage unfolding through space.

Perhaps that’s why intelligence quotients have dropped so dramatically, he’d thought. Nobody printed on paper anymore. Offset now referred to countervailing influences not production. Printing was confined to 3D plastic objects.

If you’d asked him back then, Jack would have said they’d have to shoot him before he’d submit to confinement. But there comes a point where it’s pointless to resist, he’d say now.

Finally the change to Peace: ‘the receptive above the creative so that their energies merge from above and below, a stream of energy regulated by mankind - light inside and darkness out.’

I kind of wanted to share it with someone.”

That was probably the most he ever said to her, before or after. She’d come floating in on a small boat of her own device, with a job, like a mermaid (he thought). “I love the way you share,” she’d written back.

“OK, here the Tea Pot Party wins the landslide vote and votes legislation out of existence.”

‘Floating world’ from ‘world of pain’ to hedonism - ukio-e - folk art, pornography, actually,’ Jack thought listlessly.

“I wouldn’t know,” the guy was saying. “I haven’t seen a Japanese in years. Leave out the part about the Tong. It’s too Zombie War stuff.”

He had never been actually down here; only the actors came down to meet Jack, do their cameos and leave. They hated going down.

“So who is the dead girl in the apartment,” Dick mused; Jack often called him ‘Dick.’

“That’s it—Mad Cow Disease caused by AIDS.” Brilliant.

Julie was playing opposite in this scene.

OK. “He found out what I was going to become; then I found out what you are going to become,” Julie read from the teleprompter. “Making telepathy seem like dreaming.”

“No improvising,” Dick said.

“What?”

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“That wasn’t in the prompt.”

“I’m looking at it.” Butt high, in her spike heels, Julie walked off the set. Pony tail swinging.

The theme of this episode was supposed to be dealing with disaster and grief, but it seemed to Jack more like the inevitability of species behavior or the queasy feeling being 15. ‘I Can’t Tell You Why,’ Jack thought.

“You have wide hips. I can’t have children,” Jack read in the prompt.

That was it. He ‘went to the trailer.’ Julie was in his room smoking like the proverbial gun on the mantle. She just looked at him when he said that. In a catafaulk of smoke, they sat silently contemplating the angst of inertia. Jack thought back in a thread of fleeting impression like a mosaic.

The night before she came to get him off the mountaintop, he threw an irregularity I-Ching. He became unsure. Did he count the third throw correctly? He had put a six next to a solid line, which could only be a 7 or 9. The reading was Hsien (Lake in the Mountain) changing to T’Sui (Lake Below), or Wooing into Gathering. If he made the questionable third line a broken one, and a six, he got the reverse, Gathering into Wooing.

What was significant, he thought, was the other six at the top of the original read counseled not following your heart. This disappeared with the correction to being prepared.

The counsel now read, “Often a man feels an urge to unite with others, but the individuals around him have already formed themselves into a group, so he remains isolated. Misunderstood and lamenting, perhaps he will come to his senses.”

The I-Ching was originally thrown using tortoise shells, reading the lines in them. As things got warmer, the clams and lobsters died off in Maine.

There was a lot of sentiment for leaving the United States and joining Canada, which had better benefits. They had more trees. And crabs.

Dick was an ass, but he’d needed to work again.

“Not in a million years,’ the Tea Party said.” Confidence dwindled as the sky seemed safer than the sea. Those who chose to stay died. Then the old were defunded.

He sat looking at himsel fin the mirror behind the bar.

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He leaned forward, elbows on the bar, and saw a shoe. Standing up, palms on the edge, he leaned further and saw a leg. He got up and walked around the end and saw a girl, passed out on the treads, her face in the gutter.

He just stood there, blinking. Instinctively, he knew she was other—the way a dog would know.

“What the Hell,” he thought and crawled in. Dragged outside again, he picked her up. She was very light but seemed somehow denser. He went in the back and put her on his bed. He heard a small noise and turned around.

Julie was standing in the doorway.

“WTF Jack?” she hissed.

He pushed by her to reexamine the scene of arrival. Crawling back under the bar, his hand touched something—a soft bag containing something hard.

She must have been holding it when he dragged her out. He took it back in his room and sat in the big chair by the radiant.

Inside the bag was an object that did not seem particularly threatening.

It reminded him of a Nikon SLR lens (non-digital) without the glass in it.

The girl had not stirred. Julie seemed to have gone away. Jack drifted off.

When he woke up, the girl was sitting up holding the device. She called it an ‘articulant’ and said it ‘ierened,’ which she explained was a sequence of ideas containing an action that was imbedded in a large set of concepts that comprised a whole. In what she called TrueLanguage, it looked like this:

01 1 1

11112212212211122

2 2 2 2 1 2 2 1 2 2 1 1 1 2 2 1 1 1

2220

When Jack saw this, he realized she wasn’t speaking to him. He looked at a face that was somehow larger and more fragile than one would expect.

She was achingly beautiful. She told him she wrote the future with it. ‘Like the I-Ching,’ he thought.

As she manipulated the intricate interlocking circles of the black metallic device, he ‘heard’ reserve, question.

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‘The ‘0’ must respresent the points of intersection with the larger construct in which it was imbedded,’ he thought. Approval.

‘Seven glasses,’ he thought unexpectedly. There was seven glasses on the bar when he went back, and one was broken.

“Where’s Julie,” the prompt read. Words like world’s apart.

“I don’t know,” he said into the silence.

Then they shut the set down.

Jack didn’t know how many days it had been. He’d measured them

by Julie’s coming and going. No one upstairs spoke to him anymore. No supplies arrived. The tube was locked down.

He was not alone. And he was not hungry or thirsty. At first he just hibernated.

He woke up to find his guest’s face a few inches from his. She was moving her lips.

Lying in the mouth of the cave and listening to the wind in the barren trees, Jack had thought nostalgically. The faces hovered. Another glass broke.

One of them spoke. She described a window hung in space.

Jack was looking through the window at a horrible storm. The trees cracked like gunshot. It was very cold. It reminded him of a very old televised show. A name like sterling. The room filled with silver light.

He saw Julie. He saw his wife, a daughter. He heard a glass crack. He sat on the edge of the bunk—old used to mean something of value; not it was brittle and powdery—fading.

Upstairs Dick chortled. It was far better than anything he could have dreamed up. Old man isolated. Then he fell to the ground like late winter ice under a boot. Another glass shattered.

Jack heaved himself up and went into the bar. Three more glasses broken.

Or one, he wasn’t sure. No one around. Where did she go? He walked up to the concourse, faced the long stair where the shootout in the Untouchables took place, standing under the clock. The tube upstairs was through the door at the top. It was locked. His wife’s name was scratched in the glass. The tube hatch a foot outside it was locked.

To either side of it a narrow passage extended into darkness. Jack had 182

never been farther than the hatch. He snapped a light stick off the wall and started walking to the right. And slammed into something translucent and hard, almost unseen. Shadows moved irregularly beyond it.

They could have been fish. Jack didn’t know how far into the station the sea had come. Awfully big fish swimming upright…

Something made him turn, and suddenly the girl’s face was in front of his.

Jack was sitting on the edge of the bunk with his head in his hands. He didn’t know how he got back there. The girl was nowhere to be seen. He pulled the I-Ching from the nightstand and read randomly: The girl was in the bunk beside him. Assent.

Thunder out of the earth.

Julie was standing in the doorway glaring at him. No, it was the girl.

The prompt went back on: “Goddamit, Jack. I’m an artist not a magpie.”

Bright and shiny objects. Julie.

“Who is this. Where are you?”

“Above. She is dead to you, as the girl is to us. You can have the girl.”

“Where are you? Who is this.”

“Outside.”

“Where’s Dick?”

Another glass cracked.

‘This architecture of lines needs to be recast,” it articulated.

‘Hierarchy,’ he thought. A revolution.

‘Between the layers of our two places a new being is created in a higher place. It has been tried before,’ the words glowed. “Not all are in agreement.”

Sometimes change is necessary. If not changing is dangerous. Pearls.

‘Why pearls?’ He wondered, moving aimlessly in another dream. He slept a lot these days in the Oyster Bar....

It was a sunny day above, as Mikael maneuvered his small boat to the facility’s pier. He owned—as far as he knew—one of the only two intact copies of the I-Ching known in the West. It had taken a lot off his plastic, almost as much as buying into the production team for the Oyster Show.

Mikael was also what passed for a constable on the East Coast because 183

he was good at seeing patterns. He was just thinking about Jung’s argument in the preface that the publication of Wilhelm’s translation paralleled the discovery in the mid-20th Century that atomic physics could only describe probabilities. Correlation and causation were not the same thing, and natural law was out.

People often didn’t understand what Mikael was talking about, and he hadn’t had a girlfriend in a long time. He had liked Julie, but although she was quite a bit older, she just didn’t get him. He missed her. She knew he was an outsider and apparently liked it. Maybe she just enjoyed a mystery.

Like his daughter Mila’s disappearance seven years ago.

Mikael found the Control Tower deserted but the CG monitor on. He wasn’t sure why Dick was recording when the show was in hiatus while they figured out what happened to Julie and what to do about Jack.

He could see Jack was talking to someone on the Grand Concourse. The other person was difficult to make out—someone must have turned out the lights in that section. He could see movement and a little light in the shadows.

Odd—he could see Jack quiet clearly. And hear him.

Jack was talking about Jung, the I-Ching, and synchronicity. Although he had a different way of explaining it, Jack appeared to be laying out the discourse Mikael had been having in his head a few minutes ago on the green water that had not seen the blue the Atlantic was painted in the Oyster Show for several decades.

He wondered why everyone had called him Dick, since that wasn’t his name. One didn’t inquire too much in the enclosed spaces of their society.

Mikael secured the facility and went down to the ground to reflect.

Can you kill a ghost? Mikael wondered why the thought came to him like a tribal banner unfurling at the continental conference in the Southwestern Highlands where they ate peyote and shared visions in honor of the old days.

The Painted Man. They may have made little else, but at least they made another generation. He shook his head to clear it. He had to see for himself.

The entrance to the tube topside was at the lower end of the harbor, embedded in the side of the Old World Trade Center. It angled gradually down to Grand Central. Propelled by gravity and a little compressed air, the 184

capsule nudged into the rubber mantle surrounding the central door opening onto the staircase where the shootout took place in the Untouchables—Jerry Garcia with his foot under the baby carriage wheel and his gun leveled on the thug holding the accountant by the neck. One of Mikael’s favorite video clips.

The second stairway down to the Oyster Bar was directly across the station from where he stood. The only sound was water dripping somewhere. Beside the clock in the center was a bench with something on it. It was a broken glass with pieces of a doll’s body arranged around it. One of the eyes was in the glass. The other was still in the head sitting upright by itself looking straight at him. Halfway down the stairs was a stool with another broken glass They sat at the Oyster Bar in the only light left in Grand Central Station, under the heaving Atlantic, and drank quietly from one of the last old bottles underneath. Jack was describing the screenplay he had started since they shut the show down.

“She has travelled only once. There are others.”

“Others here, well yes, that too. But others have gone on to another place and then another.”

“Beings traveling between dimensions become ghosts and then ghosts of ghosts and so on, eventually becoming something so other that the origin disappears and the destination is infinite - no, words are inadequate—there is a deconstruction so sublime that understanding suppresses it. The ones in between must be the angels.”

“How old is she?”

“She’s a ghost.”

“Which way has she gone?”

“There is no up or down. Only out. And it’s involuntary half the time.

They are either taken or exchanged. I suppose being taken is sort of going down.”

“Is she going to stay?”

“Hard to say. Depends on who wants who.

Jack didn’t say anything. He just emptied his mind into what words he could finally dredge up out of the glass.

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“There are others here that are not ghosts. They’re in the tunnel behind the street door. There seems to be some kind of membrane separating them from this dimension. I don’t know if they’re the same people as him or something else.”

“What do you think they’re doing?”

“Maybe making a TV show about us making a TV show about some other time we don’t appear to really understand.”

“What don’t we understand?”

Jack didn’t say anything. These kids didn’t get sarcasm anymore. He felt like he was dying.

There was a movement in the shadows outside in the corridor.

“She wants to iren with me.”

“Gotta go.” He drained his glass.

Mikael was not used to alcohol. He woke up on the floor in front of the bar. Under his hand was a scrap of packing paper on which was written something he could not quite make out in the scrawl.

It was hard down there to tell how much time had passed. Going up didn’t help much either.

Up in the Grand Concourse, a trickle of seawater ran down the stairs from the door to the street. He could see the crumbled building across the street and the shadow of the tube to the surface. It just felt empty. Mikael did not look around as he exited, knowing the place was now empty.

It was dark on the boat going back. There was no point in going any further with the investigation. Not that he necessarily believed a single word of it. Whoever was down there would stay—or not. But they wouldn’t be coming up. And no one would be going down. The place was haunted.

As he approached the tower, an unexpected heave lifted the boat up like two hands cupped and gently deposited him at the base. The grass felt soft, like garden lettuce never chilled—only softer. Jack looked back and saw nothing more. Lives intersecting onto infinity. Everything lost. It felt good.

Far off in the distance there was a water spout seeming to pierce the sky.

It glowed pale. And then the horizon was gone.

‘The world is neither round nor flat,’ Jack was thinking. ‘More like a 186

Cornell Box, with meaningful objects pushed into cubicles.’

‘Measuring the gap between one’s distorting reflection & one’s self.’ He was looking through a luminous membrane into the Station as Mikael stumbled out. ‘The manic-depressive New England landscape projected onto history such that the region’s extremes of bleakness and abundance were internalized as emotional touchstones.’

He has been content to live a life that did not follow a straight line but coiled razorlike through intervals of misery, each bit a discouraging echo of the past. He was here before the water rose; they were not. The kids had a term for their current condition—‘leetspeak’—ownership gained through mastery of the internet which had raised them to a higher plane of existence (they thought).

Putnam, a 20th century philosopher had argued that meaning is not in the head but informed by the context in which a concept is encountered and is dependent on a community. He was arguing against the prevailing notion of metaphysical realism where objects and relationships exist independently of how we perceive them. This was wrong headed; deprived of contact with what the words refer to conceived something like a brain in a vat. If human beings could be said to have souls then it was impossible to say that machines did not, he proclaimed.

‘Just a flash in the pan,’ he thought. In his eyes, she was tilting planes of light shifting through otherness. Her thinking flowed into his like water to water. Like Jacobs ladder, ierening deeper and deeper into another, rising up through heaven after heaven. He’d gathered that things had not been well in her world since the loss of communal sentiment. It had to be fought with indirection. The I-Ching had said that. The fragility of the beings taken shattered another generation. He was a reanimation, looking back into a world he would never share, filled with ghosts.

For a few seconds, Jack was back at the curve of the Oyster Bar, holding something circular and milky white; then something snapped shut like a clam, and he was the pearl. ‘Seeing through soiled linen.’ Was he tuning the machine, or was the machine tuning him. And where was she in all this?

Then he was sitting in front of a machine speaking to it.

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“I’m not talking to you; I’m talking to your wife. She’s on the other line,” read Dick’s teleprompter. Mikael was reading the I-Ching in the tower: thunder on the mountain, like a bird rising. Epistemology vs. alternate facts.

This world happened when the EPA was trumped.

“You said six.”

“Down, The sixth.”

They had called it ‘clanging,’ a mode of speech associated with psychosis in which words are associated with their sounds.

She had told him to take the object in his hand and twist it. The she was in completely. Like the responsive vibration of a tuning fork. A precise combination of frequencies.

And then he was the machine, and the machine was him.

The grass had felt soft, like garden lettuce never chilled—only softer.

Jack had looked back and saw nothing more. Lives intersecting—just they two. Everything lost. It felt good.

‘Once we were formed by our geography,” Mikael thought. ‘Miners and autoworkers, laborers in clothing and electrical and transportation industries, produced communities based the fact that they worked and sweated and suffered and lived together creating a tangible product that seemed to them to be imbued with world-historical significance.’

“The Unforgiven’ was Twain’s greatest work; Jim and Huck set out to avenge the blinding of a prostitute in Wyoming.” Jack was cracking himself up.

‘The chance hit of 3 coins spinning upward to collide with the moment of the throw.’ Mikael thought. ‘Now all they had were committees.’

“Black and yellow blood—contemplation—being seen,” he read.

‘A story is the story of a life.’

“He was clean shaven, down to the microbes,” the prompter read.

It had been hard to tell how long he had been in there. Going up hadn’t helped much either.

Jack, now the observer, in the here after, stood facing a triangle of his 188

wife, Mila, and Julie, contemplating the inevitability of temperament, the iron string (as Emerson put it), upon which the moods like glass beads were strung.

Narrative is found in all forms of creativity, including the architect’s plan for public spaces around buildings, unstructured recreation, retail displays and video games. All gone in the here after. In the beginning of the century, someone wrote that a personal narrative was essential to a person’s sense of self or cultural identity. By contrast, a fiction was ‘the sound of the human voice, or many voices, speaking in a variety of accents, rhythms and registers.’

Finally, Jack went to sleep. He had a dream, and it became a world. He found the machine in his pocket. He started to irene. He was alone, and he didn’t want to be. He went looking for the souls of those he and his had lost.

“A narrative breaks down only when community is lost.”

Yes, Mikael was his son. And our lives are the story of our lives.

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Shane Crosby

Skate

Papa gave Dana a pair of metal roller skates for her eighth birthday but

one of the skates was missing string. Mama had a suggestion.

“Go in the closet and get one of those old shoes,” Mama said, her eyes fixed on the television set. Andre the Giant was wrestling Rowdy Roddy Piper.

Dana listened to the crackle of the plastic covered couch as it responded to Mama’s shifting weight. She ran her fingertips along the empty string holes of the skate and pouted her mouth into a “no.” She didn’t want mismatch strings in her new skates. Dana associated mismatched skate strings with the sound of flies on warm trash, roaches scattering at the flip of a kitchen light switch, and the smell of sweat from Mama’s work clothes piled in the corner of the one-bedroom apartment. Dana wanted skate strings that matched because cousin Terra had skate strings that matched. Cousin Terra and skate strings that matched were associated with pink Easy-Bake Oven desserts, ponies and clowns at birthday parties with laughing faces, crisp prickly lush green lawns, a garage big enough for two cars, and a mommy and daddy that ate breakfast together.

When Dana refused Mama’s suggestion for the last time, Mama shook her head and sucked her teeth the way she always did when something disappointed her. Like the time Dana told Mama that Mama’s new boyfriend peeped in when Dana took showers, rubbing himself or like the day Dana’s teacher said that Dana would need to be “held back” a year or like the night Dana said she wanted a job on the corner like the women she walked past on Figueroa Street because they looked glamorous, flicking their cigarette butts, they looked glamorous, in their bright tight clothes, they looked glamorous, stepping off the corner to lean into car windows, talking to men like they owned Figueroa. Like they owned the men. Glamorous. Like the women in the jeans commercials. Glamorous. Like cousin Terra.

When Dana was done talking about glamorous things, Mama sucked her teeth and calmly slapped Dana so hard Dana’s gum flew across the room.

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Mama pressed her face close to Dana’s and whispered, “Keep on and I just might put you on that corner my damn self.”

Mama heaved herself from the couch, pounded the side of the television with a meaty palm and adjusted the rabbit ear antenna. “So let me get this straight,” she said. “You want your daddy to exchange them damn skates for new ones? You hard-headed girl. I told yo ass I’ll put string in that damn skate but you go on and give ‘em back to him. See what happens.” Mama sat back down on the couch and watched Andre the Giant leap across the ring and grab Rowdy Roddy Piper by the throat.

Dana grinned wide with a mind filled with thoughts of skating with cousin Terra down pristine Beverly Hills sidewalks. She was sure that Cousin Terra would call this year to say happy birthday and when cousin Terra did call, Dana would tell her about her new and perfect skates.

“Mama,” Dana said, looking at the floor and then back towards Mama, and then back to the floor.

“Yes, baby?”

“Will Papa be here Friday?”

Most Friday nights Mama had company come over to play cards. Ever since Mama got her new boyfriend Papa had stopped coming by but Mama’s new boyfriend had suddenly disappeared, so Dana was hopeful that Papa would come play cards.

“Yes, he just might come through. But baby. Don’t ask me shit else about skates. That’s between you and your daddy.”

“Yes, Mama.”

“And, Dana.”

“Yes, Mama?”

“Don’t embarrass me this Friday. You understand?”

“No Mama, I mean, yes Mama.”

Friday couldn’t come soon enough for Dana and when it did, Papa didn’t.

Dana said nothing to Mama and cried herself to sleep. She cried herself to sleep three more Fridays in a row and spent her waking days either in the principal’s office or walking along Figueroa Street or staring at her skate while Mama lay spread out on the couch, exhausted, changing channels.

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On the fifth Friday Mama said something that gave Dana hope.

“Baby.”

“Yes, Mama?”

“Don’t embarrass me tonight.”

“Yes, Mama.”

Dana went into the bedroom and placed the skates by the door. Her eyes rolled upward as she counted Mama’s list of Don’t Embarrass Me’s: Don’t air out dirty laundry in front of company. Speak only when spoken to. Stay out of grown folk business.

The sun dipped below the Pacific Ocean as the small apartment began to fill with guests: Mr. Lex with his chewing tobacco spit can, Ms. Mary Mae Bell with her King James Bible and flask, Mr. Ray Del from downstairs, and Tico, Papa’s best friend from the Vietnam war who talked aloud to himself sometimes, staring into some far away jungle. Seeing Tico made Dana hold her hand to her chest to keep it from splitting open. Wherever Tico was, Papa was never far behind. She turned off the bedroom light and sat on the floor with the door cracked to give her a view of the party. Light sliced through the darkness. She watched the guests seat themselves around the kitchen table and exchange pleasantries. Mama searched her stack of blues records and, with the mischievous grin that reminded Dana of school, decided on Johnny Lee Hooker just to get a rise out of Ms. Mary Mae Bell. Johnny Lee Hooker wailed on about the absence of heaven and hell while Dana became the impatient hostage to the residual sounds, smells, and retold imagery of the blue-collar work week. Music, the smell of liquor, and smoke slowly filled every crevice of the apartment, taking everyone high, making everyone forget, rotating the arms of internal clocks back to more youthful days.

Dana marked time by the number of empty bottles next to the table.

The night wore on. Mama cursed Mr. Lex for missing his spit can and Tico mumbled something about “Nixon” and “Agent Orange” a few times.

There was talk of Ronald Reagan and how he was going to live after being shot. Everyone agreed that no man, not even a Republican, deserved to get shot like a mangy stray dog on the sidewalk. Everyone agreed except for Mama.

Mama wished that television stations would stop talking about the president 192

so she could watch her wrestling in peace. Mama didn’t watch wrestling for entertainment. She watched it for technique. Every so often Mama would pull Dana into her wide lap to point out the various maneuvers each wrestler performed, real and unreal. On a good night, depending on how many bottles were opened, Mama would share stories about the South, wrestling in dark bar basements for sport, for money, and how she was forced to quit wrestling due to torn muscle tissue, the darkness of her skin, and the threat of her gender.

Finally, there was a knock on the door. Papa made his entrance. At 5’1” Papa’s Napoleonic strut was meant to mark territory rarely in dispute. His size, and attitude about his size, made him the perfect killing machine before, during, and after Vietnam. Excited as she was about finally giving the skates back to Papa, Dana still had to fight sleep. Her head rolled back and forth in tiny jerks, eyelids heavy on watery eyes. She knew that if she stayed up just a little bit longer, she could give the skates to Papa. Papa usually stayed later to tell her stories about growing up in Mississippi, running through green fields as far as the eye could see, shelling peas on Great-Grandma’s porch and eating dirt candy. Dana didn’t care for dirt candy too much ‘cause it just tasted like dirt to her. Sometimes, depending on how many times he filled his short glass during the night, Papa’s voice would drop really low and he’d talk about Vietnam and running through mud brown fields peppered red. “Some lil’ girls don’t have it as good,” he’d say, staring at her feet. “Some lil’ girls don’t have it as good.”

Papa exchanged a salute with Tico and gave everyone else his customary wink before sitting at the table.

Dana noticed that Mama said nothing to Papa.

Mama said matter-a-factly to no one in particular, “We’re playing Spades,” which was news to everyone else because they had been happily playing Bid Whist most of the night but since the party was six empty bottles deep into the evening no one complained but everyone knew that, as a matter of Friday night card-playing historical record, Papa disliked Spades. Hated it, in fact.

Mr. Ray Del from downstairs intuitively poured Papa a glass of scotch, Tico mumbled, “clacker,” and the first obstacle of the night was cleared.

Mama seated herself across from Papa, making them a team. She dealt 193

everyone cards. Papa spread his cards in his hand for a better view.

“Rumor has it that shooter was trying to impress that pretty white gal, what’s her name? The one who was in that movie about the taxi driver?” Papa asked, as he organized his cards.

“Lord please. We already talked about Reagan getting shot,” Mama said.

“Play cards. Shit.” Mama downed her drink and motioned for a refill. Dana’s eyes darted from one parent to the other. She clutched the skate like any other child would a teddy bear. All Dana could think about was, if Mama or Papa went to jail, she’d have to wait forever to get her new skates.

“Seems to me,” Papa said, ignoring what everyone else was slowly becoming aware of, “If you already talked about the act, then it wouldn’t hurt to talk about the unseen things, like what actually motivated that man to shoot the Commander-In-Chief. Mighty bold act if you ask me but then again, a woman was involved so by default rhyme and reason goes out the window. Personally, I’d like to know if King James might have something to say about that blonde-haired girl, Eve, and that apple.”

Dana saw Ms. Mary Mae Bell leaf through her Bible with the glee of a child during Show and Tell but before Ms. Mary Mae Bell could speak, Mama laid down her cards with a thud. Liquor in glasses swayed back and forth.

“So, Jodie Foster was that fool’s downfall, huh? Mr. Fucking-Know-ItAll?” Papa smiled.

“Which fool?” he asked. Papa placed the ace of spades next to the joker.

The stereo needle reached the end of the record–its mechanical arm lifted, moved back to its resting place and the stereo turned itself off with a click, followed by complete silence.

Tico mumbled, “Beehive.”

Mama looked toward the bedroom door and then back to Papa.

“Since you wanna talk about motivations, what the hell motivated you to get that girl a skate with no string?”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t act simple, Carl. One of them damn skates you gave Dana for her birthday don’t have string and she been buggin’ the hell out of me about 194

getting you over here to take ‘em back.”

“Take ‘em back? Just put string in the goddamn skate.”

Laughter or some timid version of it spread around the table but Mama’s silence also gave everyone pause. Mr. Lex moved his spit can. Mrs. Mary Mae Bell took one last sip from her flask and tucked it under her arm.

Tico mumbled, “My Lai.” “Hell, that’s a grand idea, Carl,” Mama said. “Why didn’t I think of that shit?” Sarcasm, like a razor drawing blood.

“There’s a lot you need to be thinking about,” Papa said coolly, his eyes focused on his cards. “Like that boyfriend of yours. If you would have let that man be a man then maybe he would have acted like a real man and not a boy.”

Mama leaned forward.

“If you could last longer than a three count then maybe you’d be qualified to speak on how a real man should act.”

Papa folded his cards.

“I lasted long enough to push two babies up in you. Not my fault you couldn’t do the rest.” Chairs slowly receded from the table like a full moon tide. Mama and Papa remained.

Mama did what she always did when she was disappointed. That sound traveled across the apartment and into the bedroom like a silent whistle to something deep, profound, and primordial within Dana as she stood between door and door-jam, skate in hand, trembling, wide-eyed to possibility. Many years later, during a college interview, she’ll be asked, “Who in your life has most influenced you?” and she’ll pause. Perplexed. Touched. Thrown off her game. She’ll want to avoid her rehearsed answer and will have the urge to give a response she won’t understand for decades to come. As a graduate student she’ll submit a theoretical manuscript to a top tier developmental psychology journal in which she will outline the possible awakening triggered within her developing subconscious in that one-bedroom apartment, during a card party.

She’ll hypothesize that synapses fired that night, hardwiring subtle paradigm shifts leading to alternative behavioral traits and subconscious realizations that she would not get those new skates, she would never truly play with cousin Terra, smelly work clothes might mean that someone cares enough to 195

make work clothes sweaty, flies on warm trash are the byproduct of purpose driven activities that produce sweaty work clothes, roaches scatter at the flip of a light switch only if there is a light switch to flip, and most importantly, Mama would kill if Dana ever worked a corner.

Mama looked down at the table and sighed.

Tico mumbled, “Incoming.”

Mama lunged across the table with the quickness of a cobra and clasped both hands around Papa’s throat as he stood and lurched backwards, pulling Mama, the table, and everything on it with him to the floor in a red blur of clenched fists, elbows, teeth, and torn flesh.

Beneath a cascade of cards, cigarettes, ashes, whiskey droplets and the King James Bible, Dana walked toward the closet to find old shoes.

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Marley Stuart

Asset My father walks like you hammered rebar down his neck, all the way to his calves.

Written on the wall in red marker, all caps: “Your ability to get up and go to work is an asset to protect.�

Shoulders back, belly out, heels hard on the floor.

After patching the ceiling or pulling wire for more light.

But mornings are worst of all, like sleep was too much to bear.

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Jared Pearce

Ark Me on my left, you on your right, heads crooked and elbows kinked like seraphim atop our bed: flat holder, long box of desire, storing safe in the wake of emotional floods, the anaconda crush, the wildebeest run, the gawks and awkward walks we limp and call, our orioles of despair, our lonely wolverines and curled pangolins, and keeping the gilt walls of commandment to steady our words that oil the gears of the day, and the machines we break sieging the Jericho of love in us, to break into that promised land across the Jordan of our hope. Without tiller, without sail, there’s a storm we pass through, sloshed and savage and mean for living, and without hinge, without nail we press down our container, pecking the scrolled directives, slow leaking divinity into us, bailing out, dark huddling, pushing that sunrise.

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Jack Harvey

His Fifty-Sixth Birthday On the marches of March we march on regardless; birthdays bring no one out of the woodwork; even the birthday boy saws his horse in two.

Spectatio, sweet delicate mouse girl believes; Swanhild the swan maiden swoops down on her priapic darling.

O idle Ides, O pretty days boating along, my idol, I ruffle your rough hair; you toy with my veiny tiller while the winds with cheeks bulging like buttocks blow soft gales.

Our bark flies like a flea over lake and loch.

Wales guards England on the marches;

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in the garden of Eden sword-bladed angels stand like cataracts.

In the urban wastes I guard you.

Watch out, forwards and scouts, danger ahead; enemies, fiends as relentless as German as hard as stones in the cradle.

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Ron McFarland

The Poker Players

Most likely the statement, “Misery loves company,” is proverbial, with

origins in Latin, Greek, or some more ancient tongue, and in The Tempest, the goofy Trinculo, speaking of the man-beast Caliban, observes that “Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows,” or most of us would say it, “Misery makes strange bedfellows.” Shakespeare often launches wisdom from unlikely sources. But it has long seemed to me that “poker” might aptly supplant “misery” in those adages. Poker obviously requires company and the several folks gathered at any given table often qualify as “strange bedfellows” indeed, irrespective of the gender of said “bedfellows.”

So, here’s my poker story dating from more than fifty years ago, 1966, and I’m teaching English at a small college in east Texas where the humidity on too many days comes close to matching the temperature, and air-conditioning is all too rare. My classrooms, the library, and my small, windowless office rank with my garage apartment among the non-air-conditioned spaces of my brief sojourn in The Lone Star State, where I promptly acquire a taste (all too predictably?) for Lone Star beer—the tall bottle version, which costs under two bucks a six-pack, as I recall. Not air-conditioned also are the sites where the half a dozen of us gather monthly to swelter over stud and draw poker—hilo, anaconda, pass-the-trash, do-ya-wanna, New Orleans, Chicago—nickel, dime, quarter—three-raise limit. Nope, we did not play Texas hold ‘em. A single joker serves as the only wild card, counting as the potential fifth ace, otherwise wild in straights or flushes. Split-pot hands predominate. It’s a friendly game. If you win five bucks you’ve had a big night. We start dealing at seven and no matter what, the game ends at midnight.

To appreciate what follows, by the way, you don’t need to know or care much at all about poker, or cards, or gambling. At least not any more than you need to know or care about whales or whaling when you try to read Moby Dick. Not that I claim to be any Herman Melville. And after all, this is just a little story, not an epic novel. And for the record, we rarely called ourselves

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gamblers. We called ourselves poker players. It was a game, and we played, but we didn’t “gamble.” And yes, I know the word “gamble” derives from that word “game.” But like I said, we called ourselves poker players.

Maybe, despite how I analogized misery and poker, what makes for good poker games, for a table you want to visit again and again, resembles what makes for a good sit-com: a good cast of characters. And as in a successful sitcom, an occasional guest spot sometimes proves . . . interesting, or profitable, and sometimes, yes, irksome. So in addition to me, the young (mid-twenties then) English instructor teaching a 5-course load that includes freshman comp and surveys of American and British literature, we have Brian, who teaches economics and will leave in another year to become a city manager for a town somewhere in Arizona; Bill, an artist, who will haul me off for a weekend in The Big Easy in the fall, where we will attempt to run a spatter paint machine for tourists in Jackson Square and get ourselves deported in a heartbeat by locals who specialize in such high art as pastels on newsprint and bright paint daubed on black velvet; Jerry, who used to play on the offensive line at the college and who works as a guard at the women’s medium security prison near town; and two army majors who teach in the ROTC program, Mack Blanchard and Ed Held, both of whom have seen “some bad shit” in Nam. My brother spent a year there during the Tet Offensive of 1968, and he assures me there was no “good shit” in Vietnam. I’d just lucked into a 2-A occupational deferment, as if English instructors were somehow vital to national security.

The pair of officers were delightfully mismatched, but they seemed to get along well enough, at least at the poker table. Mack had served in the Delta, if I remember correctly, and he told us more than once about what the Cong did to teachers in the supposedly strategic and secure hamlets. The mayors or headmen first, and then the teachers, doctors and nurses too. He’d seen heaps of lopped off limbs, and he’d seen heads displayed on poles. Male or female, the Cong didn’t care. Ed had been in country, too, and he corroborated Mack’s lurid stories, but he rarely added anything to them. One exception involved a vividly ghoulish account of a night spent on the edge of a rice paddy with a private, “just a kid” he kept saying, who would lose a leg from stepping on a 202

set of poisoned punji sticks, and the place was infested with leeches, and then “some damned fool,” some “rookie,” lit a cigarette and they were promptly pounded by mortars. “Lost four guys that night,” he said.

Mack and Ed had been captains then, but they’d been promoted, “the upside of war,” Ed said drily. It’s the kind of remark Mack would not have made. They were both career officers, and they had mixed feelings about ROTC, but they weren’t exactly complaining about their present assignment.

Mack had seven years in, Ed just four. Mack had graduated West Point and he exuded the sort of stiff professionalism you’d expect from an Academy grad. He was quiet, reserved. I imagined his men equally respected and feared him, but they probably felt confidence in him. He was the kind of officer who would get you out of it alive, I guessed, but what the hell did I know about it? Nothing, not a damned thing. I was an English instructor with a freshly minted master’s degree and minimal teaching experience, and I had a fiancée back at Florida State who might or might not want to join me in Texas at the end of the year. I’d been a very good Boy Scout, made Eagle by age thirteen, loved camping and enjoyed the paramilitary drills and exercises my troop emphasized. Our scoutmaster had seen action on destroyers in World War Two, and he told us we might be lucky enough one day to have the chance to die for our country. He actually did say that, and more than once. I wonder now if he re-upped for Korea. I’ll bet he didn’t. He had a good job with Florida Power & Light.

Ed had gone to college somewhere in the Midwest and been commissioned upon graduation. His family didn’t have money to send him to school, and his grades weren’t great, so the ROTC scholarship had worked well for him, and when he graduated hardly anyone had heard of Vietnam. He’d been a marginal student in business ad, he said, so a few years in the army looked okay, and right away he got posted to Germany, where he met his beautiful wife Lotte—he called her “Lottie,” and sometimes, echoing Hemingway’s pet name for Marlene Dietrich, “The Kraut.” She was working at the PX. So yeah. If we ever played at Mack’s apartment, I don’t recall, but we played at Ed’s place several times in the couple of years I was in Texas, so I got to feast my eyes on Lottie the Kraut more than once. Truth be told, she wasn’t 203

really “beautiful,” but she was attractive, a little big-boned, I suppose. What was the word we used for it back then? “Zaftig.” Is that even a real word? It sounds German. It meant generously breasted. I don’t think I’ve heard that word for about fifty years. She had soft-looking blonde hair and big green eyes, and she was nice to us, nice to everyone, and although she spoke English quite well, she had a pronounced German accent that I found charming. I’d taken a couple of years of German at State, so I liked to stumble over a few words and phrases, and Lottie always flattered my pronunciation. “Dein Deutsch ist so gut,” she would tell me, grinning. She flashed a lovely smile.

Picture a stereotypical German barmaid at a Hofbräuhaus, also stereotypical, or perhaps a stereotypical Biergarten.

Ed liked to say that when he won at poker he told Lottie he’d won twice as much as he really did, and when he lost, he told her he’d lost half of what he did. They’d been married only two years, no kids. He’d been wounded in Nam, but not too bad, he insisted, barely enough to win him a Purple Heart.

He wouldn’t talk about it. I think, in a way, he was embarrassed by the medal.

Every so often I see one of those Purple Heart license plates. I suspect that would be one of the last things Ed would ever attach to his car. You know, I don’t recall exactly how the subject came up, but it did. As I remember it, Jerry asked Mack if he’d ever shot anyone, which is just the sort of thing he’d ask about, if you knew Jerry. He was a kid, really, just turned twenty-two.

He’d messed up both knees so bad in football that he couldn’t have enlisted if he’d wanted to; also, he was married with two kids, a two-year-old and a newborn, so he wasn’t going anywhere. Weird thing: we’re all beer drinkers except for Jerry, who doesn’t drink at all—he’s a Mountain Dew guy.

I do remember exactly what Mack said to Jerry: “I’d rather shoot than get shot at, that’s for damned sure.” So yeah, he was evasive about it, and I couldn’t blame him. Anyway, when Jerry asked Ed, he said he “damned sure had been ‘shot at,’” and he “wouldn’t recommend it.” Then he laughed and so did we, and he said, “It was just a flesh wound, like they say in the movies.”

And we all laughed again, except for Mack. Jerry laughed, too, but I don’t think he quite got it. He was the worst poker player of the lot. His broad face was his tell. Any time he had a decent hand, his face would light up like he 204

was embarrassed to have hit one for a change, and if it was a draw game, you could see his fingers go white as he gripped his cards. Funny. He wasn’t very sharp and he wasn’t very lucky, but he was your classic good ol’ boy and we all liked him. The second worst player was Mack, who was plenty sharp enough, but not lucky at all. Still, he loved the game, or maybe he just enjoyed the scene. There was always lots of table talk about everything from guessing who was bluffing, to race problems, to LBJ. But neither Jerry nor Mack contributed much when it came to the jabber. I admit a lot of it was me, but Bill and Ed kicked in their fair share—they were talkers. Everyone teased Jerry. No one teased Mack.

Mack had been married and divorced. He had a daughter “somewhere in California,” he said. He never heard from either his ex-wife or his “exdaughter” (his term). Mack was married to the army, Bill said, a career man with a vengeance, and Mack appeared to agree, but in fact we all knew he was seeing a nurse who worked at the campus infirmary, a strikingly beautiful Texas native with raven-black hair and flawless ivory skin. Her name was Belle, Belle Blanchard, and she was almost frightening in her aloof beauty.

She was Texas aristocracy, daughter of a wealthy rancher up in the panhandle, and she could trace her ancestry back to the Confederate general, John Bell Hood. Thus, her name. I believe I saw her no more than two or three times in those years. I was blown away each time and struggled to keep myself from staring at her, or even from glancing in her direction. The very last thing I wanted was to make eye contact. In an odd way, I think I was frightened of her beauty, at least daunted by it. Mack rarely, if ever, left her side when they were out in public.

Ed and Lottie were fun to be around, easy people, relaxed, smart in some ways but not very sophisticated. About Ed’s prospects as a career officer it was hard to say, but he’d recently signed on for another four years. Neither Ed nor Mack wanted to go back to Nam, but both of them did.

Bill was a few years older than the rest of us and had done a stint in the air force. He’d spent a year in Greenland working with an air refueling outfit and two years at Chanute AFB in central Illinois. His military life was “bland”—the word he used to describe it—and boring, which was what I 205

figured he meant. I knew a poet who spent much of the Second World War on a destroyer plying the icy waters off Alaska. His poems were clipped, terse, and remarkably quiet. His images could only be defined as frigid. I bought one of his books and he signed it (this was years later), but I read only a few of the poems, and I was never inclined to open the book again. He signed the book simply, “Regards” and his name. A couple of years after his death, I sold the book at Powell’s in Portland for three times what I paid for it—no, four times. But I still feel uneasy about that, like you shouldn’t sell off a book you’ve had someone autograph.

Oh yes, Brian, the economics prof. He was a few years older than I, thirty or so, married to a cute redhead named Sue and the father of a bright fiveyear-old boy who probably evolved into a Henry James child prodigy. I’ll be boastful enough to say that I was the best poker player of the bunch, but Brian was a close second. They owned probably the lone house in town that featured a bona fide bomb shelter. Yeah, we did play poker one night down there in the shelter, but it proved claustrophobic as all hell, and everyone lost money that night but Mack. Go figure. Obviously, a two-year sampling does not provide adequate evidence, but from what I could tell, the Point does not necessarily equip career army officers to thrive at the poker table. Maybe only those who slip off to Benny Havens’ Pub acquire that proficiency. But that night our stoic major prospered. He played like a genius. He could not lose.

Brian took home a dollar or two, and I about broke even, but Mack cleaned up.

Where were we all going? Those couple of years in that small college town in east Texas touched us all in different ways, but the defining event proved to be not the war or the draft, and not a disastrous poker game, although the night Brian’s cousin from Cleveland insisted on joining in and brought a bottle of Jim Beam, most of which he guzzled solo before ten o’clock, came close. When it came to poker, we all (except for Jerry) stuck with beer. The definitive event occurred at Bill’s opening at a chic gallery in Houston. Our town was located in a dry county—twenty miles across the Trinity River to a pair of rundown bars and the nearest beer (no hard stuff). Liquor could be imbibed in cities like Houston, about sixty miles to the south, by paying five dollars for a temporary membership in a drinking club. Mind you, those were 206

the days of thirty-cent gas and five-cent stamps, so five simoleons meant something. You could buy a new car for under $3,000 and a decent house for under $15,000. So long as you weren’t black, life in east Texas was affordable and pretty good, if you didn’t mind the heat and humidity. Some Texans were hailing the Astrodome, which opened in April ‘65, as the eighth wonder of the contemporary world.

Well, we rarely got together with our wives or girlfriends, but then I was the single guy, so maybe the others did party together some, but I don’t think so. Brian and Sue would invite me over for dinner occasionally, and Bill and I liked to zip across the county line to hit those bars, one of which was run by an obscene old peckerwood named Bronc, who walked with a crutch and claimed he’d been on the rodeo circuit sometime back. The other bar featured Tina, a gorgeous one-armed barmaid who brandished her ample breasts as if they were weapons. She was a remarkable pool shark. She’d nestle her short cue in the little V created between the stump of her left forearm and her elbow—you could see the talc in the crook there—and she’d let fly. She loved to hustle the college boys, who seemed to enjoy losing if only to watch her nestle their dollar bills into her deep, sweaty cleavage. She had a way of licking her lips that would distract all but the most serious pool players.

Fortunately, pool wasn’t my game, but I did like to watch her in action.

But back to Bill’s gallery opening in Houston. It was a solo exhibition and his first in several years, he said, and potentially his biggest, and he hoped his most profitable. Certainly, it was slated for one of the city’s most renowned galleries, although at that time, as I’m now aware, Houston was only beginning to emerge as a city that cared anything at all about art and culture, so it probably didn’t boast that many art galleries then, renowned or otherwise. The art and culture scenes constituted a mere subset of the more predominant and popular (and intense) sports rivalries that pitted Houston against Dallas—then and now. As you may know, in 1960 the Dallas Cowboys stung Houston by landing the NFL franchise, while poor Houston had to make do with the Oilers of the newly formed American Football League. Bragging rights. And Texans, then and now, are big on bragging rights—I knew Texans in 1966 who were still plenty sore about Alaska being admitted to the union 207

in 1959. But if Dallas had the NFL Cowboys, Houston could boast of the Astros, the 1965 moniker shift from the old Colt .45s, while Dallas was bereft of major league baseball till ‘72. Symphonies and art galleries were budding in both cities in the mid-1960s, but they had yet to blossom.

I couldn’t speak for my fellow gamblers—poker players—but the prospect of that opening really excited me, if only because of the novelty. My 24-yearold shadow had never crossed the threshold of an art museum at that time, let alone a private gallery. I had no idea what to expect, or how to dress—was this to be a coat-and-tie affair? Indeed, it was, Bill informed us. The ladies would wear cocktail dresses. Bill would perform as the evening’s celebrity.

Presumably, as I understood it, he would stroll about the gallery answering questions about this or that painting, what he meant by it, what inspired it, what painting techniques he employed, his favorite media, whose work he admired. That sort of thing. The gallery owner, a distinguished matron of the arts in her sixties, silver-haired, would provide spectacular hors d’oeuvres, and champagne would flow, and I confess I had only the slightest experience with that cosmopolitan beverage. In fact, I had imbibed wine (a mediocre rose) on only two or three prior occasions, my other experiences with vinology having been limited to covert boyhood sips of the Mogen David my beer-quaffing parents had been gifted with somewhere along the line and the cooking sherry Mom used when she Grandma baked fruitcakes for Christmas. As I said, those days I was strictly a beer-drinker, and Lone Star was good enough for me. Art profs and artists from the University of Houston and Rice University would be there, along with the art critic from the Chronicle—much would depend on his (or her) review. Glamour, it would be an evening of high glamour.

The two majors and their ladies drove down together, while the rest of us crammed into Bill’s two-tone green ’62 VW bus. Bill’s wife Claire drove and the rest of us worked over a six-pack of Lone Star. Jerry excused himself— couldn’t get off at the prison, he said, but I guessed he couldn’t really picture himself at an art gallery. He was shy, young and shy—it wouldn’t have been his scene. Jerry took me out on his deer stand once—that was more his scene.

I saw a local girl a couple of times, allowed myself to forget my Tallahassee fiancée, and one of those times we double-dated with Jerry and his wife (I 208

forget her name) at the drive-in theater. That was also more his scene, and maybe mine, too, back then. We had a good time and I felt like I was back in high school.

The gallery was smaller than I thought it would be, brightly lit, and crowded with people who looked like they were accustomed to being elegant.

The gallery owner and her gawky assistant, who turned out to be her daughter home for the summer from Sarah Lawrence, met us at the door and swiftly drew Bill away from us, Claire included, and steered him toward a clutch of patrons who appeared particularly elegant and prosperous as well. The owner’s name was Cheryl Kittell, pronounced “ch,” not “sh,” she stressed, and the accent must fall on the second syllable of her family name. KIT-tell was one thing, we were given to understand, and Kit-TELL something altogether else.

The daughter, whose name was Sharon, raised her eyebrows and sounded a slight hiss as her mother instructed our enunciations. I liked the daughter right away, and in fact she proved an ideal hostess, handing us copies of the catalog and leading us directly to the hors d’oeuvres and champagne.

Although the gallery was air-conditioned, the machine did not appear to be up to the challenge, and I discreetly unfastened the top button of my shirt under my tie. This was the era before aluminum zirconium infused antiperspirants, and I could feel my Old Spice stick washing away under my arm. I didn’t panic, but I was seized with an attack of self-consciousness the likes of which I had not experienced since the cotillion held at the end of Mrs. Brown’s Ballroom Dancing Class when I was thirteen and had to be coaxed out of the men’s locker room at the country club by one of the chaperones. If only to distract myself from myself, I turned my attention to the art.

Bill’s paintings surprised all of us, I think. I’m not sure what we expected, but the artwork we’d seen on the walls of his and Claire’s place reflected an opposite end of the spectrum. Entering their home, you’d have seen a large oil depicting a prairie landscape, meticulous in detail, muted colors, strangely captivating. I’m not versed in such matters, but I can still see that canvas and although whatever I could say about it would make it sound very ordinary, the effect of that piece was anything but. In the room where we played cards, the walls were hung with half a dozen or more smaller paintings, some 209

watercolors (a covered bridge, a country school with children at play—almost primitive in nature, like a Grandma Moses), some temperas (a voluptuous nude we felt obliged to comment on from time to time—Brian liked to show her his hand when playing five-card draw, a sure sign he was about to fold), and a couple of prints. One of the latter depicted the Loop at night, and the other, quite different in style even to my untutored eye, was of the Quarter in New Orleans, number three of ten I recall for some reason, obviously a very limited printing. From a literary perspective, the works were as varied as Faulkner and Hemingway, or Elizabeth Bishop and Wallace Stevens. They hardly belonged in the same room together. I suppose they reflected Bill’s eclectic tastes, or maybe they belonged to Claire. She’d been studying art history when they met.

Bill told us and Claire knew and admired the artists, but his own work could not have been more startlingly, even stridently, different. His oils and acrylics were mostly large—like four feet by six feet in several cases. The dimensions were expressed in centimeters. I knew enough about terminology to guess his work would qualify as “abstract expressionism,” but after that, I would not even today be able to say much about what he was after. Bright colors blazed across the canvases, many of which seemed (if this adjective makes much sense) angry, even furious. Yet the human form was rarely and only marginally detectable. Was that a woman’s distorted face? Was that a human skull? And objects appeared only as approximations of what they might be—a pistol or a hammer, a tree or a lamp, a building of some sort or a semi? The elegant patrons, however, sustained a clamor that I interpreted as celebratory, or curious, or intrigued. It was hard to say.

It was hard, even then, to say what I felt. I remember trying to find words I might use to express my reactions to Bill about his art without being inane (“interesting work”) or dishonest (“I really like some of these”). I mean it’s not like the paintings were dull or uninteresting, and after all, I did like some of them, sort of. My father was fond of the word “impressive,” which he would employ on a surprising variety of occasions, but I knew it wasn’t the right word for me. I might be forthright and ask, “Bill, what the hell are you trying to do here?” But after all, he was a friend and a member of the table, a 210

fellow poker aficionado, a gambler. Maybe all art involves gambling. Maybe that’s what this was all about—a high stakes roll of the artist’s dice—or an elaborate bluff: either see me or fold. But after all, I knew Bill would never ask us, or me, what we thought. He might want to know, but he wasn’t the kind of guy to confront you and say, “Well, what did you think?” Is there anything to be said for stunned silence? “I’m speechless,” I might have been able to say. “I don’t know what to say.” Well, that would’ve been honest enough. “Amazing.” Really? Would I have said that? This was the era before such fashionable buzzwords as “incredible” or “awesome.” But as I said, Bill wasn’t going to ask.

The evening moved along smoothly enough, and an hour or so into it, Cheryl Kittell managed to halt the buzz of conversation by tinkling her champagne flute, after which she said a few words about “our distinguished and wonderfully talented artist.” Polite applause followed, and soon little red dots appeared here and there on the tags beside the paintings, and with each one, it seemed, Bill’s smile grew broader, although the champagne likely played some role in that. Every now and then I’d catch a word, like “wow,” or “isn’t that something?” or “hmm.” That latter expression, the judicious “hmm,” struck me as a good choice of diction.

I began to look for the rest of the gamblers, particularly for the majors.

For whatever reason, I was exceptionally curious to hear what they’d have to say, although I’ll confess to having been motivated largely by some imp of the perverse. God knows, I was telling myself, if I can’t find the vocabulary, professorial wannabe and closet poet that I am, what will two career army officers say? I noticed Ed and Lottie first. She was wearing what I would later come to recognize as some variation of “the little black dress,” and it functioned as an apt setting for her radiant blonde hair the way a carefully devised gold band might set off a costly diamond. I was so surprised, however, to see how attentively they appeared to be examining one of the large paintings that I lost my concentration on the lovely Lottie. “I see something of Picabia in this one,” Lottie was saying, “und dat one near to the door, maybe Severini?

Ja, the dynamics, the motion of Gino Severini. Ve saw one at de MOMA, ja? You remember?” Ed nodded. Lottie’s accent tended to kick in when she 211

expressed excitement. “Listen to The Kraut,” Ed said, smiling. “She knows.”

Of course, at that time I did not know Picaba or Severini from Picasso or Rembrandt. Did Ed know about art? All I could say was “hmm.”

I asked them if they’d seen Mack and Belle, but they said they hadn’t noticed them at all after they first came in.

That’s when I saw Belle, and for a change Mack was not with her. She sighted us and lifted her beautiful and flawless porcelain face, and her glossy black hair, shoulder-length, swayed like liquid ebony. She was wearing a sleeveless burgundy satin cocktail dress that barely kissed her knees. Her finely sculpted shoulders made me desperate to find some casual reason to touch them. Impossible. These were the days, at least there in Texas, before the informal embrace became almost universal. In my family we were handshakers, and that didn’t change until after my brother came back from Nam. Then, over the next several years, it changed altogether, and we became a family of huggers. But I had no hope of casually taking Belle Blanchard into my arms that evening at the gallery in Houston, and it’s just as well, as I’m confident I’d have found myself metamorphosed into some avatar of Count Dracula. Major Mack Blanchard would have emerged in the form of Professor Abraham Van Helsing, and things would not have gone well for me.

“Where’s Mack?” we asked, pretty much in unison.

“We’re going to have to leave,” Belle said. “Mack’s . . .” she paused, “got an awful headache, a migraine.”

Now what’s odd here is that right away, even though I’d seen Belle on only a couple of other occasions, I knew something was off. For one thing, I’d never known Mack to have a migraine, or a headache of any sort. “We need to go,” Belle said.

Still under her spell, I followed Belle to the parking lot along with Ed and Lottie, and there stood the major, pale and perspiring, leaning against his new Buick Riviera—almost the same color as Belle’s frock. It could’ve been the heat and humidity, of course—August evenings in east Texas can be grim—but Mack was not one to pretend. “No sir,” the battle-hardened Major Blanchard declared, he had experienced something like this before, in Nam, flying on a chopper the one time he’d had to do that, what he could only 212

describe as some form of vertigo, in this case brought on by Bill’s paintings, but producing the exact same symptoms. We’d have laughed, and later we did, or at least I did, but at that moment it was no laughing matter. We never told Bill about it, though—just told him Belle hadn’t felt well—she told us to make that excuse, and to tell Bill how much they, she and Mack, appreciated the opening. But I think Bill knew, or at least he suspected something.

They say, “Music hath charms to soothe the savage beast.” But in fact, the line comes from a play by William Congreve: “Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast.” I wouldn’t have known that then, but after almost fifty years of English professoring, you make sure to get the quotes down accurately.

1697. Well, perhaps painting hath some powerful charms as well, although not necessarily soothing ones. Bill’s work sold well at the opening and for a couple of years after that, I understand, but he never made it big time, not even, really, on the Houston art scene as it evolved. Right after the opening, Bill threw himself maniacally into his painting, so much so that our poker sessions came to an abrupt halt. Not long after Christmas, Ed and Mack got orders sending them back to Vietnam, and I regret to say that I lost track of them after that. I left Texas at the end of the ’67 spring semester and started work on my doctorate. My Florida fiancée finished her degree and joined the Peace Corps, serving in Ecuador, where she fell in love with a fellow volunteer. I’ve also lost track of her.

Now, fifty plus years later, I suppose I could track all of them down, thanks to the internet, but I don’t want to think what might have become of the majors and their wives, or Jerry and his wife, or Bill and Claire, and I certainly don’t want to think of Belle Blanchard as an old lady, even as an attractive and well-preserved and distinguished, silver-haired old lady, maybe a general’s wife. Somewhere along the line I heard that Brian and Sue divorced, so you see what I mean. That’s precisely the kind of thing in this information-burdened age that I do not want to know about. I don’t care to take the risk, don’t want to gamble with these memories, these friends who meant so much to me then. I have not played poker in years.

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Louis Gallo

Clearing the Attic I. Ah, wrapped in layers of cloth, an excavation, I, the eager archaeologist— two Made in Occupied Japan paper fans, beautiful when flared as a peacock’s tail, so absurdly frail— how could they have survived all these jaw-toothed years? Like the old flower in a crannied wall that despite all odds, despite grass and Round-up, despite solid rock . . . suddenly blooms in spring.

How account for the persistence of the stunning delicate in a world of threats and mayhem and brutality?

Must we resort to luck, that exasperating quality or force— who knows what luck is?

I open the fan, pinch its spokes, color bleeds into the room as I fan myself, thinking of Hiroshima.

II. I blow dust from the top of still another box full of what I regard as pure lagniappe— a solid brass deco perfume bottle

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from the thirties, a beaded deco purse no doubt the prize of some vamp of the Jazz Age, a tiny celluloid Donald Duck, the long-beaked version circa 1929, a Tiffany-like paper weight— scratched glass but nevertheless . . . some strings of glass Mardi Gras beads made in Czechoslovakia, now worth a fortune, a gutta-percha case with copper trimming and a small tintype framed within, some chalk, hand-painted Easter ducks from the late forties, an ivory cigarette holder bearing the inscription “Montleone Hotel,” an envelope bulging with nineteenthcentury chromolithographic trade cards and cartes de visite (one I swear bearing the likeness of Walt Whitman), a Lalique bud vase, solid despite its nearly invisible hairline.

I see that years ago I wrote on the box “For Maddie”—I had hoped to save what I loved for my then infant daughter.

Now grown, she happens to be sitting on the sofa across the room as I inspect each cherished item.

She cautiously observes me pull every doodad from the box, spots her name on it, and, finally, with a sigh exclaims, “Daddy, we don’t want that shit. Sell it on ebay.”

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III. An old Hibernia Bank cash envelope, yellowed and curling at its edges, and I hoping for some lost cash find instead four miniature celluloid throws from an ancient Mardi Gras krewe.

Maybe my mother slipped the envelope into my pocket on one of my visits.

Perfect condition: the elephant trumpeting, the donkey sulking like Eeyore, the three conjoined monkeys— see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil— once clasping eyes, the next ears, a third, mouth.

And the last, a colorful whistle.

Can’t make toys of celluloid anymore.

They can burst into flames at any moment and scorch children.

I have lived with these trinkets all my life; they have embedded themselves into my primal mind.

And to commemorate I raise the amulet to my lips and like Childe Roland toot the whistle in most dubious triumph.

It works, of course, and startles Baby, asleep and purring on the carpet.

A shrill squeak of the past silent all these years, the past terrifying my cat. Terrifying me.

IV. Sorting through one more box,

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a futile attempt to unload, I found one of those Victorian chromolithographs, a dainty envelope with a decorative inscription on the flap—forget me not.

Inside, a slip of parchment-like cardboard scalloped at the edges, a work of art, with the signature of Charles F. Gehris.

Alas, I’m afraid everyone has forgotten Charles, and, while tempted to toss the thing in my trash bag, instead I stuck it in my shirt pocket for safekeeping since, I assume, I alone now remember Charles F. Gehris.

Whoever he was, wherever he is— the sadness of it all, the desperation.

Forget me not.

V. And the old love letters in faded script, the flowery loops and sprawling vowels, some crumpled, some tattered, some bursting into flames in my hands.

VI. So thus I have become Dr. Frankenstein who stitches together not body parts to create new grotesque Adams and Eves but the magician who conjoins specks, shreds, broken toys, love letters, ivory, brass, tin, specks of gold, ingots, ephemera, ash trays, beaded purses, rags, bottles, ancient pin cushions, pewter, bottle openers, tobacco crate labels,

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leather books, wooden cigar boxes, aqua and milk glass, postcards, box cameras‌ all of it, omnia, the loose ends of existence, the discards, rejects, maimed yet beautiful, pristine in their disintegration, persistence, so that I might reinstate, recreate, resurrect time itself, the greatest monster, that ultimate brigand and saboteur, to lasso it back, to live it once again and pretend to conquer it.

Bah, nothing of the kind. Rather, a divestiture, a diaspora of each pungent second strung together like these rosary beads, the yearning that it melts away into itself, dissolves, swirls like mist into some primal cloud of unknowing, that I may unknow it, that it may never return to lull me again with its sweet, rhapsodic requiem.

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David James

Can’t Buy Me Love “Money can buy happiness if it is used to buy time.” from “Findings,” Harper’s, Oct. 2017

My friend uses his money to buy planets and stars, even a few hundred asteroids.

He can look up at the night sky and see investments, ownership, real estate.

My sister, on the other hand, bought two film genres—film noir and romantic comedies, post-1980.

She seems happy but it’s hard to tell.

Using a completely different tactic, this guy I know from Thailand bought virtue, courage, and persistence.

My neighbor Becky bought an elephant in a wooden crate while Jimmy, my cousin, purchased the other-worldly belief of five witches on broomsticks.

Some try to buy love; others try for status.

One wag bought a first-class ticket straight to hell.

If I had money and could afford it, I’d buy huge buckets of laughter to relieve the tension, the pressure. I’d laugh my way to the very end and go out with a smile on my lips, fate or no fate.

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C. L. Cummings

The Calling Desire is something primitive, a belly button buried, something that impels, even without your permission.

My body rings like a telephone waiting to be answered, the tailwind of a southern breeze naming (me) a name I faintly recognize

and

something snaps + comes undone something uncoils + comes writhing.

/

It is said that afterwhile your home will send for you.

That you are part + parcel of that place, and you’ll play your part as parcel when it calls

you’ll return, exhausted.

/

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I think to holler out, to give back what’s well alive + struggling.  I think to holler out.

I think to holler out.

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Don Stoll

The Friend

Ami was not Ami Sehene’s real name, if there is such a thing. His mother

called him Ami. This began before he started school because at an early age he had established that he was a friendly boy. His mother came from an educated Francophone family, of higher social status than his father’s family. His father would have been satisfied to go on calling the boy Mutara, the name given shortly after his birth because it had belonged to two of Rwanda’s kings, including the one who occupied the throne when Mr. Sehene was born. But because Mr. Sehene loved his wife he did not object to her insistence on calling their son Ami. He saw this manifestation of her Francophilia as an affectation, but as a harmless and perhaps endearing one. Besides, the name was an apt expression of his son’s amiable nature. Like his wife, Mr. Sehene believed that anyone who gave their son a chance would appreciate his friendliness and set aside all reservations about the foreign origin of his name.

Ami was Tutsi. This would bring him ill tidings in 1994, when many Rwandans set aside any ambivalence they may have felt about the ultimate reality of tribal distinctions and decided that nothing in the world was more real.

One day in the spring of that year—if there is such a thing as spring in a country blessed by a temperate tropical highland climate where the temperatures vary little throughout the year and are lower than in most equatorial countries because of the high elevation—several weeks into the genocide, Ami found himself standing with a shovel in his hand at the edge of a pit he’d been commanded to dig so that he could die in it. Ami’s despair was mitigated slightly by appreciation of the ironic fact that the man with a bow and a quiver full of arrows sitting nearby, shaded from the hot sun beneath which Ami bent over with his shovel, had been a friend.

A jacaranda shaded Ami’s former friend. A person who had attained sufficient moral distance from what was happening to take note of its aesthetic dimension might have asked why the man brushed from his pale yellow shirt

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the occasional blossom that fell softly on that shirt while Ami toiled. The purple of the blossoms looked splendid against the pale yellow background.

Ami and the man in the pale yellow shirt sitting beneath the jacaranda had played football together in school, which they’d finished not five years before. They had played goalkeeper and fullback, respectively. They had been resolute but flawed players. Each had often covered to prevent a goal that the other’s mistake would have let in.

Football partnership appeared in retrospect to be a flimsy basis for friendship in light of the man’s recent choice of identity as a Hutu committed to eradication of all Tutsis. Ami nevertheless thought he’d caught a lucky break since execution by a man he knew and had liked would be swift. Swift death had not so far been the experience of every victim of the genocide. Ami knew that his mother and father and brother and sister had died in circumstances suggesting the possibility of prolonged suffering. Ami had accepted that he must die. But since it would go fast, he would welcome it.

Ami’s old friend surprised him, though.

“I want you to suffer,” he said as he finally strolled out of the shade into the midday sun as Ami indulged in a brief respite from his labor.

He shot two arrows into Ami, one above each knee. Ami had been leaning on the handle of his shovel, with its angled blade thrust into the earth at his feet so that the tool could securely support his weight. Ami therefore fell forward onto the ground.

The bowman became angry with himself. Hunger for his lunch had caused him to act in haste, without giving thought to how he would achieve his end of making his victim tumble backward into the pit. But the bowman deflected his anger onto his victim. He complained bitterly and abused Ami with bad language as he dragged him to the edge before shoving him in. He walked away singing the old Miriam Makeba song, “Malaika,” in a reedy tenor voice.

“Wait,” Ami called out. “Didn’t I dig the pit so you could bury me?”

“Yes,” the bowman answered. “But I’ve decided that would be too much work.”

Losing blood, unable to walk and therefore with no interest in trying to haul himself out of the pit, and, as far as he knew, many kilometers away from 223

any current friend, Ami waited for death. To comfort himself as he waited he sang “Malaika,” which had stuck in his head. He did not sing continuously as the bowman had. As if oblivious to the futility of the exercise, Ami worked at translating from the Swahili version, the only one he knew, into English so that his English might improve.

The bowman had failed to deprive Ami of water. He’d wanted his victim to drink only while he toiled so that he would not have to devote to the execution an entire day for which he had additional plans, including the courting of the young lady he hoped to make his wife. But Ami had snatched his water bottle from the ground before dropping into the pit. The bowman demanded the bottle and threatened to shoot more arrows into Ami, who asked him how much worse his situation could become. *** Later, Ami would speculate that the water had kept him alive until his recue, but it was only speculation. He couldn’t tell Sarah and George how long he’d spent in the pit. Having busied himself for what seemed like a long time with “Malaika,” he lost consciousness. He regained it in the hospital. He’d been taken there by soldiers of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, the insurgent army led by Paul Kagame, who would become Rwanda’s President. Something Ami could have told Sarah and George but wouldn’t was his would-be executioner’s identity. He’d withheld that from the Rwandan Patriotic Front, too. Ami believed the man had been executed by Kagame’s army. But he wasn’t sure, and he wasn’t sure about George and Sarah, and he believed in forgiveness.

Sarah and George had come to Rwanda’s capital, Kigali, to meet the man that their son, Peter, had just finished working for. Peter was in California, starting college. But that was after he and Ami had developed a mutual admiration while Peter spent several months volunteering for Ami’s nonprofit, Friend on the Street. Friend on the Street took in boys who’d lost or been abandoned by their parents.

Ami had decided that Sarah and George should be exposed to more than his country’s miseries. He’d hired a four-by-four and a driver to take him and George and Sarah to the far north of his tiny country for the purpose of

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enjoying the tropical beauty of Lake Kivu.

In a boat on the lake, Ami had told them the story of the bowman. Ami’s guests were silent for a long time after he’d finished.

“You must still think about it all the time,” George finally said.

“How do you get over something like that?” Sarah added.

Ami shrugged.

“Let the dead bury the dead,” he told George and Sarah, smiling his dazzling smile. “I have motherless and fatherless boys who need me today. I can’t be bothered to think about what happened fifteen years ago.”

Ami’s assurance that the past was past satisfied George and Sarah. By the time the driver of the four-by-four had returned all of them to the outskirts of Kigali, Ami’s ordeal at the hands of the bowman seemed inconsequential.

He had done so well with the company he’d started in order to arrange tours of Rwanda by French musicians and tours of France by Rwandan musicians that he no longer needed to work for his livelihood, devoting himself instead to Friend on the Street. Not that he’d lost interest in music: during the drive back to Kigali he entertained George and Sarah with the tapes made by one of his parentless boys.

“In Tanzania they have bongo flava,” he explained. “But this is original Rwandan hip hop, and this boy can be a great success.”

Ami thought he might promote the boy’s music. This would benefit the boy because Ami wouldn’t need to charge for his services.

Ami clothed his trim frame in Parisian fashions. This he credited to his fiancée, a Francophile like his late mother who, like his late mother, had bestowed a new name.

“I’m not Ami but Copain,” he grinned. “Or sometimes Camarade.”

“Other ways of saying friend,” he added in case the Americans hadn’t understood.

Dinner would be at his house.

“I hope you like French food?” he said. “Nothing exotic: just coq au vin.”

He smiled again.

“With a homegrown twist: I’ve instructed my cook that the vin must be Rwandan beetroot wine.”

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Would his fiancée be there?

Ami looked unhappy for the first time since he’d recounted the bowman story.

“In Toulouse, arranging an exhibit by some of our better young painters.

Can you content yourselves with her picture?”

He extracted a photograph from his shirt pocket. George and Sarah clucked their admiration of the young woman who was even darker than Ami. Like many middle-class homes in Kigali, Ami’s house was enclosed within high walls topped by concertina wire. Ami’s walls looked taller than most. But what was more striking to George and Sarah as the driver opened the iron gate with the key Ami had handed him was that the concrete arch over the gate looked lower than most. The approach to the gate was a short but steep incline.

Ami chattered about his fiancée and the Toulouse exhibit and George and Sarah kept their eyes on the arch as the driver gunned the four-by-four’s engine for the climb. The Americans shut their eyes when the roof of the vehicle struck the underside of the arch. The driver was first out of the four-by-four, followed in order by Ami and Sarah. George, his arthritic knee bothering him, got out last. The vehicle was partly in and partly out of the yard, trapped by the arch that had become embedded in its roof. A vertical hairline fracture divided the arch into two sections of equal width.

“That arch isn’t going anywhere,” Ami sighed. “Not until I hire some workmen to remove it so we can move the four-by-four.”

He gave a “What can you do?” shrug and said “I’ll call the police.”

He explained that Rwandan law stipulated a police report for every driving accident, no matter how minor.

Ami, Sarah, and George had been ignoring the driver. They were embarrassed for him. But as soon as the police had been mentioned he started begging Ami not to call. He spoke in Kinyarwanda. Ami translated until he became exhausted.

“It’s the same thing over and over,” he told the Americans.

Trying to smile, he managed a grimace.

The driver had a bad driving record from when he was a young man.

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This was his first accident in many years and it wouldn’t be fair if he lost his license and livelihood because of a single mistake. He and his brothers could do the repairs for no cost.

Sarah and George sympathized with the man until Ami offered them the explanation that had occurred naturally to a Rwandan: “He’s afraid of the police because maybe he had something to do with the genocide.”

The driver seemed on the point of tears.

“I’ll get you a taxi so you’re not troubled by this chap anymore,” Ami said.# The next morning at the offices of Friend on the Street, Sarah and George inferred from Ami’s ebullience that the story about the bad driving record had been true. Ami complained good-naturedly that despite his fluency in English he was unable to absorb its ferment of colloquialisms—the envy, he claimed, of all speakers of Kinyarwanda.

“You have this wonderful word in English,” Ami said.

His eyes gleamed.

“You are lucky because we have nothing like this in Kinyarwanda, which makes me sad. This word is”—he paused to savor it on his lips—“this word is ‘fuck.’ So expressive! Indeed, English is a great language.”

Ami had at that moment good reason to praise the virtues of the word “fuck.” He couldn’t find what he’d planned to give Sarah and George: a certificate commemorating their son’s service to Friend on the Street.

“By God, it was in my hand a minute before you arrived.”

“You’ve looked in these drawers?” Sarah asked.

She’d come around to Ami’s side of his desk.

“Fuck!” he said.

He smiled at them.

“Do you see what I mean about this wonderful word?”

He looked again through every drawer.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

He stood and spun around. Two rusting, ill-matched file cabinets stood against the wall behind his desk. He rifled through the drawers. His energy rose as he repeated the wonderful word.

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“Fuck, fuck, fuck! Fuck!”

Sarah and George saw that Ami was unhappy about the missing certificate.

They were pleased to see his displeasure mitigated by the chance to use the wonderful word.

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Katheryn Krotzer Laborde

“Bring[ing] into Focus Two Quite Disparate Lives”: Patrick Samway on O’Connor and Giroux (Flannery O’Connor and Robert Giroux: A Publishing Partnership.

University of Notre Dame Press, 2018, 320 pages, hardcover, $39.00; e-Book [PDF, EPUB], $38.99.)

Late in December 2013, I had the good fortune to be included in a

roundtable discussion on “The Year of Flannery O’Connor” led by author and scholar Patrick Samway, SJ, as part of the Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society’s annual Words and Music Feast. Having earlier presented a work of creative nonfiction about O’Connor’s home and hometown—a farm called Andalusia, and a small, Georgia town called Milledgeville—I was delighted to be included in the discussion. But more of a thrill was the treat Samway had brought along: there, on a table, were unpublished letters between O’Connor (1925-1964) and her editor and friend, Robert Giroux (1914-2008). He announced that the letters would be part of a book.

The promised book is the second in what might be considered a series about Giroux and writers. The first, The Letters of Robert Giroux and Thomas Merton, came out in 2015, and Samway is currently working on a book about the relationship between Giroux and poet John Berryman (who met as students at Columbia University). Flannery O’Connor and Robert Giroux: A Publishing Partnership differs from the first book in that it is not strictly a book of their correspondence (though quite a few letters do appear); rather, it is a nuanced account of two important figures in the world of American publishing that considers history, culture, and religion. Such an all-encompassing lens is needed to achieve, as Samwell states in the introduction, “a book [that] intends to bring into focus two quite disparate lives, those of a Southern female fiction writer and her Northern male editor, and the impact they had on each

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other” (6). As these two did not live in a vacuum (not even O’Connor, who once referred to herself as a “hermit novelist”), the book is peppered with recognizable names from that world. Those familiar with O’Connor’s life story will not be surprised by mentions of Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Hardwick, Robert Fitzgerald, Allen Tate, John Crowe Ransom, Robert Penn Warren, John Hawkes, and others; those who have read other accounts of Giroux’s life (for example, 2013’s Hothouse by Boris Kachka) will be looking for, in addition to Merton and Berryman, T.S. Eliot, J.D. Salinger, Walker Percy, Eudora Welty, Jean Stafford, Jack Kerouac, and more.

O’Connor is (often) quoted as saying, “lives spent between the house and the chicken yard do not make exciting copy.” It is true that anyone who has read either biographical essays or book-length biographies about O’Connor’s relatively brief (thirty-nine years) life cut short by lupus knows the high points of that life; Samway’s book, while not a strict biography, does indeed hit all of the essay-level facts and a good many of the book-level truths. Where his look at O’Connor differs from that which has come before is that Samway considers not so much “life of the person” as he does “life of the writer.” This emphasis on the writing self clearly comes from years of casual conversations with Giroux who, in the “hundreds of times” the two met, “sometimes repeated informally the same anecdotes about his authors” (ix). Samway, it should be noted, was also one of “his authors,” with Giroux editing both his Signposts in a Strange Land (a collection of Walker Percy’s essays and talks, 1991) and Walker Percy: A Life (1997).

Samway states that a “crucial factor in evaluating and interpreting biographical information…is to consider whether a particular biographer had personal knowledge of the subject and the subject’s family, friends, and acquaintances” (15). He goes on to say that “[w]hile such knowledge does not guarantee a successful biography, it does add authenticity of a degree very close to that known by members of the family, at lease at the level of reportage” (16). Samway’s firsthand knowledge of his friend Giroux adds such authenticity to what is a compelling and well-written book. While Samway never met O’Connor, he very clearly expresses the sense of her that came from both hearing Giroux’s many comments and anecdotes (coming to us in 230

the text with the occasional “as he explained to me” kind of comment), and conducting his own scholarly research.

O’Connor, the writer Biographical details aside, Samway gives the reader not so much a portrait of the woman who was writing on a farm but of the artist who was growing professionally, which is to say he shows us a fulltime writer learning to deal with the fulltime realities involved in that life. We read about a young novelist who (understandably) frets through an anxious transition from Rinehart & Company and editor-in-chief John Selby (himself a published novelist who did not seem to either like or understand O’Connor’s writing, process, or personality) to Harcourt, Brace & Company and executive editor Robert Giroux, whom she had met through Robert Lowell in 1949. We see a writer who works her way through one re-write after another (in the days, it should be pointed out, when copies were made by typing through sheets of carbon, and revising was a matter of re-typing a manuscript, word for word, from beginning to end). He gives a portrait of an artist who learns in time to trust agents to place her stories rather than worrying over that time-consuming task herself. In describing other lessons she would need to learn, we sense Giroux talking through Samway: “One way or another, O’Connor would learn that when others were involved in helping a novelist have a manuscript published, each person proceeds on his or her own schedule. It would soon be clear to her that both readers and editors work on many projects simultaneously. O’Connor simply had to content herself waiting for the mailman to deliver a letter from Giroux about specific plans for publishing her novel” (106).

Fascinating details about process emerge: we are told that O’Connor “altered 346 lines in the galleys [of The Violent Bear It Away] and 460 lines in the page proofs, costing her a total of $308.67” (204). An interesting twist is added when Samway states that Giroux did not comment on these changes because he was “pre-occupied from mid-October to mid-November by yet another visit by T.S. Eliot” (204).

In considering the effects that lupus, which O’Connor suffered from for the

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last third (and then some) of her life, and the resulting isolation she encountered when she moved, with her caretaker mother, to Andalusia, we again feel that Samway is reflecting Giroux’s observations. The author notes how O’Connor’s “declining health and mother’s omnipresence” gave her “little choice but to share her thoughts about her fiction in letters to friends….”(103). He notes that loneliness “must have been a constant companion” (104), and elsewhere comments about anxious moments produced by her relative isolation, living in far-off Milledgeville as she strove to finish her first novel.

Though Samway’s take on O’Connor is informed by years of conversations with Giroux, there are also moments when we know we are reading the reflections of one who has seriously explored O’Connor’s work on his own, and invites readers to do so, as well. Take for example, his examination of novel titles: “But what would others think of this title, not knowing her stated intention? Should the emphasis be on wise or on blood, and what does the title mean when you put these words together?” (105). He also considers the interpretations of the biblical text that inspired the title The Violent Bear It Away.

Here and there, he ponders the connections between her life and her literature, his ruminations going beyond the well-known (and perhaps worn out) “adult child living on a farm with a demanding mother” variety. For example, he notes that when O’Connor (at least in her letters) begins to consider her own imminent death from the very disease that also took the life of her father, it is at a time when her relationship with Harcourt, Brace (HB) was “disastrous” (179). He further suggests that her stress is echoed in her writing, seeing “The Enduring Chill” as a “reflection of her own psychological state” at that time (182).

Giroux, the editor Samway states that Giroux once told him that his ‘’ultimate role as an editor is to help all [his] authors write their very best’” (14). Knowing firsthand that to be true, Samway is able to attest to what it is like to have Giroux as an editor: “From personal experience, I know that he read every word of a text, used a red pencil to suggest corrections, and then attentively

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reread subsequent versions” (14).

The glimpses of Giroux the Editor are fascinating. For example, there is the story of how Thomas Merton “contacted him…with [The Seven Storey Mountain], a book that would significantly change his life an editor” (89), not to mention the lives of countless young men in the years that followed World War II. There is the tale of how he, when working as an editor at HB, had lost out on the opportunity (given to him by J.D. Salinger himself) to publish Catcher in the Rye, a manuscript that had initially made him ponder “how lucky he was that this incredible book had come into his hands” (92).

This deeply-regretted loss was more than a professional one for Giroux who recognized the importance of the novel; it symbolized a change in HB that started with the hiring of a textbook salesman who would became company president in eight years. The rise to power of William Jovanovich (whom Giroux refers to as “Don Giovanovich, ” and O’Connor, “Mr. Ivonovitch”) lead to Giroux’s fear that HB would, more and more, become better known as a textbook publisher rather than one of literature. The loss of Catcher led Giroux to accept an invitation to join Farrar, Straus & Cudahy (FSC). (The publisher would, in time, be called Farrar, Straus & Giroux.)

Samway points out that there was more to Giroux’s leaving HB than an apparent dissatisfaction; there was a matter of, as Giroux explained it in a letter to Jessamyn West, “’bigotry and religious prejudice’” against him as a Catholic (140). Close to twenty authors followed him to FSC. Insight to Giroux’s role as an editor to O’Connor go beyond noting that he scribbled red notes in the margins. Samway writes of Giroux’s sending books O’Connor’s way—at first from HB and later from FSC. He speaks of Giroux’s not telling O’Connor how well Merton’s The Sign of Jonas was doing (having sold, at that point, over eighty thousand copies) as she noted, in a letter to a friend, that 208 copies of Wise Blood had been returned before the first royalties statement, and 200 before the second (132). After leaving HB, he continued to give counsel over matters such as contracts with HB (from his apartment, on his own time, and not from his office at FSC).

That O’Connor didn’t automatically follow Giroux to his new firm points to both the former’s tendency to not move quickly and the latter’s 233

being a person of honor, encouraging her to give her newly assigned editor a chance. O’Connor gave not only Catharine Carver a chance for the mere nine months the latter remained at HB (an important period that included the release of O’Connor’s A Good Man is Hard to Find, and a publicity trip to New York), but Derek Lindley who, as Giroux disclosed in a letter, had “never liked” O’Connor’s books and had even voted against publishing Wise Blood (172). O’Connor opted to stay at HB as Lindley himself had stated he did not foresee leaving by the spring of 1958, he had taken a position at Viking.

With his departure, O’Connor finally felt that she could ethically leave the press that had published and promoted her first two books. With Giroux as her editor, O’Connor would remain at FSC for the publication of her third and (posthumous) fourth books.

O’Connor’s Catholicism The book delves into thought-provoking avenues that sometimes have everything to do with O’Connor’s publishing, and sometimes do not. For example, the subject of O’Connor’s Catholicism comes up. While a few biographies of O’Connor published over the past decade emphasize her life and vision as a religious person (The Abbess of Andalusia by Lorraine V. Murray, The Terrible Speed of Mercy by Jonathan Rogers, and Flannery O’Connor: Fiction Fired by Faith by Angela Alaimo O’Donnell), none have come out since the publication of O’Connor’s A Prayer Journal in 2013. For that reason, Samway’s consideration of these journal entries—written when O’Connor was in graduate school—are unique. Also impressive is his insight to O’Connor’s brand of Catholicism. Samway states that “Many O’Connor critics correctly (though somewhat dismissively) note that she was a ‘devout Catholic,’ which too often, without modifying explanation, sounds as though she were a mechanical and robot Christian, which was not the case. O’Connor simply could not have sustained an intense prayer life, especially when living with a deadly disease, without experiencing the efficacy of what she would have considered prayer-filled graces, coming at times, even as a young girl, when she least expected them” (59).

Samway interestingly considers that O’Connor died before the changes

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created by Vatican II, the Ecumenical Council that addressed issues of the Catholic Church in the modern world, were put in place, musing that had O’Connor “experienced the maturing vision of the Church as a result of the decrees of Vatican II, she and Giroux would have had, I believe, many fruitful, open-ended discussions about how the Church…might always seek to reform itself” (197). His thought can’t help but make the reader wonder how these changes would have affected, if not make cameo appearances in, O’Connor’s fiction.

Because Samway is, as he states, “a Jesuit priest with a background in American literature,” mentor he ends the book with a thirteen-page “Theological Postscript.” This may not appeal to every person interested in the story of O’Connor and Giroux, but as there are a multitude of books and articles that considers theological interpretations of O’Connor’s work, this section adds to a conversation that started even as O’Connor was still alive.

(Rainulf Stelzmann’s “Shock and Orthodoxy: An Interpretation of Flannery O’Connor’s Novels and Short Stories” appeared in the March 1963 Xavier University Studies, and was shared with O’Connor. Her brief, but appreciative, letter of response was published in 1985 in Xavier Review.)

Gordon, the mentor Another fascinating (and at times, at least for this reader, humorous) exploration is that of the relationship between O’Connor and Caroline Gordon, a published novelist and “disciple of Henry James” who regularly (and thoroughly) critiqued O’Connor’s work before publication. Gordon’s “literary theories tended to fuse Aristotelian concepts of plot, classic Greek and Christian mythology, Jungian thought, and the four levels of biblical interpretation…” (109), and it was these approaches that Gordon relentlessly applied to O’Connor’s work. In doing so, Samway says Gordon “manifested a desire to ghostwrite parts of O’Connor’s fiction, giving it a character that O’Connor wanted to avoid” (109). In particular, Gordon’s aim was to teach O’Connor to not reveal, through “‘inappropriate use of narrative voice,’” her own identity of subjective Southern woman rather than objective, classically educated man (109). Samway notes that Gordon oversteps her role as a

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mentor and, as a result, O’Connor “seemed always to be trying to withdraw unobtrusively from Gordon’s classroom” (111).

O’Connor is not the only one to receive “classroom instruction” by way of dense and long letter; Samway, briefly dipping into his role of Percy biographer, gives an account of how the writer received twenty-one singlespaced pages of detailed criticism from Gordon (who started the letter with telling him how impressed she was by his novel). As he himself told Samway, Percy responded to the critique with a check for $200 and the decision to not publish the book in question (115). (This anecdote is but one example of Samway sharing stories and comments heard firsthand from other literary lights.)

The personal Despite the biographical nature of the book, it strikes one as surprising when relationships of a more personal nature come up as this is a volume about a publishing partnership, not the other kind. Samway covers the oft-discussed romance of O’Connor and Erik Langkjaer, a handsome and intelligent Danish salesman who worked for HB. Of more interest, perhaps, is Samway’s revelations about his friend’s relationships. In 1952, Giroux married Carmen de Arango; a Columbia graduate and daughter of a Cuban aristocrat, she worked for the Vatican delegation at the United Nations. It was a union that ended fourteen years later when she “simply left him and returned home to her parents” (129). Noting that Giroux, in his conversations with Samway, referred only “obliquely” to this marriage, the author states that it “most likely was destined not to succeed from the beginning, though Giroux was grateful for the love and support of his lifelong friend and companion [Charles] Reilly, who subsequently lived with him…” (129). One senses here that it is his deep friendship with, and respect and love for, the man who had a “reluctance to talk about his private life” that steers Samway away from the word “homosexual” and toward such diplomatic wording as “the developments in his life after the divorce” (196).

That said, he does point out that Giroux “neither [hid] nor [felt] the need to explain his relationship with Reilly” (197), and that the two “never hesitated

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about appearing in public as a couple” (238). The delicacy of terminology does not take away from the success of the book; it simply stands out in an age where biographers tend to be franker in their wording.

The unpublished letters If it was the promise of seeing the unpublished letters that kept this reader happy to see this book finally come to pass, knowing that Publishing Partnership is not a book of letters is far from a disappointment. That the book is more than a series of exchanges is, in the end, a great strength; much would be lost, in the form of Samway’s personal knowledge and insight, if all we had were O’Connor’s and Giroux’s words. As it is, Samway gives snippets of unpublished letters here and there that advance the text in appreciative ways (and are sure to be enjoyed by those who enjoy reading O’Connor’s correspondence). These letters come from the HB archives, Emory University, New York Public Library, and other sources, with the most interesting coming from Robert Giroux’s own files (located at Loyola in New Orleans). Having been given bits of their correspondence here and there, it is particularly enjoyable to read along as they discuss the final stages of putting together The Violent Bear It Away.

Those particular letters were written in November 1959, a handful of months after Giroux visited Andalusia. That visit was not only his first time on the grounds that housed, shielded, and eventually inspired O’Connor, but would prove to be the last time the two would speak face-to-face. What is evident in this particular exchange of letters, and in all of the letters Samway provides, are the feelings of trust, respect, and affection the two shared. While it was the individual talents of O’Connor and Giroux that worked together to create a distinctive and provocative fiction still highly regarded today, it is the aforementioned feelings between the two that contributed to a satisfying and productive partnership the discovery of which will leave readers of this book feeling, if not touched, then certainly enriched therein.

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Ralph Adamo

A Review of Five New Books of Poetry Cruel Fiction by Wendy Trevino (Commune Editions & AK Press UK, 2018); Yonder by Rodger Kamenetz (Lavender Ink, 2018), Abandon by Geoff Munsterman (limited edition, 2018), Gallimaufry & Farrago by Kathleen Balma (Finishing Line Press, 2018), dark acre by Canese Jarboe (Acme Poem Company, Willow Springs Books)

Reviewing what’s new in poetry is increasingly like standing in a river

and trying to identify the molecules of water that pass by; there’s too much of it and it’s going by too fast. This is a cause for celebration on one hand, and regret on another, in that even devoted readers-practitioners of poetry can’t hope to keep up. I’m still discovering American poets I ought to have read thirty years ago, and am even much further behind trying to understand all the voices that have emerged in the rest of the world.

That said—and also that even here and now, I am neglecting to include notice of half a dozen books that came my way, that I liked, that deserved serious attention—here are five that I will try to talk about.

I like all of these books for the same reason—they are good, they make me feel something, they represent some of the original possibilities for poetry’s causing chaos and creation—AND because they are not like one another, technically or any other obvious way within the traditions of poetry. While occasional poems in these books may share a tone, a sensibility, a style even, they more emphatically demonstrate that poetry at its core is a voice, and I’d go so far as to say a voice trying to tell the truth.

Cruel Fiction by Wendy Trevino opens with a six page list poem, both narrative and lyric (bathed in naturalism), from within fifty-four hours of the detention of a large group of women being held presumably for their participation in some kind of protest. The list conveys both what the narrator experienced and what she observed others going through. What is produced

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is both angry and oddly dispassionate, a catalogue of wisdom earned the hard way, through experience.

Trevino’s work is dense, frequently presented in prose, though she obviously knows her way around traditional metrics. She grapples in these poems with politics, both present and historical, with popular culture but as seen-through, with personal history but not in a confessional way. There are poems in which the process of thought is what is on display, most revealingly.

This is the poet as observer-participant, clear-eyed, non-emotional (if often horrified), recording the incidents, the emotional instigation of which she withholds for the sake of the poem’s not simply becoming a scream.

I can’t think of any other (American) poet writing this way, or any who have, even considering the best of the Beat poets, or the most engaged of the poets who stepped into protest in the ‘60s like Bly or Lowell. The closest may be Bob Kaufman, in his frankness, but Trevino has broader concerns and more varied chops. (Bill Lavender’s Memory Wing also comes to mind as a poem that uses autobiography, in a similar way to reach larger than personal concerns.)

All that noted, it is also true that she can be drily funny, find the touching moment, even the sweet one, especially among the thirty sonnets in the section called “Popular Culture & Cruel Work,” which begins with a reflection on Tony Bennett’s reaction to Amy Winehouse, though in these too, the poet returns to concrete reflections on race, gender, justice. In the poem that introduces Jon Bennet Ramsey and Natalee Holloway, she notes “Burying a middle class white girl is/A lot cheaper than paying someone to/Explain her body.” By the end of the section, we are in deeper and more explicitly political territory: “Capitalism is bad for women—/Be they cis or trans.

Whoever we are/We start there.”

Published in 2018, this book remains intensely relevant to the world the poet (and all the rest of us) occupy. #16 begins “A border, like race, is a cruel fiction/Maintained by constant policing, violence/Always threatening a new map.”

In the final section, another thirty sonnets, the poet moves closer to autobiography, though, again, not in a confessional mode, and her own 239

story often dissolves back into history, the story especially of the Mexican experience in the border world of Texas, the incongruity of racial division, and more. Beneath it all, informing it all, is the poet’s insistence on trying to understand the world in which she finds herself. Maybe this is what all poets try to do, but with Trevino, the search, the questioning feels more intense, more informed, more measured than we usually see.

Rodger Kamenetz’s new book, Yonder, is a collection of prose poems, and that choice enhances the meditative quality of the work—poems composed not of dazzling lyrics but flashing epiphanies. In these poems, Kamenetz is displaying a lifetime of craft, not only in poetry but in the precision of language, however much that language diverges from rational or naturalistic experience. He is also making use of his newest passion/modality/tool— dreamwork as a basis for understanding and for art.

Occasionally, in these poems, that becomes explicit, as in “Encounter with a Muse,” when “In dream logic we pour like smoke from one body to another… I hear in water the movement of all things I might step into. I lie in the riverbed and she dreams against my ear.”

While Kamenetz is the oldest and most widely published of these five poets, it is good to see that he continues to grow, to experiment, to seek new ways of seeing and comprehending experience. The poems are gentler than Trevino’s, focused on the more ineffable of our concerns on earth. Politics are only a dim background noise, not a foregrounded horror of error and bad faith as in Trevino’s poems. But Kamenetz is not looking for or finding an easy way through, as we see in “The Illustrated Book of God:” …The father came to me and blessed my broken mind…My body disappeared and I walked into pages…The peacocks led me to the horizon. The elephants recited their bible. The lions returned and ate my heart. I died in the dark of my last page. The book went on still unopened still unknown its hand beyond knowing.

Maybe it’s true that poetry (at least somewhat) belongs to the age of the

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poet. Where Kamenetz seems to be thinking of the universal and the final, Geoff Munsterman, is far more grounded in the concerns of here and now, especially the concerns of the body, in his new collection, Abandon. These fifteen poems are very New Orleans-centered, but not the New Orleans of the tourist, rather the fractured universe that it can be for those who choose to plant themselves here, hoping for enough light to grow. The poems are filled with things, with a shifting array of things to eat, to watch, to hold, to love. “My heart is a carnival float,” the poet says, “I didn’t build it to last.”

Generally, these poems are stories, but with indeterminate elucidations.

But they sing too, like this prose piece, the story called “The High Priestess:” “He tasted her Worry: crab or cheap saltines. He tasted her Spite: raw garlic ground into aching incisor. He tasted her lust: toasted pecan & quince.

He tasted her love: fresh citrus & mint twisted into whiskey.”

That three-page poem ends: “Never let the fire die. Never stop stirring the pot.”

Again, it is his grounded locality that causes the work to rise up: Poetry is a long line— longer than the Walgreen’s checkout when

you’re already late…

This is the work of a poet of the city—too educated not to feel the irony of everyday life as a miraculous burden. The poems, filled with the city’s physicality, heartlessness and humor: “I prefer the pornography of Payless—a working foot sliding in and out….”

I suppose this is the beauty of what we call “chapbooks”—that so much energy can be packed into such a slender, lightweight form. These poems are rough, immediate and refined all at once. And, again, somewhere between Trevino and Kamemetz’s level of political. “I have been,” the poet tells us, “as Latina, queer, elderly, black, incarcerated/& beetle as the books I read would let me be—”.

The engagement with the world, however, is never really abstract or from books. The intensity of experience in these poems can leave you breathless, as can the occasional aside, like when the poet pauses to say:

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Don’t my heart break pretty? Shards of it A tapestry of prisms stitching the bathroom Floor.

Katy Balma’s collection, Gallimaufry & Farrago, is also a chapbook, but with its twenty-six poems, it cause me to further question what we mean when we call a small book that. (I know what the dictionaries say.) A steely intelligence marks these poems; they brim with observations that often seem to surprise the poet, as they do the reader. “Do poems want an admission of guilt,” she asks in one of them. This is a poet who explicitly poses questions to begin a poem, and not infrequently continues the questioning as it develops, “The Forgiveness Project” being the most obvious example, with questions both profound and absurd. This is a combination of ideation that occurs in many of the poems, a sort of one-two jab at our defenses, always with raised awareness that challenges comfort, and generally denies its possibility. The titles are instructive: “Summer Camp for Sirens,” “Temporary Empathy,” “Black Hole Horizon.”

In a prose poem called “Poem Poem Poem Poem Poem,” the aliens (not making their first appearance in this poem) will announce their arrival by “making a tonal racket from on high.” But the poet’s work as herald is only beginning, as she notes in the poem’s conclusion: In order for us to trust any of this it must be repeated several times.

Read this poem over and over until you believe.

A neat autobiography of sorts—“Highlights of an Interview with the Author”—a device that yields a vivid abstraction of the author through a myriad of concrete pronouncements—also reveals the sense of mirth that simmers beneath most of these poems. For one shorter example: “The Author on Dating a Werewolf : your ass is his only moonshine.”

“Singularity” tackles the enigma and paradox of Job, in which god is referred to as “an overt narcissist.”

Job is turned this way and that, examined form many perspectives including those of various Greeks, as well as the poet’s own students to whom

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“Job was a snooze fest.”

These poems tend to delight more on a second reading, after an acclimation to the poet’s ways and subtle demands. But one that is sure to charm New Orleanians (and affirms my sense that the last poem in a book is frequently the most revealing) is “Lunch Alone at Antoine’s, September 2015.”

The poem begins: “Eating an oyster here is exactly like eating an angel’s/ testicle.” She manages to reasonably conflate the pleasures of fine dining with theology: …(They’re all Italian, those angels. And treacherous. They never liked people, never understood God’s perverse need to love us best….

The poet’s meal continues with shrimp and grits, lemon delight, coffee: “Yes, please. Regular. Sugar. Cream.”

It is a book that pleases on its own considerable merits, and even more suggests that this is a poet with a wide scope of interests and future work worth hunting for in the mess of new books down the line. dark acre by Canese Jarboe is presented as volume 8 in Willow Springs Books “surrealist poetry series.” “Landscape W/My Father & A Dead Man’s Harmonica” is a good one through which to begin to see how Jarboe goes about constructing their poems, each a collection of fragments that for the most part function successfully as experiences the reader will feel. Jarboe (hereafter identified by the correct pronoun, “they”) begins this and most of these fifteen poems with an arresting image or thought: “The Missouri state line is as good a place as any to kill yourself.” The poem seems to be about obsession, or anyway the narrowing effects obsession has on anyone around it. “He thought you dripping dark honey/onto the ceiling fan for months…”

The language is dark and beautiful throughout this book, more elusive than allusive, fragments that sometimes startle with their clarity, other times taunt with their mystery and even menace.

Jarboe knows how to use space—they approach the page as a canvas more

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than as the traditional grid—as well as with inspired line breaks to heighten suspense, creating surprising illuminations and cross-dressed meanings.

Quoting pieces of these fragments to illustrate such assertions is a challenge.

You’ll have to trust me; these poems are like ripe fruit sometimes, one bite and the language is dripping down your chin. They are sensual, eclectic, precise and sometimes scary I first encountered the title poem, “dark acre,” in an anthology of work about or influenced by the late poet Frank Stanford. Of all the poems in that book, this one struck me most unbreakably. It is a poem featuring death, like much of Stanford’s work, and also both the quotidian and the darker aspects of country life, though if their poem is somehow “influenced” by his, that influence seems diffused through many texts and many years. (Stanford, who committed suicide in 1978, wrote most of his poetry beginning in the late 60s.) Still there are lines that feel like the ghost of Stanford could be standing by, nodding: I am the daughter of the seer of Crawford County.

He keeps his Catalogue of Death beside the bed.

I don’t look inside.

Elsewhere in this exhilarating nightmare poem, “These locusts been waiting seventeen years to see me in my nightgown,” they tell us.

“My fingers are filet knives,” the poet says, “they’ve got to be.”

Reading poetry is not for the faint of heart, an assertion most kids in school would find absurd. For that matter, maybe most people would. But these books, together and separately, demonstrate how ferocious the human spirit is, and how significant, how necessary poetry is to the understanding of the human condition, and to the alleviation of its harshest experiences.

(Carolyn Forche, in her wonderful anthology Against Forgetting, posits it as a necessary form of witness.) Poetry can and does do other things, of course, functions in many ways for different people and cultures and can even be light. But the poets discussed here all clearly recognize that they are engaged in important work, hard work, necessary for their own survival and, ideally, able to inform and even transform the lives of their readers.

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Contributors Benjamin Aleshire lives in New Orleans. His work has appeared in The Times (UK), Iowa Review, Boston Review, and many others. An excerpt from his novel-in-progress, Poet for Hire: Kismet of a 21st Century Troubadour appears in Lit Hub. Ben serves as assistant poetry editor at the Green Mountains Review, and has received awards from the University of New Orleans, the Vermont Arts Council, and the Breadloaf Writers’ Conference. The second edition of his artist-book of visual-poems, Currency, was released in 2017.

Tom Andes’ writing has appeared in Best American Mystery Stories 2012, Witness, Atticus Review, and elsewhere. He lives in New Orleans, where he works as a freelance editor; teaches for the New Orleans Writers Workshop, which he cofounded; and moonlights as a country singer. His sporadically updated website is tomandes.com.

Joana Araújo is a Portuguese-English bilingual content reviewer onsite at a Fortune 100 company in Cupertino, California. Her translations of poetry from Portuguese have been published in Catamaran Literary Reader. She received her bachelor’s degree from the Catholic University of Lisbon. In Portugal, she worked as a journalist and a TV production assistant. In 2002 she moved to San Francisco where she earned her MA in broadcasting arts and was a graduate assistant at San Francisco State University.

Robert Asahina is the author of Just Americans, named by the Washington Post Book World as among the best nonfiction/history books of 2006. He has been Senior Vice President, Deputy Publisher, and Editor in Chief of Broadway Books; President and Publisher of the Adult Publishing Group of Golden Books; and a Vice President and Senior Editor at Simon & Schuster.

He has also been a Visiting Scholar at the Asian/Pacific/American Studies Program at New York University; Deputy Managing Editor of The New York Sun; an editor at George, Harper’s, and The New York Times Book Review; a film critic for The New Leader and The American Spectator, and a theater critic for The Hudson Review. His articles and reviews have appeared in

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The Wall Street Journal, Art International, Yale Theater, Los Angeles Times Book Review, Washington Post Book World, and other periodicals. In 2013, he founded Asahina & Wallace, a Los Angeles-based independent book publisher, with Robert Wallace, a National Magazine Award-winning editor and Emmy Award-winning TV producer.

Jonathan Bracker’s poems have appeared in America (May 28, 1988), The New Yorker, Poetry Northwest, Writer’s Digest, and other periodicals; in several small press anthologies; and in seven small press collections. His Concerning Poetry: Poems About Poetry was published this year by the Upper Hand Press. He is the editor of Bright Cages: The Selected Poems Of Christopher Morley (University of Pennsylvania Press: 1965), co-author with Mark Wallach of Christopher Morley (Twayne Press: 1976), and editor of A Little Patch Of Shepherd’s-Thyme: Prose Passages Of Thomas Hardy Arranged As Verse (Moving Finger Press: 2013). Bracker has lived in San Francisco since 1973.

Terese Coe’s poems and translations have appeared in Able Muse, Agenda, The Cincinnati Review, The Moth, New American Writing, New Scottish Writing, New Walk, Ploughshares, Poetry, Poetry Review, The Stinging Fly, Threepenny Review, and the TLS, among many other journals. Her collection Shot Silk was listed for the 2017 Poets Prize, and she has received grants from Giorno Poetry Systems and Vermont Studio Center. Copies of my poem “More” were heli-dropped across London as part of the 2012 Olympics Rain of Poems. Terese’s 2018 collection of poems, Why You Can’t Go Home Again, includes “The Bumbly.”

Britny Cordera is a two-year Pushcart Prize-nominated poet. She is a proud writer of color and Louisiana Creole poet, descending from African, Indigenous, and French/Spanish ancestors. Her poetry can be found or is forthcoming in the Pinyon Review, Concis, and Auburn Avenue. Currently she is an MFA candidate at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale.

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Dr. David Craig has published 24 books/collections, 21 of them poetry, as well as hundreds of poems in various journals and anthologies.

Shane Crosby was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. He received a certificate of proficiency from Ascension Elementary School, a high school diploma from Junipero Serra High School, a BA in history from the University of California, Los Angeles, a M.A. in special education from Clark Atlanta University, a PhD in special education from Georgia State University and an MFA in creative writing from the University of California, Irvine. He is currently a lecturer within The Writing Program at the University of California, Los Angeles. This is his first professional publication.

C.L. Cummings edits BA/G. A native of Orlando, FL, she studied film at Valencia College and English (Creative Writing) at the University of Central Florida where she received the Department’s Outstanding Fiction Writer Award in 2015. She currently lives in Baton Rouge, LA, and is earning an MA in Educational Leadership. Her work in poetry and fiction has appeared or is set to appear in A Garden Of Black Joy: Global Poetry From The Edges Of Liberation & Living, Crack the Spine’s “Routine” Anthology, apt, and Sonic Boom, among others.

JD Duff grew up in the suburbs of New York City. She has a Master of Arts in Writing and a Master of Arts in Teaching English Education from Manhattanville College. She also holds an undergraduate degree in Africana Studies from Binghamton University. JD taught college level writing and literature for over seven years. She is a writing and language consultant who currently splits her time between Westchester county, New York and the suburbs of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Some of her publications may be found in The Wrath-Bearing Tree, Storgy Magazine, Crack the Spine, and Melancholy Hyperbole.

K. Eltinaé is a Sudanese poet of Nubian descent. His poetry has been translated into Arabic, Greek, Farsi, and Spanish and has appeared in World Literature Today, The African American Review, About Place Journal, Muftah,

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among others. A selection of his poems were shortlisted for the 2019 Brunel International African Poetry Prize. He currently resides in Granada, Spain.

More of his work can be found at: http://k-eltinae.com/, https://www.facebook. com/eltinae/, https://www.instagram.com/k.eltinae.

Javier Etchevarren was born in Montevideo, Uruguay in 1979. He is the author of Fable of an Inconsolable Man (Action Books). His poems have appeared in América invertida: An Anthology of Emerging Uruguayan Poets, American Poetry Review, and American Literary Review.

Two full volumes of Louis Gallo’s poetry, Crash and Clearing the Attic, will be published by Adelaide in the near future. A third, Archaeology, will be published by Kelsay Books. His work has appeared or will shortly appear in Wide Awake in the Pelican State (LSU anthology), Southern Literary Review, Fiction Fix, Glimmer Train, Hollins Critic,, Rattle, Southern Quarterly, Litro, New Orleans Review, Xavier Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Missouri Review, Mississippi Review, Texas Review, Baltimore Review, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, The Ledge, storySouth, Houston Literary Review, Tampa Review, Raving Dove, The Journal (Ohio), Greensboro Review,and many others. Chapbooks include The Truth Change, The Abomination of Fascination, Status Updates and The Ten Most Important Questions. He is the founding editor of the now defunct journals, The Barataria Review and Books: A New Orleans Review. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize several times. He teaches at Radford University in Radford, Virginia.

Nicole Pepinster Greene earned her bachelor’s degree in English and French from University College Dublin before earning her post-graduate degrees in the US. She taught for twelve years at UL, Lafayette. Now a professor emerita at Xavier University of Louisiana, she was an Andrew W. Mellon Professor, Chair of English, and Editor of Xavier Review and its press. Her publications focused on the history of basic writing and Irish writers Somerville and Ross.

Jack D. Harvey’s poetry has appeared in Scrivener, The Comstock Review, Bay Area Poets’ Coalition, The Antioch Review, The Piedmont Poetry Journal

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and a number of other on-line and in print poetry magazines. The author has been a Pushcart nominee and over the years has been published in a few anthologies. He has been writing poetry since he was sixteen and lives in a small town near Albany, N.Y. Having been born and worked in upstate New York, he is retired from doing whatever he was doing before he retired.

Jim Hilgartner earned an MFA in creative writing at the University of Alabama, and serves as a Professor of English at Huntingdon College, also Fiction Editor of THAT Literary Review. His work has been published in ACM: Another Chicago Magazine, Apocryphal Text: Poetry, The Chapbook, Greensboro Review, Mid-American Review, New Orleans Review, Red Mountain Review, SLAB, Vermont Literary Review, Worcester Review, Writing on the Edge, and elsewhere; he has twice been awarded the Fellowship in Literature from the Alabama State Council on the Arts.

David James’ third book, My Torn Dance Card, was a finalist in the 2017 Book Excellence Award. More than thirty of his one-act plays have been produced across the country. James teaches writing at Oakland Community College.

Monty Jones is a writer in Austin, Texas. His book of poems Cracks in the Earth, published in 2018 by Cat Shadow Press, is available from Malvern Books in Austin (info@malvernbooks.com).

Dewayne Keirn lives in northwest Arkansas. He enjoys gardening when not writing or reading. He has been published in Ozarks Watch Magazine.

Jesse Lee Kercheval is a poet, fiction writer and translator. Her most recent book is America that island off the coast of France (Tupelo Press, winner of the Dorset Prize). Her translations include Fable of an Inconsolable Man by the Uruguayan poet Javier Etchevarren.

Nathaniel Klaung has been published in Sporklet. He is a musician, he would like to be a painter but he is impatient with both brush and canvas, and he works at a bar. Nathaniel is applying to MFA programs and research fellowships.

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Katheryn Krotzer Laborde is an Associate Professor of English at Xavier University where she teaches an interdisciplinary course on Flannery O’Connor. An author at work in her third book, her work (mostly creative nonfiction) has appeared in South Writ Large, Poets & Writers, Callaloo, Free State Review, Cosmonauts Avenue, and other sites and journals (including Xavier Review).

Carol Lorenzo: Short Story Collection: Nervous Dancer won The Flannery O’Connor Short Fiction Award, ‘95. Since then I’ve had multiple short stories in journals by hard work, luck, a self-forgiving sense of humor, and deep pleasure in the explorations. Visiting Lecturer: Emory University and Georgia State University—Graduate Fiction Workshop. Manuscript Evaluator for Southern Methodist University. Education: The New School and The American Theatre Wing, NYC. At Home: In Snellville, Ga., in wonderful southern light in a house protected by the spirit of a rescued German Shepherd.

Ron McFarland retired from teaching English at the University of Idaho in July 2018 after toiling in the mills there for nearly 50 years, serving 2 years as the state’s first Writer-in-residence, and turning out more than 20 books, including 10 books & chapbooks of poetry, The Rockies in First Person (a study of regional memoir) and Appropriating Hemingway (a study of Hem›s appearance as a fictional character). He›s currently working on a book about Gary Soto, the prolific Chicano poet & writer from Fresno, CA. Sonnet Mondal writes from Kolkata, India and his latest poetry books include Karmic Chanting (Copper Coin 2018) and Ink and Line (Dhauli Books 2018).

He has read at literary festivals in Macedonia, Ireland, Turkey, Nicaragua, Sri Lanka, Germany, Hungary, and Slovakia. His writings have appeared in publications across Europe, North America, Asia, and Australia. Mondal was one of the authors of the “Silk Routes” project of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa from 2014 to 2016. Director of Chair Poetry Evenings International Festival, Mondal edits the Indian section of Lyrikline (Haus für Poesie, Berlin) and serves as editor in chief of Enchanting Verses Literary Review. He has been a guest editor for Poetry at Sangam, India,

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and Words Without Borders, New York. His works have been translated into Hindi, Italian, Chinese, Turkish, Slovak, Macedonian, Slovenian, Hungarian, and Arabic. www.sonnetmondal.com Jared Pearce’s book, The Annotated Murder of One, was released from Aubade last year (www.aubadepublishing.com/annotated-murder-of-one).

His poems have recently been or will soon be shared in Triggerfish, Picaroon, Wilderness House, Aji, and Adelaide. henry 7. reneau, jr. writes words in conflagration to awaken the world ablaze, free verse that breaks a rule every day, illuminated by his affinity for disobedience: a phoenix-flux of red & gold immolation that blazes from his heart, like a chambered bullet exploded through change is gonna come to implement the fire next time. He is the author of the poetry collection, freedomland blues (Transcendent Zero Press) and the e-chapbook, physiography of the fittest (Kind of a Hurricane Press), now available from their respective publishers. Additionally, he has self-published a chapbook entitled 13hirteen Levels of Resistance, and his work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. In case of tyranny, Google: henry 7. reneau, jr./poetry to remove the size thirteen jackboot from your neck.

Zack Rogow was a co-winner of the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Award for Earthlight by André Breton, and winner of a Bay Area Book Reviewers Award for his translation of George Sand’s novel, Horace.

His cotranslation of Shipwrecked on a Traffic Island and Other Previously Untranslated Gems by Colette was published by SUNY Press. His English version of Colette’s novel Green Wheat was nominated for the PEN/Bookof-the-Month Club Translation Award.

Aidan Ryan is from Buffalo, NY. He has published essays on literary arts, music, local histories, and travel in The White Review, Traffic East, and CNN, and is the author of Organizing Isolation: Half-Lives of Love at Long Distance (Linoleum Press, 2017), a collection of cut-up poetry. He is also co-founder and publisher of Foundlings Press, where he most recently co-

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edited Constant Stranger: After Frank Stanford, a multi-genre critical and artistic celebration of the life and work of the poet Frank Stanford, with over 30 contributors. As an editor, he also conceived and managed the production of My Next Heart: New Buffalo Poetry (BlazeVOX, 2017), a collection celebrating new voices in his hometown’s literary community. He is currently co-editing an anthology for the press Dostoevsky Wannabe and writing a history of the Canisius College Hassett Readings.

Fabián Severo (Artigas, Uruguay, 1981) is the author of four poetry collections. His book Noite nu Norte/ Night in the North, translated from Portuñol by Laura Cesarco Eglin and Jesse Lee Kercheval will be published

by Eulalia Books in 2020.

Noémia de Sousa (1926–2002, full name Carolina Noémia Abranches de Sousa Soares) was a Portuguese-language poet born in Catembe, Mozambique.

After her childhood and education in Africa, she lived much of her adult life in Lisbon and Paris, working as a translator and as an employee of the Moroccan consulate in France. She wrote strong political poetry dealing with themes of race and equality. Because of de Sousa’s key role in her nation’s literature, she is often called “the mother of Mozambican poetry.”

Don Stoll’s fiction is forthcoming in The Broadkill Review, The Main Street Rag, Wild Violet, Coffin Bell, The Airgonaut, Between These Shores (twice), Pulp Modern, Yellow Mama (three times), Frontier Tales, and Children, Churches and Daddies, and recently appeared in The Galway Review (tinyurl. com/y6nxt9nv), Green Hills Literary Lantern (tinyurl.com/y2lfxysm), Close to the Bone (tinyurl.com/y38ac6jv), Horla (tinyurl.com/y3k6eewx), Dark Dossier (twice), The Helix, Sarasvati, Eclectica (tinyurl.com/y73wnmgq), Erotic Review (twice: tinyurl.com/y8nkc73z and tinyurl.com/y36zcvut), Cliterature (tinyurl.com/y5m8arzn), and Down in the Dirt. In 2008, Don and his wife founded their nonprofit (karimufoundation.org) to bring new schools, clean water, and clinics emphasizing women’s and children’s health to three contiguous Tanzanian villages.

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Mark Statman’s newest book of poems is Exile Home (Lavender Ink, 2019).

Statman’s poetry collections include That Train Again (Lavender Ink, 2015), A Map of the Winds (Lavender Ink, 2013) and Tourist at a Miracle (Hanging Loose, 2010). His translations include Never Made in America: Selected Poetry of Martín Barea Mattos (Lavender Ink/diálogos, 2017).Black Tulips: The Selected Poems of José María Hinojosa (University of New Orleans Press, 2012), the first English language translation of the significant poet of Spain’s Generation of 1927, and, with Pablo Medina, a translation of Federico García Lorca’s Poet in New York (Grove 2008). Statman’s poetry, essays, and translations have appeared in fourteen anthologies, as well as such publications as New American Writing, Tin House, Tupelo Quarterly, Hanging Loose, Ping Pong, and American Poetry Review. A recipient of awards from the NEA and the National Writers Project, he is Emeritus Professor of Literary Studies at Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts, The New School, and lives in San Pedro Ixtlahuaca and Oaxaca de Juárez, MX. Marley Stuart teaches English at Southeastern Louisiana University, where he serves as an Assistant Editor of Louisiana Literature. A graduate of the Bennington Writing Seminars, his stories and poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in The Chattahoochee Review, Permafrost, Painted Bride Quarterly, The Healing Muse, SPEAK The Magazine, Backstory, and elsewhere. He and his wife, the writer Kimberly Dawn Stuart, live in New Orleans and direct the small press River Glass Books Bronwen Tate teaches Writing and Literature at Marlboro College, a tiny radically egalitarian educational utopia buried in snow in southern Vermont.

A citizen of the Chickasaw nation, Bronwen has an MFA in Literary Arts from Brown University and a PhD in Comparative Literature from Stanford University. She has published six poetry chapbooks, as well as poems in venues including Denver Quarterly, TYPO, and LIT and essays on the poetics of Lyn Hejinian, Bernadette Mayer, Frank Stanford, and others.

James Valvis has placed poems or stories in Ploughshares, River Styx, Hubbub, Southern Indiana Review, Hiram Review, and The Sun. His poetry

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will be in Best American Poetry 2017. His fiction was chosen for Sundress Best of the Net and won 2nd Place in Folio’s Editor’s Prize. His work has also come in 2nd for the Asimov’s Readers’ Award. A former US Army soldier, he lives near Seattle.

Robert Ward has written nine novels including the 1972 National Endowment Award Winner, Shedding Skin, the Pen West Award Winner for the Best Novel of 1985, Red Baker, and the Hammett Nominated thriller, Four Kinds of Rain.

In addition, his collection of magazine pieces, Renegades, received rave reviews from Publisher’s Weekly. The author has also written and produced both Hill Street Blues and Miami Vice for television. His new novel The Stone Carrier will appear in November of this year.

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New from

XAVIER REVIEW Parterre: New and Collected Poetry and Prose

by Thomas Bonner, Jr. 978-1-883275-218-0 • 2018 • $20.00 Parterre celebrates the career of a remarkable scholar and teacher. Tom Bonner’s short stories and poems are intimate and affectionate portraits of Southern people and places. His insightful articles… supplement his pioneering work on the fiction of Kate Chopin.

Bernard Koloski, editor of Awakenings: The Story of the Kate Chopin Revival.

In a collection brimming with erudition… Tom Bonner also gives us serene poetry and narrative thrill rides such as “Front Lines”— an altogether original story form that can best be identified as postmodern.

Ralph Adamo, author of Ever: Poems 2000-2014.

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XAVIER REVIEW Go Home and Cry for Yourselves

by Tim Fitts 978-1-883275-27-3 • 2017 • $13.00 Quirky, surprising and darkly humorous, Tim Fitts’ characters will get under your skin. These memorable stories unsettle, as strong fiction should.

—Claire Messud, author of The Burning Girl Powerful in its portrayal of Americans living on the margin between “just getting-by” and catastrophe—financially, morally, existentially—this is a riveting collection of short fiction that captures the voices, attitudes, and crippled/crippling days of its masterfully drawn characters.

—Gordon Macalpine, author of Woman with a Blue Pencil

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XAVIER REVIEW The Shy Mirror

by Gordon Robert Sabatier 978-1-883275-26-6 • 2016 • $15.00 There is no singular delight in coming into the world of Gordon Robert Sabatier who is both a natural poet and a learned one too…. Here is a poet who does what all art asks us to do: to blur the lines between what is human and not human, the lines between pain and ecstasy, between being fully immersed in the physical and the spiritual in the moment of the poem. Here is a poet who uses formalisms we use to harness the fierce and wild.

—Darrell Bourque, author of Megan’s Guitar and Other Poems from Acadie

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