#156: Two Poems by Jody Bolz

ALWAYS BEFORE, LIGHT GATHERED 

~This poem was published previously in Prairie Schooner (2013).

Always before, light gathered

where I stood

as if each thing mattered.

Now it won’t, the moment

a collapsed box

whose doll-like tenants

scatter on the ground,

thrown riders,

like the dead I found

ten years ago:

a mother and her son.

Nothing to be done.

No way to stop the film loop

my brain replays,

mastering each image

as it darkens from the center

like the wooden floor

they lay on.

Race from that house—

run into the summer street,

scream for help—

Run away a thousand times

and still

the scene follows.

I hardly knew her,

but this much I could tell:

she finished her book             

                                                                           

and her boy and herself.

People say

she took him with her

as if any mother would—

but where were they going

without their blood?

*****

#155: "Fancy Man" by Julie Wakeman-Linn

~This story was previously published in Rosebud (2010).

Jacaranda blossoms littered the steps of 36 Katima Mulilo. Tom Jensen knocked three times. He didn’t feel great about mooching a bed from his dad’s old pal, but he’d run out of options. When the door opened, he asked the Zambian houseman, “Is George Wilson in?”

“Now is not a good time. Can you come back after tomorrow? Maybe next week?” The man whispered, traces of Shona in his accent.

“George gave me a standing invite.” Tom started to explain, when the man muttered he would check with Bwana George, clicking the door shut.

Tom unslung his backpack, trying to figure out why this guy wouldn’t let him in. Maybe George’s house was too small to have a spare bed. Zambians lived in this neighborhood; the houses had wire fences, not like the rich diplomat compounds of Nairobi and Harare where he had been a house-sitter. Still -- Lusaka with its flowering jacarandas was as pretty as promised by the bedtime stories his dad had told him and his baby sister Lucy. 

The door opened and the houseman, still frowning, ushered Tom into a square living room. Maybe George would help him find a job or at least give him time to figure out where to go and what to do next. Being expelled from Zimbabwe had been scary, but he wasn’t ready to give up on Africa and go home to frozen Minnesota. George would also have news of his mother and Lucy.

On a wood table, George’s surveying tools, a transit and a light device, weighted down blueprints. Enormous splashy paintings covered the walls, a sort of Cubist Victoria Falls, an abstract orange sunset over the savannah, and a Cape Buffalo herd done in dots against a pink sunrise. All three paintings seemed like windows onto familiar landscapes, even though they were modern and blurry. 

 “Tom, welcome to Lusaka,” George’s booming voice preceded him. “College didn’t work out?”

“Wow, you’re dropped –what – 50 pounds? How are you, you old scoundrel?” Tom said.  George’s voice was the same but everything else had changed, his lanky six foot frame now stooped and his wavy brown hair mixed with gray.

George plopped in an easy chair and waved Tom into the other. “You look as scrawny as ever.”

“Nothing like travelling to keep a guy lean.” Tom laughed. He was a head shorter than George and Africa had kept him skinny with a couple of bouts of malaria. He hadn’t seen George since that night they’d prowled the State Street bars in Madison. George had been looking for some action but with his bulky beer gut, he hadn’t had any luck with the sleek young guys. Mid-evening, George gave up trying to score and they’d had fun as George showed Tom how to look gay when he needed to. Now he was washed up on George’s doorstep, out of work, nearly out of money, out of ideas. “I was doing just great until that ass Zimbabwean president shut down all the independent newspapers and my job disappeared.”

“Your mum told me in her last couple of Christmas cards to watch out for you in case you got into more trouble. Are you in trouble?” George asked.

“Not really,” Tom mumbled, thinking how little she cared. He’d run 10,000 miles away from one DWI charge and a crashed up car and she still nagged. She’d never help him, but he missed Lucy. Lucy had been fine in the backseat, even though his accident totaled his mom’s Camry. “Do her letters mention Lucy?”

#154: Three Poems by John Hoppenthaler

Poem

~This poem was previously published in New Letters (1985)

In this uncertain exile,

I heat canned ravioli in a saucepan,

stir, stare deeply

into bubbling tomato sauce

and see you.

We met again over Chinese food,

like the old days,

and discussed the subtle changes.

I expected you to order

shrimp with lobster sauce

like you used to, but you ordered

sweet and sour chicken,

and you never liked it before.

Tasting my drink I thought,

Jesus, God, Lord,

once this almost ruined my life.

I raise the spoon to my mouth,

scald my tongue, and know it’s done.

*****

Redux Is on Hiatus

“And now we welcome the new year. Full of things that have never been.”

~Rainer Maria Rilke

Not exactly the premise of Redux, where we bring previously published literary work back into the world for a new, online audience…but who can argue with Rilke?

Redux will be on hiatus until Monday, January 12, 2015  Please join us then for another year filled with wondrous and amazing poems, stories, and essays. 

Happy new year!

#153" "Knife" by Ted Chiles

~This story was previously published in Permafrost (Summer 2008).

            John woke to pain. Not an explosion but an announcement between his shoulder blades. Have I slept on something? The remote?  He tried to roll over, but the pain spread down his back and across his shoulders. 

He was on his side facing the window.  He never slept in the middle. He always slept with his back to her side of the bed. Even after she left.

John tried to roll over again, but the pain returned. He rested and then slowly turned onto his stomach and slid off the end of the bed. It hurt to stand, but he found relief with his head bowed and shoulders slumped.

He walked to the door and flipped the switch to the ceiling light. No remote or book lay on the bed. But in the middle of what would have been a chalk outline of where he normally slept, he saw a stain – red going to brown.

It was probably a boil. He walked out of the bedroom and down the hall to the bathroom, thinking that a boil had formed and purged itself during the night. He switched on the lights and raised his head to the mirror. He seemed older, having left something of himself in the bed.

John neither liked nor disliked his appearance. He thought of himself as normal, and he was normal in the way that people from the Midwest don’t have accents. He filled peoples’ expectations.

John examined his back. He expected a hole. The remains of a boil.

Instead, he saw the knife.

It had a hilt and handle of polished metal about five inches. The hilt curled back on itself. Coiled ropes of steel textured the handle and gave it a vaguely medieval look. Not a noble blade worn openly, but a villain’s weapon.

Only a little blood flowed down his back.

#152: "Friend to the Goddamned Community" by Charlie Boodman

  

~This story was first published in The Madison Review (2008). 

The neighbors’ infant is screaming again.  Something is wrong.  It’s been twenty minutes and the kid hasn’t shut the fuck up.  Your headphones are welded on and the stentorian Screamin’ Jay doesn’t dim it.    

     “Dadda… Momma… Dadda …”  In hefty moans, the voice broadcasts a woeful mantra through your open window.  You think to close it, but consider your obligations.  Why is he still crying?  And is he okay?  If you hadn’t just smoked that joint, maybe you could gauge the severity of the situation.  But you can’t.  You decide it’s your duty to get involved.  That’s you: Mr. Friend to the Goddamned Community.

You cried that way as an infant when you were scared.  Your father was always downstairs working on his H.O. model trains.  He had his headphones on, and he couldn’t hear you.  Luigi Luccarini would climb a ladder to your window and sing the theme song from The Greatest American Hero.  Luigi was retarded, but you didn’t know that.  All you knew was some lunatic with one tooth was peering through your window ranting into his feather-duster microphone while you screamed your eyes teary and nobody intervened.  From that day, the policy was:  always intervene.  

#151: Five Poems by Eric Nelson

I LOVE CHICKENS

~This poem first appeared in Cincinnati Review (2012).

Because they spend the day paying attention—

One eye looking for what they can eat,

One for what can eat them. Because they hang

With me in the yard, their clucks and coos a comfort

While I plant and they dig. Because for them

Roaches are a rare and challenging treat.

Because an egg tucked amid pine shavings in the dark

Coop is a brightness and a marvel.  Every day.

Because their eggs are not only white but also brown,

And blue, and dappled, and fit perfectly into my palm.

Because they walk like wind-up toys and run

Akilter, careening like roller-coaster cars.

Because everything we haven’t eaten tastes like them.

Because they are delicious. And their eggs are delicious.

Because they are a world of recipes: Cordon Bleu,

Kiev, Curry, Florentine, Parmigiana, Pot-pie.

Because each of the one-hundred folds in a chef’s hat

Represents a different way to cook an egg.

Because sometimes they think I am a rooster

And squat down to be mounted.

Because they are not mascots for sports teams

Even though they are fierce with their hypodermic

Beaks and their scaly feet’s claws.

Because they like to have their scaly feet rubbed.

  

Because after eating they use the grass like a napkin

To wipe their beaks. Because they are flappable.

Because every night they return to their coop

And every morning they walk the plank into their day.

Because like us they brood, follow a pecking order, desire

A nest egg. Because even their shit is useful.

*****