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#252: "The Departure" by Rebecca Gummere

~This essay was first published in The Gettysburg Review (2012).

Early one morning in mid-May, my ninety-two-year-old father swallows three pills--two for his heart and one for anxiety brought on by his declining condition. He insists on taking the pills all at once, so my mother places them in his large, outstretched hand. In his other hand a glass of water trembles, the surface as troubled as if a small storm is brewing. He tosses the pills back, pouring the water after, then he gasps, inhales, and aspirates one, two, or perhaps all three into his lungs. We will never know for certain, and in the end it matters little. The sparse bedroom in their senior-citizen apartment already feels like a small stage, the tall rhododendrons outside the window a shadowy green backdrop.

Agitato--in an agitated manner

Within minutes my father shouts that his chest is on fire. “Call someone!” he tells my mother.

            Taped to the kitchen wall is a large sign: Do Not Resuscitate.  My father has signed the papers assuring the State of North Carolina that he wishes to forego any heroic measures. His body is worn; his mind wanders distant corridors. His heart malfunctions. Basic daily activities, like getting out of his chair to go to the bathroom, thoroughly exhaust him. A hospice nurse has been visiting for the past three months, providing support for my mother and comfort and pain relief for my father.

Cesura--break; stop

Several months ago as my mother was helping my father get ready for bed, he asked her, “Will I always be like this?”

            In my family we veer down the nearest side road when such questions loom. My mother smiled and patted his arm. “Let’s get those teeth brushed,” she replied.

            Another evening during their bedtime preparations, he stopped her to ask, “Will it be Wednesday?”

            “What?” she asked, confused.

            “When I die.  Will it be on a Wednesday?” 

            She kissed his forehead and went back to helping him out of his T-shirt and into his pajama top. 

            He held his arms up for her like a compliant five-year-old.  “I love you, you know,” he told her as she hooked up his oxygen and buttoned him in for the night.

#251: Two Poems by Anita Sullivan

~These poems were selected by Clara Jane Hallar, Assistant Editor for Poetry.

~This poem was previously published in Nimrod International Journal (2011).

A Broken Abecedarius of How Things Might Be if the World Were Saved

Achoo! at the beginning of a tale.

Beasts wandering in daylight, unafraid of being shot, even

Centaurs, who would not be drunk any more if invited to your wedding.

A dragon or a dinosaur named

Ellen.

Flies who would go to the front screen door on command so you could

            let them out.

Galumphing as the normal gait of soldiers.

Hazelnuts that fall one by one into the mouth of the Salmon of Wisdom who swims

            beneath, until the time comes for her to be caught by a wizard’s

            apprentice and cooked over a slow fire until she has rendered up all the

            wisdom remaining in her unsung parts. But

I digress. . . .

Intoxication once a day by the scent from white

Jasmine flowers tumbling over a garden wall, except for the

Keepers of Butterflies, who would need to remain sober.

Loping as an alternate choice (see G above).

More respect for Dame Love, who has thoughtfully abolished Reason.

Nearly all the children reaching the house in the middle of the forest, where they will be

            temporarily changed into birds, and introduced to their hearts’ desire by a very

Old bear, who knows all the tales with caves in them.

Pearls of music rolling around between the warm, uneven bricks, under the chairs.           

                        Quiet

Regales of yellow leaves, and the musk of grapes.

Sisyphus released from duty but staying on as a volunteer on weekends when he has

Time off from being a taxi driver in New York, something he has always wanted to

            try.

An upset

Victory by

Whim, who has finally convinced Steven Hawking that she is indeed the final black hole

            into-which-and-from-which comes

Xanadu with its plazas and feasts, its gardens of endless endings for which we have all

            secretly

Yearned—and to which we have spent the last million years

Zigging and Zagging (see G above) and where we will arrive this very

            AFTERNOON.

           

                                               

 *****

#250: " Where the Highway Ends: Sketches of Denise Levertov & Mitchell Goodman" by Mark Pawlak

~This essay was previously published in Hanging Loose (2007).

“Life and memory of it so compressed they’ve turned into each other.

Which is which?”—Elizabeth Bishop

“We do not remember days, we remember moments.”—Cesare Pavese

Preface

I came to MIT in 1966, on a scholarship, from a Buffalo, New York, working class family, a family where books were suspect and my decision to go to MIT instead of a local college surprising. I was majoring in physics when, during my senior year, I took a poetry writing class with Denise Levertov. In Denise, and her husband, Mitch Goodman, I found the intellectual family, and the wider world, that I had been searching for. Over the years, I continued to live and work in the Boston area, mostly in Somerville and Cambridge. My relationship with Denise continued as she became my confidante, my poetry mentor, my guide to a life of the mind broader than just physics and mathematics. I was soon admitted into her large but intimate circle of friends, social activists, and writers. This included becoming an invited guest at her country house in western Maine. At some time in the early 60s, Denise and Mitch had bought a farmhouse in the township of Temple—literally where the highway ends. It served them for years as an escape from the summer heat of their Greenwich Village apartment. After they moved to Boston, as it was closer to the farmhouse, they took off to Temple more frequently and in all seasons, as indicated in the following sketches from memory. As you read them, imagine the effect on a young mind of this couple, poet and novelist, well-read intellectuals, and political activists.

Summer

I remember flying with Denise in a small prop plane from Boston to Farmington. The twin engines thrummed as we skimmed the green treetops of Maine’s endless woods. It was my first visit, August. Mitch was there to greet and drive us in his Volvo to their Temple farmhouse.

There was always at least one other Volvo parked on the front lawn. Over the years, with each visit, I would find the collection had grown. Mitch bought them for spare parts to keep one aging Volvo running. His answer to inquiries was always “You can imagine how common a Volvo dealer is in rural Maine.”

The kitchen window looked out on a lone apple tree beside a fieldstone fence a short distance behind the house; beyond the fence was a broad, grassy field. It sloped up from the farmhouse to a tree-lined ridge; to the right of the house the field descended sharply in the direction of Temple Stream. A granite slab served as the front-door step. Denise and I sat there one morning as she read me the poem she’d just written: “night lies down/in the field. . . .”

#249: Three Poems by Bruce Robinson

~Selected by Clara Jane Hallar, assistant editor, poetry

~This poem was previously published in Spoon River Quarterly (1991).

Dialing and Dolor

                                    la vida es sueño

            Selena’s on the telephone. Richard

is in conference. Philip’s on hold.

Rosalie is calling. Kevin

is dialing. Mark is listening.

            At the front desk Pat is decding

whether to be masculine or feminine.

Most of us have already made this decision,

some have lived to regret it.

            And where is Caroline?  Philip calls Selena,

there’s no answer. He calls Bob, but

Caroline’s not there.  He calls me,

I’m holding for an open line. “Mark, is Caroline there.”

            She is not. She is in the conference room,

speaking to herself, practicing eye contact,

practicing doing without cigarettes

for an hour and a half, studying inflections, weighing nuance.

            Through the skylight the sun lights

without connection or warmth; it’s working on a

concept, it’s on to something big. The sun is so much

like light it’s almost uncanny,

            As if masculine were feminine,

or dialing listening, sometimes there’s just

the warm contours of the telephone

when you’ve been on hold.

*****

#248: "Who Owns This?" by Nathan Leslie

~This story appeared in Boulevard (2011).

There was this guy.  He called himself Franklin, though I found out later his real name was Charlie Smythe.  Well, Charlie (or whoever he was) liked the name Franklin.  Not Frank or Frankie.  Franklin.  He was proper that way.

            We both lived in the gated community, Meadow Haven.  I was working three nights a week at the Meadow Haven Club.  It was an upscale community pool—just for the residents of Meadow Haven.  The developers carved out a nine-hole golf course, a pool, a line of Jacuzzis, and faux-clay tennis courts.  The works.  Not that most of the Meadow Haven residents didn’t have their own means of entertainment (pools and Jacuzzis of their own), but I worked at the pool anyway.  If Meadow Haven residents wanted to be seen, they’d go to the pool.  That was the difference.  My job was to hand out towels (if needed) and make sure the residents signed their name and address in the assigned box.  I knew most of the regulars, so it was merely a formality.  I was good at being friendly, at smiling my clean-cut grin and validating the Meadow Haven ethos, or whatnot.  I’d get an occasional tip, a lawn-mowing gig.  It was generally relaxing.  There was nothing much to it.

            But back to Franklin.  Unlike most of the other regulars, Franklin always came to the pool unaccompanied.  Of course, our bread and butter were the housewives and their rug-rats.  Each afternoon Franklin would show up in his black Nylon jogging pants, his yellow or green t-shirt, and he always carried a twelve-ounce bottle of Deer Park water in his right hand—in between his finger and thumb as if it were a cigar.  He’d make a federal production:  unscrew the cap, take a small sip, lick his lips, lick his lips again, screw the cap back on dramatically with a flick of the wrist.  He liked being watched.  He liked attention. 

Franklin was a short man with a short man’s complex.  He had an Irish-looking face, with a pug nose and strawberry-blonde hair.  Franklin moved quickly, swinging his arms wildly, as if he were power-walking.  Overcompensation if you ask me.  He usually wore a rhomboid gold earring in each ear, pirate style.  When he took off his shirt I could see the weird, faded places where you could tell he had tattoos removed from his reddish skin.  But whoever removed the tattoos didn’t do such a hot job:  the ghost of his previous tattoos was still there.  When I knew him Franklin was maybe forty—the kind of guy who was not quite my father’s age, but certainly too old to be my brother or cousin.  But I was in college at the time, so my perspective of everything was skewed.

            So I was sitting at the desk reading an Elmore Leonard paperback propped on a stack of towels.  Franklin came up to me.  Most of the residents signed in, took a towel, said hello, and went for a swim.  I felt this guy standing there, watching me.  Just standing there.  Then I heard the smack, smack, smack of gum between his teeth.  His breath smelled like apricots.  Great, I thought, I have to look up from Rum Punch.

            “Hey, bub,” he said.  “Do you know who owns this?”

            I was dumbfounded.  The facial expression I screwed on probably shouted:  “That is a stupid question.”

            “Who owns this?  You do, really.”

            “Right,” he said, still chomping away on his apricot gum.  He crossed his arms as if to defend himself against the oncoming I-gotcha.  “But I still have to sign in.” 

            “You don’t literally own it,” I said.  “But the development owns the golf course, the pool, the Har-Tru tennis courts.  You know, your community association dues and membership fees help pay for maintenance.”  I don’t know why he didn’t see the big picture, but then I guess he wasn’t the first clueless rich guy in the world.

            “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said.  Franklin had an odd way of talking—some kind of aw-shucks 50’s amalgam, with a heavy dose of the new-agey that emerged as we became acquainted.  He was friendly, open-hearted; Franklin always was.  But there was something else there too.  Something.  I mean, “Bub?”  Who says that?  Franklin went on:  he just moved in and he figured he’d see if we needed a sculpture in our lobby.  “You have to have a sculpture,” he said.  He said it might add to the “authority” of the place, the overall “energy.”

            Now you have to understand, “lobby” is far too grand of a word to use to describe the area in which I sat—despite the dues and fees, which mostly covered salaries and upkeep of the facilities.  Aside from the desk, there was a scuffed miniature pool table with warped faux-cherry cues, an air hockey table, and a cheap, triangular, laminated coffee table—management used it for fliers and announcements and the like.  For penny-pinching reasons Meadow Haven didn’t give much thought to the lobby; residents complained it looked like the lobby of a public pool.  No room for a statue, unless it was a little desk-top paperweight do-dad.

            I shrugged, but Franklin kept pressing.  How the lobby needs a statue.  How every lobby should have a statue.  How a statue brings the “energies” of the room to focus.  How a statue makes a lobby feel homey, full.  Like I gave a rat’s ass.  I just wanted to be left to my own devices—to my on-the-job R&R.

            “I’ll have to ask Lynda,” I said.  I propped my head in my hand.  “She’s the manager.”  I let my gaze drift back down to Rum Punch, hoping he’d get the hint.

            “Great, thanks a mil, bub,” Franklin said.  “If you’d do that for me I’d really appreciate it.  And if you want a statue of your own, let me know, will ya?  I mean, I’ll sell you one lickety-split, on discount.”  He made clicking sound with his tongue and pointed at me as if we shared some inside joke.  We didn’t. 

            “Okay,” I said.

            “Just remember:  I’m a sculptor.  I sculpt.  This is my life-force.  Help support your local artist.  We are part and parcel.”  Of what, I thought.  I just didn’t get his whole thing.

            He smacked his gum and signed in, grabbed a towel, glanced at the name.  Even carrying a towel, Franklin somehow managed to swing his arms. 

            “I’ll ask Lynda,” I reiterated, trying to avoid his eyes.  The guy weirded me out from the word go.  I guess there are worse things; he was memorable. 

            Then I let Franklin dissolve into the background.  Went back to my Rum Punch.

#247: Three Poems by Shahé Mankerian

~Selected by Clara Jane Hallar, Assistant Editor for Poetry

~ This poem was previously published in The New Guard Literary Review (2011).

The Mosaic of the Missing

We found the doll’s head

rolled under the chassis

of the charred Mercedes,

then one plastic sandal

on the cracked manhole.

Her mother fell

on the sidewalk, staring

at the feet of the crowd

that circled the bomb crater

like crows. They found

her braided pigtail twisted

around the telephone wire.

We heard the choked whisper

of the mother get louder.

“Ya, Souraia, stay home

and dress your doll.

We’ll have the damn okra

without bread.” We mistook

shards of glass for fingernails.

The three o’clock chimes

of the clock tower muffled

the siren of the ambulance.

The corner grocer needed

help behind the counter,

but his son was busy sifting

through bones and limbs

as if searching for souvenirs. 

*****