#22: "Haints at Noon" by Marlin Barton

                                                                                                        

~This piece previously appeared in New Letters (2009)

Editor's note:  This story contains offensive language.

Field Notes: Federal Writers’ Project (FWP) interview, Lottie Eppes, 97. Riverfield, Ala. September 12, 1936.

     These be hard times, sure ’nough, but they ain’t hard like what us had before Freedom come. I was born on the Teclaw Place, and ain’t far from it now as the crow fly. Ain’t never been far from it in all my days.

     Marster Will wasn’t no good marster, but I heard tell a worse. Us didn’t starve, but us got hungry some. Three pounds a meat, a peck of meal, and potatoes every week ’bout all we got. A little fatback and syrup. Maybe a chicken on Sunday if us picked enough cotton.

     Most old folks like me, they tell some, but they ain’t gon’ tell all what could be tole, just what white folks wants to hear. In these hard times now, black folks needs what they can get from white folks and be scared somebody gon’ take it away. Me, my day soon to come. I ain’t got no worry ’bout nothin’. What anybody gon’ take from me?

     So I tell what some won’t.

#21: Two Poems by Erica Dawson

~This poem previously appeared in Sewanee Theological Review (2010)

If I Could Write a Song

…for my grandfather, I would make it start

With Pardon me, Boy, old-fashioned southern tune

Of trains, trysts laced in satin, and the art

Of Boy, gimme a shine, New York and soon

A stop in Baltimore, a silver spoon

Set in the diner, ham and eggs, the clock-

Struck morning hour, one leftover moon.

But still the tall white pines whisper and mock

You: “Boy” in caps like “God,” so I’d rechart

The triptik, change our destination, prune

The lyrics back and make the song impart

Pardon me, Boy, is that canvas cocoon

A straightjacket?  And this brick-front festoon

The state asylum in Kalamazoo?  The shock?

The Haldol? Haloed, do you feel immune?

And still the tall white pines whisper and mock

Us; so, I’d make that bin our where-the-heart-

Is home, and sing there’s no such thing as loon.

Let’s make a break; and, Boy, you don’t bogart

That vodka now.  In a Midwest monsoon,

Let’s go to AsylumLake like a baboon,

Beating our chest and, let’s invite the schlock,

Polack, and every other nameless goon;

Yet, still the tall white pines whisper and mock.

I, then, would end our song with this: you’re strewn

On us:  Mom holds your gun but she won’t cock

And shoot.  Sometimes she hears a raven croon,

And still. Your tall white pines, whisper, and mock.

*****

#20: "Other Fine Gifts" by Jeffrey N. Johnson

~This piece previously appeared in The Evansville Review (2007)

           

            Last year, despite the problems at home, I was intent on celebrating the season. I took solace in the city and all its festivity, each afternoon stealing an hour after classes to wander the downtown streets in search of the perfect gift. The lampposts trailing down Wisconsin Avenue were garnished with frozen wreaths and red ribbon, and the happy and hurried faces of shoppers blew by like snowflakes in a storm. As I joined a flow of people in front of the bookstore and pushed into the vestibule, a blast of hot air washed over me, but I was suddenly warmed on the inside by a familiar face – an old college flame twenty years removed from my life stood before me with little silver bells dangling from her ears. We stood toe-to-toe like wooden dolls and blinked at each other.

            “Oh my God,” she said. “Roger Loughlin?”

            But for the crow’s feet, Loren possessed the same appeal, both the sexual and the intangible, as she did in college. Her hair bounced lightly on her shoulders and she wore a long cashmere coat that somehow managed to show her figure. She looked like she would drop her bags to hug me, but held on as if she carried some fragile gift. Instead, she grabbed my arm and raised her cheek to mine in a kind of mock kiss that didn’t seem to leave either of us satisfied.

 

#19: "Shades" by R.T. Smith

~This poem previously appeared in The Sewanee Review (2009)

Shades

When Odysseus descended to the underworld

and crossed the dark river to learn the key

to his destiny, he poured the ritual milk and honey,

the wine and barley and blood to summon the dead,

but he never expected to find his mother among

the shadows who were filled with mist and sifted

with the wind which had no source.  He had thought

her alive and back in Ithaca expecting his return.

He had assumed the worst ordeals were his own. 

But when he reached out, shivering as he wept,

to embrace the ghost, that wanderer found

no substance, no flesh nor blood nor bone,

and he must have felt as I did that first time home

when my mother’s mind had begun to wander

and she disremembered not only the laughter,

the lightning-struck chinaberry, the sunset

peaches and fireflies and the sharp smell

of catfish frying, but also her name and the fact

that she was sitting in her kitchen of fifty years

beside my father who stood there straining

not to wring his hands or surrender to the tears

welling around his eyes.  She gathered her purse

her hat and wrap, then said, Please drive me home

before strangers take every damned thing I own.

Her eyes glaucous with terror, she was exhausted

and desperate, almost herself “an empty, flitting

shade,” as Homer says it, uncertain in her haze

whether she was moving toward or away

from what might be called the Great Dream.

When she sobbed and cried, Where is my son?

I, too, felt bewildered, and not even a seer

from the land of night and frost and smoke

could tell me what words would amount

to comfort nor which constellation to steer by,

nor where all this heart sorrow might end.

*****

#18: "The Separation of Specialist Piatrowski" by Arthur McMaster

~This piece was originally published in Wisconsin Review  (2009)

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

Jerry Piatrowski got out of bed and put on his uniform. Today was the day he’d get out. What was to stop him? A man’s enlistment is a contract with the Army, right? A legal deal with the U.S. government, for pity’s sake. Today was here. He was gone.

Jerry opened his locker and took hold of a large package on the upper shelf. Let me out, he thought. Time’s up. He had his out-processing orders to prove it. His medical records spoke for themselves.

         If there had been anyone in the barracks just then to ask him if he was sure, sure he didn’t want to re-up, he’d ask: “What do you think? Like maybe I want one more tour in the damn desert?” Jerry had had more than enough of that.
        Had there been anyone there to answer him, and there was not a soul around, he’d ask it this way: “What am I going to do, go on more patrols? Shoot more Hajjis?” He tucked his dog tags under his shirt. “All I really need.”
        The hallway was quiet. 
        Specialist Piatrowski might have asked a friend to accompany him as he sought his exit to the rest of the world. Just who was or was not with him today, however, was unclear.
        The personnel building was right here. Let’s do it, he thought.

#17: "Recovery" by Kathy Fagan

~This poem previously appeared in TriQuarterly and in The Charm (Zoo Press, 2002)

RECOVERY

            Remember. Resurrect. A river

Taken under the rain’s

            Right arm. Enter an R and everything rises,

Like cream, to the surface.

            It’s the ornamental nature of the peacock

Letter. From its azure

            Crest to its emerald

Throat to the Roman grandeur of its mirrored

            Train—iridescence runneth over!

Red rover, red rover. And look! Regarde!

            Our laureates rush over—

To write us a rhyme, a romance, or retraction,

            To write an Rx for our grieving

Hearts: Turn words every morning like a bride

            In your arms and repeat after me:

Resh. Ra. Roar. Rabbi. I am

            Wronged. I am wrong. Dark.

Sorrow. Rare. Miracle. Adorable. Reaper. Raison

            D’etre. We are

Irreparable. But what of it?

            Therefore shall we labor

In the service of the R.

            Therefore shall we practice

Such random acts of artifice as

            The topiary, curlicue of orange

Rind, and other ethereal arrangements of the sort

            Featured in Martha Stewart’s

Marathon pre-Christmas broadcast,

            “An Undecorated Life is Not Worth Living.”

Pre-recorded in the recently renovated

            Rooms of her rustic 18^th century Vermont,

Paris, Prague, and Ozark farmhouses,

            She credits Ezra Pound and his celebrated Modern

Maxim, “Make It New,”

            For her own mantra: “Make It Yourself,

Make It Pretty, and Keep the Glue-gun Loaded.”

            Despair prepared for is despair

Averted. The R knows that. As do charm,

            Conjury, and all rarefied matters of inconsequence

I was formerly

            Forever railing against. No longer.

 *****

#16: "Shelf Life of Love" by Virginia Pye

~This piece originally appeared in The Potomac Review (as “Shelf Life of Happiness”; 2010)

My brother calls from his rental car on the way home from the hospital while I consider lunch meats at the Stop ‘n Shop. He rarely calls, not until recently. My mother used to call all the time. She can’t get the hang of cell phones and besides, they don’t let you use them from in there, where you need them most. The walkie talkies we gave her and Dad a year ago spoon like lovers in a box under their bed. They were supposed to give her peace of mind when she shuffled out on errands and left him alone. But now she is the one in the hospital and there’s no one at the apartment. Still, the double bed, I imagine, is neatly made, the bedspread faded but clean. She would have wanted it nice for my brother when he got back from visiting her at the end of the day. So far, though, he insists on staying with her, sleeping in a recliner chair like the ones we sat in at the end with Dad. The report from my brother is brief, inconclusive. He’ll get back to me when he has more news. We hang up without saying good bye.

My friend Sarah calls as I’m deciding between organic bagged romaine and the regular kind. She wants to know if her husband Michael ruined our visit to them. We haven’t even unpacked. When I think of ruin, he doesn’t come to mind.

“He was fine,” I say, wondering why the organic lettuce is so heavy. Then, because it’s a friend’s duty, I egg her on: “with us.”

That sets her off.