#43: "Dresstrees" by Kirsty Logan

~This story was previously published in lip magazine (2009)

     Every summer we decorate the orchard with dresses. On Friday we mix the dye in huge sheep-dip vats, as tall as me but wider. One blue, one purple, one pink, one red, one yellow. When leaves fall in we fish them out, their veins dripping colour. When insects fly in, we leave them be: once they’ve breathed in the chemicals, it’s too late. The dye smells sharp like fresh pepper, earthy like sprouting potatoes. Once I dipped in a finger, expecting it to taste like roasted vegetables. It was more like nail varnish; I didn’t try it again.

      On Saturday the vans arrive at the farm, spilling over with fabric. The drivers stack the boxes by our door, their talk and laughter making their cigarettes wiggle furiously. Their bellies hang over their belts, pushing out their t-shirts like balloons about to pop. They peer in the windows before roaring away. We pour out of the house and tear open the boxes. Piles of dresses, all the same beige-white like the underneath of a tabby cat. We sort them into piles: dresses to be reddened, pinked, purpled, yellowed, and blued.

      On Sunday we get up with the sun. We pile the dresses into the dye vats, swirling them around with broom handles. The dogs run infinity symbols between our legs, trailing leaves. The horse watches us intently, the colours reflected in her eyes. At midday we sit on the doorstep, eating chunks of bread and cheese dipped in soup. Our fingers dye the bread rainbow colours, so it looks like we’re eating iced cakes.

      On Sunday night the dresses hang in the trees, dripping multicoloured tears on the grass. My finger pads are dented from the beading, my knuckles ingrained with colour. The cat lurks in the doorstep; earlier she ventured out, then had to spend an hour licking her paws clean. The dogs sprint manically among the coloured drops, tongues lolling, tails swishing the hanging fabric.

      The sun slides behind the hill, lighting up the dresses in a blaze like fire. It sets, and the dresses fade to black.

*****

#42: "Do Not Call My Lord, The Lion" by Adrienne Wolfert

~This poem previously appeared in Poet Lore (1969)

DO NOT CALL MY LORD, THE LION

1.

Iam too mortal for Divine Loneliness.

I have seen the face of the Lion and I deny it.

I have known the chill of recognition and I say it;

The Lion is the King of Beasts.

Do not call my Lord, the Lion.

It is He who stands waiting on the rim of mortality.

He is perfect to Himself.  What need has He of my love?

Is He not terrible? distant? isolated on the hill?

Does He not promise Death?

He commands.  Nature obeys.  Man he has given to ponder.

In our dreams, sunk to dread, we fear Him.

Awake, our words shatter His image.

Before the twenty-one inch orb of our eye’s reflection,

We bow to the mindless violence.

The Lion on the hill is wordless. He needs no rationale for murder.

It is our mortal loneliness to know him King of Beasts.

I have seen the natural god, I have walked his temple.

The peacocks chewed by hyenas, spreads his fan in the dust.

The golden impala rears exquisitely impaled.

The enemy lurks everywhere, part of the natural habitat.

How can such Being know me more than I know this creature?

I am too mortal for Divine Loneliness.

I seek the god who died, the God who was my Father.

I am no longer child, and God was never my Father.

Neither did He love me so that I may know love,

Nor teach me as He promised.

Nor did He give me knowledge; this I must to acquire.

Nor clarify His justice where murder precedes the murderer.

He loves me no more than the stars do, nor can I convince him of goodness,

I have looked at the Lion, at the green orbs of his power.

Don not call my Lord Nature.  Nature is King of Relentless.

Do not call my Lord Father.  He neither accepts nor claims

Responsibility.

#41: Four Poems by Michelle Boisseau

I LOVE A PARADE

~This poem originally appeared in Tar River (2009)

She knows a spoonful of religion.

It's very shiny. Over the dunes,

along the ocean, she steadies it

at the end of her hand. Like ribbons

wandering behind her, her children

follow their own trembling spoons. Careless

grasses congregate in the sand. Smirk

of surf, cough of gull, I must confess

I'm not trying that hard to love her.

*****

HUBBUBBING

~This poem originally appeared in Tar River (2009)

He cruises in smiling and knowing

it's polite to look out his eyes and exude 

regard, he sweeps our faces like a pine

shoreline with his trolling lights.

The tight tedium of others threatens

to swamp him, so he reconnoiters

with a drink floating by and the view

of Columbus Circle.  In the rain

the public queues glisten like lacquers.

All knowledge is orientation.

The horizon he sails toward eagers him.

The pleasure of knowing oneself

is knowing one's plenty.

*****

#40: Two Poems by Julie L. Moore

~This poem was first published in The Southern Review (spring 2010)

Heartland

I am sitting in the shade

watching my son’s baseball game

as the other team’s coach squeals like a monkey,

then yells, I want another banana! to his players

on the field while he stands

atop their empty bench.

They are losing by a lot of runs.

It’s hot as Texas as the sun bakes

the boys’ skin like dough,

as they sweat like pepperoni.

Our attention is, to say the least,

divided. Sucking on lollipops,

we chat about the biology teacher

who disappeared in April. The break-

down rumors. And the punishments the school

doles out like candy at a parade.

By the handful. With apparent glee.

We cheer on cue,

for high heat that gets a batter swinging

and missing, for line drives

snagged, hits in the clutch.                                                               

For my son’s teammate who steals home.

Cigarettes and popcorn smoke the Sunday

air like ham, while the other team’s

second coach walks back and forth in his dugout,

which isn’t dug out at all,

flashing his tattoos on each calf:

on the left, coins and cards—

ace, king, queen, jack—

on the right, hogs wallowing in tame cliché.

Between innings, the second base ump comes to the sideline,

his muscle T-shirt baring the sharp fangs

of his tattoos. He kisses his girlfriend as she

flashes her jewel-pierced tongue.

And the story of the missionary from church

comes up like a batter—

the coups in Chile in the ’70s—

how men thrust machine guns

into his chest and yanked him

from his house. How when the general heard him tell

what he believed, the whole gospel story,

he let him walk.

*****

#39: "Naked Lunch" by Denise Falcone

~This essay appeared in Kerouac's Dog Magazine (2010).

Sometimes my mother and her fiancé liked to escape the humdrum formula of comatose suburbia to mill around Greenwich Village for a dose of beatnik fashion and avant-garde social color. It was 1962 and I had not yet crossed over the border of my dreams when they invited me to accompany them. All I knew was that the people who lived there wore black and walked around barefoot all the time. “Denizens of the demimonde” they were and maybe some witches lived there as well.

We browsed in a monotonous dawdle in and out of shops hawking smelly hand-crafted leather goods and turquoise and silver jewelry until they decided to purchase their matching wedding rings from a silversmith who offered to engrave the thick American Indian-style bands while u-wait. I plopped down on a window seat next to something grey and furry, its face hidden in its body while sleeping rolled up like a round loaf of bread. Suddenly a tall girl with thick long bangs walked in. She had on a nubby red knitted poncho over a plaid madras skirt and when she kissed the silversmith on the mouth for an embarrassingly long stretch of time, I had to catch my breath because SHE WASN’T WEARING ANY SHOES!

Cafe Bizarre was located down a flight of stairs in a basement, unlike our local soda fountain where you could sip a cherry coke and gaze out the wide windows at the peeling barks of the sycamore trees and across the street to the friendly neighborhood bakery. They thought it might thrill me to go to a real live Greenwich Village coffee house, but the disconcerting brick walls, the narrow doorways hidden by dark velvet curtains, and the painted black ceiling appeared more like a funhouse than a place where you would want to get something to eat. I ordered a hot chocolate and stared down at the tan-colored liquid in its thick brown china mug placed before me. In tortured silence I pretended to wait for it to cool but minutes passed and I was bugged-eyed by then. What if they doped and kidnapped me, these bongo-drum playing, goateed, black turtleneck-wearing zombies?

The idea of being reprimanded for not drinking what I ordered caused me to eventually bring the cup to my lips. I thought, Oh well, so long everybody, and took a sip.

            It wasn’t bad. In fact, it tasted very good.

            It was dusk when we emerged. Our car was parked a million miles away. My mother wrapped her wonderful arm around me and as she went on about how it was starting to be pot roast weather, I began to notice the words, hung on signs in the windows of stores and apartment buildings, stenciled in white on the street between the crosswalks, in repetitious patterns on the sidewalk, taped as fliers on lampposts, and even pressed in the window of a pizza place, READ NAKED LUNCH.

            Asking a grown-up about anything that had the word naked in it was acutely mortifying for someone my age, so I sat quietly in the back seat of our car while the shadows of the city washed over me. By the time the highway signs assured me that home was just a couple of miles away, I had it figured that this was probably a novel about two people who liked to have sex on their lunch hour everyday. After all, and I could now say this with experience, this was an uncensored bunch.

William Burrough’s controversial novel, Naked Lunch, a landmark publication in the history of American literature, was published in Paris in 1959 by Olympia Press. The book was released in America in 1962 by Grove Press.

     

*****

THE STORY BEHIND THE ESSAY

When William Burrough's controversial novel, a landmark publication in the history of American literature, celebrated the 50th anniversary of its first publication in Paris by Olympia Press, I  felt compelled to write about an experience I had when the book was released in America in 1962 by Grove Press.

*****

ABOUT DENISE FALCONE

Denise Falcone is a writer who lives in New York City. Her work has appeared in Randomly Accessed Poetics, Why Vandalism?, Mr. Beller's Neighborhood, Antique Children, Poet Kitchen, J Journal, The Foliate Oak, 6 Tales, Perhaps I Am Wrong About The World, and others.

#38: Three Poems by Kim Roberts

~This poem previously appeared in Gargoyle (2011)

NOT-SO-SUPER HEROES
for Michael Gushue

Edema Man can make others swell at will
so their rings no longer fit.
Dustball Man distracts foes
with repetitive domestic chores.
Each Spring thaw, Ice Damage Man
reveals new potholes along your daily commute.
Papercut Man leaves his enemies with cruel,
nearly invisible hand wounds.
Digital Signal Man can jam
all high-speed internet connections.
Existential Man paralyzes enemies
with a desire to read Heidegger.

*****

#37: "Souvenir" by Diane Simmons

~This piece previously appeared in Local Knowledge (2009)

            He said do you want to come to my place and I said OK.  We paid the bill and walked along to Twelfth Street. We went in to a second floor apartment. It was the usual railroad, long and narrow with windows at either end. 

At the front was a bed.  At the back was the kitchen with a small table and one chair.  In between were two narrow, windowless rooms entirely given over to ceiling-high shelves. The shelves nearest the door contained what looked to be about a thousand record albums.  The shelves closer to the kitchen held CD cases, hundreds of them.

            We passed between the shelves to the kitchen.

 “You sit in the chair,” he said.  “I can get another one in a minute.”

He opened the refrigerator door. An army of brown beer bottles had taken over the top shelves.

            “Want one?”

            “Not yet.”

            He opened a bottle, put his head back and took a long swig.

            He took a foil-covered dish from the one shelf of the refrigerator that had food, put it on the counter, then bent down and lit the gas oven with a match.

He leaned against the counter, pulling hard on the bottle again.

            “I never saw anybody with so many recordings.”

            “Music is pretty much my emotional life. Just to be up front about that.”