home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
Text File | 1996-12-14 | 169.6 KB | 4,199 lines | [TEXT/R*ch] |
- --
-
- @@@@@ @@@@@@
- @@@@@@ @@@@ @@@@@@ @@@@@@ @@@@@ @@ @@ @@@@@@ @@ @@ @@ @@
- @@ @@ @@@@@@ @@@@@@ @@@@@@ @@@@@@ @@ @@ @@ @@@ @@ @@ @@
- @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@@@ @@ @@@ @@ @@ @@
- @@@@@@ @@ @@ @@@@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @ @@ @@@@
- @@@@@ @@ @@ @@@@ @@ @@@@@@ @@ @@ @@ @ @@ @@@@
- @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@@@@ @@ @@ @@ @@@ @@ @@
- @@ @@@@@@ @@@@@@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@@@@@ @@ @@@ @@ @@
- @@ @@@@ @@@@@@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@@@@@ @@ @@ @@ @@
- dedicated to the art of the written word
-
-
- ================================
- POETRY INK 2.07 / ISSN 1091-0999
- ================================
-
- **Poetry Ink Electronic Literary Magazine**
-
- ~Dedicated to the Art of the Written Word~
-
- Volume 2, Number 7
- Issue 14 (December 1996)
-
-
- This file looks best viewed with a 9- or 10-point mono-spaced font. We
- recommend Monaco or Courier. If you are using a Macintosh, we highly
- recommend you use ProFont 2.1.
-
- This file is coded as setext, a special text coding which embeds
- section breaks and style codes in a non-obtrusive format. We recommend
- you view this file with either EasyView 2.6.2 for the Macintosh, EVWin
- 1.6a for Windows, or sv for Unix. However, this file can still be
- viewed with any word processor which can import text files.
-
- We hope you enjoy POETRY INK, and we urge you to encourage the poets
- and writers found in these pages by dropping them an eMail. All of the
- writers featured in POETRY INK invite comments and constructive
- criticism of their work, so support your local Internet Poet!
-
- We accept no advertising, but we will plug stuff we think is cool. If
- you are interested in having your chapbook, book, CD, magazine, or
- software reviewed, please either contact us via eMail, or send the
- item you wish reviewed via snail mail to the mailing address found in
- our Masthead.
-
- If you are interested in submitting work for possible inclusion in
- POETRY INK, please see the Submission Information and Guidelines at
- the end of this document.
-
-
-
- Masthead
- --------
- **Editor & Publisher**.............................Matthew W. Schmeer
- <poetink@inlink.com>
-
- **Honorary Editor Emeritus**.........................John A. Freemyer
- <JAFreemyer@aol.com>
-
- **Senior Contributor**................................Wayne Brissette
- <wayneb@apple.com>
-
- ************************Literary Correspondents**********************
- Lawrence Revard Phil Pearson
- <lrevard@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu> <pkpearson@earthlink.net>
-
- Shaun Armour Rick Lupert
- <ssarmour@aol.com> <RickPoet@wavenet.com>
-
- Calvin Xavier Maybe You?
- <address unknown> <your address here?>
-
-
- **Submissions and Other Contact Info**
-
- eMail:
- <poetink@inlink.com>
-
- anonymous FTP access:
- <ftp://ftp.etext.org/pub/Poetry/PoetryInk>
-
- snail mail:
- Matthew W. Schmeer, editor
- POETRY INK PRODUCTIONS
- 6711-A Mitchell Avenue
- St. Louis, MO 63139-3647 U.S.A.
-
-
-
- Legal Stuff
- -----------
- POETRY INK is copyright (c) 1996 by POETRY INK PRODUCTIONS, a wholly
- owned subsidiary of the imagination of Matthew W. Schmeer. Individual
- works copyright (c) 1996 their original authors. POETRY INK is
- published electronically on a bi-monthly basis. Reproduction of this
- magazine is permitted as long as the magazine is not sold (either by
- itself or as part of a collection) and the entire text of the issue
- remains intact. POETRY INK can be freely distributed, provided it is
- not modified in any way, shape, or form. Specifically:
-
- **You May**
-
- * Upload POETRY INK to your local BBS and commercial online
- services, such as America-Online and CompuServe.
- * Distribute POETRY INK to your local non-profit user group free of
- charge.
- * Print out and share with your friends, family, classmates and
- coworkers.
-
- **You May Not**
-
- * Distribute POETRY INK on CD-ROM without prior written consent
- * Charge for access other than a reasonable redistribution fee (i.e.
- online connection time).
- * Charge Shipping and Handling fees for any media POETRY INK is included
- upon.
-
- POETRY INK PRODUCTIONS retains first-time rights and the right to
- reprint this issue, either in printed or electronic format. All other
- rights to works appearing in POETRY INK written by authors other than
- Matthew W. Schmeer revert to said authors upon publication.
-
- POETRY INK is produced on an Apple Macintosh Color Classic running
- System Software 7.5.5. POETRY INK is initially uploaded to our
- subscribers, with further Internet distribution by our readers. We use
- Global Village Teleport Gold II Fax/Modems. POETRY INK is produced
- using Claris Emailer 1.1.v3, BareBones Software's freeware BBEdit Lite
- 3.5.1, Robert Gottshall's and Rick Zaccone's freeware spellchecker
- Excalibur 2.2 and M. Akif Eyler's freeware setext reader, EasyView
- 2.6.2. We encourage others to support these fine hardware
- manufacturers and software programmers.
-
-
-
- Subscription Info
- -----------------
- It is now possible to have each issue of POETRY INK delivered to your
- eMail account upon publication. This service is now available to all
- readers regardless of computing platform.
-
- Each issue of POETRY INK will be sent to your eMail account upon its
- publication as an UUEncoded eMail file attachment. Most eMail clients
- and commercial online systems' proprietary software will automatically
- translate this file into readable text format; otherwise, you will
- need to procure a utility to translate the file you receive into a
- readable format. Please check with your Internet Service Provider to
- be sure that you can receive eMail file attachments before you
- subscribe. CompuServe and America Online do allow this functionality.
-
- If you wish to subscribe to POETRY INK, simply send an eMail message
- with the subject line "SUBSCRIBE POETRY INK: your real name" to
- <poetink@inlink.com>, where **your real name** is your actual name and
- not the name of your eMail account. It is not necessary to provide a
- message in the body of your eMail. For example, the subject line of
- your message should look like this:
-
- SUBSCRIBE POETRY INK: John Q. Public
-
- You must follow this wording EXACTLY; otherwise our eMail macro will
- not be triggered and you will not be added to the subscription list.
-
- Sending a subscription request triggers an automatic reply, which you
- will receive within three days. This reply will confirm your
- subscription, and also provide you with information pertaining to the
- POETRY INK subscription service. It is very important for you to save
- the reply for future reference.
-
- Please note that you will not receive the latest issue of POETRY INK
- upon subscribing; however, you will receive the next scheduled issue -
- and all subsequent issues - upon their release.
-
- One final caveat: if you have submitted work for consideration and
- your work has been accepted, you were automatically assigned a
- subscription to POETRY INK, and therefore these instructions do not
- apply to you.
-
-
-
- From The Editor's Desktop
- -------------------------
- You know, I am getting kind of sick of writing these little intro
- ditties, but then as the editor and publisher, its my job to keep you
- up to date on the latest happenings here at POETRY INK Headquarters.
-
- As you probably know by now, we had a little mix-up in sending out the
- last issue of POETRY INK to all our subscribers; for some reason a lot
- of you received the zine as seven or eight segmented files, and others
- had strange characters throughout the text, which interfered with the
- setext formatting. Well, it seems like there was a mix up in our eMail
- macro, and instead of sending the last issue out as an eMail
- attachment, the zine was sent out as an eMail message. We have fixed
- this error and now hopefully everything is fine and dandy.
-
- On another note, back issues of POETRY INK are now archived on
- etext.org's anonymous FTP site. As long-time readers know, the first
- ten issues of POETRY INK were produced in a format that could only be
- read on the Macintosh computing platform; now, however, all of those
- back issues have been translated into setext-enhanced ASCII text
- files. You can find the archives at:
-
- <ftp://ftp.etext.org/pub/Poetry/PoetryInk>
-
- While you are checking out the back issues, check out the file
- "memetic.hqx"; it's an electronic chapbook of poetry and prose I
- authored in conjunction with John Freemyer, POETRY INK's Honorary
- Editor Emeritus (it's a BinHex file, so you will need to have a
- utility to decode BinHex files). Okay, okay, I had to do a cheap plug
- for myself there. Jeesh! Anyway, read it and let us know what you
- think.
-
- And while we are on the subject of distribution, I want to let you
- know that POETRY INK 2.04 and 2.05 have been included on Pacific
- HiTech's Info-Mac X CD-ROM, which contains the "best of the Internet"
- programs and zines uploaded to the info-mac Macintosh ftp site. These
- CD-ROMs are sold to User Groups around the world for placement on
- private and public Bulletin Board Systems; having POETRY INK on these
- CDs means a wider distribution for our contributors and a wider
- viewing audience for the zine itself. (Please note, however, that we
- receive no money from the distribution of these CD-ROMs, and we
- consider the inclusion of POETRY INK on these discs as a form of
- archiving, not subsequent publication.)
-
- Not only is POETRY INK going to be included on this CD-ROM, but the
- above mentioned John Freemyer will have two of his HyperCard
- multimedia projects on the CD-ROM as well. The projects "Hate The
- World" and "Are You A Space Alien?" are two segments of an ongoing
- series of HyperCard projects that promise to change your life in ways
- you would not otherwise imagine. If you have a Mac, check them out.
- By the way, "Are You A Space Alien?" will also soon appear on one of
- the CD-ROMs accompanying "MacAddict" magazine. How's that for
- distribution and prestige, eh? Congratulations and kudos to John on
- this achievement. (FYI, you can email John for more info on how
- to obtain these programs at <JAFreemyer@aol.com>.)
-
- Matthew W. Schmeer, editor and ascii addict
- <poetink@inlink.com>
-
-
-
- Corrections Department
- ----------------------
- No corrections, so no worries!
-
-
-
- Belles Lettres
- --------------
- A place for reader comments, criticism, and other assorted feedback.
- Not too many letters with complaints, suggestions, etc. these days, so
- this section is devoid of any meaningful content besides this little
- explanation.
-
-
-
- The Write Thing
- ---------------
- (Okay folks, this one is a groaner. But at least it's clean enough to
- share with your kids.)
-
- _The Chicken & The Frog_
-
- A chicken goes into a library and says to the librarian: "Buc buc buc
- buc buc" (i.e. chicken sounds).
-
- The librarian gives the chicken a top-ten novel.
-
- On the way out, the chicken meets a frog coming in. The chicken shows
- the frog the book, saying: "Buc buc buc buc buc."
-
- The frog replies: "Reddit reddit reddit."
-
-
- (Hey, I warned you this was a groaner!)
-
- Got a good joke, a funny story or a bit of humor pertaining to the
- literary arts? Send it to POETRY INK with the subject line "SUBMIT
- WRITE THING".
-
-
-
- Featured Writer
- ---------------
- Stephen R. Ward <srw@homeward.airtime.co.uk>
- 3 poems and an essay
-
-
- _Rose_
-
- The rain washes his eyes
- (I rose before the stars wanted to dim)
- They suppose that he cries
- With sadness that his love is not with him
-
- But she is always there
- Who rose before the suns and earths were made
- (You whom I think most fair)
- With echoed smiles of joy that will not fade
-
- And he is always here
- Who rose before the stars had walked above
- Two eyes and one small tear
- (Why? I would say my spilling fuel is love)
-
-
- *--==--*
-
-
- _Seascape at Night_
-
- a wave winding wide (the passive pulse of
- you) (a dormant undulation as the
- moonlight burns its fluent fingers on my
- siren shore) strokes heavy in sleep and pulls
- the surf of mating sheets in ebb and flow
- (the glistening ocean droplets of your
- suspensive swell) towards the haven of
- the sinuous sedative beaches of
- remembered deeps that were described as i
-
- who watch the billow of your curling tide
- (crawling by its deft degrees of sleeping)
- (advancing unknowing pillowing pride
- unconscious of my eye also weeping)
- and the surge in me beats mariners time
- when the echoing surf and shanties of
- your wave winding wide (in passive pulses)
- and surging swells as your seascape brightens
-
- as i dreamed the partnership (of soft wave
- and beckoning beach) and can now paint it
-
-
- *--==--*
-
-
- _Never Having Been_
-
- If I could say
- in a funny way
- like Roger McGough
- that the thing nearest
- to my mind is
- what to rip off
- first: your jumper, dearest,
- or your jeans:
- what would you say?
- (If I would have my way,
- my funny way,
- with you,
- what would you say?)
-
- Who would believe
- that adultery
- could be so easy?
- Just a nod and
- some (although I
- was never any good
- at) winking.
- Don't go thinking
- 'bout it.
- Don't tease me
- either, non-believer.
- (If I should have
- my way,
- you say.)
- If I should
- would you?
-
- Never having been
- or having seen
- another's
- weird attempts
- under covers,
- I likely would fumble,
- not tumble
- into bed.
- (He said.)
- I, a married
- harried
- man,
- but quite naive
- believe
- that you, a believer,
- wouldn't either.
- (So there.)
-
- But at least
- I would have liked
- to have pieced
- together the question aloud
- to you.
- Am I allowed
- to you?
- (Will you have their
- funny way with me
- and us?)
-
-
-
- Featured Writer Essay
- ---------------------
- Stephen R. Ward hails from Lancashire, United Kingdom, where he works in
- Information Technology (IT).
-
- About _Rose_, _Seascape at Night_, and _Never Having Been_, Stephen
- writes:
-
-
- "The ideal audience the poet imagines consists of the beautiful who go
- to bed with him, the powerful who invite him to dinner and tell him
- secrets of state, and his fellow-poets. The actual audience he gets
- consists of myopic schoolteachers, pimply young men who eat in
- cafeterias, and his fellow-poets. This means, in fact, he writes for
- his fellow-poets."
- --W.H. Auden, "Poets at Work", 1948
-
- My poetry has always been private -- born of emotion-of-the-moment
- into a world where I'm afraid to let my offspring wander in case it is
- harmed, rejected or simply scorned. But we all crave praise for our
- creations, I suppose, as well as wanting to coddle them -- qualities,
- which, after six years of being a father, I realise are instinctive in
- us all. We have to trust not only in our child's ability and right;
- but in the world, to offer its acceptance.
-
- Prior to this semi-reluctant untethering of my poems (to a pride of my
- "fellow-poets"), then, my audience consisted usually, only, of one: of
- "the beautiful who go to bed with [me]" -- i.e. my wife -- plus an
- occasional close friend or two; and it has usually also been the case
- that my poems were written to, about, for -- or occasioned by -- such
- companions.
-
- I described myself in my submission to POETRY INK, as:
-
- A chemical engineer by degree(s) -- a modern romantic by nature --
- most of my working life has been spent sitting in front of various
- Macs, marketing I.T.; writing about I.T.; editing newsletters about
- I.T., and designing annual reports about I.T.. I only write poetry
- when I'm sad. (My personal life is happy; but my working life is sad
- -- which is not to say I only write at work.) And I'd like to be as
- good a poet as Robert Graves. (One day...)
-
- ...which was supposed to make the point that much of my emotion -- and
- thus my poetry -- stems from antithesis, from conflict: whether
- flippancy and earnestness, art and science, good and bad, happiness
- and sadness. (Isn't this the same for all artists?) But, also, to
- 'warn' that my particular brand of 'lyric poetry' may not be to modern
- taste.
-
- However, having said that, this selection covers three somewhat
- contrasting and evolutionary styles.
-
-
- _Rose_
-
- I started writing poetry, as many do, I suppose, in an adolescent blur
- of angst: sometimes for "myopic schoolteachers" and the school
- literary magazine; but, more often than not, to burgeoning blondes and
- brunettes who I worshipped, unrequited, and from afar.
-
- "Perhaps at fourteen every boy should be in love with some ideal woman
- to put on a pedestal and worship. As he grows up, of course, he will
- put her on a pedestal the better to view her legs."
- --Barry Norman, quoted in "The Listener" magazine, 1978
-
- But real love came much later. And it was only with the pain that
- comes with the realization that one's love is not always perfect that
- my poetry also 'matured'. (I hope.)
-
- The poem was written in a telephone box in the rain at six o'clock one
- rainy Saturday morning in Leeds a few years ago. A depression caused
- by having to 'phone for an ambulance for a neighbour suffering an
- obvious cardiac arrest; as well as an aching absence. Unusually for
- me, it (the poem) all originated in my head, waiting for the medics,
- watching the rain; and I only scribbled it down later, as one of many
- "pimply young men who eat in cafeterias", eyeing the early-morning
- buses going by.
-
-
- _Seascape at Night_
-
- Typically: a first line or phrase or weird combination of words comes
- to me, which -- if I haven't instantly forgotten -- knowing how
- important, and increasingly infrequent, such flashes of inspiration
- are -- I may or may not scrawl down on a piece of paper -- which I
- then lose. Eventually, usually on the same scrap, I end up with so
- many workings, corrections, crossings-out, insertions,
- asterisks-marking-substitutions, arrows-pointing-improvements, that it
- looks like my pet spider has fallen in the ink-pot and suffered a
- disastrous operatic aria (with accompanying dramatic movements) and
- consequential, agonizing demise. I then copy this out carefully --
- only to find that, often, with careful scrutiny -- my original lines
- have evolved so many times that they are pretty much the same as they
- were several hours or days ago.
-
- I can't remember the exact situation that prompted this; apart from
- waking out of both real sleep, and a lack of awareness of many things
- I perhaps before took for granted. I remember, though, that it did
- take a lot of writing.
-
-
- _Never Having Been_
-
- "The magic of our first love is our ignorance that it can ever end."
- --Benjamin Disraeli
-
- But real love often dies. Tragically as a spider's web.
-
- I admit it. I can't write anything other than 'love' poems.
- Inspirations such as Gerard Manley Hopkins (who taught at a local
- Jesuit school), Dylan Thomas, Edward Thomas, Graves, Philip Larkin,
- Seamus Heaney, Brian Patten and Roger McGough have meant that -- as
- with REM's Michael Stipe -- the rhythm of the words may sometimes feel
- more important than the words themselves. Poetry is a craft -- whether
- practised freely or formulaically... -- that is only fully realized
- with performance (as with music): but I try to make the essential
- sound as obvious as I can, as detailed as the notes in an Elgar
- orchestral score.
-
- My "first love" faded away (explosively). I was smitten with
- someone-else. And this is how I felt. No, however flippant it is,
- there was no adultery -- more through luck than judgment. I wouldn't
- -- and still don't -- know how to. It all ends/ended happily, anyway.
- (The magic of my second love is my knowledge that it can never end.)
- Which is probably why I don't write as much poetry as I used to...
-
-
-
- Greg Gunn
- ---------
- <gregor@netpath.net>
- 2 poems
-
-
- _Angst Sandwich_
-
- A hunger in my soul.
- sleepless nights of tossing, turning to and fro.
- on the breakfast table an empty bowl.
- and in my dreams
- feet burn on sun-baked sand.
- waves lap, lick, nip
- gnawing at the land.
- overhead, birds wheel and cry
- against the sky
- stars in shrieking silence
- burn,
- fade,
- and die.
- think I'll have a ham on rye.
-
-
- *--==--*
-
-
- _Separation, Divorce and a Sense of Mortality_
-
- the days are shorter now
- and the nights grow cooler.
- small animals gather with greater urgency.
- and leaves yellow and brown,
- scores of them,
- detach themselves from limbs
- and flounder to the ground.
- reminiscent of unspoken words, careless remarks,
- dried up tatters of ancient parchment, faded ink,
- unpaid bills, broken promises, unfulfilled destiny,
- death certificates.
- the silent screams of leaves,
- deafening as they tumble to the ground.
- they are raked in piles,
- burned to ash,
- blown away in the wind.
-
- a door swings to,
- lock snaps shut.
- penetrating echo,
- a stir of dust.
- the cobwebs in the corners tremble.
- dried up husks of insects
- dark, but bloodless pale, beneath.
- silent testimony.
- and even though it's been three months
- the rooms are still not home.
- the furniture haphazard, out of place.
- and piles of books, papers scattered
- on the floor like leaves.
- boxes, unpacked, stacked along the walls.
- pictures not yet hung lean against the walls.
- up against the wall
- receding in the distance
- down the empty hall
- stifling
- this life that now stands perfectly still.
-
- the impatients bloom all summer
- red and white
- and then one still night
- the frost settles on the low ground
- penetrating crystals of ice
- bursting cell walls.
-
-
-
- The As Of Yet Untitled Column By Rick Lupert
- --------------------------------------------
- by Rick Lupert <RickPoet@wave.net>
-
- **This issue's topic: A personal history of reading poetry out loud.**
- **And Coffee.**
-
-
- I was a senior in high school when I first realized that I could
- capture the attention of those around me by reading my work out loud.
- I hadn't had much experience with poetry at all. Oh sure I'd had a an
- acrostic poem published in my sixth grade poetry anthology.
-
-
- _Pigs_
-
- Pigs are very Piggish
- Irregularly attached to mud
- Gosh darn it, pigs are messy
-
-
- But there was no live reading; no chance to really interpret the piece
- for my sixth grade peers through special intonation and facial
- expressions.
-
- In my twelfth grade Literature class, we were all required to memorize
- a piece which our teacher assigned to us, for recitation in front of
- the whole class. Mr. Goulart (who was a good looking young teacher who
- I imagined that all of my female classmates wanted to sleep with, thus
- inspiring me to want to be an English teacher some day) had chosen a
- piece called "Underwear" by Lawrence Ferlinghetti for me. It began "I
- didn't get much sleep last night, thinking about Underwear..." and
- then went on to detail all the different kinds of underwear and their
- various purposes. I had taken the liberty of borrowing a pair of sexy
- pink panties with black trim from a friend of mine (thanks again Karen
- if you're reading this) which I planned on pulling out of my pocket at
- a particular spot in the poem. When I stood in front of the class
- (consisting of a good portion of the varsity football team) with the
- panties dangling in the air from my hand, poetry took on a new meaning
- for all of us.
-
- I was so pleased with the response I received that I took the
- opportunity in several succeeding classes to read a few of the things
- out loud whenever Mr. Goulart gave me the chance. I always had the
- rapt attention of the class, even amidst high school love ditties and
- feeble attempts at humor.
-
- About a year later (1987) my friend Daniel (who I met during my
- thirteen month tenure as a McDonald's crew member) told me about this
- coffee bar in Pasadena where there was an open mike. night for poetry.
- I suggested that we go even though we were both nervous about the
- prospect of getting up in front of strangers in this pretentious (ie:
- bohemian and cool but we were too naive to understand it) atmosphere.
- We went. I read a few things I had written at work. (this was the post
- McDonald's era; I was working as an Engineer at a local radio station)
- I had the kind of job where I sat around and did nothing so there was
- plenty of time to write:
-
-
- _What Not Indublah_
-
- What not indublah with my magnitude
- Under the foo foo bush where the gopher dost frolick
- Hinging on the thread that being to hold up Manny's Lizard
- Crossing over the valley of dull scissors that eateth of the greenish
- residue
- What not indublah with my magnitude
-
-
- (a masterpiece, no?)
-
- The crowd at the cafe received my work well. I went back the following
- week. This second week, the crowd did not receive my work well. I
- figured the first time was a fluke and didn't read again until 1993.
-
- I had taken up writing on a more consistent basis, actually making a
- point of taking a small journal with me wherever I went so I wouldn't
- lose all these thoughts which came to me. I found a listing of
- readings in the LA Weekly (local liberal/alternative press) including
- one at the now defunct Iguana Cafe called the poetry circle in which
- people were invited to show up, share a poem with the group, and then
- listen to critiques of your work. I hadn't really shared anything of
- my recently written so-called-serious work and I figured this would be
- a good place to do so. I would learn if any of it could be taken
- seriously or if I was just on the wrong track all together and should
- focus more on becoming a dentist, or something. When it was my turn, I
- read this piece:
-
- _Dirty Coffee_
-
- I hate drinking coffee in the morning
- Because coffee is a dirty drink.
- I hate getting dirty in the morning.
- The night is for dirt.
- I like being dirty at night.
- Sitting in the dirty dark,
- Surrounded by dirty people,
- Thinking dirty thoughts,
- Drinking dirty coffee.
- I like being dirty at night.
- In the morning,
- I'd rather have an orange.
-
-
- The room really loved this piece. They gave me the impression that I
- had just breathed fresh air into their otherwise bleak existences. I
- was pleased. Perhaps there was some validity to what I was doing after
- all. I didn't realize the full extent of this endorsement for some
- time as I learned in my subsequent experiences in the Los Angeles
- Poetry community I learned that the Iguana was one of the major
- centers for poetry in the city and many prominent LA poets were at
- this open poetry circle. I had the opportunity to read a second piece
- that afternoon:
-
-
- _I Want To Fuck Art_
-
- I want to Fuck Art.
- I want Mona Lisa to give me head.
- OH! I'd Make Her Smile! Yes Indeed.
- I want to lie naked in the Haystacks
- With the Waterlillies raining down upon my body.
- Furthermore, I want my jiism to be regarded as an impressionistic
- painting.
- It will hang on the walls of every major museum,
- And be the highlight of several private collections.
- Each jiism
- Splattered on a canvas
- With a date
- and the name of the person it was meant for,
- Or just the label
- ALONE.
-
- I want to Fuck Art,
- And by god by tomorrow I'll be at the Venus de Milo
- With a condom and a chisel.
- I'll have my own collection of marble breasts
- to do with as I please.
- Night after night,
- Stone tits,
- Always firm,
- No bra required.
-
- My palette is foreplay,
- My painting is intercourse,
- And what YOU see is orgasm.
-
- I want to Fuck Art,
- For Fucking Art's sake.
-
- God bless America.
-
-
- The reaction to this piece was a bit overwhelming. I'm not sure they
- had heard anything like it before. Though Matthew Niblock (often
- published poet and co-publisher of Sacred Beverage Press) did comment
- that the whole ending "didn't work." "I Want To Fuck Art" eventually
- won me a poetry slam which gave me the opportunity to read on the
- third stage at Lollapalooza and Matthew later went on to base a short
- film around this poem.
-
- So I started to go to readings around Los Angeles. Magazines started
- publishing my work. People began asking me to read as a feature at
- their venue, and in the spring of 1994 I began to host a weekly open
- reading at a coffee house in the San Fernando Valley, which I have
- done ever since.
-
- People ask me how I got this gig hosting the reading...the previous
- host had been running the show for about two years. He always made it
- clear that he was only doing this so eventually MTV would come in and
- discover him and make him a V.J. Apparently this had happened to
- someone else in Los Angeles and so here he was hosting this reading,
- although he had no actual interest in poetry himself. (He began every
- reading by reading selections from Justine Bateman's poetry
- collection. When I took over, this was the first thing to go.) One day
- he announced that this would be his last evening hosting. I
- immediately went up to the owner of the place and asked if he was
- looking for a replacement. He said that he was and if I wanted the job
- I could have it. I've been hosting ever since. The pay...there is no
- pay. I do get free coffee whenever I'm there though. That's pretty
- good for a poet.
-
- _Coffee Is Not a Drink For Pussies_
-
- Coffee is not a drink for pussies
- It's a serious beverage commitment
- Dark
- Dirty
- Bad for your teeth
- Bad for your brain
-
- Coffee is not a drink for pussies
- one drop
- will stain your shirt
- Forever
-
- Coffee is not a drink for pussies
- I'm sure it causes cancer
- Leprosy
- Male pattern baldness
- Female pattern baldness
- Premature ejaculation
- Under-cooked omelettes
-
- Coffee is not a drink for pussies
- It is hot like the Equator
- Bitter like four year old milk
- Black like Nigeria
- When you drink coffee
- It's like you're drinking Nigeria
-
- Coffee is not a drink for pussies
- Don't talk to me about Lattes
- Mother Fucker
-
-
-
- About the Columnist
- *******************
- Rick Lupert lives and writes in Los Angeles except when he writes
- elsewhere. Like in Paris for example. He has also written in
- Pittsburgh, but that was just the airport. He has written in other
- airports as well. He has hosted a weekly open reading at a coffee
- house in Los Angeles for two and a half years and has had poems
- published in "Caffeine Magazine", "51%", "Blue Satellite", and "The
- Los Angeles Times". He is the author of "Paris: It's The Cheese". Rick
- Lupert is a short, vegetarian, guitar playing Jew who recently
- suffered the loss of two of four of his goldfish. Send no flowers.
- Money only. Visit the everunderconstrucion world of Rick Lupert at
- http://www.wavenet.com/~rickpoet.
-
-
-
- Calvin Xavier
- -------------
- <address unknown>
- 2 poems
-
-
- _Lipstick on My Joystick_
-
- The new
- computer
- games
- are so
- flashy
- and so
- sleek
- but so
-
- is dog shit
-
- wrapped in
-
- a-
- lu-
- min-
- um
- foil.
-
-
- *--==--*
-
-
- _Found Poem for Henry Miller_
- ~found as a scrap of a tattered letter~
-
- I used to drive past his house
- in the Pacific Palisades every day
- while driving a truck for a living.
-
- Sometimes I parked in front of his house
- and smoked a cigarette.
-
- I knew his lawn well.
- I watched his windows.
- I never saw the shades move.
-
- When he died, I realized
- I should have knocked on his door
- the first time
- I saw the house.
-
- He never noticed me sitting
- in front of his house
- in my truck.
-
- It wouldn't have made a difference
- if he had.
-
-
-
- Allison Eir Jenks
- -----------------
- <ajenks@students.miami.edu>
- 3 poems
-
-
- _Fabric of a Kiss_
-
- Young boy tattooed himself
- To my velvet temper
-
- My untamed parade.
-
- Slapped him with melody,
- he choked and smiled
- in my hedonistic web.
-
- Coma in my lane,
- he swam for my height,
- Thinking that was all
- that kept him from me.
-
- On a day
- any heifer would do,
- When an obscure light
- was leaking from his eyes,
-
- Like some buttery monster,
- I granted him a minute
- on that vinyl couch.
-
- His dizzy feet came at me
- With a swollen breeze
- All I saw were chaotic scraps of light
- and stray, red knots
-
- My counterfeit kiss
- peeled him to the skull.
- Nine years of him
- Packed in a kiss.
-
- He heard parachutes of violins;
- Swan beaks insisting love.
-
- I saw a drowsy sow.
- Still, my lips
- tugged him to oblivion
-
-
- *--==--*
-
-
- _No Longer_
-
- All seems safe in my little box.
- Invisible drapes tie my eyes.
- Simple words glue my teeth.
-
- Everything I can picture in my mind, exists.
- On some other side,
- hearts shoot through careless floods,
- Undetected eyes float,
- Phantoms crawl through heavy dust.
- Rebellious sleepwalkers sing a universal chorus.
- Serene mornings are disturbed by foul-handed wolves.
- Creatures move through hidden parts of the moon
- Birds speak their marble language.
-
- The drinking mind is the universe.
-
- Here, heroes take their stations.
- Murderers dress in suits.
- Crazy animals are devoured.
-
- Profiles of death chase.
- I will add to the collection of sleeping fields;
- Graveyards with names and names.
- Who are they?
- Who were they?
- Who will I be?
- Years bring attics of deteriorating photos.
- Not all are equipped for fame.
-
- Ancient signs in the stars are dormant.
- We've forgotten how to cross borders.
- Facts limit us from our own endurance.
-
- The disturbed howls from the underground
- are blocked by grass.
-
- I can no longer let every day be close to the same,
- Confining smiles to certain places.
-
-
- *--==--*
-
-
- _Fox River_
-
- Fenced in at Fox River.
- Committing nonsense;
- splitting worms, tossing berries.
-
- Twisted within candy trees.
- Wedged under your callused chest,
- chanting with the bark of the starved coyotes.
-
- You lie to me. I bite your shoulders.
- We cut down a tree and licked the roots.
-
- A bullet of snow snaked its way down my chest.
- You left it there, smirking with pleasure,
- diving at the chilled spot.
-
- You paved my fingers.
- Placed granite rocks under my head.
-
- My eyes were stained glass windows.
-
- Over there, on the side of the foot bridge,
- beer signs sit on the river like fishing lure.
-
- A curly, red-haired boy
- blows a wreath of bubbles off the bridge.
- They rise by the protruding brick cross.
-
- I think of when I met you
- by Mr. Crayton's grocery store
-
- With lollipop stains,
- your blue tongue flagged me down.
-
-
-
- Thomas Dunnam
- -------------
- <tdunnam@interlink.or.jp>
- 1 poem
-
-
- _Holidays and Local Sketches_
-
- A coral-red, raw silk-jacketed simulacra of a blond airlines
- reservation clerk's fist
- Lazily arches across the plywood structure constituting his check-in
- station as a
- Result of getting no answer to the smoking/no smoking query; nailing
- a garish and
- Mewling social service worker on hiatus squarely on the left temple
- of her figleaf
- Bifocals, but vacations on the cheap are.
-
- A sourly homicidal and dementedly greedy Cincinnati travel agent
- wacks a retired
- Soda jerk in the back of the head with a lead pipe wrapped in duct
- tape and throws
- His limp and gullible old carcass out the back door of his 'office'
- and consequently
- Down a levee and into the swiftly flowing waters on the now infamous
- $100 Ohio River Cruise.
-
- The holiday sea shines blue below the sky,
- Or sea holidays below a blue sky,
- Er, see holidays below:
-
- An outraged and paradoxically humbled 40 year-old 'college student'
- is lynched in the
- Paris summer backyard garden of an unregistered youth hostel by a
- nation of 15
- Sub-teenage gypsy pickpockets -- having been just previously
- convicted in a faux
- Trial interminably interrupted by motions to sniff more glue of the
- crime of not having
- Had much money to steal. The court-appointed counsel for the defense
- constantly
- Playing the not-guilty-by-reason-of-I-forget card to no effect.
-
- Black weather makes for a sweet holiday in the forest,
- Though black leather makes sweat for us,
- Or weather makes life sweet in the black forest,
- Oh sweet forest! Sweet for us!
- Sweat for us, sweet holiday forest!, er
-
- A UN 'peacekeeper' on leave shoots up a forced-prostitution 'tavern'
- in the mountains
- Of I-can't-remember; a tourist from Guatemala dressed in his national
- outfit races
- Across the ice that seasonally connects the Aleutians to Siberia; an
- occult Scotch
- Wizard crashes his purplish hang glider into the garden balcony of a
- narco-lawyer's
- 21st floor Caracas condominium. All these last ones taken from
- newspaper clips.
-
-
-
- Notes From the Workshop Gulag
- -----------------------------
- by Lawrence Revard <lrevard@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu>
-
-
- Lawrence Revard is currently on sabbatical from his columnist duties.
- He will return in Poetry Ink 2.08 (February 1997).
-
-
-
-
- About the Columnist
- *******************
- Lawrence Revard is a graduate student at the University of Iowa's
- Writer's Workshop for Poetry. He welcomes comments regarding his
- writings for POETRY INK. He can be reached at the eMail address at the
- beginning of this column. (Okay, you lazy bum, here it is:
- <lrevard@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu>)
-
-
-
- Rebecca E. Hays
- ---------------
- <Rebecca450@aol.com>
- 1 poem
-
-
- _To See the Stars_
- (for Andrew)
-
- Black is the night between.
- Not velvet.
- Not a material curtain of darkness
- or phantom artist's canvas.
- For that depiction implies
- texture,
- form,
- solidity,
- and not this,
- this eccentric emptiness of eye-deceiving Nothing
- which stares back at us without pity or hope but only a promise of
- ~Something~...
-
- Mysterious Nothing tugs at baffled eyes,
- compelling one to seek ever further into hollow void...
- ever deeper into impossible shadows of ink too ebon to see...
- The writing upon Heaven's page, too dimly scribed.
- But there,
- suddenly,
- ~there~ at the most oblique angle,
- in the startled corner of one's vision,
- ~Light~!
-
- Colors,
- so subtle as to make one question one's perceptions,
- glimmer,
- glow,
- transform,
- becoming nameless shiftings of ultimate perfection...
- Hiding fiery identities behind masks of glorious alteration,
- these constantly deviating uncounted willow-the-wisps fade and flush,
- beamingly set into the indignant darkness like pixie torch-fire...
-
- Reborn again this night -
- ~Let there be stars.~
-
-
-
- June Hayes-Light
- ----------------
- <june@gael.u-net.com>
- 1 poem
-
-
- _Echoes of petals..._
-
-
- Echoes of petals filled the room...
- a white room, bright with grief.
- Thoughts lingered around the lamp...
- like moths around a flame.
- Echoes of many, mourning the few...
- on dark roads, wet with fear.
- Memories of falling, clutching at straws...
- I am innocent and shoulder the blame, whilst
- Echoes of passion are fearful and tame.
-
-
- Echoes of petals, borne on the breeze...
- a far away window, framing the sky.
- Voices for faces, drifting away...
- down years of recalling
- Echoes of children, running free...
- down fields of endeavour into the void
- Touching by listening to silence unfold...
- curling down corridors escaping from me, those
- Echoes of longing for what cannot be.
-
-
- Echoes of petals starting to fade...
- doubting, remembering if I ever was me
- While a stranger invades a familiar face...
- and traitorous limbs to defection succumb.
- Echoes of maybes fall to the floor...
- to mingle with promise's dust.
- Sweep up the past in giant hands and...
- scatter its ashes for others to find where
- Echoes of sorrows in silence are blind.
-
-
- Echoes of metal down darkened halls...
- figures in white, a ballet of blades
- Touche & riposte in challenge we die...
- salute the conqueror, honour the mask.
- Echoes of scoring, counting & moving...
- through foil-sharp sunlight into the realms
- Of empty space, staring at time's
- kaleidoscope diary, missing a day and
- Echoes of petals, dying away.
-
-
-
- World Wide Words
- ----------------
- by Phil Pearson <pkpearson@earthlink.net>
-
- Book Review
- _On the Island_ by Josephine Jacobsen
- Ontario Review Press
- 256 pages
-
-
- **Part 1: "...the other translation, from letters to matter"**
-
- Josephine Jacobsen's relatively unheralded collection of new and
- selected stories, "On the Island", delivered in evocative prose and
- set in exotic locales, offers up to her readers a rich fictional world
- of overloaded symbolism and jagged time. In fact, the narrative line
- of her stories in the first half of the book thrives on a non sequitur
- approach. White space for scene breaks is relatively rare. Memory,
- flashbacks, and the present collate and coexist in a tricky
- relationship, as Jacobsen has a human-rights investigator wonder "how
- the past hours, the present minute, would show in memory's tricky
- records" at the end of "The Inner Path" (69).
-
- Again and again in the first nine stories, reality exists as a false
- reality, often realized with epiphanic violence. In the first story
- entitled "The Mango Community," an expatriated American painter (most
- of Jacobsen's characters are artists of some sort) concludes that she
- has never really "seen snow" before (8). In the story "Nel Bagno," a
- writer, Mrs. Glessner, reaches a similar epiphany when trapped
- overnight in a bathroom: "For the first time, ever, she became
- conscious of what she knew. In her non-fiction, she never described
- things truly; not ever as truly as she could (53-54). Jacobsen's
- ultimate violent epiphany of false reality reaches its culminating
- point in the magical realist piece "Sound of Shadows." With tongue in
- philosophic cheek, Jacobsen begs questions--chillingly playfully to
- the reader--in a short introductory paragraph while the second
- paragraph gets cheekier in its wordplay: "It is one room wide--a long
- dark living room, a narrow dark bedroom, a dark narrow kitchen; a long
- narrow back yard between high, board fences, and on the alley end, a
- wire fence with a toothed gate" (21). Even the fence takes on a false
- anthropomorphic role.
-
- Jacobsen, at times a logical positivist philosopher par excellence,
- probes with Wittgenstein-like vigor the falseness of language too. In
- "Nel Bagno," Mrs. Glessner thinks, "But what was the actual connection
- between the letters and the porcelain objects close upon her? The
- translation from English to Italian was nothing to the other
- translation, from letters to matter" (53). Later on, she mentally
- notes that a "dictionary's uses anticipate neither biology nor crime"
- (55). Revising her analysis and perception of language, Mrs. Glessner
- now sees language as antecedent to experience. Existence in all its
- real qualities precedes essence, the abstractness of language. Ms.
- Jacobsen would make a good Sartrean existentialist.
-
- These philosophic concerns with the inherent falsity of reality and
- language carry over into Jacobsen's own painterly writer's eye and
- concentration on detail. For example, color needs translating, offers
- new insight, allows for reseeing (6): "On this tiny island she [Jane
- Megan] remained amazed at the progressive detail of her own sight: new
- shades of purple and rose appeared in the noon sea. She was stunned by
- the varieties of green: the serious glossy green of the breadfruit,
- the translucent green of the fringed plantain blades, the trembling
- play of the flame trees, the palms' hard glitter. Green, what on earth
- was it!" Green is, and is not, green. More the latter, for Jacobsen.
- Appallingly though, sight can become monotonous; its immediacy can be
- lost. Caddy, in "The Edge of the Sea," becomes obsessed with the
- falsity of eyes. She knows that, "The eyes looked through everything,
- and everything they looked through came apart. Nothing held.... When
- the eyes looked at people, at cosmetics, at billboards, at
- speedometers, at blackboards, these objects came apart like wet
- tissue" (97). For Jacobsen, perception, like "memory's tricky
- records," is subject to inherent falsity. The very act of perceiving
- can deceive.
-
- Characters deceive left and right in Jacobsen's stories as well, and
- one's perception of identity is manifestly and symbolically
- precarious. Along with Jacobsen's preoccupation with the falseness of
- appearances exists a concomitant apparent notion of an absence of any
- unified, discrete identity, which is instead "tricky records" of
- memories, feelings, sounds, and lights. Dan's hauntingly chilling
- past, piecemeal, tinged in a romantic light by Caddy's own
- untrustworthy memories, opens up with wicked revelation. Facts seem to
- be repetitious by Mrs. Brounlow's remembrances. Gina and Dan have
- married, by Dan's dark machinations, and Caddy "does not know...who
- they are" at the end of the story (109). Other thoughts of doubt crop
- up. Is Mrs. Bart's switchblade-yielding girl fact or fiction? And
- George? One of the Company, he is "neither in nor out of the living"
- (78). Ironically, a character puffs that George was a "real person,"
- further blurring the real and false line of identity (80).
-
- All of Jacobsen's first nine stories deal with the deep question of
- identity. And, for her, ultimately, identity equals gesture, equals
- action. More broadly, gestures free us from the falsity of language.
- They are prelanguage truths. As Anabel Avon muses, "Gestures were the
- real language, the ancient one. The sculptor, the dancer, the priest
- understood this. Actions, too, were gestures, deeper, simpler, than
- they seemed" (116). An artist constantly on the lookout for them, she
- becomes obsessed by gestures: "...each of these made its own,
- translated as a line, a blocking out of space, an arrested motion. She
- found that its magnetism was as much the isolation as the view--the
- smell of dusty sun and some crushed aromatic plant; the pulse in a
- lizard's throat; the shield of light on the water, that corroded to
- bronze, to copper, to lilac as the sun focused itself into a huge
- ball, round as a blood orange, touched the sea's rim in one sensual
- gesture and slid--slid actually as the eye watched--below the world
- (116). In the cryptically titled story, "The Inner Path," a
- human-rights investigator/writer loses two-thirds of a finger in a
- bloody and gross gesture. Here the action quite literally matches the
- "other translation, from letters to matter."
-
- Many of Josephine Jacobsen's finely plotted stories tantalize the
- reader with open-ended denouements rich in possibility. One such
- arresting story she entitles "Season's End." This reader's
- fine-toothed comb worked overtime between, around, and up and down
- lines trying to desnarl the text. A plausible and psychologically
- revealing interpretation follows, hinging on Mr. Gains being gay. One
- cannot help wonder if his name is a tip-off to the reader and a bit of
- wordplay on Jacobsen's part. Or is it a Freudian slip? Unwitting? Does
- some latent homosexuality prefigure in her art and psyche? At the
- least, this possible interpretation adds a much richer dimension to
- the last page. And regardless if Mr. Gains is a closet pederast, an
- unwitting homosexual, or an openly gay man, his overt admiration of
- Chico and his dissembling treatment of Arthur is suspect on a few
- levels. "Season's End" comes across as a sort of male menopause story.
- "Season's End" means the loss of sexuality, the assuming of an asexual
- nature. At the very end, when Mr. Gains says aloud, "Yes, I can ask at
- Thurston's," and then adds, "I could," one feels that he will
- innocently rationalize Chico's theft of the watch, his sexual
- proclivity inherently compromising himself somehow (92). Whether or
- not this is how Jacobsen envisioned a reading of the story, her
- unresolved ending leaves an alert reader much room for multiple
- speculations.
-
- On the whole, the first nine short stories in Ms. Jacobsen's
- collection, "On the Island", offer up well-imagined fictional worlds,
- along with a richly textured prose style. She has a textual
- sensuousness that reminds one of Durrell, and her world at times
- strikingly resembles Graham Greene's Greeneland in its stark,
- isolating nihilism. In fact, a Jacobsenland steeped in isolation and
- the Hitchcock premise of placing an ordinary person in a highly
- unordinary situation can be found at the core of most of her fiction
- and sets off her writings with recognizable landmarks.
-
- A few caveats remain though. Her foreshadowing and symbolism come
- across as a bit overloaded and cliche-ridden at times. Do we really
- need both a lame dog and a lame boy in the first story? And the
- symbolic rainy ending of "The Inner Path" inappropriately suffers from
- ill-chosen, bathetic symbolism. Sometimes this overdoing passes across
- into her writing, so we get overwritten lines such as "She sat up in
- an agony of stiffness, the full, ludicrous, unbelievable, locked
- misery drowning her" (56). Strike up the violins! In like fashion, she
- runs words together with the result being a clogged syntax of odd
- rhythms, seemingly revealing a rather lax ear on her behalf. For
- example, she writes: "The fatigue was a sudden accumulation, mental
- and emotional even more than physical; the wearing and tearing of tiny
- teeth; indignation, frustration, endless effort; the initial effort of
- clearing himself from instant imagination; the slow, dangerous,
- laborious attempt at the winning of confidence, the hoarding of facts"
- (59). Equally irritating is her bad habit of unwitting alliteration.
- Far too many overall literative sentences abound. One shall suffice.
- "in this past month he had fed the typewriter keys doggedly,
- persistently, feeling his own fiery frustrations faintly eased by the
- lines that would express them" (62). But these are relatively minor
- quibbles. Jacobsen's painterly eye is deft and vivid, fully
- transcribing for us, her privileged readers, those gestures from that
- "other translation, from letters to matter."
-
-
- **Part 2: In the Mind of the Eye's Storm of Josephine Jacobsen**
-
- Eyes, yes human eyes, are truth-bearing, truth throwing, truth
- registering physical organs for Josephine Jacobsen in the second-half
- of her collection, "On the Island", and all of her last eleven stories
- function, some with vivid moralistic and messianic zeal, in bringing,
- first to her own characters and then, by implication, to her readers
- as well, the import of the eye's out- and intake. Jacobsen champions
- the eye. By the eye's own compass she swings us into the jungle and
- garden alike, happy, many times, to pinpoint her fictional needle to
- just that line between jungle and garden too.
-
- In the heavily pun-titled story, "Late Fall," a young priest, Father
- Consadine, secretly speculates with frequency upon the mystery of the
- presence of God, especially how this presence penetrates circumstance
- and flesh. His mind's eye drawn to the symbol of the lion, the
- gladiator lions of the historic Roman Coliseum, majestic,
- terror-striking, brute, dangerous, inescapable, he wonders (130) if
- "at the last moment, did anyone believe, so confronted? Yes. But--and
- here was the crux--did they, could they, know they believed? Facing
- that hot maw and the impersonal ravening gaze, could they hold that
- thread?" Inwardly satirical and irascible, rebellious, mired in a
- state of seemingly noncommunion with God, Father Consadine, at story's
- end, two miles out in the village's Dump, looks down over its (138)
- chaotic brilliance "into that abomination of desolation spoken of by
- the prophet; in this case, the raw remains of the once-possessed, the
- shards of personality. It was disintegration, visible. 'Jesus, Mary,
- Joseph!'" Truth becomes finally "visible" and communes with the eyes.
-
- From another pun-titled story, "Help," Jacobsen depicts the world of a
- black maid named Violet set inside the white, bigoted world of her
- stomach-troubled employer Mrs. Harker. Considerably sympathetic, at
- first, in the opening pages to Mrs. Harker and her marital situation,
- Violet's good nature soon fills with furious contempt as Mrs. Harker
- reveals herself to be a thief who steals eighteen dollars from a wool
- glove in her purse to cover petty card losses incurred while playing
- bridge. Very early on, Jacobsen writes, "Violet knew a mean man [Mr.
- Harker] when she saw one. She had met shame in Mrs. Harker's eye.
- Shame was something Violet knew about, from a former period" (141).
- Again, truth becomes visible and communicates to the eyes. Without
- Violet's clear perception of Mrs. Harker's situation, physically
- abused and nervous to the point of having an ulcer, the reader could
- not make sense of Violet's contemptuously kind decision to drop,
- unanticipated and unexpected, the matter of the theft altogether. What
- one sees, how one reads a person correctly, for Jacobsen, determines
- just what motivates a person, how they act, or how they react.
-
- Mrs. Curtis notes a curious jolt of dislike--ridiculous she
- wonders?--from the gaze of Dr. Brade in "Vocation." All alone,
- powerless, relying on the congeniality of strangers as a patient, she
- is rudely awakened and frightened by Dr. Brade on the eve of a tricky
- five-hour operation. After Dr. Brade has left her, Mrs. Curtis,
- outraged, confused, knows "why Dr. Brades's eyes were familiar. She
- had seen them, late at night, in a great railroad station" (153). A
- guard patrolling the station sadistically rousts a very old, dirty man
- from a bench with a merciless smack of his nightstick against the
- pitted soles of his shoes. And nearly two years gone by, and this
- sadism has never totally left Mrs. Curtis' mind, for "the eyes of the
- man in the tan uniform seemed not to fade" (156). Appalled at the
- loose abuse of uniform and the visceral sadism to hurt another, to
- instill deep fear, Mrs. Curtis sees that "suddenly all over the world,
- eyes shone at her, steady in their useless, cureless, idiot
- priesthood" (157). These eyes come before her "steadfast, unsmiling[,]
- ancient" (158). In "The Night the Playoffs Were Rained Out," these
- eyes come from Tribes, Clans, and Borders. For Mrs. Plessy, Mrs.
- Gombrecht's bright ceramic blue eyes shine at her "with a fixed, china
- hostility" (167). Showing us, her readers, the primitive, prelanguage
- truths free of the falsity of language, the world of gesture that
- occupied her concern in the earlier stories, here, visual gestures
- being the focus, Jacobsen imaginatively glorifies, with the gusto and
- meticulousness of a finely plotted detective story, a philosophy of
- the eye.
-
- In "A Walk with Raschid," she has James Cantry say, "The truth...can't
- make me free if I don't know it" (180). And to know the truth, for
- Jacobsen, involves "seeing" it. Not until a taxi driver stares (on the
- last page of the story) into James' eyes and reveals to him his wife's
- deception does he suddenly put two and two together. Deceptions become
- machinations: "under a djellabah hood, dark eyes, now turned a light,
- steadfast blue, raced away raced away" (181). Jacobsen narrates in
- another story, that "cause and effect, lovely as graph lines and as
- clear, operated below all things" (245). Cause: Tracy, James current
- wife. Effect: the rejection of James by Oliver, his inarticulate,
- ten-year-old son, the same age as Raschid, in favor of Louise,
- Oliver's biological mom and James' first wife, through the
- manipulative lies against James as told by Tracy to Oliver.
-
- Interested not only with just imaginatively delineating deception in
- its many guises but also its twin, truth, in all its masks, Jacobsen
- explores the theme of friendship within the looking glass of fiction
- in her story, "The Friends." At the end, thirty years of friendship
- between Mrs. Perkins and Rosie O'Shaugnessy, employer and employee,
- comes down to one final message, a final gesture: "deep from Rosie's
- eyes, Rosie looked at her. 'Missus Perkins,' she said, 'I've got a
- pain.' 'Rosie,' said Mrs. Perkins" (195). Moments later, Mrs. Perkins
- smothers Rosie, in the terminal stage of cancer, with a pillow,
- suffocating her. From this unexpected gesture of euthanasia, Susan is
- bathed in a great sense of peace. Later that day, she says to herself
- that why she did it was "to feel better" (197). Yet, picking up her
- handsome silver sugar bowl and seeing over its faint mist of tarnish,
- "her face flashed back at her, through stretched and broken, into
- mysterious patches (197). So, like Father Consadine, Mrs. Perkins'
- eyes receive the mysterious "shards of personality." Similarly, the
- ending of the first-person story, "The Wreath," has the unnamed
- narrator noticing a big wreath being hung on a cord from a window of
- an institution of mental health: "It had a huge bow; it swung a
- little; then the arms withdrew and it hung still. The bars quartered
- its bright green-and-red circle. And by some queer sudden movement, as
- though the ground beneath the station wagon had shifted, altering
- every proportion just a little, its broken circle seemed to me
- beautiful and strong and appropriate" (228). Beautiful, strong,
- appropriate, the broken circle altered by her bald encounter with a
- delusive female patient, Jacobsen shows just how much emotions color
- what or how one perceives the world around them.
-
- Nowhere is this emotional coloring more so the case than at the end of
- the story entitled "Motion of the Heart." Jacobsen writes, "At this
- exact moment, and without any preparation at all, Milly saw what she
- intended to do--saw it before her....There would be no Larry. Though
- she failed to believe it, she knew it" (209). Here, deceived by a
- lover's face that "was constantly in change--looks passed over it; it
- was in shadow of light; it melted and sharpened," Milly's motions of
- the heart create motions of the eyes (198). In this process, which one
- might call "eye-bridging," for lack of a better term," a sort of crude
- dialectic that proceeds from emotion to eye, and so on to a greater
- emotion, or vice versa, constantly takes place. For Jacobsen and her
- philosophy of the eye, a counterbalance continuum of in- and
- out-seeing always is at work within one's self.
-
- Jacobsen fictionally captures this dialectic of mind's eye and eye's
- mind in the story of "The Jungle of Lord Lion." Caught in the
- undergrowth of rigid social convention and her own happy, personal
- peace, in the recurring terrible beauty of Boundinian jungle, of Mrs.
- Chubb's vile racism, and Mrs. Heatherby's subsequent buckling under to
- Mrs. Chubb's social blackmail, one surmises that Mrs. Pomeroy at
- story's end "somewhere within her knowledge...had understood the
- terrible components of joy" (220). Likewise, for Mrs. Mary Driscoll,
- in "On the Island," fantasy of beauty and real green jungle violently
- coagulate, her husband bloodily decapitated by a machete blade, a
- victim of mistaken identity. Finally, from the story "Jack Frost,"
- Jacobsen defends the perceptive truth of the external eye through Mrs.
- Travis, a ninety-three-year-old gardener who has "a belief in the
- physical, a conviction of the open-ended mystery of matter" (233).
- Fearing the loss of her wild cosmos and her garden proper, which, in
- her own mind, she created out of nothing, she engages in a defiant
- battle against Jack Frost for the life of her flowers. Physically
- unfit to wage much of a battle, she finally triumphs, surviving an
- ankle sprain and teeth-biting cold. With a lyrical panegyric
- championing the visual eye, Jacobsen's narrator sees "a dozen shapes
- and colors blazed before her eyes, and a great tearing breath came up
- inside her like an explosion. Mrs. Travis lifted her head, and the
- whole wave of summer, advancing obedient and glorious, in a crest of
- color and warmth and fragrance broke right over her" (240).
-
-
-
- World Wide Words Special Features
- ---------------------------------
- by Phil Pearson <pkpearson@earthlink.net>
- 1 poem, 1 short story
-
-
- _The All-Night Cafe_
- ~Arles, September 1888~
-
- It's 1:15 AM:
- An empty pocket of a night
-
- Two peasants,
- Crumpled up like old accordions,
- Zero in the throat,
- Face down in the barking of their minds.
-
- Two lovers,
- Hearts full of wine,
- Take in the pink bouquet's sweet fragrance,
- The halo effect of three gas lamps,
- Oblivious to the time of clocks.
-
- And the waiter,
- With the motheaten eyes,
- In need of a clean shave,
- Ramrod stiff in posture,
- Stares vacuously out into space.
-
- A painter
- Dreams of soft Louis XV greens and malachite
- Of sunflower yellow and hard blue greens
- Of a devil's furnace and starry nights.
-
- It's 1:15 AM:
- An empty pocket of a night.
-
-
- *--==--*
-
-
- _Crawdads_
-
- On his hour-long lunch break Mr. Hooker went to Nanci's Baby Boutique
- at the mall. First, he circled the perimeter, eyes browsing over
- bootie socks, layette sets, Baby's Little Engine That Could Book, a
- Beatrix Potter Baby Book, My First Football, baby shoes, New Kid On
- The Block dolls, "My First Paddington PLEASE look after this Bear.
- THANK YOU," Little Slugger caps, Baby's First Headband, Baby's First
- Barrette, before finally deciding on a Fisher-Price 3-in-1 Travel
- Tender, and a surprise gift.
-
- Mr. Hooker requested that the Travel Tender on display be collapsed
- and packed up in its own tote. The salesclerk complied, pointing out
- the 3-in-1 bassinet-crib-playpen, its soft foam floor, with padded
- side rails too, the fabric durable and washable nylon. He said
- nothing, smoothing a body hair back down on one of his wrists. A CPA,
- young, well-groomed, he nodded his approval of the demonstration when
- completed, an inhibited smile oddly playing across his lips beneath a
- thin mustache.
-
- They moved back to the counter. Teasing the nap of his mustache, Mr.
- Hooker waited while his bill was totaled. He read the liquid crystal
- readout above the store register and paid in cash. The salesclerk made
- small talk about his cute surprise gift as she wrapped it up for him.
- Having received his change, Mr. Hooker meticulously turned back the
- dogeared corners of three one dollar bills and righted each one face
- forward before placing them back in his wallet. Then with a sufficing
- thank you he carried away his purchases.
-
- -==-
-
- On his lakefront property that evening, Mr. Hooker was casting for
- sand bass off of his dock. A cordless phone lay nearby. His wife,
- expectant any day now, was resting in bed with more new lower back
- pain. The last week or so she had been experiencing short, irregular
- contractions their doctor had called "Braxton Hicks" contractions.
- "Par for the course," the old doctor had told them.
-
- Behind around the back side of Mr. Hooker's ice fishing house, up on
- cement blocks just off the shore rocks, a young girl's muffled "ouch"
- carried out into the autumn air. She wrung her hand first as if it was
- on fire, next squeezed it under an armpit before sucking on the
- offended finger in her mouth.
-
- Mr. Hooker came upon her sucking on her index finger. An empty Ziploc
- bag lay at her feet, and he was curious to find out what was going on.
- As she sat, one knee kept quivering so much that she was forced to
- hold it down with her free hand.
-
- The little girl, calling him "Mister," asked him if he could please
- help her catch some crawdads. She said she was afraid to catch them;
- she feared getting pinched again; and she just had to have lots of
- them.
-
- Mr. Hooker's stomach fell as the girl snuffed back a flow of snot,
- followed by a sleeve wipe. Two red small round burns, oozing pus, were
- spied on a wrist. He asked her if she was from the trailer park up the
- road. She nodded warily. He asked if she had a momma and a daddy. Yes.
- Did she like her momma? Yes. Her daddy? She mumbled something about
- crawdads. And her name was? Mandy. Mandy who? Duke.
-
- He said he was Nicholas Hooker II.
-
- A wince of pain showed as she picked up the Ziploc bag.
-
- "Saint Nick" he was, said Mr. Hooker. "Jolly Saint Nick," he said
- solemnly. We'll catch you lots and lots of crawdads, he told her, but
- first he had to make a couple of quick phone calls and then he would
- be right back.
-
- On the dock, Mr. Hooker dialed directory assistance and got a phone
- number for a Duke living in the Regency Mobile Home Park. He dialed.
-
- -==-
-
- Upstairs, in the master bedroom, Mr. Hooker lay in bed watching the
- ten o'clock news on TV. He had the sound muted all the way down
- because his wife had fallen asleep after a lower back rub. While
- gently massaging her sore back, he had mentioned the encounter with
- the young girl. His wife hadn't liked the sound of it either. She said
- it was best if they kept their noses out of it. She was glad he had
- notified the police. She had rolled over next, and they had done a
- fetal kick count together. She was eight days past her due date.
-
- Suddenly the doorbell was buzzing and then the bed was wet.
-
- Mr. Hooker wondered who that could be at this late hour while cinching
- his robe and going downstairs. He was a man who hated surprises. One
- headlight of a white car could be seen burning dully in his driveway
- as he pulled aside the curtains. His wife was yelling his name and the
- cat was mewling like a baby as he pulled open the door. The cat
- catapulted out.
-
- "Yes?" he said.
-
- A large woman wearing an odd loose-looped sweater with a high tight
- o-ringed neckline said, "I'm Mrs. Duke, the one you hung up on on the
- phone earlier tonight--Mandy's momma."
-
- "My wife's yelling for me. I think her bag of waters has broken. I
- have to call my doctor right away. I'm sorry. Please move your car. We
- have to go to the hospital right now. What do you want? I have to go,"
- Mr. Hooker said.
-
- "Listen," the woman said, "You'd better stay out of this if you know
- what's best for you. With Ken Ray's drinking and all. You shouldn't
- have called the cops. I gotta get back. The police are coming back
- tomorrow to talk to him when he is more sober."
-
- "It's your problem, lady. Look, I gotta go. I'm sorry. The police will
- deal with it and help your husband if he has a problem."
-
- "You don't understand," she said.
-
- "No, you don't understand. We're having a baby. Now! Please move your
- car. Goodbye," Mr. Hooker said and closed the door.
-
- Upstairs, Mr. Hooker's wife had just called the doctor. The telephone
- rang. She picked it up.
-
- "Is that bitch, Maggie, there?" a man said.
-
- She said, "You must have the wrong number. Sorry."
-
- "Sorry, my ass. You're the one who's gonna be sorry, lady. Fuck off, "
- the man said.
-
- Mrs. Hooker hung up.
-
- The telephone was left ringing as they rushed out the door to the
- hospital.
-
- -==-
-
- Four hours later, the old doctor told the Hooker's they were in the
- early stages of labor. He was giving Mr. Hooker's wife the painkiller
- Demerol to help her relax. Mr. Hooker stood by the bedside, holding
- her hand.
-
- "You'd better sit down, Nicholas," said the old doctor. "It's going to
- be a while. No use wearing out rubber yet."
-
- "Everything's okay?" asked Mr. Hooker.
-
- "Yes. No preeclampsia problems. No intrauterine growth retardation.
- Normal blood pressure. Normal on the urine. Normal prepartum cervix
- changes at Mindy's last checkup," said the old doctor.
-
- "And her water breaking?" Mr. Hooker said.
-
- "Nicholas," his wife said, squeezing his hand.
-
- "Impending delivery is progressing, Nicholas. You can tell a
- contraction is significant when the uterus becomes so hard that you
- can't indent it with your finger for 60 seconds. If need be, with the
- help of Pitocin, we can speed up Mindy's labor. Okay? You'll have a
- beautiful bouncing baby any hour now."
-
- An orderly entered bearing clean sheets and towels. Dr. Boettcher's
- name sounded over the hospital's intercom system, and the old doctor
- excused himself. The telephone rang once and stopped before Mr. Hooker
- could pick it up. He dragged over a hardback wooden chair from a
- corner and sat down next to the bed.
-
- "Scared?" said Mr. Hooker.
-
- "A bit," said Mrs. Hooker.
-
- "Love ya, ya Munchkin," said Mr. Hooker.
-
- He scootched back in the chair, the legs squeaking across the linoleum
- floor. The orderly glanced his way leaving the room.
-
- His wife said, "I know you do. I feel like a seasick walrus. I sure
- could use a barf bag right now."
-
- Mr. Hooker got up saying he needed a milk or some hot tea. He pressed
- the nurse's aide button knotted round the cold chrome bed rail.
-
- -==-
-
- In the maternity ward, through smudged plate glass, red, round, small
- puckered-up faces cried in chorus as Mr. Hooker looked on. Their
- little o-ring mouths yawning wide, the red, round, small uvulaes, like
- little Sweet Pea and that wavering uvula in those idiotic Popeye
- cartoons, he thought. All black holes, the mouths.
-
- -==-
-
- His nostrils flared passing a stationary cleaning cart after rounding
- the corner back to his wife's hospital room. Mr. Hooker, crushing a
- milk carton, its air squishing out, milk bubbling inside, frisbeed the
- flattened pint into the cart's wastebasket.
-
- A policewoman was sitting on the hard-back wooden chair, waiting, when
- he opened the door.
-
- "Mr. Hooker, sir?" said the policewoman.
-
- "Yes, officer?" he said.
-
- He motioned her towards the other bed area nearest the window, giving
- the wraparound curtain a few sharp tugs.
-
- "You guys, or shall I say gals, sure do take the cake, you know that?"
- Mr. Hooker said, dropping down on the bed. "Where do you get off
- barging in here? My God, my wife'll be in labor any minute here and
- the last thing we need right now is you parking your pretty little
- catbird seat right here in the midst of us all."
-
- The policewoman was black and heavyset. Her shoes were shiny and her
- hair cornrowed. She was in dress blues, tie and tie bar, billyclub by
- the side, walkie-talkie hugging the hips.
-
- Mrs. Hooker said, "Officer Perry was very courteous and professional.
- She has a four-year-old baby boy. I'm the one who offered her a seat.
- She wanted to wait outside."
-
- "I just need a little follow-up information, Mr. Hooker," said the
- policewoman, pulling out a notepad and pen.
-
- "Shoot," he said deadpan.
-
- The policewoman said, "Do you know a Ken Ray Duke?"
-
- Mr. Hooker said "No."
-
- He looked at a dirty streak on the window.
-
- "What exactly was exchanged between you and Mrs. Duke at your
- residence earlier tonight?" said the policewoman.
-
- "Let's step outside," said Mr. Hooker.
-
- -==-
-
- By six o'clock that morning Mrs. Hooker labor had only progressed
- slightly. A new doctor came in and administered a shot of Pitocin. A
- nurse came, felt Mrs. Hooker's stomach for sixty seconds, and went.
- Mr. Hooker was spreadeagled on the other bed, his face sideways on a
- pillow. Another nurse dropped off a floral arrangement and a big red
- helium balloon that read "Congratulations on Your First Baby!" and
- departed. There was no note with the flowers.
-
- Mr. Hooker was feeling decidedly down in the mouth. He had been
- humiliated and embarrassed by his wife in front of that policewoman.
- He'd have his say in due time.
-
- "Nicholas, I think it's time," said Mrs. Hooker. "Please ring a nurse
- for me."
-
- Feeling uncomfortable, Mrs. Hooker asked for an epidural to numb
- feeling from her waist down.
-
- -==-
-
- Finally, at nine-thirty Friday morning, with significant contractions
- starting, Dr. Boettcher moved Mrs. Hooker to a delivery room.
-
- Contractions were coming every ninety seconds.
-
- "She's almost fully dilated. Things are cooking," said the old doctor
- to Mr. Hooker when he left the room.
-
- Mr. Hooker said, "Good luck!" worrying about his rumpled pants.
-
- Mrs. Hooker said, "Oh, God."
-
- Mr. Hooker said, "I think the cat was left out," as they wheeled her
- away.
-
- Leaving the room, a nurse gave a thumb's-up sign to Mr. Hooker.
-
- The orderly stared at him momentarily, then the door was swinging back
- and forth.
-
- -==-
-
- And for three hours delivery went on. By 1:30 pm the baby had moved
- far enough along the birth canal that the old doctor could see the
- hair on its head. But then it stopped moving any further. On
- inspection the obstetrician noticed fecal matter within the amniotic
- fluid and was alarmed.
-
- An emergency C-section was decided upon. With the old doctor by Mrs.
- Hooker's side, they wheeled her into a nearby operating room and
- administered general anesthesia. If the baby had aspirated the fecal
- matter, this result could potentially be dangerous and possibly fatal
- because of the lung damage. Surgery was over in half an hour.
-
- -==-
-
- The old doctor shuffled into the room. Two small round stains could be
- seen on his hospital gown at each armpit. A surgical mask, its cloth
- ties trailing on the ground, was in one hand, a skullcap in the other.
- He said, "Your wife's okay, but the baby didn't make it. Nicholas?"
-
- Mr. Hooker looked away, watching the red helium balloon twist around
- on its blue ribbon. "Yes?" he said.
-
- "I'm sorry," the old doctor said.
-
- "Yes," said Mr. Hooker.
-
- "Fecal matter in the amniotic sac was fatally aspirated by the baby.
- It was a girl," the old doctor said.
-
- "I see," said Mr. Hooker.
-
- "Your wife's lost some blood. We'll be keeping her for observation
- overnight," the old doctor said.
-
- "I see," said Mr. Hooker.
-
- The old doctor squeezed Mr. Hooker's wrist and shuffled out of the
- room.
-
- -==-
-
- Mr. Hooker stared hard, watching the red helium balloon twirl around
- and around on its blue ribbon, twirl around and around and he was
- suddenly twirling his little girl, around and around on a carrousel, a
- merry-go-round, merry-go-round, feet running, lungs aspirating,
- aspirating, circling around and round and round, laughing, clapping,
- pirouetting, little girl's horse rocking, bobbing up and down, up and
- down, the music callioping and callioping and galloping, stalls,
- quiet, and then he is watching the red helium balloon twirl around and
- around on its blue ribbon.
-
- -==-
-
- "Nicholas?" said Mrs. Hooker.
-
- "Yeah?" he said.
-
- "Would you check the room and make sure we haven't left anything?"
- Mrs. Hooker said.
-
- He did not reply. He went into the lavatory. Teasing the nap of his
- mustache in the mirror first, he then gazed at himself, and now in the
- mirror he was brushing his little girl's hair for church. He turned on
- the faucet. Wave after wave swept up upon the cold shore rocks. A gull
- flapped into a stiff headwind. A driftwood stump was cobwebbed with
- old fishing line. Hooker ambled on by. Two brown ground squirrels
- played tag. Their tails flicking up and back, resembling question
- marks, he watched them busily bury acorns. He listened to the raspy
- filing of the leaves in the treetops. Fishermen were mini-jigging for
- perch with silver wigglers in the weed beds of raccoon's tail out on
- the lake. Hooker came upon a crawdad skeleton bleaching in the
- afternoon sun. Lifting it up gently, fuzzed flaky legs, he tore off a
- pincer, scrutinizing the green-blue orange-tipped arm and the white
- china underside as smooth as pearl, worked the hinge three times till
- it dry-as-dust crumbled away and said to his daughter, "Jenny, now you
- stay away from those wet rocks or you're going to fall and hurt
- yourself."
-
- "Oh, Daddy!" the little girl said, "Look at the bird."
-
- A gull flapped into a stiff headwind.
-
- The girl sat down upon a driftwood stump cobwebbed with old fishing
- line. Hooker ambled on by.
-
- The little girl sang, "Row row, row your boat, gently down the stream,
- merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream."
-
- Then she said, "Oh, Daddy, look two squirrels."
-
- Two brown ground squirrels played tag. Their tails flicking up and
- back, resembling questions marks, she watched them busily bury acorns.
- She listened to the raspy filing of the leaves in the treetops.
- Fishermen were mini-jigging for perch with silver wigglers in the weed
- beds of raccoon's tail out on the lake.
-
- Jenny came upon a crawdad skeleton bleaching in the afternoon sun.
- Lifting it up gently, fuzzed flaky legs, she tore off a pincer,
- scrutinizing the green-blue orange-tipped arm and the white china
- underside as smooth as pearl, worked the hinge three times till it
- dry-as-dust crumbled away down to the flint brown sand, flint brown
- soil, Jenny as brown as soil, brown ground squirrel, brown ground
- squirrel, brown ground, Jenny now scampers out away beyond
- Hooker's--he faltered, clasping the brown handicapped bars on the
- walls. He straightened a washcloth on a towel rack and pocketed a
- wrappered soap bar.
-
- Mrs. Hooker said, "Is everything okay in there?"
-
- "Nothing here," Mr. Hooker said.
-
- He came out of the bathroom. He settled his wife into her wheelchair
- and released the brake. Going out the door, he flicked the light
- switch off and the telephone rang. He left his wife in the corridor
- and went back in and picked up the phone.
-
- A voice said, "Hooker? That you? You son of a bitch, Hooker. You and
- your heroic crawdads and Mandy. Jesus."
-
- Mr. Hooker hung up.
-
- The phone rang again and he ripped the cord out of the wall.
-
- He came back out, shrugged, said it was a wrong number, and moved his
- wife down the corridor to the elevator station.
-
- -==-
-
- A white car gunned down alongside the curb, grinding to a halt in
- front of the Hooker's residence. A man ratcheted the handbrake up
- slowly. He tossed a burning cigarette out the driver's side window
- onto the lawn. Two boys on roller-skates clattered past over the
- sidewalk.
-
- Upstairs, Mrs. Hooker lay sleeping comfortably on the bed. Downstairs,
- Mr. Hooker, on leave from work for a brief respite, was reading a
- novel.
-
- The doorbell buzzed.
-
- He got up from his La-Z-Boy and absent-minded answered the doorbell.
-
- "Guess who's coming to dinner, Hooker? Your ol' buddy, Kenny Ray!" the
- man said.
-
- Hooker slammed the door shut and dead-bolted it.
-
- "Here comes Kenny," the man said through the door.
-
- Hooker went and sat back down in the La-Z-Boy. Pounding reverberated
- throughout the entire house. Hooker got up and said, "Jenny! Jenny!
- Your daddy's going crawdad hunting, Jenny. We must go crawdad hunting!
- Let's go crawdad hunting on the shore rocks, Jenny. Jenny? Jenny?"
-
- The cat, startled by the noise, had become snagged in the carpet and
- was mewing frantically, its caught back leg doing wild crazy eights.
-
-
-
- About the Columnist
- *******************
- Phil Pearson hails from Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he's involved in higher
- education and enjoys fiddling around with multimedia projects. A Mac
- aficionado, Editor-in-Chief of the popular "MacSurfer's Headline News"
- website, he maintains a keen interest in twentieth-century poetry and
- fiction. In his quieter moments, he can often be found fishing for
- yellow perch and the elusive walleye.
-
-
-
-
- Ben Ohmart [1]
- --------------
- <findline@ix.netcom.com>
- 1-act play
- (editor's note: this section is divided in two 32k sections for better
- viewing with EasyView)
-
-
- _A Gorilla Suit, A Judge's Wig and a Little Blue Cap_
-
- CAST OF CHARACTERS
-
- ARLEEN - A woman in her thirties who is in love with pain. It kills
- her to admit it but she can't live without it.
-
- ARMONT - ARLEEN's husband, and a gorilla. He's tried to succumb to
- the world of Man, and has pretty much adapted. But he can get very
- violent.
-
- KIEV - ARLEEN's friend and one time co-worker. A woman of about the
- same age. She doesn't like ARLEEN's preference of pain, but tries to
- be as good a friend as she can without overstepping bounds.
-
- FRANK - Frankenstein's Monster. A gentle creature who wants love, but
- still doesn't know his own strength or role in the world of today.
-
- BOBBY - A date KIEV picked up. Played by ARMONT.
-
- WAITRESS - At a bar. Played by KIEV.
-
- WOMEN - Who sells papers; another at at a bar. Played by KIEV.
-
- BAILIFF - In court. Played by KIEV.
-
- VOICES - Played by all the members of the cast, in the dark.
-
-
- SETTING An apartment, a few bars, which can be altered from one
- another just by furniture rearranging, and various places in the city.
-
- TIME Now.
-
-
-
- (It's a middle-class apt. Much of it looks like a cage in a zoo: some
- furniture is torn, magazines scattered, banana peels in dark corners.
- But ARLEEN, an attractive woman in her thirties, who enters, tries to
- keep the place livable. She's not happy with her life, but content as
- can be. She wishes she could be more satisfied with herself. She takes
- a small garbage can by the hallway, as normal practice, and breaths in
- a sigh to begin the work of picking up, etc. She smells something and
- looks around to discover it; it's in the garbage can. She takes a
- bigger sniff to make sure and comes back scowling. She goes off to get
- a plastic bag from the kitchen, comes back and starts the arduous task
- of putting the mouth of the plastic over the can. Just then ARMONT, a
- gorilla, enters, flinging his keys down. He's a real gorilla who's
- managed to repress a lot of natural desires and anger, and so a lot of
- times takes it out on ARLEEN. He tries to act like a man mostly, but
- many times his bruteness escapes him. Except this time he's happy, and
- is a little quicker with his natural actions, such as swinging his
- arms low, grunting, climbing over the furniture, but all in
- moderation. He should act more like a man than a gorilla, for the most
- part. When ARLEEN sees him, she gives a copious smile and moves to the
- end table which contains the mail)
-
- ARLEEN. Morning..cold...I suppose it's still on snow. (ARMONT is
- beside himself and can't speak for a moment. He climbs on the couch)
- Well! Did you hear already or something or...(Stops; concerned) You
- didn't attack the mailman...like in the summ...(Shakes it off) There
- is a new color in the spectrum, lover. And it is a kind of bullion of
- white, kind of white. Yes? (She holds up envelope for him to see, then
- underlines the return address with her fingernail and a wide teethless
- smile. This calms him somewhat)
-
- ARMONT. It came - through the mail.
-
- ARLEEN. (Concerned about his lack of enthusiasm) What? You place the
- stamp, you let it go in the blue box, what does a - (ARMONT begins to
- grow violent, and she backs away to do the cleaning) The next time you
- have me write it out for you, make sure you want it.
-
- ARMONT. Can I tell you what happened to me today? Would you mind if I
- started in on what my life means to me at this very moment in time?
-
- ARLEEN. Por favor. Did you wipe them? (This makes ARMONT jump up and
- down until he comes close to her) Kiev called and I think I'm going to
- lunch. Since last week...I think she wants to pay.
-
- ARMONT. I love you, Arleen, so it's the event that most car
- dealerships are on about, the "once in a lifetime" deal and crap and
- shit and you never know do you, you turn on them the night following,
- it's the next year and they still "ever" all over you.
-
- ARLEEN. Not these cars, right? I mean. We've passed that?
-
- ARMONT. (Growing angry; starts swinging arms) I am setting up a...
- thing. A thing. You let me talk about Roy with an i, Roi, and he'll
- let it be told to you about perfection, an amount of spaces that must
- be filled. Any time there is a "must" in a something, you've got to
- know that there is a meaning of parking, yes, it's fantastic, in what
- it achieves, brings it in and sets it there before, on top, underneath
- you, whatever! (Being swept away by the excitement, he becomes even
- more animated than when angry) And it's on free land, that's the
- beauty mark that sets this thing into so many directions, you see what
- I can be on about, when's the preceding time you've built the
- establishment and lost directions to the rent catcher because there is
- no just none of a fucking address?! (ARLEEN shakes her head "no", but
- really doesn't understand what he's talking about) It's this that is
- the secret, and do you know how many lots attract, it's like putting
- up one of those...you've seen, spiral coin drops, for the GAY AIDS
- awareness, whatever, that circle down and down and nobody can stop the
- hands from going to it, that's what they need!
-
- (Pauses to see what her reaction is; she has none and it momentarily
- confuses him)
-
- ARLEEN. I want you to put this in the kind of single sentence thing
- that you use...on Delmonte. A full peel. Come on. I love seeing you so
- excited.
-
- (Picks up the letter and shakes it a bit, hoping his excitement's come
- from this. It agitates him, and he runs over swinging his arms)
-
- ARMONT. There is no subject of doctoring at the present point of
- summits. Uh, climax. Until there is a direct stoppage of what I've got
- the latch to, I mean Roi knows the land, we go halves for a
- contractor, he can put the touch in with that too, it's not like we're
- going to the dole with six months up our sleeve, and a percentage for
- something like...three...months 'til our way paves, ha, ha, it, uh,
- paves clear to settle it up completely, so...
-
- ARLEEN. I don't think run-ons count with me. You're scaring me.
-
- (ARMONT becomes excited. He almost hits her the way he's ranting
- around)
-
- ARMONT. I have the chance to get in on the ground floor of a parking
- garage. You chitter like a jungle aphis and we don't see the logic of
- countless thousands, we're meaning a hundred thousand over some kind
- of period. A pie, no pieces for us, and we'll take the plate with us.
-
- ARLEEN. (Pauses; worried) This is one of those gorilla things...
-
- ARMONT. What?
-
- ARLEEN. A joke of the bush, some kind of -
-
- ARMONT. What the fuck is wrong with a proposition, that puts you on
- the pave to glory, evolution, no, not that, uh - bene - uh! (It's
- making him mad that he can't think of the word, and he runs around the
- apt.) The revolution! The revolution of affording it all for the
- first-
-
- ARLEEN. (Very serious; causes the pause in the room) We have an
- envelope.
-
- ARMONT. (Turns away to think) I have seen the white. When held.
-
- ARLEEN. You have an envelope. - A kind of bulky substance that can
- only generate something you've wanted. I think we've both wanted.
-
- ARMONT. (Torn) - Of course, the affirmation is a given. But Arleen.
- (Serious himself) The projected income is staggering. "Remember A Day
- In Hollywood, A Night In The Ukraine"? Full to the rafters, a five
- spot per, and it was like a wedgie to get us in, and then sunbathed by
- a wondrous moon. Everyone dressed to see, hear, entertained, and they
- don't care how much...cars...(Stops to have his point taken)
-
- ARLEEN. (Pause; thinks seriously about this idea) Moonbathed, then.
-
- (ARMONT doesn't know what she's talking about, but after a moment
- figures it out and goes wild)
-
- ARMONT. You're missing the crux of a point set out! You're missing...
-
- (He starts swinging wildly about, and ARLEEN still tries to pretend to
- clean when all she's really doing is trying to ward off the blows. But
- at least one finds her and connects. Either an uppercut or direct to
- the eye. She's down but still ARMONT grunts like a wild beast in front
- of her to show he's angry. He doesn't strike her again, but lets her
- watch the anger. A strange feeling comes over ARLEEN in moments like
- this. This is why she hates herself. She's attracted to the violence
- her husband shuns on her, but hates feeling the pain. She can't help
- the attraction; and now stands up, face to face with the mad gorilla
- screaming before her. It gives her a rush she can't help, and before
- she knows it, she's in his arms, trying to kiss him as he flails her
- with his hands. She withstands the abuse because it drives her sexual
- urges on more, then after a moment, ARMONT too begins to calm more
- toward sexuality. He treats her rough as he paws over her, kisses,
- forces her into painful positions. She's almost starting to cry, but
- doesn't dare come away. He grabs her legs and she busies herself with
- undoing her panties as ARMONT sets her on the table so that they then
- commence "the nasty". From start to finish, the act is quick, but with
- such intense energy, it's obvious that it's a need far too powerful
- for them to ignore. They finish and the breathing becomes more
- regular. ARLEEN removes a weak hand to behind the table to find a
- banana which she then gives to ARMONT. He moves away to peel and eat
- it, but she feels used and unhappy because of the experience, and
- quickly takes her gorilla back to hug, faking the afterwards
- happiness. ARMONT eats his banana over her shoulder; he's calmed as
- much as a gorilla can)
-
- ARLEEN. (To stay away from the depressed subject of herself:) I think,
- and I mean, I just want to understand that this is a...um, given with
- you. Not like the door to door pompano, at four-way stops. Something
- you'll want to..?
-
- ARMONT. I am tired of being beneath the lion.
-
- ARLEEN. (Laughs at the absurdity of this) Where is this located? I
- mean, can you count on -
-
- ARMONT. Okay. Now, the first thing to be admitted, is that, it is in a
- sense in the middle of somewhere, nothing can be nowhere centered, it
- is just not possibly in a civilized society. (Beats his chest; she
- gets the joke) But. In the bus lines. On the trail of a government
- work station. We will be competitive, when rates discovered.
-
- ARLEEN. Unless they're giving free.
-
- (This makes ARMONT angry, and ARLEEN is sorry she's said something.
- She's afraid. ARMONT didn't think of this)
-
- ARMONT. But. A territory of wide expansion. Next to a State Park.
- Would have the tourist trade, of course any workers that comed to
- high-rise and "progress". So we've got several.
-
- ARLEEN. (Feeling cold; goes about her housework) You realize how long
- you've been waiting on that envelope.
-
- ARMONT. (Pause; thinks; becomes convinced) Yes! But do you know this.
- To sit in the shade of my box. My box? I read the complete Agatha
- Christie. Earl Stanley Gardner. Rex Stout. They pass and I ring up and
- charge out, and count off change. Like a professional. And think of
- the time.
-
- (Obviously this is a lifelong dream with him, so she's quick to put
- compassion into everything she says. Pause)
-
- ARLEEN. And it's more than being a doctor?
-
- ARMONT. (Screams) I am angry with myself for once being unsure. There
- is a cypress tree inside every one of us. At the top of that one for
- some is the desire for the professional capacity. Fixing, doing,
- becoming, I've realized that once for me. But I know now what I've
- been feeling, needing. You can't just be cutting it down. Lot of
- monkeys around.
-
- ARLEEN. I understand.
-
- ARMONT. What's the matter?
-
- ARLEEN. No, it's nothing to do...I mean, if you've changed...
-
- ARMONT. (Excited) No, but yes! That tree to me is reading mysteries.
- If it can be done in a box somewhere on free land. It's a dream to be
- made into cash flows. A system of us. And a husband around, forget the
- calls, the, yuck, defecation of clean up, I interned and...you know
- how you think something's made for you, just because you're invested.
- Spent. Done. But you don't become. Am I swinging on your vine?
-
- (ARLEEN is preoccupied with something else now. Ever since the word
- "defecation" she's been afraid of showing ARMONT the smelly trash can)
-
- What?
-
- (She smiles and pretends that she's just doing her usual cleaning as
- she moves to try to take the can away. But she slips on a banana peel
- and falls, then quickly and seriously tries to throw back all the top
- papers, etc. she put in there so ARMONT won't see. He notices this
- strange and serious attitude)
-
- Are you going to have to show me what's both - okay, what's in the
- trash can?
-
- ARLEEN. - Don't you remem -
-
- (Decides to stop there. ARMONT starts moving around more: the
- beginning of getting worked up)
-
- ARMONT. What is so -?
-
- (He moves closer and ARLEEN tenses, ready for something to happen, as
- lights fade. A pop song is heard through the scene change, and remains
- when lights come up on the pub. It's a dark place with tables and
- chairs around, a counter going off stage that hasn't enough room to
- show the bartender, a jukebox playing oldies through the scene,
- perhaps the flicker of the occasional dance light from a far off disco
- part of the place. KIEV, a nicely dressed woman in her thirties who
- loves clicking her nails over her teeth while thinking, which is what
- she now does, waits at one of the tables anxiously. She wards off the
- invisible come-ons of the men now and then. After a moment, ARLEEN,
- dressed in unrevealing long clothes, wearing sunglasses and a hairnet,
- enters timidly, but worriedly. KIEV peers through the darkness, then
- waves to her, but ARLEEN can't see the signal. When she gets close
- enough, KIEV trips her, then helps her up. They both try to speak
- above the music. ARLEEN's shocked about KIEV's appearance)
-
- ARLEEN. My God.
-
- KIEV. (About sunglasses) Take those off.
-
- ARLEEN. You're making me...
-
- KIEV. Oh, relax.
-
- ARLEEN. You're just...up.
-
- KIEV. Don't fly off. Huh, get away from here, but don't fly off.
- Remove yourself, why didn't you call?
-
- ARLEEN. (Not eager to go into this subject) Why is it here? I don't
- frequent these...we are two in here together, fighting off the men,
- haven't you been? (KIEV nods) For the sake of virtues, why...(Floats a
- hand around meaning "here")
-
- KIEV. You have not returned them.
-
- ARLEEN. What are you doing up and...I mean, God, what did he say, is
- it like a...oh my God, it's drinkable, isn't it?
-
- KIEV. Arleen, would you just -
-
- ARLEEN. Yes, and we're to become the best of sloggers joined. Whatever
- it is, I mean, don't do doubles, Christ, don't...the singles aren't
- worth the price, I still mean monetary concerns, Kiev..
-
- KIEV. Leave it alone and it'll grow by itself? I told you...that. To
- get your butt into a seat I can see, talk to.
-
- ARLEEN. (Realizes the deception) I'm not sorry?
-
- KIEV. You should be a big time. You dropped me...in two months, ago,
- haven't heard a ring, write, drawing God from your kind. What do you
- think, I don't concern myself with, if living or dead, I wouldn't want
- to take even money on you, but I could take it.
-
- ARLEEN. Hold it. You don't have breast cancer. (KIEV nods "no")
- Uh-huh, this is the way you go.
-
- KIEV. Worried, Arleen.
-
- ARLEEN. (Stands to go) This is your playing.
-
- KIEV. You're going to sit down, until I'm satisfied with your excuses.
-
- (ARLEEN pauses at this serious tone. She really does want someone to
- confide in, but she's scared. She looks around to make sure she's
- safe. KIEV doesn't understand)
-
- Drink? I think a couple of orange and rums. You know?
-
- (ARLEEN shakes her head "no", but KIEV has already signaled the waiter
- with a snap. KIEV tried to wait until a pause in the music so she'd be
- heard. There's an uncomfortable pause in the music while ARLEEN sits
- looking quite depressed. KIEV thinks it's up to her to supply the
- conversation)
-
- You know, I put in for Yardbirds and I think I'm gypped. (ARLEEN
- doesn't even look at her) "For Your Love"? When Clapton wasn't
- restless yet, I think. (Tries a laugh, but it's leads to nothing.
- Pause. She's quite concerned for ARLEEN) You know, I took off the full
- afternoon out of Lakewood for you, you've got to talk. Speak. Gush
- forth the words, as you say. You're alarming me in a kind of...huh.
- Just...ah...
-
- ARLEEN. You shouldn't've taken me out.
-
- KIEV. That's!
-
- ARLEEN. I don't like to...
-
- KIEV. You're worried about Armont? He's...
-
- ARLEEN. Yes? He could be here, how would I know? He's...
-
- KIEV. (Notices ARLEEN's sad) You married a black.
-
- ARLEEN. (Has to laugh at this) Generalize. And you don't even know...
-
- KIEV. (Getting angry) I'm almost at it, Arleen. Pretty close, all
- right, now you've been gone away for months, and at home, I've driven
- by. I don't come in, because of...your husband. I don't feel it's...I
- mean, talk to me. It's obvious...all right, no more words unless
- they've got a tag from you.
-
- ARLEEN. (Smiles) We've been friends too long.
-
- KIEV. (Also smiles) I don't know where I pick up talk like that.
-
- ARLEEN. (Pause; serious) I think it was that Lakewood should've been
- given up six months before...the trip. Was I ever happy with it
- anyway?
-
- KIEV. Regrets? Huh.
-
- ARLEEN. You don't call them...you've stuck with it and I admire you.
- Perhaps if I was to have a...another "space" of my own. I don't know
- if you call it cope, but. - The fact-finding mission...
-
- KIEV. Into Mali. Timbuktu. Up the Niger.
-
- ARLEEN. Twenty-five miles north of Gao. My mistake.
-
- KIEV. (Understands) I think you should meet someone. I've got
- a...there's a saint in mind, my angel. Crosses the t's while he
- speaks, that kind of good. And all for -
-
- ARLEEN. (Still in her own world; grows cold as speaks) Can a person
- help it, though? There isn't much you can do but dig down and
- excavate, it may be a copy someone's planted and it's not worth...but
- it's from you. And you've got to abide by it. Leaves you cleaned out
- like something, but isn't it better? I mean, better than leaving it
- alone, and not doing anything about.. it. - If the jungle wasn't my
- thing. Then. (Pause) I'm sure I woulda found something else.
-
- KIEV. (Pause; can't follow. Like a friend:) I blame Trandike. Of all
- the places.
-
- ARLEEN. (Laughs despite herself) Not Trandike.
-
- KIEV. Well, I mean. Because of a package? And we should all take
- advantage because the unions scream for it? What kind of a boat cruise
- are we talking?
-
- ARLEEN. (Though glad for the relief) No, no. Come on, Kiev.
-
- KIEV. (Grateful for the smile) Now. You going to take those sunglasses
- off. There is an eye in this room, I'm a pretty fair guess it's behind
- one of those windows and I don't mean to say lightly I don't care for
- the peeps. I like to see the ones that extract this clever talk from
- my...(Makes the motion ARLEEN should get 'em off)
-
- ARLEEN. (Scared to; rationalizes) It's too light in here. For me. You
- know how -
-
- KIEV. It's nighttime in this place. It's chalkboard without the
- writing in five feet of any direction, Mrs.
-
- ARLEEN. Like how you drive at night? And it's so bad when the, on the
- two lanes, the cars start and you have to shield. Well? There are
- cracks get in here. The dance floor?
-
- KIEV. Is that what that is?
-
- ARLEEN. Sensitive eyes.
-
- KIEV. (Lets it go for now) - How's the work coming?
-
- ARLEEN. Huh?
-
- KIEV. Armont. He get the appointment? I'm sure, since it's been years.
-
- ARLEEN. - Two months and he's making more money than I thought
- possible. Only took them a month or three weeks or what to erect the
- stupid thing, and it's coming in.
-
- KIEV. What?
-
- ARLEEN. The car park!
-
- KIEV. Sorry.
-
- ARLEEN. Sorry. Yeah. Just. This doctor thing. Thought it would...
-
- KIEV. His idea.
-
- ARLEEN. I don't remember.
-
- KIEV. Maybe? (ARLEEN shrugs) - He's wild.
-
- ARLEEN. (Frightened) What makes you say that?
-
- KIEV. (Unsure; it's so obvious) Well, he's...
-
- ARLEEN. All right, okay. He switches around. I was hoping. - It could
- do something, and the change would, a doctor. Now that's some sign of
- pride. A niche. But the lot's bringing it in, why should I be on
- about...?
-
- KIEV. And that's not my obvious meaning?
-
- (A pause between the ladies. ARLEEN has withdrawn into herself, while
- KIEV makes a short plan)
-
- Did we ever get those drinks? (ARLEEN's not listening) I'm going for
- them myself. I will get picked. Have the affair from the husband who
- is the invisible man and not feel guilty thanks to you. It is the walk
- that does the pick up, that's why Yardbirds is good, naturally funky.
- Blues swivels those legs and hand me the stick, Arleen, I rhythmically
- strike their hollow heads. Down. (ARLEEN turns at hearing her name.
- KIEV moves closer to her) What did you say you needed to -
-
- (She loses her balance as she leans over and falls on ARLEEN, knocking
- her sunglasses off. KIEV notices the swollen black-eye and ARLEEN
- darts to recover the glasses)
-
- Arleen! - Is he? Good L -
-
- (But she stops because ARLEEN has found the glasses and hurries away
- as she puts them on. Lights fade here and music from the jukebox comes
- up to cover the scene change. Lights come up on ARLEEN's apt. again
- and music fades out. ARLEEN enters, looks carefully around to make
- sure she's alone)
-
- ARLEEN. Armont? - Armont?
-
- (She's alone, and quickly goes into her usual practice of cleaning up
- the apt. She folds up her sunglasses, pockets them, and makes sure she
- doesn't look like she's been out of the place. She tries to whistle a
- pop song to pretend she's in happy spirits but her lips aren't
- working. She picks a large amount of banana peels out of a corner.
- ARMONT, in baseball cap that has a pocket protector full of pencils
- latched onto it, enters. It's been a long day and he's moving slow.
- He's also a little guilty about his previous behavior. He pauses.
- ARLEEN knows he's there, but waits until he starts the conversation)
-
- ARMONT. (Notices the silence) Said I was sorry. - Months ago...
-
- ARLEEN. How did it go?
-
- ARMONT. You heard me. - I try to contr... - You heard me.
-
- ARLEEN. (Nods. Stands and tries to be heroic) - It was your shit.
-
- (ARMONT doesn't answer, just gives a slight grunt and bounds away to
- hang his hat up. Takes a pencil from his hat and scoots around the
- room with it. He uses it to measure his temper; to control himself)
-
- ARMONT. It was - it was...my shit.
-
- ARLEEN. (Ready to turn off this subject) So did the fist fulls come
- in?
-
- ARMONT. They are there. They have been captured. Done away with, into
- the box that is locked, kept for cash, stocked and barrelled probably
- if it means anything. (Still trying to control himself. It's tough for
- a gorilla to count to ten) The receipts I believe gross this kind of
- thing at about, oh, come on, say, a thousand?
-
- ARLEEN. (Surprised) Another bottle over the nodes, s'il vous plait!
-
- ARMONT. It is a figure, and those are facts.
-
- ARLEEN. But for how -
-
- ARMONT. This is a weekend figure. A curvy, luscious, bit of boner that
- just sets you out. Don't it? (Getting himself horny)
-
- ARLEEN. (Senses this) Roi?
-
- ARMONT. What, doing his box? Reads almanacs, for Dike's sake.
-
- ARLEEN. (Correcting) Christ's sake. You do it for Chri -
-
- (Realizes she may not want to say this. ARMONT doesn't notice, he's
- still becoming aroused)
-
- Quite a park.
-
- ARMONT. Yeah, doesn't it bring it? In? (Comes up to her and fondles
- her) Curvy, luscious figure. Keeps you hungry.. hungry, for the
- non-holidays, and who wants a Sunday, God. Legal, free par...(She
- tries to pull away to get back to cleaning, but he's too strong)
-
- ARLEEN. Haven't done the right wing corner.
-
- ARMONT. Not yet?
-
- (He looks around and it's driving his rage on. He looks at her, not
- understanding. She's growing afraid. It's making her blood boil. He
- starts flapping his arms, and she can't help but throwing herself into
- them. He's enraged and she finds it so stimulating. She begins to kiss
- his nipples and hair, and it's hard to keep near him in this ranting
- state. Finally ARMONT breaks the pencil and begins to stab her with
- the broken half in his hand when the lights go out. Pop music, perhaps
- Prince's "Thunder", comes up and stays even when: lights up. It's the
- same apt., cleaner, three months later. ARMONT enters and grabs his
- hat as if late for work. There are no pencils in it now. ARLEEN limps
- in; it's not a bad limp but she's walking far from perfect. She
- carries a brown bag with a smile)
-
- ARMONT. It's no good.
-
- ARLEEN. No, they're yellow.
-
- ARMONT. No, the attraction. We're pulling them in, another building
- going soon, near, and it's, I told you about this, there's an eats, so
- there's no reason to worry about...I mean, how much are we making?
- It's going in right on top, and we're working out a discount with the
- head...whatever and get a...thing about discounts. If not free.
- Parking for food that kind of...put them away!
-
- (ARLEEN has developed a thick hide to this kind of random abuse, but
- it's still difficult to ignore the sheer volume of it sometimes. She's
- lost a lot of love, not to mention blood, for ARMONT. She's looking
- quite anemic and has more scars than the obvious limp if the audience
- could see clearly)
-
- ARLEEN. Time?
-
- ARMONT. Yeah?
-
- ARLEEN. Tonight? Time?
-
- ARMONT. In a - oh, uh. A meeting.
-
- ARLEEN. What meeting?
-
- ARMONT. This thing of the Park Officials. They've gathered already,
- and it's said to go until an...oh, what is...an eleven o'clock time
- frame I'm thinking.
-
- ARLEEN. And you've got to stay.
-
- ARMONT. Roi calls in sick out of the blue, grey out there, and you
- suppose I like pulling double? When are they going to extract their
- cars? How should I know? I've got a library set for this one. Fucking
- impossibly.
-
- ARLEEN. Ble.
-
- ARMONT. You think so.
-
- ARLEEN. No, - (Sighs) Doesn't matter.
-
- ARMONT. The hurry in, am I. Impossibly the way twelve hours gotta
- pass.
-
- ARLEEN. No bookmark for you. Straight through -
-
- ARMONT. (As he reaches for the doorknob) Maybe I'll phone for the
- paint.
-
- ARLEEN. Paint?
-
- ARMONT. Going too well. Good?
-
- ARLEEN. It's going well.
-
- ARMONT. And lines' got to be redone.
-
- ARLEEN. It's only five months.
-
- ARMONT. Four. But yeah.
-
- (There's a knock at the door which surprises both. ARMONT opens it not
- too quickly)
-
- COP. (Off) Ah, Jesus! What the hell is -
-
- (Enters. A young man in plain clothes. He looks at ARMONT with a
- little terror and unbelieving. He tries to speak to ARLEEN but can't
- get his focus off ARMONT)
-
- You Mrs. Ugatun? (ARLEEN nods but doesn't know what to make of any of
- this) Where is your husband, ma'am? (She points. He looks, then
- laughs) Uh-huh. Where might I locate him at this present time?
-
- ARLEEN. He is standing right there.
-
- COP. Am I going to have trouble?
-
- (ARMONT sees that this is going to go nowhere, and removes his wallet
- from one of the socks he's wearing on his big feet to hand to COP.
- During this:)
-
- He is wanted for a few questions, and I would deem it proper if you
- could help us out? We don't ask for much.
-
- (ARMONT takes the driver's license out of the wallet and hands it to
- COP. COP looks at it and laughs at first at the joke. A pause. He
- looks at ARMONT and realizes it's true. He can't believe it)
-
- They give them to anyone nowadays.
-
- ARLEEN. What's this about?
-
- COP. Land. You're wanted for questioning.
-
- ARMONT. What about?
-
- COP. (Jumps when he hears it speak) - Land, I just put in your ears.
- Are you - yeah, I could think of a couple good questions. You come
- along.
-
- ARMONT. (Growing angry) Am I under arrest?
-
- COP. (Places hand on gun; ready for it) I am prepared to do so.
-
- ARLEEN. (Concerned) Under what charge?
-
- COP. Conspiring to defraud the national government out of three point
- six acres of valuable government land. Land belonging to the United
- States of America.
-
- ARMONT. (Over "States of America") Yeah, I know where the states are.
- What kind of a crack is this? I don't know who...what is this in
- reference to? I don't know anything you're...how come I'm being picked
- on, where's Roi, he'll explain everything you need to...his was the
- land, and he got it in signed places, saw the deeds, it was a clear
- case, I mean...why are you...what are you trying...defraud, I don't...
-
- (During this ARMONT's become very agitated and early on COP's realized
- he must put the cuffs on this one before something happens. During
- this, ARMONT is dragged out; COP can do it because ARMONT is surprised
- more than anything and allows himself to be taken away by the puny
- official; ARLEEN is concerned)
-
- I don't know what you expect to learn by, I mean everything's on file,
- and things go by...legal, it's was all legal, like a kind of, I don't
- understand wha keend of, wha sined o' quoostons, you do knoo wooo...
-
- COP. (Over ARMONT) You have the right to remain...silent, an attorney,
- bananas if you want them. (Laughs) If you give up any of these rights,
- go hungry or something, don't blame me because they were all told, you
- could do damage to your...case. And how do you like the climate here?
- Oh, all in a court of law.
-
- (They moved out and ARLEEN is worried. She shuts the door slowly. She
- feels alone. After a pause, she picks up the phone and dials, but no
- one answers)
-
- ARLEEN. Come on, Kiev......you.....bitch......
-
- (She hangs up, exasperated. She doesn't know what to do, and just
- walks around the apt. a couple times. Finally she realizes, grabs her
- coat and scarf off the hat rack and leaves, closing the door behind
- her. Lights out. Lights up on a jail. There's no need for bars, just a
- lighting effect of bars on ARMONT who sits on a stool facing ARLEEN.
- They've lapsed into one of those pauses that come in long, emotional
- talks)
-
- ARMONT. If it wasn't for Darwin I'd be destroyed, now I get a trial.
-
- (ARLEEN tries to smile but can't. She's not as outraged as she should
- be)
-
- ARLEEN. (Absently) Darrin.
-
- (ARMONT grunts that he doesn't understand. She shakes her head and
- comes back to earth)
-
- You're right. Insanity like...itself. Nothing else. Me.
-
- ARMONT. What can I expect? What do I know? The thing is built. Fine.
- The thing is, it brings in and fine.
-
- ARLEEN. What are they going to do about Roi?
-
- ARMONT. Those posters like Jesse James? (She nods, then he nods.
- Hopeful:) You're coming to it.
-
- (She nods, though not sure of herself. He's happier and begins pacing
- and speaking, but lights fade from ARMONT. Lights stay up on ARLEEN
- for a moment, then go out completely. Lights up on a bar. Not the same
- one as before. ARLEEN sits sipping something. Also, she doesn't care
- if she's seen or not. She's doing some heavy thinking. There are
- shadows in the back. A pause. KIEV wanders on, laughing, having a good
- time, she's not looking for ARLEEN so is surprised when she finds her.
- She waves frantically to someone. BOBBY, a relaxed man of any age who
- has bad eye trouble from the contacts he wears, enters, unsure of
- himself since he didn't expect to meet anyone)
-
- KIEV. (Taps ARLEEN on the shoulder) Arleen?, you lush. You're sitting
- between these shades of light, I can't see, I can't tell you even
- exist, how are...months, again. (ARLEEN waves the talk away. KIEV sees
- that something's wrong) This is Bobby, but you can meet him later.
-
- (She pushes him offstage. She's concerned about ARLEEN, sits down and
- waits for ARLEEN to say something. Pause)
-
- You know, I lost fifty cents here. Not really. But I feel it's our
- tradition now. These places. Gabber-gabber.
-
-
-
- Ben Ohmart [2]
- --------------
-
-
-
- ARLEEN. (Looks at her without expression) - The accounts are frozen.
- (Goes back to her drink)
-
- KIEV. (Worried) Months, Arleen. You've got to explain to me...
-
- (Touches her back as she says this, but ARLEEN pulls away because it
- hurts. She withdraws into herself, unsure. There's a pause, as KIEV
- doesn't know what to say. Lights fade. A gavel raps. The following
- voices blend into one another like As Is)
-
- BAILIFF'S VOICE. Hear ye, hear ye, all rise, the honor -
-
- JUDGE'S VOICE. To be decided on this day being the twenty -
-
- PROSECUTION'S VOICE. Did in fact have a secret desire to make more
- money, sure we all do -
-
- DEFENSE'S VOICE. There has been no "obligatory scene change" linking
- this -
-
- PROSECUTION'S VOICE. I think the contracts, this is your signature is
- it -
-
- ARMONT'S VOICE. Milk snake uncoilings, always fund raisers, plays at
- Nat. Park, so when he pitched in this thing, sure I thought there -
-
- JUDGE'S VOICE. This court stands adjourned for Martin Luther King Jr's
- birthday weekend -
-
- DEFENSE'S VOICE. And you know of no one besides Roi, he was the
- perpetrator -
-
- PROSECUTION'S VOICE. Where is he hiding, Mr. Ugatun, there is nothing
- to prevent this court -
-
- (During the following, ARLEEN is seen in a dark area of the stage,
- wearing her coat, scarf and a little blue cap. The wind howls; perhaps
- snow. She's slightly sad and pensive)
-
- DEFENSE'S VOICE. You are only part owner of this enterprise, and yet
- it seems this court -
-
- ARMONT'S VOICE. If I knew -
-
- JUDGE'S VOICE. The witness will answer the question -
-
- WITNESS' VOICE. Well, I suppose...five for an hour -
-
- LADY WITNESS' VOICE. But we were really at a race to see City of
- Angels, found the tickets in a Boston subway garbage can -
-
- WITNESS 2'S VOICE. I never found them unreasonable in any way, form,
- buy one get one free hours -
-
- ARMONT'S VOICE. I suppose several thousands -
-
- PROSECUTION'S VOICE. Wasn't it closer to the tens of -
-
- JUDGE'S VOICE. The defendant will answer the question -
-
- PROSECUTION'S VOICE. When in the throws of the Park's Planet of the
- Apes musical, with real apes -
-
- ARMONT'S VOICE. (Becoming excited) Arleen!, I suppose, but I can't be
- expected -
-
- PROSECUTION'S VOICE. To clear close to a hundred thousand in a period
- of -
-
- (The voices fade away just as ARLEEN makes it off the stage. Lights up
- on KIEV in her house, a newspaper in one hand, the receiver to her ear
- in the other. She's excited. Obviously no one's answering. Lights come
- up on another bar; different from the last time. ARLEEN enters, no
- emotions can be seen. She unbundles and sits at a table. She snaps for
- service and a WAITRESS, a woman with tied back hair and exposed
- cleavage, enters. All she has to do is see who it is and she's off to
- fill the order. There's a huge shadow behind ARLEEN, checking her out.
- WAITRESS returns with two drinks and ARLEEN puts a couple dollars on
- the tray)
-
- WAITRESS. There's an easterly coming up. (ARLEEN shoots her an
- inquisitive glance) A three bourbon. Filters to the toes and a man
- loses his warmth off the top of his head. Donald Pleasance lives in
- the south of France. That rhymes. (Starts to go)
-
- ARLEEN. (To herself; in her own world) Favorable. Favorable. Shouldn't
- pick them up. What right did I have. Socks on that padding. Six
- months. Snorting. Too cold to be a favorable...
-
- WAITRESS. (Misunderstands) Strawberry scotchshake.
-
- (Exits. ARLEEN holds the glass in two hands as if it could warm her.
- She's not as upset as she is confused. Looks like she hasn't slept for
- a while. After a long pause of this analysis, FRANK, the original
- Frankenstein's monster in complete get-up, enters. He's the one who's
- been checking her out. He walks, talks, acts just like the Monster. He
- stretches his hand out for her and taps her on the shoulder. She turns
- startled, but not by his appearance)
-
- FRANK. Mind...sit down...
-
- (ARLEEN isn't prepared for this, though she could be somewhat
- attracted to this...thing)
-
- ARLEEN. I don't...
-
- (FRANK begins the arduous task of bending his knees to sit, but ARLEEN
- doesn't want this)
-
- I mean...I don't do...this isn't what I'm here for, I'm thirsty and
- it's cold.
-
- (FRANK grunts disappointed, but respects her wishes. ARLEEN turns at
- hearing this grunt and pauses. She could be entranced, she could be
- frightened or shy, but she's got to say something to this bachelor)
-
- Those joints. They need something too. Liquified jostle.
-
- (She tries to smile and he shakes his head. She thinks that was a
- stupid thing to say, but after a moment smiles. She traces the smile
- with a hand and is surprised to be wearing one. She loses it and
- thinks. She pauses, then shakes her head and downs the drink, and
- bundles up quickly to go. She starts out, but sees something and
- stops. She's not sure how to act, but just calmly sits back at her
- table and doesn't try to hide, but doesn't offer her face voluntarily.
- In a moment, KIEV enters, peering through the darkness. She's
- surprised when she finds ARLEEN, but adopts an attitude as if she's
- getting used to it. She sits and ARLEEN knows she's there, but still
- says nothing)
-
- KIEV. (Pause) There's a much better one on the East. A clan called The
- Brady Killers. Instead of smashing their instruments, because they may
- need them. They open up cole slaw containers and heave the ho. It's
- messy because they use like mega-ounces of mayonnaise. (Pause) Are you
- going to talk to me?
-
- ARLEEN. No, I'll phone the police.
-
- KIEV. (Pause; doesn't understand; concerned) I just got it today. I
- just got it and there it was, what did you think, I mean why didn't
- you let me know? About...? You're here? You keep coming to...these...
-
- ARLEEN. You introduced me. You're really one of the last, okay?
-
- KIEV. What?
-
- ARLEEN. I did not meet you. You came and I was about to go.
-
- KIEV. Will you talk to me? You can write it down if you'd rather.
-
- ARLEEN. (Coming out of her shell) You're trying to be funny? You're
- trying to make like it's some kind of...all fated thing, and just hold
- the hand and make it with a Rum Collins, a bit better like you've got
- -!
-
- KIEV. (Cutting in) Hold the cordless. Hold on, Mrs., I'm looking in
- these places because the other day...and you try to -
-
- ARLEEN. Look. Leave. All right?
-
- KIEV. What? Talk to me. How is Armont doing, is he...
-
- ARLEEN. (Viciously) You want to talk to me about him, after you set
- him up in the first place! Why do you have to keep after -
-
- KIEV. Whoa, whoa, I did what. What? What are you -
-
- ARLEEN. You know, don't you? You've always known, but some people just
- can't stay out of -
-
- KIEV. If I had a vague idea I think I could catch it, but it's running
- too fast for me.
-
- ARLEEN. You always did object, and couldn't wait until after Africa,
- but did anyone ask -
-
- (KIEV stops her because she's nodding in the affirmative; KIEV
- understands. This action has taken all the fight out of ARLEEN and now
- she tries to drain an already empty glass. To herself:)
-
- How can I go there?
-
- KIEV. (Forceful friendship) I say to a cause, it's none of my
- business. They do it that way, that's the way it is, and I can't
- change anything. My advice, my money, it can go. But when it's forced
- on something, I say forget it. - You be the way you like, fine. I
- could always tell, yeah. You don't build heaters together. You don't
- stand at those lines. Side by plastic molds by side and you think you
- don't understand what makes a girl sweat. So why do I change you? I
- don't, and you should know that an apology's coming. But. I mean. To
- be truthful. I've always seen - you don't quite know yourself. But I'm
- not giving out anything. You come to me, if you don't like something.
- And I can't help with your own skin, but I can give you a piece of my
- brains that don't particularly contender...you know, that kind. Of
- thing.
-
- ARLEEN. You didn't...
-
- KIEV. (Shakes head "no"; means herself:) There's a sane person
- somewhere. Oh! There she is.
-
- ARLEEN. But how...
-
- KIEV. You really expect to build on government land, you don't get
- caught?
-
- ARLEEN. But after so many...
-
- KIEV. Listen, Arleen. You see the sweaters, middle of roads? How long
- does an artist take to paint a dotted line? Gee, men. (ARLEEN
- understands and wants to laugh) Man's an idiot...(ARLEEN looks at her
- sternly) This Roi. With an "i". Garage on wild life estate...
-
- ARLEEN. You really didn't...?
-
- KIEV. (Lays a hand on ARLEEN's hand, takes it away quick, remembering
- last time) I don't do those. Don't do those kinds of things. - If it's
- the kind of thing you -
-
- ARLEEN. (Knows what she means) I know I probably left him there. Make
- him something he's not.
-
- KIEV. - But if he'd have taken the hospital gig...
-
- ARLEEN. Oh, sure. - And then? Does it make a difference. (Pause.
- Slight mood change)
-
- KIEV. I would've expected you to be...I forget the court number, but
- it's in the -
-
- ARLEEN. Twenty-three. (Pause) But how can I? Really?
-
- KIEV. You're having thoughts on -
-
- ARLEEN. (Almost pleading) We all get our kicks. We get them in some
- kind of way.
-
- KIEV. (Doesn't agree, but nods for ARLEEN'S benefit) Kicks. Yeah.
- (Pause. Another mood change. She tries to be bright) Know that Bobby?
- Prick, nine-incher. Launches off on these tirades of a bulk rate
- overseer. He's discussing to me about the dangers of giving the
- charity works too much power in poundage, and slams his hand down
- talking about a man who's trying to cancel those black boxes, you
- know, that the bulk rate you see it in. And opening doors that stay
- long enough to bunk me in the ass, and a complete asshole, told him
- about you, think you might be a couple. Got his phone number, well, I
- don't mean couple, but...you should see about...(A tender subject)
- Well. Just. - There are a lot of dangerous people out there.
- Moderation is the key. You be careful. But do something to be careful
- about.
-
- (ARLEEN's been listening attentively but she doesn't want to come out
- of herself too much. KIEV sees this, but also that she's
- half-listening; it's better than she expected. She smiles)
-
- Let me go refill us. Well, you, and I know the special that this thing
- causes, it's going to be one of my requested. I do these joints, not
- roaches. You know you never did drink enough at the retreats. You
- taste the Kiev Special and Fried Fruit Concoct an d you make up for
- it.
-
- (She walks off. ARLEEN's pensive again, but now more aware of where
- she is. After a moment, music cranks up. A WOMAN, tightly dressed,
- walks across the stage. She knows she's being followed and likes it.
- That is, until she turns around. It's FRANK, and she's repulsed, and
- so quickens her pace. He's not disappointed, but has that lady's man
- gait. He sees ARLEEN who's looking at him from the corner of her eye.
- He stares at her for a moment, being as civil as Frankenstein can be.
- She turns to face him. He makes a "greetings" gesture. She turns back
- around. He starts away. She looks back. He looks back and it catches
- her. She smiles, not sure why. She turns back to her table. He comes
- over)
-
- FRANK. (Always speaks slowly) Frank wonders what beautiful woman has
- to sit around for. You beautiful woman. (ARLEEN can't help but blush)
- No. Mean it. Kind of red of lips. That certain...French expression,
- don't know what.
-
- ARLEEN. (Somewhat attracted; but repressed) Thanks.
-
- FRANK. Let me buy you drink. Talk. Talk about selves, or other people,
- it doesn't get on Frank's bad side in any case.
-
- ARLEEN. (Isn't sure it's a good idea) I'm with someone. I think
- maybe...
-
- FRANK. (Gives the signal "it's cool") There is a time for everything.
- A season, I like the Byrds. I had to put some change into the jukebox
- because it is not...enlivened quite enough, don't you think?
-
- ARLEEN. (About music) It's nice.
-
- FRANK. Frank think you have nice too. Are nice too. You have that
- certain French saying something.
-
- ARLEEN. (Looks at her wedding ring; it's causing her distress) Yes.
-
- FRANK. (Takes a paper out of his huge pockets with some difficulty)
- Frank ask a favor. See.
-
- ARLEEN. I'm not sure if...
-
- FRANK. No, no. Just ask to. See. Phone number. Now, I can't write. But
- I...persuaded this...man to write out my own pay phone for you. Give
- me a call?
-
- (Hands her the paper. Grunts in an endearing way and shakes away after
- he sees something off. ARLEEN is taken by him, but isn't sure if it's
- a smart thing to do. After a moment, KIEV enters with a strange-shaped
- drink. She shows it to ARLEEN)
-
- KIEV. You know what this is all about? (ARLEEN turns back from looking
- after FRANK. She doesn't know) Said you ordered it, the girl. Girl,
- huh. She keeps ragging on the Cloisure brothers over there, and I know
- 'em, enough to...let's put it this way, there's enough breast work on
- her she could do a one-woman magazine. Forget the Newport Kings ads.
- Drinks coming, it's the banana, you know...mooshes in the grease..
-
- (Goes off laughing. This puts ARLEEN aware to her situation again.
- Obviously KIEV's forgotten it's a tactless remark. ARLEEN pauses and
- looks at the paper FRANK gave her. Lights fade fast and the VOICES
- start)
-
- PROSECUTOR'S VOICE. So you know how everything's run, go to the osprey
- nests on your lunch hour -
-
- DEFENSE'S VOICE. I fail to see how any -
-
- ARMONT'S VOICE. Arleen -
-
- PROSECUTOR'S VOICE. And of course how do we know that there was in
- fact, no one can positively rely on a -
-
- DEFENSE'S VOICE. Does counsel wish to sum up in a -
-
- PROSECUTOR'S VOICE. Who can say what your "Roi" may be made out to be,
- you have your choice between a gorilla and a man with an almanac
- fetish, which do you re -
-
- ARMONT'S VOICE. You keep twisting every -
-
- JUDGE'S VOICE. This is a high charge, with violating the United States
- National, you will -
-
- PROSECUTOR'S VOICE. So produce him!
-
- (Lights up on ARLEEN deciding something in her apt., by the phone. She
- does and picks up the receiver. At another part on the stage, only a
- hairy hand can be seen picking up another phone after a ring's heard)
-
- ARLEEN. (Shyly) Frank...?
-
- (There's a light sound, like a wild animal busy on fresh meat, from
- the shadows. ARLEEN doesn't know what to make of this, but she's
- intrigued. Slowly)
-
- I'll...hold...
-
- (A loud pounding comes in. It's FRANK's footsteps. He answers the
- phone)
-
- FRANK. This is Frank.
-
- (Lights fade on both of them and a romantic song starts, perhaps Derek
- and the Dominos' "Thorn Tree in the Garden" or something intensely
- romantic and "cool". This plays during the romantic montage that
- begins, hopefully ending as the song ends. Lights up on the bare
- stage. This is the street. ARLEEN is shy and not completely willing to
- do this. FRANK comes forward; he's intimidating and never looks too
- friendly. As he advances, ARLEEN gets a rush and it's obvious she's
- ready for rape or some kind of activity which stimulates her deeply.
- They exchange first date greetings. He puts a heavy hand on her
- shoulder to lead her away. They come to a small newsstand where a
- WOMAN sells newspapers, magazines, etc. She sees FRANK and can't move.
- He knocks her out of the way and grabs a paper. ARLEEN is breathing
- hard after this display of strength. He folds the paper to the movie
- section and throws it to her, pointing that she should look for a
- film. ARLEEN begins reading the movies, as FRANK shakes his head yes
- or no. This doesn't have to be heard. Lights dim here. It's another
- night. A slight addition to their clothes could accommodate this. It's
- a restaurant and they're having dinner. It's hard for FRANK to use
- cutlery. ARLEEN's loosened up but still not sure of herself. They
- talk. Finally FRANK is fed up with not eating with his hands and
- throws the food, etc. to the floor. Lights dim from here, ARLEEN is
- scared and hates this, because she's still excited. Lights come up on
- a doorstep where ARLEEN and FRANK are just coming in. A different
- night. She's smiling and turns to face him. He holds up three fingers
- and lunges his face toward hers. She backs off, but thinks)
-
- ARLEEN. Third date? I suppose...
-
- (He goes for her. The difference between FRANK and ARMONT is that
- FRANK is very gentle in his violence; it's from the moment of the
- violence rather than how ARMONT intimidates with wild actions. ARLEEN
- senses this and she's caught up in it. For her, it feels like romance.
- He presses his lips to hers, but pretty soon she wants to get away.
- She didn't expect such a long one, and he's squeezing her hard. Now
- she's fighting for air and trying to squirm away from the pressure put
- on her. She starts kicking to be let go, but FRANK doesn't know
- anything better to do than hang on. He's killing her. At last, he
- deems it enough and let's her go. The song has finished. They're both
- out of breath, but FRANK hides it better. ARLEEN is in heat and it's
- all she can do from jumping this once dead man's bones. Finally she
- nods and does a stupid movement that makes her trip or something and
- she tries to get back inside before her knees give way. She waves
- goodbye to him and FRANK starts away after giving his cool bye wave. A
- soft song begins, either a new song or something like Queen's "You
- Take My Breath Away"; perhaps Ray Charles' "Unchain My Heart". Lights
- fade here)
-
- JUDGE'S VOICE. And the court will now hear both arguments for -
-
- ARMONT. Arleen!
-
- (It's the next night. A movie theater. Two seats in the dark staring
- into the audience. FRANK concentrates on the film, it's hard for him.
- ARLEEN is really falling for FRANK and casts many glances at him. She
- grabs his hand. He takes it and squeezes it hard, very hard without
- knowing it. It's excruciating to ARLEEN, she's turning red. But it's
- also making her legs go crazy. She casts her shoes off and starts to
- run her legs up and down him; she wants him now. After a moment of
- this, FRANK gets a very bad scare from what he sees on the screen and
- breaks hand contact so he can flail them in the air. ARLEEN is
- surprised by this action, and though she appreciates the freedom from
- pain, she's still worked up. Lights fade here. Lights up on a picnic
- setting. ARLEEN and FRANK laying on a table cloth on the floor. A
- basket and food beside them. Perhaps birds singing. ARLEEN has her
- head laying on FRANK's leg. She's happy and in the middle of speaking.
- Song fades)
-
- ARLEEN. - but I didn't think there'd be any need of me, you know. So I
- had a week sick leave coming, I'm never sick if you can believe it.
- And......I just take care of the place. If you can miss making boxed
- heaters. Then. Well, I don't. I suppose. But Kiev knows gossip when
- she hears it. Names change, but I listen. I'm actually glad you've
- never... she goes in for the parliamentary male, wear a title for an
- eight hour part of the day and then move on. Unless she snares one.
- See if he can get three feet to the left -
-
- FRANK. What husband think of you leaving?
-
- ARLEEN. (Raising head up) What do you mean? I didn't think we had to
- move onto...I thought we were leaving Armont -
-
- FRANK. Arleen. Honey. I love you. You know that.
-
- (He bends down to kiss her. He can't make it, so lays her on the
- ground. She stares up at this huge creature, her breathing becomes
- quicker. He starts down slowly toward her. It's not until the last
- moment that he sticks his arms out. ARLEEN wants to scream. He kisses
- her, but choking her at the same time. She beats on him to stop, let
- her go, but he's not ready yet. At last he pulls away and she breaths
- heavily, putting hands to her throat. It's exhilarating and she throws
- herself into his arms. He loves it and he's more gentle now that she's
- making the move. She discovers what she's doing, because of his
- gentleness, and pulls away quickly)
-
- ARLEEN. No! No, this isn't -!
-
- FRANK. Arleen. Honey. What's the matter?
-
- ARLEEN. (Cutting him off) You know damn...why do you do this?
-
- FRANK. What? What am I doing?
-
- ARLEEN. Can't you just...can't you just kiss me? Like a...? Why do you
- need to...
-
- (Stops then shows what she means. She chokes the air. FRANK shrugs)
-
- FRANK. I don't know what you -
-
- ARLEEN. Would you come off this? Just come off it altogether?
-
- FRANK. Honey. I'm not sure what you need. Mean.
-
- ARLEEN. (Cutting in; hates his slowness) Is this romance, with slow?
- You.. come on...(Snaps her fingers. He tries, but she gives off a
- weary sigh) What - you're just like...(Thinks better of it)
-
- FRANK. What? Go on. Say it. Honey. Say it. Just like a jailbird
- husband. Just like -
-
- ARLEEN. He's not a -
-
- FRANK. You wouldn't know, when was the last time you went down to -
-
- ARLEEN. Listen to yourself, you're -!
-
- FRANK. I'm like what?
-
- ARLEEN. Why do you have to...(Mimes squeezing) You think I like it?
- Huh? (Softly, a little to herself) - You think I like it? (Pause. She
- turns away; doesn't want to face the truth)
-
- FRANK. Is it my breath?
-
- ARLEEN. (A laugh escapes her) You don't understand. You don't -
- (Pause) I never should've extracted him. It's what Kiev. Said when we
- were there even. And what was I doing? What was I really doing?
- (Pause. As if she's got to explain it to FRANK) We crossed the river.
- We'd just crossed it. I was at a low point. It's like having a
- religion chosen for you by the grandparents, but what do you know what
- you're like. You've got to seed, sow, stitch, buttonhole, I don't
- know, and tell yourself you know when you find it. - Thought it was
- the thing. Swinging from.. I forget the species now. They're not here.
- Hulking. Black. Muscular. Snorting. Breathing. Hard. What else could
- Lakewood afford for us. But I was thankful. I'd seen. - And I knew
- exactly what my religion was about to be. (Pause) The others were
- terrified. Somehow... Well, I got close. And the rippling muscles just
- went on like some kind of mountain chain. Got in there. It's amazing.
- Slipped away from camp that night. Got in there. They grunt, you think
- it sounds like words, and if you're patient. If you can be patient,
- teach, repeat, repeat the sounds. It's possible you're right. I knew
- it. The first time I heard his vocal box. Learned on Agatha Christie.
- I'm half British, so I speak weird, I know. And the first thing he
- said, actually said I thought to me was. Armont. - I thought he would
- work. Thought he could wear a suit and go to the club and drive a car
- and be a...I don't know. But God. How I felt. (Pause) Almost six
- months, now, we're married. Thought he would chip in, I mean like. You
- chip a part out of a tree. You can fill it up with something else.
- Something stronger. - He needs his trees. (Pause. Softly pleading) And
- you! You're soft, gentle! What do you need with things
- like...(Throttles herself about the neck. Catches her breath. Serious;
- to both of them) Do you think I need that? Do you think I...(Pause.
- Unsure) I don't...that isn't me, you know.
-
- (FRANK's been quiet up until now because he's not sure of the
- situation. He's eager to say something that will make it all better)
-
- FRANK. Honey. Arleen. I love you, Arleen.
-
- (She sighs as if he's not been listening. She starts eating something.
- FRANK's disappointed)
-
- ARLEEN. This is a picnic. Eat.
-
- FRANK. I... (Pause; "never mind") Let me put on some Journey. (Reaches
- for a tape player as the lights fade here)
-
- PROSECUTOR'S VOICE. So that I can't see any reason why this jury
- should not ask a -
-
- ARMONT'S VOICE. Arleen! Why can't you -
-
- DEFENSE'S VOICE. And I feel that that is sufficient cause for the only
- one -
-
- (A gavel raps to stop all this. Lights up on a courtroom. Only the
- JUDGE, sitting on high, can be seen in the light. She wears an English
- judge's wig and a black robe)
-
- JUDGE. Armont Benjamin Ugatun, you will rise. (A light on ARMONT) You
- have been found guilty by a jury of your...twelve people. On January
- the seventh, nineteen ninety-four. For the crime of attempting to
- defraud this government out of four acres of land and getting away
- with it. All monies as a result of such a scheme are now property of
- the United States government. All building materials on that said land
- are also declared so. The maximum penalty this crime can allow is a
- fourteen year imprisonment and a two hundred and fifty thousand dollar
- fine. As you're busted, so to speak, the fine is right out. But. I can
- still give you the maximum the law will allow, and sentence is passed.
- Fourteen years, eligible for parole in half an hour. Case dismissed.
-
- (Raps gavel. Lights out on JUDGE. ARMONT is very disturbed by this,
- but has learned to control his temper while in jail)
-
- Bailiff will please remand this man to the holding cell.
-
- (ARLEEN has appeared on stage during this and can't decide if she
- wants to do anything or not. Suddenly she shouts out)
-
- ARLEEN. No, wait!
-
- (BAILIFF enters and begins to escort ARMONT, who's now looking around
- for his wife, away)
-
- Please! Just a couple minutes. (ARMONT is excited. ARLEEN grabs
- BAILIFF's arm who stops) I'm his wife.
-
- (She doesn't believe it and gives a laugh. She presses her arm and
- BAILIFF raises her eyebrows. She shrugs and stands off to the side
- where she can see but not hear)
-
- ARMONT. (Pause. Stifled anger) You remembered where I live.
-
- ARLEEN. I've had thinking...
-
- ARMONT. You've had...? You should try having a month or five weeks
- to...
-
- ARLEEN. Two weeks. - I've had time to think. I've -
-
- ARMONT. (Becoming angry) Yeah, a lot of - why couldn't you...? Two
- weeks...(He comes closer and she backs away. He pauses) I'm sorry. I.
- I'm sorry. It's this. This...they've found me...but I'm coming back.
- Yeah. I've found out I can just walk on...- We'll start, well what is
- "scratch" anyway? I think we've still got that envelope, don't we?
- That envelope?
-
- ARLEEN. - You seem calmer.
-
- ARMONT. Yeah, well. You make a fuss, make a row they hit you with a
- club. It took me a while, but I realized that.
-
- ARLEEN. (Pause; uneasy) Look all right.
-
- ARMONT. Why didn't you -
-
- ARLEEN. I'm not sure.
-
- ARMONT. (Amazed) You're not...
-
- ARLEEN. No. I mean...
-
- (Makes the motion meaning "between you and me". This starts ARMONT
- pacing, as if working up to anger)
-
- Give me a reason. That's all I want, a reason. So we can.. not a
- parking garage. - Calmer. - But how can it be...not the same? I don't
- know if that's the word. The word..
-
- ARMONT. (Can't believe it) I know we can do this. A half an hour.
- What's a half an hour? Come on! I know how to - !
-
- (He goes for her. She backs away from fright, and ARMONT explodes from
- this lack of trust. BAILIFF is on her feet)
-
- All this for you! Everything for you! What's a banana in a bunch? They
- put those little blue stickers on them! You know how much I hate those
- little blue stickers?! And you now've got to question...When I say
- about the envelope...! Do you know what it's like to ooo to say it's
- my coat, no don't hang me up! I wash my fingernails, but I have to
- fight to take blood! Toilet paper? Who invented this stuff! Those
- little blue tags?! Aug iii oo!!
-
- (But the BAILIFF's taken ARMONT away. ARLEEN pauses. Silence. She
- feels the loneliness. Lights fade here very slowly. ARLEEN takes a few
- steps in ARMONT's direction in slow motion as lights go out. Beat.
- Then lights slowly come up on FRANK, in a nightclub, waiting. He's
- trying to sip a drink through a straw. Pause. ARLEEN enters,
- distraught, and just stands there looking at FRANK. Long pause.
- Finally he looks around, for the unseen force, and sees that ARLEEN's
- watching him. He grunts that he's happy to see her and beckons her to
- sit. She nods her head "no" but comes closer. He holds out a drink for
- her and she takes it just so she can set it down)
-
- ARLEEN. There wasn't anymore ripple in his eye. - The pupil. What
- could I see in it? - I don't think there was anything to see.
-
- FRANK. You very hampered. We have a nice time.
-
- ARLEEN. I don't know anymore. (Pause) I felt I owed him...The strength
- was no longer there. (Pause) Is that what I felt? If the ripple wasn't
- there...was...
-
- FRANK. (Doesn't understand) No. This not right. But I think Frank will
- change your mind. Ease this. Ease this.
-
- (Takes a big box, looking much like an engagement ring box, from under
- the table. He's eager for her to like and open the nice gift. She
- can't smile, and pauses. She opens it just for him. It's a Bride of
- Frankenstein's hairpiece. She's surprised and overcome for a moment,
- then regains her sadness)
-
- I want you to be mine. I have often hear you say about him. Frank
- knows how to treat you. He's in jail. He's nowhere. (She wants to
- interrupt after "in jail" but decides not to) So I don't see why there
- should not be something between us. There is something between us. I
- will get you drink.
-
- (He stalks off to the bar which is on stage. She looks at the wig and
- tries to keep from crying. She takes the box in her hand, and wants to
- take a step toward FRANK, but she's not sure. She doesn't know what to
- do. Long pause. A love song starts on the jukebox. It effects ARLEEN
- who slowly, painfully puts the wig back in the box and closes it. She
- begins to back out a different way; she's decided, and makes a few
- steps in the opposite direction of FRANK. Lights fade)
-
-
- THE END
-
-
-
- Ken Wilkinson
- -------------
- <red&ned@orca.bc.ca>
- 3 poems
-
-
- _above the alley_
-
- up through the cool shadow
- in through the open window
- comes the sound of a slow ringing bell
-
- the grey streets are narrow down below
- and the bell sings of shining brass
-
- swinging in a hand I imagine ancient
- and smooth and bent around the bell
- as a tree root through time accumulates itself
- around a stone outcrop
-
- reverberations shimmer and hang
- inside the room
- where fat bright yellow thick lipped vases
- hold up the beautiful faces of dying flowers
- and the woman in the bathroom
- puts on her morning makeup
-
- I know without imagining
- how her fingers dangle
- how her hands move
- slender and careful over objects
- how they pause before taking hold
- and after
- how they gently release the plastic cylinders
- of lipstick and mascara
- that click on the porcelain
- between the squeaks of the hinged mirror's
- opening and closing
-
-
- *--==--*
-
-
- _mist_
-
- from this place
-
- rain falls grey in the slanted light
-
- off the edge
-
- of the green mountain
-
-
- *--==--*
-
-
- _little demons_
-
- this is what the little demons do
-
- they look at you
- through the open window at night
- when you think that it's the trees
-
- but it's the demons
- nasty little demons
- waiting inside you
- inside the insides of your eyes
-
- you can see them in the trees
- because you are seeing them everywhere you look
-
- they get in your eyes
- they get inside your eyes
- they live and they lie
-
- then slide down
-
- through the eyes
- into the moist tender parts of the mind
- then into deeper things
-
- heart
-
- bones
-
- black insides of the bones
- marrow black without light
- lightless
- because it's black
-
-
-
- Illiterati
- ----------
- by Shaun Armour <SSArmour@aol.com>>
-
- **A Tale of Two Italos**
-
- Reading doesn't always go quite as planned. Nor do the best laid plans
- of literary columnists. Perhaps the biggest obstacle is one that
- harkens back to college or high school--the need (or should I say
- obligation) of reading under a deadline. Put me on a beach, with my
- butt enmeshed in the weave of a hammock and a Herradura margarita in
- one hand and I can fly through "The Brothers Karamazov" like, well,
- like one flies through a margarita on the beach. I'll read the back of
- my wife's skincare bottles in the bathroom, but tell me I have to read
- something, and it's like your parents telling you to go outside and
- play--sort of takes the fun out of it.
-
- Where am I going with this? Well I was going to review this massive
- book called "The Sleepwalkers", by Hermann Broch, a book Milan Kundera
- called "One of the greatest European novels." Aldous Huxley described
- it as "impeccable virtuosity". Thomas Mann, George Steiner and Hannah
- Arendt all raved of it's brilliance. Clearly all these people are much
- smarter than I am, and they loved this book that almost nobody else
- seems to have read. Believe me, I tried to get through it, I put on my
- fishing pants and started wading.
-
- After a month of reading and nearly three hundred pages, I slipped
- into a narcoleptic coma. When my wife revived me, my only words were,
- "Reading hard! Deadline!" Her prescient response was, "What are you
- thinking, trying to read a thousand page book by someone named
- Hermann?" She went to the bookshelf, grabbed two books, tossed them my
- way and said, "Now guys named Italo write readable books."
-
- So here I am, deadline days away, and I have read two wonderful,
- charming books by men named Italo. To be more specific, "Confessions
- of Zeno" by Italo Svevo, and "If on a Winter's Night a Traveler" by
- Italo Calvino.
-
- I read Calvino's, "A Traveler" first, and what a stroke of good
- fortune that was after "The Sleepwalkers". Calvino starts his novel
- off with very specific instructions for the reader. He wants you to
- get comfortable in preparation for the reading of his novel. Actually
- he spends the first six pages discussing directly with the reader,
- just how one might get the coziest on the couch, or the bed, or
- nestled in an oversized chair. He recommends good light, keeping your
- cigarettes handy and ways to avoid unwanted distraction. I genuinely
- appreciated this advice. It's always nice when a novelist takes the
- time to think about my needs. I don't think Hermann Broch had been
- thinking about my needs. But I'm not bitter.
-
- "If on a Winter's Night", you see, is all about reading. Don't
- misunderstand--though this is confusing--there is a story. Actually
- there are ten different stories. No, this isn't a collection of short
- stories either. It is a literary maze, constructed by perhaps the
- greatest Italian writer of the century. It is a novel created to defy
- all standard expectations that a hapless reader might presume to
- entertain. The novel you see, is about a reader, trying to relax and
- read an Italo Calvino book. The reader is never named directly, so I'm
- pretty sure Calvino was picturing me as he wrote the book. This
- egocentric assumption is often confirmed throughout the novel as
- Calvino speaks directly to the unnamed reader. It would be easy to
- call what Calvino does in this novel a literary trick, but it works so
- perfectly that it's more of a miracle.
-
- About a chapter into the novel, just as your finally getting involved
- in the story of a spy waiting to meet someone at a nearly deserted
- train station, the story leaves off unfinished. Calvino surfaces to
- guide you in your confusion. He helps you the reader realize that you
- have a defective copy of the book, and so the novel takes you back to
- the bookstore to get another copy. And that's where Calvino has you
- meet the female reader, also with a defective copy. You and this
- kindred literary spirit become detectives searching through novels,
- raiding college libraries, travelling around the world searching for
- the ends of stories. Oh, and you the reader get to fall in love as
- well, but I won't tell you if you get the girl.
-
- Calvino alternates between analyzing readerly impressions and guiding
- you through ten different, brilliantly conceived unfinished novels.
- Each of the ten novels has a different plot, style, setting and
- writer. He does this with such an economy of means that the novel
- concludes in under three hundred pages, which you might remember is
- where I drifted of in the "Sleepwalkers", an unrelated, unfinished
- novel. Up until the time of his death, Italo Calvino was considered
- the uncontested King of Italian Magical Realism. Clearly this is an
- author who wanted to make his audience feel importance and joy in
- reading. Many people in this century have claimed that since James
- Joyce the novel has basically been a dead form. Calvino defies
- stagnation, envisioning and deftly creating endless permutations and
- perspectives through which to see the written word. As complex and
- labyrinthian as the novel gets, Calvino never leaves you behind.
- Sometimes he holds your hand and sometimes he pushes you forward.
- Either way, it's a place you want to go to. Calvino, clearly was
- having a hell of a fun time writing this book, and he gives the reader
- full license to have fun right along with him. I have a friend who
- learned Italian just so he could read Italo Calvino in his original
- Italian. This is not a negative commentary on the translation but an
- supreme accolade to Calvino's virtuosity. Almost all of Calvino's
- novels were translated by William Weaver, who since Calvino's death
- has translated all of Umberto Eco's books.
-
- After reading, "If on a Winter's Night" I was hooked on "Italo" books,
- so I dove right into "Confessions of Zeno" by Italo Svevo. Svevo wrote
- a number of novels around the turn of the century. They largely went
- unnoticed until he met and was championed by James Joyce in 1912. Not
- a bad guy to have in your corner.
-
- "Confessions of Zeno", is the story of Zeno Cosini, a rich Italian
- living in Trieste near the turn of the century. Zeno is a
- guilt-ridden, hypochondriac with mild egocentric, delusions of
- grandeur. Zeno, in an attempt to quit smoking and deal with his
- obsession with phantom illnesses, consults a psychoanalyst who induces
- him to write his memoirs for therapeutic purposes. Zeno only follows
- his therapist's instructions as long it meets his own agenda.
- Ultimately, Zeno uses his memoirs to reconstruct, reshape and
- obfuscate his own mistakes and idiosyncrasies, thereby creating a more
- palatable mythology of his own life.
-
- Svevo manages to create a thoroughly likable and believable scoundrel,
- who stumbles through life, with no real goals or talents. Even as Zeno
- recounts his own version of his past, the reader can divine from the
- memoirs what may really have occurred. In this way two stories are
- told: Zeno's, and what the reader is able to read between the lines
- and construct based on what is **not** said. Svevo manages to ask
- serious questions, often in a hilarious way, about how we as
- individuals define ourselves, and our lives.
-
- As much as the reader might not want to, one can't help but sympathize
- with Zeno. While he is a deeply flawed individual, he is also
- extremely human. His vanity, foibles, and self-delusion are awkwardly
- engaging. When Zeno gets drunk at a party and starts to say the wrong
- thing, it is the reader who feels his embarrassment. It is easy to
- make great, noble characters engaging; Svevo manages instead to make
- us root for Zeno the bumbler. When Zeno asks three different sisters
- to marry him until one finally accepts, we see not only a pathetic
- character, but also an obstinate optimist who assumes sooner or later
- things will go his way. Reading, "Confessions of Zeno", is like
- watching an Italian opera buffa, where the audience yells out advice
- to the clownish characters. While the reader could easily make better
- choices than Zeno, it is simple to understand and forgive the bad ones
- he makes, and twice as much fun to watch him making them.
-
- Svevo, like his mentor Joyce, often uses a stream of consciousness
- style for the writing of the novel. The structure of the book however,
- remains clear, linear, and lucid. Zeno's life flows by in vignettes,
- each one marking a different milestone in our protagonist's existence.
- By doing this, Svevo manages the literary equivalent of time lapse
- photography, creating a rich layered character while encapsulating his
- life with a genuine sense of completion.
-
- Both Calvino and Svevo deftly create bold, original characters while
- eschewing any standard literary framework. Most importantly perhaps,
- is that both these books are fun. This does not imply that the novels
- lack depth--both books have important things to say--but each author
- in his own way has found the internal humour of his creations. "If on
- a Winter's Night a Traveler" lovingly ridicules the obsessive reader
- while "Confessions of Zeno" finds it's humour in how individuals
- manage to juggle their view of the world to make their own existence
- more bearable.
-
- All of this brings me back, guiltily, to my copy of Hermann Broch's,
- "The Sleepwalkers", which sits precariously on the edge of my desk.
- I'm sort of hoping I'll accidentally knock it off and lose it in that
- little space between my desk and the wall so it can no longer mock me
- for failing to finish it. The problem you see, is that the three
- hundred pages I read of the "Sleepwalkers" were pretty damn good. The
- writing was eloquent and often quite profound. From a technical
- perspective there were times I was in awe of Broch, but, and this is a
- BIG but, I never was able to make any emotional connection with the
- book. There was a cold, emotionless quality to the characters which
- I'm sure was intentional in keeping with the setting of the novel, but
- it thwarted my efforts to really let myself get involved in the story.
- Sooner or later I'll finish it, probably when I'm bedridden with the
- flu, or break a leg climbing up the ladder in the used bookstore.
- Until then, I shall retire it to the bookshelf in the section set
- aside for books I am not yet smart enough to read.
-
-
-
-
- About the Columnist
- *******************
- Shaun Armour lives in Toronto, Canada. He is currently in the process
- of writing a novel, and likes bowling shirts and has his own pool cue;
- alas, he cannot yet eat fifty eggs.
-
-
-
- J.W. Drake
- ----------
- <hansel@primenet.com>
- 1 poem
-
-
- _Drake Is Dead_
-
- Drake could see the future,
- Freeze-frame style,
- Grainy with probabilities,
- Chemically imbalanced.
-
- But not in time to know
- The present,
- Not in time or place
- To count.
-
- Drake lived past the present,
- In places too far
- To mention.
- It was hard to remember them, anyway.
-
- Then they were monster,
- Him the corpus,
- Her the heart.
- But two-headed.
-
- Drake tested life like
- Fitting candled eggs to normal curves,
- To simplify the understanding.
- He worked at knowing a present
- Finely resolved.
-
- There were times when
- We never knew if Drake
- Existed now or then.
- He talked too loud, at times.
-
- Sometimes they played at flowers,
- Moments of growing,
- Each tick a measure,
- Cell pulses of fruition.
-
- Look out, Drake!
- Keep down, make them work for it.
- Take all you can,
- Now.
-
- More flowers, deeply colored,
- More likely to blossom
- In too much heat,
- And die.
-
- Fierce blossoms are needed
- To do time.
- Drake sampled random measures,
- Contrapuntally.
-
- Let the truth in,
- Let the truth win.
- Drake made truth final
- In his work.
-
- Burned images, frozen contexts,
- Melt the plastic, fade to never,
- Take this one, too.
-
-
-
- News From The Front Lines
- -------------------------
- John Freemyer, insipid reporter
- <JAFreemyer@aol.com>
-
-
- _Poet Charged With Fondling_
-
- CONNERSVILLE (CN) -- A self-proclaimed 'anarchist poet' was charged
- Sunday with fondling a woman who felt hypnotized while listening to
- him read his poetry at Connersville Poet Corner. She was one of twenty
- women who say he molested them during local poetry readings
- throughout the course of the Bard Bardo Poetry Festival here in
- Connersville.
-
- Calvin Xavier, 43, who is recognized in the Connersville poetry
- community as a "pornographer and sometimes great poet," according to
- local fans, told police he needed to touch the women in order to
- "release their muses and creative powers."
-
- Twenty women have come forward so far to accuse Xavier. Sixteen of
- them are poets, themselves.
-
- The latest charge involves a non-poet who came to Xavier's reading to
- learn about poetic expression. She told police she listened to Xavier
- at a Poet Corner reading and fell into a deep hypnotic state when he
- dimmed the lights, wrapped his face in duct tape and slowly chanted,
- "Come to me now, eat my brain, eat my mind."
-
- He walked from the podium and touched her breasts and put his hands
- down her pants in an experience she said felt like 10 minutes but
- actually lasted five seconds.
-
- "She felt that she was not strong enough to fight him off and that she
- felt that the audience at the reading would believe she was 'uncool'
- and uncooperative if she struggled," police stated in a complaint.
-
- Xavier told police he touched the women as part of the poetic
- experience and that the women had consented to his touching them by
- coming to his readings. He said he had conducted more than 100 such
- Poet Touch readings over the past five years, police reports said.
-
- Xavier defended his methods, telling reporters, "I know I am right to
- touch women in the poetic sense but probably wrong in the prose
- sense."
-
- But Jade Scabit, a Connersville poet and teacher at Grace High School,
- said sexual touching is not a part of his poetic sensibility.
-
- "For these women, being mauled by a poet is like being assaulted by a
- priest," Scabit said. "It is being ambushed by someone with whom you
- put your trust. Poets are supposed to touch us with words, not with
- their grimy hands!"
-
- One woman said Xavier had fondled her to "invoke her muse," the
- complaint said.
-
- The Bard Bardo Poetry Festival continues through Saturday.
-
-
-
- About the Contributors
- ----------------------
- Stephen R. Ward is this issue's Featured Writer. Go to that section
- to read more about Stephen.
-
- Greg Gunn is a 38-year-old land surveyor currently residing in
- Burlington, North Carolina, and suffering from an early mid-life
- crisis. Tired of measuring angles and distances and elevations,
- flinging ink on mylar maps and blazing trails for bulldozers in a
- profession dominated by DOS and Windoze machines, he spends his spare
- time happily pushing pixels and poetry on his Macintosh, learning
- Photoshop and HTML, reading, or hiking in the southern Appalachians.
-
- Allison Eir Jenks originally hails from Chicago, and is currently in
- the M.F.A. program at the University Of Miami. She is the managing
- editor of the "Mangrove Literary Magazine". She has been published in
- over 100 magazines, anthologies and Internet publications, including
- "256 Shades Of Grey", "Paramour", "The Fauquier Poetry Journal",
- "Sivullinen", "Lexicon", "Paperplates", "Blue Sugar", "L'Ouverture",
- "InterBang", "The Trincoll Journal" and "The Internet Herald".
-
- Thomas Dunnam currently works in educational publishing and reads
- poetry in Tokyo bars (often against the wishes of a significant
- percentage of the patrons). He used to be a freelance writer until the
- magazine he was employed by waxed too controversial and got shut down.
- His prose poem "Halfhuman" appeared in POETRY INK 2.05.
-
- Rebecca E. Hays spends her days playing with words and pixels,
- creating eMail and icons, appreciating the whimsical diversity of
- friends-found-on-the-Net. Virtually homebound from birth (40 years
- ago) due to severe disability, she touches the world on a virtual
- plane--and smiles affectionately at its perversely adorable caprice.
-
- June Hayes-Light hails from the United Kingdom. She holds a Doctorate
- in Psychology and Special Needs and works with children who have
- emotional & behavioural problems. Her previous published work is
- mostly associated with her professional activities and research. As a
- wheelchair user, she is committed to disability rights and a majority
- of her writing reflects this interest and the difficulties that
- disabled people meet in society.
-
- Ben Ohmart has had 100s of stories and poems in zines and journals,
- and will have had 4 plays produced this year. Along with writing
- lyrics and screenplays, he likes listening to British comedy (radio
- shows especially) and collects an autograph or two.
-
- Ken Wilkinson hails from Vancouver, British Columbia. When he's not
- loafing in his leisure at an enjoyable pace, he can be found working
- at Rufus' Guitar Shop where he loafs with great finesse under hi
- manager's watchful eye.
-
- J.W. Drake (actually a pen name for John Hansel ) lives in Tucson,
- Arizona. He lives with his dog and writes poetry when he's not writing
- a detective novel, eating, sleeping, or working for somebody else
- doing ads, PR, or website design/maintenance.
-
- John Freemyer lives and writes and programs multimedia projects
- in Redding, California when he is not covering events for
- the Masterson, Illinois "Champion News".
-
- Calvin Xavier lives in his car--a 1975 Chevy Vega station wagon--and
- travels the Midwest hustling pool and writing poetry. He calls himself
- "the bastard son of Anne Sexton and Robert Frost." We call him a bad seed.
-
-
-
- Writing Rant
- ------------
- by Calvin Xavier
- <address unknown>
-
-
- **The Publishing Blues, or Just Write Dammit!**
-
- There has always been a debate over how writers/poets/word-hacks
- should justify their existence. Various publications (which shall go
- nameless due to possible threats of legal action) are devoted to
- helping writers get published, win awards and contests, and help break
- through writer's block by featuring "how-to" articles which tell you
- how to structure your novel/short story/screenplay/epic poem, etc. so
- that publishers will want to publish it.
-
- Well folks, guess what? These publications are a waste of your money.
- Nobody really cares about what you write; all they care about is how
- much money they can make off of you. So you have to ask yourself the
- question:
-
- "Are you willing to prostitute your words just to have your work read
- by somebody other than your lover or family or local 'poetry writing
- group*'?"
-
- I have never been willing to do this. And I seriously doubt you would,
- either.
-
- Let's face some facts here, folks. The majority of people living in
- America (where I live and write) can't read past an eighth grade
- level. Which means that the average Joe Weeniebrain wouldn't know "The
- Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner" from "Baywatch". It's a sad fact. And
- there is nothing you can do about it as we race toward the 21st
- century and an age of video-on-demand, Internet shopping malls, and
- idiot push-button jobs where reading a good book means sitting down
- with "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus" to figure out why you
- and your boyfriend are always fighting over which way the toilet paper
- should come off the roll, over or behind? I am afraid for the future
- of America, folks, and it's the liberals' fault for pushing equality
- and freedom before moral responsibility and standards.
-
- So what I write I write for my own agenda and I'll be damned if I'll
- have some literary agent tell me to bend over and grab my ankles
- 'cause Random House has a helluva deal for me that is going to make us
- rich rich rich. Because if I'm gonna get rich off of a book contract,
- then Random House or whomever is going to make even more money. Don't
- kid yourself; publishing is a business, and businesses are only in
- business to make a profit, and they will do it at your expense.
-
- And then there is the other side of the coin: the Academia. Now I
- don't know about you, but I spent the majority of my higher education
- back in the early seventies thinking I could change the world through
- my writing; I planned on teaching during the day and writing at night
- and having the best of both worlds. And then I woke up, smelled the
- java, and got on with my life. The halls of Academia today are filled
- with the potheads I knew back then. They don't care about changing the
- world anymore; they only care about protecting their tenure and making
- sure that everyone is treated equally under the conventions of
- Political Correctness, which is just a sham purported by these
- self-same professors living in their ivy league towers earning
- outrageous sums of money for teaching maybe one or two symposiums a
- year to justify their existence in an age of spiralling college costs.
- Political Correctness has nothing to do with politics and everything
- to do with the way educational institutions purport to educate the
- masses so they can keep receiving government funding.
-
- Well, guess what folks? I ain't buying it! I've been there and back
- and I know better than to fall prey to some uppity feminist in
- Birkenstockers ranting against the Romantic ideal in late 18th century
- poetry because female writers during that time got the shaft when it
- came to publishing poetry and even though Mary Shelley got famous it
- was because she was married to a well-known and well-regarded poet who
- was a founding member of the old boys club of Byron, Shelley and Keats
- (sounds like a law firm, doesn't?). Instead of teaching literary
- history as it happened, English Lit teachers today are rewriting
- history to jive with their own biased interpretations of how and why.
- Instead of taking a look at a work on its own, suddenly everything is
- interpretive from some sort imposed and supposedly superior 1990s
- viewpoint. Well, interpret THIS, baby, interpret THIS!
-
- The halls of Academia are filled with folks who can't function in the
- real world and wouldn't be able to make a living if it wasn't for
- teaching. And just to make things real real clear, I'm talking about
- the fucking English departments. If you are an English major, do
- yourself a favor and minor in something useful, otherwise your first
- job upon graduation will be delivering pizzas while quoting
- Shakespeare.
-
- So you if you want to earn money writing poetry and quality fiction,
- give up any hope of becoming the next Stephen King or Danielle Steel
- or Patricia Cornwall or whoever is the flavor-of-the-month writer this
- time around. Because these people pander to the "Baywatch" crowd; not
- that there is anything wrong with this, because it is a helluva way to
- make a helluva lot of money. But selling your soul to the almighty
- dollar ain't what it is all about.
-
- What it is all about is Writing. Writing Writing Writing Writing
- Writing Writing Writing Writing Writing Writing Writing. Writing.
-
- You have to feel it. You have to be it. And you have to do it.
-
- Now, most folks think I'm insane and a total malcontent when it comes
- to my opinion on this issue, and frankly I don't give a damn what
- other people think. I don't have to justify myself or my reasons, but
- I will make an exception in this case because I'm writing this column
- for your enlightenment.
-
- Yes, I am a purist when it comes to writing. Yes, I think what I write
- has to mean something and be something to me. And yes I would like to
- make money off of what I write. But I am not willing to give up
- control of my words in order to do this. Nope, I'd rather die poor and
- penniless than sell-out my words for a million bucks.
-
- You see, even if I had all the money, it's not about the money. I
- could be the richest son-of-a-bitch in the world and yet I would still
- feel lousy as hell if I couldn't write. Money can't buy the
- satisfaction of a finished poem. And that is the truth. Period. End of
- story.
-
- But this doesn't mean you have to abandon publishing altogether. This
- wonderful thing called the Internet is ripe for self-publishing. And
- there is always the independent press and the vanity press. Most folks
- aren't going to make a bundle in the poetry gig; I've published over
- sixteen books in the independent press over the past twenty-odd years
- and I never made over $30,000 on them. That's total, not a piece.
-
- You see, I don't write for money. I could, but I don't. I write to
- write. And you should, too. Bukowski knew this, Rollins knows it, and
- I'll be the first to admit it: Money is secondary; writing is
- paramount.
-
- And I end this column with a quote from one of this magazine's
- contributors. As Rick Lupert said in his excellent column in the
- previous issue of this zine, "I am a poet. Money isn't a part of my
- lifestyle."
-
-
- *more on this topic in my next column, dammit!
-
-
-
- Submission Information
- ----------------------
- POETRY INK is a free electronic literary journal written by and for
- writers and poets with access to the burgeoning global community known
- as the Internet. Rather than existing solely on the World Wide Web
- (that part of the Internet getting all the media attention nowadays),
- POETRY INK is designed to be downloaded to your computer and read
- off-line. We encourage you to share POETRY INK with your friends,
- family, classmates, and coworkers.
-
- Since we are a free publication, our contributors acknowledge that the
- only compensation due to them is the right to access a copy of the
- issue of POETRY INK in which their work appears. Because POETRY INK is
- found on America Online, CompuServe, and other various online services
- - as well as our own World Wide Web home page - we do not anticipate
- access difficulties. We regret that we cannot provide so-called "hard"
- paper copies; if you desire a "hard" copy, you will need to download
- POETRY INK and print a copy on your own printer.
-
- POETRY INK accepts submissions on a per-issue basis, with each issue
- published on a bi-monthly schedule for a total of six issues per
- calendar year. Generally, each issue is uploaded and eMailed to
- subscribers and contributors on the fifteenth of every other month
- (April 15, June 15, etc.). We do not send rejection letters; if your
- submission has been accepted for publication, you will be notified by
- eMail within one week of sending in your submission (or within two
- weeks if you sent your submission via snail mail).
-
-
-
- Our Submission Guidelines
- -------------------------
- * Your name, eMail address, physical (snail mail) address, and
- telephone number must appear on each submission. Your name and eMail
- address will appear on any published work; the remainder of this
- information is only for our files and will not be released. You may
- omit including your telephone number if you are uncomfortable
- disclosing this information; however, please realize this means that
- if we need to reach you immediately regarding your submission, your
- submission might be excluded from inclusion.
-
- * Electronic submissions should be submitted as either plain ASCII
- eMail files (where you type the submission in the body of your
- message), or as BinHex 4.0 (.hqx) file attachments. BinHexed files
- should be in plain text format (the kind produced by SimpleText on the
- Macintosh and WinWrite on Wintel machines). Regardless of submission
- format, please use the subject line "SUBMIT POETRY INK: your real
- name" where **your real name** is your actual name and not the name of
- your eMail account. For example, it should look like this:
-
- SUBMIT POETRY INK: John Q. Public
-
- * Please keep poems under 3 printed pages apiece (page size = 8" x 11"
- page with 1" margins printed with Times 12-point plain font). Please
- limit short stories to under 5000 words.
-
- * Please limit submissions to no more than 5 poems or 2 short stories
- per person per issue.
-
- * Simultaneous submissions are okay, but please contact us if your
- work is accepted by another publication so that we may remove the work
- in question from consideration. No previously published work may be
- submitted.
-
- * Please include a short biographical sketch (3 to 5 lines) with your
- submission; if your work is selected for publication, this bio will be
- included in our "About the Contributors" section.
-
- (These submission guidelines are an abbreviated version of our
- complete guidelines; all submissions are subject to the guidelines
- outlined therein. For a copy of our complete submission guidelines,
- send a request to our eMail address.)
-
-
-
- Spill The Ink!
- --------------
- Spill the Ink! Read POETRY INK, the electronic literary magazine! For
- details and complete submission guidelines, eMail us at
- <poetink@inlink.com> with the subject line "SG Request."
-
- We encourage you to share POETRY INK with your friends, family,
- classmates and coworkers.
- ..
-