Spittoon

Volume One

Issue One

Fall 2011

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Fiction EditorFiction EditorFiction EditorFiction Editor

Matt VanderMeulen

Poetry EditorPoetry EditorPoetry EditorPoetry Editor

Kristin Abraham

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Table of Contents

Wayne Lee Thomas Fiction……………………………The Contract…………………………......4

Ann Stewart Fiction………………………...The Itch ……………………………………5

Sara Pritchard Fiction………………………A Forever Home…………………………15

Nate Pritts Poetry………………………Sky Poem………………………………….27

Sky Poem………………………………..28

Sky Poem………………………………..29

Rich Murphy Poetry……………………….A Summer Reading…………………….30

Amanda McGuire Poetry………………………Glass: A Metaphor… ………..…..31

In Fits of—…………………………...….32

On the Phone with a Father… …..33

Kristi Maxwell Poetry……………………….from PLAN/K…………………………...34

R.J. Ingram Poetry……………………….Love Sonnet to I-25……………………..39

The Siege………………………………...40

Kyle Hemmings Fiction………………………Cat People #19…………………………..41

Cat People #17 …………………………43

Cat People #18………………………….45

William Haas Fiction………………………Grid City in Decline…………………….47

Arpine Konyalian Grenier Poetry……………………….Lost to Numbers……………………….48

Special Section: Interview with Arpine Konyalian Grenier…………………………..53

William J. Fedigan Fiction………………………A beautiful song, just beautiful ……..58

Dana Curtis Poetry………………………Lily Obscure Discusses… ………..61

Schrödinger’s Dream……………….....62

Schrödinger on the Ex-Planet ……..63

Ryan Collins Poetry……………………..Dear Wisconsin Falls—……………….....64

Molly Brodak Poetry………………………Long Exit……………………………..……65

Nervous Spell…………….…………......66

Kirsten Beachy Fiction………………………Groff’s Haplotype………………………..67

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The Contract

Wayne Lee Thomas

Man by the name of Peabody told Daddy he had a will to sell. He’d been knocking on doors

like typewriter salesfolk used to, had gamboge sweat lining his pits. Daddy weren’t one to

turn away a working man, even one retailing in shirttails. And when Daddy explained he

didn’t have a pot to will someone to piss in Peabody explained how he had a sure-fire

bargain, said he’d supply the inheritance if Daddy just bought the contract. Daddy inquired

about what kind of inheritance exactly but, as Momma later fussed, not the contract.

Peabody told him a farmhouse in the sticks and a horse named Honey, or a money-making

pig shack called Juicy Butts just outside town, or the deed to the very trailer we were living

in. Daddy figured he’d have the trailer paid off in a decade and, being young as he was, he

weren’t about to sign a fool’s deal. He was hung up about us kids pissing on his grave for

having to slop pigs. So he signed for the farm and horse in the sticks.

Momma got past Daddy indebting the family $15 a month for the rest of his natural life

when she realized the sheer joy his newfound legacy gave him. After a few years, she even

stopped pointing out how he wouldn’t be around to brush Honey once they retired to their

country estate. Everyone allowed him his fantasy of planting a small garden, enough peas

and okra to store for the winter, and ambling along on Honey’s back on land he rightfully

called his own. We liked Daddy big-eyed and happy. He got the trailer deed sure enough,

but he never owned much else to brag on.

We all thought it the end of Daddy when Peabody called about Honey. Said horses weren’t

made to live the 30 years that’d come and gone since the contract. Daddy, a grown-damn

man, cried a week holed up in his room over a horse he’d never seen. When he re-emerged,

he started in preaching to us kids how lucky we’d find ourselves with a rural manor, how

it’d be wise to start saving up for a horse. My sisters bickered over who’d get to move in that

farmhouse. I said I’d supply the pony.

Daddy passed in his eightieth year. Peabody drove out with the contract in hand looking

about half-dead himself. Asked who’d sign for the estate. My sisters signed, every last one.

Seeing as none had ever been married, they said they wouldn’t mind living communally.

Fortuitous. Someone else’s daddy passed a month later, and they were joined by a son. And

another son a few weeks following, then a daughter. Turns out lots of daddies had signed

the contract. But after periods of adjustment, no one seemed to mind. It was a big

farmhouse set on a few acres of land, roomy enough for sons and daughters to hand feed

oats to a half dozen ponies named Honey.

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The Itch

Ann Stewart

Becca Lee was itchy. She sat with her mother and father and younger sister Martha

at the center-most table of the Fly Inn, an old diner next to a small airport thirty

minutes from their home in Brighton, Michigan. Like she did so often late at night,

waiting for car horns and her neighbors’ raucous lovemaking to lull her to sleep,

Becca ran through the events of the day in her mind, imagining what could have

been the outcome had she made a different choice. Today, on an unseasonably warm

Sunday, she might be in Central Park, sprawled out in the middle of a patch of sun,

reading. She could have spent the morning at her favorite bakery on the Upper East

Side on Broadway – good, crusty scones dipped in bitter black coffee. She might

have chosen to get some work done in the dark room on her new black-and-white

series. But instead, she had picked this weekend to visit home, agreeing to join her

parents on a trip to Ann Arbor to have brunch with Martha, who had opted to spend

the summer of her freshman year at college there in town. Becca now felt like a

worm on a hot sidewalk, and she wondered why she had thought it could be any

different.

Cocooned in the warmth of the old diner, the Lees all took turns rubbing their eyes,

tired from what had turned into a long unlucky journey. Her mother and father had

bickered constantly after leaving the University of Michigan campus, one blaming

the other for what they had seen when they had arrived at Martha’s new home, and

arguing about how to deal with her. Becca’s intention in tagging along had been,

from the start, to defend her sister. They were wrong to disapprove of her not

coming home. Martha needed to extricate herself, and Becca had been proud of her

for trying. But now she felt angry at her, too. Martha had known they were coming,

but she hadn’t even come to the door. Instead, she had allowed her roommate, a

braless beauty with a tongue ring and lengthy dreadlocks, to lead them through the

tiny flat, where the two of them were sharing a bedroom. If her plan had not been to

stand up to them and tell them the truth, then she should have cleaned up and told

this person to keep a low profile.

Becca scratched, barely conscious of her nails tearing her skin. The vinyl-covered

chairs of the diner, squeaking beneath them, made the only sound that could be

heard aside from an occasional clinking of metal from the kitchen. Like many

Michigan businesses, the Fly Inn was struggling to survive, and this afternoon the

Lees were the only customers. The owner and his wife alone staffed it. At one time,

the place had been a local family favorite. The walls were still covered with

photographs of long-time customers, some yellowed with age. One taken over ten

years ago was of the Lees, all beaming, except for Becca, aged twelve in the picture,

who stared off to the side, her mother’s hand resting hot on her shoulder. It was

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taken the day of Becca’s confirmation. She remembered the dress – stiff and

scratchy – and the stares of the hefty matrons at her father’s church.

Becca’s mother dug frantically in her purse for a hand mirror and pouted. Her

father took loud sips of water and slammed the glass back on the white linen

tablecloth.

“I’ll drive home, okay,” Becca said. “Just settle down.”

“I’m not the one who needs settling down,” her mother said. Her father snorted.

Becca shook her head. In fact, it was her father who had been the calm one. Becca

had scalded for Martha, awaiting his rage, but this time it was her mother who had

fallen to pieces. Becca remembered being surprised in her dorm room by her parents

years ago. All had gone well that day, until her father had seen condom wrappers in

the wastebasket. They had spent the entire brunch at Gandydancer listening to his

fiery sermon her mother enrapt and Becca solid, unbending as concrete. In the end,

Becca had told him that if hell was what she would get for abandoning those old

ways, she would take it. They had never come to visit again.

When she had graduated, Becca left for New York. No job. No family. Hell

whispering from around every turn. And yet there she was still. Poor, but happy,

she felt. But Martha hadn’t learned from her. It was remarkable, back in Michigan,

back with the family, that so little was different. It seemed that Martha had chosen

silence, as if it were the only protest of which she was capable. But Becca felt that

her sister was choosing to be the final copy spit from a Xerox machine that was

nearly out of ink. Faded and unreadable.

Her father snapped at Martha, demanding she take her hat off at the table. The

girl silently complied, head hung low, pulling off the Tigers baseball cap and

stuffing it in her lap. When he looked away, Becca placed a hand on her sister’s

lower back. Her t-shirt was still soaked with sweat from helping him with the car.

The family minivan had suffered a blowout along a county road south of town, and

they had stopped in front of an apparently abandoned, dilapidated greenhouse to

change the tire. Becca had attempted to lead her mother away with her to check the

place out, so that Martha and her father could have a moment to talk. But as they

worked on the spare, her mother had chosen to stand over them and gripe – at

Martha for her lifestyle, and at her father for not making it go away. So Becca had

taken her camera and entered the old structure alone.

The roof of the greenhouse had broken out, and the glass walls had been shadowed

over with filth. Inside, the plants had taken over, crawling over the walls and

carpeting the floor with a dark, muddy green. It had been easy to spy a flower, right Stewart, The Itch

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in the middle of the rotting jungle, which looked like the fetuses Becca had once

seen in pictures held up by protesters outside a Planned Parenthood. The same

lopsided shape and vomitous, shiny, purple-crimson color. Becca had stepped

toward it, her feet crunching on the leaves and stalks beneath her. After taking

several photographs, she had touched it, drawing a smear of pollen away on the tips

of her fingers. It had been soft and cool – the exact sensation, Becca was realizing as

she watched her mother glowering across their table at the diner, of her sister’s

damp cotton shirt.

The owner’s wife was a plump woman, nearing sixty, and wearing makeup that

gave her face a copper sheen, making Becca think of the greenhouse glass that let

only a few threads of light in. The woman approached the table, carrying a tray of

drinks aloft, the flesh beneath her arms jiggling.

“Here you go folks,” she said, too kindly. “Four lemonades and a coffee with sugar

for the lady.” She held a tray in perfect balance as she plunked down each glass,

and ended by gingerly placing the hot cup before Becca.

“Can I get y’all more water?” she asked.

Becca’s father said, “I think we’re fine for now, Joanna, thanks.”

“You bet, Reverend, and remember you’ve got free refills now.”

The woman turned to go back to the kitchen, where her husband was working the

grill. The sound of spatula on steel echoed against Becca’s eardrum.

“Soups up, Jo-Jo,” the owner hollered.

Joanna was the woman’s name, Becca recalled. Her daughter had gone to Brighton

High. She had been very popular, but Becca could not remember what she had

looked like. Instead, she kept seeing her own sour face in the confirmation photo,

lower lip protruding just a little.

Joanna was stepping up to the counter when the phone rang—the jangling tone of

old rotary-dialers—and stopped her in her tracks.

“Hold on baby doll, and let me get this phone,” she said.

Martha nervously twirled her hair around one finger, having developed a habit of it

that was slowly resulting in a bald spot near her temple. She pushed back her chair

and rose, smoothing her sweatshirt over her hips, newly widened from her months

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at the dorms. Becca had tried not to notice, and had held her tongue even when she

had felt the folds of flesh tumbling out of her sister’s waistband.

“Where are you going?” their mother snapped, tugging at her pearl necklace.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” Martha said.

“You can’t say excuse me?”

“Excuse me, please,” Martha said and jiggled off to the restroom.

“Why can’t someone in this family act like a lady?”

Becca rolled her eyes and noticed they felt sticky. They seemed bent on closing.

“Wait Marth,” she said. “I’ll go with.”

But when she got to the restroom door, Martha had locked her out.

“Marth, come on. Let me in. Talk to me.”

Through the crack in the door, Martha said, so softly Becca could hardly hear,

“There’s nothing to say.”

“There is something to say and you know it.”

Martha just sniffled.

“Why can’t you say it? To me. Just to me,” Becca said.

After a moment of the same silence, Becca angrily banged her palm against the

door. Keep it then, she thought. Take it to the grave. She returned to the table.

Joanna had arrived with Becca’s mushroom soup and her mother’s salad with ranch

dressing on the side. When Martha returned to the table, Becca made a point to

meet her eyes. Her sister shook her head so slightly it was as though she had only

shivered.

“Can I get anything else for y’all?” Joanna asked, holding the empty tray against

her thigh.

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Stewart, The Itch

“No thank you,” Becca’s father replied. Joanna winked at Martha before returning

to the kitchen. The girl smiled and reddened, looking down at her lap. Becca

grinned.

“Hey Marth,” she said, unable to stop herself. “I think she wants you.”

“Rebecca! Please! Jeepers,” her mother gasped.

Becca noted the contrived way her mother had of avoiding the Lord’s name in vain,

even in a moment of profound horror, and couldn’t help but laugh. The sound of her

own giggling was like a bell in her ears. Suddenly, she felt as if something was

crawling on her hand. Glancing down, she noticed a swathe of red bumps peppered

between her fingers all the way to the tips, and she let out a squeal.

“What’s the matter now?” her father asked.

“That plant I touched in the greenhouse gave me a rash,” Becca said. “Oh God, it

stings.”

“Don’t blaspheme. It’s nothing.”

“How do you know?” Becca said.

“Yeah, how do you know?” her mother added. “She might need a doctor.”

“Well there’s nothing we can do about it now,” her father said. “We can call Dr.

Kisky when we get home.”

Her mother raised her voice. “The way you’re driving that could be ages.”

“You don’t like my driving? You drive!”

“I drove more than half the way already.” Becca noticed foamy flecks of spit on her

mother’s lower lip. She stared angrily into her untouched soup. It looked almost

clear, but stippled with clouds, like a dish of soapy bath water. She blinked hard. “I

said I would drive…settle down…” The words came like coughs.

“I’m not the one who needs settling down,” her mother said. Her father snorted,

nose whistling. Joanna came to the table with a tray of drinks. Déjà vu, Becca

thought.

“I said take that stupid hat off at the table,” her father was saying. Her head hung,

Martha took off the cap and stuffed it in her lap. Becca blinked again, her eyelashes

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clinging to each other. She felt her hand drift again to her sister’s back, despite the

fact that it was the girl’s own fault for putting the hat back on.

“Here you go folks,” Joanna was saying. “Four lemonades and a coffee with sugar

for the lady.” She plunked down four lemonades and carefully placed coffee before

Becca. The old cup was gone. So was the soup.

“Can I get y’all more water?” Joanna asked. Becca stared astonished.

Her father said, “I think we’re fine. For now. Joanna. Thanks.”

“You bet Reverend, and remember you’ve got free refills now.”

The owner hollered from the kitchen, “Soups up, Jo-Jo!” The phone rang.

“Hold on baby doll, and let me get this phone.”

“What the hell…” Becca said under her breath. She looked at the faces of her

family, who seemed to have noticed nothing. Martha rose.

“Where are you going?” their mother snapped.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” she said.

“You can’t say excuse me?”

“Excuse me, please,” Martha said, and went.

Becca stared incredulously at her mother, as she stood to follow Martha again.

“What are you doing? She just went. You just had this conversation, remember?”

“Why can’t someone in this family act like a lady?”

Through the restroom door, Becca asked Martha, “How many times can you go to

the bathroom? You’re not bulimic are you?” Becca heard her mother’s critical words

fly out of her own mouth, and wanted to smack herself in the head, possibly with

her cell phone, or against the wooden “W” that was tacked to the door. But it hadn’t

mattered. Martha did not respond. Becca’s words had fallen on the floor like dying

leaves. Again she tried to get Martha to let her in so that they could talk.

“Say it. Say it to me…” She considered kicking the door in. She could do it. It was

only plywood. But she stumbled backwards to the table instead.

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Joanna arrived with another bowl of soup and another salad. When Martha sat at

the table, Becca looked at her sister and saw the same shiver shake her body.

“Can I get anything else for y’all?” Joanna was asking.

“No thank you,” Becca’s father repeated, and Joanna winked at Martha before going

back to the kitchen. She smiled and reddened, looking down at the floor.

Becca shook her head violently. She again felt a powerful urge to make a lewd

comment that would shock her mother and expose her sister. Her soup was again

before her, looking now like a bubbling dish of cortisone cream. Under her busy

fingernails, she felt a sudden wetness on her hand, like pus. Slowly, a violent

prickle rising up her spine, Becca looked down. What looked to be a shiny, blood-

colored plant shoot had burst from one of the pustules on her knuckles, and held her

fingers in a strangling grip. Screaming from deep in her throat, she slapped at it,

visions of the poison ivy that had spread to her vulva when she was fourteen

assaulting her memory. Her father had told her at the time that it was God’s

punishment, because there would have been only one way the rash on her fingers

would have ended up there.

“What’s the matter now?” her father asked.

“My hand,” she stammered. “I’m pretty sure that goddamn plant I touched is

making me hallucinate.” But when she looked again, there were only little red

bumps, like a patch of eczema, where the winding shoots had been.

“Don’t blaspheme. It’s nothing.”

“No see,” she said. “I’m hearing things. I feel like you said that already.”

“Yeah, how do you know?” her mother added. “She might need a doctor.”

“Well there’s nothing we can do about it now,” her father said. “We can call Dr.

Kisky when we get home.” His face was relaxed, but a coating of sweat shone upon

his forehead and neck. Becca thought she smelled insect spray.

“The way you’re driving that could be ages,” her mother said. Her voice was loud

and grating. She pulled at her pearls

“You don’t like my driving? You drive!”

“I drove more than half the way already.”

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“Stop,” Becca said. “Please, stop.”

Becca had taken acid in college on winter. When a string of Christmas lights had

started dancing in the windows, she had been able to will herself out of seeing it

happen, as one would wake oneself from a dream. Looking down to see her soup

was gone again, Becca began to suck in ragged, jolting breaths.

“It’s a hallucination. Don’t panic,” she repeated to herself quietly.

“I’m not the one who needs settling down,” her mother screeched. Her father

snorted and scowled, curling his lips and baring slick white canines.

Becca closed her eyes. The sound of sizzling grease and a banging spatula in the

kitchen continued in a pattern, like the jackhammers that woke her in the morning

in the city – so unlike the sleepy suburb in which she had grown up, where she had

slept until noon, dreaming of packing a suitcase that was never filled, until her

mother had kissed and shaken her awake.

“I said, take that stupid hat off at the table,” Becca’s father said. Again Martha

obeyed. Becca opened her eyes and followed her sister’s gaze to the floor, on which

her eyes seemed transfixed. Where her sister’s sneakers should have been, a

smooth woody bundle of purplish plant roots spread out, from her pant legs over the

floor, heaving and stretching and wrapping around the table leg. Her eyes filling

with tears, Becca reached down to touch them, but her hand rested on Martha’s

back instead.

“Marth? Oh Marth…” she whimpered. Her family didn’t seem to see what was

happening. They continued exchanging cold glares and saying nothing at all.

Joanna came to the table with a tray of drinks. Again she served them and asked if

they wanted more water. Becca’s father politely refused through a leering, open-

mouthed grin. She reminded them they had free refills and again turned back to the

kitchen. Again the owner yelled to her, and the phone rang. When Joanna picked it

up, she began bashing the top of the receiver into her face. Her head shattered like

glass and fell in pieces onto the floor. Becca gasped and jumped up, knocking her

chair over.

“Where are you going?” her mother snapped.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” Martha said.

“You can’t say excuse me?” Their mother’s cheeks heaved and bubbled like boiling

water.

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“Excuse me, please!” Martha screamed. Pulling out handfuls of hair, she went to the

restroom. Becca followed, nauseous. She glanced at the owner, who stood

motionless behind the counter, frozen, with a spatula in his hand like a sword.

Becca banged on the restroom door. “Marth, open up. It’s an emergency. Come on

let me in, please!”

“There’s nothing to say.”

Becca moaned, feeling suddenly weak. She swallowed a sugary glob of saliva and

made her way faintly back to the table. Joanna had again served the soup and

salad. Becca’s bowl was filled with viscous white fluid that overflowed onto the

tablecloth. She looked at her hand and saw that the skin over each knuckle joint

had burst open, revealing a tangle of tendon, bone, and woody vines that were

reaching hungrily toward her face as though it were the sun.

“Look! At! My! Hand!” she screamed.

Her parents stared blankly forward. Their lips were moving, but rather than

words, a thick white ooze glurted forth, falling soundlessly into their laps. Martha

was seated again, her head still hung, her shoulders slumped. Her eyes had gone

white. Quivering dark red stalks of braided sinuous strands grew out of her mouth

and nostrils, winding counterclockwise and attaching themselves to the table. Becca

screamed again and again, tearing with her fingernails at her throat. She could feel

the hideous sprigs winding around her neck like strangling hands.

She did not remember leaving the greenhouse. She had no recollection of how they

had gotten to the Fly Inn. Of course, this was because the Fly Inn was no longer in

business. Now Becca remembered. Their daughter had gotten pregnant and had

tried to douche with liquid drain opener, and the owners had sold the place and left

town soon after she died. The well-worn tiles on the floor of the Fly Inn crumbled

now and became a sea of leaves. The tables and booths shrunk and were nothing

but shards of glass. The faces in the photos were gone, and the frames disappeared,

replaced with a layer of moss and mud that let in just a few slivers of sunlight.

Becca and her family stood face to face, but suspended, like flies trapped in a web.

Their arms were outstretched, frozen just short of clutching one another. Only

Becca had managed to reach her sister’s body. Her hand held fast to Martha’s lower

back with some sticky nectar that smelled of bleach.

Massive vines had pierced them all with networks of roots like veins. Their orifices

ran with orange foam, as the plant strangled the systems of their bodies and held

them in their grisly positions. Winding branches ran under their bones, connecting

them like beads in a necklace. Martha’s neck had been replaced by an entanglement

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of roots that ran under her scalp and up along the wall. Thirsty shoots had made

their way up her mother’s nose. Her father’s jaw had come unconnected from his

face. It hung by the incisors from a thin green branch below him, like the blossoms

on the Dutchman’s Breeches that her mother grew at home.

Suddenly a ream of light rolled over them, and a man approached Becca from

within it, wearing what looked like a spacesuit. She tried to run to him, but her legs

would not move. Rhubarb-colored shoots were snaking up her jeans, up along her

spine and around her neck. A cloud of flies scattered when she began to thrash

about, emitting hoarse, garbled screams. Finally, she forced herself away from the

circle of her family, snapping stalks and branches, tearing the barbs from her skin,

spitting blobs of foam and acrid plant juices mixed with her own blood. With a

vehement thrust, she threw herself forward, leaving four fingers behind her, along

with most of her hair. The man in the suit caught her when she collapsed, a flap of

scalp hanging down over one eye so that she couldn’t see his face through his mask.

His arms wrapped tight around her, and he shouted something that Becca couldn’t

quite hear, because the vines had plugged her ears on their way to her brain.

Becca wanted to tell him he must leave her there on the fecund floor of the

greenhouse and help her family first. They had come to help her and now they were

dying. In a dream, she begged, Save them, please. She couldn’t live without them.

She didn’t want to be alone. But the words were like aphids swarming in her mouth,

and instead, through a cascade of orange bubbles, she gurgled, “Marth, I think she

wants you.”

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A Forever Home

Sara Pritchard

“Oh, Sean, look at this one!” the girl cooed. “Just look at him, Sean. Look how tiny

and old he is. He looks like a little old man. Ohmygawd, he’s sooooo cute,” she cooed

again. “Poor, dear little thing. We could call him Rumplestiltskin or Uncle Wiggly or

Jiminy Cricket.”

The girl had long, matted hair the color of chicken gravy, twisted into wooly

dreadlocks and gathered up into a squirrel’s nest on top of her head. She wore

combat boots and pilled tights and a little fuzzy pink rag of a skirt no bigger than a

hand towel, an old Harley Davidson motorcycle jacket many sizes too big, and huge

round glasses. Sparkly rhinestones riveted the auricle of her left ear like a

bejeweled bass clef. From the right ear, many tiny gold bells jingled.

“Cora,” the young man said sternly. “No! Come on! We agreed to get a puppy. Not

some decrepit old thing on its last leg. You said you wanted a puppy. That’s what

we agreed on.”

The boy, too, had dreadlocks, but his were stuffed into an oversized knit cap that

made his head cast a shadow like an enormous light bulb. His pants hung low on

his hips, cinched by a wide, studded belt. Plaid boxer shorts poofed out above what

was supposed to be the waistband of the pants.

“But, Sean, just look at him. We can’t just leave him here. He looks so sad. He’s

sooooo dear.”

“Corrrrrrrrrrrrr-a!” the young man sighed, exasperated. He hiked up his pants and

jutted out a hip to give gravity something to think about. He grabbed the girl by the

arm and pulled her around the corner and down another cinderblock and cement

corridor lined with steel kennels stacked three high.

Everyone was barking and whining and meowing. It hurt Ponce de León’s ears. He

huddled in the back of his crate and put his head under his blankey. He wished he

could go home. He liked the girl with the big glasses and pierced ears. He liked her

voice, which had a little squeak to it like Nina’s, but he was afraid. Earlier that day,

someone had taken his picture, nearly blinding him with the flash, and someone

else had written his bio in a stupid persona that was supposed to be him talking.

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Pritchard, AForever Home

“Arf! Arf!” his bio said. “Aren’t I cute? My name is Ponce de León, and I’m an 18-

pound, male Wire-Haired Fox Terrier. I am around ten years old, and I am very

smart, affectionate, and gentle. It goes without saying that I am housebroken and

well-behaved. I was found sleeping at the foot of the Gibson-Brown angel in East

Oak Grove Cemetery. I was very tired and lonely and hungry. I whimpered and

rolled over on my back, exposing my tender belly, when the Animal Friends

volunteer approached me, and I raised my paw politely when offered a pepperoni

treat. My mistress has died, and I ran away from home. I am very healthy. All my

medical records are on file at Paw Prints Veterinary Clinic where I have visited

regularly for the past eight years. At Paw Prints, they all know me and love me

because I am such a charming, good boy. One time I won a Halloween contest at

Mountaineer Mall, dressed as the Lone Ranger. Please make me yours and give me

a forever home. Arf! Arf!”

It was so embarrassing, that Pet-of-the-Week dog voice. And this was not Ponce de

León’s first encounter with THE VOICE. He’d been here before, in fact, in the very

same shelter—eight years ago, but he really couldn’t complain. THE VOICE (and a

similar photo) had brought Nina to his rescue that time.

“Here,” the boy said. “This one.” He was squatting in front of a little Black Labbish

puppy with paws the size of MoonPies. The inside of the puppy’s crate was a mass of

shredded fabric and globs of polyester stuffing, the remains of a dog bed and

numerous eviscerated toys.

“Just look at him!” the boy said, sticking his hand sideways between the bars of the

crate. The puppy licked and gnawed at the boy’s fingers and wagged its tail full

circle like a propeller.

“Just look at him!” the boy said again. Gravity had won the pants contest. The

pants now appeared as a sling, the red plaid boxer shorts in full view. The girl,

however, was nowhere in sight.

Out in the car—a rusty 1989 Subaru sedan—the girl tried to hold on to the

squirming puppy, who had already managed to turn on the hazard lights, chew the

knob off of the gear shifter, swallow one of her bell earrings, and piddle on her skirt

while the boy drove down the windy dirt road from the Animal Friends shelter.

Ponce de León hunkered down between the girl’s combat boots, half under the seat,

shaking.

He would have preferred the back seat where he could see out, but that was taken

up by a cat carrier with two cats—Helvetica and Times—who had been living for

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years outside an old print shop along the railroad tracks. The print shop had been

demolished to make way for an urban renewal project that included townhouses,

shops, restaurants, and a theater. Not cats. Somehow, Helvetica and Times had

found their way out of the Animal Friends shelter and into the boy and girl’s car,

too.

Truth was, Helvetica was relieved to have been caught and spayed. She’d had more

litters than she could count, and she didn’t even enjoy her estrus anymore. She’d

been faking her cat call for years and was looking forward to retirement as a

pampered indoor cat, sleeping in a sunny, southern exposure widow, birdwatching

out of one eye; eating tasty Nine Lives tuna day in and day out; batting about a

catnip mouse every now and then to entertain the humans; or, on special occasions

when company was present, making a spectacular, Nijinksy-worthy leap at a stupid

feather dangling on a strand of elastic suspended from a doorjamb.

Times, however, was livid about the neutering. He’d put up a struggle when he was

trapped and tore right through the animal control officer’s padded gloves, inciting a

case of cat-scratch fever that had hospitalized the officer for three days. Times

would never give up fighting and catting around, balls or no. Even in the shelter, he

sprayed ceaselessly and strutted about their cage, proudly displaying his left profile,

which showcased a cauliflower ear bitten down to a lumpy stub by a Manx. Times

had won that fight, though, paws down; he’d put out the Manx’s eye.

All four Animal Friends adoptees were absolutely free and came with dry and

tinned food, flea medicine, treats and catnip, all of which had been donated to the

shelter, and they all had health certificates verifying that their shots were up to

date, and all Cora and Sean had to do was sign adoption contracts saying that if

they could not keep any of their new pets—for any reason—they promised to return

them, no questions asked, to the Animal Friends shelter.

Moose—what Sean named the Black Lab-Great Dane-mix puppy—was exuberant to

be adopted; Ponce de León was nervous and apprehensive; and Helvetica and Times

were not entirely pleased—to put it mildly—with the adoption arrangements.

Helvetica would have preferred a canine-free environment, but she agreed with

Times that the puppy was no challenge whatsoever: a few swats on the nose, maybe

a little bull ride on its back, and they’d have it under control. “Besides,” Helvetica

pointed out, “Labs are more interested in the litter box than the cat.”

Times was angry about the whole situation and disgruntled about the prospect of

living with a Wire-Haired Fox Terrier. His ideal situation would have been barn cat.

Lord of the Cows, rat catcher, snake charmer.

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“They’re full of piss and vinegar,” he said, referring to Ponce de León’s breed.

“Crafty little demons,” he said, spraying the back seat of the Subaru through the

mesh window of the cat carrier. “And stubborn. They never back down or give up a

fight.”

“Yeah, but look how old and feeble he is,” Helvetica consoled him. “Piece o’ cake.

“Besides,” she added, raising a back leg behind her head and licking her butt, “I

thought you said you were going to run away as soon as they opened the door.”

Which he did.

The Subaru rattled down River Road and then down another dirt road, this one

with potholes the size of washtubs. The descent was steep. Cora and Sean lived

outside of town, along the river and the railroad tracks, in a mobile home on a

remote, abandoned homestead designated in the property tax books in the

Monongalia County courthouse as Lock Eleven, but most people called the place the

Drowned Man’s House.

The job of lockmaster had once been a respected position, one held by a civil

engineer, a member of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Lockmasters were

responsible for overseeing the maintenance of the locks and dams, which controlled

flooding and ensured year-round navigation on the Monongahela River. The

lockmasters’ houses were built by the Corps with no expenses barred, meant to

serve as an attractive compensation for the lockmasters and their families who had

to live in these remote houses outside the city limits, along the river’s locks and

dams and adjacent to the railroad tracks that followed the river.

The house at Lock Eleven was built and first occupied in 1902. It was a grand,

sprawling Victorian, painted the pale yellow of French vanilla ice cream, with

maroon and spruce trim, and with all the standard Victorian features and

embellishments: turrets and gables, gingerbread and transoms and stained glass,

front and back staircases, and a big sweep of a wraparound porch that entertained

the breeze from the river. Six slender and ornate yellow brick chimneys decorated

the slate roof, and a stand of cottonwoods marched down the lush lawn to the

cement dock. “The Cottonwoods,” the house at Lock Eleven was called.

At the turn of the twentieth century and up until mid-century, The Cottonwoods

was a showpiece along the river, a landmark known to rail and riverboat travelers

alike, something to be pointed to and admired. But within fifty years, the original

stone and timber locks of Lock Eleven were failing, and construction on a large,

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comprehensive lock and dam system that would eliminate many of the original

locks, including Lock Eleven, was begun. That Army Corps of Engineers project was

completed in 1950.

The original lockmaster was a man named Homer Martin, who came to live at The

Cottonwoods when he was a young civil engineer. After the demise of Lock Eleven,

he remained in the house alone for many years. His children were grown—there

had been many—and moved away, and his wife had died on April 12, 1945, the

same day as FDR. Homer Martin was an old man in 1956, when he was down on his

dock, puttering about, and he spotted a woman and a child in a row boat about

twenty feet from shore. He waved. The woman was rowing, and the child was

dipping a can into the river, ladling up water and pouring it back, and then

suddenly the child toppled over the edge of the boat, and the woman sitting in the

stern began to scream and the boat began to rock. Homer Martin kicked off his

shoes and dove off the dock and swam out and dove down again and again and

saved the child. He grabbed her by her hair. Homer Martin was still a strong

swimmer in spite of his years, but as he handed the small girl up to the woman in

the boat, the old lockmaster’s heart gave out, and he went under one last time.

A large grapevine wreath hung on the dock of Lock Eleven for many years, and

rather rapidly, the house fell into disrepair. First came the teenagers, carloads of

them, driving down the dirt road in their Chevys and DeSotos with their beer

bottles and Camel cigarettes, and behind them came the thieves and pillagers with

their crowbars, and years later, the vandals with their cans of spray paint. The

windows of the Drowned Man’s House—as The Cottonwoods then came to be

known—were broken, and the stained glass stolen, as well as the leaded glass built-

ins, the crown moldings, the newel post and banisters, the chandeliers, the doors,

the oak floorboards. But because what was left of the house at Lock Eleven was

easily accessible from the railroad tracks, yet remote and difficult to reach by land,

the road having not been kept up, The Cottonwoods became a shelter for drifters,

and a homeless camp grew up around it, and eventually the clapboards were ripped

off the house and fed to bonfires and then the lathing strips and studs. Broken

bottles and sardine and tuna fish tins and cigarette butts and syringes and

cardboard Tampax tubes and condoms littered the grounds. In no time, there was

just a pile of slate roof tiles and the foundation: a field stone grave, home to snakes

and spiders, vermin and such.

The twenty-three-acre stretch of property along the railroad tracks known as Lock

Eleven was sold at public auction in 1985, because Uncle Sam wanted to offload the

liability. The developer who bought The Cottonwoods? The girl’s father. And Cora

was just a baby then. Now Cora’s father was happy to have her out of his house,

Cora and her dreadlocks and piercings and tattoos.

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When the rusty Subaru turned off the River Road and began the steep, winding

descent down the crumbling road to Lock Eleven, Cora rolled down the window, and

Ponce de León could smell the river and the river mud and the staghorn sumacs and

the onion grass and wild carrot and the road dust tainted with creosote from old

railroad ties, and the lingering smell of campfires and burnt garbage and piss.

Ponce de León pricked his ears and sat up between Cora’s boots.

He’d been here before.

It was many years ago. Another life. A life before Nina, a life with Prophet Zero in

the homeless camp.

Ponce de León jumped out of the car and sniffed about, Moose bounding after him.

They went down to the river’s edge near the old iron bridge where Ponce de León

had often seen the ghost of Homer Martin walking about at night in the shadows of

the cottonwood trees. Sometimes he saw Homer Martin sitting on the big

cornerstone of the old foundation. He smelled like sweet cherry pipe tobacco. Some

of the drifters who camped at The Cottonwoods nearby had seen the old lockmaster,

too, and they were frightened of him, but Ponce de León knew there was no reason

to fear ghosts and that the ghost of Homer Martin lingered only because he was not

ready to leave this place he had loved and cared for so well. Homer Martin still

longed for human things, the sounds and smells of the river and the land: the toll of

the tugboat bells and the moan of the barges and the music of the freight trains and

the first Jack-in-the-Pulpits and Dutchman’s Breeches peeping out from under the

dead leaves in the woodlands come spring. And after Prophet Zero died, Ponce de

León saw him, too, sitting with the old lockmaster, watching the trains, and

sometimes Ponce de León sat with them. He, too, loved the river and the barges and

the trains.

Moose jumped in the river and paddled about, and Ponce de León scampered down

the railroad tracks toward the hobo camp, hoping to see his old pals, Jamie and

Angel and Car Wash and Q-Tip. But when Ponce de León came to where the camp

used to be, there was no one there. The area was closed off with a high chain link

fence along the bank as far as Ponce de León could see, and warning signs on stout

posts had been erected. KEEP OUT, the signs said. PRIVATE PROPERTY. NO

TRESPASSING. NO CAMPING. TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED. —Lock

11-Cottonwoods Upgrade, Phase I, WV Permit #W7682-B-26501

Ponce de León was happy living with Cora and Sean and Moose and Helvetica at

Lock Eleven. Soon it was summer, and Ponce de León spent most of the day in the

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garden with Cora. Moose was not allowed in the garden because he was unruly and

dug things up as fast as Cora planted them. Moose was big now and clumsy. ‘Goofy’,

Cora called him.

The days were long and the ground was warm and Ponce de León spent many hours

exploring, walking along the railroad tracks toward town, the way he used to walk

with Prophet Zero. Moose had to be tied up most of the time because he ran off and

he chased deer and one time dragged home the carcass of a fawn. He rolled in mud

and anything putrid or dead, too. ‘Mudpie’ Cora sometimes called him, too, or just

plain ‘Stinky’.

Early on Saturday mornings, Cora and Sean and Ponce de León drove into the town

square and set up a tent at the farmer’s market where they sold vegetables and

flowers and ground cherry jam.

The evenings were cool and sprinkled with lightning bugs and meteor showers.

Ponce de León slept at the bottom of the bed on Cora’s side just how he used to sleep

with Nina. Sometimes Helvetica slept there, too. Moose had to sleep on the back

porch because he was so big and so stinky. Times had fallen in with a band of feral

cats, kittens that had been dumped off on the River Road and left to fend for

themselves. Sometimes, late at night, Helvetica heard him screaming outside the

bedroom window. “Old love,” she hummed to herself, “leave me alone,” and rolled

over.

Fall came and brought wind and leaf rain, chevrons of honking geese in the sky,

bonfires, and a great production of canning salsa in the kitchen.

‘Old Man’, the boy called Ponce de León. ‘Old Man’ or ‘Methuselah.’

“How goes it, Methuselah?” the boy would say to Ponce de León each morning as he

sat in one of the captain’s chairs lacing up his combat boots. The boy was a tattoo

artist at Wild Ink, and the girl—Cora—was his canvas. Ponce de León was amazed

and intrigued by the pictures and text on Cora’s body: Popeye the Sailor Man with a

can of spinach on one bicep; a smiling Sarah Palin with the inscription I CAN SEE

RUSSIA FROM MY HOUSE on the other; Edgar Allen Poe with a raven on his head on

one forearm.

Staring out from the back of Cora’s neck was a small eye in a triangle, like the one

forming the tip of the pyramid on the Great Seal, underneath it the motto, Novus

Ordo Seclorum. A colorfully illustrated map of the Appalachian Trail decorated

Cora’s back, from Georgia on her left hip to Maine on her right shoulder, complete

with representative flora and fauna: a Wake Robin trillium and a Mountain Laurel,

a serviceberry tree; a porcupine, a moose, a beaver, a copperhead, a bald eagle, and

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a scarlet tanager. The seven deadly sins formed a bracelet on her right wrist: LUST,

GLUTTONY, WRATH, ENVY, PRIDE, SLOTH, GREED; a Salvador Dali clock melted around

her left wrist like a watch. The seven heavenly virtues—FAITH, HOPE, CHARITY,

PRUDENCE, JUSTICE, TEMPERANCE, and COURAGE—encircled her right ankle, while

Max Ehrman’s “Desiderada” adorned her chest, and the Beatitudes in lovely

Zapfino script traversed the outside of her right thigh and calf. Blessed are the

poor . . . Blessed are the meek . . . Blessed are the merciful . . . Blessed or they who

mourn for they shall be comforted . . .

One afternoon Cora asked Ponce de León if he would like to go for a ride, go into

town with her to visit a friend. Ponce de León scampered to the back door. It was

not going to be a fun visit, Cora told him (she talked to him all the time, like he was

a person, like Nina had talked to him), but it was something they had to do. They

were in the Subaru, rattling into town. Ponce de León had given up barking at

everything that moved. It was too much effort. Besides, it was futile; everything

kept on moving. It wasn’t like the mailman at Nina’s, who always left the porch

after a furious, successful barking reprimand to Get away! Go! Go!

They drove perhaps twenty minutes, up the dirt road from Lock Eleven, down the

River Road, across the railroad tracks and over a bridge, down the boulevard and

through many traffic lights and then across another bridge and into a neighborhood

Ponce de León immediately recognized. It was his old home place, the neighborhood

where he had lived most of his life with Nina before Nina died. He stuck his head

out the window. He saw the funeral home and the car wash he had walked by every

day, the brick house where the Scotty dog, Sweetie, lived and the house up the

street with the picket fence where the English Cocker Spaniel, Nellie, lived; and

behind there, he knew, down the alley, Sally, the mongrel was always up for a little

fence fight; and farther down the alley lived Buddy the Beagle/German Shepherd

mix, and Molly the Standard Poodle, and Missy the Pomeranian and Bella Donna

the toy Yorkie no bigger than a guinea pig. He watched everything go by. And then

there was his house. The burning bushes were a fiery red. The cat bird meowed

from the yews.

Cora parked in the alley, and Ponce de León got out and sniffed about. Another dog

had been there recently. A big dog.

“Come on, Cricket,” Cora said. “This way.” ‘Cricket’ is what Cora called him most of

the time, ‘My little Jiminy Cricket’.

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They went to the back door of the house directly across the alley from Nina’s. A

young woman with red-rimmed eyes and a puffy face let them in. Her name was

Ramona, and she and Cora embraced.

“I’m so sorry, Ramona,” Cora said. “I’m sorry I’ve not been in to see you. I’ve just

been so busy with the garden and all—”

“Oh, Cora, I know. I know how it is. We have such different lives now that we’re

married. I’ve been meaning to bring Billy out to your place, too.”

They went into the living room, which was dark and cluttered with books and toys.

Raggae music was playing. Ramona dabbed at her eyes and blew her nose and

thanked Cora for coming. “I know it will be O.K.,” she said, and cried a little more.

“It’s just such a disappointment. But thank god we have Billy. There won’t be any

more children, the doctor said.” And Ramona started to cry again.

No woman no cry, Bob Marley was singing, No woman no cry.

And Ramona cried some more.

Ponce de León hated it when women cried. It upset him. He started to quiver, and

Cora reached down and patted him. “It’s O.K., Little Man,” she said. That’s what

Nina had called him, too, sometimes, ‘Little Man’.

“He’s so sensitive,” Cora said to Ramona. “He’s my little canine mood ring. Aren’t

you, Cricket?”

“The lady who used to live behind us had a little dog who looked a lot like him. I

wonder what happened to him after she died,” Ramona said. “Oh, he is cute, Cora.

Maybe we’ll get a dog like him for Billy when he’s a little older,” Ramona said and

stroked Ponce de León’s back.

“I love him, but I don’t know whether we can keep him,” Cora said and hesitated.

“Why?”

“We’re thinking about traveling. Maybe to Australia and New Zealand. Maybe

staying there. Sean says there are lots of opportunities in New Zealand. Land is

cheap, and the economy is good. I don’t know. I don’t know whether I really want to

leave. It’s Sean. But I just can’t leave Cricket.”

Cora lit a cigarette, waiting.

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“I asked Sean if we couldn’t wait a couple of years,” Cora continued, “I mean,

Cricket is so old. He’s not going to live that long.”

“What did he say?” Ramona asked.

“He said you can’t plan your life around a dog.”

“I don’t know,” Ramona said. “I mean, you wouldn’t abandon a child. It’s the same

commitment. I don’t know. Is a dog any different?”

“I don’t know,” Cora said. “It’s an ethical question I can’t come to grips with. But

just saying, ‘Well, let’s wait until Cricket dies’ seems so . . . I don’t know so . . .

so . . . crass, somehow, so inhuman.

“I don’t know,” Cora continued, “Sean says we can take Cricket and Helvetica back

to the Animal Friends shelter, and someone else will give them a good home—it’s a

no-kill shelter—but it just doesn’t seem right to me.”

“What about the other dog, the big goofy one? What’s his name?”

“Moose. Sean’s friend Arlo says he’ll take Moose. They live out, too, and Moose is so

happy and gregarious, he’d be happy anywhere, especially somewhere where he can

run. And Helvetica. Well, she’s no trouble at all. It’s just not the same with Cricket.

Nobody wants an old dog.”

“Well, it sounds like you’re going. I mean, it sounds like Sean is making

arrangements. You’ll go with him, Cora, won’t you? You’re not thinking about

splitting up, are you?” Ramona asked.

“But we made a commitment to them,” Cora said, stroking Ponce de León’s ears. We

promised them a forever home. You just can’t abandon your animal friends because

you want a different life and they don’t fit in. I’m just afraid it might be a decision

I’d regret—on principle—for the rest of my life. And it makes me question the kind

of person Sean really is. I mean . . . if he’d leave MoonPie and Cricket and

Helvetica, would he leave me? We had a big fight about it.”

“I’m sorry,” Ramona said and took a drink from a tall, sweating glass.

Ponce de León heard every word Cora said, and he trembled. Lots of people think

that dogs don’t understand human languages, but they’re wrong. Ponce de León

understood every word of English. English was easy. He lay by Cora’s feet and

pretended to be asleep. He didn’t want to go back to the shelter. He loved Cora and

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her bells and tattoos. He’d only lived with her for seven months, but he loved her

just like he’d loved Nina and before her, Prophet Zero. He would never leave Cora,

no matter what opportunity came his way.

“An old dog can be a big expense,” Ramona said. “I mean, veterinarians cost as

much as, if not more than, people doctors, and of course, insurance doesn’t cover

dogs. And Noah has two more years of school and then his dissertation. I mean—”

Cora knew what Ramona was implying: they couldn’t afford the financial burden of

an old dog—and so she changed the subject.

As the young women talked, Ponce de León got up and stretched and explored the

downstairs. That’s what he was: an explorer. That’s what Nina said. He was quite

shaken by the conversation he’d overheard between Cora and Ramona, but he was

also excited to be back in his old neighborhood. He’d seen the outside of Ramona’s

house many times from the kitchen window of Nina’s house across the alley, but

he’d never been inside. He remembered the woman Ramona pushing a baby stroller

down the alley. Sometimes a young man with a ponytail and a slight limp walked

beside her. Ponce de León had enjoyed barking at them.

When no one was looking, Ponce de León tiptoed up the stairs. He had a good sense

of spatial relations, and he knew that from the back of this house, he’d be able to

look out and see his old house, see his favorite watching spot in the kitchen window.

In a small bedroom at the top of the stairs, the shades were drawn and a musical

mobile was playing, painted ponies going round and round. In a corner of the room,

by the window, a little boy lay in a tiny bed with a short railing, clutching a blanket

and sniffling.

The little boy sat up. “Dog,” he said and laughed his little boy laugh.

Ponce de León jumped up on the bed. The little boy giggled and patted Ponce de

León’s head.

“Dog,” the little boy Billy said again.

Ponce de León licked his face, and Billy squealed and petted him some more. From

the bedroom window, Ponce de León could look down and see the kitchen window

from where he used to watch for Nina. He felt strange and sad, looking at his old

house and remembering his old life, himself looking out the window he was now

looking in. In Nina’s house, a different dog—a Boxer—was looking out from his old

favorite barking place. It was hard to comprehend, this Boxer looking back at him

from his spot. Ponce de León’s life came rushing back to him. He remembered how

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he’d ridden in a boxcar with Prophet Zero and lived at The Cottonwoods and how he

used to walk with Prophet Zero into town and wait outside the soup kitchens and

how all the homeless people coddled him and the soup kitchen staff gave him scraps

and bones and how Zero used to preach on High Street and all the college kids knew

them and made a fuss over Ponce de León, too. His name was Lucky then.

This is what Ponce de León knew: 1) at any minute, your life could change, even

your name; 2) at any minute you could end up back where you started; 3) at any

minute you might have to leave home; 4) at any minute, someone you loved might

leave you.

Billy lay down and put his thumb in his mouth, one arm around Ponce de León, and

fell asleep. Ponce de León closed his eyes. He slept, too, lightly, and he dreamed he

saw Nina out in his old back yard by the burning bushes, hanging up laundry. He

saw so clearly her kind face, and he remembered with sadness how sick and weak

she had been and how just before she died, she looked like an angel to him. Here is

another thing Ponce de León knew: The dead never really leave us.

Billy sighed in his sleep, and Ponce de León curled up against him. He liked it here

with Billy in his little bed by the window with the view of his old house, but he

loved Cora, too, and The Cottonwoods. He felt old and tired.

“Where’s my little Cricket?” he heard Cora call. “Cricket!”

Cora was at the bottom of the stairs. Ponce de León knew that if he pretended to be

asleep, she’d come upstairs and find him and tiptoe back down and get Ramona,

and they’d both tiptoe back up and see him sleeping there with Billy, and his fate

would be sealed. Cora would be free to go to New Zealand, and he would be Billy’s

dog. And then some day, he’d cross over and he’d be Nina’s and Zero’s dog again,

too. And he’d see Cora again, too, sooner or later, in what Nina called The Sweet

Bye and Bye, and Little Billy would meet him there, too, someday, he knew.

And if he ran down the stairs? Then Cora would have to choose between him and

Sean and maybe Regret would follow her all the days of her life.

The catbird mewed again, Meow, Meow, from its nest deep inside the tangled

branches of the overgrown yew, and as he had seen Asta the Wire-Haired Fox

Terrier do in the old Thin Man movies that he and Nina had loved to watch again

and again, Ponce de León covered his eyes with his paws and feigned sleep.

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SKY POEM

Nate Pritts

morning voice

hushed & heavy

against your neck

caught up in these low clouds

tangled & tired

in branches or in green

this sky

promising rain

or whatever

feeling is in reach

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SKY POEM

Nate Pritts

how quickly this sky

falls

into this

new sky

yesterday it wasn’t here & now

all these clouds held loosely together

in the grip of this field of breeze

I see the rain the rain & the hours

& it all burns off

& lightens

there is a moment

that happens &

there is the pure burst

of change

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SKY POEM

Nate Pritts

running out of blues

so I’m lifting my pen off the page, remembering

the shock of those green leaves

in last night’s sunset

so alive looking so much like themselves

in that relentless but welcome glow

trying to read my future in the shade

& all these leaves are moving so erratically

while the sun just blasts through

whenever

it gets a chance

& sometimes the light hits my eye just right &

I don’t even know what I’m

looking at

it’s just bright

bright so many reasons to look

away I’m learning

something about lightness

how to say a name for a thing

say it

& watch it happen

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30

A Summer Reading

Rich Murphy

Moby Dick beaches itself in the laps

of Americans, the Artic and Antarctic

snow opening to eat its own. An Ahab

feels a leviathan in his pants and elects

to become a politician. Parishioners

of a puppeteer believe they have their god

on a leash. The cool receptions of people

and climates aren’t omen enough for

a species only able to focus. Poking at

a doubloon with harpoons the citizens

on the U. S. of Pequod have no reason

to expect they unravel the navel into

Jonah’s whirlpool. Melville can’t

go much further than this: Someone else

clings to a coffin. The draft is becoming

long winded, our waves unnaturally white.

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31

Glass: A Metaphor for Muscles: A Quote from

Louise Bourgeois in Two Variations

Amanda McGuire

I.

“The challenge involves stacking

all that glass without breaking any,

(

overcoming the conscious

desire to smash everything.”

II.

Your body is a tall, blue shelf

lined with bowls, mirrors, vases.

My room is full of sharp objects.

My body is a small, blue shelf

lined with bowls, mirrors, vases.

Your room is full of blunt objects.

We never hang up without saying I love you.)

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32

In Fits Of—

Amanda McGuire

Considering: an octopus’ width, his (or her) “Eight Arms to Hold You”;

each tentacle an adverb: greedily, jealously, lovingly, all of the above.

*

Vacillating: am I or am I not a ________ person? Are adjectives hereditary?

On the phone, my mother gossips about her neighbors, people I hardly know.

*

Reflection tomorrow: yesterday I wouldn’t get out of bed;

today I’m “just being honest. That wasn’t your best.”

*

Two expressions: tight-lipped, a line or an o

as in “open-mouthed”: “so and so didn’t deserve…”

*

Little decorative pillows litter the floor,

the china cabinet feeds the fuse, beckons me.

*

When I wake up to him whispering pet names into my ear

I can hardly remember the porcelain or glass, my little ego.

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33

On the Phone with a Father, After an Accident

Amanda McGuire

His mouth full of hurt: his voice breaks.

While pacing outside, I hear a train.

The rabbit in my yard stares at me.

I recall photographs: her first birthday, little cake, little hands.

I think train.

“It’s like feeling everything all the time at once.”

I feel guilt in my backyard among the bloomed daffodils.

There are other sounds it makes: clack and whistle.

I held her once—awkwardly—before passing her back to her father.

His silence on the other end is my yard in winter with snow.

I approach the rabbit, phone in hand.

“We’re taking one day at a time.”

His resignation is a sigh in the form of clichés.

I move closer, and the rabbit hops away.

He found her hanging from a fan cord.

“It should have been me. I keep thinking.”

The faint echo of the train fades until it’s as if it never existed.

I imagine the x of cord around her neck, the o of her little mouth.

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34

from PLAN/K

Kristi Maxwell

“And then a Plank in Reason, broke,

And I dropped down, and down—

And hit a World, at every plunge,” (no. 280)

Emily Dickinson

Shave me from myself (“Chip away, chip away”)

Razor good, as in “razor to be a good girl”

Foam as snow if sea as season

(salt assaults an eye with the [fist / frost(ing)] of itself

seasoning seizing not ceasing to sting) (the bee of itself it be)

Crest as a knee coming up as under a sheet if postured so it will [if willed so]

[I’m in-crest, so in-crest (increased) indeed]

“Snow provided by SNOW BUSINESS, INC.” [s n o w-b r i n g e r]

Snows, you know, are types of boats [blotted typos against

the sea as seen from above (aerial—not Ariel

not a tempest’s musterer, but a typist err’r) (the sail

an apostrophe sets in a word

sending it out to eye) (aye)]

What is the icing on

What ties a singing to an ear

a siren (a siren song in the seai

very different from sirens singing

through the city: but no

not in that both portend [both tend to

some future or present unpleasantness])

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Maxwell, From PLAN/K

“a told tray sure” (Gertrude Stein)

Shank-sunk Shank-as-hunk Milkshake (chic)

Milking it Milk the lemon a Main Squeeze

a Main Sail a Sale on Main

Street of chicks I’m li[c]king

Heimlich for what’s stuck

in a throat [the road to

stomaching—some aching

there, there]

Food comes up

because the boat boasts little

or comes up as upchuck

poor landlubber [the sea a lube

and not one’s own secretion—

the sea other to the self

no sailf] [fails to barnacle

the self to sea] [no shack culled from sea

for to live in]

Toucan incant uncanny two can

insist in utero to

end it To Row Row Row Your

to throw overboard

A boar to bear

out attack needs a touch

of wildness a wilder-

Ness a Loch Ness to Latch onto

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36

Maxwell, From PLAN/K

Punishing itching to pun

pun issued pus-like from

“Sun-dried [tomatoes / two men go]

hang’d like dogs” unable to

dodge what calls dirge

forth gibbet here hand it

over the bandit sez [se(i)z(es)]

Death-traps Death-tarps: shroudsii

to re-route or short circuit the circus of gazes

Shroud: “any one of the supporting

ropes or wires that extend down

from the top of a mast” Death-ship

in the sense of lordship

in the same scene as an apprenticeship

’s ending Earth contorting Death

coercing its “d” with an Arg!—a Wreath adds to Earth,

agreed? A deed indeed did done

a dead deed indeed passed moved past pissed on

by a stream of doing not by dung

What deed leads to dungeon

to man made dung Abject

Jettisoned to Aid the getting

away from or the Chase, jet-speed

Flotsam: flopped sons, no Sam or Abe, [Un]Just[ly] Waste

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37

Maxwell, From PLAN/K

“a mental world […] its boundary the skull” (Hugh Kenner)

Sequence Sequins Penguins’ Sea-Fins

a defense against sinking

“Pirates aren’t Santa” [skull and cross] Bones Season 1 “Pirates aren’t San

-itary” Aren’t sending enough C to the sea inside themselves

(them cells there where C should sail)

Mal(-ice / -nutrition) mal: bad (“she’s as cold as ice”)

There is a mythod to the[ir] Madness

Err Grrr Arrg guile beguiled socked by

a sucker punch patched up by

rum punch a face registering a bruise as error

whether [weather for] cruising

for or not

A sentence without sentiment

Thrown off the scent (it’s so over, bored) Dense

sin leads to intense sentencing depending

on how dense the sentencer is

(a dunce with a hunch—a hench

-man who will not give [an inch / a shit])

A sentence towards no sentience

(a penalty, pen-halting)iii

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Maxwell, From PLAN/K

A gore leads to a sling the grow task: to grow back

not grotesque (tisk tisk) a nerve-shot arm all loosey-goosey

Nerve-shaw, as in rickshaw, message carter,

impulse carrier Make a career of it [outfit that career

with Clarks (nerve-shod) with Cartier (yippee ti yi yay)

(hee-haw, pshaw, carry on [get carried away!])]

Tie the knot Sailor’s Knot Carrick Bend [charac

-ter, undeterred by the bind one’s got oneself in (one’s got

oneself, after all, to depend on, no matter how deep

the end fallen into)] Anchor’s Bend Anchor up

man the hatch Tie one on then tidy up sir dine

with me on sardines (it is not sardonically that I ask)

“Say hello to pirate pants, bottom right [if your bottom is right]

[…] the style works when worn” Glamo[o]r-ed April 2010

Maroon as the color of the Season

Maroon as Ruin as Room of [for] One’s Own in the Worst Way

Way out from all else with no way back but waiting

(pirate pants sit at one’s calf [pull a chair up at the calf-table

with mandible ready for more than nibbling] thus

are perfect for wading) Will someone come, Will them, “Come”

i emergent sea / emergency

ii Death harps on in ghost-form. iii

Penultimate! Ultimate Pen! Pinned in an untimely way, many a mate, many a Paper Mate whose ink’s run dry

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39

Love Sonnet to Route 25

R.J. Ingram

my boyfriend and I drive northbound

the passenger window slid halfway

and his head emerges this time

there are streaks of Ohio grazing

in the rain and pay no attention

to Michael as he moos and counts

them while they eat and sing

as school children just before recess

begins the most noble tar smell and salt

seeps inside of my Toyota and swims as I

drive suddenly Michael forgets acres of loam

grabs my arm and points at my side

of the road where a numinous sign assures

a prosthetic knee can fit like an old friend

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40

The Siege

R.J. Ingram

spring draws its yellow crayon around everything

Brenda Hillman

and winter flicks a stolid blue

around the traffic cones police-

men settle down route twenty

five slip southbound so i too can

draw my own blue circle around

their flashers at fifteen degrees

a second another car hits sprouts

up and i sail between goddamnits

and yessirs all of us in unpredicted

ice storms find ourselves surrounded

by diasporas remembering to brake

or not to but above us and our

billboards a wave of heron sings

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41

Cat People #19: Girls Born in Tunnels

Kyle Hemmings

As a child catching hairs with his tongue, Pixie-Bob warned the adults of

earthquakes, of large spaces below the ground where wishes formed. The adults

laughed at him or told him that earthquakes never happen in this city and on this

coast. Anyway, they were too busy attending barbecues in the sunny suburbs,

drinking water from silver spigots, or tossing left overs to the anonymous hands

reaching up through the ground.

After moving to the edge of the East Village, where Pixie-Bob makes a living

photographing B-girls in the last hours of their swan dance, he discovers the

existence of tunnels. He recalls as a child the underground hands that groped and

swayed at barbecues. How many of those starving hands, he wonders, got their

wish?

Sometimes, Pixie-Bob visits the tunnels, which can be entered through manholes,

subway station shafts, the cracks in your mother's existance, or at times, by just

dropping a wish. He discovers girls living there called the Undercats. Because of the

poor quality of air, they can't French kiss properly and their dialect is Poor Kitten.

You can always tell an Undercat because they tend to sit alone in the last car of the

subway with soot on their faces which some might mistake as make-up. They often

sit pixie-faced with one eye lifted up and at an angle, listening to a stolen I-pod.

They prefer Progressive Jazz with hard direction or Tokyopop.

Pixie-Bob falls in love with an Undercat. Her name is Mango Soff and she tells him

stories of how her family survived the 4th Ave. Wars by the handouts of rich

CoverUps at barbecues. She tells him that at times it's hard to breathe in a bubble,

but she would rather dream of light rather than being one of The Cover-Ups, who

have no sense of tempo. They mate to an illegally downloaded i-Tune, but shortly

after, she dies because either she forgot to breathe or thought the moment was too

beautiful to ruin by living on.

Every day after work, Pixie-Bob visits the exact spot in the same tunnel where he

met Mango Soff. Over time, her body decomposes into dust and in its place is a large

bubble with a tiny tear. Breathless, Pixie-Bob takes the bubble above ground and

places it in a warm spot of his bedroom, near the wall that shows old photos of his

family in various positions of happy denials and gross cover-ups. Pixie-Bob always

gets sentimental at the memory of artificial grass.

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Hemmings, Cat People #19

Eventually, a girl breaks through the bubble. She grows up sickly, anemic and she

tells Pixie-Bob that she has fuzzy memories of a woman's voice and a strange

addiction to mangoes which Pixie-Bob gets from the farmer's market on 6th Ave. He

never lets her out of the apartment for fear the light of day might destroy her. He

names her Peach-Purr. One day, while Pixie-Bob is at work, calculating how many

Cover-Up models in photos would benefit from natural settings, an earthquake

devastates the city. The building where Pixie Bobie works, collapses. He is taken to

a hospital where he lies half-conscious, sometimes waking up and asking Where is

his daughter. She won't last long in a world without him or mangoes. One night,

Pixie-Bob escapes from the hospital in nothing but a green striped gown and

slippers. He growls at people passing by, giving him strange looks.

Meanwhile, Peach-Purr escapes from the rubble of her building, and as if by

Undercat instinct, finds the exact tunnel she was bubbled in. She hears footsteps

approaching. She counts the stranger's breaths. "It's me," says Pixie-Bob, "your

father." She smiles, but no one ever told her she was blind. Together, they hold

hands and pretend they're listening to light jazz. They stop breathing.

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43

Cat People #17: Feline Eye, Feline You

Kyle Hemmings

Kat is walking down the street, sidestepping monarch butterflies or painted ladies

with one leg, grounded, perhaps crushed by children’s hands. It's hot in the city,

sneaker rubbing against talus and hungry spider vein, flashbacks of the night

before: two sweaty bodies in solitude, post-coital despair by windows, kitchen sink

drip drip, cats of the night, unlicensed and turncoat, screeching by dumpsters. The

heaven-eyed boy whose profile lingers against moon clones. Kat smiles, recalls the

hookers below her window, on night guard for pure love against fragile corners. Kat

keeps bopping and the sun keeps ticking. She looks up: blue falsetto of sky, some

straggling birds in retro-glide, a small piece of paper floating down maybe 10

stories, maybe a letter, maybe she shush shush shouldn't because curiosity killed

the . . . But Kat does because the vessels of her heart are networked to a thousand

tiny hands pushing up under the streets. The letter is a suicide note. It reads:

. . . by the time you have read this oh beautiful stranger, I will be dead, a jump head-

first through a broken roof, through another ceiling, and I will land on the floor of

my favorite Dunkin' Donuts, which itself is a ceiling to the truly decaffeinated. But I

will live through you. This letter is a magical letter, and whoever reads it will

become me. Through you, accidental reader, I will love again what spits and kicks

back. I can only imagine your blue hang-glide eyes, your sulphur and copper tongue.

Our memory trace will mingle and breed, but don't burn your fingers in my coffee.

The letter is signed by the poetess, Low-ki, the famous subway rapper, diva of side

street Slam.

Kat folds the letter, sticks it in a pocket next to an unused condom given to her by a

boy of bad weather forecasts. She approaches the downtown fair. She smiles she

cries she peeps in windows she mellows over deadlined lovers in coffee shops she's

light on her feet she's all sugar and anarchy. Scents of hot sausage, chestnuts, red

peppers, coppertoned flesh melting into the street. She spots the heaven-eyed boy,

calling himself OddHat, entertaining the crowd high on health fizzes; he's pulling

cats out of his baseball cap, stopping at number 9. He turns and stares hard at Kat.

What's in the back of her throat feels like goo and sludge, her tongue as if stapled to

the floor of her mouth. "Low-ki," the boy yells out. The cats jump and disappear into

the air. Kat runs, dodging bodies and food carts. "It was all a mistake," OddHat

yells," you misunderstood me! I love you, not her, not Kat!."

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Hemmings, Cat People #17

But Kat is running down narrow streets that lead back to each other. She runs

towards the last scrape of the island. She runs, closing her eyes, tasting her own

salt on her lips. She takes the letter from her jeans and tosses it into the air. She

imagines it flying over traffic, gliding into the hands of another soft-eyed girl. I can't

be the one, thinks Kat, panting hard. It’s me who needs saving.

As she jumps through the sun's last halo in the air, something that is invisible to

the city's sanitation workers and flesh peddlers behind closed shops, Kat hopes that

both she and Low-ki will land on all fours, such carefree Siamese twins.

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45

Cat People #18:

Thick-skinned Cats Can't Hurry Love

Kyle Hemmings

Kat is looking for a boy with green pumpkin eyes, the kind that glow in the after-

glow. Darkness may be his sister who died at a young age, falling from a tenement

window. Nobody heard the sound. Nobody can confirm the progress of their own

deaths. It's just another unspoken lie, the consistency of peanut butter eaten from

fingers. Kat thinks she met this boy one night at the Soho club, Detritus from Stars.

She was too drunk to laugh at the number of krazy girls falling on their asses or

pretending to be suicidal cherry blossoms. It was obvious that nobody on the dance

floor had any kind of glue.

The boy with green after-glow eyes was saying something about sole or soul, then he

whispered into Kat's ear that they could both have type XX blood. He disappeared

and Kat went home with a stranger who had an arthritic mother still living with

him. On an old army cot, a real collector's item from the 4th Ave. Wars, they were

quiet, palm against each other's mouth, dancing without the need for amphibious

feet. In the morning, Kat slipped past the snores and goat-sounds of the arthritic

mother, who slept with her shoes on. At home, Kat had the sensation of green fur

falling from her life, which she associated with the boy she never got to know. She

thought about him throughout her day at the paralegal office, among the

Tupperware parties and the bosses banging shadows against walls, among the men

who had given up on speaking and those who had become high-tech walkie talkies

without the need for charging.

Kat visits the old magician, Octosullus, on the second floor above an antique lamp

shop in Chinatown. She tells him about the boy who had whispered code into her

ear, about the dream-type they might both share. Octosullus listens patiently; he

has miniature fir trees in his eyes. The boy who will love you, he says in a voice of

spark and red leaf, has a double X cut into his heart. But be careful at night. This is

a city of serial killers who work slow and without electric drills.

The old man says that he needs to see Kat's heart.

Kat stands and pulls off her Tee shirt, the one with The DeathRock Mutants design.

Octosullus reaches inside the body cage and pulls out the heart with the ease of

pulling rabbit tails from under the streets. Yes, says the old man, inspecting the

tortuous vessels, it has a double X near the coronary. He must have touched you in

some way. You will find him on the outskirts of the city. Only at night. He can’t

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Hemmings, Cat People #18

sleep. He collects the edges of all sorts of things. He is bleeding from your wireless

love. He might return to you when you feel love is impossible.

I never thought love was impossible, says Kat in a soft, wiry tone. I always thought

it was improbable. But then again there are pigeons in the air.

Yes, says the old man, nodding, there are pigeons in the air.

Kat twists her head and torso through the Tee shirt. She sits down and stares

pensively at the old man. His eyes are tired, the peace of rivers, of old mothers who

survived their own 4th Ave. Wars.

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47

Grid City in Decline

William Haas

The grid city’s street map shows no ailanthus sprouting through rafters. The

perpendicular lines, cut with rulers and inked by steady hands, indicate no

bunchgrass splitting cracked asphalt and no spiny black locust stalks slicing grey

sunlight. Residential is marked by red; industrial, by blue; commercial, by yellow.

No key colors rotted roofs, abandoned cars, sacked Victorian houses.

At twilight the boy returns from the landfill. A strip of lichen lines a road overgrown

in buckhorn and spurge. The landfill’s stink clings to his clothes. He’d found no

precious metals today, only some plastic bags, newspapers headlined with dead

events, concrete from which to carve arrowheads. He’d also found the street map. It

will come in handy as did the plastic bags he’d wrapped around his hatchet head. In

a world of thistles and thorns, he likes the smooth touch of plastic. He finds it at the

bottoms of holes, beneath moss, bobbing in hypoxic creeks. It feeds the birds you

don’t want to eat.

Back at camp, he burns the map for warmth. The geometric streets curl into carbon

and billow into the black. He throws a plastic bag into the fire and watches it shrink

into filaments. Smoke burns his eyes. Tomorrow the daylight will be shorter; the

shadows, longer. The road will disappear beneath the weeds. He senses that death

is just getting colder, like thawed seeds sewn on frozen dirt.

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48

Lost to numbers

Arpine Konyalian Grenier

It may be worthwhile to have undone a people or system or

tell me at what cost does one consider such undulator

withstanding insertion devices

the freak has undone

the freak has undone the freaky in us

burqa only in the mind of the non-burqic

just some one person or thought

or lost kingdoms

a layer of graphite managing itself

a zero energy state of electricity

some nano carbon

I come from

graphene obscene

using the virtual to share narrative

a camoufleur in violation

longing

capillary and cell size are the same for the shrew and the blue whale

minimal neural substrates chosen for maximal output

fractal dimensions more than one but less than two

maximize exchange minimizing distance

here and there wild undertakings

no way back to how we were

lost to numbers

I am devoured whether I speak or not

constraints for metabolic reasons

walk the call dispossessed

the disclosed in and of me

the concealed

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Konyalian Grenier, Lost to numbers

narrative temporalizes lost kingdoms

geometric over topologic and yet

continuous to discontinuous

self regulating systems

a void brimming with possibilities

inside and outside put away

begettings

the same differently

for which reason either or came about

perception milking away perspective

begetting nauseates

access as you infer but also when the virtual detonates

one fills in the blanks so as to literally wander

convene to intervene said the master

loving is a field

the energy differential sings

supervenes

time everywhere among the living and the dead

because we are

an irreducible black facing an irreducible white

bottomless flurry at the sky and numbers

some subject some object some verb

the tug and twist neither reflexive nor hedonistic

a personal so what of face value

intensely inane

blocked and illuminated

blank aperture

leap for paradis

veracity

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50

Konyalian Grenier, Lost to numbers

structural emotionality after structural unavailability

sanitized and romanticized promise

beauty is truth it says

do I lament Turkish uses a Western alphabet now?

does it hurt to read Turkish in Armenian?

your exemplar for torture is Byzantine

mine is Ottoman

fear and love remain

all else is frost

do we pray with it or for it?

what I use as filler for lack accentuates my lack

memes are in the way and on the way

things that do not correspond may coincide

I will use all that comes my way

fake solutions too

meaning hides behind them

applauds

noise threatens

quit being Armenian for a day

lawless sequence of events have made the impossible possible

one reaches for an algorithm to restore normalcy

to thread narrative or capture sequence

comfort

formless taste in rapture

loveless cinnamon stick

subtracted lives lie

gaze is equivocal

the tear in the order of things feeds my sanity

pulls code

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51

Konyalian Grenier, Lost to numbers

log in plug in tune in for a moment over time

one curves as the linear allows

fantasy but not fullness

potash salivating after suspects

spherical and labile

I resist numbers

resist eyes

scraps of feeling or thought

I scrape narrative off thought

culture feeding nature

feeding culture

every hour greets 15 degrees of earth’s circumference

forgery furthers code-breakers

musician to writer unlike writer to musician

remember collapse created noise

heat followed neutral currents

exchanging charge

neutrino to muon

sterile neutrinos too and Q balls

accretion of matter perhaps

always neutral

milk straight from the cow not yet lost to its taste

spherical octagon what else

a dying star still visible

hoping the asymptotic carries gravity and strings

looking for beauty toying with charge

after parity violations not standards

not relativity

that is how we feel matter among the awry non-matter we come from

that is where hope and love have perched

and violations

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52

Konyalian Grenier, Lost to numbers

fact check dot org screams at me

embarrassment too

I choose the latter because

I want to touch you.

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53

Special Section:

Interview with

Arpine Konyalian Grenier

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54

Interview with Konyalian Grenier

Born in Beirut, Lebanon, Arpine Konyalian Grenier did not take residence in the United States

until after graduate school in “the sciences” (a nebulous label she applies to her education).

Grenier has never been someone to accept or use labels, especially not those for degrees and

honors, so she is often very quiet about her educational background. Knowing her and reading

her work, however, make it easy to see that Grenier is widely educated, both academically and

experientially. One of her many post-secondary degrees is an MFA from Bard; she has also

ardently studied and performed music, especially piano, for most of her life. Grenier is fluent in

many languages, although she says “[I] more and more try not to speak any other than English

(and if I can help it not to speak that either)” because she is “interested in what is behind

language.” Her poetry embodies that interest both towards language and identity.

Here, Konyalian Grenier talks with Kristin Abraham about writing and her new book, The

Concession Stand: Exaptation at the Margins (Otoliths, 2011). This is her fourth published

manuscript.

Spittoon: Do you see yourself as a science or art person—you left the constriction of scientific

research for poetry? What about science is unsatisfying?

Grenier: Perhaps I see myself as both or neither. Often I have problems with both. The other

day someone said to me, “I hear you are an author.” I almost fell as my body twisted

emphatically (we were dancing). A few months ago a notable poet (friend) said my writing was

“orphic.” A while back an editor said, “You write like your ass chews gum.” I responded by, “At

least I have an ass that can chew.” Then there is music you know.

But what I really want to say is that science, music and poetry and all seem to come from the

same place – experience – they actually validate each other. There will always be poetry out

there even if there were no life in the Universe.

Poetry is path or passage to knowing and not about knowledge as in data, more as in wisdom and

life and self acceptance. In The Concession Stand there is a line about my father who worked and

prayed all his life; in a way that is what I do.

I did not decide [to become a poet], I had to give in to the doing of poetry.

Spittoon: And what does that mean “the doing of poetry”?

Grenier: That has to do with lifestyle and a continuing need for self knowledge which one never

fully gets and yet one is always after. Writing a poem is similar to that I think, and I feel I will

never write the perfect poem but will continue to spend a lifetime trying to do just that.

Spittoon: Some poets have said that writing poetry is their “calling.” Do you believe it is yours?

Is it your “destiny” to write poetry?

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Interview with Konyalian Grenier

Grenier: I feel uncomfortable with words like “calling” and “destiny.” I started doing poetry for

practical reasons.

Spittoon: Practical reasons—interesting choice of words. Many people would say “there’s

nothing practical about poetry.” Could you elaborate?

Grenier: Life was difficult as a single parent. I would be doing research during the day and

music at night when studios were less expensive or free (in those days there were no computers).

But i always felt uncomfortable about leaving my child at day care and with baby sitters for such

lengths of time. One day I saw a poetry workshop notice in the paper and decided to attend it

thinking poetry would be a less labor-intensive venue for creative expression. In retrospect, was I

ever wrong about that.

But that is how I started doing poetry, and for several years thereafter I felt guilty having

abandoned music to poetry, until I read Maritain and Heidegger and Celan and and, you know.

Spittoon: Which other poets have influenced you?

Grenier: Often non poets or those who have passed on. I had a poor relationship with my father

until he passed. Then he was a light in the sky, shining – energy I cull from every so often.

Spittoon: Could you explain what you mean when you say “non-poets or those who have passed

on” are ones who have influenced you? It sounds like you’re calling non-poets “poets,” which

intrigues me.

Grenier: For me, there is poetry in living and non-living systems. Often I reach out to Simone

Weil (“in time her weaknesses became her strengths”) or Derrida or Kafka or Mahler or my great

grandmother with whom I used to have pretend conversations in Kessab – an idyllic place in

Syria where we spent our summers. I used to pretend I had come to visit her from the USA

where her daughter, my grandmother, lived.

Spittoon: I would love to hear more about Kessab, also about your manuscripts. I suspect you

have several. How have their theme and style evolved over time?

Grenier: Below are sections from The Concession Stand:

Why do I write you then? Oh but it is, how do I write you. No, why is first, the cello-

spastic chain pertaining de sire. De who? An earth spot longing for a frame. L’arbre et la

glycine (Celine Zins). Closure. I have no frames for you but the room is ready. Because I

saw space flutter by, charmed but also charming. Anomie created anomaly, I am not

indifferent to you. On the other hand, Aghd. I read you as I, dirt stained and twined of

light, write you, with no capital. For so and lo, for Mama. Where is Mama?

I can survive identity but not language. Hear me spread for St. Gregory's Daughter;

Whores From Samarkand; After The Trading; The Cables Set, The Light; Silk, Paper,

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Interview with Konyalian Grenier

Gunpowder; The Concession Stand; if it weren’t for; Part, Part Euphrates;Yeva Girk;

The Silent G. Manuscripts, inside out or outside in like measures of land bark at me for

the space between death and the dying. I crouch by, sleep, push, taper, pull. The

document. Because it is all a matter of scale, one, Yeva (Eve) related, conflagrates.

Another bridges or insures, random phase. How respectful we may seem next to the aged,

how generous. Still, the shores of Beirut would grab a ship named after Champollion, the

scholar who bared its hieroglyphs hundred some years ago. Bare. Not in years but

arpines.

The titles of some of the manuscripts are listed above. I continue to revise them. Often

revision creates diminishing returns. I have several versions of some.

Spittoon: How do you know when to stop? Or, when do you know a piece is “done,” ready for

print?

It takes a while, months, to come up with the first draft of a poem. At some point after I have

read the draft, I feel orgasmic, at the same time humbled and powerful inside. I feel I have

somehow conquered death. The poem is done. Now and then over the next few months I return

to it and adjust stuff here and there, nothing major. After the poem is published, I seem to totally

be disinterested in it.

Spittoon: In The Concession Stand, you write:

We are discussing yapmak (to make) versus etmek (to do). Nefret emtek (to hate) has been

interesting for me because in Turkish, nefret (hate) becomes a verb only with the

auxiliary, etmek. For the verb “to hate”, I prefer to utilize the auxiliary yapmak (have a

poem titled, nefret yapmak) because I feel hate does not come from a natural action, that

it takes effort to hate. So, “making” hate makes more sense than “doing” hate, I say.

I’ve noticed that you don’t often speak of poetry as “writing,” but as “doing.” Is this a choice

you’ve made because of the effort it takes to write poetry?

Grenier: I say “I do poetry” instead of “I am a poet” because the latter nauseates me for some

reason. Doing poetry is a lifestyle for me. The word “doing” feels mundane and everyday. I like

that. It comes from passion but also choice, feels less static and polished than being a poet.

Spittoon: In The Concession Stand, you say mart in Armenian is the human and tram (its anti-

gram) is money…Tell us more about that.

Grenier: The human is the only capital we truly possess. It would be wonderful if we could

teach that in early education, teach that true power is only power over one’s self, that hierarchy is

not related to human interaction nor to pleasure.

Spittoon: Of course, this makes me think of the English words “mart” (market) and “tram”

(streetcar or trolley). At times, while reading The Concession Stand, I get the impression that you

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Interview with Konyalian Grenier

subscribe to a Jungian type of “collective language/memory/unconscious,” from whence all

words can trace their origins. Is this so?

Grenier: Yes, yes. You have a point there. [In The Concession Stand, I mention] a connection

between the Celtic and the Armenian. No wonder my first name – Arpine – is a land measure in

Celtic, and ray of the sun, in Armenian.

Spittoon: On a related note, it seems you would say that poetry is the ultimate representation of

this collective unconscious; however, you also say “facing backward is the death of death, no

living survives it.” How do those seemingly contradictory ideals work together? Or, can they?

Grenier: One faces all directions, including those unknown. So, being inclusive and non-

hierarchical towards any and all directions keeps one fresh and open to experiencing the now –

all is vibration anyway – and direction is relative, so is stance.

Spittoon: What do you intend for your readers to experience when they read your work?

Grenier: When I write I feel I am both alone and with all of humanity. I do not think I have an

agenda. Perhaps intention develops as the work is developing. All in all, however, I write

because I am dumbfounded by life.

Spittoon: Do you find this ever hinders your ability to communicate in other media

(conversation, email, etc.)? Or do you consider poetry to be its own sphere of communication?

Grenier: I just completed a manuscript titled Tango Reel Territorial which comes from a long

standing desire for connection. So, to answer your question, I love all forms of communication

because that is about me and the “other”. The (singular and plural) “other” complete my world,

that altogether fascinating but silly world, silly only because of what we expect from it that it

does not (cannot) deliver.

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A beautiful song, just beautiful…

William JWilliam JWilliam JWilliam J. . . . FediganFediganFediganFedigan

Michael says he sings to cancer, says cancer sings to him.

Michael says cancer is a woman. Michael says she loves him, says he loves her.

Michael says cancer will kill him. He tells Jimmy:

-I sing to her, Jimmy. I sing a beautiful song, Jimmy, just beautiful…

-OK.

-She sings to me, Jimmy. She sings a beautiful song, Jimmy, just beautiful… Can

you hear the song?

-Sure.

-We love each other, Jimmy.

-OK.

-She will kill me, Jimmy.

-OK.

Michael and Jimmy on Ward B, basement.

Michael on Ward because he sings to cancer, hears cancer sing to him. Jimmy on

Ward because he wants to kill self. Jimmy tells ER doc he wants to kill self. Jimmy

gets 14 days on Ward B.

Jimmy likes Michael’s song. Beautiful song.

-My mother sang a beautiful song, Jimmy, just beautiful…I wish you could have

heard her…beautiful song, just beautiful…

-Delusional, doc says.

Doc puts Michael on different meds, heavy meds. Meds don’t work. Michael sings

beautiful song.

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Fedigan, A beautiful song…

-Tell him to shut the fuck up! Mouse says to Jimmy. Anger issues.

-He’s just singing to himself, Jimmy tells Mouse.

-Fuck you and fuck him! Mouse says. Anger issues. Assault with intent to kill.

-Any thoughts of suicide, Jimmy? doc asks.

-No. Feel good.

-Any thoughts of hurting yourself, Jimmy? doc asks.

-No. Feel good, Jimmy says.

Jimmy discharged. Jimmy out. Week later Mouse out. Jimmy sees Mouse in park.

Mouse looks for clean butts on ground. Finds clean butt with good tread left. Mouse

cleans it off, fires it up.

Jimmy asks about Michael.

-How’s Michael doing? Jimmy asks Mouse.

-The asshole’s dead, Mouse says.

-What?

-He’s dead.

-Cancer? Was it cancer?

-He hung himself with a bed sheet.

-What?

-He says over and over he hears his mother. She sings to me, he says, it’s a beautiful

song, he says, just beautiful… next thing doc and nurses running around. Code Blue,

crash cart…dead.

-Shit.

Jimmy walks away.

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Fedigan, A beautiful song…

Jimmy listens.

Jimmy listens for her voice.

Jimmy listens for her song. Beautiful song, just beautiful…

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Lilly Obscure Discusses Documentary Film

Dana Curtis

Triple bill: Café Flesh, Baghdad Café, Atomic Café --

and later, everyone will meet -- where else? --

at the café-- the new

triangulation of cinema food, cinema

lights. Meanwhile, Lilly eats

roast chicken stuffed with wild rice,

rosemary and dates. Provencal potatoes,

asparagus swimming in hollandaise. Later,

she's bent over a pink toilet

in front of a camera saying

cinéma vérité-- someone else

can patch this into an award-winning documentary,

some other director can give this meaning,

give this a truth beyond disease, beyond

the obvious influence of Buñuel, the American

Independents, her favorite screenwriter,

and now these worn velvet chairs, architecture

only seen in old theaters. And it's not so much hunger

as fatigue, not so much art

as hunger.

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Schrödinger’s Dream

Dana Curtis

the cats have come for you,

want to know why, want

a terminal explication de texte

you cannot find the equation

to quantify their journeys, cannot

and will not determine

sound and fur they do not

appreciate eternity

x + y = ∞

in this lead box, cyanide

is god (cyanide is always

god, invisible standing on the sun)

toss them in oxygen

they fall like stars on the carpet

marbles on the lawn

dust in the nucleus

jewels in the blades

they write your name

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Schrödinger on the Ex-planet

Dana Curtis

We've found snakes where there should be

cats, but meanwhile, the children

play on the train tracks. Deaf and

inevitable, it grinds

them into bullets and rings.

I always knew, always

entrenched the savory noise, dreamt

of jumping boxcars, seeing the light

in my eyes become some sort of

meaning. All children die on train tracks;

ever fascinating the invisible life.

Far be it for me to unleash

the sky--this time--entrapped and

who's on the floor. Do I, does anyone

remember the knives we used?

Think: we carved them to artifacts--

hear the whistle and don't feel

well. Everything is to

excess. Who doesn't matter so long as

bodies hit the ground,

all that's left.

Someone has triangulated

my location. I'll do

anything now: bury the bodies, skin

the snakes. The desert is so

astonishing at night. Let's talk about

this. Let's figure it out, entangle mathematics;

What shall we do without

meaning? The cusp ruined

the prophecies. I walked barefoot into

a burning night.

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Dear Wisconsin Falls—

Ryan Collins

I hear it’s easy to trip over the golden cobblestones

of your serpentine roads, lined with poppies & mending fences built

by red-headed strangers w/ calloused hands. Consult the tea leaves.

Still the telegram fog hovers between hills, bridges appear from thin

air & we drive off because how could we not. What I know & you do

not could fill a thousand earthenware jars with papyrus scrolls, secrets

hermetically sealed & buried beneath the holy prison, the one no one

soul ever escaped. Maybe the people who look down to catch them-

selves are the tourists, the Philistines come to remove the words from

your throat, to collapse your house of tarot cards. Light no candle for

strangers, less they start a blaze.

Mind the gaps,

Quad Cities

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Long Exit

Molly Brodak

A house is a house wren’s counterfeit life. Chains woo.

Made in a bivouac of smoke. We sat down in that weird city,

with our treats. The fetters were comfortable. The chains

made pretty noises, hoops whistled near our ears. Pale greens

forgot themselves all night. Greenness like the night’s organs.

Chains enact love instantly. Bodies are revolting without them.

All of this looks slow from afar, so we crept up to the fence.

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66

Nervous Spell

Molly Brodak

Empty air does not make a picture. The space could be dotted,

it wouldn’t change. What is the opposite of nostalgia, my sister asked,

polka dots? The flatness of survival? Its guilt? Or a field recording, fresh

off the bus? Paranoia is the instrument and director, then, reminding me

I only see myself through one part of myself, and my nerves are often

completely wrong about the world. A nerve can be pulled from a cadaver’s

arm like no problem. It says something has happened out there, look alive

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Groff’s Haplotype

Kirsten Beachy

Groff wished he had a leather folder with brass corners instead of the creased pages

he unfolded from his pocket. The mortician who spoke last month to the Ruritans

had carried a portfolio that matched his polished shoes. Groff wiped his palms on

his Dockers and tried to smooth his papers out against the podium. It was his first

time.

His father and grandfather had never stood up like this to speak, in front of folding

chairs full of neighbors and strangers. Probably no one in his whole line of fathers,

stretching back to Switzerland and, much earlier, to a corner of Egypt, had ever

tried this before. They’d rather lean on their shovels, gaze at the sky, and watch

birds, profoundly silent.

Why had he agreed to speak?

He had gotten carried away at the annual Ham and Turkey and Oyster dinner.

Betty Harlowe sat at his table, watching him cut triangles of ham and fork them

into his mouth. “The trouble with sitting near Groff,” she said, “is that you can

hardly get a word in edgewise.” She dug him in the ribs to let him know he was

included in the joke.

He smiled and went on forking, but later, when she mentioned that her brother had

Parkinson’s disease, Groff ventured, “You know they’re doing a genetic study on

that?”

Betty nodded encouragingly, so he continued. “They want 10,000 samples. Your

brother could send in a cheek swab. And here’s the best part…” Study participants

could get their Y-haplotypes analyzed for free, which meant that Betty’s brother

could learn the path that his ancestors took across the globe, using data encoded in

his genes to plot the map of their ancient travels. Groff got his own Y-haplotype

traced, but it had cost seventy-five dollars, plus postage to send the kit in…

Groff realized that Betty was staring, amused. He gulped down his whole glass of

water to wash the salt and embarrassment from his tongue.

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Beachy, Groff’s Haplotype

“You ought to give a talk on that,” Betty had said.

Betty was on the board. Betty was the board.

From her perch on a folding chair in the fourth row, Betty Harlowe watched Groff

clear his throat, his eyes dilating under his new haircut. After a long pause, he

started.

“You and your father and your father’s father, all share the same Y chromosome.

Tonight, I’m going to talk about how—how researchers use tiny differences on that

chromosome to see where your forefathers came from.” Betty nodded approvingly.

He’d only stumbled once.

“For instance, the fathers of men with the L variation come from a male ancestor

who lived in the Indus Valley, which today we call Afghanistan.” In the front row,

Lana Reese thrust her hand into the air, but Groff’s eyes were locked to his papers.

His fingers were trembling.

“And men with the E variant—”

Lana waved her hand and then interrupted. “What about the mothers?”

Groff jumped, stared into the crowd, vibrating.

And then he fled.

His papers sloughed off the podium like sycamore bark. Betty sighed and hefted

herself to her feet. “We’ll have the coffee ready in five minutes. Meanwhile, are

there any announcements?”

*

Down by the bridge, Groff leaned his forehead against the railing, filling his lungs

with cool night air. A honeysuckle breeze soothed his newly-shorn neck. Soon he

would go back and get his car. Soon, before everyone came out to the parking lot.

But for now he stared gratefully down into the moonlit water, communing with his

silent ancestors.

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Contributors

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Wayne Lee Thomas teaches creative writing at a small college in northeast

Tennessee. He is editor of The Tusculum Review.

Ann Stewart is currently a PhD candidate in creative writing with a specialty in

fiction at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, where she also teaches creative

writing and introductory literature. She is the newly appointed editor-in-chief at

UWM’s literary journal, Cream City Review, and has published both fiction

and poetry in Ellipsis, Untamed Ink, At Length, and other journals.

Nate Pritts is the author of four books of poems - most recently Big Bright

Sun (BlazeVOX) & The Wonderfull Yeare (Cooper Dillon Books). His fifth, Sweet

Nothing, is forthcoming from Lowbrow Press in late 2011. He is the founder &

principal editor of H_NGM_N & H_NGM_N BKS. Find him online at

www.natepritts.com.

Sara Pritchard is the author of Crackpots (a novel in stories), which was a NY

Times Notable Book of the Year, and the linked-story collection, Lately. Her new

collection of stories, Help Wanted: Female, is forthcoming from Etruscan Press in

2012.

Rich Murphy’s credits include the 2008 Gival Press Poetry Award for Voyeur; a

first book, The Apple in the Monkey Tree. His website is

http://richink.wordpress.com/about/.

Apart from obsessing over food and wine as editor of Connotation Press’ From Plate

to Palate and on her blog The Everyday Palate, Amanda McGuire’s poems and

reviews have appeared in such places as Noon: Journal of the Short Poem, The

Cream City Review, Fifth Wednesday, Literary Magazine Review and So To Speak.

She teaches at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio.

Kristi Maxwell is the author of Realm Sixty-four and Hush Sessions, and her next

book, Re-, will be brought into the world by Ahsahta Press in 2012. She lives in

Tucson with a poet and two cats.

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RJ Ingram is a BFA from Bowling Green State University. He works on the poetry

staff of Mid American Review and is a co-editor in chief of Prairie Margins.

Kyle Hemmings is the author of three chapbooks of poetry/prose: Avenue C (Scars

Publications), Fuzzy Logic (Punkin Press), and Amsterdam & Other Broken

Love Songs (Flutter Press). He blogs at http://upatberggasse19.blogspot.com/.

William Haas lives in Portland, Oregon, and teaches writing at Western Oregon

University. His work has appeared in River Teeth, Dark Mountain, Appalachian

Heritage, and elsewhere.

Arpine Konyalian Grenier’s poetry and translations have appeared in numerous

publications including How2, Columbia Poetry Review, The Iowa Review, Fence,

Verse and Big Bridge. Her latest is a collection of hybrid text titled, The Concession

Stand: Exaptation at the Margins (Otoliths).

William J Fedigan writes about who he is, who he knows, what he knows, and

where he’s been. He can be contacted at Wfedigan@aol.com.

Dana Curtis is the author of Camera Stellata (CW Books) and The Body's

Response to Famine (Pavement Saw Press). She has also published several

chapbooks: the most recent of which is Antiviole (Pudding House Press). She is the

Editor-in-Chief of Elixir Press .

Ryan Collins is the author of a chapbook, Complicated Weather. Recent work has

appeared in Third Coast, Sentence and Greatcoat. He lives in Rock Island, Illinois.

Email: ryancollins3@yahoo.com

Molly Brodak is from Michigan and currently lives in Georgia. Her poems have

appeared recently in the Collagist, Field, Kenyon Review, Bateau, and she is the

author of the chapbook Instructions for a Painting (Greentower, 2007) and the book

A Little Middle of the Night (U of Iowa Press, 2010).

Kirsten Eve Beachy is an assistant professor of English at Eastern Mennonite

University. She is editor of an anthology of Mennonite writing and contributing

editor to The Tusculum Review.