WAR, AND AFTER

JOEL CHACE

B L A Z E V O X [ B O O K S ] Buffalo, New York

War, and After by Joel Chace Copyright © 2016 Published by BlazeVOX [books] All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without the publisher’s written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews. Printed in the United States of America Interior design, cover art and typesetting by Geoffrey Gatza First Edition ISBN: 978-1-60964-230-3 Library of Congress Control Number: 2015954034 BlazeVOX [books] 131 Euclid Ave Kenmore, NY 14217 Editor@blazevox.org

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  13

Sharpsburg

After using a hammer to smash open the desk’s jammed roll-top, they found papers covered with sentences and the skeleton of a bat. Between physical fear of going forward, and moral fear of going back, there is a predicament of exceptional awkwardness from which a hidden ground-hole would be a wonderfully welcome outlet. As our grandfather’s farm was being auctioned off, we sat high up in the dark haymow, trying to comfort his old barn dog. Syntax can be as lonely as anything you’ll ever see. Tiny saints are bits of time. Prosecution’s witness claimed that the teacher had old money; however, the statement “He sinned badly” brought a perplexed expression to the courtroom artist’s face. “On the floor,” she said; “that’s a sign of true passion.” Mental strain was so great that I saw at that moment a singular effect mentioned, I think, in Goethe’s life on a similar occasion—the whole landscape for an instant turned slightly red. Meaningless phrases. Not ice. Never in my life have I spoken ironically. Crafting sentences in the mind—forming, revising, rehearsing to perfection—is a beneficial employment; or can be—if that mind is right. A silence fell on every one at once, for each felt that the momentous 'now' had come. You won’t believe this—not yet—but we have your best interests at heart. Pretty high up in his career. From late morning to early afternoon, the lace maker worked intently, in a swath of light on a curb; only when a small cloud finally obscured the sun, did she pull back her hands, rest them on her thighs, and look up from her creation.

 14

His only comment after watching the film was, “Did they have to put in that human hot-dog guy?” Thought she was black because of her name. Carefully, precisely, he pushed the book into its place on the shelf and had no signal that everything would change before he again touched its leather binding. Goddamn it, sir, unhand her immediately! Now and then a bullet from them cut the air over our heads, but generally they were reserving their fire for that better show which they knew they would get in a few minutes. Your rope is our hope. He tried to explain what his mother meant, but the doctor told him to shut up; there was no way he could translate her suffering. During that hour, while bullets snipped leaves from a young locust tree growing at an edge of the hollow and powdered us with fragments, we had time to speculate on many things. Huge problems with the petard. Night started at the end of creek water. His handwriting is neat and legible, he spells accurately, his observations are hardly ever emotional, and he rarely mentions religion. I would like to think that he is part of the burial party in that photograph. There were a great many left unburied, and where they were exposed to the sun they were as black as darkies. I will here correct an effort made on page 13. Butterfly or penguin? Manifestly, there’s a point to bad taste. She could feel it coming, so she kept her composure when—right in the middle of the viewing—he said, “What do you think’s going to happen?” He runs the place, on paper, at least. Wrenching an answer out of that set of variables. I avoid clichés like the plague. He was officially released about three weeks later, which meant that, as he says it, "I was once again, legally and technically, food for powder."

  15

Puts a person to a point, inside. Soak in water, and hold the dread. Just as we started, I saw, with a little shock, a line-officer take out his watch, as though the affair beyond the creek were a business appointment which he was going to keep. Nothing as dead as a gray cat dead in gray rain. He takes a couple of steps but stops abruptly when he notices a piece of paper that has been placed beside the food tray, on a small table, which is situated slightly to right of center stage. I mean, how can you be here? She thought that she’d made it through unscathed, but when the video of his solo began, she felt tears flowing down her cheeks. Opposite is obvious, and well beyond. She wondered what had happened to her grass. This narrowed the field and brought us to consider that work before us more attentively. Again and again, hour after hour, by charges and counter-charges, this portion of the field was lost and recovered, until the green corn that grew upon it looked as if it had been struck by a storm of bloody hail. While photographing those Nazi bunkers, she must have disturbed a gulls’ nest; swooping at her repeatedly, one bird smeared her hair and camera lens with feces. Very soon, you and I will meet, face to face. How they came into the ark. Who else’s dad fished in a suit coat and tie? She couldn’t look her sister in the face. In order to make it more readable, I added periods where they seemed reasonable, and the next word was capitalized as if it were the beginning of a new sentence. Most of the dead are now buried, but large numbers of horses still remain and pollute the air. Wholesaler’s comeuppance. That city kicked our ass. She clutched her revolver, cleared her throat loudly, and jostled his leg with her foot. But there aren’t always doors.

 16

It was written in a composition booklet similar to those blue exam booklets used today for college essays, measuring approximately 8-1/2 by 6-3/4 inches, bound by thread that had been broken or rotted, and some pages were out of order. What you’ve shined. Cold and wet and exposure use up an old man, when a young one gets over anything after a few hours of sleep and a good breakfast. Kate Smith’s subtle rendition. Human nature was on the rack, and there burst forth from it the most vehement, terrible swearing ever heard. The crank nerved it all up. He says “It Is What It Is” one more time, I’m gonna rip out his fucking vocal chords. She dared him to diagram it. Though unwilling to shear such offensive twists of nearly pubic grit from his jaw, he also seemed unable to fully grow it out to at least a thickness that would not serve as an embarrassment to his Division and as an affront in the eyes of the Lord Almighty. Cartoon of a wind-blasted boulder. Information trickled in throughout that evening but stopped altogether once night became a thick smear of insects. Unconscionable number of tans. But one of my officers long afterward assured me that he could have walked across the entire line on dead bodies of my men. Their next project will be defining the line between confusion and near confusion. Intransitive bird. Her brilliance led to all those unparalleled constructions. Suddenly a stir beginning far upon the right, and running like a wave along the line, brought our regiment to its feet. That diarist almost always eschewed the use of periods to end sentences. It is clear that he has been rendered unconscious, probably by drugs, and that this is his first “coming to” since the end of the last scene. Gabbing actually accomplished a great deal. Not ice. And for my next trick, I’m going to make syntax appear right before your eyes.

  17

That prospect was far from encouraging, but an order came to get ready for the attempt; our knapsacks were left on the ground behind us. He was forced to invent an entirely new pattern of abuse. In and of itself, the speech was rather disappointing, though we’d glued ourselves to its allusions. To painstakingly split an infinitive. Whatever happened in that room would have remained a mystery if it hadn’t occurred to us simply to ask. “Not today, sweetie,” she said with great difficulty to her child; she barely lifted her head off the chaise, then added, “Please.” A creek that ran red with blood. Meaningless phrase: no such thing. As soon as he stepped out of the tent, he realized how drunk he had become; he thought of himself as Elastic Man, hurling off in several different directions. During her final years, she suffered under an illusion that someone had invented a remedy for rascals. As we stood looking upon that brilliant pageant, I thought, if I did not say, "What a pity to spoil with bullets such a scene of martial beauty!" What we’ve done has mostly accumulated. Stitch’s itch refreshed. The longer you stay in bed, the more you stretch time. Here, recourse was had to strategy. When we asked him where the battleground was, he said, "You are on it now.” In all of her great paintings, she named things. Sign that reads: Please Help—Need More Signs—This Is My Last One! Untutored failure. We thought we heard water running though it actually was someone moving a table. This one raves about the main points, while that one keeps the records. The wounded gray-haired hero called out: "My boy is here dead, and I shall go soon; but it is all right." He claimed he was rebuilding a drum.

 18

Glorious thought that there are still some of Christ’s faithful servants remaining, who are privileged, and have the spirit to meet and worship Him, even upon a field of battle; but mail goes in a few minutes, and I must close. The escapee came to a bad end in the south, making a face and then collapsing. When I get back into this again, I’m going to commit. Habits don't wear well on them. Reads, and sticks to it. We were getting ready now for a charge proper, but were still lying on our faces. Just prior to summer recess, they managed to ram through the bill on timeless average. Begins to weep. He lies motionless for a few seconds, then brings one or both hands up to his eyes and his forehead. Being clear is. Fixing all her students with her good eye, she continued, “But never, ever begin a sentence with ‘Because’!” The plant was a hassle. That was fresh anxiety—the scales were turning perhaps, but which way? With precision of step and perfect alignment of a holiday parade, this magnificent array moved to charge, every step keeping time to tapping of a deep-sounding drum. What stars do in the field. O.K., Mister Blister. Her embarrassment was enveloped in rising noise, but she ducked, anyway. I’ll come back when you have a right retrospect on this matter. If we can get anything to eat, or anything to sleep on except open ground; or under, save sky; if we can see a house that is not riddled with shot & shell, or left tenantless through terror; or if we can get a glimpse of a woman who does not exceed the requirements for sweepers in College, we think we are in Paradise. Found in a broken chair. For the second performance in a row, he bounced onstage without wearing his codpiece. Bank tellers and small types all around.

  19

All citizens have deserted their homes, but the male portion are doing good service in carrying off wounded with their spring wagons. Under oath, she testified that she owned that direction. Ripe as a flowering shrub. Something had plastered an aww-shucks look all over his mug. They changed the prop into something half-human but with a better sound. I see again, as I saw it then in a flash, a man just in front of me drop his musket and throw up his hands, stung into vigorous swearing by a bullet behind his ear. On each side of an article. The priest persevered, telling her that she looked striking in black. It must have been true, for correspondents said so, and editors confirmed it. Sideways drift showing a general path. First you draw; then you play; then you throw your card away. She said, “My name feels so different these days!” Only a quitter does. Those used to be worn by old poets. I remember looking behind and seeing an officer riding diagonally across the field—a most inviting target—instinctively bending his head down over his horse's neck, as though he were riding through driving rain. They thought it was a bridge, but it turned out to be a baby. He told the dentist just to forget it. The sunburned woman had long, powerful arms, and wore an enticing perfume. Many men fell going up that hill, but it seemed to be all over in a moment, and I found myself passing a hollow where a dozen wounded men lay—among them our sergeant-major, who was calling me to come down. Just making the bread, as they say. But when you came to hunt for this particular itch, it was always the next regiment that had it. Dispatching unholy sounds. Although often confused and sick in mind, her surpassing intelligence can shine through.

 20

I fell forward and lay unconscious with my face in my cap; and it would seem that I might have been smothered by blood running into my cap from this last wound but for an act of some enemy soldier, who, as if to save my life, had at a previous hour during battle, shot a hole through the cap, which let the blood out. Called that because it lessens each day. Soon after she landed and rolled in, she landed the role. Get off my ladder. With his hand on the doorknob to his wife’s office, he paused, realizing that the news he bore would condemn her, also, to searing anguish. Poison to a religious man. You have to see to look around. Up to that point, she had lived terrified of the New Testament’s final book, afraid even to pronounce its name. He thought, as he gazed at the county jail’s grimy façade, how strange it was that in a cell somewhere in there was a guy who used to ride the school bus with him. The sun had not yet fully risen and was already horrid such that it beat down like an angry gentleman’s hat on all necks of the assembled Division. “That’s not funny!” the child screamed at her imaginary friend. Showing in a minuet their full position lying in 2 Deep Cut roads in form of a perfect L. I was wrong when I wrote. She waded into the river, up to her thighs, and felt current tugging her dress tightly against her buttocks. He found out later that those four men had followed him all night and would have beaten him to kill if he’d pulled his car over even for a second. Oh, Moon, turn blue. Nothing succeeds like success in military events, and nothing fails like failure. Arrondissement, her favorite word to see and say. I found his remains and marked his grave. Master was disturbed by matters of course. Flickering red lights.

  21

You can make soup out of it. Who could come out safe to tell their tale. There are three 2’s in the English language, but only one thew. In coolness of the cement-floored garage, the little girl stood in just her underwear and high heels, helping her grandmother shuck corn. A raised desk in an old church, with the Lamb set out on it. At that same instant, a youth, not over fifteen, who had his arm torn by a shell or ball, came up holding his bleeding member in his other hand. Only when you pay for them on time. Not quite, if it makes you feel any better! She pocketed two tiny scented candles: the only time in her entire life that she ever stole. Right after their concluding seminar, the professor pulled that student aside and said, “When I think of what you’ve contributed to this class, the image that keeps coming to mind is a single turd floating in a toilet bowl.” People, reputedly. Soldiers were given water and bread by handkerchief-waving ladies, who stood at their gates. Wages are their opposite. It was an awful place to put a battery: in front of two haystacks, and with its flank within easy musket length of the enemy. “Every single fucking day,” she whispers. We killed all their first line; their next line came out of the woods just as we reloaded, and they too were laid like the rest. Our organization goes to work at night. He awoke in misty early-morning light, with his head resting on a fresh cow-patty. I find that secondary only to good health and provisioning of an army, careful grooming of facial hair is the most potent calmative that could ever be prescribed for dyspeptic morale. The oracle was finally replaced. Must be changed to make them charming.

 22

Classic betrayer. Petite and entirely bald, the woman sat quietly, alone in mid-May sunlight; she was naked, each article of her clothing folded and placed in a pile beside her on the bench. Don’t make your problem my problem, boy. There certainly is a point to wild mice and crazy noons. I fear you have not a high idea of my position. Liking to fiddle around with large things. While leading his regiment, he had fifteen balls shot through his hat, beard, and uniform, but he emerged from battle without a wound. All the inside cottage windows had been gnawed by a squirrel, which they found curled up dead on a tri-cornered pillow in a back bedroom. Those photographs were the first, on any significant scale, of that sort of thing. Where they fell. Calculating messages caused great frustration; they didn’t sink in, he complained, because there weren’t enough stoppages of time. Seems she existed twice. Stragglers come in from the field, some wounded, some tenderly escorting comrades who are wounded; it generally takes two or three to perform this service for one man, and all hands wear a gloomy countenance and limp. The green bocce ball nestled right up against the pill. He crept to its very edge, then looked far down into fjord waters. You have to choose to get sort of dead around it. My rubber blanket is not quite big enough to accommodate ever so sweet and welcoming a guest on rough hill sides, or in drenching valleys that constitute my changing homes. Inexplicably shallow. Even out on the river it was so steamy hot that the barge poleman had to wipe his face with a huge red handkerchief. Impacted. A victory is fine for lads, yes, but it will fade in their thoughts as quickly as a moon courses through its cycles. Used to little account.

  23

Does not your innocent little head imagine that I could get a photograph taken here? My stars! Shielding his eyes for several seconds. Sensing that she would emerge transformed, she wandered through the hall filled with sculptures. His men did not all behave well at first, but they had a hard fight of it and lost tremendously. This fever chart of public opinion. Batteries usually are in this condition. She was shoved from the roof of the toy factory, which had been abandoned for decades. If you have an opportunity, please send me 2 pairs of my blue woolen socks; I like them rather better than Government issue. Bomb collects sentences. Not ice. Our batteries are playing on them, which hurries their time, so that they begin to show signs of unsteadiness. Expressed by newspapers, letters and diaries kept by ordinary people. The effect was appalling. If you wait for an auspicious opportunity, you may never score. After a bit of this groping, the actor holds his stomach, then head, then half-collapses from a sitting position, back onto his bed. There were no troops at that point to keep the line, and things looked squalley and doubtful. Modest maidens. This land lies as they changed it. Effluvia arising from conditions of these grounds is intolerable, quite enough to make a person in perfect health sick, and how men can recover in such a place is a mystery to me. A sign, soft music. “Not my same old town anymore,” she thought. This, perhaps, was not literally true; but the statement did not greatly exaggerate such a shocking slaughter. They had never seen one before, but there it was, sitting in an enormous nest high up in the Spanish bell tower. “Oh, you mean the libretto,” he sneered. Free high-jinks.

 24

She always grabs up the paper, greedily. It would slit some eyeballs. As they walked through the hay field and moved slowly away from their house, the older boy put his arm around his little brother’s shoulder, then explained that what had just happened back on the porch meant that their grandfather was now dead. Deranged slave. Shot and shell went fluttering over our heads like partridges for sound. When I caught up to them, they were as lively as a set of crickets. In that infinite economy of the human race’s advance, it may have been worth what it cost. Where that original book is, if he did indeed recopy the original, remains a mystery as does so much surrounding this man. All supplies they took away was pillage and extortion. Contemporary Mesopotamia. Fine old man, that was the last I ever saw of him, as he was shot a few moments after. She virtually spat in the nun’s face as she screamed that she would not accept an average grade. His white-tipped cane tap, tap, tapping, he stopped at the crossing, placed his hand on a tiny woman’s head, and remarked, “Very sorry, but aren’t you usually a garbage can?” Gunmen in movies. Ordinary troops. She gave them the definition of denouement, then began sobbing. He trimmed all but his right thumb’s fingernail, which—during intercourse—he would press along her flank until she came. A large number have professed faith in Christ, while many others are deeply concerned on accounts of sin; today Brother Willis baptized fourteen, seven of whom are from his regiment. Single, bare light bulb, hanging from a ceiling cord. No one there wanted to meet her once it was known that she had majored in languages.