250 feet up
the massive crown
of one of the oldest redwoods
in the park bristles proudly
in the midday sun.

Up on the Hillside Trail
barely visible among the gangly saplings
and shrubs stands a buck, antlers agape,
completely unflapped
by us trekking noisily along below.

The trail is so steep in spots
that one misstep and you would go
crashing down
into the stream far below.

Stretching up from alongside the trail
the famous 225-foot-tall “walk-through” tree
crashed to the ground
back in December 1971,
the forest growing in filling
the shadowless space all around.

There hasn’t been a major fire here
in 200 years although
giant redwoods survive them just fine
due to their thick impenetrable bark hides,
leaving behind blackened fire caves
in their trunks as reminders
of their tenacity, resilience, and eternity.

But for me the most awesome aspect
of this ethereal experience
is simply walking along behind my wife,
following along in her precious path
mesmerized as always
by the motion of her movements moving
with perfect perfection
especially accentuated today
by the mystical majesty of these ancient woods
improved by the mere pristine presence
of the most beautiful woman ever
to grace its trails.

Pythons

Busy day of San Francisco sightseeing:
riding the Muni Metro N-Train,
transferring to the F-Line Streetcar,
walking up Broadway to Columbus
and into the famous City Lights Bookstore
(I actually met Lawrence Ferlinghetti
when I was here 14 years ago,
he signed a couple of his books for me),
then across the street
to the Beat Museum (closed, damn).

Then we continued climbing the steep hills
rising like pythons up to Mason Street
to the Cable Car Museum:
amazing watching these huge
whirring spinning wheels still powering
ancient cable cars like they did 130 years ago.
Outside, one of the cable cars
becomes stuck at the corner
so we climb on, pay our $5,
sit down as it gets push-started
and we ride the fattened coils
of the giant undulating python hills
back down to the bottom
where we enjoy a lovely lunch
at the Boudin Cafe (as I waited for
my pain pills to kick in)
then took the N-Train back to Dave’s.

“I need to lie down,” she said,
her eyelids heavy as hens.
When I went in later to check on her
she was sprawled out languidly
across the bed on her tummy,
one leg bent at the knee,
one arm stretched out above her head
like she’s picking apples off a tree.

The long, strong, soft, pure landscape
of her lush body lying content
as a python sleeping in the sun,
is the most beautiful, fascinating, enticing thing
I’ve ever seen in my entire life.

I almost call him Larry

Did I tell you I met Lawrence Ferlinghetti?
No of course I didn’t tell you. Every July I’m
in San Francisco on business and
always make the pilgrimage
over to City Lights Books and this
time I see a rather oldish gent
at a desk in an office so I
stick my head in the doorway and say,
“Excuse me but are you Lawrence?”
(I almost call him Larry.)
And it is him, so he signs a couple
books for me, says to make
myself at home; I tell him I’m
reading his biography but he seems
uninterested in that, always
been a rather un-egotistical man I think.
Well anyway, it was great
meeting him, he’s over 80 you know.

Brussels, Amsterdam, Paris, and the stars in the sky

“This new Inn you’re taking me to
sounds nice, at least in the guidebooks.”
“Yes, it’s right in the middle of things,
so pretty and full most of the time.
I’m sure it will be fine.”

I’m not terribly fussy about hotels and inns,
as long as you can get some sleep
it’s fine with me. She, on the other hand . . .
“Remember that one you took me to
in Belgium, outside of Brussels,
that ugly room above the bar?”
she glances over at me.
“How could I forget that one?
You wouldn’t even sit down in that room.”

“And in Amsterdam, I still think that
was a brothel, with the red light blinking
in the window.”
“Oh yeah, you didn’t sit down in that room either.”

“And in Paris, that scary place
on that dark, dingy street in the Arab section.”
“At least in that room I rubbed your feet –
remember those blisters you had
from us walking all day long –
before getting you out of there.”

“And remember in . . .”
“OK, OK, I get the picture.
But at least I quickly moved us
to a new and better place each time
as soon as I saw you were uncomfortable,
as soon as I saw you couldn’t even sit down.”

She smiles at me and takes my arm
and I realize that if need be I’d try to move
the Earth and the Moon and the stars in the sky
for this woman or die trying.

Neal Cassady

virtually lived in a car,
was happiest driving.
I don’t know how many trips
he made back and forth,
up and down
across the country,
down to Mexico,
up into New England,
over to California, Texas, Colorado.
100 mph. 110 mph.
money for gas and cigarettes,
beer and cheap wine
taking precedence over
everything else.
picking-up hitch-hikers
for a few bucks,
for some colorful conversation.
driving even when exhausted.
or hungry, or lost, or lonely.
the Road was his Home.
all that primal, raw,
uncultivated energy directed
who-knows-where who-knows-why
as long as it was
on the Road.

Some Enchanted Evening

What has become of me
I’m wondering, flying 38,000 feet
over the Atlantic, a couple hours out
from Boston, but closer to home
and my wife, listening to
“Some Enchanted Evening”
on my airplane headphones.
Years ago I certainly would
have chosen some wailing guitar
performances from the Rock Legends
track. But today . . . well here I am
listening to “Younger Than Springtime
Are You,” fighting back the tears,
thinking of my wife
and how young and sweet and beautiful
she still is to me
and always will be.

Adventure

I’m crowding her on this airplane, she’s at the window, I’m in the middle seat, leaning into her space, trying, I suppose to get closer to her, to my beautiful wife. She takes my hand, that’s such a nice thing. I am always so happy when she takes my hand. But she’s not terribly interested in talking with me, chides me over everything I say. I’m making small talk, trying to pass the time, trying not to worry about missing our connecting flight. “There’s nothing to do about it anyway. I try not to worry about things I can’t control. Look at it as an adventure,” she chirps and squeezes my hand. And I think how our lives together have been an adventure, such an incredible adventure for me, being in her life, part of her life, still amazed that she is mine. I still can’t figure, when I think back on it, why she ever acquiesced to be mine, to spend her life with me.

“Do you remember when you first decided you wanted to spend your life with me?” I ask. She answers me right away. She always answers me right away when I ask her silly questions like this.

“Oh no, that was such a long time ago.”

“I remember when I knew I wanted you to be with me forever.”

She looks at me blankly, thinking no doubt, oh here we go again.

“I knew on our very first date, when I asked you to go steady with me. I knew it from the moment that we met that I had to make you mine.”

She smiles. She humors me with a shallow smile, trying to turn back to her magazine. She doesn’t appreciate my curiosity about the past.

But I continue. “You first told me, in a letter anyway, that you wanted to marry me when we were only seniors in high school. I wonder if that counts as a commitment. I mean, perhaps people who date seriously talk about getting married now and then, without having truly made up their minds. Sort of comes with the dating territory. Probably seems like a good thing at the time, don’t you think?”

She smiles at me again, a smile Dante could have written 100 cantos about or Shakespeare a dozen sonnets. “That was such a long time ago,” she repeats and turns back to her magazine, letting my hand go.

Landscape

I survey your divine form, the landscape of you
from across the room, beginning
at your head, your hair so soft and brown,
moving to your shining silhouette,
your perfect nose and ever-sweet lips,
and chin and ears and white neck,
then continue flowing over your shoulders,
off down your arms to your delicate fingers –
typing, writing, pointing, touching me –
my fingers, my hands, and face,
my arms and chest, my head and heart.

Then I return to continue my journey
down over your chest to your luscious hips,
that sway like ships moored beneath the coming storm,
then to your thighs I know so well,
and calves and ankles ending at your pretty little feet.
Yes, the landscape of Patti enthralls me so,
I should have been a geologist or an explorer.

Gypsy Daughter Press

“The evil! That’s just a phrase! Who knows what is evil and what is good? It’s just a question of personal preferences. You’re worried about your own skin – that’s the truth of the matter, but you’ll never become a rhinoceros, really you won’t…you haven’t got the vocation”
-IONESCO

I knew a child who lived on the wild side and painted pictures with no borders between his phenomenal and spirit worlds. His only rule was the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

He then encountered an elementary school teacher who moonlighted as a free soul bounty hunter. She would break his spirit and prove that his indigo wisdom and difficulty decoding language was waywardness. By the end of grade one, the boy was drawing heavy lines around every character; this is the church, this is the steeple…

His God nearly drowned in conformity. In a confluent world, that child might still be riding the river.

It is the river riders, those who think and learn differently, who take us beyond the boundaries of human knowledge and expectation. In these times, when the world is facing unprecedented social and environmental challenges, climate change, overpopulation, famine, the death of the ocean and the atmosphere, it is the lateral thinkers, problem solvers and risk takers, to whom possible solutions to the problems we have created will occur.

In short, every heretic poet reconfiguring words and numbers, and seeing the messianic light in a punk haircut, could be the new Galileo. We never know where the answers are found; and every door that is closed is a closed door.

HALO SHE SAYS

Don’t go down, the bluesman sings
in a weary voice, to Fannin Street
while the wise child in the back seat
claps her hands to the music and
says bye bye to the rear view mirror,
since she knows she’s the one who’s
moving forward. You’ll be lost and never
found. You can never turn around.

We’ve come to the stop light. The music
stops and the radio tells us the world
is convulsing. Wise child knows more
than she can say, words like war, flood,
earthquake, and volcanic eruption.
She understands. I turn off the news
and return to the song, I wished I’d
listened to the words you said, startling
the punk kid at the bus stop who looks
up from his book and raises his hand,
two fingers, just as the sun jumps out
of a cloud and lights up his orange Mohawk.
Halo, she says as the light turns green.

In the fifty years that have followed the 1950’s, when conformity defined the change from American isolation to American economic imperialism, we have experienced radical social transformations.

During the Cold War, the world was polarized between communism, one manifestation of the principles of the social gospel, and capitalism, Darwinian economics. America, with its adversarial history of witch-hunts, reacted by persecuting artists who challenged the status quo.

The Cuban Revolution, a reaction to American imperialism in Central America, was inspired by poetry and liberation theology, whose premise is reversal of unjust social, political and economic conditions. Fidel Castro, who has used a poet’s command of language to lead, elevated the revolutionary poet Jose Marti to the status of icon in the newly formed apparently non-theistic society.

Castro, educated by Jesuits, explains the ethic that survives the death of God, the demise of a hierarchical religious orthodoxy which has little to do with the teachings of Christ, by all accounts a political activist. Indeed, the meaning of Messiah in Hebrew is “leader of the people.”

In My Life, his autobiographical interviews with Ignacio Ramonet, Castro described Marti’s “profound humanism,” a philosophy expressed in “arroyos,” rivers of words based on Christian ethics. “With the teachings of Christ, “he says, “you can formulate a radical socialist program, whether you are a believer or not.”

This is one interpretation. There are others. Literal interpretation of the Bible is unquestioning acceptance of the premises of historical poets from the Judaic culture where religious axioms are constantly challenged in critical discourse.

George Bush stood on an inflexible steel platform of Christian evangelism to win the American presidency and then used it as a weapon to cudgel belief systems in the so-called axis of evil that did not fit his narrow definition of goodness.

Cuba, whose humanitarian outreach, medical swat teams sent all over the world in times of crisis, even extended to victims of 9/11, was judged by the Strangelove constituency to be in that axis.

The last time I was in Cuba, I gave some of my books to the National Library. I was told that the convalescent Castro was looking forward to reading my book about Al Purdy. The two men who’d met during the Sixties had music, essential to the polyphonic poet, and a Judeo-Christian ethic in common.

Purdy, the son of an evangelical widow, left home, but he still saw the world through a window framed by her belief system.

President Chavez’s self–description, “…not from the standpoint of religion but from the standpoint of social vision, I declare that I am a Christian” describes the moral structure that informed Purdy’s world view. In “Hombre” he wrote:

Guevera is dead now and whether the world
is any closer to freedom because
of Che’s enormous dream is not to be known

“Shoeshine Boys on the Avenida Juarez” is Purdy’s contemporary parable of the loaves and fishes.

In the meantime I get my shoes shined
(pay 1 peso and 30 centavos-9 ½ cents).
Then I get my shoes shined again
by the next “boy” on the Avenida Juarez.
And the first boy is kinda mad.
He thinks I think he didn’t do a good job.
The third shoeshine boy is middle aged,
with fat cheeks and a moustache.
He seems to think I am very funny.
His moustache quivers and he laughs at me.
Looking back I see the first and second boys
think I am nuts too; but they grin.
And when I get my twentieth shine,
far away down the Avenida Juarez
past Alameda park all the way to Sanborn’s
House of Tiles, I see the brown shoeshine
boys grinning. But my face is serious
for I’ve badly needed all twenty shines.

A CIA man lurks twenty feet behind him, but that only feeds the poet’s antithetical enthusiasm for benevolent micro-business.

That enthusiasm needs to be resurrected, like the metaphorical Easter bunny with his baskets of fertilized eggs, if we are to survive our excesses.

Poet and theologian Tim Lilburn remembers the Purdy times “shaped by social activism that grew out of liberation theology. In the Sixties and Seventies the spirit of the social gospel was dominant, and even if people weren’t reading liberation theology and engaging in social action they were caught up in the spirit.”

But the times they were a changing.

“There will never be another like him,” they say about Purdy and it is too easy to assume that it was the land that had changed. What they really mean is that the poet is not a man for our time, when his free-wheeling, affirmative lyricism would be eschewed by the critics who clog our cyber system with divisive commentary.

Once again, despite the apparent expansion of freedom in pornography and violence, we find ourselves in an age of conformity, the worst possible condition for poetry. Ideas are in retreat, because risk is apparently too costly for the career-oriented, college-educated poet.

If liberation of the human spirit to create solutions to the moral dilemmas that face us depends on the movement from fear to freedom, poets are currently facing their greatest challenge. The Catholic Church, led by Cardinal Ratzinger, did everything possible to shut down the liberation movement, while at the same time covering up for the perverts that “suffered little children to come unto them” and supporting regimes that contradict the egalitarian teachings of the real Jesus of Nazareth.

Breaking every commandment, Christian Americans water-boarded Muslims and even the most moderate political candidate, a lawyer, talked about finding and killing Osama Bin Laden instead of bringing him to justice. It’s hard to believe this purportedly messianic politician forgot to rhyme at that critical moment. I can’t imagine Canadians letting our uber-conservative Prime Minister, get away with a comment like that.

Was the real Barack Obama locked in a backroom with duct tape over his mouth? I hope so. Liberation is not a one time thing, but a daily necessity as we are reminded of our responsibility to the universe.

When I was a child in school a teacher scotch-taped my mouth to keep me from speaking out. Recently, when I was instructed that a poet laureate should not be “political,” I reprised the pain and exhilaration of being taped and freeing myself. One corporate bully, who had recently objected to my reading a poem about achild who fell during a foot race at the special Olympics and was helped to the finish line by his running mates, actually assaulted me, knocking a drink out of my hand, during the intermission in Cosi fan tutte this spring.

Cosi fan tutte indeed. The irony would not be lost on Mozart, who was, sadly, a deeper thinker than Bin Laden’s metaphorical hunter or the corporate bully.

Tape off, I will have the last word.

INTENTION

Our mothers said we could kiss it better,
and we believed them. In the time before
fear or duck and cover on television, we
kissed our wounded knees; we kissed
the sap flowing from trees broken by
lightning; we kissed sparrows that
flew into windows and fell down dead
in the grass. We kissed the sky when
angel dresses started coming undone.

We are the generation that kissed the thawing
tundra, defrosted segregated ice cream counters,
ripped our lips on melting glaciers and tore
our tongues on a frozen highway of tears.

We learned how to pray, repeating words
spoken by an invalid genius who lined
up his lead soldiers, good versus evil,
and wrote books read in sickrooms all
over the world, the word in/valid meaning
not valid, since we are all sickened when-
ever a name is written in the archives of
terrible sadness. That was the moment we
became poets and nothing, not teachers
who scotch-taped our mouths shut or bad
fairies, was going to stop us from doing
what we could to kiss the world better.

If poetry is not political, divine dialogue, then what reason has it for being? It is not currency. We can’t eat it, although we can wipe our asses with it, a righteous ending for a lot of the soulless narcissism that currently appears in the guise of poetry.

There is always hope, the dialectic keeps moving. A tremendous social momentum may bring us back to the moment Moses read the Commandments which are the precepts of righteous action.

I will leave you with words by John B. Lee, who wrote in the Afterward to Sweet Cuba, an anthology of Cuban Poetry from Hidden Brook Press:

“I want the poem to have the transformative power of prayer. Most people think of prayer as the importuning of God. I think of it as an appeal from the inner world of the individual to the outer world of the universe to make a connection whereby the iteration of the best words in the best order presents the possibility of grace, the covenant between the self and the universe, the vanishing into the thing where the soul makes contact through the mind, the body, the heart with the enthralling and all–containing spirit of things. Existence without alienation. What the authors of the Bible meant when they spoke of the covenant between God and man for which the rainbow is a metaphor.”

Amen to that.

Beer Mystic Excerpt #11: Istanbul Literary Review

Beer Mystic Excerpt #13-14: Sensitive Skin

Furman Pivo believes he [plus beer] may be the cause of a rash of streetlight outages. This sense of empowerment transforms him into the Beer Mystic. He has a mission and a mandate. Or does he? In any case, 1987 NYC will never be the same and the rest is history or myth or delusion.

Beer Mystic Invitation: Participate in a unique literary adventure that will take you on the longest, rowdiest literary pub crawl ever. Follow the Beer Mystic’s story around the world through a global network of host magazines [next excerpt at end of chapter / cover by David Sandlin].

The pavement lies moaning under the shrieking mega-watts of light as a limo plowed through Times Square scattering the truck-ass mallrat throngs pilgrimaging [etymologically related to pilfer and pillage] through the overlit emporiums, looking for something to take home with them. They want tricks of light, disco balls and touchy-feelie chiaroscuros to “light up their lives” and make life a pageant they’ve been invited to. They come here to be galled and unnerved by revelations of extreme epidermal mysteries. There is a porn theatre I hear that supposedly shows women losing their skins and women with asymmetrical alignments of limbs. Did these consent to the amputations to enhance their careers in the manner of castrati? The wall-eyed scrums in their ill-fitting clothes crane their necks and peer intently into our skulls and into Telecom lobbies to be sure they are not missing a single Broadway or MTV star to call home about.

I was here in TS on a lark after work. Had three hours to kill and I kill it best by wandering around with one of the new 22-oz. brews [beer name withheld to protect my rep] around Times Square and then downtown to meet my fate, my date, Jude the Obscure. Work at Codger Office Supply kills the brain but beer kills the killing. Like faith, beer is good for the soul. Like the Bible, the more obscure, the more profound. I stand under the Times Square ticker, next to a newsstand [the vendor peering suspiciously at me from the corner of his one good eye] to write these things down. “Like faith, beer is good for the soul. Unless it meshes with the wrong spiritual gears and unleashes and magnifies a vomitous tirade of venom and violence. A bad drink leads to a bad drunk – Sub-head Elle: ‘Remember alcohol is a poison [why do you think it is called intoxication?], poisons are lethal.’ A bad drunk like a hooligan or barroom brawler is the quaffly equivalent of a bad religious devotee [fanatic, fundamentalist]. The secret is to enlist beer’s quaffly charms for vision, harmony, charity, unification. The happy drunk is charitable, offering drinks, advice, conviviality.”

I lean into the newsstand. The vendor is already coming over to head me off. I see Lauren Hutton’s face on the cover of Vogue. I pick it up and stare at it to reassure myself. I point to her face and say to the vendor “That’s my friend.”

“Ah, fuck grazy.” Maybe he’s right. I lean against the outside of his shack.

The pen she used to sign my MESSENGER RECEIPT said INDULGE. Yes, she had invited me in for tea. I had hesitated. Maybe just say “no” in a polite way.

“Your shoes are soaked.” Said Lauren Hutton. And since I did not believe it myself, I usually said “or someone who looked just like her.”

“It’s wet out there.”

“Let’s take those shoes off, and your socks too, and I’ll dry them for you.” She put them in, I guess, the oven and came back with tea and some wool socks on a Delft blue serving tray.

She held her teacup and saucer and just stared at me for a while. I stared at my wiggling toes.

“Thanks for the socks.”

“Oh, your welcome. What is your life like, may I ask?” Had I seen any of her films? What would I say? I couldn’t name any: Was Zorro: The Gay Blade one? I remember some exposed breast photo of her…

“It’s OK.”

“I’m not prying…”

“It’s OK. I am rich and poor but you prob’ly don’t wanna hear.”

She encouraged me to talk about my education, [not] writing, marriage, plans, my dead father. How every time I see a Campbell foundry sewer grate I want to tap someone on the shoulder and say, “My father made this.”

“My only real awards are for perfect attendance in 4^th and 5^th grade and I broke the county record for the mile in track.”

“See now.”

“I’m educated but I’m dumb.”

“That’s how it works sometimes.”

“Yea, but dumber than most, dumb enough to take this job.”

“Or scared to try for something better?”

“Could be.”

“Destiny is sad.”

“With all due respect, destiny just makes it easier for those who have to not feel guilty about those who do not.”

“You may not believe me when I say I agree. You know how I try to get back at these types? I wear decidedly untrendy clothes, clothes unbecoming of my stature – I am told.”

“That’s funny.”

“Drink your tea before it gets cold. Even funnier is that in no time these people will be falling over themselves to copy my daring style sense. And at the snap of my fingers, it is fashion. I live in a world that exploits fear to squeeze money out of every pore. That is just how it is.”

“I live in a world of beer and cocaine. Self-doubt, self-destruction. You know, beer punk, where ugly is beautiful and the conventional beautiful is despised. I’d be marked a traitor if they knew I was here…”

She went into the kitchen and came back with my dry warm sneaks and socks on a second tray next to a paper sack.

I put on my socks and sneaks and as I got up she handed me a wadded bill. “Here’s something for your efforts.”

“Thank you.”

In the doorway she handed me the bag. “Here’s three beers a client brought me from Belgium. I don’t drink beer.”

She handed me a card. “Go to my friend André. He will make something nice of your hair. They say esteem starts at the top of your head.”

Once outside I grabbed a piece of dry cardboard from a garbage can and sat on the wet stoop a couple of doors down from her place. I unwadded the bill. It was a $20 bill. I turned to look over my shoulder to see if maybe she was staring out the window. I opened the paper sack. Inside were three bottles of Ramée Blond. I read the label: Bière artisanale d’Abbeye, 8%, une bière finement brassée, non filtrée et très digeste. La Ramée doit être servie à une temperature de 7^o C. It packs a smooth deceptive wallop and I disappear into the massive out-there, where I spot a limo, large as an empire, idling on the street as the somebody in sequined dress emerged from the Vermicom Technotainment lobby at 1616 and shimmered into the back seat. I was reminded of several large edible flatfishes of the genus Hippoglossus you can see flopping around on ice down at the Fulton Fish Market. But instantly she’s no more than just a dark head burdened by the superior architecture of her coif.

“It’s the Mafia Princess,” I hear somebody gasp. But it could be anybody we want it to be. “She’s no ordinary fuckin’ oyster, yuh know!” somebody else informs us. But was it the actress playing the Mafia Princess, or the author who had ghost-authored this Mafia Princess’ life, or the Mafia Princess, herself a frustrated actress, hoping to play herself in the story she has not written herself? It didn’t matter, it was instantly like the thirsty on their knees drinking sand at the mirage of a desert oasis.

She offers no autographs, no smiles, no free samples of her new fragrance Umerta, or is it Aorta? The bystanders instantly process her silence, as ingratitude or contempt, others see it as a sign of grace, of high purpose, while still others believe it is the justifiable paranoia that comes with being the target of stalkers. Still other others read further into it and will find sustenance there. Whole empires sit on the edge of a misreading. Entire communities subsist on the notion of discovering slights, slights from stars we can get indignant about, indignant to the point of getting worked up about, until we can wallow in justified retribution and only then, when the retribution is executed, will we feel alive for an instant.

The limo glides by, its proportions influenced by however far our eyesight is willing to carry our enchantment. And in the last glimpse of this bloated carcass I notice her configuration of wounds some call our senses [ed. sensory organs] spelling out contempt across her face as a flash lights up the backseat when suddenly [not gunfire or a lit compact!] – must be her reading lamp in the backseat has shorted out – done the ole “black-eye.” Her head with coif attached disappears into total oblivion – contempt given more form and reign. One more glance: Yes, indeed the light is out and I may have put it out.

Someday I’ll draft a petition with Nice to claim proper credit for these outages – not a trophy mind you, just some gazes drenched in mystification, or maybe a smattering of golf-course applause, an NEA performance grant, or some people mistaking me for someone famous.

I have no idea how this black-eye thing works. I mean, me and Nice have thought about it. Maybe it has something to do with anger and the resultant static charge it builds up inside me. A vibe? A “Mathilda thing,” is what Nice called it, referring – I learn much later – to the Raould Dahl story about a gifted girl seeking revenge with her paranormal gifts.

Nice explains it this way: “All matter is atoms. All atoms are nuclei – aiy-yai-yai – protons and electrons. The electrons whirr around the nucleus – us-us-us.” And at that point she stands up and with her arms outstretched, twirls around, bouncing off my walls, orbiting around the perplexed nucleus that was me.

“But if something agitates the atom – it could be anything – the electrons are forced to jump ship, jump to another orbit. This leap is a quantum and this quantum gives off energy. And its launching pad is your furrowed brow.”

But maybe it’s more metaphysical, like somehow I have merely retooled the notion of serendipity to act like volition. Or maybe it’s the way beer makes a poster of Jarry’s Ubu, King Ubu’s abdominal spiral, spinning hypnotically and knotically, wrings me with it into the mischief of its dangerous corkscrewing action.

Nice had stolen a book from the Second Avenue branch of the NY Public Library called Mysticism: Holiness East & West. I keep the book on my nightstand – yes, you guessed it, an old beer crate – it is by Denise and John Carmody, [Oxford: Oxford University Press]. The book vividly describes a South American tribal trickster named Avireri, a culture hero who helped explain the mysteries of the natural world, the seasons, the cycles of existence, to the Campa people. He made night and the seasons happen by dancing certain dances. Eventually, Avireri becomes happily drunk and begins to play the panpipes… Because the panpipes were important to the Campa, they associated the music of the panpipes with the crucial moment when Avireri brought on the rains. That he was drunk and showing off when he did this hardly mattered. Drunkenness can be a mode of ecstasis, a door to perceptions, feelings, that seem extraordinary [at least to the drunk].”

Upon Nice’s advice, I now keep detailed documentation: odd rumblings of conscience, psychokinetic mayhem, premonitions, things moving of their own accord, the time and place of each black-eye, any distinguishing sonic or concomitant phenomenological details. Anyway, it’s something and I’m in the middle of that something. With a wish comes the will and with will, a way. Nice is great, she makes me feel like I am not alone. There is nothing more priceless that one person can do for another. Notepad: The blink of an eye as detonation device.

I saunter further downtown, keeping an eye out for a happenstance girl I saw on the corner of 7^th and 26^th a week ago. Her smile flung at me so flagrantly, so obviously into me that I could have floated across oceans in that smile. She had substance but also something that glowed around that substance. Despair? Someone perhaps not yet convinced that work led to dignity. Like she still had intact hopes. Like her eyes were yet to grow tired. But she was not where I had left her. I jump the turnstile at 23^rd and 6^th just as the F is pulling in and I’m at Broadway-Lafayette  in the time it takes me to find a seat. Thanks Mr. Himmelreich, 10^th-grade Nazi gym teacher; you were right, gymnastics, particularly leaping over the leather horse in a single bound, has come in very handy indeed.

And as I’m waiting for the DON’T WALK to turn to WALK, a string of lights cheering up a café blow with a crackle. So what if ample moisture’s clinging to the surrounding air and that a wicked wind, the kind that can tear objects from their logical moorings, had just passed. I toasted each of the 26 dead bulbs anyway – skoal, prosit, vivat, chayim, proost, salute, a votre santé, za vashe zdorovye – with 26 sips from a rare Dutch Brouwerij ’t IJ brew, a Zatte, pulled from my coat pocket, like an outlaw drawing his 6-shooter. [Kelly notes: Obscurity is the cocaine of both the DJ and the beer enthusiast.] And after that a Brand. Brand means fire in Dutch. And fermentation and fervor have the same Latin root, fervere, meaning to boil. The mind has a way of organizing obsession to act like a commitment to ideals. Now we’re getting somewhere. Two beers just waiting.

When I spot Jude she is being careful as always not to stand in front of a mirror or over a puddle because the puddle’s reflection might reveal her emergent double chin. Something only she seems to notice. Reflection, one might say, has outlived her purposes.

I am face-to-face with Jude – she is gorgeous but I think she thinks not for much longer. Jude-Jude-Jude – just repeating her name sounds like weariness. She is adorned “so to allure the eyes of all men that should see her” – it’s basically the only Bible stuff I know. Jude swears by panaché [lemonade and beer] and Monacos [grenadine and beer] to effectively recapture her romantic days in Paris. When love was always just around the corner, when it was always being snatched from her clutches like a postcard of Doisneau’s famous “Kiss.” Even stayed in a hotel with a view of the Hotel de Ville. She wants it to be 1950. She wants it to be her Barbara Stanwyck to my Rod Taylor, as she reaches for my long neck: “May I feel it? Just curious what long neck really means.”

To which I am supposed to respond: “Don’ shake it, the head may go off in yer face.”

“I’ll just have to take that chance.” But, between you and me, she was more about the cinematic simulation of taking a chance than the actually going down on you – in public or in private.

“My knees bruise easily.”

Jude is my date at Broadway-Lafayette, lined with its insistent and agonizing dreams in museum cases and storefronts that are pulled from our collective memories of times that never occurred. And since the anorexic nature of our coin purses barred us from entering these scenes I sent some of these snooty tracklit terrariums on the blink. Or so I made the story go. Or so the story made me go. We have a mutual need-fascination with trolling the extravagant art openings in the area, where entire spreads are served up and exuberant selections of not-cheap French Chardonnays and Pinot Noirs and that is how we get by and get to see some art. By 8:30 p.m. the galleries are closing down and we are left to our wits outside on Wooster.

I said something that rhymed perfume with tomb. She did not [want to] get at what it was I was saying. She wanted me and the mind I fed to stand still. She wanted me to act like the men she knew from Capra movies. She wanted me to offer her a steady arm, praise, flattery. A good income, a grand entrance, a pension, medical insurance. You see what a weird dog the human being is, willing to bark up the wrong tree for as long as it takes and that is faith and that is – to some, mind you – stupidity.

“What’m I, just some attractive clingthing to you?” She wondered. By constantly using words like “attractive” when referring to herself, she could stand with bait on hook and wait for me to agree. So the whirlpools of her need for compliments and my whirlpool founded in a need for beer would collide and whirr into one another. Believe me. This quantum dynamic coaxed from me niceties, compliments on her choice of earrings, top-shelf liquor, her legs – they were luscious, her breasts that defied gravity and age. But all of it was meant to prop her fragile self up on these auto-deluded, auto-choreographed instants where she would believe the lies that she fed my mouth.

And so I stood before her with a smirk and again toasted this manifold terrarium black-eye with Jude the furtive, Jude the obscure amourant who loved radio. Or the way radio seeps into you like beer seeps into unnamed internal organs. Or the way radio still promised some measure of renown. Jude was on the radio just last night with Mark Leyner. Jude, who read by candlelight. Who would drip candle wax onto your nipples only if the drink had taken her far enough. Whose cramped abode smelled of myrrh and dust from a more glorious age.

She felt obliged, by virtue of her concern for her future in communications – i.e., via “my” radio show at a fledgling basement radio station – to tag along, act impressed, add her imprimatur to the proceedings. The station’s signal scattered only about half as far as we thought it did. Like micro-local, like a couple of blocks. I tried to explain this to her. Our press – the Voice called us “Rapatistas”; Spin called us “Radio Egotopia” – emanating outward some 100 times further but really nowhere because by the following week three-quarters of the Voice and Spin readers had forgotten they ever read about us – but not Jude.

Jude felt obliged to act [or be – she had long ago given up distinguishing between the two] flattered when I insisted that it had been the two of us, indeed, “our unique bio-electrical chemo-hormonal interface” that had caused these latest boutique-window black-eyes.

She wanted to read from her book, À la Belle Étoile, during my show. She had become a victim of the hope that this well-received book had once promised. And so I kept leading her along. I was just a fill-in DJ for fuck’s sake. A sometimely spinner. And in the meantime, she led me along. Showed me every highlighted clipping, every underlined review her book had ever received, even one in Tel Aviv. And this was the irony: I flattered her to get her to reveal more of her skin, to get closer to her splayed legs, to flatter her into bed, the very bed I would hope to pass out in so I could avoid having to make love with the desperate her that Jude bludgeoned all hope of a satisfying relationship with. Persistence is that sad memory of hope. And she had somehow forsaken all delicacy and discretion for lunges at the crotch, which the crosshairs of her mind had made into the way to the heart.

“I gotta tell you that deejaying’s just a hobby. Nothin’ more.”

“I have to promote my book. The publisher certainly doesn’t. Recognition leads to renown and renown to fame and fame makes you feel good enough so you don’t get depressed thinking you’re never gonna get rich.”

“There’s no guarantee anybody’s even listening at two in the morning.”

“But you promised.”

“You’d be better off gettin’ on yer knees in front of a sewer grate and reading down into the sewers.”

Her skirt was always black, skimpy [clingy and flingy also approximate her sartorial states of mind] and rode way up past whatever its called beyond the thighs whenever she sat down. The far edge of discretion. Her blouse: always the same or forever some variation of that same – clingy, diaphanous, silken, suggestive. And with every trip to the ladies room in the old Knitting Factory on Houston, she’d return with another button undone and all this skin, this delirious cleavage [to which we were both beholden] was all meant to perform some trick of mind in man but instead only revealed more of who she could never be than who she really was.

“You gotta promise to never tell anybody this.”

“I promise.” I knew it was as good as spilled but I went forward anyway, at the risk of having this confession used against me at some later date.

“When I first ordered a Yuengling here I thought it was a Chinese beer.”

“And?”

“HELLO! It’s been brewed in Pennsylvania since 1820-something.”

She grabbed my bottle. “1829. Pottsville.”

“They make a reasonable Black & Tan, a lager far tastier than the usual American piss.”

It was sip for sip: me sip beer, she her Monaco and then a quick switch to her rum and diet Coke. I tell her about my old man with his cases of cheap beer in the garage. We’d drink cans of Milwaukee’s Best and he’d try to convince me it was just as good as Leffe. And then another. I see him emptying another in the kitchen on the sly, hunched over in pain. I was supposed to tip off my mother if he went too far down the path of no return. He could die from the mixing of alcohol and whatever he was taking. But I never did. One more – he makes the shush sign with finger to lips and he was quickly moving beyond the pain, the doubt, the existential angst of knowing he was going to die. The next beer flushed his face and all was well, a fine tune into a temporary reprieve. I am staring at the bar top and the bottle.

We took a cab in deference to her posing [i.e., non-walking] shoes, to see Bell, Book and Candle at Theatre 80. And there in the dark, cramped and creaking seats I watched her feverishly rub her hands warm in the aromatic weld of where desire met misery. And then watched her grab the hands that had once been attached to my arms [rather precariously] and place them under the pendulous awe of her breasts. This was exciting to her; to feel my palms go moist and then to subsequently denounce me for the way my sweat would stain her silk blouse. Only joking. Or not. Or. But I pulled one hand back anyway because, although I enjoyed the moist warmth under her breast – the controlled jiggle – I wanted to keep one hand free to hold my beer, no matter how much her breasts resembled the most exquisite of Belgian beer goblets. And she knew this. Weakness in me [there was plenty to feed on] is where she found most of her delight. The libidinal confusion she had been infected with was contagious.

In the middle of the film she nibbled my ear, coyly, just as Jack Lemmon’s aunt declares “We can put out streetlights but we can’t turn anything to gold.”

“See,” Jude sneered, “YER no original. Yer just a scene cut from a bad movie.” She cuddled up in a smirk that glistened with a hint of saliva.

“I got diaries dated at least 6 months back. I never even heard o’ this film until you told me,” I said from under a whisper just seething to be more. [Ed. The author can verify this in his own right as well.]

“They’re backdated, you cooked’m.” she gloated.

And with that I stood up, I had my honor but – shit! – I dropped the beer, an exquisite Belgian Dikkenek, or “thick neck,” to smash at her feet [a rare sacrifice!] assaulted by her, betrayed by this, this… film, abandoned by the celluloid myths to the point where I was nothing more than an awkward self-conscious mirror-beholden character, like an extra cut from a film that will never bathe in the light of the film projector.

Someone in the audience SHUSHED us. Another yelled “Down in front!”

And then suddenly Jude had to go, had to outdo me. Had to beat me to the door. Had to look indignant at the dishevelment my desires had caused. Her skirt now as revealing as shrink-wrap around veal shank. She had to feed a cat. Walk some dog – I don’t know.

Beer Mystic Excerpt #13: Sensitive Skin

Anthology  of poetry and short stories published by Michael Pendragon, containing some poems and short stories of his own.  It includes excerpts from Blake, Milton, Poe, Byron, Shelley, and Wilde as well as many other poets and writers.

Suggested by Diana Magallón

“Imagine Borges‘ fantastical bestiary having tea with Alice. Imagine Jonathan Swift and James Thurber exchanging notes. Imagine a frog from Calaveras County who has seriously read Mark Twain. Meet Monterroso”.

Carlos Fuentes about The Black Sheep and Other Fables

This section will look at some of the highlights of the previous 11 issues of Jack Magazine. Rest assured, I have many more memories, and these highlighted posts are not just my favorites. Each and every artist who has contributed to this magazine has become a memory at this point, one I will always appreciate.

Issue 1

I remember for the very fist issue of Jack Magazine, Michael Rothenberg told Michael McClure about Jack Magazine. Michael M. allowed me to reprint three selections from Touching the Edge: Dharma Devotions from the Hummingbird Sangha, published 1999, by Shambhala Publications, Inc.

I remember Michael R. saying that Michael M. said something like, “You just don’t know Jack,”  which became a catch-phrase.

McClure also sent me a signed copy of the sutras, and wouldn’t you know, I ended up losing it when moving from California back to the Midwest. I couldn’t believe I’d lost that book. In a weird twist of fate, Denise from over at Empty Mirror Books, who I’d had contact with over the years, wrote to say that whoever found the book sent it to her. She knew it was mine due to Michael’s signing it to me directly. I was really embarrassed, but she nicely sent the book to me. What an odd coincidence though. I bet nobody will ever sign a book to me again.

I also really enjoyed reading and reviewing Gary Snyder’s The Practice of the Wild.

Issue 2

Allan Graubard also came to me by way of Michael Rothenberg. He allowed me to reprint in digital form his Fragments of Nomad Days in Jack. This beautiful book mesmerized me. With photos by Ira Cohen — with whom I later did a large gallery for Big Bridge — the complete words and images were wind-swept and woeful, but reaffirming. I felt, as I did this issue during a complicated romance at the time, very into it. With Santa Anas flowing in my windows on dry days, and palm fronds floating downward from the sky, I could feel Fragments. I still go back to read it when I need to.

Issue 2 also presented Jack Collom’s great Ecosystem of Writing Ideas, a multipage look at his teachings in nature writings at Naropa University.

Issue 3

When issue 2 came out, Gregory Corso was very ill, and by issue 3, he was gone — January 17, 2001.

In honor, Michael got permissions from Ira Cohen, BARDO MATRIX’s publisher, to do a digital printing of Corso’s Way Out: A Poem in Discard, which had been printed in 1974 in Nepal on rice paper. It’s a fascinating canto/play-based chapbook.  We also did a tribute to Gregory, and I remember writing something too. I remember being afraid to post those photos of him in the hospital, but Michael convinced me it was cool. Ira had provided us much material, including a letter titled My Karma Ran Over My Dogma, which Ira had written.

Issue 4

In issue 3, I’d reprinted Gregory Corso’s Way Out, and for issue 4 got permissions from Ira Cohen to publish another from BARDO MATRIX: Angus Maclise’s The Subliminal Report. Ira, Gregory, Angus: these guys were urban shamans. I don’t think my work on Report was quite as fascinating as Way Out, because I didn’t try to find a cool paper background. But as an original work, it was grand. Ira had made a woodblock profile — and a trademark Mylar portrait of Angus — to put on the cover of the book.

I don’t have many inside stories to tell of Ira. I talked with him on the phone a few times when working on a web gallery. Both he and Michael were frenetic and thought I was very shy, I think.

Michael wrote this poem, which was later published in Exquisite Corpse:

Phantom, Come Hither!
for Ira Cohen & Mary Sands

You’re not having enough fun
Or smoking enough dope

Not opening up your head
Or heading out into the open

So go (NOW) to the Cosmic Hotel
Check in to the Paradise suite

Give the Akashic cashier
All your hard-earned money

Condemn the sacred incantation
Of your tragic virgin muse

Pay tribute to the grave robbers

To troubadour Francois Villon
Master bandit vagabond

Break open the sky!

Let the shattered stars shred all memories
On the bloody road to ruin

Map the trail where lost dreamers go

This is not a day for archives
Libraries or documentaries

Pound the wheel into motion
Lie without shame

In a bramble of white roses

Run in terrible glee through worlds
Of avant-garde Pinocchios

Dance like Yakas

In the hallowed wheat fields
Of Indiana, Ohio and Idaho

The Killing fields of Pollyanna!

Drink to the masked dancers. Have fun!
Because that’s what suffering is for

There is no time for contemplation

No time to lean on a lamppost
And smoke that forgotten cigarette. . .

Instead, blow blue smoke into the lights of a dying city!
While the sun goes up and down and up

And you shed your skin
And I shed mine

And die, and die, and die
With every fucking breath

Death-click, enlargement, refraction, replication and scan

You’re holding on too tight
To your rule book

Operating manual

Your life
You don’t need your life!

Step outside and scream
To the Daughters of Hell!

I’m waiting for you
Ghost draped in flesh

Waiting for you
To turn me on

June 7, 2000

Issue 5

I don’t think it was ever intended to just keep on the Beats with Jack Magazine, though surely they were an influence, but just as surely, we wanted to break out of the mold.

For issue 5, right when we published it, we got news that Philip Whalen had died, and got some devotions together. This was June 22, 2001, a year after the first issue. Back then I was trying for quarterly issues, which was too much for me to keep up with. Michael, one of Whalen’s best friends and executor of his estate, was going through a tough time. We talked often, I got plenty of stories of the loving and humorous manner in which Whalen lived until the very end.

One of this issue’s features reached to a different part of the world, South Africa.  Jack featured the work of 8 poets from that region, a fascinating journey.

Issue 6

Issue 6 was my favorite issue. It represents a time I was downtrodden in life. The end of a long relationship. A culmination of lies and being cheated on. Feeling very alone, with few friends. Struggling in every aspect of my life. I also got laid off, and my grandfather had died. My dad’s Parkinsons was getting worse.

I had read Allan Weisbecker’s *In Search of Captain Zero and reviewed it two issues prior, and now with summer coming on had decided to learn to surf. For the first time in a while, I felt better. While I never could surf very well, I loved to get out on the water. There was an act of ablution. Issue 6 was my first real thematic issue outside some South African poetry previously. I featured Kevin Opstedal’s Rare Surf, Vol. 2, and had permissions from surfer/painter Matt Scott to illustrate the magazine with his art. Ben Marcus contributed great surf film chronology The Price of Gas. I was on the road to redemption, but still wipe now and then. This was probably my favorite issue because it represented something of beauty after struggle.

*In the next few years I would hear from Allan Weisbecker himself, and we keep in touch randomly. I reviewed his post-Zero book — Can’t You Get Along with Anyone?– over at Big Bridge. I feel like Zero had saved me from certain doom, and given me hope. Thank you, Allan.

Issue 7

By the time I put issue 7 together, I had moved from California, a scene that had birthed Jack. I think this issue was a little darker and blander, somewhat reflective of a transition in life that was actually good in the end. This is the issue I met Cece Chapman, whose work has appeared in Jack since. Cece made me feel like I was still by the sea. I also really enjoyed the last issue with the old categories of Eco-Watch and Renaissance, including John Aeillo’s poetry and Mark Spitzer’s Bob Dylan’s Tarantula. I also got to know Joanna Barnum, who would illustrate more in Jack later and create my Moon Willow Press logo someday.

Issue 8

We’re in full bloom again with beautiful photographs of Cuba by Terri Carrion, and some brighter colors overall. Cece’s feature took me away. I featured an speech by Ian Johnston on my favorite author’s, Gabriel García Márquez’s, One Hundred Years of Solitude. Dan Barth, who had written a feature for the first issue, was back with Ken Kesey: The Artist and His Work.

At this time, I was moving around a lot and had to quit HTML-editing Michael’s Big Bridge. I just didn’t have time. I had left California after packing all day, and arrived in Vegas at 4:00 a.m. during my Big Move. In the next year, I had lived in Normal, Illinois; Naperville, Illinois; and Kansas City, Missouri. I had little time for Jack for a few years.

Issue 9

I thought maybe a new design might help me reinvigorate my passion for Jack, but truth is I was still recuperating from my downtrodden last year in California and my several jaunts around the country to find new housing, a new job, and so on. My dad was getting more ill. I was not sure I wanted to keep doing Jack, but something inside made me move on. Issue 9 had a design change. I liked it. I was also living temporarily with my Dad’s first cousin and her husband, in Kansas City. They had lead fascinating lives. I wrote an article about them, featuring their years in theater.

The art in this issue, by Claudio Parentela, may have saved my poor design choices! Kevin Opstedal, who had once sent me a tape of surf music, was back with more poems, and some of Jack’s regulars like Jayne Lyn Stahl, Julio Peralta-Paulino, Ashok Hiyogi, Martin Kovan, and Zdravka Evtimova were in this issue.

Issue 10

When I put issue 10 up, it was up for almost 2 years and was the only dynamic issue of the magazine, where I added to it throughout that two years. This had to do with another couple years of a lot of travel, caring for my father, and traveling back and forth to Vancouver, BC, to spend time with both my fiance and my dad back in the states. I liked this issue though. It was centered around fantasy, which was a favorite genre as a child and extended into adulthood and movies. Once again Joanna Barnum did some fantastic illustrations. Several summers before I’d read a draft of Michael Rothenberg’s Drums of Grace, and asked if I could excerpt a chapter. The book is a lifelong work of his, and where his “Walter Blue” originated. The fantastical journey is also illustrated by Ira Cohen.

Some might say a fantasy issue is a far cry from any Beat to Big Bridge arc, but the beauty is that it was on the edge. And I found several regular contributors who had written something in this genre, who were back again, including Marco Antonio Govea, Martin Kovan, Margaret Pearce, AE Reiff, and Nanettte Rayman Rivera.

Issue 11

With the Eco-Watch category having ended previously due to a lack of articles in that area, I decided to concentrate this entire issue on the great outdoors and preservation of natural ecosystems. By now I was also married and planning to open Moon Willow Press, and saying good bye to my wonderful father (Issue 11 was dedicated to him). I foresaw Jack’s end, and welcomed some new writers I wish I’d known about earlier, including Justin Kibbe, Oritsegbemi Emmanuel Japka, and Nathaniel Mohatt. I had some regulars return as well, and featured a compilation of all previous wilderness writings, including pieces by Coral Hull, Gary Lawless, Jack Collom, John Aiello, Jhana Hadson, J. Scott Bryson, Katherine McNamara, kevin Opstedal, Michael McClure, Mark Koslow, mIEKAL aND, and Susan Smith Nash. This may have been my second favorite issue because of the subject, which comes full circle if you look at Ancient Order of the Fire Gigglers.

Issue 12

The current, and final issue, is about travelin’ on. There are a few regulars I wish to thank yet again: Stephen, Valery, Julio, AE, Daniel, Marcia, Vernon,  Shelia, Ashok, Bart, Dee, Zdravka, and Charles. Thanks also to Francis, Michael G., Clara, David M., William, M Bromberg, Landon, Carlos, Thomas, Joanne, Farida, Donna, and Pat. I want to say thanks to all the contributors, especially Michael Rothenberg, for adding so much to Jack Magazine, including, with David Meltzer and Terri Carrion, a compilation of ROCKPILE on the Road journal entries and photographs featured in the current issue.

I want to also particularly thank once again Cece Chapman for helping Jack live when it was down, to Jayne Lyn Stahl and Rodney Nelson for their continued work, understanding, and connection in some email conversations, to Anthony Wright for some fascinating reading as of late, and to Jon Watson for being one of the world’s last true Dharma Bums.

There is always discovery, wherever we go. Just remember, it’s not leaving, it’s just moving on.

The vineyards withered in the heat, yellowish-green like the clouds in the sky. The clouds were wild hammers that killed the sun but gave no fresh air. Lyuda didn’t care about the sky. The vineyards stretched endless before her, she rode her old horse Matey through the hot leaves, cursing under her breath. Not a living soul was in sight, only the yellow road, full of sun, climbed the hill and sank behind its scorched crest.

There were only old men in that village. They wore their new suits and dreamt of naphthalene, killing the moths in air around them. Her husband went to Italy, to Julia Nova or another damn place at the back of beyond, and left her with the old funeral suits of the geezers and their drooling son who howled no matter if it hailed, rained or the clouds just beat it towards the town of Radomir, leaving the sky ugly and hot above her house. Lyuda lived with her mother-in-law, at the end of the village. She could not stand it any longer in that heat, with her wailing baby and the constant chatter of her mother-in-law, a woman who left bread for the ravens.

There was a guy, Stoycho by name, in the neighboring village. He was single. She made up her mind to take her son to doc Petrov there and drop in at Stoycho’s place on her way back. There was nothing wrong with her son, nothing really, but she wanted to see that Stoycho guy. She was young and the clouds bothered her.  She rode their toothless horse Matey through the scorching vineyards, through the dusty maize fields, then through the pepper garden she had to water in the afternoon, all the time thinking, why are there only old men in that lousy village. They were so many, the old geezers, more than the stones on the road. In the neighboring village, Stoycho lived with his mother. Rumors had it his heart was weak and gave him trouble.

Well, her baby son howled as though there was fire burning in

his mouth when Lyuda entered Stoycho’s house. Stoycho’s mother, the old darling, started treating Lyuda to blackberry jam. I made it for Stoycho, you know, she explained. The old hen could have taken the baby for a while, Lyuda thought then said, “Aunt Dimka, can you mind my little Pavel while I go to the next room. I’d like to ask your son about a problem I have with my raspberries.”

Then she turned to Stoycho, “Stoycho, let me see that magazine you have about the worms that eat the roots of raspberries.”

When the two of them went to his room and he, scraggly and yellow in the face like the withered maize, bent over a basket full of old issues of Bulgarian Agriculture Magazine, she said, “Stop that,” and pressed against him. He was thin and gaunt, like her mother-in-law’s dog. Her mother-in-law was as stingy as a vice and she thought the mutt could well live on the rats he chased. Stoycho bent under Lyuda’s weight, cold like a bottle of lemonade in a fridge, though it was baking hot in the room. The horizon moaned, warped by the burden of the noon. The sky had a swollen cheek and the bad tooth in it was the sun.

“Don’t talk,” she said, paying no attention his face went scarlet like a packet of red pepper. He gasped and he choked but she swallowed his hiccups and her blouse took the cold lemonade of his body.

“Pavel is crying, Lyuda!” Stoycho’s mother shouted from the other side of the door.

“Crying won’t do him any harm,” Lyuda said, pressing hard against Stoycho’s weak heart.

“Lyuda, come! That child of yours will burst! He’s wailing!” the other side of the door shouted. Pavel, like a volcano, spurted out another howl.

“Did you find the magazine, Stoycho?” his mother shrieked but he could not say, “Not yet.” His words sank into Lyuda’s mouth.

“Come tomorrow at my place… the house under the willows. You know where it is,” Lyuda whispered, then jumped, opened the door and took her son from the arms of the old woman. The baby’s shirt was wet down to his belly button.

Doc Petrov said he’s got a third tonsil in his throat. He’ll spit and spatter like that util we cut it. But Pavel is still a baby, the doc said, and we’ll have to wait a year or two,” Lyuda explained, suckling her son. She had plenty of milk, ” I’m like a cow,” she said unhappily. Her breasts weighed like sacks, she had filled Stoycho’s mouth and eyes with her milk, too. She had soiled his shirt, and it was a pity there was not another baby nearby she could suckle. It fact there was one, a six month old girl in a village further down by the river. Her milk was clean and strong like a cement road, so why should she waste it? Pavel put on a kilo every month with her milk, and every old man and every old woman who had trouble with their sight asked Lyuda to sprinkle some of her strong milk in the bad eye, and the eye healed.

Her mother-in-law cured some rash on her stomach with Lyuda’s milk, too. When the old men cut their hands while they chopped the grass for the small chickens, they brought their cut fingers, Lyuda squirted her milk on the cut and they watched her breasts, round like the clouds above the hill. But what could old men do? Her husband picked rotten olives somewhere in Italy, and she tortured poor Stoycho. The guy was thinner than his own shirt.Didn’t that vineyard have an end? Her horse Matey was exhausted, he could hardly drag his own hooves forward, and Pavel, swimming in his own drool, had finally fallen asleep.

Her breasts were swollen and hurt her, she had to squeeze the milk out of them, and she hated to do that. Pavel was a lazy baby with wrong tonsils in his mouth, and he made no big efforts to suck her milk. Her breasts squirted white rivulets on his cheeks and wetted him even more. She had heard women’s milk was expensive in the town of Pernik, but the ticket for the bus was so expensive she forgot about that right away. If only she could get rid of that milk. Faraway, by the road that sank into the clouds and the pieces of tattered sky, she noticed several brown dots as big as fleas. Yes, that was Boko’s herd of sheep. Oh My, how come she had forgotten about Boko. He was the second single man in the district and lived in a whitewashed house in the village of Opal. He drove his sheep as if they were infantrymen from one mountain to another, all the while swearing his throat off. He was shorter than the ram whose horns he decorated with geraniums.

Boko had a tractor as well, and last year, when Lyuda’s husband still hadn’t started itching to bury himself in Italy, Boko got drunk like an eel and drove his tractor through her mother-in-law’s barn. It was then that Lyuda figured out Boko was as tall as her chin, but now when her breasts weighed a sheep each with that milk in them, she didn’t think about her chin.

Lyuda had to go and water the pepper garden. In the evening, she had to weed it. That dammed pepper! The more she hated it the stronger it grew. Every stalk was covered with big white blooms. The weeds in the pepper garden could hardly wait for her to turn around and suckle Pavel. They quickly threw their seeds behind her back, and on the following day they had already sprouted big and leafy. Does Boko pass by the canal or by the river on his way home with his herd, Lyuda wondered.

The village of Opal was in the midst of the wilderness. The old men there were more than the flies, the old women did not like her at all. There was not even a doctor there so she could not take Pavel to have his tonsils checked again. Boko lived with his mother if the old nanny-goat still had not met her maker in that heat. Imagine the two hours’ ride Matey would have to limp before he hauled his old hooves to Opal. Finally, Lyuda came up with an answer. Boko mowed the old men’s meadows and took a two liter bottle of brandy an acre. She’d ask him to come and mow their Pop’s meadow under the vineyard. Bullshit, Lyuda said to herself. I can mow that meadow myself. A toddler could. Why should I ask Boko when he’s as tall as my tits? If you’re so smart, tell me how you’ll bring him here then. He’ll get drunk and he’ll fall asleep in the middle of the road. So what, Lyuda reasoned. She’ll go and find him.

At that moment Pavel wailed again. She had forgotten the bottle with his water in the box with Stoycho’s magazines. Everybody who could run or drive moved to live in Pernik, but her husband, she wished he’d choked on a rotten olive in Italy, left her in the old village so she wouldn’t think of bad things. There were two younger men in the three villages: the first on his deathbed, his heart weak like a bottle of the local beer. The second could not walk half a mile without falling drunk after the first hundred steps he took.

Oh, her smart husband that tiptoed to pick olives in Italy! He had calculated it all. She’d water the pepper garden all the time. Her father-in-law, too, was in Italy, picking olives, although it was high time he put on his new naphthalene suit and prepared for the better world where all water was brandy, and there were two pubs on each cloud. Lyuda wished there was another baby she could suckle. Her breasts hurt in the heat. How come that milk in them doesn’t go sour, she wondered. Lyuda’s husband left her the old Moskvich car all busted up. She could not start it and couldn’t drive to Pernik. If you took a peep in a pub there, no matter which pub, you’d see a man who was tall to the ceiling and his heart never gave him the slightest trouble. “Don’t go, Plamen. Don’t go to pluck these frigging olives in Italy. You know what we do in the morning and in the evening. Forget about money. We’ll sell the wine. We’ll sell the Moskvich, too. Pavel doesn’t eat much. He’s Okay with my milk, and I am full of it like a dairy. I have the feeling that if you touched me below, milk will run from there, too. Before he went to climb the olives trees like a gorilla, her husband didn’t go out of bed for four days.

“Are you ill, son?” her mother-in-law asked, concerned.

Lyuda was very angry, indeed. “He’s not ill at all, woman. He is with me. He protects my milk from getting sour. What will Pavel eat if that happened?”

Before Plamen, her husband, left for Italy, he told her, “Don’t look at anybody. Listen to me carefully. Don’t look at anybody. If you do, I’ll kill you when I come back. You know I can always detect when you’ve looked at another man.”

Who can I look at, Plamen? You don’t have breasts that weigh a five gallon barrel each, and there is no other baby but Pavel to suckle, the vineyard has no end, the sugar beat field has no end. You pluck these fucking olives in Italy and I’ll stay here. Squirt more milk into the old men’s eyes? In all the three villages, there is no old man whose eyes I had not squeezed milk into at least twice. Come on, Matey, old horse. We are still not going home, you know. I have to weed the pepper garden.

Lyuda bent down to weed the pepper. She left Pavel on his white sheet and she weeded, and weeded, and weeded until the pile of sour weeds became taller than Boko. It was good that Pavel started screaming, for she suckled him and relieved her breasts. Suddenly she remembered there was another baby in the village of Vladimir, the six month old girl. Petrana end Petar had adopted her. They couldn’t have children for twelve years and when the small thing squeaked in their house things became happy and peaceful. Petrana and Petar went to live in Pernik first, but there was more smoke than air there and the baby was a puny one. It didn’t put enough weight, so in the beginning Lyuda wondered if its heart was okay. When  little Yana fed a month on her milk, the little thing buckled up.

Come on, Matey, old boy, let’s go to Petrana and Petko’s place to give weak Yana some milk. I hope she’ll drink much this evening and make my breast easy. And you, lazy, lazy guy, she turned to her son Pavel. You couldn’t suck all my milk. Well, it’s not your fault that I am like a cow. Lyuda rode five miles of the road that was full of sunset and warm wind, before she made it to Petrana and Petar’s place. She saw Petar, big and slow, milking the cow in the barn, but didn’t say anything to him.

“Petrana,” Lyuda called out. “Bring little Yana here. I’ll suckle her. You prepare a clean bottle and I’ll fill it with milk for her. Quick, woman, quick. I’ll burst like a grenade with that milk. Petrana, wash my Pavel, please, while I give suck to your Yana. Then give me something to eat. I’m starving. I ate only raspberries today. My belly’s full of raspberries, my milk is raspberries and a million raspberry thorns are in my fingers. I’m afraid I may scratch your Yana. Yana, treasure, smile at me. Smile.”

Petrana who had been waiting twelve years for a baby gave Pavel his bath smiling happily. She touched him so lovingly as if the boy didn’t have his drool all over him. Lyda noticed Petar’s eyes on her breast as she suckled small Yana. Petar is Okey, Lyuda thought then she turned around and saw Petrana ladle out delicious soup in the plates on the table.

“I’ll give you more soup, Lyuda,” she said beaming with happiness. “You give the kids your strong milk.

“Yes, it’s strong,” Lyuda said. For a split second she looked at Petar. A drop of milk dripped from her on Yana’s neck. She was a lazy baby, too, and Lyuda had to pinch her nose to wake her up. Yes. It was true Petar’s hair was gray. It was true he wore old patched trousers that smelled of dogs and manure, but Lyuda smelled of Matey, of dust and of a horse’s saddle. So what. Let her husband pluck olives. It served him right. Don’t go to Italy, Plamen, please. Please, don’t go. I cannot live without you.

Plamen held her fifteen minutes in his arms before he caught the bus to Italy. He and his father almost missed it on account of that.

It was true Petar’s back was hunched, but, on the other hand, if it wasn’t that hunched, he’d pack and go to Radomir to make twice as much money. Here he planted potatoes, herded cows and mowed for the old women. He was with his wife and probably every morning he held her in his arms.

Lyuda ate three plates of the soup, then Petrana went to bring some cherries. She had plucked them today, she said, so Lyuda could have some cherry vitamins in her milk for the kids.

While Petrana went out for the cherries, Lyuda looked at Petar once again then started squeezing milk into the bottle for little Yana. Then she looked at hunchbacked Petar. He shook in his soiled pants, patched at the knees. She saw his face. Although it was tanned by the sun it changed color, now red, now black around his eyes. The two babies slept quietly on the couch, Pavel’s tonsils slept as well. Petrana had dressed Pavel in a pair of her daughter’s pants.

Petrana came back with the cherries, a big, full bag of them, and Petar said, “I’ll go and give Matey some barley. Poor soul, he’s been under the scorching sun all day.”

“I was there, too,” Lyuda told him. She thought she was stronger than Matey, but didn’t say so. The two women talked about Pavel’s tonsils, and about fruit juices they were supposed to give the babies. Finally, she wrapped Pavel in his white sheet, propped him with a pillow on the couch and went to check Matey that was blissfully chewing his barley. Petar smoked by his side, the cigarette like an open wound on his mouth.

He stood up and moved restlessly as Lyuda approached him, then left his place to make way for her, but she did not go the way he had made for her. She went directly against him, she collided with him, with his old patched trousers, and with his shirt she collided, making it all wet with her milk. Stay quiet, she said. Yes, it was true he smelled exactly as Matey did, like the stables at the end of the village. But if one took a walk through the vineyard or if one weeded the pepper garden, one stopped smelling of Matey. “Wait. Wait,” she said. He was hot like the stones of the stream that had run dry under the heat of the yellow clouds. She thought she had squeezed all her milk into that bottle, but Petar’s chest was white all over with it. Then his shirt was a white cemented shield and her milk was stronger than ever.

“Now go to Petrana. Quick. Hold them in your arms, both of them, Petrana and Yana,” she whispered into his ear. But then, again, Lyuda didn’t go the way he had made for her. She bumped into his soiled pants, patched at the knees, for a second time. Pavel suddenly wept and kicked in little Yana’s pants that he had already wetted. Matey went on eating his barley, the best food the old horse had seen for years.

“You are so late. Where did you go?” her mother-in-law asked when Lyuda came home and left Pavel on the bed, wet like a fish, drool and milk all over him. His tonsils were evidently at work again, ruining the little guy’s peace and quiet.

“I visited aunt Petrana and uncle Petar, ” Lyuda answered. “I suckled little Yana. She is as thin as wire. I left her a bottle of milk, too, and while Matey chewed his barley, Petrana gave me something delicious to eat.”

“Good. It’s good you help her with that child,” her mother-in-law said. “Petrana’s had hard times, those doctors, hospitals and all. But now that she has her Yana, she’s settled down. Listen, your ant Malina came and said that the grass in our Pop’s meadow was ripe enough. You have to mow it, Lyuda. Tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow… Listen, I almost forgot. Stoycho came here an hour ago. He brought some agricultural magazine for you… there’s something in it about worms in the raspberries. I thought there were no worms on the raspberries this year. He left ten minutes ago… long and thin like a thread. His heart’s no good. I am sorry for him.”

“I am sorry for him, too,” Lyuda heaved a sigh.

The poor soul,” the old woman went on. “He plodded five kilometers in the heat to tell you about that worm. He trudged all that dusty road in vain. I am sorry for him, he is a sick man.”

“I wish I came back half an hour earlier,” Lyuda said.

Pavel turned around on the bed and gave out a howl. It sounded like he had a beehive in his mouth. Lyuda gave him her breast. She had suckled little Yana, she had left a liquorice bottle, full of milk for her and she dripped milk again. Where did that milk come from? She was afraid to think what would happen when the grapes would be ripe. Then probably she’d drip a white milky path after Matey’s tail in the fields. She wished she could go to Pernik. Women’s milk there was more expensive than these bottles of French perfume, which transformed you into a lady. Never in her life had such a lady weeded a pepper garden, nor shoveled manure into a truck. There was not even one old men in Pernik, and not one old-fashioned suit. The pubs there were full of tall men. Well, her husband Plamen held her fifteen minutes in his arms before he caught that bus, it was true. But how could she live with fifteen minutes a whole year until Plamen made enough money to buy an apartment in Pernik? Plamen, don’t go. I can’t live without you, she said several times, but he went.

Now she wished she had come back home earlier. Stoycho could have told her about the worm that ate the roots of the raspberries.

“Lyuda,” her mother-in-law said. “You send a word to Boko…Oh, don’t tell me you don’t remember who Boko is. A small guy, as short as a keg. He’s a shepherd.”

“Yes, yes. I know him,” Lyuda said and wiped the milk from her son’s cheek.

“You told Aunt Malina to go and ask Boko to come and mow our Pop’s meadow. Didn’t you mow that meadow last year, Yuda? You did, and you were pregnant at that time. Yes, I remember. You had Pavel in your big belly when you mowed it.”

“We’ll see, “Lyuda said. “I have to dig the vineyard, I have to put manure in the bean field and I have to water the maize. I have to pick the raspberries, too, so I said to myself that Boko could help us.”

“Well, yes. You know these things better than I do. I forgot to tell you that Boko… the poor guy is no bigger than one of his sheep, you know. And he didn’t grow up because he drank from an early age. So Boko came here in the afternoon to ask when you wanted him to mow our Pop’s meadow. Lyuda, give me a glass of water, will you?”

Lyuda gave her some water and the old woman went on, “Boko said that tomorrow he’d find you in the maize field under the vineyard. You’ll go to water the maize tomorrow, won’t you? Tell the guy when he’s to start mowing. Oh, you are blessed with your milk, you can take my word for that. And Pavel is such a handsome baby, Lyuda. Let me touch wood. Let me touch wood just in case. He sucks your milk as vigorously as a calf, and he’s so strong. Lyuda, be tomorrow, about seven p.m. in the maize field. Boko will come there and talk to you about Pop’s meadow. Did you hear me, Lyda?”

She had told Plamen not to go to Italy. We’ll make enough money, she had said. But he was hard-headed, he went to pick the rotten olives there.

“Yes, I heard you, “Lyda muttered. “I’ll be waiting for him there in the maize field, under our Pop’s meadow.”



For Gram:  I know that you wander through the shadows of our kitchen while I scratch up my notebooks.  Thank you for watching.  I see you too.

Route 2’s overpass fence curls toward me: a frozen, mesh wave.  Once again, I’m crunching cans through each diamond-shaped hole.  I have chugged twelve Moxies, but still, I need more.  In October, I began to spell out a message.

A sign.

For him.

It will soon shout, “WELCOME HOME TRAVIS KENT.”

At first, I had painted a cardboard slab, but it became mushy from rainfall, the reds and blues slipping away.  Custom-made banners, to me, look unfriendly and boring.

Cans are best.  During Ashfield’s sunrise commute, the tin will fire up just like spotlights.

Which probably doesn’t matter.

Not now.

Maybe Travis has been machine-gunned by a troop of Iraqi soldiers.  Maybe he has been shot, shredded.  Maybe, right now, he is bleeding in a gunfire storm.

I loose countless minutes with all my questions.  “What if he’s gone?  Does Travis exist anymore?”

It’s almost evening.  I scowl back at the horizon of my new town.  Ashfield, Massachusetts.  I have remained here for just one reason, but that reason may never return.

^^^

Ashfield is a 40 square mile town in the Berkshire foothills in the southwestern corner of Franklin County [Massachusetts].
For decades, Ashfield was a quiet farming community with dozens of dairy and apple farms dotting the hillsides and lowlands. In the past 40 years, however, several farms have disappeared and the open fields and pastures have returned to wooded areas. It is only in the last 20 years that more people have been moving to Ashfield than leaving it. Lured by the cool breezes and the scenic vistas, people from all walks of life have moved from the cities.
Through all the years, the common theme has been that “small is better” and that Ashfield’s role in the world is to be a haven from the world (Massachusetts Department of Housing and Community Development – DHCD.)

^^^

Through the kitchen window, I watch my grandson hurry by.  Nelson disappears into the barn.  He will most likely mist himself with a can of air freshener hidden behind the tool chest.  I am certain that he hides his nicotine habit.

Golden lids crowd the tabletop.  They appear similar to fat, newly minted coins.  I am canning a fresh lot of green tomato jam, frozen from July 14th.  Nelson first arrived on that Saturday.  My daughter, Ellie, had puttered halfway up the carport and tossed her son’s bags onto the lawn.  She only stayed until Nelson finished changing her sedan’s oil filter.  Ellie had said, “He’s no hooligan.  Definitely jumbled up in the head.  But Jackson just moved in, Mom.  We need our own time.”  She told me about college courses Nelson had dropped, about cough medicine stupors.  Ellie said, “He wants out.  And you’re the one person he respects.  Friggin kid.  Hates his own mother, I bet.  Only thing that makes him smile is working on cars and trucks.”  Ellie finished her cucumber sandwich and steered back to the suburbs without a farewell to Nelson.  Later, on that first evening, I had asked the boy, “Why do you suppose your mother brought you here?”  He sniggered and replied, “She probably saw it in a TV movie.  I took acid once, plus, Jackson wants to cure my faggotry.”  I attempted to locate that word in Webster’s Dictionary, but discovered that, as I had suspected, it does not exist.  His own creation.  I do, however, know what it means.

Now, in this moment, Nelson stampedes into the kitchen, autumn’s coolness chasing him.

I say, “Careful.  Don’t let the heat out.”  I towel off my goopy hands, wrench him close and sniff his hair.  “You smell like…something.”

“No, I don’t,” he replies.

“You smell like cinnamon.”

“It’s my deodorant.  No smokes today.  I swear.”

“Sure.”

He wiggles off his jacket.  “I thought you were baking cake donuts this week.”

“Next week.  And you fry them.  No baking necessary.”

“Whatever.  They’re good.”

“Tell me, how’s your sign?”  I remind myself to smile.

“I don’t know,” he says, shrugging lazily. “I started out with letters that are way too big.  And I think his last name’s going to get smooshed.”

“Well, I’m sure Travis won’t mind one bit,” I say.

“Yeah.  Right.  If he even sees it.”

“The war’s about to end…sometime soon.  He’ll return.  Iraq’s on the mend.”  What else can I tell the boy?

He muscles open the ice box and pulls out another Moxie.

“That’s warm.  I just put it in.”

Nelson snaps the tab anyhow.  He rants, “Bush is a moron.  A total idiot.  So, probably, Travis’ll be there forever or maybe, he’ll just come back dead.”

My grandson is correct.  Unsure of how to respond, I remain silent and begin to place jars into a photo box.  They make thudding noises.

“Did you check the mail?” he asks.

“Yes.  Nothing for you.”

He drinks, his Adam’s apple jogging up and down.  Nelson then pads over to an encyclopedia that lies open on the table.  “What were you looking up?” he asks.

“Vertigo.  Alma called and said that she had it.”

“Does she?”

“No.  She’s ridiculous.  Will you mark that one for me?”

Nelson dog ears the page and his face twists into something that resembles a miniature smile.

^^^

“Don’t ask, don’t tell” is the common term for the U.S. military policy which implements Pub.L. 103-160 (10 U.S.C. § 654)…The policy prohibits anyone who has sexual, bodily or romantic contact with a person of the same sex from serving in the armed forces of the United States, and prohibits any homosexual or bisexual from disclosing his or her sexual orientation, or from speaking about any homosexual relationships, including marriages or other familial attributes, while serving in the United States armed forces…The military will discharge members who engage in homosexual conduct, which is defined as a homosexual act, a statement that the member is homosexual or bisexual, or a marriage or attempted marriage to someone of the same gender (The Pentagon’s New Policy Guidelines on Homosexuals in the Military, The New York Times, July 20, 1993, p.A14).

^^^

When I write to Travis, I pose as his girlfriend.  I scrawl lies about bikini waxes, periods and double D breast implants.  For a laugh.  The beginnings of these prettily-penned letters kickstart my chuckles.  I hope Travis enjoys the jokes too.  But as space on my notebook page begins to vanish, those punchlines fade.  I tell him that he is my entire world, my whole galaxy, my complete universe.  I tell him that, “I love you to death.”  I often propose marriage (something I have done maybe fifty times before; he always tells me to “quiet down”).  When I re-read these sentences, I vault away tears, but the sorrow pinches at my chest harder and harder, all through the night.  I never cry, though.

If he dies, I hope Travis withers quickly.

Painless.

Before jetting away to boot camp, he sternly said, “Try not to bust me for being a homo cocksucker.  Remember.  Don’t ask, don’t tell.”

So, I don’t and I don’t.

Travis has been in Iraq for eight months.  Now, I confuse days, dates.  I squeeze the poofy mound of blankets that rim the left side of my bed (his side), and I remember Travis’ peppermint smell.  I pretend I’m nestling into his shoulder: A strong resting place.

I know that all I’ve ever wanted could be no more.

^^^

I can’t forget any part of Travis.  His sweat, so easy to show.  His eyes like brand new tinsel, his joshing phone calls, his nakedness that always made me feel like a sweepstakes winner.  I can’t forget his nostrils which are the size of nickels (I always told Travis I could look inside his brain).

That September morning has become branded into my memory.  I said I would rotate his tires, but stripped instead.  I told Travis, “Don’t be noisy.  Just knock off the groaning and the swears and all that.”  Gram was downstairs, writing an article, so I tried to be quick.  Seconds after, I heard Travis click on the TV.

“What the hell?” he’d said.

I wiped my chin on the flat sheet.  As I turned, I saw the wavering airplane.

Travis didn’t blink, didn’t close his slackened mouth.  He simply said, “The country’s being attacked.”

We both watched a massive beam topple down from the twenty-first floor.  Hours later, while the iron melted, bent, and folded into a white dust cloud, we remained aghast.

I can’t forget the following night either.  Travis told me he had enlisted.  He said, “Stop having a hissy.  I’ll be back.  I promise.”

I then punched his nose, but he didn’t bleed.

Travis pinned me against the panelling.

He said, “How am I supposed to protect you if I can’t protect this…country?  I’m going to be like, like Indiana Jones.  Superman.  Spiderman.”

I had always known Travis thought of himself as a celluloid superhero.  But this was real.

Not a movie.

Real.

^^^

Harlot- (n.) a prostitute, a whore, young roller, rougue.

-Random House’s Webster’s College Dictionary, 1995

^^^

Nelson has begun wearing my dead husband’s flannel shirts.  He reads all the moldy science-fiction paperbacks Gilbert used to secretly purchase at the drugstore.  Nelson steals away after breakfast to construct his sign, then returns, much later, to watch Laurence Welk beside me.  This boy’s life has become partly mine.

Today, November first, he is hunched over a bowl of minestrone.

I confess, “Your mother called three times.”

“For what?”

“She inquired about when you were coming home.  She thinks it’s time.  Jackson is settled and…she wants to be a family.”

He clicks his tongue.  “Please.  That’s crap.  But if you want me to leave, I’ll go.”  He nods and stirs tomato wedges.

I ask, “Don’t you miss home?”

“I like Ashfield.”

“So, are you just…going to hide here forever?”

“I’m not hiding, Gram.”

“Then, what do you suppose you’re doing?”

“Just, I don’t know, living.”

“Living?”

“And waiting.”

I sigh, but refrain from doing so loudly.  “What about work?” I ask.

“I’m going to get a job.  After I finish the sign.  I can work at the garage and tune up cars.  I know how to do that.  Dad taught me everything.  Or I’ll talk to somebody at the Lake House.  I could wait tables, bartend,” he says.

“You really want to stay here?”

“I’m a country boy now,” he says, crushing up a tower of Saltines.  Nelson dumps the ruins into his soup.

“See, I’m talking about school.  A career.  What do you see yourself as?  What do you really want to do?  What do you dream about doing?”

Nelson chews for quite a while.  He napkins his cheek.  “I dream about being with Travis.”

I certainly understand.  Nelson believes they’ll settle in some farm house, fry up cake donuts and clothespin their shorts to the outside line.

I remember his fifth grade report, now yellowing in the crawlspace.  He was told to choose someone that he admired and then write a report.  He chose his grandmother.  I have two hat boxes stuffed with Nelson’s school papers.  He would send them to me even before showing Ellie or, Paul, his real father.

^^^

This home had been silent for quite some time.  The only sounds that would reach my ears were the croaking floors and clunking radiators.  When my husband had passed, I remember feeling crippled each evening.  I would curse, sob or sometimes phone Alma.  We’d whisper until sunrise.  Many years later, I grew to enjoy being the only breathing soul here.  I wrote articles for the Ashfield News.  I tamed the ancient broiler.  I mowed the front lawn, yet paid the Howard boy to tackle the rear.

Nelson lives here today.  There is comfort in his cough, his smoked up smell.  I have found safety in his love of kosher pickles.  I am even fond of the rock and roll music he blares while tending to our neighbor’s trucks.

Nelson is unlike his mother, much more like his grandmother.  Often, I believe that he becomes more like me everyday.

I, myself, also waited for a soldier to return.  After surviving breast cancer and loneliness, I enjoyed twenty more years with him.  It was bliss.

I certainly do long for Gilbert.

^^^

OLD FASHIONED CAKE DONUTS

Ingredients…

3 Eggs

1 ½ Cup sugar

½ Cup melted shortening

1 ½ Cup milk

6 Cups flour

6 Tsp. baking powder

1 ½ tsp. salt

1 ½ tsp. cinnamon

1 ½ tsp. nutmeg

Instructions…

Beat eggs.

Add sugar and stir.

Pour in shortening and milk.  Mix.

Slowly add all dry ingredients.  Mix well, until mixture becomes a workable dough.

Knead dough thoroughly.

Using a pin, roll out dough, adding enough flour to handle.

Cut portions with a donut cutter.

Carefully drop donuts in deep fat fryer for 8 minutes.

Lift out donuts and place them on wax paper or paper towels.

Let cool.

^^^

In Gram’s house, there are dictionaries, cook books, encyclopedias, Farmer’s Almanacs.  Countless volumes rise up, uneven, in each corner of each room.  She has always had questions: About begonias or continents.  About recorded rainfall or blackberry pie.  I bet Gram wants to know everything one day.

Sometimes, I wish I could find every answer too.

In some magical book, I’d look up:  “Is Travis coming home soon?”  It would tell me, “Yes.”  I’d search for the definition to:  “Does he love me?”  The page would read, “Positively.”

^^^

Icy winds swoop down the highway.  This is the coldest it’s been since last winter and now the chill has returned like a long-vacationing cousin.  I grind in more cola cans.  I’m trying to form the curvy S in TRAVIS.  It looks more like a Z or a cut up garden snake.  I gulp a Moxie, my sixth this morning.

“Hi there.”

I turn, fizz bubbling down my chin.  Two girls pose beside the mouth of the bridge.  Wrapped in identical sweaters, capped in blonde, they almost giggle, and then, move closer.

I squeegee my lips with my sleeve.  “Hi?”

The taller, slimmer one tells me, “We see you making your sign when we drive back from Wal-Mart.  We both work there.”

I reply, “Yeah?”

She says, “Your sign is…big.”

“Looks good,” the other girl says.

“Oh.”

The taller girl tells me, “My brother’s coming home too.  Before Christmas, I hope.  Like, so, I see you all the time and I thought I should do something too.”  She pulls out a small, pathetic cardboard square from behind her back.  A sign.  It says, “WE LOVE YOU ROB!!!!”  Botched American flags float around the boy’s name.  “See,” she says.

“Super.  Yeah.”  I poke a finger into my left ear and twist.  Golden nuggets of wax cling to my fingernail and I flick them away (It feels like another earache is about to arrive since I get them monthly; Travis always said, “Like a period”).

The girl asks, “So, uh, like, is it okay if I hang mine next to yours?”

Spears of annoyance slice at me.  I’m also aspeed with cola.  “No room,” I explain.

“Well, maybe I could just put it here toward the end,” she says, motioning to a free, untouched space.

“No, thanks.  I need the whole thing.”

“Please?”

The other girl says, “You don’t own this bridge.”

Slurping the last of my drink, I tell them, “Hey, I was here first.”

The prettier girl pleads, “There’s only one bridge in Ashfield.  This is the only place.”

“Sorry.  Can’t.”

The ugly girl shouts, “You’re a dick, you know that?”

I shrug.

Careless.

“You’re a fucking fucker.  Come on, Susie.”

I watch them vanish into the overgrown shrubs.  Opening another can, I know they’re right.  I should let Susie hang her dismal sign.  To me, it wouldn’t feel right, though.  I’d be nudged and pestered everyday.  When I first envisioned his sign, it never had a lame cardboard neighbor.  Plus, their brother is alive and, I know that Travis might be gone.

Dead boys are more important.

^^^

Abomination- (n.)  1.  Something greatly disliked or abhorred.  2.  Intense aversion or loathing; abhor.  3.  A vile or shameful action, condition or habit (Random House’s Webster’s Dictionary, 1995).

^^^

I have just reminded Alma to take iron.  A kerchief covers her balding, wispy hair and she complains about the cookies.  She has always been this way.  Alma says, “Not as good as mine, Marianna.”

I pretend to bark.  “You should have brought some of your own then.”

“Well, I don’t bake them until Christmas.”

“Too bad for me, I suppose.”

“Indeed,” she says.

I ask her, “Are we playing our Whose the Best Old Lady game again?”

“Oh, surely, dame.  Surely.”

“I wish I had a medal because today you’d win first place.”

We both begin laughing and Alma smacks the tabletop.

She yells, “You’re a firecracker!”

I’ve known Alma since Gilbert died.  We met during his wake.  When I asked exactly how she had known my husband, Alma replied with her trademark nonsense.  She’d said something like, “Well, I’m not sure I did know him, but when I saw his photo in the Ashfield News, I thought he looked familiar.  So…I didn’t want to foul things up.  Figured I should cover all my bases, you know.  I decided to come anyway.  Oh…and I’m so so sorry for your loss.”  I remember cackling almost too loudly.  I told her she was ridiculous.  Alma clasped both my hands and we didn’t stop smiling for minutes.

Today, she inquires, “Is it time for our anisette?”  Alma appears as though she is a child sitting eagerly before a pile of birthday gifts.

“No.  Nelson might see.”

“Big deal!  This is your house.  Plus, anisette on Wednesday afternoons is a tradition.”

I peek out the window and see him.  Nelson’s head is buried under the hood of my car.   He could be changing spark plugs or dumping in more windshield washer fluid.  I do, though, long for that licorice taste, but can’t bear for him to witness.  I do not want Nelson to believe that such things are acceptable.

I reluctantly say, “We’ve got five minutes.”

Alma yelps, “Get goin,’ gal!”

I shove aside a pillar of dictionaries and rush for my booze, my tumblers and my sugar bowl.

Alma says, “You’re not his mama, Marianna.”

“See…Ellie is a bit dim when it comes to Nelson.  She only has men on her mind.  Always has.”

“It’s not your job to straighten him out.”

I rim each glass in sugar, and then pour.  “There’s nothing wrong with Nelson.  It’s Ellie’s new husband.”

Quietly, Alma adds, “And that army lad too.”

We toast and I swallow a large sip.  I remain uncertain of how to speak about Travis.  Alma may disapprove and I’d like to dodge another thirty minute debate.

I toss back another gulp.  I submit.  I proclaim, “Nelson’s in love.”

Alma chokes on her anisette, laughing.  “Is that possible?”

With no reservations, I stare into her sagging, dewy eyes.  “Yes, Alma.  It is possible.  I know and he knows.”

“Then let’s pray that boy comes home in one piece.  And soon.”

^^^

It’s most likely two or three in the morning.  I know this house, but still, I grope the walls and stumble toward the bathroom.  Light suddenly shines with an eye-burning glare.  I can hardly recognize Nelson who remains frozen in the hallway.  I then realize that I’m dressed in only a bra and slip.  My right breast sags toward the carpet while my left breast remains absent.  Crossing my arms, I become charged with embarrassment.

“Sorry,” Nelson says.

“Sorry,” I offer, as well.

“Had to whiz,” he tells me and turns away.

“Too much pop?”

“Guess.”

I sigh, throwing my hands up.  “It’s okay to look, Nelson.”

He pivots, squints, and then, stares elsewhere.

“We’re bunkmates.  It was only a matter of time.”

He asks, “So, like, did it hurt?”

“The mastectomy?  Yes, a bit.  Having only one breast hurt a great deal more.  Your granddad didn’t care, though.  I suppose we all loose parts along the way.  I’m glad I didn’t loose all of me.”

“I’m glad too,” he whispers, still looking at the wall.

^^^

I’ve grown tired of brown acid vomit.  I’ve grown tired of bearing the coldness that scales up Route 2 each day.  Sometimes, I climb down, back step the breakdown lane and stare up at my work.  One day, Travis’ sign appears lopsided like a drunk had done it.  Other times, his message looks simply perfect.

It’s probably for nothing, though.

He might never see this.

I continue to loose more minutes, asking myself, “What if there’s no air puffing up his lungs?  What if there is no blood sliding through his veins?”

^^^

I scan the entire store.  Gram had asked me to buy groceries (bouillon cubes, cream of tartar, floss, shortening?).  She begged me, again and again, to write a list and now, I know I should have.  I wander down the cramped aisles with hopes of jumpstarting my memory.

As I triple-blink, I see that Travis’ mother is slowly pushing a carriage toward me.  She fusses with her scarf.  I’m flushed with panic and I pretend to inspect bars of chocolate.

The woman asks, “You think that I wouldn’t notice you, Nelson?”

I force a smile.  “Hi, Mrs. Kent.”

“Still in Ashfield, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Marvin and I see your sign.  See it every Sunday comin’ back from my dad’s in Shelburne Falls.”

I hunt for words, but cannot find them.  They are hiding inside some uncrackable safe.

She huffs and places a loaf of bread in her cart.  “We got a letter this week.  From the army.  He’s dead, you know.  He’s dead now.”

“What?”

“He was killed.  My son is dead, Nelson.  So you can go home,” she says, teary.  “And you’re a harlot.  An abomination.  I believe that.”

^^^

I return to the bridge.  Only to find a mad spattering of crunched up cans dotting the pavement.  The T has completely vanished.  The E seems to have braved fifteen bullets.  Among the aluminum mess, I begin to cry.

Open-mouthed.

This ache cannot be locked away.

Travis was once swaggering, joking, swearing.

Now, he is not.

He’s gone.

^^^

My husband’s favorite dessert was Kentucky Derby Pie.  After he came back from the war, I couldn’t bake enough.  Gilbert would gorge, devouring the chocolate treat just as a vending machine pulls in dollar bills.  He’d always beg me to eat a sliver too and, truthfully, I would only do so to view the pleased look on Gilbert’s face.  Kentucky Derby pie tastes rather bland to me.  After his death, I never crafted another.  This dessert became a spiteful reminder of my loss.  Today, though, I would like to toss that hurt into the wind.  What if Nelson would enjoy a slice?

I begin poring through books in my office, but, still, I can’t seem to find the recipe.  Then, I spot a 1955 Betty Crocker manual at the bottom of a tall stack.  I shuffle over and attempt to slide the book out.  When it’s halfway free, the tower tumbles, crashing down on my spotted arms.

^^^

Nelson had sulked in with the groceries, uttered maybe one sentence and retreated to his bedroom.

I hear a tap at the door.  From the cook book ruins, I stand.  The tapping soon becomes knocking and then, slamming.  I ease closer, only to see that my daughter, Ellie, fumes on the porch.  Her hair has become a lighter shade of brown, longer too.  As I open the door, I am certain that I carry a bewildered face.

“Ellie?”

She almost tramples over me.

I plead, “What are you doing?  What is the problem?”

My daughter begins to scream, “Nelson!  Nelson!”

“What’s this?” I ask.

“I’ve been calling and calling and I told you that it’s time for him to come home.”

Ellie rumbles to the parlor.  Nelson, puffy-eyed, peeps out from the bottom of the staircase.

She commands, “Get your stuff.  We’re going.”

“He’s fine.  Nelson’s no problem.”

She sweeps the hair away from her creased forehead.  “I’m not going to bother you with him any longer.  It’s time he got his act together.”

I latch onto my daughter’s arm.  “Listen, everything’s okay.”

“No!  No, it isn’t.”

“Don’t be hysterical.”

“He’s my son, mom.  Jackson and me make the decisions.”  She then lunges at Nelson, flailing like a wild creature.

I scream, “Ellie!  He doesn’t want to leave.  Let him be.  Nelson’s a man now.  He can decide.”

Her face sags and she glances from window to window.  “Alright, then,” she whispers.  “Fine.  Take him.  Have him.”  She glowers at Nelson.  “If you’re not home in a week, Jackson’s going to ditch all your stuff.  It’s right now or not at all.”

The boy replies, “This is where I’m supposed to be.”

Ellie flicks something imaginary from her sweater.  “You cocksucking out here, Nelson?”

“Enough,” I tell her.  “None of that talk.”

“I know my son.”

Glaring at the woman I birthed, I say, “Watch what you say here.  And let’s forget Thanksgiving next week.  Maybe we’ll see you at Christmas.”

^^^

Nelson’s head weighs on my lap.  It feels as though it was crafted from lead.  I’m squeezing medicine drops into his ear while someone spins the giant wheel on a television.  I do know that is torn by Ellie’s words.

Nelson says, “Sorry I messed up Thanksgiving.”

I sigh, but do so in a quiet fashion.  “You didn’t mess anything up.  Your mother’s just angry right now.  This is all for the best.  Stay still and let the drops sink in.  Ideally, this month’s earache will be gone by Tuesday.”

My grandson tells me, “Travis never wrote back to me, you know.”

I cannot reassure him.  Nothing I say will bandage Nelson’s wounds.  I do recall Gilbert’s war time, though.  I decide to tell him, “Your granddad only wrote me once.  They’re busy, of course.  He said he was hungry.  He said he was okay.  He said that he needed cigarettes.  Small talk.  But Gilbert also said something…surprising.  He told me that I was his bar of gold and that he was my Fort Knox.  He said he’d be back to take care of me.  Rather poetic.  Unlike him.  I thought someone else came up with that.”

Nelson looks up at me, tears pooling in his eyes.  “He’s dead, Gram.  I found out today.  Travis died.”

“Oh.”  This is all I can manage.

While he weeps, I see that Calvin Paynes’ funeral has concluded and the procession crawls down our street.  Headlights bleed through the curtains, flashing as though we were in the midst of a high beam disco.  Nelson almost wets my thigh.  I squeeze him, kiss his cheek.

I finally say, “Find those cigarettes of yours.  I’ll get my anisette.”

^^^

11/15/01

Mr. President Bush

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW

Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. Bush,

Hello!

I hope that you’re enjoying your time in that big big white house.  Sometimes, I wonder what it would look like if it was a black house.  Or a pink house.  Guess I’ll never know.

I’m pleased that your war for oil has been such a success.  Cash!  Cash!  Cash!  This year has been a real winner for you.

My big-dicked homo boyfriend fought in your war!  It’s true.  I bet he killed tons and tons of those terrorists.  But he was exploded or shot or tortured.  Actually, I don’t know how he died, but I’m sure that it was unpleasant.  He’s dead now.  Anything for the good ole U.S. of A.  Anything for you, Mr. President!!!

Got to be going.  I have to find a new cocksucking sinner so we can get married, adopt black babies and ruin the “moral fiber” of this country.

Sincerely,

Nelson Ford

14 Old North Street

Ashfield, MA 01330

P.S.  I hope you enjoy the American flag I have enclosed.  Sorry for all the white stains on it.  Oops!

P.P.S.  I pray that you face true horror, true misery, true ache.  The massacre of you and yours will be my gold mine.

^^^

Gram warns me that her radio pre-sets are forbidden, so I’m trapped with the sound of fiddles and twangs.  I creep toward the post office to send away my letter.

I see Travis’ mother again.

Mrs. Kent.

She has beached her car on Wagner Road, the hazards winking at me.  I guzzle a cloud of air.  I know what should be done.  Pulling in behind her, my hands cramp into fists.  But I get out.  Mrs. Kent scowls and then, looks forward as if I don’t exist.  I knock on her window twice.

I shout, “Need some help?”

She shakes her head.

“Roll it down,” I say, almost commanding her.

She does.

And I hide my armor.

His mother says, “I don’t need you.”

“Did you call anyone?”

“There’s no phone booth for miles.”  Her eyes look as though they might shoot searing lasers at me like a villain from one of Travis’ favorite superhero movies.

I say, “No, I mean on your cell.”

“I don’t have one of those,” she snaps.  “Marvin gets off work in a few hours and he drives this way.  He’ll see me.”

“Well, I see you now.  Don’t be…foolish.  You want me to take a look at things?”

She says, “Marvin thinks I probably need a new timing belt…some kind of belt.  Maybe that’s it.”

“Have to order parts, then.  Just…let me take you home.”

“I’ll be fine on my own.”

“You’ll freeze.  Lock it up and come with me.  Do it.  I won’t say a word.  I swear.”

^^^

I park beside the white curb (the place where I first dropped a kiss on Travis’ forehead).  As promised, I have not spoken.  Mrs. Kent spent three miles fiddling with her purse, sighing, locking and unlocking the door.  Now, she is crunched over.  Travis’ mother rocks before the dashboard.

I finally say, “Here you go.”

“Thank you,” she barely whispers.

Mrs. Kent peers at me and then at the car mats.  “I hope you know that I never wanted Travis to be this way.”

“Gone?  Or gay?”

“Either.  He was supposed to be a big football hero.  Or a movie star.  I imagined he’d have a wife and children and now, he’s just, he’s…”  Mrs. Kent shrivels even more.

Unplanned words begin to parachute off my tongue.  “There was nothing wrong with him.  Or with us.  I thought he was perfect.  I thought we were perfect.”

“To you, I’m dumb, Nelson.  Old fashioned.  A Jesus freak.”

“All that matters is…we both loved him.  A lot.”

She is choking on sadness.

“Travis was a hero.  Even before he left.”

Mrs. Kent finally opens the door, planting one foot on the frosted lawn.

I whisper, “Can I see his room?  Just once more.”

^^^

I see a splash of worn t-shirts and boxer shorts.  As it always was, his room is garnished in reds, whites and blues.  An American flag droops off the wall.

This is the place where, as a gag, Travis tied a blanket around his neck, pretending to soar like Superman.  This is the place where, lovingly, he would grip me while I dreamt.  This is the place where he will never be again.

I lift a pillow from his unmade bed.  Pressing it to my nose, I suck in the scent of his hair.  Sweat.  Unwashed.  I remember that when Travis slept, he never looked peaceful.  He was screw-faced as if someone had slammed him in the groin.

Mrs. Kent eases in and says, “Marvin will be home soon.”

“Can I keep this?  Please?  Sounds weird, but it’s my favorite smell.”

She sighs.  “If you must.”

^^^

A large amount of the United States’ gold reserves is stored in the vault of the Fort Knox Bullion Depository, one of the institutions under the supervision of the Director of the United States Mint…The two-story basement and attic building is constructed of granite, steel and concrete…The vault door weighs more than 20 tons. No one person is entrusted with the combination. Various members of the Depository staff must dial separate combinations known only to them…The gold stored in the Depository is in the form of standard mint bars of almost pure gold or coin gold bars resulting from the melting of gold coins…No visitors are permitted at the Depository. This policy was adopted when the Depository was established, and is strictly enforced (The United States Department of Treasury’s Internet Fact Sheet – www.treas.gov).

^^^

I had asked Nelson what he might like for Christmas.  He’d replied, “Does Wal-Mart bring boys back from the dead?”  I decided to not respond.

Nelson now spends his days at the auto body shop.  He returns home with his tales of cars and trucks.  As we eat turkey pot pies, he’ll tell me something like, “I changed Ms. Franklin’s tire because it had already been patched.  I told her the hole is on the outer tread and you can’t plug that since it’ll just blow out again in two or three months.  I said your mechanic is a doofus.  So, I jacked it up and popped on a new one.  Seven minutes flat.  My record.”  Nelson’s stories always warm me.

I have just finished an article for the Ashfield News that highlights developers who are attempting to contract on protected land.  It ran just three days ago and, already, I have received a bevy of comments.  Alma says it my best feature yet.  She believes that I’m helping to preserve Ashfield.  After reading it in the bathroom, Nelson had exclaimed, “What a bunch of A-holes.”  I am quite proud of my writing.

Everything in this house, somehow, feels fine.  My life swims ahead and I am content.  Nelson heals each day, casting out more smiles than I have ever seen.

We need this, each the same.

^^^

By ten A.M. tomorrow, my entire family will stream in for Christmas Day.  These rooms will hustle.  People will crowd one another, leaving behind gifts, crinkled bows and muddy footprints.  I do love such moments.

Tonight, though, Nelson, Alma and I sip on Anisette, watching a vintage Frank Sinatra holiday special.

Alma almost yells, “Should I sing along?”

I say, “Not unless you want us to leave and go to the Lake House.”

“Should I do a Christmas dance?”

“Not unless you want us to toss you out in the snow.”

Nelson interjects, “A dance would do us good.”

I believe that he’s somewhat tipsy, though I remain untroubled.  My grandson takes Alma’s hand, pulls her off the couch and they begin swaying to “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.”  I laugh.

“Don’t dip me,” Alma says, “We’ll crash and I’ll break something.”

Amid our chuckles, I barely recognize the doorbell’s chime.  I struggle up and meander toward the kitchen.

My eyes widen and my legs quickly feel as though the have become massive barrels.  Travis stands on the stoop.  His left arm no longer exists; only a pinned up, empty sleeve.  The boy’s face appears to have aged five years with drooping eyes and lips.  I watch him press the bell again.

Dazed, I open the door.  Travis nods at me.  He waddles in and simply stares at a bubbling Nelson.

My grandson stops his dance.

^^^

Wordless, I could only click on one of his favorite movies.  We lie in bed, watching Superman slit through the clouds.  It seems like I’m inside my own cinema daydream.

Travis finally says, “You know, those assholes sent my parents the wrong letter.  Dip shits.  I was at a military hospital in Kentucky.”

My sentences rise up as only whispers.  “I’m glad you’re…back.”  Nuzzling my head on his shoulder where, once, his arm was connected, I brim with happiness.

He says, “If it’s too weird, you can come to my other side.”

“No.  I like this side.  It’s my side.”

Travis snickers.  “What the hell am I worth now?  Not a lot.  Can’t do much on my own.  Maybe I’ll get disability checks.  Maybe I can work at Wal Mart.”

“You’re worth more than anything I’ve ever known.”

At last, he looks into my eyes for more than five seconds.  Travis clamps his jaw.  In a busted voice, he tells me, “Thank you for taking me.”

“Thank you for letting me take you.”

^^^

Black Gold, n.  petroleum.

- Random House’s Webster’s College Dictionary

Valery Oisteanu is a Living National Treasure of an imaginal Atlantis situated somewhere between Tristan Tzara’s lost Romania and the beat–mythographical Lower East side.
-Peter Lamborn Wilson (Poet, philosopher, author)

If you like the pair of Jacks, Micheline and Kerouac, you’ll want to hold this card.  It’s all here, even unexplored nooks and crannies in this fire and water ending of the world book… “the word on the street/be fast on your feet” You can go anywhere from here. This book: ”Perks in Purgatory” is the Ticket!  Remember Lord Buckley said “Get your tickets now. ”
-Charles Plymell- (poet, artist, publisher Cherry Valley Editions)

Valery Oisteanu is a wild worldwide traveler into the unknown. He travels Beyond The Imaginary, thus beyond ‘Imagination’– on his trips he dines with his Surreal (ist) Friends such as Phil Whalen, Frida Khalo, and certainly Victor Brauner and Gellu Naum. His Dreamscapes (escapades) are erotic and – mystical, invoking his highest “Anti-philosophical” reflections. In “His Own Words” Oisteanu has seen it all, described it all – “megalopolis in apocalypse”, ‘nightmares’, children in Hell, drunken submarines as well as ‘synchronicities’ of paradise!

Please welcome Valery Oisteanu into your world – ‘his-space’ is your space, virtual and real, right here and elsewhere!
-Nina Zivancevic- (poet, writer, art-critic, Paris, France)

Perks in Purgatory is a juicy album filled with retinal snapshots from a slapstick apocalypse, a Mongolian cluster of dream scenarios, surreal encounters, and extraordinary events. Oisteanu’s magnetic rhythms conjure telluric forces, twitchy little storms in the diaphragm. This Zen daddy trickster takes Gentle Reader on a whirlwind tour of the outer limits, endlessly spinning tales as old as Homer, as fresh as milk.
-Max Blagg (poet, performer, editor of Bald Ego magazine)

With a voice like honey dripping from stalactites… with an amber tone that tickles the bones… Valery Oisteanu personifies hip! From Bali to Dali, from Mecca to Mexico, this poetry steals from myth and gives to eternity.
-Jeffrey Cyphers Wright (poet, collagist, art-critic, editor “Live Mag”)

Valery’s like a priest with a stopwatch, running through the world, consecrating everything.
Valery “Poet-Philosopher-Extoller” Oisteanu lives in three centuries and nine continents at once. A savage and gifted raconteur, dream-cartographer and Zen Dada high priest, Oisteanu is an excellent tour guide through New Jersey, Bucharest and the Upper No-Mind. Valery Oisteanu is a tenured professor at the “Buddha University in space.”
-Sparrow (poet, performer critic)