Words+Images

MUSE IS THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL PUBLISHED BY THE LIT WORDS+IMAGES

ISSUE04.08

They’re haunted houses. Thanks to NAFTA. Thanks to patriotic corporations that sent our jobs overseas and sent 08 GENE VINCENT SPEAKS TO ME our sons and daughters to the desert to TONI K. THAYER protect their profits and to die there, or Cleveland leads the lead, finally—in come home to unaffordable health care, 15 AN OLD MAN LIES DOWN WITH THE LION MAJ RAGAIN home foreclosures. Lives are up in the air, PTSD claims denied. Home ownership anchored by debt. It’s yet another dubious has diminished. Our urban streets look 16 DANCING WITH LORCA accolade for our hard luck town. Last more and more like Baghdad while 04 R.A. WASHINGTON HAUNTED year Detroit wrested away our brief reign Neocon CEOs hole up in the gated as America’s most poverty wracked city. McMansion green zones of the exurbs. 17 SNOW, ROSES HOUSES 0 8 GEORGE BILGERE BY RAY MCNIECE Not to worry. Look around. White House Our tenuous toe-hold in the spin about our robust national economy middleclass is loosening, our families 18 LOST IN THE OUTFIELD has dissipated like smoke from a roadside are uprooted. Our homes unmoored. THOMAS DUKES IED. Walk the potholed streets from Hard times have turned our households Kinsman to Lorain Avenue, past blank upside down, misery loving company. The 22 MORNING RITUAL (LORAIN & W. 98TH ST – CLEVELAND) stares of second story windows under unfunhouse tilt-a-whirl lurches up again, MICHELLE RANKINS wood rot flashings flaking white paint, tethered together on the power grid, new 4x8 press board screwed over picture dirty energy browning out the landscape 24 DREAMERS OF THE DAY (BOOK REVIEW) PEGGY LATKOVICH windows. A kind of economic Katrina has below. We are tethered together also by hit home. TV cable, the ties that blind, hunkered 25 MERMAID Cleveland is not a plum—that once inside, eyes glazed over from the porn of GENEVIEVE JENCSON touted but quietly abandoned civic violence as we curse and blame our own booster slogan attempt at Big Apple poor, parroting fear mongering pundits, 25 IN THE VONDELPARK, AMSTERDAM ROGER CRAIK status. Nope. Cleveland is a corroded never noticing our own downward spiral, muffler in a gutter in front of a slumping this slow tornado of debt after the credit 26 DISTANCE duplex on St. Clair near East 72nd. bubble burst, the whirlpooling debris of GRANT BAILIE

COVER tiltawhirl, 22.5 x 19.5, Furthermore, drive the suburban ring the American dream as it goes down the acrylic on paper, 2007 from Euclid, to Garfield, to Parma, to Old drain. Naw, we’re not in Kansas anymore, 32 WHAT YOU HAVE LEFT (BOOK REVIEW) Brooklyn past stolid rows of tract houses Toto. This is Cleveland as post industrial MARY GRIMM that once were factory worker’s palaces, wasteland. 35 HOMETOWN’S GRAVITATIONAL PULL their first steps into the middle class. To But Cleveland is a tough town, JOHN ETTORRE those cookie cutter boxy castles, a union inhabited by hardened folks who can man could come home for the weekend laugh at their plight, broken plumes on

For more information on Amy Casey, with a paycheck long enough to feed a the gray sky. And maybe there is a new visit www.amycaseypainting.com family of four and set aside some cash wind arising, gonna blow all these blues www.zgallery.com for their college educations. He was a away, as Native son Langston Hughes UPCOMING hardworking man who played cards and wrote. We cast bleak but unblinking March 20-April 25, 21st Annual McNeese National Works drank beer with his buddies on Friday eyes on our town so-ugly-it’s-beautiful. on Paper Exhibition at McNeese State University, Lake Charles, LA night, went with his wife to their bowling Witness the stillness in a flake of rust league on Saturday, watched the game on as it drifts down from the Superior April 18-July 6, Living in Your Imagination: SPACES 30th Sunday and got back in the grind come Viaduct onto the Cuyahoga, or sunlight Anniversary at SPACES gallery in Cleveland Monday. breaking though slate overcast and

July 5- 26 Now where is he? Where have his igniting a broken beer bottle on Snow URBANIC: Sightlines and Microchosms at kids gone from those abandoned Road, or forsythia blooming, dripping Moxie DadA in Pittsburgh, PA neighborhoods? with ice melt from the broken gutter of Opening October 17, 2008 a foreclosed house, or even, yes, a plum AmyCasey/AmyKligman/MinervaOrtiz @ Project Space, Kansas City, MO tree in my Slovenian great uncle’s back yard in Euclid, those blue bulges dusted with silvery smut, glowing like evening spreading across Lake Erie.

Everything is looking at everything else. JUDITH MANSOUR-THOMAS Editor And so the world is created as seamless TIM LACHINA Design Director vision. Where does the seer end and the

RAY MCNIECE sight begin? This conundrum prompted Poetry Editor Meister Ekhart to declare, The eye with which PEGGY LATKOVICH Assistant Editor I see God is the eye with which God sees me.

ALENKA BANCO Writers and artists translate visions via pen Art Editor to paper and via brush to canvas. As poetry KELLY K. BIRD Advertising Account Manager editor for MUSE, I hope to create a locus [email protected] for the ekphrastic impulse, art created from SUBMISSIONS art that is more than mere art for art’s sake [email protected] [email protected] navel gazing, but expression that opens out [email protected] into the wider world. MUSE is that synergy between literature, art, and graphics. As a young poet I often visited the The Cleveland Museum of Art and wandered the galleries with a pocket notebook in hand, the upended, 20.5 x 22.5, acrylic on paper, 2007 paintings windows into the timeless world of imagination. Open these pages, walk through rooms of literature and art, and look through windows beyond time and space where the Founded in 1987 as Ohio Writer, Muse is the quarterly To: [email protected] journal published by The Lit, a nonprofit literary arts organization. No part of this journal may be reproduced moment of creation, which is the eternal From: Mary E. Weems, Ph.d. without written consent of the publisher. 2. Silence Visit us at www.the-lit.org. now, resonates your consciousness. Every Date: February 3, 2008 picture tells a story and every poem conjures A woman’s silence Re: Response to Issue 01.08 Cover is as colorless as two hands that THELIT CLEVELAND’S LITERARY CENTER a thousand images. Send us your poems that Art pause to protest open out into this world. Who knows, if The Lit make a meal out of dirt ARTCRAFT BUILDING 2570 SUPERIOR AVENUE 1. Silence caress a woman SUITE 203 revives the highly successful mirror of the arts fold in prayer CLEVELAND, OHIO 44114 04 hold an obituary One woman watching 216 694.0000 WWW.THE-LIT.ORG programs, those poems may end up on stage, 08 guide fate toward love from the universe shape the world M while a man with a brush gazing back at us. reach out and touch. U covers the image of Mary S with white. RAY MCNIECE

4 THE MUSE AS EKPHRASTIC IMPULSE MUSE IS THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL PUBLISHED BY THE LIT

Everything is looking at everything else. JUDITH MANSOUR-THOMAS Editor And so the world is created as seamless TIM LACHINA Design Director vision. Where does the seer end and the

RAY MCNIECE sight begin? This conundrum prompted Poetry Editor Meister Ekhart to declare, The eye with which PEGGY LATKOVICH Assistant Editor I see God is the eye with which God sees me.

4 GENE VINCENT SPEAKS TO ME Poetry Reading TONI K. THAYER Sunday, April 20, 2 – 4 pm NewCharles and Jane Word Lehner Auditorium, s Akron2008 Art Museum I first see him in the toiletry aisle at the new Shop-n-Save. I am “They built that great big goddamned grocery store Featuring Alison Pelegrin and selections from her book Big buying antacid tablets for Lance and I look up from the bottle and all they have is fruit fucking cream antacids?” He sounds Muddy River of Stars, winner of the 2006 Akron Poetry Prize. of assorted fruit cream flavors and I see him. I think he is a offended. Followed by a reading by New Words 2008 poetry contest man at first. No, not a man, an adolescent boy. He is the size “I guess so,” I lie. “Maybe they haven’t gotten all their finalists, a reception and book signing. and slim-hipped shape of the boys who come stomping into stock in yet.” Presented with generous support from Dr. John and Libby Jacobs my office each day. Except no boys around here dress like that. “Maybe this country is going to hell. Did you ever He’s wearing a red cowboy shirt with black piping and snaps, think of that?” and his blue jeans are cuffed broadly over pointy-toed boots. I close my eyes, ready for a sermon. I press the palms It’s the hairdo that makes me stop and stare though. His hair is of my hands together concentrating on the points of contact in slicked back and sculpted into an elaborate pompadour from each finger, one at a time, just like I used to do in church. I can One South High | Akron, Ohio 44308 | 330.376.9185 | www.AkronArtMuseum.org somebody’s crazy TV fantasy of the 1950s. It twists and curls hear Lance lower his feet from the coffee table. He clears into a precarious black wave trembling just on the verge of his throat, readying himself for oratory, but he collapse above his unsuspecting forehead. stops short. Great, I think. Is this what I’m going to have to “You think maybe they got some- deal with this year? Are the boys going to be like this now? thing better over at Kroger’s?” Then as I watch, he slips a tube of toothpaste out of its he asks. Seeking box and slides it into the front of his pants. A tooth- Local Authors brush quickly follows. I open my mouth to say something. I am a school authority and I can’t let Join us for the things like this just happen. I am about to put Local Author Fair at the on my stern, teacherly voice when he turns Larchmere and I see the soft swell of breasts under the FLEA market red shirt. Mac’s Backs & Festival! I snap my mouth shut and look up Books on Coventry Saturday, June 28, 2008 into her face. Her blue eyes hold mine for a second before glancing down and back up my body. I drop the antacids into my basket and pull my cardigan sweater Information & Registration: closer around myself. She chuckles and wraps her hand around the Loganberry Books lump in her pants. I notice how ragged her fingernails are as she says, 13015 Larchmere Blvd. the cherry Shaker Heights, OH 44120 “A girl has to have something to keep her fresh.” I blush and head for 216.795.9800 the checkout line. ones, Lance. You like c h e r r y , www.loganberrybooks.com Honey.” There is an edge of pleading in my 04 A t home, Lance is in his chair watching the end of the 08 football game and cracking pistachio shells between his teeth. voice that I don’t like. My summer vacation isn’t officially over M When I give him the bag with the antacids in it, he throws it for another 13 hours, but I sound frazzled already. U He tries to convince me to go to the Kroger’s, and I S Three Floors of New & Used Books across the room and tells me, “I don’t like this flavor.”

EM www.macsbacks.com “It’s all they had,” I tell him. almost tell the truth. I almost tell him that of course they have 9 all different kinds of antacid tablets at the Shop-n-Save, it’s the wrinkle up and waiting for him to stop so I can suggest business Suddenly I yell out, “Why are you limping?” instead of “Who a brand-new Grand Marquis for our second wedding anniversary. biggest supermarket in the tri-state for godssakes, but I picked the communications as a major that might incorporate his interest in are you?” That seems to make him happy. Jeff Rogers and I have settled on fruit creams specially, because I know just how much he hates language and his father’s understandable concern for his career Over her shoulder she says, “Gene Vincent walked with a journalism, which still makes his father uncomfortable but doesn’t them. I almost tell him that, but instead I hear myself pleading, prospects. I am wondering who else is in the waiting room, and I limp.” At the door she turns around briefly and says in an explana- send him into a rage. And I have dreamed about her every night. I “Lance, Honey, I’ve got to start work in the morning. School starts see her outside my window. She is walking up the steps to the main tory tone, “Gene Vincent speaks to me.” have dreamed of massaging her pompadour with an enormous tin tomorrow, remember? I’m not going out again tonight. OK?” entrance. She is wearing shiny gray slacks and a black T-shirt with “Who’s Gene Vincent?” I ask Lance when he gets home later. of blue saddle soap. I have dreamed of sitting at the kitchen table “Fuck,” he proclaims. the sleeves rolled up to expose slim, strong arms. At the top of the “You don’t know who Gene Vincent is,” he says it as a while she served me pancakes the shape of late-model automo- “Why don’t you go out to Kroger’s yourself?” I surprise stairs, she flicks a half-smoked cigarette over her shoulder and statement while he is fishing a beer out of the back of the fridge. He biles. Last night I dreamed that we were dancing in a crowd in the myself by asking. slides her left hand over her hair. leaves the kitchen without answering me. high school gymnasium and at the end of the song she bent down Jeff Rogers is in mid-sentence when I get up and walk out I follow him into the garage where he is treating his car and kissed me on the mouth, just a little kiss. The dreams stay in “Well, Rebecca, since you asked,” Lance begins, and the sermon I of the room. Five pale, nervous faces look up at me as I charge seats with saddle soap. I stand and watch him slowly rub his hand my head all day and distract me from my work. It makes me tired. I expected earlier unfurls itself from its temporary hiding place through the waiting room. I jog down the hallway, my pumps over the subtle curves of the blue leather with a careful tenderness think I must be going crazy. under his neat red mustache. “My vehicle has more mileage on it clacking on the tiles, and I hurry around the corner just as she’s that I have never felt on my own skin. Still, the morning goes routinely: I have to tell a freshman than yours, as you have not been working throughout the summer walking out of the main office. I hold onto the wall to keep myself “No, I don’t know who Gene Vincent is,” I tell him. “Do you?” girl that short-shorts are not a matter of free speech and I convince months. Due to this I believe that your vehicle should be the one to upright. She is slapping a pack of cigarettes into her hand. She looks Lance laughs. “Course I do. They play him on the oldies Nina Logan that community college is more welcoming to single be utilized for errands and so forth. Do you follow me?” up and her eyes widen in surprise. station all the time. Dad’s secretary always gets up teen mothers than a university. At lunch I decide to drive out to the But I don’t follow him. He follows me as I walk into the “Well, well. If it ain’t my grocery store girlfriend,” she says and wiggles her lumpy old ass when his song car lot to talk to Lance and his dad about interior options, but I see kitchen and heat up frozen lasagna and tear lettuce into cereal with a little sneer on her lips. comes on. What’s it called? . . . ‘Be-bop-a-lula,’ her walking into Mitch’s Diner and without thinking I pull into the bowls for a side dish. He talks to me the entire time I prepare dinner, “You can’t smoke in here!” I bark at her. I think.” next parking space I see. When I walk in she is sitting at the counter telling me why he won’t drive my car because it wasn’t purchased She ignores me and says, “You look prettier with your hair He starts to sing, “She’s my baby . . . I with a cup of coffee. I sit three stools away and study the menu, from his father’s lot and how we were already engaged when I done up like that.” don’t mean maybe,” and he grabs me. wondering what to do, watching her out of the corner of my eye. bought it so his father takes it as a personal slight that it even gets I touch my hair. I feel embarrassed and angry to be “C’mon, Becky, dance with me.” She taps her foot and hums almost inaudibly to herself. driven at all and how he hopes I’ve had the oil changed recently standing here like this. “What are you doing here? Are But I don’t dance. He crushes “Who is Gene Vincent?” I finally ask. because I can’t expect him to take care of some other dealer’s stock you a new student? I haven’t seen your file.” my wrist in his hand and She turns without a hint of surprise. “Only the best rock- and on and on. Finally, we eat in silence. Lance watches the rerun “Advertising and promotions,” she bounces up and down n-roller of all time,” she says. “And that is a fact.” She holds me with highlights of the football game that was on when I came in. I stare drawls. “Ad-vance leg work. Trying to drum like a toddler about to her eyes for a second. “I was wondering if’n I’d see you again.” out the window and remember the day I finally accepted his up a little work for me and the boys.” wet himself, and I I feel myself start to blush. “What about Elvis Presley?” marriage proposal. I’d had my job as guidance counselor for a year She draws a cigarette ask, “Does he do I protest. and couldn’t think of any reason to stay single at the age of 31. He from the pack. Watching charity work or She nods her head. “Elvis got all slick and clean real fast, was so happy he made a pot of chili to celebrate. h e r h a n d m o v e something? Like sold out to Hollywood and all that. Gene stayed real. He was down Tonight I dream about her, only we aren’t in a super- towards her mouth, I J e r r y L e w i s and dirty, an honest-to-god rebel.” market. We are on surfboards racing through perfect ink-black tell her, “This is a high maybe?” “What’s so great about that?” tunnels in an ocean of oily hair. We both look like Annette Funi- school,” as though that will W i t h a “It’s got you all het up, don’t it?” She chuckles her low, cello with hip-hugger bikinis and enormous bouffants—hers black make her stop. disappointed shrug, warm chuckle. “School Teacher?” She says it like it is my name. like the waves around us, mine glowing white blonde like it used to “Yes, ma’am.” She flips he stops bouncing. “I’m not a school teacher. I’m a guidance counselor.” get when I was a lifeguard at the pool all summer long. We are open a silver lighter and lights the “What do you mean?” “Better yet,” she says. laughing, but then she starts plucking things out of the swirls of cigarette. “And a high school’s gotta “I don’t know. Like, I’m silent with embarrassment. The waitress stands in hair— a bright red football, a shiny new Lincoln Town Car the size have dances now and then, don’t it? I why would he talk to front of me and I order a health salad and a lemonade. I stare at my of a loaf of Wonder Bread, the halogen desk lamp from my office at thought maybe your high school here would regular people?” place setting on the countertop. school—and stuffing them into her swimsuit. The lamp shines down like a real, live band to play at one of ’em, but it Lance screws his face up “Gene never stopped playing little towns like this one. Going eerily from her crotch, illuminating her pointed boots and an endless seems you all prefer your music a little more pre- and plops back down inside around, raising hell, making the girls scream and cry on a Saturday emptiness underneath her surfboard. I haven’t had dreams like this recorded, and a little less hillbilly.” the car. “I think he’s dead,” he night. He made life mean something. Now that’s what I do too.” since I was a girl. I wonder what is wrong with me. I gape at her, wanting to take a step closer, tells me and goes back to I look up. My eyes slide off the curve of her hair and settle 04 04 I see her a second time the very next day. I am sitting at my wanting to ask her why she wears her hair like that, wanting to massaging the car seat. on the cigarette perched behind her ear. “What do you mean?” 08 08 desk while Jeff Rogers, the captain of the football team, is crying tell her about last night’s dream. “Gene told me to take his place. He told me to form a band. M M and telling me his father won’t talk to him anymore since he She chuckles the same as she did at the Shop-n-Save and He told me to make the girls scream. So that’s what I do. Right?” U U S S mentioned that maybe he would like to study poetry at the univer- tips an imaginary hat in my direction. “So I guess I’ll be off then.” Friday I have allowed to “When did he tell you that?” I ask her. “Before he died?”

EM sity if they give him a football scholarship. I am watching his cheeks She turns and heads for the door. She limps slightly as she walks. Lance as I wouldn’t mind having “Nah. He told me in a dream.”

10 11 all different kinds of antacid tablets at the Shop-n-Save, it’s the wrinkle up and waiting for him to stop so I can suggest business Suddenly I yell out, “Why are you limping?” instead of “Who a brand-new Grand Marquis for our second wedding anniversary. biggest supermarket in the tri-state for godssakes, but I picked the communications as a major that might incorporate his interest in are you?” That seems to make him happy. Jeff Rogers and I have settled on fruit creams specially, because I know just how much he hates language and his father’s understandable concern for his career Over her shoulder she says, “Gene Vincent walked with a journalism, which still makes his father uncomfortable but doesn’t them. I almost tell him that, but instead I hear myself pleading, prospects. I am wondering who else is in the waiting room, and I limp.” At the door she turns around briefly and says in an explana- send him into a rage. And I have dreamed about her every night. I “Lance, Honey, I’ve got to start work in the morning. School starts see her outside my window. She is walking up the steps to the main tory tone, “Gene Vincent speaks to me.” have dreamed of massaging her pompadour with an enormous tin tomorrow, remember? I’m not going out again tonight. OK?” entrance. She is wearing shiny gray slacks and a black T-shirt with “Who’s Gene Vincent?” I ask Lance when he gets home later. of blue saddle soap. I have dreamed of sitting at the kitchen table “Fuck,” he proclaims. the sleeves rolled up to expose slim, strong arms. At the top of the “You don’t know who Gene Vincent is,” he says it as a while she served me pancakes the shape of late-model automo- “Why don’t you go out to Kroger’s yourself?” I surprise stairs, she flicks a half-smoked cigarette over her shoulder and statement while he is fishing a beer out of the back of the fridge. He biles. Last night I dreamed that we were dancing in a crowd in the myself by asking. slides her left hand over her hair. leaves the kitchen without answering me. high school gymnasium and at the end of the song she bent down Jeff Rogers is in mid-sentence when I get up and walk out I follow him into the garage where he is treating his car and kissed me on the mouth, just a little kiss. The dreams stay in “Well, Rebecca, since you asked,” Lance begins, and the sermon I of the room. Five pale, nervous faces look up at me as I charge seats with saddle soap. I stand and watch him slowly rub his hand my head all day and distract me from my work. It makes me tired. I expected earlier unfurls itself from its temporary hiding place through the waiting room. I jog down the hallway, my pumps over the subtle curves of the blue leather with a careful tenderness think I must be going crazy. under his neat red mustache. “My vehicle has more mileage on it clacking on the tiles, and I hurry around the corner just as she’s that I have never felt on my own skin. Still, the morning goes routinely: I have to tell a freshman than yours, as you have not been working throughout the summer walking out of the main office. I hold onto the wall to keep myself “No, I don’t know who Gene Vincent is,” I tell him. “Do you?” girl that short-shorts are not a matter of free speech and I convince months. Due to this I believe that your vehicle should be the one to upright. She is slapping a pack of cigarettes into her hand. She looks Lance laughs. “Course I do. They play him on the oldies Nina Logan that community college is more welcoming to single be utilized for errands and so forth. Do you follow me?” up and her eyes widen in surprise. station all the time. Dad’s secretary always gets up teen mothers than a university. At lunch I decide to drive out to the But I don’t follow him. He follows me as I walk into the “Well, well. If it ain’t my grocery store girlfriend,” she says and wiggles her lumpy old ass when his song car lot to talk to Lance and his dad about interior options, but I see kitchen and heat up frozen lasagna and tear lettuce into cereal with a little sneer on her lips. comes on. What’s it called? . . . ‘Be-bop-a-lula,’ her walking into Mitch’s Diner and without thinking I pull into the bowls for a side dish. He talks to me the entire time I prepare dinner, “You can’t smoke in here!” I bark at her. I think.” next parking space I see. When I walk in she is sitting at the counter telling me why he won’t drive my car because it wasn’t purchased She ignores me and says, “You look prettier with your hair He starts to sing, “She’s my baby . . . I with a cup of coffee. I sit three stools away and study the menu, from his father’s lot and how we were already engaged when I done up like that.” don’t mean maybe,” and he grabs me. wondering what to do, watching her out of the corner of my eye. bought it so his father takes it as a personal slight that it even gets I touch my hair. I feel embarrassed and angry to be “C’mon, Becky, dance with me.” She taps her foot and hums almost inaudibly to herself. driven at all and how he hopes I’ve had the oil changed recently standing here like this. “What are you doing here? Are But I don’t dance. He crushes “Who is Gene Vincent?” I finally ask. because I can’t expect him to take care of some other dealer’s stock you a new student? I haven’t seen your file.” my wrist in his hand and She turns without a hint of surprise. “Only the best rock- and on and on. Finally, we eat in silence. Lance watches the rerun “Advertising and promotions,” she bounces up and down n-roller of all time,” she says. “And that is a fact.” She holds me with highlights of the football game that was on when I came in. I stare drawls. “Ad-vance leg work. Trying to drum like a toddler about to her eyes for a second. “I was wondering if’n I’d see you again.” out the window and remember the day I finally accepted his up a little work for me and the boys.” wet himself, and I I feel myself start to blush. “What about Elvis Presley?” marriage proposal. I’d had my job as guidance counselor for a year She draws a cigarette ask, “Does he do I protest. and couldn’t think of any reason to stay single at the age of 31. He from the pack. Watching charity work or She nods her head. “Elvis got all slick and clean real fast, was so happy he made a pot of chili to celebrate. h e r h a n d m o v e something? Like sold out to Hollywood and all that. Gene stayed real. He was down Tonight I dream about her, only we aren’t in a super- towards her mouth, I J e r r y L e w i s and dirty, an honest-to-god rebel.” market. We are on surfboards racing through perfect ink-black tell her, “This is a high maybe?” “What’s so great about that?” tunnels in an ocean of oily hair. We both look like Annette Funi- school,” as though that will W i t h a “It’s got you all het up, don’t it?” She chuckles her low, cello with hip-hugger bikinis and enormous bouffants—hers black make her stop. disappointed shrug, warm chuckle. “School Teacher?” She says it like it is my name. like the waves around us, mine glowing white blonde like it used to “Yes, ma’am.” She flips he stops bouncing. “I’m not a school teacher. I’m a guidance counselor.” get when I was a lifeguard at the pool all summer long. We are open a silver lighter and lights the “What do you mean?” “Better yet,” she says. laughing, but then she starts plucking things out of the swirls of cigarette. “And a high school’s gotta “I don’t know. Like, I’m silent with embarrassment. The waitress stands in hair— a bright red football, a shiny new Lincoln Town Car the size have dances now and then, don’t it? I why would he talk to front of me and I order a health salad and a lemonade. I stare at my of a loaf of Wonder Bread, the halogen desk lamp from my office at thought maybe your high school here would regular people?” place setting on the countertop. school—and stuffing them into her swimsuit. The lamp shines down like a real, live band to play at one of ’em, but it Lance screws his face up “Gene never stopped playing little towns like this one. Going eerily from her crotch, illuminating her pointed boots and an endless seems you all prefer your music a little more pre- and plops back down inside around, raising hell, making the girls scream and cry on a Saturday emptiness underneath her surfboard. I haven’t had dreams like this recorded, and a little less hillbilly.” the car. “I think he’s dead,” he night. He made life mean something. Now that’s what I do too.” since I was a girl. I wonder what is wrong with me. I gape at her, wanting to take a step closer, tells me and goes back to I look up. My eyes slide off the curve of her hair and settle 04 04 I see her a second time the very next day. I am sitting at my wanting to ask her why she wears her hair like that, wanting to massaging the car seat. on the cigarette perched behind her ear. “What do you mean?” 08 08 desk while Jeff Rogers, the captain of the football team, is crying tell her about last night’s dream. “Gene told me to take his place. He told me to form a band. M M and telling me his father won’t talk to him anymore since he She chuckles the same as she did at the Shop-n-Save and He told me to make the girls scream. So that’s what I do. Right?” U U S S mentioned that maybe he would like to study poetry at the univer- tips an imaginary hat in my direction. “So I guess I’ll be off then.” Friday I have allowed to “When did he tell you that?” I ask her. “Before he died?”

10 11 the counter asks. “Fair’s been over for two weeks.” I pull myself up onto the rough boards and walk over to don’t want her to go. “No, no, there’s a band playing tonight,” I explain. her. Standing next to her I realize she isn’t as tall as I thought she “Can I join your band?” I call out as she opens the door. The girl sniffs and rubs her pink nose. “Not that I heard of,” was. “We could still have a dance,” I say. She nods and heads back to Leaning against the side of the car, she considers this. “What do you she complains, but she goes ahead and tells me how to get there. her car to switch the music back on. It’s a slow, silly song about play?” she asks. As I pull through the gates to the fairgrounds I’m surprised walking home from school. “Gene could croon sometimes, too,” “Nothing . . . yet,” I admit. not to see any lights on anywhere, but I see another blue flyer she says as she walks back to me. After facing each other awkwardly Again that velvet chuckle. “Well, you can call me when hanging from a light pole, and another, and another. I ease my car for a moment, we embrace lightly and sway back and forth while you learn yourself something. How about that?” And she slips into up over the hill following the trail of flyers away from the parking the singer’s voice dips and crests. I close my eyes and lean my cheek the car and backs it away from the stage. lot towards the midway. Beyond the crest of the hill is a small against the cool satin of her shoulder. I imagine her hair curling I am enveloped by the shadows of the September night. wooden stage. Parked in front of it is a chrome-splashed shark of a around to envelope us. The song continues to spill out of the car as she drives away: “She’s car, its headlights on high, illuminating a single figure alone on the When the song is over, she bends her head and kisses me, the one who yells ‘more, more, more,’” Gene Vincent sings. stage. She is wearing black leather pants and a blue satin shirt. Her lightly, on the lips, just like in the dream. “Happy now?” she asks Lance is already asleep when I get home. The bedroom hair stands up higher than ever. It glistens in the cold glare of the me. The next song starts. “W-e-e-l-l-l, Be-bop-a-lula,” Gene smells faintly of stale beer. There is a note on my dresser that says, headlights. She holds onto a guitar that’s slung over her shoulder Vincent wails. “Ha! I won. Buy yourself something pretty.” Next to it is a $100 bill. and she leans in towards a microphone at a funny angle, one leg “That’s always the last song of the night,” she tells me. I slip into bed without waking him. cocked stiffly behind her. “That means it’s time for me to go.” As I float that night through a sky of blue satin, I feel chrome As I get out of my car I hear her singing “. . . here comes the “Where are you going?” fins sprouting from my back and I hear Gene Vincent speaking to me. devil doin’ 99 . . .” along with a distorted recording that spills out of “Somewhere else,” she says. “Don’t know yet.” “More, more, more,” he whispers, “More, more, more.” makes me angry. I feel like she is making fun of me. I am afraid that the windows of the shark. I cross my arms over myself and wait She walks towards her car. I realize she is leaving and I she knows about my dreams somehow. I say, “That’s stupid. Dreams until the song finishes. Her face creases and her mouth stretches don’t mean anything,” as much to myself as to her. with the intensity of her performance. Her voice is clear, but She stands up. “Suit yourself,” she shrugs. “I say dreams are pitched unnaturally low. She is beautiful. all there are.” She strides across the restaurant and tacks something to the bulletin board before leaving. She doesn’t look at me again. The song ends and she jumps off the stage and leans into My salad comes and I try not to cry. The waitress sighs. the car to switch the stereo off just as the next song is beginning. “Jerk can’t even pay for a cup of coffee,” she says to no one in She stares at me over the hood and I see fireworks in her eyes. particular. “Where’s your band?” I ask, truly curious. As I leave, I glance at the bulletin board, hoping no “Their van broke down,” she answers, squinting at me. one notices. Black letters on blue paper read, “LITTLE GENIE “Oh,” I say, “Am I early? I thought I was late.” building strong organizations AND THE BLUE DEVILS, one night only! Farmington County She stares at me for a moment. “I ain’t got no stinking for strong communities Fairgrounds. Saturday 9pm. Rock and Roll. Rock and Roll. band,” she yells at me. Rock and Roll.” “Oh,” I say again stupidly. “Did they quit?” She starts laughing. “Did they quit? Did they quit?! What, The next night I tell Lance the mall is staying open late for Labor are you retarded? There never was a band.” She jumps back onto Day sales. He’s happy that I’m busy so I won’t complain when he the stage and stands in the glare. wants to go bet money on the bar trivia tournament. He always “But what about the flyers?” I ask. “What about Gene bets on his own team. He always loses. Vincent? You said he told you to get a band and take his place.” The fairgrounds are 20 miles away in Davies. I haven’t “He did. I ain’t got one yet.” been there since I was a teenager. I hope I can find my way. I actu- “Then how do you put on concerts?” I keep pressing. ally stop at the mall to buy some towels so I can show Lance what I She is laughing again. “I don’t put on concerts, Guidance Janus S. Small, president got tomorrow. Traffic on the way out of town is terrible because of Counselor. I hang flyers and I ask people to hire me, but they don’t 216.991.6003 the high school football game. We’re playing our arch-rivals in the and no one reads the flyers, and I drive on to the next town. I met a 216.408.2711 cell first game of the season and everyone wants to be there. When I kid last month in Texas who wants to be my bass player, though . . . 216.991.6009 fax finally get on the highway, it is deserted. I drive fast. I open my as soon as he graduates high school. He plays a for real, far out, 04 04 08 08 windows and let the wind fight with my hair. In Davies I can’t figure stand-up bass. You should see it.” 3220 green road M M out which way to go so I stop at a Dairy Queen off the highway “I came,” I tell her, starting to wonder which one of us is U U cleveland, ohio 44122 S S ramp and ask for directions. crazier for being here. [email protected]

EM Why you wanna go to the fairgrounds?” the girl behind “You are the first.”

12 JSShalfPgHOR.indd 1 2/29/08 10:36:33 AM 13 the counter asks. “Fair’s been over for two weeks.” I pull myself up onto the rough boards and walk over to don’t want her to go. “No, no, there’s a band playing tonight,” I explain. her. Standing next to her I realize she isn’t as tall as I thought she “Can I join your band?” I call out as she opens the door. The girl sniffs and rubs her pink nose. “Not that I heard of,” was. “We could still have a dance,” I say. She nods and heads back to Leaning against the side of the car, she considers this. “What do you she complains, but she goes ahead and tells me how to get there. her car to switch the music back on. It’s a slow, silly song about play?” she asks. As I pull through the gates to the fairgrounds I’m surprised walking home from school. “Gene could croon sometimes, too,” “Nothing . . . yet,” I admit. not to see any lights on anywhere, but I see another blue flyer she says as she walks back to me. After facing each other awkwardly Again that velvet chuckle. “Well, you can call me when hanging from a light pole, and another, and another. I ease my car for a moment, we embrace lightly and sway back and forth while you learn yourself something. How about that?” And she slips into up over the hill following the trail of flyers away from the parking the singer’s voice dips and crests. I close my eyes and lean my cheek the car and backs it away from the stage. lot towards the midway. Beyond the crest of the hill is a small against the cool satin of her shoulder. I imagine her hair curling I am enveloped by the shadows of the September night. wooden stage. Parked in front of it is a chrome-splashed shark of a around to envelope us. The song continues to spill out of the car as she drives away: “She’s car, its headlights on high, illuminating a single figure alone on the When the song is over, she bends her head and kisses me, the one who yells ‘more, more, more,’” Gene Vincent sings. stage. She is wearing black leather pants and a blue satin shirt. Her lightly, on the lips, just like in the dream. “Happy now?” she asks Lance is already asleep when I get home. The bedroom hair stands up higher than ever. It glistens in the cold glare of the me. The next song starts. “W-e-e-l-l-l, Be-bop-a-lula,” Gene smells faintly of stale beer. There is a note on my dresser that says, headlights. She holds onto a guitar that’s slung over her shoulder Vincent wails. “Ha! I won. Buy yourself something pretty.” Next to it is a $100 bill. and she leans in towards a microphone at a funny angle, one leg “That’s always the last song of the night,” she tells me. I slip into bed without waking him. cocked stiffly behind her. “That means it’s time for me to go.” As I float that night through a sky of blue satin, I feel chrome As I get out of my car I hear her singing “. . . here comes the “Where are you going?” fins sprouting from my back and I hear Gene Vincent speaking to me. devil doin’ 99 . . .” along with a distorted recording that spills out of “Somewhere else,” she says. “Don’t know yet.” “More, more, more,” he whispers, “More, more, more.” makes me angry. I feel like she is making fun of me. I am afraid that the windows of the shark. I cross my arms over myself and wait She walks towards her car. I realize she is leaving and I she knows about my dreams somehow. I say, “That’s stupid. Dreams until the song finishes. Her face creases and her mouth stretches don’t mean anything,” as much to myself as to her. with the intensity of her performance. Her voice is clear, but She stands up. “Suit yourself,” she shrugs. “I say dreams are pitched unnaturally low. She is beautiful. all there are.” She strides across the restaurant and tacks something to the bulletin board before leaving. She doesn’t look at me again. The song ends and she jumps off the stage and leans into My salad comes and I try not to cry. The waitress sighs. the car to switch the stereo off just as the next song is beginning. “Jerk can’t even pay for a cup of coffee,” she says to no one in She stares at me over the hood and I see fireworks in her eyes. particular. “Where’s your band?” I ask, truly curious. As I leave, I glance at the bulletin board, hoping no “Their van broke down,” she answers, squinting at me. one notices. Black letters on blue paper read, “LITTLE GENIE “Oh,” I say, “Am I early? I thought I was late.” building strong organizations AND THE BLUE DEVILS, one night only! Farmington County She stares at me for a moment. “I ain’t got no stinking for strong communities Fairgrounds. Saturday 9pm. Rock and Roll. Rock and Roll. band,” she yells at me. Rock and Roll.” “Oh,” I say again stupidly. “Did they quit?” She starts laughing. “Did they quit? Did they quit?! What, The next night I tell Lance the mall is staying open late for Labor are you retarded? There never was a band.” She jumps back onto Day sales. He’s happy that I’m busy so I won’t complain when he the stage and stands in the glare. wants to go bet money on the bar trivia tournament. He always “But what about the flyers?” I ask. “What about Gene bets on his own team. He always loses. Vincent? You said he told you to get a band and take his place.” The fairgrounds are 20 miles away in Davies. I haven’t “He did. I ain’t got one yet.” been there since I was a teenager. I hope I can find my way. I actu- “Then how do you put on concerts?” I keep pressing. ally stop at the mall to buy some towels so I can show Lance what I She is laughing again. “I don’t put on concerts, Guidance Janus S. Small, president got tomorrow. Traffic on the way out of town is terrible because of Counselor. I hang flyers and I ask people to hire me, but they don’t 216.991.6003 the high school football game. We’re playing our arch-rivals in the and no one reads the flyers, and I drive on to the next town. I met a 216.408.2711 cell first game of the season and everyone wants to be there. When I kid last month in Texas who wants to be my bass player, though . . . 216.991.6009 fax finally get on the highway, it is deserted. I drive fast. I open my as soon as he graduates high school. He plays a for real, far out, 04 04 08 08 windows and let the wind fight with my hair. In Davies I can’t figure stand-up bass. You should see it.” 3220 green road M M out which way to go so I stop at a Dairy Queen off the highway “I came,” I tell her, starting to wonder which one of us is U U cleveland, ohio 44122 S S ramp and ask for directions. crazier for being here. [email protected]

EM Why you wanna go to the fairgrounds?” the girl behind “You are the first.”

12 JSShalfPgHOR.indd 1 2/29/08 10:36:33 AM 13 AN OLD MAN LIES DOWN WITH THE LION BY MAJ RAGAIN

In an old book of Zen teachings, I come now across a note, written in my own hand, twenty five years ago.

The lion must slay the dragon. Each scale bears the words, ‘Thou shall.’ When the dragon is slain, one is reborn as a child.

I was delivered into this world with the dragon’s egg nestled in my breast. I cannot remember the day it emerged from its shell, first a peep, later a snarl. I have felt its hunger since boyhood. One midnight it moved its lair to the lower bitter regions of my soul. It began to feed on what I feared and prayed against. Neither of us knows what it guards or why.

Nights, the dragon climbs my rib ladder to lay its head against my heart, lulled to sleep by the drumbeat. It is prisoner to the heavy coat of mail which no sword can pierce, prisoner to the weight of idle years, the taste of sulphur and ash, the bars of bone. Its every dream beckons the lion, the great jaws tearing open the soft underbelly, releasing the dragon from its troth.

The dragon’s death marks my birthday. I do not wish to be a child again.

04 04 08 08 Thou shall lie down with the lion. M M Thou shall be reborn as an old man. U U S S

shades of night are falling, 32 x 42.5, EM

EM acrylic on paper, 2007 14 15 AN OLD MAN LIES DOWN WITH THE LION BY MAJ RAGAIN

In an old book of Zen teachings, I come now across a note, written in my own hand, twenty five years ago.

The lion must slay the dragon. Each scale bears the words, ‘Thou shall.’ When the dragon is slain, one is reborn as a child.

The dragon’s death marks my birthday. I do not wish to be a child again.

04 04 08 08 Thou shall lie down with the lion. M M Thou shall be reborn as an old man. U U S S

shades of night are falling, 32 x 42.5, EM

EM acrylic on paper, 2007 14 15 ROSES DANCING WITH LORCA GEORGE BILGERE BY R.A. WASHINGTON

a few times since, A late fall day, and unseasonably warm enough, i’ve seen you against my sleep for whatever dire reasons, lifting you left feet then right to let me stain the rose trellis in a jig only you could design. the light hitting your awesome face a deep red in the brittle afternoon, just so. enjoying the gratitude of thirsty old wood soaking up the blood. there have been times since, well moments really SNOW This is satisfying, when i pictured you sitting in a field GEORGE BILGERE for some reason, although I realize scattered with wild Reds, and Yellows stones of Grey, and Brown A heavy snow, and men my age that somewhere an aging surgeon you, all over the city is stepping out for a showdown there as you were at 23, wispy are having heart attacks in their driveways, with a famous young tumor reading a love poem to Garcia Lorca on the dusty street of somebody’s life. and, dropping their nice new shovels Lorca, the great dancer he was with the ergonomic handles And somewhere else a soldier swoops to your words, an andulusian gypsy that finally did them no good. is pulling a blazing friend a dance he names after you. out of his armor, Gray-headed men who meant no harm, his dance flies out from his hot-fire soul who abided by the rules and worked hard and a girl in a border town your words spill like armies over the vast space for modest rewards, are slipping is strapping a bomb calling forth the dead and the barely remembered to the shy breasts and the swarm, softly from their mortgages, nobody ever got to kiss Crane and Hughes, your twin heroes falling out of their marriages. before she heads to the marketplace take you in arms brotherly, How gracefully they swoon— to mingle with the pears and radishes, d.a. sets his whimsied smile and echos each line the fish staring from their beds of ice. with the beat of drum rock. that lovely, old-fashioned word— from dinner parties, grandkids, But I’m just painting a trellis, your father moved by the sight vacations in Florida. thinking already of the praise I’ll get for it, brings his lips to your ear proud, even though I’m doing my usual half-assed job, King and Malcolm and John F. and Gandhi They should have known better slopping stain on the garage wall, take hands, hum out grace than to shovel snow at their age. Pollocking the flagstones, willing to fall If only they’d heeded a little short of perfection, you smile wide, your elder beard now full and grayed in their love and say, the sensible advice of their wives although I know that spring, when it comes and hired a snow-removal service. uttering roses, will settle “Well, shall i read another?” But there’s more to life for nothing less. 04 04 08 08 M M than merely being sensible. Sometimes U U a man must take up his shovel S S

and head out alone into the snow. EM

16 17 ROSES DANCING WITH LORCA GEORGE BILGERE BY R.A. WASHINGTON

and head out alone into the snow. EM

16 17 LOST IN THE OUTFIELD

THOMAS DUKES

FIRST INNING SECOND INNING FOURTH INNING about it: terrible pants, blousy shirts, thick glasses (which, it turns I am ten, maybe eleven. My father insists that I try out for baseball. Daddy has erected a basketball hoop in the backyard. He put a post Seventh grade gym is a one-semester nightmare. I look the sweet out, I didn’t need), but I don’t have the high grades of a true nerd, I stand in the outfield of the ball park in Aiken, South Carolina, on in the ground, anchored in concrete; the post is black, a “telephone innocent that I am. In the days before social promotion, in the days only the test scores: I do not work up to potential. the south side. Maybe it’s four o’clock, perhaps a bit later. I am pole,” the hoop shiny orange, brand new. The post is even taller junior highs antedated middle schools, there are sixteen-year-olds I do, however, play the piano: Chopin, Beethoven, Mozart. doomed; I know it, my father does not. The new glove feels like a than my fear of it and of Daddy. I am forced to stand there with the still in ninth grade. I nail myself to the cross with the very best. Adults explain that I am dead dog on my hand. Daddy, a Depression boy tightwad, has ball to try to make baskets. I am very tall, but all the pubescent On the first day, standing in line, I get a nipple tweaked by artistic as if I had some birth defect no one could fix. blown fifty 1966 dollars on baseball equipment I have no desire to height in the world won’t save you if you aren’t interested. a guy who’s already been to juvenile court for setting a cat on fire. I do not work up to potential except in gym. Once again, use: a hardball, a softball, matching bats, and this heavy thing on Son, cain’t you do anything right? Alphabetically, I am next to another guy who is completely quiet the slimming effect of regular exercise is amazing. I am a good six my hand. Under orders, my mother has dropped me off with great Once I walk away, bored blind, with some neighbor kids because he does not want to go back to reform school. feet, and in a few weeks, look almost normal in my out-of-it poly- misgivings because Daddy has insisted; he is going to have a pal. still playing, having fun. Daddy orders me back in a voice that I am, of course, the last picked for everything. The boys in ester pants. Team sports are still a total loss, but no one cares. Daddy I am his only son, his only child. freezes my blood. the honors classes are also athletic; they are destined to succeed, to has stopped speaking to me except to yell about my grades. This In a few minutes, I shall drop the ball. I have not yet seen I later find out he has offered ten dollars to the kid who get ahead. Their fathers are professional men; their fathers, surely, new coach gives me gentlemen’s B’s. the Peanuts cartoon where Charlie Brown drops the ball; this is life can teach me to make baskets and like it. like them. I am only in honors English and will soon get C’s in that Once, before the basketball hoop, the coach tells us we imitating art before art happens. The ball will land in my glove, and Nobody collects. because I refuse to finish reading Lost Horizon, the worst novel I cannot go to the showers until we make a basket. I am third up. I I will drop it because I am looking at the setting sun and thinking have ever started. don’t even look as I throw the ball. how pretty it is, how I wish I were home in what we call the family THIRD INNING I don’t care who wins in gym class or in the few sports I make the basket. room with the back door open to the start of spring, and the smell of By the time I am twelve, I am physically afraid of my father. He will things I go to in a pathetic, desperate attempt to fit in. I cannot care. Everyone is in shock. I have never before or since done fresh grass, early blooming flowers, springtime noise. let me read in the living room, in my bedroom, but I cannot read As the term progresses, I actually start to trim down thanks to the such a thing and never will again. In the locker room, I am so dazed I want to be reading. while he watches sports on television because he will try to explain mandatory exercises of the day: jumping jacks, push-ups. But I am that I forget to take my shower, then have to lie to the coach about it This is a beginning, the beginning of the end of my to me what’s going on: hopeless at team sports. because that is required, even though this is seventh period and we friendship with Daddy. My dislike of and disinterest in sports will He’s stretched out on the blue-green vinyl couch, the last The coach is a tall, young man and lives down the street from are going home. separate us for the rest of our lives. I live to read; my father, due to word in 1960s family décor. Some football team, or maybe it’s us in our tract-house, working class neighborhood. My father drops in I tell my father that evening that I made a basket on first what I recognize later as audio and visual dyslexia, is functionally baseball, or maybe it’s Martians, is creaming the other side. “Now, on the coach one fine evening “to see what to do about the boy.” try, and he walks out of the room. He sits on the front porch to illiterate, if very bright. We cannot share reading; he wants us to son, see here, them Cowboys—” There is nothing to be done. smoke a cigarette, an unfiltered Camel. The smoke finds me reading, share sports. I am about to lose my best buddy and my Daddy, and “Daddy, I’m not interested in sports.” I get athlete’s foot for the first time. a pungent rebuke. for a southern boy, there can be little worse. My mother is not around so he can say what he’s In English, when asked to define the word irony by I hear the collective groan when I drop the ball, but I miss thinking: example, I will use this and get “very good” written in the margin in SIXTH INNING the ball’s thump because I am day-dreaming. I try to throw the “What the hell kind of boy are you? bold, red letters. A small boy cousin is visiting unexpectedly with his folks one ball, but it heads toward North Carolina, and the pitcher must I watch him carefully to make sure he won’t rise and hit Sunday afternoon. He is as bored as I am well-meaning, so I take the 04 04 FIFTH INNING softball bat and ball to the backyard, and we take turns hitting and 08 08 chase it down. Soon, the other boys are bent over, making those me. He knows my mother will not put up that. ridiculous throaty sounds, the affectations of early manhood. I don’t dare answer his question with the truth: a queer one. Ninth grade gym, same school, but this time I am older, pitching. My mother’s flowers are in bloom; the setting is like some- M M U U I am standing straight, lost in the outfield. wise in the ways of junior high. I get out of lunch and study hall by thing out of a French movie, a good one. S S joining the Library Club, where I can hide from social scorn. I am a I call from the grass: “Hey, Daddy, come see!”

EM true nerd by this point. I feel it and feel hopeless to do anything He watches for a moment, hears the soft cracks of the bat, 18 19 LOST IN THE OUTFIELD

THOMAS DUKES

EM true nerd by this point. I feel it and feel hopeless to do anything He watches for a moment, hears the soft cracks of the bat, 18 19  the hmmp of the softball in the glove, then goes back into the house. NINTH INNING  We are strangers who know each other very well. Years later, long after my college degrees gave Daddy something to  brag about, a colleague’s wife has gotten great seats to an Indians  SEVENTH INNING game; her husband invites me along. The Indians triumph over  At the end of ninth grade, I am discovered to have a genetic blood Baltimore, 11-1. We are in the stands where they take your food  POV: Practice of View disease. This does not explain my sports apathy but does explain order, and my eating is prodigious because someone will bring   the lethargy, the bad grades. I have an operation that summer, the food to me. Saturday May 17, 2008, Megan’s Closet, Inc. will  present “POV: Practice of View” at The Lit. Becci old-fashioned kind where they cut you stem to pubis and you need I am stunned by how much I remember, the fouls, the  Noblit Goodall, editor of Megan’s Closet and author six weeks to recover. strikes, the hits, the heartburn-and-headache-inducing plays. I  of Chaise, along with Cleveland native Chris  Bowen, will respectively present a women’s and Mama and I strengthen our already great friendship; we know enough to know this is a terrible game. I see the athletic grace  men’s writing workshop focused on gender-based, discuss wild plans for my future that promises, somehow, to release of the players; I am bored. I watch the fans below; I am bored. I  point-of-view writings. us both from the unhappiness of the last few years. Since my diag- can’t believe how much about baseball I remember; I can’t believe I   Becci Goodall will read from Chaise and a chapbook nosis, Daddy has lost his anger. Mama uses the truce to clear out a know enough to know that I should be bored.  in progress from Megan’s Closet. Discussion on lot of junk in the house, and at some point, the sports stuff in the On the drive back, my friend confirms, “This was a  plans for Megan’s Closet, her small press. David bottom of Daddy’s closet goes. Do we give it to that small boy terrible game.”  LaBounty, Writer-In-Residence, will read from The  Trinity, his most recent novel. cousin? I don’t know, but we all seem to relax some once it’s gone. By now, Daddy has died, and I no longer make the three-  In ten years, it will be replaced by a bunch of medical times-weekly phone calls, searching hard for something to discuss  Open-mic will follow at 5:00pm. equipment after Daddy gets lupus. other than the weather and the noble way he is sliding into death.   To inquire or register, direct correspondence to But the basketball hoop will still be there when Mama and So I talk to him after death: “Daddy, I went to Jacobs Field  [email protected] or join in the discus- I sell the house in 1998. today and saw the Indians. They killed Baltimore, 11-1. I wish you’d  sion at www.megans-closet.com.  been there . . . . “  The Lit is located at 2570 Superior Avenue, Suite  203; Cleveland, OH 44114; 216.694.0000. EIGHTH INNING Daddy is teaching me to drive; it should be a disaster. But it isn’t: EXTRA INNINGS for once, we share an interest. Backwoods southern roads are My workplace has given me tickets, free, to an Akron Aeros game. A marvelous training spaces for student drivers. It is spring and woman could conceive, carry, and give birth to a child in the time it summer; we have to get me ready for the road test I become eligible takes a game to be played. The Aeros games are, surely, the slowest for after my birthday in September. His old Ford truck, the only in the minor league. reality left from the failed pig farm, is not air conditioned or auto- The lights go down, the families come in, they leave as matic; we are the last to get everything. For once, I don’t care; they like. It is cool tonight, and the cheers greeting the players are driving stick is cool. lackluster, but we try, we try to make up for the empty seats. I look On Sundays, we worship the clay and sandy paths leading at the dreamers in the field and think of Bull Durham, a movie I toward my freedom. Neither of us thinks about it, but the stick and the have seen nine times. During time-outs, we sing YMCA with hand uncertain road conditions prepare me for all kinds of driving hazards. gestures, and I don’t have the heart to want the good folks around We drive by the tracks. A sluggish freight train gains on me. me to know what that home-run, gay bar smash hit was really Daddy looks at me, and I look at him: about in the 1970’s. Maybe they know and don’t care. “Race him.” I do not catch anything thrown in the stands. I do not win I do. Sand flies in the open windows as I hit the gas, as I the chance to make a fool of myself on the field. pass a car full of brightly plumed women coming from church. I watch the game, the terrible game, the equivalent of a Feral dogs scatter in fear, the truck farts great protests at being really, really bad date. made to exert itself so. I am fifteen, and for the first time, feel like a I stay to the end. Not, notice, the bitter end. teenager: Daytona, watch out! We celebrate my victory at a country gas station that sells LIGHTS OUT Daddy an illegal beer. I get an RC and two moon-pies as my reward. The playwright Richard Greenberg has written a play, Take Me

04 He lets me sip his beer, thinking he is introducing me to alcohol, Out, about a gay baseball player who comes out with tragic results. 08 and I don’t have the heart to tell him about Aunt Marian, Grand- This gay player has, at least, come in. M daddy Hair, and the Sunday afternoon they introduced me to U S blackberry wine.

20 MORNING RITUAL (Lorain & W. 98th St – Cleveland)

BY MICHELLE RANKINS

Carry me, momma To the bus stop Bop-ity, bop-bop Let my feet dangle in the air and my ponytail bop Up and down Up and down Tell me, momma why ants are black and why grass is green and why come worms can’t walk, and why you didn’t eat cereal with me and why you cry sometimes when you miss your bus and have to walk to work? Carry me, momma To the bus stop Bop-ity, bop-bop Let my feet dangle in the air and my ponytail bop Up and down Up and down

surrounded, 22 x 30, acrylic on paper, 2007

04 04 08 08 M M U U S S

22 23 MORNING RITUAL (Lorain & W. 98th St – Cleveland)

BY MICHELLE RANKINS

surrounded, 22 x 30, acrylic on paper, 2007

04 04 08 08 M M U U S S

22 23 review

MERMAID DREAMERS BY GENEVIEVE JENCSON OF THE DAY I see a mermaid break the oiled surface IN THE VONDELPARK, AMSTERDAM of the Cuyahoga, pulling a white MARY DORIA RUSSELL; RANDOM HOUSE, $25.95 BY ROGER CRAIK fish from her hair. Veins lace her withered face PEGGY LATKOVICH and her sore lips glisten through the hot night. And the old dogs toddling Almost beautiful in the smog-soft glow, after their owners

like the city seething in fish-thick heat, while the whippersnappers contacts, none other than T.E. Lawrence, returns to Cleveland, is a rushed denoue- her body is made dark by the shadow come snuffle-barging in on your attentions, the famed “Lawrence of Arabia.” Lawrence ment, albeit colorful and entertaining. of brittle towers. Seeping in the concrete proffering the absurdity of themselves and slithering up the iron lampposts, to you, calm at last, introduces her to Winston Churchill, who Dreamers of the Day is an engaging story on your curved wooden bench. her voice lulls the city into saline was at the time the king’s secretary of that unties many of the often baffling state, and Gertrude Bell, who is to become political knots that are Middle Eastern sleep. Streets and river banks are ruled by ghosts, Every six years or so it seems hugely influential in the configuration of history. At times the dialogue reads too dead air, deserted nightclubs, and decline. you come back here, stay at the same hotel in the Anna van den Vondelstraat, modern-day Iraq. The Middle East at the much like a lecture on world affairs, but around the corner from the Vondelkerk’s In that mud-dark river swims a broken time is being cut and pasted by colonial- this can be overlooked in the light of slatted graphite spike of a spire ists (mostly British) into what it will even- Russell’s clarity of prose. If you take fish circling on one white and weary fin. a r y tually become today. The significance of nothing more away from the book than and after breakfast let the long paths and pathways of the Vondelpark Doria Russell has written a book that is oil is just beginning to be felt. References the advice on the final page “…never buy take you strolling, skirting the ponds part travelogue, part history lesson, part to the impending obsolescence of electric anything from a man who’s selling fear,” it with their dabbling, puttering, squabbling waterfowl romance novel. Her prose flows as cars are especially ironic. might just help you get through this elec- smoothly as the Nile in this story that Agnes strikes up a too-fast-to- tion year. while others pass: tracksuited i-podded girls, cyclists at ease, the dogged starts out in Cleveland in 1919, travels to be-believed romance with a German spy jogplodding old. the 1921 Cairo Peace Conference, and named Karl Weilbacher. Is he wooing her ends up in, of all places, heaven. only to get information, or is he sincere in And gathered into these, yet separate, Her protagonist is Agnes his affection for her and her ubiquitous again you ponder how remarkable it is that here, without your stir, Shanklin, a Cleveland school teacher on dachshund Rosie? This is the closest everything at its accordant pace recedes the brink of middle age. The flu epidemic Agnes comes to having an influence on unobtrusively into focus: in the reeds of 1919 leaves her with no surviving rela- world affairs. Otherwise, she floats tives, a substantial inheritance, and through these upheavals like the tourist the movement of a whitened branch delineates a heron, hidden from your eyes contacts in Egypt through her late she is, never defying the prime directive. until with smooth hydraulic glide missionary sister and her husband. She She soaks in the events going on around of neck and wedge-shaped head into its shoulder blades remakes herself from the dowdy, über- her, commenting on them, but never it draws forward to the edge of memory, makes real practical mouse that her domineering acting on them. the illustration that you thrilled at as a child in a book of birds you had, and thrill at still mother prodded her into being, into a Agnes tells her story from the in jaded adulthood: the hunched chic modern woman. This happens with afterlife, having died of cancer at age 76. grimness on stilts, the bristling austerity. the help of a Halle’s shop girl named This device works well for the most part. Mildred, a real-life girlfriend of Bob It gives her the advantage of historical And gradually, one by one, the old joys that were never truly gone Hope. As in Russell’s previous work, perspective, the ability to dispense return themselves to you, deep in the green heart 04 04 Northeast Ohio references pepper the wisdom from beyond the grave. The last of a foreign city; and in quiet 08 08 book, sometimes a little self-consciously. chapter, however, is a bit too whimsical to exhilaration you stroll round again, M M wondering how you got it all so wrong Agnes travels to Cairo on a whim support the gravity of the rest of the book. U U for so many years. S S and meets one of her sister’s Egyptian The penultimate chapter, in which Agnes

24 25 review

24 25 DISTANCE

GRANT BAILIE ghosttown, 23 x 31.5, acrylic on paper, 2007

I know a woman. She is exactly the opposite of every other woman I have ever known in this one regard: she is beautiful up close, but farther away becomes less so. With distance she becomes almost like a monster, her delicate features blending with shadows to form vague fur, tusks, claws; her mouth dissolves into a bloody smear. It is more like a phenomenon of weather than anything else; a mirage—and I am thinking now specifi- cally of that strange trick of light and space that occurred here just a few years ago. Our city lies on the edge of an ocean. Not one of the more famous oceans, but an ocean nonetheless. It is hundreds, maybe thousands of miles across. We do not know much about the people who live on the other side, though sometimes we can pick up their TV stations (their local news looks much like our own,) and every summer a cruise ship docks in our harbor, and people from that strange country pour off the gangplanks, visit our shops, take pictures of each other standing next to our statues. I bring all this up because of what occurred—this phenomenon of light and weather I mentioned before. On a morning three or four years ago, it happened that anyone standing on our beach, could look across the ocean and see the opposite shore as if it was no more than twenty feet away, like the ocean had become nothing but a river over night. It had not, of course. It was still an ocean. A few people dove in and started swimming toward what seemed like nearby land only to have it vanish a few dozen strokes out. They would turn around then, come back trying to explain what had happened, telling us that the land was not there, that the ocean was there, the same as before. But standing on the shore we could still see the other 04 04 country, their beaches and buildings, their own people at their 08 08 own edge of the water looking back, pointing, taking pictures M M that would probably not turn out. U U S S By noon, there was a crowd on both beaches. People

EM were holding up signs. We couldn’t read their writing—their

26 27 DISTANCE

GRANT BAILIE ghosttown, 23 x 31.5, acrylic on paper, 2007

EM were holding up signs. We couldn’t read their writing—their

26 27 were strange, and their handwriting beach behind her, the forgotten bags and blankets, the discarded shaky—and I imagine that they could not read ours. Guys were wrappers, the empty cans. The teenagers on my side of the ocean flirting with girls they knew they would never meet and girls were began shouting at the two girls, and the girls looked as if they were doing the same. The people of that country did not seem very shouting back but of course we couldn’t hear. It was only an optical different from us. The city behind them was much like our own, phenomenon, not an aural one, and though everyone had figured and except for what appeared to be a tendency to wear suspenders that out from the start, young people will be young people and will rather than belts, their dress was nearly identical to ours as well. go on shouting for no reason. I was there with the crowds standing at the edge of the water, After a little while, the girls lost interest and left the far watching our counterparts looking back. Hotdog vendors began beach. The teenagers on this side kicked at the sand for another setting up—I am not sure on which beach first; did we get the idea minute or so while they worked on a plan for the rest of the night. from them or them from us? Now and then, someone on this side or Then they were gone in a racket of broken mufflers and car speakers. that side would raise a can of soda or a hotdog in a toast, and someone I was alone, across the ocean from a woman I knew I would never on the other side would match it with their own drink or food. meet, but who looked back at me now, smiling still, sharing the Paper airplanes were shot across the water toward us or same water. I thought her smile looked a little sad, and I imagine house cluster, 12 x 11.75, acrylic on paper, 2007 away from us, dissolving into the air as if slipping into another mine was becoming more so as the evening wore on. dimension. Maybe it was hotter on the other side; their people Then the light was gone, and the woman was gone, and I removed their shirts with greater frequency than we did, wading drove home, came back the next day to find the ocean had become out into the water until it was up to their chest If they went farther, just an ocean again, and the land across from it was as distant and the disappeared. unknown and unknowable as it had ever been. It all lasted for three days. We began to think it would last The whole thing makes me sad even to think about it And forever and the crowds thinned and the sale of hotdogs became less why was I thinking about it at all? I had only wanted to tell you profitable. The vendors moved on. In the end, there was only myself about this woman I know, but I became distracted. I have lost my and a small group of teenagers on our side of the ocean. On he point in comparing it to something else, something that happened opposite side was a woman and two girls. I thought the woman was a long time ago—at least it seems like a long time ago now. And it 04 04 looking at me. The girls were definitely looking at the teenagers, happens like that sometimes, I guess, with time like it does with 08 08 but me and this woman from the far shore sat in the sand facing space. M M U U each other across the ocean, with our shoes off and the water just But here she comes. I have been waiting for her. She is S S reaching our respective toes. walking toward me, waving hello She is hideous. She is hideous.

EM She smiled at me. I smiled back. I noticed the litter in the She is beautiful. 28 29 were strange, and their handwriting beach behind her, the forgotten bags and blankets, the discarded shaky—and I imagine that they could not read ours. Guys were wrappers, the empty cans. The teenagers on my side of the ocean flirting with girls they knew they would never meet and girls were began shouting at the two girls, and the girls looked as if they were doing the same. The people of that country did not seem very shouting back but of course we couldn’t hear. It was only an optical different from us. The city behind them was much like our own, phenomenon, not an aural one, and though everyone had figured and except for what appeared to be a tendency to wear suspenders that out from the start, young people will be young people and will rather than belts, their dress was nearly identical to ours as well. go on shouting for no reason. I was there with the crowds standing at the edge of the water, After a little while, the girls lost interest and left the far watching our counterparts looking back. Hotdog vendors began beach. The teenagers on this side kicked at the sand for another setting up—I am not sure on which beach first; did we get the idea minute or so while they worked on a plan for the rest of the night. from them or them from us? Now and then, someone on this side or Then they were gone in a racket of broken mufflers and car speakers. that side would raise a can of soda or a hotdog in a toast, and someone I was alone, across the ocean from a woman I knew I would never on the other side would match it with their own drink or food. meet, but who looked back at me now, smiling still, sharing the Paper airplanes were shot across the water toward us or same water. I thought her smile looked a little sad, and I imagine house cluster, 12 x 11.75, acrylic on paper, 2007 away from us, dissolving into the air as if slipping into another mine was becoming more so as the evening wore on. dimension. Maybe it was hotter on the other side; their people Then the light was gone, and the woman was gone, and I removed their shirts with greater frequency than we did, wading drove home, came back the next day to find the ocean had become out into the water until it was up to their chest If they went farther, just an ocean again, and the land across from it was as distant and the disappeared. unknown and unknowable as it had ever been. It all lasted for three days. We began to think it would last The whole thing makes me sad even to think about it And forever and the crowds thinned and the sale of hotdogs became less why was I thinking about it at all? I had only wanted to tell you profitable. The vendors moved on. In the end, there was only myself about this woman I know, but I became distracted. I have lost my and a small group of teenagers on our side of the ocean. On he point in comparing it to something else, something that happened opposite side was a woman and two girls. I thought the woman was a long time ago—at least it seems like a long time ago now. And it 04 04 looking at me. The girls were definitely looking at the teenagers, happens like that sometimes, I guess, with time like it does with 08 08 but me and this woman from the far shore sat in the sand facing space. M M U U each other across the ocean, with our shoes off and the water just But here she comes. I have been waiting for her. She is S S reaching our respective toes. walking toward me, waving hello She is hideous. She is hideous.

EM She smiled at me. I smiled back. I noticed the litter in the She is beautiful. 28 29 review WHAT YOU HAVE LEFT WILL ALLISON, FREE PRESS, 2007

MARY GRIMM

wasn’t heard from again.” Holly is act of civil disobedience. Meanwhile charming and willful, maddeningly selfish Holly experiments with one addiction one minute, tender the next. The other after another, looking for something to characters do their best for her, but she is dull past betrayals, and the future ones as likely to bite the hand that reaches out she’s hardened herself to expect. to her as not. “Oh, Holly,” you’ll find your- The only person who gets effort- self saying, “just let someone love you.” lessly past her distrust, who she takes in hat You The action of the novel is set in with a full heart, is Claire, hers and Lyle’s Have Left is a novel, the story of a discon- motion by Cal’s discovery that he’s seri- daughter, and in the space of the novel, nected family, the members continually ously ill, and it takes us from his farm, Claire moves to the center, nudging Holly holding on and pushing away from each where Holly grew up, back to the past and out of her pain and self absorption, other. It’s told in chapters that could func- her parents’ NASCAR racing days, and bringing the threads of the story as well as tion as stand-alone stories (some were into the future of Holly’s troubled the characters of her far-flung family published elsewhere first), and although marriage with Lyle. together. this arrangement fragments the chro- The characters struggle with I should mention that Will was nology, the characters immediately their desires for closeness, for family, for my student at Case Western Reserve engage the reader. They come to seem like identity, for meaning, leading them to University, in the first creative writing part of your family: you argue with them, sometimes dramatic and self-destructive class I ever taught. I was amazed then by get mad at them, want to comfort them at acts. Holly claims that she is invisible his talent. (The class, in fact, was full of the same time that you’re holding back an when she’s going way over the speed limit. good writers, which raised my expecta- “I told you so.” “The secret, she says, is whiskey…. Two tions about undergraduate fiction writing Even though I kept thinking I cops on the median and me doing ninety,’” a little higher than the future could fulfill.) knew better than they did how they she tells Lyle as proof. “They nailed the I don’t think I’m prejudiced by this should be acting, I got so fond of Holly, guy in front of me and the guy behind.” acquaintance, almost twenty years ago Cal, Wylie, Lyle, and Maggy that I didn’t Holly’s father, Wylie, is a drinker, now, when I say that this is a wonderful see any reason why the book shouldn’t be medicating away the pain of losing his book, full of heart, crisply written, full of four hundred pages instead of its spare wife, and the long continual ache of his sadness and light. and eminently readable two hundred. self-imposed exile from Holly’s life. “’I The story centers around Holly, want to be a part of her life…. Just not who sees herself as abandoned, not quite yet.’ It’s a matter of pride,” he tells without reason. Her mother dies in a freak Lyle. But when Holly comes to find him,

04 accident when she’s five. Her father leaves he hides, and “not quite yet” stretches into 08 her with Cal, her grandfather, which is another decade. M supposed to be temporary, but “three days Even Lyle, who’s the most solid U S after the funeral, he walked out of the presence in Holly’s life after Cal dies, loses

EM insurance agency where he worked and his job for what seems to some a pointless

32 review WHAT YOU HAVE LEFT WILL ALLISON, FREE PRESS, 2007

MARY GRIMM

EM insurance agency where he worked and his job for what seems to some a pointless

32 HOMETOWN’S GRAVITATIONAL PULL Creative Writing JOHN ETTORRE

Perhaps most famously of all, James Joyce hated what he called the “center of paralysis,” his native Dublin. “How sick, sick, sick I am of Dublin!” he once exclaimed in a letter. “It is A Writers’ Conference and Workshop the city of failure, of rancor and of unhappiness. I long to be out of it.” He was good to his word: he never set foot in the city July 8-13, 2008 after 1912, living in self-imposed exile until his death in 1941. And yet, the city never left his imagination. His masterpiece, This conference includes workshops without “genre” bias or boundaries, workshops about strong imaginative Ulysses, lovingly recreates Dublin in all its early 20th century writing, period. There will be classes, lectures, and readings as well as small groups meeting with each sights, sounds, smells and texture. Some fans of the book think member of a strong faculty and with time and space for individual conferences. he renders it more precisely than an actual visit ever could. Cleveland State University’s Five-Day Conference on ometowns are tricky things. The late Willie Morris, meanwhile, spent his later years back in Writing in the “Slip Stream” They begin as warm, nurturing environments, Yazoo City, happier the second time around. will feature: familiar places you proudly call home. Eventually, that very Like many writers, I tried to escape my hometown, familiarity can feel stifling, driving you away at a certain stage moving away from Cleveland in my 20s for larger, flashier of life, in search of some mythical better place where you’re places, cities which I thought would be far better venues in certain you’ll be happier. And yet, for most people, one’s which to practice my craft. For a time, they were. hometown exercises a kind of silent gravitational pull whose But then the steady drone of that gravitational pull force one can’t always resist. Like quicksand, it tugs on you set in, and I found myself back where I started. I was ambiva- harder the harder you resist. lent about it for years, feeling as Joyce did that I was in a geog- What’s true for civilians is doubly true for writers. raphy marked by failure, and worried that it might somehow Nin A. Van Andrews Josip Jordan If we’re any good, our writing—poetry or prose—is rub off on me. Eventually, with maturity, you come to under- Lisa (poetry and fiction) Novakovich (poetry) steeped in a sense of place. The more tied you are to an area’s stand that what you sought to escape is not so much an actual D’Amour Paula Honor (fiction and Donna (playwriting) Michael McLain Moore non-fiction) history, people and landscape (both physical and psychic), the place, but the straightjacket of earlier expectations you’ve Hemans Patrick (fiction, (poetry and (fiction) MacDonald memoir, memoir) easier it becomes to weave that place through the fabric of come to associate with that place. Grasping that, you can poetry) (memoir) your language. Not long ago, novelist Phillip Roth observed change those expectations. All it takes is some revisions. Workshops limited in size. application deadline is June 10, 2008 that his native Newark, New Jersey has been one of the chief Now, I see this place with writerly eyes, as a place recurring characters in his fiction. gorgeously haunted by its once-sequined past, bent over from For an application and details, including tuition and available room options, On the other hand, there’s a long tradition of writers the accumulated weight of its might-have-beens and almost- call (216) 687-2532 noisily dissing their places of origin. In his thinly veiled Wines- wases. But it also has great sedimentary layers of depth and or write now to: burg, Ohio, the novelist Sherwood Anderson mocked his native beauty, the kind that can come only from epic pain and loss. IMAGINATION, Cleveland State University, 2121 Euclid Ave., RT 1834, Cleveland, OH 44115-2214 Clyde, Ohio as a provincial backwater. Harper’s editor Willie It’s a place that rewards emotional and civic archaeology. or visit our website at: www.csuohio.edu/imagination Morris, like many Southern writers, was similarly embarrassed And so I keep digging. by the gothic backwardness of his hometown of Yazoo City, 04 Mississippi, and thus headed to Manhattan, where he wrote a 08 Cleveland State University is an AA/EOE committed to nondiscrimination. M/F/H/V encouraged. 08-00302 memorable coming-of-age novel, North Toward Home. M U S