The broken C I Sidling and secretaries A harmless three-hour tour T Y Reality TV on the Red Planet That faithful moose passes by “Darn tootin’, I love Fig Newtons”

REMOTELY CONTROLLED

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Winter 2015 ISSN 1916-3304 The broken C I

W i n t e r 2 0 15 Issue 17 T Y

The Broken City A r t Contributor : , ISSN 1916-3304, is published semiannually Bill Wolak out of Toronto, Canada, appearing sporadically in print, but The Broken City (“Tasting the Whispers” on the front cover and always at: www.thebrokencitymag.com. Rights to individual Love Opens the Hands “Sand Dreaming of Dew” on page 8) has just published works published in remain the property of his twelfth book of poetry, entitled , the author and cannot be reproduced without their consent. with Nirala Press. Recently, he was a featured poet at The All other materials © 2015. All rights reserved. All wrongs Mihai Eminescu International Poetry Festival in Craiova, reversed. O n t h e W e b : Romania. Mr. Wolak teaches Creative Writing at William PatersonD i s c l aUniversity i m e r : in New Jersey. Owww.thebrokencitymag.com n m o b i l e d e v i c e s : Remotely Controlled Though we arrived at this issue’s title independently, we Sissuu.com/thebrokencity u b m i s s i o n Guidelines: should point out that is also the name ofC oan n unaf�iliated t e n t s : book by Aric Sigman. Correspondencewww.thebrokencitymag.com/submissions.html: Poetry .....3-7, 12, 13 [email protected] Robot .....8 O n Tw i t t e r : Fiction .....9 Essay .....11 @brokencitymag The Broken City I n t h i s i s s u e : Breakfast Clubbed is currently accepting submissions for its summer 2016 edition: . The broken C I Sidling and secretaries A harmless three-hour tour T Y Reality TV on the Red Planet That faithful moose passes by Do we control TV, “Darn tootin’, I love Fig Newtons” REMOTELY CONTROLLED or does it control No, it’s not another food issue; the magazine is running us? Studies done in a school-themed edition. We’re looking for work the ’90s suggest the that involves school at any level, from kindergarten latter view is more to college, but we’re most interested in submissions accurate. It’s not the about high school. content that hooks us, they discovered, Is your coming-of-age �iction looking for a good it’s the medium itself. home? Show it to us! Still having nightmares that you’re late for class and can’t open your locker, twenty At least we’re years later? Tell us about it! Just this once, we’ll even 17 addicted together; Winter 2015 consider heartbroken teen angst poetry. ISSN 1916-3304 let’s lean back and The enjoy the ride. Broken City Send your poetry, �iction, essays, comics, illustrations Welcome to and photography to [email protected]. ’s tribute to television’s past and present. - 2 - Imperium In Imperio Catherine Bull

Because Cookie punched BooBooKitty right in the damn face then 40 seconds of ohhellno awyeah on a red pool table! And now they’re business partners. Because �ingernails! Because murder! Because unexpected children! Because silk sheets and sidling and secretaries and seriously huge self-portraits. Because while he was dying he was not dying! Because the box they’re in is the box they’re all in together, and they go all in, all the hair all the sex, all the effoffs, all the about-faces, all the facials. Because people! Because wanting! Because entrances! Audacity! Breakdowns! The hots! Because booze and butts and begging and wily lunching and jewels the size of satellite dishes! Because rhythm! Because rhymes! Because of course! Because who wouldn’t act that way all day if they could! Because who doesn’t want to be all their everything at all times with the dial all the way up, and have no one leave the box of your life for any reason but dying and only then if you kill them your damnself? Catherine Bull’s work has appeared in , , , , Bellingham Review and other �ine journals. Her poem “On Stage At The Field The Human The Literary Bohemian The Operating Bardot” appeared in the winter 2013 music-themed issue System of . She holds degrees from Oberlin College and U.C. Davis, and lives in Seattle. Catherine is also a Seattle The Broken City Independent Bookstore Day Champion, and for an explanation of that and more, please visit www.catherinebull.com.

- 3 - “Talk Show Addicts” by Roger Brown Janet McCann

To live in identical houses, each with four-pronged aerials and all equidistant from the street and from each other, one or two-formed shadows, glimpsed in front of screens, in blaring yellow light.

The voices that they hear are not their own and not each other’s. The voices that they hear— The psychiatrist said that the killer must have been

an abused child. The political analyst blames Obama. Viagra sales are slumping: why? Some countries in Europe have low sperm counts and births are dropping there. Many believe wallabies make good pets but they don’t; they jump over fences and can leap right into neighbors’ houses, and they punch! I love my wallaby, he’s gentle as a lamb. Thatcher was Ronald Reagan’s friend, America was closest to Britain then. It is true that the one pair of penguins is lesbian but they have to have sex with males to produce eggs, one of them will make the sacri�ice. They can’t just ring up the sperm bank, ho ho!

in their identical houses, where the voices they hear are not their own and not each other’s do the lights go out at once, or does one blink out at a time until the frame is dark? Find the Roger Brown painting here: http://chicago-outdoor-sculptures.blogspot.com/2010_04_01_archive.html

- 4 - Listening to Emily Dickinson’s Poems in a Bar While Watching Ultimate Wrestling on Mute Janet McCann

Shaved heads, fangs, He kindly stopped a woman and a man in mortal for me. erotic combat. I dwell in possibility Violent colors and screaming. and the tattooed brunette throws the bucket A fairer house at the blonde, who seizes the brunette’s �lap of hair than prose. and yanks. My life You can’t turn it off, closed twice. that huge screen over the bar. What a resounding slap, If immortality unveil mute but you see the patchy color rising on the white face. the gleam of oiled muscles, costumes �lashing electric colors. Rivers of blood �low over her face, between her breasts, into her eyes, I felt a funeral in my brain. someone is thrown into the pit. Wild nights! Wild nights! Whirl of heliotrope and orange, stillness. Medico! Janet McCann is a Texas poet who has been teaching creative writing at Texas A&M since 1969. Journals publishing her work include , , , , , Kansas Quarterly , , , , and , Parnassus Nimrod Sou’wester The Christian Century Christianity and among many others. She was a 1989 NEA Creative Writing Fellowship winner. Literature The New York Quarterly Tendril Poetry Australia McCall’s Her most recent collection: , Lamar University Press, 2013. She started teaching in 1963 and just dismissed her last class! The Crone at the Casino

- 5 - The Agony of Defeat B rent Raycroft

The things we used to see on TV, my brother, my sister and me. Vanuatu tribesmen, for example, diving from a wooden tower with vine ropes tied to their ankles. Each mortal tug made the make-shift tower sag and though the line was duly shortened sooner or later some poor sportsman would hit the ground head �irst. Or so we hoped. Or was the level ground a pit �illed with twigs and topped with moss to make the tourists think the danger worse than it was? The spectacle reenacts (we did not know it then— that would take the advent of another medium) the legend of a woman held captive in a treetop bower harried by her cruel mate to the brink and over. Diving after her he died because he didn’t use a vine. But he won’t be fooled again, will he? The things we used to see on TV, my brother, my sister and me. Brent Raycroft lives north of Kingston, Ontario and has published poems in , , , , , , Arc Prairie Fire Vallum Freefall and other magazines. He doesn’t have Grain The Walrus The Broken City a full-length book out yet, but there is a manuscript rising (he imagines) through various slushpiles. , a single- The poem chapbook, was recently published Subtleties of Divine Creatures by Thee Hellbox Press.

- 6 - Fifties’ Child Nels Hanson

Where did they go, kind companions of defeated different father or mother. The curved-nosed elves sailed childhood, their constant cheerfulness who they sea of milk and �loating rice, bergs waiting for Titanic. really were, happier than any parent? Bucky Beaver Lowing Bossie, Elsie never met, separate pastures, each no one made fun of, brushed and smiling, big teeth in thrall to competing dairies. Sweet Sugar Bear, casual white and strong enough to fell a tree? Strange Reddy stoned cartoon Bing Crosby crooning—his coated oats Kilowatt, monopoly PG&E’s electric robot boy in cultured cavities and made you fat that anyway future free comic book each Spring? Does he live or falter, time would do. Towering but gentle Jolly Green Giant, memory fail, against his better judgment �ly his kite half human, half vegetable, grew peas and broccoli into high voltage line? Was it intentional? Sharpie you hated and never ate though still you admired his the Gillette parrot, my best friend, no howling coach size and strength, vast legs spread, my Colossus of or principal, sang smartly, “Look sharp, and feel sharp Rhodes above fertile valley like yours so you wished too!” between rounds, rugged Gene Fullmer, shaved- a friendly monster to set things right. Four decades headed and doomed Hurricane Carter. Land of Sky later a wealthy neighbor owned a cane the lame man Blue Waters where surely Hiawatha lived with his used who bellowed the goliath’s almost scary “Ho, Ho, tender grandmother Nokomis, the drunken forest Ho!” The raisins dancing to “Through the Grapevine” “Hamms, The Beer Refreshing” bear dancing to tom-toms beating arrived too late—we farmed yellow Thompson Seedless ? Its rhythm made me want to drink or raisin grapes through autumn rains and the Sun-Maid live with surviving Indians in deerskin. Speedy Relief co-op’s default and all went broke, grandfather’s farm grows old, disk body and hat Alka-Seltzer tablets air a ghost in dreams. Michelin Man and Pillsbury Dough dissolves. Eye-patched grizzled pirate intoning, “Darn Boy, both hollow, pumped with air, won no affection. tootin’, I love Fig Newtons”? I didn’t like them, only I was jaded, too skeptical to believe they loved us for

Dad did, fruit too healthy, not enough like candy. Now ourselves and not adults’ money to purchase new war, I do but never buy, their frayed Jolly Roger full fathom cash you’d earn or die from vanished kingdoms’ make- �ive, with Snap, Crackle, Pop, friends or odd brothers, believe you believed, still prefer to any grownup life. Nels Hanson grew up in California’s San Joaquin Valley and has worked as a farmer, teacher and writer/editor. His �iction received the San Francisco Foundation’s James D. Phelan Award and Pushcart nominations in 2010, 2012 and 2014. His poems have appeared in , , and other magazines, and garnered a 2014 Pushcart nomination, ’s 2014 Prospero Prize, and 2015 and 2016 Best of the Net nominations. Word Riot Oklahoma Review The Paci�ic Review Sharkpack Review

- 7 - B i l l Wo l a k - 8 - M a k i n g i t re a l Matthew Harrison

that It was the end of the shift. The airlock mountains, looking at the stars or even duction of oxygen, and they both knew door opened with a hiss, stirring the looking at the dust. Rather that than what was happening to . cabin’s �ine red dust, which then settled stuck in this bloody portacabin wonder- “No point anyway,” Steve said. gently in the low Martian gravity. A ing if Jessie’s going to look at me today. “If we produced more, it would only helmeted head appeared. The bitch!” blow off into space.” “Coffee, Pete?” Steve greeted Surprised at his friend’s vehe- “There’s rock,” Pete suggested. the head. mence, Pete half-rose, then sat down “Hollow caverns, that’s what they were Caverns! The helmet was unfastened, re- again. “I’d give you my place, just that thinking of.” vealing Pete’s stubbly face. He coughed Marty...” “ ” Steve snorted. “We and, grimacing, spat out a gobbet of “Nah, sorry, losing my grip.” can’t even �ill a portacabin with oxygen. saliva that traced a gentle arc before Steve smiled ruefully. This,” he gestured at the small volume reaching the �loor. Pete took off his suit and since of air around them, “this is from Earth, “Christ—none of that!” Steve it was the end of the shift he opened plus a little from the algae. If it wasn’t scolded. He was neatly dressed and a bottle of spirit that they’d distilled for the relief ships... And how long are clean-shaven. themselves from fermented waste. It they going to keep sending them?” “We’re not on air yet,” Pete said, was rough, but after a day on Mars, you “We’ve got plants,” Pete said. gesturing to the lenses that commanded needed it. Already the two men could “Had some asparagus this morning.” the room. He moved slowly to where the see things in a rosier light. He raised his glass again. “To Martian saliva lay, and ground the �loor theatri- Pete raised his glass. “Here’s asparagus, grown on Martian soil!” cally with his heel. to the Aspiration of Mankind.” That Steve nodded, also raising his Then he picked up the coffee was how Marty had described their glass. “But seriously,” he said, “what cup and, still in his suit, sat down and mission. “Two aspirations—you and have we achieved here? Two years in, took a draught. He swilled it around his me!” He downed the glass and poured and what have we got—apart from mouth as if to clear his throat of dust. himself another, watching the liquid asparagus? Even that was grown in your nightsoil Steve asked him how things spiral gently out of the bottle. Steve put shit with Martian gravel for aeration. were. a hand over his own glass, but allowed Martian soil? Martian , more “The patrol?” Pete coughed his friend to lift it away and pour him a like it.” again. “Same as yesterday. Pointless.” He generous measure. Pete put down his glass. upended the cup and let the last drops Earth had risen—a bright blue “There’s other vegetables coming.” He fall slowly onto the table. dot through the portacabin window. held down a �inger, counting. “There’s “We had a dust storm yester- “Mars was supposed to be a big exploration; we’ve got a good map now.” day,” Steve reminded him. thing,” Steve said. “But on Earth they Another �inger. “There’s medical sci- “Didn’t need a patrol to spot don’t aspire to be Martians. We’re ten ence, the effects of low gravity—” that,” Pete said morosely. “Got the sat minutes behind right now; that’s twenty “Yes,” Steve broke in, “a lot of views, haven’t we?” minutes for the reply. Think about opportunity for medical science—the “It keeps you out of mischief,” it—twenty minutes for each turn of the radiation sickness, the cancers, the Steve replied. The two of them went conversation. We’re just nowhere.” infertility...” through this routine each day, like a Pete had no answer to that. “And?” Pete looked at him. double act. “How’s the terraforming?” he said at “Yes, but we didn’t have to come Then Steve’s tone changed. “Me, last, to break the silence. here to fry ourselves with radiation. I’d rather be out there, driving over the “Ha!” Steve supervised the pro- Could have done it more cheaply on the - 9 - and

Moon— had a chance to get back home.” minutes, boys,” he said. “Try to cut the grumbles; it’s not good Pete tried again. “There’s the search for life. If we hit for the brand.” the jackpot there, it’d pay for everything. We could patent the “Yes, Marty,” they said. DNA, or whatever it uses for DNA.” Marty’s eyes fell on the bottle. “Hey, you’ve been Steve made a face. “That’s Jessie’s thing, grinding up drinking, right?” He sized up the two men. “Let’s have some rocks, microanalysis. But two years and she hasn’t found any. action. Steve, you argue with him; Pete, you snatch the bottle If it’s there, it’s pretty well hidden.” away. Then, Steve, you grab the bottle, smash it over his head. “And anyway,” he went on, “we didn’t have to bring How’s about that?” people here to do it. Jessie could’ve been on Earth, analysing “Over my head?” Pete said slowly. week probe samples.” “Not really, head, you know how to do it, like with the “You’d have been on Earth too then,” Pete reminded soy carton the other time. The ratings were up for a !” He him: “ease up.” Then he went on, “The biggest thing’s been looked at the two men pleadingly. “Come on, boys, you’re the reality video. That’s where we’re making .” He ges- best we’ve got. Steve, imagine he’s Jessie!” tured at the cameras that ringed the cabin. “They’ll be watch- They nodded. Marty left via the port to the adjacent ing us grousing now.” cabin. “God, what I wouldn’t give for a decent murder,” they Steve shook his head. “We’re still off air. But the rat- heard him say as he disappeared. ings...” Steve looked at Pete. “Now there’s an idea...” Pete shrugged. “They’ll be back, soon as something Then, steadying himself, he took a slow swing at his happens. Like someone falling off a mountain.” friend. Pete parried, and did a pretend jab into Steve’s ribs. Steve agreed. “Bloody mountains! They’re so big. I Steve staggered back, then reached for the bottle. wasn’t prepared for that.” He put his glass aside; they had The cameras on the walls began to blink, signalling almost gotten it out of their systems. that they would soon be on air. The two men sat down. At that moment, another helmeted head appeared “Come to Mars, and learn to act,” Steve said softly, rel- in the airlock. There was the usual swirl and slow settling of ishing it. The camera lights stopped blinking and turned red. the dust, then the visitor took off his helmet. “You’re on in �ive Matthew Harrison lives in Hong Kong, and whether because of that or some other reason entirely, his writing has veered from non- �iction to literary, and he is currently reliving a boyhood passion for science �iction. He has published numerous SF short stories and is building up to longer pieces as he learns more about the universe. Matthew is married with two children, but no pets, as there is no space for these in Hong Kong. www.matthewharrison.hk

- 10 - Outer and Inner Truths Te r r y B a r r

Lassie The Big Valley Twin Peaks I’ve been a TV junkie all my life, from into the greatest, the most artistically time. And we met Al and Lisa through The Mod Squad Then Came Bronson the days of to to inspired period of network TV? The pe- . Technically, we met them and . riod where ABC, NBC and CBS decided through Lamaze class, but we’d all agree I’ve argued with buddies and colleagues to take chances, perhaps pushed into that Lynch’s collection of oddities and about the use and utility of TV, the joys this decision by FOX? Consider: in the grotesqueries bonded us. Each Sunday Twin Peaks and aesthetics of this bastard medium. late ’80s and early ’90s, NBC gave us night after the show, we’d check with Northern Exposure If TV shaped me into the monster I am, , ABC gave us , CBS each other about what we’d experi- The X-Files exactly whom or what do I menace? gave us , and FOX enced, just as we did during the rest of I’m a Ph.D. in English specializing in gave us . I don’t think net- the week when our babies wouldn’t eat Joyce, Faulkner, Southern Film, Creative work TV had ever been or will ever be right or kept us up as they wailed and Writing, and Food and Literature. I that good, with shows about nothing pulled on their infected ears. have been married for 30 years to the and alien abduction and Jewish doc- I’ll never forget seeing Al and same woman and have never strayed. tors in nowhere Alaska. And of course, Lisa for the �irst time in Lamaze. Lisa he I have two lovely daughters who are Agent Cooper and the invader within, introduced herself by suggesting that Bob Newhart Show The Wild Wild West competent and well-adjusted, but who, Bob. I know there were precedents: T her “back hurt like hell; so bad that I The Outer Limits Here Come the Brides like me, often �ind themselves binge- , , want to scratch the eyes out of everyone The Blacklist watching TV. My younger is currently , who talks to me.” Al just stood behind House of Cards obsessing over (she just (just kidding). But let’s face it: there was her, kind of smiling. �inished while continuing a concentration of strangeness in the “I want to get to know these Picket Fences to major in psychology and minor in art early ’90s, to the extent that when CBS people,” I said to my wife as she was Gilmore Girls Twin Peaks at a rigorous liberal arts college), while introduced in the mid ’90s, considering how to “Kegel.” Catcher in my older considers her critics hailed it as “ Lite.” And so we did. They came to —as sustaining and Pop-culturally speaking, the our place for dinner one night and were nurturing as all those times when one ’90s were a decade of strangeness for greeted by a burned-out toaster oven of us stood in front of the rocker hold- me—my transition from irresponsibil- on the front steps. “We almost turned ing her and swaying to some unheard ity to fatherhood. I think I completely around,” Al said, but they didn’t. And Twin Peaks rhythm because sitting in the rocker checked out musically in the ’90s, only after our babies, their Nick and our caused her to scream bloody murder. barely aware of Nirvana and Pearl Jam. Pari, were born, we found She owns the complete series, paid full Because my daughters were so small, and staged a theme party. Al was Sheriff The World price, and is constantly outraged when it seems the only music we listened to Harry and Lisa was his great love Josie. Sings Goodnight she �inds whole seasons on sale for regularly was lullabies from The party was at our place, so while $5.99. And when she’s away from home, . they left baby Nick with a sitter, we had Andy she rents them on Net�lix. Kind of simi- That is, except for Julee Cruise no choice but to incorporate Pari into Grif�ith Seinfeld lar to my owning whole seasons of and Angelo Badalamenti, the musi- the theme. So I was wife beater Leo, Twin Peaks or . cal geniuses behind the soundtrack to mainly due to my long ponytail. My wife So I raised two TV junkies, and , along with David Lynch, was The Log Lady, and our precious when I think about it clearly, I under- of course. It was Cruise’s voice and Pari was the log. My wife tied a log sign stand how it happened. Badalamenti’s orchestration that—de- around one of Pari’s baby legs. We have My daughters were born in spite the images they were underscor- pictures to prove it. 1990 and ’94 respectively. But, I won- ing—put my older daughter to sleep at Is it comforting or disturbing to der, do they know that they were born night, on long car rides, or basically any discover friends who share with you a - 11 - Eraserhead Blue Velvet 3 Hour Tour fascination for movies like or ? Is there a friendship barometer based on movie thrill-seeking? Or is it Karen Robiscoe Twin Peaks that we were all just too comfortable in our small town when Twin Peaks the outré became popular, when hit the air? ended as abruptly as it started, and I stowed away (the tits and ass) though Al and Lisa have remained friends of ours ever since, with castaways, that smoldered... even to this day I don’t believe Pari has seen a single episode. got lost for days the girl next door Seinfeld Maybe that’s for the best. just �loatin’... in shorty-shorts , of course, was another matter. drifted to she wore Seinfeld * * * a green lagoon, her tresses plaited... I remember my �irst episode. Elaine and Jerry on pontoon baked some pies are visiting Jerry’s parents in lower Florida, and Elaine can’t saved from boatin’... to please the guys sleep because the Seinfelds refuse to put on the air condition- built some huts —a partner shy er. Funny, I hadn’t known that my Jewish family of origin had with bamboo struts, of dating... made a . with coconuts (a walking check) I got so happy about the show, because who doesn’t for shingles... (an intellect) All like watching dysfunctional Jews meander through Manhat- caught a sow (the boss of wreck) in the Family tan? It wasn’t irreverent humor like the groundbreaking for dinner chow, (and matey) back in the ’70s. Actually, I’m not exactly sure and held luau since hull was toast what kind of humor Jerry and the gang produced. All I knew to mingle... we lived on coast, then was that no matter what the week held otherwise, in the of ladies three composing SOS’s... Seinfeld decade of the ’90s, my wife and I planned our Thursday nights the pedigree, —the theme of show around . the richest she for year or mo’— Kids know when their parents are excited or, let’s face was older... but which show, Seinfeld it, obsessed. Our daughter Pari was only three years old when while hourglass can you guess it? our addiction began. At breakfast on those Thursday de�ined the lass Karen Robiscoe’s short stories, essays, creative non- mornings as I got her cereal and otherwise readied her for her Seinfeld �iction and poems have appeared in: (at Montessori day, I’d say, “I’m making spaghetti for supper, and SEINFELD UCSB), , , then we have !” Spectrum , , , “Pisghetti,” she’d say, “and !” Postscripts to Darkness KY Story Bohemia, , , , Now what she knew about the Costanzas, Uncle Leo, Steam Ticket Peach Fuzz Peach�ish Dark Light , , , or Mr. Pitt, I can’t say. Of course, she knew noth- 3 Bibliotheca Alexandrina The Main Street Rag , Fowlpox Press, , ing, really, other than that her daddy particularly loved these Meat for Tea The Sand Canyon Review Midnight (at Antioch), and . Online, characters. How could I explain that, in the face of the rise and Circus Blue Crow Magazine Lunch �ind her work at , fall of fundamentalist theme parks (Heritage USA), incursions Ticket 300 Days of Sun Seinfeld , , Silver Birch Press, and her in Kuwait to save autocracy, and Bill and Monica, I thought Handful of Dust The Whistling popular blog: . this show, this , perfectly re�lected the absurdity of our Fire Art4theHomeless culture? How do you explain absurdity to a little girl? Charron’s Chatter Seinfeld A more formidable problem was that her bedtime was 8:00—8:30 tops—and didn’t come on until 9:00. Ugh. You can try to hold lines and be disciplined. You can struggle, and beg, and bribe. Or you can make a “special night”—the option we chose. but I’m going to give it to George when he’s confronted by his “Okay, you can stay up late just this night sweetie,” boss, Mr. Lippman, for having sex with the cleaning woman on which of course she took to mean every Thursday night. We’d his desk. have our pisghetti, give Pari her bath, and then make a big “Was that wrong?” George asks. “I gotta plead igno- Seinfeld batch of popcorn and settle into our added-on den to watch. rance on this thing.” George pleading ignorance is like Jeb - 12 - It’s hard to say what my favorite moment is, Bush looking a little confused when he dropped a 20 into a Changing Channels collection box for victims of a deadly Florida hurricane and was met with a moment of stunned and awkward silence by James B. Nicola the reporter covering this “moment.” You know, he was just doing his fair share like most wealthy American aristocrats. That kind of ignorance, George, I mean, Jeb. Two evenings ago, neither you nor I In any case, I know TV characters had had sex and got up to answer the door—the laughter even talked about it. But this? was awfully loud and, thinking on it after, In case you’re wondering what a three-year-old I came to the conclusion that was why thought of such a scene, don’t worry. Pari usually made it to you didn’t hear the doorbell. Last night, though, -minute mark of the show and then fell onto one of the smoke alarm. What was it you were heating, our laps. We let her stay with us until show’s end and then a cup of milk, for a cup of cocoa? carried her to bed. You didn’t ask if I would like a cup. The Though she was sweet and precocious and very Did you think I was going to get up X-Files persuasive, I couldn’t let Pari stay up on Friday nights for and �ix it? Then I thought, you’re always eating . And even though I taped it and watched it later, pro- or drinking, or both. And it dawned on me tecting my child from those darker human impulses, my wife that all I had to do to save a life was always convinced that the sounds of crying men invaded one day was to remove the battery her sleep. from the stick. So now, to change the program, * * * you’ll have to get up. After all, I am Of course, there has always been a tradition of creepy not anything if not a loving wife. Widely published on both sides of the Atlantic, horror in TV—a stalking of the unknown. Though I’m a paci- The Twilight Zone Alfred James B. Nicola has several poetry awards �ist who generally shrinks from con�lict, I have been a brave Hitchcock Presents The Outer Limits X-Files and nominations to his credit, with recent adventurer in TV unknown, from to The Night Stalker poems appearing in the and to and to creator , , and . His Chris Carter’s beloved , with Darren Mc- Southwest Atlanta The X-Files non�iction book, , won Gavin. Reviews Rattle The Broken City a Choice Award. His �irst full-length poetry As in these other shows, was best watched Playing the Audience collection, , has just been late at night, especially if that night sky, which I could al- released; his second, ways see clearly through the windows bordering our den on Manhattan Plaza , will be out in 2016. More at: three sides, was blanketed white with clouds. In that setting, Stage to Page: Poems from sites.google.com/site/jamesbnicola. Donnie the serial killer who bathed his victims �irst, or the the Theater Jersey Devil, or the chicken farm where the birds were fed the processed remains of their own kind, came through with even greater darkness and chill. The one stand-alone, non-mythos episode that al- ways got me—even after seven or eight repeated viewings— sures to narcissistic ends, it was these times. As I’d watch the was Peter Boyle’s visionary character in “Clyde Bruckman’s successive episodes of this beautifully unnerving series, I’d Final Repose.” When confronted by a deranged killer who sink into our sofa, peer through the windows at the night sky, asked him why he, the killer, did such horrible things, Bruck- be thankful for my own comfort, and lose myself in man/Boyle’s reply was: “Don’t you understand, son?... You do of a world “out there.” A world that stayed out there only so the things you do because you’re a homicidal maniac.” long. Life is often just that frank—just that terribly simple. One night, as we returned from a Christmas party The X-Files That post-modern. and were putting our daughter to bed, I walked into the den, Moments like this should have terri�ied me more, �lipped on the episode of that I had taped, and then me with my therapist wife turning the sound down on our punched the phone message button that was redly-�lashing. set while our child lay sleeping two rooms away, through our And this voice emerged as if crawling through the wires like kitchen. that centipedish, wormlike parasite with the extended teeth If I ever accused myself of pursuing my guilty plea- did, back in season one: - 13 - “Terry... we’re watching you and But the ’90s brought us the sense civilization up ahead as houses we know where you live. Sieg Heil, Sieg Jewish hits—not secondary, assumed appear and traf�ic—or at least three Northern Heil, Sieg Heil.” characters, but the JEWS. And was cars—pass me by. And then I see some Exposure Donnie? The Smoking-Man? anyone more Jewish than buildings, a town. The neo-Nazi from the “Kaddish” epi- ’s Joel Fleischman? Roslyn. sode? Fleischman whined about I look to the left and there is a I erased in a misper- having to serve time (as a doctor) in small blue building. On the window I ceived attempt at protecting my family. Cicely, Alaska, and initially, who could read “Dr. Joel Fleischman.” Just ahead, The next day, I called a police detective, blame him? The series had plots, but the side of another building greets me and through much research and other more than anything, it seemed to exist with its mural of a desert scene: “Wel- strange phone calls, we found our man, to nourish a point of view: that the come to Roslyn: An Oasis.” I wake my the one lurking outside: he was an adult greatest outsider (Joel the Jew) was our wife. man living with his parents, a man who insider in a town that was composed of “Look over there, honey.” had twice been arrested for indecent even greater outsiders, mis�its, has- She does. exposure. He was warned by the police, been’s, and malcontents. “Oh my goodness!” but he never really stopped his watch- My wife and I loved these CBS Pari is awake, too, by now, so ing until we moved and changed our Monday nights. A peaceful show with we park and enter the Roslyn Café, The X-Files number. quaint Americana music, native-Ameri- ordering burgers and coffee. We keep had ended by then. I can rituals and philosophies, and a searching the streets outside for Fleis- never discovered how this guy found me moon-for-the-misbegotten love story. chman or Chris or even Ruth-Anne. We or why he watched. We all knew that Joel and Maggie would see signs proclaiming “Hot Set, Do Not Or what he, in fact, ever saw. never work. But then, I was in a mar- Touch,” but neither Ed nor Shelly ever I �inally concluded that he riage with an Iranian woman, and there greets us. Still, we’re here, in mythical saw my movie reviews in the “Readers were people from my Alabama home Cicely, and I feel as if I’m no longer who I Reviews” section of the newspaper. I who argued we would never work ei- am. Malcolm X The X-Files had had the audacity to like Spike Lee’s ther. So fuck ’em, I pulled for Maggie and It’s the closest I ever get to my . “Trust no one,” Joel, and when the lure of NYC became dreams of meeting my favorite charac- warned. Close your drapes, check the too strong for Fleischman? Well, I love ters. Home Andy Grif�ith children. Delist your number. Think of New York too. The lox was fresher in I buy a Roslyn Café t-shirt, the and and be glad that Cicely, but the bagels? best any of us can do, and when I return Northern you have a healthy family and a secure * * * to my home in Greenville, SC, I tell the Exposure place. Quit creeping yourself out. Find We’re travelling cross-country, story of Roslyn. And when another series, another town, a good my wife, two-year-old Pari, and I. We’re comes on, the following Mon- doctor. in Washington state now, and up ahead day, I see myself, my wife and daughter, Find Joel Fleischman. And Cic- on the interstate I see an exit for Roslyn. standing on the corner where that faith- ely. My wife and baby are asleep, Julee ful moose passes by. * * * Cruise dreaming through our speakers. I It’s still the ’90s, and for a few The Goldbergs Jewish characters have popu- have no one to consult. We’re supposed more months and even some years, my lated TV ever since to hit Seattle by four, and I’m not sure four shows remain on the networks. But back in the ’50s. Frankly, I was always we can make it if I take this detour. by decade’s end, they’re all gone to the Barney Miller Welcome Back, Kotter suspicious of Fred and Ethel Mertz, too. But could I live with myself if I syndicated wasteland, to be replaced by , . don’t? what? I can’t really say, for soon we have M*A*S*H The Wonder Years Sidney Freedman, the unit’s psychiatrist So I do. a second daughter, Layla, and TV turns Brooklyn Bridge on . Paul in , The state highway two-lanes it- into Nickelodeon and ABC Family. and the short-lived , self through the winding foothills of the And of course, Barney. writer/producer Gary David Goldberg’s Cascades. How far will I go to �ind what I I don’t mind, though, for I lived Family Ties more honest, autobiographical version hope to �ind? I have no prior knowledge, in and through the ’90s where “noth- - 14 - of . only the intuition of a devotee. I can ing” happened on TV but a murder of a homecoming queen, an alien abduction of an FBI agent’s outside world that we were ready to communicate. That we sister, and an Alaskan town becoming everyone’s My Town. might be willing to trust someone, or anyone, except those we Except that we all know what happened then and shouldn’t, like the small town beauty queen and the beings in the next decade, as the terror and happiness of small TV that raised her. towns turned into a national nightmare of real or imagined Everything happened back then, in those ’90s, and 52 government and corporate conspiracies that helped us ne- channels couldn’t contain all the action. But later, in the fear- gotiate or perhaps persuade ourselves through Desert Storm ful 2000s, when I could afford to, I bought the entire DVD col- and into Desert Swarm (“Swarm, swarm” the security guard lection of those suspiciously true series. I still watch when I cried at Brentano’s as Jerry’s Uncle Leo attempted to swipe a want to, though it isn’t the same. My kids are grown, so I don’t book), and through other Middle East con�licts we didn’t fully have to turn the volume down or wait until they’re asleep to understand. No wonder many of us wanted to hide in Cicely, watch. I’d miss what we had even more, if I didn’t remember behind a guise of nothing, or in a nondescript apartment in it all so well. suburban DC with only an X on our window to signal to the For that “truth” isn’t “out there.” It’s all in here. Terry Barr’s essays have appeared in a variety of publications including , , , , , and . His essay collection, Hippocampus Magazine The Bitter Southerner Deep , will be published in 2016 by Red Dirt Press. He lives in Greenville, SC, with his family, South Magazine Blue Bonnet Review Full Grown People Red Truck Review Don’t Date Baptists and and teaches Creative Non�iction and Southern Film at Presbyterian College. He may be reached at [email protected]. Other Warnings From My Alabama Mother

- 15 - The Broken City - Issue 17 www.thebrokencitymag.com [email protected]