Zig Zag Lit Mag Dear Addison County
Issue.4 Spring.18
Zig Zag Lit Mag Dear Addison County,
Thank you.
We can’t believe only two short years ago we were preparing to release our first issue. We are growing every year (Issue.4 had our most submissions yet!) and are amazed and excited by the work in our Addison County community.
Special thanks to the Vermont Book Shop, Vermont Cofee Company, ARTSight Galleries & Studios, the Litle Pressroom, the Bixby Memorial Free Library, Lily Hinrichsen, the Bixby Writers’ Group, the Oter Creek Poets, and to the Mt. Abe teachers and students behind Nodah.
We said farewell this year to our co-founder Muir Haman, who has been with Zig Zag since its genesis. He has moved to a new position in a new state and we wish him the best of luck moving forward with his family.
Submissions will be open for Issue.5 during the entirety of June 2018.
To download your free digital copy of this or past issues, to keep up with events, or to find out more about us, check out zigzaglitmag.org, and remember . . .
Read Local. Write Local.
Zig Zag Crew
1 Table of Contents
A WOODCHUCK TELEMACHIAD —Ed Webbley 4 Sassy Blurb with Eye, Teeth, and Left Foot—Ross Sheehan 10 House of Reason—Ray Hudson 11 American Typewriter—Linda Shere 12 fate’s fate—Erik Rehman 15 Before You Go (a novel in progress)—Elaine Anderson 22 Arbus Twins—Peter Bruno 31 Nourishment, Eastern Washington State—Ray Hudson 32 Dear Make Nkhombe—Corinne Kehoe 33 Two Worlds Stiched Together—Lily Hinrichsen 36 Cover Artist & Writer Spotlight—Lily Hinrichsen 37 Y as in Yellow—Margi Rogal 39 War—Cliff Adams, Jr. 41 A Boy’s Eye View—Lincoln McGrath 46 A LIFE IN FULL: For My Father—Burgess Needle 47 The Stripper Santa Incident—Trish Dougherty 50 Kestral Lane—Ken Hypes 56 Clover—Janet Fancher 57 The Professor’s Garden—Anne Louise Agan 59
2 Pressing Leaves—Susan Jefts 64 Exploding Volcano Eye with Grasp and Teeth—Ross Sheehan 65 Apples—Elaine Pentaleri 66 Self-Portrait at 41—Michelle L. Mowery 67
Readers Take Note: We do not censor the content of our submissions and even though we publish work by writers ages 2–200, not all works will be suitable to all readers. A pepper in the table of contents will designate those works that may have spicy ingredients.
Addison County Whereabouts In Issue.4 Bristol Cornwall Ferrisburgh Hancock Lincoln Middlebury New Haven Orwell Panton Ripton Starksboro Vergennes Weybridge
3 A WOODCHUCK TELEMACHIAD
That one night, Ma out, trailer cold, water thissing from the kitchen sink from as yet unfrozen pipes, the hungry cat cursing him: barely schooled boy, numb redneck who would spray ethyl ether into the carburetor of the GMC and with the battery charged all day on the kitchen table, and now by a cinder block weighing the gas pedal, filling the barnyard with exhaust the color of a bruise, all to crank the truck’s heater so to have a warm place to read the Sporting News before the sun fell. He would drive up to the access road above the interstate construction where in the dusk the blasted ledges hurt the ridge like a bad sprain. Sitting in the warm cab of the truck, sipping a Pabst through a chaw of Red Man, contemplating his limited success with the girl from Marshfield he met at Cole’s Pond Casino last summer, he saw himself: fledgling drunk, furtively holding hands with the ghost of a thistle. From up there he could watch for lights in the trailer. He wondered if his mother remembered it was her birthday.
From the ridge, the darkening town looked prim, well laid out. He couldn’t see the tenements by the river, or the grain elevators by the railyard, or the foundries. The select board had pulled the streetlights from the rougher parts of town so that tourists and skiers, high up on the interstate would see only the village lit up, only the white frame houses, the
A WOODCHUCK TELEMACHIAD 4 brick business block, and the spires of the churches. Still, he thought, it looked beautiful from up here. Soon, the access road would be cut off by the new highway, and he would have to hike to the ridge. Sipping his Pabst and spitting into a Dunkin Donuts coffee cup, he swung his legs side- ways on the truck seat to keep from cramping. They’d had a good practice, and he was feeling it. He’d won the takedown scramble for the first time in four seasons, countering three desperate throw attempts by his usual practice partner, Max. One week away from states, the whole team was peaking. Coach had let them out fifteen minutes early. Under his weight, still dehydrated, he would drink another beer, read about the Red Sox and Bruins, and then head down to the trailer to finish his Trig homework and bench and curl before he slept.
It occurred to him that Cousin Tommy still hadn’t brought the heating oil. Tommy had left before chores that morning with the 100-gallon tank lashed to the field truck, planning on siphoning fuel oil from Gramp O’Rourke’s evaporator units while the old man was away in Montpelier, testifying. With all the problems, he found himself wishing for his father, but he was away again, playing six nights a week in the city and picking up some studio work. Lately, his checks hadn’t been as regular as before, and things were getting tight again, but he missed his father’s optimism, his resilience. When the house burned, along with his father’s books and instruments, the piano, his mother’s antiques—everything—his father had borrowed sleeping bags and moved them into the barn for two weeks until he and two uncles bulldozed the cellar hole fat, poured a concrete slab and produced an old turquoise and white three-bedroom trailer that one of the boys had won in a poker game in Island Pond. Since then, the farm had failed, his brother had left for the army, and his father for the jazz clubs in New York City. If it weren’t for school—and Ma— he considered, he’d leave, too.
5 A WOODCHUCK TELEMACHIAD At school, Mr. Burton had him reading some fairly strange things this semester. Physics and Trig were providing a chal- lenge. French IV and Honors European History were a breeze. But Burton’s English class followed him everywhere, even here, in his retreat, where he hid from the bill collectors and other assholes who plagued his mother. Burton had assigned him an independent study unit this quarter: WH Auden and Wallace Stevens. He had always liked English—DH Lawrence and Hemingway with Mrs. Connor—when she was sober— and Chaucer and Shakespeare with Charlie Hollins—when he wasn’t putting moves on every fast girl in class—but Burton was different. The two would meet every Tuesday and Thursday during lunch period . . . at first to shoot the shit, but lately they would discuss poems, and how to write essays, and even now his own poems. First, had fallen for the titles of Steven’s poems: “Le Monocole de Mon Oncle,” “Tea at The Palaz of Hoon,” “A Rabbit as the King of Ghosts.” Then, his words: “somnolence,” “ratapallax,” “convoluvulus,” “concupupiscent,” and all that.
Lately, he thought that he was beginning to understand Burton’s point about language, about imagination. Auden might be another story. Burton had led him painfully through the historical fact that Auden was queer, but one (at the time), could not tell. Though he struggled with “The Shield of Achilles,” he went back again to The Iliad, which now grew in his mind. He now liked its power, its anti-war message, the grim images Hephaestus hammered into the shield. Even thinking it now brought tears, wondering about his brother at Fort Benning.
He saw truck lights approaching the trailer. He put his truck in low and headed down the hill. Idling in the drive was the field truck with the oil tank lashed to it, but Tommy wasn’t driving. Uncle Ray was.
A WOODCHUCK TELEMACHIAD 6 Hey, hot shot.
Hey.
Where’s your mom?
Not here.
I can see that. Where is she?
Probably having a drink in town with Marge Pelkey.
Well, I’ll hook up your oil, and wait for her, if you don’t mind . . .
I don’t think do, Ray.
Lissen boy, you need to get off your high horse. You ain’t going to kick my ass like you did Glen Pelow’s.
No, but you stay away from Ma.
Well, you know I don’t have to hook up no oil. That’s for sure. If the old man knew you and Tommy was stealing it . . . you and your ma owe me something wicked to begin with . . .
Do what you have to do, Uncle Ray . . .
He parked the truck and sprung the hood, lifting the batery from the cradle and carrying it inside as if it were an heirloom. It was too cold to shower, so he sat at the kitchen table in front of the space heater and opened his Trig book. The trailer jumped as Ray dropped the oil tank outside the furnace closet.
Someone must have taught him to connect the oil tank, to purge the filter, to prime the fuel pump, to clear the ignition, to step back when he threw the badly wired switch to ON,
7 A WOODCHUCK TELEMACHIAD but he couldn’t remember. Who taught him how to castrate pigs? To shoot gray squirrels and slit them open for buternut meats? Ray had shown him how to work the brook for trout, and Dad taught him how to read music, but when he tried to remember how he had learned everything that made him, and although he knew where—right here amidst his uncles’ scabby vertical farms—for all he was worth he couldn’t feature who taught him all this. The heater kicked on with a troubling loose thump. The smell of dust rising from the vents brought him back to the dirty trailer.
Later, after lifting weights and eating a can of peaches, he crawled under the blankets into bed. With his sweatshirt hood pulled over his head, he began reading “The Man with the Blue Guitar.” He had borrowed a book of Picasso’s paintings from the Atheneum, and propped up on the chest of drawers beside him, the blind, blue guitarist accompanied Steven’s improvisations on the imagination. He found himself refecting on Burton’s startling advice from this noon’s meeting. With his SAT scores and his football, Burton claimed, he could go to Columbia. God knows he showed need, and his transcript was solid, as Miss Minerva, the Guidance Counselor pointed out. The first thought he had regarding this was that he could bunk with his father in the apartment he shared with Benny the sax player up in Washington Heights, but soon, as always, the plain truth arrived: He could not leave his mother in her current state. With Kendall in the army and Dad God knows where? With Ma owing everyone in the county, and about to lose what was left of the farm?
He awoke to Ma’s voice out at the end of the drive, driving of yet another suitor. He knew by the crispness of her good-bye, and the slurred wheedling of the male voice, followed by the scratch of tires. He heard her walk in alone. She put a record on the turntable, and soon his father’s scratchy trumpet solo filled the trailer. “Salt Peanuts” he thought the song was
A WOODCHUCK TELEMACHIAD 8 called. It was if his father was home late from a job, ducking in his room to say goodnight, still in his tuxedo, reeking of cigarettes.
Later, his mother checked on him, intending to turn out the light. Open on the bed were the notes he was taking. He had copied in large block letters:
THAT GENERATION’S DREAM, AVILED IN THE MUD, IN MONDAY’S DIRTY LIGHT,
THAT’S IT, THE ONLY DREAM THEY KNEW, TIME IN ITS FINAL BLOCK, NOT TIME
TO COME, AWRANGLING OF TWO DREAMS. HERE IS THE BREAD OF TIME TO COME,
HERE IS ITS ACTUAL STONE. THE BREAD WILL BE OUR BREAD, THE STONE WILL BE
OUR BED AND WE SHALL SLEEP BY NIGHT. WE SHALL FORGET BY DAY, EXCEPT
EXCEPT THE MOMENT WHEN WE CHOOSE TO PLAY THE IMAGINED PINE, THE IMAGINED JAY.
Reading this, his mother was vaguely pleased. What in the world has he been up to, she wondered?
Ed Webbley Starksboro
9 A WOODCHUCK TELEMACHIAD Sassy Blurb with Eye, Teeth, and Left Foot
Ross Sheehan Vergennes
Sassy Blurb with Eye, Teeth, 10 and Left Foot House of Reason
What is it about failure that brings me back to a high corner bedroom in your house?
Beauty is in the hall pounding at the door. The hard bones of her wrists and arms,
radius and ulna like crowbars, battering to get in. There are dark circles under her eyes.
She survives on scraps and is easily bought. The floor is littered with strands of myself
I have tried to splice into rope. The narrow window looks down onto a familiar lawn and the road
to the asylum curves away like the edge of a nickel.
Ray Hudson Middlebury
11 House of Reason