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

ISSUE08.09 Images of the Fire in memory of A., 5 years old

All that remained were the empty, ash black eyes without their glimmer gleam, the windows burst open­­— shattered like fireworks into the late dusk of April evening, a house that had become newsprint of Munch’s scream. A BENEFIT F He, the man, had paced in panic, then stood at one point, CELEBRATING his hands: bare, dark tree branches reaching into 35 YEARS OF the black plume of smoke that was his shock of hair. COVER THE LIT JEANNETTE PALSA This was after the neighbors had slowed his attempts We Become Enlightened SATURDAY, O and covered his cries with the uselessness of their hands. NOVEMBER, 7 6:30PM In other blind moments, he gathered the shaking little girls CONVIVIUM 33 like shadowed willows that spilled around his legs, clinging, GALLERY their faces: frightened storms off-course, hovering over R the sloping hills of their shoulders that pressed in around their confusion, the unnamed grief that precipitated.

Finally, as rivers rushed from gaping mouths, wide eyes: CLOSURE the tiny brown silk of breathless boy lifted from the floor, Visions of Reality, Words of Promise passed through the terrible space between outside and in.

For 35 years, The LIT, founded in 1974 as Leonard Trawick, and the late Cyril A. Dostal. Featuring hors d’oeuvres and cock- The Poets' League of Cleveland, has been Lifetime membership is awarded to Mary tails set to the soundtrack of the Vince TINA PUCKETT Northeast Ohio's only independent, non- Chadbourne, Christopher Franke, Nina Robinson Jazz Poets, the evening will mark profit organization dedicated solely to Freedlander Gibans, Diane Kendig, Joan The LIT’s rich history and the organiza- literature and literary artists. Marking its Nicholl, and John Stickney. tion's fertile future. milestone 35th anniversary, The LIT has Featuring provocative, large-scale To purchase tickets, inquire about collaborated with Convivium 33 Gallery photographs of artist Donald Black, the sponsorship, and find out more informa- COVER We Become Enlightened 13 Poem: Soft Spot, Cavana Faithwalker; and artist Donald Black to revisit the very series captures Cleveland’s foreclosure cri- tion about this historic celebratory event, Jeannette Palsa Image: India Moopathis, Herb Ascherman popular Mirror of The Arts Program with sis and provides inspiration for words that contact The LIT at 216.694.0000 or 03 Poem: Images of the Fire, 14 Poem: The Last Goodbye, RB Rhumes; For Closure: Visions of Reality, Words of speak to our city’s ability to survive in the [email protected]. Tina Puckett Image: Aspara Illumination Sita, Keith Berr Promise; An Exhibition of Photography, face of adversity. Words of promise are 04 Poem: Having It, John Donoghue; 15 Poem: Sit on The Wall, David Shevin Words, and Found Materials to honor contributed by Kazim Ali, Eric Anderson, Image: Trolley, Garie Waltzer seminal and visionary figures whose early Grant Bailie, Kelly Bancroft, Mary Biddinger, THELIT 16 Short Fiction: The Good Earth, The Mud CLEVELAND’S LITERARY CENTER influences shaped The LIT’s mission. Giao Buu, Eric Coble, Cavana Faithwalker, 08 Book Archaeology, Rob Jackson Okla Elliot

The LIT proudly honors John Gabel, Shurice Gross, Michelle Rankins, Kristin 10 Image: Nicole, Billy Delfs 17 Chapter 11: Ablaze, Rick Ridgway Bonnie Jacobson, Robert McDonough, Olsen, and Erin O’Brien. 11 Poem: Geometry, Neil Carpathios 28 Nonfiction: Plagued, Charlotte Morgan 08 09 12 Poem: Planets, Cavana Faithwalker; M Image: Untitled, Karen Ollis Toula U S

EM contents 3 Images of the Fire in memory of A., 5 years old

All that remained were the empty, ash black eyes without their glimmer gleam, the windows burst open­­— shattered like fireworks into the late dusk of April evening, a house that had become newsprint of Munch’s scream. A BENEFIT F He, the man, had paced in panic, then stood at one point, CELEBRATING his hands: bare, dark tree branches reaching into 35 YEARS OF the black plume of smoke that was his shock of hair. COVER THE LIT JEANNETTE PALSA This was after the neighbors had slowed his attempts We Become Enlightened SATURDAY, O and covered his cries with the uselessness of their hands. NOVEMBER, 7 6:30PM In other blind moments, he gathered the shaking little girls CONVIVIUM 33 like shadowed willows that spilled around his legs, clinging, GALLERY their faces: frightened storms off-course, hovering over R the sloping hills of their shoulders that pressed in around their confusion, the unnamed grief that precipitated.

Finally, as rivers rushed from gaping mouths, wide eyes: CLOSURE the tiny brown silk of breathless boy lifted from the floor, Visions of Reality, Words of Promise passed through the terrible space between outside and in.

For 35 years, The LIT, founded in 1974 as Leonard Trawick, and the late Cyril A. Dostal. Featuring hors d’oeuvres and cock- The Poets' League of Cleveland, has been Lifetime membership is awarded to Mary tails set to the soundtrack of the Vince TINA PUCKETT Northeast Ohio's only independent, non- Chadbourne, Christopher Franke, Nina Robinson Jazz Poets, the evening will mark profit organization dedicated solely to Freedlander Gibans, Diane Kendig, Joan The LIT’s rich history and the organiza- literature and literary artists. Marking its Nicholl, and John Stickney. tion's fertile future. milestone 35th anniversary, The LIT has Featuring provocative, large-scale To purchase tickets, inquire about collaborated with Convivium 33 Gallery photographs of artist Donald Black, the sponsorship, and find out more informa- COVER We Become Enlightened 13 Poem: Soft Spot, Cavana Faithwalker; and artist Donald Black to revisit the very series captures Cleveland’s foreclosure cri- tion about this historic celebratory event, Jeannette Palsa Image: India Moopathis, Herb Ascherman popular Mirror of The Arts Program with sis and provides inspiration for words that contact The LIT at 216.694.0000 or 03 Poem: Images of the Fire, 14 Poem: The Last Goodbye, RB Rhumes; For Closure: Visions of Reality, Words of speak to our city’s ability to survive in the [email protected]. Tina Puckett Image: Aspara Illumination Sita, Keith Berr Promise; An Exhibition of Photography, face of adversity. Words of promise are 04 Poem: Having It, John Donoghue; 15 Poem: Sit on The Wall, David Shevin Words, and Found Materials to honor contributed by Kazim Ali, Eric Anderson, Image: Trolley, Garie Waltzer seminal and visionary figures whose early Grant Bailie, Kelly Bancroft, Mary Biddinger, THELIT 16 Short Fiction: The Good Earth, The Mud CLEVELAND’S LITERARY CENTER influences shaped The LIT’s mission. Giao Buu, Eric Coble, Cavana Faithwalker, 08 Book Archaeology, Rob Jackson Okla Elliot

The LIT proudly honors John Gabel, Shurice Gross, Michelle Rankins, Kristin 10 Image: Nicole, Billy Delfs 17 Chapter 11: Ablaze, Rick Ridgway Bonnie Jacobson, Robert McDonough, Olsen, and Erin O’Brien. 11 Poem: Geometry, Neil Carpathios 28 Nonfiction: Plagued, Charlotte Morgan 08 09 12 Poem: Planets, Cavana Faithwalker; M Image: Untitled, Karen Ollis Toula U S

EM contents 3 Having It I cried once and I think smaller. Tomorrow 0 5 Having it is bad, I’m not saying it isn’t, if they find more, I’m a goner. I knew someday This summer has been filled with good news: LIT lifetime but the moment of being told you have it— something would tap me on the shoulder. MUSE IS THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL PUBLISHED BY THE LIT 0 9 VOLUME 2, ISSUE 3 AUG 2009 member, Nina Freedlander Gibans, who has been an just before going in and then going in— It’s like I’m on a train, like I’ve passed inspiration, an editor, and friend to nearly every writer and that’s maybe worse: you hear it, and everything through a window—me on one side, artist in this city, was awarded the Martha Joseph Prize for falls to your feet like pots and pans. everything else on the other. JUDITH MANSOUR Editor Community Arts Leadership by the Cleveland Arts Prize; We chew life and spit it out as it comes—even [email protected] 2002 Writers & Their Friends Fiction Honoree, Thrity Umrigar, that moment of being told, JOHN DONOGHUE was awarded the 2009 Cleveland Arts Prize for Literature; “Having It” originally appeared as “Old People” GARIE WALTZER though I wouldn’t have believed it. TIM LACHINA and 2008 Writers & Their Friends Honoree, Paula McLain’s in Precipice published by Four Way Books. Trolley / Lviv, Ukraine Design Director [email protected] upcoming novel, The Great Good Place – a work of historical fiction about the life of Hadley Richardson – sold to Random RAY MCNIECE House’s Ballantine division for just north of half a million Poetry Editor [email protected] dollars. Congratulations Nina, Thrity, and Paula.

ROB JACKSON Other friends of The LIT: Kazim Ali, Dan Chaon, David Giffels, Fiction Editor [email protected] and Robert Flanagan are slated to release books in the coming months. In fact, Kazim and Ted Mathys will be reading ALENKA BANCO from their new novel and poetry collection, respectively Art Editor on October 10th at The LIT. David Giffels and Dan Chaon [email protected] have both agreed to make appearances this fall at The LIT’s BONNIE JACOBSON book club: Local Perspectives, hosted at Mac’s Backs, and DAVID MEGENHARDT I am hoping to schedule Robert Flanagan for a reading in Contributing Editors [email protected] Cleveland some time very soon. There is a lot to look forward to, not the least of which is great reading. KELLY K. BIRD Advertising Account Manager [email protected] One of the perks of this job is that I often have the inside scoop on when a new book is in the works, when it will be released, what the author’s process has been, and what the SUBMISSIONS critics are saying. In addition to providing me with the literary (Content evident) may be sent electronically to [email protected]. We prefer electronic submis- grist I live for, it gives MUSE the opportunity to whet your sions. MUSE publishes all genres of creative writing — word-loving appetites. So at the suggestion of Mary Doria including but not limited to poetry, fiction, essay, Russell – whose action packed 2010 release Eight to Five, memoir, humor, lyrics, and drama. Preference is given Ohio-based authors. Against excerpted in MUSE 10.08 – we are introducing a new column: Chapter 11. This column will feature chapters and excerpts from novels or other tomes slated for release in the coming year.

Founded in 1987 as Ohio Writer, MUSE is the quarterly We’re thrilled to hear of and report successes. If you have a journal published by The Lit, a nonprofit literary arts organization. No part of this journal may be reproduced success story under way, do let us know…enquiring minds, and BILLY DELFTS without written consent of the publisher. all that... Hope you enjoy. LISA, 2008 8.5X8.5" FROM THE SERIES: Judith STREET PORTRAITS THELIT CLEVELAND’S LITERARY CENTER COMMISSIONED BY CLEVELAND MAGAZINE PS: Oh, by the way, should you want an opportunity to work A R T CR A F T BUIL DING directly with Paula McLain, she will be facilitating The LIT’s 2570 SUPERIOR AVENUE SUI T E 203 Public Fiction Workshop this fall. CLEVELAND, OHIO 44114 08 08 216 694.0000 WWW.THE-LIT.ORG 09 09 BACKGROUND M BILLY DELPS M U PLAYGROUND, NYC, 2003 U S S

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4 5 Having It I cried once and I think smaller. Tomorrow 0 5 Having it is bad, I’m not saying it isn’t, if they find more, I’m a goner. I knew someday This summer has been filled with good news: LIT lifetime but the moment of being told you have it— something would tap me on the shoulder. MUSE IS THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL PUBLISHED BY THE LIT 0 9 VOLUME 2, ISSUE 3 AUG 2009 member, Nina Freedlander Gibans, who has been an just before going in and then going in— It’s like I’m on a train, like I’ve passed inspiration, an editor, and friend to nearly every writer and that’s maybe worse: you hear it, and everything through a window—me on one side, artist in this city, was awarded the Martha Joseph Prize for falls to your feet like pots and pans. everything else on the other. JUDITH MANSOUR Editor Community Arts Leadership by the Cleveland Arts Prize; We chew life and spit it out as it comes—even [email protected] 2002 Writers & Their Friends Fiction Honoree, Thrity Umrigar, that moment of being told, JOHN DONOGHUE was awarded the 2009 Cleveland Arts Prize for Literature; “Having It” originally appeared as “Old People” GARIE WALTZER though I wouldn’t have believed it. TIM LACHINA and 2008 Writers & Their Friends Honoree, Paula McLain’s in Precipice published by Four Way Books. Trolley / Lviv, Ukraine Design Director [email protected] upcoming novel, The Great Good Place – a work of historical fiction about the life of Hadley Richardson – sold to Random RAY MCNIECE House’s Ballantine division for just north of half a million Poetry Editor [email protected] dollars. Congratulations Nina, Thrity, and Paula.

ROB JACKSON Other friends of The LIT: Kazim Ali, Dan Chaon, David Giffels, Fiction Editor [email protected] and Robert Flanagan are slated to release books in the coming months. In fact, Kazim and Ted Mathys will be reading ALENKA BANCO from their new novel and poetry collection, respectively Art Editor on October 10th at The LIT. David Giffels and Dan Chaon [email protected] have both agreed to make appearances this fall at The LIT’s BONNIE JACOBSON book club: Local Perspectives, hosted at Mac’s Backs, and DAVID MEGENHARDT I am hoping to schedule Robert Flanagan for a reading in Contributing Editors [email protected] Cleveland some time very soon. There is a lot to look forward to, not the least of which is great reading. KELLY K. BIRD Advertising Account Manager [email protected] One of the perks of this job is that I often have the inside scoop on when a new book is in the works, when it will be released, what the author’s process has been, and what the SUBMISSIONS critics are saying. In addition to providing me with the literary (Content evident) may be sent electronically to [email protected]. We prefer electronic submis- grist I live for, it gives MUSE the opportunity to whet your sions. MUSE publishes all genres of creative writing — word-loving appetites. So at the suggestion of Mary Doria including but not limited to poetry, fiction, essay, Russell – whose action packed 2010 release Eight to Five, memoir, humor, lyrics, and drama. Preference is given Ohio-based authors. Against excerpted in MUSE 10.08 – we are introducing a new column: Chapter 11. This column will feature chapters and excerpts from novels or other tomes slated for release in the coming year.

Founded in 1987 as Ohio Writer, MUSE is the quarterly We’re thrilled to hear of and report successes. If you have a journal published by The Lit, a nonprofit literary arts organization. No part of this journal may be reproduced success story under way, do let us know…enquiring minds, and BILLY DELFTS without written consent of the publisher. all that... Hope you enjoy. LISA, 2008 8.5X8.5" FROM THE SERIES: Judith STREET PORTRAITS THELIT CLEVELAND’S LITERARY CENTER COMMISSIONED BY CLEVELAND MAGAZINE PS: Oh, by the way, should you want an opportunity to work A R T CR A F T BUIL DING directly with Paula McLain, she will be facilitating The LIT’s 2570 SUPERIOR AVENUE SUI T E 203 Public Fiction Workshop this fall. CLEVELAND, OHIO 44114 08 08 216 694.0000 WWW.THE-LIT.ORG 09 09 BACKGROUND M BILLY DELPS M U PLAYGROUND, NYC, 2003 U S S

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4 5 TINA PUCKETT is a Kent poet. An upcoming OKLA ELLIOT is an Assistant Professor in Creative MARINA FAHSBENDER has written for chapbook, Crushed Sunlight, is expected in Fall Writing and Literature at Ohio Wesleyan University. Interview, Surface, and Big Magazine. She now lives 2009. “Images of the Fire” is a response to newspaper He is the author of The Mutable Wheel and Lucid with her two daughters in Cleveland Heights and articles about a boy who passed away in a fire. Bodies & Other Poems. Co-editor, with Kyle Minor, of teaches literature, creative writing, and media stud- The Other Chekhov. ies at Andrews Osborne Academy in Willoughby. at MAIN LIBRARY ROGER HUMES is a poet and computer graphic artist from Claremont, California. He has published CHARLOTTE MORGAN is a writer, journalist, and JOHN DONOGHUE has lived in Cleveland for two books of poetry, There sings no bird and after the socio-musicologist from Cleveland. She often writes more than thirty five years. He teaches electrical visitation, and is working on a third, Pages To Angela. about houses and cites F. Scott Fitzgerald, Billy engineering and writes poetry. Wish him luck. MUSIC conWilder, and Joseph L. Mankiewicz as her influences. Friends of Cleveland Public Library NEIL CARPATHIOS is the author of the poetry RICK RIDGWAY is the author of Three Squirt Dog collections, Playground of Flesh and At the Axis of BILLY DELFS is a photographer based in Cleveland published by St. Martin's Press, and the forthcoming presents Imponderables. “Geometry” is included in his newest who works for regional and national magazines, ad- Ablaze is due out in 2010 by Red Giant Press. book of poems, Beyond the Bones, which is being vertising agencies, and with design firms. His main 3rd Annual released August of 2009 from FutureCycle Press. focus is the portraiture work he is assigned but con- KEITH BERR is the owner of Keith Berr Productions www.cpl.org and tinues to explore the medium through personal proj- and is a photographer whose work spans every category ART ARCHITECTURE TOUR DAVID SHEVIN teaches and administers the Honors ects and travel. of photography from the commercial to the artistc. The Rambling Sailors Via Lolly the Trolley Program at Central State University in Wilberforce, He has a Midwest location in Cleveland, Ohio and a Saturday, September 19 at 2 p.m. Saturday, August 22 at 9:30 a.m. OH. His books of poetry include Three Miles from KAREN OLLIS TOULA has been a professional pho- Southwest location in Santa Fe, New Mexico. in the Louis Stokes Wing Low Level Luckey and Needles and Needs. tographer for 30 years. Karen has exhibited widely in Depart from Nautica Complex galleries and has pieces included in the permanent JEANNETTE PALSA is a photographic artist who CAVANA FAITHWALKER works at The Cleveland collections of several museums, notably the Cleve- enjoys creating unusual images. She works in both Museum of Art. He’s a poet, visual artist, and per- land Museum of Art, the Cooper Hewitt National Mu- digital media and the antique process of wet-plate forming artist. He sings, plays didjerido, and hand seum of Design, and the Smithsonian Institute. drums. He follows Christ and has never met a collodion (ambrotypes and tintypes). Jeannette has The Kent Shindig All-Stars Saturday, August 8 at 2 p.m. stranger. His life philosophy is breathe in, breathe out. exhibited work in numerous galleries throughout the GARIE WALTZER is a Cleveland Heights photogra- United States. in the Eastman Reading Garden Featuring the J Black Trio pher. Her carbon pigmented images of the cultural Friday, August 28 at 12:15-1:15 p.m. HERBERT ASCHERMAN, JR. is a fourth genera- landscape currently appear in Contact Sheet, Light- tion Clevelander. His career as a photographer began Work’s 2008 Annual, and were recently added to the GRANT BAILIE is a self-taught author, poet, and Free and open to all ages. in the Eastman Reading Garden in Cleveland in 1975. Herb founded the Cleveland collections of the Cleveland Museum of Art, the visual artist, and credits "reading his ass off" as the best For more information on Music at Main Library Pre-order boxed lunches. form of instruction. In his off-time, he works full-time Photographic Workshop, has exhibited in 12 May Houston Museum of Fine Arts and the Robert B. call 216.623.2848 or visit in security at Tower City Center. He regularly contrib- Shows, the NEO show and dozens of museums and Menschel Media Center in Syracuse, NY. http://www.cpl.org/ nearts For more information call (216) 623-2821 tribgalleries throughout the country. In addition, he has utes to MUSE and is working on a new novel. 325 Superior Ave. • Cleveland, Ohio 44114 visit www.friendscpl.org had one-man exhibitions in Paris,utors Tokyo, and India. WBg_09_Muse_Jan 1/8/09 8:44 PM Page 1 Life Creates Changes Appletree Books 12419 Cedar Rd. Cleveland, Ohio 216.791.2665 Can Help You. 08 William Busta Gallery 2731 Prospect Avenue 08 09 WBg Cleveland Ohio Cleveland OH 44115 Free Appraisals Every Friday 11am-4pm 09 M williambustagallery.com or by appointment. M U 216.298.9071 10717 Detroit Avenue 216 458-7695 U S S Cleveland, Ohio 44102 www.graysauctioneers.com

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6 7 The WilliaM N. skirBall WriTers CeNTer sTaGe proGraM Book Archaeology IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE CUYAHOGA COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY FOUNDATION AND CLEVELAND MAGAZINE.

ROB JACKSON THE WILLIAM N. SKIRBALL Where we go in search of forgotten or WRITERS CENTER underappreciated literary works STAGE PROGRAM IS EXCITED TO RICK RIDGWAY than thirty years later. I remember pick- of incest, betrayal and searching for a lost Author of Three Squirt Dog ing up the little gray hardback in the late child occupies a space between universal BRING YOU: and Ablaze 1980s at a used bookstore in Washing- myth and gothic tale. A child is left to die After You've Gone by Jeffrey Lent has the ton, D.C. just a couple years before mov- in the woods, the issue of brother and sis- October 6, 2009 Garry Trudeau, creator of the Pulitzer Prize- intensity and ardor of a great 19th Cen- ing to New York to find work as a writer. I ter. A tinker recovers the child. Brother winning comic strip Doonesbury, which appears in nearly tury novel. Nothing postmodern about remember carrying it around a lot, open- and sister go separately in search of the 1,400 newspapers in the U.S. and abroad. Collections Lent. Direct emotion, elegance, rich ing to random pages just to read and re- child and are chased by three strangers. of Trudeau’s work have sold over seven million copies worldwide. In addition to his work as a cartoonist, Trudeau descriptions of Nova Scotia, upstate New read internal monologue that broke every McCarthy casts a malevolent world the has also contributed articles to Harper’s, Rolling Stone, York and Amsterdam. It isn’t as great as syntactic rule. An example: “Eight or reader may never shake once they have The New Yorker and The Washington Post. Lent's Lost Nation –maybe the best novel ten years later the chance discovery of a visited. Overshadowed by his later mas- of the new millennium, rough-hewn, painting—a Chirico, I believe—, black terpieces written in a western idiom, transcendent, piercing, – but it’s awfully and white checkerboard surrounded by Outer Dark is rooted in the dark tangle of November 3, 2009 Political satirist and bestselling author ChrisTopher arcades and buildings, utterly blank Appalachia and deserves to be reconsid- good, and in a new style for Lent, with BuCkley, Buckley is the author of twelve books, long Jamesian sentences that reach and facades, utterly empty and gleaming ered and on your shelf. including the novels The White House Mess, Little Green space against which rises, the sole Men and Thank You for Smoking. Buckley’s most recent turn like vines. Literature can’t wither work, Losing Mum and Pup: A Memoir, chronicles his with writers like Lent working. vertical there, the striding silhouette of efforts to cope with the passing of his mother, Patricia GRANT BAILIE a man—will fill me with a fright I do not Buckley, and father, author William F. Buckley. Author of Cloud 8 and Mortarville understand at the time and that becomes MARINA VLADOVA clearer today in this attempt to recon- Appassionata by Fannie Hurst. Why Contributor to Interview, Surface, struct, to put into words something that does the world no longer remember Fan- WRITERS CENTER STAGE April 13, 2010 and Big Magazine there is no name for but which lies within nie Hurst? She was loved and remem- SEASON SIX Poet Mary oli ver (born in Maple Heights, Ohio, in 1935) is the author of more than a dozen books of Chamberet: Reflections from an bered once, writing novels that would human grasp all the same.” I was moved 2009- 2010 SERIES poetry and prose, including American Primitive (winner Ordinary Childhood by Claude not only by the subject matter but also by be dismissed because of their popular- of a Pulitzer Prize), New and Selected Poems (a National Morhange-Bégué the transfiguration of images in each ity, only to lose even that—to become Book Award winner) and House of Light (winner of the Christopher Award and the L. L. Winship/PEN New (Translated from French by Austryn rereading and this writer’s confidence both dismissed and forgotten—to be- England Award). Her most recent poetry collection, Wainhouse for The Marlboro Press 1987) that her readers will not only forgive her come unread. But I remember. I look for Evidence, was released in April of 2009. grapples with poignant images from imperfect memory, but will also be her books in every garage sale, antique Ohio Theatre • childhood, each intimately packed with willing to participate in its reconstruction. shop, secondhand bookstore. I own sev- BEST SEATS GO QUICKLY. RESERVE TODAY. May 11, 2010 her mother’s Auschwitz death camp ex- eral first editions and have given away so JhuMpa l ahiri, author of the Pulitzer Prize- For subscriptions to the series or perience and the “gravity of her plight.” many copies of Appassionata that I can- winning collection of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies, for single ticket information and the critically acclaimed novel, The Namesake, an Claude Morhange-Bégué’s attempts to not even find one now to quote from. But DAVID MEGENHARDT please visit writerscenterstage.org. international bestseller. Lahiri’s second collection of piece together her own and her moth- trust me: it is brilliant and poetic and ab- short stories, Unaccustomed Earth, debuted at #1 on Contributing Editor MUSE er’s past. She boldly braids her narrative stract and odd – everything I value in the New York Times bestseller list and earned the author the prestigious 2009 Commonwealth Writers Prize for in present tense with occasional dips into Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy a novel. So find some garage sale or an- Best Book.

08 the past and recounts events through rich Written in the prose of a primordial for- tiques shop or secondhand bookstore that 08 09 multiple perspectives, characterized by est with characters drifting through the I have missed and buy it. Read it. Remem- 09 M an alarmingly detached voice of an iso- shadows and speaking in a dialect both ber what I remember. M U lated eight-year-old speaking now more rudimentary and oddly poetic, this tale U S S

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8 9 Geometry

Everywhere things are beginning for people: kisses, ideas, the first buds of love

sprouting, the tiny almost unnoticeable cracks in love’s granite. One person’s starting line

is another person’s finish. Today, ten thousand people will vanish and their small replacements

will bring someone joy. So when I sit on my stoop and look at the sun going down,

I know it is rising for someone who looks at it thinking it is setting

for someone somewhere else. Everywhere parts of people are dying inside them,

parts are being born like happy tumors. Clouds stitch themselves together

with invisible string stretching around the globe like rubber bands

around a basketball as someone pictures me on this stoop looking up, though

she, like me, just sees what floats above her. We will never meet, she and I, dots

on a graph that will never touch, but each of us draws a line toward the other,

a perfect line that links us forever, a line that proves no dot is ever alone,

ever separate without another dot.

NEIL CARPATHIOS

08 08 09 09

M M U U S BILLY DELFS S Nicole

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10 11 Geometry

Everywhere things are beginning for people: kisses, ideas, the first buds of love

sprouting, the tiny almost unnoticeable cracks in love’s granite. One person’s starting line

is another person’s finish. Today, ten thousand people will vanish and their small replacements

will bring someone joy. So when I sit on my stoop and look at the sun going down,

I know it is rising for someone who looks at it thinking it is setting

for someone somewhere else. Everywhere parts of people are dying inside them,

parts are being born like happy tumors. Clouds stitch themselves together

with invisible string stretching around the globe like rubber bands

around a basketball as someone pictures me on this stoop looking up, though

she, like me, just sees what floats above her. We will never meet, she and I, dots

on a graph that will never touch, but each of us draws a line toward the other,

a perfect line that links us forever, a line that proves no dot is ever alone,

ever separate without another dot.

NEIL CARPATHIOS

08 08 09 09

M M U U S BILLY DELFS S Nicole

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10 11 Soft Spot

Planets If we could for us we might maybe build Multitudes glide in for a start An indestructible And out of my world thinking it right soft spot here they need not bear crawl inside your heart to which we were the weight of stolen time. on our hands and knees key Give work twice its due HERBERT ASCHERMAN, JR. and stand up India Moopathis and move CAVANA FAITHWALKER In their worlds they must to make room Be on tractor beam Orbits. Just like me. Planets around suns. Thinking they are suns to other planets. not gleaning they’re in galaxies among many. How does one realize that? Locked in orbit. meteors converging, gloating. A Catastrophic End in tow. Freeing only Frantic eyes To watch and heart to hope they miss the mark. Now what can be done If your sun goes out? Centripetal pledge Centrifugal wedge You spin round about The wonder of growth Warmth of its closeness Fruit of its harvest The empty bone cold Of its distant light. If out goes your sun KAREN OLLIS TOULA It invites you in Untitled You move in closer You see much, much less. There was a blinding flash. You were too small 08 to take it in. Come 08 09 09 die with me it bid. M M U U S CAVANA FAITHWALKER S

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12 13 Soft Spot

Planets If we could for us we might maybe build Multitudes glide in for a start An indestructible And out of my world thinking it right soft spot here they need not bear crawl inside your heart to which we were the weight of stolen time. on our hands and knees key Give work twice its due HERBERT ASCHERMAN, JR. and stand up India Moopathis and move CAVANA FAITHWALKER In their worlds they must to make room Be on tractor beam Orbits. Just like me. Planets around suns. Thinking they are suns to other planets. not gleaning they’re in galaxies among many. How does one realize that? Locked in orbit. meteors converging, gloating. A Catastrophic End in tow. Freeing only Frantic eyes To watch and heart to hope they miss the mark. Now what can be done If your sun goes out? Centripetal pledge Centrifugal wedge You spin round about The wonder of growth Warmth of its closeness Fruit of its harvest The empty bone cold Of its distant light. If out goes your sun KAREN OLLIS TOULA It invites you in Untitled You move in closer You see much, much less. There was a blinding flash. You were too small 08 to take it in. Come 08 09 09 die with me it bid. M M U U S CAVANA FAITHWALKER S

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12 13 Sita on the Wall

She raises her left hand in one of those intergalactic “We come in peace” salutes, thumb extended to the full L arms wide, turned from her logical center of gravity,

The Last Goodbye lovely stone carving. This is the same hand that can hold a demon at bay, my feet bare, all fades to black summon a monkey warrior, the marble cool, washed cover a grocery bill, by the steps of countless her voice flickers pilgrims through a flame reaching tame a golden hind or the ages through the darkness send a colony of chipmunks

into hiding. move past the pit she says “remember” that flowed How I would like with the dreams i walk from the temple, to pass the corridor beside her, of blood and sacrifice, turn, look back, to look in some secret and fragile pages the liquid one last time for the whole story, to hold for a moment burns upon my tongue in cool how many times the notice of the goddess (pure passion have i walked here stone, purest stone). She smiles through the ages? a human moment enter the line as rare and distinct where i stand my turn i do not know to find her as the barking deer’s call. Sita silent again i may never come this way I can not think of you in her cage again KEITH BERR Aspara Illumination Sita without imagining deer. waiting for me Sita, they will stalk you alone

behind her silver mask RB RHUMES and in hunting groups. lies wisdom No, she insists, i scarcely comprehend Wait. I have to find a good grove

my senses tumble to drowse in. I need to find into aphasia, the best place for a strong attempt to comprehend 08 and green heart. 08 09 her message 09 M M U DAVID SHEVIN U S S

E M M E

14 15 Sita on the Wall

She raises her left hand in one of those intergalactic “We come in peace” salutes, thumb extended to the full L arms wide, turned from her logical center of gravity,

The Last Goodbye lovely stone carving. This is the same hand that can hold a demon at bay, my feet bare, all fades to black summon a monkey warrior, the marble cool, washed cover a grocery bill, by the steps of countless her voice flickers pilgrims through a flame reaching tame a golden hind or the ages through the darkness send a colony of chipmunks

into hiding. move past the pit she says “remember” that flowed How I would like with the dreams i walk from the temple, to pass the corridor beside her, of blood and sacrifice, turn, look back, to look in some secret and fragile pages the liquid one last time for the whole story, to hold for a moment burns upon my tongue in cool how many times the notice of the goddess (pure passion have i walked here stone, purest stone). She smiles through the ages? a human moment enter the line as rare and distinct where i stand my turn i do not know to find her as the barking deer’s call. Sita silent again i may never come this way I can not think of you in her cage again KEITH BERR Aspara Illumination Sita without imagining deer. waiting for me Sita, they will stalk you alone

behind her silver mask RB RHUMES and in hunting groups. lies wisdom No, she insists, i scarcely comprehend Wait. I have to find a good grove

my senses tumble to drowse in. I need to find into aphasia, the best place for a strong attempt to comprehend 08 and green heart. 08 09 her message 09 M M U DAVID SHEVIN U S S

E M M E

14 15 full-time after I showed them what kind of worker I was. I sank into uum,” he said. “I don’t know. Chuck showed it to me.” Jess’s couch and steeled myself. As long as I’d known Jess, he was the The rest of the night went more or less like that. I told him about emotional type—apt to tell someone he loved them or scream at a Anne, and how she had tits better than the airbrushed ones in Play- The Good Earth, the Mud stranger or get into a fight when some man flirted with Alice or just sit boy. She had dropped out of college a couple of times, even though her in a bar and drink all night, staring at the dark tabletop like it held the parents were paying for it, which is why we met at Second Place, a bar OKLA ELLIOTT only truth there was in this shit world. and grill we both worked at until I quit—me in the kitchen, her in the I didn’t think Alice was serious about this break-up. They bar where those tits brought her in three, four hundred dollars a night I got out to Jess’s place late on a Friday evening. It was early November name. “Anne with an e,” she always said. I get a kick out people who must’ve broken up a dozen times or more in the three years they were in tips from guys she mostly didn’t want anything to do with. But her and the sky was uncluttered by clouds. It was so sweet and calm I are so serious about their names. Me, I don’t give a Fig Newton fuck married, your classic strobe-light relationship. People always thought parents had gotten tired of paying for school, so now she had to do it could’ve sworn the breeze was caused by the fanning maple leaves in- about my name. Call me asshole or Jesus, I’m still me. she’d go for a guy with a bit more brains, a bit more of a future than herself. “That’s so Anne,” I told him. “She wouldn’t go to school stead of the other way around—and I realized how long it had been As I drove down the long gravel driveway to his trailer, Jess, but they never could get each other out of their blood. Back when when her parents told her to, but soon as she had to do it on her own, since I’d gotten out of the city. Alice had left him again. He told me it I wondered what state he’d be in. they were still just dating, it was the same. I’m not proud of it, but dur- she went and was getting all A’s in her classes.” I thought I might call might be for good this time. I asked him what had happened, but he I didn’t see him at first. I walked up to the screen door, and as I ing one of their early break-ups, Alice and I were drunk and ended up Anne, if Jess and I didn’t stay up all night drinking. wouldn’t say, not on the phone. “Bring your shotgun,” he said, “we’ll was about to open it, I noticed his stooped form shadowed in the in the sack. I wish I hadn’t done it, but she was a looker and was a lot of As I was telling him about her, I realized talking about dating get drunk and take the dogs out and see what we can shoot.” I told Jess gauzy metal screen. Jess is a tall man, long-shanked and skinny, wiry fun to joke around with. She could have a good laugh with you. She this great girl probably was not the best way to cheer Jess up. For some I had business to take care of—I was working at the time as a day with muscle. Seeing him standing there like that, like he’d been wait- had a real sense of humor, you could say. After we got done, she said reason I always do that. But instead of shutting up like I should have, I laborer down on I-40 where they were putting in two extra lanes “to ing since day-one of the goddamned universe, made me wish I’d they ought to put different warnings on beer. kept going. I told him I had two more classes and I’d have my welding accommodate the economic and cultural growth of Charlotte, the come running the minute he called. He opened the door like a movie “Everyone knows it’s bad for you,” she said, “but what they ought certification. Then I could make some real money. Twenty-five, thirty Queen City”—but that I could come character, like Igor or the Hunch- to warn you about it is that it’ll make you say the damnedest things to bucks an hour, and all the work a man could ask for. And after a cou- late the next week, or maybe the back of motherfucking Notre Dame. people and have sex with people you shouldn’t.” ple of years, I planned to open my own welding company. I told Jess one following. “Welcome to my humble I scooted myself up against her and started rubbing her back re- maybe we could go in together and be partners. He could move down It was three weeks later I got an- abode,” he said, emphasizing the ally soft, the way I’ve heard women like a man to do. to Charlotte. “Just think, man, all the pussy you can handle and other call from him, and the second I word abode. Jess had dropped out “Yeah, but the best sex is sex you shouldn’t be having,” I said. She money coming in by the fistful. We’ll be the kings of the Queen City.” recognized his voice, a shot of guilt of high school the minute he was laughed and we were right back at it. That was something a guy on the construction crew said a lot, about ran through me. legally allowed, which is sixteen in When Jess found out, he told me it was okay, that we’d been the kings and all, and I liked the way it sounded when he said it, but it “How you been?” I asked. North Carolina, but he sometimes friends too long to let it get in the way, but I could tell he wanted to gut sounded stupid when I heard myself saying it. “You know . . . about as well as took to a fancy word and relished it me like a fish. I said I was sorry about a thousand times, that it was an “That’s fine and good for you,” Jess said. “But I’d just hold you can be expected.” the way a dog will a rawhide bone. accident, and so forth—all the stupid shit you say in that situation— back. I fuck up just about everything.” “Man, I’m glad you called,” I He waved me into the messy trailer until finally he told me to shut up and never talk about it again. “Don’t talk like that,” I said. “You shouldn’t talk like that.” lied. “Is the invite to come out there with a bow and a big wave of his “Check this out,” Jess was saying now. “I just learned how to do “You want me to lie, then? That what you want?” and break some shit still open?” hand and a toothy grin. Alice had this from Chuck down at Sally’s.” He opened a bottle of Pabst and “I want you to talk like the Jess I know, the ornery fucker too stupid “If you’re interested.” been gone only a month, but the tossed the cap on the counter but didn’t watch as it bounced to the to know when he’s beat.” Jess and I used to talk to each other that way, in- “Hell yes I’m interested. trailer already smelled like he’d kitchen floor. There were about fifty caps scattered all over. “You sulting ourselves or each other to rile us up. Sometimes insults are the These guys on the construction been living alone for a year or know how you can shotgun a can of beer but can’t a bottle, right?” only way to make a person feel good about themselves again. job I was telling you about have been more, and beer bottles rested He was speaking fast and his hands were shaking. I nodded. “Well, “I guess I wised up some,” he said. working my skinny ass to the bone.” empty on every flat surface. Chuck showed me how you can shotgun a bottle.” He grabbed a straw, “Oh, come on,” I said. “You can get any pretty girl you want, so We made plans and I canceled a “Mind if I open a window?” one of the bendy ones you give kids, and put it into the bottle. He long as you know the trick.” date I had with a pretty girl named “Help yourself. My abode is waved his hand at the straw sticking out of the bottleneck, like he was Jess looked at me, then took a big drink of his beer. Anne, which was too bad but proba- yours,” he said. “Here, catch.” demonstrating something important, like he was about to perform “You just have to ignore pretty girls,” I said. “They’re so used to bly would end up working in my I sat near the window, opening magic. Then he bent the straw down, onto the side of the bottle, and guys ogling them, what you have to do is not pay them any attention. favor in the long run. She was a bar- my beer, and thinking how this showed me, slowly, how to hold it down. They go bat-shit crazy. They can’t handle it. And soon enough, they’re 08 08 09 tender and what they call a nontradi- was going to be a rough a weekend. “Okay, now watch.” Tilting back, he guzzled the whole thing begging.” I got up to get another beer. “That’s all, man. You just have 09 M tional student at UNC-Charlotte, The week had been a tiring one, faster than seemed possible. to know the trick.” M U because she was in her mid-twenties, working outside, being new guy on U S “Jesus,” I said. On my way back, I saw a pistol on the kitchen table, mostly hidden S just a few years younger than me. the crew, and not even permanent,

E M M “Yeah, no shit, right? Something about air pressure or a vac- by clutter of the KFC and Burger King variety. I picked it up and looked E And she was serious as hell about her though I hoped they’d take me on 16 17 full-time after I showed them what kind of worker I was. I sank into uum,” he said. “I don’t know. Chuck showed it to me.” Jess’s couch and steeled myself. As long as I’d known Jess, he was the The rest of the night went more or less like that. I told him about emotional type—apt to tell someone he loved them or scream at a Anne, and how she had tits better than the airbrushed ones in Play- The Good Earth, the Mud stranger or get into a fight when some man flirted with Alice or just sit boy. She had dropped out of college a couple of times, even though her in a bar and drink all night, staring at the dark tabletop like it held the parents were paying for it, which is why we met at Second Place, a bar OKLA ELLIOTT only truth there was in this shit world. and grill we both worked at until I quit—me in the kitchen, her in the I didn’t think Alice was serious about this break-up. They bar where those tits brought her in three, four hundred dollars a night I got out to Jess’s place late on a Friday evening. It was early November name. “Anne with an e,” she always said. I get a kick out people who must’ve broken up a dozen times or more in the three years they were in tips from guys she mostly didn’t want anything to do with. But her and the sky was uncluttered by clouds. It was so sweet and calm I are so serious about their names. Me, I don’t give a Fig Newton fuck married, your classic strobe-light relationship. People always thought parents had gotten tired of paying for school, so now she had to do it could’ve sworn the breeze was caused by the fanning maple leaves in- about my name. Call me asshole or Jesus, I’m still me. she’d go for a guy with a bit more brains, a bit more of a future than herself. “That’s so Anne,” I told him. “She wouldn’t go to school stead of the other way around—and I realized how long it had been As I drove down the long gravel driveway to his trailer, Jess, but they never could get each other out of their blood. Back when when her parents told her to, but soon as she had to do it on her own, since I’d gotten out of the city. Alice had left him again. He told me it I wondered what state he’d be in. they were still just dating, it was the same. I’m not proud of it, but dur- she went and was getting all A’s in her classes.” I thought I might call might be for good this time. I asked him what had happened, but he I didn’t see him at first. I walked up to the screen door, and as I ing one of their early break-ups, Alice and I were drunk and ended up Anne, if Jess and I didn’t stay up all night drinking. wouldn’t say, not on the phone. “Bring your shotgun,” he said, “we’ll was about to open it, I noticed his stooped form shadowed in the in the sack. I wish I hadn’t done it, but she was a looker and was a lot of As I was telling him about her, I realized talking about dating get drunk and take the dogs out and see what we can shoot.” I told Jess gauzy metal screen. Jess is a tall man, long-shanked and skinny, wiry fun to joke around with. She could have a good laugh with you. She this great girl probably was not the best way to cheer Jess up. For some I had business to take care of—I was working at the time as a day with muscle. Seeing him standing there like that, like he’d been wait- had a real sense of humor, you could say. After we got done, she said reason I always do that. But instead of shutting up like I should have, I laborer down on I-40 where they were putting in two extra lanes “to ing since day-one of the goddamned universe, made me wish I’d they ought to put different warnings on beer. kept going. I told him I had two more classes and I’d have my welding accommodate the economic and cultural growth of Charlotte, the come running the minute he called. He opened the door like a movie “Everyone knows it’s bad for you,” she said, “but what they ought certification. Then I could make some real money. Twenty-five, thirty Queen City”—but that I could come character, like Igor or the Hunch- to warn you about it is that it’ll make you say the damnedest things to bucks an hour, and all the work a man could ask for. And after a cou- late the next week, or maybe the back of motherfucking Notre Dame. people and have sex with people you shouldn’t.” ple of years, I planned to open my own welding company. I told Jess one following. “Welcome to my humble I scooted myself up against her and started rubbing her back re- maybe we could go in together and be partners. He could move down It was three weeks later I got an- abode,” he said, emphasizing the ally soft, the way I’ve heard women like a man to do. to Charlotte. “Just think, man, all the pussy you can handle and other call from him, and the second I word abode. Jess had dropped out “Yeah, but the best sex is sex you shouldn’t be having,” I said. She money coming in by the fistful. We’ll be the kings of the Queen City.” recognized his voice, a shot of guilt of high school the minute he was laughed and we were right back at it. That was something a guy on the construction crew said a lot, about ran through me. legally allowed, which is sixteen in When Jess found out, he told me it was okay, that we’d been the kings and all, and I liked the way it sounded when he said it, but it “How you been?” I asked. North Carolina, but he sometimes friends too long to let it get in the way, but I could tell he wanted to gut sounded stupid when I heard myself saying it. “You know . . . about as well as took to a fancy word and relished it me like a fish. I said I was sorry about a thousand times, that it was an “That’s fine and good for you,” Jess said. “But I’d just hold you can be expected.” the way a dog will a rawhide bone. accident, and so forth—all the stupid shit you say in that situation— back. I fuck up just about everything.” “Man, I’m glad you called,” I He waved me into the messy trailer until finally he told me to shut up and never talk about it again. “Don’t talk like that,” I said. “You shouldn’t talk like that.” lied. “Is the invite to come out there with a bow and a big wave of his “Check this out,” Jess was saying now. “I just learned how to do “You want me to lie, then? That what you want?” and break some shit still open?” hand and a toothy grin. Alice had this from Chuck down at Sally’s.” He opened a bottle of Pabst and “I want you to talk like the Jess I know, the ornery fucker too stupid “If you’re interested.” been gone only a month, but the tossed the cap on the counter but didn’t watch as it bounced to the to know when he’s beat.” Jess and I used to talk to each other that way, in- “Hell yes I’m interested. trailer already smelled like he’d kitchen floor. There were about fifty caps scattered all over. “You sulting ourselves or each other to rile us up. Sometimes insults are the These guys on the construction been living alone for a year or know how you can shotgun a can of beer but can’t a bottle, right?” only way to make a person feel good about themselves again. job I was telling you about have been more, and beer bottles rested He was speaking fast and his hands were shaking. I nodded. “Well, “I guess I wised up some,” he said. working my skinny ass to the bone.” empty on every flat surface. Chuck showed me how you can shotgun a bottle.” He grabbed a straw, “Oh, come on,” I said. “You can get any pretty girl you want, so We made plans and I canceled a “Mind if I open a window?” one of the bendy ones you give kids, and put it into the bottle. He long as you know the trick.” date I had with a pretty girl named “Help yourself. My abode is waved his hand at the straw sticking out of the bottleneck, like he was Jess looked at me, then took a big drink of his beer. Anne, which was too bad but proba- yours,” he said. “Here, catch.” demonstrating something important, like he was about to perform “You just have to ignore pretty girls,” I said. “They’re so used to bly would end up working in my I sat near the window, opening magic. Then he bent the straw down, onto the side of the bottle, and guys ogling them, what you have to do is not pay them any attention. favor in the long run. She was a bar- my beer, and thinking how this showed me, slowly, how to hold it down. They go bat-shit crazy. They can’t handle it. And soon enough, they’re 08 08 09 tender and what they call a nontradi- was going to be a rough a weekend. “Okay, now watch.” Tilting back, he guzzled the whole thing begging.” I got up to get another beer. “That’s all, man. You just have 09 M tional student at UNC-Charlotte, The week had been a tiring one, faster than seemed possible. to know the trick.” M U because she was in her mid-twenties, working outside, being new guy on U S “Jesus,” I said. On my way back, I saw a pistol on the kitchen table, mostly hidden S just a few years younger than me. the crew, and not even permanent,

E M M “Yeah, no shit, right? Something about air pressure or a vac- by clutter of the KFC and Burger King variety. I picked it up and looked E And she was serious as hell about her though I hoped they’d take me on 16 17 it over. Jess had the best guns. He was always going to gun shows, look- a thin spine of green curving through the middle. Jess’s truck rattled surprised to see that the spot hadn’t changed since I’d left Shelby stomach. I told myself not to piss my pants. Every one of my thoughts ing for a deal. This one here was probably one of his little finds. It was a as if to come apart. Yellow and brown leaves were matted to the County. I guess I shouldn’t have been, since not much else had came to me slow and clear, but I couldn’t move. What would happen nickel-plated job with faux-wood grip. I didn’t know the makes of guns ground. Late afternoon sun was cutting through tall, bare trees— changed either. if he did it? Would the police think I’d killed him? My fingerprints the way Jess did, but I knew a good gun when I saw one. black gum and maple and elm. In Charlotte, where they’re developing We opened beers and used Chuck’s shotgun method to empty were all over the pistol. But I could explain that. The bottles. Maybe I “Sweet piece,” I said and sighted the wall on the other side of the the suburbs so fast, you see deer running around in people’s back- them. I set our two empties up on the trunk of an overturned cedar, could explain it. At least he wasn’t going to shoot me. But how would I living room. It had a nice weight to it. yards because the year before, it had been forest, and the deer are too along with a few other bottles and cans I found lying on the ground. get back to tell them about it? I’d have to get his keys from his pocket “It’s a Beretta 84 Cheetah,” he said. “I got the thirteen-round clip stupid to take a different path. It’s weird and sad to see them running “Let me shoot that,” I said. to drive back into town. It might look like I stole his truck. I could just for no extra. And that’s real wood.” around with the eight-lane roads and malls and nice condos for the I missed the first two shots. It’d been a long time since I’d shot a walk. Why did my fingerprints have to be on the goddamned pistol? I looked again at the handle. The finish on it made it feel fake, upwardly mobile bastards. pistol. But the third one hit and so did the fourth. Jess was shotgun- “Don’t do this. You’re better than her. I—don’t, just don’t, but I guess it was real. Jess knew his shit. And I was glad to hear him “Weather’s no good for hunting,” Jess said. “Too wet and too sunny.” ning another beer, so I fired the rest of the clip, leaving one can please, please.” talk about it, because he sounded happy talking about the pistol or I didn’t know why wet and sunny made for bad hunting. I never untouched. He looked up into the canopy of trees and the muscles in his not happy, but at least like he had a set of balls between. much cared for hunting, to tell the truth. When I was a boy, I used to “Not bad for a Charlotte boy,” Jess said. neck tensed. I closed my eyes and thought again not to piss myself. The sky was turning gray-blue, and I thought how serious hunt- think about hunting the hunters instead of the animals. The way I saw “Let’s see how you do.” “I can’t,” he said. ers were just now getting up to go out into the woods. But, then, Jess it, the animals needed more help than the hunters did, so I should be I walked around and found more targets and set them up. When I opened my eyes as he was handing me the pistol. I took the clip and I never claimed to be serious hunters. It was probably around five on their team. I never killed anything, because I never really aimed. I turned around, Jess had the Cheetah raised and aimed right at me. out and slid it into my back pocket and put the pistol in my jacket a.m. that I finally asked him if he had anything to eat in the house. I But I was the best at shooting bottles or cans or whatever other junk We stood there looking at each other. pocket, not for any good reason, but just to be doing something. still hadn’t asked him what he’d done to make Alice leave, not want- we set up for target practice. I’ve always thought I could kill a person “Well,” he said. “Get out of my way. Or do I have to shoot you first?” “I can’t even do this,” he said. ing to talk about it really, and I stupidly hoped we just wouldn’t get sooner than I could kill an animal. I walked back to where Jess was standing. I grabbed a beer. Jess “That’s good, man,” I said. “That’s a good thing.” around to talking about it. “Then we’ll shoot cans or whatever we can find, like when we raised the pistol and emptied the clip so fast he only hit one of the bot- He just looked at me until I had to look away. I turned my head toward We finished another beer while he cooked sausage and eggs and were kids,” I said. tles. He reloaded quicker than I thought possible, and then emptied the truck. “Give me the keys. I’ll drive us back.” threw some dried-out cornbread in a pan with about half a stick of He kept his eyes on the road and I looked out the window at the the clip again just as fast. This time I drove us through the woods, butter to moisten it. We ate using our hands. trees and the underbrush. I was already looking forward to being back he got two more. He began reload- down the long green spine of the “Alice took the silverware with her,” Jess said. That was the first in Charlotte. ing again and dropped a few bullets logger’s trail. Once we got back on time I thought she really might be gone for good. “Hey, did I tell you about Anne reading me poetry?” on the ground. the road, and the tires were whir- Lying on the couch, I could hear Jess snoring in the other room, “No,” Jess said. “You also didn’t tell me you were gay.” “Hey, Bull’s-eye, give me a shot ring smoothly with the wet hiss of louder than I would have thought a person could snore. No wonder “Fuck off. No, seriously. She read this one to me about how love at it,” I said. the rain-covered asphalt below us, I she left the sonofabitch, I thought. My body was worn-out but I is a sickness, and I thought you might like that idea.” I saw that he was crying. I hate it looked over at Jess and almost said couldn’t sleep. I lay there for a while thinking about Anne back in “Why the hell would I like that?” when people cry. I have no idea what something but didn’t know what I Charlotte. She’d read me some Russian lady’s poems before I left to “I don’t know. I just thought you might.” to do around people who are crying. might say if I opened my mouth. He come out to Jess’s. In one poem, the woman said she was happy that “You knew Alice,” Jess said. “You know her recreant ways.” “What’s the worst way to die?” had his face pressed against the the man she was talking to and her didn’t need each other, didn’t Here it goes, I thought, hoping he wouldn’t keep using his word- “What the hell are you talking glass and I thought how cool it must share a sickness, because when he left she didn’t care. After she read a-day vocabulary on me. about? Don’t be stupid.” feel. I knew when we got back to his that to me, I couldn’t think of love without thinking of it as a sickness “Do you think she’s coming back?” he asked. Jess put the Beretta to the side of his place, I couldn’t just get in my car we give or catch. “There’s no way to tell what she’s going to do. You’d know better head. “What if I just blew my brains and leave like I wanted. We would I had to piss, so I got up to go outside. On my way out, I saw the than me.” out? How would she like that, do have to find a place to eat dinner, Cheetah sitting on the table and grabbed it. I stood on the porch, “She’s living in Gastonia. She’s living with some man named you think?” He pressed the barrel and then we’d probably end up naked and pissing. I aimed the pistol at my car, a beat up Saturn, and Vincent. What kind of name is that anyway?” hard against his temple until the drunk again. By then I’d know the then aimed it at the moon. It was too cold to be standing out there like “You know how she is,” I said. “She’ll be back.” skin went dead white. things to say, and how to say them. that, but it felt good, with no one for miles to see the idiot things I was “I know she thought she deserved better than me.” “Stop fooling around.” But as I drove, I only wanted to get doing. That was what I missed about living in the country—the free- “That’s not true,” I said. “I’m not fooling. What else am back to Charlotte, back to Anne, dom to do any damn thing that came into your head. I walked out “I don’t think she’s coming back.” I supposed to do?” back to my life. 08 08 09 onto the yard in my bare feet and felt the good earth, the mud, “If she does, she does. If she doesn’t, to hell with her.” He’s going to do it. My face “The weather’s changing. It’s 09 M beneath me. “You haven’t changed a bit,” Jess said and laughed a little. went numb and sweat rose up all going to be a prepossessing day,” M U U S Around three o’clock in the afternoon, after we woke up and ate, Jess pulled the truck into a clearing littered with the trash from over my skin and an empty place Jess said and rolled down the win- S

E M M we were bouncing our way up an old logging path, two dirt rivers with an old campsite. This was one of the spots people came to party. I was like falling opened in the pit of my dow, letting the wind blow in on us. E

18 19 it over. Jess had the best guns. He was always going to gun shows, look- a thin spine of green curving through the middle. Jess’s truck rattled surprised to see that the spot hadn’t changed since I’d left Shelby stomach. I told myself not to piss my pants. Every one of my thoughts ing for a deal. This one here was probably one of his little finds. It was a as if to come apart. Yellow and brown leaves were matted to the County. I guess I shouldn’t have been, since not much else had came to me slow and clear, but I couldn’t move. What would happen nickel-plated job with faux-wood grip. I didn’t know the makes of guns ground. Late afternoon sun was cutting through tall, bare trees— changed either. if he did it? Would the police think I’d killed him? My fingerprints the way Jess did, but I knew a good gun when I saw one. black gum and maple and elm. In Charlotte, where they’re developing We opened beers and used Chuck’s shotgun method to empty were all over the pistol. But I could explain that. The bottles. Maybe I “Sweet piece,” I said and sighted the wall on the other side of the the suburbs so fast, you see deer running around in people’s back- them. I set our two empties up on the trunk of an overturned cedar, could explain it. At least he wasn’t going to shoot me. But how would I living room. It had a nice weight to it. yards because the year before, it had been forest, and the deer are too along with a few other bottles and cans I found lying on the ground. get back to tell them about it? I’d have to get his keys from his pocket “It’s a Beretta 84 Cheetah,” he said. “I got the thirteen-round clip stupid to take a different path. It’s weird and sad to see them running “Let me shoot that,” I said. to drive back into town. It might look like I stole his truck. I could just for no extra. And that’s real wood.” around with the eight-lane roads and malls and nice condos for the I missed the first two shots. It’d been a long time since I’d shot a walk. Why did my fingerprints have to be on the goddamned pistol? I looked again at the handle. The finish on it made it feel fake, upwardly mobile bastards. pistol. But the third one hit and so did the fourth. Jess was shotgun- “Don’t do this. You’re better than her. I—don’t, just don’t, but I guess it was real. Jess knew his shit. And I was glad to hear him “Weather’s no good for hunting,” Jess said. “Too wet and too sunny.” ning another beer, so I fired the rest of the clip, leaving one can please, please.” talk about it, because he sounded happy talking about the pistol or I didn’t know why wet and sunny made for bad hunting. I never untouched. He looked up into the canopy of trees and the muscles in his not happy, but at least like he had a set of balls between. much cared for hunting, to tell the truth. When I was a boy, I used to “Not bad for a Charlotte boy,” Jess said. neck tensed. I closed my eyes and thought again not to piss myself. The sky was turning gray-blue, and I thought how serious hunt- think about hunting the hunters instead of the animals. The way I saw “Let’s see how you do.” “I can’t,” he said. ers were just now getting up to go out into the woods. But, then, Jess it, the animals needed more help than the hunters did, so I should be I walked around and found more targets and set them up. When I opened my eyes as he was handing me the pistol. I took the clip and I never claimed to be serious hunters. It was probably around five on their team. I never killed anything, because I never really aimed. I turned around, Jess had the Cheetah raised and aimed right at me. out and slid it into my back pocket and put the pistol in my jacket a.m. that I finally asked him if he had anything to eat in the house. I But I was the best at shooting bottles or cans or whatever other junk We stood there looking at each other. pocket, not for any good reason, but just to be doing something. still hadn’t asked him what he’d done to make Alice leave, not want- we set up for target practice. I’ve always thought I could kill a person “Well,” he said. “Get out of my way. Or do I have to shoot you first?” “I can’t even do this,” he said. ing to talk about it really, and I stupidly hoped we just wouldn’t get sooner than I could kill an animal. I walked back to where Jess was standing. I grabbed a beer. Jess “That’s good, man,” I said. “That’s a good thing.” around to talking about it. “Then we’ll shoot cans or whatever we can find, like when we raised the pistol and emptied the clip so fast he only hit one of the bot- He just looked at me until I had to look away. I turned my head toward We finished another beer while he cooked sausage and eggs and were kids,” I said. tles. He reloaded quicker than I thought possible, and then emptied the truck. “Give me the keys. I’ll drive us back.” threw some dried-out cornbread in a pan with about half a stick of He kept his eyes on the road and I looked out the window at the the clip again just as fast. This time I drove us through the woods, butter to moisten it. We ate using our hands. trees and the underbrush. I was already looking forward to being back he got two more. He began reload- down the long green spine of the “Alice took the silverware with her,” Jess said. That was the first in Charlotte. ing again and dropped a few bullets logger’s trail. Once we got back on time I thought she really might be gone for good. “Hey, did I tell you about Anne reading me poetry?” on the ground. the road, and the tires were whir- Lying on the couch, I could hear Jess snoring in the other room, “No,” Jess said. “You also didn’t tell me you were gay.” “Hey, Bull’s-eye, give me a shot ring smoothly with the wet hiss of louder than I would have thought a person could snore. No wonder “Fuck off. No, seriously. She read this one to me about how love at it,” I said. the rain-covered asphalt below us, I she left the sonofabitch, I thought. My body was worn-out but I is a sickness, and I thought you might like that idea.” I saw that he was crying. I hate it looked over at Jess and almost said couldn’t sleep. I lay there for a while thinking about Anne back in “Why the hell would I like that?” when people cry. I have no idea what something but didn’t know what I Charlotte. She’d read me some Russian lady’s poems before I left to “I don’t know. I just thought you might.” to do around people who are crying. might say if I opened my mouth. He come out to Jess’s. In one poem, the woman said she was happy that “You knew Alice,” Jess said. “You know her recreant ways.” “What’s the worst way to die?” had his face pressed against the the man she was talking to and her didn’t need each other, didn’t Here it goes, I thought, hoping he wouldn’t keep using his word- “What the hell are you talking glass and I thought how cool it must share a sickness, because when he left she didn’t care. After she read a-day vocabulary on me. about? Don’t be stupid.” feel. I knew when we got back to his that to me, I couldn’t think of love without thinking of it as a sickness “Do you think she’s coming back?” he asked. Jess put the Beretta to the side of his place, I couldn’t just get in my car we give or catch. “There’s no way to tell what she’s going to do. You’d know better head. “What if I just blew my brains and leave like I wanted. We would I had to piss, so I got up to go outside. On my way out, I saw the than me.” out? How would she like that, do have to find a place to eat dinner, Cheetah sitting on the table and grabbed it. I stood on the porch, “She’s living in Gastonia. She’s living with some man named you think?” He pressed the barrel and then we’d probably end up naked and pissing. I aimed the pistol at my car, a beat up Saturn, and Vincent. What kind of name is that anyway?” hard against his temple until the drunk again. By then I’d know the then aimed it at the moon. It was too cold to be standing out there like “You know how she is,” I said. “She’ll be back.” skin went dead white. things to say, and how to say them. that, but it felt good, with no one for miles to see the idiot things I was “I know she thought she deserved better than me.” “Stop fooling around.” But as I drove, I only wanted to get doing. That was what I missed about living in the country—the free- “That’s not true,” I said. “I’m not fooling. What else am back to Charlotte, back to Anne, dom to do any damn thing that came into your head. I walked out “I don’t think she’s coming back.” I supposed to do?” back to my life. 08 08 09 onto the yard in my bare feet and felt the good earth, the mud, “If she does, she does. If she doesn’t, to hell with her.” He’s going to do it. My face “The weather’s changing. It’s 09 M beneath me. “You haven’t changed a bit,” Jess said and laughed a little. went numb and sweat rose up all going to be a prepossessing day,” M U U S Around three o’clock in the afternoon, after we woke up and ate, Jess pulled the truck into a clearing littered with the trash from over my skin and an empty place Jess said and rolled down the win- S

E M M we were bouncing our way up an old logging path, two dirt rivers with an old campsite. This was one of the spots people came to party. I was like falling opened in the pit of my dow, letting the wind blow in on us. E

18 19

cate Colorado, just as you’ve pulled back from your nefarious them. What a giddy cataclysm!

C H A P T E R 1 1 plot to Ohioize it. Leave Colorado to the dolts who founded it— I hopped and scuttled with all the dignity of a participant splinter-group Mormons, genocidal cowboys, and misan- in a potato-sack race. I was plowed around like a tackling thropic mountaineers who wore the same b.o. polluted long dummy. As my drunken buddies egged the cops on, I was de- Ablaze johns for decades. I’ll stay here in the Bay area and hope an posited like a sack of feed onto the back seat of the cruiser. I was (EXCERPT) earthquake doesn’t swallow me. We’re all scattered now, like hauled to the cinderblock station, bum-rushed inside, finger- RICK RIDGWAY knights who forgot what grail they were pursuing anyway—I printed and mugshotted. I was made to bend over and grasp my mean, Frog, you, Bill, Huey, the whole crusading gang of dits ankles, so that a stationhouse expert could peer into the keyhole

MONDAY sleep-daze. Almost like an amnesiac. Or like a man with just a and scalawags and movie-lovers. What the fuck—it was sweet of my ass and spy any baggies of pills or weed, files and chisels, My dreams are made of fire and air and water, and all the few strong sensual memories. I squeeze my eyes shut and imag- then, it’s bittersweet now, and eventually it will just be bitter. I or zigpuns that I’d had the canniness to ensconce there. beings who ever existed or could exist pass through them like ine my wife’s legs brushing me, entwining. The smell of her hair don’t know if this qualifies as life wisdom or just middle-aged I was kept in the bullpen holding-cage for two hours. A lost travelers. oil and skin and intimate pits is so keen that it dissolves all cate- dyspeptic belch. I’m running out of space here. Say hi to your firearm safety poster on the opposite wall depicted humanoid This morning, I’m dreaming of the Orinoco River, where gories—memory, reverie, fantasy. The odor of Cecilia in the public defender for me. Your perpetual buddy, Bernard.” gun-toters in the two-handed firing stances. A squamous old I’ve never been but am now. An oil spill is lashed with fire. sheets bewitches me forever. Popeye mop-man came in to mop the checkerboard floor—the A rotten pier is smoldering. I’m staggering in the muggy smoke. I imagine—my fingertips imagine—the texture of Cecilia’s I trip to my knees—the dream-thud almost knocks me awake. waist and thigh. Sleep-warmed. Inturned, rounded. Perfect. I Little convulsions are needling the muscles in my legs. stroke them in memory. Riding on the quilt, Greta grumbles For a few more seconds I have to stay in the dream, sucking peevishly as I turn my body and abruptly get out of bed. smoke like bad opium. Here it comes! A crocodile, a quick- Alfalfa scampers back into the room and pops up onto the footed scaly wedge, waddles toward me. Its deltoid mouth is windowsill and hunkers into the crack where the glass is lifted. spattered with soot. Its hide is scorched. Hackles of fire run up The cool autumnal breeze riffles the fat white curtain and I hopped and scuttled with all its tail. It lets a groan. Its ruined jaw gapes, inches from my arm. makes it form an airy new shape, like the sail of a dhow. The kit- In the cold October Ohio morning I come awake, twitch- ten tenses and chatters at a squirrel in the pine tree. ing like an old dog. The meat of my heart pumps in fear and I stroke Alfalfa’s back with two fingers, as I survey the yard. jubilation. I take sips of air. I hesitate to look at the floor, for if There’s gleaming silver-white frost on the lawn. One section of the dignity of a participant in reality is truly evil and draws its essence from chaotic dreams, the grass no bigger than a door, shines bright where the first I’d behold the croc crouched on the rug and grinning its burnt, rays of sunlight have steamed the frost to water. The birds chirp, hungry grin. a dawn chorus that’s both discordant and harmonious. Shrieks a potato-sack race. I peer at the rug. Woven wine-red and dove-gray quick- blend into trills. Choir upon choir overlaps—and the noise they sand swirls, it’s empty. There’s a thumping sound in the hall- make is raw and elated and soothing all at once. I wonder if Ce- Bernard’s a pesky joker. His public defender jibe refers to our butterscotch and licorice colored tiles chosen, probably, for way, though. My warped and knobless bedroom door jiggles, cilia understands birdsong better than I do. I’ll have to ask her. jaunt through the Napa Valley back in 1985. Near dark a CHP their knack of depressing and sickening and thereby chastening and I swivel to face the croc. It’s only the cats. An orange paw I tickle the pads of Alfalfa’s back feet and he swivels to pulled us over in our rental car—four chortling, arguing unruly drunks like me. Popeye had a cigarette tucked behind pries the door open, there’s a blur of racing fur, and a skirmish gnash playfully at my fingers. I put on my burnt-orange wool drunks—for doing 50 in a 45 zone and weaving infinitesimally. his ear, a grace note of lumpen etiquette that I’ve always envied. erupts under my bed. Alfalfa, the male kitten, is practicing his sweater and go downstairs barefoot and make a pot of coffee. I, the marginally sober driver, was commanded to walk in a His ducktail ’do was the dire gray color of a worn nickel. He joyful thuggery on Tina, the neurasthenic nine-year-old female. All four cats sashay around my ankles, urging me to fill their straight line. I complained that the conditions were too crepus- grinched at me and said something odd, something like, I swipe beneath the springs with a shoe—both cats emerge and bowl. Alfalfa bullies the bigger cats aside, hooks out a dry nug- cular to determine a straight line. I suggested that the officer “Wheezit on the beezer, huh kidaroo?” gallop downstairs. get, and shuffles it back and forth. The other three cats are dis- spray-paint a luminous runway along the berm. I suggested that The inside of my mouth was rich with wine fumes lurched My other female, Greta, a Persian-gremlin-tabby mix, gruntled, tails thumping, as they watch him. he then supply me with burlap foot encasements so that I backward from the beating. When I recalled the odor of the back- marbled orange and black and white, with puffed pale-orange I sip coffee and sift idly through the junk that’s accumu- wouldn’t ruin my brogans. I suggested some other things. seat in the police cruiser—vinyl and vomit—my stomach sent ten- muttonchops and tufts of snowy hair curving out of her ears, lated in the wicker basket on the table. I glance at an obscene As the straight line cop fumed, his partner climbed out of drils of nausea like creeper vines up through the wine effluvia. I hops onto the bed. As she lays purring, I stroke her jowls and si- 1992 Christmas card from Bernard in San Francisco: a semi- the squad car and ambled over. They had a brief powwow, as I rolled my tongue gingerly over the bloody shreds of torn inner lip. I 08 08 09 lently intone the Numidian spell which transforms a feline into nude Santa Claus, ruddy schlong emerging through the fly of jeered and did a sinuous dance on the roadside scrub. They licked my jostled teeth—the entire grotto of my mouth had a train- 09

M a woman, but it doesn’t work. his pantaloons. On the back: “Season’s greetings to the Cauca- made their counter-suggestion; they began to clobber me me- wreck vibe. I had an aching lump on the back of my head. My kid- M U The dream havoc has faded. I lapse into a pleasant, warm sian Rodney King. I’ve given up my master plan to Califorini- ticulously with their billies, increasing the ferocity as I cursed neys hurt. I felt like a baby seal who’d survived a vigorous clubbing. U S S

E M M E

22 23

cate Colorado, just as you’ve pulled back from your nefarious them. What a giddy cataclysm!

C H A P T E R 1 1 plot to Ohioize it. Leave Colorado to the dolts who founded it— I hopped and scuttled with all the dignity of a participant splinter-group Mormons, genocidal cowboys, and misan- in a potato-sack race. I was plowed around like a tackling thropic mountaineers who wore the same b.o. polluted long dummy. As my drunken buddies egged the cops on, I was de- Ablaze johns for decades. I’ll stay here in the Bay area and hope an posited like a sack of feed onto the back seat of the cruiser. I was (EXCERPT) earthquake doesn’t swallow me. We’re all scattered now, like hauled to the cinderblock station, bum-rushed inside, finger- RICK RIDGWAY knights who forgot what grail they were pursuing anyway—I printed and mugshotted. I was made to bend over and grasp my mean, Frog, you, Bill, Huey, the whole crusading gang of dits ankles, so that a stationhouse expert could peer into the keyhole

MONDAY sleep-daze. Almost like an amnesiac. Or like a man with just a and scalawags and movie-lovers. What the fuck—it was sweet of my ass and spy any baggies of pills or weed, files and chisels, My dreams are made of fire and air and water, and all the few strong sensual memories. I squeeze my eyes shut and imag- then, it’s bittersweet now, and eventually it will just be bitter. I or zigpuns that I’d had the canniness to ensconce there. beings who ever existed or could exist pass through them like ine my wife’s legs brushing me, entwining. The smell of her hair don’t know if this qualifies as life wisdom or just middle-aged I was kept in the bullpen holding-cage for two hours. A lost travelers. oil and skin and intimate pits is so keen that it dissolves all cate- dyspeptic belch. I’m running out of space here. Say hi to your firearm safety poster on the opposite wall depicted humanoid This morning, I’m dreaming of the Orinoco River, where gories—memory, reverie, fantasy. The odor of Cecilia in the public defender for me. Your perpetual buddy, Bernard.” gun-toters in the two-handed firing stances. A squamous old I’ve never been but am now. An oil spill is lashed with fire. sheets bewitches me forever. Popeye mop-man came in to mop the checkerboard floor—the A rotten pier is smoldering. I’m staggering in the muggy smoke. I imagine—my fingertips imagine—the texture of Cecilia’s I trip to my knees—the dream-thud almost knocks me awake. waist and thigh. Sleep-warmed. Inturned, rounded. Perfect. I Little convulsions are needling the muscles in my legs. stroke them in memory. Riding on the quilt, Greta grumbles For a few more seconds I have to stay in the dream, sucking peevishly as I turn my body and abruptly get out of bed. smoke like bad opium. Here it comes! A crocodile, a quick- Alfalfa scampers back into the room and pops up onto the footed scaly wedge, waddles toward me. Its deltoid mouth is windowsill and hunkers into the crack where the glass is lifted. spattered with soot. Its hide is scorched. Hackles of fire run up The cool autumnal breeze riffles the fat white curtain and I hopped and scuttled with all its tail. It lets a groan. Its ruined jaw gapes, inches from my arm. makes it form an airy new shape, like the sail of a dhow. The kit- In the cold October Ohio morning I come awake, twitch- ten tenses and chatters at a squirrel in the pine tree. ing like an old dog. The meat of my heart pumps in fear and I stroke Alfalfa’s back with two fingers, as I survey the yard. jubilation. I take sips of air. I hesitate to look at the floor, for if There’s gleaming silver-white frost on the lawn. One section of the dignity of a participant in reality is truly evil and draws its essence from chaotic dreams, the grass no bigger than a door, shines bright where the first I’d behold the croc crouched on the rug and grinning its burnt, rays of sunlight have steamed the frost to water. The birds chirp, hungry grin. a dawn chorus that’s both discordant and harmonious. Shrieks a potato-sack race. I peer at the rug. Woven wine-red and dove-gray quick- blend into trills. Choir upon choir overlaps—and the noise they sand swirls, it’s empty. There’s a thumping sound in the hall- make is raw and elated and soothing all at once. I wonder if Ce- Bernard’s a pesky joker. His public defender jibe refers to our butterscotch and licorice colored tiles chosen, probably, for way, though. My warped and knobless bedroom door jiggles, cilia understands birdsong better than I do. I’ll have to ask her. jaunt through the Napa Valley back in 1985. Near dark a CHP their knack of depressing and sickening and thereby chastening and I swivel to face the croc. It’s only the cats. An orange paw I tickle the pads of Alfalfa’s back feet and he swivels to pulled us over in our rental car—four chortling, arguing unruly drunks like me. Popeye had a cigarette tucked behind pries the door open, there’s a blur of racing fur, and a skirmish gnash playfully at my fingers. I put on my burnt-orange wool drunks—for doing 50 in a 45 zone and weaving infinitesimally. his ear, a grace note of lumpen etiquette that I’ve always envied. erupts under my bed. Alfalfa, the male kitten, is practicing his sweater and go downstairs barefoot and make a pot of coffee. I, the marginally sober driver, was commanded to walk in a His ducktail ’do was the dire gray color of a worn nickel. He joyful thuggery on Tina, the neurasthenic nine-year-old female. All four cats sashay around my ankles, urging me to fill their straight line. I complained that the conditions were too crepus- grinched at me and said something odd, something like, I swipe beneath the springs with a shoe—both cats emerge and bowl. Alfalfa bullies the bigger cats aside, hooks out a dry nug- cular to determine a straight line. I suggested that the officer “Wheezit on the beezer, huh kidaroo?” gallop downstairs. get, and shuffles it back and forth. The other three cats are dis- spray-paint a luminous runway along the berm. I suggested that The inside of my mouth was rich with wine fumes lurched My other female, Greta, a Persian-gremlin-tabby mix, gruntled, tails thumping, as they watch him. he then supply me with burlap foot encasements so that I backward from the beating. When I recalled the odor of the back- marbled orange and black and white, with puffed pale-orange I sip coffee and sift idly through the junk that’s accumu- wouldn’t ruin my brogans. I suggested some other things. seat in the police cruiser—vinyl and vomit—my stomach sent ten- muttonchops and tufts of snowy hair curving out of her ears, lated in the wicker basket on the table. I glance at an obscene As the straight line cop fumed, his partner climbed out of drils of nausea like creeper vines up through the wine effluvia. I hops onto the bed. As she lays purring, I stroke her jowls and si- 1992 Christmas card from Bernard in San Francisco: a semi- the squad car and ambled over. They had a brief powwow, as I rolled my tongue gingerly over the bloody shreds of torn inner lip. I 08 08 09 lently intone the Numidian spell which transforms a feline into nude Santa Claus, ruddy schlong emerging through the fly of jeered and did a sinuous dance on the roadside scrub. They licked my jostled teeth—the entire grotto of my mouth had a train- 09

M a woman, but it doesn’t work. his pantaloons. On the back: “Season’s greetings to the Cauca- made their counter-suggestion; they began to clobber me me- wreck vibe. I had an aching lump on the back of my head. My kid- M U The dream havoc has faded. I lapse into a pleasant, warm sian Rodney King. I’ve given up my master plan to Califorini- ticulously with their billies, increasing the ferocity as I cursed neys hurt. I felt like a baby seal who’d survived a vigorous clubbing. U S S

E M M E

22 23 Six weeks later, I paid a $385 fine. I don’t know where I I slide Cecilia’s postcard from beneath Huey’s letter. 2-12- ing stepwise up a romantic staircase from arm-patting to like a clot of slop. ranked in the ledger of California psychodom—far below Caryl 93. A Philadelphia statue—a petrified jockey wearing a tricorn caressing to kissing to—months later, years later—conditional I set the cereal bowl on the floor and Alfalfa climbs in, Chessman and Juan Corona, at any rate—by my crime (the chapeau. On the back, one freezing phrase: “I’m so glad for you.” surrender. A clenched fuck with every nerve ending cement- boating and slurping. Greta bats at his tail and Booger stalks the nebulous D & D) was duly recorded and punished. A looped, ornamental C in red ink sits at the bottom of the card. hard probably. periphery, back arched like a dromedary, looking for an open- I find a brief letter from Huey. An Elvis stamp, a Colorado A tundra of blank spaces between the curt line and the C. I feel hateful, envisioning this scenario. I cluck scornfully ing to lap some milk. In everything he does, the kitten is exu- Springs postmark. “Hey, Ray. Guess what. I’m living—tempo- The “glad” makes me wince, from hurt and shame. Does it at myself. I know perfectly well that Cecilia’s obdurateness is a berantly pre-emptive. rarily—on Jerry’s couch. I remind myself constantly that all life drip with sarcasm? Or does it just mean, ever so mildly and byproduct of my errors, but the knowledge abrades. When a I walk outside. The sun plates the west hillside now. Leaves is temporary, and it helps cut the indignity. It’s a lumpy, musty, daintily, that she’s glad? man makes crucial errors, as I have, self-knowledge and self-ad- from the apple tree fill the potholes in the driveway, a floating pea-soup-colored (bile-green?) monstrosity of a couch. I think When my agent sold my novel in January, I immediately mission are akin to self-hatred. gumbo of rainwater and leaves in each rut. Some leaves are pale Jerry may have salvaged rather than bought it. My advice to wrote a long, rash, ardent letter to Cecilia—my wife (my ex- Lancing self-hatred has spoiled many pretty mornings, green, others lavender-tan. Yellow jackets feast on the windfall you: forget novels. They’re a sucker’s gig, unless you can out- wife), the love of my life. A month later, this icicle message came. and here goes another one. For the millionth time I’m pleading apples, augering into the winey-smelling meat. All six weeping Sidney Sidney Sheldon. But hey, I know your miserable life ex- When I’m woozy and reminiscent, I think of Cecilia as in- inwardly, telepathically, to Cecilia. “Sweetheart, I love you. willow trees have snapped and toppled in a July tornado. Shards perience don’t include yachts, bikini-clad French poontang finitely loving. But with coffee embittering my palate on a cold Still. Always. Once you were as free as rolling water, as a sun- of raw wood stick out from the ruptured trunks. Green creepers named Yvette, Cinecitta art directors in ascots, or colorful jet October morning, I know that her love is finite. She’d pulled beam, as an animal with no known predators. Together we were grow on the fallen jumble of paralyzed wood, life still feeding set yahoos. You lack the necessary ingredients for a quick-kill taut a decade ago. I could read the cessation of love and trust in like happy water creatures on our own isle—swimming in our from trunk to branch. potboiler. I know, I know—you do have a passing knowledge of her harshly beautiful brown eyes, and her unpliant posture pool of love, sinking down, boosting each other up like dol- I walk across the loamy front lawn and pick up the raccoon Colorado fern-bar nymphomaniacs and low-level drug dealers which expressed, “Keep at least three paces away from me, phins, frisking, floating. It took a long time for me to poison the bowl from the porch. All summer I’ve taken great pleasure I swallow dregs of my

and galoots named Yackasacky who sell pistolas out of the truck knave.” Cecilia’s tribunal was in session, and I was accused and water, and I never wanted to. All the errors I made were against watching the coons eat nocturnally. Bread, grapes, bananas— of their car. But basically—and may I be brutally frank here?— convicted of multifarious crimes. Physical crimes (roothog, reason, against the momentum of love. To the end of our mar- they’ll scarf anything I lay down. These rascals live in the boles you’re a street-level divorced grub like me. An enchilada-roller, adultery), emotional crimescold (verbal lashings, empathetic ero- coffee.riage I continued to love you. More and more desperately, as the of the trees along the road, and in the densely piled brush along a cartoon-hauler, a broom-pusher even. We’re college graduate sion, the failure to execute a thousand small decencies), even end neared. Please begin to forgive me. Slowly. Tentatively. But the edge of my property. In May I’d seen a coon chomping a career fuck-ups. Are you as sick of this stinging truth as I am, whimsical crimes (showcasing a joke at exactly the wrong begin.” milk snake in the ditch, twisting it like a kid with a long hunk of Ray? So let’s do that goddamned screenplay. Get a series of moment). I swallow dregs of my cold coffee. Booger, the big orange taffy. When I walked out to survey the damage on the morning throat-rippers or saw-buzzers or teen-manglers cooking. A What makes it awful is—I know I’m guilty, mostly. male, my favorite among the cats, sits on the sill above the table. after the tornado, a coon was clamped to a branch high in an NIGHTMARE ON ARAPAHOE AVENUE, something like Cecilia is wise, loving, just—and unforgiving. There can’t He glows like spun gold in the morning sunlight, his golden- elm tree. He squawked at me, protesting the devastation of rain that. Buzz me. Reverse the charges. I should be somewhere possibly be an entity in the universe more tenaciously unforgiv- green eyes dilated, his fur puckered where his heart beats in his and wind. down the line before Jerry gets his next phone bill. You know ing than a wronged ex-wife. belly. I touch his warm flank and he stretches sensuously, bask- A big-daddy coon likes to shinny up my birdfeeder and anything about silver dollars? What’s silver doing these days? Cecilia’s far too bright and mercurial to be a doctrinaire ing on the sill. dig out seed with his talons. Then he tips the hummingbird Jerry’s got a collection socked away in his dresser. Buzz me. De- feminist or a clichéd scorned woman or a standard dour divor- *** feeder and guzzles the sugar-water until he’s soused. He shin- 08 spite my philosophical maturity and long-view stoicism, I can’t cee. She’s majestically independent. Stung once, she’s unlikely I eat some Puffed Wheat cereal, which tastes like Styro- nies back down and hotfoots it across the flower bed, his muzzle 08 09 09 take this fucking couch much longer. Buzz me. Huey.” to re-marry. Who could she take for a lover? Some hybrid of foam pellets. I’m ready to deep-six all cereals. Shredded Wheat sticky, licking his soaked whiskers as he glances thief-like back M What an army of no-goodnik schemers I could mobilize if Paul Newman, Eugene McCarthy and Benjamin Spock, per- tastes like wood pulp. Grape Nuts taste like cat litter. Corn M U at the window where I sit watching him. I enjoy this blithe fat- U S I ever gathered them all together. haps. The wily chap would have to court her assiduously, mov- Flakes, after they’re submerged in milk for ten seconds, taste boy hugely, and I hate to think of him shot, skinned, or S

E M M E

24 25 Six weeks later, I paid a $385 fine. I don’t know where I I slide Cecilia’s postcard from beneath Huey’s letter. 2-12- ing stepwise up a romantic staircase from arm-patting to like a clot of slop. ranked in the ledger of California psychodom—far below Caryl 93. A Philadelphia statue—a petrified jockey wearing a tricorn caressing to kissing to—months later, years later—conditional I set the cereal bowl on the floor and Alfalfa climbs in, Chessman and Juan Corona, at any rate—by my crime (the chapeau. On the back, one freezing phrase: “I’m so glad for you.” surrender. A clenched fuck with every nerve ending cement- boating and slurping. Greta bats at his tail and Booger stalks the nebulous D & D) was duly recorded and punished. A looped, ornamental C in red ink sits at the bottom of the card. hard probably. periphery, back arched like a dromedary, looking for an open- I find a brief letter from Huey. An Elvis stamp, a Colorado A tundra of blank spaces between the curt line and the C. I feel hateful, envisioning this scenario. I cluck scornfully ing to lap some milk. In everything he does, the kitten is exu- Springs postmark. “Hey, Ray. Guess what. I’m living—tempo- The “glad” makes me wince, from hurt and shame. Does it at myself. I know perfectly well that Cecilia’s obdurateness is a berantly pre-emptive. rarily—on Jerry’s couch. I remind myself constantly that all life drip with sarcasm? Or does it just mean, ever so mildly and byproduct of my errors, but the knowledge abrades. When a I walk outside. The sun plates the west hillside now. Leaves is temporary, and it helps cut the indignity. It’s a lumpy, musty, daintily, that she’s glad? man makes crucial errors, as I have, self-knowledge and self-ad- from the apple tree fill the potholes in the driveway, a floating pea-soup-colored (bile-green?) monstrosity of a couch. I think When my agent sold my novel in January, I immediately mission are akin to self-hatred. gumbo of rainwater and leaves in each rut. Some leaves are pale Jerry may have salvaged rather than bought it. My advice to wrote a long, rash, ardent letter to Cecilia—my wife (my ex- Lancing self-hatred has spoiled many pretty mornings, green, others lavender-tan. Yellow jackets feast on the windfall you: forget novels. They’re a sucker’s gig, unless you can out- wife), the love of my life. A month later, this icicle message came. and here goes another one. For the millionth time I’m pleading apples, augering into the winey-smelling meat. All six weeping Sidney Sidney Sheldon. But hey, I know your miserable life ex- When I’m woozy and reminiscent, I think of Cecilia as in- inwardly, telepathically, to Cecilia. “Sweetheart, I love you. willow trees have snapped and toppled in a July tornado. Shards perience don’t include yachts, bikini-clad French poontang finitely loving. But with coffee embittering my palate on a cold Still. Always. Once you were as free as rolling water, as a sun- of raw wood stick out from the ruptured trunks. Green creepers named Yvette, Cinecitta art directors in ascots, or colorful jet October morning, I know that her love is finite. She’d pulled beam, as an animal with no known predators. Together we were grow on the fallen jumble of paralyzed wood, life still feeding set yahoos. You lack the necessary ingredients for a quick-kill taut a decade ago. I could read the cessation of love and trust in like happy water creatures on our own isle—swimming in our from trunk to branch. potboiler. I know, I know—you do have a passing knowledge of her harshly beautiful brown eyes, and her unpliant posture pool of love, sinking down, boosting each other up like dol- I walk across the loamy front lawn and pick up the raccoon Colorado fern-bar nymphomaniacs and low-level drug dealers which expressed, “Keep at least three paces away from me, phins, frisking, floating. It took a long time for me to poison the bowl from the porch. All summer I’ve taken great pleasure I swallow dregs of my

and galoots named Yackasacky who sell pistolas out of the truck knave.” Cecilia’s tribunal was in session, and I was accused and water, and I never wanted to. All the errors I made were against watching the coons eat nocturnally. Bread, grapes, bananas— of their car. But basically—and may I be brutally frank here?— convicted of multifarious crimes. Physical crimes (roothog, reason, against the momentum of love. To the end of our mar- they’ll scarf anything I lay down. These rascals live in the boles you’re a street-level divorced grub like me. An enchilada-roller, adultery), emotional crimescold (verbal lashings, empathetic ero- coffee.riage I continued to love you. More and more desperately, as the of the trees along the road, and in the densely piled brush along a cartoon-hauler, a broom-pusher even. We’re college graduate sion, the failure to execute a thousand small decencies), even end neared. Please begin to forgive me. Slowly. Tentatively. But the edge of my property. In May I’d seen a coon chomping a career fuck-ups. Are you as sick of this stinging truth as I am, whimsical crimes (showcasing a joke at exactly the wrong begin.” milk snake in the ditch, twisting it like a kid with a long hunk of Ray? So let’s do that goddamned screenplay. Get a series of moment). I swallow dregs of my cold coffee. Booger, the big orange taffy. When I walked out to survey the damage on the morning throat-rippers or saw-buzzers or teen-manglers cooking. A What makes it awful is—I know I’m guilty, mostly. male, my favorite among the cats, sits on the sill above the table. after the tornado, a coon was clamped to a branch high in an NIGHTMARE ON ARAPAHOE AVENUE, something like Cecilia is wise, loving, just—and unforgiving. There can’t He glows like spun gold in the morning sunlight, his golden- elm tree. He squawked at me, protesting the devastation of rain that. Buzz me. Reverse the charges. I should be somewhere possibly be an entity in the universe more tenaciously unforgiv- green eyes dilated, his fur puckered where his heart beats in his and wind. down the line before Jerry gets his next phone bill. You know ing than a wronged ex-wife. belly. I touch his warm flank and he stretches sensuously, bask- A big-daddy coon likes to shinny up my birdfeeder and anything about silver dollars? What’s silver doing these days? Cecilia’s far too bright and mercurial to be a doctrinaire ing on the sill. dig out seed with his talons. Then he tips the hummingbird Jerry’s got a collection socked away in his dresser. Buzz me. De- feminist or a clichéd scorned woman or a standard dour divor- *** feeder and guzzles the sugar-water until he’s soused. He shin- 08 spite my philosophical maturity and long-view stoicism, I can’t cee. She’s majestically independent. Stung once, she’s unlikely I eat some Puffed Wheat cereal, which tastes like Styro- nies back down and hotfoots it across the flower bed, his muzzle 08 09 09 take this fucking couch much longer. Buzz me. Huey.” to re-marry. Who could she take for a lover? Some hybrid of foam pellets. I’m ready to deep-six all cereals. Shredded Wheat sticky, licking his soaked whiskers as he glances thief-like back M What an army of no-goodnik schemers I could mobilize if Paul Newman, Eugene McCarthy and Benjamin Spock, per- tastes like wood pulp. Grape Nuts taste like cat litter. Corn M U at the window where I sit watching him. I enjoy this blithe fat- U S I ever gathered them all together. haps. The wily chap would have to court her assiduously, mov- Flakes, after they’re submerged in milk for ten seconds, taste boy hugely, and I hate to think of him shot, skinned, or S

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24 25 crunched under car wheels. those jailbait honies in towns like Cozad and Grand Island.” All summer I’ve turned the porchlight on and sat in the “You like that Nebraska porkette look, huh?” dark livingroom waiting for the coons to arrive just after “That could be. All those little Sue Lyon and Drew Barry- dusk. As many as five coons have competed for scraps. Big- more types traipsing home from school, carrying their books, The faculty, staff, and administration daddy coon, the buccaneer of the bunch, will bang the empty wearing those goddamn football jackets—so you know at John Carroll University metal dish around the stone porch and snuffle up to the win- they’re betrothed to some football player baboon.” warmly congratulate our colleague dowscreen, probing mischievously with his tapered schnoz “Ah, I hear the sour jealousy of a non-athlete…Here’s the and haughty, masked face. Habitually, Booger perches on the really tough question, Frog: how does it feel t’be divorced, George Bilgere, Ph.D. back of the couch, making trills purrs and growls, aroused by deadbeat and desperate—the old three-D existence?” Associate Professor of English the brigade of coons. The operator interrupts to squeeze five more quarters All my cats are strays, orphans, barn cats that fled the out of Frog. barn and lit out down the road. Tina is permanently spooked, “I’m not that bad off. It’s not like I got caught boning the Recipient of a traumatized—impossible to pet or hold. The others, maybe au pair girl.” 2009 Pushcart Prize for his poem all sired by the same marmalade-colored tomcat, came onto “There was an au pair girl?” “Graduates of Western my property a few years apart, meowed for eats, and made “No, there wasn’t. It’d be pretty suspicious hiring one when Military Academy” themselves at home with swift aplomb. If a search party comes we don’t have kids, wouldn’t it? I just need to shape up and looking for Alfalfa, I’ll have to deny his presence. He’s already maybe Genette will take me back.” my new homeboy. “Nobody shapes up at our age, Frog.” *** “Landing a $50,000 a year job would help. And she wants I stroll up the gravel driveway and examine the garage me to enroll in some sort of personality-disorder therapy ruefully. A few weeks ago, drunk and manic, I cannonaded my program.” old Aries into the center post, dislodging the sandstone. The “Sounds punitive. Somebody should write an essay— sagging, weather-drubbed structure looks like a cross between ‘Biblical Wrath and the Modern Divorcee.” a wrecked pagoda and a shotgun shack. I’ve gouged a hole in “You’re the writer, numbnuts. Go to it. Genette’s wrath the clay floor with a posthole digger and rammed a spare beam hasn’t been that sweeping. It’s more reasonable, kinda New into the hole and wedged it against the sagging roof. On the Testament.” Please join us for this very special event! door, which is permanently lifted because the sash is cut, birds “Oh man, I got work t’do on you. I’ll disabuse you of have nested. Egg-sucking snakes and other varmints crawl your last vestige of optimism. We’ll analyze this whole mess The Orange Art Center is excited to invite you to around in here. In July I spotted a five-foot-long blacksnake over six or eight beers upon your arrival. Be prepared for a full our 3rd annual exhibition and benefit, slithering over the ledge, so I feel a prickling on my skin psychic and emotional ream, steam and dryclean.” Taste of Orange: the Fusion of Art and Food This exhibition will showcase and auction the works whenever I venture back here. I kick a few shreds of muddy “Great. Then I get to read your serial killer book, I of artists from around our region. straw, tumbled from a bird’s nest, and study the ledges for suppose.” snake movement. “You can put that off, you coward. You pantywaist.” Mist floats on the hillside as the frost evaporates. The Again the operator butts in. Friday, September 11, 2009 at 6:00PM the fun phone rings as I barge inside, and it’s Frog on the line. “I’m out of quarters, chump. I’ll see ya in a few hours.” begins with a Live and Silent Auction, Amazing “Where you at, Frog-boy?” “See ya then…Put the spillover on my bill, you stickler,” I Hors D’oeuvres and Wonderful Wines. Live and “Still in Ann Arbor. I gotta wait for a muffler shop to say to the operator. There’s a clicking a whooshing, but no silent auction conducted by Bob Hale of Benefit open up. I knocked my motherfuckin’ rust-can muffler off on reply from the ticked-off operator. “Screw off then, ya god- Auction Services, LLC. a speed bump last night.” damn bureaucratic harpie.” Casual attire Frog sounds genial despite this crisis. It takes a real mas- I hang up with a pang. The operator sits in an airless Honorary Co-Chairs Fred and Linda Griffith sacre of a crisis to upset him. “So how was driving through the hive, trapped in a cycle of dull, mechanical, soul-wilting The Griffiths will also be the judges of ourCup Cake Bake-Off heartland like?” labor. My errant piss-shot might cause retribution. I imagine Frog neighs softly. “I passed that Field of Dreams a squadron of phone call ninjas scaling my house, grappling Ticket prices prices: $ 50 per person ($ 25 tax-deductible) ballpark in Iowa, just to bedevil those ghostly knuckleheads.” along, kicking in the windows, hammering me to mincemeat $ 85 per couple ($ 35 tax-deductible) “Because it was a no-brainer move, Frog. You got James and eating my cats like Hong Kong perverts. It’s everyday $100 per person ($ 65 tax-deductible) includes gift $170 per couple ($100 tax-deductible) includes 2 gifts 08 Earl Jones as this bitter black activist writer—and he’s waxing hatefulness and paranoia. I hobble over to the sink and slap 08 09 09 nostalgic about early twentieth century, Jim Crow baseball. some cold water on my mug. For a list of our participating artists, more information and M Unbelievable drivel, even by Hollywood standards.” M U to purchase your tickets contact Orange Art Center at U “You know what redeems the heartland, though? All S Ablaze will be available by Red Giant Press in 2010 216-831-5130 or visit www.orangeartcenter.org S Taste of Orange Taste

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26 27 my room. Set up the security measures and got back in my cold pulsed on and off. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that he was one bed. I formed my cocoon and tried to sleep. It was 1:38 am. Some- plague behind. Or maybe there were mice in his room terrorizing thing jumped on my head. My father banged on the wall – “Quiet!” him. I needed a new idea. The mice weren’t coming from under Chip asked, “Did you see them boxes he bought? Doesn’t Plagued the door; they were coming in from beneath that gap between the he know that shit don’t work?” floor and the wall. “Do you want to tell to him? Hurry up and clean this up. CHARLOTTE MORGAN “I’ve got it! I’m going to fill that space between the floor Momma hated a nasty kitchen. She said, ‘If you see roaches, get and the baseboard with plaster,” I thought. Boric Acid.’ We need to fill in this crack behind this sink,” I said. My brother Craig remembered Momma’s bag of plaster in Sure enough the space behind the sink and the wall the basement. I went down and got some. I made the gray mixture housed roach carcasses. Craig stole money out of our father’s Mu- Our mother, Era Morgan, victim of a loveless marriage and domes- ***** in one of my mother’s best bowls. She used to mix cake batter in it. riel cigar can to buy the Boric Acid. He snuck past our father who tic violence, had run away. She left behind a bitter husband, Charles I got on my hands and knees with a butter knife and filled camped out in his lounge chair watching “The Wide World of Morgan and three of her children. With no mother, our home died I had the brilliant idea of stuffing clothes in front of my in the space. The smell of fresh plaster trumped the staleness in the Sports.” Chip and I kept him talking while Craig ran down to Ellis’ slowly of neglect. Opportunistic mice and roaches and termites door to keep the mice out. They just pushed their way in and even- air. The magazines and books my mother had warned me about Drugstore. moved in and took over. tually one jumped on me while I slept. keeping in my room, were covered in dust. I stopped to read a page “Black people always got their hand out looking for the Then I took a Cleveland Press newspaper, rolled it up and from Vincent Bugliosi’s Helter Skelter. A thick splinter stabbed me white man to give them something. They don’t buy property. They ***** stuffed it under the door. I took Agatha Christie and Dashiell Ham- in the knee. I pulled it out, but some fragments remained. take their money and play the numbers. I tell people I hit every two mett paperbacks and stacked them up to block the door. I was safe. I got back on my knees anyway. I moved furniture to get weeks — with my paycheck. Look at how y’all destroyed this house. The night brought terror. The mice wanted food. I wanted I got under my blanket and turned my radio on, but down to the baseboard. I found coins, an old journal, more dust bunnies, Your mother...” sleep. I wrapped myself up in a blanket, making sure to cover my softly in case there was a breach in my security. I had forgotten to pens and mice droppings galore. I could take it up until he started in on Momma. Luckily, head. I turned my television down low so I could hear the entry of factor in going to the bathroom. I had to open my door and go pee. No one called me for dinner. After I had completed the Craig was at the side door with a bag. Chip took the yellow and red vermin into the room. The hallway was freezing. A basement window was broken. perimeter of the room, I got cleaned up and into bed. I turned on bottle and cut the tip off of it with the butcher knife, Momma used My bed was in the corner. There was a hole in the plaster. The toilet seat was cold and the linoleum was missing the television to watch “The Avengers” on the CBC. I had forgotten to slice her London broiler. The walls were a dingy lemon yellow with a white trim. Momma under my feet. There were holes in the floor around the toilet. The to put my other security measures in place. I heard a mouse in my I snatched the bottle from Chip and squeezed it gener- had painted the room herself. A winter storm captured an entire wood was exposed. There was no electricity in the bathroom so I waste basket. ously and white powder shot out and went up my nostrils and into pane of glass from the back window. Father swore he wouldn’t fix had to finish fast. I threw a shoe and hollered, “Die bastard, die!!” In re- my eyes. Terror struck! My imaginary asthma attacks were worse anything anymore. On the way back to my room I saw that my father’s sponse, it screeched. The plastic on my window rippled in the than real ones. I cut cardboard from a yellow door was broken off its hinges. I saw the light wind, I pulled my blanket tight and tried to go to sleep. “Charlotte, give me the damned bottle,” Craig said. He legal pad into a square big enough to from his televi- A week later, a calico cat had climbed in the broken base- snatched it from my hand and went about applying the powder to cover the missing glass. I stapled it in sion. Then I re- ment window and made herself at home. She ate the mice. every surface and in every crack where we thought a roach might place. Next I took plastic from my fa- membered crawl. I never saw another roach. ther’s dry cleaning, and stapled it what my little over the entire window. I had no heat brother Chip ***** in my room because our father had said, “We ***** had refused to do what Momma got termites One day I had a plate in my room. Out the corner of my asked, “Get that damned heat in here. I think eye, I swore I saw something brown moving up the wall. Momma Some time after we beat the mice and the roaches, Chip duct repaired.” that’s where had told us to never bring food in our rooms. said, “Have you noticed Daddy hasn’t been to the grocery store?” Fully clothed and all these The next time I saw a cockroach, I was in the kitchen dur- wrapped in three blankets, I holes in the ing the daylight hours when I cooked. It moved across the salmon peered out from my fabric for- floor are pink countertop. tress when I heard a mouse run coming “We got roaches,” Craig said on his way to the bathroom. across the room. I kept a shoe from.” Our father had bought these little gray anti-pest nearby and I threw it in the di- I went in boxes. One was on the floor under the kitchen table. A red light rection of the sound. All was quiet 08 08 09 for a moment, and 09

M then it started up M U again. U S S

E M M E

28 29 my room. Set up the security measures and got back in my cold pulsed on and off. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that he was one bed. I formed my cocoon and tried to sleep. It was 1:38 am. Some- plague behind. Or maybe there were mice in his room terrorizing thing jumped on my head. My father banged on the wall – “Quiet!” him. I needed a new idea. The mice weren’t coming from under Chip asked, “Did you see them boxes he bought? Doesn’t Plagued the door; they were coming in from beneath that gap between the he know that shit don’t work?” floor and the wall. “Do you want to tell to him? Hurry up and clean this up. CHARLOTTE MORGAN “I’ve got it! I’m going to fill that space between the floor Momma hated a nasty kitchen. She said, ‘If you see roaches, get and the baseboard with plaster,” I thought. Boric Acid.’ We need to fill in this crack behind this sink,” I said. My brother Craig remembered Momma’s bag of plaster in Sure enough the space behind the sink and the wall the basement. I went down and got some. I made the gray mixture housed roach carcasses. Craig stole money out of our father’s Mu- Our mother, Era Morgan, victim of a loveless marriage and domes- ***** in one of my mother’s best bowls. She used to mix cake batter in it. riel cigar can to buy the Boric Acid. He snuck past our father who tic violence, had run away. She left behind a bitter husband, Charles I got on my hands and knees with a butter knife and filled camped out in his lounge chair watching “The Wide World of Morgan and three of her children. With no mother, our home died I had the brilliant idea of stuffing clothes in front of my in the space. The smell of fresh plaster trumped the staleness in the Sports.” Chip and I kept him talking while Craig ran down to Ellis’ slowly of neglect. Opportunistic mice and roaches and termites door to keep the mice out. They just pushed their way in and even- air. The magazines and books my mother had warned me about Drugstore. moved in and took over. tually one jumped on me while I slept. keeping in my room, were covered in dust. I stopped to read a page “Black people always got their hand out looking for the Then I took a Cleveland Press newspaper, rolled it up and from Vincent Bugliosi’s Helter Skelter. A thick splinter stabbed me white man to give them something. They don’t buy property. They ***** stuffed it under the door. I took Agatha Christie and Dashiell Ham- in the knee. I pulled it out, but some fragments remained. take their money and play the numbers. I tell people I hit every two mett paperbacks and stacked them up to block the door. I was safe. I got back on my knees anyway. I moved furniture to get weeks — with my paycheck. Look at how y’all destroyed this house. The night brought terror. The mice wanted food. I wanted I got under my blanket and turned my radio on, but down to the baseboard. I found coins, an old journal, more dust bunnies, Your mother...” sleep. I wrapped myself up in a blanket, making sure to cover my softly in case there was a breach in my security. I had forgotten to pens and mice droppings galore. I could take it up until he started in on Momma. Luckily, head. I turned my television down low so I could hear the entry of factor in going to the bathroom. I had to open my door and go pee. No one called me for dinner. After I had completed the Craig was at the side door with a bag. Chip took the yellow and red vermin into the room. The hallway was freezing. A basement window was broken. perimeter of the room, I got cleaned up and into bed. I turned on bottle and cut the tip off of it with the butcher knife, Momma used My bed was in the corner. There was a hole in the plaster. The toilet seat was cold and the linoleum was missing the television to watch “The Avengers” on the CBC. I had forgotten to slice her London broiler. The walls were a dingy lemon yellow with a white trim. Momma under my feet. There were holes in the floor around the toilet. The to put my other security measures in place. I heard a mouse in my I snatched the bottle from Chip and squeezed it gener- had painted the room herself. A winter storm captured an entire wood was exposed. There was no electricity in the bathroom so I waste basket. ously and white powder shot out and went up my nostrils and into pane of glass from the back window. Father swore he wouldn’t fix had to finish fast. I threw a shoe and hollered, “Die bastard, die!!” In re- my eyes. Terror struck! My imaginary asthma attacks were worse anything anymore. On the way back to my room I saw that my father’s sponse, it screeched. The plastic on my window rippled in the than real ones. I cut cardboard from a yellow door was broken off its hinges. I saw the light wind, I pulled my blanket tight and tried to go to sleep. “Charlotte, give me the damned bottle,” Craig said. He legal pad into a square big enough to from his televi- A week later, a calico cat had climbed in the broken base- snatched it from my hand and went about applying the powder to cover the missing glass. I stapled it in sion. Then I re- ment window and made herself at home. She ate the mice. every surface and in every crack where we thought a roach might place. Next I took plastic from my fa- membered crawl. I never saw another roach. ther’s dry cleaning, and stapled it what my little over the entire window. I had no heat brother Chip ***** in my room because our father had said, “We ***** had refused to do what Momma got termites One day I had a plate in my room. Out the corner of my asked, “Get that damned heat in here. I think eye, I swore I saw something brown moving up the wall. Momma Some time after we beat the mice and the roaches, Chip duct repaired.” that’s where had told us to never bring food in our rooms. said, “Have you noticed Daddy hasn’t been to the grocery store?” Fully clothed and all these The next time I saw a cockroach, I was in the kitchen dur- wrapped in three blankets, I holes in the ing the daylight hours when I cooked. It moved across the salmon peered out from my fabric for- floor are pink countertop. tress when I heard a mouse run coming “We got roaches,” Craig said on his way to the bathroom. across the room. I kept a shoe from.” Our father had bought these little gray anti-pest nearby and I threw it in the di- I went in boxes. One was on the floor under the kitchen table. A red light rection of the sound. All was quiet 08 08 09 for a moment, and 09

M then it started up M U again. U S S

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