Onomatopoeia Magazine

Onomatopoeia Magazine SUMMER 2010 Issue

2010-06-17T22:04:00.000-07:00

Click HERE to view and download the SUMMER 2010 issue. Courtesy of issuu.com

CONTENTS

FICTION

The Things We Keep by Liane Kupferberg Carter

Young Man with a Moustache by Jeffery Ryan Long

Scent on a Mission by Margaret Eaton

Darkness and Storm by Barrie Darke

Dwight Goes to Rehab by Michael Frissore

POETRY
1001/1011 by Thomas Reed
Death Before Factory by Anthony Liccione
Black Seed by Black Seed by Donal Mahoney
Caseworker Takes Notes by Donal Mahoney

WHATNOT

Straight From an Agent - Nathan Bransford, literary agent/author/blogger interviewed by Bobby D. Lux

O' War! War! O' Elegant, Heavenly War! Essay by BothEyesShut

All the Pretty Horses Photo by Christopher Woods

The Fortune Teller Is On A Break Photo by Christopher Woods

Solve the Equation Art by Todd R. Behrendt

A young Midwestern girl looking bored, lace curtains in window light and a silhouette of a flightless bird Art by Todd R. Behrendt
Ilie Ruby's The Language of Trees Reviewed by Bobby D. Lux
Millicent Borges Accardi's Woman on a Shaky Bridge Reviewed by Jara Jones

NOTE FROM THE EDITOR

I'll be honest, a part of me feared that Onomatopoeia would be a one-and-done project. Fortunately, I had a bit of luck and good fortune on my side. The SPRING issue found a bit of an audience and I received far more submissions (good ones too!) for the SUMMER issue than expected, so now I have to keep this going because the FALL 2010 issue is already being constructed... at least until a large multi-national media conglomerate comes knocking with their million dollar offer for the website.

In actual Onomatopoeia news, Jara Jones has graciously come on board as the Poetry Editor and will begin working on the FALL 2010 issue. I will make one promise that we will have a podcast up and running before the next issue. I will also promise that I will do my best to figure out how to make Onomatopoeia available as a free e-book for you kids with your fancy Kindles and stuff.

That's it for now. See you in September.

Bobby D. Lux

Editor-in-Chief

Onomatopoeia Magazine

Nathan Bransford, literary agent, interviewed by Bobby D. Lux

2010-06-17T21:49:00.001-07:00

“…remember that the only way to write a novel is to sit down and write it and keep going even when you would rather be doing anything other than writing.”

Straight From an Agent

Nathan Bransford, Literary Agent, Curtis Brown Ltd.

as interviewed by Bobby D. Lux

Of all the tremendous resources available to writers on the Internet these days, for my money (of which I have very little, for the record), the most invaluable is the access to daily interactions with literary agents. Nathan Bransford, an agent based out of the San Francisco offices of Curtis Brown Ltd., is perhaps the most accessible of all the literary agents who have embraced an online presence. During any given week, the thousands of visitors to his daily blog, www.nathanbransford.com, are provided with a front row seat to the ins and outs of the publishing world from a perspective and insight that has rarely been available to them before. And if they’re lucky, Bransford, an author himself, will gladly critique their work for them [HINT: Get there early on Mondays]. If that’s not enough, he’ll answer specific questions directly on his forum about all things publishing, querying, and even LOST (Requiescant in pace).

Can you discuss your evolution in becoming a writer/agent/blogger?

When I graduated from college I knew I wanted to work in publishing, and my first job was assistant to the president of Curtis Brown, an incredible agent and mentor. That set me on the long apprenticeship to becoming an agent. When I was beginning to take on clients and starting to build my list at the end of 2006, because it’s so difficult to get established I wanted to set myself apart from other agents out there by building a web presence and try and help out people who were seeking publication. At that time there were a few blogging agents, but for the most part the industry hadn’t yet really embraced the Internet and especially social networking. So I started blogging, at first on MySpace (how 2006 was that?) and then over at Blogger. It’s been immensely rewarding, and I couldn’t have imagined at the time the extent to which it would be integral to building my client list.

When I set out to be an agent I honestly never really thought I’d end up writing – I thought maybe I’d write a screenplay one day, but eventually I decided to try writing a novel. My first attempt crashed and burned, but I ended up having a new idea that I was excited about and I wrote another novel around the end of 2008 and beginning of 2009. That became JACOB WONDERBAR AND THE COSMIC SPACE KAPOW, and I was fortunate enough to find an agent and publisher. It will come out next year.

As an agent, what do you for look for in a writer? Is this different from what you look for as a reader?

I’m a generalist both as a reader and an agent, and read just about anything. I’m drawn to compelling plots, unique voices, and I’m not a trend follower at all. I’m always looking for stories that are just brilliantly told regardless of what the market is doing. My essential feeling is that you can’t start a new trend if you’re always chasing the ones that are already “hot.”

The one main difference is that as an agent I’m looking for writers who think of themselves as more than just a writer and are willing to go the extra mile with publicity, building an online presence, and doing everything they can to help themselves stand out. As I’m sure you’ve heard the publishing industry is going through a period of transition and turmoil, and authors who are willing to embrace the business and publicity end of writing have a better shot at making their work stand out in this competitive landscape than those who think of themselves as just a writer.

What is your favorite part of being a writer? An agent? A blogger?

As a writer, it’s just so fun to create worlds and put your characters in tricky situations, and when you’re finished with a novel, no matter what happens with it it’s something you can look back on and be proud of. It’s hard work and I’m not one of those people who always finds writing fun (and I’ll admit that I’m a little suspicious of those who do), but there’s really nothing else like it.

The best part of being an agent is helping make writers’ dreams come true and seeing a project go from a brief description in a query to something that is sitting on shelves and out there for readers to love. It’s often a frustrating (and very long) process, but when everything comes together it’s immensely rewarding.

And my favorite part of blogging is the instant feedback and the dialogue with readers. I’ve learned an incredible amount from my readers, and I’m eternally grateful to the people who participate and leave comments and participate in the blogging community.

How does being an agent inform you as a writer? How does being a writer inform you as an agent?

In the course of my job I’m reading all the time, and since I’m a hands-on agent I have to think very critically about what is and isn’t working in a manuscript and be able to articulate that to an author. While it’s much harder to be self-critical of your own work, it’s been very helpful to think about structure and why certain elements work and others don’t and forgetting what I learned in college about approaching books in terms of what they mean and instead every day asking the question, “Is this good? Will this appeal to readers?”

And as an agent, being a writer has made me much more sympathetic to just how difficult the process is, how it feels to be an author waiting for news for a really long time and how it can render you temporarily insane. I think it’s cemented my respect for always trying to help an author achieve their vision.

What's the worst part of being an agent? What's the best?

The worst part is the waiting. The best part is when the wait is over.

Play Nostradamus if you will... Where do you see the publishing industry heading in the next several years?

The publishing industry is currently undergoing a huge amount of turmoil as it moves from a business that depended on its unparalleled ability to get paper books from authors into bookstores to one that is in the content delivery business and where it doesn’t enjoy any particular distribution advantage. The major publishers historically were able to choose the books that they placed in front of readers, and were really the only game in town if an author wanted to have their work read in large quantities. With the rise of e-books that advantage is going to erode, and there is enormous competition not just from books that are coming on the market outside of regular channels but from other media as well, much of it available for free.

There’s still no real replacement for the package of services that publishers are able to bring to bear (authors of the future will still need editing, copyediting, design, etc.), but in the challenging short term landscape publishers are probably going to continue to focus on the blockbuster titles and books they think they can break out in a major way. The challenge is that they have to pay top dollar for the hottest commodities, meaning it’s tough to make money even when something does catch fire.

But e-books are here to stay, and the next five, ten, twenty years are going to be a wild ride for everyone in the content delivery business.

Could you spare some free advice for aspiring novelists? What to do... and what not to do?

I think the most important thing is to study the craft and business of writing. Writing a novel isn’t just a matter of sitting down and letting the genius flow, it’s important to have a sense of how to craft the ups and downs of plot, avoid rookie errors, and think of character arcs and all the rest. Even if you’re writing literary fiction: it still needs to have a plot. And when you are finished it’s not just a matter of sending it out and sitting back as other people take care of the rest – it’s important to really know the business and to use that information to your advantage.

The other main advice is to remember that the only way to write a novel is to sit down and write it and keep going even when you would rather be doing anything other than writing. Lots of people write when it’s fun and stop when it’s not, and that’s no way to finish a novel.

Your debut novel, "Jacob Wonderbear and The Cosmic Space Kapow" is set to come out in 2011. Can you give us a preview?

JACOB WONDERBAR is a middle grade novel about three kids who trade a corndog for a spaceship, blast off into space, accidentally break the universe, and have to find their way back home. They visit crazy planets, become frenemies with a space pirate, have wild adventures, and meet the king of the universe.

Do you see yourself continuing to write in the YA genre?

I’m not sure what the future brings, but I’m currently writing a sequel to JACOB WONDERBAR, so that’s my world (or I guess universe) for the near future.

How do you manage to find the time to write, blog, and be an agent?

My hobbies have gradually fallen by the wayside and the Wii is like a Siren I have been successfully resisting for the last several years, but I love agenting, blogging, and writing more than my hobbies, so I’m happy with the tradeoff.

Finally, why do you hate the Lakers?

Well, my family have been die-hard Sacramento Kings fans from the beginning, and the vile Lakers have always the Kings’ arch-rivals, especially during the 2002 Western Conference Finals when the referees stole Game 6 from the Kings in utterly blatant fashion AND NO I AM NOT OVER IT A;LSDKJF. Nothing personal though.

For more information on all things Nathan Bransford, look no further than www.nathanbransford.com. You can also find him at www.curtisbrown.com.

# # #

Bobby D. Lux is the editor-in-chief of Onomatopoeia Magazine. His fiction and non-fiction has been published here and there, including several stories in FLYMF’s Greatest Hits. A sometimes actor and murder mystery dinner theater host, he’s currently hard at work on that damn novel of his.

Poetry Review - Millicent Borges Accardi's Woman on a Shaky Bridge reviewed by Jara Jones

2010-06-17T21:41:00.001-07:00

Woman on a Shaky Bridge by Millicent Borges Accardi
Reviewed by Jara Jones

Accardi asserts in the title of one of her poems, "This is What People Do". It's the poetry version of a street busker whipping out the chainsaws and starting to juggle. It's flashy, more than a little cocky, and it draws a crowd.

However, once you've snapped the reader to attention, the poet has got to deliver. And for the most part, Accardi succeeds (specifically with work which effectively combines her skills in economical imagery and clear, gentle repetition). No better example of Accardi's craft can be found than in her ode "For John, For Coltrane", when she writes:

"They say he looked ten
years older than the music;
They say the music used his
his body more
than love..."

While there are a few flat notes in her collection, Accardi's Woman on a Shaky Bridge makes good on its promise to document how "anxiety affects attraction", and is recommended for any poet who wants to see how a skilled artist can marry form with a welcome point of view.

Woman on a Shaky Bridge was published by Finishing Line Press - www.finishinglinepress.com.

# # #

Jara Jones is the brand spanking new poetry editor for Onomatopoeia Magazine and is the sort of chap who'd stab you in the throat. With a paper clip, and a little determination. Or maybe he'll make you some pancakes. Hard to say, really. He thinks good poems should be like hand grenades: brutish, violent, and quick.

Art - A young Midwestern girl looking bored, lace curtains in window light and a silhouette of a flightless bird by Todd R. Behrendt

2010-06-17T21:37:00.001-07:00

Todd R. Behrendt lives in the deep woods of the Adirondacks with his wife. His work has appeared in Burn Magazine, Direct Art and Interrobang Magazine. He welcomes all comers to www.trbehrendt.com.

Photography - All the Pretty Horses by Christopher Woods

2010-06-17T21:33:00.001-07:00

Christopher Woods is a writer, teacher and photographer who lives in Texas. He shares a gallery with his wife Linda at MOONBIRD HILL ARTS - www.moonbirdhill.exposuremanager.com.
©2010 Christopher Woods, All Rights Reserved

Poem - Death Before Factory by Anthony Liccione

2010-06-17T21:25:00.001-07:00

Death Before Factory by Anthony Liccione

These factories
that surround my house
always burning,
with three chimneys
sticking out of each,
lining themselves up
like a locomotive,
only going nowhere--

they keep
smoking more clouds
to the sky,
more toxicity,
to a diseased-worn city.
And those inside
the belly of the sweat,
feeding a broiler that bleats
for more coal,
more steak and potatoes,
around a time clock
that speaks in different
tongues,
and spits out the same
repetitive, redundant
load of production.

The robotic workers.

Tattooed with
plastic trees and
roaming hungry eyes
behind their heads,
and on their backs
they sleep in a trailer
that never forgives them.
They wake to a mirror
that never eats with them,
only swallows them whole.

There is only need here
never want,
want would be asking
for new car, a new wife:
it is just enough
to make a paycheck
survive, live
until it bounces back
in a unpaid whine.

The same count by the hour,
the same quota
of faces that break their backs
and run overworked fingers
over the mill, punch press

sorting, spraying, capping
oiling, typing, tying;
the tedious conveyor belt
always lashing forward
like a snakes tongue.

The paper cuts, pepper
-cheese boxes,
assorted mail droppings

waiting for the whistle
to change shifts,
a pink slip–
to slip into a new life.

# # #

Anthony lives in Texas with his two children. His poems have appeared in several print and online journals, and he has four collections of poetry books.
©2010 Anthony Liccione, All Rights Reserved

Poem - 1001/1011 by Thomas Reed

2010-06-17T21:19:00.001-07:00

1001/1011 by Thomas Reed

A bug:
little long thing, sat on an eyelash.
All about is tremulant:
the pudgy hand of a child wipes tears.

She cries, "MOM!",
who runs from across the street, not looking,
to coddle, kiss, talk sweet things:
meatloaf, mashed potatoes, apple pie,
lies about who will be there to share.

Bank tellers leave their posts;
shops left empty; cars pulling up;
all join the crowd:
people holding hands,
sharing "it-can't-be"s and "oh-my-god"s;
threats, worries, consolations; all rise,
like bleats in an abattoir,
some lambs flossy white, others greyed,
each voice lost in the flood of the whole.

A crash; a scream;
the lambs are silenced.
All tumbles:
dust, rubble, glass, steel,
desks turned to splinters.

A final crash, then calm.
Among the ruin, some find books, crushed lunchboxes,
smashed "World's Best Dad" mugs.
Unlucky lambs find bodies, or parts of bodies.

# # #

Thom Reed is a student who spends most of his time watching old cartoons and sleeping. He'd like to write an existentialist masterpiece someday, but for now he needs to pick a haircut.
©2010 Thomas Reed, All Rights Reserved

Poem - Caseworker Takes Notes by Donal Mahoney

2010-06-17T20:16:00.001-07:00

Caseworker Takes Notes by Donal Mahoney

I was there the day
there trickled down the wall
of an old man's room one roach

that stopped across
a canyon in the plaster till
the old man's elevated slipper fell.

The roach absorbed the blow
and as though perforated for that purpose
dissolved into an archipelago.

The old man looked at me
and patiently explained, "Despite my
constant smacking of its brethren

one roach each day will trickle down that wall
and pause and pose as if to say,
'Go ahead and smack me, that's okay.' "

To take advantage of the archipelago at hand
the old man pointed toward the last palpitating island
and once again explained,

"Each roach I smack, you see,
offers me that same good-bye--
one last flicker of antennae."

# # #

Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.A. He has worked as an editor for The Chicago Sun-Times, Loyola University Press and Washington University in St. Louis. He has had poems published in the U.S. and abroad in a variety of print and online publications. Recently he received word that he has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. However, the nomination is for a poem he hopes no one reads in its present state.
©2010 Donal Mahoney, All Rights Reserved

Essay - O’ War! War! O’ Elegant, Heavenly War! by BothEyesShut

2010-06-17T09:11:00.001-07:00

“What to do for this social sickness? Depose the rich and give their stuff to the poor, á la Robin Hood? That only works in movies.”

O’ War! War! O’ Elegant, Heavenly War!

by BothEyesShut

Reason and intelligence lead thoughtful people to reach the same conclusions when those conclusions seem most obvious, and that’s a shame. We intellectual sorts daily nod and smile at one another, agreeing on many momentous topics of discussion, differing on only the tiniest of distinctions. Too many discussions terminate with these knee-jerk conclusions, really, and one of these universally agreed-upon topics happens to be the matter of war.

War, says the sage scholar, is a base, savage, corrupt, unworthy use of our time and resources. War, he spits, defiles our dignity and pollutes our minds, denounces our integrity and poisons our innocence. War, he decries, is hell.

However, this perspective does not lend itself to a round, fair judgment of martial practices. War is too ancient a human institution to be flippantly dismissed out-of-hand. We owe too much of our bounteous, idyllic lifestyle to war for such a hasty expulsion of it. War is too human to be deemed inhumane.

War, the heart of so much civilization, cannot be immoral, unjust, or depraved. War is not loathsome, nor is it an abomination. War is not iniquity.

War, in fact — is a really, really good time.

War is not hell. Come now, does this look like hell to you?

I. War Brings People Together

“[The most awesomest party ever] grows out of the barrel of a gun.”
– Mao Tse-Tung

Nothing thrills the soul like a good explosion, except maybe a good explosion with body parts flying out of it. Rather than blowing people up solo, though, one can make the minutest bang a resounding ka-boom! by inviting one’s friends and neighbors along. An armed skirmish inspires conviviality, and any reason to hold a shin-dig is a good one.

Many Southern Californians live in apathy of their neighbors, ignorant of their neighbors’ names, ignorant of their neighbors’ proclivities, ignorant of their neighbors altogether except for the kind of car they drive and which households make the most noise. We repeatedly prove ourselves too proud to love, too haughty to give a heartfelt hug when we need it most. Drop a few cluster bombs on the local strip mall, though, and people cling to one another like infant monkeys.

Never mind the block party; Mrs. Dilweed’s acclaimed potato salad isn’t going to make any friends. It’s suppression fire from a machine gun nest at the end of a suburban cul-de-sac that softens the hardest of hearts. Until cowering in a muddy shell crater with them, one never knows one’s true brothers and sisters. Camaraderie springs from warmth, and the root word of warmth is war (little known fact). This is why most ordnance produces heat, flame and conflagration, and why even cold bullets, once in merry flight, are called fire.

Don’t stay out in the cold. Choose warmth. Choose war.

Did you see that buzzbomb clip Ralph as it whizzed by? Bang! Zoom! What a gas!

II. War Inspires Art

“The object of war is not to [party hard] for your country but to make the other bastard [party hard] for his.”
– General George S. Patton, Jr.

     What pastoral oils graced canvases during Earth’s peaceful centuries? What poetry dripped honeylike from the tongues of minstrels during the Great Pacific Period? What music resounded through the halls of humanity during the Time of Tranquility?
     Aha! But there were never any such occasions, of course. Do not be silly.
     All great art is the result of a vicious, mindless, self-consuming, bullet-tossing, bomb-fumbling world hell-bent on blending hell into every fine thing produced by man. Without the bang of guns, there would be no onomatopœia. Without the need for camouflage, there would be no paint. Without the need for morale, there would be no music, no comedy, no burlesque.
     Without war, the Beatles would have been a boy band. Without war, Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls would have been about schoolchildren dismissed for summer. Without war, Leutze’s painting of Washington crossing the Delaware, boot at the prow, would have featured that great general having his shoes shined.
     No art exists but that which came from the fertile, menstruating womb of war. What possible inspiration could there, otherwise, be? God (big G)? Please. We have a Sistine Chapel already, thank you.

Without war, we'd not have pretty paintings like "2,000-Yard Stare," by Tom Lea

III. War Improves the Humans-to-Resources Ratio

“The death of one man is [smart shopping]. The death of millions is a [hot deal].”
– Josef Stalin, comment to Churchill at Potsdam, 1945

Limited resources! cry the teachers of social studies. Limited resources! cry the pundits of the mass media. Limited resources! cry the politicians of every country throughout time. All these persons devoutly believe to have spotted the obvious reason for war, when all along they’ve had it backwards. War is not a battle over limited resources. War is the simple solution by which humanity divides limited resources amongst fewer peoples.
What difference does it make if seventy percent of all the oil in the world exists in the Middle East and North Africa, if there are so few people in said world that they couldn’t possibly consume it all in seventy-seven generations? War isn’t a contest of tug-o’-war with natural resources as the prize. War is a game of musical chairs which begins with someone left standing, and ends with everyone seated comfortably.
Every human death brings humanity closer to feeding itself. The practice of warfare puts palatable provisions on everyone’s plate.

Always enough to go around when "around" is less round

IV. War Spurs Science

“You can’t say that civilization don’t advance, however, for in every war they kill you in a new way [that is consistent with the scientific method].”
- Will Rogers

Dehydrated foods, microwave technology, and countless other advances sprang from the American war machine, yet detractors still picket and march and gripe and whine, saying, “Make love, not war!” and, “Draft beer, not people!” as though these pithy proverbs were the pinnacle of wit and political consciousness. These naysayers have conviction — one can tell by the limitless cash they spend on verbose bumper stickers for their hybrid automobiles, verbose little slogans such as, “Why do people bomb people who bomb people to show that bombing people is wrong?” and “It will be a great day when schools have all the money they need and the air force has to hold a bake sale to construct a bomber” — but their hypocrisy outshines their passion every time they stir water into their Carnation Instant Breakfast (™) or nuke their breakfast burritos for thirty seconds on High.
War motivates our sharpest knives and brightest bulbs to design ever-more-efficient blenders in which to purée people, without which the interminable process of old-fashioned battle would positively bore the soldiers to death. Who wants a war without robotic drone fighter planes firing laser-guided ordnance while threading the needle through phased-array radar sites? Nobody, that’s who. Night vision goggles with infrared target-acquisition-sharing capability! Electromagnetic silent supersonic Gauss rifles! Nuclear submarines playing hide n’ seek beneath polar ice caps, with bionic remote-controlled spy sharks to follow them!
Let’s face it, war makes a technological wonderland out of an otherwise unremarkable world, and though it may seem somewhat more destructive, we’d all probably die of boredom without it, anyway.

The hi-tech miracles of war bring delightful conveniences into every home. Every boy and girl will want a civilian version of BigDog under the tree this Christmas!

V. War Brings the Rich and Poor Together

“When the rich wage war, it’s the poor who [benefit greatly].”
- Jean-Paul Sartre

     Of the many struggles plaguing mankind, class warfare remains one of the most deleterious. The working class has always been exploited by people with money and power, and has always outnumbered its rich slave-owners by a ratio too imbalanced to ignore. In 2006, the top one percent of the population of the United States owned more than twenty percent of the wealth. This is the same as if the rich had stolen every single possession from nineteen percent of American citizens, not to mention everything these unfortunate nineteen percent are currently earning, and everything they will earn until the day they fall over and die — until the statistic changes again, that is.
     What to do for this social sickness? Depose the rich and give their stuff to the poor, á la Robin Hood? That only works in movies. Once again we find that war, that old internecine pastime, is the answer.
The problem is not economic disparity. The crisis is that aristocrats are an alarmingly endangered species, their numbers falling faster than those of the black rhino, the giant panda, or the beluga sturgeon. In order to save this grievously assailed caste, the opposing herd must be thinned. What better use for the poor, than war? War is not only useful for inciting art, science, conservation, and brotherly love; it’s also humanity’s best method of lessening the huddled masses of impoverished paupers to match the dwindling and endangered populations of aristocrats.
     Eat your heart out, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Why not? Ancient Romans coined their money and forged their swords from the same metal, and in the same fire.

VI. War Spurs Philosophy

“We make war that we may live in [wine-induced philosophical contemplation].”
-Aristotle

     Humanity once needed to laze in order to store up energy for the hunt. Now that our prey comes to us through drive-thru take-out windows, we no longer require such lazing, but shaking the habit has proven too difficult for most of us and as a result, we’re lazy.
     Philosophers are no different, and in fact often constitute the laziest portion of society (armchairs redounding). For this indolence the fault falls but partially on them, however. Having explained away the meaning of life with eighteen answers to choose from (and this before even touching upon world religions) philosophers peaked rather young, and the resulting malaise keeps them from coming up with new material for our amusement on a regular basis, lazy bastards that they are.
     With the threat and promise of war, though, philosophers and thinkers from every corner of the globe clamber over one another to pose their perspectives to the world. War is detestable! say some, and War is inevitable! say others, and War is glorious! say still more, all of them having worked out valid, logical reasoning to support their point of view.
     Without war, whatever would we do for philosophy? Where would we find our bathroom reading? Like it or not, the world has war to thank for the musings of Confucius, Gandhi, Lao Tze, Kant, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the rest of the simpering peaceniks.
     No war, no philosophy.

Socrates preferred the M4A1 for its close spread at medium range

VII. War Holds Religions Accountable

“An eye for an eye makes the whole world [see eye-to-eye].”
- Mohandas Karamchand Ghandi

     Perhaps most importantly, war keeps the world’s major religions on their toes. Any religious leader can jaw non-stop about how one ought to live one’s life, but when hundreds of weeping mothers pour in on Sunday begging for a divine promise to bring their sons home from war unscathed, even the most wretched charlatan must turn his gaze inward and ask himself, “Do I really know what the hell I’m talking about? Do I really think there’s an ultimate source of love and wisdom and fairness who could let a war like this happen, simply because people are born imperfect and grow up stupid enough to fire projectiles at each other?”
Mark 13:7 says that wars must happen. Judaism and Islam have been hurling grenades at one another for centuries. Hinduism even has a goddess, Kali, dedicated to destruction, and Taoism doesn’t really care one way or the other. It should surprise no one, therefore, that most of the people recruiting for war, speaking in favor of war, and doing the actual killing practice religion. War benefits religions by holding them accountable, and by accomplishing the following:
     War eliminates the fighters from religious congregations, leaving only the lovers.
     War forces religious leaders to answer in detail the most treacherous, and imperative, mysteries of life.
     War allows believers to emphasize their belief in heaven by martyring themselves, an otherwise impossible task in the modern era.
     “‘There are no atheists in foxholes’ is not an argument against atheism — it’s an argument against foxholes,” says James Morrow. Indeed, nobody wants a godless heathen in the trenches defending America. What would that say about us here at home?

Warriors of anti-aircraft fire and theosophical debate, may your barbs fly true!

VIII. War Destroys Warfarers

“We have to face the fact that either we are going to die together or live together and if we are going to live together then we are going to have to [die together anyway].”
– Eleanor Roosevelt

Having covered all the aforementioned benefits of war, it remains to note that even if war could be disparaged (not bloody likely) enemies of this most honorable practice would have nothing to fear, because war primarily destroys warfarers. Collateral damages aside, and the odd woman-and-child combination notwithstanding, most victims of war who die with bullets in their chests die also with guns in their hands.
War, then, is a cancer-eating cancer. Who can fear an innocuous thing like that?

Like Romeo and Juliet, war loves war, and war kills war.

IX. War Expedites Evolution

“Violence is the last refuge of the [guy who should have tried violence sooner].”
– Isaac Asimov

     The human race has war to thank for much of its enduring success and happiness, but natural selection continues. Having developed foresight, as well as a prototypical reasoning faculty, humans owe it to themselves to help speed evolution along, rather than sluggishly floating through stages of development like flotsam on a wave.
     Since evolution depends on the deaths of as many would-be parents as possible, war hurries genetic development exponentially. Millions of heroic, conscientious warmongers with an earnest desire to kill opt out of parenthood, and thereby hurry the filtration process. In addition to these purposeful patriots, millions eject themselves from the gene pool by enlisting under dubious pretenses also, including (though fortunately not limited to) the overemotional, the desperate, the directionless, the uneducated, the unassuming, the weak-willed, and the easily-convinced. With all these excellent specimens volunteering their progeny for oblivion, homo sapien version 2.0 might just be released millions of years ahead of schedule.
     One never knows which genetic mutation will prove most useful to the next line of humans, but one thing is certain: war finds those beneficial mutations quickly — much faster than waiting for rest homes to empty does.

Evolution at the speed of boom

     With so much to thank war for, how can we continue to castigate this most-precious of traditions? There’s so little the world can agree on! And yet, everyone admires the silent nobility of a rusted, burned-out tank half-hidden in tall, green grass. Everybody can appreciate the natural beauty of an antiquated minefield, the subtle majesty of barbed wire silhouetted against the sunrise, its coils spiraling along the horizon like glittering ivy.
     Why must we as a civilized people rebel against our most fundamental natures? Let us enjoin our destinies hand-in-hand, staring boldly, proudly down the rifled barrels of our mutual obliteration. Let us not come to regard our beatific invasions as clumsy mistakes, but as the measured, artful strokes of a virtuoso violinist crafting a concerto.
     There’s nothing sick or evil about death. Death, so-called, does not even truly exist except as the briefest juncture between shapes of life, a nurturing moment in the infinite infancy of existence. Let us not stay the hand of the reaper, but take up our plows and sow our seeds in preparation for Death’s gentle harvest.
     We did not invent war. We are war.
     So stand down the picket signs and snatch up the weaponry, salute the Commander In-Chief and strut stolidly to doom. Our splendor and sublimity await!

     With Much Love and Many Rockets,
     -BothEyesShut

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BothEyesShut is the author of the popular new weblog, "In a Real World, This Would Be Happening" at botheyesshut.wordpress.com. He was born in Huntington Beach, CA and is currently writing his fifth novel. He lives in Long Beach.
© 2010 BothEyesShut, All Rights Reserved

Art - Solve the Equation by Todd R. Behrendt

2010-06-17T09:03:00.001-07:00

Todd R. Behrendt lives in the deep woods of the Adirondacks with his wife. His work has appeared in Burn Magazine, Direct Art and Interrobang Magazine. He welcomes all comers to www.trbehrendt.com.

Book Review - Ilie Ruby's Language of Trees reviewed by Bobby D. Lux

2010-06-17T08:57:00.000-07:00

The Language of Trees by Ilie Ruby
Reviewed by Bobby D. Lux

In her debut novel, The Language of Trees, Ilie Ruby wastes no time grabbing her readers and immersing them into a sense of foreboding that hangs in the air like heavy fog. Her narrative is instantly inviting and her characters are as charming as they are wonderfully vulnerable.

Among the many strengths of this work is how Ruby’s Lake Canandaigua setting leaps off the page as well-defined as you would expect any other character. Ruby, also a poet, knows this setting very well and whether it’s charting the twenty-four hour lifespan of the Mayfly on the one day a year they inhabit the lake to telling of local myths and legends, she injects the reader with an honest feeling of the region without slipping into melancholy.

Of course, the themes of love lost and discovering a second chance in life are among the usual suspects, but Ruby’s approach to them illustrates a depth in her writing not always found in the work of debuting novelists. Ruby places her likable, headstrong, and wounded characters within in a haunting (a carefully chosen word) atmosphere where redemption is possible if you’re ready to find healing.

The result is character-driven page-turner of a novel that’s eager to be an excellent companion on long summer days. Ruby proves herself a writer capable of crafting an engaging story of great emotional depth; a writer both eager and well-prepared to stake a claim for herself in the literary world.

The Language of Trees was published by Avon Harper Collins. You can find more information on Ilie Ruby and her work at her website, www.ilieruby.com.

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Bobby D. Lux is the editor-in-chief of Onomatopoeia Magazine.
© 2010 Bobby D. Lux, All Rights Reserved

Fiction - The Things We Keep by Liane Kupferberg Carter

2010-06-17T08:18:00.000-07:00

“She opened what she assumed was another closet, and discovered a dressing room she didn't remember. It was full of empty tie racks and barren shoe trees. Then she looked up, into the painted gray eyes of an oddly serious child swinging from a gate.”

The Things We Keep

by Liane Kupferberg Carter

A week after their father Gene's funeral, Barbara and Aggie Harrell and their cousin Emma went to clean out his apartment. Barbara had not been there since a disastrous dinner with her father and his second wife Pauline three years earlier. The building had seemed elegant, but now one of the art deco letters over the awning was missing, and the chandeliered lobby smelled of last week's lamb stew. Barbara had a key that Gene's neighbor, Mrs. Milner, had pressed on her at the funeral. Her eyes had been an ugly red. "I can't go back in there, Ms. Harrell," she'd said, sounding apologetic. She was the one who had found him.

Barbara arrived first, feeling like a guilty trespasser. The apartment seemed foreign and masculine; no trace of Pauline remained. She opened the window and stood as uncertainly as she had the last time, waiting to be invited to sit. So much furniture to give away. She had no use for it and she doubted that Aggie and her husband Jerry would want anything that they hadn't specifically chosen for the house they were building on the North Shore. Jerry had just installed voice-activated lights in every room. "What if you get laryngitis?" Barbara had said, but Jerry hadn’t been amused.

The trick, she thought, was to work quickly, not to think. She flipped several light switches before she found the hall light, and opened the first closet she saw. The butterscotch Lifesaver smell she had once loved so much still clung to his jackets. The last time she'd been there, the assailing smell of Pauline's perfume had hung everywhere.

Barbara pulled suits from the closet, feeling like a suspicious wife as she emptied the pockets of change and match books and ticket stubs. She'd have to see that the electricity was turned off soon. Stop the mail. The phone service too, she thought, noticing an antique brass telephone on the hall table. As she folded clothes, she remembered the summer she was five, when Gene ran a string from the basement to the garage, and they had talked to each other through two tin cans. Sometimes she would place a finger lightly on the string to feel the vibration of his words. She tried to remember the sound of his voice now, but only heard it dimly, as it was that still summer, whispering metallic promises in her ear. They had started this game after Barbara saw a movie about Alexander Graham Bell, and she liked to imagine that her father was Don Ameche. "Watson, come here, I need you," he would say. "Watson here. I need you," she would answer, and he would run and catch her in his arms. He applauded when she fearlessly climbed ladders, or held back tears after falling into a bee's nest. She had been his first born, much photographed, petted and praised. But slowly, subtly, that had changed. The winter she was twelve, Pegasus had been hit by a car. She had carried him to the side of the road, covered him with a blanket, and called the vet. Her father drove them to the animal hospital, braking and accelerating wildly. The dog had been in bad shape. “There’s nothing more I can do,” the vet had said. “I’m so sorry. Would one of you like to stay with him?” Her father had hesitated, and in that moment, Barbara had spoken. “I’ll do it,” she said, following the vet into a room without any windows. She held Pegasus in her arms, murmuring into his puzzled, cloudy eyes. The needle slid between sinewy folds; the dog quivered, then slumped warm and heavy against her chest.

“You are your mother’s child,” her father had said in the car going home, almost as if he were speaking to himself. She’d kept silent, sensing even then it was a double-edged compliment. She had seen how he’d begun to wince at her mother Eleanor's brisk voice. One summer evening months earlier, they had barbecued swordfish and eaten supper on the back patio. “Can’t you just leave that grill alone? I said I’d get to it later,” Gene had said, watching Eleanor vigorously vacuuming out ashes. He tipped back on the legs of his chair, staring moodily into the neighboring yard.

“Gene, you’ll break the chair that way,” her mother had said. Her father brought the chair down hard and flung himself out of it. Later that night, after Barbara had dragged the furniture back to the porch, she sat to watch the fireflies make darting pinpoints of cold light, listening vainly for the sound of his returning car.

The doorbell chimed. Aggie was wearing a sleek black silk suit and pearls, looking beautiful and unhappy as only she could, wearing her suffering, thought Barbara, like a prize ribbon. Their cousin Emma stood behind her.

"You'd think Mrs. Milner could have managed to at least wipe up," said Aggie, running a proprietary hand over a bureau top.

"It wasn't her place. If you don't want to clean, why don't you pack up the rest of the clothes?" Barbara said, thrusting an armful of shopping bags at her.

"Aggie told me on the way up that she visited here several times after Pauline left," said Emma a little later, as they opened cartons they'd found piled neatly against the front window.

     "Look! Your old school essays." Her legs slid gracefully under her. "Imagine saving these. Okay, how do you spell vicissitude?"
     "That's what dictionaries are for."
     "You never needed them, though," Emma said. "I'll bet you were a tough act for Aggie to follow in school. She once told me she always felt like Barbara Harrell's underachieving sister."
     "I didn't know that," said Barbara. "I always felt like Agatha Harrell's plain one."
     "Give it a rest already. Besides, it’s not even true. You've got character."
     "That sounds like something my mother would have said,” Barbara said. “One time when I was thirteen, she took me to buy bras. Not that I needed them. She followed me into the dressing room and watched me try on every damn one. Afterwards, as we were driving home, I said, 'Mom, I'm ugly.' You know what she said? 'Don't worry, dear, it's just a stage.'" Barbara and Emma laughed.
     "What's so funny out here?" Aggie said plaintively. She piled bags full of shirts and socks in the hall, and watched them uncertainly. "Haven't you even finished one box yet? We haven't got all day."
     "Is Jerry picking you up?" Barbara said.
     "He's playing racquet ball."
     Aggie’s husband had recently joined a trendy new health club popular with masters of the universe types and models. Barbara wondered how he was managing it all. But he didn't want Aggie to work, and she was flitting between decorating the new house and taking classes in designing what she referred to as “tablescapes.”
     "Well, anyway, I'm done," Aggie said.   Her mouth twitched, and Barbara thought, it was a mistake to let her go into that room alone.
     "How about if I make some coffee?" Barbara said. “We can't remove anything until the appraisal, but why don’t you make a list of what you’d like to keep?"
     Barbara returned with a tray; Aggie sipped the coffee warily and made a face. "It tastes like mouthwash."
     "It's cinnamon blend. Sorry. It's all I could find.”
     "And it's stale," Aggie said accusingly.
     "It was probably left over from Pauline. Dad only drank espresso."
     "I always thought your father was the most cosmopolitan man I ever met," said Emma. "You know, I even had a little crush on him once."
     "I know," said Barbara. "So did most of his students. Sometimes I think that if he’d died young, he would never have had to shrink to life size."
     "Well, you made that wish come true," said Aggie. "Maybe if you had let Mom take him back, this wouldn't have happened."
     "He told you that?" Barbara said. "Oh, Aggie. Do you really believe I would have done that?"
     "Dad blamed you," Aggie said.
     "Dad always blamed anyone but himself."
     "Look!" said Emma, trying to deflect the sisters. She held aloft a thick stack of black and white photos that looked as if they'd been trimmed with pinking shears.
     Aggie looked longingly at a picture of herself in the ocean, sitting astride her father's sunburned shoulders. "Remember the cottage in Maine that didn't have any phone or TV? Daddy and I went sailing alone every morning and we dug for clams. He even found a pearl in an oyster for me. It was the happiest summer of my life."
     He must have planted the pearl there, Barbara realized. He’d done the same conjuring trick for her once, before Aggie was even born. "Don't you remember the swarms of black flies? There was a crust of them on the outhouse door,” Barbara said. “And no running water inside. We had to take the dishes outside and hose them down. Mom hated every minute there."
     "Then she should have made more of an effort."
     Barbara sucked in her lips to keep from speaking. She hated it when Aggie criticized Eleanor. What did she know? After her initial grief at Gene's departure, Eleanor had refused to speak about him. Barbara had often wished she could have siphoned off some of Eleanor's sorrow, taken it and embraced it as her own to spare her mother. After Eleanor's surgery, Barbara had bathed her mother, soothed her, cooked delicate broths and hearty stews, and nursed her mother as tenderly at the end as Eleanor had once nursed her. Gene had pleaded with Barbara to convince her mother to let him come home, but Eleanor was adamant: she had suffered enough.
     "What's this?" Aggie said, studying a photograph of eerie light swirls.
     "It looks like an abstract painting," said Emma.
     "No," Barbara said softly. "Don’t you remember? It was the Aurora Borealis." The year Barbara was nine, they had spent Christmas week at their grandmother’s compound in Vermont. One night, Gene rushed into their room to wake them. They had wrapped quilts around themselves like cocoons, and crept out to the field across the road. Barbara remembered it had been very cold, but clear, the darkest night of the year. Eleanor was waiting for them. Pulsing bands of yellow-white light arched across the sky in luminous fans, as the four of them stood in awed silence. "They call them the Merry Dancers," Gene had whispered. "Aurora Borealis...The Northern Lights."
     "He always loved the planetarium," said Aggie.
     "I remember how your father always used to point out the constellations to us on summer nights," Emma said. "Such beautiful names. Cassiopeia... Andromeda.... Your mother loved those stories."
     "Mom?" said Aggie.
     "Oh, sure," Emma said. "She loved those old myths. Old movies too. She once told me that when she was a girl she slept on collar buttons for six months because she thought it would give her dimples like Margaret O'Brien. And that later she used to wash her hair with cherry soda so it would be the color of Rita Hayworth's."
     "It's nice to think of her that young," said Barbara. It sounded like something Aggie might have done.   As a teenager, Aggie had steamed her face with chamomile, made masks of oatmeal, applied cucumber compresses to her eyelids, pumiced her feet, even slept on her back so her face wouldn't wrinkle. The sisters were so unalike that strangers never believed they were related.   Aggie's face was punctuated by dimples--and not from collar buttons--that made pleasing secrets when she smiled. Growing up next to her, Barbara had felt monotonously untextured. There was a world of difference between plain and ugly; sometimes, Barbara had almost longed for ugly. At least it gave definition. Aggie was beautiful, and Barbara had learned early that beauty confers power.
     "Speaking of cherry soda..." said Emma.
     "I'll see if I can scrape up lunch."
     Barbara rummaged in the cupboard. Not much to choose from. Tins of anchovies. Jars of macadamia nuts. She opened a can of salmon, thinking about all the Sundays a long time ago, when Emma and her parents came to visit. Barbara and her father would drive to Lox, Stock and Barrel, where all the fathers waited on line clutching slips of papers with numbers. When they got home he would slice tiny bagels and line them with dollops of cream cheese and slivers of fish, making sandwiches no larger than his little finger for Barbara and Emma to nibble as they squatted over the comics spread along the floor.
     Barbara emptied the refrigerator of sour milk and rust-edged lettuce, sliced an onion to add to the plate, but when she reached for a wrinkled tomato, her fingernails slid through the soft red skin.
     Aggie had set the dining table with lace placemats and had folded linen napkins to look like fluttering birds. It felt oddly festive. Emma picked up a plate. “What are you going to do with all the kitchen stuff?"
     "There’s very little here,” Aggie said. “He didn’t take much when he left. He said he needed to make a clean break."
     "Breaks are never clean," said Barbara, buttering the toast and crumbling it into little pieces.
     "I think he was ashamed,” said Aggie.
     "Of what?” said Barbara. “That his latest girlfriend wasn't much older than his daughters? Oh, don't look so shocked. You think Pauline was the only one? Grandma’s money just made it easier for him."
     "Stop," said Emma. "Please stop."
     "Who are you to sneer at Grandma's money?" said Aggie. "What do you think paid for summer vacations? Or school?" she crammed half a sandwich into her mouth.
     "All that money doesn't seem to have improved your table manners."
     "Enough." Emma slammed her fist against the table; the china clattered. "Don't you realize your parents are gone? All you have is each other."
     "We're orphans," said Aggie, beginning to cry.
     It sounded so Dickensian, thought Barbara.

     After lunch Emma took the bags of clothes to the homeless men's shelter. Aggie stood at the window, pinching buds on a blanched coleus plant. "This was purple when I gave it to him," she said. She twisted off her diamond wedding band and stared at the band of pale skin. "Jerry wants to start a family."
     Barbara sat beside her on the window seat and watched her play with her charm bracelet.
     "What do you want?" Barbara asked gently.
     Aggie shrugged. She would have looked petulant if she weren't so clearly unhappy. "Does it even matter?" she said. She walked to the piano, and lightly touched the keys. "Dad didn't play," she said. "I wonder why he even had a piano."
     "Maybe it was for Pauline."
     "No," said Aggie. "She wasn't musical."
     "Pauline wasn't much of anything," said Barbara. "It wouldn't have killed her to come to the funeral." After Barbara had called Pauline with the news, she'd stayed up all night, unable to write any words she could bring herself to read at the service the next day. Finally, she had chosen a poem. "'And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.'" But he hadn't; Barbara was left to rage for him.
     She sat at the piano bench, picking out a series of chords. She had loved listening to her mother play. Eleanor had taught herself, and played not very well, but with great feeling. She had often played "Someone to Watch over Me" when Barbara was young. For years, Barbara had thought her mother had written that song, until the day she heard it on the radio. That was after her father had run off with Pauline. Eleanor had never touched the piano again.
     Barbara had been 24 when Pauline moved into house next door to her family. A tall, graceless woman, with frizzy brown hair and a helpless air that for reasons Barbara would never know had appealed to her father. Aggie had been away at school that year.   Pauline had asked Gene to fix things about her house, and to thank him had plied him with cool drinks and warm looks. One summer evening at twilight Barbara had gone out to cut Ophelia roses, and across the honeysuckled-scented garden she had caught a glimpse of a bare, tanned shoulder, and on it, her father’s long, fine fingers. The intimate laughter floated across the stone patio as she snipped creamy pink flowers and dropped them on the warm, damp earth. The scent of roses has sickened her ever since. Friends sent floral arrangements to Gene’s funeral, but Barbara told the delivery boy to take them to a hospital instead. “Do for the living, not the dead,” Eleanor used to say. After Gene left, he was dead to Eleanor.
     "You saw a lot of them here?" Barbara said.
     "Not a lot." Aggie looked up; she was examining an ashtray made of glazed clay and pebbles. "I saw him mostly after Pauline left. Remember this?" she held out the misshapen ashtray.
     Barbara remembered. She'd made it in day camp, choosing only the palest blue pebbles she could find to match her father’s eyes. She nodded. "I made that when I was six."
     "No you didn't!" Aggie's eyes got round as she shook her head. "I made it. In kindergarten. Dad said so."
     Barbara was suddenly very tired. "It's too hot in here," she said, yanking at the window. Soot blew across the sill. She went to the bathroom to wash her hands, and looked for aspirin. Wedged between the grimy, abandoned tubes of Pauline's cosmetics were more bottles of prescription pills than she cared to count.   A frayed negligee hung on a peg behind the door. She sat on the lid of the toilet, and ran her hands over and over her cheeks.
     She heard Emma return, and the muffled sounds of conversation. "How could he do this to me?" she heard Aggie say. Barbara rose and stood in the doorway of the bathroom, carefully wiping her hands on a towel. "Aggie," she said slowly, "do you think no one else is grieving?"
     "Barbara," Emma said warningly.
     "She acts as if she had a private monopoly on him.”
     "You’re both rubbed raw," Emma said. "Let's just finish and get out."
     Everyone was silent.
     "I know!" said Aggie. "Before we leave, let’s each choose just one thing. Something significant."
     Aggie always did like romantic gestures, thought Barbara. She remembered when Aggie was sixteen, and thought it was the most beautiful thing in the world that Lord Byron had kept the cremated heart of his best friend Shelley. "It just refused to burn, Barb," she'd said, her eyes large. "Too much spirit."
     Barbara nodded. "Why not?" she said. She returned to the bedroom, and stripped the king size bed. The room looked as impersonal and reassuring as a motel room. Anywhere,

U.S.A.

No Gideon’s Bible, though; just Gene's yellowed copy of The Portable Thomas Wolfe.
     She opened what she assumed was another closet, and discovered a dressing room she didn't remember. It was full of empty tie racks and barren shoe trees. Then she looked up, into the painted gray eyes of an oddly serious child swinging from a gate. A small watercolor, it had been painted in a burst of friendship one summer in Truro by a fellow artist who had seemed quite taken with Gene's older daughter. "But he's your friend, Daddy," Barbara had said. "Why doesn't he paint your picture?" She remembered how she had squirmed, the straps of her sun dress scratching her burned skin. Gene had smoothed her hair, tucking it behind her ears.
     "You're much prettier than I am," he said, then rubbed his stubbly cheek against hers. "This way you'll always stay my own little girl," he'd said, in a tone infinitely sad.
     She turned and took in the bedroom. Where were all his canvases? She knew he'd let go the studio space he'd rented; where could everything be? Had he sold them all? She wondered yet again what he had done that last day.
     "Barb?" Emma stood in the doorway.
     "Leaving?"
     "In a minute. Don't be too hard on your sister. She’s not like you."
     "You know the saying. ‘If you can't be rotten to your family, who can you?’ Sorry. Poor joke. You're absolutely right." She followed Emma to the foyer.
     Aggie was peering into the mirror, meticulously painting on lipstick with a small brush, much the same way she used to work in a water coloring book. Barbara and Emma smiled at each other.

     "Thanks for coming," Barbara said to Emma, and hugged her. "Talk to you later?" Aggie placed her cheek against her sister's.
     "Aggie," Barbara said. "Why don't we go up to Vermont for a long weekend? Just us.”
     Aggie hesitated, glanced at Emma, then back at Barbara. "That might be nice," she allowed.
     Barbara closed the door, then walked through the apartment, closing windows, turning off the refrigerator and leaving it ajar. The pebble ashtray was gone; let Aggie keep it. She switched off lights, then returned to the dressing room to stand silently. Gently she lifted the watercolor of herself from the wall, leaving a ghostly outline where it had hung, and wrapped it in an old pillowcase.
     Finally, at the front door, she turned and reached under the table, pulled the phone cord from the wall, and straightened slowly, cradling the silent receiver against her ear. "Watson," she whispered. "I'm here."

# # #

Liane Kupferberg Carter’s articles and essays have appeared in more than 30 publications, including the New York Times, the Huffington Post, Parents, Child, McCall’s, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Skirt, and numerous newspapers and journals. She is a 2009 winner of the Memoir Journal Prize for Memoir in Prose, and a Glimmer Train Finalist in Poetry. Carter is working on a memoir about raising a child with autism.

Fiction - Darkness and Storm by Barrie Darke

2010-06-17T08:17:00.001-07:00

“We lingered in the courtyard, tipping our heads towards the characters we knew. Lady Macbeth had little time for more than a brief greeting, and some fulsome thanks, but we made her eyes glitter with excitement.”

Darkness and Storm

by Barrie Darke

WE WERE LADY Macbeth’s favourite band. At one time, that was an upstanding thing to be. We shrugged about it, of course, between ourselves and when others were looking on, but it couldn’t be denied that the Macbeths had a biting glamour to them, in those days. In the main, that was thanks to her. We were called In Core of Nerve, and we were Manchester men.

Large events have their own banners of good luck questing before them. We were in Scotland when her messenger, a whippet of a lad familiar to us even from his silhouette in a tavern door, found us one idle afternoon. We met him with good natured groans and insults to both his paternity and his masculinity, though nothing he hadn’t heard from us previously. He passed on his Lady’s request - could we travel to Inverness and play for her, tonight? And not only for her: for the King? And not only play: but be the main attraction?

It was, in fact, one of our few nights off. We were young and excitable, but our music was serious and draining for all of us, though worst for our singer, Dan the Whirler. It was not beyond us to refuse this request, and be respected by her for it, so we sent the messenger outside into the native drizzle while we passed it around. Lance, our drummer, said we should instead play a small concert, perhaps a free one – let Inverness come to us. Jason, our guitarist, said being at the beck and call of warriors and Royalty was not what he thought our music should be about. I said, to fuck with them all. Our nights off were inviolate.

What distinguished Dan the Whirler from other men, I consider, is that he knew more of what it is to live your life unhappy. It was sunk into him deeper than most. Things that old men may feel, with their best behind them, he felt with his best still ahead of him or happening to him now. Every grain of the sandstorm stung him. For that reason, he was able to pinpoint the experiences that would make things mildly worthwhile, that others of us would have missed. He said, ‘Boys, it will be a fine idea to see the centre of things for once. I say, let’s head over.’

The messenger was called back in, his King insulted. We laughed at his fallen face, and then ordered him to lead the way.

We are not as morose as our sound and our reputation suggests, and the trek to Inverness was strewn with jokes and pranks on the head of the messenger. Our spirits were skipping at the prospect of playing our music to people who might not ordinarily have heard it, whether they be the saddest serving girl or the King. It had a great uncoiling force in those circumstances.

They knew us at the Macbeths’ castle, and we were the last to arrive before the King himself, which pleased us mightily. We lingered in the courtyard, tipping our heads towards the characters we knew. Lady Macbeth had little time for more than a brief greeting, and some fulsome thanks, but we made her eyes glitter with excitement.

Dan the Whirler said to her, ‘Is this wisdom, my Lady, we Manchester men set before the great King of Scotland?’

She said, ‘The King will take what’s offered.’ She left us smiling. We couldn’t fail to appreciate a woman with such steel in her.

The other, homegrown musicians were also assembled in the courtyard, and were tight-faced because of their rightful place in the night’s line-up. It was difficult for us not to laugh, so we did laugh. Some of them we knew, and could parley banter with, although they seemed not to enjoy it as much as they customarily did. There were other bands that we didn’t know, though they knew of us and believed this was their propitious moment to sweep us to one side. Since we were in a warrior’s castle, it was correct for me to offer to lop off a few heads, though it didn’t have to be taken that far.

The King arrived. It was impossible for us not to feign boredom in the eye line of our rivals. The King of Scotland was, to a Manchester man, at the level of a town hall clerk. In fact, he was as impressive as these people usually are – sturdy at first sight and diminishing thereafter. A white beard belongs to the world, after all, and can be sported by anyone. Lady Macbeth greeted him with a hand, and they exchanged words in their impenetrable accents. Into the castle we followed behind, making sure of course that we were at the head of all the musicians.

We were not introduced to the King, that would come afterwards if he was pleased to do so, but we were brought before his two sons. These were fans – gabbling then tongue-tied, staring then darting their eyes away, asking Dan the Whirler about certain lines from the songs (and seeming satisfied when he said he didn’t know where they came from), and finally taking on the glacial cool that comes from knowing that, whatever else happens to them in their life, they will always have met us.

Then the feast entered the first of its many hours. Serving girls carried platters, their muscles shivering with strain, and the noise level of the Thanes, as I believed they called them, suggested they were instantly intoxicated. Well, life is harder the further north a man gets.

It wasn’t our habit to drink overmuch before playing, or to mingle with others. Lady Macbeth knew this, and had given us a far off table, where we could sit with our own observations. Not that we passed many words around our table. That form of communication is a waste, compared with what would come.

The lesser bands played their songs to an indifference that seemed to be almost career-ending for them. Their melodies were pleasing only, had nothing eternal captured in them, and their playing was tentative, over-practised, without heat or the threat of collapse. Lance, Jason and myself were automatically disdainful of them, though Dan the Whirler as usual stared off, absorbing some essence from them, as he put it. Occasionally this was useful to him, though we couldn’t fathom how. And he broke out of it when Lady Macbeth sat with us.

She was an attractive woman, without being pretty. A hard and slightly too long face, and so thin that you had to believe her bones were almost breaking through. Even asleep, we surmised, she would look feverish, and during the act of love she would likely choke a man. Dan the Whirler always used to say that the absolute jet black of her hair was gorgeous, but scary in a way that no-one else’s ever was, as if it would be black even when she was ancient, even when it was still growing in the grave, and don’t even begin to ask him about her eyes, which were purple if they were anything. For myself, I liked her cheekbones. I liked nothing more than a cruel cheekbone. What made her attractive was the idea that she was unshockable, but you weren’t, really.

‘I apologise,’ she said, ‘for taking you away from your night off.’

We said that was nothing to worry about – no one else but her could’ve done it.

‘And what form of bad behaviour have you been indulging in on your tour?’ The smile she gave there was the unshockable one.

We demurred. Our bad behaviour was not widespread, but there was enough of it for us to keep our counsel in good company.

Her smile told us she knew that. ‘The King’s retinue,’ she said, ‘will provide opportunities no doubt.’

We demurred again. We had a form of loyalty to her serving girls. We remembered their names.

Then her voice became tighter. She didn’t look anything like vulnerable, she wouldn’t be capable of that on her deathbed, but she did betray a heavy effort when she said, ‘I have one more request of you, gentlemen.’

‘And what’s that?’ Dan the Whirler asked.

She left a necessary pause. ‘I would like to hear Darkness and Storm,’ she said.

We all had the power of veto. That was how In Core of Nerve operated - if one of us had an objection, it would carry all before it. That was true in all matters apart from the playing of Darkness and Storm. It was only right that Dan the Whirler made that decision. That said, the song began with me playing a circular riff, and if I didn’t do that, nothing happened. So I wasn’t without influence.

He was staring off again, though probably not listening to the music this time. Lady Macbeth took a short dance with the King, to some inoffensive music. People could dance to our music, but not in that way. There was no doubt she knew what she was asking of us – she would have heard of it happening, had she not seen it herself. Perhaps she just wished for a dramatic night, or the most dramatic night. It was a shame it had to be at a cost to us.

I left the hall, returned to the courtyard. There were two friendly dalmations out there who knew me of old and were straining to see me, but I expected my mood would upset them, so I kept apart. I had to hear their pitiful mewling instead.

The sky was, of course, dark and stormy – but this was Scotland, so I saw no omen in that. Some of the serving girls, idle between courses, came out to talk when they saw me, Arabella and Ingrid, but I was able to plead artistic distraction and be kindly left alone.

I tried to make myself feel what he could be feeling. It had to be admitted that he wasn’t a man to shy away from drama himself, like perhaps many a front man. I conjured the excitement, the risk and fear. I could get some of it, but most of what I got was a homesickness that made me stop all such thoughts before I joined the dogs in weeping. I returned to the hall, to our table. They were all looking at me.

Dan the Whirler said, ‘Johnny, I’m happy with playing it. We haven’t done it for many a show now, we can’t let it die of neglect. And I can see it will suit the atmosphere of the night, or drag it along with us. It’s the power of it, Johnny. If you can resist that …’

‘If it’s drama you wish for, Dan the Whirler, we’ll decide when the moment comes.’

He laughed a little at that. Lance and Jason looked unhappy, but that was the decision.

A youngster, someone’s effete son, sang to the King. It may even have been his own composition, so feeble was it. There were the first of many toasts, lead by the warrior king of the castle, the lucky husband – a very rough hewn man, if that needs to be said. It was the wrong atmosphere for us, but Lady Macbeth had thought of that. They brought the bear out and killed it.

We moved backstage during the worst of that, the howls that hit the head and the roars that shivered the feet. We spoke not a word backstage, and didn’t even look at each other. Mostly we looked into space, drew pictures in the imagined flying blood. When the agonies reached a peak, a steward came for us. There was no banter with this one.

Lady Macbeth was on stage to introduce us. She did so by saying we were the best band she knew of. We couldn’t help but feel a little pride when that was said. It got the King smiling indulgently anyway.

We started, as we had ever since we wrote it, with Nothing Wounded Goes Uphill. This has a long instrumental introduction, during which Dan the Whirler stayed back near the drums, readying himself, only whirling occasionally. Then just as the audience were hypnotised, he darted forward to sing. Even people who knew it was coming – even Lady Macbeth – felt a whipcord through them at that. When it finished, we got a bigger cheer than the other bands had after their whole performance.

Our music was primitive in most ways, but so was our skill at playing, so we still needed to keep our heads down, our eyes on our instruments. But it wasn’t every night that we had a King watching us, even a foreign King. We all flicked looks at him during the next song, Circle Their Names, which was a simple thrasher from our earliest days, when we were called Cave-Born Bastards. We liked to drag them into raucous states early on in the show, and Dan’s whirling was almost at its most extreme. It might not have been the song to win over the King, but he paid us close attention, and his two sons were clearly delighted with it. We followed it with our slowest song, A Wailing and Gnashing of Teeth.

It was during that one that the atmosphere started to come right, and the other musicians watching us had to concede defeat. Often we missed the magic of that song – we only kept it in because when we got it right, it was a highlight. It should be said here that Jason was our best musician, and that night he added notes to that song that pushed against the subdued melody, things we had never heard him do before, and it remade the whole tune. It gave it a more pained weight, but a beauty that made it all worthwhile – a beauty that made you want the pain, even. It opened up wounds in everyone. Even big Macbeth himself, I noticed, was looking into himself during that one, looked suddenly more dishevelled.

An Elementary Blunder, one of my own favourites, and one I had a lot of input on, came along next. It had slow verses and roused choruses. Not something we claimed to’ve originated, but we did it peerlessly. No one could build up to a crescendo the way we did, and Dan’s whirling made the spectacle something that would be talked about for decades. The King’s sons were bug-eyed and sweating during it, and Lady Macbeth had moved down to the front, red slammed into her cheeks.

Without a pause we went into The Wind, It Is Shrieking, which had a sad but sweet-toothed melody, somehow brought out even more by the aggression we played it with. There wasn’t anyone there who could think about anything other than what we were doing, no matter their problems or their obsessions. It didn’t work that way for us up there, though - our thoughts were eaten up. It was after this song that, if we were going to do it, we did Darkness and Storm.

There need be no mystery about it. Like the majority of men and women, we did things because to miss the chance of doing them would be unbearable. So I started that circular riff, and the whole castle moved about three feet into the air. Lady Macbeth looked as though she was close to fainting, but I couldn’t give her much attention. All that had to fall on Dan the Whirler.

We could never pinpoint what it was about that song. It was, for us, a traditional arrangement of verse-chorus, no extended instrumental passages, just a steady build in intensity. Dark flecks came off it, that’s the best way of describing it. A tower that rose and shook. Dan said once it was like a song that comes through every few hundred years, then is forgotten till it’s written again - something the world needs and will always have. It was our good fortune that, at that time, we had it. We wondered if it exacted a price from all those others who’d played it.

It didn’t happen every time, but it happened enough, and we all knew it would happen that night. Towards the end, Dan whirls as he sings, the words break from the verse and chorus structure, and more of them tumble out, so they have to be sung faster. We all watched him, though we couldn’t ever be certain it was on its way. We only knew when it arrived. His glare into the crowd becomes a glare through them into Christ knows what, and some of the strain floods from his face. All at once, the whirling is less graceful and not so controlled. Then his legs betray him and he falls. We stop playing, but I’m not being an artistic person when I say that the song carries on by itself for a few seconds.

We dragged him backstage. He was shaking and we usually took a few bruises from his feet and elbows. He was talking gibberish – Lance used to believe he was saying the lyrics backwards, but that couldn’t be checked. We laid him down like usual, made sure he didn’t choke, and hoped it wouldn’t take him away forever.

We didn’t allow anyone but us to see him that way, and that had to include Lady Macbeth and her husband when they came rushing through. We tried to thank them for their concern and bundle them back out, but it was difficult. They weren’t showing any concern.

She crouched down by him. ‘What are they saying to you?’ she wanted to know. So she was a believer in that idea of it.

‘What do they want us to know?’ she said, spitting the words into his shivering face. She looked like she might die from a lack of that information. Even Macbeth, who I wouldn’t have thought took much interest in that, looked young again as he leaned over Dan’s body.

‘Please, can you leave us?’ I said to them. ‘He needs us, no-one else.’

She was touching him now. ‘They’ve come tonight for a reason,’ she said. ‘What are they saying we should do?’

‘Fucking get out,’ I said. ‘Leave us.’

‘Be quiet,’ she snapped, not even looking back at me.

She shook him. I grabbed her arm. She yelled something at me, just a noise, and that got him involved. I hardly saw him move, and then I was breathless against a wall, one of his hands covering most of my chest. His face was still youthful, as though he wasn’t interested in this necessary piece of violence, it was a simple small step that had to be taken. My head bouncing off the walls.

They let us back in after ten minutes, which was when they left, without a glance at us. Dan was sitting up, wiping his face countless times, trying to do something with his hair, drinking water. He gave us a weak smile, but didn’t say much.

‘What did those two want to know?’ I asked him after a while.

‘Easy stuff. If they’d be happy in the future,’ he said.

‘Will they?’

He shrugged. ‘I told them the chances are against it.’

I was in favour of leaving the castle, leaving the whole primitive country even, but Dan wasn’t in any rightful condition to travel, especially not through that wild night. (Later they said that horses had eaten each other that night.) I thought we should at least seclude ourselves, have no dealings with anyone, but then some of the King’s retinue came in to see how Dan was, and they brought ale with them. The serving girls joined us soon after. Our nerves needed to be calmed, they said.

None of it worked for me, though I tried, I tried. Soon I was out in the courtyard, the wind in my face, and the highland creatures making their woeful calls to the clouds. I had women on either side of me, and tankard after tankard was emptied, but all there was in me was that homesickness feeling, rearranging everything in my chest.

# # #

Barrie Darke lives in Newcastle in the northeast of England. He has had several plays performed in the UK over the last few years, has recently worked with the BBC, and has seen a handful of his short stories published. He is also trying extremely hard to be a published novelist. He teaches Creative Writing, as much as possible, within a few miles of his home.

Fiction - Dwight Goes to Rehab by Michael Frissore

2010-06-17T08:17:00.000-07:00

“It was called “The Horrors of Alcohol Abuse,” and was hosted by a man named Will Stevens, who the film said was a big deal comedian, but I had never heard of him.”

Dwight Goes to Rehab

by Michael Frissore

Next thing I knew police were telling me I crashed into something. They said what it was, but I was suddenly distracted by a Gallagher routine going on in my head.

“What was that last part?” I asked.

“A building,” one of them said.

“I crashed into a building? What was the other part you said?”

“It’s a twelve-story building.”

“Okay.”

“And you crashed your car into the seventh floor.

“That’s bad.”

“Yeah. No shit, drunkard.”

I didn’t remember it happening. I didn’t remember driving or even the fun drinking part. The police said that people on the seventh floor looking out thought it was a terrorist attack because a.) I was flying, and b.) Both front doors of my car were open, giving the look, from a distance at least, of an airplane.

What they thought happened was that I somehow drove into the freight elevator. This made no sense because I would have been inside the building. Or some building. And there was no evidence of my car exiting a building, only entering. So I baffled law enforcement and everyone else with my flying car.

I didn’t kill anyone. This – and the pseudo-comical, Evel Knievel-like nature of my crash – were among the reasons I received minimal jail time along with a judge forcing me to go to rehab for thirty days.

Thus, I was forced to attend The Betsy the Cow Clinic. This very prestigious clinic was founded in 1983 by a group of farm animals in Vermont. Farmer Charlie had one hell of a drinking problem himself, the poor man, and, when he got so drunk one night that he beat one of his cows to death, some of his other animals got together and had an intervention for Charlie. It was a touching one, very reminiscent of the famous "Intervention" episode of Party of Five. Three years later the animals built their own facility. At least this is what I was told.

It was a pretty somber place, this clinic. When I arrived all this lights were off and you could hear a pin drop. Well, I could hear a pin drop. Why do people say you when they mean I. That bugs me.

I sat waiting for about a half hour until Gertie, the manager, who looked amazingly like the granny from the Sylvester and Tweety cartoons, showed me to my room. She opened the door and the smell of marijuana was undeniable, but Gertie appeared to not notice. My roommate sat Indian style on one of the beds. His name was Zeus. He was a balding hippy, probably my parents’ age. He stood 6’5” and, for as long as we roomed together, when we were in our living quarters he wore only tighty whities.

“Hey,” I said to him. “Have you ever been caught with the weed?”

“What weed?” Zeus said.

“Come on. It so apparently smells like pot in here.”

“Listen, narc…”

“I’m not a narc. I’m just curious as to how strict they are around here.”

“I don’t share, man,” he said.

“I’m not asking…” I started to say, but changed direction. “What do you mean you don’t share? Weed is supposed to be about sharing.”

“My supply is scarce.”

“Do you sell it at least?”

“No, that’s illegal.”

“So is smoking it.”

“No way.”

“You’re thinking of sex.”

“Hey, you’re not a fag, are you?”

“I am, but I don’t want to have sex with you.” I really didn’t.

“Why not?”

“You’re not my type.”

“What type am I?”

“The aging hippy pothead type.”

“I’m not a hippy. Hippies are fags.”

“Can you not use that word?”

“What word?”

“Are.”

“I can’t use are?”

“No, fags.”

“Why?”

“It’s offensive.”

“What about cocksuckers?”

“That’s fine.”

“Really?”

“No.”

“Queers?”

“Can we just pretend I’m straight?”

“Whatever, fag.”

He rolled and lit a joint, not offering it to me.

“Can you believe we’re in Room 213?” he said.

“What’s wrong with 213?”

“That’s the room number they found all those body parts in Dahmer’s place, fag.”

“Stop calling me fag.”

“Sorry.”

“You mean Jeffrey Dahmer?”

“No, Prince William Dahmer IV of Edinborough.”

“You don’t usually hear sarcasm from hippy potheads.”

“I told you I’m not a hippy.”

“I’m Dwight, by the way.”

“You played right field for the Sox.”

“No, that’s Dwight Evans, but I was named after him.”

“Ah,” he said. “I’m Zeus.”

“Nice to meet you.”

“Can I call you Dewey?”

“Sure can.”

“Can I call you Dewey who likes man spewey?”

“No, you can’t.”

Gertie came into our room without knocking and invited us to orientation. For me, it wasn’t an “invitation,” per se, as it was mandatory. Zeus has been at the clinic for more than thirty days, though he wouldn’t tell me why. He never missed an orientation.

Once we got started there were four of us. There was a midget or dwarf sitting in the back and a man in a suit who looked to be about seventy up front. Gertie turned the lights off and showed us a short film. I started to wonder if she was the only one who worked here.

The film was a real downer as it was all negatives about drugs and alcohol. It was called “The Horrors of Alcohol Abuse,” and was hosted by a man named Will Stevens, who the film said was a big deal comedian, but I had never heard of him. Mr. Stevens began:

Do you love beer? Do you wake up every after-noon and have a drink of breakfast? When a beer ad comes on, do you lick the television screen? Have you been in a trance since I said the word “beer?”

Zeus began throwing pieces of paper at me.

Now, I’m not anti-drugs and alcohol by any means. In fact, I’ve got a big vial of crack in my back pocket that I plan on smoking in about two minutes. Ahahahaha-haha!!! Just kidding.

I rolled my eyes and looked over at Zeus. He had produced, from underneath his shirt, a bong he had made out of a Bic pen.

But wherever does all this excessive drinking get you? You shower, put on a pair of drawers, spray Glade under your arms only to find yourself doused with Key-stone and clam dip the second you enter the door.

A woman who wasn’t Gertie came in and tried to confiscate Zeus’s bong but received a punch in the stomach for her efforts.

“Dude, that’s not cool,” I said.

“Neither is sucking a man’s cock,” he replied.

You dance the waltzing pissant for a couple of hours, get into a spoon fight or two, pass out, and wake up somewhere across town wearing someone else’s drawers and feeling like you’ve been eaten by a wolf and excreted off a cliff.

I tried to help the woman as Zeus kept shouting “Sit down, faggot.” Gertie finally came in and asked what happened.

“He punched her, Gertie,” Zeus said.

“I did not, you son of a bitch.”

The fallen woman started to speak, but Zeus leaped off of his desk like Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat onto all three of us and said “The fag pushed me.” Some security men came in and grabbed Zeus while medics attended to the woman. Gertie told me to behave myself and watch the rest of the film.

I believe it was John Seldon who said “’Tis not the drinking that is to be blamed, but the excess.” Moderation is the key. And if you decide to transpose it into a higher key, you might as well be singing with the fat lady, ‘cause it’s over.

The midget, who, like the old man, had been sitting quietly through the whole incident, applauded at the end of the film. Gertie entered the room once again and told us to gather up front for a discussion about this important movie.

“I loved the film,” the midget said. “Will Stevens is brilliant.”

“Who is he?” I asked.

“How should I know?” the midget replied. “He’s the guy is the film.”

“Just seems to me he might have been doing this as community service for something is all I’m saying,” I said.

Gertie then asked us to introduce ourselves. As it turned out, Patrick, the midget, was not a midget at all. He was actually sort of accordionesque due to a skydiving accident. His parachute wouldn’t open and he landed feet first onto a field.

“So,” I said, “Did dinnerware come out of the chute, like in cartoons? And can you play Frank Yankovic songs?”

“I got a song for you,” Patrick said. “It’s called ‘Taps.’”

He lunged at me like a rabid dog. Gertie was quick to pull him off of me and made him stand in the corner. It was now just me and Gerald in the group. Gerald was a former president of a state college who had gone on a bender of his own. He lost his job when news of the incident was printed in the school newspaper. Gertie, to my delight, had printed copies of the story and handed one to me, asking Gerald to read it out loud. Gerald, tears forming, read:

There will be new rules regarding alcohol on campus thanks to student protest and a two-week drinking spree enjoyed by the president recently.

The college will now be known as Booze University, according to the president, who now wishes to be called “Captain Cognac.”

More and more tears came as he read the first quote.

“College without drinking is like…college without drinking,” the Captain said. “In fact, I’m drunk right now. I’m drunker’n a hootin’ owl at a turkey shoot.”

While the majority of the campus responded to this news in bacchanalian glee, the Captain’s plan does have its opponents.

“I believe this is an error of intergalactic proportions,” said a student who was then smashed over the head with a beer bottle.

The Captain let everyone into his office as he prepared to sign the plan into being.

“I’m gonna bign the sooze bill,” he said. “Hello, Mr. Elephant. Is the bean dizzy? Get the bean. Wanna sing a song. I have a bootiful songing voice. Jeremiah was a bullfog. Mrs. Hildebordebuben, what’s your name? Take a memo. All potesters to the will bill be hebedded. Ha, I said hebedded. I meant…Mrs. Hooderhoafen, get me another bucket of scotch. No whammies. No whammies. Stop.”

There was a pause as Gerald placed his head in his hands.

As the Captain fell off his feet he scribbled a giant “X” on the floor with a blue crayon and yelled “Party!”

The Captain’s plan is supported not only by 384 percent (his figure) of students at the college but also by his “new trusty sidekick” Horace. Although many staff members assure us that Horace does not exist and is a figment of the Captain’s imagination, he issued this written statement:

There was another pause so we could each read the “statement,” which read:

“craptinn carfo9n is aa genis*/ $crapcarp! I lik cheeeez jjj the quik brow foxxjumpd ooove69”

I was very proud of myself for controlling my laughter, but it wasn’t over. Gerald finally continued reading.

Despite the debate over Horace’s existence, the Captain’s approval rating has gone up 93 percent (actual figure). Here are some student comments:

“Captain Cognac cares about the state of this institution.”

“This is a big victory for students.”

“Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeerrrrr!”

“Lick me. Liiiiick meee.”

The Captain has a vision for this college, and as he looked out of his office window at the campus community, he held his head high and said, “I can drink any student here under the table.”

Then he fell out of the window.

As Gertie patted the Captain on the back, my laughter could no longer be held inside. I was literally on the floor, hysterical. I wondered if Zeus knew about this.

With the orientation over, Patrick asked me if I wanted to play basketball with him.

“Seriously?” I said.

“Yeah,” he replied. “What, you think I can’t shoot hoop because of my condition?”

“No, I just thought…”

“Let’s go. I’ll kick your ass.”

We went to the gym and played a little one-on-one. Patrick was amazing. He was like a Slinky. He could dunk from the free-throw line and his feet didn’t leave the ground. He beat me 11-0 and asked if I wanted a rematch. I told him I’d try to find Zeus and make it a fair two-on-one.

When I got to our room, Zeus was sitting on the floor, staring at a blank television screen and caressing a gigantic bong. I entered to him laughing at nothing in particular and trying to catch what I guessed was a fly, although I never saw it.

"Hey, man," he said, looking up at me. "What are you doing with Heathcliff the cat’s severed head?"

"It's a basketball," I said.

"Oh. Hey, come here," he said as I sat on the bed beside him. "You know what?"

"What?" I asked.

"Chicken butt," he answered before laughing hysterically.

"You got me on that one, Zeus," I said, staring at him blankly.

"Listen, listen, man," he whispered. "Shhh...It's in the air."

"I'm sorry?" I said.

"Shhh...It's in the air," he repeated. "Shit's in the air, get it?"

"Ah, brilliant," I shouted over his insane laughter.

"Shit's in the air," he continued. "There, satisfied? Are ya? Huh? No? I didn't think so."

"What the hell are you talking about?" I shouted.

“I don’t know.”

“Hey, did you hear about Gerald?”

“So what’s with the giant orange?”

“Oh, do you want to play some b-ball? You and me against Patrick?”

“The midget?” Zeus said, laughing again.

“Funny thing about that…”

"Hey,” he said, pointing. “It's in the sky, man.”

"Oh, God. I’m not going through the ‘Shit’s in the sky’ bit again, Zeus.”

"No, really. Look,” he said. “It’s her.”

It was Emilie, Princess of Paddington County, named, for some reason, after the adorable Peruvian cartoon bear. She was the only English, vegetarian, lesbian, gothic superhero in the entire state. She had been away for quite some time, and now had returned, and with new tattoos and piercings. This was all according to Zeus.

"Princess Emilie," Zeus said. "You've returned, but wherever have you been?"

"I’ve been on tour, fighting alien evildoers like Alf and the Great Gazoo. I am your god. You shall not worship any gods but me. And don't eat meat."

”Yeah, man," Zeus exclaimed.

"I must go now," she said. "Remember, don't get run over, and Jell-O shots next party."

And so, after this ill-conceived farewell, the boys watched as the princess flew into the mid-afternoon sky. So ended another pathetically told story that makes absolutely no sense and was written by a pack of monkeys. Tune in next time when our heroin faces Gene Simmons, Richard Simmons, and novelist Jane Austen in a four-way match of death.

# # #

Michael Frissore is the author of a poetry collection called Poetry is Dead (Coatlism Press, 2009). He writes for SlurveMag.com and his work has most recently appeared in Monkey Kettle, Fast Forward Volume 3, The Toucan, and Errant Parent. He also blogs occasionally at michaelfrissore.blogspot.com. Mike grew up in Massachusetts and now lives in Oro Valley, Arizona with his wife and son.

Fiction - Scent on a Mission by Margaret Eaton

2010-06-17T08:15:00.001-07:00

“It was a distinct odor, a complex reduction no canned fish could compete with…”

Scent on a Mission

by Margaret Eaton

As he got closer she grilled him. “Did you get it? Did you get the Joy?

“No my friend, I found no Joy. And the bitch in the clogs was no help.”

Earlier

“Find the joy my friend.” That’s what he said to me in the Hungarian aisle of Planet Grocery. He was nibbling on a clump of oily fish fresh from a tin. I gave him a quick nod that could have been mistaken for a twitch, then holding my breath I darted away. I rounded an endcap with just enough caution to avoid knocking down a tower of canned coconut milk, headed up the Middle Eastern aisle and exhaled. I spotted what I had come in for: rows and rows of Greek honey. As I reached for a particularly plump jar his pungency announced his return. It was a distinct odor, a complex reduction no canned fish could compete with, it was uniquely human, uniquely American homeless: piss, puss, and sour mash.

I glanced in his direction and instantly regretted it. He had bad feet. Their feet are always bad. Before I could look away he repeated his plea, “Find the joy.” This time with each word his hand moved the fish clump closer to me like a chess piece on an invisible board: find, the, joy. I nodded again, slower than before thinking at least he’s got a decent message. It’s not ‘Jesus hates you for killing American babies’, or ‘God knows what you did last Tuesday.’ Plus I liked the way he carried himself, he had an almost debonaire quality and remarkably good posture for someone with such bad feet.

I put the honey in my basket and slipped away wondering if I had allowed myself to warm to him because I knew I could file him away to some remote corner of my soul reserved for those I only condescendingly deigned to appreciate for their quirkiness but had no other use for. Or had some part of him seeped into some part of me, on its own, on that scent, on a mission, without any intention of spending any time in any corner.

Later I saw him shuffling with purpose toward a female version of himself hovering in the exit, her face red and raw from her unprotected life, her body a mass of sweaters holding back the door. I checked her feet, they were indeed bad. One had escaped the confinement of its shoe and was wearing a dark sock for which I was grateful. She had a little dog on a rope who was going in and out, in and out, over the line of permission and back again.

# # #

Margaret Eaton lives in St. Louis. When she's not dabbling in fiction she helps social change organizations say what they mean, so they can get what they want. She's a contributing editor to Dowser. You can read other stories by Margaret at Opium and Rumble.
© 2010 Margaret Eaton, All Rights Reserved

Poem - Black Seed by Black Seed by Donal Mahoney

2010-06-16T00:53:00.001-07:00

Black Seed by Black Seed

Every day the same people
at the same table
at the rear of the cafeteria.
The maiden, 35 at least,

is gray at the temples,
sour at the mouth.
The widow, 55, waves
a cigarette like a wand.

Girdled and dyed,
she needs no one now;
She ministers to a dog
and has a new apartment.

The accountant, 65, wants to retire,
his years of intemperance
tempered by a stroke,
his anger at everything

suddenly gone. The janitor, 60,
explains over and over
how over the weekend
he snipped from his garden

husks of dead sunflowers
and drove them out of the city
and into the forest
and there in a clearing

spread the black cakes
for chipmunks to strip,
black seed by black seed.
I, a young editor,

“with your whole life
in front of you,” they insist,
sit through it all,
Monday through Friday,

spooning broth, buttering slices
of rye, and praying that after
pudding again for dessert,
the phone on my desk

will explode too late
with a call I’ll take anyway,
and that after that call, I’ll rise
and take from my sport coat

a speech I wrote years ago,
a speech I’ll discard for two lines
off the cuff: “Here’s two weeks’ notice.
I have found a new job.”

# # #

Fiction - Young Man with a Moustache by Jeffery Ryan Long

2010-06-16T00:36:00.001-07:00

“He was serious—he did have a serious moustache—but he also had a lot of dreams she liked to hear about, like his dream to build a giant electric brain at the top of Mt. Everest.”

Young Man with a Moustache

by Jeffery Ryan Long

The young man with a moustache worked at the internet café in our town. All of us thought it was rather extraordinary of him, especially in those days, to wear the moustache by itself; no sloppy beard to dwarf it, no sculpted goatee to subtract from its singularity, no exaggerated, tongue-in-cheek sideburns to comically frame it, to suggest he really wasn’t taking it seriously. No, the moustache lay stark and dark, well groomed over his mouth so naturally it looked as if he’d been born with it, even though we knew he’d just grown it the summer before we started our freshman year in college.

You might not think it so extraordinary the young man wore only a moustache when so many others, at least in those days, dared not. That he simply wore a moustache, perhaps, is not so special—but as a moustache it was a magnificent specimen. We later learned he’d grown it in hopes of appearing “Lennon-esque,” a tribute to the 1967 incarnation of that ubiquitous being, now deceased, whose name and likeness has infiltrated every strata of popular culture. But the young man’s moustache operated on a higher level, strove for something even more universal, more powerful. We all thought it was, more appropriately, “Stalin-esque.” Unlike Lennon’s, where two distinct wings were separated by a vague perforation—the groove in the middle of the upper lip—this young man’s moustache hung like a single piece of thick fabric, per Stalin’s in the photographs. Mandelstam’s caterpillar. It was a nearly straight bar over the lips, which spilled into two short ledges at the corners of the mouth. Whatever Stalin’s faults as a political leader, or as a human being, the former General Secretary of the Communist Party could maintain a striking moustache. This is what gave the young man an authoritarian presence as he stood at the counter cash register, his lower lip working like a scoop to collect the foam the moustache had gathered from his cappuccino. We all looked up from our keyboards, our coffees having long since gone cold, and fingered our naked upper lips in the reflection of the computer monitors.

People commonly mistook the young man for someone much older than his eighteen or nineteen years. Old women referred to him as “sir” and businessmen coming in for quick espressos would idly make conversation with him about stocks and sports, to which he would reply with the same nervous smile (which came off as a knowing grimace from under the moustache). We heard that his own mother, once the young man’s moustache had grown firmly in place, had panicked when she’d glimpsed the “strange man” from the corner of her eye, walking through her house wearing only boxer shorts. And his father, we also heard, now felt uncomfortable when he gave the occasional lecture or piece of advice; he felt he was speaking to his father, instead of the only son sitting to the side of him, slouching on the couch with the TV remote control in his hand, obviously thinking about other things, greater things.

The young man’s first girlfriend—and I’m speaking of the girl who was with him when he made the transition from ordinary, clean shaven student to the young man with the moustache, homo superior—had had similar discomforts and apprehensions. Her first problem, which arose when the young man’s moustache was grown out, was that her father had had a moustache in his college days. She’d seen pictures of the dashing fraternity jock, his hair long, a can of American beer in each hand, his tight body tanned by some coastal sun. There were also the playful snapshots, close-ups of his face with the tips of the moustache curled into perfect circles. Although her father now went without facial hair, the young man, disconcertingly, reminded her of the times when she was an admiring child and her mother showed her those photographs to prove what a handsome man her husband used to be. The young man’s moustache brought issues to the surface his first girlfriend didn’t feel responsible to address yet, at this time in her life, when by all rights she was supposed to interact with boys the complete opposite of her dad.

Then there were the stares the couple drew when walking about town. The men sitting in the reclining chairs in the barbershop once saw them hand in hand on Main Street—when she glanced through the front window she saw them smiling, elbowing and winking at one another. Mothers holding their children by the arms in the candy store would look over the gummy snacks and click their tongues. She heard one of them mutter “Cradle robber” under her breath. The first girlfriend was indignant. After all, she was older than the young man by a month and a half.

But she stayed with him longer than anyone expected, despite the sly looks and whispered comments. We learned that she had actually liked him. He was serious—he did have a serious moustache—but he also had a lot of dreams she liked to hear about, like his dream to build a giant electric brain at the top of Mt. Everest. This brain would transmit optimistic thoughts telepathically to all the people in the world, in the form of electric waves, thereby sponsoring good feelings among mankind. He believed this giant brain was the key to world peace. Even though she didn’t quite believe like he believed, she liked that his heart was in the right place.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t just the two of them in that utopian world, living through fantasies of electric brains and genetically engineered cats with wings, and she knew it. That the world was watching and judging her against the young man with the moustache began to grind away at her affection for him. “It’s just—anachronistic,” the American Studies instructor said about the moustache one day. Even though neither one of them knew what he meant, they guessed that it wasn’t wholeheartedly positive.

The end came at Burger Castle. We were there watching the young man and his girlfriend in line from our booth, having just joined our fries into a collective, forming a large enough pool of ketchup from individual packets. The young man stared up to the menu board, serious as always, stroking the moustache deliberately with his thumb and index finger. When he put his arm around his girlfriend and nestled in close, asking her what she wanted, that’s when she heard it. We knew she heard it because we heard it too, over the frying apple pies and the yelling from the kitchen, the slide of wasted wrappers from the trays to the garbage cans, the opening and closing of the entrance and exit doors. “Lolita,” someone said from behind them in line—and although he either didn’t notice it or pretended not to notice, her head went down, her hair falling into her face.

He maneuvered her to the cash register, they ordered, and he took their tray and went to a table. We couldn’t hear them anymore; we just saw her standing over the table after he’d sat down, shaking her head. He looked up at her, puzzled only in his eyes, his mouth open under the moustache we knew she was really talking to. Then she brushed the hair out of her face and walked away, out the door, while he sat hunched over the food wrapped in paper. He must have been so depressed he couldn’t even finish; the fries were left untouched and the bacon burger only half eaten when he picked up his Coke and left. All of our fries were gone, the ketchup smeared into the paper tray covering, and after we discussed briefly how “too bad” it all was, we threw our garbage away and went back to our houses, all of us a little ashamed.

He became, for all of us, a hero after that—not in the way that Captain America was our hero, but how Tom Thumb or those fat twins on little motorcycles would have been our heroes had they lived in our town. We followed his movements closely, reporting on what we’d seen him do or say in class. One of us (I swear it wasn’t me) even made a half-assed attempt to grow a moustache—he hid the early stages of it by covering the lower half of his face with his hand when he sat down, even when he talked, so that whatever he said was unintelligible. We made him pull the hand away and saw the thin patches of incoming hair. We convinced him to shave it before he made a fool of himself. We knew that even if he grew it for weeks, for months, it would never achieve the majesty of the young man’s. From what we saw, and I’ll admit it was still in the early stages, this moustache looked like a stringy affair, not something you’d want to imprint on a coin. Besides, we could only have one young man with a moustache.

“Did you hear what he said in English today? It made absolutely no sense at all.”

“He’s always a step ahead—that much is for sure.”

And there was our constant vigilance from our computers at the internet café; we’d always watch his interactions with other customers. One day, a heavyset woman in a business suit looked through her purse at the cash register. He handed her the hot chocolate she’d ordered and then began to leaf through his biology textbook.

“I think it’s great, what you’re doing,” she said, giving him a five dollar bill.

“Oh—thank you.”

“I went back to school four years ago, got my MBA. Yeah—whoo!” She exclaimed this softly and made a motion with her arms in the air. “Now I’m making fifty grand a year. Not bad for a divorcee—formerly housewife, thank you very much—who got her GED.” She said this last part conspiratorially, leaning into the cash register.

The young man nodded.

“So when did you decide to go back?”

“Go back?” We knew he was confused, but a moustache like that would never allow confusion to show on the face.

“You know, back to school. Were you working, then just up and decided that a higher education was what you really needed? Career, and all that stuff? That’s sort of how it was for me. And Jamie, my daughter, started getting all the brochures, the letters in the mail, and I just thought ‘why not?’ I guess got the bug, too. Best thing I could have ever done in my life.”

“Yes,” the young man said.

“Well, have a good day,” the woman said as she took the hot chocolate and turned away. Then we saw her set the drink on an empty table and begin to look through her purse once again. She pulled out a business card and returned to the register.

“Look, here’s my card,” she said, holding it out with two fingers, each fingernail painted a dark shade of maroon that matched her blazer. He took the card and looked at it. “I don’t—I don’t really give it to that many people, but I thought well, if you needed some financial advice—what with your new future and all.” She smiled. “Or, if you just wanted to chat, have some dinner—okay. Bye.” She went out the door, came back in when she realized she’d left the hot chocolate on the table, took it and left again; this while the young man stood at the register still holding the card in front of him with both hands. We all turned from our computers to one another, each of us making silent “whoahs” it would have been ridiculous to see the young man make, because his moustache exacted so particular a temperament. That afternoon, while playing videogames in someone’s basement, we went through dozens of scenarios, all of them concerning a date and ensuing love affair between the young man and this older, heavyset professional woman.

The aspects of the young man’s life upon which we most speculated were the times he wasn’t around, not at school or work. What, for instance, did he do on nights off? The young man didn’t have any friends; we were certain he’d probably lost patience with too many others in the past. After his first girlfriend had broken up with him we didn’t see him around the river, or at the go-kart track, or in the pool hall next to the grocery store. When we did see him, he was always alone, the moustache set and intent, his mind focused only on the unknown mission. One of us said he saw the young man at the stationary store, buying pencils and notebooks. This led to a number of theories: perhaps, after the TV set was turned off and his parents were asleep, the young man retired to his room to write the pamphlets and manifestoes which would inevitably lead him to greatness, a greatness we were proud to recognize so early. The young man was more interesting than our college classes or our own quick romances. He kept us small, and by doing so enlarged our imaginations.

Then we heard the young man was dating someone new. They’d been seen at the movie theater, his one hand in hers, the other mechanically moving from the bucket of popcorn to his mouth. She was a high school teacher’s daughter who, unlike all of us who were merely students still living in our parents’ homes and having our mothers do our laundry, was working for a living at the bank next to the butcher. We were impressed she worked for a living straight out of high school instead of killing four years before having to work for a living. Her maturity and her forty-hour a week work schedule seemed to put her and the young man with the equally mature moustache on the same level. We all believed nothing could spoil the relationship.

One Friday night one of us, with the girl he was dating at the time, was in the back seat of his father’s car at the local make-out point: a wide, uninhabited dead end with the creek just a few yards from the road, the branches of trees hanging over the parked cars. He’d seen the young man with the moustache pull up and park with his new girlfriend through the window while he was on top of his date, and told us he crawled off of her right after he had removed her bra.

“What are you doing?” she’d said, after he fixed his shirt around his shoulders and slid closer to the backseat window in order to look at the parked car.

“Shh,” he said. “I just want to see what he does.”

“What are you, some kind of pervert?”

“Look, can we just play the radio a while, or something?” he said. “A guy doesn’t get an opportunity like this every day.”

He told us he couldn’t really see what was happening in the young man’s car. It was either too dark or the new couple was below the level of the windows. But he said for one second he caught a flash of white skin and he didn’t even know what body part it was. We were all disappointed he hadn’t seen more, but we clapped him on the back for the effort. We pictured the young man and his new girlfriend kissing for hours, saying nothing, and when their lips parted we pictured her with a moustache as well—a red one, right under her nose, where the young man’s moustache had chafed the skin with its rough contact.

A nasty rumor spread round shortly after: the new girlfriend had asked the young man to shave. None of us could believe she had the gall. In recompense, we began a plot to sabotage their relationship but quickly nixed the idea. It was the young man’s test, and he wouldn’t let us down. He wouldn’t stop defying everyone with his soul-stunning moustache just for a girl. He’d taken us too far. Nevertheless, we kept closer tabs on him, nervous surveillance with walkie-talkies and shotgun mikes to monitor the status of the moustache. Each day over the span of two weeks ended with a sigh-provoking “All clear—the subject has been spotted and the moustache remains.” We eased up a bit, relaxed, began to bowl again and ride our mountain bikes through the woods. One of us, playing videogames online at the internet café, saw the new girlfriend kiss the young man right at his cash register, the moustache falling over their joined lips like a protective blanket. We thought everything would be okay. Our faith in the young man with the moustache deepened.

After a quick pick up game of basketball at the schoolyard one weekend we decided to go to the internet café for milkshakes—we could get them at a discount because we were students at the college. When we walked in, we all sort of froze into a row in front of the door. Believe it or not, I actually walked back outside to check the name of the establishment; it was the same as it had always been. And there were the same trash cans, the same water thermos and paper cone cups, the same computers, the same menu board, the same posters of coffee beans in outer space, coffee beans swirling around the head of a rooster, the same espresso machine behind the counter. And there was the same young man at the register—except that now he was simply a young man, nothing more. The moustache was gone. He met our eyes and smiled at us while we stared at him. He looked ten to twenty years younger. The face was common—good looking, maybe, but nothing close to dictatorial. Now he was one of us, hardly even a young man anymore, just another guy.

A few said nothing, just lowered their heads and left. A few picked up magazines from the rack and sat down, not knowing what else to do, frequently looking away from the articles to convince themselves that there he was, with no moustache, and that it was over. Then there were a few of us, myself included, who swallowed hard and went up to the register, who ordered our milkshakes and made small talk with him about exams, about papers to write. It’s difficult to portray the awkwardness of that exchange—only one whose heart has been that invested, whose dreams have been contained in a single splendid thing, now gone, could understand.

The shock, it seems strange to say, didn’t last for long. We went back to our computers for email and now we ate muffins that crumbled over the keyboards despite the rules, tipped the guy irregularly, and sometimes even played practical jokes on him, which he didn’t take so well. In other words, we treated him as we would any other employee at any other establishment: without the deep respect, even awe, we’d shown him before. I could say we learned, eventually, that we really hadn’t lost anything. I could say it was like we all had had tails—we were born with them, we lived with tails all our lives and therefore considered them important. Then one morning we woke up without tails and we discovered we never really needed them in the first place, and that life was actually more comfortable without having to drag a tail around. I could say, in shaving his moustache, the young man set us free. And he did, in a way, but into what? Soon we were drinking beers in the back of pickup trucks, parked for hours outside all night diners. Soon we were just barely passing our classes, hung over from Jell-O shots at fraternity house parties. I had to get out of town. I transferred to State University the next year, after working at a car dealership in the summer.

I actually saw him again, a few years later, when I’d come home to celebrate Thanksgiving with my folks. I’d heard he’d gotten a job at the video rental place and had an office in the back. He’d broken up with his girlfriend long ago. I ran into him at a bar—I offered to buy him a drink and he accepted, but only on the condition that I let him buy me one after. We talked about a few of the classes we’d taken together at the college, about certain professors and girls whom we’d both had crushes on. It was pleasant. He was wearing one of those—those chin things, cut very close so that it almost looks like a shadow at the end of your chin. It was a goddamn shame. After a few drinks I almost confessed to him that when he’d had his moustache, he’d been the greatest man alive—to me, to all of us.

But then I thought about it and decided to keep my mouth shut. Nobody ever wants to hear those kinds of things.

# # #

As of this printing, Jeffery Ryan Long is in the process of relocating from Hawaii to Italy. He enjoys music and is very new to the works of John Sanford, a writer his friend has begged him to read. Aside from biking, walking is the greatest inspiration behind Jeffery's stories. He has most recently been published in Labyrinth Inhabitant, The Last Man Anthology, and Hawaii Review, and is currently working on a fantasy novel.

Photography - The Fortune Teller Is On A Break by Christopher Woods

2010-06-10T18:26:00.001-07:00

Onomatopoeia Magazine SPRING 2010 Issue

2010-03-05T10:57:00.000-08:00

Onomatopoeia Magazine - SPRING 2010

Click HERE to download the SPRING 2010 Issue as a PDF! Courtesy of Issuu.com.

CONTENTS

FICTION

"The Playground" from Between Two Brothers
A novel excerpt from Christopher Johnson

Swizzle Stick
By Daddio Mick

Beige
By Gregory Cohen

NON-FICTION/INTERVIEW
The Writer Abideth
"Two Gentlemen of Lebowski" author, Adam Bertocci, as interviewed by Bobby D. Lux

Directing a Monkey
Non-Fiction by Chris Kent

The Man I Knew
Non-Fiction by Sarah E. Lowe

POETRY
Beggars would ride.
Poem by Jara Jones

Playboy, August 1978
Poem by Jara Jones

lucky day
Poem by Anthony Liccione

ART
I care who's here and between the clouds
Artwork by Marta Pelrine-Bacon

NOTE FROM THE EDITOR

   I suppose that one of the "perks" of starting a magazine is that you get to pen the letter from the chief to announce each issue. It’s a treasured place in the publishing world, though perhaps not so much in online publishing (damn Luddites). It’s a place where the Editor-In-Chief can wax poetic on whatever subject they deem fit for press. Unfortunately, I've long suspected that these letters are often skipped over like they're those full-page articles/really a paid advertisement (you're not fooling anyone!) because really, who cares what the Editor-In-Chief has to say? I don't. We get it – the magazine is good, you worked really hard on it, and the writers are the most talented collection since that one time Twain, Joyce, Tolstoy, Wilde, and Melville stayed up late one night at a coffeehouse to chat about the things they like to jot down.
   With that floating the back of my mind, I would like to welcome you to the premiere issue of Onomatopoeia Magazine. Since this is the premiere issue, allow me to explain the thinking that pushed me towards this venture: why not?!
   Of course, with that out of the way, my next task was to come up with a name, and Onomatopoeia was the first thing that popped in my head. I’m a firm believer that, in writing, as well as in life, the first idea that makes room for itself is the best. Onomatopoeia is literary term that has to do with words that imitate sounds, so we’ve got the whole pretentious literary thing going on, but the final selling point for me, the moment when I knew this would be called Onomatopoeia and nothing else was when my 10th grade creative writing students told me that Onomatopoeia was a cool word. That’s it. Because when fifteen year olds think something is cool, you’ve clearly touched a nerve.

Cheers,
Bobby D. Lux

PS – The magazine is really good. For what it’s worth, I worked really hard on this, and, in all sincerity, I’m very proud to print the work of the writers and artists in this debut issue. See you in June.

Two Gentlemen of Lebowski Interview with Adam Bertocci

2010-03-01T23:45:00.000-08:00

“Shakespeare is the greatest writer in the history of pretty much anything ever, but he also just loved a good dick joke.”

The Writer Abideth

Adam Bertocci, author of “Two Gentlemen of Lebowski”

as Interviewed by Bobby D. Lux

A skill required to survive the doldrums of the ever-unchanging world of the desk job is the ability to find things on the Internet to amuse yourself. So if I have to choose between work and Hey, check out this link, it’s hilarious, I choose the link every time, no questions asked. Some days, it’s a picture of a normally cute cat making a disturbing or condescending face. Other days, you find your entertainment in a re-imagined version of Shakira’s Hips Don’t Lie with Glen Danzig singing backup. And then there’s other days when you strike pure gold.

One morning, just like that, I stumbled onto Two Gentlemen of Lebowski by Adam Bertocci. For the next hour I was absolutely tickled (which is a phrase I’ve never used before) as Bertocci seamlessly weaved the language of Shakespeare into the adventures of everyone’s favorite cinematic Dude and his best bowling partner who also was a dabbler in pacifism (not in ‘Nam, of course). As it turns out, I’m not alone in my admiration for Bertocci’s script. The script flew across the Internet with the speed of Epic Beard Man and since the following interview was conducted (late January), Bertocci has been busy as the subject of international press, meeting with agents, looking at potential book deals, and even visiting rehearsals as several theatre companies are now mounting productions of his script.

Can you talk about how this idea came forth and how you developed the script?

The idea initially came about as a funny idea about a line or two--real famous lines, like "You're out of your element" and "The Dude abides," translated into cod-Shakespearean. At the time, it was just a throwaway joke.

The idea to actually do the script came about a month later; I was in the process of sending out query letters around the movie industry, to generate interest in one of my screenplays, and I was frustrated at the rather low number of reads I was getting. For some reason I got it into my head that actually following through on that silly idea of mine would make an effective publicity stunt. I guess I figured that every group of friends has at least one person who just really loves “The Big Lebowski”, and that would help it spread.

I developed the script very linearly, starting with the character list and plowing my way straight through. Honestly, if I hadn't confirmed that the name Walter existed in Shakespeare's day (it's even in his work) the whole project might have died before the first scene.

On the surface, it seems that The Big Lebowski is an unlikely as choice as any for this type of adaptation, but as you read it, the story has many of the qualities of a work of Shakespeare – mistaken identity, deception, a Player Queen (and Karl Hungus) and so on. Was there any part that stuck out to you as especially Shakespearean in The Big Lebowski?

For me, the obvious element was the fact that it begins and ends with direct address, a prologue and ends with an epilogue--a common enough feature in Shakespeare, and the source of some of the most famous moments ("Romeo and Juliet", Rosaline's goodbye in "As You Like It", Puck wrappin' things up for us in "Midsummer"). So that was a good early encouragement for me.

Beyond that, there are two things that stood out for me. Firstly, the importance of language. The language of "The Big Lebowski" is extraordinarily precise, with every "fuck", every "man" carefully planned in the Coens' script. Furthermore, just as Shakespeare created many of the words and phrases we use today, the "Lebowski" characters create and propagate language as well, and they all end up quoting each other with the same regularity that we quote the Bard.

Secondly, the mix of high and low culture. Shakespeare is the greatest writer in the history of pretty much anything ever, but he also just loved a good dick joke. "Lebowski" is an art film from the Oscar-winning Coen brothers, but it's also a crazy romp about a stoner and the scraps he gets into with his bowling buddies.

You have an excellent command of Shakespearean language. Can you talk about the actual writing process once you decided to write this? How quickly were you able to adapt the dialogue?

The first draft was basically banged out in a weekend... a very intense weekend, to be fair. And that was basically a simple translation of the shooting script into a lazy Elizabethan, laying down the foundations.

Maybe it was just easier to develop the work as a Shakespearean piece, get the good stuff in, once I had it all 'translated'.

What elements of the film were easiest to adapt and which the more difficult?

By far the most difficult element was the profanity. "Zounds" just doesn't have the impact it used to, and there's really no way to get around the fact that a movie with a "fuck" count of 260 is going to need some attention paid to the four-letter words. Everyone's favorite trivia tidbit from "Two Gentlemen" is that the hardest thing to write by far was Walter's outburst to Larry. What am I supposed to do with "Do you see what happens, Larry, when you fuck a stranger in the ass?" Shakespeare himself couldn't improve on that, and I think I spent longer on that one page than the whole act that surrounded it.

From a more technical perspective, anything involving telephones and answering machines and such was a bit of a pain. Of course, I guess Shakespeare would complain about how his plays suffered under today's technology. The ending of "Romeo and Juliet" would be tough to put together in the age of cell phones.

It's funny but people don't tend to ask me which part was the easiest. I dunno, it was either moving along at a brisk little clip, or it wasn't, y'know? I think the bits with the Knave and Maude were the easiest... simple two-person dialogue, not too much information to get across, and they came late enough in the movie that I'd been working for a while and was used to the process.

What’s your favorite part of Two Gentlemen of Lebowski? What is your favorite line?

For favorite part, I'd have to say the closing. Partially because it's one of my favorite parts of the movie, it just feels so warm and comforting... but partially because I just think the translation all came together there. It's one of the few parts of the play I have memorized, and when I was revising, I'd smile every time I got there.

I have a certain amount of affection for the closing of "Midsummer", which I crib the opening lines of the ending from. It has the same feel as the end of "Lebowski", a friendly goodbye before the magic ends for the evening.

I don't think I have a favorite individual line. It's probably a tie between all the sexual ones. Shakespeare just loved a sly reference to the vagina. Sex, sex, sex, that's all the kids think about these days.

Your script went viral almost immediately after you posted it. How did it spread so quickly, and how has your writing career benefited from the attention?

I've done my best to track the spread via a timeline on the Web site, but the short answer is, it came in three steps. First, it took off on the Something Awful forums, where I'm a member--they've been great to me. Second, it hit Twitter, and got to someone called Drew Olanoff... I actually have no idea who he is, but he's apparently very big on Twitter. From him, it got to Alyssa Milano. And as Alyssa Milano Tweets, so Tweets the nation.

My writing career has benefited, but not in the way I was planning for. Somehow I ended up a produced playwright and an author with an agent. But I did this project to try and raise my profile as a screenwriter, and that corner of the world hasn't really responded yet. I'm hoping that once the play actually opens, or the book comes out (if it does get published), I'll be able to leverage it into something else.

I never really saw myself as a playwright, so I'm not sure what I'll do with that cluster of buzz. But I do enjoy writing prose and nonfiction, and so maybe this whole 'book' thing could work out for me.

Why do you think The Big Lebowski has developed such a rabid following over the past decade? How many times have you seen the film?

I can't speak for everyone, but what I think makes it work so well and helped it build this cult audience is the way it creates these little patterns. It's an intricate little puzzle box, the film, and you learn more about it every time you watch it; you notice how this connects to that, how this character is quoting that character. There's always something new to find in a classic.

I'm about to shock the world and say that I haven't actually seen the film all that much. Maybe fifteen times (and three of those times were after initiating this project). By normal moviegoer standards, maybe that's a lot, but by "Lebowski" fan standards, it's nothing.

It's a film I'm very fond of, obviously, and a film I've enjoyed studying and reading about; it's a film that rewards that level of scholarship. But it's not one of the films I'd consider myself an expert on, nor one of my very favorites or anything like that.

I guess in a weird way that explains why I knew the film was rife for a Shakespearean conversion. It wasn't something I was doing as a conscious, I-must-honor-this-film tribute to "The Big Lebowski." I was serving the words on paper, not my own feelings for the movie; I'm able to view the movie with enough closeness to love it and yet with enough distance to bring some new perspective to it.

What are some of your other projects you’re working on? Talk about your other creative interests and pursuits.

Right now I have one film on the tail end of its festival run, a profanity-saturated monologue about the life and times of James K. Polk, and that's gonna hit the Internet in February. That's my tenth short film for the festival circuit. I'm planning to shoot number eleven this year, a romantic comedy, if I can find the time.

I am continuing to plug my feature film screenplays to Hollywood. This largely takes the form of writing letters and crossing my fingers that someone will decide they wish to read the script.

Ironically, the blowup surrounding "Two Gentlemen" has sort of sidetracked me from all the things of my own that I was hoping to call attention to. I think it's very important to always have something new in the pipeline, to always be working on something, and I confess sometimes I've been guilty of shirking that because of this hoopla.

Are there plans for any more Shakespearean takes on other classic cult films?

Lord, no. I'm not terribly certain the world needs another one of these, even if I could recapture lightning in a bottle. A lot of this project came to me in a flash of insight.

But even if I was able to do as good a job on another movie as I hope I did on "Lebowski," I don't think it'd go viral or provide the same boost to my life. I think people would just smile and move on. You can't force these things.

With that said, I know which films I'd do next if someone held a gun to my head and said 'do one'. But I think I'll keep that to myself. My little private joke.

They are, however, cult films, approaching classic status, so you hit the nail on the head there. (I'm a bit of a stick in the mud about the word "classic." You gotta be real old to get that word.)

How much fun was it to write this?

Great fun. Look, the only reason to do any project is because it's fun. That goes double for fan projects.

I think readers, especially Shakespeare buffs, can tell from the writing that I was having a high old time. If I wasn't taking joy in the mashup process, you'd have known.

My father sort of hit the nail on the head: the reason this project caught on with so many people was because it was supremely pointless, an enterprise taken on for pure love and pure amusement with no guaranteed reward.

I pity the poor bastard who tries to do any similar project and doesn't enjoy it. I really do.

For more information on Adam Bertocci and his endeavors, including Two Gentlemen of Lebowski, visit http://www.runleiarun.com/. To stay up to date on all things Two Gentlemen of Lebowski, join the fan page at: www.facebook.com/twogentlemenoflebowski.

Bobby D. Lux is the founder of Onomatopoeia Magazine and resides somewhere in Southern California. His work has been featured in several magazines and anthologies, most recently FLYMF’s Greatest Hits. Sometimes an actor and sometimes a creative writing teacher, he justifies not updating his blog, http://www.bobbyswritingschool.com/, because he’s busy working on a novel.

Poem Playboy, August 1978 by Jara Jones

2010-03-01T23:44:00.000-08:00

Playboy, August 1978 by Jara Jones

Your eyes don't first discover the man on the cover.
He's just a pair of white tuxedo pant legs a woman uses to wrap her frame in place.
He could be a pole, or a wall.
Inside, in the magazine that aroused the erotic cells exactly thirty years ago,
(the small and quiet history of your birth)
there is that palpable sentiment of desire, the yearning to fill one's belly with the hot and soothing liquor of culture.
Men chew a wide, fantastic grin offering Camel cigarettes, mug at the camera as their adjust their mirrors in their contoured Datsun compact car.
Showing off their lime green life vests as they test out jet skis for a photo shoot, or standing awkwardly in brown chino pants, it's clear they are serious about leisure.
A Sears and Roebuck gray corduroy jacket hangs off the shoulder of a blond, bearded male, a jacket just like the one your father wore, after the Navy and before the soft gestures that led to your life.
The collar resembles a wing of some large, clumsy bird, and the breast pockets are fastened with simple brass rivets.
More than the models, with their flat eyes, their acres of curly, resplendent pubic ferns, and their ripe, tanned flesh-shapes, you longed for that jacket.
You aspired for that artifact, that costume, that hairstyle or talisman that could give you a backstage pass into adult sophistication.

Jara Jones is the sort of chap who'd stab you in the throat. With a paper clip, and a little determination. Or maybe he'll make you some pancakes. Hard to say, really. He thinks good poems should be like hand grenades: brutish, violent, and quick.

Poem lucky day by Anthony Liccione

2010-03-01T23:43:00.000-08:00

lucky day by Anthony Liccione

on the way to work
caught up in a late
state-of-emergency traffic,
I saw a man running
through the grey morning
downtown,
a briefcase under one arm,
while using a newspaper
umbrella to cover his head,
from the kneecaps down
below he was drenched
with water,
hopping over puddles
and crushing flowers
with the speed of his heel
in a single-bound,

when suddenly, in fate
thunder sounding as THOU-
he met the finger of God,
blazing white flash cutting
through the sky,
pointing him out and
striking like the last bowling
pin standing, poor guy
I thought, lucky bastard he was,
and I having a chance
to even see this magnificent
once-in-a-life-time event
take place, right before me,

just like that,
it flashed through my mind,
the twenty-six million jackpot
lottery ticket in my visor,
awaiting to be drawn and claimed,
maybe it is my lucky day

or maybe,
looking on from the smoke-hole
of his body,
perhaps it could have
just as well been the Devil
having that old familiar twitch
in his middle finger.

Anthony lives in Texas with his two children. His poems have appeared in several print and online journals, and he has four collections of poetry books.

Fiction Short Story Beige by Gregory Cohen

2010-03-01T09:57:00.000-08:00

"'You do not wish freedom. You fill your life with obligations and appointments. You live from a calendar and communicate at a distance. You are far freer here. What is it that is truly lacking?'"

Beige
by
Gregory Cohen

   The hands of the clock hadn’t moved in days. 7:36. Couldn’t even tell if it was a.m. or p.m. No windows available to check the sun (or moon, for that matter). The door was locked; the walls were thick and soundproof. The sound through the tiny speakers inset neatly into the corners of the room was constant: the supposedly soothing rush of waves lapping against some nameless and, probably, non-existent beach.
   Harold was in a timeless void, comfortable but lost, utterly adrift and with no answers. He looked around at the room, seemingly for the thousandth time since he became aware of his surroundings. The room as twelve by fourteen feet (he’d paced it off enough times to be fairly certain of the accurate measurements). The carpet was the color of sandstone, a Berber weave. He knew Berber; he’d ordered enough of it for his clients. In the center of the room stood the bed, queen-size, covered in a tan comforter with enough pillows to fill a sultan’s harem. The walls were empty of decoration except for the natural colored grass-cloth covering them from floor to ceiling. In the corner of the room stood a small square refrigerator filled with all sorts of edibles. The refrigerator was taupe. The edibles actually had color. The refrigerator was nicely stocked. If Harold had been hungry at all, he wouldn’t have wanted for anything. All of his favorite foods were present. But Harold wasn’t hungry; Harold didn’t have any appetite at all.
   Next to the refrigerator stood a water cooler, the large up-ended bottle resting on top three-quarters full. This water cooler was the object in the room that worried Harold most of all. Because, although Harold wasn’t hungry, he was thirsty and he had been drinking regularly, greedily even; but the level of the water hadn’t changed. Not a fraction of an inch. Harold was sure of this. On his second day here (at least what had felt like his second day), Harold had marked the level of the water on the outside of the bottle. He had used his own blood to do it, ripping at the cuticle on his thumb until the blood welled around his nail and smearing a line along the waterline. Now, on what had to be at least his sixth day, after drinking quarts, if not gallons of water, the cool liquid inside the bottle still reached that dried smear of blood.

   Harold’s eyes drifted from what he had begun to think of as the refreshment counter over the bare walls, to the drab bed, and eventually rested on the two doors that led from his room. One led to his bathroom, ultimately normal in its contents: a sink, a toilet, a shower stall, a towel rack, and a collection of unlabeled bottles and boxes holding shampoo; toothpaste and toothbrush; shaving cream, an old-fashioned razor and after shave lotion; deodorant; a hair brush. Everything in the bathroom was a light unmemorable tan color.
The other door was locked. Harold had no idea where that led. It had never been used. No one had ever come through it and Harold was certainly not being allowed to go out.

   Harold was a prisoner in a world of beige simplicity. This, of course, was a terrible thing; but there were worse things. For instance, Harold had no idea why he was being imprisoned or how he had become so. He had gone to sleep one night in his own apartment, having come home late from a party being thrown by a friend of a client of whom he had only recently been hired. He had fallen into bed, his bed, exhausted from working the room and happy to be back in his own domain, and awakened the next day (or the next minute perhaps; he really had no way of knowing) in "The World of the Bland." And, as terrifying and unbalancing as the entire experience had been, he fully believed that that overall "beige-ness" was the worst part of it. After all, Harold had always lived his life flamboyantly. He had to. As the foremost Interior Designer to the wealthy and the ultra-wealthy, he was required to live to his own creative standards; and, as he lived alone, he could do just that, allowing his apartment to reflect his inner extremism. Not one wall of his 2000 square foot loft was painted the same color; they all screamed with passionate boldness. His home was a work of art and he the focal point of all that explosive energy.
   All of the people who visited his home commented on how well it focused the meaning of Harold’s life back on himself. Of course, the people who visited his home were there to experience it. Harold only invited prospective clients home. If he was to socialize, it was in public; after all, socializing was a waste of time unless he was able to be seen. His was a controlled environment, exuberant and bold in its appearance, but, like the valuable piece of art that it was, not meant to be touched or altered by anyone but himself.
   Harold sat on the edge of the bed, smothered by the non-creativity surrounding him and wracked his mind to try to discover how he had come to this place, who had brought him here, what they wanted, and just how he would find a way to return to the world in which he belonged.

   "Hello? Hello! Listen to me, damn, it!" Harold shouted from the center of the room, as he had been doing repeatedly since he’d discovered his imprisonment.
   He didn’t move to a wall or the door, just sat on the bed and shouted aimlessly. After all, he had no idea where the door led, if anywhere at all and he had no way of knowing what waited on the other side of the walls; why waste the energy to move toward them when he could sit in the center and yell for help in comfort?
Anyway, his cry for help wasn’t going to get a response. He knew this already. He was shouting out of habit, for lack of anything else to do. The total lack of input was really starting to get on Harold’s nerves. He was a man who thrived on stimuli. From the moment he entered his apartment, he had arranged to have his senses automatically bombarded. Responding to the motion of his front door opening, a very sensitive motion detector would bring his sound system to life, blaring an endless stream of hard rock and rap music out of the 32 speakers hidden tastefully throughout his loft. The recessed mini-spot lights he had artfully dispersed throughout his living space would shine on a myriad of moving sculpture and reflective surfaces, casting floating beams of light and color over every surface in the vast space. His phone would invariably be ringing upon his entrance and would repeatedly break the monotony of his time alone; he was a very busy man and his expertise was essential to the happy lives of all of his clients. Harold spent most of his time at home on the phone, answering minor decorating questions – "Harold, should the painting hang over the sofa or should the sofa face it?" – making appointments, or quoting prices for a personal one-on-one visit. But, here, in this sensuous wasteland, there was nothing but the even lighting, the beige surroundings, and the endless synthesized waves.
   The waves stopped.
   Harold sat and listened to the total silence for several minutes before he could be absolutely sure. The waves had been so incessant that it was difficult for him to be positive that they had ceased; he could almost continue to hear them inside his head. But after careful examination of the speakers, actually climbing on top of the refrigerator to place his ear against one of them, he concluded that the repetitious lapping had come to an end. So, the question that now occurred to him was... why? Had someone stopped the recording in response to his shout or had the CD finally come to its end?
   Somehow, it didn’t feel random. Harold didn’t think the sound had ceased because of some technical error. It had seemed to go quiet for a purpose. He sat atop the refrigerator, all senses attuned to whatever might happen, and waited in anticipation.
   Nothing happened.
   No new sound effect replaced the waves. The lighting remained constant. The color scheme, of course, was untouched. All that was new was the silence, and it was absolute. Harold had a moment of panic as he pondered the possibility that the waves had not ended, but that, instead, he had gone deaf. Of course, he could hear himself breathing, but wasn’t it possible to "feel" sound through your body without actually hearing it as it entered your ears? Harold leapt off the refrigerator, landing silently on the tightly wove carpet. Running to the door, he pounded on the solid surface with his open palm. He didn’t expect anyone to answer his call; he only wanted to hear the pounding noise for himself. He was rewarded with the deep, hollow, thump each time his hand struck the door.

"Thank God," he mumbled to himself and his voice sounded incredibly loud in the lifeless air. It also sounded very, very frightened. Harold wasn’t used to that sound. He had always considered himself ultra-confident, able to handle any situation and handle it with style. It was one of his greatest business assets. Harold was able to sell a decorating concept, no matter how outlandish, to even the most conservative client. He believed in his talent; he was solid on the image of Harold Parmer, Design Genius. He absolutely knew that no one could surpass his creativity and imagination. He had often exclaimed to prospective clients, "Give me a room... any room... and I’ll turn it into a masterpiece."

"That’s correct, Harold."

The voice came from the speakers and caught Harold completely off guard. It was uninflected, asexual, ageless. Had Harold been required to describe it, his normally extensive mastery of the English language would have failed him. He would have simply described it as "a voice."

Who are you?" Harold directed the question in a vaguely upward direction, not sure how his voice might be transmitted to the speaker.
No response.

   Harold turned to the door and shouted, "Hello. Who are you? You can’t pretend you’re not here anymore. Once you’ve spoken, you’ve given yourself away. Now give me some answers."
   "How dare you assume that you can command us?"
   Was there a touch of emotion in the voice now? Had Harold managed to push some buttons or was he only hearing a tone in the voice he would expect to hear in his own? He had never before doubted his own senses, but there was a quality in the voice that was so generic, so neutral... so beige, Harold thought to himself... that it defied full comprehension. However, whether there was annoyance in the voice or not, Harold thought it prudent to err on the side of safety.

   "I’m sorry," he said quietly, moving guardedly to the bed and sitting, "I didn’t mean to sound demanding. I’m frightened and confused and I would like whatever answers you’d be willing to supply."
   For a moment, Harold feared that the conversation was finished. He sat in the middle of the room, waiting for a response from the voice; and the wait stretched on and on. Harold didn’t want to speak too soon or say the wrong thing, if the voice was simply considering a response; so he sat and waited... in silence and neutrality and blandness... and lost track of time.
   It was when he next heard the voice that he realized he’d lost more than just a few minutes of time.

"Who we are is not important, Harold."

It was as if the conversation hadn’t paused, but Harold could tell by the sour taste in his mouth and by the beard stubble growing on his chin that he had had to have been asleep for at least several hours.

"Take care of your physical needs, Harold, and we will give you the essential answers."

Harold waited for more, but nothing followed. He weighed his options and decided that the wise course of action would be to follow instructions, at least as far as he was able. Keep his captors happy and gather what information he could. He moved to the bathroom, urinated, washed his hands, brushed his teeth. He considered shaving, but didn’t feel the need at the moment, so he dried his hands and face and re-entered the bedroom.

"I’m ready for answers now," Harold announced to the air. He was amazed at how calm and normal his voice sounded.

"No, you’re not. All of your physical needs, Harold. You must eat."

"I’m not hungry."

   Yes, you are."
   Harold moved to the refrigerator and opened the door to inspect the contents. Although he had glanced through them before, it had been more of an exercise in acquainting himself with his surroundings. Now he truly inspected the contents. He still didn’t feel particularly hungry, but he had to admit that the idea of tasting something did make his mouth fill with saliva. He sat on the floor, his eyes level with the interior of the refrigerator and began to work through the food products inside. Apples, nectarines, grapes, oranges, carrots, celery, sliced green and red peppers, a tub of ranch dressing, cheese slices, crackers, luncheon meats, a jug of apple juice, a carton of milk – nothing that required preparation... a world of finger-foods. Placing a grape in his mouth as he continued to inspect the food, he was surprised at the hunger that the sweet fruit encouraged in him. He quickly polished off the bunch of grapes, tossing the naked stems aside and began to consume tiny sandwiches made from salami and cheese folded between saltines. Drinking the apple juice directly out of the jug, his hands worked feverishly dipping hunks of vegetables into the dressing and shoveling the entire mess into his already filled mouth. Harold continued gorging himself until the refrigerator was nearly empty and he found himself surrounded by peels and cores and crumbs of every sort.
   At last, he sat back against the bed, his head leaning against the footboard and breathed as deeply as his swollen abdomen would allow.
   "Now we are ready to receive your questions, Harold."

Harold started. He had totally forgotten about this unseen presence. He had been totally absorbed by his feeding frenzy and now he needed to regroup quickly before his captors changed their mind about continuing their dialogue.

"Who are you?" Harold managed to croak, working at a slice of apple peel trapped between two of his molars.

"We are we."

"That’s not an answer. You promised me answers."

"Wrong, Harold. It is true we promised answers and an answer is what we have provided. We cannot promise that we can deliver understanding."

"Where am I?"

"You are in a room."
So, this was how they were going to play it. So be it. Harold always prided himself at being good at word games. "Where is the room?"

"It is here, of course."

Harold was beginning to feel frustrated. He needed some cold, hard facts.

"What time is it?"

"Time is relative."

"What time is it in this room?"

"7:36. We have provided a time-keeping appliance, a clock. Why waste a question like that?"

"Because the clock doesn’t move. It doesn’t change. It always says 7:36."

"And the assumption is that the clock is incorrect?"

   "Well, it can’t always be 7:36, for God’s sake!" Harold shouted.
   Silence. Stretching on as Harold counted off the seconds... and watched the clock stand still... as he sat on the floor of this colorless room in the middle of here... with his keepers watching stoically from somewhere beyond... as they waited, patiently, for him to regain his calm.
   "I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have shouted," Harold carefully kept his voice even and relaxed.
   "Continue with the questioning."

Harold relaxed. He was beginning to learn the rules and, as long as he knew the rules, he was confident he could make this conversation work for himself.
"How long have I been here?"

"An answer to this question is not required. That is why the clock has been provided."

   "But the clock doesn’t move."
   "Exactly."
   Did Harold perceive a note of satisfaction in the voice? There was no modulation, so how could he possibly recognize any sort of emotion in it? He had to be interpreting the changes in vocal patterns himself, forcing a humanness to the voice that was missing in reality.
   "All right, then," Harold stood and began to pace. Pacing always helped him organize his thoughts, "Why am I being kept here?"
   "So that we can learn."
   "What could you possibly want to learn about me?"

"The term – ‘we’ – is not exclusive to us. You are a part of ‘we’ as well."

Harold thought about that statement. He wanted to learn what was happening to him, surely; but is that what the voice meant. The riddles were troubling, but he felt he was getting somewhere.
"If I teach you what you want to know, will I be allowed to leave?"

"If we learn what is necessary, release will be allowed."

"Alright, what is it that 'we' wish to know?"

There was a pause. Harold began to worry. Did the voice understand sarcasm? Was his last response perceived as hostile? Did they decide that the conversation was over? But before he had a chance to apologize again, the voice reappeared.

"We have attempted to provide you with everything necessary for your comfort and well-being. What have we missed?"

"Freedom, for one thing."
"You do not wish freedom. You fill your life with obligations and appointments. You live from a calendar and communicate at a distance. You are far freer here. What is it that is truly lacking?"

"Companionship."
"You do not want companionship. Perhaps you want the opportunity for companionship, but you have had that for many years and have not taken advantage of it. You live alone, you work alone; when you come into contact with others, the relationship is fleeting and unsatisfactory. You have never felt the need for true intimacy beyond that which you can provide yourself."

Harold sat on the bed and listened to the voice calmly disassemble his reasons for being allowed to leave.

   "We tire of these superficial attempts at self-assessment. Think carefully about your next answer, for if we find it unsatisfactory, our conversation is at an end."
   Harold fought to control his panic. He simply had to continue the dialogue. It was his only hope for freedom. He knew he had the answer; he understood what this existence was inhibiting. But he had to make the answer truthful and complete. He sat and thought and the voice was silent and patient.
   Finally, Harold stood. He composed himself and faced the wall; he had long ago decided that the direction in which he spoke made little difference.

"I need to create."

"Creation is not being hindered. We have, in fact, given you the perfect canvas."

Harold looked around at the blank walls, the bland carpet, the monotone furnishings of the room surrounding him.

"Is that what this is all about? Is this a test to see what I can bring to the room? Have I been put here to test my creativity?"

"You may create if you wish. You are the one that said it was your need; it makes no difference to anyone else. But if it is the inability to create that keeps you from happiness, we only wish to assure you that we will not stand in your way."

So, that is the key, Harold thought to himself, a surge of energy coursing through his body. This is like some freakish game show – put an artist in a blank room, and let him create art from whatever he can find. Well, if anyone can win this little contest, he sighed with relief, it was he.
He scanned the room quickly, looking for something, anything he could use as an artistic medium. The room was bare, of course, except for the furnishings. The refrigerator had been thoroughly emptied, thanks to Harold himself, and the few items remaining from his meal lay scattered and useless along the floor.
A thought popped into his head... the bathroom. Of course, there were several items in there that could substitute as paint. He dashed inside, quickly focusing on the toothpaste; even the tube looked like the varied tubes of acrylics he often used in his decorating adventures. He squeezed a dab onto his finger and stared listlessly at it. Harold was a man who worked with color, vivid hues that shocked the senses; this glob of paste coating his finger was not even brilliant white. Damn it, he would’ve even settled for that damn Crest baby blue. This paste was actually cream colored. Harold experimentally slid his finger along the wall; the toothpaste all but disappeared into the grass-cloth. Tossing the toothpaste tube onto the floor, Harold poured the shampoo onto his hand. It looked like a puddle of water in his palm, utterly colorless, as were the shaving cream and aftershave lotion as well.

   "What do you want from me?" Harold collapsed to the floor, crying to the featureless ceiling, "I am a manipulator of color. How am I supposed to create without color?"
   Laughter echoed off the bare walls in the bathroom and Harold, crawling along the tightly woven carpet, pulled himself out of the bathroom to find out what the hell was so damn funny.
   "It is amazing, Harold," the voice spoke condescendingly to the exhausted wreck leaning weakly beside the bed, "how a supposedly creative individual such as yourself has such an overpowering lack of imagination. You need color? Are you so desperate for external stimulus that you fail to see the incredible capacity for blinding beauty within yourself? Don’t you see, Harold? All the colors you could ever require are inside of you, if you only looked deep enough and allowed yourself to truly see."

   And the laughter came again, fading away quickly leaving the man alone again. He had failed, Harold realized. He had failed the test and now he would remain a prisoner in this horrible beige room for all eternity. Staring at the appalling taupe walls and the sand colored floor and the tan furniture until his mind snapped and he ceased to be himself and then, maybe then, he would be lucky enough to see the clock tick over to 7:37 before he lost his sanity completely.
   Tears were streaming down Harold’s face as he thought about his captors. They were so superior, spewing all that cliché crap about the colors being inside. Who did they think he was? Some little idealistic child? Believing that all the wonders of the world live solely in the mind? He wiped the tears from his eyes with the back of his hand, clear tears, by the way. He brushed his sleeve against his running nose, ridding his lip of the snot, once again clear, that had been gathering there. No colors. Nothing had color, no color outside or in, as far as he was concerned.
   And his eyes fell on the water-cooler and Harold began to laugh. Now, there was color, the one bit of color in this whole bland horrible existence. Maybe they had been right after all; he rolled on the floor in near hysterics. The only color in this entire room had indeed originated from inside himself – a bright smear of red marking the waterline on a clear plastic bottle. Harold’s tears and laughter provided a constant underscoring now, but he was unaware of them as he looked over his shoulder at the bathroom counter, dripping with liquids and creams and lotions, all colorless and drying to a film around the gleaming razor lying next to the sink. A razor blade. The perfect paintbrush.
   Harold crawled to the bathroom to begin redecorating.

Gregory Cohen is a Southern California writer, actor, and director. He fills his daylight hours teaching young people the wonders of Water Conservation and Recycling, substitute teaching, and running his on-going acting workshop in Orange. During the summers, he is the Theatre Department Head at Camp Laurel in Readfield, Maine. He lives in beautiful Orange County with his wife, Kysa, and their two loving, yet demanding Welsh Corgis, Phoebe and Bethy. You can follow his exploits at www.gregorycohen.tv.
© 2010 Gregory Cohen, All Rights Reserved

Non Fiction The Man I Knew by Sarah E. Lowe

2010-03-01T09:47:00.000-08:00

"As she rolled away, he said one day he was going to take a shotgun and blow her away. ‘I’ll blow her away and get out of this place. One of these days.’"

The Man I Knew
by
Sarah E. Lowe

When I was little, my grandfather slept a lot and talked very little. His stomach rose and fell like a great breathing hill held down by thick black suspenders. His head was bald even then, his gray eyes small inside horn-rimmed glasses. When my grandpa smiled, which was more frequently than one might have imagined, he revealed the rotten mouth of an Appalachian man proud to still have his own teeth.
A framed picture of him with a Hawaiian hula dancer sat on the mantle ever since I could remember. He’d pick it up and kiss her if he knew I was watching, teasing me that he was going to run off and leave grandma one day.

"Gonna run off with my little Hi-waiian gal," he’d say, dusting off the place below the frame. "One of these days."
I explored his world with care—his bathroom that smelled like Selsun Blue and his workbench in the garage covered in cardboard, grease, and Juicy Fruit wrappers. He gave names to the daddy long-legs and liked canning tomaters in mid-summer. He was happiest watching Hee Haw or buying me cigarette-flavored donuts from his favorite diner. He paused for ages before taking a picture and never said much of anything.

"Your grandpa loves you," my grandma would say with hands on her hips and sorrow in her eyes. There was a ‚but‛ to that statement that I was too young to understand.
When she died, we had to put him in a home. His mind had started to slip along with his bladder control. On our first visit we found that he’d resurrected my grandmother in his mind. She took the form of a wheelchair-bound woman who looked nothing like my grandma except for the expression of loathing she got when she looked at my grandpa.

   "Now Edna," he’d said, "Sarah’s here to see you," as if my name would soften the molten rock surrounding her heart. And if it would have been my grandma, it would’ve. "Sarah."
   The woman put her thumb to her nose, wiggled her fingers and let her tongue fly out like a stream of water from a hose. As she rolled away, he said one day he was going to take a shotgun and blow her away. "I’ll blow her away and get out of this place. One of these days."
   My uncle hoisted grandpa up the stairs and into the kitchen one Thanksgiving afternoon. "Thought the old man could use some holiday cheer," he laughed, sitting him down at the kids’ table. I don’t know that grandpa remembered my name. If he did, he didn’t say it. I placed mashed potatoes on his hairy tongue and watched it swirl around in the too-soft pinkness of his open mouth. My uncles poured whiskey into his coffee and everyone had a good laugh, except my mother.
   As we drove down the gravel roads that night and back onto the highway, my mother told me about hearing my grandmother scream at night. She stopped at a red light in the center of three cornfields and a Texaco gas station. "He was a mean drunk."
   Christmas Day came and went. We watched the evening news with my uncles then drove out to see grandpa at half past 7. He sat at a card table alone with some breaded turkey cutlets and a dish of red Jell-O.

"Do you want us to feed you?" my mom asked.

   "No."
   His breath was staccato, and his lips chapped. My mom and I got to talking about the latest Oprah show since talking to grandpa was like talking to a cat. His eyes moved, but who knew if he was actually thinking anything at all?
   Then he spoke.

"I’m going to be seeing y’all again real soon," he said almost cheerfully. He shifted in his seat revealing the top of his Depends.

"Oh yeah?" my mom said.

"Yea."

The fluorescent light above us flickered.

"Why’s that?" she asked, looking at him but smiling like this was our private joke.
He blinked and his eyes steadied. We both suddenly knew that he was really there.

"David’s going to come pick me up for Christmas supper." He coughed without covering his mouth. "In a couple of days or so, I believe."

My mother flinched as if a window had dropped on her fingers. Her eyes fixed on his fingernails, always dirty as a younger man and now clean crescent moons. He yawned and folded his hands over his belly.

"I suppose we’ll see you then," she said. "One of these days."
And the next time I saw him, my mother wasn’t with me, nor my grandmother or anyone else. My mom called to say he was about to pass.

   "If you want to go, you’d better go," she said. So I went.
   He slept in his bed half propped up in a gray sweatsuit. A glass of milk sat beside him going sour in the sun.
I kissed his face, and his eyebrows rose. So I kissed him some more, and a watery smile came but he didn’t stir. I wondered if he was dreaming of me as a tiny round-faced girl, or if behind those crinkled eyelids he was making love to his little Hawaiian gal. I kissed him all the same. And I sat for hours, or maybe just twenty minutes, while my boyfriend waited in the car. I gave him what I could only give him, the only thing he ever wanted. I gave him silence, peace, from the world he never loved.
   The nurse opened the door and I jumped. She banged an empty water jug all along the wall.

"Jack," she shouted, "your granddaughter is here."
I grabbed my purse and stared at his face.

"Jack, wake up!" she yelled.
I stood, sliding around the edge of the bed, and walked to the door.

"Don’t leave, honey," she said, tearing the packaging off of a needle. "He’ll want to know you’re here."

I shook my head and backed away maybe as his gray eyes were opening.

   "Jack!" she barked.
   And then I was gone.
   And shortly thereafter he was gone. In that sun-drenched moment, I think I may have finally understood.

Aloha, grandpa. Goodbye.

Non Fiction Directing a Monkey by Chris Kent

2010-03-01T09:16:00.000-08:00

"There’s only so many times a person can say 'there are no small parts, only small actors,' before you stop believing it yourself. I mean, is Romeo and Juliet still heart wrenching without the Nurse?"

Directing a Monkey
by
Chris Kent

I am a teacher. No, that's not right. I facilitate learning. I prefer the longer expression because it makes me feel elevated into a position of greater good, like the garbage man who considers himself a waste management engineer. Still, to say that I actually facilitate anything is a bit of a stretch as the dictionary definition for facilitate is "to make easier," and there is nothing that I have made any easier for the students in my classes.

   I am a drama teacher, and my primary function is to direct a gaggle of sixth graders in a forty-five-minute play, three times a year. Body armor was not included with my contract. As an English literature major, I have no prior experience directing anyone anywhere other than to the first-floor bathroom (down the stairs, to the right, second door on your left). Still, the job was mine the minute I mentioned I had been in a play my freshman year of college. To my boss, head of an independent middle school and part-time professional lacrosse referee, this meant I was an expert in drama and all things related.
   "Want to make an extra three grand?" he had asked as I mulled the paperwork to be a seventh grade science teacher's assistant. The fact that I live in Orange County and my rent was past due played no part in my decision. It was all about the children.

   On paper, my job seems simple. Direct. That's not to say I don't try to pass on any knowledge. I start each trimester by discussing the origins of theater, the difference between acting and pretending, and then touch on theories of method acting, character study and intentions. Quickly, however, my efforts are boiled down to sputtering words like "cross," "enter," and "upstage," while pointing in a general direction. I look forward to the day these skills will serve me well as a traffic guard.
   Out of all my students, Dylan is the least responsive to my pointing. Partially because he sees it as a sign of my superiority, but more so because Dylan doesn't like his role in the upcoming play. Dylan is cast as a monkey. Although the play is set in the Amazon jungle, and therefore the likelihood of one or more characters being monkeys is greater than in, say, "My Fair Lady," Dylan is still displeased. I had to create his role because there are twenty-six students in the class but only twenty characters in the script. Therefore, his lines are scribbled in poor handwriting on the sides of illegally Xeroxed pages. He takes his displeasure out on me by walking bow-legged and spinning his arms like a helicopter, while monotonously saying "ooo... ooo." It's the most pathetic monkey anyone has ever seen. It's not that Dylan doesn't understand how to act like a monkey. No, I have seen him portray a sensationally true-to-life chimpanzee after class. However, Dylan responds to his anger at receiving a "supporting role," in the same passive aggressive manner I respond to wanting my girlfriend to iron my shirt: feigning incompetence.
   "I should be Archie. I’m way better than Ryan. He walks funny. I think he has a brain disease.‛ For six weeks, I’ve heard every reason why I should have cast Dylan in a larger role. ‚Besides, monkeys are stupid. I don’t even have real lines."
   There’s only so many times a person can say 'there are no small parts, only small actors,‛'before you stop believing it yourself. I mean, is Romeo and Juliet still heart wrenching without the Nurse? No, but you need Romeo. And is Stanley, the waiter, as important as Willy in Death of a Salesman? If your name is in the title, shouldn’t that make your part more influential than those that have non-Equity actors playing them? Let alone parts that are penciled in?
   Still, I tell Dylan that without the monkey, the jungle setting would seem fake and therefore the whole reality of the play rests on his convincing portrayal.
   "Dylan," I say in a voice my mother would use while trying to explain why the red candlesticks were off limits, "the point of this class is exposure to theater, to learn how to be a good cast member. Support your peers."
   He gives me a puzzled look before returning to his monkey impersonation. This one looks more like a wounded pterodactyl. All I can do is shake my head and move on. The performance is eight hours away.
   Twenty minutes before show time, I run into Dylan’s sister and she tells me he spent the whole afternoon watching TV and eating chocolate bars. I take a Lamaze--sized breath and prepare for questions from the Dean about why the monkey in the play looked like a decomposing scarecrow. Then I catch Dylan out of the corner of my eye. He’s standing next to Ryan, the lead of the play, who is visibly shaking. I look closely for any sharp weapons that might be tucked in Dylan's pants. Then I see Dylan put his arm around Ryan and can barely make out the words he tries to whisper in his ear.
   "Don’t be nervous," he says, with what could be a smile. "We’re here to make you look good."
   Ryan takes a deep sigh and smiles. I watch as the two walk backstage. I loosen my tie and take a drink from a near empty water bottle. The house lights dim. The curtain opens. I am a teacher.

Chris Kent is a playwright, director, and actor. He earned his Masters of Professional Writing degree from USC and currently teaches theater at Vistamar School in El Segundo, CA. Chris is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America and the founder of the Black Wing Theater Company which produced Isaac and Ishmael, his first original play, in the Fall of 2008.
© 2010 Chris Kent, All Rights Reserved