+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ T M M OOOOO RRRRR PPPPP OOOOO RRRRR EEEEE V V IIIII EEEEE W W MM MM O O R R P P O O R R E V V I E W W H M M M O O RRRR PPPP O O RRRR EEE V V I EEE W W W M M O O R R P O O R R E V V I E WW WW E M M OOOOO R R P OOOOO R R EEEEE V IIIII EEEEE W W +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ Volume #1 January 15, 1994 Issue #1 +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ CONTENTS Two Matts and a Bob . . . . . Matt Heys, Bob Fulkerson, Matt Mason The blinds aren't from Venice . . . . . . . . . . . Todd Robinson Traces in a Fast Food Restaurant . . . . . . . . . . Niki LeBoeuf Oh Bean Curd! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Byron Lanning Grazing Through Life . . . . . . . . . . . . Miranda A. Schatten Clowns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A.J. Axline Bigcow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A.J. Axline the past mostly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Edgar Sommer The Frog Prince . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Karen Alkalay-Gut snow baby . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Robert A. Fulkerson Tangents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Karen Alkalay-Gut Wasted Milk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mike Capsambelis Riding the Yokohama Night Train . . . . . . . . . John Alex Hebert Yes Kai, yes Margaret, yes, yes, yes . . . . . . . . Colin Morton B and F Auto Wrecking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . David Pellerin In Museums . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Matthew Mason Conversation Hearts Ghazal . . . . . . . . . . . . Matthew Mason Leaving Home . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kris M. Kalil Interview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Karen Alkalay-Gut Frozen with a Stranger in the Park . . . . . . . . . J.D. Rummel About the Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Authors In Their Own Words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Authors +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ _The Morpo Review_ Volume 1, Issue 1. _The Morpo Review_ is published electronically on a bi-monthly basis. Reproduction of this magazine is permitted as long as the magazine is not sold and the entire text of the issue remains intact. Copyright 1994, Matthew Mason, Robert Fulkerson and Matthew Heys. All literary and artistic works are Copyright 1994 by their respective authors and artists. +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ Two Matts and a Bob (Editors' Notes) *** Matthew Heys, Co-Editor: This I enjoy: zoo aquariums. What better entertains in any refreshingly cool aquatic house, what sponsors the pleasure of all those truly enraptured by the natural world, than the task of misleading our youth, an activity that is available in surplus within the walls of our nation's zoos? "See that snail, Angela? Its fangs can strip a cow to the marrow in less than a minute." "Really?" "Oh yes, just for snoring too loud, but let's move on..." ... and that is untrue, of course. Snails do not have ears and do not attack unless provoked. Enjoy the first issue. *** Robert Fulkerson, Co-Editor: The first issue of _The Morpo Review_ has finally been put to bed. You're sitting there (or perhaps standing there or jogging-in-place there) reading this wondering, "What in the heck is a Morpo and, more importantly, why would it have it's own Review?" Good question, my friend, and one that I'm sure will be answered in some future issue. One question I will attempt to answer is this: Why did I get involved with two guys named Matt to put together an electronic literary magazine? Basically, I had no choice in the names of my co-editors. Overall, I can count at least six Matts I have met through various on-line networks over the past decade. It appears that the late 60s and early 70s produced a plentitude of Matthews. I'm hoping that since my name is a three-letter palindrome it will be easier to remember than Matt or Matt. But of course, I'm probably wrong. Matthew did write one of the four gospels. I don't seem to remember "The Gospel According to Robert" being a popular reading during any period of history. Maybe I'm just fighting the odds. Maybe I just want to be a part of bringing you a quality literary magazine on a semi-regular basis. The true meaning of there being two Matts and a Bob as co-editors of _The Morpo Review_ remains to be seen. *** Matt Mason, Co-Editor: Sitting here looking over the finished copy of the illustrious first ever issue of _The Morpo Review_, certain thoughts cross my mind such as "I hope someone actually reads this," "I really need a shower," and "People need to mellow out and write more funky poetry." I kind of have a beef about that last statement (no puns intended on the cow poems contained in this issue) as I open anthologies and National Book Award winning books of poems and stuff like that and as much as I'm impressed by the dour elegance of it all, I'd really like to see a few more poems about cows or which dare to be witty, mildly unbalanced, or wildly hilarious in ways that truly make my fanny tingle. Granted, though, you're here to read poems and stories rather than listen to some cranky old editor up past his bedtime ramble on and on about his tingling tush, so with no or at least very little further ado, I present to you, _The Morpo Review_! +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ "The blinds aren't from Venice" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Todd Robinson The blinds aren't from Venice they're from Woolworth's, USA. Still, they divide the suburban scene into discrete rectangles. This blond girl, dissected in her red doc martens slides down my street so sure that she's whole unaware of the dozen blue divisions of her round little self. +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ "Traces in a Fast Food Restaurant" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Niki LeBoeuf The Sprite(tm) can waits, in faithful ignorance of abandonment. It remembers your lips. ** "He was here, I tell you - the ashtray told me so..." And so it goes. Ashes to ashes. Presence to dust. ** The cliche of lipstick on a plastic straw, with a side of fries. A table for one, tonight. +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ "Oh Bean Curd!" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Byron Lanning One day in a creme de cacao, contrabassoon country a king summoned his agriculture minister to his bed. "Reuben," he cried. "How goes the bean curd harvest?" "Not good," replied the agriculture minister. "The rancid season came a few minutes late and the beans never had a chance to curdle." This news deeply upset the king. The last time the bean curd harvest failed an insurrection among his subjects broke out. During the rebellion, a group of radical Mexican chefs tried to assassinate the king by faxing him a large burrito containing a stick of dynamite. The assassination attempt failed though because the king had left the palace to go to the Arctic Circle to hunt trophy-sized lemmings. However, the burrito did cause serious damage in the palace. When it exploded, it blew off the queen's new face lift and destroyed the king's mounted heads of mice, voles, and gophers hanging in his den, which over the years he had killed on safaris. The king started to pout. He didn't like insurrections at all. They gave him headaches. He ordered his mistress, who lay in bed next to him, to bring him his fishnet panty hose because he wanted to wear something that would make him feel good that day. She paid no attention to him, for she lost herself in calculations, doing permutations of random numbers to prove mathematically that God actually made the universe in five not six days and took the entire weekend off. The king then asked the agriculture minister if they could use last year's bean curd harvest for this year, but the agriculture minister said if the king used the remainder of last year's bean curd harvest, the kingdom wouldn't have enough bean curd for the big college football game in the Bean Curd Bowl. The king wouldn't hear of such a thing. He loved the Bean Curd Bowl, not for the football game, but for the half time show at which he announced the winner of the Miss Bean Curd Contest, the woman who had the personality, intelligence, and looks most like a tub of bean curd. This agriculture minister's admonition caused the king to pause and reflect. As the king paused and reflected, his mistress put down her permutations and said, "Why don't you use next year's bean curd harvest for this year?" The king replied, "Yeah, why can't we do that?" "Well, we could do that," said the agriculture minister, "but this proposal has two problems. First, what do we do next year for a bean curd harvest? We won't have one if we use next year's harvest this year. Second, some disgruntled wizard, angry at your high bikini taxes, put a hex on next year's bean curd harvest. Anyone who eats it will get an unquenchable desire to gulp down coffee grounds and percolate." "Hmm, that does pose a problem," said the king. He scratched his mistress' beard in contemplation and suddenly said, "Heck," he said, "we'll just borrow off this year's bean curd harvest for next year." The agriculture minister reminded the king that this year's harvest failed because of a late rancid season, to which the king retorted, "Don't bother me with details." The king then addressed the problem of percolating, said it didn't seem so bad in comparison to insurrections, so he directed the agriculture minister to use next year's bean curd harvest this year despite its hex. The king's mistress then suddenly had another idea. She told the king, "Why don't you make percolating a national pastime. That way no one will think percolating is out of the ordinary." "I like that!" shouted the king. He immediately declared a proclamation, proclaiming that percolating had replaced arson as the national pastime. +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ "Grazing Through Life" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Miranda A. Schatten I think that we humans think too much. We get a lot accomplished-- we work hard, build, play, but at the end of our lives, that's all we have-- the end. Do you see cows worrying about who that new Holstein favors? Perhaps we would be more content dying not in a hospital bed with perfumed roses, but outdoors, looking up at the sky, and with a mouthful of grass. +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ "Bigcow" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A.J. Axline tawny sinewy beast of the field your mottled hide taunts and beguiles hoof me and hoof me and hoof me and hoof me your hooves speak beauty tattooed on my flesh one stomach is not enough for you not two or three, no, you saucy cow you use all four to turn your grass into rump and thigh and chartreuse tongue what you must think of us; we butchers who you see through dark, soulful orbs we who are drawn to your macabre mystique as hate and awe war in our fat bellies you dance in the moonlight as you sleep your bovine dreams drum sensual rhythms as you sway...trapped in the blacklands of tenebrous illusion and sensitive existence +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ "Clowns" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A.J. Axline "Let's hear it for the nameless, faceless few!" No one cheered. "What is this?" one of them shouted from the back. "What is this supposed to mean, anyway?!" "Shut up, Bozo!" someone hollered. "You'll get your turn, you killer. Sit down." The clown glared at the front of the room briefly, then sat down. He looked furious and scared under his white face makeup. "So," the instructor continued, "if we take away the poor and the rich, and the destitute and the dishonest and the not-so-nice and all the rest of the people that don't deserve to live, who are we left with?" "CLOWNS!!!" they screamed. For you see, the room was filled with clowns. Tall clowns, fat clowns, starving clowns, white clowns, black clowns. They were all there, sitting in their desks, wondering why they had come, looking for answers that no one had any intention of giving them. They, like the clown that had shouted from the back, were all furious and scared. Some of them had gone beyond normal fear into blank terror. Tears streaked their greasepaint, dripped from their chins in big white drops. "Clowns," the instructor repeated. He looked like a shark. "Big clowns, little clowns, clowns, clowns, clowns." He grinned. Some of the clowns shuddered. "Clowns." His mouth embraced the word like an exotic fruit. "An elite society of clowns. How could it not work? Think about it, friends and neighbors. You, as the last remaining leaders, movers and shakers, running the globe! Weeding out the weak and crushing them under your floppy shoes! Think of it brothers and sisters! THINK OF IT!!! CLOWN RULE!!! CLOWNS RULING THE WORLD!!!" They were all weeping now. They couldn't help it. Sobbing clowns moaned and wailed around the lecture theatre. Big polka dot handkerchiefs were pulled from front pockets, some of them several feet long. The buzzer went off. "Get out of here," the instructor sneered. They filed out of the room, shaking and sniffling. The clowns composed themselves in the hallway, trying not to look bad in front of the other clowns that were scurrying around, squinting at timetables. One of the dismissed clowns looked back at the bulletin board next to the classroom door. The bulletin board read: CLOWN REVOLUTION AND SOCIO-DOMINATION 251. "I hate that class," the clown whispered to his buddy next to him. "What can you do? It's compulsory, Bozo." his friend replied. Silently they shouldered their Clown University packs, and went to their next class. Slowly but steadily, a few of the clowns would drop out during the year, unable to take the swelling inside their brains. There would always be eager clowns waiting around the country, however; waiting in line, desperate to take the place of their fallen comrades. In the end, there were always more clowns. +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ "the past mostly" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Edgar Sommer then walking in sternly strides on the waking moon the beach low tide these 2 waiting to hit a turning point in their story together but there was only salted rain already down spreading thin pointing at everything and the past mostly +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ "The Frog Prince (with thanks to Assaf and Zyggy)" . . . . Karen Alkalay-Gut All those princesses retelling the stories of their lives, giving information not previously available, or only lately understood - convincing you, poor reader, that princesses in fairy tales are real people too you know, and as such deserve their side told. Even the woman now my queen, I believe, has had a bash at it, explaining - probably - how it was worth kissing a frog to get to me. I always liked them beautiful - What Proust said, "As for the women of beauty, we will leave them to the men of no imagination," just made me put down Proust and pick up some sly lady-in-waiting. You know how they tell women, "It's just as easy to fall in love with a rich man as a poor one"? I go further. It's only possible to really feel something if she's got a perfect ass, hungry breasts, eyes that seem deep as mine, and - this is in addition - an all-abiding hunger for me. And no bitch. Except for my narcissism, I'm perfect - smart, handsome, rich. I'll never understand why that witch put a curse on me. Unless of course she wanted to have me and I never looked her way. I remember now she did once come around to talk before she toadified me, muttered something about Emily Dickinson, "I'm Nobody, who are you." I was busy listening to my answering machine while she went on with "How awful to be somebody - How public like a frog - to tell your name the livelong day to an admiring bog." "Maybe it is only the media that ruins your minds," she said, looking at my wellstocked library of videoclips, "makes you think that your identity as men derive from the marketable quality of your female conquests. What do you want from life? How will you get satis faction? Tell me something to prove your kind is worth investing in." I didn't think I had to prove anything to someone who had nothing to offer me in the world. Maybe if she'd been a movie maker she'd have had a chance. But I decided to try the silent treatment on her - it usually works with admiring women you can't get rid of any other way. "Kiss me goodbye, then, boy," she said, and I screwed up my face and scrunched my body away as if age and ugliness were con tagious. So I woke up the next morning a stout-bodied amphibian with a hunger for a pond and a lily-pad. And I read the instructions on my pillow about the need for being kissed, left the castle, and began my quest. It wasn't easy being green. I just didn't exist for all those princesses with the magic lips. Had to learn all kinds of tricks to get close to them. Told one of them about my centrality to French cuisine, encouraged a second to see (ahem) my identity deep in my throat, Whispered to another (flawed) beauty that I could cure warts. Even the one who finally did it for me - the one with the golden ball - was conned, cooerced, threatened, before she eventually fell into my trap. I'm not complaining. I got what I wanted. And a few nights on the town, a couple beers, a bunch of blonds, got me back to what I was before. +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ "snow baby" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Robert A. Fulkerson apgar 4 no name hunger mommy the only i know the only thing i really crave pain more know about me machine breathe since i can't myself the world fuzzy and won't focus when i try but fills a round warmness my eyes and i can only wail long warm and hard cat like a not a human craving brain floating on fluid thoughts my clearly won't together come because they meet don't all time the brain with these holes mommy i only weigh pounds and ounces two and six tubes sucking life pain and pumping into my blue veins visible to the world desire mommy and upon me come seizures when cold my body shakes violently bony blue flailing arms wildly sounds cutting me razor blades like to make snow angels need more down screaming and wailing to put me with my starving head breathe breathe breathe brea +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ "Tangents" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Karen Alkalay-Gut I All day she passes her hands over the money of others, counts out what they will need for the business trip to Tokyo, the honeymoon in Turkey, the needed vacation (look how his hand shakes) in Lugano. All day she counts out foreign bills, with no will of her own to sit in this bank so near and yet so far. II So one night I'm a character in some guy's dream and my part is not very big and I don't speak his language so most of the time I'm backstage waiting for the moment I get called out and jabber a few words in French to a dreamer's blank face. I don't get the incentive - I say to whom I think is the director. What am I doing in this dream - what's my function, motivation, Stan? The man widens his eyes and dies, or fades away while I watch. So there I am, behind the scenes, thinking - don't I have something better to do with my time III So one night she comes to visit me and I see it in the way she stares - she's locked back into that old obsession. Maybe she isn't but I've got to protect myself I can't stand it when she starts in about our 'relation ship.' We don't have one, I say sometimes, but it hurts me to hurt her almost as much as it hurts to imagine feeling in her situation. God she lives through me the way my mother did in the old days - the only son, the fear of my turning, anticipation of my return. How can I tell her to get a life - how can I reel her out into the night and say find something to sink your teeth into. IV How do people get to mean things to each other how do they not miss falling into formulas, slip out of prescribed patterns? Sometime I am so slow I don't know that someone was saying something meaningful until minutes after I hang up. Then maybe I call back "Sorry for being such a boor - I should have known your situation." Then maybe she says, "What situation?" and I see I'm an egomaniac thinking my responses could be so critical to her. Or maybe she just says it to protect herself from my ill-bred intrusion. And then maybe I take that risk and stretch out my neck just a little more and offer her the nape. V And here I am out here on a limb of a tree by your bedroom shivering in the rain and trying to figure out what to do now that you have refused to open the window. Here I am at my funeral looking up at your tears. It's a standard photo but the people are real. Here I am at the center of the dancefloor, pulling you in out of the shadows for your moment in the spotlight. Here is the lonely monarch, her back to the camera, alone +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ "Wasted Milk" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mike Capsambelis Fortunately, the garbage collectors were late today. The air was rather soupy, and I had to strain my tired eyes to see through the mist as far as the curb. But, yes, three brown draw-string trash bags sat patiently along the road. A cat worked its way between the bags, sniffing here and there, and I waited to see if it would start clawing its way into the collection of moldy crusts and wilted lettuce. I really didn't care if it did rip the bags. I didn't care about much of anything since what's-her-name left, so why would a cat tearing through my trash upset me? When the cat finally snaked away from the bags, I quietly turned the frigid doorknob and gently leaned into the door until it opened. In the distance, I heard the swish and squeal of the brakes of the truck. The sun was now behind the row of suburban middle-class houses across the street. The first bag was knotted tightly and, after several feeble attempts to untangle the plastic web, I ripped into the three-ply lining of the bag. If the cat saw me now, it would probably laugh at the irony. If that girl saw me now, she'd yell at me for making more of a mess of things. The inside of the bag smelled of spoiled milk. The rancid, solidified goo oozed from the rotting carton on to some old newspapers. I had bought the milk about three weeks earlier, when I had begun dating the girl. She was a coffee drinker, so I bought a half-gallon of two-percent for her coffee. I hate milk; I even eat my cereal dry. She had begun to stay over a few nights and had an incredible flare for whining so obnoxiously that it penetrated the flesh and zeroes in on the exposed nerves below. She wanted her coffee every morning, and she wanted it with milk. Or au lait, as she called it. So now for breakfast, she drank her coffee au lait, and I ate my Apple Squares (no lait). And we were content. But then she left, and I went back to an empty bed. The newspapers, which I hadn't felt like reading lately, were soggy from the milk and felt like they were on the verge of disintegrating in my grasp. Below the newspapers were some crusty paper towels and a salty- smelling, grease-spotted Pringles can. "How can you eat that disgusting crap?" she used to ask--about basically anything I ate. I rummaged through everything but saw no sign of the letter. When I called her last night to ask her to come back, she said it was all in the letter she had left and hung up. What a mess. I scanned the spread of rubbish around me, hoping once more I'd find the letter. I wondered whether or not this girl was really worth the trouble of digging through the waste left over from the past couple of weeks. I spotted the disintegrated remains of crepe streamers from my birthday party tangled around a few chicken bones. I remember I came home from work that day to find my house decorated with signs, balloons, and streamers, and a cake in the middle of the kitchen table. I laughed; no one had ever decorated for me before. Even my mother had never made a big deal about my birthday. When the girl came over that evening, I hugged her as soon as she stepped in, but she frowned. "Who did this?" she asked, glaring at a couple of balloons that had floated to the ceiling. "This is so childish." I found out later my cousin Stephanie did it. She felt bad because she had forgotten my birthday the year before. "Come on," I said, realizing there was no point in staying up now. "Let's go to bed." The cake could wait until the next morning. The second bag was no prettier or more fragrant than its predecessor. It proved easier to open, however, and nothing spilled out. I held my breath upon the appearance of a stack of envelopes, the onslaught of white paper catching me off guard. But it was mostly junk mail or bills that had been paid. She always complained that I waited too long to pay my bills after they came in the mail. So this time, I paid them the day they came. I told her that one night in bed, and she shrugged it off as if she didn't care. At night, she didn't care about any of those stupid little things that she whined about during the day. She would suddenly become passionate when she got into bed. And not a complaint out of her until the following morning. I tossed the envelopes aside; the letter was not hiding among these intruders. Tssh. I could hear the air brakes release on the diesel monster as it closed in on me. The truck was just around the bend. I just then realized how perturbed Gus and Roy would be upon seeing my garbage. They'd probably pass right by my house without a second look. Once, Roy got really pissed off at the neighbors for not fastening their twist ties securely, so he launched the bag across their lawn, leaving behind it a stream of old magazines and watermelon rinds. I dug deeper into the bag and felt the gritty moistness of coffee grounds engulf my hand. I grasped a piece of paper and negotiated it through the rubbish to the opening in the bag. Not the letter, it was a free offer coupon from my Apple Squares. Two proofs-of-purchase would get me a Kellogg's squeeze bottle. It started to bother me that she just left me with nothing but my Apple Squares, a squeeze bottle, and a carton of curdling milk. With no notice; I mean, don't I deserve at least a week's notice to tie up any loose ends? Like what to do with the milk or whether to buy more coffee. I want to call her a bitch, I try to call her a bitch, but the sounds will not form in my throat and roll off my tongue. The word just sits there and ferments. I keep seeing it, but it won't emerge from its hiding place. It stirs itself around, builds up and transforms into harsher, more sinister words that don't come out either. It's always been like that. She was a bitch. But there must have been sometimes that she wasn't--something that kept me from ending the relationship. I mean, I wasn't necessarily unhappy when she was around, just...frustrated. It got to the point where I would start dinner earlier, eat faster, and get to bed quicker, because there I could be with her without wanting to strangle her. I crumpled the coupon and tossed it aside. There didn't seem to be anything else resembling paper in the remainder of trash in the second bag. Besides, the fumes rising from the open bag were daring me to relinquish that morning's serving of Apple Squares. The grating sound of Gus and Roy's voices was penetrating the chilly morning as the groaning truck peeked from behind the neighborhood's only brick house. The third bag was easier to explore. No flashes of white were immediately visible to distract my probing eyes. The trash consisted mostly of the familiar remnants of bachelorhood: TV dinner trays, stale beer cans, an outdated condom. She wouldn't let me wear a condom. She felt it was taking away from the purity of sexuality. She told me it was safe, and I trusted her. Just like I trusted my mother when she told me to hold my breath and dunk my head under the water. It seemed stupid at the time, but I lived through it. And I enjoyed it. I bought the TV dinners the day after she left me. I had gone through the process of ending a relationship before, so I knew I wouldn't feel like cooking much for a while. I actually told her this when I called her to find out why she left. She laughed. "You've got some problems," she said. I thought that was strange. I thought she had the problems. Salisbury steak, fried chicken pieces (mostly white meat), and turkey dinners still couldn't make up for having someone to spend time with and--I don't know--have sex with. I heard the crunchy sound of paper as I dug through the bag. It was a wad of wrapping paper from my birthday gift. We were lying in bed about to make love, and she said that we needed some good sex music. I laughed, but she pulled a wrapped cassette from under the covers. It was a Marvin Gaye album--an old one that I didn't have yet. "Happy Birthday," she said. "Let's screw." At least she liked Marvin Gaye. The last girl was a Randy Travis fanatic; before her, a Motley Crue groupie. But Marvin had that special way of making the right sounds, the soul, that went straight from the ear to the pelvis. After that, every night, we'd listen to both sides of the tape and fall asleep to his last song, still sweating, sometimes giggling, always exhausted. Always happy. Morning brought us back though. Back to coffee and dry cereal and whining. I never found the letter. I suddenly saw myself sitting amidst three half-full garbage bags, the skeletal remains of dinners past and miscellaneous paper products enveloping me. The truck screeched to a slow stop, and Gus appeared from behind the truck, stopping abruptly at the sight of me. Then, with a puzzled expression began to stride slowly towards me. "Find it?" he asked without looking at me, and began to pick up the leaking bags by the ties, thereupon spilling more coffee grounds and crumpled Kleenex to the ground. "How did you--?" I began, my words grasping at the dewy air as I suddenly realized it was obvious that I was looking for something. "You shouldn't have thrown it away if you still wanted it." He heaved the last bag onto the truck and jumped on and rode away. I knew he was right. I stood up, shaking the garbage off of my hands, and walked towards the house, ignoring the mess. I don't think there was a letter. There never was. She had nothing to explain, so she had no letter to write. I woke up that morning thinking that I had thrown it away accidentally, but there never was a letter. Just a carton of wasted milk. She's gone for good, I knew this now, and I went to the cold sheets of my empty bed. +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ "Riding the Yokohama Night Train" . . . . . . . . . . . . . John Alex Hebert Riding the Yokohama night train vertical elevator vehicle voyage measured in minutes not kilometers sit and swallow every breath in silence looking out window at passing neon wave of tsunami consumerism. The invasion is complete. Gen. Adam Smith is victorious. People riding bicycles from ramen shop to video arcade where electronic digital mah jongg is played against silicon brain and human is rewarded with animated semi-nude Japanese girls upon victory and the silicon brain only does its programmed duty. Fellow passengers sit folded hands in lap eyes in lap or stand and avoid glance contact between each of us no matter how many times I look trying to establish eye contact they look away and peruse the ads plastered on wall of compartment of smiling geisha bride or laughing teeth white child but I need eye contact I want eye contact to relieve myself of Western guilt. American guilt born out of two mushroom clouds rising over two cities in '45. Cities untouched by conventional bombing because war scientists were curious about effects of dropping little boy and fat man on unharmed cities. I'm sorry I'm sorry I didn't want them to do it I wasn't even born yet just please let me unload my guilt. We pull into Shinagawa station train load of isolated humans with themselves for company. Walk out in the quiet crowd moving to the exits not reading kanji I go with the flow. I walk around Shinagawa Eki trying to figure out which women have the benwa balls. Raw emotional feeling like a wound or maybe my pecker is showing. See all the lovely madam butterflies flitting away with tiny steps. I feel like a bull in a telepathic china shop. I must stink of violence and insane depravity. Nobody wants to look in my eyes. They just walk around in turtle shells of ray-bans and walkmans shut away in shells of self surrounding them. My shell broke I'm dripping out want to touch somebody I don't have to pay to touch. Want to start yelling in the middle of all this I'm sorry about the war and Commodore Perry giving you that tiny train infecting you with westernization. Instead I walk around feeling like a dirty gaijin with my tentacled flesh creeping up their leather skirts and if I could have only smiled and meant it I'd have been okay. +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ "Yes Kai, yes Margaret, yes, yes, yes" . . . . . . . . . . . . Colin Morton Through our work in Canada I know you'll be as generous as the small two-member immigration panel even a minor accident could kill a minute to send your tax creditable donation steadily losing their ability to neutralize the world seems deaf to your support will allow us to intensify our efforts although public opinion polls show that 95% of Canadians are managed mainly at the local level stop and think about this: the people of the area understand why the mindless destruction of this change for the better you would above all, pick up the phone, make the government realize as long as we continue to permit the refugees that promise for the future. For a world without legislation, President Bush has said that 62% of all loon chicks specially trained in nonviolent tactics this is a nuclear alert! as Canadians know all too well, Alberta is not a generous, tax-deductible donation. I promise you that legitimate, threatened refugees though frightening and shocking to even contemplate Polka Dot Door and C'est Chouette generals, admirals, and politicians throughout the world woefully out of step with the feeling of being part of something valuable and when we raise the alarm over polluters of our water, our air, and our land providing nuclear technology to countries calling itself a peacemaker and we're convinced that so much of Canada and Canada's tradition put on public display for their wanton disregard of every cent we have to affect significant changes in white beluga whales you and I both want to see the unsteady ship of state is imposing what amounts to nine long, awful days to reach other Canadians who want our government decimated as we have grasped more and more of an urgent situation I hope you will respond before we made the decision to turn to you for help, we passed acid rain controls to make them more accurate, faster, and more lethal in some cases it could be a death penalty to believe compassionate Canadians will help toxic wastes - silent, pervasive, deadly filled with more than a hundred pages of interesting text but for it to succeed against those who produce and dump nuclear- capable attack-oriented Americans, because we sail our boats - or hike, or drive, or scuba dive it's a grim situation. But, with your help the general public rose up and the government suddenly signed the nuclear weapons Please send half a million compassionate fellow human beings haphazard, thoughtless and wasteful support for our opposition to colour, sex, ethnic origin, language, or religion working extremely hard. They aren't asking for important contributions to the pride in our work and confidence in the base of a red pine soaring 12 stories above you, and please send torture, lengthy and arbitrary imprisonment, and murder with your generous support quiet, persistent sound of life as it has been lived since Europe, the United States, and even Antarctica on Christmas Eve three large smelters in Ontario and torture and detention without trial is tax-deductible and I must seize the moment and make sure through the window of the postage-free business-reply tax receipt for the full amount of your older sister haunting call of the loon through hard work and resourceful money stretching immediately helping those innocent people who timely and informative work on our new one dollar coin. +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ "B and F Auto Wrecking" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . David Pellerin The phone rang twelve times before someone picked it up. "B and F," said a graveled voice. "What can I do for ya?" "Fan pulley for a 1971 Dodge 1/2 ton," I said. "318 V-8 with a top-loader four speed, no air. You got one?" "Air? There weren't no fuckin' air on no `71 Dodge, what are you talkin' about? Pulleys? Hell yeah, we got a shit load of those." B and F Auto Wrecking is a sprawling tar-pit of Detroit dinosaurs, a stinking super-fund candidate stacked yards deep in automotive refuse. This is not some well managed suburban "automotive recycling center." There are no clean-cut young men in blue cotton coveralls keying part numbers into computer terminals or saying "Good morning, may I help you?" on the telephone. The cars at B and F are not organized into neat rows by make and model, and there is no indoor display of plastic-wrapped hood ornaments and hubcaps. B and F is one of the few yards that still clings to tradition, proudly advertising its purpose in hand-scrawled white letters painted on the rusted sheet metal fence: "AUTO WRECKING". Most of the cars at B and F come in behind a tow truck or are driven in by frustrated farmers or debt-ridden rednecks. The cars are quickly stripped of their useful parts, crushed into metal pancakes six inches high, loaded twelve at a time on a flatbed truck and taken away. Only the oldest and rarest vehicles - those with valuable sheet metal parts - are preserved for future generations. B and F is, for the most part, a self service wrecking yard. They will pull a part for you if the weather is good, but you had better be prepared to pay for the effort. At B and F, you bring your own tools or you bring extra cash. I entered the yard and walked toward the office, a single-wide mobile home that looked like the past victim of a hurricane. There were old tires stacked three-high on the roof, like an elevated potato garden. The office was propped up by cinder blocks and used wheel rims, the aluminum siding so dented and torn so that the insulation was visible between the seams. I climbed two wooden steps to the front door, turned the knob and pushed. The door opened a few inches, then caught against the buckled floor and stuck. I pushed harder and the door crashed inward against an unseen barrier. I stood in the doorway until my eyes became accustomed to the dark. I saw Fred, the "F" in "B and F", seated at the grimy black desk. He was lighting a cigarette. When he finished he blew smoke from the corner of his mouth and said: "You again?" He grinned and showed his stained teeth. "What do you want?" he said. "We probably ain't got it." I told him the same thing that I told him on the phone, minus the part about air conditioning. He pulled down the black microphone that hung from a coiled cord over his head. "Hey, you lazy assholes!" he yelled. A scratchy soprano version of his voice squawked out over the P. A. "Somebody tell this sumbitch where the slant-sixes are..." "It's a 318 V-8," I corrected him. "They're the same," he shot back. He hadn't released the button of the mike, and his voice continued rasping out of the speaker mounted on the side of the trailer. "A fuckin' pulley is a fuckin' pulley." The full-time staff of B & F consists of a pair of twins in their late twenties. Both of these brothers are named Steve, and I have never seen them together. I know there are two of them, though. When I explain to one of them what I want he always says, "Fuck yeah, over there by the fence," and waves his arm vaguely in whatever direction requires the most travel. It never fails. I'll climb over the rotting corpses of Desotos and Lincolns to where I think he has sent me, and when I get there his twin will appear out from behind a Chevy Bel-Air and ask, "What'n fuck are you lookin' over here for?" There is a third employee, but I've only caught sight of him a few times, when the sun was at just the right angle. He is older than Steve and his brother. I'd have to estimate his age at somewhere between 35 and 90. It's difficult to know exactly, though, since the lines of his face are completely obscured by a decades-old layer of infused grime. His long hair could be blond, red, or completely gray, but the grease and dirt that coat him from head to toe give his hair the same uniform oil-blackness as the rest of his body. In the dozens of times that I've been into B and F, I've never seen any activity aside from the occasional movements of Steve, Steve and their grease-covered coworker. There does seem to be a constant, gradual movement of inventory in this place, however. I am now convinced that the cars and trucks flow constantly, like glacial ice, toward some unseen final exit. I've sold six vehicles into the yard in the past twelve years. All of these vehicles have been quickly swallowed up in the rusting mountains of iron, plastic and steel. I once brought in a 1964 Ford pickup that had stranded me on the highway three miles out of town. I have no patience with vehicles that die unexpectedly, and that Ford had taken me completely by surprise when the differential disintegrated. I towed it home behind an old Eldorado and sold it to Fred the next day. That truck was rolled in through the gates of the yard on a Wednesday. By Saturday, when I went back to look for a Pinto taillight lens, the truck was nowhere in sight. Surprised that it would be crushed and taken away so quickly (it wasn't a bad truck, the blown rear-end notwithstanding) I asked one of the Steves what they'd done with it. "Over with the other fuckin' Fords," he said, hooking a thumb to the west. I followed his instructions toward the back of the lot where a grove of cedar trees started. I climbed over a large pile of engine blocks, squeezed between a school bus and a Dodge van, and leaped over crevasses that had formed between half- submerged Lincoln Continentals, Mercury Zephyrs and Ford Fairlanes. I finally found my old pickup mixed in with a dozen other Ford trucks of similar vintage. The engine had been pulled, the tires and wheels were off, and the bed was filled with rusting tie-rods, leaf springs and bumpers. It was completely surrounded by other vehicles, some stacked five deep in the mud. I couldn't see any possible access, and concluded that the truck must have been either airlifted or thrown to its final resting place. I stepped out of the office and, carrying my wrenches, began searching for the proper pulley. I walked in the general direction that Fred had indicated, detouring around the opaque black puddles until I was deep into Chrysler territory. I didn't believe Fred's contention that a slant six and a 318 shared the same pulley, so I searched for a car or truck with a V-8 to scavenge from. The visit to the office had not been for the purpose of locating the pulley anyway; Fred had no idea what parts could be found in his yard, or where they might be. The only reason to stop was so that Fred would know who was in his yard, and to make sure that he considered it open for business. It was rumored around town that Fred had shot at more than one customer who had been found prowling around in the back of his yard at the wrong time of day. Fortunately Fred had very bad eyesight and was, as a consequence, a very poor shot. I found the pulley I needed dangling off the rusted engine block in the front of a battered Dodge Tradesman van. The water pump had been removed from the cracked block, and the pulley was hanging by a rubber belt from the alternator. There was no need to use my tools. I just plucked the pulley out from the engine compartment, separated it from the radiator fan with a yank, and headed back to the office. "How much?" I asked, tossing the pulley onto the desk in front of Fred. "Five bucks," he said, looking me in the eye. I fished a five out of my wallet and slapped it into his palm, then picked up my pulley. He kept his hand held out. "Plus eight percent for the Governor," he said. "Fuck the Governor," I said. Fred's laugh bellowed out of the trailer and cackled from the speaker as I walked down the steps. +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ "In Museums" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Matthew Mason If the naked statuary isn't shamed, then why are we? Marble penis, oaken chest, surely pale compared with flesh. Granite nipples, painted thighs, cannot be the best designs! We, in all our varied frames, curtain our bodies, obsessed with shame; why can't fellow patrons see us walking naked through museums? +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ "Conversation Hearts Ghazal" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Matthew Mason Love is shredded wheat. Filling, but it passes quickly. --Herb Verde Am I a melon? Will I be "good" only if your blows echo roundly inside? Why can't you just move your lips around my rind? I stare at my socks, say "Let's go," and we strip, shaving carrots becoming smoother, slicker, transfigured. But neither of us has screamed, "Stop! I'm dizzy. Please, let me off." We only say "Yes," like bread does, apples or milk. Will you love me though I'll no longer eat honey? Lick every smear of chocolate syrup? Will you kiss me? Imagine the inside of my lip sweet again? Will your tongue cool; again mistrustful, again? In the wild, do humans mate for life? Will you... No, your hands on my thigh are cold, wide and cold. +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ "Leaving Home" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kris M. Kalil Crouching near my car I plunge my fingers Into the thick black fur Of my German Shepard dog Dogs And cry because they are both with me Guarding me From the trembling earth Cry because the beast is near Steadily searching Grasping, groping with a methodical fury Telegraphed to my trembling hands Through the shifting ground beneath my feet But I can't leave you Oh God, Why don't you come? Praying to the house of my childhood I watch the windows for a fleeting shadow Wait for the door that inhaled you To blow you back to me A coward I can't run The width of the street I can't scream The beacon of your name To guide you back to me The dark mass of the beast Erupts into my periphery Roaring, reaching As the solid bulk of my dog (Dogs) Returns his challenge And leaps from my grip Don't leave me! Oh God, Why don't you come? The house continues to hold its breath As I hold mine In the ensuing silence Stillness Waiting for the ground to tremble With the release of a scream +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ "Interview" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Karen Alkalay-Gut (With thanks to the students of Wayne State University, University of Delaware, and Ben Gurion University) I am jet-lagged, tired, fluey, disoriented. The reading is over, the adrenalin is already beginning to diminish, and I am remembering my ingrown toenail, the itch on my eyebrow, the thirst ignored for almost an hour. I scratch, shift my weight, sip the water, and brace myself for the poems created by those who have read deeply into mine. Sometimes these questions are like blows whose force is felt the morning after. "Do you always write the truth?" Do you mean my own experiences, what happens to me, felt on my skin? Sometimes I breathe truths from long ago or far away. They make their way from lungs to screen. Or they belong to those I love, incorporated unwillingly, exposed in thin disguise. "Do you mind revealing such intimacies to strangers?" More painful to reveal them to friends. "Do you live as wild a life as you imagine?" No one could live that wild a life. But sometimes it is wilder. "Isn't there a discrepancy between the poetic and the critical life? They feed each other like the lion and the lamb (Of course, as the joke goes, we have to replace the lamb every day.) "Must poets always be lonely?" Afterward, I walk out into fresh air with whoever was assigned to feed me, often someone I really want to know better, and we discuss surprising intimacies while part of me remains in the auditorium +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ "Frozen with a Stranger in the Park" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . J.D. Rummel That year, autumn closed around the eyes of the Midwest like a dead man's hand, somehow relaxing its chilling grasp to allow sporadic glimpses of a warmer summer, a time long past. He had never been here before. Larger urban centers, such as Chicago or the coastal Los Angeles or New York, suited his needs far better than here; as he wandered through the airport terminal these facts were not lost to him, and plainly he had no idea what he hoped to find in such a place. He chose to stand outside, undisturbed by the brisk night air and its augury of a harsh winter. The dim electric light and utter lack of activity gave the loading zone a spectral, forlorn quality. There were only the three of them. Himself, tall, thin, dressed so fashionably and with such poise that he might have stepped from the pages of a magazine, and the two uniformed, commercial pilots he had seen inside who'd been assigned the task of hauling his baggage. Quietly, and with a deliberation reserved for the mentally impaired, they stacked his belongings. From the south came a sudden rush of activity, disrupting the funereal atmosphere of the late evening; headlights pierced forward, washing the dapper figure in whiteness. A black stretch Cadillac jerked to an echoing halt, positioning its trunk so as to most efficiently receive a flow of luggage. The driver jumped out with the same type of confused energy demonstrated by the limos's approach. He straightened his uniform and hurried around the vehicle. He was a rangy young man, whose gut was beginning to swell from too much beer and not enough sweat. Long brown hair and a thin moustache shaded his narrow face. "Mr. Traven?" he asked, slightly touching his cap brim. It was a false gesture, carried out with awkwardness. The perfectly dressed figure nodded and smiled. He motioned the pilots to begin loading his baggage into the Cadillac. The driver looked at this and then to Traven, a perplexed expression curling across his face. A face that said: airplane pilots don't do this. Jed Traven formed an innocent grin, "Frequent Flyer perk," he said. "Errr. . .My name is Ron, and I'll be your chauffeur," said the driver. "It's nice to meet you, Ron;" Traven glanced down at an expensive watch, "a little late, though." Ron swallowed, "I'm sorry about that. . .I, well, I didn't..." Traven let out a gentle laugh, "No harm done, Ron. To be honest, I have all the time there is." He squeezed Ron's shoulder and the chauffeur relaxed-- the gesture conveying good will. "Let's go have some fun." He turned and waved the pilots away. "You may go now, gentlemen." Ron watched them shuffle off, moving with a sluggishness that would explain any air disasters they might be involved in. He then opened the rear door of the limousine and Jed slid across the sumptuous velour seats. The interior was expansive and held every requested convenience. He opened an ice-cold can of soda and took a long drink. "You know, Ron, cold Squirt is one of man's greatest achievements. I wish we'd had it when I was younger." Ron glanced at the rearview. Traven hadn't seemed that old when he looked at him earlier. The image that played back was unclear in the interior gloom of the car. He swung the vehicle out and toward the exit. "Oh, yeah, yeah, I like beer myself--Black and Tans--you ever have one?" It was apparently a rhetorical question as Ron never ceased speaking long enough for a reply to be issued. "It's Guinness an' Harp, the Guinness is too heavy to mix with the Harp so they stay separate." Ron looked again into the mirror, using it as a reference point for the conversation. He wiped at the muddy reflection with his sleeve. "So, where to?" he asked. Traven let out a satisfied sigh as he finished the soda. Something was starting to tingle in his throat, like the onset of the flu. "What is the most expensive hotel in town?" he asked. "Uh, there's a Red Lion downtown that used to be a Hilton. Do you have a reservation?" Traven stared out the tinted window as the dark scenery rolled past. "I won't need a reservation." His voice had a confidence, as if sharing some easily verified statistic. "Yeah, yeah, you're probably right. I can't imagine they'd be full. Listen, are you here for business or pleasure?" "I can't say." "Oh, yeah, yeah. Listen, sometimes I get to talking too much, you know? So if I do, just let me know, okay?" Traven chuckled, "I like to talk, and I enjoy listening, so you and I should get along well. Tell me, Ron, where can a fellow meet ladies in this town?" Ron pumped his head in a nod, "Yeah, yeah, I dunno. What're you looking for?" "Any warm-blooded female will do," he said, wiggling his eyebrows. And Ron replied, "Yeah, yeah." Ron waited outside the bar with the engine idling, keeping the car warm. This guy he was driving around was something else. A mover and a shaker. He had to be some big-wig somewhere because the staff at the Red Lion had fallen all over themselves trying to please him. He reminded Ron of a rock star, the way things started happening when he appeared. But he wasn't stuck-up or anything. He laughed at all of Ron's jokes, so it didn't matter to Ron if the guy was a serial killer. And the guy did like to talk, just like he'd said. He talked about things like a man who'd been rescued from a deserted island. He seemed hungry for companionship. Balls of light floated across the floor and the people. Monitors flashed images from the ceiling and walls; cartoons, dancers, weight lifters all blipped around on the multiple screens. On the gleaming, blinking dance floor men and women twisted and bounced to the pulsing music. Some moved with style, others stomped and jerked to an utterly private rhythm. The room flickered with a strobe light. White beams rushed out to illuminate a swirling haze of smoke, then withdrew just as rapidly. And the closeness of it all--heat curled around the room and squeezed droplets of sweat from the most sedentary figures, causing liquor to splash and flow over ice and down into mouths. Traven tasted iron and salt in the thick air as he passed through the room. His presence turned heads, drew unconscious stares, generated whispers. Some saw him as taller than he was. If questioned, none would be able to agree on hair color or length, eye color, or build; they would only concur that he issued a siren call for attention. In the terribly over-crowded bar, Traven cleared a section of an occupied table with snappy conversation that everyone heard despite the crashing music; he requested drinks for the entire table and entertained those seated around him with an infectious and charming humor that defied recounting. Everyone would remember the words and the evening differently. But as successful as he was, Traven could not concentrate on the business at hand. As his newfound guests looked at him, expecting some engaging anecdote, he felt a long-denied past pushing at him for recognition. None of the people were his friends, none knew him. There was no Jonathan Rollins amongst them. How he had enjoyed sitting in the kitchen with Rollins, tossing back and forth opinion and observations--pretending that the concerns of such finite lives were important. Sometimes on Sunday afternoons, he and Parson Dale would play chess, treating each game as a learning experience. He missed such times more than he thought possible. "Can I get you anything?" he heard someone say. His vision focused on a nametag that read: Colleen. Reverie faded as his eyes trailed from the nameplate across the soft, swollen expanse of silk covered breasts. He directed his gaze higher, taking in the ringlet tresses of blonde, the smooth, powdered face and perfectly shaded blue eyes. She smiled, "I said, can I get you anything?" Her voice was loud, working against the music, unaware of how keen his hearing was. Jed returned her smile with fluid grace, insinuating his will at a spot just behind her electric blue eyes. "Would you step outside with me?" his voice rolled across to her, clear and distinct, as if there were no music for it to compete with. She mustered a good natured grin, and held up her hand, wiggling the ring finger so that the wedding band caught the intermittent light. His grasp around her hand was not startling. It seemed the way things should be. It was right, totally without threat, yet insistent. Standing, he gently tugged her toward the door. They stepped through the crowd, never seeming to touch anyone, parting the people as they moved. The group offered little notice of their passage. It seemed to Colleen that time had slowed, thickened like cold syrup. Reality was leaking out of the corners of the curiously tilted room. She thought if she could just open her eyelids wider everything would be normal, and she might find herself at home in bed. Outside, the low hanging moon was too large in the sky, and though she saw clouds of her own breath, the cold was not apparent. In fact, Colleen tingled with warmth, perhaps because her heart was beating so noticeably, the blood flow booming and booming just below her ears. The door of the Cadillac opened to a dark, somehow inviting interior. In his hand, Colleen felt the ring sliding off her finger, not catching on the knuckle as usual, but flowing smoothly, as if the ring were many times too big. He held the jewelry between their faces, the facets reflecting red from his carmine-colored eyes. "The man who gave you this has forgotten how a woman like you must be held, how you deserve to be touched," she heard. And fingers like the touch of rabbit fur trailed down her cheek pausing briefly over the thickening veins of her neck, then curved under the hair and combed the loose strands outward. She drew closer to him. He tilted his head down and kissed her. She had no idea why she was doing this; it was wrong, but it was as if her conscience had been drugged and abandoned in some mental basement. It was true, she thought, her man had forgotten her, had treated her like some securely stored possession. She returned Traven's kiss now, along his cheek and ear, wanting to be closer. She knew he was speaking to her, but the words seemed like warm, buttered things that melted and seeped under her flesh. She drifted backward into the shadows offered by the limo; she had a need to feel those hands on her skin. The clothing she had earlier tucked, buttoned and brushed so carefully seemed to dissolve from around her. He knows you, Colleen, something whispered. She guided his hands, saw him despite the darkness, and there was no mistaking that he cared about Colleen. When those fingertips brushed her, when his lips and tongue moistened her, she jolted at the pure contact he granted. An animal drug was glutting her veins, racking her with spasms and making her gasp. She welcomed the foreign chemistry, hoping it would stay longer, that the slow-time of before would stretch and stretch this moment. There was a will flowing into her now, an alien presence pumping across her senses, more than the sound of breath and muscular effort, more than smells of cologne and deodorant stirred by sweat, more than glimpses of flesh working in the blackness, more than the salty rich flavor against her tongue, even more than the animal touch that found her out; within her now was something beyond her past experience, outside her reasoning, but never far from her desires. For all the passion she knew she was safe, kept in a warm place by one who saw her innermost self and accepted it. And as she floated somewhere with him she welcomed the breaking of the vein, never begrudging his own pleasure and taking. Because she recognized it all as a natural act--a meeting of mutual needs. The sleep that came to him later was not the same as long ago, not like the rest of a man; in the unlit room, with sheets over his head and heavy cloths draping the windows, he lie in a semi-conscious state, aware of his surroundings but lacking energy or enthusiasm to deal with any changes that might occur. Still, a part of him slipped away, seeking release from all the growing weight that squeezed him when he was mobile. The figures were all very clear to him. Very clear. There was Kay, with her ember-red hair and intelligence; Lynn, whose wide, grey eyes moved him and made her shocking past so incredible; Anne, possessed of a spirit that eclipsed her ordinary features and drew him like a lodestone. Anne shone the brightest this time. Because it was a dream, things happened that were not true. The sadness was not with him, and the night was bright and sunny. Rather than leaving her, he remained, spoke with her, learned that she was indeed everything he wanted her to be. Her smile and laughter surrounded him; her silences were mysterious and troubling; she held him in a soft, iron snare. The facts held no authority in this world, only what he wanted to take shape, did. Because it was a dream nothing went wrong and the two of them built a better place to be. Because of the sun setting in the real world, because of what he was, the figures began to lose their definition, the better place started to recede and dim. For all the things he could make happen, he had no power to grasp the dream and make it stay. He could see it, but he could not touch it. And after a while, he could not see it, either. The sun was down now. He knew it and his eyes opened. Movement became easy again. He cast the sheets off and showered. He was hungry. Under the porte-cochere Ron sat in the Cadillac. Music thrummed from the expensive stereo making him twitch and shake. His eyes were closed and he was smiling, recalling the night before. That strung-out woman was wild. Whatever Traven gave her was some good stuff. He wondered if Traven was on the run, if he'd see his photo on one of those criminal call-in shows. He wondered what sort of reward there was for him, if any. A guy this smooth had to be illegal. "Did the young lady get home safely, Ron?" Ron jerked around so violently he heard a cracking noise from his neck. "Geez! I didn't hear you get in!" There was a startled anger as he spoke. Traven ignored the tone, grinning. "I shouldn't wonder, the radio is a bit loud, don't you think?" Ron swallowed, remembered that he was talking to a client, remembered that he couldn't afford to be fired again. "Yeah, yeah," he said, turning the volume down. Traven asked again, "The young woman did arrive home without incident?" Ron was surprised at the honest concern he heard. "Oh, yeah, yeah, she wasn't walkin' all that good, but I got her to the door." "Good." Ron rubbed his neck where it was beginning to ache. "So, where to?" Jed Traven made a face. "I hadn't really given it much thought." Ron guided the car down the drive, glancing at the rearview as he spoke. The reflection was still blurred; he had forgotten to clean the damn thing. "It's too bad you don't have a costume, I know a couple parties where they're givin' away prizes for the best costume." Traven opened a can of Squirt. "And to think I almost dressed up like a duck tonight." Ron looked back over his shoulder. "Huh?" "Why on earth would you expect me to wear a costume?" "Well, Halloween, you know. . ." Traven looked up through the polarized moonroof. "Tonight is Halloween?" Ron wondered how out of touch this guy was. "Yeah, yeah, it's my favorite holiday, even though I don't do much for it anymore, y'know? I usually watch some bad movie, or one of the old Universal classics, maybe visit a haunted house. . ." "Haunted house?" "Yeah, yeah, y'know, people put 'em together--radio stations, charities-- they charge you to get in, then give the money to crippled kids, like." "Do you know a good one?" Ron caught the interest in Traven's question. "Oh, yeah, yeah, Spirit in the Night--like the Springsteen song, 'Like spirits in the night (all night) in the night (all night)'" Ron's singing was raspy, he performed a miniature concert, exhorting an invisible crowd. "Ron, does your boss get a lot of comments on you?" "Yeah, yeah, but I work cheap." Traven smiled. "It has been a long time since I truly enjoyed myself. Do you think it would be fun?" "Yeah, yeah." "Do you need a costume?" What ship dumped this guy off? Ron wondered. "Uhh, no." Traven nodded, "Ron, let's go to a haunted house." "Awright!" And Ron hit the gas. A long line of people huddled in the cold outside a derelict office structure. A painted sign was illuminated by floodlights and girlish squeals emanated from the interior of the decaying building. In the parking lot a wolf-man jumped out from behind some cars and growled at newcomers and passers-by. Ron looked at the pseudo-lycanthrope and said to Traven, "That guy's no Lon Chaney." Traven examined the substantial crowd waiting before the entrance, "With such a group how do they expect to frighten anyone?" Ron's voice dropped to a dejected register as he spied the line. "Aww man, we'll never get in." Traven touched his forefinger to his chin. "I don't wish to go in such a crowd. We'll go in first, and have the others wait out here." Ron slowly turned toward him. "You wanna cut a line that size? Maybe I better stay here." "Nonsense. Do you see any girl you'd like to go in with?" "Girl?" Ron asked. "Certainly. Being frightened with a shrieking female appears to be the charm of this operation. What would be the point of being brave and bold for each other?" Ron wondered if the man had been consuming his own drugs. "Uh, that blonde with the big guy near the front looks good." He said this not as a joke, but as a test, to call the bluff of someone over-reaching his ability. For a moment Traven hesitated, and Ron felt a rush of triumph. "Well," Traven said, "she's wearing a lot of make-up, but it is Halloween, I suppose. Very well." He pointed at the line. "I like the one with the long black hair." Ron followed at a discreet distance, prepared to watch a savage ass- kicking, and pick up the pieces. Moments later Traven returned with the two girls they had singled out, his arms draped over each. "Ron," he said, "you are with Rebecca." Ron nodded, taking only a glancing notice of the girl's groggy condition. "Hi. . .Rebecca." He faced Traven, "Y'know, up until now the best trick I ever saw was my cousin John juggling three apples and taking a bite out of one--I think this is better." And he put his arm around the girl. "Just to make sure, later, I'll take a bite out of one," Traven said, winking. And Ron laughed a dirty, ignorant laugh. They stepped up to the entrance. The line was halted, waiting for the signal for the next bunch to go ahead. Ron had no more doubts that Traven would have his way. At the ticket counter his faith was justified. Traven spoke to a young woman and a uniformed security guard. "We would like to go in now, just the four of us." The girl making change shook her head and waved her hand like some annoying bug was in the air, then her eyes glazed over. "Sure," she said. The security guard's eyebrows shot up so fast they threatened to leave his head, but when he looked at Traven her agreement seemed perfectly natural--the best of all possible options. Traven looked away from the guard and spoke. "Incidentally, what charity does this benefit?" The ticket girl tried to focus her eyes and replied numbly; "Uh, muscular dystrophy. . ." her words dropped off, as if she had forgotten her lines. Jed pulled a roll of green bills from his pocket, cracked off several notes whose value far exceeded the fair toll, then strolled inside with his date. In the cold outside, the crowd was angry; some muttered, some even shouted obscenities; even the two men who couldn't remember what happened to their dates were mad. Tonight, Ron had broken probably half the company rules he'd promised to observe. Of course he didn't really care, this Jed Traven was just too much fun; the haunted house, dinner, dancing, it was the best date he'd ever been on, even if his girl did seem more interested in Traven, and more than a little out of it. He thought about that as he lugged Traven's zombie-woman to her front door. Maybe all this guy did was drug-up his dates, but he had never seen any street action that worked like this. At the door she seemed to rally, just like the others, and go back to living with nothing but a pleasant memory that she could not detail. Traven stared out the rear window. Although he saw Ron returning he could not lose the image of Ron carry-walking the female up the pavement. Nothing had changed. Had he really thought it would? Now that he was sated, objectivity returned. He had gone out and done what he always did. This time he gave a complete stranger a human toy to play with. How removed from humanity he was. It was always like this; first the hunger, with its utter disregard for the feelings of others, then the detached joy of needs being met. How predatory he was. Finally there was the sadness, the realization that he was no longer a man, just a shadow who lived on those of substance. This place was the same as everywhere else. Ron got back into the car. "Okay, I got her inside." He turned up the heater fan, put the limo in gear and started to drive the early morning streets. He reached into a sack, removed and then skillfully opened an imported beer. As he made a turn, several empties clinked on the floorboard. "So, where to?" he asked. "Someplace quiet." "If it wasn't so cold I'd. . ." --he cut loose a hollow belch-- "pardon me, I'd say the park." Traven cocked an eyebrow. "The park will do nicely." Ron shrugged and made a sharp turn, almost entering the wrong lane of traffic. "I s'pose you can keep us out of trouble if the Man shows up--it's way after hours and. . ." He held up the beer. "You learn quickly." "Oh, yeah, yeah. Hey, listen, I wanna tell ya, I been thinking, and man, you were right." Ron addressed the blurry reflection. "How's that?" "About Rebecca--she did have too much make-up on." Ron thought he could make out Traven's eyes rolling back. "The unexamined life is not worth leading, Ron." "Oh, yeah, yeah," Ron replied. Jed saw the park much better under the white moon than Ron did. The frosty lagoon sparkled like broken glass, and leaves drifted down in the breeze settling upon other leaves, forming a shifting, rustling carpet over the earth. The pair stepped across the brittle covering, each with a peculiar gait. Ron moved unsteadily, the beer flushing his motor centers, making his moves measured and uncertain. The beer also prevented him from noticing that Traven's steps, even in the leaves, were noiseless. He travelled like an early morning fog: visible, quiet, and disturbing nothing. Ron looked around. "Gee, it's kinda nice; we shoulda kept the girls with us." The words slurred together ever so slightly, and something about the statement twisted a knot in Traven's skull. "They would have come because I made them want to, not because they cared. Doesn't that bother you?" The question had an intensity that intimidated Ron. He spoke hesitantly, the alcohol adding to his deliberation. "Uh, no, not really. It just felt good to have them along. Who cares why?" Traven relaxed slightly, nodding. "Yes, it's like that, the feeling of power. But very quickly the reality of who you are slips away and before long they aren't people anymore..." Ron glanced sideways at the man, assessing him. He took a drink and spoke. "Man, what is wrong?" Traven returned the look. "What?" "Look. You ditched two, three, maybe more women. You got money, some style." He looked at Traven for an extended moment. "A lot of style. You could probably go anywhere in the world, an' here you are, standing in the park with a drunken stranger, freezing. There's something wrong with you." Traven smiled. "That's the first insightful thing I've heard you say." Ron shrugged, "It's the beer." The two of them moved toward a picnic table and sat down on its top. Traven steepled his fingers and stared off. "I had a dream about an old friend named Anne." Ron's lips made a smacking noise as he pulled the bottle away. "You were in love?" Traven nodded, "Yes. But she's gone now." Ron made a dull face and finished the beer. "Y'know I don't wanna make you mad, but yer better off. Sooner or later she'd let you down. Everybody lets ya down--men, women, friends, family." "I'm sorry you feel that way. Surely you have someone in your life. A lover." Ron straightened, as if accused of some unnatural act. "No, I don't... Well, y'know I don't... I sorta make women mad, y'know? It was really great tonight, having a girl do what I liked without wondering what she was thinkin' about, tryin' to figure out why she did something. Y'know?" "My, I can't imagine any woman being mad at you." Even through the beers Ron heard the sarcasm and bristled, "Yeah, well, not everybody's as smooth as you. If I could do the things you do..." Traven halted him with a glance. "No. What I do is wrong, but I have to do it." Ron waved him off. "Hey, I know what you mean. It's like, you gotta have it, but it's not fair that these other people have got it, and. . .ya gotta go through all this bullshit to get what you want. And what you want is lots simpler than what she wants." Traven shook his head and blinked, "We are talking about two separate things." Ron pulled a beer from his coat pocket, opened the bottle and spoke with less heat. "So tell me about Anne. She couldn't handle you always scammin' on the ladies?" Traven's lips turned into a wistful smile. "No, I let her go. I never allowed myself too near, never took the chance." Ron squinted, "I don't get it." "What I mean is, when I saw that she could affect me, I left." Ron curled his lip, nodded, "Smart move, when you know they can make you crazy--run away." "But I ran too many times, too far. I found things on the edge..." He halted, considering his audience. "I was afraid that if I let someone close enough, even someone I wanted to be there, I would give that person..." He shook his head. "If you allow yourself to care, you give part of yourself..." Again he stopped. "In loving someone there is a chance for losing control, because you are trusting outside your field of authority. I could never do that, I had to have my control. Now of course, I have it, and I envy humans their capacity to give themselves over to another. To trust someone else is a wonderful thing." He turned to Ron and asked, "Why are you wasting this opportunity?" "Huh?" "You have this great potential for an adventure, an exhilarating experience, the chance of winning or losing, a marvelous gamble, but you too are freezing with a stranger in the park. Why?" Ron squeezed his temples and sniffled in the cold. He looked at Traven with the glare of someone feeling cheated, then finally he spoke. "It's so complicated, y'know?" He considered the beer, then rested it between his knees. "Y'know, I watched my mom and dad, they didn't have an adventure. . ." He pursed his lips--tasting the words before he issued them. "It was work. Hard work. Everyday, y'know? I don't think I ever saw anything I wanted." Ron sniffled again, staring at his shoes. "If what they had is love, who needs it?" "Are you loved, Ron? Certainly you'd be missed by people, you'd leave some hole, but the hole would close over. Would anyone refuse to let it close?" "Nope," Ron said in an almost whisper, "you?" "I wouldn't even leave a hole." Ron gazed at Traven, deep into eyes he had seen squeeze the will out of strangers, pulp the conscious logic of so many people. Traven returned the moment, trying to dredge up some trace of a long-lost humanity. Ron took a swig of his beer and said: "I really gotta piss." And both of them snorted and looked away, laughing at the scene they had built between them. Ron rose and stumbled to a tree, while Jed Traven wandered over to the pond, curious if it would freeze solid, or if it were deep enough to retain some softness underneath. The moonbeams broke into thousands of tiny twinkles on the surface making it hard to judge. Ron drew abreast of him. "So, what are you doing here?" Traven breathed a long, slow sigh and Ron distantly wondered why no steam issued forth in the cold. Finally, Traven spoke, "Every so often I try to run from what I am. I never make it." Ron nodded, "Yeah, yeah," he said. "It's like this movie I saw. It had one good line, y'know how some movies are like that? Just one good thing? In it, this guy says: 'No matter where you go--there you are.' Y'know?" "Yes, I think I do." And the vampire listened as Ron told him the entire plot to the movie with one good thing, because there were so many hours until dawn and he really had nowhere else to go. +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ About the Authors Karen Alkalay-Gut (gut22@ccsg.tau.ac.il) teaches English at Tel Aviv University. Her hobbies are rock music and dogs and poetry. A.J. Axline could not be reached for a biography by press time. Mike Capsambelis could not be reached for a biography by press time. Robert A. Fulkerson (co-editor, morpo-bond@morpo.creighton.edu) is a graduate student in computer science, even though he's not sure why he's there or whether or not he'll return in his next life as a llama. John Alex Hebert (jlh2646@usl.edu, include note that it is for John) lives in Lafayette, LA, the fetid heart of Cajun culture. He is presently working as a deckhand on a oil field supply boat in the Gulf. Matthew Douglas Heys (co-editor, morpo-kneebend@morpo.creighton.edu) lives in Omaha, Nebraska and is a tireless campaigner for peace between the warring bakeries of the upper Midwest. - m@ Kris M. Kalil (kkalil@creighton.edu) is an intrepid world traveler searching for the perfect slice of cheesecake and is a graduate student in English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Byron Lanning (bjlanning@delphi.com) works as a struggling writer in Missouri. Niki LeBoeuf (vortexae@mintir.new-orleans.la.us) is a senior at Metairie Park Country Day High School and is undecided about college but is planning to major in either English/Creative Writing or Music Composition. Matt Mason (co-editor, morpo-frog@morpo.creighton.edu) is a penitent donut eater currently living in California for no apparent reason. Colin Morton (aa905@freenet.carleton.ca) is a full-time writer who lives in Ottawa, Canada. His most recent book of poems is _How to Be Born Again_ (Quarry Press). David Pellerin (pellerin@netcom.com) is a freelance writer who lives somewhere east of Duvall, Washington. He has owned 27 used cars. Todd Robinson (trobinso@unomaha.edu) is fervently trying to get into graduate writing programs around the country. He is relatively happy, for the nonce. J.D. Rummel (rummel@creighton.edu) hopes to combine his tremendous natural talent and abundant charm into a career as a financially successful writer of fiction. Witness this paragraph as evidence of his fictional greatness. Miranda Schatten (miranda@wam.umd.edu) is an Electrical Engineering student and a government employee, with strong interests in science, music and poetry. Edgar Sommer (sommer@gmd.de) is continuously climbing the walls to nodom. The colliding banter is making his eyes empty all the time. +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ In Their Own Words "The blinds aren't from Venice" (Todd Robinson) "The speaker in the poem is unable to reconcile his conflicting feelings regarding the 'bohemian' girl walking down his street. She appeals to him on an aesthetic level, but she also angers him. He despises her aura of self-confidence and 'hipness,' yet he takes voyeuristic pleasure in watching her 'round little self.' He's confused, much like the author." "Traces in a Fast Food Restaurant" (Niki LeBoeuf) "'Writer's Block' can make one very desperate for inspiration, so I told myself to scribble something about the first thing I saw. The first thing I saw was an empty Sprite can. So I scribbled and showed it to a friend of mine (who had been responsible for emptying that Sprite can) who proceeded to write a haiku at me. I couldn't take that lying down, now, could I?" "Oh Bean Curd!" (Byron Lanning) "'Oh Bean Curd!' and its companion story, 'The Story,' belong to a collection of humor, tentatively called _Seeing Little Men Who Aren't There_. This collection will contain twenty pieces. I have completed fourteen of them." "Grazing Through Life" (Miranda A. Schatten) "I wrote this poem in October 1993 during an introspective mindstorm, with thoughts of why people worry so much. Perhaps I referred to cows because they are such 'contented' creatures." "the past mostly" (Edgar Sommer) "These pomes are pitchers in the mind for a brief moment as they are written down. Pitchers contain at least as much aural as visual Stuff, in the platonic sense (just kidding). I don't know them before this happens, and don't understand them much after. Author and reader are pretty much in the same situation. Welcome to excrimentalism. Ola!" "The Frog Prince" (Karen Alkalay-Gut) "'The Frog Prince' - is a montage of other poems and cultural references from Emily Dickinson to Mick Jagger to Sesame Street that is meant to show a culturally inbuilt narcissism that makes human relations difficult at best." "snow baby" (Robert A. Fulkerson) "I am fascinated by the thoughts that run through the minds of various types of people. There are all sorts of people out there, many of them hurting with no way out -- mothers, sons, teachers, cab drivers, Alzheimer's sufferers, killers, crack babies. This poem is a twist on the 'walk a mile in another person's shoes' adage." "Tangents" (Karen Alkalay-Gut) "The material from 'Tangents' is autobiographical and biographical (Some of my friends recognize secrets they told me here. I carefully disguise them). I think it is about all kinds of contiguous experiences that put together show something about loneliness and the feeling of being tangential to others." "Riding the Yokohama Night Train" (John Alex Hebert) "The nature of consciousness is such that it is a subjective roller coaster ride of sensual experience. I wrote this poem because the experience of living in Metro-Tokyo would not fit into the structure of a short story or essay. Watching the Tokyo masses suggested to me a possible future world of socially engineered crowd control through refined 'bread and circus' techniques." "Yes Kai, yes Margaret, yes, yes, yes" (Colin Morton) "Letters arrive in my mailbox every day asking for donations for worthy causes. I want to say 'Yes' to all of them, and I do give what I feel I can. But if these messages were all I knew of the world, I wouldn't have a hope. By breaking up these appeals and looking at them as if through a kaleidoscope, I don't mean to make light of suffering, but to express the crazy-making frustration of one to whom it seems no amount of 'help' will ever be enough." "B and F Auto Wrecking" (David Pellerin) "Junkyards are on the verge of extinction in this country. This is not necessarily a bad thing, just an observation. Their disappearance is due to increasingly restrictive environmental regulations, suburban encroachment and the recent dominance of 'mega-yards' -- the junkyard equivalents of Wal-Mart stores. The characters in _B_and_F_Auto_Wrecking_ are real. I couldn't have made them up." "Leaving Home" (Kris M. Kalil) "I wrote 'Leaving Home' to rid myself of a haunting dream prompted by various upheavals in my life, both good and bad. The feelings generated by these experiences, however, were the same: vulnerability, instability and fear." "Interview" (Karen Alkalay-Gut) "'Interview' was written after I did a bunch of readings last year around the New York, Delaware, New Jersey area and was beginning to feel that the interviews I was giving were the only things that were grounding me in a reality of self. So it's about losing it." "Frozen with a Stranger in the Park" (J.D. Rummel) "I wrote 'Stranger' in 1989 because I had never written a Halloween story. Halloween is my favorite holiday and I wanted to try and capture that cool, autumnal sensation from my childhood. In real life, the chauffeur is a friend of mine who actually can't drive. There is a longer, duller explanation of the story, and anyone who cares can e-mail me at rummel@creighton.edu." +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ How to obtain copies of _The Morpo Review_ ASCII and PostScript versions of _The Morpo Review_ and related materials are made available through the following avenues: o Via Gopher to Morpo.Creighton.Edu under Electronic Journals and Lists/ Electronic Magazines/The Morpo Review. This Gopher has the ASCII and PostScript versions of _The Morpo Review_, as well as any limited edition color plates (JPEG pictures). o Via Electronic Mail subscriptions. Send a hearty "Mooo" to the Internet mail address morpo-request@morpo.creighton.edu and you will be put on the distribution list. E-mail suscriptions are only for the ASCII text version of _The Morpo Review_. Currently, there are 80 worldwide e-mail subscribers. o Via World Wide Web. Currently, you can just point your WWW Browser to point at the Gopher above as: gopher://morpo.creighton.edu:70/ +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ Addresses for _The Morpo Review_ morpo-frog@morpo.creighton.edu . . . . . . . . . . Matthew Mason, Co-Editor morpo-bond@morpo.creighton.edu . . . . . . . . . Robert Fulkerson, Co-Editor morpo-kneebend@morpo.creighton.edu . . . . . . . . . Matthew Heys, Co-Editor morpo-submissions@morpo.creighton.edu . . Submissions to _The Morpo Review_ morpo-request@morpo.creighton.edu . . . . Requests for E-Mail subscriptions morpo-comments@morpo.creighton.edu . . . . Comments about _The Morpo Review_ morpo-editors@morpo.creighton.edu . . . . . . Reach all the editors at once +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ Submit to _The Morpo Review_ What kind of work do we want? How about Sonnets to Captain Kangaroo, free-verse ruminations comparing plastic lawn ornaments to _Love Boat_ or nearly anything with cows in it. No, not cute, Smurfy little "ha ha" ditties--back reality into a corner and snarl! Some good examples are "Oatmeal" by Galway Kinnell, "A Supermarket In California" by Allen Ginsberg, or the 6th section of Wallace Stevens' "Six Significant Landscapes." But, hey, if this makes little or no sense, just send us good stuff; if we like it, we'll print it, even if it's nothing close to the above description of what we want (life's like that at times). Just send us good stuff, get published, and impress your pears and neighbors. Deadline for submissions for our next issue is February 15, 1994. So send us your unhinged poetry, prose and essay contemplations at morpo-submissions@morpo.creighton.edu +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+