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(Avant)Poetry
"Flood"
Germain Droogenbroodt, Spain
Germain Droogenbroodt, Spain
Like wide-open arms
reaching pleadingly to the sky
the branches of a tree
in an area flooded by the storm
Nearby
pleaded heavenward
also of people numerous arms
but in vain.
reaching pleadingly to the sky
the branches of a tree
in an area flooded by the storm
Nearby
pleaded heavenward
also of people numerous arms
but in vain.
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"Momentum"
Carla Schwartz, Massachusetts |
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I want to make the moments move over
want to make them slide out make room for new moments I want the wind to calm I want the wind to rise up and roar I want to keep moving like my pen I want to find my dream again I want to know who is knocking on my dream when I lie down who is trying to learn who is trying to horn in who is sliding through my wall of brain and offering me what? a tool? is it a pen or a rolling pin? of course I need both I need to roll my thoughts smooth after kneading into a ball I need a strong arm that I might toss that ball far into the water to splash back at the full moon and the pen so that when I succeed to slide just one moment to add space in time I can use it to record my dreams. "my garden"
Mina Beach, Pennsylvania good morning summer, good morning summer before summer comes again
i’m going lake surfing and tending a garden of stone roses i’m cutting out paper hearts and trying on glasses good morning summer, good morning summer before everything goes dull again i’m picturing leaves on trees and staring at the cloud-covered moon i’m performing love spells and dreaming up a county fair good morning summer, good morning summer before summer comes again i’m writing her name in cursive with the pressure washer on the driveway i’m buying new socks and making popsicles in the ice tray good morning summer, good morning summer before the magic evades me again i’m kissing the sweat off from under her necklace and sitting on the balcony i’m looking into the lake and seeing what looks back good morning summer, good morning summer before summer comes again i’m dying my little death in the sweet grass and cutting her hair in the kitchen i’m finding a new spray of freckles and wondering who i’ll be i’m spinning a nickel on the page of the phone book to see where it lands and making crayon-wax candles and cooling down on the tile floor and writing devotions and holy letters behind her belt and finally feeling like myself again "EAST VS WEST: A SYNOPTIC CULTURAL COMPARISON"
Yuan Changming, Canada During the great flood
Noah hid himself in the ark While Dayu tried to contain it With his bare hands Prometheus stole fire From Olympian gods While Sui Ren got it By drilling wood hard Smart Daedalus crafted wings To fly away from his prison-tower While Old Fool removed the whole Mountain blocking his way Helios enjoyed driving his chariot All along in the sky While Kuafu chased the sun To take it down & tame it Sisyphus rolls the boulder uphill Because of his deceitfulness, while Wu Gang cuts the laurel as a punishment For distractions in learning "Unstitchable"
Kiyoshi Hirawa, Nebraska The trunk was a reluctant reliquary,
a shuttered museum in the worst part of town, rent paid to the sump pump under the last basement step, three decades undisturbed until jostled awake by a girl-woman learning her third decade from stories on porches and long-lost trunks hiding lost long looks and a police uniform: faded French blues, crinkled shirt, despondent gloss of a duty belt, sagging velcro straps criss-crossing a kevlar vest. But no badge or gun. Costume clothes? she wondered. Stolen artifacts, confessed the curator, a woman-gran bitterly burning a lost decade in story-torches lit with the hot oil of memory, sifting the incomplete ensemble, voice crackling like vinyl. Ask a police department how they handle misconduct–sexual misconduct–and they’ll ask for your badge and gun. And clothes and gear. Then you’ll gather shirts and pants darkened by spots of bodily fluids. Some yours, most not. Vomit from a man you dragged out of a garage foggy with carbon monoxide. Blood from a train v. car wreck, a woman almost cut in half. Baby spit-up from CPR on a three-month old, two-finger chest compressions in the back of a swaying ambulance, paramedics clutching an IV, tapping frantically for a vein. They all lived. Makes no difference. You’ll be asked for your jacket. The hat, too, with the badge so shiny you turned it backwards searching buildings on burglar alarms. They shoot at what’s bright. Burglars do, too. Try turning in a duty belt after one thousand seven hundred and four calls for service in a single year. And all you’ll think about are stitches, tiny ants scrambling over the leather snake of a duty belt and the molded kevlar that never contoured to a woman’s body, then you’ll recall your first perineal stitch after your second child. Your discomfort accommodating someone else's comfort. You don’t own these stories, you’ll tell them. We own your voice, they’ll tell you. And when they own your voice, they’ll stitch as they please, suturing your future, invisible stitches crisscrossing and lining the length of your body from lips to lips. The girl-woman let wool and polyester slip between fingers and thumb, the embroidered badge scratch across knuckles. Why not keep the badge and gun, then? The woman-gran, ever the contemplative, conscientious grave robber, held up a uniform shirt against the sun, rays oozing through the subterranean window, penetrating the threadbare layers but halting at the dark patches, arching, twisting, genuflecting before the splotch of stains haloed by light, worn out and worn through, wholly unstitchable. "L’ANTI-«PROMESSA» D’AMARE"
Ivan Pozzoni, Italy Da anti-«poeta», vittima della mia anti-«poesia» non sarei in grado di dedicarti che un’anti-«promessa» d’amore, la mia anti-«promessa» d’amore avrebbe i tratti d’una sinestesia, la durezza staliniana dell’acciaio e la dolcezza del colore, la finezza dell’amicizia e la consistenza dell’amore, i tuoi occhi, candidi, mi tramutano in cinico malato d’idrofobia, e contro la rabbia – monamour- non esiste dottore. Anti-«promessa» d’amore da leggere davanti all’ufficiale di stato civile, come riuscire a convincere un mondo tecno-triviale che ti ho amata dal Giugno del 1976, forse, addirittura, da Aprile, io ero un embrione e tu, ancora, eri immersa nell’aurora boreale, saresti stata sei anni un angelo, un fantasma, l’inessenza di un frattale, senza fare una piega a attenderti, sei anni, trentasei anni, senza niente da dire, i contemporanei montoni di Panurgo mi condannerebbero al silenzio totale. Sei la mia anti-«promessa» d’amore e, magari, il concetto ti suona insensibile ti osservo dormire, serena, come una briciola adagiata in un tostapane, il mio amore – mi spogli dal ruolo di «guastatore»- è abissale come un sommergibile, condannato a disseminar siluri sotto (mentita) spoglia di pesci-cane. "THE ANTI-PROMISE TO LOVE" Anti-poet, victim of my anti-poetry, all I could do is dedicate to you an anti-promise of love, my anti-promise of love would have the features of a synesthesia, the Stalinist hardness of steel and the softness of colour, the finesse of friendship and the consistency of love, your white eyes turn me into a hydrophobic cynic, and there's no doctor for rage, my love. An anti-promise of love to be read before a registrar, as to convince a tecno-trivial world, i've loved you since June 1976, perhaps, in truth, since April, i was an embryo and you were still immersed in the aurora borealis, for six years you would have been an angel, a ghost, the inessential of a fractal, without batting an eyelid waiting for you, six years, thirty-six years, with nothing to say, the sheep of Panurge's contemporaries would condemn me to total silence. You are my anti-promise of love, and the idea may seem imperceptible to you, i observe you sleeping, serene, like a crumb abandoned in a toaster, my love I am stripped of the role of ‘sapper’ - it is abyssal like a submarine, condemned to scatter torpedoes under the (false) guise of a dogfish. "Wild Gatherings: Creasy Greens"
Charles A. Swanson, Virginia 
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(Avant)Stories
Please make sure to address story submissions to Dave Sykes. Thanks!
"Sign My Bucket?"
For Wayne
Larry D Thacker, Tennessee
For Wayne
Larry D Thacker, Tennessee
I was in the back, dusting, of course. It’s what I do, sweeping up behind the rough-skin-chaffed, tire-kickers wandering lost in the antique aisles watching for some long-lost mystery they’ve misplaced out of a dimming past. They leave a little of themselves behind through the store in the way of dust. It’s like a full-time job. I tell myself it’s meditative, this sweeping up of the microscopic, this feathered following on.
Something, someone, banged through the front double glass doors, and fell to the floor. A woman cursed the day under her breath. Something splashed followed by another string of curses.
She yelled out, “Hey! Anyone home? Hello!”
The door slammed behind her. The little chimes I’d rigged to the top of the entrance doors sung out in a song that screamed chaos.
I dropped my feather duster and ran to the front. This could be important. But for the sound of splashing water, I thought maybe a postal employee was having trouble maneuvering a delivery into the shop. It’s happened.
The ruckus this woman caused was unmistakable. She meant business, of some sort, and I didn’t even know what she wanted yet. I’d just opened, and things were hopping.
It was a hot day. Humid as h*ll. She was sweat-soaked in rings through her green and faded Dollywood tank top. I saw sweat trailing down her legs, what wasn’t covered by her acid washed, knee-length jorts. She was barefooted to boot. Her blond-ish hair was stringy on her forehead from the humidity.
She was pulling along one of those bright yellow, industrial janitorial mop buckets, the kind you crank down with the handle to squeeze the life out of your soggy mop. Her mop was in the bucket. She steered with the mop handle with one hand and fought a heavy backpack on the other shoulder. She was standing in a puddle of water. She’d spilled it fighting her way in. A gray, chunky water filled it. She hadn’t spilled it all. Things were floating in there.
I stood and looked at her, waiting, like, here I am, now what?
“You own this place, boss?” she asked, about as loud as before, like I was still in the back.
I didn’t answer that question. I never do. It doesn’t matter who owns the shop. Get on with it, lady.
“How can I help you?” I asked, eyeing the spilled filth.
She asked sort of the obvious question, though it surprised me still.
“How much you give me for all this?”
All this? I almost blurted out. I don’t see sh*t. But I held my tongue.
She stood churning the mophead up and down in the water like this was going to entice me. As if I’d say, Wow! A bucket that holds water! And a mop that soaks sh*t up. I’ve been looking for that setup for months!
Again, I held back. I opted instead for, “I’ve already got a mop and a bucket, and my bucket ain’t full of nasty *ss water.”
She looked down and made a face as if she’d only just realized she was standing barefooted in a mess. She kicked some drops off the toes of her left foot and shifted her backpack a little.
“You might be better off dumping that water. You gonna clean up that mess you’re making?”
She said, “What? You giving me a job, or something?”
“No, we don’t need any help, but it’s your mess, ain’t it?” I reminded.
She was standing on a string of spaghetti like she was smushing an earthworm. She toed it aside. She said, “D*mn. I can’t believe I spilled some! But hey, this here ain’t your ordinary dirty mop water, boss.”
She’d lowered her voice now and was looking around like she didn’t want anyone else but lucky me to hear about this incredible deal she was about to lay out.
How could I not be curious now?
“Oh?”
She nodded, wide-eyed. What was this lady on?
“Did you know Madonna was in town?”
“The h*ll you say,” I responded. I figured it could only get better from here. Besides, I was now just as interested in how long she’d keep standing there in dirty water as for what she might have to say about the Queen of Pop stopping off in Yamertown.
She was growing more enthusiastic, nodding and lowering her voice another notch.
“Yeah. Her and a bunch of her people were down at that Italian place.”
I said, “You don’t say.”
“Yeah. They were making a big *ss mess all over the table and up underneath,” she said, twisting up a disgusted face. “All over the floor.”
That “Italian place” was actually “Dos Fretelli,” my buddy Bill’s Italian-Mexican hybrid restaurant.
“You work there?” I wondered.
“No. I stoled this. I’ve always loved Madonna. Imma material girl just like her. They rolled all this out back when they were done cleaning up. I grabbed it.”
“Madonna, huh?”
“Yep.”
What was I going to do with this? She was obviously out of her mind.
“Why’d you bring it me?”
“Pawn shop sent me here,” she said. I made a mental note to thank Ricky down at Millennial Pawn.
“You sure it was Madonna? The Madonna.”
“Like there’s another Madonna,” she said, sort of aggravated with me. “Oh, and Reba.”
“Reba.”
“Yep,” she said.
“McEntire.”
“Did I stutter, boss?”
Now I was curious.
“Anyone else down there,” I asked. “I used to listen to Madonna a little.”
“Maybe,” she whispered, still looking around a little paranoid. “I didn’t stick around long.”
I grabbed my phone and flipped through my contacts. “Well, why don’t we give Bill a call and see who all’s down there, what d’ya say?”
I thought she was gonna drop everything and bolt and leave her great find behind.
“Who?”
“I know those folks down at Dos Fretelli. The owner’s a friend of mine.”
The mop slipped from her hand. “You gonna rat me out, man? Please don’t. I just love me some Madonna, boss.”
“Hey, you found me,” I reminded her, “if there’s a chance this is really Madonna and Reba’s spaghetti slop, then I need to know before I invest good money, you know what I mean?”
I thought that would shut her up.
“And Britney.”
“Let me guess. Spears?”
“Yep. Ms. Britney was down there too.”
“Now we’re talking,” I said.
The phone was ringing. Bill answered.
“Dos Fretelli’s! Home of the buy two, get one, stuffed fajita calzone!”
It sounded busy in the background. The woman looked nervous, like she had a bellyache.
“Bill. It’s Len. You had some interesting guests today, I hear? Some star power down there, maybe?”
He was quiet for a beat.
“Oh! Len! Yeah,” he laughed. “It’s like Hollywood’s here for the day. Jenny’s next door is having their annual drag review fundraiser for Pride Week.”
It all made sense suddenly, didn’t it?
“The shows start at seven. A lot of the gals are using our back seating area as a green room.”
They sounded loud and busy. I could only imagine what a crowd of drag queens filling up on Mexican / Italian would be like by showtime.
“Let me see,” he said, “I see Dolly…and Cher…”
I nodded and grinned. The lady nodded as if to say, I told ya!
“Um, there’s Reba…Lady Gaga…Martha Washington!”
“You don’t say. You got a Madonna in the mix?” I asked.
The lady grinned wider and inspected her dirty water again and tried picking up some spaghetti with her bare toes. She was like a contemplative monkey discovering intentional dexterity.
I whispered low. “Hey, man, you short a mop bucket from out back?”
“How’d you know?”
“Some nut’s trying to sell it to me, dirty Madonna water and all.”
I thought she was going to hear him laughing through the phone.
I spoke up. “You think Madonna might swing by the shop here?”
The lady gave a little hop and yelped with excitement. She’d maybe forgotten the situation she was really in. I tossed her a roll of paper towels.
“Would you mind?” She started sopping up the mess humming a rendition of “Like a Prayer.” She’d wring the fluid back into the bucket. The smell was up in my nose suddenly, a mix of rancidness, BO, disintegrating pasta, and a drop of Pinesol.
I hung up. “Madonna’s on the way,” I told her. She was stunned.
“Oh, wow. You got a magic marker,” she asked.
I told her I might somewhere.
“You think she’d sign the bucket?”
“Lord, I hope so,” I said. This was getting better and better. I just hoped she didn’t get too nervous and take off. I asked her name.
“My name’s Selma Fay, Boss,” she replied. She was about done sopping up the mess. I told her to go wash her hands in the back if she felt like it. She did.
Then it was quiet for a moment, like when I enjoy time best in the shop, alone, but not really alone, surrounded by this long room of puzzled history all nested together, surely secreting its own combined language just away from what we can clearly make out.
I heard the crowd coming on before I saw them. Some singing. A few chanting, “No justice, no peace!” Someone said they were so full they might pop. They strolled up, tentatively, gazing up and around, I guess wondering if they’d found the right place. I “recognized” a few of them. Reba’s teased hair. Madonna’s proud nose. Cher’s long hot crow black hair. They burst into the shop like a showtune act already in progress.
Madonna yelled out, “Where’s Len? Who’s in charge here?” fists on hips, legs straight and planted, looking like a new sort of superheroine.
Cher stepped in and followed up with, “Yeah! Anybody here?”
I was behind the counter. “I’m right here, ladies! Len Lake at your service!”
Someone yelled, “Oh, now don’t you tease us like that, Lenny Boy!” I guess they’d already nicknamed me. No one but my mother had called me anything but Len since I was born, and she’d been dead ten years. I didn’t mind it.
The rest of the queens and their colorful entourage was dispersing through the antique store, ooh-ing and ahh-ing at the cool stuff and giggling their *sses off trying on old hats and slinging vintage handbags over each other’s shoulders. They stepped leisurely around the bucket and mop. One asked, “You have a little accident, Lenny Boy?”
“It’s a long story,” I told them.
“All stories are long stories, Lenny Boy,” Reba said. “And I’d do something about what’s in that bucket before it grows hair on it.”
They laughed.
I yelled toward back, “Selma Fay, you’ve got company!”
She squealed from the bathroom, “Oh My God!” and came trotting to the front.
Madonna was posing with a mounted 8-pointed buck when Selma Fay ran up and jumped in the frame without being invited. A tall boy, a foot taller than anyone of us, shoved Selma Fay back gently and got between her and Madonna. Selma Fay’s eyes got big and round and crazy.
“Who you think you are pretty boy? I’m Madonna’s biggest fan - at least in this sh*tty little town!”
I shot her a look, like, Calm down, would you? She backed off.
“I’m sorry, boss. I’m just so excited.”
Cher spoke up. “She work for you?”
“No,” I shot back. “She don’t.”
Cher asked the obvious question. “Then why she callin’ you boss?”
“Never mind that,” Selma Fay interrupted, walking over to the bucket and mop and puffing up proudly.
“Ms. Madonna, ma’am, I know you’re busy and all,” she started, humbly, rolling the bucket across the floor and at the same time uncapping a black magic marker she’d found who-knows-where in the back, “but if you don’t mind, would you sign this here bucket?”
Madonna stared at her. Stared down at the rippling sludge in the bucket. Leaned closer with a little sniff and jerked back, scrunching up her lovely nose. In a smooth baritone voice that surprised even me, said, “Listen here, baby girl. Where you get off stealing our left-behinds?”
Selma Fay released her grip on the mop and looked round for where she’d stashed her backpack. Someone yelled, “Ooh, Lordy, Madonna Ray’s about to come out, y’all!”
Then it was as if Selma Fay sobered up instantaneously, like a switch flipped and better light had suddenly flooded the room. She blinked a few times, stepped closer to Madonna. To Cher. Toward Reba.
“What the h*ll kinda trick is this?” she hissed. It was like she was a different person. She
slapped her backpack down and threw the marker at Madonna’s feet and looked over at me. “You
in on this, boss? What the h*ll!”
I shrugged, hoping I appeared as amazed as her.
“You mean to tell me, y’all aren’t who I thought you are?”
She took a closer look at Lady Gaga. Lady Gaga lowered her oversized sunglasses.
“My heart’s just broken in two. Imma fool.”
I think everyone really felt sorry for Selma Fay in that moment.
“You still want that bucket signed, baby girl?” Madonna asked, picking up the marker, her voice an octave higher now.
“Well, maybe just the mop handle, if you don’t mind. I think maybe he’ll want to keep the bucket,” she said, glancing at me.
“Um, no. You’re taking the bucket of swill with you when you leave and I better not find it tossed behind the building either,” I warned.
Madonna shot me a look, like, Give the old gal a break, won’t you? That made me feel a little bad. But what was I to do with it?
“So why you girls dressing up like famous people then if you’re not them? It ain’t Halloween by a long shot.”
After all this, it still seemed she didn’t get that they were drag queens. When she said “girls,” she meant it. They realized it, too, but I guess they didn’t want to confuse her anymore than she was already.
Madonna managed a quick signature on the mop handle. It was hard to read, which was probably best since “Madonna’s” true performance name was Material Ray Mathis. When she was done, she handed it back and Lady Gaga took a turn, signing Luxxxury Adelle. Reba signed, Miss Jazzee. Cher’s real name was Cheri Mae Fox. Selma Fay wouldn’t know any different since all the marker scratching might have said anything. It at least gave her a souvenir from a wacky day no one expected.
Selma Fay looked at me and said, “Well, it woulda been funny if you’d bought this off me in the beginning, huh, Lenny Boy?”
I gave her a look for tossing that nickname at me. She wasn’t in the club, but was feeling like a million bucks, I guess. I laughed. “That wasn’t ever going to happen, but sure. Just don’t go trying to hawk that mop.”
“People do what they need to do out there, man,” she said. “But I’ll never get rid of this. I think I’ll make a walking stick from it.”
“I’ve got an idea,” Madonna offered, pulling a stack of paper from her handbag. “Our show’s this evening and tomorrow down at Jenny’s Party Palace. How about you give these out to people, say, for ten bucks?” She handed them and a bill to Selma Fay.
You’d have thought someone offered her a full-time job with six figures. She grabbed the leaflets, stuck the ten in her jorts pocket, screwed the soggy mop end off the handle and plopped it in the bucket, and headed for the door.
Madonna yelled out, “If a lot of people show up, we’ll know you did a good job handing those out, Miss Selma!"
Selma Fay turned with a smile and said, “You can count on me, boss!”
Something, someone, banged through the front double glass doors, and fell to the floor. A woman cursed the day under her breath. Something splashed followed by another string of curses.
She yelled out, “Hey! Anyone home? Hello!”
The door slammed behind her. The little chimes I’d rigged to the top of the entrance doors sung out in a song that screamed chaos.
I dropped my feather duster and ran to the front. This could be important. But for the sound of splashing water, I thought maybe a postal employee was having trouble maneuvering a delivery into the shop. It’s happened.
The ruckus this woman caused was unmistakable. She meant business, of some sort, and I didn’t even know what she wanted yet. I’d just opened, and things were hopping.
It was a hot day. Humid as h*ll. She was sweat-soaked in rings through her green and faded Dollywood tank top. I saw sweat trailing down her legs, what wasn’t covered by her acid washed, knee-length jorts. She was barefooted to boot. Her blond-ish hair was stringy on her forehead from the humidity.
She was pulling along one of those bright yellow, industrial janitorial mop buckets, the kind you crank down with the handle to squeeze the life out of your soggy mop. Her mop was in the bucket. She steered with the mop handle with one hand and fought a heavy backpack on the other shoulder. She was standing in a puddle of water. She’d spilled it fighting her way in. A gray, chunky water filled it. She hadn’t spilled it all. Things were floating in there.
I stood and looked at her, waiting, like, here I am, now what?
“You own this place, boss?” she asked, about as loud as before, like I was still in the back.
I didn’t answer that question. I never do. It doesn’t matter who owns the shop. Get on with it, lady.
“How can I help you?” I asked, eyeing the spilled filth.
She asked sort of the obvious question, though it surprised me still.
“How much you give me for all this?”
All this? I almost blurted out. I don’t see sh*t. But I held my tongue.
She stood churning the mophead up and down in the water like this was going to entice me. As if I’d say, Wow! A bucket that holds water! And a mop that soaks sh*t up. I’ve been looking for that setup for months!
Again, I held back. I opted instead for, “I’ve already got a mop and a bucket, and my bucket ain’t full of nasty *ss water.”
She looked down and made a face as if she’d only just realized she was standing barefooted in a mess. She kicked some drops off the toes of her left foot and shifted her backpack a little.
“You might be better off dumping that water. You gonna clean up that mess you’re making?”
She said, “What? You giving me a job, or something?”
“No, we don’t need any help, but it’s your mess, ain’t it?” I reminded.
She was standing on a string of spaghetti like she was smushing an earthworm. She toed it aside. She said, “D*mn. I can’t believe I spilled some! But hey, this here ain’t your ordinary dirty mop water, boss.”
She’d lowered her voice now and was looking around like she didn’t want anyone else but lucky me to hear about this incredible deal she was about to lay out.
How could I not be curious now?
“Oh?”
She nodded, wide-eyed. What was this lady on?
“Did you know Madonna was in town?”
“The h*ll you say,” I responded. I figured it could only get better from here. Besides, I was now just as interested in how long she’d keep standing there in dirty water as for what she might have to say about the Queen of Pop stopping off in Yamertown.
She was growing more enthusiastic, nodding and lowering her voice another notch.
“Yeah. Her and a bunch of her people were down at that Italian place.”
I said, “You don’t say.”
“Yeah. They were making a big *ss mess all over the table and up underneath,” she said, twisting up a disgusted face. “All over the floor.”
That “Italian place” was actually “Dos Fretelli,” my buddy Bill’s Italian-Mexican hybrid restaurant.
“You work there?” I wondered.
“No. I stoled this. I’ve always loved Madonna. Imma material girl just like her. They rolled all this out back when they were done cleaning up. I grabbed it.”
“Madonna, huh?”
“Yep.”
What was I going to do with this? She was obviously out of her mind.
“Why’d you bring it me?”
“Pawn shop sent me here,” she said. I made a mental note to thank Ricky down at Millennial Pawn.
“You sure it was Madonna? The Madonna.”
“Like there’s another Madonna,” she said, sort of aggravated with me. “Oh, and Reba.”
“Reba.”
“Yep,” she said.
“McEntire.”
“Did I stutter, boss?”
Now I was curious.
“Anyone else down there,” I asked. “I used to listen to Madonna a little.”
“Maybe,” she whispered, still looking around a little paranoid. “I didn’t stick around long.”
I grabbed my phone and flipped through my contacts. “Well, why don’t we give Bill a call and see who all’s down there, what d’ya say?”
I thought she was gonna drop everything and bolt and leave her great find behind.
“Who?”
“I know those folks down at Dos Fretelli. The owner’s a friend of mine.”
The mop slipped from her hand. “You gonna rat me out, man? Please don’t. I just love me some Madonna, boss.”
“Hey, you found me,” I reminded her, “if there’s a chance this is really Madonna and Reba’s spaghetti slop, then I need to know before I invest good money, you know what I mean?”
I thought that would shut her up.
“And Britney.”
“Let me guess. Spears?”
“Yep. Ms. Britney was down there too.”
“Now we’re talking,” I said.
The phone was ringing. Bill answered.
“Dos Fretelli’s! Home of the buy two, get one, stuffed fajita calzone!”
It sounded busy in the background. The woman looked nervous, like she had a bellyache.
“Bill. It’s Len. You had some interesting guests today, I hear? Some star power down there, maybe?”
He was quiet for a beat.
“Oh! Len! Yeah,” he laughed. “It’s like Hollywood’s here for the day. Jenny’s next door is having their annual drag review fundraiser for Pride Week.”
It all made sense suddenly, didn’t it?
“The shows start at seven. A lot of the gals are using our back seating area as a green room.”
They sounded loud and busy. I could only imagine what a crowd of drag queens filling up on Mexican / Italian would be like by showtime.
“Let me see,” he said, “I see Dolly…and Cher…”
I nodded and grinned. The lady nodded as if to say, I told ya!
“Um, there’s Reba…Lady Gaga…Martha Washington!”
“You don’t say. You got a Madonna in the mix?” I asked.
The lady grinned wider and inspected her dirty water again and tried picking up some spaghetti with her bare toes. She was like a contemplative monkey discovering intentional dexterity.
I whispered low. “Hey, man, you short a mop bucket from out back?”
“How’d you know?”
“Some nut’s trying to sell it to me, dirty Madonna water and all.”
I thought she was going to hear him laughing through the phone.
I spoke up. “You think Madonna might swing by the shop here?”
The lady gave a little hop and yelped with excitement. She’d maybe forgotten the situation she was really in. I tossed her a roll of paper towels.
“Would you mind?” She started sopping up the mess humming a rendition of “Like a Prayer.” She’d wring the fluid back into the bucket. The smell was up in my nose suddenly, a mix of rancidness, BO, disintegrating pasta, and a drop of Pinesol.
I hung up. “Madonna’s on the way,” I told her. She was stunned.
“Oh, wow. You got a magic marker,” she asked.
I told her I might somewhere.
“You think she’d sign the bucket?”
“Lord, I hope so,” I said. This was getting better and better. I just hoped she didn’t get too nervous and take off. I asked her name.
“My name’s Selma Fay, Boss,” she replied. She was about done sopping up the mess. I told her to go wash her hands in the back if she felt like it. She did.
Then it was quiet for a moment, like when I enjoy time best in the shop, alone, but not really alone, surrounded by this long room of puzzled history all nested together, surely secreting its own combined language just away from what we can clearly make out.
I heard the crowd coming on before I saw them. Some singing. A few chanting, “No justice, no peace!” Someone said they were so full they might pop. They strolled up, tentatively, gazing up and around, I guess wondering if they’d found the right place. I “recognized” a few of them. Reba’s teased hair. Madonna’s proud nose. Cher’s long hot crow black hair. They burst into the shop like a showtune act already in progress.
Madonna yelled out, “Where’s Len? Who’s in charge here?” fists on hips, legs straight and planted, looking like a new sort of superheroine.
Cher stepped in and followed up with, “Yeah! Anybody here?”
I was behind the counter. “I’m right here, ladies! Len Lake at your service!”
Someone yelled, “Oh, now don’t you tease us like that, Lenny Boy!” I guess they’d already nicknamed me. No one but my mother had called me anything but Len since I was born, and she’d been dead ten years. I didn’t mind it.
The rest of the queens and their colorful entourage was dispersing through the antique store, ooh-ing and ahh-ing at the cool stuff and giggling their *sses off trying on old hats and slinging vintage handbags over each other’s shoulders. They stepped leisurely around the bucket and mop. One asked, “You have a little accident, Lenny Boy?”
“It’s a long story,” I told them.
“All stories are long stories, Lenny Boy,” Reba said. “And I’d do something about what’s in that bucket before it grows hair on it.”
They laughed.
I yelled toward back, “Selma Fay, you’ve got company!”
She squealed from the bathroom, “Oh My God!” and came trotting to the front.
Madonna was posing with a mounted 8-pointed buck when Selma Fay ran up and jumped in the frame without being invited. A tall boy, a foot taller than anyone of us, shoved Selma Fay back gently and got between her and Madonna. Selma Fay’s eyes got big and round and crazy.
“Who you think you are pretty boy? I’m Madonna’s biggest fan - at least in this sh*tty little town!”
I shot her a look, like, Calm down, would you? She backed off.
“I’m sorry, boss. I’m just so excited.”
Cher spoke up. “She work for you?”
“No,” I shot back. “She don’t.”
Cher asked the obvious question. “Then why she callin’ you boss?”
“Never mind that,” Selma Fay interrupted, walking over to the bucket and mop and puffing up proudly.
“Ms. Madonna, ma’am, I know you’re busy and all,” she started, humbly, rolling the bucket across the floor and at the same time uncapping a black magic marker she’d found who-knows-where in the back, “but if you don’t mind, would you sign this here bucket?”
Madonna stared at her. Stared down at the rippling sludge in the bucket. Leaned closer with a little sniff and jerked back, scrunching up her lovely nose. In a smooth baritone voice that surprised even me, said, “Listen here, baby girl. Where you get off stealing our left-behinds?”
Selma Fay released her grip on the mop and looked round for where she’d stashed her backpack. Someone yelled, “Ooh, Lordy, Madonna Ray’s about to come out, y’all!”
Then it was as if Selma Fay sobered up instantaneously, like a switch flipped and better light had suddenly flooded the room. She blinked a few times, stepped closer to Madonna. To Cher. Toward Reba.
“What the h*ll kinda trick is this?” she hissed. It was like she was a different person. She
slapped her backpack down and threw the marker at Madonna’s feet and looked over at me. “You
in on this, boss? What the h*ll!”
I shrugged, hoping I appeared as amazed as her.
“You mean to tell me, y’all aren’t who I thought you are?”
She took a closer look at Lady Gaga. Lady Gaga lowered her oversized sunglasses.
“My heart’s just broken in two. Imma fool.”
I think everyone really felt sorry for Selma Fay in that moment.
“You still want that bucket signed, baby girl?” Madonna asked, picking up the marker, her voice an octave higher now.
“Well, maybe just the mop handle, if you don’t mind. I think maybe he’ll want to keep the bucket,” she said, glancing at me.
“Um, no. You’re taking the bucket of swill with you when you leave and I better not find it tossed behind the building either,” I warned.
Madonna shot me a look, like, Give the old gal a break, won’t you? That made me feel a little bad. But what was I to do with it?
“So why you girls dressing up like famous people then if you’re not them? It ain’t Halloween by a long shot.”
After all this, it still seemed she didn’t get that they were drag queens. When she said “girls,” she meant it. They realized it, too, but I guess they didn’t want to confuse her anymore than she was already.
Madonna managed a quick signature on the mop handle. It was hard to read, which was probably best since “Madonna’s” true performance name was Material Ray Mathis. When she was done, she handed it back and Lady Gaga took a turn, signing Luxxxury Adelle. Reba signed, Miss Jazzee. Cher’s real name was Cheri Mae Fox. Selma Fay wouldn’t know any different since all the marker scratching might have said anything. It at least gave her a souvenir from a wacky day no one expected.
Selma Fay looked at me and said, “Well, it woulda been funny if you’d bought this off me in the beginning, huh, Lenny Boy?”
I gave her a look for tossing that nickname at me. She wasn’t in the club, but was feeling like a million bucks, I guess. I laughed. “That wasn’t ever going to happen, but sure. Just don’t go trying to hawk that mop.”
“People do what they need to do out there, man,” she said. “But I’ll never get rid of this. I think I’ll make a walking stick from it.”
“I’ve got an idea,” Madonna offered, pulling a stack of paper from her handbag. “Our show’s this evening and tomorrow down at Jenny’s Party Palace. How about you give these out to people, say, for ten bucks?” She handed them and a bill to Selma Fay.
You’d have thought someone offered her a full-time job with six figures. She grabbed the leaflets, stuck the ten in her jorts pocket, screwed the soggy mop end off the handle and plopped it in the bucket, and headed for the door.
Madonna yelled out, “If a lot of people show up, we’ll know you did a good job handing those out, Miss Selma!"
Selma Fay turned with a smile and said, “You can count on me, boss!”
"Appalachia Jack, Snarling Yow, and Alexander Gardner as Never Seen Together"
Nancy Cook, Minnesota
Nancy Cook, Minnesota
This is what Mathew Brady is thinking in April 1862: wartime photos are doing a good business. Not only stills of young men’s faces before they depart for the fighting, but photographs of the scenes of war: pitched tents, physics with the tools of their trade, infantry
cleaning their weapons, cavalry astride their mounts, generals in consultation, and everyone writing and reading letters to and from home. Brady is keenly aware of the profits made in trading in relics these two plus years since John Brown’s galvanizing raid on the Harpers Ferry Armory. Now that the war is teetering on the edge of northern states, opportunity beckons. To cash in on the public’s appetite for memorabilia, Brady sends photographers up to the boundary towns along the Potomac in Harper Valley.
In September, Brady’s best man, Alexander Gardner, heads to Antietam, arriving in time to photograph the hundreds of bodies of men and horses still unburied after the bloodiest day of fighting yet. A curious man, meticulous in his work, and dedicated to his craft, Gardner comes prepared for the sight of extreme blood, severed limbs, broken skulls, for the stench of fear, sweat, sh*t, urine, filth, for the grim faces of leaders and men in shock. It’s in the nature of the business. When he looks around he sees art ready for composition.
He also sees a story, though, and he’s not quite prepared for what it evokes in him. Heartbreak, as he has not felt heartbreak since tuberculosis devastated the close circle of family and friends he’d once assembled here in the US. So he takes pictures, hundreds of pictures that bear witness to grief, lost hope, youth’s fragility, the toll of duty, terror, bewilderment, desire.
Near sunset, Alexander Gardner sits alone on a downed tree a little apart from his tent, half a mile from the now silent Antietam battlefield. Sipping brandy, too tired to eat. The slowly evaporating blue of Maryland sky reminds him of summers in Inverness and he remembers a boy running in Caledonian forests and on the shores of Coldingham Bay.
Therefore it doesn’t surprise him to see a child of about ten emerge from the woods. Gardner follows the boy with his photographer’s eye, takes in the coltish thinness of him, his too-big gray-green overalls, the ragged blond flight of hair that lifts and falls as he lopes along, a small knapsack slung over his shoulder.
The child’s gaze is watchful, like Gardner’s. But the sun’s slant for the moment has hidden Gardner in shadow. Oblivious of Gardner’s presence, the boy steps quickly to the rear of the tent, touches the canvas and waits. After a few seconds, apparently satisfied no one is within, he sneaks up near the front flap where a kerchief hangs from the tent pole. Wrapped inside is a half loaf of bread and a jar of plum preserves. The boy lifts the kerchief, pockets the bread and preserves, and neatly replaces the cloth, all without making the slightest sound or disturbance.
‘Men have been shot for stealing less.’
The boy freezes. His sight travels to Gardner’s voice.
‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to shoot you,’ the man says.
At that, the boy runs for the woods. Gardner doesn’t bother to follow. He has more provisions, and no appetite anyhow.
Long past midnight, it’s black as pitch, and Gardner wakes to a fiendish howl. Instinctively he reaches for his shotgun, then remembers the boy. He creeps from his tent, moves very slowly in the direction of the menace. Is it a wolf? A wildcat? Maybe a coyote?
Inching through the grass, Gardner almost trips over the boy, who stirs and then sits up.
Gardner rests his gun against his hip. ‘What’s your name young fella?’
‘Jack.’
‘Jack what?’
‘Jack nothing,’ the boy says. He’s full of spit, this kid.
‘Okay, what brings you here, Jack Nothing?’
Jack lifts himself up, cocks his jaw. ‘Looking for my brothers, Tom and Will.’
‘Ah. Fighting men, are they?’
‘Mebbe. They just run off.’
‘You’re worried about them, are you?'
‘No. Don’t like ‘em much. They’s mean to me.’
‘Hmm. But you’re here looking for them. There’s a war going on. It’s dangerous. So
why –’
‘They my brothers.’
Jack stands, lifts his knapsack, and trots off.
Gardner lets him get about 100 paces, then follows. A minute later he hears the strange animal yowl and turns left, toward the sound. What he sees are two glowing yellow eyes and a fiery red mouth baring sharp white teeth. The canine creature snarls viciously, otherwise doesn’t move. Gardner raises his gun, takes aim, and fires. He’s a good shot, especially at such close range. He knows he’s hit his mark. But moments later the beast can be heard running in the boy’s direction. Gardner rushes blindly in pursuit.
A thin line of pink dawn breaks through on the horizon and now Gardner can see ahead both boy and beast. They are locked together, the boy’s left arm wrapped tightly around the neck of the beast, which Gardner now observes is a kind of dog, black-furred and sharp-snouted. Its red mouth still blazes like a lantern, but is no longer snarling. The yellow eyes have dulled. In contrast, the boy’s blue eyes are crystal sharp and vibrant in the emergent light.
With his right hand, Jack is holding out a bone of some kind in front of the dog, what he must have used to trick it into submission. The dog is snatching at the bone with his open mouth, but his fangs can’t seem to hold a grip.
‘Leave me be,’ Jack says, as Gardner approaches.
‘I just want to help.’
‘Don’t need help from no killer.’ The wild dog lies down with a whimper at Jack’s side.
It looks to rest against a large boulder, but its big paws and head just pass through the rock and settle on the ground. Gardner looks askance from the dog to the boy, not quite ready to believe what he’s seeing. ‘I’m not a soldier,’ he says after some hesitation. ‘I’m an artist. A photographer. I take pictures. To show what things are really like.’
‘It’s all a frenzy,’ the boy says.
Gardner wonders, does he mean the war? Photographs? Life itself? He lays his gun down gently in the grass. Against his better judgment, because in his mind the snarly canine still poses a danger.
But when he looks up again, the black dog is nowhere to be seen. The boy is readying to take off again.
‘I get paid,’ Gardner says. ‘For the photographs.’
‘I know. I’m not stupid,’ Jack says. His tone tells Gardner the child has often had to defend himself this way.
‘I could take your picture. I mean, I’d like to,’ Gardner says.
When Jack doesn’t respond, he adds, ‘I’ll make you some breakfast. Hotcakes, eggs, pork. I’ve got some beer.’
So Jack follows him back to his tent and heartily indulges himself. He allows Gardner to take photographs, half a dozen of them.
Later, Gardner unpacks the glass slides in his Washington D.C. studio but he finds no images of Jack. The boy, like the beast, has simply vanished.
cleaning their weapons, cavalry astride their mounts, generals in consultation, and everyone writing and reading letters to and from home. Brady is keenly aware of the profits made in trading in relics these two plus years since John Brown’s galvanizing raid on the Harpers Ferry Armory. Now that the war is teetering on the edge of northern states, opportunity beckons. To cash in on the public’s appetite for memorabilia, Brady sends photographers up to the boundary towns along the Potomac in Harper Valley.
In September, Brady’s best man, Alexander Gardner, heads to Antietam, arriving in time to photograph the hundreds of bodies of men and horses still unburied after the bloodiest day of fighting yet. A curious man, meticulous in his work, and dedicated to his craft, Gardner comes prepared for the sight of extreme blood, severed limbs, broken skulls, for the stench of fear, sweat, sh*t, urine, filth, for the grim faces of leaders and men in shock. It’s in the nature of the business. When he looks around he sees art ready for composition.
He also sees a story, though, and he’s not quite prepared for what it evokes in him. Heartbreak, as he has not felt heartbreak since tuberculosis devastated the close circle of family and friends he’d once assembled here in the US. So he takes pictures, hundreds of pictures that bear witness to grief, lost hope, youth’s fragility, the toll of duty, terror, bewilderment, desire.
Near sunset, Alexander Gardner sits alone on a downed tree a little apart from his tent, half a mile from the now silent Antietam battlefield. Sipping brandy, too tired to eat. The slowly evaporating blue of Maryland sky reminds him of summers in Inverness and he remembers a boy running in Caledonian forests and on the shores of Coldingham Bay.
Therefore it doesn’t surprise him to see a child of about ten emerge from the woods. Gardner follows the boy with his photographer’s eye, takes in the coltish thinness of him, his too-big gray-green overalls, the ragged blond flight of hair that lifts and falls as he lopes along, a small knapsack slung over his shoulder.
The child’s gaze is watchful, like Gardner’s. But the sun’s slant for the moment has hidden Gardner in shadow. Oblivious of Gardner’s presence, the boy steps quickly to the rear of the tent, touches the canvas and waits. After a few seconds, apparently satisfied no one is within, he sneaks up near the front flap where a kerchief hangs from the tent pole. Wrapped inside is a half loaf of bread and a jar of plum preserves. The boy lifts the kerchief, pockets the bread and preserves, and neatly replaces the cloth, all without making the slightest sound or disturbance.
‘Men have been shot for stealing less.’
The boy freezes. His sight travels to Gardner’s voice.
‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to shoot you,’ the man says.
At that, the boy runs for the woods. Gardner doesn’t bother to follow. He has more provisions, and no appetite anyhow.
Long past midnight, it’s black as pitch, and Gardner wakes to a fiendish howl. Instinctively he reaches for his shotgun, then remembers the boy. He creeps from his tent, moves very slowly in the direction of the menace. Is it a wolf? A wildcat? Maybe a coyote?
Inching through the grass, Gardner almost trips over the boy, who stirs and then sits up.
Gardner rests his gun against his hip. ‘What’s your name young fella?’
‘Jack.’
‘Jack what?’
‘Jack nothing,’ the boy says. He’s full of spit, this kid.
‘Okay, what brings you here, Jack Nothing?’
Jack lifts himself up, cocks his jaw. ‘Looking for my brothers, Tom and Will.’
‘Ah. Fighting men, are they?’
‘Mebbe. They just run off.’
‘You’re worried about them, are you?'
‘No. Don’t like ‘em much. They’s mean to me.’
‘Hmm. But you’re here looking for them. There’s a war going on. It’s dangerous. So
why –’
‘They my brothers.’
Jack stands, lifts his knapsack, and trots off.
Gardner lets him get about 100 paces, then follows. A minute later he hears the strange animal yowl and turns left, toward the sound. What he sees are two glowing yellow eyes and a fiery red mouth baring sharp white teeth. The canine creature snarls viciously, otherwise doesn’t move. Gardner raises his gun, takes aim, and fires. He’s a good shot, especially at such close range. He knows he’s hit his mark. But moments later the beast can be heard running in the boy’s direction. Gardner rushes blindly in pursuit.
A thin line of pink dawn breaks through on the horizon and now Gardner can see ahead both boy and beast. They are locked together, the boy’s left arm wrapped tightly around the neck of the beast, which Gardner now observes is a kind of dog, black-furred and sharp-snouted. Its red mouth still blazes like a lantern, but is no longer snarling. The yellow eyes have dulled. In contrast, the boy’s blue eyes are crystal sharp and vibrant in the emergent light.
With his right hand, Jack is holding out a bone of some kind in front of the dog, what he must have used to trick it into submission. The dog is snatching at the bone with his open mouth, but his fangs can’t seem to hold a grip.
‘Leave me be,’ Jack says, as Gardner approaches.
‘I just want to help.’
‘Don’t need help from no killer.’ The wild dog lies down with a whimper at Jack’s side.
It looks to rest against a large boulder, but its big paws and head just pass through the rock and settle on the ground. Gardner looks askance from the dog to the boy, not quite ready to believe what he’s seeing. ‘I’m not a soldier,’ he says after some hesitation. ‘I’m an artist. A photographer. I take pictures. To show what things are really like.’
‘It’s all a frenzy,’ the boy says.
Gardner wonders, does he mean the war? Photographs? Life itself? He lays his gun down gently in the grass. Against his better judgment, because in his mind the snarly canine still poses a danger.
But when he looks up again, the black dog is nowhere to be seen. The boy is readying to take off again.
‘I get paid,’ Gardner says. ‘For the photographs.’
‘I know. I’m not stupid,’ Jack says. His tone tells Gardner the child has often had to defend himself this way.
‘I could take your picture. I mean, I’d like to,’ Gardner says.
When Jack doesn’t respond, he adds, ‘I’ll make you some breakfast. Hotcakes, eggs, pork. I’ve got some beer.’
So Jack follows him back to his tent and heartily indulges himself. He allows Gardner to take photographs, half a dozen of them.
Later, Gardner unpacks the glass slides in his Washington D.C. studio but he finds no images of Jack. The boy, like the beast, has simply vanished.
(Appal)Trad
|
"Home At Last"
Doug Stoiber, Tennessee The out-of-state visitor smiled as I spoke
Of the grandeur of East Tennessee, Its green rolling hills, its remarkable lakes, The Great Smokies in their majesty. Of Dollywood’s magic, and Knoxville’s allure, Old Rocky Top’s legend in song, I rhapsodized warmly on all of the charms Of the state where I know I belong. “You from around here?”, the traveler asked, As in wide-eyed amazement he stood. “Not born and raised here”, I Volunteered, “But I got here as soon as I could!” |
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