Red Cedar Review

Figure without caption.

Red 
Cedar 
Review

volume XI issue 2


RED CEDAR REVIEW STAFF

EDITORS— Rose Arenas

Marilyn Basel

Greta S. Bolger 
Lynn Domina 
Janet Flegg 
Ron Mieczkowski 
Sam Mills

EDiTOR— Randall K. Roorda

GRAPHIC ART— Kim Bauer

Mark Neering

RED CEDAR REVIEW is a biannual magazine of the literary arts 
published at Michigan State University. Manuscripts may be submitted 
to 325 Morrill Hall, Department of English, Michigan State University, 
East Lansing, Michigan , 48824. Please include return postage.

SUBSCRIPTIONS — one year (two copies): $3.50. Single copies: $2.00.

OUR THANKS to the MSU College of Arts & Letters, English Department, 
Student Media Appropriations Board, George Kooistra and University Publications, 
Joe Kuszai, Abbey Press, The Lansing Star, Albert Drake, Jim Kalmbach 
and other friends.

COLOPHON — The text is set in 11 pt. Univers Bold, heads in 18 point Zentak 
Grotesk. Printed on 70 lb. Nekoosa Offset vellum finish, pink. Cover stock is 
65 lb. Beckett Text laid finish Latigo brown.

Printing and binding by Wellman Printers, Lansing, Michigan.

Copyright Red Cedar Review May, 1977.

2


Contents

POETRY

Overnight Projects with Wood Diane Wakoski 5

Flash Cube Prophecy R Bartkowech 7

Listening to the Sounds of Spring Under Bamboo Frank Graziano 8

Imperfect Prisms Barbara Drake 9

Two Poems Herbert Scott 17

Billy's Gone Shelby Stephenson 20

Gray Stories Ann Pulsipher 21

Three Poems Hugh Fox 22

A Ranch in Mexico Jim Daniels 26

Two Poems Casey Bush 27

Freud's Hat and Cane Joel Dailey 29

A Sort of Complaint on Behalf of a Would-Be Rapist... Michael L. Johnson 30 
Two People Laurie Cosca 31

The Sweet Small Blue Air of a Plum Lee Upton 32

The Wedding Curse Ron Mieczkowski 34

Waiting To Be Let In Brenda Swope 35

Challenging Situation No. 3: The Rolling Skull David Citino 36

Three Poems Dan Gerber 37

To J. B. George Lewis 49

Promises Richard E. McMullen 50

Two Poems Judith McCombs 60

FICTION

Three Mothers Susan Schaefer Neville 11

Web Andrew Scheiber 41

Palimpsest Gerald Williams 53

Contributor's Notes 63

3


Figure without caption.
Number Two

Kim Bauer


Overnight Projects With Wood

for all the plumbers, carpenters & mechanics

Lined up

like chocolates in their perfect paper jackets,

the boys on one side of the room.

The girls,

little shelled filberts,

on the other;

The girls are going

to home economics for the first time.

And the boys,

to shop. To Manual Training.

But you thot "manual training" means learning

to be a man.

And thus today you are a carpenter,

plumber, 
mechanic, 
woodsman.

I,

I knew that home economics 
had nothing to do with being 
a woman.

Now, two friends speak to me.

Rilke, with his jet black mustache curling like a scythe,

smiled this week as he told me he won a silver dollar in sixth grade 
for building the best birdhouse.

His father, the tailor, had just built a house in Ohio,

and the wood, like scraps from a new suit, 
fresh and unscarred, made a house 
snug beyond any of the dreams of a poet. 
When I see him,

he jingles the lonely silver dollar in his pocket,

a medal for his beautiful hands.

And he feels no need to build a house of his own.

5


The man from Receiving, at Sears,

did not begin his birdhouse until seventh grade.

And though his book promised this as an overnight project,

this birdhouse required two years to become a 
chaotic tower of babel.

Or, so he says.

I have all these stories from men,

while I remember my own perfect blanket stitch, and neat patching.

A good batch of biscuits.

Tho I rebelled against making a nice apron, cut a hole in the middle of it, 
and mine was thus, too disgraceful to be shown on parent's night.

Oh, we were all little ice cream sundaes then; 
butterfingers, 
or creamy fudge.

Such babies,

such children,

thinking, dreaming,

You, of manhood,

Rilke and his brother, the man in Receiving at Sears, 
training for wisdom.

I,

what was I doing?

Making my own perfect blanket stitch,

patching neatly,

making good biscuits,

And rebelling, rebelling, against a plain apron.

Diane Wakoski

6


Flash Cube Prophecy

He jumped up in the middle of darkness

Sleep and silence

Aiming to record the last few minutes of the dream

Disturbed by waking

He stood in the black room camera ready

Said smile and set the shutter speed down slow

But when the flash went off this moment kept repeating 
Three men with torches rushing back into a cave

And the transparent figure of a dreamer 
Dispersing in the artificial light.

R Bartkowech

7


Listening to the Sounds of Spring 
Under Bamboo

From the rock

a wind rises to its feet 
no one hears a word 
the river that spoke 
has laid down its music 
the sun mixed its brown 
in the air 
but one bud 
like an oyster 
prys itself open 
the sound 
of cocoons unravelling.

Frank Graziano

8


Imperfect Prisms

They were having a sale 
on imperfect prisms.

What's wrong with them? I asked. 
Imperfect, said the salesman.

They looked fine to me.

I'm not perfect.

So I bought seven 
and took them home in a box 
like hamsters 
or a carton of fish 
and placed them in a row 
on my east windowsill. 
Then I went to bed in the dark.

Next morning 
it was like when your dog 
has puppies.

The white ceiling 
wavered with young rainbows.

Prisms are pretty, you know, 
but sharp. All 
that morning, light 
kept falling into the prisms, 
breaking 
and getting color 
on my clothes and on my face.

I had my hands full.

I'd do it again.

It was worth the price— 
getting seven 
apparently perfect rainbows 
from seven 
allegedly imperfect 
prisms.

Barbara Drake

9


Figure without caption.
Flying Salmon Series —3

Mark Neering


Three Mothers

Eran remembered this from when her mother was really her mother. 
They each held one end of the wishbone and pulled, but it didn't crack 
right away; it twisted and stretched. We should have let it dry more, her 
mother said. A wet bone is like green wood, it won't break easily. But 
they kept pulling, both of them laughing, twisting the bone around and 
around, finally holding the bone up in the air while Eran twirled under 
the bone and her arm like she was doing a turn in a dance, chicken skin 
hanging, the bone tearing and twisting until it snapped apart. And then 
laughing because neither of them could ever remember which part of the 
bone was good luck. Eran had the long end, she said the long end was good 
luck. Her mother agreed; it must be the long end that was good luck, it 
had been years since she'd seen any. I'm eight, Eran said. Had it been 
that many years. Eight years ago, her mother said, that was the best luck 
of all, and she took both ends of the bone into the kitchen. Eran started 
to take a plate off the table. Her mother came in and said no need for 
that, you'll have plenty of dishes to clear when you're older. She turned, 
arms full of smeary dishes and she stubbed her toe on the door frame. 
Later that day, it got red and swollen. It's because I said the luck was in 
the long end, Eran thought. Having said that made it so.

The worst part always came in late August. It was like a slow frost that 
lasted through September and which began, despite the heat, as a sharp chill 
like glass beneath the skin. It caused the muscles on Eran's mother's face 
to slide and sag downward like the skin on the overripe tomatoes in her garden 
or like red unbaked clay. Her grandmother, who had lived with them 
throughout the summer, through the other part, would leave when the frost 
came. She would say: your mommy's much better. Her grandmother didn't 
understand about the frost, she would only say: give her this lavender eye 
shadow, it will perk her up. Her mother would sit on the sofa knitting, 
head bent like a nun. When her grandmother walked out the door, her 
mother would move from the couch and crawl under the piano, hugging 
her knees. Often she cracked her head on the blonde wood underside and 
the keys roared.

11


The other part was when her mother was too happy. That was when her 
father would begin to look worried and her grandmother would come to stay. 
Sometimes they would send her mother to the hospital for weeks. She would 
leave too happy and come back quiet. When her mother was too happy, laughs 
would stick in her throat, delay, then rise to the surface uncontrollably like 
air pockets in mud. Sometimes, when she was older, Eran could feel the same 
laughs forming in her own throat like bubbles. She would try to catch them 
before they escaped. She learned not to laugh unless she was very sure that 
what she was laughing at was funny. When she was sick, her mother would 
play the piano six hours a day. She would dream once again of being a concert 
pianist. She would play only Rachmaninoff, which sounded loud and crashing. 
When she wasn't sick, she would only play the piano when she dusted the 
keys. Her father told her that when her mother played the piano and sang she 
was sick and when she dusted the keys, she was well. Eran tried to stop her 
fingers from tapping when a song came on the radio.

When she began to play the piano and laugh, her mother would get her hair 
done twice a week, the gray hair fixed in a youthful style. She would tell Eran 
that she was having an affair with her beautician, that he would be her manager 
and they would travel across Europe. He would fix her hair in the style of the 
country they were in. He would buy her designer dresses. Eran went once to 
see the beautician, to tell him to leave her mother alone, to make her calm again. 
The beautician was an old man with pictures of his grandchildren spaced between 
the bottles of hair spray and pink gel. Her mother sat in the chair like 
a quiet child while he combed out her set. Eran left the beauty shop without 
them seeing her.

Her mother told good stories when she was too happy, but not very many 
of them were true. Her mother told her about her other affair with a man who's 
breath smelled like almonds, who had bits of bran under his nails. Her mother 
told her about how she was secretly a spy, not a government spy, but a spy 
from God. And her mother bought things, one hundred dollars worth of Broadway 
Show music and ten dozen six ounce cokes because they fit her hand. Her 
mother poured the cokes out of the bottles and into baggies then she hid the 
baggies under the bed and put cut flowers into the coke bottles and arranged 
them in the living room so the bottles would have two purposes: when she 
wanted a coke she took the flowers out and poured the coke back in. On hot 
days some of the baggies would burst, making the floor sticky under the bed. 
Her father's feet stuck to the floor and he got mad because her mother was 
spending money and he stopped all the charge accounts. Eran learned that 
when her mother bought something for herself to wear she was sick and when 
she went a whole year wearing the same sweater every day, she was well. Once 
when her mother was between being too happy and too sad, when she was 
really her mother, she had stopped and looked for about an hour at a teal blue 

12


dress with a feather, in a store window downtown, but she wouldn't buy it.

During the day, when everyone was gone and the frost had started, her 
mother said to Eran, there's no escaping. Tears covered her face like rippling 
glass. Her stomach was as round as a bubble in her knit slacks. Last night, she 
said, there were earthquakes in Italy. There could be one right underneath 
this house in the next minute. I can hear the rumblings, she said, oh Eran I 
can hear the rumblings. Eran looked out the window. The tree she saw looked 
filmy. There isn't any rumbling mother, I'm sure of it. It's quiet. Still. The 
ground is solid. Let's hide under here, her mother said. She pulled them both 
under the ebony grand piano. The day was hot, late August. The grass was 
scorched, the leaves dulled and bleached by the sun, the sky wedgewood, opaque. 
Other children were playing, Eran could hear them through the window. Everything 
mocked her mother. Eran wanted to hear the thunder her mother heard. 
She wished at least that it would rain.

The cost of oranges keeps getting higher, her mother said. Crop failure. Soon 
no one will be able to buy oranges. And the car wouldn't start last winter. Ice 
age. And there are nuclear bombs hidden all over the world and one could fly by 
this window right now and explode in our front yard, and no one can tell you 
that the world won't end in the next second. And no one, her mother said, seems 
to be at all aware of that but me. Where is the control, she said. Where is the 
control. Eran tried to move away; she didn't want to hear. There's really no 
sense in doing anything, her mother said, not when in the next second God could 
rip the sky like so much paper.

When her mother was in the hospital, her grandmother told her stories about 
her mother when she was Eran's age. She said: there was a fire in the house and 
everyone was too afraid to move, but Patty. She picked up Harry and she pushed 
me out the door and she called the fire department and they came. And then, 
after it was all over, she collapsed, right there on the sidewalk. Eran vowed that 
if she were ever in a fire, she would let herself burn if she had to, waiting for 
someone else to save her. Your grandfather, she said, watched Patty play the 
piano for hours; he told her she was a genius. Your grandfather died and left me 
with two young kids-- Harry still to educate and Patty to finish. Her grandmother 
said: your grandfather lost his business during the depression and I had to embroider 
handkerchiefs to make money for food. And I got a job finally, at a 
publishing company and I did well, better than any woman had ever done. Sometimes, 
she said, I wonder if we would have lost the business if I had been in 
charge. Her grandmother spent all her time making clothes for the family. Her 
hands were arthritic, knotted, but she never made a mistake, though often she 
would stick a needle into her finger and blood would form in a small shiny dome 
which sometimes rubbed off onto the fabric. Eran had a seersucker dress with 
a stain of blood on the back like rust. She didn't mind it because she couldn't 

13


see the stain when she had the dress on. Her mother had a white silk blouse 
with a dot of blood at the throat, covered by a button.

She woke up in the middle of the night and saw her mother, standing over 
the bed, face wet and cold, eyes someplace else, saying Eran, Eran, when 
the world ends please don't let go of my hand. Her mother touched her face, 
smoothed back her hair, reached under the blanket and pinched Eran's fingers. 
Eran said: I won't let go of you mother, I won't let go.

Her mother was ecstatic and she wrote a check for 50 Datsuns. She said she 
was going to start a dealership. She and her mother had fun, driving all around 
the city for a whole day, stopping at the Datsun dealer every hour to get into 
a new color. Her mother touched her tongue to the hood of each new car as 
she got in it for the first time. Each color tastes different, she said. Just like 
M&M's.

Her mother drove the Datsuns to the grave of everyone she had ever known 
who had died. At the gravestone of her father she talked for a long time, and 
very seriously, asking him to please tell her mother, Eran's grandmother, to 
stop telling her to wear blue eyeshadow and to tell her husband, Eran's father, 
to stop telling her to lose weight and to tell Will, Eran's brother, to stop demanding 
elaborate desserts. Eran, she said, is the only one who doesn't ask 
for anything. That was the only time her mother was serious that day. Eran 
thought her mother looked pretty, like Loretta Young. Eran thought her mother 
looked prettier when she was crazy than when she was her regular mother, even 
if she didn't wear blue eye shadow. Eran was sorry when her father said they 
had to give back the Datsuns.

Once her mother and her father went to a college reunion. After dinner, 
during the keynote speaker, her father said her mother had stood up and 
screamed Don't talk about Frisbees, which Eran thought was very funny, 
but which was what caused her father to put her mother in the hospital that 
time. Eran decided never to scream anything that didn't make absolute sense.

Her father took away her mother's checkbook and hid it. Her mother 
borrowed a few dollars from Eran's piggy bank, then she and Eran scraped 
the sandy grit from inside their pockets, the bottoms of old purses and ripped 
hems. They put the grit into five different envelopes, one addressed to Austria, 
one to Turkey, one to Brazil, one to Sweden and one to Paris, France. 
They went to the post office and mailed the envelopes just, her mother 
said, to prove that they could do it. You see, her mother said, you can be 
anywhere if you put your mind to it.

14


Eran's grandmother dressed her mother like a doll, in outfits where 
everything matched perfectly— never a stripe with a plaid, a dot with a 
check. Her grandmother said: when my children go out any place, I like 
to know that I'm somehow with them. Her grandmother tried to make 
her mother wear her dresses short, when that was the style, and when she 
was sick her mother lengthened them, saying they made her look too much 
like a child. Her grandmother would stare at her mother, the white part 
of her eyes bug-yellow, and smile and if her mother looked like she was 
thinking, she would say 'what are you thinking?' and if she were humming 
she would say 'what are you humming, Patricia?' and if she looked like 
she might cry, she would say 'why are you going to cry?'

When her grandmother had been sewing, there were bits of thread all 
over the house, spools of thread in baskets and purses. Whenever Eran's 
mother walked by a spool, thread would catch on her hand or grab at the 
leg of her slacks and follow her around the house, unraveling. One day she 
followed a piece of red thread for an hour before she found the spool, hidden 
in a box in the basement, and she wound the thread back onto the 
spool without saying anything.

Eran tried to tell her father about the frost but he said: your mother's 
fine, she's not talking to radios. She tried to tell her grandmother but her 
grandmother said: she's fine, she's not dancing for strangers. Her mother 
brought them all dinner and whispered something to Eran on her way back 
to the kitchen. She said: there was an earthquake in South America: hold 
onto my hand.

Eran sat on the floor in her bedroom surrounded by plastic dolls sitting 
quietly, freshly combed and brushed, legs spread out in V's. A plastic 
ballerina doll on top of a music box sat directly in front of her. She wound 
it up and it bobbed, arms always in fourth position, brown painted hair 
swept back in a plastic bun, always dancing the same steps to the same song. 
When the ballerina began to slow, Eran held it upside down and tried to 
pluck the prongs herself, but it sounded too tinny so she wound it up again 
and she decided she would never let it stop all the way, that the doll would 
die if she let it stop, that she would keep the ballerina with her forever, the 
brass key where she could reach it so that it wouldn't die. Things occurred 
to Eran as she sat there watching the dolls, things that had never occurred 
to her mother. Things like: how can a planet full of so many things that 
are so heavy— granite rocks and trucks and millions of people— float in empty 
air without falling, how can that be. And she got very angry at sidewalks 
and new buildings she had seen going up, digging out holes in the earth in 

15


slabs and adding it in other places, destroying the balance. She herself 
would be very careful. She would keep the dolls quiet. She wouldn't run. 
Soon her mother's face would slide back, face muscles resting, thawed. 
But Eran wouldn't give up the vigil. She would think of things that were 
funny, but she wouldn't laugh. She would think of things that were scary, 
but she wouldn't scream. She would be too busy, sitting in her room watching 
her dolls and keeping that ballerina doll in the pink tulle dress wound 
up so very tight that she would never ever miss a step.

Susan Schaefer Neville

16


Gloves

On his first date with Mary

he closed his eyes and kissed the screen door.

Later, they both laughed about this.

They spent their honeymoon at Candlestick Park 
cheering for the Giants. At home they hung 
a pennant on the wall above their bed.

As a corpsman he shoveled bodies into rubber bags. 
When the stench became too bad 
he stuffed sen-sen up his nose.

After parties floral-scented Airwick 
was a lifesaver, and Saran Wrap 
for the leftover hors d'oeuvre.

She was glad when they bought the Dart 
with bucket seats. When drunk he could not 
put his hand on her thigh.

On vacation they watched the President 
through the bullet-proof glass 
pulling at his ear, his mouth moving.

He played cards with the boys 
five nights a week. She drank wine, 
read Cosmopolitan, was asleep when he came home.

It was only exploratory, but he died, 
the pure hands of surgeons 
rooting in his belly for coin.

Herbert Scott

17


In New Mexico

The road rusts 
away. I follow 
the yellow sandstone ridge 
edging the sky.

In this desert 
the past is a mirage 
you almost believe in, 
almost remember 
from the last time 
you entered your wife, 
the heat welling up 
like water 
you would dig for 
in the dry sand. 
You scan the horizon. 
Is it the rider 
you look for, a fleck 
in the lens of your eye, 
hellbent forever? 
Later you discover 
the white ribs 
of his horse, read 
the scripture of his death, 
witness to your own 
private betrayal.

Herbert Scott

18


Figure without caption.
National Geographic Visits Vesuvius

Kim Bauer


Billy’s Gone

His hair hackled, front legs flexed, 
he arched his back just right 
to poise the neighbor boy 
backward off the porch.

Flocks of sheep 
nudge the grass 
where Billy raced 
the far pasture trees 
before he got too wild. 
Head to head we press. 
the rifle. cocks. 
grace.

supper.

Shelby Stephenson

20


Gray Stories

I want to finish writing these essays tonight 
even though my eyes have dripped down my cheeks 
in sloughs of tissue, 
but how can I concentrate 
when you insist on telling me 
about your brother who carries a hatchet when he sleepwalks 
or your aunt who attends the funerals of strangers, 
spends hours in graveyards, and the police 
have to come and take her home.

I am sick of your brother stories

your aunt stories

in fact, I am tired of hearing about your whole damn family 
and your job last summer cleaning hospital rooms 
how many men you've gone to bed with in the last two months 
how different you are from everyone else

because you're not.

leave me alone.

leave me alone to my desperate gathering of words 
like tin-foil chocolates,

melting, then solidifying into a small fist of images 
that clutch at the edge of my brain, 
a sedum growing from the white regions under my hair.

I need time to pull them apart. 
take your gray stories someplace else.

Ann Pulsipher

21


Will

I've started singling out 
which beggars I give money to now, 
and how much,

the guy with the sore of his leg, the sore isn't sore 
enough and he's too fat, I can imagine him prodding 
it every night with a needle 
to keep it "alive",

and the guy who comes out at you aggressively, 
little runt-face on top of a grey-rag bag overcoat 
that looks like a bathrobe,

too fucking nervy, practially takes it out of your hand, 
and the Gitana with her kid on the sidewalk, just sitting, 
whining,

she whines too much, or I wouldn't mind it if she 
meant it,

she doesn't, it's fake, contempt, really means 
FUCK YOU!

The guy with one leg off above the knee, the other 
off up to the hip, he doesn't even ask, let's his leglessness 
ask for him, I give him 10, 20 Pesetas at the beginning 
of the month, at the end 5 at most, I begin to get afraid 
myself, buy cans, get ready for the check not to come, 
begin at night to walk through massive furnitured marble-floored, 
portrait-filled homes of the 100 wealthiest families of Spain, 
looking for the kitchen, the secret room where 
they hang the salami 
and the hams.

Hugh Fox

22


Toward a descriptive analysis of 
the sociology of the Spanish 
lower classes: 1975-76

Am I saying that 
the restaurant owner's 
wife who asked the 
old couple when 
they went into the 
back and sat down, 
"Just resting 
or do you want to 
eat or drink anything?" 
was compassionate, 
or that the waiter 
who had been out and 
came in and when he 
found out they were 
just sitting bought 
the old man a cognac 
and the old woman a 
cafe con leche was 
compassionate too, 
am I making a case 
for Spanish slob- 
classes as 
compassionate or 
is it just a carryover of the 
pre-industrial small town 
hick mystique 
that I never had a chance to 
see born in 1932 
Chicago, 
the Hog Butcher of the World?

Hugh Fox

23


Figure without caption.
Flying Salmon Series — 2

Mark Neering


Headlines

two 19th-century watercolors — a still life of cuttlefish

(sepia), 5 varieties of shrimp/lobster, 20 varieties of clams/shell- 
fish, anchovies, flounder and 16 other varieties of fish...and a 
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Orange Grove — invaded the 
Aphrodite Detergent Works today,

all stench stopped, and the entire workforce stared

for 3 bleached minutes at a claw of light 
coming in through the frosted glass window the 
invaders had broken.

Seafoamian — the deep-in cleansing miracle of APHRODITE — 
began to accumulate in the Seafoamomamian, 
overflowed the vats and the

watercolors

dissolved into two

small piles of

dead (former-green)

brown.

Hugh Fox

25


A Ranch in Mexico

i.

40 people under a mango tree— 
eating mole out of a big pot over flames. 
the men play dominoes and cards for money. 
the women talk fast and loud, and 
watch their men.

II.




the small children break a piñata and 
scramble for sweets; dirty their clean clothes.

III.




the older boys play soccer in a field until dark, 
when they come sweating back to the tree to 
drink with their fathers; all the while 
the older girls sit with the women, 
waiting, watching the older boys.

IV.




After dark, the women quiet down and

talk in low voices, while the teenagers wander off into the dark. 
Some of the small children fall asleep on laps, and 
others sit at the feet of their mothers.

When it is time to go, the men say so.

Jim Daniels

26


Lee Trevino Gets Hit by Lightning

how a media event did not do the sports figure in

the Free Press Lies! 
the Times they lie! 
the Herald Tribune 
it lies!

the Chronicle 
the Examiner 
the Chronkite 
the Chancellor 
they all lie! 
they ALL Lie!

there was no mother in the garden 
with a chain saw, the F stop 
was stuck 
the camera man

said it was for fuck,

no pictures in this journal— 
telephones spit back dimes,

the sports section speaks no truth. 
no truth! Lee Trevino 
was on the 18th green 
holding his putter 
defiantly 
towards storm clouds 
when 
ZAP!

like a lightning rod 
connected

the earth 
and sky 
and lived 
to tell about it.

Casey Bush

27


we lose touch quickly with the underworld

I have lost days 
perhaps whole months 
gone

the smell of the camel 
in the desert 
his eyes sunken

I am inside an elevator between 
floors, my companions 
a pull tab 
a cigarette butt 
soon 
we will all know each other

Casey Bush

28


Freud’s Hat and Cane

A bent-over charwoman mumbles 
every morning as she throws 
open the closet door and finds 
the forgotten hat and cane.

She curses Sigmund Freud thoroughly, 
believing he is in love with her

and only leaves his hat and cane 
as a sign that he wishes to return 
to the closet and surprise his

most diligent charwoman. They 
will make wild, unrestrained love 
on the hardwood floor of his

private closet. But he always 
fails to appear each morning, 
and this morning is no different.

She closes the door and continues 
to allow photographers and their 
cameras up the winding marble

staircase, through the master 
bedroom, and into the famous closet.

Someday, she smiles to herself,

they will come begging my picture.

Joel Dailey

29


A Sort of Complaint on Behalf of a 
Would-be Rapist Arrested at 
3:00 A.M. on November 22, 1976 
Near Wichita, Kansas

One has the sense that in his urgency

he had misunderstood

the whole thing from the start:

wearing just socks, a pair of pantyhose

over his head, unarmed

he walked into the all-night grocery store

and tried to grab the female clerk-

only to be run off

into the subfreezing darkness, his sex

bellowing in the vast

emptiness of his disappointed dreams

for hours as he scurried and hid,

hunkered and shivering, until at last

he fell into the long,

willing arms of the law.

Michael L. Johnson

30


Two People

They entered the store like slow animals, 
heads slightly forward, arms swaying.

He asked for three shirts of the same color. 
"Do you think I'd look good in powder blue?" 
and winked, slapped his pot belly.

He smelled of cigar smoke, 
the woman tattoo on his arm danced.

His daughter, with large features 
like those from mirrors at the circus, 
played with her hands. She was pregnant, 
wore no ring. Her father bought her presents, 
called her Sis and Lover.

His voice covered her face like a veil.

Laurie Cosca

31


The Small Sweet Blue Air of a Plum

She has passed a truck in the alley 
between the two stores every morning since January. 
Today is the first she sees the man 
whose gloves would be yellow.

He is pitching boxes into the truck, into rain, 
the tail gate down and swinging.

If there is a purple almost clear 
as the fluid eye held between leaves, 
somewhere in the truck orange is sunken.

The rain finishes and everything smells of the opening ground.

She is just out of a bath and the man 
who does not love her is sleeping, 
the first time he has let her 
see him like that.

Her body is warm and still bright.

She smells the water from over her shoulder.

The man who pitches boxes stops 
and the side of the green paneled truck wants to shiver. 
He is telling her it is best 
she does not hurry, 
it is best she is wearing her first dress 
the color of the small blue breath on a plum.

If a sleeper walked with her

she would not hear so clearly 
the man's boots, the rain pooling, 
the soft spilling sound of earth.

Lee Upton

32


Figure without caption.
Process Piece

Kim Bauer


The Wedding Curse

The couple 
walks down smiles, 
rice 
showers at them. 
The old 
fertility symbol.

Relatives and friends 
shove thick fingers 
in paper bags.

Throw handfuls 
of the grain 
like small pebbles 
into a lake.

Concentric circles 
spreading 
to the edge 
of veils.

Tonight 
the bride will 
dream 
of insects 
crawling 
between her legs. 
The touch 
of antennae 
in her uterus.

Her screams 
will rise like gulls 
over Mormon Utah.

Now swooping 
down 
on the locust 
the plague 
the children 
eyes blind with rice, 
diving 
into her womb.

Ron Mieczkowski

34


Waiting To Be Let In

It has always been that small thing in the back 
of the mind; that needle point that probes through 
the base of your brain to look out from your eyes, 
ripping through, making tunnels where the 
rats will play and store rotten fruit, where 
they will burrow in.

You cannot make the shopping list anymore— wandering 
up and down the aisles you knock things from their shelves, 
the labels so obtrusive— pictures of Cling Peaches with 
no pits, cakes that are not mixed, coffee that must be perked.

Returning to the parking lot you cannot remember where you 
parked your car or if you brought it. People walking 
by are staring, staring and you getting on some bus 
that you hope is the right one.

It is blue, the one that brought you here was blue.

The children are sitting quietly on the front steps, 
tracing your movements with their eyes.

They have been waiting since they got home from school 
to be let into the locked house. They have been 
waiting for two hours. They have been waiting for you.

They sit leaning into your sides, pressing their faces 
into the folds of your wrinkled skirt.

Brenda Swope

35


Challenging Situation No. 3:

The Rolling Skull

Having fashioned 
what you could not accept 
of your self and your parents 
into a figure your own size, 
you call it "enemy" 
and in a great struggle 
during which you prove 
to the world and to your lover 
your purity of heart, 
your courage and strength 
you behead this new man 
but the head 
becomes a grinning skull 
rolling after you in the dust, 
follows you into your tent 
when you try to rest 
or to lie near your lover, 
grows wings, a great tail 
and slithers or flies 
after you through mud, 
water and sky, laughing 
at you as if 
it knew you better 
than anyone else 
in the world.

what do you do?

David Citino

36


Butterfly

I lived in a house 
where it rained every day 
and the wind played middle C 
on the windows

She was the only woman alive 
for miles

and I forgot there were things to be done

I don't remember the first time

I went there

or the last time I closed the door

She said she was going for the groceries 
and when the wind stopped

I was gone

Dan Gerber

37


Figure without caption.
First Mass

Kim Bauer


Canticle

How I want to use the word 
in a story in a poem in speech 
the ring of the chair on its axis 
the whir of the heater in my room 
the bell-like sound of this word 
saddles and candles and gongs 
chanting in the dome of the Taj Mahal 
my tongue rocks in its bed 
water in a subterranean pool 
sweet desire 
that draws me with its heat 
a fine distinction between this and that 
welded in a sound bearing 
the mind in its tone

Dan Gerber

39


December

Night has been falling all afternoon

I'm not concerned with what comes or goes

Below my feet 
snakes coil together 
not one bird is flying 
not one fish cares about ice

The last flies buzz

slow and clumsy

They stumble across my knuckles 
and I let them

They are old and the year is old 
and I haven't lived 
a more perfect day

Dan Gerber

40


Web

“Web," Little Johnny Clement had said, his face glowing smooth and brown 
in the yellow motel lamplight, "you reckon we'll ever get to play the Opry?"

"Why sure we will," I answered. But even as I spoke, I found that eager, 
ingenuous face a cruel place to aim such a calculated lie. I tucked him in, drawing 
the stiff motel bedsheets across his pajama shoulders, then got up and snapped 
off the light. There was a small comfort in the darkness, which was broken only 
by the fluorescence of the gasoline island across the way filtering through the gaps 
in the Venetian blinds. "You bet we will," I urged softly, "go on to sleep now." 
As I finished speaking, Henry roared drunkenly from the room next door with all 
the gusto and surprise of an air-conditioner kicking on in the dead silence of a hot 
Texas night.

I had never in my life wanted so badly to believe a lie as I did that night Johnny 
Clement, wide-eyed, and earnest, had asked me about the Opry. My answer had 
been as much to myself as to him, a testament to the false hope that, out of desperation, 
I had kept kindled for myself for some years now. I believed — or, rather, 
professed to believe — that there was a way out, a way off that grinding roadhouse 
circuit the Panhandlers had been playing for almost a decade. It seemed impossible 
that the long upward struggle could end here and now; but in those ten years we 
had achieved practically everything except the success we so earnestly sought. The 
Panhandlers had started out well enough, with more than enough raw talent, ambition 
and energy to go around, and a string of hit singles, the first of which predated 
Hank Williams by a full three months; but it had all been, in effect, too much too 
soon, for it was Hank's death six years later, and the cresting of the rock'n'roll tide 
that shortly followed, which washed away almost all of that early, hard-won fame. 
After that, getting back on the track proceeded to get more difficult by the season. 
The big tours were all rock and roll, and not country, as they had been in the days 
of Hank Williams and the Hadacol Road Show. The only place where times were 

41


not hard was at the top, where the Opry survived, packing them in every Friday 
and Saturday night; but for acts that had not escaped the middle belts yet, the 
effect of rock and roll's takeover was paralyzing. The only choices were to change 
over to the new style (as many did) or simply to hold on, playing to whatever pockets 
of loyal followers already existed, until the new craze blew over and things settled 
back into perspective.

Things had begun to settle some by 1957, when Little Johnny Clement came 
into the Panhandlers. The country-western market was still cool at the bottom of 
the line, where folks like Doggie Clement eked out meager livings by playing for 
barn-dances and such; but at the top of the heap there was a little elbow room 
opening up, and Henry became inspired at the prospect of finally having a fighting 
chance at fulfilling his destiny. His singing, in spite of his alcoholism, had begun 
to take on some of its old fire, and the addition of Little Johnny Clement 
proved to be one of Henry's master strokes. There was something peculiar and 
wonderful in the way the boy could lay his sweet, mournful steel lines in between 
the sung phrases, which more and more were laden with the tension of Henry's 
wheezing, crackling voice; they seemed to balance each other out perfectly, and 
there was a truth, a revelation you could almost say, in the tableau that the man 
and boy together comprised.

It was not long before the two of them, answering each other with voice and 
steel guitar, became the central music conceit of the entire band. The audiences 
loved it, the sight of this bright-faced wonder child sharing stage center 
with the fat, balding figure of Henry Grabnell, who himself seemed the embodiment 
of a kind of ravaged innocence and vitality. Johnny would smile with 
careless glee, shimmying the steel slide bar across the strings as Henry, bodily 
mirroring the down-and-out desperation and occasional forced gaiety of the 
Hank Williams tunes he so loved, would waver drunkenly before the microphone, 
rasping and coughing out the vocal lines with chilling authenticity.

The climax of every performance came with "Lost Highway," the old Leon 
Payne tune in which an innocent boy is ruined by a life of sin and sings his warning 
out to those following in his footsteps. Hank Williams had made it famous, 
but Henry made it into a near-mystical kind of truth. He would sing it, his guitar 
slung uselessly by his side and both hands gesticulating wildly, as if it were a 
message of imminent doom, an onrushing apocalypse which, no doubt, Henry 
in his desperation truly felt. But it was addressed not so much to the audience 
as to the sunny, half-laughing person of Little Johnny Clement., who answered 
every agonized phrase with a deftly mournful lick from his upright guitar. 
Henry's delivery was like a cry of warning from the lost to the living, a haunting 
thing which in those moments recaptured the energy and inspiration which 
had until now been gradually dissipating.

But all of this had still gotten us nowhere. The band was now as good as 

42


ever, but none of us, especially Henry, seemed able to sustain it much longer 
without at least the promise of moving on to something better. 1957 found us 
playing pretty much the same circuit we had started out playing in 1948, and it 
could not be long before our present burst of inspiration failed us, and the depression 
and weariness that had been stored up in the intervening decade broke 
loose to consume Henry and the rest of the band. The Opry, and the hope of 
national recognition, seemed the only place left for us to pin our ragged dreams, 
and Henry, dangling the apple of Little Johnny Clement before the men up in 
Nashville, had been assiduously courting their favor.

But the man who was supposed to have come down to see us at the gig that 
night at Brownwood never showed, and it was just after I had sent Little Johnny 
Clement off to sleep with those false assurances that the bad news came. Henry 
was letting me into his room when the phone rang. He staggered over to the 
night-stand and uncradled the receiver, bellowing a drunken acknowledgment.

He listened for a moment, his face growing dark and angry, and then swore, 
slamming the phone down without so much as a good-bye. "Well that hangs it," 
he said, his eyes darting, like those of a caged bird, about the walls of the motel 
room. "Fuck them all. I don't need their goddamn Opry anyhow. I'd still rather 
play the lousiest shit-hole in Texas than their fucking Ryman Hall."

I winced at Henry's distraught bravado. "Another blow-off?" I asked.

"Worse than that," he said, slumping forward on the edge of his bed. "You 
know why that bastard didn't come down from Nashville? They decided, he 
tells me, that my image ain't exactly up to Opry standards. It's my drinking, I 
suppose—but hell Web, Hank Williams was a drunk—they had to drag him out 
onstage, for Christ sakes—" He shook his head, reaching with trembling fingers 
for the bottle that was on the night-stand. "They say they'll be happy to pay 
for a temporary release on Johnny, but they ain't interested in the Panhandlers."

"Johnny?" I said. "You mean they just want the boy?"

"That's it," Henry answered, swigging his Jack Daniels. "Don't that hang 
all?"

"You going to let them have him?"

Henry's chest heaved in a futile attempt at laughter. "Hell no, I've got an exclusive 
contract. Besides, the Opry might come around anyway, in time—if 
they want the boy bad enough. But you know we ain't got a chance without 
him.'"

"I know," I said.

"But don't you mention nothing about this," Henry said, his eyes widening, 
as if for emphasis. "Especially to the boy. Damn it all!" he cursed, glancing about 
the room. "To think it would come to this."

"Henry," I said, "you ain't going to be able to keep it quiet forever." 
"Maybe not," he said, "but that's all I can do for now. Just until we get that 

43


break we"ve been looking for—and we're going to get it too, God damn it! You 
know why?" He stared at me, his grey smile weak and insincere. "Because of all 
those old songs—'Mind Your Own Business' and 'Lost Highway'—why, people 
still love the old songs, I don't care what you say—I mean, look at us the past 
couple of months—like new again! I never did believe this rock and roll thing 
would hold on forever. 'Be Bop A Lula'—what the hell kind of crap is that anyway? 
It ain't real feelings. Hell, it ain't even real words! And here we are, the best 
goddamned Western swing band in the country—and they ain't interested. Well 
they goddamn well better get interested, that's all I got to say!" He sank back on 
the bed, as if exhausted by the effort of his speechifying.

"You buck up now, Henry," I said, opening the door to leave. "There's a way 
out of this somehow. There's got to be."

"Damn straight," Henry muttered, his sagging face propped against the bedstead. 
He raised the bottle to his lips, and I left him as he set it back down, staring 
blankly out at the walls, his shattered world.

Ben Black surprised me that night as I was pulling Henry's door shut behind me. 
"Beautiful night out," I heard him say, and as I wheeled around I saw him standing 
in the doorway of his own motel room, his eyes flickering alertly from beneath the 
brim of his hat. He was staring up past the eaves to the stars that shone crystal-like 
in the dark blue spread of sky. "Yes sir,"he said, with a lingering glance towards 
the horizon where the moon, silver-dollar-like, was beginning to set, "ain't nothing 
prettier than a clear night in Texas."

"Yup," I said, without any real conviction.

Ben leaned against the door-jamb, his head turned absently away, with one heel 
making a screwing motion into the ground, as if he was crushing out a cigarette butt. 
"He's crazy you know," he said softly, without so much as a twitch to indicate whom 
he was talking about. "We ain't never going to play the fucking Opry."

I took a deep breath, wringing my hands, and sat down with my butt against the 
cold cement of the walkway. "They don't want him Ben," I said in a whisper. 
"It's a shame too. Maybe he don't deserve to play the Opry now, but there was a 
time he did. They ought to consider that."

"Aw hell," Ben said, "it ain't that he don't deserve it. But I'm tired, you know?

I mean, here it is, almost ten years now—"

"I know," I said. "You and me are the last orifinals, except for Henry. It don't 
seem possible, somehow."

"Course it don't," Ben said, "but it's true, ain't it? I mean, ten years—and what 
have we got? A family? Or a home even? Hell no—we ain't got nothing—except 
tired, that is. At least I'm tired—tired of the whole goddamn thing—and you 
ought to be too! Why Christ Web—"

"Henry and me," I said, with a weary toss of my head, "we're kind of in this 

44


thing together. Both crazy the same way, I guess, being in the war and all. We got 
to keep on going, you know? It was a damn good band once—and it could be 
again—hell, you remember what it was like when we started—"

"Seems I do," Ben muttered vaguely. "And I'll grant it has been better here of 
late. But it ain't never going to be like it was—even if we are doing the same damn 
songs." His voice was thick with regret. "Aw hell, Web, I'm sorry. But a man just 
gets tired, you know?" There was a pause as he yawned, glancing at his watch, and 
then he said: "Well, I'm beat. This here is just too much talk for a tired old rounder 
like me. How about you?"

"Think I'll stay up awhile," I said. "It's a right cool night out."

"So it is," Ben said. "Well, at least that boy can sleep. He don't know no better 
I guess."

"Yup," I said, forlornly, "I guess." And as Ben shut the door behind him, the 
spill of light on the narrow walkway snuffing itself out, I knew that he was right. 
I was tired—tired to death of the whole thing. But I felt now more than ever that 
there was no way I could quit, because quitting on Henry would have been quitting 
on myself as well.

I got myself a chair, the kind with the aluminum frame and synthetic seat and 
back, from down the walk a ways, and setteled into it, staring out at the white disc 
of the moon. The stars seemed to burn, white-hot, against the dark carpet of sky, 
like tiny pinpricks of light, and the open prairie, beyond the sheen of highway which 
basked in the pale moonglow, stretched all the way to the horizon, where it stopped 
being prairie and became drier, breaking into gulches and arroyos, and finally into 
foothills which in the daylight could be seen in the distance as a kind of jagged, 
hazy silhouette. Ben had been right about the Texas night, too; there was nothing 
more beautiful than this, nothing I could think of anyhow, but tonight there was 
something both placid and sad about that shining, silver-dollar moon as it bit lazily 
into the far-off foothills. It was the quietness that did it, I think— not just the 
quietness of that empty expanse of plain and sky, but something akin to that space 
I felt inside, as if the stark silence of the scene itself had somehow penetrated and 
become a part of me. The view was not that much different from the one that 
lay out the front window of my rented motel room back in Santa Teresia, but 
there was something about the stillness here that was not to be taken for granted. 
There were some words running through my head, a snatch of an old Hank Williams 
tune. But for some reason, despite the fact that I must have played it a few 
thousand times, the melody eluded me. The words themselves Hank Williams had 
scrawled on a piece of scrap paper for his friend Jimmy Rule little more than a 
half-dozen years earlier, but on this crystal-like Texas night they struck me as 
something timeless, like words of the ancients almost, as if they were truth from 
another age, another world, with the power to hush whatever melody might presume 
to despoil the purity of their meaning:

45


The silence of a falling star 
Lights up a purple sky 
The moon just went behind a cloud 
I'm so lonesome I could cry.

The moon had slipped further beneath the hills, what was left of it glowing 
pale and large and inscrutably faceless. Somehow I sensed that the lost melody 
would only have broken the solitude, the aching silence that seemed suddenly 
reserved for this moment, this place. I felt at last my body urging me towards 
sleep, but what I wanted instead was to remain in that moment, to make my 
peace with the silence, the desperation, that was taking hold in me— to embrace 
it almost, remaining in that moment, in the placid, terrifying eye of this, my 
own private storm, and stare wordlessly out at the setting moon and dark, glimmering 
plain.

But there was something else besides that silence reserved for this night. There 
was the explosion of pistol-shots from Henry's room, and I leaped to my feet, my 
hand instantly reaching for the door-knob. But I jumped back with a cry as one 
final shot, a delayed one, whined and with a dull, whizzing sound, splintered 
through the wood of the door itself. "Henry," I shouted, bracing myself against 
the motel's adobe wall, "are you all right in there? What the hell's the matter?"

The rest of the lodgers were, of course, on the patio in an instant, crowding 
towards Henry's room. Ben was there before any of the rest of them, looking 
with an expression of wonderment at the long tail of splintered wood that hung 
outward from the bullet's exit. "Henry!" he shouted, and together we lunged 
against the door, feeling the chain snap at the pressure.

Henry was sitting up in bed, his Jack Daniels in one hand and smoking, pearl- 
handled Panhandler's pistol in the other, staring at his feet where they were 
propped up on the bed frame. "I done it," he was saying, with a tearful, childish 
grin that seemed more expressive of madness than intoxication, and it was 
only when I looked to where the smoking pistol was pointing that I realized, 
in the half-light moonglow that fell through the open door, that the foot-shadow 
was somehow not right— that there were toes missing, or dangling, and in a sudden 
awful moment I noticed the black, frightful glistening mushroom of blood 
across the bedsheets.

"Jesus Christ," I mumbled, unable to scream, "he's gone and shot himself."

"I done it," Henry was saying stupidly. "I sure done it now, ain't I?"

Ben was yelling for the people outside to get a doctor, and I turned to say 
something to him, something like I don't believe this, and as I turned my eyes 
tracked along the wall opposite the bed, where there was a shattered mirror 
and, next to it, a circular pattern of fractured plaster, in whose center there 
was the unmistakable bore of a bullet hole. In an instant, I thought of Little

46


Johnny Clement, who had been asleep in the next room. "Ben!" I yelled, 
choking with terror for the boy. "The kid next door— he's shot through the 
wall—" Ben nodded, moving out of the doorway. There were clusters of 
people, dark shadows, closing around the outside of Henry's room and blocking 
the blue-white spill of moonlight. Teeth clenched, I reached in through the 
darkness to where the mangled foot was spraying blood outward across the 
sheets, and gradually closed my hand around it, feeling for the place where 
the pulse, the wild spurt of blood, felt the strongest.

"Damn," I hissed. "Where's the fucking light?"

"Piss on it," Henry cried, his body jerking with a convulsion that could 
have as easily been laughter as a sob, and as I looked away from him, to the 
right of the bed, I saw that the lamp-shade was tipped askance— as if, you might 
say, someone had put a bullet through it, too.

"God damn you," I said, squeezing his bloody foot, the nearly-severed toe 
pressing like a pebble against my palm. "Why'd you do this?"

"The boy's O.K.," Ben said, returning from next door, "and the manager's 
got a doctor on the way. What about him?" He nodded dubiously towards 
the sobbing, hysterical figure on the bed. "Jesus Christ Web— the gun—"

Something exploded like a sulphur flare from the darkness of the bed, and 
in an instant Ben had leaped from the doorway and knocked the burning pistol 
from Henry's limpid, trembling hand. The two of us stood at the foot of the 
bed, our breath coming in fluttering, adrenal gasps as we stared up at the fresh 
hole in the ceiling. Plaster dust filtered down through the darkness from the 
jagged concentric cracks which now encircled the lodged bullet.

"We could of been killed," I said, my grip on Henry's leg frozen tight in 
shock. "I- I'm sorry Ben— I forgot about the gun— must have been the sight 
of the blood that done it—"

"Never mind," Ben said. He took a deep breath, and stepped back from the bed 
the bed. "That foot hurt, Henry?"

"Hell no," Henry answered loudly, his voice crackling and gurgling. "I 
shot her good through." He pointed with incongruous pleasure towards where 
I stood pressing the bloody foot against me. "There was a fly on it— a goddamn 
fly, would you believe it? Right on that fucking toe— I got him though— blew 
him to hell and back—"

"Just like Hank," Ben muttered hopelessly.

"What?" I said.

"Just like Hank Williams," he answered, turning to go back outside. "He 
tried shooting a fly off his toe one night down in Shreveport. Plugged the headboard 
in the next room— six inches above where Billy Byrd was sleeping."

"Jesus Christ," I said. "Henry's lucky he didn't hit nobody but himself." 
"Especially that boy," Ben remarked, leaving the room. A host of shadows 

47


crowded around the door staring with unseen eyes at what must have been the 
ridiculous sight of one man clutching another man's foot in the total darkness 
of a comically shot-up motel room. It was only when the doctor arrived that 
someone was finally able to peel my hands from the shattered foot and exasperatedly 
push me out of the way. Outside, the moon was down; the only light 
glimmering beyond the press of shadows was the glow, off to one side, of a 
fluorescent gas island where now there was a huddle of cars with red lights 
flashing and rotating, flinging fiery tracers to the blackest corners of the dark, 
endless plain.

Andrew Scheiber

Excerpt from Cadillac Blues: A Western Lullaby, a work in progress.

48


To J. B.

midnight dancing hourly before my eyes 
visions of the October wind on Mercer St. 
and posh hooded women hurrying from theatre to theatre 
speaking slowly of Pinter and essence

told you I had no money that fall 
on the subway to 3rd Ave. Brooklyn 
before I left

now married

have only been back once

when it rained

couldn't remember where you lived now

only

that night 
and how casually you removed your blouse.

George Lewis

49


Promises

When she punches 
the seedlings in 
she must make promises: 
Come up, and I'll feed you 
with water, protect you 
from bugs and boys.

They always come up. 
Flowers grow at her.

Richard E. McMullen

50


Figure without caption.
Untitled

Mark Neering


Untitled
Untitled


Mark Neering


Palimpsest

(found in a drawer)

On the back of March 30, 1927

Have found this old diary thing in a box of worthless books. It's not really 
a diary. Just an old ledger book with some diary entries in it. It's hard to 
read the writing. A yellowish-brown ink that has faded because of age and 
dryness. I can't even start to read it since it's so old-fashioned. The 'T' and 
the 'F' are both so fancy that it would probably take forever to get used to 
them. So I won't read it. Why bother? But there's so much blank space 
that it seems a shame to waste it. And in some places the writing is so faint 
that it's all but disappeared. The backs of all the pages are completely blank 
so I'm going to use them myself from now on. With no one to talk to and 
nothing for entertainment, I need some kind of outlet. The only trouble is 
I have nothing to say. Not today at any rate. Maybe tomorrow. As usual, 
work was boring and TV was not worth watching.

On the back of March 31, 1927

Still can't decipher this stupid writing. Have determined that it was written 
by a woman. Will call her Mary. Mary seems to have had lots of leisure time. 
She spent all day this day...that day?...reading a book called The Roses by 
the Well. She gives a long plot summary that I couldn't/wouldn't read. Says 
she can identify with the heroine because both of them are in love with a 
guy named Kenneth. Well, on this day there is nothing I can identify with, 
except maybe that dead dog I saw in the middle of the road driving home 
tonight. Work was incredibly tedious, as usual. Watched TV. Wanted to go 
to a movie, but there isn't anything good in town. Couldn't stand it anymore 
and went out to the Pizza Hut. It was crowded and there were a lot of kids 
there laughing and joking. Just wait until they grow up and have to go out 
into the real world. Then we'll see how long they keep up with the laughing 
and the joking.

53


On the back of April 1, 1927

Mary must have attended a tea party today. It was her April Fool's Day, but I 
don't guess anyone played any tricks on anyone. It was my June the Fifteenth, 
not that I keep track of that sort of thing anymore. I think I would have rather 
been where Mary was. She lists a bunch of names of others who were there. I 
am not impressed by the guests, but the food sounds great. Somebody brought 
an almond rum cake with cream icing and someone else brought a lemon cake 
that was twelve inches high. Would have loved it, especially since my own dessert 
tonight was from the Safeway frozen food section and it was a cheap little 
chocolate thing that tasted like dry sawdust. Am trying to figure out what 
Mary's age might be, but have decided it wouldn't be fair to thumb ahead looking 
for clues. I'll take each day as it comes. It gives me something to come 
home to. Work today was OK because Wilson was sick so we just goofed off a 
lot. Nothing on TV. Nothing to do.

On the back of April 2, 1927

If Mary doesn't do something pretty soon, I'm going to lose interest. Today 
she went to a book circle meeting and socialized. I think she wants to be a 
slut from the way she talks about Kenneth, but she can't do it because they're 
still so old-fashioned and Victorian back then. If she was going through all 
that now, she would be in the back seat of Kenneth's mustang, smoking dope 
and everything. She's always talking about how boring the Ladies Club Socials 
are, but chances are she was never as bad off as I am. At least she doesn't have 
to work a 42-hour week and cook her own meals. I think she lives with her 
parents and has a lot of leisure. Lucky girl.

On the back of April 3, 1927

Was wondering why Mary left so much of her diary blank. Now I know. It's 
hard to fill up blank pages if you don' have a lot to say, and Mary never has 
anything interesting to say. Today, she wrote about an ice-cream supper at the 
church that Kenneth took her to. It really gets tedious when she starts talking 
about how “handsome and gallant" that fruitloop is. I thought I would barf 
before the two of them ever said goodnight on the porch swing. Thank God 
he didn't try to give her a little kiss or she might have gushed on for another 
whole page about how thrilling it was. Mary is such a dull person. A real 
zero. But I guess that's what comes from being raised back in the Twenties. 
It wouldn't surprise me, though, to learn that she marries a millionaire and 
never has to worry a single minute for the rest of her life. So what's the use of 

54


having the day off if you don't have anything to do? Went to the Mall and 
bought a new pair of shoes on sale. Ate out. A Bob Hope special on TV. 
It was really funny, especially some of the jokes about Ford and Nixon. I 
don't see how he gets away with some of the things he says about politicians. 
That's the good thing about living in America though, I guess. You can joke 
a lot about public leaders and not have to fear getting sent to the salt mines 
like they do in Russia.

On the back of April 4, 1927

Can't decipher anything Mary did today. Mostly I think she sat around 
working on a new dress, but I can't tell what she was doing to it. Technical 
terms. I just don't think it's fair some people don't ever have to work or sweat 
or worry. If she's going to complain about her future, then I'm not going to 
read anymore. Christ! She doesn't have anything to worry about. Two guys 
have asked her to marry them! Her parents apparently have lots of money 
because she says something about a summer vacation in Europe! I should 
have worries like that! Today they were talking about maybe laying off a 
few people in the office, and if they do, I'll be the first to go. I know I will 
be because I haven't been playing along with the office politics like the rest 
of them, sucking up to old Wilson and laughing at his stupid jokes just to 
get in good with him.

On the back of April 5, 1927

Mary wrote something in code today. Either that or her handwriting is getting 
worse. Was tempted to just sit down and read through this whole thing to the 
end, to see what really happens to her, but then I decided not to. If I have to 
live my life one day at a time, then by God she's going to have to relive hers 
that way too. She's probably some old biddy by now. In a nursing home with 
a dozen grandkids. Such a waste. Have decided I'm not going to let my life 
be so empty. If something hasn't happened by September, then I'll try to find 
another job. I'd like to go to L.A. or New Orleans. At least there I'd have 
something to do with my nights. I just can't imagine what it would be like 
to open the entertainment pages of a big city newspaper and find dozens of 
things to do. I get so lonely around this six-cop town I want to yell my damn 
lungs out and shake everybody up.

On the back of April 6, 1927

Mary really has the hots for Ken now. She's a real schemer too. It seems that 
Daddy is in a position to offer Ken a good job if he'll marry her. Some people 

55


have all the luck! I can't even get anybody to look at me twice, not that there's 
anyone in this town I would want to look at me, but here Ken is about to marry 
a small fortune and have it made for the rest of his life. It would be so easy to 
just lay down and die. If there is justice in this world, I'll get a better job and 
move away from this dump. Only two movie theaters and one of them seems to 
show only old Disney junk. Mary's so dumb. She's gushing all this time about 
how rich and full her married life is going to be. If she only knew she was just a 
couple years away from the Depression, she wouldn't be talking so much about 
parties and picnics on the front lawn! Thumbed through the back pages to see 
if she's still around after the Market Crash, but the last entry is dated February 
18, 1928. Poor Mary. Wonder whatever happened to her? Sometimes I look at 
the ancient bags limping toward church on their canes or studying prices through 
thick bifocals at Safeway, and I wonder "Are you Mary? Did you used to be 
Mary?" but I can't ask such a thing because Mary's not even her real name.

On the back of April 7, 1927

Have decided Mary is making all of this up. Either that or she's mixed up on her 
calendar. Today she says she mailed a letter to some guy in Boston and he answered 
her...the same day???...proposing marriage. She's now telling herself that 
she is going to be a Big Society Dame in Boston with servants and jewels and 
furs. So. Mary's a fraud too. Just like everyone else. If she's going to lie, she 
might as well lie big. After all, she's only lying to herself. And to me I guess. 
But then I don't count. Her mistake was in not throwing this thing in the fireplace 
and getting rid of it. I will. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe the next day. 
Sometimes I wonder what the purpose of it all is. I mean, why even try? The 
thought of having to work twenty years and never getting anywhere except to 
the end of a social security line is really depressing. Mary probably does luck 
out though. She'll grow old and fat and happy. Never a worry, even in the worst 
of times. At least she didn't have to worry about a car. Just when I thought I 
had my bank balance back up above a thousand, it looks like I might need new 
rings and valves and God only knows what else! There's a knocking and I'm 
using a quart of oil every hundred miles. It'll be just my luck to throw a rod on 
the way to work some morning. And Mary's back to worrying what kind of 
lace to have on her wedding gown.

On the back of April 8, 1927

I was right. Mary's a real fruitcake. She thinks she's going to marry this guy 
from Boston who will grow up to be governor or something. It's a shame she and 
I never got together. I could have probably straightened her out. Letter from 

56


home. Dad is sick again. They lost a calf. Want me to come home some weekend 
and help repair the fence along the highway.

On the back of July 28, 1927

So. Mystery! Mary skipped a couple of months on me and doesn't even tell me 
why. Can't have been that European vacation because she would have been 
gushing about it. There's no explanation. But then, who cares? They probably 
had her in the nuthouse. At least she seems cured. She's no longer engaged to 
the Boston millionaire. She's back to attending Luncheon Club functions, telling 
me who wore what kind of dress and brought what kind of food. As if I 
cared! Mary, you are a very boring person. I liked you better when you first 
had a little mystery about you. I saw you with long auburn hair that took an 
hour each day to comb and braid up. I saw you in a long dress sweeping into a 
crowded room. I bet you could accept and hold a saucer and cup like a ballet 
dancer holds an impossible pose. When I have nothing to do, I just like to think 
about you and how easy your life was back then. I don't belong in this little 
town earning a hundred bucks a week, although today was a little exciting. 
Jim P. showed up forty minutes late and Wilson fired him on the spot! They 
had words. Lots of shouting. And we just sat there like statues pretending we 
couldn't hear. Really shocked everyone. But at least maybe that'll keep me 
from getting laid off now. I volunteered to do some of Jim's clerical work in 
addition to my own drudgery and Wilson was impressed by my savvy. He 
said if he'd known I was so capable, he would have gotten rid of Jim years ago. 
Of course nothing was said about giving me any of Jim's wages in addition, 
but I can't have everything.

On the back of July 29, 1927

So I cheated. Went to the back pages to read them carefully, to see what happens 
to Mary. Nothing. Not a clue about whatever happens to her. I thought 
maybe she would marry, move away or wise up. Just the same old drivel about 
luncheons, choir practice, and school dances. Can't say as I blame her though. 
If I'd been living a life as dull as hers, I might have been desperate for small details 
like that to write in a diary. But I bet if she'd ever taken the time to go 
back and read what she wrote the day before, she might have seen how boring 
it all was and tried to write something a little more interesting. Maybe that's 
what she did right before she wrote that nonsense about the guy from Boston. 
I'd give anything to have her walk into my room right now so I could say, 
"Mary, or whatever your name was, forget about Kenneth and the guy from 
Boston. I'm what you need. I could straighten you out." Wilson is already 

57


looking around for someone to replace Jim. I said I could handle the job, 
but he doesn't believe me. I asked for a week to prove myself, and he's going 
to give it to me. One week. I'll show him. If I was doing Jim's old job and 
getting his salary, I might not hate that place so much. Might not even think 
about moving.

On the back of July 30. 1927

Back more or less to a normal routine, Mary and me both. But who cares? 
Mary can be such a pain sometimes, but I guess that's part of her mystery. 
I find it very easy to speedread through those sections about her latest dresses 
and her latest social function, yet I find myself being drawn to every word, dress 
hoping she'll say something that might somehow make us seem closer. I keep 
wishing old Ken will rape her some night so that she'll really have something 
to write about. There has to have been more going on back then. And there 
has to be something better for me to do. Work is the same old grind, although 
I'm being super-efficient whenever Wilson is around. Sometimes I want to just 
toss a chair through the TV, the shows are so dumb. Especially the reruns.

On the back of July 31, 1927

The same. Not even interested in reading about Mary and her dumb socializing 
and her gushy romantic crushes on whoever walks into her line of sight. I think 
she's making it all up anyway. I ought to just throw this thing away. It's such 
a waste of time. If I had any sense, I'd throw this away, pack up and head 
for California, except that stupid car probably wouldn't get two hundred miles 
before it fell apart on me. Work is a pain. At least Wilson thinks I can do the 
job now. He said it's mine now. He didn't say anything about a raise though. 
It would be just like him to make me do a harder job at my same old salary. 
Sometimes I just want to stomp his face until it looks like hamburger, him and 
that overweight wife of his both. I'd really like to see that white Buick explode 
in a big ball of flame with him at the wheel and her sitting there by 
him with one of her sleazy champagne blonde wigs on. That's one funeral 
I'd show up early for, just to get a good seat.

On the back of August 1, 1927

Work was better and Wilson did say he'd give me thirty dollars a week more 
starting from last Monday! Love it! Love it!! Mary is reading another novel 
no one else has probably ever heard of. All about a summertime romance 
in Paris. That means for the next few weeks, all I'll be reading about is passion


58


less love around Parisian landmarks. There are better things I could be doing, 
but it's still nice to drive home and know Mary's waiting for me, ready to tell 
me what she did all day, just like any other regular housewife. Another letter 
from home. They lost another calf on the highway and they insist I come home 
and help Dad fix the fence this weekend, so maybe I will. I'll be able to brag 
about my raise. Hello Dolly was on TV tonight. Big lavish sets and costumes. 
Expensive. But well worth it.

On the back of August 2, 1927

Gerald Williams

59


Inheritance

Did you not father me?

Father, I am not your son.

Though I have your heavy habits

& your heavy bones, your blue straight eyes 
whose gaze goes outward from the dark within, 
I am not your son.

Though I sit with half my life lived through 
as you sat, slumped, my heavy forehead 
clamped to paper reckonings, 
my heavy words held back 
before the quick & baffling, peopled world, 
I am not your son.

Though I see the proud, disordered hills 
contoured with certainties your surveys made, 
though I prove your numbers & your distances 
in alien wanderings,

though your measures chart my wilderness

in lines you would not recognize,

I am not your son.

Though I seek your faith & do not find, 
though I follow still your straitened righteousness, 
& count the doubts that keep the vision off, 
though the chill of your despair spreads in my skull, 
I am not your son.

Though I live as you did, narrow, good, 
steadfast at work, mistrusting play, 
longing for the easy, noisy joys, 
yet keeping loneliness my closest friend 
& silence as my habitat,

I am not your son.

Though I know you did not know why you lived thus, 
though your death is one year past & done, 
though you are my father still, 
yet I am not your son.

Judith McCombs

60


Photograph Taken 
at My Father’s House

This is his house. In the foreground the grandchild 
leans on a mallet & squints at the sun;

she smiles with her pumpkin teeth at someone, 
it must be the in-law. No one will play her, 
we are all too busy. She has his hair, 
perhaps his knees. In the background the road 
lies empty, a white merciless curve 
between lots. Over the top of the picture 
Atlantic clouds are floating, sky-high, 
beautiful white out of beautiful blue, 
safe as the developer promised, beyond cities 
& winter. Between the child & the road 
is the square screened porch with the sky-blue chair 
where he sat in the mornings, a K-Mart special, 
cruise-style, where my brother with nothing to say 
will sit tonight.

Now, in the foreground 
beyond the camera, my brother is burying 
flowers & garbage, in the compost plot 
which is next to the garden no one will want. 
These are the flowers from another ceremony, 
glads & irises, white, the church 
sent them over, to help. Flowers do not last 
in this heat, the glare is too much. At the florist's 
they told us, Buy mums, Mums are the best 
to stand up in this heat, & we dutifully bought 
all of their mums, from us & the others 
who could not attend. I am out of the picture, 
hosing the garden & the struggling geraniums 
Mother forgot, hosing the yard

& the driveway, for guests. I have tried all morning 
but the water sinks down through the green-brown grass 
& is gone in the sand. Plants have to thicken 
to stand it down here, even the gaudiest 
live with drought at their roots.

61


Soon we are going 
where the mums have been sent, under a canopy 
the directors provide. & after the ceremony, 
when nothing has happened but words & silence, 
the flowers will be left under the canopy 
to help them stand up. & the director's son, 
correct in black, will lead Mother out, 
holding her elbow to be sure she keeps going 
back to the black provided car.

& she in her dress of not quite black, 
not quite correct, will leave him abruptly, 
walking too fast, not looking at us 
on the long ride back, she didn't expect 
to be left alone in the house of the photograph 
where we will try to help, answering the doorbell, 
thanking the guests who are trying to help.

Judith McCombs

62


Contributors

R BARTKOWECH is in Boulder working on a second novel. His works are forthcoming 
in The Little Magazine, DeKalb Literary Arts Journal, and Quarry West.

KIM BAUER from Bay City is a Studio Art major at Michigan State University.

CASEY BUSH has won a pair of writing awards in the last four years. He lives in 
Grayling and occasionally surfaces to edit News of Lansing.

DAVID CITINO is assistant professor of English at Ohio State's Marion Campus where 
he edits Cornfield Review. His work has appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Cimarron 
Review, and San Jose Studies.

LAURIE COSCA works at the Chico State Bookstore and has been published in The 
Denver Quarterly, The Reed, and The California Quarterly.

JOEL DAILEY is finishing his MFA at Bowling Green, Ohio. His poems have turned 
up in Poetry Now, Hollins Critic, Mikrokosmos, and Bird Effort.

JIM DANIELS edits Pine River at Alma College.

BARBARA DRAKE teaches writing and women's studies at MSU and edits Stone Press 
publications. Her work has appeared in Transpacific, Epoch, and Sumac.

HUGH FOX has just finished a non-fiction novel and First Fire,an anthology of 
South American Indian myth, will come from Anchor Books this fall.

DAN GERBER's work has appeared in numerous magazines and several anthologies 
including The New Yorker, The Partisan Review, Inscape, The Third Coast, and 
Contemporary American Poetry (Hokusei Gakuen College, Sapporo, Japan).

FRANK GRAZIANO works for the Arizona Poetry in the Schools Program and edits 
Grilled Flowers. Floating Island Publications in California has his first chapbook.

MICHAEL L. JOHNSON has published poetry and scholarly articles in several dozen 
little magazines and journals, also a chapbook Dry Season by Cottonwood Review.

GEORGE LEWIS is working toward an MA in Linguistics at MSU.

JUDITH McCOMBS, co-founder of Moving Out, has published widely in little and 
feminist magazines. Her first book: Sisters and Other Selves, Glass Bell Press, 1976.

RICHARD E. McMULLEN's poems have appeared in Anon, The Massachusetts Review, 
The New York Times, and periodical Lunch. Chicken Beacon is available from 
Street Fiction Press, Ann Arbor.

RON MIECZKOWSKI studies English at MSU. He won 2nd prize in the RCR's Creative 
Writing Contest for his poetry, which appears in Descant, Invitation, and RCR.

MARK NEERING's works were recently exhibited at 120 in the Shade gallery in 
Lansing with Ed Hall and the Art Yard Graphics Group.

SUSAN SCHAEFER NEVILLE is moving from Ohio to Florida, having received an 
MFA from Bowling Green. She has taught workshops at University of Toledo.

ANN PULSIPHER studies English at MSU. This is her first time in print.

63


ANDREW SCHEIBER is a graduate student at MSU, two-time winner of 1st prize 
for fiction in the RCR Creative Writing Contest.

HERBERT SCOTT teaches at Western Michigan University. He helped edit The Third 
Coast, and his poetry has appeared in Poetry Now and The Chariton Review.

SHELBY STEPHENSON chairs the English department at Campbell College, North 
Carolina. His work can be found in Southern Poetry Review, Texas Quarterly, 
International Poetry Review, and many other small magazines.

BRENDA SWOPE, sophomore at MSU, won 3rd prize for poetry in the RCR contest.

LEE UPTON, Journalism major at MSU, won 1st prize for poetry in the RCR contest 
again. Her work has been accepted by The California Quarterly, Invitation, and RCR.

DIANE WAKOSKI, widely-known prolific poet, will return to MSU to conduct workshops 
in the fall. Her latest book is Waiting for the King of Spain, Black Sparrow 
Press.

GERALD RAY WILLIAMS is from Gene Autrey, Oklahoma (pop. 110) and this is his 
first time in print.

64


Figure without caption.
volume XI issue 2