poetry/daryl jones Daryl's poems often speak through personal THE MINES experience but, unlike the work of many for my Grandfather contemporary poets, they do not lapse into i. obscure personal brooding. Grounded in an All day the inexhaustible blue vein awareness of himself, they move outward, conscious in a larger sense of the emotion runs before his headlamp's narrow shining inherent in persons and incidents — yet each down into the black depths falling away place or individual is always defined within the from his feet. Teeth and eyes context of immediate human experience. glance yellow, disappear, and muscled picks In many of these poems human life is existing or bite and ring through the glistening shaft. siowty dying beneath the "surface" — out of Soon, a weary figure cut from anthracite, touch with tight, air and spirit, the mind and he will rise to the light, the red sun senses muted in the suspension of old age, the resting on the slag heaps, heading home. depths of water and earth, the imperfect suspension of love, the perfect suspension of death. ii. The earth, laid open like a scalp, Image and language derive directly from their receives him, gives him back each night source in the person or incident which concerns to the woman framed in the pale light them — but each personality, each object can be sounded beneath its appearance. It is below this spilling from the porch, cave-ins surface of existence that the poet functions, deep deepening her eyes. It does not change. in experience and emotion, exploring the world Soon she will kneel on the kitchen floor he knows at new depths where people and things behind the steaming tub, his lean body widen to larger statements about themselves and our lives. Among them the poet must quickly slowly soaking white, and gently touch the blue veins throbbing in his temples. chooae, carrying back what he can to construct the poem. More follow — deeper breaths bring longer dives, a new vision stows and opens, one becomes at best "conditioned" to the process . . . . one can never master it. Daryl Jones is a graduate student in English at MSU. He has published poetry in several little magazines and is currently the coeditor of PREVIEW (a campus literary magazine). In his spare time Daryl is completing his dissertation on the cultural significance of the dime novel western in 19th century America. — Dennis Pace CARP We know them as logs, shadows drifting under slabs of darkness. They are large, and weave through hanging cables of sunlight, sunken cars, and broken bottles - slowly, a life among sharp edges. MOLLUSKS Often, in roiled water, we mistake a sunstruck can Their history is the sea's: for their dull flash. We seldom a slow stirring in darkness; a silence really see them. They live deep, almost beyond our seeing, hardening to lime. Clenched like fists, armored with the green-gold they languish in dark chambers, tossing on the sea's unsettled bed. fingernails of drowned men. reprinted with permission from Happiness Holding Tank Some, like the blood clam, bivalved, or pearl-bellied oyster, muscle into sand to thwart the moon. It pulls at them like starfish, sucks them clean. Others, like the periwinkle, storied, or spined queen conch, hide in spirals to outwit the sea. Its rhythmic urge, loosening, courses deep in jellied vitals. Sometimes, after storms, we find them drying on the lip of a barren beach like delicate pink cloisters, upturned faces shining like a spinster's ear in each of them, something murmuring, in each of them, something of the sea. photography by Dennis Pace NO SURVIVORS It's said men live for days beneath the sea in great air bubbles trapped between the decks. Close air, and damp shirts STILL FISHING AT NIGHT clinging to their backs, they do not speak. Some weep, some silently for Mac resent the measured breathing at their sides. L But all, grieving, dream of far horizons, Remember? The lake still sunlight on blue water. They would rise up weedless in early March, from many fathoms, swim to future lives, the season not yet opened, and we, had not their separate deaths at some far place anchored beyond all law, our reels crossed here, and tangled like sheets round their legs. singing with illegal bass? ii. Though cold, it was windless, a night of silver, the silver of fat bass flashing in the net, the silver of the unexpected frog I hooked, the fat moon belly shining silver in the silver night. iii. In the far darkness clear across the lake, geese poised invisibly. Bold with spring, their calls somehow were near to us. We sat imagining the slow wobble of silver through liquid dark, the infinite deceit of lures quivering gently in our hands. iv. When you moved, in darkness a deeper shadow, I moved, our rocking lives balanced. v. Remember how we dreamed, rowing home, of beans and burnt black coffee? Even then, as each muffled oar dipped into stars, we were leaning toward today. SINCE WINTER'S COME He spirals to the cellar once each night. Perhaps it is the way the flashlight looms through mason jars of last year's jam delights him, the dusty shelves in bloom, the rows of apricot and grape, the plum, the marmalade like sunlight under glass. And he keeps odd hours, stays up late stretched out full length on the flowered couch. All night reading the Farmer's Almanac, paging through predicted snow, the sleet, the somewhat warm, he arrives at Spring. He tells no one. His neighbors say he drinks. Not Bread Alone a story by Ken Pituch Uncle Walter didn't have baker's hands. Aunt MiUlie's hands were plump and rosy white, like a fresh pastry. Uncle Walter's hands were narrow and bony with large blue veins that ran like mountain ranges between scars and freckles. My father once told me that when Uncle Walter was a young man in Poland he had been a fine guitarist. Along with three cousins he had formed the favorite band in the town, the band that played for all the weddings and holiday celebrations. But after coming to Chicago he had ■ever played again. Marrying Aunt Millie and starting a bakery left no time for music. They settled down to the business of making a good life for their family. So the guitarist's hands worked in flour and dough and eventually achieved moderate success tor Petrmski's Bakery. Uncle Walter wasn't rich. Any money he saved he usually gave or lent to some needy relative or friend. But he was very proud. During the '30s and '40s his bakery was the favorite of the Polish community. Sunday mornings after seven o'clock mass at St. Helen's almost the whole parish would stop in for a half dozen rolls, a loaf of rye bread or sometimes just to talk Polish and English with each other. I remember one such Sunday when 1 was very small. I was behind the counter trying to sneak some kolaczki without Aunt Millie seeing when Father Tomazewski, the pastor, walked in with a smiling old priest in a black topcoat. The bakery quieted as the priests recognized the neighborhood of my eariy up and shuffled to the closet. There was no other walked toward the counter, the old one smiling childhood. Dirty tenements seemed to have sound as the door creaked open and he reached serenely at the men and women and patting the replaced the old neat houses and apartments. The up and pulled a large case from the top shelf. He once tidy storefronts were flaking and falling set the case on the bare floor and knelt beside it. small children on the head. I saw one old woman bless herself. apart. Glass and litter covered the sidewalks and After a nervous glance at my father, he opened streets. And there were twice as many taverns as it. Then, like a father picking a new baby out of "Walter," said Father Tomazewski to my uncle, Td like you to meet your archbishop, I had remembered. bed, he lifted the old guitar and stood. Returning Petrinski's Bakery was neither better nor to his chair, he began to pluck and tighten the Cardinal Stritch. Your eminence, this is Walter and Mildred Petrin&ki, two of our finest worse than the rest. The window was dirty and strings. the light over the door broken. We stepped First the low ones, then the highs, which parishoners and the best bakers in all of Dlinois." inside. There was no smell of kolaczki, chruscziki seemed to cry out in pain as they stretched. But The cardinal shook my uncle's thin hand. "God be with you, Mr. Petrinski." He turned to or fresh bread. It smelled like the inside of an gently he brought them all in tune. The left hand closed down at the neck and the everyone and said in a soft, prayerlike voice, "It empty refrigerator. The shelves were empty, is a pleasure to be here this morning. This is except for a few stale - looking crumbs. We right thumb strummed a long forgotten chord. He closed his eyes and let the hands play. First indeed one of the finest parishes in the diocese. stepped behind the counter and into the kitchen. Your bakery, like your entire neighborhood, is Aunt Millie was behind the table, picking they played slowly, easing themselves into the old tunes, sometimes missing, sometimes an example for the entire city of Chicago." something off the floor. When she stood she saw Tears swelled Aunt Millie's eyes. Uncle Walter us. She forced a smile and pointed to the stairs. hesitating, but never stopping. Father's eyes smiled, then sold the cardinal a dozen paczki. "Will you go and see him?" Father moved for the closed, too, and he rested his head against the back of the couch and began to hum. The archbishop shook most of the men's hands, stairs, and I quickly followed him up to the flat. Uncle Walter was sitting in his straight - One song led into another. Soon the fingers then quietly left. God himself couldn't have made them more proud. As we walked home that backed wooden chair staring at the bare lightbulb were dancing on the strings. I heard some that hung from the ceiling. The shades were familiar polkas, but most were from another morning we could feel God's grace falling like world. I lost track of time; he may have been dew on every tidy lawn of every neat brick house pulled, filtering out all but a dirty yellow light. and apartment building. The Polish community His elbows rested on the arms of his chair but his playing 15 minutes or an hour before I saw the had been blessed. hands were clasped together and moving. The thing on the guitar. That was in 1949. My family moved to bony fingers jerked over each other. A black circle was moving on the dark wood When he saw us his hands stopped. He picked Michigan a year later and we began to lose just above the hole. Soon another spot emerged contact with our relatives in the city. But when I himself up and walked to my father. "Michael, from beneath the strings; three more followed it's good you come home," he said slowly, quickly, these crawling below the hole. I stared grew old enough to understand, I started hearing about bad things happening to the neighborhood, reaching his hands to my father's shoulders. Then at them, hypnotized by the music and by their the bakery and Uncle Walter. to me. "This cannot be Paul? You have a fine slow movement. son." His hands grasped my shoulders. The grip Many of the old families were moving to the More crawled out. Now some were on the old suburbs. Poorer people were taking their places: was firm, the fingers seemed to sink into my man's sleeve. His arm moved briskly up and Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Negroes and others of flesh. down but none fell off. Then one crawled onto He returned to his chair and I sat down on the Chicago's poor. Business in the bakery was bad. the narrow hand. The last chord choked. Uncle Sunday mornings were no longer special. Bums musty couch. My father went into the other Walter looked down and gasped. A dozen tiny room and came out with a bottle and two glasses. and winos would drift in begging for a handout. They began to drink together and talk of old, spiders plodded over the curved body. With a My father received a letter from Aunt Millie horrible scream, he crashed the instrument to the better times. Twice my father mentioned the asking his advice. The bakery was in debt and floor, smashing it to splinters. The strings gave a Walter was drinking. She asked if my father bakery in Michigan, but Uncle Walter seemed not final groan. might help them start a new bakery in Michigan. to be listening. His eyes were somewhere else,not Maybe they could sell the old one and start over. focused on anything in the room. My father and I said nothing to each other on His hands were moving still. Bony fingers the four - hour trip home, and I didn't even tum She ended the letter, "Walter feels very bad. crawled up and down his glass. He began to talk to look at him as we drove. There is no one left around here to help us. in Polish. I could no longer understand, but my Six weeks later Uncle Walter died and we Please help us if you can. Your loving sister - in - law." father kept nodding his head, a sad, faraway look returned to the city. About 20 people attended in his eyes, too. the funeral mass at St. Helen's. He was buried by My father took me with him when we When his bottle was empty, Uncle Walter got the new pastor, Father Chavez. returned to the city that Saturday. I hardly directors/robert sickels graphics/run pitts denise mccourt