Richard Howard Eugenio Montale Jane Hirshfield Rabindranath ...

Richard Howard
Eugenio Montale
Jane Hirshfield
Rabindranath Tagore
Ingrid de Kok
Melissa Monroe
Jonathan Safran Foer
Jonathan Lethem
Victoria Redel
Timothy Westmoreland
Paul Poissel
Amy Jean Porter
Matt Cauley
+ !interviews with
Danzy Senna
John F. Callahan
Guy Maddin
$10 USA $14 CAN
ISBN 074470 86764 7 36

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Printed in Canada
Dear Readers:
August 1, 2002
Rangi, the last Editor-in-Chief, wrote a letter from the editor, and
so I suppose it is up to me to continue to do so, and then up to
the next EIC to do so again next year, thereby making the letter
from the editor a tradition of sorts. It is an odd role for me, the
beginner of, or, at the very least, promoter of traditions when it
seems that this past year all I've done is to remove them. This
issue has no theme, hosted no contest, has two covers, and is (topping
out at over 300 pages) the longest issue of The Columbia
Journal produced to date. I have to say that we're rather proud of
ourselves, which, I'm sure, will prove our downfall.
Issue #36 covers a broad range of sytles of art, poetry, fiction, and
nonfiction; translations abound in this collection — poetry and
prose poems from France, Italy, Brazil, and Inida — and we have
continued to print our artwork in color. There are three interviews
in this issue - with John F. Callahan, editor of Juneteenth and
executor of Ralph Ellison's estate, with Danzy Senna, author of
Caucasia, and with Guy Maddin, Canadian director of such classics
as Careful, Twilight of the Ice Nymphs, and Tales from the Gimli
Hospital. About the covers: we found two artists whose work
impressed us very much and asked them to submit cover proposals,
which they did, so that we could choose one or the other,
which we did not. We chose both.
That then is the story of Issue #36 - except I would like to say
Thank you to my staff of editors and assistants without whose
help this issue would never have been produced. I am indebted to
them beyond anyone's reckoning as they managed, by sheer Herculean
strength of will, to make me look competent.
J. Manuel Gonzales
Editor-in-Chief

Table of Contents
Poetry
INGRID DE KOK The Archbishop Chairs the First Session
How to Mourn in a Room Full of Questions
DAVID WAGONER
SCOTT HIGHTOWER
JANE HIRSHFIELD
JAY MANCINI
CHRISTINA PUGH
MARK DOTY
MELISSA MONROE
The Transcriber Speaks
That Hunter
Spring Sheering
Indian Summer
'52 Maneuvers
Flowering Vetch
Downed Branch
Bowling Alone
Lady's Slipper
The Bootblack
from Feux d'Artifice
On the Graphic Representation of Time
On the Analysis of the Metaphoric Impulse
RABINDRANATH TAGORE fromThe Lover of God
PETER COVINO
EAMON GRENNAN
Three
Four
Five
Six
She Speaks to Me from Her Birthing of
Waters of 1972
Egg
Was
EUGENIO MONTALE The Coastguard House 202
2
4
5
28
53
55
56
72
73
8o
98
107
119
122
161
162
163
164
190
200
201
MATTHEW ROHRER Homage to John Yau
PAULA FRIEDMAN
MARY JO SALTER
RACHEL ZUCKER
IVAN JUNQUEIRA
VERONICA PASFIELD
RICHARD HOWARD
Non-fiction
RICHARD SIMON CHANG
MEREDITH PHILLIPS
NASDIJJ
JOHN F. CALLAHAN
Lou STOVALL
LAWRENCE WESCHLER
"Disagreeable Object" (Homage to John Yau)
Third Homage to John Yau
208
209
210
Undreaming Landscape 240
Office Hours 241
The Big Sleep 244
from Eating in the Underworld
Diary (The Second Seed) 266
Diary (The Third Seed) 267
Diary (The Seventh Seed) 268
Estive Aqui 290
O Enterro Dos Mortos 294
From the Home of Unwed Mothers 3 01
Silences 3 X 4
Separated at Birth
Annals of an Eater
Touching Him
The Making of Ralph Ellison's
Juneteenth
Working with Jacob Lawrence
Dark Garland/Affirming Flame
59
74
83
175
192
222

Interviews
BERTRAM ASHE Passing as Danzy Senna I2 5
A COLUMBIA JOURNAL INTERVIEW Night Talk: An Interview
with John F. Callahan 165
A COLUMBIA JOURNAL INTERVIEW Goat Glanding: An
Interview with Guy Maddin 247
Fiction
TIMOTHY WESTMORELAND
JOHN MCNALLY Men
MARCELO RIOSECO
SUSAN STEINGBERG
VICTORIA REDEL
JOHN MCMANUS
ANIKA HAYNES
ARTHUR BRADFORD
GABE HUDSON
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER
HOLIDAY REINHORN
JONATHAN LETHEM
PAUL POISSEL
ED PARK
Strong at the Broken Places 6
Who Love Women Who Love Men
Who Kill 30
The Most Important Man in the
City 94
Caught 99
Stuff 109
Natcher Mountain 146
Dreams of Skin 153
Radish 205
Those Were Your Words Not Mine 211
Not Cold, Not 111 at Ease or Alone 232
Last Seen 269
Children with Hangovers 298
from Les faits d'hiver 304
An Oral History of Atlantis 320
Artwork
AMY JEAN PORTER from Birds of North America Misquote
Hip-Hop and Sometimes Pause for Reflection
JOHN LANGFORD
JACOB LAWRENCE
MATT CAULEY
Thick-billed Murre i
Scaled Quail i
Northern Jacana ii
Buff-bellied Hummingbird ii
Johnny Cash on Sun iii
Dancing with Death iii
6 Hanks iv
The Burning v
New York Transit I vi
New York Transit II vii
Revolt on the Amistad viii
Morrocco ix
Inside x
Ultraviolence x
GEORGE JENNE She's the Third to Go this Month xi
Mimi was the Fattest Little Woman in the World xi
ROBIN VINCENT from Self-Portraits
Untitled xii
Untitled xii

Anna's Kind Eye! from Heart of the World
I t
"Strong or not, we all knew, the world
destroys us without mercy."
Timothy Westmoreland

INGRID DE KOK
The Archbishop Chairs the First Session
April 1996, East London, South Africa
On the first day
after a few hours of testimony
the archbishop wept.
He put his grey head
on the long table
of papers and protocols
and he wept.
The national
and international cameramen
shot his weeping,
his misted glasses,
his sobbing shoulders,
the call for a recess.
It doesn't matter what you thought
of the archbishop before or after,
of the settlement, the commission,
or what the anthropologists flying in
from less studied crimes and sorrows
said about the discourse,
or how many doctorates,
books, and installations followed,
or even if you think this poem
simplifies, lionizes,
romanticizes, mystifies.
There was a long table, starched purple vestment
and after a few hours of testimony,
the archbishop, chair of the commission,
laid down his head, and wept.
That's how it began.

How to Mourn in a Room Full of
Questions
The witness tells it steady:
the breathing of a boy deep asleep
the way the young, even the watchful young, sleep;
the window splintering,
shaking shack walls,
raked breathing of the shot, same, boy.
The mother and her spreading blanket.
Old sorrow holds down anger like a plug.
And juridical questions
swab swab the brains and blood off the floor.
The Transcriber Speaks
I was the commission's own captive,
Its anonymous after-hours scribe,
Professional blank slate.
Word by word by word
From winding tape to hieroglyphic key,
From sign to sign, I listened and wrote.
Like bricks for a kiln or tiles for a roof
Or the sweeping of leaves into piles for burning:
I don't know which:
Word upon word upon word.
At first unpunctuated
Apart from quotations and full stops.
But how to transcribe silence from tape?
Is weeping a pause or a word?
What written sign for a strangled throat?
And a witness pointing? That I described,
When officials identified direction and name.
But what if she stared?
And if the silence seemed to stretch
Past the police guard, into the street
Away to a door or a grave or a child,
Was it my job to conclude:
"The witness was silent. There was nothing left to say"?

-TIMOTHY WESTMORELAND
Strong at the Broken Places
"I'm making flowers out of paper
while darkness takes the afternoon."
—Julie Miller
The sky hung low, matted curls dangling, here and there, even
lower. The summer had been hot, parched with fire, and now the
fall was cool, and for days at a time there was no sun. I drove the
winding road, a hint of mist falling, my wipers dry on the windshield.
I stopped by to see Murphy every afternoon. He sat on his
front porch, the windows pulled open wide, a bottle of Famous
Grouse on a bench beside his chair. I steered into the driveway. The
sky was dotted with rolling pigeons, spiraling up. Then, a smear
against the gray, they tumbled earthward. I killed the engine,
watched. There were no hawks. Sometimes a pigeon didn't pull out
of its dive, though I'd never seen this happen. It's one of those things
you hope to experience, just so you can know that it's true.
Murphy was reading, a collection of Hemingway stories in his
palm. I knew better than to ask, but I did anyway. "What're you
reading?"
"Hey, CJ," he said. He spilled scotch into an extra glass that he
kept for me. "Page 274."
"Sounds good," I said. I sat down next to him, took the scotch.
I'd never seen Murphy read a book from beginning to end. Each day
he opened a book to a random page and perused for a few minutes.
If he opened to a page he'd read, he flipped through until he found
an unfamiliar scene. Murphy's memory was marvelous for certain
things. He repeated the habit of opening and closing books until
every sentence was familiar. Then he spent the next few days putting
the story together in his mind. He always said this made the writing
more interesting to him, more challenging. Murphy was the
most driven person I'd ever met, the most capable.
"There any hawks?"
"Not that I could see," I said, glancing out the window.
"I'm down to six birds," he said. "There's a damn bobcat.
Comes down at night." He shook his head, offered an envelope
between his fingers. A tender gesture, his hand trembling.
I tucked the stationery into my jacket pocket.
"There's a man and a woman drinking and talking in a railway
station," he said. "They're drinking absinthe."
"I don't know Hemingway," I said.
"You don't have to," he said. "There are people talking. There
are always people talking about one thing and meaning another."
I smiled.
"CJ," he said. "I know you don't want to talk about it. . ."
"No," I interrupted. "I don't."
"Have you ever tasted absinthe?" he asked.
"No," I said. "I don't think they make it anymore. They make
Pernod."
"It's not the same."
"That's why they make it," I said.
"They distill absinthe in Spain," he said. "And in Prague."
"It can kill you, can't it?"
"I suppose," he said. "If you drink enough of it." Murphy
closed the book. He finished off his scotch. "You drink enough of
this and it'll kill you."
"So what happens?" I said. "In the train station, I mean."
"Depends on who you ask - the woman or the man," he said.
"I came in during the middle of an argument, so I'm not taking
sides. It seems to me, though, that neither one is listening."
"What are they fighting about?"
"What difference does it make, if one's not listening?" Murphy
stood, paused for his balance, then hobbled to the screen door. He

pushed out, whistled loudly to the sky, to the birds.
Murphy called it an "affliction." He had been married, but
begged his wife to go. He made life unbearable until Cathy left him
one October, while darkness exhausted the afternoon. Her hair was
black as a raven's wing. It hung down in her face when she cried. She
and Murphy both cried when the letter arrived from the doctor. To
hear Murphy tell it, it was that he thought she couldn't withstand
the sight of him slowly turning into a stranger. "That's all illness is,"
he'd say, "a slow transition into the unfamiliar." I know all this
because Murphy wrote it down, a little at a time; brief notes stuffed
into envelopes. I kept them all, in a box on my bureau.
One afternoon, not long after Cathy had gone to live with a
friend, Murphy decided he'd raise the ceiling. I'd come by for my
drink, which in those days was Havana Club. Before he took sick,
Murphy made regular trips into Canada to bring back the illegal
rum. He wasn't on the front porch when I pulled in, so I walked
around back to the bird pen. Finally, I climbed the steps to the back
door and knocked. Murphy answered, covered in a fine, white powder.
"What the hell is that?" I asked.
"Plaster," he said. "Come in." He tried to pull the door wide so
that I could see, but it hung. "Hold on," he said, slamming the
door. There was a God-awful commotion, the sound of things being
thrown recklessly, a scraping at the foot of the door. Murphy yanked
the door open. "Now," he said, sweeping his arms like a matador.
The kitchen was empty except for an ax, some other tools, and
the ceiling, which was now in the floor. Large strips of molding and
sections of plaster-covered gypsum were piled more than a foot deep
in places. Above, a black expanse of exposed beams and the darkened
underside of stained, beaten, wooden shingles. Asterisks of
light peeked through, as though it was the night sky. The scent of
oak and wet cardboard were in the air. Murphy coughed. "Watch
your step," he said. "There're nails in some of that molding."
"It's going to get cold in here," I said.
"Once the snow covers, it'll be fine," he said. "Help me with the
table."
A small dinette table and chairs were perched in the den, just
out of reach of the mess. We lifted the table and set it atop a wellplanned
stack of ceiling parts, in the center of the dining alcove.
Murphy retrieved glasses and the bottle of rum from the cupboard.
We stood at the table, its top coming to our waist, bistro-style.
Amid the ruins, we drank the Anejo Reserva from aperitif glasses,
the butterscotch start transforming into a smooth, vanilla finish.
"What are your plans?" I asked. I sipped and held the rum in
my mouth.
"This is the last of the Havana Club," he said. "Enjoy." He
tipped the bottle, filling my glass again. He freshened his own and
held the dark bottle up to measure what remained. "The angel's
share," he said, tossing the bottle into the rubbish.
"Come again?"
"The angel's share," he said. "In the aging process, a certain
amount of the spirit evaporates. They call that the angel's share." He
smiled. "It's best to assuage the higher powers."
"How much?"
"In Havana," he said. "Six percent a year. Cooler climates, two.
Kind of a spiritual sales tax."
"A small price to pay," I said. I lifted my drink for a toast. We
touched glasses, finished the rum.
"Have you talked to Cathy?"
"Not in a while," he said. He rinsed the aperitif glasses and
returned them to the cupboard. "You want to help me clean this
crap out of the house?"
"Yeah," I said, pausing. "Want to talk about this?"
"The question is, do you?" he said, opening the door. A breeze
seeped inside, stirring the woody dampness. "You want to talk
about the ceiling, I guess. Not the cause."
"Maybe we should just get this out of here before it gets too
dark?" I suggested.
"A man lives his entire life in a house with ceilings that are
unnaturally low," he said. "Look at me, CJ. I'm not short. I've a
right to vaulted ceilings. I want to die in a house where there's one
room where I can't reach the ceiling." Murphy bent and lifted a
stack of molding. He tossed it out into the failing light. "Now, you

10
want to talk?"
"I think you should let Cathy come be with you," I said.
"That's what I thought," he said. He garnered sections of the
ceiling, leaning them against the cabinets.
"I don't know what to say," I said.
"Nobody knows what to say," Murphy insisted. "What you
mean is that you don't want to think about it."
"It makes me uncomfortable," I said.
"You think I'm comfortable?" Murphy crouched, picked up
some scraps. He wheezed. "The problem is," he said, "you think
this is about you. You think this is about Cathy."
"We're suffering with you."
"No," he said. "You're not. Cathy may be sympathizing. Maybe
even empathizing. You can't even talk about it. At best, you just feel
pity."
"Now you're feeling sorry for yourself."
"Fuck you, CJ." Murphy breathed heavy over a pile of gypsum.
"I'm dying. I have a right to feel this way."
"Maybe I should go," I said. Murphy closed his eyes, pinched
the bridge of his nose. I felt like I could guess what kinds of things
were knocking around inside him. But I didn't have his way with
words. Murphy had a manner of expressing himself, which was
acute, exacting. His head had always been clear. How hard it must
have been for him with me standing there, seeing him like this. I
might have asked Cathy to leave, too. There was no way of knowing
if all this was the result of what was growing inside his head or
if this was just the kind of thing a dying man does.
"Fetch a chair over to the sink," Murphy said. He dug in the
utility room.
I waded through the mess, brought a dining chair from the den.
I tested it on the floor, angled it so that it was sturdy. Murphy
clutched a portable floodlight in one hand and a coil of orange
extension cord in the other. "Let's shine some light on the subject,"
he said. He clamped the light to a rafter, draped the cord over the
latticed beams. "Plug it in," he said, handing the cord down to me.
I suspended it over the door, found a socket above the clothes dryer.
"Let there be light!" he called. I punched it in. "And it was good,"
he said.
I turned the corner, the room was awash in a harsh, artificial
light. It reminded me of what I'd seen on CNN, after an earthquake
or a terrorist bomb, rescue teams working long into the night
beneath that sickly glare. I always wondered what the deciding factor
was, when it just became a search.
"I don't know what I expect people to say," Murphy said, his
hands on his hips, staring at the clutter. "I just hope they'll say
something."
"Anything I could say just seems stupid," I said. "I feel like I
have to watch every word."
Murphy looked at me, expressionless. "We need fuel."
"I just don't think you should be alone," I said. "Maybe you
should call Cathy?"
"We do two things without the company of others," Murphy
said. "We go to our dreams and we die." He opened the refrigerator,
stooped to look inside. "We don't have much," he said. "Beer
and cinnamon rolls." He reached and pulled out the two cans of
rolls. He ran his hands under the faucet, dried them on a towel from
the drawer. "You know," he said. "People don't even call anymore."
"I know," I said. "People get busy with their own lives. Time
gets away from them." This had been true of me as well. I'd picked
up the phone, hesitated. What might I get on the end of the line?
I'd think. Murphy could be sleeping, or worse, in some kind of crisis.
What kind of solace could I offer? From the time I was born, I'd
never spent a day in the hospital. I was rarely sick - once in five
years — that I could remember. I stayed up too late and mixed my
drinks. I threw up in the morning, took the day off from work, and
by five I was sipping a beer at the Spoke, looking at the waitresses
and thinking I should call in sick for the week. I'd earned it, I
thought. I'd learn, watching Murphy go down, that it's the sick people
who earn their days. They should get two weeks a year of calling
in well.
Murphy popped the can of cinnamon rolls on the edge of the
counter. He fingered them onto a cookie sheet. "That's the luxury,"
he said, "of thinking you've a life ahead of you."
I opened the refrigerator, took a beer. "Beer?"
II

12
"No," he said. He peeked in the oven, turned the dial.
"I've never seen you drink beer."
"I don't care for it," he said. He spread out the second can of
rolls.
"There's a case in there?" I opened the refrigerator door and
looked again.
"Cathy thought it'd help settle my stomach."
"Never heard that before," I said.
He tilted the oven door, slipped the pan inside. "This'll take a
few minutes." Murphy stroked his hands on the towel. "Let's gather
equipage." He ducked out the back door.
The night was turning cold. There was no moon. I couldn't see
a thing in the pitch dark. Murphy had a freestanding tool-shed in
the backyard. I heard him rummaging and I waited, looking up at
the scattershot of stars, the pearly satin of the Milky Way. Murphy
appeared with a wheelbarrow, a snow shovel in the bin.
"Take this," he said. "I'll get the planks."
I backed the thing up the steps, guided it into the dining alcove.
The snow shovel was heavy in my hands. The pressed metal head
was rusty with use. It occurred to me that it was like Murphy to
have a more difficult shovel. It was heavier than the plastic ones, but
also it wouldn't break. And that's what would draw Murphy - staying
power. I scooped some rubbish into the wheelbarrow and it was
like I was taking my insides out. These old tools would outlast their
owner and then what would become of them? A yard sale, and some
strange hands would tuck them into a nook of another garage. Like
all secondhand tools, they'd go unused until a grandchild, maybe
someone named Dave, took them out to play. In years, these tools
would be in Dave's garage. By then, there wouldn't be a soul to
remember Murphy, no one to tie him to these things.
I tell all of this now, because it's what I want to believe was in
my heart. I want to think I was already in mourning. But the truth
is, all of this came later. These thoughts came to me after the fact,
after Murphy was gone. What was really on my mind was how long
it was going to take to clear out the mess and how Murphy was
going to repair the damage he'd done. I was worried, but not so
much about Murphy, and I was thinking about how to get in touch
with Cathy. I told myself the treatments would work and that Cathy
would come home and that things would be like they once were.
Murphy set the planks and we wheeled the full bin down and
far out into the yard. Murphy had an idea where he wanted everything,
and I just followed orders. We cleared out the big stuff first.
Between runs, Murphy checked the rolls in the oven. We had
cleared the alcove of the larger sections of ceiling by the time the
cinnamon rolls were browned. Murphy painted the icing on with
smooth, deliberate strokes. I sipped beer. The kitchen was getting
cold except where the floodlight poured down and out in front of
the stove. Murphy switched off the oven and let the door down so
that the heat would spill out. He used a spatula to lift rolls onto
plates. We stood in front of the oven and began eating. Murphy was
pensive.
"So," I said. "Where is Cathy?"
"She's staying with Jonathan and Lori for a while," he said.
"That's just up the hill," I said, relieved somehow.
"It's better this way," Murphy said. "I don't want her having to
take care of me like some baby."
"You're doing fine," I said. "You can't even tell there's anything
wrong."
"I don't want to be pathetic," he said. "Around her or anyone."
"You're going to be OK," I said.
Murphy swung the refrigerator door open, reached in, and
pulled out a beer without looking. He dug into his pocket, retrieved
a knife. "There's no tenable treatment," he said. "It's inoperable."
He peeled the cap off and took a long swallow.
"I've got hope."
"I've got to piss," he said. "But I know better than to do it into
a stiff wind."
I scuffed another roll onto my plate. This was a conversation I'd
wanted to avoid. "You coming back to work?" I asked.
"I doubt it," he said. "I've got the time coming to me."
"What will you do with all that free time?"
"You know, CJ, you're supposed to be a buddy," he said. "You
should think before you open your mouth."
"I meant with no one here to talk to."

"Read," he said. "There are so many books out there."
"That's an odd thing to do with your time."
"Can you think of something better?" he said. "Everyone
should die knowing something. Having learned. I spent most of my
life working."
"I'd travel," I said.
"I've got a time bomb inside me," he said. "I don't want to
lounge in Key West. Drink for a few days at Sloppy Joe's and then,
one afternoon, slump over into a grand mal." Murphy lifted his beer
and took a long drink. "Can you do me a favor?"
"Sure."
"Stop talking," Murphy said. He scratched two rolls onto my
plate and two onto his. We ate the rest of the cinnamon rolls without
speaking; Murphy eating, looking out the window into the
dark, living inside his head.
This was as close as I wanted to come to a final conversation. I
didn't want any part of a Terms of Endearment scene. I hated those
kinds of movies, never believed in forking out money to get kicked
around like that. The truth is, I guess, I've got a tender heart. I cry
easily. So, I hide it. I try not to get coaxed. There's no need to be
one of those red-eyed viewers rushing for the bathroom when the
lights come up.
"OK," Murphy said, finally, taking the long last swallow of his
beer. "You shovel. I'll roll."
Murphy cleaned his hands on a towel. Bending, he picked up a
large section of gypsum and dropped it into the wheelbarrow. I took
the shovel in hand, began to scoop mounds of dust and paint and
plaster. Murphy was quick and precise, running the wheelbarrow
down the ramp and out into the yard. He came back and left a wet
stripe in the plaster dust. "It's getting damp out there," he declared.
"We need to move faster."
My shirt began to stick to my back, sweat burning in my eyes.
I dug into the wreckage, began to worry about the linoleum. Murphy
returned from the toolshed with another shovel. "Don't worry
about the flooring," he said. "It's coming up."
Murphy hustled like a teenager, scooping and running the bins
of trash out into the yard. We worked with a fury. The more Mur-
phy pushed, the more I followed his lead. When the large sections
of ceiling were gone, Murphy brought in a push broom and cornered
a knoll of garbage.
"You take care of that," he said, huffing. "I'll go to work on the
floor."
"This floor could take days," I said. I leaned on the broom, my
back tightening. I took the towel off the counter and dabbed my
forehead.
"I put it down," he said. "It's good hardwood underneath. No
glue. It's anchored by the stripping." He went to the pantry, pulled
out a toolbox. "Just wheel that out onto the pile."
I carefully ladled the last of the plaster. I set the empty Havana
Club bottle on the counter. Murphy dug at the metal stripping that
separated the den and the kitchen. He wedged it up, then pulled
along its perimeter. I watched for a moment, resting. He seemed to
be focused on something far off in the distance. The lip of the
linoleum curled as he tugged the metal back.
"Take a break," I suggested. I was winded, aching.
"I'm almost done," he said. He hammered a metal wedge at the
wooden molding beneath the cabinets. It lifted easily. "Get that out
of here," he said. "And come help me get this up."
"Yeah," I said. I lifted the wheelbarrow, rolled it out of the
kitchen, out into the cold night. My breath hung in the air in front
of me. I hefted the last binful of remains onto the pile. I stood for
a moment, still, leaning on the upturned wheelbarrow. The stars
were brilliant. I took the cold air into my lungs and felt a chill down
my back. Cathy would be horrified if she knew I was helping Murphy
do this. But the damage had been done before I ever arrived. I
was just seeing this through to the end. I ran the wheelbarrow back
through the grass and into the light of the kitchen. Murphy had all
of the molding pulled up and was rolling the linoleum. He had the
linoleum in the dining area gathered and was cutting across the
floor with a utility knife. The flooring sliced smoothly, with a minimum
of effort.
"Come take the other end," Murphy wheezed.
I kneeled, grasped the linoleum at the cut, and lifted. "You
make the turn," I said. Murphy was gentle, backing toward the

16
door. We worked together, as if we were pallbearers.
When we had everything on the pile, Murphy went to the toolshed.
He returned with a can of lawn mower gasoline. He poured
along the edge of the heap and then over the top. He dipped into
his shirt pocket. "Stand back," he said. He removed two matches
from the box. Carefully, he tucked one, tip outwards, back into the
box. He struck the other match, the flame jumping up, reflecting
his expression. He appeared grave, serious as he touched the flame
to the first match. Just before the entire box lit, Murphy tossed it
onto the pile, and after a fleeting uncertainty the entire heap erupted,
reaching skyward with the sound of a sheet being ruffled in the
air.
"Jesus," Murphy said, jumping back. Still, it seemed, he stood
dangerously close to the fire, lingering, as though he might let himself
burn.
"The fumes," I said loudly.
He nodded and we both backed from the fire. We stood in its
warmth for a long time without talking. Embers lifted up with the
wind and were carried for as far as I could see without going out.
"What's on your roof?" I asked.
"Cedar," he said.
"Let's hope the wind doesn't shift," I said.
"It's all the same to me," he said. He breathed out heavily and
I could see his words in the air. "It's all the same to me."
We stood with our faces to the warmth and our backs to the
chill. Sparks rose and smoke mingled between us and the stars. The
fire popped, the noise of burning hanging in the air. The taste of
soot was in my mouth.
"The stars are beautiful," I said, finally.
"They are," he said. "You know what you're looking at?"
"You mean what constellation?"
"You're looking at the past," he said. "The light you see left
those stars maybe a thousand years ago."
"I've heard that," I said.
"I like the company of the stars. More than people, I think."
"Why's that?"
"I don't feel so alone." Murphy was quiet. "You know how long
they gave me?"
"No," I said. "You never mentioned it."
"Fifteen months," he said. "Best case."
I thought about this for a while. "Do you believe in God?"
"Don't be stupid," he said, prayerfully. "If there's a God, then
it's an Old Testament God. I feel like I'm paying for someone else's
sin.
"So you don't think a person goes on?"
"No."
"You've got to have hope."
"Tell that to yourself when you're dying."
Murphy turned, headed back toward the house, watching his
steps in the damp grass. I waited, remained in the warmth of the fire
for a while longer. The bare, oak-lined kitchen was waiting, gutted.
Murphy would drag the table back to its place. He would be there,
sitting at the dinette table with an empty bottle of rum, his life passing
rapidly, as if aging more quickly than me.
*
I can still remember the box. It was there beside his chair, when
I mounted the front porch steps. The November sun hung coolly in
the air. The fallen leaves were dry on the ground. The collection of
Hemingway stories was in Murphy's lap. His eyes were closed, and
I thought he might be sleeping. Quickly, something else came to
mind.
"Murphy?" I said, afraid. "You sleeping?"
There was a long pause. "Thinking," he offered. "Afraid I was
dead?"
"For a moment," I said.
"We should be so lucky," he said. "I won't go that easily."
I opened the screen door, let it close behind me. "What's on
your mind?"
"Mercy killing," he said, flatly.
"What do you mean?"
"Margaret just killed Francis," he said.
"Margaret?" I said.
"Macomber," he said. "Francis, her husband, was humiliated by
Robert Wilson."

i8
"What are you talking about?"
"Francis was a coward. He gut shot a lion and then ran when
the lion charged from the tall grass. Wilson took the lion. Then
Margaret."
"You've been reading this?" I said, realizing what he was saying.
"That's part of it," he said. Murphy offered me an envelope and
I took it, pushing it into my jacket pocket.
"What's the other part?" I asked.
"Francis redeemed himself. Shot a Cape that was on him."
Murphy sat up in his chair. "But no one ever reclaims themselves
from cowardice."
"You're not a coward," I said, stupidly.
"You don't know what I'm like," he said, "while everyone
sleeps."
"So you think Margaret is right?"
"I think bravery is nothing but endurance," he said. "Lasting
through habitual crisis."
"She kills Francis?" I said. "That seems a brave gesture."
"Like an ostrich. The thing was," Murphy said. "He died
happy."
There was an awkward moment when neither of us said anything,
both of us reflecting, I suppose. "What's in the box?" I asked
finally.
"My ticket out of this place," he said. "Absinthe."
"Absinthe!" I repeated. "Where in the hell did you get
absinthe?"
"Prague," he said. He turned and looked down at the box.
It was not a square box, but rather a round tube, closed at each
end by a cap. I lifted it, "PAR AVION" printed on the side. It had
come from Praha 9, Czech Republic. Murphy had removed the
bubble wrap, and inside was a bottle of Hill's Absinthe, emerald
green.
"You're not going to drink this stuff?" I said.
"Not yet," he answered. "I don't have a drip spoon."
"This will kill you," I said. I held the bottle up to the light. The
color was soothing, magnificent. I wanted a drink myself.
"When the time comes," he said. Murphy stood, steadied him-
self with a cane. Slowly, he made it to the door. He turned. "But
thank you for your solicitude."
Murphy was unsteady on the steps. He'd written to me over the
course of a month, recounting what had begun to fail him. There
was a certain unexplained numbness in his extremities. His balance
was leaving him. Though his mind seemed sharp, he said it was as
if at times he lived in several alternate realities, simultaneously. He
floated, easily, between them. For the moment, he had no trouble
separating them. I held the door for Murphy, with my hand at his
back.
Murphy always knew the sky. I looked and there were no
hawks. I wanted to believe that his step was sure in the grass and
leaves, that nothing in that respect had changed. But, in fact, he was
slow and deliberate. Each foot forward drawing leaves, their crunching
rising unnaturally. I strolled beside him wanting to say something,
but nothing would come to mind.
His pigeons seemed to chortle. He unlatched the pen, gently
reached in, and grasped a bird. I expected them to fly. Instead, they
moved about on their perch. Murphy had delicate manners with the
bird, and he held it out for me to touch. With a finger, I caressed its
chest.
"You'll take care of these," he said. "They'll need a lot of attention."
"Yeah," I said. "But that's a long way down the road."
Murphy lifted his hand and the pigeon took to the air,
corkscrewed upward. He set all six birds to flight. We both watched
them fly, tumble downward in a graceless fluttering. Each time a
bird fell, I felt my stomach go out of me as if I were the one falling.
"These are good, strong birds," Murphy said. "They always pull
out."
"Murphy," I said. "Maybe they get it from you."
"Strong at the broken places," he mumbled.
"What's that?"
"Nothing," he said. "It's just something I read somewhere."
I nodded.
"Listen," he said. "I've got something I want to show you."
"What's that?"
i

20
"Plans for the kitchen," he said. He patted me on the back.
"Murphy's got a plan."
"Let's look," I said.
We both made the back steps and I swung the door wide for
him. The kitchen was still an oak cask, the rafters filled with cross
beams and the smell of time. In the dining alcove there were several
boxes and a large stack of drywall panels. I kneeled. "This is a jungle
gym," I said.
"Yeah," he said. "But it's geodesic."
"OK," I said. "It's a geodesic jungle gym."
"I got plans for the stars, CJ," he said, smiling. He slapped me
on the back. "I'm gonna weld that motherfucker together. I'm
gonna cut drywall pieces to fit underneath, then tape and bed and
paint. I'll have a dome!"
"What do you want a dome for?" I asked.
He pointed to the apex of the ceiling. Above the dining area
there were no cross beams, just the rising zenith. "I'm gonna hang
it from that rafter and project stars onto it. A home planetarium."
"A planetarium?"
"Is there an echo in here?" he said. "Yeah. A planetarium. I got
this star projector from Brookstones. I want the heavens, right
here."
"Murphy," I said. "You're in no condition for this. Welding.
Drywall. Tape and bedding. How the hell are you going to get the
dome up there?"
"Leverage," he said. "Don't take the wind out of this for me."
"I'm not," I said. "I just don't know if you should be working
that hard."
Murphy studied me for a moment. "The day I can't work anymore,"
he said, "is the day I'll hit that bottle."
Murphy didn't turn away. He stared. And it looked as if tears
welled at the corners of his eyes. "OK," I said. "OK. You want some
help at least?"
"I'm on my own," he said. "I want to do this."
"Will you call if you need help?" I said.
"I won't need any," he said.
We stood for a moment without talking.
"OK," I said. "I was just offering."
"I'll walk you to the car," he said.
The rolling pigeons were rising higher in the sky now, their gestures
making the outline of a spire. I slipped onto the seat and Murphy
closed the door. He bent. "I'll be fine," he said.
"I know," I said. "You didn't offer me a drink."
"Nothing in the house," he said.
"I'll pick up some things from the store."
"I don't need much," he said.
"I want to see to it that you get indoors," I said, pointing to the
house.
Murphy turned and slowly made his way inside. If I squinted,
I lost sight of the fact it was Murphy. It was just an old man, unable
to get around. A man just biding his time.
I dug into my jacket and pulled out the envelope he'd given me.
I tore it open. He'd written,
I've never seen Prague and probably never will and that makes me
sad.
I've not seen the stars in days and that makes me anxious.
I've seen some things that most never will.
I put the key in the ignition and started the car. I looked toward
the house and Murphy was sitting on the porch, his head ducked,
reading. It's one of the images I'll always have with me. I thought
about his plan all the way home.
•
I picked up fresh vegetables, potatoes, steaks, charcoal, and a
bottle of Famous Grouse. Murphy had asked for beer, so I picked
up a case. Darkness fell before four in the afternoon, and the Christmas
traffic was heavy. People were rushing to finish their shopping.
I was patient. I had time. I wanted to surprise Murphy with a good
meal.
Along the streets, away from the traffic, scattered houses glowed
with colored lights. The ground was bare, dry, and hard with freeze.
Murphy had hoped for snow, and I told him there was still a week
before Christmas. He'd said he knew. I'd learned not to take anything
for granted. I turned into the driveway and the front porch
was dark. It had gotten too cold to sit there and read. Inside, Mur-

22
phy had resorted to space heaters for the kitchen. I hoisted the groceries,
leaving the beer, for now, to stay cold in the trunk.
Murphy met me at the door. "CJ," he said. "You didn't need to
bring all this."
"You don't even know what I've got," I said.
"I just needed the beer," he said.
"Life's more than just needs," I said. I patted him on his back.
"Let's move to the counter."
"I'll catch up," he said.
I maneuvered around him, set the bag on tlie counter. Murphy
was using a walker. He made two steps, lifted the metal frame, and
let it fall ahead of him. He had been lucky so far, according to the
doctors. He had kept much of his ability. He could talk and think
clearly, though at times he was slow. For me, it was excruciating.
There were no more envelopes or books. He did not talk of characters
as if they were neighbors. What I'd known of Murphy was gone.
Other than his birds, there was nothing left for him to attend to.
The bottle of absinthe, untouched, was on the counter. I let it go.
"What did you bring?" Murphy asked.
"I got some Famous Grouse," I said. "Would you like a pour?"
"Just a finger," he said. "My three-finger days are gone."
"I brought steaks to cook out."
"Neighbors have my grill," he said, working his way up beside
me.
"Why's that?" I reached for two glasses in the overhead cupboard.
"I didn't think I'd need it."
"We'll figure something out," I said. I poured two small scotches.
I put a glass down in front of him. "I've got potatoes and vegetables."
"Enough for three?"
"Three?"
"I asked Cathy," he said, letting the sound of her name fall like
a stone.
I turned, looked at him. "That's great," I said. "Let's toast." I
lifted my glass. Murphy took his. "To Cathy," I said.
"To Cathy," he said, raising his glass to touch mine.
We each took a sip and held it in our mouths for an instant.
Murphy swallowed. "I've got something to show you."
"What's that?"
"Look up!"
"Christ," I said. In the dining area was a perfectly white dome.
Below, something was covered in a sheet. "You did it!" I walked over
to take a closer look. "How'd you get that up there?"
"Sunk some heavy duty eyebolts into the rafter," he said. "Used
one as a pulley. Ran a rope through it. Hooked up the dome."
"Jesus," I said. "How'd you keep it aloft? I mean when you let
go of the rope? You had to go up there and maneuver it to hook it
up?
"Tied it around the refrigerator," he said. "Leverage." He
smiled.
I laughed. "So what's under the sheet?"
"The projector," he said. "I had to build a platform."
I laughed again. "You're something, Murphy."
"Pour me another finger," he said.
I splashed scotch into both our glasses. "Those heaters do the
trick," I said.
"It's temperate," he said, taking his drink in one mouthful.
"Turn them off, will you?"
I kneeled and fingered the switch. "When's Cathy going to be
here?"
"After a while," he said. "Let's get some fresh air."
"You up for it?"
"Yeah," he said. He pointed to the trash can. "Tie up that sack
and meet me at the steps."
Murphy scuffed across the floor. I knotted the trash and lifted
it out of the can. I paused, finished my drink. Murphy braced himself
with the door frame and I stood in front of him. He leaned into
me.
"How do you do this on your own?"
"The same way I do everything," he said.
He walked with me to the trash can at the side of the house.
The night sky was mottled with clouds and the smell of snow was
on the air. Together we mingled out into the yard, beneath the dry,

are bones of a chestnut. The leaves crumbled under our feet. I tried
to forget Murphy's condition. I imagined it was just another stroll,
like any other, which we often took in each of the changing seasons.
Murphy was keen on weather; he was in tune with all that surrounded
him. The illusion I tried to keep for myself, of course, was
transparent. Murphy had to work hard to gather each step. He
wheezed, and I could see the breath leaving him. Each puff a cloud,
and then nothing.
I tried not to accommodate him, wanted to be just like I was
before he took sick. I needed him to ask for help, though I understood
he wouldn't. Finally, he paused, looked skyward.
"Will it snow?" he asked, breathing heavily.
"Eventually," I said.
"I'd like to see one last snowfall," he said.
"You'll see plenty."
"You just can't talk about it," he said. "People don't talk about
the dying enough. They try to avoid mentioning the dead to loved
ones. 'Oh,' people say, 'be careful not to mention so and so. She's
still in mourning over him.'"
"What do you want me to say?" I asked. "Do I think you'll live
to see it snow? Maybe. Maybe you will."
"That's a start," he said.
We walked on a little further, out over the frozen dirt where
Murphy had had vegetables and flowers only six months before. He
had difficulty managing the walker. I looped my arm through his.
Murphy nodded. "Thanks," he said.
"Are you giving up?"
Murphy looked at me, surprised. The question had come from
somewhere else, from a part of me that I had been guarding for a
very long time. Murphy halted. He turned in his walker, looked
back toward the house, then faced me. "Yes," he said, finally. He
began walking back toward the house, as if what he'd agreed to was
something as simple as, "Would you like ice in your drink?"
Once out of the garden, I let his arm go. I thought he'd want to
make this trip on his own. A cold breeze picked up. Both Murphy
and I were mute. We walked this last walk alone, together.
Cathy's car pulled into the driveway, and she met us at the back
porch steps. "You're getting along so well," she said to Murphy, with
a china smile that was flawed in that minute way.
"A regular Charles Johnson," he said.
"Let me help you," I offered to Murphy.
"I can do it," he said. He braced himself on the door frame,
took each step one at a time. When he mounted the top step he
said, "Give me that damn thing."
I placed his walker in front of him. Murphy's back was to us,
and I turned to see Cathy, tears streaming down her face. I put my
arm around her, held her close. She dried her face on her jacket
sleeve, and we all went inside together.
*
We had each had an absinthe, our drip spoons beside our glasses.
As we'd added water, our drinks had turned from milky green to
opalescent. A smooth narrowness came to my vision. The stars were
crisp on the ceiling. I felt strangely euphoric about Murphy's dying,
as though, now, it made sense. The absinthe was a serene thing, and
I think we all felt this gentle passage. Strong or not, we all knew, the
world destroys us without mercy.
"The stars are perfect," Cathy said.
I turned to her. "Murphy's idea," I said. "Pretty good."
There was a long pause, a vacancy. "It's just a shell," Murphy
said, dolefully. "It's paper roses."
"Paper roses," I said, "last longer than the real thing."
"But they smell of glue," he said.
"Sometimes, Murph," Cathy said, "you have to settle for what
lasts."
"Nothing lasts," he said. "Everything just evaporates - desiccates."
"No," Cathy said. "It's like hunger. Some things just come
back, stay."
We were all motionless for a while. Murphy leaned forward,
stirred the last of his absinthe with the slotted spoon. He drank the
last of it down.
I gazed at Murphy. "I've got a powerful hunger," I said. "Speaking
of things that last."
"It's like an aperitif," Murphy said, looking at his empty glass.

26
He paused. "Let's cook!" He stood, steadied himself with the edge
of the table.
"I'll get the oven," Cathy said.
"We need a grill," I said. "Which neighbors have it?"
"Across the driveway," he said.
"Keep your place," I said. "I'll help you in a minute." I walked
to the window and looked. "No one is home over there."
"I've an idea," he said. "CJ. Put the oven on for the potatoes.
Give Cathy one of the oven racks."
I turned the dial to 450, pulled a rack out, and handed it to
Cathy. Murphy headed for the door. "Where're you going?" I asked.
"Wash the steaks and bring them out," he said.
Murphy and Cathy went out the door together. Slowly, I
scrubbed the potatoes and put them in to cook. I knew Murphy and
Cathy needed time alone. I ran the cold meat under the faucet, laid
it out on a nice platter. I salted each piece, dashed out some fresh
ground pepper. I left them on the counter. I stood at the door with
my hand on the knob, motionless, waiting. The absinthe had taken
away my sense of time. I tried to conjure Murphy's face. Finally, I
gave up hope that remembering would ever fill the hollowness,
would ever be the same as seeing. I buried this thought, opened the
door.
Outside, in the side yard, Murphy had turned the lid of a metal
trash can upside down and stuffed it downward into the barrel. He'd
poured the coals into the bowl of the cover, set them aflame, and
settled the oven rack on top.
"You're a fucking genius," I said to Murphy.
He smiled. "Give the coals a while to heat," he said.
Cathy put her arm around Murphy, and we walked together
back out under the chestnut. We stood, looking up for the clouds
that had now abandoned us completely. There was an inky blackness
out over the yard. Above, the sky glittered.
"No snow," Murphy said.
"No," I agreed.
The absinthe tightened on me and somehow I felt we had all
gone weightless, as if we were just floating among the flickering
points of light. I thought of the box the absinthe had come in. Even
now I think of it, and how, in the end, it was larger than the one
that contained Murphy's ashes.
"It's such a beautiful night," I said, the cold having given way
to the alcohol.
"Isn't it?" Cathy said.
Just then, I heard a muffled noise, the sound of a pillow being
fluffed. I thought of Murphy, but he was there with us. We all
turned toward the house, toward the sound. As though a shotgun
blast filled the space between us, I felt the concussion. The lid of the
trash can rose, in an instant, as high as the roof, flaming coals reaching
even higher into the limbs of the chestnut. Shards of fire drifted
in the air, high up above us, and met with the stars. I felt as
though we were liquefying, merging into the center of the universe.
Fire burned in places, at the tips of tree limbs. Coals came down on
the cedar roof, burned a pale white; others drifted down and lit the
dry grass.
All that had been raised, lifted on the hot air, seemed to take the
longest time to settle. In the trees, in the grass, on the roof of the
house, asterisks of fire flickered like stars. Murphy lumbered forward,
toward the house. Cathy and I could only watch, stunned,
under the air of the absinthe. Murphy moved slowly, far out into the
grass and into the darkness and the fire. It seemed as if he walked
among the stars.

28
—DAVID WAGONER
That Hunter
That Bella Coola hunter had followed and found
Every kind of creature in the mountains,
In the woods, and along rivers
And had killed them, had praised them
Over their still warm bodies, and thanked them
For dying, for becoming carcasses
He carried back to the fire-pit
Where he would sit and eat them and listen
As his wife and children thanked him
By mumbling and humming
To themselves and swallowing and becoming
Part of what was his. He would tell them
(Through a mask of firelight) how he had seen
And known the breath of Mountain Goat
White on the mountainside, how the breath
Of Black Bear had been black at the cave's mouth,
How the breath of Grizzly Bear against the sky
Had been a rainbow, and he smiled
Inside himself without moving his lips
And ate the most tender flesh of the inner thighs
Of Snow-That-Does-Not-Fall, the strong, melting
Tongue of Crooked Foot, and even the many-colored
Brittle splinters behind the eyes of He-Is-
Coming-Toward-You, and he became
A great hunter, and one morning he hunted
Along the ice and through the forest
And along the riverbank to the end where its mouth
Opened and saw nothing but the blood-colored smoke
Of Bax-bakwa-lanux-siwe—He-Eats-
What-Cannot-Be-Eaten—and tracked him down
And killed him and ate his heart, but suddenly saw him
Leap away and around on all four winds
As sand-fleas, clouds of mosquitoes, and horseflies.

—JOHN MCNALLY
Men Who Love Women Who Love
Men Who Kill
Shortly after the switch was pulled, Thomas Roubideaux's leg
started to smoke. That, at least, was what the witnesses had
claimed. The electric chair hadn't been used in thirty-four years, so
no one knew quite what to expect, but nobody expected a man's leg
to start smoking.
During the week before the state killed Roubideaux, the local
news featured several segments on the chair itself: how it worked,
who built it, what needed to be done to make sure that it was in
working order before the execution on June the third at 12:01 a.m.
Channel Two even profiled the man who cleaned the chair's various
metal attachments and mopped the floor in preparation.
That was one year ago. The next execution - the second one
since the death penalty has been reinstated - is tonight, and Brandon
Dawson is choosing an engagement ring for Sheila Resnick, the
woman he loves.
"This is our estate jewelry," the salesman says. "All of these
have had previous owners, but if you're looking for something
unique, a one-of-a-kind, I'd definitely go with one of these here
rather than something new. Would the bride-to-be like one of our
Art Decos?" He motions to the center row of ring displays.
Brandon, however, is distracted by a display of gaudy men's
rings with stones as large as jawbreakers. "Let's take a look at that
one," he says and points to a ring that is loud and pointy, the sort
of ring a street-fighter calls a cutter. When the salesman hands it
over, Brandon lifts it up to the light, turning it one way and then
the other. The ring is unlike anything Brandon owns. "I like it,"
he says. "Looks like something Elvis might have worn." When
Brandon slips it on, snug against his flesh, he thinks again of the
restraint that held Thomas Roubideaux's ankle in place, twists of
smoke rising from the man's shaved calf. What he'll never forget are
the witnesses, how weak and glassy-eyed they had looked when they
spoke to the press afterward.
Brandon stood outside the penitentiary that night, holding up
a sign that read Americans Against the Death Penalty, but he had
positioned the sign in such a way that it hid his face from the TV
cameras. Despite what the sign said, Brandon wasn't the least bit
bothered that the state was executing a man. They could hang the
guy, shoot him, poison him. They could fry him or burn him at a
stake. They could throw away the key, feed him or not feed him,
use him as a guinea pig for science - Brandon could care less, so
long as the man was never set free. The way he saw it, Thomas
Roubideaux should have done his research. He should have paid
attention to details. Some states kill you for the crimes you commit;
some don't. You don't want to risk getting executed, you take
your business to another state. In the end Brandon couldn't muster
much sympathy for a man who failed to understand the nature of
cause and effect.
There he stood, protest sign raised, surrounded by solemn men
and women holding lit candles in their cupped palms. When the
others in his group bowed their heads, he bowed his. Within
earshot were the rednecks and frat boys who, in a rare moment of
solidarity, were roasting a pig on a spit and preparing to light an
arsenal of fireworks.
Brandon leaned into Sheila and whispered, "Want some more
coffee?" but before she could answer, the lights of the penitentiary
dimmed and several dozen Roman Candles shot from the parking
lot, arcing overhead. Within the hour, Brandon had learned about
the smoking leg.
Now, at the jewelry store, Brandon holds his hand away from
his body. He frowns and nods, squinting at the ring. "Double
down," he says and laughs.
"A gambling man," the salesman says.

"No, no," Brandon says, "not really. But I'm trying to get into
the spirit."
"Good for you!" the salesman says. "Nothing wrong with the
gambling spirit. It's the gambling that'll get you in trouble."
Brandon says, "I'll take the ring. Mind if I wear it out of here?"
"Not a problem," the salesman says. "All I need is that tag."
The salesman pulls a pair of precision scissors from his shirt pocket,
gently takes hold of the tag on the ring, and snips it free. He
holds the minuscule tag close to his eye and says, "Two thousand
four hundred for the Elvis ring." He looks up at Brandon and grins.
"Still interested in one for the lucky lady?"
Brandon's palms moisten at the thought of his now-depleted
bank account, but he forces a smile and says, "You betcha."
Upon pulling into the parking lot of Superior Lobster, a
seafood distributor where he is head of accounting, Brandon is
nearly sideswiped by a red Chevy Nova, the same Chevy Nova that
nearly sideswipes him every day. He cannot see the driver through
the smoky windows, but the car has become emblematic of a certain
type of asshole, and whenever Brandon happens to see a red
Nova, any red Nova, his heart quickens and he starts clenching his
fists. Today, he honks his horn a few times, rolls down his window,
and flips the driver the bird. The Nova hesitates longer than usual,
engine revving melodramatically, and Brandon instantly regrets his
spontaneous outburst. He's not prepared to fight. The only
weapon he owns is pepper spray, which he has carried with him ever
since getting mugged a year ago. The Nova's engine revs a few more
times before the driver jerks the car into gear, leaving behind a trail
of snake-like skidmarks and the stench of burnt rubber. The threat
of violence is gone and Brandon sighs.
It's funny, really, how the mere sight of a particular make and
model of car can actually alter the body's physiology. This had happened
to him in high school, too, after his first real girlfriend
dumped him. She drove an orange Volkswagen Beetle, and every
time he saw one zipping by, he felt like weeping. Even now, twenty
years later, the sight of one of those silly, squatty cars will cause
him to spiral into melancholy, and he'll realize that his breathing has
accelerated.
Brandon doesn't want to leave Sheila's ring in the car, so he
pockets the box. His own ring is blinding in the sunlight. He likes
the ring, but it's possible he went a little too far this time. Suddenly,
he's self-consconsious about wearing it. It's like coming back to
work after a long vacation with a new mustache or a toupee. People
get used to seeing you a certain way, and anything new ends up
seeming like a costume or, worse, a disguise.
Maria Mariani, the owner's oldest daughter, greets Brandon
when he steps inside the lobby of Superior Lobster. "You look in a
good mood," she says.
"Do I?" he asks. He doesn't want to tell her about the engagement
ring. For the past three years, her father, Salvatore, has tried
talking Brandon into taking Maria out for a date, but Brandon feels
no pulse of desire for this woman. It's a touchy issue, refusing the
boss's request to date his daughter, and it's for this very reason that
Brandon avoids meeting with Salvatore alone. It's hard enough
working for a man who insinuates mob connections and has a hairtrigger
temper; dating his daughter would lead only to disaster, the
end result of which could very well be Brandon lying unconscious
in a Dumpster, rotted seafood heaped atop him.
"You're late," Maria says. "I guess we'll have to dock your pay."
She's joking, of course, but her jokes tend to put Brandon in his
place in terms of the company hierarchy. While Maria is only a secretary,
she is the boss's daughter and will one day run the business.
In a stage whisper, she adds, "I was late, too, so I guess I can let you
slide." She winks.
Brandon smiles and starts to walk away when Maria stops him.
"Whoa, wait just a minute," she says. "Let me see that ring of
yours."
"Huh? Oh, this," he says, and he holds his hand out for her.
She grabs onto a few fingers and starts twisting his hand from side
to side.
"Is it new?" she asks.
"Yep," he says. "I mean, it's not a new ring — it's used — but I
just bought it."
"It's beautiful," she says. She drops his hand and looks up at

34
him as if really seeing him, his true nature, for the first time.
"Well, thanks," he says, heading for his office. He turns back
one last time and says, "I appreciate it." And he does. He feels, if
only for the moment, less self-conscious.
His days at Superior Lobster are filled with numbers and equations.
He spends most of his time hunched over his desk, either
penciling in figures or punching buttons on his calculator. Part of
his job is being watchdog, making sure that no one is skimming
from the company. He'll occasionally hear about someone using
the company gas pump for their own vehicle, and he'll have to let
them go. The ones he really needs to watch are the guys in shipping
and receiving. They're always smuggling lobsters out at night. They
have somehow justified to themselves that because they spend their
days dealing with the lobsters, they are entitled to take one home
every now and then. They'll put lobsters into their tool boxes or
inside duffel bags, or they'll tuck one inside their down-filled jackets
before clocking out. Brandon knows that these men don't like
him - he has more education than any of them, and he makes more
money than they ever will — but being disliked doesn't particularly
bother him. What bothers him is that he occasionally slips and tells
them something about his own life, and this puts him in a vulnerable
position. They know, for instance, that he has spent the past few
years wooing a woman who is in love with a man on death row, and
they know that this man, Ridgley Brown, is going to be executed
tonight.
"We'll do something special to celebrate," one of them told him
earlier in the week.
"Well, now," Brandon said, "an execution isn't really anything
to celebrate."
"What? Are you friggin' crazy? Of course it is. Once they cook
this guy, she's all yours, pal. Am I right? That's what you've wanted
all along, ain't it?"
It was what he wanted, but he hated that one of his own
employees saw his motives so clearly. And sure enough, the warehouse
supervisor pokes his head into Brandon's office at noon and
says, "We've got a little surprise for you, Chief."
Inside the warehouse — a room with several stainless-steel walkin
coolers, each one the size of a bank vault - the men of shippingand-receiving
huddle around a portable Coleman camping stove
with a pot of boiling water on top, while Salvatore Mariani, owner
of Superior Lobster, holds a thirty-pound Maine rock lobster bellyup
for everyone to see. Wrapped around the lobster is a thick piece
of masking tape, and written across the tape in Magic Marker is
Ridgley Brown's nickname: THE HAMMER.
Salvatore says, "Any last words, Ridgley?" He shakes the lobster
from side to side as if the lobster is saying, Nope, no last words.
"Well, then, looks like it's time you paid for your crimes, son."
Just as Salvatore drops the prehistoric creature into the galvanized
tub, someone nudges Brandon from behind and whispers into
his ear, "Good luck tonight." Before he can turn and see who it is,
everyone begins cheering and hooting.
Salvatore shakes hands all around and winks at people he can't
physically reach, then says, "Now get the hell back to work. The
execution's over. The son of a bitch is dead."
The crowd breaks apart, heading for the freezers or the loading
dock, but Brandon lingers a bit too long, hearing what sounds at
first like a fan above his head, clicking with each rotation, but what
turns out to be the lobster cooking at too low of a temperature, tapping
the side of the tub with one of its claws. It's knocking lightly,
like a man who's drunk and locked out of his own house but hopeful
that someone will open the door and let him inside.
Brandon turns the flame all the way up, but he can't bring himself
to watch the lobster cook. He waits for the tapping to stop,
turning the flame off only after the lobster has been boiled to death.
*
The men at shipping-and-receiving remind him of the men his
father used to pal around with. His father drove a semi for a living,
and his buddies were a handful of other truckers he'd gotten to
know at various loading docks. When Brandon was seven, his
father took him hunting with some of these men, and though Brandon
didn't want to go, he wasn't in any position to argue. On their
way out the door, his mother whispered into Brandon's ear, "Don't
turn into them."
35

"Into what?" he asked.
"Men who like to kill."
Brandon owned a Daisy BB air gun, the kind that looked like
a miniature rifle, and he kept a box of BBs in his left pocket. With
the weight against his thigh, the sag of his pocket, the faint whisper
of rolling silver balls, it was impossible to forget his purpose for
being there, and for the first few hours he, too, felt like one of the
men, like a hunter himself, even though all that he had shot were
pieces of tin and tree bark, all at close range.
At lunchtime, while the men sat around unpeeling Saranwrapped
sandwiches and popping open beers that had been resting
in the lake itself, Brandon made the mistake of asking his father
where the bathroom was. Though he had whispered the question,
an obvious indication that his words were meant to remain private,
his father laughed and shook his head, then repeated the question
for all his buddies to hear. The men roared.
"Hey, this ain't the Howard Johnson's," one of the men said.
Brandon had liked Howard Johnson's — the orange and aqua buildings
that occasionally dotted their roadtrips, the same colors as the
Miami Dolphins, his fathers favorite team. There was something
exotic about seeing a Howard Johnson's under the gray skies of the
plains, a touch of the tropics in the Midwest.
His father said, "We're standing in the worlds largest bathroom,
son."
Brandon looked around. He couldn't fathom what his father
meant. Then his father stood, unzipped his pants, and pissed on a
tree. It was the most startling thing he'd ever seen his father do.
Another man said, "Mind if I join you?" and he pissed on the same
tree. One by one, the men pissed for Brandons benefit, and after
they had finished, they nudged Brandon. "Your turn," they said.
"Go on. It's only us."
But Brandon couldn't. It wasn't so much that he didn't want to;
it was a physical impossibility. The few times he'd been in public
restrooms and someone else walked in, Brandon had felt as though
a switch inside his head had been flipped, shutting off his ability to
pee.
His father said, "For chrissakes, Brandon. We're not going to
drive you back to town every time you need to take a leak."
Brandon shook his head. He didn't see the point of unzipping
his pants and trying - not in front of all his father's friends, at least.
"I can't," he said.
One of the men snorted. "You got a modest one on your hands
there, Charlie."
"Modest, my ass," his father said. "Sooner or later he's going to
have to piss, and that'll be the end of modesty."
Three days later, Brandon was taken to the hospital for a bladder
infection. His mother, furious at the men, waited in the hall.
The nurse said, "This will sting a little, honey, but you'll feel better
real soon." She was younger than his mother and her hair smelled
like the lilac bush outside his bedroom window. She pinched the
scruff of Brandon's penis, lifted it, and slowly snaked the tube up
through the blazing tunnel of his urethra. Brandon tried squirming
to the head of the bed, but as soon as the urine began to syphon out
of him, the pain in his bladder started to vanish, and Brandon,
teary-eyed, looked up at the nurse and told her that he loved her.
*
One night, thirty years later, Brandon awoke on a sidewalk,
squinting up at the face of another nurse - Sheila Resnick. She was
on her way to work at the hospital, three blocks away, when she
found him on the ground.
"What happened?" she asked. "Did you fall?"
"I got mugged," he said.
"Oh, no." Sheila crouched and looked closely into Brandon's
eyes. She was about Brandon's age, and she had a nearly imperceptible
scar along her frown line. The scar disappeared each time she
turned her mouth down, making Brandon want to reach up and
touch it, but he restrained himself.
"He jumped out from die alley here," Brandon explained, "and
then popped me on the head with a brick or something."
"Your head's bleeding," Sheila said. "And your chin needs
stitches."
"My chin?"
Brandon looked down and saw that his new Polo shirt was
streaked with blood. Fresh drops fell from his chin, hit the fabric,

and bloomed. He reached for his grocery sack, but the half-gallon
of milk had exploded upon impact. The crown of his head pulsed
from where he'd been clubbed. "All he had to do was ask," Brandon
said, "and I'd've given him the damn wallet." As soon as he
stood, he started to sway.
"Easy, easy," Sheila said. "Here, put your arm around me."
At the hospital, Sheila led Brandon to a partitioned rectangle of
space. She had him hold a dry-ice pack to his head while she
scrubbed the grit out of his open chin with what felt like a Brillo
pad. To divert Brandon's attention, to reel him back to the here and
now, Sheila began talking at length about the series of Planet of the
Apes movies, and how for the past four nights after work she'd gone
home and watched them on the "Late, Late Show" on channel 6.
"Tonight's the last one," Sheila said. " Conquer the Planet of the
Apes. Have you seen it? No? Well, I can't seem to figure out the
chronology of the whole series. The first one was pretty straightforward.
Astronauts go into space, they accidentally get caught in
some kind of time-warp, and then they end up years later back on
Earth when apes rule the planet. But in Escape from Planet of the
Apes, two chimps from the first movie travel back to the present,
and I guess it's supposed to explain how the planet ended up with
talking apes in the first place, but it doesn't make sense. You know,
logically. It's some sort of weird logic after the fact, if you know
what I mean."
Oddly enough, Brandon did know what she meant. An
accountant's life was ruled by nothing if not logic and order. The
more Sheila spoke, the less Brandon fixated on his pain. He couldn't
stop watching her. Periodically, he removed the dry-ice and
touched the top of his head. The lump was starting to feel like a
soft belly after a large meal.
An old doctor wearing bifocals appeared through the drawn
curtains, reading a chart. Without looking up, he said, "Okay, who
in here wants me to sew his chin back on?" Brandon was going to
answer, but Sheila placed her hand on his shoulder, gave it a
squeeze, and began telling the doctor Brandon's story.
Four days later, Brandon called Sheila at work and asked her to
lunch, and the next day they were sitting together in the hospital
cafeteria, garish orange trays with plates of inedible food resting
between them. Sheila was in her own world, though, and it was
obvious that she wasn't listening to a word Brandon said. Her body
was there, but her mind was somewhere far away. Brandon saw it
in her eyes, two bottomless wells.
In the lobby, just as he was getting ready to bolt from the hospital,
she asked if he could give her a ride. Brandon didn't see the
point of dragging on their visit, but what could he say? He
shrugged. "Yeah; sure," he said.
Her directions led him to the front gates of the state penitentiary.
She didn't offer an explanation and he didn't ask. She opened
the car door slowly and watched her own feet hit the ground, careful
of her footing. Over the next few days, Brandon couldn't shake
loose the image of Sheila walking to the prison gate and waiting to
be let inside. He wanted to know more, so he called her at the hospital.
"Do you want to talk?" he asked.
"Actually, I could use another ride," she said. "Would you do
that for me?"
It was on that second ride to the penitentiary when Sheila told
Brandon the story of Ridgley Brown, how he had shown up at the
emergency room one night ten years ago in need of twelve stitches
along the brow of his right eye, and how he had told her these
incredible stories about the time he had hitchhiked across the country,
sleeping under overpasses and waking up shrouded in fog, or
how he had caught fish in a Colorado stream using a handmade
spear, or how he had filled a diary with the names of all the different
kinds of birds he'd seen.
After the doctor had stitched his brow, Ridgley and Sheila
walked to a diner for coffee, where Sheila told him about her life.
She was twenty-three years old, and the only interesting thing that
she could think to tell him was that her past two boyfriends had
stalked her after she'd broken up with them, and that she was forced
to get restraining orders against them. "What are the odds?" she
had asked Ridgley. "Two stalkers in a row!"
Early the next morning, Ridgley Brown was arrested at the Sunshine
Laundromat for rape and attempted murder. The victim had

gotten away and given a physical description that was consistent
with a police sketch of a local serial rapist who killed his victims
with a hammer.
"He was doing his laundry," Sheila said. "And he was with me
shortly before the time that he supposedly raped this woman, and
we were talking about fishing. We were having coffee. There is
absolutely no way that Ridgley Brown committed these crimes.
Would someone who'd brutally raped and then tried murdering a
woman be doing his laundry the next morning? Calmly doing his
laundry, I should add. I don't think so."
"Wait a sec," Brandon said. "You're not talking about the guy
they call The Hammer, are you? The guy on death row? That Ridgley
Brown?"
"I hate that name," Sheila said. "Don't call him that."
"But that's how he killed those women, right? He raped them
and then he beat them to death with a hammer."
Sheila said, "They've got the wrong man."
"You're kidding, I hope. I mean, you're lucky to be alive. You
had coffee with this guy?"
Sheila said, "I had coffee with you, too."
"True. But my name's not The Hammer."
"His name's not The Hammer. Do you think he gave that
name to himself?" Then she told him about the poetry he had written,
and how some of it had been published in a small but prestigious
journal.
"He writes poetry?" Brandon said. "You ask me, that's reason
enough alone to kill the guy!" He laughed. He was trying to lighten
the mood, but Sheila was staring straight ahead now, flexing the
muscles in her jaw. "Hey, look," Brandon said. "It wasn't just this
one woman, the woman who got away. It was several women, and
those women didn't get away. And they have DNA evidence."
"Have you ever been to a medical laboratory?" Sheila asked.
"Well, I have and I can tell you that they don't know what they're
doing most of the time. They're overworked and they're always
mixing up samples, and the place is filthy and people are always
coming and going, including janitors. Evidence gets tainted all the
time."
"Oh!" Brandon said. "So what you're saying is that they mixed
up Riley's blood sample with the real killer's blood sample, which
just so happened to be in the lab? Is that what you're saying?"
"No," Sheila said. "You're not listening to me. What I'm saying
is, how can you trust the accuracy of the results? You can't."
"Okay, okay," Brandon said. "All right. But let me ask you this.
Why are you still involved with this guy? I mean, he's got lawyers.
He's got a family. I'm assuming he's got other friends. What sort of
a hook does he have into you?"
"Hook?" Sheila said. "I'm trying to save his life."
"Okay. All right. But why?"
"Why? You want to know why? Because we're engaged to be
married. That's why."
Brandon ran a stoplight. Fortunately, there weren't any other
cars in sight. "Shit," he said. "I mean, holy shit." And then he was
silent. If what she had said was meant to shut him up, it worked.
He dropped her off at the penitentiary without so much as saying
good-bye.
For two weeks, Brandon didn't call Sheila, but the longer he
waited, the more intrigued he became. Here was a woman, after all,
whose two previous boyfriends had been stalkers. Brandon believed
that certain people had magnetic qualities, and that there had to be
something about Sheila herself, some intrinsic quality, that had
attracted these men. And then there was her own devotion to this
guy on death row. He didn't buy any of her theories — of course
Ridgley Brown had killed these women - but one couldn't help
being intrigued by Sheila's unwavering commitment to this man.
Brandon wasn't able to put his finger on why exactly, but her blind
devotion made Sheila more vulnerable, and there was something,
well, sexy about vulnerability. How many people possessed the ability
to overlook, against their better judgment, pure evil? And wasn't
vulnerability and naivete just as worthy of being a turn-on as, say,
perfume or fishnet stockings? Worthier, Brandon believed, because
it wasn't something you could simply spray onto yourself or slip
into. It was deeply rooted. It was who Sheila really and truly was.
At the end of those two weeks, he called her to say that he was
sorry. "Do you play pool?" he asked.

"I'm not any good," Sheila said. "I'd embarrass you."
"Well, then, I'll teach you. And I want to hear more about Ridgley
Brown. You brought up some good points and I was unfair.
I'm sorry."
And so they fell into a routine: Brandon taught her how to play
pool, and Sheila enlightened Brandon on the corruption of the
prison system.
"Did you know," she said, "that if you're black, you're far more
likely to get the death penalty than if you're white?"
"Really!" Brandon said.
As an accountant, Brandon was interested in statistics and the
statistical methods used to reach certain conclusions. Sheila's arguments,
usually delivered in the form of broad statements, were often
based on an explosive combination of vague sources and raw emotion.
There were times her hands actually shook when she read
some of the injustices aloud. Brandon wanted to say, Now, let's take
a look at the numbers here, or Now, where did these figures come
from? but he knew that these sorts of statements would run counter
to his ultimate goal.
Brandon showed Sheila how to do bank shots, how to slice a
ball into the corner pocket, how to break without scratching. After
a few beers, he showed her a few trick shots.
"Here's a little something Minnesota Fats used to do."
"Were you always good at pool?" she asked.
"I was good at math. I was good at Geometry. Pool is really
nothing more than Geometry plus coordination, and I've got pretty
good coordination. Back when I played every day, I could almost
always run the table. After the break, I'd look at the table and I
could see all the shots, every last one. It was pretty amazing. I'd feel
almost, I don't know, prescient."
"Did you play for money?"
"Money? I wouldn't even play for a beer. No matter how good
you are, there's always someone better. I couldn't do it. I don't have
a gambler's constitution. I'd choke." He reached up to touch her
scar, but she flinched and leaned back. "How'd you get it?" he
asked.
"Oh, my father," she said, "but it's a long story." Brandon
expected her to tell him the story, but she didn't. She dug through
her backpack instead, finding some pamphlets about executions
that had gone awry. "You should read these."
"Absolutely," Brandon said.
At home, Brandon poured over the literature. There were several
electrocutions that had taken more than one jolt, causing flesh
to burn and sizzle, a body part to catch fire, smoke filling the room,
the prisoner all the while still alive, tortured. There were prisoners
who desperately gasped for air in gas chamber executions that had
failed. There were numerous lethal injections in which doctors
couldn't find suitable veins and had to prod the prisoner's body for
nearly an hour. Syringes full of deadly chemicals occasionally
popped out of arms. There were drunk executioners. There was
faulty wiring. During John Wayne Gacy's execution, the lethal
chemicals unexpectedly clogged the IV tube, prompting officials to
draw the curtains between Gacy and the witnesses. In such
instances, prisoners would spasm and gasp for air. A few times, the
prisoner, while in excruciating pain, made a second, impromptu
statement to the people watching.
Brandon understood the need for a better system, but with each
report he couldn't stop thinking of the murderers' victims, and how
surprise must have quickly dissolved to make room for terror once
they realized that the stranger before them was here to cause them
harm. And what did they have to endure — what sort of pain and
humiliation and fear - before they were granted the peace of death,
ending the torture these men had caused? Sheila was in love with a
man who'd hide inside of a woman's apartment and wait for the
door to unlock, the light to come on. According to the autopsies,
he'd knock the woman unconscious with a hammer, rape her, and
then kill her with the hammer's claw. What luxuries should we
afford this man for his own death? What pain shall we spare him?
Two months into the pool-playing lessons, Sheila took Brandon
to his first execution. Brandon held up a sign: Americans Against
the Death Penalty. When the prison lights dimmed and the fireworks
lit up the sky, Sheila took hold of Brandon's hand and
squeezed it until it actually started to hurt. If Brandon had to pinpoint
the moment that he fully committed himself to the pursuit of
4:

44
Sheila, he'd have cited the instant that he began to feel the pressure
of her grip. Thirty minutes later, witnesses poured out of the penitentiary
with stories of a man whose leg smoked when they tried to
electrocute him. But it was too late for Brandon to retreat. He was,
against his better judgment, irretrievably in love.
*
That first execution was one year ago. Brandon has been by
Sheila's side ever since, helping her with every petition, doing everything
that he can possibly do to help free a man that he wants dead
nearly as much as the victims' families want him dead. But while
they want Ridgley dead for closure, Brandon wants him dead for
just the opposite — a new beginning.
Tonight marks the third time that the state has attempted to
execute Ridgley Brown, but this is the first time that Brandon and
Sheila have made it this far, actually driving to the penitentiary mere
hours before Ridgley is to be killed. The other two times ended in
stays of execution several days before the scheduled date.
Sheila, slouched in the passenger seat, stares blankly as the
houses along Sheridan Boulevard, the nicest houses in town, flick
past. It's ten at night and the city is eerily desolate.
"I drove by the penitentiary this morning," Brandon says.
"Was anybody out there?"
Brandon shakes his head. "A few TV cameras."
"It's all so surreal," Sheila says. "Look. My hands are shaking."
Brandon reaches out and holds one. He rubs her palm with his
thumb. He expects her to comment on his new ring — the Elvis ring
— but she doesn't.
"Have you talked to him yet?" he asks.
"Last night," she says. "But we agreed not to speak again."
"Any news from the lawyer?"
"Nothing new," she says. "He says anything's possible, though.
He said you'd be surprised what can be accomplished in the final
hours."
Brandon nods; he hopes the lawyer is wrong.
At the penitentiary, they are joined by other anti-death penalty
men and women. Several of the protesters are professors at the state
university. Others have religious affiliations. Brandon lives in a
part of the country that is overwhelmingly conservative, and the
pro-death penalty advocates outnumber those who are anti-death
penalty by twenty to one. The hatred that the pro camp feels
toward the anti camp is palpable, and in a city where the mayor and
a number of the judges are outspoken right-wing members of the
Christian Coalition, Brandon fears that if the pro camp decided to
rough up the anti camp, the police would suddenly and conveniently
disappear.
Tonight, one pro guy in particular is being unnecessarily aggressive.
He's with a group of frat boys, and he keeps taunting the anti
group through a bullhorn that's adorned on either side with the
state university's team mascot, Herbie Husker, an affable cartoon
farm boy who wears overalls and a straw hat. "We're havin' a barbecue
tonight at midnight!" the frat boy yells. "Want to join us?"
Or: "We'll take our Ridgley Brown extra crispy, thank you." These
are par-for-the-course taunts, the ones Brandon expects, but then
the frat boy starts zeroing in on Sheila. "My condolences to the
future widow!" he yells. "But not to worry. There are plenty of
good-looking men on death row to choose from."
The others in Brandon's group remain Zen amidst the taunts.
They continue to huddle and peer into their candles, softly humming
slave hymns. Only Brandon is glaring at their opponents, and
only he is mumbling a litany of assaults he'd like to perform on the
bastard with the bullhorn. The frat boy realizes this, grins, and flips
Brandon off, and when Brandon breaks from his circle, walking in
the frat boy's direction, a cop stops him and says, "You'd do best to
stay with your own folk, sir. There's no need making the night
worse than it already is."
*
At Superior Lobster, men were always returning to work with
black eyes or contusions from the fights they'd gotten into over the
weekend. This was one of the things that scared Brandon about
these men, the fact that under nearly any other condition, they
wouldn't think twice to knock Brandon to the ground and do bodily
harm to him. Brandon had an intellectual understanding of violence
in that he often felt the impulse to punch someone who was
out of line, but when it came to the actual punching, he suspected
45

46
that he would freeze up.
In the fifth grade, Brandon had come home from school after
getting beaten up by a seventh grader, a bully nicknamed Mongoose,
who inexplicably decided one day to make Brandon the
object of his aggression. During the after-school assault, Brandon
had stood perfectly still, absorbing whatever punishment Mongoose
doled out, hoping that his passivity would take the steam out of
Mongoose's anger. He mistakenly thought that the other kids, his
own classmates, would admire his unwillingness to participate in
something so crude as an unprovoked fistfight. But the other kids,
including his friends, yelled, "Fight back! Fight back!" and it was
all Brandon could do not to break down in tears.
When his father came home from work that night, he took one
look at Brandon and said, "I hope the other guy looks worse."
When Brandon didn't answer, his father said, "Well?"
So Brandon told his father what had happened, how he didn't
want to fight back because he didn't know why he was being
attacked in the first place.
Brandon's father said, "Let me get this straight. A guy attacks
you, but because you don't know why, you think you shouldn't
fight? Is that what you're saying? Jesus Christ Almighty, Brandon,
is that how you plan to go through life? Well?" When Brandon
didn't answer, his father said, "C'mon. I want you to show me
where this Mongoose character lives."
"No, Dad."
"I said, c'mon, goddamn it."
Brandon knew that his father wouldn't back down, so he gave
him directions but begged him not to go there.
"You're going, too," his father said. "I want to show you something."
Brandon wished now that he had lied. He wished he had told
his dad that the other guy looked worse, but it was too late. A few
minutes later, and they were at Mongoose's house. When Mongoose's
father opened the door, Brandon's father ordered him to step
outside and take a good look at what his son had done to Brandon.
Mongoose's father obeyed, but he looked disgusted at both
Brandon and his father. "I don't have time for this shit. This is
what kids do. They fight. What the hell you expect me to do about
it?"
Brandon's father said, "Your kid's older than my kid. He's a
bully. Is that how you raised him, to pick on kids who're younger
and smaller than he is?"
Brandon thought he could see Mongoose through the screendoor,
crouching in the shadows of their living room, but he wasn't
sure. It might have been a piece of furniture he saw. Brandon was
expecting the conversation to end - his father had made his point -
but then Brandon's father took hold of Mongoose's father's face,
squeezed it tight, and shoved him against the doorframe. In a low
voice, a voice Brandon didn't recognize, his father said, "Your son
messes with my son again, I'll kill you. You hear me, you son of a
bitch? I'll kill you." Then he let go of the man's face and led Brandon
to the car, his grip too tight around the back of Brandon's neck.
On their way home, his father said, "You don't let anyone fuck
with you. You hear me? Nobody."
*
A minute after midnight, when everyone is expecting the lights
to dim, nothing happens. A short man, whom Brandon recognizes
from TV as the warden, steps outside and announces through a
portable P.A. system that there has been yet another last-minute stay
of execution by the governor. The warden is clearly perturbed by
this news.
Sheila hugs Brandon, her tears soaking through his shirt and
dampening his chest.
"Oh my God," she says. "I've got to call Harvey." Harvey is
Harvey Zimmerman, Ridgley's attorney, a beleaguered man who
has taken on Ridgley's case, pro bono. Brandon suspects the man is
going to cash in on his experience once Ridgley is dead. Write a
book. Appear on Oprah. The death penalty is always in the news,
and Harvey could make a decent living doing the morning talk
show circuit. Plus, there's always the human interest side of the
story: women who love men who kill, of which Sheila is one. It's
possible that Harvey truly believes that Ridgley was given a raw deal
the first time around and is representing him out of the goodness of
his heart, but Brandon has his doubts.
47

48
Brandon and Sheila cross the highway on foot, heading for the
payphone at Burger King. While Sheila calls Harvey, Brandon
orders french fries and a milkshake. He slips into a booth and
spreads the fries across the sack they came in. "Shit," he says. "Shit,
shit." He picks at the fries. He wags his head. He can't believe it's
come to this, a third stay of execution. How many close-calls can
one man get? How many loopholes are left? The lawyer is like a
magician-for-hire, pulling an endless stream of kerchiefs from his
sleeve — a dull and predictable trick that sooner or later must come
to an end.
Sheila joins Brandon at the booth. She is full of hope. He sees
it in her eyes. "The governor has agreed to look over the issue of
jury tampering. He says he'll make a decision by the end of the
week."
Jury tampering could lead to a dismissal of charges. This
explains the hope. What Sheila isn't acknowledging is that it's an
election year, and by agreeing to look over the case, the governor is
giving the illusion of being fair. But he also must give the illusion
of being tough on crime, which is why none of what the lawyer is
doing will amount to anything. Sooner or later, Ridgley will fry in
the electric chair. In the meantime, everyone will use him to
advance their own agendas.
"Oh, for crissakes," Brandon says.
"What? What's wrong?"
Brandon wants to tell her to quit being so naive. Don't you see?
he wants to say to her, Don't you see what's REALLY going on?
What he finally says is "It's just so, I don't know, so frustrating."
Sheila says, "I know. Believe me, I know. You don't have to tell
me about frustration."
"Excuse me," Brandon says, and he slips out of the booth and
heads for the restroom.
No sooner does he lock himself inside of a stall when someone
else enters the restroom, locking himself in the stall next door. It's
one of those guys who likes to talk to himself in the John, as if no
one else is within earshot. "C'mon, c'mon, c'mon, c'mon," he coaxes,
"c'mon, oh-oh, c'mon," and then Brandon hears the muffled piss
hitting the water in the toilet bowl, followed by sighing. "Oh,
yeah," the voice says. "Whew, boy."
The switch inside Brandons head — the switch that allows Brandon
to pee — has been turned off, so he zips up. Brandon steps out
of the stall and nearly trips over a Herbie Husker bullhorn. The
mere sight of it sets his heart pounding. Brandon, peering between
the slats of the stall's door, sees the frat boy from the execution sitting
on the toilet. He appears to be reading the graffiti and softly
chuckling. When he turns and sees Brandon staring in at him, he
squints and leans forward.
"Hey, what the fuck?" he says. "What in the fuck are you
doing, man?"
The frat boy reaches for his pants and starts yanking them up,
but Brandon already has his pepper spray out, aiming it between the
crack. According to the package, the spray could hit a target six feet
away. Brandon presses down and sprays the frat boy's face. When
the boy reaches up to cover his eyes, Brandon sprays his crotch.
The kid falls to the floor, curling into a ball and screaming.
Brandon pockets the spray and leaves the restroom.
Sheila says, "Did you hear that?"
Brandon squints, as if trying to hear.
"That screaming," Sheila says.
"What screaming?"
Sheila cocks her head. "Hear it?"
Brandon listens, then says, "Nope. You ready?"
They leave Burger King. He knows if he doesn't do what he
had planned to do, he'll never do it, so in the parking lot, under the
fluorescent lights, clouds of bugs flapping blurrily all around, Brandon
pulls the ring from his pocket. He opens the box and shows it
to Sheila.
"What's this?" she asks.
"I was going to wait," Brandon says, "until after, you know..."
And he's about to propose when Sheila holds both hands up and
starts shaking her head.
"Oh, no," she says. "I'm sorry, Brandon." She starts crying.
The penitentiary glows across the street, and a floodlight makes
obligatory sweeps over the yard.
Brandon shuts the ring box. "How can you love him?" Bran-
49

don asks. "He's using you, Sheila. Can't you see that?"
Sheila stops crying. She squints at Brandon, and at first Brandon
thinks it's because of the brightness of the parking lot's lights,
but then he realizes that she is looking at his ring. When she finally
looks up, it's as if she is staring at a man she has never before seen,
the same chilling clarity she must have felt looking into the faces of
former lovers who, upon rejection, took to trailing her every move.
What she's thinking is all in her eyes. Her face is eerily expressionless.
Her scar seems to be shimmering in the weird, unnatural light.
She is about to speak but turns and walks away instead, heading for
her friends across the street who are waiting to hear the news.
*
Brandon is driving home, but he isn't sure that he can stand
being alone right now, the weight of the night bearing down on
him. What had he been thinking this past year? At what point did
he lose his sense of how things would pan out with Sheila? She's in
love with a man on death row. How was he supposed to compete
with that?
At the last second, too late to hit the blinker, Brandon turns
onto Cornhusker Highway instead of driving to his subdivision.
Cornhusker is the seediest part of town — trailerparks, motels with
weekly rates. Brandon pulls into the gravel parking lot at Lucky
Jim's, a townie bar, where some of guys at work claim to hang out.
On his way inside, he notices a red Chevy Nova with smoky windows,
and on closer inspection he sees that it is the red Chevy Nova,
the driver of which nearly sideswipes him on a daily basis. The car
is parked in such a way that it's taking up four parking spaces. Brandon
clenches his fists and walks inside. Through thick spirals of
smoke, he spots Maria Mariani. She is sitting alone in a booth, a
half-full pitcher of beer in front of her, along with four empty shot
glasses. When she sees him, she perks up and waves him over.
"Oh, Brandon," she says, standing and hugging him. "I'm so
sorry," she whispers into his ear. "I saw the news." She's holding
him longer than necessary, and her mouth rests against the soft spot
beneath his ear. Maria is drunk, so Brandon takes her by the shoulders
and gently pushes her back down into the booth. He sits across
from her.
"Do you love her?" she asks.
Before Brandon can answer, a man by the pool table raises his
stick aloft and yells, "Oh yeah, baby, oh yeah!" The man looks over
at Maria, winks, then notices Brandon and narrows his eyes. He
struts over to the booth.
"Did you win, honey?" Maria asks.
The man, still staring at Brandon, says, "You bet your sweet ass
I won."
Brandon says, "I don't believe we've met. I work with Maria.
I'm their accountant. Brandon," he says and holds out his hand.
The man says, "Vik," but doesn't accept Brandon's hand. Then
he heads back to the pool table.
"He's been winning all night," Maria says. "I guess I'll be marrying
a regular pool shark."
"You're getting married?"
"Oh, one day, I suppose," Maria says. "Vik says as soon as he
can afford it."
Brandon looks around the bar. The place is crowded, but he
doesn't see anyone else he knows. The common denominator
between the red Nova, Superior Lobster, and this bar suddenly
becomes clear. Maria. Brandon excuses himself and scoots out of
the booth. He walks over to Vik and says, "You want to play a
game?
Vik says, "I recognize you, bub. You might not realize it, but I
know who you are."
"I know who you are, too," Brandon says.
Vik says, "You want to play? Okay. 8-ball. Call your shot. No
slop. Twenty bucks. Now let's see who wants to play, smart guy."
"Twenty bucks? Is that it?"
Vik looks around, laughs. "Okay. Fifty."
Maria has wandered over now to see what's going on.
Brandon says, "That's your Nova out there, right?"
Vik huffs through his nose. "You know goddamn well it is.
You flipped me off this morning, remember?"
Brandon smiles. He pulls Sheila's ring from his pocket, opens
the box, and balances it on the edge of a corner pocket.
"Oh my God," Maria says. "Oh my God, would you look at

that? It's gorgeous."
"You win," Brandon says, "you get the ring. I win, I get the
Nova."
Maria is smiling at the ring. No doubt she's imagining what it
would look like on her own finger. But then something crosses her
face, the reality of what the ring means. A commitment. A lifetime
with Vik. A sentence. "Don't do it," Maria says.
Vik looks ready to back out until Maria tells him not to do it.
He's left with no choice now: he has to do it. He surveys the bar.
More people have moved in closer, circling the table, to watch.
"Okay," he says. "Okay." He fishes his keys from his pants pocket
and sets them next to Sheila's ring.
They flip for the break and Vik wins. Vik circles the table while
Brandon racks the balls. Vik checks to make sure that the rack is
tight, and then he breaks. The break is explosive, sending the balls
ricocheting off every rail, spreading the rack evenly across the table,
but nothing goes in. Vik shakes his head. He can't believe that a
break with so much action has resulted in nothing.
Brandon, chalking his cue, thinks of Sheila, her devotion to
Ridgley Brown, faith so blind she'd step into his shoes, if she could.
How could you not love a woman like that? Tomorrow, Brandon
will call her to apologize. This isn't about me, he'll say, it's about
you, and I'll be there for you this time, honest. And he will. From
here on out, he'll be right behind her. He'll follow this woman to
the ends of the Earth, if that's what it takes. He loves her - and
soon she'll see how much.
Brandon looks down at the table now, at the configuration of
solids and stripes, taking the whole of the table in, and he sees clearly
his next eight shots, one right after the other.
—SCOTT HIGHTOWER
Spring Shearing
My grandfather ran a shearing crew; knew
how to pack, unpack, set up the flats; saw to it
that no shearing arm's oily teeth were ever far
from a dark tin snout luminous with amber.
My grandmother, then just a mother, would go
along and cook for the crew; among other things,
she made sure a burlap-wrapped cannister
was set up clean and full of water. One season,
her hands were full with turkeys hatching.
My mother, barely a teenager, went in her stead
to cook in the tricky old Dutch oven. Coals
on top; coals below. She made sure there were,
among other things, a gold yeasty roll,
a drink, occasionally, an interval of relief
from the noise and deadeningly even vibrations.
Times that found the banal but powerful gasoline
engine shut down, the usual sounds and textures
of the world rebounded immediately: the air
and bending bones, stripped of their relentless
rippling mask, moved on. Among other things,
53

54
those hot and dusty days were about
a chore well done, even in those thirsty spells
of disorder which were but a span between
a contract and its fulfilled expectation.
A little salt, browned beef, tomatoes, onions,
beans, a little sugar. The well-fed crew jangled
tokens in their pockets; each one a claim
to a bleating head, nicked and shivering,
gangly and shorn; each portion of their
honor brought them one rung closer
to that chosen blue suit, to flour or
violet water for their belove'd. At night,
she dreamt; slept safely between her devoted
father and the peaceful, yellow-toothed rig.
"Indian" Summers
More than lush. Loaded. Like a stick of dynamite
with a slow, lit fuse: maybe a tearing candle
on a keg of gunpowder ... in a ship . . .
like the one that alchemistically shuttled
slaves, molasses, and rum to gold. In time,
even starched barbarity, epically attempting
to contort new subjects into a singing serfdom,
resigned. The encomenderos failed to convert
themselves to a feudal Mediterranean Latifundio
sanctified by a Spanish crown. Now, the land
has another border and the dreams of two
post-colonial states. Some of our peace,
like the smoking tomahawk, has been engineered.
In the real summer in Texas, bats up from Mexico
still devour mosquitoes; actual houses have been
maintained for them by wise and appreciative
stewards of the land. "Bat houses?"
some of the intrepid but perplexed strangers ask.
Traveling in New England, "Indian summers . . .,"
I remember thinking. "Strange terrain of nouns
and adjectives: strange successions
of wills and scattered rationales."
55

'52 Maneuvers
For how long do brothers
share the inheritance?
Gilgamesh, Tablet X
Texas. June, 1952. The twentieth century
world, already separated into two great vats
of darkness, was already militarized.
Just a hundred years earlier some
had tried camels on the western plains.
Now, Fort Hood ran maneuvers
through the fences and across
the terraces of our charge, the land.
Instead of cutting his fences
in the middle of the spans — where repairs
would have been simplest to make -
they "took out" whole corners.
My father watched them. I have often
wondered how he must have felt:
the work undone, the work ahead.
From time to time, we would plow up
corroded relics of that week: a long black core,
a broken green-handled knife, fragments
of a helmet, canteen caps with chains.
My mother and my grandmother baked
pies; recalled the northern boys
who couldn't tell goat from lamb
asked for "berry pies."
They bayoneted coconut,
chocolate, banana cream; pooled
their money and split pies.
My father filled their orders;
delivered all of them warm
from the running boards and fenders
of his truck. That week, they kept
the ovens going late into the night;
long enough to bake out 465.
The old garden fence escaped
the clumsy maneuvers, but not
the competition or convenience
of the renovated grocery store in town.
The low tin roof of the old sheep shed
no longer serves as slide.
The dipping vat has grown
mysterious with vines.
The old tool shed has given way.
57

My sister was the first to leave.
She married a local boy turned
soldier. They started their family
in a nearby town. My beloved
brother went off to sow a few
wild oats before he settled down.
I was the one that left
to get an education.
The hapless soldiers left in June.
Early August, I wrangled out
into the brutal tontine -
the family's greedy child.
-RICHARD SIMON CHANG
Separated at Birth
The streets of New York City are covered in graffiti like no
other city in the world. If scientists put their minds to it they could
probably come up with one of those mind-warping analogies, such
as: Linked together in a chain, all the graffiti in New York would
girdle the earth at the equator two hundred times over and still rope
its way to the moon. GrafFiti's ripple from the American megapolis
to the suburbs and overseas to large international centers like Paris,
London and Rome is nothing new. But that rough sketch does not
come close to capturing the current extent of grafFiti's reach. There
are web sites on graffiti in countries as removed as Thailand, Iceland,
and Sweden. I have seen graffiti in the outskirts of Dresden
and downtown Nice. I have been on a bullet train from Tokyo to
Osaka and seen its colorful swatches fly past me at 300 km/h somewhere
in between. It is hardly a stretch to say that graffiti has
become one of the most familiar constructs of the Roman alphabet
on the planet. Although it takes on many forms, it is instantly recognizable,
right up there with the fast-food logos.
Advertising bombards our existence in a similar manner,
encumbering large chunks of our periphery (far more if you're
standing in the middle of Times Square). It also works in the exact
same arena as graffiti, and on the surface, shares graffiti's goals. Both
vie for the immediate attention of Joe Average and out in the environment,
they exist at the same levels: in subway tunnels, on billboards,
at bus stops. Any space diat is fertile ground for graffiti can
be replaced easily by advertising.
59

6o
Of course advertising is far more sophisticated, relentlessly subversive,
and by nature manipulative. At any given moment there are
conference tables surrounded by senior account executives singing a
chorus of demographic data and detailed buying trends and referencing
psychological histrionics to come up with the most efficient
system of images and graphics and fonts to make Joe Average
change or support his choice in disposable razors. The ad's appearance
is just a formulaic by-product of that end goal. That sort of
cold, hard calculation hardly factors into the creation of graffiti.
Or does it? Over the last forty years or so, graffiti has spread so
far and burrowed so deep into our consciousness that it has altered
the cultural landscape in a big enough way to deem what I have to
say in the next few pages as essay-worthy. What has happened is that
the level of string-pulling found in advertising is gradually appearing
in graffiti. If this continues, and it certainly looks like it will, the
two practices could become indistinguishable in the not too distant
future. Really. I suppose the reason why this involution has gone
unnoticed and undocumented for so long is primarily because the
processes of graffiti and advertising take place behind closed doors.
In fact both rely on secrecy for survival: ad executives play their
cards close to the vest to maintain a competitive edge and graffiti
writers work under the cover of darkness to avoid obvious legal hassles.
To convince you of this odd coalescence, I propose the following
premise: that although graffiti and advertising may seem
antonymous, they share the same blood line. Both appeal to and
react to pop culture in the same way, and the entrepreneurial genes
that drive advertising can also be found in graffiti. This unity, I
believe, poses serious implications for America - not Greenhouse
Effect serious, but it will affect what you buy and how you live.
GRAFFITI AMERICANA
The really fascinating thing about the whole cultural suffusion
of graffiti is that it has all happened since the 1960s (though pinpointing
its exact origin would seem like an impossible task, much
like sourcing the very first martini) because for as wide as graffiti has
spread, legitimate books on the subject are limited; most of them
are written by graffiti artists and contain nothing more than per-
sonal accounts, anecdotes, and photography. Makes for fascinating
reading but very little research value. There are a handful of books
that offer bits of historical insight, but nothing authoritative and
current. Two of the most referenced are Subway Art by Martha
Cooper and Henry Chalfant and Street Art by Allan Schwartzman.
The former was published in 1984, the latter in 1985 and has been
out of print for years. Both reference a New York Times article from
1971, which points to a bike messenger from the Washington
Heights neighborhood of New York City, who in the 1960s began
scrawling the code TAKI 183 on walls throughout his route, as the
most direct link to the current graffiti boom.
The second amazing thing about the quick spread of graffiti is
that it happened without the assistance of a unified collective or any
sort of organization. There was not the concerted effort and leadership
that most impactive movements have. Keep in mind that (1)
most of this synthesis occurred pre-Internet and (2) graffiti has continued
to spread in spite of strong-arm efforts by city governments
to quash it. In recent years graffiti-abatement task forces have
popped up all over the country, even in states as rural as Idaho and
Montana. Descriptions of the various abatement programs are strikingly
similar. Typically classified under a larger crime force, such as
the Anti-Gang Task Force or the Anti-Drug Task Force, they often
mention something about James Q. Wilson's "broken window" theory,
which basically asserts that left unrepaired, one broken window
welcomes others. City councilmen and mayors have taken creative
liberties with that metaphor and expanded it to portray graffiti as
the broken window not just for more graffiti but for gang violence
and drug use. It has been labeled the threshold crime that portends
deeper evils. In effect, what the Wilsonites are doing is fighting an
unsophisticated enemy in order to provide the illusion that they're
taking steps against more serious issues like drugs and gangs and
gun violence. Graffiti is the scapegoat, the political red herring, simply
because politics aren't involved in fighting it. For us, it is more
important to read between the lines, to envision the sweat from the
furrowed brows of city officials; theirs is a frustration that borders
on paranoia. One overlooked reason why graffiti has pushed so
many legislators to the edge is that there is nothing they can do to

62
stop it, because in the end graffiti is quintessential^ American. It is
as American as baseball cards and plot-deficient action movies,
which is why graffiti has spread so quickly around the country and
why it has been adopted as a form of expression all over the world.
The task of ridding America of graffiti is an impossibility tantamount
to climbing Everest with a windbreaker and tennis shoes. In
fact, America is the only country where graffiti could have emerged.
There are several truly American character traits at the very
heart of graffiti. Two of these can be found in its primary criteria as
told to me by a former graffiti writer: "It has to look good and be
in a dope spot." Now right away we can relate this "look good, dope
spot" tenet to the American people's (1) naturally garish sense of
style and (2) uninhibited exploitation of blank space. Garishness
has always punctuated American design and industry, from Cadillacs
to SUVs, Las Vegas to Disney World, The Wizard ofOz to Star
Wars. This "more is better" aesthetic — or "banana split-style" as one
friend calls it — may not be exclusively American, but it is undeniably
American. When we talk about cities that means public and
private spaces that have not been claimed by advertising. This leads
us to the graffiti writer's (3) critical sense of rebellion and (4) exercise
of Manifest Destiny, two ideologies that played vital roles in
early American history and are jackhammered into gradeschoolers
at such an impressionable age that they lodge freely into the noetic
cornerstones of their identity.
These days when we are actually prohibited from doing something
we are either shocked ("I can't believe they're banning smoking
indoors") or just ignore the restriction altogether ("Oh it's fine,
just put on the hazards"). And this isn't even mentioning our country's
military actions, which seem to be guided by a similar M.O. In
the business world, this determinist attitude is revered as (5) entrepreneurialism.
In the world of graffiti, the currency that is passed on
is notoriety. Graffiti writers feather their nests with fame and each
additional piece builds on that presence. That means (6) competition
is high, which leads us back to the logjam of graffiti on the
walls of the world.
GRAFFITI AND ADVERTISING
The by-product of all this latent Americana buried under the
skin of graffiti is that the form has become the ultimate definer of
the urban landscape, just as Swedish cars have come to symbolize
modern suburbia. The free association that takes me instantaneously
from Volvo to James Taylor to weed whackers to white folks playing
Cranium over cups of Kona can be matched step for step by the
free association from graffiti to Jay-Z to baggy jeans to inner-city
black children calling "we got next" at Rucker Park. By the time the
producers of "The Fresh Prince of Bel Air" took advantage of this in
its spray-style title fonts in the late-'80s, the prime time TV audience
could already recognize the graffiti letter form as more than
just a font; it was indicative of a lifestyle, one that was reinforced by
the images over which the titles ran. Through a quick series of clips,
we see the Fresh Prince (1) dribbling a basketball in front of a backdrop
of graffiti, (2) running into a group of bullies on the court, (3)
getting pushed around by the bullies, (4) getting scolded by his
mother, (5) getting into a taxi, and (6) getting out in front of a mansion
in Bel Air, where there is no graffiti and the only trouble his
rich cousin Carlton gets into is skipping out on his Princeton interview.
This title sequence is innocent enough — the Fresh Prince
maintains a twenty-million dollar smirk throughout - but watched
alongside "NYPD Blue" and "Homicide" week after week, year after
year, into the infinity of daily syndication, and combined with
movies like New Jack City, Boyz in the Hood, and White Men Can't
Jump, it contributes to the whole media package perpetuating the
false correlation between graffiti and crime. For Joe Average, who
watches more TV than he does any single thing in his day other
than sleep, graffiti inspires all kinds of assumptions about crime,
class, and race.
The only other medium that can match graffiti's lifestyle pitch
in intensity is advertising. These days, advertising works on many
levels. The two I'm concerned about are its short-term impact and
long-term conditioning. The short-term pitch is the item that's
being sold, the knit roll-neck sweater, the cuffed chinos, the linen
skirt. The long-term pitch is the crystallization of capital-lettered
concepts, like Community, Freedom, Youth, Joy, Spirit, and Beauty,
which are meant to strike an emotional chord with Joe Average.

64
This Gap lifestyle is represented by the simple cuts and muted pastel
colors of the clothes, the uncomplicated commercials and ads
shot over a backdrop of white, the toned bodies and fresh acne-free
faces of the models, their singing and dancing in unison. However,
the ads are not selling this lifestyle as much as they are reinforcing
it, because the Gap lifestyle is already familiar to Joe A. — which is
scary. It doesn't come from tactile personal experience. Joe A. has
neither friends nor family nor co-workers who resemble the models
in Gap ads; the truth is that a scant percentage of the world population
really looks like those happy, bedhead, wrinkle-free freaks of
nature, and most of this contingent don't maintain such an overwhelming
stasis of joy. Gap strategists (Marlboro, BMW, J.Crew,
Crate and Barrel, and Martha Stewart, Inc. are other sophisticated
examples) have wormed their way into our desires purely through
advertising and diligent product placement. Joe Average sees this
Gap lifestyle in fashion spreads and commercials, on TV shows like
"Friends" and "Sex in the City" and craves this lifestyle because he
has been conditioned to crave it. By that same token, Joe Average
has been conditioned to backpedal from graffiti's lifestyle of thugs
and thuggery. But this fear is not founded. Joe A. has no idea who
writes graffiti. How could he? Graffiti happens at night while Joe A.
is sleeping.
SO, WHO ARE THEY?
It is imprecise to lump all graffiti writers under one denomination,
say inner city hooligans, just as it is erroneous to assume that
all nuclear power plant workers are fat and live for doughnuts. Over
the past forty years, the face of graffiti has been tracking dramatically
across the color scale. In the 1970s, the majority of graffiti
writers were from the intraurban settings of New York, Los Angeles,
Chicago, Philadelphia, and San Francisco, and primarily of African-
American and Hispanic descent. But as with many trends that crop
up from that culture (breakdancing, hip-hop music, Raiders ski
hats) graffiti secured the indicia of street-cred cool and edged into
the suburbs and beyond. (Funny how suburban fads and interests —
grunge, microbrews, Teva, Ocean Pacific — never run countercurrent.)
These days the majority of graffiti writers are neither from the
inner city nor members of a racial minority. This premise is
axiomatic: there are few African-Americans or Hispanics in Nebraska
or suburban Seattle (not to mention Reykjavik or Honolulu or
Hong Kong). More importantly, this ethnic multiplicity is only the
transient result of a continuing shift. When one white rapper makes
it onto MTV, the music community hypes him as the harbinger of
a greater musical assimilation. He is put through the publicity
machine, interviewed and photographed ad nauseum, and an album
later disappears to await his turn onVHl's "Behind the Music." Yet
a massive gentrification in graffiti culture has gone unnoticed for
the same reasons it continues to be viewed as a minatory gestalt.
The authors of this change, like the white hip-hoppers, have studied
and mimicked urban styles and themes in earnest, therefore the
style (or "brush stroke") of graffiti has evolved only in a gradual
(and natural) manner over the past forty years, revealing no sudden
changes in subject matter that would point toward such gentrification.
So, to Joe Average, who doesn't witness the act of graffiti writing
and offers but a twinkle of thought to the graffiti in his path,
graffiti has retained its downtown spirit and tone.
Some of this did make the news in the early-'80s when roommates
Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, and to a lesser extent
Kenny Scharf, sent a charge through Manhattan's East Village and
revealed just how diverse the graffiti community had become. They
weren't exactly traditional graffiti writers in that they didn't use
spray paint or lay up large wildstyle pieces — Basquiat scribbled messages
in marker, Haring drew his signature figures and scenes in subway
stations in white chalk. But what they did do was widen graffiti's
margins and integrate a broader genre of street art. It would be
more accurate to say that they were fine artists who worked for a
limited time on the street. Haring and Scharf studied at the School
of Visual Arts in New York City and, along with Basquiat, organized
group exhibitions of their work at the famous Mudd Club.
They immediately found an audience in the world of fine art and
became celebrities. They shared yucks with Madonna, Yoko Ono,
and Andy Warhol, and by 1981, had disappeared into the unctuous
world of high-dollar gallery art and abandoned the street scene for
good. Basquiat died of a drug overdose in 1988, Haring of AIDS

66
two years after that. But public awareness of the big picture - that
there was an increasing number of trained artists working on the
street while waiting for the big break - went away long before those
tragedies, despite its continuance below the surface.
Somewhere in the mid-'90s the aspirations changed. There are
probably strong socio-anthropological explanations - baby boomer
parents, the Internet, a decade-long bull market - but the point is
that graffiti writers weren't entirely satisfied with word-of-mouth
notoriety anymore. They wanted to make a living at making and
selling art within the old establishment, and for the first time, they
had the means to pursue that ambition. They went to art school.
Many of them traded in their tags for their real names. Some gave
up the street altogether. Now, almost a decade later, the status report
is mixed. Out of the current generation of graffiti writers, a few are
revered like indie-label college bands and make regular appearances
in the pages of limited-distribution magazines - While You Were
Sleeping, Juxtapoz, Scrawl, Tokion - and fill up trend reports in hip
fashion glossies like Nylon, Surface, and Black Book. In a three
month span earlier this year, former-Brooklyn graffiti writer James
Marshall (who studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and works
under his tag, Dalek) appeared in WYWS (Issue 16), Transworld
Stance (January), and Juxtapoz (March/April). But this is only middle-tier
celebritidom. These publications are more like fanzines, put
out by graffiti insiders for peers.
So far, the most successful in making the transition to gallery
art has been San Francisco graffiti writer Barry McGee. Known on
the street as Twist, McGee is in his mid-thirties. He has a BFA from
San Francisco Art Institute and has shown at places like the San
Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Armand Hammer Museum
at UCLA. Currently, he is represented by SoHo dealer Jeffrey
Deitch and shows regularly at the well-respected Deitch Projects.
Manhattan street artist Phil Frost is on his way as well - he has
exhibited at Michael Solway's Gallery 2211 in Los Angeles and had
his first solo exhibition this year at the Philadelphia Academy of the
Fine Arts - but he and McGee are the exceptions.
In terms of pure street art, Southern Californian Shepard
Fairey, who goes by the tag Obey Giant, is the most accomplished.
Fairey is stocky, baby-faced, and, on his better days, sports a fresh
Bobby Brady haircut. While a freshman at the Rhode Island School
of Design in the late-'80s, he Xeroxed a picture of professional
wrestler Andre the Giant's head and made small square stickers out
of them. Next to both ears were two simple tag lines: "Andre the
Giant has a posse" and "7' 4" 520 lbs." Fairey and his friends plastered
the stickers on their skateboards and throughout Providence.
He gave them to friends and they did the same. Over time he modified
the ATG image and created new stickers, made stencils, and
printed posters. The various paraphernalia spread to friends across
the country. The game quickly became a buzz and the buzz quickly
became a trend and the trend quickly became a phenomenon. This
was the innocent birth of guerrilla marketing, a turbocharged form
of word-of-mouth based on the medium of cool (now employed by
brands like Mountain Dew and MTV, which pander to the whims
of the lucrative tweenage market). On his web site (www.obeygiant.com)
Fairey explains that the sticker partially latched onto
"the trendy and conspicuously consumptive nature of many members
of society. For those who have been surrounded by the sticker,
its familiarity and cultural resonance is comforting and owning a
sticker provides a souvenir or keepsake, a memento. People have
often demanded the sticker merely because they have seen it everywhere
and possessing a sticker provides a sense of belonging. The
Giant sticker seems mostly to be embraced by those who are (or at
least want to be) rebellious. Even though these people may not
know the meaning of the sticker, they enjoy its slightly disruptive
underground quality..."
This quote is important on many levels. First, it shows how far
the street artist had come vis-a-vis Fairey's assessment of the market.
Not only did he feed the popularity of his stickers, he understood
the niche commercialism that powered it, and within that level of
understanding is a sort of analytical sophistication that toes the line
of a certain other prevailing street presence. Not surprisingly, upon
graduation Fairey launched Blk/Mrkt Inc. (pronounced Black Market),
a design firm which has since been hired by Dreamworks,
Sony Entertainment, Virgin Records, Universal Pictures, Netscape,
Ford, Pepsi Co., and many more.
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68
But despite his white-collar position, Fairey continues to prowl
the street, pasting up posters, spraying stencils, stickering park
benches, mailboxes, lampposts, etc. The designs have acquired a
harder edge, influenced largely by Russian Constructivism and to a
lesser degree by World War II posters, Chinese and German propaganda
posters, and Cuban Revolutionary posters. His tag, Obey
Giant, is dripping with tongue-all-over-cheek because he isn't providing
the public with anything to obey, which brings us to the second
great revelation about his quote: Fairey diagnosed that the
human intellect registers all public visuals within a very narrow
scope of comprehension. Joe Average interprets all posters and signage,
whether it's a store front, a black-and-white flyer pushing guitar
lessons, a Victorias Secret billboard, a schedule of services outside
of a church, as some sort of solicitation, all appealing to him for
either time or money. So, when Fairey trumpets his mantra "Obey"
to the masses, he is in fact telling them to disobey everything
around them. The message is the medium.
But that's hardly the case. What is ironic about Fairey's campaign
is that Obey Giant is selling something itself: the lifestyle of
not buying into what's being sold. In trying to convey any sort of
message or symbology, Obey becomes antithetic to itself, which is
more than likely a wink and nudge to further reinforce the campaign
against blind adherence to a medium by exposing the spiral
argument and futility behind it all. However, its popularity has
given the message "to obey" an ancillary significance. The
groundswell surrounding the sticker campaign has bred a self-defining
culture of rebellion. And so it is questionable whether or not the
stickers are projecting the Obey message effectively. It seems that
the stickers are inspiring the contrary. Instead of nudging people
toward thinking about ads a little bit more, they are lobbying them
toward thinking about graffiti a hell of a lot more. Either way,
Fairey's Obey Giant campaign reveals the mold of the new street
artist. This progressive level of thought instantiates the new plateau
of the street art movement as a whole. It has grown up.
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
Well, would it help if I added that Fairey has since licensed the
Obey Giant name and image to Paul Frank's clothing line, and now
it is possible to buy an Obey Giant T-shirt at Urban Outfitters.
(Obey Giant-designed skateboards are also available.) So, now the
message of the sticker has transcended its philosophy and swagger
into pure advertisement, traipsing through the back door of product
endorsement, like concert T-shirts and Air Jordans. The products
are more than an extension of the stickers and posters because
they alter (undermine) the ideology behind them. People buy the
Obey Giant T-shirt because they want to belong to its underground
culture; it is the same sort of emotion that made Joe Average pick
up an A-Team lunch box back in the fourth grade. It is taking an
existing market (people who know what Obey Giant is and means)
and translating that into product sales (people who want to be identifiable
as members of this "in" club, if only to the other members
of this club). To purists, this could be the most sinister of marketing
schemes, i.e., selling out.
It is quite possible that this drift toward advertising will lag
indefinitely in this nascent stage of exploitation, but somehow I
don't think so. Commercialism is in graffiti's DNA. And no matter
how much graffiti tried to maintain its distance from civics, it has
always been about selling a message. Even while graffiti was shaking
off its cerebral spinal fluid, when TAKI 183 et #/knew as much
about the principles behind their practice as much as they did about
ozone depletion, its overwhelming sense of indignation was always
there as a de facto accomplice. And as graffiti writers evolved into a
more sophisticated and self-analyzing species, the undeniable message
of graffiti became more concrete and salient, so much so that
it could only conform to the advertising it denounced. Through the
mere act of graffiti writing, the graffiti writer was presenting a message
for public absorption, and to Joe Average was no different than
any other form of propaganda. Because its rebellious message ran
through the veins of all Americans, the lifestyle it advertised became
increasingly accepted, up to the point where it created its own market.
Gentrification paved the way for a more ambitious breed of
graffiti writer, one with higher expectations, one who would eventually
exploit his own market, which had been snubbed by the rest
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70
of society as something hideous and bad. This new enlightened
street artist identified a synergy between his street art and his desire
to forge a successful gallery art career. I'm guessing it was somewhere
in the mid-'80s that he started to justify his work on the
street as self-promotion or nascent guerrilla marketing. When the
'90s rolled around, this had become more of the norm and Fairey
fine-tuned this motivation into an efficient buzz generator. And
when it hit overload, he finally cashed in his check. In doing so he
fully realized the ultimate potential of street art as an advanced form
of advertising, with one decisive advantage in that its purity and
honesty make it a better salesman. Whether you realize it or not,
Fairey has already had a hand in making you decide what to wear,
what movie to watch, what music to listen to, what soda to drink,
what web browser to use, what car to drive. That's practically all of
your product consumption, and a far wider reach than our generation's
greatest pitch maker, Michael Jordan.
And this is just the beginning. Right now, the 16-24 demographic
presents the biggest mass of consuming power in the history
of the U.S. since the baby boomers. As this multi-handled generation
of young consumers (they've been called the Echo Generation,
Generation Next, Generation Y, tweenagers) grows older, ad
agencies are growing wiser: Last year, MTV placed orange traffic
cones bearing a tiny logo of its annual Video Music Awards all over
New York City; in its current "Get Linked" poster and billboard
campaign, Internet service provider Earthlink matches propaganda
style imagery with Faireyesque tag lines like "Advocate Anonymity"
and "You Are Not For Sale"; Truth, a new anti-tobacco industry
organization, uses magazine advertisements to teach readers how to
stencil its logo on public spaces; Adidas has just reissued the Soviet
Union soccer jersey from the 1962 World Cup and is advertising it
with Constructivism-influenced ad spreads; we need not mention
the countless smaller skate clothing companies (DC Shoes, Vans,
Zoo York, Droors, etc.) whose ads dominate skateboard magazines
and young men's monthlies like Stuff'and Maxim.
Do I have to point out that politicians take out ads as well, and
that deep-pocketed industrial groups like auto manufacturers and
high-tech firms, which already use street art-style ads, have a big
hand in what goes down on Capitol Hill? From there it doesn't take
much speculation to see that somewhere down the line, a graffiti
writer may help you decide which President to vote for, if that hasn't
happened already. At that point, the Wilsonites may just start
jumping out of their windows.

—JANE HIRSHFIELD
Flowering Vetch
Each of the tragedies can be read
as the tale of a single ripening self,
every character part of one soul.
The comedies can be included in this as well.
Often the flaw is self-knowledge; sometimes greed.
This is why the comic glint of a school of herring
leads to no plot line,
why we cannot imagine a tragedy of donkeys or bees.
Before the ordinary realities, ordinary failures:
hunger, coldness, anger, longing, heat.
Yet one day, a thought as small as a vetch flower opens.
After, no longer minding the minor and almost wordless role,
playing the messenger given the letter
everyone knows will arrive too late or not at all.
To have stopped by the fig and eaten was not an error then,
but the reason for going.
Downed Branch
I wanted to be intimate to my own life.
What came were
the many eating their way through the tree.
Night of no wind, the grass littered with unripe apples.
The limb fell hard.
It was not
the weight of the apples but the many eating,
even on the ground still eating,
anonymous and steady as the body allows.
Someone else could name them, genus, species.
Someone else could feel for them affection.
I wanted the intimate knowledge
they had of the tree,
wanted their simple, almost weightless, and ruinous hunger
made without distinction of the lived-in tree.
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74
-MEREDITH PHILLIPS
Annals of an Eater
7 pm and time for dinner. A social engagement with two old
friends in Chelsea and a deep, growling hunger dictate a complicated
subway transfer, followed by a crosstown hike to 1 Oth Avenue
and 24th street. Huffing and puffing to the door of their sixth-floor
walk-up, I endure the memory of the last meal taken with these
two; on a recent, blighted evening, they lured me to their home,
only to set out a small wheel of smoked gouda on a platter, cheerfully
claiming to consider such dross an acceptable stand-in for dinner.
But this time, I will not be played for a fool. Before knocking,
I vow: tonight, we will eat, and we will eat out.
Inside, there are soft strains of 40s jazz, the hopeful sight of the
orange sun sinking behind the silver Hudson, and the two old
friends snuggled deep in their plushy couch. They have headaches,
they announce, and inform me that we're going to order in - would
I prefer soup, or a burrito?
Le Cirque, San Domenico, Babbo, Balthazar. Who could
doubt New York's position as the nirvana of the gourmand, the
arcadia of the gourmet? From the nether regions of the country, I
have made my way to New York to eat, and I wish to do so often,
and well. But somehow, I'm failing miserably. It is a grand irony
that in a place boasting one of the most progressive food scenes in
the country, an area thick with Epicurean markets and a fusion of
cultures, I've spent the last two months subsisting on a diet of gin
and frozen peanut butter cups, with a cinnamon roll thrown in now
and again for a burst of energy. On this diet I will waste away, both
physically and spiritually, but it is a rare occasion that I find myself
in a restaurant, and when I do, it is almost never what I expect.
After an examination of their eating habits, I blame the New Yorkers
themselves.
With a weakened spirit but a hardened will, I pout, wheedle
and whine until we finally achieve a compromise: we can eat out, as
long as we manage to stay within the building. As I make a mental
note never to make dinner plans with diese two again, we file down
to the Puerto Rican restaurant below. Harsh flourescent lights highlight
the smears on the menu, which lists three kinds of rice, three
kinds of beans, green plaintains, sweet plaintains, and a bevy of
stews. After denying our every request, almost by rote, the waitress
admits that they have nothing to serve other than fried pork chops,
red beans, and yellow rice. Luckily, a very satisfying meal, considering
that at this time, it is the only food available to me in all of New
York City.
During daylight hours New Yorkers focus on items procured
from shiny coffee carts on the street. Lunch, when it does occur, is
inevitably one of 24,000 options from an ancient deli — a terrazzotiled
throwback to a day when corned beef and tapioca pudding
reigned king, or from one of ubiquitous mid-town soup stands,
where $3.75 can buy the blue pot special, which includes an unripe
banana and a sadly chewy, seed-bedecked roll.
To a far greater degree than the nationally known restaurants
like Nobu or Gramercy Tavern, it is 24 hour stores hawking Chipwiches
and Greek diners famous for tuna melts on rye and thickcut
fries that define the New York food scene for residents without
expense accounts.
Situation comedies create false images, coaxing those on the
great plains, gulf-coasters, Californians, and the rest into the belief
that they have a bird's-eye view into the habits of New Yorkers.
Large, well lit restaurants with burgundy-jacketed waiters must be
easier to film than ethnically-influenced dungeons where one must
bring their own lighter to read the tattered menu.
In what other city can you look out the window for the num-
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76
ber of the nearest Korean deli, dial up, and have someone bring a
lone grapefruit to your tenement? Of course, top chefs give the
Times writers something interesting to go on about, but New York
is different than I thought.
To prove my point, I created a survey of leading questions,
designed to confirm prearranged correlations, and administered it
to a sliver-sized sample comprised of people I thought I could get
to agree with me.
It is telling that one of the only places that Manhattanites will
eat is within their own buildings, or "within a three-block radius,"
according to certain surveyed individuals, all in their twenties and
thirties, all of whom classified themselves at least as "expert-class"
eaters, including a few who have taken the business of eating to a
professional level. The interviewees all claimed convenience as one
of the top priorities. Surprising, price was of less interest. Considering
that only one person surveyed was confident that she can eat
out at all after writing her rent check each month, it appears that
once a debt is established, the degree of debt is irrelevant.
Of all persons surveyed, no one other than an actual chef
cooked at home, or even shopped, with any regularity. "It was definitely
embarrassing when we had an Epicurean out-of-towner try
to cook us dinner, and we realized our stove didn't work — never
had — after living in our current apartment for two years. It wasn't
plugged in or something," explained my red-haired friend Eddie as
he channeled ice-tea flavored dust into a bottle of water, held his
thumb over the top, and shook it.
And though most of those surveyed deemed eating as at least
three out of the following four - a form of entertainment, a diversion,
an excuse to be social, and an alternative to sex - most New
Yorkers rarely seem to eat anything interesting at all, or at least in
the manner I had dreamed of.
According to Emma, a leggy, late-sleeping New Yorker, "The
best days are the ones where I wake up and have a bowl of Cheerios
- or, of course, Sugar Corn Pops. Later I get a deli-sandwich
ordered in, then late at night another bowl of cereal. Yes, I would
have to say that those are the best days."
One well-to-do couple orders in every night from a Moroccan
restaurant famous for chicken stewed with preserved lemons and
olives, light, fragrant couscous, and rack of lamb, rubbed with the
intoxicating spice combinations of Northern Africa, scented with
apricots. Without fail, he orders a chicken sandwich with french
fries, and she orders the pita smeared with hummus and some
french fries. Every night. When asked why they don't eat out, Evan,
the tall, pale, computer programmer half of the couple says, "I
don't like the period of time between when dinner is over and the
check arrives, so I stay at home and get them to bring me the chick-
en.
When they do get around to leaving the house, New Yorkers
know they need to indulge themselves and stock up rich experiences
like a hamster stocks, in its cheek, snacks for later. "Once I
went to a Russian restaurant where they had a whole, pan-fried
chicken on the menu, which they served flat," recounted one curlyhaired,
pink-cheeked girl with a penchant for indulgence (me). "I
ordered it, of course, because when else was I going to get to have
a whole chicken all to myself?" And, as stated by a stout, tacohound
of a chef, recently transplanted from a car-intensive city: "If
you're going to walk five miles a day, and eat one time a day, you
may as well truck on down to the Blue Ribbon for fried chicken.
(Walking to eat fried chicken is apparently a common rationale - it
was listed by more than one of the surveyed individuals.)
When asked whether she is more likely to drink dinner than eat
it, one inculpable teetotaler responded, "Oh dear - that is tough. A
hot chocolate, a V-8, a sprite, and some juice come together nicely
to make a meal." That wasn't the question, but her answer is so
strange as to be worthy of inclusion.
Other than in the publishing industry, the liquid lunch seems
out of fashion in Gotham, though liquid dinners are de riguer, at
least in the young, fiscally-challenged, sexually charged set, as does
the post-mellifluous slice or falafel. However, both of these options
were widely considered medicinal as opposed to nutritional. "It's
just so I can manage to get out of bed the next day," asserted a tiewearing,
career-thinking twenty-something who gets his hair cut
77

every three weeks.
Answers in the "Snacks and Mr. Softee" segment of questions
were telling. One participant, a shapely yet slender woman of Eastern
European ancestry, told me that she finds candy to be a pleasing
palate refresher, and a slender, self-employed architect admitted
that "if I ate as much candy as I consider eating, I would be a fat,
fat man."
Using candy as a stand in, or thinking about eating instead of
actually eating - that might be the heart of the problem.
I've found the same thing at my new office job, where there is
no kitchen, or even coffeemaker. Such conditions would be too
tempting! These women (and yes, men!) thinly, shinily persist on a
diet of cigarettes, yoga, filtered water, and white russians. Overheard
on the subway: "Do you work out?" "No, do you?" "No, I
just don't eat. It's easier."
Jeremy, a Manhattanite transplanted to Austin who, in the face
of glorious Tex-Mex and barbecue, limits himself to soup, hot
chocolate, and grilled cheese with ketchup, raves about the days of
New York's Chock Full o' Nuts restaurants.
In sunny Austin, amidst scores of independent restaurants,
boasting smoothies, salads, whole grains, and healthy if terrible
tempeh loaf sandwiches prepared by sweaty, eager vegans, he takes
a notebook to a local, highly substandard chain - a localized version
of Denny's with a bar - and stays all day. The world is his oyster,
yet he eats at this place on the frontage road, marked by a big neon
hat. I had no idea that it was New York that had prepared him for
this kind of life.
It was clear something was wrong the minute I inspected the
kitchen in an apartment I've subletted from a trim, healthy-looking
— if in that moony-eyed, hungry way — freelance writer. In the freezer
were frozen spices from a fancy place that sells frozen spices, in
the fridge were some Zabar's green olives, dusted with a light white
fur. Her pantry was stocked with a neat supply of soda crackers, and
a box of oats - perhaps the two least tempting foodstuffs on earth.
These things took up enough room on the shelves that it was clear
that she hadn't just run out of food - this was the norm.
Does she ever cook? The pots and pans, upon scrutiny, bore no
signs of use, though the silver kettle did look well-loved: boiling
water must be a crucial step in making oats palatable. I wondered
what she does to procrastinate: doesn't everyone know that eating
is a writer's best defense against getting anything done? Perhaps not
for a gal who fuels herself on basic grains and warm fluids. It was in
this haven of asceticism - Brooklyn - that I began reading takeout
menus every night at about 7:30. Chinese, or healthy Chinese, or
Mexican? Mediterranean? So many options: too many options. I
could wile away the hours, stricken with paralysis, thinking about
eating, never actually getting anything down. Living in this house,
I too began to turn into yoga-doing, nearly Gandhi-ish being, without
even the hefty weight of morals to ground me.
79

8o
—JAY MANCINI
Bowling Alone
Once when I was at the border
with nothing to declare
except perhaps an almost
maniacal passion for
bowling and distant
memories of long lost
evenings at the Bowla-Bowla
(now a Sears hardware store),
a customs agent pulled me
aside, clearly suspicious
of my bright green PBA
shirt and multi-colored
shoes (size 14) replete with
the #8 (my lucky number)
circled in red and yellow.
Such is the fate of a life-long
Kegler (an old German word
for bowling pin). I was hooked
the first time I ever saw
"wrong-foot" Lou Campi
(so named because he led
with his left foot, like an oldworld
boccie player) on
Make That Spare. None
of my football-tossing,
girl-chasing school mates
ever understood the nirvana
of a well thrown strike.
Even my father, a Brooklyn
Dodgers fanatic, never came
to grips with the fact
that I could spend
so much time indoors
at what he called "a sport
for little kids and old
ladies." The only time
he was even mildly
impressed was when
we met Yogi Berra
himself at the Berra-
Rizzuto Lanes in Clifton.
None of this was relevant,
of course, to the Gestapolooking
twenty year old
with the uzi pointed
in my face who probably
never even threw
a spare in his life. For
some reason my twelvepound,
personally made
four-colored ball would
not pass through the x-ray
machine without a pinball
type of alarm going off.
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82
Luck or fate was in my
corner when a heavy-set
fifty-ish looking brute
of a supervisor came
ambling up to me. His
green-toothed smile nearly
invisible under a walrus-like
mustache as he placed his
fingers ever so gently in
the holes and sighed. Turns
out he had lived in the U.S.
back in the early sixties
and was, for a time (or
so he said) addicted to bowling.
He even remembered
Graz Castellano, the first
person to bowl a perfect
300 on television.
Needless to say, I got away
unscathed and, more
importantly, with all my
bowling paraphernalia
intact as I continue to
roll through life in search
of that perfect lane.
—NASDIJJ
Touching Him
Navajo boys grow up knowing this: there are monsters in the
world. You learn early on, they're out there. Your grandmother will
speak of them. She scares you, too. A little bit. Sometimes a lot. She
has a lot of power. It scares you when Grandmother holds the
sheep, the sheep struggles, and she cuts the animal's neck with her
knife. She holds the sheep firmly as it dies. It knows it is dying. It
tries to get away. But at some point it gives itself to her as she holds
it like a baby. Kicking. You stand there, watching her. You are too
scared to even run away. She does not ask you to help her hold the
sheep. But she will. Someday. The day looms like bats. You hope it
never comes flying from the cave. But it will find you, and you
know it. Grandmother will have you touch and hold the sheep.
Touching the animal as the life slips away. You know something of
the power of touching things. Grandmother touches you, too, and
sometimes firmly. She scares you, protects you, grounds you, and
someday she will ask you to help her hold the sheep.
You learn early on the enormity of touching things.
Even writing, we are touching things. Pounding away like a
sculptor chips away at the marble of what was. Writing the stories
of what happened is a stone. The stone is not unlike a sheep. It has
a life that belongs inherently to no one. You take it. Or not. You
create the sculpture or not. You write the thing or not. All of it is
monsters.
I am afraid to write about touching him. The monster of it lives
outside with the bats. Touching the story of what touching him was
83

like is, too, a chipping away at rock with hammers and a chisel. The
thing emerges like the story in the stone. It has eyes. A nose. Fingers.
Lips.
It has funny toes.
Awee had a penis, too. It came with being boy. All boy. Every
inch of him. We do not discuss it. The penis is forbidden. Like
death.
It bled, too.
He was always touching it. The foreskin did not retract all the
way. He could peel it back so he could pee. Then, he would gently
peel it back a little bit, and it would bleed. It did not need to be cut
off (like most white people would be done with it), but just slowly
over time, discovery, like death, is giving birth to what you are
inside the layers of the thing.
In the morning, he would wake up with an erection, and there
would be a little blood on his underpants, or his pajamas, or on the
sheets (it depended on what he slept in, Awee preferred nudity as it
was quite natural to him). He would grow alarmed, but more curious
than alarmed. He wondered what it meant. He always wondered
what things meant.
It meant he was a male. That is all it meant.
It did not mean that he was bad. Or that he was a bad person.
Or that he was a criminal. Or that he was not covered in the skin of
his morality. It was not a shameful thing, and we did not treat it like
it was.
We simply acknowleged that Awee was male. AIDS had not
robbed him of everything. Enough. But not quite everything. He
had his gender, and he even liked it.
Most women want their sons to put it away. Get it out of sight.
That is probably natural, too. Little boys do not walk around with
erections.
And if you believe that, I have some land in the Everglades that
I would like to sell you at a bargain.
Little boys walk around with erections. Men know when they
care to remember beyond and past the moral injunctions erected by
motherhood. The erections of the son, and the knife of the grandmother
are not bats that touch, but stand in the darkness of the
cave, wings folded tight, stiffly at attention.
I was not his mother. There are vast differences in the way men
raise boys versus the way in which women raise boys. Most women
would opt for circumcision. Let him squirm and suffer like the
sheep. I opted for time, and knew that every hard-on he got would
peel it back a little bit, and his penis (like his life) would emerge
from the wetness of the skin that had protected it.
Awee was his penis.
My job was to protect him. Loving him was easy. It wasn't really
work. Protecting him was work.
We had this Big Thing between us.
It was an agreement. Engorged with blood. The agreement was
important. We had agreed that we would interrupt time itself (or
events) to pose the question: what do you want.
Just ask it. No one, no one, no one would ever, ever, ever be
punished for asking it. It deserved an answer.
What do you want.
I want to live.
Was an answer.
I want to be alive.
Was an answer.
I want to be in life.
How to do those things was never easy. They were hard to
implement. Harder than a penis on a twelve-year-old could ever
hope to be.
I want to play baseball with the other boys.
There was a lot to ponder. There was a lot to consider. There
was a lot to protect.
There was a lot to touch in life. Touching him was magic.
Writing about touching him scares me. Because I live IN the
world (and I understand how vindictive it can be) even when I try
not to. How can you even hope to paint a picture of who he was
without telling the story of touching him? You had to touch him to
know him. You had to hug him to protect him.
This does not necessarily imply the touching of his penis (we
are so focused on the poor thing). There wasn't much to touch.
Awee had yet to go through the full-throttle of what is puberty, and

86
at twelve, it loomed and squirmed like a sheep as Grandmother held
it and deftly made the blood drain in spurts into her pan. I do not
understand how the penis of a boy — even erect — can be perceived
in a sexual context. The thing is just too vulnerable and exposed. It
would be like calling a peanut a melon and expecting the taste to be
the same. It won't be. The peanut is a taste. A marble is what boys
play with. It is not a tomato. It will not cut nor will it spill red with
seed.
His penis was only a possibility, and a thing he studied curiously
like he might study the rules of a board game purchased in the
toy department at Wal-Mart. It was private, too.
It was something that perplexed him, and he looked to me for
guidance and for comfort. I only write this squirmy stuff here
because if I do not, I will be dismissed as twisted and inappropriate
which I will be anyway.
Your penis is a contradiction. Any boy's penis is a contradiction.
Thusly, you are prepared to deal with the other contradictions you
will find in life. Millions of them. Your penis is the center of your
body and your life. No matter what your mother tells you. You
know that from day one. You know, too, that it can be put away so
you might have a life.
What do you want.
Baby boys will tell you by their touching that they want their
penis.
I want to live.
What do you want.
I want to be alive.
What do you want.
I want you to touch me.
He did not mean his penis.
He meant his life. Hold all of it. Held fast. Like Grandmother
as she holds her sheep.
Touching him was my life. I don't know how you could deal
with AIDS without touching him. I don't know of any way to
approximate giving him what he wants without touching him.
Wrapping him in hugs.
Touching him was magic. He was more than simply there.
It made me nervous. Touching him.
He was twelve. I was his dad. His new dad. His adoptive dad.
He was all over me. With his hands, his kisses, and his hugs.
He had AIDS.
Let's be real. It was why I adopted him. Do-gooders doing
good. The do-gooder shit runs deep. As deep and as liquid black as
the loneliness in his lucid eyes. We were like lovers, too. I don't care
what you think. It wasn't sex. I was not about to have sex with a
twelve-year-old boy struggling with AIDS. I have crashed-andburned
before (many times) but not like this. It wasn't sex. It was,
however, him in bed.
At night. When he was afraid.
Dreams. He was on Sustiva. It was just one of the HIV medications
he was on. Sustiva makes you dream, and not just any
dream. The research materials that describe the side effects of Sustiva
use the term: LSD-like. These were LSD-like dreams, and they
would scare any twelve-year-old boy shitless.
They were electric. They were alive. They were visceral. They
spoke to him in screams.
Him standing there at the side of the bed late at night. Weeping.
He had either wet or shit the bed. AIDS is not a nice disease. I
was exhausted. I would have to clean him up, clean his bedding, put
it in the wash, and I let him sleep with me, I did. Him clinging to
my leg like a remora. What was it going to hurt except the armchair
psychologists and moral authorities who would dissect it later.
Post-vivisection. You're not supposed to do that. It's against the
rules. It's a big No No in our impenetrable culture. Him touching
me. Hugging me. Wrapped around my numbness.
I gave him that. I gave him things I was not supposed to.
Things that I hoped would prevent him from slipping away. Hold
tight, boy. I was his rock.
It wasn't sex. I have to keep repeating it. It wasn't sex. It was survival.
I do not know how I can separate him out from issues such as
sex and AIDS when, in fact, he came from both. I believe his mother
passed the virus to him. At birth. That is what I believe. I write
this as though it were an indictment. It is perhaps unfair. He had
been abused, too. What was fair about any of it? How he got AIDS

was irrelevant, and a convenient way to get out of having to deal
with the reality of him now. Denial is a snake of many colors. I do
not know how I can separate him from the carnage that he came to
bed with. I bought him blue pajamas. It was not enough. He could
go through two or three pairs of pajamas in a night. Cleaning him
was not sex. Nevertheless, it was soft and often intimate.
At first, my biggest fear was over shit. The smell of it. The feel
of it. The disgust. It was not like having a baby. Or changing diapers.
It was a lot of shit. The boy was twelve. He was far more disgusted
(with himself) than I could ever be. There were times when
he was in control of his body and his bowels. But there were other
times, the not-good-times, when he wasn't in control of much.
Finally, we evolved this struggle into a ritual, which helped. It helps
to put these horrible things into rituals. I would pick him up and
put him in the tub. I would wash him, touching him, and we did
not talk much.
Sometimes he would cry. He had worked so hard at being independent.
Now, our secret was that he was a baby once again, again
and again, always slipping back, and I agreed not to tell anyone
because he begged me not to. We had so many secrets.
In time, I did not think about his shit, or the smell of it. I do
not remember it. I remember him.
What I remember is how nice he smelled in his blue pajamas.
I would wake up in the morning, and he would have soaked the
bed in sweat, clinging to me again, with his twelve-year-old erection
pressed against my leg. I ignored this. Who from invisibility has
come to life in impotence. Not him. Not I. Some judge, some see,
some hear, some speak in tongues and babble, some reaffirm the
contradictions of their lives. Some disintegrate. Some find themselves
in faith. I found mine in touching him. We were alive.
In the good times, there was a lot of touching him. Other boys
did it quite a bit. Boys his age. It was normal. They did not know
that he was sick: 1) because we did not tell them, and 2) he was
quite good at covering it up.
During one of the good times (when the pain from his neuropathy
could still be controlled by morphine, then later by a combination
of methadone and lamictal), I let him join a baseball team.
It was the world to him.
He was supposed to have a physical. I forged a doctor's signature.
It was like being back in high school, and you needed a bathroom
pass. Sue me.
He was quite clear about his desire to do this. "Look," he said.
"I'm dying. We know that. But before I do, I just want to play some
baseball."
What do you want.
I swallow all my fears like they are rocks inside my throat and
say okay.
What do I do if he bleeds?
I sit in the stands with the other parents. In terror.
I am so nervous, my hands tremble uncontrollably, and I have
to clench my Coke. He steps fearlessly right up into the balls.
Swings. That crack. Home runs win him a lot of friends.
Now, they are touching him.
Arms around his neck. They're all over him with their shirts off.
Late at night and summer hot and drinking Coke and the lights
from the baseball field have illuminated not quite everything in
truth.
I sit in the bleachers with the other parents who have arrived in
their SUVs, and worry, worry, worry not about home runs but
about stupid things like him getting bruised and blood, what if...
What If is the kingdom of the Board of Regents whose battlefields
are littered with the corpses of the boys who have fallen there
to protect the pleasure of the king.
What if.
Fuck.
What if he gets invited to his friend's house — other boys his age
sleep overnight, and camp in backyards in their tents — what if all
his secrets are found out? Can I? Can I? He wants everything.
I do say no.
Just no. Sometimes I am the bad guy, too.
"No, you can't sleep over at John's house."
"But, I want to."
That and fifty cents...
John's house. Where John and his brothers sleep with their
89

friends in the basement in their sleeping bags, and stay up late, and
eat chips, and cookies John's mom has made, and shine their flashlights
on their dicks like look at mine.
Like I am not supposed to know. Give me a break.
I know John. I know his brothers. I know the basement. I know
the friends. I know the cookies. I know the flashlights as if they were
a lighthouse, and it would be my son who is the small ship lost out
here in the bigger waves at sea. I know the laughing squeals of boys
like I know antiquity. All of it is normal. All of it is fine. All of it is
stuff that you have to let go of as you let them live their lives. As
lives unfold. I know this: John will die at twenty in a frat house alcohol
initiation. It will break his parents' hearts (they didn't know boys
drink). Sam will live to be sixty-two, and he will always miss John.
Frankie will live to be eighty-eight, and he will have four children,
all of whom will grow up to be arrogant and rich. They will all have
pools. Steven will finally become a doctor. Grant, contrary to everyone's
expectations, will spend thirty years delivering mail. There is
nothing wrong with it. Dennis will own a hardware store. Dan will
move to New York where he will blow his brains out after twenty
years as a junkie. Craig will visit Dan once, and never go back to a
major American urban center again in his life. Mark will become a
schizophrenic at nineteen, and will live on and off in a variety of
institutions and group homes. He will hate his medication. Tom
will sell new cars to people who play golf, and sometimes he will
wonder what happened to everyone.
Every now and then, infrequently, but from time to time, they
will all remember flashlights, and they will grow a little hot and
blush.
"But I want to go to John's. Everyone will be there."
Not everyone.
I am essentially a selfish man.
It wasn't John I objected to. Or his mother with her cookies. It
wasn't the basement with the boys. It wasn't sex or flashlights.
It was chaos. Anywhere.
AIDS is chaos imposed on time.
Awee would go (if I let him, and I would not), and lose himself
in those quickly running moments in the wind where he was just a
boy again, and essentially like them.
And he wasn't like them.
No matter the illusion of the medications he was on.
What they bought was time.
John had a few more years. Frankie had almost eighty. Mark
was already showing signs of schizophrenia. They just weren't too
visable yet, or obvious. His bothers would look back, and think: oh,
yeah, there.
"But I want to go," Awee begged. A basement with sleeping
bags. A mom. Cookies.
Now, who was going to give him his medication? Would he
remember it. Not likely. Mom? With her cookies. Dispenses out the
antiretrovirals. Nada chance.
This is where he crawls up onto my lap again. To cry. I am his
rock. His wetness is touching me. I am touching him.
It was not John or Mark or Tom or Steve he was going to miss.
It was his childhood.
They were having theirs. John was already drinking, but no one
knew it. Secrets are everywhere.
My purpose is to protect my son. Sometimes from himself.
He sulks to punish me. I am not amused.
What if he stops loving me.
These are the dragons of my discontent. What if he dies, and
I'm not there to hold him.
He was something of a thief, and liked stealing bases. Slides
into third. Skins everything. His thigh, his knee, sand and dirt
ground into his skin.
Him screaming in the bathroom as I spray him in antiseptic.
"You DON'T have to hurt me!"
But I do.
All that hurt should steal such gentle shapes as this.
I was the one who held his hand when they put a catheter in his
penis at the hospital.
"It will be okay," I lied.
It wasn't. He pulled it out. Now, blood again. They tied him
down, and I was the one who wept.
"I HATE it! I HATE them," he screamed.

"I know," I said. Hopefully, I could touch him with my lies. But
he was too smart, and usually he found them out.
Finally, I made them take the catheter out, and I would pick
him up, and set him on the toilet so he could pee, and I would hold
him.
I tried not to look at his penis. It was just a silhouette. Boys his
age have usually discovered masturbation, and not as some comparative
vernacular, but as the artillery of flesh. "I won't have children,"
he told me. Discovery comes at strange and inconvenient times. "I
always thought I might."
"No, but you'll have other things."
"Like what?"
"Like sunsets. Don't we always try to see the sunset — even from
the window — if we can?"
I could make him smile.
I could make him smile like no one else on earth. Only I could
do it. Often, when I made him smile, he would reach out with his
fingers and he would gently touch my eyes, and sometimes my lips,
just to see if we were real. We were so real, we burned.
I bought him his own private flashlight to consult his penis
with. I am a walking, talking advertisement for Wal-Mart.
It is the sun that falls.
What had once been torture for us — this touching — now was
something else. He liked it when I washed his hair, and we spoke
quietly in whispers. Soapy head. He would dunk himself down into
the water of the bath and emerge more beautiful than god.
As people began to find out that he was sick with AIDS, that
he was dying, there was less and less of them touching him. No
more baseball boys with their arms drapped in brotherhood around
his shoulders. John, Mark, Steve, Tom, Dennis became his memories.
He, too, would be one of theirs. Eighty-eight is a long time to
carry them. Schizophrenia just loses them like luggage at the airport.
Even my own friends and colleagues moved further and further
away. "I can't deal with this," my literary agent said, which surprised
me because she had never met my son. "I hope you understand."
I said I did.
But I didn't. I surely didn't.
Like she was even there.
People I worked with in publishing grew thin as smoke.
Even in the hospitals, no one came around. The nurses avoided
him.
We held hands a lot.
It wasn't sex. We did not care what anyone thought about us
holding hands. It wasn't about them or what they thought. It was
about us. It always had been.
When I think of touching him, I remember how he held me.
Hard around the waist. On the big bike when we could hold it up.
Like the Acropolis clings to the burden of the cliff. The ancient
citadel of Athens.
If it's true that good boys need no blush upon their cheeks, it's
true, too, that men do not need epilogues. Come sit behind me,
son, and touch me here and here. To wake the soul by tender, roaring
strokes of bikes, and touching me through fear.
93

94
—MARCELO RIOSECO
The Most Important Man in the
City
Concepcion, when I was born, was a small city where everybody
knew everybody else. Families spoke proudly about their parents
and about their parents' parents. It was a time when, if a man
said he lived in Concepci6n, you thought of Chile's southern reaches,
of long train rides, and of a rainy provincial city where people ate
late lunches and long conversations between friends were as ordinary
as breathing. This was the period when I saw the craziest and
happiest people in my life. One of these was Carlos Escobar, my
father, who claimed to be the most important man in Concepcion.
And in that year, 1956, nobody quite outdid him.
My father worked for the National Railroad Company. For
most of his life, all he did was speak at union meetings, hang out
with friends, and stay by my mother's side for more than forty years.
He could talk for hours on end, as long as there was wine and
friends at the table. He smoked a brand of cheap, domestic cigarettes
that stunk up the house. Every morning he would read the
newspaper, El Sur, in the bathroom, smoking and talking to himself.
When he walked through the house, he left a tobacco cloud
behind him.
"Cigarettes are good for thinking and help my digestion," he
would tell my mother. She would always get upset about his smell
and the foul words he used, and she scolded him for this. Nevertheless,
she tended to say that without men like my father, Chile
would be ruined.
His passion was Concepci6n's Hunting and Fishing Club where
he would go on Saturday afternoons to get drunk and criticize the
government. Once he was elected Club president, he started telling
everybody he was the most important man in the city, and he did
everything he could to prove it.
According to him, the title of Hunting and Fishing Club President
was the highest position a railroad worker like himself, born
in Concepci6n, could aspire to. He was an eccentric from the middle-class
and he knew it. He constantly surrounded himself with
friends and beautiful women, giving presents and extending invitations.
He felt a special attraction to young women and he did not
hide this fact. His energy was endless. He publicly ridiculed the
railroad authorities, and, during the national strikes, he organized
huge cafeterias to feed his coworkers' families.
When he felt happy, he would sit me on his knees and pass his
huge, rough hands through my hair. "Your father is completely
crazy," he would tell me, laughing. And that was enough for me to
believe that I had the best dad anyone could wish for. My mother,
though, was rather shy compared to him. She was extraordinarily
beautiful and distinguished by her calm demeanor. She would constantly
condemn my father's flirtatious and rebellious ways and their
fights and reconciliations always had the same intensity. My father
would often get drunk and forget to come home. My mother
would sometimes wait for him at the door, and when she saw him
coming, she would give him a hard slap and then shut herself in the
kitchen to cry. After a few days they swore eternal love to each
other.
There was a period when my father was truly crazy. He spent
his spare time praising himself as the most important man in the
city. Perhaps for that reason, destiny may have granted him an
opportunity to prove it. On a Friday morning he had gone to the
center of town in his old Ford. He parked it in front of City Hall
and when he returned, there were two policemen writing him a
ticket. These officers were friends of my father and apologized for
the inconvenience. My father got angry and ended by beating them
up; then, he calmly left in his Ford. In no hurry, he drove around
the Plaza a few times as the police pursued him. He coolly maneuvered
onto the sidewalk and drove into the market facing the Plaza.
95

With the police running behind him, he drove slowly enough to
greet people he knew: "Hello, Pepe. How's the family?" "Hey,
Marfa Luisa, say hi to your mom for me." "Don Jorge, have you
been taking care of your heart?" People stared at him blankly. He
kept this up for almost an hour, weaving through the aisles until he
was finally stopped. He decided to give up in front of the Cathedral.
He was always a fan of spectacles; it was there that a large,
curious group had congregated, many of whom were his friends.
The police took him out of the car in handcuffs, among applause
and cries of victory, while he raised his hands, waving like a provincial
Caesar. He was arrested and detained at the police station.
Although my mother refused to go and get him out of jail, he convinced
the guards to release him that night. He threw a huge party
at the Hunting and Fishing Club and invited the whole municipality
along with the officers who had detained him. The party lasted
two days.
When he arrived home that Sunday morning, she did not say a
word, nor did she lock herself up in the kitchen or cry. She poured
him a cup of coffee, helped him get into bed, and a few moments
later disappeared. She returned at noon. My father was still sleeping
off his drunkenness when he felt the vibrations of a bus pulling
up next to our house. Its tooting horn must have startled half the
block. Suddenly, the noise stopped, and I could hear my mother's
voice calling out: "Carlos! Carlos! Wake up, I'm leaving!" My father
rolled out of bed, still half asleep and in his underwear. When he
realized what was happening, he couldn't believe it. My mother had
arrived in a bus full of men. She was in the bus door, wearing a
lovely red dress and a fancy beach hat that covered half her face, and
she looked extraordinarily beautiful. The uproar was complete: the
men were calling to my mother in a mixture of provocative and
admiring cries, whistling and laughing crazily. "What's going on
here, Ana? Get off that bus this minute!" yelled my father from the
door of the house. "Ay, Carlos don't exaggerate! I just wanted you
to know that I'm going to the beach with my friends," she responded.
"Who are all those men?" shouted my father. "Admirers, who
else would they be?" He had no chance to hear the rest of the
answer because the bus took off at full speed. Furious, my father
dressed, took the car, and followed. With some effort, he finally
found her sunbathing on Blanca Beach, surrounded by her admirers.
She greeted him as if it were the most natural thing in the
world. At that, my father lost all scruples. "Ana, come back home,
you're being ridiculous." "Ridiculous? And you? Why did you drive
through the market?" "Nothing, it was a joke." "Well, I think the
most important man in the city has a lot of competition today."
"Ana, all right, now stop this behavior and let's go home." My
mother did not indulge him with a reply. Indignant, my father got
up and went towards the car. "I'm leaving," he announced. He
turned on the motor, then quickly turned it off. He smiled, took
out a cigarette and walked back to my mother. He spoke proudly:
"I will be in that car waiting for you. When you get tired of this
game, you can join me and we'll go home." He turned back
towards the car. On his way he realized that, if there was one
important person in this city, it was Ana, his wife.
My mother made him wait five hours before she decided to
return. It was almost dark when she found him sleeping in the car.
At first she didn't wake him. Instead, she took a cigarette out of his
shirt pocket and lit it. For the first time, she appreciated the aroma
of the tobacco she hated so much. Gazing into the rearview mirror,
she fixed her hair and then looked towards the ocean with a secret
joy, for she finally understood that the man slumped beside her was
too proud to admit he had been defeated by the woman he loved.
And for all those times he acted crazily, he was not crazy at all, nor
was he a fraud or a brute, but rather he was the man with whom she
had shared more than half her life, who had given her a son, and a
dream to defeat death. That is why she gazed at the waves and waited
to wake him till the stars shone like metallic mirrors over the sea.
Translated by Alex Cussen
97

—CHRISTINA PUGH
Lady's Slipper
If the heart were pared
to two rose kidneychambers,
furled
in the grass —
if cursive veins
scribbled at the seam
where the halves
paled and interleaved —
if, on these thumbnail
tablets of instruction,
the letters bled
at the moment
I tried to read -
still the pines
would shelter
the soft graft,
never knowing
the sense of its stitch,
what words
weave a ventricle,
what seraph
or arabesque
stains there
to plot a body's need.
—SUSAN STEINBERG
Caught
Lord she was glorious in that dress. Fresh I would venture, brilliant.
And good to see the Chinese wilted flower pattern, perhaps
outdated, of black and red on a night so wet. Fastened off-center,
as it was, and short, I spied her knees despite my speed through the
doorway, and suntanned they were, brilliant, golden.
My mother would have piped in, Cheap, but this girl, she
struck me, and I struck her as well, though, funny, with the door is
how I did. And she didn't flinch when it smacked her, though I did
flinch outright, feeling the smack, then seeing her glorious, static
poise.
Frozen she was. And I froze.
But here's me talking of a girl, of a dress, when I had rushed in
rain-soaked, gasping, like a wet dog, as the old saying goes, into the
ladies' room, my hair matted flat, my skirt dripping wet as if water
sprung from leaks in the skirt itself.
My mother would have said, Dry those clothes, had I shown to
her house wet as that. Dry up, she would have said, pitching a
towel. She would have said, A drowned rat is what she looks, and
I did look a sight, squeaking wet shoes across the tiles, squeezing
water from my hair with paper.
I knew I had to rush — there was no denying — time was flying
past.
And I knew there was dinner waiting and talk — we had hardly
talked all year, I with my life, my mother with hers. There were
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neighbors waiting, and here I was late, the drive one more hour, at
least, and what kind of daughter, yes, yes, I had heard it. I should
have called more often, I should have driven quicker; I had heard it
all. I would rush.
But I was soaked to the bones, as they say, and drying, not
thinking of the reason I had rushed in first, which was to use the
room, so to speak. How odd to say, to use.
I was too soaked to use anything, really, drying quick, my skirt
matted smack to my legs, heavy with wet, and dark.
And this girl stood poised under the heat light, bone-dry, glorious
in Chinese flowers, not looking at me, at my burst through the
door, but looking only at herself in the mirror.
I would explain my lateness to my mother.
I would tell her weather, Bad weather, I swear.
She would say, She brings bad weather with her, She always has,
Am I right.
She would say, The rainclouds must follow her around, all the
times she's rushed in soaked from rain.
The neighbors would laugh behind their hands. They would
give the looks that say, We shouldn't be laughing at the poor thing,
should we.
And I would explain my look. That weather was to blame.
That I dried my rain-soaked hair with paper, I swear, in a tavern, in
the ladies'.
My mother would say, She could have stopped off, cleaned up,
dried a bit more to be decent, for decency still counts, Am I right,
And anything less than decent is not worth the drive.
Tell me if I'm not right.
I went into one stall, the girl into the other, both of us locking,
unbuttoning, and sitting, though I never, in general, sat all the way,
but here, for some reason, I did and hard. The seat was hot from
the heat light I ventured, so hot I could have slept there and waked
in hours, days, when someone happened to knock and wake me. I
could have slept there, head to the door.
I spied her black slipper under the divider, and I thought how
small; my feet would never have fit in shoes so perfect and small,
and how curious, too, her shoes, they were dry. In a blinding down-
pour. How odd.
I thought, did she hear how my big, soaked shoes had squeaked
across the tiles on my way to the stall like a bad hinge worn from
use. I could have blushed, were I that type, and had she heard my
shoes, cheap as they were, squeaking across, and she must have
heard, her shoes being so curiously dry; slippers they were, and who
wouldn't have heard.
Like buffalo, my mother once piped through a smirking
mouth. Like a whole herd of buffalo coming through the house,
and I laughed with the neighbors. You're funny, I said.
Well, this girl must have been on her way out, and the rain
must have rained during her dinner, for she was dry. And I was sure
she had already eaten, for she did seem, somehow, already fed, satisfied,
it seemed, in the way she took her time.
I slowed my speed to hers.
I thought of her hands, small, propping her up from the seat.
I thought of her face, her gaze on the door of the stall.
And I knew her date waited at the bar, a wiry one, chewing a
toothpick, taking a mint for later to suck.
And I could tell they would leave, these two. He would take
her somewhere, to a lot, to sit, to kiss; I knew this part, the rush.
There was no denying the heat of hands on the back.
My mother would have said, That animal, had he been mine
looking so rough as that, looking him toe to face as he sucked his
toothpick waiting for his girl.
My mother would have said, And where does he work, Am I
right.
She would have smirked, She had better not bring that one
home.
The neighbors would have laughed into their shirts, their knees.
I would never have brought one home.
The neighbors had daughters too.
And the daughters never brought them home.
If I told the neighbors a thing or more of their daughters. I had
spied those nights in summer. I had seen a thing or more.
But I would watch my tongue. I always watched it.
I was decent, I was.
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102
So much so, I thought to tell her to wait — it was storming
sideways — and I almost did tell her, looking at her perfect slipper,
Wait. But we were in separate stalls, as it was, and I would never
have struck up talk.
I was decent.
And surely her date would say, Let's wait; he had brains, sure,
and would buy the drinks — for him something cheap in a shot glass,
for her something sweet with a cherry. But strong.
She could take it.
I could tell.
And perhaps I would have a drink at the bar with the girl and
her date, a shot, perhaps, and quick I would eat; I was starved.
We would click our drinks, give a toast to life, then laugh at the
storm, at the three of us sitting there, caught.
I would leave soon as I could; I would speed. Just one more
hour, then dinner, reheated, but I needed to dry before my mother
saw me so soaked.
I sat hard, draining, not wanting to rise just yet, and she was
beside me, a wall between us, a thin divider, and she drained, as
well, and drained, it seemed, at the very same pressure, the very
same pitch and speed.
I could have blushed for thinking such cheap thoughts, but I
wasn't one to blush. I could have though and easy.
I could barely pull up my rain-soaked skirt.
I felt her rise, adjust.
And I wondered of this date outside the door, some wiry steady,
I knew it was. He was wiry-fingered, and I wondered of him. Of
them. Of what they would do in the lot. I knew of tongues, the
taste of mint; I knew nights in lots, hands hot on my back, those
wiry ones I loved.
Then barefoot, creeping across the grass, I could see my window.
I was golden.
But the neighbors' windows always lighted. Their curtains
parted shining squares of light on the grass as I pushed up my window.
Caught.
I always wondered how to fit in.
I almost always found a way.
The neighbors' lights went off. The grass below my window
blacked.
And I watched the ceiling from the bed, thought of the night,
of the lot, of the wiry one, the rush of him, whoever he was, and I
stayed in bed still feeling his hands, still hearing the suck and suck
and suck of us.
It was summer.
At night I returned to the lot.
So I knew they were going to sit in a lot, these two, perhaps the
one out front.
My car was in that lot, the keys in the car, the motor running.
I had so needed to drain the last several miles, I parked and ran, not
thinking.
And now I opened the door to the stall, ran water, faced the
mirror, faced her face in the mirror.
I would explain her face.
How satisfied.
And I would explain the weather.
It was thought to be drizzle and grew to a downpour, I swear it.
My mother would shake a plate of blackened food below my
face, saying, That ungrateful, The dinner was cooked and recooked
and recooked.
The neighbors would nod their heads, make the faces, then the
arms around my mother's back that say, You've worked so hard and
she's still good for nothing.
Let her go already.
I would say, Surely I'm good for something.
Surely the neighbors knew I was.
My mother would pitch the plate to the table, storm to her
room, slam the door, crying, dramatic.
I would shake my head, say, That leaky faucet, and laugh alone.
I would wait with the neighbors until dark, until one of them
walked me to my car, said, Go.
It was always this.
I was always late.
I was always waiting, then leaving red-faced.
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104
And here I was on my way.
I would stall.
It was glorious with the hum of the fan, the flower soap smell,
the sucking sound of the drains. And lord she was tall I saw as we
soaped our hands in side-by-side sinks under the light.
I would explain her turn of the faucet, the steam in the mirror.
Then she was gone from the mirror, so I turned my faucet.
So it wasn't just me there.
You see.
It never just was.
If I told the neighbors, Look.
It wasn't just me there.
I would tell them, Look.
Those brainless good-for-nothings, and they knew it, the
neighbors, their animal daughters I had seen in lots at night in summer.
Take a look at your girls.
I would watch my tongue.
I would watch it go.
Your girls, I would say.
Banged-up knees and brainless.
Sweet they seemed.
Indecent.
I had the rush of hands on my back until morning. The girls
had hands rushing all the way up and up. And more. I knew. I
had spied.
Just they came home early. They were sweet in their dresses. A
hello to their mother, the father, a kiss in the air, and everyone went
to their rooms.
Just they were animal that way. Rushing through it. Rushing
home.
And they didn't sleep but went to their windows, the daughters,
their mother, the father, to catch me. They waited for me to walk
across grass, to catch me at my window, golden.
Sure, they always caught me.
I almost always fit right in.
But that once I pushed my window up. The neighbors' win-
dows lighted. It rained.
And the rain had tapped the car in the lot; it had streaked the
windows. It was warm in the car, getting hot, hotter, then later, and
he said he would drive me home. The rain, he said, but I wanted
to walk across the grass.
I walked as slow as I could.
I pushed my window upward.
My mother stood in my lighted square.
Sure, I couldn't fit.
I almost said, Well, look, I can explain.
I almost said, Let me in.
But she pushed the window down on my fingers, hissing, You
indecent good-for-nothing.
The neighbors' lights went off. The grass went dark. It rained.
I sat beneath my window, fingers wilted in the grass until the
rain stopped, the sun rose, my mother left for work.
Indecent, they whispered behind their hands.
Not me. Their girls.
This time I would say it.
I would say, Animals.
I would say, Brainless.
And I would run to my car, my mother steaming in the doorway,
Where do you think you're going so soon, you ungrateful.
Let her go.
I would drive the way home and never return.
I would say, Look, I've let you go.
I would laugh alone. I'm funny, I would say.
I laughed aloud in the ladies'.
The girl turned her faucet.
So it was her in the mirror, alone, you see.
So I turned my faucet to be with her.
I felt it when she looked at me.
I can explain her look.
It was good for something.
So I looked back.
But she was gone from the mirror, rushing past me, drying her
hands on her Chinese flowers.
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106
She reached for the doorknob and pulled.
I wanted to say, Not yet, Wait.
I wanted to say, The rain.
She left streaks of wet across her dress.
She was gone from the room in a rush.
And I was brilliant, lord, in the mirror.
I was static, poised, drying out in the light.
—MARK DOTY
The Bootblack
What can be said of this happiness?
The bootblack on his knees
in the dim of the bar gives himself
completely to the work of polishing,
leaning into the body of the stool
before him, a shirtless and eager man
who's being mouthed clean.
Around them parts the human dark.
Not much to do with degradation;
the generous bootblack pours
his attention out of his body
- all alertness - into the presence
before him, up the legs, beautiful,
burying his face in the warm cloth
of the lap: completed, receptacle,
recipient, held, filled -
Though it's hardly passive:
he's working to relinquish,
giving the seated one pleasure,
releasing his own weight.
They seem to light the gloom
of their corner; together
they make one lamp. And as if
his work were not complete
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until it had been seen by another
— labor of the mouth,
art perfected with the tongue —
he turns his face toward me,
his witness, smiling, though the verb's
thin for this unshielded triumph
of a face: What's he conquered?
Distance and dissatisfaction have slipped
from the look he lifts to me,
so that his power might not go
unacknowledged, now that
he is the image of achieved joy.
-VICTORIA REDEL
Stuff
"Is this really the way you think I want to remember my mother?"
he asked, shaking out the endless little bits of things stuck at
the bottom of the pocketbook — unwrapped sticky sucking things,
loose capsules, a split and dirty pill, receipts and then more receipts
- for what? he couldn't tell - and did he need to check through
every piece of paper and see what the hell crazy products his mother
bought at yet another rip-off store? Dropping a metal hair clip
on the bed, he said, "This is quite a way for you to meet her."
The girlfriend looked up from where she was sitting close to
him and said, "Do you not want me here? Tell me. Just say so if
you want to do this by yourself."
"Just tell me if you want this?" he snipped, pinching open the
metal hair clip between his thumb and forefinger. "If you don't, I'll
chuck it." He wanted to chuck the whole thing out, toss all these
lost days of being back in this clutter. Fuck the piles for Goodwill.
Let alone her rooms of papers and closets to sort through. He'd
throw the house out if he could. But here, now, first, was the shit in
her pocketbook. Cards. And plastic.
"Why exactly did a woman like her actually need this much
plastic?" he sneered at the girlfriend who was up now, leaning in
close to the mirror, pinning her bangs into a spit curl. He looked
at the planked stretch of the girlfriend's back, and her serious face
in his mother's mirror, and he thought he better not start thinking
about how damn good she looked in his mother's room. He needed
to just get to it. Might as well get on the phone - wasn't that
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no
how it was done? - and say his mother wouldn't be needing these
cards and he would have to listen while women with every kind of
cheerful accent said, "You're the son? Oh, I'm so sorry."
He'd heard nothing but sorry women on phones for days and
nights. Last night, just as he'd drifted off, an old neighbor called
teary, saying how could it all happen so quickly after such a life as
the life she'd seen. When he'd accused, his eyes sharpening in the
dark room, "So you tell me. What did she see?" the neighbor's
voiced stiffened, "This and that. You know her. Nothing you need
to think about."
If he was lucky enough to get a woman on the phone.
Women could do things for him, he knew. No, no, he needn't
start sending proof of anything, they would send him the last statement,
make a note and that would take care of everything. "My
God," the women would say, "this is the last thing a son should have
to deal with." They understood. They could hear it in his voice
what kind of son he was and they wanted to help out — even in as
little a way as they had to offer.
The girlfriend wanted to do things too. So was it so wrong the
way he'd let her take care of things when all his mother's friends
came back to the house? He stood in the doorway then, watching
her move, lithe among his mother's arthritic friends. The girlfriend
carrying platters of sliced meats into the dining room, stopped to
lean close to him, whispering, "I'll talk to them. I'll take care of it.
You go in and rest."
"This one's a keeper and a looker," the women called to him,
loudly, with chewed bits of pumpernickel in the corners of their
mouths. "Did she meet your mother?" He imagined how he would
have suffered, moody and silent, watching her make eager talk with
his mother. And the girlfriend — what could she have eaten of his
mother's burnt roasts and goulash, everything thick and gelled with
gravy? This girlfriend, he loved the way she ate, seaweeds, and long
radishes that she steamed for her dinner. Even watching the way
food rested on her fork as if the fork was a sort of prayer. But seeing
her in the living room, talking with the old women, her hands
steadying the wobbly saucers of his mother's glued china, he
thought, actually she looked a little like them, a skinny new world
version, a thickness lurking about her nose, even her boyish hips
looked like something on the verge of swelling large.
The girlfriend had found him later, fitting herself against him
on his boy-sized bed.
"Hey, you never even fell asleep. I finally got the last of them
out of here. I thought they were going to lick the plates clean and
then eat them up," she whispered, reaching around to stroke him.
She cupped him in her hands. "Would this maybe make you feel a
little better?"
All the nights he'd spent conjuring girl-hands in this house!
He hunched closer to the wall, as if refusing her were the best
comfort he could manage.
But now the girlfriend, all pretty and leggy draped in only his
open shirt, was up at the mirror, fingering enough pots of cremes
for every minute of day and night and holding one after another
stubby lipstick up to her lips. His mother's lipsticks. His mother's
smeared mirror, where how many times had he come into the room
and found his mother staring at herself, or calling him over to help
her get to the high place on her zipper where her hands couldn't get
to? He couldn't count how many times he'd zipped her up, but he
could count the one, maybe two times he had, hooking the clasp
into the eye, said, "You're looking nice, Mom." And seeing himself
in the mirror, napping next to his mother's dumped out pocketbook,
he was ashamed at all her stuff and ashamed at all the one
word answers he ever gave her.
"Do you want to do the drawers?" the girlfriend asked, twisting
an orange lipstick into its silver holder.
"Do you think I do?" he sneered, looking down at the sunken
shape of the emptied pocketbook.
"I don't have to be here if you don't want," the girlfriend said.
"It's fine. I can head back."
He remembered the sound of this house, days he'd rush home
from school to have — what? — maybe an hour at the most alone. In
his room or playing records in the living room or coming in and
searching through the bureau for something new he'd never found
in his parents' drawers. He'd reached in both their drawers,
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112
scrounging around, unpairing socks, mad there wasn't any secret.
There was always such ordinary stuff— socks and coins. Even his
mother's silky things felt plain. Those years, he'd worn his mother's
lipstick more than once and liked it mostly for the waxy taste when
he chewed it off.
"I guess we better do it," he said forcing his eyes back up to see
her in the mirror and, seeing himself there, pale, unwashed, he saw
what the girlfriend could not recognize in him, his mother's long
face, her slack and heavy jaw. He tried to make his face shorter. His
girlfriend in his cotton button-down shirt looked like something
that might blow away, looked like all the silky things he had wanted
to find in his parents' drawers.
"But first let's take a break," he said, falling back on the pile he'd
dumped out from the pocketbook. Then, waving his hands like a
drowning man, he said, "If you come lie on top of me and do every
dirty thing you can think of, I'll let you take all the lipsticks you
want."
"They said things," the girlfriend said. She was relaxed on top
of him, her knuckles working at pressure points in his face.
"Who," he said.
"Your mother's ladies," she said.
"Oh, really. Must have been fascinating," he said.
"Actually, it was. But I shouldn't say anything," she said.
"What? Say what?"he said.
"Nothing. Just what women say, you know," she said.
"I don't know. Do I look like I know what women say?" he said.
"Nothing. I mean nothing that's really going to change anything,"
she said.
"Then why'd you bring it up? Why'd you say anything?" he
said, rolling out from under her. "My father used to sleep on this
side. He said it was the only way he'd ever sleep because she was up
and down half the night."
"Why?" asked his girlfriend. "Why was your mom up?"
He looked at her smooth legs stretched up and scissoring the
air. She looked like something that had never waked in the wrong
hours of night, something that could fall asleep in any corner and
stay dreamless and asleep until morning.
What did she think she was trying to do - massaging out knots,
relaxing him?
"I guess she couldn't sleep. But for all I know maybe she wanted
to do more housework," he said and wanted to roll right the fuck
over, pull his pants on and get back to work. What did he think he
was doing losing most of the morning with the girlfriend doing
some woolo-woolo thing above him? It was time to stop doodling
around and call the customer service women or at least just get the
girlfriend up and off his parents' bed. Though, really, what was the
big deal? It was just a bed in a fucking room. Hadn't his mother
even offered - and, more than once - that if he came out for a visit,
she'd give up her room for him? For him and a lady friend. That
was how his mother said it - lady friend - so that he was always
teasing into the phone, "I don't even know women who qualify as
ladies, Mother."
"Was she always unhappy or something back then?" the girlfriend
asked, her tan legs still scissoring. She pointed and flexed her
painted red toes. She was always in motion, the girlfriend, always
in a constant flush of aerobic activity. She was elastic. It seemed
there wasn't any way he couldn't bend her legs. She was skinny and
skinny chested too, and he remembered that when he'd thought
about it, he'd thought his father must had fallen for his mother's
large breasts.
"What's this?" the girlfriend said, pulling up in some yoga situp
position, twisting her torso impossibly to reach around her back.
"Man, I'm getting stabbed by your mother's keys."
"Back when?" he said sliding open the bedroom closet. Since
when did she have a closet like this? Everything jammed in, blouses
unbuttoned, overlapped on the same metal hanger. Who needed
clothes like this? What did his mother suddenly need pant suits for?
And not just one, but maybe five, and in fancy newfangled fabrics.
Where could she have been going in all these clothes? There were
straw beach baskets and silly hats with visors. And long batik dresses.
Sarongs. They were, he figured, from her trips, the cruises she
told him about to Mexico and Finland.
113

"I really needed that get away," his mother announced over the
phone, just back from the Greek islands. "And, okay, I admit it, I
adore vacationing."
"Vacationing?" he'd asked, surfing back and forth between
movies.
"It's such great, great fun," his mother had said about the ships.
Fun? When had his mother first started talking about fun? Why this
going on trips when he could barely remember her ever wanting to
leave the house? He was used to seeing his mother in the housecoats,
and here, finally smushed between the new stretchy things, were
one or two that he remembered, loose floral affairs with buttons
missing so that he could not help but see too much flesh.
"Can I have your attention?" the girlfriend said, holding up
shriveled pantyhose. "Look, you can't give this kind of thing away.
I'm going to throw all these out."
"It's not fair you knowing anything I don't know. Does it seem
right to you?" he said.
"Didn't she ever talk to you? What did your mom tell you when
she called every week?" the girlfriend said.
He tried to pull back anything his mother had said to him
when she called. She was always too much with the talking, as his
father used to say. "You are talking me to death," his father had
shouted, and sometimes he'd say it too to his mother, like a long distance
family joke. "Okay, I've gotta hang up, Ma. You've talked me
to death."
"I don't know. She said things," he said, holding up a silk wrap
skirt. After his mother came back from her California trip, she'd
called to say she was home.
"How was California?" he'd managed to ask her.
"Too much on the bus," she said. "I'm too old for all that sitting."
Now he imagined her in bright skirts up on ship decks, shopping
in duty free ports. Maybe there was line dancing. Casino
nights. She'd told him when he'd asked why she went on the trips
alone, "What do I want from the same old faces? I want to meet
people."
"These are cool," the girlfriend said, fitting her fingers inside a
pair of pink suede gloves. "I definitely want these," she said, blowing
a flurry of kisses. But these gloves looked like something the
girlfriend already must own, would show up wearing in the parts of
town where she was always arranging dinner parties. All he remembered
was his mother in his father's winter gloves and his father
shouting, "Go get your own gloves."
"You're really not going to tell me anything?" he said.
"Look, its nothing to get nuts about. You're making a big deal
of nothing. But even your mother gets to have some privacy," the
girlfriend said
"You don't know my fucking mother," he said, thinking of the
afternoons he'd come into a darkened house and her still in bed.
"You caught me," his mother had said to him.
"You're right," the girlfriend said, pulling off the narrow suede
gloves and laying them palm to palm on the bureau top. "I'm getting
out of here for a little while."
"Great," he said, "Fine. Leave if you want."
"Look! I'm just going out to get more garbage bags to help you
with all this stuff."
He sat cross-legged on his parents' bed, one of the worn floral
housecoats tented over his head. He had not been in the house
alone since he'd come back. Instead there were always the concerned
questions of his girlfriend, a few grunting widowers, but,
mostly, the house wheezed with the ladies bunched on the living
room sofa. "That gal, she could tell a joke," he'd heard one say.
"Remember her line about marriage and a spare husband?" and he'd
watched the the stray men look up and laugh right along with the
ladies.
Hadn't he sat on the stoop with his mother and these same
ladies?
He could think of her non-stop yakking, but could he
remember his mother ever telling anything like a joke?
Here, finally in the quiet, he wondered where had he been?
There had been afternoons heaped on years that he couldn't get out
of being right there, in her range, close enough for his mother to
yank his collar down, lick her finger to smudge dirt off his cheek.
115

He heard her even when he was slamming a ball against the garage
wall, or, later, sneaking inside for the quick minutes it took to jerkoff.
Even then, angled against the green bathroom tiles, he could
hear his mother outside the window and thought he'd never get far
enough away from all her talk. But it was obvious he'd missed it all.
Seen nothing. Or just wrong things. But tented under her cotton
housecoat, on his parents' bed, nobody could say he didn't know
that smell. He'd found his mother in the house dress, buried among
all the new stuflf. He could breathe her right in. He was surrounded
by his mother.
His parents' room actually looked pretty scrimmed through the
orange and red dahlia dress print. He piled together the scraps and
keys and wallet from her purse in between his legs. He would look
at everything, even the chipped pills, the lint and hair clumps, the
dirty coins. He would slow down. There was an agenda book that
velcroed shut. It might take the rest of the day, but he'd go through
it carefully.
The agenda book opened over-stufFed, papers and cards jabbed
out. There were ads — toasters and raincoats on final sale at the
department store. In the last section an address book had names.
Maybe he should, one by one, call all the names he didn't recognize.
Some lived in different states. But what was he going to hear, that
there was some lady in Seattle who sat a bridge fourth on the Winter
Blues Cruise? Or listen while some guy young enough to be his
brother piped up with, "Oh, you're her son? She was in our folk
dancing group. She was quite the polka girl. A mom like that.
You're lucky." Or, worse, he'd hear quiet on the other end and then,
"You're sure? You found my name in her address book? I'm racking
my brain. But I'm pretty sure, really. I'm sorry, really. I don't think
I know her." He shook the agenda book and a wad of envelopes fell
from pages. He slipped off the rubberband. There was a bill from
the electric company, a bill from the podiatrist, a late notice from
the phone company and a handwritten letter obviously refolded and
reread more than once.
He read as far as the salutation — Dear Full-Figured Lady — and
knew this was no saved newsy letter from one of her ladies wintering
down on a boardwalk. He read further and knew the man was
not old, not a lonely widow, but a young man, with, as he put it,
"a taste for the mature woman who knows what life is all about."
This discerning man thought she sounded perfect. Could they
meet for dinner? Theater? He said that he could already picture
them window shopping at night along the Avenues. Together they
didn't have to be lonely. She should know, he really needed her to
know, that while this wasn't the first response he had ever written,
this was the one he felt would be the true one, the genuine article.
Crazy! he wrote, but isn't following your heart a little crazy?
Signed, Hopefully yours, Brian.
It was dated two years earlier.
Two years his mother carried the letter around in her pocketbook.
Transferred it seasonally from leather shoulder bag to straw
bag. From the looks of the paper creases, the folding tears, he knew
he didn't want to know how many times she'd read the letter. He
could hear all the stories and it would just be that. He took his
mother's dress off from his head. He shut his eyes. He could bet on
his own fucking life that his mother never called this Brian or any
Brian. He knew it like he knew he was his mother's son.
"Is this garbage or donation?" The girlfriend's voice was suddenly
close by, careful, adjusted.
"What?" he asked, his eyes still shut.
"Touristy stuff. Castanets. You know, stuff you buy because
you're there."
"Where? Where did my mother go?" he asked, opening his eyes.
The girlfriend was wearing an embroidered fez. She held up a tied,
full garbage bag. The room was a wreck of his mother's stuff.
He looked around suddenly certain he wouldn't recognize his
own mother if she walked back into her bedroom.
The girlfriend crawled onto his mother's bed beside him. She
was still holding the garbage bag. "It would easier if you could tell
what you need."
"What was she doing?" he asked.
The girlfriend placed a hand flat on his forehead "She was just
living. That's it, Baby," she said. She pressed her palm against his
skull. "It's nice. Your mom was living it up."
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n8
He leaned against the filled-up garbage bag. There was something
hard that poked back at him. Alone without his father or
him, she practically burst the seams of this house. His mother's
closet, his dad's closet, even the closet in his old room was jammed
to the top shelf. It might take another week, but he'd clear it out.
He felt for his girlfriend's hand, the easy stretch of her as she
curled around him. This girl was a girl to meet in any part of their
city at any hour. Maybe he'd look up at a corner to see her across
the street waving her bright gloved fingers. He'd take a deep breath.
Let her think he'd had a mother who was Living It Up. He'd cross
over to her. Maybe he'd be lucky enough to let his breath be taken
away.
Amy Jean Porter, Thick-billed Murre, from the series Birds of North America Misquote
Hip-Hop and Sometimes Pause for Reflection, 2002, Ink and colored pencil
on paper
Amy Jean Porter, Scaled Quail from the series Birds of North America Misquote
Hip-Hop and Sometimes Pause for Reflection, 2002, Ink and colored pencil on
paper

Amy Jean Porter, Northern Jacana, from the series Birds of North America Misquote
Hip-Hop and Sometimes Pause for Reflection, 2002, Ink and colored
pencil on paper
Amy Jean Porter, Buff-bellied Hummingbird, from the series Birds of North
America Misquote Hip-Hop and Sometimes Pause for Reflection, 2002, Ink
and colored pencil and paper
Id
y
in
ui
h
x
0
(J
John Langford, Dancing with Death, 2001, Acrylic/mixed media
< Id
D
0
o
John Langford, Johnny Cash on Sun, 2001, Acrylic/mixed media
III

IV
John Langford, 6 Hanks, 2001, Acrylic/mixed media
—MELISSA MONROE
from Feux d'Artifice
On the Graphic Representation of Time
Most artists charged by official commission with
documenting major displays of fireworks, fix
on the often conflated, often completely
imaginary instant when the great pageant
is at its height,
all the advertised explosions
blossoming stereotypically against
thickly-inked night. Although appropriate fare for
a fete-book, such fanciful simplifications
omit too much. More scrupulous
draughtsmen, intent
on capturing the actual precarious
event in its entirety, must find a means
of incorporating both "before" and "after"
in a single image. One
classic solution
was the diagrammatical tableau: the whole
festive sequence compressed and unfolding piecemeal,
its episodes distributed about the page
as if simultaneous.
Contemporary
viewers, versed in such strategies, would readily
read these discrete scenes as chapters of a story:
here the insolent infidels' florid silken
tent is set alight;
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120
here our indomitable
infantry defile, each ensign's insignia
legible. On this litter, the most holy Host
is conveyed through the clean-swept cathedral square, where
tumblers with balance
beams are capering above
the upturned heads of revelers at heavily
laden festal boards; a ship of fools is scuttled
amid applause; a frightened horse rears and throws its
rider when the pyre ignites;
now a hell-mouth roars
and belches flame, and, almost at the margin, halfhidden
behind the battlements, the climactic
feu-de-joie appears as just a few asterisks
trailing broken trajectories.
The twenty-firstcentury
eye may be disoriented by
this synchronous omnibus format. We prefer
a two-tiered approach in which day and night are not
superimposed.
At the bottom, orderly rows
of unspent materiel (girandoles loaded
with grenades, Roman candles, cannons, Catherine
wheels) are all labeled alphabetically, keyed
to a neatly printed table.
Each object (but
not its indexical letter) casts a small, sharp
shadow on the otherwise empty parade ground.
Above it, where we would expect a sky, a sky,
but as blank as the bleached, raked sand
and abruptly
abbreviated. Instead of the mid-day sun,
we see a darkened duplicate scene descending
like a window-shade. The wicks are lit; fireworks scratch
their flourishes across a
full-scale firmament.
Curiously, this glorious finale fails
to hold our full attention. Once we adjust to
the tight cross-hatching that signifies night, our eyes
tend to slide
down the umbilical trail linking
each of the exuberant freeze-frame conclusions
to the scorched patch of earth where it started, then jump
back to the overilluminated boxed list
to locate its name. Or else
we may shrink away
from the "fine frenzy" and squint through thickets of smoke
until we think we see the pyrotechnician
hurrying from fuse to fuse, brandishing his bunch
of grey touch-papers and his white-tipped stick of punk.
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122
On the Analysis of the Metaphoric
Impulse
Chrysanthemums, umbrellas, sno-cones, colonies
of polyps, mops, plumes, harpoons, spermatozoa,
milkweed seeds: we seem to be unable to see
fireworks without transforming their
drifting, swiftly
disintegrating configurations of sparks
into images. Starting with Aristotle,
many have remarked on the human tendency
to discover or invent
likeness, even
(or especially) in the most unlike objects,
"to give the thing a name that belongs to something
else." Numerous attempts have been made to explain
this trait.
Perhaps the propensity to equate
disparate phenomena conferred a certain
selective advantage on those hominids with
a penchant for tropes, whether because they amused
potential mates
(a tenuous hypothesis),
or because metaphorical thinking signals
greater overall cognitive capacity,
which naturally translates into a crucial
competitive edge.
T
This latter conjecture, while
more plausible, is equally impossible
to verify; therefore we must reluctantly
limit ourselves to a lesser question we can
better address:
How does our taste in imagery
vary, vacillate or even evolve over
time and space? With reference to fireworks, we observe
that the displays themselves remain essentially
unchanged down through the centuries;
nevertheless,
their graphic representations are constantly
finding new forms - from the biomorphic (twining
intestines, thistles, sheaves of wheat), to the martial
(the tassels on shakos, spiked mace heads,
mushroom clouds),
to the domestic (brushes, feather dusters, lace
curtains, spurting shower nozzles). Do these diverse
metaphors in fact reflect characteristics
of their respective eras?
When we trace spindly
white rocket trails across the medieval sky,
and see a mycelium, threading through the loam,
its multiple fruiting tips erupting in spores,
or maggots eating their way
out of cheese, are these
analogies the artists' or our own? Unless
the creator happens to have left a statement
(which is rarely the case), all our speculations
are idle, and if
the fluted columns of flame
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celebrating the birth of a late Louis look
as though they were crowned with crumbling Corinthian
capitals, and their upright symmetrical lines
remind us of
the sand-blasted alabaster
facades of ancient temples, this may well be mere
retrospective projection. We thus must further
restrict our scope to the only other subject we may
realistically hope
to describe: ourselves.
Which visual similes seem aptest to us?
Next to no nonanecdotal data have been
gathered on whether or not we agree about
what resembles what.
This is where we should begin.
Returning again to fireworks, let us focus
on the unstable constellations we persist
in imposing upon them. When we see either
an actual
pyrotechnical spectacle
or a pictorial record (mediated
but durable), let us study our impressions
rigorously, reading the scribbled-upon sky
as a sort of Rorschach blot, or
a message flashed
at us by an old mirror that has lost almost
all its silvering. After we identify
the shapes we make out of the brilliant particles
scattering into the dark, we can turn to why.
—A COLUMBIA JOURNAL INTERVIEW
Passing as Danzy Senna
Caucasia, written by Danzy Senna, is part of a growing subgenre
of African-American novels, some of which announce their
themes by their titles: White Boys, by Reginald McKnight; The
White Boy Shuffle, by Paul Beatty; The Last Integrationist, by Jake
Lamar; and Negrophobia, by Darius James, to name a few. Caucasia
is a "Post-Soul" novel that explores the world of "mullatos" — both
cultural and racial. But even though artists such as Kara Walker,
photographer Lorna Simpson, and essayist Lisa Jones also explore
the vicissitudes of post-Civil Rights Movement Black identity, in
Black fiction it's been pretty much a boys' club.
[Reginald] McKnight has suggested that, since Toni Morrison
and Alice Walker have been so high-profile, most emerging Black
female writers have — consciously or unconsciously — emulated
them and their prose-style. As a result, it seems that most young
Black women write what novelist Trey Ellis calls "Afro-American
glory stories" in a Morrisonesque "Afro-Baroque" style. Or, as
Danzy Senna suggested, they come from a family-oriented
"kitchen" tradition, mining the past for inspiration. So while many
of the male writers were influenced by men like Ishmael Reed,
Clarence Major, and the other writers of the sixties' Umbra Workshop,
Senna is a woman exploring fictional territory that many of
her sisters aren't, at least not explicitly.
Educated at Stanford, Senna worked as a reporter at Newsweek
before earning an MFA at UC Irvine. She is currently the Jenks
Chair in Contemporary American Letters at the College of the Holy
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126
Cross.
On a mild late-May morning I drove to Somerville to interview
Danzy Senna. The conversation took place a few days after a reception
given in Danzy's honor by the Worcester, Massachusetts-based
Charles Houston Cultural Project, where Danzy read a hilarious
excerpt from "The Mulatto Millennium," an essay originally published
in Half and Half: Writers on Growing up Biracial and Bicultural.
She served tea, along with chocolate chip cookies and a small
collection of light tan, dusty rocks that she assured me was sugar.
"You're sitting on a gold mine," a writing professor once told her,
referring to her bi-racial upbringing. The skin she's in is often made
an issue by those around her. We talked about race, Caucasia, and
much more.
BERTRAM ASHE FOR COLUMBIA JOURNAL: Let me read to you
something Saul Williams said in the documentary /'// Make Me a
World. He said, "I don't have to be like, Tm Black and I'm proud'
— that's a given. Not to discredit that historical moment; I mean,
that's totally why I'm here, you know, but the reason why I'm here
- why I am here - is to transcend all of that." Is that a viable perspective
for the creation of Black art?
DANZY SENNA: TO transcend this sort of "Black is beautiful"
rhetoric? Well, what I like about that quote is the "that's a given."
And I think that's true, that we have the privilege to feel that it's a
given that our parents didn't. And I guess a sense that what's different
about the earlier generations of mulattos and then my experience
was that there wasn't ever any shame attached to Blackness -
it was like, Blackness was the thing to be. The White kids in high
school wanted to be Black and the Black kids wanted to be Black,
and the mixed kids wanted to be Black kids, because hip hop was
the thing. You know, Doug E. Fresh, and the like. So with that as
a given, there's a beauty and a richness that's not on shaky ground.
Then you can start to, I think, look at some elements of Blackness
in a more critical light and the whole thing doesn't fall apart once
you start to look at it honestly. It doesn't crumble.
BA: Yes. Because one of the things that links this novel to other
Post-Soul works is that while it's an examination of the soul era, at
the same time there's a kind of critique of the era as well.
DS: Oh yeah, definitely. I mean, I was just talking about how my
identity as Black comes out of a kind of joy around Black culture
and love of Black culture. But I certainly had a lot of pain and rejection
from the Black community, from a certain element of the Black
community and that was vivid from my childhood. There was the
sense that the Carmens [a character in Caucasia] of my childhood
were so insecure of their own sense that Black was beautiful that
they felt they had to kind of take that out on me — and I had that
consistently throughout my life and have felt that from certain individuals.
I think the difference between me and someone else from
the experience is that I never saw that as representing The Black
Community, I saw that as individuals in the Black community, and
that's been a very liberating thing for me, just in general. I did a
reading from Caucasia during the book tour and this mixed woman
in the audience raised her hand and she said, "You know, I'm gonna
speak from my experience that Black women have always treated me
like shit. And I wanna know did they treat you like shit, did they
treat you badly, because that's my experience." And I was like,
"Black women.... You know, I have about five really good friends
in the audience right now who are Black women, so I'm not going
to be able to say that 'They've' treated me badly. Some Black
women have treated me badly, who had issues, and others have been
like incredible friends and family to me." So, you know, I think
that's really dangerous territory once you start talking like that.
Because then, you just start to buy into the whole, racialized thinking
about people as symbols, people as just representatives, and I
feel that, for some reason, I don't know why, I think my parents and
my godmother and all these people in my life were able to stress that
to me. It was good in the end, because you can go crazy once you
start thinking like that. But once you're aware of it as [coming
from] individuals, then it's free, you can critique whatever you
want, because you're just talking about "Carmen" and "Redbone"
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and they're types in the world that people recognize, but for every
Carmen there's a Dot, for every Dot there's a Cole. Black women
are not a monolith, and neither are Black men. So I think that's liberating
for an artist to start to think about those terms if you're writing
about race.
BA: Indeed, indeed. Well, you know, Caucasia is so political, but
in some ways it's not political at all. I like that about the text. It's
set in a world that's unmistakably political, but Birdie's experiences
transcend any sort of narrow political perspective or stance. I want
to read to you something that Kevin Powell says in "The Word
Movement," his introduction to Step Into a World. He says, "The
Word Movement is, in some ways, both political and apolitical.
Political in a sense that any time a Black person decides to put down
on paper what he or she feels, that in itself is a political act. Apolitical
in the sense that far too many young writers, including some
in Step Into a World, are only concerned with their individual lives
and careers and have not given much thought to the fact that our
very ability to be writers and artists stems from previously ongoing
struggles." Have you found that perspective, as you talk to other
writers and appear on panels, and attend artist colonies?
DS: In terms of Black artists being more individualistic?
BA: Not necessarily just being more individualistic. Part of what
you just articulated, it seems to me quite clearly, was a deft understanding
of the necessity to see a wide-ranging Black community at
some points, but also to break that wide-ranging Black community
up into individual acts at other points, in a way that's healthy, right?
Some people only see individuals, and other people only see the
expanse, and I'm wondering if you've run into authors who are
more like the former, to the extent that Powell is saying? Here's my
guess about what he's suggesting. There are people who are bugged
to high heavens about the fact that there isn't more African-American
fiction, just to limit it to that genre, that argues for the liberation
of Black people.
DS: Yeah. Now, I told you this, that I was on a panel with Ishmael
Reed when we got into it - we "had words" on the panel. He was
just so resistant to any critique I had of Black essentialism. He was
like, "No, that didn't happen to you when you were little. No, that
didn't..." I said that I had gone to an Afrocentric school and was
really treated badly by certain teachers, even there, and I felt somewhat
isolated from the community. And he said, "Well, I just don't
believe that, because Kathleen Cleaver is light-skinned and she
never had that experience." And I was like, "I'm talking about my
life." You know? "I don't know why Kathleen Cleaver has anything
to do with my life." So I mean, for me, I resist that kind of political
bullshit that Ishmael Reed was spouting, and I think his generation
in general is more vulnerable to that kind of mentality and
what's really refreshing about this generation is that we seem to have
more bullshit detectors. We've seen that it doesn't really move us
forward as people to deny our own sort of flawed humanity.
Because we are flawed, as flawed as anyone else. To kind of sanctify
Blackness, or make it sacred is to deny our humanity, actually. It's
a flipside of racism in a way. We're all the same, actually. I don't
really agree with that, with what [Kevin Powel] is saying [above]. I
especially don't see it in literature and poetry. I see that more in
nonfiction, in essayists and political commentators. I see that neocon
Black-think as being really naive about why you're able to speak
in the first place. And I see that in feminists, young anti-feminist
women. Like, "Did you think you would be able to write this book
if it hadn't been for all these women?" And when I look at writers
like Paul Beatty and Junot [Diaz] and Darius Qames] and Trey, I see
the complex relationship to Blackness that you were talking about,
where it's this refusal to feel that you have to buy into the whole
essentialist rhetoric, or that you have to say I'm just an individual,
I'm not Black, and there's a real, sort of sophisticated relationship to
history and ourselves. So I haven't really come up against that strain
that he's talking about.
BA: Do you feel limited to having protagonists who look like
Birdie, Jackie, or yourself? Or, is the very fact that I'm asking this
question part of why it's important that you continue?
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DS: I just always find it interesting that nobody ever asks Richard
Ford, "Do you feel limited by White, straight male protagonists?
Are you gonna step out of that?" And people don't ask Terry
McMillan, "Are you gonna write about anything other than a Black
woman?" I mean, I might, I might not, but these aren't all the same
character. You know? And my character in my new book is biracial
and is very different from Birdie, and this idea that one racial
thing could define, that Birdie could represent all people like that,
I think is problematic. That suggests that I would have written the
"every bi-racial" story in that novel. Of course, I didn't. I mean, I
know what you're saying, but I could only write about what I care
about, or the characters that I want to write about at the moment.
So, I mean, I'm sure I would be given a lot of accolades and be told
I was clever if I wrote a book from an old White man's point-of-view
next, but I don't want to. So I'm not going to. And I think that,
yeah, I'm always sort of aware, struck, by how I think even a Black
writer is going to get that question less than I am. I think I'm going
to get that question being bi-racial and being from a very particular
kind of experience - appearing one way and feeling the other - so
I'm going to get that question a lot. But what can you do? On one
level it's like, could Joyce stop writing about Ireland? I mean,
"Come on, Joyce, just move on!"
"I mean, can't you write about Hong Kong for once?" I think
you have territories as a writer that are your inspiration, and I feel
like, in a way, for me to go out and write about a Taiwanese girl
right now would be letting that sort of racialized thinking control
my writing. And I don't want to do that. I felt like Jackie was in
no way related to Birdie. She wasn't Birdie grown up. Also I have
so many mixed friends at this point that when I'm thinking of characters
I'm often thinking of very different people and mixed people
have no connection to one another. And there's a whole sort of infinite
range, I guess, of mixed-race experiences, that Birdie doesn't
begin to cover.
BA: Early in the novel Birdie says, "I felt myself to be incomplete
- a gray blur, a body in motion, forever galloping towards comple-
tion - half a girl, half-caste, half-mast, and half-baked, not quite
ready for consumption. And for me, there was comfort in that state
of incompletion. A sense that as long as we kept moving, we could
go back to what we had left behind." And Birdie previously referred
to learning what she called, "the art of changing," which is the
process of "forever galloping toward completion." But late in the
book she says, "The name Jessie had been a lie, but I wasn't quite
sure the girl Jessie had been was such a lie. Maybe I had actually
become Jessie and it was this girl, this Birdie Lee, who haunted these
streets searching for ghosts, who was the lie." She says, "I wondered
if Whiteness were contagious. If it were, then surely I had
caught it. I imagined this condition affected the way I looked,
walked, talked, dressed, danced, and at its most advanced stage, the
way I looked at the world and at other people." Is she referring to
the cost of practicing the art of changing? Do observations like this
one interrogate, finally, Birdie's early, naive commentary about the
comfort of incompletion?
DS: I think what interested me, and one of the things that was fictionally
exciting for me just on a kind of dramatic level, just purely
plot and thematic level, not even personally interesting to me, was
this question: when you pretend to be something long enough, at
what point does the act become more real than the original? When
you go into passing, you assume that you'll always be clear on the
original real self; that the performance will be just the performance.
But for Birdie I think that when you do it long enough, you know,
that becomes really blurry and dangerous. Your sense of identity
becomes really, um, kind of precarious, and nebulous, and so, it
became that, for her. I mean, I think about [New York Times book
reviewer and memoirist] Anatole Broyard [who passed for White
until his death in 1990]. Him performing Blackness for the amusement
of his White friends is a perfect example. How did he see his
Blackness? At what point did his performance of being a White
man become real, you know? I was just interested in the idea of performance,
and how it affects the performer, and that you can't
assume that there is a real, fixed, solid self that will always be there
when you come back from the show. It's just this really slippery
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thing, to pretend at something, to play make believe.
I remember my college roommate and I, we decided one week
that we were going to just speak in British accents, just to annoy
everyone in the dorm. And we did, and we got really good at it, and
then we kept trying to stop - and we couldn't. And I would say,
fin a British accent] "Caroline!" and then I would try to speak like
an American, but somehow it didn't sound right. So I just, I don't
know, I think it's really interesting. Without any answer to it, I just
think it's an interesting question. And how much of our identities
do we choose - is there a "real" person, or is it all a series of passing
and performance? That's why I think it's important when I say early
on that she learned the art of changing at Nkrumah, that it was at
the Black school that she learned to pass as Black, and then later
learned to pass as White. I think Birdie's only real self, in a weird
way, was that first few pages when she's playing make-believe with
her sister. And even that is an act of performance. She didn't even
know what she looked like, she only knew what her sister looked
like. So I just didn't want to leave any solid ground, in a way. I
wanted to just keep pulling the rug out and to see what happened.
BA: You said recently that you were tired of race. What did you
mean by that?
DS: Actually, my whole new book in some ways is about race, but
in a way it's also about — well, I don't want to get into my new book
too much, because you'll read it at some point, but it's about a
friendship-slash-stalking situation, and what I said to my Post-Multicultural
Literature class was, "I'm writing this novel and there's this
really tight friendship that's in some ways based on racial solidarity,
and it becomes really suffocating, and really kind of stalker-like at
some point." And I feel that about race - that it's both my best
friend and my worst enemy, personified in this book. But it's like,
I glance out the window and she's standing across the street looking
in at me, you know? I can't get away from it. And it's served me in
all these ways. It's created comfort zones for me, and it's created
inspiration, it's empowering on one level, and it's also like terrifying
and relentless and I can't get away from it. It's hard to feel like so
much of your life is devoted to something that's so absurd on one
level, and so constructed. But on another level, that's what everything
is. Everything is a construct that we believe in. I guess it's
just... Yeah, it's exhausting. Sometimes I feel exhausted and suffocated
by it and stalked by it. This is something very important
though: I don't choose to make it an issue in my life; it is made an
issue in my life. And I remember my grandmother, my White
grandmother, saying to me, you know, "I wish you guys wouldn't
talk about race all the time," and White people saying that to me all
the time. You know, "Can you just stop talking about it?" And
once I choose to stop talking about it, they bring it up, in some way
or another. It's not something I choose to be obsessed with. That's
important for me to say.
BA: Recently in an online version of Siren magazine, you said, "I
make a political and social choice to identify as Black, but it's
important to use identity and identity-politics as a tool rather than
a definition of who you are. Now I'm trying to disrupt a way of
thinking about race." Has this project, this "disruption," contributed
to the fatigue of discussing race?
DS: What do you mean by "has this contributed" to the exhaustion?
BA: Well, you've talked a lot about how writing Caucasia - no, not
necessarily writing... My sense is that your having to promote Caucasia
has contributed to this sort of fatigue.
DS: Yes. Anybody who's ever written a very successful novel feels,
I think, stalked by that novel. I don't think it's even just about race,
although that inflates it. Anybody, I'm sure Dorothy Allison feels
like she's never going to get away from Bastard Out of Carolina. Or
Alice Walker can never get away from The Color Purple, and I think
that part of my exhaustion has to do with race, and part of it has to
do with a sense that I'm forever going to be defined by this book,
and by the experiences it addresses. And that's a more universal
first-novel-doing-well kind of experience. In a way, I think my
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childhood was so defined by race, and so racialized that the only
way I was ever going to transcend it was to bore myself to death of
it. In a way the boredom with it is kind of liberating in a way. I
don't know if that makes any sense.
BA: It does. Well, it would certainly mark a kind of turning point,
in terms of your relationship to it.
DS: This is going to sound weird, but since this book came out, I
feel no kind of... What's the word I want... It's not loyalty, but....
I don't feel like I have to answer to anybody anymore, and that's
really nice. I feel like, as an artist, I've let go of a community in a
way. To embrace my artistic identity I've had to let go of any sense
of a comfortable racial community. And that's been really liberating
more than anything else. I was asked at a reading - I read "The
Land of Beulah" at this reading — and this Black woman in the audience
who clearly didn't know what my racial background was said,
"What are you?" after I finished reading it.
BA: Yow. Was that the first question of the Q & A?
DS: Yep. And I said, "I'm a writer." And she was just like

136
sense of history - I've seen their literature and stuff. So I just sort
of felt like it was time for someone to take the piss out of them, basically.
Also, I felt like I wanted to resist being co-opted by them, and
being used as some sort of spokesperson by them. As an artist, that
seemed really not a position I wanted to be in. So I wrote that, and
then it was denounced by some of the people in that movement,
and I felt good! It served my purpose. Actually, a lot of the people
in that movement thought it was funny and were able to laugh at it.
BA: It's interesting that you would use satire to "take the piss out
of" the mulatto movement a bit. Once you said you almost felt as
if your use of satire made you "a traitor to your gender" — I believe
that was the phrase you used. What did you mean by that?
DS: Well, it's funny - I just feel like satire's often been the realm of
male writers. But I've always been really tempted by it, and drawn
to it, and I think partly because that's my father's sense of humor
completely, and I was raised partly with him. I just feel that women
are expected to be sort of sincere and realist and authentic - especially
Black women writers. And whenever I read things to a lot of
women... Like I just did this reading at Michigan to a bunch of
housewives and Middle America women who loved Caucasia, and I
read something from my new book, and they were in dead silence.
They did not know what the hell I was doing, and I felt like I had
disappointed them. The element of Caucasia that they could connect
to was the sentimental part, the heartfelt stuff, the family stuff,
and what they couldn't relate to, what they didn't read into, was the
more complicated political commentary going on. I mean, people
could read from it whatever they want, but... So anyway, I don't
know, there's just something about this idea of women's writing
being kind of in the kitchen...
BA: Quilting bee type stuff.
DS: Yeah, exactly. I mean Trey Ellis kind of parodies the womanist
strain [in Platitudes]. But when I was in college I hung out with
a lot of lesbians, and I've always felt like lesbians got my sense of
humor better than straight women.
BA: That's interesting.
DS: My friends were more into satire, my women friends who were
gay. [While at Stanford] there was this feminist magazine called
Aurora. My friend and I, this Black lesbian woman named Toni,
one night we wrote this epic parody poem of all the poems that we'd
ever read in there, and we went and snuck into their office and
anonymously put it into the submission box. And it was like the
worst schlock that we had ever written. I'll have to show it to you
sometime. It was called, ah, umm... I think it was just called "My
Story." It was just - it was so funny. And they published it on the
cover of the magazine and it was like the talk of the feminist community
that this Black woman had anonymously written this like
"wonderful" poem. There were lines in it like, umm... "Fuck this
cuntry Amerikkka," spelling "America" with three k's, and "this
country," with "country" spelled "cuntry"... I guess I just feel there's
such danger in taking oneself too seriously that I'm always tempted
to do that kind of a thing. It was very funny. And you saw Enigma.
We did some things in there like that letter to the Oreo Cookie
Factory, and "Jive 101" in the back. So I don't know, satire just
always had this sort of appeal to me.
BA: Now, Darius James has said that his preferred form of satire
and parody would be to take over the New York Times for a day or
so. He would publish a bunch of stuff that the New York Times
wouldn't ordinarily publish, but he'd retain the typeset, the format
and everything so that readers wouldn't necessarily be aware that a
satirical gesture was being made. And while I'm fascinated by that,
the reaction to the poem that you're discussing sounds like what
might happen. It almost seems as if there has to be some kind of
satirical marker. Otherwise...
DS: Only we'd get the joke! Because Enigma was being published
the same week as Aurora, so it was kind of like we were trying to
sabotage their magazine. All the Enigma people knew about it, and
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one of the editors of the feminist magazine — they were all White
women - said to me, you know, "Did you see our latest issue? What
did you think of the poem on the cover?" And I said, "Oh, it was
really amazing. What did you think of it?" She was like, "Oh, I
liked it, that's why we published it, because we don't get a lot of submissions
from Black women, and we thought it was really edgy. But
do you really think a Black women wrote that? Because some part
of me thinks someone didn't." And I said, "I don't know, why
would you say that?" It's as if apart of her got it.... And then later,
when we told them, they were so pissed off. They were incensed at
us. Because their issue was everywhere and it was just a collegiate
prank. It was fun.
BA: It seems to go to the heart of the whole idea of satire. It's intentionally
edgy, and yet at the same time if one includes that satirical
gesture that I was talking about, that marker, in some ways it's an
out, I suppose.
DS: Yeah, I kind of think in a way it's funnier when you don't
include it, and then later let people know. I think that you can ruin
the joke if you give too much warning. But let me tell you one of
the other things I did in college, because this is one of the pranks
I'm most proud of. And my dad's a real prankster, and he kind of
taught me this growing up. He loved playing tricks on people and
stuff. My boyfriend in college, Omar, who I've talked about before,
was a columnist for the school newspaper. And he wrote these
political essays every week on race and gender, and he was just kind
of writing identity politics essays about being Black and being profeminist
or whatever. He whispered to me one night, giggling, that
he kind of wished that someone would... that he would have a racial
attack on him, that someone would do something to him, jokingly,
because then he would get famous.
Sooooo... a week later, he had written this essay about the fraternity
system and how messed up it was. My friend Toni and I are
in my room smoking weed, acting really silly, and Omar [who is
half Black and half Jewish] wasn't in his room, I knew he wasn't in
his room, since we all lived in the Black dorm. So I called his voice
T
mail, his phone, and left him this message on his machine - assuming
he would think it was me - in this man's voice with Toni laughing
in the background, saying, [in an angry male voice] "You goddamned
nigger kike, I saw your fucking essay and we're calling from
the Psi Phi fraternity. We're coming over there, and we're gonna get
your nigger-kike ass." I said all this stuff- it was just really stupid
and silly. But it was kind of muted and I had a towel over [the
phone], and I can't remember what else I said. So then we waited
for awhile to see if he'd come back, and we got distracted, and Toni
and I went out for the evening. When we got back to Ujamaa, the
Black dorm, I went up to his room. And the whole Black Student
Union is in his room listening to the message with these somber
expressions on their faces. They had already contacted the Stanford-
Daily. And everybody was like, "Danzy wait till you hear what happened
to Omar!" And he's sitting there with this like half-upset,
and underneath it, like, gleeful expression. So I said, "Oh, that's terrible!
Um, Omar? Can I talk to you alone for a minute?" Because
he had already told the person in the Daily and it was going to be
in the paper. So I told him, and he was just - he's usually a very
mild-mannered guy - he's just like, "You bitch. What am I gonna
do now?" He laughed a lot about it later, but I made him tell them
that some friend at another school did it. It was just so funny, the
whole thing. But anyway. I just love the image of the Black Student
Union leaning in, like they had found this gold mine.
BA: What I love is that in some ways that part of the book - especially
in light of the stories you just told - is a classic trickster
moment! And it doesn't have the marker, either; it doesn't really call
attention to itself in a huge way. You either get the joke or you
don't. If you don't, it's perfectly okay, the text still propels itself, but
if you do it enhances it.
DS: Yeah, that's interesting. I think that's true; I think I tend to
prefer that for myself, the way that I deal with satire. A lot of it is
the inside jokes in Caucasia that nobody outside of my family and
friends would get. Even the Aurora [feminist] group was based on
this publication in college, and Redbone was someone from my
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childhood... There was just a lot of stuff that I was having fun with,
kind of giggling as I wrote it even though when it came out, it was
very serious in the text.
BA: That, finally, clears up something for me. You had mentioned
a couple of times in the past that there were elements of the book
that you found humorous, and I'd always wondered about that, and
until now, I didn't get it. I understand now.
DS: Well, even for me the mother is just so over the top. Certainly
she's familiar to people, but just her and the Jim character... I
mean, there was one review that said that they felt - in a negative
review - that they felt like sometimes that the White characters bordered
on parody. It's almost making fun of people and types. I
mean, I think I'm always having to restrain myself as a writer. I
think in that book I was very restrained in terms of wanting to go
over the top in certain places, and trying to keep it under control.
BA: Why do you think it is that more women novelists, or fiction
writers in general, haven't been exploring this whole identity politics
idea or terrain?
DS: Identity politics terrain?
BA: Well, early in the interview when you would refer to people
who were doing the sorts of things that you were doing, you would
mention Paul Beatty, and you'd mention Trey Ellis, and Darius
James, and perhaps Colson Whitehead, but never other contemporary
female writers.
DS: Yeah. I think it's that kitchen thing. The only negative review
I've ever written, and the only book review I've ever written - and
will never do again - was of this Dominican-American writer
named [Loida] Maritza Perez, or something. Book called Geographies
of Home. That title for me was, first of all, part of my problem
with the book. I was like, Did she go into a computer program
that would like spit out a computer-generated book on identity? I
mean, Geographies of Home? And then I felt like the whole book was
just so limited to the kitchen, and that idea of culture offered up on
a plate, the ethnic food fair model of identity politics, and it's very
comfortable. But one of the things that I've always felt was refreshing
about satire and Black satire was that it shifts the gaze. There's
no way for a White man to read Paul Beatty and feel that they're
looking at Black culture from that comfortable, neutral White gaze.
He's so much the trickster that there's a sense that you don't have a
solid ground under your feet. You don't know who's looking at
who, who's laughing at whom. And I think that women and Black
people have always been expected, as artists, to be reporters first, to
be historians, and authentic reporters from the streets of culture.
And so, maybe there's something about female writers that feels
somewhat locked into that model of the one being gazed at. I think
it's always been the realm of White men or straight White male
writers to be the invisible artist. So women and Black people and
Latino people are sort of supposed to offer up their experience to be
looked at, but they aren't supposed to be invisible themselves, to be
artists. And I think that satire is one of those ways of reclaiming
that position as an artist, rather than just as a subject.
BA: Well, I can't help thinking of both the historical figure of the
Hottentot Venus and these repeated applications by post-Civil
Rights Movement African-American women. I'm thinking of the
essay "Venus Envy" in Bulletproof Diva or the play Venus by Suzan-
Lori Parks, or the title poem of Elizabeth Alexander's The Hottentot
Venus. You know, this whole idea of being in the gaze and dealing
with and talking about and trying to decenter that gaze. But none
of those three are fiction writers.
DS: Well, my mother once pointed out to me that today's Black
women writers are only writing about the past. And I gave her my
new book, which is set in the present, and she was saying that the
only writer who's doing the present is Terry McMillan. Beside the
fact that she was trying to be more popular, I think what was interesting
about her was that she was, finally, someone talking about the
present - that there were Black people living today. Of course, it
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was part of the feminist movement, too, to reclaim history, and
Black women - Toni Morrison, Alice Walker... Paule Marshall,
Gloria Naylor, were all talking about the past. There was a need to
do that, but.... I just wonder what that's about. I mean, what is this
sort of thing about history and Black women writers. But I think
that, I'm really hoping that more will write about the present. I
think Zadie Smith [in White Teeth] wrote about the present and that
was refreshing. I can't think of anyone else. It's something that's
interesting about all these new Black male writers that they are kind
of dealing more with the present. But I don't know what that's
about, really. I just think it's interesting and notable. I think it
comes out of the feminist reclaiming history thing, but I think
maybe we're past that moment.
BA: When you read "The Mulatto Millennium" at the [April,
2001] Post-Soul Satire Symposium [at the College of the Holy
Cross], one of the interesting things that I didn't expect was that
some people who had a little problem with your book were delighted
by your essay. And it was really, it seemed as if there was a kind
of, "Oh, she can do that, too!" reaction. I obviously haven't read
your new book, but, given the reaction to the Michigan women that
you just referred to who didn't "get it," do you anticipate a kind of,
"Oh, she can do that, too!" reaction to your new book?
DS: I don't know.... I don't know what the reaction's going to be
to this book. But in a way I worry that the people who liked Caucasia
will not get it, and the people who like that essay also won't get
it.
BA: Really?
DS: I mean, that's what I'm worried about, because I have no idea.
You're in a book so deep you don't know... I did show it to someone
who I shouldn't have shown it to, probably. He was a very traditional
White male writer who's a very New York Establishment
writer, and he was completely baffled, and didn't get the tone or
whatever. So I don't know. I thought it was entertaining when I
was writing it, and I get it, but I don't know if anyone else is going
to get it. I just can't predict.
BA: And that really, on some level, goes to the heart of what you
were saying earlier about being an artist, you know, the whole idea
of not being beholden to the expectations of your audience, your
readership. And I've always, quite frankly, admired people who
took the Picasso/Miles Davis approach to being an artist, which is,
basically, "Follow me — I'm going to do what I do, and either you
come along or you don't."
DS: Yeah.
BA: I've always wondered: is that an exciting feeling, is it a disconcerting
feeling? Or do you block all that stuff out, not even think
about it?
DS: I have to block it out when I'm writing. Now that I think of
it, there was this other place where I read where they didn't get the
book at all, either. And I think one of the reasons is audience.
Michigan, an all-White audience, very Middle America, didn't get
the book because I'm writing about race and most White people
don't feel that you can laugh at race. As I read there were these
earnest expressions, but slowly as I kept looking up [the expressions]
turned to, "Whaaaat?"
BA: Deer in headlights.
DS: Yeah, they didn't know where to enter it, what kind of emotional
plane to enter it on. I think one of the hardest things for me
about being a writer is that you have to spend so much time alone
with your work as a fiction writer — and you don't have to do that
as a screenwriter, I think. But it's got to be purely yours in a way
that other new commercial work doesn't. So I've just had so much
time alone with this novel and it's so... it's not a light novel. It's
supposed to be comic, maybe, but not light. I just have felt that
"Am I crazy?" kind of feeling. My friend Joy came over one night
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and I was working on it and I was like, "Oh, I have to read you this
scene," laughing, and I read it to her, and she thought it was kinda
funny, but she was like, "Danzy, I think you need to get out more..."
You know, it's midnight, and I'm sitting there with all these pages.
There's just a feeling that you could be writing in Chinese and you
just aren't sure. It's kind of intense, I think, the writing process.
And I can't do the time clock version of being a writer. I can't check
in at nine and get out of it at one in the afternoon and join the
world. I literally have to go completely into the work and cut out
the world when I'm writing for weeks and weeks if I'm intensely
into a scene. That makes it hard on one's sanity and level of functioning.
So when you were asking if I was neurotic or crazy, the
answer is, Looks can be deceiving.
BA: So: what happens beyond the upcoming novel? I heard you
refer sometime ago to a possible collection of stories that you might
want to do?
DS: Yeah, I mean I've been writing short stories not very committedly
for the last few years, just things I'm working on in my computer
that I haven't even sent out. And I will fiddle with them for
awhile now after this book is done. But I had an interview with
someone for the Holy Cross Public Relations Page - they said I was
writing a Ben Stiller comedy. Which was a joke, and I didn't actually
know she was going to put that in there, but um, I want to do
something really light this year. Just, I mean, I'm going to be teaching
here and I want to do something that's not heavy and also where
I can see the end in sight. Because I want to take off another probably
two years before I start another novel. Unless there's one that's
just burning to get out of me.
BA: Could it start burning at any moment? In other words, could
you wake up one day and all of a sudden there's this smoldering
beginning of a flame?
DS: There would probably be a short story that could kind of like
keep going, because that's how Caucasia started, actually. I knew
eventually I wanted to write a novel, but I wrote a short story that
just seemed like the right beginning, and I think that's what will
happen. But I really want to write something very light after this
book. I need to spend the next year recovering from it.

146
JOHN MCMANUS
Natcher Mountain
It was two things Lonzoe done, it was the tree farm and the gas
stations. It was Annie who he done it for, that night was quite a
night, the wind chimes in the wind. It rained and rained. Clyde
come in at Billiards slams his money on the table, drinks the honey
wheat. Was they out of High Life. Clyde said no Lonzoe I just took
a likin to the taste. Lonzoe says you think I give a lumpy shit. Don't
take no fence. Don't tell me what to do. Clyde starts shootin eightball,
Lonzoe lines up lucky number 7. Hey Lonzoe I guess you and
Annie have one of them open relationships. Drug it out like real
slow words. What ye mean. Seen her with the Breeden boy at
Hatcher's Store for beer they's headed for the lake. How the hell
would you know. Why else would they go that way.
Usual Lonzoe was real practical. When he heard the song about
the cowgirl on the ceiling he said that don't make no sense. The one
about the lost highway, he said that's highway 72 how it got
swallered when they put up Tellico Lake. He whups Clyde three
straight games and Clyde he blabbered this and that and if he'd had
his glasses on and Lonzoe said eat shit and wandered off. Where's
Lonzoe. There he was against a table like to crush it. I'm gonna kill
him Jasper he tells me. Who. That Breeden boy, I'll slash his throat.
That's what all folks says. I ain't different from all folks. Went to the
pay phone come inside said what's the number. Call Annie first. I
did and she ain't home. They run that Christmas farm, go look up
Smoky Mountain Trees. As if they run the whole damn Smoky
Mountain. I don't know why I said it though I should of known to
shut my mouth when his eyes was slants like that. Went out again
come in again. You with me fellers. The football game ain't over,
Clyde says. Vandy ain't even gonna score. I still wanna see it. You
big faggot. You cuckold. What the hell's that mean. It's what you are
Lonzoe if it's like I seen.
I don't know where he gets those words, it's like it's a big box
full.
Lonzoe lunged for Clyde but Clyde moved forward, Lonzoe's
on the floor, why don't you save it for Johnny Breeden.
Lonzoe drove.
Lonzoe smokes. He takes us down the 411, flicks his cigarette.
Maybe you should of took the Mint Road. Maybe you could hush
so I can think. It was some big rain comin. I wondered if we'd kill
Johnny Breeden. I hoped it would be Annie in his stead that died,
I never got to drink with Lonzoe anymore, that's why I come.
Clouds like big black nightmares right there in November, they was
dogs, they was the trees. It looked like they was little bits of shot.
Lonzoe cussed on Sixmile Road to make the truck go. What are we
gonna do. Quiet, I'm still workin it in my brain. I don't get quiet
for no one else but Lonzoe. He was real mad. I'd never put no stock
in Annie. Her skin's all green like it's the bottom of a lake. In the
trees they was no leaves. Lonzoe pulls in Breeden's driveway, no
lights on and rocks is in the air. Fists against the door, they weren't
no answer. Johnnys at the lake, them fenced up dogs all karf karf
karf, they weren't no other sound. Lonzoe got hisself so mad he took
their big ceramic nigger eatin fruit, he smashed it on the porch. I
love to watch him smash it. Run down to the shed. Come out had
a chain saw.
Jasper I'm gonna cut every tree on this farm.
He looked into my eyes seen I was scared.
No you ain't. You watch me. Chain saw's loud. They ain't
nobody home nor in this valley. Mick Jenkins up the road. He'll be
stone drunk. Don't do it. If you get the other saw it's twiced as fast,
the rain is comin hard. Growl just falls down timber, timber, water
felt so good. Trees would fall whichever way you pushed. Halfway
up the trunk it wasn't only sell em anyway. I don't know what kind
of trees it was. I wished them trees was all the men at Billiards, Lon-
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zoe'd saw them till they died except for me we'd click our chain saws
then we'd drink a beer. Everybody in the world was split in two, I'd
be the only one, he'd talk out loud about the things inside his head.
Now all he said was Annie Annie Annie. The clouds they had the
moon in them, the rain. Look what just two drunks has done
tonight. The stumps was warm, I said you never have such fun with
Annie, fuck her, move back up at Natcher Mountain. My fingers
still was shakin from the saw. I went to piss I didn't see him get the
rifle out. They was four slow spaced-out shots and then no barks.
Why'd you go and do that for. Cause Annie's mine and I'll make
sure that everybody learns it.
Two of the dogs was dead the other two just crawled. Ain't you
gonna shoot again. He shook his head. What had come over Lonzoe.
He come from purebred mountain stock, it clogged him full of
meanness. Pit bull crawled behind the truck before it died and Lonzoe
backed right up and all this blood and Lonzoe said, I'm right
pissed off, it made me glad. I said how Annie was no good. I was
the only one he'd tolerate to say it, he'd of clobbered any other man,
I would of watched it. He drove me home he come in for a beer.
Jasper, he says, real serious, and then I thought he would of said a
serious thing.
You think we'll get in trouble.
I don't know.
I don't either.
The mountains back behind us, was that all, we thought two
different things about each other, it was tangled. Clyde calls up and
Breeden's down at Myrtle Beach, three weeks, my heart beats fast.
How the hell do you know. He works with me at Denso. Who was
that with Annie. Who knows cause every day she's on a different
guy. Oh well it's done now. What is. Things. What things. Hung up
cause that's what Lonzoe would of done he hated Clyde, Clyde was
ugly. Lonzoe's passed out snorin on the floor, the bottle's empty.
What was it but go to sleep, the sky was black as black. The trees
would turn to brown next day I thought but it was green for way
past Christmas. When they jailed his ass I wanted in there too but
Lonzoe didn't rat me out, I didn't visit, he had other friends inside
that jail. I didn't want to see. He got hisself probation and the gro-
cery went and fired him. Annie left for Rufus Reaper, fuck you then,
he said, I won't even beat him up, that's how much I give a shit. He
had to pay the court, he had to make the payments on his truck. He
opens up the Daily Times about how terrible he is, they wasn't on
his side. Jasper, you got to help me get some money.
I said alright.
You ever robbed a man before. No one I ain't related to. Who
would you steal from. Rich folks. Who's rich. Lamar Alexander. He
don't live here no more. Reggie White. He runs a church you shit
for brains, that made me mad, I told him figure out your money for
yourself. I went home and they was snow up top the mountain. I
wanted to drive and see the snow but fuck it, I could see the snow
from my porch. How come you hear about a avalanche in other
places, never here. I thought how Lonzoe wished he drove a truck
but now he can't because of jail. We use to drive the mountains just
to drive. What if it snowed till everyone was dead. I got so piss ass
drunk and meantime Lonzoe robbed the Amoco, he robbed the
Mister Gas, he robbed the Walland Highway Citgo. He stole a car
which I don't know why he did that, he wasn't never scared. I don't
know how to tell him things. He saw the coppers in his driveway so
he drove out here to my place.
Guess what. What. I'm fucked.
We pitched horseshoes. He got to thinkin loud how Annie'd
spent up all his money on her perfume and her clothes. She never
bought a thing for me, he says, she threw my tape of Slayer out the
window, called me stupid. I never cost you a penny I said. She
smacked me on the head most every day he says. He got to thinkin
all the miserable things she done. Can you drink a beer in prison.
Don't talk like that, you're my buddy don't go get yourself in jail no
more, I told you all along what Annie was, she even got the cross
eyes.
Lonzoe just laughed.
Don't you care if you get locked up. You know I don't think he
did give a fuck.
How old did we start drinkin he said. I said fourteen or so. It's
been a long time since it felt like then he says and now the only fun
is to fuck shit up, the trees was fun, the Amoco, the tires I slashed
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at Billiards they was fiin.
I didn't know you done that.
Clyde's, and just the one.
We stared into the dark.
You know what.
What.
I never give a shit about that bitch Annie.
Bull shit I said.
I never even liked her.
Well I'll be.
Does that mean you don't like me cause I lied.
I like you.
Good cause I was scared he said.
You was? I said.
I ain't no good.
Bullshit I said but as for Annie she can rot.
I always liked you better, Lonzoe said. The stars jabbed down
like helicopter search lights, we watched it gobble up the black. It
felt like we was kids deep in the woods again beneath the insulation
house and twigs blew off the trees they must of been as many stars,
they twinkled where the hemlocks was, the cops won't never find us,
we were shadows.
Anyways.
Clyde comes over Lonzoe picks a fight. You want a good kick
in the balls. That's what he got, he's moanin like the devil girl that
died. You alright there Clyde. Stay out of this, said Lonzoe, just you
lay there and be drunk.
That's exactly what I did.
You was happy Annie left me. You had your scummy little eye
on her and Clyde moans no no no. Lonzoe kicks his legs like he was
doin it for me. It made me proud how fast he kicked his legs. There
was Clyde all tied up in a chair. The towrope from my truck. You
know the things on oaks the strings of fuzz well Lonzoe scoops a
handful up and shoves it in Clyde's mouth and spit hung down all
right you little prick, we'll try it thisaway. He picked up more and
shoved it up Clyde's nostrils with his finger. The sky was upside
down just like a cowpond and the moon trapped up inside of it, I
felt like I was with someone. I thought of Annie gettin it from
Rufus, I wished Clyde didn't have no eyes to see the 2 of us together
in the yard, me layin down and Lonzoe over Clyde hey Clyde
your nose is all stopped up. Ow ow it hurts. Shut up you baby. Lonzoe
took some rope and wrapped it round.
Say sorry or I strangle ye.
Lonzoe starts a laughin, wouldn't stop. I don't think he meant
old Clyde no harm. I knew I'd fall to sleep account of everybody's
half alive and doin things they never would of done inside my head.
Woke up in a foot of snow the coldness burned my blood no one's
around. Every morning after black outs when I wake I think of what
I can't remember. It could of been a hundred thousand acts. He
could of thought that I was Annie. Scrap of paper in my jeans said
Jasper, gone to hide myself at ma's house well his fingers put it there,
it wasn't mine, it wasn't Clyde's.
Every time he gone he come back different. I know how it is
down there in Georgia.
Drank some Busch, I drank some Wild Turkey. Where's the
cops, maybe I'll go down to Georgia too so I can change like Lonzoe
is and then we'll stay the same. The air so cold my sweater
mashed that sweater fuzz inside my belly button. Get out. Get out.
Poked my Buck knife up there like it's a cave. I was drunk or else it
would of hurt me somethin fierce. The twists and turns inside of it.
They wasn't nothin in that hole, but it must of bled for upwards of
an hour.
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—ANIKA HAYNES
Dreams of Skin
The Baker family, at least those who are elders, expect those
whose own positions in the family are still inferior, (meaning they
are still young, meaning they are under the age of forty-seven), to
uphold traditional Baker ethics and honor their long instilled codes.
The order or path a Baker family member can undertake is determined
by skin pigmentation, hair color and texture, thickness of
lips, density of derriere, and delicacy of bones.
Color of eyes are a minor concern. Blue, green, light brown,
hazel, gray, and teal all are lauded. Historically, it has never been
held against a Baker if he or she emerged from the birth canal with
a pair of ordinary brown ones. A combination of phosphorescence,
refraction tricks, and, later on, the onset of contact lenses sufficed
to give the appearance of owning an exotically colored pair of
pupils, if one so desired. Albeit, the elder Bakers deemed this desire
trite and unnecessary compared to what was mandatory to succeed
in the future life's task. It seemed scientifically universal that every
race received every eye color. Eye color, the elders mused, was the
only indiscriminate place in genetic placement. Therefore, the elder
Bakers let this one go.
However, not to let one's breath release into fresh relief yet, the
forebears of the elder Bakers compiled exhaustive lists, requirements
necessary to facilitate subtle and perfect familial transformation.
These lists were hand-written in fine calligraphy with exceptional
pen on expensive British parchment. They were bound and hidden
in one of the secret panels in the intricately designed old mansion

154
that had been in the Baker family since, according to Baker lore, the
original Genesis. These texts are removed from their hiding place
at each and every Baker birth.
Solid intellectual capacity must be demonstrated during the
primary formative years of a Baker initiate. It is too early and dangerously
presumptuous for an infant born into the Baker family to
be called a family member so soon after birth. The last name is temporarily
bestowed upon the child to avoid raised-eyebrow questioning
from curious neighbors and other gossip-prone families. The
person bearing the name understands that, until he or she is eighteen,
the name can be changed and will be if familial transformation
shows evidence of failing.
A Baker, when he or she is born, has a lot of work to do. In
order for them to be primed properly in the tradition of previous
generations, strict training is provided. The ability to master a fine
art is required, such as classical piano, cello, violin, or the harp.
(The harp was not an original requirement and still isn't. The elder
Bakers voted on one unconventional, relatively eccentric instrument.
The other choices that lost for their aesthetic crudeness were
the flute, the oboe, and the lyre.) A zealous interest in the sciences
is held in high esteem. European world history and art history, if
assumed as favorite subjects of interest, do affect substantially the
terms of any inheritance. Any interest shown towards Africa, even
if sincerely charitable, such as missionary work, is frowned upon.
Viewed with contempt. Attempting to bond with African natives
in hopes of reclaiming a mythical ancestral connection by touring
the wild jungle full of its sharp-toothed lions and sinewy giraffes
and sleeping for weeks on dirt floors is considered contagious savagery.
In accordance with what is written on the scrolls of the elusive
British parchment, those on the brink, those awaiting official
familial transformation, must have also mastered an aristocratic
British accent. Those who feel compelled to hurl bastardized versions
of English words or phrases off their tongues are sent to a tutor
hired specifically to recreate a clean and colonized language that
flows effortlessly from the larynx.
Alice, Elizabeth, Constance, and Queen Ester Baker make up
the current matriarchal junior elders. Nathanial, Leonard, Ralph,
and Andrew Baker make up the current patriarchal junior elders.
All are siblings. No rivalry exists that is based on gender alone.
Competition rears its claws through physical attributes or lack
thereof. Fleshy behinds, left and right thigh contact, indiscernible
cheekbones, a brownish tint to the skin, droopy or pink lower lips,
kink to the hair, a premature paunch and freckles are checked off
and tallied in the family's book of physical records. The goal, of
course, is to have the least amount of these traits per human unit in
the individual sub families as possible.
Magdeline Baker bore these eight from her own pelvic region
with the expert assistance of her husband, Jeffrey Baker. All eight
were considered official family members. This was indeed a triumph.
There was always at least one birth child in a family of at
least four or more children who was thrust into fast exile because the
behind protruded only centimeters past the accepted limit or the
skin maintained a yellow undertone ensuring a darker pigmentation
in future offspring. Jeffrey's five brothers and sisters had twenty
children between them, excluding Jeffrey's eight. One quarter of
them had failed familial transformation, leaving their parents
embarrassed and reproductively blemished. Every child born who,
at the age of eighteen, was required to adopt a new identity, lessened
their parents' chances for receiving a hefty inheritance.
Yet, Magdeline and Jeffrey's union had fused the perfect genetic
DNA combination so that all their children emerged into the
world ivory coated and pristinely built, like alabaster columns
molded into stellar bipeds. Their hair was shiny, straight, and
blond. Though it didn't matter, all eight were born with blue eyes
that remained that way throughout their lives. Their skin, silken
and translucent, revealed thin branches of wavy blue veins floating
beneath. Magdeline was particularly fond of her girls' physical
results, and the generally acknowledged preference for boys over
girls pained her. Her daughters had narrow hips and flattened backsides
that fit neatly into custom made A-line skirts. Cinched waists
cradled between tube thighs and low mounds of breasts assured
Magdeline and Jeffrey that anyone inspecting or scrutinizing their
girl children would never suspect that traces of African genes ever
existed. As for the men, they were allowed to get away with more
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physical flaws. It was more important, according to tradition, that
they create excessive monetary solvency.
Among even the most noble and dutiful followers, however,
there exists always a heretic. A roiling rebellious spirit. An annoying
atavistic gene creeps up in even the most carefully maintained pedigrees
and disrupts a perfectly coifed genetic code.
Magdeline and Jeffrey Baker, suspended in the bliss of their
own dynamic physical creations, never took seriously the growing
restlessness of their fifth child, Nathanial. Born in 1948, to financial
abundance and among four spoiled yet symmetrically aligned
older siblings, Nathanial struggled to remember and uphold the
codes he'd been given to memorize since the age of two. His parents
attributed his learning difficulties to natural competition and
infighting between he and the ones who came before him. A soft
spoken boy laden with an unfortunate affinity for tanning deeply in
any kind of light or heat — sun, radiator, flame or florescent lamp —
Nathanial's synapses fired defective neurons. He welcomed opportunities
that darkened his prized hide and hid the pasty pink exterior
that covered his cartilage and bones.
From an early age his pale coloring bothered him. He felt
insubstantial, lacking solidity. When he was four, Nathanial
became terribly conscious of his appearance. In the main foyer of
the Baker Mansion, amidst the gloomy and forlorn dark-stained
mahogany, there stretched a floor-to-ceiling length mirror, the only
place on the first floor that reflected natural light. Two slender windows
flanked either side of the huge double doors that led to the
foyer. Through white muslin curtains, if the day was clear, patches
of crystalline blue sky dappled by an egg-white sun would reflect off
the mirror. Every day Nathanial basked at the bottom of the mirror,
a Lilliputian to its immense height, hoping to attain the rich color
of the wood.
The Baker Mansion is located on several acres of sprawling
green hills nestled in a tiny town in upstate New York. The town,
Coalstead, missed notation when the original New York State maps
were drawn. Over time, Coalstead garnered a guarded fame because
of its strange inhabitants and the few mysterious cases of people
who had grown up there and vanished from the hills.
The Baker children always traveled with their parents or a trusted
relative. A labyrinthine path was carved in the early 1900's, on
the dawn of the industrial revolution, that leads from the front
doors of the Baker Mansion to the main road and on throughout
the small town. The path was designed to avoid images and people
who could conceivably and irretrievably sully the conscience of a
Baker initiate. It allows travel to the post office, the general store,
the local museum, the hair salon and barbershop, and the specialized
crafts store that sells expensive and rare pens, plumes to dip in
ink, and delicate papers flown in from other international aristocratic
societies.
The path's original purpose was to provide the Bakers with their
basic needs from the external world until they acquired the means
to rely solely upon themselves. The design worked quite well for
five decades. The children, or Baker initiates, felt no need to
indulge curiosity or an inquisitive eye. They'd been trained thoroughly
to focus on their life's task which was of course to effect
familial transformation. The Baker children were allowed to look at
pictures and view films. Their environment wasn't so austere that
fun of all sorts was prohibited. Rather, information they received
about certain events taking place in the world required necessary filtering
through the elder Bakers' discerning lenses. To properly
indemnify the Baker children against brainwashing predators, the
elder Bakers utilized methods of protective interest tampering.
For instance, on golden idyllic mornings when the grass looked
so green it seemed painted (actually, it was painted, as Magdeline,
furious that her lawn didn't resemble the scenes of rustic nature
paintings by eminent dead painters, hired a gardener to cure her ailing
grass. When the gardener failed to deliver his green thumb
magic, however, she had him solve her problem by painting the
grass a luminous green that looked as if dew perpetually dangled at
its tips). As the Baker children would set out to buy some milk for
their mother, they followed the path of safekeeping. Seeing any of
the Baker children approaching the grocery store, the owner would
quickly replace his poster advertising Aunt Jemima pancake mix
(with that smiling dark brown woman championing her quality bat-
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ter) with a sign for Caro syrup (with its neatly dressed White
woman cheerfully holding the bottle.) The switch took place with
quick agility, leaving the children none the wiser. Things like this
happened all over the town of Coalstead with the elder Bakers making
generous promises or hefty threats to those who dared rupture
generations of philosophical preening.
Nathanial, however, grew into a wanderer. Not only had he
developed an attraction to melanin (and not the swarthy ruddy
kind, either) he wanted to know what would happen if he veered off
the carved path that led him through a longstanding specific route.
He pondered, while at the base of the foyer mirror waiting for his
skin to darken, what he would find if he avoided the general store,
the museum, the post office, the hair salon and barbershop, and the
specialized crafts store that sold plumes to dip in ink. He strained
his imagination, for it was severely limited. He hadn't ever seen
anything else or been anywhere else, but he did feel at a loss. There
was, according to Nathanial's own internal compass, something
amiss. He labored to find the language to articulate this knowing
feeling, but, short of breath and sweaty from thinking so hard, he
slumped against the mirror unable to understand his burgeoning
desires.
In 1970, the Coalstead postal worker, Eugene Palmer, finally
died at the age of eighty-eight. He died of sudden respiratory failure
in the middle of his route. The elder Bakers were on a family
reunion vacation in the hills located directly in back of the estate,
unaware of the malady that had befallen Mr. Palmer. Usually when
hiring new town employees the elder Bakers had the final vote. For
the first time in fifty years there was no official Baker to consult and
the other vote holders had no recourse but to act independently,
which is how the glossy magazine arrived, on its cover a Black
woman, the color of burnished cherry wood radiating a pearltoothed
smile and wearing a gleaming tiara atop a fluffy afro, at the
Baker Mansion. The new mailman, Russell Blindsome, was thrown
into his position without a proper briefing of what could and couldn't
be placed in the Baker mailbox. And so it was that Nathanial,
who had just turned twenty and who would've been a junior in college
if he and his siblings still weren't receiving their academic
lessons at home, once finished with his paper on the clothing styles
and cultural etiquette of citizens during the Byzantine Era, strolled
down the lawn for a good stretch and a gulp of fresh air, and to
retrieve the mail.
The magazine, popular with a more secular skinned crowd, was
the only piece of mail inside. He looked at it flabbergasted by this
woman's complexion, then narrowed his eyes suspiciously. He eyed
the magazine, surveyed the vast green space around him to make
sure no one was watching, then turned it upside down and sideways.
He couldn't understand the woman smiling back at him.
Did she exist? Was this a photograph or a painting? He knew on a
visceral plane that he was not supposed to see such taboo material.
Even though he had no clue as to what it was, he knew it was
absolutely forbidden. Nathanial, who'd never in his life defied family
rule, shakily pulled his white button down shirt from his tweed
pants and shoved the magazine in his crotch. He flattened as best
he could his shirt over his pants musing as to how he would explain
to his older sisters why he couldn't tuck his shirt in.
He thought of what was in his pants and his face inflamed. He
hyperventilated all the way up the walk to the mansion. The Brown
woman's luminous skin pressing against his belly, even if she were
merely a two dimensional image, turned his bones into slack rubber
ropes. He almost fainted as he stumbled into the foyer past the mirror
towards the back stairs that led to ancient and forbidden tunnels.
Nathanial was treading dangerous and tumultuous waters.
Though he passed the age of eighteen with body type and hue
accepted, if not praised, defiling his mind with thoughts of himself
and this crowned woman lodged in his crotch was certainly grounds
for full and irrevocable exile. He began to run in the dark, the stairs
retreating farther and farther down the hall even as he increased his
speed. In between heaving and leaping he managed to wonder
briefly why the house was so big, so expansive that it took hours to
go from one room or floor to the next.
The magazine cutting into his ribs invoked images of himself
bronzed and muscled holding the intriguing woman, burrowing his
face into her neck. He ran, gasping, choking on the dust that leads
the way towards secret quarters. He pushed past legions of blond
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haired translucent figures, portraits of long gone relatives, lining his
path on either side. Nathanial, panting over the magazine that
threatened to spill out of his trousers, ran the marathon of the
insane, sensually awakened yet unaware that he was breaking the
path of safekeeping.
-RABINDRANATH TAGORE
Three
He never came to me.
In the whole long dark he never came
to tend my lacerated heart.
I'm a girl with nothing, a tree
with neither flowers nor fruit.
Go home, poor tragedy. Distract yourself
with chores, dry your eyes. Go on now,
dear tattered garland, limp with shame.
How can I bear this staggering weight?
I'm budding and blooming at once,
and dying, too, crushed by thirst
and the leaves incessant rustling.
I need his eyes in mine, their altar's gold fire.
Don't lie to me. I'm lost in that blaze.
He'll leave me. If he leaves me, I'll poison myself.
My heart waits, fierce and alone.
He drinks at love's fountain too,
my friend. His own thirst will call him.
Listen to Bhanu: a man's love
whets itself on absence if it's true.
Translated by Chase Twichell & Tony Stewart
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162
Four
That jewel-dark blue becomes you, Lord,
and rules your heart.
Radha sits alone and inconsolable as night
wrenches into dawn. Through veils of tears
she stares into the Yamuna's starry nothingness,
crazed by grief, by crickets.
She walks, she sits, she throws herself down
beneath the banyan, in the tryst-shadows,
a twig in her tangled hair. She cries
at a faraway flute, and leaves the floor unswept.
You're cruel, Lord of the lonely dark,
So far away in Mathura.
In whose bed do you sleep?
Who slakes your thirst upon waking?
Where are your sun-colored clothes —
lost among the trees? And your crooked smile?
Whose necklace gleams on your neck?
Where have you thrown my wildflower chain?
My golden love for whom I bloom unseen,
you rule my emptiness, my endless nights.
For shame, black-hearted one -
you're coming with me.
That girl is suffering.
Translated by Chase Twichell & Tony Stewart
Five
Shake off that sadness, Radha!
Here comes your Lord, beautiful as sky,
sauntering and singing through the grove.
Quick, your indigo blouse.
Part your hair, reckless blossom,
deepen the red on your brow.
Let's celebrate the consummation!
With anklets jingling, run to the trysting-place,
light the golden oil,
perfume their secret room beneath the trees.
The star-white jasmine blooms tonight.
String a thousand flowers, girls,
and hang them all around.
Oh, my own thirst awakes
at the sight of him, the sound of him
practicing his song of their reunion.
Translated by Chase Twichell & Tony Stewart
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Six
Come to me with a mouth full of words,
come look me in the face.
Syama — there I say aloud one of your tender names —
you laughing God, you did not come.
Your flute, that lonely bihanga,
stopped singing at the sight of moonlight
pouring honey on the grove.
What have you done with my innocence,
thief, where have you hidden my soul?
Did my river of tears not flow past your house?
Why did you not come play your flute
here in the perfumed hallways of the trees?
Oh Lord, the lion of pride
slinks back into the shadows.
Your face undoes my pain.
How quickly she slips away, with nothing
but a thin sari of longing to protect her,
the two of them already laughing again.
Let's honor their sacred commingling.
Translated by Chase Twichell & Tony Stewart
—A COLUMBIA JOURNAL INTERVIEW
Night-Talk: An Interview with John F. Callahan
About the Making of Juneteenth and Discerning
the Art of Ralph Ellison
SCOTT WOLVEN FOR COLUMBIA JOURNAL: Tell us a little bit about
yourself and how you came to be involved with Ralph Ellison.
JOHN F. CALLAHAN: It happened this way. In 1977 I wrote an essay
called "The Historical Frequencies of Ralph Waldo Ellison." I
made the case that Ellison's work was all-of-a-piece: Invisible Man
provided a fiction and introduction to the essays, and the essays an
expository framework for Invisible Man. Not only that, I had also
come to believe that Ellison's essays and his passage about "the principle"
in Invisible Man suggested a way to read American literature,
and unravel the riddle of American identity. Anyway, the essay was
published in a journal about to change its name from the Negro
American Literature Forum to the Black American Literature Forum.
Seeing it in black and white, I felt proud of what I had written, and
with the chutzpah of youth, I sent a copy to Ellison. "Dear Mr. Ellison,"
my note began, and went on from there — briefly. Then I
rubbed my hands as if to say, well, that's done, and forgot I'd sent
it. You can imagine my surprise and pleasure when about a month
later out of the blue I received a two page single-spaced letter from
Ellison.
The letter had a formality about it, but its undertones suggested
we had been in conversation for a long time, which I guess we
had in an unspoken way. At any rate he closed by saying "if you are
ever in New York and have the time, Mrs. Ellison and I would be
glad to see you." In the meantime Ellison sent me a copy of the current
issue of The American Scholar in which "The Little Man at
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Chehaw Station" had appeared. His inscription beautifully
expressed and maybe anticipated the spirit of friendship that soon
developed between us. "For John Callahan," he wrote, "and to that
vision of fraternity expressed by Frederick D. and Danny O'C." In
May I got back to New York and by prearrangement showed up at
the door of the Ellisons' apartment on upper Riverside Drive. Suffice
it to say we went from formal to most informal, and by the time
the Ellisons walked me up to 150th Street and Broadway to catch a
cab at one in the morning, we were friends. I suppose I should add
that from the beginning my friendship with Ralph was as much filial
and paternal as it was literary.
SW: What is it like, being in charge of a writer's literary estate?
Where does your discretion enter the process and has your notion
of discretion changed over the years?
JFC: Literary estates are as different as Tolstoy's unhappy families,
so I will hazard no generalizations. I can say that being in charge of
Ralph Ellison's literary estate is a particularly complex task - a
daunting and humbling task if ever there was one. Fortunately,
Ralph set the highest standards of craft and discipline. And I don't
mean that simply in the abstract. If you showed him your work,
you discovered how honest and demanding he was as a reader. If
you were his friend, he was all the more rigorous - he treated your
stuff as he would his own, and he was a perfectionist, even about his
letters. He was insistent that scholars and writers practice their craft
with utmost discipline - what he called "conscientious consciousness,"
after Henry James. "Even homeboys must do their homework,"
he once wrote to a young African-American scholar. He
couldn't stand sloppiness, couldn't stand it when someone ignored
the facts in favor of a flashy, attention-getting, or simply careless,
observation.
Being Ralph's literary executor is a job that has made me well
"acquainted with ambivalence," as Invisible Man put it. There are
two broad categories of discretion. I am responsible for granting or
denying requests for access to the restricted sections of the Ellison
papers, housed, according to his wish, at the Library of Congress,
and requests to quote, sometimes extensively — too extensively —
from his unpublished work. And of course everyone has the best of
reasons. As literary executor, I have to balance the desires and needs
of scholars with Mrs. Ellison's rights and authority over her husband's
work and, in some cases, her right to privacy. And then other
people come along convinced that they should be given the right to
perform, dramatize or film scenes from Invisible Man or other Ellison
works. All this is part of the American entrepreneurial impulse.
I recognize that; so did Ralph. But he was also a stickler for the
integrity of his work, and I keep that in mind.
The other part of the job has involved editing posthumous volumes
of Ellison's work. Here I experience considerable fear and
trembling making decisions I wish he were here to make, and as a
close friend who was with Ralph when he passed away, I grieve all
over again. On the other hand, as the person charged with the
responsibilities of literary executor, I feel bound to bring his standards
and values to bear on decisions of access and on the editorial
judgments governing posthumous volumes of his work. On the
matter of editing his writing, I don't kid myself that my decisions
would have been his. You can't know precisely what he would have
done or not done in newly arisen situations. But sometimes the
past is a reliable guide. For example, when Mrs. Ellison and Random
House asked me to edit the Modern Library Edition of his
Collected Essays, the late Joe Fox, who was assigned to Ralph after
Albert Erskine's death, thought the essays should be rearranged.
"Let's separate them into categories - literary, political, musical,
autobiographical, et cetera," he suggested to Mrs. Ellison. But she
said no. "Ralph worked hard on the form of those books," she told
him, and she insisted that Shadow and Act and Going to the Territory
remain exactly as Ralph had published them in 1964 and 1986,
respectively. And she was right. At first Joe was disappointed, and
he thought I would be too, but I told him I thought Fanny was
rightly sensitive to and protective of the final decisions Ralph had
made about form and sequence. I told him that Fanny's decision
(and Ralph's when he published the two books) would make it easier
for me to come up with an organic, logical sequence for those
unpublished and published but uncollected pieces I wanted to
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include. Fanny's decision gave me the donnie for the Collected
Essays. To some extent I patterned the organization and sequence of
the volume after Brooks Atkinson's Modern Library Edition of
Ralph Waldo Emerson's essays; no one seems to have picked that
up, but I like to think the correspondence would have pleased
Ralph.
To return to your question, it isn't so much that my "notion of
discretion" has changed, but that each of the posthumous volumes
presented different challenges. In the essay and short story collections
the discretions called for were ones of selection and sequence
as well as scrupulous attention to Ellison's hand-written revisions on
what appeared to be his final typescripts. The unfinished second
novel, of course, was much thornier, uncharted editorial and literary
territory.
SW: With the posthumous collection, Flying Home, you seem to
have exercised some of that literary discretion, leaving out short stories
that seemed less than polished. Were you pleased with the collection?
Were you pleased with the critical reception of the collection?
JFC: In a word, yes. My unexpected discovery of a cache of previously
unpublished stories in the bottom of an old cardboard box full
of discarded magazines and newspapers provided the impetus for
the collection. Earlier, Random House had decided against bringing
out a volume of Ellisons previously published, uncollected stories.
Of these, eight were from the novel-in-progress, another,
"Slick Gonna Learn," from an early, unfinished novel, Slick, circa
1938-1940, and still another, an outtake from Invisible Man. So
there were only six or seven freestanding stories. Of the unpublished
stories I found in the Ellison woodpile, six definitely were
worthy of inclusion; a seventh, "A Storm of Blizzard Proportions,"
written in 1944, I wanted to include, but in the end I gave way on
it. I hope to add the story to a subsequent edition of Flying Home.
But, yes, I was (and am) pleased with the Flying Home collection.
Instead of simply presenting the stories according to the
chronology in which they were written, I arranged them in a
sequence that introduced the reader to a succession of African
American protagonists; in effect, the collection is a kind of bildungsroman
in which different stories and characters follow the life
Ellison knew and imagined from boyhood to youth in the 1920s
and early 1930s to young manhood in the late 1930s and early
1940s — a period going back some twenty years. As they develop,
the stories also show Ellison preparing thematically and technically
— stylistically, too — for Invisible Man, which he started a year after
writing "In a Strange Country," the second to last story in the collection.
Incidentally, the critical reception of Flying Home was
extremely positive; reviewers and readers appreciated the stories,
and saw them anticipating the identity-invisibility theme of Invisible
Man. A couple of reviewers compared Flying Home to Dubliners
and In Our Time, collections in which the whole is greater than
the sum of the parts.
SW: Can you take us through your thought process on JuneteentHl
What did you think the first time you read it through whole?
JFC: Your question makes it sound as if what turned out to be
Juneteenth was a manuscript lying there waiting to be discovered. It
didn't happen that way. Mrs. Ellison put the question of the second
novel with characteristic terseness and acuity when she first walked
me through Ralph's study a few days after his death, and showed me
what he'd left behind from the unfinished novel. "Beginning, middle,
and end," she mused. "Does it have a beginning, middle, and
end?" To answer her questions, I tried to sort out the manuscripts
for each of the different sections of the work-in-progress and identify
the most recent, most complete draft for each section of the
total work. Then I laid out the sections according to the order in
which Ellison seemed to have composed them. That was a more
difficult process then it might appear because although the computer
versions were dated, for the most part the typescripts were
not. For quite some time I intended to lay out the different sections,
write editor's notes to do partial duty for the missing transitions,
and publish the whole thing as a succession of interconnected
fragments. But after lining up all the manuscripts and reading
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them straight through, I realized that what I had was more an
archive than a book.
At first, I was very discouraged; for one thing there was a good
deal of redundancy - Ralph had written the same scene over and
over again, sometimes decades apart. One such scene fascinated
me; it was the scene at the Lincoln Memorial, and it was a pivotal
incident for Ellison. When I read the scene as he rewrote it in the
early 1990s, I realized it had become a more conventional third person
narrative; to be sure, Ellison had kept some of the excursions
into Hickman's mind as Hickman recounted the incident, but there
was none of the dramatic crackle present in the earlier version in
which Hickman is sitting at the delirious Senator's bedside brooding
about the ruined promise of the man he'd raised as a Negro boy
preacher. Looking at the dying man, he remembers taking his congregation
to the Lincoln Memorial the day before the assassination.
Then, as Hickman departs the Memorial, Ellison returns the focus
to the old minister in the Senator's hospital room. He writes: "And
to think, Hickman thought, stirring suddenly in his chair, we had
thought to raise ourselves that kind of man..." I felt a terrific sense
of dramatic tension born of the interplay between past and present
action — a tension missing from the later, more expository versions
of the same scene.
Mulling over the different effects of this scene's different versions,
I began to wonder if Book Us organizing principle of
antiphony — its fractured, recurring call-and-response between
Hickman and Bliss/Sunraider — wasn't the closest Ellison ever got to
telling the heart of his story. "Remember," he admonished himself
in one undated note, '"that the essence of the story is what goes on
in the minds of the characters on a given occasion.' The mind
becomes the real scene of the action." And I remembered that in a
prefatory note to "Night-Talk," the first excerpt Ellison published
after the Plainfield fire of 1967, he wrote of the communication
between Hickman and Bliss/Sunraider as "antiphonal in form and
an anguished attempt to arrive at the true shape and substance of a
sundered past and its meaning." Working on the second novel,
almost 30 years later, I found Ellison's words to be an almost perfect
description of what he had done with his principal characters, Hick-
man and Bliss. His sundering of form also seemed to express and
enact his theme, "the evasion of identity."
I reread Book II along with the manuscript in which Hickman
remembers Bliss's birth, an episode Ellison intended to place somewhere
in Book II, and it struck me that what I had in my hands
was the most coherent, complete, and compelling narrative within
his nowhere-near-finished saga.
SW: What I'm driving at here is did America miss out on a work
that might have surpassed Invisible Man if not for that fire at Ellison's
Massachusetts home?
JFC: Of course those questions are unanswerable - you know that,
I'm sure. Ten days after the fire, in late November, 1967, Ellison
wrote Charles Valentine that "a section of my work-in-progress was
destroyed"; in the summer of 1969 he told Jim McPherson that the
fire "destroyed a year's worth of revisions." As far as I can tell, he
never specified exactly which section or which revisions were lost.
We also should remember that by the time of the fire he'd been at
work on the novel for about a dozen years, at intervals with varying
degrees of intensity.
Remember, too, Invisible Man was almost seven years in the
making; more than a few people in Ellison's crowd thought he'd
never finish it. My point is that although Ellison was working well
on the second novel, who can say that he would have finished it to
his satisfaction sooner rather than later if there had been no fire?
There were other factors involved in the book's slow gestation and
in Ralph's reluctance and, in the end, his inability to finish it.
In any case, we have Juneteenth and the other manuscripts that
will be gathered together and published in the scholarly edition. As
I read it, Juneteenth is one of those posthumous works that both
refers to a great writer's finished work and opens up the territory of
what he left unfinished. Like America, Juneteenth is a work somehow
always in progress.
In some ways, it picks up where Ellison left off in Invisible Man.
Invisible Man ends with the narrator suggesting that he, an African-
American, speaks for the rest of us, white as well as black. In June-

172
teenth there are two antiphonal voices belonging to Hickman and
Bliss/Sunraider, a "rootless American type" who, despite his efforts
to purge himself of blackness, can't erase the black vernacular from
his language or eradicate his experience as a black child and a black
boy preacher from his memory. Dying, Senator Sunraider is a
telling, ironic and tragic example of Ellisons proposition that
"whatever else he is, the true American is also somehow black."
SW: It seemed as if the critics were lined up and waiting for Juneteenth
- Greg Tate in The Village Voice went so far as to accuse you
of a "literary crime." What did you think of the critical reception
and of Tate's comments in particular?
JFC: The Tate piece was a descent into tabloid journalism, an exercise
in literary muckraking. I mean when a reviewer calls a book,
whose every word is Ellison's, "monstrously fraudulent," reviles its
publication as "a literary crime," and finds its editor guilty of "callow
butchery," whatever else that reviewer may be doing, he's not
writing a review. Nonetheless, although Tate's screed is an anomaly,
if you put aside the tone of hysterical accusation, it does exemplify
a tendency of reviewers to focus on how Juneteenth came to be
rather than what the book is about. John Palattella discusses this
phenomenon in the fall 1999 Dissent, and does so, I might add, in
the prologue to one of the most perceptive and discerning reviews
of the book that I've seen.
But look, I would have had to have been naive in the extreme
not to have expected that I would become the lightning rod for
those who were disappointed or frustrated or puzzled about the
book — or unwilling or unable, just yet, to yield themselves to its
sundered, sometimes deliberately confusing form of telling a story.
Also, there were such high expectations and ballyhoo about the Ellison
second novel that a reaction was bound to set in after the initial
buzz and excitement subsided. The test will be how well the book
wears, what's said and written when people go back and read and
teach Juneteenth years and decades from now. And I believe the
book will only increase in importance and critical esteem as time
goes by and its readership grows.
T
As far as the rest of your question is concerned, with a book like
Juneteenth I'm inclined to distinguish between reviews and what you
call the "critical response." Remember, Juneteenth is a difficult
work. This is the deliberate result of Ellison's trying to bring to life
a "sundered past." His lyrical vernacular carries the reader along,
but so much of the action takes place in the minds of Hickman and
the delirious Senator Sunraider that you're not always sure what is
going on, when, and where. As Ellison noted, "sometimes [the two
protagonists] actually converse, sometimes the dialogue is illusory
and occurs in the isolation of their individual minds." Certainly the
novel is not a book that reveals itself on one reading. Malcolm Jones
made this point tellingly in Newsweek.
In the second place when a novel's been in the works for over
forty years and the reviewers know there are well over 2000 pages of
manuscript, you can't blame them from wondering and speculating
about the 1600 pages that aren't there. It might have been a little
like the Sherlock Holmes story in which the dog didn't bark. And
some critics used my full, frank account of what I found and how I
edited Juneteenth against the book. On the other hand there were
many positive, admiring reviews, perhaps especially out in the Territory,
the provinces but also in more imperial venues, in Boston,
New York, and Washington.
Frankly, I am puzzled over the weight some critics and scholars
have given to Louis Menand's review in The New York Times Sunday
Book Review. One guy went so far as to call Menand's the "prevalent
view," and failed to take account of the very positive reviews of
Juneteenth by individuals who have written extensively about Ellison
in scholarly as well as popular journals; Henry Louis Gates, for
example, in Time or Robert O'Meally in The Atlantic, not to mention
Charles Johnson's assessment on PBS and in his preface to the
paperback edition.
Rereading Juneteenth for a class recently and hearing students
respond persuades me more than ever that it is a book that will only
grow in importance and reputation. I'm convinced that, as the
years and decades go by, critics, scholars and readers will come to see
that, as he did with Invisible Man, Ellison did in its pages what no
one else could do — or did do.

174
SW: When is the scholar's edition out and what can readers expect
to see in that text?
JFC: In two or three years if all goes well. The edition will consist
of the latest, most complete version of each section of the work-inprogress
along with variants of selected passages and incidents, a
thorough sampling of Ellison's notes, and editor's notes, and introductions
as appropriate and necessary.
SW: Do you think Ralph Ellison would find some humor in the
fact that most of the community of critics chose to talk about your
role in Juneteenth, instead of talking about the story itself, or the living
sentences?
JFC: I don't think yours is a fair or realistic assessment of the
response. Given the more than forty-five years between Invisible
Man and Juneteenth, and the fact that the book is an edited, posthumous
work, some discussion of the book's provenance was fitting
and proper. Besides, many reviewers wrote conscientiously about
"the living sentences." But, yes, I imagine Ralph would have been
amused by the other agendas brought to the table. Maybe a little
exasperated, too, but he understood how the game is played. And
I think he'd be delighted, maybe even a little surprised, at the enormous
staying power of his work, including Juneteenth.
Remember, in 1955 he told the editors of the Paris Review that
he doubted Invisible Man would be around in 20 years.
SW: What are your plans for the future? What are you working on?
JFC: I look forward to editing a volume of Ellison's letters.
Whether their focus is personal, professional or, as often the case, a
mingling of the two, his letters provide an extraordinarily rich and
complex perspective on the American scene from 1933, when he
wrote his mother back in Oklahoma City from his student's vantage
point atTuskegee, up through 1993. I'm also at work on something
of my own about which, learning from Ralph's experience, I'll say
nothing until it's done.
March 1, 2002
-JOHN F. CALLAHAN
The Making of Ralph Ellison's
Juneteenth
In 1985 I sent my friend, Ralph Ellison, the draft of the Ellison
chapter from a work-in-progress on African-American fiction. At
the time I was arguing that, writing Invisible Man, Ellison had built
upon Richard Wright's novella, "The Man Who Lived Underground."
In a long letter Ellison replied that my choice of Wright
and his underground character as an influence was "all too deterministic."
Perhaps believing in humor as the last, best pedagogical
device, he took me to task in uproarious, even scatological terms.
"By focusing on my relationship with Wright," he scolded, "you
overlook the debt which both Wright and I owe to other novelists
and forms of fiction. What's more," he continued, "it's like assuming
that because a goose and a swan happen to occupy the same
barnyard, swim in the same pond, and are friends, it guarantees that
the goose will follow the swan's example and instead of laying eggs
that produce goslings it will bring forth cygnets."
Now I do not pretend to know if Ellison was setting up a mischievous
parallel between his goose and Wright's swan in the folk
tradition of Br'er Rabbit and Br'er Fox. I was too nonplussed, too
glad and too sad that I was reading Ellison's riff instead of hearing
it face to face with all his nuances of voice and expression to enjoy
and contend with. "But while there's no question," he went on,
"that both goose and swan will lay eggs(!), their respective offspring
will be determined not by their proximity but by their genetics. A
bee pollinates great varieties of plants (here let Dostoievsky be the
bee) but each will produce its own flowers and fruit in kind."

176
As I read my friend's letter, I began to feel like Br'er Rabbit gazing
at old Tar Baby. I was ambivalent. I wanted to disengage, but
I couldn't resist pawing at the words that gleamed in black and
white on the page right under my nose. "True," Ellison continued,
"a critic might decide to slip a swan's egg under the goose's butt, but
while this might stir up arguments as to whether the hatchling
which comes forth is a goose, a swan, Daffy Duck in drag, or some
kind of Frank Perdue fuckup that has too little black meat or too
much white meat to be a proper 'oven-stuffer', the egg will produce
a cygnet that was signed, and sealed - if not incubated - by swans."
His metaphor delivered, Ellison pointed me toward the briar
patch: "But all joking aside," he wrote, mischievously enlarging the
joke, "I know, John, that you're not that kind of critic; therefore I
suggest in all seriousness that you take a fresh look at Notes From
The Underground." Nor was Ellison finished. To my growing
embarrassment, he moved from the barnyard inside to the library
where he made his point with irrefutable specificity. "If you do look
at Notes, 1 ' he needled me, "and then look at the prologue to Invisible
Man you'll see that the opening rhythm (or riff) alludes to
Notes." Finally, in a gesture that seemed to my trembling ego the
unkindest cut of all, Ellison reinforced the "literary fact" of the matter
by typing out the opening lines of Notes From Underground and
Invisible Man.
The moral of my story (and Ellison's) is not that Ellison was
uninfluenced by Richard Wright but that Wright's influence was
more interesting and complex than what is suggested by certain literary
"historical fictions." Marching to his own drummer, Ellison
bridges the terms, "literary fact" and "historical fiction." Echoing
his resolve to create a character and narrator who, whatever his
flaws, possessed "intellectual depth," Ellison writes that "there is too
little of Wright - the conscious, thinking, eloquent individual - in
[Wrights character, Fred] Daniels, while there is too much of society's
racially biased wrong." Turning back to the draft I had sent
him, he asks: "And isn't it contradictory to credit me with being
'cryptic cagey' and, by implication, full of 'shit, grit, and mother
wit', and then overlook the possibility that I might have drawn not
upon Wright's fiction but upon Wright himself? Why take from the
artifact when the genuine article was at hand?" Ellison's questions
led me to the "lower frequencies." Who knows, I asked myself, but
that Richard Wright, the man more than his work, was a catalyst for
the complex, composite character of Invisible Man?
Back in 1985 Ellison's witty advice rescued me from confusing
"literary fact" with "historical fiction." Needless to say, I dropped
the Wright prologue from the Ellison chapter in In The African-
American Grain. But Ellison wasn't around to bail me out when
years later, by force of circumstance (or shall I say, necessity?), it fell
to me, as literary executor and the editor of his posthumous works,
to disentangle issues of authorship and editorship, literature and
life, fact and fiction. It was inevitable that my act of disentangling
would create a different tangle. As I labored to discern a book in
the "seemingly intractable body of material" - the unfinished totality
Ellison left behind from forty years of work -1 gradually became
aware that cutting through the Gordian knot of Ellison's manuscripts,
I was creating a literary knot perhaps equally resistant to the
act of unraveling. And, take my word for it, I did not set out to play
Alexander the Great to Ralph Ellison's King Gordius.
Nonetheless, after the fact as it were, I want to reflect on some
of the ambiguities of this posthumous work of fiction, aware that
the very construct and title of this essay, "The Making Of Ralph
Ellison's Juneteenth" suggests if not a contemporary Gordian knot,
then something of a literary (and perhaps historical) snarl. I am
aware that you would not need to be a linguistic philosopher to ask
why I describe the book as Ralph Ellison's Juneteenth and not, as
Stanley Crouch wisecracked, John Callahan's Juneteenth, since, in
the literal sense, Ralph Ellison did not make or even explicitly title
this particular work. The short, simple, and, I readily confess, the
incomplete answer is that the conception, characters, plot, episodes,
and words of the book, including the lovely, vernacular word, Juneteenth,
are Ellison's. Of course, the complexity of the question has
to do with the peculiar, attenuated nature of collaboration necessarily
involved in a posthumous work brought into existence by an editor
in the author's absence.

Ellison left no instructions about his work except the wish
expressed to Mrs. Ellison and to me before his fatal illness struck,
that his books and papers be housed at the national library, the
Library of Congress. Of course, as I well knew, his public comments
from the 1950s to the weeks before his death in 1994 took
for granted the publication of his novel-in-progress. A few days
after his death Mrs. Ellison walked me into his study, a room
adjoining the living room still wreathed in a slight haze of cigar and
pipe smoke. As if to protest the writer's absence, the teeming bookshelves
had erupted in chaos over his desk, chair, computer table,
and copying machine. Anyone else might have given up, but Fanny
Ellison persevered in her effort to do the right thing by what her
husband had left behind. She showed me stacks of printouts, scraps
of notes, jottings on old newspapers and magazine subscription
cards, and several neat boxes of computer disks. At her direction I
removed several thick black binders of typescript from the first of
two, long, rectangular black steel filing cabinets next to his desk.
The other cabinet, I was to discover, contained folder after folder of
earlier drafts painstakingly labeled according to character or
episode.
"Beginning, middle, and end," Mrs. Ellison mused. "Does it
have a beginning, middle, and end?"
The question can't be put any better than that, I thought.
Many times in the next few years I followed the twists and turns
of Ellison's plot, and his characters' movements through space and
time. I traced and retraced their steps as they moved from Washington,
D.C., south to Georgia and Alabama, southwest to Oklahoma,
and back again to the nation's capital. I reached back with
them from the novel's present moment of the mid-fifties to spots of
time in the twenties and thirties and even farther to the first decade
of the new century when the Oklahoma Territory emerged as a
state. And as always, Mrs. Ellison's question pursued me and
brought me back to the task at hand, for it was always clear that at
the center of Ellisons saga was the story of Reverend Hickman and
Senator Sunraider, from the Senators birth as Bliss in Alabama to
his death by an assassin's bullet. To use an architectural metaphor,
this was the true center of Ellison's great, unfinished house of fic-
tion. And although he did not complete the wings of the edifice,
their absence does not significantly mar the organic unity of the
book we do have, Juneteenth.
Given Ellison's hopes and ambitions for his book and the narrative
and lyrical power of much that he did manage to complete, it
was fitting and proper for someone (in Ellison's words in Invisible
Man) "to slip into the breaks and look around." At Mrs. Ellison's
request, I did so, but before working through the labyrinth of the
unfinished novel, I turned my hand to Ellison's essays and short stories.
In gathering together The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison,
which appeared in 1995, and Flying Home and Other Stories, which
appeared in 1996, I was an invisible editor. There were editorial
decisions to be made, to be sure: which pieces to include, which to
leave out. In a few cases, mercifully few, there were conflicts
between the manuscript versions, and there was the recurring question
of how much copy-editing to inflict upon a dead writer's prose.
But the author had seen most of these various works through to
publication, and so very little was left to chance. The most formidable
challenge was the matter of sequence. Yet even here, perhaps
because Ellison had so painstakingly shaped Shadow and Act (1964)
and Going to the Territory (1986), and because, with the exception
of "A Party Down at the Square," which I insisted begin the volume,
the short stories seemed almost to arrange themselves according to
the characters' progression from boyhood and youth to manhood,
neither collection betrayed more than an occasional fingerprint of
its editor.
All the same, editing the essays and short stories provided clues
to the mystery of how Ellison worked. Going through his papers,
covering a span of years from the mid 1930s to the early 1990s, I
discovered he was a perfectionist, whether he was writing fiction,
essays or, for that matter, letters. In the case of Invisible Man, his
first and only finished novel, the manuscripts show that he cut the
novel from 781 pages in the second-to-last draft to 612 pages in his
final typescript. And that is not all. During his final full revision,
finished by April of 1951, Ellison shaped an explicit Prologue and
Epilogue out of the less than satisfactorily organized passages with
which he had opened and closed the penultimate draft. He then

i8o
worked with his editor, Albert Erskine, the two men, author and
editor, reading the manuscript aloud to catch minor infelicities in
the text of what became the finished masterpiece, Invisible Man.
Things were different with the second novel. I do not mean
that the manuscripts and notes from Ellison's novel-in-progress
show a lack of revision; if anything they are an a fortiori expression
of his mania for revision. In the first place Ellison did not leave a
straightforward, continuous manuscript; he left a jumble of manuscripts
and typescript. There were considerably more than two
thousand holograph pages, typescript pages, computer printouts,
false starts and new starts, revisions and re-revisions, notes, clips,
scraps of notes, and outlines. Clearly the editorial task was to sort
the materials into a chronology of composition and, if possible, a
coherent narrative sequence. But as I tried to discern one, inclusive,
more or less complete sequence, I realized slowly, somewhat against
my will, that although Ellison had hoped to write one big book, his
saga, like William Faulkner's, could not be contained within the
pages of a single novel, whether in one, two, or even three volumes.
As I proceeded to arrange Ellison's oft-revised, sometimes reconceived
scenes and episodes according to their most probable development
and progression, I felt uneasily procrustean. For it became
increasingly plain that here and there limbs of the manuscript
would need to be stretched, and elsewhere a protruding foot lopped
off, if — a huge, improbable if — all the episodes were to be edited
into a single, coherent work.
As I proceeded, I found manuscript drafts written from the
1950s to the 1990s, in which Ellison tried to tell and to embellish
his essential story of Alonzo Hickman — the jazzman turned Daddy
Hickman as he is called by little Bliss, and then shortly afterward
Reverend Hickman - and of Bliss, whom Hickman midwifes into
this world, raises as a black child, and who turns into the race-baiting
Senator Sunraider. Nothing of perfect clarity emerged from the
totality of the manuscripts except the sense that to the end of his life
Ellison continued to struggle over how to unify all of his story in a
single novel. You might say his motto as a novelist had been e
pluribus unum; but as we all know, that is easier said than done, and,
after all, the specter of ex uno plures lurks just the other side of
e pluribus unum.
Like Caesar's Gaul, Ellison's attempted conquest of his second
novel falls into three parts or, really, campaigns: from about 1954
until the manuscript-devouring Plainfield fire of November, 1967;
the immediate aftermath of the fire and its impact over the next several
years, and the last twenty-some years of Ellison's life, an interval
during which he held the Albert Schweitzer Professorship in the
Humanities at New York University, and, in the name of citizenship,
did more than his duty on national boards and commissions
while, all the time, the second novel remained his hound of heaven
(and hell) pursuing him "down the arches of the years," pursuing
him "down the labyrinthine ways/ Of [his] own mind" until the end
ofhislifein 1994.
Ellison's projected second novel was a glint in his eye as early as
June of 1951, when he wrote Albert Murray that he was "trying to
get going on my next book before this one [Invisible Man] is finished..."
But, so far as I could tell, not until 1954 did Ellison begin
to put pen to paper, and in April of 1955 he sent Murray a rough
"working draft" of a partial episode. From 1955 to 1957, Ellison
was at work on the second novel as a fellow at the American Academy
in Rome. "It was in Rome during 1956," he told John Hersey,
that he "conceived the basic situation, which had to do with a political
assassination." Not too long afterward, in June of 1959, Ellison
wrote Murray that "Saul Bellow had read book two and is to
publish about fifty pages in a new mag which he is editing — THE
NOBLE SAVAGE - of all things." (Again, so far as I could tell, it
is likely that in 1959 Book II existed only in partial form.) During
the next five or six years, Ellison published three more excerpts in
literary quarterlies. Meanwhile the contract for the book, dated
August 17, 1965, stipulated delivery on September 1, 1967. In his
own mind, Ellison may have been moving toward completion in the
summer and fall as he revised the novel at his summer home outside
Plainfield, a village in the Berkshires. Then, in the late afternoon of
November 29th, Ellison and his wife, Fanny, returned from shopping
to find the house in flames.
The Plainfield fire has taken on the proportions of myth to
such an extent that it is necessary to try to distinguish between fact

182
and fiction. Ten days after the event Ellison wrote Charles Valentine
with understated stoicism that "the loss was particularly severe
for me, as a section of my work-in-progress was destroyed with it."
In 1969 he told James Alan McPherson that the fire "destroyed a
year's worth of revisions," but that he was "presently in the process
of revising it again." By the time of McPherson's account, done
with Ellison's blessing and collaboration in 1970, the second novel
had begun to loom larger than a single novel or a work-in-progress.
"He has enough typed manuscripts to publish three novels,"
McPherson wrote, "but is worried over how the work will hold up
as a total structure. He does not want to publish three separate
books, but then he does not want to compromise on anything
essential. 'If I find that it is better to make it a three-section book,
to issue it in three volumes, I would do that as long as I thought
each volume had a compelling interest in itself,'" Ellison told
McPherson.
On and off for the rest of his life, Ellison continued to work on
his mythic saga of race and identity, language and kinship, religion
and politics in the American experience. Sometimes revising, sometimes
reconceiving, sometimes writing entirely new passages into an
oft-reworked scene, he accumulated more than two thousand pages
of typescript and printouts by the time of his death. Although his
last published excerpt from the novel, an offshoot titled "Backwhacking:
A Plea to the Senator," appeared in 1977, in subsequent
years Ellison did not give up on the novel to which he had given half
his life. Far from it. The novel was his obsession, and he certainly
foresaw the work's publication, and expected to oversee publication
himself. Not two months before his death, he told David Remnick
that "there will be something very soon." He told Joe Fox, the Random
House editor assigned him after Albert Erskine's death in
1993, the same thing at the same time. Yet he had not showed Fox
a single page of manuscript, even though the more than two thousand
pages he would soon leave behind were in such drastic need of
organization and culling that someone needed to step in while Ellison
was alive to discuss what was publishable from the many manuscripts
he had produced in over forty years of writing. To adapt
Thomas Jefferson's metaphor for the anguished fact of slavery, the
second novel seems to have become a wolf Ellison had by the ears
and was unable either to hold fast or let go.
At the end of his life, the novel continued to be Ellison's primary
labor. He was working on it when a terminal illness held him
fast, then killed him less than two weeks after it was diagnosed. In
and out of consciousness from soon after his entry into the hospital
until Mrs. Ellison brought him home for the last time, his last days
and hours were given over to the fundamentals of death and dying.
Sadly, he did not seem any closer to realizing his ambition in what
he composed in the printouts of the last years of his life than in earlier
typescripts. Indeed, he may have wandered farther from his
original purpose as he added new scenes and new riffs, few of which
advanced the central action of the work as a whole. As if to goad
himself back on track, Ellison wrote note after note reminding himself
that every passage of a novel should advance the action. His
notes are rich and copious, but certain obvious and salient details
are missing. For example, I had hoped to find some reference to the
precise identity of those sections constituting the "year's worth of
revisions" that were lost in the Plainfield fire in 1967. I found no
such clue. But I did surmise from the internal evidence of early and
later typescripts that what was lost in that disaster, and then reconstructed
and rewritten slowly in succeeding years to the best of Ellison's
ability, might well have been a version of Book II. Interestingly,
the first excerpt that Ellison published after the fire was
"Night-Talk," an episode which appeared in the Quarterly Review of
Literature in 1969. This brilliant, half-delirious and hallucinatory
dialogue between Hickman and Sunraider picks up from the draft
of Book II from which Ellison had apparently edited most of "And
Hickman Arrives" for Saul Bellow's journal The Noble Savage back
in 1960.
In 1970 Ellison spoke of possibly publishing the novel in several
volumes, but I found only Books I and II labeled as such. Book
I is narrated by a reporter named Mclntyre, and Book II tells the
story of Hickman and Bliss from Bliss's birth to his imminent death
as Senator Sunraider, and tells it mostly through the minds of Hickman
and Bliss/Sunraider. Additional episodes - notably some 400
pages of a rambling Oklahoma narrative from which an earlier ver-

184
sion of "Song of Innocence," published in the Iowa Review in 1970
was taken — are nowhere referred to as Book III.
In the end it was impossible not to conclude that Ellison - who
had boldly aimed at an epic novel charting the immense, and
uneasily settled, moral and racial territory of America - did not
manage to thread his way out of his self-designed labyrinth. The
very magnitude of the more than two thousand pages was tantalizing
and misleading: there was both too much and too little material.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Ellison tended to amplify and
smooth out scenes that had formerly crackled with dramatic tension.
Strangely, he failed to write the crucial transition passages
which might have knitted up the loose ends of his saga. As early as
1960, however, when he published "And Hickman Arrives," Ellison
had settled on the heart of his story: it was Hickman and his
relationship with the little boy who looks white, talks and is raised
black, runs off passing for white, winds up as the race-baiting Senator
Sunraider, and dies from wounds suffered at the hands of an
assassin who is his unacknowledged son.
In 1959, Ellison wrote Murray of writing, revising, and editing
fiercely in order to give Bellow fifty pages of the novel-in-progress.
Unlike the other seven excerpts that Ellison published over the
ensuing years, "And Hickman Arrives" is not a continuous, consecutive
excerpt from the work. Ellison began the section with the
third person prologue to Book I, then ignored entirely the remaining
335 pages of Book I, all narrated by the white reporter, Mclntyre.
He followed the prologue with a scene not found in either
Book I or Book II, his two fullest manuscripts at the time, in which
Reverend Hickman and his deacons and deconesses witness the
shooting from the Senate gallery, where they have gone for a
glimpse of the Senator after they are turned away from his office
and their warnings fall on deaf ears elsewhere in Washington. Ellison
then cut to scene in which Hickman shows six-year-old Bliss his
prop of a coffin and instructs him in his part in the Hickman-crafted,
jazz-inspired, sacred drama of death and resurrection that partakes
of sacred and profane realities, not the least of which is Hickman's
variation on the old American confidence game.
At that point Ellison jumped forward in Book II, and ended
"And Hickman Arrives" with the Juneteenth night scene of chaos
and confusion in which a deranged white woman who claims to be
Bliss's mother attempts to kidnap him, and Bliss and Hickman are
separated. Thus, back in I960 Ellison took pains to craft a long
piece, composed of half-a-dozen scenes selected from the narrative,
compressed and linked together to maximize the story's dramatic
tension and show off the relationship and background of the central
characters, and the motive of the longer work. It is also true, as will
be seen in the manuscripts to be included in the scholarly edition of
the novel-in-progress, that Ellison aimed at integrating Mclntyre's
perspective and voice with an abundance of Oklahoma material and
episodes, told alternatively to Mclntyre, and in later versions to
Hickman, into the central story of Hickman and Bliss/Sunraider. It
is also true, and regrettable, that Ellison never found a satisfactory
way to accomplish this integration of sub-plots into a single composition
or to turn the Mclntyre and Oklahoma tales into a separate
fiction or fictions. And yet there lay in wait, close to completion
- not complete, but within striking distance of completion -
the story of Hickman and Bliss, the latter grown to manhood and
come to preach (and be shot down) in that national church of idealism
and cynicism, the United States Senate.
Was this enough for Ellison? Clearly not. He did more than
tinker in his last years. He rewrote and sometimes recast and
expanded scenes that he had finished and published decades earlier.
He lived (and died) with his great dream of writing a novel on the
scale of Moby Dick slipping farther and farther from his grasp; but
he never gave up, and he had no intention of quitting the fight.
When he died, leaving behind a sorrow of incompleteness that perhaps
only his widow could truly comprehend, what was to be done?
Working with the manuscripts, I was reminded of Invisible
Man's conceit of listening to Louis Armstrong's "Black and Blue"
through the speakers of five phonographs playing simultaneously. I
came to know what Albert Murray meant when he said that "Ralph
didn't have a writer's block; he had the opposite." Ellison followed
the riffer's muse no matter where she seemed to lead. His notes are
full of anxieties (and ideas) about how to integrate the Mclntyre and

i86
Oklahoma narratives and sub-plots into the central action generated
by Hickman and Bliss, and how to bring his whole story home.
Yet the manuscripts, all the revisiting of the late '80s and early '90s,
shy away from that integrative task even as Ellison set out to
embrace it. As I pondered the choices available to an editor of this
unsealed mountain of writing, I recalled these words from Invisible
Man: "Without the possibility of action, all knowledge comes to
one labeled file and forget."
Was I to deposit the manuscripts and notes in the Library of
Congress to rest unpublished with Ellison's papers? Or was I to
publish all of it? (A nearly impossible task, by the way, because Ellison
sometimes created file after file of the same episode on his word
processor, sometimes changing less than a dozen words or phrases
in each version and usually giving the versions different titles.) Or
was I to publish each and every section in its latest version, along
with lists of the changes that Ellison made to the successive versions,
and include also a generous sampling of his notes and comments on
the overall work and its individual sections, episodes, characters,
themes, and plot?
This latter option came to seem a fitting and proper way to
make public posthumously what had been private while the writer
was alive and cherished hopes of bringing his magnum opus to
completion and putting it into the hands of his many readers.' But
such a volume would be a barely manageable hybrid. Part fiction,
part compilation, it would be a kind of archive between hard covers.
And would such a compendious Book of Ellison's Second
Novel have been enough? Would it have done justice to what he
actually achieved in fiction in the decades after Invisible Man?
No: these archival options properly belong to a variorum edition
for scholars, libraries, and the bravest, most dedicated readers.
Not everyone shares my view. Some critics have argued that
since Ellison did not publish a single, coherent narrative from his
multi-layered second novel during his lifetime, he would not have
wanted to see a free-standing narrative of the central story in his
saga published after his death. How do they know? No one wished
more ardently than I to find a final manuscript in Ellison's study or
tucked away in his papers with a note in his hand to the effect that
this was what he wanted published, perhaps with the only ambiguity
a phrase crossed out here and there, then put back, as he had
done so memorably with the words, "on the lower frequencies,"
from the last line of Invisible Man. But that was not the easy fate
that awaited me as I confronted the disparate, protean remains of
Ralph Ellison's unfinished second novel.
"One never knows, do one?" Ellison was fond of quoting Fats
Waller. In the case of Juneteenth, who knows but that in the disputed
territory between fact and fiction some collaboration between
Ellison and me, his notes and manuscripts standing in for his living
voice, was possible. Like Invisible Man listening to Louis Armstrong's
"What Did I Do To Be So Black and Blue," I had no choice
but to "slip into the breaks and look around." What I found, after
working through a jambalaya of manuscripts in varying states of
composition, was that the heart of the novel, in the words of one
reviewer, "[e]ven in its incomplete, editor-assembled form," was "an
extraordinary book." Not everyone agrees. A number of critics
have posted Caveat Lector signs to warn readers away from Juneteenth.
Louis Menand, writing more as an idealist than a pragmatist,
worried in The New York Times Sunday Book Review that "what
at first seemed hideously contrived" will come, over the years, "to
seem perfectly natural, even a little adorable. Juneteenth will go into
the world and become Ralph Ellison's second novel." Yet even with
his backhand flick of the lash, Professor Menand acknowledges and
anticipates die staying power of Juneteenth.
Precisely to avoid confusion between author and editor, I wrote
an introduction and an afterward pointing out that Juneteenth was
the central narrative - not the only narrative but the central, most
finished narrative — that I discovered in die manuscripts of Ellison's
unfinished saga. I reiterated that every word was Ellison's, nothing
was my invention, and I explained which of his manuscripts make
up Juneteenth and why. It was altogether appropriate and necessary
to frame the posthumous Juneteenth with these explanatory essays.
Guardians of our national literature may rest assured that now, and
for years to come, these essays will inform the reader about the
provenance of Juneteenth.

188
In the meantime readers will decide whether Juneteenth is a
"Frankenstein's monster," in Menand's words, or a work of art.
Incidentally, if there is a hint of Frankenstein's monster in Juneteenth,
it is because Ellison put it there. The book ends with a chillingly
concrete and surreal nightmare in which the dying Senator
hallucinates a scene in which he is abducted by three black men,
each of whom speaks a different variation of the African American
idiom. In a brilliant counterpoint to the Senator's earlier contemptuous
reference on the floor of the Senate to the Cadillac as the
"Coon Cage Eight," Ellison brings to vivid visibility "no ordinary
automobile," but what Senator Sunraider imagines as "a bastard creation
of black bastards...an improvisation of vast arrogance and
subversive defiance which they had designed to outrage and destroy
everything in its path. A rolling time bomb launched in the
streets."
Ellison here ups the ante from Invisible Man where the dispossessed
in the person of Dupre and Scofield burn down their tenement
and thus become "capable of their own action." Now, in a
stunning interface between technology and personality personified
by three, black "thinker-tinkers," he projects a more fearsome social
action. Out of the Senator's feverish imagination in Juneteenth
comes a "mammy-made junkyard construction, and yet," he concludes,
"those clowns have made it work, it runs!..." On his vernacular
frequency Ellison turns the mythical boatman of the River
Lethe into three cold, cunning, implacable black men about to ferry
the Senator across his American river of forgetfulness, perhaps the
Potomac. On another frequency, Ellison essays the implications of
technology in the hands and minds of those African-Americans
who, unlike Hickman and his "vanished tribe," are capable, militant
members of the party of nemesis determined to exact revenge for all
the injustice and invisibility visited upon them by the Sunraiders of
America. Yet, to the last, Ellison is true to the ambiguity, complexity,
and possibility of his characters and his story. In the midst of
his and, one suspects, his society's chaos, the dying Senator hears
"the sound of Hickman's consoling voice, calling from somewhere
above," in the continuing struggle for his soul and the soul of America.
A few years after Invisible Mans publication, Ellison responded
to a query from the National Book Award Foundation with a reflection
on the nature of the effort he had put in on his remarkable first
novel. "My sole preoccupation was with transforming a seemingly
intractable body of material into a work of art," he wrote. In my
case, during the more than three years that I worked with the manuscripts
and notes of Ellison's unfinished second novel, I began to
realize that mine was the distantly related task of discerning — not
creating, but discerning - a work of art within the "seemingly
intractable body of material" that Ellison left behind.
Perhaps, like Ellison's Alonzo Hickman, I have been an unlikely
midwife, not to a child but to a book of mixed ancestry and
antecedents. I like to think that my labors have enacted a little of
the Ellisonian proposition that freedom is not only the recognition
of necessity but also of possibility. In any case, I am reminded that
while at work on his second novel, Ellison wrote of "the troubling
suspicion" shared by all Americans, "that whatever else the true
American is, he is also somehow black." As Ellison's friend and
now, by virtue of what he called "the sheer unpredictability of life in
these United States," the editor of his posthumously published
work, it is my hope that Juneteenth exemplifies a measure of the
indivisibility of American life, literature, and personality.
To paraphrase one of Invisible Mans valedictory comments, so
there you have it, or almost have it. You have the interconnecting
stories - shall I say fictions? - of my friendship with Ralph Ellison,
Ellison's relation to his forty year work-in-progress, and my relation
to his unfinished novel and to Juneteenth, the narrative which in my
estimation best represents his efforts. Far better than any defense of
mine, Ellison's language and action, characters and voices, theme
and countertheme of possibility and chaos make the case for Juneteenth,
and for Ellison's historical (and prophetic) moral imagination
as he projected his story of America forward from Invisible
Man.
March 1,2002
ii

—PETER COVINO
She Speaks to Me From Her Birthing
Waters of 1972
My she-ghost is walking toward the Calvario again, up the curved end
of Via Nuova, where evening descends in curves.
At the end of the street, she stoops to pick up some imaginary fallen thing -
a blessing, an injured bird, used stamps.
And she keeps walking toward the wood-cut effigy
of the Woodcutter Jesus, his weathered arms outstretched
toward the harvests mechanical limbs. Several
now shake fig trees, olive trees, etc.;
and I smell that sharpened lemon smell.
Almonds too, uneaten, and strewn onto the dusty ground,
indecipherable in their tinny, distant languages:
this Soil of Plenty, Piano di Grazia, disparaging fields.
In the burnt and stippled countryside, tractors
plow the earth, hungry for remembered taste.
This land so close to the sea of silvered fish,
sardines in the sea grass, among cooling stoppered bottles of wine.
Tonight she is my fastest ghost, mercury, my passion fruit,
in a perfectly struck pose.
And if she mutters to me, in her head-cocked, heavy fugitive tongue,
I will answer in a silence so forlorn, she would gladly surrender
her own lost voice. Tonight her message is written in the resistances
of our Southern Appennine village, at the limits of the mountain.
I want to write my love all over her, make up for lost time;
unwieldy arm cast, agonizing trophy case of scribbled promises.
I want to ship myself, 1972, a gnat-stained parcel,
to that other country she ran off to; her glance a mantel of violet-scented can<
That child is electric in the indiscriminant weeds of her hips,
dandelions and chicory pour from her mouth—
balm for this child-toting specter of my sister, strange avenger, who forever
scrambles through the second floor veranda of our house.
Beloved ghost, from this storybook's trap-door. I am heavy
with semolina flour and the sweet forgiving sweat of you.
191

192
LOU STOVALL
Jacob Lawrence was the first American artist of African descent to receive
sustained mainstream recognition in the United States. His success came early
— at the age of twenty-four— but lasted almost uninterrupted until his death
in June 2000. In the last ten years of his life, he received numerous awards,
including the Presidential Medal of Arts and more than eighteen honorary
post-doctorate degrees.
Lou Stovall, Lawrences friend andprintmaker, spoke about his long-
time collaboration with Lawrence at the opening of the traveling retro-
spective, "Over the Line: The Art and Life of Jacob Lawrence, " organized
by the Phillips Collection, Washington, D. C.
Working with Jacob Lawrence:
An Elegy
I want to take you by the hand, to lead you through the making
of a painting in the way Jacob spoke'of it. You take up your
brush, as Jacob did, to paint the green not just on one section, but
on everything that will be green, because to not paint all the greens
at one time would be to lose the rhythm. Then the reds, seemingly
with a will of their own, the reds course through the hearts and
hands of every artist. Sometimes the reds are subtle as the red of
one rose petal against another when only the magic of light can
show the separation, and sometimes the reds sum up the drama, as
a bloodied footprint against the white of snow. How else to show
the distance your mind must take to get you from the unbearable
weight on your back, the blinding heat of the Southern sun over
endless cotton fields to freedom in the far North of Canada? Jacob
painted his history, yours and mine. He called his paintings autobiographical,
which takes me to my primary topic.
Jacob loved people, and we really loved Jacob. He was humble
and gracious. In a word, he was "centered." He knew who he was
and what he wanted to be. As his printmaker, I was in a half-dozen
cities with Jacob and his wife Gwen over the years. It was not
unusual for people to come up to Jacob to describe how his work
had affected their lives, their children, enhanced their homes,
taught them history. Jacob answered every compliment with a
handshake and a sincere "Thank you for those good thoughts. That
is so generous of you." On one occasion, a man stopped his BMW
in die middle of traffic, ran over to Jacob and said how special it was
to see him. After recieveing his handshake, the man ran back across
traffic to his BMW and continued on his way. We all looked at each
other and said, "Well, Jake was that the winner?" And Jacob said,
"That was awfully nice of him."
Jacob Lawrence was, at once, my hero, my teacher, and my
mentor. I admired him because he used his art to tell the story of
struggle and triumph over adversity. Somehow that seems too small
a statement to introduce the way I feel about the greatest man I have
ever known, but his life was about struggle and triumph. As a man,
his life had been the struggle of minority vs. majority, Black v.s.
White, rich vs. poor. He was outraged by unfairness. Unfairness
made him angry, impassioned his art, and focused his attention.
Through steadfast dedication to his principles, he triumphed as a
humanitarian. As an artist, his struggle was realism vs. abstraction,
personal vision vs. popular style. His social commentary combined
both realism and abstraction. Jacob painted his world: first what he
saw, and later what he read and heard about. He notes that his
painting of John Brown was among his first paintings of non-Black
Americans. The series, painted in 1940, at the age of twenty-three,
was a harbinger of Jacob's relationship with the world. He did not
restrict himself inside racial lines. The title of this exhibition, Over
the Line, evokes so much about the man. He was a consummate
scholar. He was well-read and interested in everyone and, seemingly,
everything. He painted people who changed the lives of other
people, people who dedicated themselves to justice and honor. He
painted people at war, at work, at play, and in worship. He painted
people in transit and people in their communities; he painted the
things around them.
Jacob's primary goal in life was to make art. At a time when
Jacob was quite ill and obviously not pleased to be taking a break, I
asked why he was so restless about getting back to work. "Why not

194
relax, and take it easy until you feel better?" His answer: "Painting
is what I do. I still have thoughts and ideas to express." In this, his
typical to-the-point style, Jacob summed up his working attitude.
As a young man in the Harlem of the 1930s, Jacob had received
significant appreciation for his art. Harlem had been the mecca for
striving artists of color. Jacob was recognized and accepted by some
of the leading social realists of the time from the larger community
of New York City. He felt he belonged with the social realists and
was certainly interested in the abstractionists, but according to an
assortment of statements that Jacob made over a period of years, he
was glad to have a separateness from those two styles. Frequently,
when we were together signing prints or planning the next print, we
would conclude the evening with dinner and casual talks, which
always led to Jacob's New York of the 30s and 40s. I am forever
indebted to Jacob for his personal history, which connected me to
the history that formed my beginnings as an artist.
The style of the social realists, which prevailed at the time, was
to combine color and geometry to express movement, depth, and
emotion within the composition. Jacob further developed those
planes of movement, depth, and emotion by adding narration, a
sense of place and urgency. His thoughts were fueled by the stories
on the street of hard-won escapes from forced labor, divided families,
and pernicious levels of hunger. It is said a play based on the
life of Toussaint L'Ouverture, the liberator of Haiti, gave him incentive
to make his first series of narrative paintings. Jacob was twenty-one
years of age. He became a part of his own evolving history
as Harlem continued to attract Southerners looking for employement,
housing, and cultural sustenance. Jacob's heart-winning style
and techinique brought him significant attention at a very young
age. My collaboration with Jacob began much later in his life.
As a silkscreen printmaker, my primary focus has been to
broaden the range of possibilities in printmaking. By collaborating
with other artists, I have been able to master skills and techiniques
which have added to the sum of printmaking. In addition to my
collaboration with Jacob Lawrence, the work that I have done with
other artists, especially Sam Gilliam, and Gwendolyn Knight
Lawrence, has required increasing levels of invention. When I am
asked about my favorite collaborations, I say Jacob for the largeness
of content, Sam for the thrill of the unanticipated, and Gwen for
the complexity of the reds. Collaborative work requires a concept
that goes beyond the self, beyond one's role as the painter and
beyond one's role as the printmaker. When creative minds work
together the work seems to take on a higher meaning.
My collaborations with Jacob Lawrence and other artists have
led me to think about artists' workshops, both as they existed several
centuries ago and as they have continued to evolve among modern
artists. Collaboration after mastery is the single most rewarding
experience for an artist. In addition to our being good friends,
Jacob Lawrence and I had a special collaborative relationship. Jacob
and I would discuss color and how to arrange those colors in order
to establish greater distance, space, and definition of subject. Shapes
were first and foremost in our discussions. At the outset of our conversations,
an arm was an arm, but as we reached a higher level and
became more involved with the print, we made reference to the subject
in an increasingly abstracted way. The arm would then be
referred to as the shape on the right of the blue. Subject matter and
intent were understood and did not enter into our discussion with
the exception of showing the correct facial expressions. Jacob made
sure that faces showed what they should about his subject; for example,
he would use wide eyes to show interest, a grimaced mouth to
show pain, and often an abstracted face to show years of subjugation.
These memorable faces, combined with the gestures of the
hands and the position of feet, compel us to take Jacobs vision with
us. The uniqueness of his work lies in this, his particular manner of
painting, which has always been unforgettable. Some call it the
strength of simplicity. Others single out his ability to show movement,
hard toil, and joy. And all agree that his use of color was
incredible. Jacob made use of everything that was around him. His
style encompassed our lives.
Like his ideas, the principle elements in his paintings were
never static. His shapes established a kind of rhythmic movement
with one element working in correspondence with another
throughout the composition. His use of color enhanced action,
especially in pieces like Revolt on the Amistad, a work of unusual

196
complexity and abstraction. This piece is unique to me because I
was frequently going back and forth between Jacob's original paining
and the developing imagery in the print. There were moments
when the ambiguity of shapes in the composition was increased
because the force of Jacob's ideas demanded a stronger statement. I
use the word "force" because he was imagining how a mutiny
aboard a ship would look. Using silkscreen printmaking at its best,
Jacob was able to compare the state of one proof to another, as he
adjusted his composition to suit his idea. What happened and how
to represent what happened on the deck of La Amistad mattered to
him. His knowledge of history told him about the violent struggles,
slashing knives, and gnashing teeth set against the colors of rope,
skin, and uniform, with the turbulence of the waves lifting the ship.
We were creating meaning, in other words, making an art language
that would take us beyond conventional expectations of what
was possible in the silkscreen medium. Jacob loved communicating
about the prints by telephone. We both thought it added another
dimension to the terms of making visual art. The effect on memory
and perception, for example, was compounded as we zeroed in
on a specific area. The use of the telephone gave us time to articulate
Jacob's ideas about expression and my ideas about the realization
of those expressions. We knew that we had established a new
way to communicate visual ideas.
In one meaningful exchange Jacob said, "Imagine the red in
two planes. The structural or outer area should be deeper than the
interior. Make it deep enough so that it looks still. The interior red
will look more translucent after the glaze and will seem to go back
in space. Can you do that?" I did. I made the proof and, after finishing,
I gained a new appreciation for Jacob's complete understanding
of color.
In The Burning, we were counting blades of grass over the telephone.
In the original, the grass was not dominant. But in the
print, the grass is varied, complex, and active. In order to effect this
we would count the blades of grass from left to right and then break
up the shapes according to elements already in his composition. For
instance, Jacob said, "Put the grass stroke from the top row on the
left into the middle of the shape on the third level fifteen blades
over." This mediod of working was effective because silkscreen ink
can be printed with the same opacity as gouache and more opaque
than tempera. I had learned to print flat colors with little or no rise
on the surface of the paper during the proofing stage so that over
printing was much the same as painting over and umber wash in
traditional painting techniques. For Jacob's work especially, as the
print developed I would increase the density of the ink until we
were satisfied that the colors were rich enough. His idea for making
The Burning more dramatic was stunning. We added scarlet red
to the dark red of the flames on the roofs of the houses and changed
the orientation of the houses by printing bright white on the facing
fronts and dark brown on the sides, setting them deeper into composition.
Jacob added a dark foreboding sky coming in from the
right, over the burning houses.
As we worked together, the changes made to the silkscreen
prints in comparison to Jacob's original gouache or temperas
increased. Jacob used the opportunity of silkscreen printmaking to
re-address his subjects. By taking a second look at a painting during
the printing process, he was able to place emphasis exactly
where he wanted it. While working on the print New York Transit,
we happened to be together in New York with one proof and one
pencil in a very small hotel room. We were working hard on changing
a hand and Jacob said that he would just draw it again. He drew
the shape of the hand in the border. When I returned to my studio
I enlarged the hand to fit the space and then sent the proof to him
when he returned to Seattle.
He accepted that he had no limits in making silkscreen prints
because he could experiment without being in danger of losing the
image. When Jacob worked on his originals he worked in the same
manner that I work as a printmaker. By working in this way we
knew what the overall layout would be, because the outlines were
drawn before we started. Invention began when we applied color,
then lines could change; gestures could be altered; skylines could be
reduced or increased. Where a color led, we generally followed.
Jacob's uniqueness was that he liked going through the proofing
process. We both understood that prints had to appeal to the visions
of many people, and we were conscious of a print's effect on them.

198
Jacob always had strong ideas about painting and, as we continued
to work, he challenged the silkscreen medium, and I developed an
even finer hand for cutting and painting stencils in order to satisfy
his feeling for the edge.
Perhaps one of the most effective uses of the silkscreen in Jacobs
re-direction of an image occurred in the print Contemplation. We
had pretty much finished the print when Jacob called to say he was
sending another proof and asked me to call him as soon as it arrived.
Jacob had painted over his original candle in the work and replaced
it with a very alive, blowing-in-the-breeze, candle. To paint out his
original he had piled on the paint because the flame of the candle
was surrounded with timbers printed in really dark browns. I was
literally pacing at the door waiting for the proof, and I was dialing
his number as I unwrapped the print and got my first look at what
he had altered. There was little time to react before Jacob asked
what I thought. "No" is not in the vocabulary of a printmaker, so
I commented on the effort he had put into his paint-out and said
"great, no problem" and, a dozen or so colors later, it was no problem.
In his alterations, Jacob was not correcting his work, but
adding to the sum of it. He would not be satisfied with verbatim
copies of his earlier works. He wanted to understand the silkscreen
medium and thereby give all that he could to the expression of his
thoughts and ideas.
We triumph when we rise above limitations and create a sense
of order, a place of well-being, an attitude of possibility, and a desire
for accomplishment. Working together, Jacob and I did that.
Jacob Lawrence, Burning, 1997

COURTESY OF JACOB AND GWLENDOLYN LAWRENCE FOUNDATION
PHOTO BY JOHN WOO
COURTESY OF JACOB AND GWLENDOLYN LAWRENCE FQUN-
PHOTO BY JOHN WOO
Jacob Lawrence, New York Transit II, 1998
Jacob Lawrence, New York Transit I, 1998

o
CT"
s
i
COURTESY OF JACOB AND GWLENDOLYN LAWRENCE FOUNDATION
PHOTO BY JOHN WOO

—EAMON GRENNAN
Egg
Phantom violets out of season and green locust leaves and the off-key squawking
Of the titmouse couple snapping at sunflower seeds under cover of this fast-
Fading November day (eyes the colour of sunflower hearts in midsummer)
And your wound - dog-bite or barbed wire? — starting to ooze again and silence
Starting to fold round you like homespun shawl and a packed zodiac of
Ornamental cabbage-heads white and purple and pale mauve all lit up last night
By blanching moonlight: it is as if the days must keep on giving as if Autumn
Were what we're made for - a spur to the unsleeping heart which anchors its
Famished eye on the one bloodfleck flickering in that glimmery opalescent glue
Of egg-white oiling across the frying-pan, the sunflower -yellow sun itself its centre.
200
Was
To slow things down. To remember exactly. What a tongue was,
For example, and for how long. How the soul, whatever it was,
Was at home in those open moments. How you felt like it was
You'd arrived at the core, wherever that was. But you knew it was
Always beginning with hands, since taking each other in hand was
What you did, though tonguing about the body branches like birds was
Only the half of it - pecking, inspecting, tasting this and that (was
That an eyelid, a nipple, fingertip, lip?) — since there was, always was,
A bodiless nerve of curiosity to clue you into something that was
Beyond mere explorers of the local, experts of the everyday, that was
Lying, if you could hang on, outside such fleeting finality as was
The common lot (they said) of your like, since you were sure that was
Not your case, certain with each slow motion that what was just was.
201

202
EUGENIO MONTALE
The Coastguard House
You don't remember the coastguard house
on the cliff, on that rocky outcrop:
forlorn, it waits for you
since the evening
your thoughts swarmed into it
and paused there, restless and edgy.
For years now the sou'wester
has been battering the old walls
and all joy is gone
out of your laugh: the compass
twirls like mad, and there are no more
throws of the dice. You
don't remember: some other time
blanks memory out: the thread unravels.
I still keep a hold
on one end of it -
but the house grows distant
and the smoke-stained weathervane on the roof
spins without stopping. Still I hold
one end of it; but you
are off on your own now
and not here, breathing, in the dark.
Lord, that fugitive horizon -
where a tanker's light
flickers once in a while!
Is this the way through? (The breakers
keep seething
against the cliff that plunges to the sea...)
You don't remember the house of
this evening of mine. And I
don't know who goes, who stays.
Translated by Eamon Grennan

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To My Mother
Now that the chorus of quails
lulls you to eternal sleep, a scattered
flock in light-hearted flight
towards the high, harvested headland
of Cape Mesco; now that this war of the living
grows more ferocious,
if you lay your body by like a shade
(and it isn't a shade,
dear heart, it's not what you think),
who will look after you? The empty street
is a dead end: only two hands, a face,
those hands, that face, the gesture
of a life nothing else but itself —
only this will bring you
to the paradise thronged with souls and voices
in which you live,
and the question you leave, this too
is a gesture of yours
in the shadow of the crosses.
Translated by Eamon Grennan
—ARTHUR BRADFORD
Radish
Radish and I were entertaining ourselves by throwing a knife
into a tree. We were trying to make the blade stick inside and stay
put. It was hard to do.
Radish was a friend of mine who had a red face. The skin on
her cheeks and forehead and the tip of her chin was especially red,
like a radish. She didn't mind that we called her that. She accepted
the fact that she was redder than most people, and besides, she
didn't look ugly, just different.
I was six years older than Radish. I think I was twenty-five, or
maybe it was twenty-four. I was probably twenty-four and she was
eighteen. It was my knife we were throwing at the tree. We took
turns. Probably only about one out of every fifteen throws stuck
into the tree.
"This tree is too hard," said Radish. "Let's find one that's dead
and rotted."
"Okay," I said.
There was an old apple tree out in the clearing. It's leaves were
gone and the bark was falling off of it.
"Try that one," I said.
Radish stepped closer and chucked the knife at the apple tree.
She was a good thrower. The knife hit blade first and stuck right in.
"Nice shot," I told her.
I walked over to the tree to get the knife. I wanted to try a
throw myself. Radish's throw had been very impressive. But when
I got there I couldn't pull the knife out. It was buried deep, almost

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to the hilt.
"Jesus, Radish," I said. I yanked and twisted the knife but it
wouldn't come loose.
"Let me try," said Radish. She walked over and laid her hand
on the knife. It wouldn't budge for her either.
"See what you did?" I said.
"Wait a second," said Radish. She gripped the knife with both
hands and jerked it downward. The tree let out a cracking noise
and split open a little. Bits of wood splintered off and Radish pulled
the knife free.
"There," she said.
She handed me the knife but now I was looking at the place
where it had once been. There was a new hole in the apple tree and
you could see inside. It was hollow and filled with bugs.
"Look at that," I said. There were thousands of them, all crawling
on top of each other.
"They're ladybugs," said Radish.
She was right. The tree was filled with ladybugs. They were
scampering everywhere, bustling about in circles because of the
crack Radish had made in the tree. Some of them flew up into the
air and we pushed them away from our faces.
The air became thick with them. We had to cover our noses
and mouths so that we wouldn't breath them in. Radish stuck her
hand inside the tree and pulled out a whole handful. The bugs
crawled up her arm and through her fingers.
"Damn," she said.
"Don't kill any of them," I said. "They're good luck."
"Then this is a good day," said Radish. "We should make wishes,
right here in front of the tree."
"Alright," I said.
We both shut our eyes and made wishes. The bugs were all over
us now. They crawled up my sleeves and behind my ears.
I opened my eyes before Radish and saw her lips moving. She
was repeating her wish over and over again while the bugs crawled
on her red face. Whatever that wish was, she really wanted it. She
was still cupping her hand too, holding onto her batch of bugs.
Some had spots on their backs and some had none at all. They
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say each spot represents a year in their life but can ladybugs live that
long?
I had wished that day to be liked by Radish. Not in the way
she had been liking me, but as a lover. I wanted for us to fall in love.
Two days later she packed up a bag and left town. She hitchhiked
west, all the way to Washington State. I got a postcard from
her there. She had settled in a costal town and was working with a
man named Darrel who repaired wooden boats.
"I got my wish!" she wrote to me. "The one I made in front of
that ladybug tree. I hope you got yours too."

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-MATTHEW ROHRER
Homage to John Yau
The most expert concerning the Godhead are the meek.
Meek little feet rain down on the ceiling.
Ceilings perform the most important function,
functioning as the dead-end of the room.
The room where we spoke has not awakened yet.
Yet even you are not sure if the pictures are listening.
Listen: do you hear that mysterious engine?
That engine burning and turning over our heads?
The head of every religion is allowed to witness these things once,
once they've drawn in their irresistible nets.
Now they're dropping nets off the roof, or is it rain?
If it's rain that falls, it's called squalls.
"Disagreeable Object"
(Homage to John Yau)
Women who have been mounted by the devil
say his ding-a-ling is cold and rough.
Roughly half of the village reported seeing the disagreeable object
by the cliffs. Standing beside it, a colossal monopod, tall and thin.
A thin rain sweeps the green streets. The thin
man walks all the way home without ever lifting his feet
which are not feet. He stands always
beside you, the fact of his single foot and leg disguised.
My disguise is to hang myself from the rafters
of the palace at 4 AM, a spine with no body.
The body is uneven and it is made of clay.
Ideas fly away like bees smoked out of the hive.
And the hive of ideas goes quiet. It shrinks
under its own weight. All that's left is crushed and rough.
A rough cold disagreeable object. Even the devil
wants nothing to do with it. He wants to look sexy.

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Third Homage to John Yau
You take off your clothes, and I'll take off my clothes,
and we'll pretend we're in high school.
In high school I never did this, but trust me.
I watched from the sidelines, chewing my nails.
And now my nails are grown back like claws.
And I'm hairy where I wasn't. I resemble a monster.
Now monsters aren't scary to me. They're so small.
I have grown to tower over them, to dwarf them.
A dwarf also attended that school with me. We were friends.
I baked her bread in the shape of my desire. Very uncomplicated.
She was uncomplicated too. She was only a dwarf on the inside.
Outwardly she was as sexy as the rest of them.
The rest of them ignored me. And now that I think
of it, she did too. I sat on the sidelines, growing horns.
And now my horns, claws and shiny fur
have caught your eye. And you are different from the way you were.
You were made of sticks and your voice was made
of feathers. Now you rise up to meet me in the bed,
and the bed cracks, and the windows rattle.
You take off your clothes, and I take off my clothes.
—GABE HUDSON
Those Were Your Words Not Mine
REWARD
I am blind, which is the reason I, Valerie Hackett, am having to
offer this reward, and because I'm blind I cannot see the keys as I
type this so please forgive me if there are any mistakes. Three weeks
ago, on February 23, 1991, my 19-year-old son, Chad Hackett, a
Navy SEAL, was killed in combat over in Desert Storm, and the
way I found out about this was two government men came to my
room and notified me of Chad's death, while I lay here in bed.
The details of Chad's death are puzzling. According to the government
men, Chad's SEAL Team, stationed at Ras al Mishab,
Saudi Arabia, was involved in some operation that tricked the Iraqis
into believing thousands of American soldiers were storming the
Kuwaiti beach of Mina Saud. Tragically, Chad's team was spotted by
Iraqi defenders set in along the beach, and since they had already
buried the decoy explosives in the sand, the other SEALs scrambled
into their Zodiacs and paddled out to sea. Chad, however, according
to the two men, wildly charged the Iraqi machine-gun nest.
Now this is the strange part: Chad was carrying something called a
Koch MP-5 machine gun, and yet he never fired a single shot as he
ran at the Iraqi soldiers, who cut him down in mid-sprint. No one
knows why Chad charged the Iraqis like that, but the two government
men said Chad's actions were brave and courageous.
The men also handed over Chad's personal belongings, which
they found on his body after it was recovered by his fellow SEALs.

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There wasn't much, his dog tags, an I.D. card, and a letter, which
apparently was sealed in a Ziploc baggie, strapped inside his wetsuit.
The strange thing is I asked my nurse to read the letter to me, then
my friends, and then my family, but they all of them, after glancing
at the letter, refused to read it to me. The only person who did actually
"read" the letter to me was my sister Rhonda, but I could tell by
the singsongy voice she used and the way she kept clearing her
throat that she was not really reading it. She was making it up.
Rhonda has always been a liar.
So whoever is reading this, someone who lives here with me in
the Recovery Ward and who has come into my room and is right
now reading this reward note posted on the wall next to my bed, I
say this to you: I am willing to pay $300 to the first person who will
read this letter to me. The letter itself is taped on the wall below this
note. So please, do a kind deed for an old blind woman, and help
put her heart at ease, and make $300 in the process. Thank you.
THE LETTER FOUND IN MY SON CHAD'S WETSUIT
Dear Chad,
Hi love. I was so excited to get your letter today that when I
snatched it out of the mailbox and saw who it was from I raced
through the yard and in the house and into my room and I called
Jeannette, Pam, Megan, Uncle Stan and Aunt Judy, Mom and Dad
at work, and Grandma and Grandpa Pollard in Seattle to inform
them not to phone me or to bother me for the next hour because I
was going to be extremely busy reading over this letter that I just
received from Ras al Mishab, Saudi Arabia, from my dear sweet
Navy SEAL who is right now preparing to storm the beach off the
coast of Kuwait.
Then I yanked down the blinds and bolted my door and took
off all my clothes (Remember when you called from the Naval
Amphibious Base the night before you got shipped over to Saudi
and you made me promise I would read all your letters naked? You
said it would be more fun to write them because you would know
that I would be naked when I read them? Well, I kept my promise.)
and crawled under the sheets and cuddled up with Mr. Snuggles (By
die way, Rags bit a hole in Mr. Snuggles and now some of his stuffing's
coming out. Can you believe it? I had to hit Rags with my belt.
Bad Rags. Poor Mr. Snuggles.) and had just finished the "Dear
Montana" of your letter when there was suddenly a loud banging at
the front door.
I was like, Who can that be.
So I leapt out of bed and wrapped myself in a towel as I flew all
the way through the living room and then I threw open the door
and you will never in a million years guess who it was. It was Kurt
Donovan. I thought this was so completely weird because I knew
Kurt started pre-law at Berkeley this year and then right before you
shipped out you swore that when you got out of Desert Storm the
very first diing you were going to do was drive straight up to Berkeley
and kick Kurt Donovan's ass.
I remember you said you were going to capture Kurt Donovan
and tie him to a tree out in the woods with some special SEAL rope
and break all his teeth out one by one and then cut off his feet and

214
then strategically stab him in the spine so his legs were paralyzed,
but first, you said, before you did all that, you were going to
"straight-up kick his motherfucking ass." You said this to me exactly
three months ago before you shipped off to BASIC UNDER-
WATER DEMOLITION/SEAL TRAINING in Coronado and
you knew that once you completed your training and were officially
a SEAL they were going to instantly ship you over to Saudi
because that's what your navy personnel detailer promised you
when he offered you the chance to go to BUDS.
Then after you said how you were going to capture Kurt Donovan
you threw yourself on the ground and started doing one-armed
push ups and each time you came up you shouted, "You want some
of this you son of a bitch?!" And then the next day at the bus station
right before boarding the bus for the Warfare Center up in
Coronado, I asked you if you were scared about starting BUDS
because I know I would be and you said, "We'll see how fucking
Kurt Donovan likes scooting around Berkeley in a wheelchair. I bet
the girls in Berkeley won't like Mr. Genius Pre-Law Kurt Donovan
so much when they see him scooting around town in a wheelchair.
You want to bet? I'll betcha. This will be Kurt Donovan," and then
you got down in a squat position and rolled your arms back and
forth just the way you figured Kurt Donovan would roll his arms
back and forth when he is in a wheelchair.
So like I said, I was shocked that Kurt was standing at my door
like that, because I thought you and Kurt had issues, but when I
mentioned this he said, "What are you talking about? What's in the
past is in the past. To tell you the truth I'd forgotten all about it,"
and then Kurt chuckled and said he had no clue that you were still
mad at him for what he did in the fourth grade when he stuck that
chocolate-covered doughnut on his dick in the cafeteria and told
you that if you didn't eat the chocolate-covered doughnut off his
dick then God would make your mom go blind and so you gobbled
down the chocolate-covered doughnut and threw up and everyone
at your table laughed. Kurt said that was a heck of a long time ago,
and what's in the past is in the past, and like I said, he said, "Chad
didn't know that I was just goofing around and the reason I did the
thing with the doughnut was because I secretly wanted Chad to be
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my friend, and besides," he said, "I just got a letter from Chad yesterday."
I said, "You got a letter from Chad yesterday? In Berkeley? As
in my Chad the Navy SEAL who is in Desert Storm?"
He said, "Yeah, that's why I'm here. He asked me to come down
from Berkeley and see how you're holding up."
I told Kurt that was really weird because I had just got a letter
from you and I was just about to read it.
Then Kurt said, "So let's read it."
So then we both came back here to my bedroom and read over
your letter because I wanted to know if there was anything you
might have left out in my letter that you put in Kurt's letter but
when we were done reading it Kurt said no, that's basically what you
said to him too.
Except of course the poems you sent me, because I cried a little
when I started reading them and then Kurt asked if he could read
one of them out loud to me because he said they were "really excellent
poems," and I can tell what you mean about how being over in
Desert Storm is making you "think about your life and the world in
a different way." My favorite poem is "Ocean Salty Like Tears," and
I love how you start off by writing that sometimes while paddling
off the coast of Kuwait you "feel just like a pirate," but that your
only gold is me, Montana.
So I know you must be dying to find out because you asked me
about a hundred times in your letter and the answer is — yes, yes, yes
- I went to see your mom in the hospital last week and yes after I
left your mom I went to talk to Dr. Wexley. Dr. Wexley said, "Oh,
hi, Montana," and then he said, "If I can be perfectly honest with
you Montana, Mrs. Hackett's operation was a complete disaster,"
and then he went on to say that even though he'd been able to successfully
execute the cornea transplant the tests were indicating that
your mom's body was rejecting the new corneas and he was afraid
she wouldn't have her sight back when the bandages came off.
I said, "Maybe they're defective corneas."
Dr. Wexley sighed and said, "We got those corneas from the
Eyebank for Sight Restoration. As far as corneas go, they're top of
the line, Montana."

216
I said, "But who was the donor? Maybe they were depressed
and shredded their corneas by crying all the time."
And then Dr. Wexley said, "Come on, Montana, don't be
ridiculous. Now I know you're upset, but the only thing you can do
is be strong for Mrs. Hackett, though I'm not going to say anything
to her yet. There were some complications during the surgery and
she's still pretty tuckered out."
So what Dr. Wexley told me broke my heart, especially since I
had just got done listening to your mom go on and on how her
heart had grown wings of hope and had been soaring and for the
past couple nights since the operation she'd been having these wonderful
clairvoyant dreams in which she could see perfectly and she
called these dreams her Premonitions of Joy. Your mom said it was
the little things she couldn't wait to see, like a leaf, or a bird in flight,
and her son when he came home from Desert Storm. She said, "I
listen to what's happening over there everyday," and then pointed to
the radio.
Plus I know you have been praying, Chad. This is the other
thing that broke my heart and I didn't tell your mom or Dr. Wexley
this so you needn't worry, but I know you've been praying every
night over there in Ras al Mishab that your mom's cornea transplant
would be a success, and then I also just read your poem, This Written
Prayer #26, where you talk about "The Elusive Geometry of
Recovery," so when Dr. Wexley informed me the operation had
been a disaster I broke down crying near the registration desk. And
I don't know what happened next but I guess I started to hyperventilate
and I must have lunged across the desk and grabbed a pair of
scissors and cut my all hair off because finally a bunch of nurses had
to jump on me and give me a shot of something and then drag me
away.
I hope you won't mind what I'm about to tell you but if you do
please hear me out before you get upset. A couple minutes ago I had
Kurt Donovan's dick in my mouth. Now please do not get freaked
out because I had Kurt Donovan's dick in my mouth until you have
read all of this letter, because by the time you are done reading this
letter you will realize that I love you with all my heart and that what
I'm doing right now I am doing for us and besides, if nothing else,
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I want you to know that I am being completely honest with you,
which when you called from the Warfare Center right before you
shipped off to Saudi is what we agreed was the most important
thing in the world, that we be completely honest with one another.
Do you remember, Chad, when you said that on the phone, "Montana,
you are the most beautiful girl in the world, and I feel like the
luckiest guy in the world, and I swear I want to spend the rest of my
life with you. But this is going to be tough on us. Me going over to
the Middle East is going to be tough on us. And the only way we
can get through this is if we are one hundred percent honest with
each other." So I am being completely honest with you right now
and the reason I had Kurt Donovan's dick in my mouth was because
I wanted to feel as close to you as possible, I wanted to feel like you
were right here with me, I miss you so much, baby.
Now this was Kurt's idea, but I have to say after he talked it
through with me it seemed to make a lot sense, because Kurt said
he would just be acting. He said he would just be playing the role
of Chad Hackett. I have to confess the whole idea of it, being that
close to you, made me excited, so I said, Okay Kurt, let's get that
dick of yours out of those pants, but first we agreed that I could
only put his dick in my mouth and suck on it if I promised that the
whole time I would be thinking of you, so I said, "Scout's Honor,"
and I want you to know that I had my eyes closed and was thinking
only of you a second ago when I was pretending that Kurt
Donovan's dick which was in my mouth was really your dick in my
mouth because I could taste your dick and it tasted so good baby.
That's right, in my mind Kurt's dick didn't even exist, and you had
the biggest dick in the world.
I want you to be careful over there and take care of yourself,
Chad. That story about you guys capturing that whatever-whatever
island and planting the flag in it was amazing, but it also sounded
scary, especially those Iraqi Sea Mines floating all over and under
the water and that at first you thought it was a sea turtle, and the
creepy part where you said you were finning underwater and saw
that dead Iraqi soldier stuck in the barbwire and there were chunks
of his leg missing like something had been eating him, and I don't
know why you had to yank his mask off like that and make funny

218
faces at his face because a dead man's face is nothing good to see
Chad.
One thing I was worried about was that the operation had rattled
your mom's brain loose. I figured maybe whatever they did to
her eyes accidentally got her wires crossed because your mom
seemed to be under the impression that I had changed my name to
Abby. She kept saying, "These are great brownies, Abby. How is the
baby, Abby? I'm so happy for you, Abby," and of course I felt sorry
for her sitting there with her like an idiot with those bandages
wrapped around her head and now she had brain damage too so
that I didn't have the heart to correct her. I kept my big fat mouth
shut. I said to myself, "Mrs. Hackett has had enough sorrow in her
life. So, Montana, you do not need to be the one to tell her that she
has brain damage too."
God must be listening, Chad, so I wouldn't give up hope yet,
and I promised I wouldn't tell anyone about why your mom is blind
and I have kept my promise and I am only bringing it up to remind
you how you said if God listened once then he's going to listen
twice. Those were your words not mine. You said as you stood there
in the center of all that laughter in the cafeteria after eating that
chocolate-covered doughnut and throwing up you realized that you
absolutely and completely hated your mom. You hated your mom
because of how much you loved your mom. You told me how that
night your mom shouted why did she have to be the mother at work
who got a call from the principal of her son's school saying her son
had thrown up, she shook you, and screamed, "Why? Why? Why?"
and you couldn't tell her you'd thrown up because you wanted to
protect her and your dad wasn't there to protect her because he was
dead from stepping on a Bouncing Betty in Da Nang, Vietnam, and
so it was just the two of you all alone helpless in that crummy
apartment and so you decided right then and there that you
absolutely and completely hated your mom's guts.
And that night you prayed to God. I hope this doesn't hurt too
much for me to bring up because I could see how it might hurt to
go over it but you said that night you prayed to God for assistance
because you said your soul was in great distress and you needed His
assistance. You prayed the way they taught you to in church. You
were just a little boy and you got down on your knees and prayed
to God and asked Him to make your mom go blind.
But you were just a little boy and so you shouldn't blame yourself,
because there's no way you could have known the next day your
mother would wake up and call you over to her bed and tell you to
call the doctor because she had watery spots in her vision and couldn't
see and then later that day go to an opthmologist who diagnosed
her with Congenital Hereditary Endothelia Dystrophy because how
many people have ever heard of Congenital Hereditary Endothelia
Dystrophy, especially when nobody in your family has ever had it
before?!
I'm glad that you were thinking of me and asked Kurt Donovan
to come over to my house and check up on me, because I don't
want you to worry or anything while you're getting ready to storm
the beaches of Kuwait but I had been feeling pretty down and out
to tell you the truth, but I am definitely feeling a lot better than I
have been for the past few days, in fact, I have to say that this is
about the best I've felt since that little incident at the hospital. Earlier
when I said I cut all my hair off in the hospital I guess I lied
because the person whose hair I really cut off was Abby's, and you
are probably just as surprised to hear this as I was. This was the first
time I ever heard of this Abby person, was when she showed up in
the doorway of your mom's room and said, "Hi Mrs. Hackett," and
I saw the confusion on your mom's face and when I noticed how big
Abby's body was with a baby in it, well I put two and two together,
Chad, and I just basically flipped out and I cut all of Abby's hair off
or at least as much as I could before the nurse pulled me away. You
had been two-timing me, Chad Hackett. We've been together for
close to a year and now I find out you cheated and lied to me and
now you've made a baby with this bitch Abby.
Kurt was just saying tell Chad I feel like a SEAL. Oh yeah I feel
like a Navy SEAL. Kurt was saying how does that feel to have a
Navy SEAL in my mouth like that? Kurt was saying, Oh God,
Montana, that's right, baby. Then I knew Kurt was about to finish.
I also knew Kurt was lying when he said he got a letter from you,
Chad. I just want you to know that I am being completely honest
with you right now and that I knew exactly what Kurt was up to

220
when he said he got a letter from you.
My first idea was to come over there to Ras al Mishab and shoot
you myself. I cannot even tell you all the things I had planned to do
to you, but then the more I thought about shooting you the more I
realized how completely sad your life has been and I know things
haven't been easy with just you and your mom scraping by and I
started to feel sorry for you, and then I got mad at myself for feeling
sorry for you because of what you did to me, and I ripped Mr.
Snuggles's head off, and then I hit Rags with my belt.
I figure all the pain in this world must have just made you out
of your mind sad and crazy, Chad, you must have just lost your reason,
you probably did not even know what you were doing because
of how crazy you were, so I forgive you, Chad Hackett, because we
are even now and everything can be fine between us and I want you
to know that I have forgiven you.
But there is one last thing I want to say to you though I hope
there's no reason for me to have to say it. Don't you dare think about
trying to hurt me through God while you are over there in Saudi
Arabia, because I know you and I know after you get this letter you
might become angry and wrathful and do something you regret
later like say a prayer to God asking him to do something horrible
to me like make me go blind, because I am warning you don't bother
trying to get in touch with God because I have taken care of that
and I have already said a little prayer myself.
I asked God to guard over me. I told Him how I was just a
young girl in the world and all alone and how my boyfriend Chad
Hackett broke my heart and I told God that if Chad Hackett from
San Francisco asks Him to do something horrible to me then He
should just do to Chad Hackett whatever horrible thing it is that
Chad Hackett asks Him to do to me, so Chad if you ask God to
make me go blind then what God will do is instead of make me go
blind he will make you go blind Chad with watery spots in your
eyes. Right there in Saudi Arabia. It was an I'm-Rubber-You're-Glue
Prayer, Chad, so please don't do anything rash because God likes
woman better and I am a woman, Chad. You will learn better than
to mess with a woman, Chad.
If you don't believe me then just take one guess why it was that
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Kurt Donovan showed up on my doorstep like that when he did?
The reason is because I said a prayer to God three nights ago asking
him to send Kurt Donovan all the way from Berkeley over to my
house today. I got down on my knees and I said, "God you are the
only one who can help me. So, God, will you please send Kurt
Donovan over to my house three days from now because even
though I don't want to do what I am going to do I have to make
sure everything is right between Chad and me."
So that's another reason why you shouldn't give up hope on
your mom's new corneas and why you should just accept things as
they are, because God does listen and things could be worse and I
love you. It'll all work out just fine, you'll see, and we'll be able to
put all of this behind us, and when you get done over there in Saudi
Arabia you can come straight home to me and I swear to you I will
have figured out a way to steal that baby from Abby by then, and
we'll be able to start a family. In the meantime, I'll practice signing
my name as Mrs. Hackett and I will be thinking of you and wishing
that you are safe and well over there in Saudi Arabia. I miss you
and love you so much.
xoxoxo ad infinitum,
Montana

222
-LAWRENCE WESCHLER
Dark Garland/Affirming Flame
Leaves from my commonplace book, September 2001
I have shored these fragments against my ruin ...
From Walker Percy's "Love in the Ruins" (1971)
Now in these dread latter days of the
old violent beloved U.S.A. and of the
Christ-forgetting Christ-haunted
death-dealing Western world I came
to myself in a grove of young pines
and the question came to me: has it
happened at last? [...]
Undoubtedly something is about to happen. Or is it that something
has happened? Is it that God has at last removed his blessing
from the U.S.A. and what we feel now is just the clank of the old
historical machinery, the sudden jerking ahead of the roller coaster
cars as the chain catches hold and carries us back into history with
its ordinary catastrophes, carries us out and up toward the brink
from that felicitous and privileged siding where even unbelievers
admitted that if it was not God who blessed the U.S.A., then at least
some great good luck had befallen us, and that now the blessing or
the luck is over, the machinery clanks, the chain catches hold, and
the cars jerk forward?
From Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms
Once in camp I put a log on top of the fire and it was full of
ants. As it commenced to burn, the ants swarmed out and went first
toward the center where the fire was; then turned back and ran
toward the end. When there was enough on the end they fell off
onto the fire. Some got out, their bodies burned and flattened, and
went off not knowing where they were going. But most of them
went toward the fire and then back toward the end and swarmed on
the cool end and finally fell off into the fire. I remember thinking
at the time that it was the end of the world and a splendid chance
to be a messiah and lift the log off the fire and throw it out where
die ants could get off onto the ground. But I did not do anything
but throw a tin cup of water on the log, so that I would have the
cup empty to put whiskey in before I added water to it. I think the
cup of water on the burning log only steamed the ants.
From Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire
I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
By the false azure of the window pane;
I was die smudge of ashen fluff—
and I Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky.
That Polish generation that survived the War - the Holocaust,
the razing of their entire capital, millions upon millions dead — and
bore the burden of such survival, they understood ...
From "Could Have" by Wislawa Szymborska
It could have happened.
It had to happen.
It happened earlier. Later.

224
sion
Nearer. Farther off.
It happened, but not to you. [...]
You were in luck — there was a forest.
You were in luck — there were no trees.
You were in luck — a rake, a hook, a beam, a brake,
a jamb, a turn, a quarter inch, an instant.
You were in luck — just then a straw went floating by. [...]
From Zbigniew Herbert's "Mr. Cogito on the Need for Preci-
and yet in these matters
accuracy is essential
we must not be wrong
even by a single one
we are despite everything
the guardians of our brothers
ignorance about those who have disappeared
undermines the reality of the world
Saturday morning, somebody on NPR dug up e.e. cummings'
"I go to this window" poem, with its haunting last lines:
- and all about
herself
the sprouting largest final air
plunges
inward with hurled
downward thousands of enormous dreams
Meanwhile, other lines kept thrumming through my own
mind, Rilke's, from near the outset of the first of the Duino Elegies:
... For beauty is nothing
but the beginning of a terror we can only just barely endure,
and we admire it so because it calmly disdains
to destroy us. Every angel is terrible.
And it has to be said that for all the horror of those endlessly
repeated video spools, there was something terribly, compellingly
sublime, about the spectacle of those towers plunging in on themselves,
the crumpling exhalation of being- something, perhaps, not
so much simply awful as awe-filled. Is it perhaps, too, in this sense,
that every terror is beautiful?
Pillow of air.
It used to be, rising out of the subways anywhere between Midtown
and the Battery, you would quickly and almost automatically
orient yourself by looking to one side — and yes, there was the
Empire State Building - and then to the other - and there indeed
were the twin towers — and depending on their relative sizes and
placement, you immediately knew where you were, in what city,
and how far north or south, and indeed which was north and which
south, which was west and which east (the very enactment, after all,
of Orient-ation). And now of course all that is over. Now with each
automatic swivel of the neck, we represent for ourselves the absent,
the endlessly absent...
Now instead the twin towers will become temporal markers.
With every cinematic or photographic sweep of the New York skyline,
or even simply of the New York backdrop, we will invariably
register, subliminally, automatically: the world of time neatly trisected
- the era before the twin towers, the era of the twin towers,
and now the era ever after.

226
From W.S. Merwin's 1971 prose poem, "Unchopping a Tree,"
which launches out...
Start with the leaves, the small twigs, and the nests that have
been shaken, ripped or broken off by the fall; these must be gathered
and attached once again to their respective places ...
And it goes on like that:
It is not arduous work, unless major limbs have been smashed
or mutilated ... It goes without saying that if the tree was hollow in
whole or in part, and contained old nests of bird or mammal or
insect ... the contents will have to be repaired where necessary and
reassembled, insofar as possible, in their original order, including
the shells of nuts already opened.
And so forth, for paragraph after hallucinogenic paragraph:
Every single leaf is reattached, every single branch; tackle and
scaffolding are hauled in so as to facilitate the final reattachment of
the reconstituted bore to its stump, at which point the tackle and
scaffolding start getting pulled away.
Finally the moment arrives when the last sustaining piece is
removed and the tree stands again on its own. It is as though its
weight for a moment stood on your heart. You listen for a thud of
settlement, a warning creek deep in the intricate joinery. You cannot
believe it will hold. How like something dreamed it is, standing
there all by itself. How long will it stand there now? The first breeze
that touches its dead leaves all seems to flow into your mouth.
You are afraid the motion of the clouds will be enough to push
it over. What more can you do? What more can you do?
But there is nothing more you can do.
Others are waiting.
Everything is going to have to be put back.
From Maurice Merleau-Ponty's "The War Has Had a Place"
(1945)
We have learned history, and we claim that it must not be forgotten.
But are we here not the dupes of our emotions? If ten years
hence, we reread these pages and so many others, what will we think
of them? We do not want this year of 1945 to become just another
year among many. A man who has lost his son or a woman he loved
does not want to live beyond that loss. He leaves the house in the
state it was in. The familiar objects upon the table, the clothes in the
closet mark an empty place in the world ... The day will come, however,
when the meaning of these clothes will change: once ... they
were wearable, and now they are out of style and shabby. To keep
them any longer would not be to make the dead person live on;
quite the opposite, they date his death all the more cruelly.
From Thomas Mertons "The Sign of Jonas"
The perfection of 12th-century Cistercian architecture is not to
be explained by saying that the Cistercians were looking for a new
technique. I am not sure that they were looking for a new technique
at all. They built good churches because they were looking for God.
And they were looking for God in a way that was pure and integral
enough to make everything they did and everything they touched
give glory to God.
We cannot reproduce what they did because we approach the
problem in a way that makes it impossible for us to find a solution.
We ask ourselves a question that they never considered. How can we
make a beautiful monastery according to a style of some past age
and according to the rules of a dead tradition? Thus we make the
problem not only infinitely complicated but we make it, in fact,
unsolvable. Because a dead style is dead. And the reason why it is

228
dead is that the motives and circumstances that once gave it life
have ceased to exist. They have given place to a situation that
demands another style. If we were intent upon loving God rather
than upon getting a Gothic church out of a small budget, we would
put up something that would give glory to God and would be very
simple and would also be in the tradition of our fathers.
The question of whether or not we now should simply rebuild
the twin towers as an assertion of our defiant resolve thus adumbrates
in all sorts of directions. What were "the motives and circumstances"
that once gave authentic life to those buildings (to the
resolve, that is, to build them in the first place)? Are they motives
and circumstances that still pertain, and ought they? And if not,
what other motives and circumstances might now pertain, or ought
to be made to pertain?
From Carl Sagan's "A Pale Blue Dot"
In some respects, science has far surpassed religion in delivering
awe. How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science
and concluded, "This is better than we thought! The universe is
much bigger than our prophets said — grander, more subtle, more
elegant. God must be even greater than we dreamed"? Instead they
say, "No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that
way." A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the
universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth
reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by conventional faiths.
Sooner or later, such a religion will emerge.
Perhaps some of those who convince themselves that Allah is
absolutely everything, and that there ought not to be anything else,
have precisely nothing else themselves; they look at a monument
like the twin towers as its own celebrants also looked at it, as the
Center of Everything, the very "everything" that they have nothing
of. Theirs hence becomes, at its base, a war of Nothing against
Everything - although, of course, they would parse matters exactly
the other way around.
From George Orwell's "Reflections on Gandhi"
The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection,
that one is sometimes willing to commit sins for the sake of
loyalty, that one does not push asceticism to the point where it
makes friendly intercourse impossible, and that one is prepared in
the end to be defeated and broken up by life, which is the inevitable
price of fastening one's love upon other human individuals. No
doubt alcohol, tobacco, and so forth, are things that a saint must
avoid, but sainthood is also a thing human beings must avoid.
Thirty years ago, I was in college and Nixon had just invaded
Cambodia, and we were of course all up in arms. The college had
convened as a committee of the whole in the dining commons — the
students, the professors, the administrators - what were we going to
do? How were we going to respond?
Our distinguished American history professor got up and
declared this moment the crisis of American history. Not to be outdone,
our eminent new-age classicist got up and declared it the crisis
of universal history. And we all nodded our fervent concurrence.
But then our visiting religious historian from England, a tall, lanky
lay-Catholic theologian, as it happened, with something of the
physical bearing of Abraham Lincoln, got up and suggested mildly,
"We really ought to have a little modesty in our crises. I suspect,"
he went on, "that the people during the Black Plague must have
thought they were in for a bit of a scrape."

230
Having momentarily lanced our fervor, he went on to allegorize,
deploying the story of Jesus on the Waters.
Jesus [he reminded us] needed to get across the Sea of Galilee
with his disciples, so they all boarded a small boat, whereupon Jesus
quickly fell into a nap. Presently a storm kicked up, and the disciples,
increasingly edgy, finally woke Jesus up. He told them not to
worry, everything would be all right, whereupon he fell back into
his nap. The storm meanwhile grew more and more intense, winds
slashing the ever-higher waves. The increasingly anxious disciples
woke Jesus once again, who once again told them not to worry and
again fell back asleep. And still the storm worsened, now tossing the
little boat violently all to and fro.
The disciples, beside themselves with terror, awoke Jesus one
more time, who now said, "Oh ye of little faith" - that's where that
phrase comes from - and then proceeded to pronounce, "Peace!"
Whereupon the storm instantaneously subsided and calm returned
to the water.
Our historian waited a few moments as we endeavored to worry
out the glancing relevance of this story. "It seems to me," he finally
concluded, "that what that story is trying to tell us is simply that in
times of storm, we mustn't allow the storm to enter ourselves; rather
we have to find peace inside ourselves and then breathe it out."
Case in point: "Operation Infinite Justice" (the Pentagon's original
code name for their evolving operation).
Wouldn't finite justice suffice? Can human justice ever be anything
more?
From Tomas Transtromer's "Sentry Duty"
Task: to be where I am.
Even when I'm in this solemn and absurd
role: I am still the place
where creation does some work on itself
"Deciamos ayer"
Fray Luis de Leon, the great humanist scholar (and Hebraist) of
the Spanish Golden Age and one of the sages of Salamanca University,
was condemned by the Inquisition for translating the Song of
Solomon and spent four years in prison before being allowed to
return to his lectern at the university, where he began his first lecture
with the phrase, "Deciamos ayer" - "As we were saying yesterday
..."
Comte Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand:
Nobody who wasn't alive then will ever know the sweetness of
life [la douceur de la vie: the sweet/soft plushness of life] before the
Revolution.

232
—JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER
Not Cold, Not 111 at Ease or Alone
Leading a charge, I always begin to wonder if I am alone. I convince
myself that the pounding of the hooves behind me, the whoops and
prayers of the men behind me, are only creations of my mind,
which refuses to let me advance toward death unaccompanied. This
sad and active imagination of mine has bled onto every aspect of my
life. I watch my hand push through the cuff of my shirt and I wonder
if there is a hand or a cuff at all. I doubt my friends, and doubt
strangers. Just last night, kissing my wife before sleep, I wondered,
Are you really here beside me? Or are you just my fear of the
absence of you?

234
How is it that my family is what I most care about, and also what I
am most distant from? My wife, my children. I feel as if my heart is
a tree on the riverbank, dropping its leaves into the flowing water. I
don't want to be cold, and I don't want to be ill at ease or alone. I
want to be a loving person. I remember a soldier. (I think about
them all the time. They haunt me like hands in gloves.) He had
taken a bayonet through the shoulder and each word out of his
mouth could have been his last. "Tell my wife I love her very
much," he said to me, his fingers tightening around mine. I asked
him, "How?"

236
I've never once in my life felt part of a conversation. No matter how
much I speak, and how much I listen, I am always elsewhere, never
expressing myself or understanding others. On my way to church
this morning, a dog approached me on the path. We stood facing
one another for many minutes. He wanted something, but I didn't
know what it was. I wanted something, but he didn't know what it
was. I wanted something, but I didn't know what it was.

I
238
And there are times when I wonder about myself. The War defines
me, my family defines me, the glass of water that I push across the
table defines me ... I kill, love, and push things so that I can know
myself. (The glass balances on the edge and then falls. The water
bleeds across the floor, and I feel exhilaration.) But what if they
were to disappear? Would I? There have been times, in battle, when
I've lowered my gun, making myself defenseless in the way of a volley
of fire. I close my eyes and ride my horse aimlessly, like a drunken
soldier. I act drunk all the time. I don't want to die. I just want
to know that I'm alive.

240
—PAULA FRIEDMAN
Undreaming Landscape
Hot winds lashing overwires,
sky a-skitter with crisp
maple leaves, and sirens.
My mind weds each to each
as if wild prophecy
blows in from without.
Out here, thinner bones
meld with the sunset
and darkness only consoles
a blackout heart.
Before my eyes, the sun
cedes to a brightness; in blue
air the atom splits -
Nothing pictures it, not
wires, sirens, the refracting sky,
nor these maples buckling
close as hidden children.
—MARY JO SALTER
Office Hours
Unlock the door, drop my backpack,
turn the computer on, and the kettle;
waiting for both to warm up, settle
behind the unfileable disaster
of my cabinet, and ignore that stack
on the floor since last semester.
What a strange job I have, supplying
people with meter and metaphors!
I could be trying to write poems.
Instead, I've tried improving yours —
the ones about your grandmothers dying,
your cats, your broken homes,
your clueless junior years spent touring
Europe; I've tried to quash the onset
of another sonnet on a sunset.
Although it's been intensely boring,
and today I ought to feel elated
a pack of you graduated
(the few who slaved to get a summa,
the hundreds who will die not knowing
the proper placement of a comma),
I must admit that, watching caps
and gowns go by, I had a lapse
in judgment: I was growing

242
sorry to lose — well, two of you.
Funny, clever, and modest too,
fresh from an internship at Glamour,
lovely Amanda would always bring -
throughout the autumn, winter, spring -
poems about sex last summer.
Diane was writing a Book of Hours.
Terse through her Terce, mutely lauding
her Lauds, I knew my place at least.
Deferring to her higher powers,
behind the grille of my desk, nodding,
I listened like a priest.
Sure, it was selfish that I booked
you both for Tuesdays at eleven,
but didn't you find to your surprise
(as I did) that fine-tuning even
projects unlike as yours soon looked
part of one enterprise,
and to hell with "independent studies"?
To view the whole thing as a game
we'd dare to lose at; to focus on
one line until it's more than one -
yes, you got that, and I came
to see you as my buddies,
who reminded me of that grand plan
I had, I think, when I was young.
You showed we could do anything
at all, if we took time to do it.
Excuse me, Amanda and Diane,
if I start now to get to it.

244
The Big Sleep
Two bodies in bed, each with a book.
"Would you mind if I turn
the light off?" I ask nicely.
"Would you mind waiting
for just one more page?" he asks nicely,
"they just found another dead body."
(My husband is reading Raymond Chandler.)
"Sure," I say. "I understand."
So I go back to my book.
Mine is about the disastrous history
of navigation, before the solution
of the problem of longitude.
More often, he's reading about science,
and I'm reading fiction.
After a while I set down the book,
arrange my pillows, close my eyes,
and behind my lids I see floaters of planets
slide and flicker -
celestial bodies, all unnamed,
that could never guide me if I were a sailor.
My husband's the one
with the sense of direction.
(Yes, I'm aware
of the gender cliche 1 —
but what can I do? It's true.)
Amazing what he doesn't notice —
what I'm wearing, what he's wearing,
half the things I notice.
But he can't believe I'd never dare
to experiment with a new route home;
that before reading this book, this week,
I'd always confused latitude and longitude.
For now, though, nobody's going far.
"Want me to read this aloud to you?"
he offers. "It might help you sleep."
He reads me a few pages
of snappy dialogue and guns
before I stop him.
"It's too funny," I say.
"It's too wonderful. It makes me laugh.
I'll never get to sleep."

I 246
He turns off the light -
which may mean what it does
in Raymond Chandler movies.
But soon we slide, lock, side to side,
my stomach to his back,
like continents buckling
over the rumpled waters,
and in time, though no observer
is there to report it, we probably look
like corpses, except that he always snores.
Sometimes I do. We wake each other up
a lot, and apologize,
his body and my body
till death do us part.
-A COLUMBIA JOURNAL INTERVIEW
Goat-Glanding: an interview with
Guy Maddin
MARK BINELLI FOR COLUMBIA JOURNAL: When you sent me the
tape of Dracula, you included what was almost a disclaimer, noting
that you didn't originate the project. It said something interesting to
me about your career, that you would consider a silent, black-andwhite
ballet version of Dracula a kind of sell-out.
GUY MADDIN: Yes, a complete sell-out! Such a populist thing. The
strangest thing is, I've had 85-year-old women come up to me and
say, "That Dracula was so NICE, and you're such a fine-looking
young man." I really do wonder what the hell I've done wrong.
MB: Did many people see it?
GM: Well, it had a concert-hall premiere here in Winnipeg as part
of a nascent Winnipeg film festival. Maybe 1,000 people showed up
for that. And I've never had more than ten people show up for the
premier of anything in Winnipeg. People are always hardest on the
hometown boys, especially in Winnipeg, which, like Columbus,
Ohio, is one of those test-centers for new McDonald's products.
You know, "If they'll eat McRibs in Winnipeg, they'll eat em anywhere!"
A real meat-and-potatoes, no-fancy-frills kind of place. Very
skeptical of anybody from Winnipeg. And I always fear, the worst
thing is, if a lot of people start turning out, then I'm becoming one
of those Winnipeg institutions. Every city has one of those, too, like
a weather man or a dinner theater guy. A funny sportscaster. But a

248
lot of people did see it locally, and the feedback was good. I did send
out a handful of tapes to some of my old National Society of Film
Critic buddies.
MB: Will people in the States be able to see it?
GM: Maybe. If it gets sold to American Bravo, it'll have to be cut
down to an hour. But something can always be cut from anything.
You know, it's ballet, for crying out loud. Cut it down to five minutes
as far as I'm concerned.
MB: How did you end up doing this project?
GM: Well, I was really not that interested in doing it, because I don't
have that much feeling for ballet. It was offered to me by a producer
who really liked the Royal Winnipeg Ballet version of Dracula
and it had become her obsession to get it filmed. She wanted it
filmed in color, much like the color I used in another feature of
mine, Twilight of the Ice Nymphs. And she asked me if I could do
that. I said, "Well, yeah, I COULD do it. But I don't think I'm the
person to do it." I said most of my camerawork— and when you talk
to a producer about film styles, you lose them almost immediately
- but I said, you know, look at my movies: I've made almost static,
proscenium-arch-bound tableau movies, where people are talking
into a microphone hidden in a vase of flowers that's bolted down to
a table. That's a far cry from capturing the kinesis of ballet. And
besides, I've never really liked Dracula, the story. Of all the horror
movies I loved, Dracula bored me the most. It's been reduced to
such uninteresting elements.
MB: And it's been done to death.
GM: It's been done more than anything. The Count on Sesame
Street. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I mean, not only that, I hate all of
the permutations of it, too. I can't get into the Sarah Michelle Gellar
cult. I hate the make-up. I hate all those corrugated foreheads.
MB: So you weren't a Goth kid?
GM: Well, when I was little I loved the quivering cleavage on Hammer
films, and the sound the stakes made when they went through
that cleavage and bottomed out in the coffin. That, to me, was the
sweet sound of a honeymoon. But other than that, I couldn't care
less about Dracula. I love Murnau more than anyone and I can't get
through Nosferatu. I do love Vampyr, by Carl Dreyer, because it
doesn't seem to have shots of vampires biting people. It just has
beautiful women lolling around in bed. It's very mysterious and no
Honeymoon for Gunnar & Snjofridur in Tales from the Gimli Hospital
matter how many times I watch it I can't understand it. So, in short,
no love for the story, no love for ballet, period. So, I was working
on another project, this thing that's been revived now, The Saddest
Music in the World, it's called, with Kazuo Ishiguro, the author of
Remains of the Day.
MB: Did he write it?
GM: He wrote a story that I adapted into a script, and I sort of
hoped to be up and shooting that by a year ago, and so I said no, I
can't do Dracula, because I'm doing this other movie. I didn't have

250
to say I don't like dance, I don't like Dracula. But it got delayed and
got delayed, just like real movies, in Hollywood, get delayed, until
I was broke. And this producer phoned me back and said, "Are you
sure you won't reconsider Dracula?" And I said, "I'll do it!" Because
I was starving. I guess the first thing I decided to do, after that, was
to read the book, which was slow-slogging for me. It's not my
favorite style of writing.
MB: It's all in letters, right?
GM: Yes. Letters and journal entries. An epistolary novel. But the
style is horrible and it must have taken me four months to read this
300-page novel. But the book, when I started distilling it down to
its main elements, it's really cleverly put together. Something's got
to explain its durability. Being badly written is one explanation. But
also — from a woman's point of view, I can't speak — there must be
something aphrodisiac about the Dracula story. And from a man's
point of view, I was really taken by how easily I could identify with
all the men in the book, who are angry and jealous, just as I've been,
to extremely uncomfortable degrees, in my youth. And even recently,
embarassingly enough, when a romantic campaign just doesn't go
your way. And so all these men in the novel, three of diem are
actively pursuing Lucy to be their bride. And when they realize she's
going off on these sleep-walking jags and actually experiencing
completely unfettered sexual fantasies that are not attached to them,
they can't deal with it. And then they find out the fantasies are
attached to a foreigner — in the novel, it's in all likelihood an Eastern
European Jew. In my movie, just because the dancer happens to
be Chinese, it's an Asian. Or an Other. Because it's dance, it's
abstract enough so that you don't care about the race of people, any
more than when Jessye Norman plays Carmen. But it's this whole
thing of the Other, and it makes me think, yeah, this is the way I
am. I start propagandizing against people, the same way people used
to malign Jews, or their romantic rivals, or last spring, when the
Chinese briefly held that American airplane, it took about four seconds
before a flash-fire of propaganda exploded out of the American
press, depicting all Chinese in this Yellow Peril sort of way. It
was just unbelievable. This was right around the time I'd accepted
the project. And I realized the key would be to retell the story from
the point of view of the jealous males, basically.
MB: And that element rarely shows up in the other film versions of
Dracula.
GM: I don't think it does at all. The vampire hunters are always
heroes, and the women have unwittingly become victims of an evil
spirit. That's how the characters describe Dracula in the novel, but
it's an epistolary novel, so don't forget you're getting your standard,
intro-English unreliable narrator. They're propagandizing. As far as
I'm concerned, I don't even care if Dracula really exists in the story.
He's something that's invented by every jealous man. He's the perfect
lover. He's very powerful. He's got more money than the jeal-
ous man.
MB: He's got better moves.
GM: Yeah. At the international level, he's got more business savvy,
the way die Japanese did in the Eighties. Or the way die last few
hundred years Jews were not to be trusted because they used witchcraft
to get their money. So it's just the same timeless strategy that
mildly emasculated men have always used, and that's propagandize,
propagandize, propagandize. Demonize your rival. And not only
that, blame the victim. The girl is experiencing these incurable sexual
fantasies - even though, so are we! But this being Victorian England
— or any time, for that matter — it's not okay for women to have
these fantasies. So let's cut off her head — this is the proper cure for
vampirism - cut off her head so she can't think about them anymore,
fill her mouth with garlic so she dare not speak of her fantasies
and cut out her heart just in case she actually falls in love with
the object of these pornographic reveries. So just using that as a simple
point of the compass to approach the project, I thought, well,
maybe I can have a MEAN-SPIRITED ballet. Rather than a ballet
that's all tutus and leaps and happy spins, I could just have something
that's shot through with mean-spiritedness and bigotedness,

something that the more mean-spirited operas manage to get into
their works. But ballet is always too much en pointe to be mean,
ever. It's hard to be mean when you're standing on your tippie-toes.
MB: Some of the creatures in the movie, I guess they were devils,
reminded me of stills I've seen from the old Thomas Edison horror
movies, or Melies. Were you thinking of those films?
GM: Well, the demons existed in the stage version, and I just didn't
have the nerve to say I'm cutting them out, after I'd cut so much
else. But brightly lit, on the stage, they looked like the cast of Ice
Casdum Vatnsdal as Osip as Christ in Heart of the World
Capades cavorting around. You half expected one of them to pick
up a bucket of confetti and throw it at the other one. So I just decided
to trim down their stage time a little bit and film them in sil-
2 5 2 houette, and all of a sudden they did take on more of that Melies or
Edison demon thing. Though I didn't shoot them quite primitively
enough. And having watched some Melies quite recently, I probably
should have shot the scene so that, when you hit a demon, it
instantly disappears in a cloud of plaster dust. But you know, the
whole thing, I'm fairly proud of having taken it as far away from the
stage version as I did and slathered my DNA all over it. Though,
having realized now how far from the original stage version I did
take the film, I wish I had planned earlier on to take it even further,
to really make it my own. Because it's probably just a few scene ideas
away from something I would have been happy to have originated.
I don't even know what those scene ideas are, so I can't tell you what
they'd be. Just a little bit of myself, since I have been through so
many troubled, woeful, jealous times.
MB: I read an interview where you said you wanted your newer
films to have more energy, to have conflict in every scene. Dracula,
and your short The Heart of the World, both seem like a step in that
direction, with lots of quick cuts. They just felt a lot speedier.
GM: Yeah. I at least managed to get the cutting quicker. Though
that doesn't necessarily guarantee that the pace of the movie is going
to be quick. I think in these cases, they DO move faster than my
early movies. But I think it's more viewer involvement that keeps
movies clipping along. I really admire the movie Sweet Smell of Success.
That's a good template: always keep viewers slightly behind the
plot and maintain multiple conflicts. There's never just two people
in conflict in a scene. There's always at least three and sometimes
seven people in a kind of circle of conflict. The permutations and
combinations of conflict are like a seven-cylinder engine barrelling
along.
MB: And with that movie, EVERYTHING is so fast: the dialogue,
the music.
GM: Yeah. Beautiful. And you almost need to be a little bit cynical,
a little bit mean-spirited, to keep the engine humming along like
that.
MB: Why is that?
GM: I'm not sure. Maybe if there's going to be that much conflict,
naturally, things are going to be more bilious. My next feature is my
project with Ishiguru, and it will have, I hope, that much conflict,
and will have dark bile coursing through its veins, instead of the
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254
blood I've been working with over the past year. And I really hope
it, too, moves along. Since Sweet Smell of Success, I've discovered
Billy Wilder's Ace in the Hole, and The Big Carnival, which is really
tremendous as well. I don't know, when you're just making a movie
about human sadness - when that's the main theme - you want to
avoid the self-pitying tenor that shoots through something like that.
The lugubriousness of a one-dimensional variety. You want some
cynical distance so you can have belly-laughs at the expense of these
people, so I'm going to be using Wilder and McKendrick as my
models more and more.
MB: Will this be the first time you've worked with a writer other
than George Toles?
GM: Well, I've gotten it to the point where Ish—
MB: Ish?
GM: That's what he likes to be called, Ish. He hasn't been called by
his first name since he was in grade six. He ran into an old schoolmate
who called him Kauro and I think he said, "Gesundheit!" So
Ish has just given me permission to write the rest of it with George.
We got to the point where he agreed that we had the right spirit.
MB: So was this an existing short story he'd done, or did you guys
come up with the idea together?
GM: No, it had been kicking around. My producer on the project,
Niv Fichman, is producing Ish's first novel, A Pale View of the Hills,
and Ish had been talking to him about this other story. And Niv
thought I might like to take a look at it, that it needed a personal
touch, somehow, and that it could be mine, even though I'd never
made a movie for more than, well, in American dollars, basically 1.2
million dollars. He thought I might want to make a slightly bigger
budget picture. It'll still only be three million. Then it just became
a discussion process between me and Ish, because I realized that in
making the project my own, I'd left all of Ish out. So it was a mat-
ter of Ish sticking up for himself. And he can do so very intelligently.
So we're jamming Ish back in, and then I would jam some of my
stuff back when Ish wasn't looking, but Niv would catch me, so it
was a sort of tumultuous four or five months, during which everything
went into a profound stall and I had to do Dracula. But now
everything's been resolved. I had tea with Ish in London recently.
MB: I'm trying to imagine your version of Remains of the Day.
GM: I'd love to get my hands on that print! Merchant-Ivory and
Maddin. I was walking down the sidewalks of London one day with
the Brothers Quay. They know everyone. They're very gracious and
well-connected people. And they stopped me in front of this door
and said, "These are the offices of Merchant-Ivory." And there was
this keyhole which looked like it had been enlarged with a rasp into
a glory hole of some sort. I stuck my eye up to it and looked in and
I could see this sloppy corridor with a pail and a mop in it, and I
sort of expected to see Merchant and Ivory in there, en flagrante
delicto. I guess it was too early in the morning. The Quays are early
risers. But that's the closest I'll ever come to them, probably, just
staring in at the scene of their crimes.
MB: What do you think draws you to more outmoded techniques
of storytelling? The way you go back in film history is sort of like
writing a novel in an archaic form.
GM: Right, like John Barth did in The Sot-Weed Factor, where, after
you've read it, you go, "Why did I just read that? I could've just read
The Decameron, and it's better." I guess, I'm not sure. It's a weird
thing. I feel like I'm mining a motherload of disused film languages,
but it's a mine that you don't have to stake a claim to because no one
else is interested in mining it. Not that many people are even coming
over to watch what it is you're doing at this mine, or to look on
the screen when you finally throw the things up there. I've theorized
about it myself. At first, my nostalgia-philia might, just to do some
amateur self-analysis, it might be because I was the youngest in the
family of four, but BY FAR the youngest, a complete accidental

256
afterthought. I think my parents hadn't even slept in the same bed
for so long, they forgot the facts of life, and I happened along. So
by the time I came along, they were just exhausted and I was just
put on the floor with the television set. We'd just got television in
Winnipeg the same month I was born. So I was just left alone for
many years, left to explore this vast house. My older siblings grew
up and left. I could switch bedrooms at will. And I discovered these
old photograph albums with these great old black-and-white photos
of my parents, looking fantastic, together with my brothers and
sisters, all crammed into a station wagon doing these sort of Hugh
Beaumont-Barbara Billingsly summer vacations of Mt. Rushmore
and the Grand Canyon. But I never got to go anywhere. And it just
Einar the Lonely in Tales from the Gimli Hosptal
sort of instantly occurred to me that these photograph albums were
the history of my family, the Bible, the book of myth, and all the
wonderful things in the world happen in myths, not in the present.
And I became very backward-gazing. All of my toys were hand-medowns.
The little toy soldiers who'd been chewed up by the dog, the
apparently brilliant dog who was visible only in these old albums,
who'd been dead for a long time, and the only traces left of this dog
were the chewed-off heads of Noah's Ark animals and soldiers and
things. Meanwhile, I was left with a dog who never once was toilet-
trained and just pee-stained all the carpets in the house and was just
as stupid and lazy as I. Though not as reflective, I guess, and not as
mythologizing. So to me the past always seemed precious. Even as
early as grade three, I started to reminisce about grade one, and how
if only I could go back I could do a much better job. It was a very
unhealthy obsession with the past. At some level I always felt like I
would get a chance to redo things. I noticed that I never felt the
great moments in my life while I was experiencing them. Like if
someone died or someone was born or someone got married, I kept
telling myself, while I was emotionally flatlining, "You know what?
I'll have an appropriate emotional response NEXT time my dad
dies, or NEXT time my child is born." And sure enough I do. I
Anna
experience the grieving process in slow, long, luxurious installments,
and joys similarly are turned into all-day suckers I get to enjoy
much later. So it's just kind of strange. And when I first picked up
a camera - this is part two of the answer - I accidentally started
making images that reminded me of the past. I didn't know how to
do a basic three-light setup: a key light, a back light and a fill light.
And so I unplugged the fill light and the back light, because they
were just creating weird, ugly shadows. And I suddenly discovered
very harsh, high-contrast shadows, film-noirish looks, and went,

258
"Hey, what I'm shooting actually has some atmosphere, and it
reminds me of that era that I love." I did a lot of reading and always
wanted to be a writer, but knew I wasn't good enough. So I thought
maybe by making primitive movies — I'd seen a few. Un Chien
Andabu. Stuff like that. I thought maybe by making primitive
movies I could recreate the same tingles in people that I got by looking
through the years-gone-by as a child. If I could just reproduce a
few tingles in people, that would be film poetry, you know? So I just
pointed myself in that direction, straight backwards, and started
working my way that way. And since film's always been an art AND
an industry, in its industrial haste it's always disposed of its most
intriguing artistic vocabulary units, and I just went back along the
highway of film history and picked up all the discarded units: the
part-talkie, the pantomime, black and white, two-color Technicolor,
proscenium-y stagings, tableaus, millions of other things. Some
of them good, some of them bad. I decided to embrace them all.
Minstrels, all the heinous things.
MB: Tell me about goat-glanding.
GM: Oh, yeah. I discovered that term through George Toles, and
I've since bought a book on the conversion to sound. Goat-glanding
was an exciting term for me. It's used extensively in the Soviet
Union throughout the 20th century on their old silent films,
because they still made silent films well into the late Thirties. But
goat-glanding was a term made popular because in the Twenties, as
a cure for impotence, men were desperately having monkey glands
and goat glands installed, as sort of booster glands for the prostate
and testicles. I don't think it turned out to help much at all. It probably
didn't, or they'd still be doing it. It was sort of a surgical
attempt to do what Viagra does. And I guess some clever journalist
noticed that when silent movies, in 1928, were trying to convert to
sound after they'd already been shot, in an attempt to combat their
impotence in the face of these newly-minted talkies, they would
sometimes reshoot scenes and add some dialogue. They would
almost always add a synchronized soundtrack with sound effects.
And that became known as goat-glanding — making a part-talkie
when it was originally conceived as a silent. I like the goat-glanded
movies, because in the same way a painter has the option of using a
big or a smaiJ brush or splashing the paint on, or smearing it on
one's hands, the goat-glander can choose to have his actors talk, or
resort to pantomime, or objects can make a noise if they're important
noises or make no noise at all if they're not worth mentioning,
just the way a writer wouldn't mention the color of the wallpaper in
a room if it was of no interest. So what excited me the goat-glanders,
even though they were just fucking studio hacks desperately
trying to gussy up passe product, they were actually behaving the
way artists behave, and that's adding only the effects that really matter,
the way a sculptor reduces things to its essential or a writer
writes in only the details that are pertinent. Rather than nowadays,
where soundtracks are just cluttered up with every literal-minded
sound. When you watch foley artists and sound mixers working on
a soundtrack now, a foley artist will actually watch — let's say two or
three people are sitting around a table, wearing various fabrics in
their garments. If one of them shuffles in his seat, they will literally
duplicate the sound of the rustling, an arm rubbing against a blouse
or something. I didn't realize such small, almost invisible and certainly
inaudible sounds were replicated. But in order to make the
soundtrack seem real, they include not just car traffic noise and
wind and every footstep, but these shufflings and little squeakings
and things that really are cancelling out the miracle of filmmaking.
They film a scene and record the sound, then they re-record every
sound until it just seems like real life, and so it's not even a miracle
but it IS just real life, and no one's impressed. Whereas I think when
you goat-gland, you call more attention to the artifice and therefore
to the decision behind each sound effect and it might actually make
you think about why it's there.
MB: In general, you don't have any problem pointing to the artifice
in your films, whether it's the painted backdrops or the melodramatic
acting.
GM: I love it. I get into arguments with people who "help" me all
the time. They're always saying, "You're breaking the dramatic illu-

260
sion." Even in the dance, for crying out loud. They were saying,
"You're bringing people out of the dance with these intertitles." I
said, "Bringing people out of the dance? They're dancing!" It's not
real life. People don't bite each other and suck each other's blood,
first of all, and second of all, they wouldn't dance if they did do it.
It's art. You're not fooled by a painting in a museum. You don't try
to climb into it. You may be moved by it. I hope so. Eventually, I'd
like to make stuff that really impresses people to tears. But I don't
know why - since film has been invented, there's been a huge contingent
of literal-minded people who've tried to make it more and
more real. 3-D isn't good enough. Smell-O-Vision. Adding sound.
But, you know, whatever. Those are the people who want to get into
virtual reality. Remember that fad from ten years ago? All those peo-
Anna in Heart of the World
pie can go put on their cyber-gloves and play with themselves as far
as I'm concerned.
MB: Even in painting, there was the whole panorama painting
movement, where people really wanted to be transported into these
hyper-real worlds.
GM: No, and I can understand the allure, and I think it's just up to
the artist to give the viewer, the consumer of his art - and I can't
believe I'm describing myself as an artist — and I'm just thinking this
for the first time - but maybe what makes the artist a success or a
failure or charming or just plain distasteful is WHERE he poses the
consumer of the art, between the artifice and the seduction of the
earthbound. Where he or she manages to position the viewer.
Halfway? Ideally, I guess, you suspend the viewer in a very beautiful,
perfumed spot halfway between fantasy and what they think is
reality. And maybe if you can sustain that spot or move them
around in that spot in a pleasing way, then you've made something
very good. But you can obviously cloy someone with too much fantasy.
And complete realism is impossible. So you've got to keep
someone suspended between the two poles.
MB: Do you think - I mean, I'm also attracted to older film, older
music. There's definitely something magical and other-worldly
about it because it's from another era. But do you think there's also
a danger of sentimentalizing the past?
GM: Yeah, there is. You see it in really vile forms in a lot of contemporary
movies, where they talk about the Fifties or the Forties
and you can tell they're being psychologically dishonest with themselves.
I believe — and I think all sorts of literary heavyweights would
back me up on this - that human nature hasn't changed since
Homer's time, and just because jitterbugging looked great and people
didn't actually fuck in the Forties, or because they just felt boobs
in the back seats of cars in the Fifties, or whatever, all those generalizations
about the past, are just really naive rearward looks, and
human nature hasn't changed a bit. When you're reading a Faulkner
novel and not being distracted by set decorations, or when you're
reading Kafka, or Homer, you realize these are the same people that
you know and who have fucked you over or who you're trying to
fuck over or trying to seduce, and wonderfully, wonderfully, wonderfully,
no one has changed much. Just some clothing styles, and
some modes of artistic presentation have changed. So if you just try
to be honest about human nature, even if you're making really cartoonish
stories like I do, then I think you can avoid sentimentalizing
that stuff. The surface can still be mishandled and you can sentimentalize
it too much. But I don't know. Even Dracula, my way

262
into it, as I said before, was just the way I used to date. These guys
in the Stoker novel, written a hundred years ago, seemed to have the
same impulses that I did, and it's quite likely that a hundred years
from now everyone will too. So I think as long as you're honest with
yourself, maybe even hard on yourself, the way Billy Wilder is - I
don't know why I mention Wilder so much. It's not like he's my
favorite director or anything. But just be hard on yourself, and then
put yourself into all the characters somehow, and you won't sentimentalize
anything.
MB. Who do you like as far as contemporary filmmakers?
GM: Well, I'm often teased that for me, contemporary is everything
after 1929.
MB: Well yeah, I guess you mentioned Billy Wilder.
GM: Right! Well, in recent months, I really liked MulhollandDrive
a lot. I'd sort of fallen out of love with David Lynch for a long time,
but I liked that. I liked Ghost World a lot, as do most teenage girls
and middle-aged men. So being in that demographic, there I am.
I'm actually pretty omniverous. I watch a lot of pictures. I've only
recently begun to grow weary of a lot of the teen-beach-punk comedies,
things like that. I was game for even American Pie 2, but that's
where I got off the train.
M B: You have to get off at some point.
GM: Exactly. Or stay on and just let it pull out of town. It feels more
like that, actually. The town where everyone's partying and I'm the
only one on the train, pulling out. I watch a lot of rock videos, actually,
even though the fishing's pretty meager. You have to be patient.
But one rock video out of a hundred will have something pretty
innovative in it.
MB: Any that come to mind recently?
GM: It's quite often just a portion of a video.
MB: Right. Have you ever made a rock video?
GM: I've done a couple. But to answer your question, I like all Britney
Spears rock videos. I did a little rock video last summer for a
group out of West Virginia called Sparklehorse. I think the video's
even available on their website if you're adventurous. It's called "It's
a Wonderful Life." We shot it in Super 8 and just cut it gently to
the music. It was nice. And I'd love to make some more. I'm doing
an opera aria video in fact, this summer, just as practice before going
into the The Saddest Music in the World. It's an aria from Thomas
Ades' Powder Her Face. It's a pretty contemporary opera, written
maybe three or four years ago and performed in England. The CD
is out, I think on EMI.
MB: So your next film is actually a musical?
GM: It is. Though it's not one of those musicals where people suddenly
burst into song. Although I love those. My favorite musical is
maybe Love Me Tonight by Rueben Mamoulian. It's Rogers and
Hart music. It's incredible. You've got to track that down. It may
not be available on video so easily. But some of those Ernest
Lubitsch operettas like The Merry Widow, track it down. It's unbelievable.
Where every song actually advances the plot. It does all the
plot advancement work of the screenwriter. It's so charming. But
no, this'll be, I want it to kind of be a film noir musical. I know this
sounds awful. I hate it when you start to use previous genres to
define a new hybrid genre, but it's not like that. The original Ishiguru
story was a political satire where different nations each perform
a kind of extortion-like limbo to show how badly off they are. They
get into a contest to expose themselves as so miserable they're finally
worthy of international aid, so people are actually making themselves
MORE miserable, sort of like street beggars or something.
And I just thought, well, political satires are fine, but their shelflife's
short, and I want it to last at least long enough to be premiered.
So I decided to try and add personal sadness even more, because I

264
think people do the same thing. They do an emotional limbo. I can
remember lying in bed with an ex-girlfriend one night, and she was
feeling really sorry for herself. Rather than console her, I decided to
let her know that I was even worse off than her, that I had no future.
And then she tried to top me even more. By the end of the night,
we'd both convinced ourselves that there was really nothing worth
living for anymore. And we started off the evening not even meaning
any of these things we were saying, and hours later we were
needing to check into a clinic. I realize people do that as a really sick
test of each other, and so I was able to try to get a lot of that into
the story. But there are these musical numbers, because the story is
situated in the middle of this saddest music contest which is to
determine which ethnicity is the worst off and then worthy of the
million dollar prize. So that's its pitch. Which, obviously, needs
some practice.
MB: No, I'm sold.
GM: Thank you, thank you.
MB: What'd you think of Dancer in the Dark?
GM: You know, by the time it came to Winnipeg, I was prepared to
hate it. I hadn't been all that thrilled by Von Trier in the past. But I
actually liked it quite a bit. Bjork finally won me over. I also felt like
my vision was failing me during the movie, I guess because of the
video and the hand-held camera. It was making my eyes sore, so I
felt like I was going blind faster than Selma. I thought the musical
numbers in that were tremendous. I'm not going to be using that
strategy. But the really sloppy, Dogme version of a musical number
is tremendous. It was liberating to see someone who makes movies
exactly the opposite way I do - although SO MUCH the opposite
that there's actually some overlap, it actually becomes the same
sometimes - but it was kind of refreshing to see someone just pick
up a video camera and start shooting things and get great perfor-
mances.
MB: Have you thought about how you want to shoot your musical?
Have you been looking at lots of old musicals?
GM: Yeah, I think I own every possible bootleg copy of every parttalkie
musical. I'm still missing a few that aren't available. I really
want to see Delicious. It was made in 1929, it had a Gershwin score
and it's a Janet Gaynor-Charles Farrell part-talkie. I'd really love to
see that movie. I've talked to archivists. If you can put a plea in your
piece, anyone out there who can find Delicious, I'll pay anything to
see it. But I'd really like to reuse the halting kinesis I learned on
Dracula. And I'd like to use a choreographer again. I don't want to
just block my actors. I want to choreograph them so they're constantly
moving. I rewatched Miracle on Morgan's Creek by Preston
Sturges recently, and he's got so much dialogue in that movie that
he makes it play by choreographing all the people, all these fantastic
male character actors who are just swarming around. You know,
I spent the first ten years of my filmmaking career shooting frozen
tableaus. And now, I just want things to never sit still any more.
After ten years of that, I'm ready to shoot some melees.
Kyle McCulloch and Kathy Marykuca as Lt. John Boles and Veronkha in Archangel
265

266
—RACHEL ZUCKER
Diary (The Second Seed)
from Eating in the Underworld
The flagstone trail winds serpentine through
he loves me and he loves me
thrum of prayer behind talk
sky a background of birds
the ache and savor
of flowers out of season
Diary (The Third Seed)
from Eating in the Underworld
Would that I were not an only child,
that she'd find other models subject to her affections
here silk and paper flowers
a landscape, no horizon —
and it isn't the sky that matters
but if I fly through
the frame, a window, distributes time
across dimensions: I would not stop it if I could
267

268
Diary (The Seventh Seed)
from Eating in the Underworld
The answer is the length of my body
by the cast of the sea
danger not invented but
visited, situated -
I lined them up and ate them all
Death
is not the opposite
nor the same as sleep
an opening, peephole:
—HOLIDAY REINHORN
Last Seen
Five days before Abraham Lincoln High's first home game against
Ulysses S. Grant, Senior Jennifer Langsam, Captain of the Girls' Volleyball
Team and National Merit Finalist, discovered a pair of soiled men's
briefs lying in the bottom of her locker.
Dr. Jean Churchill, Girls' Varsity Volleyball Coach and Director of
Abraham Lincoln's Physical Education Programs, wrote an official, if
abbreviated, description of the incident on her clipboard as she stood
beside the tearful and obviously shaken Ms. Langsam, who claimed that
she would be unable to practice until both the shoes and the briefs had
been placed in the trash receptacle and the locker "fucking Boraxed by
a janitor."
Dr. Churchill promptly excused the girl from the afternoon's practice
and put a teammate (Ms. Melissa Bone) in charge of escorting her
to the Tri-Met bus shelter located in front of the school at 2400 SW
Kokanee Terrace.
According to Dr. Churchill, Ms. Bone returned to the gymnasium
premises within ten minutes time and volleyball practice resumed, after
which Ms. Langsam was last seen by Football Coaches John Churchill,
Donald Radcliffe, James McCortle and Brian Apple approximately
twenty-five minutes later on the A. Lincoln racing track, running 880's
in street clothes and bare feet.
Head Football Coach John Churchill: "When I saw Jenny running
like that I blew the whistle and told her to stop. You run on a
basalt track without shoes on - it's going to shred your paws."
26

270
"Oh God, my baby. My Chickie. God. Oh God!" -Mrs.
Ardiss Langsam, Mother.
Dr. Vera L. Rose, Principal: "As a community, an institution, a
living, breathing body. We are doing everything. Everything we
can.
»
"I've known Jenny since she was a tiny, tiny girl. She used to
water my plants for me when Ken and I had the boys in hockey
camp up at Vail. I used to tell her, 'eat anything you want while
we're away' And she really would.
Once we came home and all our Haagen-Dazs ice cream was
completely gone and she had put the empty cartons right back in
the freezer. I never said anything about it to her. Maybe she
thought we wouldn't notice." -Mrs. Martha Kern, Neighbor
"Do you think I'm not thinking about it? Of course I am!
What do you think I'm thinking? What are you thinking about?"
-Mr. Russell Langsam, Father
Can you tell us your name please?
Brian Apple.
Is that your full name?
Yes, it is.
And what is your occupation, sir?
I'm a Football Coach.
Thank you. And can you tell us please, what you saw on the
afternoon of 10/11?
I saw Jenny.
You mean Ms. Langsam?
Yes.
And where did you see her?
Well, first I saw her on the edge of the football field. Then I
saw her on the track.
What was she doing on the track?
She was running on it. I guess you could call it running. I'm
not sure.
And what were you doing, when you saw Ms. Langsam earlier,
on the field?
I was with the team and coaching staff getting ready to practice.
That means taking the footballs out of the billow bags and setting
them down on the thirty. This is when I saw Jenny, standing by the
north goal post on the opposite end. The track runs in a ring
around us, so that was about seventy yards from me.
And you say she was just standing there?
Yeah. (Pause) And I waved at her.
You waved?
Mmhm.
Just casually?
I guess.
Dr. Jean Churchill, Girls' V. Volleyball Coach: "There are
always going to be pranks at the high school level involving condoms
and underwear, and during the Homecoming weeks, it's
going to get particularly bad. Some years I've seen them (students)
all but wallpapering the halls with Trojans and Black Cats.
In the scheme of things, finding a pair of stained underwear in
one's locker around here before one of the first home football games
is relatively miniscule. I have no idea what it was about those blue
briefs that set the girl off."
Interview w/ Apple, Coach Brian / Cont.:
So, in order to see her there, and just wave casually, you must
know Ms. Langsam fairly well, is that true?
Well, I'm married to her big sister, yeah, so I knew Jenny all
along. When I dated my wife and then later, when I married her,
Jenny was in the wedding. She was the flower girl, supposed to
throw the petals into the aisle, but she didn't end up throwing them.
She just walked up to the front of the church holding the straw basket
and there was a big sisterly argument at the reception about it,
I can tell you.
How long have you been married to Ms. Langsam's older sister?
Too long. (Laughter)
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272
And her name is?
Kelly. Kelly Ann.
And of the two, who would you say is better looking?
Excuse me?
Mrs. Ardiss Langsam, Mother: "When Kelly married Brian it
was the happiest day of Jenny's life. I mean it. The poor thing was
so overcome with excitement, she forgot to pick up her own grandmother
and bring her to the church!
Of course, Russell and I were not too thrilled with Kelly marrying
somebody, well....we know Brian is a wonderful coach and an
ambitious person, but let's just say Jenny was aware that her father
and I wanted her sister to go on to college."
Contents of Backpack Found in A.L.H.S. Classroom 230 /
Biology Lab:
1 Red Canvas Wallet w/ Tri-Met Bus Pass (two transfers still
available)
Oregon Driver's License - #LANGSA360CDK
Cash: $5.35
The Strange Effects of Faith, Volume 2 by Joanna Southcott (247
PgsO
Past Finding Out: The Tragedy of Joanna Southcott and Her Successors
by G.R. Balleine, MacMillan, 1956 (151 pgs. with highlights)
1 Jumbo pack Trident Sugarless Gum (Cinnamon) 3 sticks
remaining
1 Mead Spiral Notebook, College-Lined. Selected pages used.
(See Report)
Mead Notebook, Ms. Jennifer Langsam, pg. 28: (See Excerpts)
The next time I go out with Dick Schumacher, he will take me
to Roxy Heart's and pay for the whole thing, which, by most standards,
is a pretty cheap date.
I will have the Dungeness sandwich. He will have the Reuben
a la Roxy. Then we will drive out to Sauvie's Island, and crawl
under somebody's barbed wire fence. And we will walk out into
somebody's cow pasture holding hands.
The sun will be going down and I imagine we will walk in the
direction of that setting light until a farmer shows up and starts
shooting into the air. He will come toward us with a gun, the
farmer, and Schu will drop down onto his stomach in the grass.
"Oh come on," I'll whisper to him. "Don't be such a chicken.
You're doing exactly what he wants."
Schu will not seem to care a bit about what I'm telling him
though. He won't get up no matter what I say, so I will just hang
onto his hand and keep still and look into the fading color without
even blinking, until the farmer is right up on us. He will be old and
hill-billy and panting hard.
"You kids better get the hell off my property," he'll say, shoving
the muzzle of the gun between Schu's shoulder blades. "Now."
"All my sister had to do at my wedding was walk up the aisle
with her basket of Marguerites and sprinkle the goddamn petals
into the aisle. That was all there was to it."
-Kelly Ann Langsam-Apple, Sister
From: The Cardinal Times/ Back-to-School Issue/Sports
Round-Up Insert
Abraham Lincoln - "Slice of the Month"
Jennifer Langsam - Girls' Varsity Volleyball - MVP
Call Her: La Capitana
Favorite Color: Cardinal Red
Favorite Flavor: Pralines and Cream
Worst Enemy: The Other Team
Favorite Position: Down Ball - Strong Side Set
Favorite Move: The Tandem
Ultimate Weapon: Back Row Kill off Weak Side Set
Mead Notebook, Ms. Jennifer Langsam, pg. 7
Her Dream ByJ.L.
I was looking out the window into the backyard and I saw a
mother badger in the driveway with three babies riding on her back.
273

They were tumbling around. Then I saw a lynx. And I noticed the
mother badger seeing the lynx at the same time I was seeing it. I
put my hand up to the window and knocked on it to warn the badger,
but the mother badger didn't seem to mind. She left her babies
in a pile and walked over to the lynx and the two of them were kind
of communicating with each other for a while, except the lynx kept
looking over the badger's shoulder at the babies the whole time and
didn't appear to be listening to whatever the badger was telling it.
The lynx had those spotted tufts of hair coming off the tips of its
ears. It was very pretty, the lynx. Then the two of them seemed to
come to some sort of agreement and the lynx walked over to the pile
of baby badgers and picked one up by the neck and carried it away.
I guess to go kill it. There wasn't any struggle. I figured the two of
them must have come to some sort of agreement.
Head Coach John Churchill: "If I have one player this year
that's going All- State, it's Dick Schumacher. He's taking it all the
way. You can quote me on that."
Hallmark Greeting Card: (Dated 3/78) - Donated by Mrs.
Ardiss Langsam, Mother.
Dear Jenny,
"Happy, Happy Birthday to you!***
You don't know very much about me, but I know lots and lots
about you. For example, I know you are five years old today!
I am your Aunt Molly and I live in Redding, California with
my own little girl who is just exactly your age. Her name is Heidi
2 74 and God gave her to me on the very same day you were given to
your Mommy and Daddy. March the 12th!
I got this card for you because it had a funny horse on it with
black buttons for eyes and patches sewed onto its skin that look like
stars. I hope I can send you a birthday card every year and that
someday we can talk on the phone.
Love always - XOXO - From your Aunt M.
P.S. Sometimes I hold my little girl up to the mirror and we
play a game. We pretend the little girl in the reflection is you looking
back at us, and we talk to her as if she is right there in the room.
We tell her everything that is happening to us, like what we ate that
day and what we wore. Maybe sometime, Jenny, you can play along
with us. Maybe the next time you look in the mirror you can pretend
that the little girl looking back at you is really my little girl.
And when you talk to my little girl in the mirror, to Heidi, you can
pretend that I am standing behind the two of you, just listening.
OK?
May I have your name, please?
Antonio Hobson.
Is that your full name?
That's me.
And what is your occupation, sir?
I have a doctorate in Aeronautical Science.
I see. Were you working at Abraham Lincoln High School as a
custodian on the evening of 10/11?
Yes, I was.
What happened to you on that particular evening?
Well, on that particular evening, I came to work my shift like I
always do, and as I was waxing the Science Wing like I always do, I
found footprints.
What kind of footprints?
Blood footprints.
I'm sorry, could you repeat yourself, please?
You heard me, man. I said blood footprints. Going up the
stairs into the Biology Room first, then back out of that room past
the second floor windows and down to die trophy cases at the end
of the hall. There were 96 of them altogether and they were making
a beeline -
— 96. This is a definite count?
You think I'm not gonna get a definite count on blood footprints?
(Pause) As I say, they looked to be about a ladies' eight,
eight-and-a-half, and let me tell you, they were fucking strange.
27.'

276
They started right in the dead center of the first stair and they were
dark at first, real messy, so as they went along, you know, I expected
them to fade. They should have faded. But they didn't, ok?
They went straight up to those trophies and then — bang. They're
gone. Like whoever left them had just...walked off for Christ's
sake...into the atmosphere.
"I know she wasn't pregnant. I'm 99.9% percent sure of it. If
she was pregnant she would have told me because we did that kind
of stuff for each other.
"When I had to go to the clinic in the summer, it was Jenny
who came with me. Some of the girls they gave valium to, but Jenny
told me not to take it. She said, 'Don't let them give you that. I'll
hold your hand.'
"Up above my head on the ceiling there was a poster of a forest,
pretty trees and flowers, with a stream running through it. I
remember it had a very nice feeling, and I suppose they put it up
there for that reason. So you can think about and appreciate all the
good things in your life while they're doing the operation. I
remember I wanted to look at that forest the whole time, but Jenny
wouldn't let me.
"'You don't have to look up there Missy,' she said. 'Look here.
Into my eyes.'"
- Ms. Melissa Bone, Classmate
Interview w/ Apple, Coach Brian (Cont.)
Well, I never thought about it, but if I had to answer I'd say
Kelly Ann is definitely prettier. (Pause) But Jenny is more unique.
Unique how?
Just weirder looking. I mean, she has the same features as Kelly
except everything that looks normal on Kelly's face is bigger on
Jenny and set farther apart. So you don't know what to think when
you look at Jenny because she should be pretty, but technically, she's
not. Let me try to explain. Jenny looks better in pictures and from
a distance and Kelly looks better next to you, in person, except
Jenny has the better body because she's athletic, you know what I
mean?
I think so. Are you and Kelly Ann Langsam living together in
marriage at this time?
Well, sort of. What I mean is, I'm there sometimes. Off and on.
Where are you living when you aren't living there?
(Smiles)
Fair enough. So Coach Apple, when you saw Ms. Langsam
standing near the north goal post can you show me please, exactly
what you did?
You want to know how I waved?
Yes.
Just in the regular old way. Lifted my hand up.
What did she do when you lifted your hand up?
Nothing. She didn't do anything.
Mead Notebook, Ms. Jennifer Langsam (pg. 28 Cont.)
I won't do anything, but Schu will let go of my hand. He will
put both of his own hands into the air and start to cry, to blubber
really, just like a little baby — the farmer and I won't understand a
word he says.
Then, he'll start crawling toward the car on his knees and get
cow pie all over his cords. And he won't get more than about ten
inches before the farmer turns the rifle on me.
"What do you have to say for yourself?" the farmer will ask me,
and I...I will lift up my shirt.
"I'll tell you where Brian's living. In the basement of the fucking
high school is where. "-Kelly Ann Langsam-Apple, Sister
Mr. Russell Langsam, Father: "No, no. My sister Molly, Jenny's
Aunt has been dead for years. Jenny's sister Kelly Ann knew her, but
Jenny never did. Absolutely not. That was before her time."
Interview w/ Hobson, Antonio (Cont.)
So you mention the "footprints" - that they seemed to terminate
in front of the trophy cases on the second floor, is that true?
No. No, these things didn't just "seem to terminate," ok? They
disappeared.
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278
And what might one find inside the trophy cases themselves?
What is on display there, at this time?
Well, the displays are changing about every five minutes, but
right now they've got the Cardinal Cavalcade going. That'll be up
until the Homecoming closes. After that, they'll start in with the
Winter Preview.
What is the Cardinal Cavalcade?
Just pictures basically. Of all the athletes and all the coaches.
It's a display of every fall sport, so they hang the pictures in a pyramid
shape. The coaches up top and then all the kids, the athletes
underneath.
And in its history has the Cardinal Cavalcade always intermingled
the pictures of both males and female athletes in its display as
far as you know?
(Pause) I find 96 blood footprints in the hallway of my building
and you want to know whether pictures in a high school trophy
case are co-ed? Is that a serious question, man? Is that the best you
can do?
I am attempting to conduct an investigation, Mr. Hobson.
Yeah? Well, it's Dr. Hobson to you, my friend - and you know
what else? I've been staring at your face, ok, the whole time we've
been talking here, and did you know, man? You don't have any eyes.
I have eyes, sir.
No, man. No. You have eye-balls. Not eyes. It's a different
thing.
Highlighted Text: Past Finding Out: The Tragedy of Joanna
Southcott and her Successors: pg. 3 (See Contents)
One day to Joanna, a young maid came weeping. She had
dreamt she was walking alone through the forest at the edge of
Caddy Fields where a yellow cat scratched her right breast.
"Never go walking in Caddy Fields," Joanna told the woman.
But a few nights later, at the same spot, she was found there murdered.
Michael Ale, Employee #T237, Tri-Met Bus Co.: "I saw this
young lady at 4:17 p.m. I was driving the #62 route and I make it
a habit to always stop in front of the high school whether kids are
waiting there or not.
On this day, I was a couple minutes behind and she was sitting
in the shelter all by herself when I pulled the bus over and opened
the doors. She had a backpack on her lap with her hands folded
over it, and nice clothes on. Definitely going up to Council Crest.
From a distance she looked like an old woman the way she was sitting
there, but up close, in the face, she was only a kid.
All right — on or off?' I say to her, and then I saw she was barefooted.
'Whoa, whoa, whoa,' I say, 'Got to have shoes to come on
my bus.'
'Oh no, it's OK, Mike,' she says to me, and we don't have to
wear nametags at this company. Tri-Met drivers are all identified by
the vehicle number, so I don't know where she's getting that. 'No,
it's OK, Mike,' she says. 'You can go on without me.' This is what
the young lady says."
Interview w/ Apple, Coach Brian (Cont.)
Do you think Ms. Langsam did not return the wave because she
could be angry or upset with you for any reason?
Angry? (Pause) Why would she be angry with me?
You did mention earlier, Coach Apple, that you and your wife
are experiencing, well, —
Oh, you mean about Kelly. No. No, Jenny doesn't know anything
about our problems. That's recent.
Are you sure?
Definitely. Since that flower fight at the wedding, the two of
them are incommunicado, and I mean totally. (Laughs) In my
opinion it's silly, but as you can imagine, I stay the hell out of it.
No. Jenny doesn't know a thing about what's going on with Kelly
and even if she did...Let's just say that I don't think it's me she'd be
angry with.
But she did, for some reason, refuse to return your wave on the
day she disappeared?
Well, I don't even know if she saw me, really. She just kept
standing by the goal post, kind of staring down the field and holding
her backpack like it was a baby, sort of cradling it, in a way. So
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280
I went back to what I was doing, and when I looked up again, she
was running around the track with those arms her arms out -
just like they were airplane wings.
This is when you noticed she was also barefooted, correct?
Correct. And she was puffing her cheeks in and out as she ran,
really hauling ass.
And where was the backpack at this time?
Oh. I'm pretty sure it was on her back.
You're pretty sure?
I think it was.
Thank you, Coach Apple. Thank you for coming down here
today.
No problem.
"The day before she disappeared, I remember Jenny wanted me
to go with her to The Galleria. They were having a sale at Crystal
Ship and we were digging through a big box of discount Walkmans.
They had them in a bunch of different colors, but she said she wanted
a yellow one. She had to have that color, only that color, and of
course there wasn't one, so we had to go through the whole stupid
box.
I didn't think it was that big a deal, but Jenny was really intense
about finding a yellow one for some reason, she's like that about
things sometimes. She'll get a thing in her head and she just won't
give it up, it's like she can't almost, so we started taking them out
one at a time, until I noticed Jenny had stopped and was staring
into the video monitor up above our heads, you know, where it
shows on a screen who is walking by outside on the mall. She was
staring at it with her mouth open in kind of a goofy way.
'What's your problem?' I said to her. 'What's the matter?'
And she said, 'My Aunt is here. My Aunt Molly. I saw her walk
by on the screen.'
I said it was cool if she wanted to go say hi, but she didn't. She
smiled at me and said she didn't need to, never mind. So we went
back to looking through the box. But I thought it was weird and a
little bit rude, you know, that she never went out there, to see her
Aunt."- Melissa Bone, Classmate
Dr. Vera L. Rose, Principal: "I am an educator, a facilitator, a
highly educated woman. But first, I am a mother. No one has to
tell me about pain."
"I was never a fucking kangaroo. Never." -Kelly Ann Langsam-
Apple, Sister
Mead Notebook, Ms. Jennifer Langsam, pg 41
In his book, Past Finding Out: The Tragic Story of Joanna Southcott
and her Sucessors, Mr. G.R. Balleine says Mary Bateman did
good business in Leeds as a wise woman, abortionist and professional
thief whose specialty was "screwing down." If you had an
enemy, you brought Mary a picture of his likeness along with four
screws and four guineas and his power to hurt you vanished.
When trade was slack, she would invent people to screw down,
a hussy scheming to seduce your husband or a rake with designs on
your daughter.
When she heard about Joanna Southcott, Mr. Balleine said
Mary saw new possibilities. She secured a seal and posed as a
preacher and showed eggs inscribed CRIST IS COMING, which
she said her hens were laying.
Team Interview #5: Vealbig, Troy - Defensive End - A.L.H.S.
I've heard from some of your teammates that things can get
pretty crazy around here at Homecoming time. Is that true?
(Shakes head)
No?
(Pause) Maybe. Which ones told you that?
Son, it's not my job to name names. I'm just thinking that well,
you guys seem to be working pretty hard on the field right now.
Our team always works hard.
Exactly. So don't you think with all that hard practice that
sometimes you guys might like to blow off a little steam?
What do you mean?
I mean do you think it's possible considering how hard you're
working for stray underwear to switch places or even locker rooms

282
from time to time, just as a joke?
Maybe my team doesn't think something like that would be
very funny.
You're right. But maybe it wasn't meant to be funny. Maybe it
was meant to be some sort of threat.
There are plenty of other people who use the basement around
here besides us.
Can you be more specific?
Not really. Why don't you ask my coach?
Richard Schumacher, Classmate: "Day before yesterday I took
her to Roxy Heart's, which is a really nice restaurant. She had the
Dungeness Sandwich. I had the Reuben a la Roxy, and then we
decided to go up to the Museum of Science and Industry.
Neither of us were there since we were little kids, so we looked
at the beehive and the baby chickens in the incubator and the twoheaded
sheep and this pair of shrively black lungs they took out of
a two-pack-a-day smoker that kind of shudder in and out, like they
are really breathing.
So we looked at all that stuff. And then Jenny wanted to go
upstairs into the giant heart. It's about as high as a two story building
and you can walk right through the center of it on a little rubber
track.
One side is the aorta and the other side is the ventricles and it's
painted all purple and red. The veins wrap around it on the outside
too, just like a real heart. Inside, it's musty and kind of smells like
feet, and there is a recorded sound of the heart beating and then,
out of all the loudspeakers, it tells you the story of the human heart
in the human heart's own voice. Describing the path of blood
through your body for you.
And in one special part of it, on one wall way in the back, is a
glass cabinet with a real heart in it. Actually, it's only a collie's heart,
but they've got it hanging on this little piano wire and they run electricity
through the center of it every so often to make it beat. The
whole thing is lit up with a cool, yellow strobelight too. That's
where she really wanted to go. In that passageway by the actual
heart. That's where she wanted to do it."
"There has never been any discord between my two daughters.
Brian and Jenny were thick as thieves over sports and Jenny
absolutely worshipped her sister from day one. I mean it. In her
eyes, Kelly Ann just walked on water. One Halloween, I remember.
Kelly Ann was the mother kangaroo and Jenny was the baby who
rode in this giant pouch in the stomach of the costume. Isn't that
darling? Both with big kangaroo ears. Somewhere I have a picture
of that." -Ardiss Langsam, Mother.
Miss Eleanor Moyes, Forensics Instructor: "Jenny Langsam is
fabulous. Bright, inquisitive, perfectionistic. Notice that I say "is."
Several weeks ago, she came to me and told me she wanted to do
her Autumn Interpretive Project about someone named Joanna
Southcott. Now I had never heard of this person, but I told her it
was absolutely fine. You don't know how many speeches about
Colleen McCullough and Nancy Friday I have to sit through."
Vandalism on Volleyball #12 / Red ink / indelible -
I AM MY NAME
Mrs. Ardiss Langsam, Mother: "It was Jenny who took the call
about Russell's sister. Now this is just the reason I did not encourage
my girls to ever touch telephones when they were little.
We were having a get-together, and here comes Jenny out to
find me in her nightgown.
'It's a lady, Mom,' she says to me. 'From Little Chapel of the
Bells. She has a body there and she wants to know, does it belong
to us?'
Well, of course, I race to the telephone to find out what in
heaven's name is going on, and I find out tiiat this unspeakable
woman from the funeral home - she has already taken the liberty of
describing what Molly....what she did to herself...to my five-yearold
daughter.
Now can you imagine what kind of a person would do something
like that? Would call someone's private home in the middle
of the night and say such terrible, inappropriate things without even
283

284
checking. And how could you not know you were talking to a
child?"
Excerpt from Interview w/ Radcliffe, Coach Donald (pg. 2)
So, after you saw Coach John Churchill blow the whistle at Ms.
Langsam who was running on the track, what happened?
Well, she didn't stop right away. She did another 880 with her
arms out like a bird and her neck held all the way back. It's just
about impossible to run in that position for any length of time
without snapping something and when she was done you could tell
she was beat. She bent over and put her hands on her knees to cool
out and she was in that position for quite a while, panting like that.
And what happened during that time, while she was "cooling
out?"
How do you mean?
I mean did anyone go over to her?
No, well...not really. #87 Dick Schumacher, our wide receiver,
he tried. He got a towel from the manager and asked if he could
take it over to her because apparently, they had a little thing together.
I'd seen her hanging around with Schu before. I said fine, take
her the towel, but Coach Apple told us to get back in line. He blew
the whistle right then for the huddle, and I'm the low man on the
totem pole around here. I didn't argue. We still had to whip Grant's
ass in a couple of days.
What happened after that?
After that we practiced. We practiced and I didn't think about
it again to be honest. I figured she just went home. But, if I'd
known, you know, what was going to happen, Jesus. I would have
paid closer attention.
From Miss Eleanor Moyes, Forensics Instructor (Recvd. 10/13)
Columbia Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition, pg. 2574:
Southcott, Joanna, 1750-1814. English religious visionary,
uneducated, even illiterate. Spends earlier years in domestic service.
Begins c. 1792 to claim gift of prophecy with "revelations" that
attract many followers. Later, announces she will be mother of the
coming Messiah as woman in Revelation 12. Dies of brain disease
at 64, after time set for birth of "The Second Shiloh." After death,
followers continue to study 60 or more tracts of her writing; sect
never completely dies out.
Can you tell me your name again, please?
You remember my name.
And you are the custodian, is that right?
I work as a custodian, yes.
And you are seeking to amend your statement about the
"blood" footprints I take it?
No. No, those footprints were there. I just have something else
to say.
All right.
The day before the girl disappeared, I found some other stuff
that I didn't mention to you the last time we talked.
Really. What "stuff" was that?
A toaster-oven. With an English Muffin inside it. And a melted
plastic fork.
I see. Where exactly did you find this "stuff" as you call it?
In a duct.
I beg your pardon?
I found them inside a heating duct that connects the two locker
rooms down here. The boys and the girls.
I'm sorry. Let me get this straight. You found evidence in a
heating duct — inside a wall — and you didn't mention it to anybody
until now? Why is that?
(Pause) I was scared.
Scared? Scared of what, may I ask?
The building.
You were scared of the building, itself? I'm afraid I don't understand.
(Pause) Something's very wrong in this place, man. You should
trust me on it.
What were you doing inside a heating duct in the first place,
Dr. Hobson? Again, if you do not mind my asking?
I was listening.
Listening to what? What were you listening to?
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286
Just listening, ok?
Kelly Ann Langsam-Apple, Sister: "Please. Our Aunt Molly
never had any daughter. She was a total freak. My sister and I heard
from her when we were kids, but only because we had to. Our
mother used to let her write to us behind my father's back. She was
just a barrel full of monkeys, that Molly. If you like people on Haldol
who try to carve off their own face."
Mrs. Sondra Stetson, Tenant, Raleighwood Apartments, #308:
"Considering they're newlyweds, they fight like absolute cats
and dogs. Everyone in this complex is sick to death of it and they
only moved in three months ago. And let me tell you, we are just
as glad he's only around here on the Wednesdays now when she's
not at home. He's a real preening peacock, that one. I don't envy
her one bit.
A couple of mornings ago was the worst. He shows up at
maybe ten, ten thirty the night before and we can hear bickering off
and on all night long. Her voice is really up there this time too.
He's a cocksucker one minute, a filthy, goddamn liar the next.
Anyway, we've heard it all before from these two and tonight is par
excellence. She's gonna find out who it is...and when she
does...blah, blah, blah - and then there's all the crying and the
making up. We get to hear every bit of that lovely business too, and
I mean loud.
It goes back and forth like that until dawn when the wife finally
goes out onto the lanai in her bathrobe and starts throwing things
over the railing. It sounds like bombs are dropping out there. By
then, I have to come out to investigate, and when I do, she's in the
middle of heaving this toaster oven down into the parking lot, aiming
for either the husband or his mustang, I'm not sure which. And
the most horrible, viscious sound is coming out of her as she's staggering
around on the balcony with the cord of that toaster oven
dragging along behind her. Like some kind of animal. I don't know
any other way to describe it. The husband, he's in sweat pants and
baseball hat and whistle, no shirt whatsoever, and he's standing
down there, trying to catch everything she's throwing — jockstraps,
socks, you name it. Underwear in every color of the rainbow is flying
around like ticker tape. It's a sight, I'm telling you, so early in
the morning, because right behind them, these two, is the most
beautiful sunrise I've ever seen on Scholls Ferry Road, just really
phenomenal, all pink and gold and ripped crimson. I have to look
at it for a minute, at the sun just tearing through the sky. I notice
things like that, and it takes me a minute to come back to myself,
you know, but I do.
'Now honey,' I say, to her first, 'Should I call someone?' and
then, when she doesn't respond, I lean over the railing and call down
to the husband. 'I think I should call someone.'
But the husband, he only looks up at me and waves.
'Oh, no, that's OK, Ms. Stetson,' he says to me, just as peppy
as you please. 'Go on back to bed now. We're almost done here.
It's all right.'"
Handwritten Inscription from Title Page: The Strange Effects of
Faith, Vol. 2 by Joanna Southcott. 247 pgs. with highlights (see
Contents)
Now she is barefooted.
Resolute.
Full of an unearthly conviction
Because she knows.
She is changing shape.
Mr. Russell Langsam, Father: "My sister Molly was nothing
but a liar."
Mrs. Ardiss Langsam, Mother: "When they announced their
engagement, I have to tell you, I went into that kitchen and I lost
it. I just...I don't know. But Jenny followed me in there. She was
in her volleyball uniform about to go to practice with those horrible,
dingy kneepads on, and she shook me, really grabbed onto my
shoulders and shook me, hard, until my teeth rattled in my head.
'Kelly and I love Brian, Mom,' she said. 'So should you and so
should Dad.' And she was just so fierce about it, I was embarrassed.
28'

288
Having Brian still standing out in the living room after what I had
done to humiliate him on his engagement day. My God, I couldn't
go back in there right away, so Jenny went in for me and asked
Brian if he could drive her down to practice, so I'd have a chance to
fix myself up a bit. She and I agreed it was a good idea to keep him
out of the house for a while. It was dark by the time they got back,
but by then, Russell and Kelly had the champagne poured, and we
were all going about our business like it was the best news in the
world. Ultimately, because of Jenny. Because of how much she
loved her sister. Because of....Oh God. I'm going to have to stop
myself here."
Interview with Hobson, Antonio, (cont.)
So...what I think you're saying Dr. Hobson and correct me if
I'm wrong, is that you consider the physical plant, the building
itself, Lincoln High School, to be responsible for the disappearance
of Jennifer Langsam? Is this true?
I never said it was the building. I said she was lifted.
Lifted. By lifted, you mean kidnapped...you mean taken, by
someone?
No. I mean lifted. By a force. There's a whole hierarchy of
them out there. Venerates, Dominations, Yazatas. Somebody must
have wanted her.
"No body, no witnesses, no evidence, no nothing. So I guess
that's an easy one, right? My sister was abducted by aliens." -Kelly
Ann Langsam-Apple, Sister
Cynthia Blachley, Author, EVANESCERE: Notes From The Files
Of The Missing, Houghton Mifflin, 1991.
If one stands in front of the trophy cases on the second floor of
Abraham Lincoln High School at the approximate spot at which
these footprints in blood are reported to have disappeared, the subject
sees one of two images. One either looks in and sees the pyramid
of smiling athletes and their coaches. Or one looks past them,
into the glass and sees as in a mirror, a sharper reflection of oneself.
I think the question we have to ask ourselves here is in regard
to what was actually being witnessed. In other words, was the vanished
simply looking in at some photographs, or was she contemplating
something far deeper, in the reflection of her own face?
Excerpt from Mead Notebook / Ms. Jennifer Langsam (pg. 28
Cont.)
"There's an angel in my stomach," I will say to him. "Why
don't you try and shoot it out?"
And before the farmer can say anything, I will grab the muzzle
of that rifle and pull it up against my belly button so he can feel the
two pulses beating under it. Then I'll look at the farmer and he will
look at me and all at once I'll feel such tenderness toward him, such
a quiet gentleness, even though I know that if I wanted to I could
rip open his chest and eat out his heart in the space of one breath.
"Go ahead," I'll tell him. "Do it."
And right as he's about to pull the trigger, I will notice there are
little clots of mud caught in his eyelashes.
Highlighted Text: Past Finding Out: The Tragedy of Joanna
Soutchott and her Successors, pg. 12 (see Contents)
"I have heard my name called," Joanna said. "In an audible
voice."
No one can understand how the visitation comes, how the
words of the heavenly messengers, though perfectly formed, cannot
be understood by a bodily ear.
"Spread thy wings," they say unto me. "For He will awaken.
He will terribly shake the earth."
Excerpt from Resume: Ms. Jennifer Langsam - Donated by
Mrs. Ardiss Langsam, Mother
OBJECTIVE
I am seeking part-time summer employment in an office or
restaurant where I can draw on and develop my people skills. I am
comfortable working with people of all ages. Working outdoors or
with animals would be a plus.
289

290
—IVAN JUNQUEIRA
Estive Aqui
Estive aqui. Por entre os ramos,
um sopro diafano de sandalo
trazia a imagem das infantas
que ao sol banhavam suas trancas.
Estive aqui, bem sei. Foi quando,
aos pes do riacho e da montanha,
o vale imerso em nevoa branda,
ja pressentiamos que a infancia
nao era mais que um ditirambo,
o som fugaz de uma pavana
tao subterranea quanto a lama
que flui nas vfsceras de um pantano.
Estive aqui. Nao foi ha tanto
que tao difuso na lembranca
ficasse o barro desses cantaros
ou o perfume dos crisantemos.
A noite lfamos. A chama
das velas nos tornava estranhos
como figuras de um romance
a que faltasse a propria trama;
a noite, absortos na varanda,
longe da colera e da infamia,
viamos ambos, entre os anjos,
vagas estrelas leopardianas,
I Have Been Here
/ have been here before. But when or how I
cannot tell.
-Dante Gabriel Rosetti
I have been here before. Muscadine
branch in gossamer breeze, on which
those princess likenesses are borne,
who wash their braids below the sun.
I have been here, I do know. Back when,
at the banks of a mountain and riverlet,
the valley immersed in flickering mist,
so early we'd anticipate that youth
was nothing more than dithyramb,
stray notes from a pavane
subterranean as mud,
through the belly of a swamp.
I have been here. Not so long ago
that I've made distant memories
of these recollected pitcher clays,
chrysanthemum perfumes.
At night we read. Made strangers
by the candle's flame, as would-be
characters of a novel
that was missing plot itself;
2C

292
e assim do ceu toda a semantica
famos lentos decifrando,
como quem segue a caravana
de seu ignoto e obscuro sangue.
Estive aqui. Tera sido antes
do que imagino? Ou foi engano,
falacia talvez, erro humano?
Quem sabe o sonho de uma crianca?
Ecos sombrios na distancia,
teclas sonambulas de um piano,
timbre antiqiifssimo e tiranico
de um rio em busca do oceano...
Eramos poucos. Os relampagos
Se contorciam — salamandras —,
dilacerando-nos os flancos
com o cristal de suas laminas.
Havia a treva, o pasmo, o panico.
O olho fosforico das tarantulas.
O cha de h'rios nas tisanas.
E subito o apagar das lampadas.
at night, on the verandah, rapt,
away from cholera and disgrace,
we saw between the angels
vague leopardine stars,
and so, we turned to study
all their bare semantics, like
people follow caravans of blood,
unknown, obscurantist.
I have been here. Was it earlier
than I imagine? Or merely
a mistake, a fallacy or human error?
Who knows, perhaps a child's dream?
Dim echoes in the distance,
sleepwalking piano keys,
old and tyrannical tone
of a river in search of ocean...
We were few. Claps of
lightning - salamanders -
lashing at our sides
with blades of glass.
There was darkness, awe, panic.
The phosphoric eyes of tarantulas.
Lily tea in the tisane
and quick, extinguishing lamps.
Translated by Patricia Soldati & Macgregor Card
29

294
O Enterro Dos Mortos
Nao pude enterrar meus mortos:
baixaram todos a cova
em lentos esquifes sordidos,
sem alcas de prata ou cobre.
Nenhum baisamo ou corola
em seus esqualidos corpos:
somente uma neVoa ingl6ria
lhes vestia os duros ossos.
Foram-se assim, nus e pobres,
sem deixar feudo ou esp6lio,
ou mesmo uma fnfima j6ia
que lhes trouxesse a mem6ria
o fragil brilho de outrora,
quando lhes coube essa sobra
que Deus larga, pouco importa,
nas maos de quern caia a esmola.
Passo a passo, vida afora,
sempre os vi em meio as gorgonas
da loucura cujo polen
lhes cegou a alma e os olhos.
Nao pude enterrar meus mortos.
Sequer aos labios est6icos
lhes fiz chegar uma hostia
que os curasse dos remorsos.
The Burial of the Dead
I could not bury my dead:
they all descended to the grave
in slow indecent coffins
without even copper handles
nor any balm, nor flower
upon their squalid bodies:
only inglorious fog
dressed their bones.
So they went, poor and
naked, passing down no claim
nor estate, even the lowest
jewel that could remind them
of the past whose fragile splendor
God, benevolent, let fall —
no matter upon whose hands it fell,
just that they were eligible.
Whole life ahead, at every step
I saw them in the raving
Gorgons' pollen,
blinding eye and soul.
I could not bury my dead.
Not even to their stoic lips
apply the lightest wafer
to finance their remorse.
295

296
Quero esquece-los. Nao posso:
andam sempre a minha roda,
sussurram, gemem, imploram
e erguem-se as bordas da aurora
em busca de quem os chore
ou de algo que lhes transforme
o lodo com que se cobrem
em ravina luminosa.
I'd just as soon forget them.
I cannot — they're all around me,
they beg, whisper, moan
and follow to the edge of dawn
after a soul to cry for them,
or something to transform
their share of burial mud
into luminous debris.
Translated by Patricia Soldati & Macgregor Card
297

298
—JONATHAN LETHEM
Children With Hangovers
The children with hangovers are taking out the garbage. I
watch from above as they lurch out of the basement apartment.
Their garbage is in brown paper sacks, the kind you have to request
to be given anymore at the grocery checkout, and the paper sacks
are rotten and soggy, splitting like tomatoes. The children with
hangovers stagger out cradling the sacks, hoping to keep them from
bursting before reaching the curb. They slump them in a heap in
the street, coming away with fingers stained with salad dressing and
coffee grounds. Then they turn back to the apartment, squinting
groggily in the morning sun. It is early for the children with hang-
overs.
The man next door stands out on the curb, beside his neatlyknotted
green plastic garbage bags, scowling at the children with
hangovers. I am sure he can hear the bass thrum of their music
through his walls, as I can hear it up here on the top floor of the
house, pulsing clear through the apartment between. I am sure that,
like me, the man next door does not understand how the children
with hangovers can keep it up.
The man next door has five flagpoles. He displays three at all
times, an ordinary flag, a rattlesnake coiled above the words Don't
Tread On Me, and a P.O.W./M.I.A. flag, with crossed sabres on a
black field — prisoner of war, missing in action. On the fourth pole
he shows a flag for every season, an Easter flag, with pink stripes
and bunnies for stars, a scary black-and-orange Halloween flag, a
Valentines flag, a Thanksgiving flag, and so forth. The fifth pole is
always bare, ready for some crisis or affiliation not yet born.
The recycling trucks come before the garbage trucks but no one
has left anything for the recycling men, not the man next door or
the children with hangovers or the man in the apartment between,
or me.
The postwoman comes next, and as always she comes up the
stoop and pushes a single fat bundle of mail, bound with a rubber
band, through my slot. Then, as she has done lately, she goes down
the stoop and rings the bell for the basement apartment. Though
she's left all the mail for the house upstairs she rings the bell of the
children with hangovers and when they come to the door the postwoman
goes inside.
Often when I go down to sort out the mail I run into the man
who lives in the apartment between, just as he is coming in from his
night shift driving a taxi in the city. He drives all night and early
morning and returns to sleep through the late mornings and afternoons
and early evenings, and then he awakens again near nightfall.
I hear his alarm clock buzz at eight or nine. Then he begins drinking
and cursing and readying himself for his shift, which begins
after midnight. He continues to drink in the taxicab as well and by
the time he returns in the mornings he is usually looking as bad as
the children with hangovers, or worse. When I run into him in the
hall I offer him his mail, and then his hands are too full, with his
bottle and his pistol which he keeps under his seat while he drives
his cab. He asks me to hold his pistol while he looks at the mail I've
handed him, then finds his keys and unlocks his apartment door.
Once his door is opened he reclaims his pistol and goes inside. The
mail for the children with hangovers I bring upstairs into my apartment.
I live in fear of hailing a cab one night in the city and finding
that my driver is the man from the apartment between.
I never see the postwoman leave the basement apartment but
she must at some point go and resume her rounds. I just never see
her go.
This evening the children with hangovers build a bonfire in the
backyard. Perhaps this is why their bags of garbage are so exclusively
oily and damp. They have been hoarding their paper and card-
29

300
board for the bonfire. The bonfire is many feet around and grows to
a quite impressive height. I can see magazines burning, centerfolds,
glossy paper the color of flesh wrinkling in the blaze. Soon I see they
have begun stacking broken chairs and shelving and other items,
plastic and ceramic vessels from their kitchen, onto the fire. The
children with hangovers dance laughing in a circle around the fire,
with bottles in their hands. They light cigars and smoke them as
they dance and sing around the fire. The postwoman is there with
them in the yard, dancing too. I don't know whether she's been in
their apartment all day or whether she came back.
I hope she has not burned the mail.
The alarm clock of the man in the apartment between buzzes
while I am looking out the back window at the tower of flame,
which rises well above the heads of the children with hangovers
now.
The mail for the children with hangovers is all collection
notices and credit card offers and I sort through it, making two
piles: collection notices, credit card offers. I have two large piles.
The only mail the children with hangovers will accept are the free
gifts which sometimes arrive, videotapes or CDs or CD ROMs,
which I bring downstairs and leave at their door.
The children with hangovers have never invited me inside.
I think the children with hangovers are fucking the postwoman.
The garbage has not been picked up from the front curb. Today
may be an obscure garbage holiday, a patriotic or religious or civic
occasion nobody can keep track of, not even the man next door.
The smoke from the bonfire curls through my back windows,
so I shut them.
The children with hangovers have begun giving out my phone
number when bill collectors call. I handle these calls for them,
explaining just as well as I can, trying to spare any misunderstanding.
The collectors rant and fume on the line. I am patient with
them, hearing them out, soothing them exactly as one would an
infant. This sometimes takes hours, but I've decided it's the least I
can do.
—VERONICA PASFIELD
From the Home for Unwed Mothers
They're a nice couple
an architect! an interior decorator!
artistic like me. This baby will be happy there
and I'll be a lawyer, an Indian activist
a groupie, a rock star.
If she's a girl I'll name her after my favorite nun
in this home for lonely whores
and refugees from Catholic school
kicked out when swollen bellies
could no longer be hidden
behind books clasped in front
or under empire waistlines
or never standing still too long.
I'll go back to school
another school
I'll move far from the Rogarello's garden
next door where we snitch tomatoes
when our food runs out, but the beer
never does.
Away from a big brother who comes home
drunker than our parents
after throwing a jukebox through a picture window
and decides which sister to lift
from her bed to his.

Matt Cauley, Inside, 1996, Acrylic, photo collage & ink
Matt Cauley, Ultraviolence, 1996, Acrylic, photo collage & ink
George Jenne, She's the Third to Go This Month (2000), Mixed media
George Jenne, Mimi was the Fattest Little Woman In The World (2000), Mixed media

Robin Vincent, Untitled {2000), from Self-Portraits, Acrylic
Robin Vincent, Untitled (2000), from Self-Portraits, Acrylic

304
—PAUL POISSEL
from Les faits d'hiver
Grincement d'amour
Le 8 Janvier, le chef de poste de l'Ecole militaire entend un
etrange bruit dans la cour de la caserne. II y decouvre une jeune
femme assise, qui ouvre et referme le couvercle d'une petite boite en
fer. « Qu'est-ce que vous fakes la ? » demande le chef. La jeune
femme repond, « Je me debarrasse de mon chagrin. » fividemment
le chef lui demande des explications suppldmentaires ; il apprend
ainsi qu'elle est domestique, age"e de vingt-deux ans, et qu'elle s'est
laiss^ se'duire par un adjudant, ou un lieutenant, un militaire de
toute facon, et que de toute facon il Fa quittee. « Et la boite ? » « Ah,
5a. » Peu de temps apres la disparition de son militaire, la jeune
femme a fait un reve ou sa mere lui dit que si elle voulait se debarrasser
de son chagrin, elle devrait 1'enfermer dans une boite et le
laisser e"chapper sur un terrain militaire. Ce qu'elle a fait. « Vous
savez, dit la jeune femme, je me sens deja mieux. » Avant de la laisser
partir, le chef ne peut register a lui poser une derniere question :
« Comment avez-vous enferme votre chagrin dans une si petite
boite ? » « C'est la chose la plus simple du monde, re'pond la jeune
femme. Je l'ai cuit au four jusqu'a ce qu'il retrecisse a la bonne
taille. » Elle lui montre le contenu de la boite : un tas de cendres.
from The Facts of Winter
Love creaks
On the eighth of January, the captain of the garrison of the Military
Academy hears a strange noise in the courtyard of his barracks.
He finds a young woman sitting in a corner of the courtyard, opening
and closing the lid of a small metal box. "What are you doing?"
asks the captain. "Getting rid of my sorrow," the young woman
says. Obviously the captain demands some further explanation; so
he learns that she is a servant, twenty-two years old, who let herself
be seduced by an adjutant, or a lieutenant, or anyway a military
man. And anyway he left her. "And the box?" "Oh, that." Not long
after her officer vanished, the young woman had a dream in which
her mother told her that if she wanted to get rid of her sorrow, she
should shut it up in a box and release it on terrain belonging to the
Army. Which she has done. "And you know, I feel better already,"
the young woman says. Before he lets her go, the captain can't help
but ask one last question: "How did you get your sorrow into that
little box?" "It was the easiest thing in the world. I baked it in an
oven until it shrank to the proper size." She shows him what's in the
box: a heap of ashes.

306
Dans la neige
Le 20 Janvier, M. Sylvain, cultivateur a Gennevilliers, reve que
son voisin, M. Laforge, s'est perdu dans une tourmente de neige. II
part a la recherche de son camarade, mais M. D le retient, et lui
dit, « Vous etes pere de famille. » M. Sylvain rentre chez lui, et
apprend le lendemain que M. Laforge est mort, noye" dans un e"tang
dont la surface a peine glace'e ^tait dissimulee par la neige.
La meme nuit, M. Laforge reve que son voisin, M. Sylvain, s'est
perdu dans la meme tourmente. II part a la recherche de son compagnon,
et, traversant la propiete de M. D , il tombe dans un
etang dont la surface a peine glacee est dissimulee par la neige. M.
D.... s'approche du bord de l'etang et lui murmure a Foreille, «
Vous etes pere de famille. »
Et M. D reve qu'il est devenu rond comme un oeuf, et qu'il
ne peut plus se ddplacer, meme dans sa propriete.
L'appetit de Babin
Le 23 Janvier, Georgette Babin, une petite fille agee de neuf ans
et demi, reve qu'elle traverse la rue des Petites-Ecuries avec son pere,
lorsqu'elle entrevoit, dans un regard d'egout, une vieille femme, qui
lui tend une tasse de the et des oeufs a la neige. Georgette est saisie
d'une faim dem&uree ; elle quitte son papa pour accepter lets mets
offerts. Mais le the a un gout apre, comme la fumee de la pipe de
son papa; elle laisse tomber la tasse et 1'assiette pour se mettre les
mains a la gorge. A ce moment son papa accourt ; quand il voit la
vieille femme, il pousse un cri de douleur. « Ma fille, ma fille, as-tu
bu ce qu'ill y avait dans la tasse ? » « Oui, mon pere, » re'pond Georgette.
« Et as-tu mange ce qu'il y avait dans l'assiette ? » « Non, mon
pere, le the m'a coupe l'appetit. » « Helas », dit son papa, et il se met
la main au front. « Maintenant tu dois vivre avec la vieille, dans logout.
Parce que tu as bu le contenu de la tasse, tu ne me reverras pas
; mais parce que tu n'as pas mange le contenue de l'assiette, tu reverras
ta mere. » La vieille prend Georgette Babin par la main, et la
mene dans l'egout, oil elle eprouve une joie qu'elle n'a jamais ressentie
de sa vie.
In the snow
On January 20th, Mr. Sylvain, a farmer from Gennevilliers,
dreams that his neighbor, Mr. Laforge, has got lost in a snowstorm.
He goes off in search of his comrade, but Mr. D. holds him back,
saying, "You are a family man." Mr. Sylvain returns to his house,
and the next morning he learns that Mr. Laforge fell into a pond,
its barely-frozen surface hidden under the snow, and drowned.
That same night, Mr. Laforge dreams that his neighbor, Mr.
Sylvain, is lost in the same snowstorm. He goes off to look for his
companion, and, while crossing Mr. D.'s land, he falls into a pond
whose barely-frozen surface is hidden under the snow. Mr. D.
comes up and whispers in his ear, "You are a family man."
And Mr. D. dreams that he has become round as an egg, and
can't move at all, even on his own property.
Babin's appetite
On January 23rd, Georgette Babin, nine-and-a-half years old,
dreams that she is crossing the rue des Petites-Ecuries with her
father, when she sees an old woman in the opening of a storm drain,
holding out a cup of tea and a plate of meringue. Georgette is suddenly
very hungry; she lets go her father's hand and takes the offered
sweets. But the tea tastes as bitter as the smoke from her father's
pipe; she drops the dishes and puts her hands to her throat. Her
father runs up, and, when he sees what she's done, cries out with
grief. "My daughter, my daughter, did you drink from the cup?"
"Yes, father." "And did you eat from the plate?" "No, father. The tea
tasted bitter and I lost my appetite." "Alas," her father says. "Now
you will have to live with the old woman in the sewer. Because you
drank from the cup, you will not see me again; but because you did
not eat from the plate, you will see your mother from time to time."
The old woman takes Georgette Babin's hand and leads her into the
sewer, where she is seized by a joy like nothing she has ever felt
before.

308
Une seconde petite Babin Another little Babin
Le 30 Janvier, la petite Blanche Gatineau, une petite fille, reve
qu'en traversant le carrefour de la rue Charles-LafFitte et du cours de
la Republique, elle entrevoit dans un regard d'egout une vieille
femme, qui lui tend une tasse de the' et des oeufs a la neige. Blanche
n'a pas grand-faim, mais elle accepte de gouter les mets offerts. Le
the est apre, et les oeufs a la neige sont poudreux, sec, comme le
chaux. « Maintenant tu ne reverras plus ta mere ni ton pere » lui dit
la vieille femme. « Effectivement, madame, je suis orpheline »
repond Blanche Gatineau. « Ah bon ? » dit la vieille femme. Et elle
redisparait au fond de son trou. Blanche regarde dans le regard dugout.
« Madame ? » appelle-t-elle. « Madame? » Elle n'entend que le
bruit de l'eau. Se penchant en avant, elle voit une petite lumiere
bleue, qui etincelle puis disparait au fond du passage obscur.
Un cas de deces spe re
Le 5 fevrier M. L , age^ de cinquante-six ans, reve qu'il est
appele devant un tribunal militaire, pour plaider la vie de son fils. «
C'est vrai que mon fils est un voleur et un vaurien, » dit M. L....,
mais ceci est un cas de deces spe re, phrase par laquelle il entend,
« mort de tout espoir. » Ce qui est curieux dans le reve, c'est que cet
argument a 1'air de convaincre les juges. Dans la deuxieme moitie
du reve, il traverse un pont avec son fils, par un temps des plus mauvais
: vent, pluie, etc.
On January 30th, a girl named Blanche Gatineau dreams that
she's crossing the intersection of the rue Charles-Laffitte and the
cours de la Republique, when she sees an old woman in the opening
of a storm drain, holding out a cup of tea and a plate of
meringue. Blanche isn't very hungry, but she agrees to taste the
offered food. The tea is bitter and the meringue is dry, powdery, like
chalk. "Now you will never see your mother or father again," says
the old woman. "Indeed not, madame," says Blanche. "I am an
orphan." "Oh really?" says the old woman, and disappears back into
the storm drain. Blanche looks into the mouth of the drain.
"Madame?" she calls. "Madame?" She hears only the rushing of the
water. Leaning forward, she sees a small blue light, twinkling, then
disappearing at the end of the drain.
A case of decease spe re
On February 5th, Mr. L., fifty-six years old, dreams that he is
called before a military tribunal to plead for the life of his son. "It's
true that my son is a thief and a good-for-nothing," he says, "but
this is a case of decease spe re," by which he means something like
'death of all hope.' The funny thing about the dream is that the
judges seem convinced by his argument. In the second part of the
dream, he is crossing a bridge with his son, in the worst weather
imaginable: wind, rain, etc.

Des Leches-brouillard
M. J... reve d'une chanson incroyable qui s'elance dans la nuit
du 15 fevrier, pour adoucir les ame des aventuriers et les employe's
de boutiques, tout en remplissant leurs coeurs de fantaisie. Seules les
voyelles de ce poeme redoutable penetrent chez M. J..., faubourg
Saint-Martin, mais elles lui donnent une faim qu'il ne peut satisfaire
en mangeant. II ouvre les rideaux de sa fenetre, et cherche dans la
nuit la source de ce chant. Un individu, la bouche ouverte, se tient
a Tangle d'une rue laterale. Est-ce le chanteur? M. J.... descend dans
la rue. Personne ne dort cette nuit-la; tout le quartier se promene
malgre le froid d'un fevrier se've're et brumeux. « Que faites-vous ? »
demande M. J... a un passant. « Vous trouvez qu'il a un gout particulier?
» dit le passant. «Hein ? Quoi ? » « Mais le brouillard, Monsieur.»
M. J.... ouvre sa bouche. « Non, » dit-il. « On dirait du
boeuf, » dit le passant. « Bonne nuit. » Et il rentre chez lui, ainsi que
les autres promeneurs ; la rue est deserte. M. J.... reste la, bouche
be"e, a Tangle de la rue Saint-Martin. « Pardon, » lui dit son voisin,
un brahmin de Londres. « Etait-ce vous qui chantait tout a Theure
? » « Non, » dit M. J « Mais je suis descendu a cause de cette
chanson. La connaissez-vous ? » « Je la prenais pour une improvisation,
» dit Tindien. II renifle et fait une grimace. « Vous ne trouvez
pas que ce brouillard a un gout particulier ? »
La voleuse d'enfants
La petite Henriette Thieblemont reve le 20 fevrier qu'en traversant
la rue des Petites-Ecuries avec son pere elle entrevoit, dans un
regard d'egout, une vieille femme, qui lui tend une tasse de the" et
des oeufs a la neige. « Non, merci » dit la petite. Plus tard, dans
Teglise Saint-Nicolas-des-Champs, elle revoit la vieille femme, qui
lui tend un verre de vin blanc. Henriette refuse d'un signe de tite.
Elle apercoit la vieille femme une troisieme fois, rue Grange-aux-
Belles, mais la voleuse d'enfants ne lui oflfre rien. « Pourquoi ne
m'ofrrez-vous pas quelque chose ? » demande Henriette. La la vieille
femme lui repond : « On ne peut rien avec un enfant comme toi. »
Fog-lickers
Mr. J. dreams of an unbelievable song that leaps through the
night of February 15th, softening adventurers and shopgirls and filling
their hearts with fantasy. Only the vowels of this formidable
poem reach Mr. J. on the faubourg Saint-Martin; but they give him
a hunger that food doesn't satisfy. He opens his curtains and looks
for the source of the song. An individual with his mouth wide open
stands on the corner of a cross street. Was that the singer? Mr. J.
goes downstairs. No one is asleep tonight; the whole neighborhood
is out walking, despite the February cold and the fog. "What are
you doing?" Mr. J. asks a passerby. "You don't think it has a funny
taste?" says the passerby. "What?" "Well, the fog." Mr. J. opens his
mouth. "No," he says. "Beef, I would have said," says the passerby.
"Good night." He goes in, as do all the other walkers, leaving Mr.
J. alone on the corner of the rue Saint-Martin, his mouth wide
open. "Pardon me," says his neighbor, a Brahmin from London.
"Was that you singing just now?" "No," says Mr. J. "But I came
down on account of the song. Do you know it?" "I took it for an
improvisation," says the Indian. He sniffs and makes a face. "Does
this fog taste funny to you?"
The child-stealer
A little girl named Henriette Thieblemont dreams on February
20th that, while she's crossing the rue des Petites-Ecuries with her
father, she sees, in the opening of a storm drain, an old woman who
offers her tea and a plate of meringue. "No thank you," says Henriette.
Later she sees the old woman again in the church of Saint-
Nicolas-des-Champs, holding out a glass of white wine. Henriette
shakes her head. She sees the old woman a third time on the rue
Grange-aux-Belles, but this time the child-stealer offers her nothing.
"Why don't you offer me anything?" asks Henriette. The old
woman answers: "It's impossible to do anything with a child like
you."

312
Le chloroforme
Mme. Paul Brame, fille de la baronne fivain, agee a peine de
vingt-six ans, est mere de trois enfants. Le soir du 15 mars, elle a un
mal de tete. Elle se couche vers onze heures, et fait le reve suivant :
n'arrivant pas a faire dormir ses enfants, elle met dans la bouche de
chacun une goutte de chloroforme. Les enfants en meurent aussitot.
Mme. Brame n'a aucun sentiment de culpabilite. « J'ai oublie qu'il
sufifit d'en respirer la vapeur, » re"flechit-elle. Elle se reVeille. Sa tete
lui fait toujours mal. Elle debouche la bouteille de chloroforme
qu'elle tient a cote de son lit, et elle est sur le point d'en verser une
goutte dans sa bouche quand elle se rapelle qu'il suffit de'n respirer
la vapeur.
Chloroform
Mrs. Paul Brame, daughter of the baroness Evain, and barely
twenty-six years old, is the mother of three children. On the evening
of March 15th she has a headache. She goes to bed around eleven
o'clock, and has the following dream: unable to get her children to
sleep, she pours a drop of chloroform in each of their mouths. The
children die immediately. Mrs. Brame feels no guilt. "I forgot that
the vapor alone does the trick," she thinks. She wakes up. Her head
still hurts. She uncorks the bottle of chloroform which she keeps
beside her bed, and she's about to pour a drop into her mouth when
she remembers that the vapor alone does the trick.
Translated by Paul LaFarge

314
—RICHARD HOWARD
Silences
Dear Helen, dear Karl,
I have your letter—
what a joy it is to hear from you both,
even though your occasion for writing
is not quite joyous. How strange that you found
the film—I was sure
we burnt every print:
apparently not. So now you wonder
what it all means—did you guess who they were,
those rosy little angels, or devils
—it comes to the same—
reveling on screen?
I realize I have some explaining
to do, and I shall try... Somewhat hampered
as I am because I don't know, really,
how much you two know.
My dearest children,
until your father died I held my tongue
(though why, in my English, the idiom
for Keeping Still occurs is something of
an astonishment—
as if that organ,
once let go of, would be liable
to decompose the great speech of silence)!
In any case, I said nothing all through
Kurt's last stages,
and when the poor man
v
could bear no more and begged my help to end
his torment, even then I still... kept still,
just as I had for all the years he smoked
more cigars than Freud...
"Taciturn Anna,"
Kurt croaked from his bed, only half-joking—
it was the name of a child-murderess
when we were students in Prague: a sort of
female Struwwelpeter.
Kurt liked my silence,
liked it when I merely stared at the cigars
(both of us mindful of their meaning)
and never spoke. Kurt smoked himself away,
and now I shall say
something, if only
to take back silence once you both have heard
an unwonted and perhaps unwanted
but necessary supplement to your
father's history.
Of course I helped him
to the end he sought—the other silence:
even you, Karl, for all your Principles,
could not object to suicide like that
as an escape from
advanced lung cancer.
I myself now tend to call it an escape
from something else: measured penile response
to erotic stimuli... Kurt, you know,
was the first doctor
who made arousal,
especially "deviant arousal",
a subject for scientific research.

316
You know that much, and probably you know
a little something
more than that as well:
all through your childhood, lots of attention
(phrased politely enough to be prurient)
was paid to his famous experiments
at the Institute:
put the offender's
penis in a sealed tube and show him films
of naked boys and/or girls (whatever
the "deviation " may be thought to be);
measured displacement
of air from the tube
reveals increases of penile volume,
recorded so the researcher can see
just which images have elicited
the greatest response.
Your father maintained
that a child-molester's outlook cannot
be concealed—he was always scornful of
"subjectivity" in psychiatry
and eager to find
verifiable
evidence of these... abnormalities:
"The problem is, most men will not tell you
the truth about being attracted to children.
You see, they don't have
much motivation
to say, 'Yes, I did it,' or even 'Yes,
I wanted to do it...' What is needed
is some device roughly analogous
to lie-detectors,
able to reveal
what a man might not willingly reveal."
By '68, Kurt had perfected most
of his phallometric methods, but
a Communist regime
would not countenance
the research he had begun to develop,
and we "fled"—you were seven, five—
from Czechoslovakia to Toronto
where Kurt continued
testing deviants
at the Institute. By then his cancer
had set in—could there have been some link?when
he began to recognize in himself
similar responses
while administering
those "lie-detector" tests he had devised—
symptoms he acknowledged to me, his wife
of two decades, indistinguishable
from those recorded
phallometricalry
in accused molesters of "boys and/or girls".
That was when Kurt decided no longer
to oppose the course of his cancer, though
the means to do so
were at hand. You see,
my dears, he felt that Science had betrayed
him, or else he Science. What was "Science"?
The consciousness he now belonged to a
"community of
sexuality"
came as a maddening revelation.

318
Such a community, he realized
from evidence of his own flesh, could be
neither affirmed nor
even disputed
in quantitative terms; Kurt would accept
no others. The lab was closed, all films shown
to "subjects" were reportedly destroyed.
You won't remember
how such sequences
were... recorded, such movies ever made;
enormous care was taken to prevent
the sessions with a boy of seven and
a girl under six
from seeming "special",
to them—an occasion memorable
beyond a bathtub with two naked kids
having a wonderful time together.
(Their father smoked, their
mother held her tongue.)
So when Kurt's life ended, the measurement
of penile response was ended as well—
—the first measurement, I should say. Others
have followed his lead
(Bancroft in Akron, specifically)
though employing quite different systems,
as the world knows. No need to speak of this
again. Let us all
restore the silence
I have broken somewhat against my will.
I think I have stumbled upon a law
of life: that children must learn, in the end,
what their parents know.
You know what I know,
what I learned as I gave Kurt his release,
having put you two children in the tub
and trained the camera on your gaiety.
I am a little
fearful I have made
your father into a monster for you,
to say nothing of myself. Let me say
nothing and instead give you Kurt writing
in such lacunae
as cancer allows:
No one talks to me other than myself
and my sentences reach me as the voice
of a dying man. With your help, dear voice,
I'll deceive myself
about loneliness
and lie my way into... humanity.
Surely it's best to end like that, with Kurt's
best words rather than mine, to his (and your)
Taciturn Anna.

320
—ED PARK
An Oral History of Atlantis
I have seen things I never wished to see, and every night I hear
the ocean. If it seems strange for a short man to sport such a lofty
tone, consider that the other venues of pleasure are closed to me. I
stand 4 foot 8 in honest shoes—though hydraulic insoles and good
posture get me to 5 even. I am not a true midget and am allowed
passage on most major roller coasters. Here at the lighthouse on the
island's northern tip, I hang lanterns that mean "All Ports Closed,"
and spend my days pitched somewhere between anticipation and
dissipation. I study the forgotten chapters of the Chicago Manual of
Style, with their helpful instructions on bookbinding, perhaps
included so that civilization can start anew, after the bomb or the
wayward comet, when absolutely everything needs to be relearned.
That task may fall to me. I am compact but I contain volumes.
I know the lore of semaphore, the meaning of ship's bells, and the
beautiful Beaufort scale, running from 0 to 12, with which I rate
the force of wind. Right now we're at nil, the "sea is as a mirror." I
build drink after drink and wait for the rains to come.
My youth merits less than a sentence. At eighteen, when it was
clear nature would not begrudge another inch, I stopped the height
shakes, the protein packs, the kelp-based head balm that scented my
sleep with sulfur and salt. My parents, those twin towers, proceeded
to kick me out of the house, unconvinced to the end that I wasn't
some prolonged sight gag. I walked to Manhattan, arriving at
noon. This was the day before the day the city blew up every bridge,
back when they thought rats spread the dread metagenetic phoresis,
or "Metaphor" virus, which they wanted to contain or exclude, it
was hard to remember which. By 1:30 I had found gainful employment
as a messenger, by 3:15 a studio apartment six stories above
Water Street. Such is the dedication of the tiny. My room fronted a
parking lot, a bit of suspicious real estate that never held a single car.
Beyond stood a disused warehouse, ampersand and ampersand, all
its signage washed away.
Summer became winter without a fall. Night classes, situps,
self-improvement. The room had come with a slight northward
slant, a heap of broken seashells, and a heavy box of books. In those
pages, as stiff and frangible as potato chips, I read of miniature races
the world over, and of entire cities that rise from the sea at times of
grim conjunction. I took notes, and took notes on my notes.
A neighbor helped install a rod across the bathroom doorway.
Every night, after my lucubrations, I snapped into a pair of cunning
anklets and hung from it like some hairless bat god, with a forbidden
name full of diphthongs that would drive the pious insane just
to say it. Thus I tried to touch the ground—secretly, shamefully—
and dreamed my bones' slow migration.
One night, hanging insomniac, I felt a light against my eyelids.
I opened them to see my body squared in silver, as if ready for transfer
to a larger canvas. Light splashed through my window's grid, so
strong it hurt to look. My ear flushed with cold night air, I discerned
a formidable rattle. It was three in the morning and somebody
was typing, hard strokes falling without a gap.
When I awoke, snow had gathered on the sill, and the books
there had begun to ripple. The window across the lot was now quite
closed. I studied the glass, but none of the dark shapes moved;
below, the paving held no traffic. At two I broke for lunch: a plate
of chops as big as my torso, a glass of Ovaltine the size of my forearm,
and a side of potatoes only slightly smaller than my brain.
Then, full of midget vigor, I ordered the same meal again.
At the other end of the counter sat a man of about forty, tall but
not disgustingly so, who was reading a foreign paper. He had most
of his hair, gold wire glasses, and an intellectual slump to his thin
frame. Whenever anyone coughed, he would wince, but then, so
did everyone else. No one cared to contract Metaphor.

322
It was only when the man got up to leave that I recognized him
as Walter Walter, the exiled Dutch writer. I had never heard of him
before Water Street. One of his early books had been among those
left in my apartment; I'd read it on a thunderstruck Halloween, as
the walls went white with lightning and every terse phrase sent a
chill. The library had his other titles: a few bracing policiers that
established his name in criminous letters, plus a fat volume of memoirs
with the demoralizing subtitle "The Early Years." There had
been some Low Countries scandal to run him out of Europe. So
here he was, Walter Walter. His recent outpourings predicted
plagues and the rise of every atavism. The articles appeared only in
obscure journals of the occult persuasion, some of which I'd found
neatly twined at curbside. Now I began to wonder whether this was
coincidence. If he lived in the area, perhaps I had been reading his
trash. I decided to follow Walter Walter.
I made my last pass at the spuds, left a quarter tip, and walked
outside. The street looked empty. One block east marched a conceivably
Walteroid figure. The thickening snow made him look even
thinner, as if ready to slip away between dimensions.
A crab of newsprint scuttled past. Every so often I'd maneuver
behind a call box or dumpster, not that he ever looked back. He
turned left where I'd turn left, then right where I'd turn right: Water
Street. He dashed up the warehouse stairs. I stood by the lamppost
as though plucked from a dream, studying the silent door. In my
room, waiting for him to appear, I eased myself into his later essays.
It was writing as disease—a torrent of speculation and data, with no
trace of the proportion or wit that marked his admirable detective
fiction. The only thing that had carried over was the fear.
Around five, I thought I could hear typing again, at a less sure
clip, the machine's report larded with silences. The sound stopped
two hours later. Night had fallen. I donned my foul-weather costume
and nearly tobogganed down the stairs. I emerged to see Walter
Walter, in derby hat and overcoat, heading north.
I kept a full block behind. Even if he slipped from sight, there
were fresh tracks in the dusting of snow. I counted ten cross streets,
then stopped counting. The snow fell harder and the wind moved
higher up the Beaufort scale. We went west, a tall man and his shad-
ow incarnate, hitting a region of mild industry—all flashing lights
and mechanical pleasures. Every lurid satisfaction could be had. I
began to think less of Walter Walter, not that a sleuthing lilliputian
should judge.
The lights, the falling snow, the Pine-Sol reek of every slippery
venue—it was Christmas Eve, I realized. Good God, what had I
become? Even a minnikin should have standards. The dingy marquees
and tattered banners touted assorted sordid scenarios, but in
the most oblique possible terms. What did they mean by "Japanese
Eggplants," "Sitting Pretty," "Bulbs While-U-Wait"? I couldn't
imagine—but of course I could. Or was I just seeing what I wanted
to see?
My quarry finally ducked into the Wandering Womb, the initials
like mammaries. A little bell rang; I heard him stamp his feet.
The blacked-out windows bore slopes of steam. I counted thirty
Mississippi before following.
It was a gaslit room, diverging from the straight exterior walls
to curve like a ship, with a plush green carpet and bespoke lowboys
and a player piano doing the "Salt-Water Rag." The walls were
papered in velveteen, incised with anchors and fleur-de-lis. At the
antique cash register stood an even more antiquated man. The clerk
was kitted out in a trig dark suit with batwing collar and a cap that
suggested a telegraph operator. I exchanged a ten, all I had, for a cup
of brass slugs. They were heavier and smaller than quarters, with
double Ws raised on each face.
A dozen booths were set into the walls; a narrow staircase suggesting
more underground. I kept to the surface. The doors were
mahogany with black curtains behind, some with boot-tops
beneath the fringe. Quaint signs said "fresh" and "hot" and "wet." I
could feel the clerk's eyes on me, so I ducked into Booth 3 and shut
out the world. It smelled of paraffin and hearts of palm. In the dark
I could make out a weathered hand-crank and the stout shaft where
the images lived, lunging up like a friendly seal. The bench was far
too low, but a few phone books, concealed inside, made for an adequate
perch: I was sitting atop all of Manhattan. Fitting a slug in the
slot and my face to the eyepiece, I took a deep breath and manned
the crank.

324
Somewhere in the shaft a bulb hummed on. It was like light
from the nineteenth century, unsure and shrouded. Now a few
black cards clacked by in sequence, connected to the turning spindle.
They were ink black, save the worn auroras at the corners. I
spun faster, till the shadows gave up a shape.
But it wasn't a woman at all. It was a whale.
That tongue of a body barrelled toward me, voluptuous tail
held aloft, white fins fanning in tandem. I turned, harder. Each
image, I could now see, was stereoptically doubled, enabling an
antediluvian 3D. I gasped as it corkscrewed, the crank damp: then
the picture froze. Before the bulb could simmer, or perhaps the cap
snuff the candle, I entered another slug. A new set of cards came
into play, whirring like wingbeats as I spun. The humpback rose
and rose, through leagues of sepia, its body now caught in reticulations
of light as sun met sea. It was coming up for air, while I
merged with that ancient water.
The whale, my whale, largely traveled alone. For a time it
joined a regiment of dolphins, and now and then cut through
schools of smaller fry, dagger-shaped, that parted like a veil around
it. My mind supplied a plot where of course none belonged, some
briny threnody with unseen hovering harpoons, Moby-Dick from
the beast's point of view. I didn't believe it myself when I began to
cry, my tears falling directly on the quick-milling cards: fresh, hot,
and wet. I spun and blubbered, wondering what "Dutch treat"
Walter Walter had come here to watch—whether the Wandering
Womb was all whales, all the time, or if it offered deep-sea coelocanths,
manatee matinees, self-propelled versions of the kraken.
The wind from the cards cooled my cheek, and I swear I felt a
spray. To complete the cetacean sensorium, a medley of bovine
moans and expressive hinges, perhaps etched on a wax cylinder,
issued from a cabinet by my legs. Sometimes the view straddled the
waterline, whitecaps like flame; other times it looked shot from a
boat, as a school of humpbacks turned in sequence like the coils of
a single vast serpent. But mostly things stayed underwater. My
breathing adapted. Each slug seemed to last longer. The humpbacks
sang in half-hour arias; my face was damp with sweat or spume. I
woke when I started dreaming that the crank was an oar. The cap-
tain's command to fire was a klaxon blast from the front desk.
I emerged at four bells, the last one out. I tried asking the clerk
about what I'd seen, but he just glared at the grandfather clock and
twisted his blond handlebars. I glimpsed myself in a pierglass, looking
suitably depraved, with all the starch gone out of my shirt and
the corners of my eyes as red as roses. Now it was a thousand blocks
in the punishing snow. There were no footsteps to follow—the trail
gone literally cold. As I turned onto Water Street, something glinted
under the streetlamp: a pair of wire spectacles, like a crumpled
insect, the lenses shivered in the snow. I put them on the handrail,
where nobody could miss them.
I never saw Walter Walter again. I lost him in the chaos, as the
city heaved under the rule of Metaphor. People acted out, walking
pie-eyed in the middle of traffic, playing musical instruments they
had no right even owning. All the dogs committed suicide; electricity
was touch and go. There were fewer rats since the bridges went,
it was true; but the ones that remained had developed antennae.
At night I'd float in my tub, head against the enamel. I could
hear elevators plumb and launch, wind howling through the
garbage chute, ghostly voices of tenants too tall to talk to. It was a
direct line into hidden nerves, a blueprint's subconscious filtered
right through my skull, and it sounded like nothing so much as
whalesong.
These private oracles served as a fix, but I passed my days in a
benthic haze: I wanted to swim again, to be by my blowhole familiar.
Unable to resist, abject as any addict, I finally made a return visit
uptown, but the entire district had been rezoned; the mayor, linking
Metaphor to vice, had decreed that only pizza parlors could
operate there now. They'd renamed it MUNGO, for Municipality
near North Grosvenor and Orange, as if that would make people
forget.
It did. The Wandering Womb had wandered away. Everyone
was new. They all wore clip-on neckties and couldn't answer my
questions. I was hungry but I didn't stop. All the way home my
mouth was open, and snowflakes fell in like krill.
I was seasick, but not from fantasy. The bridges, it seemed, had

326
acted like stays securing Manhattan, and now it was moving south
to freedom, while its edges slipped into anonymity. No more West
Side Highway; no more FDR. And beginning that night, no more
warehouse. An eraser-pink crane deleted it by a floor a day. As each
level went, I could see nothing of human life but thousands of
sheets of paper, perhaps all of Walter Walter's hopeless writing,
whirling like birds as they blew away.
The epidemiologists, at wit's end, suggested things like
"Smoke-a-Pipe Day" and "Make Fun of British People Day." I knew
from my reading that my time drew near: the little man, when not
playing percussion and symbolizing the madness of World War II,
was always a convenient scapegoat. So before the mayor could
megaphone any anti-nanist propaganda, I threw out all my books
and climbed as far north as the Manhattoes allowed.
Here I see no one, I plan for the flood, I do my mundane
midget things. Some nights the hour advances in step with the
Beaufort scale, so that at 7 "whole trees sway"; at 9 "shingles may
blow away." I could chart other events for you: the mylar hearts lost
at the zoo, the gulls turning in wide circles like a planetary system.
On the water to my left, on the water to my right, float barges so
big they're like pieces of the city, whole blocks wrenched loose with
not a soul on deck. They continue at night, maybe the same ships
in a hell of repetition. Their lights are orange and imploring, and
glide in a line as steady as math: torches on some river whose name
we've forgotten, whose name we were maybe never even meant to
know.
CONTRIBUTORS' NOTES
BERTRAM D. ASHE is Associate Professor of English and Director of
the Africana Studies Program at the College of the Holy Cross, in
Worcester, Massachusetts. He is the author of From Within the
Frame: Storytelling in African-American Fiction (Routledge), as well
as essays published in Signifyin(g), Sanctifyin and Slam Dunking: A
Reader in African American Expressive Culture; Race, Gender and
Class; and African American Review.
ARTHUR BRADFORD'S first book Dogwalkerwas published by Knopf
in 2001. He also directed a documetary film called How's Your
News? which aired on Cinemax in Spring 2001.
JOHN F. CALLAHAN is the literary executor of Ralph Ellison's estate.
He is the editor of The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison (1995); Flying
Home & Other Stories (1996); Juneteenth (1999), and, with
Albert Murray, Trading Twelves: The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison
& Albert Murray (2000). Callahan is also the author of The Illusion
of a Nation: Myth & History in the Novels ofF. Scott Fitzgerald (1972)
and In the African-American Grain: Call-and-Response in Twentieth
Century Black Fiction (1990, 2001). He is the Morgan S. Odell Professor
of Humanities at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon.
MACGREGOR CARD is a poet, translator, and editor of The Germ: A
Journal of Poetic Research. He recently completed an MFA in Poetry
at Brown University, and a first chapbook, Souvenir Winner is forthcoming
from hophophop.
MATT CAU LEY'S background lies in the visual arts. After moving to
New York, he attended Parson's School of Design, obtaining his
degree in Illustration there. His work has been published and exhibited
in and around the New York area. He currently works for
Bloomberg Television as a Broadcast Designer, yet he maintains his
Illustration and Custom Toy Design work on the side. His clients
have included DirecTV, the USA Networks, the Irvington Institute,
Safe Horizon, and POPSmear magazine among others. Currently

328
Matt resides in New Jersey with his wife, dog and two cats and can
be frequently found lurking about in the basement generally avoiding
housework in the pursuit of visual creativity.
RICHARD SIMON CHANG lives in New York City. He is proud of his
recent appearance in the Tulane Review and hopes all of this will
lead to something some day.
PETER COVINO'S poems have recently appeared in The Paris Review,
The Ohio Review, The Journal and Verse. New work is forthcoming
in The Cimarron Review, The Penguin Anthology of Italian American
Writers, and in the documentary film Stories of Silence. Peter is a
Ph.D. student in English/Creative Writing at the University of
Utah.
MARK DOTY received a B.A. from Drake University and an M.F.A.
from Goddard College. He is the author of six books of poems,
including Source, a new collection from HarperCollins. He's also
written three books of nonfiction prose. He's received the National
Book Critics Circle Award, the PEN Martha Albrand Prize, the Los
Angeles Times Book Award, and is the only American to have
received Britain's T. S. Eliot Prize. He recently received a Lila Wallace/Reader's
Digest Writer's Award.
CHRIS DOYLE lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. He has rec
ently exhibited at P.S.I Museum of Contemporary Art, The
Queens Museum of Art, and at Jessica Murray Projects. His public
projects include LEAP, presented by Creative Time and Commutable,
with the Public Art Fund. His work has been supported
by grants from Creative Capital Foundation, New York Foundation
for the Arts, and NYSCA.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER was born in 1977 in Washington, D.C.
He is the editor of the anthology A Convergence of Birds: Original
Fiction and Poetry Inspired by the Work of Joseph Cornell, and his stories
have been published in the Paris Review, Conjunctions, and in
The New Yorker. He just recently published his first novel, Every-
thing is Illuminated, and he now lives in Queens, New York, where
he is at work on his next novel.
PAULA FRIEDMAN reviews books for several periodicals, including
The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and The New Criterion.
Her poems have appeared in The Michigan Quarterly Review, Prairie
Schooner, Tikkun, and others. She lives in Oakland, California.
EAMON GRENNAN teaches at Vassar College. His Leopardi: Selected
poems won a PEN award for poetry in translation. His most recent
book of poems is Still Life with Waterfall (Graywolf).
ANIKA HAYNES, born on the wave of afro pics and black power
dashikis, is a writer living in Brooklyn. Her loves are fiction and
writing on hiphop culture. She has written for The Source and other
hiphop publications. She is currently the assistant managing editor
for a youth produced newspaper called Harlem Overheard.
Texas native SCOTT HIGHTOWER is the author of Tin Can Tourist
(Fordham University Press, 2001). He attended Columbia University
and is a contributing editor of The Journal. He teaches at New
York University/Gallatin.
JANE HIRSHFIELD'S most recent book, Given Sugar, Given Salt
(HarperCollins 2001) received the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award
in poetry, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle
Award. A collection of her poetry in translation will appear in
Poland in 2002, published by ZNAK.
RICHARD HOWARD received a B.A. from Columbia in 1951 and did
graduate work at Columbia and The Sorbonne. He is the author of
eleven books of poetry, including Untitled Subjects (Pulitzer Prize,
1970) and, most recently, Trappings, as well as the critical study
Alone with America and the critical prefaces of the anthology Preferences.
He has edited the Library of America edition of The Travel
Writings of Henry James 2nd the 1995 edition of The Best American
Poetry and has served as the poetry editor of several periodicals, a

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function he now occupies at the Paris Review and Western Humanities
Review. He is the translator of some 150 works from French,
including Stendhal's Charterhouse of Parma for the Modern Library.
In 1983 he received the American Book Award. He has also received
the PEN Translation Medal and the French-American Prize (twice)
and was designated a Chevalier de I'Ordre National du Merite by
the French government in 1982. A member of the American Academy
and Institute of Arts and Letters since 1983, he has served as
the Poet Laureate of New York State (1994-97) and the President of
PEN American Center (1978-80). After serving as Luce Visiting
Scholar at the Whitney Humanities Center at Yale in 1983, as
Ropes Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of
Cincinnati, and as University Professor of English at the University
of Houston (1987-97), he became Professor of Writing at Columbia
in 1997. He reviews regularly for the New York Times, the Los
Angeles Times, and many literary magazines and serves as the director
of the James Dickey Poetry Series at the University of South
Carolina (16 volumes to date). He was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship
in 1996.
GABE HUDSON'S first book of fiction, Dear Mr. President, will be
published by Knopf in August. His work has appeared in
McSweeney's and The New Yorker. He lives in New York City.
GEORGE JENNE currently lives, draws and sculpts in Brooklyn, NY,
where he works as a prop and model maker for television and film.
He grew up in Chapel Hill and received a BFA from the Rhode
Island School of Design. Jenne's short film The Belligerents has been
shown in several film festivals, and he has exhibited across the country.
Poet, translator and critic IVAN JUNOUEIRA was born in Rio de
Janeiro in 1934. He worked for many years as an editor for Brazilian
publications. He is the author of more than 25 books, including
the poetry books Os Mortos (1964), Cinco Movimentos (1982),
A Sagracdo dos Ossos (1994), translations into Portuguese of T.S.
Eliot, Baudelaire, Marcel Proust, Marguerite Yourcenar and Dylan
Thomas, and various essays (the most recent: Baudelaire, Eliot,
Dylan Thomas: tres visoes da modernidade.) Junqueira has received
several academic medals and literary prizes, including the prestigious
Premio Jabuti (1995) awarded by Camara Brasileira do Livro.
He was elected a member of Academia Brasileira de Letras in March
2000, and now occupies the chair that once belonged to Joao
Cabral de Melo Neto.
INGRID DE KOK lived and studied in South Africa and Canada. She
now works at the Centre for Extra-Mural Studies at the University
of Cape Town, South Africa. She has published 3 collections of
poems, Familiar Ground (1988) Transfer (199) and Terrestrial
Things (2002), and edited a number of texts on South African culture
and literature. Her poetry has been published in journals and
anthologies widely around the world and translated into Italian,
French, Dutch and Japanese. In 1999 she was awarded a Residency
Fellowship at the Rockefeller Foundation's Centre in Bellagio.
PAUL LAFARGE is the author of The Artist of the Missing and the
translator of Paul Poissel's Haussmann, or the Distinction. He is most
recently the recipient of the Guggenheim Award for fiction. He lives
in New York.
JON LANGFORD is a founding member of the seminal punk-rock
band the Mekons. His other musical groups include the Waco
Brothers and the Pine Valley Cosmonauts. He lives in Chicago.
JONATHAN LETHEM is the author of Motherless Brooklyn and other
novels. He lives in New York City.
GUY MADDIN'S films include Careful, Tales from the Gimli Hospital,
Twilight of the Ice Nymphs, Archangel, and The Heart of the World.
He most recently adapted a ballet version of Dracula for Canadian
television. He lives in Winnipeg.
JAY MANCINI has taught physics at Fordham for 18 years. His poems
have appeared in Denver Quarterly, The Journal Larcom Review,

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Arts & Understanding, California Quarterly, about 40 journals in all.
He has published about 50 physics articles as well.
JOHN MCMANUS grew up in Blount County, Tennessee. He is a
recepient of the 2000 Whitings Writers' Award. His second collection
of short stories, Born on a Train, will be published by Picador
in spring 2003. He lives in Austin, Texas.
JOHN MCNALLY is the author of the story collection Troublemakers
and editor of several anthologies, most recently Humor Me: An
Anthology of Humor by Writers of Color. New work can be found in
With Love and Squalor: 14 Writers Respond to the Work of ]. D.
Salinger (Broadway Books, 2001), The Iowa Award: The Best Stories,
1991-2000 (Iowa, 2001), and F Magazine. He teaches at Wake
Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
MELISSA MONROE lives in New York and teaches at the New School
and Fordham University.
EUGENIO MONTALE was a poet, prose writer, editor and translator.
An early modernist, Montale won the Nobel Prize for literature in
1975. He died in 1981.
NASDIJJ was born in the desert in a Navajo hogan in 1950. His
mother was Navajo, and his father was a cowboy. In 1999, Nasdijj's
story, The Blood Runs Like a River Through My Blood was nominated
for a National Magazine Award and subsequently became a book
(one of both Salon and the New York Times best pics of the year for
nonfiction) published by Houghton Mifflin. The book has been
optioned for a film. Most recently his work has appeared in the New
York Times Magazine. Nasdijj is now writing a book for Ballantine
Books to be published early next year called The Boy and the Dog are
Sleeping: A Fathers Journey Through the Land of AIDS.
ED PARK is a senior editor at The Village Voice, where he writes about
film and books, and a contributor to Cinema Scope magazine and
the book Virgin Fiction. He is a member of the Harry Stephen Keel-
er Society.
VERONICA PASFIELD won the 2001 Avery Hopwood & Jule Hopwood
Award for Poetry and the Paul & Sonia Handleman Poetry
Award at the University of Michigan. She was a magazine editor and
writer in Detroit and San Francisco for years. But a one-year sabbatical
from journalism turned into two, which led to poetry. She is
currently trying to convince her eight-year-old son, Tyler, not to
scratch his chicken pox, as well as studying creative writing and
filmmaking at the University of Michigan.
MEREDITH PHILLIPS is a freelance editor who has been published in
the Austin Chronicle and Texas Monthly Magazine. After a brief
downsizing, she is relieved to find herself steadily gaining weight.
She lives in Ft. Greene, Brooklyn and will enroll at The New School
in the fall.
Born in 1848, PAUL POISSEL was a French poet, novelist, and architect.
His most notable work, Hausmann, or The Distinction, was first
published in 1922, shortly after Poissel's death (November 17,
1921). Founding member of "the club of the Expropriated" (with
Bartolomeo Facil), Poissel edited the Review of the Expropriated. His
other works include Scottish Drafts (1876), The History of Misinterpretation
(1889), Discrepancy (1907), and the Facts ofWinter (1905).
AMY JEAN PORTER is an artist who recently moved to Cambridge,
Massachusetts. She is drawing 508 species of birds in her series,
Birds of North America Misquote Hip-Hop and Sometimes Pause for
Reflection.
CHRISTINA PUGH is a recent winner of the Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship,
sponsored by Poetry magazine; the Grolier Poetry Prize;
and the Associated Writing Programs' INTRO Award in Poetry.
Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Harvard Review,
Hayden's Ferry Review, Tar River Poetry, Smartish Pace, and on the
website Poetry Daily, among other publications. Her criticism has
appeared in Boston Review, Arts Media, Verse, and elsewhere. She has
read her poetry in the "Poet's Voice" series in Fairfield County, Con-

334
necticut, and at the Twentieth Century Literature Conference at the
University of Louisville. She was a lecturer in the Literature Concentration
at Harvard University from 1998-2001 and assisted
director Gail Mazur at the Blacksmith House Reading Series in
Cambridge, Massachusetts from 2000-2001. She has also taught literature
and writing in the honors program at Emerson College.
Currently she works as an assistant professor of creative writing at
CUNY, College of Staten Island.
VICTORIA REDEL is the author of three books: Where the Road Bottoms
Out (Short Fiction), Already the World ( Poetry) and, most
recently, the novel Loverboy. Redel has been the recipient of the
Gable Prize for Loverboy and the Tom and Stan Wick prize for
Already the World. Loverboy was a featured selection by Quality
Paperback Books and an LA Times best fiction selection for 2001.
HOLIDAY REINHORN is a writer from Los Angeles. She is the recipient
of a Teaching-Writing Fellowship from the Iowa Writers' Workshop,
a Tobias Wolff Award in Fiction from The Bellingham
Review and a Carl Djerassi Fiction Fellowship from the University
of Wisconsin at Madison. The story that appears in this issue of
Columbia was adapted into an independent feature film with funding
from The Arthur Jerome Foundation. She is currently at work
on her first novel.
MARCELO RIOSECO was born is Concepcion, Chile in 1967. He
won the 1994 El Mercurio Poetry Prize for his book Ludovicos o la
Aristocracia del Universo. He has also published El Cazador, a collection
of short stories (1999) and an anthology of Chilean poetry
(Malaga, Spain: Litoral, 2000). He currently lives in Santiago,
Chile.
MATTHEW ROHRER is the author of A Hummock in the Malookas and
Satellite. He lives in Brooklyn and is one of the poetry editors of
Fence Magazine.
MARY JO SALTER is the author of four books of poems, most recent-
ly A Kiss in Space (Knopf 1999). Emily Dickinson Senior Lecturer
in the Humanities at Mount Holyoke College, she is also a Vice
President of the Poetry Society of America and a co-editor of The
Norton Anthology of Poetry (4th ed, 1996). She has published one
children's book, The Moon Comes Home (Knopf, 1989).
PATR?CIA SOLDATI was born in Porto Alegre, Brazil and is currently
a Ph.D. candidate in Brazilian Literature at Brown University. She
has translated The Riot in the Sand: Diary by Kara Walker, published
in Portuguese in 2000.
DANZY SENNA is the author of the highly acclaimed novel Caucasia,
which won the Book-of-the-Month Club's First Fiction Award, was
selected as one of the Los Angeles Times' Best Books of the Year, and
has been translated into five languages. She holds the Jenks Chair of
Contemporary American Letters at the College of Holy Cross.
SUSAN STEINBERG'S stories have appeared or are forthcoming in
The Gettysburg Review, Quarterly West, Conjunctions, Alaska Quarterly
Review, Boulevard Denver Quarterly, The Massachusetts Review,
and others. Her first collection of stories is forthcoming from FC2.
TONY K. STEWART is a Professor of South Asia religion at North Carolina
State University, specializing in the premodern and early colonial
literatures of Bengal. His most recent work was a translation of
the Bengali and Sanskrit, Caitanya Caritamrta, with Edward C.
Dimock, Jr. (Harvard Oriental Series, 1999); he has just finished
translating an anthology of 18-19th century Bengali folktales. He is
the founder and Director of the North Carolina Center for South
Asia Studies, an educational cooperative of North Carolina State
University, Duke University, the University of North Carolina-
Chapel Hill, and North Carolina Central University.
Lou STOVALL studied at the Rhode Island School of Design and at
Howard University (B.F.A.). Since 1962, he has lived and worked in
Washington, D.C. His drawings and silkscreen prints have brought
him grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the

336
Stern Family Fund. His recognition as a master printmaker has
gained him commissions to print works of such noted artists as Josef
Albers, Peter Blume, Alexander Calder, Elizabeth Catlett, Gene
Davis, David Driskell, Sam Gilliam, Lois Mailou Jones, Jacob
Lawrence, Robert Mangold, Mathieu Mategot, A. Brockie Stevenson
and James L. Wells. Through Workshop, Inc., founded in 1968,
he has made a unique effort to build a community of artists in
Washington, D.C. and to encourage, by his own example, service in
the community.
RABINDRANATH TAGORE was a Bengali poet, novelist, educator, who
won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. Tagore was awarded the
knighthood in 1915, but he surrendered it in 1919 as a protest
against the Massacre of Amritsar, where British troops killed some
400 Indian demonstrators protesting colonial laws. He died in
1941.
CHASE TWICHELL has published five books of poems: The Snow
Watcher (Ontario Review Press, 1998, and Bloodaxe, U.K., 1999),
The Ghost of Eden (Ontario Review Press, 1995, and Faber & Faber,
U.K., 1995), Perdido (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1991, and Faber &
Faber, U.K., 1992), The Odds (University of Pittsburgh Press,
1986), and Northern Spy (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1981).
She's also the co-editor of The Practice of Poetry: Writing Exercises
From Poets Who Teach (HarperCollins, 1992). Her poems have
appeared in a number of magazines, including Antaeus, The New
Yorker, Field, Ploughshares, The Ohio Review, The Georgia Review,
The Paris Review, Poetry, The Nation, Ontario Review, New England
Review, The Southern Review, and The Yale Review. Chase
Twichell has received fellowships from the National Endowment for
the Arts (1987, 1993), the Artists Foundation (Boston), the New
Jersey State Council on the Arts, and the John Simon Guggenheim
Memorial Foundation (1990), and a Literature Award from the
American Academy of Arts and Letters (1994). In 1997 she won the
Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America
for The Snow Watcher. She's taught at Princeton University (1990-
2000), Warren Wilson College, The University of Alabama, Goddard
College, and Hampshire College, as well as at various writers'
conferences, including Bread Loaf, Stonecoast, The Catskills Writers'
Conference, The University of Vermont, Mt. Holyoke, Napa
Valley, and the Sewanee Writers' Conference. In 1999 she quit
teaching to start Ausable Press, which publishes contemporary poetry-
LAWRENCE WESCHLER, a longtime New Yorker staff writer and
author, among others, of Mr Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder, is the new
director of the New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU.
Over the last several years he has been teaching at Sarah Lawrence
and Columbia. His latest book is the forthcoming Robert
IrwinlGetty Garden (Fall 2002).
DAVID WAGONER has published sixteen books of poems, most
recently Traveling Light: Collected and New Poems (University of Illinois
Press, 1999), winner of the William Stafford Memorial Award
given by Pacific Northwest Booksellers, and ten novels, one of
which, The Escape Artist, was made into a movie by Francis Ford
Coppola. He won the Lilly Prize in 1991, has been nominated twice
for the National Book Award, and has won the Zabel Prize, the Blumenthal-Leviton-Blonder
Prize, the Eunice Tietjens Prize, the English-Speaking
Union Prize, the Levinson Prize, and the Union
League Prize of Poetry (Chicago). He was a chancellor of the Academy
of American Poets for 23 years. He has taught at the University
of Washington since 1954 and is the editor of Poetry Northwest.
The University of Illinois Press will publish his The House of Song in
2002.
Born in 1966, TIMOTHY A. WESTMORELAND taught astronomy at the
University of Texas at Arlington before completing his M.F.A. at the
University of Massachusetts at Amherst. His story "Near to Gone,"
which was selected by Carol Shields for inclusion in Scribner's Best
of the Fiction Workshops 1998. Subsequently, his stories have been
published in Book Magazine.com, Quarterly West, The Indiana
Review, Crab Orchard Review, 64, and others. Also, his story

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"Darkening of the World" was selected by Charles Baxter for inclusion
in Best New American Voices 2001. His story collection, Good
As Any, was published this year by Harcourt. Gathering, a novel, is
also forthcoming from Harcourt.
ROBIN VINCENT is a photographer by trade, shooting musicians ranging
from Little Jimmy Scott to Sonic Youth. Her work has appeared
in several national publications. Last year she mounted her first show
entitled Thespians, bringing together her fine art and professional
work. However, she feels most content in the world when putting
brush to canvas. The paintings shown are part of a larger collection
called Self-Portraits. She is currently trying her hand at transforming
her photographs into paintings. She lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan
with her husband and two daughters.
A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, RACHEL ZUCKER'S first
book, Eating in the Underworld, is forthcoming from Wesleyan University
Press. She lives in New York City.
COLUMBIA
A Journal of Literature & Art
Issue 37: Fall 2002-Spring 2003
Editor-in-Chief: Tiffany Fung
Managing Editor: Ryan Bartelmay
Prose Editors: Claire Gutierrez & Morgan Beatty
Poetry Editors: Ericka Pazcoguin & Anna Ross
Non-Fiction & Layout Editor: Stephen Johnson
The Editors are now accepting submissions for
Prose, Poetry, & Non-Fiction Contests.
Prose Judge: Binnie Kirshenbaum
Poetry Judge: To Be Announced
Non-Fiction Judge: To Be Announced
An award of $500 will be made to the best entry in each category.
Winners will be published in Issue 37.
Reading Fee: $ 10 (per story not to exceed 20 pages double-spaced
or up to five poems) includes a copy of issue.
Deadline: Postmark January 31, 2003.
(Manuscripts will not be returned.)
Mail submissions (no e-mails please) to:
Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art
[Prose / Poetry / Non-Fiction] Contest
2960 Broadway
415 Dodge Hall
Columbia University
New York, NY 10027