Oedipus Square Near the Palace

Oedipus Square Near the Palace
      by Dougler Reima

"My adoptive parents changed my name when they found that the authorities were after them and now I am forced to live with this false identity in order to protect them. I've told you some of this before. Why do I protect those who attempt to force on me what I do not wish? Simply, I love them. When I discovered that these were not my parents, Maryanne being not my mother but my nurse, and Philip not my father but my trustee, I disbelieved my ears and decided to go to some office, some officials, to determine the truth of the rumours. Let me tell you, since we are fellow travellers on this awkward road and so you will understand its import, my story as I recollect it. Could you reach me my cup? I forget where I set it down. Thank you! You are so good to me! May God grant you comfort and joy and long life!
        I adored my parents. I was eighteen at the time my troubles began. We--myself along with my parents, brothers and sisters, as well as the extended family, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and godparents--gathered in Oedipus Square for Mayday celebrations, nineteen seventy-three, to give our thanks to God, of course, but simultaneously to send Antonia on her way. The wedding had brought many together. When the revels had got well underway, and during supper hour when most had gathered in the hall there around the board, a drunk called out suddenly in a loud voice for everyone to hear his toast. He slurred out a speech I've spent my life trying to forget. 
        'You, Eddy, you think that you're so fine! Living in comfort and wealth, with parents dotting on you their a handsome prince. But . . . these are not your mother and father!'
        The room hushed. I said nothing. I leapt up to challenge him but instead hurried from the hall. Later I confronted my parents. Ivory, thank you. Yes, I, am comfortable. Are you weary of this tale? No? Well, they assured me that the man was speaking foolishness and had no sense of things, that he was witless and that I must not give the slightest credence to the matter. I experienced great relief and believed them. I did, at least, believe them in word. My heart smarted with doubt and eventually I sent a servant to discover the truth at the Vroix. There my fate was sealed. He returned. I listened. I fell ill. I left home. The rest is a long, long story so fell and deep that you will hardly credit it. I had to remain apparently well and sane in order to survive. But really, inside I burned with fear for my future. You know of that yourself, Ivory, I have long gathered from the stories you tell me of your own wild upbringing. Your understanding of the ways of insanity makes my confession possible. 
        How does one live with the sort of prediction my servant brought back? How can one ever again trust oneself in the company of woman or man when it has been told to one by the gods that one will kill the very people one lives most, one by an act of physical violence, the other by one of infamy?
        I fled! Maryanne was not going to become my wife! Of that I felt certain. Though I loved her, I did so with utter purity of heart and mind! She was my mother! And as for Philip, nothing could have induced me to take up arms against that reverent head! So, I did what I had to do. O the cleverness of the gods, Ivory! O the depths of my horror! O the tyranny of youthful hope! I began a life on the road, as I am--irony of ironies--living on the road again all these many year hence. And do you know that I could not die? I think you have already guessed that, Ivory, have you not? That I wished to die then, many years ago? You knew because you have seen it in my eyes, seen that I have visited death and returned with a surfeit of it on my being. Death written on me.
        I had hardly left home when I encountered a group of soldiers on a narrow way. I stood to one side to let them pass. They ignored me and strode by. But one of them, an old, white-haired man, as he passed, turned and pushed me aside, raising his oaken cudgel to strike me. Enraged, suddenly, I wrested away his stave and swung it in an instant at his own head. I hit him harder than I intended, I think, though I have had second thoughts about that since.
        Nevertheless, he fell to the ground and eight soldiers rushed at me with swords in their hands. I still had the dead man's staff and with it I flailed about me. Before one could have said "Robinson Crusoe" all of them but one lay lifeless, the byway littered with their bodies. I had never felt fear, don't get me wrong. I wanted to die! I fervently wished that I had then been killed! But fate had other things in store for pitiful me. As you will hear, death was not my youthful destiny. Thirty years later I am still alive and well and, my blindness excepted, as capable as ever. I believe that I could still inflict similar devastation if need required. My strength remains undiminished over the years. Is that not remarkable, Ivory?
        The rest of my story will have to wait for another occasion. Tomorrow night maybe I will continue it. Do you know where I should relieve myself? Help me to a spot and then I will try to sleep, I think. I am the author of my own destruction, and I know it all. I congratulate myself not on my history but on my knowing. My knowing what I endured and what I must still endure before my long flight is done. You are not my mother are you, Ivory?

On Maryland Off Broadway

On Maryland Off Broadway

     by What's His Name

        Hitler had only

        Rommel had two but

        Himmler had

        But poor old Gooballs

I've just come from giving a lecture. I am fifty-five and divorced with two high school-aged kids I seldom am allowed to visit. Dandy sees me and opens the door. 

        "Really good play you wrote. It's great!" I say this coming up the steps. They creak. They are strong, nevertheless. The yards in this part of the city are thirty feet wide. Cops live on each side of Dandy and Filbert's. The eaves touch. The yard on the right sports a chopper without a motor. 

        "Really?" she says, emphasis on the first syllable. "Wow, I'm so glad," is what she means. Filbert shakes my hand, then she. Her's lingers, saying, "Remember when you thought these the softest hands?" 

       "Take the Martin in the warmth?" Filbert says. It is twenty-five below, not good for the preservation of an instrument. Filbert operates a skyhook. Off season now, he lazes. His father fixes cars in the country on his yard in a grey plywood Quonset, the chokecherry trees beside it tall and spindly. The fruit puckers the mouth. He hit a policeman and spent a full year in jail for it. He drinks now only under his wife's care. 

        Filbert likes his beer. He also likes Glenna. They sleep together now and then because Calvin doesn't anymore. Calvin drinks Guinness when he drinks Guinness because of his Irish roots. Filbert drinks anything but Guinness. Filbert can play a passable Vaughan lick with a few hours practice. Calvin says things at the dinner table, with adult guests and his mother present, like, "Mandy still makes me think of a giant ostrich," flapping his arms like short wings and springing his legs. He will say this twice with accompanying motions and emphasis on "still," once at the beginning and once in the middle of the meal. 

        Inside, three women sit on a couch without legs, low to the floor. One of them has swollen glands from wisdom teeth coming in. On each side of her a woman sits with her legs tucked under her and a mug in her hands. Steam ascends from one of them. I put the Martin down in the hallway and then move it a few feet, away from the warm air register. Around the boots the smell of damp, cut plywood. The fur of the cat standing on the guitar case radiates heat. Old oil in a hot cast iron pan. She squeaks when I push her and bats at my mitten. The look in her eyes grows mischievous. It is too hot in this house. The thermostat on the boiler can't be working. 

        Mandy wobbles towards me with arms outstretched. 

        "You must be thirsty," I say after I have lifted her and hugged her and spoken her name three or four times. She reaches out an arm and hand, fingers spread. I go to the kitchen and look for a cup with a spout. I pour water into a pint jar from the clean dishes rack and help her drink. She chokes, and when she recovers says, "Oh, oh!" I hug her and walk into the living room. I am forever hugging Mandy. I notice that the top of her head feels slightly feverish. After awhile I take off her sweater and stockings so she can run around in her Huggins and t-shirt. 

         "Mandy loves grandpa," say the women sitting on each side of Glenna. The three look at me holding her. When they have finished some silent and spoken congratulations, and confirm that Mandy will be well looked after, they resume their conversation. Filbert gives up the armchair in the corner for me. He leans forward out of habit more than to pay attention. His crossed legs dangle and his elbows rest on his knees. 

        I sit facing out from the corner of the room. Mandy climbs onto and off my lap with intense regularity and teeters always here and there among the jackets, books and household items on the floor. I go to the kitchen for a carrot. It has much garden dirt on it. I rinse it, rubbing with my palms till it looks clean. When I sit down again, Mandy comes, arms stretched, eyes on my carrot. I hold it to her lips but she pulls it, whining, till I let go. She sits on my lap while she eats. 

        I say, "Just a little bit. Don't take big bites. You might choke." She bites small bites and I am convinced that she loves me. She lifts it up to my mouth, watching my lips with cute eyes.  I nibble and feel the odd sensation of a lot of spit. Next time she gives it to me I wipe it first. 

        "Mm mm, good!" I say.

        "Mm mm," she says. 

        As I am leaving, after Mandy has also shared my toast and jam and a sip of the tea Glenna makes for me, getting up despite her unhappy teeth and throat, Dandy appears out of nowhere. Standing beside me above the stairs, with one arm around my shoulders, she says,

        "See you tomorrow night. We're working on strong endings, right?"

        "Yeah, strong endings," I say, squeezing her waist. "See you tomorrow."

His Mother's Taste in Colours

My Mother's Taste in Colours

     by D. R. A. Y. M. A. R.

Bardo's family life made the grackles look positively Clint Eastwood. They lived in a walk-up above a shoe repair in East Fort Gary on a street that shall remain nameless. His mother's taste in colours! Gad! Black and blue, the front. The hue not of delphiniums which would have reminded of puff and oxygen but Port Colburn helcinite. Why not just spray paint a huge "weird" on the front window?

        He, himself, had never committed adultery but Gertie had. And with an uncle! A minister! How could she have done that her mother said to her in his presence because she thought him too young to understand. And when Gertie had apologized enough over a two-week period by crying, wringing her hands and performing various other displays of obedience, his mother had in fact gone from abject disapproval to intent interest in the details of the tryst. Whether Ronald knew. How many times. In the garage even! The use, skilful or clumsy, of objects and toys. The application of and manipulations with oils, flower petals, ice cubes, oblong objects of specific shape and texture and also the size of these. Nothing beneath her dignity or beyond the borders of her hunger.

     Bardo liked reading. The history of the Hubble telescope. Tourism. Montisuma's revenge. The Mexican economy. Aberrant Pomeranian mating conventions. The nature and frequency of muggings in Hyde Park. Moses's probable meandering's in the reed basket before Miriam's mother took him to nurse. The nefariousness of fashion industry recruiters. Blues in America. Little Brother Montgomery. Blind Lemon Jefferson. Maimie Reefer. Jump Jimmy Adams. Sun Records.

        Bardo disliked all references to sex between humans. In the animal kingdom, fine. But not concerning consenting adults, politicians, passion, experimentation, privacy, successful parenting, lesbian couples, cruising, gay men, movies about gay men, telephone-personals women, virginal Britney Speers, aging vital grandparents, or older persons, and housewives. As far as he was concerned, the topics of sex might all happily be erased from the pages of magazines and books and never be referred to in conversations either. 

        Del's life ended in the war. His mother and father frequently still burned candles for him. Bardo hardly remembered him. Del's room had become Bardo's room, and though its sloped ceilings and small windows cramped life in it, adjustment had come quickly. It came gradually but felt quick. Before, he'd slept on a cot in a corner of the basement behind the furnace where, from as far back as he could remember, the sound of the sudden fan soothed him when he couldn't sleep. He'd wait for it. Tell himself it would be soon. And the service box above his head with Federal Stab-on Centres written in white letters on a blood-red label he read often lying down. Wires inside metal tentacles crisscrossed through the fir planks above. Where two joists were used together for strength, as around the opening for the stairs, a crack between them rained light dust when someone stamped on the hardwood in the kitchen. 

        Sockeye, his next door neighbour, lived in fear. He himself said it was not fear but kindness. If kindness consisted of reprimanding Bardo when he told an off-colour joke, or not laughing unless the joke poked fun at no race or suggested no raciness, and if it meant interrupting anyone except people whom Sockeye admired and whose favours he curried, then he was not afraid. Sockeye's mother lived for the Valium with which his father supplied her. She would say things to her daughter-in-law such as, "If I had known how beautiful that vase was, I wouldn't have given it to you. I would have kept it myself!" Sickness kept her indoors and inactive. The only activity she found tolerable was shopping. Sockeye disliked any references to his parents. Neither to his mother's health nor to his father's tendancy to give extravagant gifts. Like his father, Sockeye spent lavishly on presents for his acquaintances. 

         Bardo had met Sandrilaka in Prague and then communicated with her for two years, mainly by letter. Her hair, brown as doeskin, and her eyes, blue as the colour their house was not painted, took him. He initially found breathing difficult in her presence. And when that affect left him he discovered that, with her or not, he could not stop holding his breath until a deep one surprised him. After a few months, in the letter writing stage, he said the most absurd things, things he regretted later after he had fallen out of love again. "I think of you all the time." "I miss you so much I hardly know what to say." "How can I ever in words begin to express my inner emotions." Many more. All of it foolish and trite, though he had felt those sentiments with a sincerity that he now could not understand. He tried re-feeling them, the words, but failed. She was he knew not where now. He did not feel blue about it. 

        For now, living in his basement suite on Henry St., looking at the back of the Finklemann Fruit and Vegetable wholesaler, it's brick blackened on the ally side, he was glad he was not in love. Now he knew himself better than he had there for a few years. 

White Bodily Fluids

White Bodily Fluids
     by Dirk Duggler

       busybodies, prepare ye 

       the way of the Lord

Lying is a manly act. If you've been working on a written report since four AM because your grades suffer when you don't (being naturally an average student), and a gifted acquaintance (who writes his in an hour and scores top marks) says, "Did you get up early again?" then say, "What do you mean? I got up at ten." Don't let the manipulators force you into honesty.
        I am a teacher of undergraduate courses. I have graying hair and a receding hairline. My salary is less than forty thousand. I shop for my suits, shirts and jackets at Value Village. I have never employed a tailor. My vehicles both have rust around the wheel wells. This spring after classes ended I spent a few days doing my own rust repair on them, grinding, sanding, fiberglassing, puttying and painting. I own a cabin (not a cottage) that cost me fifteen thousand. I live in River Heights in a common bungalow. When my wife and I are visiting in voluptuous and sumptuous houses of similar or slightly larger size than ours, we come back wondering if we should put out a greater financial effort and buy a better place. At the end of each summer, when we have overspent again, we agree to buckle down and not buy coffees, stop at McDonald's for an Egg McMuffin even once a week, and see what's in the freezer so we can save a few hundred dollars in September and October.
         The student in the front row with a sundress and neat hair, attractively sweet and smiling, became quite distant after the third class in September when I gave my charges this analysis of the value of lies. She gave the appearance of being bored with the course after that and missed too many days. Another truism: "Don't overprepare. Too much information and students don't learn much." I expect that my upper-level undergraduates this year will require authority. I will say to myself, as if I was speaking to them (by way of deflecting the attitude that they will take that they want both entertainment and display of confident knowing in the subject they are studying under me), "I am not an authority on Mennonite Literature. I don't know what the word authority means. It has no meaning for me. I know a great deal, but I will not show that to you all at once, nor ever in any comprehensive way. Some of you may quit the class when you do not get the show of authority from me that makes you feel that you're getting well educated. Others will begin to miss numerous classes but stay for the credit. Some will settle for being entertained. You will, however, if you stick around, learn a great deal in this class because you will read many poems and stories together with me and I will quietly provide for you with questions that derive from my rich discoveries, which in turn themselves derived from my not saying much when the temptation is to say a great deal, and saying a great deal when the common requirement is to say little."

          Related to this business of authority is the way some colleagues relate to women. One woman of my acquaintance asked me why Bill Bentley (a well-known teacher of art history at our university with thirty-five years experience under his belt) never smiled at her. "I always give him a big smile when I pass him in the hallways," she said  to me, "but he pretends not to know me. He never smiles back. I took expressionist history with him five years ago. He has a prodigious memory. I know he remembers me. I know he does, but he won't smile at me. What's with that?" 

        I thought I had an answer and told her that he probably has trouble relating to women. Later I thought that he probably has trouble with authority. Women who smile at you and then you smile back, means that you are not in control of the future with that female. A man must not smile easily or give too much of himself to a woman at all, any woman, wife or daughter, fellow passerby or new acquaintance, if he wishes to continue to be fed the sense that he is in the drivers' seat generally in this world. The world is a place that does not not truly vindicate hierarchies. Signs of successful manipulation ("control" for our purposes, or "authority," if you will) vaporize and disappear as quickly as shit down a toilet when you smile willingly, extemporize unwisely, stay silent when others wait for you to speak, defer to student opinion, practice your guitar a few hours a night when your day job is scholarship, or allow (by accident or deliberation) any of a thousand other simple deflections of order.
       Apparently my book, recently published, has been shat on by a Ms. Meireanna Corbozzi who argues, in a review, I have it by way of the grapevine, that I don't know what Deleuze and Guattari's thesis is. Since theirs is the theoretical heart of my book, her criticism constitutes claiming that I am assuming a vapid authority and should give it up. I expect that she does not appreciate my treatment of the poets and story writers whom I treat to a Deleusian analysis, finding my stance unauthoritative, excessive, irreverent, full of things left out that might have been said, and unaware thus of the good things that might have been given about Mrs's. Wiebes, Friesen, Bergen, Ms's. Brandt, Birdsell, Klassen, Braun, Poetker and Toews. In most cases my analyses in the book praise little, criticize little and analyze a great deal a certain few of their works. No comprehensiveness speaks from those pages, I say without embarrassment. No authority fails to smile out of them, either. I wrote, I proliferated, I thought, I smiled, I published. Mia culpa.

        At this point in my life I have no regrets. My students tend to like me in the end, I tend not to remember bad reviews, I make friends with outcasts, I regularly give up those acquaintances who irritate me, I stalk no one, I consider knowledge of the world's human order increasingly tedious and not worth the effort, and I continue to become more clever. I will not end this story with any clevernesses.

Loving God

Loving God

     by Douglas the Divine

I liked what I saw. 

        There was Joe, the oldest. He leaned against the fireplace, his pipe in his hand, talking to his dog. The family fortunes had been dealt a death blow and they were all standing in the kitchen of the old manor house for the last time. The last of the horses, heavy Percherons, being led away by new owners, swayed and thumped, shod hooves slipping on the cobblestones of the courtyard. 

        "Yer won't be getting such as this much longer, will yer?" Joe sang out to the small dog lying by the fender. He held out a rind of bacon from his empty breakfast plate. His drooping, horsey features and bowed head spoke of defeat. He was engaged to the neighbouring estate owner's daughter, Doris. He would marry, step into harness and go to work for her father. The others, Joe thought, especially Mabel, were not as fortunate as he. 

        "What are'ter going to do with yourself then?" he said to Mabel as she bent to clear her brothers' plates from the table. She spoke no word nor acknowledged him with a look. 

        "Yer can't sleep on the streets that's sure," he added, but Mabel said nothing. "Might be yer could keep hoose fer aunty crost toon. Till yer find anither place as'll hav ter." 

        Henry, the middle brother, kept quiet until he noticed Dr. Ferguson coming up the drive. 

        "There's the doc," he said leaning out to see the front step in the courtyard. 

         "Is he turning in?" asked Malcolm the youngest. He said little. He felt less concern than the others. He was young and stood a better chance of making his mark than they. 

          "Yes. Here he is." Henry went to the door as the doctor knocked. Mabel nodded to the visitor as he entered and then left the room.

        "Sulkiest bitch that ever trod," Henry said, shaking his head in the direction of her disappearing back. "What should we do tonight? The Tap and Spyglass? Jill and Denise at least will be there." The doctor nodded and smiled. He took the drop of whiskey Joe held up to him and raised his glass in a toast. 

          John Ferguson practiced in the countryside far from Liverpool where he'd been educated because once here he had grown to like the rough and ready people. They were suspicious people, unwilling to see a doctor except when death made it preferable, and they were in every way difficult to meet. Yet, he would not have traded this lonely, unwelcoming place for the city. 

        He passed the cemetery and was startled to see Mabel kneeling at a grave. She looked up at him then, seeing him too, and stared at him with dangerous eyes. They mesmerized him, leaving him weak. Where before this moment he had felt light and free, now his spirit sagged under the weight of her powerful eyes. The oppression passed the moment he moved out of her sight, but it took some time before lightness returned to his step, to his heart.

Examining Ourselves from Behind

Examining Ourselves from Behind

      by Kindly Dougie McDonald

everyman

aphoric his state of mind

alliterative his mien

qualifying all

even that endless question of

judgement as the real

if judgement is the real

then all is flux

and Being has no home

Lorenzo Smith had been contemplating the way his daughter loved her daughter. He knew that she loved her dearly. She loved her so much that she could not abide having her disobey and be mischievous. And she mischiefed, that little girl, never doubt that for a minute. The temptation for his daughter, Lorenzo thought, was to teach the little one to be good by telling her what to do and expecting her to follow these instructions immediately. Swift punishment of sharp tongue and precipitous placement in isolation in her room followed hard on any resistance to her mother's requests. Now, Lorenzo knew that the odd outbreak of telling and requiring, as well as the occasional confinement in a room by herself, would do the child no harm. But he also knew that implacable authority caused lasting anger in children. He considered that he had learned much by raising his own daughter, and now by watching her raise hers. He had a few thoughts one morning about the matter and decided to jot them down. 

       It just so happened that he was due that very hour for a rectal examination by his doctor Susan Cracks and he did not look forward to this event. In fact, he felt that he might just decide against going and pretend that he'd forgotten the appointment. He got up and wrote these ideas down. He felt inadequate to say anything about children to a mother who loved her child so much. But in the end he did record these following precepts and meant to give them to her soon. 

Mischief kids grow out of

Anger they don't

Control isn't everything 

It's cracked up to be

Teach a child how to love

And you teach a child how to love

The fertilizer of control

Breeds hate and anger

Love: a product of giving in

We tend to control our firstborns

Give a kid a chance

Make love more important 

Than behaviour

We control because we are afraid for them

Then they control because they are afraid of us

I would rather have a naughty child now

Than a naughty adult later

Gentleness and kind talk 

Gets us just as far as authority

It feels like authority is the only way

Giving up authority is another and better way

Though a harder one

A child learns to love to the degree

That a parent learns to give up control

The best step taken is sometimes a step backwards

Sometimes we do in the name of instruction

What we actually do because we are tired

"Talk to your kid," said the lord

Lorenzo knew that he had some authority In these matters since he had himself learned (by accident, having sired a thoroughly single-minded daughter whom, it goes without saying, he loved to distraction) by growing his own. He had learned in addition by observing parents around him, seeing how they inevitably wished to channel their offspring's behaviour and correct it, thinking that that was a most important thing to do during these early formative years.

       He, Lorenzo, knew in his heart though, and had known when he raised his children, that that desire to make your children behave and follow a certain path meant that they did not get to choose their own path. This not choosing their own path meant that they could not learn to see their own value. Not seeing their own value meant that they learned to hate themselves (rather than hate their own parents whom children will love no matter what these parents do). Hating themselves, they grew angry and could not in the end relate to the parent who had loved them by controlling them. All too often he had seen this scenario played out and his heart ached for the little ones. His heart ached for the little granddaughter who was of his own blood. 

        Lorenzo did not want to go through with the rectal exam, but in the end, on impulse, he up and drove down to see Dr. Cracks. She bent him over, she spoke kindly to him, she penetrated his bum, and she declared the whole thing a success, including his health. So, everybody wins, Lorenzo thought, as he drove home in his red Mazda truck.

Paging Rrophets

Paging Rrophets

      by Dougie Dorkheimer the Third

The day is coming to an end. Prepare the way of the Lord. I am not good enough to stoop down and tie the laces of His shoes. I eat wild locusts (There are no other kind, I believe. No one would raise them. No one would attempt to domesticate locusts, would they? For what? Eating? Not enough prophets around. To help out Pharaohs  pissed at slave nations? Nonsense. Now, honey is another matter. Lots of people to help slurp that up.) and wild honey. It's not easy to get. A variety of cultures employ a variety of methods, but in the desert around here the Ibnites tend to smoke out the nests and climb high rope ladders to where they are located. That is how the Dead Sea scrolls were found, in fact. Honey gathering. 

        I have not the advantage of a community so I go it alone. I just distract the bees by spreading a little honey from my private supply on my naked body (carefully avoiding certain parts). I run past the hive a few times till I have most of the bees following me. I let them get close and land and then roll in the sand and kill them all. Walla, no bees! There is an art to this, I know. You learn by trial and error. Locust for protein, honey for sweetness and energy. Today your account will be required of you. Today we live, tomorrow we die. I will cut this baby in two and you each get half. If you study and get your Ph.D you have something at least. Better a plumber with a Ph.D than a plumber without one. There once was a kind father with two children, Hansel and Gretel. God helps those who help themselves. Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's. A life is empty of meaning. There is no exit for humans because we are the only moral entities in the universe; nothing else is or is required to be moral. Only man is so saddled and he has no escape because he knows too little. He knows nothing of the future. He is more moral than God. Man is the idiot who thinks he can know. Man will no longer be man by the year 2050. "Mankind" will be over by then. What we need is a man who longs not to be a man. We need someone who is not interested in replacing God once God has--as He has--abdicated. We need someone who is interested in the history of meaning because no other available body of knowledge exists for him to entertain himself with. We need someone who is happy and joyful, and in the thought of his own loss finds most joy. Yes, we need that person and that person is coming. I am not worthy to untie his shoelaces. That person is on his way here because I can hear the thunder of his steps. He neither creeps nor slinks. He is a stranger to careful thoughts. He does not at all revere the secret way nor practice the neat and restrained. He is a singer of sad tunes that make him happy and happifies others, too. He sings, plays an instrument, walks far, likes the thought of lying on grass and looking up at the sky, of lying on grass and looking down at the dirt. He loves dirt, air, water and sun. He is a force to be reckoned with. He has no love of the past for the future has occurred to him. The future irradiates him with its goodness and with its wealth of places to swim. The future is honey on him.

No Tall Tales

No Tall Tales

     by Shortense Hind-Bottom

Bunyans hurt, they say, but have never, praise God, had one myself. It feels as if someone's pulling a fish hook out of the ball of the foot. Or like hiking with broken glass under the heel. Or someone tapping a little hammer on an aching molar. 

        This is how McDairmid started off his Sunday school lesson March 5, 1009, the year Ballyhunagden castle was completed. The year that saw little King Harold the Grunter and his enormous wife, Magdridsdottir, establish their seat in its spacious courts. This was also the year peace finally came to CoMeade on the northeast shore of Bailedonague island. Till then, since the fifth or sixth centuries, wars had inevitably sapped them of energies and foodstuffs. Now, edibles aplenty in the markets. Even early already here in March produce from trade with the English had doubled since the previous year and everyone seemed happier than they had been for decades.

        McDairmid looked around the room of little ones, May, Sandra, Wanda, Wendy, Sindy, Pretzella, Dawn, Carabelle, Joy and Ron and continued.

        "See my foot, for instance," he said. He undid his laces, took off his boot, slipped off his ledderstrempf and raised his right foot, sole up high enough for the group to see it well. 

        "This foot has walked very far.  Thousands of miles has it seen the earth pass beneath itself. It has thought not one thought in all that time. No, not a single conception has it generated in its fifty-three year sojourn. What does that tell you ladies? What can you incidentally glean from that?" The room smelled of his socks and his skin. Everyone but McDairmid felt a little dizzy.

         "'Put your foot down, it smells'?" Or, "'please don't tell us. We pretty ones don't want to know firsthand what an old foot has gone through'? But halt, there is some method to this. I shall now draw a relevance, an interesting moral, from this little display and prelude. May I put my foot down now? Aaahhh, thank you."

        With that McDairmid lowered his foot, took a deep breath and told them the following.

        "Ladies, young generators of future mankind,, I wish to inform you that this foot is happy! Yes! Without bunyans, without corns or rickets, without hideous growths of any sort and without even a serious case of itching callouses it stands erect and proudly before you as an emblem of the joy of thoughtlessness. Do you begin to see my drift?" He further lowered the foot that he had earlier raised for them to inspect. Unblemished, it lay before them as calmly as a sleeping infant, as trusting as a whale pup stuck to the side of its mother lumbering through the deep.

        "Joy is not to be had by hard thinking. That is the moral for today. Joy, however, may be taken through a combination of thought and action. Viz., I run, jump, wiggle toes and so on as action and my foot sighs with relief after what it has had to endure for the previous half hour when it was being held up to my head as a catalyst for the thoughts that I've been expounding before you. So, yes, a mixture of the two works its small delights. Joy may be gotten by a predominance in you of rest and laziness where the foot sees nothing but sky and gorse and bedsheets. That is, sick, sad, resting, lazy, unpredisposed and so on, it lays about in a fallen fashion. Then, too, the foot feels joy and release from care. But, try to make that foot privy to each of your head's concerns, lifting it to your ears each time another fancy hums through the spaces between them, and it will soon complain. It hates such compulsive attention to thinking. So I give you the truth, younglings, that you will derive more joy out of a thoughtlessness than out of a busy intellectuality that engages all parts of you, even ones I have as of yet not chosen to appropriate for my small fables and lessons. That will come. Let's see. What body part should we, Fiona, make the centre of our discussions next Sunday? Well, maybe that will be clearer for you on the day itself. Class dismissed. We shall see you at 10:30 sharp next week of a Sunday. 

None

None

     By DouGlas Er eiMer

       when the sun refused to shine

       when the sun refused to shine

       oh lord I want to be in that    

            number

       when the sun refused to shone

Darkness came, and the sun no longer held the world in light. Now a form crept with care from the old mill house, crossed the yard in the shadow of trees, and entered the church. No canle shone at any window. The dark casements of Église St. Surplice glowed black and still against the wispy lumination of moonlight. A night cock wooed, and from behind the house the Lilburn Wrentit babbled through the mill wheel. Crickets and dogs in the far distance. Cloying hibiscus nearby. Lilac flowers dropping their odors on everything. Dust of the earth needing rain laying on the tongue and in the nostrils. The hour of sacred love had come.

        Her habit about her, Justina, nun of the Whitefrock order, stood at the front of the church, cheerful, and too full of anticipation. Her heart beat quickly, and her hands held each other. When the door opened, and Enry entered, she whimpered loudly enough for him to hear and he stopped in the aisle. He did not feel her fear. He felt, if anything, a great expectation, and her frightened sob encouraged him. He walked easily now, not as he had done in crossing over to the church, and in a moment he stood before her. The alter loomed. Above them a statue of a suffering Jesus in the arms of a tender mother Mary hung high  up in the carapaces of the cathedral. 

        "Justina!" Enry said, quietly, for he was not a boorish man. She said nothing, but mewed again, put her hands to her face and covered her eyes.

        "We are not alone here," Enry said. "Look!" He turned his eyes upward toward the ceiling and there statuary and paintings, alive with the faint light of the faces of throngs of those saved at the end of days, dove and swam in the vaulted heights.

        "I don't think we should go through with this!" Justina said quietly, fearing that her sisters would come to her aid. They slept, all twenty-three of them, young and old alike, in rooms along the edges of the chapel  built there for them by beneficiaries centuries ago. Their sharp ears heard everything. Mice dared not walk too boldly over the stone floors. Bees roused them, arriving at the hive below the eave late after a night of drinking, bumping in accident against their window panes. The nest of dovelets cheeping in their little sleeps, caused the twenty-three to turn and look once about. The twenty-three were a restless nest of lets themselves.

        "None but thou and I shall know of this night's deeds," spoke Enry with strong assurance and he placed his hand upon sweet Justina's breast. She moved from him, and then she moved again, this time into his embrace with a willing forcefulness that surprised him who thought her so lightly driven.
        "Oh Enry!" she said. "Twelve years this need has been on me and now I will take what I may from you to drain it away! The time has come. Now is the day of reckoning!" So saying, she's threw off his hat, pulled sharply at his shirt buttons, grabbed at his belt buckle, and then yanked down his trousers with a suddenness that left him speechless.

        "My! Jristina! What have you done! This is not the way . . . ." His words fell on deaf ears. As suddenly as she had started, she stopped. She attacked her own habit, and before a cock could have crowed twice, she stood there in her natural finery, resplendent, with thighs, stomach, arms, breasts, legs, and throat displayed in the moonlight filtering down from the ponès above. The scent about her was roses in dew. Enry turned to run. But it was too late! She lunged forward and snatched him firmly by the belt. She drew him back toward her with a willfulness out of keeping with the nuns of Whitefrock. She undressed him leisurely, and then took him in her arms, his eyes wild and roving, his hands reaching now and then for purchase. Such dreadful longing he had till now and in all his born days never beheld nor had to endure enacted upon his person. She nibbled, licked, tickled, toyed, pressed, depressed, slid, tangled, felt of, sprinted, sprangloticled, whispered, sucked, prodded, probed, knickered, wumpleed, snumped, pressed some more, squeezed, grabbed, yanked, tore, pummelled, whipped, mittened, handled, dallied, mouthed, and snickpelted with such a will and for such a duration that Enry fell senseless to the floor, deprived of even the feeling now of fear. For the first time in his life he had met his match and from that day forward, notwithstanding the irony of the situation that the cavalier had been outcavaliered, he would have have none of nuns. He crossed the street when he saw them.  He hurried along down allies where he thought not to meet up with them. He seldom attended church except with a bodyguard at his side, and he kept his muzzleloader about him wherever he went, even to the bathroom, for it was especially there, handling himself (as briefly as ever he might), that he felt most vulnerable. He was destroyed. Heavy need had ruined him. Longing of the most unendurable sort had taken him by the horns and found him wanting. He never again saw Justina, but on certain nights of the summer season, when the moon shone steadily down and with modesty, he fancied he heard the cry of a woman in grave danger and urgent hope drifting down from the heights of the church steeple. 

Not Observing Beavers

Not Observing Beavers

         by Duog Riener the Cross

Babbitt the beaver plied his way through the waters off Margaret's Point and took in a strange sight ashore. He saw two men squatting before a strange contraption whacking each other on the back and leaping up and down. Babbitt slapped his tail and the gunshot of it made the men dive for the granite, arms over their heads. When they got up again they looked at Babbit and pulled their guns and fired shot after shot at where he swam. The spurts of water about him made him swim under the surface where they could not see him. Then he rose closer to them where they did not expect him and slapped his tail again and dived and found a spot to hide where he could watch unobserved. They fired randomly into the water here and there two dozen times and then went back to work.

        They took wire beside them and leading into the bush. They bared the ends of the two leads. Then they attached these to the box before them. Babbott watched closely. When they had done this, they reached each of them into his pocket for some wad of some sort to stick into their ears. Then they looked at each other and held thumbs up in the air for a moment, dancing a little, nodding, smiling and generally giving all the signs of affirmation and agreement. Then they crouched before their "thing" and put their hands together on the little cross above it. Not to be nitpicky about the whole mechanism, Babbitt thought, but these two are imbeciles, as complicated as they make a little thing. Why all the exuberance? Before he could think again, the men looked into the forest, nodded once more, and plunged their hands downward, at the same time falling flat on the rock before them.

        A second passed and then a roar to beat the drums of Hades split the known world and orange and yellow light as of three suns blazing filled the bay. Babbitt slapped his tail three times and dove down very deeply indeed into the sound.

        The men, now while Babbitt was not looking, rushed from their spot into the woods and began to search for a safe way over the fallen stone and jagged rock, product of the dynamite blast. When they got to where the sticks had been shoved into a crevice between two huge slabs of granite, what they saw made them hold each other and dance and jump and shout. There before them gaping a crater stood where a tree had once been. A crater six feet wide and seven deep. They leapt inside and began to inspect the rubble. They then shouted again with enough noise for babbitt to rise and tentatively glance about him once before slapping and disappearing anew.

        Gold! They had lots of it! And a whole vein of gold showed where the deep hole was clear to the bottom. Yellow, six inches wide, disappearing north into the hardpack. Quartz white, gold yellow, disappeared into the great pink granite as neatly as Babbitt disappeared into the water. From a distance the two heard insane slapping of tail on water. They stopped, paid it a second's heed, and returned their attention to the new wealth. No one must ever know of this place. No one must never be told. They would have to cart out enough only that they could walk unnoticed about town and city. They could not fill their knapsacks and pockets with it till they bent under the load, for then, surely, someone would ask them what they carried, or a policeman would force them to empty their pockets, and he would see the twenty-four karat rock and know. No, they must forever be discreet and bring out only as much at one time as they could do without suspicion. Could they carry out this act of will? Could they believe in themselves for the long-haul, or would they begin to think, when they were rich and drove big cars, that they were being nitpicky and tell a lover, or a wife, or a friend about some aspect of it? Gold rushes were caused by the smallest hint. The smaller the hint the bigger the goldrush. Tell one person, an invalid, or a person even with eyes set narrow in his face, or one with eyes set too widely there, and men and women would begin to follow them wherever they would go. Canoes would swoop down on them as they canoed. Men with revolvers would suddenly appear out of the gorse as they hiked home and shoot at them if they didn't tell. No, they must keep the secret. In the next installment I will tell you how they proceeded, and what near misses they encountered, and caused both by foolishness and by accident, too.

Others

Others

     by Chevy (the Ax) Reimer

         Do unto others as I would have you doing to them 

         Blessed are the weak for they shall inherit the Kurds

Mississippi lay back on the raft and smoked his corncob. The smoke curled upward towards the stars. A frypan of possum grease and cold catfish at his elbow and a jug of Werner's Best at his other allowed him to stay put and not rouse himself when the need for this or that arose. Sounds of a distant steamer plied by and disappeared around the bend. In his nose the brackishness of tainted fish and wet rough wood tickled. He turned on his side and slept. At daybreak he reached Cairo.

        Cairo coming around the bend got him up at last. Hot night air so thick he could hardly wade to the raft's prow had made him naked. He swooped on his overalls and took up his straw hat. Then he looped a rope over his arm and stood by to leap to the bank. He pulled in at the wharf by a café and a series of slips with other launches. None of the spaces would accommodate a craft of his size, so Mississippi maneuvered closer to the bank until he heard the bottom scrape, then jumped to shore and tied up to a tree.

        The waitress brought him coffee, ham and eggs. He finished these and asked for more. When he was done and had successfully eluded the management without paying, he walked down a Main Street until he came to a station where trucks take on water for their fields. Here he helped them fill and received small tips for his efforts. He returned at end of day to his raft, and with the tobacco purchased he lay aboard thinking that this might be his permanent place of residence. He decided, then, that, in fact, that was just what it would be. He had found his home.

        A policeman came by and asked his business. Mississippi told him and the man left. He wished then to move his bark up closer to the tree to which it was tethered. He heaved and pulled, he huffed and puffed and roared, but alas to no avail. He was too weak to pull that beast up even an inch further. Nothing for it but to leave it where it was. From here he would regard the comers and goers at the café. Yes, he thought, this is the good life. I am so glad that I am Mississippi Jake Jennings of Cairo. He smiled and relit his dead pipe

        

Picasso's House

Picasso's House

     by Douglas El Greco

Simplot purchased a painting of Pablo Picasso's house at a Sotheby auction because they had decided to diversify their holdings, surplus capital being an issue in the last three quarters. Our dealers told them that any price below three million guaranteed them a rich return if they ever decided to place it on the block again. I was sent to make the bid and when I returned to Chicago with it, security guards, two of them, sat one on each side of me. They were not allowed guns aboard, of course, but they were big men and trained in hand-to-hand combat. 

        A thirtyish woman, dressed to kill, seemed very interested in my movements as we flew. I noted this and told the guards who took an interest in her from then on. She asked questions about my work, my family, my lifestyle and my means. I answered her duly, as well as I could sitting ahead of her. She would not give over during the entire flight. She even switched to the same plane as I did at Heathrow. Eventually, during ground transport, we successfully lost her and I did not see her again until the painting had hung in the Simplot headquarters for more than a year.

        We were elated with the purchase. It raised the agricultural corporation from its rural ignorance to something resembling urbanity. The members of the board, in the meeting that ensued, spoke of the new face of the company at every opportunity. Even shareholders at large, from Wyoming, Utah, Del Rio, Montreal, Dublin, Hamburg and Asian cities, too, stopped to see the work. Excitement generates from exotic objects; that we began to understand. All of us, executives with decision-making powers, planned to organize more purchases of rare art and music. Stradivarius, Lloyd Loar, Breminski, Rachmaninoff, Wilbur, Chopin and Tchaikovsky were named among us as likely sources of original music and valuable instruments. Holbein, Winslow, Plummer, Rubens, Van Gogh, Matisse, and many another great painter found his way into our meetings. Once a year we would purchase a rare work it was decided, and I would be the one making the excursions to obtain them. Single, without a family, dapper-looking and charming, I say with modesty, I presented them with the best face for such serious responsibilities.

        Now, one day, as every day I did, I stood observing the Picasso hanging in the offices of Simplot's president. Seldom at his desk, flying from country to country as was his wont, he tacitly agreed to keep the "sanctuary" doors opened to trusted members of the executive. I observed once again the house itself, with its turrets and tweltth-century architecture. A fieldstone walk led from the lane to the front door. Twelve steps, wide and sweeping, climbed to the high double oak panels of the entry. Four graceful columns supported a ceiling and a roof above against rain and sun. Twenty-foot windows of small-pane glass, some colored red and purple, blinked in a light clearly Parisienne in tone. The sun must have been setting in the west, for the day declined and amber light slanted in with long shadows from the left of the beholder. A small front yard, a wide view of the reaches behind the house, and a sky of blue and expansive height divided the painting's perspective. In the back yard, outbuildings that were surely stables and servants' quarters neatly, coldly, done in blinding white, decorated the rest of the scene. Living beings there were none except a dog curled on the top step as if awaiting its master.

        "Where is he?" I demurely asked myself on many occasions. Was it the painter himself? Was it possibly a self-portrait? The whole picture had the look about it of Utopia, of a quaint and perfect day with heavenly weather and pastoral peace settling like bees abuzz on the overlit world of quiet objects all about. Where could he be? In his study reading? At table eating a late dinner? Might he be in the bath soaking the oils from his tired fingers? Could he be lounging in a smoking room with some of his female acquaintances, since it was common knowledge that Pablo dallied and played in that way until he died at the age of ninety-seven. 

        "He's right there by the bush," a voice said in my ear, and I turned abruptly at the tones I did not recognize. It was the woman from the plane! How confounded I felt, and fearful, too! What on earth was she doing here? She must be an agent of some sort intending to steal this, I thought. How did she get in here? The place is locked and sealed tight. No one enters without permission!  

        "Have you permission to be here?" I stuttered, betraying, I am afraid, my trepidation. I looked for signs of a weapon on her person but saw no evidence of any. In my unease, oddly aware of the unimportant suddenly, I smelled the mustiness of the canvass as if the Picasso had lain in a basement for many years unattended or cared for. Her body's pleasant appeal told me of perfumes rich and clean, scents carefully applied by an expert. She stood with one hand at her bosom, straight-backed and damned attractive in a black dress and fashionable pumps. Her neck long and thin, pulsing with the slight beat of an excited heart, she reached a slender arm then toward the painting, as if she had not heard my question.

        "There he is, don't you see?" she said. I paused, watching her with distrust, then bent toward the shadows of the foliage to the right side of the painting where brilliance turned to dark shape and wildness. Sure enough! A figure I had never noticed before, lonely against an elm of great width, but so shaded that it seemed hardly a tree at all, and the body bent at an odd angle as if needing the support of the trunk. 

        "Well, I'll be..." I said. She interrupted me.

        "He's pissing," she announced, pointing towards his waist. "He's taking a piss!" She turned to me and grinned, looking down towards my own regions of that sort. I blushed at the word. I never use it myself. This woman, for all her outward grace, coarsened the room with her speech.

        "No! It can't be! Why do you think that?" But I bent to look closer, and sure enough, a hand barely visible holding something pointy, which also came to clarity only with purposeful concentration.

        "My Lord!" was all I could manage.

        I discovered, upon further investigation, from the woman herself, that she was the wife of the company president, a former model for the great painter himself, and sent along secretly on the previous mission to guard against my leaving with the painting for my own gain. She smiled when I apologized for suspecting her of evil purposes. Then she did something that I would never have expected, nor was soon inclined to forget. She took me by the hand, kissed me fully on the lips, and whispered in my ear.

         "Let's take it with us somewhere far away!" she said, and then looked at my eyes to ascertain if I understood. I stood for a long while mulling. She touched against me with the whole length of her being, and soon I came to the conclusion that her suggestions bore some advantages. I spoke further with her, we negotiated various items of contract, she agreed, blushing at some of them, and finally we lifted the painting from its hanger and placed it in a suitable bag before driving to the airport.

Penis Williams

Penis Williams

     by Dr. Douglas Ramme

He lost to his sister Serena and afterwards they met at a small coffee shop to discuss the game. The lopsided loss surprised even his father who had bet that the younger man's recent victories guaranteed him a strong finish. Serena offered him this advice.

        "Approach the net when I'm scrambling, Penis. You tend to stay too far back, because you want to be safe, and then your near corner offers itself to my backhand. At least three times in this last set you could have driven one from ten feet crosscourt where I wouldn't have been able to get to it." Serena spoke with calm friendship to her younger brother, knowing that he struggled against advice from her. She noticed her father's silence. He drank coffee and beckoned the waitress over for something to eat. Empty because of restricted access, the cafe served today only four others, all players or trainers. 

          She waited a while, but when he sat there thoughtfully she said,

          "You are the number fifteen seed, Penis, and you will eventually take me down a notch, don't you think?" He smiled A little, because he felt a great warmth for his sister even now. He reached for one of the chocolate bagels that arrived and ate half of it before answering. He passed the other half to her.

         "I hope you're right. I sometimes lose faith in my abilities. How did you do against Sasha in the British open the first time you played it? Did you feel uncertain then? At all?"

She nodded, smiling. Her foot came out from under her and she leaned to whisper to him a confidence. The father smiled. He knew that she would bring him around. She had that cozy gentleness that found its way to its mark when she wished it to. This goodness came from a strange place, not a crooked one. Penis would be won over as he always had been.

        "Come here and hug me," she said to the boy who had till now sat there with his arms crossed. He undid them and put them about his sister, till she snuggled against him and kissed his neck. Soon all felt fresher in the cafe. They would practice the approach to the net later in the afternoon. Now the time pressed them to attend to some business before returning home for lunch. The children's mother counting on them being at table when they played home games. No one guessed the love these two felt for each other. No one knew the father's full interest in or pride over their accomplishments.