Autobiography (cont'd)

Autobiography (cont’d)

       But Klaas Reimer interests me more than does Johan Martens, Klaas, the Fool of the Dnieper, Johan, the Emperor’s Golden Bird. Klaas and Johan had known each other during the early troubles. They grew up sons of neighbours in what is now Zaporosni, once Chortiza, as I’m sure you know. Klaas eventually led the Mennonites from the land that no longer tolerated them, while Martens moved in the intimate inner circles of the one who had promised them peace and betrayed them. Both were conspirators of a sort, and both ambitious, true, but much more of that later.

       This ambition, this private inner agitation that leads the self toward some social destiny, these ideas of the singular consciousness pitted against the history of man, stir vague interest in me, but not by a long shot the hunger I feel to know and transmit the details of the generation, birth, life, death and notoriety of Klaas the Fool. I wish to tell you of the family he fathered, next in size to Abraham’s, and the family that fathered him descended, it is rumored, from the Vikings themselves and the great peoples who once flourished all across what we now know as northern Europe, who, alas, in our day subsist only in Iceland. Before the Vikings, certain records in song from the murky past suggest, the Reimer line extends to the coldest regions of the Northwest Territories, to peoples who crossed the ice or land bridge at Alaska and migrated West and South until they finally populated all of Asia Major and begat, in turn, the famous and bloody Danish hordes.

       Large indeed! Members of the Reimer family like to do what it takes to ensure the generation and increase of our own. We go to ridiculous lengths to propagate our genes, the women and men alike. Klaas was no exception. His forefathers and mothers neither, I believe, and that is of what I wish now to speak to you. But, first the circumstances of his growing interest in America.

       Klaas Reimer, bless his migrant soul, was my great, great grandfather on my father’s side. He was born propitiously (though anything but precipitously) with the sun beating down on him in the family bunta, the midwife collapsed in a chair and frantic from the effort of extruding him with a set of crude wooden forceps out of  great, great, great Grandmother Inga Reimer. Imprisoned in Russia as a lad, he met there with dissidents who could talk of nothing else but America. I wish to tell you of the events long before the Czar’s demise, when he was a young emperor and kindly disposed toward Mennonites. Good farmers, lusty and fruitful wives and daughters, quiet in the land (that laughable lie goes) and the whole business of the golden touch, the gift of weaving straw into gold. Korzanski told me what he knew of Klaas, whom he had met again when Klaas was warden at the Brignh, that most devilish of all of Peter the Great’s prisons. But that is another story. Now I need to hurry. I have only a few moments. I go for exercise shortly. The other inmates will be out of the yard in two minutes.

       My mother, a Zacharias, a Jewess, longed for a son and on the day I was born sunlight filled the room with such brightness and warmth that she felt certain I was destined for some great purpose.

       “A great joy filled me and I knew that God had some grand plan in store for this baby,” mother would say. “I felt like Elizabeth must have conceiving John.”

       My father left his father’s farm at a young age and worked in the great north woods for a spell, till he turned twenty, and then headed south to find his fortune. I had ten brothers and sisters, being born at a time when large families still outnumbered small, and children crying and suckling and fidgeting in church bothered no one especially. Spank them with a show of severe agitation as they carried them down the aisle out of the assembly and keep them in the waiting area till they settled down and when refreshed come back for what was left of the service. This provided mothers and children with a necessary break, two and a half hours being an immense long time to endure the buzzing of the preacher.

       We lived on a small acreage near the American border, a quarter mile from the Emerson-Pembina crossing and we did, I now admit, though with some chagrin and slight embarrassment, occasionally sneak across to buy and sell, and to seek entertainment of various sorts among the farmsteads and small towns. These were mainly dairy farmers; and, their milkmaids, let me establish right at the start, surpassed all for litheness of limb and general felicity of proportions.

       Circumstances and bad luck started my troubles, and now I find myself here, my ten years almost complete. Lucky in love, unlucky in money, they say. Outlaw, I enjoy my surroundings. I have grown accustomed to them with reluctance. The men here treat me with respect, though a reminiscence of initial rites of passage I will not foist on anyone. You may well prod and pry, gentle reader, but no word of those trials will escape these lips. Be that as it may, I inhabit my own cell, availed of good books and various sources that I find useful for my historical interests and research, and the food they serve me three times daily leads me to nothing more uncomfortable than an occasional mild melancholy.

                                           (To be continued)

Autobiography

Autobiography

I have decided to tell my story. I stand firm by this decision despite a dubious audience as well as the embarrassment such an enterprise causes family members and even acquaintances. Had I known at the time of my troubles what I know now, I would not feel the need to burden (sic) you with the trivial details of my life, details that you who read this may at first flush think insignificant but which may yet well justify themselves and reward your patience if you take the time to reflect on them at a later date when, either in the throes of some despondency yourself, or at a moment of greater leisure, half asleep on your couch by a fire, they intrude on your solitude and awaken your memory to the serviceability of their mystery.

       I had been incarcerated nine months when I first met Korzanski. His name sounds Polish but I have no doubt now of his Russian ancestry. We discovered, via the circuitousness such unexpected enlightenings take, that he knew my father’s family. Someone by the name of Johan Martens had been the resident choir conductor and music teacher to Czar Alexander’s two daughters. This same Martens, at the time of the murder, occupied adjoining rooms to the Czarina on one side and the young girls on the other.

       Korzanski knew all this because he, at the time, had charge of ordering the care and grooming of the Czar’s horses and those of his guests. He tracked the comings and goings at the palace, ostensibly out of curiosity. His income, nay, his very physical survival, however, depended on alert observation. On the said day, he had been in and out of the palace doors three or four times with news of the Czar’s mood and temperament. He personally saw, he told me, the musician emerge from the Czarina’s room and enter that of the girls. Ten o’clock in the morning it was, March 22, 1916. Korzanski informed me of these details in December of 1975, the year he died. He died in prison, in solitary confinement, at the age of eighty-nine.

(To be continued)

Gonzalo

Gonzalo

    By Douglas the Sailor Man (avec Miranda)

No autobiography this time. No sex, either. Really. I’m sick of sex. And not a journal. Too reflexive. No high philosophy. No modern themes. Love, fear, war, lust, betrayal, transgression, family. No Christian themes or subjects. (The list above is really subjects not themes. Themes are longer statements that sum up the author’s entire purpose as it is accomplished by plot, setting, character, point of view, symbolism and other narrative elements.) No Christ figure. No loving God. No praying parents. No converted prostitutes. No examination of humility. No lessons on pride. No biblical allusions. No Moses, floods, floating babies, whore-born gods, wise kings, parables, good or bad men and women, vain, learned Sadducees or vainglorious Pharisees (nor pharisaical Sadducees neither). No ranting elders. No hungry beggars, dissipate lepers, virtuous wives, buyers and sellers in temples, lickspittal rich merchants, short men in trees, nor gutsy women in besieged fortresses who cut off the heads of sleeping enemy kings. No raging prophets, or visionaries, and so on. Blake be damned and Milton, too. Who wants to be great, anyway. No big stories. No stories that make people wag their heads at the prodigious virtues of the author. No sparse plots. No, nor no fulsome plots, neither. No wily writer pretending love, planning fame. No second-string quarterbacks. No lyricism. No restraint and prohibition. No false excess. No laughter and no tears. There never are, only are not but act as whips in the hands of lackluster authors whose company you would discourage to even your most regrettable relative. No tall tales. No braggadocio. No thin men. No wags. Fops. Lady-killers. Don Juans. Madonnas. Sad princes. Winsome, attic-bound, lady poets. No severe brothers. No kick-ass sailors. And absolutely no great scientists. Not a single great scientist. No Einsteins. No what-the-hell-was-the-name-of-the-guy father of the atomic bomb. No tragic Manhattan Project. No Cousteaus. Rob Roys. Uncle Toms. Douglas Copelands. Lifted skirts? Maybe. Peeps at Sadie’s underwear? Tempting. Brassieres coaxed off? Yeaaah, but. No hooks and eyes. No coy use of any literature. No allusions to Faulkner, nor attempts to copy his style. No reverence for Bob Dylan. Been there. No use of nifty modernisms, blah, blah, blah. No idealizing greatness in any form. No heroes nor heroines. No princes good at horseback. No fools or Falstaffs providing diversion for the higher-minded. No Sir Lancelots. No deceiving, luckless nor warring kings. Maybe a Green Knight. Maybe. Maybe Sir Gawain and the Baroness in bed. No music whatsoever. Guitars. Pianos. Flutes. Banjos. Dulcimers. Especially dulcimers. Goddamned dulcimers! Congas. Cymbals. Drumsticks. Spoons. Mandos. Violins. Organs. Whistles of any color. Pipe. Penny. Dog. No travel. No protagonist or dipstick off to Europe to visit the king. And no culture. Same diff. No Joyce. No James. Enery or the epiphany guy. No Eliot. Never again. Never. No Pound, Williams, D.H., Bergson. Not even Melville. Certainly not Kathy Acker. Not if she paid for it. Have you looked into her? Vile stuff. Unreadable for any lover of Nietzsche. No depression at home. No escape abroad. No “Jeez it’s cold in Manitoba in January! Wonder what it’s like in Brownsville about now?” No sickness and death. No sickness and cure. No failure. Nor success. Not interested. No corporations winning, losing, merging, disintegrating. Absolutely no references to sports or hockey. Entirely prohibited. No quarter given there. And no ironies. No ironies in the pieces at all. None. Not one irony will I let in. No sly knowing on the author’s part. No self-promoting recollection of the times he figured out this or that. No hatred. No vilification. No vitriol. No alliteration. Nor any forms of linguistic intensification. No backbiting. No massages. By either libidinous gay men or pretty women. No lesbianism! I’m sick of women kissing women! No voluptuous descriptions of the female anatomy. No adoring descriptions of the female anatomy. No sneaky observations of the female protagonist in the bath. No female protagonists. No baths. No observations. No females. No masturbation. That’s the last thing I want in a story of mine. No one plays with himself. No playing with oneself, either privately or in public. No references to come, quim, sperm, jism, cream, milk, or any other white bodily fluids. No substitution of Anglo-Saxon for Latin. No pricks nor penises. No piss nor urine. No vaginas or their Saxon equivalents (I don't recall ever having heard the word). No ass. No buttocks. No derrieres. No tits. No hope for money. Nobody inherits anything. No yen for cars, waiting for promotion, want of this or that. No needs of any kind. No passionate embraces, or heavy-fisted defenses of virtue or vice. No fighting. No loving. No rectal examinations.  No wine-making at home. No purchase or imbibing of wine, beer, whiskey, port, scotch, liqueurs, or any commerce whatsoever in alcohol. No reflection on the state of human depravity. No mention of the homeless, the gay, the straight, the sinful, the sexless, the militant, the lonely, the weak, the pitiful, the grand, the flighty, the dull, the wanton, nor any other large personalities. No remorseful people. No industrious ones. No jam-making, preserving, fruit-picking, goose-hunting, dog-petting, log-cutting . . . . Well, log-cutting. Maybe log-cutting. No floor-sanding, house-building, church-going, cathedral-touring, political-campaigning, hen-pecking, nit-picking, weaseling, lambing, vacuuming, meteorological-reporting, sipping (neat or through a straw), wise-cracking, yelling, nastiness, and singing. No references to songs. Eighth Street and vine. With Bill Pratt his partner. I miss my darling so. Your light shines down from your window. I could be holding you tonight. Heaven’s telephone. By the old crossroad. Catch them by surprise. Nor look any other musical culture. All they rest is okay.

No Mention of the Lonely

No Mention of the Lonely

    Don Donald Reimerez

               What to do if you get lonely,

                  What to do if you get cold

                  What to say when you are only

                  Fifteen years and none too old

Wichita in the fifties lay before its future like a brick under a broken window. Motorcars crowded unpaved dirt streets, brick factories, all without glass, stared derelict out over vasts of city sprawl, lonely men in lonely windows smoking lonely pipes watched cats slink through garbage piled in paper bags behind smelly cafés. Smog pooled along sidewalks green with age and filth. Fish of indeterminate species lay inert and barely alive in ditches and canals that ran through this abandonment. Women had no water with which to bathe. Men looked for scraps to eat along the riverbank. Dogs did not chase cats or each other. In this casualness, Ronnie Ramirez lived with his grandmother, his mother, his father and brother, as well as his sisters, Tina and Maria.

         “If only I had a true friend,” he said at breakfast one day. His mother, in a red coat and wearing a black hat over her black hair, spoke reedily for him to explain himself. She did not turn to him. She held a pot in one hand and a baby in the other. She set the infant on the stove and placed porridge before her son. She smelled of sleep. Ronnie ate and brought his dishes to the washtub.

         “You go visit Ruthie,” his mother spoke to him from the other room. “Ask her if she would like to play with Maria.” The wash water was dirty and his hands hesitated to go into it. “When she was here last time she left her pinafore in my room and she could come back for it.” The baby kicked against the crib once or twice and Ronnie walked in to tickle her. He sniffed her and then went out into the field behind the apartments. He used his yoyo for a while and eventually looked up at Ruthie’s windows. She stood there and waved and then came down carrying a load of wash. She spoke over her shoulder to her mother inside the door out of which she had come.

         “Let’s go for a walk after you are done your chores?” Ronnie said. He handed her two clothes pins and then a pair of slacks. A blouse, two towels, three corners, a set of washcloths, two pairs of pink underwear, a corset, and a few handkerchiefs he reached up to her where she stood on the ladder. Dust swirled about the damp wash from Droniez’s horse and buggy. It came slowly down the ally from out of the sun and disappeared behind the poolroom across Windsor Blvd. Horse turds lined the grass where they’d been kicked aside once they were no longer fresh. The strong odor of a new one mingled with the scent of wet laundry.

         “Come inside, Ruthie!” his mother called from the back room. She appeared with the baby under her arm, which she handed to the fifteen year old who smiled and chucked. “Would you like some lemonade?” The wind rattled the window over the sink and airborne dirt outside swept past. “I’ll make a bunch of toast!” she added. Ruthie handed out the cards and Ronnie rolled the dice.

         “Sorry!” she said.

         “Sorry!” he said.

         They laughed.

         “My father used to have my mother stay out all night at Aunty Martinez’s when he wanted to catch up on sleep,” Ruthie said. She sipped the lemonade and made a face. Soda biscuits in her plate stayed untouched, but the other food slowly disappeared. Her breath came through her nose audibly. Ronnie counted it and found it to come more often than his. 
        “Cause we live in the Rivers we can’t have a cat.”

        Ruthie said, “Sorry,” and then got up.“Come over tonight for a while and help me put my Christmas decorations up with my mother?” Ronnie nodded and walked her to her door. He tapped her shoulder with his fist and she smiled at him and pulled his ear a little.

         “Good,” she said.

         “Nice,” he added.

         “When do you have to sleep?” she said and he did not know because he couldn’t remember ever looking at the time to see. He would now, though, and he would tell her next time. It was good to have a friend, Ronnie thought, even if it was a girl.

Vengeance is Mine

[Written circa 2002]


Vengeance is Mine

   By Leigh D. Doubledee

Now, when the scribes heard of this, they went and told Pilot that the Jew would have to be punished. They would have nailed Him to a cross that moment, but Pilot declined, saying that each man under his rule must have the chance to defend himself before his governor. He insisted, though they argued, and when Jesus was called by the guard, He left his cell and came and stood before Pilot.

       “What have you to say for yourself?” the governor asked in a gruff voice. A mastiff at his side snarled and made it clear that none might approach and live. Two chickadees in a hempen cage tossed their beaks skyward now and then in little trills.

       Jesus waited for someone to address him. He seemed not to have heard Pontias. The ruler, with a sudden flourish, loosed the chain that held the Great Dane and it leapt at the man in white before them. It charged, and in a second launched itself bodily into the air at the Christ. The Holy One moved not a muscle; He stood there still and silent. The beast seemed about to tear into His throat, but abruptly in his forward motion he came to a shocking stop, as if he had hit a brick wall. The nose of the dog actually dented in, and his teeth ground on a hard substance and brake. Fragments of enamel flew through the air, scattering on the stone steps. The Christ seemed unimpressed or almost unaware. He cleared his throat, and asked Pilot what it was that he had said.

       Livid, the governor took hold of a staff at his side, one bedecked in shards of glass and pointed with innumerable hooks, barbs and glinting blades. He wheeled it above him and brought it down with a curse and with enormous force on the Savior’s head.
       “There, you ingrate! Take that!” he shouted and then his wooden pole appeared to bounce off a substance hard and resilient. It rebounded back at him with such force that it sheered deep into his shoulder, cleaving it and the arm free from his body. The limb flew through the air and fell near the mastiff, which sniffed it and licked the blood. Pilot stood still in the moment before pain, and the look on his face would have surprised a devil of the fourth level of apprenticeship. Then the hurt came and he screamed three times before he collapsed and twitched on the ground at Jesus’s feet.

       “There, there,” the master intoned. “You will be alright. I will see to it that you don’t die.” With that, he took him by the sleeve, lifted him up and set him on his feet.

       “What was it were you saying?” Jesus asked Pilot. Pilot continued looking at the wound and making loud noises. He pointed at it with his other hand and howled and pointed some more. He turned to the courtesans and retainers around him and indicated his injury, bellowing for them to provide him some comfort. They said nothing, but stood there in confusion.

       In sudden and terrible rage, Pilot launched himself at Jesus full bodily as if to tackle Him. He bit at Jesus’s shoulder with foam and spittle flying, and snarling coming from his lips. His words were incoherent. He snapped and chomped at the Savior and would have inflicted severe injury on Him, but some impediment kept his teeth from finding their mark. Instead, they met with stony resistance of an invisible sort. They crunched on stone, they splintered, they brake apart, and flew, like the beast’s, about the feet of our Lord. Pilot, blood dribbling from his mouth, roared his agony and anger at the gaping crowds.

       “Help me hurt Him!” he seemed to be shouting, again and again. No one responded. No one could understand his babble.

       Jesus took him by the arm that was left to him and led him gently away across the tiled floor toward the palace entrance. Pilot looked back over his shoulder, terror in his eyes, emitting loud unintelligible cries and pulling back to be released from the Son of God's light grasp, but all to no avail. He disappeared through the gate. Watchers saw him walk reluctantly with our Lord down the street before the palace and turn a sudden corner into a narrow lane. He was never seen again.

       

Responsible for Us

                      By R. Drib

Buddy walked the second mile

He felt it in his shins

For all he knew when he got home

He’d pay for all his sins

The dog would need to be let out

The cat too and her brood

And oh he hated doing time

To keep the pigeons cooed

But when he got there all was still

He wondered what was wrong

Had time stood still or run away

With all the four-foot kind

And was this now the heaven that

He’d waited on so long

Where not a feline or dog scat

In him would raise that nasty song

Of service and of feined love

For creatures here below

For all the fowl created first

So many eons ago

Pets are a nuisance. One can never pet animals enough. Petting is a sign of their authority over you. Give an animal an inch and he’ll take an ell. F--- them all, I say. I am a man with the following habits, as my behavior concerns animals. I dislike horses. I abhor all cats. I take strong exception to the purchase and feeding of birds. I loathe snakes and their legless keep. Rabbits do not disquiet me, but irritate the hell out of me. I dispise the man in power at the upper level academy where I teach who sends around a memo asking faculty to please mind their speech and keep it proper. Cows less so, of all the four-footed kind, but even with them I avoid contact.

       I will give you a for instance. If ever I have to go to a farm and if then I am shown about it by the owner who, of course, takes pride in the few hens, sheep, goats and cows he nurses about the place, I insist that he watch me squat at the gutter in the barn and defecate. He usually looks hard at me for a minute altogether without speaking. Then I explain that cows regularly lift tail and crap wherever they may be and are not reprimanded. He will turn from Bossy or Browny then, without introducing her to me, and will lead me back outdoors to the tolerably natural part of the yard where we may breathe fresh air and tread on green grass rather than manure.

       Hens--and especially the little chicks--leave me cold and inconsiderate. I am not a vegetarian. I love to eat animals, if you were beginning to suspect my politics. I once witnessed a Clydesdale step on a chanticleer and felt elation. The fowl did not die but lay there horribly injured, to my great satisfaction. Swift tolerated nincompoops no more willingly than I tolerate all forms of animal life. I feel, at times, mornings especially, like disfiguring a puppy, or a cat. I would never do so, for legal reasons, and since I hold a public position of high rank. Yet, just once, for the sheer release of the thing, hand me a chicken as I lay there in that half hour between sleep and waking and I would venture to guess that I would not be able to stop myself. Wild life more than all other forms arouses my ire. Wolves make the world a less safe place, let alone a hygienic one. They move about the countryside indiscriminately dropping their turds on gorse and shrub, under tree and hedge. I stretch out in the grass and lay down in them! Plus, the females eat their little ones’ droppings. I have seen a mother dog gobble up—it is too much for memory—three pups worth of morning toast, wet, steaming, sickening. And this is called creation, and those creatures?

Ibises I cannot abide. They, with their long necks straining skyward one moment and ducked down beneath the mucky water the next searching out dead crab and mortified clam, give me the heebeegeebies. If I had one in my hands now, I swear I would tear it apart limb from limb. Even rare species, such as the Trumpeter Swan, activate my spleen. I seldom attend dinner parties, private or departmental, to which my wife and myself have received invitation. The Two-tufted Fishmonger that inhabits the northern lakes of Quebec strikes me as a truly offensive fowl. It snacks on beetles in the mud, dead or alive, it nibbles at things crawling in mounds of moose droppings, it defecates itself nine times an hour, and it closes its eyes so smugly on television programs devoted to it. I would like to smack those self-satisfied peepers once or twice to show it what for, and to wake it up to its fortunes.

Bears in the wild have no reason to consider themselves deserving. Give me license and I would, if I had the desire to mount such an expedition, turn my last remaining ten years to a decline in their population. What on earth do we need them for in our forests? They thrive on human waste and refuse. Knee-deep in discarded diapers, they congregate and gambol in garbage dumps, mindless of the fuss they generate in the hearts of those hired to bring human excess away from human sight. Deer, too, and especially, cause me concern for my heart. If I see one more movie about a young girl attached to a baby deer received with a broken limb on her farm, delivered by well-meaning conservation officers!

Domestic pets in my view are an abomination and should be gotten rid of. They stink, they fritter away their time, they cause the old to fall and injure themselves, they rub their anuses on blankets of babies and the babies put these filthy coverlets to and into their mouths, they whine and call when put outdoors if it is the least bit cold, and in every way insist that they be pampered. Pamper them by putting them all out in the snow on a fifty-below night for its duration, I say, and rid us of the troubles they bring. I am myself retiring in two years and by that time will have freed this house of the cat my children gave us for Christmas once when they wished to be less responsible for us.

Winsome, Attic-bound Lady Poets

a

Winsome, Attic-bound, Lady Poets

     By Dougy Doggie Dickenson

    emily dickenson

    gobbled the thickest one

    she could imagine each day

    when she was good and full

    crammed with the cream and all

    once more she’d so much to say

Oh my darling Robert Mann / I just wish that I could stand the noise and lights / and rocking band that plays so loud / the pussies stand and cry and call / and whine for peace / I hate to bother / you about this insignificance / but I know you will take my part / and let the owner of this mart / know that a woman down below / below in number eight three o / is feeling noxious every night / because the musics loudly bite

       Such nonsense and more Emily thought to herself about her most recent imaginary lover. Her father had once expressly forbidden a handsome farmer who had called, asking for her hand. Well, not asking for her hand, exactly, but next to it. He had inquired with modesty in his demeanor if he might confer with Emily, and speak to her in private because he owned a large farm with sheep, horses, cider press, barns, and various outbuildings, as well as a spacious house with a well-appointed attic in which she might spend, to her heart’s content, her time unmolested, composing verses.      

       He wished, he told her father, to strike up an acquaintance with this woman whom he had never seen, whose beauty was legendary, who excelled at the arts, and in particular at poetry, and also (he blushed as he spoke the words) whose laundry he had spied once or twice from his pasture close by as he rode his horse and counted livestock. The various items of lingerie on the lines especially had intrigued him and beckoned his heart to enquire after her availability for brief social intercourse.

       Her father had roundly berated this handsome man and asked him never in future to make reference to women’s dainties drying on racks in or out of the house, laid out in drawers, or draped about a person underneath their dresses and blouses where none was intended to see or have reason to refer to them. And if this thick man—father referred to him so to his face—if this thick man wished to be set perfectly straight on the matter, the beautiful one was his wife, Analda! Furthermore, Emily’s laundry never yet had hung outside on the line over the lawn for all and anyone to ogle over!

But, if he, the farmer, so wished, he might have a quick observation of various articles of Emily's underthings and, not unlikely, might find them a little less to his taste than his wife’s. He took the thick man upstairs to my bedroom. Without knocking, he entered, followed by this strapping young buck, who glanced at me and stopped dead in his tracks. Father opened the specified drawer and took out item after item, holding each up. The neighbor did take them in, I noticed. He was dumbstruck. He could not believe his eyes. I saw all this, I must repeat. Father said then, “Are you satisfied!” The man simply nodded and the two of them walked back downstairs. Now I pen a lament for the loss of such a fine specimen.

That was today’s memory, today's conquest of passion. What will tomorrow bring? I hardly dare say. But write I must of my own unworthiness and the beauty of the men who come to call. I remember, for instance, Basil Bayleaf. With his tanned exterior and white interior, he struck me at first as a dismal prospect. I experienced no desire fanned by his outwards. What I did like about him, though, was the way his mouth in its pinkness tongued mine when he finally got me to meet him in the woods. He talked little. We loved. I took notice of his tongue. I looked closely at the bright inside of his mouth. He showed me when I asked. “Open wide,” I said, and after a minute of introspection, he did that. Once gone, he did not return to visit again.

Now, Nelly, my horse, is another matter. Like Sir Topas, I ride him on errands. After dark, mainly. We canter along and then stop and roll in the meadow if the air is warm enough and there is moonlight. We relish in this diversion for no reason so much as the togetherness it expresses. I spoke of how we feel about each other. She likes me and I like her. With her legs dandying the air, and mine, too, and our hair flying in the night wind, we take our time and play to our hearts’ content. And then we sleep. Lying there for two hours or more, we become one with the earth, our limbs tightly entwined. Nelly has my heart now. No man will ever love me as she does. I adore her whinny. I can recognize it among those of the other mounts in the barnyard. When she neighs I come. I dash out and throw myself on her back and we ride away.

My doggie, too, is a beloved of mine. If not actually my favorite farm animal, then one I list high on the scale of friendship. His tongue lolls when he has run for a space. His eyes sweat and seem tired but happy if he exerts himself. I, on the other hand, am myself seldom active any more than is necessary for the practical tasks at hand. I write, that is true, but writing requires no swift movements of arms and legs. I sing now and then, but the forming of musical notes with the throat and mouth taxes neither the ligaments nor major muscles. I sing without perspiring and so, even when I am active I seldom lose myself to exhaustion. Doggie is frequently spent.

Now, the other afternoon, he came to me at night. He whined beneath my window and when I heard him I opened it and let down a ladder, which he has learned to climb, and up he came and spoke to me in a language we both understand. He spoke of recent nocturnal adventures. Then he lay down with his head in my lap. I pampered him. He slept, finally. He spent the night in a restless state. I do not let him up here often. If father found us he would thrash me and kick doggie.

       Father spanks me roundly when he disagrees with my habits. He takes me over his knee, lifts my dress, and punishes me. He paddles me initially without strength of purpose, but then with more vigor, until he believes that I have learned my lesson.

Doggie doggie on the wall

Who’s the fairest of them all

Is it me or is it her

Tell me please you little cur

Doggie doggie on the ground

Is my body soft or sound

Do you running think of me

Speeding over humps and skree

Doggie doggie panting hard

You’ve become my little pard

I would give my life for you

My love my dear is all too true

Doggie doggie darling pet

You are not my favorite yet

Once you are I’ll let you know

But till then you’re free to go

So she wrote. Emily fixed her gaze on a sheep in the pen outside the barn near the chicken coop and composed further. “Oh, Henry, darling wooly boy / You take me to heights of joy / I your lovely sweetheart am / You my special little lamb / When the church on Thursday meets / and my family leaves the house / you and I can freely play / spent in pleasures all the day / You will sweep the chimney first / I will be your special nurse / We will watch the evening’s sheen / then the dark’ning of the green / Children coming home to sleep / will not rush to greet their dams / For their hearts at suppertime / beat as fiercely as does mine / In my bed and you in yours / each to other fond will bleat / you of troubles I can’t see / I of things I’d rather be

       Emily fixed her mind on her poem and wrote it quickly. Then, tired, she hauled herself up off her bed and went to the window to survey the grounds below. Who would she engage for this evening, she thought as she looked about her at the moon-strewn fields.