NAP Literary Magazine
Volume 1 Issue 1 January 2011
Editor: Chad Redden NAP Literary Magazine and Books: Indianapolis, Indiana, U.S.A. & WWW.NAPLITMAG.COM NAP Volume 1 Issue 1 Š 2011 NAP Literary Magazine and Books All rights revert back to authors upon publication.
Contents Mark Cunningham [specimen] 7 [specimen] 8 [specimen] 9 [specimen] 10 [specimen] 11 Ben Nardolilli Libiamo 12 Boy Toy for June 13 Nick Monks The Wonder of the Fairy Tale
14
Amanda Laughtland Things You Don’t Have to Do 15 Nobody Means to Hurt Your Feelings 16 Going to Bed Alone 17
Howie Good Swirl 18 Michael Murphy Bon Vivant 20 Caitlyn McDowell 22 Brass Winter Sunday’s 24 Peter Branson The Curlew 26 Swifts 27 Michael Shannon Her Last Sentence 29 Christopher Mulrooney Transport 30 Farm Community 31 The Caper 32 The Heist 33
Linda Mills Sonoran Sojourn 34 Threats 36 David Supper Hey man... 37 True Love 38 Thomas E. Jordan Clearly Mumbling 39 Timothy Moore The Ghost 40 Michael Lee Rattigan Untitled 44 I Made This on a Saturday I Felt Ill 45
Peter Harris Beneath the Beautiful Mind of a Blossomed cherry tree 46 Those Reassuring Susurrating Sentinels 48 Facial Hair 51 James Evans Remick II Shoulder 60 Radio Orgasms 61 Love is a Donkey 62
NAP Submission Guidelines 64
Mark Cunningham
[specimen] The officer who opened fire couldn’t tell the difference between the suspect’s front and back, even with the suspect’s hands raised. We tried to recycle the “plastic conception” into a new form, but that only made it more plastic. All my stories are Möbius stories, so there. He hit me so hard I saw double, and then he said, “That’s just who I am.”
[specimen] He said he’d be more communicative later, but I was getting the message right now. They radioed in to say they could be reached only by letter. No matter where it comes from, no sound is distant.“The sound of small aircraft makes you hum.” To the person who said, “Don’t forget me”: whoever you were, I haven’t forgotten.
[specimen] Oh, everybody likes you, just not the way you like them. “Speak for yourself,� the ventriloquist said. Dust is always superficial; we are all dust. The speck of dead skin stopped being part of my eye and became part of the visible world. One symmetry = a symmetry.
[specimen] I could hardly see the moth against the brick wall and, when I finally found it, it had spot-like gaps in its wings, so figured it was near its half life. “It’s like radio. It makes sound.” She said she had been a follower of Baba R.E.M. Dross, but now she followed Baba ROM DOS. We couldn’t tell if it was a real tree or made out of wood.
[specimen] The test was on the uncertainty principle, but since my mind works on the uncertainty principle, I didn’t do so well. I turned on the light, which made me have to shut my eyes. It’s cold enough in the kitchen that I can see my breath; therefore, air exists.
Mark Cunningham has published three books, 80 Beetles (Otoliths); Body Language (Tarpaulin Sky); and 71 Leaves (ebook, BlazeVOX). A newish chapbook, Georgic, with Eclogues for Interrogators, is on the Lamination Colony site.
Ben Nardolilli
Libiamo You will never be poor You have the laughter of a woman, I am the source of many women’s laughter But unlike you, it is never shared With them behind closed doors.
Boy Toy for June Take me out for a conversation, Promenade this mouth for a talk, I am willing, flexible, hand me Subjects and give me ears to wear Down until they understand The origins, the definitions, The closing of the is/ought gap, Such is the powerful joy I run Through my mouth for nights Measured out in our empty glasses.
Ben Nardolilli currently lives in Montclair, New Jersey. His work has appeared in the HoustonLiterary Review, Canopic Jar, The Delmarva Review, Contemporary American Voices, SoMa Literary Review, Gloom Cupboard, Black Words on White Paper, and Mad Swirl. Ben was the poetry editor for West 10th Magazine at NYU. He maintains a blog at mirrorsponge.blogspot.com.
Nick Monks
The Wonder of the Fairy Tale On the path into the forbidden wood I tread on scented rotting pine needles My breath born into the frosty air Between and in then on into the trees A shower of dew from a branch Unlike Hansel and Gretel being an adult I found my way back to the car park But saw the ghosts in the ruined house
Nick Monks was born in Lancashire, England, in 1965. He studied philosophy at Hull University. He has spent about six years working and travelling abroad. Nick has been published widely in small press magazines. He likes mountain walking.
Amanda Laughtland
Things You Don’t Have to Do You don’t have to be cheerful when you’re blue, vivacious when you’re tired, sympathetic when you’re bored. You don’t lie awake listening to snores. You need never turn out your light no matter how late. No one lingers in the tub when there’s only just time for a shower. You have life’s great blessing, a bathroom to yourself.
Nobody Means to Hurt Your Feelings Your family might wish you’d acquired a husband instead of a desire to find your own life, but nobody means to hurt your feelings. Accept the idea of poor little me, and you’ll only be a bore. Ladies who expect orchids get orchids while you’re sniffing a single gardenia. Fill your time with amusing things—parties, hobbies, and books to keep you interested and interesting.
Going to Bed Alone The evening is a party, all the requisites at hand: a good thick book or a stack of magazines. You’ll have more fun than anywhere else— we’re not being vulgar. There’s nothing more rejuvenating than dinner in bed, a bowl of hot soup. It’s scarcely worth the trouble to get up—might as well make an art of it, but don’t forget your bedtime ritual to help resist the dust-filled air and hard water of most cities. Your schoolgirl glow won’t survive on its own. Amanda Laughtland lives north of Seattle where she teaches at Edmonds Community College and publishes books and zines through her Teeny Tiny Press (http://teenytiny.org). Her book, Postcards to Box 464, was published by Bootstrap Productions in 2010 (http://www. spdbooks.org). Her chapbook, Take It, can be downloaded for free from Ungovernable Press (http://ungovernablepress.weebly.com).
Howie Good
Swirl Your tongue, a swirling storm, finds me, and, Bingo! the Ukrainian church shouts, flowers pop heart pills, the fish can’t sleep because of the noise,
the leaves so green they’re almost black.
Howie Good is the author of the full-length poetry collections Lovesick (Press Americana, 2009), Heart With a Dirty Windshield (BeWrite Books, 2010), and Everything Reminds Me of Me (Desperanto, 2011), as well as 22 print and digital poetry chapbooks.
Michael Murphy
Bon Vivant I will make the tongues of your bridges lift to the roof ’s of their mouths, treads of tires cooling to a pause. And my sails, stitched with poetry and stuffed with songs, will force apart your highways’ eyes, reuniting the river with its barefoot intentions. Those suffocating hair-do’s, crumpled like forgotten-dollar-bills on your heads, will hatch out of automobiles, inconvenienced; tiny swine ringlets will uncoil down to your foreheads in warm incubations of sunlight.
Sounds from the sea will spill from the conch of my shanties, landing like drool on the pillows of your ears. Your docile hearts will somersault on rinds of brine as the dolphin freshly leaps and as hangnail teeth of sharks dangle from your lips‌
Caitlyn McDowell She was thirty-five cents for a chocolate milk. Her smiling freckles dot the galaxy of my memory. We pushed each other at recess and talked half-seriously about the tests. Her eyelashes were like a swimming cilia over a mingling sea of jade. I can still feel the shirt clinging to my back after she shoved me down the slide. We found brown caterpillars and let them tickle the insides of our elbows‌
Her laugh was like a dripping oar‌ Now that the bells echo is defining distance and our chlorine summers are stiff towels, I wonder where she is, where I am, who we were, and why(or if?) these questions matter‌?
Brass Winter Sunday’s Turning my morning doorknob into the bronze lit hallway, I would yawn at flights of golden dust threatened by Lysol rags. I exhumed the stillness of the just-unsealed tomb; pancakes began hissing and syringes of syrup dribbled upon my youth. Torn like Velcro from the living-room rug, my cooked pajamas were swapped for cuffed trousers. Off to summit the black ice steps of Church! Plastic Jesus, that cracked corner of eucharist, couldn’t anoint my creasing folds of boredom. Acoustic songs blew out the candles of prayer. We set off to celebrate our hunger:
pewter’s of donuts, warm bagels, bottomless vats of serrated butter, lettuce fringed subs. Once home, the windows blued by lesser angles of sunlight, taxes resumed at the kitchen table. Crumbs trembled next to palpitating calculators. I would creep around the cloak of the corner, turn my doorknob counter-clockwise, slip empty homework into the pocket of some folder, and finally approach the quadrant of windowsill where I could exhale the secret fog of my dreams.
Michael Murphy does not consider himself a poet, and yet, he writes poetry. He is an anomaly, an aberration. His poems have been featured in Portland’s street paper, Street Roots, and he can be found at times peddling poems with his typewriter.
Peter Branson
The Curlew (The curlew is on the red list of species judged to be on the road to extinction.)
“O curlew, cry no more in the air” (W. B. Yeats) The Peak District National Park This tearful horn-anglais refrain haunts like old Irish pipes, high-bubbling trills as shrill as tribal widowhood. St Beino blessed, his sermons rescued from the waves, tale goes, blurred like a needle’s eye by candlelight and lost again before you know, they weave between two worlds, of living and of dead. These browns, burnt olives, duns add clout: hard times abound, present and past; echoes of flyblown gunnels and consumptive back to backs; of guttersnipe, folk old before their span – famine, disease, debilitating dust; of gamekeeper, mill owner, magistrate, pawnbroker, rent collector, tallyman.
Swifts The Common Swift: Apus apus Not here this year, lost souls, homes worn away, handhold to fingertips, like spent pueblos. They don’t die back or hibernate, but cruise vast distances above the turning world. July evenings, they sidestep, scissor-kick thin air, etch pen ‘n’ ink invisible tattoos. Banshees, dust devils in wet suits, anchors on skeins of rising light, they’re soon shrill specks in your mind’s eye. Time lords, stealth craft hot wired to while away brief summer nights, they preen, breed on the wing,
use what the wind blows in to feed, fix nests under house eaves. Broadcast, they silhouette the urban sky, shape-shift, in one heartbeat, present and past.
Peter Branson’ poetry has been published in Britain, USA, Canada, EIRE, Australia and New Zealand, including in Acumen, Ambit, Envoi, The London Magazine, Iota, Frogmore Papers, The Interpreter’s House, Poetry Nottingham, Pulsar, Red Ink, The Recusant, South, The New Writer, Crannog, The Raintown Review, Barnwood, Able Muse and Other Poetry.
Michael Shannon
Her Last Sentence She thought about Tom, and how the rancidity of his breath was infused with stale beer in the mornings, how little hairs poked out from his big ears, which reminded her of cartoon elephants. She thought of his confessed infidelity last spring with that slut from work, Tiffany—the one who looked like she was still in high school—and then she put the razor to her ashen, tattooed wrist while the tub dripped tepid water, then she sliced a vein, maybe it was two veins, maybe more; the opening was a gash that emitted a red hue clotted with what reminded her of mucous, and she sighed, she scowled, she allowed her mind to drift, the water imbuing with a tinge of pink, reminding her of babies, of the one Tom inculcated her to finally forget about; and right before she closed her eyes, the blood became, at least it seemed, vermilion.
Michael Shannon is a technical writer in Pennsylvania. His work has been published by Enigma, Steam Ticket, Down in the Dirt, The Oak, AntiMuse, Barfing Frog Press, Wisconsin Review, Midway Journal, The Foliate Oak, Gloom Cupboard, The Griffin, Seven Circle Press, Xenith, Word Catalyst, and The Hamilton Stone Review.
Christopher Mulrooney
Transport here you can exchange anything for anything out the back door to the Oriental Lanes and Spanish colonial times and buy a college course in wallpaper hanging the muscular tissues come in sample cases so you can decide before you paste the whole port for the salts who never go anywhere only ship the goods unbought unmade untaxed and all the while a comical parade of yes men a defile
Farm Community nothing but a few farmers dirt farmers subsistence farmers and the broken soil around a general merchandise store where the cracker-barrel philosophy is bare as stubble and weeds
The Caper the panel discussions engender a species of reflection ready for the next move just the opposite a likely maneuver then you string up all the locals install your own people that’s when the strings get pulled you have clear sailing
The Heist the format is in high dudgeon first smash all the windows and gut all the buildings subdivide to keep up appearances sell the lot in blocks and now you have an income share that drops off in next to no time right next door
Christopher Mulrooney’s poems have appeared in Burning Houses, The Delinquent, Turbulence, Paragon, 322 Review, and holland1945.
Linda Mills
Sonoran Sojourn By the brick fountain bus door opens with a squeak— Oranges and dust smells Waiting cloudless afternoon One man holds out a dry hand Under an old truck loudly arguing chickens- Baskets of red chilies Brown eyed child asks questions A gift to keep the sun off Room with pink plaster old walls and faces with lines— Deep shadows help…some Desert sky broken glass stars Windowsill cricket singing
Dry land farmer asks what this woman can do? Looking for water Dusty facts gather in dust The well driller talks too fast New pipes take the flow— An old man holding up a bowl water for the Sun Voices by the brick fountain Again the squeaky bus door
Threats Grey ad purple washed out A few left over dark clouds Torn loose from the sunset By the shoving wind that kicks out A final passing threat Shaking free the last fat drops That clamor down as idle agents Harmless except against Beds of daisy faces again turned up Little wide eyed wonders
Linda Mills was born with less than 7% vision words have always been her gateway to the universe. Impatient as child and adult, shorter forms of poetry appeal to her. Over the years, as Linda Trujillo and later as Linda Mills, she has had poetry published in the US, England, and Japan.
David Supper
Hey man… ….isn’t murmur a rum old word? I’ll have mine backwards, a double of course and drown it with coke if its white and its pure. Golden’s like nectar, so I’ll drink it alone, while navy’s so dark I’ll have it with black. Don’t say a word, not even a rumrum just sit yourself down and we’ll drink a toast, to the sugar, the cane and the drink you like most.
True Love Rosie’s cheeks are red it’s true, but only time will tell, whether the cause is Cupid’s arrow, or the cider, beside her, inside her.
David Supper has been writing poetry for about 12 years. He is now retired and living in Nottingham where he founded Serpent’s Tooth, a poetry writers’ group, which meets regularly in West Bridgford. He has had a number of poems published on-line and in print. David also directs and designs sets at The Lacemarket Theatre in Nottingham.
Thomas E. Jordan
Clearly Mumbling I found a corner where my mumble is clear and appreciated Followed closely by applause from the perfect audience, Finally I’m not entirely incoherent, This is me you hear. I hear me too. I start off – “so sorry” – to all the clapping hands And like clock-work to the jokes on who? I am able to speak my thoughts, So just hear me out, get a clue, this isn’t an attack, it was never planned, so don’t even try to map it out or trace a contour. Let’s just say it’s my own kind of Mouth by Math, a common explanation, but an uncommon equation. An answer to Just what am I fighting with this beat-box slap? Breaking down how I’m slapping such a face On the road to destroying this repetitious beat knocking sense at your door from the back seat of the streets? Thomas Jordan lives in Portland, Oregon. As well as a writer, he is also a painter, and photographer with numerous shows around the Portland metro area displaying his mixed media work. Thomas is also a musician and has a 7” vinyl EP out with his former rock band The Wittdrawls.
Timothy Moore
The Ghost Ben Sully is a ghost. Let us clarify. Ben Sully is the ghost. He is the only ghost there is. He is the only ghost that has ever been. When you hear about hauntings. When you hear about poltergeists. When you hear whispers in your ear and it wakes you and makes you shiver in the cold, dark night. It is not your dead grandmother. It is not an angry demon. It is not the angels from up above. It is Ben Sully. It has always been Ben Sully. He is here now, and he is trying to scare you. He is making eyes spring from his face. His face is a skull in front of you. The boney hands reaching for you will soon crumble on your dining room floor and, clattering against the tile, they will turn into dust, and then nothing. You will not know for sure this happened, but it did happen. Wait for it. Ben Sully couldn’t tell you how long he’s been doing this – maybe he’s forgotten. Or maybe he’s lost the words to explain. Ben Sully can take many forms. He can dissolve into vapor and mist. He can travel through sound waves. He can be in two places at once. Three places. Four. But he is incapable of telling you the why. Try asking him next time he appears next to you in your full length mirror, shaped as your dead uncle. Say: “Why, Ben Sully?”
He will make you scream, but you will see that he will not be able to tell you. Understand: There are times when Ben Sully doubts. He will not admit it, but we will for him. He had just scared a baby in a crib. He had appeared over her and looked down at her small blue eyes, and he didn’t even mean to, but he scared her, because he was part vapor and part Abraham Lincoln, the top part of his body with a bullet hole in his head, dripping blood onto matter, onto nothing. He had scared a family of tourists at Lincoln’s childhood home. He had appeared on the bed there, over the mantelpiece, smiling. People will speak of this for decades. He had forgotten to change his form. It wasn’t his fault. He appeared over baby Michelle’s crib, just looking at the beautiful thing, admiring her puny hands, and almost scared her to death. The baby, not even two weeks old, screamed and choked on her own fear, and if her mother wasn’t in the bed ten feet away, if her mother hadn’t run to her, right through Ben, right through his half-Lincoln body, not even seeing him, she would have gagged, thrown up in her mouth, drowned in it, and died. She grabbed her baby, and hit against her back. “It okay, baby,” she said to the baby. “It’s okay.” And ten minutes later, though there were still tears, the baby was okay.
This was a time when Ben Sully doubted his purpose.
There are other times too. Like when he scared the couple by forming a figure in the backseat of their car. He had a hook for a hand and he scratched that hook against the back of the woman’s neck, softly. She screamed, and the man driving screamed, and they crashed into a tree and they died. Ben Sully does not try and take life, but it does happen. He does not try and take life because he sees what happens after someone dies. Nothing. Ben Sully sees a person take their last breath, sees through their skin to their heart as it takes its’ last beat. And then there’s nothing. He would stay over their bodies for hours at times, hoping that they would become something like him. But there is no one like him. Ben Sully doubts because Ben Sully is alone. If he could make people like him he would kill the world. No one would be able to stop him. He would kill everyone and they would be like him and they would live in three places at once, dissolve into the wind, become whispers, skeletons, living memory. He would be able to talk to them, to guide them, and he would have an answer for them when they asked, “Why?”
“Because,” he would tell them. “There is a purpose here. We are part of that purpose. We are here to create wonder. Fear. Comfort. We are one with the plan.” And if there were others like him, others in this state of existence, he would believe it too. Ben Sully is collapsing in front of you, but there’s still time. Instead of screaming, grab onto his skeletal form. Tell him that he need not be alone. Tell him that just because he doesn’t see it, doesn’t mean there is nothing beyond death. Tell him that there is a reason that he is here. That there is purpose. There’s still time to tell him.
But you don’t. You just scream.
They always just scream.
Timothy Moore is an army brat and has traveled across the United States. He’s wanted to write fiction of all kinds since his father picked him up a Batman comic at age six. He is currently an editor at the online Ghost Ocean Magazine. He also blogs feverishly at www.tim-readmyblog. blogspot.com.
Michael Lee Rattigan
Untitled As the plane taxied on the lit runway, in the mute pause before the imminent impossible act to follow, I caught myself reading a line with the same absorption as one in prayer; realized a form of prayer was actually taking place.
I Made This on a Saturday I Felt Ill thanks to Laura Cumming’s “A Face To The World” The key by the sink opens a door to...Who knows what? - it starkly points to something. Albrect Dürer chased a whale, was an obsessive observer, diarist, noter of the bizarre and everyday- and time itself: “nothing must be lost to dust and oblivion.” Down to “Self-Portrait in the Nude”: a diagnostic aid, words (for his doctor) appended to his gesturing hand: “There, where the yellow spot is located, and where I point my finger, there it hurts”. Art isn’t just struggle with the world, but involved response.
Michael Lee Rattigan was born in Croydon, England. He studied at the University of Kent and Trinity College Dublin. He has lived and taught in Cancun, Mexico and Palma de Mallorca. Through Rufus Books he has published Nature Notes and a complete translation of Fernando Pessoa’s Caeiro poems.
Peter Harris
Beneath the Beautiful Mind of a Blossomed cherry tree Beneath the beautiful mind of a blossomed cherry tree my annual pilgrimage of 6.8 miles by car ends at your grave. Each year I am embarrassed that the moss has occupied the headstone more, so today I bring plastic gloves, a bucket, brush and soap, and draw the water from a stand pipe among the graves in the next aisle. As I scrub to uncover your name, my thoughts come back to the same point: in eye-scope is the street where you were born, then moved a short way up into your married home where you gave the last of your rations to two hungry sons; then years later babysat their children whilst one daughter-inlaw studied late medieval crucifixion art with the OU and the other cleaned the Co-op offices of an evening. A shocking proximity, no more no less and always the same, is your green wooden door (now white UPVC) with this silent plot of land hummocked by forgotten decayed presences where you came to stop.
A life with the same death context as anyone’s, including ours, yet doubly so through the ruthless window.
You studied no philosophyworking class and female would have you kept you from that-
but I guess you knew all the same being as all we are being unto death.
Those Reassuring Susurrating Sentinels The reassuring susurrating sentinels of my childhood who shooed me along the school drive after my pencil-lipped slap-handed father had dropped me at the gate in a dust bloom “Are dying,� he says (thus the Head of Biology) I look in disbelief though I am no tree surgeon and would not know an elm from a beech, but even to my uncultivated eye, it is palpably true:
the crustaceous Cryptococcus fagisuga coating he diagnoses as terminal
the o-mouthed wounds of green blood where lopped
limbs once were
decide it for my layman’s eye
me the teacher now not the pupil duty on the same gate I ran through the same drive the length of my once ambition hard skinned too too many false starts, weatherings infections and amputations one day dying like this curtained chorus line of my youth is doing tall and ready to fall fall fall fall fall fall fall fall fall felledfelledfelledfelledfelledfelledfelledfelledfelledfelledfelledfelledfelled felledfelledfelled yet the branches still dip and rise
like cartoon rollercoasters
for me for me for me
they whisper new things now:
shush and hear the heavy breathing air balloons of your mind break from their moorings there is still time to dream and be shush
Facial Hair Everything was ready for Alison’s arrival. Michael had followed her stipulations exactly. The frying pan contained a tablespoon, and no more, of olive oil. The garlic lay on the chopping board in thin slices. So too the broccoli, the mushrooms, the onions, the peppers and the tomatoes. All the vegetables were organic. The tuna was dolphin-friendly and tinned in spring water, not brine or sunflower oil. All these ingredients were tumbled into the frying pan as soon as she arrived and cooked for ten minutes on a low gas to prevent the vegetables’ vitamins and minerals from being destroyed. The organic brown rice was already cooked. It was kept warm in the rice cooker. Such was her will. Michael’s apartment had never been cleaner. The last time Alison had visited, she had sat by mistake in a pile of crisp crumbs he had dropped unnoticed on the sofa. That morning he had been late in getting up and those crisps, along with a hurriedly swallowed Colombian filter coffee and half a digestive biscuit that had crumbled in the coffee, had been his improvised breakfast before crowd surfing through the rush hour. When she stood up to go at the end of the evening, he had been in two minds whether to tell her, but anticipating her greater wrath if she discovered she had walked home in such a state, he told her just as she placed her gloved hand on the door handle. Her first instinct was to shriek that he was repugnant, loathsome and nauseating, for bludgeoning series of synonyms were her weapon
in arguments. She soon apologised and once the crisp crumbs were brushed from her skirt into the kitchen bin’s undiscriminating mouth, she resumed her foreign policy of careful smiles and politely articulated boundaries. This time Michael was certain he would pass inspection. The toilet exhaled the fragrance of ocean blue. The bath admired its shiny white coat in the polished bathroom mirror. The bed reclined confidently, dressed in its clean, unwrinkled duvet. Dirty clothes skulked in the linen basket and the vacuum cleaner had tormented the carpets and sofas of their dirt. He’d avoided crisps and other crumbly foodstuffs altogether by eating nothing all day. He made the requested changes to his appearance and odour too. He shaved off his goatee beard and properly ironed, this time, a dark purple shirt and a pair of black jeans. His hair was parted on the right and not in the middle, a style Alison castigated as supercilious. He had exchanged his Lynx deodorant for a splash of Old Spice. During their first meal together, she had been irritated by the television left on in the background. He’d wanted to catch the last highlights of the British Grand Prix, but the tungsten whine was, as she described it through a constricted mouth, “unrelenting torment.” This time a recording of Chopin’s Nocturnes in E flat major and B Major and his Preludes in D Flat Major and E Minor waited to accompany their meal. She claimed Polish ancestry on her mother’s side and for that reason, Chopin was her favourite composer. He’d never asked whether she had aesthetic reasons for her choice.
She was a teetotaller and therefore a one litre bottle of mineral water sat on the table beside the two tumblers. It was a lighthouse in the middle of a sea of table cloth warning of the sharp cutlery below. He had a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc 2007 put to one side just in case she changed her mind, and if she did not, for him to drink after she had left at nine forty-five pm. If he could not sleep, which sometimes happened, one or two glasses would be enough to help him put out into the dark, unbroken sea of the unconscious. He considered lighting candles, but decided not to as their gentle radiance would have suggested a much greater intimacy than they had established, something she had stated when he had tried to kiss her during their first date. She was a great believer in relationships being allowed to develop naturally. He’d not asked for her definition of natural development, but nodded his acquiescence in response to her steady gaze. He sat in his armchair, chin on hand when her rapping on the door machine-gunned his skull. He leapt from the sofa, checked once more for crisp crumbs, smoothed his fringe back from his face and opened the door. “Hello Michael,” she said, “I said I would be here at seven, didn’t I?” Her tone of voice sounded as if he had issued her with the challenge of punctuality and she had risen to it successfully. “Yes, of course,” he concurred, “I do not think I have ever met someone with such a sense of time as you.”
He helped her out of her jacket and hung it on the wall peg near the door. She removed her hair clips which let her dark, abundant, chestnut hair swing down across her shoulders and back. She placed a hand on the doorframe to balance herself as she eased off her shoes.
“Where they normally go?” she asked.
“Yes, of course.” He took her shoes and placed them next to his trainers on the shoe rack. “Do I have time to do some work before we eat?” she inquired holding up her laptop in its black leather case. Her name, Alison Barnes, was in capitals on a name tag.
“Yes,” he replied, “of course. Is it important work?”
“Yes. It’s my final assignment for my MBA. It is due next month, but I thought if I could get some of it done now...” He nodded his assent and walked into the kitchen to begin cooking as she sat, legs curled beneath her, on the sofa, her fingers tapping the keys. He slid the chopped ingredients into the frying pan and stirred them with a wooden spoon. Soon the kitchen and living room suffused with the odour of cooking fish, vegetables and warm rice. He enjoyed the smell of tomatoes cooking. It reminded him of his mother’s full English breakfast on Saturday mornings. She insisted on saying ‘Grace’ before they ate. The
prayer went as follows: For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly grateful. She was not a religious woman and had married his father in a registry office, but she retained a sense of some Being’s presence that she approached through this Christian prayer she had learned at junior school. He looked at the calendar hanging on the kitchen wall and noticed that it would be his parents’ wedding anniversary in a week’s time. He reminded himself to buy them something.
“That smells nice,” she opined, still tapping away.
”It is what you asked for,” he called back.
“Good,” she replied.
When the tomato juice rose to the edge of the pan, the mushrooms softened and the garlic sharpened the mix of odours, he extinguished the gas, scooped rice onto their plates and added the contents of the frying pan. After he placed their plates on the table mats, she suddenly stood up, stretched and looked intently at what he had served. “Do you have any grated cheese?” she asked, her eyes glittering at what he had prepared.
“Yes, I’ll go and do it now.”
“You mean to say you have cheese, but you have not grated it yet, so technically you do not have grated cheese,” she smiled.
“Well, something like that,” he scowled.
“I’ll do it,” she offered as she padded her way into the kitchen.
The meal was, by his own admission, very good. He enjoyed the amalgam of herbs with tomato source and was careful not to spill it over his shirt. She ate hungrily too, not saying much between mouthfuls and lavishing her bread portions with low fat spread. He made the mistake of overfilling her glass and had to pour some of the water back into the bottle. He watched her as she parceled the food neatly before taking it on her fork and raising it carefully to her mouth. At one point she caught him watching her. When he suddenly remembered Chopin, he excused himself and went to turn the CD on. The first piece was Prelude in D flat major, or Raindrop as it is also called. He returned to his seat as the delicate pattern of right hand notes ascended above the repeated raindrop note.
“Whose music is this?” she enquired.
“Chopin’s. Your favourite.” He felt he must have sounded surprised that she didn’t know, for she lowered her eyes and frowned while spearing a large slice of mushroom. It was then that he noticed something strange about her, something he perhaps should have noticed right from the start, but in the first bloom of attraction had not: a line of dark hair that followed
the figuration of her upper lip. Surely it was a shadow created by the lamp to their right-hand side, he thought, but as she folded her napkin to signal she had finished, he saw the line of hairs again. “Is there something wrong?” she demanded as she raised her glass, a bracelet slid down to the extent of its width on her thin, vein-flecked arm.
“No, nothing,” he answered,” I am really enjoying myself.”
“So, why are you looking at me in such a strange way?” By now the sombre, ethereal mood of Nocturne in E Flat Major trickled from the speakers. Its beauty contrasted with the flat white aspect of her face that demanded not the truth, but another fact. She is not a lover of Chopin, he concluded. She is not the lover of anything, not the uncompromising stars, the narcissistic moon, the shore-slapping night lake and not the folding waves. No, her face was flatly pugnacious and he thought of Molotov’s profile from his Soviet history textbook from school. And now that line of hair too? What does she take me for? He put down his knife and fork with sarcastic care.
“My dear Alison...” he began.
“Don’t say dear,” she interjected, “it’s so patronising to a woman.”
“Alison,” he continued, “I have merely noticed one of your idiosyncrasies, that’s all.”
“Stop talking like that. You don’t normally talk that way.”
“But this is a momentous occasion of portentous discovery,” he teased, enjoying her confusion over his sudden loquacity. “And what idiosyncrasy is that?” she asked, her eyes narrowing as she reached for her glass again and finished the remaining water. The Nocturne became more urgent as the notes curved higher in a dolorous arc. “I am sure that a beautician would have the answer,” he said, his fingers lightly tapped at one of the legs of the table. her.
“What do you mean?” she demanded as anger and anxiety rose in
“I mean the hairs above your lip.” Her fingers went immediately to her top lip and then she covered her mouth with her palm.
“I never noticed before,” he continued, “and I think they are cute.”
“All women have hairs over their mouth,” she retorted from behind her palm, “and you are exaggerating.” “No I am not. There is an unmistakable line of hairs above your lip. And they all point the same way.” It was the tipping point. Alison stood up, walked around the side of the table to where he was sitting and placed her face against his.
“And you are bum!” she screamed, the spittle settling on his nose.
“I thought you ought to know,” he smiled.
“What have you done with your life?” she continued, “what’s the big plan? Watch telly in your boxer shorts for the rest of your life?” He said nothing as she packed away her laptop and then strode into the hall. He followed and watched as she struggled with her shoes and threw on her coat. She turned to look at him coldly one more time and then left. She slammed the door so hard, it bounced back open, and finding his keys in his pocket, he closed the door and double locked it. He returned to the dining room, switched on the television and then went to pour himself some Sauvignon Blanc 2007. As he sat sipping his chilled wine, he reached to phone lying on the coffee table. He punched in a number and waited for the response.
“Hello?” said a voice from the secret garden.
“It’s me,” he announced.
“And?” asked the voice.
“Yes,” he said.
To pay the mortgage, Peter Harris teaches English and for fun is studying for a PhD in philosophy. Since 1993, his poetry, critical articles and reviews have been published in a wide range of literary magazines. Flarestack Publishing published a collection of his poems called Touching My Father in 1999.
James Evans Remick II
Shoulder She bought me a ham. It was a peace offering of sorts. Even offered to cook it. Which I declined rather graciously I thought. Her eyes didn’t appear to agree to disagree we use to say. Seal it with a kiss and a roll on the floor. We’d laugh at the reddened cheeks and blistered legs. That night I stuck it in the oven. Her ham glazed to perfection. I ate it naked.
Radio Orgasms We made love in the belly of a rhino. Half drunk he was more than willing us to break the bonds breathed before God and hungry friends. I remember her dress was purple and filled a room with empty cans. The corners smelled of pee and sex. So when Reggie offered his insides we didn’t hesitate and he could crush you. A sensitive soul he was more than rough skin and pointy horn. He was a poet and a tradesman, with a voyeuristic streak of course. With that in mind we did make love inside his velvety belly. It started out slow as he just stood in the alley behind the arena But we picked up as he moved off. I’d slip slap into her with each step. I imagined he tromped down Euclid in the dark of the night. When she climbed on top, he upped and galloped. She held onto his Paper Mache organs, heaved and bucked. I swore I heard him buying drugs at one point She came heavy and pulled hard on his small intestine. He roared as she rolled off and vomited. Sometime later I finished myself and woke up outside my apartment I tried to apologize for her behavior or at least the vomit. He laughed it off “It smells like candy” That was Reggie for you, always on the bright side. As he walked off the giant gray hard-on was evident
Love is a Donkey Roaming free down a barrio or untethered in midtown Hialeah. It’s hard to imagine a donkey on the streets of Hialeah, Florida (or love for that matter.) As kids we chase it withered and decrepit it still managed to escape. You can call out of character names “Lu Lu.” Louder: “Loo La!” Ragged: “Chin Chin” Whispered: “Jill” There’d be no luck whatsoever. We threw petals and various bits of trash -ed hotel rooms each night. In vain. (In vein) needles poked. Dropped a few pounds and Awkward pauses between bites of rice. Cilantro kisses On butter rimmed lips sealed a lifetime of worry.
We beat it without mercy T.V. Doctors cry “You hurt the ones you love!” And so we do, Push our beds together. We wrap our tortillas and hold hands through the fireworks Over and done for the night I’ll say “Love is a donkey.” But at least it’s our donkey.
James Evans Remick II is a Cleveland poet, playwright, and wearer of animal noses. Among his accomplishments is tricking his wife into naming their cat (Csonka) after legendary Miami Dolphin running back Larry Csonka. Also, he is a veteran of many a space war. James hopes to one
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