Poetry Noxzema by A. P. Davidson American Standard by David Baratier Confirmation by Jennifer Lagier Ancestral Bed by Barbara Wesiberg In a New York Bank by Robert Cooperman Fiction (excerpt) Hubba Hubba Big Boy by Al Masarik 
Noxzema By A. P. Davidson I remember the creamy ritual-- pearliness caking in a blue jar on a countertop dusty with talcum. My mother in a half slip and naked lips, enlightened by a 100-watt mirror. A wet cloth draped her hand like a clumsy glove. She washed her face and leaned on the sink, water running down her nose and spotting her bra with tears. Two fingers raked the surface ruining the new-snow smoothness. She served each eye a dime-sized portion and circled and circled until the Noxzema lard was as brown as chocolate, her fingers working long after the eyes were stripped. Through this moist dark she reached for a tissue and scraped to surface her unhighlighted self, the smeared and ozzing crumple whispering in the trash. Each night weas like this, her eyes winking from the trash of Q-Tips and boxy tampon applicators, tissue wads unfolding with her words. As she dabbed my nose with grown-up cream I wondered if one day my own face would chatter from the trash, if I would become a ghost to torment some other girl, tell her the truth about mascara. Back to top American Standard By David Baratier It's the kind of place where everyone's mother works there. They fly a clean flag each morning. So damned incestual, I don't want to know what drugs she's taking or some new growth located where. Top it off with a daughter sitting to my left who's a single mother with five kids under ten jittered out on 14 hours straight-time, telling me she's working extra for a gun to change her ex- husband's mind about alimony. Makes me nervous. The only way to get away from it all is the men's bathroom, and they took me aside about that yesterday. Back to top Confirmation By Jennifer Lagier Ironically, it's a nun who orders mother to purchase my first pair of high heels, nylons, the superfluous bra, rubber straight-jacket girdle. She tells me the vulnerable priest needs these reminders to adorn my pudgy, twelve-year-old body so he won't succumb to overwhelming desire. I stare at sister's drab habit, imagine life beneath black cloth, visualize her spartan cell, untouched breasts, utilitarian panties. I sit, listen in confusion, ponder threats of hell and her Catholic warnings. Mother gleefully chooses my size 15 tent dress: two tones of heifer plaid with immense rhinestone buttons. I redden, sweat toward adulthood within tight elastic. When my turn comes to be confirmed, I stumble forward on command, down the church aisle dividing our class into isolate genders. Trembling and filled with a devout sense of faith, I kneel, receive a slap in the face from a man wearing skirts. Back to top Ancestral Bed By Barbara Weisberg I was given the family bed--soft polished cherry wood, two carved headboard arches, four posters, and a mattress so high I had to use steps to reach the warm, downy cavern. This was my great-grandparents' bed where they'd slept, together, for fifty years, where my grandfather was born, and my great-aunts died, inseparable spinsters, an hour apart. My parents' bed too, where my mother slept in transparent gowns until father got sick with his "bad heart"--then they gave it to me. A special gift. Did they think I was deaf? I'd listened through walls to them in their bed. Even my night light didn't help. The mountain was haunted--I new that!-- and slick with bodies wet from--what? I woke up at night drenched in my pee, got up and stood in the hall until dawn, then curled up naked beside the stains. Bedwetter! From then on, cold rubber sheets. I never rested. I never told dreams. Seven years old, in the family mausoleum. Back to top In a New York Bank By Robert Cooperman She stands in line, grumbling, an old woman little children would take for a witch. When she strides to the front, we gasp, Miss Manners scolding a breach of etiquette wide as a shelled farmhouse wall during World War I. "I need the bathroom," her stage whisper. "I'm sorry, we have none," the teller wrinkles her nose at this lack of military discipline. "I really need to go," her demand summons the manager. "We have no public facilities," he states, as if that's that. "Where do your workers go?" she demands, a few of us nod assent, bladders beating a tattoo of sympathy. "This is a private institution!" "You cater to the public!" she won't budge, not even when the guard approaches, a hand on his revolver. As she starts to squat, the manager slaps his sides, leads her to what must be the porcelain sanctuary I can only dream of, with none of her chutzpah. Back to top Hubba Hubba Big Boy (excerpt) By Al Masarik We lived in my grandmother's house then, and she worked days as a janitor at Wilmington High School. I don't know why I call the house hers, since it was my grandfather's too. But he seemed more like a visitor, a strange guest. He disappeared for long stretches into his room, where he got drunk and read mysteries. He worked for the railroad when he wasn't in his room. My cousin Roweena came to stay with us after her mother got killed in a car wreck on the Fourth of July. A drunken sailor ran into her, and suddenly we had Roweena living upstairs in what we called the sun room. At the time she must have been eighteen or nineteen, maybe twenty; she was done with high school anyway. Everyone treated her like royalty, probably because her mother had just died. But there was something else, too. Roweena was beautiful and everyone we knew was just ordinary. When my grandfather actually ate at the dinner table with us, he dressed up and acted like Roweena was his date; he acted like they were in a fancy restaurant in a movie, or on TV, New York City maybe, anywhere but Wilmington, Delaware in our dining room. My mother and grandmother always laughed at him in his shiny suit and fat tie. I didn't know what to make of it. I heard my grandmother whisper to the neighbor woman more than once, Damn fool's in love with her. Well, everyone was in love with Roweena. Sometimes when they'd joke about my grandad and her, they'd call her Earl's crush. He would get embarassed and look kind of sheepish and hurt, be real quiet at the table. Roweena would put one hand over her heart, and she would leave it there long enough to get my granddad's attention. Then she'd say I'm sorry, Earl, but my heart is already spoken for. And she'd put her other arm around me and pull me to her. I loved it. We sat so close together at the table I could feel her leg against me, and whenever she'd hug me like that I wanted to crawl up into her lap like some chihuahua or something. Everyone was obvious about their love for Roweena, and I was probably the worst. I'd get a tickling feeling between my legs when she touched me, sometimes even when she just smiled at me. I was always having to go to the bathroom, couldn't make it through dinner. My mother and grandmother were tired from working, and I think more tired of me peeing on the floor. So Roweena would volunteer to help me with my aim. Back to top |
