Artwork By David Hernandez
A Sound Like Acid by Wendy Lyn Burk Window Seat by Joe Ahearn Pepek the Assassin by Joyce Ellen Davis Aliases Henry Lee Da by Dan Sicoli 
A Sound Like Acid By Wendy Lyn Burk I imagine her going mad in various ways: when she eats three ice cream bars I imagine she'll want to eat six, then eight, then ten, the freezer door open all this time, and her gradual agonized fatness, her shivering. When she takes a children's video up to her room I imagine her watching it over and over, learning the songs by memory, nose to the screen, and eventually howling and shitting her pants when I come and tell her to turn off the set. When I hear her uncertain laughter in the kitchen I imagine she's hugging her arms around her chest and trying to give herself counsel in a tender voice, her words growing gradually sweeter and clearer: you want to be dead, you want to be dead. And I always imagine myself bursting in through the door to save her, or sobbing. Walking upstairs to discover her spinning slowly from the overhead light, first cutting her down while cradling her neck in my hand, then draping her body over my back. Some days she's leariing against the kitchen counter, wrists slit open with the meat knife, or she's on the floor with the blade twisted into her belly, which I have imagined repeatedly how to reshape without wrenching her organs, grazing her heartbeat. Or else when I get to the kitchen she's hugging the oven, down on her knees as if praying again, and I have to drag her away from the gas, turn the knob to off, crack open the downstairs windows, tilt back her chin and start giving her mouth to mouth. And I'm pressing my mouth to her mouth so hard and trying to breathe so that she'll start breathing, but when I draw back to inhale, I find there's no way to tear her rubbery lips from my lips. This is the only conclusion: our mouths glued to each other, our throats one tunnel, until she's screaming into my mouth as I scream into her mouth, a sound like acid. Each throat hoarse, outrageous with bleeding, each mouth in horror forcing the other to take by force what it needs to survive. Back to top Window Seat By Joe Ahearn First the sky and then my analogies. And then the long sitting-and-looking-out. And then just numbness as the plane lumbers on toward Reno, one dumb thing piercing another. Just over New Mexico, I write, "Fear is the absence of faith," thinking not of martyrs or Desert Fathers, but of my own dim life that like this jet lusters on ahead of sound, pulled by what's too fast to see: the smiles and chatter of those around me, the small seas of fight in their eyes— Next to me, Sean, my companion of fifteen minutes, stirs, looks, says, "I like that," pointing at my faithless sentence. But what can I say to him? The urge to sleep is strong— And all around us, the endless imperial blue, the careless impertinence, the ceaseless thrumming of some dark vowel in our chests. Augustine said, "It is in God that we move and have our being. And in God, all those years ago, I stood at lunch-time Mass among the Religious, the nuns slightly swaying, the priest illumined and candescent—and me, too crazy for anything else, in the eighth day of a sad novena, laboring there with my Scotch and cocaine, somehow birthing the Son, an end to the fear, a way in the desert. Now, arriving, somehow intact, drowsy, a little bored, unconscious of heartbeat, unconscious of breath, a made thing, saved by God and psychiatric medicine, I look out the window and think of nothing. How I fought—for years, as one going under fights, lost in that sea not of light, but extinction. In my journal, three weeks ago, I wrote: "I no longer believe enlightenment is possible. I only hope death is final." Today, stunned by the merely apparent, I fly toward what is, a curve in the sky. Back to top Pepek the Assassin By Joyce Ellen Davis Pepek, my Uncle The Assassin, Has but one eye. He likes To imagine that the other Is in a museum in Krupina, Skewered on the point Of a Czech policeman's bayonette Like a pearl onion on a shish-ka-bob. The policeman, who was beating His horse, Swapped his life For Pepek's eye, a poor trade. Now at 5 a.m. that horse Pulls a milk wagon through the streets Of Krupina, While Pepek, my Uncle, Eats cold cereal flakes In his kitchen in Connecticut, Grows fat on raspberries and cream. In the spring, Pepek digs for clams, Those jelly-kisses from the sea. He cracks their locked doors With the hard points Of his middle fingers, And swallows them raw. He wears a straw hat while he works, Sweat pours into his shirtsleeves Like seawater. He is frightened. He is ashamed, and stares into the sun Until his tears crawl out. His eyes are two slits Black as flatirons As he tries not to remember How he once killed a policeman For beating a horse. Back to top Aliases By Henry Lee I disguise my feelings wear a broad brimmed hat and avoid eye contact. My cigar makes smoke so my profile is obscured. I look behind, over padded shoulders and three decades go by. Cadillacs idle their engines impatiently at a funeral on Mulberry Street. With cops all over leaning on kids, I avoid committing minor offenses. I hold back spitting in the subway and slip quarters in the meters. For luck, the "Nam" veteran with black glasses gets a fiver. He won't finger me. Love is dead, murdered. I did it with premeditation. Desire still bursts through my brain like a diver rising after a plunge from a high board. Every block I get closer to Chinatown makes her attraction stronger. I get stuck like a fly on yellow stickum twisting from the ceiling of a noodle shop. In the distance I see a rickshaw. it will take me to my love in Shanghai. Back to top Da By Dan Sicoli my father painted everything brown everything my father with a 4" brush painted the goddamn world barnstable brown garage doors our rusty old van sidewalks the backyard picnic table the backyard the window trim my bicycle the kitchen floor the soles of my mother's feet one of the clothesline poles my shoelaces the edges of the blades of the ceiling fan the steel bearings of a strange machine rotting in the dampness of the wine cellar the lint in my best friend's belly button the angel fish in the fish tank the keys on my uncle ernie's accordion and the now-broken strap that used to hold my uncle's accordion across my uncle's chest the bottoms of all the coffee cups in our house and our neighbor's house the fence the sign that says for sale in the bar behind our house the three canadian 20s ma stuffed in an envelope and taped behind her vanity mirror he painted tv screens and toothbrushes and trees at the edge of the horizon my father only drank on Christmas eve i only saw him drunk once it was on halloween during the '67 world series was the only time i ever saw my father drunk he would take a bit of wine on his anniversary it was the only time i ever saw him drink and now i breathe my father's soul forgive me now i watch it rise i breathed it in as it rose forgive me now it rose and i let it go and in flight it did not fall forgive me forgive me not it rose it rose it: rose Back to top |
