Vers Magnifique! Great Poetry For The People

Kate Benedict

Kate Benedict is a New York poet (a Bronxer) who has published since 1980, & lives with her husband on New York City’s ritzy Upper West Side; they surround themselves with totemic objects and thrift-store treasures. She has worked in book publishing and finance, hating every minute. Visit her website, from which these poems are reprinted: http://home.att.net/~leahyshaw/katebenedict.html. Also her online zine is at http://www.umbrellajournal.com/.

Atlantic City Idyll Beneath Bronx Singular EL: The Litters Glimpses of the Body.... In The Key.... Into His Hand Itchy Scar

Atlantic City Idyll

Come bet with me and be my luck
and bring me gimlets tart with lime.
We’ll chase the wily holy buck
and toss the dice and sneer at time.

And we will dazzle in our clothes
and neon dazzle us as well.
We’ll strike a sleek and moneyed pose,
we’ll yell a blithe, ecstatic yell

until at last we’ve squandered all,
shot the wad and maxed the cards,
until we’ve quaffed till dawns appall
and hoarse are velvet-throated bards.

Come stroll with me and be my muse
of feckless hope and vain desire.
On the boardwalk the huckster woos
and Armless Annie tongues her lyre.

Beneath

Where it sank exactly no expert knows,
the British frigate with a Hessian name.
Most likely, it foundered in the narrows
off the Bronx in a nor’easter. It came
with a freight of gold to pay the redcoats.
The coins are still unclaimed, or so some dream.
They glint in murk beneath our pleasure boats,
the scattered coins with unremitting beam.

But there are those who do not trawl so low,
who put all latent treasure out of mind.
My family never spoke of a lost ship
when we took those waters at a nimble clip
on summer Saturdays. Were we sun blind,
to notice nothing luminous below?

Bronx Singular

In the confinement of my solitary childhood
I did a little wandering.
So many things to see and ponder—
bars next to bake shops,
whining expressways,
shrines to the Virgin Mother
set up on people’s lawns.
Some days I’d straggle very far,
past weedy lots and car lots,
through the labyrinth of the projects
to the spot where avenues ended
or else where they began.
There was a beach down there,
I swear it,
a tiny inlet strewn with bottle tops
and sludgy rubbers,
mussels too,
and once a horseshoe crab.
There’s where I did my best thinking
as oily water slapped into my sneakers
and jets descended,
low and lower,
to LaGuardia across the way.
Here is not where I belong
is what I’d say out loud to no one.
My real neighborhood is elsewhere.
I’m from there.
I’m going there, someday.

Early Lessons: The Litters

Rouge, the tabby who matched my mother's hair,
had kittens in the crook beneath the stair.

Mink Max had hers on the porch, on a perch of dried
cloth. My mother didn't let her come inside.

I was four when Rouge brought forth her litter.
I named each kitten: Puffy, Winky, Glitter.

I was eight when Max grew swollen-large.
She'd purr and preen and queenly strut, garage

to snowy gutter, stoop to alley to back-
yard. And Rouge? Daddy put her kittens in a sack

and drowned them in the toilet. The sack throbbed,
the sack mewed. I held my ears and sobbed

though he said to let them die was just humane.
Max glared at me one day beyond the windowpane.

She seemed untamed, she snarled and hissed and rolled
her arching back. Her kittens: dead of the cold.

I had to see. I let one chill my palm.
I weighed the awful event with icy calm

and coldly cursed my mother for allowing the kittens' fate.
Thus it was I learned terror and hate.

Glimpses of the Body at a City Window

Mine is not a building with a river view.
No park outside my window changes hue
with the successive seasons. If I crane,
I see chaotic traffic, and a fire lane.

Shades shield me from the urban mess.
If now and then I raise them, it’s to guess
the weather, not to linger at the sill.
Still, one day I lingered against my will.

Across the street, I saw a man, a very
old man, naked in his room. A terry
towe—gray, perhaps once white—glided past
his hips. He bent, and his momentous ass

hovered above the avenue. Vast, pink—
he bore his great weight gently to the brink
of that too public sill. His wife helped him dress.
He put up with each capable caress.

Were they not mindful of the spectacle
they made, he in his enormous shackle
of slack skin, she in her intimate act
of wifely duty? Their street-show lacked

self-consciousness or shame. Uninhibited
as infants, pure, free, they exhibited
his frail exquisite body and were proud.
It wouldn’t have surprised me, had they bowed.

Nor did it surprise me when the scene would play
again on other days, or that I’d stay
by the window, riveted to the floor,
or that in time their figures came no more.

In the Key of Snow

In Central Park, you lost our keys,
you dropped them in a drift of snow.
The plows

had not yet cleared the road.
Our boots dipped deep with every step,
hip-

high sometimes, kneecap high
and in the snow you lost our keys.
A haze

suffused the tops of trees,
a shush of sleds was on the air.
A pair

of cardinals did not cheep.
Quiet city, muffled, furred.
No one heard

the house keys fall. No one
heard them clink or ring.
How long

it’s been since last it snowed,
how long since we were that transfixed,
so lax

that we let go of keys,
lost them in capacious snow.
Awe

is a deep, distracting thing.
We even took a mazy turn,
down

a path that seemed so strange,
it was made over by the snow.
How

long until it snows again
and snow mist caps the winter trees
and we lose

ourselves, or keys?

Into His Hand

...cupped in sleep, you’d tuck a nickel. Such
gentle stealth: not wrist or finger stirred.
His O-mouth gaped, his snoring chuffed and whirred.
That numb deposit: all you knew of touch.
Double shifts of duty on the subways
conducting a shrill orchestra of doors.
After, rotgut with Clancy’s dull-eyed boors.
Back home he’d drop right off: you’d foray
into father’s room, bearing your bright coin.
You loved imagining that wealthy waking—
but did he like the joke? It wasn’t spoken.
Today that quiet man lies dead. I join
you, husband, in a rite of our own making:
tucking in his hand this subway token.

Itchy Scar

A faded scar of mine turns garnet red.
I’ve dusted powder on and slathered rich
ointment. Nothing assuages the sharp itch.
Untidy wheals have broken out and bled.

Hadn’t I forgotten that childhood gash,
forgotten it like a freckle upon the back?
Forgotten too: the masked faces, the black
coma, the body part removed like trash.

The scar was numb. It gave no sensation—
though I recall, dimly, how it prickled
when newly etched. For a while it tickled,
then all feeling ebbed. Complete cessation?

Unheal me, resurrect me, the wound wails.
Have at me, prize me open with your nails.

Adrian Boas

Adrian Boas was born and grew up in Australia but has lived for the past 35 years in Jerusalem. He was born in 1952. He started writing poetry only recently. He is an archaeologist and university lecturer in the field of medieval archaeology (a field he has published 2 books, & is completing a 3rd in).

A Momentary Intrusion

A Momentary Intrusion

Down shopping mall or narrow covered suk
In sun-warmed streets the happy people pass,
A Friday morning's shopping to be done.
And laughing faces, children at their play,
Young girls and lovers walking hand in hand,
And somewhere near a baby's laughter heard.

But now a brightness, far too bright to bear,
Then, for a moment pure silence reigns.
But only for a moment, then a rush
Of heat and noise and dust filling the air.
An immense din, too great to be described
And putrid smell that is best not recalled.
The frightful ringing matrix behind all
Is broken by the sound of falling glass.

But sound and smell are only part of this
And sight is now far the most awful sense.
Shattered limbs, burned faces, wild eyes
And empty husks of bodies on the street.
The anguished cries of injured and distraught
Are buried now beneath the sirens' wails.

This is not part of my life, people cry
As fear and comprehension take a grip.
And those who still live settle in their pain,
Begin to grasp their new reality.
But some are dead, some will not walk again,
Some will never more see their loved ones.
Some who before were children now are old,
Some wish that death had taken them instead.

Return here tomorrow and you will see
Some candles and a wreath, a curious crowd,
Perhaps and angry voice or two that shout:
"How could this happen? Who will take revenge?"
But come again, say in another week
To pleasant covered suk or shopping mall,
Or sun-warmed streets where happy people pass,
A Friday morning's shopping to be done.

George Dickerson

George Dickerson is a poet ("The New Yorker," "Mademoiselle," "Pivot," "Rattapallax," "Medicinal Purposes"), fiction writer ("The Best American Short Stories of 1963" and "1966") and actor ("Blue Velvet," "After Dark, My Sweet," etc.). His "Selected Poems 1959-1999" was published by Rattapallax Press, 2000. He is a member of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

A Mist Of White Horses Badinage For "Pepper" Dentistry In War The Integument Of Dust

A Mist of White Horses

Tell me you have not forgotten the rain,
Close by the Mediterranean Sea,
Promise a mist of white horses again!

In the marshy sedge of the delta’s plain
Where the white horses of Camargue run free,
Tell me you have not forgotten the rain!

Why we should meet I could never explain,
Except for a squall’s serendipity;
Promise a mist of white horses again!

Huddled together like two sheaves of grain,
Strangers sheltered under a wind-whipped tree;
Tell me you have not forgotten the rain!

Well, this led to that and that led to pain,
But what severed us was not surgery;
Promise a mist of white horses again!

I’ve stumbled into an arid domain
And counted the days to infinity;
Tell me you have not forgotten the rain;
Promise a mist of white horses again!

Badinage for "Pepper"
(for Thomas M. Catterson, in memoriam)

So you've finally gone to seek your severed leg
And end your body's antic quarrel with time.
Terrific! What's left behind? Here. At the still point.
Where the mirthless clowns of midnight
Snicker: "Hoo ha! Hoo ha! Sweet Pepper's dead,
With Eastern metrics dancing in his head."
This is not so fine, my friend...this hapless end.

You know how absence aches....
You knew before you quit
Your walker's intricate pirouette
The recklessness of wish and want...
The cost...the haunt... ("Jig! Jig!" the jongleur said.
From his busted bed.) But to stop short
The syllables of your heart's fierce muttering
So soon is beyond my knack to grieve.

Hey! Let's take a jaunty, jocular leave
And screw the wizard of finality.
We'll have another cigarette. You bet!
And watch the lovely ladies' last late pass,
Then listen for God's gruff guffaw
As you humpety-bump your raggedy ass
Up the steps of heaven. "Hoo haw!"

Dentistry in War

Leaning in, his drill a weapon in his hand,
Hachem sortied into the molar’s core.
I could read the braille of sweat
On his oily face, acned like downtown
Souks pocked with bullet scars.
“Your mouth’s corrupt,” Hachem said.
I thought of Martyr’s Square
And the bomb-blasted stumps
Of the center’s rotten teeth.
“Root out the cause,” Hachem said.
His hairy finger probed
Like the snout of a foraging pig
Or the blunt nose of a Kalashnikov.
“The nerve must die,” he grinned,
Imagining himself the perfect
Executioner, imagining himself
On barricades, firing away,
Committing murder in the name
Of hygiene, without anesthetic,
Smirking while the city screamed.
“I hate the killing,” Hachem said,
“It’s such a waste of dental work,”
Digging deeper still, as if to excavate
The ruined Roman stones beneath
The crumbled, bankers’ vaults,
The war-wrought jaws of East Beirut,
As if in my poor slobbering mouth,
He could wipe out recent history,
Eradicate the offending caries
Of civilization gone awry.
I thought of flesh falling away,
Of teeth like gravestones
Marking the cemetery of the skull--
All laughter gone--incised
With Hachem’s demonic skill.
He was a man of sensibility:
Leaving in my sinus a pool
Of formaldehyde to combat
The germs that might yet try to live--
Embalming sentinel of his domain.
I protested the coming hurt;
He cursed and shouted, “Screw your pain!
What matters is my artistry.”
Oral butcher of West Beirut,
How many of the mounting dead
Smile the rictus of your dexterity?

The Integument of Dust

I’ve been cautioned by the cognoscenti
Much of the dust in my unkempt rooms--
The dust that soups my kitchen air,
Stirred by a ladle of sunlight--
The motes that silt the rivers
That grain my oakwood table--
These are flakes of my own dead skin
Hanging around to haunt me--
Sometimes cohabiting
With the sloughed-off flesh of others:
The man who reads the meter,
The plumber who plugged up the leak,
And all the transient lovers
Who’ve left hints of themselves behind
With these miniature calling cards,
Just to remind me what I’ve squandered.

This is unsettling news, to learn
I’m dying piecemeal day by day,
That when I scratch or if I shrug,
Particles of me fritter away,
And to discover I’m never alone,
Even in my most private acts--
For which I can hardly atone.

(“Ashes. Ashes. All fall down!”)

If I draw the blinds, I cannot escape
Hannibal’s elephants marching on Rome--
Their dunglike feet pluming the air--
Or the ghosts of the Ganges dead
From ghat-burnt pyres that smudge the clouds.

Coterminous with the cosmic dust,
I am commingled with all that’s passed--
Nudged in a sneeze of memory--
Composed from our common quick pool of quarks
At the yawn and stretch of awakening time.

When the great storms rose on the Kansas plain,
My grandmother taped all the windows tight--
The cracks of doors and all the chinks
Where the laden wind could insinuate--
Sealed fast the cedar chest under her bed.
Covered with blankets, we hid in the closet
While the banshee wailed through her widowing house
And the buzz of bees filled our dust-bit heads.
Before he died, my grandfather ripped
The tape from the chest, felt deep to the center
For the yellowing linen of her wedding dress,
Unfolded it with arthritic care
To find another’s dust sheltering there.
(And the centipede crawled on their mohair couch.)

I have been to distant desert places
Where toppled columns crumble and flake--
Our civilizations blow away in the wind
And dust devils dishevel the mind;
I’ve knelt and wept for all our sins;
And I’ve come back home to trace
The calligraphy of your spectral face
Writ in the grit of my windowpane.

Clayton Eshleman

Clayton Eshleman is a poet, translator & editor of Sulfur magazine. He has had many books published by Black Sparrow Press since 1968. Upcoming books include Companion Spider [essays] & a revised translation of Aimé Césaire's Notebook of a Return to the Native Land [both by Wesleyan University Press]. Check out his websites: http://www.webdelsol.com/Sulfur/ & http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/authors/eshleman/

Shopping

Shopping

Crematorial sensation in a department store, thousands of suits and dresses without bodies, as if it is always Book 11 of The Odyssey, we are surrounded by speechless souls

Souls trying on souls, the hippo-assed white, the mantis-waisted black, caramel shoulders of a teenager, a pink ankle-length soul for Xmas day

Caryl found some fabulous pants, gold green alligator quills, loose in the crotch, baggy in knee, she put them back, fearful no tailor she could find could fashion them perfectly

(In eternity, Henry Miller is a tailor--
lustfully he entered the Cave of the Nymphs,
soon became more concerned with the gates of ivory and horn,
souls arriving, souls departing, all needing
a cutting here, an addition there--
a drowned soul slithered in, needing resurrectional attention,
old Blake hobbled through, Henry dusted him off,
perked up his lapel)

We sashay over to the Santa Center, the old sot in red crumples each wish, sending a beam of hope into the child heart, I can feel the soot already in the childrens' mouths as wishes like elves congregate on their lips, they sit for a moment on the stony gingerbread knee, this realm of sweet deception

Dorothea Tanning's female cloth-like forms blow through, crumpling knots of outwinding femininity

Department
depart meant
Beckmann's Departure
clothes awaiting casting off

Redesign yourself, step into this angelic armor

Cuddly music, emptiness made cosy

"'Exquisite work, madame, exquisite pleats'
vanish into a bloated face, ordering more dresses,
gouging the wages down,
dissolve into maria, ambrosa, catalina,
stitching these dresses from dawn to night,
in blood, in wasting flesh."

Old man in a pea coat searching for something among womens' suits

Recalls my father searching for my mother after she had died, he'd steal his car keys the Rest Home people had hidden, then drive and drive, 200 miles away one afternoon a housewife found him parked in her driveway--when she asked him what he was doing there he told her he was looking for Gladys

--emptiness keeps coming in,
the unfillable sleeves and slacks of life

The terrible animal imprint in perfume departure, the civet cat and the musk deer, crushed like grapes, displayed in tiny gold vases

I help Caryl shop, holding her coat and scarf, pick out clothes, color schemes, purples, lavenders, auburns and deep browns, things for her new silhouette.

Dylan Garcia-Wahl Dylan came to the UPG a number of times. He has written novels, as well chapbooks of poetry. In addition he has hosted reading series, cable access shows, and is an avid jazz enthusiast. He is married, with two children from a previous marriage. One of his long-term goals is to live in Europe. I have known Dylan since 1993 and we have collaborated on a number of arts projects. His website: http://dgarciawahl.com/

As In Benediction Baptism Filmatic Gates Of Rodin Manikarnika Ghat Quiver For.... Somnolent Verse Song To Whom Is Forbidden Voices Welled

As In Benediction

You, Madonn’ of my desires,
each dream is coiled to your caress
as is the solstice of my needs.
My love, when the world covets flesh
mine very words shall covet love.
For answers come before questions.
And now only thy flesh is the
lasting want of antiquity
come immaculate. Soft, I scream
my past and my sins into you.
Palm to my chest, these delicate
flushings of wish are beyond me.
The dark refracts as a single
wonder passes from you to me.

Baptism

'Tis only by humble cherish
that I make my way to your fount
The writhing of my essence in the hands that I clasp
make into this hollow of mine, a performance of grace.
The words of my confession, the trial of my days
lent to your forgiveness.
For you,
I shed myself of my flesh,
of my calling, of my sins
before your waters darkened by candlelight
to seek redemption
to ignite a purity
to deepen my bow
and fall to the within you.

Filmatic
for Jerry Tomlinson

“Well, I've wrestled with reality for 35 years, doctor, and I'm happy to state, I finally won out over it.”
-Elwood P. Dowd, “Harvey”

Life (?)…
     an archipelago of breaths
Reels –
     movement
     (or years)
          purposed and propelled by memory
The theatric boast of life the eyes parade
a silent camera, ever behind, focusing.
In patchwork scenes childhood, middle years, old age,
death – then birth -
edited
played out
critiqued

               Nothing known at the fade in
               will be felt in the fade out

Leaving nothing to predictability,
except pardon,
the film is christened - ages
in sensitivity and texture
The stir of the heart
scripts the direction of purity,
cleaving to what we cast off,
never playing tomorrow as the strains
     of another day

What of the actor?
His lines are his to forget
     -his audience to recall

Gates Of Rodin

Whereas Ghirberti had bronzed paradise
The unfathomable can be found more explicit
By the doorwell as much mirror as it is plaster,
A question posed: By what sins is there a rising in Hell?
As declension must have a counter balance
Avarice is brought in holy quantities
The expulsion of shades that have drowned in spirit are still
The Biblical myths pray in their falling
And incomplete as is all sin
In vignettes of lamentation
Never has the human form been more naked
Never have beliefs passed by so rapidly
Even if discord is not visible to you
Face your sorrow and it is sculpted in portal.

Manikarnika Ghat

The Ganges moans unlike any ocean can
But, come tumult, the voices are similar
Death is this sound of dying
Dead, all is the reap of prayer
A shade made of life
owing veneration
to what waves can bring to memory
In the renunciation of the river
wisdom is given repose and
passions are washed away to become sediment
The water, itself, is but a mask of the senses cleansed

A diseased breeze feeds
the sinless fires
in turn sooting the air with ancestry
making way for the eternal river
-which is Heaven

Chanting at the steps
Doms of outcast wearied
Bodies burned of their stories

Quiver For A Ballerina

Is his life the tune of his human hands
as they play out rhythms at his shoulders
in a refrain that comes to nothing more
than drumming of nervous architecture
to the straight on stare of strangers and friends
which mixes the past with what now comes myth
in a man that is buried from within
by the loss decreed sanctimonious?
The very tremble of his hands excused
in order to show his capacity
to feel beyond the blur of his present.
For continuum weighs sympathy. There
is not sin in the baring of these days
that calm this man to strains of humanfold.

Somnolent Verse

‘neath bare your feet the grasses sing
as springtime yields the world its heart
In timely tongue my language will pattern
a supple course of desire
There’s a prayer I’ve chanted made up of your motions
in a day that needs you closer to tomorrow
So, until I can approach you
having you see me as naked
without seeing me as weak
I will not call again upon your rest
Sleep
Sleep
for a moment in the hold of God

Oh, sad intangible one,
to die impossible by your side

Song

Singing something
     to walk through the walls marketing the world
Singing to imbue a horizon
Singing a prayer of spirit
It is within our flesh that God comes to ponder
     showing the makings of illusion
For it is not the ribs enclosed in flesh
     that give definition to man
It is by the singing we are defined
Judgment comes by how the songs of midnight
     meet the songs of daybreak

Sculpting an innocence
is easier in the blindness of the womb
than in the world
     with its mint of the unfamiliar

To Whom Is Forbidden

There was the night I dreamt you drowned
Baptized to me an anguish found
No breath to rise, lips part no more
As horror wished to be adored
I pardoned our unwedded bed
I practiced saying your name dead
At Midnight’s lunch the grave was served
When I rose to unleash my nerves
And tipped the shelter of my fears
In the house that believed you here
The corners where your shadow weeps
Displays the dust thought buried deep

What comes of you is chord and note
With weight to sink but wave to float
My eyes to lift and tremble when
I woke to find my broken pen
Its ink in flood across your throat

Voices Welled

Emparadis’d in your reaching spirit, delicate
there is a sky that does not pass above you,
a second that is not made a moment without you,
and a beauty etched to carols of the heart.
For there is something naked in your voice.
Innocent not - sometimes a weakness
when the heartened flesh trembles pale
brightened by a moon of continuum Spring
who’s breath does birth the belief of ecstasy
kept to union in nestled bodies
weeping for immortality.
For in each whisper, a catharsis.
An echo for to surround
with the sigh of your quiver.
All senses toward you.
And always
you
moving alone within invited crowds.
Always you
stopping breaths
forever
and dressing desire.
Always you
haunting the hours of man
with an image of beauty
that justifies their loneliness.
And always you,
only you,
hearing my voice
falling silent
in hesitation
of your soliloquy
in fear of its touching

Everett Goldner

Everett Goldner is a poet and actor currently living in San Francisco.

Heat Sonata Leather, Sketch, Score, Mist

Heat Sonata

Now motion is postmarked, sealed and shipped.
I recognize the propriety of stagnation
and await, with my brilliant reasonableness
the next hundred easels.

I await that old classic: the end of invisibility.
I await the confluence of light and need.
I await a microcosm of dogma...

In Lyle, perspiration's index sits on its stool
and thumbs its tail at a schizoid menu.

Fringe elements wail in the heat. Thermonuclear with the Jewish 'u' on...
Leaf and chrysalis bent like a blank dogear...

Tasteless things. Placards and shrugs.
Old anthems placated down through the pipes
Into one small --

Wash 'n wear kaleidoscopes.
Steel-belted harpsichords.
Thrill-seeking stonehowls.

The last impulse of speech is always fluted.

Leather, Sketch, Score, Mist

Elastic gong rings in a shivering space:
bent beams cross on a leafless cluster;
Unraveling a batch of glass-blown bake.

roily dodges wandering, opaque;
momentum, rivaling, lacks a pout to muster.
Elastic bound rings in a searing space.

Out in grace, waiting curious, all origami cascade:
illuminate this stillminded play concave maze –
unraveling spiral, of nonesuch make

while star-felt reelings la deedle de game
reaping, into verse, pelt static through flame.
Elastic bound rings in a salted space –

and moves impatiently, like an unsigned wave
palms up and soundless in any given enclave,
unraveling spiral, horn and wake.

at limbo, o scarlet harlequin, bow a sheer A;
a long-muted mobile sees its calmed outline fade.
elastic bound rings in a salted space
unraveling spiral, horn and wake.

Harvey Goldner Harvey Goldner (newpacificboomerang@hotmail.com) lives in Seattle. His three chapbooks—Her Bright Bottom, Memphis Jack, and American Flyer—are available from Spankstra Press (Seattle). To purchase, contact Chris Dusterhoff at spankstra@hotmail.com or write Chris Dusterhoff, Spankstra Press, PO Box 224, Seattle WA 98111.

Claire Black....

Claire Black

19 sonnets from an apple basket

Prominent cheek bones, on the deck of her pastel condo,

high up, Claire runs a red comb through her hair, black

with just a minor encroachment of gray. From far out,

a Pacific breeze ruffles white the Sound water and stirs

some business papers beside her chair. Down there she sees a few

trivial gulls and sailboats and—vibrant capitalism, three huge ships:

a freighter from China stuffed with mattresses for the massive

Americans, a ferryboat, passengers bound for Bainbridge and TV,

and the wedding cake Princess, top-heavy, her pleasure sponges

no doubt drowsy from a big dose of rigatoni and red wine or

something. She dozes and dreams a rustle of rats in the attic, the

several stations of the crass, a basket full of death wishes & red

delicious apples, a priest—the beast who scooped her up—dead

in a dim room, a bullet wound in his forehead, oozing blood, red.

She awakens and her trigger finger itches. Claire Black,

recently widowed at fifty, leans over the railing of her deck,

cold now and in the dark. Should I inject my face with

bo-tox? Should I jump? But what if death is—even lonelier?

Maybe I will inject my face with bo-tox and buy a small dog,

a Maltese, maybe two Malteses, male and female. I'll call

them Tess & D'Urberville, Derby for short. Yes, bo-tox and

two Malteses, but both male—Laurel & Hardy. O fuck, all

I need's a stiff drink. From a cabinet above the kitchen sink—

a tumbler, a fresh fifth of Bombay gin and two tiny bottles of

tonic water, Schweppes. Claire struggles unscrewing the Bombay.

Hot Christ! I don't need a man to screw: I need a man to unscrew

bottle caps. After a blast of gin, a TV dinner and a hot shower,

Claire, in a pink silk kimono, settles down for a family album hour.

Two more gin & tonics and Claire feels like a blathering mother so

she first phones her daughter Phoebe's friendly answering machine

in Omaha, and Phoebe's friendly answering machine (Claire sees

corn stalk or parrot green) cheerfully announces that Phoebe

has gone to church to eat corn on the cob, to sing some hymns and

to play a little bingo. Claire informs Phoebe's answering machine

the if she should ever return to church she'll be packing a pistol in

her Louis Vuitton, to drill a filthy raven between his twisted eyes.

Another blast from the bottle and baby daughter Annie's answering

machine (pantie pink) in Miami sings, breathlessly. Seems Annie's

fanny's on the back of her photographer fiancé's Harley, and they're

touring Gulf Katrina states on assignment for National Geographic.

Claire, now somewhat slurry, sings to Annie's pink machine that she

is torn between skydiving in Peru & scuba diving in the Caspian Sea.

Nuclear family business complete, Claire decides to connect

with her larger tribe: she flips on the TV. It will take a village

to polish off this bottle of gin, she thinks, as she riffles her deck

of channels, finally fixing on the Seattle Sonics versus the Phoenix

Suns. All those stunning men in silky shorts, so tall and nimble!

But what a waste. If only...if only they could break free, free at

last—God Almighty!—from that retarded basketball. She trembles

weeping while splashing a tumbler half full—or half empty?—

of gin and tonic, then wraps an Indian blanket around her tightly

and stumbles out onto the deck—those lights, those harbor lights!

Claire's eyes open at dawn. She crawls inside, drinks her last drink.

She dumps what remains of the Bombay gin into the kitchen sink

and mumbles: "Time to sell my eagle's nest high above the Sound

and live somewhere closer to the ground, maybe even under ground."

In a peachy Hawaiian surfer shirt, Red Feather—long black hair,

blue cotton headband—shuffles his homemade cards. He gazes

into, and through, Claire Black's eyes, places a card on each

of the nine points of an enneagram crudely sketched with a red

magic marker on old cotton, and speaks, amused, hamming it up:

"Madam Black, I see shoes, shoes moving back and forth. I see

a man in black…but not Johnny Cash…I see a flash…not from

a camera…I see blood…from a head…not yours…I see your

"photo… a theater poster?…a postal wanted poster? Now cross

my palm with silver. Twenty bucks. I'm in serious need of fresh

buffalo meat. Would you like some advice?" Claire swoons and

nods. "Record your dreams in this specially blesséd journal.

"A mere twenty bucks. I'm in serious need of a dog for my sled.

Mark your place with this red feather. It's free: I like your head."

Claire stands up, dizzy. With a grand theatrical gesture, Red Feather

hands her his business card—Have 3 Eyes; Will Travel—& a rather

filthy paperback copy of Steve LaBerge's Lucid Dreaming. "Brother

Steve's a shaman—campus tribe, Stanford clan. Sacred smoke of cedar

"fire has purified this copy—twenty bucks. My squa needs a new bra."

"Where'd you get your red feathers?" Claire stammers. "From a

cardinal, but not at Rome—in Missoula." Claire's fingers now smell

like a Cascade Mountain campfire. She exits Red Feather's closet—

Red Feather, Registered Psychic on the door—in the back of the

Fremont New Age Bookstore (just below the Troll) and browses a bit,

buying a hunk of rose quartz and a fresh copy of Lucid Dreaming.

Claire wanders Fremont, and before sundown she rents a basement

studio apartment in an old building. Her windows—sidewalk level.

She sees shoes, shoes moving back & forth. Red Feather—you devil!

Saturday night and neon swirls in a Fremont tavern, The Cars

on the jukebox churn cream into butter, the bartenders—Lars

and Laura—draw multiple beers for the boys and girls, Dusty

throws a dart that misses the board, Nicole Rococo swats him

on the ass and everybody laughs. Out front, under lights, under

summer stars, Leona and the smokers gesture & smoke & pose

for the traffic. In back of the tavern, in the dark, Angelo parks

his Harley in the weedy lot, and with a big silver key, opens the

back door. Claire Black follows him down dark stairs, and

together they light a dozen candles on the long table that stands

surrounded by cases of wine and beer. Slowly more ghosts

file in and fill up the chairs. It's Claire's first AA meeting: The

Saturday Midnight Fremont Free Monsters. Hanging on the wall—

their motto: The way up is the way down. Claire feels quite small.

Shadows and candlelight play on his face. "My name is Angelo, ex-

con, gypsy, joker, and I….We were out in the yard shooting hoops…

hard words…push & shove. I got stuck in the gut. As I lay dying,

blood pooling in the dirt, I saw—it's all a big joke. The world, the

"Earth—comedy central. God the father mother joker. I also saw,

not that we're all in the same boat, but that we're all parts of one

sailor. You, me, everybody, really just one sailor. Sounds corny,

I know, like a Beatles song." The meeting over, the ghosts drift up

and out like smoke. Claire declines a ride on Angelo's bike. "Angelo,

you're beautiful, and you and your beautiful bike make me feel like

seventeen. But I don't want to feel like seventeen. I want to feel

seventy, or a hundred & seventy. See you next Saturday." Rarely

have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path.

Most evenings, Claire reads: Kafka, Sam Beckett and Sylvia Plath.

Claire wakes at dawn, goes to the stove and boils water—Am I

dreaming?—for a pot of green tea loaded with honey. She records,

with words and small sketches, her dream: On a sinking ladder, she

tries to climb out of a sunken flower garden. Out her window she

sees shoes moving. Am I dreaming? She puts on her walking shoes

and begins her long day's walk towards night. Widdershins, she

circles Green Lake, observing the joggers: Some joggers are demons,

some are being chased by demons, while others—the unawakened

dead. Am I dreaming? Claire stops at a Greenlake Starbucks, sits at

a sidewalk table. Coming up the sidewalk—a pair of men, both bald.

They are taping posters to poles. One is very old and tall and slow

and white; the other, very young and short and quick and black.

A few feet from Claire's table, they stop and tape. The poster reads:

WANTED! The Amateur Avant Fremont Freakstar Theater Needs…

#10

…Actors And Actresses Any Age Or Size, Experience Useful But

Not Essential…Also, Anyone Willing To Help Backstage With

Props, Costumes, Sets, Lighting And Sound Or As Stage Hands,

Prompt And So On. Contact…. Claire remembers her college

thespian career. Her senior year, she starred as Irene, in Ibsen's

When We Dead Awaken. That freshman Gina stole the show

as Maja—bigger tits, bigger hips, bigger lips—that bitch! May

she freeze in Hell or Norway! Sundown, the following Thursday—

just a hint of Autumn quince in the air—Claire strolls down hill

to an old weathered barn—the Fremont Freakstar Theater—near

the canal. Waiting to ham for the director, she chats with Troy—

seventeen, short, genius, black—who has put down his hammer.

"No, Claire, I didn't drop out: School interfered with my education.

I didn't run away: I kissed Mom goodbye at the Greyhound Station."

#11

"It was my 16th birthday, Cinco de Mayo. I tell you, Claire, I was

ecstatic to be exiting rust-belt Buffalo. My first day in Seattle,

Ocho de Mayo, I explored on Metro, and Fremont felt—just right.

I sat under the Troll awhile, then strolled on down to the canal.

"Something drew me to this barn, where I met Stan, that old man

over there, hammering. Forget the director, Peter Pan: Stan's the

heart and brains of this enterprise. He was a hotshot New York

director in the '70s, a rising star, fast. Thought he deserved a little

"Holiday in Poland, big mistake. In Warsaw he looked up mad Jerzy

Grotowski, bigger mistake, and joined one of Jerzy's theatrical, uh,

experiments. Stan and some other seeker suckers were driven deep

into the countryside, and dumped. Stan, distracted by some strange

"Polish flora, became separated from the group—lost, alone. Clear

night awhile—then rain, lightning & thunder. I felt like King Lear

#12

"(Act IV, scene 4) at first, and that was theatrically charming, but

soon I felt like shit. A Polish farmer out shooting squirrels found me

the next morning, shivering under a Polish oak, in shock. I returned

to New York and attempted suicide, failed, & then attempted drugs,

"without success. So I moved to Seattle. It seemed like a nice place

to sleep. Stan's taught me everything about this monkey business—

backstage and front—and he gave me a valuable piece of advice:

Shun actors. Their brains are like vacant barns in which grotesque

"birds and creeping things come to nest. And I've managed to teach

Stan a little about computers. Mom got me a PC when I was six,

a gift from a rich lady whose house she was cleaning. At 14, I was

considered a prodigy hacker: I could see the cracks in the seams."

When her name is called, Claire tells the director, Mr. Peter Pan:

"Cancel my audition. Could I work backstage with Troy & Stan?"

#13

Sunday night, night of the autumn equinox, Claire Black takes a

long bubble bath (total immersion) followed by a quick hot shower.

Her body covered with a clean cotton sheet, Claire curls up in bed,

rehearsing her lucid dreaming script. Sleep. Am I dreaming? Yes!

Claire, small as a sparrow, stretches her wings and ascends to the

sun, to the top of the Christ Tower, rose quartz pulsing with light.

Standing on the deck of his penthouse condo—Christ! He wears

Mexican sandals, 501s, a green cotton shirt with pearl buttons and

a dusty gold pinstripe fedora. He smiles and says: "Claire, I know

what you're thinking: Christ looks like Crazy Horse. Who'd you

expect—Jim Caviezel? Now about that so-called priest. Go ahead,

off the son of a bitch. You've got my green light." His shirt turns

from green to yellow to red, then back to green again, but brighter.

Claire wakes at dawn, humming Ave Maria. She feels much lighter.

#14

Claire gives Angelo 500 bucks and a kiss, and he gives her the cold

piece. "Yes, Angelo, I know the drill: point and squeeze. When we

first got married, my late husband Rusty, afraid of rapists, bought me

a .38 and taught me how to shoot it. After we got to know each other

"a little bit better, the pistol disappeared. Rusty wasn't the brightest

bulb on the Christmas tree, but he was no fool." Later, at the barn,

Claire says to old Stan: "Say, Pops, I'm going to be an old crone at a

Halloween party. Can you give me some tips?" Stan, master of

props, gives her a cane from a Noh drama, bits of a crone costume

and a ragged wig from a Yeats' play; and, touching her face, says:

"A little paint here, Claire, and you'll look like a hundred." Then

Claire asks Troy: "Troy, can you find a man? You might have to

"hack the Vatican. Can you hack the Vatican?" "Of course I can.

I can hack the Vatican. Tell me his name and I'll find the man."

#15

Thursday, clear and sunny, Claire meets Troy for lunch, Kentucky

Fried, crispy, a picnic at the Troll. "I found your Father Yago. He

really gets around, to & fro, up & down, slums & jungles, jungles

and slums. It's like something's been chasing him for forty years,

"but, surprise, he's back in Seattle; and, next week, Allhallows Eve,

he'll be at Blesséd Bingo & the Beatles at his church in Rat City."

"Troy, you hacked the Vatican?" "Didn't have to. Yago plays

bloggo, has pages at MySpace. Yago likes to keep in touch."

Feeling foxy from the chicken and the rare, crisp autumn weather,

Claire strolls from the Troll to the Fremont New Age Bookstore,

thinking: I'm coming to get you, Red Feather. But Red Feather

isn't there. There's a basket of red delicious apples on a chair, and

on his door, a note: Eat one, in remembrance of me. Don't worry:

be happy. Have gone to pick apples with my tribe in Wenatchee.

#16

The bingo basket whirls. Beatles blare. Bending low, poking

with her cane, her appearance an amalgam of an ancient Mother

Superior & an old Irish-Japanese witch from Macbeth, Claire

enters the raucous bingo hall &, with mincing steps, heads straight

for Father Yago, who sits at the children's table slurping a hot

fudge sundae, a Notre Dame varsity sweater over his shirt & collar.

She croaks in his ear: "Father Yago, I have a bequest for the Holy

Church, gold and precious stones." With Claire on his arm, Father

Yago waddles down a dim hallway to an even dimmer room.

They sit at opposing desks. Claire looks in his eyes—nobody home.

Claire thinks: Father, you have sinned. Say half a Hail Mary,

quickly, & kiss your ass goodbye, you freak. Claire reaches in her

purse and feels the cold piece. She looks out her exit, the window—

crescent moon. A flash coincides with Sergeant Pepper's crescendo.

#17

Next day, Mysterious Murder on the evening news. Bud, 300 pound

cabdriver, towers over ace reporter, Molly Chen. Scratching his butt,

Bud explains: "She was so old. I picked her up at Swedish and she

seemed Irish yet oddly Japanese and when we got to the church in

"Rat City she tipped me a quarter, barked, took it back and tipped

me a dime and then when I wasn't quick enough getting out to open

her door she called me a goddamn fool and poked me with her cane.

She must have been a hundred. You see, Molly, to live that long,

"one must be exceptionally mean. That's my theory." Claire, feeling

finally even after forty years, returns to the Church and, following

a date with jolly Bishop Tucker at Ray's Boat House (Friday, fish),

Claire makes arrangements to enter a retreat on the eastside of Lake

Washington (nine months official mourning), a convent for rich lay

ladies—flowers, ducks. Without delay, Claire begins writing a play.