Poetry and Fiction
Poetry
Neglecting Your Easel --by Brooke Matson
the lament of mother mudflower --by Ryan Bohac
Poem for the Paris Metro --by Claire McQuerry
Alligators and Oranges at Play --by John Morey Maurice
For Mr. Unattainable, with something resembling love --by Kate Dowd
Rock Minstrel -- by Tony Wadden
Permanance -- by Katie Thompson
Villanelle on your birthday -- by Claire McQuerry
Fiction
The Session -- by Erin Cochran
Suicide is Painless-- by Ann Pukstas
The Agony of Young Love -- by Brian Doyle
Poetry
Neglecting Your Easel
The consequences have been strange:
Illness has come again. The gulls flock
to the banks of the river, and remain
rooted there in the rain
like a cluster of white stones
washed to gray over earth's soft pages.
My easel is dry
and though I have covered the portrait with a sheet,
the outline hidden there unravels
and spreads like water spilt
into my dreams, rushing under doors and through the cracks
in faces. Every morning,
new cobwebs are flown
throughout the house, as if they labored
all night to sew the rooms together
where the gaps were too wide.
So I move to the kitchen and wash away
the roughness from potatoes,
and think, as I rub them, how they swelled
inside the dark room of the earth
with the enormity of planets
in their massive turning
and are unburied, whole and ready
for hands to receive-
all that was lost between
the call and response of wings.
the lament of mother mudflower:
for combing over your ancient remnants
with a hand sullen, unseen;
for standing as teacher, whose lessons
so subside in words unspoken-
o, child, rest beside me,
for truly i am sorry.
for granting you my oceans
as passages for providence;
for seasons ever becoming honest,
their crafts of repetition,
(though, a stopped clock tells
the right time twice a day)
your perspective is one only:
of eyes slowly waking.
your missions have relinquished-
the weight of the spirit unfolding,
whose flowers have abounded you
the truths you have abandoned.
for making you my children-
my choir of decadence,
unsinging the eternal song
which has not yet been sung.
you, (who pass through your new age
before your sun's inception)
o, children,
rest beside me
your mountains of intentions.
Poem for the Paris M'tro
It was Sunday's last run, day nearly
gone, she drifting alone on the platform
at Varenne (beside Rodin's Penseur
in bronze), sad in her raincoat. And I don't
know why I should recall her now, except
that faces have stopped making
sense, have turned to floating debris
at the end of a tunnel's dark throat.
I've become like the catfish or any
skimmer of murky depths whose
jellied eyes know only
a glimmer of scale amid the shiftings
of dark particulate. It's the perpetual
unlight that makes you work
your gills, crave a cigarette against
the tightness that is not caused by lack
of oxygen, but absence of sky. Charonne,
Voltaire, Ambroise- artes like beads,
jabber down a rosary of track in profane
prayer. And the morning crowds
that ebb to afternoon trickle, swell
with evening's rush, and the doors that sigh
and close with a shudder, the capsulate fluorescence,
leave always the same impression: dark
coats, pale cheeks, dirty walls. Until, after
a time, desire dissolves to one
insistent dream-le rave le plus beau-
undying day. Northern Alaska, let us say, mid-
June. Mademoiselle in her
raincoat is with me. We sun ourselves
at midnight, and, even in summer, our toes freeze
in floating light. Gold-stained shallows of a glacial lake.
Au Naturel
There is real fog tonight -
the atmosphere is alive,
vibrating with energy,
power in icy stillness.
It could be excitement -
Mother Earth's anticipation
for the changing of the season.
Just another girl in a boutique
trying out a new fashion.
Or is it malice?
The quivering in the air
is no shuddering of joy.
Millions of water molecules
paroxysm in death-thoes,
renouncing their liquid life
in the chill back rooms
of Nature's haberdashery.
Jo
We weren't young together.
I never painted lady bugs on her toenails
or played hopscotch with her at recess.
Our dolls never had tea together and her
name was never carved into my tree fort.
Jo is the kind of friend you grow old with.
It's her letters from far away places that
your daughter will find in the attic, and the
sweet, smokey smell of her car that will
follow you into a modern life.
Jo wears flippy skirts with trench coats
and sings to the Velvet Underground.
She paints too, paints the vibrancy of life,
and her own face.
I told her once it was meant to be and she
took a long drag off her dainty cigarette,
looking out over the dark, deserted park.
There, in that park, we talked of greatness.
Our futures took shape in the long shadows
that stretched before us, danced in the moonlight,
shivered with the cool night breeze.
We both understood, right then, in the moment
when Billie Holiday's husky voice billowed into
the crisp air, mingling with smoke and laughter,
that this was happiness.
Right then, we understood life.
Alligators and Oranges at Play
Alligators and oranges play in the sun
Planting watermelons
Children play in the sun
Planting bombs and guns
Parents kill the alligators
Peel the oranges
Spit out the watermelon seeds
And rejoice in their children at play
Detritus
It was a huge cleaning chore
The basement storage
Holding such pure garbage
And such clear memories
Toys broken beyond any use
Stacked and ignored.
Junk I couldn't remember owning
or remember wanting
Precious bits of paper from preschool
With pressed flowers
Among the first school photos
And last prom mementos
And there was the bike.
Bought by Nana & Papa
who could not face
That their little granddaughter
could never ride
Stopping and staring
I found I could not choose
I didn't know where
The bike belonged.
We stood there lost
Between the piles of junk
And the cherished items
Never to be used again.
True For Me
It is said that
The aspects of
A flower
Given with love
Reflect directly on
That particular
Relationship
Thank you for
The plastic rose
That made this
True for me
For Mr. Unattainable, with something resembling love.
There are no more humans on earth,
Of this I'm quite certain.
There remains you -
Reptilian.
And sprawled out on a cold, wet beach
There is me -
Old, used, cracked, bleached by sun
And broken by wave.
There remains you -
Scaly indifferent,
Fork tongued for double sweet talk,
Slithering through beach grass.
And sprawled out on a cold, wet beach
There is me -
Hard to the touch,
But brittle now the fact is a strong
Squeeze will shatter me
Even if I can't feel it.
There remains you -
No guilt in your full, sleek belly,
Gliding away from the scene of the dine.
And sprawled out on a cold, wet beach
There is me
Filled with only the sound of the ocean.
Malkovich
Don't
Ask me to live
Your toe-nail
Biting
And your Being-John-Malkovich head of
Blond curly
Ideas.
I will not
Ask you to love
My neon pink
Plastic shoes
Or my
Pulp Fiction all-night dancing
Fetish.
Love me;
Disregard these
(Secondary)
Quirks.
Lauds
all i can see are shoulders
crashing corners rounded rough in pencil-lines
looping lines of silver in the chapel-light
clinging fragile to a wooden pew
all i can see are shoulders
brutally precise in cold graphite
waging battles in the chapel-light
a sharp intake, a gasp, a sigh -
but "we are tired, my heart and i"
oh, pencil-lines falling to disorder
sad and tired strokes of a no. 2
souls rotting into the kneelers
creaking quid est veritas
what is truth
lauds
now the bells have begun to toll the dawn
leaking pools of resonating, rippling gold
as firetipped fingers sound the steeple-cymbals
into ecstasies of thunderous light
lauds
all i can see are shoulders
and my eyes are not my own.
Exhibit A
this is art:
formcolor metaphor
tension with the requisite contemplation
maybe a hidden picture
emerges
is there poetry in this place?
the dour plaque offers a stately nothing,
save a bronzed reflection
hush ~ woman in pinstripes
passes baby to husband
dignified crowd stares down display
the artist stretches out
nudging a cluster of docents to muffled giggles.
The Rock Minstrel
He tapped stones and listened if they chimed.
a tempered rock bore music from its womb,
and life resounded rising from the line.
He played the rocks for music he could mine,
though sometimes he could only thuds exhume.
He kept tapping, listening for the chimes.
Some thuds struck dead, most ruins clunked with spite,
all prejudice was stone that flatly thumped
echoless of life-sounds from the line,
and when doubt frenzied, he struck time and time
again, afraid the music wouldn't resume
from tapping stones, listening how they chimed.
Yet faith would sound, and stone with stone would rhyme,
like finding bones had broken out in bloom,
like breath in death resounding in the line.
From granite, schist, or shale hearts, he tapped signs
of love he left behind in an empty tomb,
whence his stone echoed chime on chime on chime
rising, ringing in ever resounding lines.
baby feet
the closeness i feel is overwhelming yet delicious
i am too young
feeling five again wearing mom's oversized high heels
pearls drooping to my chubby knees
the smell of eye pencil and lipstick, toothpaste, and shaving cream
one day when i am older
when i am older
every thought, exhale, and pulse entirely for you
sometimes the shoes are too big and I can't walk a step
and i want to step down onto the cool tile floor
baby feet--moist and innocent
Permanence
Rocks rattle
Pulled from red dirt
Dropped into a red can of lions
They sparkle sometimes,
Sparkle red
Or even green;
Like the grasshoppers you catch between quiet fingers
Hooked and thrown out into the white of rivers.
We must be quiet;
While at the river,
While at the funerals,
While lying next to the shaking grandmothers.
Peanut shells stay for a long while,
You think,
As long as his ashes underground,
Maybe.
The round stomach, skinny legs, laugh,
Now in that jar or urn or can,
Or anything.
Villanelle on your birthday
Like the ocean, you say,
this liquid music of beech leaves and wind. Folded into memory's
ear when you've gone. The way
inside this moment-aftertaste of birthday
cake and wine (California grapes in valleys
across the ocean, you say),
armchair of books and coats, a May
evening against the window glass-will be
yours when you've gone. The way
two half-asleep voices lace
and fumble like shoestrings in the cold, advance and flee
like the ocean you say
I must see, and this diffusion of grey
light that floats the curtains, will be
mine. When you've gone (runway
of your California coast reaching to stay
the wheels of your plane) this hour will return for me,
like the ocean, you'd say-
in your ear, when you've gone away.
Fiction
The Session
She's trying to hide behind herself again. She sits in front of you, her thin legs drawn up to her chest, letting her hair fall into her face. You ask her to stop biting her nails, so she removes the raw nubs from her mouth and worries her cracked lower lip instead. It begins to bleed again, so you sigh and hand her tissue so she can once more smear it half-heartedly down the side of her chin. You really wish she wouldn't dig the heels of her sneakers into your leather couch like that. You can't help but wonder how old they are. Hell, you can't help but wonder what color they are. There is scribbled writing all over them and duct tape over holes in the canvas, all covered by a protective layer of grime. Her thin arms emerge from the tent of a shirt she wears so that she can more easily pick at the scars and the scabs that cover her skin. You make a brief note of several fresh cuts and settle in to wait her out.
I rolled out of bed that morning, groggy at first, then instantly awake when I realized what day it was. And, ohmigod, I only had six hours to get ready! I ran over to the closet doors, jerking them open and started tearing out article after article of clothing. Mom must have been drawn in by the sound of the hangers hitting each other. She entered shortly after the first camisole hit the floor with a glass of skim milk and a plain toasted bagel on a plate.
"Eileen, honey, don't forget to eat your breakfast. I left out the jam because you're eating out tonight, and we don't want you to go over on your calories."
"Yes, mom, that's great. Does this color look okay?"
"Not with those highlights in your hair, sweetheart." She smiled placidly and left.
She doesn't bother pulling the ends of her dishwater hair out of her mouth to mumble an answer to your question. She continues to work on her split-end collection as she reaches down and violently tears off loose threads from the hole in the knee of her jeans. It appears that she's lost more weight since last week. You dutifully make a note it as you lean back in your chair.
All those step classes had totally paid off. I looked fantastic. My ass had never looked more spectacular. A nice little black shirt solved that whole color problem I was having. I knew that if he wasn't flustered in the first few minutes, he was gay. Or dead. Anyway, it wouldn't have been due to any fault of mine. I was flawless. He wasn't going to just like me. He was going to love me.
You can't imagine when her jeans last saw the inside of a washing machine. Some of the stains worry you. You can't help but wonder if something is going to transfer onto the surface of the couch. As she pulls her arms back inside of her shirt, you repeat your last question. She mumbles something about "a waste of time." You calmly note that her confrontational attitude remains unchanged and move on.
"Isn't this a great party, Robby?"
"Uh, yeah, it really is."
"I'm so glad I remembered that it was going on! This is way better than any crap-assed dinner and movie."
"Yeah...costs less, too. Heh."
"What can I say? I'm a cheap date!"
"Hey, have I told you how awesome you look tonight, Eileen?"
"No, you haven't. Do tell."
"Let's get a couple of drinks, and I'll just lay it all on you."
"Ooh, sounds like a good plan."
You ask her how she feels today. You don't expect an answer, and you don't need one. She doesn't seem able to sit still, or focus in any one place for very long. She is extremely interested in the books on the shelf, on the knickknacks on your desk, on everything but you. You kill a few minutes and blow through the notes you have on previous sessions, looking for that other kid's name. You finally find it, written in one of the margins.
"Eileen, why don't you tell me about Robby? Let's talk about him."
"I don't know, it just doesn't seem like a good idea."
"Don't be a such a bitch, you'll be fine. Nothing is going to happen."
"I just don't think-"
"Exactly! Don't think, just do."
"Are you sure?"
"Of course I am. Just let it dissolve on your tongue. Then all you have to do is kick back and feel it. Come on, Robby, you can trust me."
You know Robby, Rob, whatever, is a sore subject. At least you finally get a reaction out of her. You sit and take notes while papers and books fly around the room, crashing into the walls. She is screaming, for the most part, unintelligibly. You are able to make out a few choice words here and there, directed at you, her family, Robby. You are glad she can't throw things very hard as a binder bounces off the back of your chair.
It was a great party. I knew I was going to have the worst hangover ever. I looked over the edge of the couch to the floor where Robby was sprawled out on his stomach. What a lightweight. One tab of X, and he was out. I let the high-heel that was dangling on my foot fall onto his back.
"Hey, Prince Romeo, get up. You need to take me home." I couldn't believe how far out he was. I nudged him with my naked toes.
"Dammit, Robby, I need to get home. Get up." I rolled off the couch and onto him. I suppose that's when I realized something wasn't right.
"...Robby? Robert, wake up, oh God, please wake up! Shit! Wake up you sunnava bitch! Someone call 911! Oh God, wake up, wake up!"
You hand her mother a new prescription for a stronger sedative and tell her that the last payment was right on time, thank you. You usher Eileen out of the office door, patting her on the back and tell her what a great session it was, you really think she's made some progress, we'll see you next week.
Suicide Is Painless
He slammed the front door of his midtown high-rise apartment and threw his keys onto the satin couch with enough force to make them bounce onto the oriental carpet. He stood still in the middle of the living room panting heavily with his eyes darting from one object to the next in quick succession, trying to find something to focus on for longer than a second. If it had not been for the dirt tracks left by tears on his face, he would have seemed dashingly handsome in that Gatsby sort of way.
How could she have done this to him? He stood still a moment longer trying to control the rage that wanted to burst from every pore in his body. He stomped the twenty-six steps to the bathroom with such energy that he knew he would get another note from old Mrs. McCarthy downstairs tomorrow morning. That didn't matter now. Nothing did.
Once in the bathroom, he gripped both sides of the porcelain sink until his knuckles were white. His head down, he exhaled loudly into the sink three times as his therapist had told him to do. Seeing his miniature self reflected in the polished gold faucet, he lifted his head to stare critically at himself in the mirror. Repeating over and over in his head was the tune from M*A*S*H, Suicide is painless...
He filled the basin with cold water and plunged his face in. Trying to make the song go away, he focused on his heartbeat. But all he could hear was, "Lau-ra, Lau-ra." He stayed under until his lungs were ready to collapse and came up gasping. He rubbed his face with the fluffy blue towel marked "His" and turned back to the mirror. He searched for some flaw or imperfection. Any sort of clue to explain what she had done.
He switched off the light and walked through the hallway lined with smiling pictures of the two of them and into the cold kitchen. The pictures reminded him of the way he wanted to remember her, not like in the morgue with the toe tag and her corpse covered so he wouldn't have to see her body all smashed from the impact. Flicking the light on, he went to the fridge for some milk. Laura always had milk before going to bed. She said that it helped her sleep. It was worth a shot.
He drank the milk right out of the carton for the first time in two years - Laura had never let him. He looked down on the counter and saw the travel brochures that she had laid out for him to look at that night. They had never had the chance to go on a honeymoon and she'd always wanted to go to Australia. The outback. He saw the glossy pictures of smiling, tanned people; a couple on a jet ski with the woman's arms tight around the man's waist. Pushing them away, he replaced the milk in the refrigerator. Suicide is painless, he found himself humming.
Realizing that sleep was not going to come for some time, he slumped back into the living room and turned on the TV to see if there's anything to distract him and get the damn song out of his head. He pressed the button for the Tivo to see what had been recorded recently. Instantly, Edward Norton and Brad Pitt came onto the screen.
I want you to hit me as hard as you can.Fight Club. It wasn't a movie that most people thought Laura would have liked, but she watched it all the time when it was on TV. She couldn't stand the violence and swearing in the DVD version so she watched it on FX. He had always seen it as a movie about violence. She was the philosopher who argued that it was about transcendence over the material and reaching a higher sense of enlightenment. The Narrator tries to kill himself in the end to get rid of his alter ego. Suicide is painless.....
He sat there and watched for a few minutes skipping to the parts he liked. What was he going to do now? Go on as if nothing happened? Become a priest in Moscow? Travel the world? He hit "Play."That old saying, how you always hurt the one you love? Well, it works both ways.
He remembered that she had a gun at one point. She bought it back before they were together when she still lived by herself on the rough side of town. He found himself getting up and walking numbly into the study where her desk was. Pulling open the upper left drawer, he found the old Colt .45. He let the heaviness of the gun weigh his arm at his side. He carried the gun back to the kitchen, grabbed the travel magazines from the counter, and walked back into the living room.
Sitting himself back on the couch he put his feet on the edge of the glass coffee table. The magazines were on his lap and the Colt made his right hand seem dead and lifeless next to him on the couch.
Suicide is painless.
The Agony of Young Love
As he sat in his lavender and red striped chair, Derek focused most of his attention on the end of his cigarette that seemed to fizzle with indifference as the fiery tip inched towards the butt he held between his middle and ring fingers. He did not usually hold his cigarettes in this manner; as a matter of fact, he did not usually smoke at all, but he once saw a German man in a World War II film smoke with this strange habit and he simply thought it was a stylish thing to do.
Of course, no one else in the room even noticed his actions because Fr. Mitchell was too busy talking and Jimbo seemed to be listening intently to the wayward sermon. The priest spouted off an endless rambling of advice that had to do with the proper management of a home, but Derek did not quite see why a Catholic priest would know anything about owning a home, so he just nodded politely and kept imagining how people in Germany would appreciate his sense of style. As his attention drifted through the smoke-hazed window across the room, Derek noticed the last of the falling leaves whirling in the cold wind and drifting down to cover the ground with a thick and ugly brown blanket.
The room in which they waited carried the same general mood of any other sitting room, but Derek wished that instead of magazines bearing the names of Christian Family and The Catholic Review, the end tables held Sports Illustrated or Car and Driver. Across the room from where Derek sat, Jimbo rose from his own lavender striped chair and interrupted Fr. Mitchell's endless ramblings to voice his concern over whether or not the organist had the right music.
As soon as the now flustered priest scuttled out of the room, Jimbo sauntered over to Derek and smacked him square in the middle of the back as he pulled a leather-encased flask from his coat pocket with an etching of an eagle perched in front of an American flag and the words "Born Free" underneath. As he brought the flask down from his mouth, Jimbo almost too excitedly professed, "I can't believe you're doing this, man" and passed the liquor to his friend. Derek took a slow draw from the flask and cringed as the taste of bad whiskey ran across his tongue. He sighed for a long second and carefully replaced the lid. In the same movement, Derek ran his hand along his tuxedo jacket to wipe away some sweat and lifted his cigarette from its perching the ash tray with his middle and fore fingers. Forgetting his German sense of style, he took a full and deep drag and sputtered a simple "Yup," as the smoke billowed slowly from his mouth.
The whole room slowed to an ominous halt with the cloud of motionless smoke looming overhead and the two men quietly reflected under the apparent weight of their exchange. The eerie stillness lingered indefinitely until Fr. Mitchell sprang back into the room and whirled the smoke into an agitated frenzy. The two young men shot to attention with their shoddily tailored tuxedos coming up just short of their wrists and ankles. The priest spoke with a languid excitement and the tremendous simplicity of his words echoed in Derek's mind. "Gentlemen, it is time."
* * *
The day was just like any other early August day in Mountain Grove, Missouri. The air outside was so densely laden with humidity that anyone willing to leave the cool comfort of the air conditioning would be forced to cling to every last breathable molecule. The streets around the town square revealed only minimal activity as most people opted to stay inside. Even the group of elderly locals who typically stood watch in front of the hardware store had been driven from their posts by the utter intensity of the heat. An occasional mother struggling with a stubborn and restless child labored from one shop to the next trying to find the best deals on clothes and supplies for the upcoming school year. Among those willing to brave the unbearable heat were Derek and his girlfriend Katie who slowly emerged from the diner in the far corner of the square.
This small and somewhat untidy establishment was simply named The Mountain Grove Diner, and Derek often made it his restaurant of choice when he went out to eat with Katie. In truth, he didn't even like the food and he wasn't sure if Katie did either, but the owner still had an original Asteroids machine that was an optimal source of entertainment while they waited for their food. Derek didn't exactly thrive as a conversationalist, so this particular diner offered him the chance to skirt the burden of talking. On this day, however, Derek unfortunately did not get a chance to play.
The pair stepped out onto the sidewalk and Derek's brown leather work boots allowed him to tower over Katie who stood meekly in her bright pink flip flops with bright pink nail polish adorning her toes. Her petite figure was dwarfed by the imposing stature of her boyfriend and her soft blue eyes and blond hair shined vibrantly. Katie's makeup had been smeared from underneath her eyes and she clutched her purse close to her chest as they moved towards Derek's truck.
The black paint of the rusted 1992 Ford Ranger absorbed every last bit of the sun's heat and emitted a sort of vapor that seemed to make the surface of the stationary car flutter up and down under the intense rays of light from the sun. The silence of the town square enclosed around them and even intensified with the awful creak and bang of the truck doors. Both of them slid silently onto the scorching seat and sat awkwardly waiting for the engine to turn over fully and provide a much needed break from the silence. The old radio eventually crackled to life and finally gave at least a somewhat permanent refuge from the painfully empty quiet.
Derek spoke first. Not because he wanted to, but because he figured his position as the male necessarily compelled him to. After pulling out of the parking space and putting the truck into drive, he uttered, "I don't know what to say."
"Well then don't say anything."
"But can't you even think about it"
"I can't believe you're still asking me that. I said no. Besides, we agreed a long time ago that we would never even consider it."
"I know, but I never thought it would actually happen," Derek said as he suddenly felt his head swirling and driving him into a deep and peaceful unconsciousness. Everything around him blended into a haze of endless colors that flashed brightly in a myriad of patterns. He heard a distant whine or screech that was prodding him to do something, but he could not figure out what to do. The spinning finally halted and he caught the bright red stop song just in time to slam on the brakes. Katie sat frozen in disbelief that she had not been crushed by the train that was bearing down upon them. She was not relieved so much as she was simply amazed. Derek's consciousness sharpened immediately and he sat stunned with a look of morbid awareness.
Both teenagers sat in quiet contemplation as the train passed and the events of the last few seconds raced backwards and forwards through their minds. Derek wondered how his mind had drifted so aimlessly and almost caused their deaths, while Katie simply clutched her stomach and stared into the passing train.
The Current
"The Beginning"
An impertinent little stream whispers its way past Moira O'Brien's cabin in an otherwise small, silent, and somber valley very near Leadville, Colorado. Moira has owned this mini-valley since May 1933, when her father died and left it to his as-yet unborn daughter. He'd found a fair amount of gold in the first mine he'd dug, and he'd named the black hole on the side of the otherwise crisply green and unpretentious mountain the "Bonnie Moira Mine." That deep pockmark on Moira's mountain was directly next to a tiny, but talkative stream that would become-somewhere down near Buena Vista and Salida-the Arkansas River, (and that is Are-Kansas). From beside the Bonnie Moira Mine, and sweeping happily over baby boulders and sticky black mud, the soon-to-be-Arkansas babbles incessantly to a grey haired woman sitting in a cedar-stained, oak Adirondack chair. It has high hopes, this silly stream, no more than four feet wide. It whispers them to the woman as she pulls the ends of a bluish grey wool blanket more tightly around her knees. The woman stares at the clear, confident water as it bounces its way along her valley. From her chair, she sometimes reaches her hand into it, and it always grabs hold in a cold clasp that reminds her that not everything that begs to be touched should be touched. And, always while she holds the stinging hand inside the ever-greying blanket trying to wheedle the blood into a defrosting gallop, she thinks about the boy with eyes the color of electricity in the dark. She'd been lured towards that ceaseless humming voltage by a steady stream of "A Bushel and a Peck," and "Rollin' Stone," and she'd been zapped. He died, of course, November 1, 1950-shot in the head by some CCF who did not understand that the painfully sharp grasp of those eyes had killed many before with no weapons and no words. She had been zapped with such ferocity by this boy with the electric eyes that Moira had not left the safety of her mostly quiet little valley even when her body traveled to places like Madagascar, Argentina, and Norway.
In Norway she saw a glacier the same color as those fumingly blue eyes. Glacial ice acts much like minerals, compacting and compressing until the only color that can slither its way out is that prickling, itching blue. She'd laughed, actually. But whether those eyes sent fatal currents through every watery inch of her spirit, or whether they were seething chips of neon glacier freezing and biting whatever piece of her that they could possess-they still massacred her little by little and sent her down the valley in increasingly copious pieces to cloud and quiet the giggling stream.
"The Middle"
The Arkansas River, (that is Are-Kansas), sweeps alongside Amber Raleigh's hometown and threatens to carry each and every one of the young people in turn to the Mississippi in patched tractor tire tubes and inflatable arm bands. Nobody asks it why it wants them to go to Napoleon Arkansas, (that is Are-Can-Saw, though it should be Are-Kansas), but that seems to be its deep, sticky and infinitely beige plan. It must be the most frustrated river in the country, the way the teenagers strip down to skin and moonlight and float with their warm Coors Light cans until it bends towards Dodge when they plant their feet in its clay belly and only the empty cans continue the intended path.
In her hometown, there are seven kinds of deadly snakes. The Osage Copperhead, the Western Cottonmouth, the Western Diamond-backed Rattlesnake, the Timber Rattlesnake, the Green Prairie Rattlesnake, the Western Massasauga, and the Syracuse High School Short Stop. As she sits with her feet covered in taupish mud-water, she wonders how only six of them have anti-venoms. She had been bitten by a Massasauga once before she knew to stay away from soulless things that bite. She remembered her eyes had almost swollen shut. She knew then, dirty feet in dirty water, that they were puffy and reddish, but she needed no ER doctor to tell her, and he would have no syringe full of help with which to inject her anyway. The surprisingly warm pull of the Arkansas reminded her naked feet of nights when she had let the moonlight bounce and play over her young and bendful body, and she had watched friends wade into the thick embrace of river to lie down and be swept away towards the bend. She had gone instead to the bed of a rusting Ford truck, and allowed herself to be poisoned by something much less appealing than a Cottonmouth going for an evening swim. The venom of Diamondbacks is an especially potent hemorrhagic causing damage to the blood vessel walls-Syracuse High Short Stop venom gathers in the belly causing abnormal swelling and a lack of regular hemorrhage. How odd, she thought as a dragonfly perched on her knee.
On the Great Plains, there are two types of light. Sunlight makes everything seem like a more alive version of itself. Pale people look glowing, tan people look golden, wheat sparkles with a coppery shimmer, growing corn leaves seem cut from bright green silk, and the Arkansas flows quietly East-Southeast like a solemn beige mat. Sunlight is for life. Moonlight is for deaths, thousands of little ones anyway, in rusting truck beds on sparking sand banks. Moonlight makes pale people look dead, tan people seem to be made of wet ashes, and the Arkansas' thick waters seem made of milk. Those Kansas teenagers, dead and ashes, beside that river of milk baptize themselves in the name of the Crotalus atrox, Agkistrodon contortrix phaeogaster, and the Sistrurus catenatus tergeminus. And the irritated Arkansas keeps moving its quiet muddy motives toward its favorite termination-the Mississippi.
"The End"
My town is drowning. Not just in fermenting corn meal, sugar, yeast, and malt, but water too. I can see them flailing around at the wide greedy mouth of the Mississippi, my kith and kin, they're sinking in moonshine and sunshine-and they don't care. My brother finished his law degree at Loyola in New Orleans, and lives in Baton Rouge now with his wife, Bernadette. See how the Mississippi steals everything from us at the meeting place of the Arkansas, (that is Are-Can-Saw, no matter what anybody else calls it), and the "Mighty" Mississippi? It's a giant mouth, and it's trying to swallow my little town whole. Napoleon isn't much, but we've got a Confederate hospital, and a Winn-Dixie. At night I've been stealing off the back porch and watching the rivers. The White River drops down into the Arkansas, and then together they pour their souls into the haughty and heartless Mississippi. It eats them, but more like a snake eats a mouse-whole and without hesitancy. I don't belong to it, that nasty and cold American Nile, but it will try to swallow me, if it can. They're closing in, both of them, and they'll cover this town in silt, and sand, and snippets of other peoples dreams from the North and from the West. I suppose my brother might have done the smart thing. Swimming away, floating down with the creeping giant until you reach a place less likely to drown in sticky sweet sorrows. From this dock made of old barn door and steamboat bits, I can sink my feet into the thick, warm embrace of the last few minutes of Arkansas River. Past the bridge where Duff got shot, and across Mr. McInerny's cotton field it submits to the heavy push of the Mississippi. Sometimes, I leave my clothes on the dock and let my body cut through the muddy mess of milky water like a moonlit blade. I wonder where it came from and what it's seen on its way to wrapping my body in its thick manila grasp. I want to yell, and sometimes I do. Don't go! Stop where you are, Arkansas, go back and tell your headwaters you don't want to end like this-you don't want to end up like a bowing, scraping servant at the feet of a bigger river. Tell them you won't have your power zapped and stolen like that. You won't just lie down and take it! So far, the Arkansas rolls on, eases into the jaws of the Mississippi, and allows itself to be pulled closer and closer. Soon, I suppose, Napoleon Arkansas will be covered in a quiet blanket of brown water, and the stills will be abandoned and the Winn-Dixie will move out and I will have to find a home somewhere less likely to be quietly sipped into a watery oblivion.