RED CEDAR REVIEW
RED CEDAR REVIEW



RED CEDAR REVIEW

VOLUME SIXTEEN, Spring 1984

© Copyright 1983 by Red Cedar Review


CONTENTS

Jean Battlo

The Birth of a Poet.....................................................2

Carol Cavallaro

To the Woman At the Window..................................3

Poem for Emily Dickinson.......................................4

Starving with others..................................................6

Mary S. Emery

Romance Languages.....................................................7

Gwen Ashbaugh

Packing Grandmother’s Trunk................................... 8

I Wake to Nakedness................................................ 11

Lyn Lifshin

The Woman Who Wraps Up in Poems

and Leaves and Fingers...............................................13

Madonna Who Doesn’t Want to See........................15

Madonna of the New Age Man.................................16

Madonna’s Phone Calls..............................................17

Gayle Harvey

Angel...........................................................................18

Amy Beth Hill

Weatherveins.............................................................19

John Lee Hall

to the druid’s mother...............................................31

David Ewick

Dream of the Storm..................................................33

The Things We Can’t Name......................................34

David Swan

Only in Death Will Man Find Peace..........................35

Keweenaw Fire Tower................................................36

Hannah Stein

Living of the other Side of the Line........................38

Paul Shuttleworth

The Quiver of One Moment.....................................39

Carol Morris

Carriage Hill Blues.....................................................59

Magic Pickles................................................................61

V. Glen Washburn

Life’s Like That...........................................................63

Shirley Campbell

Alienation.....................................................................65

V. Glen Washburn

A Hobday Tour...........................................................66

Louis Philips

Dinosaur.......................................................................67

Contributor’s Notes...........................................................95

Editor’s Page.....................................................................97


THE BIRTH OF A POET

Jean Battlo

That single instant when I saw infinity 
then turned away and out and in 
to living;

that imagined moment when my mother’s blood 
burned into me

and my father bruised me into being, 
forging with fire my self to this moment 
where now

I sit with a fine white wine 
wondering, what drink was theirs 
what thirst

what seed of celebration or of rancor

formed this I-am,

that now, old and dead abandon me

here and now and poet

in late late sleeping hours of night 
peering at a painting of that sad Gachet 
weeping, out of context 
at that twisted bed at Arles,

two nights before I take that father 
to a grave.

2


TO THE WOMAN AT THE WINDOW

Carol Cavallaro

Are you dead, a ghost in the machine

who turns my blood to the noise of every day?

Do you sit on the bed with the shadow neat under your legs 
like a skirt, while you remember Europe as a geranium stuck 
in a jar, the smell, the crippled streets,

the head-bent people?

How horribly you let in glaring light

to burn my hand, til it stares out

from a chiaroscuro painting, the thick sun white as a line

in two dimensions, and unbearable.

Mother, electricity

leaks from the calculator as it sits in the drawer;

water drips from the clock;

onions red as hearts

eat a circle.

They’re building a highway near our house; they’re pounding. 
Like the bones of a saint, like a bone beneath the altar,

I float on the river below the road, an arrow, a stick,

an effigy of birds and spirits twisting at last

like the sculpture of a cathedral.

You press against the glass to watch.

And I see them, your window wizens.

They uncurl my hands working them in sleep;

their yellow powders streak the sheets. One after another

you send them through the door

to play at childhood, force me to recall

likes, dislikes, the patterns numbers take.

Then sometimes you turn your face away, in spite 
of history, and go 
further back than birth.

3


POEM FOR EMILY DICKINSON

Carol Cavallaro

Idiot. Victimization

is damn well one of the three temptations, the way 
of the cross, the feminine Jesus. Look.

A flame reflected in her lantern 
makes a hundred piercing 
suns, casts the shell 
of everything that pounds

I understand; you love me; you can’t 
give anything; I shouldn’t take it personally-

I don’t, gentle one, and if it’s any comfort, know

in the tide.

Her silence formed the sounds that comb 
our brains for meaning.

she gives us only the circle

that I don’t understand why you can’t; it’s perfectly 
opaque to me, except that you must keep your male house 
close around you, but I hope

of the forest's

blooms, the gold 
dilation of the water light, 
the spark of stars in the night-thin

that I’ve made it clear that I can’t give and give alone, 
shockingly enough; it’s too dangerous for me, for whatever 
reason, and I hope that I’ve given you what I owe you,

sky, the paper

of smoke where our shadows 
shine

to comfort us as we dream; and the crown

and taught you all that I can; perhaps 
you’ve forgiven me for growing up and wanting to take 
you to where you think you already are-but so 

4


of green leaves on the summer grass

covers her when she sleeps;

she whispers in the tree's breathing-

convince me like the constant

blocked, and understanding nothing!-and I can’t bear it 
anymore, or you staring at me, expecting everything 
but giving less and less; I hope

wind. She is the one who watches

the bittern drink

serenely. The awful torch

stabs from her fingers.

that I’ve given you what I promised, because even now my 
spirit cries that it isn’t enough, but the pain was enough, 
and isn’t it supposed to be pain?

She is jewel-like, open, the sweet, 
cruel, broken

stitch,

the moorage.

5


STARVING WITH OTHERS

Carol Cavallaro

She wants her blood to stop. She’s in a light.

You see

what she carries, how fragilely

her children

are buried at Schoenbrunn inside a circle 
of the flames, among the double rows 
of golden houses, the pure, 
slanting sun, where she stood 
in the window. At night there, 
the moon is so hot and white that it is a luminous 
black burning in the eyes, moving 
very fast; but now the sun threads through 
openings in the clouds, apertures 
in the bone-cold mind of God, the patterned, 
layered, blue 
sky, the land itself 
streaming, creeks, roads, horses 
that lift their God-given shoulders to the edge 
of the stream 
of the sun, the hills, the yellow and grey 
covered fields, the pebbled 
places, the water there, brown, upturned, 
plowed dirt, as upward and open 
as her husband’s big hands, 
and trees 
on both sides of the dark 
shy deer 
in a light too small to see.

Today a sea gull turning to an ibis 
landed in the exact middle of a narrow 
bridge, among black 
fishermen, in the intense 
morning light, near 
vegetation peaking in the green-shadowed water 
fingers of the canal, fir 
trees thin 
and incredibly pointed, the red, 
strangely, singly petaled thickness 
of an anthurium plant, 
bleeding too.

6


ROMANCE LANGUAGES

Mary S. Emery

We spent half the night 
finding synonyms for fuck 
because there was nothing on TV.

By the time we reached the d’s 
you were telling me I was looking 
more like Ann Corio every minute. 
Maybe I should have pretended 
she was that little Calabrese 
from your old neighborhood 
who ate hot Italian sausage 
and made the boys’ eyes water. 
You said we could turn down 
the sound and play $10,000 Pyramid. 
I said we could turn down 
the covers and you could read my lips. 
And until your elbows collapsed 
beneath all those Italian words 
I couldn’t have imagined the dreams 
of any dying burlesque queen.

7


PACKING GRANDMOTHER’S TRUNK

Gwen Ashbaugh

It was daddy 
taught me the alphabet. He put 
Apples, I put

Bears, he put

Cotton Candy, I put

Dolls. We packed

Everything we could

Fit into my

Grandmother’s trunk. We passed the

Hours that way, me learning my

Ps and Qs, he sending me valentines by homing

Pigeon, or teaching me secret ways to get gold

out of the lode with

Quicksilver.

It was daddy 
taught me to crouch low in the cinders, to feel 
for the pre-trembling of the train in my legs.

He used to move out slowly, ankles

sinking into the ties as into the stops of a silver horn, loping 
the low notes of a sad bolero.

He waid he’d wait till he’d hear train wheels 
screaming in their ruts before he’d 
break for the shoulder, snare his big hands in the rungs, 
catch, couple, cling 
to the O-moan of darkness.

He rode home to Colorado from the

Chicago World’s fair, crouched

On chunks of coal and baled steel in the orange boxcar.

He said he loved the cows and cornfields flying by, the train 
clatter of castanettes, the

fencepost, fandago.

It was a free moving picture show.

It was his way back west.

8


I packed my grandmother’s trunk and in it I put his

Ashes, his grandpa’s

Bible, his grandma’s

Choir of Cornish miners. I packed my Central City

Dancing shoes, a churchyard elegy, the

Ear his grandpa sewed back on

the bear-mauled man. I packed

Fool’s gold, daddy’s fine most gallant handkerchiefs, 
my gypsy skirts, even the

Glory

Hole. I packed a cake with lemon

Icing, beef

Jerky, his bone-handled

Knife, the

Low notes loping, my mantilla, my mother’s

Marriage vows. I packed the

Nights of

Orion, the train

Palmada, the cornfield’s

Quaking, broken rungs of mother’s

Rocking chair, my black

Spanish shawl. One ticket to

Trinidad and Tobago in the pocket of his

Uniform, a purple

Vellum tambourine, pressed

Wallflowers, a wishbone, sheepbur

Xanthium, clotbur clinging to his trouser cuff. 
White flakes of

Yarrow, the train

Zapateado.

It was daddy

taught me to cling to the broken rungs of his big hands.

He wrapped me in wet strands of pumpkin pulp and rocked 
me to sleep. He packed me in my grandmother’s trunk and 
buried me deep. I called him Ashes to

Ashes, train bolero,

Bound for Colorado in his soot-covered boots.

Daddy light the tallow

Candle on your miner’s hat and I’ll

Dance your churchyard

9


Elegy, our train fandango.

I’ll wear lupin and wild rose so

Fancy folks in passing groves will think a new tooth 
Grows in the

Hollow mouth of the dream coach.

I’ll hitch our

Jack-o-lantern surry with the broken singletree

I’ll take my

Knotweed-tasseled whip for

Lame gray Dobbin. I’ll remember your

Mad money, I promise, and my flannel

Nightgown. I’ll go to the Judge’s

Old road to the courthouse steps. I’ll

Pack the horseshoe nail you bent into a wedding 
band, all the

Quaint dowry you gave me, and I’ll ride the

Rails, hoping that somehow again, in

Some field of lost

Time, I can be

Unwise of myself as

Vagabond child

Wedded like

Xanthium to

Yesterday, always dancing your train

Zapateado.

10


I WAKE TO NAKEDNESS

Gwen Ashbaugh

Just before dark, the swans take off their wings and webbed 
slippers. Orphans, as are all children of the imagination, they 
peel the feathers off their long necks and pile the white husks 
on the banks of a lake.

Just before light, as in a game of musical feather, one of them 
finds herself naked, standing on two human feet in front of a 
stranger. In his arms he hides a bundle the size of a skinned 
widgeon. She follows him home, and for seven years, when 
the owl grazes her window, she leaves her work to look 
through moldering closets for the raiments of her 
metamorphosis.

11

Wobbly apprentice to enchantment, my foot 
sucking the floor behind me in arabesque a terre, while the 
needle pecked out the scratchy strains of Tchaikovsky 
and the ballet mistress flailed and preened in front of the 
mirror, I tried to hold perfectly still, part of a frozen 
foreground of swan in a nineteenth century landscape.

Somehow I knew

that if I ever got wings I’d have to fly through 
the waiting room where the mothers sat gray as mollusks, 
puffed out in a sea of netting, glueing sequins and rhinestone 
tiaras, plying needles and pleating tuttus for the ballet recital.

Inside, I tried to bleed white aragonite out of my pores. 
Womb hollow, quill mute and full of air as the scattered 
stars of Cygnus, I tried to be an orphan, no man’s Odette, 
the owl’s Odile.

Ribbons and thread, the tools of a mother’s artifice 
are not enough to lift a child swan out of the resin. I was 
caught with one foot in the water, one wing straining its 
seams.

Slowly, I learned that the dance is the grain in a leaking 
oyster, wrapped like a poem in the white nacre of elision, 

11


spun into the pearls that are sometimes found in the beak of 
a downed bird. Not as swan, but in a poor mantle of flesh, I 
knew that I too would go down off a cliff with a man who 
had plighted his troth to the dark vision he remembered 
having dreamed once dressed in motherwhite.

III




But I have always believed in the mysteries of dusk. I have 
sometimes seen the owl fly down by motherlight with a pearl 
in his beak, always believed I would unravel it and find in it 
the singly grain of my knowing.

Feather white

spun out of prism light, mother

of pearl, I know where to find them. I mount the stairs 
to a steamer trunk covered with the labels of cities 
sunk in practiced opulence. I crack it like a shell, find them 
put to rest with burst shoes in the prison light of attic 
window, packed tight and drugged with the popped beads 
from a lover’s broken string of camphor. But I do not put 
them on.

IV




Instead, I wake to nakedness, the man beside me naked, 
unfamiliar, as though seen by an eye still floating in the 
delicate cranium of a swan. I grope for my dress of feathers 
on the floor by the bed, over his muted form, and painfully 
I feel the webbing receed from my hands, a shrinking tide 
blue yes or a little green with dawn but fingers unmistakable.

Then the man, I know him, know his nakedness, and the 
knowing rises up whirring and flapping out of my eye and the 
rings clear and I love.

12


THE WOMAN WHO WRAPS UP IN POEMS AND LEAVES AND 
FINGERS

Lyn Lifshin

the woman born in 
July crab 
shells around 
you know she

sounds like she 
gets right down 
to you’d think 
from her poems

she gets intimate 
fast telling 
you the first 7 
years with a

husband who 
couldn’t She’s 
not the kind of 
woman who’d

use the word 
intercourse 
seems loose and 
open People

come on to her 
just reading the 
poems. Listen, 
it’s a shell

she’s had to 
grow something’s 
missing in her 
skin that keeps

her from bruising 
when she touches 
people fast some 
thing’s cold and 

13


it’s sealed over 
with glass that 
she’s painted 
words like cunt

suck and fingers 
and baby on But the 
words are just 
words It will

take longer than 
you suppose to 
make a world 
of these words

14


MADONNA WHO DOESN’T WANT TO SEE

Lyn Lifshin 
won’t wear a 
watch doesn’t 
look at what’s 
happening lets 
shutters blur 
the stained 
air tilts on 
the edge like 
someone who 
stands on 
the rim of a 
scale set 
back ten 
pounds with 
glasses they 
can just 
see as far 
as their 
waist

15


MADONNA OF THE NEW AGE MAN

Lyn Lifshin 
is always feeling 
herself up to 
getting that 
silent pulse 
of pure rhythm, 
gulps flower 
essences before 
its light ashes 
on her skin for 
the fire trance 
ceremony knows 
if she feels 
low or odd its 
probably just 
her chakras not 
really flowing

16


MADONNA’S PHONE CALLS

Lyn Lifshin

scream like a 
broken smoke 
detector or an 
ambulance breaking 
a door down.

She watches the 
black rose twitch, 
lies there waits 
like someone 
waiting for a 
liver transplant 
who only has 
a few days

17


ANGEL

from The Art of Children, boy, 10

Gayle Elen Harvey

a very large angel is flying like an astronaut over this country 
of orange-rooved houses.

with only one wing, he fills up most of the sky.

think of it, this kool-aide blue air parting in front of him, 
his gown painfully white.

we know his manners are better than ours.

toucan-colored clouds soak the top of this paper.

half a sun shines.

it’s Sunday, the right day for angels.

one-dimensional flowers bloom in the sky over his head.

“gum-drops,” he murmurs, unable to tell us about

his own childhood.

muddy and mortal, we ask for his blessing.

“christmas,” he weeps, rising like a perfect skater

over the real ice of a pond.

18


WEATHERVEINS

Amy Hill

My wife, Monika, left me, O, about an hour ago.

I can’t really blame her. Afterall, it’s not every day that one 
comes home to a ten foot marlin with chrome scales bowed 
across the fireplace. Well, actually she took the marlin, O.K. 
You see, Arcady and I had redecorated in her absence. I’m 
afraid it was the frosted glass portholes and the stained life 
preserves, Arcady’s idea, that really gave Monika the willies.

“The Lusitania!” she had screamed.

“So,” I said calmly. “Maybe someone could’ve spray 
painted that on or washed it with a hose a couple of times. 
You got to admit. It looks authentic.”

“Ruther, what are these planks, and for god’s sakes, what 
are these crates? ”

“Monika. Please. They’re just lobster traps, I thought you 
liked seafood.”

She had never looked better storming out of here. 
Tempestuous almost. I think it was the sound of her moire 
cape snapping at her ankles that made me shiver, then laugh.

It was a good thing she didn’t go into the bedroom. O, I 
suppose I could’ve explained some things, maybe have said 
we were having the furniture cleaned. All of it.

But I couldn’t have explained the rest.

She wouldn’t have understood. Not ever. I wouldn’t have 
known that a week ago. Monika’s misunderstanding.

It was a week ago, on a fuzzy blue Monday, that I drove 
Monika to the airport. She was flying to the Carribean and I 
was not stopping her. Monika went there every year. She 
insisted that a good tan during the off season was a 
marketable asset. Marketable asset. That was how Monika 
thought of herself. She had told me that she was a hand 
model and I never asked for proof.

19


You’ve seen those commercials with women stroking all 
kinds of things. Dishes. Furs. Men. Well, some of those hands 
are Monika’s. Or so she says.

When I met her in Arizona she was a weather girl. They’d 
tell her that it was raining in Kansas and she’d gently press a 
magnetic drop of rain somewhere in the middle of the map. 
Don’t get me wrong. She was extremely bright. Monika had a 
chatelain wisdom and was certainly the most radiant girl I’d 
ever met. No, her hot-waxed exterior never got dull. I could 
swear that when it rains, water just beads on her skin.

She did admit to me though that she knew more about 
cuticles than isobars.

The station gave me her job. And I guess I felt guilty about 
it. I felt that I owed her something. If nothing else, I figured 
I could coach her at night about sunspots. I don’t know. 
Things got out of hand. Somewhere between hurricanes and 
monsoons, I married her.

We’d been together about a year when they sent me to a 
sister station, here, in Green Bay. I let Monika fly ahead and 
find us a house.

She did. She found us a dandy. A house with a family 
name. Monika had told me over the phone that the name of 
it was Ashton Hearth.

She also told me that she had put a down payment on it 
and that the house was on a peninsula of all places and that it 
needed just tons of work.

The new job was too good for me to pass up. I had to move 
fast. So I bought the Ashton home without ever seeing it. 
When I finally did, I wasn’t really sure whether it was right or 
not. But I felt terribly moved by Monika’s presence as the 
car had crackled down the crusty gravelled driveway.

The house was low, sunken into sandy earth. The corners 
of the house were darkly fused with monstrous recalcitrant 
lilac branches. At one time, I felt sure that the house had 
been a towering manifestation of whitewashed rocks and 
giant crosses of green lacquered timbers. Now, gravity had 
since sucked the house down into a bowl of white and grey 
stalks. The roof was no higher than the top of my head.

Monika had worried me a bit about the tons of work part. 
But the outside seemed too defined, too linear for an inward 
erosion that consumes some old houses. And I was fairly 

20


certain Monika didn’t know a thing about plumbing or 
electricity. Whether it was top notch or what.

“What work?” I asked, as I poked my way about the damp 
but immaculate rooms.

Monika moaned. “I can’t believe it. She must have been 
crazy that Ashton woman. All the rooms are peach or teal. 
Are those what I think they are? Giant orchids and peacocks 
on everything. O, Ruther. I know what you’re thinking.”

I honestly thought she did, so I didn’t say anything.

“You’re thinking: Monika. What difference can colors 
make? June. Psychology Today. 'Passive Prisoners in the 
Pink’. No, listen, I’m serious. Hospitals. What color are 
they?” She lifted an English hunting print off the wall.

“What?” I asked. “The waiting room or where you die?”

Monika made fish lips. “They’re that milky green. It’s 
supposed to soothe you and give you hope. Look at these 
walls. Will you,” she said.

Monika. Monika. This is what I thought. I don’t recall what 
I said to her.

In the end, we agreed that it would somehow be an 
infringement on Monika’s selfhood to be subconsciously 
manipulated by the late Mrs. Ashton. Especially since Monika 
considered herself to be reptilian and would never find 
temperate harmony as the house stood. Point being, I was 
mammalian and would always be cold without someone to 
warm me.

We gave the renovation of her bedroom top priority. The 
house was so large that we allowed ourselves the luxury of 
separate bedrooms. At least this is what we told each other.

The truth was that I hadn’t slept with Monika since she’d 
left Arizona. It became a habit that neither of us attempted 
to break. Monika suggested the separate bedrooms and I had 
agreed. The more she pulled away, the more intangibly 
beautiful she became. I told myself that she was playing a 
sophisticated courting game. A game that would one day end 
in a most delirious capture. But I’d been in pursuit for several 
months now.

My loins ached for the final killing, but my heart was 
beginning to fade. It just wasn’t worth it anymore.

21


I wanted the goods without the hunt.

Two days after we had moved in, Herrace Zanker, an old 
friend of Monika’s crept in from Philly. They had what she 
called a creative tete a tete. With him came a circus of 
designer assistants who ate all my natural peanut butter. But 
Zanker and his harlequin workers had slipped back in Philly 
by the Friday before I took Monika to the airport.

He did only Monika’s bedroom.

“Herrace didn’t want to do the rest of the house,” she 
explained slowly. “My bedroom exhausted him. I thought 
he’d thrive on the frustration of it all. Especially, god, o, the 
sunporch.”

“The sunporch? I like the sunporch,” I murmured and she 
shook her mussell black hair.

“Rutherford. I think this would be a good time. Transition 
periods are difficult. Do you know it takes a bear a whole 
week to come out of hibernation? Look, I’ve got a possible 
wedding band layout in Chicago. I think I should go to get 
ready for it. Alone. Ruther. Please. Please don’t smile like 
that.”

After she packed she gave me a little card. I thought it 
would be where I could reach her. But it was a business card 
in the shape of a house. The address was in Warwick, the 
closest town.

“I hear she’s good,” Monika cooed at the airport Snackhut. 
“She’ll do a good job of things before I get back. Call her this 
afternoon and make an appointment with her to see the 
house.”

I never called the woman though.

On the way home from the airport, I stopped off at the 
Ginger Foxe bakery to claim the coffeecakes Monika had 
ordered. In fact the last thing Monika had said to me was, 
“The blueberry caramel cake, Ruther. Don’t forget to pick it 
up.” Then she had blown on her plane ticket like there was a 
bug to be got ridden of.

As the brass bells over the bakery door jerked on their fat 
velvet straps, I remembered how I had caught Monika’s kiss 
in my hand and put it to my lips. But she had already turned 
to the man next to her and was laughing. This made me want 
to give the girl behind the counter a hard time.

22


She was a striking young woman with a pin-up girl look to 
her. Not an aluminum blond of a Marilyn Monroe ceramic, 
but softer, like a twenty-five watt light bulb. Her jeans were 
the color of a fresh bruise. A blue and orange college 
sweatshirt was bunched around her torso.

On the glass case to her right was a shoebox with receipts 
in it. Someone had crossed out the size with thick, greasy 
black strokes.

I shook the snow off of my tiger-eye tweed driving cap and 
stomped my feet loudly on the carpet runner.

“You must be Ginger Foxe,” I said leaning toward her over 
the doughnuts.

“I just wiped that counter off. No. I’m Arcady. I live 
upstairs. Mrs. Foxe, that’s Ginger, has a cold. Don’t I know 
you from somewhere?”

“Arcady?” I interrupted and pulled out the card Monika 
had given me.

“I do know you,” she insisted. “You’re the new 
weatherman on channel eleven. O, I love the color radar. So 
does Mrs. Foxe. Was that your idea?”

“No. Listen, do you know a Herrace Zanker?” It was only 
a hunch.

“Singular?” I took a step back at her laugh. It was a wet, 
open mouth bar laugh. Then she pointed to the card I was 
reading. “Hey, where you pick that up. That’s mine, you 
know.”

“I came to pick up a coffee cake that my wife ordered. I 
had no idea you’d be here,” I explained.

She smiled and gave me a large, pliant masculine hand 
white with flour. “Ashton, of course,” she said quietly giving 
it a dignity it no longer deserved.

I nodded proudly. “My wife, Monika, is away. She gave me 
your name. I suppose you’ve talked to her.” There was no 
response so I went on to explain the rest. Yes, it was very 
large. What it needed was paper, paint, lamps, whatever she 
usually did to, uh, change the mood.

“The mood. Yes, your wife said something about that.” I 
thought the girl might laugh instead she grinned and assured 

23


me that the mood was what she did best.

She agreed to meet me early the next day. Tuesday, at 
eight or so. I gave her a key, though I don’t know where I 
would have gone and in exchange she swung a white box at 
me. She held it by the strings like a marionette. I thanked her 
and she winked without smiling.

By the time I got home the snow was spinning in ferris 
wheel circles.

Just like I had predicted. Before I fell asleep I thought of 
the girl at the bakery and Mrs. Foxe pointed to the red spots 
on the radar moving like amoeba to devour Warwick.

In the morning I ordered Chinese food for our breakfast.

She showed up at eight in the same jeans. This time she was 
wearing a cocoa sweatshirt with smears of ochre paint around 
her shoulder. I gave her a mug of coffee. She shook the 
cinnamon sugar Monika had on the table for toast into it, not 
bothering to stir it. Then she fished around in the stiff 
canvas dufflebag that she had brought as I spooned the sweet 
and sour won ton into crystal bowls.

The snow had given her face an appealing, red chapped 
look of a pressed prom rose. As it melted, her curls grew 
darker under the fleshy jawbone. I leaned back in the wicker 
chair when she started to eat, rubbing the white denim 
kneecaps with my palms.

“I’m sure Monika will like what you do, Miss Sutherland.”

The girl had a few strands of egg roll in her mouth. They 
swung as she bobbed her head. She seemed unusually 
awkward for a woman past her adolescence. Perhaps she was 
just unrestrained. I was certain that in long ago summers she 
had been a camp counselor. I imagined she would handle 
obscure games like sack relays, egg tosses and greased 
watermelons with an unequalled finesse. When she had 
finished chewing she insisted I call her “Cady”.

“Like a katy-did, the insect,” she added.

I was impressed by all the samples she had laid in front of 
me. A plethora of shag carpet pieces and paint chips. She 
seemed so suddenly serious and I began to sweat again.

“So tell me about your wife. That’s really what’s important 
here. Not what colors she likes, later, that maybe.”

24


She put me off a bit with this one, though I suppose I had 
been mulling over just that subject in the past week. I 
frowned as thoughtfully as I could for Monika’s sake. With an 
epiphanous grin I asked Arcady if she thought if there was 
any monosodium glutamate in the egg rolls. Some people 
notice that type of thing.

Then I spilled my guts. “Monika’s, well, I don’t know. It’s 
so hard to describe someone you’ve been so close to. She’s... 
not like you. O, god, Monika’s not like anybody.” 
My voice had begun to tremble.

‘Neither are you,” she shrugged nonchalantly but her hands 
had begun to pick at the carpet samples.

“Not genetically, no. But, spiritually or something people 
have a bond. Monika looks at things so differently. She scares 
me sometimes.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand, Mr. Wildlimb.” She looked 
redder and I wondered if perhaps I was scaring her a bit, if 
she was thinking that I was not safe to be with. Like this. 
Alone.

“O, Christ. This house, for example. Monika hates it. She 
has been stripping it, clawing at the walls for weeks now. It’s 
all she does. She wakes up and it’s chip, chip, chip. She get’s 
in bed and well, the whole place reeks of turpentine and 
linseed.”

“I can’t smell anything, Mr. Wildlimb.”

We were silent for a while. She sorted paint chips and I 
rubbed my eyes with the back of my hand.

Finally I said, “You smell nice. Like allspice, cloves.”

“Like a bakery,” she said, smiling a bit. When she blinked, I 
saw that her irises had the dull sheen of undeveloped film. 
Blank and moist, waiting to be engraved with an idelible 
image. She looked back at me, boldly for a moment then 
pulled her hair over her eyes trying to stretch her bangs.

“I know,” she said suddenly.” A jungle motif in the dining 
room. ”

“Rainforest. Yes,” I added eagerly, knowing what she was 
getting at.

Glass fruit swung over our heads as she bumped the Tiffany 

25


lamp, reaching for samples. We wrote down a long list of 
ideas Monika was sure to love on the bag the Chinese food 
came in. I thought of all the colors and patterns of snakes 
and lizards that I could and wrote those down on the receipt 
that was stapled to the bag.

After writing notes feverishly, Cady paused, almost 
panting.” Do you think I could see her bedroom?”

It was the one question I had been dreading. I felt like a 
father who is trying to tell his only daughter that the 
backseats of cars aren’t only for groceries and the Great 
Dane. So instead I told Cady that I would do the painting 
myself. I wanted to be done when Monika came back. That 
was the most important thing.

Before she could say anything else I thought of something I 
wanted to show her. I got up and grabbed a large prism from 
the window sill. A hollow grey earthwormish tube was 
suspended inside it.

“Do you know what this is?” I asked. “I found it when I 
was a boy. Monika put it in glass for me. She went through a 
phase putting all sorts of things in glass. Everything she 
found.”

Cady held out her hand but I didn’t want to give it to her.

“It’s a fulgurite. When lightning hits the sand, it forms a 
tube of natural glass.” Then I looked at her as if it were a 
telescope. The prism refracted her body in a zig-zag. Like a 
gruesome magic trick she waved her disjointed hand and 
smiled. I felt that if I could slide her head back on to her 
body and put her back together that it would help put me 
back together as well.

I put the tube down. “You’re not what I expected.” I 
suppose this could have been either one of us, but it was me.

I wanted to touch her or ask her something intimate. 
Instead I whispered rawly, “Maybe we should look at 
Monika’s room now.”

As we wound through the dim halls, I wished I could tell 
her to go home. But she was racing ahead of me as if to find 
an exit. I called ahead telling her which door was Monika’s. 
Cady pushed it opened but stood there as if the carpet were 
quicksand.

Monika’s bedroom was covered with dozens of girasol webs

26


that netted to form a ceiling. And each web glittered 
intensely, as if a spider had laid a dozen nacreous eggs.

“Dear god,” said Cady and she wet her lips.

There were almost a hundred apothecary jars filled with 
herbal oils on the shelves by the windows. Glass bubbles 
floated on the oil. By the brass bed was a case filled with 
glass engravings shaped like giant brilliant cut diamonds.

“Untouchable,” she said. “It’s so untouchable.”

Cady was crossing the room to the windows when she 
finally noticed the fish. Monika had strung ten circles of 
intravenous bags. The bags acted as suspended aquariums. 
Within each were dozens of darting neon blue, red, yellow 
tropical fish. Angel fish, tetras, and the like. Some no longer 
moved as I had not come in to change the water since 
Monika had left.

Cady twirled around under the bags wrinkling her nose. 
“My god, they can’t live very long.”

I frowned. “No, they don’t” She turned to Monika’s 
dresser and picked up a silver mirror, looking only at the 
back. Then she gently pulled open the top drawer, it slid into 
her long arms easily. I went and stood behind her.

Cady’s eyes watered as did mine from the sharp rose oils 
that had permeated the cedar lining. She dipped her hand 
into the waves of streaky silk and satin. I almost expected her 
hand to be wet when she withdrew it. The vitreous folds 
crested in foamy lace, percolated as she stirred the material 
more furiously. It began to trickle over the sides of the 
drawers onto the garnet carpet.

I took a deep breath as she lifted out a brassiere. It was 
reinforced with reticulated golden thread. Cady held it in her 
hands like the wing of cicada, then she held the gossamer 
membrane to her chest.

“I’ve never seen such lingerie. Your wife, well, she’s a very 
beautiful woman. She must look very stunning in them.”

I blinked. “I dunno,” I said.

Cady dropped it in the drawer. “I’m very sorry. I should 
never have said that.”

“No. She just won’t let me touch her. I try. She just won’t. 

27


I’ve never. . . never seen any of these things. Perhaps they’re 
for someone else.” I paused, feeling very bitter and my eyes 
were hot. Cady picked up the bra again and looked to the 
window.

“Can I try it on?” she asked and I watched numbly as she 
raised her arms above her head and asked me if I would help 
her pull her sweatshirt off.

After a short struggle we unbent our heads together and 
studied the mirror. I smoothed Cady’s light hair with the 
back of my hand. Her breasts glowed a frostbite pink. Her 
nipples were swollen and sparkled of ice dust.

“What are those?” I asked, running my fingers down the 
deep, sunburst scars that sloped into her nipples. Cady 
lowered her chin, touching my knuckles.

“I just developed too fast. It happens sometimes.” She 
started to cross her arms but I pulled her hands to my sides.

“When did you start?” It was a question I had always 
wanted to ask Monika.

Cady squirmed. The bra was much too small. “Ten.”

“Is that very uncommon?”

“One day I was on the stairs in school. I was still a little girl 
and suddenly I felt as though someone had rolled a marble 
down my leg.” I ran my tongue over the rim of the ear. 
“Monika doesn’t have these, does she?”

“No,” I said flatly, then I went and got the fulgurite so I 
could look at Cady from all the angles I could imagine and 
then some.

I had her put on all the lingerie we could find and each 
time Cady changed I looked at her through the grey tube. 
She was wearing a black teddy with sequins when I came up 
with the idea.

I pulled Cady down on the floor with me.

“I wish I could still do the house. But, I can’t. I’m sorry, 
Ruther.”

I squeezed her hand in agreement and told her what I 
wanted her to do. We found the hat pins in a drawer with 
scarves and sunglasses. I gave Cady the pin with the cabochon 

28


ruby tip and took the opal one for myself.

We climbed on chairs. “Like this,” I directed her with the 
opal in my fist. “Like this.”

The stale water pooled into the carpet looking like blood. 
Cady wanted to go but I made her stay until the last fish, a 
blue one, had ceased its spasmodic flopping.

“Monika and I make a smart couple,” I told her as she 
peeled off the black velvet. “You know, I think that we’ll 
grow together in this house.” It was, to be sure, a long range 
prediction that made us both smile.

“I know,” she said. “I think you’re right.”

Naked, she bent and tenderly picked up a white angel fish 
by its forked tail. Then she placed it on Monika’s bed.

“Do you know what causes it to rain fish or frogs in some 
places?”

“No. I’ve no idea. Perhaps Monika knows.”

“Yes, I think she would.”

Together, we put the rest of the fish there. Wetting the 
sheets. There were about three hundred getting pale in the 
air. Closing their eyes with metallic shutters.

About three hundred. That’s what it looked like.

29


TO THE DRUID’S MOTHER 

john lee hall

i made 
the wind 
that swirls 
in the yard. 
it only shows 
in leaves 
and snow, but i 
made it strong 
enough 
to hurt you, almost 
enough 
to make me 
want 
to see you.

i

split the oak 
back home, 
the one 
beside the thorn-wrapped 
ash, the one 
that leaned 
against my back 
while i read books 
that kept me 
away 
from you.

i learned spells 
from reading books, 
mother. can’t 
you read 
my warning 
in that 
tree?

you were the one, 
mother, 
who warned me 
to join 
the human race, 
stop living

31


in imagination.

i

turned farther 
into magic, 
cast the spell 
making you 
drink 
as much as i do, 
crazier 
then i am, 
more 
changeless 
than the celtic gods 
we serve.

the crab-shell 
castings 
say

my pain will end 
when i accept 
your sameness 
over 
time. making 
good sacrifice 
and letting you 
be

will end 
the rage 
you never meet 
and close 
the dreams that say 
i

am the sacrifice, and 
you

are the druid. i pray 
to the mothergoddess 
that it 
be so.

32


DREAM OF THE STORM

David Ewick

The basement window 
caked with coal dust 
has an eye, a clear spot my father 
rubs clean with a rag.

Through it, yellow light scatters, 
settles against the remains 
of an unfinished fallout shelter: 
boards, cinder blocks, storage 
for a week’s rations, fiberglass, 
nails, other things inadequate 
for their purpose.

He stands on a cinder block 
dragged to the window 
for this purpose: to watch for the storm.

This is Kansas, 1961. He is the age

I am now.

The glass rattles in its casing.

My father drops the rag, turns his eye 
to the eye of the window, so only the glow 
from the bulb behind the coal furnace 
defines the difference between black and white, 
washes in dull light his 
white sleeveless shirt, black 
pants and shoes, catches the dust 
and coal particles in the slow dance 
our presence has stirred.

He turns to me,

his face drawn, dark,

as if peering through some great distance.

He gestures to the eye, beyond the eye,

to the hill in the northwest, 
the eye of the storm.

He steps from the cinder block, backs away. 
Here it comes,

and the eye of the window closes.

33


THE THINGS WE CAN’T NAME

David Ewick

The stars bum

like children learning to speak, 
vowel by vowel, through time, 
until their language 
has eclipsed its usefulness,

become something else, 
a glance, a wicked look, 
an accusation.

The light we see is not the star itself

but something it has lost.

We touch one another and feel

nothing. Our fingers are deaf and dumb.

We see our children as reflections 
of comets moving away.

Our grandchildren don’t know us.

don’t recognize the constellations in us, 
the names we were given

by our ancestors.

So we watch stars track across the sky 
until we lose them,

search for understanding

of Polaris, the way it revolves

around itself, no children of its own,

reminds us that we are outdistanced 
by our own memories.

Antares is bright before dawn.

Yesterday I watched it fade quickly 
while you slept.

Our children were old before I could wake you.

34


ONLY IN DEATH WILL MAN FIND PEACE

David Swan

I

Adam and Eve were legally married 
standing in nervous, rigid fright 
before a large congregation 
of unknown relatives.

Jesus Christ is buried 
in plot number one 
of the Methodist Midland County Cemetery.

II

Chopin’s heart lies in an urn

at the church of the Holy Cross-Warsaw. 
Rasputin’s penis was cut off

by his lover and kept in a box.

Tchaikowsky left his skull

to England’s Royal Shakespeare Company 
for Hamlet’s graveyard scene.

John asked for ten minutes of silent prayer 
2:00 p.m. Sunday, December 14.

III

(For Chris Hammond)

Upon hearing the news of my death

find an old Gothic church,

sit down at the piano and play Imagine, 
then ring the church bell 
once for every year I lived.

I don’t know where I want to be buried; 
the south transept of

Westminster Abby,

beside Yuri’s family estate 
within view of the Ural mountains 
and among the yellow daffodils

and birch forest,

in a small graveyard 
alongside Captiva’s chapel,

at sea, or

in an unmarked grave 
overlooking Superior.

I will dig my father’s grave

35


and I would like you

to help my son dig mine.

Pass a bottle of Black Velvet,

laugh until you both fall down,

tell old drinking stories, and

teach him to play Somewhere Over the Rainbow 
on your banjo.

I want to be buried naked

in a rough cut pine box.

On the top in black coral inlay

I want the words

Only in Death

Will Man Find Peace

Anyone who thinks of draining my blood,

taking out my guts,

filling me with embalming fluid,

putting make-up on me,

and dressing me in Sunday sport coat and tie, 
will be visited every night 
by a violin-playing poltergeist.

I want no gravestone,

only an oak tree,

to grow over my remains,

to have it’s roots enfold my skeleton,

and to feed off of my body.

I am to be placed into the ground at 
sunrise.

36


KEWEENAW FIRE TOWER

David Swan

first snow after October. 
flakes falling in perfect verticals;

oxygen seeds cascading through pools. 
late autumn beige, reds and yellows

soon wet with tiny white octopi.

no longer can we see the lights

of Lac La Belle, nor

the outlined figure of the Hurons

like a school of whales singing in the distance.

you lean your back in the curve of my body 
as we sit under the warmth 
of a blanket

my great grandfather brought over the ocean.

I feel the moist breath of my whispers 
against your ears,

your neck, 
your cheek 
as we talk of Diane, of Rexroth, of Lennon, 
Whistler and Monet, 
the perception of poets 
and hedonists.

I tell you about the death of Mingus;

how he died in Mexico at 56 
was cremated the next day 
and that same day 56 sperm whales 
beached themselves along the 
coast of Mexico 
and were removed by fire.

I explain to you how I will die 
sailing toward the eye of a hurricane, or 
hang gliding in a lightning storm.

I tell you that my reality

is found in the lights and reflections 
upon water . . .

any water.

as the morning 
seeps into focus 
we watch 
blue green lights 
undulate

upon the bay, 
like my lips

upon the wave

of your

naked

shoulder

37


LIVING ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE LINE

Hannah Stein

I discovered a note 
not meant for me. Slowly 
I untied I and You 
Pulled sinuous body straight 
spun them all into a ball of thread 
on my fingers. But 
it sprang open, unraveled, 
drew a line down the middle of my life.

I stumble on. Owl-eyed

I teach, cook, eat. 
But I am afraid. Of 
leafless branches 
that imprint a cold sky, a cursive 
of ropes on grass, a centipede 
running along a laundry basket.

I fear a snake next might unwind 
from a pocket, retrace 
your writing. That your eyes, 
as guileless as before, 
will strike me blind.

38


THE QUIVER 
OF ONE MOMENT

Paul Shuttleworth

A man is sorting ice cubes on a wooden counter. He never 
completes the audit.

I can think she waits for him. Driving like a knife. Her 
honest admiration is ballad-quick. These long yellow eyelids. 
Will I forget you again? Hands of consolation. The personification 
of fire and smoke. It is precisely how she slept, the 
full hips brown on the white quilt.

Her sobs were an event. Is she ineffectual snow blowing 
off winter wheat, darkened by the loose soil? She runs 
screaming like lighting. On the sofa, three minutes of gushing 
and no attempt to conceal it.

Burlesque dancer laid aside like a striped jacket, very 
pretty like a new bar of lime soap. The dull metal look of 
eyes. To this day she thought, to this consequence of boogie 
woogie music. The tongue of heaven in the labia: the color a 
natural defense. Standing alone, her gaze against him 
like the others. Lovers feeding each other lemon pudding.

Hygienic kiss, down cushions, no altar, glass beads on a 
curtain. When she finished, her clear shadow stretched, the 
hands smooth on the bruised thigh, a boredom speechless, 
halfway between the notion of love and being paid.

The interview made him limp and pale. His chin sweaty. 
Her eyes added to the shaking of the room. Porcelain walls. 
No idea what time it was. The need to urinate soon. He 
thought of a king weeping for a favorite horse, a type of joy 
between old noun and old noun.

The popular city street leading to city hall and the 
fountains and statues and drunkards in waiting-rooms 
dejectedly, hands saying ‘Forgive me.’ A man walks along the 
sidewalk with a dog on a leash. He may be ill. His head tilts 
to the right side. From the cradle to this: bundles of see you 
later and the end of the week ending like a dropped plate of 
buttered rice. The hostile glances of waiting strangers 
prowling in the library. It was already late afternoon and the 
fog was rolling in over the new highway erected over the 
older section of town.

39


The wide entry comes alive for the beardless face. Lit 
candles. This misty wind stills the music vaulting out the 
window. She rests one arm, using the other arm’s elbow to 
arch herself upward. He intends to remain ethical. Forget the 
comedy of children painting on old bureau forms. It is not 
yet fatal. Melancholic conduct: he retrieves her pink camisole 
from the bare wooden floor and kisses the lace border as he 
hands it to her. She rinses off a washcloth and hangs it on a 
peg on the door.

He ignored the summons as long as he could. Each tap on 
the door, each reference to the authorities: please answer 
correctly. The neck muscles cramped. He calculated the 
distance downtown.

Do you get up early in the morning? Does the sight of red 
paper annoy you? Was her mouth cruel? Did she remain 
kneeling? Did you notice any abnormality? Was it as coarse 
as sand? The answers, please. With some detachment, he was 
able to finish the form, not feeling rebuked. Her hands folded 
over her pubic hair?

Riding in a car, he selected people he might like to meet. 
The audience as performance. Photography as erotic habit, 
the motion of frozen gestures. This earth, this sickly texture 
of developing off color, preserved in his own hands.

An hour passes. The house is suggestive of the nearby 
beach. By a desk lamp, he files the photographs in a 
cardboard box. The zoom lens was used. A warm breeze from 
the ocean. Books on the occult, a ghost in the small hamlet, 
children led by a demon-child. She waves to him from a 
window. Her upper parts pudgy, red velour wallpaper behind 
her. He files it away. She does not say, ‘Go away.’ 
Later, they share a bottle of white wine and sit by a wicker 
table.

‘Let me help you.’

‘I admire a man who know what he wants.’

They do not take sides. It is simple and quick, her blithe 
smile does not remind him of anyone he has known.

‘You flatter me.’

‘Shouldn’t I?’

Unashamed, she says, ‘Come, come, you can’t take it all in 

40


with your eyes.”

I could write a short letter if you know what I mean. 
Something that draws her conclusion for her. The bitten ear. 
The world takes another step without me. I tried to 
telephone a couple of times, just to say the mouth lodged in 
pink hell. Closing your eyes, the sofa damp in the corner, you 
tried to sleep. The streets empty and there was no one else 
but you to watch. I could have counted the worn out 
garments that other men shred or disliked because it wasn’t 
the first time. Fingers on her breast, lulling my hand to a 
dream of rosy return. I stumbled up the stairs, the hurry up 
of lifting her off her knees afterwards. The blonde. Pale 
sleeping face. Rushing the words of becoming a man.

He felt no desire to stay with her. The greasy dinner later: 
hamburger and white bread out of a plastic package. A coast 
of strangers, all walking within the winks of time. Time as 
what echoed in the corridor leading to the stairs. She sat in 
that same room, possibly beside the wicker table, her 
shoulders pale and heaving, the dim street outside lonely like 
the jingling of a dog’s collar tags.

I’m on the front end of a fire truck, holding on to 
something as soft as a mattress. We pass alongside a high 
brick factory wall, nearly scraping. We barely avoid a head-on 
crash with three bicyclists, all in suits, perhaps missionaries. 
We arrive at a farm where a field is smoldering. As the 
firemen bring their hoses to the field, I enter a machine shop 
or kennel where numerous dogs are in crates. The crates are 
too small and the dogs cause the crates to breathe.

I wanted to ask if she liked coins. Did she like men to 
bow and open doors? Several times on the beach I have been 
struck by the silence. It reminds me of a hat in a closet. It is 
like a late evening parlor game. She yawns, but I am 
enchanted and pat her shoulder. A dog barks outside. Her 
white teeth on my ear.

A little thrill with marbled flesh. Promised strawberries. 
Giving in to the sucking. Plump breasts. Slowly. . . think of it 
as reading a menu, narrowing the choices. She could use oil 
for a massage. Ask her to speak in low and soft tones. Her 
impudent smile, then down on her knees, her blonde hair in 
the ball of a fist, an angry shake of the hand, pulling her 
forward again, disgusted by her spitting on the floor. Kissing 
the lips. Whimpers. Imagining a mountain inn, young girls 
with rucksacks in a meadow, their noses sunburnt and 
peeling. Then she brushes out her blonde hair. A casual 

41


glance out the window.

Before starting out for downtown, he thinks, They scratch 
too much. Something could be done. A decision must be 
made before the walk is over. Inside the brain tiny mice 
clawing at the stuffed furniture.

“These are not empty threats,” the letter says. “You were 
heard.” Enclosed photographs of rope coiled on stone. He 
licked his fingers, wiped them on his tweed jacket. A wave 
of nausea as when he came down the stairs from her 
performance, feeling he had paid too much. “Snuggle up 
against it,” he told her, “it’s healthy.” So clearly her breasts 
throbbed. The pleasure of only a second.

When I got home, I thought it was criminal to have 
expected it to last forever. It’s more like a box of bonbons 
one can buy at some movie theaters. It can be spaced out. A 
cigarette and begin again, gently rocking her hips to the 
music. From my seat, I could hear the sour breathed 
whinnyings of the others, their cheap jokes about moon 
landings and incomprehensible breasts glued to pasties and 
little steamboats in canals. A row of high school youths up 
front. She lets one stroke her flank. “We’re so glad you 
came this evening,” she added.

Melting together, hearing our guttural tameness cry out 
for now and then, we speak preference and place, trying 
not to be rude. I warn her not to bite. I extend a thumb 
inward and she straightens up for it is a second opening, a 
joining of nearby forces, and pressing my chin on her 
nipple, wondering if she tells the story later to finish off the 
boredom of being with another woman. The course lay 
open to me. Her art coupled so desolately with amiable 
coolness, speaking not of morning, only now and tongue 
and lips contracting.

Who is caressing her now? In the purest night, the salt air 
reminds him of all he has given away. To live simply with 
one’s desires and defects, unaware of others. She makes him 
feel he is understood. She listens. “Trust me,” he instructs, 
“this finger is not very long and surely. . .” She kisses his 
cheek.

He begged for a little time to think. The questions were 
difficult. He had a hard time thinking with the others in the 
room. Was her silhouette lovable? Do you drink much? Did 
you ask her to pose in a frock? She proposed a glass of 
white wine. Yes, it was there below the bed, already cool


42


ed. Do you frequent those places, and how often? The only 
way to get a handle on this is to consider the pleasure she 
gave. A beating does not have to be inflicted.

The scent of jasmine and privacy. I have referred to her 
instructions. Her movements right and left. The circle of her 
hips in the bright amber light. Her clothing opened. She had 
been on stage scarcely two minutes. A short whine as she 
moved her hand against her coarse hair. “I am so sensitive,” 
she said. The meaning as perfect as the invention of the gate 
latch, as thought out as a dog climbing another dog. The 
movements of memory. She is not herself, she says, and was 
once a model. The small pocket camera. She must stand 
closer.

If he loves her performance, he sends a note backstage. He 
attends her act over and over until she responds with her 
address, and that surely cost a gold ring or bracelet. He is 
more than onlooker, yet less than superior when she pulls 
back the piece of bright cloth and drops into the humid bed 
by the curtain.

We were to discover inclines of breast, the colorful slumber 
of seduction, and we did not cry. Yet. . . the summons. The 
poses were lifelike. Now the bath water is warm enough.

He is given a fourteen year old bride by the natives. She is 
brought to his hut in a white pantsuit and white fez cap. She 
is brown skinned with black wavy hair. She makes love 
ardently. So quick is his passion: he rushes inward after 
lowering her trousers to her knees and slightly raising up the 
blouse beneath the open jacket. He pulls her onto his belly. 
She gyrates on him. She is much smaller than him. Later he is 
disturbed to see that the flesh of her young breasts is mottled 
as if by fire scars.

The doctor said, “First, I’ll write you a prescription.” 
Towering over me. “Our wee friend has caught. . .” Yes, our 
little man, tallywhacker, puddly, tiny engine, peter, the horn 
of knowledge. Fever too. Twin pals hurting between such 
unconditioned legs. The wart. . .“No, it is not a callous.” 
Double whammy. “Of course I’ll have to report this at the 
end of the month.”

When they hire inspectors, they have to give them 
something to do. Now in my own eyes, it is not truly an 
infraction of the law. We will be sensitive. But you must 
cooperate. It causes us all some anguish. Now again, after the 
curtain fell, what happened? It’s certainly better than standing 

43


around at the packing house looking at dead meat. We are 
not empty of emotion.

She lit another cigarette. The odor of cosmetics. A bitter 
taste in my mouth. I was surprised to be there, as if with all 
the goodies in a schoolyard, the other children held to their 
lessons.

He gives him medical names that had never entered his 
mind, items without the fragrance of delicious berries stuck 
inside a vagina. Pay attention. It does no good to recall her 
throat, the half-spoken promise of hands curling to what is 
imagined beneath lace.

“Are you sick?”

“Why do you think I’m here?”

“Many like to pretend until it is too late, and they give the 
wrong symptoms.”

“My disorder is of a private nature.”

“Do you have any children?”

Her hand was on my forehead. It was in the room they 
searched later. Her outstretched arms. . . I needed to get 
away as soon as possible. The body produces a sense of 
anxiety before the illness actually makes itself known.

Please copy the questions on the sheet provided. You must 
not say that you have no opinion. You must represent your 
life honestly. Feel free to be ruthless with yourself. Think of 
it as a script. What led up to the feeling of justification? Do 
not forget that their statements have been turned in. We are 
on familiar terms with the events. You noticed that she was 
pale. Her teeth were on your cheek? Your ear? The full lips 
suggesting you would be pardoned for any dilation of moral 
posture.

Do you clip photographs from magazines? It should be 
your intention to come clean. Your permit has not been 
renewed. You had better come downstairs. You can leave 
your coat in the hall. Would you care for a mint? There’s a 
bowl of them on the desk of the secretary in the second 
office down the hall in the basement.

The curtains parted. She was there, strikingly blonde, 
something to be sipped like a liqueur. There was an eagerness 

44


to appear available. It was as if her mouth was a phone 
number. She began to dance to the beat of a drum. I was just 
an onlooker, there only because I felt a sense of sympathy 
for her plight. I nodded at her as she danced past me and 
dropped a black stocking. It was only natural to wish we 
could have met by accident on the beach. The performance 
was divided into three zones, providing a sense of intimacy 
for the whole audience, particularly those of us near the 
front.

The lateness of the hour. The scolding for wanting to leave. 
The offer of a poster used another town, a wanton pose. 
Then I had no doubts. Flatteringly, she rubbed her teeth on 
my ear. The finer stuff, she must have thought, as she 
brought out a bottle of white wine.

The doctor looked at him and must have said, “So this is 
joy.” Manly pride. Stop squaking. We can burn it off. That is 
what he will say at the next appointment. The authorities 
have not indicated if they will allow the cure to take effect. 
What then would prevent him from saying that it did not 
happen the way it is described? Direct methods are called for. 
He did not insist that she was beautiful; he was simply feeling 
virile.

He is slowly blinded from acid secreted by his tear ducts.

Perhaps meaningless. Yesterday the train ride ended. The 
voice said, “If you look into a telescope, a most powerful 
one, you will see yourself at the other end.” Now again at 
some country inn. The proprietor has no memory, he says. 
For breakfast they served two slices of bacon, toast, and 
almond flavored tea with honey in it. The door opened and it 
was there. An enamel tray.

I can still see my father standing over my bed when I was 
three years old. Terrible fever. In the middle of the night. His 
paunch. These things come back, soft like the pillows he 
placed on the floor beside my bed. “Will it help if I hold your 
hand?” Like the stones he kept for luck in his pockets. Was it 
sense of duty? The look on his face: an evening spoiled. The 
white blossoming snow outside. Then waking up to see him 
asleep on the floor, waking him up to ask for the wool 
blanket he had taken from the end of my bed and had placed 
over his body. Cough medicine, the taste of chewing tobacco. 
My teeth clenched. The night snapping against the loose door 
downstairs. Something wanting to come in with slim hands 
and full lips. Spitting into a paper napkin. Inch by inch his 
hand moved across my forehead. Ice on my favorite tree 

45


outside. My dinner on the table downstairs, uneaten and 
cold. He slept with two pillows, one below his head and one 
over his head. The blankets drawn up to my chin.

No more sea and wind with salt in it. Now the ride past 
fields of winter wheat. Large hogs in pens. Silo. Barn. Rough 
roads. The inn’s proprietor driving. A gold tooth. He names 
the towns: Impulse, Knowledge, Remote Pacing. . . Driving 
slowly. Saying, “It’s best not to see yourself as an isolated 
figure.” Saying, “In our profession, we feel we have a healing 
influence.”

Later, installed in the white house in the middle of the 
block, I am told, “Fill the void. The answers will come to 
you. You will feel like a fugitive. You will come closer to the 
confession here.”

He spent the first day writing a report on the condition of 
the house. Tattered wallpaper, chipped paint, stained toilet 
bowl, soiled rug, blankets used for curtains, broken 
thermostat on the stove makes baking difficult, no mailbox, 
furniture tawdry (sofa ripped to the stuffing). . .

Again the questions. Did her breasts take you away? From 
What? Will you need three sets of thermal underwear? Had 
she been waiting for you? When you climbed the stairs, did 
you imagine her bleeding into a vaginal pad? Describe her 
posture. Was it like plucking a flower? Use your own words. 
The whole affair. Did you imagine her pregnant?

Well oiled and restless. She dozed off. An intimate bond. 
She bent backward. It jumped. The beach required a coat. 
Using the bus in the morning meant having to wait on the 
foggy comer with people setting off for work. The bus was 
always crowded. The men read newspapers, often unfolding 
them onto your half of the double seat space. They did not 
like to think you were reading what was before your eyes. 
But taking the bus in the evening was different. In the tunnel 
you could see your face reflected, could see the faces of 
the other passengers without seeming to stare. Gaunt faces 
of people going to a movie or dinner or shopping. Then 
arriving and climbing the stairs. Saying, “Undress slowly.” 
Remembering a television show where a woman scrawled her 
love on a mirror with lipstick.

Step by step you try to walk back. Sore buttocks. You try 
to remember a box of toys you owned. Tractors, wooden 
blocks, metal coachmen, rubber balls. Now jagged flakes of 
snow.

46


She seems enormously happy that I came on time. A 
slovenly housekeeper. The smell of blonde hair. A wicker 
chair and table. Her hands on my knees. It always happens as 
if two patients slipped away to meet in the darkened waiting 
room, afraid of footsteps in the hallway. Hastening, as if 
reputation was still to be had in the old way. I could have 
broken my neck on the steep stairs. Like two patients in the 
bushes. The deserted garden. Not seeing the doctor with his 
camera and tripod on the roof. Going down on her. Once 
more imagining that it happens on a grassy slope above the 
ocean. She rests her head on my arm, saying, “I can’t figure 
you out.” She whimpers. A celebration of half-refusal.

Now the back door nailed shut. The proprietor out front in 
his car.

“We could take you by the scruff of the neck. . .”

“Why taunt me?”

“You refuse to cooperate?”

When my father came home from work, our two dogs 
would meet him at the front door. The older dog was calm, 
but the young retriever leaped and mouthed his gloved hands. 
My father would smack the retriever, actually box with it, 
unloading fast combinations of rights and lefts. The dog 
would stand on its hind legs and snap at his hands. Finally, 
my father would say, “To your comer. Go lie down.”

He watches his finger dab at his eye (as if looking at a 
mirror) to remove a piece of dust.

Higher primates can describe their feelings. Everything 
failed. But on her skin, I waited. I noticed the pale brow, the 
reddened cheeks. It was like staring into a bowl with the soup 
all gone. Motionless, she slept. She offered marvels and 
merriment, then withdrew behind the curtain. She was not 
a star, not someone seen in the right cafe chatting to the right 
photographer. She looked at me from the stage, as if saying, 
“Suppose it were to be.” I sank into her rounded belly, an 
abdication of blush and the need to get some money to pay 
the dentist. My native parts deep into the advantages the 
others only imagined. Her blonde hair in my fist. Yes, this 
way, toward me, tilt your head slightly and then the other 

47


way. All the secret dreams narrowing into the power of 
being, only days after she glided across the stage. Then the 
yearning done with, her sleeping form before me like the sea 
flickering at the harbor.

At the waiting room, noticing the wooden chairs scraping 
the marble floor each time someone stood up or shifted a 
chair. Waiting to be interviewed. Old magazines on battered 
coffee tables. The words and photographs like slavers groping 
in the hold of a ship with pubescent contours. A baton 
twirler sells a pick-up truck. Get a fix. An identity crisis for a 
woman naked by a swimming pool, the door to the house 
open behind her, her auburn hair long and pulled around her 
tan neck and down her shoulder, the right nipple exposed. 
The chairs scraping. Rooted in the full neon light, unable to 
leave. An exultation of It-would-be-a-shame: this delay not 
the end, certainly a note could be written to her, something 
to say it can be consummated again if I keep the secret.

Now the house in the middle of the block. The car outside. 
The endless torture of no choice. The suggestion of blonde 
oneness in the questions. Were you under a spell? Poised over 
her. We are now prepared to deal seriously with you. Was it 
mystic? It’s for your own sake. She was very striking. The 
aborigines brought her to the hut. It is easy to understand 
why she was not weeping. Perhaps no suitable man had 
previously been found. Now the house in the middle of the 
block: smudged wallpaper, soiled carpets, kitchen chairs 
obviously bought at a restaurant auction. Just sit for long 
periods in the overstuffed easy chair and think about the 
questions.

If you need a rest, read the local newspaper. Perhaps she 
was fifteen years old and ran away from home. Seeing an 
advertisement for dancers, she. . . Stop it, read the local 
newspaper. King and Queen Candidates Announced. A dance 
will follow. If you haven’t made plans for your valentine. . 
Some people may have inadvertently been missed in the 
survey work. For sale-Brome and alfalfa bales. Filled with 
delicious chocolates and creamy butter bons, she dripped 
sweetly on the stage, then inserted a finger, withdrew the 
finger and sucked on it. A boy wearing a high school football 
team jacket caught the black stocking she tossed. The boy 
waved it over his head, then kissed it.

48


Do you think that women like to kneel? Did your father 
bet on horses? He kept on trying, but he could only 
remember the foam the surf left on the sand.

“Would you like to go out today?”

“Do I have to?”

“The fresh air might help you to answer the questions.”

“Where would you take me?”

“You could see the packing house. It’s really quite 
interesting and it’s only just on the other side of the railroad 
tracks.”

When I was a boy, my father collected rail spikes. He 
walked along the tracks on weekends. Our basement was 
filled with rail spikes. When he began this hobby, he believed 
he could paint them gold and sell them to people he met. 
Later he used them as birthday and Christmas presents. The 
railroad company went bankrupt and I often wondered if it 
wasn’t somewhat his doing. After all, he could have brought 
the loose rail spikes to the train station once a month to be 
used again. I went with him often along the tracks. It was the 
only time he was really dishonest. If a train passed us, he 
would wave to the engineer, wave as if he was not stealing 
railroad property. Yet I still have one of his favorite ones.

Do you understand cause and effect? Breast like someone 
in the business of breeding. Hearty. Unembarrassed, she bent 
over and arranged the bed, letting me rub her buttocks. This 
small investigation is officially recognized as having 
boundaries, but we warn you...

Outside I could hear the jingle of a dog’s license tags. I 
walked west toward the beach not caring what time it was. 
My eyeballs seemed raw. I tried to count how many blocks I 
could walk without turning my head from side to side at 
corners. It was late. There were no women out. Usually, I 
enjoyed counting women who were attractive enough to be 
desired. I would try to keep in mind the number of the one 
that was most buxom, the one that was blondest, the one 
with the most dark eyes. ..

49


A man is sorting ice cubes on a wooden counter in a 
country store. A customer is in front of him, telling a story. 
It is difficult to keep the count straight.

When we arrived at the packing house, it was late 
afternoon. A tour without death, but with the odor of death 
and defecation in the air. We are issued white plastic helmets 
and white luggers to snap on over our clothes. The lecture 
begins in the storage room.

Everything is cooled to 35 degrees. I notice the great sides 
of beef hanging on hooks, blood dripping onto the cement 
floor.

“We use everything. The noses, lungs, gullets, and excess 
livers are sold for dog food. By the way, have you tried eating 
brains. Very good fried.”

I watch the proprietor closely. He has been with me for 
days, seldom leaving the car parked in front of the white 
house. As we entered the packing house, he asked me, “Do 
you get the feeling you have been brought here to be killed? ”

In the room named The Killing Floor, the walls are made of 
enamel white brick.

“After stunning the cattle with a captive bolt compressor, a 
stunner driven into the sinus cavity (a shock wave to the 
brain renders them unconscious), we puncture the aorta.”

The floor is slippery with steamy water and animal fat. 
The proprietor, obviously holding the rank of inspector, is 
watching my reactions.

“Aging begins at death.”

She brushed her blonde hair. Her parted lips suggested loss 
of hope, yet an hour of passion. In a golden light, her flesh 
seemed more gold than pale. Behind her the velvet gold 
curtain. From each wrist, a bracelet and chain dangled a 
massive gold globe. This incident recurred at the start of 
every performance.

“I was waiting for you.”

50


The stairs had exhausted me. She asked if I wanted a cup of 
coffee. She said she had to complete her exercises first. Her 
breasts evenly bounce, smaller and less pudgy than they 
appeared on stage.

The shouts from the audience mingled with the music. One 
boy shouted up a proposal for marriage.

Did she blush? You said that you did not fall on the stairs. 
We must be sure beyond a doubt. Did the glitter attract you?

She wiped the perspiration from between her breasts. My 
lips passed over her. Applause she still heard. I cried out all at 
once. Like a nude painted for a popular magazine. Now these 
inquiries. Just a portrait. Recalling sand castles at the beach. 
The gloomy fog, neighborhood bars, the sandy streets. 
Delicacy and firmness saying, Come to bed, come to 
something better defined than a dance. I remained awake to 
observe her. Her upturned breasts for every clerk to see, 
forgetting their sagging shoulders and lost luggage. The boys 
shouting, “Let’s make out.” A journey out of plot into silk 
and outstretched arms, audacious hips and black stockings 
bought by the carton to toss aside.

Passing judgment. The train moving days from the ocean. 
Not really a trial. You have no wife to call? Indelible writing. 
Your home will be locked up. The yellow twilight coming 
through the train windows. Cushioned chairs. Children 
laughing at the station, punching buttons on the soft drink 
machines. Here and there men who might be spies. Feeling 
worn out. Slightly puzzled. She was hollow-eyed. Her blonde 
scent stronger than cigarette smoke, trying hard not to make 
a bad impression, not wanting to seem easy. The roles 
reversed, I felt she was watching me as I awkwardly lowered 
my underpants. Trains moving in contrary directions. Waking 
on the rolling plains. I could write her a letter. I shouldn’t 
have rushed off. You were drowsy and dozed off. Just the 
quiver of one moment. When I returned home, I wanted to 
come back to you. Your brown hips on the white quilt. No, 
you did not have a tan, that is something constructed later to 
recall it better.

At first I thought I could ignore the summons. I reported 
that I was ill. They reduced me to a state of constant anxiety 
until no meaning was clear. I offered them imaginative tales.

51


Does the action we have taken seem fair? In our report of 
your first visit. . .

“I knocked on the door.”

“She gave you a deprecating smile?”

“No. The novelty of a fan seemed to intrigue her.”

“At first you thought that no one was home or that she 
gave you the wrong address?”

He is brought a young bride by the old men of the tribe. 
She is perhaps fifteen years old. She is dressed in a white 
pantsuit and wears a white fez cap. She is brown skinned 
with black wavy hair. She makes love to him enthusiastically, 
so quickly: he barely has time to lower her pants and pull up 
the blouse she wears beneath the jacket. She gyrates on him 
and he is struck with how small she is. She moves him to 
orgasm plus orgasm. Later, he is disturbed to see that the 
flesh of her young breasts is mottled as if by fire scars.

The newspaper is delivered. The people at the hearing were 
told that last year. There was an exchange of gifts between 
secrets sisters.

A picture of her writhing on stage. It had all happened. 
Confusion of turn, bite, shoulder. Whirled around, fervently 
licking. Gasping for air. Oblivious to the city outside. Nipples 
like pebbles. Deep enough. Deep enough. Almost howling, 
feeling the perfection of moving in the gap between two 
islands. It is like being a big eater.

My father worked at the University of Law (UL) until he 
was purged. He and another junior instructor, an obese 
woman from the desert, wrote a proposal: they were to have 
reconstructed The Great Trial, using law students to portray 
those who had been involved. The performance was to have 
toured all the cities in the state. After the proposal was 
written, the woman convinced my father to approach the 
authorities to ask for permission and for a grant. She was 
very heavy, perhaps 250 pounds, and her face was the color 
of burgundy wine when she walked any distance. She was 
new to the faculty and had no friends. My father and mother 
felt sorry for her and often had her over for dinner. She said 

52


that he should present the proposal because he had slightly 
more seniority. My father went to the capitol for several 
weeks. Just as his money was running low, he managed to get 
in to see the Deputy Minister for Law. During the time my 
father was away, the woman tried to become friends with 
several other junior instructors. At first they ignored her. But 
when they learned of my father’s efforts, they asked her why 
she was involved in what was obviously a plot to make them 
appear to be do-nothings. She denied any base motives. They 
said my father was self serving. When my father returned, he 
learned that she was now against the project. But it was too 
late. The proposal to dramatize The Great Trial had been 
approved and the authorities had issued a press release and 
the story soon appeared in the newspaper. The woman 
approached the Junior Faculty Coordinator and wept, saying 
she had been railroaded into the project. Although she 
valued the work of The Great Trial, she felt that my father 
was planning to use it as some sort of a stepping stone. After 
weeks of meetings, the deans of UL dropped the grant. There 
was a subsequent investigation. Although my father was 
found innocent of any wrong, he was relegated to a small 
office in the basement of the administration building. The 
woman resigned at the end of the year and returned to the 
desert. She had thought she had earned her way into the 
clique of junior instructors; she had not shown them up. But 
she was still unpleasant to look at (“A great sack of pus,” my 
father admitted.) and the others laughed at her behind her 
back.

“The Conscience.”

“A book?”

“We can become angry with you.”

“I swear she was alive when I left her.”

“That is not in question.”

“I was a mere trick.”

“You expect us to believe that?”

53


“It all reminds me of a man tossing a stick for a dog. The 
dog seemingly does not tire. But the man knows better. He 
keeps hurling the stick further and further, and changes 
directions to confuse the dog.”

“We are not tossing sticks.”

“Then why was I summoned here at seven in the 
morning?”

Calm, unhurried, he paid the admission fee and entered the 
theater. He took a seat near the stage. The light flowered on 
the various girls, but especially on the blonde one he came to 
watch regularly. That night she was wearing a red velvet 
frock. At the end of her routine, he passed her a note 
wrapped in paper money. She smiled pleasantly; perhaps she 
was used to this sort of approach. She did not exhibit 
surprise. He noticed the soft flesh of her breasts, perhaps 
even the purple bite mark on her throat (barely concealed by 
cosmetics). I hastened up to a seat behind the subject and 
was watching when another dancer dropped a note in his lap 
at the end of her bump and grind. He may have only caught 
the subject’s hand withdrawing from the vicinity of the 
woman’s thigh. When he exited the theater, he waited out on 
the sidewalk for a bus. When no bus arrived shortly, he began 
walking west.

“You have not given full answers.”

He is slowly going blind from acid secreted by his tear 
ducts.

His idle hours some kind of jail. Any moment now. It was 
enough to draw a conclusion. As if everything was 
foreordained, he was seated in the waiting room. He realized 
he was alone. They might expect him to boast. Never in his 
life had he been confined. He would try to describe her.

The interview left him limp and pale. The inspector seemed 
to be in sympathy with him. His chin sweaty. Her velvety 
skin. Her eyes added to the shaking of the room. So many 

54


sighs. Porcelain walls. He asked her first if she thought it 
would be humiliating. No idea what time it was. In this 
posture, her blonde hair in his fist. The need to urinate soon. 
She said she did not feel obliged to do so, and she understood 
it was the excitement. A type of joy between old noun and 
old noun.

The wide entry comes alive for the beardless face. The heat 
in the room has them gasping. Standing by the bed, 
something nameless born between them. Lit candles on the 
wicker table. It thrilled him to see her buttocks as she leaned 
over to pick the quilt up off the floor. This misty wind stills 
the music vaulting out the window. Her bobbing breasts. She 
is arched upward. Just one more tussle, please. He intends to 
remain ethical. Her hair dishevelled. Trust me. The others 
lacked your sense of joy. Melancholic conduct: he retrieves 
her pink camisole from the bare wooden floor and kisses the 
lace border as he hands it to her. She poured out a small glass 
of white wine. She rinses off a washcloth and hangs it on a 
peg on the door.

Unashamed, she says, “Come, come, you can’t take it all in 
with just your eyes.”

I have a letter to mail. Something that draws a conclusion 
for her. The last hope is gone. The bitten ear. Think of rustic 
postures. I could have borrowed a camera and taken you to 
the forest. The world takes another step without me. I have 
waited so long. I tried to telephone. The pushing and rushing 
of her body. Closing your eyes, you tried to sleep. The sofa 
and the bed both damp. Did you do it to pass the time? 
Fingers on her breast, lulling my hand to a dream of rosy 
return. Rushing the words. I filed the photographs. “Next 
time, next time,” you promised. Then at the clinic, I 
remembered showering off blood, remembered burning the 
underpants.

Promised strawberries. Like something with a For Sale sign 
on it. Giving in to the sucking. I call my place of work in the 
morning to say I’m ill. Plump breasts. A standing room only 
performance. Her impudent smile. Then she spits on the floor 
the milky stuff. Sucking chocolates out of her vagina along 
with her month’s flow. Kissing the lips. A harvest moon. 
Imagining a mountain inn, young girls with rucksacks in a 
meadow, their noses sunburnt and peeling. Crawling over her. 
Then she brushes out her blonde hair. It is the time to think 
of when we were fused. A casual glance out the window. A 
craving for applause and wolf whistles.

55


Melting together, hearing our guttural tameness cry out for 
now and then, we speak performance and desire. My ordinary 
clothes on a wicker chair. I warn her not to bite. I cried out. I 
extend a thumb inward and she straightens up. It is a second 
opening, a joining of nearby forces. Pressing my chin on her 
nipple. Opening them to their widest. Wondering if she tells 
the story later to finish off the boredom of being with the 
other dancers. Promising her that we will go swimming every 
day. Her art coupled desolately with amiable coolness. 
Speaking not of morning, only now and tongue and lips, 
contracting. Saying we will lie down in the warm sand, linger 
as the others go home, our passion our only occupation, 
hundreds of gulls in orgasm bending the sunset.

The scent of jasmine and privacy. I can boast. The circle of 
her hips in the bright amber light. I took off my clothes 
awkwardly. She must stand closer. Yet one morning there 
was a summons. To what purpose?

The doctor said, “First, I’ll write you a prescription.” My 
fear a means of gaining sympathy. The doctor towering over 
me. “Our wee friend has caught. . .” Certainly we can avoid a 
report at the end of the month.

“My disorder is of a private nature.”

“Some bonds are not honorable.”

I conceded much more than I should have. Her hand was on 
my forehead. A white box on the inspector’s desk. He opens 
the box and displays several tapes. It was in the room they 
searched later. Sinister business passed from hand to hand. 
The body produces a sense of anxiety before the illness 
actually makes itself known. Slowly, I parted her lips. 
Wishing for mirrors. The sickness reported, I had to answer 
the summons.

He sees his finger dab at his eye (as if looking into a mirror) 
to remove a piece of dust.

The curtains parted. Appraising eyes. Men with hands in 
pockets. She was there, strikingly blonde, something to be 
sipped like a liqueur. As sweet as chocolate. There was an 
eagerness to appear available. Creamy flesh risen from its 

56


sleep. It was as if her mouth was a phone number. Like a 
Christmas box ready to be opened. She began to dance to the 
beat of a drum. Illusion for an aging man. I was just an 
onlooker, there only out of sympathy for her plight. But I 
had a taste for it. I nodded at her as she danced past and 
dropped a black stocking. She tossed herself from side to 
side. It was only natural to wish we had met by accident in a 
cafe by the beach. Her eyelids tinted blue. The performance 
was divided into three zones, providing a sense of intimacy 
for the whole audience, particularly those of us near the 
front. I could have reached up, but it was forbidden.

No more sea and wind with salt in it. The melancholy 
nothing at all left. The ride past fields of winter wheat. What 
was the meaning of the tapes? Large hogs in pens. “We 
thought you were a forthright man.” Silo. A tom white 
blouse. Barn. “You are now a long way off.” Rough roads. A 
suspicious figure in the dreams of the authorities. The inn’s 
proprietor driving (an agent). Wishing for the waves and froth 
of surf. The agent’s gold tooth.

“You must see it from our point of view.”

“I have tried.”

“There were grounds for the complaint. Beauty can inspire 
terrible acts.”

“I never denied that I had her breast in my mouth.”

“We heard the very last sound that came from her 
apartment.”

“So now I’m taking a trip.”

“So you’ll remember what we want.”

Had she been waiting for you? It appears clear enough at 
first. Again the questions. The agent seems tired. He has his 
reports to write. Are you afraid of offering evidence against 
the others? Describe her posture. Did you see anyone 
downstairs? Use your own words.

“You refuse to cooperate?”

“I had my company’s permission to take that day off.”

“You indicated she was not a good housekeeper. Did that 
anger you?”

57


“I behaved myself. It was just a lively sympathy that led 
me to her.”

“Yet you ignored the first summons.”

Do you think that women like to kneel? Did your father 
see a farm girl from the northern part of the coast? He kept 
trying to remember. He felt thirsty.

She lifted her hair off her neck, admitting, “I am very fond 
of you.” He buried his head in her breasts. They tumbled 
onto the bed. Her belly like a low-lying meadow. Her pubic 
hair moist.

She wiped perspiration from between her breasts. Long 
after the dimmed lights of the theater. My lips passed over 
her. Think about bathing beauties. Applause she will always 
hear. Her charms made for viewing. I cried out all at once. 
My smile reflected in her eyes. Like a nude painted for a 
popular magazine. Feeling in my prime. Needing the soft and 
fat buttocks. Now these inquiries. The poignant music she 
danced to. Just a portrait of a lonely Sunday. The sleepy 
eyelids of the authorities, listening to the story over and 
over, over and over saying that it is not complete. A pensive 
smile, something better defined than her dance. Time passed. 
I remained awake to watch her. The reports grew larger. Her 
upturned breasts for every clerk to want. The certain joy of 
flesh. The boys shouting, “Let’s make out, honey.” My 
desires representing what we both wanted, yet an illusory 
satisfaction. A journey out of plot into silk and rosy 
pleasure, audacious hips and black stockings bought by the 
carton to toss aside.

58


CARRIAGE HILLS BLUES

Carol L. Morris

She turned twelve last night 
and her party was a bust.

The girls factionalized,

were bitchy.

The nachos, pizza, cake, pepsi, potato chips 
didn’t help.

She’s got the white sugar blues.

She’s recovering now on the patio

in her bikini

in a chaise lounge

still wearing since morning 
her maroon and grey striped socks.

Her skin’s so pinkety-pink in th East Lansing sun.

At her feet a yellow jacket 
wobbles near the rusting hibachi 
woozy with pollen from the crab apple blossoms.

A man on a wooden balcony across the street 
sips his second Tom Collins, 
reads the Science Digest.

His grecian formulated wife 
waters a geranium bud at his elbow.

It wavers in a red-cedar tub.

A father and daughter cycle by, 
his stomach touching the handle bars.

She rolls over

blows an exasperated breath against the nylon webbing.

I want to comfort her.

I want to say it doesn’t matter.

I drain my bloody mary 
and head for the Shoprite.

Crabgrass and teeny leaves of baby birches.

59


Out of a townhouse I hear a black man yell 
in tipsy conversation, 
“Michigan is broke, man.”

In my bowling shirt and moccasins,

I meld with the other women 
many in tennis skirts, 
sport socks with little balls 
hanging out of their shoes. 
They stuff their grocery carts 
with avocados and boxes of frozen 
Lean Cuisine.

I push the wire mesh cart past the toilet paper, 
the sani-flush, 
past the anchovies and capers 
twisted in oily glass jars, 
past the Oreos and the Lorna Doones,

up to the checkout counter 
which has the banner:

MASTER CHARGE AND VISA THIS LANE

Behind a blonde boy in a bathing suit 
and his six of Strohs,

I throw my beef and a carton of Haagan Daz 
on the moving rubber table.

It’s suppertime in Carriage Hills,

Blythe, 
and the living seems easy.

60


MAGIC PICKLES

Carol L. Morris

Next to the fool moon

of the refrigerator

I’m alone in apartment 7,

lucky seven

of the Bentwood Arms, 
making pickles 
late midnight.

From the copper bowl at my elbow,

cucumbers

poke their ends, noses 
toward the light.

Aquamarine light

slanting through blue-green mason jars 
a cool beam falling 
on the porcelain countertop.

And I in a velvet apron-

slippers made of marigolds 
acknowledging the black snake 
of an October night

61


at the window,

lower them

two by two

into their widemouth vaults,

ladle the foggy whispering brine

down the backs of thier unbending necks. . .

Now they are seahorses 
jockeying for position 
among the bay leaves

their tails pearly rings of onions

their hooves cloves of garlic

their headdresses: red and yellow peppers

The clock strikes three

and I cap each aquarium

with a zinc top:

Then I set them on the windowsill.

A watery hedge against approaching ice.

62


LIFE’S LIKE THAT

V. Glen Washburn

He was born just right some say 
under Saturn exactly right 
right night best hour 
into a most auspicious age 
waiting breath held for his thrilling

Others

eyes older weaker cataract altered sight say 
it was a negative sort of thing

He didn’t start school until he was ten 
thereby missing the deadly advantages and benefits 
of a proper education 
and having to make due 
poor thing 
with the bare simplicities 
of vision and dawn 
water reflecting sun sparkles

But what really happened 
while Lodovico 
bound to Caprese back in 1474 
not a great year 
but a saucy clever little year 
with his wife who used to be 
and still is occasionally in the white of the moon 
known to us all as

Francesca di Nervi di Miniato del Sera

a song just like her name

a jubilee

dull but anxious 
alive warm moist 
an incubatory succubus 
as her horse was struggling 
up that steep hill from the evil west 
she fell

Three months pregnant to the very instant 
and inside her belly bulge

still warm and wet from this morning’s jostle 
the embryo got joggled just right

63


a few million cells were re-ordered 
and as she fell an almost visible flashing 
sudden warping of the world 
the universe shrugged 
whole fabrics for just a cat’s blink shuffled 
and exactly 4,321 hours later 
when he was born 
they called him Michelangelo

64


Shirley Campbell
Shirley Campbell



A HOLIDAY TOUR

V. Glen Washburn

On your left is your world

That dull brownish thing over there

Passing swiftly on your right

are hundreds of other planets

built and peopled by all those other 
creatures Handsome little gooks aren’t they

And here slowly unrolling 
and painstakingly pictured 
is where I live

I hope you like it here

I do sort of

(Not that I wouldn’t change if for a job selling 
used maces and such)

I’m really honoured to have been chosen 
to show you around this place 
and if you’ll be careful

not to stray too far from the clearly marked path 
there’s very little that can harm you 
except of course

for the deadly and dreadful and feared 
in fact so deadly and dreadful and feared 
that we don’t even have a name for him in our language 
usually so superior to yours

But you can always tell when he’s about 
by the sweetish almost gingery odour 
quite like what you are now smelling 
and be his evil way of doing a perfect imitation 
of a tourguide

66


DINOSAUR

Louis Philips

In the dark, we hear the boisterous, drunken singing voices 
of Edmund Spenser and Wilber MacKaye. They sing an 
almost forgotten folk tune.

SINGERS

“Mr. Bourne and his wife once at breakfast had a strife.

He wanted bread and butter with his tea, tea, tea.

Says she: ‘I’ll rule the roost, I’ll have a plate of toast,’ 
So to loggerheads went he and she, she, she.

Now there was a Mr. More, lived on the second floor,

A man very strong in the wrist, wrist, wrist.

He overheard the clatter, of toast and bread and butter,

And he knocked down Mr. Bourne with his fist, fist, fist.”

As the lights slowly come up, we find ourselves in the modest 
aberdeen cottage of Mr. and Mrs. Edmund Bourne Spenser. 
Edmund Spenser is an ex-patriated American who has spent 
the last two decades of his life in various Scottish villages. 
Edmund is dressed in miner’s gear, with the light on his 
miner’s hat still on.

With Edmund is his best friend and upstairs neighbor-Wilber 
MacKaye. Mr MacKaye is in his mid-fifties and his hair is 
white and thinning. He wears a light jacket, shirt, and blue 
wool tie, but at the moment his pants are draped over the 
faded sofa. He stands in his long blue undershorts and sings, 
sings.

Arlene Spenser, wife to Edmund, enters. She is a transplanted 
Londoner, and (like her husband) in her mid-forties, with a 
head of long red-hair and a music-hall temperament. She 
once had ambitions to be an actress, but she has long ago 
given those ambitions up. She wears a loose-fitting print dress 
and has pink cotton slippers on her feet. In short, neither her 
dress, nor her manner show her off to the best advantage. She 
carries Wilber’s tweed cap and flings it in frisbee style across 
the living room.

ARLENE: I found your bloody hat. It was in the garden 
where you left it.

67


Wilber lunges for the object. Misses it, and spills some ale 
onto the sofa.

EDMUND: (to Wilber) Watch what you’re doing, you bloody 
ape.

ARLENE: I just had the cushions mended too.

EDMUND: Aye. Twenty years brand new to the day.

ARLENE: A good sturdy sofa it is. Who cares how old it is? 
you can’t measure everything in life by age.

EDMUND: I’m sure that goes for you too, Dearie.

Wilber continues singing.

WILBER: Said poor Mr. More, a-sneaking to the door, for sure 
I’m a man without brains, brains, brains.

ARLENE: It’s not funny anymore.

Edmund grabs his friend by the shoulders.

EDMUND: Did you hear that, Wilber?

WILBER: I have one bad ear and the other is not much good 
either.

ARLENE: I ask the solictor up and you turn the whole thing 
to a drunken brawl.

EDMUND: The old lady don’t think our sky-larking is 
funny. (turns to his wife who is fetching the tossed cap). 
Why, Madame, I shall have you know that the song we were 
rehearsing has weathered the years better than any of us. 
“Mr. Bourne and His Wife” is among melodies, a dinosaur. Of 
course we know that survival is all, and “Mr. Bourne and His 
Wife” has survived when other grossly over-rated tunes have 
dragged their quarter-notes out to some swamp to die.

WILBER: Hear! Hear!

EDMUND: Hear! Hear!

68


WILBER: No sense of humor, your old lady? Is that what 
you’re saying?

ARLENE: I’ll old lady the both of you out into the gutter, 
that’s what I’ll do. (to Edmund) Now give Wilber back his 
pants, so he can be presentable to our guest.

EDMUND: Your guest. Not mine.

From outside the back window, we can hear the cry of a 
dinosaur rummaging among leaves.

WILBER: Pants? What pants? Did I have pants when I came 
down?

EDMUND: You can put pants on a monkey, but it doesn’t 
make him a king.

ARLENE: I am a respectable married woman. I should be 
spared these awkward sights.

EDMUND: Exactly what she said to me on our honeymoon.

ARLENE: How would you know? You were out getting 
drunk with your chums.

WILBER: Peace! She’s right, Edmund. Only unmarried ladies 
and Mother Superiors should be forced to look at a man in 
his garters.

EDMUND: I hate to tell you this, Wilber, but garters went 
out with the stone age.

Wilber bends over and points to a scratch high on his leg.

WILBER: And there is where Mrs. Chaplin bit me.

ARLENE: Mr. More will be here any minute, you fools!

EDMUND: (to Wilber) Fools? My loved one is talking to you, 
sir!

WILBER: And will this Mr. More be wearing pants?

69


EDMUND: Of course. It’s a sine qua non\ A civilized person 
can hardly walk abroad without seeing men in long pants. 
None just in their garters. Conformity is rampant. Why I hear 
tell of a society in Edinburgh devoted solely th the cause of 
putting pants on animals. Why, if the Clothing For Animals 
Society has its way, there won’t be a naked arse, to be seen 
from here to New Foundland. (picks up Wilber’s trousers). 
You should send these down, just in case the elephants in 
the zoo need something to wear. If I am any judge, this pair 
could cover two or three of them in one shot.

ARLENE: You two can’t go on celebrating forever.

EDMUND: Of couse we could, that is if we could live forever 
What a revolting thought that is. But no fear of that. Mortality 
with its stink throws a monkey wrench into everything.

WILBER: Forgive, forgive. It’s not everyday your husband 
brings home a dinosaur.

ARLENE: If that is all he brought home with him, if would 
be easy to forgive, but he had brought the whole world upon 
our shoulders as well.

The sound of a dinosaur eating a tree.

EDMUND: That would be justice, and we know there is none 
of that.

ARLENE: Mr. Shelby will advise us. Mrs. MacAbee says he 
is a brilliant solicitor. He’s handled all kinds of rock stars.

EDMUND: Well Gerty has handled all kind of rocks.

WILBER: Twenty billion dollars. Not a penny less.

EDMUND: Not enough. Not enough.

WILBER: Edmund, make your friend put his pants on.

EDMUND: Make him do this. Make him do that. Make your 
own friends is what I say.

ARLENE: We cannot conduct serious business if you do not 

70


put your pants on.

WILBER: The last woman who said that to me meant something 
else entirely.

EDMUND: What are we talking now? Ancient History? You 
haven’t looked at a woman as long as I have known you. 
Upstairs puttering around your cats and books.

WILBER: That is because your wife has quite stolen my 
heart.

EDMUND: She should have stolen your cherry.

ARLENE: Talk smut down at the tavern. Not here!

WILBER: (pulling on his pants) When I was a mere broth of a 
lad, I couldn’t wait for my first pair of long pants. Now, 
when I am all grown and tottering toward senilty, I can 
never wait to get out of them. Does that tell you what you 
need to know about growing up in this world?

ARLENE: Women grow up; the male of the species grows 
sideways.

WILBER (sings') ‘Says More, ‘Upon my life, you shall not 
beat your wife, for it is a sin and disgrace, grace, grace.’ 
‘You fool,’ says Mrs. Bourne, ‘This business is not of yourn,’ 
And she smashed a cup of tea in his face, face, face.’

ARLENE: Sober you up quick enough.

EDMUND: (at the window) Look at Mrs. MacAbee’s hooligans 
throwing stones at Gerty . . . .(takes up a rifle) Hey, 
you kids! Get away from her before you get hurt. I’ll blow 
your heads off if I have to!

He turns back from the window.

EDMUND:(to Wilber) Look at yourself, man! Your trousers 
are on backwards.

WILBER: So they are. I thought they were riding a little low. 

71


EDMUND: Why can’t Mrs. MacAbee keep her children at 
home, locked up in an oven or sonething? Why do they have 
to be out there pestering a poor innocent dinosaur?

ARLENE: If you wanted her to be left alone, you shouldn’t 
have brought her home. (looks at her husband and beats him 
to his nearly automatic response) Which is what my Mum 
said when you married me.

EDMUND: And where was I going to leave her?

ARLENE: My mum? You didn’t have to drag her along on 
the honeymoon.

EDMUND: The dinosaur. Of course the difference between 
your mum and a dinosaur is merely a hair’s-breadth. 
Miniscule. But do you think after years of plotting, mapping, 
exploring, trudging, and digging that I would leave my prize 
out there so some villain could sneak up on her and snatch 
her out of my grip.

Wilber is in the act of pulling his trousers off wher the doobell 
rings.

ARLENE: That’s Mr. More now. And you two will probably 
be proud to greet him in the altogether. That will get us all 
off on a proper foot.

Arlene crosses out to answer the door.

EDMUND: (calls after her) If we greet your solicitor stripped 
to the buff, a proper foot will be the very last thing he’ll look 
at. (to Wilber) A proper foot! A proper foot in the arse is 
what I should be giving you.

WILBER: What did I do?

EDMUND: Why didn:t you tell me that finding the world’s 
only living dinosaur would be such a heavy responsibility? A 
world on my shoulders!

Sounds of the dinosaur munching in the garden are heard. 

72


EDMUND: (calls to Gerty) Quiet you! You’ll get some food 
as soon as we get a check in hand.

WILBER: Last time I looked, she was eating the fence.

EDMUND: So who’s going to stop her? I’m telling you, 
my friend, that all the good things of the earth are dead. 
Someday you and I and Arlie will be extinct, and some 
space-craft of the future will dig up our bones and put us 
on display. A penny for the peep-show.

During the above, Arlene has returned, bringing with her a 
sturdy tweed of a man. This is Shelby B. More, Esquire, 
whose tanned face is punctuated by a chaplinesque moustache. 
He sets his brief-case on an empty chair.

ARLENE: One of these men is my husband, Mr. More.

SHELBY MORE: Aye. Which one?

ARLENE: Take a pick. Whatever one you think is best for 
me, though I hope you’ll choose the one with his pants on.

Mr More thrusts out his hand.

EDMUND: Careful of my hand, sir. I haven’t gotten all the 
coal dust off. Frightful dirty stuff, coal. If God had wanted 
mankind to live in warm houses he would have allowed us 
to pick a clean and inexpensive fuel right out of the air. But 
as it is we have to be satisfied with oil, gas, coal, and dinosaur 
droppings. Is that what you think?

SHELBY: And the sun.

EDMUND: The sun is a dying star. It is a dinosaur like the 
rest of us . . . (looks at Arlene) Sorry. I was just apologizing 
for the unwashed hands.

SHELBY: That’s the history of the human race, isn’t it? We 
must thrust our hands into dirt to get what we want.

All the while, Shelby has been staring with great puzzlement 
at Wilber who has been leaning out the window, waving his 

73


pants at Gerty.

WILBER: Over here, Gerty. Over here.

SHELBY: (indicating Wilber) And this one?

EDMUND: That’s our upstains lodger--Mr. MacKaye. He’s 
a dealer in rare books, but he has always had this thing for 
dinosaurs.

SHELBY: Pleased to meet you, Mr. MacKaye.

EDMUND: We have gone ahead in our celebrating. Shall we 
pour you a good one to help you catch up?

ARLENE: Wilber only comes downstairs to take his pants 
off.

WILBER: I was merely showing my friends where I had got 
bit.

SHELBY: The dinosaur bit you?

WILBER: Of course not. My cat did. Mrs. Chaplin I call her 
because she has a funny walk.

EDMUND: He has the only queer cat in the neighborhood.

WILBER: I wouldn’t know about that, because I’m not home 
very much, but I know she is upset about having a dinosaur 
in the backyard. It interferes with her mousing.

SHELBY: I can imagine ... I will have that drink if you 
don’t mind.

Shelby crosses to the window.

SHELBY: It is down there in the yard is it?

WILBER: You cannot miss it.

SHELBY: I didn’t think so, but all I see is this flat green hill.

WILBER: That’s Gerty!

74


SHELBY: (genuinely moved) What a sight this is.

EDMUND: The only live dinosaur in the world and there it 
is!

SHELBY: What keeps her from running away?

EDMUND: Apathy.

SHELBY: Apathy?

EDMUND: It is difficult to get a dinosaur interested in anything.


WILBER: As long as we feed it, it won’t go anywhere.

ARLENE: Just like some other people we could name.

SHELBY: It is incredible all right.

EDMUND: Seeing is believing.

ARLENE: That’s what my mum always told me about sex.

SHELBY: No, seeing is only seeing. Believing is something 
entirely different.

The cry of the dinosaur is heard throughout the land.

SHELBY: I see the dinosaur, but I can’t believe that you 
people have taken no precautions to keep her in place.

WILBER: Well, sir, we did chain her to the house on the left.

SHELBY: I didn’t notice a house on the left when I came up

EDMUND: Precisely. Does that prove our point? It was a 
beautiful cottage too. Not a stick left.

WILBER: She doesn’t like to be chained down.

SHELBY: And you’ve tried nothing else?

ARLENE: Wilber put a dog-tag around its neck. In case it 

75


should get lost.

EDMUND: Of course, what are the odds of a dinosaur getting 
lost these days?

SHELBY (with distaste) A dog-tag!

EDMUND: A dinosaur-tag if you will.

SHELBY: But that’s nothing man! An itty bitty tag around 
the neck of a great big animal?

WILBER: Nothing to you perhaps, but you try putting a tag 
around Gerty. I tell you I was hanging on for dear life. Everytime 
old Gerty bobbed her head, I was sliding about on a reptilious 
roller-coaster. Seasick, I was. Up, down. Up, down. A 
terrifying experience it was.

ARLENE: It makes our neighbor sick riding about on Gerty’s 
neck, but it makes me sick to think we are sitting on a 
billion-dollar discovery and we don’t know what to do with it

SHELBY: Well, I am certain there will be lots of uses for 
your dinosaur. A new commodity on the market always wets 
people’s appetites.

EDMUND: New commodity on the market? Why, man, she is 
millions, and millions, and millions of years old!

SHELBY: New is a relative term.

EDMUND: Relative to what?

WILBER: Old. That’s what new is relative to.

SHELBY: Sometimes a thing can become so old that it becomes 
new again. You two . . .

ARLENE: Three . . .

SHELBY: Three own the only living dinosaur in all of existence. 
This will make you the richest people in the world. 
Everyone will line up for miles to see a dinosaur.

76


EDMUND: It is not as if she can do tricks yet.

SHELBY: Dinosaur rides at a pound a head. Movies, television, 
interviews. There is no end to the possibilities of turning 
Gerty into a goldmine.

Sound of the beast.

EDMUND: We will exploit the bejesus out of her, will we?

SHELBY: Exploitation is the name of the game. It is the 
stamp of the modern world.

EDMUND: I don’t think we should take her places, though. 
Transportation might be a problem, with what the airlines 
charge for overweight baggage. A flight to Edinburgh would 
do us in .

SHEBLY: We can only take one step at a time. What kind of 
dinosaur do you think it is?

WILBER: A big one. What can be more useless than an itty- 
bitty dinosaur.

SHELBY: Even a small dinosaur is such a rarity that it has 
its market-place value.

EDMUND: He wants to know the make of it, Wilber. Whether 
it’s a Ford or a Volkswagen.

WILBER: A Rolls Royce. That’s what our Gerty is . Doesn’t 
our Gerty look like a Rolls Royce to you.

SHELBY: (looking out the window) Quite. But I would call 
it a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

WILBER: Brachiosaurus. Huger than seventeen elephants.

ARLENE: I always wanted to go out with a man who owned 
a Rolls Royce, but it was my station in life never to meet up 
with that kind of man.

Shelby returns to his sachel and unpacks a great number of 

77


legal documents.

ARLENE: The clock. I always wanted to hear the clock. Isn’t 
that what they say in all the ads? The clock is the noisiest 
thing about it.

EDMUND: A clock isn’t the noisiest thing about here . I can 
say that. I could say that if I could hear myself think.

ARLENE: Clamp on yer pipe before I crack yer head open 
with a tea kettle.

EDMUND: Temper. Temper. A regular ale-wife I married.

WILBER: Yale wife? You wife went to Yale? What did she 
major in?

EDMUND: Ale-wife. Not Yale wife. Why is it so difficult to 
make myself understood in my own home?

ARLENE: Where do you want to be misunderstood? Among 
strangers?

WILBER: What’s he yelling about? An ale-wife is better than 
a Yale wife any day of the week.

SHELBY: Please! No quarrelling! There will be plenty of 
Rolls Royces to go around. A Rolls for you ... a Rolls for 
you ... a Rolls for you ... a Rolls for me!

WILBER: (softly) “Mr. Bourne and his wife once at breakfast 
had a strife. He wanted bread and butter with his tea, tea, 
tea.”

SHELBY: All we have to do is merchandise her carefully. 
Little dinosaur dolls . . . make that big dinosaur dolls . . . 
huge dolls . . . dolls as big as cities.

EDMUND: Something cuddly.

SHELBY: The world’s first cuddly dinosaur.

EDMUND: Something the whole state of Virginia can take to 
bed with it.

78


SHELBY: Virginia? Why Virginia?

ARLENE: Oh he mined coal there once, and he keeps talking 
about going back there.

WILBER: Yes, Virginia. There is a dinosaur. Don’t go to 
Virginia. You’ll have enough money to buy her.

ARLENE: You wouldn’t have anything if I didn’t have the 
sense to call in Mr. More. (to Shelby) Otherwise the two of 
them would be spending their days looking at her out the 
window.

EDMUND: I particularly like her at night when her great 
head obscures the moon. Oh take a great chomp out of the 
moon for us, dearie.

SHELBY: Just sign here and we’ll get the dinosaur bolted 
down.

EDMUND: Bolted down? Come, come, Mr. More. A dinosaur 
is not a sewing machine.

SHELBY: I couldn’t agree with you more.

EDMUND: You might.

SHELBY: We must be careful and not let harm come to the 
animal.

ARLENE: What are you asking us to sign, Mr. More?

SHELBY: Just a standard business arrangement. I shall act as 
your agent and in return will be paid 20% of all monies 
brought in. Perhaps you want to take these documents and 
have your own solicitor read them.

WILBER: You are our solicitor.

SHELBY: In that case, I have read the contracts and find 
them in order. Sign.

EDMUND: (starts to sign contracts and stops) We do have 
one problem.

79


SHELBY: What is that, Mr. Spenser?

EDMUND: We could use a bit of an advance to keep Gerty in 
oats.

WILBER: And fences-unless I miss my guess.

ARLENE: She is eating us out of house and home.

WILBER: And fences.

SHELBY: No problem. The food will be supplied for free.

WILBER: Free? Now there is a generous man.

EDMUND: Do you have any idea how much she eats?

SHELBY: It doesn’t matter.

WILBER: So you say now.

SHELBY: I know food merchants who will trample over one 
another just so they can advertise that their beef is the official 
beef for the world’s only surviving dinosaur.

EDMUND: Beef??

SHELBY: Steak then.

ARLENE: Gerty is a vegetarian.

SHELBY: An animal as big as that? Ah, no, you’re mistaken. 
You just haven’t been looking closely enough.

EDMUND: She eats grass, leaves, shrubs, flowers . . .

SHELBY: All right then, I’ll call a couple of florist shops. 
A vegetarian. That is a disappointment. I was hoping we 
could feed her live animals. It would make a better show. 
Watching an animal eat leaves is little low on the entertainment 
scale. We’re going to have to think of a gimmick.

EDMUND: Isn’t a live dinosaur enough?

80


Randy Huishens
Randy Huishens



SHELBY: Not any more.

EDMUND: You’re daft!

Gerty roars.

EDMUND: Even Gerty agrees with me.

ARLENE: Quiet, Edmund. Mr. More’s the expert, not you.

EDMUND: I find the dinosaur, but everyone knows more 
about it than me.

SHELBY: Oh you might get a few good news stories out of 
it, but the public gets tired of things awfully quickly.

EDMUND: But, man, this is a dinosaur! Dinosaurs don’t 
grow on trees!

The crash of a tree is heard.

WILBER: Speaking of trees, there goes the last one now.

SHELBY: King Edward gave up the throne to marry the 
woman he loved. Where’s the headlines about that today?

EDMUND: That was fifty years ago!

SHELBY: Well, do you want a short play in the deadlines or 
do you want fifty years of coverage?

EDMUND: I’ll be dead by then.

ARLENE: Let Mr. More speak, Edmund. It is a miracle any 
of us get a word in edgewise.

SHELBY: People walk on the moon and nobody thinks of it 
twice. It’s a bloody bore. People turn on the telly and go 
directly for the sports. (Edmund raises his arm in protest.) 
You have a good product, I agree. But packaging is everthing 
these days. I suggest McAmm, McAmm, and McAllagher to 
control the flood of merchandise. Coloring books, T-shirts, 
lunch buckets.

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EDMUND: Everything but the kitchen sink, aye?

SHELBY: No. I am sorry if I give you that impression. We 
are after quality. Quality merchandising. Quality entertainment. 
Nobel prize-winning writers will write the screenplays.

ARLENE: I always wanted to be in the movies. When they 
were filming the royal wedding, a lot of photographers took 
my picture.

SHELBY: (not paying any attention to Arlene) We’ll have 
someone come up and teach her a few tricks.

EDMUND: you mean play on the horns like a seal.

SHELBY: Now there’s an idea. We could have our own recording 
company. Dinsoaur records.

ARLENE: I have heard records of whales singing.

SHELBY: Righto. The dinosaur plays, the whales sing. Twenty 
million records sold like that (snaps his fingers).

EDMUND: I don’t want Gerty imitating a seal!

SHELBY: She doesn’t have to imitate a seal. She can develop 
her own style.

EDMUND: And maybe you want her to jump through a 
hoop while she’s at it!

SHELBY: So you think it could be done?

EDMUND: I am certain that this world can build a hoop big 
enough.

SHELBY: Are you angry at something I said?

ARLENE: Leave him be, Mr. More. He is as grumpy as they 
come lately.

EDMUND: I’m grumpy, am I? Well, you ain’t seen nothing 
yet! When you start making my Gerty cute, making her walk 
through hoops, and play Auld Lang Syne on the Glockenspiel 

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. . . Then you’ll hear grumpiness. I don’t want Gerty on the 
television advertising toilet tissue.

SHELBY: Of course you do, or you wouldn’t have called me 
here.

EDMUND: My wife called you here. She’s the one who wants 
to be rich and famous, riding around in a Rolls with her cauliflower 
ear pressed up against the dashboard to hear if the 
clock is ticking.

ARLENE: Cauliflower ear is it?

EDMUND: All over the world the clocks are ticking. Gerty 
out there is a living clock. She was on this planet before we 
were on this planet; she will be around after we’re gone. She 
is a living, breathing animal. This is not Mickey Mouse time.

SHELBY: Mickey Mouse is still news, which is a lot more 
than we can say for King Edward VIII. A man gave up the 
throne of England for the women he loved. Who remembers 
him now?

EDMUND: I do! By God I do!

ARLENE: Nor everyone cares what you think, Eddie. What 
about Wilber? It’s a third his, too. If we want to merchandise 
her, then he should have a say.

SHELBY: How about it, Mr. MacKaye?

WILBER: Well, I was thinking of a book.

SHELBY: Exactly. That’s what we need, a biography. The 
Story of a Dinosaur, as told to . . .

WILBER: I was thinking of something scientific actually. I 
have been an amateur paleontologist all my life.

ARLENE: It was he who got us set on Gerty’s tracks.

The song of the dinosaur.

SHELBY: Forget science. There’s no money in science.

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WILBER: I didn’t think it would be a best-seller.

WHELBY: If you could hang out with a scientist or Monty 
Python, which would you prefer? We know what the choice 
would be every time. People want excitement, laughs.

WILBER: What’s wrong with knowledge?

SHELBY: Nothing. It it can be presented in an entertaining, 
laughable way. If dinosaurs died out, it was because of boredom, 
that’s all.

EDMUND: How can they have been bored? The world was 
new to them!

SHELBY: Newness is the oldest thing in the world.

EDMUND: I got it! Why don’t we place a paper-bag over 
Gerty’s head and we can charge people to come up and guess 
what it is.

SHELBY: I will take that under advisement. And I also think 
we should have hats.

EDMUND: Hats?

SHELBY: Bonnets. Sun-bonnets with pictures of Gerty the 
Dinosaur all over it.

EDMUND: I’ll take that under advisement.

WILBER: I feel sick to my stomach.

ARLENE: Mr. More, I don’t think this is what any of us had 
in mind.

SHELBY: That is because you are all too close to the event. 
You have to step back to gain perspective. You are caught up 
in the excitement of finding. Soon you will be caught up in 
the far greater excitement of using what you find to your 
own best advantage. Now if you will just sign these three 
copies here, Mrs. Spenser.

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As Mr. More places a pen into Mrs. Spenser’s hand, we hear 
the sound of a window breaking. And then the cries of a 
woman, and the cries of children.

ARLENE: What was that?

Wilber leans out the window.

WILBER: Our dinosaur has crashed his noggin through the 
third floor window of Mrs. MacAbee’s apartment.

EDMUND: Gerty gets her revenge. Good. Going after the 
children, is she? I hope she scares those nippers out of ten 
years’ growth. Considering that the eldest boy is only nine 
years old that should send them all scattering back into Mrs. 
MacAbee’s wrinkled womb like raisins.

Excitement is heard from the house across the way.

WILBER: She has got Mrs. MacAbee in her jaws.

The house that we are in is also shaking with great tremors. 
Furniture falls over. Mr. More spills to th ground. The others 
hold on.

SHELBY: Are we in an earthquake?

ARLENE: This happens whenever the dinosaur turns around.

Wilber calls out the sindow.

WILBER: Don’t you worry, Mrs. MacAbee, Gerty is a vegetarian.


EDMUND: Mrs. MacAbee looks so much like a pumpkin it 
may not help her.

ARLENE: For God’s sake, Edmund, we have to do something.


SHELBY: I think I’ve sprained my wrist. I hope you people 
are insured.

EDMUND: Why should we do anything at all? Her children 

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have started it. What with her nippers tossing stones at Gerty.

SHELBY: Insurance for Gerty. That’s what we’ll need. And 
that won’t come cheap, I can guarantee you that.

EDMUND: Of course it won’t come cheap. What does come 
cheap? Even cheapness doesn’t come cheap these days. We 
pay through the nose for cheapness!

A woman’s scream. Voices across the way. A second tremor. 
The dinosaur’s tail comes crashing through the window.

EDMUND: Duck.

WILBER: Hold on, Mrs. MacAbee, we’re coming! Get the 
rifle, Edmund.

EDMUND: What good is a pea-shooter against a Brachiosaurus.


Edmund grabs the rifle. He and Wilber exit. The dinosaur tail 
disappears from view.

ARLENE: We just had that window repaired a fortnight ago. 
One of Mrs. MacAbee’s little nippers tossed a pool ball 
through it . . .

WHELBY: If this happens every time Gerty moves, we’re going 
to be up to our ears in glass.

Arlene crosses to the window and calls out.

ARLENE: The main thing, Mrs. MacAbee, is not to panic.

SHELBY: I’ll sit on the floor where it’s safe. It is safe, isn’t 
it.

ARLENE: Very good Gerty is putting our neighbor back. 
SHELBY: (mopping his brow) That is a relief all right. 
Arlene turns back to the solicitor.

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SHELBY: We must get Gerty out of this place as soon as possible. 
We have to find her a decent environment.

ARLENE: A tar-pit, you mean. A tar-pit is the only decent 
environment for a dinosaur.

SHELBY: That’s not what I meant, Mrs. Spenser. No need to 
take offense. We are all on the same side of the fence, so to 
speak.

ARLENE: If we had a fence.

Arlene begins to pick up the fallen furniture. She attempts to 
restore a sense of order.

SHELBY: (trying to smooth things over) Tell me, Mrs. 
Spenser, I am very curious. How did you and your husband 
manage to come into possession of a dinosaur? One can’t go 
down to the corner store and buy one.

ARLENE: Quite right about that. Can’t go down to the store 
to buy it. . . (continues cleaning, as the noise out side starts 
to fade). A lot of it was Mr. MacKaye’s doing. Wilber has a 
vast collection of books and documents, all related to the 
Loch Ness Monster. For years he has been tracking every 
rumour, every photograph, every stitch of evidence relating 
to prehistoric life upon our planet. Naturally, with such a 
library overhead, Eddie and I became interested ourselves. If 
one prehistoric monster could survive all the way down to us- 
then why not more? Ane where was nessie hiding all those 
years? And then not too long ago there were stories about 
dinosaur tracks being found in Africa.

SHELBY: Ah yes, I read that myself. It even crept into the 
financial pages.

ARLENE: One of the new countries.

SHELBY: Countries nowadays are always changing their 
names. The oldest places in the world sneak up on you with a 
new name. It plays absolute havoc with the Conservative view 
of things.

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ARLENE: Our hearts sank We thought that some Ivy League 
Paleontologist with a prestigious degree and an inexhaustible 
cash flow had beat us to the punch. Needless to say, 
no one gives people like us credit for anything. But we found 
the first dinosaur. It was right in our own back yard.

SHELBY: God works in mysterious ways.

ARLENE: No. Man works in mysterious ways. I always 
thought God was on holiday. Tell me, are you a golfer, Mr. 
More?

SHELBY: No, I am a Salmon fisherman myself. That is why I 
moved to Scotland.

ARLENE: Well, if you had been a golfer, you might have 
found Gerty before us. For eight years, the three of us 
scoured form Buchan to Cairngorm, hiking up one side of 
Cairngorm and down the other. We thought that there might 
be a system of caves where the relatives of Nessie might be 
lurking. We peeked into every hollow, cave, and den until 
last night, on the verge of despair, the three of us were 
walking home, taking a short-cut across the Cairngorm 
Country Club, with Wilber reciting aloud from Chaucer, that 
Middle English of his grating on our ears, when I looked up 
and there she was... A full-grown, living breathing 
dinosaur, chomping away on the 15th Green.

WHELBY: No wonder the greens have been in such terrible 
shape.

ARLENE: Our prayers had been answered. It was as if Eddie 
and I and Wilber had devoted our lives to a fiction, to an impossibility, 
and when that impossibility stood before us, a 
huge mountain between us and the moon, it told us everything 
we needed to know about ourselves. The problem of 
course was to get the beast home safely. We couldn’t go for 
help for fear the helpers would try to claim her for their 
own. That is the way isn’t it? People always claiming what 
they have no right to. We were fortunate, however, that 
Gerty had an ear for Chaucer. Wilber simply recited Chaucer 
to her and she followed us home, quiet like and meek. We 
must have been the first humans she had seen. She took a 
liking to us right away.

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SHELBY: All your efforts will pay off handsomely.

ARLENE: Sad, isn’t it?

SHELBY: Sad? Why sad? I think there should be dancing in 
the streets.

ARLENE: What we want is right out the window, and 
nobody will leave it alone.

SHELBY: If that is how you feel, then why didn’t you anticipate 
it? Why did you go to all the trouble of searching for it 
in the first place?

ARLENE: {sinking into a chair) I don’t know. I don’t know.

We hear the door to the cottage open. There is the scrape of 
boots upon a mat. Edmund enters.

EDMUND: We won the battle without having fo fire a single 
shot. Mrs. MacAbee is resting comfortably at home, her darling 
family clustered about her mountainous bosom.

SHELBY: {stands up) Do you think she’ll take any action 
against us?

EDMUND: She’ll take action, all right. It’s the only thing to 
take around here. They’re very strict about keeping pets in 
this neighborhood. A fellow a few houses down tried to keep 
a kangaroo, but that was no go. The authorities made him 
surrender it.

ARLENE: What happened to Wilber? Is he all right?

EDMUND:Oh he is fine and dandy. It is the world that is all 
wrong.

SHELBY: Just sign these papers, Mr. Spenser. And we’ll get 
your dinosaur set up nice and comfy, somewhere where 
children won’t pester it.

EDMUND: We can’t do that now, Mr. More.

SHELBY: What do you mean you can’t do that now?

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EDMUND: Wilber is taking the dinosaur away.

SHELBY: Away? what do you mean by away?

EDMUND: The world is not ready for dinosaurs. Wilber is 
going to lead her up Cairngorm and entice her over the edge 
of a cliff. Spatter her two brains against the rocks.

SHELBY: Over a cliff?

EDMUND: As long as Wilber recites Chaucer, Gerty will do 
anything he wants.

SHELBY: But you can’t do this!

EDMUND: Of course we can. She’s ours.

ARLENE: (not disappointed') Oh Eddie . . .

Shelby rushes to the window.

SHELBY: Come back here! Come back here with that 
dinosaur this minute . . . (looks around for his hat) . . . I’m 
going after her myself then. If you people don’t want her, I 
do.

EDMUND: That does seem to be the problem, doesn’t it? 
(he turns the rifle upon the solicitor). If I were you, I would 
sit down on the sofa, kick off your shoes, take off your trousers. 
Make yourself comfortable. You are going to wait here 
until Wilber returns. Until that time, we shall be one happy 
family.

SHELBY: Mrs. Spenser. Speak to him. Do something. You’re 
his wife. They’re taking bread out of your mouth.

ARLENE: I fear I have been outvoted two to one.

SHELBY: You can’t agree with what he is doing. It’s a crime 
against humanity. Mankind deserves this discovery.

EDMUND: Yes, all tied up in a nice little bonnet. Starring in 
the movies. Giving out interviews on the telly.

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SHELBY: What about all those lovely Rolls-Royces you promised 
her?

EDMUND: The next time. There is always a Rolls Royce 
waiting the next time.

ARLENE: My Mum said that if I ran away with Edmund that 
I would never end up with anything. A girl hates to prove her 
Mum wrong. That would be a terrible guilty thing for a girl to 
live with.

SHELBY: I will have you prosecuted within an inch of 
lives.

EDMUND: We have been within an inch of our lives so long, 
it cannot make any difference now.

ARLENE: (at the window) Our backyard look ever so bigger 
with Gerty gone.

EDMUND: She took most of the fence with her.

WHELBY: You idiots. People like you have no right living in 
this world.

EDMUND: I suppose you are right. We are like Gerty in that.

SHELBY: Em going after her.

EDMUND: I wouldn’t.

SHELBY: And when I get her back you will get nothing, 
nothing, nothing from me.

Shelby bolts out, heading for the door. Edmund raises his 
rifle and fires. We hear the sound of the solicitor collapsing at 
the door. Edmund goes out to check. He returns.

ARLENE: Oh, Eddie, did you . . . ?

Edmund shakes his head.

EDMUND: He’s wounded, that’s all. But he’s unconscious. 

92


He’ll be all right, but we have to get him to the hospital. Be a 
good girl will you and pop upstairs and ring up the Ambulance 
Service. I think I frightened him more than anything.

ARLENE: I’m on my way . . .

Arlene stops.

ARLENE: It’s such a terrible thing the way everything turns 
out for the worse.

EDMUND: It is at that.

ARLENE: Is Wilber really going to lead Gerty over a cliff?

Edmund shakes his head.

EDMUND: You know he couldn’t.

ARLENE: I didn’t think so.

Edmund takes his wife’s face into his hands.

EDMUND: We’ll hide her away in that great cave we found. 
How about that, old girl. And the three of us will go up there 
and make sure she’s happy and fed. We’ll just have to keep 
her out of harm’s way, that’s all. Maybe someday the world 
will be ready for her.

ARLENE: Poor Wilber. It will break his heart to keep her 
hidden away like that.

EDMUDN: I tell you my heart was in my throat the first 
time I saw her. A living creature so close the beginning to 
Time. One of the first large creatures in God’s menagerie. 
Just as we are another. It was wrong for us to bring her back 
here. It was enough to have seen her.

He looks up. His wife has gone upstairs to Wilber’s apartment 
to call for an ambulance.

EDMUND: If we had only known at the very beginning . . . 
(he starts to sing) . . .

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“Now there was a Mr. More, a-bleeding on the floor,

A man very wise in the law, law, law,

He overheard the clatter of money in the platter,

So he knocked him down with a dinosaur paw, paw, paw.

It was enough to have seen her.

Lights out.

Curtain.


CONTRIBUTORS’ NOTES

CAROL MORRIS is a graduate student in English at MSU. 
Her work has appeared or will soon appear in Harbor 
Review, Tendril, Labyris and elsewhere. She won 1st place 
in the Red Cedar Review contest in 1982 and honorable 
mention in 1983.

PAUL SHUTTLEWORTH teaches at Southeast Community 
College, Fairbury, Nebraska. His poems have appeared in 
December, Ontario Review, Southwest Review, and others. 
He edits Nebraska Review.

JOHN LEE HALL is a junior at Michigan State. He is nineteen 
years old.“to the druid’s mother” is his first published 
poem.

MARY S. EMERY is a Pittsburgh native and lives there 
presently, though she also grew up in both Chicago and Los 
Angeles. She is a graduate of Carnegie-Mellon’s Creative and 
Professional Writing Programs.

CAROL CAVALLARO is in Columbia University’s School 
of the Arts M.F. A. program, Writing Division. Her poems 
have appeared in Chelsea, Prairie Schooner, Denver Quarterly, 
Descant and others. She has won several prizes, including 
the college prize of the Academy of American Poets, the 
Ohio State University, where she also completed a thesis for 
her M.A.

AMY BETH HILL is a junior in English at Michigan State 
University. Her story “Weatherveins” placed 2nd in the 
1983 Glendon Swarthout Fiction Writing Contest.

V. GLEN WASHBURN is an alumnus of Michigan State 
University (M.F.A. 1968) and worked “if that is the correct 
term” on the Red Cedar Review back in those days. After a 
short career in the University teaching business he went to 
Australia and had numerous poems and a short collection 
published there . He is currently in Anchorage Alaska.

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JEAN BATTLO has published poetry in the Red Cedar 
Review, Janus, Bardic Echoes, Windless Orchard and 
elsewhere. One of her plays, #*8, placed among eight 
finalists in a national competition in Carmel, CA. She is 
also working on a humorous diet book, Oh, That This Too 
Too Too Too Solid Flesh Would Melt - Syndrome.

HANNAH STEIN lives in Davis, California where she writes. 
She has previously published in the Red Cedar Review, 
Beloit Poetry Journal, Kayak, Poetry Northwest and other 
magazines. She also won third prize in the Chester H. Jones 
Foundation National Poetry Competition, 1983. She has 
previously published under the name Hadassah Stein.

DAVID EWICK works in the English Department of 
Wichita State University, Kansas •

LOUIS PHILLIPS is the author of a comic novella, Theodore 
Wainwright is Going to Bomb the Pentagon, and 
numerous books for children. His poetry has appeared in 
many magazines and anthologies, including New American 
Poetry. He has won various playwriting contests.

DAVE SWAN will be graduating from MSU in June with a 
B.A. in English. This is his first pubheation. He is moving to 
Oregon where he will continue his writing career.

GWEN ASHBAUGH is a former graduate student in English 
at MSU. She received 2nd place in the RCR contest in 1983.

LYN LIFSHIN has previously been published in the RCR. 
Her books include Ariadne’s Thread, the Hotel Lifshin, 
Reading Lips and Want Ads.

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RED CEDAR REVIEW EDITORS

Kathy Crown 
Adele Prince 
Mary Dickson 
Maria Godoy 
Lora Garrick

Dan Deneweth

Amy Hill

Tim Tessin

Dave Quisenberry 
(contributing art editor)

Our Thanks to MSU College of Arts and Letters, English Department, 
George Kooistra and University Publications, and 
Albert Drake.

A special Thanks to Jim Cash who has funded our annual 
creative writing contest for the last five years, and to Barbara 
King of the College of Arts and Letters Internship Office, and 
Joe Kuszai of the MSU Graphic Arts Dept. for graciously allowing 
us the use of their equipment and expertise in the preparation 
of this issue.

RED CEDAR REVIEW is a biannual magazine of the literary 
arts published at Michigan State University. Manuscripts 
may be submitted to 325 Morrill Hall, Michigan State University, 
East Lansing, MI 48824. Please include return postage.


Typesetting and keylining by RCR editors

Printing by Thomson-Shore, Inc. of Dexter, MI.

Figure without caption.
RED CEDAR REVIEW is partially funded by the 
ASMSU Funding Board.

Back Issues of RCR........................................ $1.00

One Issue of RCR............................................ $2.50

One Year Subscription of RCR.......................................... $4.00

Postcard Mysteries, fiction by Albert Drake............... $2.50

Love at the Egyptian Theatre, poetry by Barbara Drake .... $2.50

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IN THIS ISSUE

Poems by:

Cavallaro

Battlo

Stein

Harvey 
Lifshin

Ashbaugh

Morris

Emery 
Swan 
Wasburn

Hall

Ewick

Fiction by:

Shuttleworth 
Hill

Philips

Graphics by:

Huishens

Campbell

Cover Design by:

Dave Quisenberry