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September 2005 Humdinger Literary E-zine Editor-in-Chief: Chris Goebel |
| Scroll down the page to read this past issue of Humdinger Literary Ezine. |
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The September issue of Humdinger Literary E-zine focuses on unusual mainstream fiction, such as Mark Blickley's hilarious cardboard cut-out carrying Andrew in "My Better Half" and Seneca's confidentially uproarious and surprising story of her roommate's romance with a mysterious Pearl of the Ocean in "Mahi-Mahi." Tim Li's "Untitled" provides a wolf chase with an unexpected conclusion, while Rebecca Hirsch's "Youth!" yanks us out of Li's forest and into Hirsch's New York city-girl street smart and smart talking, orange juice hunting adventures. Sheloman Byrd's "Homeroom" reminds us of the freedoms we have and the choices we need to consider for America's future to avoid creating the prophesy of 1984. Poetry submissions ranged from New York City-Style to political upheaval to mysteries of the sea to mysteries of math to journeys within one's self to outside of one's self. Finally, the issue closed with a look at Untrustworthy Narrators as discussed by Chris Goebel.
My Better Half Mainstream Fiction By Mark Blickley
Mahi-Mahi Literary Fantasy Fiction By Chris Goebel Untitled Fantasy Fiction Tim Li
Youth! Poetry Rebecca Hirsch Poetry Rebecca Hirsch
Homeroom Fiction (possibly Mainstream, Satire, or Science Fiction) Sheloman Byrd Poetry
State of the Union? Poetry
Actuary Poetry
Bottom Feeders Poetry
A BUMPY RIDE Poetry
the long road Poetry
Discovering New Genre: Dualism and the Pseudo-Narrator Essay on Writing
My Better Half by Mark Blickley People who see me must think I’m eccentric, emotionally disturbed, or lonely. People who speak with me have told me that I’m an obnoxious, good for nothing bastard, a nasty prick, but I don’t give a fuck what anyone thinks. I don’t even care who reads this damned notebook. My name, Andrew Tremper, is right on the cover for all to see. It all started about nine years ago. I was shacking up with this girl who was what they call a “modern dancer.” We lasted a little under a year together. Her name was Miriam and she went to some artsy-fartsy college up in I was confused. I’m an educated man and I know what a dervish is—it’s spinning around, out of control. But the Divas didn’t spin. Hell, they barely moved. For over an hour, all they did was lift a leg or move an arm or twitch their head every few minutes, while electronic music slammed into our eyes and pulsing lights irritated our eyes. The Dervishing Divas sucked, but Miriam looked awfully good in her low cut leotard and I could see that she had the rounded buttocks of a thoroughbred horse. I don’t remember how I got to a Dervishing Diva performance or where I heard about them, except that back then I used to make the rounds of a lot of inexpensive arts events, because there was always lots of women and I was posturing as an arts enthusiast, a good looking, well-built arts enthusiast. Hell, I remember the night I nailed Miriam. I had to put up with hours of her art-speak about how the Divas don’t dance, they manipulate movement and shit like that. Well, let me tell you, she moved like a worm with a match under it later that night and a lot of nights that followed. When she finally skipped out on me, the bitch left me a going away present—a life-size cardboard cutout of me. On a note pinned to its crotch, she said she had it made because talking to the cutout was the only time she could have an adult conversation with me, expose her feelings without being ridiculed, cut-off or ignored. The note said a helluva lot more than that, it was a freakin’ manifesto, but you get the idea. It was a real artsy exit, don’t you think? And probably the highlight of her creative career. I mean, just imagine all the thinking, planning and execution involved in trying to make me feel like a complete shit. I was going to throw the damned thing out, but I grew sort of attached to it. She did pick a pretty decent photo of me to enlarge in cardboard, although I’ve always thought of myself as somewhat taller than I am. Standing back to back with the cutout proves we’re the exact height, five feet ten and three quarters of an inch. That sonofabitch dancer nailed me down to three quarters of an inch. In her manifesto, she predicted I’d keep the life-size cutout because I was so in love with myself. Miriam was wrong. I kept it to show the other broads I bang the monument of obsessive love given to me by a former member of the Dervishing Divas. The girls I take up to my apartment all seem to be impressed, so I guess Miriam’s cruelty backfired on her. How’s that saying go about a last laugh? I kept the cardboard cutout of myself inside my apartment for about three or four years. It made its world debut at a stupid party thrown by a woman I was involved with who lived in Hoboken. The point of the party was that no one could speak. Everybody had to write these responses, keep them in their pockets and then show them to other guests when communication was desired. We were kind of like idiotic mimes without makeup. I feel like an ass even admitting that I’ve attended parties that, but hey, in a time of AIDS, artsy babes are the most liberal and liberated, so I played the game to win the prize. Sue me. It’s better than sitting home and choking the chicken in front of adult video rentals although that, too, has its moments. I cut up a few garbage bags and wrapped them around my cardboard cutout that I named Sir Andrew. As I pulled the plastic around Sir Andrew’s head, it felt as if I was trying to suffocate myself, which is ridiculous because I don’t hate me. I pulled the plastic off Sir Andrew and decided to take him outside in all his glory, to allow other people to enjoy twice the pleasure of our handsome face. I had to carry my cardboard cutout of myself down to the PATH train station at Thirty-Third Street. PATH trains are subways that link New York City with New Jersey and man did I get some bizarre reactions to carrying a life size cutout of myself under my arm as I crossed the state line beneath the Hudson River. I dug the attention. The reason why I decided to take Sir Andrew—I’m just plain old Andrew—to the party is because I’ll be damned if I’ll spend my time writing out silly shit on slips of paper just to appease some piece of ass. I they want me to be silent at a party, fine, they can talk to my life-sized cardboard cutout, Sir Andrew. He won’t answer them back. Sir Andrew was the hit of the party. A gorgeous redhead even slipped me her phone number when her hostess wasn’t watching, because she wanted to hook up with the “creative genius” that had turned the party’s conceit into what she said was a new art form, or some crap like that, yet all I did at the party was smoke some pot, down glasses of great cognac that the label said was made by monks and eat like a pig. Whenever anyone approached me with their little fuckin’ witty remarks on paper, I’d shrug, shake my head and point to Sir Andrew, who I propped up in a corner of the living room. So there you have it, the secrets of a creative genius. My mother used to yell at me that if I kept my mouth shut, people wouldn’t know how stupid I was. I guess the old bag was right. Anyway, tragedy befell me and Sir Andrew later that evening. I had planned to spend the night with my girlfriend, but she caught me making out with the redhead in the bathroom and pitched a fit. That’s when the silent party turned into screams. I told her to shut up and stop ruining the integrity of her party, to pull something out of her fuckin’ pocket for me to read if there was something she wanted to say. The redhead immediately ran off and shortly afterwards, my girlfriend kicked me out of her apartment. I grabbed Sir Andrew and staggered my way back toward the PATH station. I was really loaded; that bitch should not have driven me out of her home. Before I even made it over to the subway, a Hoboken cop gave me a summons for pissing in the street. I think I even accidentally sprayed a bit on poor Sir Andrew. I had a hard enough time navigating through the streets and train turnstiles, but with Sir Andrew tucked under my arm, it became damn near impossible. My cardboard cutout smashed into telephone poles, parked cars, fire hydrants, as well as other pedestrians and was nearly decapitated by closing subway doors. By the time we arrived home, Sir Andrew was bent, ripped, crumpled and stained. He looked exactly the way I felt. He slipped out of my hands as I flopped onto my bed. When I woke up the next afternoon, the first thing I saw was Sir Andrew, face up on the floor, next to my bed. He looked scary. It was as if I was looking in a mirror at a decaying, diseased image of myself. My first impulse was to crush my cutout and toss it into the garbage, but the idea of trashing me like that was too disturbing. That was when I realized how attached I’d become to the fuckin’ thing. I couldn’t keep the cutout, but I wouldn’t throw it out either, until I could replace it. That’s when I remembered walking past this porno palace right off of Times Square that advertised they could make life-sized cutouts from photos, although the sample displays were all these gross-looking naked people with bloated breasts and shriveled shlongs. They reminded me of my first experience at a nudist beach. I was about fifteen- years-old and was expecting to see all these incredibly hot babes jiggling about, playing volleyball, stretched out in the sand flashing more than just a smile. What a disgusting shock to discover that the nudists were mostly guys, middle-aged or even older and the women on the beach looked liked my Mom’s friends, or like our neighbors. Anyway, I set up a timer on my camera and took fresh portraits of myself in my favorite outfits and picked out the best one. The guy at the porno palace couldn’t believe that my balls weren’t at least hanging out through my zipper. He charged me eighty-seven dollars and change and did a beautiful job. When I picked it up, I noticed that my cardboard facial expression had a really strange look to it. I’ve since heard it described as compassionate, concerned, thoughtful and affectionate. The truth was that my expression was affected by total anxiety. It was the first time I had ever used my camera timer, the first time I ever took pictures of myself and I didn’t think I was going to pull it off. I was too embarrassed to ask someone to take multiple portraits of me, because they might think I was some kind of conceited, narcissistic bastard. I liked having the new, updated version of Sir Andrew with me. Because of Saint Andrew’s success at the Hoboken party, I decided to regularly ferry it out in public. And let me tell you, it attracted and engaged more female strangers than if I had been walking the most adorable puppy in Manhattan. However, when talking with these curious and inquisitive women, they paid more attention to my cardboard face, rather than to my real face that sputtered out words of charm and profundity. The first question they asked was, of course, why do I have a life-size cut-out of me? My answer would vary according to the appearance of the inquisitor. If guys asked me, I would say something like my girlfriend is going out of town and couldn’t bear to be without me for even a day, so she forced me to clone myself so I could travel everywhere she went. Or I would feign shock that they hadn’t heard about the terrorist attack in Florence and that they needed an immediate model to replace the recently exploded statue of David, so I was on my way to Federal Express Sir Andrew to the Italian authorities, you know, stuff like that. When young women asked me the same question, my response was dependent on how they looked. If I wasn’t attracted to the questioner, I’d give them the same answer I gave the guys. If the woman looked like she had potential, I’d say something romantic, like I was on my way to launch this cardboard representation of myself into the Hudson River, not unlike a Viking funeral pyre, because my dreams of trying to connect with true love had died, or my response would be something humbly humorous, like I decided to invest all my negative traits into this cutout and was on my way to burn it in a sacrificial fire of repentance and purification, or some shit like that. You get the idea. Funny thing, women didn’t invest any of my negative traits into Sir Andrew—they did the exact opposite. Sometimes, I’d bang babes that I swear were more in love with my cardboard self than with me. One girl insisted that I prop the cutout by the bed and keep the lights on so that she could see Sir Andrew while we did the nasty. There certainly are a lot of freaks out there, but freaks are the most fun in bed. Sir Andrew was pretty good for me in more ways than just the babe department. I never needed a scale. When I’d start to pork up a little, all I had to do was compare myself with the cardboard stud and it would force me to keep myself in check. I had to maintain the same handsome and appealing appearance as Sir Andrew, because my worst nightmare would be that one day I’d be cruising the streets with Sir Andrew and no one would recognize that it was a life sized cutout of me. Call it vanity if you want, but I call it a fight against nostalgia. I don’t ever want Sir Andrew to represent my glory days—he must be representative of the here and now. And it’s more important to me now than ever, because that schmuck of mayor, Guiliani, has cleaned up the Times Square area and replaced porno shops with all the cartoon crap and family entertainments. Even my cardboard cutout maker, Leon Sasha, was driven out of his Peep Show Paradise months ago and I’ve been unable to track him down. I take Sir Andrew with me almost everywhere I go these days. Aside from his talent for attracting women, I he also supplies me with peace and safety when I travel home to Manhattan after working in one of the sleaziest neighborhoods in Brooklyn. All the fruitcakes, psychos and homeless assholes seem to fall instantly in love with Sir Andrew. I just lean back in my subway seat, close my eyes and hold up the cutout like a shield while some lunatic mutters away at it, instead of pulling out a knife or hassling me about money. They tell the cardboard all about their wildest and sickest thoughts, experiences, and confessions and find comfort from that stupid look on Sir Andrew’s face. But the truth is, I’m getting a little pissed over all the attention paid Sir Andrew. Why the fuck does everybody love him so much? Why is he more important to people than I am? I mean, if I don’t take care of him, protect him, he could easily be destroyed because he’s so damned fragile a little moisture could melt his compassionate smile into a sneer and ruin him! Ruin us! What started out as a gimmick to attract attention to myself has really boomeranged into a gimmick that diverts attention away from me. Sometimes, I feel like I’m the prop and that my cardboard image carts me around to help me keep in touch with the rest of humanity. To be honest, I’d like to be more like Sir Andrew. I have a tendency to sprinkle profanities and slang into my speech in order to bolster my image as a strong man, but Sir Andrew is completely silent and no one, man or woman, has ever questioned his strength or manliness. And he helps people with their problems, because he listens to them and stares them in the face when they’re talking to him. In some ways, I sort of admire Sir Andrew, but it’s kind of hard to change when your role model is yourself.
© 2005 Mark Blickley
Mahi-Mahi Literary Fantasy FictionChris Goebel Don't bother eavesdropping, because all has been said and no words need exit one to enter the other. The three of us stare ahead, unmoving as the world revolves, drifts and flies. In the distance, you see a hotdog-shaped figure, or is it triangularly blocked? No matter. The shadow bobbing beyond could only be a boat drifting away from the beach. We have a makeshift fire; the weather is cool, so sit beside us to gather the pragmatic pieces of our poetry and make your own lines. First, we construct poems with hilarious sexual connotations. Once our spurious matter dissolves, we enlighten one another’s spirits with our lyrical souls. “She’s gone,” my companion says. Forgive his cliché. He’s not a damn writer. “I think it’s too soon to say.” “What?” you ask. “His girlfriend.” The deep tones of my voice surprise you. Perhaps I smoked before, you think. “Who is she?” you ask, but no one responds. You wonder if we have gone deaf and then you recognize the silence that surrounds the unutterable. The time is too soon. However, you can ask a different question. You are direct. “What about the mahi-mahi?” “Ah,” I nod. “One who starts at the beginning merits a full account.” Now, you think perhaps I smoked more than just cigarettes; I may have smoked my own philosophy. The figure on your left finally turns to you. The sunlight on his face glows amber and eyes of green weather-beaten glass smile at you. “Seneca is a philosopher and poet and I am a fisherman. She tells my stories. Silent fishermen manage honesty best. Anyway, I just got a nibble on the line; that was all.” You look around for a fishing pole, but there is none, and you gather that the figure speaks metaphorically. I laugh. Later, I can tell you about Merek’s tardy alliance with virtue. He needs me, because the greatest word he ever said was jurisdiction. I can tell you now; it was, “Humanity’s jurisdiction stops below the sea.” Not bad alone, I think, but better in true context. Hold on. We will get there. “No one saw her enter the water,” I say. The person to your left nods. You relax, resting with your palms on the sand behind you, feeling giddy between two strangers on a beach somehwhere in Maimi, giddy because you know our words allude to a secret. You are in on it. “It was a sunset then too. Everyone saw her walk out of the water, glittering with iridescent scales. The spots on her modest bathing suit could not hide the angular frame of her body, the sculpted arms and the long dripping hair that spun round, casting droplets as golden rain. Her eyes were shadowed, her gait slow. Every stride was the opening of an oyster and all on the beach looked up and wondered how many millimeters that the pearl would have.” I pause for an artful second. “She tripped on her hair and blackened her eye.” You squint malevolently at me for convoluting her meticulous entrance. “She did,” I reassure you. “That’s when Merek ran into the water. We had been passing time on the beach, to say that we’d done something—anything—on the weekend, when Merek saw her and rushed urgently into the undramatic Caribbean surf.” You glance over at Merek, but he looks at the beyond. I smile, on the verge of a comical secret that you wonder at, simply because the girl’s entrance should not have been so magnificent if the story was to be a caricature of her. I humor you. “Having been raised more coarsely, or not having been spellbound by her femininity, I covered my mouth and laughed to near herniation. At her falling and at the blackening of her eye.” Thus begins the tale I relate to you about the curious woman who walked out of the water and into our consciousness. After saving the mysterious Pearl of the Ocean, Merek led her to our little encampment on the beach, two threadbare beach towels and a yellow umbrella missing a spoke, or two. “Help me help her,” Merek asked me as he escorted her sopping body over to his towel. I laughed through my nose, as Mary Poppins said some people do. “Help her what? Bust the other eye?” Her deep brown eyes were strangely innocent, yet—not challenging me, as I had hoped. There is nothing like a little maliciousness to justify a well-hoped for catfight. His tone held a warning. “I’m serious, Seneca.” “Okay. But what can we do, Merek? We have no ice, no frozen steaks, no first aid kit. I’m trying not to laugh and that counts as helping. No offense,” I said as I patted her cool arm. “Mother raised me to laugh at calamity.” That might have been a lie, but I had told it so proficiently for so long that I believed it, or it had really happened. Merek’s silent eyes glared at me as cool as shards of green glass. “Uh,” I began, “can we can fix this at the apartment?” Merek used to appreciate my not-so-subtle, gee let me help you get laid kind of suggestions, but that time, his full lips didn’t curve upward to help one-inch dimples form. “All things are relevant.” I offered my best noncommittal comment. “We are relatives, then,” the girl said in a well-modulated whisper. I started at her words and then considered them. If ideas were relative to time, place, and suggestion, then people could become everything but blood relatives to one another. Oh, I could have barfed potatoes! The newly black-eyed beauty had a mind. I hated the girl flat out because Merek had not understood the innuendo I had weaved into our lives together as plain old roommates. I had barely maintained our platonic relationship. Merek should have saved me, not this clumsy urchin with a penchant for self-mutilation. I laughed again. Her head had actually crashed into her knee. Actually! Such comical moments deserve holiday status. “Looks bad,” Merek told her as he brushed back hair from her face—hair that should have been mine and a face that should have been mine. “Come to our place. It’s not far away and Seneca won’t mind. We’re roommates, so that makes us trustworthy.” The girl, I should say woman because she possessed a youthful, yet knowing expression; well, that one looked from one to the other of us, her eyebrows relaxed, her pupils flickering inquisitively. “It’s relative, not sexual,” I said, tossing back the twit’s philosophy. She giggled in a manner—a tinkling suggestion—that she knew about my intentions and insinuations. I no longer laughed, only because she had breached my superiority wordlessly.
Merek now sighs, and you turn to him, recalling that his participation in our conversation has waned in and out, because, you determine, his mind wanders. He resides in two locations, his heart splayed between past and present, continuously searching the horizon. “I’d better go,” you suggest, standing up and brushing sand off your rear. I take your arm and pull you back down gently. “It’s okay. You’ll learn about the time Merek said jurisdiction and how the mahi-mahi were involved.” You sit again, somewhat stiffer than before because Merek’s eyes did not notice your ascent and descent. We speak softly, as I relate the rest of Merek’s story. Or is it our story—or everyone’s? Who cares, so long as it has an end.
“She, oh her name was Islaterra,” I tell you. “She returned to our apartment and Merek could barely walk and talk to her at the same time, which is rare for such a man. I once saw two women fall into his arms at Mardi Gras.” “What did he do?” you ask. “He politely caught them and said assuaging things to calm their drunken spirits enough to release him. Merek mostly detests that kind of behavior because drunkenness is such a proletarian occurrence in his life; everyone suffers from it. But enough of that—I can digress too much.” You nod and almost laugh.
I continue. So this woman, Islaterra, sat on our brown velvet sofa with a peach towel around her small golden shoulders and listened to our usual premeditated conversation that fell flat with her somehow. I think that happened because she did not need entertainment or award-winning performances. Islaterra accepted us for who we were—eccentric roommates who defined ourselves by our interests, not occupations, and who, though in our twenties, had never committed to anything of quality. “So?” you ask. Islaterra nodded, never interjecting, but waiting for pauses in our speech to make diplomatic commentary. The attentiveness of her slightly watery golden eyes caught our passionate desire to be listened to until someone had really noted the importance of our ideas in the world. And those golden eyes looked all the more gorgeous in contrast with her badly blackened eye. I felt a putrid hatred for her. I shake my head and by now you have ascertained that I, Seneca, madly loved Merek and you wonder what happened when Islaterra arrived. From my narration, you can tell that Islaterra possessed a magical beauty. You observe the fading sunlight and glowing firelight cast on my face and into my green eyes that are slightly lighter than Merek’s and you feel minutely sorry for me. I laugh and pat your arm. “Don’t pity me,” I tell you. “Every person has a consolation somewhere.” Then, I vigilantly pursue the threads of the romance of Islaterra and Merek. This, you understand suddenly, is something that I must do to escape from the past. What imprisons us more effectively than our pasts?
That night, Merek waved his arms while speaking—I had never witnessed that from him—and leaned forward, then back into the sofa, as if the motion of his conversation would sway Islaterra into loving him. I felt nauseated, of course, because Merek’s inveterate dialogue with me was monosyllabic and undemanding. I especially resented his being undemanding with me. We were decent roommates and that was as good of a reason as any for him to marry me. Still, I would not let him fall in love with Islaterra without the reassurance of having complicated their relationship enough to make them both want to hire private detectives before dating. If only I had been that successful. Then, they would not have gotten to that unforgettable mahi-mahi part that would bind them together forever, I guess.
We fell asleep on various couches that night, our minds exhausted from conversation, our senses witless to being strangers trusting strangers. Merek must have awoken first, because when I opened my eyes, I heard the shower running. Rapidly, I searched for Islaterra. She had better not already be in the shower with him; I would kill them. I turned to my left and Islaterra’s eyes opened to look directly into mine. I’m sure she encountered miniscule details that I had never discovered about myself; she was that way. Not discerning, not quite. At the time, I wondered if we resided on the same spiritual plane and then shuddered as if she might be a ghost. How do you tell if a person’s a ghost? You shake your head, though you have several ideas about how to determine if a person’s a ghost. The point is not in answering my question, but in getting to the answers for the puzzle that irritates you. Can’t I tell you the end? That’s what you fear the most, that by my not arriving at the end of my tale, I’m suspending and building your emotions to a higher level of intensity. And you don’t want that—but you do. You remain silent and feel a chill at your back, as if a cool breeze just penetrated your shirt. September winds rarely chill in I laugh and you note that each of my laughs sound different. “She wasn’t a ghost. Well, not that kind of thing.”
But her presence and proximity decimated me. Those eyes, dark and watery, as if she might cry any moment and that damn sense of vulnerability that she damn well knew men could not resist. Islaterra invaded my territory and made me feel like a jealous monkey that wanted to impale her eyeballs with a banana. “He catches fish,” she said, making it sound like a quasi-question. “If you’re asking for verification, yes he does—on a good day, of course.” Her eyes probed. “And he eats them?” I shook my head. “Most of the time not. He fishes for the thrill of it and gives the fish to neighbors to eat.” I thought she winced, but a quick smile from her left me disconcerted. Our photo album. If I could find that, then I could show her Merek’s past companions. She would be disgusted, at least dismayed. I would build upon that fear and she would crumple, realizing how hopeless it would be to attempt to tame Merek. Merek spoiled my plans. He came in the room, drying his hair. His method of operation had changed; he normally arrived clad in a towel, displaying the magnificence of his physiological self. Not this time. Everything was so different that I couldn’t plan and became desperate. “Fishing today?” I harped on the only topic I knew somehow bothered Islaterra. For once, her eyes stilled upon mine and she took a deep breath. Merek missed our exchange. “I don’t know. You two wanna go?” I answered for her. “Sure! Let’s go.” You understand that I should not have spoken for Islaterra. In truth, I did not glance at her to witness the boring of her eyes into mine, or worse, to witness her pain. She might be a vegetarian or a prospective marine biologist, I mused. Even I knew differently, I recognized it with my sixth sense; my actions fell shy of an inscrutable blasphemy.
Your patience thins. “You went fishing?” The sky darkens and you steal a look at Merek, wondering what he thinks about the story. Does he know that I sabotaged his relationship? If so, how did he forgive me? He must not care what I’m saying, you gather, or else he would comment on my unscrupulous behavior. And I know him well enough to realize he’s lost. You watch as he closes his eyes and wraps his arms around himself, as if to ward off a chill, the same chill, perhaps, that you felt earlier. Your eyes scan the area around us. No shadows move; no prowling beast lurks; no phantasmal light hovers. “You are right,” I say, startling you. At your look, I continue. “You feel something unusual, supernatural. Isn’t it funny that when we confront the supernatural, our trust wavers? Do you trust us now?” You shrug. That’s not the point. Everything now is about the story, about Islaterra and Merek and fishing and his stupid roommate who can’t finish a story because she’s got some hang-up. Seneca. She’s as confusing as a philosopher. I smile, close-lipped, mysterious. Mona Lisa didn’t know a secret like this one. “I’ll finish.”
By the time we had alternately showered and prepared to leave, the better part of the day had passed. Fortunately, Islaterra’s black eye had deepened and spread to a large lemon-sized blotch on her face. I glowed in admiration of it! How perfectly it marred her face, how deeply it disturbed the eye! Unfazed, Merek spoke with Islaterra in a constant rumbling dialogue. Her voice rested on the ears like a down-filled blanket. Such inane, impractical softness. We drove to a restaurant. On the way, they sat in the front of the car, the lovers, oblivious to anything, save the light of one another’s eyes and the inflorescence that draws bees. Merek ordered a bistec empanizada, chicken fried steak, instead of his usual pan con bistec, a beef and onion sandwich that he should have ordered. Islaterra drank a fruit concoction, naturally. I ordered a boliche, pot roast, with some fried plantains stuffed with shrimp and salsa, and plantain soup—oh, and espresso and tea, then flan. What the hell, I was alone and not sharing inflorescence with anyone. All the while, I waited for the glorious moment when we would fish and Merek would hook a big one. He would draw it out of the water and Islaterra’s expression would darken as black as her injured face. Yes! Her expression would transform into a monstrous blotch, terrifying and repulsing Merek into my awaiting (and warm!) arms. However, their protracted conversation lasted hours. The waiters at the restaurant surrounded us like agitated flies. Could they help us? Did we need anything else? And finally, would we like to lease our table? I rolled my eyes—and rolled them. I rolled my eyes at Merek and Islaterra’s helpless dallying, at their indecision about where to go, at their apparent joy when one of them accidentally brushed past the other. My eye muscles ached. I developed intense pukeness, a worse ailment than nausea, because nausea sounds dignified; my ailment bore no dignity. Eventually, the moment arrived and we departed to fish. We parked at the beach and unloaded the fishing poles; we had three because I had packed one for each of us—thoughtfully. So thoughtfully. I told them to walk ahead while I straightened my line and they did. I watched their silhouettes as they neared the water. Islaterra swayed slightly; her hair whipped in the wind. The damned sun began to set—damnably!—shining like a gold aura around her. Merek held her hand and turned toward her and I, mesmerized, watched the give and take of their hands, the constant movement of their legs as they stood and talked. The water lapped at their feet and they backed up to talk some more. Merek relaxed his pole at his side. She handed hers to him. I gathered that she would leave soon and rushed to finish with my line, tangling it beyond repair. I threw my pole in the back of our car and jogged out to Merek and Islaterra. When I approached, their immersion into one another prevented their noticing me. Islaterra’s gaze rested upon the sea. “What happened then?” “Well,” Merek said, “I saw the mahi-mahi running together because the water was clear. I hooked one and when I reeled her in, I noticed that another followed her.” “Why?” She didn’t look at him as she spoke. Strangely, he was affected and didn’t look at her either. “I pulled her in, unhooked her and threw her in the ice chest.” Islaterra drew in a breath. “And the other fish?” His voice was bland. “The other mahi-mahi circled around for about an hour, until we started the boat again and left.” He laughed. “If you fish, you know that. There are several species of fish—of other animals, too—that stay together.” “I have never fished,” she offered. “If we fish today and you catch another mahi-mahi—” “We can’t. We’d need a boat—” he corrected. “But if we did,” her eyes silenced him, “and if you saw the other mahi-mahi circling, would you release it?” “Of course not!” Merek shook his head and laughed—his last laugh. And Islaterra disappeared.
“What?” you ask. “What do you mean, disappeared?” “Well,” I answer, “she didn’t walk or swim away, but just was not there anymore.” Merek nods. You know it is for your benefit, that acknowledging it does not help him—only you. “Guess what he said?” I ask. “That quote you said earlier,” you answer. I nod. “It went like this. She disappeared. I told him that he could go after her and find her, no matter where she went and he said: humanity’s jurisdiction stops below the sea.” “What did he mean?” you ask, without thinking. I shake my head. “I’m a philosopher and storyteller. I tell the story and present possibilities, but know few answers. Gathering meaning is not my forte.” We three look out at the sea, wondering where Islaterra went and how. Probably, we speculate similarly. Then, the wind blows again, so tinglingly that we wrap our arms about ourselves and shudder closer to the fire. A few stars twinkle, a buoy floats, waves lap in—almost silent and we try to still our breathing because our senses heighten. The sand crunches as Merek stands. He trudges back to the car and you move to rise, but I place my hand on your shoulder. We should wait. Neither of us knows what he will certainly do—only what we certainly wish. In minutes, he is back, casting his line before he even reaches the water. We look at one another, the light of the campfire dancing on our faces and lighting our eyes. Merek wades into the water, knee-high, waist-high, shoulder-high. We see his head above the waves and the repetition of his casts and reeling in. Suddenly, the tip of his pole bends downward and he leans back, reeling in and back. We stop breathing. He searches the water around him. Merek stills, then reels, then stills. We hear his thoughts whipping and cracking across the water like deadly lightning bolts. We think, get out of the water, Merek. We think: that giant great white shark might get you. The water’s dark. Or, you might find something, but everything’s a risk. The fish leaps out of the water and Merek pulls it in, holds the line above its wriggling body. He looks down too, his head following something in the water. Merek unhooks the fish and holds it facing him and then lowers his arm and releases it into the water. We tremble with the cold breeze, with the trembling of his fingers and the wracking of his shoulders, with the knowing of those who knew a story all along, because it belongs to all of us, to our consciousness. Islaterra rises out of the water and we look away, because the light emanating from her is too bright and our eyes bear too much salt water. You look at me and witness the burning tears of anger and resolution streaming in golden rivulets, carving my intensity into your memory. I loved him that much and he loved her with a greater intensity. The mahi-mahi swim together; Merek holds the destiny he had to lose to win; and I, well, I must seek out another roommate. But you have the best of everything, the opportunity to reap from our awakenings. And I disappear. © 2005 Chris Goebel
Untitled Fantasy Fiction By Tim Li She stops to rest by a tree. She pants, out of breath and as she leans against the dark, nameless bark, she closes her eyes in pain. © 2005 Tim Li
Youth! By Rebecca Hirsch So here we are again. Aimless wandering that pretends it’s romantic. I should probably stop bemoaning this So here we are again, romantically ambling at an early morning hour on Avenue B. This is generally where one would go cliché-tripping describing the passing crowds. Let’s go! Uptown old people feeling lucky they can meander alongside the locals (wait, there are no locals) and not get mugged, the young and hip, young and not-hip, hip and not young, always French people, kids, dogs, men on bikes. I would Never do hip. Death before hipness. So why do we wander? The eternal question—but in terms of tonight, the answer is as follows: I met a kid through a kid who lives on E 9th Street, dangerously close to Veselka and its pale imitations. This kid was a kid unlike any other. He wore Where’s Waldo T-shirts, dumb glasses and was cooler and radder than people like me, for being flamboyantly awkward and wittier than life itself. Yes, this was an enviable kid. In a twisted sense, as all good things are. So one early youthful morning (kids sleeping on other kids’ beds, girls lounging in glasses and jean dresses, esoteric techno, pizza), The Kid said to me, “Get me some Orange Juice at Key Foods,” to which I replied, “OK!” and did. Actually, it wasn’t a command. Actually, I think I offered. But because I like the idea of the Command, we’ll pretend it occurred in that form. So here I am on my journey for Vitamin D, 2 for $5 orange juice. Except anyone who knows his Key Foods knows there exists not one on Avenue B, so I must explain. I saw a Train Girl (who totally was not on a train) on my way down to the Key Foods at Let me explain the Power and the Glory of the Train Girl. Train Girls are the girls who live and die on trains. Not really. But if the trains brought forth into the world a certain kind of girl, it would be the girl in the tight jeans, the black puff winter jacket, shiny curls, shiny hoop earrings, gum smack, magazine flip, cliché, cliché Train Girls. I adore them. Why do I adore them? I wouldn’t want to be one of them. I adore them in a purely condescending way, which is a twisted way to adore, but twisted is the name of my game—which is why I’m buying orange juice for a flamboyantly awkward kid at I let the Train Girl meet her Train Friends and pretend I’m not a stalker, heading back for the The Kid is everything I’ve always despised. He doesn’t filter his speech. He Lounges. He has leaping, bounding confidence that is totally inappropriate for a boy who wears Where’s Waldo T-shirts. Cliché, cliché party time: the most obvious reason he unnerves me is because he makes me realize what a censorious, quasi-wallflower I am, who can’t handle non-ironic T-shirts. And so The Kid repulses. And so he fascinates. I’m exaggerating the profundity of The Kid. He’s only a kid. The world is full of Kids. Youth Is Everything. At least it is to me. That’s unfortunate. Apparently, the mindfulness to appreciate youth means you’re not young anymore. Though I’ve never been young . . . though I look like I’m 12 . . . I’m an 85-year-old man and always have been. Train Girls, my fellow Avenue B night walkers, the ostentatious youth! And I, passing, passing all of you, because I walk fast, to Key Foods where the 2 for $5 orange juice lives, to obsequiously buy for The Kid I worship, past the girls I worship in the pseudo-bohemian, edgy kind of/truly Alphabet City, which is no longer demarcated from the East Village (I say with a wistful sigh for a time I never lived through and read too many New York Times articles about and go all vicarious and trip myself up again). And now we’re at the end. An end to the romantic night wandering. What’s the moral of my story? Orange juice is for the weak. Key Foods in Winter is bright aisle lights and very sad. It was a cold walk up the apartment stairs and a buzzing walk from apartment building to apartment room door. “Yo, kid,” said The Kid (even though this is before I started calling him The Kid out loud, so he couldn’t have called me that yet). “Yo, Kid,” I didn’t say back. “Orange juice?” “Orange juice.” This is also a lie. I refused the orange juice but was happy to serve it. Sleep without citrus. Wake up someday. ©2005 Rebecca Hirsch is the address of the eve., Stoop-sitting and being indulgent and melancholy. SO MUCH YOUTH in the perpetual mediocre cocktail party that is They're walking! They're singing! I get millions of stares but no one stops me and tells me they need me. THIS IS WHERE THE STORY BEGINS: lonely kids on lonely blocks in purloined dress shirts watching the mass of humanity pass! To The Thirsty Scholar and the Âme Russe- the world is full of kids on cellphones shouting intersections, drinking new drinks in new bars and finding new ways to flirt with different kids and same kids and the mating dances go on and on. ©2005 Rebecca Hirsch
Dogfish by Kerry Redmon
At eight, we brought in day’s first drag, Twin diesels whining as winch gears strained To hoist the net above the box Where Bubba released the shimmering mass, Jerking the slipknots with weathered hands.
We in shorts, orange boots, cotton gloves, Scooped fish to the tray to cull the catch. The shrimp, the squid, the crabs, silverfish, We pitched in sturdy plastic baskets, Then scraped away the dead and dying.
A dogfish emerged in a scoop from the box. A blob of yellow blotched with black, A prehistoric bag of ooze, With warted flesh and lumpy fins, He slipped through my fist and splashed in the bay.
As a wisp of Northern cooled my face, Bubba told of drags that swamped the box Flinging dogfish on the deck To bask their slime in Texas sun, All day on hot steel while the shrimp were culled.
He said that when they’d swept the deck Of lifeless scraps to seagull’s squawk, Each dogfish plopped and wriggled away. No one he had ever known, Had ever seen a dogfish dead.
Copyright 2005, Kerry Redmon
State of the Union?
They say they want
Copyright 2005, Angela Gatto
Actuary
Whatever you may do, in a lifetime of doing stupid things Use a Texas Instruments 10-digit scientific calculator It fits
Bottom Feeders by Sabrina Hartel
No drive-bys from the fountain of youth,for us.
A BUMPY RIDE by Celeste Curcio
Dragging my sorrow to the counter by the tail, More than three hundred days twice you've been gone, I step forward, thoughts stuck outside my jammed suitcase, “It will be good for you,” More than three hundred days twice you've been gone,
the long road
In most fiction, the reader trusts one of three types of narrators: first person (I), second person (you), or third person (he, she, and/or it). That narration can allow us to know a limited amount of information about characters or situations or all information (omniscient). Until recently, the aforementioned narrative types represented most fiction we read. But what happens if we cannot trust the narrator? I remember reading The Great Gatsby for the fifth or sixth time when I discovered that, although the narrator, Nick Carraway, claims he is trustworthy, he is not. How can an honest man not tell his cousin that her husband is cheating on her, or tell his new girlfriend why he won’t get serious? Nick knew that Gatsby had shady connections, but never mentioned them to the police and even failed to inform them of a possible murder. In fact, Nick Carraway was something of a dishonest character and whether he was aware of this is unclear. Imagine that Nick was not aware of his dishonesty and merely professed honesty because he perceived that he told the truth. We might call him crazy. Writing the narrative of an insane person is not new, but when an author intentionally and consistently constructs narration with the purpose of hiding the character’s dual nature, or dualism, that is fairly novel. Dualism acts like a mystery, because the readers will discover new and surprising information. However, dualism is different from a mystery story too, since the reader will not know until the end what part of the story the dual nature of the narrator warped. Then comes the part of the story that can never be told: that which the narrator did not realize and could not therefore tell us. According to this definition of dualism, then, the narrator, that is, the storyteller we traditionally have trusted, can no longer be trusted implicitly. Since we have previously needed to trust our narrators, unless they were insane, narrators with a dual nature are not real narrators; they are pseudo-narrators. Now, we not only have the categories of first, second, and third person limited or omniscient narrators, but we also have pseudo-narrators--people we can’t trust. Pseudo-narrators tell the story, so we must place some faith in them, but as with reading a mystery, we must be prepared to shift our perception of a situation, in some cases, multiple times. In Poe’s “Tell-Tale Heart,” the main character proves his insanity, but at the end of the story. Until the conclusion of the tale, the reader lacks sufficient knowledge to understand the dualism of the narrator. Afterwards, the main character commits murder and then, terrified that the police can hear the beating of the dead man’s heart, the narrator confesses. In many ways, readers learned that we could not trust the validity of every statement we were told. Does dualism require an insane narrator? Of course not. Personal perceptions create glitches in our abilities as story tellers. A drunken woman may believe herself justified in cursing at her child, because her parents raised her that way and alcohol further impairs her judgment. Imagine this woman as narrator. She would leave out certain aspects of her behavior that she cannot see herself. Though she has a drunk/sober dual nature, we trust her sober. However, her addiction causes aberrated thinking that calls her back to the bottle. Our narrator will unknowingly deceive us, causing us to have revelations throughout her narration as facts pile up against parts of her reality. This is an identity mystery as much as it is a situational mystery. Mystery readers can appreciate the nuances of dualism because readers of this genre get two mysteries: what happened and what caused the warp in the reality of the narrator. Other examples of dualism might be: amnesia victims, narrators that are privy to only part of their reality, addicts, those with mental disorders and so on. Again, true dualism consists of narration told by a storyteller that cannot be aware of the distortions they deliver and this aspect is necessary from a pseudo-narrator because it causes the reader’s trust to shift away from complete trust and therefore constitutes a new genre, dualism, and narrative class, that of the pseudo-narrator.
Copyright 2005, Chris Goebel
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