There was a small door in the back of Andre's white stone villa. It was off the garden and fed into the pantry. The door frame was tear-shaped as were many windows in Morocco. Andre had learned that it was once the "ice door", for the bricks of ice that the rich Tangerois , natives of Tanger, had brought in for parties, and used to make ices and drinks.
Lying in his Paris convalescent home, he thought back on the years he'd spent in North Africa, the glittering years of the French Embassy parties, his wives and mistresses, the food. The stable influence in his life had always been Farid, with his watery hazel eyes that reflected the water and his wit which always calmed him. Twice a year, Farid's mother, Zohra, came down from the Rif and lived with them for a month, bleaching the linens and making couscous and fragrant tagines speckled with lemons and onions and fennel. It was the memories of those meals and of fat lingering days that held them, that made Andre want to continue to live.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
15 - Camilla Basham
The funny thing about driving your car off a cliff
I bet you’re still hitting those damn brakes.
No matter how messed up it is
You’re programmed to hang onto it.
You know that actor dude who OD’d to kill himself:
the one who was supposedly screwing the Olsen twin?
I bet he ended up dying with one hand on 911,
the other one jammed down his skinny throat.
Even Moose, our soccer team’s answer to God,
When he finally dumped his cheating girlfriend
He ended up sitting outside her house
with a hard on smoking indo;
His dad’s shotgun riding shotgun
in a broken down sedan.
But, he didn’t do anything.
He just set there in the fog
Under some flickering street light
Listening to Muse.
Hard to let go.
Hard to release the brake.
Just as hard to hit the gas.
Parents tell you to coast.
Were they really ever 15?
No matter how messed up it is
You’re programmed to hang onto it.
You know that actor dude who OD’d to kill himself:
the one who was supposedly screwing the Olsen twin?
I bet he ended up dying with one hand on 911,
the other one jammed down his skinny throat.
Even Moose, our soccer team’s answer to God,
When he finally dumped his cheating girlfriend
He ended up sitting outside her house
with a hard on smoking indo;
His dad’s shotgun riding shotgun
in a broken down sedan.
But, he didn’t do anything.
He just set there in the fog
Under some flickering street light
Listening to Muse.
Hard to let go.
Hard to release the brake.
Just as hard to hit the gas.
Parents tell you to coast.
Were they really ever 15?
15 - Corii Liau
“What does it mean to you,” she asked him, “being No.15?”
I couldn’t answer her. Even if I hadn’t been distracted by her odd and direct manner, the fact that she was wearing a bright red color on her lips that dangerously exposed both her and me in the gray, anonymous street, and the throbbing, leaden pain in my knee where I’d fallen the night before—even without all these things, what would I have said anyway?
I had no idea why I was No.15, who decided I would be No.15, and what the future of No.15 was even supposed to look like.
She was attacking me with this question, and yet she did it in so righteous a manner that I couldn’t help but feel that she was trying to help me. I think, in the bleak shades of my years living in Neuenstadt, any attention that any one of us gave to another person living there, was so unexpected, so startling, that it seemed like an overture of love.
I think that day, when she asked me the question, her white face turned up against the sodden air and spotlighting me with those eyes, I think I imagined a future where No.15 would love and be loved.
I couldn’t answer her. Even if I hadn’t been distracted by her odd and direct manner, the fact that she was wearing a bright red color on her lips that dangerously exposed both her and me in the gray, anonymous street, and the throbbing, leaden pain in my knee where I’d fallen the night before—even without all these things, what would I have said anyway?
I had no idea why I was No.15, who decided I would be No.15, and what the future of No.15 was even supposed to look like.
She was attacking me with this question, and yet she did it in so righteous a manner that I couldn’t help but feel that she was trying to help me. I think, in the bleak shades of my years living in Neuenstadt, any attention that any one of us gave to another person living there, was so unexpected, so startling, that it seemed like an overture of love.
I think that day, when she asked me the question, her white face turned up against the sodden air and spotlighting me with those eyes, I think I imagined a future where No.15 would love and be loved.
15 - Donna Shomer
‘These children’
we often say.
And we mean entire encyclopedias of feeling,
universes of experience.
But they are snowflakes, unique specs.
They share genre,
maybe the specificity of desire.
My daughter sidles up to her mirror
Brandishing that damnable eyeliner
But as she touches it to her left eye…
…I sidle up to my mirror.
My mother watches me
struggle to get these lines straight.
we often say.
And we mean entire encyclopedias of feeling,
universes of experience.
But they are snowflakes, unique specs.
They share genre,
maybe the specificity of desire.
My daughter sidles up to her mirror
Brandishing that damnable eyeliner
But as she touches it to her left eye…
…I sidle up to my mirror.
My mother watches me
struggle to get these lines straight.
Tigers-John Fetto
They entered as tigers, but fled like lambs, up out of the valley in they had been mistakenly been dropped. Hawley out front, walking to fast, not carefully. It wasn’t his mistake. The pilot’s? Or the staff officer who threw a dart at a map, stroked his chin and thought let’s see what they find there. Four men in, still four men, three behind Hawley, lungs aching to keep up. Behind them down below, bugles blared, summoning troops to chase them, but chase them where? Hawley had broken brush toward the river, then doubled back, leading them up the draw toward, toward a ridge. But beyond the ridge? There was no way of knowing, until he got there, just another hundred yards? More? Dirt sifted under his boots as he climbed. He could see the trees part to show sky. So close. And then the pop of gun fire, crackling like a fresh lit camp fire, slowly, and then rising. He slumped behind a the tree. When he peered around the trunk, he saw no men following. There was no one.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Hazardous - Kaye Doiron
It would be hazardous to my health to delve into the hazards of deep thought today, or even to gaze upon the unconscious dribblings of my fingers as I try to make my way through the muck. Instead, I will skirt along the outer edge of consciousness, and refuse to go any farther.
Hazardous - Jackie Davis-Martin
The hazard was the exposure. She couldn’t possibly tell either of them.
That’s the way Audrey determined she’d set up the story. She’d call her character Ava, close but not exact, since everyone knew she wrote mostly about herself in one way or another. Everyone. She laughed there—a little harrumph to herself—since ‘everyone’ meant those who read what she wrote, which was a small set to begin with.
Ava could not possibly tell either Paul or Malik that she was sleeping with another man. If she told Paul, she risked several reactions that she could not endure. One was his refusal to ever see her again, to ever have those lovely moments in his big big bed bent over a volume of Yeats or Snodgrass, heads together and legs under the sheets, reading aloud, until they’d be entangled again.
Audrey re-read what she’d just made up about Ava. The name Ava maybe sounded too exotic, suggesting Gardner. But possibly a younger audience wouldn’t think of that, and besides, her audience wasn’t young; she didn’t have much of an audience really. So: Ava.
Paul was lovely! That’s all Ava could think. His body, his mind. She loved his clothes. She couldn’t give him up, give up their weekends together. Or their every-other weekend since Paul had a child, Paulie, who lived out of state, whom he visited on the weekends in between.
Ava had it made. If it weren’t for her conscience.
In between there was Malik. Malik worked weekends, conveniently for Ava, worked at a newspaper publishing plant actually working the presses. Malik was perhaps even smarter than Paul, although Paul had a smarter job. Ava would drive to Malik’s house (the way she drove to Paul’s) and he’d fix them breakfast or dinner depending on the time of day. She accommodated his schedule. Malik knew a great deal about psychology, about analysis; Ava felt she had to be forthright with him at all times (which she knew was a bit of a joke, considering her dilemma) and felt, when she was with him, that the air was purer, freer than it was with Paul who really postured a bit.
So: why did Ava have to admit anything? She’d gone on like this for six months—maybe more?—with the tension of one discovering the other and what it would mean.
Audrey paused in her writing. Did she have enough of a conflict going on? What was at stake for Ava now that wasn’t before?
The problem was that Malik changed his job. He applied for and actually received a teaching position at the community college in an effort to change his lot, to invite Ava fully into his life, he said. He hadn’t had much to offer her, but he would; he’d work at it. Besides, they’d have the weekends together now, far more suitable for her teaching schedule, too. Ava had told Malik she marked her students’ compositions on weekends, or went on outdoor club hikes with her girlfriends. Malik was so emotionally available—Ava guessed that was the word—that she could only imagine his reaction to her breaking things off with him. He’d cry; he’d openly grieve, not at the loss of her, but at the loss of what he perceived her to be; he’d cry that she was not the forthright woman he saw her as, frank and open and smart. He’d called her “my bright penny.” Then he’d probably throw something, too. He thought physical release was good, maybe why sex with Malik was one of the most satisfying experiences she’d ever had. That and the fact that he was so well endowed.
Audrey hesitated. Why not say “that and his big penis.”Big dick. Why not eliminate those words all together? The words themselves were hazardous.
So: Ava would have to endure hurting Malik if she told him. Worse, she’d have to give him up; she wouldn’t have that comfort in her life. She’d just have Paul. But was ‘having Paul’ even an option? Paul was playful; they’d go out to dinner, to an occasional concert, they’d play around in bed, but he seemed distracted with his other life, too, the child. Suppose she told Paul about Malik? “Are you some whore?” he’d say. “What the hell’s the matter with you?” He’d turn his back, right there in his own living room, forcing her to get in her car and drive home. How could she live without Paul?
Audrey sighed. Was Ava’s choice enough of a hazard? Maybe she’d re-write Paul a bit, make him a teacher at Ava’s school, hazard that exposure too. She’d have to think about it more. She’d decide something. She had to finish the story.
That’s the way Audrey determined she’d set up the story. She’d call her character Ava, close but not exact, since everyone knew she wrote mostly about herself in one way or another. Everyone. She laughed there—a little harrumph to herself—since ‘everyone’ meant those who read what she wrote, which was a small set to begin with.
Ava could not possibly tell either Paul or Malik that she was sleeping with another man. If she told Paul, she risked several reactions that she could not endure. One was his refusal to ever see her again, to ever have those lovely moments in his big big bed bent over a volume of Yeats or Snodgrass, heads together and legs under the sheets, reading aloud, until they’d be entangled again.
Audrey re-read what she’d just made up about Ava. The name Ava maybe sounded too exotic, suggesting Gardner. But possibly a younger audience wouldn’t think of that, and besides, her audience wasn’t young; she didn’t have much of an audience really. So: Ava.
Paul was lovely! That’s all Ava could think. His body, his mind. She loved his clothes. She couldn’t give him up, give up their weekends together. Or their every-other weekend since Paul had a child, Paulie, who lived out of state, whom he visited on the weekends in between.
Ava had it made. If it weren’t for her conscience.
In between there was Malik. Malik worked weekends, conveniently for Ava, worked at a newspaper publishing plant actually working the presses. Malik was perhaps even smarter than Paul, although Paul had a smarter job. Ava would drive to Malik’s house (the way she drove to Paul’s) and he’d fix them breakfast or dinner depending on the time of day. She accommodated his schedule. Malik knew a great deal about psychology, about analysis; Ava felt she had to be forthright with him at all times (which she knew was a bit of a joke, considering her dilemma) and felt, when she was with him, that the air was purer, freer than it was with Paul who really postured a bit.
So: why did Ava have to admit anything? She’d gone on like this for six months—maybe more?—with the tension of one discovering the other and what it would mean.
Audrey paused in her writing. Did she have enough of a conflict going on? What was at stake for Ava now that wasn’t before?
The problem was that Malik changed his job. He applied for and actually received a teaching position at the community college in an effort to change his lot, to invite Ava fully into his life, he said. He hadn’t had much to offer her, but he would; he’d work at it. Besides, they’d have the weekends together now, far more suitable for her teaching schedule, too. Ava had told Malik she marked her students’ compositions on weekends, or went on outdoor club hikes with her girlfriends. Malik was so emotionally available—Ava guessed that was the word—that she could only imagine his reaction to her breaking things off with him. He’d cry; he’d openly grieve, not at the loss of her, but at the loss of what he perceived her to be; he’d cry that she was not the forthright woman he saw her as, frank and open and smart. He’d called her “my bright penny.” Then he’d probably throw something, too. He thought physical release was good, maybe why sex with Malik was one of the most satisfying experiences she’d ever had. That and the fact that he was so well endowed.
Audrey hesitated. Why not say “that and his big penis.”Big dick. Why not eliminate those words all together? The words themselves were hazardous.
So: Ava would have to endure hurting Malik if she told him. Worse, she’d have to give him up; she wouldn’t have that comfort in her life. She’d just have Paul. But was ‘having Paul’ even an option? Paul was playful; they’d go out to dinner, to an occasional concert, they’d play around in bed, but he seemed distracted with his other life, too, the child. Suppose she told Paul about Malik? “Are you some whore?” he’d say. “What the hell’s the matter with you?” He’d turn his back, right there in his own living room, forcing her to get in her car and drive home. How could she live without Paul?
Audrey sighed. Was Ava’s choice enough of a hazard? Maybe she’d re-write Paul a bit, make him a teacher at Ava’s school, hazard that exposure too. She’d have to think about it more. She’d decide something. She had to finish the story.
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