Untitled by Caroline VII Miller

28

Visual Art Selection

Literary Art Selection

Upon Reading
a Recent Issue of the
AWP Chronicle

(A Found Piece)

If Nikki Giovanni weren't a writer,
She would have started a cleaning service.
She's a good business person,
Easy to work with--Just do your job.

Goodbye Jane Kenyon.
Goodbye May Sarton.
Goodbye Stanley Elkin.
Let evening come.

Doughnuts are a writer's best friend:
Powdered sugar on good days--
Chocolate-dipped when things are
going badly.

Do all artist's colonies have cows?

The World's Best Short Short Story Contest
Recently announced its winner:
Mr. Tom Fleming won $100.00 and also
A box of Florida oranges!

Congress cuts arts endowments.

If you have a poem about condoms
Please send it to the anthology editors of
"Getting It On: A Condom Reader."
They may publish it!

Amherst Press recycles manuscript submissions
That do not include a SASE.
Lend your voice to Writer's Harvest:
Stop hunger and its consequences.

--Lynette I. Corder

Literary Art Selection

Second Thoughts

"You say Morocco
And that makes me smile
I haven't seen Morocco
For a long long while"
--Jackson Browne

There is a flight
Every hour,
And the plane
Goes either way.

One slow summer leg
Placed over the other,
Both feet touching
The long pine boards
Studied,
Rote,
Her back
To the keys,
Anne edges deeper
Into the piano bench.

She eyes
The hanging bag,
Folded,
Propped slumping
Against the portmanteau,
Each in its place
By the door,
Waiting.

She checks
The hour,
Tugs at the bracelets
Hanging from her arm
Idly,
Unfastened,
Adjusts the straps
To allow the watch
To rest squarely
On the back
Of her wrist,
And checks the hour.

She considers
The brass locks,
Wholly,
One then another
On the twin French doors,
Plain,
Coupled and unopened
To the moist October cool
Where the dogwood stands,
Thin, handsome,
Black and gray,
Like a groom leaning
Into an absent breeze.

There is a flight
Every hour,
And the plane
Goes either way.

--Delmar Brewington

Literary Art Selection

I saw the claw marks; they were there just as plain as day--big, long gashes running deep into the wood of his front door. He told me how it would happen every time storm came through--how something would blow in with wind and rain making his dog go crazy with fear. What was so strange about the whole thing was he swore it never started until after his wife died. . . . I mean, sometimes that's all he would talk about over and over. He said up until she passed away his dog had been just like any other old farm hound he'd ever had.

I tried to reason with him. I tried to tell him it was probably just something the dog smelled blowing up from the river bottom or maybe the thunder and lightning that made it go crazy like that. . . . But he never seemed to listen. He'd always just shake his head and stare off at the ground, reaching a hand up to his mouth to wipe away that dry, nervous paste that clung to his lips.

He told me how his wife had always hated that dog. He'd go off on these stories about how she used to change right in front him--how one minute she seemed normal, and then the next she'd start shaking and getting hysterical--how he'd have to hide the shells to the gun every time his dog would dig up her flowers or get a hold of one of her cats. He swore there were times that she'd get so bad he didn't even recognize her. . . . He said whenever he'd see her lips starting to tremble, he'd learned to just walk away--telling me how he was afraid of what he might hear, afraid he wouldn't even recognize the voice that came out.

Well . . . since we were friends and all, I was always polite. I'd sit there and listen to him even though I knew there was really nothing I could say. You see, age and alcohol had pretty much set him in a way of thinking--petrifying any kind of logic he may've had and pickling him into believing his wife had something to do with it. . . .

Looking back on it now, I guess I'm the only one he ever really talked to . . . for good reason of course. If he would've tried to tell them stories to anybody else, they would've probably just laughed in his face. You see, most people that live around here have always seen it the other way around: In their eyes, his wife had always been the victim.

When she passed away, a lot of people were surprised that she lasted as long as she did--stuck way out on that poor piece of land, waking every morning to his stale soured breath, just to find out day after day that nothing was ever going to change, knowing that whatever he'd given her at that point was all she was ever going to have.

Whenever they'd get huddled together in those little groups, their whispers were rarely kind; even around me, people talked about him as if time had erased our friendship. The funny thing is, I knew more about the truth than all their stories put together. I always knew he had his faults, but I never acted like the rest of them--I never let myself forget about the past. . . .

You see, people have forgotten that his story reads just like everybody else's around here. . . . They seem to forget how he put in all those years working down at the mill--sweating side by side right along with the niggers, day in and day out, twelve hours straight spent in a swirl of lint and humid heat. They forget how he always tried to do right, how he tried to pull himself out of the poverty of those times--away from that thick, stagnant ooze that used to suck and slurp at all our feet, slowing us down, trying to cement us back in time.

What's even worse, people forget how he stood with us through the hard times--fighting like everyone else to keep his head above those clouds that had settled in--all those sickening stereotypes that Dr. King and the media had picked out to exploit in front of the nation. He'd been just like the rest of us, strangling on his anger, knowing how all those outsiders were looking in, knowing that generations of stories and lives, yours, mine, our families' and friends' were drawing nothing more than a hateful curl from so many strange lips.

But you know, my friend, out of all of that most folks only remembered one thing. And I'm almost ashamed to talk about it because I know that God's love transcends everything. I know He can look deep into our hearts and see the goodness that is there. You don't have to be in church for Him to see it, or put something in the offering tray for His eyes to be opened. . . . The point I'm trying to make is that over the years, even though his wife kept coming in on Sundays, people around town started to notice that he was slowly drifting away from the church. Didn't give any reasons. Didn't seem to have any regrets. They didn't care about what he'd lost to the loneliness on that land or what he might have found in the comfort of a bottle of bourbon. It was enough for them to know that when he pulled away from Jesus Christ, he had pulled away from the one and only thing that held the roots of the world together.

Now if you watch them, they act disgusted when they see him on the street. It's like they look at him and see a scar where there should have been growth. I guess in their eyes, he's broken from a way of life, and as you probably well know from living around here, there's a lot of people who won't forgive you for that . . .

Well . . . I guess I've gotten a little sidetracked. I apologize for that even though it's really all part of the story. But I don't want you to worry now, because when you came to me, you came to the right person, 'specially if you're wanting to find out the truth about what happened the other night.

He was alone during the storm . . . probably lost somewhere in an alcoholic haze. I doubt he even heard the whines or the frantic sound of scratching that must of been tearing against the outside of his door. Everything that met his ears was probably numbed by that bottle of liquor or drowned out by the sheets of rain that were pounding against his roof.

I lay awake most of that night myself, tossing and turning, listening to the wind as it rushed around the sides of the house. I tried to ignore the thud of each gust--convincing myself that I didn't hear the pops and cracks of the pines as they bent down towards the roof. With each flash of lighting I'd catch a glimpse of the inside of my room--the faint ripple of curtains, or the slight rock of a picture against the wall. The electricity went out sometime after one, so I really couldn't tell you how long it all lasted. All I know is at one point, when I got up to use the commode, it was raining and blowing so hard I couldn't hear my piss splashing in the bottom of the bowl.

I waited the next morning till it started getting light, thinking I'd get up early and ride around . . . you know, just to get a look at what kind of damage had been done. I figured while I was out, I might run into somebody who needed some help or something.

Well, I found that someone soon as I pulled up in his yard. The bad thing about it, there wasn't much I could do. I mean, we're friends and all, but sometimes when a man's grieving you just gotta leave them alone till it works itself out.

It's true what you heard. . . . I saw the carcass. That dog had definitely been burnt. Not charcoal blackened now, but just kind of singed and bloated. I caught the scent right away, 'specially since it just rained; that wet, seared smell had been washing out all night and it lay thick all around, saturating the ground and air.

I'm telling you it was a scary sight, seeing its body all splayed out like it had been caught at full stride, one eye still pointing up wildly towards the sky. It was a bad feeling just standing there not really knowing what to say. It took me most of the morning to talk him into burying that thing. He sat there for the longest time holding on to that big ugly head, gently popping it up in his lap. . . .

Most folks have found it easy to explain. They've convinced themselves his dog was struck by lightning. You can tell by the way they've been spreading the story around, the way they've been acting kind of indifferent about the whole thing--talking about it over and over as if it were all common knowledge.

And I guess for some lightning must be the logical explanation. But you know, I keep remembering something I've heard all my life: I remember how people used to always say that when lighting strikes it tries to pick out the highest thing around. I mean, I grew up believing that kind of thing, 'specially after hunting in them woods up on the Salkehatchee bluff and seeing some of them big oaks and hickories split wide open down to the roots. I guess that's why it always seemed funny to me. . . . I mean, most of the people that were doing the talking had never even been to his house before. They'd never even seen that long ridge of his tin roof spread out towards the sky, or those huge magnolias and hackberries that stood in the yard, or even that old rusted water tower that reached up high above everything else.

Of course all of that taken into account probably wouldn't have made any difference anyway . . . people believe what they want to believe. A lot of them are already talking about how he should've stayed in church; they knew after his wife was gone, his dog was about the only thing he had left, and after they heard what had happened, I'm sure they saw that all as a sign--figuring that big wheel had finally come rolling back around, giving him what he deserved.

As for myself, I really don't know what to think . . . It's just always seemed kind of funny to me that when things are hardest to explain, seems like everyone's got an explanation.

There is something I have to tell you though just between me and you . . . something that's kind of gotten me spooked about everything that happened that night. I mean, ever since I saw his dog laying there with that look in its eye, I get these shivers up my spine just thinking about it . . . thinking to myself that maybe that dog knew something that we don't. . . . I mean, sometimes when I picture that thing trying to claw and tear its way through the door I can't help but thinking that maybe we ought to be scared too, you know what I'm saying?

I mean, any animal has got to witness some pretty strange things, getting stuck outside all day and night--not to mention getting caught in one of them storms that rips through here about late July or August. While we're all holed up nice and cozy waiting for the worst to blow over, there ain't no telling what an animal might see or smell, slipping through the woods, running on ahead of the wind.

Untitled by Caroline VII Miller

Visual Art Selection

Literary Art Selection

Untitled by Michael Boasso

36

Visual Art Selection

They Called Her Degonwadonti--Several Against One

Mary Sitts heard the sound of screaming
again. She was being carried through darkness
by the decorated one who held a stick toward the sky.
The wind was sweet with honeysuckle, and gently
blowing just enough to make the Weeping
Willow sway from side to side.

She was ten in 1779 when taken to the other side;
the massacre caused her to have dreams of screaming,
always from which she awoke--weeping.
This was a life she didn't know--one of darkness,
until that summer when Indian Violets gently
poked their heads into her life. Never had a sky

been so blue nor had she felt a part of that sky.
She married Black Wolf from the Indian side--
Mohawk territory New York. He would gently
take her and then cradle her during her screaming
dreams where she would awake again in the darkness.
Their way became like the Weeping

Willow tree and the wind--swaying, weeping,
bending--then again--reaching for the sky--
always together, even while separate. But a darkness
came over her as she recalled the white side.
Hooves shook the earth as screaming
people bloodied the ground. Gently

she was lifted up--again dreaming--again gently
laid and comforted while weeping.
Years passed. A baby was born, and her screaming
echoed through the meadow. The Great Spirit in the sky
sent life to the betrayed and broken people's side.
A gift for their faithful endurance during darkness.

At dawn they were touched by darkness,
when Black Wolf was shot. On a wooden scaffold, gently
he was placed in the sacred burial. On this side
one was never gone and his spirit could be heard weeping.
She lay on him one last time and rising, begged for the sky
to take her too. Pleading, hopelessly screaming,

she placed the marriage stick by his side. Darkness
still looms and screaming is heard when the wind gently
blows through the Weeping Willow--calling her into the sky.

--Barbara R. Sheeley

Literary Art Selection

Violin, Bass, Viola, Cello

The strings smooth their feathers down,
And the resined bows take wing:
Swallows dart, and herons soar,
And waxwing waltzes kingfish.

--Delmar Brewington

Literary Art Selection