It’s raining here
For you
With your cigarette and black coffee mug in the same hand,
You
Who still keeps a typewriter in the closet
To pay homage to the old ways,
To those grown-up men trying to find their boyhood once again.
Breathe in the droplets,
Or they will smear the carbon copies
Falling from your trees,
Thin leaves for submission to the press.
Doesn’t anybody print unknowns anymore?
You cry,
Doesn’t anybody read?
You dye your
Second-hand clothes with the same tea
You make for me to drink,
So what am I to think
About the fairy tales of utopia you spin me now?
Let go.
Dance for the rain.
It came down for you and shimmered.
The czars and I and even you can all enjoy the ballet;
Your words,
They will wait for you to untie your wet boots.
Jennifer Stohlmann
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
Monday, February 18, 2008
Poetry: Search and Rescue
My mother brings home an
owl with a broken wing and winces
when she wraps it in warm towels,
like a part of her is broken too--
maybe there is. I make the bed
like you will sleep there: no sheet.
It takes three days for your
lingering scent to stop lingering or
for my nose to adjust--
either way, it's gone.
The owl dies over night and
my mother begins planning the funeral.
Two birds build a nest on our porch.
I say ours but it was never ours,
now was it?
A ferry sinks on the evening news.
the water is warm and thick,
like breast milk,
so they decide to swim.
I remember the skin behind your ears
and loving you,
violently. I want your blood on my hands.
Dirt in carpet, shovel in sink,
and the owl is still wrapped,
swaddled, on the kitchen counter with
the cat pawing the back door and
mother in the yard,
whispering our father in heaven hallowed be your name.
I make up my mind to
swim to you but by the time I
make it to the Atlantic,
the notes in my pocket are too wet to read.
I forget if they were
love letters to begin with. So I swim home.
Dear mother, did the deer join the prayers
at the owl's funeral?
An obvious ending:
The men and women on the ferry later say
the search was better than the rescue.
The less obvious:
The owl unburied himself
and flew away.
Stephanie Willis
owl with a broken wing and winces
when she wraps it in warm towels,
like a part of her is broken too--
maybe there is. I make the bed
like you will sleep there: no sheet.
It takes three days for your
lingering scent to stop lingering or
for my nose to adjust--
either way, it's gone.
The owl dies over night and
my mother begins planning the funeral.
Two birds build a nest on our porch.
I say ours but it was never ours,
now was it?
A ferry sinks on the evening news.
the water is warm and thick,
like breast milk,
so they decide to swim.
I remember the skin behind your ears
and loving you,
violently. I want your blood on my hands.
Dirt in carpet, shovel in sink,
and the owl is still wrapped,
swaddled, on the kitchen counter with
the cat pawing the back door and
mother in the yard,
whispering our father in heaven hallowed be your name.
I make up my mind to
swim to you but by the time I
make it to the Atlantic,
the notes in my pocket are too wet to read.
I forget if they were
love letters to begin with. So I swim home.
Dear mother, did the deer join the prayers
at the owl's funeral?
An obvious ending:
The men and women on the ferry later say
the search was better than the rescue.
The less obvious:
The owl unburied himself
and flew away.
Stephanie Willis
Poetry: The Consequences of Fearing Loneliness
I fall asleep in the bathtub to be closer to the ocean.
I invite others to sleep near me. Their bodies
keep me warm like water: cold, cold, cold,
and then you adjust.
October becomes November and I can't distinguish
my breath from smoke. Think of me next time
you drink lukewarm soup or touch a girl
who can't stop shaking.
I am sorry for thinking
the wrong people are wonderful,
for thinking I am wonderful, for thinking
of he and me as we.
I’m sorry for holding his shoulder when he tried to leave.
I apologize for the kiss on the mouth. Don't remember me for that.
Remember me by all thirty knuckles and strands of hair
in your mouth and Sunday mornings.
Let me get ahead of myself now. Let me think of
sharing a grocery cart and doorman greetings by name
and waking up under flannel and down.
Don’t ask to know what I am thinking.
Or, teach me to stand still. Teach me to be quiet
and steady and comfortable in this moment alone.
Teach me to stop expecting the best for me
to be what I expected.
I apologize for lingering too long. I apologize
for kissing him when I tasted only like beer.
I woke up with his elbow in my face.
I licked his elbow. I am sorry for this.
Touch my thigh in the morning. Think of the last bed
and its inhabitant— think of her short hair and lazy mouth.
Teach me indifference. Kiss my mouth and
go home and stop answering the phone.
Go back in time to a favorite moment.
The winter at the beach—the way my feet
sunk into the sand. Choose to stay here;
claim there has been nothing worth returning to.
Consider my ribcage and wrists. Consider
coin tosses and drawings passed back and forth
and the tops of my feet in the cold.
Return to me.
Stop missing the small things: toes and teeth and eyelashes
left on the pillow. Or miss them more.
Go back with me to that beach. Breathe only fog.
Reach as far as you can reach. See if we can touch.
Stephanie Willis
I invite others to sleep near me. Their bodies
keep me warm like water: cold, cold, cold,
and then you adjust.
October becomes November and I can't distinguish
my breath from smoke. Think of me next time
you drink lukewarm soup or touch a girl
who can't stop shaking.
I am sorry for thinking
the wrong people are wonderful,
for thinking I am wonderful, for thinking
of he and me as we.
I’m sorry for holding his shoulder when he tried to leave.
I apologize for the kiss on the mouth. Don't remember me for that.
Remember me by all thirty knuckles and strands of hair
in your mouth and Sunday mornings.
Let me get ahead of myself now. Let me think of
sharing a grocery cart and doorman greetings by name
and waking up under flannel and down.
Don’t ask to know what I am thinking.
Or, teach me to stand still. Teach me to be quiet
and steady and comfortable in this moment alone.
Teach me to stop expecting the best for me
to be what I expected.
I apologize for lingering too long. I apologize
for kissing him when I tasted only like beer.
I woke up with his elbow in my face.
I licked his elbow. I am sorry for this.
Touch my thigh in the morning. Think of the last bed
and its inhabitant— think of her short hair and lazy mouth.
Teach me indifference. Kiss my mouth and
go home and stop answering the phone.
Go back in time to a favorite moment.
The winter at the beach—the way my feet
sunk into the sand. Choose to stay here;
claim there has been nothing worth returning to.
Consider my ribcage and wrists. Consider
coin tosses and drawings passed back and forth
and the tops of my feet in the cold.
Return to me.
Stop missing the small things: toes and teeth and eyelashes
left on the pillow. Or miss them more.
Go back with me to that beach. Breathe only fog.
Reach as far as you can reach. See if we can touch.
Stephanie Willis
Fiction: Meanwhile
“Ugh,” grumbled the gatekeeper.
“What?”
“Kids. Damn kids.”
“Yeah?”
“And Money. Damn money.” He shifted in his seat. Two crows passed.
“How many?”
“How many? Two crows.”
“Kids. How many.”
“Three.” Pause. There was a creaking at the door, but no one turned his head to look. Silence. Silence. Creaking. Silence. A third crow flew by; the three convened on top of the bar across the street. Gay bar. Straight crows, though. No one bought drinks.
The air was brisk. November brisk. The air was crisp, too. Brisk November crisp. Like, if you took a step on a-not-too-city sidewalk then all you would hear is the brisk, crisp, brisk whi-crack of crisp crumpled leafs squish under boot. Floral bouquet death rattle rattle.
“You got any kids?” The gatekeeper didn’t really care; he had time to kill, and no shank.
“No.”
“You got any money?”
“A little.” It was black out. The older the years get, the less they like light. By November, two thousand five was so crotchety it locked the sun out on the porch and swallowed the key, along with some stale tapioca and cold hot tea. Ugh.
I had nothing left to say to the gatekeeper, and he had nothing left to say to me, so we kept talking. What was said was not important. There was silence. Another crow passed. Landed on the bar. Fat crow. Fat enough to be on a diet, because this crow didn’t buy a drink either. Now there were four crows on the bar, but the bar probably thought there were five, because one of the crows was so fat.
It started snowing.
“God is a bird, I think,” the gatekeeper muttered, “I think.”
“Yeah?”
“Because his shit is white.”
It stopped snowing.
Benjamin Korman
“What?”
“Kids. Damn kids.”
“Yeah?”
“And Money. Damn money.” He shifted in his seat. Two crows passed.
“How many?”
“How many? Two crows.”
“Kids. How many.”
“Three.” Pause. There was a creaking at the door, but no one turned his head to look. Silence. Silence. Creaking. Silence. A third crow flew by; the three convened on top of the bar across the street. Gay bar. Straight crows, though. No one bought drinks.
The air was brisk. November brisk. The air was crisp, too. Brisk November crisp. Like, if you took a step on a-not-too-city sidewalk then all you would hear is the brisk, crisp, brisk whi-crack of crisp crumpled leafs squish under boot. Floral bouquet death rattle rattle.
“You got any kids?” The gatekeeper didn’t really care; he had time to kill, and no shank.
“No.”
“You got any money?”
“A little.” It was black out. The older the years get, the less they like light. By November, two thousand five was so crotchety it locked the sun out on the porch and swallowed the key, along with some stale tapioca and cold hot tea. Ugh.
I had nothing left to say to the gatekeeper, and he had nothing left to say to me, so we kept talking. What was said was not important. There was silence. Another crow passed. Landed on the bar. Fat crow. Fat enough to be on a diet, because this crow didn’t buy a drink either. Now there were four crows on the bar, but the bar probably thought there were five, because one of the crows was so fat.
It started snowing.
“God is a bird, I think,” the gatekeeper muttered, “I think.”
“Yeah?”
“Because his shit is white.”
It stopped snowing.
Benjamin Korman
Fiction: The Magic Of Cinema
The director’s chair was found six years later, folded up and broken down in a pile of trash among a roll of posters, a wobbly coffee table, and a towering wooden sculpture of the moon with a crack running down the middle. In six years, it will have been three places. The first place is a film studio, where M transformed it into a mountain on whose peak he would stand and command his minions. The second place is a stockroom, where M brushed past it every time he had to use the toilet, whose chambers could only be accessed that way. The third place is the trash pile, where M discarded the director’s chair to the wind, the rain, and the rag and bone man. If wood could wish it could weep, then in six years the chair would surely wish it couldn’t wish anymore.
M sat on the chair with so much exuberance that it stopped creaking and began to squeal. The director removed his masculine paw from the arm and raised it at his crew.
“Heave, you sons of bitches!” M hurled a violent gesture at the workers, who were in the process of utilizing a series of pulleys that they had constructed the previous day to lift a tremendous wooden model of the moon. They tried, and again they failed.
“It’s heavy,” remarked the portliest crewman with the most ill-fitting of caps.
“I know it’s heavy, it’s the moon! The moon is heavy! God put a lot of cheese in there, and I expect you vermin to respect every last morsel of it, because so help me if this thing splinters or cracks you’re all fired.” M staked his reputation on fantastic inclinations, and keeping up appearances was his favorite hobby.
“Harrumph,” harrumphed the fat man; intent on receiving a paycheck at the end of the week, he went back to work.
M did not like the workers because he was certain they were all anarchists. And he did not like anarchists because he was certain that they all had no beliefs, not even that there was cheese in the moon. The negative end of his passion that he reserved for anarchists (and unwashed hands, and unwaxed mustaches, and wobbly coffee tables) was offset by his admiration for the moon (and sharpened wits, and pretty women, and mildly pretty women), which he studied from afar like a philosopher studies immortal penumbras. The moon was big, and wise, and it could not be conquered. M’s admiration was unending. But M was not an astronomer; he would never visit the moon and peel its skin, revealing the soft mushy flesh underneath. Nor could he taste the silver cheese M was a film director, and with his current production he intended to sap the moon of all its mystery using genius, using brilliance, and using the magic of cinema (Although M didn’t believe that cinema itself was magic; to him, the magic was in the hands of the director).
The tentative title of the film was “The Great Voyager,” and it recounts the tales of a creative, adventurous young man whose hands were as clean as his moustache was waxed, born and raised in the heart of the Future. After battling and defeating the wicked-hearted “Emperor of Futureland,” the daring young scamp goes on to meet, woo, and trounce upon every pretty and mildly pretty woman in the whole of the Future. He then builds a time machine, and, with unceasing bravado, proceeds to meet, woo, and trounce upon every pretty, mildly pretty, and entirely plain woman in the entirety of history. Returning to The Future, the young man brags about his escapades and becomes a national hero. When asked what he will do next, the hero replies, “I plan to voyage to the moon!” He builds a spaceship and, taking ten of the most mildly pretty women in the land with him, he sets off for new frontiers. Upon reaching the moon (a trip lasting three years— noted by the dozens of toddlers who joyfully teeter out of the ship after landing), the brave young man battles and defeats the entire indigenous population of frog people, miraculously and unexplainably grows to the size of the Sun, gives a long soliloquy about the importance of dreams, and puts the moon in his pocket, where it stays until the end of time, which, by fantastic inclination alone, he causes. Roll credits. M wrote the script himself, and he was very proud of it.
He leaned back in his director’s chair and muttered a garbled curse at the staff. After another fifteen minutes of nihilistic bungling, the crew finally lifted the moon onto the set, and M commanded the cameraman to begin rolling. The film sped from canister to canister; he directed his actors.
“Thomas, you are playing a brilliant man! Stand like a brilliant man would stand, like a bear standing at the mouth of his cave!”
“Yes, sir.” Thomas stiffened his back and forced the air into the chasm of his chest.
“No! You look like a bullfrog! Become a bear. Rip the webbing from between your toes, walk out of the swamp, and grow some balls!”
“Yes, sir. You’re right. I’m sorry.” The actor cowered apologetically. M took a brief moment to sigh, and was suddenly overcome with rage. He swallowed his sigh and spat out an apoplectic grunt.
“Where is my tenth maiden? Where is my tenth maiden? When the hero voyages to the moon, he brings ten voluptuous maidens with him, and I count nine! Will somebody please enlighten me as to where I can find my tenth maiden?!” A delta of veins emerged from M’s forehead and started to pulse. His face turned red. An actress was missing.
M considered himself to be a person possessing all of the attributes that a woman should ever need to find desirable. Healthy, rich, intelligent, mustachioed, and, above all, not bald. For these reasons, he considered his relationships with the actresses in his films to be a sort of charity to which he was donating. Of the nine women currently standing on his stage, he had slept with six. Two of the six he had deflowered, and for that he was terribly proud. Two more, who did not wish to be deflowered, he had allowed to perform fellatio. This was another of M’s charities. The woman on the stage who had not yet experienced M surely would by, or possibly during, the film’s premiere. Four of the nine women on stage were from Kansas. Another two traveled together from Nebraska. There was another from Wisconsin. One was from Maryland, and the last one trekked from Canada, which M assumed to be a vast wasteland of scenery and pleasant living.
M was their savior because he had, in one hole or another, given them class. And without class, they were nothing but the weathered feces of the Middle West.
Furious. In an act of raging indignation that would only hinder the production further, M grabbed his chair and threw it into the stockroom, where it would remain for the next five years and eleven months.
“I’ll be back!” he bellowed, and stormed away.
The missing actress was named Catharine Pless, and she did not audition for her role. Ms. Pless made M’s acquaintance at a party, and her visage burrowed deeply into the furrows of his brain. She was not impressed by his career. Her left breast was slightly larger than her right, and it made several attempts to escape her evening gown. There were knots in her hair. She ate and spoke at the same time. M asked if he could meet Ms. Pless again, and she answered with stern indifference, a raised eyebrow and a piddling snicker.
When M arrived at her apartment, he spent fifteen minutes boring her to death about artistry and passion and cinema magic. She spent four minutes in the bathroom, and then they went to bed together.
They proceeded to hump for eight minutes. Ms. Pless yawned audibly and asked to be excused for a moment to powder her nose. M began to get very anxious. When she returned from the bathroom, she carried in her hand an electrical appliance roughly the size and shape of a toy pistol. A rubber cone was situated at the long end of the appliance and, when it was given power, it would, presumably, vibrate. M frowned.
“You’ll need to use this, or else I’m going to go to bed.” M’s eyes gaped semi-sideways. All of the blood suddenly rushed back to his brain, and he clumsily recounted all of the encounters with women he had ever had and realized that at this moment they meant absolutely nothing. A ball of phlegm became snared in his throat, and it grew thicker each second he could not answer her. Finally, he submitted. He used the appliance and in twenty minutes she was asleep. He saw himself out. That night he lay in bed for two hours without blinking, and the next day he appeared at her apartment again and offered her a role in his film.
He snatched the handle of her dressing room door and tugged it open. Inside, she sat and read a magazine. Her jowls were wrinkled with the stains of boredom. She did not notice, or did not seem to notice M’s presence. He opened his mouth, but only a thin spray of air escaped. She turned the page of her magazine. A moment passed, and she turned another page. More time, and another page still. M slowly backed out of the room and silently closed the door. He stood against the door, empty, for three minutes, and listened to the pages rustle inside the room.
When M returned to the set, he informed his actors of his brilliant decision to include only nine maidens on the young hero’s voyage to the moon for very important kabalistic reasons that were only now occurring to him. He stood, and together they all went back to work.
Ben Korman
M sat on the chair with so much exuberance that it stopped creaking and began to squeal. The director removed his masculine paw from the arm and raised it at his crew.
“Heave, you sons of bitches!” M hurled a violent gesture at the workers, who were in the process of utilizing a series of pulleys that they had constructed the previous day to lift a tremendous wooden model of the moon. They tried, and again they failed.
“It’s heavy,” remarked the portliest crewman with the most ill-fitting of caps.
“I know it’s heavy, it’s the moon! The moon is heavy! God put a lot of cheese in there, and I expect you vermin to respect every last morsel of it, because so help me if this thing splinters or cracks you’re all fired.” M staked his reputation on fantastic inclinations, and keeping up appearances was his favorite hobby.
“Harrumph,” harrumphed the fat man; intent on receiving a paycheck at the end of the week, he went back to work.
M did not like the workers because he was certain they were all anarchists. And he did not like anarchists because he was certain that they all had no beliefs, not even that there was cheese in the moon. The negative end of his passion that he reserved for anarchists (and unwashed hands, and unwaxed mustaches, and wobbly coffee tables) was offset by his admiration for the moon (and sharpened wits, and pretty women, and mildly pretty women), which he studied from afar like a philosopher studies immortal penumbras. The moon was big, and wise, and it could not be conquered. M’s admiration was unending. But M was not an astronomer; he would never visit the moon and peel its skin, revealing the soft mushy flesh underneath. Nor could he taste the silver cheese M was a film director, and with his current production he intended to sap the moon of all its mystery using genius, using brilliance, and using the magic of cinema (Although M didn’t believe that cinema itself was magic; to him, the magic was in the hands of the director).
The tentative title of the film was “The Great Voyager,” and it recounts the tales of a creative, adventurous young man whose hands were as clean as his moustache was waxed, born and raised in the heart of the Future. After battling and defeating the wicked-hearted “Emperor of Futureland,” the daring young scamp goes on to meet, woo, and trounce upon every pretty and mildly pretty woman in the whole of the Future. He then builds a time machine, and, with unceasing bravado, proceeds to meet, woo, and trounce upon every pretty, mildly pretty, and entirely plain woman in the entirety of history. Returning to The Future, the young man brags about his escapades and becomes a national hero. When asked what he will do next, the hero replies, “I plan to voyage to the moon!” He builds a spaceship and, taking ten of the most mildly pretty women in the land with him, he sets off for new frontiers. Upon reaching the moon (a trip lasting three years— noted by the dozens of toddlers who joyfully teeter out of the ship after landing), the brave young man battles and defeats the entire indigenous population of frog people, miraculously and unexplainably grows to the size of the Sun, gives a long soliloquy about the importance of dreams, and puts the moon in his pocket, where it stays until the end of time, which, by fantastic inclination alone, he causes. Roll credits. M wrote the script himself, and he was very proud of it.
He leaned back in his director’s chair and muttered a garbled curse at the staff. After another fifteen minutes of nihilistic bungling, the crew finally lifted the moon onto the set, and M commanded the cameraman to begin rolling. The film sped from canister to canister; he directed his actors.
“Thomas, you are playing a brilliant man! Stand like a brilliant man would stand, like a bear standing at the mouth of his cave!”
“Yes, sir.” Thomas stiffened his back and forced the air into the chasm of his chest.
“No! You look like a bullfrog! Become a bear. Rip the webbing from between your toes, walk out of the swamp, and grow some balls!”
“Yes, sir. You’re right. I’m sorry.” The actor cowered apologetically. M took a brief moment to sigh, and was suddenly overcome with rage. He swallowed his sigh and spat out an apoplectic grunt.
“Where is my tenth maiden? Where is my tenth maiden? When the hero voyages to the moon, he brings ten voluptuous maidens with him, and I count nine! Will somebody please enlighten me as to where I can find my tenth maiden?!” A delta of veins emerged from M’s forehead and started to pulse. His face turned red. An actress was missing.
M considered himself to be a person possessing all of the attributes that a woman should ever need to find desirable. Healthy, rich, intelligent, mustachioed, and, above all, not bald. For these reasons, he considered his relationships with the actresses in his films to be a sort of charity to which he was donating. Of the nine women currently standing on his stage, he had slept with six. Two of the six he had deflowered, and for that he was terribly proud. Two more, who did not wish to be deflowered, he had allowed to perform fellatio. This was another of M’s charities. The woman on the stage who had not yet experienced M surely would by, or possibly during, the film’s premiere. Four of the nine women on stage were from Kansas. Another two traveled together from Nebraska. There was another from Wisconsin. One was from Maryland, and the last one trekked from Canada, which M assumed to be a vast wasteland of scenery and pleasant living.
M was their savior because he had, in one hole or another, given them class. And without class, they were nothing but the weathered feces of the Middle West.
Furious. In an act of raging indignation that would only hinder the production further, M grabbed his chair and threw it into the stockroom, where it would remain for the next five years and eleven months.
“I’ll be back!” he bellowed, and stormed away.
The missing actress was named Catharine Pless, and she did not audition for her role. Ms. Pless made M’s acquaintance at a party, and her visage burrowed deeply into the furrows of his brain. She was not impressed by his career. Her left breast was slightly larger than her right, and it made several attempts to escape her evening gown. There were knots in her hair. She ate and spoke at the same time. M asked if he could meet Ms. Pless again, and she answered with stern indifference, a raised eyebrow and a piddling snicker.
When M arrived at her apartment, he spent fifteen minutes boring her to death about artistry and passion and cinema magic. She spent four minutes in the bathroom, and then they went to bed together.
They proceeded to hump for eight minutes. Ms. Pless yawned audibly and asked to be excused for a moment to powder her nose. M began to get very anxious. When she returned from the bathroom, she carried in her hand an electrical appliance roughly the size and shape of a toy pistol. A rubber cone was situated at the long end of the appliance and, when it was given power, it would, presumably, vibrate. M frowned.
“You’ll need to use this, or else I’m going to go to bed.” M’s eyes gaped semi-sideways. All of the blood suddenly rushed back to his brain, and he clumsily recounted all of the encounters with women he had ever had and realized that at this moment they meant absolutely nothing. A ball of phlegm became snared in his throat, and it grew thicker each second he could not answer her. Finally, he submitted. He used the appliance and in twenty minutes she was asleep. He saw himself out. That night he lay in bed for two hours without blinking, and the next day he appeared at her apartment again and offered her a role in his film.
He snatched the handle of her dressing room door and tugged it open. Inside, she sat and read a magazine. Her jowls were wrinkled with the stains of boredom. She did not notice, or did not seem to notice M’s presence. He opened his mouth, but only a thin spray of air escaped. She turned the page of her magazine. A moment passed, and she turned another page. More time, and another page still. M slowly backed out of the room and silently closed the door. He stood against the door, empty, for three minutes, and listened to the pages rustle inside the room.
When M returned to the set, he informed his actors of his brilliant decision to include only nine maidens on the young hero’s voyage to the moon for very important kabalistic reasons that were only now occurring to him. He stood, and together they all went back to work.
Ben Korman
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