MSR Fall 2007
Main Street Rag, PO BOX 690100, Charlotte, NC 28227-7001
704-573-2516, contact us
Feature:
Small Press Publishing with
March Street Press & Press 53Essays
Confessions of a Medical Shopaholic by Nancy Scott Hanway
It's A Blood Thing by Jim Farley
First Born by Kennedy WeibleReviews by David-Matthew Barnes, Heather Jane Collings, S. Craig Renfroe, Jr., Penelope Scambly Schott, Richard Allen Taylor.
of the following work:
The Rhythm Method, Razzmatazz, and Memory: How to Make Your Poetry Swing by Keith Flynn, The Golden Ratio by Keith Flynn, Rosary of Bones by Jennifer MacPherson, Abuse Art Not Children by Robert Pomerhn, Here, Bullet by Brian Turner, The Clumsy Living by Bob Hicok.
Poetry by Anthony S. Abbott, V.T. Abercrombie, Thomas Robert Barnes, Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal, Douglas N. Baldwin, Curtis W. Bauer, Emily Benton, Nancy Cherry, Bekah Dinnerstein, Deborah H. Doolittle, Alejandro Escude, Gary Every, Ed Galing, Bill Glose, Alan Harawitz, Jeff Hardin, Michael Hettich, Gayle Elen Harvey, James Himelsbach, Charles M. Israel, Jr., Richard D. Krohn, Lyn Lifshin, David T. Manning, Jamaal May, Marissa Mendoza, Walt Peterson, Marian Plaut, Andrea Potos, Chad Prevost, Doug Ramspeck, Talia M. Reed, Jonathan K. Rice, Rosaly DeMaios Roffman, Stan Sanvel Rubin, Maureen A. Sherbondy, Shoshauna Shy, Helen Vo-Dinh, Chuck Sullivan, Jennifer K. Sullivan, J. Tarwood, Lolita Stewart-White, Ann Walters, Elia Robert Zashin.
Cover Art: Z. Scott
Images: Doug South.
Jim Finley
Friendswood, TX
IT’S A BLOOD THING
I say blood is sure thick in Shallowater. I say this so people can better understand my situation. I been through hard times. Some nights I wake up in a sweat thinking about what I been through. I admit I’ve done things in my life, things I don’t talk about. But I’m not a bad person. My mama loves me and I got a sister who feels the same. Not just that. I got friends; I got lots of friends. But they’re not in Shallowater. They’re over in Fort Worth. Fort Worth is where I was before I came to the Panhandle. Me and my mama, Eleanore, and my sister, Wynita, came up here after Camels killed my daddy. Daddy smoked regulars, no-filter regulars. He smoked since he was eight. I used to watch how he did it, how he’d flip a Camel up in the pack and tap it on the back of his hand, then take it between his lips. He’d drag a kitchen match down the outside seam of his Levis until it burst into fire. Even if there was no wind, Daddy would cup his hands just so to protect the flame, then he’d light up. Watching all that made me want to smoke something awful.After Daddy died, Mama couldn’t wait to get out of Fort Worth. Me and my sister wanted to stay with our friends. We didn’t want to change schools, but Mama was determined to come to Shallowater. Mostly because this is where she grew up. This is where her people are. And that’s what I’m getting to. The misery I got in this town ain’t fair. It’s a blood thing. I’m talking about Mama’s brother-in-law, Uncle Arno Kincaid, the sorriest, most no-count person who ever lived in Shallowater, the man who broke Aunt Jo Ruth’s heart and damned-near ruined my life in 1955.
September, 1955, is when Arno Kincaid had that bad wreck out in California. I shouldn’t let it drag me down, but I can’t help it. My life’s not worth warm spit since that wreck.
To understand all this it’s necessary to know some things, especially how an innocent person like myself can get dragged in the dirt for what somebody else does. A person shouldn’t get blamed just because one of their kinfolk marries some trashy no-count. I understand now, but at first I could never figure Mama’s sister marrying one of those people. Oil field trash is what they are. At least, that’s how they’re known around Shallowater.
The old Kincaid house sits across the tracks, north of the cotton gin. From the road it looks like an adobe house, like one of those New Mexico Indian houses built out of mud bricks, with a big, crooked hole in front for a door. Wynita says it looks like a fort. She calls it Fort Kincaid. It’s no use to drive by. There’s nothing to see except junk cars and broke down trucks. Everything they have is up on blocks in the front yard.
Mama hates the Kincaids. She says old man Kincaid ought to be shot.
“When he’s not in jail for stealing chickens or molesting children,” says Mama, “he’s working on his liquid diet, sitting in front of that mud house in his dirty undershirt, swigging down bottle after bottle of Green Pheasant shaving lotion.”
Mama says things like that, but she stretches her neck wanting to know about the old man, same as everybody else in Shallowater—stretching their necks, but always keeping their distance, like they’re at a zoo gawking at some dangerous animal from another continent. Sometimes I wonder if the old man really does all those things he’s accused of. Wynita says a person doesn’t have to do anything to be disliked.
Want the rest of the story (and more)?
The conclusion can be read in the Fall 2007 issue which is available direct from MSR for $7 at
The Main Street Rag Bookstore.BACK TO TOP
Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal
West Covina, CA
THE SONGBOOK OF LIFE
I hum from the songbook
of life. The elegant birds
who live in my neighborhood,
they wrote this book, which
isn’t available in any library
or bookstore. It has won no
awards or prizes. The Academy
of American Poets cannot
sell this book or make a profit.
None of their poems compare
to what these elegant birds
sing on a daily basis. I hum
from the songbook of life, an
unworthy narrator. I bow to
Them and in silence I enjoy
their noble, joyful language.
EL CANCIONERO DE LA VIDA
Yo tarareo del cancionero
de la vida. Los pájaros elegantes
Que viven en mi vencindad,
ellos escribieron este libro, que
no esta de venta en ninguna biblioteca
o libreria. No ha ganado ningún
premio o condecoración. La Academia
de Poetas Americanos no puede
vender este libro o enriquecerse con el.
Ninguno de sus poemas se compara
a lo que estos pájaros elegantes
cantan todos los días. Yo tarareo
del cancionero de la vida, un
narrador malo. Yo los saludo
y en silencio me divierto con su
canto noble y su lenguaje alegre.
Andrea Potos
Madison, WI
A LITE READ
You take it to your bed, grateful
to let your ragged brain float.
Thirsty for something sweet
and nearly weightless,
you gulp it, the Grape Koolaid,
instant lemonade of your childhood.
Such relief to be free
of the complicated protein of thought,
dense fat of meaning
burdening your arteries, your heart;
your memory pinched awake.These pages could be buoys
in the immeasureable ocean of print.
They keep you clear
of silty
ambiguous depths,
jaws of baracudas,
spontaneous eggs of the coral
that seed the dark.
Doug Ramspeck
Lima, OH
POET LAUREATE: FRISTOE, OHIO
(Population 947)
If only the just-to-be-resurrected body of Christ
somehow worked as a metaphor for Main Street.
Or for once, just once, the syllables on the tongue
resembled the susurrations of July wind
rippling through a soybean field. It’s been
late nights drinking at the Redbird Inn,
talking about tip blight or front end loaders
or square balers or sorghum. How many ways
are there to describe another walleyed
farmer slugging beer from a tallneck
then wiping off his mouth with a sleeve?
Words here grow slow as corn stalks
in August drought, and everything is too damned still.
And try quoting Ashbery—not the smoothness,
not the insane clocks in the square, the scent of manure
in the municipal parterre, not the fabrics, the sullen
mockery of Tweety Bird—and see how far it gets you
with the morning crowd at Ray’s Gas and Eats.
Tomorrow’s the dedication of the grain elevator.
What’s short and goes with all of us numbed,
hungover, and squinting up at the Wilgus County sky?
Jonathan K. Rice
Charlotte, NC
MARIE WANTS TO RUN OFF TO HAWAII
She wants to wear a grass skirt
and a coconut bra,
sip on exotic drinks
in the Pacific sun
as I fan her with a palm frond
or bring her breakfast on the beach.She likes pineapple daiquiris,
rum and coke,
wants to go to luaus
and wear hibiscus leis
as she watches native fire dancers.
I want her to learn the hula dance.I will watch and play the ukulele
with the guys in the band.
But in the winter
she will miss the snow in Michigan
and its frozen lakes, her mother’s cannoli
and family and friends at Christmas.Blood is thicker than poi,
especially Italian blood.
She will give me the coconut bra
and say goodbye,
buy a one way ticket to Detroit,
leaving me holding the bra and ukulele.
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