MSR Fall 2005
Feature:
Catching Up with Lyn Lifshin
An Inteview by Nathan LeslieFiction
Alienation of Affection by Carl F. Thompson, Jr.
True Lagoon by William SheldonReviews by Victoria Moreland, Richard Allen Taylor, Anne Barnhill, Tim W. Brown, Cheryl A Townsend, S. Craig Renfroe, Jr.
of the following work:
Let it Rain Coffee by Angie Cruz, Suckers by Joseph Farley, Secret Places and Other Poems by Brian Kenneth Swain, Radiance by Barbara Crooker, Permanent Party by Michael Casey, beneath the valley of the blue-eyed boys by Mark Hartenbach, The Influence of Pigeons on Architecture by Timons Esaias.Poetry by Anthony S. Abbott, Carol Hamilton, Partridge Boswell, Larsen Bowker, Elizabeth Bridges, Leslie Brown, T. Anders Carson, Robert Cooperman, Timons Esaias, Michael Estabrook, Christopher S. Fuqua, Marc Jampole, Mary Soon Lee, Scott MacPhail, David T. Manning, Stephen Malin, Deborah Mead, Greg Moglia, Lenard D. Moore, Lou Roach, Francisco Rodriguez, Omar Shapli, Carol Smallwood, William Sheldon, Max Snavlin, Richard Allen Taylor, Richard Vargas, Martin Vest, James Washington, Jr., Fredrick Zydek.
Cover Art: Transformation, by Sally B. Miller.
Images by Kim Copeland, Karon Luddy, Taso Papadakis, Gerald Wheeler
Carl F. Thonpson, Jr.
Annondale, VAAlienation of Affection
I never heard about the aliens until my wife told me that Roger Glimmerhorn had been carried off talking gibberish and that he wasn’t the first.
“What do you mean, carried off?” She’d caught me nearly mid-stroke in my wood-splitting labors, working a felled oak in our woody backyard. A tree dies, I call an arborist to take it down, section it. But the splitting I keep personal. It avoids the cost of a log-splitter and dues at the local health club, though it may evoke fantasies involving a good masseuse with an affinity for the deltoids. But in lieu of a svelte young thing with creative physiotherapeutic powers, my field of view was being consumed by my lovely, lumbering wife. Clara, proffering a glass of iced tea, clarified the news of the day.
“I mean, carried off. In an ambulance. But without a siren.”
“What do you mean, carried off in an ambulance without a siren?”
Though I was a sweaty mess and enjoyed taking a moment to sit on our deck and admire my backyard handiwork—that growing stack of split wood—I couldn’t help noticing most of the ice in the glass I’d been handed looked already melted.
“Well, Bob, I could say ‘what do you mean, what do I mean,’ but I don’t want verbal warfare at the moment.”
“Fine,” I said. I took a long gulp and waited.
“The proverbial ‘men in white coats,’ they came and took him away. And no one knows where Greta is. Their daughter Lucille has always been hyper. She’s practically living on Ritalin as it is—what must she be like now? I hope their health plan covers this.”
“Huh. That means Roger’ll miss Wednesday night bowling and Friday night poker. I’ll have to get substitutes.” I stared at the yard full of tall yet aging oaks and wondered which would be first to give up in a windstorm and skydive onto a neighbor’s carport, or kitchen, or bath. The value of a house is immeasurably increased by good-looking oaks, but there’s a war of maintenance that goes with that nature-qua-nature look. “And what do you mean by ‘aliens?’” I said. “You did mention ‘aliens,’ right?”
“Yes, that’s what Linda Garvoni said. Poor Lucille.”
“Roger’s always complaining about Latinos taking all the low-paying jobs and Indians if not Pakistanis taking all the high-paying, high-tech jobs.”
“I don’t think we’re talking ‘normal’ aliens, Bob.”
Clara, as usual, had neglected to sugar my tea; nor had she commended my labors at laying up wood for winter. But domestic tranquility is … well, domestic tranquility. “So, I still don’t get it. ‘Aliens,’ what?”
Clara, my overweight bundle of joy, my fifty-year-old wife (two years my senior), who’d begun growing a prospective third chin, put on one of those womanly (perhaps matronly) looks of concern. “Well, according to Linda according to Lucille, Roger, as he was being carted off, kept saying aliens had run off with his wife.”
“Roger should be so lucky,” I said.
“Robert Malcolm, how dare you say a thing like that.”
“Well, she does talk her head off to no end. Roger’s one of those silent types who enjoys—as odd as it may seem—peace and quiet. Amazing he and Greta have hung together this long. Maybe if they didn’t have their thirteen-year-old, Lucille …”
Want the rest of the story (and more)?
The conclusion can be read in the Fall 2005 issue which is available direct from MSR for $7 at
The Main Street Rag Bookstore.BACK TO TOP
Anthony S. Abbott
Davidson, NC
The Man Who Could Not Get In
The door, of course, was always closed
or almost closed, as if indeedto invite entrance, a hint of enchantment
beyond its dark entry, as if to saybehind here is something you have
never seen or touched before.He passed the door daily,
transfixed by its very presence.Sometimes he would walk by
pretending indifference, lyingto himself. Sometimes he would
stop and push, a gentle shovewith the shoulder to see if it might
give way. No luck there.Sometimes he sat like Rodin’s thinker,
elbow on knee, fist against chin.He’d contemplate it open, he’d
dream, scheme, beam it openwith some spell. Or maybe
experience would teach himto swivel the hinges in some
odd way, a twist here,a soupcon there. He didn’t know.
He only knew the thrustof wind, the sense of marching,
marching in place, limpinglike a lost soldier from
an unremembered war.
Carol Hamilton
Midwest City, OK
Body Language
So the old photos speak,
tell when she wore a different body,
a small, compact and soft
bundle of girl watching the older,
slimmed down cousin, tea party,
a learner and a teacher. Mimicked motions, a goddess
to watch, cup lifted to lips,
sipped just so. Yet in another shot,
this time with someone younger,
confidence, a showing off now,
a responsibility to pass wisdom
on, shifting shadows as the sun
slides across earth turns, makes
a tall pine foreshortened,
stretched long both, two aspects,
one tree. A definition is achieved
by deciding against reality. I saw
her last Friday. Everything
has changed since then.
Richard Vargas
Albuquerque, NM
Soulmate
the second time we met
at sonny’s bar she was
telling me about the short
stories of paul bowles
and how some of them
made her feel high
she said she was going
home to get the book
for me and i’m thinking
“yeah, right...”
but 15 minutes later
she walks back in
puts the book in front
of me on the bar
orders another beer
later
the drunk jailbird
from arizona who
had been bumming
drinks all night
leans over and asks
if she’d like to go
make out in the
parking lot
the great ones never
miss an opening and i
knew she was something
special when
shaking her head no
she looks at me and
says “i’d rather have
my nipples shaved off
with a cheese grater...”
Leslie Brown
Atlanta, GA
Amputation
When Sharon lost her leg,
doctors said she would feel
a phantom pain.
She would wake at three a.m.
itching under her absent knee,
scratching the empty sheet.
The eight blue-eyed Susans
she stuffed between her toes
when she was six, the second
toe that extended longer than
the first, the callus she almost
worked away with pumice,the scar from the beach nail
when she was bronze and
17, the cold plum polish
she had painted on her nails
the day before the accident¾
all ached under the sheet.The remaining leg was now
ridiculous, a protruding thing.
She felt no affection for this gangly orphan,
This long, white bag of meat,
only missed its twin made
beautiful by the echo of itself.
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