MSR Summer 2001
Featuring: GENDOLYN BROOKS
Interviewed by Kevin BeznerFiction by Richard Peabody.
Reviews by Jen Hirt, Marth Whitfield.
Poetry by Angi Becker, Janine DeBaise, C.S. Fuqua, John Grey, Jay Griswold, Albert Huffstickler, Lucinda Hynett, Jarret Keene, Joel Kuper, Lyn Lifshin, Tom McCarthy, Ken Meisel, Ronald Moran, Tiffany Dean Parker, Richard Peabody, Richard William Pearce, James S. Proffitt, Jonathan K. Rice, Marty Silverthorne, J. Tarwood, Gerald Wheeler, Don Winter, Fredrick Zydek.Cover Photo by M. Scott Douglass.
Internal photos and images by Ron Bousquet, Kevin Bezner, Lou Green, Don Stewart.
Poetry
Richard Peabody
Blue Suburban Skies I’m thinking about March madness and the six pack of Sam Adams in the fridge when Jenny meets me on the front porch, the front porch that’s badly in need of a paint job.
“Hey Hon. You going out?” I peck her cheek and move to go inside, but she blocks the doorway with her arm. I can’t move forward so I backtrack awkwardly, my weight on the wrong foot, and study her face. She’s been crying and her cheeks are red and puffy, so she’s probably pissed off as well. Uh-oh, I’m thinking, I worked late, had the boss bust my chops over the new corporate web design, ate cold Moo Shi Pork for dinner, and now this.
“I found these . . . ” she begins and thrusts a fistful of hand rolled cigarettes at me
“. . . in Jason’s sock drawer.” Four badly rolled joints. Jenny drops them in my hand and wipes her eyes. “I want you to have a talk with him.”
“Sure Hon, where is he?”
“Down at Albert’s house.” She crosses her arms and holds them tight to her chest across the Virginia Tech logo on her sweatshirt and then looks straight up in the air. “They’re probably doing drugs and listening to Marilyn Manson CDs, and you know, the usual—slicing and dicing neighborhood kittens—or else—“
And then she was quaking in my arms crying her eyes out.
“I’ll take care of it honey. Don’t get so upset. He’s a good kid. He’ll be fine.” I kiss her sweet smelling blonde hair and disengage myself. She nods her head, waves an arm at the street, and she’s down the steps and off to the gym, jogging down the hill toward the Y.
I watch the bouncing ponytail and her athletic little body until she’s out of sight around the bend before tucking my satchel in the door, closing it, and starting down the street in the opposite direction.
What to do? Jason has fucked up big time. Leaving the joints in the sock drawer was either a bad case of in Jenny’s face or just plain stupid. But which? You’d think with all the time the boy wonder spends on his PC that he’d be smarter than that, anyway. Who knows these days? It was work just to get him to go outdoors.The conclusion to this story can be read in the Summer 2001 issue, still available directly from Main Street Rag for $7 and an interview with Richard Peabody appears in the Summer 2002 issue also still available from MSR. Both are available at The MSR Bookstore.
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