MSR Summer 2004
Features:
Duff Brenna
Interviewed by Jeffrey Okla ElliottThe Kafka Within
an essay by David ChorltonFraming the Debate
political commentary by M. Scott DouglassFiction by Salazar's Grave by Charles Edward Brooks, winner of the 2003 MSR Short Fiction Contest. Rush to Judgment by Cyndy Muscatel, Runner-up 2003 MSR Short Fiction Contest.
Reviews by Janice Fuller, Mike James, Barbara Lawing, S. Craig Renfroe, Rich Ristow
of the following work:
Boys by David Lloyd, Saying These Things by Ronald Moran, Barb Quill Down by Bill Griffin, Petitions for Immortality: Scenes from the life of John Keats by Robert Cooperman, Jasper by Michelle Groce, Krypton Nights by Bryan D. Dietrich, The Resurrection of the Body And the Ruin of the World by Paul Guest, Zoo Music by William D. Waltz, Satisfied with Havoc by Jo McDougall.Poetry by John Amen, Therese L. Barholomew, Erin Bealmear, Karla Huston, Jo Carolyn Beebe, Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal, DC Berry, Beebe Barksdale-Bruner, W.K. Buckley, Michael Colonnese, Sean Thomas Dougherty, Lyle Daggett, Doug Draime, Michael A. Flanagan, Timons Esias, Mark Fabrizio, Christien Gholson, Gerald Kaminsky, Laurie MacDiarmid, Michael Murray, Ione O’Hara, Jonathan K. Rice, Rich Ristow, Andrew Sage, Marisa Rosenfeld, Askold Skalsky, Mike Schneider, Martin Vest, Mike White, Tricia Yost, Anne Zahran, Fredrick Zydek.
Cover Art: The Color of Rust, a photo by Stacey R. Fruits, graphically manipulated by M. Scott Douglass.
Images by Stacey Fruits, Helen Lurye, Douglass South, Gerald Wheeler.
Now hatred is by far the longest pleasure;
Men love in haste, but they detest at leisure.
(Lord Byron: Don Juan, XIII, vi)
In the Pastelaria Gomes, two dozen noses pressed against the plate glass window. For snow was blanketing the town, something the owners of the youngest noses had never seen at all. Ohs and ahs echoed in the elegant little salon; the caged canary chirped an obbligato of its own.
But two senior citizens, seated at separate tables, took no part in the brouhaha. Their loud conversation with each other—both women were slightly deaf—absorbed them completely.
The leaner of the two, a former teacher, looked daggers at the other. “Of course your materialistic philosophy can’t explain the fall of standards we’re living through right now, Menina Piedade das Dores. Your world-view is one of the causes of it.”
A stocky ex-librarian with fiery hair banged her coffee cup into its saucer. “It certainly can, Dona Brunilda! Anyone who can face reality objectively is bound to accept our Marxist-Leninist thinking on the situation! . . . Not to change the subject, but with your diabetes, you shouldn’t be eating that pastry.”
Everyone addressed Brunilda as Dona, for she was a married woman, even if her husband had gone off to Brazil soon after the wedding and never been heard of again. Because Piedade das Dores had not married, and to her disgust, she was still called Menina—a form of address used also for little girls.
“It’s the diet kind—made with sweetener. . . . I was about to say, Menina Piedade das Dores: Stonewalling Stalinist that you are, you just won’t accept that Marxism-Leninism is dead and buried.”
The redhead squinted at her adversary. “As far as the Portuguese Communist Party’s concerned, you’re right, Dona Brunilda. They don’t even hang up portraits of Marx, Engels, and Lenin at their so-called congresses. Much less Stalin. That’s why I quit. Just as you stopped going to Mass after the Second Vatican Council.”
“But in my heart of hearts, I’m still very much a Catholic,” Dona Brunilda insisted.
“And I a Communist,” retorted Menina Piedade das Dores.
At the window, Dr. Perreira’s wife sighed to the friend beside her: “Those two are at it again. They just never get tired of fighting, do they?” Like millions of other West Europeans, the speaker knew nothing about Communism and precious little about the religion that she herself professed.
The snowfall ceased abruptly. In the west, clouds parted to let through shafts of gold and crimson light. The enthusiasm of the watchers at the window rose to new heights.
But the two septuagenarians paid no attention to the spectacular sunset that Nature was laying on. Having paid their bills, they rose and gathered their things. With a stiff bow to each other, they stalked out of the Pastelaria Gomes like the signatories of an armed truce.
Want the rest of the story?
The conclusion can be read in the Summer 2004 issue which is still available direct from MSR for $7 at
The Main Street Rag Bookstore.BACK TO TOP
Therese L. Bartholomew, Weddington, NC
Providence
Her face chapped, weather-beaten, rain-drenched
stares out from underneath a black umbrella.
Do homeless people have umbrellas?
Through the fogged windshield
I gawk and make eye contact.
Guilt is more easily swallowed without eyes.
Her left eye circled in blackness and self-loathing.
Who did that to her?
Did she leave him, or
will my money line his abusive pockets?The light changes;
I’m off the hook.
My heavy conscience tugs me to the right
and into the parking lot.
Pulling the Gap wallet from my purse—
a one, a five, a ten.
The five
middle of the road—
not insulting,
not over-zealous
The five.
At a safe distance I pull the money from my wallet
and prepare for the exchange.
Leaning across the passenger seat,
my hand meets her icy fingers briefly.
“God bless you,” she says.The light turns green;
and I wonder if her hands are clean.
Gerald Kaminsky, Belmont, CA
Biographical Fragment
She dropped like lightning
From her mother’s womb.
Her fists were clenched, the signal
Gesture of her fractured youth,
The maddening question always
Is there something clinched
There in those tight fingers
Or merely a weapon fist
To batter the disappointments
Blooming in the daily dust?
When her parents divorced
Her childish pique made anger
Like guilty pee pee
In her school girl night.
A Jello mold of madness,
She trembled, fumbled into
Another woman’s arms
Still a child believing
That all like mother women
Could be trusted, loved.
But when she suffered
That betrayal she faltered,
Took her pills like candy
Thinking They’ll all be sorry.
Vomiting, her stomach pumped,
She looked back wrinkled
By the life she’d missed:
“Moma, I don’t want to die.
What should I do?”
And Moma, tough enough
Even to lose a daughter, said
“Why dear, make do with
What you have.” And let
Silence tell the rest.
Laurie MacDiarmid, De Pere, WI
Blunt
You’re soooo blunt, the student says,
breaking the sudden hush—
she claims it’s a compliment but
her mouth twists as it sucks on something small
and bitter, and the young man beside her
drops his head onto the table,
squeezes it,
as if to knead my voice out of his
tangled, copper hair.I’ve rammed our discussion
into an ugly reality
where men with downy cheeks have to imagine
how it feels to be banged into
like a swinging door,
into a place where poets can dive into memory
and come up bloody,
where beauty is not a rose but a fist
hard as the father’s penis
in your mouth.
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