The
Main Street Rag
Summer 2008
Main Street Rag, PO BOX 690100, Charlotte, NC 28227-7001
704-573-2516, contact us
Feature:
The Fractured World: An Interview with Scott Owens
Interview by Tim Peeler
Essay:
“Going Amtrak or A Brief Account on the State of Sitting
Next to Strangers for Over Six Hours”
by Natasha Kochicheril Moni
“The Ride Home” by Nancy Lou Canyon
“Guy Files” by Steve Cushman
“Dear Marilyn Chambers” by Tom Williams
Reviews by Anthony Abbott, David-Matthew Barnes, Raul V. Clement, Heather Jane Collings, Brittney Blaskowitz Prichard, and Eric A. Weil.
of the following work:
Séance by Janice Moore Fuller, The Other Chekhov by Anton Chekhov, edited by Olka Elliott and Kyle Minor, Driving Through the Country Before You Are Born by Ray McManus, Slantwise by Betty Adcock, At Home in the Land of Oz: Autism, My Sister, and Me by Anne Clinar Barnhill, and Anticipate the Coming Reservoir by John Hoppenthaler.
Poetry by
Scott Owens, James Babbs, Chris Wright, Luke T. Bergeron, Jessie A. Carty, Chris Christi, Martha Christina, John J. Jester, Bill Christophersen, Ziggy Edwards, Llyn Clague, Matt Dennison, Krikor N. Der Hohannesian, Paul Feldmann, Ethan Earle, Howard Faerstein, Rachel Flynn, Bill Freedman, Alan Gann, John Grey, Bill Griffin, Arthur Gottlieb, Alan Harawitz, Tim Houghton, Donald Illich, Jerry Judge, Wendi Lee, Brad Maxfield, Ken Meisel, Gary Metras, Barbara Lovell Moore, red hawk, Tolu Ogunlesi, Robert K. Johnson, Connie Post, Andrea Potos, Mike Powers, Samuel Stenger Renken, Tom Rich, Christina Romanelli, Edward Michael O'Durr Supranowicz, Jacob Russell, J. Tarwood, Juanita Torrence-Thompson, Charles Webb, Eric A. Weil, Jenn Williamson.
Cover Art: M. Scott Douglass
Photo Feature: Arun Gaur
Scott Owens
Hickory, NC
NORMAN INCARNATE*
Unable to stand my own breath
I get up at night, walk to the bathroom
and spit, brush my teeth, swish
Listerine, spit again. Still the taste
is there, like something solid at the back
of my throat, bone fragment, undigested
meaty stuff, a memory of retching,
and that’s when I know that Norman is back.It happens most when my weight is up,
my sugar, my blood pressure, when I anger
easily, tire more easily,
when my hands want to stay in my pockets
all day, my face refuses to rise
to meet the greeting of any I see,
when I haven’t gotten my way in months,
and I lie down in my own failure.Like sweat, he oozes out of every pore,
Cro-Magnon in his demeanor, a little Nazi
pounding his fist on everything, declaring
nothing is right, no one trying
hard enough, life not fair,
self-pitying, self-hating, self-absorbed shell
of a man, not even decent enough to wear
the borrowed costume of common courtesy.
*Also appears in Scott Owens' book, The Fractured World, due for release from Main Street Rag
August 18, 2008 and available in The Main Street Rag Bookstore
Ziggy Edwards
Pittsburgh, PA
URBAN WHORES
She sprinted shoeless but not far;
two rookies sprawled her on the asphalt
across the strip from Wal-Mart.Blinking, legs unsteadily coltish
in ripped fishnets, she let them
lead her to the squad car.
Wexler did the head-tuck, palm briefly cupping
the dome of her skull.More and more of them
as the ‘burbs creep together and cinch in,
impinge on high-rise hollow logs.
Spotted here and there, like deer
walking down Main Street.
Tolu Ogunlesi
Abeokuta, Nigeria.
DOWN THIS WINDING ROAD
Down this winding road are the estates
where epitaphs blink at every gate,
mansions where dreams are touched
by the gentle barrelling of bones.
There is the draft that silence stirs
outside the windows, as it swings
from one dark branch to another.
There are also the nightly stampings
on stairways, and the lyrics of fear worming
from shelves of murdered wood, shelves
that trap books longlisted by age.
And then of course, there are the tenants
required by the realtors: captains eager
to go down with their ships, eager to spit
bubbles upon shelves of oceanfloor,
alongside chinaware trapped in gilded kitchen cabinets.
Connie Post
Livermore, CA
AMNESIA OF CLOTHES
Please don’t bring me monogrammed towels
I don’t want them to remember my name
Or the body they’ve wrapped up wet and shiveringPlease don’t get me a turquoise blouse
One that matches my eyes
I want to know I could have been someone
Of another colorPlease don’t bring me a necklace
With my astrological sign
Or I might drop my sun
Searing the equator under the breast bonePlease take away every single sweatshirt
That tells you where I’ve been
And replace all my garments with plain powder blue shirts
And when they finally wrinkle
I will tie them around my waist
Shrouds to a mourning bodyPlease watch me strip down
To the naked days of dust and salt
Until its only skin that can speakUtter a psalm in the bruised dawn
Turn away when I am clothed again
Turn away when the sacrament of shame
Has resurrected its contagious membrane
Up and down
All around my silhouette
In a half lit roomWalk out of the walk in closet
When disrobing has lost its wayIgnite a blouse,
Rip off the pants of subservience
Until only your fingers
Know their own identity
And the rest of you falls
Like the robe
You dropped in the hallway
Last night
Nancy Lou Canyon
Bellingham, WA
THE RIDE HOME
Somehow riding in the dark car with fat snowflakes flying at the windshield, splitting over the cruiser in billowing white streams, reminded Celia of the way water flowed around her body when she surfaced from the bottom of Lake Monroe. She thought of her sister’s directive: Sissy, remember what happened, and the lake’s murky-dark with its fizzing bubbles rising in echoy pings washed over her. She probably wouldn’t talk to the preacher about her sister’s visitation, for whenever Celia was around her daddy a thickness gathered between them, a feeling that made her legs turn dense and her thoughts go fuzzy. He still blamed her for Star’s death.
The radio sputtered as she spoke into the dark interior of the cruiser: “I’m worried Jigger could get mean.”
Johnny held the handset to his mouth as her words dropped into the heated air. Suddenly she wanted to take it back. She’d hit the chickens once with a stick when she was a kid, and her daddy had run after her, shouting, “How’d you like me to take a stick to your backside?” She’d shot off through the orchard, her daddy fast at her heels. That’s where the memory ended.
The police radio squawked. Johnny mumbled cop-talk. It made no sense what he was saying; that is, until he said over and out.
“Sorry,” he said. “The radio, I was concentrating.” He clipped the mic back onto the hook on the lit dash. “You were saying…”
“Oh, it’s Jigger…”
Johnny said, “He’s out past the firing range pulling some goon out of a ditch. Sergeant Bailey has us patrolling separately. Cover more territory that way.”
“Good idea,” Celia said, imagining Jigger stuck in a snow bank while Johnny lay naked in her bed, his heavy-lidded eyes taking her in, his full mouth smiling sweetly. Feeling suddenly dizzy, she sank back against the seat and rested her damp head on the bench back. She never felt this way around the guys at the club. Johnny’s profile, the fringe of curls warmed by the glow of the dash, appeared vulnerable. Maybe this was what true love felt like. Vulnerable. Dizzy. Sweet.
The snow fell more heavily the farther they got from town and Johnny slowed the cruiser to a crawl. The snow-covered highway compacted beneath the tires making an eerie crunching sound as they rolled along. The wipers pushed the white stuff in thick wedges to either side of the windshield. Thack, thack, thack. Johnny turned to her, his face now pinched. “Rita Road?”
“Yes,” she said, “and then a right on Route 1.” She sat up, feeling the sickness draining into her pelvis as they neared the turnoff. It was all right, what she was doing, wasn’t it? She was pure, wasn’t she? Jigger wouldn’t know, would he?
“Up there,” she said, hearing the apprehension in her voice. She pointed, her finger touching the foggy side window. “The driveway, there, just past the leaning mail boxes.”
Johnny tapped the brakes and the patrol car went into a skid. Even as he turned the wheel and continued tapping, the cruiser’s trajectory continued ditchward. Celia pushed her feet hard against the floorboards, shrieking as the front right tire dropped in to the ditch, tossing her forward against the dash, catching herself with her hands.
“You okay?” Johnny said, and turned to assist her.
“Yeah,” she said, feeling a little embarrassed by her squeals and his hand on her arm. “Forgot to warn you about the ditch.”
She turned to the window and scanned the white landscape, the exhaust finding the headlights, tossing mailbox and fencepost shadows in long blue shapes that stretched up the driveway like fingers pointing toward the little churchhouse.
“Let’s see what she’s got,” he said, and revved the engine. The tires spun, whirring as the cruiser settled in a little more solidly.
The snow blew sideways, streaming past the streetlights along Route 1, whisking over the pine copse toward Lake Monroe. The two of them hunched together, leaning into the wind as they covered the short distance from highway to Celia’s place. Johnny cupped Celia’s arm, supporting her strongly as they trudged through the falling snow to the faintly lit porch.
The stings against her cheeks reminded her of the snowy night she’d walked home from the Toy Toi Club and found her mother standing in the bedroom closet, lifting an ash-coated finger to her colorless mouth. “My dead sister,” Celia had said. “How could you?” She’d grabbed Star’s urn from her mother’s hands and set it back on the closet shelf.
“Where’s the woodpile?” Johnny shouted.
The wind blasted around the corner of the little churchhouse, stealing her breath as she answered. “There,” she said, and relinquished his support. She watched him disappear into the blizzard. It was a stretch to think that he would stay; after all, he had a monumental shoveling job ahead of him, his cruiser being top priority. She trudged up the porch steps to the back door. As she turned the door key in the lock, her heart thrummed in her chest. With his car stuck just feet from the house, she realized her prey was now suitably vulnerable.
Celia switched on the kitchen lights and removed her coat. She hung the snowy garment, smelling of wet wool, tortillas and peppers, on the wall hook and toed off her winter boots. She crumpled newspaper and stuffed it, along with several sticks of applewood, in the trash burner and shut the iron door. The wind howled, lifting the eaves and flickering the lights. A puff of spicy wood smoke wafted into the kitchen as the fire caught.
She poured two glasses of wine, swallowed some quickly to dissuade her stomach jitters, then lit every candle she could find. Soon the flickering candles and the snapping wood noticeably cheered the little churchhouse. When Johnny came in from the storm, she’d hand him a glass of wine and offer to run him a hot bath.
Wood thunked against the porch. Jigger always grumbled when he stocked the woodpile. She imagined his furled brow, his squarely set jaw. When he saw that she’d had the Monroe miracle and her burn scars were healed, he’d turned and run like a scared field mouse. By now he was inching along the dark highway, his windshield wipers snapping their necks to clear away the snow. Out past the firing range the weather always worsened, and while searching for GIs who’d gotten too cocky and careened into the ditch, many a cop had ended up in trouble as well. She was surprised he wasn’t the one being hauled from the ditch after all those Bucks he’d downed earlier. Perhaps the Folgers she’d made him had helped. Perhaps he’d come over in the next few days, after the fight went out of him, and they’d talk about the miracle in the woods.
Both of the men were helpers. Serve and protect was the motto. Right now, she wanted Johnny like she wanted the wine, like she wanted the burn to her fresh skin, like she wanted a john. She lit several candles and set them on the toilet tank. She stripped off her wet clothing and hung it on the back of the door. Her feet were icy cold. Johnny would understand about Star’s ghost, where Jigger wouldn’t. She took another sip of wine and studied her scarless thighs for a few moments longer, then pulled on her red silk robe. Maybe the plows would come by and bury Johnny’s patrol car in a snow bank, then there would be no excuse.
Thud, thud, thud. The chopped wood hit the porch, the sound of it making her listen for the door. She didn’t know what her daddy would think of her receiving the Monroe miracle, but she did know what he’d think of her cheating on Jigger. Even though the preacher believed copulating out of wedlock was a sin, he put up with Jigger because he was a cop. She shrugged, thinking of all those Christians she was letting down just by being herself. Her daddy’s opinion didn’t matter, did it? The thought of his preacher-judging looks sent a crawly feeling up her spine. She drank more wine, recalling the same feeling had nearly overcome her once while swimming too close to the giant lily pads.
The door banged open. Johnny cleared his throat. “Celia? Celia, you there?”
“I’ll be right out,” she said, and slid on a fresh coat of red lipstick. She stepped into the hall. There was Johnny, all red-cheeked and snow-drippy, staring at her red-robed figure. And just like that, a transformer blew out on the highway, the explosion sending sparks into the sky, lighting everything to daylight for a few moments before darkness swallowed the valley completely.
Want the rest of the story (and more)?
The conclusion to this can be read in the Summer 2008 issue which is available direct from MSR for $8 at
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