MSR Spring 2007
Main Street Rag, PO BOX 690100, Charlotte, NC 28227-7001
704-573-2516, contact us
Feature:
Jennifer K. Sweeney,
Winner of the 2006 MSR Poetry Book AwardInterviewed by Suzanne Baldwin Leitner
Essays
Idiot Fee by Rebecca Grabill
The Yoga Master by Patrick Tucker
Stairs Take Longer by Taylor Collier
Family Reunion by Caitlin Prentice
Reviews by Phebe Davidson, S. Craig Renfroe, Jr., Heather Jane Collings, Richard Allen Taylor.
of the following work:
Angel Pays a Visit by Carolyn Elkins, Stepping on Cracks in the Sidewalk by Linda Annas Ferguson, Somewhere During the Spin Cycle by Joseph Mills, Aqua Regia by F.J. Bergman, One of Us One Night by Mark Wisniewski, Living in Dangerous Times by Linda Lerner.
Poetry by Jennifer Sweeney, Barry Ballard, Thomas Robert Barnes, Peter Bates, Rachel Squires Bloom, Dale Cottingham, Chris Crittenden, Dion N. Farquhar, Elizabeth Mary Dillingham, Kerry James Evans, Brent Frisk, Rebecca Morgan Frank, C.S. Fuqua, Arthur Gottlieb, David Lee Garrison, Carolyn Gregory, Carol Hamilton, Dana Stamps, II, Mercedes Lawry, Charles Israel, Jr., Robert K. Johnson, Angela Johnson Stancar, Vicki Mandell-King, Susan Landgraf, Mitchell Mertz, Sean Lause, Shannon Williams, Judith W. Monroe, Stanley M. Noah, George J. Searles, Erin Sweeten, Ginny Thompson, Dan Sklar, Bernadette Ulsamer, Pamela Ushuk, Maria Veres, Luisa Villani, Alice Toporoff Wallace, Kelley Jean White, Laura L. Washburn, Lisa Zimmerman, Fredrick Zydek, .
Cover Art: by Tyler Strouth.
Images by Morgan Tyree, Doug South.
Patrick Tucker
Baltimore, MDTHE YOGA MASTER
A modern retelling of the short story
Xingu by Edith Wharton.
Kate Ferguson-Coleridge felt a tremor of panic rise within her as there was a knock on her front door. She could distinctly make out the voice of Meredith Stuart-Kitridge’s followed, predictably, by Judy Cumberlin-Robinson’s. It was with great effort that Kate picked herself up from her hand-stitched, leather, Smithson Collection easy chair to greet Meredith, the founder and president of the West White Plains Ladies Kripalu Yoga club.
“Hi,” She said brightly, pulling open the door with slightly too much eagerness.
Meredith’s blue eyes fluttered at Kate with surprise and nothing else was required for Kate to know, know down in the center of her Sacrum, as they called it, that something was wrong.
Was it her outfit? The black top and white linen draw-string pants came from the Neiman’s Labor Day Catalogue; they had been purchased four weeks prior to the inception of the West White Plains Ladies Kripalu Yoga Club. In fact, Kate now remembered, the purchase of the draw string linens was done to mark the inception of the Kripalu Yoga Club’s predecessor, The West White Plains Ladies Kundalini Yoga Club, which, of course, had come into existence following the dissolution of its various ancestors, the West White Plains Ladies Qui-gong Club, Pilates Group, Under-water Pilates Group, The West White Plains Women’s Meditation Circle, and the West White Plains Ladies Tai-Chi Association, respectively.
No, she determined, it was not her out-fit. If it had sufficed for the other yoga club, it would suffice for this one.
The house? she wondered, mentally evaluating the composition of her furniture and decor, yet again. Would repositioning the couch enhance the flow of chi through the room? No, the feng shui is as good as it is a s going to get. But if not that, then what is it? As she stood in her doorway, in that single, tortuous moment, Kate resigned herself to the fact that she wouldn’t be able to correct the error in time. There was simply no way to tell what Meredith Stuart Kitridge, followed, predictably, by Judy Cumberlin Robinson, would find fault with and verbally demolish. Not until the thing was revealed, like evidence of some sinister plot, and subsequently picked apart in the calculatingly condescending tone in which Meredith Stuart Kitridge dispensed such criticisms.
“Namaste Kate,” Meredith corrected sweetly.
Meredith and Judy both wore velour, Macci Collection, draw-string pants in slightly varying dyes, and G-Crew fleece tops in slightly more similar dyes. Meredith’s hair, recently colored a deep burgundy red, protruded through the back of her canvas Earnst and Todd Financial soft-ball cap in a neat pony tail.
“Namaste,” Kate answered, taking no exception to this correction, sure to be the first of many. She had not forgotten that namaste was the proper greeting among practitioners of yoga, rather, she simply felt dishonest using such expressions in casual conversation. To do so recalled for her the night her husband dragged her to a musty blues bar in the city where (after several screw-drivers) she realized that while she liked blues music, she could not relate to it politically or economically, and she had no real business listening to it. In her heart she feared, in moments when she had the mettle to admit such fears to herself, that the same was true of Yoga, Pilates, Qui-gong and Tai-Chi, respectively.
“Namaste Kate,” Judy greeted.
“Namaste.”
Judy and Meredith strode into the living room, each fisting a venti skim latte. Kate had asked Meredith to bring her a venti skim latte as well, as she asked every week. Meredith had never succeeded in remembering this request.
Want the rest of the story (and more)?
The conclusion can be read in the Spring 2007 issue which is available direct from MSR for $7 at
The Main Street Rag Bookstore.BACK TO TOP
Jennifer K. Sweeney
San Francisco, CA
THE TREEHOUSE*
The scraps of wood nailed in their places
so crooked you can almost see
the boy-artist with the oversized
hammer in his hands.
Fixed in its look of tipping,
the house seems to lean into the apple tree
in a strong wind.Are the two forms aware of each other?
The memory of trees
recorded in each cobbled board,
collage of forest
suspended from the tree.And the boy, himself a kind of tree,
with his ragged concentration.
He is inventing the world
as he absorbs its colors
and shapes in the kaleidoscope of his eye.
When will he learn to begin
the catastrophe of order?What he knows now is this backyard,
wooden fence standing its square guard,
birdhouse trembling from a branch
and the branch’s shadow where the cat finds relief,
stack of kindling by the adobe stove, ash in its belly,
smoke threading the air.And his body, so borrowed,
sculpture of fire, carbon seed and scrap.
The earth passes through him
like a season of light and death,
no form separate from another
though names will not tell him so.*Appears in salt memory (Main Street Rag, 2007) reprinted with permission.
Thomas Robert Barnes
Tahoe Paradise, CA
CIGARETTES AFTER CHURCH
They file out
as they had come in,
each to his own skin,
thought hovering
above them like wisps,
a reflection of their clasped hands,
what triffle that can be held.With bristly hair, dark eyes,
noses, and ears and stature,
each bears the culture,
two kisses for a stalwart widow.Outside, they huddle like sheep,
uttering Basque and French.
Smatters of laughter sparkle
beneath the smoke of their cigarettes.
Then slowly, then more quickly
they dissipate into its fabric,
the streets, the night.
Shannon Williams
Fayetteville, NC
FROM SCRATCH
Sign in the median says “Wrong Way,”
and diamond-dust pavement
curves around the bend;
the sun set in my rear-view mirror
becomes the middle ground
for everything I left
behind these paintbrush strokes of sky—
a home and a husband,
smeared streaks of orange and red,
so I drive east until the freeway ends,
strip, submerge, and watch
watercolor stains bleed into the sea.
The tide crashes into the shore,
eroding the beach
where I once laid with a man
who could pick guitar strings
but never find the words,
so I sang to him for eight long years.
Then he sat in narrow streaks of sunlight
that crept through the window
between closed blinds, mistook sunlight for prison,
painkillers for love,
anger for justice,
me for a martyr.
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