Featuring an interview with
JOY HARJOFiction by Gerald Kaminski, Rebecca Motil, and David Plumb.
Reviews by Sherri Smith, Henry Berne, M. Scott Douglass, and Bill Wesse.
Poetry by V.T. Abercrombie, Mark Battelle, Elizabeth Seabrook Bouleware,
Ann Campanella, Alan Catlin, Barbara Conrad, Rob Cook, Kathleen M. Crisp, Louis S. Faber, Myles Gordon, Bill Griffin, Joy Harjo, Jonathan Hayes, Michael H. Ivey, Joe Kenney, Diane Lockward, Lyn Lifshin, Julie Luchevsky, Richard Lupton, Frank Palmisano, III, Alanna Paully, Tim Peeler, Christopher Salerno, Dan Sicoli, Diana Smith, Rose M. Smith, David Vancil, Gwen Williams.Cover Art by M. Scott Douglass.
Tim Peeler, Hickory, NC
NO LIFEGUARD ON DUTY
The swing guitarist lets go a loose hook,
A sound that mates mid day waves with a sure
Attitude. The tired ocean amplifies
Across the bass drum of smooth beach you can
Only feel with bare feet and a belly
Full of fireworks. She lies beside you, a
Russian novel folded open on a
Bright yellow towel. She will never
Marry. You can only have her like a
Wave has the high sand by the leaden pier–The fat earth races toward a rosy
Sunset–you sense the flying ground beneath
Your wellborn need to mix the strange colors,
To paint the possibilities on the
Scattershot canvas you carry quietly,
Where no beautiful bird lures you out,
Out into deep waters.Rose M. Smith, Columbus,OH
CIGARETTE BREAK
Edwinna asks me often how I quit.
She dons her coat each day
mid-morning at the office,
rummages through her bag
for tucked away delight
and pops "Back in a few…"
into the auto-response line
of her Internet chat software.
We almost collide
at the corner once again.I can remember the dizzying rush
of pulmonary chambers
feeling the spent smoke of a long dead leaf
fill and stifle the moist membrane,
trips on tiptoe into the dark
of grandmother's basement
to hold Forbidden firm between my fingers,
teach him to glow, to heat, to burn,
to draw his sweet cologne
into my young chest again.I see the tamped, grey, dusty butt
of a Salem Light 100
balanced as if long practiced
between index and finger two
of my two-year-old daughter's
soft, splayed hand. I watch her
draw the discarded filter end
closer to the mouth of innocence:
The slight tilt of her head.
The narrow, not shut fixture of her eyes.
A voice across time once again breaking silence:
Now you tell her why she can't
do that.Edwinna asks, and I hesitate,
Recount for her promises whispered over
daily chore and routine: of thanking
unseen champions for deliverance
out of the hand of Habit–you know,
of prayer–of three days into a summer retreat
on a hill in Bremen, Ohio
finding I had not had, had not wanted
a cigarette since.She hears the name of Jesus,
this Jesus thing–this incongruous restraint
she thinks I have endured.
Her eyes glaze on a distant
point of focus.
She stares into a picture I cannot imagine,
then back at me as if I'm from a planet not yet named.
She does not want to hear it but I know that
she will ask me how I quit again.They give them such inviting names:
Marlboro, Merit, Virginia Slims, Kool, and One.
I suspect her brand is Black & Mild,
a wrapper dark, inviting, different, curious,
a wild leaf on the inside
refusing to be tamed.Michael H. Ivey, Chapel Hill, NC
A FAMOUS POET SPOKE
He shuffled onstage, a white poet,
youth almost spent, old age sizing him up.
He's good, they said, Pulitzer Prize,
National Book, this and that,
he's done it all, they said.
He shuffled in, thin, slightly bent,
on his back a poet's slump
shaped by years of paper and pen.
His long, narrow face
betrayed a sunless style,
pale, tender, like a hot house flower.
Under his lip he grew
a sparse Foo Man Choo that needed help.
He looked at us
and smiled a nice, sweet smile
or was it just a polite smirk,
practiced, well concealed?
I couldn't tell. As they said,
he's good. He read a poem
about a garden he did not enjoy.
You could tell he likes nature
neat, air conditioned, with no weeds please.
He read other poems
about small, easy things in life,
personal quirks, slow lazy moments,
a couch, a cup of coffee ... things like that.
I had to agree, he was good,
clever, slick with words.
He wore black shoes that night,
but his soul was definitely white
and well heeled too.BACK TO TOP
Josip Polovich believed a cemetery should be quiet. But the Cemetery of All Souls was loud with the constant rumble of cars and trucks that whooshed and growled by all day on the highway that formed its eastern border. Perhaps it was a cemetery for restless souls, Josip thought. Perhaps that was why he was drawn to this wide expanse of emerald grass and the ancient trees that cast shade on the graves below.
Late summer in New York City brings heavy, humid air. As August gave way to September, Josip often left the close hot apartment he rented near campus and strolled to the cemetery. Once inside, he headed for the trees, his shadow disappearing under their large, spreading branches. He'd discovered the cemetery within a few weeks of coming to the United States. It was old, with antique mausoleums built in the style of Greek temples and worn marble benches placed at intervals around the graves. It was the age that drew him, reminding him of Croatia. Sometimes he sat on one of the marble benches and used his penknife to carve aimless shapes into a stick, shapes that twisted into branches and forks that reminded him of roots.
In June, just before he'd left for America, Croatia had declared independence from Yugoslavia. "Go," his parents had urged. "Go now. Your studies are what is most important. Croatia will need engineers to build its future. We'll be fine." And so Josip had flown across the ocean, believing that events would soon settle down, that he would return in two years with his master's degree. But by the fall semester, his country was at war with itself–one ethnic group fighting another, settling blood feuds that went back generations. It was impossible to go home.
Days passed, then weeks with no word from his family. Josip worked at his engineering studies, wrestling with a new language as well as the familiar one of equations and physics. He divided his time between the laboratory, a two-room apartment, the cemetery. His mother and father were on his mind, always, and the family of smaller sisters and brothers. They were still alive, he assured himself. He would see them again.
* * *
One day, Josip arrived at calculus to find a seat open behind a young woman with shoulder-length blonde hair. Josip slid into the chair, flipped his notebook open, and began to copy the day's equation from the chalkboard. While waiting for the lecture to begin, Josip studied the blonde woman's back, looking for clues as to her appearance. She was slim and neatly dressed. He imagined her scent was clean and fresh.At the end of the class, she turned around and he saw that she was beautiful, with a wide white smile and small American nose.
Their eyes met. Her eyes were the color of the sea on a summer day. Josip smiled and held out his hand. "How do you do? My name is Josip."
She shook his hand and said that her name was Merry.
"Mary?"
"Merry. Like Merry Christmas. It means 'happy.'"
"Ah, happy. Yes. The perfect name."
She smiled, pleased.
* * *
Later that month, a letter arrived from his father. "Dragi Josip," it began. "We are still together. All are well. We regret to inform you that we can no longer fund your education. May God bless you and the Holy Mother watch over you. Love, your family." The letter was written in careful language on air-mail paper, so thin Josip could see through the words to the other side.Josip sat on an unstable chair in a rented room, holding the light-as-air letter. He'd expected something like this; his family owned a small hotel on the Adriatic Sea, and tourism was a poor business to be in during a war. He wondered what unsaid words hid behind the plain sentences. Had his family lost everything, then? At least they were whole and unharmed; his father had written, "All are well."
Josip's eyes traveled out the window to the brick wall across the alley, seeing the mother with her strong beautiful face and the brothers and sisters that in his mind were always chattering, always moving, in a way that had often irritated him but that now filled him with a greediness for their faces and voices and quick, light ways.
* * *
He had enough money to cover his tuition for one more semester, but he would have to take a job to pay rent and buy food. One day, the cemetery's gate held a hand-lettered sign: "Caretaker wanted. Apply at the office." Josip walked across the street to the office, and left with a job working afternoons and weekends.Now he could remain at the cemetery long past closing time, watching the light deepen from blue to cobalt, waiting until the stars shone white in the indigo sky. They were wonderfully familiar, these distant suns–the same as those that lit the Croatian night: Polaris and the stars of Ursa Minor; the triangle of Vega, Altair, and Deneb; the constellations of the Sea Goat, Hercules, Libra, and Sagittarius. At times, their very familiarity filled him with a longing for home that was like a hunger for an unattainable food. He imagined that his family had looked on these very same stars earlier that night, one-quarter turn ahead on the Earth's surface.
The conclusion of this story can be found in the Spring 2002 issue available directly from MSR for $7 in The MSR Bookstore
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