Summer 2006
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from Winter List #1 Residential Real Estate The front porch was lethal It is a case history of the same old swan song Put-down the puce flower and step back from your ready-made stereotype! Homeowner Association approved her imposition is to live there Out front Where everyone can see Victim of Function The glamour shot postcards of her real Estate agent consume her remorse reminds her There is more out there to eat Jim Ball from Winter List #2 YellowMan's Advice to the Disenchanted Follow the way the weather vane points. Be in league with sanctimonious drunks. Sequester your own jury. Gate-crash Internet genealogy sites. Carry a flask named Mike. Fall off the wagon. Let it strip the enamel from your teeth. Ear plugs. What's the volume of a no-fault divorce? PF Allen O'Fallon IL from Winter List #3 Daily News A convoy of hornets, reporters often cannot see the arbor for the trees. Paradoxical to the admirable precept that news is a reflector of what happened— not a roast, not to amuse, or anger, or persuade, but to inform— the words they write convey their masters’ biases and fears. In China after press conferences of important political figures the news appears as wallpaper, posters on stones each a regulation informing the masses with Geiger counter sensitivity the dictates of their leaders. Margo Roby Jakarta, Indonesia from Winter List #3 If a Tree Falls His words were stinging hornets The result of a bomb detonated long ago the fallout being tallied by the Geiger counter that was my psyche. I sat as if under a shaded arbor reflecting his heat skyward His rant grew louder, yet paradoxically waned to nothingness in my ears. I would bend like grass in the wind. At the press conference he performed admirably. Convoyed by a troupe of lawyers regulating his words precisely he amused the journalists with witty anecdotes. Like wallpaper my apparition hung in the court. He would not pay for his crime here but he would roast in hell. Mark Hughes Jakarta, Indonesia from Winter List #1 It will not be an imposition. It will be a privilege, a privilege to witness that pathetic murdering scum squirm as lethal injection strips him of his manhood. I will wear puce. A drab dried-blood shade of puce. No longer the victim I will function at a new level, judge and jury. No longer the stereotype flower child of my youth I will rewind, rewrite my case-history, put down a stiletto heel on the porch steps to the County Court House, with his swan song on my lips. No going back. I have all ready made my decision. Guilty as charged. No mercy. Joan Terry Milford OH Porch Swing Rebellion La Rosa’s case history, a ready-made stereotype rising star, about to flower into celebrity, teetered like a pendulum. If he had known that porch swings across the country squealed in rebellious response he might not have felt himself the victim. On that fateful day, Arthur Godfrey, in his Blue Ridge Mountain banter, announced to singer and world-at-large a swan song put-down as lethal as a modern day Norville maneuver. Julius, like Caesar, must have turned three shades of puce, the color of a blood-soaked flea at feeding time. How could he function? How could he sing one more Italian note? But sing he did, with hearts all over America lifting him with angel wings. Oddly, those same hearts lifted Godfrey in prayer. “Forgive him Lord, he knows not what he has done.” Joan Terry Milford OH from Winter List #2 The gate-crasher moved like a phantom cat pouncing from one shadow to the next. I was mesmerized by the scene. Even the addictive Internet could not compete. I was oblivious to the volume of genealogy collecting at my feet, like a Who’s Who at a family reunion. The weather vane on the potting shed waved reminiscent of Uncle George. A hound dog bayed in the distance. I watched the figure skirt around the pumpkin laden wagon and sequester himself in the shed. I armed myself with silver flask and a spray can of red enamel. Clearly I was out of my league. If Uncle George were here he would know what to do. I became increasingly aware that I was alone but for ancestral spirits gathering. I thought of Gramps, outwardly a cantankerous sanctimonious grizzly bear, inwardly a pussy cat. He taught me the principle of no-blame, no-shame, like a no-fault insurance plan. “Stand on your own feet, trust your instincts,” he would say. I made my way to the shed. When I opened the door a pair of feline eyes stared back. The intruder had vanished into the night. Joan Terry Milford OH | |
Cheers Jack Daniels genealogy trail led to a sanctimonious curmudgeon whose no-fault attitude was hereditary. He wobbled like a weathervane in a Nor’easter, flask in pocket, lucky charm around his neck. He was on the tongue of every chuck wagon cowboy, gate-crasher, bowling league enthusiast around the country. He was known to strip the enamel off a ’57 Chevy with his breath. The Internet has volumes of his latest escapades. His motto: Where two or more sequester there I will be. No wonder his ego was inflated with everyone cheering his name. Joan Terry Milford OH Circa 1909 He was old now, old, cantankerous and eccentric. Every sanctimonious bone in his body ached. The enamel on his once perfect teeth ached. Some said he was in league with the devil. He could spin a weathervane with a glance, spot a gate-crasher at forty yards. His genealogy chart read like a Who’s Who in Wizardry. He would sequester himself with the Internet to find a no-fault clause in a volume of babble-de-gook. He still carries a silver flask in a worn leather pouch with no wagon in sight. His obituary will be scant. Harold Potter, the elder, ninety-four, cause of death unknown. Joan Terry Milford OH from Winter List #3 The Gypsy She scanned the spread before her; Queen of Pentacles crossed by the Devil flanked by a pair of sevens Knight at her feet, King at crown. Justice, Tower, Death… At a glance she saw danger. However the press conference would not warm to danger. She held the pendulum like a Geiger-counter anticipating a gold mine. Instead she unearthed a hornets’ nest. Like a convoy of malice, reporters fled through arbor into house. She was not amused by the paradox. Her opportunity to be accepted as seer, psychic, soothsayer was in ruin. She had admirable intentions, hadn’t the spirits led her into this career? She should have read the wallpaper, peeling, sagging, a clue like the red reflectors lining the drive. There was no guarantee, no regulation denying her access, no pot roast dinner in her honor. She held the key to her own destiny, but it had the sting of low self esteem. Once a gypsy always a gypsy. Joan Terry Milford OH from Winter List #1 Lethal Imposition The puce porch flower Swan song function Ready-made the Stereotype case history A lethal imposition For the put-down victim Don Depew Jackson, MI Stereotype in chalk No one noticed until she was smashed and leaking puce on an oriental rug. Before that, she was a ready-made victim, leaning on white porch rails, inhaling the sweet scent of summer flowers while she waited for the hammer. She heard it clicking back long before there was a gun in his hand. Her life was a case history, spiraling towards that resounding crack in still air; the final, lethal put-down. When she left him, she knew it was the last imposition he would tolerate. She crossed the line, until she was traced in pale chalk. She has a function now. Her empty eyes impale her swan song onto the ceiling. C. E. Laine www.celaine.com Split Today I split again. New Client: a multiple. Case History: a stereotype. Wanting, at last, to heal. When reality sang its swan song, the fibers became unraveled; we functioned, I survived. Found strength, somehow. An unwanted flower blooming in cracked asphalt, a victim who learned to hide under the porch until the footsteps faded, knowing I was an imposition. The best I knew was a put-down. The worst, the dazed puce of blood stains again, with wounds just to the edge of being lethal. Ready-made personalities leapt forward: tough identities to deal with tougher things. I’m trying now to reweave the strands of individuality, forming a sturdy split oak basket, solid and tight. Jane Hufford Downes Toledo, Ohio from Winter List #2 Blissfield We take our women’s softball league seriously in Blissfield, Michigan. If you should move to town, the first thing the Welcome Wagon does is size up your pitching arm, and check your genealogy for baseball greats. Not that we’re sanctimonious about paternity. Why, we let Clutch LaRue play shortstop, because she’s good. It don’t matter none about her ma and that trucker back in ’74. We have a no-fault policy when it comes to pedigree, long as you can play ball. We’ve fixed up the ballpark nice. Clean, and we’ve done the bleachers with some red enamel paint bought at volume discount at Gilson’s. We have the only flagpole I know of anywhere with a weather vane on top, donated by Maude Stanton, to monitor any change in wind direction. We sell Cokes, bottled water, and homemade brownies, and keep an eagle eye on Bob Johnson so he isn’t nipping at his flask in the stands. It’s a place all our families can be comfortable. We charge $2.00 a head, and don’t allow a single gate-crasher, not even family members. Thanks to Thelma Patterson, we post our stats on our own Internet web site, along with the game schedule, team members’ favorite recipes, and photos of babies and grandbabies. After the season, the team will sequester itself until it decides what to do with the proceeds. We’ve paid for things a lot of people don’t even know about. A college scholarship for the Schmidt girl. Two goats from Heifer International. Medical bills. Food for the hungry in Afghanistan. Flowers for Main Street. Where we see a need, we try to meet it. Simple as that. Yes, in Blissfield, we take our softball seriously. Jane Hufford Downes Toledo, Ohio from Winter List #3 Thinking of Concord Grapes In a high armed hospital bed Grandma sleeps While I sit waiting, holding her dry hand, thinking of roast pork, mashed potatoes and applesauce on plates with chipped rims, and how, for years, she hung wall paper for the rich people in big houses along River Road. We’d pick Concord grapes, the ones with seeds, on September afternoons, the arbor so warm the heat rose like the buzz of a hornet, for jelly or juice or just for eating out of hand. Were she aware, this constant convoy of medical machines would amuse her, a Geiger counter clicking, with reflectors and blinking lights. She was born into the wilderness, assisted by her mother only. Yet Death advances steadily, as birth did 97 years ago, with severe and admirable regulation. No press conference was called upon her birth, and none will be called when she expires. The paradox is not that she is dying, but that she lived. Jane Hufford Downes Toledo, Ohio from Winter List #3 Learning My Lesson The first time I was stung by a hornet was the day I realized that the world could hurt me whether I deserved it or not. I made an admirable attempt at holding back the tears at the same time wanting to hold a press conference to tell the world, the paradox of a boy who wanted to be grown up, to participate in the convoy of that which amused adults, but whose interests were more like putting baseball cards under a bike's reflector to hear its motor sound in the spokes. I wanted to go buy a metal detector or a pair of x-ray goggles or a Geiger counter or whatever it was you used to root out flying insects and their breeding grounds. The first time I attended an ox roast, looking at the poor beast suspended over the fire, I remembered the sting and made a mental note of the regulation regarding nature's unfair balance -- an ox could serve its master under a yoke, then become dinner and leftovers for those who benefitted from his labor. He was good with steak sauce and corn. I didn't know him personally. The first time I removed wallpaper from a wall in my new home in Ann Arbor, I found underneath it only more wallpaper, glued on with a vengeance since unseen -- the steam machine filling the room with wet air and clouding my view out the window of the large egg-shaped nest under the neighbor's eaves. A few minutes later my garden hose was running full blast, paper, bees, and dirt flying and splashing onto the brown lawn, my conscience bothering me a little less this time than the last. Don Bruey Ann Arbor, MI from Spring List #1 American Apocalyptic Multiplicity is a city word for how many ways to lose. Farmer understands that, understands the day after day duration of his bet. Mucking out the cruel stall of someone else’s cash cow has taught him there are no substitutions for calluses. Gambler understands farmer. They share the same skin, plow the same furrows of chance. They both romanced the lonely librarian, but with different intent. Gambler’s heat lost to farmer’s steady hand. Farmer worked his casino dark to dark. Gambler tilled his neon fields. A future anthropologist will puzzle the cubist fields fleeing beneath airliner wing, then sift thin soil for clues. Why was porcelain kept next to artillery, pike and crystal sharing the same absurd space? Why lottery tickets mixed with seed packets, ledgers of debt sprouting with cruise pamphlets? What crushed gypsy powder haunted the patched overall pockets? Thick almanac rested on the computer keyboard, and where the wheel stopped, nobody knows. Bill Keyes Tucson, AZ from Spring List #3 Pumpkin Uncle Rob called her pumpkin, a subtle pronouncement of favor. She was the chief casualty of his vulnerable, preoccupied state. In his eye, she was the one pictured on the dust jacket of every steamy novel, in the ads for porn films. His lust for her was prodigal. Unable to halt the continuation of his advances, she stared out the window, watched blue jays dominate the conservatory lawn. Even now, nothing can alleviate or even mitigate her pain. Wendy Morris Bolingbrook, IL wem@ameritech.net from Spring List #2 Lunch at Fifty Feet It was noon, the last day before the weekend, the ash tendrils of my Chesterfield luminous red and gray, acrid smoke blocking my view of the cheerleaders who mill around the distant field like so many choreographed prairie dogs - the other roofers with their black lunch boxes, binding their psyches to oversized trucks and chesty women and Budweiser laughing with yesterday's blunder fresh in mind, how they dropped their hammers when the fruity new guy revealed his silver medal from last summer's quilting bee. Don Bruey Ann Arbor, MI brueys@netzero.net from Spring List #1 Chance How cruel my body, suffused in multiplicity. So much time has passed, since my refusal, yet this twinge of sensation still plagues me, reminds me of my surprise as you implied “no substitutions,” solely me, only me, simply my left breast. At first, as if porcelain, too fragile for harsh working hands, yet you approached, a librarian, quietly, as if you belonged, and knelt, like an artist, entranced by the cubist masterpiece, wanting to praise, to claim. So you reached, an anthropologist, staring with awe at your amazing find, brushing sand from the soft protrusion the piece you wished to touch, to win. You took your stance, a soldier, digging in for the duration, firing the artillery of your eyes, your apocalyptic desire. As if you, the maverick exec and I the cash cow, need only merge to form multi-national perfection. Then you trembled, the gambler, cupping dice, shaking with hunger for the next big score, almost unwilling to let go, to take your chance, to throw them bones, let them roll freely down the pike, tumble into oppositional revelation Dlyn Fairfax Parra Tucson, AZ 4/17/02 4/22/02 And from previous lists: from Winter List #2 [Untitled] The manager of a local supermarket had a bigwig image of himself thinking he had a viable theme song that would serve as a gangway to higher store profits and a raise for himself by advertising the bakery’s rutabaga sponge cake and the butcher’s homemade bratwurst on the local radio station but he soon found himself in a triangle entangle of astronomical advertising costs for the store unwarranted pay dirt for owners and career bedpost bondage for himself that might return him to the lowly work of laboratory assistant to veterinarians studying a zoological virus where his most significant contribution was scrubbing terra cotta floors and putting soiled lab coats into a washing machine Nancy Angelo Jackson, Michigan from Winter List #3 Rockhounding As I search for peacock copper southeast of Tombstone, Sugarloaf’s flanks are deceitful with rattlesnakes sleeping on warm stones in the late afternoon. Hysterical dust devils lash out, tossing sand and leaves stolen from the planet. Alerted, I look toward Mexico where lightning meets in diagonal rendezvous sending out a shock of trombone down the quiet wash. Gray silk curtains brag rain the way a bookkeeper balances the ledger for the year with a sigh. A heavy, mop bucket cloud dumps into the desert; the traffic of butterflies and birds seeking shelter snooker me into trotting to higher ground, watching now for snakes not pretty rocks. C. Christy White, Tucson, AZ cchristy1@prodigy.net from Winter List #4 Mostly Going East The only time I have ever visited there was four days before it happened - the lunacy, the epitome of violence and the dead, and the tart taste in my mouth when I realized you might have been there. I tried to recincarnate your face, my mind at once a no-trump fleeting memory holder and desperate pollster of imaginative possibilities, to remember the particulars of where you said you worked or where you lived in Manhattan, at the same time wishing I could retroactively will you to have been picking up your dog at the kennel after your trip or playing a round at the golf course you pointed out to me from the plane, leaning south, from which those on the left could see the Statue of Liberty, giving me the bird's-eye tour of New York City amidst the airplane's rocking horse motions, five minutes from the ground and four days from something else. Don Bruey Ann Arbor, MI brueys@netzero.net OLD LISTS SPRING 2002 Spring List #1 gambler pike duration multiplicity cubist substitutions librarian cash cow cruel artillery porcelain anthropologist apocalyptic Spring List #2 blunder roofers fruity tendrils luminous Chesterfield prairie dog cheerleaders binding mill quilting Spring List #3 casualty pronouncement pumpkin blue jays prodigal preoccupied vulnerable conservatory book jacket dominating alleviate mitigate continuation Spring List #4 consolation prodigious translate clasped boutonniere Greyhound skim pocked insecticide faithful onyx spit-shine commonplace numbering system dimples WINTER 2002 Winter List #1 pylon moccasins sensationalistic science fiction thing-a-ma-bob preferable watermelon vegetarian ordinance goal post mime believer tryouts Winter List #2 bigwig viable bondage sponge cake entangle theme song astronomical bedpost pay dirt triangle gangway virus washing machine zoological terra cotta bratwurst Winter List #3 diagonal rendezvous shock snooker hysterical ilk planet trombone lightning lashed out ledger deceitful traffic mop bucket rattlesnake brag Winter List #4 particular pollster reincarnate leaning New York City kennel epitome rocking horse lunacy violence golf course dead tart no-trump Instructions 1. Use ALL words in the list 2. in shortest poem possible 3. without sounding contrived. 4. You must inform yourself of something in the process. At Pudding House, we don’t let you get away with gimmicky results. This has to take you someplace. NEW RULES! EMAIL your poems marked “Word Jar Challenge” IN THE SUBJECT LINE by the expiration date. Mind-blowing or at least interesting efforts will appear on this page of our website. Only accepted work will get responses, so keep checking the website! Yes, you may also submit by U.S. Mail marked WORD JAR CHALLENGE so that computer-challenged friends may participate. Unless we’re traveling, you’ll hear from Jen within 24 hrs if your poem is chosen. Do not email requests asking why your poem wasn’t chosen. Two seconds after reading with gratitude and deleting, Jen won’t remember; sorry, that’s the way it is. Your submission implies willingness to allow your poem to appear on the website; copyright notice will appear in your name. Provide your real/publishing name (no handles—this is a serious site) and city/state. We are going to publish very few; this is not a competition. Don’t let web-publication be your end-all writing effort. Real publication, to Pudding House, is the real paper page! Poems accepted poems for the Summer 2001 lists: Chiller A late night sound arrests me from the paperback depths of a sci-fi thriller. A uniquely foreign clink transports me halfway across the western world like an enticing hyperlink from some undercover-kepi-conman. My body tenses for fight or flight. It detects unforeseen arrhythmias with each tick of this contemplative clock. The phone is unplugged, so I foolishly scribble HELP ME on the title page with a pencil stub. I didn’t lock the door. Or the windows. The noise seems to come from the kitchen. Maybe a cat. But I don’t have a cat. The faintest chink roars in my ears. I try to stand, but fear thickens like rigor mortis, a still life pardner. My heart is battering my bruised rib cage. If only the subassembly of ice cubes weren’t so Amana new in this old dark house. Laura Treacy Bentley Huntington, WV Urban Army Boots I remember the conman and friend, the one who always wore the kepi, the one who was known for battering ice cubes with a rifle subassembly, the one I used to call “pardner” in the Cowboys and Indians days, the one whose idea of westernization involved religious war, the one who penciled the contemplative manifesto against the oil companies, the one whose website had a hyperlink to every crackpot government consipiracy group, the one whose highway death was watched on Los Angeles TV by millions, the one whose death earned an unforeseen 14 share. Don Bruey THE INSPECTOR I notice the prying eye of the inspector crawling across the cobblestone in my direction. It gathers dead bugs and soot and other trashy faux pas to add to its list of my undesirable ways. I am always “in dutch”. The inspector’s wife washes heads in her kitchen sink ten dollars a soak. The same sink that a crockery of carrots and potatoes await to be cleaned for the evening meal. Standing at the old sideboard, only in her half slip she’ll divvy up the proceeds with the inspector at the end of the day. Not to let them spoil my razzmatazz I chose to edit their guidebook with its hopeless honor system, and let freedom quietly pull me over the windowsill. My adventurous nature leads me like a well-trained guide dog upstream to mountain ranges I’d only seen in magazines. Suddenly I think I am the remissible one wanting to forget the endless daunting of the portentous inspector and his nondescript wife. I get cold and clammy at the thought, like being airsick. I stretch out in the sand to take in the stars and planets using them for alignment of the scattergram that’s been created in my life then catapult that condescending eye into a black hole. Jean Spencer Salem, OH Fate and Niagara Falls It wasn’t enough that the wedding had brought the rain, mosquitos and grousing relatives—remissible in time, perhaps, but not today. It wasn’t enough that I was airsick or that she had left her half-slip hanging out of the suitcase to be divvied up between the conveyer and the zipper. The portentous attitude of the driver and the clerk’s razzmatazz presentation of the worn key to our nondescript room were warnings unheeded. We should have known what was in store when the guidebook’s glossy map led us to a closed bridge, and we should have noticed how we were lodged on a dirty river, slightly upstream (and downwind) from the rancid crockery plant. At the Riverwalk she wrenched her ankle tripping on a guide dog sleeping on the cobblestone sidewalk. It never dawned on us, even as we used the honor system with the nurse who repeatedly claimed to know how to “wrap a leg”. We should have known when the crutch’s handle wouldn't stay in alignment. But when the medieval festival’s catapult delivered its contents neatly through the open window of our rental Buick on the third day of our new life together, we started to get the idea. Don Bruey Ann Arbor, MI (We try not to take more than 1 from a poet; sometimes we can’t help it.) Here’s a 4/23/01 word jar submission-- The list follows the poem. Thanks, Ashley Alquine for Forgotten Moldering dirt around the spinach leaves Decadent, with the rich smell of dreams Tilled with aluminum tines by an Elizabethan farmer In a backwoods Kentucky field He Whistles the Anthem of the Republic with disharmonic air Whacks with murderous glee The green heads - cast away children on the way to the supermarket It pays for his son’s scholarly ways Off in Orlando, girdling himself in advance placement courses He forgets oak trees hide the dark loam surrounding spinach, cabbage, and onions. He forgets from all his remembering Five young cousins with knee-holed britches sound out bible stories on an old chalkboard The top sergeant at the recruiter office sees a steady file of these youngun’s come to forget Forget arthritic hands of fathers tilling earth - forget their own blistered hands For blistered souls The earth fungily bears more and more green from fields forgotten The old plantation houses are withered - liquid paper and butterfly bandages hold them together Laminated - one holds court for a clinic Young women with large dark eyes wait Round like pears They, too, forgotten fields Ripe and ready to harvest Ashley Alquine Word List clinic supermarket advanced placement Elizabethan republic laminated blackboards decadent spinach girdling murderous liquid paper topsergeant butterfly bandage Orlando disharmonic scholarly aluminum arthritic fungily On 4/28/01 one of our guest poets sent this poem in response to the list that follows it. ANONYMOUS LUNCH In the rainforests there are no hysterical markers, no tear-jerker circumstances posted on a stanchion, no double speak catalogues of exploitations, no barometer to measure the pressure of predation. In the rainforests there is no food for a keeshond, but a real man can always eat hearty. The fly catcher, after long famine, digests all except a tear trace of salinity flavoring the cucumbers. The candy dishes of the rainforest offer no finger-printed toffee to tell us who sampled whom. Meanwhile, the bronco orchestra blends all shrieks into one heart-stopping arrhythmia; sonata sound can be identified.... Larry McAneny Silver Spring, MD keeshond orchestra catalogues barometer stanchion salinity flycatcher arrhythmia toffee rainforests tear-jerker finger-printed bronco circumstances cucumbers exploitations hysterical sonata double speak famine PAST WINNERS BEAT Here are the obvious particulars the port of entry you must avoid the blasting ineffective and ghastly commonplace toward Disneyfication of your bongo drum moments —the times you opted for a nap by the citron trees rather than figuring your providence, this state of insulation against the thought-worthy, not a state of grace spectacular as a part-song debut on the lawn. The zodiac is junk mail; Every uprise you don’t squelch or support will kill you; Your own viscosity means everything in the honeysweet drag of the hallmarkcard day; If you have not experienced your own mordacious moment worthy of losing every friend you’ve ever had, you sleep too much, drink too much KoolAid, read too many paperbacks at copycat cafes in big bookstores. Kat Stasson Minneapolis, MN (summer only); Miami May Word Jar list: bongo drums particulars commonplace insulated citron Disneyfication spectacular port of entry providence ineffective part-song zodiac mordacious uprise viscosity
The Word What a great gift— |
