Jayne Pupek

LIVES IN DECLINE

What were we to make
of the insurrection of yellow flowers?
Seedlings sprouted and bloomed
as if compelled to do their duty,
but not one of them thrived.
We shrank from conversation,
spent the early months inside,
watching fall previews
on the television,
even singing sometimes
the jingles that began each program.
When you lost your job and the cost
of gasoline
consumed more of our budget,
we cancelled cable
and spent more time in the dark.
We didn't talk any more than we did
those evenings we'd spent
stretched out on the braided rug
jotting down clues to solve
the latest serial murder
while the lanky detective
pursued the wrong man.
We didn't know then
how rare a yellow flower
opening its petals in a North window,
or how the Cathedral bell ringing
down the street could signal
the passage of time even on days
when the minute hand stopped.

—This poem first appeared in THE DIRTY NAPKIN, 2008

CP

Jayne Pupek is the author of the novel, Tomato Girl and two books of poems, Forms of Intercession and The Livelihood of Crows.

—Photo by Ross Eldridge

Winter Reading
Ross Eldridge

As a schoolboy in Bermuda I enjoyed an unplanned day of reading and daydreaming when the weather kept me from fishing or walking with a friend on the beach. Come the rain, wind and cold, I reached for a book, a blanket if necessary, a spaniel, and settled on my mother's sofa.

I recall the day I presented myself at the Senior Library, almost certainly the first moment I was able to do so. Would I have been twelve or thirteen, perhaps? That is when I started reading histories and biographies.

I am blessed in having had friends who pass books along to me, and who generally know exactly what I'd appreciate. Nearly every book I read has been handed around a group and I still use the public libraries.

These days and nights, I am drawn to non-fiction first, and the classics. I am reading plays. And I have looked for novels set in the part of England where I live, and/or written by local authors. I still enjoy a good biography.

In the past few months I have read several histories on the First World War. And I have been reading Alan Bennett's autobiographies, Untold Stories and Writing Home.

The book I'm holding in the photograph is the stage play, The History Boys, which is brilliant. Bennett adapted it for the film, and that's terrific too. I've watched it many times as it's a great way to spend ninety minutes enjoying fine language and thoughts. I was something of a history boy myself.

I celebrated another birthday recently, and, using some money my sister sent me, I bought something which is, I suppose, a bit naff. A faux-fur mink blanket. It's 79" square, and warm as can be. It feels lovely. Cailean is not sure whether it is friend or foe, and growls at it from time to time, then burrows under it (the underside has a faux-suede finish) for several hours. Friend. That's the blanket in the picture. I look pretty damn good for 82, don't I? That's because I'm not nearly 82, which would be my mother's age.

It has been a chilly, rainy day. Not fit outside for man or beast, as WC Fields put it, and perfect for lounging about under the faux-mink. We posed for the photograph, time delay, but had been reading through the morning, and continued to do so all afternoon. Cailean popped up for the flash. He did not bark: I was worried about him disturbing the neighbours when I got him, so I trained him to bark in Braille. If he needs to alert me to something at the door, he stands by it and paws the floor almost silently.

I read a bit, then wondered about this really odd and vivid dream I'd had last night about a time machine set to go from my mother's back garden except for the fuel. All it needed was gossamer from fairies' wings.

Now, instead of gossamer in Bermuda, it's back to The History Boys and the touch of faux-mink just north of Narnia.

CP

Ross Eldridge lives in a tiny North Sea town on the coast of England near the Scottish border. He reads a good deal, has a go at photography, and researches family history. Ross has written a weekly newspaper column, but is now content to blog. His blog is called Barking Mad in Amble by the Sea, and it is dedicated primarily to his little dog, Cailean.

Vimy Ridge
Robert Rogge

The war was delayed. Frantic retreat and pursuit ceased, and the armies caught their breaths. The regiment moved into divisional reserve and, company by company, to Arras.

Arras was an ancient town famed for its fragile lace; at least that was the town their fathers knew when its medieval glories were blown to bits. The Arras Ian saw was a new town, twenty-six years old.

But Vimy Ridge was ancient. Their fathers had fought there.
Ian came with his company in thirty-hundredweights that spilled a flood of khaki, kilts, and Glengarries over the tailgates and into the town. Noncoms warned: the last lorries would leave at twenty-one-hundred hours. Anyone, drunk or sober, not back would walk fifteen miles to camp.

The uniformed men fanned across the cobbles to the pubs and into the side streets where hard, painted women waited.

Taxis took them to the Ridge. Short days ago, the same taxis had trundled feldgrau youths to the Ridge. Now the Jerries were gone, and these new men had come to see where their fathers had fought.

Vimy Ridge rose stark and long and, to the soldier's eye, was awe-inspiring. It tyrannized the countryside, the object of uncounted deaths. Men from the Maritimes to the Rockies had conquered the Ridge. White-crossed acres ranked their graves. And, later, a humble and grateful nation raised the beautiful monoliths.

A new generation of trees and growth covered Vimy's flanks, but the crest grew only grass and clipped hedges. The Memorial was there, and it held their breaths.

Slender Canadian marble spires reached to the sky and held the eye with their simple, clean beauty. The broad stone base anchored the ridge and they pulled off their Glengarries and stared. A slant of sun struck the shafts, highlighting the graven, sorrowful Motherhood kneeling over its fallen sons.

Old sweats who had served in the Great War paced the concreted trenches where once they had crawled, and remembered. Green grass carpeted the folds where once men had sprawled in fear and death. And only the measured tread of hobnails remained to echo the guns. Perhaps it was the sun's shafts that made them turn away and blink.

Or perhaps it was the names, row upon row, etched into the marble. The Missing. Casting back across the years, some found names dimly remembered. The new men could only stare dumbfounded at the awful reality. They were only names, but so many.

They looked to the east where Jerry waited and knew that they, in turn, would walk the Valley of their fathers.

In the evening the lorries rumbled them away. In the summer's distance, the spires on the ridge, clear in the afterglow, touched the sky.

—from Fearsome Battle

CP

Robert Rogge, an American, fought with the Canadian Army in World War II. He wrote of his experiences in Fearsome Battle. Under the pen name, Robert Elliot, he is also author of The Eagle's Height, a novel of air combat in World War I.

Child Support
Heidi Kenyon

My mother's mouth was ugly,
her two fingers tweezing into the pocket
of my unfortunate green plaid shirt.
I stood frozen but for a twitch of my head
to avoid her hand: even its brush against my braid
would make me that much more involved.

The neatly folded check was a two-handed saw:
its rasp against the flannel as she withdrew it
echoed the grate of my father depositing it,
his own mouth twisted.
Not until I had shame to hide from my own daughter
did I recognize the shadow over his eyes.

I did not hear the teeth
of that finely perforated edge, catching
in the threadbare fibers of my heart,
until it whispered from the wireless static
behind my ex's phone message. His voice
is not more cordial than normal, as I first think:
it's compressed like a sentient wild Slinky.
He is restraining it from the glowing red gravity
of a staircase we've been down before.

His accusation falls open before me,
a yawning aperture of truth
into which I must fall, like the lemming
to the scourging sea: there is no escape
from what he says, from the middle
into which my mother has now placed my own daughter,
from the words her mouth has made, which must have begun
"Your father..."
and I am falling through time,

the ugliness is upon me, a great crush
pain, rage, need, desperation
and I never connected the folded check
with the food stamps when I was eight

CP

Heidi Kenyon is the retired co-founder of a cooking school, a former editor at the University of Idaho Press, and the mother of three. She lives in Seattle, Washington.

TRAVELOGUE
Ross Eldridge

HIS FATHER WAS A REINSURANCE ACCOUNTANT: The memory file said so. His mother worked in a second-hand bookstore. His Family. In the file. Photographs and film. There's Dad boarding the morning train to go into the City. Mum drives home from the station. She collects her husband at 5.45pm.

At his fingertips.

Christopher Heap took a breath. A deep breath. There was a rush of cold air onto his face. His eyes watered briefly.

Christopher depressed a switch, and his chair back moved more upright and he was able to look ahead. He could see a clear night sky, facing north. Always the north. Ursa Major, forty-five degrees above the horizon, and Polaris. Always. A comforting feeling. Familiarity breeds contentment.

He'd been lying in a field for five years, his back against a bale of loose hay, and the air was cold. He appreciated his warm clothes. Cold air on his face. He pressed his switch. And it was morning.

The sky was lavender and gold, dark trees grew paler green. The switch. In the conservatory now, toast in a rack on a tray. He pressed his switch and became more upright. On a ridgeline a row of houses. Just like the house he knew he was in. The sunlight struck panes of glass here and there. Stars in the daytime sky.

Christopher reached for his toast. A small white plate, a blue line around the outer edge, and five pats of butter, all perfectly formed. Always. A small silver knife. "H" engraved in the handle of the knife near the top. He buttered one of the five slices of whole-wheat toast. The jar of Ruby Grapefruit Marmalade was there too, a silver spoon with the "H" cut into it. Christopher spooned a little of the fruity mix onto his first piece of toast.

He finished his last slice of toast and wiped his sticky fingers on the linen napkin on the tray. Then he pressed the switch and the chair back relaxed and he gently assumed the position that he would sleep in. Sudden night. Pinpoint stars became elongated strings of light, flowing past and behind the young man. He became comet-like in the darkness.

Warm air flowed over Christopher's naked body. It seemed to relax him even more than he had been, and his was a life of total relaxation. He closed his eyes. Depressed his switch.

The sphere hurtled across space with Christopher asleep at the switch. He'd wake again in five years.

The new version man. Physically fit. Skin that cleans itself. Hair that grows just a little then rests. The years pass and the young man remains young. There is no degeneration, no need for regeneration. Not at this speed.

Christopher is not alone out here. Many young men have been pulsed at speeds approaching that of light energy, in spheres, in every direction, aimed anywhere away from the Earth. Young men bound for distant stars, distant planets spinning around stars, distant lands on distant planets.

Christopher Heap took a breath. A deep breath. Cold air. Another five years had passed. While he was eating his toast, he wondered what in the world reinsurance is, and what books might be.

What he was, exactly, didn't concern him at all.

CP

Ross Eldridge lives in a tiny North Sea town on the coast of England near the Scottish border. He reads a good deal, has a go at photography, and researches family history. Ross has written a weekly newspaper column, but is now content to blog. His blog is called Barking Mad in Amble by the Sea, and it is dedicated primarily to his little dog, Cailean.

It Was What It Was
Judith Quaempts

Phillip was a thin, dark boy
who lived across the alley.
When I was ten, we were friends.
His mother dyed her hair black.
She smoked a lot and rarely spoke.
His stepfather beat them both.

We were eating dinner:
hot dogs, baked beans,
potato chips and the one coke
we kids were allowed all week—
when through our window we saw Phillip
burst from his back door.

He ran like a cartoon figure,
arms and legs pumping
as he tried outrunning
the laughing monster at his heels.

This was a race Phillip
had no chance of winning.
His stepfather caught him
and then Phillip was screaming.

Call the police Dad, I begged,
he's killing Phillip.
It's a damn shame, my father said,
but it's none of our business.

Until that moment
my father was God.

CP

Judith Quaempts lives in rural Oregon, where she has a novel in final draft. She writes about the homeless, the ill, the abused—people we don't always see. She is inspired by the poetry of William Stafford and Raymond Carver.

MY FAVORITE SCARY STORY

Christina Olson

stars my aunt, home alone
in a hot Cincinnati day. There's a knock
at the door. On the stoop
there's a man. This is where
I always pause and take a sip. Behind him
I like to put the car, hood raised,
dull olive body a box
like domestics were in those days.
The screen door cuts his face
into tiny squares. I like to say
that she ran a hand
through her short brown hair
before she reached for the latch,
used only a single finger
to lift the hook from its eye.
And when she turned, and saw
the family dog perched behind her,
a growl she'd never before heard,
she knew then that it was a bad idea,
this man in her house, and she said
Maybe not. And he said
he understood and went down
the street and the woman who
let him in, the one who couldn't read
the warning in the gray hackles
of a six-year-old sheepdog or
who didn't have one-well,
he raped that woman. You knew that.
I say that I love this story
because it's true, though
my aunt can't confirm
because I've never asked her.
And I say that it makes me love dogs,
but what I really like about it
is who I turn into when I tell it.
In my next life, I would like
to come back as someone who tells
the truth, but for now I can live
with the bite of lie and porter,
the dog at the top of the stairs
and his whole body tense,
everyone leaning forward slightly,
everyone waiting to hear
what's going to happen next.

CP

Christina Olson's first book of poems, Before I Came Home Naked, is forthcoming from Spire Press. New work is also slated to appear in Brevity, The Best Creative Nonfiction, Volume 3, and Black Warrior Review. Originally from Buffalo, New York, she is currently a visiting assistant professor of writing at Grand Valley State University in Michigan, where it also snows a lot. Contact her at notwyethschristinaolson@ gmail.com

Talkin' About My Generation
Wayne Scheer

I once dreamed big dreams.

I taught school and quoted Ghandi and King and Susan B. Anthony, spreading seeds of inspiration like an idealistic Johnny Appleseed.

I married and raised children. Paying the mortgage took priority over planting my forest of dreams.

Now I'm retired. I golf and sell Extended Health Care to my peers.

CP

Wayne Scheer retired from teaching writing and literature in college to follow his own advice and write. He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a Best of the Net. His work has appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, Notre Dame Magazine, The Pedestal, flashquake, Flash Me Magazine, The Internet Review of Books and Eclectica, among others.

Rachel in Her Cups
Michael Zerger

Rachel considered the last task before her. The washing of coffee cups looked almost daunting in scope and perhaps best left to the dishwasher. And yet, this was the end of it. This seemed the last opportunity to view things as a whole, as they were.

As the sink filled with water and lemon-scented soap created a froth of bubbles, Rachel began setting the cups into it. Perhaps unconsciously, she immersed them in life’s order.

Roland loved his coffee as he loved her. The first cup was a white ceramic with the badge of his unit. Fresh out of the Navy when they met, he looked sharp in his starched whites and just a little silly in his Dixie Cup hat, playful and a little unreliable. Like his whites stored in some distant closet, the cup was now somewhat stained and worse for wear. Into the water. swirl, wash, rinse, dry and into the box.

The water was a bit hot and Rachel took time to run some cool water into it. The next cup was a crudely made ceramic, her first pottery class project. She had given it to him while they were dating. Dunk, yes, that's better, the water was just right. Wash, rinse, dry and into the box. Next the bright red cup with the Kliban cat on it and a chip in the handle from when they had knocked it off the counter while making love in the living room. Then the various red and white cups with white and red hearts he had given her, each of them stuffed with chocolates or the little notepads she was so fond of. Swirl, dry, into the box. The cup with the school mascot, the school he had left her for, leaving her to understand in his absence how much she loved him. And the cup with the logo of the computer company that was his first real job. With some semblance of stability established, she had left her home to begin a new one with him. And to accumulate cups.

And so it went, swirl, wash, rinse, dry, and into the box. Cups for schools, cups for companies, the cup for the Irish Wolfhound Rescue Club. Four boxes of cups. By the time she finished, the water was getting cold, her hands were red and chapped, her eyes rheumy. She pulled the plug in the sink. Water, soap, and memories swirled down the drain. One by one, she carried the boxes outdoors to the tables in the yard and with a highlighter marked each box $.25 apiece.

CP

Michael Zerger resumed writing prose poetry 10 years ago and has recently begun writing flash fiction. Some of his work can be found in Apotheosis and Bewildering Stories.

Kneeling
Heidi Kenyon

in front of the washing machine,
checking his pockets, I find
receipts, a grocery list,
a folded paper that, when opened,
bursts into flame,
chars a chunk out of my chest
and sears itself to my heart,
melting on like hot plastic
dripping over a vermillion chuck roast.
Hot burned flesh smell briefly;
gagging.

I get dinner for the children. I read stories.
I place both hands over my temples.
What am I trying to hold in?
I put away the dinner, make sure
my chest keeps rising. The bloody roast
cannot be felt within the cavity.
I put the children in pajamas,
read more books,
put away toys,
feel the crinkle
of the paper in my pocket, its lip curled.
Toothpaste, vitamins, drinks of water,
I am Wile E. Coyote, post-steamroller:
can't they see I'm as flat
as this piece of paper?

Go to bed,
go back to bed, let's go potty, go back to bed
so I can sit here in the dark,
waiting for your father,
waiting, breathing, trying, willing,
for him to come home.

CP

Heidi Kenyon is the retired co-founder of a cooking school,
a former editor at the University of Idaho Press, and the mother of three. She lives in Seattle, Washington.

I Have a New Mission in My Life
Michael Estabrook

My apprenticeship as a poet over the past 20 years has prepared me for my latest project, The Patti Poems, about my wife.

This project will be my magnum opus, what I will spend the rest of my life on. It is all I care about, all that is important to me. It and she have become an obsession, to say the least. And, oh woe is me, it definitely has a mind of its own, pulling me all over the place, so far becoming a collection of 21 books.

Often we do these things simply because we must. Patti is my climb up Mount Everest. I must try my best to capture the pure, ethereal beauty of this most incredible woman, not only the most beautiful woman I have ever known, but the most beautiful person I have ever known.

I'm not certain, quite honestly, if I am up to the task, whether I have the talent and poetic apparatus to succeed. But what choice do I have, really?

Where is Dante when I need him? He has sent me off through Purgatory and into Paradise all by myself:

Relentless

I was relentless
in my pursuit of her, simply relentless.
In college she thought
it might be useful for us
to date other people:
good experience,
nice to have some freedom,
might improve our relationship.

But I didn't leave her time
for much dating.
I wanted her all to myself,
needed to have her all to myself.
So I visited her college constantly,
whenever I could,
dated her, took her to campus events,
brought her home on the weekends
and for holidays too.

She had no need ever
for anyone else other than me.
It was my plan, my strategy
to make myself indispensable in her life,
so I could have her all to myself, forever.
And my strategy worked.

CP

Michael Estabrook has published chapbooks and appeared in Eclectica, Miranda Literary Magazine, the beat, Poetic Diversity, and other venues through the years, but he is still searching for that perfect poem. Right now he is looking for it in his wife and says if it's anywhere, that's where it will be.

Learning to Listen
S.C. Morgan

The first time I married I did it in haste, like a pebble propelled from a slingshot.

I married the year after I graduated from high school—the same November America elected Richard Milhouse Nixon president, the year Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King were gunned down, and the year after my little brother was killed in a shooting accident. If you believe in omens—as I have learned to—I ask you, what good could come from all of that?

I remember the day he asked. We were living in Bavaria—Garmisch-Partenkirchen—in a funky room we rented from a hausfrau so I could work while he went to The Goethe Institute to learn German.

"Because I want to," he'd said.

He sat straddling a wooden dining chair—the only chair in the room—his arms crossed over the back. I sat on the edge of the bed. A shard of light fought its way through the weathered drapes. As he spoke I examined the dust particles suspended in flight, floating in that single beam of light. My recollection is that he didn't actually ask, but rather suggested that "we might as well" as we were already living together. Confronted, I felt vulnerable and didn't know the right answer.

A small moth of a thought fluttered through my brain and whispered, Don't do this. But, the voice was ineffectual, too timid, drowned out by the crashing circumstances of life.

Then, as though listening to someone else, I heard my own voice say, "Okay, why not?'

Okay? Why not?

So casual, so little regard for myself, and, looking back, so little regard for him. I believed then that life was long; a person could make mistakes and move on. I was only along for the ride.

He seemed happy enough with my answer and hugged me, but I felt like a liar, too afraid of being alone to end it.

I'd say our marriage was a bit like the proposal, offhand and with little regard for each other's intrinsic value. We had no idea what to make of life, we simply made it up as we went along. We paid the price for our mistakes.

Eleven years and two children later, when the little voice inside said, You better leave him now, at 30, or you will be doing it at 40, it thundered in my ear.

CP

S.C. Morgan lives on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica. An American expatriate, her writing has appeared in Escape From America, Real Travel Adventures, and Notre Dame Magazine. She writes about nature and human nature—anything that is interesting.

QUAKE
Christina Olson

—for Colleen, in China

When I thought you dead,
when the news photos
from Chengdu showed

the bloody rubble
and I sat in my cubicle
trying to tell paint from plasma

on the jagged chunks
of concrete that were once
an office, that's when

I planned your funeral songs
and remembered things
to tell you. There's a word

for the man I want to marry:
it's ucalegon, a neighbor
whose house is on fire.

There are no roads to Juneau
and most people who live there
like it that way; there is a disease

that turns men's soft tissue
to bone and their skeletons
look like something pulled

from the sea, from pirate ship.
But then you weren't dead:
you were alive and dusty

in your shitty Peace Corps
apartment. And the mantle
of earthquake-it will not

be the one that presses you
into the earth, or at least not
now. Not this time. Still-

whenever Van Morrison opens
with lemonade and bright roads,
something in my chest
cracks. But only every time.

CP

Christina Olson's first book of poems, Before I Came Home Naked, is forthcoming from Spire Press. New work is also slated to appear in Brevity, The Best Creative Nonfiction, Volume 3, and Black Warrior Review. Originally from Buffalo, New York, she is currently a visiting assistant professor of writing at Grand Valley State University in Michigan, where it also snows a lot. Contact her at notwyethschristinaolson@ gmail.com

Jayne Pupek

RED GLOVE

A woman comes into the bookstore
late for the reading. Already the poet stands
at the podium, book open, his voice moving precipitously
over the page as if it were bruised skin and each word
printed there not a word at all, but a wound.
The late arrival takes the seat next to me,
no greeting or nod, she is already absorbing the poem,
the longing inside her stronger than anything
the poet might say. Her name may be Susan or Carol,
or even Isabelle, but she is just as likely to answer
to dirty floors, coupons, Clorox, aluminum foil.
She wears her life in the strands of hair
coming loose from the rubber band
looped around it, and in the man's shirt
drooping off her shoulders.
I smell her history in the cigarette smoke lifting off her coat
when she moves to hang the garment
across the chair's curved back.
Her needs show in her cheap shoes, discolored teeth,
and dark half-moons deepening her eyes.
And here I find the proof of her longing.
It is in the single red glove
clutched in her hand, and in the way she wrings it
like a cloth soaked with blood.

--This poem first appeared in the UK magazine, Mslexia

CP

Jayne Pupek is the author of the novel, Tomato Girl and two books of poems, Forms of Intercession and The Livelihood of Crows.

Barry Basden

Hope

It's always been with us,
always will be,
this yearning from somewhere
deep in our fragile souls.

Whether for eternal life
in the next world
or, less ambitiously,
for a better life in this one,
we humans need hope.

Else why scribble on paper,
strew songs into the air,
or chisel the word in stone?

CP

Barry Basden is coauthor of Crack! and Thump, the story of Captain Charles Scheffel, who was featured in the History Channel's 10-part color series, WWII in HD.

Rain
Robert Rogge

The rain poured down, and the troops tramped ankle deep in mud that stunk of rotting corpses. When they were forced off the road by the lorries, their boots sucked and squelched in the deeper muck of the ruined fields.

The rain hissed on their helmets and ran into every crevice of their rain capes. It ran cold down their necks as they sweated under the rubber capes. The rain dulled their spirits, and it fell and it fell and it fell.

The men tramped away from the guns and into the drifting, gray sheets of rain. Their spirits lay dead in the sopping fields.

The rain fell on the awful faces of the dead and washed the wounds, leaving ugly gaps, dark red and black against the yellowed skin. The rain fell on the whimpering wounded lying on the soaked stretchers. The injured men twisted their faces from side to side trying to escape the cold, pitiless downpour.

A man could bear almost anything if only he could keep the rain off his face.

The sheeting rain muffled the sound of the guns in the distance, and the water streamed down from the tall, leafy poplars along the road. The kilo markers passed in solemn, sodden slowness.

The attack had failed and the dead lay uncomplaining in the rain. The tanks, mired in the muck, never reached the start line. The field guns, hub deep in mud, became unmanageable, their fire erratic and out of aim. The machine gun companies got lost in the woods, stumbling through the underbrush with their heavy loads, unable to find their fire positions. Scudding clouds grounded the planes.

The infantry went forward against the MG 42s and the mortars. A few bent back, away from the murderous fire, pulling away to where they could live.

And the rain fell dismally, washing away the hash of battle left in the field.

—from Fearsome Battle

CP

Robert Rogge, an American, fought with the Canadian Army in World War II. He wrote of his experiences in Fearsome Battle. Under the pen name, Robert Elliot, he is also author of The Eagle's Height, a novel of air combat in World War I.

Michael Wright

Other Observations

Writing an appointment in my calendar, I see in small print in one of the boxes that T.S.Eliot was born in 1888 on this day in September. I feel a small shock of surprise, for he was alive when I was in college, and yet the calendar reminds me he was born in the Victorian era. And then I remember that I am 68, probably as old now as he was when he came to my college to read.

For the next couple of hours I walk around the house, muttering to myself, "Let us go then, you and I..." and "like a patient, etherized upon a table." In so many ways those lines open, at least for me, the modern era in poetry--the invitation to visit a life which has failed, so different from the poets of a generation earlier, who still hoped, still struggled with large views. And the famous opening image, grotesque and smelling of death. A quick calculation and I realize Eliot came to this voice at the time of the First World War. No wonder...

Suddenly I remember when I gave Sam for his birthday the recording of T.S.Eliot reading from Prufrock and Other Observations. I was perhaps 15--no, younger, because he and my mother had already separated by the time I was 15. Probably I was 13, when we were living in Cambridge and he was in the graduate school of English at Harvard.

I suspect it was my mother who implanted the idea that I give my stepfather a birthday present. She knew that we didn't get along, and that a gift from me, especially one which showed I recognized his tastes, would help smooth things over, might establish us in an adult relationship, when we had so painfully failed as father and son.

I was excited to find the record. It was the beginning of that era in the 1950s when poets recorded their work on long-playing discs. Dylan Thomas was the most famous, and I was proud of the fact that I avoided the popular choice, knowing that for my stepfather and his friends, Thomas was not a poet in the same exalted rank as Eliot.

I stood in front of Sam as he unwrapped my present, eager for his praise. His face twisted as he looked at the record jacket, and he said, "I was hoping it would be the Four Quartets." I felt humiliated, felt that I was supposed to know that Prufrock was passe, that the Four Quartets was the correct thing. Yet, how could I know? I hadn't read Eliot, I had only heard the name around the table when Sam and his friends discussed literature. My face burned. "Well, thank you anyway," he added, dimly aware from my mother's stunned silence that he had hurt me. I turned away, determined that I would not try again to reach out.

So we live in dreams of what might be, fantasies of love that could embrace us. "Till human voices wake us, and we drown."

CP

Michael Wright lives in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, raises heirloom apples and throws pots. His work has appeared in diverse publications, most recently in Writers on the Edge and The Sigurd Journal.

It's Not That Funny
Wayne Scheer

I have this dream where Penelope Cruz is coming towards me totally naked, her arms outstretched, her pink tongue slowly circling dark, full lips.

I say, "No, no. I'm married," and she tells me how she doesn't care. She must have me now.

I grab her by her soft, sensual shoulders and explain that I'm a one-woman man. She breaks down sobbing, and I take her into my arms feeling the warmth of her breasts. I hold her as her tears dry, slipping my hand downward to pat her rear--I am only human, after all. She smiles bravely to show she'll be all right, and I peck her on the forehead in my best fatherly manner.

I open my eyes and stare at the ceiling, realizing I have an erection that would make a sixteen-year-old boy proud. Vickie is sleeping soundly on her side, her naked butt facing me. I pat it gently.

"Do you know your ass feels remarkably like Penelope Cruz's rear end?"

"Huh?"

I roll towards her and poke her.

"You have that dream again?" she asks.

"Uh-huh," I say as I snuggle as close as is possible.

"The one where you imagine you have the erection of a teenager?"

"No! The one where--"

I hear Vickie snoring peacefully, and although I can't see her face I know she's smiling.

CP

Wayne Scheer retired from teaching writing and literature in college to follow his own advice and write. He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a Best of the Net. His work has appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, Notre Dame Magazine, The Pedestal, flashquake, Flash Me Magazine, The Internet Review of Books and Eclectica, among others.

Writing Class

Carter Jefferson

She showed up on the first day of class three years ago. In a wheelchair. The other students, all in their 50's and 60's or older, bustled around and made her a place at the table. Beautiful woman. Blond hair, cut like a boy's. Wearing a green turtleneck. Skinny, though.

She hung in for two, maybe three, of our eight-week sessions, chatting, smiling, doing friendly but solid critiques on her classmates' work. She could already write; just wanted to learn about memoirs, maybe needed some company, somebody to read her work. She mentioned she had a Website. Nothing much, just monthly reports for friends--about living with ALS. They were publishable. I told her so.

She got weaker. One day her driver pulled up in front of the building. She could walk two steps from car to chair, but slowly, carefully. A friend pushed her around. Then she stopped coming to class.

I kept following her reports. She used a voice device with her computer. One day she wrote what she said would be her last entry. Not enough breath left to put a word on the screen. Went into a special home for people with nerve diseases. Finally, one of her friends told me they were arranging to publish her memoir. An e-mail, just a couple of weeks ago--they had the books. I ordered one, and started to read it the minute it came.

Toward the middle she mentioned the class. And me, the "incomparable class leader." I cried.

CP

Carter Jefferson is editor of The Internet Review of Books. He also is a member of the Internet Writing Workshop.

Entrepreneur
Sue Ellis

"This is going to hurt me more than it does you."

The next day Tommy showed his friends the welts. They all paid the promised dollar. Nobody had believed how tough his old man was. He couldn't wait to show Roberta after school. She paid much better than money.

CP

Sue Ellis is a retired postmaster who lives with her husband in Spokane, Washington. She has been previously published in Dead Mule, Pen Pricks, and Flash Me Magazine, which nominated her for a Pushcart Prize. She is a member of the Internet Writing Workshop.