Dec '03 [Home] Degrees of Apprenticeship: Hunter Program Profile by Donna Masini |
. | . | . | B Three Card Monte ~ Slowly ~ Donna Masini | The Myth of The Grim Reaper ~ What I Know of the Story ~ Amy Meckler | 52 Pints of Blood ~ Meditation on the Study of Semiotics ~ Shelagh Patterson | Song of the Firemoon ~ The Day the Sun Rises Twice ~ William Pitt Root | Drive ~ Margaret R. Smith | On the Trip You Took to Find Out Whether ~ Nicole Tavares | Sci-Fi Valentine ~ Ultraviolet ~ Kimberly Jaye Thatcher | On Your Parents' Stoop ~ We Went to the Moon ~ Wendy Wisner Image: Dennison Tsosie A The Damned ~ Magdalena Alagna | Fingernails: A History ~ Tomara Aldrich | Listening to Lorca ~ Meena Alexander | Waiting to Get to Old Age ~ Sarah Antine | The first time I sat at the piano in Carmen's house ~ Marisabel Bonet | The Heart of Silence ~ Waltrudis Buck | The Sudden Mud-Dogging Death of the Palmetto Homecoming Queen ~ Ashley Crout | A Woman Is a Gallery She Can't Stop to View ~ JoAnne Growney | Syllabica ~ Dress Rehearsal ~ Gabrielle LeMay | Theory of Flight ~ See Above ~ Jan Heller Levi | I Never Want To Go When It's Time ~ "The Part of Myself That " ~ Kate Light Image: Steve Hopps Contributor Notes ~ . ~ Three Card Monte Donna Masini They're at it again. On Broadway, the crowd closes around the dealer, his cards face down in the uncertain sun. They never win, but they keep coming back. Last night I slept with him again. Again the long sexless night. Desire. What sends them back, what makes them inch up, into his chants, throwing their burning hard- earned cash, what propels them to that table? Is it his beautiful hands, the voice that makes him luster? It looks easy. They're sure to win. They must. They can see the trick, the sly card they have outwitted. Behind them the Tower Record sign, the cheap eager dresses on racks, the Broadway traffic. Again and again I go back to him, banging against him, certain this time he'll, this time Who would have thought love would come so slowly? December it seemed a sure thing. I raced into it, announced myself, the way I've read salmon leap against a stream, that awful arc, the way music will build, ache, but release doesn't come. I love you, he says. Month after month I fall for it, fill up with it, ticking down Broadway, the way those salmon—how do they?— stupid, lusting, plunging. The crowd scatters its disappointment, each trying to figure how he'd lost, it had really looked like, she'd been certain, it had seemed so certain, those beautiful hands, that voice, and now a new crowd begins to form. Face after stupid face. ~ . Slowly Donna Masini I watched a snake once, swallow a rabbit. Fourth grade, the reptile zoo the rabbit stiff, nose in, bits of litter stuck to its fur, its head clenched in the wide jaws of the snake, the snake sucking it down its long throat. All throat that snake, I couldn't tell where the throat ended, the body began. I remember the glass case, the way that snake took its time (all the girls, groaning, shrieking but weren't we amazed, fascinated, saying we couldn't look, but looking, weren't we held there, weren't we imagining—what were we imagining?) Mrs. Peterson urged us to Move on, girls but we couldn't move. It was like watching a fern unfurl, a minute hand move across a clock. I didn't know why the snake didn't choke, the rabbit never moved, how the jaws kept opening wider, sucking it down, just so I am taking this in, slowly, taking it into my body: this grief. How slow the body is to realize. You are never coming back. ~ . ~ The Myth of The Grim Reaper Amy Meckler Have you seen it? The black hood and the scythe creeping, hunched, spreading his smoky breath through the cold room where the family waits? You'll never see it, though the living create the fables and lore that Death will come or the angels will call so we think some outsider cloaked in dark upon a horse or ray of God through clouds appears to force us out. But have you sat with the hoarse bleats and coughs as a body staining the sheets, straining to do some hard last work, admits he must do it himself? Have you seen it? Once the lid is off, the body's a cup holding the steam of ourselves leaking up. ~ . What I Know of the Story Amy Meckler After loading the bundles and securing the stalls they pushed off into the fresh-water ocean forming around them. The crows flapped a panic inside their wooden cages spreading feathers to the muddy sties. The place became a shaken mess. Only the women cleaned. And the eternal thumping on the hickory roof. Did Noah sleep through it or hold his wife through the clapping rain that sounded like lion claws loose from their ropes? Did they have even a little love between them? Those days, what of love between husband and wife? Could it spring from nowhere in the thirtieth year of marriage? Did any kindness board the ark from the life before? Or beauty? In the delicate necks of the gazelles? Mercy, then, in the galley cupboards? The record doesn't show. We only know a little jealousy, pettiness, hate crept on board. Hidden in the sheep's thick wool or the heavy robes of the captain. It is not inconceivable no goodness was preserved from the old world God was destroying. Goodness can grow from nothing, spring itself up from the damp earth. Only evil needs a little ill will to rub against to make a spark. ~ . ~ 52 Pints of Blood Shelagh Patterson I once had an ex-girlfriend who rested her hand in the air between us, It's paralyzed. The doctor can't figure out what's wrong. She didn't understand her body was breaking without my touch, that that was the hand I had held during the movie in which nothing almost disappears all of Fantasia because a little boy reading in his school's attic won't believe he is part of the story. She told me she didn't return my phone calls because I was always believing we were beginning to get back together. She didn't understand all we had to do was name the last crumb of a world where one woman wakes on a couch with her head in the lap of a girlfriend who curls her fingers in the tangle before it all disappeared. ~ . Meditation on the Study of Semiotics Shelagh Patterson To the real question, How does it feel to be a problem? I answer seldom a word. —W.E.B. Du Bois (I) I am trying to understand semiotics, the study of signs. On the internet, i found a good advertisement written by Professor David Chandler of the University of Whales: Deconstructing and contesting the realities of signs can reveal whose realities are privileged and whose are suppressed. To decline such a study is to leave to others the control of the world of meanings which we inhabit. But, what does it mean to accept such a study? Isn't semiotics just another theory developed by a western white man to keep us thinking in the culture of the western white man? If I do not learn your culture, if no-one learns your culture, then won't it disappear? We've always known whose realities are privileged. (II) To solve the problem of the western white man, colleges have developed the male studies program. MALST 348.00— Margaret Thatcher and Benazir Bhutto. Through comparing these two former Prime Ministers, this course aims to analyze how these women were able to rise to power in what are considered male-dominated societies and discuss the impact of their subsequent impeachments on the global dialogue of gender and power. (III) Excerpts from the Merriam's Webster Collegiate Dictionary; study- Latin. from studere to devote oneself, study, probably akin to tundere to beat. see contusion. meditate- past participle for Latin's meditari meaning mederi to remedy, to heal. (IV) MALST 201.33 Kissinger and Carter. Through comparing the ideologies of these two politicians, this course aims to elucidate the diversity found within the culture of the western white male and discuss the difficulties of defining any culture. (V) Sadly, I report that another western white man flaunts his ignorance, this time by questioning the merits of celebrating Hip-Hop, a "culture" known for violence, drug abuse, and demeaning women, while a city crumbles from the wrath of the flag he pins to his lapel. ~ . ~ Song of the Firemoon William Pitt Root [Interview] Tonight I am floating with the moon far above me swinging like the blind skull of a flower high-flung braincase of a windbleached rose the ghostly murmur of a coasting stone and like the ancient sailors sung to by mermaids a world below I know the subtle scales on which desire balances breath I know and knowing dive into the dark that sings and calls into the dark unbreathable into the falling arms of the singer whose hold is a chilled flashing whose heart silver and empty like the conch is skilled at calling Falling I cry out and those cries become my song ~ . The Day the Sun Rises Twice William Pitt Root [Interview] The day the sun rises twice the primitive dream of fire comes true fire that burns forever fire no water on Earth can quench fire whose light pins shadows to the stones fire whose killing edge turns flying birds to ash Aeons after the last of the one-eyed prophets has chanted into that permanent darkness no archeologist shall ever unearth countless minute embers will linger among the omens And so I make this black mark on the silence now knowing none shall remain to speak and none shall hear when the clouds rise in our eyes against those suns rising around us like the thousand trees of life all clad in flames ~ . ~ Drive Margaret R. Smith for Robin take 28th Street behind a dirty fish truck a man rolls a rack of silk shirts jostling over winter potholes transience guitar and luggage rattle in back says my name like he's holding it in his hand dry warmth car heater late day sun shimmers melted snow brightens all shades brown brick ask me what music I like say my name again (I had forgotten what it felt like to be explored) parked police cars fire trucks on Houston tension tinge a need to move the bridge rises home his body slow over my urgency lean back in the seat metallic hum of climb tell how to get home don't say don't stop driving take the exit he leaves in the morning I bury my face in the sheets his smell pine and leather park the truck open my door lie down under light touch like strangers touch like lifetime lovers ~ . ~ On the Trip You Took to Find Out Whether Your Birth Mother Was Alive, You Bought a Souvenir from a Mayan Market Woman Instead Nicole Tavares Solamente para Úd. Lonely you, a present for your mother. Un recuerdo to identify her skin. A memory, for you only. A boy who fell not from a sky. The place where flesh-n-blood snaps a beaded necklace. A woman become a market nurses an orphan you. You want to buy bibs and placemats. Pint-sized overalls bought, you think, thirty years ago by your mother present in your adopted hunger, stealing formula from the Met market her breasts so parched so (un)like weaned Mayan's skin. It will cost you more más tarde, apart she snaps the sling from the baby. She promises los colores will not run away like another woman who speaks English. Hair knotted loosely. Spanish. some Indjun. remembered aunts. Don't buy why the family 'friend' ran away at the snap of a finger. Her belly had become a hollow bead, a present like his afro at the hospital she threaded tears into, his skin trading local color for the exotic at the NY stock market. Is this only for you? Un recuerdo. A father marketing the luck of a boy who fell from the sky who colors not outside the lines in the beginner's biology book. All skin so brown, so shreddable, forgettable. Did you say goodbye when you stepped on the plane? Promise to pray, a present like a necklace, white neck of a grave where flesh-n-blood snapped off like the fallen plastic wrappers, Mayan baby's sugar snaps, who threads his white beads through your trenzas, your dreads a market of parched roots. My family tree. Árbol de familia. Your tongue presents itself from its hospital for the first time. Your mother tongue is not Spanish, neither is hers. A mother, a woman who needs you to buy the colors off her body. You flew to Central America to brown your skin to thread its birth mark, its natural color to its shadow lost and skinny hovering around the earth. If you don't hurry, someone else will snap this recuerdo up. Her English dressing up her hunger. A record by which to color outside the lines of your mouth, I cannot leave this market. Hollowed the baby hurls the beads from the sky. He does not remember his mother who left her home to buy him a present. You can't remember who skinned whom, whose bodies at the market sold raw for the highest price. Who undid her snaps? She did or did not ask to buy or be bought to fill a need, under careful wrappings of a present. ~ . ~ Sci-Fi Valentine Kimberly Jaye Thatcher It lives in salt like the rare blue-red blooded dye of an oyster like one of those star trek episodes where the hero returns unable to breathe and pronouns deliberate what went wrong with said hero chambered in mother ship sinking in alien silt till realizing he's alien—grit of a black pearl evolving strands of earth strung air that burn human lungs with memory—primordial ooze who after first contact only wants to keep absorbing because till then (he/she) didn't know (it) was lonely ~ . Ultraviolet Kimberly Jaye Thatcher You're an early morning sunburn. A daily wave of short murmurs visible outside the violet end of wave length spectrum far from source—you travel as light lighted from a far universe from an increasingly vanished star. you're a bog but I won't find butter ripe as salt —no amount of sacrifices unearthed in poems fish scales from compost in the garden now razed not tilled and not barley but something rises within cracks of railroad ties down a dirt path to the lake house where I came to study water as rupture. Some mornings the inlet perfectly still as blue mirror, sometimes too bright sometimes glazed in moving fog till speed boats glance the surface and wakes lap long after I cannot hear motor of the crew's laughter echo out the hourglass sieve. I am adrift backside on the dock feet turned into water returning by noon face burnt. They have you as auburn or red-headed but I know you as gray radiation like dye pumped in my veins as a cyst searching for death—they never found you and I survived but what happened to the family? I moved to the city of concrete all green eliminated long ago, but gulls cry outside my landlocked fifth floor window—you never get away from water—you never get away from salt. Even here toxins flow in the near-dead river though in the sound in reverse. I sometimes see tide press inward against the will of a barge and sometimes press forward in the harbor to the ocean never still. We only know you by the damage we suffer. ~ . ~ On Your Parents' Stoop Wendy Wisner Next came the part I couldn't explain. So I said to you, in the white January morning: It was never my father; I was afraid, I don't know, to be alive. And you said: I think I know. Then it was August, your mother's azaleas brown, heavy to the ground because she was leaving, and we were married, and you said: Let's go home now. And we did because it was ours. ~ . We Went to the Moon Wendy Wisner My sister and I. But it was only the moon filling the Parkwood Pool and we weren't sisters. We bolted up the ramps, climbed the steep white steps — mothers' voices claimed us but we didn't look back. We peeked under the gate, between the bars — how strangely it swayed there: bloated, forgiving over tense blue ripples. Then I knew her cold hand was cold for a reason and it didn't matter who she was. I had touched her. I couldn't let go. ~ . ~ [Poetry A] |