Jessica de Soria Dalton
Caribbean Roots
Photograph
Inspiration Piece

By Sarah Krouse
The Woods
Response

I was sitting on the deck at my parents’ house in Connecticut one summer night, listening to the distant sound of a high school marching band practicing when my father said he wanted to help people die.

He said he could to start a business. People would decide when they were in their sixties where they wanted to die – on a boat, in a desert, on a beach, in the woods— and he would help them get there when things took a turn for the worst.

It was the summer he started driving elderly people to day care. He had retired and wanted a small source of side income and with my sister and I old enough to drive ourselves, it was the only chance he had to fasten someone’s seatbelt and keep an eye on them in the rearview mirror.

Once or twice a week he would pick up a group of men and women in a handicapped-accessible van. He’d walk to their doorsteps and chat for a few moments with their nurses, children, spouses, whomever was charged with caring for them.

He liked the idea of giving these people a break for a few hours: the nurses with wet beds to change, the spouses who had not grown old as quickly as their partners and were charged with their care, the children who refused to put their parents in a home and instead offered them an extra bedroom.

This is not what my father wants.

“Gruel is gruel,” he would say, as in, mush is the same no matter who is feeding it to you.

Do parents say that because they fear you won’t have time or room for them?

I told my father he should keep his business idea to himself — it was a little bleak.

“I’m serious,” he said. “People don’t know how miserable it’s going to be to die until it’s too late.”

Earlier that week, Joe, an 80-year-old man who hobbled and couldn’t remember his wife’s name started running down his driveway.

He hadn’t walked without help for years, my father said, when he told me the story.

Joe started walking slowly at first, letting go of my father’s hand as he led him down his driveway. He then picked up speed and broke into a run.

He ran until his legs gave out and he fell flat on his face. My dad said his nose crunched as it hit the pavement and broke.

“Just like that,” my father said. “Running and then down.”

My father drove the rest of his passengers to day care that day. Joe was dead by the end of the week.

My father said that under his business plan, there would be a checklist, criteria that you have to meet before you are left to die. There’d be a failsafe, too. Each person would be left with a cell phone and if they decided they weren’t ready to die, they would be saved.

“The kicker is that no one will use it, no one at that point will be cognizant enough to save themselves,” he said.

My father’s criteria: diapers. He doesn’t want anyone to put a diaper on him.

**
I had just come home from college for the summer and already he had shown me where he had filed his and my mother’s wills.

He begrudgingly puts away $400 per month to make sure he is in permanent, not day care, he tells me.

“How ridiculous that dying is the most expensive thing you can do,” he said.

My mother, who has no interest in death, came out on the deck and I said, “Have you heard about Dad’s new business plan?”

She rolled her eyes. “He’s told me all about it.”

“But what will you do with the body once the person is dead? Just leave them there?”

“Why not? Animals can eat the body or it can just decompose – what is wrong with nature running its course?,” he said, pointing out that he wouldn’t reasonably have a way of knowing whether his clients had actually died — and he wouldn’t want to disturb the process.

He said he’d choose places so remote, it’d be unlikely that anyone would find them.

“Why don’t we talk about something else, my mother said, taking a sip of her wine.”

Since retirement she has been walking every day, swimming, doing Zumba and Yoga, Jazzercizing, doing anything she can to stay healthy.

“You don’t use it, you lose it,” she would say, joking that she needed to be alive as long as possible.

**
I escaped most of his elderly day care stories that summer. I taught swim lessons and spent nights drinking in parking lots, on beaches.

The college summers were a continuation of high school parties – gatherings in dark places where my friends and I drained cases of beer before driving home.

That summer whenever my mother forgot what she was doing, measured an ingredient wrong while baking or had trouble holding something with her arthritic hands he’d say, “There’s room on the bus for you.”

He showed her how to pay bills that summer, how to access financial records.

Does he plan to die first? Does he want to die before he is old to avoid a ride on the bus?

**
I ask him where he wants to die.

“Maine,” he said. “There are lots of woods and it’s cold enough that I’ll freeze to death.”

I see the image of him in the woods as I finish the last sip of my beer that night.

I get in my car, fasten my seatbelt and imagine someone like my father, fastening his seatbelt on a bus that will go to elderly day care.

I accelerate and picture my elderly father walking in the woods where he will die.

I see him break into a run.

My car winds over the yellow markings on the outside of the road leading to my parents’ house, toward a rock wall.

I see my father fall. I swerve and stop.

I exhale.

If a man falls in the woods and no one is around — does it make a sound?

…………………….

…………………….

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Episcopal Red
By Sarah Krouse
Inspiration Piece

I will not walk through the red doors. There is a sanctuary behind them and splinters painted red on their face, but I will not stand and kneel to the rhythm of hallelujahs and Amens.

I was always proud that we Episcopalians got a paint color all our own – Episcopal Red. It matched my mother’s coat, Mrs. Scoffield’s “Dorothy shoes” that she clicked for me each Sunday, and the hats on my father’s 246 Christmas Santas.

My sister and I were reprimanded regularly for giggling in church. We knew we were supposed to be still and proper, shoulders back, Books of Common Prayer at attention, but our surroundings were too puzzling, too entertaining to ignore. It was the way my mother transitioned from soprano to bass during the hymns, the taste of the host donated by Elma the shut in, who we assumed had never tasted her own holy pita bread, the way the minister swigged the dregs of the cup of salvation.

My mother, my sister and sat in the second row on the left side, arms linked, though I never understood why my mother wanted to sit up front. I suppose it’s somehow related to her need to snap pictures of us each day, and to furiously take notes when my father teaches her online banking, “just in case”.

My father never came with us; he went to the early service instead. He was the lay reader and prepared communion each Sunday, dutifully pacing between the altar and the crocheted doilies that supported the elements to be blessed. He wore a white robe, wrapping the Cincture chords around himself, knots through the hole, underneath the belt and back through. He went to the early service because he didn’t want to sing like we did at the late service – the “family service”. “The Saints of God” didn’t make him cry for a lost mother the way they did for my mother. He didn’t want to watch other children jumping up and down or coloring in their pews. He didn’t want to wait in line for communion.

–
My parents repainted the bedroom walls when I left. They are pink now, more so than when Rachael and I jumped on the bed in elephant pajamas or closed the final suitcase before college. The walls were not repainted to create an office, an in-home gym, a meditation room; my parents painted them to reassure themselves that they had not dreamed up twenty-three years of tucking two girls into bed. The walls were painted to help my mother pretend that there was still a reason to flick on our nightlight.

She lets down the curtains in Rachael and my old room each evening as though our warm bodies are still beneath the Laura Ashley sheets. She draws the curtains up again each morning.

I call my shrink the Old Broad because I was born and raised a Connecticut WASP and we are taught not to acknowledge the elephant in the room. She looks like a grandmother, but asks how many people I have slept with and what my relationship with my parents was like. She says I’m “briefly depressed”, that if she were to prescribe me drugs, I would be better by the time they worked fully. I said, “no shit”, she scowled and said what she meant was, my negativity is temporary.

My friend was just hit and cut in half by a bus last month. Last year my boyfriend’s mother was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer. The year before that, my sister’s boyfriend threw her against the wall and called her a “stupid bitch”.

I haven’t been through the red doors since I left home. I am not the same Megan Smalls that giggled before Him as a child. I don’t want to tell him that I drink more than just communion wine, that I miss most Sundays because there are naked men next to me, that I can spew criticism faster than I can whisper a prayer. I have lost the creed. I’m not sure that he can see me beyond the red doors and I’m not sure that I want him to.

–
Rachael hadn’t understood why I cried when she showed me the space she had made for her boyfriend in her closet, or why I frowned when she said that though he had moved in, she wasn’t sure which nights he would sleep beside her.

“He is doing the best he can,” she said. “I will not defend it anymore, if you can’t be supportive, you don’t have to hear about it.” So I didn’t.

Her new apartment uptown was a sterile – white walls, tiled floor. Not like the first place she had found for him, for the child he already had – for the kids they would have together. Her first apartment had hard wood floors, “Honeydew Green”, “Pumpkin Spice Orange”, “Land of Lavender”- painted walls. This new home had no room for children. It had espresso finishes, sharp black book cases, a daybed with cappuccino pillows. When his second child was born to a new mother, she had left him. When he needed help applying to city colleges, she propped the black and white photograph of him dancing down Madison Avenue with his first child on top of her vinyl collection. She gave him the keys to her new apartment because he brought over his new child and in doing so, gave her a reason to put away the candles, to soften sharp edges, to keep a bin of rainbow colored animals in more than a corner of her mind.

He brought in the mail the day he left. He never remembered her birthday, he never called to say he would not be coming home, he never cleaned the trail of small green leaves that didn’t make it into his rolling paper, but that day, he brought up the mail. He placed it on the table beside his surrendered keys. The credit card bill leaned against my sister’s hugging salt and peppershakers, two painted porcelain ghost-shaped figures. She threw them out the window that day, watching them fall and smash against the pavement of 135th Street.

We call her shrink Laura Linney – her name is something close to that, but it doesn’t really matter. She has repeatedly asked my sister why she stayed. I think this is rude. I think it’s obvious why she stayed – sanctuary. She made offerings, he filled her.

–
Growing up, Rachael and I were acolytes. I could see the gleam in my mother’s eyes as I carried a torch, and read from the Corinthians, the Ecclesiastics, pronouncing the names as practiced. She never wanted to join the choir or read the lessons, rather, she wanted to watch us serve. Our father taught us the steps, the pace, the lifting of the offerings, how to extinguish candles with golden bells.

We never understood the point of this routine, or why the procession entered from the side door, parading the choir down the aisle to the back of the church, only to march forth again after the bells and prelude, hoisting the cross higher over our head. “It’s part of the ceremony,” my mother would say.

The church doors are open as I pass again on my way home from work. It is dusk and from the doorway I can see the altar candles lit, they look closer together than I remember. Perspective at work.

My parents have stopped asking me if I made it to church that week. I have more to say to Him than will fit in the Confession. My new set of beliefs is longer than the Nicene Creed, and I’m not sure that He wants to hear it.

–
When he makes his special tomato sauce, my father paces carefully between the sink and the stove. His wooden spoon rests on the white counter top, his tomato sauce busy ridding itself of pinot noir’s proof. My father always uses Georio Le’Beuf, the kind with the flower label, the kind that turns his cheeks red and helps him tell us that we are ungrateful, star boarders, selfish, too sensitive. He can always finish the bottle, swirling and sipping down what we leave in our cups.

–
I used to jingle the offering envelopes. My mother would put quarters in mine, allowing me just one tambourine shake before ostentatiously quieting me and smiling into her hymnal. I usually got one more shake as I placed it into the offering plate.

The quarters were nothing, though, compared to the first Sunday of the month, the day the program read “Lords Prayer – sung”. The organist would pound the pedals with all the force her stark white Keds could muster, shaking her bench and sending us into hysterics as she belted “and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil…”

“It’s not proper to mock the organist, you know,” Mr. Gallagher said. “You are supposed to set an example for the congregation,” Mrs. Ross scolded. But Mom never reprimanded us for it. She doesn’t go to the ten o’clock any more. When we left for school, she joined my father for the eight o’clock, no tears for “the Saints of God”, no linked arms in the second pew.

Mine was one of few churches that used the traditional, “and forgive us our trespasses”, rather than “and forgive us our debts”. The church in front of me with its open doors will use “debts”, suggesting something is owed, the organist will not pound the pedals and I will not stand in a linked row of three.

I stand outside looking at the door. It is dusk, my mother is walking into our old room to let down the curtains, my father is stirring a bubbling pot with red-flushed cheeks, my sister is lazily swishing a half empty glass of wine. I can feel their ceremonies as I consider mine. Like pitches harder to reach with age, bread swallowed out of obligation, blessed wine that must be returned to the earth, I process.
…………………………

…………………………

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I Sense You
By Melissa Pasanen
Inspiration Piece

If sound waves unfold
Perhaps colors turn cartwheels
And scents undulate.

If flavors explode
Do touches dance the tango
And lights oscillate.

If I could not see
Or hear, touch, taste, smell – what would
Awaken my mind?

_____

Well-You-Asked800.jpg (189 KB)

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The test is over. Turn in your pencil. Hand it over.

You get an automatic A for trying. Nothing more to do.

This is just a test
By Cassie Premo Steele
Inspiration Piece

I am the blue woman, the do-woman, the woman so tired

she cannot even look at you. I look instead at the corners

of life, at the bottles and books and things cooked and

uncooked in the strife. Haiti, Michael Jackson, what

happened to John Mayer, that woman without tenure,

adjunct pay, family leave, my husband’s brother who

had a heart operation they need to do over– these things

wake me in the middle of the night. So I start to write.

Pen and ink or a computer, it doesn’t matter, as long

as I am leaving the do-woman behind and becoming

the blue woman, step by step, word by word, time

after time. I once taught a woman how to be in time

instead of on time, and she learned the lesson so well

she left me. This is just a test, I told myself, adrift,

we are all just practicing, no need to get testy, keep

going, don’t let life get to me. And then I stopped.

I looked at you finally. Life always gets to us

eventually. Who am I kidding? We all wake up.

We all take up another breath. Otherwise, we’d all

turn blue. Time to rest, blue woman, you said to me.
_____
Response pieces:
Blue Women, Acrylic Paint in sketchbook/illustration board

The test is over. Turn in your pencil. Hand it over.

You get an automatic A for trying. Nothing more to do.

BlueLady800.jpg (265 KB)

NekkidLadies.jpg (123 KB)

Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Tony Anthony
Inspiration Piece

Saint Shannon’s Salute
By Robert Haydon Jones
Response

They call me, “Violent Victor.” Behind my back mostly. Sometimes a new guy in the quad – or a client who has gone off his meds and gone back over the edge, says it to my face. I gently tell them not to do it.

“You can call me that all you want when I’m not around,” I say. “But not to my face. Okay?” That’s all it takes – at least so far. The fact is with these men — you never really know.

It is an affectionate tag. I work with men who have been hard hit by violence. Most of my clients are former and active military. All of my clients are still doing unremitting battle with the aftermath of acts of violence – done by them and/or to them.

Most of the back-story the guys have on me is so grotesque and false it’s amusing. Sure, some of the stuff about me they talk about is true but I admit to nothing. Suffice it to say they all know, “I’ve been there and done that.” They know I’ve been just like them – and in spades – and they also know that now I am not just like them. I am in Recovery.

I’m a volunteer. I come in once — sometimes twice a week for a few hours. I talk. I listen. I’m never judgmental – not even in my head. Most of my talk is about mylife now. Like I said, I don’t do “War Stories” or show off my buffaloes.

It’s no big deal. I’m glad to do it. Gertrude Bradley and the other therapists do the heavy lifting day in and day out. I just come in once in a while and show the guys what life looks like on the other side. In case you are wondering, I’ve changed the names of the people and places in this to keep everything confidential.

Gertrude Bradley called me at home for the first time ever on Easter Sunday night. She woke me up at 2AM. She’s very apologetic, talking very, very  softly to me. Am I okay? It’s a unique emergency – Sergeant Thomas T. Thompson has been arrested in Greenwich, a very affluent New York suburb, 14 miles down 95 from me. Some sort of morals charge – a Peeping Tom complaint.

Could I get down there right now? The Police Chief has also just been called. He will meet me at the station.

Well, of course, I said, I would go right away. Sergeant Thomas T. Thompson is a hero to everyone in these here parts. He received the Medal of Honor three years ago – and when you read the action reports – you wonder if maybe they should have given him two.

Gertrude tells me The Police Chief is a former Marine, who says he knows me. I tell her that I do know him. I do not tell her I don’t like the Chief much. Gertrude says the goal is to make the whole thing go away – but there could be a problem with the complainant…the husband or boy friend. He wants to press charges. He’s really pissed.

That’s where I come in. I’m supposed to talk the angry guy down using the PTSD angle. The Chief and his guys will try too – but there’s a limit with them like there isn’t with me.

I get to Greenwich in 12 minutes. The signs in the lot close to the Police station say you can’t park there unless you’re a cop or disabled.  I hardly ever use my HANDICAPPED-Parking placard, but now I do. A cop on his way out gives me a look – hey, I don’t blame him. I’m in damn good shape.

The Chief gave me the sit-rep. At around 10 that night, a cop on routine patrol had seen a man standing in the shadows by a lit window on the side of an otherwise dark ranch style house.  The cop stopped and approached the suspect. As he came closer, the cop could see through the window.  A man and a beautiful woman are on the bed watching TV. The man is wearing jockey shorts. The woman is naked.

The suspect is so engrossed, that when the cop taps him on the shoulder, he shouts, “What the hell, get your hands off me.” Well, the cop asks the suspect to accompany him to the car. And he goes quietly. The cop is in the process of cuffing him, when the husband comes running up and takes a couple of wild swings. The cop pushes the husband away, locks the perp in the squad car and brings him in.

The desk sergeant checks the suspect’s Drivers License, “Thomas T. Thompson,” and is savvy enough to freeze everything right on the spot. There is not a scrap of paperwork on the incident. There have been maybe 20 frantic calls  — but they have all been made on personal cells – and most of the calls from the police station have been made from the parking lot.

Thomas T. Thompson is currently in a holding room. He just had a double quarter- pounder with cheese and a jumbo diet coke. He’s reading a two-month-old copy of Rolling Stone. He has not uttered a word, except to say, “yes”, he understands his Miranda rights.

The complainant is in another holding room with his wife. William Keene and Shannon O’Neil. The husband is more pissed than ever. Why are they being held? What is it…is the creep a cop?

“Wait”, I say, “Shannon O’Neil. A blonde? Girl-next-door face…but a fantastic wet- dream body? Plus naughty, bright green eyes?”

“Jesus, yes”, says the Chief, “no wonder the husband’s all fired up.  You marry a walking fantasy like that, you gotta watch out every day.”

He couldn’t have been more wrong. I knew Shannon well. She was from my hometown. Her first husband, John O’Neil, was a recon marine in my outfit. He was killed by a sniper at Hue.

She mothered the three kids, went back to school and went on to be a fantastic physical therapist at the VA Hospital in West Haven. I mean she was really good. She had helped me regain range of motion in my left arm – after I couldn’t raise it to my shoulder for seven years. A lot of her patients called her, “Saint Shannon.”

She went ten years without a date. Her current husband was a widower. She met him at a grief group at her church.

“Well, Victor,” the Chief said, “don’t take this the wrong way, but that’s a saint even I would be tempted to take a peep at.”

I did take it the wrong way. But then I took it the right way. It turned out to be the way out.

I went in to Holding Room B and talked with Thomas T. Thompson. He greeted me politely by my polite name. I had sat in briefly on two or three groups he attended in the quad while he was still on the mend from his surgeries. I remember being surprised then that he was so young and spindly. He didn’t say much. He seemed to be a real decent kid.

I asked Thomas what the deal was with him out at Shannon’s house and he told me straight out that he loved Shannon. She had worked for two years with him to help him regain some use of his shattered right hand; every bone in it had been broken.

He told me his love was pure – that his wife knew about it. When I asked him if his wife knew that he was looking at Shannon naked, he kept silent. I kept silent too. We sat there for three or four minutes in shared silence.

Then he told me that his love was pure – that it was holy – that seeing her naked and innocent – was a holy thing – that seeing her beautiful breasts and nipples and her belly and her triangle and her absolutely beautiful bare ass — transfused him with grace – and gave him a will to live he had lost.

He asked me if I understood. I told him I did. I told him that a famous old Marine had once told me that the Congressional Medal of Honor is almost always about extraordinary acts by ordinary men. Most often it is given posthumously. When the Recipient is a living person, sometimes the medal imposes a burden of extraordinary expectation that can be impossible to bear.

I put my arm around him. He put his arm around me. We were quiet for a while. Then I told him he had work to do but that I believed he would be okay. As I went out the door, I heard him start to weep.

Then I went to Holding Room A. Shannon came right up to me and gave me a hug. She was a sweet armful all right.

I stepped out of her arms and got right to the point. I told them Thomas was out of his mind. I told them he had PTSD in spades and that no judge or jury would ever convict him.

I told them that we needed to make this go away. That Thomas had agreed to treatment and that I and the Chief and the Prosecutor would guarantee he would never violate their privacy again.

As I expected, the husband wasn’t buying it. “I won’t let this go away,” he bellowed. “That creep has violated us. How long has he been out there?”

“Mr. Keene” I said, “I understand your anger but I’m asking you for mercy here. This man was bad hurt fighting for us. He’s not asking for mercy, I am.  Everyone in the Armed Forces, including the Commander in Chief, is expected to salute a Medal of Honor Recipient. There’s a reason for that.”

“I don’t know,” Keene said. “What do you think Shannon?”

She reached down for his hand and brought it up and kissed it.

“I think Violent Victor is right,” she said with a mischievous grin. “No judge or jury would convict Thomas. And Gertrude and Victor can fix him. What’s more, even though I’m just a physical therapist at a VA hospital, I sort of feel I’m a member of the Armed Forces. So I owe Thomas a salute.”

The husband looked confused. I wasn’t. I knew what was coming. “What do you mean?” he muttered.

“Well, if anyone asks, I will swear that I gave Thomas my permission to look in our bedroom window.”

Well, what could you say? It took quite some time for her to calm the husband down. But she did it. She gave me a thumbs up sign as they left.

I went back and told the Chief and the Prosecutor that there was no more complaint – and that I would take Thomas home and get him in to treatment.

They asked me how I got the husband to drop the charges. I told them about Shannon saying she owed Thomas a salute – but I could tell they didn’t believe me. They probably thought I had threatened to kill Shannon and her husband. Like I said, I do have a bad reputation. There’s a series of photos of a Marine in the Nam assembling an ear necklace that’s still a big deal on the Internet. Well, he does look something like me. But, what the Chief and the Prosecutor were thinking didn’t really matter. It was over.

I wondered how many nights at the window Shannon had given Thomas. She had given me five of the most glorious nights of my life seven summers back. It was a secret, a holy secret, but if I were ever asked by a proper authority, I would solemnly swear those nights had saved my life.  

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Michelle Wallace
Curiouser and Curiouser
Response

The Looking Glass
By Cyndle Plaisted Rials
Inspiration Piece

Alice, headbanded child, cake girl,
don’t come around here
no more, confused from caterpillar smoke
and Jabberwock gibberish, your eyes no longer bright.
The difference between Alice and me
is that I do not wish for some semblance
of sense and I am not terrified
of however these mad creatures speak to me.
I’ll sing whatever song they give me.

♠ ♥ ♣ ♦

What did a pile of cards say, Tarot or no?
Hard to read much into star charts,
personality classifications based on
a cluster of days that fall around each other.
Maybe in this modern day of careful diagnosis
and weird mysticism,
we could begin to incorporate personality
disorders in each grouping.

♠ ♥ ♣ ♦

…..January: Obsessive-compulsive
……….(get up, scrape car, go to work, work, scrape car, sleep, repeat)

…..April: Bipolar
……….(rain, sunshine, depressingly cold, manically warm—
……….impossible)

…..September: Dissociative Identity Disorder
……….(crisp, dry, warm, chill, gray, sunny, damp)

Alice had ADD, whatever month she
…..was born in.

♠ ♥ ♣ ♦

What was Carroll’s tic, the hiccup, the teacup
in his sanity? Artists are allowed
their eccentricities, they are charming,
some of them. On the day I wrote
I received a carte blanche, license to enact
all kinds of nonsense on the page, in life.
Of all the cards to pick among diamonds, hearts,
everything, I chose that blank document
with no guaranteed fortune attached.

♠ ♥ ♣ ♦

Alice may have been a little brave, heading down the hole for the sake of catching up with a perfect white thing.
And then the cakes and potions. All for the sake of transformation. Eat me. Drink me. Not unlike Take this and
eat ye all of it. Some kind of hallucinogenic Pilgrim’s Progress. Or do I fit your measurements now? Now?

♠ ♥ ♣ ♦

In the Parlor:
Pick a card, any card, but don’t get the
Old Maid, no one wants that, bad queen
of Spades also worth 13 unlucky points
in the game of Hearts. You may win
if you take your tricks empty, if you sneak that bad
queen in on somebody— and then they curse you.
But you look across the table into their eyes
and know you’re already cursed—
if all that courtly love stuff is true
you won’t be sleeping for weeks or eating
or looking lovely. In medieval times,
love made people ugly.

♠ ♥ ♣ ♦

Everyday, see small things
to follow, the contradictory confusing things:

…………………………You have to run fast to stay in one place
…………………………and even faster if you want to get somewhere.

Backwards is forwards and the words cycle
in different order, depending who you ask.

♠ ♥ ♣ ♦

Let the Mad Hatters and March Hares
attempt to pull me into some musical chairs
tea party— I am reaching past a
Caucus Race for something stranger
and more real than what Alice
found on either side of the looking
glass. The point is not to look
only at your self, but to see
someone else.

Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Tony Anthony
Response

Dots…
By Robert Haydon Jones
Inspiration Piece

We all have a nifty built-in alarm that goes off when someone we can’t see is looking at us, right? Usually it’s no big deal. The alarm is a remnant from long ago when we were prey animals. So, Jimmy O’Hara was not alarmed when he felt the hidden eyes on him as he took his regular twilight stroll at the Dog Park, a 30-acre remnant of a mid 19th century estate his rich Connecticut home town had acquired 20 years back.

Jimmy O’Hara had gotten to middle-age against very heavy odds through amazing good luck and because early on he had made a conscious decision to honor his intuitions. He made this choice when he was 12 in the extremely unpleasant aftermath of being drugged and raped by a man Jimmy’s inner voice had warned him not to trust.

So even though this was the Dog Park, after another minute of feeling the eyes on him and his alarm clanging steadily, Jimmy decided this could be the edge of some sort of trouble. Someone he couldn’t see had been on him for way too long.

He started a quick scan: Dogs and their walkers, a few skylarking children, a handful of bird watchers and some old people on benches. Nothing. But…

One of the neat things about our nifty, built-in, “hidden eyes on me” alarm is that often you can follow that interior beam on out and track right on to the Looker. (If you haven’t done this yourself, I urge you to try next time you feel the eyes.) O’Hara knew how to do it – he did it straight out of the gate — the problem was he was denying the Looker he had locked on.

Then he came to his senses and swiveled back to the Looker he had passed over. About 70 meters ahead, seated on a bench at the crest of the path up the hill he was walking…an old woman…her face slightly shrouded by a wide-brimmed hat, holding something dark and glittery in her lap – a gun? Hard to tell – it seemed wrong size – old woman, a glimpse of snow white hair – Jimmy was assessing, assessing, when her eyes came straight up and met his. She was the Looker all right. She nodded confirmation and Jimmy’s “Big Trouble” gong went BONG! BONG! BONG!

The old woman had been a ripe, worn, woman approaching the outer edge of her beauty when Jimmy O’Hara had last seen her forty years back.  She was maybe 18 or 20 years older than Jimmy. They had quite a lot of history together – but Jimmy was totally surprised she had sought him out.

As he came up to her, she said, ” It isn’t fair you look this good, Jimmy – I was hoping if you weren’t dead, you would look like Dorian Grey – but you look good – I’ll bet you’re killing more ladies than ever.”

“Not really, Greta,” Jimmy said. He was looking at her hands. What was she holding? “In fact, I’m a happily married man – with oodles of kids and grandkids. I’m a writer.  I don’t drink or drug. I drive a Mercedes. I sing in a church choir.”

“I know all that Jimmy”, Greta said. “A 2010 S550 Mercedes. 7 Children. 11 Grandchildren from 2 wives. I knew all that before I left London to see you. Quite a smug, self-satisfied life… it isn’t fair you aren’t dead or in prison or hospital or suffering some how – you have a lot to answer for.”

Adrenalin spurted warm and wild through Jimmy. The question was: Is it a gun in her lap? If it was a gun, the questions were: Could he get her before she fired? Or could he run and escape any bullets? He was surprised and annoyed that he had an overwhelming urge to jump her. What the fuck was her deal anyway?

Greta’s husband, Andre, had been O’Hara’s boss, mentor and idol – after Jimmy was hired straight out of college as a junior writer-producer at the hottest small advertising agency in New York.

Andre was 25 years Jimmy’s senior –a Basque from San Sebastian, schooled in Paris, the black sheep of an Import Export dynasty – living large in NYC as a Creative VP for maybe the most famous ad agency ever. He was brilliant, ruthless, ambitious, hard drinking, witty, a compulsive, incessant womanizer. Jimmy adored him.

They worked and partied like a Batman & Robin twosome for a rhapsodic year – the best year of Jimmy O’Hara’s 22. They won all the big awards. Clients chased them – squads of women chased them. It was good. Then it was bad. Jimmy won awards – Andre didn’t.

It unraveled from there. The day after Jimmy won the Cleo for best TV spot of the year, a secretary in HR warned him that Andre had asked for approval to fire him. “Too much ego to be a team player.”

Jimmy went into icy-cold mode. The next day he took a job at a big agency that had been pursuing him for months. The salary was 6 times what he was making. He gave Andre two weeks notice and said he was really sorry – but hoped Andre would understand and they could stay close.

They did stay close. Jimmy made sure of it. He and his squeeze of the moment saw Andre and his wife, Greta, often — for drinks and dinner – and they went together to theatre and parties.

Greta was from London, a Polish Jew, who had escaped the SS as a child on literally the last train out of Warsaw.  She looked like a gypsy. She had a BBC accent and was very bright and very sad. Andre treated her horribly. He had stopped running around and had fallen hard for a famous, very young, Swedish model. He had set her up as his mistress in a duplex in the 70’s off Park Avenue.

Andre was away with his model when Jimmy took Greta in Andre’s bedroom. To his surprise, Greta behaved as if she had never had good sex before. She told Jimmy she loved him – like girls did then after you had sex with them. But Greta was no girl, she was a woman – her older foreign body had started to go – in fact, that stirred him.

Jimmy spun it out icy cold. She bought him expensive things. She said she loved him, it had never been like this. The standard stuff that women said in those days. He was dating two young beauties but he made sure he kept Greta on the string. He wanted Andre to find out…but he spun it out – to grind it in maybe – and then suddenly he didn’t want it any more. It repelled him. He stopped. He did not return her calls.

Two months later, Jimmy called to invite Andre to the Giants game. She answered. He asked to speak to her husband. “Jimmy,” she said, “my husband is dead.

Greta said Andre had died a week before. They had argued. Greta had confronted Andre’s mistress. The young model had promised Greta she would stop seeing Andre – she agreed he was much too old for her.

Andre was enraged. He bolted into the bathroom with a bottle of Pernod and locked the door. She knocked and banged but no response. 3 hours later, Greta called 911. It was too late. Andre had gulped 40 Quaaludes and chugged the Pernod. There was no note.

Sorrowful, leaden, days followed. Greta prepared to return to England. Jimmy tried to give her support. But he had no heart for it. The night before she left, they tried sex, but it was no good, they stopped almost right away and lay in stark silence. He had not seen her since.

Now Greta was an old woman with a furrowed face and snow-white hair. There was a glitter in her eyes Jimmy didn’t like. What was it she was holding?

“I lied to you, you bastard”, she said.

“Andre knew about us — that’s why he killed himself. I told him all about us. I told him I loved you more than I had ever loved anyone — that you gave me sex I had never even dreamed of. I hated him with that girl but I wanted you more than I hated him. I figured he would leave and then you would come.”

O’Hara felt like he had been kicked in the stomach. “No”, he groaned.

“Yes” she said loudly. “Yes! He loved you too. You got us both, you bastard.”

“No”, O’Hara said again – he was bent over like he was trying to get his wind.

He had done something terrible, no question. Like she said – a double terrible, even though he had stopped because it felt wrong. It was way too late by then.

Greta stood up. She was holding a small photo in a black metal frame. She handed it to O’Hara. “That’s you and me, Jimmy, at the Oak Bar – Andre took it. Did you ever see a woman look so happy?”

Greta walked past him toward the parking lot.

“Keep it to remember us by”, she said, not looking back. “You got us both. See how that plays for you the next time you sing in church.”

Jimmy watched her down the path and into a limousine. Then she was gone.

When Jimmy got home he showed the photo to his wife and told her the story. She said the woman looked very exotic – and very, very happy. And that he looked mighty happy too.

“God, Anne, he said, “I did a bad, cold wrong – I’m horrified but it was so long ago; I’m a different person; it’s hard for me to connect the dots.”

“Well, Jimmy”, she said, “Maybe there are no dots to connect.”

“Thanks for that, pretty lady,” he said. “You know, I’ve been thinking. Andre was a Basque, who could never keep quiet – and a terrific writer. It just doesn’t figure he didn’t leave a note.”

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Rosemary Luckett
Snow Says
Response

Never Written Poems
By Dale Leffler
Inspiration Piece

Never written poems runaway
like playful Samoyed dogs in a winters’ storm.
Even if you find them, you can’t really see them
or make them come.

Black eyes and pink noses covered by curled tails
circled together for warmth and protection against angelic snows
with no beginning and no end.

So, in doing the walk, seeking white upon white
and corralling the past back in to house
merely ensures the walker will survive,
not the poet nor the never written poems.

For, in the house, these cold crusted words melt and run away like damp dark puddles huddled on the floor, from snow covered boots,
reflecting burning embers of a dying fire.

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Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

La Cucina
By Tim O’Kane
Inspiration Piece

Most afternoons, sunlight reflecting off the bay leaves
a dappled, mottled field of saffron
oscillating across the kitchen’s cinnamon
ceiling; like water spilling over mustard
pebbles. Rosemary thought the effect good chi – little
enough she knew of it – but she clove serenely,
almost religiously, to the pap of pop culture parsley.
Chop, chop, chop. Ginger
broke the spell; “We’re almost out of thyme.”
“How can we be out of thyme?”
“I didn’t say we were out of thyme.
I said we were almost out of thyme.”
Chop, chop, chop. “Well. Send Basil
to the market for more and also some coriander
and a winter squash; perhaps a calabaza or butternut.” Meg,
who learnt to spell on twitter and always tried to curry
favor with Rosemary and Ginger,
stuck her head in the kitchen and said, “AcornMeg can i cum in
@BabyRosemary?? i hv a msg
4 @GilligansGinger” Rosemary picked up a large knife. “Get out you beggar – lice-
ridden, grammatic, syntactic catastrophe! Get out before I pepper
your ass!” “AcornMeg 4Q! Tworld! Listn 2 big star rag on
lil ol me. She a pip, a prik, and
GKWE! 86!!! (_x_) #smh ::poof::” As the door slammed, Rosemary
smiled, “Tell Basil to pick up some Mace.”
Chop, chop, chop. “In case that bitch comes back. And thyme.”
Chop, chop, chop. Ginger looked up. “Very sage.”
Chop, chop, chop. “By the way, we are now out of thyme.”

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Sherry Cogan
Inspiration Piece

Untitled
By Teri Mason Riffle
Response

I am tired…
not at all inspired
I have no time
or right frame of mind

Monotony…
monochrome
monotone

I am surrounded by people
yet I feel alone

I close my eyes and sigh

A pale, peaceful moon rises before me
its face veiled in a crystalline cloud
I watch as it breaks free
of the icy shroud
and I bask
its effervescent glow

I awaken on the sea…
arched red rocks surround and soar
Gentle waves carry me
to an unknown shore
and I ask
myself what I already know

Tranquility…
transformation
transfiguration

I am surrounded by no one
and I feel at home

I close my eyes and smile

Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.