That’s right. I used “monotreme” in a sentence. While this is a logical segue into a discussion revolving around cloacas (which I like to call “cloaca orbits”), we’ll forgo all of that and instead move onto the heart of the matter, which is the latest issue.

(Some of you still have no idea what I’m talking about. I know Eileen doesn’t.)

Anyway, this month we’ve got an issue full of the sort of family fun you don’t want to invite your entire family over to enjoy. So you enjoy it, by yourself, in that closet you’ve got set aside for just such a purpose, the one with the pillows and the flashlight and the wi-fi access and the half-eaten box of fudge rounds. You know the place.

This month we present to you a confusing hodgepodge of humor, consisting of poems that read like prose and more non-fiction than you’re probably used to. The work of four poets, five writers, a cartoonist, and some other people not worth mentioning, are all compiled here for your enjoyment.

No Defenestrati this month. Don’t cry, they’ll be back next month. They’re on Spring Break.

—Andrew Kaye, editor-in-chief

or total body tattoos
showing everywhere
there’d been bare skin;
or big bad clodhoppers;

or high-healed black boots -
I tried not to stand out
too much by standing to
clap in the hip Hollywood

SRO bookstore, when the
crowd rose in unison
as if we were in a
stadium or concert hall

to cheer the speakers
who in reality were
rock ‘n roll stars from
the ’80′s band Primus and

Guided by Voices, here
gone literary to pitch
their debut novels, which
judging by what was

read outloud batted five
hundred, the first excellent
- funny, interesting,
universally appealing -

except for too many
fart, piss, shit and zit
jokes and references
to all manner of drugs

entering the body by
every conceivable route
and cavity – while the
second struck out, no

doubt, no way Artificial
Light would’ve ever
landed a publisher
if Z were not a

CD-selling celeb
though in all honesty
I’d never heard of either
pop group before.

Both men (actually
one was just a boy)
dwelt obsessively
on death, which each

obviously felt was
both very cool
to write about and
very cool of Kurt

to have done, but
something that was
not on the horizon
for themselves.

It was an extremely
hot night in Los Angeles
with the electric grid
gone out earlier that

afternoon (Greek lunch
in the chic Larchmont
District), so no one was
all that surprised

when halfway through
the questions and answers
session (by far the cutest
girl in the middle front row

breathlessly asked X
where he’d found such
a beautiful shirt and
what his necklace meant?)

the A/C went down and
it got awfully warm as
a Skylight clerk tried
to made light of it until

presto, the owner emerged
with candles that he
lit to make it less dark
and even a bit romantic,

imploring the audience
to take care since his
precious hardbacks were
extremely flammable.

Some of the less happy
campers decided to
pass on the rest of the
evening — it’s still not

certain exactly what
happened to the three
teeny boppers that
made them scream -

and rushed the exit,
which they soon
found was locked,
requiring the power

to go on before the door’d
open –or at least that’s
what the management
claimed, although a

woman who said she
was a safety technician
shouted out that was
a pure ruse (b*** s***)

used to assure that
nobody sneaked out
without paying for
merchandise, since

the normal security
system’s invisible
eye device obviously
was on the fritz.

To make a long story
short, after the riot (really
no big deal, just a few
muscle-shirted goateed

guys in fedoras throwing
chairs ’til the storefront
window broke), the folks
who stayed had the time

of our lives, all for
one and one for all,
swaying alongside
the sexy rockers who

by now’d pulled their
acoustic guitars from
the cases, preparing
to strum old favorites,

and we whooped out
almost a play list from
Bill Graham’s Winterland
days, and I sang right along…

“Rat in a drain ditch,
caught on a limb, you
know better but I know
him. Like I told you,
what I said, steal your
face right off your head…”

til the juice came
back on, and all the gang

remaining there hugged,
leaving at least one geezer
Deadhead and another
Jerry may he RIP, ecstatic.

————

Gerard Sarnat splits time between his San Francisco Bay Area forest home and Southern California’s beaches, where he and his wife care for their first grandson. Gerry is a father of three, physician to the disenfranchised, past CEO and Stanford professor, and virginal writer ’til the recent tender age of sixty-two. He has been published or is forthcoming in EZAAPP, The Hiss Quarterly, Pens on Fire, Poets Against War, Thieves Jargon, Underground Voices, Flutter, Jack, Atavar, Wilderness House Review, Aha!Poetry, Spindle, Black Zinnias,The Furnace Review, and Stonetable Review among others. “Just Like the Jones’,” about his experience caring for Jonestown survivors, was solicited by The Jonestown Annual Report and will appear later this year. Gerry is currently working on an epic prose poem, “The Homeless Chronicles.” He has been accepted into a four person writers’ cooperative by The California Institute of Arts and Letters; Pessoa Press plans to publish his first book.

One cow, then another, ignites in the March sun, then stands in the long shadows and crops hay. Death does not level all: if you covered the earth with pyramids whose tips all reached the same height, then somehow managed to put you hand on all of them at once, they would not feel even. In space, no one can hear you scream, and if anyone could, all the helium would make your voice sound funny.

 

Short-winged Mold Beetle

Just because your shadow is longer doesn’t mean your stature has grown. I could tell by the way she was dressed that she was very modest and that she was wearing a pink bra. People are one thing, but when the refrigerator changes tone, you need to listen.

————

Mark wants you folks to know that Otoliths will be bringing out a book titled 80 Beetles, which will be a collection of, guess what, these beetle poems.

There’s nothing here I want to buy tonight
–Lois Lane‘s alright, because Superman
is bound to show up, but I was hoping
to do better: Justice League, Green Lantern,
Blackhawk, Metal Men, Sea Devils, Hawkman.
But everyone has beaten me to them.
They’re evil, I think. They’re selfish. They’re out
for themselves and have bought everything up.
Fooey. So I leave for the Woolworth’s down
at the end of the open-air mall. They

sell comics there, like Tarzan of the Apes,
Dr. Solar, Magnus, Robot Fighter,
and Boris Karloff’s Tales of Mystery.
They’ll do in a pinch, and I’m squeezed by greed.
But I find nothing there except Disney
comics and other funny-animal
books and I’m too big for those–I’m almost
ten years old. I could go across the street
and see if they have comic books, but it’s
a four-lane highway, I’m small for my age,
and I’m not sure if I can cross quickly
enough. I’m not the Flash or Superman.
But I want what I want or else I’ll spend
a boring weekend at home. So I go

and I wait until there’s no traffic one
way. Then I cross to the center lane, which
is the turning lane, and wait for the cars
and trucks and buses and motorcycles
to trap themselves behind the traffic light
at the intersection of South Cobb and
Pat Mell drives. Then I cross over and go
into the drug store there and quickly find
–I can sense these things–the magazine racks.
The selection here is even worse, and
there’s the same Lois Lane I left behind
at the Rex-All Drug Store, but I need her
–she’s all I’ve got tonight. There’s no one else
to have. It’s funny how you fall in love
with all that’s left when there are no options.

We’ll eat out again next Friday. By then
there will surely be new comics but I
just can’t wait. I’ll pass the night with Lois
and, tomorrow, re-read some old favorites
and pretend they’re new. I’m in the third grade
but I’m already afraid of dying,
especially if it means that I’ll miss
the second half of a continued story
–I’ve got to be around to buy next month’s
Action and see how Superman escapes
a kryptonite trap. Not that he won’t–good
always wins, at least in comic books and
the Bible, and that’s good enough for me,
even though I’m none too good myself and
probably won’t go to Heaven if death
comes for me anytime soon. But I need
to know how he does it. I hate evil,
especially when it buys my heroes
out from under me. Still, nobody knew

to save the good reads for a little boy
from Marietta. And for all I know
some kid was hoping for this Lois Lane,
the last Lois on the rack. I almost
put her back but think, People are greedy
or mean or rob and murder because they’re
lonely. I’m lonely, too, but fighting it,
and if I can’t have what I want then I’ll
take what I can get and be satisfied.
One day, maybe when I’m old, or at least
mature, I won’t want anything at all
but what I can make myself, but by then

it’ll be too late to be so selfless,
unless I’m Hell-bent on seeing Heaven.
The thing is that I want a good story
and pictures that help to tell it and dreams
about it afterward, as if it was
written for me and I wrote it myself.

————

I’ve had poetry published in many journals, including Ascent, South Carolina Review, Ohio Journal, and Florida Review. I’ve authored two books of poetry: Buffalo Nickel (BrickHouse Press, 2004), and The Weight of the World (BrickHouse, 2006). My third book, The Story of My Lives, will be published later this year by BrickHouse Press. I’ve taught university English in the US, China, and the Palestinian West Bank.

On homeward roads the granite houses march,
their roofs pulled low against the lash of rain,
their windows streaming sea-spray, rustic arch
and cobbled path fence-deep in mud again.
They’re drunk. The town is famed for drunken homes,
its pavements wet with whiskey and its gutters
deep in rum. Each tilted building roams
the wine-dark streets some happy hours, then sputters
oaths of sober dryness soon to come.
Then drunken pubs, with brandy-buckled knees,
spin, reel, and stagger on the waving shore,
shout filthy welcomes to the sea, and slump
to sleep in hollows under dripping trees.
All dream of beer. All wake demanding more.

Slurp!

The old chains hang above the stagnant moat,
where ancient creatures gothically float
with graveyard rags and bones caught in their teeth.
Beheaded statues roam the blasted heath.

“No, no!” the wise declare. “The time is past
when people could be made to stand aghast
at tales of howling ghosts and wizard wands,
and awful things that dine on feet and hands!”

The creature enters by the kitchen door
and eats the fools who say it feeds no more.

————

Robert Connal lives in Scandinavia with a beard, a forged Estonian passport, and twenty-three cats. He has often said that he was born in the wrong century. Everyone who knows him agrees that he belongs in any century but theirs.

Books written by numerous acclaimed atheists have been must reads for anyone who thinks the idea of God is just a bunch of hooey. With their success, what was once simple non-belief has turned into the celebration of human beings becoming merely worm food after death, and the mocking of Christians as being stupid. And with this, Internet bloggers who once might have been afraid to write about their religious beliefs now see the success of Dawkins and the rest and take note that atheism is the fashion. Atheism is cool, man. And you might soon see covers of Vanity Fair and GQ with photos of celebrities standing next to God while looking the other way as if nothing’s there. Maybe it’ll be one celeb goes this way, the other celeb goes that way, and God’s there saying, “Whadda ya want from me?”

Dawkins (NOT the former Family Feud host, frequent Match Game panelist and star of Hogan’s Heroes, as I once thought – see, that’s Richard DAWSON), whose book “The God Delusion” has sold 1.5 million copies in English, is even beginning a tour of the Bible Belt and the Midwest to spread the Good News of no supreme being in the house. Atheists everywhere will gather, get some popcorn, maybe a program (You can €˜t tell one non-believer from the other without a program), all to hear Dawkins speak and to worship nothing but the joy and intellectual superiority of being an atheist. Those who have long loved to make fun of preachers and televangelists are now following their own head muckety-muck, who himself is not only the atheist leader, but also thinks he can actually convert Christian believers. Such is the nature of the atheist chic: Darth Vader to the Christians’ Luke Skywalker. Mr. Dawkins is here to put an end to faith as we know it! Uh-oh, Christians! Better wax up them crosses and call Han Solo for help!

These books label Christianity, and religion in general, as not only stupid, but dangerous. In “God is Not Great,” Christopher Hitchens asks, “”How can we ever know how many children had their psychological and physical lives irreparably maimed by the compulsory inculcation of faith?” My guess is that we can’t, at least not until we’re done tallying the psychological harm caused by video games and exposure to homosexuals. Like any group, the atheist chic have the children in mind, of course.

Dawkins, ever the scientist, conducted a morality poll for his book, and writes that atheists are just as moral, perhaps even more so, than Christians. This gives atheists intellectual and moral superiority to bask in as they sip wine not drawn from the blood of Christ, and cross themselves with all sorts of incorrect mockery. This morality thing seems to be true in Dawkins’ own case, as, like more than a few Jesus freaks, he is on his third wife. Nonetheless, I find it hard to believe that someone who married one of Dr. Who’s sidekicks can make anyone stop believing in God. Apparently, part of being atheist chic is landing a bride from the garbage years of some British Sci-Fi program. I think Hitchens himself is engaged to Holly, the on-board computer from Red Dwarf.

Brendan O’Neill referred to “New atheism” as “the surprise political hit of 2007.” (Just wait until 2012 when there’s an atheist chic presidential candidate.) Unlike the old atheists, such as Darwin and Marx, O’Neill says, the new atheist’s “distaste for anything that looks or sounds vaguely religious exposes the shallow anti-intellectualism of their new atheism…Their opposition to religion is (driven) by a dinner-party disdain and moral revulsion for the stupidity of the religious.”

The next dinner party you go to, do the sign of the cross and see who throws a stuffed mushroom or deviled egg at you. They certainly won’t let you play Cranium with the others, because Christians believe humans don’t have craniums.

Reviews of “The God Delusion” on Amazon.com are chockfull of anti-Christian sentiments. One reviewer wrote, “Following this book’s advice could help avert much of the religion-spawned violence we see throughout the world today.” Goodness gracious! The new atheism will help you fight terrorism! The same reviewer referred to the Books in the Bible as, “obnoxious propaganda pieces that reflect neither a decent moral code nor any semblance of historical accuracy.” You used to have to be a stoner in college to wax so eloquently about God, but stoner chic never took off, no matter how large the object you’d try to make a bong out of was.

In October, members of the Freedom From Religion Foundation (or Ffrf!!!) met in Madison, Wisconsin, of all places, to discuss that which they do not believe. A Boston Globe article quotes Bill O’Reilly, discussing the gathering in Wisconsin, as saying, “You expect those people to be communing with Satan.”

This is probably why atheism can be so chic. Well, no, you don’t, Bill. Because atheists don’t believe in God or Satan. I myself was twelve when I stopped equating atheism with devil worship. Grow up, Bill!

Blogger David Horton had something to say about Christians like O €˜Reilly. “Strange the mentality of religious believers who refer to atheism as a €˜religion.’” Horton doesn’t offer any examples to back this up himself. Is it the Satan worship thing? Christians, you have to understand: Satan equals religious; atheist equals not religious. You’ll never be Christian chic if you can’t keep those separate.

Atheism, however, has become rather ironic in that it’s indeed practically a religion now. Believers and non-believers alike are now violating the imaginarily-written amendment of the separation of church and state. Maybe the power atheists can cash in on the new atheism with tchotchkes mocking religious baubles; however, O’Reilly could be right. The third wheel here is Satanism. They may not like atheists horning in on their disrespecting God business. They’re very sensitive.

Horton, and the like, as the name calling atheist, however, cannot possibly match the absurdity of the victim atheist. Soon there will be anti-atheism discrimination suits filed. Just look at About.com‘s atheism blogger Austin Cline getting his panties in a bunch about Mitt Romney. Romney’s response to an anti-Mormon heckler last year included, “…the nation does need to have people of different faiths, but we need to have a person of faith lead the country.”

Cline, in response, takes on the role of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. of atheists, accusing Romney of “equally vile bigotry,” and saying that he’s “unwilling to accept irreligious atheists as equals.” If the religious are such fools, why do you want to be equals? An atheist would have to be pretty stupid to want to be equals with someone they already deem to be stupid. Is atheist chic all about the bully who just wants acceptance? Do atheists just want a hug and a Christian to say, “I understand. Let me tell you about our God.” Maybe then we can all hold hands and spin around until we do see Him.

Couple this with Richard Dawkins saying, “We have the €˜Out’ campaign. We do see an analogy with gay rights. There are a lot of people in the closet in America.” The next thing you know, punching an atheist will be a hate crime. These non-believers will soon want to get married and drink from the same fountains as us Christians. Go back to your country, atheists!

When you really think of it, I suppose Christians brought all this good ole atheism on themselves, what with our gay marriage bans and our “moral values.” The whole “atheism as religion” thing could very well be Christian backlash. When you keep referring to a “culture war,” and fighting about silly things like gay marriage, “the war on Christmas,” and a little sex on television, the other side will eventually get fed up and say, “Oh, yeah? Not only are you wrong, but your God ain’t real.”

Or maybe the non-religious finally want a little piece of the spiritual action. They want to be accepted, like those nice Scientologists, and Richard Dawkins is their L. Ron Hubbard. They want their own atheist holidays, their own brand of rock music, and maybe a little Davey and Goliath type cartoon in which Goliath says, “Gosh, Davey. I don’t know how you sleep at night thinking there’s a boogeyman under your bed and that you might die before you wake. Prayers are retarded and there’s no God, you stupid asshole. Now pick up my feces and let’s go play Halo.”

I have two best friends who are atheists. We’ve always gotten along fine because I couldn’t give a shit whether they burn in hell for eternity. One of them is kind of an atheist the way most people are Christians. No, he doesn’t believe in God, but don’t try to hand him any books or atheist brochures, or take him to your Godless meetings, because he’s not interested, thank you. The other actually handed me “The God Delusion,” like it was the new Harry Potter, and I thought: Why not just hand me a book titled ‘Mike, Your Mother is a Whore?’ And I left his atheist dinner party, but not before jotting down the recipe for those delicious deviled eggs from his Atheist Cookbook.

————

Michael Frissore is a writer; a humorist; a surrealist; a matador; a black ninja; a guitar god; a political independent; a voracious reader; a Chinese food enthusiast; a Marxist (Groucho); a Lennonist (John); a coffee drinker; a devoted husband, son, brother, and uncle; a loyal listener of The Opie and Anthony Show; a hoagie aficionado; an Arizonan, but still a New Englander at heart; a future peddler of the Swede movie series; the Philistine avenging devil of the sea; and just a sweet dude whose writing is published throughout the Internets and, magically, in print as well.

The Martian stones originally were kept from view because they compromise widely held beliefs of space and government. “Widely” here is an acronym of use. You may wonder how the original writing got carved on Huachuca walls. We all do, but it too is acronym, easy to understand if it bore likenesses to the ancient hand, but the likenesses were only in the mind of the viewer. Somebody has to hide this stuff. There is no need to act like that. We try our best.

They could have been hieroglyphs in tree grains, hidden messages in the erosion of hillsides and in the way leaves fall. None of this either has been conclusively revealed. Suffice it that even were they published, lacking media outcry nothing could have come. They were untitled, meaning, unsung.

So: the writings were passed off as fiction. I assure you this is the furthest from all truth. Even before CheesE Blocks was issued on the internet it occurred in quantities so slight as to be rejected by even little mag. Not to say that further efforts made in the startup manufacture of Blocks for public consumption at Farmer’s Markets and Flea Markets had any other referees than those consumers who bought the CheesE. Yes, or no, they did not comprehend. Understanding CheesE is not easy, but we’re glad to say the label did well. Collectors bought it to display in their private collections. These are untraceable today. This was only an apparent Swiss. Its holes implied a message as a kind of script but it was also an apparent hieroglyph. Not a good choice it turned out.

Two questions remained for our query. Who did translate the original? Who anywhere is competent to read Martian? This is such a problem that computer codes were broken, including the translation, or a version of it, we cannot be sure because it was stolen from NASA vaults where it was secretly kept. We don’t know who did this either. Why don’t we know so much? Perhaps it was an accident, which is more believable nonsense. Some drunk clerk copied the letters and snuck it out past inspectors, the work uncertifiably scribal by a penciled archivalist. Not. No. The observations like an ersatz jazz were probably added just before unconsciousness.

———–

AE Reiff’s secret clearance with NASA expired, but he was bound by their Nondeclaration Policy until the recent release of the Director upon the publication of the Man in Mars photos. While the existence of Mars writing on the Mars stones continues to be denied, government no longer feels threatened by the existence of penumbras captured on cheese. Go figure. Further discoveries will be issued as they become available on the author’s website, http://encouragementsforsuch.blogspot.com/. He sent poems into space on missions decades before the Beatles.

SHOULD I DISCUSS THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE?

Only a damned fool would deny there is something really strange going on in the Bermuda Triangle. Please don’t sugar-coat the events that have occurred in the Triangle, as this could damage your credibility big-time when one day your daughter learns the truth. Practically all commercial planes avoid the triangle these days as they have concluded that it’s simply not worth the risk. This is why when you fly to Europe they swing you way up north towards Canada and Iceland. Sure, it takes a couple hours longer than if you would just fly straight across the Atlantic, but everybody realizes this would be simply be too risky, and perhaps even deadly. So passengers and flight crews readily accept the longer routes in favor of safety.

Cruise ships also avoid the triangle, and this is why so many go to the Panama Canal to steer as far away from it as possible. Cruising through the Panama Canal is incredibly boring, as you have to go through a bunch of locks in which there is nothing to do accept watch water full up beside your boat. But understand that these cruise companies have to kill time somehow and this seems to be the preferred method of recent years. Once again, the alternative would be to cruise through the Triangle, and this is not appropriate for the faint of heart, so most readily accept the Panama diversion.

So if you see the Triangle discussed on TV it’s best to simply wave the finger at the television and mutter something to the effect of “Triangle Bad”. This will help to communicate there is something sinister going on there and that it’s best to avoid it all costs.

EXPLAINING THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN TO YOUR CHILD

There is no reason to scare your child with stories of this elusive beast, but no doubt she will come forward with questions at some point. If she should accidentally catch a glimpse of this hairy creature on television, I, as well as most Doctors at the American Society of Pediatrics, recommend that you make light of the Abominable Snowman and simply pretend that he is friendly and lovable plaything with an excellent sense of humor. Sure, someday she she’ll undoubtedly want to know the truth, but the longer you can keep this charade alive the better off your child will be.

WHAT ABOUT ROSWELL? AT WHAT AGE SHOULD I EXPLAIN THIS TO HER?

Your child must understand what really happened on that day in 1947, and it’s never to early to prepare him for the truth. I think the best way to start is at night to point out distant stars in the galaxy and then buy some model spaceships at the Wal-Mart. Then you can pretend that the spaceships are leaving the distant stars and then flying around in our atmosphere. This will get your child used to the idea that:

Yes – there are aliens from other worlds who fly in spaceships and,

Yes – they sometimes will fly around in our atmosphere and

Yes – sometimes things will go wrong and they will crash like they did in Roswell.

The whole concept will obviously be too overwhelming for your child to grasp, but it certainly won’t hurt to start laying the groundwork. We are so lucky to live during a time in which extraterrestrial life has finally been proven, and it’s only natural to want to share this information with your child. But don’t rush things, as your baby will come around in due course, as only the truly insane and those in institutions remain in denial about Roswell.

HOW SHOULD STONEHENGE BE ADDRESSED?

Probably not during the first few years, but don’t discount the possibility that she’ll catch a glimpse of the rock formation on television and look at you wide-eyed for an explanation. Nobody really knows how they did it, so don’t go feeding your daughter some cockamamie story about how you “think” it was done. Because the truth of the matter is that you just don’t know, do you?

Personally, I could care less “how” they did it, and am much more interested in “why” they did it. I mean, give me a break, they dragged those stones hundreds of miles just to stand them up on some field? Talk about having too much time on your hands! OK, I imagine it was pretty cool on the Summer Solstice to see the Sun and the shadow it casts like it did in the movie Indiana Jones, but was it really worth all that effort for just a few minutes of fun? And what if it was cloudy? So when I see Stonehenge on the television I point at my ear with my finger and make the classic twirling motion to indicate to my daughter that these Stonehenge creators were totally nuts. You certainly don’t want her joining some weird cult when she’s older (especially a group into rock formations) so the sooner you set her straight about these freaks the better off she’ll be.

SHOULD I TELL HER ABOUT THE BIG ASTEROID THAT IS GOING TO HIT THE EARTH IN 2018?

Absolutely not! While most now realize that this asteroid will likely end civilization as we know it, there is no reason to rob your child of the joys of childhood. Sure, we’re probably all going to get pulverized, but what if the calculations are off a bit and the thing misses us completely! Then all this worrying will have been for naught.

SUMMARY

Do not rely on the school system if you want your children to know what really is going on in the world today. I have touched on some of the biggies above, but truth be known, I really have only scratched the surface, and deep down I think you know it. Please join me next month as we’ll address Crop Circles, the Loch Ness Monster, and Nazca lines.

————

John Homans writes from South Florida, where the weather is very nice. When the weather is not great, he enjoys ribbing travelers to the area by saying things like “I see you brought the bad weather with you.” People really seem to enjoy this line and tend to gravitate towards him after hearing it. But deep down everyone knows that it is ridiculous to think someone can actually transport weather from one place to another, which makes the appeal of this line all the more fascinating.

I’d read, “tear the mask from error is to establish truth,” something a minor Enlightenment philosopher named Maurice Falconet pronounced, quoted in Peter Gay’s The Rise of Modern Paganism. Not a required book, but I was a procrastinator, and read a solid overview of the Enlightenment, the era named by Kant. I relished stray pieces of information, unable to link them except when drunk or on a caffeine high. No amount of Red Bull would push me through college. I hadn’t converted, I hadn’t made the switch to digital as Karen had. One could not remain an Erasmus in 2007.

What I most enjoyed was driving a cab, having the town’s streets memorized, firmed up in mental gridlock. It helped pay for my education, though I stopped attending classes. You might say I was in the horse latitudes, left without any wind to sail through life as Karen had. After five years of marriage, the social and intellectual gap had widened to the point that I felt diminished. So I simply took the bus to a town far away from her.

The best times I had living with her wasn’t actually in our house, sharing experiences as normal married couples, but driving a taxi around town. It supported me money-wise as well as giving me independent terrain all my own. l enjoyed taking fares to their destinations. I looked upon it as fate, each fare having a definite place they claimed, a goal, an accomplishment. It made my own struggle to achieve parity with Karen easier, at least for a short period. As for our marriage, she preferred the status quo, but I needed distance, maybe returning when I found success, i.e., money. Having a career was out of the question

Something about Falconet’s mask attracted me, maybe because I felt uglier than I really was, now peering into the bar’s mirror. The tavern was on the outskirts as I was. I’d tumbled downward: the mirror was severely cracked in two places. My broken images I compared with Karen’s looks, if not beautiful, certainly was above average. Attractive entailed being an attractor, that was plain as we walked down the sidewalk together. Too many male glances; I learned that hard fact as my self-esteem plummeted. The double-cracked mirror reflected Elephant Man, a movie I’d seen bitterly and self-destructively five times.

A man sat two stools away, looking at me in the busted mirror.

“We’re no angels,” the man spoke to me, still staring in the mirror. His name was Hank and he worked in the Building and Trades Local Union. “You hungry?”

I’d just enough money but after that, paraphrasing Nietzsche, sought zeroes. But I wasn’t too proud and would call Karen if I floundered.

“Yeah, I’m hungry,” I said, embarrassed to admit it. He moved over to me, stool to stool, tête-à-tête, French for just plain knocking heads together.

He asked me what I did for a living. That wasn’t bar talk unless it flitted naturally in inebriated streams of words. Maybe my ultra-serious expression gave me away as an old-fashioned bum.

“I can get you good pay for an indefinite length of time. Interested?”

I nodded and said, “I’ve no trade, no skills,” and Hank said that was fine because,

“On this job all you have to do is picket a house under construction.”

“What about the flak I’d get.”

“No problem. The guys aren’t working there now,” Hank said. “The man I hired before quit, out of the blue, just up and quit.” Hank bought me a couple of microbrews while he nursed scotch and water.

“Scared off maybe?” I asked. I saw Hank’s left hand, how a crooked red scar jigjagged through it.

“Did some picketing in the Big City and things got rough. Broken bottle did it.” Travis Tritt sang on the fifty-cent a play box, “Why’s the rich man busy dancing while the poor man has to pay.”

“Too radical for them maybe,” I said. My experience with synchronicity had always been striking, something I never missed. Philosophy hadn’t taught me that, but maybe my grandmother’s wisdom had, how she wrapped everything up as happening simultaneously, slurring time.

We split at midnight after Hank gave me his business card, the address of the hall clearly and boldly printed. I patted the card in my shirt pocket. I swayed and stumbled, making my way back to the motel, also on the outskirts. With Karen it had always been a house close to the central business district. The outskirts reminded me of softcore porn, there but not enough there. You always wanted more, the harder stuff, but I’d forsaken that, at least for the time being. I swatted a couple of cockroaches crawling across the bedspread
before I crept in between the cruddy sheets.

For $40 per day, I held a union sign ( “THIS IS A NON-UNION LABOR SITE” ). The quiet neighborhood spooked me at first. The foundation had been laid, and stacks of lumber were piled near a mound of dirt. Occasional passersby eyed me suspiciously. I drank strong coffee from an Aladdin thermos Hank had given to me. Maybe Hank wanted the union to flex some muscle, get coverage from local TV stations. I felt like Eugene V. Debs of the 21st century, which had most in common Paris Hilton, the blogosphere or the virtual world of Second Life. I was as out of step with the times as Thomas Aquinas would be if he lived now.

A truck rounded the block, three guys looking at me weirdly. I gulped down another cup of caffeine to buttress myself against what I saw a threat. The Dodge Ram cruised by again and again until it finally stopped. A tall, lanky guy stepped out, striding toward me.

“How’s it, bro? I’m Clu.” Not much bopping fists anymore, at least not on the TV shows I watched.

“Cold. Looks like rain,” I said, hating myself for cliche-talking. Out of fear I should have shown my aggression, letting Clu have it with some obtuse Ludwig Wittgenstein epigraph. Maybe that would’ve been like Kryptonite to a stranger wearing a Yankees cap. So foreign, philosophy, as I shifted my feet in loose dirt, wondering why I hadn’t tried a taxi job.

“Me and those two guys were going to get the floor in today, put up studs.”

“The local wants to shut this down. You’re non-union.” I shook as he spoke, my aversion to conflict strong.

“How much is Hank paying you? $30 a day?”

“$40.” I felt small, double digit wages for what, an up-and-coming philosophy teacher? I’d always shirked middle-class responsibility. Too insecure, basically too frightened, knowing I’d be overwhelmed at encouraging others to enter the mainstream bourgeois life. I preferred manual labor jobs. Quick, what was the opposite of philosophy? Driving cabs, no? Standing next to Clu, I realized I had no future as a philosophy instructor. Being a professor, that was as real to me as believing in God and knowing I’d be consciously aware of my sovereign self in heaven. I then wanted to give Clu a big friendly hug for my satori.

“That’s no kind of ends,” Clu said. I assumed “ends” meant money.

“What sort of ends are you talking about?” I asked.

“Maybe three Franklins a week.” I turned my neck, seeing Clu’s friends gawk and laugh.

“Who do I whack?” I asked. Nervousness translated into paranoia which led to humor. I’d read enough Kafka to realize that. “I watch ‘The Sopranos’.”

“I watch football. You’re fucking with me?” he asked, smiling.

“What do I really do?” I once heard a long-ago friend’s priest say the way of life was to live a holy life and go to heaven, but could all that be achieved in eight words?

“I give you three eightballs to sell, you know, Devil Dust,” Clu said, moving closer as if on a busy street. The only noise was a bus, and then the noon whistle.

“I don’t know anyone. I’m new here.” But I wanted to do it and expected Clu to make it easy for me. “Why ask a stranger like myself? I could be a nark.”

“Hank set you up because he’s a big-time dealer around here and wants to turn us into a nullity.”

Nullity: Latin root meaning none. I flashed upon the Cary Grant movie, “None But The Lonely,” its brooding darkness, how one had to chose mind-numbing work or crime. Odets’ screenplay showed a third way to live-fighting fascism.

“Oh.”

“You measure out the crystal by the quarter or gram.” Clu sounded more business-like than Hank. But, then, Clu wasn’t staring at me in a cracked mirror.

“What are eightballs?” I asked and Clu said they were three and one half grams. If you want to know the origins of nothingness, then consulting Sartre would be your man. If you wanted to be somebody, I wanted both essence and matter combined, then it was Leibniz’s monads. Questioning, Clu was my Socrates.

“Only I’d be giving them to you. Free,” Clu said.

“How can you trust me?” Clu’s old man had been a contractor before Hank had become a honcho.

“He slashed Hank with a bottle,” Clu said. “We’re non-union and to hell with phony politics.” Clu went to the truck. He came back, handing me the eightballs, in small, clear bags, plus a delicate scale, or “skies,” the arcane professionalism decreed.

“Hank has a fine recipe for meth, made lots of money,” Clu said. “The union job acts a cover for converting straights into methheads, enrolling people into the UFC.”

“What’s UFC?”

“United For Crank,” said Clu. “We just want to work this area, is all. Clu wants the who freaking state to himself.”

“Monopolies end up selling shoddier goods,” I said, my lips uncontrollably twisting into a wicked smile. Clu and company would cook, making good quality glass and I’d weigh and the sell them. It was opening another franchise; capitalism required expansion or death. We shook hands like business partners. The
quid pro quo: I had to quit going radical, so I ripped the sign up. Easy.

 ”Let’s get the highway rolling,” said Clu and gave me a ride to my motel room. Clu also gave me two names at the same bar as I’d sloshed in the previous night. No citizens remained these day, only consumers.

I turned on the FM station as I weighed it out. “I am the one. I am the chosen,” sang Lenny Kravitz.

“Confidence-building,” I said, sniffing now and then.

I weighed many bags, working precisely and neatly. That night, listening to an after-midnight, all-music
FM station, I saw car headlights turn off. A woman got out and opened the room next to mine. I quickly opened the door and introduced myself. Maggie told me she worked the swing shift at the only all-night, big chain restaurant in town. It was nearly 2 a.m.

“There’s still room for bacon and cheese hamburgers,” she said, asking with her tired eyes if she could visit me.

The paraphernalia was on the table and I’d no intention of trying to hide it.

“Try it, you’ll like it,” I said. Maggie told me she took Bennies to keep awake because sometimes the other
waitress failed to show. And she worked part-time at a convenience store nearby, too.

“A secret boozer. Uses makeup to hide her haggard look,” she said. We snorted and talked all night. “I declare my independence from the fool and the knave. I declare my independence from the coward and the
slave,” sang Len Chandler. I loved his triumphalism.

We finished a few bags and Maggie knocked the door of another motel room. A woman staggered out and
Maggie burst inside, telling her she had something to wake her up forever. We three snorted, then drank beers.

We tossed the empties hard against the wall, not caring about noise, just shooting the shit. Sunrise, we squinted in unison, laughing how our eyes forced up the sun. Then we got in Maggie’s car and zoomed to a bar she frequented.

I carried the eightballs in my zipped jacket pockets. The barflies shared the candy. I went to the bathroom, seeing the urinal’s harsh, yellow-stained porcelain flaming, making my piss gaudy as it ker-splashed. For days and nights, I couldn’t count the sunrises and sunsets, crank delivered its chrome and diamonds. We bounced around town, downtown and outskirts, people from one bar knowing others in homes, others in upscale bars, to homes secluded in forests to apartments with smooth Danish furniture. The future was ours, the past was the devil.

Maggie finally crashed, slept for a few hours, then drove to the restaurant hoping her long-time employment
there would pull her through the hole of not losing her job. The others scattered and gone, bodies whirling and spinning with platinum, disappearing into so-whatness. I sat alone in my room, touching the leftovers as it permeated my skin, still high. But what about Mr. Clu? How was it left? Did he want the money or the bags? And about Hank: Had Karen put him there, knowing entanglements would bring me down? I meant “down” as in getting over my head, not as crashing and burning. Karen like making certain I had a goal, though menial it was compared to hers. Had she followed me or had she sent private security to watch where I went? Getting even for dropping her? My every move and twitch? How would anyone keep tabs on the vorticism, the crooked-edged machine cubist images, that magazine, Blast. Blackwater surveillance
( “keep watch” ) could. Clu=clue? Clueless, me not him.

I walked to a store where they sold handguns and bought a twenty-two revolver, plus a box of bullets. It began to rain, hard and nasty, as I walked the outskirts. No money for a room, I needed and wanted to hitch back to Karen.

The basis for the paranoia may have been paranoid, like Roosevelt’s ” the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” But with me there wasn’t “we” anymore.

The rain pushed me down, deeper into the earth. I knew how to make the switch. I stood in a mud-soaked gully off the highway. I knew what to do with the gun.

THE END

———–

My mother read my first published poem, “Wrong Womb,” and told me never show it to my father. It could’ve changed my life if I had. I would’ve been CEO of a bigtime cloning company, replicating as many Buck Owens’s as possible. Instead, I’m stuck typing “Finnegans Wake” over and over. This ritual is destined to be greater than the invention of golf carts.

Dawn Corrigan
(The Human Formerly Known as “Smiley”)

————

Dawn Corrigan says: “My work has appeared recently or is forthcoming at Steel City Review, Insolent Rudder, Clapboard House, Wigleaf, and The Nervous Breakdown.”