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T M M OOOOO RRRRR PPPPP OOOOO RRRRR EEEEE V V IIIII EEEEE W W
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MM MM O O R R P P O O R R E V V I E W W
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H M M M O O RRRR PPPP O O RRRR EEE V V I EEE W W W
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M M O O R R P O O R R E V V I E WW WW
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E M M OOOOO R R P OOOOO R R EEEEE V IIIII EEEEE W W
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+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
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Volume #9 April 15th, 2002 Issue #2
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Established January, 1994 http://morpo.com/
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+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
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CONTENTS FOR VOLUME 9, ISSUE 2
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I Don't Know Her Last Name Either . . . . . . . Russ Bickerstaff
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For Julio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Michael Ansa
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canal street, eleven . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Luis E. Munoz
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Play the Enemy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ian Randall Wilson
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A POEM FOR DAPHNE, NO. 117 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Duane Locke
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Marbled Composition NOtebooks . . . . . . . . . . . Richard Fein
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Avatars Descending . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Glenn Osborn
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About the Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Authors
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+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
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+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
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Editor + Poetry Editor
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Robert Fulkerson The Morpo Staff Kris Kalil Fulkerson
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robert@morpo.com + kalil@morpo.com
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Associate Editor Fiction Editor
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Lori Abolafia J.D. Rummel
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lori@morpo.com rummel@morpo.com
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+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
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+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
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_The Morpo Review_. Volume 9, Issue 2. _The Morpo Review_ is published
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electronically on a quarterly basis. Reproduction of this magazine is
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permitted as long as the magazine is not sold and the entire text of the
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issue remains intact. Copyright 2002, The Morpo Review. _The Morpo
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Review_ is published in ASCII and World Wide Web formats.
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All literary and artistic works are Copyright 2002 by their respective
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authors and artists.
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ISSN 1532-5784
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+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
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+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
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I Don't Know Her Last Name Either
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by Russ Bickerstaff
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She showed me her turtles
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she showed me her frogs
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she filled me in on all the intimate details
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of the checkered history of the furniture in her apartment
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we played with the magnetic poetry she had made by hand
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we watched a fishing show that she'd taped off the Independent Film
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Channel
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while drinking scotch on the rocks
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it was around the time she started to list her high school
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achievements
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from years ago
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I went up to use the bathroom
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I couldn't find the light switch
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so I eased nature in the dark
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and I realized:
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I'm going to love her
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and it's not going to matter
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in the long run
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sometimes the best way to enjoy a good auto accident
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is to avoid it.
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+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
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For Julio
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by Michael Ansa
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The freshly scrubbed, pubescent-
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Looking
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Puerto-Rican boy who confesses love
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To me tonight on
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A crowded dance floor
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Doesn't know
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Anything
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His name is Julio and he is
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Twenty Two
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He calls me "beautiful" and likes
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"Older men"
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"Older, black men"
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I laugh and want to be kind to him
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When he asks for
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"Only a kiss"
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Strangely tonight,
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My grief is for him-
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Because he wears that hungry look
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Because he doesn't yet know
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This is not a place for love
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But a house of prayer
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Because he doesn't understand
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You must sometimes walk away
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Because he is me
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A thousand different nights ago-
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"I love you too."
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+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
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canal street, eleven
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by Luis E. Munoz
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the procession slips
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through the rain
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the sea of black umbrellas,
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a white dress guiding
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grandmothers and unwed nieces
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to the steeple, clouded
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his hand, malfunctioning,
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shielding his face
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from black soot
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and ash
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as they walk down
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canal street,
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unable to distinguish
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new york drops
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from his eyes or the rain
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+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
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Play the Enemy
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by Ian Randall Wilson
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1.
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Because Jimmy says so
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Five younger boys huddle
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fall chilled and planning,
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lines in the mud drawn by sharp sticks
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send Billy this way
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Kevin to cover our flank
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Robby on the point.
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We're behind my house
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near a scatter of trees,
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the shadowed woods beyond.
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Our breath jets out
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in plumes of steam.
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We are excited.
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We are scared.
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Jimmy is calm.
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We are executing maneuvers
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designed by von Clausewitz and Tsun Tsu,
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the names difficult to pronounce,
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classic runs of Army confrontation
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laid out in dusty books that Jimmy reads.
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We never lose.
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Because Jimmy says so
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Five warrior children
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charge the south slope
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up a shallow incline, sliding
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on the rotted cover
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of dead leaves and loamy earth.
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We weave through evergreens
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hurling pine cone grenades
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shout our Semper Fi.
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The opposition has no chance,
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the air blues with the pop
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and crack of cap rifles;
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Christmas presents for boys.
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No prisoners are taken.
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We never lose.
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Because Jimmy says so
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we build ice forts and a maze of trenches
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with cardboard overhangs
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that traverse the Feldman's sidewalk
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to end up at the Smith's.
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We take advantage
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of the terrain's natural cover--
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those are Jimmy's words--
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laying in supplies of high-piled hardened snowballs,
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and hot chocolate for drinking during truce.
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The air stings our cheeks red
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we wait for Jimmy's command.
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Then, from across the street
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with a shout and smash
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the battle begins.
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We hurl our snowball cannonades
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as fast as we can grab and toss
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high over the plow-heaped banks
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a white barrage flung at the Enemy beyond.
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Those brave boys who venture out
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in desperate dashes
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across the no-man's land of Aspen Ave
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are easy targets for Jimmy's sure-thrown hand.
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We never lose,
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until our parents call, Dinner.
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We never lose.
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2.
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His letter comes to me
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in the safety of my college dorm
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between classes
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with foliage raging into full color
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during sweater weather
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when the girls still show some leg.
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Here, I plan my strategies
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|
for bringing Mary to my bed.
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|
Here, I devise ways
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|
of answering the calculus tests.
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|
Here, I read the words
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of dead poets
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analyze their rhyme,
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|
examine their reason.
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|
His letter comes to me
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in the safety of my deferment
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|
behind the defense of bad knees
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and an uncle with a friend
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|
who knows another friend
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who put in the right word
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with a senator on the right committee
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with the right influence
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for the right amount
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at the right time.
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Jimmy doesn't have those friends.
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It's hot,
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he writes,
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so hot the air is weighted.
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The jungle smells like nothing
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he's known before.
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Sound is swallowed whole
|
|
yet a branch's crack
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|
gives away a position in a trigger flash.
|
|
He hasn't seen the Enemy, he says,
|
|
but three men in the squad were picked off
|
|
on patrol yesterday
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|
and another died
|
|
when he stepped on a mine;
|
|
a censor has blacked-out the details.
|
|
The strategies don't work, he says.
|
|
The information is always wrong,
|
|
Intelligence always gets it wrong,
|
|
and how can you pull a flanking maneuver
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|
in a jungle so thick
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|
it takes five minutes to hack away five feet.
|
|
The Enemy disappears.
|
|
New men arrive
|
|
old ones die,
|
|
others rotate out.
|
|
His feet swell
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|
from jungle fungus,
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|
he can smell himself.
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|
The strategies don't work, he says,
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|
he's just trying to stay alive.
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I don't believe in the war.
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|
I think the country is wrong,
|
|
I think Jimmy was wrong
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|
to go when the rest of us found ways
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|
to stay behind.
|
|
But I don't tell him this,
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|
I write about the high school game,
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|
some friends of ours
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|
that moved away,
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|
the woods behind the house.
|
|
My letter comes back marked deceased.
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|
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3.
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I have thought about him,
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|
less and less,
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|
until I see my sons
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behind the house.
|
|
At the instant the sun folds
|
|
and the outline of their shadows
|
|
run from the trees
|
|
Jimmy isn't dead.
|
|
His name isn't sandblasted
|
|
onto black granite
|
|
in a mall somewhere in Washington.
|
|
Where Jimmy is
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|
warrior children still run
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|
through phantom woods
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|
throwing pine cone grenades
|
|
making gun sounds with pointed sticks
|
|
rushing forward in frantic charges
|
|
to sweep aside their friends
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|
who this afternoon
|
|
must play the Enemy.
|
|
Where Jimmy is
|
|
the strategies work--
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|
the flanking maneuver,
|
|
the interlocking fields of fire,
|
|
the enfilade.
|
|
There is no friendly fire misdirected
|
|
gouging out dirt craters of rock and mangled bone
|
|
where the squad's men used to hide,
|
|
there are no dust-offs to ambush
|
|
there are no shit-covered pungi sticks
|
|
there are no hills to climb in pouring rain
|
|
where every wave of new men are repulsed
|
|
by tumbling tracer rounds,
|
|
casualties do not run 70%,
|
|
there are no sucking chest wounds,
|
|
there are no screams in triage,
|
|
no one cries for Jesus
|
|
or his mother,
|
|
no one worries about body counts,
|
|
or punching his ticket,
|
|
or short time,
|
|
or the coming Tet.
|
|
Jimmy doesn't die
|
|
in a firefight
|
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for a patch of ground
|
|
we win today
|
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and give back tomorrow.
|
|
Jimmy doesn't die
|
|
in a firefight
|
|
where the choppers can't get in
|
|
where the radio's down
|
|
where the Lieutenant is dead
|
|
no one's in command.
|
|
Jimmy doesn't die
|
|
by a single round
|
|
through the heart
|
|
that stands him up
|
|
like a heavy bag
|
|
before he slumps into the grass.
|
|
Where Jimmy is
|
|
there are only golden afternoons
|
|
where sunset holds off another few minutes
|
|
enough time for a last skirmish
|
|
a last battle among friends
|
|
a last game
|
|
because Jimmy says so.
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|
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+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|
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|
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A POEM FOR DAPHNE, NO. 117
|
|
by Duane Locke
|
|
|
|
Clouds,
|
|
So admired by the drugged, absinthed, syphilitic Baudelaire
|
|
Are still there,
|
|
High up, distant-vaporous,
|
|
To be loved
|
|
By women
|
|
Who spent most of their lives in kitchens or brothels.
|
|
This is what clouds are for, not rain,
|
|
To be
|
|
The only lovers of Baudelaire,
|
|
And the only lovers
|
|
Of these housewives who spent their lives in kitchens,
|
|
Or these whores who spend their lives in brothels.
|
|
|
|
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|
|
|
|
Marbled Composition Notebooks
|
|
by Richard Fein
|
|
|
|
Islands of white dot the two black hard covers.
|
|
Hardness, marbling, permanence.
|
|
Lasting words deserve being chiseled in marble,
|
|
the psalm of David, the to-be-or-not-to-be of the Bard, Lincoln's
|
|
timeless address,
|
|
would fit well on the heavy-thread-bound paper within.
|
|
Schoolchildren are wrongly assigned these notebooks,
|
|
for the pages are unforgiving of error.
|
|
These pages must be ripped from the binding,,
|
|
with the remaining scraps bookmarks
|
|
for every repented word, sentence, paragraph, or page.
|
|
Only certainties should be inscribed in such notebooks.
|
|
A looseleaf is more relaxed.
|
|
Its pages are already mutilated with trinities of holes.
|
|
On each page something new can be scribbled,
|
|
then with a click of the three metal rings
|
|
each page can be shuffled among previous pages.
|
|
Regretted sheets are slipped off from the rings leaving no trace.
|
|
Don't choose one over the other. Both books are needed.
|
|
First in a barely legible script, jot down all rambling
|
|
and slide the papers into the looseleaf.
|
|
Be patient. Add some sheets. Remove even more. Be patient.
|
|
Finally, carefully copy a few lines
|
|
from the precariously connected looseleaf papers,
|
|
a lifetime's distillation,
|
|
into the tightly threaded pages between the composition covers.
|
|
If the marbled musings are then thrown into the winds,
|
|
the few leaves they're inscribed on will not scatter.
|
|
|
|
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|
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|
|
Avatars Descending
|
|
by Glenn Osborn
|
|
|
|
|
|
When we came into the club that night--the night that Zinc reinvented
|
|
Avatars Descending--the place was already on fire. The opening band,
|
|
Timequest, had apparently outdone themselves, and the bubbling buzz as
|
|
we moved through the crowd with our instruments was not what we were
|
|
used to--it was warm and musical, but it wasn't about us.
|
|
|
|
We'd built our rep over five years on the road. We weren't the Rolling
|
|
Stones, but people in three or four states knew our music. When we
|
|
walked into a club, people cheered. But not tonight. Tonight people
|
|
just moved aside and kept talking as we pressed through. People seemed
|
|
to hardly notice us, in spite of the fact that we were an hour late.
|
|
|
|
The owner, Frankie, intercepted us about ten feet inside the door and
|
|
collared Lanny. Over the noise of the crowd I heard him say, "You're
|
|
the luckiest man on earth tonight." He pointed at the stage, where the
|
|
first band was almost done knocking down. "They blew this place away,
|
|
and when you didn't show, they blew it away again. If they didn't have
|
|
to leave for another gig, you'd be out the door right now, man. Go
|
|
ahead, you guys. Let's see if you can top that." Then he just walked
|
|
back behind the bar.
|
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|
|
It took us the usual half hour to set up and we could tell something
|
|
was different. Nobody seemed to care if we were there or not. They
|
|
were talking and dancing to the jukebox and ordering beers. Usually
|
|
there's a kind of lull while you're setting up and people seem
|
|
impatient. Tonight they didn't.
|
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|
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Neither did I. I was the reason we were late. I was the one who had
|
|
punched Zinc and bloodied his nose and I was the one who refused to
|
|
play that night until Zinc apologized to me for fucking around with my
|
|
girl Juice. You can't go fucking around with the chicks of other
|
|
bandmembers. Zinc knew that as well as anyone.
|
|
|
|
Well, he wouldn't do it. Wouldn't apologize. But then Juice came into
|
|
the room and told Zinc to leave, and she didn't say it very nicely.
|
|
This changed the complexion of things. After he left, Juice told me,
|
|
Look, honey, he was just flirting, and so was I. We're all friends,
|
|
and shit happens. You oughta drop it, Marion.
|
|
|
|
I hated it when she called me by my real name. What I did, though, was
|
|
pick up the case for the Roland and walk ahead of her out the door,
|
|
down the hallway of the hotel and out into a cold November night. I
|
|
decided to deal with the Juice situation later. As soon as I climbed
|
|
in the back of the van and shut the door, Lanny floored the fucker and
|
|
set me down hard.
|
|
|
|
When we were finished setting up, Chip put Frankie on a mic at the
|
|
mixing board and the guy seemed to have forgotten our tardiness. After
|
|
he spouted a list of upcoming bands, he said We're very glad tonight
|
|
to present a band you all know from their CDs on Record Records--and
|
|
here he started screaming our band name over and over--Elevator Music!
|
|
Elevator Music! Elevator... He didn't seem to comprehend the irony of
|
|
the name, which was only to be sneered.
|
|
|
|
Chris just cut him off with a cymbal crash and we were into the first
|
|
chorus of our most popular song, Elvira Madigan's Problem. I figured
|
|
about one percent of the people in the room knew who Elvira Madigan
|
|
was, but who gave a shit. The song was getting some air play in
|
|
Dayton, our home town, and East Lansing, Ann Arbor and Detroit. And
|
|
this was Toledo, gritty gateway to the sea. They knew us here.
|
|
|
|
But they didn't give a damn. You can tell when you're not going over
|
|
and that night you could smell it. Some people stood close by the
|
|
stage and watched--drunks and maybe the local music reporter--but we
|
|
had none of our usual crowd control.
|
|
|
|
We finished the song and Lanny plucked a few bottom notes, like he was
|
|
sending out an SOS. Then he took off the Fender and strapped on the
|
|
Gibson. It had a raunchier sound that he usually saved for the last
|
|
couple of songs. I flipped a few switches on the keyboard and bounced
|
|
out a couple of arpeggios to test the sound of the room. Chris rattled
|
|
through a series of reggae rim shots. Zinc just stood there, his
|
|
Stratocaster waving a small arc in time with some beat playing in his
|
|
mind.
|
|
|
|
We played dance numbers and we played ballads, and Zinc bled into the
|
|
mic. I almost felt some sympathy for the bastard. Yeah. The Devil.
|
|
|
|
When you've got a dead crowd in a club, the best thing to do is to
|
|
play some covers. You learn that fast on the road. So we hit everybody
|
|
from Curtis Mayfield to Talking Heads to Warren Zevon. At one point,
|
|
out of the blue, Chris tapped the first few slow beats and we were
|
|
into CSNY's Guinevere, for Christ's sake.
|
|
|
|
Playing three-minute pop songs, you burn through a lot of music real
|
|
fast. We'd only been on the stage half an hour when Lanny blew into
|
|
his mic his usual spiel about tipping the waiters and ordering another
|
|
round and that we'd be back in a few minutes. I watched Chris and
|
|
could tell he was ready to keep on playing until we had them under our
|
|
spell. The way it worked pretty much every night, that was what he had
|
|
in mind. But Lanny unstrapped and walked off the stage. The rest of us
|
|
followed quickly. The crowd couldn't have cared less.
|
|
|
|
Chris went to the bar and ordered a margarita. Lanny sulked over a
|
|
glass of water. Zinc and I walked out the back door and into the
|
|
blackness, now crossed at a sharp angle with blowing snow. I'd seen
|
|
Juice in the lobby and just waved. She understood.
|
|
|
|
Normally, Zinc doesn't say much. He even has a Bob Dylan attitude
|
|
about his music: It speaks for itself. He doesn't have to explain.
|
|
Lanny gets us organized, and we recognize him as the leader of the
|
|
band, but Zinc is our creative genius.
|
|
|
|
Choosing to speak a few syllables, he said to me, Bounce, stay loose.
|
|
|
|
That's all he said. Then he took off running across the parking lot. I
|
|
saw him crouch and slide like a base stealer onto a little drift, then
|
|
make a snow angel and laugh his ass off. I went back inside and looked
|
|
for Juice.
|
|
|
|
She was at the bar with Aim--Amy--Chip the sound man's lady and driver
|
|
of what we called the Groupie Van, a 1978 Chrysler sedan that looked
|
|
as if it had been on the set of a Mad Max movie. While Aim drove,
|
|
Juice kept the books and made arrangements. She decided where we'd
|
|
stop to eat and the motels we'd stay in. Sometimes they were joined by
|
|
a genuine groupie, for Zinc or for Chris.
|
|
|
|
I walked over to Juice and Aim and didn't know what to say. I felt
|
|
sheepish and guilty but still angry. Just to fill the silence I asked
|
|
Juice for a cigarette, then went back to the stage and stood behind
|
|
the Roland, watching the crowd, catching occasional looks and sending
|
|
back a honky tonk riff in exchange. Chris and Lanny and Zinc ambled on
|
|
together and I knew they'd come from the van and a line of coke.
|
|
|
|
Lanny started it off. Pluck, pluck, cluck, cluck. Funky Chicken. We
|
|
played a couple more covers. Van Morrison, Into the Mystic. Fats
|
|
Domino, Blueberry Hill. Steely Dan, Haitian Divorce. People began to
|
|
dance again. They forgot about Timequest and just boogied. That's what
|
|
they'd come there for and we were louder than the jukebox.
|
|
|
|
My left hand was sore and swollen. Zinc's nose looked broken and
|
|
streaks of purple and red were spreading under his eyes, but his hands
|
|
on the fret board were sure as the feet of a mountain climber, only
|
|
much faster. After a ballad break for Boz Skags's Pain of Love, from
|
|
"Slow Dancer," which brought out all the damaged romantics, Chris
|
|
tapped us into the first bar of our own Avatars Descending. Lanny
|
|
whomped out enough bass to cover the deficiency I felt in my left hand
|
|
and we caught each other's eyes and smiled. Zinc strode across the
|
|
stage like he always does on that song, which made the crowd push
|
|
toward the stage in mock belligerence.
|
|
|
|
Then Zinc did something totally out of character. Over Chris and
|
|
Lanny's continued steady beat and bottom, he stung out the first few
|
|
notes again of Avatars Descending. But like it was a hymn. Chip picked
|
|
it up with a snare ruffle and Lanny dropped in with what looked to
|
|
Chip, at the mixing board, like a boa constrictor undulating on top of
|
|
a parade of fenceposts.
|
|
|
|
All of us sing, so all of us had mics. Lanny looked at his as if it
|
|
were there to interview him. In the one beat he missed, Zinc shouted,
|
|
"G!" as if pulling a rabbit out of a hat.
|
|
|
|
Avatars Descending is in the key of E minor. It rumbles with blues
|
|
undertones through a lament about the death of leadership and descends
|
|
into an anarchic battle, just to prove the point. At the beginning, it
|
|
always gets people dancing and at the end it always makes them go for
|
|
another drink.
|
|
|
|
Before the echo of Zinc's demand had faded, I hit a 10-finger G Major,
|
|
held down the keys and stabbed the wah-wah peddle with my right foot.
|
|
Chris hit a couple of triplets and danced off into a ska shuffle that
|
|
Lanny knew instinctively to lope along on right behind the beat. The
|
|
moment was like people have reported in auto accidents or tornadoes;
|
|
time slows down and you can feel nanoseconds, see things happening as
|
|
if they were, ironically, moving slowly.
|
|
|
|
I could go on for an hours about those few seconds after Zinc shouted
|
|
"G!" but what's more interesting started with the smile on Zinc's face
|
|
the moment he saw what we had collectively done with his command.
|
|
|
|
Many musicians have said, and I'll confirm it, that music is better
|
|
than sex. When the band is in the groove, a Ferrari cranking on all
|
|
twelve cylinders, there is a palpable joy that spreads from player to
|
|
player and then from one dancer or listener to another and you can
|
|
literally see a wave of pleasure spread out over the room.
|
|
|
|
Zinc set off a tsunami that night. Some aural god--Pan, perhaps, or
|
|
the Pied Piper--spoke directly to his hands and bypassed his brain
|
|
entirely. From where I stood behind the Roland, I could see him
|
|
leaning into the crowd like a man trying to find his way in the dark.
|
|
But what came out of the amps and flowed out through the Marshal's and
|
|
into the room was like the snap of a whip.
|
|
|
|
Crack! And you could see every face in the room snap toward the stage.
|
|
Then Zinc proceeded to deconstruct Avatars Descending, playing it
|
|
backward and upside down. It was the same song we all knew, same song
|
|
the crowd knew, but no one had ever heard it before. Not like this.
|
|
|
|
He played like the avatars the song was about, like a cross between
|
|
Django Reinhardt and Robert Johnson...
|
|
|
|
...that crippled gypsy,
|
|
|
|
your deadly crossroads...
|
|
|
|
Same song, same lyric, but the burn Zinc put on it that night...it was
|
|
like a whole new song. Where he came up with switching to the key of
|
|
G, I don't know, but the effect was like spraying butane onto a
|
|
campfire. First, a deep, funky mist arose and then a hissing, the
|
|
vibrato he forced onto the strings of his guitar. Chris switched to
|
|
brushes and Lanny took a step back, plowing a deep furrow under Zinc's
|
|
lead. There was a button on the Roland, one of a hundred, right above
|
|
Calliope and just under Anthem that I couldn't read because of the
|
|
sweat in my eyes. I'd never hit it before. I thought it said Blood.
|
|
What the hell.
|
|
|
|
I played a vamp over the top of Zinc's solo. The synthesizer screamed
|
|
like a wild animal. Zinc turned only his head at me, his body still
|
|
leaning into the crowd. I could see in his eyes a question: Are you
|
|
following me? Will you follow me? I answered with a flattened seventh
|
|
that overrode his guitar for a moment then sank like a handkerchief
|
|
thrown onto the crest of a wave. Yes, is what it said.
|
|
|
|
No one knows, not even Zinc, probably, what he did with his pedals,
|
|
five or six of them, and his wah-wah bar and the volume controls on
|
|
his guitar. Blazing notes from outer space burst from the Marshals
|
|
like a field of asteroids.
|
|
|
|
Out on the dance floor, couples broke apart and groups of people
|
|
formed and danced toward the stage. Then the whole dance floor became
|
|
something like a single couple dancing. They weren't dancing with
|
|
themselves and they weren't dancing with one other person. They were
|
|
dancing with each and every person on the dance floor. They were
|
|
dancing with abandon. Even the shy girls and the nerdy guys came out.
|
|
It was ecstatic for the crowd and it was ecstatic for the band,
|
|
co-conspirators in the ecstasy of music.
|
|
|
|
Lanny was the first to rise above the stage. I watched his feet go
|
|
limp as if he were swimming, floating a foot or so over the jumble of
|
|
cables. Then all of us followed, trusting entirely the force that
|
|
lifted us, father music, mother harmony. Zinc shot forward and drifted
|
|
like a mad cloud over the dancers, and the whole place pushed beneath
|
|
him and began to move in synchronicity with our music. The barstools,
|
|
empty of people, gathered and bent themselves into shapes resembling
|
|
trophies. I saw Chris and his kit levitate, the drums rising to become
|
|
vibrating planets. And then the majesty of our music pulled me toward
|
|
the ceiling, gravity impotent. Looks on the faces of the dancers made
|
|
me think they might be penitents at a joyous, tearful shrine.
|
|
|
|
Zinc's final note, an A-flat seventh delivered from on high and
|
|
processed through his bank of effects, sounded like the scream of a
|
|
dying bull, an avatar descending. That note granted each of the
|
|
dancers an extra day of life and provided resolution to their lost
|
|
demands. It looked to me as if we had just panned a pie plate full of
|
|
twenty-four-carat gold, which I would gladly have hurled back into the
|
|
river just to have kept that feeling alive for another five seconds.
|
|
|
|
That night we treated them the way the wind treats a flag. When we
|
|
finished, they were spent, cruising numbly past the nirvana they'd
|
|
come there for, crashing onto the dance floor, smiling.
|
|
|
|
And when the music actually ended, hours later, I still had the Juice
|
|
situation to deal with. But on that night, after that delirious magic,
|
|
that proof that music is better than sex, Zinc could have my girl.
|
|
Hell, he could fuck my mother and I wouldn't care.
|
|
|
|
~~~
|
|
|
|
It was only a few months later, though, that the tensions overwhelmed
|
|
us all. I told Juice to take a hike and that left Aim alone in the
|
|
Chrysler, which infuriated Chip, and that, in turn, set up a
|
|
side-taking battle that left us all bloody. By mutual decision, we
|
|
called it quits. Another great band joined the parade of broken dreams
|
|
along the musical highway.
|
|
|
|
After Elevator Music broke up I used to see Zinc play now and then,
|
|
standing in for any band that needed a guitar. In fact I saw him only
|
|
a couple of months ago, outside the Social Security office. Said he
|
|
was on tour with a warm up band for Phish. I laughed. Phish doesn't do
|
|
warm up bands, I said. They just get out there and put on a show. What
|
|
the fuck are you talking about, Zinc?
|
|
|
|
It was a joke, Bounce. I don't play anymore.
|
|
|
|
I thought about that night when I punched him. I felt the weight of
|
|
that in what he had just said, but when he walked off without saying
|
|
another word, I thought, Jesus, can that be true?
|
|
|
|
If I'd had a guitar in my hands right then, I'd have thrown it at him
|
|
and yelled, Play this, you asshole! And it's impossible for me to
|
|
believe he wouldn't have picked it up the way any guitar addict would
|
|
and checked out the craftsmanship, the quality of the pegs, the
|
|
distance of the strings from the fretboard and that he wouldn't have
|
|
tested it, wouldn't have burst through one of his leads--maybe from
|
|
Avatars Descending. But I didn't have a guitar to throw and Zinc just
|
|
kept on walking.
|
|
|
|
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|
|
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|
|
|
|
about the authors
|
|
|
|
|
|
** Michael Ansa [ michaelansa@yahoo.com ]
|
|
|
|
Michael Ansa is a native of Ghana and a high school English teacher in
|
|
Boston. He also teaches Ashtanga Yoga and is in the process of
|
|
compiling a series of poems on immigration and spiritual/ cultural
|
|
displacement entitled, "The Year We Forgot." Two of Michael's poems
|
|
from this series can be seen in the January 2002 issue of
|
|
coffeepressjournal.com.
|
|
|
|
|
|
** Russ Bickerstaff [ staticstudio@emailaccount.com ]
|
|
|
|
Russ Bickerstaff is a performance poet based out of Milwaukee,
|
|
Wisconsin. He has been performing for 6 years. He is currently working
|
|
on a couple of novels that no one else knows about. He is also more or
|
|
less unemployed. There are exactly thirty teeth in his head. He has a
|
|
BA in psychology, which he received at the University of Wisconsin at
|
|
Milwaukee in July of 2000, shortly after identifying a few structures
|
|
in the dissected brain of a sheep. He has been engaged to be married
|
|
twice. In neither circumstance was he the one who popped the question.
|
|
|
|
|
|
** Richard Fein [ bardofbyte@aol.com ]
|
|
|
|
I have been published in many web and print journals. I'm considered
|
|
by most literary critics to be the greatest poet since Rod Mckuen and
|
|
Jewel. But the highlight of my life was when I was arrested in
|
|
communist East Germany for espionage because of an inflatable doll in
|
|
my possession. But that's another story.
|
|
|
|
|
|
** Duane Locke [ duanelocke@netzero.net ]
|
|
|
|
Duane Locke lives alone in a two-story decaying house in the sunny
|
|
Tampa slums. He lives isolated and estranged as an alien, not
|
|
understanding the customs, the costumes, the language (some form of
|
|
postmodern English) of his neighbors. The egregious ugliness of his
|
|
neighborhood has recently been mitigated by the esthetic efforts of
|
|
the police force who put bright orange and yellow posters on the posts
|
|
to advertise the location is a shopping mall for drugs. His alley is
|
|
the dumping ground for stolen cars. One advantage of living in this
|
|
neighborhood, if your car is stolen, you can step out in the back and
|
|
pick it up. Also, the burglars are afraid to come in on account of the
|
|
muggers.
|
|
|
|
|
|
** Luis E. Munoz [ lemunoz33@hotmail.com ]
|
|
|
|
Luis E. Munoz is an English literature junior at Arizona State
|
|
University outside Phoenix.
|
|
|
|
|
|
** Glenn Osborn [ gosborn@accesstoledo.com ]
|
|
|
|
Glenn Osborn is a freelance writer, designer and photographer living
|
|
in Perrysburg, Ohio. He is a founder of the Scrawl: The Writers Asylum
|
|
( http://www.stwa.net ), a collaborative workshop for writers, and
|
|
has been managing editor and designer of the website's ezine, The
|
|
Story Garden ( http://www.stwa.net/tsg/ ). He operates
|
|
HandsOnWebsites, a site design firm at http://www.HandsOnWebsites.com
|
|
and recently has developed a successful photography business marketing
|
|
prints of his digital photographs of flowers
|
|
( http://www.HandsOnWebsites.com/blossoms ).
|
|
|
|
|
|
** Ian Randall Wilson [ IanRWilson05@aol.com ]
|
|
|
|
Ian Randall Wilson is the managing editor of the poetry annual 88: A
|
|
Journal of Contemporary American Poetry. Recent work has appeared in
|
|
The Alaska Quarterly Review, Spinning Jenny and Spork. His first
|
|
fiction collection, Hunger and Other Stories, was published by
|
|
Hollyridge Press. He is on the faculty at the UCLA Extension where he
|
|
teaches classes in fiction. He is also an executive at MGM Studios.
|
|
|
|
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|
|
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