push through the fog of winter! charles bane, jr.,gloria g
TRANSCRIPT
Push through the fog of winter! Charles Bane, Jr., Gloria g. Murray,Sonnet Mondal, Phil Juliano, and The Dream Journal
The BlotterThe BlotterFebruary 2016 MAGAZINE
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Push through the fog of winter! Charles Bane, Jr., Gloria g. Murray,Sonnet Mondal, Phil Juliano, and The Dream Journal
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“Notes on the neighborhood”Here at the new home (we’ve been here over a year, but I’m always reti-cent when it comes to new situations) I have taken over what would bethe dining room in a normal family. My computer is sitting on one corner- I’m left handed so all of the things I am working on are stacked to theright. The new Little Book. The next issue of The Corner Bar Magazine.My sketching journal - the last class was Drapes (I did poorly) and thenext class is Still Life With Drapes and I expect to do much, much worse- sits on the far corner, needing to be opened and attended to more regu-larly. Practice, if it doesn’t make perfect, makes better. In my case, onlythe tiniest bit better.
It is a big table, and cluttered with stuff that hasn’t the least thing to dowith my work. A matte from a frame store which didn’t get thrown outwhen the frame was used (it houses a photo of the girls that they hate butI love. So it goes…) A stick of Uhu glue, from when the girls were littleand used it with abandon to stick things temporarily together, as we alldid. I was an Elmer’s child myself and an eater of library paste, even afterit was explained to me (however true or legendary) that glue was madefrom cow hooves. I sneered at that in the same way I did when I was told(by other purveyors of fiction in my growing-up neighborhood) thatchewing gum was made from the inner bark of trees. And sour-grass wassour because people poured lemon-juice out their kitchen windows.
Speaking of windows, there is a large window that looks out from myworkspace onto the front porch and down to the suburban street. Acrossthe way is Lawnmower Man’s house. Above his house the clouds are care-fully sliding in, like an old man trying to score from second on a single.They make up for the anticipated turn in the weather by being playfulwith the afternoon light, picking up shades of yellow and gray and put-ting them back down again as it suits them. I foolishly didn’t take advan-tage of today’s sunshine. I should know better. I suffer (that’s not theright word - it’s more like I endure) some variant of seasonal disorder asthe daylight shrinks. It begins in November as a frown and advances intoDecember as general lassitude with a generous side of grumpy. In the oldhouse I countered this with “daylight” fluorescent light bulbs in thekitchen. No such feature exists here - we have a somewhat green housewith very efficient lighting that leaves me squinting at words on paper orwandering closer to lamps to get clarification. It is often gloomy inside.
I might have taken a walk around the neighborhood. Instead I was here,at the keyboard, or reading, or listening to the television play music. I likethis feature of modernity - audio channels on TV. Right now, for exam-ple, a selection (I don’t care which) of Sir Edward Elgar. Violins, peaceful.A walk, however is good both for me and for the neighborhood. I likemeandering along the side-streets, looking at the porches, what the fami-
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sCAUTION
I think Mother Nature and God
are married...
lies have collected there that make the opening to their house looklike...their house. Rocking chairs, mostly. I wonder how many folks takethe time to come out and rock in them. I suspect not many. For the mostpart, we are a busy, cluttered culture, and we see sitting in rocking chairs aswasting time. Too bad, though. Rocking in a chair is good therapy, it jog-gles your brain loose from its urgent need to check on those aspects of ourlife that demand regular attention. Our phones, social media, the news.Things from which only the occasional good does come.
At the top of the street is a park with swings. This is a good place to sit fora few moments - not as rest but for the goodness that results from just sit-ting under trees, under the sun, under the blue sky. There are neighbor-hood noises all about. The dogs - ensconced within their fenced yards orleaning out bedroom windows - bark to one another in code, developingtheir canine friendships and checking up on the status of squirrels, cats andcardinals. Although I rarely see cats wandering about, not at all like backat the old house, where they must make their way through the raccoonsand occasional coyote. If there were more cats here, there would be fewersquirrels, I suppose. Still, it’s a dog’s world, here in suburbia. Dogs makegood company, if you like company. I’m not much of an entertainer, so Iwould be troubled by and trouble for a dog. Need to go out? Are yousure? Dogs don’t do well with such lines of questioning. Cats, on theother hand, make good family - their demands are consistent, rather thaninsistent.
Farther along, the powers of commerce have pulled up, plowed down andcarted away four or five acres of piney woods. The next plot of develop-ment is going in here. You can - well, someone can - put in a lot of housesin four or five acres of land. They’ve taken the trees out for lumber, thestumps for wood-chip scrap. The top inches of dirt will be fill. They’llreplace some of the dirt as topsoil after the new homes are in place - itwon’t be anything like enough to have a good garden or luxurious lawn,but that’s how things roll. Each home will have one replanted tree selectedfrom a catalog of permissible varieties. No swamp maples or weeping wil-lows - their roots damage water pipes. No mimosas - too trashy with theirpretty flowers and seed-pods. In the suburbs, your neighbors’ opinion is asimportant as yours. I get it, I suppose, but I’ll sure miss the sound of thewind blowing in the morning through the little patch of piney woods.
Garry - [email protected]
February 2016
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“And she laughed secretly, saying: AfterI am grown old, and my lord is an oldman, shall I give myself to pleasure?”Genesis 18: 12
Not long ago, noted literary scholarHarold Bloom read the passageabove and realized it could not havebeen written by a man. Bloom, sen-sitive as a tuning fork, recognized thewriter’s wry mockery of the eternalmale belief in his prowess. InNovember, 1991, Bloom publishedThe Book Of J, called his finestbook by the New York Times, and inwhich he identifies one of the keyauthors of the Hebrew Bible, “J” (forher reference to her Creator as“Jehovah” or “Yahweh”) as a woman.We cannot know J or her times butwe can marvel at the special place ofwomen to the Hebrew sages whowrote in the Talmud that “Godcounts the tears of women.”It is the argument of this short workthat feminist poets have not merelyexploded the traditional male, all
white Western Canon but are creat-ing a golden age of new verse that isbeing ignored, sometimes willfully,but more fully because Americans nolonger read contemporary poetry. Weare literally lost without it, becausethe ancient Greeks recognized thatpoets serve as our historians, and sec-ular prophets.
There are many reasons for poetry’scollapse: children are required in theclassroom to read poets who do notspeak in their voice, or to theirtimes. This is tragic because there areserious, working poets in virtuallyevery community or nearby whowould gladly visit and beckon themto poetry’s recesses.
The corporate power supportingwealth inequality decimates legions.Only Farrar, Straus And Girouxamong major publishing housesremains interested in poets. And thelarge-scale publishing firms that pro-duce popular fiction and nonfictionare themselves part of media con-
glomerates that advertise theirauthors, and against which smallpresses can’t compete. The fastestway to have a query ignored by a lit-erary agent is to write in the subjectline “My book of poetry.”
Finally, academic poets are a separateclass who continue a tradition ofbelieving thegeneral reader will not understandtheir work ( “Yeats”, T.S. Eliotremarked in an interview with theParis Review, “that Gaelic writer).After E.E. Cummings’ death, hiswife, Marion wrote a friend, “Academics hated my husbandbecause he only wrote short poems,but above all, because he was popu-lar.”
But poets , working as cashiers orwaitresses, or juggling multiple jobsas they pursue a Master’s degree, stillwrite, even knowing that the indif-ference of the public overspreadsthem like winter cover, and, unlike J,whose radical gift was harnessed to anarrative, gaze up and long to bepleasured by the cosmos:
“Stargazing” by Ariana Nadia NashThe stars are all the skinI’ll never touch. They arethe bright points of years
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Excerpt from “The Ascent OfFeminist Poetry”by Charles Bane, Jr.
I have not lived, the namesI do not know. They speakto worlds inside myselfI will not learn. They shock —this spread of stars, these motesof fireballs, this milkyconflagration. In their depthand beauty, they arethe most intricate mapof the unknown, the mostwild moan of silence.
When a recent CNN poll noted thatonly 7% of Americans had read apoem in the last year, a new intro-duction, using all the language ofpolish on my shelf, is where I lookfor remedy. I do not want feministpoets whose gifts are dominatingcontemporary letters,to be spirits, flickering near usunseen:
Vastness of dusk-after a day.what is a person? Too lateto ask this now. The court has ruleda corporation is a person.Persons used to be called souls.On the avenue, a lucky personstands in a convenience storescratching powder from his ticket —-
silver flecks fall from his thumbsto galaxies below.Brenda Hillman
Poetry begins, and I’m writing frompersonal experience, in the uncon-scious and those who are chosen ran-domly to write it begin their craft inchildhood. “ ‘Dragoon’ ‘“, DylanThomas said to his sister as smallboy, “isn’t that a wonderful word?”Sylvia Plath was published at eight.Susan Sontag self published herpoems at nine (“I got through mychildhood in a delirium of literaryexaltations.”). At fourteen, Edna StVincent Millay wrote: “in the hushof the dying day, / The mossy wallsand ivy towers of the land ofRomance lay. / The breath of dyinglilies haunted the twilight air / Andthe sob of adreaming violin filled the silenceeverywhere.”
I believe the unconscious - which weknow from dreams does not recordtime - stores a culture’s collectivememory of its art. This explains theimpetus and inexplicable confidenceevery poet feels as they write. There’smore: when a poem is finished, its
writer - and this is a common experi-ence - often feels they are not its cre-ator. The poet reads a superior art-work but feels no part of it, thoughhe/she may have wept through itssetting down, so deep were the feel-ings stirred.
Without doubt, women felt thisimpulse and longed to “wrestle withthe polis” (a critic’s compliment ofBrenda Hillman’s work) throughoutthe worst of times. “Whenever youread anonymous at the end of apoem”, said Virginia Woolf, “it is awoman.”
Feminist poets have not only over-come the suppression of traditionalWestern literature, they are addingnew discoveries to its foundationstones. In the 1970’s, “Songs Of TheTroubadours” appeared in print,
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February 2016
translated from Provencal byAnthony Bonner. The work of thejongleurs had first come to thenotice of Ezra Pound, the championof all that is worthwhile in literature.Pound was astonished by the moder-nity of the poems which would notbe equaled until the appearance ofYeats.
And there scholarship might haveended were it not for MatildaBruckner’s seminal “ Songs Of TheWomen Troubadours”, published in2000 (Garland Library Of MedievalLiterature), followed in 2013 by MegBogin’s “ The Women Troubadours “(Norton Paperback).
But for the male lot: critics, academ-ic advisors and peers who wish tosmother feminism as it’s expressed inpoetry, the way is closed:
We Never Remember The LastArgument | Sarah Bartlet
The smell of your mom’s dress isclosed.A magnolia’s heavy unlatched tongueis closed.The bitter scratch at the back ofyour throat is closed.Your childhood’s rebuttal is closed.The road holding up an arc of treesand their strange covenant is closed.Disappearing on schedule is closed.A field of rabbits spreading their furaround is closed.I am easing myself daily closer to theground is closed.I am easy on paycheck night isclosed.Lying next to you in a box of bour-bon-soaked cherries is closed.I am almost the same taste and tim-bre as the empty field is closed.Our eyes staying closed in proximityis closed.
Telling me this child isn’t my child isclosed.Telling him he belongs wherebelonging means absence is closed.When you try to identify the poisonit is closed.The ravine raising its mouth up tothe sky and swallowing the last horseis closed.A review of the maximum leverageavailable here is closed.My hands asking to release this fist-ful of air is closed.Try and make another decision with-out me and you’ll see what I mean isclosed.Reporting back on a dream’s dia-logue with awakening is closed.I want to get on an airplane for thelast time is closed.I want to never come back hereexcept to you is closed.Crows dropping chestnuts and let-ting us crack them is closed.Fists of flowers punching throughthe dirt no matter what the air saysis closed.You plus I plus you plus I plus youplus you plus constant fucking isclosed.Like a tail in the door being able totake it all back is closed.The olden days where ships heftedthe seas apart like god is closed.Access to regret too pristine to shareleaving its knife out is closed.An element of surprise is closed.Ask yourself where your blood is andsay it’s right here is closed.Your grandmother’s curtains refusingto move for a casual breeze is closed.My great-grandmother swallowingher death down is closed.Taking the land for ourselves isclosed.Erasing an entire year of a bed nailedto the floor is closed.Making you the bed is closed.Making you an object of forgiveness
or sparkling teeth is closed.Making this unremarkable is closed.Narrative that reflects absolute truthis closed.Believing in truth as fact under treesat night after a fire takes the starsaway is closed.The scissors we use to makesnowflakes stay sharp is closed.Another year of windows softeningour gaze is closed.Holding my breath under water topanic the heart is closed.Tell me one last time please is closed.Our mouths together dredgingwords thick as oil is closed.The hatch over the mouse in yourchest is closed.Being small in the arms of myself isclosed.Holding on to a rock with a childholding on to me in a running tideis closed.Looking for mistakes like feet lookfor glass is closed.Body as fist as ship as celestial navi-gation is closed.Brick by brick this hole in the side ofour house is closed.Won’t you wait somewhere just outof sight while I do this is closed.Which of us was left holding the bagis closed.Believing it’s possible to run theclock out is closedPlease oh please oh please oh pleaseoh god is closed. v
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All hail the scholar who takes owner-ship of annotating a classic. Why?Because what they do is hard work.It’s not thankless, but we often lackthe skill to know what a task they’vegiven themselves. Is it everythingever known about the subject? No,that’s a “Compleat…”. Is it every-thing we need to know? Yep, or atleast, we hope so. We’ll never knowunless we dive in, and it has to be anattractive volume (it is!) and we needtime and patience and good coffeeand sandwiches from Dean andDeluca and the kids have to go out-side to play until, say, February.
And then we do dive in. Why?Because if we can’t be scholars, wecan be fans. We peruse, one of thoseabsurd words in English that meanswhat it does and exactly the oppositeof what it does (how that must havepleased Lewis Carroll) and we talkabout it with our friends and prom-ise to lend the book to them when
we are done, but we are never done.They’ll have to get their own copy,or wait for an important birthday,like their own or Carroll’s or maybethe Queen’s.
Mark Burstein is the president emer-itus of the Lewis Carroll Society ofNorth America and was graciousenough to answer some questions forus, which demonstrated rather suc-cinctly that we are not seriousreviewers but still like good thingswhen we see them, especially inprint, and we also like big roundishnumbers like 150. Mr. Burstein wasfun to type to, and to receive typingfrom.
Note: I am nowhere near cleverenough to have put these questionstogether on my own. My youngersister, who has loved Alice since shewas little (probably around the ageof the young Miss Liddell) posedsome of them for me, and I bounced
a couple of ideas off my good friend,aka Sir John In Florida.
Editor: We’d like to pick your brain -as the “SME” (subject matter expert)of all things Alice. We have a per-ception - it seems a modern one -that there are “levels” of readingintended for us as we grow fromyoungsters to teens to adults. Aliceis (or is it not?) a child’s fairy tale,but also arguably fantasy/science fic-tion, intended for older readers.How do you characterize it and why?
Mark Burstein: I like to point outthat the average age of the people inthe boat that famous day the tale wasfirst told was close to eighteen, all ofwhom needed to be amused. Aliceherself was ten at that time, butCarroll set her avatar in the book asexactly seven (her birthday, in fact).It was never intended for young chil-dren; Carroll wrote an abridged ver-sion called The Nursery Alice in 1890for them.
I would avoid the term “science fic-tion,” but “fantasy” is fine. Thebooks and their author were ghet-toized for a century as belongingexclusively to children, and it wasMartin Gardner’s Annotated Alicethat turned the tide in 1960. Fromnot even being listed in the first twoeditions of Victorian Fiction: A Guideto Research, it has become an aca-demic industry, eclipsing many ofthe most revered Victorian authors,and constantly generating a cornu-copia of interpretations, elucidations,and theories.
Yes, it can be read (and reread) on somany levels. It’s the most quotednovel in existence, on a par withonly Shakespeare and the Bible.Philosophers, political commenta-
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“Our questions for the editor of
The Annotated Alice on the 150th anniversary
of the publication of
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.”
tors, students, professors, and justabout anyone can find somethingprofoundly true (and often simulta-neously very funny) in its pages.
Ed: What was it about the Alice sto-ries that first grabbed your attention?How old were you? Which of theCarroll characters is your favoriteand why?
M.B.: Their depth, humor, and howfine of a description of the actualworld we live in they are. We’retaught in school that if you are intel-ligent, work hard, are dedicated toselfless public service, you mightgrow up to be president. Take a goodlook at the present crop of candi-dates; I ask you: does this conformto what we were told in school, or
have we fallen down a rabbit-hole?
I probably got my first “hit” of whatthey mean when The Annotated cameout in 1960. I was ten, and myfather, an Alice fanatic as well,brought home one of the first copies.It’s always been a bit of a bible toCarrollians. Another huge influencewas the Cyril Ritchard completerecordings. It’s wonderful to havethem read aloud, and when I was atU. C. Santa Cruz in the late Sixtiesstudying, shall we say, amateur psy-chopharmacology, they made perfectcompanions on one’s travels. ‘Nufsaid? From there I wrote severalpapers on it (particularly in relationto Zen Buddhism), and integrated itinto my senior thesis. Collectingcame just a bit later.
I have always identified with theWhite Rabbit. He’s the Hermes fig-ure, the one who initiates her andintroduces her to Wonderland. Healso serves as the “Herald” at theTrial. He gets a bit of a bad rap;everyone thinks he’s late, but in facthe was just worried about being ontime, and the only character weknow was late was the Duchess.
Ed.: We also think - we hope we arenot alone in this - that certain iconicliterature must be introduced to
readers of a particular age (ahem..the age of the reader, not the age thereader dwells within, as in Bronze orSpace) and in a particular order, andthat one should - must - read thebook before seeing any of thefilms/cartoons made from that work.Our feeling is that if one waits toolong to read Moby Dick, or TheCatcher in the Rye, one loses thedirected point of the author and thestory’s effect is spoiled somewhat.Certainly one must read The Hobbitand Lord of the Rings before highschool (and certainly before seeingthe movies!) What thinkest thou?Agree? Disagree? And what aboutattending to classics before modernpieces? For example, shouldn’tyoung people know about Alice andGulliver’s Travels before Harry Potterand (Neil) Gaiman’s Coraline? Or isthis just wishful thinking on the partof an old editor?
M.B.: I just went through this withdeciding when to read Wonderlandto my daughter, Sonja. It’s certainlyideal to have it read to you aroundeight or nine, but on the other hand,my friend Adriana Peliano, whofounded the Lewis Carroll Society ofBrazil and has done several booksabout Alice, first found her throughthat Hanna-Barbera abomination
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made in 1966.
I wouldn’t say one needs to read thecanon in chronological order. MasterPotter does just fine with Pooh orThe Hitchhiker’s Guide in whateverorder they happen to be read (mostlyto do with the age of the reader orread-to-ee). And we have a rule inour family: the book must be readbefore the movie is seen. Where pos-sible.
Ed.: What is your opinion about theAlice movies which have been pro-duced over the years? Which isyour favorite/least favorite and why?How about one sentence on yourthoughts on Johnny Depp’s “MadHatter?”
M.B.: The Annotated lists 14 featurefilms beginning in 1903 and 42other adaptations (animations, madefor TV movies, mini-series, direct toDVD, etc.). Many have a redeemingquality or two, but the only ones Ifind watchable are Jonathan Miller’s1966 BBC teleplay with Sir JohnGielgud, Peter Sellers, Peter Cook,etc., and Dennis Potter’s Dreamchild,which is not actually an adaptation. Icould give you some choice wordsfor that godawful hairball coughed
up by Tim Burton, with its execrablescreenplay and scenery-chewing per-formances. And the chutzpah of call-ing it Alice in Wonderland ratherthan Alice Returns to Underland baf-fles me.
Ed.: Illustrations: Your thoughts onthe Disney-izing of the characters inour cultural mind’s eye. Do youprefer the Tenniel or Rackham illus-trations, or a different artist altogeth-er? How about Walt Kelly’s Pogo“satire” of the Alice story in “WhoStole The Tarts” from StepmotherGoose?
M. B.: “Tenniel or Rackham?” Weknow of over a thousand book illus-trators, from Ralph Steadman (afavorite) to Salvador Dali (the firsttrade edition of which I produced).Others high on my list would beBarry Moser, Anne Bachelier, OlegLipchenko, Harry Furniss, PatAndrea, Willy Pogany, and Harry
Rountree. It is one of literature’smost delicious ironies that a bookwhose original illustrations areamong the most iconic in WesternCivilization has gone on to be themost widely illustrated novel in exis-tence.
Pogo is another favorite of mine, butI’d call “Who Stole the Tarts” anillustrated sequence, not really asatire, even though he used comic-strip characters. Would that Kellyhad undertaken to do the whole ofAlice! There are many other exam-ples of Kelly’s Carrollian work,including renditions of“Jabberwocky” and HumptyDumpty’s poem that serve as teasesfor what could have been.
Ed.: Is Alice more than an absurdlook at Dodgson’s historical period?Is it the Saturday Night Live ofVictoriana? Is such stuff inevitablein the life of a culture - we develop
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February 2016
to the point of having a leisure class,then look inward for answers, thenalmost immediately dismiss thoseanswers as silly/madness?
M. B.: I don’t believe that the Alicebooks would have survived throughtime, been translated into more than170 languages, and be adopted bypeople of all ages all over the globe,if it were solely a study of VictorianEngland. The books that have comealong in the after-time attempting toprove that all of the characters wereOxford personalities or it was a glosson some of the academic or religiouscontroversies of the time have beenutter failures. Face it, she’s universal.
Ed.: Carroll’s poetry was probablyhis first “skill” - something he beganto hone early and often as a youngman. Which of Carroll’s poems isyour favorite and why? What doyou think about the potential forCarroll (and “substance abuse”?) toachieve the heady level of absurdity,or is his brilliant doggerel a standard-ly clever product of witty times?
M. B.: Nothing comes near “TheHunting of the Snark” (counting“Jabberwocky” as part of Looking-glass and therefore ineligible). Itshows all of Carroll’s sublime wit.Most of his juvenilia is just that, his
serious poems are way too maudlin,and a few others just have bits andpieces of brilliance. “Hiawatha’sPhotographing” and “The ThreeVoices” should also be mentioned aslaugh-out-loud funny.
Carroll got a bad rap in the Sixties;he never touched anything strongerthan sherry. I don’t see Victoriantimes as distinctively witty; there arealways great nonsense verse writers –Edward Lear, Ogden Nash, Dr.Seuss, John Lennon, and one of myfavorites, the aforementioned WaltKelly….
Ed.: Alice, Dickens, Gilbert andSullivan: which is the more scathingindictment of the British culture?Just kidding - how does Alice fit inwith the other classics of 19thCentury English art? Does Carrollowe anyone props? Byron? MaryShelley?
M. B.: “You might just as well tryto influence a Bandersnatch.” Carrollwas a game-changer, genre-definer,tipping point, whatever you want tocall it. Closest we’d come is GeorgeMacDonald, whose Phantastes and“The Light Princess” were aroundand who was the very man, in fact,who encouraged Carroll to expandhis manuscript, get a better illustra-
tor, and publish it. But no, he wassui generis.
Ed.: Finally - in your opinion, ifone does not play chess does thatfact diminish the appreciation ofThrough the Looking-glass?
M. B.: I don’t think so. It mighteven be better, as a chess-playerwould notice things like the movesbeing out of order and that when theWhite and Red Knights were fight-ing over her, neither was actually in aposition to do anything about itsuch as capture or defend her. I sup-pose a basic knowledge would begood, that pawns can advance tobeing a Queen and the like.
Final note – we had fun with this.We hope we didn’t break any HIPAArules finding out about Mr.Burstein’s connection to Grace Slick’swriting of “White Rabbit” withJefferson Airplane, and how cool is itthat he has a piece of (ahem,unprepped) sixties blotter acid paperwith the Alice art?
Mark Burstein is the editor of W.W.Norton and Company’s volume TheAnnotated Alice, the Deluxe 150thAnniversary Edition. v
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Maybe I should have worn the bluetop instead of the black. It shows offmy purple rose tattoo. Hmmm, toolate now. Hope I put enoughdeodorant on. Oh well, the Shalimarshould diffuse any odor. Six minutesto seven. Why did I get here soearly? This mirror is so damn smallI can hardly see my eyeliner. Andmy eyes are so itchy, but I can’t rub.Did I bring liner with me? Yeah,here it is. Yes, that’s better. And myhair— oh god, it’s frizzed already.Was my mother’s hair this frizzy?Can’t remember. Died so long ago.Yes, I think it was. Must have comefrom a long line of Hasidic.Anyway, it looks better like this—pinned up with this butterfly clip I
picked up in Macys. Imagine— six-teen dollars for a hair clip? Goodthing I had a coupon.
Oh, I just can’t believe I’mactually doing this—again! Thoughit’s been over a year. A year on thatloser site: CATCH MATCH. Ithink I’ve been on them all.Anyway, he did sound nice on thephone. Although he didn’t ask anyquestions. Talked mostly about him-self. What was his name again?Motor59. What the hell does thatmean? Oh shit, I’ve got a chippednail. Just did them this afternoonand didn’t bring the polish with me.Look at this—my hands are shaking.Calm down, girl. It’s only a freakin’blind date. Probably a big bore.
That’s how it usually goes. “Oh, howlong were you married? Any children?Two—boy and a girl, how nice.” Andthen a pause. “Oh, by the way, I’mdivorced too—with twin girls in col-lege.” And I wait. Aren’t you goingto ask something—anything? Don’tyou want to know about my divorce,how my beloved almost killed me, try-ing to strangle me with his tie? How Ihad a breakdown and walked aroundon Valium and Prosac for almost sixmonths? Oh, you don’t really need thatmuch information? Want to know ifit’s going to rain tomorrow or if I sawthe new cell phone ad from Verizon?Oh, stop it now! You don’t reallyknow how it’s going to go…alwaysthe pessimist. Calamity Jane! Yeah,that’s what my grandma alwayscalled me. Should I let him pay fordinner? No, not on the first date.Pay for it myself—like a woman whotakes out the garbage, fixes thestopped up toilet, even kills thebugs.
February 2016
page 11
Reading, Comedy (maybe) and tunes & stuff.
Tuesdays at 10:00PMThe Blotter Radio ‘Zine
www.wcomfm.orgChapel Hill & Carrboro, NC
“CatchMatch.com”by Gloria g. Murray
For sale - cheap - on
Amazon.com (where else?)
Oh shit, I think I’ve got aneyelash in my eye. I can’t see any-thing in this damn mirror. It’s fiveafter seven. If I go to the ladiesroom, I’ll probably miss him comingin. Just keep blinking. There, Ithink it’s gone. Can’t rub because I’llsmudge my liner. Well, 7:15. Lookslike he’s not the punctual type.Well, that’s good, probably meanshe’s an Aries or Sagittarius. They’resort of free-spirited. Not like thatTaurus I was married to. Used tocheck the garbage just to see if Ithrew away something that might,god forbid, still be good—like an oldsock with only one hole, a milk con-tainer with one gulp. Oh, herecomes the waiter. Hmmm, not badlooking. A bit on the young side,though.
“Yes, I will have anotherdrink, thank you. The same and noice, please.” Why do they always putice in when you say no ice? Well, it’salmost 7:25. Maybe he forgot, butwe just spoke this morning, said hecouldn’t wait to meet me. Guess I’llwait until 7:40 before I admit I’vebeen stood up on a blind date. Isuppose that’s not the worst—notlike he knew me and then didn’t
come. Oh wait, someone’s coming
in. Well, if that’s him he’s certainlynot six foot. More like five foot six.A little on the paunchy side too, buthe does have dirty blonde hair. Andthat sweater. I don’t believe it—emerald green. What the f— it’s notSt. Patty’s day is it? Look at thejeans—charcoal gray and whitesneakers. Oh god, he’s coming over.
“Hi, are you Jeanette—youknow from Catch Match?”
“Oh, no, you must be mis-taken. My name’s Carol and I’venever been on Catch Match.”
“Really, you sort of look likeher but pictures can be deceiving.”
“Yes, definitely so. Well, Iwas just leaving. Hope you find whoyou’re looking for.”
Looking puzzled, he waves.Whew, am I glad to get the
hell outta there. Maybe I can catch amovie I haven’t seen yet on one ofthe 300+ cable channels. Maybe Ican bring this stupid clip back if Ican find the receipt. Shit, I neverpaid the check. Oh well, Mr.Motor59, thanks for the drinks. v
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The fright makes me gag, thencough, unable to take a breath. Itis a splash, a grab, a flash a No!All of these are old nightmareacquaintances I am familiar with:the splash is gore, the grab issomething coming up frombehind, the flash is an image thatchanges to something horror anda No is someone dead. If thereare other moments that can makemy sleep break apart into littlepieces, I am not aware of themanymore. The frequency withwhich I visit this quartet ofdreams depends on the weather,the food, my habits, my lack ofhabits. If this does not makesense to you, I suggest you readthe first twenty or so pages ofDickens’ “A Christmas Carol.”Scrooge puts it rather succinctly. And so I awake, the picture pro-jected on my eyelids fades butleaves that de-rezzing, pixillatedimage that only rolling over oractually getting up to splash somewater from the faucet up into mymouth with a cupped hand willrelease completely. I hear thesound of rain falling outside, itsincessant tapping on the windowjamb will either permit me to fallswiftly back to sleep or I will liefor some number of breaths andthen get up and go downstairs.GL - cyberspace
.
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page 13
February 2016
“April and my Plastic Sunflowers”
by Sonnet Mondal
The four plastic sunflowers in my bedroom-The way they swayed in the ceiling fan’s airWere the functional-year-long-April for me.
Fallen twigs of meditating winterAnd the deadwood sanity of their roughness;The begging deserts of the patient summerAnd the coarseness of their ravaged mirages;The thin tune of the nostalgic autumnAnd the restlessness of their alcoholic breezes-Were never like fresh seasonal fruits to meFor I had the functional-year-long-April in my bedroom:Those four plastic sunflowers.
Not long, my wedding and divorce-Both in their infancyEnded the perpetual April in my roomBy demanding those yellow sunflowersIn the package of reparation.
It was four seasons ago and the spring of AprilNow seems to be a creepy plastic serpentIrresistibly insidious in its illusory crueltyas my new girl friend from the same cityTalked of bringing new plastic flowers in my room.
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“MY SISTER CHANGED HER NAME”(for Beeve)
by Gloria g. Murray
because we dwelled in the land of plastic covered couchespink porcelain ladies with tasseled lamp shadesblack speckled tiles my mother on her kneeswaxed every Friday, then covered with newspaper to keep the shine and the news a little longerbecause no one ever came to that place that smelled of Pine-sol and chicken soupbecause this was an alien planet in the cosmos of Canarsie
where I, the high school drop-output on this earth to drive my mother ‘mad’ or, at the very least, kill her with what in Judaism was called ‘the weapon of aggravation’got knocked up and married a gentileand my sister, the ‘good girl’, at sixteen ran rampant in Bloomingdales, shoving in her bag things she could never, ever, afford, changed her name and hair color, made up her face like a china doll seducing men with names like “Bob the Bookie”, “Eddie the eel” and became next in line to kill my mother with aggravation
February 2016
page 15
CONTRIBUTORS:
Charles Bane, Jr. is the author of three collections of poetry including the recent "The Ends Of The Earth: Collected Poems ( Transcendent Zero Press, 2015 ) as wellas "I Meet Geronimo And Other Stories" ( Avignon Press, 2015) and " ThreeSeasons: Writing Donald Hall ( Collection of the Houghton Library, HarvardUniversity). He created and contributes to The Meaning Of Poetry series for TheGutenberg Project. http://charlesbanejr.com/ This excerpt is reproduced by permis-sion of its publisher, Transcendent Zero Press.
Gloria g. Murray of Brooklyn, NY writes, “I have been published in various literaryjournals including, Bardic Echoes, Poet Lore, The Paterson Review, Ted Kooser’sAmerican Life in Poetry, Third Wednesday and others.I am the recipient of the 2014Anna Davidson 1st prize poetry award from Poetica Magazine. My recent book WhatI Couldn’t Swallow has just been published by All Books, Long Island, NY.”
Sonnet Mondal of Kolkata, India, is the editor of The Enchanting Verses LiteraryReview. He has authored eight collections of poetry and his recent works haveappeared in The Sheepshead Review, Nth Position, Fox Chase Review, ThePenguin Review, Two Thirds North & California State Poetry Quarterly. He is current-ly one of the featured writers at International Writing Program at The University ofIOWA-Silk Routes Project funded by Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs at theU.S. Department of State.Sonnet was featured as one of the Famous Five of Bengali Youths in India Todaymagazine in 2010 and was long listed in The Forbes Magazine’s top 100 Celebrities2014 edition among India’s most celebrated authors. Later in March 2015 TheCultureTrip website, London listed him among the Top Five Literary Entrepreneurs ofIndian English Poetry.He has represented India at the Struga Poetry Evenings, Macedonia (2014) and atThe Uskudar International Poetry Festival, Istanbul, Turkey (2015). Most recently, hehas been invited to represent India at the International Poetry Festival of Granda in2016.(website: www.sonnetmondal.com)
Phil Juliano of Minneapolis, MN is a good Blotterfriend. Follow his adventures onphiljulianoillustration.com
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