From the category archives:
by KJ Hannah Greenberg
Except for the coccyx, which Jessica, tenaciously, was attempting to root out from under an ottoman, using only her front claws, nothing was left of Maurice Hichkins’ son, Wilson. Astoundingly, Maurice Hichkins was more concerned with his notes than with his pet.
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Originally posted 2009-01-31 00:03:53.
by Sally George
One day, for no particular reason, Deborah noticed that she didn’t really like her clothes. Not the ones she was wearing, or the ones she could think of in her closet. She tried to remember how they had looked when she bought them, what she had liked about them. Had they all been on sale, was that it? That was probably the reason for the pale green pants. But what about all the black pants, why had she bought them, and why didn’t she like them anymore? Even the expensive ones. She could see why they were more expensive, how they were better made, of fabric that felt softer, or heavier, somehow more costly. But there was nothing about them that gave her pleasure any more. She tried thinking about other categories; her furniture, for instance. There were a couple of things she didn’t mind, but those had generally been hand-me-downs. The things she had bought she didn’t really care for. Or worse, really didn’t care for. [keep reading…]
Originally posted 2008-09-13 19:19:08.
By Joseph Milosch
I drove heroin hooked soldiers to the infirmary. These men openly cried, or moaned rocking on the back bench of my pick up. One, with his blond hair parted down the middle, wore glasses with circular blue lenses. The MP’s made him sing “TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALLGAME.” His voice split, and large drops of spit hung as if hooked on teeth and gums.
Six weeks later, Dexter reported to me. He said, “I remember you; you drove me to the hospital my first night stateside. You weren’t afraid to let me ride in the cab.” He thought he was clever, and called me, “The driver.” Every day after lunch, he’d sit stoned in the tool room. Sometimes, he would play “Mary Had a Little Lamb” on his harmonica. He thought it was the blues.
He’d finger his choker of beads–red, white, and blue. To Dex it was like the tradesman’s cap my great grandfather wore. It stated who he was. “I’ve got my dad’s hands,” he told me, “See how large they are. That’s why my veins are so good. These hands need a lot of blood.” His blue beads stood for his bloodline and his family’s hatred towards any government agency including the draft board and the military.
He was the son of a machinist and the grandson of the last blacksmith in his hometown. “I can stand in front of my lathe all day, trimming, listening to the lathe. I love the long lean note that floats when its engine heats up and whines at a higher pitch.” Dex believed his red beads stood for the engines’ heat and the blood he left on the machine shop floor.
His white beads stood for what he believed, and that was what his family believed, “When you became rich, you became a Republican, until then you put in 8 hours work for 8 hours pay.” Dex believed he should defy all government laws. He’d use drugs. He’d show up late for formation. He wouldn’t stitch one corner of his nametag, and he’d roll up the sleeves of his uniform in winter, roll them down in summer. He would rebel. He was a confederate. His spirit would not be defeated. Drugs purified his spirit. That was what the white beads stood for, what he believed, and how he’d lived each day.
I watched the sway of his necklace as he polished galvanized fittings with steel wool. I saw his thin build, his fox–like nose, and thought of his Nam experience. In country he was the platoon’s tunnel rat. He was liked because he was fearless. He said his platoon was like our company’s sergeants, “They didn’t know anything about me,” and Dex spoke about root–like rocks rattling his helmet. He spoke about night–throated tunnels devouring light, spoke of that neck cramping fear appearing as balls of sweat on his chin. Dex spoke about what he knew, “One time I felt something alive, a snake, a lizard pressing against my thigh. I felt its heat. It made my asshole pucker,” and his face twitched as if the cold bones of the tunnel’s hands felt his face.
Everyone knew of Dex’s overseas reputation, knew Dex worked in the tool room. They knew he painted the shelving army green with black trim. He bought green felt, and lined parts boxes with it. They knew he stood elbows and couplings on their ends, and he scraped rust off pipe wrenches, putty off putty knives, sanded three hammers’ wooden handles. They knew he washed 24, 12X12 windowpanes. He stacked them. Put brown paper between them. Paper cut so square not an eighth of an inch of light came between the edge of glass and the edge of paper.
All this meant nothing to the mess sergeant who refused him entry to the mess hall, unless a Non Commissioned Officer accompanied him.
By Joseph Milosch
One could see his burning hunger in his shirts, pressed once after washing and once more before wearing to class or on the bandstand. Joseph said, “Books and music are special. They shouldn’t be treated like greeting cards.” The hardest part of college was working at the shipyards, unloading sacks of cement, grain, or salt, and after work practicing his clarinet.
It seems studying and practice made ideas feel like prisoners. A few escaped, and the maneuvers a man created to navigate through the empty spaces their departure created either fashioned good ideas or led to a tangle of emptiness. Learning how to deal with the sudden appearance of space took hours of concentration. He said, “It was through my effort I was invited to work in the engineer booth for an Armstrong recording.†During the session, his eyes hovered before jumping from one phrase to the next like the spray of drum sticks across cymbals. Occasionally, Joseph looked at his clarinet’s case beneath the table. Occasionally, he’d massaged his fingers. Always he hoped against hope that he would be able to respond to the prayed for invitation from the master.
In the future when times were hard and he was alone in his dreaming, he’d remember the obscurity of his history: the shipyard’s light at one AM, a pattern of corn in a pile of lime. In the future this image marked the brutal landscape of a third generation Pole, learning to speak English without an accent, learning to ignore the hooked winged fear, hanging upside down in the rafters of his room. It was the same room he’d soak his hands in Epsom salt, believing it would return to his fingers the nimbleness needed to play his clarinet.
While he practiced, a vision arrived of seven flowers raising the bell of their horns and blossoming. Did he recite the Trumpeter of Krakow? Were his dreams interrupted by voices as light became an image of an arrow passing through a trumpeter’s throat? He’d practice two hours before his first class. In the afternoon he’d study before breaking to rehearse his band, The Ross Gordon Orchestra, then to the station, then to the boarding house — to the shipyards. Who could believe in a life without complications? Believe in practice – practice until sleep brought dreams of fingers touching keys as delicately as a bee leaving splintered trails across a clover field.
By Joseph Milosch
I believe I have come back unfamiliar with the language of my trade. I try to remember where a handful of sand rolled down slope and water darkened earth until it sparkled gem-like. I try to recall the mornings when men focused their imagination on cut slopes, verticals, trenches and willed their backs, arms, and hands to build my country.
I drive down a street trying to recognize the intersection. I stop for a light and remember the stone mason, who broke from work twice a day to rinse old chew from his mouth. His three-fingered hand cradled the rock he chipped as he built Burkett’s milking barn.
It was my first job. I mixed concrete for him. I brought him rocks in a wheel barrow. I rolled a stone over my finger. The nail turned purple, blood leaked along its edges. I had a sliver I couldn’t find in my palm. It was the longest day of the year, the summer solstice.
Near sundown, we stopped and helped Burkett feed his stock. The mason said, “By the end of summer the days won’t be so hot and long.” The two of them laughed; then, I laughed because I realized it wasn’t going to get easier. I smelled water in the evening air as I watched his cows moaning for their metal mouthed-calves. I thought of my hands sweating in my blister’s heat. Up until then I didn’t know hands swelled from labor.
Burkett pointed to one cow, her udder swollen like a gooseberry in late August. He said, “She’s due in a couple of weeks,” and I learned dairy cows gave more milk if they gave birth every couple of years. The farmer said, “Wives are a lot like cows. To keep them happy, you got to give ‘em a child every once in a whileâ€
That cow didn’t look happy as she drew with the aid of her lower lip a few grains into her mouth. The mason thought he was funny as he volunteered me to clean the pig sty, and I wished I was hiking along the road where corn leaves caught dust and bees left splintered trails as they walked across clover.
That was how it was. I came to find there was no dignity in work. There was comradeship. I learned in the trades, I could return years later to say, “I built that.” I came to believe it was good to walk among the cows in winter, as the corn froze in its crib. During these times, I thought I could feel the solid construction in the moist air dampened my chin. It was like feeling the cold in the stone, whose cut revealed the profile of a man’s face.
I rubbed my hand across the ridge under his eye, rubbed the chink in his lip. My hand moved as if it was drawn to the joint between stones. I enjoyed feeling the even space between rocks. I enjoyed feeling the smooth saw cut of the window sill where snow gathered like dirt on its glass. I enjoyed touching our work, as I watched cows standing in their own mist and looked at the wind, pushing snow under fences and around trees.
In the evening of the first day of summer, I park and raise my hand to shade my eyes from the sun. In the street, vapor strands rise from a manhole cover. They merge at a tree of steam. I remember the shade of the white ash tree as I washed trowels, floats, and shovels. I remember that three fingered mason. He laughed when I dropped a rock on my toe, hammered my thumb. My last day, he paid me, shook my hand, and said, “You’re not afraid of work.”
by Pia Wilson
Yadra is straightening the towels and lotions and perfumes on her counter. She sets the tall white flowers in a vase to the side. She sprays a deodorizer into the air, coughs, and waves it away. Then she sits in her chair and takes out a high-class fashion magazine. She reads an article and starts to shake her head and tsk tsk the people. She checks her watch. [keep reading…]
Originally posted 2008-07-26 15:57:53.
by Joe Milosch
Sergeant Bunge walked by throwing his legs forward, as if he thought his starched fatigues could crease the air like plow blades mark the earth. I liked him because he went Airborne jumped in Europe, Korea, served in Nam. His first day in the company he lined up the platoon, inspected the cut of our hair and the shine of our belt buckles. “You’ve heard of Brasso? If you look like a soldier, you’ll be a soldier.”
Then he cursed, as though it was written in a manual for Sergeants, and his curses merged with the metal slapping air sound of a prop turbine. I heard his voice sputter, as if fueled by anger so deep inside he had to pump it out using every muscle in his stomach, back and neck. Â He cursed, rocking with the effort until his voice became a high-pitched hum.
One Friday he talked about the greatness of the American rancher. “Ranchers built the west by teaching their cowhands the meaning of loyalty.” I replied, “I’m not impressed by a rancher who feeds grade A hay to his steers while his men eat warmed-over beans.”
After morning formation he’d stand outside the hangar door. He would light his cherry wood pipe, blowing rings, and watching them turn oblique. He’d ask “Do you support the VC? Jane Fonda? Have you read Mao or Marx?” Sarge, I replied, “you wouldn’t know a Communist if he had a C branded into his forehead.†For this he took me off flight duty.
Sarge liked the fact I worked all day breaking only for lunch, or to share coffee with him. He wanted me to be serious, to explain my distrust of the president. He told me his dad was a plumber, his two brothers were plumbers. One died in Korea.
His family had fought for America. He showed me the scar on his stomach.
I knew he had a fear of something tied to retirement. The tone of his voice asked, do you think I wasted my life? His urge to question himself made him angry. He wanted his truth set in concrete. He believed he fought for love for his country, believed manhood was determined by hand to hand combat, and that he protected his wife.
I told Bunge Bars make Nixon uncomfortable, how can you trust him? How can you believe Nixon when he says, “I will pull out of Nam, end the war with honor.” Sarge closed his eyes. Did he see behind his eyelids a dying man who rolled onto his stomach as if kissing the ground? Sarge sighed, and looked at his hands as if he’d collected blood dried and flaking from uniforms. Quickly he brushed his hands in the manner a gardener wipes soil and petals from his hands.
Sarge said, “I don’t want to believe I’ve been lied to about this war. Maybe, Was I lied to about Korea? Joe, we had to fight the Nazis. I saw the camps, the Jews were living death. Believe me.” He told me he had plastic intestines, and this had to have some meaning. I could have asked him about threading pipe, or jumping at night in a war zone. I could have simply let silence be drawn like a curtain between us. Then we could swallow our myths with our coffee.
Today, I look at the scars on my hand. The one in my right palm came from cutting copper pipes without gloves. The five hammer scars on my thumb formed blow by blow; each scar is a memory of a job, a year, but memories are not excuses. I tell myself there was something easier than being my Sergeant. Sarge, you jumped from great heights with shrapnel under the scars on your ribs. You took me under your wing; saw in me more than the shadow of what I might be. You refused to call me by my nickname.
You invited me to your retirement party. There I saw your 34 years in the gold chevrons marking your arms. Saw you look skyward as if you saw the traces of yourself continue to slowly sink, slowly move earth bound. Below my hand scars are memories of blood-wetted wood, wounds closing, and the memory of the way I treated you appears in my palm as a sandy splinter of flesh, which is an open thistle thin-edged, purple, and stuck beneath a dirt stain.
by KJ Hannah Greenberg
Rosemary ran her finger through the pile of clipped job announcements and twiddled the index of her atlas. The notices she’d cut from the professional newsletter were printed in blue ink. The notices she’d pinched from The Chronicle of Higher Education were printed in black. Other notices, taken from a free, local paper, were grey on grey newsprint. Together, those bits made a dreary montage of words and aspirations.
One of the cats, who mistook the intent of Rosemary’s finger wiggling, dove. As he lunged, he chirped. Rosemary’s papers jumped, landing near where Rosemary had sprayed enzyme on cat piss. She hadn’t wanted the preschoolers to get their toes dirty.
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by Joseph D. Milosch
Jungle trees walled the sky. The wind was the voice of the dying. It twisted wide leaves in dreams of this Viet Nam veteran. He was in the Army’s drug rehab program. He would help me prepare for a white glove inspection.
Dexter took steel wool to the hooks on which we hung hammers and pipe wrenches. He taped the tips of the hammers’ claws, spray painted their heads. The hammers gleamed black and steel.
When Dexter talked his voice reminded me of a one-wing fly trapped in a jar. He was saying, “There are Sergeants who think my life is just a joke. They think they know me by watching me come and go. They don’t know shit.
If I hadn’t declared myself, they wouldn’t have a clue.” Dex, you’re an addict, you can’t hide shit. “Screw you! Joe! If it wasn’t for me, you’d still think a Jefferson Airplane was an aircraft.”
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By Joseph Milosch
In late summer when the rain came from the North, Joseph
would pull out his ballroom record player, pour a couple of high balls and dance in the screened in porch with his wife, whose legs flickered below her skirt’s hem.
They would sit on their porch and watch the aurora borealis over the distant islands of Tan Lake. The rainbow ribbon shimmered, a curtain of Christmas tinsel. Then as if the rain signaled that all was good, they’d kiss, and his wife would twist her braids, pinning them in a pretzel shaped bun, a sign it was time to fix a quick dinner of dogs and potato salad. Sitting their children at the kitchen table, they’d eat, listening to music on the porch.
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