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a literary nonprofit with a handful of ongoing projects, including a monthly, submission-based reading series featuring all forms of writing without introductions or author banter—of which sparkle + blink is a verbatim transcript. The series moves around to a different venue every month, appearing so far in bars, art galleries, music halls, bookstores, night clubs, a greenhouse, a ballroom, a theater, a mansion, a sporting goods store, a pirate store, a print shop, a museum, a hotel, and a cave.

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sparkle + blink 61© 2015 Quiet Lightning

artwork © Tracy Piperthetracypiper.com

“Look, Here” by Lisa Piazza first appeared in Cleaver Magazine.

“No Judgment at Social Kitchen” and “Life Lessons from a Ditch Digger at The Mucky Duck” by Benjamin Wachs first appeared in SF Weekly.

“Pretty from the Side” by Mira Martin-Parker first appeared in The Milo Review, Vol. 1 Issue 1.

“Upside Down, Backwards and Inside Out”, and “Versailles” first appeared in Hack Writers Magazine.

book design by j. brandon lobergset in Absara

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CONTENTScurated by

Shideh Etaat, Sara Marinelli, & Evan Karp

featured artist Tracy Piper

ALLISON BERKE Center 1

ANDREW SLOANE Healing 9

CLAIRE WILLIAMS The Man Who Drank the Sea 11

BENJAMIN WACHS No Judgment at Social Kitchen 15

Life Lessons from a Ditch-

Digger at The Mucky Duck 19

LISA PIAZZA Look, Here 23

CHARLES KRUGER A Poem That Does Not Want

to be Written 27

MIRA MARTIN-PARKER Pretty from the Side 31

Around and Around 34

Upside Down, Backwards,

and Inside Out 36

Versailles 38

DEBORAH STEINBERG Red Comfort Eating 41

HEATHER BOURBEAU Montagsdemonstrationen 45

JOSIAH ALDERETE I Want To Be a Symbol

For My Culture 47

CADY OWENS Language Arts Poetry Journal 51

QUIET LIGHTNING IS SPONSORED BY

l a g u n i t a s . c o m

QUIET LIGHTNING

A 501(c)3, the primary objective and purpose of Quiet Lightning is to foster a community based on literary expression and to provide an arena for said expression. QL produces a monthly, submission-based reading series on the first Monday of every month, of which these books (sparkle + blink) are verbatim transcripts.

Formed as a nonprofit in July 2011, the board of QL is currently:

Evan Karp founder + president

Chris Cole managing director

Josey Lee public relations

Meghan Thornton treasurer

Kristen Kramer chair

Kelsey Schimmelman secretary

Sarah Ciston director of books

Katie Wheeler-Dubin director of films

Sidney Stretz & Laura Cerón Meloart directors

Rose Linke & RJ Ingramoutreach directors

Sarah Maria Griffin & Ceri Bevandirectors of special operations

If you live in the Bay Area and are interested in helping—on any level—please send us a line:

evan@ quiet l ightning .org

- SET 1 -

1

A L L I S O N B E R K E

CENTER

Minutes later, when I walked into the Widows’ Support Group the second time, they were much more welcoming.

“I’m so sorry,” a middle- aged woman on the left side of the circle stood up. “We just thought, she must be looking for Alcoholics Anonymous across the hall. And then Emmy spoke up,” a woman on the other side of the circle wearing a headscarf waved, “and we realized, oh no...”

“It’s just that you’re so young,” Emmy said.

The women closest to the door scooted apart from each other, and I pulled a folding chair between them. Everyone seated was elderly, apart from the two who had spoken. Some looked worried.

“I was next, anyway,” Emmy said. She passed a plate of cookies from her lap to the woman beside her. “My husband, Bill, was killed at Kirkuk, which is in Iraq. He was a soldier there, and his vehicle was blown up while he was driving.” She went on to detail how they found his arm, and his dog tags, and sent

2

her the tags. Emmy had been engaged in legal action, to get the U.S. government to send her the arm, as well. “That was the arm he put around me,” she said.

“Why shouldn’t I want it?” Some of the others were nodding. I wondered if there were parts she wouldn’t want back. A toe. A kneecap.

A few other women spoke—heart attack, lymphoma—and it was my turn. “I’m Sarah. My husband Colin was 26. He was killed in a meth lab explosion.” Pause.

Wait for the embarrassed looks. “He was a D.E.A. agent.” The relief and pity followed immediately. One woman to my left, wearing dark purple lipstick, laughed. The others didn’t.

Afterward, with everyone taking up their bags and putting on scarves, the woman with purple lipstick came up to me.

“I like that,” she said. “That was great. Here’s mine: before he died, my husband beat me. At checkers!” Before she turned to go, she put her hand on my wrist.

“I’m Barbara.”

The group leader, Cheyenne, recommended that I check out an anger management class that met the next day, because grief is made up of stages, and we never know which will hit us next. Grief is also, I’ve been told, a slippery slope. It’s a crumbling cookie. It’s the monster under your bed.

Allison Berke 3

At the class, which met in the same community room partitioned from the basement of the Washoe City Episcopalian church, an uncommonly short man led us in visualization exercises. When you feel yourself getting carried away, he said, picture the scene in front of you. Name the objects. Sometimes there is one object that centers you, and you should try to bring that object with you, physically or in spirit, everywhere you go. Your centering object. He shared that his was a finger puppet of a badger, which had belonged to his father. He pulled it out, and made it bob its head at us.

Later, there was question and answer. I raised my hand. “I have trouble connecting with other people.”

He looked me over. “Understandable,” he said.

At next week’s meeting, I demonstrated for the other women. I told them about the centering object, and about naming what was in front of you. I used the room as an example. Crepe-paper bunting. Coffee machine. Folding chairs. When I saw Barbara watching me, she winked. On her turn to share, she told us it was the four- month anniversary of her husband’s death. The woman beside her, the one who brought Barbara to these meetings, possibly by force, had a white-knuckled hand on Barbara’s upper arm. She said Barbara was being very strong.

“Strong? Hah! This is smooth sailing for me!” Barbara

4

grinned widely. “He should’ve done this years ago.”

Emmy had just received a second rejection letter from the Army Division of Public Affairs. Bill’s remains had been buried on-site along with those of his unit. My process was a little further along; I had received Colin’s jacket. He’d left it in his car when he and his partner arrived at the scene. There hadn’t been identifiable ashes, but the jacket smelled of burnt plastic. It was something.

“It’s just hard,” Emmy told us, “being denied this, on top of everything, on top of having to go to work every day and still be a single parent. Next month is my son’s birthday, and I wanted him to have as much of his father with him as possible.” She worked at the office of tourism in Carson City, twenty miles down the road, and had a two-year-old son named Jeremiah.

Colin and I didn’t have any children, but after he died I got a dog, a dachshund named Edwin. I had always wanted a dog. I also planted an herb garden. I had worked, part-time, at the newspaper, but took Colin’s death as an opportunity to quit. It had been hard for me to find work out here, ever since Colin and I left DC.

I wanted to say something helpful to Emmy, though. Something that wasn’t about me.

“Would you like some portraits of you and your son?”

Allison Berke 5

I asked. “I was...I’m a photographer, I could...”

“That’s so nice of you,” Emmy smiled thinly.

The next woman to speak told us that her name was Marilyn, and her husband had stepped out to go to the grocery store yesterday, and hadn’t come back yet, and she was worried. Marilyn’s husband died five years ago, of cirrhosis. She was one of the women who rode the nursing home van down here every week. Some women came every time. Some stopped coming, after a word from Cheyenne to the nursing home director.

“I saw your husband at the Laundromat this morning,” Barbara said, as her friend tried to hush her. “He asked me why you changed the locks.”

Marilyn started to cry. Cheyenne ended the meeting early, to take Marilyn out to the van.

Barbara looked around at us. “Jesus, I was just having a little fun.”

I followed Emmy out to her car.

“So, I can come by anytime,” I told her. “For the photos. I think it would be a nice tribute. Jeremiah must look so much like Bill when he was younger.”

Emmy dropped her car keys, and looked flushed

6

when she picked them up. “I’m sorry, I’m in a hurry,” she told me. She got into her car, and rolled down the window. “I’ll give you a call.” She left quickly.

Barbara came up behind me.

“Her son’s adopted, you know.” She laughed. “He’s Chinese.”

When I got home, I took Edwin for a walk, along the river that feeds the lake. The seasons had just crossed over, and it was cold enough that I held his leash with mittens. Now when I smelled burning wood I longed for fireplaces instead of fearing brushfires.

Edwin has never been afraid of anything. He runs into the river to chase dragonflies, and lets its rippled surface close over his back. He holds his own with the neighbor’s malamute.

Colin and I used to fight all the time over whether we would move back to DC. I had wanted desperately to go. Now that he was gone, I dug in. I told myself, there were too many people in the city. There were no trails like this, no woods. Besides, Edwin wouldn’t like it. This was the only river he knew.

The next morning, I stayed in bed until eleven, watching the trees’ shadows move across the ceiling. When I finally convinced myself to get up, I went to the dresser and took out Colin’s shaving kit from

Allison Berke 7

his top dresser drawer. I hadn’t moved any of his things. His shirts still hung in the closet, and his handkerchiefs were still folded in a row, all the way to the back.

Colin’s razor and brush were mahogany-handled, with inlaid silver. His father, a Southern gentleman, had given him the kit when we married. Colin believed in owning only the essentials, and making them precious.

When I first met Colin, he was the only man at the Washington Post banquet who had dished the sweet potatoes onto his plate, and the only thing I could think to ask him was whether he was Southern. He looked at me for a long beat, and spoke slowly, deliberately, as I would come to know he always did.

“My family has lived in Richmond, Virginia for one hundred and twenty-seven years,” he said, “and I have a toothpick in my mouth right now. So I would say, yes.”

When I finished shaving my legs with Colin’s razor, I put on a towel and called Barbara, to invite her over for dinner.

Barbara had said yes, so I went to the grocery store, and swept the floors. I picked rosemary and mint from the garden. I shut Edwin in my room, in case Barbara didn’t like dogs. When my mother called, I

8

told her I had a friend coming over, and couldn’t talk long.

“Is it a male friend?” she asked.

“I smell the stew burning,” I said. “I have to go.”

Barbara was only ten minutes late. I opened the door for her, and saw that her eyes were bloodshot.

“I don’t know who I’ve become, Sarah,” she said. “I was so much happier when he was around.” She pulled me into a hug. I wanted to say, But, I made cocktail wieners. But, I have Thelma and Louise.

Instead I took one of Colin’s handkerchiefs from my back pocket, where it had been my centering object, and waited for the right moment to hand it to her.

9

A N D R E W S L O A N E

HEALING

Sputtering stupidly after falling through the ice, I thought, “I will be dead soon”, and tried to swim anyway. As the undertow pulled down and out, it dipped the ice below the surface, catching me. When the water rushed back in, the sheet was bent together, like some giant piece of twisting glass, which carried me quickly back to safety. Half alive, on the old ice, I knew she had chosen to save me. I found kindness, without reason, in that unforgiving landscape and now know, beyond doubt, that Antarctica is the only wife I will ever want.

11

C L A I R E W I L L I A M STHE MAN WHO DRANK THE SEA

Once there was a boy who could drink only sea water. Each morning he would walk down to the water with a bucket, and draw a big draft of it to his home on the hill drinking the thick stuff like it was milk. Be careful said his father, or you will drink the whole thing. His mother smiled.

The boy grew to be a man. He knew how to carve wood and to start a fire, to bake a loaf of bread and skin a hare. He could hike for many miles but he could never leave the side of the ocean. He longed to see what lay deep inland, but he knew he must remain close to the shore. So it was that he decided to become a sailor; it was a natural choice.

The people of his town did not trust the water so he went out alone. The father was glad to have him out on adventure, but the mother feared he would never return.

He braved every storm, for he could not drown. When the waves came upon him he opened his mouth wide and drank them up. When the rain came tumbling, the plants he kept on the boat

12

were watered, and he ate them. He spent many months this way, exploring the trees and rocks, but mostly the sky and the horizon, and what it means to be alone.

At last he came to a place he could not leave.

On the first day there, among the birch trees, which came like an army into the water so that he could see them from a mile away, he had also spotted a person: so fast as to be a deer, so strong as to be a god, so beautiful as to be a woman.

He searched the land but always he felt he must go further from the ocean then was good for him. He began to carry more and more water from the waves on his back and he went sixty, a hundred miles away from the sea, searching.

She found him napping on the peak of the only mountain on the island. She took one look at his burnt skin and sand speckled hair, and she knew he could drink the oceans.

For he had not been wrong; she was the daughter of one of the gods and she could tell these things easy as you or I could read a book. Early in her life she had been promised that her happiness lay at the bottom of the ocean but she had never been able to find it, not knowing how to swim.

ClAire WilliAms 13

The man woke and she knew that if he fell in love with her she could ask him to drink the sea and she would find her promised joy. It was not a slow thing, for as soon as he opened his eyes and looked at her he knew she was his one true love.

So she came with him on his boat and they went from coast to coast and he slowly drank, as much as he could, no longer eating many of the plants. He could drink as much as a whale, and still his body had more thirst. He grew a little taller during this time and his hair, thought the woman, looked like seaweed.

Slowly the shores of the world began to show their ankles, lifting up the skirts of the water to mountains, valleys of sand and coral reef. Still the woman did not see her happiness. Keep drinking, she said to the man, and he did.

They grew old this way. Sometimes it is like that, and it would not be true to say they weren’t a certain kind of happy.

The man was pleased to do as the woman wished, as long as he could sail, and be near the tumbling water, and the woman was pleased to be on the quest with the promise just around every strait, each placid bay.

By the end, the seas were shallow, less than a puddle, and surely thought the old woman, surely my

14

happiness will stick out of the water now and I will be able to grab it up! Then we will sail back home and that will be that… But the next day she realized there was not enough water for them to sail back home on and she looked at the old man who she loved but even before she looked she knew he was dead.

She lowered his body into the last of the puddles on earth and looked at the man who had drunk all the world’s oceans for her. It occurred to her then that he must be her happiness and she lay on top of him and hoped that in that moment the water would come rushing out of his body and the world would be filled halfway with it again. That underwater the two of them could live in death, their bodies giving a greater motion to the waves, their torsos curled up at the very core of the earth.

But no. There was just his stillness and the wind lapping on the last tiny sea on that world.

15

B E N J A M I N W A C H S

NO JUDGMENTAT SOCIAL KITCHEN

Mari and I are sitting in the Social Kitchen and Brewery, talking about the nature of female beauty.

We both live in the Inner Sunset, and over the years we’ve seen the building go through many transformations. It was a dive bar, it was a Mexican restaurant, it was an upscale neighborhood spot named Wunderbeer (I miss Wunderbeer), it was an empty husk… and now it’s Social Kitchen. Almost every incarnation has been better than the last. It’s so hard to tell the difference between “gentrification” and “evolution,” sometimes. “Progress” and “terrible things” share an apartment.

I pointed her toward John Oliver’s terrific takedown of the Miss America Pageant—and the very idea that in the 21st century we would line up women in swimsuits to be judged.

But this isn’t just about beauty, of course: It’s also about competition. We can’t just be happy that we have 50 beautiful women standing on a stage in swimsuits who will, it is fair to deduce, do

16

anything we ask. No, we also have to rank them… which, when you think about it, might be the absolute worst possible use of anyone’s time in that situation. Yes, pageants are obviously a display of blatant misogyny, but there’s something else at work here, too, an obsession with hierarchy that’s generally not commented upon because we’re still focused on all the misogyny. Got lots of beautiful women? Let’s figure out who’s the most beautiful! What is that?

Wunderbeer used to be a little bit of a meat market. Social Kitchen is not. Most of the space is devoted to tables, which means it’s much more of a place where you come with your existing friends, not to meet new ones. And while it’s easy for a mixed-drink bar to slip over into “sexy/trendy,” it’s a lot harder for a craft beer bar: mixology, which happens right in front of you, conjures up images of dazzling nights and gorgeous strangers—while craft brewing, which happens in a vat in the back, conjures up images of sturdy brewmasters who wonder if the suds taste too much of yeast.

Social Kitchen does it all well, and I’m going through their blond beers tonight, none of which make me stand up and cheer but all of which I recommend. “Gentlemen prefer blondes,” I joke, and Mari twirls her hair, saying, “but redheads have more fun.” She sighs. “Poor brunettes.” That’s her natural color.

The sci-fi master Octavia Butler once had an alien

BenjAmin WAChs 17

species declare that humanity was destined to destroy itself because it combines two incompatible traits: We are simultaneously intelligent and hierarchical. This has always struck me as an insight worth exploring, but it’s not Mari’s issue tonight. She’s bringing it back to beauty.

Mari has had a bad run of guys who insisted they were her friends, only to soon confess their love for her, then disappear from her life when she tried to let them down gently. It’s left her bitter about beauty… and friendship. She’s firmly in the “if you really loved me you wouldn’t disappear when I say I won’t fuck you,” camp, and that’s always made sense to me.

Not that I don’t sympathize with Mari’s would-be beaus. I crush easily—and it gave me problems until I learned to relax. Hanging out with interesting, beautiful people is a pleasure all its own. Good things may come after, but the experience spoils if you treat it like an appetizer.

I also get easily bored with my own romances, a discovery that has nicely tempered the obsessive quality that can come from being around the beautiful. An artist friend of mine from L.A., Trici Venola, once produced a series called Monsters and Bimbos, in which she pointed out that “bimbos” are pressured to all be exactly like one another, while monsters get to relish in a terrible individuality. Bimbos can be ranked against a uniform standard. A

18

monster is diminished the more he’s comparable to anything else.

Trici always admired me, and Mari envies me, because when I walk in a room everyone immediately knows: “He’s a monster.”

Mari is one of the many monsters who the world treats like a bimbo. She doesn’t want to be in a hierarchy, even if she very well might be on top. Perhaps that’s why she likes Social Kitchen—it tries a little too hard on the food and mixed drinks for her taste, but it’s perfectly relaxed on everything else.

BenjAmin WAChs 19

LIFE LESSONS FROM A DITCH-DIGGER

AT THE MUCKY DUCK

I’m sitting in the Mucky Duck with Jimmy, who called me up today and told me that his old mentor from back in Montana was in town, and he wondered if I could meet him.

“This guy’s important,” Jimmy said. “He’s the guy who first taught me how to dig a ditch.”

Of course I said yes.

Craig was recently elected the mayor of the 800-person town he lives in, which, he says, has let its infrastructure get so bad that it now needs more than $50 million in repairs to its water system. How does a town with just over 800 people raise that kind of money? “It’s going to be the work of a generation,” he says. Unfortunately he’s getting ready to retire. He’s going to try to leave them with a solid plan before he leaves public life. Something everybody can rally behind when he’s gone.

20

The Mucky Duck is a sports bar’s sports bar: lots of screens, good jukebox, pool table, better-than-average beer selection (for a sports bar), great Bloody Marys, and absolutely no pretension. I order an Arrogant Bastard, which Jimmy finds hilarious.

“I can’t believe you ordering that!” he says over and over. “It’s perfect!” Thanks, Jimmy.

The story, as Jimmy tells it, is that he was a teenager working in a sandwich shop one day (he pantomimes slathering mayonnaise on bread) until Craig came in and said, “Hey, kid, you want to make some extra money doing some side work?”

“I said yes,” Jimmy says. “I mean, sure. And so that night I found myself digging a ditch, my back was sore, my body aching, getting blisters on my fingers, and just having the time of my life, and I thought, ‘I can get paid to work like this! I had no idea!’”

Since he’s come to San Francisco, Jimmy has helped build massive art installations, created robot fighting rings, built boats out of garbage, worked the lighting for Center Camp Café at Burning Man, and been the go-to gopher for Camp Tipsy… he’s everywhere, using his hands to help a whole arts movement develop in rickety buildings and DIY masonry.

“How’d you know?” I ask Craig. “How did you know: This kid will make it happen?”

BenjAmin WAChs 21

Craig waved the question away. “I tried to get lots of kids to help me,” he says. “It was trial and error. They didn’t work out. They’d be digging and I’d leave for a half hour and come back and find they hadn’t gotten any farther, and they’d say ‘There’s a rock in the hole. I don’t know what to do!’ But Jimmy, he was the one who worked out.”

We all laugh. “Oh man, I’ve hired that kid,” Jimmy says. “I tell him to help me pull up a carpet and get the nails out, and then I tell him to clean up all the dirt from the floor while I’m gone, and then when I get back I find he’s asleep on the damn carpet!”

One day Craig told Jimmy it was time to go and gave him some tools. Jimmy got on a bus and, eventually, ended up here, where he’s helped shape a culture.

That’s how this works.

I don’t really know why Jimmy asked me to meet Craig. I’m worried that the kid looks at me as a mentor figure too. He can do better. Why isn’t he?

The Mucky Duck was also Jimmy’s choice of bars. As long as we were nearby, that’s the one he wanted to go to. Fair enough: It’s about as straightforward as a bar gets. I’ve lived in this neighborhood for years, and people love this place. I’m not a sports bar guy—I think Jimmy can do better—but I can tell you how much people adore this spot. It’s a bar for people who

22

don’t like bars to walk in and feel right at home.

Jimmy asks me if I’ve heard of “Burling,” and when I say no, he tells me that Craig invented it.

“It’s a combination of ‘bowling’ and ‘curling,’” Craig explains. “Curling stones are actually really expensive, so instead for Burling you take a bowling ball, cut it in half, attach handles to each half, and play with that. What do you think?”

I’m not a sports guy, but I can tell him the complete and unvarnished truth: “You had me at ‘cut a bowling ball in half.’”

That’s the sort of idea that a man might leave behind as a legacy.

23

L I S A P I A L L A

LOOK, HERE

For this, I use my grandfather’s axe.

Pull it carefully from behind the dead cat’s carrier in the garage, where it rests dusty and dull, subdued by seasons more or less come and gone. More because fifteen winters is a long time for a dormant blade—idle through fifteen springs and summers followed by fifteen hopeful falls glimmering with red-gold readiness. Less because it is only my bony fingers that inexpertly grip the heavy wooden handle, ready to hack the camellias crowding the far corner of my backyard.

Mine is a small job. I have hated these trees for years.

Still—some warning would have been nice. A short note typed by my sensible grandmother, attached by thick garden twine to the long handled axe, stating: to clear is not to clean. Maybe then my breath would not have stuttered when two lops revealed a fibrous system pink and raw as my own. Fleshy and hot. Intricate. Purposeful. Ambivalent but alive. Gleaming in the exposure of harsh afternoon light: the tender wreckage of life hidden beneath tough bark.

24

There are some things people will never tell you.

For instance, had my grandfather told me the first mark is always the most accurate I would have known that although the second and third hit close, it is only the consistent swinging that breaks the branches and brings the tree down. Had he said: you have to keep at it. You have to hoist and heave. Cleave. Gear yourself to twist and pull, break and shake. Press your full weight against the trunk and kick a little. Scratch more than the surface. It hurts.

Then there is the digging. Because when you clear, you have to get it all.

Hew, chop, lop; exhume, hollow, stop.

Lift the roots, clinging firm to life in the dirt

—eager as fingers to keep hold.

Relieve the circular center from its tangled tributaries.

It doesn’t want to leave.

The heart is the hardest part.

It knows.

lisA PiAzzA 25

Knows even before I find the nest—hidden in the cluster of shady branches in the next downed tree. Knows I have no way to test its working or abandoned status: far flung families flown elsewhere or diligent mother out collecting threads, pulling dolls’ hair from the wispy wind?

I carry the nest down to show my daughters.

The youngest one wants to touch—she still sees everything with her hands first: the soft, downy interior; the knitted twigs; the eggless center.

This is one way to start over: so that when all that is left is a pile of branches (roots, leaves, waterless flowers dried dead)—when all that is left is a clearing: ready and open—I can assume the gratified pose my grandfather must have held: leaning (sorry as hell) over the dirty axe.

- SET 2 -

27

C H A R L E S K R U C E R

A POEM THAT DOES NOTWANT TO BE WRITTEN

My brother was 9 and me 7 walking home from schoolWhen he suddenly pretends he’s been struck blindAnd I half believe him, “I’m blind! I’m blind!”, he cries,Clutching the fence along the edge of the park on

Bowen Street.

That was the year of second grade When I fell in love with Helen Keller and blindness.

I ached to be blind.So much I saw I did not want to see.

My father’s contemptThe worry furrows on my mother’s browMy teachers’ uncertain gesturesThe distant play of my siblings

Something was terribly wrong That only I could seeAnd how badly I wanted

How scared I was of dying.(Did my father want me dead?

28

My father wanted me dead.)

I didn’t mind the thought of a coffin.The darkness, the cold, the ground did not frighten me.I told Mommy

(she died last year):

“I don’t mind being dead, as long as I can think. But how terrible to lie in the ground and not think!”

“If you must bury me, Mommy,Bury me alive.”

To be buried alive was nothing. To be buried alive was my life.

Buried alive, I could survive.

That same yearOur principal invited a blind lady to school.A lady with a real live guide dog.A lady who could read braille and touched our faces

with herFingers like Helen Keller.

A seer.

How ordinary she turned out to be.

ChArles kruger 29

What I loved reading most at seven was “The Hardy Boys.”

They confronted mysteries they could solve.

Nobody could solve my mystery.

That summer we played at Craigville Beach.Our favorite game was digging holes in the sand And burying one another up to our chests.I couldn’t get enough of it.

One day my cousin lost his glasses in the surfHe was blind as a bat without them. Ha ha.

Later they washed up on the beach As good as new.

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M I R A M A R T I N - P A R K E RPRETTY FROM THE SIDE

“You look pretty from the side,” mother said, reaching over and touching my cheek. She was driving fast in her old red VW bug with the primer grey fenders and bald tires. We were on the Santa Monica freeway, heading east towards the city. It was early evening, and we were going to her friend Anne’s house for drinks.

“I know,” I said. “A pretty face is all I have.”

“What a funny thing to say,” she said. “Where did you get that idea?”

I was quiet. I didn’t know where I got that idea, but I knew that when I wore make-up, especially deep burgundy lipstick, like my mother wore, I was pretty. Other than that, I couldn’t really think of anything else I had going for me.

She pulled off the freeway. “You have more than just a pretty face,” she said, turning left onto Fairfax.

“You’re creative,” she said. “You’re very creative.”

I still didn’t answer.

32

“Why do you think so badly about yourself?” she asked. By this time we were waiting for the light at Wilshire Boulevard.

I still didn’t say anything. I didn’t know why I thought about myself the way I did. The thoughts were just there. It’s not like I chose them.

She turned right at Santa Monica Boulevard, heading towards Hollywood.

“You make it sound as if no one has ever given you any encouragement. I have always complimented you on your imagination. Ever since you were little I have told you that you were highly creative.”

The sun had set, and the sky was turning from brilliant blue to black. Once we passed Western Avenue the neighborhoods started getting rough. I lit up a clove and rolled my window down. After taking the first drag, I passed it over to my mother. The first hit always gave me a nice buzz.

“Who is it that you imagine looks down on you?” she asked, handing me back my clove. “Who gave you this idea that all you have is a pretty face?”

She was getting really angry now, so I thought I should probably let up a bit with the silence.

“I don’t know. It’s just a feeling I get.”

mirA mArtin-PArker 33

“Who? Who is it you’re talking about when you say that?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Teachers, middle-class people, and sometimes the aunts.”

“Your aunts don’t look down on you. Why do you think they look down on you?”

“It’s just a feeling, that’s all. It’s no big deal.”

We pulled off of Santa Monica Boulevard just before hitting Vermont, then mother slowed down and started looking for parking.

“You have always been so hard on me. You are never hard on your dad the way you are on me. His mother and his family have never done squat for you, but you give my sisters and me all the shit. You have always hated me. Always.”

She slowed to a stop and began backing into a spot, grinding the gears as she shifted into reverse. “You direct all of your anger towards me. You are so full of anger. You really need to get some help. You really do.”

I sure hope she sticks to wine tonight, I thought as I slowly rolled up my window.

34

AROUND AND AROUND

She was taking the corners fast now. “Oh come on,” my brother pleaded from the backseat. “Can’t we just go home?”

But she ignored him and continued speeding down Marine Street. She made a hard left at the corner, then headed into the alleyway and drove on.

“You just think I’m drunk,” she yelled. She took another hard left, and another, and then put us back on Marine Street once again, where she sped right past our apartment building.

“You two are always on my case,” she said. “I don’t know why I put up with it. I should just get my own place and leave you with your crazy dad.”

She went around the corner again and went as far as Ozone Park this time before making another sharp left.

“I’m not drunk!” she yelled, revving her engine into the turn.

mirA mArtin-PArker 35

“I didn’t say you were,” my brother said. “I just want to go home. Can’t you understand that? We just want to go home.”

I was scared. I could tell mother wasn’t totally shitfaced, but she was definitely tipsy. Tipsy and pissed off. She seemed perfectly fine on the freeway coming back from Hollywood. She got off at the Lincoln Boulevard exit and began heading towards Venice. But after we passed the military supply shop, I sensed her mood begin to shift. By the time we turned right at the Kentucky Fried Chicken, her horns were out.

“There’s a parking spot right over there,” my brother said, pointing to an open space in front of our building. But she acted like she didn’t hear him and kept driving. That’s when she started yelling, “I’m not drunk!” Finally, after driving in circles for ten minutes, she pulled over and parked. My brother and I got out of the car and walked towards our front gate in silence. When we got inside the apartment, we immediately went to bed, and the incident was never mentioned again.

36

UPSIDE DOWN, BACKWARDS, AND INSIDE OUT

We must have been out together that night, but I don’t remember what club we were at or which band was playing. All I know is that she left before I did. And when I got back to her apartment later that night, I opened the door and my brother’s friend Abe, a local biker punk in his mid twenties, was looking up at me from under the covers of her bed. (Her apartment was a studio, so her bed wasn’t far from the door.) I quickly went back outside and waited. A minute later my mother called out for me to come in. When I did, Abe was buttoning up his flannel shirt and my mother was in the bathroom with the water running.

Needless to say, I felt awkward. So I went into the kitchen and began cutting up a watermelon we had bought earlier that day. I loved having watermelon at night in the summer. When I was done slicing, I brought a plateful out to the table and began eating. Abe had finished with his shirt by this time and was now busy tying up the laces on his boots.

mirA mArtin-PArker 37

“Want some?” I asked. “It’s delicious.”

“That’s okay, I should probably head out,” he said, not looking up.

When my mother returned, she sat down at the table, picked up a melon slice, and began munching away. Abe grabbed his leather jacket, and said goodbye. After he left, my mother and I both spit a mouthful of seeds out the open window and burst into laughter.

38

VERSAILLES

We were at the Cuban restaurant, Versailles, and I was hungry. But instead of ordering something, I sat smoking cigarettes and watching my mother and her friend Fertile eat dinner. They were each having roast chicken, steamed rice, black beans, and fried bananas with cream.

I’m hungry, mommy, I thought, but didn’t dare say. Instead I smoked and watched them eat, since I had no money. I ran out of cash earlier that day, probably having spent quite a bit on her, buying us smokes and beer at the beach. Now I was being punished.

It’s not my problem. Ask your father for help, her eyes said. She was glaring at me over the table as she cut into a chicken thigh.

But I’m hungry, mommy, I thought.

Did Fertile know that I had no money, I wondered. Did he know that was the reason I had ordered only water and was sitting there smoking instead of eating?

mirA mArtin-PArker 39

I’m hungry, mommy, I kept thinking.

Your father ruined my life, mother’s eyes replied.

I am hungry, mommy. I am eating a cigarette in front of you, mommy. I am getting smaller in front of you, mommy. Bits of cream and banana are falling from your lips, mommy. I am hungry, I am hungry. Never mind, don’t worry about me, I’ll just sit here and smoke and starve.

Be my guest, mother’s eyes replied, your father ruined my life.

41

D E B O R A H S T E I N B E R C

RED COMFORT EATING

Roses and red-colored blossoms on the tree outside. Longest night of the year spent alone.

Eating words on pages for comfort.Comfort eating.Replacing person with words.Replacing person with other people.Replacing person with events.Going alone.Movies alone.Concerts alone.Eating alone.Joy of alone.Space of alone.Words of alone.Joy of words.Joy of alone words.Joy of words alone.In alone space.In alone time.

Writers write words so manyand read words so many in front of crowds so many on many nights

42

in many venuesover many drinks and in many dry places.

Writers eat words to stuff full the empty place in their bellies.

Writers eat words for comfort. Comfort eating late at night alone.They call this self-soothing.

Eating the words and feeling them fill your belly.Rubbing the words between your legs.Slicking the words between your legs.Stuffing the words between your legs.

Becoming an animal that subsists on words.Becoming an animal that couples with words.

No humans left like you.Where does an animal go that has been a humanand remembers what it used to mean to be human?Where does an animal go whose words are slippery,don’t stick, stay, stand?Where does the exiled animal go when the words

don’t stick?

Red blossoms on a summer tree.Red marks on a lover’s throat.Red blood from between the legswhere the words did not take root.Did not meet their counterpart.Did not engender young.

DeBorAh steinBerg 43

Red blood washing the last of the lover from the body.The last traces of words un-rooted.

Where does the barren animal go in her exile?

45

H E A T H E R B O U R B E A UMONTAGSDEMONSTRATIONEN

It has been 25 years since my life changed,When I first visited Germany, watched

demonstrations in Leipzig,And marveled how one country could shift so

quickly,How my friend’s grandmother could live through

Weimar, Bury her husband a Nazi soldier, welcome me in

FrenchSo warmly, and be the only one of us to knowThe Wall would fall within weeks?

It has been 20 years since my heart changed,Opened to meet yours in the snow of a united Berlin.Since I learned the language enough to live and workIn former Volksarmee barracks in Stralsund, to jokeAbout Hamlet in China with fellow students from

Kazakhstan And Belarus, to hold your hand under table inWarm-lit Mitte cafes, cocooned as the world changed.

It has been 15 years since my first American friend in Berlin

Had a child, anchored himself fully to this land, became

46

Of a place his parents escaped, found himself documenting

A continent shifting towards and away from its past, Embracing and rejecting migrants and a common

future, While I watched from a New YorkDot-com drunk with two towers standing.

It has been one year since we last kissed, Soft, sad, happy, chaste, wanting kisses at the door Of your eastern studio still heated by coal. Now, a second post-Wall generation will walk With lighted lanterns for St. Martin’s Day, photo

exhibits will Show the city from our time together as historical

curiosity,And we will—greyer—greet each other again.

25 years ago my life changed, and tonight, as I lean into you,

I am grateful for fallen walls and Monday demonstrations.

47

J O S I A H A L D E R E T E

I WANT TO BE A SYMBOLFOR MY CULTURE

I want to be a symbol for my cultureI want to take all the chihuahuas out there in TV

land back to my place and feed them helping after helping of taco bell

I want to wrap myself up in a colorful ponchoTilt an oversized sombrero over my eyesLean up against the nearest pronged cactus I see And take an afternoon siesta the fuck away from all of

thisI want to be a symbol for my cultureI want to tell you the wrong thing when you ask me

what this song is aboutI want to take care of your kids and secretly teach

them Spanglish swear wordsI want to give away the endings to all the telenovelasI want to be a symbol for my cultureI want to wear mi Nacho Libre wrestling maskChe Guevera t-shirt and Zapatista ski-cap all at the

same timeI want to start a Frida Kahlo una-brow trend right

here in MarinSo that all the yogamoms going into their beauty

salons

48

For their weekly Brazilian bikini waxWill instead come out with their eyebrows patchedI want to be a symbol for my cultureI want to appear in sitcoms every once in a while as

the characterWho always ends up walking away mumblish

Spanish jibberishAnd at this point I would personally like to thankAl Pacino’s Cuban and Puerto Rican accentsFor all they’ve done for usI want to be a symbol for my cultureI want to continue to flatten down the languageSo that it’s easier for everyone else to pronounce

places and wordsLike Corte Madera, Tiburon, Los Gatos, Los Angelees,

El CerritoI want to put pictures of La Llorona’s kids on milk

cartonsAnd “Have you seen me?” postersI want to start a rumor that narcotrafficantes are

smugglingDope in J-Lo’s ass and have been doing it for years

nowI want to see the remake of Home Alone starring

Elian GonzalezShot entirely on location in CubaI want to be the sugar skull with Andy Lopez’s name

on itI want to be the sugar skull with Alex Nieto’s name

on itI want to be a symbol for my culture

josiAh AlDerete 49

I want to read the subtitles backwardsI want to teach white people how to use a leafblowerI want to erase the border *La Llina* and repaint it

two feet to the leftAnd while the Minutemen and all those other

guardians of America’s bordersGo and investigateI want to go out and steal their carsI want to go out and take their jobsI want to use up all their medical benefitsI want to impregnate their daughters andSteal their places in line for the movies…I want to be that coyote that people hire to take them

back homeI want to start a West Marin support group for

people who have seen the chupacabraI want to be a symbol for my cultureI want to keep cradling the immigrant’s American

DreamLike a babyI want to be that Yucateco rolling sushiI want to be that Salvadoreno blowing leaves off a

lawn in TiburonI want to be that 19 year-old Chilanga nannying the

two toeheaded babiesThat she’s got in tow as she windowshops Mill Valley

boutiques that She will never go intoI want to be that Mexicano with a red smock and cap

looking likeA watered down disciple of Huitzilopochtli

50

As he washes cars by that gas station on Second StreetI want to be that Chicano who opens up a taco shopAnd names all the burritos after famous MexicanosI want to be a symbol for my culture

51

C A D C O W E N S

LANGUAGE ARTSPOETRY JOURNAL

Dear Mr. McMahon,

I won’t lie to you—I really hated this sonnet. I mean, I read it over and over again without understanding a word. I won’t bore you by writing the whole thing out here, but take a look at these lines:

Then thou, whose shadow shadows doth make brightHow would thy shadow’s form form happy show

I mean, come on. Tell me Shakespeare isn’t being difficult on purpose.

I took your advice and translated it into regular English. And get this—once I got my dictionary I figured out that I actually knew most of the words already. It was just the way they were arranged that made them confusing. See what I mean about being difficult on purpose?

Anyway, my new version goes like this:

At night I sleep and have a better view

52

When I’m awake, nothing is interestingBut when I sleep, I only dream of youAnd you are all I ever want to see

Even in dreams, you shine like a bright starSo I can’t help but long for the real youTo come and send my nightmares running farAnd make both night and day a better view

I can’t think of a better gift at allThan seeing you by day when I’m awakeBecause at night I find myself enthralledBy the impression that your dream self makes

Without you, there is nothing for me hereI live to dream and be with you my dear.

What do you think, Mr. M? I mean, it even rhymes and everything, if you pronounce interesting like int-rest-ing.

Anyway, now that I know what Shakespeare’s talking about, I definitely have some thoughts about this poem.

So basically, Shakespeare is saying that he misses someone, and wants to spend all of his time asleep because then he can dream about them and not feel lonely anymore.

I mean, come on. Who gets to dream good dreams about someone they love every night? I won’t lie

CADy oWens 53

to you, I miss my brother like anything, and if I dreamed about him every night I sure wouldn’t be complaining about it.

So tell me this whole thing isn’t just a made-up excuse to stay in bed all day because old Shakespeare doesn’t want to get up in the morning. I can just see him pulling the covers over his head when his mom wants him to get out of bed and get ready for school. I’ve seen a picture of him—a big fat guy in a cape with a red beard. He’s probably so fat that when he pulls the covers up over his face his feet stick out the bottom and get cold. Serves him right for being confusing on purpose, if you ask me.

Ok, Mr. M, hang on a sec. I just told Nat about lazy Shakespeare under the covers, and she says I’ve got it wrong. I guess the fat guy is actually Henry the Eighth, not Shakespeare. Nat says Shakespeare isn’t even a real guy, anyway. It’s just a disguise for Queen Elizabeth, who really wrote the sonnet. And get this—Queen Elizabeth is Henry the Eighth’s daughter! So really, the big bearded guy isn’t the one hiding under the covers at all—he’s the parent at the door saying if you aren’t out of that room in two minutes so help me.

So who even knows, Mr. M. Who even knows.

Poetically yours,Maggie

54

P.S. I do have a question about the name—Sonnet #43. Does that mean there are 42 others? And if so, are you going to assign them? Because I really think I got the whole Shakespeare gist from just this one. So we’re probably all set with the Shakespeare, don’t you think?

…

Dear Mr. McMahon,

I won’t lie to you—I’m pretty confused about this wheelbarrow poem. It isn’t hard to understand the way that sonnet was, but it doesn’t really say anything.

I mean, there’s a red wheelbarrow and it’s raining and some chickens are there too. The end.

But here’s the crazy thing about this poem: It was written by a man named William Carlos Williams. Can you believe that? What parents with the last name Williams would name their kid William? No wonder he puts his middle name on everything.

I felt bad for poor William Williams, so I read the biography info about him in our book. I thought maybe it would say something about his lifetime

CADy oWens 55

burden of having the same first and last name. But all it said was that he’s a doctor and writes poems on his prescription pad. Probably when his patients are boring.

I also read another William Williams poem, called “This Is Just To Say.” I won’t lie to you, Mr. M, “This Is Just To Say” is way better than that wheelbar-row poem. How come you didn’t assign us that one instead? I’ll write it here for you, in case you didn’t know about it.

It goes like this:

I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox

and which you were probably saving for breakfast Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold

I won’t lie to you, Mr. M—this is the first poem I’ve read this year that I actually get.

56

I bet you if I showed it to my mom she would say that William Williams is being cheeky.

And I bet if you showed it to my brother, he’d love it. In fact, hang on a sec, Mr. M—I think I’m going to send it to him.

Ok Mr. M, I’m back. Something weird just happened. I went to copy out the poem for my brother, and I found myself writing completely different words. Like when I translated that sonnet except more different, somehow.

I mean, I know a lot of other poets copied Shake-speare and wrote sonnets, and that was ok. But William Williams isn’t as old or as famous as Shake-speare, so I feel like maybe I did something bad by copying him.

Guiltily yours,Maggie

P.S. Do you want to see my William Williams poem? If this is illegal you have to promise not to tell anyone. Ok, Mr. M? It goes like this:

I have stolenthe baseball glovethat was hiddenin your closet

CADy oWens 57

and whichI knowwas your prized possession

Forgive meit’s worn in so much betterthan mine

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