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The Morpo Review Volume 01 Issue 3
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T M M OOOOO RRRRR PPPPP OOOOO RRRRR EEEEE V V IIIII EEEEE W W
MM MM O O R R P P O O R R E V V I E W W
H M M M O O RRRR PPPP O O RRRR EEE V V I EEE W W W
M M O O R R P O O R R E V V I E WW WW
E M M OOOOO R R P OOOOO R R EEEEE V IIIII EEEEE W W
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Volume #1 May 17, 1994 Issue #3
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CONTENTS FOR VOLUME 1, ISSUE 3
A Bob and a Matt . . . . . . . Robert Fulkerson and Matthew Mason
Leaving Costa Rica Before the Election . . . . Leonard S. Edgerly
Pederast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bryan Thomas
Lorelei Adams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jerome Mandel
Driving in Amahrica . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . James Lewis
Untitled . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . by Leah Cole
SuperMenu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Leonard S. Edgerly
Death of a Giant Jack Rabbit Rodeo Star . . . . . Byron Lanning
Untitled . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Magnus Y. Alvestad
Second Impression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dror Abend
Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Tuomas Kilpi
Untitled . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . John Tarver
Open the Day . . . . . . . . . . . . . Christopher Jacques Hoover
What Donna Knew . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . J.D. Rummel
About the Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Authors
In Their Own Words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Authors
Israeli Poet Traveling Lecture Series . . . . . . . Announcement
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Editor + Editor
Robert Fulkerson The Morpo Review Staff Matthew Mason
rfulk@creighton.edu + mtmason@ucdavis.edu
Proofreader PostScript Editor ReadRoom Layout Designer
Kris Kalil Elizabeth Simmons Mike Gates
kkalil@creighton.edu esimmons@usd.edu tsmwg@alaska.edu
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_The Morpo Review_ Volume 1, Issue 3. _The Morpo Review_ is published
electronically on a bi-monthly basis. Reproduction of this magazine is
permitted as long as the magazine is not sold and the entire text of the
issue remains intact. Copyright 1994, Robert Fulkerson and Matthew Mason.
The ASCII version of _The Morpo Review_ is created in part by using Lynx 2.1
to save ASCII formatted text of the World Wide Web HyperText Markup Language
version. The PostScript version of _The Morpo Review_ is created using
Aldus Pagemaker 5.0 and Aldus Freehand 3.1 (both from Aldus Corporation) and
Adobe Photoshop 2.5 (from Adobe Systems, Incorporated). All literary and
artistic works are Copyright 1994 by their respective authors and artists.
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A Bob and a Matt
(Editors' Notes)
o _Robert Fulkerson, Co-Editor_:
Recently, we celebrated Mother's Day here in the States. I'm not sure
if other cultures or countries celebrate Mother's Day, but if they
don't they should. I'm finally old enough to understand and appreciate
the gifts and knowledge that my mother has given to me over the years.
One of the great pearls of wisdom she dropped into my lap about ten
years ago was that I should take a typing class. At the time, I
thought it was one of the geekiest, stupidest classes for a seventh
grade kid to take. But now, ten years and somewhere around seventy
words a minute later, I can thank her that it doesn't take me very
long to type up my Editor's Notes mere hours before this issue goes to
press.
But one of the most important things that my mother shared with me at
a very early age was her love of reading. There was not one room in
any of the houses I lived in as a child (all two of them) that didn't
have books in it somewhere. Of course, I started out with some of the
childhood classics, like _The Velveteen Rabbit_ and numerous _Grimm's
Fairy Tales_ both at home and at my grandparent's house. As I grew
older, I of course devoured as many of _The Hardy Boys_ books that I
could (I still have a few of the hardback books, including the master
sleuth book, _The Detective's Handbook_.).
I enjoyed _The Lord of the Rings_ by Tolkien and, yes, I indulged in
many Stephen King books (my first one was _Christine_). Today, the
reading list includes Orson Scott Card, Frederick Pohl, the
_DragonLance_ series (written by Weis and Hickman) and many others.
Unfortunately, given the amount of time I spend on schoolwork and
working, I don't get half as much time as I would like to simply read
books for pleasure. Instead, I'm reading books like _High-Performance
Computer Architecture_ and _Applied Combinatronics_.
Which is why I enjoy editing _The Morpo Review_. People from around
the world send in poetry, short stories and essays for me to read, and
since I've taken on editing _Morpo_ as a sort of obligation, it's my
job to read what gets sent in. For pleasure. Which I enjoy
tremendously. Sure, I still manage to sneak a book in now and then
(currently it's _The Second Generation_ by Weis and Hickman), but I
really enjoy the pieces that pour in for each issue.
In this issue, we've brought together a collection of authors from
five different countries, with such varying backgrounds as published
scholarly author to iron worker.
I think you're really going to enjoy the diversity of literature in
this issue. To touch on a few of the pieces, Jerome Mandel has written
a ghost-love story, _Lorelei Adams_, that is a comedic yet sobering
look at reality. Byron Lanning, who appeared in our first issue with
_Oh Bean Curd!_, has returned with a story that can only be termed as
"slapstick literature" -- _Death of a Giant Jack Rabbit Rodeo Star_.
Not to be left out, we have some excellent poetry by James Lewis
(_Driving in Amahrica_), Bryan Thomas (_Pederast_) and Chris Hoover
(_Open the Day_). We close this issue with a story by J.D. Rummel, who
also appeared in our first issue with _Frozen with a Stranger in the
Park_, entitled _What Donna Knew_. What Donna knew was what the main
character of the story is still searching for -- what exactly does
love mean?
Which brings me back around to my Mom. If it hadn't been for her, I
probably wouldn't be here today, at two in the morning, writing this
little Editor's blurb for _TMR_. Thanks, Mom, for one of the greatest
gifts.
Which also, incidentally, brings me around to saying that I can see
that this rich tradition of loving books and reading will continue in
my family when I marry Kris Kalil (the proofreader for _TMR_) on July
1st, 1994. She probably has more books than I do, which is a
frightening thought. So perhaps, twenty or so years down the road,
you'll see my son or daughter editing their very own little _Morpo
Review_. The legacy lives on ...
o _Matthew Mason, Co-Editor_:
If I were to apply to nursery rhymes the same literalist
interpretations I apply to the back of cereal boxes, _Donahue_
transcripts, and the _Book of Revelations_, then I would have quite a
quandary to contend with at the line _Sugar and spice and everything
nice/that's what little girls are made of_ since I have diabetes and
it would then only seem logical that dating girls would do
outlandishly harmful things to my blood sugar.
The only healthy solutions which leap to mind, then, would be to
either join a monastery or start dating men.
I don't think I could do the dating men bit. No, I don't loath or fear
men who date men, I've simply come to the unshakeable conclusion that
men in general are pigs when it comes to dating. I've heard the locker
room talk and the jokes at parties and the anecdotes over lunch and,
yes, heard the snortings of my own pig within and I know that, with
only the rarest and unlikliest exceptions, dating a man would drive me
insane (this, of course, branches nicely into a separate discussion
about the mental status of most women but neither space nor topic will
allow this at the moment).
And the monastery option? I don't think so. It looks like those robes
must chafe something awful.
Now then, how does this pertain to _The Morpo Review's_ third issue?
Thankfully, that's not up to me to explain as I can leave that to the
literary scholars of the future to pick apart and interpret at their
will. In the meantime, you, the dedicated reader, must just be sick of
me rambling on, so enjoy our latest issue and stop throwing corncobs
and moldy cabbage leaves to yours or anyone else's inner pigs.
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"Leaving Costa Rica Before the Election" by Leonard S. Edgerly
The red and blue parade
fills my streets
children waving flags
our side and your side
dinner and dessert
rising to meet the slogans
honking all the horns
tomorrow's forecast: green and white
the same idea
only more so
since these tourists
will have departed.
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"Pederast" by Bryan Thomas
Winnow it down
to a terse
tense diatribe
just so, you fail
you've not even elucidated
your loathing
and you're back-to-front in the lifestream
and you're anxious to turn around
because it makes more sense to expect
than to regret
but your urge to totally debase yourself,
in front of as many people as possible, to purge and rebuild
stands in the doorway
You find that you must have one stick with you
up your ass let it
pass through you'd go
through less if it was just you the whole way and none of this
garbage
you're trying on postures and poses and hats and they don't fit
and you know it but its your personal cross to bear
you still masquerade there's a big
psychological rationalization potential word there
tweeze it out
"Yeah, it's my inner child, man. Fucks me up, hardcore."
pederast to the last
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"Lorelei Adams" by Jerome Mandel
The house was quiet now. Not so much silent as still. Lorelei Adams
waited for her husband to die, and now that he had done so, she wasn't
at all content with the results. They had been together for so
long--forty-seven years, except for their honeymoon and the year that
followed--that his absence from the house was an amputation.
They drove away from the wedding, trailing streamers and rice,
directly into the path of a schoolbus which tripped over their car,
spilling children across the highway. Everyone thought they were dead.
They spent the first hours of their married life in adjacent operating
rooms, the first weeks undergoing resurrective surgery, and then
months recuperating--he in his parents' house, she in hers. Although
they shared the same experience, they healed separately, and, once
they actually began to live together, their lives were full of jokes
about extended honeymoons, delayed sex, and the danger of children.
After that it seemed empty to be with anyone else.
And now he was wrapped in earth with a modest stone set upon his head
to keep his spirit down. She visited him a few times as though he were
recuperating. Sitting on the edge of the gravestone, she spoke to him
in the same level voice she used while he was alive. She explained, as
carefully as she could and for the thousandth time, the need to
separate whites and coloreds, woolens and cottons from synthetics. She
reiterated in her earnest way the importance of changing his underwear
every single day and that he mustn't wear the same shirt two days in a
row. But he was always as impervious to instruction as the cat. She
stopped visiting him in the cemetery, which only emphasized his
absence.
Now, whenever she came into the house, she turned her music up, the
way she liked to hear it, on all the speakers at once. And she was
just a little disappointed when no one got up to leave.
Though every picture in the house was hers, the ones she valued most
were the ones they fought over. She threw away that horrid lamp and
turned his study into a sewing room. The mash'ad on the floor beside
the music center was superior in every way to the bokhara with that
foolish medallion he had chosen. And the print he wanted when they
reupholstered the chairs in the living room--well, it made Lorelei
Adams smile.
And finally, finally, she was able to eat the way she wanted to eat.
She abandoned his tiny table in the kitchenette and set the octagonal
oak table in the dining room with the polished silver and laundered
linen placemat and napkin. A goblet of water and a thin glass of pale
Vouvrey stood beside her plate. And then she brought in the tureen.
She served herself carefully. She ate graciously. She smiled to either
side. She tapped the napkin to her lips and cleared away the soup
before she brought out the platter of steaming vegetables to which she
helped herself with the silver tongs. She cleared away the dishes
before she brought out the dessert and the coffee on a silver tray she
had prepared before dinner with the sugar bowl and the creamer. She
washed and dried the dishes herself, pleased with the newfound
elegance of her life, and more than a little irritated by his
selfishness.
She had to do all his jobs now. She brought the mail up and separated
it into his and hers. She answered hers in the timely manner that
always earned the admiration of her correspondents, and, as usual, his
piled up on his bedside table until she finally had to go through them
herself to pay the bills, cancel his subscriptions, and inform his
college alumni office. You think he would have had the foresight ....
But no, he never considered her or what she constantly had to do to
keep their lives together pleasant. When his mother died, he wanted to
leap upon the first plane home, never thinking that she would have to
pay the hotel bill in a currency she didn't understand, pack and carry
all the suitcases herself, and miss the very production of Carmen they
had come all that way to see. Didn't he realize that his mother was
already dead and that it could not possibly make any difference to her
when he returned?
He thought only of himself: his work, his clients, his limited
vacation time. It rarely occurred to him, as she pointed out on more
than one occasion, that she was a person too, that she, too, had work
and requirements and never enough time. And if society paid him more
than it paid her, that did not measure what was important so much as
it declared society's inverted values. Those who serve humanity are
every bit as valuable as the technicians who keep the machines
running.
But nothing about him was ever quite satisfactory. So it didn't
surprise her at all when he returned.
He was sitting in the living room as she came through the door with an
arm full of groceries.
She walked right past him, miffed at his lack of consideration.
Couldn't he see she was weighted with packages? Her irritation
increased as he continued to sit and read, while she put the groceries
away. And where had he been the past few weeks while she thought he
was dead? Damn inconsiderate.
She went into the living room to confront him precisely on this topic.
"Where have you been, Manny?"
"Dead," he said.
"That's no excuse. Really," she said.
"The cancer got me."
"You might show some consideration for me sometime," she said.
"Platelets plummeted," he said. "White cells on the rampage. Red cells
metathesizing right and left."
"Can't you stop thinking about yourself for once?" she said. "Selfish.
That's what you are and that's what you've always been."
She turned away in anger and was suddenly back in the kitchen, but
when she opened the refrigerator door, there he was, awkwardly stuffed
between the second and third shelves.
"Frozen sections showed metathesized tumors all over the place," he
said.
"Manny," she said, "would you please stop!"
He unfolded himself from the refrigerator--all arms and spindly gangly
legs--and finally inflated to his full height beside her with a
dishtowel in one hand and the unwashed salad bowl in the other.
"What are you doing?" she cried. "Can't you see that bowl hasn't been
washed yet? Put that down."
And while she washed the bowl, he disappeared. She spent the rest of
the night searching for him in every room of the house. She found him
in the study the third time she went in there.
"What happened to my lamp?" he asked.
She felt the accusation like a lash and woke up before she had a
chance to answer him.
She was out of sorts. Well, a dream like that! She washed and dressed
before going down to breakfast. Now that she was alone, it was
important to look her best all the time. Imagine! As if Manny actually
cared about that stupid lamp.
She set the octagonal table for one: woven placemat, linen napkin,
silver fork, knife, two spoons, luncheon plate, bowl, cup and saucer.
There! it looked beautiful. She brought the small silver coffeepot to
the table, steaming through the spout, filled her cereal bowl, and
brought the warm croissant from the micro, but when she went to get
the milk, she found his shoe in the refrigerator.
Really! how embarrassing! She grabbed it quickly, looked about to make
sure she was not observed, and hugging it tightly, she returned it to
his side of the bed where it belonged.
When she returned to breakfast, Manny was sitting at the table.
"Really, Manny," she said, "you shouldn't leave your shoes in the
refrigerator. It's disgusting."
"Well, what could I do?" he said. "Lymph-nodes were swelling and there
was hardly a platelet to be seen anywhere. Absolutely defenseless.
Hey!"--looking around at the shiny surface of the dining table--"what
am I? an orphan?"
Lips in a tight line, she set a place on the mat in front of him
without chipping anything. Then she noticed the small silver coffee
pot. If only he had said something. She took the coffeepot into the
kitchen and, heating the water again, prepared coffee for two in the
larger pot, knowing as she did so that her croissant would have to go
back to the micro and her cereal was uneatable. Damn irritating!
When she turned around with the large coffee pot in her hands, he was
sitting at the wretched table in the kitchenette. Two places were set
with the daily dishes and mismatched cups.
"Much better," he said. "Everything's handy. Don't have to walk so
far."
She put the silver coffeepot down on the table where it didn't belong.
She sat.
"Don't you know," she said evenly, "how much I hate eating in the
kitchen?"
"Hey, I meant to ask you," Manny said, "whatever happened to the lamp
in the study?"
Oh, she thought, was he going to get it now!
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"Driving in Amahrica" by James Lewis
I lost my coat in America
walked around in the state campsite
in what's left of their
vast wilderness
In America, men have jaws of stone
they pulled their few possessions and small children
in handcarts
to the New World
wives walking behind
praying
They sell comic books for religion down there,
have motel beds that massage you for a quarter,
T.V. shows about Hitler's teeth,
and gossip
in the frozen food section
In a liquor store a black man called a white man
a brother
white man protested showing me the colour of
their skins
I said I thought it was a form of expression
they laughed
someone mentioned a fight
I ducked
Damn coat
always blame someone else for the things I lost
Ma said things will work out in the end
that's when
I was too young for her to know me
That coat's gone for sure
So many miles in the desert
makes a family want to explode
look at that horizon
you can't see anything else
makes you forget where you left your coat
looks like rain
hope it won't last long
It's getting dark
I better go find her
I saw a guy today
lives in a bathroom off the Interstate
Hey, we're tourists
picture taking, stone arches
stepping around the U-Haul
river rafting the Colorado
Santa Fe Chicken
coffee in the pub
driving down from the mountain's deer and poplar trees
to the red sugar bowl, by the Colorado
feet in the muddy river
off roading
slickrock, lizards, and bats
kids working tables
up to my neck in Navaho jewelry
This lady tells us her grandad's a medicine man in a teepee
up on a mountain
eating peyote
Sure, we just need a place to sleep
The Grand Canyon
Ick komme mit Deutschlander
The sight every American should see
Il ne parle Francais, mais il essaye
Cin-cin
tip the water jug back
Morning, dusk, walls like rust
and wind
It's a journey, I tell her
East Arizona's the bottom of a tide pool
barrel cactus and yucca trees
Lake Mead - blue playing field
Have fun!
(they're driving off to gamble)
Fat man cleans a fish
That's a good fish!
Baseball hat on the porch says,
Sold three thousand bags of ice!
Wind carries the heat under the curry smelling tree
smell from the what's-that-flower? rides the heat
Viking woman cradles her baby
rides a fast boat
her husband tows to the lake
We talked to a philosopher
Knew he was, he smiled so_
unexpectedly
lives in a camper with his dog
Viva fucking Las Vegas!
Wayne Newton's down with flu
Three-forty-nine breakfast in the Paradise Buffet
We sneak past the slot machines
to the res-taur-rant
birds sing caa-caa, ooee-ooee
Don Ho: moookie looukie loww
Guitar: twayiianng
An angel: no doggie bags in Paradise
On edge
I watch butterflies
cartwheel over the hood of my new truck
going down into Death Valley
Wind always blows
In California it blows sand
from the lake drained for L.A.
driving it thirty forty miles an hour down the highway
into my new truck
I snap
get out behind a shack
read a threat in the window
rub the pits in the windshield
listen to country radio
sandblast my legs on the highway
see a hole and go
wind knocks the truck around
like those butterflies
We stop at a drive-in
I consume
coffee, Marlboros, french fries
see her back as she runs away across the parking lot
to call her mother
I go
quietly fetch her
Drive north into June snow
so
Motel 6 ecstasy
Can't wash a truck in Mammoth
(like to keep ma truck clean)
Over the Sierra
love them snowy streams and rocks and trees
down to drive the Yosemite
500
take pictures of Park Rangers and waterfalls
In the west, grassland lies rumpled like golden fur
Lake Shasta, skirted in red dirt
needs a top-up
I-5 North to home
timberline
home
home green
Jungle!
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"Untitled" by Leah Cole
I visited that place
Cloudy summer day
A chill breeze
Or was it more?
Steel grey, no black.
No contrast as sharp as
The draped wire
Still sharp
Was that ditch--
The one that grew poppies
And had a little gravel--
A moat?
Or-- no
Muffled mumblings
Of tourists
That don't speak the language
The language of the photographers
The army, The language
Of hate
The language of the dead
To them mixed up letters
To me hate clothed in beauty
Despair lilting and bouncing
With gentle syllables
The nightmares find me
Paris. London.
Home.
Small towns
Obscured even on the Rand McNalley
Fleeting black images
Chase me to church
Break my pious thoughts
Sketch themselves faintly
Over the Moscow sky
And put on a new Mask
In Petersburg
A pilgrimage
Of duty? Of guilt?
To seek absolution?
Or crucifixion?
A common unconscious
Opens suddenly before me
Like birth waters breaking
A flood of life seeping away
That ditch-- was it?
Yes.
They are there.
Poppies wrap their sullen roots about the wrists and ribs.
In the midst of a flood
I dream of a hand exposed
Reaching up to God in heaven
But there's no Michelangelo
To paint this on another Sistine Chapel.
Only me.
I don't wake crying.
I never do.
Only half remembered images
Over tea and toast.
Not so difficult a journey
Up before the sun
A padded motor coach
No forced march
No fitful sleep standing closely in a cattle car
No twitch of dreams in anticipation
Of confronting this evil.
I wonder, should I be nervous?
Will I stick out as the only aryan?
Will they hate me because I have
No name to find
Because I won't see in a display
My dead grandmother staring back?
We are hushed.
No one else is.
They are not pilgrims.
They are in Junior High.
They are bored on Spring Break.
They are here to see the gore.
They are here not to understand
But to gawk.
We stop. She looks in a mirror
Or is it a photo that somehow survived?
He wonders if the bunk he sees
Held his great uncle
I am drawn to the monitor.
Hidden from the faint of heart
By a barrier to shield and lean on.
Past the tattered Torahs
And the shattered windows
Texts I can translate but don't want to read
I know it will be there, playing
Playing ceaselessly
Waiting for me.
That moat that used to circle the camp.
I know that place.
How many people did I walk on?
How many grew into the poppy
I pressed so lovingly into
My German-English dictionary?
The barrier meets my body
Cool and seductively dark
I become locked to the screen
I have no power to back away
People carried to that moat
Like so many rotted chicken legs
Dangling loosely for crab bait
Or it is-- yes.
It grows poppies
I am jostled sharply
My elbow contacts the barrier
The physical pain is revitalizing
The decaying scent of the shoes
Is almost jarred loose from my nostrils.
A woman who can barely
Reach the barrier
Short and soft
Rotted from the inside
Cues up
Pushes her way through
Not willing to wait her turn
To get a peep at the freak show
At the sensationalist video
Propaganda of the West
"Damn kids. They're watching
It over and over four times"
So eager to drizzle her
Leering eyes over the record
Of the moat
Or is it-- no!
She cares nothing for our Grandmother
Or great uncle
Or my poppy
And I am become Michelangelo.
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"SuperMenu" by Leonard S. Edgerly
Internet in the morning:
a trip to Brown
for poetry
creates a menu of all things
touching the word (poetry)
highlighted in black,
a menu all to myself,
the poetry at Brown.
Imagine if I were a student there now,
or at Harvard, or Stanford,
this lit by words,
this free to order up
my own menus.
Instead (old song)
a meeting of the
Steering Committee to Reengineer the Purchasing Function
(oh please, oh please)
Bring a menu with honey on it!
Slick clear juice of the bee,
my own digital network,
cross-referenced and very, very fast.
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
"Death of a Giant Jack Rabbit Rodeo Star" by Byron J. Lanning
The Bernoulli Brothers Gunpowder Circus and Giant Jack Rabbit Rodeo
suffered a tragic loss last night when its premier giant jack rabbit
rider, Adios Superfly, exploded and burned to death in the middle of
his performance.
A few seconds into Superfly's act, the giant jack rabbit he rode,
Becoming Mr. Fink, bucked him off and propelled him to the top of the
big top tent where he flew into the midst of the flaming trapeze act,
slamming into the flaming trapeze artist, Napalm Dickey, also known as
the human meteor, also known as the Flambeau Rambo because he wears a
napalm turban on his head, which burns like a maniacal, pissed off
bunsen burner as he swings through the air the with greatest of ease.
When Napalm Dickey and Superfly collided, Napalm Dickey's flaming
turban ignited Superfly's creosote cowboy hat and volatile crepe paper
neckerchief. Flaming embers then dropped on his electric chaps.
Superfly detonated, and he fell to the arena floor in a ball of flame.
A fire alarm sounded in the big top tent and several rodeo clowns
dressed in firefighter outfits drove out onto the arena in a emergency
fire wagon pulled by Playboy bunnies. They jumped off the wagon and
extinguished Superfly with bottles of seltzer water, but not before
the flames had given Superfly an excessive cremation. A clown dressed
in a surgeon's costume named Old Doc Laudanum then entered the arena.
He took one look at the pile of ashes and stated in his medical
opinion, "Superfly could be possibly dead." The Bernoulli brothers
respected his medical opinion greatly because before he became a clown
he was a surgeon, and he became a circus clown only when he lost his
medical license in a botched liver transplant operation in which he
mistakenly transplanted a hot water bottle into a man.
Giant jack rabbit experts consider Adios Superfly the greatest giant
jack rabbit rider in the world and probably the best in the modern
era, ever since giant jack rabbit riders began using electric chaps,
Pancho Villa foot deodorant, thalidomide chewing tobacco, and wearing
frilly underwear under their electric chaps for good luck. Despite his
success, Superfly did not have a natural talent for giant jack rabbit
riding. For years he never road a giant jack rabbit longer than the
required ten seconds and many times he fell off before he mounted one.
His riding career took a complete turnaround when he attended Dr.
Puzzletwit's two hour confidence-building program, based on certain
metaphysical principles of ichthyology and the major teachings of
Nazism. The principle part of the seminar consisted of Dr. Puzzletwit
grabbing his students by the shoulders, screaming in their faces, "By
God, all you need is some confidence!" and slapping them with a live
tuna fish. As students progressed in the seminar, Dr. Puzzletwit no
longer had to tell them they needed confidence and just hit them with
a live tuna fish. Upon completion of the seminar, the students didn't
need Dr. Puzzletwit to hit them with a live tuna fish, for they had
self-confidence and could hit themselves with a live tuna fish, which
they did most severely upon receiving their diplomas.
After Superfly graduated from Puzzletwit's seminar, he had to ride a
white colored giant jack rabbit named Cream of Punishment that no
rider had stayed on longer than three seconds. This did not deter
Superfly because now he had confidence. Before mounting Creme of
Punishment, Superfly stared him in the eyes and said, "Today's the day
you get ridden you overlumpy, moby-jumbo, heathen of an Easter Bunny."
He slapped himself with a tuna fish, mounted Creme of Punishment, and
rode him for ten seconds, scoring a 9.5 for technical merit and a 9.95
for artistic merit on account he smiled vigorously throughout the
ride, pointed his toes, and extended his pinky fingers of both hands.
This successful ride launched his rodeo career. No giant jack rabbit
threw him again until his death on Becoming Mr. Fink. He wound up the
number one giant jack rabbit rider five years consecutively and
retired from the rodeo circuit when the Bernoulli Brothers hired him.
Upon Superfly's death, Sheriff Heyday of Kranky Karma County suspected
foul play. He found evidence that someone had severely buttered
Superfly's saddle. Immediately, suspicion fell on Rub Chevalier,
another giant jack rabbit rider, for the day of Superfly's death
Superfly and Chevalier had an argument over Candylegs Desideratum,
Chevalier's exwife. Superfly had started dating her and Chevalier
didn't approve of it because Candylegs was a strict full immersion
Baptist; whereas, Superfly had no religious convictions other than hot
tubbing.
In addition, Old Doc Laudanum had seen Chevalier walking around the
rodeo grounds with a large stick of butter, licking it like a
Popsicle. This did not seem unusual by itself because he always walked
around the rodeo grounds licking a stick of butter; however, on this
day, he came up to Old Doc Laudanum and asked him, "Theoretically, if
a man buttered Adios Superfly's saddle and Superfly died as a result
from a giant jack rabbit throwing him and this certain man got
convicted of the crime, could that certain man still enter a convent
and become a nun?" Doc Laudanum refused to answer. He called it a
stupid question that only someone with postgraduate work in philosophy
could conceive. Chevalier thanked the doctor, offered him a lick of
his butter then left.
When Chevalier became the prime suspect, Sheriff Heyday gave him a lie
detector test. Chevalier scored only a 55% on the test and failed, so
Sheriff Heyday told him to go back home and study the test harder,
especially the sections on George Washington cutting down the cherry
tree, Baron Munchausen, and the boy who cried wolf. Heyday feels
confident Chevalier will pass the lie detector test on his second
attempt, and he will charge him with first degree murder and reckless
misuse of butter in the act of a felony.
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
"Untitled" by Magnus Y. Alvestad
She's dressed in black
as if
someone died -
I think
she did.
She doesn't look
back
at me.
She laughed
and
I did -
now she cries
alone.
I'm a stranger
but
she lets me
read her
like
an open book.
I want to fill those pages.
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
"Second Impression" by Dror Abend
Not as much as to have left a furious letter behind
I didn't even pretend not to care
or that I wouldn't be willing to preach Holocaust to Sabbath school kids
wherever I was going
or that I knew where it was
Only that I will never have to wear that canvas uniform in a hundred degrees
weather
never be owned by a higher ranked sadist
never sent on jog in the heat with a pint of stale water
never again assist in the oppression of individuals
for the general good of a people who would not like to hear my opinion about it
so I didn't tell them.
Now, behind an ice glazed window in a frozen bottom university out there
I have my wish
I study eventlessness,
holocaust-lessness, bone-breaking-less-ness,
not even my bones by town people who think I'm a Martian
So well did I step out of my world
into the limbo of post recession
my neighbor fast asleep, his wife one month pregnant
I like pancake for breakfast
but no ketchup
I ask him
how can you have no health insurance
he says that he has study loans
Universities
are so great.
lectures and students repeat in fast jargon
future minds and experienced philosophers re-read verbally with the use of
new methods
young scholars and established residents of academia reiterate in professional
terms
margined thinkers and members of the establishment rephrase in unique language
differently trained and degree earned mental writers say differently
nothing
alone
I embark on conventions
how further into the snow was I buried at the MLA
it was Christmas in Toronto,
Paris translated, London at a Cafe`
this being arranged by the business people of a word procession
I could well afford to sit belly emptied at THE ROYAL YORK
and read The New Yorker: "Mrs. Lethwes had no feelings for the idea
[of adoption];
... Their own particular children were the children she wanted,
an expression of their love"
Mr. Shiltz had no feelings for the idea of AIDS
Mr. Fauel had no feelings for the idea of free trade
Mr. Mobavitz had no feelings for the idea of penis slashing
Ms. Hardings had no feelings for the idea of losing out at the Olympics
So my wife has no feeling for the next snow storm
nor I for my toothache
putting off my check up for two years
now it will cost
A nice touch of reality under my crowns
don't I wish it for those convention people
giving lectures of white domination
in ten inches,
research papers of
Walt Disney's policies of employment
Now criticized by tenureship junkies
manifesting
Gay and lesbian - we hate bisexuals - studies,
saying "they cause AIDS" -
as if blaming the Japanese
will help produce better cars.
the Russians - better winters
the British - snobbier schools
the Israelis - lousier wars
the Deficiency Syndrome is a part of our lives now
a thousand times better than that stale uniform, them canvas water,
that one hundred degrees Holocaust that you may not protest
for I may have no feelings for the idea of reality
Now, I can delay
and put it
away
for a while.
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
"Names" by Tuomas Kilpi
I have no dreams
just visual remorse
lies remembered badly
in an imaginary landscape
black noise
on all channels
life
ends in a commercial break
no transmission
without transgression
I have no face
just a distant cloud of dust
chinese particles and junk bonds
tattooed on my forehead
an empire destined to expire
and nothing more
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
"Untitled" by John Tarver
These people
bother me.
Walnut-shaped, satanic,
they stand in a leafy
wind,
poking and prodding the fun out
of autumn sounds.
Smoldering rubbish heaps
for heads,
they turn away
after expressing strong,
mixed feelings.
The black outfits billow.
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
"Open the Day" by Christopher Jacques Hoover
Open the day
With the slightest of breath
That rises to point and pirouettes into the coming light
It crystallizes in the bedroom's cold first air
Takes form to seize life from the jaws of dawn
To your side, she has not awakened
And continues to dream
Of a river, strong and slumbering
Of warm coffee
And a daughter
And a future
And of music without ending
And opens unfocused eyes at last
To a drowsy, lopsided smile
And "good morning"
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
"What Donna Knew" by J.D. Rummel
The first time I entered Locklin's mind, I was every bit as surprised
as you might imagine. It was a strange union to be sure; I was limited
to just seeing what he saw and hearing what he heard. I was never
privy to his thoughts or impressions, nor do I have any explanation
for the phenomenon. I have never shared the details with anyone.
Unusual as it was, it wasn't a lot of fun, not after the initial
novelty wore off, anyway. In fact, after a while it was a lot like
going to a long and boring movie. Locklin was no secret agent. He did
pretty much the same things I did. He ate breakfast, lunch and dinner.
He watched a god-awful amount of television, and when he wasn't going
to the gym he was working or sleeping. I stopped this ultimate
invasion of privacy not out of any high moral code, but out of a sort
of boredom.
Then he introduced me to Donna.
The damn fool introduced me to soft, sexy, and completely captivating
Donna. How was I supposed to behave myself after meeting her? To this
day I don't know how to express the effect she had on me. I knew that
prettier women existed. Sometimes she wore too much eye make-up and
sometimes her nose was a trifle outstanding, but in her presence I
felt an electricity, as if every system in my body were on alert; I
thought faster, I observed more, and every statement I made came under
careful scrutiny before I would release it for public consumption.
Maybe it was her laughter. When she laughed at one of my jokes it was
an honest laugh, not polite. When she listened to me she actually
heard what I said and acted as if my opinion mattered.
I knew that I was headed for trouble, and for one of the few times in
my twenty-five years I didn't want to run. I wanted this trouble more
than anything I could remember.
And I wanted more; I wanted to see myself in her eyes; I wanted to
hear her voice call my name; I wanted to make the blood rush in her
veins.
But if any one person can belong to someone else, she belonged to
Locklin. I have to be fair, Locklin was not some jerk, and I could
understand how a woman could find him attractive. Locklin was tall,
broad of shoulder and narrow of hip. He had white teeth and all of his
own hair.
He looked great with his shirt off.
I am none of those things. The best that can be said of me is that I
have a peculiar charm which permits me to have never suffered a dog
bite.
I tried to behave in a decent fashion. I played the game and tried to
live through it as I'm sure lots of people have before me. I was only
allowed to play because of Rule Three:
_NO NON-EMPLOYEES ON THE LOADING DOCK_
When Donna would come around to pick Locklin up, or just to say
"Hello", she had to wait in my shoebox-sized office.
One day she came in looking like she had unloaded and puddled a
hundred yards of concrete; she was the most gorgeous non-union labor I
had ever seen.
"Good afternoon," and as I spoke I could feel my metabolism shifting
into that Donna-fueled overdrive.
"Howdy-doo," she replied, and plopped down in the molded plastic
chair against the wall.
I was careful not to stare and yet maintain the sort of pleasant eye
contact that she would expect from a friendly, nice man.
"We look like we've been working," I said.
She blew a breath of air upwards pushing back a fallen tress of red
hair. "My brother is putting a patio in my Dad's backyard and nobody
told me to be out of town."
"Gee, I'm sorry," I said, "But look at it this way, it could be
worse."
She aimed a questioning look at me, "How?"
I gave it my best "intense cogitation" look, adding a sort of Rodin's
"Thinker" posture, even stroking my chin. "No, I guess it can't get
any worse."
She smiled. That smile meant so much; If a meteor burned through the
roof and killed me it would hurt a little less because she smiled.
"Are you going to buzz the Man, or do I have to get tough and break
Rule Three?" she asked.
"Oh-ho. Mother warned me about girls like you--never thought I'd be
lucky enough to meet one though." I wiggled my eyebrows Groucho-style.
She laughed. What a day! Christ, maybe there was a check from
Publisher's Clearing House at home.
I paged Locklin.
"Tell me something," she asked, "why are you working this job?"
A question about me?! Did she care? She was asking about me! I had to
be cool, but not flip--down-to-earth.
"What do you mean?" I answered, trying to look thoughtful.
"You have an education and a lot on the ball, why are you working in
this office? You could do better."
"I don't know. Maybe I've never found what I want to do."
She sucked in her bottom lip and nodded, "I know what you mean. For a
long time I thought God would send me a telegram saying, _"BE A
DOCTOR, DONNA"_ but he never did. I guess it's something most of us
have to work on."
"I think. . ." I started to reply, but I never got to finish, for at
that moment Locklin came in and my small magic was broken. I no longer
existed in the same room: there was a chemistry present in which I was
a completely inactive element.
Looking back I know of course how much she must have cared for him,
but at the time the reality of it was too great and I purposely denied
what my eyes saw and my heart most feared. I've done it before. How
could I be attracted to someone who wasn't interested in me? Or more
accurately, why was I always attracted to such people? For one reason
or another I have played this scene virtually all my life.
There was a very major difference this time, however: I could enter
Locklin's mind.
I guess that's why I did it. I just wanted to be with a woman who
wanted to be with me, even if it wasn't really me she was with.
At first I wrestled with the morality of it. Later, I questioned the
healthiness of it. But I guess the weather was what finally wore me
down. I couldn't stand watching the snow swirl down outside my window
and stay in that house knowing that Donna was alive in some part of
the world but wasn't with me. I had been given a marvelous gift and
only a fool would not use it.
So, on a Sunday afternoon I quietly slipped out of my own mind and
slid into Locklin's experience. It was a great deal like waking up in
a strange place. I closed my eyes in my living room and the surprise
was that, when I opened them again I wasn't in my own life anymore.
I was in luck. Donna and Locklin were together. They were walking in
the park, watching children skate on the frozen lagoon surface. We
held hands.
"Do you know how to skate?" she asked him.
"No," he replied.
"Want to learn?" she squeezed our hand as she asked.
I wanted to learn, I wanted to positively fly across the ice.
When he answered "No," it made me angry. I wondered if he didn't want
to look foolish. Hell, I was used to that.
She leaned her head against us as we walked, and I felt special, like
the only child at Christmas in a house full of adults.
We walked in relative silence, listening to the frozen earth crack,
occasionally watching it crumble to chocolate bits. I watched, as best
Locklin's eyes would let me, her chilled breath rise in clouds and
disappear.
She dumped a mitten-load of snow down our back and we chased her up a
hill. I noticed her hiding place but wouldn't have given her away even
if I could have. She jumped on our back and kissed our left ear.
Locklin dumped her in a snow drift and I wanted to tell her a joke
about her rising from the powdery pile looking like a cartoon Santa.
But I couldn't.
On a remote hill by the snow-filled swimming pool she led us to a
hole in the cyclone fencing and guided us over toward a cement bench.
She sat down on the cold surface and pulled us down to her.
We kissed. My heart was slamming inside me, or maybe it was inside
him, I wasn't sure. She tasted so good, her scent was so incredible;
the sheer rush on the senses was staggering. As she circled her arms
around us and drew herself onto our lap, I was suddenly aware of how
rarely I touch anyone, and how few were the times anyone has wanted to
touch me. It became very clear at that moment how much I missed
something I'd never had.
I began to feel ashamed; this was not my life.
I left him at that point, returning to my living room aware of a
salty, burning sensation behind my eyes, aware that I was alone.
_________________________________________________________________
Although I am not proud of any of the times I intruded on them, the
night at the bar was perhaps the most significant.
It was certainly the worst.
My involvement was purely accidental--to a point anyway.
I was drinking in a hotel lounge, watching a live D.J. perform the
unenviable task of motivating a Monday night crowd to dance.
As I stepped from the bar, looking for a rest room, I observed Donna
seated in the lobby, checking her watch, obviously waiting on someone.
I'd had a few, so I approached her.
"Come here often?" God! I regretted it instantly. What a stupid thing
to say.
She looked up, apparently oblivious to my blunder, "Hi, what are you
doing here?"
"I'm working undercover for the F.B.I., it's their new Bottom of the
Barrel Program." I wiggled my eyebrows Groucho-style, falling back on
proven material.
"You have great eyebrows," she said.
That was all it took, just that one comment and suddenly my desperate
imagination was off and running, turning "You have great eyebrows"
into, "I am secretly attracted to you, please ask me out."
Fortunately, although my imagination is strong, it doesn't overpower
my rational side. I replied, "Yeah, they're great on cold winter
nights."
My mind raced to think of anything to say that would prolong staying
with her, but after a few moments of unspectacular small talk, the air
between us began to hang in heavy, drooping pauses. It was time to
move on.
So, I waited in the parking lot, seated behind the wheel of my car,
checking to see if it was Locklin she was meeting.
I don't know why, but somewhere in the back of my head maybe I
thought if she was meeting someone besides him, maybe I had a chance.
Desperate, very desperate.
Of course Locklin drove in, parked, and at once affirmed my faith in
Donna and brought me down to reality.
My reality. Not my favorite place to be. So once more I entered
Locklin's world.
In the hotel room they had dinner, and he said things I could have
said better. I should have left then.
But I stayed. I stayed as he drew her to him and undressed her. When
I saw Donna naked, my throat tightened--somebody's throat tightened. I
saw the desire in those wonderful eyes--such a different look than she
gave me when praising my eyebrows; this look was pure and hungry. He
was making the blood rush in her veins, and I hated him for it.
And I stayed, I stayed as he made her cry out his name; I felt her
excitement, and the rhythm they built between them excluded me far
more than any mere conversation. I will never forget the sheer warmth
inside her, nor forget the fear that finally drove me out: the
stunning dread that I might never have what they had, that such
passion and acceptance was something it was my fate to only desire and
envy but never attain.
I was vomiting in the cold parking lot, watching the accumulation of
several hours spill itself down the side of my car, the acidic stink
waking me, but not halting the memory of her face as they coupled.
A bald security guard was standing beside the car, telling me that he
didn't come to my job and throw-up.
Asshole.
_________________________________________________________________
It was particularly hot that Friday night. For years, Fridays have
always been special to me. When I was a boy, Friday meant that I had
survived another week of abuse in school and could escape into my
comic books for the weekend. For two days and nights I was Superman,
Spiderman, or all of the Mighty Avengers. Friday night, when I was
very lucky, had monster movies on late, and my Mother watching them
with me, half-asleep on the sofa. And Friday night inevitably led to
Saturday morning and cartoons: Fantastic Four, Johnny Quest, Bugs
Bunny.
But those were the Fridays of my youth. The Fridays of my manhood
were spent alone, watching reruns and going to bed early, knowing that
cartoons today suck.
I had not been in Locklin's mind for the entire spring and a fair
chunk of summer. After the night in the hotel I was consumed by a
period of self-loathing and depression. I had resolved to respect
their privacy.
But it was particularly hot that summer--that night. I was in bed
watching lightning flash in the eastern midnight sky. I was damp; my
exposed flesh clung to the sheets, and long pools of moisture gathered
in the creases of my skin. The wind gusted, steadily bringing the
storm closer. It shook the leaves in the trees and whistled and moaned
around the corners of the house.
I felt sweat collecting under my eyes and tasted salt against my lips
as wetness gathered on my face. The air in my room was heavy and moist
and the rattling fan on the dresser pressed it into me like a damp
towel.
My thoughts were of Donna. They were the kinds of thoughts that are
never mentioned in daytime. How pathetic. Lying in bed enjoying
memories of sex with a woman I couldn't call my own. Not just the
woman, but the memories themselves.
All the past came back to me, faces of girls I never dared speak to,
and the rejections of those I did. In comics, sometimes there are
drawings of the hero surrounded by all the villains he's fought. I was
in the center of a circle comprised of Mary, Janet, Pam, and Cindy.
I thought long and hard in my seclusion, trying to grasp why I had to
endure such alienation. In the end the weather beat me again. It was
too hot to deny myself; I had been good long enough. With a storm
brewing in the east, and my skinny body pasted to the linen, I reached
out to Locklin's mind.
Ordinarily the transition to his experience was a smooth process.
Tonight, however, was different. Terrible. At first there was the
unpleasant sensation of biting tinfoil, then lots of little pinpricks,
an uncomfortable tingling that resembled a fever chill. Slowly, wave
after wave of some sort of horrible perception, a realization on
Locklin's part that so affected him it was transmitted almost as
physical pain. I have never been privy to his memory or his own view
of reality during our joinings, so I had no idea what was assaulting
him. I could only be aware, as always, of our immediate surroundings.
Locklin was crying. Crying and driving. It was raining and the water
rushed out of the sky in black, blinding waves. The car was moving
very fast, too fast for the road under such conditions. He was alone.
The sky lit up and for a moment became high noon tinged in eerie,
electric blue, then blackness swallowed us up again and the car
plummeted along into the evening. But the darkness outside could not
compare with the sort of shadow that was welling up in Locklin. The
pain he was enduring was gigantic, it loomed around my own
consciousness, looking for a way in, seeking to consume any
intelligence it found.
The road was unfamiliar, and the speedometer needled higher and
faster. The engine was whining, straining against the overdrive. The
rubber blades couldn't clear the glass fast enough; the road was a
flashing, twisted blur.
"Get out of my head!" I heard him say.
I was frozen. He said, "Get out, bitch!"
What in the world was he talking about?
The tears came faster now, his vision was gone. He mashed the
accelerator to the floor, and I felt the tires break loose from the
slick blacktop. Locklin took his hands off the wheel and covered his
head. The vehicle seemed airborne, it tilted and the wet, flashing
world turned sideways. I felt his throat constrict as I left him.
_________________________________________________________________
It was a hot summer, much like the one in which Locklin died. Years
have passed since that night, many things have changed, and many
remained the same. Seated on the front steps I looked up at the stars,
then down at the highway, comparing the still lights above with the
rambling glitter below.
My last conversation with Donna was at Locklin's funeral. I recall
the day being sun warmed and pleasant, a comfortable environment
oblivious to suffering.
The preacher said a few words. It was very generic, since I don't
think he knew anything about Locklin. But then neither did I, really.
After the service, Donna and I walked towards our respective cars.
Mine was not near hers but I walked beside her anyway. "If there's
anything I can do for you. . ." I said. She walked very carefully over
the grass and occasional stranger, "No, but thank you."
She seemed very controlled, very calm. I certainly didn't have the
right to ask what she thought had happened, let alone explain that I
had been present. There was so much that I wanted to say, but all I
could finally bring to her was the only thing I was certain of.
"I want you to know he loved you," I told her.
"I know he loved me," she answered, and her voice had a trace of
regret as she added, "Wouldn't it be nice if that were all it took?"
And she smiled at me, not a happy smile, but a face that seemed to say
other days were coming, and these days did not stop or wait.
She said goodbye and drove away.
I never saw her again.
The only conclusion I ever came to was the result of thinking about
it over and over on nights just like this.
It's quite possible that we forget something about ourselves: In the
beginning we are born alone, in the end we die alone, and in the
interim, ultimately, no matter who we love, or who might love us, we
must live alone.
I'm not sure, but maybe Donna always knew this. I think most of us
have to work on it.
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
ABOUT THE AUTHORS, VOLUME 1 ISSUE 3, TMR
o Dror Abend (bc05323%bingvaxa.bitnet@cunyvm.cuny.edu) is a graduate
student of English at New York State University at Binghamton. He
writes poetry and engages in creative criticism.
o Magnus Y. Alvestad (magnus@ii.uib.no) is a student, consultant and
poet in Bergen, Norway.
o Leah Cole (colel@alleg.edu) is a first year student at Allegheny
College in Meadville, PA. She plans on majoring in English and
minoring in German, with a concentration of double teaching
certification. Her ultimate goal: To get a job in a wealthy school
district (ha) and wear her birkenstocks to work.
o Leonard S. Edgerly (edgerly@ng.kne.com) is a poet and corporate
executive who lives in Casper, Wyoming. He has poems published or
forthcoming in _Amelia_, _Owen Wister Review_, and _Visions of
Wyoming_. He has published a chapbook titled _Disputed Territory_.
o Robert A. Fulkerson (Co-Editor, rfulk@creighton.edu) just finished
his first year of graduate school. He will soon graduate from another
school, that of bachelorhood, when he marries Kris Kalil on July 1,
1994.
o Mike Gates (ReadRoom Layout Designer, tsmwg@alaska.edu) is a
cyberholic who runs a small BBS in Ketchikan, Alaska. Mike is a closet
writer who sells explosives for a living (really!) and has a humming
room full of computers in a house he shares with his wife and two
infant daughters.
o Christopher Jacques Hoover (choover@usd.edu), known in certain
Morponian circles as Shadowspawn, is a network coordinator at the
University of South Dakota. His poetry and short fiction have
previously appeared in _The Longneck_, an annual publication of the
Northbank Writers Group in his home town of Vermillion (e-mail him for
details). He hasn't written anything about cows yet, but does own a
really cool handmade necktie with holsteins on a red background.
o Kris M. Kalil (Proofreader, kkalil@creighton.edu), a graduate
student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, is eagerly anticipating
her marriage to Robert Fulkerson on July 1st--a mere 5.5 weeks away!
o Tuomas Kilpi (tkilpi@cc.helsinki.fi) is currently studying
philosophy at the University of Helsinki. He also edits a small press
journal that deals with everything from comix to Bach. So far he has
written four published books and a fifth is on the way.
o Byron Lanning (bjlanning@delphi.com) lives in Missouri. He is
working on a script for an interactive CD ROM and a collection of
humor, which includes the story _Death of a Giant Jack Rabbit Rodeo
Star_. His story, _Oh Bean Curd!_, appeared in Volume 1, Issue 1.
o James Lewis (James_Lewis@mindlink.bc.ca) grew up in Vancouver, B.C.
and has lived there all his life. He worked for years as a structural
ironworker, but hasn't worked much recently, so he bought a suit and
is looking at being a salesman. He lives with his wife and their baby.
o Jerome Mandel (jerome@ccsg.tau.ac.il) is a professor of English at
Tel Aviv University. Although primarily a medievalist (his most recent
book is _Geoffrey Chaucer: Building the Fragments of the Canterbury
Tales_) he has also published on Shakespeare, Fielding, Lawrence,
Joyce, Fitzgerald, and Houseman as well as short stories in American
and Israeli magazines.
o Matthew Mason (Co-Editor, mtmason@ucdavis.edu) eater of many bagels,
is currently putting the finishing touches on his master's thesis of
poetry now titled _The Thin Line of What I Know_. He just received the
Celeste Turner Wright Award for Poetry from UC Davis but hasn't let
this go to his head (yah, right).
o J.D. Rummel (rummel@phoenix.creighton.edu) is a mysterious figure
who seeks after the truth and has sworn to use his great powers only
for good. Or at least he'd like to be. His story, _Frozen With a
Stranger in the Park_ appeared in Volume 1, Issue 1. Other stories of
his can be found on his personal World Wide Web page at
http://phoenix.creighton.edu/~rummel/.
o Elizabeth A. Simmons (PostScript Editor, esimmons@usd.edu) is a
graphic artist and editorial assistant living in Vermillion, SD. She
designs advertising layouts, posters and logos for clients as far away
as Washington state. Her publications include _Wildlife on the
Cheyenne River and Lower Brule Sioux Reservations_, two U.S. history
texts (currently being published by Harcourt-Brace), _History of Bon
Homme County_, the new format for _Schatzkammer_ (an international
journal for German teachers), cover art for numerous locally published
textbooks, and far too many pending projects. She usually wakes up
before her husband, Chris.
o John Tarver (tortorsen@aol.com) practices administrative law in
Baton Rouge, LA.
o Bryan Thomas (ez006593@bullwinkle.ucdavis.edu) is a third-year
student at UC Davis and is a victim of the 'i' for an 'I' syndrome,
afflicting those habituated to the
real-time-stream-of-consciousness-ness of the teleconference. He is
currently paralyzed by bliss, unable to write poetry.
+----------------------------
------------------------------------------------+
IN THEIR OWN WORDS
o _Leaving Costa Rica Before the Election_ by Leonard S. Edgerly
"[The Costa Rica poem] was inspired by the recent election
campaign, which sent colorful flags of the two major parties
racing through the streets when my wife I vacationed there in
January."
o _Pederast_ by Bryan Thomas
"_Pederast_ was written 12-15-93, and is very much a dialogue
between the poet and himself about the forcible removal of
guilt. I actually spoke a few of the lines aloud as I typed
them, and it's still a frighteningly vertiginous read for me."
o _Lorelei Adams_ by Jerome Mandel
"I attend a writing class with some fine Israeli writers and
the novelist Chayyim Zeldis. I had just finished two unworldly
stories, with time-slips and the impossible, and then started
this with the third sentence. As I worked on it, adding the
accident and manipulating the language, it took the shape of a
multiple-resurrection story. Just before I read it to the
group, one member told an anecdote of a friend who carried on a
conversation with her dead husband. Felt damn silly."
o _Driving in Amahrica_ by James Lewis
"I seldom take photographs, so this poem, I suppose, is
composed of word-graphs from a road trip through the Southwest
US. I did a lot of work with a musician and produced a poetry &
drums show at the Vancouver Fringe Festival in '92. We used a
hip hop beat in the background, and I just 'drove' through the
poem, keeping up a steady fast pace in the reading of it."
o _Untitled_ by Leah Cole
Leah visited Dachau several summers ago. Her interest in the
Shoa has continued throughout high school. She was able to
visit the Holocaust Museum in Washinton, D.C., earlier in the
spring. Much of what she experienced both connected with her
visit to Dachau and a later trip to the seige-scarred city of
St. Petersburg. Images haunted her until she trapped them on
paper. This poem is the result.
o _SuperMenu_ by Leonard S. Edgerly
"My daughter is a freshman at Brown, where my search for the
word 'poetry' sparked musings. What if I had majored in poetry
at Harvard instead of heading for business, what if I were in
college now?"
o _Death of a Giant Jack Rabbit Rodeo Star_ by Byron Lanning
"The image of a giant jack rabbit ridden by a cowboy entered my
head. At first, I thought I had a religious vision. However,
after careful research, picking through a myriad of religious
texts from the _Kabbala_ to _The Bhagavad-Gita_ to Hans Kung's
_On Being a Christian_, I could find no religion based on giant
jack rabbits. So I wrote a story with them in it.
o _Untitled_ by Magnus Y. Alvestad
"I wrote this little poem a year or so ago because there wasn't
anything else I could do for that sad girl. Maybe one day I'll
show it to her."
o _Names_ by Tuomas Kilpi
"I'm just trying to see if I could actually write poetry and
prose in English (which has been my primary language for about
ten years as far as reading is concerned). I enjoy the ability
to create tense images that just would not work in my native
language, Finnish. I tried to create a vivid poem - kind of 24
hours of CNN trashed into five seconds..."
o _Open the Day_ by Christopher Jacques Hoover
"Sometimes, when I tell my wife I love her and she happens to
be in a perverse mood, she'll ask 'why?' The answer that
sometimes feels the closest to the truth is simply 'because of
the way it feels to wake up with you.' 'Open the Day' is my
attempt to put that feeling into a poem. My wife maintains that
it must be fiction, because 'he never wakes up first.' Go
figure."
o _What Donna Knew_ by J.D. Rummel
"_Donna_ was inspired by two circumstances. I used to work with
this nice guy who felt very deeply for this exceptional woman
who was absolutely out of his league. Two, I was confounded by
a physical attraction for a woman that I found personally very
dull. Despite the fact that we could never have a meaningful
discussion, I felt aroused in her presence. So, one day, as her
significant other was dropping her off at work, I looked at him
and wondered what it would be like to be in his head while they
did the nasty. Those who wish to, can send "get help" hate mail
to: rummel@phoenix.creighton.edu"
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
ISRAELI POET TRAVELING LECTURE SERIES
The Israeli Consulate in New York is sponsoring a traveling lecture
series of six significant Israeli Poets. If you or your university are
interested in more details regarding this series, please write to Dror
Abend at E-Mail: BC05323@BINGVAXA.bitnet@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU or Post
Mail:
Binghamton University
Box 10355
Binghamton NY, 13902-6010
Tel 1-607-777-7762
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Where to Find _The Morpo Review_
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following means:
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o Subscriptions:
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+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Addresses for _The Morpo Review_
rfulk@creighton.edu . . . . . . . . . . . . . Robert Fulkerson, Co-Editor
mtmason@ucdavis.edu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Matthew Mason, Co-Editor
esimmons@usd.edu . . . . . . . . . . Elizabeth Simmons, PostScript Editor
kkalil@creighton.edu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kris Kalil, Proofreader
tsmwg@alaska.edu . . . . . . . . . . Mike Gates, ReadRoom Layout Designer
morpo-submissions@morpo.creighton.edu . Submissions to _The Morpo Review_
morpo-request@morpo.creighton.edu . . . Requests for E-Mail subscriptions
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morpo-editors@morpo.creighton.edu . . . . . Reach all the editors at once
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Submit to _The Morpo Review_
What kind of work do we want? How about Sonnets to Captain
Kangaroo, free-verse ruminations comparing plastic lawn ornaments to _Love
Boat_ or nearly anything with cows in it. No, not cute, Smurfy little "ha
ha" ditties--back reality into a corner and snarl! Some good examples are
"Oatmeal" by Galway Kinnell, "A Supermarket In California" by Allen
Ginsberg, or the 6th section of Wallace Stevens' "Six Significant
Landscapes."
But, hey, if this makes little or no sense, just send us good stuff;
if we like it, we'll print it, even if it's nothing close to the above
description of what we want (life's like that at times). Just send us
good stuff, get published, and impress your peers and neighbors.
So send us your unhinged poetry, prose and essay contemplations at
morpo-submissions@morpo.creighton.edu
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Our next issue will be available around August 15, 1994.
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
