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Jun 04 [Home] 12 A Big Wind Christopher A. Miller Show Me Iain Britton God Bless the Foul Balls: A Prayer for Commencement and Euthanasia Alec Firicano Adele's Battle Against the Legacy of Wendy and Ed Scott Cohen The Eclectic Popsicle Man with Flip-Top Colin James [Image: Sidney Nolan. See Essays, this issue.—Eds.]

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A Big Wind Christopher A. Miller Through this little walk-up big gusts of wind like elephants rattle the blinds in their sockets. On the fire escape across the way a boy folds then throws a paper airplane. It goes up and down delicately, delicately up and down. You lie on the bed in the bedroom, read a book with your feet up in the air, your feet up in the air in white socks. The wind bursts and blows, knocks over a tube of chapstick on the dresser. You hold down the pages of your book with your long fingers: long red nails over the base of the creamy pages folded like a bird. With your glasses up on your forehead, you look like a mechanic immersed in an engine. The wind rolls through and the blinds smack against the screens while down the street the paper airplane shimmies, glides, and like a home run lands softly atop the curb. The boy claps and yells his approval at this fine omen, this best portent. Startled you look up and let go of the book. And all the pages flutter crisply in the big wind like they had planned it this way all along. ~ . ~ Show Me Iain Britton Get out of the car and show what it is you want to show me. I sense this huge face staring down at us from 'on high.' A gannet shits on cloud- gelled hair. An angel enters left wearing Dress for Less clothes and is pointing with a large road-sign finger towards Manutuke a one-eyed village thinking about waking pushing up its roofs amongst paddocks of kumara. A man in a black singlet who plays farmer and missionary stuffs up his lines about being alive and having to get out of bed too early. Show me what it is you like about these blocks of hills this green mattress of grass that river wind gushing up the valley and I'll show you why I can't stand driving in the dark — forget about trying to read by the stars. Take that bitch larger than life walking the countryside the night fogging about her hugging tightly she wants us to be confrontational wants us very much. Isn't that enough? ~ . ~ God Bless the Foul Balls: A Prayer for Commencement and Euthanasia Alec Firicano Career Highlights: Missed two months of '88 with elbow operation. (Von Hayes's 1988 Don Russ baseball card) The ceiling of a cathedral is awful high; I wonder how many workmen fell. My parents will die sometime, like theirs did. My best friend never knew his dad; now they're both drunks. There's some bum down there somewhere, asking for quarters, livin' it up. Didn't study enough, but I remember "The Pledge of Allegiance," I mean "The Star Spangled Banner." I remember the "Our Father" too, but I still haven't thought about it much, still can't stay in tune all the time. Sometimes I'm grateful for my poor vision. If Tom Brunansky doesn't care if he hits .220 with only 15 home runs, why should I? That's what we're here for, right? That's what he's here for: a foul ball. God bless America, there goes a bum running onto the field. Beachballs. I hate them. Do the wave. ~ . ~ Adele's Battle Against the Legacy of Wendy and Ed Scott Cohen Wendy said, "Ed, out of bed. I'll get your slacks. Pack your black blazer, charge your razor, and Tell Adele to clean her room and set the table." Adele sat sulking in her bed watching cable. Wendy felt slick, she already had Eddie's slacks. She flipped her make-up lid and drove her jeep to Jack's. Kneeling in his attic, Eddie smoked and phoned his secretary. She licked a stamp, he whispered, "I miss you already." Wendy shared a squeaky ski lift with Adele. Adele accused, "You and Dad are gonna get a divorce." "It's 'going to,' not 'gonna,' now act like an adult." Wendy skied the slope, dropped her poles, smoked, and spoke with Jack. Adele sat brooding in the well-lit hotel lobby, When she saw the boy she liked from the flight, Bobby. Bobby said, "Hello," he hoped, mostly, to hold her. They took a muted mountain bus that night to Boulder. The lights in the bus dimmed as they drank and played gin. The moonlit window glowed around Adele's grin. The glitter on her eyelids glistened when their eyes met, Their palms were interwoven, warm and wet. He leaned over and gave her a grape Jolly Rancher kiss. Wendy and Ed's legacy dissolved in its softness Like the flowing shadows that fell from the ceiling. As the bus approached a lake her eyes were opening. ~ . ~ The Eclectic Popsicle Colin James Science-Dog has cast me out, theories absolved mean nothing now. The threshold measuring monitor blinks with torpid energy. Proximity pretends, meaning is hurt doorways sweat. Where art thou, Science-Dog? I was simply making minor adjustments then glancing down, I noticed his eclectic popsicle. ~ . Man with Flip-Top Colin James The window in the crowd of shaved legs was for religion. Lotions were applied. The glass got a bit smudged but the legs benefitted, and now old rubbings found in infinite caverns expand on this simple theme. ~ . ~ . ~ Christopher A. Miller is a graduate of the College of New Jersey's literature program, where he studied with the Trenton poet Peter Wood. He has lived and traveled extensively across the U.S., especially in the cities of the East Coast, and makes his living as an architectural writer. He recently completed a first novel and is currently at work on a collection of short stories. Iain Britton lives in New Zealand where his poetry has appeared in Takahe, Poetry NZ, JAAM, Spin and others and can be easily accessed online via the New Zealand Electronic Poetry Centre. Overseas literary publications include Manifold, Links, Iota and Orbis (UK) and Slope 16, The Drunken Boat and Conspire (USA) and recently John Tranter's Jacket 22 (Aust). Poems are forthcoming in Tinfish and Free Verse (USA) and Carillon (UK). His first collection will appear from Hazard Press (NZ) next year. Alec Firicano and Colin James both live in Massachusetts. Scott Cohen is a New York City-based writer whose new book is Don't You Just Hate That? — 738 Annoying Things. Poetry feature: "Sharing Space with Light"