tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-83344577193386425482024-03-14T01:30:26.578-07:00The Bactrian RoomThe Camel Saloonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466326145539153263noreply@blogger.comBlogger83125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8334457719338642548.post-57266891397413518192015-06-07T04:50:00.002-07:002015-06-07T04:50:38.666-07:00Donal Mahoney: Strangers in a Bar<span style="text-align: justify;">Sammy had been sitting in the bar for four hours drinking his usual gin and tonic, one drink after another, and even he would admit he was soused if he could put a sentence together. He didn’t have to talk, however, since he was the only customer left and there was an hour to go before closing. All he had to do was tap on the bar twice in front of his empty glass and the bartender would give him another drink. The service was wonderful.</span><br />
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Then two men in trench coats and fedoras walked in and sat down a few stools away from Sammy. They ordered a couple of beers. They seemed to be concerned about something and Sammy always liked to listen in on other people’s conversations.</div>
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“We need more room,” the big man said. “We can hardly take any more people. But they keep coming down and we can’t send them anywhere else. You would think we were Las Vegas and the drinks were free."</div>
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“Where will we get more room? We’re not talking real estate here,” the little fellow said. “No one thinks this place exists anyway. They think we’re a figment of someone’s imagination. New arrivals are always surprised.”</div>
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Then the big man said, “Oh, some people know we exist but they think we only get dictators and used car salesmen. The common belief is everyone else goes upstairs right away, provided there is an upstairs. More and more people think there may be nothing at the end.” </div>
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The little guy thought about that for a moment and said, “Well, I heard two women arguing the other day about where cats and dogs go. I know we don’t have any cats and dogs. Where would we put them? Pretty soon we’ll be getting Boomers. They’re a fussy bunch. We need more room now!”</div>
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Sammy didn’t know what to make of all of this. He wished he wasn’t drunk so he could join the conversation but all he could do was listen. The two men finally left and Sammy told himself he’d come back tomorrow night and ask the bartender who the hell those two guys were. Then he tapped on the bar twice in front of his empty glass.</div>
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<br /><br /><br /></div>The Camel Saloonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466326145539153263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8334457719338642548.post-10218171395419204992015-06-05T04:47:00.003-07:002015-06-05T04:48:46.127-07:00KJ Hannah Greenberg: Power per Unit<span style="text-align: justify;">The day eventually arrived when my little girl was no longer a child or even a student, but a parent and a teacher. Yet, the amity that I had once felt toward parenting her had gone missing. Whereas we were “buddies” during her youth, once she left for university, I was no longer privy to her comings and goings.</span><br />
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The grownup years that followed her schooling included family portraits, but not revelations. She offered me no glimpses into the tests she endured when planning and executing her wedding, getting pregnant, or delivering her baby.</div>
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After a while, I, too, stopped being forthright in my communications. Although my dear one had been the offspring with whom I had visited all of the missions beading the San Antonia River and for whom I had annually purchased a summer pass to Morgan’s Wonderland, she was no longer the confident I brought to amble the River Walk or to pursue antiques in Hill Country. I passed to her no more of my secrets.</div>
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That is, I barred her from additional treasure seeking among my mental nests of memoirs, poems, and similar verbal tinkerings. My personal disclosures were suddenly off limits; she had to make due with only my fictions, with only those writings that are more make-believe than reality.</div>
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Sadly, that girl expressed no loss in being banded from my confused anecdotes. During those long decades after diapers, when my writings helped me to reminisce, they meant nothing to that increasingly petulant daughter.</div>
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So, with a probe fashioned from last season’s words, I jotted down some number of my scrofulous deeds, none of which made me proud. I hoped she’d appreciate me once more if I again served her select, important details of our past shared circumstances. It was beyond my ken that such telegraphed notions might create, for that young woman, an aura of contempt.</div>
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She stopped calling weekly.</div>
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Accordingly, emotionally exiled, I recorded my memories of our lives in Military City. I wrote how, though poor, I pooled resources with those of other air force moms and managed, somehow, to make life bright and beautiful for us even though our span at Lackland was lackluster.</div>
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After reading those accounts, my daughter didn’t embrace me anew, but blamed me, aloud, for her father’s failed return.</div>
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That child can never know that Stephen was elsewhere, busily relaxing among other civilizations’ castanets, drinking from cups offered to him by smarmy civil servants, and applauding the surcease of rivalries among America’s friends. What’s more, she must continue to be shielded from the fact that her father remains with his mistress.</div>
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Yesterday, I walked alone at SeaWorld, where, I watched porpoises and dolphins dance. They performed measure for measure.<br />
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The Camel Saloonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466326145539153263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8334457719338642548.post-65372938306215693342015-04-24T08:01:00.001-07:002015-06-05T04:48:31.815-07:00Dominic Ward: Trial of an AestheteThe warm water of the bath eased the pain that had infected my meat, the grave worms that had been gnawing at me temporarily stilled, their business with my earth momentarily halted. But the fever was still on me. I could feel it. It was all over me, the water that washed me boiling in small bubbles against the goosebumps of my summer skin. My body shook gently, creating delicate patterns in the water, ripples that went up and down the tub. The itch that ran right through me – emanating as it was from the deepest of my fibres – was quiet, for the moment, but only just. I knew that as soon as I took my body from the sedation of the warm water, I’d be forced back into motion. Aimless motion. Motion from which there was no relief. The itch would kick my body to every corner and nook and cranny.<br />
<br />
Another ten minutes of fevered daydreaming passed. I saw my life as it truly was – a mess of pain, anxiety and despair comingled with the irrational hope of my longings. I had places to be, things to do. <br />
<br />
I decided to finally leave the comfort of the bath. I couldn’t hide from the pain forever; I knew sooner or later I’d have to face it down. But before I left the tub, I made a note to describe the sunlight as it streamed in through the solitary window, large though it was. This light was soft, winter yellow, warming and heartfelt. It had a soothing presence, slowing down the traffic along my nerve fibres to a lazy one hundredth their normal speed. <br />
<br />
I got out of the bath, got dry and got dressed. <br />
<br />
As I walked by the kitchen, I saw through its large bay windows the neighbour’s Japanese homestay girl sunbathing in their backyard, only just an arm’s reach. She was just turned twenty, a decent age for a girl, and she was all alone, set out along a blue beach towel, headphones piping her whatever music it was she liked. She was tastefully arranged in a delicate bikini with tie-side bottoms and an asymmetrical top that gathered over her left shoulder. She was beautiful. Of course she was. <br />
<br />
When we finished later, I made her promise me that she would be waiting in my bed for me when I returned from my night out. I told her it might be a long wait but that that didn’t mean I wasn’t coming. She should definitely wait for me, I reiterated. Sometimes you just had to be straight out with it.<br />
<br />
Brisbane was a horrid place in 2014. The city itself was a total snooze and the speed and E that had fuelled us in the 90s were now long gone, replaced by bath salts and other ridiculous novelty items. Hell, even the dealers had all been in and out of jail and had long since started families and settled down in suburbia with steady work in sales. <br />
<br />
Fuck me!<br />
<br />
That’s all there was to say as I looked up and down the street as it bled with battery acid and cheap wine. My neighbours were cluck cluck clucking like battery hens and I knew they all wanted me dead. It was just that sort of day.<br />
<br />
My good friend Ben was an octopus, or at least he was in the process of becoming one. Ben was my best friend, how dare you suggest otherwise. <br />
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Memories floated down onto me like a heavy February rain. We get our weather here in February, March and even into April. The Pleiades is in Taurus.<br />
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Islands of granite had formed where volcanoes used to be. That’s pretty obvious, isn’t it. Like night is dark and day is bright. <br />
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I saw this little creep walking up the street. He was with his boyfriend. I did my best to belittle them, coming at them hard like a soldier. I rubbed my dick and balls as a gesture of peace. They didn’t seem to understand this however. Oh well, you just can’t please all the people all the time.<br />
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Should I buy a packet of cigarettes? I didn’t smoke but it could be fun. <br />
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Which is worse – a man slapping his wife; or a man slapping another man’s child? What happens when the evergreen forests all dry up and the lakes and the oceans are all cut down?<br />
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Asthma is a drug you can buy over the counter. Asthma is much worse when the patient has bad breath. Can you imagine that: you’re a nurse just entering the final hour of your third consecutive night shift and some little peckerhead comes in with asthma and breathes his foul stink all over you…sometimes life just ain’t all that fair.<br />
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I have friends who read the bible and not ironically. I don’t get irony. I just don’t get it. That makes me kinda dumb. Well, I have been robotripping every day for five years now. <br />
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The widower beat his grandson with a copy of the DSM. Bipolar, schizophrenia, depression and anxiety rained down on this poor kid as his grandad whipped himself into a faggot-hating rage. The child wasn’t gay – the old man simply had secrets to hide. Bury them deep, he had. I ain’t no faggot, he would say to himself each night as he brushed his teeth in the bathroom mirror. <br />
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Nonsense aside, it was Ben that I was meeting this night. He’d already called to confirm a time and now I had nothing to do but grab something out of the fridge and lock the door on my way out. I lived alone; that’s the way it had to be. I couldn’t stand to be in the same space as anyone else for longer than a few hours at most. I needed a lot of space and time to myself, time to go slow, waste on nothing or spend on everything.<br />
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Ben and I were going to meet in the valley. He knew a crazy little side-alley bar just off the main drag. It was the kind of place you could have a rum and coke, get stabbed, then order another round. But first I had to walk my withdrawal down to the bus stop.<br />
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<i>Dominic Ward lives and writes in Esk, Australia. He is married with four children.</i></div>
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<br />The Camel Saloonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466326145539153263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8334457719338642548.post-35812862078498947982015-04-19T05:19:00.003-07:002015-04-19T05:19:32.655-07:00John Pursch: The Baroness of Brickbat BollocksArchibald Tincture,<br />
Turdly-Turd Precedent of ArchandTina,<br />
tuna capital of the whirled, flexed his<br />
artificially brawny biceps and chortled:<br />
<br />
“Wharfore ye be stragglin’,<br />
O mightily mangled and maniacally mangy<br />
flesh o’ fishes on the proprioceptive proverbial<br />
rod n’ reelin’ counterpoint pith of nylon phylum<br />
stockyard inklings of goodly impending cacciatore<br />
breastplate extravaganzas,<br />
spoiled surreptitiously betwixt thine western<br />
hemispherical mandate of manly festooned<br />
dusty kneelers and plutocratic tinkling<br />
carthorse capsizers of dyed heuristic<br />
corrugated dumplings?”<br />
<br />
His whiffle bull noodnik hound pardner<br />
in grimy guffaw-given grifter calumny,<br />
the Crown Tessa de Vitalia cum Gloriosa<br />
Plumb Numb Knockery Sand Twitchium<br />
Flavius Blond Super Eggnibus Quid Prong<br />
Fallacium Quiribonquenule E Pleurisy Magnum,<br />
snorted justly and spoke between<br />
successive codpiece snuff blots:<br />
<br />
“Eye spay, bleariest Starchy,<br />
thine semi-prevaricating quotient<br />
of stygian handy semantic pestilence proceeds<br />
from your dubiously effaced habilitation drift<br />
in swarms of surviving car parts,<br />
oily and speckled with mechanical grit<br />
of a sooty metallic tinge,<br />
sashaying from booty gall to totally fruity<br />
lung compartment floss in shot pursuit<br />
of Shetland paunchy shorthair cake and<br />
broad stirrup crumpet stew on furlough<br />
from terrier retrieval camp,”<br />
tamping down another bowl of flightiest<br />
corn-cobbian chimerical deodorant smog,<br />
sloughed off by the tiniest of pearly inhalers.<br />
<br />
“Quite a Cored Waiting Sea beatitude<br />
you’ve quibbled forth and quietly quoted,<br />
or dare eye slay, misappropriated,”<br />
Archie’s piebald prefecture of palimpsest<br />
and interminably insensate sectarian<br />
somnambulance soliloquized in crap<br />
tour house defenestration’s alluvial<br />
bloodhound best of bestial blockage.<br />
<br />
Her Majesty’s inestimable captivity<br />
of hindered skimpy delectable frumpery<br />
limped and blanched at this somewhat<br />
tempered consequential bow shot.<br />
<br />
Nothing for it bet to bust an altered<br />
snuffbox slat straight up ciliated rostrum septum,<br />
deviating periodically in frontal tune’s imperious<br />
slim phonic towel moorings of hambone hip-check<br />
hospitality suede.<br />
<br />
Nasal twang in drain eruption thus excited,<br />
she rejoined in almost cunning cannery contumely’s<br />
costumed grace of grazing brazier bon vivant:<br />
<br />
“Dearly bedeviled Precedent<br />
of this fondly gored and shackled<br />
Nubian nation of notational lotioned yearlings,<br />
your savory disheveled world laid bare<br />
so grandiloquently by yore and sea and<br />
bland discomfiture’s deciphered malaise<br />
of underbelly crouton faith and intestinal<br />
statuary belches, strewn with filched hyena<br />
droppings of a cranky feasibility study into<br />
the warehouse attributes of your lately cratered niece,<br />
the Baroness Bivonia the Blockhead of Brickbat Bollocks<br />
(the nth Brigadier of Beauregard Broth);<br />
<br />
how cometh you to slouched sandy screeds<br />
of reliquary remonstrations and peculated<br />
perspicacity in pompous pisspot tusky<br />
swordsman currying plover unbeknownst<br />
to simian ham sisters of hull-busting<br />
king-of-the-cesspool stipulation headwaters?<br />
Hansel me tryst, ewe fuelish Brahmanic stoker<br />
of knifed heretical parodies!”<br />
<br />
Sin deed, hit war quiet a jolly<br />
happenstance of gustatory testament,<br />
twitly sax per teased heirloom<br />
nutsack crematoria whiff,<br />
and coverall syllabic froth.<br />
<br />
Shaven this impious oddity oven haughty<br />
other canoe wanders howl Starchy the Piebald<br />
clan soporifically menage a troika due reply.<br />
<br />
Swell tan, high mired ash wheedle sled ewe know,<br />
he took a steep breath and crumbled ride<br />
in weed dish tyrannical pomade:<br />
<br />
“Foist of awl, mine steer Crown Tessa,<br />
isle dispense wit yer noose whence removed,<br />
yes my niece two pea exultantly expectorant,”<br />
hand hear he pawed the groin, leading fly with<br />
nod an insignificant gob of spittle.<br />
<br />
“Yes, that’s broth for the Baroness of Brickbat Bollocks;<br />
be grateful it weren’t derived from beeswax behind<br />
the bedridden trap-door blunderbuss of backside<br />
cannonade catastrophe bilge!<br />
<br />
“Now to spansule your ignoble and ill-timed query<br />
as directly and synergistically as only ewe deserve:<br />
eye come to sloppily scrunched scrotal scurryings<br />
through phonetical decades of subtly scuttled decay,<br />
burrowed smiles beneath the Samsonite Jungle,<br />
swaying bank-to-blank-to-blinkered bunk bed bingo<br />
on the good ship Lazy Popeye’s perennially<br />
submerged poop deck, snorkeling in olive oil,<br />
taking canned tuna for mercurial lunchbox<br />
gruel strayed drown the plastic spigot’s<br />
unregulated mosquito setting in set-piece<br />
scuttlebutt rumpled two-tone unicycle stilt<br />
machinery of baffled skimpy kin.<br />
<br />
“Too terpsichorean for ya?<br />
Moan adder, try these when haul hulls flails:<br />
far above tea heady waiters hover chesty bought<br />
antsy smattering of deified deistic tribulation<br />
in brittle tarrying sunset trivia man-o-whore<br />
will sever from mounted heinous crotch repeal<br />
to kneeling mealtime Clorox infestation nibs<br />
of Inkan festivals or Youran time-reversal blues<br />
or Chunky de Mylar holiday binge<br />
or national dungeon bath<br />
or Plexiglas hamster flotilla rapacity<br />
or sagacious lilac gristle<br />
in flayed snore Speedo necks.”<br />
<br />
<br />
<i>John Pursch lives in Tucson, Arizona. His work has been nominated for Best of the Net and has appeared in many literary journals. A collection of his poetry, Intunesia, is available in paperback at <a href="http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/whiteskybooks">http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/whiteskybooks</a>. His pi-related experimental lit-rap video is at <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l33aUs7obVc">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l33aUs7obVc</a>. He’s <b>@johnpursch </b>on Twitter and <b>john.pursch</b> on Facebook.</i><br />
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The Camel Saloonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466326145539153263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8334457719338642548.post-4113097781530331382015-04-14T10:24:00.004-07:002015-04-14T10:24:58.574-07:00Michelle D'costa: The Newscaster<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
When Dai was young she would stare awestruck at the news channel, in love with the newscaster’s confidence. How they relied on their memory to announce the news! She was bad at remembering lines. Even though later she did learn of teleprompters, the magic of the newscasters didn’t fail to awe her.</div>
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“Dad have you noticed ‘Priya Mirza’ is no more reading news for DTV.”, Dai said this and looked behind her shoulder at Mr Rathore who was having his evening tea, the tea cup precariously balanced on the teapoy.</div>
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“Yes I have. Why do you think she left?”</div>
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“No idea. Maybe she got poached. Anyway, Let us google it. I’m sure others have noticed it too and are wondering about it.”</div>
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<i>‘Former newsreader of DTV, Priya Mirza is keeping a low profile nowadays after she left the leading news channel. We wonder why.’</i></div>
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Dai frowned, she had missed her so much already.</div>
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‘What could have happened to her?’, she asked her Dad who was now peaking over her shoulder, at the mobile screen in her hand.</div>
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‘For all you know she’s doing it for publicity, making others worry for nothing.’, he said and shrugged.</div>
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‘She is famous Dad,’ Dai rolled her eyes. ‘Besides she didn’t do anything controversial…. she just disappeared. And that’s a big risk. You can get easily replaced and forgotten nowadays.’</div>
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‘You think she will be replaced so soon? Not if people like you keep her alive through media.’, he winked and left to change for work after glancing at the grandfather clock they had in the living room.</div>
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Dai’s brother, Jayant, was a regular viewer of Priya’s show. He missed her too.</div>
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“ She had a pleasant face. It was easier listening to her. Her replacement sucks.’’, he said.</div>
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A day passed….then two….Priya was forgotten…she was occasionally remembered by her loyal fans…like Dai…</div>
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Dai was at Kol’s- her favourite ice cream parlour.</div>
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Its blue and white exterior reminded her of Twitter’s theme and she felt at home there.</div>
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Dai got out of the parlour with a strawberry scoop dripping from the cone, snaking down her fingers.</div>
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She had her eyes fixed on a group of people crossing the road approaching her side when she saw Priya or she thought she had seen her...</div>
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She had heard that Priya lived nearby.</div>
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Priya crossed the road cautiously and the veil from her face slipped just enough for Dai to spot her tarred cheek. Dai recognised Priya from her thick fringe and cloudy eyes right below the veil’s hem. She didn’t look very different from TV except for her cheek.</div>
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But before she could shout out or say anything Priya slipped into a car and disappeared from sight.</div>
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Dai cursed her fate, on days when she had to reach somewhere urgently, the traffic had a stubborn match with her but today when she had just spotted her idol, she had been betrayed by it.</div>
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But she didn’t give up, her eyes couldn’t have played tricks on her, could it?</div>
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She hailed an auto rickshaw and on the way she tried to digest what she saw.</div>
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She was so pre-occupied with her thoughts (Priya’s tarred cheek kept flashing in her mind) that she forgot to pay the rickshaw walla and sprinted off as the rickshaw halted by her house.</div>
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The driver came out of the vehicle cursing about how customers were always ungrateful for all that the drivers went through, a long list.</div>
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She had almost reached her gate when she heard him, she wasn’t in the least embarrassed as she was still pre-occupied, paid him and said, ‘Have a nice day!’</div>
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He stared at her as if she had just apparated from thin air.</div>
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She reached her main door and slipped her slender fingers into her pocket when she realized her pocket was flat, where was the bulge that her key bunch created in her pocket? Oh damn!</div>
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She must have forgotten it in the rickshaw?!</div>
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But she didn’t run after the rickshaw.</div>
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Her fingers were itching to find the truth about Priya.</div>
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Atleast she still had her phone with her.</div>
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She sat down on the stairs, the sun rays fell directly on to her eyes, she rose a bit and parked herself on the step above.</div>
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She checked for the wifi connection. It was on. Thankfully, once when she didn’t regret not switching it off before leaving.</div>
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Her weapon-Twitter was accessible to her. She immediately tweeted</div>
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#Priya#DTV#reasonforhousearrest#supportresumeofduty</div>
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She instantly received various reactions from her numerous followers who enjoyed media as much as she did or even more.</div>
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So no one knew the real reason. Was she attacked with acid by a jealous viewer? If not what had happened suddenly?</div>
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Maya started a twitter campaign to force DTV to reveal the real reason for her resignation and that her supporters wanted her back.</div>
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After millions of followers and appeals, DTV arranged to have a live session with Priya just for her viewers.</div>
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<i>Live On air,</i></div>
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<i>‘What is the real reason for your resignation?’</i></div>
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<i>The planned answer was ‘I suffer from a skin disease and I wish to stay at home.’</i></div>
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<i>Instead she said, ‘I was asked to leave as I look hideous now.’</i></div>
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<i>‘Excuse…Oh…Uh….’</i></div>
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<i>‘I would love to continue to be a newsreader as long as I’m allowed to.’</i></div>
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This brought out a cheer from her fans as they didn’t mind her scarred face. She was the best at her work.</div>
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However the rest of the world protested, ‘How can she? She’s so ugly..’</div>
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Anyway thanks to social media she resumes duty.</div>
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People got used to it or they didn’t. Life went on and Dai realized the change that she had created.</div>
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She thought it would be the right time to send her C.V. to news agencies to apply for a newscaster role.</div>
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She did and one agency replied, ‘You need to be good looking for this role. You will be the face of our agency. Sorry you do not fit the criteria. Maybe consider using a fairness cream or maybe a surgery, that is if you really want the job that much.’ </div>
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<i>Michelle D'costa has had her work published in journals such as The Bombay Literary Magazine, Hackwriters International Magazine, The Commonline Journal, Big River Poetry Review among many others. She blogs at pikoomish.wordpress.com</i></div><br /><br /><br />The Camel Saloonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466326145539153263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8334457719338642548.post-61471547131400374532015-04-12T04:50:00.000-07:002015-04-12T04:50:20.972-07:00Richard Hartwell: Last To Take FlightBronze canvas overspreads angular bones,<br />
patchy in places as if small dead leaves<br />
adhere to cheeks, forehead and neck;<br />
within the wrinkled canyons of her face<br />
are told the true myths of her many lives.<br />
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There is so little water in the canyons:<br />
not on her face,<br />
not in the land,<br />
none to waste.<br />
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After nine decades of intense desert heat<br />
she is used to this, she no longer sweats;<br />
still, there is an almost copper sheen to<br />
her skin, like hard-worked oiled-leather<br />
sold to tourists traveling the asphalt trail.<br />
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Selling goods by the side of the road:<br />
leather goods,<br />
leather lasts,<br />
she lasts.<br />
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Neck sinews, corded like hemp rope,<br />
coil into the dirty collar of a drab shirt,<br />
black cotton, cinched snug at the waist<br />
with a silver and turquoise belt, color<br />
in a somber sea of secondhand clothes.<br />
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She focuses on the twisting asphalt:<br />
occasional cars,<br />
occasional sales,<br />
irregular pay.<br />
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From beneath the shirt, a drooping skirt<br />
greets the mounting leather moccasins;<br />
outlaw black hat – low crowned, wide<br />
brimmed, ancient, functional, like her –<br />
borne by two gray braids, one on a side.<br />
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Twisting braids, neck, skin:<br />
framing her face,<br />
framing her culture,<br />
heritage pictured.<br />
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Surroundings rain-bowed in dry dun hues,<br />
only soft-gray dusty-drab green for relief;<br />
contours of the pan, arroyos and road are<br />
broken by majestic mesas, or low shrubs<br />
and dead yucca, seen askance not directly.<br />
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Casual breaks in the southern horizon,<br />
not oriental,<br />
not occidental,<br />
merely accidental.<br />
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Above her extends a vault of blue so startling white at mid-day as to sear the eyes until only black stars dance on the retina. No relief except in the shade, except there is precious little shade and will be no shade until much later when the back rampart of the mesa will see a shadow extend from the base running fast as the setting sun toward the shimmering eastern horizon.</div>
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Only then will the ancient one, named Sorrows in the Stream so many years ago but known now only as Old Woman, rise from beside the roadside stand, place her Indian Artifacts and Curios for Sale sign under the low split-wood table, and amble slowly to the next shadow, relief, and the perilous climb, made numbly, to the top of the mesa.</div>
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It is not that her body has given out, at least not completely, or that her mind has given up, it is that her nature can no longer contain the colors of her memory and the sunburst of her soul.</div>
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She knows this, every day, and today, earlier, had prayed that no tourists would stop to barter and bluster nor would any sheriff, from on or off the reservation, stop to hassle her about permits or to rage about her son. None had, tourist or cop, and she only had to steel herself against the intrusion of passing cars seven times during the day.</div>
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She didn’t really need the occasional money to live, not that she would turn it down, but had all she needed from the land and her snares, the pool at the base of the mesa, and in the hut above. She wouldn’t turn the money down; she would use it to drink and use it to get drunk and use it to try to forget. It was good that she rarely made any sales. It was very good that she made no sales today. Since she last had gotten drunk it had been . . . how many days? She can’t remember, which she takes as a good also.</div>
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Sorrows in the Stream finds the small pool at the base of the mesa nearly full and takes the gourd from off her shoulder, sinking it into the tepid depth beneath the spring’s outcropping. This is the water source, life itself, she shares with so many others: prey and predators, mammals and reptiles, birds and insects. Almost all of them drink at night as she sleeps above them on top of the mesa. Sometimes when she descends in the early morning she spooks some small piece of fur or feather. Only rarely in the afternoon does she hear the warning stutter of a late rattler. She lives with all of these, is a part of them and the desert.</div>
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She picks her way up through the split in the side of the mesa, a split that has been here these many generations. Footholds and handholds have been carved and shaped and enlarged by numberless ancients before her. She adds her miniscule aid to this process without thought, plan, fear, or sight. Her eyes are closed. She knows the niches and knobs so well and climbing up out from the brilliant plain and into the crevasse she knows her shadow-blindness will last until she is almost at the top. She relies on the mesa wall to hold her up rather than trying to see what cannot be seen clearly in shadow.</div>
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At the top of the cleft, the edge rounds out to two steps worn from the hard rock. She takes only two or three deep breaths and then sets off to her right to the wood and woven lean-to. Years ago she built this home resting against the crumbling wall abandoned by a previous desert race.</div>
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<br /></div>
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She doesn’t know who they had been, whether related to her own people or not, whether they had been an enemy or not. Occasionally she finds an arrowhead, a flint, shards of pottery – but is not able to identify them – and climbs down the next day and adds the piece to the Indian Artifacts and Curios for Sale.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
When younger, a few years back, before her son was sent to jail, she enjoyed making up stories to tell the tourists. There would be always some truth, some truth drawn from her childhood or early marriage, but she would twist and stretch and chew on the stories like a plug of tobacco until they were soft enough to sell to even the most highway-hardened tourist.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Now, when she has to respond to a stopping car and would-be customer, she just grunts and shakes her head, playing at language illiteracy, and only nods and holds out her hand when the price seems right. She no longer cares about dispelling the myth of civilization. For several days now she has had no need to play television Indian.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
When she thinks about this play-acting – which she doesn’t do often, but is doing tonight as she goes about her few chores in and around her hut on top of the mesa, on top of her world – when she thinks about this pose of the stoic Indian woman, she tries on all the cultural garments, the mental trappings, she has borrowed from tourists’ expectations. She tumbles them over, throwing on one after another: Indian, squaw, Native American, indigenous person, even redskin and savage. Each and all fit her, or one part of her or another, but she eschews them all. For her, there is only one raiment that fits. She is One, One of the People. Not people, but People. She knows this from her uncle and from her grandfather before him. She wears no mantle from her long-gone husband and not from her son.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
She finishes this reverie and sees that all tasks are completed, in much the same manner as she climbs the mesa. She sits on the low stool outside the blanket door and stares west where the sun has finally dropped behind the horizon. The surrounding mesas are now various shades of purple and the shell of the sky is washed in streams of yellows, oranges, reds, and then into similar shades of purples as the mesas had been.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
With the passage of time and the sun gone and the moon not yet appeared, the sky above has become a speckled black felt like a jeweler’s display of turquoise. The other mesas have faded to indistinct shadows outlined by starlight alone. To the west and southwest runs the great loop of highway, almost a noose thrown into the reservation.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
If she looked down, a lonely car, lights on high beam, might be seen once or twice each night. Old Woman no longer looks down. Rather, this One of the People, lies down on one of her blankets and starts naming the animals above: Two Snakes, Dog Who Talks, Running Chicken, Rabbit, and so many others.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
When she was very, very young she went to the school on the reservation. She learned about others in the sky that she could not see. Others, not of the People, had different names for their pictures in the sky. Along with most else from the school, she thought that had been a lie, too. After two or so years, she stopped going.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
It does not matter. Nothing matters that is left behind. She knows these pictures. She takes pleasure in their flight across the sky. She can name them all. Her mind flies easily to this. But this night Sorrows in the Stream does not finish the naming. Black felt fades to blue. Animals wheel overhead, unseen, unnamed, finally chased over the horizon by dawn. Western shadows beneath the mesas shorten to meet day. At the base of the mesa, fur and scales and feathers are left undisturbed at the spring. Tears from the mesa continue to collect.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The first car of the day passes the Indian Artifacts and Curios for Sale without sign, without notice.</div>
<br /><br /><br />The Camel Saloonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466326145539153263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8334457719338642548.post-88605596764954470622015-04-12T04:45:00.000-07:002015-04-12T04:45:02.826-07:00Michael Ceraolo: Free Speech Canto XXXVIIIScott Nearing redux,<br />
though<br />
after his firing by the University of Pennsylvania,<br />
this time he was at the University of Toledo,<br />
where,<br />
true to his stated principles,<br />
he was again active politically,<br />
this time on whether the U.S. should enter the war<br />
War was<br />
"uncivilized and should be abolished"<br />
"We need protection"<br />
"but not against<br />
Berlin,<br />
or London,<br />
or Paris,<br />
or Petrograd,<br />
but against Wall Street"<br />
(prophetic:<br />
some newspaper headlines<br />
soon after the U.S. entered the war:<br />
<br />
"Draft Success Puts New Life in New York Market"<br />
<br />
"Year's Best Prices Reached")<br />
<br />
and<br />
Nearing's speeches inspired<br />
Reverend Patrick O'Brien to say:<br />
"I feel tonight like taking by the nape of the neck<br />
and hanging him to the nearest tree"<br />
<br />
and<br />
though Nearing narrowly escaped that fate<br />
he was fired by the University of Toledo<br />
shortly before war was declared<br />
<br />
but<br />
again that didn't stop Nearing from speaking out;<br />
he published a pamphlet titled<br />
The Great Madness:<br />
A Victory for the American Plutocracy:<br />
<br />
"The declaration of war<br />
was a slap in the face of democracy----<br />
the censorship bill bandaged it eyes,<br />
plugged its ears,<br />
and gagged its mouth"<br />
<br />
and<br />
<br />
"The American plutocracy was no more interested<br />
in establishing democracy in Germany<br />
than they were in establishing democracy<br />
in the United States<br />
They did want to see German industry crushed"<br />
<br />
and<br />
<br />
"The plutocratic brand of patriotism<br />
won the endorsement of the press,<br />
the pulpit,<br />
the college,<br />
and<br />
every other important channel<br />
of public information in the United States"<br />
and<br />
many other pages in a similar vein<br />
<br />
And<br />
the Federal Government took notice of his work,<br />
and eventually indicted him,<br />
in April 1918,<br />
under<br />
the marvelously mismonikered<br />
Espionage Act,<br />
a law<br />
less designed to combat espionage<br />
than to quash dissent<br />
Nearing<br />
wasn't even brought to trial<br />
until February 1919,<br />
a few months after the war ended<br />
Showing the true purpose of the law<br />
the prosecutor's case consisted of<br />
citing Nearing's words,<br />
words<br />
he readily admitted were his<br />
But<br />
they made no attempt to show that those words<br />
had actually had the prohibited effect,<br />
a fact Nearing pointed out:<br />
<br />
"The prosecution has not been able to show<br />
a single instance in which recruiting was obstructed<br />
They have not been able to show a single instance<br />
in which insubordination,<br />
disloyalty,<br />
and<br />
refusal to duty was caused"<br />
<br />
and<br />
Nearing was acquitted,<br />
but<br />
the censorship provisions remained<br />
<br />
Nearing continued to speak out,<br />
and to write,<br />
and<br />
he lived to be a hundred,<br />
but<br />
he never worked in academia again
<br />
<br />
<br />The Camel Saloonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466326145539153263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8334457719338642548.post-3381047104047112922015-03-26T03:54:00.000-07:002015-03-26T03:54:56.585-07:00Donal Mahoney: A Previous Life<div style="text-align: justify;">
It was their wedding night and Priya didn’t want to tell her new husband all about it but Bill kept asking where she had learned to walk like that. Finally she told him it was inherited from a previous life, a life she had lived many years ago in India, not far from Bangalore. She had been a cobra kept in a charmer’s basket.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
When the charmer found a customer, usually a Brit or Yank, he would play his flute and Priya would uncoil and rise from the basket. Her hood would swell and she would sway as long as the customer had enough money to keep paying the charmer. She never tried to bite a customer but some of the men weren’t the nicest people in the world. You think they would know better than to tease a cobra.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Being a charmer's cobra was Priya’s job for many years until she finally grew weary of the tiny mice her keeper would feed her so she bit him and he died. His family had Priya decapitated but she was born again later in a small village, this time as a human, a baby girl. After she matured into a young woman, she had a walk, men said, reminiscent of a cobra's sway.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Priya told Bill she had been married many times in India, England and the United States but always to the wrong man. She would give the men time to correct their behavior but none did. As a result of their failure, she bit them with two little fangs inherited from her life as a cobra. They were hidden next to her incisors. Death was almost instantaneous.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
No autopsies were ever performed. Death by natural causes was always the ruling. Priya, however, would move to another state or country before marrying again. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
She told Bill she hoped he would be a good husband because she didn’t want to have to move again. She wanted to put down roots and have children. She was curious as to whether they would walk or crawl or maybe do both. But Bill had heard enough. He was already out of bed, had one leg in his tuxedo pants and soon was running down the hall of the 10th floor of the Four Seasons Hotel. He had his rented patent leather shoes in one hand and an umbrella in the other in case he ran into a monsoon.<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
The Camel Saloonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466326145539153263noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8334457719338642548.post-42928422499365932142015-03-26T03:53:00.002-07:002015-03-26T03:54:12.489-07:00Roy Dorman: It Could Have Been AnybodyEleanor liked to tell people<br />
that she knew everybody in town.<br />
She would tell anybody who would listen<br />
that she could never live in a big city.<br />
“You wouldn’t even know<br />
all of the people on your block,”<br />
she would exclaim with a theatrical shudder.<br />
<br />
Not everybody liked it<br />
that Eleanor shared information<br />
she had about anybody with everybody.<br />
<br />
“Well, if you don’t have anything to hide,<br />
you don’t have anything to worry about,”<br />
she would spout while looking you in the eye.<br />
<br />
Tonight, while getting ready for bed,<br />
she was stabbed in the heart<br />
by one of the town’s anybodys<br />
who had been hiding in her closet.<br />
<br />
Even as she was dying,<br />
a satisfied sigh escaped her;<br />
she had known her assailant all of his life.<br />
Why just this morning<br />
she had been talking about him<br />
to his pretty wife, Mary.<br />
<br />
“I’m glad I had the chance to talk to her<br />
about his foolin’ around<br />
with that hussy, Melissa Baines.”<br />
<br />
As to who killed Eleanor?<br />
Everybody in town knew<br />
that almost anybody could have done it.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />The Camel Saloonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466326145539153263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8334457719338642548.post-26185430022821855282015-03-09T12:06:00.002-07:002015-03-16T11:39:18.902-07:00Anuradha Bhattacharyya: The Story of a Banana Tree<div style="text-align: justify;">
I was two feet tall when I stood surrounded by my brothers and sisters in the backyard of a deserted house. My mother stood huge and protective over all of us. There were mango trees and guava trees spread protectively near us.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
In winters I was protected from frost and in summers from the severe sun. Whenever it was unbearably dry, it rained and I soaked in as much water as I could, to keep me alive during the issuing dry months.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
One day the doors and windows of the abandoned house opened and we could tell that a family has moved in. There was a young lady and a little girl who stood at the door and gazed and gazed thoughtfully at all of us. We stood huddled together in the middle expectantly.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
It was still winter. Two weeks after they arrived, in the middle of a sunny afternoon there came a hoard of men with axes and climbed up the mango trees.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Within a few hours almost all the branches of the mango and guava trees were chopped off. They carried away the logs and brushed aside the evergreen leaves in a huge pile just outside the boundary wall.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
They left only the tops of the huge trees green. But it was not enough for us. We were now open to the cold blasts of the winter months.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
As winter gave way to spring the ground around us was covered with many saplings of mango, guava, Jamun and many unnamed shrubs. The balsam and canna plants turned up and there were tiny shoots of tomato and brinjal too. It was a thick growth of foliage all around us.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The man of the house surveyed the backyard often. He prodded the small saplings with his big foot with curiosity. From his expression we could tell that he was trying to make up his mind.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Then our downfall began.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
They hired a gardener.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The gardener came twice in a week with his sharp spade and large scissors. He began by attacking the bushes with his scissors. Then he trimmed the hedge.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
One day, early in the morning, he brought along a friend and a couple of ploughs. The two of them hit the ground with vehemence and within an hour, cleared the ground of all its tender saplings. We stood there shivering with fear, but he spared us and the small litchi tree.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
That day, the gardener and his friend planted selection grass all around us. The owner of the house watered the ground and very soon the grass spread all over the place in a lush green evenness.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The little girl and her mother played around us and took out garden chairs to sit near us.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
We were very happy.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
But our happiness lasted only for a couple of months. I noticed that the gardener was hostile towards the banana trees in particular. We heard him arguing with the lady that we were untamed plants and we did not allow the grass around us to grow thick. We sucked up all the water and hardened the earth near us.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The lady protested in our favour. She said we were venerable and we would bear fruit one day. So the gardener offered a compromise. He took her permission to remove some of us.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
We stood huddled together is utter despair. It was a lonely night with no one to come to our aid. We waited for our doom.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The man of the house surveyed us the next day and pointed towards me. Leave this one, he said and went back into the house.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
While I stood panting, the gardener uprooted all my brothers and my aged mother and flung them over the boundary wall, right before my eyes. That day my leaves drooped with sorrow but no one cared.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
My leaves. A banana tree has a tender trunk and much of its strength depends on the balance of its leaves. I stood alone, next to a litchi tree which was just a baby. I drank up as much water as I could and shot my leaves in all directions for support.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
But the horrible gardener loved the grass he had planted and hated me. Every now and then he chopped off one of my leaves with his sharp spade. Every time he cut off one of my limbs I tottered and swooned.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I was growing taller day by day. It was when I stood eight feet tall that I felt the first pangs of pregnancy. I took more nourishment from the earth. I could not bear more leaves. I leaned a little on the still tender litchi tree. It was the beginning of the rainy season. All my strength was drained in giving birth.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Finally, next to my heart there emerged a large fruit. It contained the grain of a hundred bananas. My entire focus was to give them as much nourishment as possible. My skin grew rough. My arms toughened. My roots spread out. I towered above the guava tree and stood braving the rains.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
It was not easy. With no leaves to prepare my food and no shelter from the mango trees, I had to lean more and more on the little litchi tree for support. As my fruits grew bigger, I was bent by their weight.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I cried out to my brothers and sisters in agony when the rains drenched me for nights without reprieve. I pleaded with god to protect me and my fruits from imminent disaster. I prayed for more strength and more nutrition. My entire body ached with the load and everyone in my surroundings could hear the groans of my labour.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Finally, in the last days of fruit-bearing, my feet gave way and I fell during the raging storm in the middle of the night. The members in the house heard a loud thud and lit their lamps. But in the storm no one came to my aid.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I lay there till the next afternoon, when the gardener came. He and the owner cursed me, spat on the ground and hit me with their feet. They said, I was useless. I was unfit for fruit-bearing. I was a burden on the ground.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
They cursed and cursed. The gardener gave vent to his pent up anger. He said, it ruined the hedge. It ruined the grass. It spoiled the beauty of the garden. It was wild.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
And it hurt me most when he said that my fruits would have never been edible either.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
But there I was lying helpless. A neighbour came and advised that I could be made to stand up on crutches. My roots were still alive and they may find ground again if I stood up.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
But the vengeful gardener, who loved his grasses more made a wry face and declared: the tree is as good as dead. Let’s uproot it and throw it away.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The lady hurriedly said, maybe we can wait till its fruits grow big enough. But the man shook his head thoughtfully and said, No, the fruits would not be worth the price we’d have to pay. Do as you think fit. The gardener nodded with triumph in his eyes.</div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<i>Anuradha Bhattacharyya is a poet of long standing. Her first book of poems was published in 1998. Since then she has been widely anthologized. Recently, she has published several short stories and a novel The Road Taken. The novel discusses many features of contemporary life neatly packed in the plot of a love story. Her other novel is titled One Word; an excerpt has been published in Indian Review. Both the novels have been published by Creative Crows Publishers, New Delhi, INDIA. </i><br />
<i>Apart from two academic books, titled The Lacanian Author and Twentieth Century European Literature, she has published Fifty Five Poems, Knots and Lofty - to fill up a cultural chasm from Writers Workshop, Kolkata, INDIA. She is Assistant Professor of English in PG Government College, Chandigarh, INDIA. She lives with her husband and daughter in Chandigar</i><br />
<br />
<br />The Camel Saloonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466326145539153263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8334457719338642548.post-19749632964523407202015-02-27T06:34:00.004-08:002015-02-27T06:35:45.781-08:00Donal Mahoney: In the Wake of Technology<div style="text-align: justify;">
Forty years ago, David Germaine had been an editor with a Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper in a large city. After that, he had worked at many smaller papers in smaller cities because if one wanted to work for a newspaper, one had to go where the work was. And David loved newspapers.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
As computers took over the newspaper business, reporters still wrote but often it was some new software that “edited” their copy, checking for spelling and grammatical mistakes but not always with accuracy. At some papers not yet fully transitioned to computers, human editors were still needed. More and more, however, as the software continued to improve, editors in cities, towns and villages grew fewer in number. And mistakes in newspapers became greater in number. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
David is now retired and living on a small farm, "far from the madding crowd," as the title of a novel by Thomas Hardy once put it. He was surprised, then, when he received an email from a publisher whose books he had arranged reviews for over the years at different papers. Once again, the publisher was seeking publicity for a new book. This time, he wanted to know if David could get in touch with some of his old friends at that Pulitzer Prize-winning paper to see if someone would review his book and generate some potentially profitable publicity. As with newspapers, book publishers, those still in the business, exist to make a profit. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
David thought about how long ago he had worked at that paper and he wondered about the people he knew there. He hadn’t heard from any of them in years. So he turned to the Internet to see if he could find some of them. What he found made his response to the book publisher easy to write in some respects but not so easy in others. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
“Mark, I’m afraid the book editor I worked with at that paper has been dead for years. In fact, an Internet search indicates the movie critic, television critic, features editor and Sunday magazine editor are dead as well. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
"The editor-in-chief, however, is still alive. I made a few phone calls and found that he is on a respirator in a nursing home in New York and will move into hospice soon. He always hired the best young people he could find and then worked them to death until they left for a better or lesser position. He was a brilliant editor but a miserable human being. Still, I’m sorry to see him go.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
“I thought maybe the paper’s gossip columnist could help but he’s passed away too. He was hit by a truck while crossing an intersection. It’s true he ruined many a reputation and was mourned by few. There was no funeral according to the news item I found. His wife had him cremated. But he’s still thought of by many as the best gossip columnist ever to work that vile beat.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
"Everyone else on that paper, I suspect, is dead as well or at best retired. Except for me out here in the country and the editor-in-chief on the respirator, I don’t know of another survivor from that staff. It’s still amazing how many Pulitzers they won.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
"For some reason, I’m still in pretty good health, free of stents and joint replacements, perhaps because I quit drinking and smoking in 1959. That was the day I married a woman who bore five children in a little more than six years. She’s dead now too. She had a stroke in the kitchen making waffles two days into her retirement. She never got up. I saw her arm move on the floor but she was dead by the time the paramedics arrived. It’s just me in this big farmhouse now but I’m pretty good with a microwave. How did we live without microwaves in the old days, another miracle of technology?</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
“Although I’d love to help with the book, you can see I’m not currently in the swim of things at any paper. And as you know, it’s not a good time for newspapers. Many of them have died and others are on a respirator. People get their news on the Internet now or on television although some folks buy a paper just to read the funnies, obits and sports scores.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
“If anyone I worked with back then is still in that newsroom, I’m afraid it’s because co-workers haven’t caught the stench yet or found the dust.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
"I wish you the best with the book. In the attachment you sent, I can see that it underscores the role euthanasia now plays in end-of-life care. In the newspaper industry, there’s no need for euthanasia. Papers are dying regularly as a result of technology while the lives of people are sometimes saved by it. Even though I subscribe to the one newspaper still published in our area, I go online first thing in the morning to check the obituaries and sports scores. But I never did read the funnies.”</div>
<br />
<br />The Camel Saloonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466326145539153263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8334457719338642548.post-9067009348111048442015-02-22T04:20:00.003-08:002015-02-22T04:21:58.913-08:00John Pursch: Miss Rhoda Dendrite“I feel a tarantula of sartorial toroidal backplane<br />
Beauregardial conclave contamination girth-wide<br />
propeller notions crawlin’ up muh backside<br />
et this very momentous hocked-up caisson,”<br />
mumbled Roto Stellar Plebeian Monocle Head,<br />
the Second Pearl of Dirty Sandwich Skylight<br />
Seashore Pasture-Blaster Quotient Filth,<br />
alias Forthright Frankfurter the Unknown Goblet-Spewin’<br />
Canned Testicle Tumbler From Bicuspid Salad Slouch Control.<br />
<br />
“Whale, my simian approximation ova<br />
hand-crampin’ crampon stew stoolie pageant<br />
runner-up from East Side lechery’s societal embargo,”<br />
began his sun-kissed sidekick,<br />
Miss Rhoda Dendrite Hand-Tendon Calling Saucepan<br />
Deliciosa en Triplicate per Furry Hound Ferocity<br />
(told separately to flashy underarm decortication<br />
mist enforcers from healthy huffing sway<br />
hosiery haunts clear acrostic the floozy’s<br />
frozen Hindlegian Hannibal Quartet<br />
of Quicksand Island Onset Sheen).<br />
<br />
Bet before she could even squirm out<br />
an altered whirl of ordinary concocted syllables,<br />
why thet thar Second Pearl of Hamwich<br />
he chest bolloxed his fat yap clean open<br />
and opined at tweed the spice of soundly<br />
graven adversarial traduction:<br />
<br />
“Queued a lewd lead-in<br />
if I does spay so meshelf,<br />
heaven fur such a wobbly<br />
wand wieldin’ beautician has yerself<br />
from lonely isthmus carrion kits<br />
in deepest pie land tractor ruts,<br />
whad bean owned and solid sold<br />
so mangy times to turd party semblances<br />
of actuarial merchant magazine salesmen<br />
on chunky vomit junkets from Nude Hexagain<br />
stakeout border parole confabulation trysts.”<br />
<br />
Rhoda tugged her happy popcorn tourney t-shirt,<br />
courtesy of curtseyed biplane miscreants<br />
in leering Cheerio outfits<br />
(wad with skirts clear up to their<br />
so-balled navel engagements<br />
in entrecotes fer fuzzy vestibular henchmen<br />
wrench socket routines gone crampy<br />
this dime-droppin’ time o’ the slippery old<br />
toothless mouth of Trenchfoot March);<br />
<br />
well, she dud indeed shabbily grab<br />
the hopalong copper tune’s itsy bitsy flashpoint’s<br />
iterative gerrymandered periscope ground<br />
to say her hairpiece afore randy ole Rotating Frankfurter<br />
could fart up another blast o’ heated peanut heresy,<br />
but wad weed this adhering gushy preamble<br />
tokin’ up so much oven smoke,<br />
well I just overwrote her familial diatribe<br />
strayed into its own redaction mythos byproduct!<br />
<br />
Wade, wade, canoe ya nose that jest wooden be fair,<br />
Ferris, or even felicitous, of antsy heft sway<br />
descending author (latter loan spittle bowl me)<br />
so here comes Rhoda ‘round the human cartwheel<br />
of fortunate imbibement circumstellar<br />
Punic brothel wax retardant<br />
smothering bottle hamster tongue…<br />
<br />
and hair’s wad she had to slay:<br />
<br />
“Firstly, lemme tank hallow the tropes who fought<br />
so bravely at the Battle of Scuttlebutt Bridge last night;<br />
heavenly swan o’ ewe deserves a metallic udder<br />
of condemnation and savory mystical<br />
counterparts to clover fer your assets<br />
in the hairy after partisan heifer warfare<br />
(known farcically and wide-eyed as the<br />
Glorious Cavalcade of Ascending Doughboy Holes).”<br />
<br />
Here she paused to truncate<br />
each and heavy ivory-collared short arm,<br />
wad amounted to over a thousand headless corsets<br />
and bloomin’ corsages of anything but bloodless<br />
strumpet soup tureens, wet with spurtin’ sallow pustules<br />
flowin’ ground the cock crow’s towering sin fer nose guards,<br />
cantaloupes, and miraculously whipped<br />
shaving crematoria vacuums.<br />
<br />
Ceremony thus completed,<br />
she canned her retinue and curried comely on:<br />
“Snow whar wuz I? Whoa yeah: puddin’ that<br />
Goblet-Spewin’ Testicular Tumbleweed<br />
name o’ Roto Frankfurter the Second<br />
Pearl of Sandy Hamwich<br />
in his proverbial placemat burial clown!<br />
Howitzer coulda hand one sever forget-me-snot<br />
wince they gut such a juicy target inner sleight o’<br />
ninety-nine tracer bullet bonanza blunt?”<br />
<br />
At this admittedly long-drawn<br />
and quarterly bastardized sled ride<br />
of a sledgehammered lead-in,<br />
Frankfurter couldn’t help but blanche,<br />
quail, crap his boots, ooze the rankest<br />
postprandial demitasse of heavyweight insipidity<br />
known to mangy breasts from hair<br />
to Chatty Mandarin Duplicity’s Two-Bitten<br />
and Distraught Conquered District<br />
(Flea to Bituminous Cuckoldry).<br />
<br />
Bet croppin’ his hairline<br />
black to the stunned saga<br />
wooden-a-shaved him from<br />
the compounding garter-foundling<br />
(nod to menschen fondling)<br />
tat war crumblin’ his whey.<br />
<br />
And so good Rhoda,<br />
Miss Dendritic Overshoe herself,<br />
in truly dewy dime-droppin’<br />
drag-crazin’ beer-quakin’ frenzy,<br />
filially delivered whad can homely be culled the cure de crass,<br />
mire than sham biologically loppin’ luft the swollen head,<br />
green-sleevin’ that pure solid Frankfurter<br />
oozin’ moustache mustard, mumbly-Peggity moutardant<br />
sand feathered featurettes of sighing gland solipsism<br />
from pier to shinnying wharf rat riot gear<br />
in cheesy cold townhome Cleaverland,<br />
bakin’ the eyeballs clean outa Cistern Butter Frack-along’s<br />
snowy grifter populace entrainment camps,<br />
‘cross burbled wire in wizened tertiary sailor nuts,<br />
flossed to geese retainer continental scum tracts<br />
and foul-weird thrivers on repast immortality<br />
deduction fruit encampment drool.<br />
<br />
<br />
<i>John Pursch lives in Tucson, Arizona. His work has been nominated for Best of the Net and has appeared in many literary journals. A collection of his poetry, Intunesia, is available in paperback at http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/whiteskybooks. His pi-related experimental lit-rap video is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l33aUs7obVc. He’s @johnpursch on Twitter and john.pursch on Facebook.</i><br />
<br />
<br />The Camel Saloonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466326145539153263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8334457719338642548.post-29960346354461353712015-01-17T18:37:00.000-08:002015-01-17T18:39:08.614-08:00Paul Anthony: The Breakfast Boys<div style="text-align: justify;">
The best time to go to the Little Brooklyn Diner for breakfast is about 9.30 in the morning. Situated on West Fifty Sixth Street, it is the current early morning favourite of the ‘suits’ from Random House Publishers who pop in on their way to the office. It is also a favourite of the ‘room only’ tourists who have read about it on Trip Advisor, and who to a man, woman, child order the red velvet waffles topped with banana, strawberries and blueberries which apparently are ‘to die for!’ It is finally a favourite for the fifty something joggers from nearby Central Park who order plates of carbohydrates with freshly squeezed orange juice and jugs of iced water on the side to rehydrate.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The time between these comings and goings and lunch time is known by the regulars as ‘the eye of the storm’, a time when they can sit in comparative ease, eat and put the world to rights while eating their favourite breakfast.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Larry enters just as the last jogger, filling his pockets with sachets of sugar, is leaving. He nods to Morey who is wiping the surfaces. Morey nods back then nods to the open kitchen. The three nods in turn mean,</div>
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<br /></div>
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“Good Morning Morey. I‘ll have scrambled eggs and bacon, an English Muffin, rice and black beans”.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
and</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
“I’m very well – not that you would notice! Thank you for not enquiring. Miriam’s back is playing up again. Muffins are off today but we have some Scotch crumpets, freshly made this morning. And would a please be too much to ask? I hope you throw up!”</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
and</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
“Get this son of a bitch his usual! Hold the muffin and give him one of last night’s crumpets. They should be nicely stale by now.”</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Morey is not a morning person. He wears an expression which suggests that all his female relations and possibly himself have just been gang raped by a horde of Visigoths. He prides himself on not knowing the names of any of his regulars. He just knows them by what they order.</div>
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<br /></div>
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‘Eggs and bacon’ settles into the cubicle. The red leather seat is still warm from someone else’s backside. He hopes it is one of the secretaries from Random House but suspects it belongs to a flatulent Romanian jogger. Anyway, he remains where he is. It is his usual seat in his usual cubical at his usual time. He likes order in his life. Morey knows this and sometimes puts his place settings the wrong way round. Morey enjoys this. Larry does not.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
He listens to the sounds of the diner. The hiss of the latte maker, the sizzling of the hot plate as bacon rashers curl into submission, the clatter of the knives and forks as they are emptied from the dishwasher. It is like a well rehearsed orchestra and he is sitting in the best of the House seats. He closes his eyes for a brief moment and conducts in the steamy atmosphere.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
A retired banker, he opens the financial pages of the New York Times and checks the Dow Jones. It is merely out of interest. He has little to invest after his wife has cleaned him out in a very messy divorce. His neatly pressed suit, laundered shirt, purple tie and Gucci shoes give him an air of importance which he no longer has.</div>
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<br /></div>
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‘Bagels and Cream Cheese’ is next to enter. He is Amos to all who know him and the one person who used love him. Dressed in Redskin sweat pants, baggy Yankees top and a Canadian Blue Jays cap, he is a medley of sartorial contradiction. He chews on a permanently unlit cigar. He would like to have been a sports reporter and indeed he talks of little else, but he is in fact a copy writer for the Christian Science Monitor. He works from home in a house as empty as Larry’s and met Mariah Carey once in a hotel lobby. She said “Hello” to him!</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
He sits facing Larry who simply acknowledges his arrival by looking up then down again. He pulls out his Suddoko book from his hip pocket, needlessly licks a stub of a pencil and begins.</div>
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<br /></div>
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“Keeps the mind active!” loud enough for Larry to hear.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
“Indeed!” says Larry noticing the smell of dead Jack Daniels on his breath.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Morey brings the breakfasts and like two lovers in mid tiff, they sit apart, eat and say nothing.</div>
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<br /></div>
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‘Denver Omelette’ comes through the door just as Larry is making a mental note to watch the progress of Allied Chemicals which has traded well over the past week. He is a mountain of a man with a cowboy hat, leather and sheepskin waistcoat over a Woodstock T shirt and stonewashed jeans. Christened Harry at birth, he renamed himself ‘Toke’ in the Sixties and it has stuck. He likes to smoke stuff which increases the depth of his basso profundo voice.</div>
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<br /></div>
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“Usual please and hold the onions today,” he shouts to Morey.</div>
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<br /></div>
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This pisses Morey off as he asks for his omelette without onions every day.</div>
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<br /></div>
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He nods to the fellow occupants of the cubicle. They grunt back without moving up. He settles into a space and pulls out a well thumbed copy of the National Enquirer and notes that aliens have landed again – this time in Punxsutawney. He chuckles to himself that they will land there every day from now on!</div>
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<br /></div>
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As usual ‘Cheerios’ is last to arrive. He says his hellos and sits down next to Toke.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
“Sorry I’m late!”</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
‘Cheerios’ is always late.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Today’s excuse is that he had to get off the subway at Columbus Circle due to a fault on the line. He rewinds his time warp Walkman and plugs it into his ear. Morey can hear the faint strains of Beethoven’s Fifth as he brings the bagels.</div>
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<br /></div>
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“Pretentious bastard”, he mumbles. “Probably thinks the John Dunbar Theme is classical as well!”</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
‘Cheerios’ aka Ronnie is a small tubby little man with a grey Poirot moustache, rimless spectacles and a thinning comb over. He dresses permanently in the garb of a professional golfer and has an opinion on everything. He is on the faculty at NYU but finds the time to have extended breakfasts at the diner every morning.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Morey brings the last two breakfasts and some more black coffee for the table. Toke reminds him that he takes his with milk. He does this every morning and every morning Morey ignores him and clears away the plates. Larry notes it is 10.23am, three minutes later than yesterday. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
“Well gentlemen. It’s Monday. Walk in the Park as normal?”</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
A collective silence indicates that they are in agreement.</div>
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<br /></div>
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They rise to go, each emptying his pockets of shrapnel to give to Morey as a tip. As usual Larry asks for the rest of his coffee ‘to go’. As usual it ends up in the sink.</div>
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<br /></div>
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“Miserable bastards”, mutters Morey as he pockets the $1.90.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
They shuffle out into the harsh winter sunlight and make their way to the Wollman Rink to watch the ice skating and to commence what can only be called virtual betting. Each Monday, they view the skaters and select the one who will fall most times. A five dollar bet is wagered by each one but it is never be placed nor collected. Larry reckons that they must have wagered more than $2,000 over the years. He actually keeps a book which notes that he is in front but he never calls in the bets. That would be crass.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The rule is that they watch the skaters for one minute then they pick the one likeliest to tumble most in a ten minute period. Larry chooses a child in a red anorak. Toke selects a pimply faced youth with a quilted body warmer. Amos plumps for a sixty something woman with a balaclava and a grey sweatshirt. Toke nominates the little kid, as black as the falling snow and ice are white.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Toke and the kid win. He has watched him the day before and knows that the kid will be WBA boxing champion long before he can skate!</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Ronnie says he has a freshman class at 1.00pm so they go their separate ways. By 10.00am next morning they are seated in the diner again. Tuesday is orange juice and tall stories day. Morey is reputed to make the best OJ this side of the Pecos Mountains. They always get a pitcher with their breakfast on a Tuesday. Toke prefers grapefruit but Morey never brings him any.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Each takes it in turns to tell a story and it is up to the others to decide if it is true, exaggerated or simply a prefabrication. Morey picks the winner, purely on a rotational basis. Only Larry has seen through this, as a statistical analysis of his book of results shows that he wins every fifth Tuesday. Today he tells one about a bear and a fish and Morey declares him to be the winner. Ronnie thinks his is better but says nothing.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Wednesday is Strange Facts Day. Again Morey is the judge and his ruse this time is to make sure Amos never wins no matter how good his effort is. Amos does not mind as he always makes his stuff up while the others trawl the Internet, Guinness Book of Records and Trivia Books for hours to get their material.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Thursday is open floor day when they take it in turns to discuss a topic chosen by whoever is in the Chair. They have discussed things like the best way to make a Brandy Alexandra, the optimum Tog rating for duvets in the summer months and the pros and cons of Ronald Regan as an actor.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Today Larry is in the chair. He chooses as his topic the best way to commit a perfect murder. When Morey has cleared the breakfast dishes he begins and gives the floor to Amos. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Amos states that it should be motiveless.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Toke adds that the victim should not be known to the murderer.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Ronnie says that the murderer should never be caught.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Larry agrees but says that it would be more stylish if the victim knew his killer.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
They admit that this would give the killing the edge but are not keen on the idea.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Morey brings more coffee.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Larry asks for a modus operandus.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Ronnie offers poisoning. He could sit beside someone in this very diner and slip something into a random cup of coffee.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Toke suggests using a stiletto in the crush of the subway. The victim would fall down and people would suspect a heart attack. As they tend to him, he would simply walk away.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Amos chooses strangling the nun who goes for a walk every morning in the park as he takes his own constitutional. She is always alone. She would have no enemies, it would not be a mugging as she has nothing to take. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The group like this but Toke is worried as strangling is ‘an art’ and needs to be practiced. Toke is a Vietnam vet.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Larry suggests that the most sublime idea would be that one of their little group picks off each of the others one at a time. It would be like Agatha Christie’s film “And Then There Were None”. Morey reminds him that there is a more recent version called “Ten Little Indians” although it is not as good as the original. He has seen both several times and has read the book. He says he likes Larry’s idea but it would have to be modified and continues with the place settings for lunch. He thinks grown men should have something better to do.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Amos has to go. He has a regular appointment at this time every Thursday. The group suspect it is with a hooker but never say anything.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The group does not meet on a Friday. Friday is family day – time to spend with loved ones. They do not have loved ones! Friday is a lonely day! Weekends are lonely too. They wait for Monday.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Morey is not lonely. He has Miriam and a Miriam with a bad back and bad attitude is better than no Miriam – just!</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Larry arrives at 9.31am on Monday, two minutes earlier than last Monday but later the previous Monday when he arrived at 9.30 am exactly. His average arrival time over the past year is 9.33am. He keeps a running log on a simple spreadsheet program at home in his condo.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
By 9.57am Amos has still to arrive. Toke thinks he may have man flu as he did not look well on Thursday. Morey suggests that he has caught a ‘dose of crabs offa the hooker’ and has gone to see the dick doctor. They go for their walk in the park and visit the zoo. It is not he same without their friend so they leave after thirty seven minutes. Ronnie has a class at 1.00pm anyway.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Orange Juice Tuesday and Toke is the first to arrive. He is surprised to see a small glass of grapefruit juice laid out for him as well.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
“Enjoy” says Morey.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
There is no sign of Amos again and Ronnie, who is always late anyway, fails to show also.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Toke asks Larry if he is playing Ten Little Indians. Larry tells him if he is, he will find out tonight. Toke laughs nervously. Morey tells him that Larry is only yanking his chain. Toke does not take his grapefruit juice. Morey is not pleased.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
It is Wednesday and not only is Larry the first one to arrive, he is the only one to arrive. Morey eyes him very closely as he eats his breakfast. Larry makes no reference to his absent friends. He leaves a five dollar tip and goes.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
‘Cool bastard’, Morey thinks.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
It is 7.00am the next morning. Larry has not slept well. His bell rings. He shuffles to the door and opens it. It will be the super coming to fix the leaking faucet.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
It isn’t</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
“Morey?”</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
“Jesus Morey….No!”</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
And then there are none!</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Morey turns and walks away quickly and quietly. He has breakfasts to make.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i>Paul Anthony is a drinker. His first efforts were with beer then he progressed to a series of exotic spirits. He has settled on Jamesons whiskey and occasionally partakes of a challenging red wine. When he is not drinking, Paul likes to write.</i></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i>His first book, “The Adventures of the Tricycle Kid” is a humorous account of growing up in Belfast in the Fifties and Sixties. He is also a contributor to anthologies such as “The Incubator”, “The Blue Hour”, “Crannog”, “Silver Apples” and “A New Ulster” and is proud to have his work featured in the “Big Issue”. </i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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<i>He has been guest author for “Creative Frontiers” and his is poetry has found a home in “The Camel Saloon” and “Athboy Anois”. </i></div>
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<i>At present, he is working on a book of short stories and a novel about the Book of Kells. He toggles between homes in Belfast in the North of Ireland and Clonmellon in the South.</i></div>
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<i>In a former life he was a University lecturer and when not drinking likes to bowl and shoot things.</i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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<i>He can be contacted by E Mail……...whatabowler@gmail.com </i></div>
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<i>Also see his pages at </i></div>
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<i>https://www.facebook.com/TheTricycleKid</i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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<i>or at</i></div>
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<i> https://sites.google.com/site/paulanthonywriter/home</i></div>
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The Camel Saloonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466326145539153263noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8334457719338642548.post-10858181406073537492014-12-10T17:59:00.003-08:002014-12-10T18:00:37.526-08:00John Pursch: She’s CargoLobots copulate twelve at a throw<br />
in shabby She’s Cargo street locales<br />
from slobbered Yeast Side shanty town<br />
to Nord Spore hooker blight contestant-go-fluky<br />
picture of exhibitionist know-how numbnut<br />
parameter pyramid of jelly control plop<br />
to tarts on Ferris wheels shy below spurned<br />
cat-o’-entrails movie deluxe Borax queen<br />
in refutation angst of popped hammerhead circle.<br />
<br />
Limbs fly off in window dressing spatter confutation proxy,<br />
daring us to crowbar ribs from rivulets of dead probate<br />
scheme contusion blend, slipping forlorn into time-trap dusk<br />
of seashore aphrodisiac extortion grind to lollipop curls<br />
on redheads lost at seizure’s pendular swoop<br />
of crosstown planetary schism.<br />
<br />
“Whoopee!” Clem he shout at nose-blown geyser strike<br />
of blow-by-lobot itch release to salami entrance handyman<br />
galore parade of daring epistemic guard dog troll platoon<br />
in defalcation’s grisly functionary sleaze entombment.<br />
<br />
Dozen parolees inundate the frontal odor fire escapee<br />
via hidden halftrack backdoor neckline perpetration hatch,<br />
flooding ontic whereabouts with muddy bootjack cataclysm<br />
hemorrhage of bile-line inguinal incursion limps<br />
in strongly piled circadian torsos, keyed to lowered<br />
basket flecks of cauterized graveyard she-food fare,<br />
canned separately for disheveled ship-to-scorecard<br />
embolism retreat beyond animal crimes.<br />
<br />
“Went straight because the causal chops impaired me,<br />
fuel-hide raucous onto roto-tundra umbral ventral sensate<br />
infiltration gauze of cheesy clothesline sex capade<br />
in fecal cavitation socket cordite plume<br />
to aging pterodactyl flight machine, dumbly pounding<br />
balled smack time-groupie phlegm whey behind her<br />
knee-hollow damping site on periscope sighs of landed<br />
signatory waistcoat pillory seduction,”<br />
spews Punky Ankle Anna,<br />
Queen of Registration Globules<br />
Nun Withheld Phlegm Mynah<br />
Blockhouse Pardon Crumbling Swath.<br />
<br />
(Lunge tidal surely flour wan off dementia’s flying<br />
as studious asp finery canned sloughed madams,<br />
blown over airy evergreens in softened thuds<br />
of counterpart seclusion hayseed overcome<br />
to needless quay-sag bovine territory spells,<br />
waxing promo flush to boggy lurch<br />
of dried lobotic eyeball crust on<br />
incandescent sunrise baker’s boson.)<br />
<br />
“Thet Juan dare be goin’ peduncular!”<br />
gestures Chary Attic Maelstrom Chunky-Chunk-Alike,<br />
Hairy Force Majeure of Slobbered Beast Slide Quotient’s<br />
flexible pummeling yard, blockaded jest sloth<br />
of She’s Cargo’s wurst bane of sallow neighborhood<br />
gazette gazebo quadrant cesspool undertow,<br />
wherein none buddy varied mostly despicable<br />
hand froggily desk-hutch inching pestilential rotifers<br />
and emotive villainy care to proffer their somewhat bruised<br />
bottom-fleecers in courts-o’-pallid barrier quaff-line barkeep<br />
fleabag keg-cracking retrograde to discotechnique blunt enthrall<br />
of slathered cornball mockeries of bobby schlock extraordinary<br />
shy school churlish coffers filling burned saliva into vanities<br />
of fairly haltered tail shod sapientially by leering shoeshine malice<br />
hailstorm queens on streetcar sidebar bridle grease commotion<br />
elocution carts, wheeled sensibly into the dawn.<br />
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The Camel Saloonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466326145539153263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8334457719338642548.post-39101533531006786562014-11-22T02:40:00.003-08:002014-11-22T11:02:24.237-08:00Todd Mercer: The Retail Battle of Big Rapids<div style="text-align: justify;">
We can see them coming for us. </div>
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They roar out of the night-dark in their pre-embargo SUVs and their armorized patch-togethers. Hundreds more of those savages are running behind the advancing line of vehicles. They’ve got weapons put together from Lawn & Garden and Hardware: wrought iron pikes, hydraulic nail guns, that kind of thing. We took heavy casualties last month. We’re weak little bitches at the moment. They might have rolled right through and wiped us out this time—and it is still going to be ugly—but we have a chance. An informer who shops both stores tipped us. Thank God. Here’s hoping the informer didn’t tell them a few things too. </div>
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We have the entire road frontage along with part of the flank of the lot edged with six foot picket privacy fencing. Their scouts saw us putting the fencing in, yet they still came. </div>
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“Nick! How many?” calls The Greeter from down on the ground.</div>
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I lower my binoculars, lean over the edge of the RV’s roof we use for a lookout post. “It seems like all of them.”</div>
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“Well come on then. Let’s get to the fence and see what we can do about it.” Down the ladder quick with my heart in my throat, but I’m not showing my fear. I trained myself to never show fear—I’m a goddamned mail carrier, after all. </div>
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The Greeter’s wheeze is crackling. “This all started with Reaganomics,” he manages to say. “That’s how it all went to shit.”</div>
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“Reaganomics? What the hell is that?” </div>
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He knocks his glasses off his nose by accident, and stops us to find them on the asphalt. </div>
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The store goes dark on the inside. Then the parking lot lights are cut too. The Store Manager’s helicopter takes off from the roof, heading wherever all the managers live. Somewhere that isn’t Big Rapids. Which means we are on our own. It’s been a long time since they tried to squelch one of these fights with police. Now it’s will versus will, the people that live in their cars in the WalMart parking lot versus the people that live in their cars in the Meijer parking lot. I hear other towns have the same standoff with at the Target-Depots and AppleShacks. We work at these stores, we live there, we stick together.</div>
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“Forget ‘em, these guys are going to slaughter us. Come on.”</div>
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“I was going… off shift… in an hour,” he huffs, damned unsuited for these conditions.</div>
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“Collect yourself, old man.”</div>
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Even before we reach our spot, we hear the staccato thumps of nails impacting the fence fronts. If I wasn’t a mailman, I’d say we’re going down this time.</div>
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* * *</div>
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I used to be Unaffiliated and out of work. I’m not proud to admit this, but I used to shop at a few different places. A long time ago most people did, but now try it and no one trusts you. </div>
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There’s no way I could have been doing as well as now, without the help of The Greeter. Four years ago I parked my old ’23 Buick beater in one of the few spaces that wasn’t claimed long term, and walked in the WalMart with a short list. I hated to leave the car, since I was traveling alone, and—goes without saying these days—everything I owned was in it. You hear what happens to the unattended vehicles of the Unaffiliated.</div>
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He was doing his Greeter thing in the front entry when I first saw him, holding his price-coding wand. </div>
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“Welcome to WalMart. Let’s scan that arm, shall we?” </div>
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And of course my data is in there, everyone’s is, but sometimes the whole thing feels inorganic.<br />
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I asked, “What if you don’t scan it?”</div>
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He looked over the frames of his glasses. “Then you can’t be assigned a price class. You would actually have to pay the whole cost that’s printed on the price tags.”</div>
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“Okay. So what?”</div>
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“Sir, nobody pays the full tag price. Unheard of. I simply don’t see it here.”</div>
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The eroding morality behind the price class system felt too compromising to be complicit in. Not that I hadn’t gone along over and over before. Almost everyone else does. But I couldn’t that once manage it.</div>
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The price coding people don’t let it be known, exactly how their structure works. But I know. I have to tell this guy.</div>
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“There are at least five discount classes. Maybe six. The first discount goes to the Affiliated. “</div>
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“Oh I don’t know about that sir, they don’t call me into the management meetings. Can I help—“</div>
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“Another discount class is for those who don’t mind that the goods they buy were made with child labor.”</div>
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“Sir, all I do is scan the arm, and tell you where the Housewares are located. I’m not political.”</div>
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“Another discount class—“ </div>
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Before I said more the Greeter reached forward abruptly; he put a business card in my hand. Thinking of all the cameras on us, I turned around and went back outside before I looked to see what I had. A card with a name and a number on it, nothing else. I climbed in the Buick and hung shirts over all the windows, and called the number.</div>
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It rang twice.</div>
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“You want to work for the Vehicle Postal Service?” the woman who answered asked immediately. </div>
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“When can you start?”</div>
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“I think you’re mistaken.”</div>
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“Did a greeter at our Big Rapids store give you a card?”</div>
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“Yes.”</div>
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“Are you already with another outfit?”<br />
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“Do you mean, am I Affiliated?”</div>
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“Are you?”</div>
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“Not at the present time. I am considering my options.”</div>
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Are you wanted for any felonies or misdemeanors?”</div>
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“If you know who you called, you must already know the answer.”</div>
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“Okay then. We’ll need you to report to the Receiving Manager, if you’re ready to work today.”</div>
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“This doesn’t even make sense.”</div>
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“Last chance. I’m busy. Affiliated mail carrier with a free parking spot and some dental coverage, or we’ll call someone else and give it to them. We don’t hire often.</div>
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Within minutes I was delivering postcards and enforcing the lot rules. The lot rules part is the hard part. I don’t even want to talk about that side of it. A week later, I had a regular meal.</div>
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* * *</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
In about ’28 the post office changed their longstanding notion of what a legal residence entailed. They started delivery to people whose addresses are vehicles. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Wherever you go now, you see the same thing—houses stand empty, sometimes blocks of houses, while nearby people live in their rides. Oh, you hear of squatters camping quietly in empty places, but that’s not worth the years of jail time, in my view. </div>
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<br /></div>
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The surest way to end up locked up as a State guest now is staying Unaffiliated, trying not to pick a team. Don’t get me started on the pathology of the times.</div>
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<br /></div>
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I started out living in rental homes. Then I landed a surprisingly good job and kept it for a long enough to ratchet back my constant background panic. So I signed a mortgage on a Tudor with shade trees. Three bedrooms. That situation didn’t last. I reverted to renting. Then later—well, I neither bought nor rented. More and more people were getting out of houses. The government gave up trying to save the country from the abyss.</div>
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I stopped kidding myself, before the last money was gone. Bought the Buick and improvised.</div>
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<br /></div>
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The day I found a spot in the lot, and a friend in the store, and lucked into the mailman position, that’s the best day I’ve had since the year my family left out on me. After a day like that, the shoulders are a bit squarer. </div>
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You have to make a little stand somewhere. You have to have pride in facing up to life.</div>
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* * *</div>
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The mail arrives at the last bay of the receiving dock, around back of the building on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Management takes pictures of all materials. I sort it, bundle up any company add-ins, and generally by noon start weaving my way through the lot. It can come to a long walk criss-crossing a short distance.</div>
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The mailman knows everybody. If I don’t know you and your car is in this lot more than an hour or two, be sure that I’ll find out what you are about. And if you’re wrong, you’re gone. If you’re wrong, I’ll know it when we talk and I look you in the eye. I’ve got a reliable knack.</div>
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I don’t put up with serious criminal activity on my lot either. Still, please lock your car when you aren’t in it. I see locks left up and I field theft reports. It keeps happening.<br />
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We get by better with diminished expectations. I tell the people in this parking lot to be glad that mail still runs at all. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
There’s an afternoon carrier who delivers to the people busy working first shift inside, the Day stockers and cashiers with preference or seniority. That’s who delivers my mail, if I ever get any. And she did. She did great. Today she brought a letter from my son who I’ve been worrying about for years. First word from him in forever. </div>
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He’s fine, he says. Doing real well. His mother is in Florida with her improved husband. He wants me to know he finished his MBA. He’s going to be one of the managers, live wherever the managers all live. He says, don’t worry, Dad, I’ve got it all figured out.</div>
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<br /></div>
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I can’t say why I’m crying and smiling both.</div>
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* * *</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The expectations: try to carve out a life and a space to live it. You go ahead and dare to experience love for other human beings, and keep yourself on the best path that’s open. Even doing right, some night ‘They’ may come for you. I know how it got this bad, but not what to do to make it better. For a few years the ’They’ of concern were the police, always coming, carrying people away from their families. Now it’s the other poor folks. We’re divided into tribes, and we’re at each other’s throats. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
In this town, I’m afraid they‘re hungrier than we are. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
They’re here, looks like all of them. Vehicles grouped in a tight wedge, they hit our barricades a few dozen yards down, accelerating to at least fifty or sixty miles an hour. Fencing and plywood fly backwards, skitter down the pavement, letting them on in. </div>
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They hate us deep, they won’t show mercy.</div>
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<br /></div>
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The Greeter turns his back to the section we’re braced behind, the one other vehicles are almost upon. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
“Run!” he shouts at me, “Save yourself!” He pushes me back in the direction of the store. Before I don’t see the old man anymore, he’s standing there in his blue vest, which will surely catch him negative special attention, somebody’s grandpa who had to return to the workplace.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
There’s a flare overhead. For a moment the area around us is day-bright. I see the lettering where his name tag reads, “Todd Mercer.” He’s smiling and waving at those Meijer bastards over the fence, doing his job, Greeting. He calls out, “Welcome to WalMart! Can I help you fiiiiiiinnndd anything?” when they bear down and roll right over the top of him.</div>
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It’s heartbreaking, but even so, someone’s bound to live through this attack who resides in one of these cars out here and is praying for a Greeter job. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I’m sprinting faster than the Canadians did, back when we invaded them. I don’t care if you think I’m a coward—I’ve got mail to deliver tomorrow, assuming there’s anyone here left to receive mail. If you ever luck into a quality job like that, you keep it ‘til they bury you. That will happen soon enough, don’t help them do it to you.</div>
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Fuck those guys. We still have the lowest goddamn prices in Osceola County. </div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i>TODD MERCER won the first Woodstock Writers Festival’s Flash Fiction contest. His chapbook, Box of Echoes, won the Michigan Writers Cooperative Press contest and his digital chapbook, Life-wish Maintenance, is forthcoming from RHP Books. Mercer's poetry and fiction appear in Apocrypha & Abstractions, Blink Ink, Blue Collar Review, The Camel Saloon, Camroc Press Review, Cease, Cows, Cheap Pop, Dunes Review, East Coast Literary Review, Eunoia Review, Falling Star, 50-Word Stories, The Fib Review, Gravel, The Lake, The Legendary, Main Street Rag Anthologies, Melancholy Hyperbole, Misty Mountain Review, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, theNewer York, One Sentence Poems, Postcard Poems and Prose, Postcard Shorts, Right Hand Pointing, River Lit, The Second Hump, and Spartan.</i></div>
<br /> The Camel Saloonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466326145539153263noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8334457719338642548.post-87153549612490176032014-09-06T17:19:00.002-07:002014-09-06T17:25:25.872-07:00John Pursch: Buncle Slim“I what plump fergot to warsh off the ink<br />
from muh stumpie hafta-go-lurchy peninsular spoutin’ pin,”<br />
chuckled H. Prerogatory Q. Nappie O’Wrangler the Pith,<br />
fifteenth Earl of Shampooed Hamwitch,<br />
Deaconate of the Touchy Toupee of Norse Umbrian Flaregun.<br />
<br />
He smoked long and lean bicuspid fillings<br />
of juiced encaustic tonic notary pulp city<br />
flagon destruction compartment moths,<br />
what flipped their mythologically impacted wings<br />
from mating rituals known clear across Louvered Swobodia<br />
for their grout-wrenching performance narratives<br />
of bulimic sod and tarts in disrepair,<br />
flung from torn fishnet undergarments<br />
outa store-bought frontier delusions,<br />
pasted to your brainpan by emerald daydreams<br />
of popcorn movie head and stick-figurine incendiary<br />
plow horse blowtorch defibrillation,<br />
courting debilitated deputies<br />
of Pyre Sighland lug-alike canned detestation,<br />
clear from Sloshing Foam, P.C.<br />
to Scuppered Downhome Outhouse Pisregard<br />
(piling place of D.T. Ponereport,<br />
dirtiest sniveling whore genital contrail remover<br />
ever found in the heinous annals of twirled hysterical sunsets,<br />
steered navel-wide from pluperfectionist magisterium<br />
to bailiff broadsides fired county cluck-wise<br />
in bullfrog buttress imitation’s filial possum<br />
of ostrich custard election know-how).<br />
<br />
Show me how far we’ve come<br />
from umpteen umbrella shots in Pealing Drama, Taxes,<br />
you syrupy sudsy slurper of deep-fired<br />
slattern-crookin’ creek-bred rusty Aphasians,<br />
plied what with plopped cycle breasts milked by<br />
inert shoddy lop-of-the-two-piece<br />
boardroom snooker jock set,<br />
imploding hourly on chunnels ground<br />
to clockwork Styrofoam pajama spurts,<br />
confronted belles o’ battling bleeding litigants<br />
he daubed with heisted creepy cradlers<br />
from hovering hilltop feudal larders,<br />
fueled to foveal floating rotation bilge,<br />
sloshing over the wobbling epiglottal eyesore<br />
of precedents becalmed to rows of stimulated sheet petal Sundays.<br />
<br />
Datelines glide to comely home front stowaway illusion meals,<br />
accepting ptomaine heat erasure by the handyman’s<br />
expressly mobbed contusion grease fanatic semblance,<br />
propped in worrisome decibel emotion proxy snooze belief<br />
for gulch-cowing cooler chatter,<br />
recollected sideways by Buncle Slim,<br />
Carbuncular Capsizer of Defenestrated Tailors<br />
Swirled Canticle-wide and Chopped Sousa Doozy<br />
Infant’s Peduncular Nerdly Emblem Grazer.<br />
<br />
Slim what shot up add mirely demotion’s causal mannequin<br />
of his churlish dame’s devotional membrane and claimed<br />
in terrified desultory infusion breath:<br />
<br />
“Who’d savory grafted android rights<br />
of wayward billowing Beluga breast<br />
inspection torts to anyone,<br />
ladder lonely slum underfed corpse<br />
of inclined planet placard plaque<br />
derision numbnut criminologist<br />
wud you mired obey pee-cullin’ year shelf<br />
in mah courtyard gloomy vestibule,<br />
figurin’ tea cup a pleasant spleef afore ya mentioned<br />
the hummed hymnal intentionals<br />
of smugly played imbibement daze<br />
gone festerin’ likely into puissant comedy of terriers?”<br />
<br />
Wheedle know,<br />
this candle figure eight o’ nine trailing tongueless crab tree,<br />
ferried along the groin grain gloss of homespun chattel pie<br />
by anyone but Buncle Slim,<br />
whale eet waddled nut fairly furor than say a gantry mire<br />
before laughing in sway bar munificence<br />
to country island lug nut slake,<br />
contested sliding follicle delusion<br />
set to porous gravy overshirt of dung<br />
in fair heathered henna implants.<br />
<br />
Showering humps every switched day<br />
from cylindrical nightstand sloop<br />
to jib to jabbering spinnaker buboes,<br />
the crowded Doctor Mastiff staggered outa timed machinery’s<br />
pubescent portal chest into naked timesheet numbing gents,<br />
kneed ‘em to submissive postulates<br />
of Oilskids Reproductive Surgery Repair Service<br />
(manned by one furious rattler biding nautical<br />
his shipping gyration’s motivated clime),<br />
and cobbled two gasping thunderheaded blonde rodeo queens<br />
to form the next great preener of shore<br />
and screaming sliver of screen shot chunky flesh<br />
to salivate a dousing seizure’s pinochle entendre,<br />
planting the Americon phlag, all plastic and purple,<br />
from middle C to lower intestinal bucolic rage,<br />
right in the rectilinear rectal mulch of down-and-shouted<br />
towny frowsy whorehouse continuity’s newly elected<br />
Precedent Hearball O’Bunky,<br />
worldly peasant extraordinaire,<br />
founder of most android nude colonial pederasty societies<br />
on cheesebag planetary discursive entrails<br />
strewn atop the Asstoroidal Bleat,<br />
flaunting Dearth’s mythical prowess,<br />
full candy canard petroleum petard infarction dog,<br />
just tarrying to stultify Chupacabra Peter’s frozen waistline<br />
into mordant extraluminal humping oblation.<br />
<div>
<br />
<br />
John Pursch lives in Tucson, Arizona. His work has been nominated for Best of the Net and has appeared in many literary journals. A collection of his poetry, Intunesia, is available in paperback at <a href="http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/whiteskybooks">http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/whiteskybooks</a>. His recently released experimental lit-rap video is at <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l33aUs7obVc">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l33aUs7obVc</a>. He’s @johnpursch on Twitter and john.pursch on Facebook.<br />
<br /></div>
The Camel Saloonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466326145539153263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8334457719338642548.post-65672953220672764542014-09-06T17:16:00.004-07:002014-09-06T17:16:46.412-07:00Donal Mahoney: The Button Workers<span style="text-align: justify;">Since the United Nations passed the Universal Right to Work Law in 2093, Skewer International has brought back from other planets thousands of migrant workers on its company spaceship.</span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
On the last trip, Manfred, an interloper, somehow boarded the ship even though he lacks one of the prerequisites for a United Nations green card--namely, a button in his navel that can be turned off to prevent him from speaking. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The navel button is a requirement of companies on Earth for any interplanetary worker. Manfred talked incessantly while the company pilot flew from planet to planet taking on board hundreds of other migrant workers, all equipped with navel buttons. His job was to bring them back to Earth to work in potato fields all over the world.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
"Manfred, will you please quiet down," Wally, the pilot, said. "You're keeping the others awake and it's tough on my concentration. There are lots of planets and I wouldn't want to land on one that has no workers waiting to get on board. I'd waste a lot of fuel taking off again." </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
"I'll do the best I can," Manfred said. "I never got a navel button like the others so it's hard for me to keep quiet. But I'm a darn good worker. All I want is a chance."</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The United Nations' version of a "green card" allows migrants to work in any nation. Talkative Manfred is unaware that he will be sent home on the next spaceship that leaves Earth to pick up more workers. Once he has a navel button installed, he can apply again to come back to Earth for a job.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
"No navel button, no job," Wally whispered to himself. "A long day's journey into plight."</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
In 2093, the demand for button workers continues to grow among farmers in the United States, Italy, China, Tajikistan, Moldova and Belarus. Other countries are expected to begin hiring them as well. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The workers are valued by institutional farmers because migrants don't complain about working conditions or low salaries the way domestic workers often do. And the button workers don't need health insurance or retirement benefits. If a button worker gets sick, he or she goes back to the home planet on the next spaceship. And when they are too old to work, it's back to the home planet as well. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
"They're always surprised," Wally thought to himself, "when they get sick or old and home they go, the same way they came. It saves companies a lot of money. If they die in the fields, however, they're put on a company pyre. It's a cookout, as one manager calls it."</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
At the present time button workers, no matter the nation in which they work, do only one kind of labor. They plant and harvest Yukon Gold potatoes 12 hours a day. During their workday, they have their navel buttons turned on so they can say yes to the foremen on horses overseeing their work and giving directions.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
"Let's get a move on" is typically what workers hear from foremen. And they respond by working faster. Domestic workers don't respond like that. They're apt to protest, maybe even picket. And pickets around the potato fields won't get the Yukon Golds planted or harvested. The button workers can be counted on to get the job done. They have no idea what "unions" were before legislation led to their disintegration.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
At night, with their buttons turned off, the workers head back to their sheds for a bowl of cabbage soup before they bunk down for the night. Libations are limited to water. On Sundays, each worker gets two bowls of cabbage soup and a Pecan Sandy cookie.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Monday through Saturday, reveille sounds at 4 a.m. when the foremen on horses blow trumpets, ready to lead the button workers back to the fields.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
"Let's go, you buttons," the foremen yell between blasts on their trumpets. "The potatoes are calling."</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Research is under way at several universities to fabricate navel buttons for domestic workers who perhaps can then be hired to work in the fields. The media remains critical of industry because the unemployment rate is so high among domestic workers. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
But, currently, domestic workers are not an attractive pool from which to seek new employees because of the tumult created for many years by fast-food workers seeking a living wage. Their wages have never gone up but the workers now get an extra sandwich for every 8 hours they work. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
"Some of them are barely skilled enough," complained one company president, "to put a pickle slice on a hamburger, never mind adding condiments as well."</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Industry predicts that eventually farmers from every nation on Earth will hire interplanetary button workers and that they will soon work in factories as well. Manufacturing jobs will then be brought back to the land of the free and the home of the button worker. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Stock Market savants say the Dow Jones average will rise dramatically as a result. What more could anyone want in a free market economy.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /><br /><br /></div>The Camel Saloonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466326145539153263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8334457719338642548.post-44663739973734710242014-08-29T12:56:00.004-07:002014-08-29T12:57:47.578-07:00Anuradha Bhattacharyya: BIG MAXSom did not know how to go about it. He left it to chance. He came across Nalini as a witty, willful girl and he was afraid that it would be difficult to steer things round to his way. However, one day, he extended his friendship to her and the next day he asked her out for a walk. In this way the two of them became palls. But Som wanted more …<br />
<br />
Early one evening, as the two of them walked aimlessly in the crowded streets of Kolkata, their conversation turns from books to themselves. Nalini says,<br />
<br />
See he’s wearing the same T-shirt. Som smiles, she continues,<br />
<br />
No, the collar is just your opposite.<br />
<br />
Som laughs, Ya, mine’s pink.<br />
<br />
Where are you taking me?<br />
<br />
To Big Max.<br />
<br />
You’ll get to see the cell-phone-girl? They laugh,<br />
<br />
May be your Xavarian will be in there too.<br />
<br />
What was he like? I mean, how tall. Did he have a beard?<br />
<br />
He looked like he didn’t shave that day.<br />
<br />
So you won’t know him if he shaves.<br />
<br />
I don’t care, says Nalini with a toss of her head.<br />
<br />
I wonder what he wanted. Probably lying about himself.<br />
<br />
I was wary.<br />
<br />
Ya, you should be careful.<br />
<br />
At that time I was literally praying that you’d come out.<br />
<br />
What’s my coming out got to do with it?<br />
<br />
Why, he’d at least shut up then. After receiving no reply from Som, who was concentrating on the street, she says,<br />
<br />
But he did mention Gaurav.<br />
<br />
Said he knew him.<br />
<br />
Wanted him. So I asked him to go to the college. What could I do if he wanted a book from Gaurav?<br />
<br />
But he didn’t move.<br />
<br />
What’s wrong today? There’s another copy.<br />
<br />
What copy?<br />
<br />
Your.<br />
<br />
That’s a pink one, isn’t it?<br />
<br />
It’s faded.<br />
<br />
Both of them fall silent. The busses make it hard for them to hear each other. They shout at the top of their voices confident that no one but they could hear what they were saying. But by now they had covered more than four kilometers after leaving the bus. Nalini was getting tired. Som was also breathless; he is barely audible when he says,<br />
<br />
Shall we go there?<br />
<br />
I was thinking something.<br />
<br />
What?<br />
<br />
Something. Nalini giggles.<br />
<br />
Hm?<br />
<br />
They were also wearing the same pink and white stripes, even the jeans, but you look most handsome.<br />
<br />
Uh uh.<br />
<br />
They laugh loudly, almost forcefully.<br />
<br />
Why?<br />
<br />
Why what?<br />
<br />
Why?<br />
<br />
Come this way.<br />
<br />
Hold my hand.<br />
<br />
Kid.<br />
<br />
And you are my uncle.<br />
<br />
Uncle?<br />
<br />
Hold my hand!<br />
<br />
This girl.<br />
<br />
Okay brother. Now hold.<br />
<br />
Don’t you think one can tell by the way we walk …<br />
<br />
That we’re not brother and sister? Our faces don’t match.<br />
<br />
Som remains quiet. He was thinking hard. She continues,<br />
<br />
That’s why I said uncle!<br />
<br />
I can’t look an uncle.<br />
<br />
Even an infant can be an uncle.<br />
<br />
No, I am an uncle but I don’t look …<br />
<br />
You look my brother?<br />
<br />
Not really. By the way we walk … don’t you think … we look different?<br />
<br />
They turn into a side street which she can’t recognize. She looks up at him and asks,<br />
<br />
We are not going to Big Max? They were nowhere near Big Max, the famous restaurant on Palk Street in Kolkata.<br />
<br />
No. I said we’ll go to that place.<br />
<br />
You said Big Max!<br />
<br />
Initially I said that, but I told you when we turned this way.<br />
<br />
You tell half the things to yourself. Now tell me: where are we going? We’ve been walking too long already. I’m tired.<br />
<br />
You get tired very soon, don’t you?<br />
<br />
I don’t have your long legs.<br />
<br />
I wish you had more stamina.<br />
<br />
Your hands are very spongy.<br />
<br />
Spongy?<br />
<br />
Chubby.<br />
<br />
Soft, Som corrects her.<br />
<br />
There’s too much flesh, red flesh. I haven’t touched such a fleshy hand before.<br />
<br />
Not mine before?<br />
<br />
I mean except yours.<br />
<br />
See, I’m a soft man.<br />
<br />
In palmistry …<br />
<br />
Damn your palmistry.<br />
<br />
No no, listen first.<br />
<br />
It says flabby palms are a sign of deceptive character.<br />
<br />
Oh?<br />
<br />
Yes. Contact with you will be disastrous for me.<br />
<br />
For once – it is right. Saying this, he laughs without laughter in his heart. His heart squirms.<br />
<br />
It doesn’t say that!<br />
<br />
It says I’m deceptive.<br />
<br />
Yes. Like you haven’t told me where we’re going.<br />
<br />
You’ll see.<br />
<br />
She is pretty. He sees Nalini looking at a girl wearing black.<br />
<br />
Hm? Nice legs.<br />
<br />
Go after her.<br />
<br />
He laughs again with an effort and says, For once …<br />
<br />
Now she looks up at his face and turns pale. She does not laugh. He continues,<br />
<br />
So? For once you’ve shown correct sense. Shall I go after her?<br />
<br />
Go. And after a while she adds,<br />
<br />
I know.<br />
<br />
What?<br />
<br />
Your company is disastrous to me.<br />
<br />
I’m dangerous! D A N G E R O U S !<br />
<br />
It was a long silence before Som resumes,<br />
<br />
Anyway. He can see Nalini thoughtful. Then she says,<br />
<br />
I think that man is the same one.<br />
<br />
Who?<br />
<br />
There, speaking on the phone. I think he’s the same one.<br />
<br />
Which one? That’s an older man, out there. That one?<br />
<br />
No-o not the Xavarian. That’s the one who talked to me in the BCL.<br />
<br />
You never told me about him.<br />
<br />
I forgot. He came up to me and asked for the book I was holding. Almost snatched.<br />
<br />
Why did you let him?!<br />
<br />
I didn’t! He asked, ‘are you taking it?’ I said, ‘yes, I think so’ and held on to it. But he almost snatched it and had a look inside.<br />
<br />
You.<br />
<br />
The book. It was <i>The Heart of Darkness</i> and he asked if I was in M.A. English. I said ‘what are you in’ without answering and he said research in something and got away. Didn’t I do the right thing?<br />
<br />
You should be careful.<br />
<br />
I think I must wear faded dresses and put oil in my hair.<br />
<br />
He looks much older. Probably lied to you.<br />
<br />
Maybe it’s not the same man. I didn’t even look at his face.<br />
<br />
Hah !?<br />
<br />
Som can’t tell what she was thinking, but he finds that she has screwed up her nose and her gait has become slower. He turns round the next bend and waits for her to catch up with him. Then she says with a forced smile,<br />
<br />
I’m getting scared of everybody.<br />
<br />
Including me?<br />
<br />
Uh, except you.
<br />
<br />
<br />The Camel Saloonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466326145539153263noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8334457719338642548.post-35025462606478861022014-08-26T03:33:00.002-07:002014-08-26T03:33:43.158-07:00Suvojit Banerjee and Sheikha A.: The Crimson Tiding. They ignored the sign when a great famine ravaged the earth, and a great war tarnished whatever was left of humanity. Amidst the crimson tide and gray skies, befell the third prophecy - death, the third horseman rode through. And along came his army of undead.<br />
<br />
A few of the remaining houses still stood lined like brave soldiers in a once thriving boulevard now desiccated to a thin spray of embers. The horseman of the army wore no mask, and neither did the rest. On his shoulders gloated a large, bone-mass of merciless veneer as he turned to Pestilence hanging in a far corner of the dominion, hands bound like a prisoner walking the revived march of a resurrection he was once meant to initiate.<br />
<br />
One of the houses flickered precariously, the light inside gasping for life, giving the appearance of a soldier ungiving to impending death until a ray of promise for continuance cued. Inside, a soldier did breathe. Her dark eyes projected through the window by the front door. The night could not be denser than the darkness in her eyes but there was a glint, of resilience, that shown visibly through.<br />
<br />
Pestilence knew those eyes well. He had looked into them and through them into another world he imagined existed but wasn't allowed entry. He had been created from a different element altogether, pre-tailored for predestined tasks. It was her eyes that had roused a sensation in him he wasn't familiar with; now knowing was an urge to flout the predefined.<br />
<br />
Since time immemorial our manuscripts and arcane texts had predicted the end of days, alerting us with the signs when the seven seals would be broken. A day of cataclysm, when heaven’s wrath and hell’s terror would engulf the human kind: but we were too ignorant. When the first signs appeared – we failed to pay heed. The Great War ravaging the lands were dismissed as acts of human greed, and the devastating famine afterwards was called an aftermath by the pundits.<br />
<br />
Then on a day when the sun lashed crimson-red rays onto the barren land, the third prophecy manifested itself. Ancient tomes said he rode a pale horse whose hooves were as ominous to vigor as a hawk to mice. But here, beneath the soigné cut-suit and a glass of chardonnay in hand, Death looked more like a businessman out on a trip.<br />
<br />
“I’m utterly bored. Looks like War and Famine had a field day.”<br />
He lowered his sunglasses, and took a sip from the glass, looking at his watch.<br />
<br />
Behind him, armies of undead continued sapping the lives of the remaining souls. A few faint screams were heard at a distance, but apart from that, the living did not resist. Death was like a saving grace for them, and they embraced him with open arms.<br />
<br />
She watched, as the insidious talons of Death clawed at all living matter not unknowing that the eyes of the rider of the pale horse bore her with a foreboding. She knew they were coming for her. Her eyes travelled the trails of the massacre as far and wide her vision would enable. Gifts of clairvoyance unassisted by a greater power to leash such rampant carnage seemed futile to her, this moment, as she felt her frail cage of an earthly body, which had been a keeper for a fierce empathy for humankind, begin to dysfunction.<br />
<br />
In Death’s queue, she desperately sought Pestilence. Her body crumbling rapidly as her eyes darted and careened through the army that stood not far from her house. The cage that held her fragile frame, in this world, shed off of her spirit as did leaves from their branches in jilting winter. Pestilence was her rescue. Eyes in which she had witnessed a softening for the eccentric principles he initially reckoned as weak morals of a decrepit land, those for which she saw, in his eyes, an acceptance, if not readily, but with steady inclination. Those eyes, she had also begun to realise, were missing.<br />
<br />
She continued to dissipate, until only her essence remained. Casting away the cloak of a weak vessel she wore, she was now reinstated to her primal, feral self. Akin in appearance to the bone-masses approaching her, bare in true form, compassion began eroding what otherwise had held her petite earthly face as eyes - they gouged invertedly as if a different entity sucked them in from the inside as fodder or feast, relishing it as if having long awaited this resurrection. <br />
<br />
There was not going to be a Resurrection – a Convention, yes. She was to unite – with Pestilence and save mankind. <br />
<br />
As she watched the army inching towards her house, through menacing cavities that now formed her eyes, the ground underneath crippled away into the chasms of a deathless death, a death she’d been visited by once before, she knew it was time. She only had to get to Pestilence. And order would restore. <br />
<br />
The sand appeared a faulty red; almost mirroring the scarlet shades of a poseur sky. The war had initiated. The war was fought. But the war hadn’t ended. Bodies were now historic remnants of souls without abodes to go to – no traces of posterity, the earth and sky were now beyond distinction. All that remained was a gathering of mist.<br />
<br />
The council was too buried in enjoying the destruction that their henchmen brought upon mankind. Dressed in glorious golden and murderous red, they gorged on the visceral scenery that the big portal presented in front of them. While the metallic smells of rivers of blood were giving their minds lascivious wings, one of the minions cried out: “Sir, Pestilence hasn’t yet completed his course!”<br />
<br />
“Silence!” One of the councilmen snapped, “He will show up soon! Do not interfere!” And the minion disappeared into one corner and melted with the pillars.<br />
<br />
Amidst the ruins of a massive city, a lanky young man slowly moved about. His eyes were two shiny marbles of emerald, and with them he scrutinized every corner of the dying conurbation. The poisonous footsteps irradiated the earth whenever they fell on it, and the hideous plague flowed from his hands in a serpentine line of dazzling, sparkling green smoke. There was a neigh in the background. Stirred, he looked back. The majestic white stead with the same emerald eyes as his stood there, hooving the ground. “Looks like we’ve been summoned”, the man said, and smiled. He rode the horse and disappeared through the outskirts of the city.<br />
<br />
She stood before them, unarmed and reneged. Her body had dilapidated but grazes of her empathy that clung to her like war-bruises glowed strongly through her torn skin. She still awaited Pestilence – before these men, her strength crumbling, but with determined intent.<br />
<br />
“I want Pestilence!” She screamed with the last bits of accumulated strength.<br />
<br />
For a moment, there was a smirk in their faces. Then, a demonic hiss released through War’s closed jaw. The hollows of his eyes flared as he roared, “Pestilence!”<br />
<br />
The rumble of dead leaves gave way to a whirlwind of green and black, and when the dust settled the lanky man with green eyes was standing in front of her, looking at the defiance of a mortal. He had been thinking about the visions: that the future would be written by not man, not angels, not demons, but by an alliance; and that he was chosen.<br />
<br />
He was looking at the other piece of the puzzle, but he did not know how to put them together.<br />
<br />
“What now?” He said, and looked at the rest of his brothers.<br />
<br />
They were looking at her. When Pestilence looked at her a second time, he saw something no human had ever done in front of the horsemen of apocalypse.<br />
<br />
She was smiling.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
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<br />The Camel Saloonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466326145539153263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8334457719338642548.post-47169041770815124032014-08-14T09:07:00.003-07:002014-08-14T09:08:41.065-07:00Anuradha Bhattacharyya: Hey Swamiji !<div style="text-align: justify;">
There was a time when the Ganga waters were effluent. The river tore down bridges, pebbled ridges and cemented borders. She was furious during the monsoons and angry during winter. In the region of the foothills of the Himalayas all the towns were crowded with temples and tourist spots that were watered by the Ganga.</div>
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The river Ganga has been controlled and guarded by the authorities so as to minimize life risks for the tourists. Still once in a blue moon someone may be heard to have lost a dear one in these waters. The stream flows swiftly by a natural downward slope and carries away all the things that are daily dropped into the water. People drop all sorts of things into the river and watch them disappear under water immediately. If a body dropped into the river like a thing it would disappear equally swiftly.</div>
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Once, on the banks of the river near the Lakshman Jhula, a family spread out its picnic basket. It was a family from Haridwar. There were indeed two families, one of a brother and the other of his sister. There were four children and four adults. They were oblivious of the fate that was about to gust out their enjoyment. But I’ll talk about that later.</div>
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Chintoo and Mintoo were two brothers of about twelve years in age. Their uncle lived in Haridwar. Ever so often they visited his place. In October, during the Diwali vacations, the days were pleasant and in the evening there was a cool breeze that refreshed them. They preferred to stay out late in the evening and take a stroll hand in hand with their cousins in the crowded market to look at the fancy items in display. Their uncle also took them out to Mansa Devi temple riding on a tonga.</div>
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The ropeway to the Mansa Devi temple was a familiar ride for them. They enjoyed it every time they came to Haridwar. They looked forward to the day when they would be grown up enough to be able to go up to the summit of the hill on foot. On top of the hill they found a viewpoint with a telescope which they would invariably peep through. They quarreled with each other to decide who would be the first to view through it. They loved the garden on the terrace, and at times when it rained they loved to get drenched, howsoever their mother protested that they might catch flu.</div>
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Their reckless manner made their father swear every time that he would not bring them to Haridwar again. But each year, after several phone calls from their cousins who were more or less of the same age, they boarded the bus from Delhi to Haridwar and reached their uncle’s house during a break from school.<br />
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The last time, in May, when they came to Haridwar, they had visited Mansa Devi temple again. After that they took a bus to Rishikesh. There on the ghats they sat in the evening dangling their naked legs. After the Sandhya Arati of Goddess Ganga, they went into the ashram.</div>
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In the ashram, out of curiosity, their uncle took the children to a swamiji. He showed swamiji each boy’s palms. All the four boys sat cross-legged in front of the swamiji. The swamiji insisted on seeing both the palms of the boys. One by one they held out their palms together open in front of him. He did not touch any one. He did not bend forward with a lens to magnify the lines. He did not wrinkle up his eyes to tell what he saw in their palms. The light from the bulb hanging from the ceiling was adequate for him to foresee the future of each boy.</div>
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To Mintoo, he said that he would grow up to be a big officer. He would have only daughters and no son. But one of his daughters would eventually make him proud.</div>
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To Babloo, he said that he should be a good son and obey his parents. To his parents he said that they should be considerate towards Babloo’s feelings and never force him to do anything against his will. They found the instructions contradictory so they asked, “Swamiji, Will Babloo do well in studies?” At Babloo’s age no one thinks of anything but studies. The Swamiji took the hint and decided to drop the topic of his marriage and assured the parents that Babloo was very intelligent and diligent in his studies.</div>
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To Chhotu, Swamiji said, “What do you want to do in life, Bachcha?” Chhotu promptly said, “I love painting!” This annoyed the parents and they clicked their tongues. Swamiji turned to them and said, “Don’t be annoyed at his childish wish. He will grow up to wish many more things in the world and all his wishes would be fulfilled. Did you understand Bachcha? All your wishes would come true!” At this Chhotu got up with satisfaction spread all over his face and Chintoo took his position before the Swamiji. Chhotu’s parents quietly made up their minds that they would teach their child what to wish for.</div>
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Swamiji looked at Chintoo’s palms and said, “You are a very naughty boy. You are always up to some mischief. You should be more careful otherwise you are likely to bring grief to your parents.” Hearing this admonition Chintoo meekly said, “Yes Swamiji”. His mother complained, “Chintoo eats a lot of sweetmeats, I don’t know what to do with him!” Swamiji kept silent.</div>
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That October, all of them decided to go on a picnic to the Lakshman Jhula. It was a pleasant time of the year. While in the sun they did not need to carry any sweaters. And the sun did not hurt either. Babloo and Chhotu carried along playing cards and Chinese Checkers to play on the picnic spot. When they reached there, they spread out their mats and according to their plan, they took out the games. But Mintoo was too eager to touch the water. His father tried to stop him but when he did not listen and started running towards the water’s edge, the father asked the elder boy, Chintoo to go after him. Now both the boys started playing with the waters of the river.</div>
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They were throwing mud into the water and fetching soiled flowers out of the water. They squatted next to the edge and used sticks to catch floating objects. The father saw their huddled backs and fumed. After calling at them a couple of times, Mintoo turned his head and shouted, “We are not coming back!” At this the father rose threateningly and both the boys dashed towards a boulder near the edge of the water. They climbed up the boulder and teased their father. Chintoo stood up straight on the boulder and waved his hands. It infuriated the father and he stepped forward. As he did so, Chintoo lost his balance and fell behind the boulder.</div>
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No one could see him at once. Mintoo called out his name and climbed off the boulder. The others saw that he was shouting at the river. They rushed towards him. Mintoo said that Chintoo had fallen straight into the water.</div>
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There were others in the picnic spot. They had all gathered together to look into the water. A local youth had plunged into the river to save the boy, but the fact was that no one could see him. No one could even see his body.</div>
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The authorities sent a search party into the river. They showed the aggrieved family to a shelter. In the shelter, among others, there was a swamiji. The drowned boy’s mother rushed towards him and threw herself at his feet. She cried, “Swamiji, please assure me that my son would be found! Swamiji, please give back my son!”</div>
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Swamiji was startled. He had no powers. He did not even know how to read palms. He was a mere ascetic who wandered from place to place in search of inner peace. Being accosted by an aggrieved mother, he could not do anything; nor did he snatch away his feet from her grasp. He found everyone staring at him expectantly. He wondered what would be a suitable reply to this bereaved group. The rest of the people had to be impressed too.</div>
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“My child, your son’s body would be found if he died before four o’clock. The holy Ganga takes away only the purest of souls; be assured that your son has gone straight to heaven.”</div>
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Everyone checked the time.
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The Camel Saloonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466326145539153263noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8334457719338642548.post-36389663094284350572014-07-16T03:01:00.000-07:002014-07-16T03:01:28.507-07:00Shane L. Coffey: Blue Collar<div style="text-align: justify;">
"God my knees hurt," Johnny thought as he adjusted his pads and crouched behind the plate. Another couple years of this and he knew he would be old before his time, not able to run or bike or kneel down to put ice on the shiner his son would get from a wild pitch. "One endorsement contract, just one," he thought as the first pitch smacked into his mitt. He didn't feel it. He made a sign. The pitcher shook his head. He made the same sign, a bit more emphatically. Danny Rico, the kid on the mound, had a cannon for an arm, but he still couldn't read a batter for beans. Johnny was the best at that; every pitcher he'd ever caught said so. But his bat was mediocre and he didn't look too good on camera. The game had given him a decent living, better than decent, but then his kid was born early and his mom got sick and if his wife had to put up with a ball player's travel schedule then she at least wanted to spend money like a ball player's wife, not that he blamed her, and so here he was, starting the second season after his knees had been yelling for him to quit. "Just one big endorsement contract," he thought as the second pitch, the pitch he'd called, slammed home and the umpire yelled "Stroi-eek!"</div>
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Rico's cannon had no shortage of ammo that day, and nine innings went by quick; the kid pitched a shutout and was only two bloop singles off a no-hitter, maybe the best rookie start in the history of the club. </div>
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Nobody would remember, even know, how bad he'd have gotten shelled without Johnny calling his pitches. Johnny went one-for-four with two strikeouts and no RBIs.</div>
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Three hours later, Johnny was sitting in an overstuffed chair in the office of a sports drink company's advertising exec. "This is it," he thought. "It's been weeks of negotiating, but this is it. I'll sign the papers, do a bunch of photo shoots and commercial spots, and in a few more months I can finally retire."</div>
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The ad exec spoke to his agent like Johnny wasn't even there. "Look, Ned…I know we all have a lot invested in this deal, but…the boys upstairs have decided to go in a different direction."</div>
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"That's bullshit, Gus, and you know it." Ned was trying to sound offended, but he clearly wasn't shocked. "What 'direction' are they going?"</div>
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"Well, far be it from me to cause any tension in the clubhouse, but… C'mon, Ned, you know Danny Rico's a local kid, and young, great physique, great stats in the minors, tests off the charts with the key demos…"</div>
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Gus kept talking, but Johnny didn't hear it. He just hung his head. Ned pretended to negotiate for about fifteen minutes, and then they both left.</div>
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Another 161 games went by slow, no post-season, and a winter spent wondering how long it would be into next spring before he'd get traded to God-knows-where. "God," Johnny thought on opening day, "God, my knees hurt."</div>
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The Camel Saloonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466326145539153263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8334457719338642548.post-7081660496590559302014-06-28T05:16:00.003-07:002014-06-28T05:22:05.530-07:00Donal Mahoney: Hilda's Family Reunion<span style="text-align: justify;">Paddy didn't want to go to his wife's family reunion. He told her that in the same nice way he had told her in years past so as to avoid other reunions over the many years they had been married. Hilda had always given him a pass, telling her relatives his job required that he stay home. After he retired she'd tell them he wasn't up to the trip--a case of the flu or something. No one ever believed her but many were happy not to have Paddy there. It wasn't that he caused a problem. He just stuck out among the Ottos and Hanses. He would forever be an Irish interloper at a German family reunion. But this time Hilda was adamant about Paddy going with her. </span><br />
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"Everyone's getting older," Hilda said, "and we should see them before someone else dies." </div>
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Hilda was right, of course, Paddy had to admit, as she usually was. He was part of the family whether they liked him or not. </div>
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"I grew up with those people, Paddy, and I may be seeing some of them for the last time. They may be boring to you but they're my family."</div>
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Unlike Hilda's relatives, Paddy's relatives, the ones already dead and the ones still alive, didn't hold family reunions, confining contact to cards at Christmas with signatures only, free of any personal messages unless someone had died, and that was just as well, Paddy thought. </div>
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At any gathering of his people, the angry ones, and most of them had been angry since birth, would, after a few drinks, start picking scabs off old problems and fresh blood would flow. Hilda's folks did the same thing but with more discretion. You'd be bleeding and didn't know why.</div>
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There was a real din the last time Paddy's family had a reunion and that was 30 years ago. </div>
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"It was a catastrophe lost in cacophony," Paddy told Hilda as he tried to recapture the ambience. Nevertheless, Paddy still saw his relatives at wakes. And the wakes were more frequent in recent years. </div>
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"Hilda, the odd thing is the angriest ones look the most peaceful in a casket with or without a boutonniere or corsage."</div>
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A few in his family, however, still hoped there would be one more family reunion despite the debacle at the last one. They hoped that Paddy's cousin, Margaret Mary O'Mara, who'd been going to Mass every day since puberty, and was once a contemplative nun, would hold a final family reunion. </div>
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"Everybody likes her corned beef and cabbage," Paddy told Hilda, who was wondering why anyone in Paddy's family would want another reunion after the last fracas 30 years ago. </div>
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"Hilda, the problem at the last one was Timmy served tankards of Guinness before, after and during the meal and the Guinness prompted inevitable arguments about the past. Liquor and grudges are a bad mix. One of my cousins knocked another one out with one punch. We were lucky another cousin didn't count him out. He was once a boxing referee."</div>
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Hilda's people, however, weren't like his loud Irish relatives. Paddy had to grant them that. They were somber Germans who drank as much as Paddy's people did but they were steady drinkers, not given to jokes and laughter. They were quiet even when drunk, so Paddy couldn't tell which one of them would rip the first scab off the past and that was always a problem. </div>
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He knew from the start Hilda's family didn't want her to marry him, an Irish Catholic from the wrong side of the theological tracks. He never fit in well with their German Lutheran culture beyond liking some of the food. They were serious, pious people not given to the frivolous, everything Paddy's family was not. In the beginning Paddy had tried to fit in but he had enough trouble keeping up with his own faith, never mind trying to understand everything Lutheran.</div>
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This time, however, Paddy silently decided he would go to his wife's reunion unless one of her kin died beforehand and everyone would go to the wake instead. It had happened before and could happen again but it's not the kind of thing Paddy would pray for. That would be bad form. Besides Germans take death seriously. None of the uproar and laughter that can occur at an Irish wake, especially if there were a tavern next door to the funeral home, which in Paddy's experience there always seemed to be. </div>
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Truth be told, both families were moving closer and closer to the end of their life span and the lines on both sides were getting shorter. Every year it seemed someone else would drop out.</div>
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"All right, Hilda, I'll go," Paddy announced. "But I'll never go to another one even if all your people die first."</div>
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Hilda thought something didn't sound right about that. Why would there be another family reunion if all of her relatives died first? But as long as Paddy was willing to go to this one, she thought she'd be wise to say nothing and leave well enough alone.</div>
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"How about a nice dish of pickled pigs feet for supper, Paddy," she said with a smile. "I remember that was one of the few things you liked when you went with me to the other family reunion. And you said the bratwurst and kraut weren't that bad, either."</div>
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The Camel Saloonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466326145539153263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8334457719338642548.post-29700930333747148872014-06-09T16:50:00.002-07:002014-06-28T05:21:34.115-07:00John Pursch: Amelia, Queeg of SotsAmelia aired her heart across the ivory dusk<br />
to seize in wondrous plangent overflight<br />
of tundra youth and glockenspiel hilarity<br />
for twisted tantrums, bellicose<br />
in all verbosity’s splendid kingdom:<br />
“I’ll warn you, Harold, but this once:<br />
we’ll start the dreaded seizures,<br />
whence again your hairy doctored species<br />
won’t have half a chalice of grassroots<br />
juicy floozy staid remission spume,<br />
held in reversal’s timeless easement,<br />
plying buck and board or otherwise,<br />
to skimp along inhalant newsstand stocking grunge.”<br />
<br />
(Proclaimed with such authority, as if to signal<br />
supper’s come and gone and nary her fairy<br />
codpiece’s latent motherhood lullaby,<br />
in tandem tamed or utterly repaid<br />
with lucid fleshly blurs.)<br />
<br />
Stir Harold, Skeg of Pallid Froth,<br />
Turd Pearl of Doubter Tripedia,<br />
listened dryly, plunging headlong<br />
into wafer-thin custard sluice:<br />
“Quite, yes; breast for brats,<br />
bully for BLT’s, a posh trope,<br />
angered by locales of inflammation<br />
corduroys or carrion lagoons,<br />
if idling séance media medallions<br />
still mean anything.”<br />
<br />
“Height of the seasoning, my feared dalliance!”<br />
Amelia, herself no lust than Queeg of Hemp<br />
or Alderwoman of Halted Turnover Smile Quartets,<br />
sawed off a fit of piquant equipage,<br />
baring all 47 of her falsetto teeth,<br />
plushly realigned that selfsame afternoon<br />
in painstakingly paraded adjutant<br />
adjudication lunchroom tryst.<br />
<br />
Skeg Harold, erstwhile Hairy O’Turbulent,<br />
himself a wild canoe on mangy an open lake<br />
and prolonged key to heavenly moorings<br />
from God’s Ivy palaces to bedpost-banging district<br />
donor spume receptacles in humble humming format;<br />
<br />
well then, Wild Harry was wise and wizened enough<br />
to scare not half a wit regarding formal battlements<br />
in certitude of breaching moats, gunwales,<br />
or fuming in canals, so variously plundered.<br />
“All the more to make ‘em happier to serve the crown,<br />
especially when mythos tattles savory know-it-salt<br />
on peppered fragrant flagrancies,<br />
what none can demonstrate or even dream to prove,<br />
in skirt of laundry woman’s realm<br />
of lured-to-courtyard debutante’s infernal wick<br />
of sanded hourly disputation.”<br />
<br />
He paused thoughtfully, swallowing a healthy blast<br />
of yardarm port, puffed long and slowly on a dead cigar,<br />
convolved to ashen eggplant muse, and so continued:<br />
“Slung as so-called seismic activation commences posthaste,<br />
keeping the masses fully hocked and piled in tertiary tasks<br />
of tusk line duty,” eyeing his opponent<br />
(or was it partner; no one moniker will quite suffice),<br />
“I, for one, would certainly welcome regulation outbreaks<br />
of whatever virulent and strange concoctions<br />
our blessed biologics care to cast upon<br />
the albeit already somewhat turbid seas<br />
of our own immodest disrepair.”<br />
<br />
Raising one eyebrow, then the other,<br />
finally registering a twinkle,<br />
Amelia, Queeg of Hallowed Turnstile Lawns,<br />
let fly her goblet, spraying<br />
Campers, Neighing Sovereigns,<br />
Charred Oles, and Preening Gringos<br />
in rainbow arch across the table,<br />
soaking Hairy’s whale-trimmed beard,<br />
drenching his immaculately laundered monkey suit,<br />
reducing his fine coiffeur to placid dishrag fair:<br />
“You, for one, for once, can sire a wrecked mutative lot<br />
of seized and fallow terriers, you impudent buffoon,<br />
furrower of slotted termagants, chastened toiler of tail<br />
after hefty snail hooker sniggerer!”<br />
<br />
At this, a hush fell over the room.<br />
<br />
Servants froze, the music stopped mid-beat,<br />
even the dancers hung as if in time suspended<br />
(every one would swear to dying day<br />
to have remained aloft until<br />
the Skeg of Pallid Froth himself<br />
had finally deemed the moment fit to rise).<br />
<br />
By all accounts, for possibly a paralyzingly<br />
interminable skein of five minutes or more,<br />
Skeg Harold sat rigid, silently transfixed,<br />
in thought perhaps or inner rage or simple quandary,<br />
obviously preparing the finest form of regal retort;<br />
or so all present had imagined and would attest<br />
in later biographical reviews.<br />
<br />
Finally he shoved back his chair,<br />
the wooden echo filling everyone’s ears<br />
with certain terror of impending purges,<br />
ignominious beheadings, defenestrations,<br />
capsized yachts, tugboats aflame,<br />
drained moats, village idiocy,<br />
pilloried knaves…<br />
<br />
He slowly rose, stepped from the table’s disarray,<br />
and thereupon began his excruciatingly deliberate<br />
circumambulations;<br />
first of his table, then the crown Prince’s,<br />
then the Duchess of Elderhairy Fine’s,<br />
then the Harshdupe Furtive Gland’s,<br />
followed by the dreaded inspection of the orchestra pit,<br />
the emptying of pockets (including the conductor’s!),<br />
the discovery of 318 crack pipes, innumerable bags of weed,<br />
half-full snorters, lighters, spoons, syringes,<br />
crumbled pills of opiates, designer shrugs,<br />
time-travelers masquerading as low-level functionaries,<br />
Robert E. Lee in full retreat from Gettysburg (again!),<br />
Charlemagne selling codfish to underage penguins,<br />
a bathroom packed with pharaohs<br />
on parole from Asphyxiation Row.<br />
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<br />
<i>John Pursch lives in Tucson, Arizona. His work has been nominated for Best of the Net and has appeared in many literary journals. A collection of his poetry, Intunesia, is available in paperback at </i><a href="http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/whiteskybooks">http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/whiteskybooks</a><i>. His recently released experimental lit-rap video is at <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l33aUs7obVc">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l33aUs7obVc</a>. He’s @johnpursch on Twitter and john.pursch on Facebook.</i>
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<br />The Camel Saloonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466326145539153263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8334457719338642548.post-52553424507794994602014-05-24T09:17:00.000-07:002014-05-24T09:25:47.710-07:00Patrick Longe: If I Had One Hundred Centos<div style="text-align: left;">
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<span style="text-align: justify;">Good morning, Houston- this is Radio Gloria broadcasting to you live from the Twin Cities with a special hello today to the Free State of Baltimore. We’d like to take this moment to tell you what we think; lighten up. And, to all you mothers out there mother on. It came through the PA system like had been excerpted from the police radio, it was arranged between some kind of official jargon. Some kind of co-opt of the airwaves. Out there where lingo rules the "thoughts" are known as folks from the Sixties and Seventies who have some kind of ongoing dialectic with the cultural scene. The common ground being that such artistic endeavors are the bedrock of society. Some sorts of legislators I guess feel entrusted with the public good-that exists in the media empire. The message though seemed like some kind of foray into enemy positions. Something like me writing up notes at Uptown Dallas Espresso. Everyone in this story fashions themselves some sort of secret service, and some that are spies too! For IT is Information Technology, and on more pedestrian level the motto is "you're only as good as your information." Today, I'm expounding on the idea that these self-anointed icons of a generation are living on in subsequent variations as youth adopt attitudes. Though they too can be as much duped as anyone by these fascists of the senses. Though many involved for jockeying in positions of influence can be duped themselves, or fronting, and very much less often reality instigators. Interestingly enough there are two sides to this equation-each thinks their import outweighs the other. However, both have the same goal to exert influence. Of course, one side has its beginnings finding toe tag of the Woodstock era. The others just found themselves in the middle of the reach and breadth too much to ignore thru decades. Each would equally claim "product" of which some consciousness played along to and taken note. As they sit across from each other across the governmental divide, the earthmaker is of the middle, or table of hidden agendas (is this sought Third Eye?). This lends itself to thinking that of the million stories in the big city, they're inklings of, let's say the left and right, each of what position and to what person? Perhaps, they would be together satisfied with forgotten memory of acts and actions- each has creeping intuition they have been breached. Where or by whom, of what grouping, what depository? What status of recourse can they develop, is such possible? Have all been set up? There are shadow characters of characters, why not government behind government. In essence, this may be tossed ball seeking to rebound. Similar to the "game" in international affairs where war the currency-each person represents someone or something, and this keeps going and going. It's a kaleidoscope itself, and its parts enough to drive people crazy. It's a spectrum of class distinctions. And, as dear readers, as well as actors of life, can put together own story from the menu of stories, how this became to be, or this person there. And, to top it all off, of these artistes, central to the cultural milieu-what themselves could possibly know of how game pieces are game pieces. Or, perhaps inclined or aligning. Or, maybe just agreed that left hand and right hand can be equal outside of social contacts. A new apartheid of rainbow grouping. Of course, for this to dominate (if we get the head….). Alas, all are alive in the media empire of this story unique to these United States. The middle though, those undulating rebels served in sandwich of themselves-the meat being meat. So live on the Various States of America; pissed, blown away, excited, reading, hysterical, such a hoot, fueled by drunkenness or laughter, or both. And, lest we forget the great population that plays outside these windows of universal view-those with locked closets of the mind, have no idea. This is what keeps things what they are-absurd if to present as actuality. However, whether know it or not, or involved in the idea-the message had become character, life has been invaded by the narrator-the cataclysmic world we know of news, sports fashion, business, etc. Of these with inquiring minds the answer is always well to the next "best yet." This I'm told acknowledged by those on the front lines and that some drag themselves into the quagmire on their own charges (likewise some in pretense). The beauty found is of the new vision framed (the nebulous new order) another event, or song, or stage adds to the discourse. And those of the left, right, middle-all have an eye out-for kindling it is everywhere. And wouldn't you know it's all wiped away for another day (for there are many lulls), the weather the only score. What comes along as in a unique role for each is salt of a bunch of ten-year-olds mixing it up. The illustration digested is that (and in what medium?) are "uptight, why and what for?" And so it's all ob-la-di, ob-la-da, life goes on, and they can listen forever on whatever channel receive in brain of narrator invaded, like hearing voices the color wheel of generally so life in the Great Experiment. And they can talk forever, if even only to self (like the devil in the air).</span></div>
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<i>Patrick Longe has been writing poetry since 1987 and most recently published in Haggard and Halloo, Mad Swirl, lightning'd press, lines+stars, Camel Saloon, The Screech Owl and The Blue Hour. Before moving to Tampa in 2000 to be near young children he had always lived in Detroit area. Wayne State University journalism graduate he works in marketing and is active photojournalist.</i></div>
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<br />The Camel Saloonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466326145539153263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8334457719338642548.post-48533203881436257662014-05-19T16:53:00.001-07:002014-05-19T16:53:06.069-07:00KJ Hannah Greenberg: The Equipment Maintenance Man<span style="text-align: justify;">The equipment maintenance man had more than a crush on the hard-nosed theatrical beauty from New York. Her eastern twang endeared her to him and her dynamic display of indignation made her seem the hottest woman he had ever met. During his many years of work in small time theatres, no other starlet, not even those individuals regularly animated during performances, was as vibrant to him as was Gee Gee Parker.</span><br />
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Gee Gee, though, could not be bothered with “minions” such as maintenance workers. Once life’s elevator doors had opened for her, she had leapt out, claiming her share of reality lighting assignments and small, walk on parts. Ever so briefly, she considered, but then rejected, devoting her life to raising funds for retired actors.</div>
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The janitor knew that lavatories remained one place in which cameras rarely lit peoples’ choices. Gee Gee merely assumed that no one would use the basement bathroom except for theater troop members. She had smiled weakly at the maintenance man as she had walked past him to get to a stall, never dreaming he’d lock her in.</div>
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The hourly wager inhaled his beloved’s protests, hoping against hope that those noises would go on forever. He had always attended her performances and was excited about this private staging. He knew that Gee Gee had missed his sneer when she had run for the toilet.</div>
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She was pregnant. She missed a lot of things. Dryfus, who had taken up with the lab assistant of his, who was working on her doctorate, missed a lot of things, too. He had even appointed another graduate student to proctor his midterms so that he could make more time for carnal sport.</div>
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Initially, Gee Gee had shadowed the younger woman, but had stopped short of the other’s bedroom, so afraid was she of reptiles. The other woman had brought cold blooded friends along with her when she enrolled in Dryfus’ program.</div>
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Sometimes, Dryfus was so preoccupied with his paramour’s exotic “sensibilities” that he forgot what he was teaching, stumbling, midlecture, in front of hundreds of students. Other times, like when emails popped up reminding him to renew professional memberships, or when snail mail, full of alumni announcements, from the departments where he had studied for his three respective degrees, arrived, he remembered that he was a tenured professor, father and husband.</div>
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The equipment maintenance man sniggered. He had at last caught his beauty. He rested his chin on his hand and would have remained poised as such had Gee Gee’s husband not walked into the toilet area.</div>
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Dryfus had been served papers, by Gee Gee’s lawyer, and had come to the theatre to beg for reconciliation. He meant to use the little known facilities in the basement to cry a bit before going upstairs to look for her.</div>
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The janitor dipped his mop in his bucket and wiped the floor. Thereafter, he sponged the sinks. Dryfus watched him.</div>
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Gee Gee heard her husband’s voice and footfall. Maybe he could actualize her escape. Her short tenure, on the psychiatric floor of the city’s medical center, which had followed her attempt to simultaneously slit her wrists, ingest pills, and chug down 100 Proof vodka, following her discovery of Dryfus’ dalliance, had been unpleasant.</div>
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Gee Gee began to silently cry. She had known that her marriage was troubled before learning about Dryfus’ infidelity. Yet, her psychologist only probed those places that the would-be actress made accessible. Gee Gee had spent literal decades covering traumas. Painting her face, every weekend, in order to deliver two or three lines, during a full length play, was not helping her get past any emotional bottleneck.</div>
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The maintenance man began to mop the floor of the farthest stall. He was unsure what he was going to do when he reached Gee Gee’s cage. If he had been able to reach the bathroom’s highest window and to toss Dryfus out, he would have. Maybe the husband would leave on his own. As long as Gee Gee failed to make any noise, she remained a prisoner. Accordingly, the man continued mopping until reaching the stall holding her. He motioned to Dryfus and then pointed to his bucket.</div>
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Dryfus nodded, promising to wait on the other side of the bathroom’s entrance. He was in no hurry to search the theatre for his wife. Maybe he could delay with a second comb over.</div>
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Billy came into the rest room. He flipped back a door, unzipped, did what was needed, rezipped and washed. He noticed Dryfus. The man’s presence, midday, was curious.</div>
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Gee Gee heard Billy’s footfall. Maybe that chum would rescue her. Maybe she should take up with him.</div>
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Some thespians bonded over hair styles or nose rings. Other pairs stayed together because of shared adventures in cooking, in karate, or in new math. Billy hadn’t really glommed unto anyone. Gee Gee was one of the few people with whom he exchanged salutations. What’s more whenever she brought baked goods to the theatre, he made sure to take some and to compliment her efforts.</div>
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Gee-Gee’s guts spilled over in the same way in which they had when she had eaten bad sushi. She used the toilet, and then, forgetting the goings on, flushed. Thereafter, it was of small matter for her to pound on the door of her stall. Both Dryfus and Billy ran in her direction. The janitor ran the other way.</div>
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Minutes later, Gee Gee was liberated. The police were en route. Billy, Dryfus and Gee Gee moved upstairs to the green room, a space to which none of them were entitled. They sipped coffee as they waited.</div>
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Dryfus frowned. He had hoped to make short work of locating his wife, to beg and to receive her forgiveness and to return to his graduate student for an afternoon of mortise and tendon.</div>
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Billy smiled. When Gee Gee had been hospitalized, he had visited her daily to play chess and bridge. His years of training in economics, plus his familiarity with organized crime, enabled him to discern good investments from bad ones.</div>
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It had been Billy who had sent the revealing pictures of Dryfus and the graduate student to Gee Gee. It had been Billy, as well, who had meant to trap her in a bathroom stall. It was a pity that his son had acted first.</div>
The Camel Saloonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466326145539153263noreply@blogger.com0