1. Spittoon
Volume One
Issue One
Fall 2011

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Fiction Editor
Matt VanderMeulen
Poetry Editor
Kristin Abraham
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Table of Contents
Wayne Lee Thomas Fiction……………………………The Contract…………………………......4
Ann Stewart Fiction………………………...The Itch ……………………………………5
Sara Pritchard Fiction………………………A Forever Home…………………………15
Nate Pritts Poetry………………………Sky Poem………………………………….27
Sky Poem………………………………..28
Sky Poem………………………………..29
Rich Murphy Poetry……………………….A Summer Reading…………………….30
Amanda McGuire Poetry………………………Glass: A Metaphor… ………..…..31
In Fits of—…………………………...….32
On the Phone with a Father… …..33
Kristi Maxwell Poetry……………………….from PLAN/K…………………………...34
R.J. Ingram Poetry……………………….Love Sonnet to I-25……………………..39
The Siege………………………………...40
Kyle Hemmings Fiction………………………Cat People #19…………………………..41
Cat People #17 …………………………43
Cat People #18………………………….45
William Haas Fiction………………………Grid City in Decline…………………….47
Arpine Konyalian Grenier Poetry……………………….Lost to Numbers……………………….48
Special Section: Interview with Arpine Konyalian Grenier…………………………..53
William J. Fedigan Fiction………………………A beautiful song, just beautiful ……..58
Dana Curtis Poetry………………………Lily Obscure Discusses… ………..61
Schrödinger’s Dream……………….....62
Schrödinger on the Ex-Planet ……..63
Ryan Collins Poetry……………………..Dear Wisconsin Falls—……………….....64
Molly Brodak Poetry………………………Long Exit……………………………..……65
Nervous Spell…………….…………......66
Kirsten Beachy Fiction………………………Groff’s Haplotype………………………..67
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The Contract
Wayne Lee Thomas
Man by the name of Peabody told Daddy he had a will to sell. He’d been knocking on doors
like typewriter salesfolk used to, had gamboge sweat lining his pits. Daddy weren’t one to
turn away a working man, even one retailing in shirttails. And when Daddy explained he
didn’t have a pot to will someone to piss in Peabody explained how he had a sure-fire
bargain, said he’d supply the inheritance if Daddy just bought the contract. Daddy inquired
about what kind of inheritance exactly but, as Momma later fussed, not the contract.
Peabody told him a farmhouse in the sticks and a horse named Honey, or a money-making
pig shack called Juicy Butts just outside town, or the deed to the very trailer we were living
in. Daddy figured he’d have the trailer paid off in a decade and, being young as he was, he
weren’t about to sign a fool’s deal. He was hung up about us kids pissing on his grave for
having to slop pigs. So he signed for the farm and horse in the sticks.
Momma got past Daddy indebting the family $15 a month for the rest of his natural life
when she realized the sheer joy his newfound legacy gave him. After a few years, she even
stopped pointing out how he wouldn’t be around to brush Honey once they retired to their
country estate. Everyone allowed him his fantasy of planting a small garden, enough peas
and okra to store for the winter, and ambling along on Honey’s back on land he rightfully
called his own. We liked Daddy big-eyed and happy. He got the trailer deed sure enough,
but he never owned much else to brag on.
We all thought it the end of Daddy when Peabody called about Honey. Said horses weren’t
made to live the 30 years that’d come and gone since the contract. Daddy, a grown-damn
man, cried a week holed up in his room over a horse he’d never seen. When he re-emerged,
he started in preaching to us kids how lucky we’d find ourselves with a rural manor, how
it’d be wise to start saving up for a horse. My sisters bickered over who’d get to move in that
farmhouse. I said I’d supply the pony.
Daddy passed in his eightieth year. Peabody drove out with the contract in hand looking
about half-dead himself. Asked who’d sign for the estate. My sisters signed, every last one.
Seeing as none had ever been married, they said they wouldn’t mind living communally.
Fortuitous. Someone else’s daddy passed a month later, and they were joined by a son. And
another son a few weeks following, then a daughter. Turns out lots of daddies had signed
the contract. But after periods of adjustment, no one seemed to mind. It was a big
farmhouse set on a few acres of land, roomy enough for sons and daughters to hand feed
oats to a half dozen ponies named Honey.
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The Itch
Ann Stewart
Becca Lee was itchy. She sat with her mother and father and younger sister Martha
at the center-most table of the Fly Inn, an old diner next to a small airport thirty
minutes from their home in Brighton, Michigan. Like she did so often late at night,
waiting for car horns and her neighbors’ raucous lovemaking to lull her to sleep,
Becca ran through the events of the day in her mind, imagining what could have
been the outcome had she made a different choice. Today, on an unseasonably warm
Sunday, she might be in Central Park, sprawled out in the middle of a patch of sun,
reading. She could have spent the morning at her favorite bakery on the Upper East
Side on Broadway – good, crusty scones dipped in bitter black coffee. She might
have chosen to get some work done in the dark room on her new black-and-white
series. But instead, she had picked this weekend to visit home, agreeing to join her
parents on a trip to Ann Arbor to have brunch with Martha, who had opted to spend
the summer of her freshman year at college there in town. Becca now felt like a
worm on a hot sidewalk, and she wondered why she had thought it could be any
different.
Cocooned in the warmth of the old diner, the Lees all took turns rubbing their eyes,
tired from what had turned into a long unlucky journey. Her mother and father had
bickered constantly after leaving the University of Michigan campus, one blaming
the other for what they had seen when they had arrived at Martha’s new home, and
arguing about how to deal with her. Becca’s intention in tagging along had been,
from the start, to defend her sister. They were wrong to disapprove of her not
coming home. Martha needed to extricate herself, and Becca had been proud of her
for trying. But now she felt angry at her, too. Martha had known they were coming,
but she hadn’t even come to the door. Instead, she had allowed her roommate, a
braless beauty with a tongue ring and lengthy dreadlocks, to lead them through the
tiny flat, where the two of them were sharing a bedroom. If her plan had not been to
stand up to them and tell them the truth, then she should have cleaned up and told
this person to keep a low profile.
Becca scratched, barely conscious of her nails tearing her skin. The vinyl-covered
chairs of the diner, squeaking beneath them, made the only sound that could be
heard aside from an occasional clinking of metal from the kitchen. Like many
Michigan businesses, the Fly Inn was struggling to survive, and this afternoon the
Lees were the only customers. The owner and his wife alone staffed it. At one time,
the place had been a local family favorite. The walls were still covered with
photographs of long-time customers, some yellowed with age. One taken over ten
years ago was of the Lees, all beaming, except for Becca, aged twelve in the picture,
who stared off to the side, her mother’s hand resting hot on her shoulder. It was
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Stewart, The Itch
taken the day of Becca’s confirmation. She remembered the dress – stiff and
scratchy – and the stares of the hefty matrons at her father’s church.
Becca’s mother dug frantically in her purse for a hand mirror and pouted. Her
father took loud sips of water and slammed the glass back on the white linen
tablecloth.
“I’ll drive home, okay,” Becca said. “Just settle down.”
“I’m not the one who needs settling down,” her mother said. Her father snorted.
Becca shook her head. In fact, it was her father who had been the calm one. Becca
had scalded for Martha, awaiting his rage, but this time it was her mother who had
fallen to pieces. Becca remembered being surprised in her dorm room by her parents
years ago. All had gone well that day, until her father had seen condom wrappers in
the wastebasket. They had spent the entire brunch at Gandydancer listening to his
fiery sermon her mother enrapt and Becca solid, unbending as concrete. In the end,
Becca had told him that if hell was what she would get for abandoning those old
ways, she would take it. They had never come to visit again.
When she had graduated, Becca left for New York. No job. No family. Hell
whispering from around every turn. And yet there she was still. Poor, but happy,
she felt. But Martha hadn’t learned from her. It was remarkable, back in Michigan,
back with the family, that so little was different. It seemed that Martha had chosen
silence, as if it were the only protest of which she was capable. But Becca felt that
her sister was choosing to be the final copy spit from a Xerox machine that was
nearly out of ink. Faded and unreadable.
Her father snapped at Martha, demanding she take her hat off at the table. The
girl silently complied, head hung low, pulling off the Tigers baseball cap and
stuffing it in her lap. When he looked away, Becca placed a hand on her sister’s
lower back. Her t-shirt was still soaked with sweat from helping him with the car.
The family minivan had suffered a blowout along a county road south of town, and
they had stopped in front of an apparently abandoned, dilapidated greenhouse to
change the tire. Becca had attempted to lead her mother away with her to check the
place out, so that Martha and her father could have a moment to talk. But as they
worked on the spare, her mother had chosen to stand over them and gripe – at
Martha for her lifestyle, and at her father for not making it go away. So Becca had
taken her camera and entered the old structure alone.
The roof of the greenhouse had broken out, and the glass walls had been shadowed
over with filth. Inside, the plants had taken over, crawling over the walls and
carpeting the floor with a dark, muddy green. It had been easy to spy a flower, right
Stewart, The Itch
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Stewart, The Itch
in the middle of the rotting jungle, which looked like the fetuses Becca had once
seen in pictures held up by protesters outside a Planned Parenthood. The same
lopsided shape and vomitous, shiny, purple-crimson color. Becca had stepped
toward it, her feet crunching on the leaves and stalks beneath her. After taking
several photographs, she had touched it, drawing a smear of pollen away on the tips
of her fingers. It had been soft and cool – the exact sensation, Becca was realizing as
she watched her mother glowering across their table at the diner, of her sister’s
damp cotton shirt.
The owner’s wife was a plump woman, nearing sixty, and wearing makeup that
gave her face a copper sheen, making Becca think of the greenhouse glass that let
only a few threads of light in. The woman approached the table, carrying a tray of
drinks aloft, the flesh beneath her arms jiggling.
“Here you go folks,” she said, too kindly. “Four lemonades and a coffee with sugar
for the lady.” She held a tray in perfect balance as she plunked down each glass,
and ended by gingerly placing the hot cup before Becca.
“Can I get y’all more water?” she asked.
Becca’s father said, “I think we’re fine for now, Joanna, thanks.”
“You bet, Reverend, and remember you’ve got free refills now.”
The woman turned to go back to the kitchen, where her husband was working the
grill. The sound of spatula on steel echoed against Becca’s eardrum.
“Soups up, Jo-Jo,” the owner hollered.
Joanna was the woman’s name, Becca recalled. Her daughter had gone to Brighton
High. She had been very popular, but Becca could not remember what she had
looked like. Instead, she kept seeing her own sour face in the confirmation photo,
lower lip protruding just a little.
Joanna was stepping up to the counter when the phone rang—the jangling tone of
old rotary-dialers—and stopped her in her tracks.
“Hold on baby doll, and let me get this phone,” she said.
Martha nervously twirled her hair around one finger, having developed a habit of it
that was slowly resulting in a bald spot near her temple. She pushed back her chair
and rose, smoothing her sweatshirt over her hips, newly widened from her months
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at the dorms. Becca had tried not to notice, and had held her tongue even when she
had felt the folds of flesh tumbling out of her sister’s waistband.
“Where are you going?” their mother snapped, tugging at her pearl necklace.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” Martha said.
“You can’t say excuse me?”
“Excuse me, please,” Martha said and jiggled off to the restroom.
“Why can’t someone in this family act like a lady?”
Becca rolled her eyes and noticed they felt sticky. They seemed bent on closing.
“Wait Marth,” she said. “I’ll go with.”
But when she got to the restroom door, Martha had locked her out.
“Marth, come on. Let me in. Talk to me.”
Through the crack in the door, Martha said, so softly Becca could hardly hear,
“There’s nothing to say.”
“There is something to say and you know it.”
Martha just sniffled.
“Why can’t you say it? To me. Just to me,” Becca said.
After a moment of the same silence, Becca angrily banged her palm against the
door. Keep it then, she thought. Take it to the grave. She returned to the table.
Joanna had arrived with Becca’s mushroom soup and her mother’s salad with ranch
dressing on the side. When Martha returned to the table, Becca made a point to
meet her eyes. Her sister shook her head so slightly it was as though she had only
shivered.
“Can I get anything else for y’all?” Joanna asked, holding the empty tray against
her thigh.
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Stewart, The Itch
“No thank you,” Becca’s father replied. Joanna winked at Martha before returning
to the kitchen. The girl smiled and reddened, looking down at her lap. Becca
grinned.
“Hey Marth,” she said, unable to stop herself. “I think she wants you.”
“Rebecca! Please! Jeepers,” her mother gasped.
Becca noted the contrived way her mother had of avoiding the Lord’s name in vain,
even in a moment of profound horror, and couldn’t help but laugh. The sound of her
own giggling was like a bell in her ears. Suddenly, she felt as if something was
crawling on her hand. Glancing down, she noticed a swathe of red bumps peppered
between her fingers all the way to the tips, and she let out a squeal.
“What’s the matter now?” her father asked.
“That plant I touched in the greenhouse gave me a rash,” Becca said. “Oh God, it
stings.”
“Don’t blaspheme. It’s nothing.”
“How do you know?” Becca said.
“Yeah, how do you know?” her mother added. “She might need a doctor.”
“Well there’s nothing we can do about it now,” her father said. “We can call Dr.
Kisky when we get home.”
Her mother raised her voice. “The way you’re driving that could be ages.”
“You don’t like my driving? You drive!”
“I drove more than half the way already.” Becca noticed foamy flecks of spit on her
mother’s lower lip. She stared angrily into her untouched soup. It looked almost
clear, but stippled with clouds, like a dish of soapy bath water. She blinked hard. “I
said I would drive…settle down…” The words came like coughs.
“I’m not the one who needs settling down,” her mother said. Her father snorted,
nose whistling. Joanna came to the table with a tray of drinks. Déjà vu, Becca
thought.
“I said take that stupid hat off at the table,” her father was saying. Her head hung,
Martha took off the cap and stuffed it in her lap. Becca blinked again, her eyelashes
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Stewart, The Itch
clinging to each other. She felt her hand drift again to her sister’s back, despite the
fact that it was the girl’s own fault for putting the hat back on.
“Here you go folks,” Joanna was saying. “Four lemonades and a coffee with sugar
for the lady.” She plunked down four lemonades and carefully placed coffee before
Becca. The old cup was gone. So was the soup.
“Can I get y’all more water?” Joanna asked. Becca stared astonished.
Her father said, “I think we’re fine. For now. Joanna. Thanks.”
“You bet Reverend, and remember you’ve got free refills now.”
The owner hollered from the kitchen, “Soups up, Jo-Jo!” The phone rang.
“Hold on baby doll, and let me get this phone.”
“What the hell…” Becca said under her breath. She looked at the faces of her
family, who seemed to have noticed nothing. Martha rose.
“Where are you going?” their mother snapped.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” she said.
“You can’t say excuse me?”
“Excuse me, please,” Martha said, and went.
Becca stared incredulously at her mother, as she stood to follow Martha again.
“What are you doing? She just went. You just had this conversation, remember?”
“Why can’t someone in this family act like a lady?”
Through the restroom door, Becca asked Martha, “How many times can you go to
the bathroom? You’re not bulimic are you?” Becca heard her mother’s critical words
fly out of her own mouth, and wanted to smack herself in the head, possibly with
her cell phone, or against the wooden “W” that was tacked to the door. But it hadn’t
mattered. Martha did not respond. Becca’s words had fallen on the floor like dying
leaves. Again she tried to get Martha to let her in so that they could talk.
“Say it. Say it to me…” She considered kicking the door in. She could do it. It was
only plywood. But she stumbled backwards to the table instead.
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Joanna arrived with another bowl of soup and another salad. When Martha sat at
the table, Becca looked at her sister and saw the same shiver shake her body.
“Can I get anything else for y’all?” Joanna was asking.
“No thank you,” Becca’s father repeated, and Joanna winked at Martha before going
back to the kitchen. She smiled and reddened, looking down at the floor.
Becca shook her head violently. She again felt a powerful urge to make a lewd
comment that would shock her mother and expose her sister. Her soup was again
before her, looking now like a bubbling dish of cortisone cream. Under her busy
fingernails, she felt a sudden wetness on her hand, like pus. Slowly, a violent
prickle rising up her spine, Becca looked down. What looked to be a shiny, blood-
colored plant shoot had burst from one of the pustules on her knuckles, and held her
fingers in a strangling grip. Screaming from deep in her throat, she slapped at it,
visions of the poison ivy that had spread to her vulva when she was fourteen
assaulting her memory. Her father had told her at the time that it was God’s
punishment, because there would have been only one way the rash on her fingers
would have ended up there.
“What’s the matter now?” her father asked.
“My hand,” she stammered. “I’m pretty sure that goddamn plant I touched is
making me hallucinate.” But when she looked again, there were only little red
bumps, like a patch of eczema, where the winding shoots had been.
“Don’t blaspheme. It’s nothing.”
“No see,” she said. “I’m hearing things. I feel like you said that already.”
“Yeah, how do you know?” her mother added. “She might need a doctor.”
“Well there’s nothing we can do about it now,” her father said. “We can call Dr.
Kisky when we get home.” His face was relaxed, but a coating of sweat shone upon
his forehead and neck. Becca thought she smelled insect spray.
“The way you’re driving that could be ages,” her mother said. Her voice was loud
and grating. She pulled at her pearls
“You don’t like my driving? You drive!”
“I drove more than half the way already.”
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Stewart, The Itch
“Stop,” Becca said. “Please, stop.”
Becca had taken acid in college on winter. When a string of Christmas lights had
started dancing in the windows, she had been able to will herself out of seeing it
happen, as one would wake oneself from a dream. Looking down to see her soup
was gone again, Becca began to suck in ragged, jolting breaths.
“It’s a hallucination. Don’t panic,” she repeated to herself quietly.
“I’m not the one who needs settling down,” her mother screeched. Her father
snorted and scowled, curling his lips and baring slick white canines.
Becca closed her eyes. The sound of sizzling grease and a banging spatula in the
kitchen continued in a pattern, like the jackhammers that woke her in the morning
in the city – so unlike the sleepy suburb in which she had grown up, where she had
slept until noon, dreaming of packing a suitcase that was never filled, until her
mother had kissed and shaken her awake.
“I said, take that stupid hat off at the table,” Becca’s father said. Again Martha
obeyed. Becca opened her eyes and followed her sister’s gaze to the floor, on which
her eyes seemed transfixed. Where her sister’s sneakers should have been, a
smooth woody bundle of purplish plant roots spread out, from her pant legs over the
floor, heaving and stretching and wrapping around the table leg. Her eyes filling
with tears, Becca reached down to touch them, but her hand rested on Martha’s
back instead.
“Marth? Oh Marth…” she whimpered. Her family didn’t seem to see what was
happening. They continued exchanging cold glares and saying nothing at all.
Joanna came to the table with a tray of drinks. Again she served them and asked if
they wanted more water. Becca’s father politely refused through a leering, open-
mouthed grin. She reminded them they had free refills and again turned back to the
kitchen. Again the owner yelled to her, and the phone rang. When Joanna picked it
up, she began bashing the top of the receiver into her face. Her head shattered like
glass and fell in pieces onto the floor. Becca gasped and jumped up, knocking her
chair over.
“Where are you going?” her mother snapped.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” Martha said.
“You can’t say excuse me?” Their mother’s cheeks heaved and bubbled like boiling
water.
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Stewart, The Itch
“Excuse me, please!” Martha screamed. Pulling out handfuls of hair, she went to the
restroom. Becca followed, nauseous. She glanced at the owner, who stood
motionless behind the counter, frozen, with a spatula in his hand like a sword.
Becca banged on the restroom door. “Marth, open up. It’s an emergency. Come on
let me in, please!”
“There’s nothing to say.”
Becca moaned, feeling suddenly weak. She swallowed a sugary glob of saliva and
made her way faintly back to the table. Joanna had again served the soup and
salad. Becca’s bowl was filled with viscous white fluid that overflowed onto the
tablecloth. She looked at her hand and saw that the skin over each knuckle joint
had burst open, revealing a tangle of tendon, bone, and woody vines that were
reaching hungrily toward her face as though it were the sun.
“Look! At! My! Hand!” she screamed.
Her parents stared blankly forward. Their lips were moving, but rather than
words, a thick white ooze glurted forth, falling soundlessly into their laps. Martha
was seated again, her head still hung, her shoulders slumped. Her eyes had gone
white. Quivering dark red stalks of braided sinuous strands grew out of her mouth
and nostrils, winding counterclockwise and attaching themselves to the table. Becca
screamed again and again, tearing with her fingernails at her throat. She could feel
the hideous sprigs winding around her neck like strangling hands.
She did not remember leaving the greenhouse. She had no recollection of how they
had gotten to the Fly Inn. Of course, this was because the Fly Inn was no longer in
business. Now Becca remembered. Their daughter had gotten pregnant and had
tried to douche with liquid drain opener, and the owners had sold the place and left
town soon after she died. The well-worn tiles on the floor of the Fly Inn crumbled
now and became a sea of leaves. The tables and booths shrunk and were nothing
but shards of glass. The faces in the photos were gone, and the frames disappeared,
replaced with a layer of moss and mud that let in just a few slivers of sunlight.
Becca and her family stood face to face, but suspended, like flies trapped in a web.
Their arms were outstretched, frozen just short of clutching one another. Only
Becca had managed to reach her sister’s body. Her hand held fast to Martha’s lower
back with some sticky nectar that smelled of bleach.
Massive vines had pierced them all with networks of roots like veins. Their orifices
ran with orange foam, as the plant strangled the systems of their bodies and held
them in their grisly positions. Winding branches ran under their bones, connecting
them like beads in a necklace. Martha’s neck had been replaced by an entanglement
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Stewart, The Itch
of roots that ran under her scalp and up along the wall. Thirsty shoots had made
their way up her mother’s nose. Her father’s jaw had come unconnected from his
face. It hung by the incisors from a thin green branch below him, like the blossoms
on the Dutchman’s Breeches that her mother grew at home.
Suddenly a ream of light rolled over them, and a man approached Becca from
within it, wearing what looked like a spacesuit. She tried to run to him, but her legs
would not move. Rhubarb-colored shoots were snaking up her jeans, up along her
spine and around her neck. A cloud of flies scattered when she began to thrash
about, emitting hoarse, garbled screams. Finally, she forced herself away from the
circle of her family, snapping stalks and branches, tearing the barbs from her skin,
spitting blobs of foam and acrid plant juices mixed with her own blood. With a
vehement thrust, she threw herself forward, leaving four fingers behind her, along
with most of her hair. The man in the suit caught her when she collapsed, a flap of
scalp hanging down over one eye so that she couldn’t see his face through his mask.
His arms wrapped tight around her, and he shouted something that Becca couldn’t
quite hear, because the vines had plugged her ears on their way to her brain.
Becca wanted to tell him he must leave her there on the fecund floor of the
greenhouse and help her family first. They had come to help her and now they were
dying. In a dream, she begged, Save them, please. She couldn’t live without them.
She didn’t want to be alone. But the words were like aphids swarming in her mouth,
and instead, through a cascade of orange bubbles, she gurgled, “Marth, I think she
wants you.”
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A Forever Home
Sara Pritchard
“Oh, Sean, look at this one!” the girl cooed. “Just look at him, Sean. Look how tiny
and old he is. He looks like a little old man. Ohmygawd, he’s sooooo cute,” she cooed
again. “Poor, dear little thing. We could call him Rumplestiltskin or Uncle Wiggly or
Jiminy Cricket.”
The girl had long, matted hair the color of chicken gravy, twisted into wooly
dreadlocks and gathered up into a squirrel’s nest on top of her head. She wore
combat boots and pilled tights and a little fuzzy pink rag of a skirt no bigger than a
hand towel, an old Harley Davidson motorcycle jacket many sizes too big, and huge
round glasses. Sparkly rhinestones riveted the auricle of her left ear like a
bejeweled bass clef. From the right ear, many tiny gold bells jingled.
“Cora,” the young man said sternly. “No! Come on! We agreed to get a puppy. Not
some decrepit old thing on its last leg. You said you wanted a puppy. That’s what
we agreed on.”
The boy, too, had dreadlocks, but his were stuffed into an oversized knit cap that
made his head cast a shadow like an enormous light bulb. His pants hung low on
his hips, cinched by a wide, studded belt. Plaid boxer shorts poofed out above what
was supposed to be the waistband of the pants.
“But, Sean, just look at him. We can’t just leave him here. He looks so sad. He’s
sooooo dear.”
“Corrrrrrrrrrrrr-a!” the young man sighed, exasperated. He hiked up his pants and
jutted out a hip to give gravity something to think about. He grabbed the girl by the
arm and pulled her around the corner and down another cinderblock and cement
corridor lined with steel kennels stacked three high.
Everyone was barking and whining and meowing. It hurt Ponce de León’s ears. He
huddled in the back of his crate and put his head under his blankey. He wished he
could go home. He liked the girl with the big glasses and pierced ears. He liked her
voice, which had a little squeak to it like Nina’s, but he was afraid. Earlier that day,
someone had taken his picture, nearly blinding him with the flash, and someone
else had written his bio in a stupid persona that was supposed to be him talking.
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Pritchard, AForever Home
“Arf! Arf!” his bio said. “Aren’t I cute? My name is Ponce de León, and I’m an 18-
pound, male Wire-Haired Fox Terrier. I am around ten years old, and I am very
smart, affectionate, and gentle. It goes without saying that I am housebroken and
well-behaved. I was found sleeping at the foot of the Gibson-Brown angel in East
Oak Grove Cemetery. I was very tired and lonely and hungry. I whimpered and
rolled over on my back, exposing my tender belly, when the Animal Friends
volunteer approached me, and I raised my paw politely when offered a pepperoni
treat. My mistress has died, and I ran away from home. I am very healthy. All my
medical records are on file at Paw Prints Veterinary Clinic where I have visited
regularly for the past eight years. At Paw Prints, they all know me and love me
because I am such a charming, good boy. One time I won a Halloween contest at
Mountaineer Mall, dressed as the Lone Ranger. Please make me yours and give me
a forever home. Arf! Arf!”
It was so embarrassing, that Pet-of-the-Week dog voice. And this was not Ponce de
León’s first encounter with THE VOICE. He’d been here before, in fact, in the very
same shelter—eight years ago, but he really couldn’t complain. THE VOICE (and a
similar photo) had brought Nina to his rescue that time.
“Here,” the boy said. “This one.” He was squatting in front of a little Black Labbish
puppy with paws the size of MoonPies. The inside of the puppy’s crate was a mass of
shredded fabric and globs of polyester stuffing, the remains of a dog bed and
numerous eviscerated toys.
“Just look at him!” the boy said, sticking his hand sideways between the bars of the
crate. The puppy licked and gnawed at the boy’s fingers and wagged its tail full
circle like a propeller.
“Just look at him!” the boy said again. Gravity had won the pants contest. The
pants now appeared as a sling, the red plaid boxer shorts in full view. The girl,
however, was nowhere in sight.
Out in the car—a rusty 1989 Subaru sedan—the girl tried to hold on to the
squirming puppy, who had already managed to turn on the hazard lights, chew the
knob off of the gear shifter, swallow one of her bell earrings, and piddle on her skirt
while the boy drove down the windy dirt road from the Animal Friends shelter.
Ponce de León hunkered down between the girl’s combat boots, half under the seat,
shaking.
He would have preferred the back seat where he could see out, but that was taken
up by a cat carrier with two cats—Helvetica and Times—who had been living for
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years outside an old print shop along the railroad tracks. The print shop had been
demolished to make way for an urban renewal project that included townhouses,
shops, restaurants, and a theater. Not cats. Somehow, Helvetica and Times had
found their way out of the Animal Friends shelter and into the boy and girl’s car,
too.
Truth was, Helvetica was relieved to have been caught and spayed. She’d had more
litters than she could count, and she didn’t even enjoy her estrus anymore. She’d
been faking her cat call for years and was looking forward to retirement as a
pampered indoor cat, sleeping in a sunny, southern exposure widow, birdwatching
out of one eye; eating tasty Nine Lives tuna day in and day out; batting about a
catnip mouse every now and then to entertain the humans; or, on special occasions
when company was present, making a spectacular, Nijinksy-worthy leap at a stupid
feather dangling on a strand of elastic suspended from a doorjamb.
Times, however, was livid about the neutering. He’d put up a struggle when he was
trapped and tore right through the animal control officer’s padded gloves, inciting a
case of cat-scratch fever that had hospitalized the officer for three days. Times
would never give up fighting and catting around, balls or no. Even in the shelter, he
sprayed ceaselessly and strutted about their cage, proudly displaying his left profile,
which showcased a cauliflower ear bitten down to a lumpy stub by a Manx. Times
had won that fight, though, paws down; he’d put out the Manx’s eye.
All four Animal Friends adoptees were absolutely free and came with dry and
tinned food, flea medicine, treats and catnip, all of which had been donated to the
shelter, and they all had health certificates verifying that their shots were up to
date, and all Cora and Sean had to do was sign adoption contracts saying that if
they could not keep any of their new pets—for any reason—they promised to return
them, no questions asked, to the Animal Friends shelter.
Moose—what Sean named the Black Lab-Great Dane-mix puppy—was exuberant to
be adopted; Ponce de León was nervous and apprehensive; and Helvetica and Times
were not entirely pleased—to put it mildly—with the adoption arrangements.
Helvetica would have preferred a canine-free environment, but she agreed with
Times that the puppy was no challenge whatsoever: a few swats on the nose, maybe
a little bull ride on its back, and they’d have it under control. “Besides,” Helvetica
pointed out, “Labs are more interested in the litter box than the cat.”
Times was angry about the whole situation and disgruntled about the prospect of
living with a Wire-Haired Fox Terrier. His ideal situation would have been barn cat.
Lord of the Cows, rat catcher, snake charmer.
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“They’re full of piss and vinegar,” he said, referring to Ponce de León’s breed.
“Crafty little demons,” he said, spraying the back seat of the Subaru through the
mesh window of the cat carrier. “And stubborn. They never back down or give up a
fight.”
“Yeah, but look how old and feeble he is,” Helvetica consoled him. “Piece o’ cake.
“Besides,” she added, raising a back leg behind her head and licking her butt, “I
thought you said you were going to run away as soon as they opened the door.”
Which he did.
The Subaru rattled down River Road and then down another dirt road, this one
with potholes the size of washtubs. The descent was steep. Cora and Sean lived
outside of town, along the river and the railroad tracks, in a mobile home on a
remote, abandoned homestead designated in the property tax books in the
Monongalia County courthouse as Lock Eleven, but most people called the place the
Drowned Man’s House.
The job of lockmaster had once been a respected position, one held by a civil
engineer, a member of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Lockmasters were
responsible for overseeing the maintenance of the locks and dams, which controlled
flooding and ensured year-round navigation on the Monongahela River. The
lockmasters’ houses were built by the Corps with no expenses barred, meant to
serve as an attractive compensation for the lockmasters and their families who had
to live in these remote houses outside the city limits, along the river’s locks and
dams and adjacent to the railroad tracks that followed the river.
The house at Lock Eleven was built and first occupied in 1902. It was a grand,
sprawling Victorian, painted the pale yellow of French vanilla ice cream, with
maroon and spruce trim, and with all the standard Victorian features and
embellishments: turrets and gables, gingerbread and transoms and stained glass,
front and back staircases, and a big sweep of a wraparound porch that entertained
the breeze from the river. Six slender and ornate yellow brick chimneys decorated
the slate roof, and a stand of cottonwoods marched down the lush lawn to the
cement dock. “The Cottonwoods,” the house at Lock Eleven was called.
At the turn of the twentieth century and up until mid-century, The Cottonwoods
was a showpiece along the river, a landmark known to rail and riverboat travelers
alike, something to be pointed to and admired. But within fifty years, the original
stone and timber locks of Lock Eleven were failing, and construction on a large,
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comprehensive lock and dam system that would eliminate many of the original
locks, including Lock Eleven, was begun. That Army Corps of Engineers project was
completed in 1950.
The original lockmaster was a man named Homer Martin, who came to live at The
Cottonwoods when he was a young civil engineer. After the demise of Lock Eleven,
he remained in the house alone for many years. His children were grown—there
had been many—and moved away, and his wife had died on April 12, 1945, the
same day as FDR. Homer Martin was an old man in 1956, when he was down on his
dock, puttering about, and he spotted a woman and a child in a row boat about
twenty feet from shore. He waved. The woman was rowing, and the child was
dipping a can into the river, ladling up water and pouring it back, and then
suddenly the child toppled over the edge of the boat, and the woman sitting in the
stern began to scream and the boat began to rock. Homer Martin kicked off his
shoes and dove off the dock and swam out and dove down again and again and
saved the child. He grabbed her by her hair. Homer Martin was still a strong
swimmer in spite of his years, but as he handed the small girl up to the woman in
the boat, the old lockmaster’s heart gave out, and he went under one last time.
A large grapevine wreath hung on the dock of Lock Eleven for many years, and
rather rapidly, the house fell into disrepair. First came the teenagers, carloads of
them, driving down the dirt road in their Chevys and DeSotos with their beer
bottles and Camel cigarettes, and behind them came the thieves and pillagers with
their crowbars, and years later, the vandals with their cans of spray paint. The
windows of the Drowned Man’s House—as The Cottonwoods then came to be
known—were broken, and the stained glass stolen, as well as the leaded glass built-
ins, the crown moldings, the newel post and banisters, the chandeliers, the doors,
the oak floorboards. But because what was left of the house at Lock Eleven was
easily accessible from the railroad tracks, yet remote and difficult to reach by land,
the road having not been kept up, The Cottonwoods became a shelter for drifters,
and a homeless camp grew up around it, and eventually the clapboards were ripped
off the house and fed to bonfires and then the lathing strips and studs. Broken
bottles and sardine and tuna fish tins and cigarette butts and syringes and
cardboard Tampax tubes and condoms littered the grounds. In no time, there was
just a pile of slate roof tiles and the foundation: a field stone grave, home to snakes
and spiders, vermin and such.
The twenty-three-acre stretch of property along the railroad tracks known as Lock
Eleven was sold at public auction in 1985, because Uncle Sam wanted to offload the
liability. The developer who bought The Cottonwoods? The girl’s father. And Cora
was just a baby then. Now Cora’s father was happy to have her out of his house,
Cora and her dreadlocks and piercings and tattoos.
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When the rusty Subaru turned off the River Road and began the steep, winding
descent down the crumbling road to Lock Eleven, Cora rolled down the window, and
Ponce de León could smell the river and the river mud and the staghorn sumacs and
the onion grass and wild carrot and the road dust tainted with creosote from old
railroad ties, and the lingering smell of campfires and burnt garbage and piss.
Ponce de León pricked his ears and sat up between Cora’s boots.
He’d been here before.
It was many years ago. Another life. A life before Nina, a life with Prophet Zero in
the homeless camp.
Ponce de León jumped out of the car and sniffed about, Moose bounding after him.
They went down to the river’s edge near the old iron bridge where Ponce de León
had often seen the ghost of Homer Martin walking about at night in the shadows of
the cottonwood trees. Sometimes he saw Homer Martin sitting on the big
cornerstone of the old foundation. He smelled like sweet cherry pipe tobacco. Some
of the drifters who camped at The Cottonwoods nearby had seen the old lockmaster,
too, and they were frightened of him, but Ponce de León knew there was no reason
to fear ghosts and that the ghost of Homer Martin lingered only because he was not
ready to leave this place he had loved and cared for so well. Homer Martin still
longed for human things, the sounds and smells of the river and the land: the toll of
the tugboat bells and the moan of the barges and the music of the freight trains and
the first Jack-in-the-Pulpits and Dutchman’s Breeches peeping out from under the
dead leaves in the woodlands come spring. And after Prophet Zero died, Ponce de
León saw him, too, sitting with the old lockmaster, watching the trains, and
sometimes Ponce de León sat with them. He, too, loved the river and the barges and
the trains.
Moose jumped in the river and paddled about, and Ponce de León scampered down
the railroad tracks toward the hobo camp, hoping to see his old pals, Jamie and
Angel and Car Wash and Q-Tip. But when Ponce de León came to where the camp
used to be, there was no one there. The area was closed off with a high chain link
fence along the bank as far as Ponce de León could see, and warning signs on stout
posts had been erected. KEEP OUT, the signs said. PRIVATE PROPERTY. NO
TRESPASSING. NO CAMPING. TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED. —Lock
11-Cottonwoods Upgrade, Phase I, WV Permit #W7682-B-26501
Ponce de León was happy living with Cora and Sean and Moose and Helvetica at
Lock Eleven. Soon it was summer, and Ponce de León spent most of the day in the
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garden with Cora. Moose was not allowed in the garden because he was unruly and
dug things up as fast as Cora planted them. Moose was big now and clumsy. ‘Goofy’,
Cora called him.
The days were long and the ground was warm and Ponce de León spent many hours
exploring, walking along the railroad tracks toward town, the way he used to walk
with Prophet Zero. Moose had to be tied up most of the time because he ran off and
he chased deer and one time dragged home the carcass of a fawn. He rolled in mud
and anything putrid or dead, too. ‘Mudpie’ Cora sometimes called him, too, or just
plain ‘Stinky’.
Early on Saturday mornings, Cora and Sean and Ponce de León drove into the town
square and set up a tent at the farmer’s market where they sold vegetables and
flowers and ground cherry jam.
The evenings were cool and sprinkled with lightning bugs and meteor showers.
Ponce de León slept at the bottom of the bed on Cora’s side just how he used to sleep
with Nina. Sometimes Helvetica slept there, too. Moose had to sleep on the back
porch because he was so big and so stinky. Times had fallen in with a band of feral
cats, kittens that had been dumped off on the River Road and left to fend for
themselves. Sometimes, late at night, Helvetica heard him screaming outside the
bedroom window. “Old love,” she hummed to herself, “leave me alone,” and rolled
over.
Fall came and brought wind and leaf rain, chevrons of honking geese in the sky,
bonfires, and a great production of canning salsa in the kitchen.
‘Old Man’, the boy called Ponce de León. ‘Old Man’ or ‘Methuselah.’
“How goes it, Methuselah?” the boy would say to Ponce de León each morning as he
sat in one of the captain’s chairs lacing up his combat boots. The boy was a tattoo
artist at Wild Ink, and the girl—Cora—was his canvas. Ponce de León was amazed
and intrigued by the pictures and text on Cora’s body: Popeye the Sailor Man with a
can of spinach on one bicep; a smiling Sarah Palin with the inscription I CAN SEE
RUSSIA FROM MY HOUSE on the other; Edgar Allen Poe with a raven on his head on
one forearm.
Staring out from the back of Cora’s neck was a small eye in a triangle, like the one
forming the tip of the pyramid on the Great Seal, underneath it the motto, Novus
Ordo Seclorum. A colorfully illustrated map of the Appalachian Trail decorated
Cora’s back, from Georgia on her left hip to Maine on her right shoulder, complete
with representative flora and fauna: a Wake Robin trillium and a Mountain Laurel,
a serviceberry tree; a porcupine, a moose, a beaver, a copperhead, a bald eagle, and
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a scarlet tanager. The seven deadly sins formed a bracelet on her right wrist: LUST,
GLUTTONY, WRATH, ENVY, PRIDE, SLOTH, GREED; a Salvador Dali clock melted around
her left wrist like a watch. The seven heavenly virtues—FAITH, HOPE, CHARITY,
PRUDENCE, JUSTICE, TEMPERANCE, and COURAGE—encircled her right ankle, while
Max Ehrman’s “Desiderada” adorned her chest, and the Beatitudes in lovely
Zapfino script traversed the outside of her right thigh and calf. Blessed are the
poor . . . Blessed are the meek . . . Blessed are the merciful . . . Blessed or they who
mourn for they shall be comforted . . .
One afternoon Cora asked Ponce de León if he would like to go for a ride, go into
town with her to visit a friend. Ponce de León scampered to the back door. It was
not going to be a fun visit, Cora told him (she talked to him all the time, like he was
a person, like Nina had talked to him), but it was something they had to do. They
were in the Subaru, rattling into town. Ponce de León had given up barking at
everything that moved. It was too much effort. Besides, it was futile; everything
kept on moving. It wasn’t like the mailman at Nina’s, who always left the porch
after a furious, successful barking reprimand to Get away! Go! Go!
They drove perhaps twenty minutes, up the dirt road from Lock Eleven, down the
River Road, across the railroad tracks and over a bridge, down the boulevard and
through many traffic lights and then across another bridge and into a neighborhood
Ponce de León immediately recognized. It was his old home place, the neighborhood
where he had lived most of his life with Nina before Nina died. He stuck his head
out the window. He saw the funeral home and the car wash he had walked by every
day, the brick house where the Scotty dog, Sweetie, lived and the house up the
street with the picket fence where the English Cocker Spaniel, Nellie, lived; and
behind there, he knew, down the alley, Sally, the mongrel was always up for a little
fence fight; and farther down the alley lived Buddy the Beagle/German Shepherd
mix, and Molly the Standard Poodle, and Missy the Pomeranian and Bella Donna
the toy Yorkie no bigger than a guinea pig. He watched everything go by. And then
there was his house. The burning bushes were a fiery red. The cat bird meowed
from the yews.
Cora parked in the alley, and Ponce de León got out and sniffed about. Another dog
had been there recently. A big dog.
“Come on, Cricket,” Cora said. “This way.” ‘Cricket’ is what Cora called him most of
the time, ‘My little Jiminy Cricket’.
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They went to the back door of the house directly across the alley from Nina’s. A
young woman with red-rimmed eyes and a puffy face let them in. Her name was
Ramona, and she and Cora embraced.
“I’m so sorry, Ramona,” Cora said. “I’m sorry I’ve not been in to see you. I’ve just
been so busy with the garden and all—”
“Oh, Cora, I know. I know how it is. We have such different lives now that we’re
married. I’ve been meaning to bring Billy out to your place, too.”
They went into the living room, which was dark and cluttered with books and toys.
Raggae music was playing. Ramona dabbed at her eyes and blew her nose and
thanked Cora for coming. “I know it will be O.K.,” she said, and cried a little more.
“It’s just such a disappointment. But thank god we have Billy. There won’t be any
more children, the doctor said.” And Ramona started to cry again.
No woman no cry, Bob Marley was singing, No woman no cry.
And Ramona cried some more.
Ponce de León hated it when women cried. It upset him. He started to quiver, and
Cora reached down and patted him. “It’s O.K., Little Man,” she said. That’s what
Nina had called him, too, sometimes, ‘Little Man’.
“He’s so sensitive,” Cora said to Ramona. “He’s my little canine mood ring. Aren’t
you, Cricket?”
“The lady who used to live behind us had a little dog who looked a lot like him. I
wonder what happened to him after she died,” Ramona said. “Oh, he is cute, Cora.
Maybe we’ll get a dog like him for Billy when he’s a little older,” Ramona said and
stroked Ponce de León’s back.
“I love him, but I don’t know whether we can keep him,” Cora said and hesitated.
“Why?”
“We’re thinking about traveling. Maybe to Australia and New Zealand. Maybe
staying there. Sean says there are lots of opportunities in New Zealand. Land is
cheap, and the economy is good. I don’t know. I don’t know whether I really want to
leave. It’s Sean. But I just can’t leave Cricket.”
Cora lit a cigarette, waiting.
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“I asked Sean if we couldn’t wait a couple of years,” Cora continued, “I mean,
Cricket is so old. He’s not going to live that long.”
“What did he say?” Ramona asked.
“He said you can’t plan your life around a dog.”
“I don’t know,” Ramona said. “I mean, you wouldn’t abandon a child. It’s the same
commitment. I don’t know. Is a dog any different?”
“I don’t know,” Cora said. “It’s an ethical question I can’t come to grips with. But
just saying, ‘Well, let’s wait until Cricket dies’ seems so . . . I don’t know so . . .
so . . . crass, somehow, so inhuman.
“I don’t know,” Cora continued, “Sean says we can take Cricket and Helvetica back
to the Animal Friends shelter, and someone else will give them a good home—it’s a
no-kill shelter—but it just doesn’t seem right to me.”
“What about the other dog, the big goofy one? What’s his name?”
“Moose. Sean’s friend Arlo says he’ll take Moose. They live out, too, and Moose is so
happy and gregarious, he’d be happy anywhere, especially somewhere where he can
run. And Helvetica. Well, she’s no trouble at all. It’s just not the same with Cricket.
Nobody wants an old dog.”
“Well, it sounds like you’re going. I mean, it sounds like Sean is making
arrangements. You’ll go with him, Cora, won’t you? You’re not thinking about
splitting up, are you?” Ramona asked.
“But we made a commitment to them,” Cora said, stroking Ponce de León’s ears. We
promised them a forever home. You just can’t abandon your animal friends because
you want a different life and they don’t fit in. I’m just afraid it might be a decision
I’d regret—on principle—for the rest of my life. And it makes me question the kind
of person Sean really is. I mean . . . if he’d leave MoonPie and Cricket and
Helvetica, would he leave me? We had a big fight about it.”
“I’m sorry,” Ramona said and took a drink from a tall, sweating glass.
Ponce de León heard every word Cora said, and he trembled. Lots of people think
that dogs don’t understand human languages, but they’re wrong. Ponce de León
understood every word of English. English was easy. He lay by Cora’s feet and
pretended to be asleep. He didn’t want to go back to the shelter. He loved Cora and
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her bells and tattoos. He’d only lived with her for seven months, but he loved her
just like he’d loved Nina and before her, Prophet Zero. He would never leave Cora,
no matter what opportunity came his way.
“An old dog can be a big expense,” Ramona said. “I mean, veterinarians cost as
much as, if not more than, people doctors, and of course, insurance doesn’t cover
dogs. And Noah has two more years of school and then his dissertation. I mean—”
Cora knew what Ramona was implying: they couldn’t afford the financial burden of
an old dog—and so she changed the subject.
As the young women talked, Ponce de León got up and stretched and explored the
downstairs. That’s what he was: an explorer. That’s what Nina said. He was quite
shaken by the conversation he’d overheard between Cora and Ramona, but he was
also excited to be back in his old neighborhood. He’d seen the outside of Ramona’s
house many times from the kitchen window of Nina’s house across the alley, but
he’d never been inside. He remembered the woman Ramona pushing a baby stroller
down the alley. Sometimes a young man with a ponytail and a slight limp walked
beside her. Ponce de León had enjoyed barking at them.
When no one was looking, Ponce de León tiptoed up the stairs. He had a good sense
of spatial relations, and he knew that from the back of this house, he’d be able to
look out and see his old house, see his favorite watching spot in the kitchen window.
In a small bedroom at the top of the stairs, the shades were drawn and a musical
mobile was playing, painted ponies going round and round. In a corner of the room,
by the window, a little boy lay in a tiny bed with a short railing, clutching a blanket
and sniffling.
The little boy sat up. “Dog,” he said and laughed his little boy laugh.
Ponce de León jumped up on the bed. The little boy giggled and patted Ponce de
León’s head.
“Dog,” the little boy Billy said again.
Ponce de León licked his face, and Billy squealed and petted him some more. From
the bedroom window, Ponce de León could look down and see the kitchen window
from where he used to watch for Nina. He felt strange and sad, looking at his old
house and remembering his old life, himself looking out the window he was now
looking in. In Nina’s house, a different dog—a Boxer—was looking out from his old
favorite barking place. It was hard to comprehend, this Boxer looking back at him
from his spot. Ponce de León’s life came rushing back to him. He remembered how
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he’d ridden in a boxcar with Prophet Zero and lived at The Cottonwoods and how he
used to walk with Prophet Zero into town and wait outside the soup kitchens and
how all the homeless people coddled him and the soup kitchen staff gave him scraps
and bones and how Zero used to preach on High Street and all the college kids knew
them and made a fuss over Ponce de León, too. His name was Lucky then.
This is what Ponce de León knew: 1) at any minute, your life could change, even
your name; 2) at any minute you could end up back where you started; 3) at any
minute you might have to leave home; 4) at any minute, someone you loved might
leave you.
Billy lay down and put his thumb in his mouth, one arm around Ponce de León, and
fell asleep. Ponce de León closed his eyes. He slept, too, lightly, and he dreamed he
saw Nina out in his old back yard by the burning bushes, hanging up laundry. He
saw so clearly her kind face, and he remembered with sadness how sick and weak
she had been and how just before she died, she looked like an angel to him. Here is
another thing Ponce de León knew: The dead never really leave us.
Billy sighed in his sleep, and Ponce de León curled up against him. He liked it here
with Billy in his little bed by the window with the view of his old house, but he
loved Cora, too, and The Cottonwoods. He felt old and tired.
“Where’s my little Cricket?” he heard Cora call. “Cricket!”
Cora was at the bottom of the stairs. Ponce de León knew that if he pretended to be
asleep, she’d come upstairs and find him and tiptoe back down and get Ramona,
and they’d both tiptoe back up and see him sleeping there with Billy, and his fate
would be sealed. Cora would be free to go to New Zealand, and he would be Billy’s
dog. And then some day, he’d cross over and he’d be Nina’s and Zero’s dog again,
too. And he’d see Cora again, too, sooner or later, in what Nina called The Sweet
Bye and Bye, and Little Billy would meet him there, too, someday, he knew.
And if he ran down the stairs? Then Cora would have to choose between him and
Sean and maybe Regret would follow her all the days of her life.
The catbird mewed again, Meow, Meow, from its nest deep inside the tangled
branches of the overgrown yew, and as he had seen Asta the Wire-Haired Fox
Terrier do in the old Thin Man movies that he and Nina had loved to watch again
and again, Ponce de León covered his eyes with his paws and feigned sleep.
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27. Spittoon 1. 1
SKY POEM
Nate Pritts
morning voice
hushed & heavy
against your neck
caught up in these low clouds
tangled & tired
in branches or in green
this sky
promising rain
or whatever
feeling is in reach
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28. Spittoon 1. 1
SKY POEM
Nate Pritts
how quickly this sky
falls
into this
new sky
yesterday it wasn’t here & now
all these clouds held loosely together
in the grip of this field of breeze
I see the rain the rain & the hours
& it all burns off
& lightens
there is a moment
that happens &
there is the pure burst
of change
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29. Spittoon 1. 1
SKY POEM
Nate Pritts
running out of blues
so I’m lifting my pen off the page, remembering
the shock of those green leaves
in last night’s sunset
so alive looking so much like themselves
in that relentless but welcome glow
trying to read my future in the shade
& all these leaves are moving so erratically
while the sun just blasts through
whenever
it gets a chance
& sometimes the light hits my eye just right &
I don’t even know what I’m
looking at
it’s just bright
bright so many reasons to look
away I’m learning
something about lightness
how to say a name for a thing
say it
& watch it happen
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30. Spittoon 1. 1
A Summer Reading
Rich Murphy
Moby Dick beaches itself in the laps
of Americans, the Artic and Antarctic
snow opening to eat its own. An Ahab
feels a leviathan in his pants and elects
to become a politician. Parishioners
of a puppeteer believe they have their god
on a leash. The cool receptions of people
and climates aren’t omen enough for
a species only able to focus. Poking at
a doubloon with harpoons the citizens
on the U. S. of Pequod have no reason
to expect they unravel the navel into
Jonah’s whirlpool. Melville can’t
go much further than this: Someone else
clings to a coffin. The draft is becoming
long winded, our waves unnaturally white.
30

31. Spittoon 1. 1
Glass: A Metaphor for Muscles: A Quote from
Louise Bourgeois in Two Variations
Amanda McGuire
I.
“The challenge involves stacking
all that glass without breaking any,
(
overcoming the conscious
desire to smash everything.”
II.
Your body is a tall, blue shelf
lined with bowls, mirrors, vases.
My room is full of sharp objects.
My body is a small, blue shelf
lined with bowls, mirrors, vases.
Your room is full of blunt objects.
We never hang up without saying I love you.)
31

32. Spittoon 1. 1
In Fits Of—
Amanda McGuire
Considering: an octopus’ width, his (or her) “Eight Arms to Hold You”;
each tentacle an adverb: greedily, jealously, lovingly, all of the above.
*
Vacillating: am I or am I not a ________ person? Are adjectives hereditary?
On the phone, my mother gossips about her neighbors, people I hardly know.
*
Reflection tomorrow: yesterday I wouldn’t get out of bed;
today I’m “just being honest. That wasn’t your best.”
*
Two expressions: tight-lipped, a line or an o
as in “open-mouthed”: “so and so didn’t deserve…”
*
Little decorative pillows litter the floor,
the china cabinet feeds the fuse, beckons me.
*
When I wake up to him whispering pet names into my ear
I can hardly remember the porcelain or glass, my little ego.
32

33. Spittoon 1. 1
On the Phone with a Father, After an Accident
Amanda McGuire
His mouth full of hurt: his voice breaks.
While pacing outside, I hear a train.
The rabbit in my yard stares at me.
I recall photographs: her first birthday, little cake, little hands.
I think train.
“It’s like feeling everything all the time at once.”
I feel guilt in my backyard among the bloomed daffodils.
There are other sounds it makes: clack and whistle.
I held her once—awkwardly—before passing her back to her father.
His silence on the other end is my yard in winter with snow.
I approach the rabbit, phone in hand.
“We’re taking one day at a time.”
His resignation is a sigh in the form of clichés.
I move closer, and the rabbit hops away.
He found her hanging from a fan cord.
“It should have been me. I keep thinking.”
The faint echo of the train fades until it’s as if it never existed.
I imagine the x of cord around her neck, the o of her little mouth.
33

34. Spittoon 1. 1
from PLAN/K
Kristi Maxwell
“And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down—
And hit a World, at every plunge,” (no. 280)
Emily Dickinson
Shave me from myself (“Chip away, chip away”)
Razor good, as in “razor to be a good girl”
Foam as snow if sea as season
(salt assaults an eye with the [fist / frost(ing)] of itself
seasoning seizing not ceasing to sting) (the bee of itself it be)
Crest as a knee coming up as under a sheet if postured so it will [if willed so]
[I’m in-crest, so in-crest (increased) indeed]
“Snow provided by SNOW BUSINESS, INC.” [s n o w-b r i n g e r]
Snows, you know, are types of boats [blotted typos against
the sea as seen from above (aerial—not Ariel
not a tempest’s musterer, but a typist err’r) (the sail
an apostrophe sets in a word
sending it out to eye) (aye)]
What is the icing on
What ties a singing to an ear
a siren (a siren song in the seai
very different from sirens singing
through the city: but no
not in that both portend [both tend to
some future or present unpleasantness])
34

35. Spittoon 1. 1
Maxwell, From PLAN/K
“a told tray sure” (Gertrude Stein)
Shank-sunk Shank-as-hunk Milkshake (chic)
Milking it Milk the lemon a Main Squeeze
a Main Sail a Sale on Main
Street of chicks I’m li[c]king
Heimlich for what’s stuck
in a throat [the road to
stomaching—some aching
there, there]
Food comes up
because the boat boasts little
or comes up as upchuck
poor landlubber [the sea a lube
and not one’s own secretion—
the sea other to the self
no sailf] [fails to barnacle
the self to sea] [no shack culled from sea
for to live in]
Toucan incant uncanny two can
insist in utero to
end it To Row Row Row Your
to throw overboard
A boar to bear
out attack needs a touch
of wildness a wilder-
Ness a Loch Ness to Latch onto
35

36. Spittoon 1. 1
Maxwell, From PLAN/K
Punishing itching to pun
pun issued pus-like from
“Sun-dried [tomatoes / two men go]
hang’d like dogs” unable to
dodge what calls dirge
forth gibbet here hand it
over the bandit sez [se(i)z(es)]
Death-traps Death-tarps: shroudsii
to re-route or short circuit the circus of gazes
Shroud: “any one of the supporting
ropes or wires that extend down
from the top of a mast” Death-ship
in the sense of lordship
in the same scene as an apprenticeship
’s ending Earth contorting Death
coercing its “d” with an Arg!—a Wreath adds to Earth,
agreed? A deed indeed did done
a dead deed indeed passed moved past pissed on
by a stream of doing not by dung
What deed leads to dungeon
to man made dung Abject
Jettisoned to Aid the getting
away from or the Chase, jet-speed
Flotsam: flopped sons, no Sam or Abe, [Un]Just[ly] Waste
36

37. Spittoon 1. 1
Maxwell, From PLAN/K
“a mental world […] its boundary the skull” (Hugh Kenner)
Sequence Sequins Penguins’ Sea-Fins
a defense against sinking
“Pirates aren’t Santa” [skull and cross] Bones Season 1 “Pirates aren’t San
-itary” Aren’t sending enough C to the sea inside themselves
(them cells there where C should sail)
Mal(-ice / -nutrition) mal: bad (“she’s as cold as ice”)
There is a mythod to the[ir] Madness
Err Grrr Arrg guile beguiled socked by
a sucker punch patched up by
rum punch a face registering a bruise as error
whether [weather for] cruising
for or not
A sentence without sentiment
Thrown off the scent (it’s so over, bored) Dense
sin leads to intense sentencing depending
on how dense the sentencer is
(a dunce with a hunch—a hench
-man who will not give [an inch / a shit])
A sentence towards no sentience
(a penalty, pen-halting)iii
37

38. Spittoon 1. 1
Maxwell, From PLAN/K
A gore leads to a sling the grow task: to grow back
not grotesque (tisk tisk) a nerve-shot arm all loosey-goosey
Nerve-shaw, as in rickshaw, message carter,
impulse carrier Make a career of it [outfit that career
with Clarks (nerve-shod) with Cartier (yippee ti yi yay)
(hee-haw, pshaw, carry on [get carried away!])]
Tie the knot Sailor’s Knot Carrick Bend [charac
-ter, undeterred by the bind one’s got oneself in (one’s got
oneself, after all, to depend on, no matter how deep
the end fallen into)] Anchor’s Bend Anchor up
man the hatch Tie one on then tidy up sir dine
with me on sardines (it is not sardonically that I ask)
“Say hello to pirate pants, bottom right [if your bottom is right]
[…] the style works when worn” Glamo[o]r-ed April 2010
Maroon as the color of the Season
Maroon as Ruin as Room of [for] One’s Own in the Worst Way
Way out from all else with no way back but waiting
(pirate pants sit at one’s calf [pull a chair up at the calf-table
with mandible ready for more than nibbling] thus
are perfect for wading) Will someone come, Will them, “Come”
i
emergent sea / emergency
ii
Death harps on in ghost-form.
iii
Penultimate! Ultimate Pen! Pinned in an untimely way, many a mate, many a Paper Mate whose
ink’s run dry
38

39. Spittoon 1. 1
Love Sonnet to Route 25
R.J. Ingram
my boyfriend and I drive northbound
the passenger window slid halfway
and his head emerges this time
there are streaks of Ohio grazing
in the rain and pay no attention
to Michael as he moos and counts
them while they eat and sing
as school children just before recess
begins the most noble tar smell and salt
seeps inside of my Toyota and swims as I
drive suddenly Michael forgets acres of loam
grabs my arm and points at my side
of the road where a numinous sign assures
a prosthetic knee can fit like an old friend
39

40. Spittoon 1. 1
The Siege
R.J. Ingram
spring draws its yellow crayon around everything
Brenda Hillman
and winter flicks a stolid blue
around the traffic cones police-
men settle down route twenty
five slip southbound so i too can
draw my own blue circle around
their flashers at fifteen degrees
a second another car hits sprouts
up and i sail between goddamnits
and yessirs all of us in unpredicted
ice storms find ourselves surrounded
by diasporas remembering to brake
or not to but above us and our
billboards a wave of heron sings
40

41. Spittoon 1. 1
Cat People #19: Girls Born in Tunnels
Kyle Hemmings
As a child catching hairs with his tongue, Pixie-Bob warned the adults of
earthquakes, of large spaces below the ground where wishes formed. The adults
laughed at him or told him that earthquakes never happen in this city and on this
coast. Anyway, they were too busy attending barbecues in the sunny suburbs,
drinking water from silver spigots, or tossing left overs to the anonymous hands
reaching up through the ground.
After moving to the edge of the East Village, where Pixie-Bob makes a living
photographing B-girls in the last hours of their swan dance, he discovers the
existence of tunnels. He recalls as a child the underground hands that groped and
swayed at barbecues. How many of those starving hands, he wonders, got their
wish?
Sometimes, Pixie-Bob visits the tunnels, which can be entered through manholes,
subway station shafts, the cracks in your mother's existance, or at times, by just
dropping a wish. He discovers girls living there called the Undercats. Because of the
poor quality of air, they can't French kiss properly and their dialect is Poor Kitten.
You can always tell an Undercat because they tend to sit alone in the last car of the
subway with soot on their faces which some might mistake as make-up. They often
sit pixie-faced with one eye lifted up and at an angle, listening to a stolen I-pod.
They prefer Progressive Jazz with hard direction or Tokyopop.
Pixie-Bob falls in love with an Undercat. Her name is Mango Soff and she tells him
stories of how her family survived the 4th Ave. Wars by the handouts of rich
CoverUps at barbecues. She tells him that at times it's hard to breathe in a bubble,
but she would rather dream of light rather than being one of The Cover-Ups, who
have no sense of tempo. They mate to an illegally downloaded i-Tune, but shortly
after, she dies because either she forgot to breathe or thought the moment was too
beautiful to ruin by living on.
Every day after work, Pixie-Bob visits the exact spot in the same tunnel where he
met Mango Soff. Over time, her body decomposes into dust and in its place is a large
bubble with a tiny tear. Breathless, Pixie-Bob takes the bubble above ground and
places it in a warm spot of his bedroom, near the wall that shows old photos of his
family in various positions of happy denials and gross cover-ups. Pixie-Bob always
gets sentimental at the memory of artificial grass.
41

42. Spittoon 1. 1
Hemmings, Cat People #19
Eventually, a girl breaks through the bubble. She grows up sickly, anemic and she
tells Pixie-Bob that she has fuzzy memories of a woman's voice and a strange
addiction to mangoes which Pixie-Bob gets from the farmer's market on 6th Ave. He
never lets her out of the apartment for fear the light of day might destroy her. He
names her Peach-Purr. One day, while Pixie-Bob is at work, calculating how many
Cover-Up models in photos would benefit from natural settings, an earthquake
devastates the city. The building where Pixie Bobie works, collapses. He is taken to
a hospital where he lies half-conscious, sometimes waking up and asking Where is
his daughter. She won't last long in a world without him or mangoes. One night,
Pixie-Bob escapes from the hospital in nothing but a green striped gown and
slippers. He growls at people passing by, giving him strange looks.
Meanwhile, Peach-Purr escapes from the rubble of her building, and as if by
Undercat instinct, finds the exact tunnel she was bubbled in. She hears footsteps
approaching. She counts the stranger's breaths. "It's me," says Pixie-Bob, "your
father." She smiles, but no one ever told her she was blind. Together, they hold
hands and pretend they're listening to light jazz. They stop breathing.
42

43. Spittoon 1. 1
Cat People #17: Feline Eye, Feline You
Kyle Hemmings
Kat is walking down the street, sidestepping monarch butterflies or painted ladies
with one leg, grounded, perhaps crushed by children’s hands. It's hot in the city,
sneaker rubbing against talus and hungry spider vein, flashbacks of the night
before: two sweaty bodies in solitude, post-coital despair by windows, kitchen sink
drip drip, cats of the night, unlicensed and turncoat, screeching by dumpsters. The
heaven-eyed boy whose profile lingers against moon clones. Kat smiles, recalls the
hookers below her window, on night guard for pure love against fragile corners. Kat
keeps bopping and the sun keeps ticking. She looks up: blue falsetto of sky, some
straggling birds in retro-glide, a small piece of paper floating down maybe 10
stories, maybe a letter, maybe she shush shush shouldn't because curiosity killed
the . . . But Kat does because the vessels of her heart are networked to a thousand
tiny hands pushing up under the streets. The letter is a suicide note. It reads:
. . . by the time you have read this oh beautiful stranger, I will be dead, a jump head-
first through a broken roof, through another ceiling, and I will land on the floor of
my favorite Dunkin' Donuts, which itself is a ceiling to the truly decaffeinated. But I
will live through you. This letter is a magical letter, and whoever reads it will
become me. Through you, accidental reader, I will love again what spits and kicks
back. I can only imagine your blue hang-glide eyes, your sulphur and copper tongue.
Our memory trace will mingle and breed, but don't burn your fingers in my coffee.
The letter is signed by the poetess, Low-ki, the famous subway rapper, diva of side
street Slam.
Kat folds the letter, sticks it in a pocket next to an unused condom given to her by a
boy of bad weather forecasts. She approaches the downtown fair. She smiles she
cries she peeps in windows she mellows over deadlined lovers in coffee shops she's
light on her feet she's all sugar and anarchy. Scents of hot sausage, chestnuts, red
peppers, coppertoned flesh melting into the street. She spots the heaven-eyed boy,
calling himself OddHat, entertaining the crowd high on health fizzes; he's pulling
cats out of his baseball cap, stopping at number 9. He turns and stares hard at Kat.
What's in the back of her throat feels like goo and sludge, her tongue as if stapled to
the floor of her mouth. "Low-ki," the boy yells out. The cats jump and disappear into
the air. Kat runs, dodging bodies and food carts. "It was all a mistake," OddHat
yells," you misunderstood me! I love you, not her, not Kat!."
43

44. Spittoon 1. 1
Hemmings, Cat People #17
But Kat is running down narrow streets that lead back to each other. She runs
towards the last scrape of the island. She runs, closing her eyes, tasting her own
salt on her lips. She takes the letter from her jeans and tosses it into the air. She
imagines it flying over traffic, gliding into the hands of another soft-eyed girl. I can't
be the one, thinks Kat, panting hard. It’s me who needs saving.
As she jumps through the sun's last halo in the air, something that is invisible to
the city's sanitation workers and flesh peddlers behind closed shops, Kat hopes that
both she and Low-ki will land on all fours, such carefree Siamese twins.
44

45. Spittoon 1. 1
Cat People #18:
Thick-skinned Cats Can't Hurry Love
Kyle Hemmings
Kat is looking for a boy with green pumpkin eyes, the kind that glow in the after-
glow. Darkness may be his sister who died at a young age, falling from a tenement
window. Nobody heard the sound. Nobody can confirm the progress of their own
deaths. It's just another unspoken lie, the consistency of peanut butter eaten from
fingers. Kat thinks she met this boy one night at the Soho club, Detritus from Stars.
She was too drunk to laugh at the number of krazy girls falling on their asses or
pretending to be suicidal cherry blossoms. It was obvious that nobody on the dance
floor had any kind of glue.
The boy with green after-glow eyes was saying something about sole or soul, then he
whispered into Kat's ear that they could both have type XX blood. He disappeared
and Kat went home with a stranger who had an arthritic mother still living with
him. On an old army cot, a real collector's item from the 4th Ave. Wars, they were
quiet, palm against each other's mouth, dancing without the need for amphibious
feet. In the morning, Kat slipped past the snores and goat-sounds of the arthritic
mother, who slept with her shoes on. At home, Kat had the sensation of green fur
falling from her life, which she associated with the boy she never got to know. She
thought about him throughout her day at the paralegal office, among the
Tupperware parties and the bosses banging shadows against walls, among the men
who had given up on speaking and those who had become high-tech walkie talkies
without the need for charging.
Kat visits the old magician, Octosullus, on the second floor above an antique lamp
shop in Chinatown. She tells him about the boy who had whispered code into her
ear, about the dream-type they might both share. Octosullus listens patiently; he
has miniature fir trees in his eyes. The boy who will love you, he says in a voice of
spark and red leaf, has a double X cut into his heart. But be careful at night. This is
a city of serial killers who work slow and without electric drills.
The old man says that he needs to see Kat's heart.
Kat stands and pulls off her Tee shirt, the one with The DeathRock Mutants design.
Octosullus reaches inside the body cage and pulls out the heart with the ease of
pulling rabbit tails from under the streets. Yes, says the old man, inspecting the
tortuous vessels, it has a double X near the coronary. He must have touched you in
some way. You will find him on the outskirts of the city. Only at night. He can’t
45

46. Spittoon 1. 1
Hemmings, Cat People #18
sleep. He collects the edges of all sorts of things. He is bleeding from your wireless
love. He might return to you when you feel love is impossible.
I never thought love was impossible, says Kat in a soft, wiry tone. I always thought
it was improbable. But then again there are pigeons in the air.
Yes, says the old man, nodding, there are pigeons in the air.
Kat twists her head and torso through the Tee shirt. She sits down and stares
pensively at the old man. His eyes are tired, the peace of rivers, of old mothers who
survived their own 4th Ave. Wars.
46

47. Spittoon 1. 1
Grid City in Decline
William Haas
The grid city’s street map shows no ailanthus sprouting through rafters. The
perpendicular lines, cut with rulers and inked by steady hands, indicate no
bunchgrass splitting cracked asphalt and no spiny black locust stalks slicing grey
sunlight. Residential is marked by red; industrial, by blue; commercial, by yellow.
No key colors rotted roofs, abandoned cars, sacked Victorian houses.
At twilight the boy returns from the landfill. A strip of lichen lines a road overgrown
in buckhorn and spurge. The landfill’s stink clings to his clothes. He’d found no
precious metals today, only some plastic bags, newspapers headlined with dead
events, concrete from which to carve arrowheads. He’d also found the street map. It
will come in handy as did the plastic bags he’d wrapped around his hatchet head. In
a world of thistles and thorns, he likes the smooth touch of plastic. He finds it at the
bottoms of holes, beneath moss, bobbing in hypoxic creeks. It feeds the birds you
don’t want to eat.
Back at camp, he burns the map for warmth. The geometric streets curl into carbon
and billow into the black. He throws a plastic bag into the fire and watches it shrink
into filaments. Smoke burns his eyes. Tomorrow the daylight will be shorter; the
shadows, longer. The road will disappear beneath the weeds. He senses that death
is just getting colder, like thawed seeds sewn on frozen dirt.
47

48. Spittoon 1. 1
Lost to numbers
Arpine Konyalian Grenier
It may be worthwhile to have undone a people or system or
tell me at what cost does one consider such undulator
withstanding insertion devices
the freak has undone
the freak has undone the freaky in us
burqa only in the mind of the non-burqic
just some one person or thought
or lost kingdoms
a layer of graphite managing itself
a zero energy state of electricity
some nano carbon
I come from
graphene obscene
using the virtual to share narrative
a camoufleur in violation
longing
capillary and cell size are the same for the shrew and the blue whale
minimal neural substrates chosen for maximal output
fractal dimensions more than one but less than two
maximize exchange minimizing distance
here and there wild undertakings
no way back to how we were
lost to numbers
I am devoured whether I speak or not
constraints for metabolic reasons
walk the call dispossessed
the disclosed in and of me
the concealed
48

49. Spittoon 1. 1
Konyalian Grenier, Lost to numbers
narrative temporalizes lost kingdoms
geometric over topologic and yet
continuous to discontinuous
self regulating systems
a void brimming with possibilities
inside and outside put away
begettings
the same differently
for which reason either or came about
perception milking away perspective
begetting nauseates
access as you infer but also when the virtual detonates
one fills in the blanks so as to literally wander
convene to intervene said the master
loving is a field
the energy differential sings
supervenes
time everywhere among the living and the dead
because we are
an irreducible black facing an irreducible white
bottomless flurry at the sky and numbers
some subject some object some verb
the tug and twist neither reflexive nor hedonistic
a personal so what of face value
intensely inane
blocked and illuminated
blank aperture
leap for paradis
veracity
49

50. Spittoon 1. 1
Konyalian Grenier, Lost to numbers
structural emotionality after structural unavailability
sanitized and romanticized promise
beauty is truth it says
do I lament Turkish uses a Western alphabet now?
does it hurt to read Turkish in Armenian?
your exemplar for torture is Byzantine
mine is Ottoman
fear and love remain
all else is frost
do we pray with it or for it?
what I use as filler for lack accentuates my lack
memes are in the way and on the way
things that do not correspond may coincide
I will use all that comes my way
fake solutions too
meaning hides behind them
applauds
noise threatens
quit being Armenian for a day
lawless sequence of events have made the impossible possible
one reaches for an algorithm to restore normalcy
to thread narrative or capture sequence
comfort
formless taste in rapture
loveless cinnamon stick
subtracted lives lie
gaze is equivocal
the tear in the order of things feeds my sanity
pulls code
50

51. Spittoon 1. 1
Konyalian Grenier, Lost to numbers
log in plug in tune in for a moment over time
one curves as the linear allows
fantasy but not fullness
potash salivating after suspects
spherical and labile
I resist numbers
resist eyes
scraps of feeling or thought
I scrape narrative off thought
culture feeding nature
feeding culture
every hour greets 15 degrees of earth’s circumference
forgery furthers code-breakers
musician to writer unlike writer to musician
remember collapse created noise
heat followed neutral currents
exchanging charge
neutrino to muon
sterile neutrinos too and Q balls
accretion of matter perhaps
always neutral
milk straight from the cow not yet lost to its taste
spherical octagon what else
a dying star still visible
hoping the asymptotic carries gravity and strings
looking for beauty toying with charge
after parity violations not standards
not relativity
that is how we feel matter among the awry non-matter we come from
that is where hope and love have perched
and violations
51

52. Spittoon 1. 1
Konyalian Grenier, Lost to numbers
fact check dot org screams at me
embarrassment too
I choose the latter because
I want to touch you.
52

53. Spittoon 1. 1
Special Section:
Interview with
Arpine Konyalian Grenier
53

54. Spittoon 1. 1
Interview with Konyalian Grenier
Born in Beirut, Lebanon, Arpine Konyalian Grenier did not take residence in the United States
until after graduate school in “the sciences” (a nebulous label she applies to her education).
Grenier has never been someone to accept or use labels, especially not those for degrees and
honors, so she is often very quiet about her educational background. Knowing her and reading
her work, however, make it easy to see that Grenier is widely educated, both academically and
experientially. One of her many post-secondary degrees is an MFA from Bard; she has also
ardently studied and performed music, especially piano, for most of her life. Grenier is fluent in
many languages, although she says “[I] more and more try not to speak any other than English
(and if I can help it not to speak that either)” because she is “interested in what is behind
language.” Her poetry embodies that interest both towards language and identity.
Here, Konyalian Grenier talks with Kristin Abraham about writing and her new book, The
Concession Stand: Exaptation at the Margins (Otoliths, 2011). This is her fourth published
manuscript.
Spittoon: Do you see yourself as a science or art person—you left the constriction of scientific
research for poetry? What about science is unsatisfying?
Grenier: Perhaps I see myself as both or neither. Often I have problems with both. The other
day someone said to me, “I hear you are an author.” I almost fell as my body twisted
emphatically (we were dancing). A few months ago a notable poet (friend) said my writing was
“orphic.” A while back an editor said, “You write like your ass chews gum.” I responded by, “At
least I have an ass that can chew.” Then there is music you know.
But what I really want to say is that science, music and poetry and all seem to come from the
same place – experience – they actually validate each other. There will always be poetry out
there even if there were no life in the Universe.
Poetry is path or passage to knowing and not about knowledge as in data, more as in wisdom and
life and self acceptance. In The Concession Stand there is a line about my father who worked and
prayed all his life; in a way that is what I do.
I did not decide [to become a poet], I had to give in to the doing of poetry.
Spittoon: And what does that mean “the doing of poetry”?
Grenier: That has to do with lifestyle and a continuing need for self knowledge which one never
fully gets and yet one is always after. Writing a poem is similar to that I think, and I feel I will
never write the perfect poem but will continue to spend a lifetime trying to do just that.
Spittoon: Some poets have said that writing poetry is their “calling.” Do you believe it is yours?
Is it your “destiny” to write poetry?
54

55. Spittoon 1. 1
Interview with Konyalian Grenier
Grenier: I feel uncomfortable with words like “calling” and “destiny.” I started doing poetry for
practical reasons.
Spittoon: Practical reasons—interesting choice of words. Many people would say “there’s
nothing practical about poetry.” Could you elaborate?
Grenier: Life was difficult as a single parent. I would be doing research during the day and
music at night when studios were less expensive or free (in those days there were no computers).
But i always felt uncomfortable about leaving my child at day care and with baby sitters for such
lengths of time. One day I saw a poetry workshop notice in the paper and decided to attend it
thinking poetry would be a less labor-intensive venue for creative expression. In retrospect, was I
ever wrong about that.
But that is how I started doing poetry, and for several years thereafter I felt guilty having
abandoned music to poetry, until I read Maritain and Heidegger and Celan and and, you know.
Spittoon: Which other poets have influenced you?
Grenier: Often non poets or those who have passed on. I had a poor relationship with my father
until he passed. Then he was a light in the sky, shining – energy I cull from every so often.
Spittoon: Could you explain what you mean when you say “non-poets or those who have passed
on” are ones who have influenced you? It sounds like you’re calling non-poets “poets,” which
intrigues me.
Grenier: For me, there is poetry in living and non-living systems. Often I reach out to Simone
Weil (“in time her weaknesses became her strengths”) or Derrida or Kafka or Mahler or my great
grandmother with whom I used to have pretend conversations in Kessab – an idyllic place in
Syria where we spent our summers. I used to pretend I had come to visit her from the USA
where her daughter, my grandmother, lived.
Spittoon: I would love to hear more about Kessab, also about your manuscripts. I suspect you
have several. How have their theme and style evolved over time?
Grenier: Below are sections from The Concession Stand:
Why do I write you then? Oh but it is, how do I write you. No, why is first, the cello-
spastic chain pertaining de sire. De who? An earth spot longing for a frame. L’arbre et la
glycine (Celine Zins). Closure. I have no frames for you but the room is ready. Because I
saw space flutter by, charmed but also charming. Anomie created anomaly, I am not
indifferent to you. On the other hand, Aghd. I read you as I, dirt stained and twined of
light, write you, with no capital. For so and lo, for Mama. Where is Mama?
I can survive identity but not language. Hear me spread for St. Gregory's Daughter;
Whores From Samarkand; After The Trading; The Cables Set, The Light; Silk, Paper,
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