WORDWRIGHTS #19 • September-October 2000 Edition • $5.95 US • $8.95 Canada
SPECIAL FEATURE:
NANI POWER INTERVIEW
The former caterer and WordWrights contributor talks about hitting the big bucks with her first novel, "Crawling At Night", to be published Spring 2001 by Grove-Atlantic.
POETRY: Barry Ballard • E. Doyle-Gillespie • Ida Fasel • J.N. Foster • Tina Hacker • Steven Hartman • Joyce Heller • Jeanette Miller • Miles David Moore • Lou Orfanella • Carlo Parcelli • Megan Smith • Cheryl Snell • Anene M. Tressler-Hauschultz • Sprague Vonier • Ken Waldman • Andrena Zawinski • PROSE: Diane Hoover Bechtler • T.M. Bemis • Sharon Goldner • Jimmy Carl Harris • Judith Podell • Len Schweitzer • THE EDITORS: A Sampling of Poetry and Prose by some of the many WordWrights Editors, including Peter Brown • Bruce Curley • Carla Giammichele • Sara Levy • Mariposa
HOME
A Poem by MILES DAVID MOORE
ALAN ARKIN WINS THE STEAK KNIVES
Some days I blunder into so much pain,
The urge to win ensuring every loss,
That in my dreams I wish I had the faith
Of Alan Arkin in Glengarry Glen Ross,
Who, speaking softly, has no stick at all,
But keeps his head down and averts his eye
Making sales calls no one wants to hear
To people who cannot afford to buy.
He never dreams of first-place Cadillacs—
Everyone knows that’s Al Pacino’s due—
But prays third-place dismissal will not be
His fate, as Alec Baldwin shouts, “FUCK YOU!”
Jack Lemmon and Ed Harris curse at life,
Hash out long-faded triumphs over beers,
And plot the theft of Mitch and Murray’s leads
As Kevin Spacey, sneering, overhears...
But Alan Arkin, neither newly wheeled
Nor cuffed and printed, always lives to take
The latest set of steak knives gratefully
In faith that, one fine day, there will be steak.
A Poem by IDA FASEL
HERE I AM
In my
gold-beater’s shop
I hammer words so thin,
they lift off in the slightest draft —
leaves fine,
simple,
tough enough in
themselves to be carried
between the pages of a book and
not break.
A Story by Diane Hoover Bechtler
HOW SICK, AGNES?
“Hep ya?”
Lonely Agnes moved from the metal rail at the burger joint to order and found herself firmly stuck.
“Blasted magnet belt.” Agnes nearly cursed as she twisted, bending from the waist, wiggling with St. Vitus’s dance, trying to free herself.
“I’ll have the number 2 combo with a Coke, please.”
The pimply guy behind the counter stared with dull-gray fish eyes, mouth hanging open, then moved robotically gathering items.
Two muscular men who could have easily dislodged her ignored plain Agnes, so she jammed both hands behind her and shoved. With a click, she flew forward.
The weighty belt from the ‘Help Yourself To Health’ catalog hadn’t improved her lower back pain one iota and now this embarrassment. Yesterday at the sewing shop, her bracelets attracted lines of safety pins, waving them hypnotically in undulating snakes. Later when she set the clock, it spun days of hours. Clasping her hands was impossible. They bounced apart, a reverse clap, the polarized bangles scooting up her arms afraid of each other. Having already wiped several diskettes clean, she wore only a bathrobe when she used her computer, afraid of giving her Mac a lobotomy.
Hungry Agnes gripped the flesh sandwich, considered cattle grazing in fields, then studied her Birkenstocks with their thin leather straps—from cows that died of old age, she’d been assured.
Eyeing the hamburger as Eve had eyed the apple she chomped, washed it down with the Coke and immediately flipped off her chair, spinning on her rear, burger landing in her lap.
“Mad cow disease,” she whispered to the white bun, stripped of all nutrients.
Curious Agnes studied the greasy, gray circle of possible brain spasm. No such thing as free range beef, just 2x2 pens. She heard the antibiotic-resistant bacteria plotting.
Frightened Agnes scrambled to her feet and dumped her lunch, tray and all, in the garbage, the fish-eyed boy yelling, as she fled the mall in a sweat.
Her bracelet snapped to the car door and ripped paint off in a red shower.
Shaken Agnes drove very slowly, the car swerving left and right seemingly on an autopilot she knew nothing of.
“Hep ya?” A peachy cheeked girl with a nose ring, in crinkled canvas jeans, jammed huge kiwis in a blender at Zenith’s All Organic.
“Carrot juice, a barbecued soy slice with sprouts and a yam muffin.” Nutritionally correct Agnes ruminated. Lunch tasted like iron mixed with sawdust but she was cool again, her personal air conditioner purring around her neck like a mechanical cat.
Her toes sent warning pinpricks of electricity up her shins, then both feet hit the ground and spun the seat about 45 degrees. The woman on the next stool clutched her purse fast to her chest.
“I don’t know what happened.” Her feet stayed at their chosen angle while nervous Agnes checked her blood pressure cuff.
The girl churning fruit said, “I don’t know either but you’re as good as a compass because you whirled to our north window.”
“I did? So I did.” Agnes made a note to have her deadly mercury fillings removed. They must be fracturing her energy fields, trying to jump out by themselves.
concluded in WordWrights #19
