WORDWRIGHTS #21 • Jan.-Feb. 2001 • Selections
BACK
STREET SCENE WITH FULL DECK
Lights cut like diamonds
through the smoky hearts
of two clubs, full houses crammed with
spayed angels digging
the music of the fundament. Queens
dressed to the nines float
fairylike outside the abandoned five
and ten slammed flush between
this pair of joints, clustering,
three and four of a kind, constantly
at sixes and sevens with the (mostly)
straight cops who
jack them around, hoping to force
them to fold their tents and move on,
do their dealing elsewhere.
I’m shuffling along, taking all this in,
when from across the street, Ace
calls me over, tells me he’s in the chips,
just got a raise, asks me to check out
the new Burger King with him to celebrate.
What a card! I tell him
“No thanks, I’ll pass, I already ate”; all the while
thinking: “None a’ that penny-ante
shit for this joker. I’m holding
out for table steaks.”
MICHAEL J. BARNEY
THE BANANA TABLE
I was thirty-nine years old and only slightly drunk when I went to sleep last night. I awoke this morning five years old wearing Lone Ranger pajamas, my school clothes laid out on the foot of the bed. Mom made pancakes for breakfast. Dad gave me milk money. For reasons I can’t fathom, I have been given a chance to start over. I sit among a class of fidgeting children. It is our first day of kindergarten. We wear construction paper nametags in the shapes and colors of common fruit. Mine is a banana; so is everyone else’s at my table. I recognize a few faces. Sitting across from me is Billy Hobbs who will steal my girlfriend in the tenth grade. Next to me, biting her fingernails, is Elaine Dorsey. Her nametag is upside-down. Sharon, my future exwife, sits at the Apple Table.
Miss Linder is our teacher. I don’t remember her being such a knockout the first time through. She is in her midtwenties with dark “That Girl” hair and a deep tan she must have spent all summer working on. I admire her legs, fixating on the curves of her calves and the way they flow up into the backs of her knees. I imagine the insides of her thighs to be wonderfully warm and sensitive. She is having an affair with Elaine Dorsey’s father that will break up the Dorsey family and spell the end of Miss Linder’s career at Kit Carson Elementary.
At snack-time we are given Graham crackers and milk. For some of my classmates, this is the first time they have attempted to open a milk carton. Eager to show off how much I know, I demonstrate to Elaine and Billy how it’s done. Elaine smiles in gratitude and offers to share her milk with me. Billy spills most of his down the front of his shirt.
Story concluded in WordWrights #21
CRAIG BLACK
DOG'S EYE
It wasn’t the setting so much, it was the smell. Ridley had gas. Bad. Roy could take the close quarters all right, the low ceiling, the heat, the lack of circulation even, but . . . “Sonofabitch, Ridley! What did you eat, son?”
Roy tried to climb over him to get to the door, but Ridley slept on and blocked Roy’s attempted escape. Roy finally gave up and just put his head on Ridley’s back and watched the backporch lights wink out one by one down the block. Must be ten, eleven o’clock by now, he thought. Ought to try to sleep.
But his eyes were tearing up again as more deadly seepage wafted into the confined, still July air. He nearly missed it when his own backporch light slammed suddenly out. The sliding door opened and he heard the thud on the porch floor. “Time to go, boy,” he said to Ridley. Time to get up for awhile. He poked him in the ribs and Ridley yapped and rolled his big rag-eared head backwards to Roy and snuffled his discontent. “Up. Out. Go.” Ridley jerked to his feet and shook as well as he could in the tight quarters. “Go, for chrissake.”
Ridley turned three ritual circles as if looking for the door. Then he went out. Roy followed on hands and knees. He first knelt and stretched, then got up one leg at a time and unfolded all six feet three of himself into a skinny shadow in the full moonlight. “Better,’’ he said.
Roy slowly walked to the back of the house and quietly climbed the stairs. It was there as always: a bottle of Food City’s finest red wine, the cork—at least it had a cork—shoved halfassed into the bottle’s mouth. And a mostly eaten bag of chips, a rubber band wrapped around it presumably to keep the chips fresh until Roy got to them. “No chance of stalage here, m’love,” he whispered, picking both the bag and the bottle from the floor and turning to the stairs.
Roy sat carefully at the picnic table on the back lawn and slowly, silently uncorked the bottle, unrolled the bag and set them before himself. Ridley wandered over and snorted, looking greedily at the bottle which held five or six fingers of wine. “Forget it,” Roy said.
Ridley lifted his leg and marked the bench Roy sat on. “You’re no dog, you’re a pig.” It fell on deaf ears. On the other side of the table Ridley was relieving himself already. “Pig.” The moon was bright enough to see the yellow stream shatter against the bench and slide to the ground.
Roy upended the bottle and gulped once. A little red line seeped from the corner of his mouth and dribbled down the side of his face until it dripped, melting icicle fashion, onto his once-white t-shirt. “Must be near the end of the month, Rid, old man.” This is even worse than the usual. I hope she gets paid soon. This stuff’ll kill you.” He poured the broken pieces of chips directly from the bag into his mouth, careful not to touch them with his filthy hands. When he laid the bag back on the table, he sniffed the air, then shot his head up to look for the moon. The bright stain of light rolled directly at high noon above him. “Bright enough to read by.”
Story concluded in WordWrights #21
H.A. MAXSON
