Fortgang Stories, First Series

Fortgang’s Childhood Sweetheart

            The little girl skipping rope in front of Fortgang’s building reminded him of his childhood sweetheart, Claire Needleman. Whatever happened to Claire? He’d never had as much fun with his adult sweethearts, that was for sure. He couldn’t even remember ever having played tag with one of them. With adult sweethearts there’s always the insecurity, the jealousy, the disagreements, the responsibilities, the compromises. With Claire it was all fun and games. Fortgang was overcome by a wave of nostalgia, a wistful question mark in the pit of his stomach. The little girl was singing as she jumped rope, “Little Brown Jug.” That voice—that was Claire’s voice he heard singing, “Ha ha ha, you and me, little brown jug how I love thee.” Fortgang was transported back to a carefree, joyful time.

            “You have a beautiful voice,” Fortgang told the little girl.

            “Thank you, mister,” the girl replied.

            “You remind me of a girl I once knew,” Fortgang said. “Her name was Claire.”

            “Claire was my mom’s name,” the girl said. “She died.”

            The question mark in the pit of Fortgang’s stomach sank. “I’m so sorry,” Fortgang told the little girl. He wondered if he should, then he did. “By any chance was your mom’s maiden name Needleman?”

            “No,” the girl replied, “Sanders.”

            Fortgang breathed a sigh of relief. “Nice to meet you,” he told the little girl before heading back upstairs to weep in solitude.

Fortgang Attempts a Cake

            There was a couple in Fortgang’s neighborhood, an older couple he would see on his strolls. They look like nice people, Fortgang thought. He never spoke to them, but when they’d pass each other on the street they’d all nod and smile, the standard courtesy among known strangers. He knew where they lived, a row house a few blocks from his own building, as he sometimes saw them coming out or going in.

            I’d like to talk to them, Fortgang thought, but he was too shy to make an overture.

            Then one day he had an idea. I think I’ll bake them a cake, he thought. He intended it to be a surprise, an anonymous one, but with a message on the icing. It would say “To the Kellers, You seem like a nice couple. Enjoy!” He knew their name because one morning, as he was passing their house, he stealthily went up to their door and saw a brass plaque that said “The Kellers.” He figured just maybe the Kellers would stop him the next time they met and mention the cake, maybe ask him if he had baked it, just the opening he was looking for.

            Fortgang had never baked anything before. He hardly even cooked. He often got takeout, and also regularly consumed frozen food, which he’d microwave—TV dinners, chicken pot pies, Mrs. Paul’s fish sticks.

            He wanted to bake the cake from scratch. A store-bought cake wouldn’t do, too impersonal. So he bought all the ingredients he thought he’d need: flour, sugar, salt, butter, eggs, yeast, and baking soda. For the vanilla icing he’d use a mix, and he bought one of those cake decorating syringes and some green frosting in a can to write his message with.

            Fortgang looked at a couple of recipes and felt overwhelmed, so he decided to wing it. He mixed up some flour and sugar and water and eggs and salt and yeast and baking soda in random proportions in a mixing bowl, but since he didn’t have a mixer he stirred vigorously with a large fork. He poured it all in a baking pan he had greased with some butter and put it in the oven. He didn’t know what temperature to bake at, so he tried the highest setting, which was called “broil.” He put the cake pan in the oven and went to watch an episode of Dr. Kildare, from his collection of DVDs.

            Toward the end of the episode, he heard his smoke alarm go off. He ran into the kitchen. Smoke was billowing from the oven. His cake was a charred lump. There was nothing he could do to salvage it. He could forget about the icing and the message. He was despondent. He poured himself a tumbler of Johnnie Walker Red and put another DVD in the player, an episode of The Untouchables.

            The following morning, just before daybreak, he went out to leave a note for the Kellers, while he figured they were still asleep. The note read, “To the Kellers, I tried to bake you a cake, but things didn’t work out.” It was unsigned. He slipped it through the mail chute in the door.

            The next time he passed the Kellers on the street they all nodded and smiled at each other.

Fortgang Simulates a Broken Heart

            It’s been a long time since my heart was broken, Fortgang, now middle-aged, realized. Younger, he experienced frequent heartbreak. The objects of his affection rarely reciprocated, and he was mostly indifferent to the apparent interest of those who might have. Oh, he continued to experience sadness and disappointment in the realm of romance, but he bore them stoically, no longer the gut punch of a truly broken heart. Surely it’s better this way, he thought, none of the moping and misery, the crippling inertia, just, you know, sadness and disappointment. Still, there was something he missed from the time of broken hearts, he realized, an all-encompassing misery to luxuriate in, a most vivid darkness, when the one loved does not love in return.

            So he decided to simulate a broken heart for old times’ sake. But first he had to imagine a heartbreaker because, ever since his last breakup, without a broken heart, the time for that was long past, he hadn’t pursued romance, felt he needed a break, a sabbatical. No, it wasn’t romance he was looking for, it was cut-to-the-chase heartbreak. But there’s no heartbreak in a void, you can’t just go through the motions, it needs at least the trappings of the real.

            But who would the object of his putative affection be? He couldn’t conjure up memories of the ones who’d broken his heart in the past, that would be cheating, it wouldn’t be a simulation of a broken heart, it would be the echo of a heart broken long ago. And the desired couldn’t be wholly imaginary either—one might seek a partner based on an ideal, but an ideal can’t break your heart. No, it had to be a real person, flesh and blood and breath and eyes and laughter.

            Perhaps Lydia, from down the hall, could be pressed into service of the imagination. She was attractive, smart, friendly, and they got along well enough in their limited encounters. Funny, she was single, and just a few years younger than him, yet he had never considered her a romantic prospect.

            So Fortgang went ahead created a history with Lydia, alone on his sofa with the lights turned down low. He began with the desire for Lydia, then imagined his pursuit, a date, some misinterpreted signals, an attempted seduction, a rebuff. If at first you don’t succeed, lather, rinse, repeat, but no, it wasn’t going to happen, Lydia tried to be kind, tell him in the most considerate of ways that it was not meant to be. That was it! “Not meant to be.” Those were the secret words. Bingo! Heartbreak!

            Fortgang was miserable. He’d lie on the bed in the fetal position feeling sorry for himself. One day he’d sleep poorly and the next for hours on end. He lost his passion for spicy food and swing bands of the thirties.

            After several days of this he heard a knock at his door. Who could that be?

            “Who is it”? he asked.

            “It’s me, Lydia, your neighbor. I haven’t seen you in a while, and I just wanted to make sure everything was OK.”

            Lydia! So I still have a chance, Fortgang told himself as he opened the door, happier than he’d been in days.

Peter Cherches’ latest book of miscellaneous prose and poetry is Things (Bamboo Dart Press).

IN A THOUSAND YEARS

In a thousand years
I want to be remembered
in a volume like 300 Tang Poems.

100 thousand college students will see my name
and read four lines I wrote
about an egret dismissing a marsh

or an ingenue losing her locust hairpin
under a moon that is a kicking rabbit
or an old man finding solace in his memories.

I would rather be remembered
for four lines written in haste
after hefting seven or eight bottles of Sam Adams

than not be remembered at all.
To be honest, it would be nice if the students liked the poem –
but it’s not a dealbreaker.
 
A SCURRY OF SQUIRRELS

Every day I walk past a tree in front of a house
And under this tree is usually a collection of squirrels –
Many gray squirrels and up to four fox squirrels.

The person who lives in the house behind the tree
Puts nuts out under the tree every day
And there are so many the squirrels can never eat them all.

I walk by and the squirrels scurry away –
Which is a good reason a group of squirrels is called a scurry, I guess.
Only one squirrel doesn’t retreat at my approach.

As I said, there are four fox squirrels among the grays –
One of them is melanistic and one of them is very big and pudgy.
The first time I saw the big one I thought he was a raccoon.

That first time I saw him he was alone under the tree
And when he saw me he stood up on two legs and stared me down.
I turned around after I passed and I found he was still watching me.

There was one time he decided to retreat at my approach
And it was like watching an old fat man as he climbed the tree.
I imagined hearing him huff and puff, cursing me under his breath as he clambered. 

There are many gray squirrels and four fox squirrels –
One is melanistic and one is pudgy and larger than the rest.
I wonder if the fat one would be picked first or last for dodgeball

If the squirrels were human children. Powerful but slow, I imagine.
These are the kinds of things that go through my mind
When I forget to bring my headphones on my walk

And why I almost never do forget.

 
SOME POEMS

Some poems are meant to be inhaled,
then exhaled through the nose.
Some poems are meant to escape through the teeth.
Some poems enter through a hole
that it drills into the back of your head.
Some pulls pull you by the ear
all the way to the principal’s office.

Some poems are ghosts,
howling between your ears.
Some posts are nettles
beneath bare feet.
Some poems stutter as they ascend.
Some poems need a paleontologist’s pickax.
Some poems pummel your roof
like hailstones.

Some poems are cryptological; zoological;
illogical; scatological.
Some poems are dead hair
beneath a barber’s chair,
waiting to be swept away.
Some poems are not poems
because they are limp and useless without the music.

Some poems are living things
and some poems are dead things
and some poems are living dead things
and some poems are dead living things.

Some poems take flight
and some walk the earth.
Some wallow like happy pigs in dirt.

And poems about poems, like this poem,
are meant to be balled up
and tossed into the nearest wastebasket
so,
after you read this,
I better hear you crumpling.

 
SPINNING


There’s this little divot in the ceiling
I am studying here in bed
While lying on my back
With the room spinning

As well as the moon outside
Spinning, I imagine, like a pinwheel
Even though there’s not even the hint
Of a breeze.

I’d get up to look and make sure
But somehow the door and the windows
Are gone
And the floor is 
Gone

And all that is left in this room now
Is me and this bed
And this little divot in the ceiling
That I have convinced myself
Is of great importance.

I finally close my eyes
With the moon out there
Spinning like a pinwheel
In a night so hot and still
Without even the hint
Of a breeze
And 

The divot in the ceiling has
Disappeared 

 
THE WRONG TIME

I meet the mountain
and the mountain
is the wrong mountain

& 
I fall in love
and it’s the wrong woman

&
I send out my poems
but they come back

having gone to the wrong places.

I am here –
in the wrong home,
living at the wrong time

&
Li Po looked up
saw the moon
offered it a drink

a thousand years ago

& 
smiled in deep sleep
even though he knew
it was the wrong time.

John Tustin’s poetry has appeared in many disparate literary journals since 2009. His first poetry collection is forthcoming from Cajun Mutt Press. fritzware.com/johntustinpoetry contains links to his published poetry online.

MY SISTER'S NAME IS FORBIDDEN ON MY TONGUE OR IN MY HEART

I do not know why,
but my sister's name is forbidden on my tongue or in my heart.
The last time I saw her, the lines from her mouth were
"if I don't marry him in your presence, I would in your absence"
Those words were seeds of death to my father
& To me, they were displaced wanderers seeking recognition.
Now, we are like borders apart
Isn't it right to say we're living in a different world?
But for us it's the third; a world of strange & unfamiliar things.

+



Soothes
             the 
                 LOVE of Experience 

                    Lifts from the start 

Continuity is Always Beginning 

              I See Something Good 
         & there was good 
 Nothing Wasted  My LOVE 

      ♡  Well along I see  ♡

Continuity always Beginning 

 Soothed my presence LOVE 
       Gifts await the Star
             in the sky
                    ☆
 
                                                                  ...

 
by  John Edward Culp 
       April 24, 2023

Flying

I remember flying

Learned it early

Somewhere between

Peter Pan and Superman

Sitting out on a windowsill

Overlooking Adsit Court

Legs dangling and then

I was off flying

The whole world in front

Of me, waiting for me

Up with the geese

And the gulls, as if there

Were no limits

No expiration date

On my flight

Soaring, zooming

Hovering, floating

I could be there or anywhere

I had the mind to be

Now I just remember flying.

It got away from me.



                Free Fall

Sometimes running feels like falling.

perhaps like free falling

your feet barely touching down

as distance appears and disappears

under you

 

They told you that life was a marathon

and not a sprint

but they sprinted away while you sat

there tying your shoes

 

And now you are running alone

almost weightless

 

This is running, falling, free falling

without a parachute to snap open

to catch you when the ground leaps up

to show you – you’ve reached the end.



     Getting Away


Time to walk away

Turn your back

A full 180 this time.

Pick up your pace.

 

There’s no rear-view

Mirror this time.

 

There are memories

That will go bump

Go thump in the night

 

But right now you’re

Moving away

 

Physically at first

Mentally sometime later.

 

But now you’re moving

Putting distance and time

Between you

 

And all those things –

the list seems too long

to go over ever again.

 

Those things you knew

You had to leave behind.

 

And now you’re

Alone out here

Without them.

J. K. Durick is a retired writing teacher and online writing tutor. His recent poems have appeared in Third Wednesday, Black Coffee Review, Literary Yard, Sparks of Calliope, Synchronized Chaos, Madswirl, Journal of Expressive Writing, Lightwood, and Highland Park Poetry.

Gen X

Maybe we weren’t resourceful. Maybe we were just confused.
Maybe we lost our way. Maybe we lost our shoes
in a pond with a surface like a screen without words or songs
from the future disconnected walking barefoot down the long
screen to the future which doesn’t have a phone
or a bookstore or a workplace and is leaking like snow cone
purple across the tile. We follow cracks from lock to key
through the back screen door. To be safe you touch the tree
growing upwards towards the moon and on up towards the light
pollution that blurs what’s happened. Together with what might.