Jelly Beans & Juice

Because the gathering was mostly made up of his parents’ horseshoe buddies it meant nothing to Joe except the occasional clang of metal on metal until the old man who owned the general store in the village just down the road came by with a giant jar of jelly beans. According to this man the jar was Joe’s now because Joe had made a guess closer than anyone else as to just how many jelly beans were in the jar, and even though when the old man pressed him on it Joe could not remember what his winning guess had been, could not even remember having made a guess, he was more than willing to accept the prize. But his father who had been standing by watching this exchange as though he had a stake in it or perhaps was jealous that he had not won the jelly beans for himself had other ideas about what should happen to the jar.
	“You can’t eat all those yourself,” he said, taking the tone he always did whenever he was trying to teach Joe a lesson. “You’ll be sick. You’ll be throwing up all over the place. I know, why don’t you share them with our guests?”
	“Nuh-uh,” Joe protested, for he could not understand why if he had been the one who had won the jelly beans he should not be able to keep them all to himself.
	“All right, I’ll tell you what,” his father said, taking the jar from the old man for whom it was beginning to get heavy and placing it on the ground in front of Joe. “If you can lift this jar and carry it to your room, you can have all the jelly beans yourself. But if you can’t, it goes on the table for the others until it’s down far enough that you can lift it,” and he pointed at the table he had in mind, a card table that had been brought out and placed next to their two picnic tables which were all lined up together in a row. “Well, I’m waiting.”
	Joe stared at the jar, which nearly came up to his chin and might have been wide enough for him to crawl into if not for the jelly beans already inside. Still, he tried to lift it. He got close to it and cocked his knees to the side and then bent over and wrapped his arms around the glass, but he was unable to lift it off the ground, could only slide it an inch or two toward the house before his grip gave out and he fell back onto his bottom. Undeterred, he got up and tried again, and though this time he did not fall, nor did he move the jar any further, and when his strength finally gave out and he became exhausted from his efforts he stood back and stared at the jar as if it had now become his enemy.
	“Well, that settles that,” his father said, who picked the jar off the ground with only the slightest of strain and placed it right in the middle of the card table where Joe would not be able to reach the lid in order to open it. Then, brushing his hands together, he added, “You might as well go and play now until dinner is ready. Your jelly beans won’t be going anywhere until then.”
	Joe wanted to argue but he knew if he did his father would only find a chore for him to do instead, and so off he went to look for his sister Jenny and when he found her in the living room playing with her dolls he told her about the jar and how he had won it and everything that came after, emphasizing just how big and heavy the jar was and how unfair it was that he was going to have to share the jelly beans with everyone when they rightly all belonged to him. But Jenny who was nearly two years younger than him didn’t understand and only asked if she could have some jelly beans, too, and when he said no, by which he meant that she could not have any jelly beans now, because no one could, she began to cry. Within a minute their mother appeared and picked his sister up and though Joe tried to explain to her what had happened she told him that he should go to his room now and take a nap.

*   *   *

When Joe next saw the jar of jelly beans it was surrounded by all kinds of other food along with a stack of paper plates and plastic utensils. The jar itself was open and his parents’ friends had already begun to dip a large spoon into it in order to scoop the jelly beans out and put them on their plates next to their ribs and potato salad. When someone saw Joe they thanked him and then everyone else followed suit and though it still rankled Joe that he had to share the jelly beans it no longer felt quite as unjust as it had when his father had first forced him into the deal. What was even better was when his mother dished him and his sister up and he was able to taste the jelly beans for himself and see that his sister was enjoying them as well. Still, throughout the meal he kept a dog’s watch on the jar and felt a pang in the pit of his stomach every time someone dipped the spoon inside and took out another scoop of jelly beans, and it was only when the meal was over and the guests began to get ready for another round of horseshoes that he suddenly wished they had taken more, because when he saw how many jelly beans were left he knew that he would still be unable to carry the jar to his room. He began to worry that his father might propose another deal like giving half of what was left to the cattle, but before he could get too worked up about it his father, perhaps reading his mind, informed him that now that the guests had had their fill he would personally see to it that the jar got to his room safe and sound with no more jelly beans removed.
	“So forget about the jar, all right?” he said in between sips of beer. “You and Jenny go run along and play.”
	Content with this arrangement, Joe and his sister went and played on their swing set for a while and afterward took turns throwing a tennis ball for their dog Blackie to retrieve, and when it began to get dark they went inside and played Operation until it was time for bed. It wasn’t until the next day when he awoke and did not see the jar in his room that Joe once again thought about the jelly beans, but now that they were in his mind again they were all he could think about, and so as soon as his father came to the breakfast table he asked him where they were. His father, who was rubbing his forehead the way he did when he had a splitting headache, groaned and took a bite of pancake, and only after that did he begin to speak.
	“Yeah, well, there’s something I need to tell you about that, Joe,” he said, his voice softer than usual. “You see, the McClusky brothers, you remember which two they are? Anyway, they got a little drunk last night and started arguing about some woman from the past—”
	“John,” Joe’s mother snapped, who was over by the stove pouring some more batter onto the griddle, “you don’t have to tell him the whole story.”
	Joe’s father nodded, and swallowed another bite. “Anyway, while they were scuffling with each other they bumped into the table and knocked it over, and the jar fell off and broke. I’m sorry, it was my fault. I should have taken it to your room right away when I said I would. But I’m going to make it up to you, all right? When I go into town on Monday I swear I’ll pick you up some more jelly beans and maybe some of that black licorice like so much. How does that sound? Is that all right?” 
	“So the jelly beans are gone?” Joe asked, trying to make sense of it.
	“Well, they’re still out there in the yard if that’s what you mean.”
	Instantly Joe jumped off his chair and ran into the living room where he climbed onto the couch and looked out the window. There they were, scattered across the lawn, hundreds of jelly beans intermixed with shards of glass. 
	“Believe me, Joe, I’m just as upset as you are. Now I’ve got to spend my morning cleaning all that up.”
	Joe climbed down from the couch and came back to the table. He mused awhile over his eggs before he said, “I want to help.”
	His father looked up from his plate. “You mean, you want to help clean up?”
	“Me, too,” Jenny said enthusiastically. “I want to help, too.”
Their father smiled. “Well, I—”
	“No,” their mother intervened. She came over to the table with her own plate of pancakes and poured what was left of the orange juice into her glass. “It’s too dangerous. And besides, you two have to clean your rooms today, remember?”
	But Joe didn’t remember anything about having to clean his room; as far as he was concerned, his room was clean. “But they’re my jelly beans,” he complained.
	“The jelly beans aren’t the issue. It’s the glass I’m worried about. You’ll cut yourself.”
	“Nuh-uh. I’ll be extra careful.”
	Joe’s mother looked to his father for support.
	“We’ll have them wear gloves,” he suggested instead.
	“Jenny doesn’t have work gloves.”
	“So she can wear her winter gloves.”
	“Mittens—and they’ll get sticky.”
	“So what? They’ll be too small for her come winter anyway. And besides, we’ve got other things we’ve got to get done around here. The sooner we get that cleaned up the better.” Joe’s father reached over and squeezed his wife’s hand. “C’mon, Joan, they’re asking to help out. That’s a good thing, ain’t it?”
	Joe’s mother frowned; she looked just like she did whenever Joe’s father asked if they could turn in early. “All right, you two can help. But you’ll keep your gloves on at all times and you won’t pick up any glass, just jelly beans—and you won’t eat any of them. Promise?”
	“Promise,” Joe and Jenny said together.
	“And Joe,” his mother said especially, “you’re responsible for your sister, understand?”

*   *   *

Joe’s mother and father each had their own ice cream pail in which to place the broken glass while Joe and his sister shared a single pail for the jelly beans, though when they filled the first one up their mother supplied them with another. The work was more tedious than Joe had expected, mostly because his sister with her winter mittens on struggled to get at the jelly beans that had sunk between the blades of grass and he kept having to come over and dig them out for her only to have her tell him not to place them in the pail but to put them back on the ground so she could pick them up herself, which might not have been so bad except that more often than not she accidentally pushed the jelly beans back down between the grass and he had to come over and dig them out again. What kept him going was that every time his parents were looking the other way he would slip a jelly bean into his mouth and chew it up and swallow it before they caught him, though that all came to an end when Jenny saw him and started doing it too, because she accidentally placed in her mouth a piece of gravel that had been kicked over from the driveway and had to spit it out, which drew the attention of their mother.	
“All right,” she said in the tone she reserved for when she had a suspicion of wrongdoing but no actual proof, “I think you two have done your part. Why don’t you go and get started on your rooms now.”
	“Can I have some juice first?” Joe asked, for between the dust on the jelly beans and the growing heat of the day his mouth had gotten dry.
	“We’re out of orange juice, dear. Don’t you remember at breakfast?”
	“Not orange juice,” he laughed. “Red juice.”
	“Oh.” His mother wiped her forehead with the back of her wrist while she considered her answer; clenched between her fingers were several weeds which she had taken to rooting out along the way. “All right, but no mess, you hear?”
	“Why don’t you bring me out a glass, too, Joe, while you’re at it,” his father said, who was taking his shirt off in order to get some extra sun.
	Joe promised both his parents to do exactly as they had requested and then grabbed his sister’s hand and led her into the house where after taking off his own gloves and dropping them on the floor he helped her off with her mittens. 
	“I want some juice, too,” she said as she rubbed her sweaty hands on her lavender dress.
	“I know,” he said. “Go sit at the table.”
	Not long ago their parents had endowed them with a shelf of their own in the cabinet right beneath the drawer where the silverware was, and from this shelf Joe chose a cup that was green while for his sister he picked out a cup covered in giraffes because he’d remembered how she only liked to drink juice out of cups with animals on them.
	“Do you want a straw?” he asked her over his shoulder.
	“Are you having one?”
	“No.”
	“Me neither.”
	He closed the cabinet door and brought the cups over to the table. Right away Jenny picked hers up like she was expecting there to already be some juice inside of it and when she saw there wasn’t any she held the cup sideways in front of her as if trying to locate where the juice might have gone. Joe ignored this childishness and went to the fridge where after pushing a carton of milk aside he found a large clear pitcher brimming with what he was calling juice. In order to lift it safely he had to grip it by the handle with one hand while placing his other hand on the pitcher itself, and once he managed to get it over to the table he had to climb onto his chair and kneel on it in order to pour. At first nothing came out except for a few leaky drops but then he remembered that he had to turn the top on the pitcher to get the holes in the cover to align with the spout, and after that he was able to fill his cup up to the edge but without going over.
	“Set your cup down,” he told his sister but instead she brought it to her chest and held it there protectively.
	“I wanna pour,” she said.
	“You’re not strong enough.”
	“Yes, I am!”
	“Okay, but if you spill any I’m telling Mom it was all your fault.”
	Joe set the pitcher down and then looked on with his knuckles between his teeth as his sister stood up on her chair and took hold of the pitcher, but before she had even begun to tilt it she bumped into her cup and knocked it over.
	“Hold it for me,” she ordered her brother.
	“You’re gonna spill,” he said reaching across the table to retrieve the glass.
	“No, I won’t.”
	Joe held the cup firmly and squinted in fear as his sister with her little tongue sticking out began to tilt the pitcher over. At first Jenny had the spout so far away from the giraffes that it looked like she was going to pour the juice right out onto the table, but as the liquid began to stretch itself lengthwise along the inside of the pitcher she moved it closer until finally it made contact with the inside of the lip. She only filled her cup halfway up before she stopped and set the pitcher upright on the table. 
	“See, I didn’t spill.”
	Joe let go of her cup and then slid the pitcher to the other side of the table so that it wouldn’t be in their way. He took a gulp and then another and when the cherry flavor and the cool sensation had washed over him he smacked his lips together and said “Ah!” just as his father often did when he would take a drink of something, and when Jenny was finished with her first few gulps she also did the same. Joe looked at her and laughed.
	“What?” Jenny asked him.
	“You got a juice mustache.”
	Jenny frowned and reached for a napkin but in the process bumped into her cup with her forearm. The cup fell over and what was left of her juice spilled out across the table with some of it dripping onto the floor. Her eyes went wide and she tried to cover it up with her hands but it was far too diffused to conceal it all, and besides, Joe had seen it happen. He could have said I told you so but he knew he would be in just as much trouble as she would be because he always got blamed for stuff she did when he was supposed to be watching after her, and so instead of saying anything he reached for the napkins himself and began to wipe up the mess. He then handed a napkin to Jenny and told her to wipe her hands while he got down on the floor to clean up the rest.
	“Hey, look, a butterfly!” she exclaimed a moment later.
	“Where?” he said and got up quick only to bump his head on the edge of the table. “Ouch,” he said, rubbing the bump. Then he looked out window on the other side of the table overlooking the backyard. “Where?”
	“It’s gone.”
He frowned and got up to put the wet napkins in the trash can beneath the sink. 
	“Look!” Jenny shouted, this time pointing out the window. “There it is again!”
	Joe ran back to the table and this time he saw it: it was a large yellow butterfly and it was hovering over the top of their mother’s flowerbed just below the window. For a second or two it landed on a flower and just as quickly hopped to another, and then another, until finally it flew away, moving in a zigzag motion over the top of the propane tank which heated their house before dropping down and disappearing out of view. Then, just about when he was going to give up on looking for it, the butterfly reappeared at the side of the tank and landed on a dandelion. 
	“Let’s chase it,” Jenny said and before he could argue with her she jumped off her chair and began running for the back door. 
Joe groaned, for he felt he was too old for chasing butterflies, but he did not want to leave his sister alone in case he was still supposed to be looking after her, and so after putting the juice back into the fridge he traipsed out onto the back porch like a sullen adult burdened with too much to do. By then Jenny had already made it past the propane tank and was nearing the raised mound which encircled the pond his family used for a skating rink in winter. At present the pond was dry and most of the dirt was cracked but there had been some rain a few days earlier leaving behind a few puddles here and there. Fearing that his sister might step in one and get her shoes all muddy he called after her and when she would not stop he chased her down just as she was descending the mound into the pound.
“Hey,” she said, “I almost caught it.”
But this wasn’t true: the butterfly was well ahead of her and in another second flew up and disappeared over the long strands of wheat which marked the end of where they were allowed to play.
“You’re not supposed to get muddy,” Joe remarked harshly while pointing at the puddle right in front of her. Right away he could see that he had upset her and she looked like she was about to cry, so he did the only thing he could think to do and tapped her on the shoulder. “Tag, you’re it,” he said, and then he took off running.
“No fair, I wasn’t ready,” she said, but soon she was chasing him anyway.
Joe ran around to the other side of the propane tank and when she had caught up to him he began running circles around it until he got bored of being chased and let her tag him so he could chase her instead. To make it interesting he let her get a head start and while he waited Blackie wandered up to him and sniffed his shirt. He saw that there was something on it, right where the dog was sniffing, which was also where his sister had tagged him. It was something red.
“Hey,” he called out after his sister, “you got juice on my shirt.”
“Nuh-uh!” she yelled back as she made her way to the swing set. 
“Yes, you did. Come back here.”
After Jenny had passed the first swing she stopped and turned around, holding it out in front of her like a shield. “You’re trying to trick me,” she said.
“No, I’m not. Look,” and he held his shirt out so she could see.
Suddenly Blackie shot off as if he had seen a mouse, and by the time Joe had recovered from the start it had given him his sister had nearly returned to his side. 
“Let me see your hands,” he said to her.
“No,” she said. “Put your hands behind your back first.”
Joe did so, and so Jenny did as he had asked and held her hands out, palms up, revealing to both their surprise just how red they were. But it was her wrists that were really red. and growing more so, until the redness became so pronounced that it leaked off the side of her arm and began to drip upon the ground.
“Why’s everything so heavy?” she asked, and then collapsed.
Joe looked down at her, wondering if this might be some new kind of game. “Hey, get up. Jenny, get up.” He nudged her with his shoe. “Jenny?”
	“Joe?” his father called from the porch. “What are you doing?”
	“What?” Joe said, peering over the top of the propane tank.
	His father came forward to the wooden railing and rested his hands upon it. “You didn’t bring me my juice. And there’s streaks of it on the table. You’d better get back in here and clean that up before your mother sees it.” He looked around the yard, scratching the hair on his belly. “Where’s your sister?”
	Joe didn’t answer.
	“Honest to God, we can’t leave you two alone for a second without you getting up to something. Now go and find her and come inside. You need to get started on your rooms.”
	As soon as his father went back inside Joe looked at his sister again. She hadn’t moved and didn’t appear to be breathing either. He got down onto the ground next to her and tried to shake some life into her but it didn’t work.
	“Jenny. Jenny, wake up.”
	He looked around the yard and saw a hose nearby hooked up to a sprinkler. He remembered how last weekend he and Jenny had run through it with their swimsuits on and how happy they were, and then he remembered a story his mother had read to him once about a princess who had cried over a dead prince and when her tears had struck his cheek it brought him back to life. He ran over to the hose and disconnected the sprinkler, but because he was afraid his parents might get mad if he made a puddle in the backyard he first dragged his sister’s body into the pond before turning the water on. The hose didn’t quite reach far enough but he was able to put his thumb in the stream as he had seen his father do in order to get more pressure and that allowed it to reach her. Soon a pool began to form around her. It reminded him of when they took a bath together and how they had a rubber ducky and he would put it under the water and one time when he let it go it floated up and smacked him in the chin. His sister thought that was funny and laughed, and he laughed, too, and now he laughed again at the thought of it. And that’s how Joe’s parents found him: pouring water from a hose onto the corpse of his dead sister, and laughing.

Wolfgang Wright is the author of the comic novel Me and Gepe. His short work has appeared in numerous literary magazines, including Short Beasts, The Collidescope, and Waccamaw. He doesn’t tolerate gluten so well, quite enjoys watching British panel shows, and devotes a little time each day to contemplating the Tao. He lives in North Dakota.

Flights

Alone in their idleness, 
two old friends thirsting for company
go to a local warbirds display

at a local airport, share
arcane knowledge of engine 
displacements and top speeds,

afterwards, down flights 
of beer, swap family fables,
fly back to empty nests.


The Long Ride

Spring-- a flurry 
of wheels and gears,
tuneups, new shorts, 
 jerseys, tires and turbes,

then mile after mile 
of training rides,
small towns 
nameless roads. 

In June long days 
for riding and camping 
while strangers ask about
a pop-up city of bicycles. 



Mercy
 
I gaze into my 
brother’s glazed eyes, 
search his face

for recognition as I hear 
the rasping
of his oxygen mask.

I press the stony
silence of his 
unshaven chin

fan five fingertips 
against his marble forehead.
I pause, count

my breaths, pray.
When will I see 
the goodness of  the Lord?

Frank C. Modica is a retired teacher who taught children with special needs for over 34 years. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Dust Poetry, New Square, Sheila-Na-Gig, and Lit Shark. Frank’s first chapbook, “What We Harvest,” nominated for an Eric Hoffer book award, was published in the fall Of 2021 by Kelsay Books. His second chapbook, “Old Friends,” was published this past December by Cyberwit Press.

*

texture of tears in a quiet forest

the crunch of leaves underfoot

crunching bones underfoot

cemetery forest at dusk

 

***

intertwined fingers

bodies intertwined

the sky fell on their heads

sun hid

night of pleasure

night for pleasure

 

***

the bird imagined flying and flew away

a man on the edge of a precipice imagines a fall

 

***

I spit

out

myself



***

you look like winter

snowflakes fall on the wounds 

on the eve of christmas



***
Do not warm black milk with your palms
The night on the head or the solar furnace of tears above the head
Do not stir up silent heartfelt cries

When the language symbols climb out, you can't put them in prison
When language symbols turn into a prison, you can't go wrong
When the dawns end with nights, you will no longer pray

Close your eyes to see Narnia
Close the dawn with unspeakable patience


***
borrowing secrecy in the barren forest
my throat is very red for blood
other people's tears are too clear not to die


***
Hug stealers
Search for hands all over the world
To cut them off

Heaven embraces everyone with
Silence


***
And you will be lucky to have a gray mouse that eats cheese
And for God's sake you will have a cat that sneaks through the kitchen

Asphyxiation of joy
Suffocation of tears -
On the first day after the war


***
birds in heavenly blood are looking for a bandage
the sky plays in madness and doubles in the eyes
of a person standing on the very corner of the abyss
near the shell crater

***
Revenge of madness
Little gophers of construction in the palm of hopes

Guns screamed
The end of all roads
We swam out to drown
The only prospect is waiting
(Tipton Poetry Journal)

***
Before-rain before-fear more than the skill before the heart
Anabioses of lame handwriting in the notebook of phobias
Involuntarily the rituals of movements turn into a prayer book of memories
The constant of terrorist attacks of heart contractions
Who will not wake up in the morning next time?
To whom did you extend your logos last night?
Multibillion-dollar humanity
Eons of yawning
Indifferent postcards of tears during the military occupation
(Tipton Poetry Journal)

***
a stone is a ruin
again
a stone is only a ruin
(Tipton Poetry Journal)

***
spring came to the sapper mine
dogs howl
birds come from the south



***
meat chops scream
in a dream through the stomach
grass grows slowly
invisibly inaudibly


***

Birds without trees
All over the world



***
My brother is Brutus
And the sky noticed it too
Otherwise, why am I walking down the road after breakfast and it's dark around
(Asam Smith Journal)


***
we are going on the road
in search of a warm spring
butterflies will show us the way
(Asam Smith Journal)


***
every second i look in the mirror and see god
every second in the sky I see god

snowflakes flying in the air
my freckles have disappeared in the mirror image
(Crank)


***
Old-fashioned tragicomedy

armor protects the soul with the body
and the bombs are flying
*
sky mountains
sky sky
sky people
how many differences
and the sky is only one
*
tangerines in winter feeling of hopeless procrastination when your favorite pornactor dies inside you
(Corvus Review)

***
Houston, you're in trouble
The gypsy's prediction did not come true
And a lot has happened
Ever since someone jumped off a bridge

The dew from under the eyes has not dried
Where did it all go
Where does it all go
Republic of the Dusk Star
Your cold palms sparkling in the sun
Whisper that it's very cold

The sun has completely faded
The universe is tensed up
And lives in constant tension
around you ever since
How someone jumped off a bridge
At the same time, they started selling
Watermelons have risen in price this year
Note:
Strengthening the internationalization of economic relations between states and the deformation of the economy are possible causes of inflation causing food prices to rise
(Corvus Review)

***
My dog suddenly turned blue

My friend the groomer only sparingly said that he sympathized with my grief
No doctor or zoologist could help either
The psychological support service also did not help me
The dog looked at me sadly and pressed against my leg

It's been a day since my dog died
Exactly a day has passed since I imagine that my dog did not die, but only turned blue
Exactly a day passed like a day, I throw out the dog food from the bowl and pour a new one

My dog suddenly turned blue
(Quarter Press)

***
we have grown from the volume of pain-water into the drowned
lizards of minutes scatter
so what's now
(BarBar)

***
pain
pain
pain
pain pain
pain pain
pain pain
pain pain pain
pain pain pain
pain pain pain
pain pain pain
and now it's over
(BarBar)

***
Every morning
I suck my rifle's dick like
Тhere was no war
(BarBar)

***
After use
A liquid dripped onto the machine gun: blood or sperm?
(BarBar)

***
in the black box of the plane is stored the black night of the soul
we are not born on this day
we are not dead this day
we are not alive today
we are in eternal night in a dispute with God and Lucifer
*
the bird became foliage and flew away
what can the human soul compare to a bird?
we were born in silence by the trees
we were born in the foliage of whitman grass
we were born in the same body
we were born for hope
*
bird on a wire
church for parishioners
temple of nature
without walls
without years
*
snow says goodbye to me
I am silent
I melt with
the snow
*
the city is hunting for my footprints
I run underground
I am running
I am underground
(The big windows review)

***
Monthly centrifuge
Night conservation

Injured blizzards
Joking death
No hope
(Denver Quarterly)

***
The comet has no other
home than the universe
(Denver Quarterly)

***
Paragraph of the body cell
Breasts adorned with grape crowns to replace nipples
Men's ball eggs stole plums
Before hunger, refresh your eyes
In the middle of the night it transforms into a child and wets breasts in a bowl of milk
(Denver Quarterly)
 
***
Ytteria sweets.
It will be correct to cheat with you, not you.
(Denver Quarterly)


***
If your name isn't in Google
You doesn't really exist

It's nice to enter the river
It's nice to go out with her
It's nice to be yourself

Your name really can
To exist apart from you
Sit down check

It's nice to be on the tape
News when it's not criminal
Evening chronicle Imagine

Your name really can
To exist physically to have a body
Lungs heart

And the only thing he may lack
In this case
It's just you

INRI INRI Cura te ipsum

If your name isn't in Google
That doesn't exist for you
(Tipton Poetry Journal)

***
The street is the back of the moon
In the midst of her  life, McDonald's suddenly grew
And it grew into something like that
Which really can't exist

Wander the countless roads -
Is this our destiny?
Let's scratch the back of the head of the moon
Let's walk here for a year or a month

From here
On both sides of the long temple
McDonald's.

You don't think:
This city seems to want
To all people and streets
Did you leave him?
(Tipton Poetry Journal)

***
children making sand castles
adults making sand castles

high tide
(Neologism Poetry)

What’s Wrong with Liberalism?
Part One: The Problem

Wonderful and terrifying are many things, but none more so than man.
—Sophocles

By Christopher Bernard

Liberalism: The First, and the Last, Ideology


Ideas have always mattered, none more so than the ideas we assume without being fully aware of them. In company with such contemporary political thinkers as Patrick J. Deneen (whose book Why Liberalism Failed sparked this essay, though it is based on thoughts I have explored, at least peripherally, at least since the 1960s, and whose book Regime Change: Toward a Postliberal Future recently appeared), I would like to propose that, at the center of the many crises confronting the human species in the twenty-first century, lies an idea we take so much for granted it seems no more than reality itself; even more, that idea has become the foundation of our very sense of right, indeed of righteousness, whether we belong to the progressive left, the Trumpian right, or the middling center of the American political spectrum. To question it would seem not only irrational but morally wrong. It is beyond the pale for anyone to doubt it. Yet doubt it we may, and overturn it we must.

Because what drives many, if not all, of our crises – the climate emergency, collapsing biodiversity and the dangers to the global ecosystem, massive inequalities of wealth, neo-fascist political movements, the ongoing, even increasing, threats of nuclear and biological warfare, and the coming of artificial intelligence that, though it has been invented by and is entirely driven by humanity, threatens to destroy humanity – is precisely this idea. It is a political and social philosophy fully dominant in the world only since the fall of the Soviet Union, though its roots go back to the Renaissance.

This philosophy has various names, but the most popular, and the one with the longest lineage, is liberalism, at the core of which is the belief in the sovereign value of the individual over the social collective and of emancipation of the individual from all forms of non-consensual identity and obligation. In one word: the belief in freedom. 

Liberalism (and its economic counterpart, capitalism) has been called by such thinkers as Alexander Dugin (another critic of liberalism) the last remaining ideology, after the destruction of fascism in the 1940s and the collapse of Soviet communism half a century later. It is also the first ideology, the fundamental matrix of ideas from which much of what we call modernity was derived. Its roots go back to the 1600s, from Francis Bacon’s positing of the goal of knowledge as power and the dominance of humanity over nature, and Thomas Hobbes’s myth of the origins of political order out of an original chaos of violent individualism. 

It developed through Locke’s defense of human liberty, to the enshrining of liberal principles in the United States Constitution during the Enlightenment and the implementation of them in the capitalist economies of Europe and America through a blend of romanticized ideals and brutal realism that has come to define capitalist culture, and the flowering of liberal democracies that occurred periodically over the following two centuries. 

Liberalism faced and defeated communism and fascism in the twentieth century, at the end of which it was heralded as the only possible ideology for the future of humanity; the much derided “end of history,” about which the cynics, as so often, were proven right.

Today liberalism is once again being challenged – in one of history’s many nasty ironies, its economic driver is turning against it, in the various forms of authoritarian capitalism in China, Russia, Hungary, Poland and elsewhere. 

Yet even the most authoritarian forms of capitalism are premised on assumptions at the core of the liberal ethos: the emancipation of human power and the sovereignty of humanity over nature. Humanity comes first: the world, the universe itself (or, to use a simpler word, nature), is a resource for human consumption and liberation – and nothing more. Or, when nature proposes itself as our ontological equal, even our master, setting limits to the human will to mastery – and, after all (a fact we like to forget), nature created us – at that point it becomes our enemy.

The result has been two and a half centuries of prosperity – a creation of wealth and an assertion of power – such as humankind has never seen, and hardly dared to dream, except by megalomaniac emperors and delirious poets. And we now know its dark result: our success is in danger of causing our own dethroning by forms of artificial intelligence that may come to dominate and even eliminate us, or an even more ignominious extinction as we poison the one planet we know can sustain life, with the waste products of our success: we are in danger of drowning (as my late partner often predicted) in our own faeces.

In another of history’s lessons in irony, two of the doctrines that define liberalism – equality and liberty – have led to their very opposites: levels of inequality never seen in history and a sense that we are locked into a destiny from which we cannot escape, whether it is the climate catastrophe or the dominance of humanity by AI, the rising of the oceans or the sixth great extinction. Never has it become clearer that your liberty is my tyranny and your success my destruction – and we are locked in a combat neither of us can win.

*

How did this horrific, and, frankly, insane, outcome happen? I believe I can speak for most of my readers when I claim that none of us would have deliberately planned such an outcome simply as a result of living as we wanted. Even the greediest or most power-hungry or most frantically celebrity-seeking are not actually suicidal in my experience – though some are, clearly, psychopathic and would be doing themselves and the rest of us a service if they could be persuaded to undergo even the most interminable of therapies or secured in a humane mental institution.

The short answer is that liberalism made a bet – and lost. That bet was on the essential rationality of human beings (a bet, curiously, that the last liberals still standing, economists, still make, though with increasing desperation): that, if human beings are ensured equality of opportunity and liberty of thought, expression, and action, they will work out a set of arrangements for living together that will lead to the greatest happiness of the greatest number – in the kindest of liberal dreams, for everyone. 

Liberals also convinced themselves that human evil – human selfishness, both of the individual and of the group, and the hatred and fear that result – is not radical or existential; that it is a result of faulty social and political arrangements and therefore can be corrected by the same means. And so what was important was getting those arrangements and the rules governing them right; with that, and an emphasis on liberty and equality as described above, society can only improve over time in its goal of decreasing human suffering and increasing happiness.

Liberalism is in many ways a beautiful, endearing, and almost childishly optimistic political philosophy and, as such, has much to recommend it. If there ever was a faith-based philosophy, it is liberalism. It makes many a religion look cynically materialistic. And there is in fact a great deal of human evil that can be neutralized through social and political reorganization. Liberal democracy, for example, has been far better than autocracy when it comes to stimulating human flourishing and decreasing human suffering, at least over that last two and a half centuries. There has been real progress – anyone who doubts it need only be shown the gigantic strides made in agriculture and medicine. If feeding humanity and curing and healing illnesses and injuries are in any sense good, then there is more good in our time than ever before.

Yet there is a problem here, as Plato’s Socrates pointed out: the fact we have saved more lives or made it easier to feed ourselves might have made it as much easier for human evil to prosper as human good. A man who almost died young from smallpox grew up to become a genocidal tyrant. A woman who almost died in childbirth or spent her life working the fields as a peasant later became a serial murderer, leaving behind a cemetery in her backyard.

Liberalism refuses to believe in the centrality of evil in human beings – and by “evil” I mean the delight in destruction, in death, for its own sake. Liberals believe, or pretend to believe, that evil is ancillary to human nature, an aberration, a sickness, or caused by crude political or social arrangements, and that it will disappear of its own accord when we get social and political organization right. 

Yet a central problem of liberalism is that, however much it claims to respect science – and in particular, biology, sociology, and psychology – it is dedicated to an understanding of human beings that has long been obsolete. And dedicated liberals refuse to accept this. They insist on believing that human beings, as a group, can be counted on to respect facts and reason, and they see society as an arrangement of individuals whose only obligation is to empower them to live according to their personal choices and create their own sovereign identities, and let them work out their relations between each other consciously, deliberately, contractually – and, to use a controversial term that has become increasingly yfashionable, transactionally.

And this theory of humanity can work well – under limited conditions: namely, during periods of widely shared prosperity. Once the prosperity is over, liberal assumptions, and the promises they promote, collapse, and liberalism is in danger of being replaced by its evil twin and successor: fascism, the political revenge of the losers of liberalism and its economic driver, capitalism. Liberalism and its failures led to fascism in the early twentieth century, and they are leading toward similar political responses today, in the early twenty-first; indeed, many parallels between the two periods are uncanny.

It is easy to forget that the fascism of the twentieth century also was a democratic ideology: it was democracy against liberalism. And this is proof, if proof is still needed, that democracy is not, and never has been, inherently liberal. There is nothing in democracy that guarantees the rights of individuals. It is not unusual for democracies even to vote themselves out of existence, as nearly happened in the first democracy, Athens, and later in Rome: it was just this catastrophe that Brutus and his co-conspirators tried to stop when they assassinated Julius Caesar. But history has not been kind to them: rather than admiring Brutus as the tragic hero he was, many of us pity the dead Caesar. 

This terrible consequence of democracy happened recently in Tunisia, where the “Arab spring” of 2010 began, and where it has now ended in a very bitter winter.

Liberalism (and capitalism) also made another bet: that nature would provide an infinite supply of resources to satisfy human wants. And then there was the presumption that human wants could be satisfied. 

Tragically for our species, these bets and presumptions have gone wrong. Human beings are not driven primarily by reason and facts; we are drive by passion: greed, lust, hatred, fear. Nature does not have enough resources to satisfy eight billion humans – and human desires, in any case, cannot be completely satisfied; they are forever driven beyond every conceivable limit because they are essentially imaginary and have little bearing in the limited world of matter and energy whose final law is entropy. Humans are limited and mortal creatures with unlimited minds: we wish for three things that we can clearly conceive, imagine, and desire but that material reality cannot provide: we want to live forever, we want to be young forever, and we want to love and be loved forever. We cannot have any of these things, and therefore, we invent fantasies that will give them to us, if we are virtuous or believing, after we are dead; or, bitterly and resentfully, we “accept reality” and go after substitutes – money, power, sex, fame. But these substitutes cannot satisfy us. And the material world, which can supply only these things, and only for the few, cannot satisfy us. 

But that is all that liberalism can promise. It tolerates all religions because, at heart, though it pretends to respect them, at heart it respects none of them. Liberalism sets us up for hope but leaves us with despair; it promises life but leaves us with death. Kind-hearted as it is, when approached for solutions to the human condition, all it can offer us is the same beautiful but empty illusions.

Capitalism, liberalism’s economic avatar, must grow or die. We now know that economic growth is the key threat to our physical survival on earth. Once growth becomes impossible, or exiguous in the extreme, capitalism will die a natural death. Unfortunately, it may take humanity with it, because capitalism is essentially amoral in its relentless pursuit of self-interest. The political and legal supporters of capitalism created the corporation and later (in the United States) named it a legal person, although it is nothing more than an imaginary entity with legal rights; it now drives much of the world’s economy even though it can, theoretically, succeed even if all human beings die in the process. The combination of the invention of artificial intelligence with the making of corporations legal persons makes AI’s conquest of humanity an almost inevitable outcome. 

Liberalism made another bet it appears to be losing: that there is a necessary link between liberalism, capitalism, and democracy. But, as already mentioned, capitalism no longer needs liberal democracy; in fact, it has long feared democracy and only partnered with it in the decades-long conflict with communism. Liberalism has been the basis of the increasing democratization of such capitalist countries as the United States; after the bond between liberalism and capitalism is broken, it may only be a matter of time before both liberalism and democracy go the way of fascism and communism, leaving behind what one might call “neo-feudal capitalism” before the possibilities of economic growth reach the limit of earth’s resources, and the most irresistible of forces meets the most immovable of objects.

So, what is the way out of liberalism and the preconceptions on which it is based, while retaining the real good liberalism helped grow and flourish? No one wants to return to any form of authoritarianism – except of course the authoritarians! No one wants to lose the hope of freedom and the decency of equality excepts for the monsters we have unwittingly bred. So, how can we root out the preconceptions of liberalism that have created the dilemmas we are facing, and build a new understanding of the world in which humanity must live, of the role of life in the world, the role of humanity in the ecosystem of life on Earth – and the role of the individual within humanity?

Prometheus and Pandora

The preconceptions of liberalism are deeply embedded in Western and now in world culture: they are rooted in medieval scholastic philosophy, in particular the nominalism of William of Occam (as noted by the controversial Russian political philosopher Alexander Dugin), the materialism of Democritus, and, ultimately, Aristotle’s philosophical responses to Plato. Liberalism continued to grow with the Enlightenment and the industrial revolution to display the nature of human choice and the power of human will when coupled with an empirical investigation of the world in the sciences and the practice of instrumental reason in modern technology. 

The result is that liberalism freed human powers as never before. Liberalism became the Modern Prometheus (as Mary Shelley subtitled her prescient romance Frankenstein). But it also let free the evils of humanity, in the doctrines of Bernard Mandeville’s notorious “Fable of the Bees” and Adam Smith’s doctrine of the invisible hand – and liberalism incautiously opened Pandora’s box.

It is an open question which of these will prevail, the heroes of Prometheus or the evils of Pandora. If the evils do, there will be no future for us of any kind. Or perhaps they will be locked in a stalemate until Earth’s limits are met and put a halt to the pathological growth of capitalism, causing the death of capitalism and its liberal ethos, if not worse for humankind.

In any case, whatever triumphs have been achieved by Prometheus’s heroes, once Pandora’s box has been opened, it is exceedingly difficult to force the evils back in again. In many cases, the heroic triumphs have become the evils.

Item 1: Liberalism has displayed definitively that our social, political, and cultural relations can be changed by deliberate acts of will. Once we realize that, it is impossible to see social relations of any kind as sacrosanct and unchangeable, even if that were the best attitude to have for most human beings in most times and places. 

Item 2: Liberalism has shown that our relations with nature can also be changed by acts of human will. This has the same effect: we can no longer see nature as sacred – that is, until we find a boundary in nature we dare not cross without threatening our own survival. This today may finally have happened, with the multiple threats to the global ecosystem caused by our own acts: it is not too far-fetched to see nature as taking revenge on the hubris of one of her creations. 

Item 3: Liberalism takes pride in its attack on the sacred in any form whatsoever. Everything must be secularized – which often means reduced to its smallest material roots. Only the lowest common denominator has intellectual respect: the quark, the string, the drives of selfishness, sex, aggression, fear. Contempt has become a driver of understanding, and reverence is ritually abused. The spiritual result is nihilism, just as the political result is fascism. And the philosophical result is the professionalized, weaponized sophistry of postmodernism when reason takes its final revenge: against itself.

Item 4: The faith that liberalism has cultivated in the scientific investigation of the world has undermined, not only that humans have a significant role to play in the universe, but even the belief that we are fundamentally rational beings: we now know we are not entirely in control of our own wills, let alone our emotions or even our perception of the world – even intelligence is only a web of illusions some of which have better practical impact than others. In fact, we may discover we are in principle unable to understand the world as it is, given the mysteries of quantum reality at the subatomic level and of dark matter and dark energy at the level of the universe, possibly even a multiverse that exists along dimensions we can only guess but never directly perceive. Physics and psychology may have boxed us into a corner from which there is no way out but the blind babblings of a character in a play by Beckett. 

We have gained an inordinate power over our world and yet, at the same time, or so it seems, an incapacity to understand ourselves, the world, or even what we are doing. The tragedy of our kind looms as the tragedy of life on earth.

One answer to our plight has been a reassertion of Platonism, which, in the west, has been a typical response to Aristotelian excesses: the modern form can be found in the fundamentalisms of Christianity and Islam and the renaissance of religion across the globe, though this “cure” is in many ways worse than the disease, an anti-Renaissance attempting to resurrect pre-modernity, just as the Renaissance sought (though with more salutary results) to resurrect antiquity. 

Another answer has been an attempt to found a political philosophy on the philosophy of Heidegger in a continuing attempt to undermine the supremacy of the sciences. 

Many of us are desperate for a master, be it a religious leader or a philosopher, and what better master than someone whose obscurities can mean whatever one wishes them to mean, and whose lack of integrity, intellectual and otherwise, has made postmodernists from Derrida and Foucault to Žižek and Butler possible? Heidegger is a sophist of unreason. That his philosophy did not shield him from the seductions of Nazism should have placed him under permanent suspicion. But as Cicero said long ago, there is no belief so bizarre it has not been held by some philosopher. He would have known how to judge modern philosophy. His laughter rings down the centuries, liberating in its strangely hopeful skepticism. Here was a philosopher who knew not to take himself too seriously.

We will not soon know for certain how a post-liberal world will function before liberalism collapses. And we already see the outline of the collapse in the crises cited. An actuarial table was recently published that gave the likelihood of humanity surviving by the end of the next century if the current crises facing it are not solved: the likelihood, according to the table, is five percent. The global civilization based on liberal and capitalist principles will likely have collapsed long before then. 

But just as an individual’s life results largely from choices, so is the life of a society, a nation, and a civilization.
_____

Christopher Bernard is a novelist, poet and critic as well as essayist. His most recent book, The Socialist’s Garden of Verses, won a PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award in 2021. He is also a founder and co-editor of the webzine Caveat Lector.

Grant Guy is a Winnipeg, Canada, theatremaker and poet. He has 6 books published and his poems and satories have been published internationally online and as hard copy.He was the 2004 recipient of the Manitoba Arts Council’s Award of Distinction and the 2015 Winnipeg Arts Council’Making A Difference Reward.

Nothing Like a Genie


Christine’s eyes flickered like kerosene lanterns

vacillating between vibrancy & shadows.

 

Her Duchenne smile warmed icy hearts during days

without flames & navigated nights without star shine.

 

We knew she’s among us if we deeply breathed,

inhaling Hypnotic Poison perfume oil by Christian Dior.

 

Christine’s combustible temper exploded without warning

yet shillyshallied like an oil lamp on a floundering whaler.

 

She sought public affirmation when her glimmer softened,

hanging around cafés flexing round hips like a streetwalker.

 

Tender evenings by firesides, telling stories on barstools sustained

Christine’s good nature, attracting suitors—repelling disparagers.

 

 


Powder Down

 

Blue herons alight

on the wooden pontoon

gangly long toes touch down

exert diaphanous pressure

spread the same sparse webbing

that navigated salty marshlands

only moments before the siege

took to the sky resting on a raft

long enough to stand motionless

then stab fish with switchblade beaks.

 

Friends and I coax conversation, skreich

kut, kut, kut-kaaaoh…kut, kut, kut-kaaaoh! 

from the shoreline, distorting our arms

flapping imagined blue plumage on wings 

engraving wet sand with temporal footprints.

 

We marvel at their behavior,

mimic feathered digitigrade skeow calls

anew—muted by restless, crashing tides,

fall face first into surging waves

attempting to emulate the flock’s

balance, poise, and equilibrium

standing peg-legged, posing

like gender neutral Bolshoi divas

locked in graceful Pirouettes, bouncing

Ballonnés and breathtaking Arabesques.


 


Sunday Song & Dance

 

Brandon wore his dancing shoes to church

each week, ready to stand when others

sat down, anxious to praise his lord

with the old soft shoe while mumbling

mantras invoking the spirits of Bo Jangles,        

Rudolph Nureyev, Isadora Duncan, Gregory Hines,

& Margot Fonteyn—turning pivots, feeling

the fury of careening feet shuffling across floors

or standing on pointe, at one with a universe

cavorting in a sanctuary where parishioners

sang hymns in syncopated time, rollicking

down sacred aisles like Dorothy enroute to Oz.

 

 


Radio Daze

 

Hauling neighborhood kids in my crimson Radio Flyer

I misread love of a free ride as peer approval—

popularity defined by jokes, laughter & abuse.

 

Touching tired shoulders under sweltering Sahara

heatwaves, sweat chilling blistered cheeks,

my determined hands pulled two, three—four

siblings & their friends—as well as dogs & cats— 

over concrete driveways, though granite landscapes,

pea gravel backstreets, & smooth city sidewalks.

 

My passengers later asked about sidewalk surfin’

donated pairs of roller skates entrusting me to perform magic

& transform them to hipsters, nailing the hard steel wheels

to crudely cut plywood…bending spikes, securing

parts of the composite idem like an expert craftsman

often eyeing my ruddy 4-wheeler on end—neglected,

gathering dust, corroding behind a hot water heater.

 

I willed my pitted wagon—once smooth & cherry red—

to Grandma’s garden spirit that sat on stacked fertilizer bags

& roamed her barren vegetable patches planting seeds

of encouragement as her corporal body lay six feet under.

 

Below waxing crescents, compressed rubber wheels

ungreased ball bearings groaned & squealed yet again,

lugging cartloads of manure enriching dry, depleted soil;

I’d glance outside bedroom windows each harvest moon

witness her apparition towing my reclaimed Radio Flyer

to the curbside crammed full of buffalo gourds, cucumbers,

squash, zucchini, warty Jarrahdale & classic orange pumpkins.

 

 


Fog

 

Fog signaled Biblical obscurity,

established paranormal grey zones

            where imagination found literary footing

            rooted in Zeus’s mist spread in Homer’s Iliad,

            Percival’s Holy Grail quest, Hamlet’s Elsinore Castle

            rampart; gothic characters renewed foggy tales

from Catharine and Heathcliff on the moors,

to Poe’s sweaty lampposts in The Rue Morgue.

 

Black and white films featured Gypsy caravans

wagon wheels cutting through grey wash

            condensation, rolling over damp cobblestones

            passing hazy painted backdrops, searching

            for body parts, lost souls, and graveyard clues,

            evaluating each mad scientist’s prognosis

hidden behind scholarly guesswork, flashing

electrodes, frosty steam pipes, pea soup clarity.

 

Universal Studio’s horror movies aside

Hollywood fog immortalized Jack the Ripper

            terrorizing Whitechapel’s murky streets,

            glazed over moody train station lovers, had

            Claude Raines and Humphry Bogart disappear

            into ebon veils that hung like airport vapor screens,

Casablanca dry ice melting as they anticipated

the beginning of an enduring friendship.

 

In the permissive 70’s, Adrienne Barbeau

enjoyed a love affair with fog, its damp caress

            featured the actress’s womanly assets to her

            best advantage, dropping like affectionate

            dew drops on her forehead lighting up brunette

            hair like a damp diadem or angelic halo;

groaning as she escaped the lighthouse with a golden crucifix

vengeful revenants returning as fog, decapitating a priest.

 

 

An award-winning author, poet, and former Evergreen Valley College English Professor, Sterling Warner’s works have appeared many literary magazines, journals, and anthologies including Danse Macabre, Trouvaille Review, Lothlórien Poetry Journal,Ekphrastic Review, andSparks of Calliope. Warner’s collections of poetry include Rags and Feathers, Without Wheels, ShadowCat, Edges, Memento Mori: A Chapbook Redux, Serpent’s Tooth, Flytraps, Cracks of Light: Pandemic Poetry & Fiction 2019-2022, Halcyon Days: Collected Fibonacci (1923)—as well as Masques: Flash Fiction & Short Stories. Presently, Warner writes, hosts/participates in “virtual” poetry readings, turns wood, and enjoys retirement in Washington. 

The sun’s orb resembled a mosque’s dome rising in the east. Palm-tree columns and smoky columns from burning rubber met a roof of light whose magnitude belittled our delusions of control, Tariq beside the driver, Marwan behind Tariq, James and I on the third seat, the non-English-speaking driver taking an unforeseen route, the usual driver replaced that morning. Instead of charging down the Baghdad-Amman highway we were in the heartland of horror.    

Tariq said: “I’ve got no idea why we’re here.” 

A dead dog’s roadside head, facing away from its paws, epitomised horrid inevitability.

“Imagine,” James said, “if the normal driver wasn't sick.”  

A town rose over asphalt’s converging edges. Palms towered over low buildings. Fast-rising, black-smoke pillars, inexplicably ascending from flaming tyres, evaporated into celestial ambivalence.     

“I think,” Tariq said, “it’s Falluja.”     

Orange flashed in a hole in a fence, gas veins sucked up into permanent annihilation. 

Blue, red, yellow, and green doors, men in white, women in black, people rimmed with light; multicoloured minarets, rusting cars, bleating horns, a long traffic island, criss-crossing pedestrians, honk-bleat, mono-syllable traffic language honking, bleating. 

I gawked through a crack between my window’s curtains, my nose meeting glass. A girl’s ivory corneas slithered with surprise when seeing me. Mica-island dots floated shocked in her eyes’ milky lakes. I thought. Girl–don’t say anything! Why did I stuck my stupid face against this glass!  

She was on the traffic island, a baby in her arms. James drew his curtains. The baby, wrapped in the same fabric the girl was wearing, resembled a reference to an inevitable future, our futures now unclear. We sat in gloom. Metal glittered outside in sharp light.

The girl looked away. My temples ceased pumping. 

“It’s Falluja,” Tariq confirmed. 

War places places on the map by blowing them of it and Falluja was again on the map. 

Traffic lights ahead. Concern fizzed in the lake of hope that desire had excavated in my head. Lights green. We shouldn't have been in Falluja! Who the hell was this driver!?    

“Sometimes,” Tariq added, “the Americans close the highway. Maybe that’s why we’re here?”

The real reason, I feared, was because the driver had masterminded infiltration.      

One by one, cars shot past green. People were on the traffic island beside the road, lights green. Two men’s faces were covered by red scarves, lights green. Thin slits in the scarves sat above the men’s eyes, lights still green. A glimmer appeared where an eye should have been, lights still green. My lake temples boiled. Lights still green. The car ahead of us shot through, lights orange. The driver accelerated. Temple-lake steam thickened. Lights red! The last vehicle through! A gap opened behind us. James hissed: “What are we doing here?” 

“Having fun,” I replied.

Beeping, honking fume-exhaling cars bleated arcane speech. 

We left the main street, houses twenty metres from the road, streets again unpopulated, vision less checked. A swirl disappeared on the lake’s surface where that fizzing had been, newness again attractive, passing jade-coloured minarets like stems of exotic plants, the green bulb between two stems displaying white and yellow tiles beneath blue, green, and gold on the mosque’s walls. The people entering the mosque resembled colourful specimens lured into a wondrous plant.

A tank turret faced us. An armoured vehicle beside the tank. A black soldier’s eyes’ whites–like ivory in ebony–became even more ivory with amazement as our eyes passed, thin glass separating our corneas, his ivories shining astonished in black. 

We were as ignorant as he was as to why we were there. 

“A short cut?” Tariq suggested. 

“The driver must know,” James replied, “what’s happening here?!”

“I hope not,” I said.

Marwan cackled. 

Two tanks, separated by a dirt traffic island, spun and faced us with perfect synchronisation, an armour dance, exoticism obliterating my concern. 

The driver darted onto the island. The tanks brushed past on each side of us, vision blocked by dust. Disappearing dust revealed machine gunners poised to shoot from the tanks’ tops. Eyes, like stagnant pools of coldness, stared down at me; a gun barrel faced my window. No sympathy, intrigue or compassion coloured the machine gunner’s irises. Buoyed by thermals of hot information, I floated in wonder. 

Death happens just like that. 

“This,” James said, “isn’t the highway.”

We returned to paved road. I still felt elated because of those spinning tanks. I had never imagined such bulk being so nimble, wonderful seeing the unimaginable–sometimes.    

Women in blue wearing pink headscarves were whipping black-and-white cows up an incline. Dawn’s violet ringed Earth’s lip. A woman in burgundy-pink apparel emerged from a palm grove. Yellow dates hung under the trees’ boughs like golden eggs under mothering branch arms, colours colliding gorgeously before rainbow horizon bands. Buzzing with gladdened fulfilment, I now didn’t care about the highway. Maybe soon I’ll regret this. But I’m going to love it before I do.

An oil tanker slowed us at a bridge at the Euphrates, morning’s blurred eye reflected with fuzzy palms in the river’s pale-blue glass. Tightening wire-time strapped us in, opposite-direction, bumper-to-bumper drivers observing us like cats observing humanoid chickens, unshaven, sharp, cold, feline faces spouting whiskers, steely curiosity glinting on dark faces. The traffic crawled. Faces stared. The tightening wires snapped on the river's other side when we accelerated, leaving the tanker behind.

We followed the river, relief like cruising at high altitude, men wearing white under palms on the other bank, heads wrapped in red-and-white scarves. The palms’ Bangalore-tube trunks produced green eruptions; worry obliterated by exoticism’s cleansing alleviation. Mosque domes, amid high palms, sparkled with elegant tastefulness. Pleasure and wonderment struck again before the magnitude of Iraq’s tourism potential, like a brilliant future emerging from a troubled past. 

Vehicles, rushing along the distant, umbilical-cord highway, flashed into the horizon, their occupants escaping with fascinating information–and soon we would be joining them.

But the driver, leaving the umbilical cord, joined a queue entering a petrol station, relief disappearing like those smoky columns into an engulfing sky. Our mouths sagged open. He, I thought, dismisses reality! 

Two other queues were waiting. Only people were moving inside the station, cars still, the people inside the cars also still. Only men, with heads covered by scarves, were wandering around–carrying guns! 

James gasped: “Jesus!”  

Tariq, raising his hands, said: “The petrol gauge is almost on FULL.”

His forehead furrowed. 

The gun-carrying men wandered, observing. The station’s roof produced a rhombus of darkness, the highway like false hope disappearing into the horizon. 

My temples simmered, vision sharpening and hazing simultaneously. I now yearned for boredom, for what normal people adore–predictability. What a turnabout in thinking! I had spent all day oscillating around a thin line of difficult-to-sustain, rewarding sensibility, abstractions removed, feeling a purity of emotion like being a part of nature. Now I was feeling too much like a part of nature! Often my mind had sat contented on that line, but you never know how close intolerability will get, and the potentially intolerable–in this unpredictability–was now making dullness attractive. Maybe, I thought, it’s better having a coward’s imagination, for this restricting blessing would be an intelligent restraining device, like morality. 

“Marwan, lay my jacket down,” Tariq said.

The Western jacket screamed against Marwan’s window. Tariq’s left arm, along the back rest of the vehicle’s front seat, exuded pretentious relaxation. Marwan laid the jacket down slowly–no fast movements. James and I drew our curtains slowly, gloom our only protection. Only our eyes shifted in our still heads. 

I hissed: “If something happens, and I survive, I won’t be responsible for my behaviour.” 

My lips hardly moved.

I was referring to the driver’s mutilation at my hands. He was risking our lives for cheap petrol, Jordan much more expensive than Iraq, risking death to make quick bucks–assuming he even knew the risks existed!

The armed men stared, James’s left-right-then-back-again eyes glinting, his head still. Subdued amazement smeared his stony face. Stacked-up seconds battled to break through uncertainty’s barrier. 

James hissed: “Idiot!”

Who was this driver? Nobody can be trusted here! Everyone could be a killer! Especially him! 

Speculation swayed my mind, howling possibilities creating blustery cerebral clashes, everything focussed down tight, like staring into wide-lens binoculars. 

Tariq, gesturing, expressed: Another place? The driver waved this off, shaking his head, the driver client and supplier simultaneously–a new venture in business practise.

“Just when I thought we’d made it,” I said, “we get a trendsetter in exotic business practices! We’re paying him! He’s supposed to be doing what we want!”

James groaned. One of those scarf-hidden faces filmed before Arabic slogans–groomed to heighten martyrdom’s mounting mountain–knocked on the driver’s window, the “martyr” clutching an AK-47! That gun, with its bony metal braces, resembled a steel skeleton, a cold, bony instrument of annihilation creating cold, bony skeletons. 

Molecules, previously unknown, swum up my veins. They felt like the transparent blue spheres of deep-sea creatures. Now I understood terror. The spheres shrunk my ego, sucked, by foul information, into nothingness. My name was supposed to get etched into history’s bedrock through my unusual experience. Because I was supposed to live long enough for this to happen, my possible impending death attained the sad grandeur of tragedy–at least to me. Dying prematurely, without my "vast potential" getting itself realised, smashed all other considerations as I plunged into microscopic insignificance.    

The driver’s window fell. James whisper-hissed “Idiot!” like steam escaping from a crack in a pipe, Head Scarf Head persistent with inquiry–a head full of what? Eyes gleamed in the split in the scarf that covered Head Scarf Head’s face. The only visible part of his body were those gleams, James mumbling: “Gawd…” Chemicals swirled like one of those black smoky columns from my feet to my temples, a coiling dread-snake slithering around my heart, squeezing it, Head Scarf Head, of machinegun Arabic, splattering words, driver hands rising exasperated, Tariq staring straight ahead, Head Scarf Head facing Tariq, chemicals sweeping from my feet through my legs and exploding in my head. We resembled street entertainers specialised in immobility. The driver’s hands and head shook again before he tossed them up with recondite annoyance. Was a deal involving us now off? 

The driver grabbed the steering wheel. We reversed, swinging around. Then: hollow swat, tight-drum-skin boooom….our roulette-wheel eyes spun, dumb-surprise gapes…A round?....Tariq said: “He was trying to buy petrol! And a car backfired!” We yelled: “A car backfiring!!” The van shot past the burnt skeleton of an upturned bus that resembled the fossil of a creature that had withered aeons before, our Nile-relief laughter flowing amid parched earth. 

“Petrol!” the vehicle streaming down the highway. “A car backfiring! Haaaaa!”

We cruised under heavenly vastness. The space now had the levitating beauty of a precious gift. A gigantic horizon rimmed the desert. Relief loosened our limbs. Our heads lolled between wakefulness and sleep. Glinting-dot traffic, a moving diamond necklace, fell over the earth’s edge. The speck of the most distant vehicle glinted where hazy barrenness met gargantuan heavens. 

Pylons, twisted into frozen-melt falls by air attacks, lined the road. 

James, who real name was Jamal, said: “I’m now worried about my visa.”

He smiled self-deprecatorily. He was Indian. He didn’t have a visa for Jordan. 

“You really would be worried,” I replied, “if they shot people for false entry.”

Half-melted pylons disappeared and reappeared behind his grinning face. The road narrowed where buildings, like ivory nuggets at the base of an enormous sapphire dome, dotted the horizon. Those buildings possessed for James a significance that disassociated them from the past, James’s present expanding, future contracting, nuggets expanding. We shot straight at them.

A goat herd throbbed like a moving black carpet. The driver pulled into a petrol station. The carpet halted besides the station’s paved surface, the border just ahead. The driver removed plastic containers from the vehicle’s boot. 

The goat herder filled a bucket with water so his goats could drink. The orderly way the goats took turns to drink unconsciously mocked human greed. 

The driver filled his containers with petrol. We stretched our legs. 

“He loves petrol,” James said.

“Imagine if the Jordanians confiscate it all,” I replied.

“They might,” James said.

“He’d go crazy.”

“He already is.”

Between two border fences was a refugee camp of tents bordered off by barbed wire. Women wearing overcoats and headscarves moved between the tents, their fabrics shimmering like precious stones against tent whiteness. The camp was divorced from normal chronology. You could feel it; it wasn’t just a staging post between more fluid physical states, but an incident freeze that fate had absorbed into the giant-backdrop sky. Time in that camp had geological scales. 

“Refused entry,” James said, referring to the refugees. 

We passed the first fence, stopping beside a hut. The driver asked for our passports. James wanted to get out. He leant forward, hands on the top of the facing backrest. His nose almost touched the backrest. There wasn’t a door adjacent to our seat.

“Don’t worry,” Marwan said. “The driver will take care of it.”

Marwan’s unflustered casualness suggested destiny was in the hands of Almighty Good. 

The driver entered the hut with our passports.

“Please!” James insisted.

James believed his destiny was in the hands of Almighty Earthly Influence. 

“It’ll be alright,” Marwan said.

“Please,” James continued. “I really have to get out.”

Marwan let James out. James raced into the hut, clutching a letter from the Indian ambassador obtained through a family connection. I followed him into the hut’s gloom. A man shrouded in half-light behind a desk looked stripped of sentiment. A fan swished. A map of Jordan covered a wall. The man was studying James’s passport. 

James said: “Excuse me sir, I’ve got a letter from the Indian ambassador.”

The man read the letter. He was formal, but relaxed, eyes solid with concentration. His facial expression didn’t change. 

He said: “I’ll fax the letter to the authorities in Amman for verification.”

“Thank you,” James replied. 

“How long are you intending to stay?” the man asked.

“Two days,” James replied. “I’ve got a flight from Amman to Madrid.”

“Can you show me the ticket, please?”

James dashed back to the vehicle, relieved his destiny had returned to his mitts. We were too rational to believe in universal protection–hence we had rational fear. James had a long stride for a short man; he used it to the full while returning to the hut, stretching out with the purposeful enthusiasm controlling fate induces. The letter was in the fax machine. The man studied the airline ticket; then said: “Thanks.”

The fax machine fell silent, the fan humming like summer lethargy.

“It’ll take a few minutes,” the man said. 

The driver, drinking tea beside the fax machine, possessed the inoffensive distance of one pursuing vital business. Being in the oil business makes all other activities irrelevant as any oil man can tell you.

The black moustache on a man in a white ensemble on a chair outside the hut contrasted vividly with his apparel, his red headscarf lurid against the hut’s whiteness. Smoking a shisha, he was as sedate as the desert. James paced around in front of him. The curious, non-judgemental pipe smoker observed the pacing James, fretting foreign to the pipe smoker as terror had been to me only hours before.  

James, hearing the fax machine, dashed back into the hut. The immigration officer, studying the response, remained mysteriously impassive. Concern's leaf-structure pang sprang inside James’s head–or, at least, it appeared that way to me. The immigration officer’s distance was joyless, no desire to help or hinder.    

He picked up a stamp, silence engulfing fan humming. Light from the door left the man’s eyes aglow with lifeless sparkles as if the hut’s gloom had drained those irises of enthusiasm; repressed intransigence could have ignited into something regrettable had any false moves been made by James who observed the stamp with that look that dogs have when they suspect that their food bowls could be filled. The threat the bureaucrat offered to Jamal’s immediate future altered Jamal’s perception of time, trapping him in refugee-camp abeyance, feeling he could have ended up in that camp, separated from progress.

Fear gushed out of him when the stamp struck his passport. The wheels I had imagined spinning in his temples stopped as his stamped passport re-entered his hands. The refreshing light he drifted back out into made things look younger.                                               

In the vehicle, we headed towards another white building where men in blue uniforms were waiting for us. James’s head fell against our seat’s backrest. He glanced out a side window. A self-absorbed disassociation from possibility left him incurious with contentment. The uniformed men’s black moustaches made hairy crescents upon their faces. 

We had to get out with our possessions, the driver instructed to place his vehicle over a rectangular hole. A man entered the hole through a door. A metal detector swept over the vehicle’s underside. 

Was the driver making Molotov-cocktails? I imagined the man in the hole discovering bottles pasted to the vehicle’s underside.

“He’s just seen Molotov cocktails,” I said.

James hid his amusement. 

“He combines driving,” I said, “with Molotov-cocktail manufacturing.”

Marwan and Tariq were asked to enter another hut with the documents and disks they had brought with them from Iraq, Tariq walking head down like a condemned man. Bureaucracy emerges from the territorial instinct. Everyone unknown entering a new space is suspicious until proven otherwise, the more important the space, in the minds of the occupiers, the greater the suspicion.

Tariq conjured up worst-case possibilities. Bureaucracy does that to consciousness, especially as he had to say–exactly–what was on the disks.

“You don’t know?” he heard.

“Only generally,” he replied.

“Generally–what do you know?”

“It must be information about our projects in Iraq.”

“And what projects are they?”

He explained.

“Okay. Wait outside, please.”

Tariq paced around, staring at the hut, terror now distant, like it had occurred to someone he once knew, who now faced paedophilia or planning-terrorism charges, torture and beheading again things that only occurred to others, circumstance elevating or relegating experience with subjective shuffles.

The driver’s hands flew in response to questions about the petrol filling his boot, his vehicle a powder keg. The immigration officer, concerned about a blaze on the road to Amman, listening with pleasant reasonableness, found the driver curious for the driver exuded a disarming oblivion that made the driver look harmless. With spirited determination, the driver convinced the officer that a rear full of petrol wasn’t dangerous, driver hands describing circles, Tariq staring, pacing, stopping, pacing, repeating: “Nawful–what did you put on those disks!?”    

“Don’t worry,” Marwan said.

Marwan breathed calmness. He and Tariq had prayed together in Nawful's house in Baghdad that morning. I had reached a conclusion: Only Marwan was a consistent follower of eternal optimism. 

We had to put our luggage through an X-ray machine. A conveyor belt entered a grey, metal box. Vents lined the box, other people ahead of us in a queue. 

A television monitor sat before a security officer’s face. The solid objects in other people’s bags made schematic representations of reality on a screen. Security is now big business, money made by creating schematic representations of reality in the minds of TV viewers, terrorism, like an oil field requiring exploitation, power’s latest money-making scheme. 

I relaxed until seeing a black plaque on the machine’s side. Crosses lay over a sign showing film. Tariq was still staring at the hut. I felt he had little to worry about: his staff would have been careful about what they had put on those disks. But it still didn’t stop him from staring.

“Don’t worry,” Marwan repeated. 

I raced to the other side of the machine. My backpack was moving on the conveyor belt towards the X-rays. I removed the film from my bag. The security officer confirmed my suspicions by saying: “Good idea.” I put my backpack back onto the belt. Bending over, I studied the vents inside the machine, trying to convince myself that the rays started past where my backpack had been. I couldn’t determine anything definitive because the purpose of the vents was unclear. Niggling fear arose–a great loss might have occurred! Dread smothered me. I may have lost photographs of a unique phase in history, radiation possibly having obliterated a “glorious” past. And what is death–total obliteration! And now, not directly confronted by real obliteration, I had become sensitive to trivialities, the ego smashing perspective, things swollen by narrowness. My photographs may have been destroyed! My very being may have been compromised! 

Tariq, still facing the White Hut of Fate, hands on head, muttered: “Nawful–what did you put on those disks!?” That hut had become a place of grave import in Tariq’s imagination, like a Versailles or a Reichstag, where he felt his future was being decided.

“It’ll be alright,” Marwan calmly insisted.

Tariq’s tight face quivered. I studied those vents. James looked around like a satisfied visitor. He had his visa. I needed evidence to sustain a desired view that had achieved monumental importance. I now had to endure a frustrating wait to discover if X-rays had obliterated a dramatic part of my past. I chastised myself for having been lax. I hadn’t controlled destiny when I should have. What an idiot I was! The fact that I had possibly survived being murdered now wasn’t enough for Fate’s goalposts had moved.  

A policeman appeared with Tariq’s disks. Tariq’s temples, if his eyes were any indication, seemed to throb like frogs’ cheeks.

“Here,” the policeman said. “Have a good trip.”

Boyish glints appeared in Tariq’s eyes. 

“See,” Marwan said. 

Marwan knew what follows death. He had it clearer than anyone I’d ever met, like a pebble of unbreakable consciousness washed smooth by belief’s caressing waves.                                          

“What a relief,” Tariq said.

I hoped to say the same after picking up my developed films; anything could bother me because permanent annihilation was for me the likeliest end, fretting hence inevitable when ideal illusions of destiny got hit.

I breathed again after collecting the undamaged developed films. That happened as two Americans got hung on that bridge near Falluja. I wondered who the driver had been.

Feeling truly lucky lifted me with volcanic grace as it should have when the Jordanians were checking us out. 


THE END