Kissing Patty McCalla						

Patty, Patty, Patty. When I was seven, all I could think of was Patty. Kissing Patty McCalla. Patty was the tiniest girl in our class, an itty-bitty version of Mary Tyler Moore. Dark hair, impish eyes, the best giggle. For picture day she wore a bright red jumper with chartreuse green leotards and white glossy vinyl Mary Janes. She was the first in our class to wear glasses, but I liked her anyway, maybe more so because of them. 

I chased her around the playground at Elmwood Elementary, around the slide, monkey bars, and teeter totters. In the winter, when the slide iced up, the boys crouched at the top and let our hard slick shoes and gravity carry us precipitously down the metal and across the blacktop. Fledgling ski jump Olympians. (Not the girls as at that time all the girls wore dresses every day.) Some kid was always getting hurt. As skinned knees were a daily occurrence, the teachers kept antiseptic and Band-Aids at the ready. 

We played jets and parachutes on the swings, and once I fell out the back of a swing and passed out from whacking my head. My ejection seat failed to deploy. I wondered if Patty was watching. Mom was called and I ended up spending a night at Mercy Hospital with a concussion beside a boy a little older who had a heart murmur. I threw up twice in one day: once outside the car on the way to the hospital when we took my sister to Grandma Dearman’s. Mom wasn’t keen on leaving my sister there as Grandpa Dearman was a “mean old bastard.” (He was!) And later, because I threw up cherry Jell-O in my bed, it looked like I was bleeding to death. It gave the nurse a fright. I was amazed at how the nurse could change the whole bed while I was still in it. I was even more surprised when the nurse didn’t seem to mind at all unlike my mother under the same circumstances when I had the flu.

Every recess, Patty was there and those fifteen minutes twice a day were bliss. Though I was equally in love with my second-grade teacher, Mrs. Hennell, and wanted to please her by making paintings and practicing the cursive letters lining the borders of the chalkboards, my mind wandered to Patty two rows over and three seats down. I tried many strategies to sit near her in the reading circle. But at recess, there was Patty, right there beside me. I wasn’t interested in shooting marbles in the dirt or playing kickball with the other boys. 

The competition was too fierce. And dangerous. Running towards home, Tom Auger, a boy on my bus route, slid under the chain-linked fence, broke his leg, and spent the next six weeks in a body cast. Though he got behind in school, Tom would later be a high school football star. I was happiest playing with the girls and the other less athletic boys. Girls were more interesting more mysterious, than boys. Why play kickball when there was Patty? 

In return for my affection Patty kicked my chins. I came home once too often with black and blue and variations of purple and green legs. But I endured the pain because it was Patty, and she was my girlfriend – as far as I knew. Even though I begged her not to, Mom called Patty’s mom and they laughed together over the kitchen phone about our courtship. The shin-kicking eased up, but I rather missed the bruises. Mom said Patty probably liked me well enough but was just fickle. All I could think was fickle rhymed with and reminded me of pickles. I liked pickles, especially the little sweet gherkins. As usual, Mom did not define the new word or offer up a dictionary. 

There were other words like belligerent, incorrigible and insolent that stumped me, though no other grownup I loved used those words describing me. I had a notion of what the word unruly meant. Nine years later when I was driving and Dad was out of the house, on the last day of living with her, Mom threatened to declare me an unruly juvenile according to the Ohio Revised Code, Section 2151.002 – when she was “on strike” and wouldn’t cook, do laundry, or look after my little sister for weeks – wouldn’t allow me do the laundry – when I tried to get out the door with the laundry baskets and detergent – when I shoved her.  (Years later we learned that during Mom’s strike a budding molester down the street attempted to lure my little sister inside his house with candy.)

In the summer I missed Patty terribly. We exchanged letters even though we lived only three miles away. These were brief and repetitive as there wasn’t much to talk about in the dog days of summer and our large loopy handwriting didn’t allow for much elaboration. I wanted her to visit so that I might kiss her under the wild cherry tree in the meadow. I implored Mom and Dad to let me ride my bike down Martinsburg Road, a busy highway, to see her. 

After all, I rode to Gambier to get a haircut once, over that rickety bridge spanning the Kokosing River. It was a very bad haircut – crooked bangs, but I also stopped at the candy store on Wiggins Street and loaded up with Bazooka Bubble Gum and Three Musketeers. But then, maybe that trek occurred when I was ten or eleven. Kenyon College was there in Gambier and my grandmother was a cook at the dining hall for many years serving the long-hair kids from the East Coast. Grandma and Grandpa had a little dairy farm just outside the village where I spent much of my summers. 

My bike was an embarrassment as Dad bought it for me new just before the Sears Spyder and the Schwinn Sting-Ray models with the banana seats and the chopper handlebars came out. Mine was a gearless stylistic remnant of the 1950s – fire engine red with coaster brakes, too much chrome, and whitewall tires for god’s sake. None of the other boys in the neighborhood ever commented on my bike as they were generally polite kids, offspring of professors who taught at the very protestant and very evangelical Nazarene College just down the hill. John Taylor, who played a viola in the orchestra and would become a weather forecaster, had a gold Spyder Mark IV with caliper brakes, a leopard print seat, and a gear-shifter like Steve McQueen’s sportscar. 

I felt somehow that I was just a little less cool and was required to work harder at popularity as I was also Catholic and went to catechism on Sundays rather than Bible school. Their evangelical parents were suspicious of Catholics. No, in actuality, prejudiced. Maybe it was because I knew fewer rules and players’ stats in football – though I liked the Jets and Packers for some reason. Maybe it was because I was the only boy in the neighborhood who knew how to swear properly.

I lost track of Patty after fourth grade as, of course, there were other girlfriends: Brenda, Sherry, Robin, Melanie, Penny, Linda, Barbie. But Patty McCalla was my first obsession, and I was indebted to her for that emotional opportunity, the instantaneity of love, the purity of adoration before the animal desire of adolescence took hold. I am not sure I actually kissed Patty when we were seven – even on the cheek, let alone on the lips. I doubt we fully comprehended the procedure even though there was plenty of kissing on television in the old black and white movies at 4:00 on Big Ten Theater and even on Bewitched and The Brady Bunch. I am fairly certain we held hands a bit until it was no longer practical to do so. After high school, I heard she married Tom’s cousin, Dave Auger, and like everyone else suffered the tragedy of adult life. They had a little girl who ran out onto Sycamore Road.


David Sapp, writer, artist, and professor, lives along the southern shore of Lake Erie in North America. A Pushcart nominee, he was awarded Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Grants for poetry and the visual arts. His poetry and prose appear widely in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. His publications include articles in the Journal of Creative Behavior, chapbooks Close to Home and Two Buddha, a novel Flying Over Erie, and a book of poems and drawings titled Drawing Nirvana.

Rejoicing in the Lord
 
For: Olga Shearer

Psalm: 34:3 (NIV)- “Glorify the LORD with me;
   let us exalt his name together.”


My soul sings to the Lord, as the sun rise your closeness comes.  
I kneel at the foot of my bed and praise you Lord with joy.  
What a delightful song my heart sings in gladness to know you.  

I turn to you for you have healed my troubled soul by your love.  
Rejoicing in my salvation from the heaviness of a broken heart.  
Now there is gladness that I have come to know of your redemption.

I once was lost in the mist of pain and sadness for I had no hope.  
You spoke to me and give me hope by the gleam in your eyes.  
Your voice was soft, and your heart had warmth for my aching soul.  


My weary bones would have been crushed if not for your gentleness.
I turned to you for comfort and found rest and I rejoiced  
A pillow to lay my head and rest a weary mind to be restored.


My soul delighted in your salvation for all my sins were forgiven.

Random Musings about Submission

By Jacques Fleury

[Originally published in Jacques Fleury’s book You Are Enough: The Journey to Accepting Your Authentic Self]

Let’s just begin in
medias res…or in the middle of things…
You see, we had artistic differences,
I was the artist and they were indifferent…
“Thank you for your submission…” but I never 
Submitted!

At least not in the way that they wanted me to;
If I wasn’t fiscally challenged, I would board a jet plane
And head for a luge run at Saint Moritz Switzerland,
A psychotically dangerous sport;
Maybe they’ve driven me to psychosis!

Luge, a sport rooted in Germanic tribal wars against the Romans;
Bored aristocrats on vacation looking for a distraction;
Although I am distracted by my own tribal war here in America,
I am nothing like a bored and puerile aristocrat…
This landed me in a mawkish quagmire of self-pity;
In my mind I absconded into a journey of devilment to topple my torment;

Writing can be an exercise in discernment that you are inevitably
Obliged to submit for judgment; that is if you expect to make
An impact other than justifying your own derangement due to
Maladjustment…
“Your writing is not a good fit for our publication” was the nadir of my existence!!!
What did I write to warrant such specious offerings you may ask?
Well I wrote from the voice of an ignoble omnivorous muskrat
Whose sexual identify is non-binary;

Both a strumpet and a sthumpet!
And as an exponent of socio-political justice wrote hither and thither
An apocalyptic reverie about mutant muskrats;
A germane allegory or political fodder for the purpose of unveiling
pejorative prejudice;
Deciding to introduce a foreign element into an established
Yet insecure environment so to demonstrate the ensuing behavior
Of those who deem themselves superior;
The muskrat representing the only POC or person of color
In an all-white order where WASPS Rule!

WASPS being descendants of
Wealthy Anglo-Saxon Protestant Males
Feeling their long history of imposing their cultural values and
Socio-political power over “the other” that is
women and minorities…
Threatened by a neo-progressive era geared towards changing the status quo;
Clamping down on their suppression in retaliation to the
Nascent and unrelenting movement towards socio-political
And economic progression and equality
In this American Nation!

“Thank you for your submission
But your work is not a good fit for our publication…” 
Really?!
So here I am, randomly musing about not being chosen…
Am I just a titular poet?
A deuteragonist in my own story?
When do I get to be the protagonist hero despite my AFRO?!
When do I get to be the plucky character in epics akin to

19th century iconoclastic South African king Shaka Zulu whose heroic story depicted
How he united tribal factions to create notable states and powerful African identities…or even
Anglo-Saxon and French epics like Beowulf together with Le Chanson De Roland?
Or even the archetypal Mesopotamian great:
The Epic of Gilgamesh;
Regarded as the earliest prototypical literature and the second oldest religious text…

“Your submission is not on par with our vision…”
Really?!
Even in the midst of global
Dissention and division?!
So we had artistic differences…I was the artist and they were indifferent.

But I decided to muse about it to manufacture
My own moment,
Fashion my own non-contentious and all-inclusive literary faction,
Where ALL postulatory voices are worthy of publication;
Because the acrimony of exclusivity is
A damnation!
I will continue to submit but NEVER to their behest for 
Submission!!!

Near Where Reeds Sometimes Sway in the Wild Wind, (and of fields barns summer’s scenes, the mise-en-scene of pastoral worlds northern) (for Raquel)

there was a winding way, and it was beyond the towns where fields and farms lived and had lived for decades, for seemingly forever. I asked a soul why some of the horses had little or hardly any places to wait in the rain (though they had some), and others at different places had large and many shelters. she said that not all ranches, just because they are ranches, have the same amount of money. and it was a sunny and summer and calm day,- and the horses there, one brown and one white and one black, would pause so briefly and look at me as I passed by. that was another world, and I wondered what it would be like being borne into such a lifestyle. 

I glanced back leaving, and saw there as I did elsewhere the tall barns on concrete forms with old but curt and organized windows small and sometimes even large. sometimes the structures were faded and needed painting and even the forms, the concrete foundations,- spoke somehow of their age. if there were reeds or some kind of wild growths on the edges of such places I liked them very much. and if the wind announced itself suddenly and then even frequently and brought such reeds over or over and back and forth in the world, like they were all dancing or talking, well I liked that even more since the world was alive then. it was an okay day. they were okay days. there wasn’t a lot to complain about.

Isabel G. de Diego’ photo
MY GRANDCHILDREN PLAY AND DREAM 
ABOUT DINOSAURS

What joy! What happiness!
While my grandchildren play 
And dream about dinosaurs
I, at their innocent age
Played with El Jabato comics
Roberto Alcázar y Pedrín
Tarzan of the Apes
King Kong and Beauty
And Warlike Azañas 

Remembering that dwarf General
Who rode a horse
Followed by Moors riding donkeys
Whom the entire Church flattered
And walking him under a canopy
For the benefits received
Being a total serial killer
From this country called “my beloved Spain”
As Antonio Molina
The man from Malaga called him
Andalusian copla and flamenco singer.

The entire Church
For these graces received from the Dictator
Had an extreme love for children
Like that of donkeys or donkeys
Stop with its mouths.
Love that was allowed by children
Because they were indoctrinated by fascist mysticism
That swarmed through Iberia
And all of Europe.

Now, my grandchildren play 
And dream about Dinosaurs
Of strange names that they know by heart
With innocent contentment
Because they see themselves converted 
Into protectors of these
Pitting them against each other
In amazing fights
In dinosaur operations
Similar to those announced and seen sets
On the benches of the Congress of Deputies
That amaze everywhere
Thank God and his asses.

When I tell them to contradict them
And make them angry:

That Triceratops is called Jester
That Velociraptor is called Cambriles
That Diplodocus is called Capitol
That Brachiosaurus is called Pig
That Stegosauria is called Balam
That Iguanodon is called Borak
That Archeopteryx is called Spain

They get very angry, and tell me:
-Bobo (for grandfather), you are a fool.
You know nothing
Wanting to hit me hard in the belly
With the jaw of an Iguanodon
What his mother saves me from by telling them:
-Bad very bad. No, children, no.

You don't do that to grandpa.
They run away laughing out loud.
While I feel like I'm privileged
Having the glory of enjoying with them
Which are so charming.
The most beautiful in Iberia!

Because, at my age, thanks to them
They have made me a warrior with their Dinosaurs
And, thanks to them
 I am the King.
Because being it
So depends on the children.

-Grandpa, there are dinosaurs that talk.
-Yes my children, of course.
I look at them and think:
-The souls of children pass to the dinosaurs
While the souls of men
Become to madmen or cafres
With feelings of serial killers.

Furthermore, I tell them:
-Do you children know something?
-What thing? Bobo.
-That dinosaur milk is very medicinal.

-Isn't that right, mom?
-No, my children, no.
Your grandfather is a fool.
-Yes mom.
-The fool is not a dinosaur
He is a big gorilla.

-Daniel de Culla

PUMPING GAS

All Rick has to do to keep his job
is pump…and keep pumping.
Fear of life without a paycheck
turns to praise in his boss’s eyes.

It’s work that’s all brawn, no brain,
except for the torture of making the correct change
and it comes with a fancy uniform,
and a hat that he’s too embarrassed to wear.

In other states, drivers do this for themselves.
But not here. Not in Jersey. 
He can’t imagine himself living in Massachusetts.
He would fade away. He would die.

He even does more than is called for,
rubs a wet cloth across the windshield
like he once saw in a black and white movie.
Occasionally, someone’s generous with a tip.

He realizes there’s no future in what he’s doing.
The boss isn’t going to die and leave the place to him.
There’s only the present and, though it moves him forward,
it never gets ahead of itself.

But someone has to do what he does.
And he’s stuck inside the one that’s doing it.
“Fill ‘er up,” says the guy who just pulled into pump A.
Rick is the guy within hearing range.




THINGS TO DO IN PROVIDENCE

Marvel at your transformation
when you haven’t really changed.

Grow weary of the same routine
and then stick to it.

Ignore the jackhammering in your skull.
It’s permanent.

Play chess in the park while your worst enemy 
is getting laid off at a costume jewelry factory.

Dress differently 
so people will mistake you for a college student.

When you have a hell of a lot of explaining to do,
say nothing.

Take aim at all your preconceived ideas.
With a bow if possible. Make the arrow  stick.

Forget that search for happiness.
Hype up sadness instead.

Join in conversations.
Even when you’re alone.

Stand by your beliefs. Then move slowly, quietly, 
away so those beliefs don’t notice you’re gone.




THE FACE AS IT PRESENTS ITSELF

It’s an odd face.
Some people like it.
In one or two, 
it invokes pity.

It’s drawn to a mirror.
Which are the standout features?
What is in decline?

Old around the mouth
yet the eyes are young.
Cheeks unblemished
but one earlobe bears a scar.

What does it say 
about the mind and heart?
That’s where the trick comes in.
It can pose open-minded and wide-hearted.
Or it can slump into the opposite of these.

It retreats from the mirror 
and rejoins society.
Most smile because 
it’s back among them.
It turns from the ones
who shake their heads.




ON THE DAY HIS MOTHER DIED HER HAIR PURPLE

He left the house thinking,
“This time I’m leaving for good.”

He had no belongings with him.
He was just headed for the store.

But, to him, she looked ridiculous.
He could no longer invite friends back to the house.

No way would he be seen with her in public.
“Free at last!” he screamed in his head.

It was a warm clear day 
and the entire world was open to him.

On his walk, he saw other mothers.
Their hairstyles were age-appropriate.

None of them were an embarrassment to their children.
Some may have even had husbands.

At least, they looked as if they did have one
then they could keep him.

He returned home with the few items 
he picked up for her at the store.

He tried not to look at her when he handed them over.
But his eyes could not avoid her hair.

It looked like a serving of grape cotton candy.
He kept the change. It was his price for staying.




IN WAR AND PEACE

Soutine perished on the run
from the Nazis,
Freundlich died in the camp,
imagine being...
no I can't even imagine it.

I cuss the weather
when it's too hot to write poetry.
But trying to create something
in the middle of crazy, outrageous, bloody war?
I'd be in a foxhole
tapping out my next breath.

For every tortured surrealist
or Dadaist in a charnel house,
there’s me:

the same old crippled relationships,
damnable family life.

There are no guerrillas in the trees
outside my window.
No bombs drop on my rooftop.

I am safe from the enemy.
I’m most as risk
from the people I know. 


John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, North Dakota Quarterly and Lost Pilots. Latest books, ”Between Two Fires”, “Covert” and  “Memory Outside The Head” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in California Quarterly, Birmingham Arts Journal, La Presa and Shot Glass Journal.