Just That Damn—Bassoon!                                             

B-Bassoonios.

Blisterpeckmania mustafa come o-er me, officer, to plunge the knife fast and hard into this plank so many times. But I knew, and will tell you—as I have told all others I know to the point that I also know, yes—I know that’s why they’ll not have no to do with, no to do with me, nothing to do with me, not at all, because—I’ll sign-seal this ack anywax you want, to melt my signature over with, th’t she; didn’t love me. Didn’t want me.
Just that damn—bassoon! 

Play that big cylindrical, brick, Guatemonia! Play out for hot-damned, that damned brick! She got letters. She got letters. She got lots and lots o’ letters; see them showering down over, all over—just like some old TV a la Como—and, yes. She was even beginning to swipe out beyond her visions, to snag in some new ones to form; and, get this, m’ yes, get. This. Get this and get this; yes this; Pop big Bassoon Family Arkestra, she meant to call it. Retch! Or, mayhaps some ‘um of a son of a brass-banded sycophant said, Do this, and do it, do it, and all—and that would dig her under more deeply, but, what? Why, big officer? Here I am all just a-practice; all just a-practice, ta plunge my knife down, into this plank. My knife. Because in-because; didn’t love me. Didn’t want me.
Just that damn—bassoon! 

So; anyway. As I catch this breath, there, hey, gotcha—I ended up well, no. She it was left; and how it was, was that the spot where the long of her ‘assonio lay down encased safely i’ black every night, was morning, when—by luck I was moved to rise pre-fourayame t’ vomit—that the long where she left her instrumentinio every single day, now lay empty and I even double-checked after retching—like after retching—you know—the after-retch fog we all commonly call it, but not one can imagine what any of the other’s after-retch fog beholds back like. That cleared, aided by a wave of maybe my left, or no it was definitely my right-spreading outpalm, I beheld she was gone, and; here were are now as we are here now and even five six one word moments ago even as we’ve been here here, has, inexorably—just like her, become—a pseudo-history—for what reason it’s pseudo I won’t bo-o-o-ore you wit’ now, just; didn’t love me. Didn’t want me.
Just that damn—bassoon! 

Gone! Yes, gone!
Tossed from the theatre; can’t behave before wild-played bassoonios. Or two or three.
But when’s none, then; okay.
With his wife, whop’ bought tickets.
Okay, Jan. This night better be good I seek san’ said so; here it is.

So here came the next she, slotted all solidly, then. Great! ‘cause she’s a real plop. We clicked. No taste for bassoonery here (a memo to confirm that upon entry, please) (a day’s anticipation regarding B-Bassoonios.) and even that much of her residue, flushed way by time, yas the floors were very clean, very smooth, yes the days were ‘lso eh eh eh, there’s nothing real to bitch on no mo’, mommy, so that’s our little Sonboy, you are so good, we always, your pappy and I, knew you’d be good. And your it would be good, and the her you finally bumped into all a-fusion would be nothing if not perfectly good as well, and, as parental controllers be damned, they’re always right cause we have then ‘e have then and it we got to have them may as well turtle-up gundra-down and feelin’ all right.

All swanny?
Hoke.
Watcha’ doan’, Uncle Pete?
Meditating.
Walk on the back barnyard.

Within which how gosh how I swear up to God hung way too many pictures of her dead sailor-sons. Thuswise, Genie; the bag-chapter this history’s, every morning of this great big good marriage that long narrow floorslot where that other’s ‘ssoonio lay each and every now happily contained nothing—no, Sam, it’s fine. Let it stand—and that was good. Rearrange—the cosmos’ fat smiling slid up me her and them slid us out slid in the mud of click contentmentition, but, pseudo. There it is, Mr. Super. Here’s your three eighths open-ended—from the dark-nenunderisque o’ his Studebaker of it may have been any make any model any car any color, just make sure—to not spoil the boy! Make him do his own welding! E-e-e-oine day confused after an overnight new year there it was all sneaky on the other side and it did all click but my fear came back came; didn’t love me. Didn’t want me.

Just that damn—bassoon! 
It suddenly lay there again. O right there.
Now; brace yourself, sailors, as this seems a sign of brewing trouble, so passing well clear of this big surprise, the morning came up on over, like it does, how it does, if you just let it come without duck or dodge, it washes over, purifies and simplifies, and any bad humor good not white truck oh, yes. Run outside clutch’d dollar bill’d memory flattens, and flattens, hear the Good Humor ice cream jingle come on, mommy; until the way ahead’s perfectly smooth so after sliding from the bedroom very carefully not looking at the thing once on the other side of the doorframe some money, mommy; that awful wakend’y upp’ng sense of the world being too hard to handle down the stairs please a little money, mommy; the gravity flowed everything down to the next lower flat into the room of the morning’s expansion over deep smelling egg toast coffee buttering muffintoasts bread and frypopping bacon—filthy plate knife and spoon—the sense being that, food will waken all pores, and it was at the big food room table across from her, that we floated to the center the question, slash statement, of eh eh did you see that thing out my side of the bed this morning that’s never been there even once since the wedding hip hitch kick ‘ick ya yo whoooa—what’s that thing anyway?

Forked her way down onto the plate with a tap tap, shifting side chairwise, she said, Oh, you mean the bassoon. That what you mean? That bassoon?
Yes. That’s what I mean.

Yah. I was cleaning the attic yesterday—had to be done sometime or later ‘fore our end-up’s arrive, but so, eh, there was this probable bassoon in a big padded case. Not knowing at first what it was, I looked inside; and here there everywhere inside, curled ‘round the black barrel was this picture here, see tee hee, see—here. Reaching for it pushed out her hand slid it out laid down flat. As I did always wonder so how they make those machines spit the turnpike pay tickets out flat like that. Machines so sturdy that in rain shine hot cold dark light into th’ most blinding blizzardry, the spat of the charges-slip never fails to function—not once. Not once. Or at least not once ever I could see. Picking the picture up showed there we were me he and she her being her and me, after her first bassonionostio recital. Shaky as her performance had been, we stood for this picture, in perfect symmetry, wearing perfectly interchangeable smiles ’fore some flowers and—for Hackensack, it says, this exit, that money, no problem. Perfectly pictures sharp as knives ticket, think, I got it. And I drove off away after saying, Oh, God. Yes, I remember that. I—I’m surprised she didn’t take the bassoon with her when she left.

Ot.
Left? 
Havoonehmetra?

Yah. I—I suppose we ought to send it to her, she must have been in a hurry. 
Uh?
Y’ ‘ee’ hurried to leave, hurried, eh eh hurried up the hell up to leave awk.

Y’ know?
Cabanaman. Like that.
What? 
P-practi-chinneo.

I thought you said—said she passed. 
Oof; slap; sudden confusion; burrowed her face; thus acted fast, so what, mister cop; do not witness the suffocation of anything first hand; such sights are life-altering so ‘o s’ so so dip; uh ah that bassoon was so loved that bassoon was so loved heck ah didn’t love me. Didn’t want me.
Just that damn—bassoon! 

—here it is praises all pr’ hear what what’d I say? Why the look—thank God something got said to her while we were under, must have been said by God hisself, maybe, but; whoever, who knows, ‘s here; how can you send it to her, you said she passed quickly; snap, just like that. How can you went it, we send it, you, we, us, when the ground’s where she’s at? Was or t’will be and never, and if never, as you say; why did you say that? This big bassoon; that is what this it, isn’t it, right? I swear to God, no! I was right about it, wasn’t I? Crap, no, oh I don’t know my instruments that well. I scarcely know instruments at all. But—was it indeed a bassoon? And—why’s you say what you said? Very odd.

Look down up left then ahead, soothe, I—I don’t know. Now and then, well—please don’t be angry but I wish I could hear her play the bassoon one more time.  
Yes, her bassoon; that didn’t love me. So-so didn’t want me.
That. 

Just that hot-damned.
Bassoon! Yes indeed, it was. 
Hey, listen, she said, come around, arm around.
What? 
I am so sorry—but—tell you what; let’s knock off to the shore today. That’ll lift things.

Okay.
BlasterShout’s splinterfix; to be used sparingly; but, so; yes, thank God. What a slip, and a fall. But no wise fatal, praise God in high heaven. We went to the beach of waves down the sand set in the scorch of in rest of the day sans umbrella. Out through the mottled green foamy surf’s surface sure there were unknowns, sure, maybe grief loss fear and sadness heaving inside those waves, but; gesundheit; o the words grief that fl’ loss ‘ow out those f’ fear ‘eelings, the twis’ sadness ‘ted, ‘mpossible to thank the Lord enough that slip was gotten away with, then, at home. After she shrouded herself back the sliding glass doors gave way to the release of the loudspraying scaldyjet of her shower, yes, sneak, sneak, yes, as a shower once started must go through to the end without—interruption—quick get that bassoon take it out back behind the garage that’d do until the right time to bury comes over. Be it gone. 

Want it gone now, but, but; nothing’s by the bed where it was means hurry the shower’s half over she must have put it back hurry in the attic bu’ hur’ there was no time for that how could ‘ry ‘t it cannot be but okay hurry ‘cause the water’s shut the doors rattling in their steel tracks don’t lay a finger in there then slide or you will come up bloody, after all you’re not so special. Anybody’s finger would but bap boop so; get it wherever it is soon as possible. Destroy it and that will be the end of that. My my, that was a quick shower, dear oh, yah, well I guess maybe it was. Excuse me step aside from blocking the way to her dresser; didn’t want me didn’t love me just that—null, nothing, that out of bound address is forbidden and so must be dead swat call an ambulance there’s something in that creek back behind here. 

Swat!
Swat’
All gone big sudden fly how. Satisfying. But; then. Ko.
Honey, I got a surprise, a big one, great big one, h-hey remember back ‘n I found that bassoon?
Okay. Why?
I’ll cut right down to it. I’m taking up bassoon. Want to play it. Ain’t that great? 

Flash—vacuum, mass, airsuck’d from ‘round me; and, but—I held she said oh o the look in your eyes was so sad that day I been haunted truly haunted, y’ I been truly very haunted o’ the empty in your eyes; so had to do something, you know how it is, when you simply have to need to do something to fix something bad; something wrong; terrifyingly sad empty cold dry dead, well I have. So, officer, see? Now can you see? I have why I am out here practicing haunted, why I’m plunging this knife hard deep loud into this plank dozens or hundreds or less may times? 

It’s practice, I have been, practice, it’s haunted, truly haunted. Yup yes yah I got to do what I got to do right the first time, eh eh ah up, grip, down, slam; the vibration up the arm—means you’re alive haunted up, grip, down, slam; the vibration up the arm and again haunted must stop it up grip slam vibration can’t let bassoonery happen again, but, practice up, grip down slam haunted no no more bassoonery never again stop up grip down slam do it right, officer, I’m sure you get it, officer. Can’t not love me. Can’t not want me.

Just that damn—bassoon! 

Jim Meirose’s work has appeared in numerous venues. His novels include “Sunday Dinner with Father Dwyer”(Optional Books), “Understanding Franklin Thompson”(JEF), “Le Overgivers au Club de la Résurrection”(Mannequin Haus), and “No and Maybe – Maybe and No”(Pski’s Porch). Info: www.jimmeirose.com @jwmeirose

Wish
~Franz Wright

In the vast window of the laundromat
it’s early spring. A man bulked in winter
layers outside the storefront stops to watch
a jet’s vapor trail across the sky.
The world is far gone. Virtually all that’s left
for me to do is wait, seated inside
this spacious place with the dynamic hum
of machines doing the labor of a village
full of washers at a river. The sound
would as soon sing like plain folk doing chores
yet from the machines it echoes mechanically
for me to hear, woom woom, to hear and sift,
to reword: wish wash wish wash rinse rinse rinse—
into the pitching whir then whine, a lot like
a jet plane taking off, of the spin cycle—
making the clumsy metal gizmo quake
like a cold wet kitten.
				In the window
I sit beside, dimmed with the wind bringing
banks of clouds, up in the metal frame
a spider dangles, weaving in the joint
between the frame and ceiling. For all I know
the weft she looms describes Zeus’s desire
thrust into the sky, to turn another
nymph into this brook, into that reed.
Uncompromising witness, how inspired
to work her craft, her wish was not a death wish,
only her waiting. Because I don’t know
much about spiders, I remember Ovid’s
myth of Arachne, using my education
to pass the time, until my clothes are ready
to toss into the acrobatic dryer.

The river is time. The sky is raining minutes.
She’s almost had a year to bury him
like rain falling to bury the world away
because when he ceased to be there, where he’d been,
he was suddenly everywhere, in each unmown
blade of grass. Each unchanged drop of oil
that lit the dashboard light. His soul stretched tight
across the evening sky. It landed on
the fence at morning to sing with her spoon and cup.

He came to night again. It was still raining.
He had flowed to the ocean, still there he was
flowing beside me. I held my fingers
around his wrist feeling for his pulse. He was
a drip in the ceiling I’d put a stove pan under,
a dark spot spreading from the corner of the room
determined to go ankle deep, knee deep.

The spider spoke about my friend as from a far source.
Any hope to quell her would be pointless
a beaver would already know at the river’s width.
There was no narrow bend to dam her, the sky
a constant dark and drumming only patter
outside the laundromat. So we talked.

His last legs had battled back so many times.
I couldn’t believe he wouldn’t come out again.
The listener with the spider about his friend
could never imagine a battle I could not
stand back up from. The dead were speaking to him

and his widow told me my friend remembered
Virginia Woolf’s being asked about her morning’s
writing. She said she’d gotten them
off the porch, meaning her characters.
She had advanced her story at least that far.

That’s all he had to say. He didn’t need
to say anymore. He meant he couldn’t get them
off the porch. They were huddled out there
under the porch roof, edging themselves at the rain.

The poem is dedicated to Franz Wright, winner of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. 
The Hastings Room Poetry Reading Series, which I help curate, hosted Franz for his last live reading in November 2014, and I came to know him and his wife toward the end of his life that year.

Michael Todd Steffen is the recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship and an Ibbetson Street Press Poetry Award. His poems have appeared in journals including
The Boston Globe, E-Verse Radio, The Lyric, The Dark Horse, and Constellations. Of his second book, On Earth As It Is, now available from Cervena Barva Press, Joan Houlihan has noted Steffen’s intimate portraits, sense of history, surprising wit and the play of dark and light…the striking combination of the everyday and the transcendent.

True Crime

Watching true
crime
programmes
at 11:30 p.m.

I've always
enjoyed
seeing these
things.

It makes me
realise that
no matter how
screwed up my
life may be, at
least I haven't
been murdered,
or murdered
anyone,
yet.

My life hasn't
got THAT bad.

So I really haven't
hit rock bottom,
yet.


Have I ? 

I Expect Too Much


Just looking
through crap,
on my phone.

Stories about
people, so - called
celebrities, most
of them I have never
heard of.

And I've noticed
that nearly all of
the supposedly
attractive women,

they all look the
same, or at least
very similar. It's
like there's a factory
somewhere, churning
them out.

I can't see any
difference between
them. They all seem
to have the same eyes,
the same plucked eye
brows. The same lips
pumped full of shit.

The same Botox filled
zombie expressions.
And the same empty
minds.

I'd love for one of
these pointless
butterflies to prove
me wrong.

If just one of them
had read Dostoevsky,
or Celine, even Kerouac,

or had written a few
poems of their own.

Not even that, just
some little thing to
show that they've got
a working brain of
their own.

Perhaps I expect too
much. 

This month’s issue explores how we experience our world and how we process what we observe.

Aisha MLabo paints a portrait of a stylish, glamorous bride on her wedding day while Sushant Kumar describes the dedication and gentleness of true love.

Ian Copestick revels in the simple joys of listening to the rain and spending time with friends, while Muhammed Sinan remembers waking up early on a foggy morning.

Sayani Mukerjee crafts lovely memories of her home, family, flowers, beach and writing, while Mehreen Ahmed, in an excerpt from her upcoming title Incandescence, presents a character whose life and feelings are intertwined with her home and its flora. Jimmy Broccoli reflects on how we bond and learn from each other, whether fellow humans or other creatures.

Uduak Wisdom Ezekiel points out how we can be alone even in midst of crowds.

Muhammed Sinan, in another piece, reminds us that elderly and immuno-compromised people are still dying alone of Covid, in a piece about a sick grandmother on oxygen.

Ridwanullah Solahudeen’s poem about safely navigating a sailboat becomes a meditation on losing his grandmother.

Paul Olayioye’s poems illustrate through metaphor how we process grief from different sorts of losses, while Hannah Aipoh’s complex pieces explore heritage, history, untimely death and sorrow repeating themselves over generations.

J.J. Campbell evokes thoughts of our slow slide into mortality, while J.K. Durick protests the frequency of American mass shooting tragedies by describing them as if they were ordinary events.

Adesiyan Oluwapelumi writes of thinly veiled repressed anger while John Edward Culp comments on the American Supreme Court and encourages us to temper justice with love.

John Grey contributes various poems commenting on how we perceive and where we find safety and freedom. Texas Fontanella processes modern life and financial uncertainty in a semi-stream of consciousness.

Visual artist Thomas Fink and poet Mark Young collaborate on ekphrastic work that explores the different ways we seek to understand: through empathy, definitions, and explanations. Shine Ballard pulls out another layer of understanding of humanity by repurposing biographies into non-representational art.

Faith is another lens through which we observe and interpret the universe. Michael Robinson describes the peace, healing and spiritual intimacy he has found with Christ. Chimezie Ihekuna, also from a Christian background, highlights the spiritual meaning of Christmas in the second of a set of poems from him we are publishing up until December.

In a thesis on Christopher Marlowe’s Faust, Z.I. Mahmud explores how Marlowe warned of the spiritual and moral dangers of overstepping our bounds to claim more power and privileges than are our natural rights as humans. He points out how we have natural limitations on our egos and behaviors and how we are ultimately not free agents but belong to each other.

Richard LeDue reminds us that practicing our faith should also involve contributing to the welfare of our fellow beings on the planet.

We hope that our issue inspires attention, thought, and care among our readers, and wish you well at this midpoint of the year.

“The bamboo bush listened without a word. Winds rustled sweet nothings through and around. Satisfied, yes, she was satisfied. Her heart was lighter. She had found her bearings here. This place which had become a spot of solace for her; she couldn’t stay away or stray away— summer, or winter, fall or spring; the bamboo bush, an extension of herself, couldn’t be parted with. The rainwater dripped down its leaves.

Skies above, far above, somewhere the greyness matched. It matched not above nor below but at the core, not the core of the earth; it was all a connected cycle. It matched the color of her mood, the greyness of the heart, an organic interconnection. The rain, the bamboo bush, the grey skies, her heightened mood, all in one chain of cosmic order. Separate, yet connected. Connected through a natural network. She loved her life, she hated her life, she just didn’t know what to do with her life; her sufferings purpled like the blooming jacarandas under a silent, grey sky.”

Order Mehreen Ahmed’s Incandescence here or at your favorite indie bookstore!

FLYING FREE

She let the bird
out of its cage,
opened the window wide,
watched the creature
tentatively pace the sill
for a minute or two,
then fly away.

It was a parakeet
and only knew captivity.

It never occurred to her
that the bird would not survive
the harsh New England winter,
or that it was so tame,
it could hop up, willingly,
on a red-tailed hawk’s claw.

She imagined her own life 
within iron bars,
how she’d dearly love
someone to set her free.

She dreamed of 
something other than survival. 
Of prey animals
and all she had to give.





NEW MORNING

Early morning,
cocks stop crowing,
other birds take up the call.
A town awakes,
leaves the sex dreams in their bed somewhere,
pushes the fear dreams to the back of their heads.
Much shaving, face washing, coffee,
now the dreamer must go out and do it.
Work harder or less, steal or put back,
screw the neighbor's pretty wife
or demons in an office bathroom.
The light has moved everyone on from where they were.
Apology replaces act.
Honing in trades places with randomness.
It's to do with the brightness
and the stirring of a spoon
or the spray of hot water on the skin.
A scrawny rooster booted last night out the door.
Other birds feed on its flesh.
A town barks like its dogs,
purrs like its kittens.
Today, a bum could be the mayor.
A mourning widower might find a bride
behind that tombstone.
A shy girl will read Homer.
A boy from Brooklyn will go to Texas.
The rooster flops down from his fence,
double-trots to the barn
to rustle up some hens.
The birds are singing a song
that a clock taught them.
A guy says never leave me
to a woman who wasn't here before.
A child recites the alphabet
before the day knows that's how words are made.



CHILDHOOD FEARS

One ugly toad 
on the banks 
of the small pond
was enough to send me
running back home.

My pond,
the one where I collected tadpoles,
was held hostage 
to that gruesome creature,
whose chief weapon  
was simply to be.

Cane toad,
that insidious interloper,
barely raised an eye 
in my direction,
as if it believed its own legend,
that one touch of its slick brown skin
would be enough to kill a grown man.

My mother tried to assure me
that they were harmless.
And in a way 
that strangers in vehicles were definitely not.

I might have dreamed
that, on my way to school,
a car pulled over
and a toad poked its head out,
said something like,
“Hey kid, do you want a ride?”

I didn’t.
But, for a time there,
my dreams were headed in that direction.




YOUR DANCE

Marriage slowly evaporating
an emptiness at home
that not even a daughter can fill,
just like your dancing dream
faded when your father lost his job,
and now spinning round the room
clutching a wine bottle –
it’s not the same,
not while your back hurts 
from falling on the ice,
and his silence is like some intolerable barrage –
you still sleep together
but it feels like you’re in different rooms –
so much for the tango,
so much for expecting flowers on your anniversary,
you can’t even get tipsy –
and your thirteen-year-old is so busy texting,
sure, her life is going great,
she hasn’t grown older,
she hasn’t had to move around just to break the tension,
and she can get away with eating chocolate,
and wearing jeans –
you have to laugh,
at her age,
you could amuse myself by catching raindrops in your palm –
now you’re in company but alone
for no one can hear you,
as your confidence peels away,
you fear your slightest error,
for your mind’s a clearing house 
for all past mistakes,
and most of them are assigned to you –
and to think, you could have been a ballerina,
you could have learned tap,
you might have found the one thing you were good at
instead of the many where you just get by –
your dance, these days, 
merely wards off doing nothing –
it’s clumsy and misguided
and unsuited to applause.



IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING

Childhood
is about remembering how it was, 
adventures in phone calls, 
a weakness sweet as early spring,
pulse in a swirl when it’s not tick-tocking,
the half-assed bringdowns of a true believer,
age of reason as proposed by a fourth grade teacher,
two bucks to mow a lawn,
farts loud and smelly enough to empty a building,
big words, small actions,
alone with an ache,
an idea in my head 
falling short of the mile marker,
stolen wine sip held long on the tongue,
briefly glimpsed nude painting in library art book,
some green and fungus-like stuff oozing from the nostrils,
an uncanny ability to be found out,
bowing head in grass with the animals,
quarreling with the word “no”,
diminishing belief in the efficacy of prayers,
any given weekend,
stuff that appears on the horizon,
upticks in knowledge, downgrades in cuteness,
tears fewer and fainter,
a liking for loud metal music,
(and loud metals as well),
TV-watching face supported by palms and elbows.
beautiful women -  who knew?
learning to be careful but not careful enough,
rushing in more than stepping away,
an inferior swimmer in a no-nonsense ocean,
singed fingers on just about anything hot,
the first bucket-list to include Mount Everest,
learning the art of unseen hands,
thwarted by the second chapter of an immense novel…
as if words would just roll down a window
and I could shove my tawny head through.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Sheepshead Review, Stand, Poetry Salzburg Review and Hollins Critic. Latest books, “Covert” “Memory Outside The Head” and “Guest Of Myself” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Ellipsis, Blueline and International Poetry Review.