Detours Couple bottles of Boone’s Farm that Belinda’s older brother got for us at A & C Beverage when we met up with him around the corner and of course the peyote buttons and we were off cruising country backroads in my mom’s ’63 Impala convertible that last summer night after graduation when we found a moist valley of fireflies that swallowed us like the sparkling, star-filled sky as if we entered a Kusama Infinity Mirror when time was giving us a second chance to lose ourselves before maturity showed up with handcuffs and magicked the key away. Midnight phantom footfall inside the bedroom ceiling and the scene dissolves out of focus and then into focus again landing me in that prickly flip of past, not to repair history in order to save a Joan of Arc or Soulika sister, but to squirm into my middle school locker so that this time Ruth White won’t find me with her punches when I take the last chocolate pudding cup in the cafeteria before she can get her spoon-ringed fingers around it. A jet stream snares me, squeezes me through jalousie window slats to territory of bigger/faster/more/more/more instead of snailing through sweaty lines of government cheese and unemployment. How to make doppelgänger sense of it, these roundabout visits that send me rewinding to never meet up with Gus who stained me with a mickey he claimed was the size of a whale’s. How can I be my best ingredient, in glory to each birthday’s butter cream? To follow the next trail of twine through hallways where Easter eggs are painted zygotes and that if I swallow one, I could clear my throat of trouble. Clothes Horse You like wearing a soup of polka dots with rascally pockets and that hat of ostrich-egg-over-easy. You’re a landscape seen through pinhole, born for knowing how to keep your clothes dancing. Passersby nod through clouds around you, gardenia with a bit of ginger on top. Sometimes you’re in the habit of spandex, buttery soft camel toe whispering for guests. Sometimes you’re all in for the dissenting swag of a judge’s collar. But always you’re hungry for the click & collect, or thrifting in the hunt for your next highlight reel. Closets never enough, scarves and gloves and bracelets color-sorted in the pantry. You tell us it was the shapeshifting of adolescence that got you here, the scripture of accessory, the rebel arithmetic of your outsiderness + your outside-ness = bondage trousers, chain mail nose ring, neon spikes for hair. Now it’s martingale back and designer pouch with teacup pooch. You say you always wear your soul on your sleeve, your style slippery or stonewashed. And there you go again, chiffon creature preening in limelight, combat boots prancing for romantic notions like sprezzatura and je ne sais quoi. Rod Serling Takes a Stab at Stand Up Before he says anything he draws deep on a fresh Chesterfield and turns his head to profile so he can better think sideways. Swish pan / swish pan / swish pan / ah, there’s the ringmaster, hot light, hot mic and he’s rapier thin cool in a black mohair 3 roll 2 sack suit and crispy white oxford spread collar. Glad you all could make it tonight because you’re traveling now with the best dressed man in any dimension. Rod straightens his Brooks Brothers double stripe and clenches his jaw for the baritone glide. I just flew into town an hour ago and boy, are my gremlins tired. Rod straddles a stool. You know, some people call me the Arthur Miller of science fiction TV, but my wife calls me television’s Groucho Marx of eyebrows…Yeah, I’m a Jewish kid born on December 25, that one Christmas Day my parents had something else delivered besides Chinese take out. He grips the mic and a beam of light launches off his silver military bracelet. You might have heard I was a paratrooper during WW2, but hell, that wasn’t half as harrowing as battling with TV sponsors… I’m no dummy but we all know what it is to look into the face of the Twilight Zone—you have to have toilet paper with you at all times for the doo-doo- doo-doo… But seriously, I do hold the record for winning 6 Emmys in outstanding writing for a drama series but what the hell do those two aliens in the front row care. They’ve probably got better jokes on their planet, like “an Earthling and a Martian walk into a diner”… A mound of ash has been softly growing near his Florsheims. My daughters keep telling me that I smoke too many cigarettes, but then I remind them of our digs in Pacific Palisades and Cayuga Lake, and they stop nagging me. Oh yeah, Sometimes I like playing the“ In Rod We Trust” card. Rod drops his cigarette butt to the floor and rubs it out with his shoe. So that’s my time, folks. I’m heading back home now to the hacienda and when I get there, I’ll walk into my study, sit down, put paper in the typewriter, fix the margins, turn the paper up, and bleed. Consider When you consider a pitch to end all pitches, a pitch for angels some say, for what materializes in the dusty corners of your apartment, a pitch as delicate as Shantung Silk carried across ocean in satchels underneath the ruby throats of birds, then your perfumed scarf will touch down upon a vestibule’s tapestry rug and proclaim the final exit. How euphemisms spiral into themselves as our pendulums slow, and cantankerous static clings to our nose hairs. How we want to chew the date off our ticket to the Imperial Lounge and just keep rolling around a lush field, olly olly oxen free. How we yearn to get drunk on cocktails of instant smiles and cellular serums, our pinkies tapping our lips. How we limit, to a parakeet mirror, our scavenger hunts for wrinkles and dearly pay to have done what alchemists do with plastic. Death will launch the trajectory of our accumulating selfies and leave us with our monkey minds godsmacked like undigested bits of beef. So wag your tongue all you want at that grandfather clock and swath your phone in a crochet shawl to muffle calls from the grave. Branch shadows will play upon your sleeping face and your scarab ring, too loose now for your fingers, will twang to the floor. No such place as exactly what happened. Poetry Accessories after Rod Serling’s “The Bard” spurs of moment + tertiary motivation + worn copy of Ye Book of Ye Dark Arts that flies off top shelf + riddle for riddling + doodle for doodling + fecund uncertainty + that crazy moon + blacks, whites & grays spring-loaded + quill pen at attention + title/act/scene/cup-inside-cup-inside-cup mash-ups from Brother Will + sand conjured from your loafers + first picture book cherished + porcelain tureen with footnotes brimming + six-foot hot dog bun for napping under stars + dust motes whirling in sunbeam + pixel by pixel hearing + gaze unmediated & gliding + cockles squirming your heart + Harpo’s harp in barbed wire + Méliès’s flash, dazzle & poof + world too small to be satisfying + horsepower via headstone + va va voom + ipsy dispsy + za za zoom
Visual art from Mark Young
Poetry from Stephen Williams
Overtaking
You’ve led a life of doing many things
but now shadows overtaking
slowing of your stride
slit of eyes and cold hands
sudden and surprising
longing for when you’re ultimately free
humming your story
only part of your remembering
tightness in the throat
hero and fool
balanced in-between by circumstance
love hopefully
a someday soon apex
as the world chaos
judges you
not caring of the evidence
jail or to the barren desert
perhaps a guillotine
but a pardon from an unknown source
yet knowing in your spirit the truth
a release at midnight through a squeaking gate
the long walk
searching for the lost family
where are they
how to find them
building endurance
time of little time
striving on for contentment
the hope
in the breath of a new believing
of the old belief
racing over earthquakes
shaking streets and rattling windows
people watching you but most in the quick
stir of their own silliness
their own fear turned backward
and you realizing
you were and are one of them
an endless family
so you pray
oh how you pray
cup of hands filling with salt and tears
some of the who and what of God
praying and praying
until the climax finally overtaking.
Short prose from I RΛM 0
DIGITOPIΛ
Technology conglomerates will access transcendental languages, localities, and emotions. Digitization shall enable nations to eliminate tactile human engagement to speed up global development – scaling and management…sans human capital. User culture will become multi-sensory, as digital technology transcends behavior responsiveness.
Shapeshifters teleport deep into the human psyche as post-mortem cyborgs intuitively track user migration toward unnavigated web sectors (ergo eternity). Virtual designers post-construct our digital experience and, in the process, self-/co-create and viralize the omniverse. Human thought is rendered obsolete as augmented data decimates theoretical relativity.
As post-apocalyptic users, how will we feel and process the inevitable – an existential shift from organicity to digitopia? How shall we determine and our browsing instincts sans emotionality in the midst of the digital monetization of conglomeration? Extending beyond collectivism – this Internet (War) of Things (IWOT)..or is it the Internet War ON Things (i.e., the digital piratization of tactile spaces mutating into an emotionless omnipresence)?
Poetry from Jake Cosmos Aller
Christmas Bombing in Nashville
There was a Christmas bomber
In Nashville one day
While watching the news
About the Christmas bombing
I am filled with curiosity
Who was this monstrous man?
Who was he?
What did he want to do?
Why did he do it?
What is the deep meaning behind it all?
The suspect said
To a neighbor
The day before Christmas
I have good news
I will become so famous
Nashville will Never forget me
Then this 63-year-old –white man
A reclusive strange man drove his RV
A believer in the shapeshifting lizard conspiracy
Perhaps a Q cult member as well
Drove his RV
filled with home-made explosive devices
To an ATT office building
Blew himself up inside the RV
Damaging 43 buildings
Knocking out power
The internet and cell service
The silence from the political leaderships
Speaks volumes
If he were a Muslim, an immigrant
A foreigner, a black or brown man
Authorities would be denouncing it
As an act of terrorism
And everyone will anxiously be wondering
When the next bomb will go off
And authorities will be hunting
The land for his associates
Fanning the fear
Driving the news cycle
Instead, we find out
he is just a pathetic old man
Who was sad,
which make us all mad
That he could do such a thing
And soon this will fade
Into our collective memory
There was a Christmas bomber
In Nashville one day
And we all forget it
Soon enough
It was just another day
In our crazy whacked outland
In these sad days of the pandemic
We see the homeless people
Men, woman, and children
The strangers sleeping on the streets
In the richest country
In the planet
Millions were driven homeless
The strangers Sleeping on the streets
As rents go up and up
Jobs disappearing
Coronavirus spreading
The strangers sleeping in the streets
Social safety nets unraveling
Forcing more people
Into dire poverty
There but for the grace of God
We do not say to the Strangers
sleeping in the streets
As we walk by
The nameless men, woman, children
The strangers Sleeping in the streets
We seldom wonder
How they got there
And whether we can help them
The strangers sleeping on the streets
All too often
We walk on by
Consumed by own problems
Having little empathy
For the strangers sleeping on the street
Just enough for coffee
A homeless man
Stood on the street
Counting his change
From panhandling all morning
Just had enough for a cup of coffee
All in all
A good start
He ambled off to his favorite coffee shop
Where the owner
Was kind to the homeless
Sometimes
Treating them to a meal
On the house
The man said
I was in your shoes
Once years ago
And you never forget
When you are down
And out
Everyone forgets your face
No one knows your name
For you are now
Invisible
Almost a ghost
The old man tried to pay
The owner said
Keep your change
You need it more than me
Have a meal with me
My friend
On the house
He ordered up
The homeless man’s favorite
Lumberjack special
Eggs, pancakes, sausage, bacon
Cornbread
Lots of hot black coffee
To wash it down
The old man
Often had just one meal a day
Usually, a late breakfast
Sometimes if he were lucky
He would have dinner
And on a red-letter day
He would have three meals
The homeless man
Had been on the streets
For too long
Barely remembered his life
Before early-onset Alzheimer’s
Robbed him of his job
His dignity
His wife
His life
His money
Now he drifted
Waiting for the grim reaper
To call him home
Any day now
He prayed nightly
To a god
That he no longer believed in
Eve in the Garden Eats the Apple
Eve was in the garden
Talking with Mr. Snake
Her new best friend
She was complaining about Adam
And about the management
Of the garden
The snake suggested she eat
The forbidden fruit
She said but the man
Said that I can not eat
That fruit
It is forbidden
Yeah that is what the man said
That is what he does not want you
To experience
The man and Adam
Are in on it together
I heard that Adam
I Will eat the apple tonight
But you need to get there first
Do you trust me, Eve
Of course, Mr. Snake
So you know what to do
Eve ate the apple
Called Adam over
Told him to eat the apple
While the Snake chanted
Eat it eat it
Set yourself free
And so Adam ate the apple
And joined Eve
In knowing everything
God came down
Banished them from the garden
Telling them
Well you made the bed
You will have to sleep in it
Go away
You disgust me
Humans…..
And Satan
You won your bet
You damn Snake
Essay from Lorena Caputo
REVISITING A MEMORY
15 January 1994 / Estelí, Nicaragua
We gather in front of a blue bullet-pocked building near the central park. Women of the Madres de los Héroes y Mártires sell home-made plastic flowers. A late-afternoon summer wind blows.
Soon we are a procession, honoring the memory of Leonel Rugama. That seminarian, teacher, poet. The guerrillero who helped finance the Revolution by robbing banks. He and two compañeros were trapped in a safehouse. Surrounded by tanks, by hundreds of troops. For three hours the shooting went on. The planes bombed. That was 15 January 1970.
His petite and spry mother leads us to the cemetery. In song and conversation we go.
After a simple commemoration at his grave, we wander around the yard alone, in groups. The Mothers visit their heroes’, their martyrs’ tombs.
A professor from the States says to me, “Stop and listen. It is time to listen.”
His students find a series of turquoise crosses. The people all died about the same date. We are told they were victims of a Contra attack.
I feel chilled, hollow.
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Almost four and a half years later, I return to face those graves that have haunted me.
Do they really exist? Was it a dream? No. I have the journal entry. What were the dates? Fourth to sixth of June 1987? Or ’86? I don’t remember.
It is a scorching late-dry-season day. For several hours I wander, trying to find those sea-blue markers.
I encounter Combatiente Juana Elena Mendoza’s site. She fell on the day of Liberation, 19 July 1979.
You walked without resting
the long road of liberation
with the recompense
of seeing your people
In Freedom
And I come across that simple white marbeline cross surrounded by a white wrought iron gate: Leonel Rugama R.
My memory remembers that sea to be to the right. But it is now crowded with newer tombs. I cannot find what I’m looking for.
I ask a grave digger, standing chest-deep in a fresh hole. He shrugs, “Go ask the pantonero.”
“Ah, yes. It is over there, to the right.”
Again, I do not find those 30, 40 turquoise crosses. I give up. For today.
“No, he’ll show you there,” the caretaker says, nodding to an assistant.
I am lead to a section of simple concrete crosses, and of tiled ones. Of blues, yellows, greens. Of combatientes, subtenientes, tenientes, sargentes.
I spend several hours more, copying the names and dates of these 57 heroes. They fell in battle against the US-Contras between 16 October 1983 and 8 January 1985. The majority in those two Octobers, Novembers, Decembers. Four in July 1984—the time of Congressional budget hearings, no?
First Sergeant Sixto A. Moreno did not see 1984 arrive. Subteniente José Angel Calderón Ordónez fell on Nochebuena—the Good Night—Christmas Eve. Ramón Arier Rizo Castillo died a week after his 19th birthday.
But I know this isn’t what I witnessed four years earlier.
The doubts, the uncertainty gnaw at my mind. After several weeks, I go back to Estelí and ask several Mothers.
I went to look for it, but I can’t find it. The workers showed me to the Armed Forces section. But it isn’t what I remember.
“Do you know of such a place?”
“It must be that common grave,” one says leaning in her chair.
“Yes. They were all victims of a Contra attack,” the other says, running her hand over the counter.
“There’s a common grave?”
“Yes.”
“There’s another one, too, in Cemeterio El Carmen. A mass burial of combatants of the April Uprising,” the second informs me.
“During the Insurrection,” the first clarifies.
I ask myself out loud, “Could that common grave have been disappeared by those newer ones?”
The Mothers look at one another and shrug.
But still, my memory remembers not one marker. It still sees so freshly a wash of 30 or 40 turquoise crosses.
I return to that part of the cemetery and widen the circle. More groupings of dates I’d missed before, among the newer sites of this decade.
There’s a tall, blue-brick pedestal with a black iron cross:
MARIO RANDEZ CASTILLO
4 February 1988
The bullets of the Contra assassins
may have killed you
But they did not kill your faith
The rain drizzles. The dripping weeds are slick. The earth is soft.
Still I cannot find them.
I ask Rugama’s cousin, who works here. “Ask the pantonero.”
The caretaker does not know. He swears there is no common grave. He asks the Rugama.
“Look, we’ve both been here only a few years,” the cousin apologizes.
The pantonero points to the western part of the yard, the opposite direction from the others. “Over there are burials from the same era. Perhaps it’s there.”
In the petering rain I enter the sea of crosses. Into 1985. Soon their dates group. Scattered here and there are combatientes, first lieutenants.
There are so many dozens from May 1985. How many just between 17th and 19th? One, two, three, six.
I weave back and forth through.
Another group: 2 to 7 August. One, two, four—again, six.
I climb between the closely packed graves.
Silvio A. Chavarría Méndez—fell in defense of the fatherland in Miraflores, Estelí, 20 May 1986. And entombed next to him are more people killed on that same day. Three from the Talavera family.
Oh, god.
I continue wading through these mostly blue crosses, scanning them for dates.
28 July 1985—so many, it seems. One, three, six, eight—nine.
I begin to swoon, ready to vomit. My solar plexus is hollow. I almost sink to my knees.
This is it. I remember this feeling. The same I had four years ago.
I want to stop. But I continue strolling through this jumble of graves.
How many died 7 September 1985? In May ’86?
I want to scream, “How could you do this?”
How many hundreds of graves are there? I dare not count.
How could we do this?
And those velvet storm clouds rumble overhead. A chill wind blows. The sprinkled rain has stopped—for a while.
Lorraine Caputo is a wandering troubadour whose poetry appear in over 200 journals on six continents, and 14 chapbooks – including Caribbean Nights (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2014), Notes from the Patagonia (dancing girl press, 2017) and On Galápagos Shores (dancing girl press, 2019). She also authors travel narratives, with works in the anthologies Drive: Women’s True Stories from the Open Road (Seal Press, 2002) and V!VA List Latin America (Viva Travel Guides, 2007), articles and guidebooks. In 2011, the Parliamentary Poet Laureate of Canada honored her verse. Caputo has done literary readings from Alaska to the Patagonia. She journeys through Latin America with her faithful knapsack Rocinante, listening to the voices of the pueblos and Earth. Follow her adventures at facebook.com/lorrainecaputo.wanderer or latinamericawanderer.wordpress.com.
Poetry from John Culp
Let Principle cohere focus As unconditional Love Entirely allowing Focus appreciation Through all perspective's Intervibral coincidence, Enjoying Allow I self the hand of preference. Born Free Sense Know Less resistance Allowing, You're Worth it. Get caught, Satisfied with your own natural grace. Turn time on a dime. Freshen your focus, NOW.