Poems, Prose, & Visual Art, from the Contributors of the Sable & Quill

Smoke--- Ann Privateer

 

wax on white linen

song sounds question

 

whether to have children or not

whether to hold fast to your plans or rot

 

to accept, go to college in Norman

major in The Dress Code for Women

 

when your heartthrob joins the Navy

and you reminisce, feel lazy

 

menstruate at eleven in your parents

new car, bright red on green seats during lent

 

surprise, there's this protective veil

a membrane in an oyster's shell

 

pearlites the incandescent

when the eye is present

 

try to make sense of protection and veils

hide when the sycophant slogan hails

 

join the masses to determine

the saprophyte from the sermon

 

uncover youth's sweet dreams

secret perfume seems

 

like so much smoke

but eyes do clear after the joke.

An Italian Fable, of sorts---Hal Freeman

 

Once upon a time, far, far away, in a land not unlike our own, Renata Pavoratti sat in the Tuscan sun eating fat Muscat grapes and drinking that lovely Chianti that Tuscany is so well known for.  Now, as we all know, God in heaven is Italian. No further proof of Italian divinity is necessary because as we all know, Il Papa is Italian and have not all popes been Italian for a millennium?  Of course, there was that Polish fellow, and then that German, and there may be more, but they don’t count in our world; they weren’t Italian. 

 

One day, as the creator was perusing his creation, he noticed a small blemish on the perfection of his world.  He noticed that in a small town in Oklahoma named Sapulpa, they had no song.  They did, of course, have drums and the Creator was fond of rhythm as are all Italians but they needed song.  Sapulpa had been named by his second-favorite people and they called themselves “The people”.  The Creator had always thought of them as wayward Italians, a long way from home and, as Italians now needing his help.  So, the Creator decided to give them song.

 

“What kind song shall I give them”, the Creator asked himself and then remembered: “Sapulpa” could be translated into a language lesser than Italian, that is to say, English, and it meant, “Running Red Water.”

“Aha,” thought the Creator, “Red Water—Chianti—Italian wine—Perfecto!”.

 

In the meantime, Renata, you remember Renata, had finished her grapes and had but a few slivers of Asiago and Romano left.  As she picked up her goblet of Chianti, as red as a ruby born in the sun, and held it aloft, a golden ray of light came down from the heavens pinning her to the spot, transfixed.  The Creator spoke to her in a voice like thunder and commanded:

“Renata, you will sing!”

Now Renata was not the sort of girl that took to being commanded to do anything. Anyway, she couldn’t sing and even if she could she wasn’t a big fan of opera.  She liked Rap.  It had a rhythm and you could dance to it and after the dance you could get a little cheese, a nice, crusty loaf of bread, some Chianti and there you have it, a feast.

“Maybe later for that”, said the Creator.  “I have just reformed your diaphragm and vocal cords and you now have the range of Joan Sutherland and the passion of your namesake Luciano Pavoratti and you know every word of every opera Puccini has ever written” (with my help, he added, sotto voce).

“That’s nice,” said Renata.  “Next time I’m in Rome I’ll sing everybody a little ditty and then we can all go out and get a little Chianti, maybe some cheese and some of those airy little onion poppy ciabatta sandwich rolls.”

“That’s a good thought but save it for later, I have a little chore for you’, said the Creator.  “In a land far to the west, my people have no song but now that you can sing, I would send you to teach them song. The have rhythm, but no song.”

“Do they have any Chianti? If I’m gonna sing I’ll be needing Chianti.”

“You’re missing the point here, Renata.  I’m sending you to teach my people song.  The rest of your desires”, the Creator sputtered, ‘are irrelevant.”

“Irrelevant to whom”, Renata asked. “Certainly not to me. I am Italian as are you, I might add.”

“OK, I’ll send some Chianti with you but you must be careful.  We all know the pleasures of wine but we do not wish to add to their sorrows.  My people are sometimes troubled when they drink. They have not yet learned to savor then sit.

“Am I social worker as well as a singer, then?

“You are what I command.  I would have you remember what I said in my book in Hebrews 13:17, (King James Version) Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves: for they watch for your souls, as they that must give account, that they may do it with joy, and not with grief: for that is unprofitable for you.

“Can you read my lips”, Renata asked?  “Pfffffffttttt!”  (Editor’s Note:  That’s a Bronx Rasberry).

                                                         It Must be the Ragweed

 

Justin came up the back porch stairs of his mother’s house and stopped at the screen door. He knocked sharply, then rattled the screen door. There was no answer. He looked through the glass of the interior door to the kitchen and into the dining room. He saw his mother’s purse atop the sideboard. He had opened his mouth to yell when he remembered his mother’s ritual nap. It must be time. Holding the screen doorframe tightly with his right hand, he raised his left elbow and drove it sharply against the screen. The screen pulled away from the frame and Justin reached inside, releasing the hook and eye latch. He pulled open the screen door, ran a credit card down the jam of the interior door releasing the lock and slipped through, closing it quietly. He crept through the kitchen and into the dining room. Hands shaking, he picked up his mother’s purse and tried to open the big brass clasp. He couldn’t hold the purse steady enough to get it open. He needed to fix. He’d skin-popped at ten but it had worn off. He’d hoped his mother would help him out. She ought to. He didn’t live here anymore. She didn’t spend a dime on him---no food or clothing for him or anything else. He just needed a little—just enough to get his head straight and then he’d quit—that’s what he was gonna tell her. He knew she’d heard it before but this time he meant it. No more uppers, no more downers, no more booze, not even cigarettes. The straight and narrow for him from now on. He just needed to get straight this one last time – so he could think clearly, and make plans. He was 40 years old—it wasn’t too late—He’d get a fresh start—maybe not cold turkey—maybe he could just maintain. No, cold turkey—that was the way to go—He’d disappointed her before—This time it was different—He was ready now—Just this one final fix to clear away the cobwebs.

Justin sat the big white vinyl bag on the dining room table and, using both hands, twisted the clasp until it opened with a snap. He upended the bag on the slick surface and Mavis’ life spilled out before him: A big black, rubber-headed key for his father’s prized Volvo 120S—long gone—sold just after his father had died almost ten years ago; a black, cloth-covered address book bulging with tattered pages and wrapped with another of her big red, rubber bands; a yellow box of Chiclets, two gone. Every week, Mavis bought two boxes of Chiclets and passed out the sweet gum to the patients and inmates at Tehama. Some of them called her the gum lady and some called her mama.  He tore the rubber band off the address book and turned it upside down, shaking it. The torn pages fluttered down. Some of the addresses and phone numbers had been crossed out or changed, and some of the names had been obliterated with heavy black slashes, and some had been covered with stars. Justin had no idea what that meant. He pawed through the rest of the stuff in his mother’s purse but found no money—not even any change.  He looked back into the bag and ran his hand up each side. He found the hidden pocket, undid it, and pulled out a wallet. It was a brown zippered billfold, edged with vinyl with cardboard inserts of a western scene—a cowboy on a horse, a cactus, and a wagon wheel in the foreground, with Monument Valley in the background. It looked just like the one his father had given him for his tenth birthday.

He unzipped the billfold and a fan of pictures opened. His dad was standing by an big old three-toned Desoto, black, gray, and red, huge tailfins, Dad grinning widely, his arms around Justin and Mavis. This was the first picture he had put in his old cowboy billfold. A battered old formal black and white photograph of his mother’s grand parents—grandpa Ezra sitting stiffly on a wooden chair, his hair parted precisely in the middle, his moustache a bristling worm beneath his nose—celluloid collar buttoned high with no tie, holding a black hat gingerly on his lap. Grandmother Cordelia stood at his side towering over him, stout, ramrod straight, with a gleam of certitude in her eye. Her hair, her glory, plaited in an intricate braid high atop her head. Then a picture of Justin about 9—his third grade class photo, eyes clear, hair shorn in a crew cut, a smudge across one cheek and one front tooth missing in a smile that only a mischievous nine year old can own. There were prints, smudges and stains around the edge of his picture—as if it had been pulled out, put back in, kissed and cried over. Justin stopped, lost for a moment in that thirty year old photograph, then opened the bill flap and took the bills, seventeen dollars, 3 fives, 2 singles. He could score three vials of crack, or maybe a dime bag. He tossed the billfold back on the table then went back through the kitchen and out the back door.

His mother woke when heard the screen door slam and got up and went downstairs, then stepped out of the hall into the dining room. She saw her purse laying on the table, picked it up, opened it wide and swept everything but the billfold back inside. She picked up the billfold, removed Justin’s picture, and tucked it away in a tin box she kept in the sideboard with pictures of other friends and acquaintances that had moved away. But they were safe in her tin box, always ready, if they ever returned.

She put the tin box back inside the sideboard drawer with a hodgepodge of debris deposited over the years, probably the only place in Mavis’ house that wasn’t orderly and spotlessly clean.  Old, yellow-gray contact paper cushioned the bottom of the drawer. There were tiny batteries for her husband Carl’s hearing aid, now more than 10 years old and mute, not a spark left; and a phone book from 1990, the last one with Carl’s name in it. It wasn’t sentiment that made her keep it around, she thought to herself, merely forgetfulness.  A box of colored toothpicks, red, purple, blue, and orange, remnants of a party from a time passed by. Carl loved parties; he liked to pass out little treats stuck on the end of toothpicks. Sad really, when she thought about it. Qtips! Carl used to dig the wax out of his ears with Qtips. He would stick one in his ear and rummage it around like a miner, then pull out the Qtip, and look at that wax, and smile like he discovered gold. He was a foolish man. Mavis was not foolish. She kept a handful of those stubby yellow pencils in the top drawer of the sideboard. More than twenty years ago, she bought a box of pencils and Carl cut them into thirds for her on his band saw—more than three hundred stubby yellow pencils. She’d used them ever since to keep score for her bowling team—“The Seraphim”—sentimental rot.

She wasn’t a sentimental woman but Mavis always wondered why Justin turned out the way he did. She wondered why he wasn’t more like his father or his grandfather. Her father and Carl both had a sweetness about them while Justin never connected with anything, not even his Tribe. He was as rootless as pollen.

Mavis on the other hand, was an orderly person; her emotions were sound and they were orderly. That was the Indian in her, she thought. That’s not to say she didn’t feel things, she did. She was just orderly about it. When Justin finally exhausted her patience, she put him out of the house. She loved him dearly, he was blood of her blood, but she put him out of the house. And slept like a baby. Justin was a drug addict and a fool, so she put him out. But she still held out her heart. That wasn’t sentiment; that was a mother’s prerogative. Today was just another signpost for Justin. Either the road to ruin or to redemption. It was up to him. She held him in her heart but put him out of her mind. If he came to her house again, she’d run him off. If he broke in, she’d call the police. She’d done what she could.

 

Mavis couldn’t stand to look anymore. She slammed the door shut. Her eyes burned. It must be the ragweed in the air. She’d have to get rid of those flowers.