Parting Gifts
Volume 11
Number 1

They have taken refuge in a transparent
sphere in the midst of nudes riding
unicorns, gryphons and camels, reveling
among gigantic birds and berries.

Seen through the slightly opaque screen,
their bodies seem ethereal, a silent
reproval of the orgy of sepias, pinks
and reds around them.

From a distance, the cracked glass recalls
a crystal egg about to hatch, a veined
butterfly’s wing nestled in a voluminous
black flower.

Or are the lovers seated inside a dew drop
blown from a gold-petalled mouth, born
from a flower’s heart?

In their greenhouse, they barely move,
fearful of tearing the transparent veil.

He stares to her right, his breath flowing
on the nape of her neck, a gentle stroke
on her belly, a wish or promise for a
child to come.

Eyes half closed, she dreams of bearing
his child. Her heart sings the Magnificat
at her lover’s touch. Rejoicing he is no
Archangel, she rests a hand on his thigh.

They hide, still, cautious. Anything could
destroy the invisible net setting them apart,
the brightest spot in the canvas.

Words, even love words could have sharp edges,
distend the perfect shape. Their hands, lovers’
winged fingers, speak in a motionless caress.

Moss
among red cobblestones. Trying
to survive
one more summer moon, who knows tomorrow?

Girl
in the flat below
shampoos in moonrays for it, tomorrow.
In the natural
state, so say her shadows.

Walks among
the moss to dry in perfect, natural composure.

I would
be the moss. Though, cobblestones
would do.

I promise her them soft.

The Fruitery, a greengrocer’s store, occupies the same spot in Guilford Connecticut since the Banores family first open it some forty years ago. The current proprietors are third generation Banores greengrocers. Unlike greengrocer stores throughout the world, and especially the east coast, The Fruitery does not put their wares on display outside the store. They are also not given to window displays.

Inside, signs are posted around the store:

Many people over the years have reached to pick up an apple or peach only to be yelled at from across the store. “The signs! Read the signs!”

When I was in high school I worked at The Fruitery but I was not allowed to touch any unwrapped food. I moved boxes into coolers, out of coolers, carried bags to cars, swept up, made deliveries, and touched young Mrs. Banores—and she me, in the back room, while the rest of the Banores family was busy keeping watch on their precious produce.

Last week I visited my mother in the Jewish Home for the Aged. As we sat in the solarium talking, little by little her friends came by and joined us. Pretty soon I was sitting with a dozen seniors, all women.

I was looking at these ladies-but it wasn’t them I was seeing. I was imagining their daughters. It was their daughters I was undressing. It’s not hard to down-age a person with some practice, and God knows, I have enough practice. A couple of the seniors had to have beautiful daughters. I could tell.

I’m not exactly your soap opera hunk. I am tall and well built, and a woman once told me that I had an appealingly soft smile. I liked that. Another told me I had a Will Rogers kind of smile. I guess they are the same thing.

Whenever there are three or more women around me I find myself picking and choosing which one will be my next lover. It happens. I couldn’t not do it.

Selecting her is not a snap decision. I study each woman carefully until the cream rises to the top. This happens everywhere-in restaurants, department stores, funerals, bus stops, at Temple -anywhere there is a group of women around me. First, I eliminate the definite no chances, which is easy. Then I pick the positives. With a guy like me who’s not all that discriminating-even in fantasy, the positives can mount up pretty fast. If there are enough positives to select from I don’t even bother with the maybes.

The scene I play out doesn’t change.

My shirt is unbuttoned halfway and my gold chain shimmers as it weaves through the thicket of my chest hair. I envision myself talking to the woman. I am charming her. I carry this all the way through to a bedroom. Then I do the same to the next woman and so forth. Sometimes, even often times, we never get as far as the bedroom scene. She’ll make a gesture that I find unappealing and the fantasy will end. Why the hell should I have to put up with an unappealing gesture or expression in my own fantasy? If the chemistry isn’t there, why bother to continue?

When I finally make my selection I proceed to attempt to fulfill my fantasy. It’s not unusual for me to end up with a new lover for the night or for a period of time by using this process. After all, I am pretty smooth, plus, I have the advantage of rehearsal. This is not foolproof and at times I go home alone. Sometimes, I never pursue - I just do the exercise. Who has the time to complete every fantasy? Besides, I love the exercise.

When it was time to end my visit I kissed my mother and said my goodbyes to the others and left. While I was waiting for the elevator one of the seniors came up to me. She was slender and wore a turquoise pants suit with the top three buttons opened. Her hair was red and curly. She was the mother of one of the gorgeous daughters. She said, “I know that look in your eye.”

“Look?”

“That look you had in the solarium. Mine Milton, may he rest in peace, had that same look when he wanted my attention.”

I watched her as she spoke and I envisioned her beautiful daughter standing naked in front of me unbuttoning my shirt and I smiled.

She looked into my eyes and smiled back. “Come to my room,” she said, fluffing her hair with both hands, “and I give you like I gave Milton.”

She turned and walked down the hallway. I pivoted and followed.

When You Kick a Stone
David Breeden

as I hang out the laundry
over and over

I stumble across the cat
rubbing against my legs

it starts and runs
then comes back

tentative yet driven
to try again

this has nothing
to do with you

the way I walk
I want to say

but it won’t understand

Enough
Elizabeth Kerlikowske

The disappointment swaddled in a thunderstorm
is that the lights may not go out
There may not be enough power in the sky
to plunge us into the darkness we so fear
What if the wind doesn’t howl enough
to rip the shingles from the roof?
Roads will rise from their beds
like dreamers
Trees collapse into heaps
Lightning carom from transformers
snapping gray blue-green landscapes of electricity
Inside we’ll huddle
breathing togetherawe filled
weather gnawing at the back door
What if life goes on as usual after this
no deafening sky fights
no house shuddering cataclysms no power greater than our own?
How will the animals left inside us know
that they have survived?
What if God’s no longer great enough
to temporarily paralyze?

Wilderness
Elizabeth Kerlikowske

Scrubby pines next door to my grandparents’ house
we called the forest
murky enough that we were never quite sure
what we saw
The ground smelled orange
spongy with fallen needles
Myrtle smothered the shaggy trunks
its glossy leaves another layer of elemental darkness
hardy purple stars comfortable
in the dusting of snow that sifted through the pine boughs
In the forest
my sister and I pounded out our poisons
from forbidden red berries of juniper bushes
Like pharmacists
we crushed them into a bloody juice
we daubed on stones to mark the boundaries of our woods
In the forest
we wept for our pets
We marked their graves with Petoskey stones
and began to understand
love was what made things holy
Among the trees and snug between two houses
we pretended we were foundlings
wondering how we would survive another night
We pressed our faces to the gentle windows
where the first lamps of evening warmed the darkness
We knew the steam that blurred our vision
smelled of bread and cookies
Would we ever smell that smell again?
The sweet ache of hunger stirred
in the pit of our self-imposed exile
Responsibilities left the forest alone
No grown-ups ever visited
No grass to mow
No flowers needing tending
No leaves to rake
Wildhiddenfragrant
the forest belonged to us
We breathed itWe swallowed it
We ground it into our knees and elbows
It’s in us still

Telling Time
Elizabeth Kerlikowske

There is no would be
No could be
There is
is
This coffee
This kiss
The clock erases the day
as quickly as we write it
Memory lingers
but does not predict
The present has no notion of tomorrow
Each daybreak begins the mystery again
Will I still love you
in an instant
in a decade?
Did I ever love you
or just myself?
The coffee warms my palm
as feelings cool
I didn’t understand the present
until you gave it to me
Today it snows
and the streets are clean again
My tracks lead from your door
Wind or thaw
in an hour I am untraceable
Old man, you have taught me
not to dwell in tomorrow
Taught me too well
The door shuts
The lock clicks
Is over
becomes a dream

Hats on the Ice
David Breeden

dark and felt
left by someone

out of the picture
the hats I mean

the ice is as
usual beautiful

beyond caring

Anymore Perfect
David Breeden

Top hat, umbrella,
suit by the sea.
Rowboat, velvet curtains,
flowers too.

Such a short time waving,
prompting in the scene,
pointless to be
any more than perfect.

In Our Forty-Eighth Year
Elizabeth Kerlikowske

We used to think that coldest was
when snow was falling hardest
Now we know it’s clarity that chills
Florid knickknacks litter window sills
We don’t know how all the chocolate got here
Life has come and moved our things around
but we don’t care
We know we can find new elephants
or make mittens out of sweaters
We trade our one-dish suppers for sonnets
and never feel hungry
The perpetual shifting of the flesh
the gravity that pulls us low
our voices falling to a different clef
and it’s still just morning
What poems will the afternoon bring?

For Michael Plessner
1964–1981

I say night meadows
and night fields,
caves of the vast dark,
because as his body rose,
the hook through his left
arm pit, I thought I saw
in the water below him
fields of dark and caves,
meadows of dark
and singing. The Castrati
singing of love before
an audience of pierced men.
The Chiaroscuro of the everyday.
The enigmatic longing.

with apologies to Jesus Christ

Blessed are the poor-
ly dressed, for women shall love them
for who they really are.
Blessed are those who mourn and cry
for they shall be called politically correct.
Blessed are the meek,
for they shall inherit the checkbook.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst,
for they shall become good cooks
and stuff themselves beyond comfort.
Blessed are the merciful,
for they shall have strength enough
to remain married.
Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they shall have the power
to see through any deceptive bitch.
Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they shall make a decent living
as marriage counselors.
Blessed are those who are persecuted
for acting like men,
for they shall know
the true nature of women.
And blessed are you when women
revile you, persecute you, utter evil words
against you, for you shall have
a fighting chance
of staying single.
Rejoice and be glad,
for beer and chips
and a big screen TV
will be your reward in heaven.

Penis Art
David James

“I will not make any more art with penises.”

—female art student, University of Michigan

It’s time to stop dicking around.
I’m plain tired
of drawing nude men,
one flopping this way,
one flopping that.
How many penises
do I have to sketch
before others start to envy me?

As an artist,
I have to draw the line somewhere.
My picture of the afternoon clouds
ends up looking like floating scrotums.
I paint a forest
in upper Michigan
and the trees all have hard-ons.
This penis thing
has gotten under my skin
and just keeps growing.

So I’ve put my foot down
and made this vow before the whole world:
no more art with penises.
From now on, the models
will have coffee pots, mixers,
blow dryers, cookie jars, anything handy
where there used to be penises.
Books, sprinklers, shoes,
roses and tulips will blossom
between men’s legs,
and I’ll refuse to acknowledge
any kind of penis,
small, medium, or large,
anywhere
on any body
unless I can get both hands on it
and create something
meaningful.

In the parking lot of the racquetball club, the man I had just met in the tournament said, “My wife is very beautiful—you’ll meet her—you’ll see.” He spoke as a man who could not believe his own good fortune. “She is very tall—as tall as I am, and she has beautiful legs. They are very long with incredible calves. She has dark nipples. I love dark nipples. I especially love dark nipples under a nurse’s uniform. If only I could get her to wear a nurse’s uniform. She will do anything for me except wear a nurse’s uniform. I don’t understand her. Do you want to meet her? Come for dinner. She will make chicken and it will be terrible. She is a terrible cook, but she will insist on cooking for company. I usually do the cooking. I’m a terrific cook. What would you like? It doesn’t matter. She will grill chicken and it will be too rare inside and charred on the outside. That’s how she cooks chicken. It is the only thing she cooks, and she still can’t get it right. She is so beautiful you won’t notice the chicken.”

“I’ll come for dinner. When?” I ask, concentrating on dark nipples and long beautiful legs and not on raw chicken.

“Tonight,” he says. “Now. Come now. It’s already four-thirty. Follow me home.”

“Is this enough notice for your wife? Why don’t you call her first?” I ask.

“After eight years of marriage I know my wife,” he says. “It’s plenty of time. She doesn’t need notice. I’ll show you. Just to make you comfortable I’ll call and tell her I’m bringing a new friend home for dinner. OK?” He heads towards the pay phone in the parking lot.

“Sure,” I call after him.

“Listen,” he says when he returns. “Tonight is not good. My wife says she is not feeling beautiful tonight.”

In the center of the white
lace, two bronze deer
face each other,
antlers charcoal drawn,
branches in snow,
curves copied from Monarchs’
wings. Their necks bear
burning candles,
a cold flame casting
shadows on the bare walls.
Two gypsy dancers,
backs arched in a duel,
sworn to die for love,
prostrated in medias res,
delaying the ritualistic
holocaust.

Nearby, in candlelight,
two women speak in sign
language. Their bodies’
slightest motion falls, smooth
unstrummed notes
in a guitar concerto.
I wonder if one
should be deaf to listen.
If one should hibernate
to see a hand
extended in one’s direction.

I turn to the deer,
the centerpiece
in that Christmas Season.
In the semi-darkness,
wavering chiaroscuro
instills life
to their immobile dance.
So much takes place
in shaded areas concealed
by the artist’s pencil.
If only one could
guess what failure
lies behind
a brush stroke,
and sense what is lost
when lips, a pale
reflection of thought,
speak in a tongue foreign
to one’s heart.
And who is to know,
what words stay in the way
when two lovers stand still
under the streetlights,
stiff in the icy night, their
clouded, bronze hearts,
unable to become
transparent.

What if a hunter
came, a lover turned hunter,
stealthily close,
face to face?
He knows where bone
meets bone, where the flesh
is soft. Like the dancer,
he calculates
his move, raises his arm
as my shadow leans
against the wall.

Feet glued to the wooden floor,
face expressionless, her hips jerk
at the haunting, atavistic drumbeat,
unreal contraption
sprouting from within the planks.
Her disjointed body fluctuates
she concentrates as though
stepping over a serpent’s head,
harder, mixing blood with guts
in the tropical sand,
flattening the inert coil.
She kicks it into the woods,
keeps pounding the floor,
eyes closed, hears the incessant
sound of carnivorous ants,
roer’s mandibles busying
around the offering, an infernal rhythm,
mini drums, echoing the ones
summoned by large, tan hands.

They left her when we shouted.
They were good dogs, after all,
despite killing the neighbors’ rabbit
in glee on the lawn
the past winter, leaving white fur
scattered like fallen snow, guts spread
red and steaming on the cold morning grass.

There must be dozens of picture books
about children finding a dead bird,
burying it in a shoe box
lined with cotton,
marking the grave with a rock.
This was never our story,
though we found several swallows in the barn
each summer, tossing the bodies
instead down a gully,
not wanting to see dogs dig up and chew
tiny birds we had watched
growing under the roof, slim as sylphs.

The dogs left this one unmolested,
and when they were done sniffing
we were surprised
to discover she still breathed,
shocked but not broken,
white feather in the center of her back
rising and falling.
We left her in a pile of shavings
and a few hours later she was gone,
flown with forked tail
and boomerang wings,
blended up into blue air.
This was one of the few and only times
we believed in resurrection,

and the rest of the summer we walked
carefully, aware of where pink newborn mice
nested under the stall mats,
their skin so thin
we could see how milk
gurgled into their bellies,
yet still praising the dogs for swallowing
fat, gray mice found running
in the grain room, for digging up
an old cow leg bone
one day in the woods, its joint
still miraculously intact,
swinging at the knee as they gripped it
between their teeth.

The ground, we knew, was mixed, littered,
and we wondered that our feet
didn’t tingle when we walked,
that constellations of skin and bone
didn’t echo up our shins,
the air vibrate all around us, shattered,
marked as it was by the dark slashes
of birds crossing the sky.

My next door neighbor is gone.
The door he tore of the hinges
is just propped against the jamb
so I squeeze through to have a look.

There is a bassinet
with a splintered headboard
against the walls in one corner.
Broken spindles are scattered on the floor.

Dishes and photographs litter the kitchen.
A partially burned Bible
is lying open in the sink
its pages swelled with tap water.

Thick round air. The sun
brightens the room with cold light,
which slowly grows more colorless and bright.
Before sunset the moon rises
like a white pockmark on pastel blue skin.
Is that Venus or a satellite?
A jewel accentuated by its isolation.
Snake-doctors hover over the flower bed.
Lightning begins to flicker atop the ridge
and the porch crackles with a sudden charge
as light rain falls from a deep blue sky.

A Gas Company employee found the body
after neighbors complained of a smell.
The girl had been dead for a long time.
The old woman and her two surviving children
had rubbed the body with cremes
evidently thinking she might recover.
They realized something was wrong
when one morning the mother touched
the girl’s arm and it caved in.
The mother told investigators that her child
had fainted, when the people dynamited the house.

Human waste was buried all over the backyard.
The coroner wore an oxygen mask
during the examination and reporters
swarmed the outside taking pictures
through the windows, while the dead girl’s
brother paced back and forth from a safe distance
with a hunting ax in his hands.
The living daughter howled the whole time
until they carried her, her mother and brother
away for observation, separating them for
the first time in their entire lives.

Village Scenes
David Chorlton

I
With snow on the tip of each finger
a hand of smoke
opens. Birches
raise their faces from the ice.
A flame spreads its wings
and flies through the forest
bright as the single eye
of the villager
stumbling home
on his drunken feet.

II
A silent choir
mouths the syllables of a text
whispered down
through generations, from the death bed
of each to the next.
It is the song of the wolf
who lived alone
before the people came
and who will reappear
when they have gone
with the wind in his silver fur.

III
Rose by rose
the clouds unfold
above the village
toward which a traveler
walks with a suitcase.
He stops to wipe the sunlight
from his glasses.
He is bringing the cure
to whatever ails the spinster
who wrote for help.
The letter lay unread for years.
Springs and autumns
passed again
before he set out
with a red carnation in his lapel
and the creases in his trousers
sharp as knives.

IV
In the open coffin
on a bed of lace
flowers await their burial.
The pall bearers carry them
twice around the church
then lower them into a grave
from which no one has ever returned.

I held the sea in that rock so steady I became glass.
I climbed forward through a day, slender, a weave in the uphill rain.

When I heard the world waiting to lean where I stood,
I fixed myself to that mountain, a final piece, a breath.

I listened as the sea held its curl in the stillness. But not for long,
And not forever, like a sky leaving our jaw.

I cupped my hands, steady and over, thinking:
Someday, you will be glass.

You will turn as I leave, striping you once in the center,
A whole world you must weave, at either end, uphill, in the rain.

From the years a sky pulls back: fillet.
Rivers make a path

As evening slips into the glass of the world,
Alone from forever, pink, engaged

At each new bend, the feel
It gives you when you speak its name.

Can do without
letters from fossils smelling
of older times, some best forgot.
Messages insisting we return
for one more (last?)
reunite with the (dwindling) decrepits.

A new shopping center
on the site of the old high school
football field cum bleachers
supposed to be enticing?
(Grass behind the seats was; however,
that’s another fourth quarter story.
A mall’s a mall).

Just forward photos, please.
Portray your present habitat
against memories we
can invoke at local grade level
in a winged armchair makes no sudden, fancy
banking turns at so and so thou feet.

May we close
with a request: not only do we seek
to avoid former allergies, but,
careless snapshots
of burial grounds as well?

He Said the Bombing Had Started Eugene Marten Back when we lived in the highrise I walked into the kitchen and stepped in something wet. You know the feeling. Something wet landed on my head. I got the medium-sized mixing bowl out of the cupboard and lined it up under the drip. Together they made a pretty sound. I went back into the living room and watched my daughter play her video game. I heard the drops falling faster, there was more thudding than splinging. When I went back to take a look the tile was getting wet again. I got out another bowl while my wife called Maintenance.

We had the whole set out under the ceiling by the time they sent their man up, and we still weren’t catching everything. He was an old guy you’d see around but this was the first time we’d ever needed his services. He wore a toolbelt so heavily accoutered he needed suspenders. I still remembered the taste of his mouth. I’d found him at the edge of the parking lot gaping up at the sky like a landed fish, a sawhorse splintered beneath him, his footprints curing in the sidewalk he’d poured. “You’re the one,” a woman called to me from a high window. “There’s no one else around.” She coached me; she was a retired nurse. He never seemed glad to see me.

He watched the leak get worse for a while, then opened his mouth and caught a few drops on his tongue. “Dishwasher,” he said. He said he’d be right back.

It spread across the threshold and over the carpet in the hallway. We put out everything he had—it wasn’t much—even our daughter’s old potty. On plastic the water clicked. The carpet was getting wet. The hallway was completely blocked and you had to leap over the pots and pans and get wet if you needed to use the bathroom. Our daughter kept having to go. I realized she was just doing it to enjoy herself and told her to knock it off.

The maintenance man came back in without knocking and said the woman upstairs was having trouble with her dishwasher. I’d seen her, this woman he mentioned, in the flashing red lights of the social gathering occasioned by the failure of his heart. He said she’d turned it off and was getting it up as well as she could. The dripping would stop as soon as it drained out. He told us she wouldn’t use the dishwasher again until it was fixed.

He told us what was going on in the world.

The kid wasn’t happy about having her video game interrupted. We told her it was time to get ready for bed anyway.

Peter Jennings said, “Something is happening.” In Jordan it was already getting light. The correspondent kept looking worriedly into the emptiness behind him. It was quiet now, he said, but who knew what these streets were going to be like when word got around. I know how he felt. I’ve often imagined myself being dragged from cars by angry mobs. The one in which I’m devoured alive by African tribeswomen naked to the waist gives me an erection.

I poured out a small pot.

“Where is everybody?” our daughter said.

“Only the buildings,” my wife said.

“Why does it all get all black when it blows up?”

“Some electronic reason.”

“I can’t hear anything.”

The drip seemed to be slowing, slowly. I emptied another pot or pan and replaced it with one from an area that no longer needed it. My daughter drew a picture of what she saw. She came to me with her crayon opinion. I crumpled it up and threw it. I told her to go to bed.

“It’s like riding it down,” my wife said. “The ground just comes rushing up.”

“Then there’s just snow,” the maintenance man said, disappointed.

I was spreading paper towels on the floor. There was another sound to think about now, a soft crackling hiss that made me worry about wet, shorted wiring until I saw what it came from: my daughter’s picture, balled up in the corner of the kitchen, slowly uncrumpling. I looked into the living room.

My wife sat on the couch next to the maintenance man. My daughter’s head was in his lap. You could live in the lines of his face.

“Let’s say,” he was saying, “You were sitting in the fuselage of a B-17, or a 29, one of those, one of many about to go on a raid. Let’s say you heard the thrum of all those engines, and felt it, felt them all in the hollow of your stomach, where the butterflies are supposed to go.

“Those are the heaviest butterflies in the world,” he said.

Summertime travelers make faces,
close vehicle windows as they take
the North Shore Drive at low tide,
its stinking salt flats of raw
mother lode pools nobody might be here
in human form without, still absent
heads or tails instead of erectus,
the pools generating micro life
even as you stand at one breathing
only through the mouth at first, leaning
against one of the great boulders
exposed by the diurnal sea change, one
of which began its re-surge out there
hours ago, and in moments will start to
wash your feet and the ripe air while
you await the signal you remember
as a child—the first meager, timid
breeze to filter the stink and
trigger your run from the mass of stone
shrieking at the ocean with bravado
of gull or tern.

Pine-Sol in the Cook’s fat-free brownies took care of Györgi plus eleven others. I have been reinstated into the band. However, a trumpet player from Culiacán continued to kick me in the ankle as we marched. I did an about-face and removed nine of his teeth with my trombone. He owed many people large sums of money and had halitosis.

The Committee has acted favorably on our petition to wear handguns. I have selected a .25-calibre Beretta automatic. Not a few have scoffed at my “pea shooter” but they do admit that the poison-tipped bullets are a big equalizer. Also the dried blood on the slide of my trombone commands respect.

Shot and killed a vampire that had crept into my tent. My comic book collection is safe. We are now halfway into Nebraska.

A farmer denied us permission to camp last night, in spite of the fact that we offered to share our supper of coq au vin with him and his family. He called us “spawn of the devil” and so we set his cornfields ablaze and moved onward into the night. The conflagration spread quite rapidly, fanned by a westerly breeze and, with luck, should reach Iowa in a few days.

Two helicopters have been following us for almost a week. We painted PLEASE SEND US MORE BIBLES in white paint on the highway and jumped them when they landed.

Finally we have reached upper Michigan and relative safety. The helicopters were traded for several truckloads of food destined for Detroit supermarkets. Our underground bunker is a welcome haven for the winter. The quality of our counterfeit money has improved greatly and is now readily accepted by the local townspeople.

We earn additional income by begging outside churches and cheating at their Bingo games on Friday nights.

First snowfall. How pleasant to pass the hours lying to each other and improving our card-cheating skills. The still is now in operation and produces enough whiskey for our needs. I enjoy my comic books. Superheros can inspire us all.

The Committee has decided that we will infiltrate the Million Moron March to Washington, DC in the spring. We are having Boeuf Bourguignon for dinner with Tarte au Pomme as dessert. My favorite!

The dragon-spine of the Sierra Madre del Sur winds down into southern Mexico and into Guatemala, Puerto Ángel hugs the Pacific coast a few hundred kilometers from the Guatemalan frontier.

The Hotel Iguana lies a short distance south of the fishing village, a vermin-infested, palm-thatched sprawl of crumbling adobe brick. The proprietor, Nando Mondragón, a retired traffic policeman, had invested his bribes wisely. Hotel Iguana was now the final destination of those souls, exiled, damned, tortured, and lost, who came seeking a cut-rate refuge that blended into the earth between the jungle and the ocean.

It is night. Remove your sandals and let us enter silently to contemplate:

Obediah J————, former NFL punt-returner, who sprayed a nerve poison on his uniform and murdered seven Chicago Bears on a cold Sunday in December.

The Watson twins who placed turds in their sister’s Christmas stocking. She has been in a catatonic shock since age six. They pass the remainder of their lives cheating at cards with Nixon, their pet chimpanzee.

The nameless bishop who sold his cathedral, changed his name to Ugo Quattropani and drove racing cars throughout Europe. Each day he limps along the beach watching frigate birds and making engine noises.

Doctor Green, the obstetrician who, at his last delivery, announced to an expectant father, “It’s a baby!” He grows fine tomatoes and marijuana that he sells in the village on market days.

A cruise-ship captain who kidnapped 700 members of the New Jersey Bar Association and sold them all into slavery somewhere along the West African coast.

And still they come. Today, Nando gallantly welcomed a Danish ballerina, now in disgrace, who inadvertently ended the career of her partner with an accidental kick to a sensitive area as he descended from a jeté.

Thus pass the seasons at Hotel Iguana, amid old newspapers, insects, the rain and tropical heat, madnesses (great and small) and the noise of jaguars coughing in the night.

Boy with Two Tongues
Michael Hettich

Six centuries ago…men understood by realism
exactly the opposite of what we now mean.

—Raymond Blakney

…that old story of the boy with two tongues, who lived for years beneath his parents’ house without anyone knowing: At night while his parents slept, he woke and pulled himself through some passageway, up into their house, where he walked around happily, watched TV, ate whatever he could find. Sometimes he dug through his parents’ laundry hamper, trying on the soiled clothes he found there; sometimes he crawled beneath his parents’ bed and whispered. He loved to listen to his parents breathing. As he grew older, he sometimes slipped into bed between his parents. They smelled like fur. If either of them woke up briefly in the middle of the night, he held his breath and didn’t move. When he wasn’t moving he felt as though he could easily disappear, really disappear. But hadn’t he already been gone for years? Where was he? Outside were night creatures and the small birds that flew only in moonlight, with faces he recognized when he stood in that outside darkness, which was so different from the darkness he usually inhabited. All those animals were running and flying around, talking whatever languages they spoke in those days, and the boy could understand them, and he could talk back to them with his double tongue. That night-talking felt like magic; that night-talking felt like purest happiness. And soon the animals learned to recognize his voice, learned to understand his language; they came out of their own species darkness, and they gathered around him. And slowly but surely he became their listening.