Irving Greenfield – Bobby Lee

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Bobby Lee
by Irving Greenfield

Act 1 scenes ii through iv

In the opening scene, General Robert E. Lee, who is dead and who was also the leader of the Confederate Army of America during the American Civil War, describes his upbringing as a Southern plantation owner, raised primarily by his mother and three aunts. He tells how he attended West Point, where he met many of the men he would later fight with and against. He describes his marriage to a sickly wife, whom he respected, and how he, “a simple country boy,” became the leader of Confederate Army.

ACT 1, scene ii

SETTING: same as the previous one, except there is now a sash and a sword in addition to the Confederate officer’s coat and campaign hat.

AT THE RISE: LEE steps out of the darkness at the rear of the stage, puts on his coat and hat and faces the audience.

LEE: With a few words my life was changed. I was fifty-six years old. I held the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel, and I had just been ordered to give it up.

(beat)
Whatever emotions I felt, I held in check as I had always done since childhood. But I can tell you they were powerful. Perhaps the most powerful feeling that took hold was not anger, as you might think,  but one of loss; tremendous overwhelming loss. And yes, betrayal. So intense were those feelings that I almost stumbled when I left General Scott’s office. I had served my country all of my adult life, and now . . .

(beat)
I did not immediately return to Arlington. Instead, I rode along the bank of the Potomac. I needed to be alone. I could not let Mary or my children see my grief.

(paces back and forth)
When I finally felt in absolute control of my emotions, I returned home. And that night at dinner, I told Mary what had happened. She did not as why General Scott had asked for my resignation. For several moments she remained silent; then she said, “What is God’s will, is God’s will. We will put our trust in him.”

(beat)
At that moment, I did not know whether my self-control would shatter; fragment, the way glass does when it is struck with a hammer, or whether I would laugh insanely? But neither of those things happened. Mary and I shared a profound religious belief. It was part of the glue that held us together. It took the place of – –

(stops and faces the audience)
I wanted my pain assuaged by the softness of her womanliness. But that was not going to happen. She came to me, took hold of my hand and kneeling beside, she began to pray. I bowed my head, knelt next to her and joined her in prayer.

(beat)
I tended my resignation on April twelfth, eighteen sixty-one to Mister Simon Cameron, the Secretary of War, the day before Virginia seceded from the Union. But in my letter to General Scott, I wrote, “Save in defense of my native state, I shall never draw my sword.”

(chuckles with satisfaction)
But I did not remain a civilian very long. In May I was appointed Commander of the Confederate Army and given the rank of Brigadier General. Shortly after I took command, I renamed the army The Army of Northern Virginia. My rank and the army’s name remained the same through out the war. By accepting the post, I immediately committed treason. The enormous weight of that word rested heavily on my shoulders. Had I become another Lucifer? I took time to reread John Milton’s “PARADISE LOST,” and found myself wondering if we – – the Confederacy – – was about to wage “impious war” and like Lucifer, would be cast into hell? I did not believe “it was better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.”

(beat)
During the next four years, I would know hell many, many, many times. The physical hell of battle and the terrible personal torment of doubt.

(begins to pace again, stops and faces the audience)
In retrospect, there were only two battles that mattered. And I lost both.

(beat)
Gettysburg was the first. That lasted for four scorching July days in eighteen sixty-three. The second lasted for almost two years – – until I surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia on April ninth, eighteen sixty-five.

(moves behind the table and sits)
Gettysburg . . . Gettysburg . . . Gettysburg . . . I can repeat the name a hundred times, even ten thousand times. And each time would be an incantation to undo what I had done. But that will never happen. It will always be. I had not just blundered; I had blundered badly.

(beat)
After it, I went to Richmond and offered my resignation to President Davis, but he would not accept it.

(beat)
Those of you who have read about the battle know that I did not choose to fight there. It happened. I did not know where General Mead’s forces were. By the time I found out, It was too late. He had moved his men into position. Oddly, my army was to the north of his.

(beat)
It is not my intention to recapitulate the battle. Much was been written about it, and no doubt much more will be written about it. But from my perspective – – the now that I exist in – – there were two major factors that contributed to my defeat. The Union took and held two positions on the left of Cemetery Ridge: Big Round Top and Little Round Top. From them the Union troops could fire into the ranks of the men who were trying to gain the ridge.

(beat)
Even with enfilading fire from those positions, some of Picket’s men were able to reach the guns on the ridge and were killed in ferocious hand to hand fighting.

(beat)
Pickett’s charge was my last hope of rescuing my original plan, which was either to capture Washington or surround it, and thereby force the Union to come to terms. At the time, I saw it as the only viable way of achieving my end. I had not counted on the ferocity of the Union’s response, although I had encountered that ferocity in various battles that preceded Gettysburg.

(beat)
General Longstreet was the only one of my Commanders who counseled against the attack. He reminded me of mu assault on Chest Mountain, which is in now what is known as West Virginia; and a similar attack I ordered on Malvern Hill during the Peninsular Campaign. But assaults failed. I answered Longstreet that I had not forgotten either event; and that I was fully aware of the consequences both good and bad of the action I proposed. But all of the other Commanders were in accord with my view. I also believed in the will of my men to win over insuperable odds.

(beat)
If I felt that I lacked anything or anyone, it was General Jackson. He was the most aggressive of any of my Commanders until he was wounded by one of his own men at Chancellorsville and died six days later. And, yes; I considered him my strong right arm.

(beat)
The previous day’s fighting at Gettysburgh in the Wheat Field was so fierce that the water in the stream running through it turned red from the blood of those men who were trying to cross it. The battle seesawed. The advantage passed to us, then back to the Union Forces. And again back to us. It went that way through the long hot afternoon. But as the shadows lengthened Mead’s men gained the ground and held it. We were forced to fall back.

(beat)
All that stood between me and my goal was the Union Army’s position on Cemetery Ridge. If we could gain it and hold it, General Mead would have to pull his army back toward Washington, and I would follow in hot pursuit. Victory was still within my grasp, or so I believed.

(moves toward the other chair, and looks at the uniform for several moments before he speaks)
I did not know at the time that the Confederacy had suffered a stunning defeat at Vicksburg, and that the Union and gained control of the entire length of the Mississippi from St Louis to New Orleans.

(beat)
Oh yes, I knew that General Grant was in Command of the Union forces at Vicksburgh, but in truth I believed that General Johnston would out maneuver him.

(walks slowly to the center of the stage, clears his throat)
I ordered General Pickett to move forward and take the Union position. The distance between Pickett’s men and ridge was about eight hundred yards, about half a mile sloping gently upwards until it became very steep, indeed, near the top.

(beat, then in a stage whisper)
It was surprisingly quiet. Just the sounds of thousands of men moving, their footfalls. I do remember hearing any small arms fire. Traveler, my mount,  was oddly nervous and I had to steady him down.

(beat, in a normal voice)
Pickett’s men walked very slowly, almost strolled. Then, a few began to lope. By the time they were half way up to the ridge, they began to run and yell.

(with excitement)
Traveler pawed the ground and snorted.

(with even more excitement)
The men, now, were three quarters of the way to the top. I allowed myself to think that General Mead, like so many of the Union Commanders I had faced, turned tail and pulled back.

(beat)
Almost as quickly as thoughts of a bloodless victory entered my head, the Union guns blazed out their deadly fire. The first volley tore apart the ranks of the running men.Volley after volley smashed into Pickett’s men. The rifle fire from the Big and Little Round Tops was just as deadly.

(yelling)
I wanted to shout, Fall back . . . Fall back . . . Fall back! But I remained silent.

(beat)
Slowly, I realized the Mead must have reinforced his position during the night; and that he had more stomach for a fight than I previously believed he had.

(beat)
Again and again the Union guns fired. The dark angel of death hovered over that slope, and like a demented farmer harvested his crop. The dead and the dying, like so many grotesques, were scattered everywhere.

(beat)
Suddenly through the pall of smoke, I saw our flag raised above the ridge. Others saw it too, and a huge shout rose from those who watched the carnage. But almost as soon as we saw it, the flag vanished.

(beat)
Pickett’s men could do no more. They turned and fled the field.

(beat, the with sadness)
I rode out to meet them. I went alone. Over and over again  to those who stopped to look at me, I said, “I am sorry . . . I am sorry.” An old timer with a gray beard and fierce blue eyes stopped and looked up at me. “You done hurt us bad, General. Done hurt us bad.” And then he ran with the others.

(beat)
In their eyes, I read their feelings of betrayal. They had trusted me, and I had violated their trust for my own purpose. My words were scarce comfort to their pain. In less than an hour, half of Pickett’s division had been killed or wounded. I wanted to weep, but I could not show my pain. I lowered my head and rode back to our lines.

(beat)
That night it rained. I ordered the Army of Northern Virginia to retreat. Mercifully, General Mead did not pursue us. Had he, the war would have been over. My men were too exhausted to fight. We had been badly mauled, and now we were going back to Virginia to lick our wounds.

(removes his coat and hat and walks back into the darkness at the rear of the stage).

 

ACT 1, scene iii

SETTING: Same as the previous one.

AT THE RISE: LEE repeats his previous actions.

 

LEE: So, now you know something about what happened at Gettysburg. And yes, I purposefully left out left out important details because, though they were important, they were details. For that matter, any battle or any war is made up of those details. And they are at their best boring and at their worst very boring. Only the outcome of any battle counts. The outcome of Gettysburg counted more than all the battles that preceded  it; it was the death knell for the Confederacy but no one south of the Mason-Dixon Line heard it ring.

(beat)
For a short while, I returned to Arlington to rest. I was exhausted physically, and what you folks now call psychologically.  With or without Mary,  I prayed a lot hoping that the good Lord would give me guidance. I believed our cause was just. But nothing Divine came; I was left to my own devices. That is to say, I started on a particular road and would follow it to its end. Perhaps that I did not receive any answer from the Almighty was in itself an answer, a test of my faith and fortitude.

(beat)
As I already told you, I wanted to resign and turn my Command over to another general. But President Davis would have none of it. I went to him immediately after the battle, even before I returned to Arlington. And he ordered me to rebuild the Army of Northern Virginia, to make it into the formidable fighting force that it had been. Its role would be to stop the Army of the Potomac from moving south.

(moves toward the chair with the Union uniform on it and stands in front of it.)
While I was in Arlington, I received word from President Davis that General Ulysses S. Grant was given command of The Army of the Potomac. Mead had been removed for not pursuing and destroying my army. Had the situation been reversed, I would have done exactly what he did.

(beat)
But over the next two years, I would face the only man who would have followed me to hell if that was what it would have taken to destroy my army.

(moves back to the table and sits on its edge in its center)
Understand my feelings. I had lost a major engagement. He had won an important victory. My army had to be rebuilt. His was fresh and waiting for him. I could not even refer to him by his name. When I spoke about him, I would use the euphemism that man. I did the same when I spoke about the Union Forces. I referred to them as those people.

(beat)
It was, I admit, petty. But I ached in a way that I had never ached before. Ulysses was the son of a tanner, a man of no breeding. And yet he not only distinguished himself on the battlefield, he was made my adversary.

(with anger)
It was an insult.

(double beat, then calmer in a moderate voice)
Still, I saw in us a reflection, albeit a distorted one, of Hector and the wily Ulysses; especially during the siege of Richmond. Perhaps I should have surrendered then, as soon as the siege began. But – – But I thought I would be able to get terms.

(beat)
No. That is not true. I knew that General Grant would not stop until the Confederacy was totally destroyed. And the truth is, I came to want nothing less than its total destruction because I knew out of that destruction, we who fought would live and become the myth we are. And those who won would become less than they were. At least we would have that.

(beat)

I was confident that I could fight that man to a draw, who rose from anonymity to become my adversary. I did not realize that everything in his life, all of his failures, had prepared him for what he was about to undertake.

(removes his coat and hat and moves into the darkness at the rear of the stage).

 

ACT 1, scene iv

SETTING: Same as the previous one.

AT THE RISE: LEE repeats his previous actions before facing the audience.

 

LEE: General Grant set his army in motion. I put mine in what we called the Mule-Tree, but the Union newspapers referred to it as the Wilderness. It was a piece of worthless real estate, overgrown with bushes and – – I suspected that Grant would seek me out, and that is what he did. I had every advantage: my men knew the area, and my supply lines were short. I baited the trap and he took the bait.

(beat)
The fighting was savage. My men held. The union forces kept coming. His army suffered appalling casualties. I believed he would break off and pull his army back to Washington. But he did not; he continued to fight.

(beat)
My own losses were extremely heavy. Some units lost more than half their strength.

(beat, then with fierce anger)
He bled me. I thought I had baited a trap, and he had obliged me by sending his troops into it. But he fought his own battle; not the one I expected him to fight, not there; not anywhere.

(beat)
In an attempt to attack him on his left flank, I ordered my army to break off contact, and began my movement east.

(beat)
He turned his army east and met me at Spotsylvania.

(beat)
And so it was, battle after battle. Up north he was called a Butcher by his enemies in the northern press. But he kept pressing me; fighting in a way that horrified me. His losses were always high, but mine were higher. he could replace the men he lost; I could not. Like Moloch, he feasted on the blood of my men.

(beat)

Tens of thousands of men were killed and wounded. At the Battle of Cold Harbor, I thought I might have stopped him, at least for a short time. His losses were so high that after the war he wrote that he regretted the launching of the assault on June the third . . . I took no satisfaction in that when I was told about it or when I read it. At the time it occurred, I was in a fury. An impotent rage against that man, as I referred to him, consumed me.

(beat)
After a day of hard fighting, the space between the two armies was littered with the dead, the dying and the wounded from both sides. Under a flag of truce, he sent emissaries to ask me if I would allow Union corpsmen to gather their wounded and ours and minister to them.

(beat, then with sarcasm)
A generous offer you might say from one who was labeled The Butcher.

(beat, then vehemently)
Not so. Not so. Rather, it was an enormous insult, a slap in my face. Had I agreed, I would have admitted that I had neither the men nor the facilities to care for my own wounded.

(beat)
That was the hidden text.

(beat)
I refused the offer. By morning most of them were dead; and those who were still alive would soon die as the heat of the day became more intense.

(beat)
Do I regret my actions? No. I acted as any gentleman of honor would have acted. I would not accept charity from someone less than myself.

(double beat)
I expected Grant to make another frontal assault against Richmond. That would have been in keeping with his hammer-like attacks. But he moved his army south. And by the time I realized his intentions, it was too late; he had out flanked me and besieged Petersburg.

(beat)
On April the second, eighteen sixty-five, I was forced to leave the city to the mercy of that man and his army.

(moves to the center of the stage)
By this time, the other one of Satan’s minions, General William Techumsa Sherman had completed his infamous march to the sea and joined forces with Grant’s army. Later, I learned the entire operation was Grant’s plan; that he had personally chosen Sherman to command the other army because they shared the same views about the nature of war.

(beat)
They made their own rules. And yes, God help us, war would never again be the same. Honor, civility and gentlemanliness would not matter . . . Sherman burned the city of Atlanta; and in his march to the sea destroyed everything for fifty miles on either side of line of march. That was what Grant wanted his lieutenant to do. That was total war. And now the two were joined.

(beat)
My last assault, foolhardy as it was, was against Fort Steadman; a fortified height much like Cheat Mountain.

(beat)
Again I was reminded about what had happened at Cheat Mountain, Malvirn Hill and, yes, Gettysburgh by various commanders.

(beat)
The attack failed.

(beat)
On April ninth, under a flag of truce, I sent my delegates to ask General Grant for terms.

(the lights go down as LEE moves back into the darkness at the rear of the stage)

Bob Ward – Old Shaft

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Old Shaft
by Bob Ward

ward_oldshaft_medium

Bryan R. Monte – AQ11 Autumn 2014 Book Reviews

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AQ11 Autumn 2014 Book Reviews
by Bryan R. Monte

The Heart Imagining Itself (and other tropical dreams) a journal for imagining the heart by Yolanda V. Fundora, 2014, UrbanAmish.com, 978-1-50028-053-6, 46 pages.

Mysterious Acts of My People, Valerie Wetlaufer, Sibling Rivalry Press, 2014, 978-1-937420-66-6, 87 pages.

Phoning Home, Essays by Jacob M. Appel, South Carolina Press, 2013, 978-1-611117-731-0, 177 pages.

Planetary Emotions by Yolanda V. Fundora, 2014, 978-1-50028-533-3, UrbanAmish.com, 121 pages.

The Talking Day by Michael Klein, Sibling Rivalry Press, 2013, 978-1-937420-27-7, 64 pages.

During the summer reading period, I received five books that I felt merited a review or mention in this issue. Two of the five books are books of poetry, two are journals (one blank and one illustrated), and the last is a book of essays. Two of the books “authors” are male and two are female and they discuss subjects in Jewish, Latina, lesbian, gay and straight American and European cultures.

Jacob M. Appel has worked as a Brown University professor of bioethics, as well as a doctor, attorney and New York City tour guide. He has written more than 200 articles, and in the last year, has had three books published including a collection of essays, Phoning Home, about his upbringing and thoughts as a third-generation, Flemish-Latvian-American Jew. Appel’s essays describe how his family’s relations over the last century and on two different continents have been influenced, tempered, tested, broken and even erased through exile, emigration and genocide.

What makes Appel’s essays so interesting and unique is his candid, stastical or professional approach and/or non-melodramatic description of his relatives’ experience. For example, in “Caesura—Antwerp, 1983” when one of his uncles happens upon a long-lost friend from the Antwerp Jewish Ghetto in a small Spanish village while searching for someone to repair his watch, Appel does not describe a Schindler’s List reunion. Rather, the two old men just embrace, shake hands and talk for as long as it takes to repair the watch, then go back to their lives on different continents.

Appel’s ability to see and write about things clearly, rationally and without melodrama also permeates his discussion of bioethics related to healthcare and the quality of life, “Opting Out,” “Charming and Devoted” and “Livery” and limits of political discourse in America due to death threats he’s received related to his openness about his opinions on end-of-life decisions, “Our Incredible Shrinking Discourse.” I must admit that Appel’s wish, “for the medical staff to place a plastic bag over my head during my sleep” once his body no longer functions as he wants it to, differs somewhat from my own wish to stay connected to whatever apparatus necessary as long as I can still write by moving an eyeball à la Jean-Dominique Bauby. However, he makes a good case for his own situation and that of his relatives. He is a keen observer with a wide and precise vocabulary and his sentences and passages vary in length and rhythm making them a pleasure to read. The essays in Phoning Home could certainly be used as a model and a source of inspiration for others trying to capture somewhat quirky family histories from a novel, detached but also realistic point of view.

AQ10&11 artist and contributor Yolanda V. Fundora submitted two journals she created. The first journal, The Heart Imagining Itself (and other tropical dreams), features richly illustrated images from Latina culture opposite empty, lined pages. This journal will be especially good for writers who benefit from visual prompts include a series of representations as to how the heart imagines itself as the the first day of spring, the sun, the moon, a cloud, a star, etc., in addition to those of the Virgin, a mermaid, the hanging woman, a cactus and different types of fruit trees. The colours are so vivid and the subjects sequentially-placed that I can’t image an ekphrastically-oriented or inspired writer being unable to discover or create new material working in this journal.

In contrast, the only illustrated part of Fundora’s second journal entitled, Planetary Emotions, is its cover which includes a representation of the stars in the winter sky revolving around the North Celestial Pole in prismatic colours. The 121 lined pages inside this 6×9 inch (15×23 centimetre) bound, paperback journal are blank and should provide enough space for one’s thoughts at least for a season (based upon the use of at least one page per day). It will certainly be small and light enough to take along on journeys or to work or class and should also be the right size to be stored later in a bookcase next to your favourite books.

I discovered poet Michael Klein’s book, The Talking Day, while “surfing” Sibling Rivalry Press’ website this summer. I had not heard of Klein before, and I found the four “example” poems, “Cartography,” “from “When I was a Twin,”” “Provincetown 1990,” and “The Poet” to be intriguing. These four sample poems are exceptional in their range and description. The first poem, “Cartography,” demonstrates the power of the poet’s imagination and how a map for him is like the backdrop to a story—in this case a village with smoking rising from it and a woman walking down a road. The next, “When I was a twin” is an elegy and expresses the poet’s shock at his loss. This shock is even stronger because the nature of the loss isn’t revealed until halfway through the poem. “Provincetown 1990” is a very chilling poem that describes both the force of sexual desire and the spread of the AIDS epidemic, and how it passed by the two men and changed them. The last poem is an account of the poet’s development, his ars poetica and his awareness of his history and that of another writer.

Other subjects covered by Klein include alcoholism, gun rampages in America and their aftermath (referring to the book’s title), aging, and urban gay life. Stylistically I find his prose poems, “Florida” and “Movie rain and movie snow” the most arresting due to their sudden turns right at the end. In addition to its excellent poems, The Talking Day, has an eye-catching, camp, erotic cover photo featuring a tan, naked man shown in a side pose in a garden, framed by hula hoops and some sort of net. This cover is certainly as intriguing and as beautiful as Klein’s poetry. I don’t know how I could have missed Klein’s career. I have only my emigration to the Netherlands twenty-one years ago and my ex-pat teaching career as an excuse. This being his third acclaimed (poetry) book, I feel I have some catching up to do.

Mysterious Acts of My People is a remarkable, debut poetry book by Valerie Wetlaufer. It covers a wide range of subjects such as love, loss, sex, violation, nature, religion and madness. The book’s title poem introduces a world in which life is cheap and violent. “They say you can get two redheads/for the price of one in this town,”… “More of my bones were broken in hospitals/than on playgrounds.” Wetlaufer also describes this world masterfully using a variety of typographical formats. Whether in “The Canyon” where she describes the natural world in prose poem blocks to draw her inner landscape or in “The Mind’s Boil” where words float all over the page to describe madness, Wetlaufer expresses herself in ways that are both arresting and memorable.

In addition to typographical variation, Wetlaufer is also able to employ monologue effectively to describe herself and her fictional and historical figures. “Insomnia with Solomon” (a page and a half column with no stanza breaks) describes Wetlaufer’s thoughts one after another starting with a phone call by her mother and thinking about the neighbour’s barking dog, why she should “stop eating red meat, take the train more often,” juxtaposed with “get my car washed, my eggs harvested,” etc. a long list of the important and the mundane which continues until it ends with the thought again of her mother’s call. Other interesting monologues include “Needle Pointing North,” about a settler gone mad, “The Window Smasher Speaks,” and “Glass Makes a Clean Cut,” by Mary Sweeny an asylum escapee and even an “erasure” poem, “The Margin of the Lake,” with lines from Dorothy Wordsworth’s journal: “I wore a dress of whisper to touch it feels smooth surprise/my face now flame colored.”

I hope you have a chance to explore Mysterious Acts of My People, or one of the other books mentioned above, during the long autumn and winter evenings. ‘Til March 2015!

Bryan R. Monte – Black Flat

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Black Flat
by Bryan R. Monte

Derek, you bastard, you kept me too late!
And now the rain makes my tires squeal
on the the turns through the university parkway.
God, I love the feel of your conversation
your teeth-clenched accent
your room’s lavender walls
on which hang art posters
from Paris and Berlin while outside
Cleveland’s steel plant ashes fall gently
syncopated by a Mozart symphony.

Eight hours a day I’d grind optical lenses
chewing pink dust through a face mask
watching co-workers cough and laugh
and slap each other on the back
signalling through cigarette-yellowed fingers
above the whine of the machinery
Mom so proud of my new union job
She gave me her car. After work
I’d swing by your dorm.
A quick meal and a bottle of wine
and we’d be laughing and rolling on the lawn
then go downtown to buy the bag ladies supper
recording their stories for local colour
the radio my noisy companion back to my side of town
talking and singing to me to make sure
I didn’t miss any of the exits, the car rolling smoothly
along the elevated, concrete expressway.

The day your letter arrived from Stanford
Your voice came from the end of a long corridor
and soon I was parting the iron, luminous plume downtown
to drive you away forever.
The radio was on and the windows were up
but we weren’t even talking.
Streetlights strobed the windshield accusingly
Never, never, you’ll never!
Driving home the world folded out black flat
and I drifted through three lanes alone.

Caitlin Thomson – Poet

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Poet
by Caitlin Thomson

He talked about dish towels,
and the importance of oven mitts.
How colour choice was everything,
patterns largely inconsequential.

I went to the bathroom after thirty
minutes, hoping that he would change
the subject. I knew he was well intended,
he kept making eye contact

while listing details about fabric choice,
durability. Whenever my hands
shuffled, he would alter the tone of his voice
and I would pay attention once again.

When I returned, he asked about my life,
what did I do for a living? Two sentences later
he asked for the check.

Claudia Gary – Transcribing an ER Report

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Transcribing an ER Report
by Claudia Gary

My keystrokes open up the next dictation:
“Tall, thin Caucasian male, 30 years old,
presents with suicidal ideation
and says he also has ‘a real bad cold.’ ”

That can’t be right! Rewind and check for static,
listen again. The words still sound the same
but now I hear a sharp tone, symptomatic
of irony. The doctor’s not to blame,

nor is he free to explicate his views.
A resident, he works long hours this year
unrecognised, unthanked, paying his dues
and learning how to tell disease from fear.

I never learn the end, which seems a shame.
But he’s the one who has to sign his name.

Claudia Gary – Fixed Up

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Fixed Up
by Claudia Gary

Container of my old life,
you’re emptied, vacuumed, scrubbed out. I survey
each closet, crevice: bas-relief
in white, devoid of what I’ve hauled away.

Eviscerated to sell,
neutered, embalmed, you make me grieve, but I’m
too busy. Easier now to dwell
on commerce as I stand here one last time.

The buyer will walk through
your rooms and corridors, then sign a sheaf
of papers. Look how fresh and new
you seem. Think how he’ll fill you with his life.

Evelyn Posamentier – High Wycombe

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High Wycombe
by Evelyn Posamentier

                           In Memoriam Evelyn Noble

nightfall
last train back to london in an hour
after that no commuter trains till morning
no public transit in this town
a couple of taxis wait near the depot
here my mother wept through a war
an alien the kind rich woman took her in
as a maid on her estate through the winter months
she smashed some glass in the kitchen
a plate crashed to the floor, hands to her face
oh, the throat, the shard that sliced her arm
dropped again to the floor
i’m so goddamned sorry, mother
everyone is dead. no one can hear us
they all comforted you, the war torn refugee girl
so beautiful, so round her eyes
what did it matter? what business have i here?
near dark in a town not far from london
i look through the public records for traces
of the kind, rich lady, who loved the poor
the homeless, their faces smeared with war
the librarian persists: are you sure she had no descendants?

Andrea Rubin – It’s not a long ride from the institute to the institution

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It’s not a long ride from the institute to
the institution
by Andrea Rubin

the faux naif resurgence. it’s so nouveau and retro. i’m reading about it on a public morning commute bus while pigeon collective is wheeling in the sky. o dirty naked man perched on a do-not-enter sign: can you say something meaningful about pigeons and the faux naif resurgence. perched on a do not enter sign beneath a harvard mba advertisement invitation. can you say something about localism. i think it means artistically i see pigeons in the sky and the word media appears 25 times in the essay i am reading. media: a highly constructed anti-sabbatical electronic cultural messaging system. media plural of medium guash ink magic marker. let’s elide glide ourselves beyond or before culture. beneath the metaphor. com-munication with the spirit world enables the chef to grill the hamburger to a degree that is just brown and not pink. medium well-done the faux naif resurgence means i find it hard to recover the syntax i was once in the past formerly accustomed to. means the words have seceded, individualism has triumphed over localism. it is not a long bus ride from the institute to the institution. just a few letters and a trip and fall down the stairs.

Frank Light – Rotterdam for Amateurs

/in

Rotterdam for Amateurs
by Frank Light

Friday, April 30, 2004. No more March madness. That was Amsterdam. This is April going into May. But it’s still the Netherlands, still daughter Julia’s sports, and with my wife at work, I’m back to traveling on my own. The late-afternoon light, diffused by clouds, darkens the spring foliage and paints the canal-laced area around Schiphol tropical, West Africa or Southeast Asia, as we descend. Inside is of course climate-controlled like any modern airport any time of the year. The mantra is mind your step from the recorded female voice you hear at the end of horizontal escalators in airports throughout Europe. Not that the Lights ever accept those free rides. Leery of slippery slopes, we walk.

The outdoor air feels the way it looked coming in – steamy. The steam has condensed to rain by the time the train reaches Leiden, where I stayed for last year’s basketball tournament. Two more stops: The Hague, host for that tournament, and Rotterdam. At least everything is on time this trip. The flight for the Amsterdam tournament was delayed by fog and the train to Leiden by some lost soul who jumped onto the tracks.

I’m in the upper deck of a second-class car packed with youths in a boisterous mood. Several of them wear tall, foam crowns like the cabin crew sported on the flight in. To honor the Queen’s birthday, they say. Many have on orange T-shirts. A striking exception sits opposite me – a young, black-skinned woman clad entirely in hot pink – shoes, slacks, blouse, earrings, cap. Even her hair is pink.

We’ve pushed ahead of the rain, so I leave my parka packed for the hike from Rotterdam station. I set a brisk pace, as the clouds are catching up. Not so many bikes here as Amsterdam or Leiden. Not much reason to loiter. An ambulance hurries past with siren bleating. Work crews sweep trash and broken glass. The police are out in force. What is it, I ask as two of them step down from a paddy wagon, a demonstration? The people on the street are mostly young. They seem excited, tired, pleased – ravers who got their money’s worth.

Queen’s birthday, the policeman answers. Some celebrate too hard.

My hotel should be around here. But I’m not seeing it. I ask the policeman.

He points behind the paddy wagon. A banner says Hotel. It just doesn’t say which one. Neon in the window advertises a Japanese restaurant.

At check-in I ask how much for the room. 110 euros, the receptionist says. The woman I spoke to on the phone told me 86. She gave that rate when I complained about 110. On leave without pay, I’m free to travel but obliged to watch my budget. Breakfast is included, the woman said. An Internet site touted rooms for 86 euros, without breakfast. None are available, however. Okay, she said, 86. Send me an email, I asked. She didn’t, and now the receptionist wants documentation. I ask if the woman I spoke to is on duty. She’s their point of contact for the tournament. No, she has the weekend off. She’ll be back when the tournament’s over. The receptionist asks for my handwritten notes. I suggest making a copy. The machine’s broken. Okay, she concedes. 86. No breakfast.

They make you work for it.

As I start to unpack I realize I don’t know where or when the games will be played. The school letter gave a web site, but I neglected to check it before departure. Every trip I forget something. I call the girls’ hotel and ask for the coach. They haven’t arrived yet. Strange, their flight was scheduled to depart ahead of mine, and mine got in a half hour late. I ask the receptionist there about the venue. She asks around. The coach of another team tells her and she tells me. But she doesn’t sound sure. Downstairs, I ask the receptionist. This is, after all, the “parents hotel.” Not a clue, and there are no other parents to check with. Last month when I emailed the team photos from Amsterdam to the basketball coach and thanked him for his efforts, he said my wife and I were the first parents ever to travel to the tournament. Well, she’s our only child, a 9th grader, and we are American. We’re also older than the other parents.

I ask if there’s an Internet café nearby. The receptionist mentions a place several blocks away. I ask if it’ll be open this late. 24/7, she assures me.

By then the rain is with us. By the time I cover a block it’s pouring. Lightning flashes directly overhead. I look for a restaurant before everything closes. A McDonald’s already has. I’ll surf the Net later. Drenched but grateful not to have been struck by a bolt from above, I enter a Netless, nearly empty café and order a vegetarian dish washed down with one “whistler” and then another: it’s draft beer in small glasses, like champagne. On leaving I ask the whereabouts of the Internet place. Not a hundred meters. I must have walked past it.

It’s closed.

Rain continues to fall but without the drama – the lightning moved to the suburbs. The phone rings as I enter my room. It’s Sally, wife and love of my life, at home in Denmark. Given her position at the embassy, she’d be my boss if I were working, a nepotistic no-no. That turns me into a dependent spouse, a stay-at-home dad. Usually.

I remove my soggy clothes while we talk. After we finish, I try again for the coach. He answers. They were late checking in because they ate at the airport. Their first game tomorrow is at 10:15. He doesn’t know where. He just gets on the bus.

The room is too warm to sleep. I find dials that will crank up the heat but nothing to cool things down. Thinking it’s me, can’t see for looking, I call the receptionist. She says there is no air conditioning. I guess it doesn’t get hot enough often enough to deal with. As in Denmark, the natives put the unpleasantness out of mind. The same discipline spares them the trouble and expense of window screens. That would imply bugs.

I prop open the minibar door. Every little bit helps. A sign says turn off the lights before opening the window, or mosquitos will get in. At least the Dutch acknowledge their presence, although I didn’t notice them in the storm nor did I see, hear, or feel any in the room. In the morning I do – on the ceiling, which prompts me to stand on a chair flapping and snapping a towel. If nothing else, the action clears my sinuses, a condition I attribute to the humidity and a pillow that didn’t sufficiently raise my head.

May Day, the storm long gone, the sky a glorious blue. I hit the streets in search of a bargain breakfast. Nothing opens before nine. Chastened, I return to the hotel. The 16-euro charge is a rip-off but better than the 24 I would have paid had breakfast been included with the room. The buffet is typical north European, with cheeses, cold cuts, and jams. Nothing Japanese about it. Maybe that kicks in at dinner.

The receptionists explore the web for me in search of venue. Seems to be off the map. The most they can do is jot down an address. I call the team’s hotel. The receptionist there doesn’t know either. The teams already left for the games. The only thing for it is a taxi. Not many around on a Saturday morning. Finally I wave one down near the central station. The driver doesn’t recognize the address. He drives to the station for directions.

The girls play three games today. Their whole season in one weekend. The international schools of northwest Europe are too far apart to do otherwise. Copenhagen wins their first. In the second game one of Julia’s teammates breaks her leg below the knee. In great pain, she goes into shock. While she lies under a space blanket where she fell, an ambulance coming, her teammates finish the contest on a waterlogged practice field. Meanwhile a girl who attended only one practice all season because of back problems reinjures her back. She cannot go on. Supposedly her parents let her come on the condition she not play. The Hungarian twins didn’t come, either. The reason they gave – tired of losing. I think the real stopper was money – it’s not cheap to fly here. Fifteen years ago they lived under communism. Now some compatriots are getting rich but not those who work honestly for their government. Anyway, the team loses by a goal, and they’re down to 12 players for their last match of the day.

Nothing-nothing going into the last few minutes, Julia and an opponent rush to the ball in front of our net. The opponent stumbles. The referee awards a penalty kick to the stumbler’s team. The ball goes into the nested hands of our goalie and through them into the goal. Final score 1-0. Julia feels terrible. The ref decided the game on a very questionable call. Julia was in that position because her teammates lagged behind and because her coach doesn’t use a sweeper. He likes Julia to keep the other three defenders in a line. She does that, but then it’s usually she who has to chase down the ball every time it breaks through. She did that over and over, played her heart out. She trudges off without stopping for the fries she left with me at halftime. After she collects herself, we talk. Her cheeks are red. I ask if she knows who’s the best passer on her team. She is. But her mind is elsewhere, and that’s fine; not only is her father biased, soccer was never his game.

Her teammates call her over, and the coach addresses them out of my hearing. Life’s unfair, I was going to say. Results don’t always correlate to effort. But you know. Inside, you know. I finish the fries, take a tram to the hotel, make instant coffee in the room, start this journal, open the window, turn off the lights, order an extra pillow, and revisit the neighborhood café. Different crew tonight. The waitress bring me soup, salad, and bread. A couple of whistlers to wash it all down. Ice cream to top it off. Living large. The girls are supposed to be making their own pancakes on a canal boat. Hope it’s fun. They’re good at forgetting.

Sally calls late. She went to the school fair in Hellerup, a suburban town between our house and Copenhagen. Everybody on the board, save me, was there. My membership is almost ex officio in light of availability and relation to the embassy.

The woman who started me on these journals laughs when I describe my own evening. Boring, I admit. The old man is snoring.

But you’re in Rotterdam, she exclaims. It’s not Paris, or London. Or even Amsterdam.

It’s better. It’s now.

Sunday, May 2. Skipping breakfast, I check out early, catch the tram, and take my travel bag to the games. A snack bar sells coffee and pastries that hit the spot. And for way less than at the hotel. At 8:30 the girls play Siegtuna, which has won the tournament seven years running. The only school here from Sweden, Seigtuna played two games yesterday, winning both by a score of 6 – 0. Copenhagen loses 3 – 0, all the goals occurring in the first half. In their final game, for 7th place, the girls continue their stellar defensive play, holding their opponent scoreless through both halves and two five-minute overtimes. Unfortunately they also fail to score. “Penalty” kicks decide the game. Julia looks shocked when the coach selects her as one of the five kickers. She’s never had a strong kick, yet he’s also had her taking the free kicks from the back line. Although the team has no captain, she is the one who meets the referee at the beginning of each game and before the kickoff. She is one of two Copenhagen girls to score in the kickoff. The other team gets three. Still, Copenhagen played well, with just one substitute available. Wonderfully, the girl who broke her leg is up and about on crutches and painkillers.

Siegtuna loses the championship in a kickoff.

Concerned about making my flight, I take a taxi to the station. Sally’s remark gets me thinking about Rotterdam. The largest port in Europe, she teased. I can sense its reach even if I can’t see it. Rotterdam is function to Amsterdam’s form. When I first visited the continent, 1968 on a Eurailpass bought with money saved in Vietnam, the trains must have passed through Rotterdam, but neither I nor any other tourist got off. Amsterdam was – and is – the destination. I mention that to the cabbie, who was born and raised here. Amsterdam’s old, he says, like Europe. I point out the red light we’re running. Sunday, he explains, meaning nobody but us chickens. Rotterdam’s built like America, he adds. It’s newer. It has tall buildings. To me it’s closer in spirit to Amsterdam than America. For starters, the climate’s the same. Same queen, language, shade of orange. But of course the two cities are different. Every place is. Anywhere you go, anything you do, is a tradeoff. Opportunity cost, economists call it. That summer, for example, I’ll leave for three months in Uruzgan, the province where the Dutch would later concentrate their efforts in Afghanistan, though nobody knows that then.

With the airline’s strong encouragement, I try my first self-check-in. It’s the future. I might as well embrace it.

The scanner does not recognize my passport.

No problem, the airline cheerleader chirps. Go to any counter from 9 to 12.

When I get to the front of counter 10, the clerk says go to counter 14. When I get to the front of 14, the clerk says they’re redoing the seating. She seems puzzled. She can’t process me. She asks me to stand to the side. After she handles a few more customers, I go back to her. They are now open for check-in. Just two seats left, she says, letting me know just how lucky I am. You’d never guess I made a reservation and arrived two hours before the flight.

Then on boarding we’re held back from the ramp after our tickets are taken. Finally they let us go. Airline employees push an empty wheelchair in the opposite direction. I feel a twinge of remorse for my earlier frustration. The twinge grows when I see who sits in front of me. It’s Julia’s injured teammate, one seat for her body and two for her leg. Her team’s flight – on another airline – could not spare the extra seats. An ambulance waiting on the tarmac in Copenhagen will take her to the hospital for more X-rays.

On the train into town I phone Sally, who says Julia called from the airport and should have been home by now but isn’t. Before leaving Copenhagen, I arranged for the mother of a teammate to take her. I had earlier asked another teammate’s father, a teammate who stayed home because her mother succumbed to cancer last Thursday. Now there’s unfairness. And perspective. It comes at you in waves. You absorb it in dribs and drabs. The funeral is Tuesday.

At Hellerup station I corral the one taxi driver out of a nearby grille. Julia gets home in due course, unpacks, and repacks for school activity week in north Jutland. At 7 the next morning I drive her to the rendezvous point in Hellerup. We have the briefest of goodbyes, as classmates might be watching. It’s the same for all of them.

I get back in time to see Sally off to work. Last night I forgot to tell her the plane flew over our house. Once home to a famous Danish actor, SS residence during the occupation, it now belongs to the US government. Reportedly we acquired it after the war for a boatload of cloth Danish women were anxious to get their hands on. So big and white you can’t miss it, the back windows looking across the Sound clear to Sweden when the sun shines as it does today. But she has to run. Not me. That’s how journals get written—by people with time, past, present, and future.