I have stripes, she said, and he thought he’d misheard her.

Stripes, she said again.

What, like a cheetah, he asked.

No, she said. Cheetahs have spots. I think you mean, like a tiger. Or like a zebra, maybe.

So, like a tiger?

No, she said again. And she looked at him, a look he wasn’t familiar with. He wasn’t sure what that look meant.

I can’t really explain, she said. I just wanted to say something. To warn you, or whatever. And she started to undress. She took off her jacket, unbuttoned and dropped her men’s tuxedo shirt, slung her bra. She kicked off her shoes, unzipped and stepped out of her skirt, peeled off her leggings, tossed her underwear. She stood in front of him and looked at him, and he knew what that look meant. See?

But he didn’t see. He didn’t see any stripes, he didn’t know what she could have meant. All he saw was her standing there – naked, eyes closed, clothes piled around her and thrown to the side, arms outstretched like in presentation, like a statue, like some kind of religious or spiritual being, almost – and he didn’t see what she could have meant, but he nodded. He looked at her until she opened her eyes and their eyes met and he looked at her, a look that meant yes, yes, I see exactly what you meant.

from MY ONLY WIFE by Jac Jemc ( Dzanc Books, 2012 )

Later in our time together, my wife would wake in the night.

She was not a light sleeper, but there was one sound that could wake her without fail.

When it was warm out, we left the windows open. If it was quiet and if the traffic was slow, we could hear the faint sound of a tin sign swaying down the street. 

The sign was very lightweight.  It didn’t take more than the slightest of breezes or a car driving by slowly to start it swinging.

I could sleep right through this sound, but I know my wife would wake often in the night because of it.

I could wake and play music loudly and she wouldn’t so much as twitch while she slept soundly.

But at night, in the warm silence, she would wake to the cool squeak of that sign below. 

She knew there was no use tossing and turning.  She couldn’t try to ignore it.  Closing the window wouldn’t be enough of a barrier.

She would simply stand quietly from her side of the bed, silently open the bedroom door and soundlessly pad to the kitchen where she would flip on the light and lean against the counter, arms folded patiently, waiting for the breeze to subside. 

I would wake and find her side of the bed empty. 

I would stumble into the kitchen blindly and stand in front of her smiling a just awakened, droopy-mouthed grin.

My sleep swollen hands would find their way to her hair and as my fingers began to thread through the soft tangle on her head, her eyes would shut and her chin would lift and she would bask in the light of the overhead lamp like it was the warmest of summer afternoons. 

Eventually she would lift her arms in a stretch, yawning, like a cat in a spot of sun, and then she would place her hands on my shoulders to still me. Her lips would form the shape of a “sh” but no sound would come out and I would watch her listen, afraid to breathe, afraid to blink.

The sign had fallen into silence outside. 

Her hands would slide down my shoulders, down my chest and abdomen, onto my hips and she would push me gently away so that she could walk back to our bedroom and climb back into bed.  Her hand would hit the light switch on her way out of the kitchen, just a moment before it seemed like an afterthought. 

I would stand in darkness for a few moments and listen to the rumple of the linens as she climbed into bed.  Then I would run the faucet, letting the water get cold, as I pulled a glass from the cupboard.  While downing the glassful in a gulp with my right hand, my left hand would tap the faucet off with measured accuracy.  I would set the glass in the sink and count the steps back to the bedroom where I would find my wife already fast asleep.

When the stories stopped, my wife’s smoking started again.  My wife sat on the windowsill to the fire escape rather than the couch. 

She hadn’t smoked in ages.

I knew I was supposed to be angry that she was doing something so bad for her health. 

I knew I was supposed to look at her perched on the windowsill half in the apartment, half out, with disdain for the cancerous scent she was exhaling all over our things, into the cool night air.  I knew I should think it was ridiculous that she opened a window so widely, multiple times a day in December when the snow was beginning to accumulate.

I knew I was supposed to be even more disgusted by this in the morning. 

But I wasn’t.  I liked the way she looked. 

I liked the broad inflations of her chest on the inhale.             

I liked the collapse of her shoulders, heavy with all that weight, on the exhale. 

I liked the delicate poise of her hand, wrist balanced on a bent knee, the limp bend of her fingers. 

I liked the contrast of the white smoke to the night sky and I liked the silhouette of her form against the morning sun. 

I liked the flick of her thumb on the lighter, the Popeye grimace with which she sucked in the first gulp of air. 

I liked the little slivers of cellophane I found glinting around on the carpet. 

I liked the ashy flavor of her.

Her mouth tasted of urns and volcanoes.

I liked the butts I found in the cheap ashtray we kept for smoking guests.

I liked the rings of her bright lipstick decorating the filtered ends.

I know I shouldn’t have, but I supported her.  When she put Marlboro Lights on the grocery list, I asked for them from the cashier without any moral hesitation.

When the clerks asked if I wanted them in the bag or with me, I held out my hand and pocketed them so that I might hand them to my wife personally. 

I pocketed them so that I might receive some of her gratitude immediately, a kiss on the cheek, as she pulled the loose end of the cellophane and unwrapped the package, eager for the soothing relief. 

After she took her first drag, I kissed her mouth, in love and happy to help.

from WE’RE GETTING ON by James Kaelan ( FlatmanCrooked, 2010 )

I haven’t slept all night, so I can say for certain that the rain stopped pre-dawn and that at some incalculable hour I discarded all the names. This morning she insisted that we use the bucket to bail the ditch, which was, I’ll admit, more efficient than using our hands to keep the water out, and though we prevented him from drowning I hated all of it intensely. But if he doesn’t die from his injuries, he might from pneumonia. He’s begun coughing. She’s lying on her side, her legs crossed to hide her cunt, petting his forehead. He watches her with his good eye, and even tries to speak from time to time. He said “no” at one point, and “yes” sometime later. I’m envious of his condition, even if he’s in tremendous pain.

The others come down from their cave after the first light. They don’t move as a single unit, but I’ll confuse myself if I separate them. They stand at the edge of the hole, aghast. “What happened?” they ask. They look at her, expecting her to give some kind of explanation, but she doesn’t betray me. They ask what they can do, and she says they should carry on like today was yesterday and he was participating in our activities, rather than wheezing in his grave. They aren’t naked, nor do they comment on the fact that we are. She is so covered with mud that it’s as if she were clothed. I’m similarly filthy.

They walk to the water tank and retrieve the coyote. I hadn’t seen it lying there. Because they didn’t gut it last night, its stomach has inflated. All the post-mortem gases have probably putrefied the meat. I wonder if this excuses me from my duties here. They killed an animal, and rediscovered it in the morning. I suppose that doesn’t count. And besides, between killing and finding already dead is failing to kill. I will have to take care of that on my own, as I will the scavenging. They are asking for a knife, but we’ve never had one. Regardless, they kneel in the dirt, which the sun is beginning to dry, and try to plunge their thumbs through the hide on either side of the spine. This eventually proves effective, and they are able to tear the hair and flesh off the animal’s back. The meat is mostly gray, but in some places purple. They use their long fingernails to unhook the skin from the regions where it’s most secure, such as the face. The eyes protrude from the skull when the lids are gone. The tail looks like a rope tied into a line of knots. When they’ve denuded the thing to the best of their ability, they walk over to the scrub brush pile, where all the branches are sodden. Even if we had matches, I wouldn’t allow them to build a fire. They will eat the dog raw or not at all. But they lay the wood out to dry regardless. They must be starving.

I hold my hand in front of my face and it shakes. My hunger should pass, I expect, by this evening, or by tomorrow morning at the latest. I don’t plan to eat again, unless I come across an edible flower or a bit of moss clinging to a rock, or that evasive corpse.

And then to the in-mountain I hear something rumbling. An enormous machine is either rolling down the highway and that noise is traveling up to us again, or a vehicle, having left the paved road, is climbing toward our camp. I watch the low ridge by which the others exited the property yesterday when they discarded the car. The noise is getting louder, and everyone—even he—has turned to listen. At the crest of that hill below us, a bright light flashes, which I realize is sunshine refracting off the windshield of a sedan. They stand up and begin waving their arms. She stops smoothing his hair and rolls onto her side, putting one arm over her exposed breasts. I expect, once it notices that it’s come across a settlement, it’ll turn around, and so I get to my feet as well. But the car continues toward us. There are no markings on the doors. It carries two people, a father and a mother, perhaps. But I can’t tell its sex from this distance. We are still children of someone, hypothetically.

They jog to meet it, leaving the carcass in the garden. Suffering from modesty perhaps, she descends into the pit to hide with him. His one eye rotates wildly in the socket. I run toward my cave, as I would rather abandon them than be discovered. We should be doing everything in our power to protect ourselves, but they’re inviting the world to look at us. I stop at the opening to my hole, but decide better of entering. If I hide there, I’m trapped. They’ll tell it where I’ve gone, and it will pull me out by my head. My only option is to flee. This isn’t cowardice, but rather resolve. To allow myself to get captured would be to admit that I haven’t changed. This is the final test of our fitness, and they’re failing.

Having climbed high enough above our land to apprehend the entire expanse and everything else in the vicinity, the gray valley, the low buildings of a town, the green river of which I have no recollection, I sit down in the damp grass. Far below, the car has been parked, and it—a man and a woman—have gotten out. It is looking into the pit at she and he, and they are gesturing with their hands, as if to explain to it what has transpired. But it can’t have the capacity to understand what they’re saying, why we were here, why she is naked, or why he is half-buried in the ground. They point up-mountain, perhaps at me, but it can’t see me. I am, for all the mud I’ve slathered on my skin, the color of the ground.

I can’t help but wonder who is trespassing down there. Is it the realtors from Battle Mountain coming for a visit? Is it our neighbors from some other tract asking how we hooked up to the electricity grid, or how many feet we drilled before we hit ground water? I’m concerned only insofar as the situation affects me. I have to keep this going. If it intends to stop us, will it pursue me? Will a helicopter hunt me down and spot me as I scurry from rocky outcropping to rocky outcropping across this mountain range? Or will it leave me in peace? Maybe it came to say that some application just got processed, and now we are the proud owners of nothing and nowhere. But I assume my instincts are correct. It came to bring us back to the city. It traveled four hundred miles to assess a fine of some sort, or levy a tax. And I’d forgotten that he is also injured, so regardless of its reason for coming, it can’t ignore his condition. I’ll have to persevere alone.

How many days have I been at this? Three, at a minimum, because I remember the sun coming up on as many occasions. I haven’t eaten, of course. I made a vow that I wouldn’t, unless I came across a carcass. The nausea has subsided, so that thirst is now my central concern. Although I’m not worried. I’ve been lying on my back, beneath a rock escarpment, since pre-evening yesterday. The heat has been desiccating.

If I had some sort of destination, I would encourage myself to stand. I raise my head and look at my feet, which are covered with blood. I must have cut open my toes somewhere along the journey, though I’m not experiencing pain. As I wait here, and for what I don’t know, I find that I’ve grown tired of thinking. There’s a goal. This constant revision is exhausting, or terrifying, if I’m being honest. These deliberations must eventually lead to a conclusion, and that denouement is what concerns me, or at least eludes me. During the evening yesterday, or this morning just as likely, for the quality of light is similar at both the start and end of the day, I watched a deer, or perhaps a goat, bound across a field. I’ve seen no other animals, unless a bird counts as an animal, but I mean nothing else on the ground. Judging by the speed at which the goat was moving, I surmised that the deer did not belong here. I’m having trouble without these subjects, but that’s to be expected. I can’t discard I yet. That would be too absurd. But I’m approaching. Language is the last technology I have to rid myself of if I’m going to start over. Although a new beginning seems beyond my grasp. I’ve gone too far in the other direction, and this isn’t a circle or a cycle, but a spectrum at the ends of which are two terminal extremes. How should I go about this? Were pronouns the right parts to start with? Maybe I should have begun by paring down my vocabulary more generally. I’ve left myself with I, as well as that and this and these. Let me hang onto those for a moment, and those as well. The adverbs can go, but I’ll retain the articles until near the end. And I’ll try to extinguish the conjunctions. I’ll have to think in simpler sentences, limiting my adjectives. That should concise things. Whenever possible, I’ll consider objects around me without assigning them qualities. The sky, I’ll think. Should I discard commas? Question marks, yes. Question marks yes. I don’t need to inquire. No apostrophes. I do not need to inquire anymore. Some repetition to ensure everything gets eliminated. I lie on the ground. The sun. A single cloud. No water. No one pursued me. I must end on the right word. The deer leaps. The goat’s hooves clatter sharply on the rocks and it slips, he, or she falls, down the shear face of the orange cliff, or did it? I had to. That was the last outburst. I will not again. I am prepared for this. That is the limit. Just five words. No more. Constricted. The cloud is moving. Nothing progressive. Present only. I should eliminate the past. One more memory. I smashed the clock. Another before I go. The garden arranged in rows. I lack the word. Bent pouring water. I stop there. The remnants cool. I close my eyes. Not yet. I open them. I am far from dying. Days of this. Tomorrow. A day without words. If I can manage. The day after. Silence. The third day a notion. Later an idea. Let me get to four. Words. There I am. Down to the last. I pause. For a moment. I have to pare. Strip this down. To three. That was two. The bits. The punctuation still. The last period. I omit. Now. Just two. The collapse. The renewal. If the. A cacophony. Plural. Noises. Noise. Singular. Last one. To one. Yes. I can. No I. No. The. In. Out. Final. None.

from ADAM ROBISON AND OTHER POEMS by Adam Robinson ( Narrow House, 2010 )

He was friends with Robert Schumann
Probably better friends with Schumann’s wife Clara
It was an exceptional time of likeability
They all got together in Germany or wherever
And played five-handed piano

See Brahms only had one hand
But he was exceedingly generous with it
Brahms was the kind of guy
He drove through toll booths
He’d ask the attendant to apply his change
To the fare of the carriage behind him please
And he traveled a lot

He insisted on strict realism
He protested excess
He scorned the work of Magritte
Clara shared with him amusing French anecdotes
Still he disdained the man’s paintings
Objecting that they were “too gay”
Or “perhaps interesting but dishonest at their core”

At the time gay meant frivolous
No one knows what frivolous meant

I can’t remember the first name of Brahms
But everything else, this all, is true
I might have the words wrong
Maybe in the wrong order 

Brahms died in 1897

There is a baby in a stroller in the library
His mother is typing with heavy fingers

He is not moving he is sleeping with cake
Dirt on his face and his hand is clutched tightly

In on itself

This boy dozes fatlipped in his lap is his
Formula and softpack of menthol cigarettes

Right next to him is his mother whom
I cannot see because we are each in a cubicle turned

In on itself

from THE RAT VEDA by James Chapman ( Fugue State Press, 2010 )

The one who puts a concrete barrier between Rat and Lilla, let him be destroyed.

The one who disguises herself as Lilla and berates Rat using angry words, let her be destroyed.

The one who disguises himself as Rat and bites at Lilla, let him be poisoned, let him be burnt.

Let the misunderstanding-demon be exploded, be wrenched out of the air and flailed.

Let the liar who says there’s no love be mocked at and made powerless.

Let the fraud who can’t answer immediately any question about love be pitied and forgotten.

Lilla built the house, she filled the house without entering it.

With desire she filled every room.

The roof’s so high above Rat’s cellar, he can’t even understand what a roof is.

He doesn’t aspire to the roof, but to the bottoms of Lilla’s feet.

Rat, you love.

Fill a dipper with love and pour it upward, drench the world, flood the garden, float your beloved on a deep-hulled ship, drown your misunderstanding, fill your basement with water, swim to her, fill the air and the heavens with water, float to her.

Can’t you feel?

Is it love if you’re so reasonable?

Do you pretend when you dance?

You do?

Then do you pretend when you dream?

What if we notice you and mock you?

What then?

Will you deny your beloved, to win back our good opinion?

Lilla exists, yet you’re just sitting there.

By your law, girls stifle their laughter; by your law, children sit in rows; by your law people marry to please their parents; by your law men commit suicide because of embarrassment; by your law half the world won’t dance; by your law animals are caught for food; by your law a girl tears up a drawing of herself; by your law a boy talks to himself in a whisper; by your law a man who’s never sung out loud dreams of impressing people he knew thirty years ago by singing for them; by your law all persons stay safe from embarrassment above all; by your law a wealthy man dies politely, hiding his terror.

Now you sit in a basement seeing the face of one who can float in the air, and no other rat knows what’s wrong with you.

But why would she love you?

What’s the joy for her?

You’re already the best of dancers, if you see it.

You’re already as far beyond the outer light as the outer light is beyond your tunnel, if you see it.

You see round lights passing, you see lights move through the tunnel, the slate of the walls: you see.

You’re not slate, you’re not a moving light, you’re not light itself, you’re the receiver.

You can’t prevent any color from entering your eyes.

Lilla spreads herself across the ceiling of your tunnel, she opens the ceiling and creates every color light, and that comes from you, that’s you.

Rat’s drunk.

Why, what has he drunk?

Saffron’s floating down, filtering through the air, where’s it coming from?

He’s eaten a grain of saffron, and now he’s drunk, he’s dissolved into his dark like dark.

The dark is annihilating, he runs at it, he’s a black rat, he’ll destroy his habits, he won’t remember standard phrases, he’ll be hated by anybody who ever found him useful, he’ll be no use.

And if he dies in the dark, his fur won’t be used to make a gunpowder pouch, his teeth won’t be turned into gears.

He won’t be immortal, even his existence will disappear, he’ll never be an important rat.

He’s drunk enough to talk to every aspect of the dark.

He’s a rat, rats’re famous for stealing food, for nervous destruction.

He’ll eat his way through the planet and sit on the moon, his mayhem won’t stop till he gets what he wants.

Give him his beloved!

He’s free, he doesn’t need hope, he’s got no path to climb, he’s with the beloved, he’s with her.

In dark he’s without a shadow, he chases nothing, he sees her with his eyes closed, and in dark he opens his eyes asleep and she’s here.

When you attain your beloved, what then?

Then you are her.

You’re the one who brought winter to the ovens, and coals to the snow.

You poured water over the desert and spoke to the snakes in warning.

You crushed the mountain tunnel to rescue the red owl that was lost in the dark.

You soothed the god of the islanders so that he stopped shouting and rested.

You made the sophisticated man relax and laugh normally.

You made the jaded woman look carefully at a blackbird.

You took wind and passed it through colored minerals so that the world we see regained its colors.

You taught falcons to sit and think, you taught sweet water to rise from the ground.

When your family turned against you, you showed them dance.

You protected your family when they tried to hurt you.

You relinquished the company of amusing men without ever realizing it.

You drank honey alongside the bee.

All this you did without noticing or speaking of it.

Lilla, I don’t want to understand you.

Pour out unreasoned light into this tunnel, pour everything light can touch, from metal statues to living horses, from colored ornaments to my own grandchildren.

Wake me, wake me.

Your dancers I praise, I hear their footfalls, I don’t know anything except the sound of what dance must be.

You created dance, you piled your hair high to show the delicate ears and you made an art of footfalls.

The beauty that every dying man has left behind, you drew it into a cloud of motion and that was dance.

The beauty that died in the memory of every dying woman, you gathered it into a mist of honey and fed it to your dancers, and anointed their feet with saffron.

Saffron falls through the floorboards and filters onto my head.

I close my eyes and touch the saffron that first was touched by your mind.

from BARTLEBY, THE SPORTSCASTER by Ted Pelton ( Subito, 2010 )

I picked up the paper and passed the time until the broadcast.  I’d handle it once we got in.  But by game time he had me so flustered with his other-worldly lack of expression and emotion that, after 50 years in this business, I made a rookie mistake.  No sooner had I started to say, “Joining me in the booth today as our color man . . . ,” than I realized I didn’t know Bartleby’s last name, or if Bartleby was his last name, his first.  All I knew him by was Bartleby.  “He’s the one who’s been pounding out the new numbers you fans have been hearing from me and he’s also designed our new team website, Arcturions.com.  Head over there, fans, and tell ‘em Ray sent ya.”  I was covering for time trying to recall some mention of a second name for him.  Nothing, my head was blank.  “The new site has lots of great new features and let me tell you, friends, if you haven’t seen it for a while you’re in for a very pleasant surprise.”   A lot of these new guys, they only go by one name.  Like Ichiro, for Seattle.  Set a new hit record and all anyone knew him by was the one name, Ichiro.  But then we all knew that his full name was Ichiro Suzuki, or Suzuki Ichiro, as it would be if he were still in Japan.  “Yes, and he’s going to add a whole new level of excitement to our game calls, that’s sure as shootin.”  But the rap singers today, they often go by one name usually and put it with some letters, they’re all MC This and 2-Shaq That.  Could I just give him some letters to make him sound hip?  What did I know about hip?  “So let me hand the mike over to my partner in the booth for Arcturion baseball.”  I paused, not quite sure what would come out of my mouth next.  Gary Carter, the Hall of Fame catcher, always said he didn’t have a theory of hitting, except that he hit best when he forgot all the theories.  Just do it, the commercial says.  “Here he is – D.J. Bartleby.”

By the time I had gone through all of this I thought for all the world the next words I’d hear would be, “Thanks, Ray.  What a wonderful evening for a ballgame . . . ”  But Bartleby didn’t say a word.

“Trouble with your mike, eh, Bartleby?” I said, on air, chuckling nervously.  “I mean, D. J.?”

Nothing.

You can’t stall forever in leading up to a ballgame.  The Arcturions were in the field and I had yet to set the defense.  Our pitcher was into his final warm-up tosses.  Now we had dead air.  So if what I did next seems extreme, keep all this in mind.

I screwed up my throat into the most unnatural position I could, a higher-pitched but still masculine-sounding false voice, far removed from my own deep gravely one, closed my eyes and let out, “Thanks, Ray.  What a wonderful evening for a ballgame.”

Now, I’m far from the most famous man in the history of baseball broadcasting.  Only once in my life, as a fill-in, did I ever call a major league game, and that was during a player strike, when replacement players came in and a lot of the regular broadcasters took the opportunity to claim sick leave.  But that evening in New Bedford, in a game hardly a soul heard, and two nights later as well, I did something that no other sportscaster in my knowledge ever has.  I partnered with myself.  “Redburn got a 3-1 fastball, D.J., and he drilled it into the corner, scoring the Long Doctor, who’d reached on a leadoff walk,” I’d say in my normal voice.  Then, in falsetto, I’d reply, “As Eddie Stanky used to say, ‘Oh, those bases on balls!’” 

“And that’s going to be all for Pierre tonight.” 

“He didn’t have his best stuff.  ‘Lucy, we can’t get married yet.’”

“Lucy?”  I replied to myself, laughing.  Where had that come from?  Somehow, in adopting this strange voice and having no time to prepare what I was saying, just going for broke, things were coming out of me that I had no idea were inside me to begin with.  “Who’s Lucy?”

“All the pitchers have girlfriends named Lucy, Ray,” my own strange voice answered, deadpan.  “It’s a Union rule.”

“And then of course there’s Lucy and Desi.  Charlie Brown and Lucy.”

“Yup, and Wordsworth’s Lucy poems.”

“What if she should be dead!” I laughed.  “Yes, and Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.”

“Isn’t the original woman, the origin of all mitochondrial DNA, posited to have been born in Africa some three to four million years ago, called Lucy?”

“If she isn’t, she should be.  But wherever she is, Lucy is crying now, because Pierre got roughed up tonight, allowing five runs in only two innings and a third, and responsible still for the runner on base, Redburn.”

Back and forth like that, with no one the wiser.  Truth was, I had always kind of wanted a partner, or thought about having one, and had done dialogues in my mind a million times without realizing it.  Now I just let go. Don’t get me wrong – I was terrified the entire time!  But terror became a kind of edgy excitement, and soon I felt like I was in a place and mood that was comfortable and easy – and brilliant!  I was having the time of my life!

Bartleby, the only witness to this strangeness, kept feeding me numbers, his face betraying no emotion.

from FURTHER ADVENTURES IN THE RESTLESS UNIVERSE by Dawn Raffel ( Dzanc Books, 2010 )