by John Riley
Black Sweater
It’s colder than hell out there.
If I decide to climb
the old oak
I better wear
my new black sweater.
You can see me there!
Big pillowy head held steady—
arms stretching up—
legs too short to climb
onto the next limb.
The children agree
my mind is finally gone.
Why, the wife pleads,
can she never have a moment’s peace?
Beneath my feet the limb creaks.
I could stay up here all day.
The special theme issue to celebrate 3 years of Orion headless is now live, Featuring Michael Dwayne Smith, Matt Stancel, Susan Tepper and Steve Prusky! Click [here].
The little lake is really a retention pond, half out of water, concrete sides around a muddy bottom. The ducks don’t mind; they have enough water to swim and the families from surrounding neighborhoods keep them well fed.
Two old women sit on a bench on the north side of the lake. The larger of the two pretends to read a book while the other stares at her feet. I stare at her while she stares at her feet and I think how nice it would be to have a book to read. I wonder if the larger woman would lend me her book, but then I realize how preposterous that idea is.
I get up, slowly walk to the edge of the water. Walking too quickly with nowhere to go feels awkward. Walking slowly without reason also feels awkward. I regret my decision to get up. I wonder if it will look odd if I turn around and head back to my seat.
Before I can make my decision, a fire truck turns on its siren. I jump. Maybe I gasp. The woman with the book looks up. She looks at me and half smiles. I half smile back. She looks at her friend, then at her friend’s feet, then back at her book. I watch her. I wonder if anyone is watching me watch her. I wonder if they think I’m weird for watching her. I wonder what all of this means. I suddenly feel lightheaded.
I sit down on the grass, on top of some leaves, too near to the ducks. I place my hand on top of my head. It feels hot. I imagine my face is glowing red. I think I’m overheated. Will it look strange if I take off my sweater? I look around; everyone else is dressed in short-sleeves. I feel very overdressed, out of place, and I worry that the book lady noticed my sweater.
Just then, as though she hears my thoughts, she looks in my direction. I clench my teeth, hold my breath, stare at the ground, pretend not to notice. Silently, I count my heart beating: one, two, three, four, five. When I reach 50, I covertly and quickly scan the scene, see her talking to her friend. I can almost hear her saying “Look at that strange girl sitting over there with that absurd sweater on!”
I try to relax, enjoy the breeze. I think about food, about avocados and how they’re allergically related to latex, about buying a bottle of pinot noir on my way home from work. I lean back on my hands, envision myself at the beach, sitting in the sand, the rhythmic waves coming in behind me. And then an ant bites my ankle.
I look down and see dozens of ants. Or maybe three or four. I wonder how long they’ve been crawling on my skin; my ankle appears red and swollen. They must be swarming inside my pants, climbing up my back and neck. I consider asking someone to check, but I know I’ll sound insane.
I reach my hand up, run my fingers through my long hair. Does anyone see me? Do I look stupid? Am I breathing too quickly? Am I breathing at all? I feel eyes on me, staring, judging. A dog begins barking in my left ear. I need to escape.
“Leave me alone!” I grumble and flee toward the adjacent parking lot. My legs are now moving faster than my body and I stumble when I reach the first row of cars.
I cannot remember where I parked and I panic, thinking my car’s been stolen or I’ve run in the wrong direction somehow. And then I see my car, its dark-tinted windows and peeling bumper stickers, and my breathing slows.
“Why are you staring at me?” I yell toward the lake. Everyone turns and looks. Everyone.
I knew they were watching me.
poem and woodcut, “Rocks III,” by Peter L. Scacco
Suddenly I became aware
of what the stream was singing
as it fluted by the rocks
and fern-draped banks,
proclaiming some huge thing
enveloping the dreaming hills
with shocking urgency,
pushing itself through the earth,
and hurling irresistible wind
at the doomed winter sky.
And I wondered what could surge
with such insistent raw passion
revealing the depth of its beauty
in each savage thrust ─
no thing, no one, only Spring.
Dedicated to the memory of Errid Farland
A lady in smoke, diffuse, impermanent, more powerful than the air I breathe. This is how I remember her. She used to laugh at me struggling for words, at odds with meaning, trying so hard to make it real. “Put it down,” she would say. “Just type it down, and let your deep self take over.” And, so, that is what I did. A thousand times in our life together, a thousand tales of befuddled romance, clueless authority, a thousand tastes upon my senseless tongue. “Where does it go?” I would ask in the lulls between keystrokes. “Where does it end?” She would smile, lean her paperback into her lap, and shake her head. “Any way the wind blows. Take it there, my love.”
poetry by Barry Spacks
When I Die
I’ll have to do without
this long full breath I’m taking now;
will no longer be me, odd animal
formed of regret, revision, glee,
become mere ash and tink of bone –
anybody…anything…
gone all fuss and blather, gone
the smiling up at the morning sky,
rapt Ajax hoisting the world again
lightly in hand in the L.A. Times,
rid of long yearning for confirmation,
the coarsening that comes with that,
and mainly missing you, treasured person,
and you…and you…and you.
by Susan Tepper
In every photo he cuts off my head.
When he deems to leave it attached
he shoots me from behind. Ah…
the shimmer of yellow hair.
But I have a face, too, fucker!
A face he used to kiss that kissed him back.
Now he turns away like it’s rotting garbage.
Has he looked in the mirror lately? Furrows
between his eyes like corn rows. High fields
we passed on the drive to The Hamptons.
How he said my hair was golden corn.
Every inch edible. Sucking on strands
while I nursed the baby. Roadside.
Sun burning down to darkness.
The world will end on June 17.
I
And for me –
My grandfather’s wedding ring;
Flimsy gold, spun
Into its own circle,
The carefully wrought hallmark
Breaking the loop
Like a sudden dash
Of stones into the darkening spinney,
Or even an oil-weary transmission
Cut from heavy grunt
And mechanical heave
To the ticking of engine embers.
II
Night drizzle covers the surface
Of the flat bed we crafted
For the faithful pick-up truck,
Slatted into the carcass of the van,
The pump-handle press
Of each rivet
Bulleting it fast and secure,
Grasping the knot between our years
A little tighter, smaller.
III
This ring with all its years
Weighs barely more
Than a grain of smudge-black coal
Or the pristine drill bit
That I found on your desk
Days after the accident.
Its currency weighs heavy in my pocket.
IV
Down in the lorry yard
The industry creeps on
Where the colliery men gather –
One less card to be punched,
One less cup perched –
Dividing up your workload,
Shouldering their own share
Back into the ground.
I can remember a time when the name Hugo Fenstermacher was not the most reviled in the history of humanity. Just six months ago the only infamy attached to my name was a disastrous rating on the website Judge Your Professor—an inevitable consequence of teaching an introductory physics class. This past spring, after a twenty-year struggle to explain the intricacies of quantum mechanics to children fresh out of high school, I asked Dean Reynolds if I could switch to the subject that had been my double major in university and life-long love: Astronomy.
I threw myself into my work with true passion for the first time since my tenure at Albertson Community College began. Freed from the obligations of particles and theory, I scheduled night classes and took my pupils outdoors for lectures under the stars as many nights as the weather permitted. The classes were more enjoyable but, as ever, encumbered by the limited capabilities of the teenage brain. The real perk of the position was unfettered access to the school’s observatory and its enormous telescope. There I would spend long hours after class, scanning the eternal black for new discoveries.
On one of these late nights I noticed a tiny dot close to Pluto. At first I thought it may be Eris, the other dwarf planet that orbits in the far reaches of the solar system, but I was soon able to account for its location. My heart leapt into my throat. Ever since I had first observed the stars, as a small child with my father in the pasture behind our house, I’d dreamed of finding a new object in the heavens. Now it appeared that I had.
With trembling fingers I dialed the number for the Central Bureau of Astronomical Investigation, which I kept stored in my cell phone for just such an emergency. The line rang for five minutes—an interminable wait—as I paced, periodically checking my object through the telescope. It seemed that the object was becoming brighter as I waited, but I dismissed it as a symptom of my nervous excitement. At last, a bored voice picked up on the other end. I told him about my discovery in one long breath. He put me on hold and, after another twenty minute wait, returned to the line to verify my discovery. I had happened upon a heretofore unknown celestial body, and I would be receiving a certificate in the mail. The object, a comet, was assigned the number X-743674, and though it has been recorded in history as Fenstermacher’s Comet, that is how I think of it still.
After that night, every class was merely an obstacle to my exploration of the universe, a drudgery I had to suffer to allow me time to track Object X-743674′s progress through the solar system. It became brighter as the weeks progressed, and within a fortnight I could begin to see the glowing edges of a trail forming behind it. As I tracked its orbit I found, to my great joy, that it was on route to pass by the Earth—possibly even closer than Halley’s Comet ever had.
I was interviewed by The Hornet’s Nest, our school paper, and by the Boise Gazette. In The Gazette I suggested that soon my comet would be more visible in the night sky than Hale-Bopp had been during its appearance in 1997. The story was picked up by several national news services, and soon the big comet with the funny name was everywhere. I kept track of the story through the amateur astronomy message boards. Sometimes I would even surreptitiously comment on the miraculous nature of the discovery, and explain that Fenstermacher wasn’t really so hard to pronounce once you were used to it.
But soon there came rumblings of concern about the trajectory of X-743674. In a video posted to YouTube, which I first saw in an amateur astronomy newsgroup that I was a member of, a high-pitched and hysterical woman announced that her calculations, which she shared in precise, obsessive detail, had revealed that the comet was due not just for a passage of Earth, but a direct impact. For a moment I was alarmed, but then I checked her video upload history and found that she had made an identical panicked video message for every major object found in the solar system over the past five years. There were 157 videos, each one more feverish than the last. I said a prayer for her cardiovascular system and put any thought of disaster from my mind.
But soon the video became unavoidable. With Fenstermacher’s Comet now visible in the night sky with the naked eye (though still no larger than any other star), the video became a viral hit in social media. Soon over a million people had watched the video, prompting worried calls to NASA. The agency had a history of ignoring such amateur quackery, which made it odd when they announced a press conference to discuss the trajectory of the comet. The assembly was brief, consisting only of a single, short message, delivered by Doctor Gerald Fiske. When Fiske approached the podium he looked like a piece of frayed yarn—small and thin, with frazzled, unkempt hair. It seemed as if he had not slept in several days. His voice wavered throughout his statement, which I am able to reproduce by memory, as can, I would guess, every person on the planet:
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by Sam Rasnake
When I pronounce the word Silence,
I destroy it.
– Wisława Szymborska
If I say nothing, I can listen. When I speak, the world crumbles to nothing. If I say nothing, you won’t answer. If I say nothing, everything will happen – or it won’t. If I say nothing, you can enter another world. Nothing is nothing – and everything, simultaneously – but, it appears, can never be something. And I’m fine with that. If you don’t let go, so the Tao Te Ching says, everything can’t happen. So I let go, but I don’t say anything about it to anyone. That’s a true silence.
Through a telescope, the deep sky with its dots and swirls of light is silent. You press against the eyepiece, but hear nothing. It’s a loneliness you can see. A span of dark you can’t follow. You can see it – almost touch it – but you can never go there. Time is not your friend. “We are stardust, we are golden.”
I’ve been told there’s a blessing in silence – an eloquence in catching what falls between words. A peace, an almost perfect quiet. In that hush, a world is built. Light bleeds over the ridge at dawn – settles down into fence wire and hay at dusk – again and again, until the noise rushes back, and we drown.
When the book is closed, The Hero with a Thousand Faces doesn’t speak. After the film has finished, the theater seats wait. A mountain cave is cold and dark. The hummingbird’s nest, empty in winter. Stones at the bottom of a lake, a fallen tree, an old desk. Nothing moves, and the story, like a feather, touches lightly down.