"Thisbe" circa 1900. Detroit Photographic Company. Library of Congress.

Man-Men

Her vestibule of memory,
is the slippery port of call,
where the doberman bark against
the proselytized metallic salts
and sing the failure of Hart’s Line to
entice the

frank breeched man–
short coated and noble–
who cripples the pearly wide
butterfly of her female pelvis,
yet fails to deaden the sobbing
lips which whimper to her midwives
Please Make the boy turn.

Inside her head,
black and lean with pry bar voices,
the dogs echo their woman handler’s command
Come Come Come
but the message’s gooseneck design,
always finishes in the birthplace painfully.

And it is the same as Gaia,
who created both
her equal
and the sickle who gelded him,
her vestibule of memory is both
producer and consumer,
rabid and loyal,
wimpling without prayer,
as the self-inventions turn to a
Bedlam where the woman
pretends in fetal position while waiting for the
man to dock the dogs.

—

Misconception of the Oyster

The edible kind is not flashy
it has no pearls.
Instead it is rough,
unbalanced.

Brackish split-level,
calcified gated,
no one knows who is really home,
inside me is a man and a woman.

You can have both,
Proteus, stand still and consume,
as when you swallowed the drunk sea
and came after me.

Your mermen are taut with nacre tails,
whispering for you to adore them,
but I am the fertile world,
hiking up my skirt,
let me capture and
charm you to
sweet adaptation.

—

Samantha Neugebauer is a writer living in New York City and is currently completing a BA at New York University. She is a recipient of the 2008 Carlozzi Family Writing Award and Scholarship. Recently, her poetry has appeared in TeenInk and West 4th Street Review. In the past, she has written for the New York Women in Communications Inc. nextBlog, the Washington Square News at NYU, and performed at the Bowery Poetry Club. In addition, she is an Assistant Prose Editor of NYU’s West 10th literary magazine. She is interested in literature, academia, and the power of place. She maintains a blog at: http://misconceptionoftheoyster.wordpress.com/

Starlight Park, the Bronx, circa 1921. G.G. Bain Collection

Thanks to all those high school missions into the Bronx for weed, I find Crescent Ave in a snap. Clockers are leaning up the huge rusted gates that surround what I guess are the basketball courts; to my right, directly across from the gates, is number 612. I circle the block a few times in hopes of finding a parking spot, but all I really do is stir up the dealers, so I double park Mike’s Jeep in front of 612. To play it safe, I secure the club and hit the hazards, but before I’m halfway out the door I’m confronted.

“What ya need, G?” A dark hood covers his head; where are his eyes? “Coke, crank, weed, X, tabs…smack, I gots the smack too?”

“I’m cool.” I slam the door, lock it. He’s still standing there and I’m waiting for something to go off. “I’m good,” I tell him, and head for the 612 entrance.

“Yeah, G…peace,” he says. “You know where to find me.”

I open the first door and step inside. The lobby’s small and smells like wet clothes and smoke. Hunter is not on the list of occupants so I search for a Lucy? Or was it Lilly? Lonnie? 532 Lucy Lombardi, sounds good. I press the security button and wait to be beamed up.

“Who is it?” The voice crackles.

“Travis,” I say, wondering if this is Sam.

“Travis who?”

“Hill. Travis Hill.”

“The actor?”

“The actor.” I feel like an idiot here.

The door buzzes and I pull it open and step inside feeling nervous about the Jeep? About Samantha? About not dropping some tears at the funeral?

Alone, I ride the shaky elevator to the fifth floor. Love is begging at my door at any price. I laugh and smile at my distorted reflection in the silver ceiling. “Funerals. Starvation. Time.” I smile again.

Inside I see Lucy for the first time. Sam kisses me hello and tells me to come in and meet Lucy.

“Lucy, this is Travis.” I walk over to Lucy who’s sitting by the window rolling a cigarette. “Travis, this is Lucy.”

“Hello, how are you?” A faded red bandanna, Aunt Jemima style, covers her head. She’s chunky, resembles Mrs. Claus. I extend my hand. “Nice to meet you.”

“Travis, hello.” She finishes rolling and shakes my hand. A firm surprise. “Sam tells me you’re an actor.”

“Yeah, study at NYU.” I scan the apartment. “Nice place you have here.” Looks like a one bedroom. Where’s Sam sleep? Blanket and pillow on the couch, must be Sam’s room. Walls crowded with impressionistic paintings of oceans and sunsets and mountains, and paint supplies scattered in the corners with white sheets covering works in progress. “Who’s the artist?”

“Sam, honey, tell him.” Lucy sparks up the lighter, brings the tiny flame to her rolled cigarette. “She’s real protective of her work.”

“It’s me,” Sam says, blushing. “I’m the artist.”

Sam’s wearing a long black skirt, tight around her hips but loose around the knees, a white blouse, which kind of looks like the one my sister got only a different color, and a pair of suede platform shoes. She’s overdressed for what I had planned for tonight, but looks real sexy so I say, “wow…you look great,” and kiss her cheek, look at Lucy. “Ah, think that went out.” What did I have planned for tonight?

“Did it?” Lucy pulls the butt from her mouth and looks at it. “Oh, I hate this…my lungs aren’t what they used to be.”

“Want me to get it started?” I look out the window, blinking hazards are reflecting off the stop sign. STOP…STOP…STOP…

“Please!” She hands me the butt. “Please.”

“Lighter? My Aunt used to—thanks—she used to roll her own cigarettes.” I light it and take a few deep puffs to get her burning.

“What happened? Gave it up.”

“Ah, yeah…guess you could say that.” Sam’s giggling in the kitchen and I’m wondering what’s going on. Something’s strange. I exhale a cloud of smoke toward the rotating ceiling fan. “It can’t be.” I take another hit, exhale. “It is…this is…” I fan the smoke into my face. “…this is…weed? You’re smoking weed!”

“No,” Lucy says, holding her gut, laughing, “you’re smoking weed.”

Sam comes in laughing with two Coors light cans and hands me one. “I told her not to,” she says, smiling.

“Crazy,” I say and hand Sam the joint, look out the window.

She puts it to her lips, closes her eyes and inhales. She opens her eyes. “Why do you keep looking out the window, Travis?” She asks holding her breath.

“What?” I’m paranoid? “No, my roommate’s Jeep double parked outside.”

“Is it there? Can you see it?” She hands Lucy the joint and exhales.

“Yeah, got the hazards on…I see it.” Lucy takes a hit and coughing deeply, hands me the burning bud. “Just keeping an eye on it,” I say, and take another drag.

“We’ll go after this beer, alright?” Sam looks down and brushes some ashes off her chest. “Okay?”

I blow smoke in her face and think about tearing that blouse open later and putting my mouth on her nipple. “You’re the boss.” We pass the joint around a few more times until we’re left with a roach, and since no one wants to hit it, I pop it in my mouth and wash it down with the beer. “Yummy,” I say rubbing my stomach.

“Did you just swallow that?” Sam asks, holding her throat.

“It’s good luck,” I say and look out the window again. “Still there.”

Lucy gets up and waddles over to the record player.

I grab Samantha from behind, around the waist, and move slowly to Sinatra’s ‘Summer Wind.’

“I never heard that.”

“What! You never heard Summer Wind?” Damn, she smells good. “You’re kidding.”

“No, no. That swallowing a roach is good luck.”

“I missed you.”

“I thought you disappeared.”

“You smell good.”

“Really!”

“What’re you working on?”

She looks over her shoulder. “Huh?”

“That.” I point to the white sheet. “What’s that sheet in the corner covering? Can I see?”

“No. Nothing, it’s not finished.” She pulls away from me. “Are you done with that beer yet? I want to leave. Are you done?”

“Lighten up, Monet.” I check the Jeep again. “Yeah, you?”

Lucy wedges her plump butt back in her seat and begins shuffling cards. “So, Travis, did you get your hands on my granddaughter yet?”

“What?” Great weed! “Say again?”

“Travis, don’t listen to…to her.” Sam sneezes. “She’s trying…” She sneezes again. “She’s trying…”

“God bless,” I say.

“She’s trying to…”

Lucy interrupts. “Someone has to watch her.” She holds up a Joker, smiles and flings it at me. “I know all about you actor types—first hand.”

She holds up the other Joker and Sam snatches it from her. “Lucy, you’re embarrassing him,” Sam says, laughing. “Now stop it, really.”

“Oh really.” I grab Sam, kiss her cheek. “Then you know…we never kiss and tell.” I kiss her lips, slip in a little tongue for good measure. “Right, Claude?”

“That’s it,” Lucy says. “Samantha, I’m calling your father!” She jumps up and storms into her bedroom.

“She’s nuts.” I take Sam’s beer. “Let me help you with that.”

Sam’s still laughing. “Now you’re in trouble,” she says, getting in my face. “My Daddy’s gonna kick yo ass, boy!”

Lucy returns violently coughing and rubbing her large eyes. “Look at this.” She hands me a photo. “Know who that is?”

I examine: stocky guy holding young girl in bikini on beach. “Ah, looks like…ah, is that…you?”

“Nineteen, prime of my life. And all my stuff’s real.”

Damn! “You look great! Who’s the guy holding you?”

“Can’t tell?” She looks on with me. “Guess!”

No way…can’t be. “Looks like…like, like Stanley Kowalski.”

Lucy gets excited. “What! Who’d you say?”

I look at her. “Stanley Kowalski—Marlon Brando.” I look back at the photo. “Is it?” I turn it over. “Holy Shit!” I look at Sam, then read the back: “1949 Jersey Shore, Lucy and Marlon.”

“Told you…told you I knew you actor types first hand.” She goes back to her seat by the window, starts shuffling again. “Told you.”

I follow holding the photo. “No way, that’s so cool…how’d you know him?”

“I’m finished,” Sam says. “I want to leave. You ready?”

“Hold up.” I hand Sam my empty can from the table. “Really, how’d you know him?”

“I knew him in just about every possible way you could know a man.” She turns to Sam and me and puts her fingers to her lips. “We were, shhhh…lovers.”

“No way, awesome. What happened?”

“Well, what happened was…” She goes back to cards, deals out solitaire. “What happened was—fame. Fame happened. Once Bud got big, and believe me he did, well, he simply forgot about me.”

“You’re serious.”

“It took me awhile to get over it, but then I met Augustine—Samantha’s grandfather, and well…well he made me forget about everything. When I see Bud in the movies now I just have to laugh. I think what if, what if I married Bud, but then I would have never met Augi. Oh, how I loved that man.”

I feel really strange and I’m at a loss for words so I utter an intelligent, “wow.”

Sam breaks the silence by telling Lucy we have to go and I check the Jeep again and tell Lucy it was great to meet her.

“Yes.” She gets up and hugs Sam, then me. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Travis…and take care of my baby.”

“I will, she’s in good hands.”

“He’s the perfect gentleman,” Sam says and pinches my ass.

“Samantha, when are you coming home?”

“Ah, late…don’t wait up. I’ll be fine.”

Lucy hugs Sam again and tells us to be careful ‘cause there’s a lot of crazies out there and we say we know and then we leave.

Chris Conroy’s fiction has appeared in several online and print publications, including Whetstone, Word Riot, Ward6 Review, 6S, and Zingmagazine.  His new fiction is forthcoming in the inaugural print issue of The Wanderlust Review. Conroy holds an MFA degree from Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville NY.  His folks were born and raised in the Bronx. Contact Chris at conroy18@hotmail.com

Chris Conroy

Times Square, 1943. John Vachon. Office of War Information.

This rain, is it even
Rain? This rain is water
Hanging itself, precipitation
Suicide, a survey, a taste,
The perfume of the clouds,
This rain is not heavy,
Like gnats and flies,
Wet swarming, a dark
Bag of diamonds, a confusion
For the meteorologists,
What to call this weather,
What icon to slide it by,
What are the weatherpeople
Supposed to say? This rain unable
To even give Noah a slight case
Of post-traumatic stress disorder.

The Millennials

We came out from under
Fifty years of winter,
Decades of frost that
Thawed only once we began
To grow up and take
Memory stock of the world,
A winter that hung lead curtains
Around everything, refused
To let our parents breathe,
So they yelled and screamed
Kicked up dirt around the border,
Made themselves warm
When the rest of the world refused to be,
Brought down walls and bayonets,
While dancing under stars of red and white.

We were born in the budding garden,
In the retreat of the old cement glaciers,
The grass was worn out
But did its best to look green
And our parents’ hands wove blossoms,
Strung the garlands around cushions
To make hyperactive flowers.
When the giants had gone to rest,
We were supposed to rise and play,
Run our fingers through the wheat
Now grown taller than ever, and roam
Freely over the continents, worrying
Little of boundaries and now enjoying
The collecting of mushrooms.

In time the temperature rose and the ice
Disappeared, we wished the winter
Would come back,
With its clear crisp lines,
Everything in black and white,
Now the world was covered in shades
Of yellow and green, sickly hues,
We escaped the heat under the shades of rocks
Where we lit our own explosions
And called it war, created heroism
From carvings of battle scenes,
Our parents still danced,
But there were no walls to fight,
We tried to build them,
There was too much land to see
And the horizon was too generous with us.

Ben Nardolilli is a twenty-four-year-old writer currently living in Arlington, Virginia. His work has appeared in Houston Literary Review, Perigee Magazine, Canopic Jar, Lachryma: Modern Songs of Lament, Baker’s Dozen, Thieves Jargon, Farmhouse Magazine, Elimae, Poems Niederngasse, Gold Dust, The Delmarva Review, Underground Voices Magazine, SoMa Literary Review, Heroin Love Songs, Shakespeare’s Monkey Revue, Cantaraville, and Perspectives Magazine. In addition he was the poetry editor for West 10th Magazine at NYU and maintains a blog at: mirrorsponge.blogspot.com

Scrubbing Bubbles. 2009, 24” x 28”, oil on canvas.

“The themes I explore in my paintings, commodities and currency, serve as social connectors, embodying universal qualities. I create totemic images that reveal the fetishizing nature of capitalist economies. My work battles the hegemony of the commodity, and the economic order that has made this state of affairs possible.”

Drive I, 2009, 34” x 36”, oil on canvas.

“In this series I create strange amalgams of images taken from U.S. currency and store bought commodities. Both of these entities embody abstract equivalences of value. Acting in concert, these forces have come to colonize every aspect of contemporary life. Social relations have become reduced to the cold “objective” exchanges between commodities and money. We are at the mercy of these powers; and because of this we are particularly vulnerable to the whims of a volatile economy.”

Carry Me Away, 2009, 22” x 16”, oil on canvas.

“When Karl Marx used the term commodity fetishism, he was critiquing capitalist society’s tendency to regard itself as highly advanced. By using the word fetish, he was employing a term routinely associated with “primitive” religions. Marx was asserting that modern society is based on spurious beliefs that lead to the worship of abstract commodities with a religious devotion.”

Loomings, 2009, 36” x 34”, oil on canvas.

“In these paintings, I capture this notion that there is a counterfeit ideology at the center of free-market economies. I create totemic objects to represent our own clannish worship of commodities and money. The work depicts out of control market forces; it captures the manic energy of the commodity as it interacts with money.”

Drive II, 2008, 48” x 60”, oil on canvas.

In the late Nineties and early Aughts James Paulsen lived in Greenpoint, Williamsburg, and Astoria. He is a native of Albany, New York and currently resides in Buffalo. James received his BFA and MFA degrees from the University at Buffalo. He has taught in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Rochester and the Visual Studies Department at the University of Buffalo. To see more of his artwork visit his website:www.jamespaulsen.com

Edward Hopper, Manhattan Bridge Loop, 1928

I can’t see anything but wasted faces,
broken bodies, tired souls and as I walk
in the morning to my job
the streets seem full of ghosts.
oh these factories sucking slowly our lives
away and all those guillotine-jobs killing our
precious time.

I am ready to start my live all over again but
on what price?
who’s going to fight for me this time?
I’ve lost all my battles against the existence
against all the factory owners
against all odds.

and later in my room
I turn on the TV and they show me how to become
A millionaire,
easy.

I turn it off
and lay in the bed and I know
that all our heroes have been wrong:

the dark is empty.

Peycho Kanev loves to listen to sad music while he drinks slowly his beer. His work has been published in Welter, The Catalonian Review, Off Beat Pulp, Nerve Cowboy, Chiron Review, Tonopah Review, Mad Swirl, Southern Ocean Review, The Houston Literary Review and many others. He loves to put the word down and not talking on the cell phone for days. He is nominated for Pushcart Award and lives in Chicago. His new collaborative collection “r”, containing poetry by him and Felino Soriano, as well as photography from Duane Locke and Edward Wells II is now available at Amazon.com

Jack E. Boucher, 1974, Library of Congress

“I didn’t go back for twenty years.
What a change, citizens.
I had lived in Germany,
walked the ruins of World War II,
saw defeated ghosts of the Vaterland,
heard the laments of destruction,
met a madman, crooning for the lost “Fuerher”, rushing crazed through Stuttgart streets, chanting:
‘The bombs are fallen, Berlin is dead.
The bombs are fallen, Berlin is dead.’
What does this have to do with the Bronx?”

Once I had a girl friend who lived in the Bronx.
I got lost whenever I visited her.
I vaguely remember her neighborhood,
a resplendent boulevard built to welcome
Napoleon IV, Marshal Foch, General De Gaulle.
But it received instead my urgent lust,
leading me astray in the seven hills,
not of rambling Rome
and the conspiratorial Tiber,
but of less noted waterway, the Bronx River,
already submitting to sludge and squalor.
I never found memorable landmarks.
The Bronx looked like so many other places
in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island too.
But the people were calm and untroubled.
It was a little while after one of the wars….
Big II? No, Korea! So I exaggerated.
So it wasn’t a war.
We’ve coined new phrases to describe not-a-war,
at least since World War II.
Thus public approval continues
for legitimate bombardments.

Afterwards, our puppeteers again mishandled
the strings that make the public dance
to a more appealing prosperity.
So we don’t call it war, no more, no more…
We don’t call it war, no…more….
Police action. Protective intervention.
Preventive strike. Preemptive attack.
Far east, mid-east, near east….
So many ways to say we’ll bomb you.
I could go on, but you get my drift,
or you might as well depart,
’cause you won’t appreciate the rest.

I never noticed while I searched for my girl friend,
how many old people lived in the Bronx.
For the youngsters came home from World War II,
married their girls, packed their bags,
kissed Ma and Pa goodby
and went to college on the G.I. bill,
followed by a class jump to lower middle,
paid for by good old Uncle Sacrifice
to reward their loyal service
with the first installment of the American dream.
So they got their degrees
and moved to Westchester and Long Island,
to new houses, lawns, two car garages
filled with the latest consumer goods.
The Bronx was not for them.
While they were packing and moving out,
marooning Mom and Pop in oversize apartments,
no longer rattled by arguments and growing pains,
distant political agitators,
in San Juan and San Turce,
were stirring credulous Puerto Ricans
with dazzling tales of streets of gold
waiting for them in New York City.
And where did they settle?
(Can’t you guess?) The Bronx.
So out with the old,
in with the unprepared for city life,
unassisted by family, government, union-
the Hispanic migration.

Instead of welcoming the newcomers to our shores
with jobs, education, assistance in urban living,
once again we betrayed our immigrants,
but this time better than ever before.
Irish, Germans, Swedes, Poles, Italians, Jews-
however low they seemed to America’s owners-
were more acceptable than Black, Hispanic, or Oriental,
despite the pledge of life, liberty and the pursuit of…
After all, the less we look like our masters….

Once I had a girl friend who lived in….
I no longer remember her name.

Oh, I almost forgot to tell you….

While Puerto Ricans were pouring off the planes,
Blacks were torrenting off the buses,
stiff and creaky from the long ride
from Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi too.
Driven out, not by Goth, Hun, Zulu, Mongol horde,
but farm machinery, by Deere, by Deere,
that rendered unnecessary until World War III,
or Interplanetary War I,
agriculture’s favorite utilities,
the bent human back, the grasping human hand.

And so they came to the Bronx, the Bronx,
as others before them had come, had come,
for jobs, homes, schools, a better life.
Does this sound unreasonable to you?
But in the mid-nineteen fifties
It was unacceptable to most.
For in with the new, out with the old,
who galloped, drove, flew, trucked, punted, fled,
until the once comfortable neighborhoods,
abandoned by experienced city dwellers,

left groups of rural newcomers adrift,
on harsh, unfamiliar streets of decay.
Despite all the universities in the Bronx,
and law courts, and legislators,
constitutional guarantees lapsed:
inalienable rights were alienated.

I’ve almost forgotten the pleasures long ago,
shared with my girl friend in the Bronx.

I didn’t go back for twenty years.
What a change, citizens.
I had lived in Germany,
walked the ruins of World War II,
saw defeated ghosts of the Vaterland,
heard the laments of destruction,
met a madman, crooning for the lost “Fuerher”,
rushing crazed through Stuttgart streets,
chanting: “The bombs are fallen, Berlin is dead.
The bombs are fallen, Berlin is dead.”
What does this have to do with the Bronx?
Imagine that I made no gentle rediscovery,
but found a biblical revelation.

Abandoned, burned, collapsed buildings,
spreading rubble, refuse, riots,
on unresisting residents,
atoning their sins in urban purgatory.

Yet across the river,
on Sutton Place terraces,
comfortable observers counted the fires,
entertained by companions and cocktails,
while tenuous holds on life went up in flames….
But how the feasting in Sodom went on….went on….
and the pleasures of Gomorrah were many….
Separated from us by the palace guard….
The prosperous wallowed in indulgences,
refusing to receive suppliants,
a perilous subway ride removed.
Thy song, chanted for all of us:
consume, consume….Waste, waste….
Burn, baby, burn….

Her house was buried under rubble,
while the fires still smoldered,
and extravagance burdened the people.
But who had declared war on the Bronx?
Did I miss the notice in the New York Times

that intelligently explained the invasion,
or authorized high altitude bombing?
Dresden, Hamburg, Nagasaki, ravaged cities,
welcome to the Bronx, don’t say no thonx.
My visit no voyage of atonement,
nor conquest of reclamation,
but arrested by these bleeding streets,
I was possessed by the wilderness,
and compelled to serve the needy.

I saw visions that tortured my spirit;
murderous madhouses of anguish,
provided by the state, the state,
no different than bedlams of Dark Ages.
Our prisons jammed, crammed full-
criminals, sinners, sufferers, babies-
hidden from sight behind forbidding walls.
After my pilgrimage to American Institutions,
I recognized the style of government consent.
The children of the parents we would not help,
were finally receiving some attention,
concealed from us by padlocked doors.
While outside those bitter caverns,
where frightened children howl,

the non-war on crime, drugs, poverty,
and all the other social divertissimos,
that keep the media at peak employment,
constantly declare truce, amnesty, armistice,
whenever it’s time to go home to the suburbs.

Our schools are losing the spirit to struggle,
our leaders always have eloquent answers,
our churches are falling silent,
while multi-national corporations peddle our heritage.
Are we mortally wounded?

I think my girl friend was crushed
beneath the wreckage of her house of dreams,
in a once pleasant neighborhood,
now submerged,
somewhere in the Bronx.

Gary Beck has spent most of his adult life as a theater director and worked as an art dealer when he couldn’t earn a living in the theater. He has also been a tennis pro, a ditch digger and a salvage diver. His chapbook ‘Remembrance’ was published by Origami Condom Press, ‘The Conquest of Somalia’ was published by Cervena Barva Press, ‘The Dance of Hate’ was published by Calliope Nerve Media and ‘Mutilated Girls’ is being published by Bedouin Press. A collection of his poetry ‘Days of Destruction’ was published by Skive Press. Another collection ‘Expectations’ is being published by Rogue Scholars Press. His original plays and translations of Moliere, Aristophanes and Sophocles have been produced Off Broadway and toured colleges and outdoor performance venues. His poetry has appeared in hundreds of literary magazines. He currently lives in New York City.