It is in that overlip of the seasons, when fall drifts up over winter, and winter slouches back into fall, when brown leaves lie trapped in a skin of ice that overnight has appeared across the puddles. There might be a brief flurry of snowflakes in the darkening afternoon, fat flakes that melt soon after they hit the frost-stiffened blades of still-green grass; there might not. Even so, someone somewhere is trying to burn off the last of their pile of leaves, the mustydamp smoke drifts heavily in the dense air, tickles my nose, blends with the moldy tang of cold wet leaves as I walk home from fourth grade in a new school. A new school in a new town, north of the Adirondack Mountains. 

Crunching through the last frozen leaves left in the park, stomping on the ice creeping across the puddles from footprints left last week in the thick dark mud, I scuff the rest of the way down the block to our house, trying to get the worst of the mud off my shoes before I get inside. If my mom sees my muddy shoes, she'll demand that I start wearing galoshes, and it's way too early in the season for those ugly things. My books are tucked under my right arm; I swing my left forcefully in exaggerated time to my steps just to hear the zwoop, zweep of my new nylon-skinned parka. If my younger brother were walking with me, we might make up some sort of goofy invented-word tune to go with it, but he's already home. I had stayed late to help the librarian at school. She lets me take home more than the two books we are allotted at a time, just for helping.

The smoke is coming from our house, I see. My father must be home early, too early, from work again, off in the back yard with a mound of damp leaves leftover from the weekend of raking.  When I go in the back porch to clump off the last bits of mud in the mudroom, and hang up my parka, I can see him through the stormdoor, hunched and hustling around the pile of leaves, this time throwing white gas on it from the red teapot-shaped metal canister. I guess he really wants to burn that pile. His Zippo clicks again and again, the pile ignites with a mighty whoosh, and then falls down flat, wearily working away at the gas-soused, smoldering leaves. The tart stink of flamed gas mingles with the smell of charred wet leaves. It reminds me of burning hair.

Tonight, after a dinner of chicken with rice that my father will not eat, when he jumps at loud noises, crouches and whirls when startled by imaginary adversaries, I will finish one whole book, reading late into the night with a flashlight under the covers, until all the noises stop and sleep finally comes to me.

Lakin Khan lives in Petaluma, California. Once she wanted to be a cowboy (her hat is testament to that)-now she wrestles words to the page, hustles teens toward adulthood and herds cats in and out of the house, occupations that are not so different from each other.

 

 

I looked through the keyhole of the oak tree into the sunrise, three days in a row I saw the sun from the side of darkness, wandering around in the hour when night has gone past its own heaviness and shimmers with it's completeness, the quiet opposite of the coin of high noon. A man is sleeping on and on, hour after hour, and a boy is sleeping in another room. It's nice to have people oblivious of one, anonymity is a human need like food or shelter, invisibility while just being on the earth.

I have on my list of notes some instructions to write about truth, and I don't know what the hell I meant. Your body can be spread across the entire world when you travel so fast, the soul in Sicily, the heart in New York, your heartbeat still pulsing anyplace there is night. Truth might depend upon where you're standing, but as you get older, you realize you are standing everywhere. When my son was small, he couldn't see beyond me, then he saw beyond his home, then his town and school. And as I get older, I leave myself everywhere and gather up parts of the world to replace the I that I have been.

There are moments that seem motionless, when time seems to pull itself up short, becomes self-conscious of its own rattling on, pulls itself up, and unable to stop entirely because of eons of momentum, nevertheless slows and expands, slows and piles up into a thickness like a lens that somehow clears one's vision. And sometimes this occurs when you are not paying attention and the effect is sudden and startling as if you have been picked up and placed in another reality, nearly the same as the one a minute ago, but in this new reality the sounds are amplified and distinct, each object surrounded by a gentle aura of light, and thoughts are part of a slow river that pushes one forward without hesitation.

I keep thinking of the swift I found on the sidewalk in Siracusa, how his wings did not fold against his body like an injured swallow, but remained outstretched as if he was already flying, imagining his next flight, having no imagination for any other act, like a paper airplane waiting to be sailed, and his eye so curious and dispassionate, looking directly at me, how could I know what he meant? I picked up that swift, lifted it under the wing to send it into the sky. It sailed briefly in a circle, then a narrowing spiral, then drifted back to the ground.

The swift lives its whole life in the sky, catching remnants for a nest, mating, snapping up insects for food. Some things are not able to lift themselves off the ground, there is a point where they sink too low in the net of gravity, and perhaps this is what pulls and tugs on the quick river of time. Things slowed down for both of us. I threw the swift three times and on the third, watched it spiral down again. What had I done for it? Given it three final glorious spins in the sky or three trips down to earth with a sinking heart?

It is only one swift and the rest are soaring above the city. It seems a miracle they do not collide, so rapidly they soar between and among other birds. They don't think about the ground or of our clumsiness or strength.

Patti Trimble's latest book of poetry is When You Dip Your Head Under Water by Running Wolf Press. An excerpt from her speculative memoir has appeared in Tiny Lights.

  

 

The Duke dominated the ball room. He glad-handed the ranchers and breeders, wore his smile and his big Stetson.

Bucko said, "Let's go talk to him."

I hesitated. It was like a greeting line at some political function instead of a party before a bull sale.

Bucko said, "Good evening, Duke."

"Evening, Bucko."

The Duke put out his hand. As he pumped my arm, I noticed a hog leg pistol stuck down the front of his trousers. I shot a glance at Bucko. He saw the pistol, too and grinned.

Bucko said, "Who the hell you going to shoot, Duke?"

"See that fellow over there? The one dressed like a sheik? If he tries anything, I'll blow his ass away."

I smelled liquor on his breath and cigar smoke, too. I looked at the sheik. He had a long scimitar slipped under a wide white belt. His blond hair and blue eyes looked lost in the middle eastern garb he wore. I had noticed him hanging around the barns and corrals snapping pictures of the bulls.

Bucko asked, "You know him, Duke?"

"Why hell yes. Known him all his life."

A fine looking woman stood next to the sheik. She had long black hair, a face like expensive porcelain. She didn't smile.

The Duke continued, "His parents have been my neighbors for years. Fine people. A few years ago he got messed up on LSD. Took that long knife and tried to gut himself. Got a scar from his right collar bone to his left hip."

We stared at the sheik and his woman. I noticed he was carrying a fancy black camera with a wide lens.

Bucko said, "Hell of a woman he has with him."

The Duke squinted his left eye, "He's got lots of those."

The woman glanced at us. Her eyes caught mine. I smiled. She didn't seem to notice. The sheik shot a sneer at the Duke.

The Duke said, "He threatened me a few years back. Came over to my house and waved that knife around. Said he was going to kill me."

The woman stared at the Duke, eyes like pieces of garnet.

"Ever since then, I keep my hog leg forty-four close by."  He tapped the handle of his pistol. "I can split the bull's eye at fifty yards."

The wooden handle looked like shimmering waves churned by cold wind. The Duke's hand smothered it. The cylinder was blued and glinted oily clean.

Suddenly a flash lit the ballroom. I flinched. The long haired woman held the camera just below her chin. She smiled. I looked at the Duke. He was on one knee, pistol aimed in the direction of the sheik, finger on the trigger.           

 

Ken Rodgers' essays have appeared in Tiny Lights. Trench Dining, his collection of poetry, is available from Running Wolf Press. He writes what he remembers.

 

 

I know when I taste ice cream if it's good, whether or not it's made with fresh whole cream or skim milk and water; I know when I hear good jazz or taste good champagne by the bubbles both create going down.  I know when I'm having a good hair day or, like today, a good diet day, requesting my peanut sauce on the side.  But how do I know when I meet someone new, whether or not they are good?  The kind of good I'd trust to housesit or to look after my cat while I'm away on vacation.  Is it there in the tenor of the voice, the shake of a hand, a flash in the first moment of eye contact? 

It would be so much easier if the degree of our goodness were apparent from the surface, something worn visibly like a T-shirt with some cool logo.  Maybe then we wouldn't trust that handsome stranger or bare our souls to that "you're-like-a-sister-to-me-best-friend" only to be dropkicked in the stomach when we are most vulnerable.  But then again, maybe it would take all the fun out of this game we're playing, the rules of which we learn as we go, discovering who to trust and who to guard against; what is precious and what, with no ache of the soul, we can stand to lose.

Christine Falcone lives in Novato, California. She may question our motives, but never her daughter's.

 

 

 

I remember playing baseball with my dad. I don't remember the feel of the bat in my hands, the swing, the sometimes smack.but the brown of his hands. The light in his eyes when he said, Yes. Yes. Let's play.

I remember dancing with him. On Christmas Eve, one hand on my back, the other holding mine, gently guiding. No heavy touch, no danger in those hands. Not then. My head resting on his chest, his lips brushing my cheek, my hair. I remember his voice, singing about the love of a girl, singing about me.

I don't remember what anyone else was doing, then. They must have been there, my mother in the kitchen, baking.cookies? Ham? I don't remember my sister and brother there. He never danced with them. They must have been there.

I remember cracking coconuts with him, the sharp pointed end of the screwdriver that he drove deep, the drip of the milk into my cup. The sweet watery taste. I remember wanting to like it, because he did. I don't remember if my sister liked it, if she even drank it. I don't remember her at all.

I remember the nights he took us all out for root beer, the cold frosted mugs that weighed down the tray clamped to our car window. The thick sweet drink. I do remember my sister then. We pretended we could get drunk on root beer, and sometimes on those July nights, I think we were. Drunk with happiness. Drunk with togetherness. For once.

I remember the crack of his belt. I remember the switches, thin so thin. Taken from the trees I loved, they left tiny bloody tracks on my tan legs. He used them because he thought they didn't hurt as much. They were worse than the belt for me. I don't remember him whipping my sister, but I know he did. Did he use the belt or the switch? I don't remember.

I remember what he used on my brother, though. The belt. Always the belt. The heaviness, the slowness in taking it off. Being forced to watch, to watch in silence. Never allowed to cry out. Until I did. I remember the blood, coming from my brother's ear. I remember wondering if this would be the end.

It wasn't.

Lisa Libowitz lives and writes in Granite, Maryland. She is a member of the Feckless WOE writer's group. 

 

 

I closed the closet door, closed it tight and made sure the latch was secure.  Then I stopped and realized what I'd done.  How long had it been since I'd felt that familiar compulsion?  For years I couldn't go to sleep at night without making sure the closet door was closed and latched.  That had been my bedtime ritual, my evening prayer-

                        Now I lay me down to sleep

                        I pray the closet its secrets to keep.

Not that the simple latch would withstand anything or anyone pushing out from the inside.  And I never had a clear image of just what it was that awaited me beyond that closed, latched closet door.  Certainly nothing so concrete, so corporeal as monsters or the bogeyman.

I always associated my close-and-latch compulsion with a play I'd gone to when I was maybe 6 or 7, with my friend Joey's family, at the neighborhood Catholic church.  I don't remember what the play was about-I'm not sure I ever really knew.  Perhaps the play was all the more terrifying because I really didn't understand it.  All I know is that there was a lantern in the cupboard, a lantern that came on all by itself when someone was about to die.

Was that it, then?  If I religiously closed and latched the closet door at night, somehow I could keep that death-light from shining?  I don't know.  I knew almost nothing of death at that point.  But I continued the practice all through grade school, junior high, and high school-though I think in later years it was largely a matter of habit.  I simply gave it up, almost without noticing, when I went away to college and lived in a dorm room, where the closet "door" was just a curtain, unlatchable.

But then there I was, 28 years old, again overwhelmed by the urge to close and latch the closet door.  I had just left my husband of 7 years, my high school sweetheart, the first and only man I'd ever slept with.  I'd moved out into my own apartment-the first time I'd ever lived alone.  Alone.

I looked down at the bed just a mattress on the floor, actually.  No one to share it with.  Even though I no longer wanted the body I'd been sharing a bed with, even though for the past several months I'd been sneaking into bed after he was asleep and getting up before he awoke-at least I hadn't slept alone...  I closed and latched not only the bedroom closet but the front hall closet as well. 

                        If I should die before I wake

                        Who the hell would know, who the hell would know?

Carol Howard is the author of "Dolphin Chronicles" (Bantam Books, 1996).  Her personal essays have been published in "The Philosophical Mother" (www.philosophicalmother.com/callmemama.html), "Tiny Lights," "Psychology Today," and "Readers' Digest."  She lives in Baltimore with her husband (2nd) and daughter (1st & only).  Her closet door is ajar.

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