. .Checking Out XVIII . . poem by, Tim Peeler

Checking Out XVIII




I wrote a masters thesis

in a motel room, weekend

manager on duty, typewriter nights;

I answered complaints about myself.



Between check ins

I scribbled pieces of poems,

made up stories about guests,

and I was sending stuff out then,

scrounging for stamps,

checking the post office box.



I can't remember how many times

I crawled under a motel building

at 3AM to change a fuse,

put the wheels back on a rollaway,

fixed a commode, walked through

pitch black, blessed by the moon.



I became the poet laureate

for the post office whores,

the random darling

of a small legion of fools,

the familiar of charming drunks,

a blundering father

in the no man's land

of the eighties.



When I dove into the pool

to clean the spot by the drain,

ten feet down, I felt

the dreamy pressure of the

whole world above me,

sensed that the water didn't

want to be there either.


. .Tim Peeler's most recent books are: Fresh Horses, (poetry from Rank Stranger Press) and Outlaw Ballplayers, a regional oral history, co-written with Hank Utley. .

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the devil lives in the woods. . by, artist jesse wiedel

. .the devil lives in the woods. .

by, jesse wiedel



when i was a little boy, i went out into the woods with a neighbor kid to try out his new bb gun. i was excited about the gun, and had fun shooting at cans and plastic army men on previous days with the neighbor. he rarely let me shoot it, though, so i mainly just hung around and watched him shoot at stuff. walking in the woods, i carefully watched his shooting technique as he looked up into a tree and slowly aimed the gun upwards. on his first shot, we saw a dark object fall down out of the tree. we were really excited that he hit something on the first try. it was a small bird.

when it hit the ground, it began writhing and flopping violently. the bb had pierced the small bird's eye. blood was squirting out of the eye and all over the ground. we didn't realize that birds could bleed so much. also, we didn't know that birds could scream. but this bird was screaming and shrieking in agony from the bb shot.

the neighbor kid panicked, and tried shooting the bird several more times to put it out of its misery. but the bird kept on shrieking and flopping around on the dry pine needles of the forest floor. we started to run back to the house to get someone to help us with the bird, but then turned back. i think we eventually crushed the suffering life out of the small bird with a large rock.

my childhood fascination with guns pretty much ended that day.





. . jesse wiedel is an artist who lives in eureka, california. (www.jessewiedel.com). .

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a boy and his lamb...by, artist jesse wiedel (photograph & painting included)

. . a boy and his lamb . .
by, jesse wiedel




here's a picture of me with my sheep, floyd. i loved that sheep. me and floyd were inseparable. i would spend hours grooming floyd, cleaning his pen. telling him jokes. he had that funny little sheepish chortle. we would go for long walks every night, sometimes coming back after sundown, after watching the bright orange sunset casting it's magical glow over the rolling hillsides near our home. i taught floyd to do lots of tricks, too. i made a little obstacle course for floyd to perform little jumps and turns on. oh, there's something to be said of the innocent, wholesome life of a boy and his lamb.
but, even though i had spent countless hours training and grooming floyd, there seemed to be some speculation amongst the elders about the physical fitness of my sheep. i refused to hear any kind of doubt about my sheep's quality of condition. i knew that floyd was a champion.
when it came time for the county fair, i was ready, and so was floyd. he never let me down as far as cooperating with the judges, and letting me pose him in various undignified positions for them to inspect. when the judging was over, i was shocked that floyd did not make the grade, while the soulless, rigid sheep of other 4-H children did. i was indignant over this failure, but glad that i got to take my friend floyd home with me, while the other children had to say goodbye to their lambs after the auction was over.
we had some special days together after the fair, chasing around the obstacle course, telling stories under the shady oak trees. until one morning, just before dawn, while i was still in bed, i heard one gun shot ring out just outside my bedroom window. i went out later that morning, and floyd was gone. all there was left was a small pool of blood on the dusty ground outside of floyd's pen.
i didn't see floyd again, until the next day when my dad brought home a large bag filled with little individually wrapped packages of meat to put in the freezer. we would be eating lamb for dinner for a while, he indicated. when it came time for dinner, my brothers and sisters would jab "how's floyd taste, jesse?" i thought he tasted pretty good, only a little bit chewy.

. . jesse wiedel is an artist who lives in eureka, california. (www.jessewiedel.com)

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poetry by dirk ashly knoedler

something is


sometimes in the morning,
things are the hardest for me
as i drag myself out of a warm bed
as you lay there, perfect and nude
sometimes, it takes all my strength as a man
to tuck in my shirt, to buckle my belt,
to put on my shoes, to fill up my pockets
with the those things I carry
wallet, gum, keys
and as my keys jingle,
you make this tiny moaning sound
and shift your body so that
your waist & your hips are exposed
i stop and look
at your skin,
at your hair,
twisted & lovely,
falling over your shoulders
and i think about crawling back into bed
but i don't,
because I have to work today
and I have to work tomorrow
and I have to work the next day too
it goes on and on like that
so i reach down
and put my hand on your hip
capturing the feeling in my hand
and quickly making a fist as i pull away
as not to lose that feeling
and i keep that with me
gripped tightly in my hand
for those times when i feel like i might lose it
for those times when i feel like nothing in the world is right
so i can look down to my clenched fist
and know that something is.

. .

haiku


three men sit and talk
sometimes there is nothing better
no woman, nothing

god, what? you do learn it
looking up at the moon or stars
it's up, up, up there

the everything gaze
maybe you should pick one thing
and just stare at it

worlds, tiny, furious
infinite dizzying dirt
against me, grinding

so many words
who knows what's what
i love these real words

on spanish peaks we
sat, silently satisfied
just trees below us

. .

i wrote poetry


i always wanted to be a poet
i wrote poems in secret when i was a boy
on paper towels, on the back inside cover of math books
on old farm house walls in the middle of nebraska
on picnic tables in city parks in small town oklahoma
on the under side of wooden decks, laying in cool weeds with summer bugs
i wrote poems in secret when i was a boy
on the neighbors split rail fence in marker until they got a dog
on playground wooden fortresses, on the desks of pale green junior high school
on the inside panel of my orange locker next to pictures of maria diaz & the x-men
on endless summer sidewalks, on trees, on rocks, on the sky with my finger
i wrote poems in places that won't be found for years or maybe never
on wooden studs behind sheetrock walls in by the hour hotels
on hard concrete floors of restaurants before tile was laid
on plywood living room floors waiting for beige carpet
on the walls of bar bathrooms i wrote poems about love
drunk and sad thinking about eternity
i wrote poems in secret when i was a boy
on the smooth belly of a beautiful young girl
on her heart, on her soul, i wrote poetry.


. .



dirk ashly knoedler is a poet/photographer/carpenter/youth worker living in Lowell, MA. he splits his time between diners and libraries. he likes magnets and porches, rivers and deep breaths.

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where are your arms tonight? poem by, mitch hemann

where are your arms tonight?
the ones that searched for me
in countless rooms.
rooms as cold as
the great lake state.

and what's become of your mouth?
its kisses, and the heat of
each heartbreaking sigh?
the mouth i openly adored,
and hated in secret.

it's raining in new york,
i still drink too much,
and i still hurt people's feelings
from time to time.

are you breathing life
into someone new?

..



..Mitch Hemann is a singer/songwriter originally hailing from Detroit. He was born with a broken collar bone, has never won a game of bingo in his life, and his favorite word is pumpkin...especially when the second P is stressed (pumPkin)..

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the scents of lincoln avenue..by joel asa miller

The Scents of Lincoln Avenue
Joel Asa Miller
..copyright 2007. all rights reserved..

1.

I threw back the glass of milk the same way I'd seen the men swallow shots of schnapps in my dad's tavern. Wincing, I exhaled sharply and braced myself against the burn of the imaginary booze. I slammed the glass down firmly on Mrs. Neuman's chrome-edged kitchen table. Harry thought I was funny. His ma looked horrified but her eyes softened when I thanked her before running out the door.

I hated having to wolf down the doughy half moon cookie with the sugary black and white frosting Mrs. Neuman bought at the Jewish bakery way up on the north side. I hated leaving the calm of their apartment, but I had to go because my Ma would know where I had been and she'd doubtlessly whip my butt.

I ran down the steps and onto Lincoln Avenue. The colossal copper dome of St. Josaphat's Basilica loomed over the neighborhood like a cloud of greenish gloom. On the south side in those days, you either had a single church and three taverns on the corners of every intersection or three churches and a lone saloon. Our intersection was the exception: three taverns and Neuman's Hardware Store instead of a church, kitty corner from my dad's tavern.

For a moment, I thought I'd take the long way home. Maybe I'd wander over to Kosciusko Park. I could watch the giant goldfish swim sluggishly in the murky water of the lagoon there. I could sit on the benches while the nuns from St. Josaphat's fed breadcrumbs to the birds. Their plain pink faces would smile from inside their black and white starched headgear and they'd tell me what a nice, bright boy I was and what a shame it was that my parents sent me to public school.

In 1958, the last of the streetcars still ran down Lincoln Avenue and I remember dodging one of them when I ran across the street that day. We lived above the tavern. I ran up the stairs. The smell of sauerkraut and onions hanging in the stagnant, humid air made me want to puke but I ran into the kitchen anyway, hoping that if I made my presence known right away, my mother wouldn't suspect I had been by the Neuman's.
I pushed the swinging door open and nearly tripped over my mother. She was sprawled out on the floor. I didn't know if it was the smell of fermented cabbage that laid her low or the cheap rye she nursed from the flask she always kept in her apron pocket.

I put my hand under her nostrils just like my Dad did when she was like this. Her breath was shallow and her skin clammy. My stomach began to turn. Two-dozen mason jars of sauerkraut sat unsealed on the kitchen table attracting flies. Wasted leaves of crinkled green cabbage, wilted by the heat, filled a wooden bushel basket and Webb Pierce's blistering tenor sliced through the floorboards from the jukebox in the tavern:

I got me a room in a cheap hotel--my head was spinnin', and I didn't feel well
I layed right down, and tried to go to asleep, but the band kept playin' and jarring underneath …


I ran downstairs to the tavern. It was the middle of the afternoon and only the really die hard, all-day boozers, sat sullenly at the bar. They were men without jobs, laid off or permanently shell-shocked veterans of World War II, Korea or the monstrous factories that soured the Milwaukee air with their fumes of malt, tanning hides, steel and zinc.

Their heads turned lazily to the open door of the tavern. Their empty eye-sockets squinted against the slice of daylight that pierced the darkness. They slid a bottle of vodka back and forth between them and in the absence of a bartender, freely filled their glasses, alternating between sluggish sips of booze and drags on their cigarettes.

Stanley Budny, a big square-headed man with a thinning blonde ducktail haircut and a deep cleft carved in his massive granite chin solemnly poured himself a glass. After my Dad, he was definitely the captain of this ghastly crew. He looked away from me and back to the stuffed badger sitting between the bottles on the shelf behind the bar.

"He's in the kitchen," Stanley said. He chain lit a cigarette and smothered a smirk. I wondered what's funny about that? Last night was spahnferkel night. My Dad was probably just cleaning up as usual but Budny watched me push through the heavy oak doors that led to the kitchen like he was waiting for something to happen.

The back door was open and the screen door flapped slack in the wind. I figured my Dad was in the alley dumping trash. I heard something drop. Another thump followed and then some strange animal sound came groaning up the backstairs from the basement.

I hoped it was one of the streamlined sewer rats that came up through the pipes after a heavy rain. If I was quiet and careful, I might be able to watch it scurry around the basement in search of food. The rats of Lincoln Avenue were shiny dark grey monsters, curious, intelligent and ferocious. It was their danger and the mystery of how they lived in their watery world that fascinated me and drew me down the precipitous steps that wound to the basement.

I heard another thud, then a shuffle. I was terrified and I loved it. I felt along the wall to keep steady against the darkness. I imagined I was stalking wild game like the dusty buck whose head steadily disintegrated over the bar. I imagined joining the men who would gather around it in the fall retelling ancient legends of tracking cagey twelve point giant buck for miles through the snowy forests up north. The way those guys would talk you'd think the deer all had ESP, PhD's in physics from M.I.T. and most importantly, complete mastery over the females of the herd.

The way to the basement was treacherous. The damp black dust filled your nostrils almost instantly. You could push through a tangle of spider webs that would regenerate miraculously minutes after you sheared through them. It was pitch black except for a thin shaft of light where the coal chute hung slightly askew on crooked hinges.

Even at night I could navigate that dark terrain. I knew where everything was: the folding chairs, the card table up against the wall; the piles of coal that loomed like a black mountain range, the purple velvet sofa dotted chaotically with black cigarette burns, the no man's land floor littered with spent brown bottles of beer, old cigarette butts and maybe a pair or two of lost dice or scattered cards from the short decks the men would play with until bitter and broke. If I hadn't been hunting the wily sewer rat, I might have turned on the lights to play in the coal pile where I would break the shiny black chunks into smaller squares hoping to expose the outlines of fern fronds cloaked for millennia inside.

I reached the foot of the stairs. It sounded like a whole army of rats had seized the basement. They breathed heavily sounding unlike any rats I heard before. I moved stealthily, knowing I would only get a moment to see them before they would dive for safety back down the drainpipes or the cracks in the foundation.

I slipped slyly past the coal pile trying not to crunch any of the little squares of coal that littered the floor. Webb Pierce's reedy voice worked its way through the floorboards above:

You call me up and say to meet me at nine
I have to hurry hurry but I'm there on time
I walk right up and knock on your door
The landlord says she ain't a-here no more…


I hoped the music would mask my approach. I could hear the breathing get louder and louder and as I came around the furnace I saw them on the couch arms and legs entangled, my father and Stella.

Their mouths were locked. My father's hand was up her skirt. I watched fascinated and confused. I couldn't move. Stella pushed hard against his hand, snapping her back like a rat dying in a trap. Her eyes rolled white in her head. It looked like my father was killing her and suddenly I remembered my mother out cold on the kitchen floor.

"Pa." I whispered. "Pa."

He turned slowly toward me as casually as if I had walked in on him shaving. Stella flushed, breathless. She turned to the wall, struggling with her panties through the fabric of her skirt.

"It's Ma," I said. "She's passed out again."

My father's eyes fixed on me, narrow and uncomprehending. Webb Pierce continued to sing:

Well you tell me sweet things that you don't mean.
You've got me a livin' in a haunted dream.
You make me do things I don't wanna do.
My friends say oh Webb what's wrong with you…


"It's always something with that cunt. Go back to the bar, Stella before those animals drink me broke. I'll be down in a few."

My father dragged me out of there. I didn't know if he was angry with me, with Ma, or with Stella but his hand coiled tight around my wrist. I could feel the tautness of his whole body in the muscles of his hand. Tears filled my eyes but I couldn't cry or complain because I'd just get slapped. I didn't have words or the urge to scream either. I just let him drag me upstairs hurling me on the landing just below the door to our apartment.

He stooped down beside me and looked me in the eye, chilly and square. His breath smelled of Beeman's and coffee.

"Son, I'm gonna show you something real special. Before we go up to take care of your Ma. It's a secret: a man's secret, you see, so you can't tell a word to nobody, OK?

I nodded thankful to be initiated into the hidden world of men: of whiskey soaked corks and cigarettes; of glossy magazines you hide in the bottom of your lunch bucket; of hunting knives and the Green Bay Packers; of complaining about the foreman or the old lady, the textured landscape of manly secrets.

My father released his grip on my wrist and extended his hand. "Smell" he ordered.

The smell of his fingers made me dizzy. They smelled ripe and strong like the scent of a live animal, vaguely like the scent of meat, blood and fish. He nodded, urging me to sniff again and I did.

"That son," my father said officially, "is the smell of pure woman. Now you know that smell, you'll never be the same. You may think you're only eight years old, but now that you've had a taste of this, you are a man."


2.

My mother stood leaning against the wall. She smoked a Pall Mall. A flake of tobacco hung lazily on her bruised lower lip. My mother was tall and as soft as my father was taut and strong but lately she'd been getting lean, wiry and black and blue from passing out and hitting the floor.

She looked at my father with a fierce black-eyed glare. The muscles clenched underneath the thin white skin of her face and the veins seemed to pulse out of her neck and arms. She took a drag from her cigarette and blew the tobacco from her lip with a purposeful stream of blue smoke.

The air seethed with cigarette smoke and the fumes of fermented cabbage. It burnt my eyes but neither my mother nor father would blink. They were welded together in a rigid gaze of loathing and couldn't break away.

I remembered the first time I had seen my Dad like that. It was the day I first met Harry. Mr. Neuman came into the tavern with Harry and three of the men who worked for him. It was the end of a sticky summer workday. Mr. Neuman held Harry's hand. I looked at Harry, and he looked at me. It was one of those moments you never forget, as though our friendship was sealed for all time, then and there. My father's suspicious gaze traveled from me to Harry and then to Mr. Neuman where it froze solid.

"Christ-killer!" my father declared bluntly.

Mr. Neuman took a step back, kicked in the chest by an invisible boot. He was a short and stocky man with a helmet of neatly clipped curly black hair and a thick purple scar down the side of his neck that disappeared under his sweat-drenched collar. He planted his feet and looked into my father like he was guessing his weight.

"Yes, I did it. I was there and I did it myself, and if I had the chance, I'd do it again," Mr. Neuman answered without a blink.

My father shook his head and smiled. His eyes narrowed, glaring back at Neuman the way you would stare down an angry dog.

"Sign on the door says Mo Wimi Popolsku not Mo Wimi Poposk-Jew," my father said. Stanley Budny and the gang gurgled their approval.

"I speak Polish too," Mr. Neuman said. "Now pour us some beers."

"We don't serve Christ-killers here, Neuman. Take your men down the street to the Berliner Tap. Maybe they'll pour you a cold one. And I don't mean a shower."

My father and Budny laughed and the gang sniggered amen. Mr. Neuman's eyes glowed like black coals. Harry looked scared. He buried his face in his father's trouser leg and held tight to his hand. All eyes settled on Mr. Neuman waiting for a response. Neuman just stood there staring at my dad, staring at him. Everybody stayed silent waiting for someone to relent but the two men were locked together in the same kind of icy hatred I now saw between my mother and father.

My father moved like a slow shadow. He picked up a beer mug and wiped it thoroughly with a rag. He chuckled to himself but he kept his eyes fixed on Harry's dad gauging every one of his breaths. Suddenly he threw the beer mug down and leaped straight at Neuman from across the bar. Neuman grabbed my father's sleeve with his free hand and in one swift jerk, snapped him to the floor the way you would snap a wet towel.

My father was out cold on the dark oak floor lying in a growing puddle of urine. Stanley Budny and the gang turned away to face the altar of bottles that stared at them from the shelves behind the bar, pretending nothing had happened.

Then, still holding Harry's hand, Mr. Neuman walked out the door. His men followed loyally behind. I remember thinking Mr. Neuman never let go of Harry's hand the whole time he had been in the tavern. Even when he whipped my father to the floor, he held Harry's hand and he wouldn't let go.

3.

"How am I supposed to run a business with you pulling stunts like this every five minutes?

"What stunt?" My mother pulled her flask out of her apron and unscrewed the top. She sniffed the open bottle and looked at my dad like she was going to offer him a swallow, only to withdraw it tightly to her breast.

"Last week you cut yourself with the new knives. There was blood all over the place. Looked like someone was killing chickens up here. You drink all day 'til you pass out at night. Johnny comes home from school. Finds you half dead on the floor with the place up here looking like hell and smelling like shit while I'm down in the gin-mill working my ass off trying to keep all of us alive."

My mother steadied herself against the kitchen cabinets with one hand and tried to slice my dad to shreds with that barbed wire smile she had. She took a pull from her flask: a long pull. Her eyes fluttered shut and her knees buckled. She hit the floor in six directions. Her bones rolled like potatoes in a sack and her head hit the floor with a dull, hollow thud.

My father dropped to her side. He put his hand under her nose like he had a hundred times before. He put his hand on her chest and under her nose again. He sat bolt upright, "Call the doctor! She ain't breathing. Someone call the doctor!"

4.

Stanley Budny and the gang stayed away from the tavern for a week after the incident with my father and Mr. Neuman and Stanley couldn't look him in the face for an entire month after that. Their wives told them to stop shopping at Neuman's since they heard what he had to say about killing Jesus.

After we buried my ma it was no different. Everybody blamed my father for driving her to drink by messing around with Stella. But soon after, my father married Stella and Stanley and the gang were back drinking, playing cards and shooting craps in the basement after hours with my father and Webb Pierce singing through the floorboards.
"Webb's a man, lives his own life," my father harangued after a couple, three shots of whiskey. "Drives a Cadillac. Inside is lined with silver dollars. He has a swimming pool shaped like one of his guitars. You can keep your Liberace. Don't care if he does come from West Allis, West Milwaukee or West Wherever. He's as queer as a three-dollar bill and everybody knows it."

My father didn't care what I did after school anymore, so I'd usually end up hanging around with Harry over at his dad's store and Mrs. Neuman would have me over for supper every Friday night. Their house glowed with the smell of fresh baked braided bread, roast beef, fish and all kinds of little treats. Mr. Neuman would fill the crystal decanter with sweet purple wine and Mrs. Neuman would light the candelabrum in the middle of the dining room table. She had this tradition of lighting a candle for each member of the family and after a while she even lit one for me.

..



..Joel Asa Miller was born in New York City in 1957. He was raised in Washington, DC and Milwaukee, Wisconsin where he worked as a cab driver and in a variety of industrial jobs.

Miller began making short films while working at GM. His first efforts were documentaries made on the shop floor with a 16mm camera smuggled into the plant in his lunchbox.

In 1988, Miller left GM to attend UCLA's School of Theater Film and Television where he earned the Masters of Fine Arts in Film and TV Directing in 1995.

Upon graduating, he began his career in advertising writing, producing and directing photography on TV commercials for clients such as CBS, Suzuki, Alta Vista, Oracle and GTE and for agencies such as Ogilvy & Mather, Ketchum, and Weiden & Kennedy.

In 2002, Miller launched Nekouda Creative an award winning creative shop in Montreal, that specializes in branding, ecommerce, crisis communications web support and film and documentary TV development.

Nekouda Creative achieved international notoriety as part of the PR team that successfully publicized the cause of 12 Kuwaiti citizens currently incarcerated without charges in the US detention center in Guantanamo Cuba.

Miller cowrote the recently released feature film, The Descendant (2006). He is currently completing a collection of short fiction, Johnny Cash At The Vista Del Mar and his latest documentary, 18 Windows will be released in June 2007..

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