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The Bra Comes From the Demise of the Corset
Between apples and oranges,
Wide and thin, childless and with--
Escape, because accidents happen
Mute relations imagine a worse mess!
But she won't lose one night
Next to the sound, the smell of a sleeping body
For these are, she said, pointing to the population
Grotesque Manifestations of Unpleasured Skin
Hence, the Ho Ho's, the Ring Dings, lard
Imagine a worse mess mute relations
Feel the difference
And cross your heart
Fly, fly, decamp, steal away
Yes, you detect the difference
Lisa Cohen's writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The Paris Review, Ploughshares, Five Fingers Review, Barrow Street, The Yale Journal of Criticism, Fashion Theory, and the anthology Queer 13, among other publications. She is currently at work on a book of portraits to be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Sufjan Stevens
An Oboist With So-So Vibrato
When my mother dropped me off at music school in upstate New York, she said, "Oh Jesus help this kid be something special!" She wanted a child prodigy, like Mozart and Lizst, but I was just an oboist with so-so vibrato. When my mother left, I changed my name from Horace to Horatio. It was a boarding school. You could be whatever you wanted for a year. I told everyone I was from Argentina, which made things better, since I was last chair in the orchestra. I refused to speak Spanish since I was in America now and I wanted to be American.
In truth, I was from Michigan. I wore Izods and stonewashed jeans, tight-rolled. I had a Midwestern slang. I said things like hoydie-doydie and naw. My father was an elder at a Pentecostal church. My mother cleaned our kitchen for a living. I was raised in a house with more bibles than aspirin tabs.
No one caught on because in music school you spend so much time repeating minor arpeggios that you don't notice other people's accents or skin tone. You only notice embouchure and posture. You envy someone else's G-sharp major scales and circle breathing. If you were an oboist, like me, you noticed the shape of a reed, the wood tone and nationality of the instrument: French Loree or Rogoutat. If you had a plastic oboe, like me, you were told not to leave your instrument on the radiator since it would melt and ruin a perfectly good case. I decided to rent an oboe from the music library; it was made of African balsam. "At least you don't sound like a saxophone anymore," Heather Wong said after sectionals. She was just being nice since she was second to last chair.
The other players fondled their oboes like exotic wives, with bulbed bells and cotton pads and gold-plaited keys. The best players used peacock plumes to swab. I used an old sock and a piece of string. Sarah Sinigesson said her father found her oboe in an abandoned Egyptian attic; it was worth ten grand, she said. I said my plastic oboe cost me two-fifty brand-new. She said, "Oh Horatio, that's just awful."
We learned to make double reeds with bamboo cane and colored thread. We shaped them with Vitry knives and a straight edge. I practiced for six hours every day. There was nothing else to do. I played Marcello, Vivaldi or Verdi, because Italians knew how to make something sound pretty with just a triad and some trills. But I was terrible.
"Relax your wrists!" Mr. Blund would say during my lesson. "If I see you use forked-F again, I will cut off your hands." Mr. Blund said he was very respected in Belgium. Mr. Blund said he couldn't wait to get out of this God-forsaken penitentiary and tour with a real symphony. He was right. The campus was stuck in a knot of trees: a row of cinderblock buildings and a performance hall shaped like a UFO. Every room on campus was sound proofed with synthetic pads and asbestos. Everywhere you went it felt like an asylum.
Juries were worse than The Gong Show. Anyone could sit in and offer remarks about intonation or timing. A bassoonist named Barbara Mushwater once stopped me in the middle of Wagner to tell me my retardation of the slurred note before the cadence was bad. I said I didn't know there was such a thing as good retardation, but no one found it very funny. I said, "Could you be more specific than bad?"
She said no, that about summed it up.
All The Nonsense of Suffering
Bethany Peters will tell you about the time her daughter crawled into the sewer pipe at the creek in the backyard and came out the other end at the waste treatment plant speaking in tongues. Her daughter was three years old at the time, and Bethany says she has dyslexia. Bethany Peters will tell you about how Christ came into her own life at a time when she considered prostitution. No one asks how she would have made such a living in Pickerel Lake, Michigan population 2,572 where downtown is an abandoned strip mall hosting weekend flea markets where you can get last year's calendars at half-price (people collect them for the pictures).
Bethany Peters will tell you about her first encounter with the Devil, at Morris Street near the P.O., where the stoplight was a stop sign in 1985. She had her groceries in a paper bag, and a carrot stick in her mouth, when the Devil (disguised as a house painter in overalls, with a dirty clergy collar) jaywalked from across the street and said, "Ma'am, can I borrow your spirit for a minute?" Bethany Peters was as big a woman then as she is now. She put her weight forward and said, "No sir, I believe I am redeemed by the blood of the Lamb," and she dropped her groceries and slugged him in the gut. No one witnessed the event, but Mr. Terry (who'd driven in from the farm for a quick shave at Sam's) later found Bethany flat on her back on the crabgrass by the P.O. Her groceries were all over the street: a can of evaporated milk, six packs of Nilla Wafers, and a jar of sweet pickled ginger for her daughter, who was six at the time. Bethany gave her testimony the next Sunday, and pastor Bob made her a church deaconess.
She will tell you she always gets what she prays for. She will tell you she is part of the royal priesthood of God. She will tell you about the time she came home from church and found a wolverine in her kitchen, eating the bread biscuits she'd made for the Christian woman's quilting bee. She'll tell you how she got him out: by shaking her ceramic chimes from the patio, singing the hymn, "Christ is made the sure foundation," which scared him out the front door, since Bethany Peters is tone deaf.
She will tell you, without flinching, how her husband died; she isn't squeamish. She doesn't mind blood, other people's or her own. She will tell you he was found crushed by a snow plow, having passed out in a drift near the Dutch Oven Bakery. His body was found in three equal parts. He was a contractor and a gambler and an alcoholic and sometimes he hit her in the face with his Sunday slippers. Bethany told everyone this in open confession at church many years later. "It really didn't hurt at all," she wept over the microphone. "But my spirit has never recovered." The other members crept around her, laying on their hands, praying for emotional healing, reconciliation, and for Christ's quick return, which will destroy all the nonsense of suffering, once and for all. Bethany cried and cried. She will tell you she never cried so much as then.
She will tell you she is dieting, even though she eats what she likes. She is a big woman. Her body is as wide as a water heater, and her breasts hang like long water balloons to her middle, concealed in a variety of calico dresses made at Joanne's Fabrics. She will tell you she has a younger brother named Guy, a small man with a handsome space between his two front teeth who is not a believer. He has been married three times, and now he runs a liquor store in the U.P. Bethany will tell you that we are all held accountable for what we know, and that God is merciful. She will not say much more about it, though.
What she will tell you is this: her daughter got accepted to a state university after three years of community college. She is studying criminal law, although Bethany was hoping for something less serious: Home Economics, Physical Therapy, or religious studies. She will tell you that her daughter is the apple of her eye, as Elijah was the Apple of God's eye. She will tell you she is glad she didn't have boys, because boys grow up hating their mothers until they are adults, and then they overcompensate for the rest of their lives, calling long distance on weekends, or sending gift packets and coupons for hair conditioners in the mail. Bethany Peters will tell you she would not trade motherhood for all the hair conditioners of the world.
Bethany will tell you about Joshua and the battle of Jericho; she will tell you Jesus drove seven demons out of Mary Magdalene; she will tell you the genealogy of Saul the Benjamite, from memory; she will tell you that Moses never said to Pharaoh, "Let my People go," because Aaron did. She will tell you that Jesus' last words were not "It is finished," but "I finally did it!" She will tell you he died of dehydration, the most natural consequence. "Drink eight glasses a day," she will tell anyone she meets at the supermarket. She will tell you about the abundance of mercy or the peace that passeth understanding. She will tell you about justification through grace and the atonement of sins. She will tell you she is happy to see you, and God bless.
What Bethany Peters won't tell you is that her mother was Jewish and her father was a soda salesman, with a head as bald as a baseball who spent his afternoons at the off-track betting depot in Muskegon. She won't tell you about the time when she was four and her Uncle Joe took off his clothes in front of her when getting ready for the bath. She won't tell you about the time in seventh grade when she broke Melissa Bricker's nose with her physics notebook. She won't tell you she didn't start her period until she was sixteen. She never told anyone about that. She never told anyone about the time she stole money from her husband to buy a wrist watch with a compass, because she'd always wanted to know where she was going. She won't tell you she hates black people, at least not in so many words. She won't tell you she prefers women in dresses and men in hats, or that she threw a fit the day they let the girls wear slacks in church. She won't tell you she is diabetic, and that she takes medication before bed. She won't tell you she has a gun under the floorboards in the pantry. She won't tell you about her miscarriage when she was twenty-seven or that she gave it a name: Lily Rose Peters. She will never tell you about the time she caught her daughter heavy petting on the back porch with Jeremy Keyswater. She will never tell you about the time she hit a doe with her husband's Jeep, and backed up over it to put it out of it's misery. She will never tell you that she hasn't shaved her legs in sixteen years. She will never tell you how she lost her front teeth when her husband jabbed her with his elbow. She will never tell you she is sorry but she doesn't have time to talk right now. And she will never tell you about the two German Shepherds she keeps in the cellar, tied to the furnace with rope, their mouths shut with duct tape, or how she feeds them Oleson's day old steaks and tomato juice, hitting them with kindling or snapping their sides with a hot wet rag, nourishing their tempers, and in the end times, when the world is one big riot, she will loose them on the antichrist, once and for all.
A Michigan native currently living in New York City, Sufjan Stevens is a graphic designer, an amateur seamster, a crocheter of ski caps, and a writer of short fiction. He has an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from The New School. Having once studied oboe technique and reed making at Interlochen Academy of Music, Sufjan has since given up the double reed for the electric guitar.
Maile Chapman
Two Small Beloved
It had been hot above average and climbing for five days. I thought her run-down condition was a reaction to that, and so I tried to keep her cool. I urged plenty of water on her. I fed her fish for protein's sake but I did not know it was iron that she needed. Would beef have been better? She wasn't eating much of anything, maybe it never mattered.
I worked a job I did not care about but then I grew to dislike it, and to dislike leaving home. The apartment we had was hot and tight during the day and now I can't remember whether we had a fan. I hope so. The weather was such that down where I worked, near the water and presumably much more comfortable, people were forcing fluids and potassium to keep from fainting. I myself had a dizzy spell and had to sit down behind the counter on the cool but filthy cement floor. All I could think of was my two babies in the greater heat of the apartment, her and her sister flattened out, breathing shallow.
When I got home that evening, a Sunday evening, they were both lying spread out on the wood floor of the living room that also served as my bedroom. Her sister got up and seemed fine, but she stayed down. She was sluggish and over-warm to the touch. I took her to one of the ambulatory clinics that are open on the weekends for emergency situations.
We waited a long time. Possibly they were overworked due to the weather. I sat in the waiting area with her body draped over my knees. When it was our turn to be seen they diagnosed that she was dehydrated and that they would fix her up with fluids. They ran a whole bag into her and she seemed somewhat refreshed. By the way, they said, her gums are looking pale and she ought to go to the regular doctor at some point.
When we got home they both ate a little. She appeared better.
That next day was Monday and I had to work again. She seemed fine still when I was leaving. Her head felt cool and she took some water, but when I came back she was on the floor again, now with her eyes glassy and fixed. Her breath was shallow and she did not respond to me in any way. The regular clinic was just three blocks away and I drove with her on my lap.
There was nobody at the front. I lay her on the reception desk to save her from the heat of my arms and at that moment her bodily control went loose. I pushed open the swinging door to the clinical rooms and we all heard my voice, and its echoes.
The receptionist and a nurse came and got her and were very calm. They said she wasn't dying, that she had some kind of heat reaction or heat fatigue and that her body was making an effort to conserve energy and that this was why she wasn't moving and why her bowels had let go.
They set her up with more fluids and then they said, Her gums are stone-white. I told them about the other visit.
They said, Did anyone think to draw blood?
No one had drawn blood, so then the doctor there did. As soon as it was in the vial they held it up and we could all see through it. It was watery, and not very red.
They were short with me and said I ought to have known to bring her to them first thing that morning before work.
They put her into an incubator, to give her oxygen. They said she could not contain it well in her blood on her own. I felt only somewhat reassured looking down at her in the hard plastic case. She still was not moving.
They told me that unfortunately they did not have any blood there to transfuse her until the morning. I asked if she would die. The doctor told me that she would not die.
They told me to go home and that all would be well and that I should call in the morning to check on her, that then I could come and see her. I touched the plastic and I leaned down to make eye contact with her. But she was far away, and couldn't see me.
I called in the morning to see if she was moving, if she was feeling better. The nurse asked me to hold for a moment while she got the doctor on the line. As soon as I was put on hold I felt a deep cold come into my skin despite the heat of the apartment.
The doctor was a long time coming to the line. When she came on, she said that when I called they had just that moment been hooking up the tubes for the new blood. She said my girl had woken and looked at the tubes and that she had turned her face away and closed in on herself, and that she had died within the last few minutes. She said it had been what they recognized as a refusal to be treated, the body's own final decision. She said, sometimes this is nature's way.
I went to the clinic with a long string of baby beads that spelled out her name, her sister's name, my name, and the name of her other parent who had been for some years living in another state. When they let me see her she was curled in a kind of laminated pressed-paper tray. She had already been in the refrigerator and her body was the way that the dead are always described, hard, cold, smaller. I put the beads around her and wrapped her in a favorite scarf that had belonged to my mother. Her hair was still soft, silky; it was impossible to think that it was true. But from her body and her face I could see that she had closed her physical self and gone out of it. When I lifted her I could not feel her there. Under her eyelashes I could see a narrow gap where the lids did not quite meet. Her eyes seemed flat within, deflated and silver.
I held her for some time in the back room at the clinic. I slipped her under my shirt and held her, my face pressed to the hard back of her neck. I then put her, tray and all, into a cardboard box that was there against the wall and I carried her out to the front. A hush happened in the waiting room when people saw the box in my arms. The receptionist was embarrassed and asked me to step into a side room to sign release papers. She told me how sorry she was, how the doctor had given her condolences to be passed on to me, and I was to let them know if there was anything they could do in the future. Meaning what? I said. She showed me to the side door which led straight to the parking lot.
I had taken some time to get things together properly and I shifted these things over on the seat so that I could put her beside me while we drove. I'd made the decision to take her north to my family.
My grandmother on the phone had expressed sympathy and grief, but having suffered the same loss many times herself she ended with a strange, light laugh that disturbed me and I asked to speak with my grandfather.
Alright, he said, you can do that, you can bring it up here. I'll go outside and set aside a little place for you.
This drive took three hours. Midway there I passed out of the heat and the sky turned dim. By then we were passing through agricultural lands and when the rain started I rolled down the window to let in the smell of wet straw. She was all the while beside me. The cardboard flaps stood over the top so I could not accidentally see her, but I put my hand in and under the scarf, to feel the smoothness of the back of her head. Even hours out of refrigeration she was colder than before. Owing to the processes of death.
The rain had dampened their property but when I pulled up in the driveway it was no longer falling. My grandfather came out when he saw my car. My aunt was there and she and my grandmother watched from the big window as I lifted the box. My grandfather had got a small shovel out from the toolshed and this was waiting for us against the side of the house.
My aunt came out with an extra pair of boots for me to wear over the long grass. She carried the bag of things I'd brought and we went to a small clearing between the old egghouse and the new pear tree.
I thought somewhere around here, said my grandfather, but he made me choose the exact spot. When I did he broke the sod and started. Then he straightened up and gave me the shovel.
You'll feel better if you do the work, he said.
That's right, said my aunt.
When I'd made the hole as deep as I could we opened her box and they recognized the scarf. We lowered her down. Around her bundled body I placed the things I'd brought to bury with her. Among them was a photo of her sister.
My grandfather filled the hole because he could do it faster and to do it slow would have hurt me.
In the house my grandmother had made coffee and set out crackers and jam. They asked me would I spend the night but I had the other girl to get home to. At the table my grandmother kept looking at me and smiling.
Do you know how many we've got buried out there? she said.
I'm only thinking of the one, I said.
There's a lot of company for her, she said. A lot of company.
She has seen more of this kind of grief than I have so I can't fault her but I thought, still think, that her way with me that day was too abrupt for the circumstance.
Before I left they marked the site for me so I could find her grave again later. Fourteen paces from the new pear tree and seven from the southwest corner of the egghouse. A little later in my absence a honeysuckle was planted in that general vicinity.
At home the other girl was upset and confused, meeting me at the door and carefully looking over my bags, looking for her sister. And not finding her. Every day for a long time she would check when I came home to see if I had brought the other one finally back.
Eventually we settled into a diminished routine, between the two of us. I've done everything I know to make her comfortable and to keep her as content as possible. She sleeps with me at night now and probably always will.
My aunt says they left the back porch light on for the first week so that the buried one would know where the house was. So that she wouldn't be too disoriented out there in the darkness. My aunt came to include that spot on her walks around the property so that there would be visits far more often than I could ever make. She stops and says hello to the ground. Once she carried a stuffed animal out there and, pacing off the location, placed it on the spot and took a photo to send to me. I admit I had a peculiar feeling in response to that effort of kindness.
In the first few months there were several times when I would say the name of the remaining girl sharply out loud, from a sudden panicked need to connect, only to find when she looked at me that she was not herself. I do believe the other, the departed, came back at first to share the body momentarily. These were generous and moving occurrences. But they soon stopped. I take this as a sign that she has gone on to someplace more final, which is no doubt what needs to happen, but I was grateful for the brief last encounters.
The other girl and I have gone on showing tenderness to each other. In the absence of her sister, we have grown closer than we otherwise would have; it is commonly known that two can be closer than three. Physical presence life in common does eventually bring back normal feeling.
Though truthfully we are probably not the pair which, if sufficiently pressed, either of us would have chosen.
Maile Chapman's fiction has appeared in POST ROAD, 3rd Bed, and Best New American Voices, among others.
Ross Martin
First Person
An ant
solitary in a field
of buffalo clover
is a ganglion
not going anywhere.
But four
together
circling a dead moth on a path,
propping the food up,
there, at work,
is an idea.
What I love is
plural,
breaths held
together,
the stains of crushed bugs
not on our fingers.
Helio Me
In the
smallest
hour
of
the day
we save
light
I am
no more
myself
than
the green
I green
into
another
year
God
let me
sleep
through
this
hour
as we
repeat it
Vicarious
for Chris Burden
Then just before I'm
born he attaches live
wires, one to each of
his nipples, and lives.
Then an assistant shoots
him in the arm with a .22
to see what it feels like.
I take the car down Route 22
past strip malls my eyes
already know, and turn
them into poems that will
not move. Take U-turns
through Jersey at the speed
of the foot on my leg.
The founding former poetry editor of Nerve Magazine, Ross Martin now lives in Los Angeles where he runs Plant Film. He has taught poetry at Washington University, The New School and Rhode Island School of Design. His poems appear in Kenyon Review, AGNI, Boulevard, Denver Quarterly, Witness, Verse, Bomb, and others. He is the author of The Cop Who Rides Alone (Zoo Press).
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