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-Charles Clayton

Cortez married the

daughter of Montezuma.

Their descendents manage

Dairy Queens and

rebuild transmissions

alongside the King’s Highway.

Iberia. Tenochtitlan.

Civilizations collide.

Cosmologies clash.

Utterly different

except for the need

to drink the blood

of non-believers.

She appears to the faithful.

Up on the mountain.

Down in the valley,

Behind the church,

In the hardware aisle at Walmart.

Jewels glimmering gold lust.

Eagle crying glory lost.

Bare brown Goddess flesh

tempting us with rites of passage,

whispering in a strange tongue...

Tear your own heart out.

Feed it to the Jaguar.

Mojito Madness

-Eric Mack

There must be the soul of a chronically lonely, and (by extension) perpetually horny old dude trapped in the rum. Maybe an old hand on a pirate ship all those centuries ago who got mixed up in some East Indies voodoo curse just as cannon balls started raining down on he and those big barrels of sweet relief below deck. One part each of a little pirate blood, voodoo curse and Caribbean Rum, all mixed together in a cosmic shaker - that's the only explanation I can come up with for why a few shots of Bacardi has a biological impact parallel to ingesting a couple little blue Viagra pills and a line of cocaine.

The graphic details will eventually be illustrated in a Jon Waters film, but suffice it to say that the men and women who profess the longevity benefits of "whiskey dick" have yet to experience that condition's Caribbean cousin.

Yet the soul of that unfulfilled old pirate is insatiable. When chafing gives way to climax, and only seconds later to deep sleep, that ol' boy is just getting started... with post-coital rapid eye movements generating fleeting visions that tease even further; there is the woman in a sparkling sequined evening gown in the jungle, tropical heat coating her breasts with sweat that reflects the light of a fire in the background somewhere, not an actual bonfire or anything, just generic sexy flames for the purpose of pointing out the boobs a little better - the kind of lighting design a 17th-century horny pirate would use for the looping porno in his head; then there are the jungle animals, the jaguars, the gorillas, the eagles and several other species that have wandered out of their native climatic zones to make the scene a little more primal; and of course there is the snake, that metaphorical Charlie Sheen on the scene reminding the dreamer of the primacy of the phallus in all things.

And then it's done. Eyes open, sun up. And it's morning so that's not the only thing that's up. Add a headache and a full bladder and now we're shaking hands with the spirit in the spirits. The only antidote for the cursed? A little hair of the dog... or a new life as a beer drinker.

Gabriele

-Gary Feuerman

I wonder how it feels to be an angry raptor, a snake about to bite. When I was six, a leopard lived in my closet. He was old and I never saw him run. Shaneek was his name and his yellow eyes shone in the dark like mini Van Gogh glass paintings. We sat in the dark and talked about the Wild Things who didn’t show up. In the morning light I’d turn on the Sony transistor radio and listen to the casualty count in Vietnam on WINS news. It was always more them than us. It was always the coldest winter in memory. It was always the funeral of a great uncle who died of an embolism. There was always the chance to see a cardinal in my backyard, a blue jay, a robin. After Shaneek disappeared, I threw rocks at squirrels and did experiments on ants. Later, I saw Gabrielle in a one-piece black bathing suit in Lenny’s backyard swimming pool, and my heart raced. On the diving board a bumble bee stung me in the upper back and I fell into the pool as if shot. Gabrielle laughed, but it was before she saw me crying. It didn’t matter. Any reaction would have done. Her skin was the color of Ceylon tea and she walked on her toes. I was sad before I talked to her, seeing the end before the beginning. It took 4 more years, but we had a beginning, and when I graduated high school we had an end. It wasn’t as sad as it was when I was 12 thinking about the future. Maybe being with someone makes the ending less poetic; but maybe not because it’s poetic again now many years later. I heard she was killed by a tiger in India. She was a zoologist and I’m not sure I can find any irony in that. But I can say that as a kid I watched Daktari and always thought the lady in the show was pretty and alluring. I wanted to be around animals, too, if I could be around her. I’d say that the day I saw the budding Gabrielle in the black one-piece in Lenny’s backyard she looked like a gazelle or had the legs of antelope or had the eyes of a tiger, but I’d be projecting backward. She looked like someone I wanted to touch and smell and caress and say I love you to. The bee woke me up. When I climbed out of the pool, she came over and squeezed the stinger out as if she’d done it a thousand times. That’s what I remember more than anything else.

The Showdown

- Johanna DeBiase

Gretchen stamped her cigarette out in the souvenir ashtray, staining the picture of the cowboy with resin and rubbing ashes into the lasso letters. She rubbed her eyes hard and wiped the black residue of eyeliner from her palms to her pants. Carving her initials into his wood table, she waited to catch Jerry evacuating his room with whichever stellar tramp he took home that weekend. She spit into his mug with the picture of skinny Elvis swinging a microphone. (What's so great about Elvis anyway?) Jerry was late with his rent and she needed his share so she could go see the Raggs play at Benders tonight.

Three months ago, it seemed like a good idea to let an old guy who sold vintage collectibles at flea markets board with her. But that was summer and flea markets were over and he was broke. Apparently being old, (Was he nearly forty?), did not mean he was responsible, stable or abject to one-night-stands with atrociously trashy women. (Where did he find them?) The sound of banging against the wall was too much for her to handle. She tore the velor blanket of a sexy Native-American woman wearing a come-hither smile (Why did she think that was ironic?) from the wall and shoved it into the microwave oven that he insisted they keep in the apartment, along with a television set. Pulling a bobby pin out of her hair and placing it on top of the blanket, she set the timer for three-minutes, pressed start and laughed with sadistic joy as he climaxed in the next room.

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tempt
- Robin Powlesland

black and white long bow
or wooden pocket blade
painting of red dinner table
rabbits dancing on the plates
it is all under water from here
the long nails and hair
your drawn out look
my mistake
my wasted strong talk

please do not come here
and spread your
shortcomings
please go
I can fashion my own
weapons
and home


Why This is 11 Days Late
- Charles Clayton

Nobody thinks they’re contagious. Just like everybody thinks they’re good drivers, even as they text and guzzle cheap beer and don’t check their mirrors and don’t bother to look around. Or wash their hands. Or stay home when sneezing or hacking up green phlegm.

All I wanted was a haircut. Take some off the sides to avoid the hat wings, trim what’s left on the top so it doesn’t look like I’m cultivating a comb over. Just walk right in, no appointment. She’s from the Jemez pueblo and has cigarette breath but the price is right and the trim usually decent enough. I was feeling fine and just laughed at the sign on the door. Wished I had the camera actually to catch one of those moments that make you glad to live in this one of a kind town.

I missed out on the snapshot but caught something else. One of the downsides of civilization, of cultivation, of millennia of living with domesticated animals that taste good and allow us to forgo the hunt is the fact that close proximity with chickens and pigs and cows has resulted in the swapping and evolution of bacterial and viral predators. Chicken pox. Mad cow disease. Influenza.

That and the fact that the loss of nomadism means that we don’t get the chance to pull up stakes and leave it all behind…like the Navajo abandoning the hogan when somebody dies. So the invisible filth piles up, moves around, spreads like, well, disease.

So blame it on China, or some other transitional hub of free roaming animals and overpopulated populace. And blame it on airplanes, and the kid with his finger in his nose who touched the elevator button, and the buttons on the atm machines, the grocery cart handles, and a thousand other unwashed fingers and uncovered sneezes and the fact that too much Thanksgiving beer cheer and celebratory pie gluttony had compromised my immune system. And especially blame whoever it was that ignored the funny sign and left me an invisible gift on the door handle of the barbershop.

Lou Gehrig is the name of a person
-Eric Mack

My great grandmother died peacefully in her sleep - natural causes. So did her sister, great Aunt Mary. And great grandma Dessie, on grandpa's side. Not the cancer, not the Alzheimer's, not the Parkinson's that killed their children and their children's children - that's now killing our parents, the generations that decided death simply wasn't such a natural thing.

"A misnomer!" they cried. "Ignorance! A lack of medical and biological understanding!"

So these things have names now, mostly ending in -oma or something no doubt named for European doctors long-dead at the hands of their greatest discoveries. Really they're just all words for cancer; literally, or figuratively something eating away...

The ubiquitous phrase used to describe the last moments of the homestead generation is what consumes me now - "Peacefully in her sleep."

All of them. One moment dreaming, the next... Maybe it just bled together. Was there even a seam holding fast the images of rapid eye movements with those more ethereal?

The children of pioneers decided this could not be. They moved in to cities they had built, in homes filled with books of knowledge they had transcribed, the essentials of life synthesized, freeze-dried and worth the shipping and handling -- and "death by natural causes" left this world, peacefully, while our parents slept.


Two Ways to Acquire Elderberry Elixir
- Johanna DeBiase

1.The over-tired toddler yanking on my shirt sleeve nearly knocks over the glass bottles of herbal tinctures lining the apothecary shelves, but I hold tight so her hands do not free themselves to grab at fragile incense burners and ceramic smudge bowls. When I turn my back, she yells to me, “Mommy, I peed,” and I see the puddle of urine pooling beneath her. I grab the elderberry elixir, pay the exorbitant amount to the cashier and head home to cook dinner.

1a. Climbing over the barbed-wire fence into the neighbor's pasture, I follow the curious directions from Lena, knocking grass reeds with my boots down to the river, turning left at the acequia's head gate, over the boulder shaped like an clover until I locate the elderberry tree ripe with clusters of deep purple berries. I harvest as many as I can fit in my basket and head home to concoct a tincture.

2. I throw another load into the dryer and return to the table where my daughter is eating noodles with her fingers and wiping her boogers on the back of her hands. I feed her the elderberry elixir and she asks for more. I explain how she can only have a little at a time and she proceeds to throw a fit yelling, “More, more, more!” and tosses her bowl of noodles to the ground, which the dog gratefully licks up. I put her in time out and try the elixir. It reminds me of something. I pour myself a glass of wine and proceed to get drunk.

2a. After weeks of waiting for the brandy, honey and elderberries to smother and seep in the jar, I finally open the syrup elixir and swallow the warm goo, feeling it coat my insides and draw out any daunting ills. The taste like sweet wine lulls me into sleep and when I wake, I feel the aching desire to run, to disregard footwear and gravel and run. The pounding of bare feet against the earth is a swift flight into the sun. I flit through the village, hovering just above the ground, past the fields and foothills, past the gas station and Family Dollar where locals procure pocket-sized tissue packets and floss. They do not see me, a wisp of wind and light.

3. I wake up with a nasty hangover. My head is pounding just behind my shuttered eyes. There is a toddler jumping up and down on the bed yelling at me to get up, “Get up, Mommy, it's morning time.” As I swing my heavy feet to the floor, I notice my nose is dripping and I suck up snot because we are out of tissues. I will have to stop at the Family Dollar on the way into town to pick some up.

3a. One more loop through the valley and I head home, letting my feet grace the earth again. I flex my legs, still able to taste sweet elixir on my tongue. Inside, I dine on chocolate mints and listen to the call of the coyotes in the distance. As I reach for a mug, I notice that my body has lengthened three inches since morning. Tomorrow, I will eat rose hips turned shiny from frost and test my legs against the mountain side.

On the Road

Before and After
- Johanna DeBiase

Two photos, taken in the same location, almost exact except for the way in which the landscape was allowed to enter the frame and the the years of distance between them.

In the first photo, I am nineteen-years-old and on my first cross-country road trip with my best friend, Michele. We left New York two or three weeks earlier on our way to California. I am wearing an Elvis t-shirt, a souvenir from Graceland and black corduroys in the sweltering heat because I did not wear skirts until my twenties or shorts until my thirties. Standing on a sidewalk, on a bridge, behind me is the Taos Gorge, barely perceptible. I am smiling wide and squinting into the sun. Perhaps I am happy we made it this far without crashing our car or getting caught in a tornado or getting busted for any number of illegal contraband we were stashing in the glove compartment. Most likely, I thought of none of these things as possibilities. I was, after all, nineteen.

The second photo, taken ten years later, my fiance is behind the lens this time and, though we do not know it yet, we are moving to Taos, leaving behind the arctic tundra of Alaska we had called home. You can only see me from the shoulders up, my linen blouse has one button clasped and I am wearing a floppy straw hat and dark glasses. My arms are leaning securely over the rail and beyond my shoulder is the shadow of rock wall and the glimmer of a snaking stream below. Smiling, perhaps I am imagining my new life ahead, the home and family I will build, but, of course, I knew nothing of the future. All I remember is that after the photo, the flash, the smiles, I searched the railing for initials I had engraved in it years before.


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- Robin Powlesland

check board lighting strung
branches on high
but you have to bend
your neck
angle eyes and hair and cheeks
others can see you then
but so can you
the lights
the way someone stops and makes
something ugly
beautiful

I know I need to go
pack it all up again
unhinge myself from
the doorway
and go

tall buildings and small paintings
color dripping on moving water through
still streets
flower stalls and large women
angles

like coins falling out a hole
in your pocket
it’s time
to go again


Fiesta
-Charles Clayton

It was fiesta time, and the descendents of Conquistadors were honoring the patron saint of the village by praying in the adobe church and drinking and driving up and down the single paved road. Empty Bud Light cans flew like confetti, lining the road for months afterward, reminding everyone of that summer day and the pride they felt as they stood along Main Street and watched lowriders parade past abandoned graffiti covered buildings.

There were a few white folks in the crowd—in town for the month to take in the beautiful scenery from the patio of their vacation home—and they found the tradition interesting if a bit inauthentic. Pinatas should be handcrafted by pious Hispanic grandmothers, not bought at the dollar store, and why did they nail the electrical wires to the side of the church? Don’t they know how historic that building is? A good photo opportunity gone forever.

There were no Indians there—the commodities had just arrived and they were too busy eating American cheese sandwiches in squalid government housing to make it to town for a Spanish ritual. Besides, they only left the rez to buy quarts of malt liquor or to gather sacred herbs in the nearby mountains…herbs they used during sacred prayers that kept the Universe from spinning out of control.


Community Service
-Eric Mack

Still new to town and like a crazed, lost tourist I jogged through the freezing darkness, tragically underdressed in sweatpants, college hoodie, crew socks and cross-trainers designed to vent as much heat away from my feet as possible, making them horribly inept at preventing the subarctic air from sneaking between my toes.

A huge blue truck crept along side of me, its electric window slowly moving downward in jerks.

"Boy -- what in the hell are you doing, boy?" an incredulous Mayor Sweetsir shouted from the driver's side - he was trying to talk over the Rolling Stones in concert in 1979. A small video screen was mounted on the dash; a tiny liquid crystal Mick Jagger skipped across a strobing stage a few feet from the Mayor, who was fully bundled in a winter coat and heavy work gloves, despite the heated air pouring out of the louvers beneath Mick's frenetically galloping feet.

I leaned in to the open passenger side, disoriented by the 80 degree difference between my trickling nose and my glacial toes. I glanced at the 12-pack of Budweiser in the back of the cab before noticing that Russ was skillfully grasping on open can with two fingers on his left hand, leaving at least three fingers for the steering wheel. The mayor's three-finger drinking and driving technique, I would soon learn, also allowed for easier track selection on his DVD player with his free hand, and was complemented by the fact that he never eclipsed 15 miles per hour on his marathon weekend DWI sessions.

A Saturday night ride with Russ was not a brief outing. It could start as early as 7 in the evening and run until 3 a.m. - if there was a really good poker game at ol' Sid Huntington's house (the 90-year-old village patriarch) it might push on until 5. Part of the stamina could be attributed to the fact that Russ was both driving and drinking so slowly. The twelve pack of Bud would easily last the whole evening - the Mayor's body was actually processing all that alcohol, leaving him more or less sober the whole evening.

I would soon come to be proud of this first night cruising with Russ. We would make 5 laps around the village, buy everyone at Archie’s a few rounds, and chisel a frozen Lynx carcass out of the bottom of a friend’s freezer, before the Mayor called it a night and dropped me back at the bar for a few more solo rounds. I had outlasted the King – all hail youth!

The next morning, with little sleep and quite hungover, I was barely able to lift myself off my mattress to return to the bar and retrieve my forgotten wallet and gear. On the side of the road a few blocks from Archie's, Russ was attaching a winch to an overturned Volkswagen, pulling the debris of someone’s less-skilled DWI evening out of a deep ditch. It was his third tow and recovery before noon. He waved. I returned a reverent salute to the once and forever monarch of Saturday night in the bush.


Summer in Jersey '74
- Gary Feuerman

I know it’s New Mexico, but I’m in north Jersey in 1974. Rivervale, or maybe Tenafly, they always seemed the same to me. It’s the end of summer and we’re at Aunt Gina and Uncle Paul’s house. I’m walking through tall grass between weeping willows being trailed by a muscled black mutt named Ditto. The dog always barks menacingly when we get out of the brown and wood-paneled Vista Cruiser. He makes me stop in my tracks and then back up toward the car, but then Gina calls him over, a smoker’s clotted voice, smiling blue eyes, casually slouched as she walks from the porch with her legs out in front of her in purple slacks. She’s the picture of suburban cool, on the edge of the woods, could have been in a Kent ad in a magazine, could have been in the hills of Appalachia. After the first bark riot, Ditto’s my friend and he walks just behind me, head down like mine. I know I should be smelling sage, and pinon and caliche dust in my nostrils, but I taste thick grass and wet dirt and hear cicadas revving up to a high pitch that makes me think the trees will explode. I smell it in my belly and hear it in my feet. There’s a hole in the backyard chain link fence and it leads to an elementary school with groomed ballfields - baseball, football, and a blacktop basketball court. Nobody’s there, but I remember the family softball game the year before when I hit the ball over the kids that play against us and it rolled into the woods. It was a home run. I can see it but I can’t hear it. People yelled as I rounded the bases, I know they did, but I can’t hear them. Does memory have sound? I walk back through the fence and toward the house, a modified, 2 story, 3 bedroom colonial, white shingles with black shutters, and gray paint on the sides. I can hear my parents in the kitchen eating cold cuts with my little brother. Silverware plinks against porcelain, porcelain against wood, porcelain against porcelain. I can hear the TV in the living room where my grandpa, Bernie, is alone watching the Yankee game. Grunts and squeaks leak through the screened window on the side of the house where my dad’s younger cousin is screwing his girlfriend, the one with the curly blond hair and glasses, and perpetually red-tipped nose. I know she’s not Jewish, but I can’t remember who told me that. It’s not a big deal, but it’s known, a fact to tuck away in some list. Uncle Paul is out on the porch smoking a cigar. He moves slowly and has a soft voice. He looks older than Gina in his button down shirt with a black square pattern, and brown nylon slacks. There’s a tuna tartar colored birthmark on his left temple in the shape of Sri Lanka. Pointing to his chest where he recently had a pacemaker inserted after a second heart attack, he tells me he and Gina are moving to Florida so he can take it easy on his ticker. The Jersey winters are too cold nowadays. My uncle pulls up in a shitass brown 1972 Olds Delta 88. The radio is playing loud, too tinny to hear what it is. He steps out looking like a Beatle – more like a Beatle than the Beatles ever did – Sargent Pepper yellow corduroy bellbottoms, Lennon bifocals, coca cola brown hair fanning down his back to his ass, a thick handlebar mustache and a deep purple madras shirt. Sargent Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band of one. Ditto doesn’t bark at my uncle. He’s just back from 5 years in Europe and India staying clear of Vietnam. I’m curious about him. I’ve seen others that look like him, but he seems real with the hippie thing. He laughs through his nose and quakes his shoulders. My dad and mom and brother come outside to see my uncle; then my great grandparents from Austria, Annie, 88, wiping her hands on her apron to clean the debris of walnut cookies, and Willie, 94, stroking his yellow-gray mustache, amusement in his eyes; and then my grandparents, Bernie, 62, with purple, varicose cheeks, and Flo, 63, her blond hair teased and curled up high and her arms crossed. Everybody stops what they’re doing. Even my dad’s cousin and his red-nosed girlfriend come outside. I stand to the side, near the garage and watch everybody watching my uncle. I don’t hear the cicadas anymore and there’s a tug at my belly that I want to run away, that my DNA is all wrong. I’m in a play with all these actors and I don’t know how to act.