U.M.Ph.! Prose #3
Ah, September at last! All the college kids are back, each one rolling a huge cart full of more crap than an army of actually-studious students really needs, streaming into the city like lemmings, rolling, strolling, from check-in to their dorms all night. Clackity-clack. ---Don't talk back to the parents who drove all the way from Jersey to help you "settle in", you brats. So, everything is fresh: new shoes, pristine notebooks and backpacks, local merchants' smiling for the first time since the June exodus, and a crisp breeze blows in off the harbor. What? You're not happy and hopeful? You mean, you're feeling stressed by all the change, the racket, the exuberance of youth? Well, read on. If red, gold, and brown leaves rustling the world awake doesn't help, at least you're not as miserable as these wretched urban souls.
Mignon Ariel King
Boston, Massachusetts
September, 2009
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In this issue:
James Conant Matthew Dexter Ted Giovannini Shannon O'Connor
Lolita Paiewonsky Paul Steven Stone Zvi A. Sesling
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Mexican Urologist
By Matthew Dexter
The only thing worse than having a Mexican doctor take an ultrasound of your testicles is having two Mexican doctors examine your testicles on separate occasions. They usually can’t speak English, so you have to go with your Mexican girlfriend--which makes the situation even more humiliating--especially when you go with two different young ladies.
First you have to sit in the Cabo San Lucas waiting room and pretend you’re there for something less nefarious and scandalous than a problem with your reproductive organs. This can get especially tricky when there are beautiful senoritas sitting near you--sneaking glances and wondering what the specific problem is. For this reason it’s always wise to go to a hospital or clinic where patients of various ailments--the more the better--are all waiting together so nobody knows who has a pain in the balls and who has a sore throat.
When you’re waiting you should try to avoid making eye contact with anyone and everyone--reading a magazine or book is a good way to accomplish this important objective. If a beautiful girl or woman does look at you, don’t be afraid to meet her eyes, but do so with confidence and a flirtatious smile that says: “My private parts are fine, thank you very much.”
When they call your name, rise with confidence, because you want the entire room to think you have no problem getting up and can do so with ease and style on any occasion. Don’t make eye contact with anyone as you exit the waiting room--except the nurse who called your name. Look her in the eyes and pretend she doesn’t know why you are there. Say, “Thank you,” or “Gracias” when she drops you off at the examination room. Then prepare for the doctor and practice what you want to say, preferably in Spanish.
When the urologist enters, stand up and smile. Introduce yourself and shake hands and wait for him to give you permission to sit down again. Explain your testicular pain or other problems and have your girlfriend reiterate the specifics in Spanish. Then the doctor will ask you to lie down on the examination table. You will do so with class and show little if any reluctance. You will not wait for him to ask you to take down your pants because we all know why you’re there for Christ’s Sake. This might be ironic if you usually wait for the doctor to ask you to remove your shirt for the stethoscope, but with your pants there’s no beating around the bush. Shave or trim beforehand if you are worried about such things. Pull down your pants and then lie there like it’s nothing, as if you were at a nude beach and everyone was doing it.
The urologist will place some type of gooey ooze on the end of the instrument attached to the ultrasound machine, and you will prepare yourself because that liquid will be cold and sticky. He will place the instrument against your testicles, probably with a force that will make you wince and wish he was more gentle. He will move that instrument around as if there was a baby inside and he will examine the black and white ultrasound screen and rub that thing against your testicles for a few minutes, checking every corner and crevice. A few times he will probably need to look down at your member to make sure he is hitting the right spot. Whatever you do: do not get an erection! This is the worst thing you could do to yourself, your girlfriend, and the doctor.
The urologist will explain what you’re looking at on the screen, and this will be done with your pants still down because he will need to move that sucker around to get the best views and show what’s right and wrong. When he’s all done you can pull up your pants and stop showing the world your penis. The good doc will probably hand you a Kleenex--but since this is Mexico , remember--he will probably substitute toilet paper for Kleenex. Use it to wipe that gook off your scrotum and legs and then grow a pair and look him in the eyes and sit back down in front of his desk.
The good old doc will write you a prescription and advise you to take it easy. Listen to him if you want, but smoke ‘em if you got ‘em. Then shake his hand again (yuck—I know) and smile and walk out of his office. If you see the nurse smile at her and look her straight in the eyes like she missed out on the greatest thing in the world; but maybe you’ll be back again for a third time; so don’t get too crazy--she probably won’t want to have your baby or anything.
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Bread Soup and Spoilt Fruit
All during the Depression,
Ida seated over piecework
at a hot sewing machine,
the only steady paycheck
in a house full of relatives,
an extended family striving
to keep from being homeless
and keeping hunger at bay.
Now I live with Gramma
and Nonna in that same house,
even in the promise of Camelot,
hunger and homelessness threaten.
We walk down the gentle slope
five blocks to the A & P.
Gramma tows her shopping cart
while I push the youngest sibling
in a large, old baby carriage
some folks call perambulators.
What's for sale this week
determines what we will eat,
but there are always the standbys
that keep hunger from the door.
We cut away the rotten bits
of the spoiling pieces of fruit
and enjoy the good parts
with an impoverished soup
of chicken broth, spices,
and stale bread they sell
for people to feed to the birds;
Gramma makes her bread soup
which she serves with the spoilt fruit.
Cruel Harvest
She had held
each of her babies
in outstretched hands
admiring each gift of life.
It had never been easy
but she had taught each one
to live their precious life
by making hard choices.
Even in the city's harshness
they had blossomed like fertile fields;
good in school, working to get ahead,
a life so full of promise,
that she had seen for them
on the day her outstretched hands
had held them up,
for all of creation to see, and bless.
Now that potential is no more
than a body lying in a pretty coffin;
stray bullets cut down her child
like a cruel harvest of bitter grief.
Now, she marches for peace
to bring sanity back to the streets,
surrounded by other mothers bearing
burdens of despondent melancholy.
She works for hope to end
the scythe of senseless violence
from reaping any more youth
just trying to achieve their goals.
Each woman walks with the weight
of a coffin on her shoulders
trying to achieve peace in our time,
out on our streets before more
of the growing stalks can be felled,
dreams taken from mother and child.
Rhyme Time
Shake it
n' bake it
but please don't break it,
took your mama nine months ta make it!
That was the chant
we used down in The Flint,
sassy teenagers taunting
the prostitutes strutting
up and down The Avenue
as we went anywheres.
Crime lurked on every corner
in the hell that was Cherry Grove.
Sounds nice, don't it?
All a the projects got
nice soundin' names,
the project three blocks
from our corner
now names the whole,
undesirable area.
Cherry Grove,
so named
as it stands
at the corner
of Cherry
and Grove.
Cherry Grove sounds fragrant;
clean, fresh, healthy, delicate.
It sits below Downtown
on the hill as it slides
down to the river
and Battleship Cove
under the Interstate
which runs up above us,
climbing over us,
we are in the groin
of the Braga Bridge.
As the travelers look down
at the antenna sticking up
from the Battleship
docked in The Cove
we are a blight;
a dingy project of
bland brick buildings
and blocks of
dilapidated tenements
with no yards, with
something on fire,
day and night,
sometimes a car,
usually a dumpster.
The fire department
no longer comes without
a protective, police escort.
I'm sure that tourists
from Wisconsin, Iowa,
Minnesota, Kansas, Nebraska,
are shocked that
a historic site
languishes
under a slum.
I hear them say,
"Something should be done!"
They are luckier than we,
who must live, shop, walk,
wheel baby carriages or
go for an ice cream,
or the local delicacy,
a steamed hot dog
with all the trimmings,
along the hard sidewalks
of Pleasant Street
which is not pleasant
over in The Flint,
by Plymouth Avenue,
where day and night
prostitutes offer themselves
to any man who doesn't
walk into the gay bar,
just off The Square
next to the sub shop
across from the Chinese restaurant
near the ice cream parlor,
the hot dog emporium and
the Portuguese market.
It's hard work
bein' this poor.
A simple walk
out to the store
means dodging
cars and whores,
drunks and junkies,
hobos and cabbies,
all for a fresh loaf of
Portuguese Sweetbread,
A Massa Sovada, and
bacalhau, salted cod,
for my cousin
prima Maria Isabel.
So shake it
n' bake it
but please don't break it,
took your mama nine months ta make it!
--Ted Giovannini
##################################################################################
When I did Time in Jamaica Plain
When I did time in Jamaica Plain
I didn’t know if the world
had ended - I thought St. Patrick’s Day
was a joke and everyone waiting
outside the bars were there
because the communists
had taken over.
When I did time in Jamaica Plain,
everything was black and veiled,
when they let us out
to go for a walk to the pond,
I put on my outside shoes.
Turtle was smelly and Jim was perverted
and they acted like the deviants,
delinquents that they were,
blowing obscenities like they were bubblegum.
We walked to the pond, I tried
to ignore them, they were revolting,
no surprise, veterans of lockups.
When I did time in Jamaica Plain,
I knew everything that was wrong
with the world, I knew
the whole world, I saw stars
and moons, Van Goghs and Joan of Arc,
I saw tacos and ice cream;
I knew the mysteries of the Green Line
I heard cigarettes speaking to me;
I saw the Golden Dome explode;
I knew everything, Love Street,
blue trees. I felt the omnipresent
lies. Nobody told the truth
to me then,
that I was just plain nuts. Nobody
wanted to. I don’t blame them.
When I did time in Jamaica Plain,
I saw a magical castle
on top of Robinwood Avenue.
Who would’ve thought to make
a castle a loony bin,
so someday, some fuckin’ loony will think
she’s a princess
in a magical castle,
I thought I was the princess
in the magical castle
and I knew it all
including what is the meaning
of the sky.
I read an NA pamphlet
and I decided this was the secret
of the Universe..
One Day at a Time.
But one day comes after another,
until they’re all the same, and they’re
all lemonade.
But that doesn’t matter,
because the margaritas will take
over the world on yin and yang days.
There’s no reason to go on
other than the hope
your brain will explode
in the supermarket
again, and you discover
the magical castle truly is magic,
and everyone is cured,
including the cow
that speaks to you in your sleep.
--Shannon O'Connor
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El Río Charles, Cambridge
The river Charles has not gotten me yet
Its nighttime waves and shadows
Drifting, like a body
Its eyes captured and refracted by
Stars and streetlights-like-stars
Dim, yellow stars, tired of watching
Night after night, watching, watching over
The moody water’s movements, illusions
Swaying like gypsy dancers or desperate drunks
Brooding, still-winter breezes in April
Riffling the waves lapping at the banks,
The River continuing its course
To some distant sea, bound with its lost trove
Lost trove that ever once breathed
Or merely existed inanimo
--Lolita Paiewonsky
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Crosses, Candles, Flowers
Dorchester, MA
The guard rail is broken, a car has rolled down the hill where three bodies lay as if markers pointing to the car.
The fourth body in the car, is wedged between the seat and steering wheel.. Bodies are carried in plastic bags
zipped shut as their lives were zippered to an end. Drivers too young, speed too fast on city streets, invincibility
too unreal. Day by day a memorial grows: crosses with names of the dead, candles to keep the flame of their
lives alive and flowers to remember them. In winter the crosses will be buried like the teens, the candles will be
snuffed out like the four lives and the flowers will freeze and wither like relatives’ spirits. Replacement crosses,
candles and flowers will bring no warmth or joy in spring.
--Zvi A. Sesling
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Like An Endless Rain, Part I
By Paul Steven Stone
In my life, good luck seems to fall like an endless rain.
Sometimes the toast lands on the jellied side, of course, but most times on the dry.
Now, some of you might wonder "What’s he got to be so upbeat about?" And I would tell you the same thing I told that thin but highly attractive Sergeant-Detective last night: "Long as the screen door snaps back doesn’t matter how hard it was pushed open."
And see what I mean about good luck…? Fate could have sent me any number of Sergeant-Detectives, but fate sent me one of Boston’s finest, Sergeant-Detective Sheila Magnuson. Aside from being a little undernourished Sheila Magnuson is possibly the world’s most beautiful Sergeant-Detective. Virtually a standard unto herself!
And educated…? I learned more new things from Sheila Magnuson in my brief forty minute interrogation than I learned all last year from anyone else. Remind me later and I’ll show you some of her more interesting intimidation exercises.
As to why I was talking to a Sergeant-Detective in the first place…? I should probably preface my remarks by mentioning I was arrested by the Boston police around 12:30 this morning for breaking and entering. It was all a mistake, of course, but it gave me a fascinating inside look at our criminal justice system.
You wouldn't know it, but I’m basically an optimist. If you tell me it’s raining, I’ll remind you that rainy weather always passes on by. If you complain about your bad leg, I’ll remark that half a set is better than no set, and that half your wood is still dry and ready to burn. But when police sirens start to converge, and colored lights begin swirling around me, and spotlights catch me standing on a window ledge outside my upstairs bedroom…I have to admit, I get a little concerned.
Still, I was pleased to discover I had done such an excellent job painting the bedroom window shut. It was clearly burglar-proof, having resisted my frantic attempts to yank it open for a good ten minutes.
Which was why, of course, the police had so much time. They could have stopped for coffee and doughnuts en route to the house, and still ended up catching me…en flagrante, I think the expression goes.
I find it especially amusing since I was the one who called the police! Only I had called to report a stolen car. Can you believe some thief stole my VW Passat out of my driveway? With the keys hanging from the ignition! Which explains why I was climbing onto window embrasures in the dark hollow hours of the night.
Did I mention how invigorating the nighttime air felt against my skin?
But what a night! Robbed, forced to scale my house in the dark, arrested by the police, grilled by a vicious and lovely Sergeant-Detective and incarcerated for hours in a jail whose images and inmates will never completely fade from memory. Not many men can boast an adventure like that!
See what I mean about being lucky?
Though it wasn’t lucky for Mom. She and I were laughing about my ‘night of crime’ and I’m sure it set back her recovery. Poor dear was in a car accident and her jaw’s wired shut. She shouldn’t have carried on like that, but it was all too funny not to laugh.
I don’t think she added more than a day or two to her hospital stay. But Mom likes to take things slow, anyway.
Isn’t it wonderful how things always work out?
Even for Fergie, the little schnauzer that was sitting in the back of my Volkswagen Passat.
I’m sure whoever stole the car must like dogs.
Like An Endless Rain, Part 2
By Paul Steven Stone
In my life, bad luck and strange men seem to fall like an endless rain.
Maybe that’s what happens when you’re a female cop.
Take what happened last week.
It was early in the morning, about 12:30 or 1. We were answering a 44C, which is a stolen car report, when we came across the guy whose car was supposedly stolen. For some reason he was standing on a ledge outside the second story of a tudor-style single-family.
Clearly, he’d been drinking. In the glare of the spotlight you could see he was listing back and forth on the ledge. And when we asked him to come down he called back in a slurred taunt, "I won’t, and you can’t make me." Just like a bratty child.
So I told him we had his dog, and let him see the little schnauzer we had picked up on the way over. Poor thing was in an accident and had a bandage on his front paw to prove it.
"Fergie," he called down with great warmth. Then, a quizzical look crossed his face as he asked, with great wonderment, "…but what did you do with the car?"
Later, when he finally climbed down, it was my job as Sergeant-Detective to fill out the report. Usually it’s no big deal, but I couldn’t get the fellow to focus. Despite everything I said to the contrary, he kept insisting he was being interrogated.
"Do your worst," he said defiantly. "Whatever you do to me, no matter how many bones you break, I will never confess."
"Confess!" I shouted in disbelief. "Confess to what? This is not an interrogation. You are not under arrest. For God’s sake, you’re the one who called us…!"
At this point, with little break in stride, he turned up the heat on a slightly amorous smile and insisted, "Oh, please, you just have to tell me your name!" Any attempt to be charming was greatly diminished by the alcoholic haze through which he spoke.
"Sergeant-Detective Sheila Magnuson," I responded in a business-like tone. "…and from now on I’ll ask the questions. You know how long it takes to fill out one of these?"
I lifted up my book of forms—just to show him the size of the report—and he jumped like a startled rabbit. "Don’t hit me!" he whined, his hands rising up protectively. Once he saw nothing was happening, he dropped his arms and confided, "If you weren’t so damn cute I’d ask the Red Cross to witness this interrogation."
"This is the last time I’m saying this," I struggled, trying to make meaningful contact with his unfocused eyes. "This is not an interrogation. You are not being intimidated. Once I fill out this accident report you can haul your sorry ass out of here. You capische?"
"We don’t need an accident report, Sergeant-Detective Magnuson," he said smugly. "We need a stolen car report!"
"Your car wasn’t stolen."
"Now why would such an attractive police officer say such a thing?"
"For the simple reason you crashed your (bleeping) car into a tree two blocks from here. On Brighton Ave."
"Go on! Me? A 99 Volkswagen Passat? Blue? With a beautiful and sweet—yes you are—schnauzer in the back seat?" He was bent over, patting the dog and rubbing its ear.
"You forget something?" I asked.
"Like what?" he replied, looking up.
"Like your mother? She was in the car, too."
"Go on! Mother?" he laughed, standing up unsteadily. "I know what you’re doing! You’re playing with my emotions. Trying to break me down." He smiled. "Do you realize how well you do this? It’s quite impressive."
Honestly, I didn’t know what to do with him. In the absence of a workable, non-violent solution I decided to let him sleep things off in the slammer. Before sending him away, however, I tried once more to convey some sense of reality.
"Listen to me; you need to hear this. Your mother was banged up in the accident and they took her to Beth Israel. It looks like she might need some facial work."
His first instinct was to chuckle, as if I had called something humorous to mind. Then he apologized, explaining, "You should understand, the one thing Mother has in plentiful supply is facial work. Now a tummy tuck, that might be something she could use! Hate to say this but lately Mother has been, well . . . a little slack."
That was it. No more Nice Lady Cop. No more reasoning with drunks. So I grabbed his arm and brusquely led him to the cruiser. "I’m locking you up for your own protection," I told him. "We’ll talk in the morning. Anything you need before I send you off?"
"You know what I’d like," he asked with that irritatingly boyish grin, "I’d really like to see you gain a few pounds."
"Goodnight, Paul Steven!" I responded, pushing him into the cruiser.
Once the door was shut, he grinned lovingly out the window and added, "Then you’d be perfect."
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In this issue:
James Conant Matthew Dexter Ted Giovannini Shannon O'Connor
Lolita Paiewonsky Paul Steven Stone Zvi A. Sesling
#########################################################################################
Mexican Urologist
By Matthew Dexter
The only thing worse than having a Mexican doctor take an ultrasound of your testicles is having two Mexican doctors examine your testicles on separate occasions. They usually can’t speak English, so you have to go with your Mexican girlfriend--which makes the situation even more humiliating--especially when you go with two different young ladies.
First you have to sit in the Cabo San Lucas waiting room and pretend you’re there for something less nefarious and scandalous than a problem with your reproductive organs. This can get especially tricky when there are beautiful senoritas sitting near you--sneaking glances and wondering what the specific problem is. For this reason it’s always wise to go to a hospital or clinic where patients of various ailments--the more the better--are all waiting together so nobody knows who has a pain in the balls and who has a sore throat.
When you’re waiting you should try to avoid making eye contact with anyone and everyone--reading a magazine or book is a good way to accomplish this important objective. If a beautiful girl or woman does look at you, don’t be afraid to meet her eyes, but do so with confidence and a flirtatious smile that says: “My private parts are fine, thank you very much.”
When they call your name, rise with confidence, because you want the entire room to think you have no problem getting up and can do so with ease and style on any occasion. Don’t make eye contact with anyone as you exit the waiting room--except the nurse who called your name. Look her in the eyes and pretend she doesn’t know why you are there. Say, “Thank you,” or “Gracias” when she drops you off at the examination room. Then prepare for the doctor and practice what you want to say, preferably in Spanish.
When the urologist enters, stand up and smile. Introduce yourself and shake hands and wait for him to give you permission to sit down again. Explain your testicular pain or other problems and have your girlfriend reiterate the specifics in Spanish. Then the doctor will ask you to lie down on the examination table. You will do so with class and show little if any reluctance. You will not wait for him to ask you to take down your pants because we all know why you’re there for Christ’s Sake. This might be ironic if you usually wait for the doctor to ask you to remove your shirt for the stethoscope, but with your pants there’s no beating around the bush. Shave or trim beforehand if you are worried about such things. Pull down your pants and then lie there like it’s nothing, as if you were at a nude beach and everyone was doing it.
The urologist will place some type of gooey ooze on the end of the instrument attached to the ultrasound machine, and you will prepare yourself because that liquid will be cold and sticky. He will place the instrument against your testicles, probably with a force that will make you wince and wish he was more gentle. He will move that instrument around as if there was a baby inside and he will examine the black and white ultrasound screen and rub that thing against your testicles for a few minutes, checking every corner and crevice. A few times he will probably need to look down at your member to make sure he is hitting the right spot. Whatever you do: do not get an erection! This is the worst thing you could do to yourself, your girlfriend, and the doctor.
The urologist will explain what you’re looking at on the screen, and this will be done with your pants still down because he will need to move that sucker around to get the best views and show what’s right and wrong. When he’s all done you can pull up your pants and stop showing the world your penis. The good doc will probably hand you a Kleenex--but since this is Mexico , remember--he will probably substitute toilet paper for Kleenex. Use it to wipe that gook off your scrotum and legs and then grow a pair and look him in the eyes and sit back down in front of his desk.
The good old doc will write you a prescription and advise you to take it easy. Listen to him if you want, but smoke ‘em if you got ‘em. Then shake his hand again (yuck—I know) and smile and walk out of his office. If you see the nurse smile at her and look her straight in the eyes like she missed out on the greatest thing in the world; but maybe you’ll be back again for a third time; so don’t get too crazy--she probably won’t want to have your baby or anything.
########################################################################################
Bread Soup and Spoilt Fruit
All during the Depression,
Ida seated over piecework
at a hot sewing machine,
the only steady paycheck
in a house full of relatives,
an extended family striving
to keep from being homeless
and keeping hunger at bay.
Now I live with Gramma
and Nonna in that same house,
even in the promise of Camelot,
hunger and homelessness threaten.
We walk down the gentle slope
five blocks to the A & P.
Gramma tows her shopping cart
while I push the youngest sibling
in a large, old baby carriage
some folks call perambulators.
What's for sale this week
determines what we will eat,
but there are always the standbys
that keep hunger from the door.
We cut away the rotten bits
of the spoiling pieces of fruit
and enjoy the good parts
with an impoverished soup
of chicken broth, spices,
and stale bread they sell
for people to feed to the birds;
Gramma makes her bread soup
which she serves with the spoilt fruit.
Cruel Harvest
She had held
each of her babies
in outstretched hands
admiring each gift of life.
It had never been easy
but she had taught each one
to live their precious life
by making hard choices.
Even in the city's harshness
they had blossomed like fertile fields;
good in school, working to get ahead,
a life so full of promise,
that she had seen for them
on the day her outstretched hands
had held them up,
for all of creation to see, and bless.
Now that potential is no more
than a body lying in a pretty coffin;
stray bullets cut down her child
like a cruel harvest of bitter grief.
Now, she marches for peace
to bring sanity back to the streets,
surrounded by other mothers bearing
burdens of despondent melancholy.
She works for hope to end
the scythe of senseless violence
from reaping any more youth
just trying to achieve their goals.
Each woman walks with the weight
of a coffin on her shoulders
trying to achieve peace in our time,
out on our streets before more
of the growing stalks can be felled,
dreams taken from mother and child.
Rhyme Time
Shake it
n' bake it
but please don't break it,
took your mama nine months ta make it!
That was the chant
we used down in The Flint,
sassy teenagers taunting
the prostitutes strutting
up and down The Avenue
as we went anywheres.
Crime lurked on every corner
in the hell that was Cherry Grove.
Sounds nice, don't it?
All a the projects got
nice soundin' names,
the project three blocks
from our corner
now names the whole,
undesirable area.
Cherry Grove,
so named
as it stands
at the corner
of Cherry
and Grove.
Cherry Grove sounds fragrant;
clean, fresh, healthy, delicate.
It sits below Downtown
on the hill as it slides
down to the river
and Battleship Cove
under the Interstate
which runs up above us,
climbing over us,
we are in the groin
of the Braga Bridge.
As the travelers look down
at the antenna sticking up
from the Battleship
docked in The Cove
we are a blight;
a dingy project of
bland brick buildings
and blocks of
dilapidated tenements
with no yards, with
something on fire,
day and night,
sometimes a car,
usually a dumpster.
The fire department
no longer comes without
a protective, police escort.
I'm sure that tourists
from Wisconsin, Iowa,
Minnesota, Kansas, Nebraska,
are shocked that
a historic site
languishes
under a slum.
I hear them say,
"Something should be done!"
They are luckier than we,
who must live, shop, walk,
wheel baby carriages or
go for an ice cream,
or the local delicacy,
a steamed hot dog
with all the trimmings,
along the hard sidewalks
of Pleasant Street
which is not pleasant
over in The Flint,
by Plymouth Avenue,
where day and night
prostitutes offer themselves
to any man who doesn't
walk into the gay bar,
just off The Square
next to the sub shop
across from the Chinese restaurant
near the ice cream parlor,
the hot dog emporium and
the Portuguese market.
It's hard work
bein' this poor.
A simple walk
out to the store
means dodging
cars and whores,
drunks and junkies,
hobos and cabbies,
all for a fresh loaf of
Portuguese Sweetbread,
A Massa Sovada, and
bacalhau, salted cod,
for my cousin
prima Maria Isabel.
So shake it
n' bake it
but please don't break it,
took your mama nine months ta make it!
--Ted Giovannini
##################################################################################
When I did Time in Jamaica Plain
When I did time in Jamaica Plain
I didn’t know if the world
had ended - I thought St. Patrick’s Day
was a joke and everyone waiting
outside the bars were there
because the communists
had taken over.
When I did time in Jamaica Plain,
everything was black and veiled,
when they let us out
to go for a walk to the pond,
I put on my outside shoes.
Turtle was smelly and Jim was perverted
and they acted like the deviants,
delinquents that they were,
blowing obscenities like they were bubblegum.
We walked to the pond, I tried
to ignore them, they were revolting,
no surprise, veterans of lockups.
When I did time in Jamaica Plain,
I knew everything that was wrong
with the world, I knew
the whole world, I saw stars
and moons, Van Goghs and Joan of Arc,
I saw tacos and ice cream;
I knew the mysteries of the Green Line
I heard cigarettes speaking to me;
I saw the Golden Dome explode;
I knew everything, Love Street,
blue trees. I felt the omnipresent
lies. Nobody told the truth
to me then,
that I was just plain nuts. Nobody
wanted to. I don’t blame them.
When I did time in Jamaica Plain,
I saw a magical castle
on top of Robinwood Avenue.
Who would’ve thought to make
a castle a loony bin,
so someday, some fuckin’ loony will think
she’s a princess
in a magical castle,
I thought I was the princess
in the magical castle
and I knew it all
including what is the meaning
of the sky.
I read an NA pamphlet
and I decided this was the secret
of the Universe..
One Day at a Time.
But one day comes after another,
until they’re all the same, and they’re
all lemonade.
But that doesn’t matter,
because the margaritas will take
over the world on yin and yang days.
There’s no reason to go on
other than the hope
your brain will explode
in the supermarket
again, and you discover
the magical castle truly is magic,
and everyone is cured,
including the cow
that speaks to you in your sleep.
--Shannon O'Connor
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El Río Charles, Cambridge
The river Charles has not gotten me yet
Its nighttime waves and shadows
Drifting, like a body
Its eyes captured and refracted by
Stars and streetlights-like-stars
Dim, yellow stars, tired of watching
Night after night, watching, watching over
The moody water’s movements, illusions
Swaying like gypsy dancers or desperate drunks
Brooding, still-winter breezes in April
Riffling the waves lapping at the banks,
The River continuing its course
To some distant sea, bound with its lost trove
Lost trove that ever once breathed
Or merely existed inanimo
--Lolita Paiewonsky
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Crosses, Candles, Flowers
Dorchester, MA
The guard rail is broken, a car has rolled down the hill where three bodies lay as if markers pointing to the car.
The fourth body in the car, is wedged between the seat and steering wheel.. Bodies are carried in plastic bags
zipped shut as their lives were zippered to an end. Drivers too young, speed too fast on city streets, invincibility
too unreal. Day by day a memorial grows: crosses with names of the dead, candles to keep the flame of their
lives alive and flowers to remember them. In winter the crosses will be buried like the teens, the candles will be
snuffed out like the four lives and the flowers will freeze and wither like relatives’ spirits. Replacement crosses,
candles and flowers will bring no warmth or joy in spring.
--Zvi A. Sesling
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Like An Endless Rain, Part I
By Paul Steven Stone
In my life, good luck seems to fall like an endless rain.
Sometimes the toast lands on the jellied side, of course, but most times on the dry.
Now, some of you might wonder "What’s he got to be so upbeat about?" And I would tell you the same thing I told that thin but highly attractive Sergeant-Detective last night: "Long as the screen door snaps back doesn’t matter how hard it was pushed open."
And see what I mean about good luck…? Fate could have sent me any number of Sergeant-Detectives, but fate sent me one of Boston’s finest, Sergeant-Detective Sheila Magnuson. Aside from being a little undernourished Sheila Magnuson is possibly the world’s most beautiful Sergeant-Detective. Virtually a standard unto herself!
And educated…? I learned more new things from Sheila Magnuson in my brief forty minute interrogation than I learned all last year from anyone else. Remind me later and I’ll show you some of her more interesting intimidation exercises.
As to why I was talking to a Sergeant-Detective in the first place…? I should probably preface my remarks by mentioning I was arrested by the Boston police around 12:30 this morning for breaking and entering. It was all a mistake, of course, but it gave me a fascinating inside look at our criminal justice system.
You wouldn't know it, but I’m basically an optimist. If you tell me it’s raining, I’ll remind you that rainy weather always passes on by. If you complain about your bad leg, I’ll remark that half a set is better than no set, and that half your wood is still dry and ready to burn. But when police sirens start to converge, and colored lights begin swirling around me, and spotlights catch me standing on a window ledge outside my upstairs bedroom…I have to admit, I get a little concerned.
Still, I was pleased to discover I had done such an excellent job painting the bedroom window shut. It was clearly burglar-proof, having resisted my frantic attempts to yank it open for a good ten minutes.
Which was why, of course, the police had so much time. They could have stopped for coffee and doughnuts en route to the house, and still ended up catching me…en flagrante, I think the expression goes.
I find it especially amusing since I was the one who called the police! Only I had called to report a stolen car. Can you believe some thief stole my VW Passat out of my driveway? With the keys hanging from the ignition! Which explains why I was climbing onto window embrasures in the dark hollow hours of the night.
Did I mention how invigorating the nighttime air felt against my skin?
But what a night! Robbed, forced to scale my house in the dark, arrested by the police, grilled by a vicious and lovely Sergeant-Detective and incarcerated for hours in a jail whose images and inmates will never completely fade from memory. Not many men can boast an adventure like that!
See what I mean about being lucky?
Though it wasn’t lucky for Mom. She and I were laughing about my ‘night of crime’ and I’m sure it set back her recovery. Poor dear was in a car accident and her jaw’s wired shut. She shouldn’t have carried on like that, but it was all too funny not to laugh.
I don’t think she added more than a day or two to her hospital stay. But Mom likes to take things slow, anyway.
Isn’t it wonderful how things always work out?
Even for Fergie, the little schnauzer that was sitting in the back of my Volkswagen Passat.
I’m sure whoever stole the car must like dogs.
Like An Endless Rain, Part 2
By Paul Steven Stone
In my life, bad luck and strange men seem to fall like an endless rain.
Maybe that’s what happens when you’re a female cop.
Take what happened last week.
It was early in the morning, about 12:30 or 1. We were answering a 44C, which is a stolen car report, when we came across the guy whose car was supposedly stolen. For some reason he was standing on a ledge outside the second story of a tudor-style single-family.
Clearly, he’d been drinking. In the glare of the spotlight you could see he was listing back and forth on the ledge. And when we asked him to come down he called back in a slurred taunt, "I won’t, and you can’t make me." Just like a bratty child.
So I told him we had his dog, and let him see the little schnauzer we had picked up on the way over. Poor thing was in an accident and had a bandage on his front paw to prove it.
"Fergie," he called down with great warmth. Then, a quizzical look crossed his face as he asked, with great wonderment, "…but what did you do with the car?"
Later, when he finally climbed down, it was my job as Sergeant-Detective to fill out the report. Usually it’s no big deal, but I couldn’t get the fellow to focus. Despite everything I said to the contrary, he kept insisting he was being interrogated.
"Do your worst," he said defiantly. "Whatever you do to me, no matter how many bones you break, I will never confess."
"Confess!" I shouted in disbelief. "Confess to what? This is not an interrogation. You are not under arrest. For God’s sake, you’re the one who called us…!"
At this point, with little break in stride, he turned up the heat on a slightly amorous smile and insisted, "Oh, please, you just have to tell me your name!" Any attempt to be charming was greatly diminished by the alcoholic haze through which he spoke.
"Sergeant-Detective Sheila Magnuson," I responded in a business-like tone. "…and from now on I’ll ask the questions. You know how long it takes to fill out one of these?"
I lifted up my book of forms—just to show him the size of the report—and he jumped like a startled rabbit. "Don’t hit me!" he whined, his hands rising up protectively. Once he saw nothing was happening, he dropped his arms and confided, "If you weren’t so damn cute I’d ask the Red Cross to witness this interrogation."
"This is the last time I’m saying this," I struggled, trying to make meaningful contact with his unfocused eyes. "This is not an interrogation. You are not being intimidated. Once I fill out this accident report you can haul your sorry ass out of here. You capische?"
"We don’t need an accident report, Sergeant-Detective Magnuson," he said smugly. "We need a stolen car report!"
"Your car wasn’t stolen."
"Now why would such an attractive police officer say such a thing?"
"For the simple reason you crashed your (bleeping) car into a tree two blocks from here. On Brighton Ave."
"Go on! Me? A 99 Volkswagen Passat? Blue? With a beautiful and sweet—yes you are—schnauzer in the back seat?" He was bent over, patting the dog and rubbing its ear.
"You forget something?" I asked.
"Like what?" he replied, looking up.
"Like your mother? She was in the car, too."
"Go on! Mother?" he laughed, standing up unsteadily. "I know what you’re doing! You’re playing with my emotions. Trying to break me down." He smiled. "Do you realize how well you do this? It’s quite impressive."
Honestly, I didn’t know what to do with him. In the absence of a workable, non-violent solution I decided to let him sleep things off in the slammer. Before sending him away, however, I tried once more to convey some sense of reality.
"Listen to me; you need to hear this. Your mother was banged up in the accident and they took her to Beth Israel. It looks like she might need some facial work."
His first instinct was to chuckle, as if I had called something humorous to mind. Then he apologized, explaining, "You should understand, the one thing Mother has in plentiful supply is facial work. Now a tummy tuck, that might be something she could use! Hate to say this but lately Mother has been, well . . . a little slack."
That was it. No more Nice Lady Cop. No more reasoning with drunks. So I grabbed his arm and brusquely led him to the cruiser. "I’m locking you up for your own protection," I told him. "We’ll talk in the morning. Anything you need before I send you off?"
"You know what I’d like," he asked with that irritatingly boyish grin, "I’d really like to see you gain a few pounds."
"Goodnight, Paul Steven!" I responded, pushing him into the cruiser.
Once the door was shut, he grinned lovingly out the window and added, "Then you’d be perfect."
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