Sandburg Serendipity

While roaming through the stacks on the fifth floor of E.S. Bird Library at Syracuse University—in search of J.D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey—I came across a green, hardcover volume of Chicago Poems by Carl Sandburg.

Chicago Poems by Carl Sandburg.

I pulled the book off the shelf and cracked it open, turning randomly to page 116. There I found the poem Under the Harvest Moon. Sandburg’s words seem fitting as classes at SU resume and summer gives way to fall.

My favorite part of the poem is the phrase, “flagrant crimson lurks in the dusk of the wild red leaves.”

I thought I would share the text of the poem with you, and I hope you find the words as meaningful as I did.

Under the Harvest Moon

UNDER the harvest moon,
When the soft silver
Drips shimmering
Over the garden nights,
Death, the gray mocker,
Comes and whispers to you
As a beautiful friend
Who remembers.

Under the summer roses
When the flagrant crimson
Lurks in the dusk
Of the wild red leaves,
Love, with little hands,
Comes and touches you
With a thousand memories,
And asks you
Beautiful, unanswerable questions.

Sandburg, Carl. Chicago Poems. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1916.

The Earth Answers: Sarah McCoubrey: Works on Paper

Sarah McCoubrey’s mixed media works straddle the line between the real and the unreal, as the artist manipulates elements of nature to create a rich fantasy world that sparks viewers’ imaginations and is open to wide interpretation.

McCoubrey’s Works on Paper exhibition continues until Aug. 24 at the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, New York.

McCoubrey, who is a landscape painter and a professor of art at Syracuse University, drew inspiration from hydrofracking sites across the Northeast and the industrial waste beds of Onondaga Lake in Syracuse, where she lives.

But for McCoubrey, this polluted landscape is fertile ground for creative inspiration—a place she calls Eden. The exhibition wall text states McCoubrey “begins the process by ‘planting’ outdoor sculptures comprised of natural elements and human detritus she finds at these sites and then makes digital prints of them, adding constructed imaginary elements by hand.”

The result is more than 20 works on paper, composed of digital images, mixed media and ink drawings, depicting a combination of twisted branches, roots and mounds of earth, slender, damaged trees, industrial debris and strange creatures emerging from the toxic ooze and crawling across stretches of barren land.

I witness an older woman sitting on a bench in the exhibition space, looking up at a series of eight panels. “Is that a potato?” the woman asks her friend, who stands nearby. “Yeah, I think so,” the friend replies.

The panels indeed show potatoes—one large potato per panel—in various states of departure. The tubers are taking off, fleeing the landscape either on foot or flying through the air.

And the images provide ample raw material for viewers to invent narratives:

One potato—Escape Vehicle: Fat Potato, 2012—looks a little like a Goodyear Blimp, perhaps floating above a patchwork of farms and fields somewhere between Akron and Columbus; maybe it’s en route to an Ohio State Buckeye football game.

Escape Vehicle: Fat Potato, 2012. Locks Gallery

Escape Vehicle: Potato With Propeller, 2012, shows a potato with wings, a blue propeller and two small trees sticking out of it flying from right to left over what looks like the snow-covered hills of upstate New York.

Escape Vehicle: Potato With Propeller, 2012. Locks Gallery

Another piece in the exhibit, Moving the Buffalo, 2012, recalls the beast from the 1954 movie Creature from the Black Lagoon, as a group of walking figures, constructed out of organic material like branches, transports an industrial-looking wagon across the ground.

Moving the Buffalo, 2012. Locks Gallery

A stocky man in his fifties stands in front of Boats on the Water, 2014, gazing intently at the work. He then turns to me and asks, “What do you see?”

Before I can answer him, he says, “It reminds me of an eyelid closing.”

The foreground of the image is dominated by a curved patch of dark earth with clumps of roots beneath the surface and small trees dotted above. In the background, we can see boats floating on a small body of water, likely a pond.

Map of the Wastebed, 2014, shows a map seen from above with fish and boats surrounding the site. Is this a scaled view of McCoubrey’s Eden? It reminds me of a treasure map and is similar—at least in terms of intent—to the map of the Hundred Acre Wood from the Winnie-the-Pooh series, written by A.A. Milne and illustrated by Ernest H. Shepard. The map gives us the setting where McCoubrey’s stories play out.

And this is where the exhibition shines. There’s no doubt McCoubrey’s work is serious, as she calls attention to the damage of toxic waste and other threats to the environment. Her images portend a future world where the Earth seems to undergo a rebellion as the planet adjusts to cataclysmic changes.

Yet she delivers her message softly by hooking viewers with her playful touch and characters that could be found either in a Dali painting or jumping off the pages of a Scholastic picture book.

In fact I believe children would enjoy seeing this exhibition. They wouldn’t need to know anything about global warming, pollution and hydrofracking; instead, they could stand in front of McCoubrey’s prints and giggle at some of the shapes and figures while comparing impressions. It would be the art gallery equivalent of lying on your back on the warm grass and staring at cumulus clouds moving across the sky. And I am sure my five-year-old niece Elizabeth would get a kick out of seeing some potatoes zipping through the air.

Sarah McCoubrey: Works on Paper is part of the museum’s 2014 Edge of Art Series. For more information, go to http://everson.org/.

Where Do You Want To Go?

I found this piece of paper recently on a shelf in the Biblio Gallery, a small art exhibition and study space located on the fourth floor of E.S. Bird Library at Syracuse University.

Where Do You Want To Go?

No text accompanied the sheet. And the open-ended question perplexed me. Did the writer mean “where do you want to go” for vacation or relocation? I wondered if the gallery had a hidden camera tucked behind the wall, with the lens zooming in on me, to pinpoint which city my eyes hovered on.

I thought about the question again and decided to play the game with the intention of making a new home in one of the cities.

I stared at the photo thumbnails. The 12 cities are, in order on the page: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, Dallas, Washington, DC, Denver, Boston, San Francisco, St. Louis, Phoenix and Las Vegas.

Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, DC and New York would provide the best career options for me, since I work in the field of media/communications, specifically video production.

After I finished college in the early 1990s, I dreamed of going to Los Angeles and working in the film industry, starting out as a production assistant and working my way up the movie business food chain. Instead I went to graduate film school in Washington, DC and then started working in journalism because I needed to repay my student loans.

But even today, more than 20 years later, the dream of residing in California still tantalizes me. I think about golden sunsets, waves crashing along the beach, gleaming skyscrapers and making friends with laid back Angelenos who can point out art house movie theaters, historic Hollywood architecture and the best places to go for authentic Mexican food.

I still get giddy when I see a California license plate standing out in a snow-covered parking lot in the middle of a Syracuse winter. And I desire to see my first and last name on an envelope followed by a California mailing address. I would probably buy colorful return address labels so I could attach them to the Christmas cards I would mail to my family and friends in central New York, rubbing it in that I would be warm during the holidays while they would be freezing.

But I think the best part of living in LA would be being able to listen to Vin Scully announce Dodger games and watching live thoroughbred races at Santa Anita Park.

Dodger Stadium. Photo by Francis DiClemente.

I looked at the sheet again and made my selection. It was definitely LA.

Of course I understand the risks of living in Southern California—the threat of droughts, wildfires, earthquakes, high crime and the insane traffic on the freeways. But I think I’d like to give it a shot.

And if it doesn’t work out, I could always pack up and drive cross-country back to Syracuse, where I could sit in my living room and make plans to go somewhere else. I could pull out the sheet I found at the library, cross out Los Angeles and say, “one down, eleven to go.”

But I considered the question again: “Where Do You Want To Go?” And two different thoughts popped into my head. One is … I could be happy living in any one of the 12 cities on the list, as long as I have a decent job and a place to live. And the second thought is … why do I have to go somewhere else? Why do I have to leave?

Is it possible to be happy right here in Syracuse? Or do I need to reside in one of these major cities in order to prove to myself that I’m successful, that I’ve made it, that I’ve lived up to my potential?

I’m still trying to answer those questions. So I’ll ask you: “Where Do You Want To Go?”

HWA Poetry Showcase

One of my poems, Exorcism, appears in the Horror Writers Association’s Poetry Showcase Volume I.

HWA Showcase Book Cover

The anthology is now available on Amazon as a Kindle e-book.

And here is the poem:

Exorcism

At 4:31 a.m. a dream startles you.
They were sucking the air
out of your chest cavity.
Sister Theresa always said to watch out
for the demons lurking around you.

Sweat drenches your forehead.
You get up and move toward the kitchen.
A bullet hole of light pierces the living room.
You look through the eyepiece in your apartment door.
No one is there on the doorstep ready to break in.
But this knowledge does not reassure you.

You open the refrigerator door
and take a gulp of orange juice straight from the carton.
No demons are hiding inside the fridge,
just restaurant leftovers in a Styrofoam take-home box.

You collapse briefly on the couch,
staring at the color bars on the television set.
And then you suspect the demons have arrived
via the electronic hearth.

After washing your face with cold water,
you look in the mirror.
A shadow moves quickly behind your reflection.
You turn around, but it has already vanished.
The demons are closing in now.

You leave the overhead light on while curling up in bed.
You are still afraid to close your eyes.
You stare at the ceiling and then at the crucifix
hanging on a nail above your bed.
Then you hear Sister Theresa’s voice.
It is frail, barely a whisper,
but you understand what she says:
“Sleep now child, for you must fight later.”

“But what about the demons?” you ask.
“It’s too late,” she says.
“They’ve already built their nest
in the catacombs deep inside you.”

My short play, End of the Line, appears in the latest issue of the online literary magazine Prick of the Spindle. The story is about two male residents of a nursing home who spend part of Christmas Day sitting outside. They smoke cigarettes and drink whiskey as they discuss life, old age, death and their lack of interest in the festivities of the Christmas holiday. You can read the play here.

End of the Line: a short play

George Saunders Is Everywhere

So I’m walking down South Crouse Avenue after picking up Chipotle takeout after work tonight. It’s raining and I’m holding the brown paper bag up to my chest so it’s shielded under the cover of my black umbrella. I take note of the dainty handle and hope I don’t appear effeminate to the motorists passing by me.

As I turn the bag around, I get a surprise. A flash fiction story from short story writer George Saunders is printed on the back. It’s part of Chipotle’s “Cultivating Thought Author Series.”

As I walk down the hill with the rain pelting me, I try to read George’s Two-Minute Note to the Future (a letter to “future reader”) before the bag turns to pulp in my hands.

You can read the story here.

And I can’t help but think that George Saunders is everywhere. I say this because 1) I’m currently reading The Braindead Megaphone, Saunders’ 2007 book of essays; 2) yesterday I read The New Yorker’s Page-Turner blog featuring an interview with Saunders about his sense of humor; and 3) our video department at Syracuse University recently produced The Book of Saunders, a half-hour documentary about George that premiered in May on WCNY public television in Syracuse.

Saunders’ latest book, Congratulations, by the way: Some Thoughts on Kindness (Random House, 2014), was inspired by his 2013 convocation address to the graduates of SU’s College of Arts and Sciences.

And I can testify to the fact that kindness is not an act for Saunders, who has been called the Chekhov-Twain-Vonnegut (insert other famous author here) of our time. In person George is nice and genuine (with an “everyman” quality), and his humility almost makes you forget about his razor-sharp intellect and literary prowess.

Here he takes time to pose for a picture with a fan/production grip (me) just outside his writing shed in upstate New York.

Photo by Stu Lisson

And after I eat my Chipotle chicken bowl I debate whether to toss the bag in the trash. I feel guilty about it, since a fiction gem from George shouldn’t be thrown out—banished to the bottom of my kitchen garbage can; it deserves a better fate than mingling with apple cores and coffee grounds.

But then I think George wouldn’t mind, and I’m sure I’ll read something else by/about him tomorrow.

A Father’s Day Poem

I thought I would post this poem, Father’s Day Forgotten, in the spirit of the day to honor dads. I should note that the poem is fictional; the only connection with my real father is that he once owned a green couch when he lived in a small house on Mohawk Street in East Rome, N.Y., after my parents divorced.

The poem appeared in my 2012 chapbook Vestiges, published by Alabaster Leaves Publishing.

Father’s Day Forgotten

Daddy and Christi parted ways at a bus depot
In the early morning hours.
No big scene, just a kiss on the cheek,
Then she turned around and was gone for good—
Hopping aboard the Trailways bus headed westbound for Chicago.
And she never looked back.

Daddy went home to his beer bottle and sofa seat,
And he drew the living room curtains on the rest of the world,
Letting those four eggshell walls close in and swallow him up,
Wasting away in three empty rooms and a bath.

And the memories can’t replace his lost daughter and wife.
So he tries not to remember his mistakes
Or how he drove them away.
Instead he recalls Halloween pumpkins glowing on the front porch,
Training wheels moving along the uneven sidewalk,
Little hands reaching for bigger ones in the park,
And serving Saltine crackers and milk
To chase away the goblins that haunted
Dreams in the middle of the night.

Now Christi has a life of her own,
And she lets the answering machine catch
Daddy’s Sunday afternoon phone call.
She never picks up and rarely calls back.
So Daddy returns to the green couch
Pockmarked with cigarette burns.
He closes his eyes, opens the door to his memory vault
And watches the pictures play in slow-motion.
He rewinds again and again without noticing the film has faded
And the little girl has stepped out of the frame.

Happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there.

Man on the Stoop

Man on the Stoop, a creative nonfiction story, appears in the Spring 2014 issue of New Plains Review. Since the magazine does not have an online version of this issue, I thought I would post my story here:

On a sunny evening in early August 2012, I walked along James Street in Syracuse, trying to find a store where I could buy a bottle of water. I was in the Eastwood neighborhood to attend a poetry reading at Books & Melodies bookstore.

I passed a red brick building with a sign that read, “Furnished Efficiencies for Lease.” A slim man in his late 50s or early 60s sat on the small stoop of the building, his head raised and his eyes focused on the traffic moving along James Street.

I continued striding down the block until I found The Burger Joint restaurant. I went in, grabbed a bottle of water from the cooler and paid for it at the counter. I then walked back to the bookstore, approaching the apartment building again.

I wanted to stop and talk to the man on the steps; something about his appearance made me wonder about his life. I wanted to learn more about him, to introduce myself and ask him some questions. As I came within a few feet of the building, he looked up at me, acknowledging my presence, and our eyes met. But I lost my nerve to greet him. I lacked the courage to open my mouth and say “hello,” and the opportunity to interact with him and gain insight into his life was lost. I also regretted not having my camera with me because I think his strong profile would have made for a nice portrait.

He wore a dark T-shirt, jeans and sneakers, and his salt-and-pepper hair and thin mustache gave him a sort of rugged cowboy appearance. Wrinkles had worked their way into his careworn face and he had a lean, hungry look, like he could have been the Marlboro Man a few decades earlier. He had oval eyes that were more vertical than horizontal. Mostly, though, he just looked tired, as if life had been dragging him down.

I will call him Sam because he reminded me of a Sam. Perhaps he was a factory worker, a mechanic, a carpenter or a truck driver. I imagined if he spoke his voice would sound something like actor Sam Elliott’s.

And I pictured him in his small studio upstairs with its twin mattress, small desk and wooden chair, tiny bathroom and a window with broken Venetian blinds.

I wondered how this man spent his days. Was he retired? Did he work? Was he an alcoholic or a drug addict? I also thought about the hot, humid night and how he needed to sit on the stoop to escape the stifling air in his apartment devoid of air conditioning.

Something in his body language reflected the universal struggle of human beings grappling with the challenges of each day, carrying around our flesh as we creep toward death. I felt pity for this man, and I am not sure why. He looked exhausted but not depressed, and he seemed content to stare out at the street and see the activity going on, to pass some time before darkness descended and he would retire for the night, trying to fall asleep in the sauna of his apartment.

But driving home after the poetry reading I thought to myself, “Who am I to assume what this man’s life is like?” I only had his outward appearance to judge him by—and this was for just a few seconds as I walked to The Burger Joint for my water and headed back to the bookstore to attend the poetry reading.

What did I really know about this man?

Then again what do we ever know by sight alone? I couldn’t possibly understand the scope and scale and depth of this man’s life based on a few cursory glances in his direction. I would have loved to sit with him on the steps, share a cup of coffee and listen while he told me the story of his life. I bet it’s a great story.

He could’ve been a hit man for the mob or a former porn actor; maybe he had pulled a bank heist and had buried $500,000 in some cave deep in the Adirondacks. Maybe he had been a world-class heart surgeon who had revolutionized the practice, but had burned out and turned to drugs. Maybe he had a family somewhere out West and they were waiting for him to come home. Maybe he was a former relief pitcher and had won a World Series in the 1970s or ’80s; maybe his championship ring was tucked in a drawer upstairs. I will never know.

I understand it is hubris to evaluate a person’s worth based on outward appearance, to judge people by what we see, what their bodies and faces reveal to us. The physical can only be an entry point. It doesn’t tell us about the heart, mind and soul.

Yet I don’t fault myself for wanting to look, even if I am being a little nosy. Curiosity about others in the form of public people watching means we are peering out, being aware of the presence of others around us. And I find value in paying attention to people who are ignored or overlooked; in seeing them, I rediscover the central truths of humanity—the loneliness, illness, poverty and suffering that bind us.

We just can’t get fooled into thinking our initial impressions tell the whole story. The skin is only the first layer; we have to go deeper to plumb the depths of the person.

And this makes me want to be prepared for the next time I encounter an interesting character on the street. I will attempt, if fear does not choke me, to look the person in the eyes, to say “hello” and to start a conversation. I will try to get at the real story of the person, instead of being stuck with only glances and guesses that offer an unsatisfactory rough sketch. My curiosity demands the complete work.

So I might just walk down James Street again one night soon and look for the thin man sitting on the stoop and gazing at the evening traffic. I think we should have a talk. I owe him one, and I think it will be a nice conversation, that is, if I don’t chicken out again.

Trippin’ While Dining

I’ve been busy working on a couple of long-term writing projects, so I haven’t had a chance to update the blog in a while.

But I found this bit of overheard conversation interesting enough to transcribe:

Three young men, likely students, were walking down University Avenue yesterday afternoon. One of the men was carrying a 12-pack of beer. As I walked past the group, I heard one of the students say: “One time I was trippin’ so bad, and I went into this restaurant and I was eating dinner, and I was literally looking down on my body from outside of myself. Dude it was crazy.”

I’ll have what he’s having, I thought to myself, recalling the famous deli scene in When Harry Met Sally (1989) when Meg Ryan faked the orgasm (with all credit to Ryan and screenwriter Nora Ephron).

That’s all for now. I hope to post something more substantial in the near future.

Saturday Night with Bukowski

I finished Ham on Rye last night (or more accurately, early this morning), and while I enjoyed reading about the exploits of Charles Bukowski’s fictional alter ego Henry Chinaski, I don’t think I would want to live next to him. Being Henry’s neighbor could put you in peril. He’s loud, rude, gets drunk all the time and brawls with his pals and strangers who cross his path. Say the wrong thing to him and you’re likely to be on the receiving end of a right upper cut.

But in one scene toward the end of the book, we find Henry reflecting on his life as he drinks alone in his room in a Los Angeles rooming house. Bukowski paints the scene with humor, absurdity, loneliness and truth.

Our narrator Henry takes over from here:

It was a Saturday night in December. I was in my room and I drank much more than usual, lighting cigarette after cigarette, thinking of girls and the city and jobs, and of the years ahead … Then I heard the radio in the next room. The guy had it on too loud. It was a sickening love song.

“Hey buddy!” I hollered, “turn that thing down.”

There was no response.

I walked to the wall and pounded on it.

“I SAID, ‘TURN THAT F**KING THING DOWN!'”

The volume remained the same.

I walked outside to his door. I was in my shorts. I raised my leg and jammed my foot into the door. It burst open. There were two people on the cot, an old fat guy and an old fat woman. They were f**king. There was a small candle burning. The old guy was on top. He stopped and turned his head and looked. She looked up from underneath him. The place was very nicely fixed-up with curtains and a little rug.

“Oh, I’m sorry …”

I closed their door and went back to my place. I felt terrible. The poor had a right to f**k their way through their bad dreams. Sex and drink, and maybe love, was all they had.

Bukowski, Charles. Ham on Rye. Santa Barbara, California: Black Sparrow Press, 1982. 275. Print.

A short time later Henry walks back to the other room, knocks on the door and apologizes to the couple; he invites them over to his place for a drink. But the man, described by Bukowski as having a face “hung with great folds of sorrow,” refuses the offer and closes the door on Henry.

And so our Saturday night ends. Henry awakens the next day with what he calls, “one of my worst hangovers.”

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