Pax ab Chao – Peace out of chaos. This is our mostly forgotten cry into the dark of “what if,” is it not? We want to find meaning and rhythm in a world that seemingly thrives on the confusion of conflict and the many resulting unanswerable questions as to “why.” When we actively reach out beyond that “in your face” confrontation with confusion and stress, we may find the meaning or purpose.
This edition of RKzJ called for writers to do this reaching out; to find peace and order from the blur of daily chaos through the written word. This chaos appears and feels different for each of us. For some, the transmutation comes from the writing itself, healing and focus by assembling these things we know as words into some representative and symbolic picture. For others, it is a change in environment– from inside to outside, either physically or spiritually, resulting in a story to be told. Others beg for reason and peace amid life’s worst experiences and challenges. You will find in this edition a unique collection of this journey through the healing of poetry and flash fiction. It is our hope that you will find comfort and connection in your challenges through this work.
As an example of Peace from chaos, I have assembled here a combined piece from fragments of our contributors’ several works. It is a semi-random piecing together of one line or fragment from their individual writings (my punctuation added for flow). It tells a story as well and offers you a hint at the stories to come.
I thought about it at the Jewish cemetery,
Crimson silk rustles blood-red,
Their castles on the crooked limbs of trees.
The irony of creeping through a tobacco barn to hide,
Wind pouring from a grey wet-bright day.
There should be a word for it, a short word.
We scramble around hunting for clues.
When you try to speak of fire and passion
And stand there eating two scoops of Dulce de leche
With hands stuffed in pockets clutching three dollars,
Remember how you laughed.
I reckon when you put a man in a hole
you ain’t got no plans to get him back out.
From this random connecting of the different thoughts of people connected only by their love of writing and their willingness to send it out into the world, we find hints at a larger story. Perhaps finding calm amid chaos comes from our realization of the connectedness of all things, when we finally relent and invite ourselves into that larger being. LDT
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Lucille Gang Shulklapper
Prayer Conditioned
I saw a sign
the other day,
one of those hot summer days
when the air conditioning never stops.
It was outside of a church
inviting people
to come in.
We are “prayer conditioned,”
it read. And I thought
about it at the Jewish cemetery.
I forgot the prayer
for the dead so I
made up my own. Father,
Mother, and sister are buried
next to one another.
I read every gravestone
that said more than beloved
father, or mother, or
husband, or wife, or
sister or brother:
O, Lord, hear my prayer,
And let my cry come unto thee
Chamber Music
Crimson silk rustles blood-red
through aortic lesions,
a widow’s lesions in lingering life
pale as a coral reef under water,
its holes inflamed by rays of light,
by piped organ blockage ,
yet, the strains play their body of work,
their preludes and nocturnes, their dirges
and symphonies, until the last movement,
until her gnarled hands fall, and the music?
Oh the music she hears! Her life blood
flows through her punctured veins,
her fingers strike the chords.
A workshop leader for the Florida Center for the Book, Lucille Gang Shulklapper writes fiction and poetry. Her work has been anthologized and appears in many publications as well as her four poetry chapbooks, What You Cannot Have, The Substance of Sunlight, Godd, It’s Not Hollywood, and In the Tunnel. Living up to traditional expectations led to work as a salesperson, model, realtor, teacher, and curriculum coordinator throughout schooling, marriage, children, and grandchildren. On Poetry: Place, to me, is the chaos of an interior life that achieves peace through the exterior landscape of a poem. I find peace in being able to express a multitude of emotions from anger to acceptance. This is Lucille’s second appearance with RKzJ.
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Lee Evans
To Know Which Way the Wind Blows
The storm is on the television screen,
But there is peace outside where snowflakes build
Their castles on the crooked limbs of trees,
Or surge in drifts on sidewalks and parked cars.
The weathermen rave on with steaming breaths
That hover as they stand outside and gasp
Excitedly into their microphones
Today’s forecast of danger. All the while
Abysmal peace descends upon our roofs,
Reminding us that what we really are
Is what the wildflowers are beneath the snow,
And what the snow itself is, and the rain
That washes it away into the streams.
The ice is dropping from the cedar trees;
The leaves lie frozen in the crystal lake.
The storm is on the television screen,
But for the latest news we have to leave
Our firesides and all that we possess,
And close the door upon them with relief.
How quickly the wind penetrates ones clothes,
Like some bold mugger desperate for cash!
But not by far as desperate as they
Whose prophesies but pierce the heart with fear,
Like Chicken Little in the children’s tale.
Lee Evans was born in Maryland, and spent most of his life there. He currently lives in Bath, Maine. After graduating from college he held a variety of jobs, including those of landscape laborer, floral delivery man, collection attendant for Goodwill Industries, clerk at the Maryland State Archives, and his current job on the assembly line in a candle factory. He has published poems in Contemporary Rhyme, The Golden Lantern, and the anthology Rhyme and Reason. He has recently produced a poetry collection called Maryland Weather. This is his second contribution to RKzJ.
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Erin Fitzgerald
Bloody Sunday
Lyla was supposed to be at church. She typically made the half-mile trek alone each week, always the proper daughter. She liked church, but she also liked Emmet Thorne, and he had offered her a cigarette about two-thirds of the way there. She never much cared for that habit, but she liked those black eyebrows enough to fake her way through a conversation, ultimately leading them to the back of the barn for a sneaky smoke.
The irony of creeping through a tobacco barn to hide and smoke was not lost on her as she crouched down next to Emmet and puffed on the hand rolled cigarette. A small piece of tobacco stuck to his tooth but she dared not say a word about that. The smells of mud and hay and tobacco smoke were exhilarating to Lyla just then, knowing church was almost underway without her. When the butt had been tapped on the dirt and stuck in his jeans pocket, she thanked him and they headed back through the barn. She wanted an excuse to stay and talk a bit longer, but had little to say apart from pointing out the mewing of kittens in the corner behind the ladder.
She was almost to the front where they had entered when she felt a hesitant hand on her shoulder. She turned and smiled for half a moment until she caught a glimpse of his eyes. They were different- desperate, frenetic, mean. Within seconds she was on the ground pushed up against the front wall of the barn, the damp ground cold through her cotton skirt. What happened next would never be shared with another soul, though it would set in motion a thousand spins of urban legend and twisted tales for years to come.
One thing was for sure- she did not feel her feet on the ground the whole way home that afternoon, and would never forget that sensation of floating and swirling as long as she lived. For a fleeting moment, she had even been soothed by the taste of blood and the feeling of flesh packed solid underneath her fingernails. Never before or since that particular moment had she ever felt closer to God.
Erin Fitzgerald is a writer of songs, short fiction, and various other styles of writing when she takes the notion and finds the time. She lives in Louisville, Kentucky, with her brilliant kids, who inspire her constantly. On Flash: “This piece is significant to me with the theme because I have a broad sense of the notion of ‘calm’ and of ‘chaos’ as pertaining to a person’s proximity to being in a certain frame of mind. I believe there are moments when people are faced with a realization of primal reaction, even in the darkest of circumstances, where calm is briefly achieved. I think this type of ‘calm’ is valid, if for no other reason than because some action was so reactionary as to be out of that person’s hands in some kind of way. I also think certain dark themes, especially when coupled with any ‘positive’ notions, are underrepresented in literature. I am a strong believer that acknowledgment does not mean endorsement, and therefore I am often interested in the slants that are little acknowledged.”
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Michael Lee Rattigan
The World as Wind
Blowing the house all day, whistling at its pores,
dragging its growl over the stripped-bare trees.
Wearing the leaves’ patience thin, scattering
chair seats up the garden path.
Wind pouring from grey wetbright sky;
snatching a bird’s kite from the empty distance
of more wind and November starkness;
channeling the live ghost
of itself through fractured cloud,
deep-slated on the world’s low roof.
Dips to pause, prelude to gust, to shearing air
that crops the noiseless falling dark.
Michael Lee Rattigan has been published on the internet, in magazines (most recently in Blinking Cursor and OtherPoetry) as well as in book form: a chapbook of poems entitled Nature Notes and a bi-lingual translation of Fernando Pessoa’s Caeiro poems. Both are published by Rufus Books of Canada.
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Howie Good
EXISTENZ
1
I thought I’d be asleep
before night broke down
into its constituent parts,
teeth and eyes strewn about
and black numerals splashed
on the walls and ceiling.
It isn’t me, it’s the road
that keeps changing direction.
2
He had a rope
around his neck
and one leg
over the railing.
In New York City,
1,600 people
are bitten annually,
most of them
by other people.
He wasn’t looking
to hurt anyone
except himself.
3
There should be a word
for it, a short word
that sounds like burn,
or climb, or shine.
Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, is the author of 15 poetry chapbooks, including Ghosts of Breath from Bedouin Books and others forthcoming shortly from FootHills Publishing, Publishing Genius, and ml press. He has been nominated four times for a Pushcart Prize and five times for the Best of the Net anthology. His first full-length book of poetry, Lovesick, was released in 2009 by Press Americana. He is co-editor of the online literary journal Left Hand Waving. This is Howie’s second time with RKzJ.
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Dave Migman
Skyward Tread
Serpentine tracks took me skyward to face the sun
and blinded I strode on with this body
lungs ache for air the damage decades done!
through the oaks birds scatter
autumn leaves plunge headlong into rosemary.
I marched four hours found a rock and laid back
beneath scented sentry pines
by silent olive groves
I picked thorns out the flesh
of my skull
examined my wounds
as shackled she falls
we scramble around hunting for clues
some turn messianic pages
for that warming glow of revelations
Some old hacks regurgitate the same wise words
that got us here in the first place.
I look past the concrete husks of our
Infection
Sprawling, unnecessary
The squalid dream of fortunate sons
Polar bears
can’t swim the gap
the melted ice left
the rivers
can’t hold the cinder and ash
brought down in the flood
but,
the earth feels good beneath my spoiled shoes
dirt grips my tracks while on cloven haunches you sit
a million miles from centre or touch or gravity
head spinning fountains of release.
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Kit Rainn
Call me reckless,
Call me reckless, damaged and awry but also know
That as much contempt as you may lay in those words
I put pride and choice in it
Damn right I´m reckless, damaged and awry
Did you think strength is a quality handed out by chance?
Sure I can seek understanding and intimacy
But I´m sure I´d rather sing and not carry a tune
Than to be interpreted by you
I´d rather remain hieroglyphs in Braille
If you do not even realize that the length of my hair
Has very little to do with the length of my patience
Or the length of a long lonely night on the kitchen floor
We have little to say to each other
Just leave me slightly slanted and walk on by
I´m fine with slanted, I´ll even confess it´s a preference
Coz nothing´s really easy
When it boils down to me
You may call yourself a loner as much as u want
But you don’t seem to know the meaning
When you then ask me to open up
Strange religion you have to allow hypocrisy
When you try to speak of fire and passion
You´ve never felt the flames engulf each sober thought
When struck by the simplest of matches
To this gasoline heart of mine
You talk of pleasure in companionship and intimacy
You apparently never did it so intense
The room spins like escher birds
And you beg the night to please not end just yet
There´s no explaining to the likes of you
That accident-prone is not a reckless behavior
But more being consumed by a vivid present
A sense of now your need for planning never allowed
I may be out of date and hideous, but here none the less
I am here in this now and don’t pretend to phantom
Where you are reading this
I am finally in a place where I really don´t care
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Ralph Weld
Berlin to Paris and Back
Just the other day in Berlin while I dined alone at an outdoor café, a woman wrapped in a flowing black Abaya, arms outstretched her palms speaking plainly, stopped at my table. She looked across the table’s floral arrangement situated between us, which divided everyone into those that were dining and those that were not.
In Paris on the Champs D’ Elysees one finds the same. The crowds stroll along the outdoor café tables in front of restaurants on the gentle incline that is the most remarkably famous street in the world.
One will find Japanese tourists in no particular order alongside the overweight American wearing “God Bless America” T-shirts, as if God would actually care whether he shopped in Paris or New York because God can afford to shop anywhere he damn well pleases.
Sunburned Russians are always waving some brochure or program to cool down their realpolitik from the heat of the city, and there are real Indians from India and real Indians from South America, and real Indians from North America, and Africans, Australians, English, Chinese, Vietnamese, Irish, Lithuanians, Turks, Georgians, Corsicans, Spanish, Italians, and everyone it seems in the world is walking side by side in this city while the pauvres citoyens à Paris must put up with it all.
Each night we meet outside Louis Vuitton just up the street from the Häagen Dazs where those that can afford it buy ice cream and those that can not pretend they are on their way to le Train Bleu bound for Nice on a hot summer’s evening. They will arrive the next morning in time for tea and a nice swim along the beach. But they really are going to the Metro to ride through the city, gazing out the windows wondering what their life would be like to get off at Pont de Neuilly.
And standing there eating two scopes of Dulce de leche watching the crowds, my impression is of being on the quai of Hodeada, in Yemen, where hundreds of Arabs walk slowly along looking at the old waters of the Red Sea. Men talk, women follow, nervous young couples chat, and someone always watches. And there are no beggers on the quai of Hodeada. And there is no fear. The beggars are in a different part of the city that allows begging.
Back in Paris, begging is a sport. The rich must dodge the poor, the less fortunate, the outstretched hand, the singing palm, the blinded eye, the malformed limb, the pair of crutches, the double amputees, broken armed, disfigured, maimed, cut, burned, mutilated and they all have a game they play called “get them to look at you.”
And those with suits, or matching coats and scarves, briefcases, nice watches, shiny shoes, bags from Les Galeries Lafayette or Les Bon Marché, have their own game called “No eye contact” because beggars are formidable as a team. If you look at them, you lose.
But in Berlin, a city of coolness, brutally cold at times, but very hip, I don’t expect to play this game. So when I’m in Berlin sitting at an outdoor café far from Paris and its Mediterranean shores, and I feel the stare and hear the mumbled “Please, for my family” I don’t miss a beat and immediately go back into my Paris game mode.
I sit here, dining alone at an outdoor café in Berlin, drinking my wine and she goes to the next table, hand outstretched, head inclined, humble, pitiful, the full display, and receives the exact same answer that I gave her just moments before. But now things have changed, and I have lost something. I am not hungry. My Salata Caprese sits uneaten, the tomatoes and mozzarella wallow bland in their pool of extra virgin olive oil. My wine has lost its taste.
Ralph Weld is originally from Avery County, North Carolina. He spent many years overseas and is now in a BFA program at UNC-Wilmington. A former Special Forces Soldier in Iraq, he has also served as a Defense Intelligence Agency Operations Coordinator at four U.S. Embassies. “I came away from it all with an attitude of neither right or left wing leanings, but rather a centered view that people are capable if they want, but have to battle the hearts and minds of everyone around them to achieve enlightenment. My lyrical essay is about the universality of poverty as viewed from an affluent western European perspective.”
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Jhon Baker
TOGETHERCOLOURED
roadside diner,
a dollar for bitter coffee.
I want the hard rain.
I want the long rain,
HARD on my shoulders and face
with hands stuffed in pockets
clutching three dollars.
I want the drowning rain,
pooling underneath
walking feet. Running
shoes cleaned and soaking;
peregrination of two miles
in a Chicago summer,
toward a phone call, paper towels
and over-extracted coffee.
On Poetry: “I gave consideration to the theme in choosing these as these poems represent portions of my recovery from chaos into the life that I now lead – which resembles hell for some people but only life to me. The red walls of my writing space also are a stark reminder of my injuries and daily strife which give me a unique perspective on the theme of – from chaos into peace – without being a monk on a mountain, even Appalachia. A life among the regular, being led in pain, one finds such peace in the smallest of things. Go to: http://willfulresemblance.blogspot.com/
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Jean Jones
The Bear
(for Scott Urban)
“A bear killed two militants after discovering them in its den in Indian-administered Kashmir, police say. Two other militants escaped, one of them badly wounded, after the attack in Kulgam district, south of Srinagar.The militants had assault rifles but were taken by surprise — police found the remains of pudding they had made to eat when the bear attacked.”
This reads like one of your poems, Scott–
our AK-47-carrying friends making some pudding,
putting their guns down
and look out!
A bear attacked them,
killing two of them,
leaving a third badly wounded.
Remember how you laughed at The Happening
and I took it as gospel?
Perhaps the planet itself is rising up to kill us,
tiring of our stupid attempts to eliminate one another,
all in the name of peace.
Now the bears are coming out of their caves to kill us
and with good reason now too.
We bring nothing but death;
do we not deserve it?
In time, the planet itself will rise up against u
perhaps that is what the Mayans were looking forward to in 2012.
The aliens will not come back
but this planet, this earth,
will wake up,
and like a dog
coming out of a bath,
will shake its fur clean
eliminating all of us fleas on this planet.
The consciousness of one will overshadow the consciousness of us all
and like a boy waking from a dream,
the earth will change direction and all hell will break loose.
Originally from Bandung, Indonesia, Jean Jones received an MFA in Creative Writing: Poetry in 1988 from Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio. Jean currently teaches Basic Skills at Cape Fear Community College in Wilmington, North Carolina. He has had two books of poetry published by St. Andrews Press from St Andrews College, North Carolina; the most recent, Birds of Djakarta, was released in 2008. Jean Jones also co-edits the online poetry ‘zine, “Word Salad,” and was the November 2009 Selected Poet 1 of The Horror Zine. His poetry is also featured in the Horror Zine Book Volume One entitled, And Now the Nightmare Begins. Jean says, “‘The Bear’ was my response to people and their concerns of destruction for one another rather than accepting their place in the world and how they related to it.”
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Gabriel Morley
Down in a Hole
I know a secret place. It’s a hole in the side of a mountain hidden by broken down old trees and arthritic vines and skeletal history and embalming clutter. You can see it for the briefest moment if you are driving north on Highway 25 and look off to the east at precisely the right time. But even then – sometimes it just isn’t there.
It’s not the hole behind the barn that deflated and imploded like a rectangular tin-topped mushroom – well, not like a mushroom at all. It’s more like a ragged pile of boards as if the old barn just got tired and sat down on itself. The hole behind that mess is an old root cellar filled with Playboy magazines from 1977 and snapbeans and botulism. Who cares about that? (Well, I guess if you aim to eat the beans and look at the magazines at the same time you ought to care about it.)
I’m talking about the other hole. The hidey-hole. The one where you have to park your truck along the highway and get out in the mud in your suit-and-tie and slide down a kudzu hill and wait until no cars are coming, then practically climb up the other side of the mountainface so you can get into it. That hole. The one you’re wondering about right now. The one you’ve been wondering about all your life. I know where it’s at.
This is private property, boy. Tennessee don’t follow the duty to retreat no more. We got the true man doctrine now. I can use force on you. The law says that. I can’t kill you, but I can maim you. You scared? If you scared, say you scared. You ain’t fixing to unpack my hole, boy. That hole ain’t none of your business. That hole abides me.
They was a Haitian man trapped under some rubble for 14 days after an earthquake. Folks laid him out on a stretcher in the sunshine. He wasn’t wearing a shirt. They made his picture. He was a slight man with a giant clavicle. Eyes wide open and alert and skeptical. He had a perfectly trimmed goatee, but no beard. Fourteen days trapped in the rubble and no beard? But no one asked him about that because he was rescued. Saved.
Who’s gonna save you, brother? Ain’t you trapped too? Who’s digging through the rubble of your life looking for you, calling out your name, dripping sweat, eating oranges, drinking powdered milk, inhaling your putrid sloughed skin dust, giving up hope and finding it again? They gonna look in every hole in the state of Tennessee? Like I did?
I reckon when you put a man in a hole you ain’t got no plans to get him back out.
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