Mormon Missionaries Pay Me A Visit

I'm sitting on my lawn
enjoying a nice blunt cigar
watching children ride scooters
up and down the street
twilight gently falling,
swallows circling,
Mississippi Kites high overhead,
tree frog, sounds of sweet shadows

Then I see them in the corner of my eye,
two bikes slow
they can not pass a lost soul –
I'm too conspicuous –
I don't want this feeling, I want them
to pass me by

Good evening sir they say
I'm Elder Hansen says the first
I'm Elder Olson the second chokes
and then they wait
but all I can think to say:
You're kind of young to be elders, aren't you?
They launch into their sales pitch
about Restoration and Heavenly Father
while I recoil in smoke, then interrupt
If I convert do I have to give up this cigar?
They are not sure
but soon get back on track
like a loose wheel wobbling
until they finally bid me good evening.
I watch them roll away
and wonder
what gives them the audacity to interrupt me
while I am at worship

by Ken Hada

The School House

Boys crowd the iron bars
like jailbirds
in an old western

All singing the same song,
like an out of sync choir
'hey mista, hey mista
hey mista you hungry
hey mista you thirsty?'

The faces in the crowd
are cracked
the hands
stained orange

They look like
they've been eating
Cheetos made of
60-grit sandpaper

I call over the one
standing off to the side
refusing to belt out the same tune
with the rest of the chorus
his head down
his hands clean and tan

"How much?"

The tenors join in
as well as the baritones
immediately undercutting
one another

'Hey mista,
three for five,'
'no mista,
three for three'

For a third world country
they sure understand
commerce and trade —
supply and demand.

I pay the quiet one
the original price
he runs off to
fetch my order
while the others insult me
in broken English

'Get the fuck out of yourself,'
one says
while hoisting up
his middle finger

They laugh
and take turns
showing off
hand signals

Flipping birds and
throwing up gang signs
one even air-pumps
two orange fingers in the pink
and one cracked pinky in the stink

They are very proud
of the foul language
and gestures
they've learned
at this fucked up school house

The constant rotation
of young Marines
who stand guard by the
front gate of the base
always take time to play professor

Children
teaching
children

The clean boy
returns with my order
and even says
'thank you mista'
for his tip

The others
smirk at
him

Modesty is not often rewarded
on this playground

They are vulgar
because it gets attention
and attention means orders
and orders mean tips

Who needs textbooks
when you can make
more money
than your father
by saying 'fuck'
and running to grab sodas


by Mark Fayloga

--
The School House is about the ‘runners’ at Forward Operating Base Joker. At almost all of the FOBs and observation posts you can find a way to have somebody go out into town to pick you up desert groceries: soda, flatbread, rice … even chickens. Most posts out here have makeshift outdoor kitchens, so the men get together on many nights for cookouts instead of eating sodium-packed rations. But no post has a system in place quite like at FOB Joker. The base is right by a bazaar and market, so not only is there more to choose from, it’s more readily available. It’s like walking into a bank but instead of a bunch of tellers behind counters and glass windows there are a bunch of pre-adolescent boys on top of a mud wall behind iron bars all vying for your attention money. -M.F.

The Benefits of Ignorance

If ignorance is bliss, Father said,
shouldn't you be looking blissful?
You should check to see if you have
the right kind of ignorance. If you're
not getting the benefits that most people
get from acting stupid, then you should
go back to what you always were—
being too smart for your own good.


by Hal Sirowitz

Misery Loves Company

Sometimes I feel miserable,
Father said, but unlike you I don't
make a big deal of it. I just see it
as the price you pay for being human—
getting my share of the unhappiness.
Whereas, you go to a doctor to talk
about your problems, blowing them up
until they're out of proportion. I
don't blame your doctor for having
a keen eye for business—the longer
you see him the more money
he gets. I just hope he's not planning
on making you his permanent customer.


by Hal Sirowitz

Reading Moby-Dick at 30,000 Feet

At this height, Kansas
is just a concept,
a checkerboard design of wheat and corn

no larger than the foldout section
of my neighbor's travel magazine.
At this stage of the journey

I would estimate the distance
between myself and my own feelings
is roughly the same as the mileage

from Seattle to New York,
so I can lean back into the upholstered interval
between Muzak and lunch,

a little bored, a little old and strange.
I remember, as a dreamy
backyard kind of kid,

tilting up my head to watch
those planes engrave the sky
in lines so steady and so straight

they implied the enormous concentration
of good men,
but now my eyes flicker

from the in-flight movie
to the stewardess's pantyline,
then back into my book,

where men throw harpoons at something
much bigger and probably
better than themselves,

wanting to kill it, wanting
to see great clouds of blood erupt
to prove that they exist.

Imagine being born and growing up,
rushing through the world for sixty years
at unimaginable speeds.

Imagine a century like a room so large,
a corridor so long
you could travel for a lifetime

and never find the door,
until you had forgotten
that such a thing as doors exist.

Better to be on board the Pequod,
with a mad one-legged captain
living for revenge.

Better to feel the salt wind
spitting in your face,
to hold your sharpened weapon high,

to see the glisten
of the beast beneath the waves.
What a relief it would be

to hear someone in the crew
cry out like a gull,
Oh Captain, Captain!
Where are we going now?

by Tony Hoagland

The God Abandons Antony (1911)

When suddenly, at midnight, you hear
an invisible procession going by
with exquisite music, voices,
don’t mourn your luck that’s failing now,
work gone wrong, your plans
all proving deceptive—don’t mourn them uselessly.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
say goodbye to her, the Alexandria that is leaving.
Above all, don’t fool yourself, don’t say
it was a dream, your ears deceived you:
don’t degrade yourself with empty hopes like these.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
as is right for you who were given this kind of city,
go firmly to the window
and listen with deep emotion, but not
with the whining, the pleas of a coward;
listen—your final delectation—to the voices,
to the exquisite music of that strange procession,
and say goodbye to her, to the Alexandria you are losing.

By Constantine P. Cavafy
Translated (from Greek) by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard

Mandragora

Pour me red wine from out the Venice flask,
------Pour faster, faster yet!
The joy of ruby thought, I do not ask,
------Bid me forget!

Breathe slumbrous music round me, sweet and slow,
------To honied phrases set!
Into the land of dreams I long to go.
------Bid me forget!

Lay not the rose's bloom against my cheek,
------With chill tears she is wet.
The wrinkled poppy is the flower I seek.
------Bid me forget!

Where is delight? And what are pleasures now?
------Moths that a garment fret.
The world is turned memorial, crying, "Thou
------shalt not forget!"


by Mary E. Coleridge