Contributors
Photo of Gail Wronsky by Gary Goldstein [email protected]
Gail WronskyGail Wronsky is the author of Again the Gemini are in the Orchard (poetry), Dying for Beauty (poetry), The Love-talkers (fiction), and co-author with Molly Bendall of the Calamity and Belle books. Her poems and reviews have appeared in Antioch Review, Denver Quarterly, Boston Review, Volt, Runes, 88, and other journals. She is the recipient of Artist Fellowships from the California Arts Council and the Utah Arts Council. Her translations of the poetry of Argentinean poet Alicia Partnoy and of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires have appeared in journals and anthologies, including A Chorus for Peace (University of Iowa). She teaches creative writing, women’s studies, and Surrealism in the Syntext Program at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.
In the poet’s story the dinner guests seat themselves on toilets around a table. The pimply nephew makes insistent advances toward his timid maiden aunt. A nurse and three monks gamble recklessly for religious hegemony. Meret and Motherwell discover their daughter’s pornographic website. A Napoleonic captain orders the execution of some Spanish patriots in front of a statue of the lovely Doña Elvira. Narration itself takes on the erotic dimension of a striptease. None of us gets what we want. What we want is freedom. The poetpours a drop of cognac on his tongue, which signals that the fighting must continue.
Jade Night
That State of Expectation
In the middle of one of my midnight enthusiasms, I entereda nearly deserted thoroughfare. In the foreground a streetlamp. A wall against which a slatted shutter bangs. Part of a blustery tree, a stormy sensation. Motherwell, seen through a window in profile, removing a pressed insect from a book. A boy prostitute, lipsticked and grinning as thoughjust about to bust out laughing. Meret,in her double-knit, paralyzed between the two.
I haven’t been to Patagonia. I’m equally intrigued bythe Pataphysicians, but I’m reluctant to read their plays.The front placket of Motherwell’s pants rises up like the stop signal at a railroad crossing. Meret will pander to it with the tiny glass palaces swinging from the sleeve-hem of her haute couture pajama. He has not yet killed either of his parents. (Assorted harmonious panoramas and views.) But with patience, I’m positive, the tapestries of memory might be parlayed from this mossy page. These paradoxes of the collective patrimony.
The Corner of the Eye
The corner of the eye, a cork-lined room like that of Marcel Proust,is where a glass and a wine bottle meet to faire l’amour. Is where Calixto, the handsome one, mixes his concrete. Where a Peruvian child alone by the rocks raises her left arm, making a flock ofwhite doves flying one way change its direction. Calixto straddles his giant hose and wet concrete gushes forth, spewing the shapes of frogs, saints, toadstools, and little Davids into the vacant bluespaces of Meret’s naivete.
A Cultural Thing
Is Simplicity Simple?
We have the President’s address. Why have we all gonefishing? Why can’t I stop laughing? If I picture an owlon top of someone’s head, and then a piece of my own excrementon top of that, will it please the King of Slide Shows? Why is night a marshland of stars and day a cacophony of futile bell-ringing? “You’re missing the point,” you say. Repeat that thirty times and you will start to understand the artist’s dilemma.
The Church of Reciprocal Love
inspired by a Hindu temple-hanging
When the man and the woman are standing
and the woman’s right knee is raised against the man’s
left hipbone it is called the mermaid.
When the man and the woman are standing
and the woman’s right hand guides the man’s erect cock
into her pussy it is called stabbing the sorceress.
When the woman is sitting on the man’s lap facing him,
her feet behind him, his feet behind her
it is called improbable octopus.
When the man and woman are facing each other,
his hand on her left breast, her hand cupping his balls,
both man and woman looking at something behind the woman
it is called electricity: bathroom.
When the man is facing the woman’s back, holding her breasts,
his cock going into her pussy from behind
it is called the breasts become buttocks.
When the woman’s feet are off the ground
and the man is holding her and doing her at the same time
it is called one tall flaming lily.
When the man is standing up and the woman is seated
below him, her lips on his penis
it is called St. Dolly and her prisoner.
When the woman is doing a handstand and the man
is holding her legs up and putting his cock in her from above
it is called neck of the cyclist.
When the man is seated below the woman,
his open mouth between her thighs
it is called a cloud now passes before the moon.
When Calixto is lying down face up, Meret woman seated
on top of him, her back toward his head
it is called blood-stained pillow, high-heeled shoes, and
a pair of (wet) panties.
Couple with Their Heads Full of Clouds
The Immense Jolt of Loving
What Scrapes the Clouds: A Digression
After the funeral procession we return once again to the room.The poet-killer is released from custody and joins us, a celebratedhero. What is a dead poet? we ask ourselves. A metaphor fortextual violence? A type of censorship? A diagetic trigger meantto move us to a different level of discourse altogether? The red curve of his mouth had been closed as if to refuse our kisses. And so we had buried him, a spent sun, at the zenith of our genital reckoning. Only his antlers remained—irregular structures stretched up into darkness, the number of their branches corresponding precisely to the number of veritable heartaches he had borne.
Tortured Little Sensitivities
Onto all of her sensations she slips the handcuffs of a smile,knowing that with one leap of her electric legs she couldinitiate the execution of Motherwell. She sips oolong tea inher fur-lined cup. Checks her website. Lifts the jewels on her arms to see if the wounds they’ve been covering havefestered or improved.
Epistolary Perfection
Interrogation of a Patron Saint
Do you want to tell me how it ends? Are you cross with me? Would you like more essence of fennel in the offering fire? When will we go out together in the little paddle boat? Will it be calmor tempestuous on the river? Who wounded you?What are we about to see? How do you explain the fact – the facts, yes, all of them? What abouthorses? Will, for example, the final discontinuity of death displace their opinions? The ongoing war?Your voyeurism? Motherwell’s flaming secret sword of unquenchable love?
