A Pantoum by Liz Johnston and Bonnie Ridley Kraft

Sylvia’s Pantoum*

The city begged to be captured in meanderings.
I had hoped to make amends.
She would write.
She did not utter a sound.

I had hoped to make amends.

Apparently the message was locked in a drawer.
She did not utter a sound,
But the pain did not easily shake off.

Apparently the message was locked in a drawer.

She would paint a picture of her own future.
But the pain did not easily shake off.
She left her notebook and pen alone.

She would paint a picture of her own future.

She would write.
She left her notebook and pen alone.
The city begged to be captured in meanderings.

This pantoum was taken from the literary musings of dear friend and author, Bonnie Ridley Kraft, with her heartfelt permission  --Liz Johnston

* in summary a pantoum is a series of repeated lines.

The First Installment of Howard's Radio Play

The Intruders

Welcome to the adventures of Max and Lena Manus, brought to you by The Radio Comic Book Club of America.

 Episode One

 
Max Manus woke abruptly from a deep sleep when a fleeting dream alerted him to the possibility of  imminent danger. Instantly awake, he realized at once that something was different, he felt it throughout his entire body. His nightshirt was wet with sweat, his heart racing, his hair standing on end. He was vibrating with energy. He could even see better in the darkened bedroom. He sat up on his side of the bed, noting his wife Lena stirring a little over on her side, but apparently still asleep. He remained still for a moment, listening for any unusual sounds, but detected nothing other than the familiar hum of their modest Southeast Portland bungalow.

Then he felt the urge to pee. Casting aside the covers, he kicked his right leg onto the floor, then brought the one with the bad knee over the edge and down to his waiting slippers.  But then, standing next to the bed, not too steadily at first, but then better, he heard a faint and unfamiliar sound.  It came from the front of the house, down the hall, the front door. Or was it just an echo from that dream? He tensed, listened hard with his good ear, then heard the faint sound again, then once more, only a little louder. Then the front door opened and someone entered the living room. Then another.

The door to the hall from the living room was closed, so he was able to rush unseen from the bedroom into the kitchen before whoever out there had time to get their bearings. But even in his scramble he could not help but noticed that his bad knee now seemed OK, for the first time in many years not bothering him at all.

Standing in the kitchen at the open knife drawer, thinking fast about his options, Max was suddenly confident that he could handle whatever threat he would encountered; he would protect his sleeping wife, defend his home, expel the intruders, even fight for his life if he had to, even if it came to killing them, both of them. He was overcome with a sense of invincibility, a feeling he had never had before. But then he paused. His glasses were still on the dresser in the bed room. “Well, I'll just have to do the best I can, won't I,” he thought. But on the other hand, he really didn't seem that worried. He could see just fine, in fact, better than ever.

Quickly surveying the neat row of blades he carefully took out his 9-inch boning knife, reflexively testing its sharp edge and narrow point.

As he was closing the drawer, a dim wavering light streaming under the door from the dining room and a creaking floor board informed him that someone was treading lightly toward the kitchen and would come through the swinging door in about three seconds. He quickly positioned himself behind the door, his right shoulder firm against it's backside. He held the boning knife tightly in his right hand. When the foot step sounded on the threshold he shoved against the door with all his weight, slamming it full speed into the intruder, knocking him back onto the edge of the dining table with a dull crack in his lower spine. The man let out a single moan of anguish and dropped to his knees, a mix of surprise and terror on his shadowed face. Then he collapsed to the floor, dropping his lit flash light as he went down.
 

When Max sped into the room the intruder reached out with both arms in an attempt to entangle Max's legs.  Max easily jumped aside, then flung himself forward and plunged the knife  into the man's thigh, feeling the sharp point dig deep into the oak floor beneath. The man screamed, roiling in pain.

But at that very same moment the grotesquely large head of the other intruder appeared around the half-open hall door. Max looked up into his barely visible hooded face. Then a giant of a man edged into the room holding a pistol and advanced cautiously toward Max. The big man glanced at his helpless partner lying half under the table, blood gathering under his quivering leg, paused a short moment, then stepped forward aiming his gun directly at Max's head.   

To be continued.

Howard Schneider

November 15, 2013

Ben's Poem, "IN PRIVAT"

IN PRIVAT by Bennett Campbell Ferguson

To my dear adventuring paramour

And my sensational partner in crime

I write to tell you I loved you.

Cool logic warns, “Away you fly!”

But there is hazier, quieter voice inside

Though I would never let it overwhelm.

For me?  I’ll take the sleek embrace

Of new days, new people free and here.

But I still want you to know

I loved you

In green tunnels, morning trains, blue worlds

Rife with our names.

I cannot pretend to not be bitter or sad

On my Christmas doorstep, those feelings linger

But telling both of you I loved you?

I see the star-me rise

Because I love

And light becomes me

The Grace of "Grief"

Grief by Liz Johnston

Coal-black, water-well cavernous grief.

Dark, cold to the bone, limitless, never-ending.

Grief of grainy gristly separation, never to be reunited.
Never to gently touch or sweetly smell in the same way grief.
Shackled by the encompassing handcuffs of unrelenting grief.
Abruptly locked away in deafening solitary confinement.
Basic hopeful rights of pumpkin orange touch, yellow laughter, and ruby-rich enduring love.
A steel-blue life sentence of hard-edged grief.
The grumbly man in the moon but a sliver.
A sliver of white, crystalline hope,
Of quiet regenerating renewal.

Old Haunts

Sadie by Ron Smith

Ah, Halloween…does any grownup remember the thrill of anticipation all day long? Especially if the holiday fell on a school night and you were corralled in an over-warm classroom as Miss Kaser (Sadie) droned on about the deplorable living conditions in Czechoslovakia after the “big” war.

           "2:35,” I thought to myself, glancing at the clock above the classroom door, “twenty-five more minutes…”

“What then, Ronald, is the capitol of Czechoslovakia?” She was looking right at me; everyone was. I felt myself redden. “Uh…Budapest,” I ventured, unsure.

“No. Susan, you weren’t watching the clock…maybe you can tell us.”

“Of course Miss Kaser. Prague,” answered the always prepared, smirking Susan Painter. Czechoslovakia was a big deal for Miss Kaser because she and her old-maid roommate, Miss Mary Majors had toured Eastern Europe right after the war; just before the so-called “Iron Curtain” clamped on those small, ravaged nations whose misfortune was to border the Soviet Union. Miss Kaser emerged from the experience a rabid anti-communist and political conservative.

It is regrettable that more government “hands-off,” free-market philosophy didn’t infuse her classroom. She was a tyrant and she-ogre of the first stripe. One moment she would be calmly discussing something with a pupil at her desk, when suddenly the luckless student would be “spread-eagle” over the desk. Under a series of blows to the flanks, the child resembled a tiny, half-swallowed lizard in the jaws of a garden snake. One of her favorite disciplinary tactics was to compel her victim to navigate around the classroom, outside the square of students’ desks. When the accused passed Miss Kaser at the head of the class, she whacked them with her paddle, her eyes gleaming. She once made a girl wear a paper hat all afternoon for refusing to eat peanut butter at lunch.

What made her so mean? “I am Sadie Kaser,” she introduced herself on the first day of class. Please call me Miss Kaser.” She paused and then added somewhat enigmatically, “I was called Sara as a girl.”

Did Sara, the girl, dream of an exciting evening past as she slumbered beside a wilting corsage after the prom? Her gown draped carelessly over a chair? Was her bedside drawer stuffed with letters from admirers, some upperclassmen? It all passed her by in a way beyond the scope of this narrative to analyze. Now she was fiftyish, hardening, a wearer of cardigan sweaters and sensible shoes. A thick salt and pepper braid clustered close to her head.

“Miss Majors and I are not passing out any more candy and junk tonight,” she stated, switching from Czechoslovakia. “We won’t be home. We’re going to a party at the Campbell Center, which is the teachers’ union. This is our rebellion against the commercialization of Halloween. All those sweets aren’t good for children.”

She was hot now; “on a roll” as they say. “Last Halloween, Miss Majors and I passed out some lovely red apples from our own tree.” She continued, “Firmer, sweeter apples you never tasted. We were so happy and proud we could share them with the children in the neighborhood.” She paused for effect. “Next morning, as we left for work, we noticed most of the apples had been pitched on the walks and curbs and had been so punished.” “Punished” being her favorite word. She worked it into discourse three or four times a day.

The three o’clock buzzer sounded; class was over. She couldn’t touch us and we were out of there.

 

A Poem and Photograph by Tetyana B.

 First Day Of School

The girl with asters
in vibrant colors,
held like a torch.
In a new dress,
in shiny black shoes
and short white socks,
with a mountain of
                a backpack,
she is standing tall
on her home's porch.

Tears in her parents' eyes
cause a puzzled look in hers.
The first day of school
reels in vivid images of times
from a memory pool,
harbored in their own
            heart and head,
and brings the anticipation
            of the unknown
to the long days ahead.

-Tetyana B.

A Poem by Liz Johnston

Inside

Writing to get inside.

Inside the grief,

Inside the panic, and

Inside the joy.

Writing in short paragraphs,

Single words, and

Individual technique.

Simply.

Open

To unexpressed joy

Untapped creativity

Unearthed story lines

Unimagined beauty

Uncomplicated structure

Untouched emotions

 

-Liz Johnston