Jive Lives, and another Kruller issue is born.
‘S coo’, bro.
I
once met a man who said t’me, "Patricia, how’d ya’ likes t’scribble sump’n
fo’ de inside cova’ of de next Krulla’ issue?" So uh course I replied,
"Get da damn heck away fum me ya’ punk sucka’!" Right On! And
so’s it wuz I came t’scribble dis little blurb, translated into Jive t’give
it dat ‘Je ne sais quoi’, fo’ yo’ eyeballin’ pleasure.
What kin ah’ say about Kruller, its super, its grand, its gots action on
de solid half traction. Right On! Nodin’ kin ace it out.
And t’any Sad Joe who dinks oderwise ah’ sputter, as Happy Gilmo’e once
proclaimed, "De price be wrong, bizatch!" What it is Mama! But not
real loudly, and fum behind some kleenex ‘cause splutterin’ be one wahtahmellun,
but ya’ kin’t plum be flingin’ spittle and stuff on sucka’s. Dat
idn’t cool even dough some sucka’ likes dat is all in de
Kool-Aid and duzn’t even know de flavo’.
Listen now, ‘cause Krulla’ is de end and da beginnin’. In fact, some Krulla’
doughnut looks a lot likes an infinity symbol. Ok, maybe dat’s some
stretch, but dat’s not mah’ problem. If ya’ wants beautiful metapho’s,
hey, check back in a week cuz’ I ran out, man. So’ry.
Be a pal and submit, if ya’ scribble. De staff and ah’ plum wants
ya’ t’know dat we’re waaay down wid de poetry, de prose, and da whole Princeton
arts community. Slap mah fro! May it eva’ prospuh’.
Can ya’ dig it?
Ah’ knowed dat ya’ could.
Don’t fake da funk
-Pat Akhimie
Learn some new words: check out the Jive
Turkey page
In this valley
they say a man fell
while pouring a pier
for the George Westinghouse Bridge
The thick cement was cold
through his shirtsleeves
as his muscled back was cast quickly
within the wood and wire-mesh scaffold.
Mass was said at St. Coleman’s
but construction continued as planned;
he had caused no structural damage.
In this valley
they say a man fell
while tapping a furnace
at the Homestead Steel Works.
The ladle’s breath was hot
through his shirtsleeves
as his callused hands melted smoothly
and flowed fast through the fiery ingot.
The batch was set aside, unmilled,
but his hardened tomb was not spared
when newly-sprung wells wanted derricks.
-- Ellen Krasik
Most of all I love it because it rains,
and even though the trees are bare, simple,
they soak up the water,
save it for another time.
It reminds me I am allowed to lose my color
in flashes of anger and cowardice,
knowing when the rains come again
it will be easier,
and something will love me
if only my mother’s daylilies.
– Katherine Byers
This winter has been mild; mid December and
still waiting for the first frost. Simon’s mother stands at the kitchen
sink scraping week-old dishes and stares for a moment out of the kitchen
window into the back yard. Stares at the huge patch of mud and yellow
grass--what was below the pool they got rid of this past summer.
Stares at the spot on the fence with two broken pickets. The spot
where she saw Simon.
She imagines the way she might have seen him: Hanging on the fence by the
thin, red scarf tied snugly around his neck, kicking hopelessly, a drowning
boy desperately trying to swim. His bluish face, eyes bulging
from their sockets Oh God no and she imagines the terrible sound
of his boots kicking, clicking, sliding against the pickets like the sound
of a mean dog clawing at a screen door. In her daydream, she grabs
for his thrashing legs, tries to lift him up to loosen the scarf¹s
grasp, to hoist him off the fence. But Oh my God Oh my fucking God
the slick nylon snow pants slip through her frantic hands and when she
misses her fingernails dig deep into the flesh of her palms. One
of his futile kicks catches her in the mouth. And she screams and
screams and cries and blood drips from her mouth and hands forming tiny
red droplets in the white snow and the snow pants keep melting though her
fingers. But it did not happen like this.
The plate she has been drying falls from her hands and shatters at her
feet as it might have had she been washing dishes that time last winter.
But she wasn't washing dishes. She went to the window to admire the
pool that her husband had bought two summers ago. An above ground
pool, a perfect fiberglass circle, not rectangular concrete like the in-ground
pools. They had to wait until August when Simon’s father had made
enough extra money sealing driveways after working all day at the plant.
He came home each night at dusk with a sore back, his shoes and hands covered
in tar. And in the feeble light of dusk, he worked on the fence they
would need when the pool arrived. Eighty dollars a yard if he paid
a professional. Eight dollars a post,
two dollars a rail, sixty cents a picket--if he did it himself-- for a
nice, new, tall wooden fence. He paid for it with three and a half
driveways.
She imagines seeing Simon struggling. She imagines running through
the back door, running barefoot through the snow, catching Simon’s wild
legs in her arms, and with one strong motion lifting him up off the
fence, placing him down quickly but carefully in the snow, untying the
scarf as he catches his breath and color returns to his face. Carrying
him inside. Driving him to the doctor just to be safe he’ll be fine…just
got a bit of a scare is all says the doctor. But it did not happen
like this.
The pool was delivered in mid-August but fall came early that year.
By the first week in September, the premature autumn air had brought a
chill to the back yards of Simon’s neighborhood and made swimming unnecessary
and uncomfortable. So Simon’s mother stood at her window above the
sink, washing dishes, admiring the pool they’d barely had a chance to enjoy.
Sometimes she went to the window just to see the pool, waiting hopefully
for the first sign of Indian Summer. But by mid-September, the trees
began to change color. Simon’s father covered the pool with a clear,
heavy duty plastic sheet--borrowed from the plant--driving rusted railroad
spikes through its edges and into the ground. Wind whipped underneath
the plastic but the spikes held. Leaves collected on the plastic
cover decorating the pool as if it were an oversized birthday cake.
Early November and snow collected on the clear plastic, hiding most of
the pool. Snow clung to the taught, slanted edges, the middle of
the cover began to sag with its weight, and by December the pool looked
like a moon crater. Simon’s mother still went to the window to bask
in its presence. No matter how cold it got that winter, she thought,
no matter how long winter lasted, the pool promised the safe return of
summer.
In January, a blizzard brought enough snow to close the public schools
for three days, and Simon stayed home with his mother. She let him
lie in her bed all morning and watch cartoons; Scooby Doo and The Jetsons
were his favorites. And in the afternoon, she made him lunch; a peanut
butter and jelly sandwich--cut diagonally because Simon said it tasted
better that way--carrot sticks, and a glass of milk. Simon came to
the kitchen table still wearing his red and blue Spiderman underoos and
hummed The Jetsons theme song quietly to himself as he ate. In the
afternoon, they sat together in the kitchen and played Monopoly--Simon
was the thimble because he liked to wear it on his pinkie between turns.
In the three days that Simon was home, they almost finished a complete
game of Monopoly. But on the fourth day, some of the snow melted
and Simon went back to second grade. It was hard for both of them;
Simon¹s mother missed having her little boy around to keep her company.
Simon missed The Jetsons.
When it happened a few days later, Simon’s mother went to the window not
to wash dishes, but to look at the pool. It was the wrong time of
day for dish washing, only 3:37 in the afternoon, though the sickly December
sun had already begun to fade. That day, as usual, Simon trudged
home from school though the snow-filled yards of his neighborhood.
As he had started doing that winter, though his mother had told him not
to, he climbed the new picket fence into the yard.
And from her kitchen window, Simon’s mother saw him hanging from the fence.
The ends of his thin red scarf had lodged between two pickets near the
knot the kindergarten teacher tied at the back of his neck. His limp,
lifeless body seemed to float perfectly on the snow covered pool; matching
silver snow pants and swollen down jacket, gray boots weren’t they called
Moon Boots? A strange little space man, winter wind gently blowing his
weightless body over the Sea of Tranquility.
Simon’s mother stands at the window, stares at the brown grass, at the
spot on the fence. Imagines that the pool had never been bought.
That the fence had never been built. That she had seen Simon coming
home from school that day, seen him several houses away trudging through
the snow. Or, if not, that she had seen him struggling, strangling
on the fence. That she had been at the window just two minutes earlier
and run out the door and barefoot through the snow and saved her baby boy.
She imagines that she had saved him and they had torn down the fence and
gotten rid of the pool and now, standing at the window almost a year later,
she can see Simon several houses away walking home from school. But
it did not happen like this.
-- Adam Ollendorff
Concubine covers her naked breasts
and steals to the soft bed of her dying
husband
His breathy voice whispers
"I love you"
and brushes the soft cheek
still foul
with a lover's mouth
-- Tracee Roderick
We ran like the natives through the streets
of the city
As if we were bulls charging the way to the
coast
Blond prostitutes in Pepsi shirts stretched
tight across their breasts
Could tell by the smell of money that we were
American
And showed us the way to rice and beer
Which came up and out in Quito
--Tracee Roderick
At midnight I play cards with you, letting
you win in memory of the others.
Each summer yielded a different case.
Eric and I rode buses in Russia,
where he decided I should call him
Mr. Eric and let him paint my nails
black. A year later I heard
that he had vanished in a hospital
chosen by his mother. By then I knew
Patty, who declared one hot afternoon,
"That’s not my name. Call me Penelope!"
Later she lived with the deaf and gave up
words entirely. Last summer I worked
with Scott, who let men beat him in hotels
he checked into under false names. I
joked
about his nervous laugh and too-wide eyes
to pass the time. One o’clock: you beat
me
at our fourth poker game. In lieu of
chips
I concede these stories. For the ante
I apologize and let you revise
the wild card according to your hand.
-- Nick Salvato
now starring in books-to-be-made-into-movies…
Patricia Akhimie as Tea Cake in Their Eyes Were Watching God
Jane Carr as Sister in Why I Live at the P.O.
Karen Emmerich as Madame Defarge in A Tale of Two Cities
Rivka Galchen as Mrs. Madrigal in Tales of the City
Carlynn Houghton as The Wife of Bath in Canterbury Tales
Patrick Lee as Marlowe in Heart of Darkness
Adam Ollendorff as Godot in Waiting for Godot
Nick Salvato as Satan in Paradise Lost
Mike Sherry as Forrest Jr. in Gump and Company
Tristan Snell as Huck Finn in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn