by John Klima
In regards to textual content, it bears noting that by being the document (or one of them) that outlines the recipe for the safe consumption of pulp-paper, “Man,” ensures its own textual survival at the possible expense of any and all other pulp-paper documents. Should a similar famine strike this or another society in the future, however, the inclusion of “Man” in the overall collection wouldn’t necessarily ensure the survival of the other gatherings (indeed, the other materials would become the most readily available ingredients for the rendering of the “stewe”).
Patience
E. Lily Yu
I.
To thin to sirocco and ceramic silence,
draw a dry bath of natron and myrrh.
The sun will exalt you, drop on clear drop,
until all that remains is the tissue of flowers
wrung of their oil, discarded and dry.
Else allow darkness to climb your chin,
silt your mouth with cold dust, crush your eyes.
Time thickens the flesh into mineral masses,
iridescently amused, museum-quality,
cold and imperishable.
II.
The desert sings, it is said, since its belly contains
a princess in her palace who sighs and twangs
bronze-fingered upon a mandolin. The music persists.
Centuries of caravans and camelback physicists
never dared to swim down. Though the singer is drowned,
though she dries to moth crispness, she waits.
Another I knew held a wrinkled shell to her ear
(the voice of the desert is the voice of the sea,
better reception some places, never so sweet
it loses that skull-scuttling hiss) and listened too long,
insensible to the shore gathering up her feet,
the water trespassing upon her knees, until too late.
III.
There are voices that claim us. Rich, royal, sometimes divine;
light as beetles ticking in a pharaoh’s tomb; mantic; cruel;
organ tones, slant rhymes, brass edicts, or oh unlucky
the simplest thing, a boy’s untuned words; we hear and obey
and expect too much from them. (What do you want from me?)
It is when they fall silent that the others smokelike ascend
from charred Chinese dunes, from the curls and cusps of the sea,
and other fingers lift the phone from its cradle and dial
and we tremble (is it?) and exuberant answer (no) but
because you will not speak I can sit here a little longer listening
to the sand and the wind on the other end.
The Art Disease
Dennis Danvers
Derek and Emily had the art disease, the both of them. Everyone they knew had it too. That’s one of the symptoms: Colonies, clusters, movements, splinter groups, manifestos. Clumping, the experts call it. She had a master’s in design and decorated cakes at Food One, not the one on 17th but the one near the park, open till midnight. He refused to sell out. He was determined to support himself with his art.
Selling poems in the park didn’t work out. He didn’t get that many buyers, and when he did, he spent way too much time discussing the poems with them—arguing actually—instead of writing new ones, but it bothered him when he was misunderstood, and it seemed he was doomed to be misunderstood—another symptom of the disease. He tried prose—carefully observed reflections on the vicissitudes of life—after taking a weekend workshop called Driveway Moments: The Eternity of Now. No demand. Light travel pieces with a profound undercurrent proved no better, partly because he hadn’t done much traveling and couldn’t afford to do more. He had plenty of profound undercurrent, just nowhere to put it.
He decided to go visionary. That way he could travel without going anywhere, make it all profound undercurrent except for a few flashy waves on the surface, and those birds—what do you call them?—cormorants, low-riders. Cool. Sufferers of the art disease saw art in everything, even waterfowl that could barely stay afloat.
There’s one more thing you should know about the art disease: It’s highly contagious.
“What do you mean visionary?” Emily asked suspiciously. “This isn’t zombies again, is it? I’m so over zombies.”
“No, no, no. Zombies are like the total opposite of visionary.” His mouth was full of icing, making his words all gummy and weird, like a zombie might talk. They were finishing off a birthday cake with Happy Birthday Shane on it when the kid’s name was actually Shan. Not Emily’s fault, but Sofía’s, who took the order and was now looking for another job, since their boss, Barb, was the one who got chewed out by the pissed-off mom who was horrified at the suggestion that all could be made right by scraping off a vowel. Sofía was a sculptor. She had a blowtorch that would cut half-inch steel plate she said, said if Emily came over she’d show her, but Emily smelled lesbian and wasn’t that bored yet with the Food One and Derek. But close. Real close.
“Visionary—like William Blake,” he said. “That weird prophetic stuff, but like it’s real, you know, happening on the street, not just words. Blake did those great paintings, but I thought, you know, I can’t paint for shit, I’ll take it outside, free it from the page—from the fucking earbuds too. On the street, in your face.” Podcasting was still a sore point with Derek.
“A street preacher.”
“Well, sort of. I prefer to think of them as prophetic performances.”
“And what do prophetic performances pay? There’s an opening at Food One. You thaw stuff. There’s nothing to it. I could put in a word for you.”
“No thanks. This’ll work. I’ve thought of another angle too. We need a cheaper place, right? You’d like a studio? The church on the corner’s for sale.”
“You sure that didn’t go condo? The Townes at the Square or something like that?”
“That’s the other way. The Methodist. This one’s something weird. The Church of the Immaculate Epiphany. It’s been for sale a while, but the condo market’s tanked. We can get it cheap. Cheaper than rent.”
“We?”
“The church. That’ll be part of my vision, that there I shall found my church—the Assembly of Prophetic and Visionary Matters. Tax free.”
“Matters?”
“Okay. Maybe not Matters, but something like that, and we raise money, tax free, buy the place, and there you go. We’re set.”
“By raise money you mean beg on the street?”
He counted off his points on his fingertips even though he knew she hated it: “Encourage donations at prophetic performances. Appeal to corporate and community sponsors. Apply for grants.”
She burst out laughing and had to let him have the last chocolate rose to make up for it. She didn’t want it anyway. She knew what was in it. She felt bad for laughing. He hadn’t laughed at her Random Rags installation, which made him just about the only one. He even went along with her it’s-supposed-to-be-funny story.
Derek, a preacher. The thought made her smile, but in a good way.
*
A week later, she came down on her lunch hour to see him work a crowd in the park, to see how he managed to bring in so much money. It was very scary. He was totally different, as if another person had taken him over. He wore a cape. It wasn’t really a cape. Where would Derek get a cape? It was a tiny deep blue blanket stolen from the airplane ride back from his father’s funeral. It didn’t look as stupid as you might think.
Then he starts. Derek wouldn’t even dance, but suddenly he couldn’t stop moving. It was hypnotic, strangely familiar, and then she recognized it. Lately he’d be lying on the sofa with the sound off, cruising channels, mumbling, writhing like a lovesick snake. “What’re you doing?” she’d asked. “Research,” he’d said. And there it was, the artistic fruits: Anybody with moves. James Brown one minute, a movie Indian the next, Herman Munster, Britney—it was mesmerizing. The sermon made no sense at all: “The
eternal moment of revelation sparks inside each and every one of you, each and every moment of your life. Let the tinder catch! Let the flames rise! Let the fire consume you! Let the smoke carry you! Signaling the universe, I’m alive! I’m alive! I’m alive!” He ended this outburst with the blanket off his shoulders and wafting over an imaginary fire, watching imaginary puffs of smoke drifting away over the heads of his rapt audience, and damn if the whole crowd didn’t turn around and watch them too. So that’s why he’d been watching that awful old western over and over until she thought she’d go heap big out of her mind.
“How’d I do?” he asked her after the performance.
“Unbelievable.”
“I thought my timing was a little off at the beginning.”
“I don’t know. This is a pretty big pile of wampum.”
*
The next night he watched Thief of Baghdad, and next day the little blue blanket was a magic carpet. The blanket was the only constant. He laid out loaves and fishes on it. (Loaves were $5; fish, $10. He could’ve asked for more). He autopsied Truth’s corpse CSI fashion, covered it with the blanket, and wept, only to reveal it risen, walking among them, asking for money. He wore it like a sarong and danced around in it. He tied it up in animal shapes and talked to it. Talking Prophetic the whole time.
That’s what he called it—TP—the visionary dialect. In addition to watching the obvious TV preachers, he practiced by reading aloud anything that made prophetic or visionary claims, from the Bible to L. Ron Hubbard, confiding in her that he didn’t strive for coherence but sought a certain visionary unity that transcended sense. “It’s all in the rhythms,” he believed, and you could tap your foot to it, there was no denying. “And the silences,” he added. He was the master of the dramatic pause out of nowhere, the Profound Silence, what Derek called the cornerstone of the prophetic.
And no matter what he said, and sometimes there were rivers of blood and mountains of dead and untold pain and suffering, he was deliriously, disturbingly cheerful. He practiced different smiles, tried them out on their friends, keeping only the ones that really creeped people out. And if that didn’t do the trick, he gave a joyful cackle when sufficiently possessed that didn’t sound entirely human. Emily knew it was the product of 40 hours of wandering in the wilderness with Nature and Animal Planet. If a heron humped an iguana, and they managed to hatch an egg, whatever came out would sound like Derek laughing.
Emily was laughing too.
Every performance ended with the blue blanket spread upon the ground, money raining down upon it, mostly bills, lots of tens and twenties. Once—a bunch of traveler’s checks. Emily didn’t know they still had those anymore, but the bank took them.
She studied Derek’s flock, their transfigured faces, the complex looks they’d give him as their bills fluttered onto the pile. Most of them were seriously worried about the poor guy. Few doubted for a moment that Derek was spectacularly out of his mind and probably needed doctors, drugs, possibly even electroshock or surgery. There were always cards for mental health care professionals mixed in with the money. “Call her—she’s really good!” someone had written on the back of one. Then added, “You’re really good too!”
That’s the thing. Crazy as he was, he put on an incredible show. Or in this case, the show was his craziness. He got to them even if they weren’t sure how. Emily had a theory: His crazy offered a charisma uncluttered by content. He could rant, and no one felt guilty. He could rave, and no one had to worry that he just might be right.
Would they continue to be so generous, she wondered, if they discovered he wasn’t a madman who preached an insane religion, but an artist inventing a religion as an art form out of channel surfing and word salad, nabbing both grant money and tax-free status while he was at it?
Emily was in no hurry to find out.
*
“Can you help me with these forms?” Derek would ask her, with a sweet puppy dog face, totally exhausted by his latest performance, and she couldn’t say no. NEA, IRS—it didn’t matter—she could do forms. She had a master’s in design. She understood form. And he was a disaster at it. He’d get all verbal and metaphoric and forget whether he was being a religion or an art form and screw up an entire application. It was just easier to do it in the first place than to come along after and clean up his mess.
It was paying off, however, and not just financially. Word was getting out his stuff was definitely worth checking out. There was even a thing about the performances in Excrement Occurs from the guy who hates everything—he fucking loved it. Every performance was now ringed with people who got it, smiling knowingly, inviting Derek over later for drugs, and he usually went, and Emily didn’t. Work started early at Food One.
And, curiously enough, at every performance, packed in close, as close as they could get, a devoted band of believers steadily grew, though it was a mystery to Emily what they believed in since Derek certainly didn’t have a clue.
“Belief doesn’t believe in me,” he told his rapt congregation. “I don’t believe in belief. Instead. Visions come. Instead. Visions come to me: Visions of the nothingness of everything! The unbelievability of belief!”
Emily was just a little weirded out by all the nodding heads. Afterwards, when a breathless believer accosted him beseeching guidance, he told her, “Go home, seize a book, any book, and read it to—You have a cat? Of course you have a cat!—read it to your cat, and a vision will come.” This worked somehow, according to the woman. Everything he did seemed to work. Not only did she have a transforming vision, but her cat did too, though she preferred not to discuss details. Emily couldn’t explain it. Not his knowing the woman had a cat. Anyone could see that. But the transforming part, that was something new and scary. Derek had never wanted to change the world before. He’d just wanted to make art.
Lately he’d been watching Bela Lugosi movies and Teletubbies on a split screen. Watching the happy spectrum creatures bouncing beside the swirling black-and-white living dead gave her a fierce headache. She couldn’t watch the moves he was getting out of it either. She didn’t know what the performance was about exactly. (Even when he explained them to her, she didn’t know what any of them were about, because if she’d ever say, “So it’s about . . . ” The answer would always be No. Fine. Who needs meaning?)
So she’d skipped this one, though he had a big crowd, and he was telling her about it, redoing bits, talking a mile a minute. One part was the shocking tale of how Jerry Falwell discovered Tinky Winky was gay one night in a foggy London bathhouse.
“Nobody laughed,” he complained. “Dead silence.”
“That’s because you’re a religion now. Silence is good, remember? You said it last week. “The silence of the universe means someone’s listening.’”
“That doesn’t make any sense. Can’t religion be funny?”
“I thought it was just about the rhythms, the talk.”
“I thought it was funny.”
“I brought home some cupcakes. You want some? They’re kind of blue. They’re supposed to be green. Barb was pissed like it was my fault, but I’m the cake decorator. Seasonal cupcakes are not my problem. You want one? They’re not bad actually.”
“Sure. That’d be great.”
They hung out in their big institutional kitchen. They were living in the church now. All the furnishings from the sanctuary had been sold off long ago, so it was a big empty barn of a building with bad stained glass. The main piece above the altar was Jesus as shepherd with one of the lambs’ faces smashed out and replaced with weathered plywood. Jesus, who seemed to have a serious case of strabismus, took no notice.
Derek and Emily had made an okay apartment out of the church offices. They used the Reverend Buckley Duncan’s former office as a bedroom. They read to each other out of the family counseling files he’d left behind. They found them inspiring: Screwed up as they were, they weren’t these people, who, as far as they could determine, included not a single sufferer from the
art disease. Buck Duncan told them to pray and forgive, pray and forgive. Nobody ever did.
There was a working bathroom in the basement with a shower, though you had to flush the toilet with a bucket until they could have it fixed. Emily had plans to turn the other end of the basement into a studio, but Food One had promoted her, so she was working a split shift and never had time to make art.
Derek held his performances in the pewless sanctuary, still with the blanket, though he made a deal with a flight attendant who was a regular to keep him in fresh ones. She brought them cradled in her arms, still wrapped in plastic, laid them reverently on the pile of money at the end of the ceremony, made smoldering eyes at Derek. Trish, her name was. Emily wanted to kick her perfect kneecaps, but you had to expect stuff like that when you were with an artist. When she did the Square Planet installation, and she got a lot of attention, Derek was really cool with it. Even after the thing with Stanley.
Derek was bringing in so much money, they not only made their church payments, they paid off their credit cards, got the car repaired, started buying wine again, fixed the toilet. They replaced the 19-inch TV, and Siena, the electronic music composer who installed cable, ripped off all the premium channels for them for free. They were even getting estimates on a working HVAC system and a new roof, the old one being the main reason they’d gotten the place so cheap. There were places in the sanctuary you could see daylight.