Magazine
Jean Biegun: “On Call”
Karina Castrillo: “I never wanted you to be like us”
John Grey: “Photographs”
Geoffrey Heptonstall: “Floating”
Andrea Horowitz: “Behind Midnight’s Curtain I Recompose Your Birth”
Leonard Kress: “A Night at the Opera”
Laurie Kuntz: “Sooner or Later”
Leigh Parsons: “Still Frozen”
Matthew Pritt: “Joseph F. Seaborn, 1898-1956, Mary B. Seaborn, 1906-“
William Taylor Jr.: “Poem for the New Year”
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Sedition
Yes, I did the same thing once.
Eighteen, away from home, establishing
Discipleship—the monk Thomas Merton,
The critic of everything, Paul Goodman,
And the deadpan Buddhist, Suzuki.
Yes, some of my professors too,
Like the one whose son was soon
To go to jail resisting the draft
And the one whose Quaker leanings
Told us all to do the same. The fact
That his psychology consisted only
Of training rats to navigate a maze,
Grading us on our skill in doing so,
Made no difference. The only thing
To do, helpless as we were, ineffective
And frightened, was to disrupt
The student military exercises,
Our fellow classmates, including my roommate,
As they gathered and marched, presenting
Arms (no matter that their guns were
Carved from wood and merely ornamental).
They still paraded to the crowd gathered
In the stadium, and yes, in spite
Of uniforms their marching here
Helped them avoid the draft, and yes,
Except for a few hotheaded devotees
Of war (in theory), most treated it
Like marching band, the outfits, formations,
Comraderie, and break from calc and labs and comp.
Still, we painted our faces and donned rags
And feather dusters, whatever we could salvage
From storage closets in the dorm.
And someone handed me a ceremonial sword,
(Dull blade and fragile, awarded
For a patriotic declamation in high school)
And yes, there I was, whooping and bringing
Up the rear, rushing from behind the stands
And streaming in between the lines
Of bored and stiff cadets, who would
Have rather been tossing frisbees or
Choosing sides for touch football.
Yes, we ruined the ceremony and some Major
Shouted outrage, another of lesser rank rattled.
In the end, we simply wandered off,
Abandoned our arms beneath the bleachers
(Including the sword, whose owner planned
To toss it in the trash), after realizing
That none of our fellow students cared
About patriotism, or centuries old
Overwrought declarations about noble deeds.
And yes, pledge week had just begun,
Soon they’d be dancing drunk and passing out.
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About the Author: Leonard Kress has published poetry and fiction in Missouri Review, Massachusetts Review, Iowa Review, American Poetry Review, Harvard Review, etc. His recent collections are The Orpheus Complex and Walk Like Bo Diddley. Living in the Candy Store and Other Poems and his new verse translation of the Polish Romantic epic, Pan Tadeusz by Adam Mickiewicz were both published in 2018. Craniotomy Sestinas will appear in 2021. He teaches philosophy and religion at Owens College in Ohio. www.leonardkress.com
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Image Credit: INTERIOR VIEW, CLASSROOM WITH LECTURE STAND AND DESKS – Smith Hall, Capstone Drive at Sixth Avenue, Tuscaloosa, Tuscaloosa County, AL. The Library of Congress
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My shortcomings are my voice, my height, my gestures, my lack of culture and education, my frankness and my lack of personality…. I am incorrigible … I say ‘merde’ to anybody, however important he is, when I feel like it.
—Charles Aznavour
***
“Come to my suite at the Bellevue-Stratford,”
Grossman said, urgent and tense. “I’ll treat
you to the most splendid meal I can afford.”
In Philadelphia, this was the seat
of glitz: grand chandeliers in the lobbies,
plushness to end all plush, crushed velvet
Bellhops and clerks from earlier centuries—
spit-polished pumps, braided epaulets.
Then came the plague of Legionnaire’s Disease
and scores of legionnaires from upstate hamlets
died or nearly died. And their survivors,
dumpy in their fezzes, downing shots
between tall drafts, slim-jims, popping beer
nuts—why did this plague choose us, they wonder?
“Come to my suite,” said Grossman. This was before
all that, before the grand hotel went under,
auctioned off, renamed. I went to visit
him that night, explained to him with candor
why I quit my job at the psychiatric
hospital, where he’d been in the men’s
locked ward, treated with electric shock
while I held down his charged and flapping limbs.
When he arrived he was too medicated
to talk, his chart so chock-full of nonsense
like all charts there, narratives created
by English majors serving as COs
opposed to Vietnam. I loved James Hood’s, which stated
he’d never known a night that didn’t come to blows
or sex, and always with a different foe
or girl, and skeptical he’d ever lose
count—an entourage he kept in tow
to keep his tally. Dark with greased-back hair,
hobnailed boots and tight jeans, a pack or two
of smokes twisted into his tee, not a care
that he was, in fact, locked up. I suspected
that a fellow aide, a Curtis voice major,
who’d just seen Don Giovanni, concocted
the tale, for James was scarless and his skin
smooth, a stipple of bristles that never connected
to form a beard. Emerging from a thorazine
stupor, Grossman was thrust into my ward
where I would be his keeper. Written in
his chart—“patient delusional, declared
a vibrator was stuck in his posterior,
and turned on high, implanted there, he feared
by homosexual aliens to mate with inferior
beings like him.” Another prank, I thought,
too many English majors working here
avoiding the draft. But here he was, slippers
and robe, amphetamine-buzzed, among the dead
slugs of my ward. On TV Charles Aznavour
was singing “I hate Sundays,” and when someone said,
“Change the channel, I hate everything French,”
Grossman flew into a dreamy rage that turned sad,
“that guy’s got soul like a motherfucker,”
as Aznavour crooned: I’m drunk/And staggering
I shout loudly/ That the little cops are
all my friends. Grossman ignored the badgering
ward—their voices and conspiracy of death wishes—
and won me over, crooning along, hugging
himself to intensify longings to smother his
demons. Weeks later when we meet
at the Bellevue, he storms the lobby, thrashes
his arms, demanding that I cover his bill and treat
him to the meal he’d promised me. Grossman grown
shorter, rat-like, like he’d been groomed in the street
since his release. As though he’d been kicked in the groin
repeatedly, his rounded shoulders like a hump
under his suit. I’d come, he thought, to join
his ratty rampage—soulful, belligerent, and tortured.
Leonard Kress’s 4th poetry book, The Orpheus Complex, was just published by Main Street Rag. He is also the author the chapbook Orphics (Kent State Univ Press). He has published poetry, fiction, and translations in APR, Iowa Review, Massachusetts Revew, Crab Orchard Review, etc. He has also completed a new verse translation of the 19th century Polish Romantic epic, Pan Tadeusz, by Adam Mickiewicz, and was recently a guest at the International Poetry Festival in Warsaw, Poland. He teaches creative writing, philosophy, and religion at Owens College in northwest Ohio. The above poem is used by permission of the author and of Another Chicago Magazine, where it was originally published.
As It Ought To Be 