Review: Alyssa Morhardt-Goldstein and Lisa Marie Basile's Diorama

Diorama by Alyssa Morhardt-Goldstein and Lisa Marie Basile

Wisp Press, 2011,

Reviewed by Janelle Elyse Kihlstrom


Alyssa Morhardt-Goldstein and Lisa Marie Basile's collaborative chapbook Diorama presents two parallel threads of a lyrical progression — at times starkly haunting, at times lushly sensual — through scenes of intimacy and eroticism, loss and death, set against a backdrop shifting in locus between the deserts of the American Southwest and the valleys and rainforests of Central and South America, with occasional detours to the Old World of the Mediterranean.

Morhardt-Goldstein's poems are informed by her background in classical music, including one presented as the first movement of a requiem mass, with parts in English and Latin.  

Her poems move gracefully between dictions, painting moods with landscape and imagery. 

One poem, "Piece for solo quena," begins:

We wear mustard-dust.
We sprouted saguaro antlers.
It sounded like the crackling of clay skeletons
             running on the back of the sun.

The wind shot through holes in our bodies:
             a violet diction of harmony.

The closing lines of her final poem exemplify an open-endedness that marks all of her work here:  "the rolling of his cigarette/ the way a potter throws a teacup."

At first reading we see an image of effortless craftsmanship, and yet, two lines before, we had the image of "the foot that knocks over the fan at night," implying a drowsy carelessness; and reading the lines again through that lens, we can see a finished, painted, even well-loved teacup being carelessly shattered.  It can be read either way, like much of the best work here.

Lisa Marie Basile writes with both startling immediacy and a taut reserve.  Her image-rich poems retain an undercurrent of mystery beneath a disarming veneer of candor. 

Her section brims with dazzling, at times devastating lines.

In "Letters," she writes:

When my mother spoke at the podium I felt
a wide angel fly from her head, crack against the rafters
and fall to the floor.

She covered the place in wing.

I imagined myself bending over her, preparing her like a
butterfly jaggedly descending toward a calm death.

Each poet carries her weight in this joint effort with technical skill and a voice refreshingly unabashed in its directness.  This slim volume is a good introduction to two complementary yet distinctive new voices.
 

Sorry We Were Out...

We apologize for our lengthy hiatus from the blogosphere.  Vacation, random personal crises, and just plain laziness may have interfered with our ability to post much over the last month and a half. 

We would like to just blame the gap on our flurry of preparation for the Spring/Summer issue, which will launch by the first of next month, but that doesn't completely account for our lapse. 

However, we might as well take the opportunity to mention that the Spring/Summer issue will launch by the first of next month!  It's looking to be a good issue, and we look forward to wrapping up production on it soon.  The issue will include the top three poetry contest winners and much more literary goodness.

And, finally (finally, indeed) look for a new review here in the blog next weekend.

2011 Poetry Contest Finalists

We're pleased to announce the 10 finalists for our 2011 Vivienne Haigh-Wood Prize for a single poem.  The prize winner will receive $500 and the winning poem will appear in our Spring/Summer 2011 issue, out next month.  The second and third place poems will also appear in a special section of the issue, and all non-winning finalists will be listed there as honorable mentions.  Finalists will be notified of the status of their entries shortly before the issue appears.  Congrats and good luck to all!

*Finalists are listed in alphabetical order by name.

Lou Amyx:  Roses
Connie Boyle:  An Inheritance
Pat Hurshell:  Elegy (in 3 movements)
Pat Hurshell:  Leda Tells It Again
Tomasz Mielcarek:  I Was Waiting For You
Jenny Sanders:  Mama's Little Heartbreaker
Lorraine Schein:  The Hanged Woman
Lorraine Schein:  The Lady in the Lake
N. A’Yara Stein:  For the Rest of Our Lives, That Far Place Waits
Julie Stuckey:  Watching the Door

Review: Melissa Crandall's Weathercock

Weathercock by Melissa Crandall

Tortuga Loca, 2010,

Reviewed by Janelle Elyse Kihlstrom

Melissa Crandall, whose short story collection Darling Wendy was reviewed for our debut issue, sent me a copy of her first non-series novel, Weathercock, a fantasy set in an alternative-reality medieval world where gender roles are directly inverse to traditional gender roles in the majority of known human societies.  In other words, men's lot in life was rather bitter.

I admit I'm not very familiar with the fantasy genre, so I asked for some feedback from my partner on this, and it was interesting to get a male perspective on the story.  He found the female characters easier to relate to than the male ones, simply because men in the world of this novel are so unlike the typical picture of a man in our society, while women in the novel's world do resemble men as we know them, exhibiting both what are perceived as positive as well as negative typically masculine traits.  It seems the reversal in behavior stems from the respective genders' stations and the effects of those roles over generations, through a feedback loop of heredity and environment

For reasons unknown to the lead characters, men were born more rarely in this society, and they were often sterile.  "It was just the way things were in Duine, the way things had always been." 

The result of this scarcity is for men to be treated like commodities, essentially as breeding studs.  Women set up "households," which are comprised of several wives, one of whom actually "owns" the husband and therefore wields most of the power, and others who exist lower in the hierarchy and have less say in household decisions.

Kinner, the lead male character, son of the "Firstwife" of a household, finds his future in jeopardy when it's discovered that he is apparently sterile and therefore cannot contribute to the household in the manner expected of him.  The only alternative to execution for a sterile male is monkhood, and so Kinner's mother undertakes with him a long journey across the country to a monastery where he can live safely among other men in his predicament — although we later learn that Kinner's mother, Holan, who is a blacksmith, has misled the other wives about her son's sterility because she wanted a pretext to travel with him to this distant place of refuge as part of her quest in relation to a special sword she has forged in honor of a god, the Weathercock, whose worship is forbidden in a society that instead worships a triune goddess.

The inverted parallels to medieval European Christendom are obvious, but the questions this allegorical adventure tale raises are provocative and compelling.

Has our own society, even today, afforded equal worth to half its members even if they do not assume traditional procreative roles?

And, political measures like affirmative action aside, what would women today be achieving in non-female-dominated professions if they had not been treated as second-class citizens since time immemorial?

Kinner, raised to be docile and not trained in battle because he is a man, does not emerge as a hero in the war between the corrupt queen and her discontented subjects that provides much of the action in the novel.  (Many of the subjects are miffed that the queen keeps stealing their husbands in pursuit of an heir.)  In this way, the story is realistic, unlike anachronistic Hollywood films that cast every other ancient or medieval heroine as a Boudica, rather than portraying them within the context of their time, where courage did not necessarily manifest itself in dazzling swordplay.

And political feminism didn't win all of its early battles, either, but the closing of Crandall's tale allows for hope that change is in the air for men like Kinner, not from martial victories but from mutual understanding between the genders one person at a time, which is how all true and lasting peace and progress tends to be won.

I admire the author for tackling this territory and think she has written an original, idea-driven adventure story worth checking out.

The book is available directly from the author, as well as in ebook form here.

Editorial: Relic From The Mix-Tape Years

Sorting through a box full of cassette tapes that survived my handful of moves from over the last decade, I reread the story of my adolescence and early adulthood, spelled out on the handwritten covers of my mix tapes.  

Ah, the mix tape, a short-lived, essentially obsolete art form.  A few of my eighth and ninth-grade classmates had made them for each other, with photocopies of kittens or puppies as covers.  As an introverted chick with few friends and less confidence in matters of influencing others' taste (but plenty of confidence in my own ability to know what I like) I made tapes for myself.

In high school the tapes, titled "Hits of 1980/90-whatever (I'm going to pass up the chance to show my precise age here)" and adorned with hastily ink-drawn musical notes, were songs I caught off the radio, recorded on the fly.  I depended on my not particularly quick reflexes to catch the songs in their entirety, and so they appeared in no particular order.

Then in college I got a bit more sophisticated.  I titled the series of tapes "Sonic Potpourri" and made them only from other tapes or (increasingly) CDs that either I or my brother owned.  I could only make them when I was at home from school, where my treasured once-state-of-the-art stereo stood in my girlhood room.  On the frequent occasions when I was home for a weekend, a new tape would be my major weekend project.  I labored over the tapes with the attention I should have directed to my homework -- the attention and the passion.  Maybe it wasn't coincidence that the only A I received my first freshman semester was in the history of jazz.

The tapes told the story of my life -- not from day one, but what was going on right at that time, in narrative form, although the narrative would probably have been comprehensible only to me.  Much of it was centered around my relationship at the time, my first serious one, and my efforts to find my own voice in the world.  Typical college stuff.  Speaking more recently to friends, I realized that almost everyone made mix tapes in those days.  My boyfriend at the time had made some for me, stuff he thought I might like, or hoped I might like, or thought I should like.  I lacked the confidence to pass on my own finds to him.  

Later on, my tapes began to tell the story of my burgeoning feminism -- since this was the '90s, a Second Wave, Riot Grrrl-influenced feminism -- my own untattooed, still-introverted but increasingly confident version of it.

I found one tape that captured this moment in time, a "special edition" called "27 Songs by Women."  One of my signature ink-drawn notes is encircled by a Venus symbol.  Reading the list of songs really took me back.  Some remain staples of my playlists.  Others I haven't heard since the '90s.  Tori Amos, Veruca Salt, Shonen Knife, Hole, PJ Harvey, the Breeders, Belly, Throwing Muses, Heather Nova, Bjork, et cetera.

"Silent All These Years" leads off, and Indigo Girls' "Language or the Kiss" closes with a question, one never answered, but replaced with different questions.  

Yes, I have my playlists now, but I can tweak them with a quick right-click of my mouse -- a bit too easy.  In comparison, those tapes have staying power.  Like the spiral notebooks I scribbled in as a kid, they're immune to hasty single-fingertip deletion.  And every once in a while, I'll probably find myself combing through that dusty box of tapes and retrieving a gem. 

I had faithfully kept journals in spiral-bound notebooks and later more attractive blank-paged hardcover books, up until my last year or two of college.  I don't know why I stopped journaling.  I continued to write poetry and dabble in fiction, but at some point I stopped allowing myself the luxury of written self-reflection.  The mix tapes filled the void, and allowed me to tell my story (if only to myself) in music.  

I never did go back to handwritten journal-keeping, but eventually (after a few resistant Luddite years) started up a live journal, which offered the slightly unnerving opportunity for me to share my personal thoughts with other human beings, albeit at a safe distance.  Eventually, I replaced my highly personal blog with others more topical in nature.  I suppose sites like Facebook filled the more personal niche, or maybe, once again, I stopped believing I have the time to journal.  And I'm probably right, unfortunately.  It's difficult enough to make the time for poetry and fiction.  But occasionally, I jot down a quote or a few lines and file them away in a safe place.  

And I have my playlists.  The one entitled "Melusine" does, oddly enough, share a few tracks in common with my rediscovered feminist mix tape.  All is not lost.

Melusine is a Hibernating Creature

Hello — just a note to say that Melusine is headed on vacation shortly.

Don't worry, we're not going anywhere warm.  Winter will remain very much with us in our travels.

In any case, our nonfiction/review series will be on a two-week hiatus until we return.

Look for a new post the last weekend of this month, and have a lovely Valentine's Day!

P.S.  Don't forget about the poetry contest — just two weeks left before the March 1 deadline:  http://www.melusine21cent.com/mag/contest

Merlaine Sivels: Daddy Issues

When I was younger, he stuck around. He got an apartment nearby, dropped in whenever mom went to work and my brother went to play basketball. He would rent movies, a new one every week. We would watch them together. Eat all the frozen pizzas in the house together. 

The next day, mom had warned me not to let him do that again. She’d said it was bad for his blood pressure.

As I got older, he drifted farther away.

Location-wise, he was a nomad. 

Parked his truck in empty fields and slept in it. He only parked in places where he knew he wouldn’t get a ticket, and he would call me, telling me the newest place he’d managed to fall asleep. It was dangerous, his like of work. People robbed trucks and shot truckers, I was told, and for the longest time I would spend nights awake, wondering if I would get a call from him the next morning. He always seemed to make it, and by day, he emptied the truck to the designated store. Then be on his way again. 

He had sent me postcards. 

Alabama, Washington, Las Vegas, Utah, Texas, Maryland, California.

I still have them. My favorite was Virginia. He would call and ask me if I’d received the latest postcard, and I would reply with a yes, I had, but Virginia will always be my favorite. For a while, she let him come back, my mom.

She let him stay with us and we played house again for a while. He was the daddy. She was the mommy. I was the daughter and my brother was the son. The roles were intricate. My part was easy, but everyone else struggled. Eventually my mom got sick of pretending. She wanted him out. He left. She apologized to me.

To my brother. My brother took her sorry to heart, as if he was the one who’d been wounded. 

I remember going into another room and calling him, tell him that she apologized. He never picked up. Never called back.

I am a girl of false hopes, my mother told me once. He promises me things. I cling to them with all my heart, all my soul. When he doesn’t deliver, I am heartbroken. But he makes more promises and I cling some more.

Nowadays she tells me that I don’t remember the old him. The one who sent me to bed without food. Who pushed me to the ground whenever I would kiss her goodnight. The one who pinched me so hard he split my tender six-year-old skin in half for biting on a straw. 

She says that if I remembered the way I would cry in her arms while he was outside mowing the law, the way I would wail in my bedroom at night after he went to work, the way I would shake in his presence when I did something he didn’t like. If only I remembered that side of him then I wouldn’t hold on the way I did.

But all I can say to her is that he is my dad, and you can never let your number one fan go.

He doesn’t call me on my twentieth birthday. I don’t wake up waiting for it, but at the end of the day, I realize there is one voice I haven’t heard from. When I call him, he assures me, yes, he did call, and he even left a message. While he is speaking, I check my phone for the voicemail sign. 

It’s not on.

I ask him when I will see him again. It has been almost a year. We make plans for Sunday. He has a delivery in Miami for Monday, so he will pass through Orlando for a few hours. 

I am excited. Not just to see him, but just to be in his presence. To hear him talk in person, for once. To see his facial features, that huge smile I got from him. I miss it all.  He does not call me on Saturday.

On Sunday, I wake up early, dress, and put my keys in the ignition, as my phone buzzes with a new text message. I don’t need to read it. I pull my keys out, go back inside, undress and go back to bed.

At my door, my mom, is on the verge of tears because she can hear mine. False hopes, honey. False hopes. 

Three days later, I read the text message. We have new plans for Sunday again. He will be there, my phone assures me.

He does not call me on Saturday. On Sunday, I wake up early, dress, and put my keys in the ignition. My phone is silent the entire drive.

Since sixteen, we have met at the Navy Exchange, even though I am twenty nothing has changed. I drive around the parking lot, looking for him. I find his truck. 

The purple eighteen-wheeler is tall behind the old lawn and garden building. When I pull up he is not there. I park behind it and go look for him. I find him exiting the barbershop. From faraway, he is my dad. My daddy.

The man that woman would swoon over at my brother’s basketball games, at my job, in restaurants, in theme parks. He is tall and poise, walking with his back straight, like the military taught him. His hair, which has been balding since before I could remember, is cropped closely to his head. From far away, that smile is bright with memories of his little girl, and momentarily I expect him to run to me and scoop me into his arms like he used to. But he doesn’t. He keeps walking, and when we are standing face to face with each other, I realize that I have made a mistake. 

This man is not my father. 

His hair is salt and pepper instead of black. His eyes, usually vigilant and alert, are tired and baggy, as if they threaten to close at any moment. His stomach, once flat and muscular, is now heavy with the threat of a gut. His muscular arms are skinny.

And his face.

He is handsome still. But his face is accented with heavy lines around his mouth, around his eyes, on his cheeks, like origami art that has been deconstructed. 

I stare because I don’t know what to say. What do you say to a stranger?

He speaks first; a loud obnoxious greeting that if I was still thirteen would have made me laugh hysterically. Now it makes my bottom lip quiver. 

I greet him, closing in for a quick hug. He embraces me and even manages to lift me off the ground an inch or two. I do not stay airborne for long, and it scares me to think that there will come a time when he will no longer be able to do that.

When he releases me, my cheeks are wet. I tell him it is allergies. He believes me. 

We walk and he tells me about the allergies he had while in Alabama. He throws his head back in a laugh and says that I wouldn’t last a minute there. I nod, still looking at him, never looking away. I want to be able to see when this man will turn back into my dad. I want to watch the metamorphosis. He asks me what’s wrong? It’s my birthday.

I should be happy.

I reply that I am old now. He laughs again. That same laugh that sounds like my dad’s. He asks me how I have been. How is my boyfriend? How is my brother? How is my car (he can’t help but comment that it still looks like shit)? 

I tell him everything is good. Everyone is fine.

I don’t tell him about how I have moved in with my boyfriend, how my brother has moved out because of fights with mom, how my car stopped working in the middle of the highway the other day, how my heart stutters when I laugh too hard or sleep on my stomach, about my puppy, about my grades. 

He doesn’t pry.

He tells me about his fiancée. He calls her Mrs. Sivels. 

When he says this, I laugh for the first time. I picture my mom. She isn’t, but to me, she will always be the only Mrs. Sivels. It is not as funny to him as it is to me. To him it is not funny at all.

We walk around the exchange for an hour. When he finds something he likes, he gets my attention by calling my name and begging me to look.

It reminds me of our road trips when I was younger. When we would pass a field of horses or cows, he would nudge me repeatedly. 

 

Look! Look! Cows!

I indulge him by feigning interest. 

In return, I point to things I like. He merely nods, continues walking. Makes a comment about my mom buying me something if I want it bad enough. When we pass the jewelry department, he shows me the ring he plans on buying for the new and improved Mrs. Sivels. 

It is five thousand dollars. He informs me that she is worth every penny.

He does not have time to take me out to my birthday lunch as we planned. He admits that I took too long getting there. We eat at a sub shop.

I do not like subs, but I don’t speak up. He doesn’t ask.

He eats quickly, almost swallowing his sub whole. 

Mouth full, he confides in me that he loves their subs. How does mine taste? As he is speaking, mine slips out of my hand on to the floor. He laughs. My stomach growls. I did not eat breakfast that morning in order to have room for lunch.

He says oh, well. He shrugs.

We are silent as we walk to my car and his truck. I cannot help but still look at him, but this time I know he is not going to change. For me, there will be no metamorphosis into the man I knew.

He pats me on the back as I stop in front of his truck. He tells me that he has something for me. I cannot help it, I get excited. I did not expect anything from him. He dashes into the cab of his truck and rummages around for a few minutes. The longer he takes the more my heart sinks. He yells down to me that he might have lost it—Oops, he found it. He steps down the cab with two envelopes. One blue. One yellow.

Both of them read To My Favorite Girl.

Before I can open them, he tells me that he has to get going. He’s sorry he can’t stick around.

I understand, or at least that’s what I tell him.

I admit to him that I had a good time. It had been too long since I last saw him.

He is already in his truck, turning his keys, and pressing buttons. He pulls the string that hangs by his head, and the sound of his horn reverberates through the parking lot as he exits on to the highway.

When I can no longer see him, I open the first envelope. The yellow one. 

It is a Valentine’s Day card. When I open the card, it sings a quick song and to the side he writes a simple message telling me to be good, don’t do anything he wouldn’t. I smile, close the card. Slip it back into the envelope, and slip the envelope in my bag.

I open the second card, the blue one. 

There is a small postcard inside. There are big city lights and people smiling, showgirls dancing, casinos and gambling all on the front. Las Vegas, it reads in pink lettering.

When I flip it over there is a small greeting. To the right is his scribbled handwriting:  I always remembered that this one was your favorite. Happy 22nd birthday, young lady.

Merlaine Sivels is pursuing a degree in English education and has promised her mother that she would publish at least one story during her lifetime (her mother's, that is, not that she plans on passing anytime soon.)