Seeing Other People

A note from the editor

Mon, 02 Feb 2009 13:45:00 -0500

I think we should see other people.

I asked some writers to compose a story or poem that focuses on a character. I live in a place with all these characters. They couple. They room. They drink hairy liquor. They play contact sports.

Where we live, everyone believes books will turn people on. Zadie Smith’s collection of 24 writers, The Book of Other People, knocked my socks off. I was so enraptured by her idea that I wished I had done it. So I did.

Here, with 18 writers — all who live or have lived in a little New England town.

Sara Blaylock
January 2009

Seeing Other People was published in January 2009 by Tobie Ludington.
Please respect the creative property of the 18 fine writers included in this volume. Please also respect the design of Lilly Handley, used in the background of this page and also in the Seeing Other People print edition.
Print editions of this volume are available for $5.00 plus $1.00 s/h.
For author contacts, publishing information, copies, and all other inquiries. please email TobieLudington@gmail.com.

Contains

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 22:30:00 -0500

Mike Young

Gabe Durham

Jono Tosch

Lyndsey Cohen

Edward Mullany

Jeannie Hoag

Rachel B. Glaser

Ari Feld

Lily Ladewig

Brian Mihok

Boomer Pinches

Christy Crutchfield

Heather Christle

Brian Baldi

Jack Christian

Anjali Khosla Mullany

Francesca Chabrier

Seth Landman

Mike Young

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 23:00:00 -0500

Minh-Huyen Wants a Tattoo

Of a beer dipped penny. Of an allowable pillow. wait how bad do u want it? um really bad. hahaha how bad? (this is math, you’re good at math). Breakfast for supper at the Blueberry Twist. On Friday nights, she watches Boy Meets World. TGIF. She’ll graduate in three years, A after A. Her finger makes a Greyhound through the biscuits. Hound gravy. will u get my name tattoed on your chest? um where exactly. i don’t know. i don’t know your chest that well. Enter Corey: fry cook, needs an algebra tutor. is it okay if i call u minn lol thatz my name kind of. Please don’t spill the lighter fluid, MC Oroville. We’ll burn this rice and make the tennis players cough. FUCK ME OH GOD FUCK FUCK FUCK OH GOD YOU FEEL SO GOOD FUCK ME. She sucks him off with her glasses on. Minh-Huyen Meets World. Test the water out here: trace lithium, trace cube steak. <3 ha what’s that? it’s a heart =) oh do u like it? Minh-Huyen is passed out in a nurse’s outfit, flanked by a 40 and a PS2 controller. TGIF. Now she wants a new tattoo. Of a turtle with a hard-on. Of Héloise on a motorcycle. There’s a louder beat, right MC O? Something that’s like, I may loan you one, but I don’t give a fuck. To drown out the boxcar billet-douxs. The initials in the imported palms. Test the equation: so smart you’re bored, then bored into, cracked and spilled and over-easy. Minh-Huyen enters the AM-PM to buy beer for her little sister. No, she thinks. I would trade this for the world. I would press the world’s stupid beard into my cunt and steal all the knives in the house. Minh-Huyen shaves her eyelashes. She goes to medical school, invents a new fix: TGIF. After a trial, it’s fed to all the right names.

Gabe Durham

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 22:00:00 -0500

Joy of Knowing

Although Gabe’s story does not appear in this online version, it is so great that we hope you will purchase a print copy of Seeing Other People so you too can read this compelling adolescent fantasy.

In the meantime, please visit Gabe’s awesome website to read more about his interest in geneology, things that are funny or true, and a cappella.

Jono Tosch

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 21:00:00 -0500

Emily

I visited our home in Carmel.
Do you remember when you said
Half the rooms should be painted
In the spirit of a looming watermelon?
It rained abundantly for one hour
Each time we said hello.
Was it a bone you found in your dumpling?
I remember a conversation about a bird
And the nests it would build
Had it not been partially dead. Nonetheless
I am making progress. Each day
Tensions lead me around
For hours on the landing
And nothing interrupts my flow.
I heard about your sister. I am sorry.
The paper said she had been treated
For wounds.
I know what that means to you.
I have been reading all our letters.

Lyndsey Cohen

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 20:00:00 -0500

She Used To Be A Waitress In Poughkeepsie

The postman came to the door and told Gladys to get spiritual. It feels like a hot bath, he said. She tried to stay positive, but his eyes kept blinking. Do you know how to time travel, he asked. Do you know how to bury in the winter. Gladys wanted to make steak tartare and then cartwheel through the living room. She wanted to be a lamp post or a chimpanzee. But the postman had only two buttons buttoned on his shirt, and he just stood there with his mouth hanging open. She should have been a hunter, she thought. She should know how to kill something with her hands.

Edward Mullany

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 19:00:00 -0500

Roger Ettinger

Roger Ettinger, a department store manager, was a week shy of his forty-second birthday when the following, seemingly unimportant incident occurred in his windowless office at the mall: a common housefly that had somehow survived the winter and was flying in arbitrary circles around his desk and his head, successfully avoiding the occasional swat of his hand, flew into his mouth and was swallowed.

Jeannie Hoag

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 18:00:00 -0500

I’m Not Phyllis

I am not Phyllis, who bathes
in the sun. I am here and
at any moment will be here.
When I come home she is not
waiting for me, she is waiting for me
to leave. The lady behind me
says I am so sorry
I made you wait
to the man behind me,
who is not Phyllis, who is also not
the husband. I am not the husband
of Phyllis, though she calls me
home to her, though she does not
want to see me.
She thinks of leaving me.
The lady behind me considers leaving
her husband, not for the man behind me,
not for any man. Sometimes a lady
just needs to leave, to start over on new snow.
If not in marriage,
there is always the chance
of success in careers, in business attire
and business transactions.
The attraction of careers calls
to the lady, and Phyllis
has a career of calling out the window
to the people below.

Rachel B. Glaser

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 17:00:00 -0500

Paul is the only person

everyone is by mistake butt
Paul is on purpose

millions of people have bodies
by mistake they make careers

Paul Newman is a homepage
his boyhood beats my bookcase

when I saw him I was
now I still am

Paul Newman is cuter than Michaelangelo’s David
and way funnier

Travolta is cheesy
Brando too cruel

a butt is something to butt up against
a man is a space heater

a man hugs you hard
he stretches you out
in the dark with the blanket
it feels Japanese-like
experimenting in the dark

I saw young Paul from my blinds
revving on his ride

I’d already emailed his websites
I said

BLOW SOME DIRT ON MY TOWN’S FACE

it was the only way to touch
I didn’t want him to slow down

Ari Feld

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 16:00:00 -0500

The Homeowner

A steel mill scabbed the pasture. Its stacks jabbed the low-slung sky, pointer fingers, or middle fingers spiking from the raw-knuckled factory roof, goddamning the locked gates and rotting lots and whatever had cut its hands from production. The compound looked like a castle when I loosened my eyes and thought of Transylvania. The women I was staying with had told me that junkies and scavengers scoured the site for copper and nickel. Live wires still veined the place and made their work uncertain. A welder had sculpted a twelve-point buck from the less perilous salvage. The trophy head arched three stories high, its neck sprouting from a boiler, the tips of its antlers visible from the porch where I squatted, swilling gin and waiting for the women to return.

Wood smoke cracked the air. Imitation brick hung in strips from the house across the street. A car with bumper stickers stopped in front of the house. Kids got out and looked up and down the street, trying not to see me. They creaked up the porch and reached for the screen door. A shout met them and they skittered back into the car. It pulled up to the next block and the kids got out and entered a demolished doorframe. “Get off my goddamn porch,” the homeowner shouted. He cracked the screen door and looked around and went back inside. The women had told me to stay on their porch. I took a hit and whistled at a bird through numb lips. Another car drove by. The driver seemed to see the first car and squeaked to a stop behind it. The car idled. A man got out of the back seat and stood by the first car. He leaned back on the passenger side and tried the handles. He scoped the street and scooped something from the curb. I slouched out of sight. He straightened and bricked out the passenger window. The kids shouted from the condemned house. The man got in their car and got it started and squawked away with the other vehicle. The kids unspooled from the stoop and chased the caravan around the block, spilling plunder.

Wood smoke clotted the gusts. I took a hit, mingling the coniferous gin with the smoldering smell tingeing my palate. The screen across the street slapped open and the homeowner stepped out, “Hey, man,” he said, “you got a phone?” I looked around the porch and shook my head. A car thick with chrome and tint coursed the street and wheeled around the barricaded middle school. I tried to whistle. I caught an acrid flavor in the air, like someone was burning trash. The homeowner burst out the screen door, lugging a footlocker and a suitcase. Smoke wisped around him, trellised against the doorframe like dark vines. We stared at each other. I took a hit. He dumped his luggage and plunged back in. Flames slithered between the shingles and the roof sloughed smoke. Cinders popped from the chimney. He kicked the screen from its hinges and dropped a mini-fridge and a stack of LPs on the lawn. He dredged out a TV, a bicycle, folding chairs and a folding table, handfuls of silverware, a hotplate, a baseball bat draped with clothes, a single mattress streaked with smoke, a sewing machine, and toy trucks and dolls. He dropped each haul a little further from the blaze. I could hear fire gnashing the structure. He stumbled out of the gaping inferno, trailing flame and soot like some demon shit from a nightmare. He smacked out the flames and added a coat tree and welcome mat to the rescued articles in the street, righting the kitchenware and furniture, stacking a yard sale. “You want any of this shit?” he said. “I’ll sell it cheap.” Fire engorged the house, spilling from windows and finding new exits. I had to shade my face from the heat. A section of the roof collapsed, splintering into the sky. “Well, fuck you,” he said. “You drunk motherfucker.” I inclined the bottle at him. He left his heap of things and leaned on the stoop. “You don’t have no phone?” he said. I pointed the bottle. He took a hit, “Fuck it, then.” I waved him on and he swilled a long one and wiped his mouth. We sat passing the bottle until flames started to stand out against the dusk. Sirens coming. A husk cradled the embers. A hoop of burnt grass girdled the wreck and smaller fires had sprung up on the next-door roofs. The sirens swelled. He shoved off to stand by his salvage. Lights swirled down the corridor of darkening homes like a fireball, paling as they pulled up in front of the real thing. Firemen swung from their rig, hooking up hoses and cinching gear. I saw the homeowner talking with the chief. He pointed to the smoldering hulk and then at his scraps. The chief marked a pad and nodded along. Jets of forced water hit the flames like a pit of snakes. The chief took out a wallet and picked a couple LPs. She bought the fridge and a lieutenant hefted it into the rig. The homeowner circulated among the firemen. The TV went and the hotplate and the folding table and chairs and most of the rest and when I loosened my eyes the fire truck looked like a moving van for hell. The homeowner mounted his bike. He caromed the length of the empty street and hooted like a surfacing miner.

Lily Ladewig

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 15:00:00 -0500

Thumbelina

Let’s be thumb-sized.
Both begotten by barley.

I’ll cover you in a mint leaf,
unpetalling our coverlets.

Kidnap me. Espouse me
to the toad wearing a top hat.

To the mole. The animal bride
in all variants of the tale type.

Humble. My trousseau
of black fur

in the harshest of climates.
To escape, undo my sash.

Tie me to the butterfly.
Steal out the door

to glimpse the sky.
It came to the reviving

of the swallow. The moribund
bird. Tender ministrations

tore his wings
on a thorn bush.

I will find you,
winged husband.

You are the flower’s angel.
You are transparent as islands.

Brian Mihok

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 14:00:00 -0500

Nervous Germans: Robert

Robert wants so badly after reading a book where a man wakes up as a bug to wake up as a bug. He researches the avenues of metamorphosis where science has been where it is going. He is dissapointed that of all things science has turned into other things, none are into bugs. Robert reads that just recently a team of biologists & geneticists discovered a way of transforming bugs into other things. Considered the most successful is an ant turned thumbtack known as Pinky. Pinky hit the headlines like a lightening bolt. Also a termite into a magnet a beetle into a paper clip and, considered a colossal failure, a caterpillar into a butterfly. Robert sits back and thinks about becoming a scientist so he can figure out how to make things in reverse order. In the morning the alarm goes off but Robert sleeps through it.

Boomer Pinches

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 13:00:00 -0500

The Doctor’s Wife

In that long hour after dinner and before the crickets, on the deck (a ten-year-old addition that still feels new) overlooking the vast and verdant backyard, the doctor’s wife delivers the punchline as usual (it is hardly the first time she has told this anecdote), preceded by a pause and two syllables of laughter, immediately followed by a scan of the three other faces around the table (over which is draped a white tablecloth that some thrifty guest had given on her wedding day sixteen years prior [all that remains of the wedding is a blur of tuxedos and smiles and thank yous and the feeling, magnified by retrospection, that life would be a much different and more difficult habit from then on (though there are other things also, rarely recalled as they fade into oblivion, like the way her husband held her during that first dance, both of them smiling, delirious and stunned at what they had blindly embarked upon [though they had not felt blind then])] which had not been unblemished when set down six hours earlier but which now is stained here with red wine and there with steak sauce), all familiar and each a trigger for memories that evoked certain emotional, intellectual, and instinctual responses in her though these were (relatively) rarely examined in much detail because who has time for that (who could ever have enough time, for example, as her gaze skimmed over her husband’s best friend, to fully reflect on the thirteen post-nuptial sexual encounters one has had with that man, the gentle violence in the dark, the sudden distance as they dressed, and the marvelously improbable secrecy in which it had all transpired, known to them and them alone [as secret holders tend to think] and bound to be forgotten once they are both dead, or both beyond memory, whichever comes first; how could she have time for all that when there is barely enough to observe whether his present laughter at her anecdote is genuine or feigned) and with the anecdote told and the laughter precipitated she is hit by a cold moment of self-awareness (hardly the first or last) in which she sees very clearly that she is a woman whose life is more than half over and still a bewilderment, that the words coming out of her mouth are meaningless sounds, manipulations of lips and tongue in the arena of mouth and teeth, that when she dies nothing in the world will stop except her thoughts (or maybe not, maybe they won’t stop, but she won’t be around to hear them anymore), that every other person at the table was in more or less the same boat and how ridiculous it was that they understood and reacted to each other’s sounds.

All of this hits her at once but she does not stop smiling. The slightest lapse in decorum would never [sic] be forgotten by these people, friend and husband and lover, and she does not want anyone to think she is unhappy. Unthinkingly she lowers her eyes (still smiling) to the prandial detritus on her plate (flank steak she prepared herself with less than perfect results though no one would ever say so) and raised her glass of wine to take a sip, bigger than intended.

“That is something,” says Rebecca, wife of Larry, mother of two.

The doctor’s wife rolls her eyes in acknowledgment. With her left hand she finds the right hand of her husband, who reclines in his chair, his plate clean and his belly bulging despite the twelve hours of aerobic exercise a week (he has felt his body slacken over the years, grow looser and heavier even as his mind has wound itself tighter [every syllable his wife has uttered tonight (and how well he knows her cadences and melodies) has been another turn of the screw] and has reached a point where to exercise or not to exercise seems a decision of minor consequence). He looks not at his wife but across the backyard to the horizon, where the sun has only just vanished, survived by its light in the darkening sky. There is the first star, alone. He returns his wife’s squeeze with one of his own, briefer and equally unthinking. On his lips a faint smile. He has heard the anecdote several times before and neither it nor his wife’s manner of relating it has ever amused him. “Well, it could have happened to anyone,” his wife says to Rebecca, and abruptly, to his wife’s surprise and, incidentally, concomitant to the withdrawal of her hand, he laughs, long and loud.

Christy Crutchfield

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 12:00:00 -0500

Fallen Clay Pigeon
Excerpt from “Pray for Rain”

She didn’t show up on my doorstep, really, but on the barstool next to me asking for half a beer if I could manage, parting the corner of a coaster into layers like book pages. She was stuck here because a road trip with her boyfriend went sour. I’ve never been here, she said. I have a lot to learn about this place.

There was the hint of accent on her, thoughtless vowels that sounded like rushing through the cold. New England. And, though she was quiet, I remember thinking I saw harshness in her and her lack of thank yous. She didn’t say much else, nodding, almost smiling, until 3am when she said she needed a place to stay. Even if I had known stay was exactly what she meant, looking at her gritty and sleepy and drunk, I would have said yes, of course, yes. I’ll take care of you, small white thing.

A million questions banged at my skull, but there are some things you just trust.

She didn’t want to be taken care of, found ways to pay her way. I would come home from work to new colors—red, orange, yellow fruits she placed on my tongue until winter. Breads and bottles of wine that didn’t come from Ingles, that she’d gotten on her long walks to God knows where. Friends told me they’d seen my little mystery walking, on the highway even, though I think that was just gossip, legend. I didn’t ask where dinner came from or how she paid for it, just tore chunks and took sips, instinct closing my eyes each time.

I wanted to tell her these things. That back home we played tambourines, women in long flowered dresses jumping with arms to the ceiling and men sweating through their suits speaking languages you couldn’t write down. And the Spirit was there. You couldn’t prove it, but I played the tambourine so hard I sprained my wrist once and I saw my Aunt Rhonda fall to the carpet and shake so hard they put a blanket over her. She sat up and spoke French, real French, which she’d never learned.

I may have given Him up a long time ago, didn’t make it to high school with a tongue of fire on my head, but I can’t deny it was there. White bird sent to us.

I didn’t tell her these things. Silence was sacred to her.

Heather Christle

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 11:00:00 -0500

Gordon Halpern

seen here tagging a lynx,
is not a man you’d marry.

Is the world’s chief miracle.
Is filled completely with sand.

Gordon Halpern, an expert
outdoorsman and avid consumer

of Soviet erotica, wishes
to thank the town for all

the kind letters he’s received,
and directs our young readers

to keep their small ears at the door.
Mr. Halpern, the Lion’s Club

Face of the Month, cannot stop
winking at subdivisions.

Is lost in a window factory
of his own making.

When our Gordon
was but two meager feet tall

an incident with the lawn mower
left him permanently amused,

a stalwart proponent of handjobs.
While most white water rafters

will never attain the graceful swoop
of Gordon Halpern’s charming maneuvers,

they can at least extract a lesson
from his epic medallions

and the best before scent
of his hair. Deep in the interior

of Halpern’s shining brainwaves
we have unconfirmed piles of real snow.

Brian Baldi

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 10:00:00 -0500

The Ombudsman

Without a doubt he is coming
around the corner when he comes,
an orange of assertions
going on about his liver,
coming from coming from shrubbery.

It is conceivable he has failed at some things
made false appeals to cars and character
actor mistakes. I’ve known him for sidewalk
feet at a time, and seen his slow
roll-up on the shorties.

He is much-discussing.
He is prior made and kept from parties.
He is woken in a stir.
He is between the numbers.
He is going to lose touch of me.

And during those pink pivotals
with cars rearranging themselves
into strips of coming on strong,
when he’s in the hot middle
sussing out the daily angina,

I hear him licking at distinctions.

—For the O.C.

Jack Christian

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 09:00:00 -0500

Marie

Karin’s parents sent a couple

Nice wishes, and off they went around the bend, on a Jonathan,

Where the road can’t Siobhan. Tom was from Homer, Alaska –

Tuesday born, raised by nonesuch, fostered by Julia. Graham

Did everything for a reason, was math proficient. Norm did it

For Eleanor. Aunt Jay did it with J.P., thereby upsetting

Many people. This made the newsletter. Did you catch it?

The guy we call “Japes.” They printed it “John Patrick.”

Marybeth conferenced with Lawson; Angela copied Creech

And cleared the changes through Jana. Michelle told the boys

To hit the presses. John threw his clothing. Ryan flew to Pasture.

This meant Par 3 with Sterling, executive ombuds. Andrew

Was impossible to locate. Terence, like the dog will do.

With Ray, there were goals, which Ruth interpreted biblically.

If she bore a child she would name it Ruth. If it was a boy

She would name its basket, but still feel reprehensible. This was

Saturday, Year of Manuals. Jamie was to wed Alan then,

At the site decided by Mary Lyons, who planned for violet;

Expected Meredith. God Love Stonewall Jackson and Men

Of Vacation. Tabitha reneged on account of charm school. Clay,

Gone to Maui. Junior Chism, somewhat racist, still invited.

Cal was what Meg was bringing to the picnic. Katie preferred

“Bar-B-Q.” Garvey was modulated through potato salad.

There were “reasons.” Put two “reasons” together, they make

A “foot.” This, according to Jack’s brother’s thesis, entitled,

Warren’s Wonderful World of Made-Up Facts. Which aren’t

Necessarily untrue – thanks Different Dave, for pointing that out.

Tulley is sorry to hear of your arms and your legs. Nothing

Is impossible. Last Bob saw, Jeffrey was starring in a movie

CalledBoy of the Incongruous Response, or was that pertinent

Only to Judy’s online community? Liz was consoling the girl

The tennis team dubbed “Ice Boobs.” What about The Flash?

What of Warm Roderick? All Mrs. Kent Choate wanted

Was a word in the cube of the Poor Man’s Bill Sandman. All Tim

Wanted were more curls. Saul told himself he could tolerate

the moniker “Fat Taco,” so long as no one said it to his brother.

Rann was Israeli, besides. It wasn’t a hoax. The field had not

Released anything. This, with apologies to Angela, who was

starstruck. Peter’s friends did and did not resemble characters

On sitcoms. They were and were not scattered about the country.

None were flyover people, nor were they reincarnations, nor stories

With beginnings, muddles, and James, who was strangely present,

Emma or not, and accepted in that time and place. Vanessa.

They never began at his Wainwrights. They were Allison, clever

As a promo. Kelly as Dana. Her father, Talbot, the lost pastor.

Existed Marsha, photographer of record, divorcee, the one

The raft guide crooned toward. Doris was alive in the North.

She called herself “Da” when speaking with herself. Lucy’s pet

Answered to “Tater Tots.” They bonded over mutual recognition

Of impermanence. And Curt Evers was a basketball hero, easily

From Appalachia, usually excited. He was a fireball. Becky

Keyed piano well. Melinda walked in the image of her mother,

Mamie Faye, who carried a bundle of favorite things, known as
memories.

And Scott was how Bonnie’s Sue met a molecular Gary, and Anne

That Miss Dot was referred into the company of Edmund Gadaire

Who was Darrell George and, for the most part, Ronald Worthington.

Anjali Khosla Mullany

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 08:00:00 -0500

The Duck or Marjorie

When Marjorie had a duck, it slept in Marjorie’s shower stall. Marjorie felt bad about this because she assumed that the duck would prefer to sleep in or near a pond, or at least a kiddie pool, or even a bathtub, but those options weren’t available.

The duck’s flat, stone-hard beak was the same vaguely variated color as blacktop. After a morning spent pecking at cracked corn or forcing bits of Wonderbread down its throat, and after an afternoon spent frantically flapping the perimeter of the tiled room, squawking desperately as it searched for a way out, the duck felt tired or even, sometimes, exhausted, and so it would push the shower curtain aside with its beak and step into the stall. Then the duck would lift and lower its webbed orange feet three or four times, as though it were in a marching band. The duck would bend its legs beneath its body and rest itself on the hairy drain. If Marjorie had recently showered, the floor of the stall would be cold and puddly, which was the way the duck liked. The duck would turn its chin and bury the tip of its beak in the feathers on its shoulder. The duck would lower its eyelids. When the duck slept, air moved with great force through the nostrils in its beak and caused the duck’s short white feathers to flutter and make a rustling sound. As the night wore on, the duck’s slumber deepened and its dreams grew vivid with desire. However, the duck never told anyone what it dreamed about. As the duck’s dreams grew heavier, so did its breathing, so that the duck’s entire body would begin to shudder and the duck’s respiration made a vibrate, rushy noise.

In her bedroom, Marjorie often lay awake, at various hours of the day and night, and listened to the duck’s noises. She thought that the duck’s slumbering breaths were like snores, that its squawks were not quacks. It seemed to Marjorie that the duck was unfortunately unaware of its duckness and therefore did not know how to achieve its duckness. She thought that it would be good to take the duck, with a long string tied around its neck, to the park, where there was a little lake with geese in it. There the duck could observe and therefore learn its waterfowlness, if not specifically its duckness. Or perhaps there was another park with a different lake or pond, one dedicated exclusively to ducks, or at least one that was inclusive of all the various water-loving species. Marjorie thought that she would like to teach the duck its duckness. The only problem was that Marjorie considered it very difficult to leave the house, what with the duck and all.

In the mornings, the duck and Marjorie woke up. Marjorie would open the bathroom door very carefully, so that the duck could not get out. The duck usually tried to escape over Marjorie’s foot, but Marjorie always picked it up in time, and cuddled it. The duck huffed and squirmed when Marjorie rubbed her cheek against the duck’s head feathers and fingered its underside. Marjorie did not know the duck’s gender even though she had on many occasions tried to check. With ducks, it is very hard to tell, because they are so flat down there. Marjorie would set the duck on the ground and retrieve a bag of Wonderbread from the bathroom shelf. She would remove a slice of bread from the bag and tear it into tiny pieces and throw the pieces at the duck. The duck lunged at the pieces as they bounced off its face and hit the floor. It swallowed them whole, its little neck convulsing as it raised its beak and forced the bread down to its stomach. Marjorie would refill the duck’s bowl with water, and then she would use a big wad of toilet paper to pick the duck’s feces off the floor and throw them into the latrine. As she did so, Marjorie would from time to time glance at her duck and sometimes she thought that their eyes met. When Marjorie looked at her duck, she hoped that at least eating made her duck happy. She thought about how much she loved her duck. When the duck looked at Marjorie, it thought of nothing at all.

Francesca Chabrier

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 07:00:00 -0500

Jigsaw

Although Fra’s story does not appear in this online version, it is so great that we hope you will purchase a print copy of Seeing Other People so you too can read this sad and tender poem.

Or contact me and I will contact Ms. Chabrier for you!

Seth Landman

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 06:00:00 -0500

Problems of Perspective

We should see all the problems of perspective. Mathematicians who are at the junction of our two distinct lines. Because parallel means you get to touch, you get to move constantly towards or away. We should see the point or, if the boundaries of our bodies propose otherwise, we should see ourselves, at least. O painter! How do I say what I mean? We are small in the small house, unable to see one another in the small pupils of our eyes. I want to see the verve in your crystal humor. You walk into the room and I forget everyone else. We should see clearly in case the middle falls out of the diagrams of one another we hold in the diminishing openings of our hearts. See, there is a third diagram of a single heart containing us both. The exclusive one, two, three. The better to understand you with. The way we tend and converge. Let me be a tower a little farther within or an unremarkable highway you commit to memory. I can see so much from here between two mirrors placed opposite to each other. I say we should see the loadstone. We are like it floating in the atmosphere.