Rotating Tables: 

 Memories of my father.
  By David Von Behren
 
                                          -for larry
 

My earliest recollections of childhood, when I was no taller than the size of a Goodyear tire, was sitting with my dad in our living room on our davenport sofa and watching the Packers football game.  But back then football wasn't about first and tens and touchdowns as much as it was
watchin' my dad call my mom doggie names.

       "C'mere and bring me another one, bitch!"

       "Beeeeeiiitch."  The word would often giggle out of my mouth with an osh kosh b'gosh smile tattoed on my lips as my mom would again bring my dad another one.  Sometimes my dad would shake it up first and then tell me to open it up and all of the yellow fizz that smells like rotten fish would jump out at me like a jack in- the- box.  And I would laugh.
     And I remember that a constant sporting event in our house was my dad yellin' at the no good bitch for her cookin and one time my dad got so p.o.'d at her entree that he back slapped her right in front of me, only he called it a bitch slap and told me that that's how you gotta break a bitch in and my face shook north and south and I kept my eyelashes from praying to show him that I knew what he was tryin to tell me.
       Two weeks after I learned how to bitch slap and I was as tall as my father's hairy belly button, I told my mom that I was the man of the house now since dad was always workin' late.  I was up in my room playin' with my tinker toys when the doorbell rang and I ran downstairs yellin 'I got it' all the way thinkin it might be the old man and hopin that he might teach me more about life like about sports or bithes or toughness.
    The man who hid behind our front door was not my dad but a strange man dressed in a gray suit and a red clip on tie.  He had hair growing on his hands,a golden tooth, and breath that smelled like a old candy cane left over from Christmas time. I asked him 'hell do you want'  just before my mom saw me and told me to go upstairs and put the soap in mouth again. But when I went to the bathroom upstairs I heard my mom cryin'; sobbing. Almost like the way she cried when my baby sister died when she was still inside of mom and dad blamed her for being an incompetent bitch-cryin.  I snuck downstairs and heard the weird man tell  my mom to please go over to his house and tell  her husband to quit gettin' it on with his wife.  My mom just rained tears. After the man left I asked my mom why she was cryin and what gettin it on meant and all she told me was , "Honey, not now." as
she hurled her clothes into her suitcase.  At first I thought the clothes were for dad, but later daddy said that the bitch had done gone and left his sorry ass and I asked him if he was sad and if he would cry and he did not answer back or even look at me.

        And when I was about 15 and my dad was in his mid-50's, although he looked a good 20 years older from his ominous 2 Kool pack a day smoking vice, I recall the two of us 'buddies' on a fishin' trip.  We would rent one of those boats that people use to catch the 'big ass bass you see on
the covers of magazines'.  My dad would always have two fishin poles hopin' that he would catch twice as much since he was impatient.

        The big joke that all of dad's friends would always tell me  is that the only thing dad would ever catch from goin' fishin would be a hangover, since he drank so much beer while in the boat.  We'd sit often for hours without a bite, dad would be drowning 'em back left and right and eventually nature would catch up with him and he would have to pee over the side of the boat into the water and one day, during his urinary half-rainbow, one of his poles, and then the other, got a nibble first and then a bite and dad would curse God for his inopportune luck and then he would curse the 'bitch' for leaving him all the while he was endeavoring to aptly pull the fish in with his pants half off and his dick hangin out and almost got it caught in his zipper and I would laugh and he told me that I was a failure of a son.  A fuckin' failure.  And I was quiet.

        Last time I saw the ol'man was on Thanksgiving  at my Aunt's house on my dad's side three years ago. Before that I had sent him an invitation to my graduation, first, and then to my wedding. Both of which he sent me a check for twenty dollars (even though the wedding reception had an open bar-he would have loved that!). He hadn't worked for five years and before that he held low key janitorial positions at my old high school.

        I drove to his trailer apartment with my wife Meredith to pick him up.  Meredith worked as a nurse, was Mormon, and looked a great deal like my own mother-my dad's first wife. I'm pretty sure that she was a virgin before we got married, though we never talked about it.

        Dad's apartment was litered with evaporated 40's and void lottery tickets, mostly scratch offs.  The walls and curtains were stained with black ash from  all the years of constantly lighting up. The only light that was imminent in the room was the blue television screen which had the Thanksgiving football game blaring on it.  The ol' man himself slightly resembled an emaciated stick figure.  The kind of stick figures that kindergartens draw.  His face was the color of asprin.

        After we said Grace at the diiner table Dad inadvertantly said 'shit'  and then crossed himself Catholic style.At least he thought he was good with God.  He then had a little to much white wine and passed out in my aunt's domestically auspicious pumpkin pie.  The family has grown
accustomed to his drinking.  In the last decade dad has had three pancreatic flare-ups.  It was almost as if God Himself was telling dad to stop hitting the bottle so hard.  But normally, Dad didn't give a fuck about what God thought, now did he?

        I took dad home by myself.  The late autumn weather was sullen and the night was pending.  I asked dad what he thought about Meredith and if he was proud of me.  He remained silent.  He then started bitchin about how dirty and smelly  my own mom was.  I wanted him to stop.  I really did
but it was so rare that I got to hear my dad's own voice that I let him continue to curse and grouse as I drove him home and when I arrived  at his trailer I wanted to hold my middle finger up to him and tell him to screw off but something inside of me could not accumulate the audacity to do so.  So I said bye and drove off without shaking his hand or giving him a hug or even seeing if he made it back into his apartment okay.

        And as I drove off I thought about that stick man who I call dad and how it  didn't really matter because I didn't know who he was anyway.  Then I thought about my wife, Meredith, and how I was thankful for her. And how tonight, I would make love to her and fuck her and feel her and pound out all of my pent up frustrations into her and take solace in her embrace and kiss the back of her ears and maybe, just maybe, treat her the way a bitch was meant to be treated.
 

 
 
                        Red Dress
                                By Michelle Williams

Everyone knew to avoid the white house on the right corner.  That's where
the lady in the red dress lived.  Every night after five she was out
walking up and down the street in her red sequin prom-like dress.  We
hoped that is wasn't from her prom since she was around 70. Her name was
Scarlet.   She walked up and down mumbling and cursing at passing
motorists.

It was said that once when a car honked at her that she
flashed them as they drove by.  On Halloween, the only time that anyone
every saw Scarlet's husband, he sat on the porch smiling and passing out
candy since he knew no one would knock at the door.  She just started
scowling  at the children out of her upstairs bay window.  The very next
night she was back out in full costume, including matching heels and
make-up.

For years she walked up and down the street uttering some
language known only to her and giving passer-bys "the finger".  Then
around the tenth year of this ritual, on Halloween a moving van appeared
in the drive way to their house.  Her husband still went on with the
passing out of candy, and she still scowled out the window.  The next day,
however, the moving van was gone, and so were they. All that was left was
a few red sequins on the front walk.
 
 

SUMMER DAYS
By Kristopher Classen

There were no children in old Russell Field that day.  As I drove by it
struck me.  We used to climb on our bikes every Saturday afternoon and
every lazy summer day; we used to pack up our baseballs and our bats and
our gloves and our Official Replica Chicago Cubs jerseys and hats, and we
would ride to Russell Field.  We would all warm up:  the Richards brothers
played catch; I would hit grounders to Ryan, who would toss the ball to
Travis Cullin at first base; little Billy Thorpe would run a lap around
the bases, sliding headfirst into home plate every time.

When we were all ready, we would split ourselves up into teams.  We would
spend the whole day there, passing the time with balls and strikes and
arguments that were always resolved by a do-over.  We would play all day;
our only obligation was to be home in time for supper.  We didn't care
what was on TV or in the paper; we didn't worry about school or work or
family or the neighbors:  we worried about whether or not we could fit in six innings before supper. But we eventually went to high school and then
to college, and we began to forget the games without even realizing we
had.  And i hadn't thought of the field until I saw it that day so empty,
and for the first time I missed it.
 
PENS
By Scott Schulman

My Dad picked up his pen. The ink was dry. He put in a pile. He picked up
another, it was also dry. He put it in the pile. The next pen was fine. He put
it in a new pile. The following pen he just looked at, like he was not what he
wanted to do with it. He tested it, but it was dry. It was placed in a new
pile. The next one was dry, but also went into this pile. He continued on with
this ceremony. He picked up one pile and put them back in his brief case. He
called me into the room, and gave me a pile of ugly pens. He said I could have
them. I thanked him, and went on my way. Then he announced he had to run an
errand.

He returned from his errand after about an hour. We asked him where he was, he
said he was buying refills for his pens. We all laughed at him. Then he sat
down with his pen catalog. He was circling the item numbers of pens he was
interested in buying. The pen he was using was one of his pens for which he
had just bought a refill.

Later that night we were filling out my financial aid forms. All of a sudden,
the pen he was using ran out of ink. He muttered some expletives about it
costing $100. I gave him my pen and told him it only cost $1 and worked just
fine.

The next morning, he was late to work. He was tearing apart the kitchen
looking for the $100 pen from the previous night. He claimed he wanted to buy a
refill for it after work that night.

Goose Girl
By Kathleen Schumacher

Apparently it didn't take much to entertain my eccentric neighbor. Her taste in clothing
was no match for the cement goose she lovingly dressed. While she schlepped around
in flowered mumu's and high-top Nike's, the goose (sometimes a gander) appeared in
tuxedoes, Chicago Cub uniforms and leather motorcycle jackets.
 
    Co-workers would ask me, "Hey, don't you live by 'goose-girl? What's with her?"
How many times had I asked myself that very same question?
 
    Spring brought a bunny costume, July, Lady Liberty, and October a fat, orange pumpkin.
Slowly, I began looking forward to each costume change. Would Santa emerge as a
short-legged, beaked and bearded fowl? I'll never know. The Allied Van Lines appeared
one morning, packed up "goose girl" and headed south. I should have known. They all
migrate eventually.
 

SWEATERS
By Jennifer Zwass

My favorite part of the entire year is that morning when I
awake, look out the window, and see the first tiny snowflakes falling
from the sky.  Everyone has that one special "thing" that they love--that
one "thing" that they can never have enough of.  For me, that one special
"thing" is sweaters.  I have every kind of sweater--from heavy wool ones
to lightweight ones.  I have long ones, short ones, thick ones, and thin
ones.  I have all colors from light pink to dark green and all sizes from
very big to very small.  During the summer, I wear my bright lightweight
sweaters but when I see that first snowfall, I know that the wool ones
need to be sent to me from home.  The sweaters that I wear correspond
with my mood.  If i'm in a happy mood, I might wear one of my bright
colored patterned swaeters.  If i'm in a sad mood, I might wear one of my
dark colored plain swaeters.  I have over 40 sweaters in all, but every
season at least two or three new ones seem to always sneak their way into
my closet.  And the funny part is that even if I don't wear them all, a
part of me won't let myself get rid of them--they just mount up higher
and higher with every new season and every fisrt snowfall.
 

Principal
By Sarah O'Brien

        Dr. Bell tried so hard to get the students to like him.  Aside
from running a good school, Reedy Ridge High, his sole desire was to gain
the respect of the pupils.  He could remember when he was in high school.
He had looked up to his principal, Mr. Stone, even though the latter was
in a position of authority.  Of course, he had attended a strict Catholic
institution but shouldn't matter; even public school kids could look to a
principal as a role model.
        Because Dr. Bell was not married, he threw his soul into his work,
his students.  He had never had much luck with women or friends, so he
chose to study hard and work long.  Now all he had were his aging parents
and his school.
        He worked so hard to make the kids happy.  He stayed late every
night, dismissing his secretary, Mrs. Baxter, to drudge through
piles of paperwork.  He made sure the food was at least edible and the
bathrooms clean.  Some days, Dr. Bell would walk through the halls during
the hectic class changes.  He tried to talk to the kids or even the
teachers but usually he was ignored.  He figured it was because they were
so stressed and busy with their intriguing schoolwork.  That is what he
thought until one day when he was touring the crowded halls.  Summoning
his courage, he tapped a boy on the shoulder, intending to ask about he
quality of the boy's day.  the boy turned around and smiled.  dr. bell was
elated to have the boy's happy attention.  then the boy deliberately put
out one foot.  He chuckled when the lonely principall fell tothe floor.
The boy walked on.  No one stopped to help the disillusioned man to his
feet.
 
Summerplays Productions
By Cristi Booth

There is a fairy tale world in my basement full of old Gunny Sax dresses
and cardboard trees. It began when I was 9, and my mom re-wrote Cinderella
and recruited my friends to act.

She poured over our Commodore 64 and flew to Goodwill for dreses.

Then next year we sat in the bathroom painting our faces to be mimes. The
parents lauged with great delight and marveled how Jane could still light
up as a child while working her spell on us. The hours spent in summer of
lainess were over.

Soon I began writing with her. The plays were 2 hours long, the list of
characters complex, the basement transformed with leather boots, green
hats and flowing white plumes.

And then rehearsal full of laughter at how our version of Sleeping Beauty
was dreaming of the wrong prince or how a fairy longed to go to war.

Always a new page of rewrites, even in the last week, the constant
reminder to memorize our lines. We would assemble and walk around on our
"stage" until things looked just right. "Don't say okay," she would
admonish us. "It wasn't a word yet."

And then one day we grew too old--I got a job, my friends said they were
too mature and the word "busy" stabbed a knife into the heart of my mom,
and Sleeping Beauty woke up.
 
Night Driving
By Bryan Ward

I began driving very late at night. The vehicle glided through the fog, kicking up moisture in its wake. The interstate was lonely.

Slowly, I began to notice peculiar things. There were an alarming number of deer corpses scattered about the highway. I weaved through the animal remnants and moved on. I became convinced that ghost cars were following me. Periodically, flashes of light from highway reflectors appeared. I was about to hit opposing vehicles, but I drove on.

The rains came slowly at first.  Without realizing it, I had become very tired and began to drift off. When I finally arrived, I was asleep.
 

                        TAKING THE CHRYSLER OUT
                    By Andrew Robertson
 

The long brown car noisily crossed the narrow country bridge.  The engine
growled merrily as the tires gripped the pavement on the far side of the
narrow stream, and it lurched forward as Colin pressed the accelerator
further.  He glanced at the speedometer disinterestedly.  It quivered at
seventy five as the old Chrysler rounded the first curve with ease.  "That
was nothing," Jason mocked.  "Me and dad did the top of the hill goin'
eighty." Colin rolled his eyes as if to say; "Oh, I'm really impressed,"
and pressed the gas to the floor.  The engine groaned as it made its way
to the top.  Colin viewed the speedometer intently now.  Seventy nine...
Eighty...  The numbers stopped there, but the needle kept moving.  Jason
laughed as he finished the last of the Jim Beam.  Colin pressed harder
into the gas pedal, but of course it didn't move.  The final turn
approached, a sharp left.  Suddenly without the burdens of ascending an
incline, the Chrysler gave a deafening roar.  Colin knew that he was going
too fast to make the turn and pressed the brakes vigorously.  The tires
screeched; the chassis groaned; and the car descended into a spin.  Jason
sat in silence.  Colin ground his foot into the pedal, grinding his teeth
with even more conviction.  Steering frantically, he labored to regain
control.  The car skidded to a stop, thirty feet away, leaving a complex
maze of intertwined tire tracks.  Jason sat silently.  Colin gazed at the
speedometer.  Zero...  Slowly, he turned his eyes toward Jason, who still
held the empty bottle in his hands.  Jason carefully laid his head back
into the head rest and dropped the bottle to the floorboards.  "I think we
did it Colin." "Yeah, I think we really did it," Colin slurred back.
Jason fell asleep.

 
Mosh Heart
By Vanessa Hall

It was an empty day.  Grey sky sucked out of night and spat into a
Monday.  Heart hollow and ears ringing full of my mother's grating
derision, I wrenched myself out of the house.  Being a proudly
disaffected youth and capital "p" Poet, I meandered to the mall-a
journey financed with pocket lint change.  Once embraced by hot
pretzel-plastic and cappuccino-commerce scents of my home away from
home, I was soothed.

I wanted to do a little voyeuristic research; unable to cope or
decipher or refine my own scattered hurts, I thieve the lives of
others.  Painting with the cheap pastels of strangers' emotion is
safe, sanitary-as synthetic and public as any mannequin.  An irritable
smoking woman in the parking lot re-applies her carmine lipstick and
slaps her six-year-old on its snotty cheek.  The old woman in Hallmark
wipes a sentiment-gleam tear from her washed-out eye and blindly sends
a shelf of baby-pouted figurines to a shattered death.  And I scribble
it all down.  For my Art (capital "a"), I blithely borrow misery from
Eddie Bauer-fresh passersby.
 
Swathed in my own aching limbs and drowning in coffee, I perched on a
sticky mall bench.  Unfeeling and unblinking, I was too exhausted from
my howling tirade with Mama to do my peeping T.S. Eliot routine any
justice.  I was a caffinated fetal knob of numbness and I saw people
no more than they saw me.  On the verge of my catatonic mood and from
behind the slimy partition at my spine, I felt a shuddering sigh.  So
I scrabbled around (hey-anybody's pain but mine) and came
face-to-pierced-ear with teen angst incarnate.  Oh, here was the
posterboy for the rinse-and-repeat-as-needed phrase.  The bubble of
scorn I feel when confronted with my own (shiver) generation of
acne-ridden flotsam rose in my throat.  My eyebrows arched and my
heart scoffed, "Useless.  A non-poetic and completely pointless
teenage wannabe-life-crisis."  Seventeen self-help column subject
matter at best.

The undefinable juvenile ignored me effortlessly, raking thin hands
through nondescript locks and pressing those same palms to a pale
face.  He stared at scuffed sneakers and examined threadbare denim,
completely oblivious to my waning aesthetic interest.  Full chest
sighs resonated from his spindly ribs and bitten-to-blood nails.
Cracking chapped lips, he muttered "Not worth it," and I must admit I
was intrigued.  Shrouded by the calla lily planter at his back, I
waited with him.  Together and alone, we anticipated what he was
longing/fearing and what I was thirsting for.  After ten minutes of
gored, bleeding time, I saw his reason and nearly spilt my bitterbean
brew.  Oh I knew it.  How very promperfect.  Her.  Not just a girl but
a whole legion of backseat ingenues and Planned Parenthood outcasts in
two distressed eyes.

She sat across from my gray boy.  The tense air snapped and strained.
Heedless pen, paper, plastic cup of joe, I jammed my fist into my
mouth and hunkered down into my potting soil shield.  I ached with
curiosity and crimped tiptoe muscles.  My apathy lay discarded and
curled upon the tastefully tiled floor.

Her frosted pink mouth parted (I could smell bubble gum breath from
where I stood) and bruised words poured out.
"How why did you let us do this?  I don't, I just, what did you want?
Do you want this?  Do you want me to cry about this?"
His wounds salted and pride scratched, the boy stabbed back.  "I've
had enough of your poison tears.  And I don't wanna have anything to
do with this.   It's nothing.  It's lies."

Shaken out of her coolly wronged-girlfriend shell, my girl clenched
azure-nailpolished fists and hissed Teen Spirit reproaches.  Curses
and accusations were flung out of her boy's braced teeth.  Ugly idiocy
and rough immaturity fused in their speech; they unknowingly became
one voice.  Filthy and screaming.  Pursued and cornered.  Here was
Euripides by the GAP, echoing with a Greek chorus of
"shutupitdoesn'tmatterIhateyou."

Medea was weighing infanticide against adoption
(what would the royal parents say?) and Jason was
worried about how this would affect his garage band.  Unable to hurl
epigrams or beg the gods, my brethren simply beat each other senseless
with devoid confusion.

Reality's bile had flooded my detached and Lysol-ed heart.  My
lust-crossed lovers were torching a high school career's worth of
self-obsessed snivel-poetry.  Hysterical and ready to get me to a
therapist, I embraced my lonely self, praying that they would heed
their own advice and shut up before I completely lost my literary mask.
Middle-aged women with complacency nestled in their crow's feet cast
disgusted glances at my soul saving, sullied, and screaming children.
The puppy-ish security guard uneasily shifted his weight from one
shiny boot to another.  It had to be broken.  This prenatal
pandemonium had to end.  I mashed shiny emerald leaves to my burning
face, waiting for manna from mall-heaven.

The maiden-no-more suddenly ceased her rasping slurs and quelled
nauseated tears.  Wiping smeary eyes on little pink sweatshirt, she
smoothed out a platitude for the pregnant ages-"But I love you."
A cop-out never sounded so sweet.  I hope to never again witness a
man-child wrench his mouth shut, sob into filthy flannel, become his
own angel.