Coming Clean

 

                                    I.

 

The grandmother, too old for this at fifty-six,

was chopping strands of rhubarb. Her son-

in-law was thirty-eight; she had been his baby-

sitter once, sorta on a high for having won a run-

off for her high school’s homecoming queen,

a tradition some said even then was on the outs.

 

She poked the steaming of her brussels sprouts

and turned the pork chops in the oven just a

touch—au gratin should retain the semblance

of cheese while melting into meat, at least as

Grandma Désirée had taught her, making sure to

whistle while you work, whisper not too much.

 

The paring knife was awkward in her clutch—

too small for ripened rhubarb that resisted

being the thing to sour afterthought—a garnish

to the ice cream for desert, assuming they

would want to stay and help with any clean-

up—what little to be done these geriatric days.

 

She thought about her daughter’s parting ways

at age eighteen—not so very long ago, con-

sidering—and how on earth a kid would help

her cause. ‘You’d drown puppies if you could!’

she’d screamed at her one time, mother slam-

ming doors on visions far away and not-so-dear.

 

The table had been set for upwards of a year—

the day her daughter called to say, ‘I’m pregnant’,

and who the likely father was; to say shit hit

the fan was not at all the case—when babies go

away, we’d love to beg them back, to bake a coffee

cake—with rhubarb, cream and fixings for a fix.

 

                                    II.

 

She wavered whether wine be added to the mix,

among the many bottles yet unbroken from the

cellar rack her husband made a million fights

ago. A mental flip of coin and thus, I think so, al-

though she hoped it wouldn’t come to anyone’s at-

tention—infant still umbilical at feeding time.

 

The doorbell dusted off its god-forsaken chime,

a braying of an artificial lamb so seldom used

since everything retreated to the corridors on-

line, the safety of the web—as long as every-

one stays spider to the haplessness of flies. Yet

now was not the time to think of this—now….

 

She couldn’t lift her feet—couldn’t fathom how

to move them from their sudden freeze. Of

course her daughter had to know the secret

key, underneath the empty urn for years—may-

be rusted to unusability, as symbols lose their

shine. ‘Come on in!’ she tossed her voice instead.

 

The urn perhaps assumed someone was dead,

scraping oh so silently to honor the bereaved—

surely there’d be tears, the unknown oceans

that decide to trickle out in stinginess, as if we’d

waste their worth the way we do with every-

thing (—the urn’s been watching, taking notes).

 

She wracked her brain for recent anecdotes—

any way to break the ice, from kitchen floor to

opening the door to awkward hugs to certain

shrugs to answer How’s it goin’? as if that ‘it’ had

all of Dante’s rings in mind. All or nothing ac-

cording to the script, too old for this at fifty-six.

 

                                    III.

 

The couple stood a moment waiting for a cue,

an invitation in, a gesture reassuring water-

under-bridge or off a duck’s back, if you will;

the lack of baby in their arms was cause to get

the first words out: ‘Where’s the little—’ met

with thumbs—she’s sleeping in the car, at last…

 

She was colicky, this kid, but kinda growing fast,

proof the pudding hadn’t spoiled, FAS or other-

wise. This was not a joke per se, and no one

laughed as such; but now the husband blushed,

having heard the specter stories and likely—

who could tell?—a willing shadow in the wings.

 

The choice to sit outside in case the baby sings

was logical, if strained—the neighborhood

had known them as a mystery, never once ap-

pearing three-of-them as one, always arguing

in muted breath when school or work was done,

often bound in bedrooms to bugger off alone.

 

She wanted none of that today—on the phone

for this soirée she said exactly that: ‘I don’t

want—’ and daughter finishing the thought,

mumbling something like a worry-not, an un-

convincing passing-off, like someone else

was listening in—a 1950’s switchboard gal…

 

The conversation stalled. A chirping cardinal

filled the void—with spring-like noise, at very

least, to fortify its nest, puff its scarlet chest,

cover for the silent rest, as often is the case—

nature knows a decoy after trial-and-error,

come-what-may, picking usables from residue.

 

                                    IV.

 

She asked to see the baby—a fitting thing to do,

if corners of her smile could not deflect the

trembles in her eyes, bloodshot for as long as

memories were blue; ‘I’ll be quiet as—’ the

mouse she’d be when dad had been a rat. But

enough of that—a household needs a 2^nd chance.

 

The husband stayed away, sensing circumstance

would need to be internal—generations at a

pass. And so the mother and grandmother tip-

toed a line to see creation under glass, a snow-

globed angel strapped within a safety seat—

exquisite, if the world would polaroid so well…

 

She felt the flood before the first drops fell—

the dearth of which the childless wife of brave

Macbeth would end her life: even killers got-

ta cry sometimes, in somnolent disguise. ‘Mom,

you know you—’ All too well she knew. The mom-

ent of conception should take no one by surprise.

 

The baby stirred, but not enough to open eyes,

perhaps a premonition that a grandma’s face

should beam delight without the fright of mas-

cara running now amok—get a grip, bite your lip,

anything beyond the steady drip of moonshine

in dark, generations at an everclear impasse...

 

She sprinted toward the house, across the grass

and through the open door—as if the pork chops

were on fire—or rhubarb chunks had lodged in son-

ny’s throat—or neighbors had convened to call

the cops—or none of this was happening at fifty-

six, far too old for learning how to lie to life anew.

 

Daniel Martin Vold Lamken (2021)

 

 

Will and Testament

 

“Now is the winter of our discontent”--the immortal launch to Richard III in the imagination of one William Shakespeare. I’d sell my birthright for the chance to study that play again with you and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern at good ol’ Wittenberg U. Remember that seminar, Horatio? We debated for hours how the hostile hunchback held so much allure in his almost win of the War of Roses. History--or was it literature?--swept him away like a rose of May who didn’t have a chance to see the summer.

 

My truest friend, I write to you in early April, shivering through a spring snowfall. Like the cemetery buds around me, I’m uncertain what to do. ‘To bloom or not to bloom,’ I can hear you tease--well, it’s rather like that, even on the other side. I happen to be on this side, too; for one reason or another, my voice hasn’t passed away.

 

Neither has Ophelia’s. God, I wish I’d been better, listened, learned. You were there, Horatio--the lone survivor--when she said, “we know what we are, but know not what we may be.” In complete lucidity. I must own a portion of her downfall and also rise to her actual orisons. As yet, inward mope I tend to be, I haven’t sought her out. But I shall. This undiscovered country is open to discovery, though not if one refuses to uncoil.

 

I was always known for words, words, words. Remember my gem: “If it be now, ‘tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come--the readiness is all.” Ahh, Horatio, why didn’t you stop me in my stride? What ‘readiness’ was I referring to, eh? My father--or his ghost, for goodness sake--found me “apt”. Good. I’ll take that into my next aptitude exam and pass it to my chances of promotion!

 

To you I offered this final word: “silence”. Forgive me for its implication of the ‘silent treatment’, for which, ironically, I cannot seem to shake. On the other hand, I wonder if I meant that word to usher in a peace like that of Walden, Eastertide, audience to those who sing against being shouted out. That is Ophelia again, and remembrance we tend to forget.

 

So, ‘silence’ is well and good--I won’t retract that final word. Yet as I shuffled off my mortal coil, I heard Fortinbras in forceful grace. “Go,” he said, as equal invitation and command. Go further, farther, forward, back, in time and space and stuff we haven’t scienced yet. I offer you, Horatio, these stanzas in that vein:

 

            the rest is…

 

Go, go, Horatio,

more Roman than

a Dane, to hasten your philosophy

and tell this tale again,

to witness what cannot be seen

and feel and smell the loam

that we become.

 

Go, go, Horatio,

horizon to a sun,

the oxygen to feed the spark

of work that’s never

done, the law’s delay to coincide

with frozen conscience,

when it comes.

 

Go, go, Horatio,

golden in your faith

as a retriever to this shell-of-self

Great Dane, who will remain

a knave within a play of pardon

if you can, from grave

to kingdom come.

 

 

Keep orating, my friend, now that you are disembodied from the limits of the globe. Our paths will cross as occasions come and go, as divinity shapes our ends and recreates our fits and starts. Now is the spring of our immeasurable content, for literature classes and beyond.

 

Daniel Martin Vold Lamken (2021)

 

 

Rough & Tumble [part 1 of 2]

 

I.

 

            Floyd Gunnison is five-foot-ten, a hundred and sixty some pounds of Fritos and Mountain Dew. He has a winsome face—younger looking than his thirty-one years, notwithstanding a missing right incisor and a scar from mustache through that gap and curling toward the jawline. “Got that,” when asked, “by a bowstring. Still killed the buck for it, so… not all bad luck.”

            He uses that term a lot, as he grew up in Luck, Wisconsin. Now he lives in Siren, seventeen miles north, and works at a sports bar. Almost lost the job last week after tumbling, again, with a platter full of beer—this time drenching the feather-brushed felt of one of the pool tables. He hadn’t been drinking on the job, and rarely in his countless trips to the hospital had alcohol factored into a mishap.

            “Just accident-prone, I guess. But only with myself—haven’t dropped a baby yet!” Floyd thinks that’s a decent line on a second date.

            “How many babies are we talking about?” she’d say, sometimes with a raised eyebrow, sometimes stroking her bottom lip.

            Third dates or fourth tend not to happen. Hard to track his patterns: he’d have a rash from, say, poison oak and assure everyone it’s not contagious (because it’s not); or he’d take a clunk on the head from a bad throw to first base and act rather loopy for a week. Not his fault, but…

            And the rumors were real about the time he discharged a double barrel birdshot a la Dick Cheney, if fortunately missing his buddy’s face. To Floyd’s credit, he thereafter sold his guns, settling with the more deliberate bow and quiver.

 

            Of course, he didn’t have to hunt at all. Or fish—especially after that excruciating incident where he was trying to unhook a trophy largemouth bass and ended up catching his own tongue in the process.

            “How in the Sam Hell,” a customer asked, admiring the taxidermy mounted on the wall, “did that happen?”

            Floyd shrugged as if he hadn’t explained this a hundred times. “Was trying to get a good look at how rooted the spoon was in its gill.”

            “Nah,” said the waitress, “you were stealing a smooch, so proud of that catch!”
            “And the fish wasn’t offerin’ consent,” guessed the customer.

            “No,” deadpanned Floyd. “No kiss was in the works, but a lot of thrashing to get outta the boat, and I musta been gob smacked. Had to hold that twenty-pound monster to my face all the way to shore, and then—well, you don’t wanna know.”

            “Managed to keep your tongue intact, though,” teased the waitress.

            “Barely.”

 

            Trips to various clinics included three stomach bluffs before an actual appendectomy. Half a hundred bee stings when he pushed an armful of raked leaves into a compost heap. Lockjaw after sleeping wrong.

            When insurance still covered the costs, he’d occasionally have a psych exam to ‘leave no stone uncovered’ why he was so unlucky in the banana peel department. It just didn’t make sense that Floyd could cover his bets at a poker party, even come out the evening’s winner, then dislocate his shoulder in a reasonable celebration.

            His parents had no clue. Sure, Floyd tumbled down the stairs a few times—who hasn’t? Suffered about four bouts of mononucleosis, it seemed. Ready box of band-aids for an active boy. “Flesh wounds” his father chuckled in a Monty Python accent.

            But then again, they died in a rollover en route to dropping off Floyd for his freshman year at UW Eau Claire. The plastic lid on his McDonald’s shake wasn’t on tight, and from the back seat Floyd shrieked an ‘oh shit!’ when it spilled all over the floor, causing heads to turn and… only one survivor.

            He didn’t drive for a couple years after that—nearly unheard of for an able-bodied adult in northwest Wisconsin.

 

            Today is Siren’s annual waterskipping tournament out on Crooked Lake, where 40 yards of open water has been carved out of the ice and snowmobiles from four counties prove they can cross it. The revving is relentless, the squeals of acceleration higher as the day grows long and the starting line tightens toward the water. Floyd ‘Son of a Gun’ has been entered in by a buddy who twisted his arm—literally, as an arm wrestle bet Floyd lost. Waterskippers are required to wear life jackets and professional scuba divers are at hand (mostly to tether sunk snowmobiles to the backhoe that lifts them out of the water). The water is only ten-to-fifteen feet deep where they stage it, and no one has ever been harmed, excepting some egos.

            One of the women Floyd dated a few years ago sees him from the behind the spectator cordon. He’s being coached, evidently, by someone who’s willing to lend him his machine. “You don’t gotta do this, Floyd,” she calls out, knowing the crowd will titter and egg him on.

            Floyd pretends he doesn’t hear yet tilts his helmet eventually, managing a discernable wink through the visor. “Yeah, I don’t. But hey.”

            He has a little down time and decides to lay on the cushion long enough for four straddlers. The high pressure weather system has kept the sky cloudless and baby blue, mesmerizing. He doesn’t want to fall asleep, so he thinks about what put the hooks in him about this town.

            Siren. Like an ambulance howl. Almost twenty years ago it had been obliterated by a tornado, and while Floyd was only eleven then, his dad drove him up from Luck to lend whatever hand they could. Summer then, of course, so he wouldn’t see waterskippers until some years later, as the lure of this town grew. Actually smaller in population than Luck, which, at a thousand people, didn’t have enough happening. Yet rough and tumble Siren spoke somehow to his soul.

            The MC’s megaphone has been spewing info steadily to the crowd, but jostles him now: “Son of a Gun, you’re on deck.”

 

 [t.b.c., part II.]

Daniel Martin Vold Lamken (2021)

 

 

Rough & Tumble [part 2 of 2]

 

II.

            Reality seems to sink him further into the snowmobile that has become his cot. He hears again, in the same dulcet remonstration, “don’t gotta do this, Floyd”, followed by the MC’s echo—“Son of a Gun… Son of a Gun…”

            It will take some time to get used to an imposed nickname. From forever he’d been known as ‘Pink’, his parents in love with the Wish You Were Here album and Dad, in particular, singing to the baby Floyd, “and by the way, which one is Pink?” Then, around the start of second grade, Aerosmith came out with Nine Lives and the song that logged the most radio time: “Pink as the bing on your cherry, Pink, ’cause you are so very…” Needless to say, Floyd had to run with such a moniker, his propensity to blush being the capper.

            “You don’t gotta do this, Floyd,” he thinks he hears again, even as nothing really can go wrong. Waterskipping is faux danger, he’s determined—probably safer than maneuvering through a glade at high speed. A snowmobile is neither boat nor jet ski, but fast enough to use its tread the way that geese take off from water, paddling like crazy above their erstwhile float. Nothing to crash into, really, if the edges of ice could slow momentum and make the forty yards hard to cover. And if the mass of the machine succumbed to gravity, so what? The sinking would be relatively slow, the scuba dudes would jump in right away, the life vest designed to tilt the body backward, a little like Floyd’s position now, looking up to baby blue, mesmerizing....

 

            “Dude, you’re up,” the MC prodding with his megaphone, a tone between bemused and crowd-cackling amused. “Haven’t been drinking, have we?”

            Groggily but honest, Floyd affirms, “no sir. Just,… meditating. Mental imaging.”

            The MC decides this rationale is worth relaying. “Folks, we got ourselves here a meditator. Zen and the Art of Snowmobile Maintenance!” More of the crowd laughs than gets the allusion, a part of pageantry the MC is supposed to pull off.

            Clumsily, Floyd rolls to his position as a driver and reviews what he’s supposed to do. Fist pump the crowd, for one—that seems to forgive all other misgivings. Then rev up (oops—can’t do that without ignition) and adjust the helmet—just like ski jumpers as they’re perched way up there on a crossbeam. A second fist pump can’t hurt, swelling the support of those who know him as ‘Pink’—he hears smattering of such—or ‘Floyd’—a few more of them—or ‘Son of a Gun’, as the MC wants to hype. “Rev that bad boy up,” he hears the megaphone as a plea to get this done.

            “Will do,” he says under his breath, the condensation fogging up his visor. “Now or never” not only revs the bad boy up, but jerks it toward the water’s open arms.

 

            It’s hard to say a million things go through Floyd’s head—maybe more, as dendrites operate. Of course he wouldn’t hear the color commentary—“Pink’s outta his league”; “Jesus! does he have control?”; “straighter, Floyd, goddamit!”—nor could he adjust beyond the present tipping point. His grip of the throttle doesn’t release until the machine itself accelerates too aggresively for holding on. Just before the lane of open water, Floyd falls off the back and wanly watches the behemoth veer toward the crowd. His own momentum slides him to the drink and, despite the life jacket, under the side of ice opposite of where the snowmobile has decided, as it were, to go.

            No fight or flight within him, Floyd reviews his life. “Fitting, this. The ignominious end to the banana peel guy. No shake innocent enough, everything in place to be dismantled. A clown that makes the rodeo less safe. And now the scuba divers will risk their lives for me—magnet of mortality…”

            He claws the least dark ice and manages to minnow himself to the edge. He surfaces with a gasp of air and horror to see what the snowmobile has done. The scuba divers, in fact, are running in fins toward the melee; the MC must be one of the stricken, as his megaphone has gone mute against the general outcry. The distant engine scream continues to simulate a Texas chainsaw massacre. Floyd flaps his arms to get out, lend a hand, apologize.

            “You stay put,” he hears somebody whisper—one of the smoky altos he’d love to have known beyond a second date. He can’t see her, his eyes straining to take in the carnage the snowmobile—well, he—created. The water is uncannily cooperative, now that he can breathe. The life vest keeps him bobbing as a box seat viewer of this frozen scene from hell.

 

            He hears again, “you stay put, Floyd Gunnison.” Now the smell of menthols curls into his nose and a mitten strokes the scar above his jawline. The water has receded and, like any mirage, the accident has faded into white, then black, then nothing upon eyelids opening.

            He feels the cushion of the dormant machine. The MC’s getting impatient. “What’s it gonna be, there, Son of a Gun?”

            There’s logic here to be thought through. “I just saw what could have been,” he glistens to the alto.

            She laughs at that. “You saw what, exactly?”

            Blinking to wake up for real, he leans up on an elbow and with the other arm traces the line toward the crowd the snowmobile should avoid. “I just have to be damn sure not to steer it that way.”

            She imagines the unimaginable, but only for a couple seconds. The MC fills the gap with some verbal adverts and then proposes to the crowd (not Floyd) a countdown, compelling the lady to walk back behind the cordon. “Ten! Nine! Eight!” and she’s halfway there.

            The MC stops at five, seeing Floyd run from the machine and slide to her side a marriage proposal.

 

Daniel Martin Vold Lamken (2021)

MasterClass with The Chosen One

 

Cabaret dressingroom—devoid of people, if recently left with shallow jars of make-up, swabs and tissues, a tipped-over can of Diet Coke in its own, all-but-drunk, puddle. A note stuck on the mirror expresses in block letters: YOUR WELCOME, NOW GET OUT THERE & WIN! Reflected to the right of this note, the dressingroom door wedges open and a familiar pompadour pops in:

 

Too soon? (enter slo-mo like a battleship; grin at the intro of Kid Rock’s “Cold and Empty”; halt in the center as cabaret figures slither in real speed from all corners of the room)

 

I don’t have to be here, do I. (scan them, raise palms, thrust eyebrows, then wink an ‘Unbelievable!’) That’s right—you want me back. (where’s Camera 3?) Always keep ’em begging. What for?

 

—Kid Rock stops, as do the slithers—

 

More.

 

Now the walls split open like the Red Sea, as if Charlton Heston had raised his staff. A crowd cheers from the blinding spotlights that pull us to the stage and festooned lectern. The mic needs no adjusting, yet seems to love the power wiggle and half-a-dozen rasps of “Thank you, Thank you very much” to let the audience exalt.

 

You know, the great Hulk Hogan once told me—we were, I dunno, on some boat—and he drapes his arm around me and says, ‘Sir’—classy guy, the Hulk—‘you need the crowd… you NEED the crowd to cover up the cries of losers, let ’em save a little face.’ So true. Because by winning—

 

Cut to a tee-d up golf ball, swacked to the oohs of a cozier crowd. ‘MEET YOUR NEW INSTRUCTOR’ underscores the hugeness of the drive. Then right back to the cabaret stage:

 

—you make the losers feel you’ve graced them with your win. (swell like Mussollini to punctuate that point; turn shoulders before the cock of head; look with feigned surprise at the video montage that shows eternal rallies just like this—a house of mirrors rippling the message; listen in like one of the crowd): ‘It’s good to have a jester—a rake—and Rudy has been great from New York’s rubble to all these Sunday morning posers in the media.’

 

Close-up in a quiet office suite with nothing on the desk:

 

Be smarter than smart. Read the titles of things—that’s enough. ‘Enemy of the People’, I’ve heard, had terrible reviews from Norway—Norway, of all places! So I did those folks a favor and made that book a #1 best seller.

 

            Cut back to the note: YOUR WELCOME, NOW

 

Grab ‘em by the hand, those wanabees, and power shake to show who’s boss. You saw how Frenchy flinched and tried to hijack the headline.

 

            Macron dissolves on the cabaret montage; focus returns to the quiet suite:

 

I’d like to see him sweat the grip of Kim Jung Un (pull that letter from the drawer; muse as the montage swings to the DMZ; act surprised when Dennis Rodman dunks a basketball and hands it to the chubby chairman, declaring, “this dude’s dope, y’all.”) ‘Living proof, folks, worth repeating: “What the hell (swirl a hand to stir the cadence for the cabaret audience to chime in) have you got to lose?!”’

 

            Hand-held camera, strolling through a hushed and darkened corridor:

 

The best ideas (pre-nup pause and hover at the gold-star door) come from here—

 

Open to the opulence of gold-replacing-porcelain, glitterballing to the sound of disco muzak and discovering a cell phone balancing atop the roll of toilet paper. Within the characteristic light blue frame a message of ‘COVFEFE’ appears ambivalent to the index finger jabbing toward its ‘send’:

 

—and that’s the way to keep ’em coming: relevance in random streams. (complete the operation; kiss the faithful digit) And the world becomes your oyster, (eyeball the bucket of KFC half-empty and act wry) though I prefer the flyover cuisine.

 

The cockpit of a helicopter, lifting off a building roof, the camera feeling it has access to the controls:

 

And here’s a little secret: they really do let you fly (another wink? Nah—the pursed lip bop to a distant beat; time this to believe it): when you’re the chosen one.

 

Panning out a dusky sky, where oversized stars start to spackle into rows of 5, underwritten with endorsements from EIB, Rosanne, Hannity, Las Vegas Sands, scrolling Star Wars-style into oblivion. The montage at the cabaret returns, a Guilfoyle gearing up to say in unison:

 

‘The BEST / is YET / to COME!’ (thanks, Kim—now just me) You’re in this not for what your resumé suggests. That and a nickel will get you on the subway. Instead, you must adopt the instincts of a shark—move forward or you die. But here’s the hitch—

 

            back to the dressingroom, noiseless and devoid of slithering figures—

 

you’re nothing if you stop at this advice. It’s like date-night with your better half—

           

            turning to the mirror and speaking to its visage—

 

you gotta listen to the yappin’ if you plan on getting lucky. Afterwards, (pull the sharpie from your pocket, punctuate the note to show you’r not a moron)  you’ll know that luck has nothing to do with it.

           

Final image of the cabaret montage: the trophied bible clutched in front of St John’s Episcopal, Lafayette Square; the chorus of ‘Gaslighter’ rises to the smirk of self-awareness:

 

I’m the Chosen One, and this (press the goddam dentures to behave) is my Masterclass.

 

            Fade to white with little legalese to bug across the screen.

 

 Daniel Martin Vold Lamken (2021)

 

Recesses of the Resolute Desk

 

(a half-act play)

 

Morning, January 20^th. The boxlike stage is cloaked in darkness, illumined only by the razor-thin line of light from above, stage right. House lights are half-up to let the audience see the characters as they slouch in corners or lie flat upon the stage. No music, but

 

SHARPIE:  Shouldn’t we be hearing another round of ‘Hail to the Chief’?

 

TIC-TAC:  or blare-outs from Hannity… From what I gather, things are gonna change around here. Not that it would matter for my kind, travelling through the guts of anyone who pops us.

 

SCOTCH:  We’re all dispensable.

 

SHARPIE:  What d’ya mean be that, Scottie?

 

SCOTCH:  For the hundredth time, it’s ‘Scotch’! Can’t you—

 

SHARPIE:  —use one right now? Yeah. Make it a double.

 

SCOTCH (harrumphing):  What I meant, if you care to know, is that we all serve at the pleasure of the president. I’m a tape dispenser, you’re a marking tool…

 

TIC-TAC:  I’m a placebo…

 

SCOTCH:  And when our duty’s done, poof!—that’s likely it…, no curtain call.

 

SHARPIE:  Oh, I dunno. Got ink enough for another four years. And you won’t have to dispense as much tape for unruly red ties.

 

TIC-TAC:  And I?

 

SHARPIE:  How did you even get here? I think I remember you inside that collective coffin of a box—

 

TIC-TAC:  The ‘clown car’, we call it, and yes—I was next in line to go down the tubes when the orange fingers fumbled and I fell into this corner, fated, I guess, to wait out the future alone.

 

SCOTCH:  What are we, chopped liver?

 

TIC-TAC:  Maybe. A difference, perhaps, is that you guys had a role in this office—helped out the cause. I was just an on-looker. What does it feel like to be…

 

SHARPIE:  complicit? To further the course of a hurricane?

 

SCOTCH:  C’mon! There are countless pens that coulda been used.

 

SHARPIE:  Somehow I was the chosen one. Remember that cheat-sheet for a presser—“I WANT NO QUID PRO QUO”? Who do you think crafted that? In all caps for the cameras to see. Me! And who do you think wrote the note for the next guy comin’ in?

 

TIC-TAC:  You?

 

SHARPIE:  Me! Not that I remember what it said. I was a little fumed that day, if ya know what I mean.

 

SCOTCH:  No, not really. So where is the note—maybe we can have a sneak peek.

 

SHARPIE:  My guess is it’s that guy lying out flat. There’s nothing else left in this resolute cave.

 

NOTE (groaning):  Leave me alone. I was just about to go to sleep.

 

SCOTCH:  ‘Do not go gently into that good night’—we just want to see. Have a right to, for heaven’s sake.

 

NOTE:  Oh, I’m sure what Sharpie over there blotted on me has nothing to do with heaven.

 

SHARPIE:  What, am I incapable of moral high ground? I throw down my glove, Good Sir!

 

TIC-TAC:  Settle down, settle down. I’m sorry I brought it up. I guess the question ‘how do you feel’ covers either too little territory or too much.

 

SCOTCH:  What do you mean?

 

TIC-TAC:  I was asking reflectively—with the past in mind and whatever we had to do with that. But I asked in present tense: how we’re feeling now in real time. On our minds, though, are prospects to come in the near-future or further down the road… That’s too much territory, probably.

 

SHARPIE:  And too little?

 

TIC-TAC:  Hmm. Too little would be knee-jerk. A meme that gets folks to nod their heads, maybe press ‘like’ before scrolling on. Today’s news as yesterday’s, fast as the speed of light.

 

NOTE (snarkily):  Who elected you desk-drawer philosopher?

 

TIC-TAC:  You’ve heard why they call the place the oval office?

 

NOTE:  Can’t hide in the corners. Biased against the rectified.

 

TIC-TAC:  Yeah, that. But reminding its residents of a womb and the ‘ova’ they are, within.

 

SHARPIE:  ‘The Birth of a Nation’? I had heard that film premiered right here, President Wilson giving it an aryan thumbs up.

 

SCOTCH:  You heard that where?

 

SHARPIE:  Fox TV. They didn’t use ‘aryan’ to describe Wilson’s thumb, of course.

 

TIC-TAC:  One of many thumbprints on this oak that we inhabit.

 

SCOTCH:  I’m still interested in what you have to say, Note.

 

SHARPIE:  Maybe Note-made-outta-oak. The most organic of us all—no offense, Tic-Tac.

 

TIC-TAC:  None taken. I’m well aware I’m a chemical question mark. But I’ll second Scotch’s motion: what’s written on your underbelly, Note?

 

NOTE:  I don’t kiss and tell. The boss placed his sentiments face down for a reason, I suppose. From what I understand, the new guy’s moving in and then—who knows? I may find myself in the recycle bin.

 

SHARPIE:  Or tv screens. Framed in the Smithsonian for all to see.

 

SCOTCH:  Democracy. Or transparency? Not necessarily the same, I think we’ve come to realize.

 

Suddenly, the line of light above slides wider toward the center. The characters simultaneously freeze and shutter, anxious for the moment now and next. A large tube descends and the noise of a vacuum cleaner revs up, moving along the sides of the stage, carefully around NOTE and SCOTCH and SHARPIE; rising for a moment, the tube seems to recognize TIC-TAC in a corner, taking on a fetal position. The tube descends, swallows like a snake, rises again and disappears. The light diminishes to almost its original thinness.

 

 SHARPIE (uneasily):  Well, you know what they say—easy come, easy go. Godspeed, ovoid friend.

 

SCOTCH:  We’re all dispensable. It’s like a Beckett play.

 

NOTE:  ‘Krapp’s Last Tape’?

 

SCOTCH:  Now you’re just being obnoxious. Why doncha flip over and we can keep it all within these walls. I doubt that it’s salacious.

 

SHARPIE:  Or seditious. I certainly wouldn’t want to be a part of that!

 

NOTE:  Listen, we’ll all know soon enough. This afternoon, perhaps, and then curiosity can be appeased. ’Til then—

 

The line of light slides completely out, and the House Lights cut as well.

 

 

Daniel Martin Vold Lamken (2021)

 

Sapphire Within

 

Yeah, she mused when signing into church,

it lifts the lid of my mystery, yet

isn’t that a little due by now, depending…

 

The protocol had been in place since spring,

off for summer months then on again

for autumn during this endless quarantine,

and through the yuletide season more extreme,

 

online services at hand, if sorely not the same;

I have the looks for radio, she jibed

to no one listening, knowing her skin

and curves beneath the thriftshop layers

lent lust to shrifted imagination, least of all

the priest’s, who assured her through the years

the gospel wasn’t gained or lost from lip service,

his or hers or Vatican III’s, hiding needlessly.

 

Unlike some, her signature conveyed

the care of every letter, legibly, with little

flair for the L that led to u and enclaves in the i

between the c and a, no duplicity in mind

to bring this name to light, followed by

a surname that still spoke to a father’s claim

she had to leave at age thirteen, when

he turned into a viper, smitten by his bite

more than the bitten consequence, time and

time and not another time again. A smattering

of those who knew would keep an eye on things,

but God knows such surveillance depends on…

 

everyone and everything in synch, by

volition or involuntary mechanics, like traffic

lights with sensors, staying green or red

during the vacant hours of any given night.

 

To that extent, the midnight vigil lured her

most of all, whether Maundy Thursday, New

Year’s Eve, occasions when the hospital

threw up its hands and handed off to miracles

that maybe could be made, if never proved.

 

Tonight was such a need, when liturgy and nods

to one another were less the energy than

candle heat and silent streams of consciousness,

a bit of seeing and being seen, depending…

 

                                    ~~~

 

Resins of black cherry trees and beeswax

smoothed the splintered cavities of each pew,

kneeling bench and altar, polished by the timeless

hours of public privacies that these folks do—

not all prayers and adoration, to be sure,

yet by osmosis holy acts among the dreams,

 

or lack of them, for some. The two-year-old

we’re gathered for may understand this

not-according-to-the-plan; but has she wrapped

her mind around a dream? Depends on definition.

 

Two meters’ space meant empty pews and no

overt exchanging of the peace; masks

would muffle harmonies if singing were allowed,

 

but midnight vigils don’t need policies to color

within the lines—darkness does so, anyway.

 

Her mother named her ‘light’ and hoped

for eyesight greater than her own, jaundiced

through a steady flow of Božkov, a rum she

could afford with little guff at grocery stores.

There was no vigil the night she died

behind the steering wheel, dependent on some

 

navigation system to override her abdicating

dendrites, stretched and saturated beyond what

Holly deems the ‘mean reds’ and I still call the blues,

to keep a cloudless sky in front of you,

even in the dark, or within whatever ark…

 

She noticed other souls, of course, drawn to

pray for not-according-to-the-plan. Most were

old; some linked elbows as the law allowed—

provided they were family or tested negative

within the past three days (or nights, depending).

 

One—a youth her age—sat clear across

the sanctuary, usually last to come and first

to leave, between the taking of communion and

announcements for the week, which had no sway

on those who didn’t need community, as such.

 

How he heard about this vigil then? Unless

an uncle to the toddler or intern at the hospital…

At any rate, he was more enclosed in shadow

than anytime she’d see him try to peer her way

before, peripheral and in the ochre light of

Sunday mornings through stained glass,

a reason, perhaps, she had dyed her blonde hair

light blue, to keep away the likes of you.

 

                                    ~~~

 

The vigil reached beyond a fulcrum point

that presupposes God must be content by now, as

prayer is not a vehicle on which fate depends,

 

rather a hand to hold to face things unalone.

Purell was everywhere; still, the stiff-arm legal code

insisted self-control. In this regard, she thought,

I wish the world would caution from within,

 

just as things were finishing. She stood

and saw the young man hadn’t exited, as if

the blanket of the service had nuzzled him to sleep.

She dipped her fingers in the holy water font

and slipped outside, windy not enough

to mute her name, inflected as a question—

probably resigned to be ignored, depending…

 

She stopped, though, in the fading radius

of a courtyard light, glistening with

crystals of a freshly fallen snow. I’m not what

your imagination makes, her eyes said softly,

as stovetop flames when nothing needs to boil.

His, of hazel weariness, agreed. He raised

a mittened hand and uttered ‘peace to you’

before retreating to the narthex door.

 

He said likewise to Old Agnes, coming out,

keeping to the metered rule, and she responded

with his name. Frail and heartfelt all the same.

 

The women, sixty years apart, walked down

the hill to level, less slippery streets. Agnes

mumbled platitudes and faith the present plague

would run its course. Or curse, Lucia said.

Agnes nodded, ‘all depends on point of view.’

 

May I ask who shared the peace with you?

Agnes lifted her withered apple face

to look into the mournful irises of sapphire

and charity within. ‘He was found inside

a dumpster maybe twenty years ago. Cold just

like tonight, God only knows how long

he lay there, or would have lasted more.’

 

Too much to say at two a.m., they bid adieu.

Lucia listened when she passed recycle bins—

plastic yellow, paper blue, glass in green and

white—harboring perhaps another plight,

 

clarity for vigils notwithstanding. I could

never be a nun, she blushed, even there

being hit upon. Opening the blueness of her

mind, she would find what fate depended on.

 

Daniel Martin Vold Lamken (2020)