The OrphanAGE, Vol. 1.30
First Lines
You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter. ~ Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Catching a late-afternoon bev at the neighborhood watering hole, between the door and the barstool, I've been twice accosted by mentions of the morning’s posting of the OrphanAGE. The barkeep passes me my glass of pinot, adding his own, “Hey man, good issue today…”.
I take a sip and snag an open stool next to one of our contributing writers – a retired after-market auto exec (can one really be considered “retired” who’s taken up gardening?). We've already run two bits of his micro-fiction. We begin discussing an in-progress 3rd. The figure on the far side of him unceremoniously slips from a stool and heads for the door. We take little note and continue to chew over an unanticipated turning: how a narrative framing ploy has begun to develop its own legs.
One has to love the way crafting fictions can have a mind of its own — no wonder the mythos of the muses continues to endure.
The parsing and what-iffing proceed into a second round of in vino’d veritas-ing. When the other man returns, he slips me a shrink-wrapped CD, “… been carrying this around in my car for a coupla weeks meaning to give it to you.” I take it. In addition to performing, he hosts a weekly Alt-Americana radio program, River Trade. He retakes his seat as the author and I resume our workshopping.
Earlier that morning, I’d met an acquaintance for a spot of eggs n waffles just up the street. It’d been a year or two since we’d done any catching up. He’d been through the wringer with a work injury and a divorce that followed. Somewhere amidst the words, we discover that we’d serendipitously both enjoyed a recent book of poems. Off the cuff, my companion unloads a bit of insight re the work.
An hour or so later, I text him, noting: no need to wait another year before breakfasting. I then ask if he’d be willing to cobble together his earlier thoughts on the poetry. [You see, human-humans expending bandwidth to think about art made by someone else — beyond dopamine-triggering, smiley emojis — is a mighty rare thing these days.]
Back home, scrolling the Instagram posts of another acquaintance, years absent now from nights of catching bands, doing drugs and reading poetry. Recalling fondly his gear-headed passions and how they'd guided my purchase of not one, but two pickup trucks. I locate a number still cached in my phone and call. No answer. I leave a message.
A few days later, my phone beeps and I’m greeted by a growly, “What the fuck you want?” Its' a rollicking 30-min catch up. Having surrendered KC for Cleveland for, now, Baltimore, we chuckle over his current passion of catching overnights to neighboring cities in order to wander about the starker settings we aesthetically seem drawn to, taking pics.
And there you have it:
How one issue of a mid-length, arts-n-culture zine comes together. Hope you enjoy. If you think you might have something to toss on the pile, hit us up.
Peace,
Dante
In This Issue:
- Poetry by Becky Plate
- Review by Patrick Dobson
- Music by The Butter Band
- Photos by Ehzno Martín
Poems by Becky Plate
THANKS BE
Thanks be.
Thanks be to the river,
and to the crickets and the cicadas.
To the breeze for which the canopy trembles
and sheds whatever has served its purpose.
Thanks be to the shadow and the light.
To the sounds of solitude,
and to the taunting buzz of the hummingbird.
To hot food and cool water.
To strangers, to friends.
Thanks be to work and to rest.
To the curl of a paperback read in humid air.
To the taste of burnt coffee and the smell of a two-stroke motor.
THAW
Black rubber muck boots
are lined with prickles of hay
that wool socks are no match for.
There is ice to break,
but so thin, it doesn't show
until it is fractured.
A moment alone
fills my nostrils with
the smell of cold, malleable mud
and my ears with the
crunch of barely frozen,
freshly-laid gravel.
Everywhere you look,
there are little pools of her sweat gathering congregating right out in the open
for everyone to see.
There is a hint,
a grunt under her breath,
that she is giving in,
growing weary.
The beasts are beginning to shed,
taunting her every effort.
A thump on the back
and a million dust mite angels take flight
on the warm updraft
in a sparkling shaft of defiance.
Take that, you frigid bitch.
Just a Moment Please... (Review)
Becky Plate’s poetry collection Just a Moment Please... defines in spartan language and careful cadences “place” without taking for granted that her readers know where that place is. As she makes clear, the soul of this volume is the Sunflower State. Unlike many prairie poets, however, Plate isn’t a name dropper. She assumes, without becoming pedantic, that readers need orientation within these diverse landscapes and cultures. She is a good guide. With precise and active language, she carves, sculptor-like, images as sharp as the serrated leaves of prairie cordgrass, a foundational grassland plant.
These poems are sometimes realistic, sometimes surreal and dreamlike. Plate makes best use of both space and negative or non-space, often in the same poem: “A shiny red race car delivers her safely/to a meal that smells of home” but then deposits her in shock and out of breath into “a time machine that spills like poison.” As human as these poems are, they also draw heavily on the natural world as metaphor for the inner lives we all lead. And, so, without contradiction, Just a Moment Please... is both a book of a particular state and, more universally, one that resides in all of us.
- Patrick Dobson is the author of When the Titans Sleep and Other Dreams and A Successful Disaster
- Just a Moment Please... is available at Prospero's Bookstore and on Amazon.
The Butter Band
The Butter Band is:
Scott Stanton - guitar, vocals
Kasey Rausch - upright bass, vocals
Chad Brothers - guitar, vocals
Grady Keller - banjo, mandolin
Marco Pascolini - pedal steel
Special thanks to:
James Albright - percussion, bass
Cobbs Hill Water Towers (Rochester, NY)
A Photo Essay by Ehzno Martín
