New Year 2005: Issue 39

Fiction/Memoir
Sindee Ernst | Jean Colgan Gould
Craig Hartglass | Bluma Schwartz

Poetry
Frederick W. Bassett | Marianna Busching | Ellen Kirvin Dudis
Gwendolyn Jensen | Don Thompson

Editors
Mary Azrael | Kendra Kopelke | Christina Gay | Jessica Schultheis

Graphic Designer
Ruth Einstein

Cover Art by Minás

Minás was born in Greece, and has lived in Baltimore since 1976, where he graduated from the Maryland Institute, College of Art. He is owner of Minás Art Gallery, an outlet for poetry, both visual and verbal. He recently completed a mural in Greektown, in dowtown Baltimore. His wonderful gallery is located at 815 W. 36th Street  (on the Avenue in Hampden, Baltimore).

About the cover art in the artist's own words:
"I created this image after a Poets Against the War reading I attended in 2003. I felt that peace was an anachronistic idea in these times. And the typewriter, an industrial and outdated machine, was more fitting than a computer. A peace sign on a computer is not even believable. At the poetry reading there was a lot of nostalgia for the past. It seems as if we have given up on the idea of peace."

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excerpt from Issue 39

Monument
by Sindee Ernst

      When I look at Ron’s face I think of the day I visited the battlefield at Antietam. I was accustomed to standing on history. My high school auditorium greeted me with aluminum block lettering on its long opposing walls. Incandescent lighting rose like flames behind the words: “April 19, 1775 . . . What A Glorious Morning for America.” Like many people who grow up in a tourist town, I never went out of my way to visit the famous sites that others traveled miles to see. I found the history in my feet; Paul Revere was always with me. Maybe right here is where he rode. Maybe the militia fought here. I felt it, under the carefully manicured triangle of green that stood in the center of town.
      But Antietam was different. Like Ron’s face it was alive and, despite and because of its history, beautiful. I remember getting out of the car and walking to the edge of the field. The dusty green expanse stretched and rolled toward a stand of trees in the far distance. A warm breeze pushed its way through the grass. It felt stunningly calm, and my skin buzzed with the tension between the peaceful place in front of my eyes and the blood that I knew rested beneath the soil.
      Ron’s face has this same tension. It is a strong face with clear edges—you can almost feel the bones that outline his jaw and chin. His cheeks are long, though softer now than I imagine they used to be. They crease gently with his grin, which breaks open easily. His eyes are not strikingly large but they are penetrating. When I watch him talk to other people I can tell that he is fully present. His gaze focuses deeply, as if he does not want to miss a single minute. But underneath this surface is a shattered pain. I catch it as a flicker, a memory rising and breaking through for an instant before he washes over it through the force of habit that he has learned in order to live again in this world. Even when he turns to smile at me I find a sense of surprise, as if he is surprised that he can still do this.

      It was a while before I heard him use the term combat veteran. One veteran had always been the same as another to me; I had never considered that qualifier. Combat. In a war it makes a difference, where you stand.
      When Ron was struggling to survive in the jungle, I was twelve years old. I did not understand the Vietnam War. I knew the shape of the country from the maps I saw nightly on the television news, but I could not place it on a globe. What I did know, or thought I knew, was that we did not belong there. I could not have argued my position; my comprehension of the actual conflict and the role of the United States was dim. I only knew that I agreed with the bumper sticker I had placed in the center of the rough blue binder I brought to school each day. War is not healthy for children and other living things. I can still see the stick drawing of colored flowers held by a small hand.
      One October, before a day of anti-war demonstrations being held throughout the nation, my college-aged neighbor pressed me to take action. He needed someone small and agile. It was close to midnight when we drove to the center of town. I walked along the grass to the statue of the Lexington Minuteman. I climbed quickly up the stones to the granite boulder where Captain John Parker stands holding the butt of his musket in his right hand, the barrel resting on his bent knee. Expecting that I might need traction, I was barefoot. The rock felt cold to my feet, but the folded bronze of John Parker’s trousers was colder. Holding tightly with my toes, I took the slip of black cloth that Wesley had given to me and I tied it around the right arm of the statue. I did not pause to look at his hardened expression. I had seen it many times before from the ground. I knew that he did not smile, but looked expectantly out into the distance. I slid back down and ran to the getaway car, a pale blue Volkswagen Beetle that had been idling at the side of the green.
      As the crowds gathered the next morning I went straight to the Minuteman. The black armband was no longer there. I tried to imagine how it had been noticed, and I thought about the police officer who must have taken it down. I pictured his chubby white skin next to the smooth green glint of the monument. I was sure that the officer kept his shoes on, and I wondered if he found it slippery.
      The image of a soldier wearing a black armband to protest the act of war reminds me that I have yet to ask Ron—if he hadn’t been drafted, what would he have thought about Vietnam. Where would he have stood? I understand that he didn’t have the luxury of that choice and that there is an irretrievable life that he will never know. And in the life he has been given there is a way in which he is ever alert. His eyes search; they are aware of movement. As quickly as he can spot a Yellow-crowned Night Heron standing midstream waiting for its prey, his gaze seeks out the hum of a helicopter flying overhead. I am thinking—traffic report. But he hears the sound differently. Incoming or outgoing, friend or enemy. His body tenses. One time I noticed the way he holds his hands. The way they don’t rest, but tilt upwards slightly at the wrist as if they don’t want to be caught off guard.
      Ron tells me that for a soldier the war is never over. I want to argue with him. I want to tell him that wounds can heal. That even a scar is something inert, without life or breath, so you can find your way around it.
      And then I look at his face.

by Sindee Ernst, as first published in Passager, Issue 39

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continue to Issue 38: 2004 Poetry Contest