SEP 2017 alt W

1The Wagon Magazine - SEPTEMBER- 2017

2VOLUME: 2 - ISSUE: 6 - SEPTEMBER - 2017Notes from New Delhi : Dibyajyoti Sarma 02Columns: Musings Of An Axolotl -C.S.Lakshmi 06 Letter from London-John Looker 12 The Wanderer - Andrew Fleck 20 P&P - Yonason Goldson 25Non-Fiction: Deborah Bennison 54Poetry: Md Mehedi Hasan 31 Wafula Yenjela 38 Kristyl Gravina 42 John (“Jake”) Cosmos Aller 78 Glen Sorestad 88 G. David Schwartz 92Fiction: John Allison 45 Corey Hill 65Book Review: A Song For Bela Gayatri Majumdar/ Joan Dobbie 75 Wrapper Art: sculpture by Benjamin Victor. THE WAGON MAGAZINE KGE TEAM 4/4, FIRST FLOOR, R.R.FLATS, FIRST STREET, VEDHACHALA NAGAR, KODAMBAKKAM, CHENNAI - 600 024 Phone: +91-9382708030 e-mail: [email protected] www.thewagonmagazine.com The Wagon Magazine - SEPTEMBER - 2017

3 NOTES FROM NEW DELHI About Bhupen Hazarika, on his birthdayIf you were around in the 1990s, it’s almost certain that you haveheard of Dr Bhupen Hazarika and at least one of his songs, ‘DilHoom Hoom Kare’, in Lata Mangeshkar’s haunting voice, from thefilm, Rudaali (1993). This was one year after Hazarika was awardedthe Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 1992. Recently, in an interview for a book containing 101 lyrics bythe poet, Gulzar, who wrote the Hindi lyrics for the song, explainedthe reason why he decided to use the words ‘hoom, hoom’, to de-note heart beats, as opposed to the popular alternative like ‘dhak,dhak’. Gulzar said, during the writing of the lyrics, he heard an oldAssamese folk song where the words ‘hoom hoom’ was used to meanheat beats.The Wagon Magazine - SEPTEMBER- 2017

4 I have enormous respect for Gulzar, but his statement mademe think of cultural appropriation and twisting of history. For, infact, the song, ‘Dil Hoom Hoom Kare’ is a copy of music directorHazarika’s original Assamese song, ‘Buku Homm Homm Kore’ fromthe Assamese film, Maniram Dewan (1963). This music is the same,only the wordings have been changed, with the words ‘hoom, hoom’making a smooth transition from Assamese to Hindi. I am not bitter. I understand a history is the history of the winner.So I thought, I would write something about Bhupen Hazarika, in a wayof reclaiming some shards of history, especially because he was born thismonth, on 8 September 1926 in Sadiya, Assam. Let’s start with his passing on 5 November 2011 in Mumbai,Maharashtra. My father is not a crowd person. He does not even attendweddings. On the day of Hazarika’s last rites, on 8 November 2011,in Guwahati, however, he had decided to take a walk, even as thestreets were filled with people. The ground, where Hazarika was tobe cremated, was just a half-an-hour’s walk. That afternoon, my fa-ther could not even reach the place; it was a sea of people. Everyonewas there to bid the iconic personality a final goodbye. It was an ex-traordinary sight, unprecedented, even in a place which has seen itsfair share of public gatherings. It was a momentous display of howHazarika’s music had touched each and every one in Guwahati, andin turn, in Assam. For the Assamese people, he was Bhupenda. Ageneration had lost its elder brother. There are limits to how popular a single person can become.For every fan of every personality, there may be a dozen others whodo not care about him. But to be loved by an entire generation, anentire population is something else. There is only a handful whocould achieve this feat. Perhaps Gandhi was one. Perhaps MichaelJackson, Rabindranath Tagore in Bengal, Amitabh Bachchan, amongthe living. In Assam, Hazarika wasn’t a person. He was, to use a cliché, aliving legend, an epitome and a testament to the Assamese culture. Hedefined Assam to the world, and every Assamese person basked inhis glory, in his almost god-like talent. There isn’t a single Assamese The Wagon Magazine - SEPTEMBER - 2017

5person, in Assam or elsewhere, who hasn’t heard about Bhupenda orknow at least one of his songs by heart. Personally, I owe my love for Bhupen Hazarika to my mother.She knows all Bhupen Hazarika songs, even the obscure ones, cour-tesy the radio. She doesn’t sing, she recites the lines of the songs, andshe has a song for every possible occasion, whether it’s happiness,sorrow, love, patriotism, life’s lessons, anything. You mention a sub-ject, and there’s a Bhupen Hazarika song about it, and my mother canrecite it. His are not songs, but poetry. They are epigrams. They arequotable quotes. They are life’s lessons. They are part of a community’scultural history. I have 431 Bhupen Hazarika songs on the hard drive of mycomputer. This is by no means a complete collection. I have no ideahow many songs he had composed and sung in a career spanninghalf-a-century, from his debut as a child artist in the second Assamesefeature film, Indramalati (1939), to being a singer of protests, attendingpublic functions, to being a high-profile filmmaker and music director,who crossed over to Bangla and then to Hindi, and yet retained hisroots. For the Assamese, he was the bridge between the past and thepresent. He was tutored by the luminaries like Jyoti Prasad Agarwalaand Bishnu Rabha in the pre-independent India, fought for the rightsof the oppressed and then, introduced the state to the world. And, imagine, the man wrote all those songs, composed thetunes and performed, relentlessly, for more than half-a-century. Theonly comparison comes to mind is Bob Dylan. Like Dylan, Hazarikahimself was the music. He was the voice. He did not need anythingelse, other than perhaps a harmonium. He just needed to sing, andsing he did, to last a lifetime, to last an eternity. If you want an American equivalent for Hazarika’s music,Dylan perhaps is not a good example. Instead think Woody Guthrie,Paul Robeson or Pete Seeger. Like these musicians, Hazarika too sangfor the common men, for their rights, for their dignity. He famouslytranslated and performed Robeson’s ‘We’re in the Same Boat, Brother’both in Assamese and Bengali. He took inspiration from the folk musicof the land and popularised it among the people. So perhaps GulzarThe Wagon Magazine - SEPTEMBER- 2017

6is right. ‘Buku Homm Homm Kore’ is a folk song! But, what is this enduring appeal of Bhupen Hazarika? I don’tknow. But, I can identify with his songs, the same way my motherdoes, despite the fact that we are two generations apart. Hazarikasings about the people, the farmer, the fisherman, the worker, theoffice-goes, the idealist, the patriot. Even his abstract love songs arepopulated with people we know. His songs breathe the same air Iinhale. I cannot sing, but I know at least 50 Bhupen Hazarika songs byheart. It has been a part of my growing up. No, he’s not my favouritemusician, but his music throbs in my being. He is not just a singer.He is part of the Assamese consciousness. Dibyajyoti Sarma 8 September 2017 New Delhi “A gift from God” is how Benjamin Victor describes his ability to create spectacular works of art. Benjamin joined the ranks of Michelangelo, Bernini, and French by receiving his first large commission at only 23 years old. At age 26, he became the youngest artist ever to have a sculpture in the Nation’s foremost collection, the National Statuary Hall in the United States Capitol. Nine years later, he became the only living artist to have twoworks in Statuary Hall. Art critics and organizations, including the NationalSculpture Society in New York City, continue to recognize the aesthetic andconceptual integrity of Benjamin’s artwork. His passion and drive clearlyshow in each of his unique and profound creations. With expressive features,exquisite detail, and thought-provoking content, the work of Benjamin Victoris sure to take its place among the great masterpieces of art history.Biographical Review written by Ruth E. McKinney M.F.A. http://benjaminvictor.com/2012/02/gallery/monuments-large-works /where-cultures-meet/ The Wagon Magazine - SEPTEMBER - 2017

7 MUSINGS OF AN AXOLOTL C.S.LAKSHMI The Hudhud Birds and A Sky to Fly We are living in times when tolerance and freedom of expressionare being talked about, with concern, in India and all over the world.When Tamil writer Perumal Murugan wrote a novel which, a castegroup alleged, hurt their sentiments and religious feelings, therewere protests calling for censorship of the work by the caste groupand the entire literary and academic world not only in India but else-where also stood by him and the matter was discussed in each andevery forum. Awards were returned by well-known writers in pro-test against the act of intolerance and the perceived curtailment ofThe Wagon Magazine - SEPTEMBER- 2017

8the freedom of a writer to express. Perumal Murugan, hurt by theprotests against his novel and the deal he was forced to enter into,declared himself dead as a writer. When he won his case against thosewho wanted to ban his book and was told by the court to do whathe does best, to continue to write, everyone rejoiced that freedom ofexpression had won over intolerance. Although the judgment itselfdid not resolve many other questions which remained unansweredas pertinently pointed out by Gautam Bhatia in his article “The faultin our speech” in The Hindu, May 11, 2017, where he says, “the lawwill protect works that have successfully entered the mainstream liter-ary culture, but it will not shield the truly iconoclastic, the seeminglysenseless, the incomprehensible. It will protect Perumal Murugan, butit will do little for Gustave Flaubert in 1860, James Joyce in 1920, orSaadat Hasan Manto in 1950….” In this list of writers who will not beshielded one can add the name of H G Razool. As I stood in a curtained section ofthe ICU ward of a hospital in Nagercoil,last week, on the 5th of August, lookingat the dead body of a fellow writer, H GRazool, I remembered the fight we did notput up for him. His book Mailanji (Hen-na) published in 2000 (Charam, Thucka-lay, Kanyakumari District), according tohim, was a way of asserting that there is nosuch thing as one Islamic way of life withwhich all Muslims, from whatever region and of whatever gender, canidentify themselves. His poems, he said, were about multiple ways ofseeing and experiencing. But Mailanji put him in an extremely difficultsituation. He had written in a literary journal that while many criticssaw him only as a representative voice of Islam since he belonged tothat community, the religious leaders themselves had questioned himon his faith and stand on Islam. Fourteen people from Muscat hadput his name on the list of Salman Rushdie and Taslima Nasreen andhad sent a signed petition to the Jamaat, urging that action be takenagainst him. H G Razool was forced to apologise before the Jamaat of The Wagon Magazine - SEPTEMBER - 2017

9his village. Needless to say, there were no vociferous protests, no pub-lic discussions, no outcries that this cannot be done in our name pre-cisely because people did not know what positions they should take onan iconoclastic book, which denied that there was one Islamic wayof life. Even the Tamil Nadu Progressive Writers’ Association hadsoft-pedaled the issue expressing a mild protest against the stand ofthe Jamaat but had not made it a national issue deserving both con-demnation and protest. So H G Razool apologised. Huge wreathsbearing the names of Tamil Nadu Progressive Writers’ Associationand Democratic Youth Federation of India were placed on the ta-boot and his book on Wahabism explaining his longstanding posi-tion on there being multiple ways of experiencing Islam and livingas a Muslim is going to be published shortly by the writers’ group. Standing before his body and paying my respects I could fore-see all this adulation happening after his death. I also knew how thequestion of tolerance and freedom of expression and what lay at itscore, of asking ourselves what do we tolerate and what do we nottolerate, what do we understand by freedom of expression and whodo we think can exercise this freedom would get muted when Razoolwill be promoted as a Sufi writer. A dead writer is someone one canquote and claim allegiance to. A dead writer is also someone one canforget conveniently after a while, especially when silence has to bemaintained for strategic purposes on certain issues. But Razool whodied at the young age of 58, would have gone through the agony ofbeing a writer who was left on his own to deal with his writing andhis views. Razool’s poems are filled with the voices of women. When Iwrote an article on Razool in 2001, I had said that “the voices ofmany women come through his poems. Be it the desire of a girl whowants pottu but wonders if her Umma would mind or that of thewoman who is worried about the meat cooking on the gas stove andabout completing her work at home before the men return fromtheir prayers, or of the wise woman who spread Islam in Tamil Naduand Kerala, or of the woman who says that the Koran, the words, andactions of Muhammad and the stories of the Sahabas, the friends ofThe Wagon Magazine - SEPTEMBER- 2017

10Muhammad, belong to her too, the voices of women come direct-ly and indirectly in many different ways. Sometimes they come asfond memories of mothers, grandmothers, and great-grandmothers;sometimes they come as the language of women abandoned andsuppressed and sometimes they appear as innocent questions of littlegirls. At no point do the poems seem like universal announcements.There is anger but no proclamations. The voices of the women do notarise from a singular way of experiencing the world. On the otherhand, they arise from different ways of experiencing and many var-ied ways of expression.” The title poem “Mailanji”, in fact, capturesthis feeling in just a few words: …Even then, All the fingers All the palms They don’t turn red The same way I translated some of his poems into English and the one wherehis little daughter asks about women Nabis is one I quote often andhad quoted just a week before his death in a writers’ conference inChengannur, Kerala. The poem is titled ‘About A Nabi Yet To BeBorn’: Those religious lectures that spread in every direction said: One lakh twenty-four thousand Nabis came as saviours of the world. The Holy Koran revealed: Those who bore the pain of words and stones and became history were the twenty-five Nabis The Wagon Magazine - SEPTEMBER - 2017

11 Adham Nabi, Nooh Nabi Yusuf Nabi, Salih Nabi Dawood Nabi, Sulaiman Nabi Ayub Nabi, Yunus Nabi Moosa Nabi, Isa Nabi And finally was born The great Muhammad Nabi As I told this story my beloved daughter asked: Vappa, among so many, so many Nabis why isn’t there even one woman Nabi? Razool also raised a wonderful question of language and afaith that is uttered and written in another language from anotherland. These questions he raised in the following poem titled Allah’sLanguage remain for us: Avval Kalima taught us the basis of the original utterances Allah is neither man…nor woman… Nobody gave Allah birth nor did Allah give birth to anyone Can’t call Allah iraivan or with respect, in the plural, iraivar That would be considered shirk in Islam since it is a male term. Addressing Allah as iraivalThe Wagon Magazine - SEPTEMBER- 2017

12the feminine,is also meaninglessfor Allah is not a woman either.In my Tamilhow shall I addressmy Allahwho isneither male nor female?My Allahwho is beyondlanguage and communitynow needsa language. (*shirk means ascribing a partner or rival to Allah in Lordship(ruboobiyyah), worship or in His names and attributes.) Razool is no more. Someone among the group gathered at thehospital told me he was planning to write a novel for he had just re-tired and had time to write more. I don’t know what the novel wouldhave been about but I am sure at least some of it would have revolvedaround the Hudhud birds, which he speaks about, which seek truthand have their wings broken but still have a sky to fly. Razool’s lastbreath would have mingled with the winds of Kanyakumari regionhe belonged to, and those winds would carry his truth-seeking wordsall over the world, where they belong for Hudhud birds never die.They continue to fly seeking truth. *****--Translated from the original Tamil published in the book Mailanji--Hudhud, an Arabic word for Hoopoe bird mentioned twice in Quran,is a colourful bird found across Afro-Eurasia, notable for its distinctive“crown” of feathers. C S Lakshmi is a researcher and a writer who writes in the pen name - Ambai. She is one of the founder trustees of SPARROW (Sound & Picture Archives for Research on Women) and currently its director. The Wagon Magazine - SEPTEMBER - 2017

13 Letter from London - 10 from John LookerThis month I’d like to tell you about an unusual poetry project thatwould never have taken shape before the internet. There are severalreasons for that. Do you know the poetry of Carol Rumens? She is a celebratedBritish poet with several collections published as well as short stories andThe Wagon Magazine - SEPTEMBER- 2017

14a novel. She has won prizes, she teaches creative writing at BangorUniversity, is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and contrib-utes a weekly poetry column to the Guardian newspaper. Recentlyshe has contributed two poems to a new anthology. More importantthan that: she wrote the foreword, endorsing and promoting this re-markable book. As Carol Rumens explains, about forty poets from many different coun- tries around the world have donated poems to this anthology. The work of those poets came together through the internet. The book is on sale around the world through the online giant, Amazon. And all profits go to an inter- national charity, The Book Bus. (http:// www.thebookbus.org/) The anthology was the inspi-ration of Deborah Bennison,a British writer who set up anindependent publishing firma few years ago called Ben-nison Books. She has alreadypublished several writers, covering poetry, short stories, a novel and non-fiction. Her small company is itself a testament to our internet age. Bennison Books promotes its publications world- wide through all the now-customary ‘so- cial media platforms’, including Facebook, Twitter, a Wordpress blog and an email newsletter. Her publishing venture is The Wagon Magazine - SEPTEMBER - 2017

15based on the new principle of print on demand. There are no printruns, no warehouses or shops holding stock, no remainders or un-sold copies pulped. Having formatted her books through an Amazonsubsidiary, she sells to the customer anywhere in the world throughAmazon and the customer’s copy is printed to order and despatchedwithin hours from the nearest regional centre. The process is efficientand it keeps costs down – although we have to regret that traditionalbookshops lose out. Deborah Bennison’s bright idea was to invite poets writing inEnglish, anywhere, to submit poems for a new anthology. In essence,this would gather poetry through the internet, many of the poemshaving been published already online. Others would have been un-published or published in books and journals. And the response was thrilling. Contributions came in from adozen or more countries: from Europe, the Americas, Africa, Asia andAustralasia. Some were from writers whose first language was not En-glish. The final volume contains the work of over forty writers and I thinkI’ve counted eight prize-winners among them including Carol Rumens. You might be interested to learn that a few of the writers havehave been published in The Wagon Magazine: Karin Anderson andBart Wolffe for example, and also me. Mentioning Bart Wolffe reminds me of the sad death of two of the contributors during the months of production. One was Bart himself, living in Britain, out of Africa. There are three very pleasing poems from Bart of which one, called Eclipse, begins: Soundless and without warning the sky Sucked in its breath. A shadowed hand Of the demon darkened the light, swollen As if announcing war over the nature of things. It is natural to wonder whether thewriter had intimations of his forthcoming death while composingthose lines. We know that he was ill for some time.The Wagon Magazine - SEPTEMBER- 2017

16 The other sad death was of Cynthia Jobin, a New England writerwho was largely unpublished but immensely popular and is now much-missed online (here we see the internet again). Her poems in thisanthology include The Sun Also Sets which contains these lines: I do not want to go, or let you go. I want to dare this ending, call its bluff, delay our parting with a sudden overflow of words – too many and yet not enough – while you, my dearest one, would choose blunt disappearance, the mute way to stanch an agony – those deeper blues along the skyline fire – as if to say the sun rises, the sun also sets. So let it set. Let us let it. Let’s. What I love about this anthology is that it’s full of unpreten-tious, intelligent and moving poems. It should appeal to readers wholike poetry from time to time but don’t buy a great deal – maybe itwould make good presents, or be a good idea on someone’s wishlist? It’s also bang-up-to-date with poetry from North America, theBritish Isles and many other countries so it gives a good sense ofwhat mainstream poetry can do right now – and that is valuable forregular buyers of poetry. As Carol Rumens explains in her foreword, readers will havethe added satisfaction of knowing that their purchase is helping tohand on the pleasure and power of language. All profits go to TheBook Bus, according to whom one in six adults around the worldhave come through childhood unable to read and write – due mainlyto a lack of books and the opportunity to read. In Deborah Bennison’swords: “This amazing charity aims to improve child literacy rates inAfrica, Asia and South America by providing children with booksand the inspiration to read them.” I have written this entire letter without giving you the name ofthe anthology, although you might have guessed from my title that it The Wagon Magazine - SEPTEMBER - 2017

17is Indra’s Net. That was the sugestion of Cynthia Jobin. Most readersof The Wagon will know that Indra is a Vedic god above whose moun-tain-palace hangs a marvellous net with jewels sparkling at everyintersection, each reflecting the others. Cynthia saw that Indra’s net could be a metaphor for universalinter-connectedness – she had in mind specifically the internet todayand this anthology of poems from all over the world. If you are interested, you can look up the anthology (and readthe first few poems) at http://amzn.to/2tPnDzQ And Bennison Books can be found at http://bennisonbooks.co Cynthia Jobin was raised in the foothills of New Hampshire’sWhite Mountains, attended a variety of New England schools and colleges(Master’s in art education, PhD in metaphysics), teacher of various sub-jects: French, English, Calligraphy, Aesthetics, History, Research Methods. Cynthia Jobin’s Works: The Elegant Useless Le Petit Hibou Au Coeur Class Poets of Emmanuel College Bart Wolffe, after a long career in media, television, radio, film andthe stage, left Zimbabwe in 2003 to live in exile in the United Kingdom.He was an essayist, poet, playwright, short story writer. Most of his playshad been published in ‘Africa Dream Theatre’, consisting of 13 plays, 10of which are one-person plays while the other three are two-handers. BartWolffe was arguably the leading one-person show specialist John Looker lives with his wife in Surrey, south-east England. His first collection of poetry, The Human Hive, was published in 2015 by Bennison Books (through Amazon) and was selected by the Poetry Library for the UK’s national collection. His poems have appeared in print and in online journals, on local radio and in ‘When Time and Space Con- spire’, an anthology commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Austin International Poetry Festival. His blog, Poetry from John Looker, is at https://johnstevensjs.wordpress.comThe Wagon Magazine - SEPTEMBER- 2017

18After reading the column by John Looker, I invited Deborah Bennison to sharewith the readers of The Wagon Magazine, her valuable thoughts and theexperience of creating Bennison Books. Here it is.- - K.P In Praise of Independent Publishing by Deborah Bennison, founder of Bennison BooksWho are the arbiters of literary taste? Why are gifted writers rou-tinely rejected by the established publishing houses? Just why is itso difficult to ‘get published’? These are questions that continue topuzzle and frustrate many people – writers and non-writers alike.They are certainly questions that frustrate me and this frustrationwas instrumental in my decision to set up Bennison Books, an inde-pendent publishing house. My aim was to publish the work of writersthat I admire and that I strongly believe deserve a much wider audi-ence. But where was I to start? Inspiration and encouragement came from an unexpectedsource. I happened to be reading Hermione Lee’s wonderful biog-raphy of Virginia Woolf and became fascinated by Lee’s account ofhow Virginia and her husband Leonard bought a printing press andset up their own independent publishing house, Hogarth Press. It isa wonderful story. Lee explains how they first thought about buying a printingpress (no powerful computer programs or ‘print on demand’ avail-able at that time in the early twentieth century!) on 25 January 1915, The Wagon Magazine - SEPTEMBER - 2017

19 Virginia’s thirty-third birthday. They eventually made an impulse purchase of a small handpress machine plus ‘teach yourself how to print’ booklet from a shop in London in 1917. It is now almost impossible to imagine how intricately difficult and slow the work of typesetting and printing a book by hand would have been. Virginia had to learn the pains- taking work of compositing, using individual pieces of type (letters and punctuation) to physically build up words and sentences until there were enough to print onto one page at atime (Leonard’s job). It was a huge undertaking, and as well as pub-lishing Virginia’s work, Hogarth Press went on to produce many oth-er publications including notable poetry, fiction, novels and mem-oirs (527 titles in 29 years). Perhaps ironically, given its independentbeginnings in the Woolf ’s dining room, Hogarth Press is now one ofmany Penguin Random House imprints. Inspired by this story, I realised that with the benefits of mod-ern technology, plus social media as a marketing tool, I too could setup an independent press, and so Bennison Books was born. In thefour years since, Bennison Books has published outstanding proseand poetry by English, Australian and American writers, as well asan international anthology of poetry (Indra’s Net),the profits fromwhich are going to The Book Bus charity. Laid out, edited and de-signed to exacting standards, these books bear visual comparisonwith any produced by the mainstream publishers, and the quality ofthe writing is also second to none. It is one hundred years since the Woolfs began their publishingventure, revelling in the excitement, autonomy and independence itgave them.And crucially, the establishment of Hogarth Press meantthat Virginia no longer had to rely on her half-brother Gerald Duck-The Wagon Magazine - SEPTEMBER- 2017

20worth to publish her work – a dependency she had long resented,saying that he “could not tell a book from a beehive”. I would argue that independent publishing is equally if notmore important today. Of course, both mainstream and indepen-dent publishers will always run the risk of publishing “beehives”, butthe existence of independent publishers such as Bennison Books willcontinue to play a small but important part in helping to ensure thatgifted authors who are – sometimes inexplicably – overlooked by themajor publishing houses, can still leave a permanent legacy in theliterary world. bennisonbooks.com The Wagon Magazine - SEPTEMBER - 2017

21 The Wanderer Andrew Fleck The Great WenThe one quotation about London that everybody knows is SamuelJohnson’s opinion that ‘When a man is tired of London, he is tired oflife.’ Johnson liked to nettle his friend Boswell about his romantic viewof his home in Scotland: Johnson much preferred the great companyand liveliness of the capital. Many English poets liked to romanticizethe English countryside too, but more preferred to spend their timein the capital. Marlowe’s A Passionate Shephard to his Love is probablythe most well-known pastoral poem in the English language, but itswriter spent most of his working life in London – whatever wordsMarlowe put in the mouth of his shepherd, he seemed to think hecould ‘all his pleasures prove’ in tavern and play house more than bybrook and field. The grand old poet of nature William Wordsworthwrote one of his most popular poems about the view from WestminsterBridge, exclaiming ‘Earth has not anything to show more fair’ thanthe sight of a sunrise over the vista of England’s capital. London continues to inspire great loyalty and love to this day:The Wagon Magazine - SEPTEMBER- 2017

22recently the English journalist Brendan O’Neill wrote that he wouldrather be poor in London than rich in Hull. So it’s true –Johnson’sline reflects a certain truth about the English - or many of them - andtheir attitude to London. But there is another quotation about London that deserves tobe as well known, and speaks to another truth about the attitude ofthe English to their capital. What is to be the fate of the great wen of all? The monster called,by the silly coxcombs of the press, ‘the metropolis of the empire’? So asked the polemicist, pamphleteer and rural commentator, William Cobbett, about the capital of Britain, indeed of the British Empire, as he quite gladly turned his back on it and made one of his Ru- ral Rides out to the provinces. London, he casually opines, is a giant monstrous pimple. It is difficult to classify Cobbett’s politics, not least in today’s terms, but per- haps ‘reactionary radical’ would be closest to the mark. He is an entertaining, acer- bic writer full of surprising and originalopinions on everything from the Reformation to the importation ofswedes (the turnips, not the people) into England, and he is perhapsthe first writer I can think of to have brought up what I think we canfairly describe as ‘the problem of London’– a problem we have talkedabout since and still talk about today. In short, London is too big, itsgrowth is unchecked, and it drains life and energy from the otherparts of the country– perhaps in Cobbett’s day, from other parts ofthe empire too. Living in the same era as Cobbett, Horace and James Smith,two successful London brothers – one a stockbroker and the othera solicitor, both writers of light verse, would have had more reasonthan most to celebrate London’s greatness. And indeed they did justthat. In their poem, The Spread of London 1813, they described thereplacement of fields, trees and wildernesses with buildings: The Wagon Magazine - SEPTEMBER - 2017

23 Saint George’s Fields are fields no more, The trowel supersedes the plough; Huge inundated swamps of yore Are changed to civic villas now. What sane person, after all, would prefer inundated swamps to civic villas? There is a small tinge of regret, perhaps – in the ‘violated sods’ they go on to mention, or the lost yew trees – but this gloomy, if ro- mantic, scene had been replaced with ‘vel- vet lawns’ and ‘acacian shrubs’, markers of a nature tamed and beautified by the hand ofman. And, yes, London is to this day, even while home to over sevenmillion people, blessed with green spaces and spacious suburbs, notto mention a surprising plethora of wildlife. The problem for some is not so much thatLondon is too big in itself, but that in its ceaselessexpansion it absorbs and changes the rest of thecountry. A poet of the later 19th century, StephenPhillips, wrote in A Nightmare of London: I dreamed a dream, perhaps a prophecy! That London over England spread herself; Swallowed the green field and the waving plain, Till all this island grew one hideous town. Of course this didn’t happen – for one thing, the green beltshave put a stop to its expansion, and if it ever does reach from seato sea, the process will take centuries not mere decades. But Phillips’poem describes a ‘prophecy’ and prophecies can be interpreted inmore than one way. London may not have physically spread overthe rest of England, but its culture and its habits of speech certainlyhave. One is no longer shocked, for example, to hear the school chil-dren of the far north of England pronounce their ths like fs, like theCockneys of yesteryear, or that a man is now commuting every dayfrom Yorkshire to the capital. But in a way, this is the speeding upof a process that has always happened in England – just about everyThe Wagon Magazine - SEPTEMBER- 2017

24big cultural and political development since the Norman Invasion,from the Reformation to the Great Vowel Shift (with the possibleexception of the Industrial Revolution) has started in the capital andspread outwards. And, if it ever was, the sea and its ‘sanctity of foam’,as Phillips has it, is no barrier. If the Smith brothers associated the growth of London withcivilisation and prosperity, other native Londoners noticed the atten-dant growth of poverty and misery, best captured in William Blake’scelebrated London: I wander thro’ each charter’d street, Near where the charter’d Thames does flow, And mark in every face I meet, Marks of weakness, marks of woe. By the 20th century, after Baudelaire had made great poetryof the sleazy demimonde of London’s sister city Paris, poets were finding great beauty even in these darker and poorer corners of the capital: think of early T.S. Eliot and his ‘faint smells of beer / From the sawdust-trampled street’. Louis Macneice, meanwhile wryly commented on the dreariness of the London celebrated by poets past: I jockeyed her fogs and quoted Johnson: To be tired of this is to tire of life. I suspect that Macneice, unlike Johnson, thought being tired of life quiet forgivable– heoften sounds a little tired himself. But there is truth in Johnson’s line,whichever way you spin it. Johnson meant that all of society and cul-ture was to be found in the capital, and if you are tired of that, you aremerely tired. My spin is this –that London is life as it is, rather thanlife as we wish it to be. Like many a provincial, I often wish Englandhad the great regional capitals the likes of which Spain, Germanyand, indeed, India enjoy. But we don’t. Instead we have this sprawl-ing, messy, unplanned city, with much as much vulgarity as beauty(which fellow Wagon columnist John Looker details each month),and with a great deal of accidie and alienation alongside its great The Wagon Magazine - SEPTEMBER - 2017

25architecture and culture. Perhaps that was something that could havebeen changed in Cobbett’s day – but to try to roll back the capitalnow is to tilt at windmills. Still, one can enjoy indulging one’s quixotic fantasies once in awhile. One such fantasy – my favourite poem about London, I think– is provided by D.H. Lawrence. In keeping with his contempt for allthings industrial and technological, as well as much of the history ofcivilization since at least the Romans (he preferred the Etruscans),Lawrence describes: London, with hair Like a forest darkness, like a marsh Of rushes, ere the Romans Broke in her lair. Credits Most of the poems in this week’s article are in the public domain. Ifound them in John Bishop and Virginia Broadbent’s London Between theLines, Simon Publications, London, 1973: Horace and James Smith’s TheSpread of London 1813; LouisMacneice’s Goodbye to London, Stephen Philips’A Nightmare of London, William Blake’s London and D.H. Lawrence’s Townin 1917. The T.S. Eliot line is from Preludes, Collected Poems of T.S. Eliot 1909-1962, Faber and Faber 1963. Andrew Fleck, who has been a secondary school teacher, proof reader and EFL teacher, among other things, writes on poetry and history at sweettenor- bull.com. Currently, he is working on a historical fiction set in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, a project that he hopes will come to fruition at some point in 2017. Originally from the north east of England, he currently lives in South Korea with his wife and two small children. www. sweettenorbull.com.The Wagon Magazine - SEPTEMBER- 2017

26PROVERBS & PROVIDENCEYONASON GOLDSONIt seemed like such a good idea at the time. I took one look at the picture in the do-it-yourselfbook my wife brought home from the library and imme-diately fell in love. Doesn’t every kid want a tree house? I certainlydid. However, we had no suitable trees in our yard, sothe idea was a non-starter. But now it was different. With my own childrenjust old enough to enjoy it, that big elm tree in the centerof our yard seemed heaven-sent for such a purpose. Thecreative design cried out to be turned into reality, and I The Wagon Magazine - SEPTEMBER - 2017

27made up my mind on the spot. My wife didn’t even try to talk meout of it. The illustration showed how the tree house would seeminglygrow right out of the elm’s trunk, the base hovering six feet abovethe ground and the top about as far beneath the lowest branches.Four sturdy beams would angle down from the corners of the floor,secured into notches cut out of the hoary bark and held in place byrailroad spikes. Beams on the top would mirror those on the bot-tom, over which panels would form a sloping roof. It looked simple enough. After all, my father was an amateurcarpenter and a professional contractor. I had grown up with a ga-rage full of hand tools and had used them to build soapbox racers,bicycle jumping ramps, and every kind of contrivance my youthfulimagination could conjure up. With a clear set of instructions, atreehouse would be child’s play. Well, it might have proven a jauntier undertaking if I hadn’tchosen midsummer to get started. The midwestern heat, humidity,and buzzing insect life made the outdoors unpleasant enough with-out the added exertion of sawing and hefting and hammering. Andwith my father’s workshop 2000 miles away, I had to improvise forwant of the tools that would have made the job easier. I did have the foresight to buy treated beams that would resistrotting and warping. But they also resisted the blade of my hand sawand the bite of my chisel as I labored to cut the pieces down to sizeand carve out interlocking notches to form the structure’s skeleton.Even more challenging was the adventure of trying to saw a semicir-cular hole in each half of the floor, discovering to my dismay that atree trunk does not define a perfect circle. My friend Jerry volunteered to be my wingman. His expertiseas an engineer for Boeing seemed like a valuable credential, but theapplication of aerodynamics to airborne construction turned out tobe quite limited. Nevertheless, we managed to get the skeleton up in an after-noon. From that point forward it became a one-man job, and Jerrygratefully returned to his airconditioned living room.The Wagon Magazine - SEPTEMBER- 2017

28 After cutting and re-cutting, I finally secured the floor panels,after which I finally hit my stride. The slatted walls went up easily,and building the ladder was actually fun. After all, when do you everget to build a ladder? A major whoops! awaited me the first time I climbed up ontothe base: my neighbors. Their fence had not been designed for priva-cy from birds, squirrels, or little children whose father just gave thema squirrels-eye-view into their backyard windows. I laid out the situation to my children, explained to them theconcept of privacy, then modified the southern wall with a singlesheet of plywood. Crisis averted. The roof never quite took shape. Measuring four triangu-lar panels with perfectly rounded tops to match the arc of the treeproved more challenging than I had imagined. We tried a pieceof fabric on one side, which worked reasonable well. But withoutenough material for the other three sides, that’s as far as we got. Asit turned out, my kids didn’t care. They only played outside in goodweather, and the canopy of leaves and branches over their heads wasroof enough for them. The children liked their tree house. Their friends may haveliked it more than they did, spending afternoons high off the ground,almost touching the clouds. Only the children knew how their imag-inations ran free with the big, wide world made bigger and widerfrom their castle in the sky. Yes, they liked their tree house. But they didn’t love it. It’s a strange kind of disappointment, and one of the manychallenges of being a parent. You want your children to have ev-erything you didn’t. Sometimes you’re able to give it to them. Andwhen you do, you discover that it doesn’t mean as much to them asyou believe it would have meant to you. What if I had actually had a tree house of my own? Would Ihave spent hours every summer day aloft in the company of friendsreal and imagined? Or would the novelty have worn quickly off untilit became just another familiar diversion that I took for granted? The Wagon Magazine - SEPTEMBER - 2017

29 And isn’t it much the same as we get older? We spend so muchtime missing the things we don’t have, even after a lifetime of expe-rience teaches us that we rarely enjoy our dreams half as much as weenjoy dreaming them. The children grew up and went off to make their own lives.Perhaps one day my grandchildren would delight in the tree house.That’s what I thought, or hoped. The tree house showed remarkable resilience. A wickedstorm uprooted a neighboring elm, which dealt a glancing blow as itcrashed to the ground. The structure remained intact, but not entirely undamaged.The back panel was no match for even a brush with the falling giant.The base and support posts stood firm, but the railings were slightlyskewed and twisted, like wax figurines left out in the summer sun. But then a more subtle enemy beset the tree house: the oldelm itself. The instructions had said that, over time, the bark of the treewould grow out and around the support posts, which it did. Whatthe instructions did not say was that the tree would grow to fill in thegap around the center hole in the floor, which it also did. And then it kept growing. Ever so slightly, one millimeter at a time, the floor began tobuckle. You could never see it happening, any more than you can seeThe Wagon Magazine - SEPTEMBER- 2017

30glaciers forming, sand dunes shifting, or the motion of the stars. Ittook years, but inexorably the floorboards separated and warped andthe frame convulsed as if made of putty. Every so often, we found a slat or rail laying lifeless on thegrass. We removed the ladder, since the tree house was no longersafe. Children visiting with their parents looked wistfully upward. Eventually, the tree house was reduced to a mess of timbersplayed at all angles and in all directions. My wife demanded repeat-edly that I take it down, and I answered repeatedly that there was noreason, since the tree itself would take care of the job in good time.In truth, I didn’t want to let it go. But when it’s time, it’s time, and it’s a man’s job to shoot hisown dog and put down his own horse. So I went out last month withmy chainsaw and started the beginning of the end. The divestiture went much faster than I would have had imag-ined. It takes so much more effort to build than to destroy. In scarce-ly half an hour, there was nothing left. Well, not quite nothing. The four support beams were fixedinto the bark. I could cut them back, but there was no way to getthem out completely. A section of the floor board was embedded inthe trunk as well. It looked as if the tree had taken a bite out of thetree house and, like a stubborn terrier, wouldn’t let it go. Or perhaps the tree house wouldn’t let go of the tree. If you The Wagon Magazine - SEPTEMBER - 2017

31used your imagination, it looked almost like the tree was smiling. And within that Mona Lisa smile resides a gentle reminder. For nearly two decades the tree house ruled the tree. But timeand slow, steady pressure gradually displaced beams and nails. Likea river coursing through the canyon and the waves lapping upon thesand, the relentless beat of time and nature inevitably relegated thework of my hands to memory. As the Talmud says: Nothing can stand before a person’s will. We can’t stop the steady advance of time. But we can turn itto our own advantage with the proper measure of determination andperseverance. And so, with the wisdom of hindsight, I have to say that build-ing the tree house was a good idea after all. Rabbi Yonason Goldson, keynote speaker with 3,000 years’ experience, lives with his wife in St. Louis, Missouri. He is a former hitchhiker, circumnavigator, newspaper columnist, and high school teacher. His latest book, ‘Proverbial Beauty: Secrets for Success and Happiness from the Wisdom of the Ages’, is available on Amazon. Visit him at yonasongoldson.comThe Wagon Magazine - SEPTEMBER- 2017

32POETRY Md Mehedi Hasan The Thief: Acrostic“Father’s away! My father’s away!”Right at the beginning, the diary does say.“Odd! In my third year, I grew old.Mother tried but the manly little hands were cold.”Thief! Thief! He took all the charms away.Hell! Neither could I love nor write:Enough to be jealous, so do I criticize.“Lone, the lonely soul loves AugustaOver my sister’s beauty a mother does stay The Wagon Magazine - SEPTEMBER - 2017

33 Vision of the goddess is all over my diary; though- Epicure they say: Of my pain nothing do they know; Fence can border no true love.” Granny murmured: “Everybody knew him. Once there was Krishna Restless lover, sweet devil was he God even if warned, I would love my Govinda.* Europe knew yet women were mad to commit the sin.” Granny says whatever she wants: “One walks in beauty; Reason is the bard flirts.” Diary howls, granny’s experience falls On my word: womaniser. No? Or may my sight be miser. Lord’s life- wine and women are all Opium alike in him finding joy, I call. Rode to Greece for glory and fame: Do a poet and I be the same? “Born Childe Harold so was I. Yearned to see my daughter’s feet Rumours! Rumours! With rumours my days fly O Christ! Not a cursed one did I meet. Naming a hero- Juan, here, I say bye-bye!” * Govinda: also a name of KrishnaThe Wagon Magazine - SEPTEMBER- 2017

34 Journey It’s too early, still dark. An unrested traveller, can’t sing though a lark I’m; with hunger and sleepiness travelling. Can you hear the mosque’s calling? Red, the next village’s also burning; Smell of burnt flesh wished a morning. My horse cried- I couldn’t but saw a bride:The cold morning’s breeze’s flying her black hairEven God couldn’t touch the red sari, I bet dear. Groom? I looked with love and pride. “Are you…” couldn’t say, only cried. The Wagon Magazine - SEPTEMBER - 2017

35 Rape and Call Me- Whore Rain’s the forecast I repeat- rain’s the forecast Stay inside, Stay dry. If you get wet, rain isn’t responsible nor are we. But your dress is, you are. I repeat- rain’s the forecast. Rain washes manhood away; With an eve’s reddish sky, cries May: “She’s a child, sons! Go one by one!” Last night a girl came to me Wearing green and with a bleeding heart, saying: “Rape and call me- whore! Wasn’t 1971 better?” I didn’t care, asked her name With a greedy sigh; “Bangladesh”, shouted she. I don’t care, do I?The Wagon Magazine - SEPTEMBER- 2017

36Song of a Winter’s Tree Winter haunts me All my leaves dropped down. Alone, ugly, unloved I stand- Begging: love me, love me, love me. Don’t water me, it’s cold. Angrily one word she said, “Sold.” Knowing the taste of setting free, Standing I’m- a winter’s tree. A little girl’s playing beneath my shadow; Heard: her mother’s a widow.Last night the widow danced with an unknown he- Singing: love me, love me, love me. The Wagon Magazine - SEPTEMBER - 2017

37 They Call Me Tiger Widow When I was twelve I saw a colorful day A girl became woman. Love, I didn’t understand But in Falgun1, while leaving for the forest He looked into my eyes Freezing in shame, I remembered Bonobibi2, and said: Let the look live, take my life instead! I didn’t dress my hair, wash clothes Nor did I quarrel Yet Falgun went away with Aleya’s3 father O, the season of honey! “Ousted! My son died for you!” Mother- in- law cursed more than she cried. My Aleya, a fine woman of eleven I set her marriage to a blind but well- off man Blind husband is better than hunger, no? My Bishorgo4 became a man Of twelve and earns Dream doesn’t survive in saline water I married him off as they offered a boat. My son, my Tommy, God sent the precious! No regret but hunger in those manly eyes. Red! Red, red water, I saw- my son bleed! The killer Kholpetua5 killed!The Wagon Magazine - SEPTEMBER- 2017

38 And I know what the reason is: The witch and her boat it is! The witch and her boat it is! I, a woman, never went to the holy land Sundarbans6 I ask Bonobibi no more to fight- Some things just look good in black and white. 1.Falgun: Falgun is the eleventh month in the Bengali calendar and Nepali calendar. 2.Bonobibi: Bonobibi is a guardian spirit of the forests venerated by both theHindu and the Muslim residents of the Sundarbans (spread across West Bengal state in eastern India and Bangladesh) 3.Aleya is a Bengali female name. 4.Bishorgo is a Bengali male name. 5.Kholpetua: The Kholpetua River is located in southwestern Bangladesh.Md Mehedi Hasan is a student of English Discipline, Khulna University,Khulna 9208, Bangladesh. His poems have been published in The DailyStar, The Daily Observer, and The Independent and also in various literarymagazines. The Wagon Magazine - SEPTEMBER - 2017

39 POETRY Wafula Yenjela VANISHING ROOTS The cow I used to milk Is no longer mine She kicks whenever she sees me The cow I used to milk Charges in hostility whenever I look at her udder The cow I used to milk Will never listen to my whistles again The cow I used to herd is called Njeye Njeye gives her milk to strangers… I brought her grass from the mountains Because grass at the foot of Mt. Elgon is tender I brought her salt from the flamingo-patronized Lake BogoriaThe Wagon Magazine - SEPTEMBER- 2017

40And water from the spring in the sweet valley overlooking the NileWhere I used to herd her in the eveningsAs we trekked from the CongoBut the cow I used to milk scowled moroselyShe mowed with rejectionFriend, it’s the cow I used to milk that makes me weepBecause now I know it’s hard to live without milkNow I know that mowing is musicI weepBecause her udder is now beyond meHow I long to herd her in the sweet valley at sundownHow I long to embrace her in our annual festivalsOf communing with my ancestors, pouring libationThe herd of the Bamasaba is stolen, forever,The herd of the Bamasaba is vanishedAnd here I lie down among my ancestorsWrapped in strange veils instead of the rich cow-hide A Dirge for SandaalWe toiled togetherIn the rains and in the sunWe laughed togetherIn mockery and in merryWe sailed togetherIn stormy seas and in still watersWe chanted in unisonIn despair and in happinessWe swallowed them allThe silent curses and the shallow envyWe drank from the same cupOf betrayal and of redemptionEven in wilderness we wandered The Wagon Magazine - SEPTEMBER - 2017

41 And discovered our vanity Through thick darkness we raced And crushed forbidden gourds In dangerous rivers we waded But survived an ambush by crocodiles For we were a portion In sorrow and in bliss Then came the executioner’s bullet And infallible revelations that you were A disgrace to humanity, A menace to society, A traitor to your country, A terrorist. You? Sandaal, you whom I knew? Now you go alone, on a lonely journey You who never told me of divine rewards For aggression against infidels You who never treated me, a kaffir, disdainfully Have dived into the gaping jaws That have always opened for others And abandoned me in a nation seething with vengeance Thin TearsCall me softly, and let your voice caress my ailing heartTouch me tenderlyAnd let your hand sing melodically in my hen-pecked heartEmbrace me silentlyAnd let your breast sweep across my sad soulKiss me calmlyAnd let these forgiving lips nurse me with the sweetness of your lifeTake me homeThe Wagon Magazine - SEPTEMBER- 2017

42And let me live for youFor you have stolen my faithful GodDon’t go, my love, don’t goFor in the fathomless chambers of my heartIs where I have hidden you.Return with the dewReturn with the mistReturn to me with a waking dream.My plea is too late?Cursed is my late tongueA tongue slackened by love unquenchableThat untamable love that soars over fortressesA tornado is sweepingDeep across the jungles of my heartShe has gone away foreverForsaking this sighing bodyBut my casualty soul shall forever write her nurturant nameOn every gemstone in the universeWith these thin tears that shall never wither.Wafula Yenjela is a postdoc fellow at the Department ofEnglish Studies, Stellenbosch University, South Africa. The Wagon Magazine - SEPTEMBER - 2017

43 POETRY Kristyl Gravina As She walks by The elegant heel of a stiletto she walks by… Her auburn wind-blown hair softly wrapped her oval face never glancing sideways she walks by… As the tables littering the little café fill up where I sit, sipping my scalding coffee waiting impatiently in front of an open newspaper to hear the bells chime at eightThe Wagon Magazine - SEPTEMBER- 2017

44 the sound of clicking heels she walks by … Never looking my way yet every day, same time and place I wait Just to watch silently as she walks by Time Ticks byNever looked backDidn’t really think about lifeuntilI realised the ticking clockbundle of past memoriesnot historywill die with merandom thoughts and little secretspleasures, fearsmoments of passion,feelingsFading away …ForgottenThe Wagon Magazine - SEPTEMBER - 2017

45 Self Preserving At times I am like water crystal clear and pure giving life to everyone easing pain And yet I am warm too Like the sun you bask in shining brightly, radiant As I scorch, burn your skin I am like a flame burning red hot and passionate banishing cold comforting yet, you are my moth And I burn you too Because I dread loving you Kristyl Gravina is from the island of Malta. Her work has appeared in several print publications including Haiku Journal, Third Wednesday, Ink Drift, The Literary Hatchet as well as forthcoming issues of Glass: Facets of poetry and Night to Dawn among several others.The Wagon Magazine - SEPTEMBER- 2017

46FICTIONJohn AllisonThe first couple of dogs Izzy encountered just minutes into his hikewere leashed and well mannered, their owners responding positivelyto Izzy’s “Hey, thank you folks for using a leash.” Izzy began the steepupward trek that appeared not too far from the entrance. Brimmingwith sanguinity, he headed for the crest. Then, heading directly toward him at breakneck speed was adog weighing at least eighty pounds covered with a coat of thick,short hair having the muddled appearance of scrambled eggs withbrown gravy stirred in haphazardly, ears flapping like flags in a stiffbreeze, a wide grin revealing the rapture of newly found freedom.There could be no doubt of the animal’s eligibility for Trump’sjust-announced ‘Happiest Dog in the Whole USA’ pageant. It worea harness to which were attached what might have been a lesser ver-sion of the saddlebags on a movie cowboy’s trusty horse had they notbeen red and purple. The Wagon Magazine - SEPTEMBER - 2017

47 The trail was much too narrow for comfort at this point, andIzzy froze for an instant before stepping quickly to the side and fall-ing to his knees to regain his teetering balance. His front to the trailand his back to the nearly sheer drop-off, he closed his eyes. Whenthe animal had flown by and Izzy found himself still on the trail andalive, he exhaled. A thirtyish woman came along several seconds afterthe dog, a leash uselessly looped under her belt and paying Izzy noheed until he lashed out, “There’s a goddamned leash law, and bigsigns all around. You think you’re special? The law doesn’t apply toyou? Goddammit!” The woman turned her head toward Izzy as shepassed, presenting him with a patronizing smile clearly bespeaking theview that Izzy was a quaint, doddering old man requiring patienceand pity. Izzy fumed. Frannie called his twitchy-lipped protestations “grumbling,mumbling, and rumbling.” She should know. For some reason sheseemed to like him anyway, at least part of the time. Most of thetime? Even part of the time made him feel good. A few feet beyond the top of this first steep climb, his spirits alreadyrevived by the beauty of the place and the magnificent weather, Izzy cameto a fifty-foot-long plateau. On the left side of the trail, next to the woodsand away from the steep slope on his right, Izzy spied an 18-by-24-in.white poster that, because of its nearly pristine condition, apparentlyhad been stapled only recently onto the sharp-edged, gravely bark ofa hackberry tree. At the top of the light-weight cardboard rectanglesomeone, presumably the owner of the thing portrayed below, hadstenciled in large black letters: “LOST DOG.” Below was an exploded8-by-10 color photo of a scarred, bumpy, brown-and-white head thatIzzy estimated to be the size of a thirty-five-pound watermelon withflaccid ears, protruding eyes, and a red tongue like a Wall Street pow-er tie hanging from a cavern protected by inch-long teeth that couldonly have been sharpened by serious work on the petrified bones of awoolly mammoth. Beneath the cavern were strands of viscous drool,and folds of skin resembling living-room drapes hung from the jawsand neck. Dog, my ass, Izzy mumbled. I’d know that thing anywhere. It’sThe Wagon Magazine - SEPTEMBER- 2017

48Grendel, for god’s sake, or Grendel’s huge-assed mother. Of course,he wouldn’t have said this aloud to anyone unless he knew that theytoo had recently tried for the eighth time to make it all the waythrough Beowulf just so they could say they had done it. Below thepicture he saw, in slightly smaller letters: “ANSWERS TO ARTHUR.JUST A PUPPY. IF SEEN, PLEASE CALL TOM at . . . .,” followed bystill more subordinate printing: “Note—photo taken before recentraccoon encounter.” “Puppy my ass,” Izzy again mumbled, imagining that the captionshould continue with “180 POUNDS MINIMUM. A REAL SWEET-HEART BUT ALWAYS HUNGRY, SO IF YOU FIND HIM KEEPHIM AWAY FROM MEAL-SIZED CHILDREN UNDER THE AGEOF TWELVE AND ANIMALS SMALLER THAN A YEAR-OLDSTEER.” Pondering what the raccoon might have done to what alreadyappeared to be a serious genetic mistake, Izzy continued to grouse,“god, he’s an ugly bastard,” and turned from the sign as he resumedhis journey. The hour was just past 9:30 a.m., and Izzy began seeingmore people on the trail, most of them appearing to be serious hikerswith proper gear. No sandals this morning, which when he occa-sionally saw someone wearing them on a trail he wondered whetherthere was a contest to determine who could contribute the most toIvy League college funds for children of orthopedic surgeons. He waspleased to see so many folks out there, for it meant not only a healthierpopulation that was good for his health insurance premiums, but alsothat fewer citizens would be sitting in church pews, the latter beingto Izzy’s mind an especially worthwhile social benefit. **** Not long before on this sunny Sunday morning between semes-ters, Izzy had stopped his twenty-one-year-old bluish green Volvo on theside of the street next to Walker Hill Park, removed his walking shoesand fit his calloused, bunion-plagued feet into the once-expensive,now humbly tattered hiking boots whose soles were just beginningto seek freedom from the leather uppers. Sitting on the edge of theright-side rear seat of Algae with her door open wide and his legs The Wagon Magazine - SEPTEMBER - 2017

49extended to the curb, he had been careful to double-tie the laces. Hetook out his phone and switched on the software that mapped andmeasured the ground he traversed, and that estimated the calories heburned. He also turned on the wrist receiver that converted analogsignals from the heart rate monitor around his chest to a digital read-out on the watch-like display. It did not matter that he had measuredthe distance (10.2 miles round trip unless he took a wrong turn ashe sometimes did), calories (usually 742-752, if he didn’t get lost,of course), time (five hours ten minutes, give or take a little, subjectto the aforementioned caveat), and heart rate (130-148 while goingsteeply uphill) countless times before on this trail. He needed to do itagain. He might do a minute or two better this time. Then he forced ear buds into his ears just outside the hear-ing aids, the buds connected to the MP3 player in his phone, andswitched on the book he had been listening to about how inorganicmolecules had transformed into organic ones that formed the basisfor life once the planet had cooled sufficiently. After locking all doorsof his beloved car, the name of which had won out in a close contestwith Phytoplankton shortly after he bought it, Izzy prepared himselfto be immersed in nature and science for the next few hours, withthe pleasing knowledge that the other hikers who frequented thispark and its trails were generally more considerate than those at theGreenbelt and a few other places he sometimes visited. Izzy used several different trails within and just outside the met-ro area of the city that was split by a north-south interstate highway,flat, uninspiring farmland to the east of the divide and lovely limestonehills covered by Ashe junipers (“cedars” to the locals), several varietiesof oak, and a pleasing variety of other trees to the west. The hillswere a consolation prize for him, since he would rather have livedin the mountains. But the hiking here was good, and it satisfied himbetween those occasions when he could travel to mountain rangesaround the country and, every once in a while, overseas. Frannie hadtalked about moving after retirement, and Izzy knew he would prob-ably join her, not only to be near the mountains but also to be faraway from this deep red state where it was perfectly okay to wear aThe Wagon Magazine - SEPTEMBER- 2017

50large pistol in a holster like Wyatt Friggin’ Earp but illegal to own adildo. Then there was the additional fact, he knew, that he could nolonger imagine life without her. On several mornings the previous week, Izzy had begun hishike near one of seven entrances to the Cedar Creek Greenbelt, thatentrance being not more than five miles from home near the pointwhere the creek emptied into El Peligroso River, a waterway nearlyone thousand miles long, the name of which most people short-ened to The Peligro. The hiking was good there and one could getan efficient workout during the workweek because not far fromthe beginning of the trail a rocky path began a rapid descent thatcovered two-thirds of a mile, and he had found that traveling downand back up four or five times was a fine thing to do. That part ofthe Greenbelt would have been ideal were it not for the astonish-ing amount of dog shit frequently deposited and left here and therealong the sides of the trail and sometimes squarely in the middle ofit. And for the many dogs brought there and allowed to roam at willby thoughtless scofflaws. On this morning, Izzyhad stayed away from the Greenbelt andits annoyances, instead having driven eighteen miles to Walker HillPark just beyond the northwestern edge of the city. Near the end ofhis trip, he had turned off a divided highway and driven through aneighborhood of homes that he could not possibly have afforded, butthat he wouldn’t have bought had he been able because he thoughtit was silly to spend a fortune on a place to eat, sleep, and work. Heneeded walls and a roof that didn’t leak too badly, and that was aboutit. The home he had shared for several years with Frannie, one she hadsolely owned since her husband had fallen prey to a horrific tumoralmost twenty years before, and ten years before Izzy had met her, wasmodest but comfortable, and he was grateful that she felt as he didabout the matter. After a couple of long streets and several shorter ones, he hadcome to the large, lovely park befitting the clientele it drew from themultimillion dollar homes surrounding it. The city maintained thepark and the trails within it, which meant that area residents couldn’t The Wagon Magazine - SEPTEMBER - 2017