+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ T M M OOOOO RRRRR PPPPP OOOOO RRRRR EEEEE V V IIIII EEEEE W W MM MM O O R R P P O O R R E V V I E W W H M M M O O RRRR PPPP O O RRRR EEE V V I EEE W W W M M O O R R P O O R R E V V I E WW WW E M M OOOOO R R P OOOOO R R EEEEE V IIIII EEEEE W W +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ Volume #2 November 8, 1995 Issue #5 +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ CONTENTS FOR VOLUME 2, ISSUE 5 Column: A Synopsis of The Story So Far . . . Robert A. Fulkerson Column: From the Belly of the Dough Boy . . . . . . . Matt Mason Swing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Joseph W. Flood One Tongues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Richard Todd Tuki Mila Pahi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Richard Todd Speechless . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Julie Schneider Woman -- A Terza Rima . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Janan Platt Nostalgia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Janan Platt ponderings of a beached poet . . . . . . . . . . . B.H. Bentzman jazzbender's sermon under the stars . . . . . . . . B.H. Bentzman jazzbender makes the aquaintance of old salt charon . . . . . . B.H. Bentzman The Greatest Escape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . B.H. Bentzman Testicular Trauma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Drew Feinberg About the Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Authors In Their Own Words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Authors +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ Editor + Poetry Editor Robert Fulkerson The Morpo Staff Matthew Mason rfulk@novia.net + mtmason@novia.net Layout Editor Fiction Editor Kris Kalil Fulkerson J.D. Rummel kkalil@novia.net rummel@creighton.edu +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ _The Morpo Review_. Volume 2, Issue 5. _The Morpo Review_ is published electronically on a bi-monthly basis. Reproduction of this magazine is permitted as long as the magazine is not sold and the entire text of the issue remains intact. Copyright 1995, Robert Fulkerson and Matthew Mason. _The Morpo Review_ is published in ASCII and World Wide Web formats. All literary and artistic works are Copyright 1995 by their respective authors and artists. +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ EDITORS' NOTES o "A Synopsis of The Story So Far" by Robert A. Fulkerson First off, I'd like to apologize for the extreme lateness of this issue. Many things (which I won't list in gory detail) have prevented the issue from being published on it's proposed date. In fact, we're almost two months overdue with this issue. We appreciate your patience and understanding. Rather than rush the issue out the door, we wanted to make sure everything was just right. Now, to move on to things changed. Since last I wrote a real column, over 5 months ago, many things have happened, both in my personal life and in the world of Morpo. Personally, I left the corporate business world as a programmer for Tandem Telecom and took a position at the University of Nebraska at Omaha as a full-time instructor of computer science. It's not that I didn't like my job at Tandem, but rather it was more a feeling like I was a square peg trying to fit into a round hole. After so many years in college (six with an almost-masters degree), I grew accustomed to the whole environment. I thrive on interaction with people, and sitting quietly in my cubicle at Tandem wasn't feeding that hunger. Now I interact with people every day (well, every Monday/Wednesday/Friday) and absolutely love it. I was also promoted to the position of Vice President of Novia Internetworking, an Internet Service Provider in Omaha, Nebraska. Between teaching full-time and vice-presidenting 3/4 time, life is, to say the least, rather hectic. Morpo-wise, we've added two new major features to our World Wide Web site. First, we've added real-time audio samples of some of the pieces in this issue being read by the author. Currently, Janan Platt can be heard reading two of her poems, Woman -- A Terza Rima and Nostalgia, and Richard Todd can be heard reading his two poems, One Tongues and Tuki Mila Pahi. Currently, only users of Windows or Windows 95 can hear these samples, as we're using the TrueSpeech audio technology. There should be a Macintosh and a Unix player soon. We'll also be adding Real Audio support by the next issue. This is very exciting, as I think that while the literature should speak for itself, it always casts a new and different light on the work when I hear the author read it. Matt Mason, the Poetry Editor for Morpo, has written hundreds of poems which I've read on-line and had my own interpretation of running around in my head. It wasn't until the summer of 1994 that I got to hear him read some of his own poetry, which was a truly wonderful experience, as there were subtle nuances I never noticed before. In the future, I hope we can do more here at Morpo with the spoken-word aspect of the works we publish. We'll also be looking at integrating some multimedia presentations into future publications, including re-printing a video file presentation of one of our previously published poems. Additionally, with this issue, we'd like to announce the grand opening of the Morpo Review CyberCafe, a World Wide Web-based conferencing application. We searched high and low for a Web-based "chat" program and finally found one we liked for its simplicity and elegance. Now, after reading Morpo online, stop by the CyberCafe and chat with other literature lovers in one of three rooms: General Discussion, Fiction Discussion or Poetry Discussion. In the future, we'll be hosting live conferences with some of your favorite Morpo authors. You can visit the CyberCafe at http://morpo.novia.net/morpo/chat/. So, there's a five-month synopsis of what's been going on. Though it sounds unlikely, look for the next issue of Morpo to hit the virtual stands around December 1st. o "From the Belly of the Dough Boy" by Matt Mason We've secretly replaced Matt Mason's normal column with new Folger's Crystals; let's see what happens: Everytime I open a magazine or newspaper, it seems that there's something new on the World Wide Web. I, myself, am pretty fascinated with that whole tetrazini, though a few things keep me from really piddling around there. Sure, I've been over at a friend's place in awestruck fascination as we waited for that whole damned file to transfer so that we could hear Godzilla roar on the Godzilla page. I've seen the nifty Morpo page and lots of other places. But, truth be told, I'm still working off an Apple iie, a computer so outdated that if it breaks I'll have no choice but to use it as a suitcase, a candleholder, or perhaps a nice casserole dish as there's no one left who fixes these things. I guess, technically, I do have Web access. Of course, with my computer's ASCII graphics and primitive ways, everything would look like Elton John's wardrobe closet put through a shredder, so it just ain't worth it. And you out there may ask, well.. hey.. you edit that keen electric rag called Morpo.. why not just take all the cash flowing in from that enterprise and buy a laptop or a UNIX system. Sadly, Morpo doesn't pay as well as it used to. Sure, I remember the old days when we'd be coated with expensive champagne, swimming in lentil-shaped pools full of marinara sauce and kiwifruit. But those days are over. Stiff competition from scads and scads (and scads) of other ezines has forced us to tighten our budget, eat more rice, and operate on Apple iie's. And.. oh.. wait a minute. That's not us. We never had a budget. You want that ezine three doors down, the one with the plastic flowers and the ceramic gnome in the yard. And why does everything smell like coffee? +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ "Swing" by Joseph W. Flood _________________________________________________________________ I inherited the swing records. The box full of ancient 78s had been unceremoniously deposited in my room. A day later, the equally old phonograph player arrived. My father was cleaning out the last of Grandpa's things, one minivan load at a time. He hated the whole affair, going through the odds and ends of an old man's life, searching through dusty closet after dusty closet, encountering only detritus. Dad put the records in my room because he had run out of space for them in the garage. He could have put them in his office; none of Grandpa's old stuff was in there. "Here," he said, letting the box fall to the floor. I was lying on my bed, TV idly by, thinking of awful high school stuff. "You like music, don't you?" Dad tried smiling, lamely. He was just looking for a place to dump all this crap. "Whatever." That night, I opened up the box and discovered records. Records! What's a record? The records had pictures of men playing trombones on them. There were illustrations of people in uniform, neatly lined up, playing instruments. I took the records out of the sleeves and ran my fingers across the deep vinyl grooves. It was so different from a CD. "You'll never guess what I was checking last night," I told my friends. We were gathered at a lunch table in the Commons. They were eating junk food and scoping for women. "What?" someone said. "LP's." "LP? Who's that?" "Records, idiot. Long-playing records." "Huh." They were utterly uninterested. _________________________________________________________________ When Dad hauled in the old phonograph, I pretended to be annoyed at the imposition. On the way out, he carefully shut the door behind him. I dragged the heavy phonograph across the room to a socket and plugged it in. The cover had a rusty metal latch. The speed of the turntable was controlled by switches as big as my hand. A plate on the side said that it had been manufactured at Versatile Manufactures in Cleveland, Ohio. I cued up the record and dropped the needle into the groove, just like I had seen them do it in the movies. Nothing happened. Then I found the round volume knob on the front of the box. I turned it and.... Sound, rich bass sound, poured out of the tiny speakers. It wasn't like my stereo, the music wasn't clear, it somehow was overlaid with background noise and static. I could see the needle tracing the groove, feeling the vinyl, and knew that that was where the sound was coming from. The music was rhythm, it was a song, a melody, like something from an old movie. I had never heard it before, ever, but knew that if I heard it more than once I'd be whistling the damn thing. I really hated myself but it was true--I liked this old crap. The mind tried to resist but was borne away by song. Who could I tell? I couldn't tell anyone. Grandpa was dead. If I told my friends, I'd be laughed out of Sun High. This was beyond old people's music--this was dead people's music. I went through the box and listened to all the records. It was a sick kind of fun, using this ancient technology. I liked the fact that the records were so big, much bigger than a CD. And heavy, the box full of them must have weighed fifty pounds. I liked watching the records spin inside the old box; I would see a scratch coming and then hear (and see) the record jump. I didn't worry about Mom or Dad finding me listening to all this fogey stuff--is our son weird? They both worked late and were never home. When they were, Dad tended to hole up in his office, typing, working on a spreadsheet. Mom would sit in the kitchen and work the phone, calling clients. There was still a lot of work to do with Grandpa's estate. Dad traded e-mails with my aunt regarding the "final disposition". He told me all this as if I cared. I couldn't see how it mattered very much--Grandpa was dead, all that was left was his stuff. Dad had finally emptied Grandpa's apartment. "It was like a rat's nest in there," he told Mom. She was standing in the kitchen, portable phone in one hand. Something was cooking in the microwave. Dad was still wearing a tie and the sun was washing over him, making him squint. "I couldn't believe how much shit he had saved. There were his old report cards, from the thirties. Timeslips from his first job--ten cents an hour. Letters from Mom, when he was fighting in the Pacific. Shoeboxes of old pictures, of their first house, of me, of those crazy picnics in the back yard. Pictures..." "Maybe we can put them on a CD-ROM?" "And do what then?" Dad loosened his tie. "Who would have time to look at it?" The microwave beeped. Cooking was finished. Mom carefully peeled the plastic sheet off of the plastic dish, steam escaping. The air conditioning kicked in, a loud whir that shook the house. "Well, you have to do something about those things in the garage, those boxes and furniture. I hate to leave my car on the street." "It's got an alarm," Dad said. Mom gave him a look. "But you're right, we need the garage back." Mom took her dinner out to the living room. "So," Dad said, opening the freezer, "we have Budget Gourmet, Weight Watcher's lasagna, bean burritos, Szechwan Chicken..." _________________________________________________________________ I delved more into the music. I can't remember the songs, I can't remember the bands. They had names like old white people--Miller, Herman, Dorsey. And the song titles were a laugh--Jersey Jump, Woodchopper's Ball, Chattanooga Choo-Choo. They were simple songs about spring and trains and love, always on the way to love, or pining for lost love, or waiting for love to arrive on exactly the right train. No tales of teenage angst, suicide, self-mutilation. Then, one day, my records were gone. I found Dad in the living room, rocketing through cable channels, not looking at anything in particular. I stood there watching him until he noticed me. "What do you want?" "What'd you do with the records, you know, Grandpa's old records?" He turned to face me, setting the remote down. "I took them to a record dealer. Sold them." "Yea?" "Uh-huh," Dad said. A strange smile crept across his face. "You didn't want those old things, did you?" "No, it's just, it's just like it was Grandpa's stuff. I thought we might keep them." "No room. You heard your mother." "Yea, right." I walked out front and sat down in the driveway. Gnats buzzed around my face. I sat with my arms over my knees. Some kids I knew from school rode by on bikes, yelling obscenities at each other. Dad was inside watching cable TV. I sat in the dark, doing nothing but thinking. +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ "One Tongues" by Richard Todd _________________________________________________________________ my language is strange to this place I know in my heart let me then my friend use your tongue fat and fluttering on flutes of rivers and wind moaning in grass wailing like night to stars it wraps around thunder bends to strike its drums bellows spring in flood and rumble of hooves let me speak vowels to dust and consonants to ice take name to be spirit holy as breath so that spirit speaks spirit and nameless live in words and we touch together edge of the sacred touch together unspeakable light touch together and feel the same touching so we may talk in common tongue sacred earth holy sky and the hoop that joins them joins us One Tongues speaking together +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ "Tuki Mila Pahi" by Richard Todd _________________________________________________________________ we gather shellfish edges of knives cracked to scrappers of flesh and hair whetted like teeth to cut water beneath our hands to peel skin we gather shellfish rooting muck with bare feet touching the dark flat curves foot to fleshy foot and string mother of pearl in pendants we gather shellfish the old way between fast and slow rivers in warm water deep with hair thick as milk we grope mud and gather shellfish blades to pry lock and twist binding muscle to scrape clean the end of flesh and dress bones in new skins +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ "Speechless" by Julie Schneider _________________________________________________________________ Your brother, angry that you weren't at his wedding refuses to speak. You were too busy saving your life drying out in detox dancing on the head of a pin. Even now, this second marriage is dead and he's still angry. Funny, how some grudges last longer than life, are stronger than blood. Brothers, what difference does it make now except to the mute. +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ "Woman -- A Terza Rima" by Janan Platt _________________________________________________________________ At the club with pool and courts, sweating on the gray carpet, the copper woman in bike shorts, busy like a sprocket, fit, well not quite. When her head weakens, her thighs remit. Knees, a heart shape desired. My mind reviews womanhood. Her small muscles curved and whittled like rosewood. And I see her on the mat - when I took dance I could make ropey triceps like that. A few wrinkles lined her skin that was otherwise flat. But her curves showed their sin each muscle dipping under, enough to hold a man's grin. Each shape a spiral, going lower, contour draped in worth. And I felt this image's power deep as seawater and birth; how her movement pulls as yet from a force outside the earth. Distanced, she wasn't a threat, a faceless icon. The men's hot eyes loosened her step. +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ "Nostalgia" by Janan Platt _________________________________________________________________ Cheese puff crumbs still savory and neon orange in the floor cracks, nail clippings pulverized between the mattress and the headboard, rose-colored sweater fluff fluttering in the heater grates, dander, thread, lipstick and flecks of skin chiseled by the wind and the blue heat of the sun; a woman who reconciles fifty, works the tines of her fingers through the ravelings of gray and consults the dust for a simple answer. +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ "ponderings of a beached poet" by B.H. Bentzman _________________________________________________________________ cautiously stepping past the line of debris of things the sea has not had time to digest watching its restless skin clawing the beach thinking about jazzbender laboring for preservation this is religious truth jazzbender had instructed you don't encounter raw experience in books and films but must stay afloat on chaos the mother of us all who's not malicious but indifferent to her sons our ships imposing order on her the neversame and if the captain's not god he's damn well moses +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ "jazzbender's sermon under the stars" by B.H. Bentzman _________________________________________________________________ we collapsed in a field without losing our grips on the bottles of beer and gazed up at the many stars jazzbender took another pull from his bottle and pontificated i got preached at by this baptist who thinks his little dunking gives him more wisdom than a sailor he thinks he's got his hand on the tiller can navigate the sea he's only scratching believing it was created for him god damn a whole sea miles deep and endless wide if god made the oceans three feet deep and lukewarm then i might have agreed but he thinks jesus was a sailor because he walked upon the water hell if he could walk upon the water what need would he have of us sailors +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ "jazzbender makes the acquaintance of old salt charon" by B.H. Bentzman _________________________________________________________________ to be a sunken galleon in a tropical sea he said where beyond the landlord's reach dreams like colored fish would sway among the shelves and desk legs in the watery twilight of the captain's cabin in every city jazzbender found a river lapping docks the sea's slender tentacles grasping at continents the one road for a thousand exotic ports how easy to slip the knot and drift back to sea who would have thought a swabbie couldn't swim the corpse drifting as far as the brackish harbor to be found bobbing in the polluted slick and foam knocking against the rusted hull of a stranded ferry +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ "The Greatest Escape" by B.H. Bentzman _________________________________________________________________ Normally my tour at Con Edison finishes at midnight. This wasn't a normal night, but then this is New York where anything that smacks of being normal is banned. This city is the fertile soil for the unusual. Only the seed of the world's unusual can take root here and blossom here. The rest either run away or are worn away. I was born in New York and I'm still here. My relief didn't arrive at midnight like he was suppose to, so I called the supervisor. Apparently Jim, the night tour guy -- my name is Arnie, or Arnold, which ever is easier for you -- anyway, Jim got sick at the last moment, possibly a heart attack, so his wife took him to the hospital. We later learned it was nothing but heartburn. My supervisor went down the list before he could find someone to cover and they took a while getting in. So I ended up riding the subway home at a very late hour. At three o'clock in the morning my car of the train was without conventional passengers. A young couple passed through the car, their hair bizarrely cut and standing on end. They wore black leather cycle jackets decorated with chromed chains. An elderly waitress, still in uniform and determined not to smile, passed through my car while clutching her purse. She was making her way closer to the conductor, changing cars at each stop. Only four passengers remained with me in my car. A skinny white guy, not dressed warm enough for the cold, was huddled in the far corner. He was forever reaching into baggy pants with those thin arms scratching and picking at God knows what. His problem, imaginary or not, had him dancing and jerking and keeping him from sleep. There was an old white woman not having any trouble sleeping, curled up against her several plastic bags filled with garbage that must have been her worldly possessions. She sat with her back to me, but I had noticed when I got on that she was missing a leg from the knee down, and this made me feel very sorry for her. She and the itchy guy probably lived here at night, on the subway. I was in their bedroom. The two remaining passengers were both Blacks -- I'm a white guy, something you wouldn't know unless I told you. Anyway, the one sitting farthest from me was real tall. He wore a dark green trench coat and a fuzzy fedora with a ridiculously wide brim. It was also a shade of green and had a colorful, five inch feather in the band. The black man sitting nearest to me, almost directly across from me, was drunk. You knew he was drunk because the stink of alcohol floated about his person. He was snoring, his body slumped forward, his head hovering just above his knees, his thighs supporting his forearms. His large hands and head bounced and bobbed with the movement of the train. While I was amusing myself with watching this little dance of his appendages, he suddenly jolted bolt upright. It had startled me, but it seemed even more of a surprise to him. His bloodshot eyes were wide with shock. He had broad shoulders and a very powerful build. I couldn't tell if his face was scarred or just deeply wrinkled. Coarse hair grew on his cheeks and a glimmering drop of snot was precariously hanging from one wide nostril. At first his eyes did not seem to see. Then they began to focus on their environment, and, sure enough, they found me. They locked on me. This big guy began to stand. With tremendous difficulty, he pulled his huge frame out of that seat using the adjacent pole, and I admit I was worried. Not that he was going to hurt me, big as he was, he was just plain too drunk to do that. I was afraid he was going to make a mess on me, that he might puke, or at the very least drip that hanging snot on me. With a push, he launched himself in my direction, swaying, coming most of the way, then stumbling a few steps backwards. The snot fell harmlessly to the floor and I was partially relieved. Finally he made the crossing, grasping the bar that ran over my head. After he was securely fastened he said, "Excuse me sir, but would you be so kind as to tell me where I am?" "You're on the E, guy," I told him. "The ee-guy?" he asked. "No, the E, just the E," I said. "I beg your pardon, but I am afraid I do not understand? I see we are on a train and that it must be night." "That's right, guy," I said. "You're riding the subway between Lexington Avenue and the Twenty-third Street and Ely Avenue station." "The subway!" he exclaimed, tossing his head from side to side to take it in. He seemed to be genuinely thrilled at finding himself on the subway. "I'm in New York! I made it! I did it!" Being in New York did not strike me as much of an accomplishment, yet he was overwhelmed with his being there; mind you, we're not talking about arriving at Carnegie Hall, merely the subway. He stared at me again, his eyes about to pop out. "Please tell me, what is today's date?" "March twenty-fifth -- no, the twenty-sixth," I informed him, while remembering the lateness of the hour. But no, he wanted to know the year? So I told him, 1982. The news was too much for him. Upon learning the year he seemed to faint, his body twisting and falling. I put my hands out to keep him from falling on me, but he caught himself, swirled, and plopped into the adjacent seat. I noticed the man in the fuzzy fedora was watching us and grinning. The drunk next to me was breathing heavy, as if exhausted, and mumbling New York and the year over and over. Once more he turned his attention to me and announced, "I did it," "Did what, exactly?" I asked. "I'm alive." With that he looked at his big hands with their dirty fingernails. Once more his expression became one of shock and he gasped, "Schvartse". He looked at me in alarm. "My God, I am a Negro," he said. "Comes as a surprise, does it?" He rose from his seat with unexpected grace and confidence. "Permit me to introduce myself," he announced in a booming voice that filled the car. While holding the nearest pole in one hand, he flamboyantly tossed his other hand in the air, and acclaimed himself, "I am the great Houdini!" He swung his arm across his waist and proffered a theatrical bow. He was unsteady. I could see past Houdini to the broad smile of the guy in the fuzzy fedora, who seemed to laugh, but not aloud. The skinny-itchy guy in the far corner took no notice of us, he was now scratching himself in his sleep. The old, crippled woman lifted her head, looked over her shoulder at us and acidly shouted, "Hey, Harry, can you keep it down?" She was instantly back to sleep. Houdini concluded his bow. He seemed dizzy for it and quickly sat down again. "Perhaps in 1982 you do not know of the magnificent Houdini?" The guy was astute, he could see my skepticism. He leaned a little closer with that awful breath of his. "I have accomplished the greatest escape of all time," he said to me. Then he leaned back and loudly announced, "soon the whole world --" He stopped short. This time his eyes appeared sad. "Nineteen eighty-two?" he whispered. "Nineteen eighty-two, guy," I reassured him. He leaned his head against the wall, just staring at nothing. I could see his strength dissipating. "Eighty-eight years," he murmured. "Is that how long you've been dead?" I asked. "No. That's how long I've been married." "Married?" "Oh my God. Beatrice, my darling. All this time I have been trying to get back and you, my sweet darling, must have died and gone on to Heaven." I sat quietly, just watching this hulking black man, his eyes squeezed closed. "I feel weak," were his last words, that is to say, was Houdini's last words, and he fell over. We were coming into Ely station. The guy in the fuzzy fedora was still grinning at my predicament, this heavy drunk lying across my feet. While the train was stopped in the station, no one getting off, no one getting on, I tried lifting Houdini off the dirty floor to get him back into a seat. He woke, somewhat, but gave only slight assistance. Unexpectedly, he pushed away. "Hey mahn, what chyu doin'?" "Just trying to help." "Well keep ya hands off me, I don' wan' no help." Without any further help from me, he stumbled to a seat and went back to sleep. He was still sleeping when I got off. +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ "Testicular Trauma" Thoughts of Designer Imposter Body Spray by Drew Feinberg _________________________________________________________________ I can remember the first time I saw the commercial vividly, for I was scarred eternally, not unlike the first time I had a woman look me square in the eye, force a smile, and mumble "Don't worry, I heard it happens to a LOT of guys." While channel surfing a few months ago, I found myself landing on MTV. It was The Real World Two that was on, and I couldn't change the channel because it was my favorite one, where Tammi purposely wired her mouth shut to lose weight. I was thinking about taking up a collection to keep it wired shut forever, but alas, I digress. A commercial interlude began with a Mentos commercial, and I was appalled to find myself mouthing along "Mentos, the freshmaker!" with my television. That was bad enough, but when I realized I was actually holding my remote triumphantly, not unlike the girl holding up her mighty Mentos, I knew I must turn off the television and get some fresh air. I reached for the "off" button on the remote, but found myself unable to hit it. Instead, I my eyes were glazed as I heard my RCA beckon: "The following demonstration has been made suitable for television." It piqued my interest, I figured I'd watch the commercial. Big mistake. It was a naked woman prancing around the screen with a spray can, covered only by two blue bars that followed her around covering her breasts, and her holiest of holies. Now, seeing an attractive naked woman bopping around on a television screen, this is not what scarred me. Don't you worry. In fact, it made me laugh hysterically. A voice-over was explaining "First, spray Designer Imposter Spray on your arms, and then spray some on your (beeped out the breasts), and the same time the woman was spraying it on the described areas. It went on to describe all the different places one could spray it, while the woman, seemingly in ecstasy, followed suit. It was truly a ridiculous image, the quasi-orgasmic quality of spraying some cheap-assed imitation perfume all over herself. She wound up spraying every part of her body really, as the voice-over told me that spraying this poisonous smelling fluid all over feels so good "you could spray them everywhere". But this of course, is not true. She missed a spot. If she was to spray the faux- spray in one particular place, shall we say, below the equator, this would not produce the ecstatic result as it provided elsewhere. I believe the correct word to describe the result would be "agony". But, thankfully, she missed that spot, so the commercial, which I thought was over wound up being just silly, not traumatic. Little did I know that in just ten seconds, I would be huddled in the corner of the room, rocking in the fetal position, hand immersed in my pants, a la Al Bundy. It seemed as though the commercial was over, as they showed a bottle of the stuff on the screen. But then it happened. Like all horrible things in my life, I saw it in slow motion, like when Marsellus Wallace in Pulp Fiction had Zed give him a proctologic exam without the courtesy of a sigmoidoscope. A nude man appeared on the screen, bottle in hand, blue bar on crotch. The voice-over triumphantly announced, "Available for men too!" The man, with a smug as hell grin, SPRAYS HIS CROTCH AND CHUCKLES! He laughs with this smirk on his face, as if it were the most euphoric and wonderful experience he had ever experienced. .And the commercial was over. It was an overload for my brain, I believe that was when I went into shock. In my trauma induced state, my entire life passed before my eyes. Well, okay, not my WHOLE life, but an incident in particular that involved myself, and my cajones. I flashed back to seventh grade, I must have been around twelve or thirteen years old. I remember being twelve quite well, it was when I was a tiny 5'4 boy, and knew that someday I would grow and grow and finally be able to conquer that freaking sign that said "YOU MUST BE THIS TALL TO GO ON THIS RIDE". Now I'm twenty-five. Hey, it's not that I'm still not allowed to go on certain rides, I just CHOOSE not to okay?? I could go on any ride I want, I just don't like waiting in line! Wait, I'm mixing up my traumas. Let's go back to my being twelvish. My dream girl, Penelope Horowitz, had asked me whether I wanted to go over her house on Sunday and study with her for an algebra exam. I could hardly sleep that night, knowing what would happen when I was alone with her, perusing the subtle nuances of algebra. I knew in my heart of hearts, that in the midst of studying, we would look up from the book, stare into each others eyes, admit our undying love, have a torrid affair, get married, have children, and happily grow old together. I just had to make sure everything was right. Sunday morning, I spent two hours getting myself absolutely perfect for the big study date. When I felt I was ready, I started to leave the house, but ran back into the bathroom. As I was singing along to "Islands in the Stream" on my radio, I realized I had forgotten the key to getting a woman to think of me as real man. Cologne. So I covered myself with my dad's English Leather, not thoroughly unlike the naked woman in the Designer Imposter commercial. But what if Penelope begged me to have sex with her? This was a real possibility. The prospect of her finding me "not so fresh" was strictly unacceptable. So in the middle of singing the Dolly Parton part of the chorus, I pulled out the waistband of my underwear, and did my final spray. "Islands in the stream...that is what we AREEEEEEEEEEEEGHHHHHHH!" I had never experienced such excruciating pain in my entire life. I had to cancel the date. I spent the remainder of the day holding my wounded huevos and cursing the day I had tried to spray myself "there". Penelope went on to date and marry my best friend. Oh Penelope, I miss you so...if you're reading this give me a call, I know I can make you so happy... Back to the story at hand. the man in the commercial had made the same mistake I had made, yet suffered no ill consequences. It was the most unreal and unjust act I had seen since Marisa Tomei had won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. But like the Tomei tragedy, this wrong could be righted, I knew it. I knew then why I had been put on this earth. It was to get that commercial modified. I wrote letters. I made urgent phone calls. I boycotted using the product. Okay, I hadn't really used it in the first place, but hey, manufacturers didn't know that. Yet every day that blasted commercial would come on time and time again. Hundreds of times, I saw that smug bastard spray his crotch. Was there no justice in the world? The horror, the horror. But just as I began to give up hope, it happened. The commercial began the same, bimbo dancing around in her Imposter glory. Same guy, blue bar on privates. But this time, he sprayed his CHEST, smirking and chuckling. Glory, hallelujah! Can I get an amen? There's no need to thank me. Just knowing that I might have saved one pubescent boy from making the same mistakes I made is enough. All I ask for is a page in the history books documenting my selfless effort to make the world a better place to live. Or maybe a statue. +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ About the Authors _________________________________________________________________ o B.H. Bentzman (BHBentzman@aol.com) was born in the Bronx in 1951. "My greatest achievement is to earn the companionship of a splendid woman, to whom I have been married for eight years." He earns his income working for AT&T as a Communications Technician. "And I am presently alive and well in a suburb of Philadelphia." o Drew Feinberg (afeinber@panix.com) is twenty-something and resides in East Meadow, NY where he is currently a full-time philosopher. He enjoys watching movies and then bitching about them, joining crusades he knows he cannot win, and singing TV theme songs to anybody within earshot especially the "Facts Of Life." Drew and his partner-in-crime, Jen, are starting their 'zine "Marvin Nash's Ear" in the very-near future so they can rant as long as they like to make the world smile and/or think, preferably both. For a free subscription, just send a request and the name of your favorite childhood board game to afeinber@panix.com. o Joseph W. Flood (JoeFlood@aol.com) had this to write: "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice." Unlike the doomed Buendias, my family always had ice in the freezer so we escaped one hundred years of solitude. Instead, I grew up peacefully in Wheaton, Illinois, a small town on a commuter line outside of Chicago, IL . After fourteen rather mundane years, my family left ice and snow for sand and sun (sort of like those kids on Beverly Hills 90210 but in a more modest income bracket). We arrived in Orlando in the middle of summer and still stayed. I spent my high school years in Florida. Then, graduation loomed (unlike those pesky kids on Beverly Hills 90210) and I had to go off to college. I chose American University because they actually gave me some cash and because I wanted to do more with my life than just hang out at Daytona Beach, like, you know? I majored in International Relations and minored in Literature. College has a way of cooking the interest out of you. You start fresh and excited about a subject and four years later all you can think is, "Get me the hell out of here!" After I graduated, I worked for a couple years for a banking consulting firm as an Information Assistant. Then, I moved back to Orlando to work on the Great American Novel. Instead, I wrote the minor Florida novel. My Inheritance (that's the name of my 65,000 words) is the first-person account of a high school "burn-out" who escapes his abusive father (and some legal troubles) by running off to college and masquerading as a college student. It's completely fictional--my parents are wonderful. My friends loved it and a couple agents actually read it but getting a first-novel published is a 1,000,000 to 1 shot. So, I moved back to The District and a got a job at The World Bank. o Janan Platt (janan@sonic.net) was born in Redding, California in 1957. She has published one chapbook of poetry (Alpha Beat Press, 1993) and her poems have appeared in Poetry Flash, The Tomcat, tight, and Recursive Angel. She is also a contributing editor of The Albany Poetry Workshop, a World Wide Web Internet poetry forum (http://www.sonic.net/web/albany/workshop). o Julie Schneider (jschneid@teleport.com) is a past winner of the Washington Poet's Association Totem Award and has the requisite degree in English Lit. She works as a LAN Administrator and among other talents can find lost icons while you wait. Favorite poets are Molly Peacock, Erica Jong and Robert Frost. This is her first published work. o Richard Todd (rtodd@unlinfo.unl.edu) grew up at the confluence of North and South Platte Rivers in western Nebraska. When he came of age he wandered from Nebraska to New York City to Montana to Colorado and back to Platte forks. He now writes, grows kids and lives on the edge of the valley. Recent work of Richard Todd is found on the web "When Arcs of Circles Touch" at http://ianrwww.unl.edu/ianr/wcrec/water/arctouch/index.htm. +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ In Their Own Words _________________________________________________________________ o Swing by Joseph W. Flood "Like the protaganist in Swing, I have lately developed a taste for the music of earlier generations. At first, I was embarassed by my new like and would hide the offending CDs from visitors, but now I proudly display my Sinatra box set." o One Tongues by Richard Todd "One Tongues is about discovering languages. Tongues we all know but which we forgot or misplaced or which were taken from us. To relearn these ways of speaking and touching. These are languages of this place called Great Plains. Written after thinking about Great Grandmother Christina who refused to learn English." o Tuki Mila Pahi by Richard Todd "Tuki Mila Pahi means 'to gather shellfish knives'. Lakota name for North Platte River in western Nebraska. We mucked the marshes barefoot searching for shellfish. A strong way to touch the river, to root in it. In the search you lift to surface many other things hidden in the mud. Some can be made into useful tools. Others scare the hell out of you." o Speechless by Julie Schneider "This is the quintessential 90's dysfunctional family poem. Apathy, denial, hidden anger and lack of communication; it's all there, with the hope that things could be different. It speaks for itself." o Woman -- A Terza Rima by Janan Platt "In Woman, I wanted to show the reader a bit of that heavy-duty nonverbal environment in today's typical health club. For months I tried many different versions and recycled two grocery bags full of crumpled paper. Then, in Scott Reid's Albany Poetry Workshop on traditional poetic forms, the words seemed to find their place within the Terza Rima framework. Poetic forms, to me, feel like tap dance rhythms." o Nostalgia by Janan Platt "I write most of my poems hearing other people's voices, not my own, reading the words. That was the case with Nostalgia, a short poem about the beautiful and simple way some women view the world and themselves when no one else is looking." o ponderings of a beached poet, jazzbender's sermon under the stars, and jazzbender makes the aquaintance of an old salt charon, by B.H. Bentzman "The three poems selected here are part of a series of eight poems written about a friend. Over many a good glass he exhanged his experiences at sea for my experiences on land. I then took his stories and character and embellished them. He was pleased at my attempts to metamorphosize him into a semi-mythical sailor. What is ficticious and what is true about Jazzbender (not his real name) I leave to the reader's best guess. This much I would like the reader to know, that the poem jazzbender makes the aquaintance of old salt charon was composed before my friend took his own life. Those of us who knew him were never surprised by his last act. We couldn't stop it from coming. It made us angry, but it didn't stop us from loving him, nor do we want to stop remembering him." o The Greatest Escape by B.H. Bentzman "My short story, The Greatest Escape, was developed from an entry in my notebook/journal. Following a dull period of several days in which nothing noteworthy was happening in my life, in a desperate act to make my notebook/journal interesting, I concocted this story about my late night ride home on the subway. A friend, who later read the entry, thought the late night tale true. Years later, I extracted the story from my notebook/journal, removed myself and invented a fictitious persona to tell the story." +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ WHERE TO FIND _THE MORPO REVIEW_ Back issues of The Morpo Review are available via the following avenues: ! = Electronic Mail (Send the command "get morpo morpo.readme" in the body of an e-mail message to majordomo@novia.net, exclude the quotes) = Gopher (morpo.creighton.edu:/The Morpo Review or ftp.etext.org:/Zines/Morpo.Review) = Anonymous FTP (morpo.creighton.edu:/pub/zines/morpo or ftp.etext.org:/Zines/Morpo.Review) ! = World Wide Web (http://morpo.novia.net/morpo/) = America Online (Keyword: PDA, then select "Palmtop Paperbacks", "EZine Libraries", "Writing", "More Writing") +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ SUBSCRIBE TO _THE MORPO REVIEW_ We offer two types of subscriptions to The Morpo Review: = ASCII subscription You will receive the full ASCII text of TMR delivered to your electronic mailbox when the issue is published. = Notification subscription You will receive only a small note in e-mail when the issue is published detailing where you can obtain a copy of the issue. If you would like to subscribe to The Morpo Review, send an e-mail message to morpo-request@novia.net and include your e-mail address and the type of subscription you would like. Subscriptions are processed by an actual living, breathing person, so please be nice when sending your request. +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ ADDRESSES FOR _THE MORPO REVIEW_ ! rfulk@novia.net . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Robert Fulkerson, Editor ! mtmason@novia.net . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Matthew Mason, Poetry Editor rummel@creighton.edu . . . . . . . . . . . . J.D. Rummel, Fiction Editor ! kkalil@novia.net . . . . . . . . . . Kris Kalil Fulkerson, Layout Editor ! morpo-submissions@novia.net . . . . . . Submissions to _The Morpo Review_ ! morpo-request@novia.net . . . . . . . . Requests for E-Mail subscriptions ! morpo-comments@novia.net . . . . . . . Comments about _The Morpo Review_ ! morpo-editors@novia.net . . . . . . . . . . Reach all the editors at once +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ SUBMISSION GUIDELINES FOR TMR Q: How do I submit my work to The Morpo Review and what are you looking for? A: We accept poetry, prose and essays of any type and subject matter. To get a good feel for what we publish, please read some of our previous issues (see above on how to access back issues). The deadline for submissions is one month prior to the release date of an issue. We publish bi-monthly on the 30th of the month in January, March, May, July, September and November. If you would like to submit your work, please send it via Internet E-mail to the E-mail address morpo-submissions@novia.net. Your submission will be acknowledged and reviewed for inclusion in the next issue. In addition to simply reviewing pieces for inclusion in the magazine, we attempt to provide feedback for all of the pieces that are submitted. Along with your submission, please include a valid electronic mail address and telephone number that you can be reached at. This will provide us with the means to reach you should we have any questions, comments or concerns regarding your submission. There are no size guidelines on stories or individual poems, but we ask that you limit the number of poems that you submit to five (5) per issue (i.e., during any two month period). We can read IBM-compatible word processing documents and straight ASCII text. If you are converting your word processing document to ASCII, please make sure to convert the "smart quotes" (the double quotes that "curve" in like ``'') to plain, straight quotes ("") in your document before converting. When converted, smart quotes sometimes look like capital Qs and Ss, which can make reading and editing a submission difficult. +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ Our next issue will be available around December 1st, 1995. +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+