Seal

Photo Essay II: The Unusual Traffic Signage Found in Sea Isle City, New Jersey

All photographs taken by T.J. Gillespie

Query. Story. Response.

Editors at JP Press
50 Evergreen Street
Unit 25
Jamaica Plain, MA 02130

Dear Editor of Quick Fiction:

Please read the following story and then tell me how awesome it is.
Then offer me money to publish it.
Thank you for your time and attention.
Sincerely,
T.J. Gillespie
SASE enclosed.






“The Hitch”
By T.J. Gillespie

“Whoa, boy, what do you think of her?” asked the driver, nodding his head toward the passenger window. “She’s a real firecracker, that one.”

A round shaped woman wrapped in a worn, red winter coat, coughing fitfully, rounded the corner of Fitzwater Street and headed into Whitman’s Hardware store. He didn’t mean her, did he?

The teenager, unsure of how to respond, crinkled his face and said, “Well, I don’t know…I mean…” and never finished his sentence.

The driver, offering his passenger a cigarette, repeated his query at the next intersection. This time the woman, in her late thirties, was carrying a bag of groceries. She reminded the boy of one of his mother’s friends; she looked like the type of woman who played pinochle or attended Knights of Columbus raffles at the church basement after Mass on Sundays. The boy turned his nose in discomfort and squirmed in his seat. He didn’t want to look at the woman or the driver.

“You must be a real lady killer, eh? Yup, real popular with the girls, I bet,” the driver said with a wink.

It was the nineteen fifties, when men wore hats, women wore aprons, and it was not unreasonable for my father, then just a teenager, to hitchhike to work.

“You know, what?” the driver began again. “I woke up today with this huge problem that just won’t go away,” he said looking first at the boy and then down to his feet. “This big, uncomfortable problem. Maybe you can help me with it.” His last words were a statement, not a question.

The boy, silent, stared straight ahead.

“What’s that?” the driver asked, taking his arm off the wheel and turning his face close to the boy. “Did you say you have the same problem?”

The boy, my father, unlocked his door, opened it, stood up and got out. Without looking back, he slammed the door behind him and said, “Thanks for the ride, mister.”




Dear Mr. Gillespie,

Good God, no.

Sincerely,
Quick Fiction Magazine.

MTV Names Poet Laureate?

In breaking poetry news...seriously...MTV networks has named its first ever Poet Laureate. The choice? New York Post-modernist John Ashbery, critically acclaimed, sure, but not quite the poetry-slam, hip-hop, spoken word style one would expect for the Generation Z crowd.

See more at the official site: MTV U.

Or read the NY Times' take on it: An 80-Year-Old Poet for the MTV Generation

For help with Ashbery's style, read Slate.com's article: The Instruction Manual: How to Read John Ashbery.

Read some of his poems, or even better, listen to the poet himself read his "Philosophy of Life" here. You can even hear the audience laugh.

This Day in Lyric Poetry...The 258th Birthday of Goethe

"German poet, novelist, playwright, courtier, and natural philosopher, one of the greatest figures in Western literature. In literature Goethe gained early fame with The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774), but his most famous work is the poetic drama in two parts, FAUST. Like the famous character of this poem, Goethe was interested in alchemy. He also made important discoveries in connection with plant and animal life, and evolved a non-Newtonian and unorthodox theory of the character of light and color, which has influenced such abstract painters as Kandinsky and Mondrian." Continued here.

"One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words."

"Children and apes may think it great, /If that should titillate your gum, /But from heart to heart you will never create/ If from your heart it does not come." (from Faust I)

Goethe famously contributed with his friend Fredrich von Schiller on a little literary journal whose aims were not that different from this humble endeavor.

Bonus feature:

Five cent review:

The Sorrows of Young Werther
Goethe

A novel about the "excess of feeling," this eighteenth century novel was a literary sensation. It inspired an overnight fashion trend: yellow pants for men! Napoleon read it nine times! The great philosopher Schopenhauer said that not only would every reader recognize himself in this novel, but every reader would understand himself better after reading it. Plus, it was Frankenstien's monster's favorite novel. (It also inspired a bunch of lovesick German teenagers to off themselves. It became an international phenomenon and is still studied by psychologists as the first example of contagious suicide. And they say video games are dangerous!)

Jesus Goes Hollywood

By T.J. Gillespie

With the recent success of Mel Gibson’s biblical epic The Passion of the Christ ($200 million and counting), a number of major studios have been scrambling to produce their very own religious themed. “Jesus is very in,” said Jerry Talent, a high-end producer backed by MGM studios, “The bible is hot and God is very right now.” Here are a few of the most hotly anticipated releases:

Jerry Bruckheimer’s David and Goliath: The Reckoning.

From the production team that fathered such hits as The Rock and Con-Air this Old Testament classic is the ultimate underdog action flick. With Tom Welling (star of TV’s Smallville) as the titular shepherd boy turned warrior king, “D&G” promises lots of amped-up guns, high-tech explosions, fast talking bad guys, and super hot babes. This isn’t your mother’s first book of Samuel! Maxim Magazine rates it four stars. Look for July 4 opening. Directed by Michael Bay.

Jet Li is Jacob.

We all know the tale: Jacob wrestles with the Lord and becomes renamed Israel, father of the 12 tribes. Well, jump ahead to modern day Hong Kong where director John Woo “reimagines” Jacob, son of Isaac and father of Joseph, as a kingpin in the Chinese Triad. Using all the hallmarks of his patented “gung fu” style, Woo’s take on the third and final patriarch brings a gritty realism and more than its fair share of “heroic bloodshed.” Co-starting Bolo Yeung as Esau. Currently in post-production.


Unlucky Lot

Although the studio remains mum, look for Roman Polonsky to return to the director’s chair for this unconventional examination of Genesis’ tragic figure. Living in the shadow of his uncle/brother-in-law Abraham, forced to leave his home in Canaan and pick up some real estate in Sodom (Gomorrah was well watered but housing costs were over inflated), Lot finally thinks he’s found happiness until a couple of locals decide to rape some angels. The climax comes quickly: death, destruction, loved ones transformed into pillars of salt by the wrath of God. Think you know how it all turns out? Think again.

Some cynics are suggesting that Polonsky was particularly attracted to some of the more salacious scenes in the script involving a drunken Lot (See Genesis 19:30-36).
Sure to be a hit at the festival circuit.

Woody Allen’s Waiting for Ezekiel.

Tapping into his old bag of tricks, Woody reclaims his title as the king of neurotic Yiddish humor and existential angst as he presents this serio-comic look at one of history’s most pessimistic nebbishes. Living in exile in Babylon, Ezekial, played by Allen himself, begins having terrifying visions of his own death by giant Gentile breasts. Dismissed by his therapist (Tony Roberts) as merely paranoiac hallucinations, Ezekial begins to realize that he is in fact experiencing divine warnings of doom, played up for laughs of course. The New Yorker raves, “This ribald yet sensitive film is slightly better than Curse of the Jade Scorpion but not as good as Mighty Aphrodite.” Scarlet Johansson and Diane Keaton co-star.

(Note: I originally wrote the opening paragraph on Sunday April 4, 2004, back when such an idea seemed relevant and slightly funnier. I finished the rest of it today when such an idea seems irrelevant and slightly less funny.)

Contest: Alternative Rock Hits of the 1990s that have been translated in and out of Japanese by Google Translate.

The First Ever R.L.P.A. Contest: Identify the following song titles and their respective artists.

For Example: “It is not possible to touch this” is of course MC Hammer’s “U Can’t Touch This.” Some of these will be much easier than others.

Leave your guesses in the comments. The first to correctly guess all thirteen will be the winner. If no one gets all of them, then, after a reasonable amount of time a winner will be announced and awarded a fabulous prize. Some are easier than others. Good luck.

1. Smell likes the mind of a teen
2. Friday as for me there is love
3. Loss of my religious belief
4. Uniformity it is better than the real
5. When our friends supply success, we hate that
6. Old female of back of counter of small village
7. March of ant
8. Star explosion of champagne
9. False plastic wood
10. It flies the bullet where the butterfly has been attached
11. Hairstyle of Demon
12. Intelligent Robot of paranoia
13. The half the life which is fascinated

Note: This idea was blatantly ripped off of Daneil Byndas who did the same thing to the Beach Boys.

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/lists/11DanielByndas.html

The Continuing Problem of Male Violence

Part I. The Four-Year War in Gombe
(Or This is Analogy Not Homology)

By T.J. Gillespie

They shared this land for millennia,
Owning a common ancestor,
Hunting together, sharing food, defending each other
Against common threats,
Cooperating to build community.

The break came casually, without malice
Or greed or competition.
Those who left first, traveling south,
Finding the fruit fresher, the water cleaner,
As they moved into Kahama, couldn’t have known
They were sowing the seeds of discord.

There’s no creation myth here; no sacred scripture;
No divine promise or covenant;
No crime of passion to stir or spark;
No kidnapped bride taken away.
But it is an ancient motive:
Rank and territory.
An expression of power to augment power.

Walking single-file, in raiding formation,
The oldest of the gang went in first,
Knocking down their quarry, catching him unaware,
Holding him, whimpering, in position while the others
Kicked, punched, and bit.
The youngest grabbed an arm,
Twisted it round and round,
Trying to tear it out of the socket.
That’ll do. Leave the body as a warning.
This is our turf.

Science tells us that violence is in our brains,
That ever since the neocortex expanded
—some time in the Cenozoic—
Aggression became more complex,
More creative,
More cruel.
Only thinking animals, like us,
And like the Kasakela and the Kahama tribe they annihilated—
Chimpanzees engaged in organized warfare in a small corner of Tanzania—

Have the required intelligence to commit genocide.

**********

II. Prayers for Intercession

on the Steps of St. Celia’s

In that austere autumn when I was nineteen,
Away at college, I remained blissfully oblivious
To the goings-on of my hometown
Until the news became national,
Unavoidable, inescapable:
Carloads of kids coming from
Abington, Hatboro, Roslyn
—the very neighborhoods I called home—
Had come to Fox Chase lusting for blood,
Letting out choric howls of the hunt.

A sixteen-year-old kid,
An altar boy left bleeding on the steps of his parish church,
Had been beaten by a baseball bat until he went limp
And then his tumid body held aloft
So his attackers could get better swings.
His head bashed in
Making seven skull fractures.

Haunted by identification, I knew
The fear I had was not that I could have been Eddie,
That I could have been the victim,
Wrong place, wrong time,
But that I could have been in the car,
A dumb—no, much worse than that—teenager
Wielding a weapon, swept up in the rush of murder.

Are we, as Rosseau suggests,
Civil at heart, generous in spirit,
Only to be corrupted by those around us
Or are we savages saved from our darkest desires
By a civilizing society, the constructs we build
To control impulse and tame our wildness?

Is evil something we do
Or something we are?

I pray that it is not hardwired in the convolutions of our brains,
Like chimpanzees,
Predetermined,
Inevitable,
Already there.

Photo Essay I: The Flora of Ft. Washington State Park

All pictures taken by T.J. Gillespie. Click to enlarge.

Our New House

The bathroom is a little small, I’ll grant you that.
The sink too close to the tub,
The toilet—sorry, the commode—squeezed snugly against the wall.
You’ll bang your knees and curse the cold
When the shower takes too long to heat up
On dark winter mornings.
But your dad can fix that.
He’ll come and stay with us for a week
And, between sips of strong coffee and trips to the hardware store,
He’ll take out part of a wall,
Put in a vanity, and install a proper medicine cabinet.

But close your eyes and see what I see.
We’re home and we can do anything we want.
I agree, the yellow wallpaper will have to go,
But the little room will make a perfect nursery
And the kitchen is perfect—
There’s room for your Polish pottery and,
Maybe, my beer bottle collection?

Come here. There’s something I want to show you.
Here, in the backyard, you’ll plant
Rhododendrons and azaleas, tomatoes and squash,
Can you see it?
We could put the grill here and have cook-outs in the summer.
We’ll invite the neighbors
To come and drink wine.
And here, under the blossoming dogwood tree,
Yes, here is where you’ll leave my bones
To be buried, blanch, and disappear.

---April and May 2005

T.J. Gillespie