Eros

By T.J. Gillespie

Why do the gods choose us, mere mortal man,
To court, conquer, kidnap and pursue?
Having already taken possession of our souls
Why do they dare to desire our bodies too?

A one-ton white bull, a wide-eyed girl,
The weight is unrelenting as waves crash ashore.
Then:
Horns adorned with wreathes of flowers
And a virgin no more.

Yeats reminds us, again, of Leda and the
feathered glory of Zeus loosening her thighs.
And Tennyson has told of Tithonous taken by Eos
Imprisoned by old age and Aurora’s tremulous eyes.
There’s Cupid capturing Psyche
And Aphrodite advancing on Anchises.

Is this what fundamentalists mean when they say
Rapture?
Or why saints burn with
Ecstasy?

But whose prayers are these? Whose gods?

Leopold Bloom looks between the legs of stone statues,
Checking not the sculptor’s skill but
The accuracy of the anatomy,
Perhaps hoping, like Pygmalion admiring Galatea,
That his appetency will cause an apparition, animation,

And marble will be made flesh.

Your Thanksgiving Sports Moment of Zen

by Bob Herpen

LaSalle wusses out
Malvern steps in; no matter
The Prep conquers all

The RLPA is Proud to Present...

Our newest contributing member, Bob Herpen. Bob has returned from a long sabbatical in Japan, needing to shed the trappings of ego which come from the chosen career of erstwhile voice of some as-yet-created minor-league hockey team in the wilds of Nebraska or Alabama.

Still the bard of the blue line, the bucket, the end zone and the baseball diamond, he'll bring a decidedly Eastern literary perspective to the world of sport through the magic syllables of haiku.

It's a two-for-one in his first foray where angels fear to tread.

"What I'm thinking at work on a dreary Sunday while sneaking furtive glances away from the Giants-Lions game at the Eagles-Dolphins contest on the next TV over from my desk"

Andy Reid’s play chart
Is really post-game meal ads
Crab fries half price now.

"If I really did what my heart desired"

I'm shipping up to
Boston; tired of Philly's act
Now Go Celts and Pats

Philadelphia Folk Tales: A Series of Very Short Pieces of Fiction III

A Bridesburg Bildungsroman

Will have its premiere at the Holiday Festival on December 29, 2007 (location TBA). Check this space for more information soon.

Philadelphia Folk Tales: A Series of Very Short Pieces of Fiction

Coming Of Age in Cobbs Creek, West Philadelphia

By T.J. Gillespie

On the night before his sixteenth birthday, Roderick Hood, slightly buzzing after a quickly putting down a tallboy of Private Stock Malt Liquor, decides to give himself an early birthday present, in fact, he plans on giving himself several if everything goes right.
He begins by stealing a bicycle.

Of course he doesn’t consider it theft and doesn’t call it that. In the parlance of his friends, Lester T, Southboy, and Mack Mack, he boosted it. He found it, unattended and calling him, leaning against a telephone pole not far from where Baltimore Ave intersects with 55th. It had seen some tough use, but for Roderick, it is beautiful: plastic mag wheels instead of rusty spokes, mushroom handlebar grips, and pegs on the back frame to carry a passenger. The year is 1986, twelve months after a city block exploded into the May morning and a year before a new drug moves into his street and gets Roderick’s brother Marcus, a taciturn boy who reads comic books with a grave seriousness, into real trouble. All around him danger smolders, but Roderick, even if he could still sense it, is absorbed by something else: he had never owned a bike before and after a few unsteady pedals, he is in love.

His plans for the evening are simple but grand: he plans, with the benefit of his new bike, to ride over to his boy Lester T’s house, puff a few loosies, get Lester’s older brother Darryl to pick up some cheap wine, and then see if Cheryl, a pretty little skeezer he knew from around the away, would help him celebrate in style.

Of course, he doesn’t get that far. As he turns down one of the alley shortcuts, he runs into one of his brother’s friends, DeMarcus Harris, who was notorious for his fancy shoes, his beautiful Puerto Rican girlfriend, and an endless supply of yellows jacks and red devils. A few years earlier he had a monopoly on pancakes and syrup, Quaaludes and cough medicine, but the tastes of his clientele have been changing lately. In the alley with him, hidden the shadows, are two fools, shot cold and dead. Roderick thinks he recognizes them, but can’t be sure exactly. With the blood and all. What could he do, Harris asks the kid, shaken up and nervous, they were part of a trash crew. Not from this neighborhood. They’d come for his pills and his cash. He is no punk.

Roderick walked home, anguished and angry, on the dark wet streets hoping the city would keep his secret. He would tell no one what he saw that night and he almost never, hardly ever, only once in a while, late at night and alone, think about what he had become.

The Transfusion: Or How to Drink Her Off Your Mind

By Paul Cassidy

This recipe requires an empty stomach and one sick day. It's a little something I like to call "The Transfusion." Start of with one bottle of an expensive vodka, Stolichnaya, Skyy, Finlandia, Chopin, any of your top shelves will do. You will also need two lemons, a sharp knife, a cutting surface, two bottles of dry vermouth, one shot glass, a silver professional-class shaker, one red/white lapel carnation, a cigarette holder, expensive cigarettes (Dunhill or Nat Sherman), a bag of ice, one case of canned, yes canned, economy beer, ten really good CDs of varying moods and artists, and a bacon,hamburger, and onion pizza.

First you open a can of beer. Drink it as fast as you can. Then, from your CDs, put on the one that is the most blue. Drink another can of beer as you go. Then go to the kitchen and load the shaker with ice and place your favorite martini glass in the freezer.

Next, fill the shaker 4/5's of the way to the top with Vodka. Here's the secret, do not hold back. Think big. The ice should crackle as the Vodka slips in around it: this should fill you with a warm sense of anticipation, not unlike a full one hundred piece symphony orchestra tuning up as the conductor strides on stage.

Splash a little vermouth around the entire apartment, try to get some in the shaker.

Finish you beer, open another, turn the CD player UP.

Shake your martini. Dance from room to room in the apartment as you shake. This is an opportunity for you to make the drink your own, to express yourself. Invite any roommates present to join in with the phrase, "Hey, want to help me shake it?"

Place shaker on counter top. Finish Beer. Go to your room, put on the closest thing you have to a tuxedo. Any dark suit will do. Don't forget the shoes! Don't worry if there are not comfortable, soon you won't even notice.

Ascend back into the kitchen. Cut yourself some lemon wedges. It’s best to get this out of the way while you’re reasonably sober--nothing ruins "The Transfusion" like an actual late-night transfusion.

Remove your favorite martini glass from the freezer. It should have a nice frosty promise to it. Place wedge either in the top rim of the glass or just right in, it really doesn't matter. There will be plenty of drink, either way.

Pour out your martini and place the shaker on ice, preferably in one of those buckets you can steal from a hotel. Definitely steal the stand if you can.

Drink your martini. Have your cigarettes ready. Remove the pin from the carnation and do your damnedest to get that son of bitch to stick to your jacket somehow. Anywhere's fine so long you can see it. I've actually resorted to just taping the petals on with scotch tape. It made for a festive confetti-like appearance.

Enjoy a cigarette.

Finish your martini.

Here I would have a slice of pizza. Remember you’re laying a base for further drinking.

Have a straight shot of vodka, chase immediately with economy beer directly from can. You're eyes may water a bit here.

Pour out another martini. Change CD. Turn up music still louder. The CD selections should be going from most blue to most upbeat. (Women go the other way. Oh yes, this drink is for men only.)

Have another slice of pizza with your next martini.

From here, you'll be incapable of and adamantly opposed to, following directions of any kind from anybody. This is good. The drink is working its charms. From here you can take the drink in any direction you like. Think of yourself as an artist, and "The Transfusion" as you medium. There's really no limit to the variations and altercations that will follow. It’s a drink about freedom. About the self.

The heart of the drink is the bottle of vodka. Don't neglect it! You must finish it before going to "bed" wherever that happens to be. If police lights appear outside--chug the vodka, clean finish it. A hospital bed is preferable to a jail cell, plus nurses love "The Transfusion."

Best of luck and enjoy.

Let me know if you need a copilot on this one!

Philadelphia Folk Tales: A Series of Very Short Pieces of Fiction

A South Philly Love Story

by T.J. Gillespie

In a small corner row home on a quiet street in South Philadelphia, Salvatore Pugliese, a thirty-something pastry chef and former amateur boxer, shared his happy little life with his bohemian girlfriend, a giggly but intellectual waitress named Marina Del Mar who dreamed of being an abstract painter and opening a gallery and studio in Northern Liberties. Marina has had this dream for a long time, at least since September, and probably even before that, but she has recently stopped talking about her plans in front of everyone, especially Sal. This is partly because Marina has a preoccupation with female flesh but feels an uncomfortable Catholic guilt that was cultivated at St. Hubert’s school for girls that has prevented her from making any untoward advances at any of the attractive regulars at the Melrose Diner. It also has to do with her considerable lack of artistic talent. So, on cool November evenings while Sal daydreams about his glory days with the Golden Gloves—and in particular a legendary bout he had against a Ukrainian featherweight from the Northeast that ended when Sal punched the kid so hard on the nose that he began to hiccough so uncontrollably that his manager threw in the towel in the first round—Marina fills journal after journal with crudely sketched but boldly rendered images of female nudes.

Each morning Sal walks the couple’s bichon-frese, a naughty dog named Napa Valley who will, in a few years from now, run away with a three legged mongrel known as Smokehouse Red. But today Napa Valley follows Sal obediently through the neighborhood down to Marconi Park, down Broad Street toward the ominously nicknamed Sports Complexes, and back home. On some occasions, like today, he’ll stop at the corner café, Torrefazione, a small place where the owners have known him since he was a kid, and he’ll order a caffè stretto with biscotti and listen to a few arias of Italian opera that play on the radio behind the counter. As he takes the first sip and watches Napa Valley nip at passers-by outside, he hears Verdi’s “La Donna è Mobile” and feels a slight tingle of pleasure and embarrassment.

Tonight, he announces to himself, I’m going to put on my old gloves and let Marina pain my portrait.

But it was too late. That day at work Marina had read about an all-woman ballet company from Eastern Europe playing at the Academy of Music and she had decided right then and there she would put away her paints and become a dancer. A few minutes later, when a young woman who sported a nose piercing and a tattoo of a Chinese dragon on her left arm ordered a slice of key lime pie and asked if Marina had plans for dinner, she could think of no reason, no reason at all, to turn her down.

An Arbitrary Rating Scale for Prospective Authors Ranging from Best to Worst. Where Do You Rank?

By T.J. Gillespie and Paul Cassidy

Do you like to write? Are you drunk? Have you been in a fist fight in the past few days? Are you working on a secret manuscript that may be a) the Great American novel b) challenge the nation's obscenity laws c) change the way we use language? Use this rating system to gauge your potential!

1. Drunken Irish Novelist (Joyce. O’Casey. Behan. Flann O’Brien. Paul Cassidy. Let it be known that Dylan Thomas makes a compelling case for great Drunken Welsh poets.)

2. Expatriate Novelist Writing in a Second Language, Preferably French (Some could argue that this is a narrow field, we prefer the term elite. Beckett. Conrad. Nabakov. Joyce, although writing in English, gets points for teaching himself Norwegian to read Ibsen. Automatic disqualification: French novelists writing in Irish.)

3. American Recluse. (The mystery. The mystique.The aura. Salinger. Harper Lee. Pynchon. Cormac McCarthy. Sean Connery in Finding Forester. Extra points if small town locals keep your secret and deliberately misdirect the fawning tourists and get them lost. See the residents of Cornish, NH.)

4. American-Jewish Novelist (Roth, Bellow, and Mailer. Some great new ones: Jonathan Safran Foer and Myla Goldberg. Arthur Miller and Paul Simon don’t count? Dorothy Parker had a Jewish father. There’s Shell Silverstein.)

5. Dr Seuss

6. Christmas wrapping paper.

7. Dan Brown. Is your writing better when accompanied by illustrations? Is Tom Hanks your favorite actor? Are you paranoid about Masons and albinos? Do you like codes and words that look the same upside-down and right-side-up? Do you think France is cool?

8. NY Times Sunday Magazine. Pictures are nice. The Ethicist is interesting. William Safire still kickin’ curmudgeon-style over language. There's a pretty decent crossword for people who are still into that.

9. Dr Phil. I should note that I am judging him solely as a persona not as a therapist and certainly not as a writer. God, I hope no one thinks of him as a writer.

10. John Grisham. I think I saw part of the movie version of The Firm. Tom Cruise was in it. And Julia Roberts maybe. I think the receptionist at my dentist's office likes him. He is often features in Parade! Magazine.

How would you rate the following:

New England mystery novelists who solve crimes while on vacation

Female novelists (spinsters-only division)

Tough Guy pulp fiction writers who may or may not be writing about their own criminal pasts

Jerry B. Jenkins

Southern Writers (particularly Southern Gothic)

Reggae bands

Alcoholic novelists who die young and/or violently (or poets who drown)

An Adjunct Professor of English Literature Visits the Campus Fitness Center

By T.J. Gillespie

With a fitted black t-shirt, faded blue jeans

and beaten up New Balance shoes, he seems

more suited for an afternoon shopping spree

at the Willow Grove mall or watching a movie on tv

or maybe drinking an over-priced Long Island Iced Tea

or slugging down Yeunglings and doing tequila shots

at one of those trendy Center City spots

than here, staring at the mirror doing squats.

He watches himself intently, moving up and down,

never breaking his gaze. The only sound

he hears comes from the white wires in his ears;

otherwise, his is alone with himself and the unspoken fears

he has about losing his young body to the oncoming years.

I catch him, once or twice, in the wall’s reflection

lifting his shirt for a quick abdominal inspection

as if the sit-ups he made a few minutes ago

offer instant results and the muscles will show

the body that, through his dreams, he has come to know.

I think of Sharon Olds’ poem “Sex Without Love”

and the “single body alone in the universe”

and I feel that there is something strangely perverse

about young people so obsessed with how they appear—

as if the only thing that matters is the now and here—

that like a modern Narcissus they never venture far from a mirror.

His head turns up and I look away before I’m seen;

panting on a programmable bicycle machine,

I too envision a body, mine, long and lean.

Corsons Inlet by A. R. Ammons

The bay at Strathmere, July 2006

One of the RLPA's favorite places in the world is the Jersey Shore, and in particular, that barrier island of Sea Isle City. It was with a sudden surprise and delight that I came across a poem titled "Corsons Inlet" in the Vintage Book of Contemporary Poetry.

You can read the whole of "Corsons Inslet" at the Poetry Foundation archives:

Here is the opening:

I went for a walk over the dunes again this morning
to the sea,
then turned right along
the surf

rounded a naked headland
and returned
along the inlet shore:

it was muggy sunny, the wind from the sea steady and high,
crisp in the running sand,
some breakthroughs of sun
but after a bit
continuous overcast:

the walk liberating, I was released from forms,
from the perpendiculars,
straight lines, blocks, boxes, binds
of thought
into the hues, shadings, rises, flowing bends and blends
of sight

You can read more about A.R. Ammons here.

Lullaby

A Poem for Children

By T.J. Gillespie

If you listen carefully
You’ll start to hear the sound
Of the Sleepy-Time Blues Band
Coming closer to our town.

You’ve got to lie really still
‘Cause they’re still far away
And you’ve got to be quiet
If you want to hear them play.

They’ve got their Napping Drummers
And their Heavy-lidded strings

And no one can stay awake
When the Tired Tenor sings.

The sun is gone to his home
And wise Old Mister Moon
Is getting out his fiddle
To join his favorite tune.

The sky has grown dark now and
The stars will start to twinkle
As your ears can hear the faint
Piano keys gently tinkle.

Listen to the happy sighs,
Nursery rhymes and lullabies
Of the Sleepy-Time Blues Band
And, sweet baby, close your eyes.

What I am Looking For in Our Next President: A Return of the Fancy Dress

[fourth in a series]

by Sir Percy, English fop.

If any of you corn-fed Colonials put down your blunderbusses and fried pork parts long enough to inform yourselves about civilized people, you may have been surprised that the House of Lords has voted to discontinue the use of ceremonial robes and powdered wigs and instead conduct its business in the American tradition of business suits. What’s next—the prime minister donning a green flight suit and a “Blue Wolf” fighter pilot helmet and landing on the deck of an airline carrier?

That is why I blame James Madison, the first American President to choose long pants over breeches. And that is why I can only hope the next president reverses the coarsening of sartorial sense and restores the powdered wig, short pants, and a daring sense of elegance!
If it was good enough for Washington and Jefferson, by jove it ought to fly for an Arakansan.

While certain candidates may brag of the Rabelaisian wit of a Henry Drummond or act as if they were a flashing hussar of debate like Colonel Sibthrop, none can claim to have the panache of say, the Marquess of Rockingham or Earl Cathcart. Americans, I know, pride themselves on quaint notions of egalitarianism—I even heard of an absurd jest called “Casual Fridays,” which is surely an imaginative tall tale from your frontier West. Still, I have seen Presidents in sweat suits, khaki pants and polo shirts; others, worse still, in sneakers and dungarees.

Now I know the odds are against finding an American in a Belgravian tailor’s shop, I continue to dream of ermine robes and perfumed miniver! You were once took pride in being called a Yankee Doodle Dandy, so America, when you pull that ballot, stick a feather in your cap and hope the vice president is a member of the Macaroni!

Then again, cold indifference is the pleasure of hereditary titles—truth be told, I simply don’t care what you do.

By the way, do you happen to have a little extra? My snuff box is a bit light at the moment.

RLPA Unconventional Book Review: A Model World by Michael Chabon

A Review of Michael Chabon’s Short Story Collection A Model World Using Michael Chabon’s Prose as Poetry

“S Angel”

Easy flirtation
Had always struck him
as an end in itself

and one that did not particularly
interest him.


“A Model World”

The truth was
He belonged to that large brotherhood of young men,
Often encountered in Academe,
Who are obsessively careful about
Two or three things—
The arrangement of socks in their drawers,
The alphabetical order of their jazz albums,
The proper way to make a Bloody Mary—

And slobs
In every other regard.


“Blumenthal on the Air”

Friendship is different
in another language;
A foreign friend doesn’t have
to understand what you feel,
And I don’t expect it.

It’s enough
If he understands what you just said.

“Sometimes,” he says,
“It irritates me to see you
made a fool.”

“But then I rememerber
that you’re an American.”


“Millionaires”

Once in a while
You see a waitress like that,
Crying at the back of a restaurant
Or in the hallway by the phone,
Staring down
At a monogrammed matchbook
In her fingers, and consider for a second or two
The untold hardness
Of a waitress’s life.

“More Than Human”

His father
Didn’t know of the constant delight
His sons had taken in him
Or the legends and fables
That had grown around his name.

How impossible was the life of a father!

“Admirals”

It still sometimes seemed to him
That the things that had happened before he was born—
Pearl Harbor, hieroglyphics, catapults,
The day his parents fell in love—
Were equally ancient and interesting,
Cryptic and
Gone.

From the archives (June 1, 2006), a previous review of Chabon:
The Mysteries of Pittsburgh
by Michael Chabon

Not recommended.

Mysteries of Pittsburgh is the first novel written by Pulitizer prize winner Chabon; two of this other books, Wonder Boys and Kavalier and Clay are widely celebrated. This is a typical coming of age novel about a young man, Art Bechstein, who is facing the summer aftter college graduation. It opens rather slowly, but gets more interesting as the story progresses and more eccentric characters are introduced.
How do you pronounce his last name? I'll let him answer: "That's 'Cha-' as in Shea Stadium, '-bon' as in Bon Jovi."

The Wind and the Walls

Psalm 55:

"Day and night they go about upon the walls thereof:
mischief also and sorrow are in the midst of it.
Wickedness is in the midst thereof:
deceit and guile depart not from her streets."

I wandered too far outside of the walls of my own head, on 109th and Amsterdam, near St. John the Divine.

"Hey Dan! Where are you these days?"

"Hey man, I wish I knew! I can't find a sign around these parts to save my life!"

Couldn't tell what I was dealing with exactly,
feeling some damp wind blow through me like a foul red line breeze near two a.m.
Stumble drunk on a subway grate, the man, trying to preach to me.

"The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit."

Your Favorite Celebrities Get Real on Fame, Relationships and Having it All.

Samuel L. Jackson

"I be walking down the street right after Pulp Fiction came out and people would just scream at me lines from the movie, like, it's crazy.
"What just happened is a f****ing miracle
and I want you to ACKNOWLEDGE IT"

"I want the wallet that says Bad MotherF***er!"

At First It got me a lot of play I mean, ha ha, like, A LOT OF PLAY, I mean like (starts laughing to himself) a lot (starts laughing harder) I mean so much (starts laughing harder) it got to the point where I had to be like YO (laughing uncontrollably, weeping) I killed so many...I mean so much time.

I had to stop lettin' the ladies say certain words and the color green just got me to be like, you know how you always wake up in different countries, joe public knows all about that !!!!!

(Starts turning the blender in his kitchen on and off) I mean look at all of this stuff.

Sometimes I have Mohammad and Juice drive around L.A. and…

you know we got this game where we…we pick up random homeless men and, you know shower and shine, shine and shave or – wait is it, yeah shit shine and shave, whatever I think that was one of my lines from TripleX, Vin Diesel be gay did you know that, he always sitting down in interviews because that motherfucker is SHORT, doesn't want people to know that though,

we – yeah anyway in the news the next day let's say there are five of them and we give 'em like ten grand a piece, shit is crazy, sure enough next day I see on the new like "5 homeless men found dead in East L.A. from apparent heroin overdoses"

I'm like, you get to feeling like, you're God.

Sometimes I just look at myself in the mirror and say
"I am God"
just over and over and over and over and over and over
or hire out of work actors to just you know ATTEND to me,
worship me you know, gold nail polish, the works.

I had NIKE make me these special (motions with his hands) Travolta had like two operations so he could use 'em right, truth serum works good but you lose mobility.

You get to feelin' like, you know, yeah.


Tom Cruise

The Bridge to Total Freedom is directly related to the Thetan and his environment also known as his Mind, which is important when you work in film, you just HAVE to keep it in mind.

If you can understand the Affinity, Reality and Communication triangle then it's just like, you know it leads you to - I was on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno and I realized there that y'know, boom, Affinity, Reality and Communication that's like my motorcycle: the Ducati Hypermotard 1100S, it has the SAME ENGINE, HA HA HA, as Jay's bike that he just took to Sturgis, the Harley Davidson 1978 1100 Roadster and it dawned on me:

"ARC triangle = KRC triangle." Affinity, Reality, Communication is Knowledge, Responsibility, Control. You know?