Melodie Provencher, Recipes for a Unicorn Hunt, Isle of the Dancing Shamans

You say you want to be buried in it,
this slatted bench,
this molasses-colored
Stickley
where I find you snoring this morning
curled chin to chest like a late-term fetus.

Strewn on the coffee table and floor
is the story of your return
which I, fevered by dreams of loss, missed.
Your keys overshot the table
when you tossed them
but not the cigarette pack—crumpled—
that landed beside the elongated nude
of the Art Deco ash tray.
And beside them your
brown leather wallet
blue plastic lighter
horn-handled pocket knife
and a gas station receipt.

It must have been very late or very early
when you decided not to climb the stair,
not to wake me;
very late indeed when you
pushed off your shoes and slid into repose,
preferring to dream here,
alone
in your bachelor crib.

—Published in Penguin Review, Spring 2005



	Pumbaa says, “Home is where your rump rests!” and I agree. I joined Fallen City Writers in the summer of 2002, shortly after resting my rump in Youngstown, Ohio. I was born in Missouri and grew up in New Mexico, California, Arizona, Texas, Alberta (Canada), Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), and DeKalb( Illinois). After college, I moved to Washington state, then to the Netherlands . . . and back to the United States again. Home right now is a stately, 100+ year old fixer-upper in Struthers, Ohio. From 1996 through 1999, I taught journal writing and self-editing for writers on AOL’s Online Campus and the Novel Advice website. Currently, I’m a full-time staff member in the Office of Student Life, as well as an adjunct faculty member for the Department of English, at Youngstown State University where I teach freshman composition. My poetry, short fiction, literary criticism and nonfiction have appeared in Towers, Blue Moon, Novel Advice Cyber-Journal, The Penguin Review and elsewhere.

Still Life w/Antonio	You say you want to be buried in it, this slatted bench, this molasses-colored Stickley where I find you snoring this morning curled chin to chest like a late-term fetus. Strewn on the coffee table and floor is the story of your return which I, fevered by dreams of loss, missed. Your keys overshot the table when you tossed them but not the cigarette pack—crumpled— that landed beside the elongated nude of the Art Deco ash tray. And beside them your brown leather wallet blue plastic lighter horn-handled pocket knife and a gas station receipt. It must have been very late or very early when you decided not to climb the stair, not to wake me; very late indeed when you pushed off your shoes and slid into repose, preferring to dream here, alone in your bachelor crib. —Published in Penguin Review, Spring 2005

Museum Piece (or, My Life in 630 Words)	Blood reds, bits of sky, metamorphosing greens, and real gold spin the tale of a life now on display at the Victoria & Albert Museum. Some chapters wax pastoral. Others detail battle fields, the triumph of victory. And scattered through the mix, visions of torture: Our hero skewered on a pole, chopped to bits, boiling in oil, or dashed to the ground, his head lopped off. Time and chronology, cause and effect, do not exist. Panel A does not lead to Panel B which has no connection to Panel C. My own life is like our hero’s, a series of unrelated events, some idyllic, some horrific. Only when I think like a medieval seamstress—arranging stories as units of color, tone, and texture, instead of by timeline—does the telling make sense. Like this: Panel A My head hovers above a huge pile of eels. On both sides, piles of North Sea salmon, Chilean sea bass, Atlantic plaice, and a suspended drop of melted ice, arrested on its way from table to cobblestone. The scene is a late 20th century street market. Note the fine detail of the fish scales, the bemused expression on the fish monger’s face, and the Dutch ad for wireless Internet service posted on the 14th century canal house. Panel B Exhaustion leaks through my smile. I’m in bed, watching as Bruce cradles newborn Alyce in his arms. His tears are wet, are real. Go ahead: Touch the cloth. Is this joy? Panel C My sister and I pose in front of a restaurant packed with happy customers. The sign reads “Island Crossroads,” and we’re both wearing chef’s hats, chef’s jackets, pepper-motif chef’s pants. A snow-capped Mount Rainier fills the background. I am grinning as Lori, frozen in a hugging gesture, inserts a Henkels four-star, professional-grade butcher knife into my back. A metaphorical image, of course. I wonder how many of St. George’s torture panels are metaphors for betrayal and disillusionment, those mini-deaths we all miraculously survive? Panel D (split screen)
	On the left, it’s high noon, a desert in the American Southwest. My father and I stand on opposite banks of the Rio Grande. Fishing lines taut through the water. Flies hover above.	Identical image, except that the sun has descended to the horizon. Hatch marks indicate dusk. We stand in the same positions we’ve always stood, staring at the river.
	The key to this panel is, again, in the detail. All action hangs below the surface, unseen and unsaid, like gathering schools of rainbow trout. Panel E Bruce—just bone and skin, like an Auschwitz survivor—leans against me as we walk to the hospital bed in our living room. My sister-in-law looks on with a disapproving glare: Bruce’s hand grabs my ass. Those of you familiar with The Life of Bruce Ervin Marshall will recognize this as the famous “Final Gesture” scene from the morning of his death. Panel F Dressed only in panties, Lori and I race with a pack of other kids through a stilt-house village somewhere in Southeast Asia. Note the filigree lace of the old woman’s prayer shawl and the phoenix and Garuda motifs in the fighting kites diving and soaring above our heads. And, finally, the panel before us today where I sit with fifteen (or so) other adults under the artificial wash of florescent lights. Desks arranged in circle formation, workshop style, we’re the academy’s answer to knights at the round table. Animus liberatus, torch-and-quill logos recur on our notebooks and binders, confirming this as the place and time we will imagine-remember: Youngstown State University, circa Fall 2005. Go ahead, dear classmates, check out the portrait within the portrait. That last panel belongs to you. Are my colors true? The details clear? Have I drawn you right?

American Pickles in Southeast Asia	Once upon a time, we are still seven years old, best friends because our lives are melded in this rambling four-plex where there’s barely a wall between your life and my life and we’re the same age, like twins. Your hair is long and dense and black and I think of bears and Isn’t that fur hot on your neck? You laugh as I work your mother’s silver-handled, boar-hair brush made in communist china, my fingers sneaking through your heavy mane. Erupting out of nowhere, the argument, Pickles or are they cucumbers? We ate the whole jar between us so now there’s no evidence, nothing to look at but our memories—memories of our tastebuds, memories of our eyes. You say they were cucumbers, looked like and skin bumpy; they had to be cucumbers. I say pickles are not cucumbers, silly, did they taste like cucumbers? … And what language were we using, anyway, because now all I can remember is the argument not the words themselves…. I was angry that you argued. I am older by two weeks and you shouldn’t argue with elder sister, be respectful, at least be kind if you have to disagree, and besides, it was my mom who bought dill pickles, american style, at the chinese emporium: They’re american and what could you know about american pickles? You, angry like a tiger, whipping around, calling me mean. I call you stupid. You call me demon. I throw your mom’s brush. We’re not friends anymore, you say, get out. I run through your livingroom, down the stairs into the yard, where my mom stands there, worried there, not knowing. What’s wrong? Nothing, I say, because I’m a liar too not just a demon. You don’t come over and I won’t go over and we don’t see each other for days and days and I feel sick. I ask my mom about pickles and hate myself more, can never eat pickles again without thinking about you, because they made me say that you’re stupid but you’re not stupid. Ohara. What are you doing now, forty-one years later? Is your mane as gray as mine?

Mel's Online Journal & Reviews	Read M.A. Provencher's Online Journal at http://www.livejournal.com/users/maprovencher/ Find Mel's Reviews on DustJackets community blog at: http://www.livejournal.com/community/dustjackets/

© 2005 M. A. Provencher
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