Preview Issue 01.01.06
Backyard | by Andrea Avery
Hidden Pulleys on Balcony Four | by Aaron Belz
The Bars of Our Fathers | by Thom Fletcher
Deep in the heart of Chesterfield: A city rat considers the suburbs | by Chris King
Schoolhouse
Coffeehouse | by Michaela McGinn
This Way Chuck Berry | by Thomas R. Raber
Sonnet: PSA | by Tony Robinson
Stardust in a Phrygian Key | by Stefene Russell
Sophomores | by Julia Smillie
The Ghosts of Winifred Moore | by Mike Steinberg
Four Days Behind the Iron Curtain, or, I'm With the Band | by Mary Kaye Tonnies
Late Night Radio | by Brett Underwood
This Way ---> Chuck Berry | by Thomas R. Raber
On the Reeperbahn in Hamburg, I'm surrounded by real St. Pauli
girls who flatter me
with smiles and point to the bottom of a drink menu, eager that I
buy them all a round of
the highest-priced stuff. They're slinky in bed clothes, with legs
as slick as scissors, and
they push the shy one who knows a little English to talk to me.
"Where are you from?" she says.
From the United States.
No, not New York. Not California.
You might say it's close to Dallas and, yes, I've watched "Dinisty"
on television.
“I'm from where Tom Sawyer is from," I say, schoolishly accurate.
A few of them nod, as if they know. But I'd like to be more precise
about my home.
I raise the matter of the Arch, to blank glances.
With the Mississippi, I'm getting warmer.
I might mention Budweiser, in Germany, but that
king falls a few oceans short of world fame.
With the jukebox playing Blondie, I ponder a visual aid:
One leg bent like a half-open jackknife.
The other thrust forward like a dagger.
I scoot low on one foot, the other heel bouncing ahead,
hands cradling a fantasy Gibson.
The women laugh at me, pointing in recognition.
I haven't impressed them, but I've connected.
"Go, Johnny, go," says one of them, in English.
Danke freunden. Without knowing, you know where I'm
from.
BIO
Harry H. Huth, grandfather of Thomas R. Raber, laid stone along the
River Des Peres as a laborer in the Works Progress Administration.