Jon Frankel's Blog, page 4

paper letters

Paper Letters
paper letters
like polaroids
develop
in the floating
light of candles
music to stare
at stars by

word eases into oases
of hair tangled in weeds
the stamp of the tongue
that seals us in time
to tell the tide of love

a pulse of salt
in a dress
seas of ears
on the page
the ink screams
for days
delays

name
above the fold
eyes in the hide
of strangers

language veiled
in cloud or clay
intimate syllables
stillborn words

wraith
in a wreath
of leaves

whisper of rain
on paper lanterns

WINTER ROOM

Winter Room

The chains of the swings hang still.
The benches are covered in snow.
High on a naked bough a crow
Lays down the law with beak and claw.
I stare out the window at a circus of ice
Circles of sun and cloud shroud the hill.
Love, let us flood this room with light
As the paperwhite opens its bloom.

The Martian Princess, chs 21 & 22

Admiral Cane searched the minibar for something to drink. “You drank all the champagne?” she asked, her face illuminated by the fridge light.
Phaedra said in a dull monotone, “Before the party. She insisted.”
“Is she your wife? Girlfriend?” She examined a split of white wine. Martian plonk. “I can’t drink this Martian shit.” Instead she collected the mini bottles of gin and vodka together. “We could mix ‘em,” she said, handing Phaedra a glass.
Phaedra was devoid of any feeling at all. She had devoted so much energy to hating the Admiral and it seemed to be gone. Why? Exhaustion, she supposed. She worked at finding that hatred and took the glass. “Ice,” she said.
The Admiral dropped a cube in the glass and cracked the nips, handing four to Phaedra. They sat in silence drinking the liquor until the Admiral said, “I’ve spent the past five years hating you and yet, now that I see you, I don’t know what I feel.”
“I still hate you,” said Phaedra.
“Fair enough. Give it time. I’m sure I’ll hate you too. I guess things worked out for me better. But you’ve done well for yourself, if your girlfriend is the Mayor of Paris/Mars. A lot better than a prison ship.”
“I’m an escort, a convict ,and a whore, understand? I screw disgusting men to stay alive. She’s the first gig I could stand.”
“I haven’t screwed anything since coming to Mars, not even myself. Of all the unforgivable things you did to me, destroying my libido is the worst.”
“I’m really sorry about that, Boss. Maybe you should vent yourself.”
“They had it coming. I saved your fucking life, you and that baby of yours and that boy. That detestable boy.”
“For the fucking money.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, space is not a charity. Everything is for sale. What happened to you anyway? You shouldn’t be here at all.”
“I told you, I’m a consort.” Phaedra drained her glass. “This isn’t doing it for me.”
“Me neither. I took some psilocybin earlier but it’s worn off.”
“Maybe—” Phaedra said, eyeing the titanium suitcase.
“Of course, what was I thinking?” She lifted the medicine chest out, brought it over to where they were sitting and put it on the table. They leaned close to examine the contents. The familiar smell of her hair filled Phaedra’s nose. “Oh, this is good,” the Admiral yipped. “Narcostar.”
“I don’t want to nod out, I have work to do.”
“Work? Looks like your work is done here.”
“You don’t understand.”
“How about a speedball then? I think we could, hmmm. Yes indeed we can.” She took out four different vials and said, “Amphetamine, narcostar, LSD and nicotine. Your arm please.”
“In the butt. I don’t want it to show. And don’t get any ideas.”
“Your gown makes it difficult. Lift it.” She prepared Phaedra’s injection and wiped a spot on her buttocks with alcohol, then pressed the needle into the goosebumped flesh. Her glands began to pump. “My turn.”
“You can inject yourself.”
“It’s more fun this way. The gown’s backless.”
“I’ve noticed.”
“A compliment?” The Admiral stood with her back to Phaedra and Phaedra took aim at her butt cheek, a strong whiff of pheromone making her woozy. The crack of the Admiral’s ass was covered in barely visible blond hair. Phaedra found herself staring at the downy crack and then the vertebrae of her long, naked back. The amphetamine rush made her smile idiotically. No, she thought, searching for the hatred, searching for the bitter, angry knot of rage she nursed.
They sat down and stared out the window at the stars. There were one or two meteors. “Beer?” Phaedra asked.
“The whiskey’s better.”
Phaedra stood and had to find her balance, then felt incredibly graceful, as if she could fly, and efficient. She got eight minis of whiskey and poured them. “It must be getting late. The meteor shower’s begun.”
“That’s what I came for,” the Admiral said.
“Me too. The Mayor wanted to fuck all night and I was like, you can fuck me anytime, but the Kushida Meteor Shower? Earth people save their whole lives for the chance.”
The Admiral nodded in agreement. “The Ruler Zenobia too. These idiots just want to drink and gossip. I am so sick of gossip, I can’t tell you.”
A meteor starting high in the sky stretched all the way to the horizon. “Wow.” Colors showered off of it. Phaedra felt herself lifting. “You’re with the Ruler Zenobia? How did you pull that one off?”
The Admiral laughed quietly. “Easy. Her Scion’s got an insatiable appetite for dick. Somehow she got pregnant.”
“It’s not all that difficult once you know how.”
“You young Ruler girls are real fertile Myrtles I guess. I aborted her and kept silent. They’ve been my patients ever since. The little minx is hot. Your age. Poor thing. She picked up the Earth Minister for Trade in the American Zone but it looks like he is after bigger game. Unfortunately for all of them the Old Ruler has business to discuss and he can’t escape. I’d be there still, bored stiff, if this emergency call hadn’t come.” She looked at Phaedra who was smiling. “I think the drugs have done you good,” she said.
“Did you say the Earth Minister for Trade?”
“Yes yes, the star of the show, except now everyone knows the Rulers Tobor Ocktomann and Imogen are showing up. You ought to know them.”
“I’ve heard of them of course.”
The Admiral laughed with scorn. “You must be high if you can’t do better than that, Phaedra. I know who you are.”
“Do you have a cigarette?”
The Admiral reacted with mock horror. “Do you want to kill the Mayor?” They both looked at her recumbent form. “Resting quietly. She won’t wake up for twelve hours at least.”
“So technically we don’t have to be here?”
“Technically we do. She could arrest. She could aspirate vomit. Anything could happen.”
“I don’t suppose there is a monitor in that thing?”
“There is indeed. Did you want to meet the American Minister for Trade by any chance?”
“Yes. I’ve got to get out of here.”
“I want to know why you are at this party,” the Admiral said. “Then I’ll take you to meet him.”
“I’ll tell you that if you tell me where my baby is.” Phaedra was suddenly cold. She didn’t feel hatred, she just wanted to know. “We landed and were met by a woman named Qudra, the French pimp who owns me now. My baby and Jedidiah were kidnapped and I haven’t seen them since.” She could see her grief and sadness as if at the bottom of a well, reflecting the light dully. It was distant and yet she couldn’t take her eyes off of it. Rage, grief, sadness. So far away, glimmering. She was thirsty for them, she wanted to haul them up and drink them down but instead all she felt was the incredible clarity of the drugs, the warm calm of the narcostar, the pierce of rapid thought, processing, sorting the world, the steady focus of nicotine, and the joy of the oceanic feeling, the connection of every particle in her body dancing with their entangled twins, racing outward from the big bang to the final dissolution.
The Admiral got up abruptly, ran for the door, and stood with her back to it, hand on the knob. “You have to promise not to hurt me.”
“Whatever you did doesn’t matter now. I want to know where they are. I hired a private dick who thinks they are on Earth. Trafficked by Qudra. Is that true?” Phaedra tried to figure if she could reach the Admiral before she could escape. It was about six steps.
“I sold you all to Qudra for a good price, that’s all I know.”
Before the Admiral could open the door Phaedra was upon her, throwing her to the floor and straddling her waist. The Admiral squirmed beneath her like an eel, much stronger than Phaedra imagined and hit at her blindly. She pinned the Admiral’s shoulders to the ground with her knees and seized her ears, twisting. “Agh!” she shouted, baring her teeth. “I will bash your fucking brains out if you don’t tell me where my baby is!”
“Okay okay. Please,” The Admiral panted, tears filling her eyes. Phaedra had never seen her shed tears or even tear up. “Let me go.”
“When you tell me where they are.”
The Admiral huffed, her face flushed and wild with fear. Then she grew still and a black anger flooded her eyes. Phaedra was enveloped in pheromone and felt aroused beyond herself, felt her stomach pitch. Damn you, she thought. I’m gonna fuck your ass when this is over. Then I’m gonna kill you.
“Qudra mentioned she might sell you to the Quarantine.”
“The Quarantine?” Phaedra banged the Admiral’s head against the carpeted floor and her eyes rolled white. “You sold us to the fucking Quarantine?”
“It was the only way I could come here. And you were supposed to stay together. You were supposed to go with them.”
“Then what did Qudra do with them?”
“I don’t know. But I can help you find them, if you let me up.”
Phaedra released her ears. They were red and the earring had torn the lobe. Blood trickled down soaking into a tuft of her hair, which glowed dully. “First you have to introduce me to the Earth Minister for Trade in the American Zone.”
They stood, and the Admiral brushed herself off. Phaedra could sense the powerful storm of pheromones pouring off her as her heart pounded. Admiral Sybil Cane stared at Phaedra with a look of devastated love. Phaedra knew it as if they were her own thoughts and feelings. This can’t be happening she thought, but the angrier she became, the more she wanted to fuck, not kill the Admiral, which only made her angrier. She shut her eyes and turned away, forcing all of the emotions back down into that deep well. When she was calm she said, “Set up the monitor. I need to get to him before Ocktomann arrives.”
The Admiral did as she was told, pairing the monitor with her phone. Mayor Mary’s vitals were strong, her breathing steady. “What do you want with Riotus?”
“I’m going to kill him.”
The Admiral smiled and took her by the hand. “I want to kiss you, 57607.”
Phaedra hadn’t heard the number in so long she didn’t at first realize what she was saying and then, finding it funny, really funny, laughed, kissing her lightly on the lips, remembering the first time they kissed, the bead of fluid on the sore. “You fucking bitch,” she said. “Let’s go.”

Phaedra’s halo crown felt crooked. “Is my crown falling?” she asked the Admiral.
They paused outside of the gold doors and the Admiral fixed the crown, gazing wickedly into Phaedra’s eyes. “I can’t believe we are going to do this,” she said under her breath.
Phaedra felt like she was floating. “Don’t make me laugh,” she giggled. “I hope I can pull it off.”
The Admiral started to giggle too and then they laughed, harder and harder until it was uncontrollable.
“Stop!” Phaedra said through bleary eyes. “They’ll hear.” The Admiral took her arm. “I do still hate you,” Phaedra reminded her. Gas molecules swarmed the chandeliers. A giant snake stretched across the floor and vanished into the wall.
“That’s the awful part, isn’t it?” The Admiral said cheerfully. “It really sparked my libido. I haven’t felt such hatred—well, never.”
“In all your years on ship I’ve hated you the most?” They bumped into the potted plant. “This is fucked up,” Phaedra said. “I really do have to kill him.”
The Admiral waved her off a little sloppily. “No fucking problem. That guy’s a-a—”
“Showboat,” Phaedra said, laboriously drawing out the syllables. “God it’s nice speaking English. American English. I think I might have to fuck your ass before I kill you.”
“Every red blooded gal needs a good ass fucking now and then to keep her honest.”
“I’ll put that on my bucket list,” Phaedra said. “Now, attention!” She stood erect and saluted the doors. “In we go.”
“Anchors-a-weigh!” the Admiral said, pushing the heavy gold bar. They fell over themselves and hastily stood erect when the Host looked up from the elephant tusks.
“Madam Petrune, Doctor Cane. I trust the Mayor is doing well?”
“It’s all under control, Boss,” the Admiral said. “I got her stabilized and monitored. She can’t fart without me knowing it.”
“I am immensely pleased,” the Host said, allowing them to pass.
“Did you try the venison?” the Admiral asked.
“I haven’t eaten since noon.”
“No wonder you’re fucked up. You need to eat.”
The thought of food repulsed her. She pulled herself together and surveyed the room. “Where to?”
“It’s just up here. The small tables on the riser along the window.”
Phaedra followed her up the steps. The tables were in shadow, concealing the occupants from prying eyes. Movie stars, politicians, models and tycoons from Earth were seated together, as well as the Martian Rulers, chief among them Old Zenobia, her Scion and their guest, the Earth Minister for Trade in the American Zone. Phaedra watched him watch her as she approached. This will be easy, she thought. Young Zenobia’s back was to them. She craned her head around to get a look. “The Doctor returns,” said the Ruler Zenobia dramatically.
The Admiral casually presented Phaedra and said, “Look what the cat dragged in. My old old friend, Eleanor Petrune.”
The three gazed on Phaedra. Riotus looked like he was going to leap out of his clothes. The women melted into their seats. Riotus cleared his throat and said, “Charming to meet you mmm—” he looked at her wedding ring— “Miss Petrune.”
“Mrs., actually,” Phaedra said. “My wife is back home on Earth.”
“I trust,” Riotus said to the Admiral, “Everything is OK?”
“Yes,” said the Old Ruler, “You must tell us all about it.” She asked Phaedra, “I hope you will join us as my guest?”
“It would be my honor,” Phaedra said. She did need to sit, the floor rocked beneath her feet like a dock in heavy weather. The Earth Minister for Trade in the American Zone stood and pulled out the seat next to him. “Mrs. Petrune?”
Phaedra put her hand on the table to steady herself and said, resisting the urge to laugh at him, “Thank you. My feet are killing me.”
“It’s those titanium pumps,” the Admiral said. “That’s why I wear swans. They’re old fashioned, but at least I can walk in the morning.”
“My dear,” the Old Ruler said, “It isn’t a party if you can walk in the morning.”
“Are you here on business?” asked Riotus. He looked at a waiter and snapped his fingers. “Champagne. Two bottles.”
“Yes, I am working for the Mayor of Paris/Mars on some construction contracts.”
“I hope your feet are not too sore to dance,” he said.
That was too much for the petulant Younger Zenobia. “She’ll have to wait her turn,” she said.
Phaedra said, “I’d love to dance. I have spent most of the evening talking to the other Mayors, a dreary business when there’s so much fun to be had.”
“First time on Mars?” the Ruler asked.
“I’ve been here five years.”
“A long time to be away from your wife, I should think,” said the Younger Zenobia. “She must get lonely.”
The Admiral said, “Eleanor’s contract is over.”
“That’s right,” Phaedra said. “It was actually up a month ago but I agreed to stay on to help the Mayor out, and, in return, she invited me to the Gala.”
The Old Zenobia said, “Cooper’s Day is the event of the year. You’re quite lucky to secure an invitation.”
The waiter returned with the champagne. He draped a cloth over the cork and twisted it open. Adjacent tables cheered when it popped. He poured glasses and the Earth Minister raised his high. “A toast: to new friends.”
The Ruler Zenobia cried, “To new friends!” They clinked and drank. Then the Old Ruler raised her glass and said, “On Mars we have a tradition of hospitality. No one knows how long they will be here, how long they will live. Dear friends disappear in the night. There are rumors of ghosts haunting the ruins of abandoned settlements. I can tell you that I myself have seen them, and heard them moaning in the tunnels of ice. Among ourselves, we appease the unquiet spirit of this desert planet, when we toast, To the dust!”
“To the dust!” they exclaimed and the toast spread to the nearby tables. “The dust!”
Riotus drank the entire glass of champagne, his Adam’s apple jerking up and down. “I would love a spin on the dance floor.” The meteor shower was near peak. The lights dimmed to almost dark and the electric candles on the table flickered to life, illuminating faces from below in flame-colored light. People crowded the windows, oohing and aahing.
The Younger Zenobia stood. “You haven’t seen me tango.”
Phaedra, who had barely touched her champagne said, “I haven’t tangoed in a dog’s age.”
The Old Ruler restrained her smile. “An excellent idea,” she said. And then to the Younger Zenobia, “Show Mrs. Petrune what you can do on the dance floor.”
“I thought I would—” the Earth Minister for Trade in the American Zone started to say when the Old Ruler silenced him with her eyebrows.
“My dear Riothamus Cunedagius, I could really cut the rug in my day and daresay could cut it now with the right partner. Humor an old woman, won’t you?”
“Nothing that vigorous is required, My Lady,” he said with unctuous insincerity. He stood and they went through the darkened room to the dance floor. The Old Ruler whispered in the conductor’s ear. Tony Vaael signalled the orchestra and changed the tempo to a tango and the couples clasped each other close and began the slow, sultry dance.
Young Zenobia’s silk gown rubbed against Phaedra’s bare chest. She felt like she had twelve feet. Then the young Ruler opened the embrace and took her mechanically through elaborate moves, displacing the other dancers. She grasped Phaedra’s back and dropped her to the floor. Phaedra felt faint as the ceiling circled like a carousel, showering the room with sparks. The Young Zenobia’s skin was turquoise and then blue, magma boiling in her eyes. Their arms stretched. The music got fast and she was whirling. In and out of her line of vision flashed Riotus who, despite executing the moves with precision and grace, had his eye on Phaedra. The Admiral stood at the edge of the dance floor swaying to the music, serenely inebriated. When the number ended Phaedra reached out to the Admiral for balance and they embraced briefly. The Old Ruler, beaming in ecstasy, said, “Oh, Riotus, you’ve put years on my life, thank you. But I am an old woman and quite winded I’m afraid.”
“The pleasure is all mine, Lady.”
The Younger Zenobia approached with her hand out, smiling. Riotus turned away from her and took Phaedra’s hand. The Admiral intervened. “Zenobia, dear. I would be delighted if you would take me.”
The orchestra launched into the next number, languid waves of sound washing over the throbbing bass. Couples separated and moved about each other with eyes closed. Riotus put his hands on Phaedra’s hips. She looked into his eyes and moved with him, rhythmically bumping her hips against his until he was hard. She retreated; made him come to her as she shrank into herself and moved as if she were swimming in a warm tropical lagoon at midnight. She opened her eyes and saw brilliant yellow meteors liquefy across the windows. Riotus’s face elongated like taffy. Her heart stitched with paranoia and panic. He must know why she was here. All eyes were upon her. She didn’t dare change her step. She tried to think without breaking the trance of the music and their movement in and out of each other. Their shadows stepped across the ceiling. He stretched his muscular body against hers like a serpent.
A wave of music swept her forward. The pulse boomed in her bowels. She felt the geometry of her mind. Thoughts and words became solid. She knew what she had to do. She had to awaken to the task. The other couples were not looking at them at all but gazing inward, each one in their own head, connected by the pulse. Now, she thought. But what would happen when she did it? Would he drop to the floor, dead? Would he feel stricken, need to sit? All they said was that it would look like a heart attack.
It was not her first time. She had slit the throat of a gangster in his hotel room and felt the hot blood on her fingers, the light dying in his shocked eyes. She had shot a politician, his cum still warm in her mouth. She had poisoned a union leader at the breakfast buffet of the Dust Inn in the English Zone and garroted a rival drug dealer while pegging her from behind. Every time she had escaped according to plan, shedding her escort identity and returning to The Pearl. She had to trust Qudra.
The dance went on and on, like space, unbound, without destination. Riotus placed his lips against hers and grasped her ass, moving her deeper into the dancers, away from the Admiral and the Younger Zenobia. His mouth smelled like a basement. They were deep into shadow now, at the edge of the dance floor. There was a potted palm against a gold column. He was maneuvering her towards it and before she knew it, he had stopped dancing and was pushing her against the column. He plunged his hand down her front and started to grope her. His finger rubbed around until she was wet enough for him to penetrate her. “Please, not here. We can go to my room.”
“Shut up,” he said, thrusting his tongue into her mouth like a cock. She pushed the button on the ring, grasped the back of his head and pulled her mouth away.
“Fuck you,” she said, pushing the stinger into his neck.
Riotus stood rubbing his neck with a look of bewilderment, a man who wants to know, what did I do? She made a beeline for the Mayors’ table, leaving him to die.
She needed to sit more than anything. The table bobbed around in her eyes. She sat in the chair as if she were mounting a horse, and the Mayors, delighted by the fresh blood, pelted her with questions about La Mairesse, while Phaedra tracked Riotus as he moved through the dancers. She couldn’t tell if he was enraged or not. His expression was desperate. His hair hung in lank, sweaty ropes. He was panting clouds of pink snow. “Petrune!” he shouted, pushing people out of the way.
The Earth Minister for Trade in the American Zone staggered to the table and stood, apoplectic, with bulging eyes and blue lips, attempting to talk. He gasped Petrune! and made a harsh noise. The color drained from his face. Phaedra looked directly at him and smiled. “Is everything alright, My Lord Minister?” she asked. The breath rattled in his throat. “Can I get you a glass of water? Champagne perhaps?” He pointed at her.
“He’s trying to say something,” Eupraxia Kiev said.
The Duke of Chou nodded. “He’s had a bit too much to drink I’d say.” They had a jolly good laugh. “Sire, please sit down.”
“Yeah,” Phaedra said, “Take a load off.”
Riothamus Cunedagius gripped his chest and fell forward, smashing his face against the table and dropping to the floor, dead.

the dream

The Dream
asleep in the rain
by her side
on the ruined desk
words defy
the day dies straight
into shutters
the dream dares to be
is wrapped
and warped by silent
premonitions

North Star Redux

I’m very excited to have published a poem, North Star in the Whiskey Tit Journal. The other work is terrific, and it’s great to appear alongside so much talent. Special thanks to the editors, Meagan Masterman, and Philip Shelley. Check it out!

chapter 11: The Elevator

excerpt from The Martian Princess, Volume Three of Drift

The line to the elevator was as disorderly as it was long. Thousands of people were crammed into holding pens and then fed through portals to a converging set of tunnels where humans merged against each other. All of the inmates had been kept in dormitories of ten to twenty people and this was their first contact with others. Jedidiah was a little ahead of Phaedra and she pressed forward, afraid of losing him.
KBI classified them as a family unit. Jedidiah was listed as ORPHAN, with Phaedra as GUARDIAN. She was MOTHER with CIA (Child In Arms). There was no food, limited water and no bathroom. They wore diapers that swelled and leaked. It took almost 24 hours for them to pass to the final holding pen, where they and 97 others, mostly middle-aged men and women, waited for an elevator to the surface. There were few children. The mood was morose, even though they had all dodged going to the Outer Solar System or being uploaded and sent to Alpha Centauri B.
After Elma’s death Phaedra shrank so deep into herself she was speechless. It was then that she named her baby for her. She nursed Elma, stayed hydrated as best she could and stared at the backs in front of her, running through her life in an endless loop. Whenever she got around to the Admiral she paused to savor her hatred, her desire to kill her. But killing her wasn’t enough, she wanted to hurt her. She wanted to humiliate the Admiral, make her beg for her life. Phaedra wanted to carve Yrmela’s scars into the Admiral’s cheeks. And then, just as her blood lust was at its most feverish, when she could see the whole thing like a movie and forget where she was, when she had become a burning star of hatred, it would come to her with apodeictic certainty: it was her fault, not the Admiral’s. Phaedra had become an object of speculation, of exchange, and her value was precisely that and nothing more. She had been that her whole life and she had known it for a long time, but at the moment it had become most true, she had become blind to the fact and had acted as if she were free. Phaedra abased herself before this knowledge. In the line, in the hours of standing, she flogged herself down to a self-loathing shade. Only slowly would she rise back into herself, and review her life again, until she got to the Admiral, when her rage would blaze and she would again pause to burn in its fire, and invent ways of killing her.
Phaedra sat next to Jedidiah on a hard bench, grateful not to be on her feet. “Excited?” she asked, hoping to wrest more than angry monosyllables out of his silence.
“About what?” he asked.
“Going to Mars?”
“Who cares. I didn’t want to go to Mars, I wanted to go to deep space.”
Phaedra got angry. “If you had any idea of what I went through to get you here.”
“You shouldn’t have bothered. Gert and the other kids are going to Pluto.”
“You would not have been kept together.”
“Thanks to you and your stupid play.”
“I don’t want to talk about that.”
“Then why did you ask?”
“I asked if you are excited, not about what happened.”
“I’m hungry.” He hung his head down and rested his arms on his legs.
“They said there would be c-rations.”
“What are those?”
“Military food kits.”
“That synthetic Saturn shit? No thank you.”
“You complain about the sweet potatoes too.”
“Because the food sucks. I’m still hungry. I’m surprised people don’t eat their own flesh.”
That was a grisly thought. “It goes against our nature,” Phaedra said. She looked around for someone in charge.
“When I was a kid we played Space Cannibals.”
“It’s taboo.”
“So is incest,” he sneered.
“What on earth do you know about incest?”
“Gert said in space brother and sister fuck and have mutant babies.”
“There is something wrong with that girl.”
“Why do people fuck anyway? It just makes trouble.”
“OK, Jedidiah, I’m not talking about cannibalism or incest with you. We need to plan what we will do on Mars.”
“They will work us to death in the mines,” he said.
After that they stopped talking. Eventually she slept, awakening every time her head dropped to her chest. He slept slumped on his own lap.

The room slowly stirred to life, like thawing water. Joining the impersonal force of a crowd in motion, they walked single file past a blue cube that scanned their scarcodes against the database of approved prisoners. Phaedra’s brain tightened as they approached the check point. She wasn’t sure her new identity would work, and her new identity made her so sad she could not even think about it. It reminded her of the day that she, Sargon and Titania had to pass the checkpoint in Central Park. The fear as they approached the Red Suits gripped her. Sargon drawing his gun and shooting Titania. Titania! Sargon. They were in the marble foyer of 1220 Fifth, Balfour licking her Papa’s face. Blood everywhere. Heads engulfed in globes of fire. Titania. The line moved. Elma, poor Elma, what did she feel going out the vent? They had loved each other. Phaedra should have warned her that it was death to know her, death to cross her, death to love her.
The line budged towards the cube. She felt the bumps on her wrist rise and burn. Jedidiah held his hand up to the cube with the hard face of a prisoner. He looked like he wanted to hurt someone, like it would make him feel good. The other men and women were not like that. They were mostly professionals. Glowing hair, great height, high cheekbones, full lips. If it weren’t for the uniforms they could have been business people on an amphibatrain going from the Upper East Side to Grand Central.
The cube’s eyestalks examined her and scanned her scarcode, then the baby’s. She took her first breath after that, as they passed through the airgate onto the elevator. The elevator was a passenger container that would be transferred by mechanical arm from The Constellations End port to the elevator track. Each container had twenty rows of five seats each. The seats were not assigned. They simply walked forward and took the next one available. Phaedra settled into a middle seat next to Jedidiah. A man sat next to Jedidiah and two men sat next to her. They had little leg room but the seats reclined a few inches. The car was a glass hemisphere. She felt an enormous lightening as the prospect opened out on all sides. Below was Mars, red, scarred with canyons and craters. The other passengers were eagerly looking up and over each other’s heads.
“Beautiful,” Phaedra mumbled.
“What?” asked Jedidiah.
“Nothing. Beautiful is all I said.”
“After nine months on that ship anything would be beautiful,” said the man next to her.
The man next to him said, “It looks beautiful, but it’s deadly. They told us it’s deadly.”
“Like a tarantula,” said the first man.
“There’s no dust storm at the moment. That’s why you can see so much,” said the second.
The man next to Jedidiah chimed in. “Get a good look now, it’s all we’ll see of the surface.”
“I wonder what it’s really like down there?” the man next to Phaedra asked.
“You don’t believe all that bullshit they feed us about careers in space? Mining Engineers! Ha!” said the man to Jedidiah’s right.
“Ha ha.”
“Ha ha.”
“There were some suckers who fell for it. Me, I’d be fine sweeping up so long as they don’t vent me,” said the man next to the man on Phaedra’s left.
“Is that how they do it on Mars?” the man next to Jedidiah asked.
“Yeah, out the door. Airlock,” the man to the left of the man next to Phaedra replied.
“They don’t burn you?” asked the man next to her.
The man to his left answered, “No man, fire is like taboo there. All that oxygen they’re making and pumping. After what we’re used to they say it’s rich. Problem is all the sublimating CO2. You have to always be scrubbing. So actually, there is much less oxygen when the scrubbers don’t work properly.”
“That’s right. Were you in the business?” asked the man next to Jedidiah.
“No, a guy in my cell was.”
“What are you?” asked the man next to Phaedra.
“A poet,” answered the man to his left.
“Really?” Phaedra asked, leaning forward so she could see him. He was in his late forties, skin hanging off of him like he had lost a lot of weight fast. His face was sad, with heavy brown pillows under the eyes and the mouth, once used to smiling, drooped from atrophy. “Where?”
“Columbia.”
“What kind of work do you do? Do you publish?”
“Free verse epic. I’ve been working on a long poem for decades, about Toussaint Louverture. I won the Duckwald Prize and was short listed for the Pugilist.”
Phaedra became animated and leaned in the man’s direction. “You remember any of it? I don’t know the first thing about Toussaint Louverture.”
“Maybe we should switch places,” the man seated next to Phaedra said.

Phaedra slept poorly but she slept. Some of it was deep enough to forget she had ever been awake. The rest of the time she chased her thoughts and ran from her feelings. Mars was looming closer. The planet was brown with a pink tint, not red at all, and the most lifeless thing she had ever seen. She realized for the first time where the hell she had chosen to go. Outer solar system and exoplanet voyages were terrifying for their finality, dissipating like energy on the drift of time. But on Mars she would be buried alive. Better to have remained in space, to have found a window and gone mad watching the stars.
Both the Admiral and Elma said she would be put to work in a brothel. She supposed she had been a whore on The Constellations End, albeit with a single client she became obsessed with, but it was not her first time, if she counted Budapest. There, if she needed more than her guitar had earned, she would suck whatever dick she had to to get by. The first time she was so fucked up she barely remembered it, Lug kneeling on her shoulders and thrusting his giant schlong in her mouth as if it were a pussy. It came to her in flashes devoid of feeling. That didn’t really count since she wasn’t paid and she hadn’t consented.
When she realized she could make money doing it, the decision was easy enough. A guy, middle aged, undistinguished, staring at her outside the theatre on a shitty day, asked her into the WC and she followed. She felt like shit, kneeling on the dirty wet floor giving what she realized now was a miserably bad blowjob. When he came she gagged and she was sure he could hear her puking as he left. She tried later to abstract herself, to disappear but it was impossible to do so with a stranger thrusting away at you. She just wanted to get it over with and got good at the fast version, which was bad for business. They were always disappointed. That was when she learned to get the money first and carry a small knife.
It took five minutes. She’d be sucking cock for free if she were with a man; she might as well get paid for it, she reasoned, having had no experience yet of what it was like to suck a cock she wanted to suck. But she knew now. She didn’t want to ruin the images in her mind of Sargon with some fat dirty Martian whose nasty load she would have to spit on the ground. Ground? Is that what they called it? No, they probably called it the floor, since they were always inside. And then what? He beats her up for not swallowing and the girls laugh at her. No business. She once heard two whores talking on a Budapest stoop. One was sitting on the steps and the other was standing. It was a hot day and the one on the steps fanned herself with a theatre playbill. She said, Why don’t you have a seat, and the other one laughed, Every time I sit I fart. Dude put some gas in my ass!
Phaedra laughed out loud at the memory and opened her eyes briefly. Everyone else was asleep. The planet was dark. It was night. She shut her eyes. Elma kicked her just to remind her for the thousandth time that she was there.
What was she doing to her? She was a shitty mother. No kind of mother at all. She didn’t deserve Elma. And Elma deserved better than her. The convict status traveled down the generations. She had condemned her child, hers and Sargon’s, to a life of perpetual servitude and darkness. And then on top of that being the daughter of a whore. Elma would sit in the corner quietly while Phaedra fucked men. They would spank her, tie her up, beat her up, fuck her mouth, her ass, her cunt. They would jerk off on her. She would piss and shit on them. She would have no power. She would be a bucket in the corner.
Elma squirmed against her. She needed a new diaper and a bath. When she was able to change her the smell blooming up made Phaedra gag. The elevator toilet was tiny and after the first few hours filthy, covered with shit and vomit and there was always a line of miserable looking, grey prisoners. They had taken off their diapers and the garbage can was overflowing. She had been given four for the baby and had one left, but she didn’t want to awaken her, it was bad enough that she cried on and off for hours. The other prisoners despised her for it.
Elma wouldn’t stop crying or lie still. Phaedra’s nipples were sore from the constant nursing. Her left nipple was infected, raw and red, the ducts hard and the right wasn’t far behind. She tried to focus. This life, she thought, it isn’t living. Were it not better to die quickly? Her hopeless numbness overwhelmed her and the strength it took to care, to love, to nurture was gone. The paralysis of a dream had crept out of her limbs and into her heart. She wanted to murder her child.
Phaedra watched the reddish brown sphere grow larger and larger. As shadows stretched off of mountains and filled canyons, craters came into focus and then structures. The planet flattened out and they descended at a speed she hadn’t realized was so fast. Everyone was awake now, staring at the approach of the glass geodesic dome that capped the volcano Pavonis Mons. The rising sun flared off its crystalline edges and they saw helicopters and jet craft taking off and landing from the surrounding airfields. In the near distance, vapor plumes rose from arrays of smoke stacks, into the brown pink haze. Industrial beetles plied the slopes of the volcanoes.
The elevator terminus raced towards them and there was an abrupt bump as they slowed for the approach. They entered the dome and descended through massive concourses full of shops and throngs of Rulers, tourists and business people. They sank slowly through this and into the deeper Small Caldera, and from there they descended five kilometers before landing with a thud. She stood and stretched, her sore joints creaking. Silent excitement, perhaps only vigilance, spread through the car as they crowded the door.
They debarked as they had come, in an orderly shuffle through the pressure lock into a dirty tunnel far beneath the grand concourse of Cooper Station. Cooper Station was the center of the large caldera of Pavonis Mons, home to the International Zone and Cooperstown, the largest Martian city, built on the gentle slopes of the crater. Skylight tubules admitted shafts of weak Martian sun into the subterranean settlement, magnified by lenses and diffused through the crystal walls and ceilings.
Humans in red uniforms with gold braid and white nightsticks stood at a line of gates scanning their scarcodes. When it was their turn they stood before a very short armored guard who barely looked at them but pointed in the direction the other prisoners were going, a hall that sloped downwards into the dark. She and Jedidiah soon found themselves milling about a room containing numerous tables evenly spaced, each with a human in red armor with a black helmet with a square, canine snout. They spent hours going from table to table. Her feet and back hurt. She had not eaten in two days and was weak with hunger. The sling weighed her neck and shoulders down and Jedidiah, silent for the first hour, began to grumble and then curse.
Perhaps an hour beyond when it seemed hopeless, when hunger and thirst left her lightheaded, so that she thought she might fall asleep standing, Elma stirred and began to scream. She emptied one breast and started in on the infected one. It was agony. The pain sent bolts of lightning through Phaedra’s nerves. Raw as the nipple was, she needed to drain the milk out or she risked mastitis and a blocked duct. She wouldn’t be able to nurse Elma then and had no idea of how she’d feed her. She wasn’t old enough to eat solid food even if Phaedra chewed it up, of that she was certain. But she didn’t actually know much about babies, after all. She was an imposter.
“I’m hungry,” Jedidiah said for the tenth time that hour.
“I know you are hungry. I’m hungry too. Elma’s hungry.”
“She can eat whenever she wants. I can’t suck your tits.”
“I wish you wouldn’t talk that way to me,” she said.
“Fuck you.”
Phaedra would not engage. She didn’t even believe he knew what he was saying. He knew the power of words instinctively but not what those words really meant, he had never sucked anyone’s tits and he didn’t have them. As they argued, and Elma cried, she tried to center Elma on her burning broken breast, the pain arcing through her. The attendants were glaring at them.
They stood at the next desk, anticipating the likely result.
“Scarcode,” the guard asked. Phaedra waved her wrist. “Not this desk.” They went to the next one.
“It’s probably not here,” said Jedidiah, stumbling along. “Its probably at the end.”
“You don’t know that. God that hurts,” she said under her breath. “I’m falling asleep.” Her head was pounding. Her mouth was dry. “Do you have any water left?” she asked.
“A little.” He took out a crumpled water bottle and shook it. “A couple of sips.”
“Never mind, you have it.”
“It’s too warm.”
Five desks on and she felt herself sinking to the ground, head swimming. She said to the guard, “Please, we haven’t eaten or had anything to drink. The baby needs to nurse. Would it be possible—”
“Not this desk, move on.”
“Can’t we find out which desk?”
“Next?”
They weren’t the only ones. The poet was arguing with a guard. “I must have my assignment!”
“Next desk.”
“I refuse to move! On Earth, even prisoners—”
“This is Mars, not Earth. Next.”
He walked away ranting, “Bastards! I haven’t eaten. It’s been days. For god’s sake you’re just going to kill me anyway, let’s get on with it!”
Phaedra wanted to say something to him but as she was about to two guards began to beat him over the head with their nightsticks until he lay in a blubbering heap on the ground. She couldn’t make out what he was saying but it seemed to be, Harder, hit me harder!
“Scarcode?” She waived her wrist as did Jedidiah. “Child in arms?”
“Yes.”
“Here’s your assignment. Area G. Take the French Zone shuttle.”
The shuttle was ten halls away. There was a moving sidewalk for the last five, which took them to the station, where they boarded a tram with a few other convicts, and ordinary people who stared at them angrily. It took two hours to arrive at the French Zone. The shuttle screeched to a stop and a voice announced Vous arrivez dans la zone G francaise…Tu’ve lazone G franc….You have arrived in the French Zone G…then in Chinese, Spanish, German, Arabic, Hindi, Russian, Swahili. Zone G was carved out of a vein of carbon dioxide ice. The scrubbers and vents clanked and periodically stalled, only to start again with a groan. Her feet were cold and wet, treading slowly through the slush. It smelled sulfurous, with the funk of unbathed humans heavy in the air. The chairs were beat up spacemetal, unpainted, with silicon cushions. They sat down and she looked at the assignment. All it said was French Zone G, Qudra.

go while you can

This is a video of an Ithaca Spring Writes virtual event I did in late November, Mary Lorson’s Of Course. She reads and then I read, about 20 minutes in. My piece is about traveling to Vietnam during Covid, and a memorable meal I had in Saigon. Many thanks to Mary! And to Robin Schwartz for putting the whole writing festival together, after being cancelled in the spring.

Isle of Dogs Part 2

this is from Part 2 of Isle of Dogs. forthcoming

And then there was the library and Baby Sips’ languid lessons, question-and-answer sessions seated on harem cushions in the stacks, an old history book open before them on the stainless-steel floor. They learned how the old world fell and the new one arose. They learned about batons, acid baths, and purges.

Sargon thought about his Sire and what he had said about cloning. If he was a clone, that meant he was his own father. And so he did something he had never done before. He scrutinized the portrait of the very first Sargon. It did not look like his Sire really, as his face was young and framed by the silver fabric and thick seals of the spacesuit. The eyes were distinct and catlike, shaped exactly as his were, as were the nose and the mouth, fleshy, fierce, and domineering. Even so, his expression never seemed that way! But Phaedra’s sometimes did. He was beginning to notice her change in subtle ways, that she was more adult than he was, and sometimes laughed at him. There was that time they saw two dogs humping, which usually made them laugh and go, Ew. But this time she said, “Those dogs are fucking.”

Fucking. That was a bad word. You were fucking crazy or fucking stupid. “Fucking?” he asked, and she squealed.

Since she couldn’t tell him what fucking was without laughing so hard he couldn’t understand her, he finally gave up, and asked Babylon Sippar.

Baby Sip fetched a filterless cigarette from a mahogany humidor and sniffed it. “Gerund of the verb to fuck. Origins obscure, an extremely old Anglo-Saxon term for sexual congress, also used as an intensifier unrelated to coitus.”

“Are there pictures?”

Baby Sip raised his eyebrows and put the cigarette back in the humidor. He reached beneath the desk and pulled up the hookah hose and puffed. “Damn,” he grumbled. “Excuse me, it’s unlit.” He ducked beneath the desk and pushed the on button. There was a gurgle and hiss, and soon the honeyed aroma of opium filled the air. He puffed and sighed and sipped his glass of brandy, considering at length his charge as Librarian and duty as tutor, as well as considerable ambivalence towards the family that had both maintained him and murdered his kinsman. “Yes. But I would prefer not to be the first one who shows you. However, as Librarian I can refer you to the Winter Palace Library Holding Catalogue volume H-M. It contains citations for encyclopedias of ‘Human Sexuality,’ which I believe you will have no trouble locating on your own, as I have not referred you in any way to its contents, I think you will agree.”

Young Sargon made his way to the third tier and opened The Encyclopedia of Human Sexuality on the floor. The first page he turned to had a map of the reproductive organs, the vagina looking like the Island of Manhattan and the penis like one of its towers, but the next contained photographs of vaginas and penises and under the word fuck he found the definition—the act of sexual intercourse, coitus or other penetrative activity of the penis or similar device, including intercrural and anal intercourse and other forms of frottage, e.g., digital penetration of the vagina, but excluding however oral sex. So it was as his Sire and Robin had described it. And now it had a name. He put the book back and decided again it was nothing he would ever do, with man, woman, or beast.

interview with david Rovics

David Rovics, a musician, writer, and independent producer of conversations with artists, interviewed me today for his show.

ithaca times profile

Cara Hoffman wrote this profile of me for the Ithaca Times. Cara and I have been friends since 1999, when I read her her book Running for the first time. I fell in love with her writing right away. Since then she has gone on to write two other acclaimed novels, So Much Pretty and Be Safe I Love You. She has been tireless on my behalf for a long time now and this time out did herself. Anyway, thank you, Cara!

This is the link:

https://www.ithaca.com/entertainment/books/a-man-for-all-seasons/article_bfac2c76-2525-11eb-b71f-b7fb4058423b.html