Val Cope is a girl I went to high school with. She's been at this poetry thing since she was a fetus. She currently works at a newspaper on beautiful Sanibel Island, Florida. Leah Hessler is a hot red-head girl I met and spent an awesome beach day with in my melancholy period before moving away to New Orleans. I know little about her except that she's a great painter, and that she made me sleep on the couch.

Love: Brooklyn-Style
by Val Cope

Fault me for stereotyping: the downstairs couple
fight then fuck, both sessions of equal volume. Upon first hearing,
I thought she'd sprained an ankle.
The sound scaled the dumbwaiter shaft,
like a blind puppy whimpering
for full teat. I was listening,
cheek to floor. One word, "Yes", forced me
to my feet. One word, from her pained mouth,
opened the secret film vault
inside my brain.
Yes Yes,
and I was transformed from haloed saint
to Caligula's pet voyeur. Yes.
Yes Yes Oh Yes
I just wanted to help,
good neighbor that I am.

Then a male voice,
groaning with thrusts. The woman's
low whimper turned caught-mouse shriek.
All that I did--sung "Blessed Be
the Mother", vacuumed,
scanned the tuner
for heavy metal--it wasn't enough.
Cats in the bushes, lizards on the Discovery Channel;
That was science I observed
without guilt. How nice to see
that animals squawk and bleat in pleasure!
But Lord! Why the schoolteachers downstairs?

I came here a virgin
of subway rattle, all-night
bars, Chicano music at 4am,
bags stranded in winter trees
like white flapping birds. Dumb with awe
until I realized: Dominican drug dealers,
the perpetual cop, hot electronics on the corner,
wind rushing through dark
stinking alleys. This in mind,
I almost forgive the educators'
plastic gallons of gin. But how can I
dismiss the fits? 4 or 5 times a week they scream,
forcing me to briefly kneel, check
for violence, then turn away,
annoyed. Yes, I want to forget
that noise, so animal
it could only be created
by humans.

Dog Bite the Second

by Leah Anne Aluzzo Frazo Campagna Hessler the 1st

The end of april

Deposit check so you can pay rent

Buy stamps so the bills aren't late like last time

Appreciate how windy and stormy the skies have been

Keep threatening but have yet to break

I find a certain accordance with these

gray winds take my mind to midwest misery

a naïve misery grows keener with the day

I smile fondly

Aahheemmmm----

Soo about that dog

Clay and glass, encouraging and unknown

More ways to let all of this go

More places to start

I tell myself I like beginnings

New corners but what am I building

glad it's there

resentful at times

I started walking down the road after the student dispersion

Never been there before, thought I'd takes a look around

Past the clay labs are these big rusting devices behind fences

They might have been lesbian magnets

(left over from the witch hunts),

I'm not sure

I'm sure of the sign though, beware of dogs, big ones

The road is silent I keep walking

Squinting and nodding

Warehouse structures with their stairways on the outside,

exposed veins

walking

"what the hell is a record store doing here? Sweet!"

"man I should really get a table from the pawn shop

I wonder if it will hook up to my stereo, or it I would have to….

smiling

walking

approaching the door

shelves of records piled high

growling

growling?

I pivot

teeth!

about five mouths full

all sharp and pointed at me, no shit

ok there's only one dog but rows and rows of these teeth

I freeze with the confrontation and start humming some

quasi-soothing-helpless-jibberish

hoping to calm the situation

this thing's leaning out the WIDE OPEN car door window

taking too long to decide which tastes more like beef, my gut or my thighs

then the angels sing

squeaky and discorded

from only twenty feet above, who'da known,

"is that my julie? How's my baby, here comes momma"

she descends the vein

and with her brings this slobbering transformation

from teeth to tongue

this thing is now licking all over my hand

happy as hell

"she gets so defensive when I leave her in the car

good thing I came out

she probably would have bit you"

????????????!!!!!!!!

no mention of windows

no I'm sorry's no should've's

i'm squinting and speechless and sweaty from panic

"yeah this is a great place" she continues

"I work at the special olympics and needed a song for the opening ceremony,

you know a big bum ba bum number"

she swings her arms as if marching

i'm dragging my mangled limbs down the track

while her and her julie are licking my face

"yeah this place is great, find anything you want"

she gives me a straight, brace-welded smile

"take care now, bye bye"

hand wave

door slam

Vroom

dog tongue teeth

gone

life

silence

Me and my heart walk back to the clay

there's a phonograph playing somewhere

high in my head

we lie under the tree and those blue florida skies

magnets let loose arms clang together in the breeze

clay and glass

Trying to Find an Alternate Route in West Virginia by Val Cope

While you talk, I stare down the girls taped to the dark panelingtheir flimsy underwear the brightest thing in the Office Pub. "I've been thinking of our future together," you say, working peanuts and beer down your throat. I've been thinking of that bumper sticker I never put on my truck (West Virginia is for Losers). Dust collects at the corners of your mouth--how it cakes and yellows. And your filthy hunting vest, spotted and stinking of blood.

We had been seamless, a breakneck duo. You and I, Eavesdroppers of the North Woods! We drove logging roads, once to the Allagash. The car in front of us was a Subaru wagon (blue), the couple inside fighting. "Love and napalm," I laughed. As if she'd heard me, the woman hurled a book out the window. It smacked the wind-shield, the creased navy spine paralyzed. My piece of wonder, a book that had seen much abuse, it came to rest on the dense heads of blackberries. We turned back, traveled through the settling dust, retrieved the book. The Floating Opera by John Barth.

Days later, in third class rapids, the canoe tipped. We scrambled over each other in the water recapturing the cooler, our poles, sleeping bags, oars. Many items washed downstream, book and Coleman lantern included. That evening we were naked cavemen squating near the jerry-rigged fire. Wet clothes and bags hung from branches. I told the sky of my beautiful wife and cursed you the millionth time.

"Peter," you say now, shaking your beard of stray nuts. "Let's not say we didn't need each other. O.K.?" I don't want to see you across the table when I raise my eyes. My impulse is to steal the truck keys, overturn the chair and salvage what I can of the muddy crumpled West Virginia roadmap. I don't want to hear you mention the Pennsylvania boy who was taken to the woods by a couple of school buddies. (They nailed his feet to the roots of a giant oak.) Screech of brakes on black ice curves, slam through the window you have your back toanything to make you shut up.

The prizes are never worth it: one deer shot and we find it pregnant. Today: we walked around the woods for hours shooting at things; we finished the first six pack by noon and blew the empty cans off a stump; we said "Deer" to each other as if we meant it. When it finally came into sight. . .I have to close my eyes to focus, to keep myself from vomiting. It is starting to snow.