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Vibe
is located at 909 W. 23rd St. in Cedar Falls on the second floor of
Bought again Books.
Persons needing access accommodation should call 266-7115 by the
day before the event. For more information, contact
Jim O'Loughlin.
Read Work by
Past Featured Readers
Chaveevah Banks Ferguson
Eula Biss
John Bresland
Scott Cawelti
Rebecca Dunham
Karris Golden
Vince Gotera
Paul Hedeen
Harvey Hess
Dave Hoing
Patrick Irelan
Kathleen Kelly
Jerry Klinkowitz
Catherine A. F. MacGillivray
Nate McKeen
Pierre-Damien Mvuyekure
Cherie "Chillin'" Nelson
Mike Palacek
James P. Roberts
Susan Rochette-Crawley
Ron Sandvik
Myrna Sandvik
Kim Shott
Ann Struthers
Jonathan Stull
John Wilson Swope
Grant Tracey
Ray A. Young Bear
Now Available from Final Thursday Press
Lamentations on
the Rwandan Genocide
Poetry by Pierre-Damien Mvuyekure
Kyrie
Poetry by Jonathan Stull
Ghost Wars
Poetry by Vince Gotera
***Winner of the 2004 Global
Filipino Literary Award for Poetry***
Laugh. Damnit.
Poetry by Ahkos
Bad Men
Microfiction by Jim O'Loughlin
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Excerpt from “Till Human Voices Wake
Us”
Published in Short Story Journal (2005)
Andy has mixed feelings about women. He never makes
advances, never actively seeks their company. When he can’t avoid them,
he is awkward but unfailingly polite, speaking in the hushed and
reverent tones usually reserved for heroes or deities. And yet he keeps
in his suitcase, beneath his travel diary and underwear, a magazine that
shows women in poses of bondage. He’s ashamed, I think, that these
images excite him. I’d like to tell him not to be so hard on himself,
that it’s better to fantasize than to do, that in any case help is
available for that kind of thing. But we don’t talk about it.
At six feet tall and 135 pounds, Andy is a collection of points and
angles. His hair is dark brown, worn in a short, nondescript style that
has never been in fashion. He considers himself a scholar in history.
He’s read the great works of literature. He has a genius-level IQ, but
his social skills are as vestigial as the legs of snakes. Some people in
our tour group think he’s gay, but I don’t believe it.
There are times when motion stops in him, when he simply freezes in
mid-stride, as if consumed by thoughts so powerful that all his energy
is required just to hold them inside. Often after he recovers from one
of these spells, he takes his suitcase, and his magazine, down the hall
to the toilets. I know what he does there, and he knows that I know.
We are in Copenhagen, nearing the end of a long bus tour of Europe.
Chance room assignments made in Paris at the beginning of the tour
brought us together—Andy, Old Fat Father Jim, and me—and out of
convenience or laziness we have stayed together throughout.
In the fall Jim plans to enter seminary school in Missouri to study for
the priesthood. Like Andy, he comes from a wealthy family, but they have
little else in common. They bicker constantly. Andy admits to forces in
the universe but doesn’t call them God. He quotes from the bible to make
his arguments against religion. His superior knowledge of that book
shames Jim and his use of that knowledge infuriates him. I refuse to
take sides, skimming along in the safe spaces between them, insulated by
a skepticism that lacks both Jim’s simplicity and Andy’s vehemence.
Today at noon we’re going on a bicycle tour of the city.
Andy is in the shower. Though there are several stalls, Jim prefers to
wait. He says he’s uncomfortable being naked with other men, especially
Andy. He believes the rumors about Andy are true, or, more likely, I
think, he sees his own reflection in those rumors.
He lays out his razor and hair dryer and baby powder with precision,
humming as he prepares.
I stand at the window and look down on Istedgade Street. Our hotel is an
old one, comfortable despite its location in the middle of Copenhagen’s
red light district. Prostitutes ply their trade at all hours,
concentrating their efforts outside the pornographic bookstores and
movie houses that line every block. (Last night Leigh, with whom I have
an arrangement for the duration of the tour, asked me to take her to a
movie, just to see what a European sex flick was like. It turned out to
be an American film, subtitled in Danish. Leigh and I laughed. We were
embarrassed and we laughed.)
Behind me Jim is humming a tune that might once have been Summertime.
There’s better music on the street; even at this hour of the morning the
bars crank it out. I hear it through the glass, over Jim’s
deconstruction of Gershwin. Jazz competes with rock and heavy metal, rap
and ’70’s reggae, a jumble of notes and rhythms that blend into a kind
of white noise if you unfocus your attention. A busker wearing a bowler
hat sits in a doorframe and blows authentic Southern blues through a
muted trumpet. Some passersby drop coins. His single sad melody cuts
through the other sounds to define my thoughts. I listen, I watch.
This is the land of Kierkegaard and Andersen, the existential and the
enchanted, but what I’ve seen so far of Copenhagen has not impressed me.
It’s so dirty, so profane, you feel soiled just breathing the air. A
breeze hugs the sidewalks, nudging ahead of it newspapers and pamphlets
and pages torn from magazines. Some of these wrap themselves around
light poles, some disappear into doorways leading down into dark
basements, most pile up against walls in alleys that seem to go nowhere.
Empty cartons and bottles clutter the ground. The city is so dismal: its
people are shabby, its buildings are shabby. I might have overlooked all
this at the beginning of the tour, might have exalted in it, when
everything was new and intriguing. But that was ten thousand miles on a
bus ago; now I’m tired, less tolerant, anxious to go home. I don’t much
like Copenhagen. Andy assures me the rest of the city is as beautiful as
its brochures boast, as magical as a fairy tale. Wait till you see the
harbor, he says.
It is true, however, that the Danish weather has been spectacular. Above
the filth, above the brown-bricked tenements and cracked pavement, thin
lines of clouds flow across a deep blue sky like the white caps of
waves.
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