Nebula Awards Showcase 2009 (20 page)

J
ane Yolen, often called “the Hans Christian Andersen of America,” admits to actually being the Hans Jewish Andersen of America. She is the author of more than three hundred books, ranging from picture books and baby board books to middle-grade fiction, poetry collections, nonfiction, novels, graphic novels, and story collections. Her books and stories have won many awards, including two Nebulas, a World Fantasy Award, a Caldecott, the Golden Kite, three Mythopoeic Awards, two Christopher Medals, the Jewish Book Award, and nomination for the National Book Award. She has also won the Kerlan Award and the Catholic Library’s Regina Medal. Six colleges and universities have given her honorary doctorates.

JANE YOLEN

 

 

 

 

The godheart of your graven idol is a clay pot
of grape juice, a copper sheet, and an iron rod
that creates a weak volt, like an electric shot

 

to the finger, if you touched your golden god.
The stern high priest hid it, but he surely knew
of grape juice, a copper sheet, and an iron rod.

 

His authority your fear and faith would renew.
As you fell to the floor and sobbed into the sand
the stern high priest hid it, but he surely knew

 

you’d give more gold and do as he’d demand,
like let your baby boy die on the bloody altar.
You fell to the floor and sobbed into the sand

 

before you watched it all and would not falter.
Fearing a greater smiting or even failed crops,
you let your baby boy die on a bloody altar.

 

You never knew the high priest used props:
the godheart of your graven idol is a clay pot
that gives other metal a static sizzle and a pop
created by one weak volt, like an electric shot.

M
ike Allen lives in Roanoke, Virginia, with his wife, Anita, and a demonic cat and comical dog. By day he covers court cases for the city’s daily newspaper; in his spare time the hats he wears include editor of the poetry journal
Mythic Delirium
and the anthology series
Clockwork Phoenix.
He’s a semiregular performer in the local improv theater and a three-time winner of the Rhysling Award for poetry. The
Philadelphia Inquirer
called his work “poetry for goths of all ages.” His newest books are
The Journey to Kailash,
a poetry collection published by Norilana Books, and
Follow the Wounded One,
a dark fantasy novelette from the publishers of
Not One of Us
magazine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When Ganesh marries my mother,
I am 18, my own man
in the eyes of the law; but barely a zygote
in his eyes. He calls me
spermling
the first time we speak in private;
I tell him I know a doctor
who can do something about that nose.
Trunk curls up, perhaps to strike?
—a smile beneath
that touched the ancient folds around his eyes.
Kid
, he says,
we’ll get along fine.

 

In my neighborhood, unseen trains
shake the ground every day at 5.
Streets without sidewalks slide between houses
tiny as boxcars, or old and rambling
as the stories the fogeys at the gas station tell,
like them eaten from inside and about to fall,
unlike them divided into 4 apartments each.
Ganesh and I play Xbox
before my afternoon shifts (of course he’s great,
with all those hands he’s at least two players
at once) and I steal glances
at his impossible profile, framed
by the dusty window: lumpy wrinkled nose
like a seasoned draft guard, curled
in inverse question mark of concentration;
on this day, clad in coveralls
with the bib undone:
How is it
, I wonder,
that you feel like you belong?
As if he heard, he mumbles,
Wherever someone loves me, I’m in like Flynn.

 

No, no, Mom, I don’t want to know
(but as always, she tells me—
I know, he could use a few weeks at the Y,
and yeah, he’s a lot older than your father
but turn off the lights
and you wouldn’t know it. Sure,
sometimes the beginning is way better
than the end, but who cares
when he gets the party rolling . . .
Oh, when he gets rolling . . . and that
trunk!)
No, no, Mom, I don’t want to know . . .

 

I still don’t have a clue how they met.
Mom can’t remember, and my stepdad
always changes the subject, spins me
yet another harrowing first-person account
of leading his father’s troops against demonkind.
For me there was no warning: after a long
afternoon behind the Burger King counter
I come home, to find him on the couch,
Mom asleep against his pillowy chest,
a bowl of popcorn in his lap, quietly munching;
his huge ears fanned out, cupped forward
as he watches
Temple of Doom
on cable
and giggles under his breath. In retrospect
I was far less surprised than
what the moment warranted.

As we wait in matching tuxes
for the justice of the peace to call us in
I feel new respect, even affection—
he didn’t have to do this, we all know it,
but he agreed without a gripe when Mom asked.
See, kid
, he whispers around a tusk,
your mother, she has this
vivaciousness,
this
pluck,
this drive to defy all odds and plow on
that’s like a bath of
rakta chandan
for
pranapratishhtha—
she makes me feel
alive, you understand? This
aatma
I want to catch with all my hands, and when
it flutters, let it go, watch its flight in awe,
then catch it again. An essence such as that
pumps new blood through an old heart.
Do you comprehend?
I nod “I do.”
I knew
you would
, he says.
You have it too.
An arm
around my shoulders; three more hands
pinch my cheeks.
Too bad you’re not a woman.
A grin, a wink. The moment nearly ruined,
but some part of me still flattered.
After the vows and the happy tears, he lifts
his trunk to kiss me wetly on one ear.

 

My son
, he says.
At the reception, for the first time, I see him dance.
No wonder Mom can’t get enough.

You would think,
with a household god,
(of great luck and strong starts, yet!)
that I wouldn’t still be slaving behind
the grease-smeared Burger King counter
(to be honest, I’m in dual-job hell;
come night,
yo no quiero Taco Bell
).
I finally ask him about this lack of riches,
and he sighs and blinks those dewy eyes.
Spermling
—he wags his trunk—
it don’t work
like that. Luck, okay, luck is when
you’re driving in downtown Manhattan, fighting
for every gap that opens in all that hurtling metal,
and your car, it’s been threatening to stall
since the last tollbooth on the Jersey Turnpike,
and you made it, but your tank’s on Empty,
and you beg that car,
Please don’t die—
and it’s like it hears you, like it’s packed with
prana
,
and goes twenty miles further than possible,
and just when you feel rigor mortis
in the gas pedal, there is a pump station
at
this
corner, that you didn’t see seconds ago—
and the $20 you thought you dropped
at the rest stop is in your pocket after all.
All four hands spread wide.
That’s what luck is all about.