MOONDOG. CROWN PRINCE OF THE ANIMAL KINGDOM by Liam Watt

Julep bounded up the five flights of stairs to the penthouse apartment I was renovating in a Park Slope town house down on Lincloln Place just below Seventh Avenue. Without pausing to catch her breath, she knocked impatiently on the door. The owner, Martin Friedman, a stocky Wall Street banker with a poker faced expression, answered the door. “Is my dad here?' Julep asked, panting. Martin let her in as I, hearing her excited voice, pushed aside the plastic tarps that sealed off the work area and ushered her into the front room where I was working. “What's up kiddo? Everything alright?”

“Dad! You won't believe! It's the most incredible thing.” Julep was 14, an emotionally intense girl by nature, now with teenage hormones raging. Still trying to catch her breath, she kept right on.“Niki and I were walking in the park after school and this really cool dog started following me. I mean, he went everywhere we went. I didn't even have anything to give him, he just kept following us everywhere. We even went into the deli to get some snacks, and he sat outside and waited. We were in there for allmost ten minutes and he was still right there waiting when we came out.” As she went on I was beginning to suspect what she was amping up to ask. “He followed us all the way down Seventh Avenue. He walks right by my side, Dad, almost up against my leg. He won't leave me alone. Dad, you gotta see him. He's really special. And he doesn't have a collar or anything, and looks like hasn't been fed in a long time.”

It was a sunny mid-October afternoon. Julep had been living with me for about a month and a half. We lived together in my two bedroom tenament apartment at the other end of the neighborhood, in Windsor Terrace, alongside the Prospect Expressway. I hadn't lived with her full time since she was four years old. The past summer she had runaway twice from her mother in Denver, and was refusing to go to school there. My ex-wife was a clever and resourseful woman, but had given up on trying to control her or gain her cooperation. Against Julep's adamant protests, I insisted she come to live with me in New York. Reluctantly, she came, but she was still in full-tilt rebellion, leaving school whenever she felt like it, throwing me into a panic every time she stayed out long past her curfew. But by some miracle, she was begginning to become more cooperative. God knows it wasn't my skill with authority or parenting, maybe she was just beginning to see my love for her. But things were still far from easy between us. I was running my own business and new at being a full-time single parent. It was already more than I could manage. And dogs are like children and I just couldn't handle any more responsibility.

“Julep, listen, Honey... I know what you want to ask, and I'm sorry. I just can't do it. We've already got our hands full.”

“Oh Dad, just come down and see him. Don't say anything yet. Just come and see him”. Her intensity was turning from pleading to desperate. Her face was flushing and her voice was getting teary.

“Julep, I'm sorry kiddo. I can't do it. I can't. Maybe when we get a little more settled into our routines. Now I've got to get back to work, it's almost quitting time.” She began to cry and moved to the front window, to look down to the sidewalk where Niki and the dog were waiting. She stood and sobbed like her entire world was crumbling, like she was holding against the utmost despair.

“Please, Dad?” pleading from her deepest vulnerablility “Why won't you just come down and look at him?”. In her swollen eyes, I saw what this meant to her and I wasn't going to treat it like she was just asking for an extra scoop of ice cream. I went to the window and looked down and saw a very large and thin, black and tan dog, standing still, waiting with her friend.

“Okay” I sighed. “I'll come down and look. But I'm not making any promises.”

“Oh, thanks Dad. Okay. Okay. You'll see. I mean, okay, Oh thanks.” She ran ahead of me quickly down the five flights of stairs, and down the large limestone stoop.When we got to the sidewalk, the dog wagged his tail at Julep enthusiastically. He was even bigger than he looked from the window. Then he looked at me and seemed to instantly understand what was going on. He sat down as if I'd silently given him the command to sit. He looked straight up at me, pushing out his chest.

“Wow” I said, “Hey big guy”. He sat perfectly stilll, except to follow my eyes. He looked like a cadet standing at attention. “Hey buddy, what's going on.”

“Isn't he sweet, Dad?” Julep encouraged me, seeing I wasn't yet trusting him. He was young, maybe not even yet full grown. I put my hand forward to pet him, knuckles first. He didn't budge. He just sat perfectly still and looked directly at me with his wild, ancient and obviously intelligent eyes. I was amazed as my own instincts suggested what his look was saying. I could almost hear the words - “Mister, if you take me in, I'll protect this girl for you, and I'll be the best dog you have ever seen.”

“Wow. He's really somethin',” I said.

Julep began to smile with growing anticipation.“Isn't he great Dad? Isn't he incredible?”

I began to think of the potential advantages. This could give Julep something to really care about and begin taking responsibility. And nobody was going to mess with this dog, who was obviously part Doberman. I was willing to give it a try. “Okay, look kiddo, I'll make you a deal. I'll pay for his shots, and his vet bills, and buy his food and whatever he needs. But you've gotta take care of him. You've got to walk him whenever he needs to go out. And feed him. And bath him. And brush him.”

“Oh yes Dad. I will, I promise I will, Dad, I want to. I'll take really good care of him.” And adding, as if to sweeten the deal and show her maturity, “And he can sleep out in the hallway until we find out if he's housebroken or not.”

“Okay,” I said. “Let's try it.”

Julep wrapped her arms around me with the biggest, strongest hug she'd given me since she moved to Brooklyn. Then, bouncing up and down on her toes, she hugged Niki, who stood by the whole time without saying a word. And the dog? The dog jumped up from his sitting position and started wagging his tail and turning one way, then the other. He rubbed up against Julep, and then turned to me and circled me, as if to say, “Okay, Okay, Boss. We're a family here. Now - which way is home? I'm really hungry. I haven't eaten in a week.”

LIBRARY BLUES by Bill Herman

I looked at the County map with increasing anxiety. Would you like me to sit down and find you a route? But I have already forgotten the name of the boulevard. There was a TV show on about the Jones Town massacre.

I sit in Elting Library just off of Main Street in New Paltz, looking out the large green framed windows with a modest hopefulness. The view is distorted by the dirty windows and the glare of the afternoon sun.

The Women in Black who stand up for peace but really aren’t that friendly were just demonstrating on the corner.

Katy Boulevard. I think (and it certainly doesn’t matter) that was the name of the tiny squiggly line in square P-27. But now as often happens when I am under a little stress I am becoming tangential.

A certain number of pretty women pass by the big windows, but what I hope for is the sight of anyone I know, any woman I know. But time has changed and I don’t know very many women in New Paltz anymore, and mostly what I’m looking at is an animated picture of my own loneliness.

If I took it really seriously I would start to feel sorry for myself or at least get really bored. The window is not delivering love to me. Almost all I see is alienation.

I betrayed myself by being too weak. I should have been ten times as strong. I should look out these windows like a king overseeing his domain. Preparing for his next great battle. Calculating his brilliant chess move.

But I know that pretty soon I will just get in my car and drive home.

I stopped and prayed for any incidental thing to save me.

THE OWL by Debby Ogg

It had been one of those long, exhausting days. There had been several emergencies, people needing assistance immediately, and more than one at a time. It had been the stuff that nightmares are made of, and I had wished to replicate myself or just be able to bi-locate to meet all the needs. But now the day was almost done; just one more visit to make.

It was nearing dusk in late Spring. I raced down the office stairs, knowing I was late for my next appointment. The air was cool, misty, and the peepers were singing their songs. I opened the windows of the car, took a moment for the car to warm up, and inhaled the intoxicating perfume of moist soil and lilac. Senses heightened and brightened, the rhythm of the day slowed down. The sense of urgency evaporated, and driving well below the speed limit, I was open to each sight, each sound, as I crossed the Reservoir bridge.

It was only a hundred feet or so later, that I saw what I thought was a large wing sticking up in the road. My breath caught in my throat. I feared it was an injured hawk. I slowed down to a crawl, not wanting to startle it if it still was alive. I pulled off the road, as much as I could, and jumped out of the car. I hadn’t a thought in my mind. It wasn’t a hawk. It was an owl, lying on its side, its large three-foot wing at an angle in the air.

At that moment, a man came running across the road. He was babbling about how he hadn’t seen the bird, that it had swooped down in front of him, and that he tried to avoid hitting him, but he had. He clearly felt terrible, but his presence seemed to disappear as I approached the bird from behind. It wasn’t moving. Very large, brown and white, I wasn’t certain if it was dead or alive. I placed my hands over him, hovering just a few inches above his body, and felt my hands pulsating. I prayed. I asked Creator to help this suffering creature. I imagined the sweetest love pouring through my hands into his body, into his mind and spirit. I was there for minutes when I felt the need to see him fully.

I moved around to be in front of him, and crouched down. At first I noticed his talons, which were larger than my hands. I looked up into his face, and it was only then that I realized that he was alive. His eyes were bright yellow, very round, blinking slowly, and so very beautiful. He was so very beautiful. He was breathing; he was not struggling. I put my hands over him again, pouring energy into him. I used my breath to connect with the energy all around me, and my hands, hot and electrified, were transmitting it to him. He wasn’t frightened. I don’t know how he communicated that to me, but he did. He took in everything given to him. I felt transported into the world of his spirit.

It was then that a DEC officer pulled up behind me. She was asking me to leave the scene. I hadn’t realized that there was traffic stopped in both directions. She was brusque and she was frightening. I begged her to take care with him, to bring him to Heinz Meng in New Paltz, a raptor rehabber. She said she had orders to follow, and they were none of my concern, and again insisted that I leave, right then.

Reluctantly, very reluctantly, I left. I never found out what happened to the owl. I was so touched by our moments together, by the way his eyes looked at me, which felt so much like the way I was looking at him, in appreciation, in sadness. It was one of those once in a lifetime encounters. Every day since, I see his face. I pray for his safety wherever he may be. May it be so.

LOYALTY by Nina Garnham

My mother was every advertiser’s dream because of her unwavering brand loyalty. Here are her brands:

Lucky Strike cigarettes
Tide laundry detergent in powder form
Crest toothpaste
Wonder Bread
Thomas’ English Muffins
Breck Shampoo
Palmolive dish soap
Ajax
Brillo
Mr. Clean
Windex
Maxwell House Coffee
Manishevitz Matzoh’s
Pontiac cars
Minute Maid frozen orange juice
Welch’s Grape Jelly
Skippy Peanut Butter, creamy only
Ritz Crackers

During her lifetime, she only changed a few things. She quit smoking. She stopped buying Wonder Bread. And she started driving Toyotas. Otherwise, her shopping list, a close-knit family, stuck together like lint in the clothes dryer.

My mother demanded complete loyalty according to her strict definitions. When she visited an apartment I had when I was in my early twenties and saw Colgate toothpaste in the bathroom, she took it as a personal affront. “Nina, how could you?” she wondered aloud.

Relatives had to conform to her ideas of loyalty or else she was likely to cut off all communication. Neighbors too. No one could criticize her parents, her brother, or her Uncle Milton. She would enforce these Cold War developments with other family members:

My father was not to see or call his only brother;
We weren’t supposed to call Aunt Florrie or Uncle Joe;
Helen and Zigmunt were out;
We weren’t supposed to go inside Mary Ligouri’s apartment in 2D anymore.

The reasons for these silences were usually unknown to us kids.

I was not immune from the threat of excommunication. “When you were little, you’d go off with anybody,” Mom often lamented, afraid of her 4-year-old’s possible disloyalty so early on. It terrified her.

WRITING ABOUT WRITING by Christina Franke

Writing about writing, writing as a little girl, before I can read, before I can write anything other than my name, my name, written out in full, painfully, unhappy that it is so, so long, so many letters to write, Maria Christina Franke, but at least not as long as my sister’s name, which still has the hyphenated second last name, Elizabeth Diana Franke-Ruta, the Ruta being a post office mistake, a small town on the Italian Riviera where my grandfather, a man I never met, my father’s father, lived and wrote, taking Franke-Ruta as his pen name, his name still popping up as a minor, very minor German writer of the 1930s.

Writing. My mother in the manic periods of her mental illness writing and writing, the typewriter clicking away as she writes short stories, some about us, about three children who live in Switzerland, the three children she sends to Switzerland to live with the German grandparents, the grandparents who had gotten out of Italy, walked out of an Italian jail in Lucca, the jailers not wanting them, this Jewish woman and her German husband, the writer, letting them walk, the jailers eating lunch in the next room, the cell door unlocked. Mother the writer sends us to Switzerland but we never get there, stopped by her mother at Ernst Stein’s Great Neck house with its white painted wooden paneling, so clean and glossy and beautiful. Writing as a little girl, scribbling lines across the page, just lines of scribble, “Look, Diana, I’m writing.”

Writing, my mother telling me how to write a story so that something that seems so hard is now easy, just tell the story to yourself and then write it, just write it, don’t worry, if you can tell the story, you can write it and I do and the little eight year old story I write about a donkey who did something I no longer remember, the story my mother helps me write, the two of us sitting in the rain drenched summer house in Inverness, the ferns wet and smelling of urine, everything wet, leaves dripping, the two of us against the world, safe in our little house, and she helps me write a story.

Writing in Mr. Trouse’s English class, writing about Macbeth, angry, furious, stubborn, twisting my hair into knots, sitting and refusing to write, then slowly, dragging my pen across the ruled paper, writing, writing about Lady Macbeth, about the words Mr. Trouse loved and so I loved too, writing about Lady Macbeth and her madness, pushing, forcing the words out, the writing rough and uneven, the pen tight, the ink spreading. And when Mr. Trouse comes to class the next day, holds up a paper and says to us, “What do you think of this?” and when he reads my writing and I think he is reading it to shame me and my anger, and when a boy raises his hand and says “It reads like honey,” and Trouse says yes, that’s what I thought too, I wonder how the words they hear are so different from the words I felt.

And summer, bored, lying on the couch, my little brothers and sister screaming, the ugly tract house, reading, reading Willa Cather, reading stories of Swedish pioneer girls and prairies, of wheat and sun and trains across the fields and I know that this is beautiful writing, that this is how I want to write.

LONG SHOT by Lynn Faye

I went through this inexplicable period of promiscuity after I got divorced. I shouldn't say inexplicable in view of what preceded it, but looking back on it now, it seems very far away.

My mother was -- in many ways -- a prude. Oh, she talked a good game on the outside: loved the nudie ladies in Vegas; always warned me and my sisters and girlfriends to come to her if we got pregnant too soon -- said she knew what she was doing at our ages. She married the guy who turned her on and who seemed dangerous and then spent the rest of her lifetime trying to understand why he was such a chick-magnet and liked it that way.

My Dad was actually a prude, too. Wanted us to be ladies. Stay on the straight and narrow. Keep our thighs closed and cleavage covered. He talked a good game, too. And acted out plenty. But basically, he wanted his daughters to be good -- nice girls. I guess to atone for his prostitute sister and keep us away from her life of crime and degradation.

My folks were from hardscrabble backgrounds and worked hard to make up for it.

Mom -- from an orthodox Jewish family. Decided to rebel and marry the guy who wasn't even Bar Mitzvahed. All my Dad knew about orthodoxy was that he wanted to be far away from it. So did my Mom.

So the seeds of rebellion were planted in me long before I was born.

I tried doing the conventional things but was always just a step "out there."
Was boy crazy early.
Had sex early.
Ran off to New York for college to get away from home and never went back while all my friends stayed Midwest.
I wanted out of that stifling home. I'd flee my family and mistakes and make a new life.

So, I married a guy who didn't turn me on.
Avoid my mother's mistake and stay safe.
Wrong!
Our sex life was terrible -- even if we didn't realize it right away.
And then, everything about our life together was lousy, too.
Alas, he was from an orthodox Jewish background and had the same hang ups as my mother - just pretended that he didn't.
Like they say, we all marry our mothers.

So, after five years of lousy sex and playing house, when I got divorced, I wanted to play. I wanted no relationship of import with anyone. I'd gotten hurt and wasn't going to let that happen again.
So, I became a tramp for awhile. Not a big tramp -- but still a tramp.
Picked up men -- wherever. Slept with them. Discarded them. And didn't like them, either.
I was enjoying myself. Or was I?
I was acting just like my father -- acting out.
But I'm not a man and I didn't fare well acting like one. I still got hurt.
You can't just pick up people, sleep with them, and drop them -- without getting hurt.

On vacations, where no one knew me, I was fearless.
Flirt. Pick 'em up. Sleep with 'em. Have great sex. Feel nothing.
Ignored the rumblings of pain; hurt; -- when the men acted just as I expected and had set myself up for.

And one day, I found myself in London.
I picked up someone whose face and name I can't remember anymore.
He was foreign. Maybe Indian. Maybe African.
Mysterious. Dangerous. Interesting.
Had dinner with him.
Slept with him.
There we were in a hotel room. Perhaps mine. Perhaps his.
Along the way, the sex got rough. Not S & M stuff. But rougher than I was accustomed to. I don't remember if he bit me; hit me; or what?
But when I awoke the next morning, I was very sore. I could barely walk. The insides of my thighs were black and blue. He was gone -- as expected. I was alone.

I couldn't believe it. How had I come this far away? What was I thinking?
I could have been killed. Beaten. Drugged. I was lucky. I was only bruised -- in every way.
I was hurt but suddenly alert.
I was so very far away from home; physically, mentally, emotionally.
And I was done with this phase of my life. I would have to rebel in some other way.
I was not my father.
Not my mother, either.
Actually, not even me.

As Far Away from Home as Possible by DeAnn Louise Daigle

When I think of home
I think of warm and fuzzy.
Why would I want to leave it?

Home is where I was nurtured
And made to feel secure.
Home was fine. The Beauty of
The Woods, the Sound of Birds
Chirping. Mom and Dad downstairs.

The cats in the shed. Jackie,
My bird, in the cage. And
Eventually the dog I’d always
Longed for, Chillie – all living
Elements of my warm and fuzzy.

Mom reading fairy tales to me
And Dad reading me the funny
Papers on Saturdays. Warm
And fuzzy. Why would I want
To leave home? I didn’t.
I wanted home to remain
Like this safe place forever.

Home wasn’t all safe and secure.
There were awful edges, sharp edges.
Dad’s drinking, Mom’s having
Awful bouts of worry. Their
Fighting left me feeling nothing
Was safe; the world could
Come crashing at any moment.

There was unspoken tension
I never knew was there.
I felt it without knowing
What it was.

Dad didn’t drink, Mom told me.
He wasn’t like the other men
Who sat around and drank beer
When they weren’t working in
The fields or potato houses.

Dad didn’t sit around and
Drink with them, he hid his
Drinking from me, from Mom.
Only, she knew. She suspected.

She also suspected, when he disappeared
For two weeks at a time, that he
Was bedding down other women.
She hinted at this only once –
Implying that he’d slept with
Her brother’s wife. How did I
Understand this? I’m sure I

Didn’t. I may have been 5 years
Old at the time. He’d been gone
And she was upset. So much is
Feelingly blacked out for me.

Only years later as I reflected on my
Attraction to a particular boy cousin
Did I begin to think that maybe
He’s Dad’s son. My aunt had eight
Children and her husband, Mom’s
Brother, could have easily just
Counted this one as another of his own.

But, did he suspect? He was in a beer
Stupor most of the time.

Did all of these people live a
Closed harmony in suspicion
Of one another?

If not consciously in my mind,
Then, feelingly in my heart, I
Took in all of these tensions and
Suspicions, lost hope, lost
Affections, lost warmth and feelings of
Distance inside.

I took them in, gathered them up –
All of these surmises and speculations
And bits and pieces of gossip gathered
Here and there, of overhearing. I
Took them in and tried, tried very
Hard to piece together the story of
My life, because their story was

So much my story.

Of course, there was then my
Mother and me and how maybe
My cousin, Dad’s nephew,
Might be my real father. That
Too was tucked away in my
Eleven year old mind. Such
Quietly explosive stuff borders

On the mystical.

The church was
At the center of all of our lives.
It taught us right from wrong,
Good from bad. The priest was
Passionate at the lectern and
Told us these Beautiful sad stories
About Mary, the Mother of God.




We all heard the stories and I
Wept right along with the
Priest, and the men, who came
To the store after Mass would
Poke fun at the crying priest.

But, people came from all the
Surrounding villages when during
The month of May, the month
Of Mary, we gathered in cars
Reciting the rosary. Cars filled
The church’s parking lot at the
Shrines he had built,

The first one to our Lady of Lourdes –
A grotto with the statue of Mary and
A statue of the kneeling St. Bernadette on
Beautiful white rocks with running
Water the priest had had piped in from
The brook that ran behind the
Grotto. People came from miles

Around to see what the priest
Had done. He enlisted the very people
Who laughed at him to build all
Of the shrines that would follow.
St. Joseph, the Sacred Heart of Jesus,
St. Therese of Lisieux.

In the summertime, there were
Processions on Sunday Evenings and
We walked around the large
Illuminated rosary at the edge
Of the water, where there was
Open ground and the grass was
Very green.

Ave, ave, ave, Maria, ave, ave
Ave Maria.

I have demons. I battle demons
In the night, and it’s all quite
Mystical.