New England Review

Joan Leegant

The Eleventh Happiest Country

R

oi’s old friend from the army, Tal, had been an actor before he got religious and now he wanted to make another film and wanted Roi to do it. An action flick. Tal checked with his rebbe in B’nai Brak and it was all right.

“Whoa, man. Looking like that?” said Roi, waving at Tal’s face—the beard, the peyis spiraling down over his ears, the black kippa. They were at a café on Sheinkin. It wasn’t certified kosher but you couldn’t traife up espresso beans.

Tal had an answer ready right away. He said the movie would be about a former con man who’d found God but was dragged back into crime by his former con man buddies to do one last heist. So he does. It goes wrong and he goes to jail. Or maybe it goes right and he makes off with a pile of stolen cash. Tal hadn’t figured that part out yet.

“How can you make a flick like that?” Roi said. “It would have to have some cheesy ending where the guy sees the light again and gives it all back and comes to his knees in repentance. It’ll be terrible. Shit. I can’t direct shit like that.”

“No, no,” Tal said. His eyebrows were thickly bunched in concentration. Roi hadn’t noticed before how hairy Tal’s eyebrows were. Maybe because now there was so much additional hair in the same neighborhood. “It’ll be a real heist movie with a real heist movie ending. Prison or victory. The fact that the guy’s religious will have nothing to do with it. He’ll just be like all the other scumbags and thieves, only with”—he waved at his face—“this.” He paused. “What?” His dark eyes looked hard into Roi’s. “I’m not asking to film my life questions. No deep meaning here. I promise.”

 

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Benjamin Garcia

Ode to the Peacock

In the language of handkerchiefs // there’s really nothing // I don’t want
I’m glad to be paid in gold // when the devil beats his // you know what

if you think it’s indecent // for a body to fan open iridescent // gird your gaze
because honey I’m throwing up // my kerchief like a flare-gun shot // watch me

unskirt a frosted muffin // top me with sprinkles // I’m flashing red-yellow-green-go
you’re the stallion and I’m the mare // smear my queer into the mirror // now you

are the mare and I am // the stale smell in the restroom stall // and you’re an all-
you-can-eat buffet // let me say your eyes are the most beautiful // urinal cake blue

blew as in the past tense of blow // blow as in coke even though you // suck it up
buttercup and butterscotch // a man named Scott wants his Scotch // filthy gorgeous

or maybe that’s a martini // a man named Martin a man named // who knows what
who knows what it means to pluck roses // from my chest // using just his teeth

and sometimes yes blood // which is thicker than water // I know something thicker
it’s called incest // when a nephew makes his uncle say uncle // say pee say cock

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Stephen Benz

Overlooking Guantánamo

One day, our dispatch-boat found the shores of Guantánamo Bay flowing past on either side. It was at nightfall, and on the eastward point a small village was burning, and it happened that a fiery light was thrown upon some palm-trees so that it made them into enormous crimson feathers. The water was the colour of blue steel; the Cuban woods were sombre; high shivered the gory feathers. The last boatloads of the marine battalion were pulling for the beach.  —Stephen Crane, “War Memories”

Twenty years ago, I went to Santiago de Cuba to gather material for a magazine article on the centennial of the Spanish–American War. Over the course of several days, I visited Daiquirí, Siboney, Las Guásimas, El Caney, and of course San Juan Hill—all the main sites associated with that war. All, that is, except one: Guantánamo Bay. But visiting Guantánamo was practically impossible, even then, five years before it became a detention camp for prisoners of the “War on Terror.” The sites related to the Spanish–American War were located inside the perimeter of the US Naval Base—“Gitmo,” to use the military’s shorthand designation—and there was no access to the base from Cuba proper. The only way to enter Gitmo was to fly in on a Navy transport airplane from Virginia Beach, Virginia. And to do that, I would have to obtain permission—rarely granted—from naval authorities. So, much as I would have liked to visit the scene of the war’s first clash between Spanish and American troops, I had to accept the impracticality of such a visit.

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“Overlooking Guantanamo” appears in NER 39.4.

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