robert manning, jr.
first place
fiction
after low Sunday
3 woman in a floral bikini, Stella,
stands by a motel's swimming pool holding
her useless creamy white towel. The flower
design of her bikini is a haphazard pattern
of what appears to be puerile daisies. The
slight, adipose bulge of her belly enhances,
not diminishes, her felicitous, visible navel.
(A linear perspective's vanishing point
would locate itself behind her centrality.)
Exposed to the sun is the puce tile of the
pool, as it is seen in the left corner. Above
and to the right of a vertex of this corner is
a blue palmetto in a large circular pot. Its
shadow rolls on the water in a broken line
and up the other side of the right-angled
corner. Stella's dun-colored hair dries in
tangles, and as she steps on the aqua blue
curb of the pool she obliterates
the palmetto's shade line. She is contented
ly involved in a flirtation with a man whose
suntan simulates an Indian's glabrous,
coppery skin. This Floridian scene glissades
by moments.
Jack Biddle encounters this scanty,
scenic set at the ending and parting of the
flirtation with the cupreous skinned man.
Jack replaces the departing flirt and inter
connects in a triangulation with Stella and
the forgotten girlfriend of Stella, who bobs
and paddles about in the chlorine water.
The displayed concupiscence of Stella's
antithetical to the girl in the pool, who
dips and plunges beneath the water. The
glance that connected Stella and Jack is
quickly broken when he finds himself on
Collins Avenue seized in sun. He waits on
the grass island divide for traffic to pass.
A detouring note blends an eccentricity
and an expected obscenity. A focus in an
air-filled deafness catches steadfastly part
of figures that will not slip by without
replete regroupment. Ah, well, to cause a
break to transport a meaningless object
would be to have Jack Bryddle micurate
into a porcelained pot. Lids raised.
m iami Beach is that south tip of
stringy blotches of townlands clotted to
gether on hotel and motel lots and houses
of families embracing happy, unhappy and
invisible alike. Does their invisibility pro
tect them, unto a kin, like canopy or beach
umbrella? Such an awkward confinement
this is! Catacombs. . .The golden-jawed
pelican rests better in languor on emptied
pier contrived the thought of silent evanes
cent Biddle.
In deliberate ease Jack develops his
notice of what a radiant, thin day it is.
Mid-morning is unclouded and wound in a
slick, filmy, Emersonian blue. Remake said
day's sky like a lost crown boweled of its
jewels. A lucid, cerulean bowl, upside
down, agonizes itself over a roily, green
border of palms. What causes this is the
bleeding of three dimensions from that
border to resemble those paper silhouttes
of children's comical, pasted-on, palm
fronds. What a bargain basement does for
a formal bleachery! How a thirsty sun
does dry his indolent mind a place
ment of bent objects that persist to melt
into an eager rainbow, and not a
desiccation !
Little did they know, Jack and Stella,
bemused chance would continue, in transit,
their aslant eye to couple them through
neon-crenulated sign blinking 'DANCE -BEER',
fulfilled pier, black sand, black sea,
black-green waves and grey foam. Jack
bore himself jubilantly alongside the check
in office of Sunshine Motel, which is a long
rectangular and simple construction of
overlaid planks. This wooden, match-boxlike
building with its carport three-quarters
its length lingers on his eye. Bungling
Biddle bumps into women as contingently
as he wins and plays those glittering pin
ball machines.
Stella Gothardt and Jack, both with
tans, between dances at the neon-crenulated
beer hall, have a somewhat refracted
dialogue. Both sit at opposite sides of an
air foam and plastic lined booth. Its
Siamese chairs are divided by a rectangular
table between them.
Jack: "I'm not sure I want to go there."
Stella: "I'm ready to spend the weekend
at the Holiday amid. . ."
Jack: (smile, short laugh) "Oh no, this
has nothing to do with that. It's not
wanting to be here. There was a miss."
Stella: (silence-or was there an "oh.")
Jack: "It's a sly and shy arrogance and
a sporadic flash on a dark sea. I had a girl
friend who. . ." (something drops and oblit
erates any more sound.)
Stella: "Have you a fearful memory
mimicking a part?"
Jack: "No that should be a mocking
memorist because I am a mischievous dis
tortionist. And, well, it's my spatial
interest which wants to maintain an ab
stract means of three dimensions."
(Laughs) "I don't care for this type of
bric-a-brac place. And as for the girl, there
has been, at least, a few things between
that span and this splash. It's a jump or
jog in timepockets for timesleeves. Why
don't we. . ." (fades out)
Stella: (Nods yes)
(And now) to the beach to witness only
a part of what could be a long sex scene.
Stella's vagina or pudenda is extraordinari
ly wet, and when she raises her legs to in
terlock her feet around Biddle's torso her
stomach fat puckers. And that is the apo
dosis of what is perhaps an inane observa
tion during common coitus.
Stella awakens to see footprints
receding down the isolated beach.
Inlands clasped they both go to the
beach and both lie down together. The day
darkens to dusk. The beach is flat and long.
The sun has left. The dim sand, now dark
brown, remains warm. A light breeze from
the Gulf is filled with sea moist and cool.
Waves break into silver quartz clusters.
She awakens and is frightened. He is not
there, and all she sees arc his footprints
leading away from her.
Daylight breaks into the room and
opens Jack's eyes. He purposely left open
the curtain at the halfway measure. The
motel's window is a series of retangular
glass framed in thin metal and one sliding
door; the green curtain, with specks of
yellow, is drawn open jocundly with time
lapse jerks of a pale cord. His muscles par
tially begin to concentrate themselves into
stumbling acceleration. Jack fumbles on
his jock strap and silkened, nylon trunks,
which are a simulacrum to the ones of his
high school track team. A pellucid celerity
finally breaks through a cool, blue dawn.
A fawn sun is being gobbled up in blue. A
crushing munch echoes from his limbering
trot on pebbles. He pops into an inveterate,
gliding mood, but a mental drop strips
reconnoitered past to psuedo, futuristic
breakfast. For the split of a second, just be
fore that quick and dashing Rambler
missled behind him, he knows he sees
crackling, grilled, sunny -side-up eggs and
orange juice and butter pooled in grits.
He had come out of the alley way of
motel rows and the auto had nestled,
nettled and nicked his foot; he had
jumped away and forward, and in no mea
surement of time he had seen a zygodactyl
bird of brightly variegated colors break
from its leafly branchlet. The hit had felt
like it had pashed his foot, albeit he had
only a small bruise. And then what was an
African gray doing loose? Psittacus must
no longer play pale mimics in a parlor's
cage.
Jack remembers John Warde two hun
dred and two feet up for six suicidal hours
before he fell and broke two hundred and
two bones. Two photographs were printed.
One photo caught Warde as he hit the
marquee and smashed red glass in
suspended chunks. The second one showed
Warde face down with red pulp fleshed out
in a faceless, circular lump. Warde's imbe
cilic fall was an impish, deliberate
encroachment on Jack.
Just before breaking into a meadow of
knotgrass Jack runs between two pines
and slips on pine needles. Such a slip,
muddy slips and wrong turns change races
as another races to the front as a cassation
of the first. An empty road running in an
oval and a forgetful race twists fat vapidity
into a practical joke. Jack's stumble
enables him to notice his shadow disap
pearing between the two pines.
On Tuesday Jack leaves; he places grace
fully his thick, black luggage on the
airline's stainless steel weighing machine
and smiles at the straight-haired blonde
who hands him back his ticket. The blonde
ticket-taker and hand-it-back has
something in her features which corre
sponds not fully to a fashion model. He
does not stop to figure out why. The TWA
airplane takes off, jostles affectionate
nerves, enervates tickles and leaves every
thing to fall where it will. A Persian car
tographer unrolls a map for inquisitive Jack,
who feigns ingenuous interest.
john salinas
honorable mention
photography
ff , I 0 o-
friday, decern ber 1, 1978
fathom
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