Issue 7: December 2006.
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Slamdance
by Benjamin Buchholz

SAMETH, 22, necktie, bare chest, surfs through the haze of a mosh pit, riding the hands.

Black Flag plays above, behind, in the background, discordant and wild.

The dancers in the pit sweat, fling their long hair in whiplash circles.

                                       SAMETH
                       I held her up to the light, my
                       girl, firstborn out there in the
                       waves of nausea, woman wailing,
                       having brought pickles with peanut-
                       butter and figs -- figs!, who
                       carries figs in their Walmart?,
                       good God, I thought -- and the
                       little pink-skinned thing gurgled
                       at me, a suffusion of light, a
                       child without armor, yet, a child
                       not having seen sun but for the
                       mistake of gasping at very first.

A Color Guard enters the mosh-pit: seven men in starched uniforms, low-brimmed hats, flags with battle-streamers shouldered, ceremonially varnished weapons.

They stop and turn toward the stage.  The outer two soldiers level their weapons and fire into the crowd.

Dancers fall, bleeding.

                                       SAMETH
                       I began slowly with the lump of clay,
                       forming, pressing, forcing out the
                       bubbles of air, teasing it upward
                       and outward, thinner and thinner, to
                       shape a vase, the womb, the delicate
                       vessels and veils, her hands on my
                       hands on the clay, spun or blockset
                       on wax paper, lights out, hallway,
                       room, REM on speakers hidden behind
                       orbs of cardboard, chalked figures,
                       behind me sitting upright and leaning
                       over me, long hair wet, salted, lush,
                       saying something like love to me in
                       in the basement of my suffocation,
                       O, dear mother shape me and shake
                       me as the tool cuts away such excess.

The Color Guard stomps forward.

The dancers flee.

Sameth hangs, fluttering, suspended in the air where the hands had momentarily held him aloft.

                                       SAMETH
                       I went fishing with my father in the
                       desert, said to him, hey, father, no
                       fish here, just beer cans, just the
                       flapping empty sound of the thousand
                       tents, the vainglorious spillway of
                       blood spent, and ghost, here, ghost,
                       that unsimple sound of wind and noone,
                       the barbed wire now sunset-colored
                       from the years of rust, to which he,
                       dad, gray-haired and genteel in the
                       steeped hickory nut cracking end of
                       himself said, let us walk and speak
                       of being in the midst of struggle.

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