Barry Silesky

Barry Silesky, a frequent contributor to RealPoetik, is editor of the wonderful _Another Chicago Magazine_, one of those few little magazines of national scope, high quality, and a tradition of openness to new forms and writers. Also in serious financial trouble, always a good sign. Sample issues $8 at ACM, 3709 N. Kenmore, Chicago, IL 60613. He can also be reached at btsds@aol.com. Send money.

LADYBUGS

(after Delores Wilbury)

Someone's getting married, and in the back, hard breathing. Horses, animals, and they're coming. But it's two women, a man, all young, all three dressed only in shorts, though it's cool, bright morning outside. The stern faces of the performers, practiced and set for this business, claim its importance: pleasure was never the point. If those breasts move the wrong cells, the woman who dreamed it "isn't interested." Whatever you do, don't laugh. Ok, we won't. But what kind of wedding is this? Only a few traces remind us-- two veils, swatches of lace draped over two hard chairs set in a row behind them, a third between them bare. It seems distant, an idea hovering in the background, and no one seems to care. They're children, they take turns twisting fists in each other's foreheads. Then the women weave about each other, screwing their faces, back, forward, ignoring the man panting alone in front. It's a battle, they're machines, and it's politics again: the women are "equal," the man simply flesh apart, each of them alone. One woman raises her arms, she's shocked-- but at what? The arrangement may seem new, but haven't we known all this for years? Eventually, the marriage occurs, another stage, and then, of course the divorce. In between, children, jobs, hours remembering when this view was the only thing, and the music carried us off. The way the flesh blossomed, the scent in June, green and green.

In an instant, it's done, both women sitting while the man puts on the white glove from the low platform. The wedding dress waits next to it. It's death, he tells us, in case we don't notice. There's really no place for that here, but the idea insists so we can feel complete, at least for a few moments. Added to the way the sexes balance, the latest child slaughtered as the home team loses again, have we left anything out? He puts on the dress, placing the veils on the women.

"Sometimes we must wait a long time to see what happens," the man says, and here come the flies, tapped from a bottle onto the veils. They're not flies, though-- not decay out of some old movie, but ladybugs, cleaners of gardens from the bright outside, spread over the lace, and flying in this dim light. Everyone's looking into that distance, mechanical voices suddenly lower, human.

"Tell me what you long for," the taller woman says, but no one answers.

It must be a happy ending.

THE CUP

"When anomalous information reaches a certain threshold, it's job is to force the left hemisphere to revise the entire model and start from scratch. "

It's those new galaxies, something we can't see that the experts know must be there. How else explain this being here at all in the face of this flying apart? Winter rain, sneeze and cough, another friend's divorce-- nothing new-- but the award must be there too. And that great sex the porn movie imagines. So the picture's changing again. Thank god for the pills, filing off the edges. Tonight you can really sleep, and in the morning, you can stand the job, admire the new door someone else installed. Does it work? A little off square, but the thing closes. It's involved with the dark matter-- the wimp theory vs. another-- either there are billions of stars we can't see, burned out, whose gravity holds the rest together, or--?. The information is vital, even if we don't understand. One day you're lifting, turning, everything in the ordinary way, and the arm won't work. The phone rings, and nobody's there. The brain doesn't notice, though; there's another explanation. A dream? No, we've outgrown that idea. It's spring again, despite the snow, and by the time all the data's collected, summer, blotting the whole affair in the sticky sheen. Surprise, nothing's moved. You're parched, and the cup sits on the table, brimming with cold water.

NATURE

Then it's spring again. Or is it snow sparkling the pines? Either way, the moon's a copper coin, says nothing, and we quiver in its music. Time for silence. How the stars hold us. How this, O that, O endless . . . The group attending is small, but bigger all the time, a chorus, swelling wherever you listen. Remember all the darkness? One bone? Magic, we cry, magic, and here's the music in the dream. Everyone's trying to eat the right thing. But don't forget the skin part-- the way she's taking off her clothes, and he is. We're paying attention, we're upstairs praying. When the war's finally over, we feel

deliciously free, though the new refugees do smell a little funny. We welcome them gladly, at least from a distance, but how to explain the carefully ragged dress, all the accidents cultivating our way to the "casual look"? Imagine talking to an old friend, making it clear: I'm glad to see you've put on a few pounds, you look much more solid. The new wife's much prettier, though she is strung tight; sometimes it seems she'll never stop talking. Meantime, someone's pried off the back door, swept out all the expensive gadgets and we didn't hear a thing. The explosions get closer, more frequent. They're the same voices, just pitched to a new timbre. Then we understand: we have gone back to nature.

Barry Silesky