Stripped of all precious illusion ...

as what happens. Someone very dry and pan-black did this: He stripped me of all precious illusion then of grace, while two women approached me and attacked. It could only have been death, not mine. Examples of my precious illusions until then: "life matters," "friends love one," "people want each other's health." Slowly, each of those -- now flat and dry but before that light and delicate -- returns in gray outline, like someone's idea of "aging." "Life matters," "friends love one," "people want each other's health" in relearning my spirit. Deaths: love/animals. I reject atheism. One day, I feel it: hope.

Sonia's Rock Band

The names of Sonia's rock bands were "Shiksa" and "Shag." I had suggested "Gash," but she rejected it. One night the men who backed her in the band surrounded me where I sat at Cecil's to ask me a question. They acted like they had come there to find me. All were smiling. All were "Mr. Nice Guys." They reminded me of a barbershop quartet. I thought they might start singing. "Why won't you have sex with Sonia?" they asked as one person. That goes against friendship. "Because her nipples," I said, "are too pale. They're the color of a number 3 pencil eraser," and they laughed.

What mothers want

Marxist

One of my writing friends, an Ivy graduate who has worked for women's magazines, who has experienced and travelled the "glamorous" world, has become a Marxist. I feel challenged by the new direction in her mind: I don't have enough money to become a Marxist. She is not rich herself, but she is at last comfortable, happily married, and can afford to teach part-time -- the lot of many women in our field. She drives to her school as often as the fully-paid men professors do, but she earns much less. Is that why she became a Marxist? No. The reason she became a Marxist relates to her research on global wages paid to produce consumer goods for Americans. I told her that I had shopped at our beautiful department stores as a girl, at Dayton's, in particular. Now that Dayton's is no longer, and we have mostly Macy's, and the glamor of Dayton's is past, and I am poor, I go to Goodwill. As children, our mother brought our used clothing there; now I shop there. Call it "clothing recycling," and it works. I cannot afford to buy much at department stores, and this way, we donate old clothes and give money to charity for the ones we buy; I find wearable clothes, a little fashionable, without causing further manufacturing hardship overseas. Am I already a Marxist?

Poems by J. D. Smith

As Art Springs from a Wound

There's no need to stay up, planning death,
or push away full plates.
No need for the other symptoms,
the familiar list,
because a pill dissolves them.
Then nothing's good or bad
but thinking makes it so,
and nothing's that bad when there's the will
to write a letter, even post it,
and begin another, asking a friend
what if salesmen -- of anything -- are right,
and, with them, cheerleaders,
the evangelists of tall hair,
the televised prophets of real estate?
What if all is bounty,
for the taking with a smile?
Then all art and craft
is happenstance and shining scar,
canopy over a ground of grief
that gives way, toppling statues,
symphonies, and poems.

All these years we could have been taking sun.
We should have have been making money.
But we didn't, and must count it loss.
Pale and broke, we settle for beauty.

Celibate

I must have wires
instead of bones;
instead of flesh,
congealed shadow
like clay pressed
on a sculptor's study
or the pressed resin
of action figures.

A cage of angles,
I turn with a jerk,
and part crowds.
A point extending
from a finger-tip
might draw blood;
another, from a shoulder,
could summon lightning.

from Settling for Beauty by J. D. Smith, a Cherry Groves Selection.

Polemics (def.)

po-lem'ic, po-lem'ic-al, a. [Gr. polemikos, from polemos, war.]
po-lem'ic, n. 2. an argument or controversial discussion.
po-lem'ics, n. pl. [construed as sing.] 1. the art or practice of disputation or controversy.
2. a dispute.
3. that branch of theological science dealing with the history of ecclesiastical controversy.

po-lem'i-cist, n. a skilled debater or writer of polemic discussions.

po'le-mist, n. an argumentative person.

from Webster's New Universal Unabridged Dictionary, deluxe 2nd edition.