Day 9: Criminal Element

At the crime fiction community site Criminal Element, 5-2 performer Clare Toohey highlights the 1961 manifesto of American sculptor Claes Oldenburg, relating it to crime writing, on Day 9 of 30 Days of The 5-2.

Seamus Scanlon

THE NEW IRELAND

In the wet grass of the church grotto
I bled away my baby
For the New Ireland
That loves sin.
I cried and the rain hid me.
I looked down
Red on green—Mayo colors.
Callow Lake I will never see again
And the Moy that carried beautiful dead boys out to sea.


Clare Toohey reads "The New Ireland":



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Seamus confesses: "'The New Ireland' was inspired by the story of a Irish teenager who gave birth alone in a grotto behind a church, in the shadow of a Virgin Mary statue. Both she and the baby died. I also linked the birth/death event to the high suicide rate among teenage boys in Ireland. I used water as motif (rain, Callow Lake, the River Moy) because it is the major component of Irish weather and landscape, and the breaking waters should signify renewal and birth."

SEAMUS SCANLON is a writer from Galway, Ireland home of Lord Haw Haw, Nora Barnacle, Druid Theatre, Johnny Rotten's grandparents and rain. His first collection, As Close As You'll Ever Be, got a starred review from Library Journal and a cult following in Woodlawn.

Kathleen Shaw

STRANGER

My neighbor looks like he's disguised
with phony beard and beady eyes.
Each night he sits and rocks for miles
and never even talk or smiles.
Each morning 'till he drives away
I find it hard to start my day.
Then he returns at six each night
and holds his briefcase much too tight.
What's in that case—a gun? A bomb?
It's awfully hard to keep my calm.
I need to know from where he came.
I need to learn his job, his name.
Is he a crook, a cop, a spy?
I have to know the reason why
my life revolves around this guy.


Clare Toohey reads "Stranger":



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Kathleen confesses: "Despite the rarity of crime in my neighborhood, many neighbors are paranoid about crime, which leads me to ask: Who is stranger—someone who looks suspicious or someone or obsesses about danger that doesn't exist?"


After teaching English for twenty-five years, KATHLEEN SHAW finally has time to travel with her husband, play with her grandchildren, read what she wants, write poems and plays, and take art classes.

Tonia Kalouria

ROCK-A-BYE, BABY

(Clapton's "Cocaine" blares
its lullaby in background)

In a roach-infested kitchen,
on a greasy counter top,
shrieks a toddler in a rocker seat
nearby the rancid mop.

"Oh, Jane, stop squawlin', sweetie,"
(Writhing on the counter top)
"Ma's textin' for her helpers now,"
(they'll "help her" till she drops.)

With their anguish unrelenting,
child and mother flail and pace.
A life arranged by drugs and drops
is etched upon each face.

"Just how long does it take
to score some freakin'coke'n meth?!"
"Oh, God, he's cut me off I bet!"
(the thought scares her to death.)

At last, Mom's prayer is answered:
She bolts toward the ringing bell.
"Okay, hold on, I’m comin'! "
(At the “in’” the cradle fell.)

(The pace changes...)

The peaceful babe lay broken
on the sticky, stone-cold floor.
Encrusted Loves and curdled milk
could torture Jane no more.

Twelve "peers" find TOT-MOM GUILTY!
The Old Prison’s her new home.
Life doles out food for thought, too,
as she paces, now alone.

On tip-toes from her sterile cube,
Mom scans the prison yard:
Through swollen eyes,
each night she spies
Sweet Jane there—standing guard.


Clare Toohey reads "Rock-a-bye, Baby":



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Tonia confesses: "Beyond the theme of Demon Drugs, I want the 'twist ending' to be thought provoking: Is Jane an angelic testimony to Forgiveness? Is she a spirit there to haunt? Is she simply an hallucination caused by guilt, drugs, and/or madness?"

TONIA KALOURIA is a retired Spanish teacher who played psychiatrist Tonia Wilson on Passions from 2002 to 2007. Her book, Aerobic Poetry: Critter Connections Collection, features humorous, rhythmic poems meant to be read aloud to help lower blood pressure and improve lung function. She has also published poetry in The Litchfield Review, Common Threads, and The Senior Years. She lives with her devoted husband of many years on the "North Shore," (Lake Erie,) and has two wonderful sons and a lovely granddaughter.

Aig'ner Wilson

CHRISTINE

Again,
Again,
Again,
Until it's all I can hear
From your stained lips.
"Kiss me again,
Hold me again,
Hit her again."
And so I do
Again,
Again,
And again,
Until the word loses meaning
And I lose feeling in my arms and hands.
I hadn't realized the cold through all the screaming.
Her blood turns the snow into soup
And I dare to dream of the taste.
My jacket, once yellow, is now red as well.
But you, smart you, wore Black.
The only way to know of the blood is to touch you.
But if I touch you, I might also turn red.

The word was RUN which consists of two legs and a body.
All of which I can't find right now.
But you're running,
So maybe I'm running too.
The woods begin to call my name.
"Christine!!" they hollow, and "Christine!!" they rot.
How do they know who I am?
Unless it's not the trees and it is you,
My black blood beauty,
Who is calling.
So I gathered my body and shot it at your voice.
If I had sanity or sense, I'd know I wasn't a bullet and that you weren't hurt,
But that sound we made colliding could pass for gunfire any day.
We fell and I kicked us into a tumble.
Grasping at you,
Pulling you in so close, we were me, and us you.
Don't you see? In the laws of man, we do not reside.
Two angels simply passing by.
We could hear the roaring of the lake
As we tumbled further.
You pulling me close with all your might.
"It's like witchcraft, you see.
If we sink, we are evil, and God can have his way with us,
But if we survive, the world is truly ours."


Clare Toohey reads "Christine":



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Aig'ner confesses: "I woke up in the middle of my apartment with a pen in my hand and ink on my bed. I was driven to write out the confession or memory of a murder, having finished a weekend of teen girl murder movies with Heavenly Creatures, based on the actions of Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme, or as she is now known, Anne Perry."


AIG'NER WILSON lives in Olympia, Washington but is originally from the Jersey Shore. She works as a quasi-librarian at Goodwill, spending most of her days swimming through tons of books. "Christine" is her first published poem.

R.A. Allen

ON CAR THEFT

Your friends were expecting it,
your teachers weren't surprised,
and even your mom had an inkling.
Truant, shoplifter, creature of the night,
your calling was low-slung and German.
Like a cheetah prowling the Kenyan plains
the road was your antelope to chase.
"Born to boost" embannered on your chest,
theft was the one thing that made you alive;
dashing evasion set your veins ablaze.

Beyond the next hill lies the Texas state line—
a Rubicon to your rebellious desires.
This line, this day, this existential choice
in an instant will chart the course of your life.
For crossing it lands you in federal court,
where property crimes are punished in the
American Way, and they stack up the counts
like an Old Testament stoning and pile on
enough time for a double homicide.


Clare Toohey reads "On Car Theft":



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R.A. confesses: "It's the difference between joyriding and OC. Back when construction sites were lightly guarded, I knew a guy who would steal dump trucks to fence in Illinois. Nabbed by the Feds, they gave him a nickel with no parole and then sent him back to Tennessee to serve another four years."

R.A. ALLEN lives in Memphis. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Pear Noir!, Boston Literary Magazine, the Recusant(UK), Underground Voices, Word Riot, Gargoyle, and elsewhere; fiction published in The Literary Review, The Barcelona Review, PANK, The Los Angeles Review, Best American Mystery Stories 2010. Nominated for Best of the Web 2010.