LONELINESS LIKE A WET PUPPY
A Christmas story
first published in The Iowa Source
photo:www.elegancebyamylee.com


Adrian Korpel

I came across her when reading the Personals ads in my local newspaper: "Mature Professional," DWF, 45, seeking "Christmas Romance and New Year's Love. Poets only."
   I hadn't had much luck meeting single women lately, so on a hunch I dialed the 900 number mentioned in the paper. An answering machine asked me to leave a message and mentioned a precise time for me to call a specific number. I recorded a description of myself, stressing the fact that I taught poetry at the university, and lying about my age.
  When calling later that night, I was connected to yet another answering machine. It said, in a pleasant woman's voice, "You sound okay professor, but you'd better pass my test for fake poets. Listen carefully: I want you to describe to me in a poem where you want to meet me and when. Make it romantic and sincere, I hate sappy stuff."
  I could hear her chuckle, and then she continued: " If I like what you write, I'll be there; if not, not. Don't use free verse, it turns me off. Leave the poem with Freshëns Frozen Yoghurt. Goodbye, professor." There was some some whirring, a click and then the usual buzz of a disconnected phone.
  Free verse was all I ever bothered with. There was no way I could come up with sonnets or odes. I thought about that for a while and finally decided on a sensitive prose poem foretelling where and when I was going to meet her.This is what I wrote:


It is midnight on Christmas eve. I walk slowly through the silent streets of the city. Snow has been falling since late afternoon; the gray day has faded into shadows, and the miniature lights in the small, bare trees are boring bright rings in the pearly dusk of winter. By now the snow is inches deep; it covers the red bricks of the mall and forms glittering, white caps on the orange fire hydrants and the gleaming, steel spouts of the fountain. The voices of summer still hang in the air, and from a long distance away I seem to hear sounds of running water and children's cries of excitement. 


Past the fountain stands a Christmas tree, decorated with shiny, red balls. A half dozen newspaper boxes are lined up facing the tree, as if they have come caroling . After wiping the snow off a bench, I sit down near the Hallmark store where tessellated, paper snowmen stare at me through the dark display window. Everything is still. As the snow floats quietly down, I am waiting for you, cradling my loneliness like a wet puppy. 


   It wasn't the greatest poem I had ever written, but it did have an undertone of pensive melancholy. And " cradling my loneliness like a wet puppy" was a master stroke, I thought. I dropped the epistle off at Frëshens Yoghurt and hoped for the best.
  For the next two weeks nothing happened. Mature Professional did not try to communicate; at least I didn't find any messages in the paper to give me a clue as to how my poem had been received. Not that I minded all that much; the semester was over, and I finally had a chance to catch up on my reading.
  I had almost given up on the whole idea of poetic romance, when Christmas Eve came around, and reminded me of my appointment. I was pretty sure that Mature Professional wouldn't show up, but I decided to walk downtown anyway, if only to prove to myself that I was a romantic old fool. It was snowing heavily, and I made slow progress, but around midnight I arrived at the bench near the Hallmark store mentioned in my prose poem. There was nobody else around, and against my better judgment, I sat down and waited.
  After about fifteen minutes, just as I was about to leave, a tall woman in a long, green, hooded coat and black boots appeared out of the steadily falling snow. She picked her way slowly and carefully across the street toward my bench. When she came closer, I noticed that she had long, auburn hair. It tumbled out of the hood of her green coat, and shone like copper in the light of the street lamps. The inside of her hood was blue, and framed her oval face like an Italian renaissance painting. She stopped, looked at me quizzically, and said with a smile,
  "Cradling your loneliness like a wet puppy?"
  I looked at her face, at how she drew up the corners of her gray eyes in mock puzzlement.
  "Yes, that's my puppy all right," I said, "Are you by any chance a veterinarian?"
  "I may be," she said, "what's the matter with the puppy?"
  "It's lonely, " I said, "I think it needs hugging."
She looked at me with an ironic smile. Then she wiped the snow from the bench with her glove, and sat down next to me.
  "I always wanted to be a veterinarian," she said," do you think it's too late to start now?"
  "I think you should," I said, "I hear it's a great profession. In fact, I may try it myself. Maybe you have a sick puppy, too."
  For a while we just sat there in silence, watching the falling snow. At last she touched my hand and smiled at me.
  " Perhaps we should see about signing up then," she said.

THE WEDDING OF THE MACHINES

Adrian Korpel

Artwork: Toon Rooymans

The two machines stood hand in hand in the field of sunflowers, facing the little preacher. Their space capsule stood behind them, a giant silver cylinder on a vast cloth of gold. 

"Are you sure this is leegical? " Mara, the female said in a little loudspeaker voice. She was angular, her many rods and bolts lining up to roundness in the center of her skeletal body. 
"You mean 'legal'," the preacher said, "the word is 'legal,' not 'leegical.'" 
The male spoke up now in deep, gruff tones that rattled the tubules of his frame. 
"We studied hard. English not easy for units like we."
"You're doing fine, Hano. But to answer Mara's question -- yes it's legal. As a minister I have the authority to marry all who are part of the Great Web of Being. Are there any other questions?" 
"Tell us about the Great Web of Being." Hano said. 
"By that we mean the passion of the quarks, the cosmic dance of galaxies, everything. But what counts is love." 
"Tell us about love," Mara said, "how people make love?"
"Variously," the preacher said, "touching, stroking, becoming one. It all depends.” 
"Variously, " Hano repeated in a flat voice. 
He telescoped one arm out to Mara and stroked her roundness. His rusty fingers traced a clockwise spiral around her hub, while his spidery legs moved up and down against hers. Jerking up his other arm, he started to tap her head, the whirring vanes inside his body cage spinning faster and faster. Mara's gear eyes slowly rotated and a soft clanging spread through her structure. She craned her head toward the sun and moved it slowly and haltingly around in small steps. Stretching both her hands to the sky, she began to croon a simple melody. Hano joined in counterpoint. Their singing rose in pitch and intensity, then became fragmented and incoherent. After a while they both fell silent. For a few moments the only sound heard was the droning of bees collecting honey in the summer's heat. Then Hano turned to the preacher. 
"Like this?" he asked. 
"I suppose," the preacher said, "sort of. Let's continue. Did you bring the rings?" 
"Did you bring the rings?" Hano said to Mara. 
Abruptly Mara swiveled her head down and started scrutinizing herself. Her hands moved frantically over the recesses in her frame and her eyes scanned left to right, up and down, over her parts. At last she stopped and looked at her fiancee. 
"What needing rings for?" she said, " Is not love counting?

ONE HAND CLAPPING (First published in Eureka)

Adrian Korpel

After the divorce even the dog belonged to his wife. Not that she had ever liked the dog -- in fact she had always hated it and its slobbering cheerfulness -- but she'd wanted to make sure that her husband felt real loss. And she had been right: he missed the dog, he missed talking to it, missed stroking the big, woolly head on his lap. 

To find consolation he went to a support group for divorced people, but the men were more depressed than he, and the women more bitter than his ex-wife. They would all sit in a circle and sip juice from little cardboard cups. Later they'd step forward one by one and tell their life stories which were depressingly generic and full of grievances against their loved ones. 

Once in a while a speaker would visit them and explain about guilt or co-dependency and the twelve steps to tranquility. For a brief time this provided some hope and cheer, and sometimes it led to an animated discussion about their guilty parents or siblings. On the whole, though, the atmosphere was sorrowful. 

Then one day he met Loraine. She was an invited speaker who lectured about the way of Zen and how it would lead to inner peace and a holistic understanding of the universe. To make that happen you had to shake up your mind, she said. For example, by thinking about impossible things like the smell of music or the sound of one hand clapping, your mind would transcend the false reality of the world and you'd be happy. He didn't really believe that, but Loraine was young and pretty and worth a conversion. 

He started reading up on Zen to impress her, and pretty soon she took him on as a pupil. In the beginning her methods were harsh -- she used to poke him with a sharp stick if he gave a dumb answer -- but things improved quickly when she allowed him to shave his head and wear a saffron robe. After that she made him sit at her feet, and next took his head in her lap and stroked his stubble. 

One day, after much meditation on the Godhead, they disrobed and achieved satori together. He was happier than he had ever been with his dog, and for the first time in his life he experienced the smell of music. For an entire summer he lived in a holistic heaven, a golden nirvana of incense and flowers and the sweet whisper of mantras. 

But then something happened that he could never explain afterward. He started to think of his dog again, and in furtive dreams he would eat cheeseburgers. He watched TV on the sly and began to lose the smell of music. 
The end came when one night, on reaching satori with Loraine, he heard the sound of two hands clapping.