Conspiracy of Males: A short story by: Evan James Roskosz
An excerpt from a story by Evan James Roskos called “Cocks.” look for the complete piece in the forthcoming issue of StoryQuarterly.
Granta’s New Voices
http://www.granta.com/Contributors/Evan-James-Roskos
Evan James Roskos attends the MFA programme at Rutgers University. He is working on a short story collection that explores American manhood. He teaches composition, creative writing and literature courses in his home state of New Jersey.
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question…
Oh, do not ask, “ What is it? ”
Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening.
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains.
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys.
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me.
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair–
[They will say: ``How his hair is growing thin!'']
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin–
[They will say: ``But how his arms and legs are thin!'']
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
And I have known the eyes already, known them all–
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?
And I have known the arms already, known them all–
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?
. . . . .
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? . . .
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
. . . . .
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep. . . tired . . . or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet–and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.
And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “ I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”–
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all.”
And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor–
And this, and so much more?–
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow, or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.”
. . . . .
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous–
Almost, at times, the Fool.
I grow old . . . I grow old . . .
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
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“Efren and Chris attack everything they do with a spirit and a level of enthusiasm that we all aspire to have in our work and our lives.” —Ted Sarandos, Chief Content Officer, Netflix
“Confronting your movie on the big screen of life can be daunting…but Efren and Chris have created this masterful guide to get you that standing ovation.” —Rodney Charters, ASC, CSC, Cinematographer, 24
“Direct Your Own Life is a fast and fun read. It’s inspirational and upbeat.” —Senh Duong, Founder of Rotten Tomatoes
“There’s more good advice in here than in a dozen books from the so-called ‘experts.’ At the rate these two are going, they’ll be running Hollywood in no time.” —Patrick Creadon, award-winning documentary filmmaker, Wordplay and I.O.U.S.A.
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“The messages in this book are brilliant; I couldn’t have put them better myself…so I didn’t. This book is essential to anyone with a dream lodged somewhere in the back of his or her mind. Use it and live it!” —Brian Ach, Celebrity Photographer
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To the Muslims of the Twenty-First Century
Dr. Rafey. Habib
Sweet children of the future,
Do not follow us:
We are the old generation, tired, disabled corrupt.
Find your own path.
All we had to do
Was follow the Book. But we
Did not even read it. We recited it
Without knowing what it meant.
We were commanded to read:
But we cannot read.
We were blessed with oil, but we
Bled it into a curse:
We could have created Colleges, filled with the
Light of the worlds highest scholars;
Libraries, centres of the highest learning,
Schools to bring our people forward, returning to
Our glittering past; educating and
Enlightening:
Financing the learned traditions of Islam
Throughout East and West.
But we have not built even one,
Not one renowned college:
All the great scholars are in the West:
Where are our scholars?
Who comes to us to learn
Any science or art? Our colleges are
Beautiful on the outside only; inside
They are prisons of
Dullness, and decay of intellect.
Where are our great philosophers? They are
All in the past: al-Farabi, al-Ghazzali,
Ibn Arabi: they are sleeping, and we
Dare not wake them; we
Dare not hear their voices.
We have no great philosophers today, not one:
No great thinkers; our novelists
And poets speak with a
Lonely voice.
We could have forged alliances
In all spheres, culture, economics, religion:
We could have fostered science and art;
We could have built our own cars, our own
Satellites, our own space ships;
We could have renewed our great traditions
Of medicine, astronomy, science;
We could have spread Islams ideal of charity
Through Asia and Africa; we could have
Shown the world a different path, a
World consumed in darkness
And the greed of Capital: we
Could have shown the world
A path of light.
But instead, we plunged into the worlds
Darkness; we traded the poetry of our desert heart
For the urban prose of circumstance; we fostered
Ignorance and backwardness and
Utter dependence on
Western corruption. We built
Luxury hotels and playgrounds for
The playboys of the West,
While our own playboys played in Europe
But instead, we tried to be like them
Driving luxury cars, wearing
Their clothes, watching their films, listening
To their music, pretending all the time
To the strictest forms of faith, veiling
Our populations in night, in the stubborn
Gloom of a feudal past.
We cared nothing for our peoples voices;
Or for the Prophetic past which taught
Consensus and community. Our politics are
Mired in fogs of self-interest, blind to
Any broad picture of the world : we cannot
See ourselves, cannot think for ourselves:
Our ignorance mires us in blind imitation,
In the night of unreason.
We financed the narrowest Islam in many nations,
We financed activists, whose actions for half a century
Have achieved nothing; less than nothing: we are
Worse than before.
And we have done nothing for
The Palestinians: they suffer
Even more oppression,
Even more cruelty
Than before: the
Whole Muslim world lies asleep
Beneath the feet that tramp the world
In freedoms name.
Sweet children of the future,
You are orphans: your parents are dead,
They left you nothing.
Muslims of the future, beautiful
Dark-eyed men and women, be beautiful
In your words and deeds,
In your clothes and manners, beautiful
In intelligence and love:
Awake from the past centuries slumber!
Awake, to find your own freedom;
Awake to your true dream.
And do not follow us:
Our dreaming is not over, we cannot wake.
We cannot tell you which path to take:
We do not know.
We have fallen into endless night, the deep forest:
We are lost.
Seek your own path;
Seek the true dawn of Islam, which
We did not find.
The Photographer Project is a personal project by Brooklyn-based photographer Brian Ach which consists of full-length studio portraits of entertainment photographers who are based in NYC.
The concept was to give the tabloid-buying public a glimpse into the lives of the people who supply these celebrity images to the media around the world on a daily basis.
The portraits were shot on 6×4.5 medium format film and also with Canon digital cameras.
The portraits are slice-of-life.
The photographers were told to dress as they would when shooting a large movie premiere; to “arrive as-is, without any embellishments.”
The Photographer Project consists of staff and freelance wire service, event, and paparazzi shooters.
The portraits are all shot in my studio in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. A gallery exhibit is in the planning stages, after which the pictures, along with 10 standardized questions to be answered by each photographer, will be made into a book.
The main goal for this project is to raise money for a well-known entertainment photographer in New York, Paul Hawthorne, who passed away of amylodiosis, a serious blood disease.
Over 70 photographers have come in for their portrait.
