Anti-Pharmakos: (Being Repetitions from a Dream Digest)

By Wain Ewing

What erstwhile, cautionary gospel could provoke inadvertent tips on entrapment and victimizationon not becoming a pharmakoseven while maintaining workable empathy day-to-day?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Apr 5, 2017
• ISBN: 9781480844209

Wain Ewing

Wain Ewing was born in Pittsburgh but has lived all over the United States and Canada. His work has appeared in Writ, Paper Radio, Pomegranate, Zero, and Bone and Flesh. He is a graduate of Hill School and Princeton University, class of 1968. In 1979, he was involved in the anti-Trident campaign in Bangor, Washington.

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Copyright © 2017 Wain Ewing.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

The author drawing on page 31 appeared in Issue #1 of Anemone Sidecar.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

ISBN: 978-1-4808-4419-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-4420-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017902736

Archway Publishing rev. date: 3/28/2017

A blues singer sings of being laid off from an East Indian owned company. Walking down the avenue he sings. The following night I see him in one room of the lake house, an Airstream trailer ten feet under water. On the kitchen table before him, a disc-shaped canister resembles an alarm clock without face or hands.

Standing in the kitchen I hear a tone emitted from the canister-object, a voice but no words. Despite initial fear I say, Okay. What is it you want to show me? Immediately I have the sensation of floating out of my body. Looking down I see my right leg separated at the hip joint like the leg a friend’s daughter ripped off her doll. I float up out of the kitchen into the attic where I locate an old nickel-aluminum spoon with either a fly or an apple seed on the tip. My reaction is, Continue floating upward & out through attic roof.

Terrific prices!

Arm and a leg!

Night-soaked beans

boil rolling at noon,

cold sun day

composed of old lines.

Flesh bits stuck to bones

now begun to bleach.

When I pick it up again, my nickel-plated duocello has changed. East Indian, made of laminated wood, the last layer birch bark. It is worn through, mutilated; partially destroyed on account of water spilt. Wood warped under tension of the strings, laminated patches torn away because today I hear a sound I don’t recall. . .

Woman outside department store chants E. Indian melody. It is the store where I bought steel-toed shoes. I didn’t need steel toes but bought them because of the style. The woman vomited. Her vomit was not repulsive but sweet, fresh pears. One time my brother threw up a lot of brown rice and it too was clean, not vomit. . . I spit a few kernels of white, clean though burned slightly, on top of the brown.

When I go into the department store there is a younger woman (sales clerk) and shelf upon shelf of new shoes. Wire from a wire recorder is strung above shelves the way I once saw wet film strips in Movielab looped over spools inside glass cabinets to dry.

Old-fashioned wire recorder made me think of H. Alger III, fellow student at the Academy, waking once behind a teacher’s desk in the hall they assigned you should your mental level plummet, or if you had demerits to work off by copying out newspaper editorials. Though above average and thorough Horatio wasn’t St. Genius however willing to put in long, moderately efficient hours. Before him on the teacher’s desk the