Dennis Loney

The Horseshoe Crab

We claimed its struggle as our own: its legs tatted an invisible shawl; its telson
ratcheted up then slapped the sand; a dull

auger: self-burial by small degrees.

Sanderlings sniffed out the advancing surf; a turnstone greeted pebbles with delight; a larger bird with red-rimmed eyes took flight; seaweed latched to the sand like just-healed scars.

We gave it an emotion as it made

its turn then lingered on our shadows, dumb and lengthening toward a blunt red tidal scum and then, eventually, to its own sea.

Dennis Loney

The gate seemed darker, blacker, as if

a stranger painted it at night

or night left something in its leaving.

The courtyard swings embraced their loss; rickety eaves gathered nuts, leaves,
dead birds. There are so many birds.

I hear the maculate slap of over-

flowing birds during thunderstorms:

a parable or act of God.

Or God, I think, at intermission.

He rose with the house lights, applauded weakly, laid His program down and walked out to the muted rain-brushed streets where gas lamp replicas threw an orderly cosmos of light, where creatures with developing tastes slunk through the negative space to feast on the sudden architecture of birds.

Stephen Gibson

It begins with a single acoustic guitar

a few chords easily strummed

before the snare taps in

and we collapse

into a world much like this bar where

strands of white Christmas lights strewn over

the rows of bottles seem to represent this evening

a map of burned out stars

mirrored backwards and receding

into a deeper almost reachable meaning we only notice

sometimes like this local news program showing yesterday’s

interception touchdown dance replay

for the thirteenth fucking time

or the silence revealed by knocks and comments from

the Addams Family pinball machine before dollar bills are produced

and inserted into the jukebox

to play track seven from a certain double-album repeatedly

as the lyrics begin

Let me follow you down

so hey whatever good times

or trouble we start to feel happy again knowing our girlfriends

are in love with us

and far away though we are here and remember

Michelle who keeps pouring for us from just across the counter

administering the dark waves

within the waves of darkness

that move inside of us sometimes making us all just

uncomfortable enough that we

must crack jokes and stare at this woman in her leopard skin coat

sitting at the corner who smokes

and fidgets with her cell phone as if she were waiting

for the rain to stop falling on the plastic tarp that’s blown across

the street

and on everyone downtown

we think we won’t become

Jay Moglia

Part One: Pain

Pain is pain. Pain is relative, and there is always something worse right up until death where a vast spectrum may be levied. Every part of the body has a unique and specific litany of cruel sensations to hand out. Stinging, burning, crunching, throbbing, broken, shattered, separated, dislocated, fractured, twisted and bruised. The face
is a vital, breathing circuit of nerves and parts covered by
a thin sheath of skin. Getting hit in the face hurts…. even
a little bit. Remember reacting a fraction too late to a basketball or football, a perfect pass buzzing right through your hands into the noggin. It feels like all the glorious contours have been leveled, totally flattened out, like a cartoon character colliding with the A.C.M.E. steamroller. Running to the mirror thinking the teeth are gone and the nose is sideways it is a surprise to see a standard fat lip. The stinging and ringing is loud and deafening, but quickly diminishes
to a low level burn and then is gone.

In the case of a bonafide face plant, onto pavement no less, multiply by hundreds, bite the bullet and hope a morphine drip is not far away. It is a sensitive area…. the skull, protector of the brain, for without, this analysis would not be happening. In a way the skull and facial bones are bumpers for the eyes and cranium, like the big front end of a late sixties Impala, absorbing impact while being pressed upon, although at a certain point physics take over with mostly critical results, but until then the structure is incredibly resilient.

What did it feel like? It hurt… a lot. A relentless, continuous, high-pitched, piercing blanket on my head. My face got a fat lip!

Part Two: (Silver X’s) EMT

Location: Independence Ave. and 1st SE near the Cannon House Office Building.

I’m lying down on a stretcher in the back of the EMT vehicle, lifted up and wheeled in on the bumpy, silvery metal surface that composes the shell of the truck. There are symmetrical, little raised X’s, which are there to provide grip, and footing I suppose. I don’t know, maybe they are textural design, or help the metal breathe unhindered by temperature change. I do know I am messed up and lucid. I
am not seeing stars, just a bunch of shiny metal X’s.

I can look out the open back doors down the Independence Avenue hill. To my left is the Cannon and on the corner are concrete road barriers. The National Guard and Capitol Hill Police stand post protecting our country and occasionally glance over at the situation that has dropped
in front of them.

Before I am taken to the hospital (not of my choice) there are reports and details to complete. I wait and watch. Mostly I want to lie calm and quiet, concentrate on my breathing and remember that at some point the pain will decrease. This is not eternal. There is chaos around my stillness. Though I can barely speak I have already given detailed instructions on what to do with my bike (a well worn but super smooth teal blue Trek OCLV with a Spinergy and a Helium… a somewhat deluxe courier bike). It is a big effort because my lock is user specific and I need to know exactly where they will put it. I suggest the Library of Congress bike rack a few hundred yards away and return to pain management hoping it is tethered and secure. Shortly there after, while the EMT technicians are taking my vitals, a DC police officer appears in the doorway with my water bottle and is about to drop it into my courier bag, which is filled with extra clothes, books, papers, etc., my mobile office. Luckily I see this motion and summon my remaining energy to stop him. He is confused. The bottle is filled with sticky Gatorade and leaks from the top (can someone invent a foolproof water bottle). Even while engaged in immediate concerns the idea of scrubbing a gummed up, stained bag in the future is unappealing. If he can be stopped that is one less obstacle in what will be a challenging recovery. Call it foresight or an aversion to preventable clutter…. it doesn’t matter. Unfortunately my friend is determined and he starts to open the bag. Gathering some more of my remaining strength, I call a halt to the operation. He is startled. I think of the collection of bottles I have at home, falling out of closets and stuffed into boxes, and tell him to do whatever he wants with it, but this will not make him go away. Maybe it is procedural. Summoning my very, very last bit of energy and straining my condition for no good reason I give him detailed directions to the bike rack after I realize he cannot interface with anyone else on the scene.

As he leaves and the EMT doors shut, fresh pressured water pounds the surface outside. While we drive away the DC Fire Department hoses down the corner of Independence and First SE, purging the area of blood stains.

Inside the ambulance the EMT lady sticks an ice pack
on my mouth. I know that ice is supposed to help the swelling go down, but my entire face is shattered. X-rays are not needed for this initial self-diagnosis. I put the pack on my lap and when chills set in I swipe it to the floor. She yells at me, “That’s my ice pack, don’t you throw it on the floor, it’s my ice pack.”

Closing my eyes I wait for the bumpy transit to end cursing my situation while dreaming of simple pleasures, ones that an hour ago were there for the taking. Simple……pleasures.

As I go from the ambulance to the emergency room, the EMT tech fixes her glare on me. She is in charge of her turf, and lets me know who is in control for I am just some dude on a stretcher. A frivolous bike rider with blood on his jersey (and from New Jersey).

Part Three: Emergency Room—(The Cutter)

The emergency room is where my lengthy collaboration with medical personnel will start. The people who will put things back together. Trauma teams, ear nose and throat, oral surgeons…. different concerned and serious young folk appear and reappear to ask me questions. An assessment must be made. Do I know where I am? How many fingers do you see? What happened to you? You mean a bike, the kind with pedals, not a motorcycle? They need to be certain there is no internal bleeding, brain damage, spinal injuries, etc.
It is very thorough and I fully appreciate the process, on the other hand having been in previous accidents and having
a firm grasp of my body’s workings I am reasonably certain my damage is confined to the face. As severe as it appears, no other parts were affected. Lying in the center of a room busy with activity I try to volunteer information and move the process along.

Soon the nice lady with big scissors arrives. I know why she is here, she knows why she is here, and there is nothing that can be done to stop her. The clothes must come off. This is where my pleading begins…..or rather my desperate attempts at logic, trying to pluck an angle out of thin air. She is looking and listening…. maybe just maybe? “There is nothing wrong with my body, I assure you, just slide the tights and shorts off, and check this out…. the jersey is full zip, it doesn’t have to go over my head!” She is so kind, she sympathetically hears me out, scissors in hand, until I run out of resolve. Maybe she is amused, or maybe she knows
I will become exhausted so she waits.

I know this may sound trivial, but like the water bottle, it is an attempt to rebuild, to even from the darkest part of an ordeal collect small victories for hope and color, minor signifiers that collectively add up to bolster the body with mental strength.

She goes to work. A pro—smooth and deliberate. First one leg, then the other. Brand new sleek tights, now lycra ribbon and my old Metropolis shorts, no longer available, are gone, but more heartbreaking is….the long sleeve, full length zipper, pre-Pantani, Cippolini era Mercatone Uno jersey, now split into bright yellow thirds and lastly a special item from the then-defunct small manufacturer of wool jerseys, Swobo. Not only is the company out of business,
but this crafty purple short sleeve was a special issue item from my former courier company—that shafted me.

Stuff, just stuff. Now so many fancy rags. I’m lucky to
be alive. Maybe they can be sewn back together?

Part Four: Well-wishers—(Voice Food for the Soul)

The hospital (intensive care) is white, beige, gray, thick, and transparent…. it is not soothing. A soundscape, which gets distorted further by the morphine, made up of tics, beeps, buzzes and hums, complicated by odd random
song snippets, piped through the staticky PA, and overlaid
with announcements. Factor in the groaning, moaning
and intersecting television noise from adjoining rooms and the grand sum is a heavy swelling sea of data, which cannot be adjusted externally. At times I would need to confirm particulars with my watchful girlfriend: “Is that really Lou Christies’ “Lightning Striking Again?” Twas not an audio hallucination, no, that unusually exuberant song from another era was indeed leaking into the room, albeit so low that it faded in and out as the hospital machinery bubbled and gurgled around it.

A person in ICU is in a compromised weakened state. Sometimes too tired to pick up the phone, but it is worth it, no matter what the speaker can offer, and that varies too, since there is the awkwardness of not knowing exactly what to say. A little is a lot, and from the heart is better…. it is voice food for the soul.

It is an electrical signal from physical drabness to a pulsing, vibrant external world full of life. It is hard to explain why this can be felt so dramatically, but each and every well wisher has something vital to add whether they know it or not. It is like acquiring shapes, colors and patterns that cannot be gotten else where…. a surge of energy, a footbridge across a large tricky landscape…. a medicine all of
its own.

Part Five: The Event—
(Steady Rollin’)

Early on as a bike messenger I decided that all accidents would be my fault…. not literally, but as an idea because despite particulars any resulting damage is damage done. The hurt does not distinguish origins. If a harried driver makes a surprise U-Turn and I can anticipate, swinging wide and clear, a potential clash has been avoided. Likewise for parked cars. Though people should check their side view before opening a car door, most don’t and if one opens, what are you going to do… get mad? Hence when riding along rows of curbside parked cars, besides a three foot buffer,
I reserve a small portion of my peripheral to glance up the line searching for heads inside the vehicles…. ones that are about to throw me a metallic body block.

This mindset extends to monitoring physical and mental status…. gauging concentration levels and maintaining an awareness to the setting. Forty to fifty hours a week, on the bike, in traffic, in all kinds of weather over many years and mistakes will occur. A few little scrapes are a small price to pay for what can be an invigorating and expansive pastime. My spills have been few, but the results have been fantastic.

December 7th is a bright, clear wintry day and my courier company (QMS – Quick Messenger Service) offers up a seamless line of work, connecting the dots across the city. The race season finished five weeks ago. I am well rested and in a fluid rhythm. It is 2 PM, five and a half hours into my day and it seems like no time has elapsed….. pedaling …earning …. optimal. It is just one of those days. The harsh, slow, freezing rain marathons make a bold imprint, so when the cards read well, best to appreciate.

Maneuvering past the guard post at the Capitol Building, the sun is high and the traffic is low. Angling from the
Capital driveway at Independence and 1st SE, I straighten out to proceed east on Independence and immediately hit
a mogul-like ripple in the pavement causing my hands to lose their grip. This usually causes a slight loss of control, maybe an adrenalin rush, and a recovery where the machine is reclaimed. In a less fortunate scenario the rider may bounce off the seat, bruise a chin on the handlebar and perhaps suffer the indignity of a crotch to the top tube. Before
I know what has happened I hit a second bump and my front wheel goes sideways. The only place the bike can go is end over end. My face hits the pavement chin first. It is as if
I’d been held upside down by my ankles, ten feet in the air,
and dropped straight down. I did not call this audible, but an audible it is… a shift in plan, a new direction. My day and the upcoming months are suddenly altered.

Part Six: Surgeons—
(The Damage)

They bring the news…the raw data … pictures and graphs, assessments and suggestions. I listen confidently, bolstered by the fact that, despite my facial trauma, my body is unaffected. This will not hinder my cycling. A minor setback perhaps, but it is the off-season, a good time to rest. This line gives me hope but is naive when compared with major facial trauma. One doesn’t have to be a first year medical student to figure this out. It is in the faces of the doctors. They will not say, “Dude you got messed up,” but their expressions do not lie.

They come in and out of my room, teams preparing a strategy. Different ones for different things. Heads of departments, lead surgeons and residents, comparing and collaborating on me, their project.

It is in their faces because though this type of work
is common, it is never routine. There are variables and
speculations that X-rays, cat scans and MRI’s do not reveal… specifics that will be unknown until they are “inside.” Though relaxed, pragmatic and deliberate, they look serious because this is a serious situation. Inside lies nine and a half hours of surgery ,four days after the accident (so swelling could go down).

A broken jaw, snapped by the chin requires a plate and the mouth (missing two front teeth) is wired shut. The cheekbones have been smashed and the eye sockets have also cracked. These get small titanium pieces that are like brackets and the entire structure is pulled up so there is
no sag. Finally the nose, which had the cartilage pushed in, is reshaped and packed with material that will allow it
to maintain shape.

I am still recovering as I write this. I got onto a wind trainer two weeks after the crash, a ceremonial victory…. twenty minutes, a small building block in the return process. Remarkably, aside from some swelling, my face does not look much different. The skill of the surgeons and the advanced technology make incredible things seem commonplace. The incisions incorporated into the natural skin lines, are barely detectable.

After one is “out of the woods” as they say, there is
a better chance of getting a frank observation from the reserved, professional surgeons. On a follow up visit to
the hospital, I query my surgeon, who is all business, fishing for a context:

“You’re healing fine, he says, it will take some time….you’re lucky, you took a hard one.”

Though I don’t need someone to tell me that, it is good
to hear.

Part Seven: (Still Riding?)

People want to know what happened. They are concerned and worried. If they heard about it they want details and if they experienced it they register a higher sensitivity, looking at me like I just walked through fire. This is not stepped up drama or sympathy (maybe a dash of voyeurism). It is a gut reaction… a nod to our fragileness and mortality. I respond, reflecting their fears and quenching my own desire to piece together the incident and move forward.

There is a window of clarity and/or reflection immediately after a serious accident. You are forced to focus on specific matters. Being put into survival mode eliminates much of the optional exterior and highlights prime essentials. My adventure on the life/death scale—if there is such a thing—was minor in length and degree, yet the blunt force and quickness with which I was taken from a serene day and dipped into the thick hospitals’ Epson Salt, only to emerge bruised but safely home a week later is a signifier to say the least. On a basic level responses to common sights are ratcheted up in surprising ways. Immediately after being released from the hospital, the entire landscape seems to be sparkling… the colors bright and sharp… lights piercing the air with fresh vitality. I make my way home on a soft wind
of reprieve…. a current of possibility.

It is a choice to place the positives over the negatives… half empty or half filled…. smashed up face but eyesight
intact…etc. This is not a tough deliberation, just as riding again is not a difficult choice. Once I have reduced the accident to facts and satisfied my own questions about abilities and skills, the mishap becomes an unfortunate occurrence not unlike a slip in the shower or a fall down the stairs. Things can happen at any time or moment. Granted, cycling offers a certain amount of “calculated risk,” but that is dwarfed by the profound and pure pleasures of riding a bike.

Non–cyclists ask me about my future plans, hinting that, perhaps, it would be a good time to consider another
pastime, one with less “danger,” but cyclists simply want
to know the extent of my injuries and when I will be returning. The mind clouding givens, the bads that come with the goods, are not mentioned. It is fully understood that getting back on the bike means riding toward life, not risking it.

George Karos

Forgive us God of All,

We seeming trapped in a church pew

Becoming obedient to humble expressions

Suited for somber states,

Of miserable multitudes

Growing wise in grandeur of commercial hate,

Commanding our harnessed past

To mingle with tried lives of serf and slave,

We wounded hearted by liberty’s lies,

We hell-bent inside our master’s guise,

We drunken, would-be saints seduced by clergy’s chalice,

Forgive us God of All,

We seeming trapped in a church pew.

George Karos

I spent time visiting with friends in New York City.

As we walked over the Williamsburg Bridge from the Lower East Side village,

We became very aware of the wind-blown scaffolding disturbed by the summer night wind. We seemed less interested in getting to Brooklyn and more intent on cleansing our collective conscience from a community we’d never been part of, from the recognition of the bastardized boroughs beneath us, and the creeping, slick-centered fear absorbed by

humans walking beside us.

I spent time visiting with friends in New York City.

Machine Wilkins

They don’t pay the tuition of the snake or sweat gasoline

While pushing their wheelbarrows down Mouse Lane

They don’t gamble with your round pillow-mirrors or

Garden with brand new barber’s shears

Sometimes an eyeball falls out—so what?

They wander around Guilford Forest checking out shadows

The arc lamps throw down around closed snack shops

If your bicycle has white-walled tires they’ll strike a match

Across a brick then sing Jimmy Reed songs until

The moon comes out with used guitars and shopping cart drums

Sure they knock over café chairs and such but the unrolled

Bandages dragging behind them sweep up pretzel bags and dust

If you want to watch them grump around the ferry dock

Cut a hole in the toes of a good pair of boots

And paddle into the mist alone

Sing out loud when they sing

Then see if you get home

Machine Wilkins

Shanty

Show me the pictures on your arm

Flash tattoos from a sailor’s youth

The mermaid the battleship the golden tooth

Fill my needle in

Stevil Kinevil

As a messenger, I was witness to the daily curiosity that is humanity. While the average person might only catch
a glimpse of the bare minimum of the world around them including, but not limited to, the span between home
and office, the span between office and lunch, and finally the span between office and home, I saw everything from the masses’ arrival at work, to transients hustling change, to the delivery of the zoo’s new albino tiger, and everything in between. It was as if I had the daily opportunity to look at the entire city from atop a gigantic microscope.

I knew how many times the walk signal flashed before the light changed. I knew the codes to dozens of buildings and on what floor the bathrooms were located, and best of all, I knew where all of the most attractive of my clients worked.

To say that a messenger has their finger on the pulse of the city is an understatement. A more appropriate description would be that we resided within the city’s heart. As I grew to become more observant, the more spectacles
I enjoyed being the audience of. Two occurrences that I remember distinctly were an old black man, sitting perched atop a fire hydrant, a cigar in one hand and a magnifying glass in the other. The sun was directed perfectly, and
purposefully at the stogie’s tip, and as it began to smolder, the man’s face was one of eager anticipation. The other was nothing but a picture of efficiency. A road weary looking homeless man stood facing me, but with his head turned down, paying close attention to an activity directly in front of him. As I grew closer, I noticed that he was
in the process of washing his hands not from a rainspout or drinking fountain, but rather, a stream of his own urine.

The image bounced through my skull with lightning speed, finally settling deep within the soft confines
of my grey matter and I marveled once again at the good fortune to be one of a select few to see such a sight.

Every morning the curtains came up, and as the miles clicked off under the wheels of my bike, I was a willing member of a swirling audience partaking in the greatest show on earth.

Peter Funk

You must understand

why I finally stopped waiting:

having only seen

the inside of the garage

and the grass of the yard,

having only shared

conversation with the rakes

and certain forgotten toys,

I couldn’t resist

your father’s fingers

roughly in the tackle

of us both.

I felt for your cower

in my belly.

I had heard whispers,

tender plotting,

while you played.

I misunderstood.

I thought

I would carry you

into the heart

of this melting sky.

If you were here

I would dare you

not to be joyful

amidst all this blue.

I understand now

that certain things

simply have to happen.

Attics will gather the hidden.

We will deceive ourselves

at a misconstrued altar.

We will rise skyward

and wait to descend.

Believe me when I say,

I dreamt a life with you.

Still, in the absence

of your weight

this sky is beautiful.

Remember when we used to get on our bikes and just ride? There were no chat rooms, no advocacy meetings, no spandex arm warmers. All of a sudden the wheels stopped wobbling and you got past the driveway, down to the corner and around the block. Then one day you wake-up early, tie-up your bedroll and ride straight out of town with no itinerary. That sensation of going as far as your legs will take you is the definition of freedom. That’s what it means to
weigh the value of everything you know and wager it against the simple promise of riding down a new horizon.

I like that bet.

That’s how it was in the in the fall of 1996 when Mobile City was conceived over several beers in
a DC bar which no longer exists. We were underemployed poets and out-of-work rockers scribbling our credos on note paper caged from Congressional offices. Mobile City’s early editions were surreptitiously photocopied after hours in the workplaces of friends, the pages full of photos and drawings supplied by bike messengers who delivered their urban visions in water-resistant FedEx envelopes to our old office at Metro Messenger. Subsequent issues attracted an ever widening range of contributors from a broader slice of life in the mobile city. There were press events, NPR interviews, and spectacular fundraisers—we were enjoying the wind in our faces.

Mobile City #6 was published in the fall of 2002 and we set the magazine aside for a while.
Other priorities began to dominate our lives and longer periods of time elapsed between bike rides.

One year ago I was reminded that there is never a good time to catch-up with life. Our friend and fellow longtime bike messenger Leo Seferlis passed in October of 2009, and like many who knew Leo
I was not prepared for the news. It seemed like we had just spoken at an event somewhere, but the years had slipped between us, and knowing I would never again hear him shouting my name as we passed each other at some blurred intersection in the heart of the city made me aware again that this instant
is the one that matters.

This is not about nostalgia people. This is about jumping back onto the moving stage and reclaiming your part. Step out of line at the Coffee-Suplex, dump the Sudoku and tomorrow’s convention agenda into the trash bin and get on your bikes! Go out and ride! Grab your bed-roll and a full water bottle and get out of town. Maybe if you ride south down 14th Street toward the Mall, somewhere around G you might get a little extra tailwind urging you along. That’s the way Leo always said goodbye: with firm, gentle insistence.

I am telling you now I like that bet.

James Kerns

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