We are excited to announce the winners of the December 2023 Chattanooga Writers’ Guild Monthly Contest is John C. Mannone with the submission “Violinist at the Metro” and runner-up is G. N. Zaccaria with the submission “Down Lexington Avenue.”
Violinist at the MetroFor Joshua Bell around New Year’s, 2007
“A man stood in a metro train station in Washington D.C., and started to play the violin.” Purposely disguised, he blended in with the crowd, stood next to a blue block wall, cold with January and away from the metro rails. People rushed in from the street to the trains, from the trains to the street, in rhythm of a workday morning—a background beat drumming against the cacophony of a wakening city to a new year.
Buffed drab brown, the violin was snugly tucked under the bristle of his chin. He bow-strummed and plucked it in synchrony with the trains. His black sweatshirt loosed his arms to conduct a symphony on strings as if he was the impassioned Bach himself stridulating melodies that quelled a hostile air.
Impatient waves of people surged through the corridors; their hustle drowned the music. For a moment, a few of them got caught-up in the swells of sound, and they swished with the plaintive moans of his Stradivarius. But so many didn’t listen to its cries, to the sweet sound of tears, except for a child clutching his mother. But she rushed him deeper into the incessant noise of a tone-deaf city.
The violinist at the metro, desperate to fill the child’s soul with intoned sounds they likely knew so well—that sweet hum of chords hymned through the slush of noise when in their mothers’ womb—a resonance of hearts. His heart, now opened, spilled memories on the ground. There, a black case, too, emptied of its song, lay stark except for a few dollar bills left as leaves, and thorns, for the music meant to be a priceless rose-petal silk to the ear.
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Inspired by “Pearls Before Breakfast” By Gene Weingarten, Washington Post Staff Writer
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John C. Mannone has poems in Anthology of Appalachian Writers XV [Barbara Kingsver], Red Branch Review, Windhover, North Dakota Quarterly, Poetry South, Baltimore Review, and others. He was awarded a Jean Ritchie Fellowship (2017) in Appalachian literature and served as the celebrity judge for the National Federation of State Poetry Societies (2018).
His full-length collections are Disabled Monsters (Linnet’s Wings Press, 2015), Flux Lines: The Intersection of Science, Love, and Poetry (Linnet’s Wings Press, 2022), Song of the Mountains (Middle Creek Publishing, 2023), and Sacred Flute (Iris Press, 2024). He edits poetry for Abyss & Apex and other journals. He’s a professor of physics teaching mathematics and creative writing in an East Tennessee high school.
Down Lexington Avenue
His Royal Highness the Crown Prince Jamio de Reznagucci is leading a parade down Lexington Avenue. He is not an authentic Prince, and he is not even Russian, but we all indulge him in this entertaining fantasy. His life’s “big dream” is to own a Fabergé Imperial Easter egg. Such rich and textured illusions of grandeur have influenced his work as a window display artist.
The five of us have been awake all night installing the annual holiday trim in the seven floors of the department store. We have worked together for over two years. Second in our procession line is Anthony Alberdero, who rejoices that he was diagnosed with simple Hepatitis B compared to the scourge that has been plaguing through the arts community for over twenty years. He pushes a handcart loaded with Christmas ornaments from the display trees. Coco, the fiery and feisty black guy who picks up extra cash as a drag queen on Friday and Saturday nights at the night club Illusions far downtown in the meat-packing district, is next. He is also pushing a handcart, this one stacked with four boxes of mannequin wigs and bolts pf sequined fabrics. Next is Charlie, the good kid from the suburbs who came to New York City with a bachelor’s degree and dreams of making it in Advertising…only to face the truth that there are thousands of other artists also applying for the same limited positions and freelance jobs. At the front is James, who likes for us to refer to him as “Prince Jamio”, with an eight-foot stretch of Christmas garland draped a and round his shoulders as if he is a Hollywood legend such as Mae West. He has constructed an entire narrative about himself as a distant descendent of the Russian royal family that were assassinated in The Revolution of 1917.
“The REAL revolution. The horrible BIG one.”
I am last in the line, pulling a genuine Chinese rickshaw. I drag my feet down Lexington Avenue, having spent six hours lying on my back on the cold parquet wooden flooring of the store’s main level. I had added ornaments to the garlands that were hoisted to the ceiling and that now swag over the main aisles. I am tired, cold, and worn out.
“Don’t look so bad, our sad little Peppino,” Jamio shouts over his shoulder, using the nickname they have given me because I seem like a little Italian mouse. “This is your holiday cavalcade. You can make it through the exhaustion.”
We were told four days ago that our store would be closing sometime in the first quarter months of the New Year. With the visual and fixture warehouse also being closed and sold off, we were told that any unused display props and design pieces should be disposed of into the dumpster.
“Make it all disappear.”
For a decade we have been hearing the “disappear message” every December from the various Vice Presidents of Visual Merchandising and Display across the major department stores. Just prior to the Christmas Day break they would send a memo or make a conference phone call in preparation for the intensive week to follow, when we were to make all of the remnants of the holiday trim magically disappear from view. This year it takes on a deeper and more poignant meaning. All of the behind-the scenes buyouts and mergers and “junk bond” acquisitions from the financiers is seeping down into our daily lives like sewage dripping from faulty pipe fittings. If the looming immune deficiency virus does not get us, it will be this shuttering of department stores here in Manhattan and across the country that will do us all in.
Jamio has a plan to take as much of the display items as possible back to his apartment, so this is just the first trip. Several more treks via subway or taxi or on foot will occur in the next few weeks. What cannot fit in his rooms will go to various friends’ lofts in lower Manhattan. So, here we are on Lexington Avenue.
As usual with each seasonal trim change, we had scavenged through the discarded display materials that were left at the dumpster behind Bloomingdale’s across the street. The night’s “dumpster dive” acquisition was this authentic rickshaw. It must have been used on a ledge between the escalators or on a platform behind the sales desk. The left wheel and one of the shaft extensions were shattered, so Jamio used a roll of electrician’s standard duct tape from our display shop to patch it back into operational form. I have the task of pulling this rummaged and battered rickshaw down the streets of Manhattan. The collapsible tasseled hood of the rickshaw is folded closed to leave space for the large papier mache head of Krampus, that legendary half-goat and half-demon monster from European historic lore. The paint is rippled and peeling from its fiendish face. Some water damage has left a streak of mildew across the back of its hideous head. Jamio believes that he can repair this monstrosity and use it for some freelance window display. Like most of the men in our profession, he is preparing for unemployment by “going solo” as a freelance window trimmer.
Anthony, Coco and Charlie all agree that we should make a diagonal short cut across the city. To save time and our aching ankles, they want us to go west and then south, and to intersect with Broadway so we can see the store windows down on that street. Those were likely installed over last night during the same time as our interior trim.
Jamio is adamant in his refusal to go through Herald Square.
“That place is a graveyard to me,” is his sharp reply to anyone who mentions the area and the Macy’s flagship store.
“Thirteen floors including the basements and the rooftop electrical service sheds. There is a reason that company boasts of its thirteen floors. It is a demonic curse on their house of commerce,” he says with a toss of his head. “During one year every boy in the display team passed away because of that hideous virus. It seems I went to a memorial service every month. Another, and another.”
He also refuses to go to Fifth Avenue. Saks holds the same nightmarish memory.
He had warned us that when Gimbels and A&S were closed, that the end is near…that was just beginning of this decimation. Luckily, all of those display trimmers could just switch back and forth between other stores…jumping between work at Lord and Taylor, or Bonwit Teller or Barneys. Until one by one they became sick and died.
Charlie wants to make the detour down Fifth Avenue so he can lay a wreath at the shuttered Henri Bendel store. Prince Jamio again says a firm “no.” We continue down Lexington Avenue until we make a right turn at East Twenty-Third Street, and head west across Manhattan.
The light of sunrise is now peaking between the skyscrapers and office buildings. The newspaper seller at the corner magazine and cigarette stand looks up and sees Prince Jamio leading this ludicrous procession down the street.
“Hey, James!” He stops clipping the twine from the bundles of the New York Daily News and The Times. Seeing the freakish head of Krampus as I pull the rickshaw to the curb to avoid a taxi cab, he laughs aloud.
“James fella, what is all this junk? I ain’t never seen ya bring dis much stuff home before!”
For over thirty years he has seen “James” (who is our “Crown Prince Jamio”) coming home from the all-night trim sessions as the various New York department stores, always with some prop or bolt of fabric.
“It must be your holiday time again!” he waves and returns to sorting his newspapers.
We continue towards Jamio’s apartment home. This two and a half mile voyage has begun to feel like an Alaskan Arctic sled dog race.
We have finally arrived at the awning of the Hotel Chelsea. Jamio is one of the established residents who has lived there for decades. His converted hotel room suite is a wonderland of Russian tapestries and furnishings. We are all exhausted but manage to cram these plundered treasures onto the passenger elevator. Jamio looks tired. Years of carrying ladders and climbing ledges behind display windows have taken a toll on his sixty-five year old frame. He catches us looking at him with concern on our faces, and so he immediately changes his posture and cocks his head to a side. Once again he is the Crown Prince Jamio de Reznagucci that we admire.
“Here’s a toast to us, gentlemen.” He passes out the waxed paper Dixie Cups printed with images of the onion-domed towers of Saint Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow. I wonder how he finds such things. He pours the egg nog.
“Enjoy your holiday, boys. It may be our last.”
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G. N. Zaccaria is an award-winning fiction-writer, playwright, artist and performer. He holds a B.F.A. from the School of Visual Arts in New York City. He is a long-term member of the Atlanta Writers Club, PenAmerica, The Dramatists Guild, Working Title Playwrights, and the Chattanooga Writers Guild. Specializing in short stories of Magical Realism and Speculative Fiction, he has also presented in Spoken Word and Performance Art. He is currently working on a second novel.
Congratulations, John and G.N.!
The Monthly Contests rotate through a pattern of Poetry, Fiction, and Creative Nonfiction throughout the year, with a new theme each month.
Go to the 2023 Monthly Contest Series Info page to view the genre and theme for each month.
This contest is free to enter for members of the Chattanooga Writers’ Guild. To become a member, click HERE.