Humidity floods this after- noon—cicadas’ fiery clicks flash against ribs—rise
& dissolve in heat lost among trees. Crook- necked squash listen to
this siren call. Thorny-leafed, too pale to be touched; yet, I slide my hand under its shade
that cradles a drowsy bee. Ripple of air sighs over- head as if I could drown
in the wish of swimming above water that’s both tranquil & turbulent like
my temper in this incessant heat— this impossible nature clinging to
my mind’s capacity to dispel a season of quarantine.
Second Chance
Scooping handfuls of beans, glossy and freckled, makes us feel richer than our neighbours. As if we have the knowledge of the Dark Ages quickening inside beans that are impelled to split overnight into sturdy stem and ladder of leaves that spiral up, and up, and up in air, like Jack’s foolish dream, we dream of beans becoming our winter currency—our desire to hoard mason jars: full—like grace, if we share without in- tention—still, we resist thinking twice in our garden’s revival, we know empathy’s fickle yet immutable, surviving among glacier stones unearthed every year, like markers trying to chart a map of losses, like our sudden sadness, seeing a bean sprout backwards to give us our second chance.
Obscurity
Standing beneath a clear night sky, the dark that surrounds you, swallows you, making
you nearly invisible as you look up to see so many stars flashing their faint light
through phantoms of space, searching for you sinking in the yard’s soft grass, with-
out certainty that you are there, waiting— everywhere— at once.
Fair Weather
Freshly turned earth crumbles beneath my fingertips, I start again, imagining what these new rows will become . . . First seeds, no bigger than dark specks, sown in trays that hold the promise of what will sprout like little green fires, flickering in daylight growing second by second— seeds not missing a breath, now aching to straddle this new ground, where I settle them in- to raised beds; and, as I plant my good intentions, I smell what these seedlings are before they reveal their plain selves, whole and upright; and I dream I will make it to the end of summer to wash them under a rain barrel’s spigot and bring them inside to prepare a meal we will savour together— if you are my fair weather— and still here with me.
M.J. Iuppa is the Director of the Visual and Performing Arts Minor Program and Lecturer in Creative Writing at St. John Fisher College; and since 2000 to present, is a part time lecturer in Creative Writing at The College at Brockport. Since 1986, she has been a teaching artist, working with students, K-12, in Rochester, NY, and surrounding area. Most recently, she was awarded the New York State Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Adjunct Teaching, 2017. She has four full length poetry collections, This Thirst (Kelsay Books, 2017), Small Worlds Floating (2016) as well as Within Reach (2010) both from Cherry Grove Collections; Night Traveler (Foothills Publishing, 2003); and 5 chapbooks. She lives on a small farm in Hamlin NY.
Straddling a divide between snafu and turmoil, We dare to risk lessons on these people. Ducking ambush, fierce and endless, We kick doors and search in frustration. Then race the moon to new vistas, Where we counsel and seed hope with promise. Amid chaos we coach, build visions, And endure where insanity reigns. What epic duty remains to carry this mission to fruition, A day, a fortnight, a year or more? How we ache to move out with character and honor. We’ve sowed this land with spirit, compassion, and blood. Oh, how we yearn, on the wings of the morning, to go home.
Fred Miller is a Californian writer. His first poem was selected by Constance Hunting, the New England Poet Laureate in 2003. Over fifty of his poems and stories have been published around the world.
Dribbling saliva, slumped in the deepest of rêveries, he was approached by a French accented usherette- a veritable caricature, advertising a take-me-from-behind coquetry; she tottered wantonly, making a beeline towards him. Sporting patent black stilettos, & sheer Hi-Vi stocking tops, with ripened honeydew melons squeezed into plunge-cut white silk blouse ‘you are not ‘ere to see the peeping show I ‘ope?’ Despite horny Mediterranean tones wafting a frisson across his prostate gland- Monty just managed to feebly shake his head; spent, unable to accommodate whatever she had to say, or offer. In a vintage styled slim-line tray, hanging from her fetching, slender bronzed shoulders, by an ebony black bespoke cord, continuously bearing the word psychopomp in a bold white text, were presented several uniformly sized ice-cream tubs, all gaudily badged glacé- ‘a final treat perhaps, something for the road? They’re only £9.99 each.’ Trying to make light of hellish migraine, toothache, heartache, a 360-degree grave discomfort, Monty mouthed ‘my mum don’t let me carry big change like that’. It didn’t matter- nothing did any more, nor would it ever again, as dark curtains descend, signaling an end to proceedings. She was uncannily strong for such a pretty young thing, twiddling him up from his seat, onto her shoulders in a fireman’s lift (as if this sort of activity was second nature to her), it really was a fantastical intervention; she provocatively guided him to his final resting place, an act which she whispered was ‘in the interests of good form.’ Laid out under an Afghani flag of convenience, spectacularly physically & chemically restrained, rendered to a pimped-up black site shipping container of carnal humidity, Monty witnessed a truism (humanity is set to destruct). Hackneyed conspiratorial sub-plots, par for the course: wealthy people, organised, confederated to extract whatever they desire whenever, wherever, & from whomever they fancy, well protected from repercussions, aided, abetted, systematically catered for by institutional intermediaries, business people, & servile providers (bleeding obvious, as lame as dedicating a movie to the proposition that rain is wet). A black-&-white metric montage rapidly leafed through Monty’s inner directory of drastic disaffection; polemic streams of subconscious & unfolding flashing vitriolic scenes presented in butchered mental forms. Sir Robert Maxwell holds hands with Dame Shirley Porter, prancing over autumnal casualties strewn around a bloody decapitated mediaeval battlefield. Incognito, an avuncular press baron contacts Benjamin Netanyahu, who gladly, without arrière-pensée, decants everything he knows concerning a haunted Saxe-Coburg Gotha. Malicious, victorious forces marshalled by Alan Greenspan carry severed limbs aloft as trophies, atop spiked banners inscribed with Supremacy, Misogyny, Colonisation & Freedom; waving goodbye as they jauntily march to loot a nearby abbey, passing as they do, an elderly Mohel under a convenient covenant pavilion, performing a bris on a newly born Jeffrey Epstein. Prince Andrew temporarily leaves the tribal ceremony with a prawn sandwich, to be intimately debriefed by insouciant teenage Mossad Agents, burlesquely attired in counterfeit Victoria’s Secret lingerie. Monty hears Royal laughter, mention of operant conditioning, Stockholm syndrome, Fiat currencies, regulatory capture, Black Death, inter-generational, international, state-resourced, trans-Atlantic fist-fuckers of humanity, neo-feudalism, austerity, & Leviathans. Fluctuating betwixt life & death, drifting over any sense of identity, vis-à-vis the origins & basis of inequality; reflecting upon subjugation, propaganda, guilt. ROTL, an acronym, pops up unexpectedly. A day release kid from YOI Feltham transported back & forth over a week’s work experience in the warehouse at Bourne End, told Monty his Student Support Worker counselled him in respect to resilience in social environments. To succeed, was predicated, fundamentally, on disengaging from peers &/or family involved in criminality. Upon the boys release from incarceration on temporary a licence at 16-years of age, for good behaviour, he was rewarded nominal assistance towards achieving social stability in a half-way house, inhabited by products of backgrounds rich in shared exogenous factors: small family flats, rented by unhappy parents, battling, blaming, adventurously polygamous, accusatory, uneducated, inarticulate, unconfident yet enthusiastically domestically violent, unskilled migrants, without faith, property, land, gold reserves, fine art collectables, off-shore bank accounts, cash savings, family assistance, or career prospects- showing little love, or interest; separating during their children’s primary school years. In the fullness of time, unprepared, socially disconnected, & without any reliable access to material resources, a youth sets out to survive, & avoid repeating the miseries experienced whilst resident with their progenitors. Sounds like a plan, but this leads to the endogenous factors i.e. being an average person, minus star qualities, & incapable of earning much beyond what is required just to keep a roof over their head. What a contrast, muses Monty to a multitude of antecedents, despots, frauds, slave owners, facilitators, as guilty as hell, whose descendants aren’t expected to, make reparations, or disconnect from those associated support networks, & their affiliates, the status quo, eternal partners in international crime. Cui bono?
Evan Hay exists in Britain & rather than follow spurious leaders- over the years he’s intermittently found it therapeutic to write out various thoughts, feelings & ideas as short stories to be examined, considered, & interpreted by clinical practitioners who may be able to offer him professional psychological assistance.
Jacob Mundy stepped off the porch and hurried along the sidewalk, eager to get to the office where he would be safe from unforeseen hazards capable of injuring or killing him. The sound of screeching tyres startled Jacob. His head snapped up and he peered down the street. A car going too fast cornered the intersection ahead of him on two wheels.
The car frightened Jacob. He imagined being struck by the car as it jumped the curb, smashing into him, tossing him into the air where he turned several somersaults before landing on the car with his face pressed against the windshield staring into the eyes of the grinning driver. The last sound he would ever hear before sliding off the car to the asphalt where death awaited would be the crazed driver screaming, “Gotcha!”
Jacob bunched his shoulders and increased his pace, anxious to get off the street.
At eight o’clock, as he did five days a week, Jacob turned the key in the door lock of Crown Insurance Company. The office opened for business at nine but Jacob arrived an hour early so he had time to set things in order, make coffee and arrange the snacks and cookies most of his clients had come to expect when they made a business call.
After filling the printer and the photocopier with paper and checking toner cartridges, Jacob Mundy sharpened a dozen yellow pencils. He placed them on the right side of his desk next to a yellow legal pad. One last chore remained; checking the liquid soap, paper towels, and toilet paper in the restroom. They were sufficient.
Jacob Mundy had done these chores every weekday for the thirty-seven years he had worked for Crown Insurance, in this office, in this town where he was born. Of course, the coffee pot wasn’t thirty-seven years old. No coffee pot lasts that long.
Jacob returned to his desk, sat down and waited for the nine o’clock opening. He closed his eyes and dreamed of exhilarating adventures in far-off regions of the world where few people had the courage to go.
Jacob Mundy imagined himself alone in a kayak, navigating dangerous white-water rapids of a wilderness river, narrowly avoiding the jagged rocks in the raging water waiting to shred his boat and take his life.
He dreamed of drinking tea flavoured with yak piss on the vast steppes of Mongolia with nomadic tribesmen, then fleeing just moments before they planned to skin him alive and roast his balls over a yak-dung fire.
Naked and armed with a blowgun and poison darts, his body decorated with bright red stripes from the juices of wild berries, Jacob imagined going on a raid with headhunters in the steaming Amazon, then fleeing into the jaguar and snake-infested jungle when he realized his head was the one the tribesmen intended to shrink in a coming-of-age ceremony for boys passing into manhood.
But he was incapable of doing anything even close to these fantastic dreams.
Jacob Mundy was a frightened man.
So he read Hemingway, Jack London, C.S. Forester, Louis L’Amour, and books describing the thrills, dangers, and hardships of life lived on the edge, of brave men, fictional and real, standing eyeball to eyeball in a do-or-die duel with death. He went to Antarctica with Shackleton, sailed four thousand miles across the Pacific in an open boat with Bligh, and searched for the source of the Nile with Burton and Speke.
How he longed to be like the men in the books he read.
Jacob Mundy had never been out of his home town. He got a passport once, thinking he might go someplace, do something daring, but fear kept him from leaving as surely as if he were nailed to the kitchen floor with six-inch spikes.
*
At eleven o’clock, a tall, spare man with an eagle’s beak of a nose came into the office. Jacob Mundy stood up. “Mr. Mitchell, how good to see you again.” Jacob, always polite, extended his hand. Mr. Mitchell ignored it.
Mr. Mitchell sat down in one of the visitor chairs in front of Jacob’s desk without being invited and gave Jacob Mundy a bleak and humourless stare. “Visiting the insurance man is like going to the dentist. You know it’s going to hurt and cost big money but it has to be done so you get it over with as quickly as possible.”
Jacob Mundy forced a smile and absorbed the insult. Never once in thirty-seven years had Jacob Mundy ginned up the courage to tell a rude and offensive client to get out of his office. It would be so easy to do if he had the courage to speak the words. Instead, he said, “May I get you a coffee? One cream and two sugars, as I remember.”
Mr. Mitchell grunted a response.
Jacob Mundy’s hands trembled as he poured the coffee. He disliked contentious meetings with unpleasant clients and did everything possible to ease tensions, not for the clients, but for himself and the disquieting fear these odious people stoked in him. He wanted to believe his clients would not harm him physically, but their anger over insurance problems frightened him nonetheless, generating in him the belief a policy holder might become violent if a claim were ever denied. Jacob Mundy made sure this never happened.
He became known as a mild and inoffensive man who never challenged anyone.
Jacob set the coffee and a plate of cookies in front of Mr. Mitchell and said, “How may I help you?”
Mr. Mitchell slurped some coffee before answering. “I’m putting in a claim for vandalism.” He picked up a cookie, examined it then put it in his mouth and chewed. “Somebody slashed my car’s roof last night.” Mr. Mitchell picked up another cookie and popped it into his mouth.
“Oh?” Jacob said.
“Car’s out front. Let’s go look. You can see what I mean,” Mr. Mitchell said. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, stood up and started for the door without waiting to see if Jacob were following.
Mr. Mitchell pointed at three long cuts in the fabric top of a bright blue Volkswagen Bug convertible. “Some little shit did this in the night.”
“Yes, I see that,” replied Jacob Mundy as he looked at the gashes. Jacob noted the fabric was shrinking, pulling away from the metal frame and some of the seams were starting to open as the threads gave way. The top was deteriorating. Replacement costs would come out of Mr. Mitchell’s pocket unless he could get Crown Insurance to pay. The slashes in the fabric would do that. Jacob understood this but didn’t confront Mr. Mitchell on the fraud.
“Let me get some pictures,” he said to a smirking Mr. Mitchell. Jacob used his cell to take several photos. They returned to the office and completed the forms for replacing the fabric top at no cost to Mr. Mitchell.
After Mr. Mitchell left, Jacob sat his desk, agonizing over his inability to call Mr. Mitchell out on the obvious fraud. Why hadn’t he said to Mr. Mitchell, “That top is old and worn out. You’re the one who vandalized it. You’re trying to scam Crown Insurance for the replacement costs. Well, that isn’t going to happen. Pay for it yourself, you lying bastard.”
But he hadn’t said those words.
Jacob Mundy wiped away the tears on his cheeks and went to lunch.
A creature of habit, Jacob went to the same café every day at the same time, sat at the same table and ordered the same thing, a tuna salad sandwich, a cup of vegetable soup, a pot of hot green tea and a glass of water. He always read a book as he ate. Today he was reading a biography of John Morton Stanley, survivor of the brutal Civil War Battle of Shiloh and famed African explorer.
Halfway through the sandwich Jacob heard a commotion at the table behind him. He listened, trying to figure out what was happening. A woman was pleading with a man to leave her alone. The man refused and the woman’s voice became agitated. The woman implored the man to go away.
Jacob put the sandwich down. He thought he detected fear in the woman’s voice. Impulsively, he stood up and approached their table. “Leave her alone,” Jacob said. “She doesn’t want you bothering her.” Jacob felt his knees quiver and his heart race. “Now go, please.” Jacob thought his voice, never deep or masculine, sounded shrill and thin.
Startled by Jacob’s unexpected appearance and demands, the man said, “Hey, ok, I was just leaving.”
After the man had left, the young woman said, “Thank you. He is such a rude and horrible man. You saved me.” She smiled at Jacob.
“I did?” He felt out of place, as if he didn’t know quite where he was.
The woman laughed. “Yes, you did.”
Jacob looked at her, bewildered by her response and by what he had done.
Gathering her things, the woman stood and said, “Thank you again,” and left.
Feeling awkward and embarrassed over his intrusion, he was unable to finished lunch. Jacob Mundy returned to his office, sat at his desk and thought about what he had done. He couldn’t believe he was capable of such outlandish behaviour. Confronting a stranger was something he had never done in his entire life. His hands trembled when he realized how daring, how brave, he had been.
Jacob fired up his laptop, opened his financial folder and studied it for a few moments. He knew he was well off, having invested substantial sums regularly for thirty years. He thought about that for several moments. All that money. Jacob Mundy closed his eyes and felt excitement surging in him.
He closed the financial folder and emailed a letter of resignation to Crown Insurance, effective immediately. Then he looked for a travel agency, found one and called.
“Khartoum,” he said in response to the woman’s question about destination. “It’s where the Blue and the White Nile meet to form the Nile River,” he added for the woman’s benefit, and maybe for his own as well. “Just one,” he replied when asked about the number of seats to book. “Yes, a one-way ticket is correct.”
After the departure date was set and the flight details worked out, Jacob emptied the wastepaper cans, refilled the printer and copy machine, cleaned the coffee pot, topped off the soap dispenser, put fresh rolls of toilet paper and paper towels in the restroom, turned off the lights, then closed and locked the office door for the last time.
Jacob Mundy never looked back.
As he walked toward his house, he thought of all the things he had to do before he left; get the necessary vaccines, find out what visas were required and so forth. Thinking of the many tasks that lay ahead, Jacob stepped off the curb without looking.
Two EMTs bent over the inert body. “He’s dead,” one of them said. They put the body in the emergency vehicle and drove away.
A man in the group of people that had gathered to gawk at the accident announced, “That was Jacob Mundy, the insurance guy,” as the crowd began to drift away.
Robert P. Bishop, a former soldier and teacher, lives in Tucson. His short fiction has appeared in The Literary Hatchet, The Umbrella Factory Magazine, CommuterLit, Lunate Fiction, Spelk, Fleas on the Dog, Corner Bar Magazine, Literally Stories, and elsewhere.
I asked Princess Di to dance She was biking across the heath in a glum mood
wearing an expression that might have suited Thomas Hardy
In fact, she would have taken up my offer She would have danced with me Who knows what else she might have done? what we would have done together
But a tornado had blown down Windsor Castle and she had to hurry back to make repairs
I saw a trowel in her bicycle basket caked with cement I knew that besides being a princess she had many other skills and here was still more evidence
Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois has had over fourteen-hundred of his poems and fictions appear in literary magazines in the U.S. and abroad. He has been nominated for numerous prizes, and was awarded the 2017 Booranga Writers’ Centre (Australia) Prize for Fiction. His novel, Two-Headed Dog, is based on his work as a clinical psychologist in a state hospital, is available for Kindle and Nook, or as a print edition. His new poetry collection was published in 2019, The Arrest of Mr Kissy Face. He lives in Denver, Colorado, USA.
I live way out. It gets real quiet. Little random adjust- ments have been made to keep me there, & filmed in
one continuous shot. People in these small municipalities often pass the time in strange mixes of activities — juggling
chain saws while wearing a two-piece bathing suit is a not unusual example. The culture can be different even when it
stays the same. This book was company for me; but the suits I wear when I work in major cities would cause division here.
The Pound Cantos: CENTO V
Sound drifts in the evening haze, North wind nips on the bough; & in small house by town’s edge—
slung like an ox in smith’s sling— now was wine-trunk here stripped, here made to stand, stilling the ill
beat music. A young man walks, grave incessu, at church with galleried porch, drinking the tone
of things. Brown-yellow wood, & the no-color plaster, all flat on the ground now, making mock of
the inky faithful. When you take it, give me a slice. A poet’s ending.
J7 on the selection list
Today, again, it is The Supremes who propel me into the morning. An interwoven medley, Love Child & Reflections, no reason for that particular pairing — it’s just the way of things, the past, un- bidden, rising up to push the hidden jukebox of the mind along.
The doors
Everything has continuity; though the light changes shapes & some things resonate with memory whilst others stay silent in the hand. Each has a number.
*
Grasp as in within. With- out. The door open, the doors closed. The way picked through. The detritus is a picked- over poem. Number unencumbered, the writing not the same.
*
To find the expression first design the primer. Sequence. Consensus. Homogenous percentage.
*
There are things scattered around the door. Pieces of glass in different colours, paper wasted since the writing’s all the same. A couple of statues, one stained with blood. Bowler hats piled up on top of one another.
*
Two doors beyond.
*
Everything might be remembered in time but it’s the linkages & the lack of space to keep them near that make it difficult.
*
Memory is not linear. Straight lines are for planning a future where you write yourself preliminary notes & leave them in strategic places. So that, whenever it is you arrive at where you were going you can open them up & see what was penned, then compare it with what actually hap- pened along the way.
*
Everything has contiguity; though the night changes shades & some things emanate from memory whilst others shape themselves within the hand. None has a number greater than one.
Visual & text poems by Mark Young have appeared recently in several journals including Indefinite Space, E·ratio, X-Peri, Word for/Word, & Futures Trading.
Mark Young lives in a small town in North Queensland in Australia, & has been publishing poetry since 1959. He is the author of over fifty books, primarily text poetry but also including speculative fiction, vispo, & art history. His work has been widely anthologized, & his essays & poetry translated into a number of languages. His most recent books are a collection of visual pieces, The Comedians, from Stale Objects de Press; turning to drones, from Concrete Mist Press; & turpentine from Luna Bisonte Prods.
I lost my reason And my will And my books And my children And the woman I love and still I never gained
Insight
No Victor
Prostrate in the bed we used to share On a Sunday night Staring at all the nothing And thinking about how swell life was For those too brief interludes Between the disasters When you would hold me so close And I could feel your heart beat
Wondering what you’re doing now Since you broke my heart in two And disappeared with my light And my hope
Just then the phone rings Just like it used to When you’d make your “Sorry I’m calling so late” Phone calls
My heart mends for a moment And I answer it Not knowing what I will say But screaming I Love You I need your voice In my mind As my pulse pounds In my ears
I answer the phone And when the man on the line Asks to speak to Victor I tell him he has the wrong number Because there is definitely no victor here
And there never will be
Poem # 226
Just as I was ready for her – Her feet upon my rug, Her body in my bed, Her coffee smells in my nose, The way her upper lip looks when she sips;
Her positivity, her proclivities, Her anger when drunk, Her endless enigmas…
Just as I was ready for her She was not ready for me In spite of how long We both waited
So here’s another poem about that.
A Plucked Flower
I refuse to be a plucked flower That is pulled from the ground, Clipped, sprayed to look shiny And put in a bouquet or garland
With the others.
There is all over the world
There is all over the world, but I live here. There are these millions of women everywhere, but here I am with you. And I have this job, and I raise these kids, and I eat this food you place before me.
I come and I go with each tide of chance, every ripple of circumstance.
It had been dragged to the edge of the field, now just a mound inside the barbed wire
fence, the windowed panel of a wedding tent draped over it, failing to hide the mottled coat,
bloated body, as I drive by in the northbound lane, following the saturated bank of the Connecticut
River, thinking of those whose lungs have become wet sponges, who are slowly drowning, dying alone.
Corey D. Cook’s fifth collection of poems, The Weight of Shadows, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2019 and is available for purchase online. His work has recently appeared in Boston Literary Magazine, Freshwater, The Henniker Review, The Mountain Troubadour, Trouvaille Review, and Viscaria Magazine. New poems are forthcoming in the Aurorean and Muddy River Poetry Review. Corey works at a hospital in New Hampshire and lives in Vermont.
It is a marvellous Memphis evening and as I get on the trolley, I catch an immediate glimpse of her. While I deposit my money, I find her fixing breakfast with those soft blue eyes shining. During the day, I call just to her the lilt in her voice. At supper, I envy the lettuce that feels the taste of her soft lips and wet tongue. I lie in bed awaiting her gentle slide into bed nuzzling her silken skin next to mine.
The trolley jerks to a start. She is in her middle twenties and as I am approaching social security. The best I can do is smile and sit across form her hoping a breeze will carry a breath of her perfume at least until her stop.
Eating Chicken Bones And Broth With An Old Gypsy Voodoo Woman Outside Of Shreveport
She pulls the carcass out of the boiling water placing it on a plate filled with herbs, spices and root powders. Breaking off a steaming rib bone with her wrinkled thumb and forefinger, she fries with, in a herb based olive oil. Eat this for fortitude. Using razor sharp shears, she cuts the shoulder blade apart and grinds it into a damp powder. Dumping it into a pan of boiling water which contains three magical ground roots, she pours it into a blue metal cup. Drink this for humility. Using wooden tongs, she extracts a bare chicken wing from the broth. This she mashes into a paste and spreads it across a slice of French bread. Chew this for moments of indecision. Finally, she strains the remaining stock through a metal mesh and then again through old cheesecloth into a chipped ceramic bowl. Into the bowl, she sprinkles five love herbs: lavender, basil, rosemary, hibiscus and patchouli. This she pours into a pint bottle and corks it. Sip this and kiss your intended lover. The depth of love will be revealed.
Rule Number One – Location
She likes to make breakfast for poor people. Even before the rooster, she’s up collecting, banging and frying.
When it’s all done she drives to the station and sets up her booth.
The poor people hate her. The food is overcooked and usually on the cold side.
She’s a braggart and a gossip. A big hand-lettered sign informs – NO CREDIT.
R. Gerry Fabian is a retired English instructor. He has been publishing poetry since 1972 in various poetry magazines. He is the editor of Raw Dog Press. He has published two poetry books, Parallels and Coming Out Of The Atlantic. His novels, Memphis Masquerade, Getting Lucky (The Story) and Seventh Sense are available from Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes and Noble. He is currently working on his fourth novel, Ghost Girl.
Water is my element, hence the Summer became a girlhood’s favourite scene, heralding swimming, boats and vanilla ice-cream, but it took English Studies in my late teens to make me enamored with autumnal traits.
Grey became imbued with a literary hue, with the Brontës roaming the Yorkshire moors, the Romantics in melancholic moods, and the Graveyard poets contemplating mortality amid tombstones.
My book cover of Wuthering Heights showed a Byronic hero against a livid wold. The wind howled in my soul. No distance could estrange Catherine and Heathcliff who taught me spiritual fortitude.
And dark clouds that omens forebode began to change their dismal discourse since what blessed Coleridge’s ancient mariner with rain-outpours evoked the very spirits that sent the frozen ship on its course though no breeze breathed or spoke, a metaphor for divine intervention despite the transgression of an errant soul.
The elms so thinned by Blair’s rude winds not even two crows could build a dwelling now mirror the nudity of my old age, shedding its sorrows and tenacious grief, preparing for the flight beyond the grave.
A daughter takes after her father
When I was nine years old, I pouted my lips to blow a tune through his trumpet, my hands unsteady beneath its weight.
At seventeen, I puffed at his pipe. liked neither its taste nor its swirling clouds. It merely imbued me with fatherly pride.
He always pondered over his books, his bent back indicative of a speculative mood, inspiring my long spells of solitude.
He tended the wounds of stranded birds. A recuperative hand became his trait that lent to mine an addiction to aid.
The shades of blue he constantly wore evoking the sea that buffeted our boat have left the flow that ripples my thoughts.
Yonder
I catch a glimpse of the vibrant yonder, a radiant house that sleeps beneath a fluttering, yellow maple tree, a lake seducing the lucent moon to quiver on its heaving bosom, a lawn on whose silken skin pirouettes a barefooted nymph, a dray of squirrels that emptied nuts of all their sealed contents, a herd of horses who’ve never been ridden, a flock of sheep that roam un-chidden, a cluster of violets awaiting a breeze to caress each enraptured face, a shadow that saunters all alone longing to mingle with my own.
Deeds
What deeds have you deleted from your subterranean archives, the ones you keep in your subconscious, diaries, and half-written memoirs? Torturing, when a child, a clan of ants, locking butterflies in tight-shut jars, peeping though keyholes at a neighbour’s wife, compromising savings by stealing a dime, seducing a schoolmate with a fake smile, wetting your bed in the middle of the night, playing the heroic when you are afraid to die, breaking every promise your tongue contrived, slighting many a devoted friend, adhering blindly to a deadly trend, attempting suicide for a frivolous wench, accusing falsely to shirk a debt! I always marvel at the scale of events deleted from CVs, bios, and self-narratives.
Susie Gharib is a graduate of the University of Strathclyde with a Ph.D. on the work of D.H. Lawrence. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in multiple venues including Adelaide Literary Magazine, Green Hills Literary Lantern, A New Ulster, Crossways, The Curlew, The Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Ink Pantry, Mad Swirl, Miller’s Pond Poetry Magazine, and Down in the Dirt.
