January 2011 | back-issues, poetry
Old Memories
Between wake and sleep in the hour
Of silent noise of dust and clocks filled space
There are old memories both brittle and tender
Like the fingers of a palm leaf and the shade it spins
On our sunburnt faces, so we bury our cheek on the beach sand
Into another half dream sunk up to our knobby knees
Deep and wet in the riverbed where we collected things
That took shape of arrowheads, or marbles crystallizing planetary nebulas
And sometimes atop the feather-grass knoll we sat cross-legged
To hear the thunder, a sound of steamroll shot from a pistol
Then we’d hear it taper off into the low tides of a cove
Barely whispering into our ears like blown leaves mingling in autumn red
When the day darkened the hour deader than sullen, outside on the curb
The dull warmth of the suburbs, in our throats hummed a Sunday proverb
Imprinting my brain with silent lips
Imprinting my brain with silent lips was only a woman
We casually met in the metropolis
We were together of the nontraditional sense
She was shapely and wan and from her mother’s bath of birth
She was born out of wooded flesh and metal bone
As we strolled along the museum pretending to loiter in profound thoughts
She’d read the veins from leaves of grass pressing a finger against the leaf
It had a pulse and it told her its life story how it lived in the divine soil
The same divine soil grew the pine and oak, the lemon and fig,
The sugar and rice, the white potato and the sweet potato,
The orange orchards where we picked the fruit, and drank its delirious juice
Running from the left corner of her lip, tracing the curve of her bottom lip
Then down, dripping off her pointed chin, and to the moist ground
Her head tilted to the side. Her long neck exposed, darkened by the shadow
She wiped the sweat with a veiny pale hand
The honey odor she radiated surrounded us in a golden and pastoral aureole
Close beside me she clung to me one minute a lasting hour
Stepping over the doorway’s threshold we separated again
Insomnia Cured
When my mother takes her sleeping pills
She thinks she’s drunk
Then like a spinning top ending its spin
Leans over like the tower of Pisa
And topples over me and my brother
Landing on us like we were pillows
Our soft bellies stuffed with feathers and cotton-balls
And stitched up with a gold thread
In her sleep she’s also walking, staring
Talking, stumbling, fumbling
Waking up into a stupor to the infomercials or static of the T.V.
But at 9pm she remembers to go to work from 10pm to 7am
And at 9am, like a shot of liquor, she drinks up the sleeping pills
January 2011 | back-issues, fiction
by Peter LaBerge
After a while, I got used it. I think the shrill wind’s kicking at my dusty, bloody ankles is the most painful part. I guess you could call it trading one set of parents in for another- the amorous couple in Cadmonic, then the old rickety woman on Lincoln Avenue, and now the newspaper salesman with the clouded cheeks and constantly stuffy nose. The first time, I had to sit for a couple hours at the train tracks across the street from Henry’s Barber Shop. The same boring Broadway and Poland Springs ads keep me company, as I wait to restart my life again and again, each time with a renewed hope echoing in 3.0 circular motions. I recite the words printed below the stoic mountains on the water bottle ad for enjoyment, sometimes even in exotic European accents. Eyes of various colors and shapes pierce into my body as I board the dingy Metro North local bound for Ansonia. I feel the set of needles the nurse at the public health clinic used to give vaccines last month re-puncture my delicate skin as my nerves twist my stomach around like dancing shapes on a chalkboard. Maybe food will help, I think, and I start nibbling away anxiously at the pack of 100 Calorie Oreos that the foster woman put in the CVS bag I always got full of things that are supposed to act as entertainment. The loudspeaker’s rusty voice croaks Ansonia Station and I collect my few belongings. On my way off the train, I hear a little kid lean over to his mother and say, Mommy, why does she look so miserable? I wipe away the tears clinging to my face before the blur of my new family’s car lights get a peek.
Peter LaBerge is currently a sixteen-year-old high school student. His writing and photography are forthcoming or featured in a handful of publications, including Reflections and This Great Society (respectively). When Peter isn’t writing, you can probably find him composing or playing piano music, singing in his a cappella group, practicing his improvisational comedy, or frantically studying.
January 2011 | back-issues, poetry
I
When the breeze[br] from the gentle side of town[br] strays off[br] into the poor parts of town,[br] it becomes scared,[br] blindly whirling down the street,[br] only to rush back out[br] to the gentle part,[br] to blow as much dust[br] into the eyes of the world,[br] as justice mostly does[br] into the eyes of the lay people…[br] or his honor, the judge,[br] as one of its most reliable[br] representatives.[br]
II
In that unpleasant repository of dust,[br] I am standing[br] and watching the city,[br] along which the echo of the poor[br] reverberates all around,[br] and the boy is silent…[br] the wind makes him even more so[br] – as if whispering to him[br] about his thousand years[br] of silence[br] and solitude.[br] In that dusky hour,[br] it scrutinizes all the world’s secrets[br] he knows,[br] in the secrets tied to the orphanage,[br] on which the night is falling[br] in the capital,[br] and the barren and locked-up homes[br] in the capital.[br] Maybe he’s thinking[br] of a poor, duped fellow,[br] a child of the same kind and faith,[br] who lived the same life[br] as he did[br] until his death.[br]
III
And death,[br] like a motherly shadow,[br] in a night gown,[br] is following the boy.[br] And since that moment, wherever he may go,[br] another shadow shall follow him,[br] equally faithful,[br] equally silent,[br] just like a shadow of death.[br] With an unspeakable dignity, that shadow[br] endures the motherly shadow of death.[br] That shadow[br] is showing twofold value:[br] without a doubt,[br] it is showing the value of the noble side,[br] which is to be served,[br] and the value of the chaste side,[br] which serves.[br] And then the shadow shall certainly say[br] to the human society:[br] “Now, in wintertime, without a coat,[br] and on such a cold day!”[br] My heart is so coldly beating[br] in my chest.[br] I am hungry.[br] Would you be so kind[br] as to give me a spoon[br] and feed me?”[br] And that society,[br] generally careful[br] to distribute all the spoons[br] claims[br] that there are no spoons left for him,[br] because he has been invisible[br] and branded with poverty since his birth,[br] and, as such, not interesting to the papers[br] and television,[br] and where there are no stages,[br] there are no spoons.[br]
IV
The night is gloomy,[br] and the insensitivity of the world[br] penetrates his bones,[br] like cold moisture[br] of a winter’s night.[br] It is a good night to die,[br] and it provides the statistician of death cases[br] with an extraordinary task.[br] Whatever…[br] the boy,[br] whom the world[br] never remembered by name,[br] but rather by his shadow,[br] feels very weak,[br] and death spreads its[br] dark dress,[br] receiving the boy[br] with so much sensibility,[br] as if it was his mother,[br] while the other shadow[br] disappears forever,[br] to the shame of human society.[br] [br] © Walter William Safar[br]
WALTER WILLIAM SAFAR was born on August 6th 1958. He is the author of a number of a significant number of prose works and novels, including “Leaden fog”, “Chastity on sale”, “In the falmes of passion”, “The price of life”, “Above the clouds”, “The infernal circle”, “The scream”, “The negotiator”, “Queen Elizabeth II”, as well as a book of poems, titled “The angel and the demon”.
January 2011 | back-issues, poetry
THE YELLOW PENCIL
No matter how loud I shout, my voice doesn’t carry.
Only in old movies do the lovers escape on an ice floe. The night
supervisor, his face curiously flushed, whispers something I can’t
hear to the new girl working the line in the family pencil factory.
Later, the worn rubber nub of a no. 2 pencil erases what has just
been written.
NOW THAT THE BUFFALO ARE GONE
We were fighting the Indians in Florida. You said a
joke without a punchline isn’t a real joke. Why I always carry an
arrowhead in my pocket, I said. Children passed over the hill, a
coffin covered with wildflowers, but Thoreau only came out when
there was a fire downtown. The tall ships of the China trade
returned empty. It was a sign of something, like a face shaded by a
wide hat.
STILL BURNING
I pass an hour rearranging chunks of the alphabet.
Distant tramping rattles the window. I wave to our mailman. He
doesn’t wave back. The furniture scuttles sideways in any room the
squad enters. They take away the neighbor who mowed his grass at
night. Buildings are still burning. I should think about something
else – island women, naked to the waist, kneeling down to bathe
their wounded eyes in the river of dreams.
REMEMBER THE ALAMO
The farts of a hopped-up Mustang echo down the
street. Sam Houston could use a shot of mescal right about now. His
hand trembles like a courier with urgent news. Under the tent, the
strongman lifting a barbell grunts. He doesn’t wish to discuss
anymore the dissonant modernism of his early work. Agents in belted
raincoats watch the border from nearby doorways. Although the sun
is out, the nine-spotted ladybug crosses undetected.
Howie Good is the author of a full-length poetry collection, Lovesick, and 21 print and digital poetry chapbooks. With Dale Wisely, he is the co-founder of White Knuckle Press.
