Walter Safar

October 2011 | back-issues, poetry

Nameless Grave

Demonic fires blaze in the eye of the stone palace,

and me,

I only stand in the dark beneath the sky

that reaches its invisible hands

out towards scores of nameless graves.

For callous politicians,

they are but nameless graves

upon which no one’s tear fell.

They were silently and swiftly buried into the black soil,

without speeches and tears,

without too many imprints

on the black soil.

(They say that everyone’s life is worth attention,

and that the dark truth is that only death equally appreciates each life)

And while they treacherously, silently and swiftly

dug a new nameless grave,

only death was faithfully listening to the crickets

feverishly spluttering away in the dark

to honor the dead poet.

In the hazy grave lies the poet,

like a shadow of many dreams,

and the raindrop,

brought from the honorable mountain

by the honorable wind,

softly and timidly trembles

on the dead poet’s white face,

like an angel’s tear.

And politicians, tycoons, church pontiffs

are sitting in the golden loges now,

ghastly and faithfully acting:

the righteous, the charitable, the Believers,

crying their copper voices

out into Croatian silence,

like a copper bell,

and the dead poet

now waits for one tear

in a nameless grave.

Memories

I am standing in the street of my childhood,

and the blue April sky

rises above me,

glittering like a dreamy eye.

Down here, the wind is marching

behind my dark memories,

tiredly,

but unfaltering,

like a tiller behind his plow.

Tell me, steady wind:

How shall I escape the screams of the past?

For years you’ve been pushing me to all corners of the world,

as I was your unwanted child.

You know, wind,

that with my restless spirit, I belong more to You

than to myself.

From You, I inherited the yearning

to travel the world and seek:

the Morning in a golden cradle,

the Day in an angel’s embrace,

the Night in a bloody dress,

and midnight in black,

that preys on lust

like death preys on life.

I am standing in the street of my childhood,

next to the same window

from which I used to gaze at you, wind,

during my childhood,

and dream of the day

when I would fly on Your soft, sweet back

to a better world,

far away from poverty;

the flies captured in the spider’s web,

the miserable cries of worms

eternally crawling beneath the feet of soulless masters,

far away from the grass

and the tear-swept flowers.

I am standing next to the window

in the street of my childhood,

as if standing next to a bloody cradle,

and the memories,

my ashamed children,

cry out into this April night

with their silent screams,

reaching their invisible hands

out to me.

And I,

driven by the gales,

I am rolling across the world,

like a raindrop

looking for its grave,

in the cracks of the arid crust

of the betrayed earth.

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”.

Siobhan Hansen

October 2011 | back-issues, poetry

Labor Day

Labor day already.

We went back

to Brookline from Marshfield,

where we summered.

With the ocean at the bottom

of the street, two streets over.

We walked barefoot down the asphalt

and the pebbled street, and over

the rocks above the sandy beach.

Our feet toughened, calloused,

for walking all summer long unshod.

We took excursions

to the penny candy store in Brant Rock

or the horse farm (with two or three horses

in an arid field) at ocean street’s end.

Searching out blueberries and blackberries,

to gift our mother with.

Only our shirts rolled up

to carry them.

(Better not rob the

strawberry patch in

old man Allen’s yard,

for him seeing all

he would be out with his shotgun

to chase away us munchkins.

The word was out on that.)

Stopping to rest, in our travels

on the old stone steps

in front of the house

hidden behind overgrown

brush and trees.

Or on a tree branch, hanging low

in the wooded ground

bordering the yards of

vast Victorian cottages.

Walking the sea wall from

whence it started, off the beach

or from the road.

Later we gathered sea moss

for aunt Bridie to wizard-like make

her famous carrageen pudding!

we rode bikes down hilly lanes.

Went down to the marsh

we trekked through to swim in the river,

with it’s strong currents or placidity.

We tromped through shaded woods,

and sunny back yards,

(running over vain lawns),

the grass yielding like soft moss

under our feet.

yes, time let us be

what we wanted to be.

Pirates and princes, unicorns,

Joan of arc, lions in cages,

batman and robin, riders

and runners of rickshaws,

or mermaids all the day long until

the sun was sinking towards the sea,

and our hands and feet were wrinkled deep.

Morning Home

I sit with my coffee.

It is still dark outside, quiet.

My cat is sitting on the cupboard

licking his leg.

looking up, in time.

Outside silhouettes of branches

break

the sky –

into dark gaps, like

fissures on a frozen lake.

A bird sings a few short notes.

again.

and then, again.

The cat tilts his head up.

then returns to pruning.

It takes it’s time,

the light,

to permeate the day.

I look over at the

displaced

second-hand sled

I picked up in a second-hand store,

leaning against the island,

bringing home home.

Absent Sunshine

October 2011 | back-issues, poetry

by Sharon Siegel

Winter, you are cold

Crisp, frigid air

Hands meet pockets

Chills sent down my spine

Winter, you are cold

Puddles on the sidewalk

Ready to freeze over

I see palm trees ahead

But I feel winter

Gusts of winds

Whirling through the air

Leaves fluttering

Through the heavy breeze

Iciness in my veins

Under grey, gloomy skies

Numbness takes over

Winter, you are cold

Put me back inside

Place me by the fire

These palm trees are not inviting

Winter, you are cold

Sarah Carleton

October 2011 | back-issues, poetry

Dirt

My hen Kiev has it in for dirt.

She craters the backyard with soft pumice pits,

digging an acre of ashy basins;

she scatters mulch

with backward-scratching feet,

scraping bare the trunks of crotons and ginger plants;

she slurps night-crawlers from the ground

and severs roots, but not the detested

greenbriar and potato vine—

those she leaves growing from the grey hollows

like a last cackle;

she conspires with the raccoons

to broadcast compost,

spreading clumps, unintegrated, across the grass:

coffee grounds and fetid beans,

newspaper strips and onion skins,

blue lemons and pulpy litter

all resurface in places laid out for clean feet;

she polarizes debris that’s meant to meld together into rich loam

(brown-bag bits now crinkle stiffly between my flower beds,

while lonely cabbage cores dry in fence corners).

I’m thinking of buying a battalion of worms

to blend sand and trash

and return humus to my post-apocalyptic garden

but what would be the point? Kiev would just eat them.

Metal and Drab

I had my fill of metal and drab,

at a desk in a room, in a suite, in a concrete block,

with florescent lights and plastic blinds drawn

against the tropical brightness.

I trudged the concrete stairs to the second floor

each day, I heaved open a heavy door

underlined with stubs and cigarette ash,

closed my eyes and called upon torrent,

frond, and passion-fruit vine

“deliver me from this job,”

before stepping over the threshold

into the grey corridor,

into a box in the calendar.

I stacked the data in drop-down squares,

each name on a line, in a crease, in a sliding drawer;

my mind arranged its own inventory

(“gob-smacked,” “saffron,” “tiramisu”)

to crowd out the ordinal meanness.

After work, outside beside the fragrant gardenias,

I rewrote the day,

the way I keep reworking this poem

to include all that was absent and filed-away:

body, beauty, nuance, compassion,

the way sometimes in the sickening gleam

I tore the thick pith of a backyard citrus

and inhaled the bitter smell of the sun.

Crossroad

At a crossroad on a quiet day

she does a double-take through rolled-up glass,

a startled glance and slight pull-back

that only I notice;

the older man in the blue sedan

doesn’t see more than the dull crawl

of her nondescript car as it passes through the shadows

of the laurel oaks,

but I take in her black hair, pulled back and morning-tidy,

the mouth curved confusedly on her taupe face,

the dough of impending middle age

softening her forearms into ovals,

the whole effect so regular it begs a story:

Why has she looked twice at this guy?

Is it the polished olive-brown of his cheeks,

the breeziness of his t-shirt,

the careful hold of one hand on the wheel?

Does he evoke a patriarch making a toast

at a long table by a cliff by the sparkling sea,

with bowls of tomatoes and penne and ciabatta

and even the children with wine glasses half-filled?

Does the sight of him make the clinging heat

feel like a dry mediterranean afternoon

sweetened with tipsiness and garlic?

Or maybe I watch too many Italian films;

maybe he’s really her next-door neighbor

who just came from the barber with his beard newly shaved

and she almost didn’t recognize him;

maybe the reason I think I sense a quick spark of desire

piercing her window and then his

and then her subtle fluster and regrouping

is because I myself have now stopped running

and stand at the crossroad, eyes fixed

on the white hair and glossy, sunny skin

as he drives away.