October 2012 | back-issues, poetry
A Place For Everything (And Everything In Its Place)
Since it’s the time of day for tidying up
she takes pains to sort each of her words
into the appropriate category:
blue, red, yellow, sweet and sour, soft
and prickly, clean, dirty or just slightly off color.
Softly evocative, thuddingly utilitarian.
Love talk, hate speech, political diatribes,
rants, raves, angry spittle-flying denunciations,
baby-voiced endearments,
all put away now, well out of sight and mind.
And so we sit and stare at each other across
the dining room table, grimacing, shrugging –
blink hard once if you want the salt,
twice for pepper.
by Jeffrey Park
Long Flight
You just knew she’d
throw it a long, long way.
And she did.
It sailed out over the infield
further than all the others by
a full two meters
and stuck quivering
in the hard-packed sand
while the spectators clapped
and cheered and oohed
and aahed
but you could tell
really they were disheartened
by the sight of it
quivering like that in the
hard-packed sand
like a lightning rod
glaring up at a darkening sky
vibrating gently
to an approaching storm
unseen and quite
inescapable.
by Jeffrey Park
The Thrill Of The New
Why don’t you sit on down
and have a cup of coconut milk?
Get comfy, roll yourself up
in my Persian rug.
Try something new
for a change, like trimming the nail
on every second toe
just to see
what it feels like. Have sex
with a stranger
and tell him afterwards that you’re an elf
and you can prove it.
Buy a pack of chewing gum
and don’t wait for your change. Drive
a slow car
real fast.
Say something snide
about the person you love
and let your eyes show that this time
you really mean it.
by Jeffrey Park
Your Reflection, Distorted
I draw my dirty
claws
across the surface
of the water,
see your reflection
in the broken glass,
your hand
extended toward me.
No matter
how frantically I scrape
at your image,
you continue to smile
and oppress me
with your terrifying
generosity
of spirit.
by Jeffrey Park
Baltimore native Jeffrey Park currently lives in Munich, Germany, where he works at a private secondary school and teaches business English to adults. His latest poems have appeared in Requiem Magazine, Curio Poetry, Danse Macabre, scissors and spackle, Right Hand Pointing and elsewhere. Links to all of his work can be found at www.scribbles-and-dribbles.com.
October 2012 | back-issues, fiction
Strolling down Bridge Street my eyes wandered to a sign in a window reading, in big bright yellow letters, BOOKS WANTED. I walked in, greeted the man behind the counter with the highest grade of courtesy I could muster, and handed my CV to him with a casual assurance born of weeks of beating the city’s pavement looking for odd jobs. A manager was produced; we conversed. For this kind of position, you see, credentials don’t matter that much but eloquence, the gift of the gab do. And with these I am blessed, and soon I was offered my own office space, on the shelf, where to box in my chatter. What will I be, the brave man inquired. “A Mikhail Bulgakov, sir.” Of the worst kind, of course. A wild and purring mad Master and Margarita. A slight frown shot through my new owner’s face, then disappeared – he would have preferred a Brown or Meyer, a Rankin even, something he’d get rid of in no time. But as a man of taste, he soon muted his commercial concerns and congratulated me for the soundness of my choice.
So here I am, dear reader, sitting on this shelf as I have been doing for weeks now, and if you are reading this at this very instant, it is that I have started tearing up bits of myself, flyleaves, irrelevant front and back matter, to kill time and boredom and sending them for help. Nobody asks for a Bulgakov these days. I’ll grow old on this shelf. But hell, it’s still better than my last gig as a kitchen porter.
by Armel Dagorn
Armel Dagorn was born in 1985 in France and has been living in Cork, Ireland for the past few years. He reads and writes in his adopted language, English, whenever he gets a chance. His stories appear in magazines such as Southword, trnsfr and Wordlegs. He just opened a little place at http://armeldagorn.wordpress.com
October 2012 | back-issues, poetry
I did not know
the lighthouse was white;
it always seemed gray,
like the cold empty sea
to which it stood sentinel.
But, once, the sun danced
through the clouds
and the lighthouse beamed –
adagio of glow upon stone.
Soon, the tide ebbed;
bitter clouds closed in;
things returned to gray.
I am lonely, fearful of storms.
by Danny Earl Simmons
His work has appeared or is forthcoming in various journals such as Naugatuck River Review, Avatar Review, Summerset Review, Burningword, and Pirene’s Fountain.
