Nahrain Al-Mousawi THREE POEMS

FOOL

Between crime of tribe I don?t belong to
And the vantage light not to tell about
When I began knowing how a child eats

Smooth the thick vine on my nape
And work my way toward you
Like nature, like I meant it to be

Like it doesn?t matter
When you turn because
I crouch in faith of sky
Halt the bow of your arms
Like I never doubted
I?m on your back
I?ll put it like this

I never doubted the strong arm
Of food to my face
The handle hunger hand on
Eyes cut back a defense
In my belly like I prowled pain
A rough game and fooled my damage into
Touch.

SPEAK EASY: LONG LIVE THE QUEEN

The fine line between
Desire
and
Hate
Startles
Seethes
Soars
Beneath her lip
Her hip
Her tiny mortal
Mating
Dig, dig.

Better at night
Afterhours sip, sip with
Mortal thugs
She speaks easy
She dips Want
She rises Hate
She dips Want
She rises and
Flippant soars and
How I do hate her
For these wings

It is easy for her to speak easy
Through a colony of cold sores
Beneath her lips,
She beams pestilence,
I am the Queen
Of the herpetic colony

She lays it down,
She and favored me through the darkish air:

Either they don?t
See or care.
Either way,
Men are stupid.
Men are fare dare.

In what way?

In sense and deed.

This is how our mother breeds
The woman we tunnel to be
We will always
Bite each other?s bait, the
Contagious quips
Criminal nocturnal wanderings
Tunnel through and ahead
Beneath the lips, the hips,
Dippy angry colony Queen
Bright-lipped bar Miss:
More sips
More digs

Better at night
Afterhours sip, sip with
Mortal thugs
She speaks easy
She dips Want
She rises Hate
She dips Want
She rises and
Flippant soars and
How I do hate her
For these wings

She lays it down,
She and fevered me on the groundbelow:

I colonized another one
Tug at the horny thug
With my diseased lip
Another infectious dig
Another one hits my colony

Nocturnal scout for
The suspect winged-
Wigged-out mate
Tunnel through and ahead
I sight the same species
Afterhours mortal thugs

A flashlight gang of
Bar bra security
Passing a joint
Illicitly joining them to
The cantankerous canker of
Our Queen?s lip

She soars anew
Another speakeasy
Afterhours relief to relive the
Original
Dizzying
Missionary
Mission
Of nuptial flight
Of her seething oozing lips
The fine line that parts
Just a bit to
Swap desire and hate

They curl curse nurse their
Oozing lips
Their unsecured encrusted
Filial jeweled wings
That she quested
As darkish air looms

And she nested during our hours
Together
Even when she soared
Darkish air
And I scouted, settled score, seethed
Groundbelow
And how I do hate her
For this
Bright-lipped bar Miss
Herpetic colony Queen
Her interminably terminal foul-hungry
Far-away hiss-kiss.

Go to dm xlviii ~ bel ennui ~ “One Hot Poetry Page” for Nahrain Al-Mousawi’s “Unbraided”…

Nahrain Al-Mousawi is a teacher and writer. She is a teacher of literature and language and has published poetry, essays, translations, and reviews in print and online journals, like Journal of Middle Eastern Women’s Studies, Women in Judaism, Rattle, and Evergreen Review.

Levi Wagenmaker THREE RECENT ERUCTATIONS

 verses for a streetwalker

of course it would not have done
to ask her even if she would
have been unlikely to sidestep
the issue given that she was a
professional funambulist someone
keen on the straight and narrow

the pole she held in front of her
for balance as she toed the wire
was – I could have sworn – not quite
held in the middle and the most
likely reason for that would be
that her breasts were not the same
size the way people’s feet tend
to be slightly different sizes
whereas strangely enough their shoes
are not just like brassieres’ cups
are not (different sizes) unless
made to measure

I once knew someone whose breasts
were unusually different in size
she was not a funambulist she was
what you might call a viambulist

blasted words

oh I know that this isn’t so
proving my literacy
the difference between this and so
is more obvious when written
than spoken
it doesn’t take that much more time
to say this than to say so
but this is a four-letter word
and so like do makes do with two
granted
that pronunciation of English language idiom
would not necessarily preclude that this
could be pronounced (or spelled) as so
(or vice versa)
you know
do you now
I too do know
that this is so

oh blast

seismic verses

Pliny the Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus
1st Century Roman author
of (among other works)
Naturalis Historia
a summing up of the knowledge
of his day, age and culture
misspelled the word from the Greek
basanitos for stone from Bashan
a region the the east of the river Jordan
spelled basaltes it became basalt
solidified magma
from the Greek word for kneading
(although kneading magma is highly inadvisable)
Pliny the Elder’s cause of death
(probably indirectly)
was the eruption op Mount Vesuvius
in the summer of 79 AD
directly causing the destruction
of the towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum
and the untimely death of most of their citizens
basanite however
is the word for the variety of black jasper
used to test the purity of precious metal alloys
jasper is a word with roots in Akkadian
(a thoroughly dead language)

Pliny the Elder might well
have misspelled Eyjafjallajökull
an Icelandic volcano
of which he must have been
blissfully unaware

basalt (which the Japanese
would tend to pronounce as
basart)
is to most far easier to enunciate
than Eyjafjallajokull
(which the Japanese
would tend to pronounce as
Eyjafjarrajökurr)

Levi Wagenmaker (1944 – ) is a retired journalist, living in the Netherlands for most of the year, and in France for some of it, with three bitches, two of whom are dogs, and a younger male, something of a dog also.  Enamoured life-long of language (and languages), for reasons immaterial to the act he writes poetry in English only, even if he could most likely manage it in a few other tongues.  His poems have been published on line more than in print, and Google will tell the curious what, where, and when.

Ed Coonce LIGHT AND MUSIC

LIGHT AND MUSIC

Ed Coonce

Chesapeake Barnes sat heavy hearted and alone in his flat, watching reruns of “Lost,” even though he knew they’d eventually be found, sipping cold tea and tenderly polishing his only friend, an enormous E-flat tuba.
He rarely practiced or played anymore. Sometimes, while staring at his reflection in the bright brass bell of the instrument, he imagined seeing Solveig’s face beside his, the way it used to be. She’d moved on to another lifestyle, leaving him broken and out of sorts for what seemed a very long time.
His job at the Nautical Museum was just enough, the fresh salt breeze, the old sailing ships and the library filled with memorabilia from other times kept him from misery and his mind off her.
This autumn evening, though, he abruptly turned off “Lost,” pulled on his light grey blazer, and reached into the tuba case. He inserted the never-used new silver mouthpiece, switched off the lights, hoisted the instrument onto his lap and began to play.
To liven his mood, he wistifully blew the first phrase of Bartok’s “Dance of the Slovaks,” remembering the triumph he felt after finishing the difficult solo in a command performance at La Scala. He teased the midrange notes till they were once more perfect, then forced the contrabass tones so that the windowpanes rattled and the chandelier swayed. He finessed “Largetto and Allegro” by Handel, slowing the tempo, then finished with a slow mournful dirge of “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child.”
The last notes still hung in the air while moonlight crept through the window and onto his face. Light reflected from the brass in his arms across the walls and ceiling and came to rest on the picture of Solveig that he still kept on the mantle. He put the instrument away, removed his blazer and lay down on the sofa. Sleep and dreams came quickly. The moon moved on.
Somewhere behind the lunar orbit, a shift in time rippled out and down and over the city, and in a blink, Principal tubist Chesapeake Barnes was under the spotlights at La Scala, playing Greig’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King.” He noticed that he was not alone, and was accompanied by a lovely young red haired woman who bowed the strings of a viola, skillfully building the countermelody to Chesapeak’s solo. Her name was Astrid, this he knew. They faced one another, eyes locked and knees touching ever so lightly while they reached the crescendo that marked the end of the piece. The patrons, electrified, stood and applauded while Chesapeake drifted away, the sound and light dying around him.
He awoke back on the sofa, soft yellow morning breathing its way into the room. The lilting strains of a viola drifted in from the walkway below. He put his feet on the floor and stood up. He felt light as a feather, as if an iron collar had been removed from his shoulders. He walked across to the mirror, noticing that his face looked different, as if he were seeing someone else, then stopped, astonished. Solveig’s picture had changed. Staring through him from the picture frame was the face of Astrid.
His heart full, he went to the window, looked out.  She sat barefoot on the stoop, playing a lovely minuet.

Ed Coonce is a writer and artist currently residing in Encinitas, California. He has been published in The Coffeeshop Chronicles by A Word With You Press, several online short story and poetry magazines, DimeStories, and has very little spare time.

 

Will McConnell BETWEEN DREAM

BETWEEN DREAM

Will McConnell

“So we’ve got everything?” she asks.

I’m not paying attention. I’m not sure I know her. I keep thinking about dim lights, clouds staring back at me. The lot of things to haul before break.

After some time she stopped asking questions. I made sure he was with a few friends. They said sure. Selective memory. We went down the elevator, which isn’t worth mentioning, I guess. It happened.

Down the hall I saw my mailbox was full. When I opened it, I saw an early birthday present.

I turned towards the service desk and saw Lisa and Katie smiling, making gestures, laughing. I was excited about the presents, or boxes, of I’m not sure what. My hands were full, but I waved back. We went on walking.

It was the third time we were trying to leave, and I finally had everything. Boxes, people. We’re by the doors and I hear a noise.

I turned and saw him in the hallway, rocking on a seat. I forgot who was in charge. People walked by, and I couldn’t see faces. She looked at me and cried. Right then, I figured out where I’d seen her. Pictures before sleep.

But I forgot he existed. Like the ornamental emerald you see under arms of snow.

And at this minute he was a new concept, a new particle. I was staring, waiting for him to take shape.

When I saw how close the door I had been, I fell over. I started breathing, and learned that I could smell. My eyes opened wider and my ears started humming. I felt a breeze.

Grabbing her hand, we walked forward and I saw the fit of things. She was still crying, but in a good way. I leaned over and picked him up.

“Son,” I told him, ”we’re not leaving you here.”

Will McConnell has been previously published in DM Du Jour and Spoken War. He writes from Northern Michigan.

Gordon Stamper, Jr. THREE POEMS

I GET IT

I can see why
you in the underwear
bent to clean the litter box

I can interpret
why you found a dead squirrel
frozen to a shepherd’s pole

I can understand
how your maple tree lived on
with a hole in the middle

I can comprehend
your lack of sleep
was a gnawing restlessness

I can know
your bleak mind unfolded
to the grey light of day

I can find
the source of
your despair

I can cure
the core of
your problem

I can retrospect
with keen intellect

My muddled present
obscurity
my past
a detailed diorama
open to interpretation

TRANSGRESSIONS

Whatever dishonor

You will place on my home
Just stop talking, my love
And do your worst

For I will
Defile myself
Transgress my nature
If I would deny you

When cleansing fires
Of hell burn me
Clean to ash
I will float to heaven

In mock tribute of
The self-righteous
Or to touch
Your rising clouds of brimstone

YEARNING TO BE FREE

How would
Charles Starkweather and
Caril Ann Fugate
act now

When would
apps for their
smart phones
not be enough

Would they text
love notes
and forward pics
of their latest kills

Death
as random as
the walking zygotes
that spawned them

Photos of
bodies framed with
little hearts or
hugs and kisses

Corpses
with countenances
as blank as
their killers’ souls

How far
would the Badlands
extend their desolation
to us this time

Would Jared Lee Loughner
smile for their camera phones
and be their comrade
in arms

What new boredom—
yearning to be free—
will express its emptiness
at others’ expense

 

Gordon Stamper, Jr., is a former college writing instructor, current proofreader, and always a writer, actively participating in Northwest Indiana writing groups and organizations such as Highland Writers Group and Indiana Writers Consortium.

Stephen A. Rozwenc UNTITLED

then there are
those long frigid winter nights
when the shivering mind desperately resorts
to cold calculation
for warmth

perception becomes beatified delusion
and crucial explanation

riparian New England snowscapes
swath moonlit snow’s creamy vellum
in fervid comforters of thermal profusion

movement becomes expectant meditation
and tragic woodpiles plummet
to festive cackling

a restless Chi of wind
moans hotter eroticism up through the back pasture
bent expectant
and sailing disbelief like a ghost schooner
its barely audible foredeck jib
a filigree powdery swirl

more prophylactic antics
tack the hillside meadow
and pausing only
to marvel before a rusty hay bailer’s
half buried halo
teasing reckless deer to feed
on heavenly light
instead of haggard strips of hemlock bark

a pearly necklace of jittery stonewall
belies the edgy slope’s
immaculate proposal of fire inside ice
launching white hot Pleaides

Stephen A. Rozwenc has published four collections of poetry. He has been the recipient of two Massachusetts Cultural Council grants.

David Hughes A CHANCE ENCOUNTER

A CHANCE ENCOUNTER

David Hughes

I was standing outside the Royal Festival Hall as the post-evening concert crowd thinned; just deciding which way to go—my favourite Vietnamese restaurant lay in one direction, Nepalese the other—when I became conscious of a nearby party watching me intently.

I turned to see a dimly familiar-looking middle-aged man with magnificent curly hair, a slightly younger, matronly blonde woman, and a strikingly attractive fair-haired girl of about sixteen. I heard angelic singing then (although, in fairness, it could have been the after-effects of the music), and my eyes sort of stuck on the nymph; I tried to prise them away, but they just wouldn’t come. I was still trying—about the give the unequal struggle up, when—

‘Stevey,’ the man called, his voice jogged something in my memory.

‘Dirk!’ We bounded towards each other and shook hands. Dirk had been my next-door neighbour in my last two years of a postgraduate degree at Surrey University, having just joined the up-and-coming German department himself as a junior lecturer.

‘How have you been, Stevey? Long time no see!’ It was—nearly twenty years, in fact, since we’d actually clapped eyes on each other.

‘This is Helen, my wife.’

‘Nice to meet you,’ I said blandly as I reached out and took the hand of the blonde woman a few years younger than Dirk and me.

‘And this is my daughter, Eve.’

The dryad! I guiltily remembered I’d been ready to throw it all in—everything—for just a smile from her a few scant moments ago. She held out her hand; a radiant and beauteous smile lighting on me as the very sun.

I was transfixed. But I knew it would hardly be fitting to give any sign of how attractive I found the girl—especially given her tender years. And so, steeling myself—not smiling—I nodded curtly and looked away, making a small ‘tcoh’ of disapproval. I saw her smile fade quickly—a look of confusion replacing it.

‘I saw you looking at Eve just a moment ago, actually,’ Dirk began conversationally. ‘That’s what made me recognise you.’ I blushed, determined to make clear I had no interest in the sexpot.

‘What, me…look at her?’ I laughed—a little too loud and suddenly; several people stopped and looked momentarily before moving on. ‘No, no, I assure you I wasn’t!’

‘No, no, all I meant was…’ he started; but I couldn’t afford to let this one go.

‘No, Dirk,’ I said, laughing carelessly, ‘I really don’t have much of an eye for little girls before they lose their puppy fat!’ I smiled at the strumpet reassuringly. ‘You’ll be fine in another ten years.’

She sort of gulped and all at once let out a quick, choked sob. Looking right away from her (I’ve always been pretty good at body language, and I felt this reinforced my point), I caught the shocked, dismayed expressions on her mother’s face—and Dirk’s. I seized my chance.

‘Well, nice to see you again Dirk. Nice to meet you, Helen, and errm—you.’ And with that, I turned on my heel and marched smartly away in the direction of the Vietnamese restaurant. At least that decision had been made for me.

Before I’d gone many steps, I could hear the girl beginning to keen—with an edge of hysteria—behind me.

‘He’s right—I a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-m FAT. Fat and UGLY!’

‘No, no, dear. No, you’re not! Dirk, who was that terrible little man? You’re not going to let him speak to Eve Like that, are you?’

‘Please, darling, don’t make a scene.’ And then, just as I began to slip out of earshot on the busy street, I heard his wife scream.

‘You’ve always been so WEAK. No wonder she hates herself!’ Mercifully, I was spared the rest.

In all honesty, the uncomfortable situation I’d only narrowly avoided had left me a bit out of sorts. Difficult as it had been, it had been of the essence to establish that I simply wasn’t the sort of man to look at a girl that age in that way, and the daughter of an old and dear friend to boot—lovely as she clearly was. I think these things are sometimes finely judged.

As the immediate stress began to recede and I neared the restaurant, the tumblers of memory started falling more freely. Now, I vaguely remembered Dirk saying something in an email exchange on Facebook a couple of years ago about the girl having a serious eating disorder.

As I push open the door, and the fragrant, refreshing warmth hits me, my mind is in full swing. A nice, soothing dish of phô, I think. But the real question is: what side dishes?

David Hughes, DM’s fiction editor and European station chief, was born in Nairobi. After studying French at London University, he worked as a language teacher, then as a clerk, and communications officer for an insurance company. He now lives in Essex, England, working part time for a housing association. David has placed work with British humour magazine Viz, had a short story broadcast on BBC radio, and others published in Whortleberry Press anthologies. A ghost story is due to be recorded by Sniplits in the near future.

C.B. Heinemann SMALL WORLDS

SMALL WORLDS

C.B. Heinemann

The first snow of the season broke free of its iron-gray prison to flutter down on Neuchatel at the same time I was feeling spikes of anxiety about living in my new home.  During the summer I fell hard and fast for a beautiful Swiss woman I met while attending a conference, and after a quick trip to the States to break up with my girlfriend and empty out my apartment, I flew back to move in with her.  Monika was blonde and elegant, with a dry sense of humor and a powerful dose of that Swiss penchant for cleanliness and order.  We felt a mysterious bond that took hold of both of us as soon as we met, an almost chemical need to be together.  We even had the same cleft tip on our noses.  It didn’t take long for her to train me in the precise arts of how to hang clothes on the line, wash the dishes properly, where to correctly place the wine glasses, and how to tie up old magazines and newspapers for recycling.  However, I noticed that she would quietly re-wash the dishes behind me.
During the late summer and autumn we withdrew into a gauzy cocoon of self-indulgence–making love, eating elaborate meals by candlelight, spending every spare moment alone together, and surrendering ourselves to that narcotic semi-coma that is the first flush of love.  I also fell in love with the city of Neuchatel, which spilled around the northern rim of the big placid lake of the same name.  Alexander Dumas once described Neuchatel as looking as if it been carved from butter, and that description still held true.  Monika lived in an apartment in the center of the old town with its twisty cobblestone streets and family-run shops.  The Jura Mountains rose abruptly behind the town, all the way up to Mont Chasseral, where on clear days we could stand in the wind and see the heads of the high Alps peeking over the lowlands.  Jungfrau, Monch, the Eiger, and on rare occasions even Mont Blanc would expose themselves through the haze hovering above the southern horizon.
However, as anyone who ever surrendered to the impulse to run away to a far-off land knows, discontent soon gnaws at the edge of bliss.  The gauze begins to thin and the intoxication that permeates each day drains away.  As autumn deepened, the lake exhaled a fog that clung to the air with clammy insistence, and the energy of summer was replaced by a battening down of the proverbial hatches.  Sailboats disappeared into dry dock.  Little shops took in their signs.  Tourists no longer wandered through the old town.  Wrapped in coats and hats, the inhabitants hurried, faces down, to work, dental appointments, or to visit sick relations.  Monika grew more sober, laughing less and spending more time going over papers from work.  I was left to wonder what I was going to do with the rest of my life.
The idea of getting a job revealed itself to be an impossible dream.  Spare Americans couldn’t simply “get” a job in Switzerland.  Even Swiss citizens had a difficult time finding work, and the preliminary research Monika and I conducted into getting me some type of employment revealed how isolated I had become.  A few vague possibilities dangled like cobwebs masquerading as cotton candy.  Monika’s brother Hannes taught at a school that might someday need a new janitor.  Her sister Ruth thought a music club near her place might like to have an American bartender.  She’d let me know.
So as snow silently accumulated in the streets and sidewalks, on the orange tiled roofs, and over the cobblestones of the old town, I felt twinges of panic.  What in the hell am I doing here?
“Hello-hello?”  Monika’s voice pierced the atmosphere as she pushed open the apartment door.  Miniature cowbells tingled from the door handle.  “So you are home?  I can tell that you made us some dinner.  It smells wonderful.”
“Yeah, I made some chicken stew and a salad.  Lucky we got everything before the snow.”
Monika rustled in the entranceway, hanging up her coat on the usual hook, placing her usual stack of mail on the Ikea telephone table, removing her blue boots and, as usual, placing them outside on the landing.  I wandered over to greet her in the same way a wary cat might greet his owner.  Monika’s nose was pink from the cold, and after she pulled off her bulky multicolored sweater it was all I could see of her face behind the mass of blond curls.  She pushed aside a section to reveal her large blue eyes and tiny mouth.  The skin of her face was dry and freckled from years of skiing in winter
and sailing in summer, and a diamond-encircled Jean Michel watch flashed from her wrist.  Monika’s family worked for Jean Michel for generations and she owned several of their watches—most of them gifts from relations over the years.  She was only an inch shorter than I, with a lean, compact physique.  Like so many Swiss people she was fit and muscular, and when I held her naked body I felt little of the “girly fat” that most women maintained.  She was as beautiful and tough as the Alps.
“So come, let’s have something to eat,” she said, leaning down to pick a wine from the wooden rack near the door.  “I’ve got a surprise tonight.”
“What kind of surprise?  Did Hannes or Ruth call?  Did any jobs pan out?”
She plucked a bottle of Pinot Gris from the rack and held it up for me to see.  “It’s something else.  Come, I’ll show you.”
I ladled steaming chicken and rice stew into two orange ceramic bowls, snatched the overflowing salad bowl from the refrigerator, and stabbed a corkscrew into a bottle containing white wine that was born in a vineyard visible from the kitchen window.   Monika disappeared into the hallway for a moment before striding into the kitchen with a large cardboard box in her arms.  “Here, my sister brought these to me at work today.  Old family photographs.  Should be quite interesting for you.  You can see my family, and even see Neuchatel back in the old times.”
“That sounds like fun.” I wasn’t sure I needed to look at musty black-and-white photographs of people I would never meet.
“I was thinking on the way home that we might be the only people to look at these photographs.  Imagine, they were taking pictures of each other for posterity, and now that has almost run its course.  After us nobody will ever remember these people.  Unless, of course, one of us in the family has kids some day.”
“I suppose,” I answered, trying to seem unaware of the hint in her voice.
“Anyway, if we don’t then I can just throw these away.  Nobody will want to see them.  Nobody will recognize these people.”
As we ate we looked at pictures of Monika’s grandparents, great-aunts, and uncles and I found it more interesting than expected.  In the photos they were young and didn’t look very different from the young people we saw every day in Neuchatel.  I even recognized parts of town in which the pictures were taken.  Then we looked at Monika’s baby pictures.  In the photos of her father and mother they were younger than we were as we looked at them, and her mom was quite attractive.  In fact, I found myself staring at one particular photo of her mom.  She glowed with that fresh, rustic look that so many Swiss  had, with no make-up and her thick dark hair arranged in braids over her head.  Her smile was devoid of guile and her eyes bright.
“Oh, here are some pictures of my father in America.  You might know some of these places.”
Monika’s father traveled all over world as a salesman for Jean Michel watches.  He had been to Asia, Africa, the South Pacific, South America, and the United States.  Monika told me that he loved America and still had many friends there.  I hadn’t yet met him but Monika described him as an incurable bon vivant.  The photos from America provided vivid proof of that claim.  We both had to laugh because each photo showed his tall, lanky form surrounded by beautiful women.  Apparently, his work in America demanded that he spend most of his time drinking and dancing at parties.
“This is incredible,” I said as I picked up one photo.  “Your dad was Mister Popularity.  No wonder he liked America.”
Monika leaned over to look.  “Yes, I knew he enjoyed himself there.  I didn’t know about all these women, though.
“Where were these pictures taken?  Do you know?”
She turned one over and managed to decipher the scrawled notation.  “Long Island, I think.  The date on the envelope is a year before you and I were born, so that’s something, isn’t it?”
“My mom is from Long Island and she used to go up there to see her family every year.  And you know, I’m pretty sure she even has a Jean Michel watch in a box somewhere.”
We picked through dozens of photos that featured Monika’s dad sitting with women, dancing with women, taking walks with women.  I noticed one woman in particular who was always at his side, and though we couldn’t see her face we recognized her hair and clothes.  Monika wasn’t laughing anymore.  She picked up one photo that showed her dad and that woman strolling together down a wooded path.  “I have to wonder who this woman was.  I wonder about my father.  Did we really know him?”
“I’m sure it’s not like you think.  He couldn’t help it if he had groupies.  It doesn’t mean anything.  He was a cool Swiss guy, kind of exotic.  Maybe they just liked his watches.”
I didn’t want to say so, but I could understand Monika’s growing concern.  What was strange was my own discomfort.  In spite of myself, I found the photos of Monika’s dad and that woman disturbing.  I tried to make a joke of it.  “Who knows?  Maybe that woman is my mom.  She would be the right age, and like I said, she spent a lot of time in Long Island and went to lots of parties.”
“That would be a coincidence.  Perhaps she was there.  It is certainly possible.”
We flipped through more pictures, most of them featuring groups of people in swimming suits sitting beside a lake.  Again, Monika’s dad was the central figure.  As we pored over the pictures Monika talked about her mother, an accomplished musician who played with Neuchatel’s city orchestra for several years.  I idly picked up another photo of Monika’s dad and the mystery woman, but this one showed the woman’s face clearly.  The two of them sat very close together on a rock in their swimming suits looking directly at the camera with sly smiles.  Monika’s dad had a cleft on the end of his nose that was identical to mine.  In fact, his nose looked exactly like mine.  A thunderbolt exploded through my nervous system.
“What’s wrong?”  Monika asked, her eyes two question marks.  “Are you not feeling well?  Are you ill?”
Monika’s appearance wasn’t at all what it was just moments before except for that  cleft nose.  I stared at her unable to respond.  The contents of my digestive system began to stir.
“What is it?  Come on, tell me!”  Monika snatched the photo from my jittering fingers and stared at it.  “You know this woman.  You know her.”  Her voice tripped over the words and she leapt from her chair to stand above me.  “What is it?”
I turned away. “You’d better call your father.  You’d better ask him about this one woman in particular.  Her name is Betty.  She died five years ago.”
Monika ran into the bedroom and pulled the door shut behind her, making a strange animal noise in her throat that I never heard before.  Moments later I heard her talking on the telephone. I put the photo down and closed my eyes.  Monika’s voice was frantic as she unloaded a barrage of emotionally charged Swiss German at who I assumed was her father.  She gasped several times and began to cry, but not in a gentle or sad way.  There was something deep and primeval in it that confirmed what I already knew.  Numb with revulsion and uncertain of what to do or even think, I gathered my few belongings and stuffed them into my backpack.
I was down the stairs before Monika could emerge and I knew she would be relieved.  The snow blew sideways with the wind and into my nose and eyes.  Fighting to breathe I pulled my collar tight around my neck and struggled through the rising snow toward the train station.

INTRODUCING PATASOLA PRESS

from Dansu Makabaa no tomodachi Lisa Marie Basile (www.lisamariebasile.com)

Patasola Press is an author-focused independent press located in Brooklyn, New York. We strongly believe in the creative, cooperative relationship between author and publisher and we support both established and emerging authors. Our primary goal is to represent writers from underrepresented groups, with a special focus on promoting female and multicultural writers. Our Kickstarter is being used to promote our publicity and design funds and to get the foundation amount we need to help with little things here and there (ads, honorariums, merchandise.) We have one book our by Rae Bryant, a Spanish-English translation collection from Mimi Ferebee and a prose-poetry collection by J.A. Tyler coming.

You can safely and securely donate via Kickstarter, where we have attained $300.00 in the past few days from really great folks! We need $1,500 to get to our goal.

Our Kickstarter donation campaign is here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/patasolapress/1583279375
Our first book, Rae Bryant’s “The Indefinite State of Imaginary Morals”:  http://www.patasolapress.org/purchase/

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Poetry, fiction, Female Writers & Translations

Lisa Marie Basile

is the founding editor of Caper Literary Journal and has or will be published in several literary journals—Moon Milk Review, The View from Here Magazine, CommonLine, Poets & Artists, Word Riot, among others. She is currently Coordinator of PEN American Center’s Prison Writing Program and author of Diorama (Wisp Press) and  A Decent Voodoo (Cervena Barva, 2012). Read her work in Danse Macabre HERE!

K.S. Jellal MASOCHISTIC CHILDREN

MASOCHISTIC CHILDREN

ON A SUNDAY MORNING,

PRAYING

K.S. Jellal

I.
Our arms crept up on vines
across the pane, peering in:
a preacher frothed gestures, tones
of glory and fire.
A man hung
like dried fruit
by flesh torn at wrists,
and a woman – reborn.  Maybe dying.
Our knees bled against one another.

II.
We were twelve
spilling
into twenty-two.

Complacent truths
and fickle dares
surmount to summer’s end.  Legs
latch to dampened parts
on swollen necks, loosened
like some widow’s faithless face.
Comfort comes, that cool quick of belt
on flesh
assumes a thing alive – with breath, and here:
a snow-topped mound rested
down with grassy fronts, a bed
with blood,
a baby.

III.
And in the end
all we were was this:
two specks, thinking thoughts
out into the world.

 

K.S. Jellal is an award-winning writer and journalist based out of the American Midwest.  While her roots are on the Philippine islands, her husband grew up in the mountains of northern Morocco. Their lives are a meeting ground of different cultures, interests, and ideas which unite to create a nexus of inspiration.