Folkestone (2013)

It’s always winter there, but it feels like autumn, because it’s all slightly dead and slightly broken. It’s 2013 and you’re still young and skinny and your family can afford the trip and no one knows who Trump is. They use pounds there but the pounds look like big stamps and you forget it’s money and you start buying stuff only a teen would. It’s 7:30 not 4:20 but you’re smoking all the same you don’t care, you have long, silver cigarettes (the cheapest, still too expensive) for breakfast. You drink Monster before classes not coffee because you know you’ll need it and because you pretend to care but don’t and that’s okay because you’re 16 and in love and there’s parks everywhere and people say hi and no one steals a thing because you’re in Europe and South America is far away. You think feelings and emotions are for emos and you call them faggots but you know you love someone and that makes you proud and special and it makes it easier to sleep at night after you jerk off (never thinking about her). You live with a young couple that must have been lovely but you never noticed because you’re too busy smoking and drinking and watching Heroes with the Muslim friend you never thought you’d have. You lose the house keys once and don’t see the allegory there but no one does anything because it’s Britain and everyone’s polite about everything and no one really gives a shit about an Argentinian. You buy beer with a fake ID from a Pakistani girl that can’t be older than you but already is (she has to be), you go to a hidden garden full of orchids and bees and get offered some hashish but you don’t have enough money and you’re too afraid to try. There’s a cemetery in the street where you think you’re living but you’re not because you will always be an Argentinian and you’ll never escape from the Third World.  So you go there with the girl you love (names never matter) and you walk and should be holding hands but don’t because you’re nothing and will never be, and she talks and talks and you’re Semele so you can’t reply because you’re burning inside and everything’s on fire even though it’s winter and suddenly wearing shorts isn’t such a bad idea. She stands in front of a big tombstone with a ship on top, some German soldiers who died once, who cares, she does, so you stare too and think it’d be right to cry for the dead young men because you’re young too (not for long) and dead (this you’ll be forever). So one day you get up and think that maybe she loves you back so you call her and talk and make her sit beside you and you tell her. You don’t say “I love you” because you know better, but you do say things like “I always dream about you” and “I like you a lot.” A second passes and your fate is decided in that second. She shakes her head, says “No,” and starts crying. You cry too, but that doesn’t matter, your life is already irrelevant and stupid. She goes away and doesn’t look back, never looks back, always moving forward (unlike you). A couple sees her and asks her if she’s okay and you know what she says and what she should have, but it’s too late now and you can’t chase her and you’ll get scolded once you get home and you will nod and pretend to be sorry and go to your room and see what it feels like to scream in your pillow. 

A lot of things happen after that, too many, you want to write them all down, you get obsessed with the idea of laying down all the facts you think you remember, but no one will ever read them because you’re too afraid to let people know how you really feel about her, about that trip, about Folkestone, where it’s always winter, where you bought pot once and went to English classes, where everyone says hi and no one steals a thing, where you’ll always lie dead.    

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Felipe Rodolfo Hendriksen studies Literature at Pontificia Universidad Católica Argentina. He currently lives in Quilmes.

Combustion

I

Where do I go without you? The shell
in which I hid before you arrived is now
compromised, and I feel naked as a wire.

I’m an old-school purchaser, always buying
two in place of one; a spare, an extra
for emergency.

But with you I was young & careless: never
thought of getting insurance, never imagined
slipping my number to another, or handing them
the duplicate of my back door’s key.

I understand persons are not objects; who then
are these people I see kneeling in cemeteries, talking
to stone? Where I reside, presidents inaugurate

aircrafts by cracking open coconuts at the landing
wheels, anointing moist vermilion with their thumbs
in vulcanised rubber grooves.

II

An ambulance—its siren bawling like a hungry
child—vanishes as soon as it appears. A grey
nightjar prepares to launch from an electric pole.

The traffic light: red; the zebra-coloured
pavement strewn with rat-gnawed foam
mattresses and homeless tykes asleep

in crisp November chill. Their still,
subdued bodies shrouded in papery blankets,
their surreptitious breaths detouring
no passing feet. Alongside, on the road,

engines hum, exhaust pipes vibrate.
Petrol continues to ignite.

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Sudhanshu Chopra is a poet, wordsmith and pun-enthusiast. 30 and rootless, he is fascinated by nature and frustrated by its incomprehension. He wishes we had evolved better or not at all. It is the midway that causes Catch 22 situations, which are quite troubling, mentally and otherwise. He tweets at @artofdying_

What You Said in German Was Not about Kissing

Sharing a ham & cheese hero with lettuce, tomato and mayonnaise and a bag of those cheese doodle things you liked on a hillside at the Bronx Botanical Garden was more fun than meeting you in that trattoria on the Piazza Navona with the waiter who spoke such good English because you were wearing the blue dress that buttoned down the front and we were caught in the rain but when we got back to the apartment on 189^th street it was hotter than ever and we dragged the mattress up onto the roof and ate pepperoni pizza from downstairs where everybody spoke Italian to you but you didn’t know a word except maybe prego and scusi and although you took German at Hunter it wasn’t much help when we rode the D train to Central Park where the Met was performing something from Wagner, maybe Tannhauser which goes on forever but I loved you because you had read all of The Magic Mountain and called it Der Zauberberg and sometimes I look at you and want to tell you that Dominic’s has been closed for years and there’s probably no one else except maybe Barbara Kaufman who remembers the night when you said something in German and I thought you said “Kiss me.”

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Michael Cooney has taught English and writing on the high school and community college level in New York City. His novella “The Witch Girl and The Wobbly” will be published January 1 by Running Wild Press. His poetry has appeared in Bitter Oleander, Badlands, and other journals.

Landscape in Dresses

Glimpses reflected in mirrors
____________part sky part shaken branches
never your eyes
____________only the moment of motion   departure
Where is it you go
____________when I lose sight of you in fog?
I’m certain I’ve seen you in dreams
____________smell of burnt toast
On rainy days your laughter chimes
____________raindrops against roof gutter
When I taste lemon
____________I believe I am closer
to knowing you
____________tart   craveable

How does desire dress?
____________In fir needles
maple leaves
____________the unlined forehead of youth
I wet my lips imagining you will ride in
____________on high tide aback an Orca
No I don’t
____________I hope the inexpressible returns
like the Steller’s jay
____________to the handrail of my deck stairs
every morning around 10
____________fear
inevitable as splinters

What I believe I want is soft
____________what you are is silver glass
shards gleaming
____________for the warmth of my blood

Words never pass between us
____________so there can be no lies
My fingertips force the pen
____________over parallel lines
outside the margins
____________if anywhere   that’s where
love exists
____________scribbled   scratched out   indecipherable

When I look into the reflection of my eyes
____________all there is is shaded lake surface
murk brown   a single pebble radiating out ripples
____________siren call for help

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Lana Hechtman Ayers’ poems have appeared on Escape Into Life, Verse Daily, and The Poet’s Café,  as well as in her nine published collections. She manages three small presses on the Oregon coast in a town of more cows than people. Visit her online at LanaAyers.com.

The Purples in the Painter’s Eye

You can’t sneer away the clouds
knuckling their great abstractions.
You can’t rename every street

after your few brave followers.
I’ve tried to appraise you with song
on the tip of my tongue, but lack

the requisite melody. Stones
rattling in a mountain brook
would more likely catch your ear.

Today we expect to hear the truth
or read it in the New York Times
where every nation has a say.

We also expect the rain to arrive
in a cornucopia of wind
tinted by solar distractions.

You refuse to credit the mind
that mapped the atom forever.
You place no faith in the art

that names itself after silence.
You expect celestial glassblowers
to render landscapes so fragile

and elegant that your old aches
and pains will find no place to settle.
I wish you luck and favor

but don’t believe the purples
inherent in the painter’s eye
will rescue you from suffering

you wrought to punish yourself
for disowning the nation you crossed
a dozen times driving alone.

Let’s agree on something small
enough to pocket when we tire
of fondling its many contours.                           

The day exposes a yellow rind
under a sickly overcast.
Let’s read the newspaper at home

and leave the absences grinning
in the public streets where anyone
can mistake anyone for themselves.

_____

Puddles Shaped like My Enemies

Last night’s metallic rain left
puddles shaped like my enemies.
I hadn’t known I had so many,
but here they are, bearing weapons 
of quicksilver, chrome, and filth.

You advise me to stomp right
through them, shattering their calm.
You have no enemies, no trace
residue to rebuke you for
famously missed opportunities.

The hard rain blinded the night
so absolutely no response
seemed possible. The cats cried
nervously, the windows rattled.
We stayed up as late as we dared,

aware that pale forces were plotting.
At dawn the sky was meringue,
the trees stood around embarrassed
by a night of hysterics. You roused
the household and told me to don

my boots and splash those puddles
before they sulked underground to plot.
We’re being silly. These puddles
don’t resemble people except
in their slouch and selfish glaze.

Besides, my enemies aren’t yours,
so you don’t have to worry.
I plumb the puddles and determine
that they’re too shallow to drown me,
even if I flop face down.

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William Doreski lives in Peterborough, New Hampshire. He has taught at several colleges and universities and retired after three decades at Keene State College. His most recent book of poetry is Stirring the Soup (2020). He has published three critical studies, including Robert Lowell’s Shifting Colors. His essays, poetry, fiction, and reviews have appeared in many journals.

Subway Benediction

Running for the subway shuttle
from Grand Central to Broadway,
I heard music drifting through 
an open door. I swung into the car 
and there he was. Long-haired, bearded 
standing in the aisle 
with his mismatched socks on display,
singing Somewhere Over the Rainbow 
in a voice so open and sunlit
that I forgot I was underground. 
Even the wheels squealing 
as the train rocked along the tracks 
could not pull me out of the song 
spinning through the crowded car
like a spider’s web, holding us fast 
for the ride that was suddenly too short.
A hat on the floor in front of him 
held some silver and some paper
and I added my thanks. As I left 
the train and headed for the exit, 
I could still hear him singing 
to the empty car, words that poured 
out into the station and were reflected 
by white-tile walls, spattering 
the passengers with red, violet and green.

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paul Bluestein is an obstetrician (done practicing) and blues guitar player (still practicing) who began writing poetry in 2018 after joining The Poet’s Salon in Fairfield, Connecticut. His work has appeared in The Linden Avenue Literary Review, Third Wednesday, and Penumbra among other publications. His first full-length collection, Time Passages, was published in 2020 by Silver Bow Publishing.