How the Cookie Crumbles
The Corner of SW 4th Av & SW Washington, the Java Man cafe, base for city Patrol Officers taking a break, late lunch, coffee catch ups. Two Patrol Officers: one is younger, newly qualified, sharp lines, fresh haircut, first days on the job, learning about law courts. More important lesson to discuss: love. Younger recruit recently burned, dumped his nearly married-her-relationship after finding her toying with other new recruits. He wants to state his case, question motives, show pity for the other wronged men. He rationalises his new wisdom: never cheat. One secret slip-up was enough. Weighs heavy on his conscience - how could he have married her? She left, so no need for confession. Interrupted by a homeless man with lump on his head, false leg, begs to have his 5L bottle filled. No. Owner does not want to encourage. Water fountain in a nearby park. Good day. Older P.O. knows about love, how people connect, how rebounds fail, being ‘footloose and fancy free’ Can be a fantasy. He drifted from his son’s mother. Marriages in The Force Rarely Last. Official. They compare notes of female cadets won and lost. Calls come in: fight in public lavatories, crazy dude pushing people on the street, needs picking up. Naked homeless man. East Burnside. Older P.O. talks about the city sucks up the river of homeless, the incessant heat, insufficient A.C. at home. Joking about nudity. Gotta see this. Bang back coffee, thank the owner, roll out unhurried. Return a few minutes later, laughing. Crazy pusher caught. Naked dude put his clothes on and walked off down the street. Back to lunch. Just how the old cookie crumbles. Sniffing Death On English roads blood-caked sacks of fur and agonised features are foxes, badgers, rabbits, sometimes too smeared to recognize as childhood friends. Here on the Oregon coast, a few miles from Pacific City, there is a large black bundle cutting the middle of the road. A sprawled body of a baby bear stretched out as if asleep, a cuddly toy dropped out of a car window. We wonder where its mother is, how long she stays at the roadside, sniffing death and growling. Only or Without At Konigssee we crave crepes. A man sells them from a shop with a name that’s just a list of the food he quickly sells. I ask for crepes with only bananas but ask for without. We laugh about the German we are both trying to learn: only is nur. He’s from Bosnia-Herzegovina, no time to notice the beauty of the lake, he tells my wife. I am working, all the time, working. Folding crepes, frying sausages, waffles, coffee-to-go – anything the tourists, mostly Chinese, want before hurrying to the boats, drink famously cold lake water, chew snow dusted cliffs, gulp at Mount Waztmann, finish and leave him to prepare fresh batter. Hurry Away In the Kaiser and Kuche cafe in Seefeld an old man slides in from the snow and sits quietly by the door, orders café und kuchen as perhaps he does every afternoon, tradition. Clothed in shades of grey, his bald head an Alpine mountain rising out of snow-lined trees. Polished black shoes - an effort should always be made. My wife says I eat like he does: tongue rummaging my mouth, licking my lips, nodding my head to the timely tastes. She likes him. That will be you in years to come. But where are you? I don’t want to be alone, paying the bill while still drinking, wiping my face with a handkerchief, crumbs stuck in the same corners no one left to tell me, so I hurry away. Late February Evening in the Bavarian Alps Snow fills the orange cone of light, white waterfall of falling flakes. The same light reaches out to an arm of hedge-high snow and then is lost in the evening of darkness deepened by mountain clouds. The still houses punctuated with rectangles of yellow, sudden life, someone preparing a meal. Above a piano is playing, notes rolling out to remind the winter that it has only days left to impress, to remind me that what is beautiful is found in stillness, snow, darkness. Hawks in Sudkreuz Station, Berlin They flock in the lower concourse, perched on benches, an eye on the escalators, another watching the supermarket exit, swooping in for tidbits, scraps of generosity hassled out of the hands of commuters, tourists, poor migrant birds - the hawks do not discriminate, tattered feathers, bald spots, talons encrusted with blood and vomit, flurry of filth when wings are flapped, a poor crop praying on, praying. Beach Colours of the Tuscany Coast On the beach of Forte Dei Marmi, exclusive Marble Fort, background of grey Apuane Alps veined white glaciers of marble, the Carrara quarries Michelangelo loved so much he laid roads to his waiting ships, blue hazing back into white. The beaches filled with olive skinned Italians, richly chipped but burnt Russians in yellow sun hats, rows of white towel-covered blue sunbeds, deckchairs, mostly empty. Wandering through it all, immigrant salesman buzzing about junk: glossy glasses, bright balls, shimmering dresses, neon iphone cases, bath towels of rainbow hues, leaning towers of sun hats on dark north African heads, some Nigerian, darker than secret migration stories; all waved away like wasps. Marginally luckier Asian women in white overalls offering massages to dozing Davids. Published in #23 of Ginosko Literary Journal, August 2019.
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Unable to Break
The young couple left the café quickly, nothing bought, and stood together in the grey, slushing snow, bodies angled obtusely, heads bowed like February willows. He looks up. She reaches behind his ears. He buries his head on her shoulder and they stand silently as the afternoon spills, minutes mumbling. They are immovable, talking now, nodding, aching tenderness, touching to try and reconnect, deny the decomposition. But no kiss or final turn. They remain waiting, unable to tear away, break. Epitaph for An Ant The flying ant staggers across the table, slipping in and out of cracks on the surface, searching Martian ravines for a new home. She sees it and picks up the salt holder. In a twitch of an ant’s antennae, she stamps the salt holder down, savagely smearing it across the table, erasing the ant over the wood it found so hard to walk on. The bottom half reduced to a black tar scar. The top half a full stop. She continues talking as if nothing untoward has happened. To her, nothing has. God has spoken and we ants can do nothing but pray. Barely Connected She screeches, banshee, flapping her arms – a wasp! zipping around the bedsit. It settles on the window, an insect Goliath, pulsing abdomen tapping an SOS on the glass, the window fused shut months ago. Armed with a rolled up magazine, I approach, stalking, my girlfriend shrinking into a fading armchair. I nudge the colossus and it hums defiance. Go on, do it! the Empress brays from her Coliseum. One strike. The wasp merely shivers. I strike again, leap back, the wasp wobbles. Well? Is it dead? Shaking our stunned heads. One more time! The wasp collapses onto the window sill, still alive. Be a man! The sting of her words weakens me. Manhood is insect death? Resurrected, this Hercules continues its labours, climbing up to the light, humming hurt and hate, my girlfriend shrieking like a horror movie victim. So I try a vacuum cleaner, sucking the wasp into dusty Hades, quiet, the bedsit still. Gingerly, I open the bag, prod the dust ball and gasp. The wasp, its body barely connected, writhe with life, a force of Nature. I close the bag, run outside and empty it in a cloud of dust to dust. I return to the bedsit, head hung in guilt, unable to deal with the real pests. Published in Queen Mob's Teahouse in August 2019. |
Poetry Biography:I have had over 70 poems published in the following worldwide magazines and literary journals: A Handful of Stones, Acta Victoriana (Canada), All the Sins (UK), The Amethyst Review (USA), Amsterdam Quarterly (NL) The Blue Nib (Ireland), Bolts of Silk, Borderless Journal, The Brasilia Review (Brazil), Bushfire Literature & Arts Review (US), Cadenza, Cake Magazine, Carillon, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal (Hong Kong), DASH (USA), Clackamas Literary Review (USA), Cooch Behar Anthology, Dawntreader, Dreamcatcher, The Dillydoun Review, Earth Love, The Ear (US), Eastlit (East Asia), Erbacce, Envoi, Finger Dance Festival, Ginosko, Gloom Cupboard, Hidden Channel, Inlandia Journal, IS&T (Ink, Sweat & Tears), Into the Void (Canada), The Journal, The Lakeview Journal (India), Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Lunch Ticket (USA) The New Writer, One Hand Clapping, Orbis, Oregon English Journal (USA), The Passage Between, Prole, Sentinel Literary Quarterly, Sonic Boom (India), Third Wednesday (USA), Of Nepalese Clay (Nepal), New Contrast (South Africa), One Hand Clapping, Opportunity Publishing, The Oregon English Journal (USA) Origami Poems Project (USA), Panoplyzine (USA), Paper Swan Press, The Passage Between, The Peacock Journal (USA), Pens on Fire, Poetry Salzburg (Austria), Potomac Review, (USA) Prole, Pulsar Poetry, Rear View Poetry, Queen Mob's Teahouse, Qutub Minar Review (India), Red Ink, Shiela-Na-Gig (USA), South Bank Poetry Magazine, Stand, Waterford Teachers Centre, (Ireland) We Are a Website New Literary Journal (Singapore), Weber - The Contemporary West Review (USA), Windfall (USA), Writing Magazine, Words for the Wild and Verbal Art (India). Archives
March 2024
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