A New Ulster 112

FEATURING THE CREATIVE TALENTS OF.Don Stoll, Daniel Picker, Ceinwen E. Cariad Haydon, Bob Eager, George Freek, Saeed Salimi Babamiri &Amin Gardiglani , Strider Marcus Jones and Jorge Leiva.

EDITED BY AMOS GREIG.

A NEW ULSTER ISSUE 112 March 2022

UPATREE PRESS

Copyright © 2020 A New Ulster – All Rights Reserved.

The artists featured in this publication have reserved their right under Section 77 of the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the authors of their work.

ISSN 2053-6119 (Print) ISSN 2053-6127 (Online) Edited by Amos Greig Cover Design by Upatree Press Prepared for Publication by Upatree Press

CONTRIBUTORS

This edition features work by Don Stoll, Daniel Picker, Ceinwen E. Cariad Haydon, Bob Eager, George Freek, Saeed Salimi Babamiri &Amin Gardiglani, Strider Marcus Jones and Jorge Leiva.

CONTENTS Prose Don Stoll Poetry & Prose Daniel Picker

Page 1 Page 12

Poetry Ceinwen E. Cariad Haydon

Page 29

Poetry Bob Eager

Page 36

Poetry George Freek

Page 38

Translation/ Poetry Saeed Salami Babamiri & Amin Gardiglani Page 42 Poetry Strider Marcus Jones

Page 45

Poetry Jorge Leiva

Page 56

Editor’s Note

Page 61

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: Don Stoll Don Stoll is a Pushcart-nominated writer living in Southern California. His fiction has appeared twice in A NEW ULSTER and recently in THE SANDY RIVER REVIEW (tinyurl.com/ha2t5eha), INLANDIA (tinyurl.com/322bbv2u), and A THIN SLICE OF ANXIETY (tinyurl.com/fy9wer4h). In 2008, Don and his wife founded their nonprofit (karimufoundation.org) which continues to bring new schools, clean water, and medical clinics to a cluster of remote Tanzanian villages.

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Vanishing Race

by Don Stoll

January 18, 2022

Michael Caruso, Editor-in-Chief Smithsonian magazine MRC 513, PO Box 37012 Washington, D.C. 20013

Dear Mr. Caruso:

My name is Alvin Dark Cloud. Years ago I won notoriety as an associate—a sort of “leading follower”—of Dennis Banks and Russell Means in the American Indian Movement.

Lately, health problems have forced me to keep a low profile but I’ve remained active in promoting the cause of my people.

I write at the urging of my daughter, Dr. Shaliyah Dark Cloud, Associate Professor of History at The Ohio State University, who has called my attention to a story in Smithsonian’s December 2021 issue. It concerned the discovery of twenty-one tintype photographs that had languished in the possession of Ms. Susan Stuart, unknown to her until recently, which 2

represented part of the estate of her father, Curtis Drake Stuart (1931-1968).

The story described the mystery and controversy generated by the photographs after Ms. Stuart, living in Tucson, had driven to Phoenix to show them to the Heard Museum.

She thought the pictures would interest an institution dedicated to the advancement of American Indian art. She also hoped for monetary gain. As you know, the photographs seemed to represent Native American men and women who had lived in the middle of the nineteenth century, or earlier.

Yet their condition after half a century in the possession of Ms. Stuart, who conceded that the grocery bag in which they were stored “with other odds and ends” had been handled casually, implied a more recent origin. Ms. Benton, author of the story, reported the expert consensus: the photographs had most likely been made during Curtis Stuart’s lifetime, in all likelihood by Stuart himself. Ms. Benton reported that the experts could not explain how this was possible.

I have information to shed light on the mystery. As suggested by the enclosed snapshot of myself, taken in 1967, a year before Stuart’s death by heart attack, I am the subject of one of the tintypes. You will have no trouble identifying which of the twenty-one faces matches mine.

You’ll also see that, despite the facial resemblance to that proud and noble “representative of a Vanishing Race”—to speak anachronistically and ironically—my face in 1967, at age twenty, evinces neither pride nor nobility. In the snapshot I am drunk. A

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girlfriend took the picture in a bar in the dusty town of Sheridan, South Dakota, near Rapid City. Curtis Stuart found me there in the bar in 1968. Where Sheridan used to be, you will now see only a filling station with a 7-Eleven store attached. Say good riddance and you’ll get no argument from me.

I am drunk in the picture the girl took, but I was probably even more drunk when Stuart found me. He found me because he was looking for drunken Indians to photograph.

I was so drunk when he found me that I have to take his word regarding the circumstances of our first meeting. But I have no reason to doubt him.

I became aware of Stuart as I regained consciousness on a bed in his suite in the Alex Johnson Hotel, in Rapid City. I suspected what the smiling, well-dressed white man sitting at the foot of the bed wanted yet I didn’t fear him. I had sold myself to white men before because it was a fast way to make a dollar. At that time I had no interest in making a dollar honestly.

Resting a hand on my belt buckle I said, “Bring me a glass of water and I’ll give you this.”

He shook his head. He stood and handed me a card. Walking away he said, “Ice?” The card said CURTIS STUART FINE PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHY. I read the phone number and the Denver address.

I drained the glass of water. I couldn’t speak for a minute because I felt like my head

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would fall off from frostbite. When I had thawed out I said, “I can’t let you take pictures because Denver’s too close and somebody I know might see.”

He said he didn’t take those kinds of pictures. He said did I want a hot shower, and a shave too if I liked, and could I wait till I was done before he explained about his pictures?

I enjoyed the best shower I’d ever had but I didn’t shave.

When I came out he pointed at the bed and said, “Clean shirt and socks.”

He said he would wait for me in the other room where I might be interested in the hot meal he had ordered. While I was eating my steak and potatoes he explained his pictures.

He said he had invented a new way to take old-fashioned pictures. He asked if I knew what tintypes were. I said no so he showed me a book full of them. I had seen pictures like that before, but I never knew what they were called. I asked what his new way was. I thought I should be polite because I could see that his new method meant a lot to him.

I nodded while he explained. He watched to make sure I was paying attention. But between only pretending to pay attention and my poor understanding of chemistry, what he said went over my head. It’s a shame because what he had achieved was astounding. For my money computer-generated imagery can’t compare to Curtis Stuart’s method. I wish I could tell you how it worked. Maybe Ms. Benton can encourage Susan Stuart to search anything that remains of her father’s estate for his description of the method. He must have written it down.

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Here’s what I know, based on what I recall of his words and my subsequent reading.

He used the wet collodion process invented by Frederick Scott Archer in 1851. But Stuart had refined it by adding certain chemicals to the immersive solution of collodion, or cellulose nitrate. His trick lay in the added chemicals, and naturally that’s the part I can tell you nothing about. But during the stage of fixing the image, the last step before washing and varnishing, for an interval of maybe fifteen seconds when the image is soaking in the immersive solution it disappears before reappearing again. The shocking thing Stuart had accomplished with his added chemicals was to make the photographic subject reappear at an earlier stage of its development.

He showed me a picture of a wolf. He claimed to have made it by photographing a stray mutt picked up off the street in Denver. That had been the first use of his method on a living subject. Since then he had learned to adjust how far back in time to go by adjusting the amount of added chemicals.

Not quite believing him I said, “So you could make a picture of me as a cave man, or— ” He stopped me by taking my hands in his and smiling. It gave me a creepy feeling.

“I want to photograph you as one of your recent, noble ancestors.”

I said, “Noble?”

He put his hand on my chin. It was a soft grip. Even so I started to pull away. His grip became firm but he spoke in a soothing voice like doctors use before doing something that 6

will hurt you. I let him tilt my head to the side and run his finger along my cheekbone.

“Haven’t shaved for a while,” he said. “Can’t hold the razor still? But I can shave you.

We’ll want you clean-shaven to show off that classic bone structure.”

He turned my head the other way.

“Magnificent.”

Nobody had ever called me magnificent before. I recall appreciating it a little. But I also had other feelings about it.

“Remove your shirt,” he said.

I went along. I still had a creepy feeling but I knew he wasn’t interested in the kind of funny business I’d worried about at first. He walked around me so he could look from every angle. I followed him with my head until he had got almost behind me and I needed to turn my body.

“Hold still,” he said.

It was a commanding voice instead of the soothing one.

When I could see him again he was nodding his head like he approved.

“Flat and hard,” he said, patting my stomach. “It won’t be like that in a few years if you keep living like you do. You’re lucky that you’re young enough to get away with it for now.”

It was true but I didn’t like hearing it. You could say I decided to take it because I owed

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him for the meal and the clean clothes and for getting me out of the bar at a time when I was going so bad that every bender could have been my last. But the truth is that I didn’t know how to stand up for myself. I felt like nothing so I didn’t know what I could have stood up for.

He said, “Ready to be photographed?” and I said, “You want me to put the shirt back on?”

“Won’t matter,” he said. “Suit yourself.”

He said we had to go down the street to where he had rented space to take and develop his pictures. I took the shirt. I reckoned he wouldn’t bring me back to the hotel once he was done.

I recall very little about the studio and everything about the dark room. It’s funny that it happened this way, but in the dark room I was wide awake after almost falling asleep in the studio even though you can see from the photograph that it was brightly lit. The alcohol was still in my system and I think in the studio it started to catch up to me again. As for why I would have been awake in the dark room, I’m coming to that.

Stuart must have had a hell of a time photographing me. Never mind that I’m standing up proud and straight in the picture, I only look that way because he had somehow propped me up.

I remember him saying “Done!” in a sharp voice that brought me to my senses. I asked what came next. He said he needed to develop the picture but that didn’t concern me so I 8

should leave. I said would he mind if I followed him into the dark room. He gave me a suspicious look and I said I was curious. I promised not to touch anything.

“I’ve photographed twenty other Indians and they all left right away,” he said.

I expected to get a no but instead he said, “Why not?”

Maybe he had decided I was harmless. Or maybe he was so pleased with his new process that he wanted to show it off to someone, even if it was only a drunken Indian.

In the dark room he explained about the image disappearing in the immersive solution for a few seconds. He said it was more than a chemical process. It also had a deeper meaning.

“You belong to a vanishing race. Your choice of how to live makes you complicit in the disappearance of your people. The drunk hastens to an early death, prefigured by the vanishing of your image in this solution.”

His words didn’t seem as insulting as they should have because I was paying less attention to what he was saying than to what he was doing. I wanted to see my picture. I wished he would stop talking. But he had a hard time doing that.

“What will appear is an image of yourself as you would have looked if the Europeans had never arrived. Your people were doomed because the Europeans brought the superior civilization demanded by the imperative of historical progress. But during their all-toofleeting time your people were noble and beautiful and we can still savor their bygone

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virtues.”

The appearance of the image finally shut him up. By this time I was as grateful for that as I was for the picture itself. It’s a crude thing to say because you know how beautiful the picture is.

Stuart lingered over it for a long time. Then he turned to look at me. His eyes opened wide and he sucked in his breath and gave a kind of little jump.

He said, “Let’s go out into the light so I can—” He never made it. He sat down on the floor in the dark. He said something was pressing against his chest. I didn’t know he was having a heart attack because in the movies you grab your chest. He didn’t do that. But I could see he needed help so I went out into the studio.

There was a table with a phone on it against the wall. I picked it up but then dropped it when I saw myself in the mirror above the table. My image in the picture had been transformed and so had I. I had worn Stuart’s clean shirt to be photographed. But in the picture I was bare-chested and I had become bare-chested, too. In the mirror I could see scars that hadn’t been there before. I realized that they were from the Sun Dance. I probed the tiny mounds of scar tissue.

When I had first looked in the mirror I wanted to run. But the scars gave me strength. I called for an ambulance and went to check on Stuart.

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If he had been alive I would have stayed with him. I couldn’t help, though, and I didn’t want to be there when the ambulance came. In the washroom next to the studio I scrubbed the paint off my face. As I finished washing I heard the siren. I left.

In the street, if anybody had asked why I didn’t have a shirt on I would have pointed to my scars and said that in feeling them I also felt my life had changed. But I passed only white people. They wouldn’t have understood.

After this it was just a matter of time before I would connect with the American Indian Movement. If you print my letter, Mr. Caruso, maybe some of Stuart’s other Indian models will come forward with stories about how their lives were transformed.

Although Curtis Drake Stuart was a talented photographer, he never understood what he may have thought would be the defining subject of his career. He thought my people were a vanishing race. But we haven’t gone away. No, sir: we’re still here.

Sincerely, Alvin Dark Cloud END

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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: Daniel Picker Daniel Picker studied with Seamus Heaney at Harvard University in the mid 1980’s; Daniel’s memoir of that experience, “Eat Your Good Lamb” appears in The Oxonian Review of the University of Oxford where Daniel studied English in the early 1990’s. Daniel Picker is the winner of The Dudley Review Poetry Prize at Harvard, and the author of Steep Stony Road, a book of poems. Daniel received a fellowship from The Geraldine Rockefeller Dodge Foundation.

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BEFORE CHILDHOOD’S END In Memoriam JPH “He thinks he was not made to die,” - Tennyson We’d play tennis every summer morn after our paper routes; but before the heat and humidity began; we finished delivering those papers, free

by seven to ride our bikes with our racquets to the new blacktop courts at Crows Woods. The net chain link fencing like that running far back behind the baselines.

We both had wood racquets, mine with white, striped loose strings, that Slazenger from my mom. Was it the summer after seventh grade?

I’m not sure now. Here I sit parked on shale grey

gravel in a lot where those courts stood, remembering running to my right in bright sun for my forehand winner; I see you across the net, the lefty with the two-handed

backhand, baseball swing, your brow glistening, hair damp over forehead. You always just won in every basketball game, but not in this game, in basketball almost always, in tennis here, never.

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You’re gone a year or so now, in the middle of your life, though not seen since months after my mom and stepfather died; that decades back now; you then working in

a bar, just as you said you would after high school, just a month after our last year.

I recall once walking just a block from your house and mine, atop the hill on old brick

sidewalk under the big tulip poplar trees, before the big white house; out back where a basketball court still stood where we played.

You mentioned “bartender school” that day.

The last time my brother and I saw you at the bar – your mom told me over the phone where you worked – you didn’t wish us to leave any money, as you were busy by the bar corner

chortling with your customers, but I left some cash, as if to pay you back, for two beers, but really for all those years of friendship so long ago, which faded away as high

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school ended so many years ago now.

Your sister used to drive us to the shore, Ocean City where we rode the waves, or you on a board, like a pale ship riding

on the rising crests of light grey waves all day, your skin sunburned red as your hair; a few years later, you drove us to the shore in your gold convertible sports car; at toll plazas

it stalled, and I pushed as you jump started it before a week in Avalon at 17, where on the beach we tossed a Frisbee close to a blonde in macrame bikini in sun.

Later, you drove us north under darkening summer sky,

to Wildwood where we rode the rides, and later, we admired that pretty girl with long brown hair, but not her friend, late cool night beside the railings, I could only wanly smile, hearing dark ocean churning endlessly in beyond dark sand.

Longing, we drove back home, two guys in a two seater. You said, “I wouldn’t wish her friend on anyone.”

“That other girl was so beautiful,” I said, after those two walked off before we spoke. You drove on under dark sky.

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The next evening after the beach you invented and we played “Roofball” tossing a tennis ball off the grey-shingled low-peaked roof above the lush green backyard grass we dove across like outfielders saving an extra-base hit before childhood’s end.

Those last great games half a decade after those two nearly endless games of one-on-one on the neighbor’s new low-rimmed basketball court, just eight feet, perfect for us two at age 12: first to 50, then to 100; I lost both by one shot.

Now you’ve left a wife behind, a grown son, and mom and sister, golf friends, more recent, and those of the past.

All our childhoods gone, relegated to a brief twinkling in God’s eyes, like the sun in your eyes across the net’s side.

(Daniel Picker)

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Above Moss Hollow or Hendricks’ Hill Farm After D.T.

Now I am not there anymore But I am as I look and see green slopes of trees in the distance, green grass rising on the mountain white clapboard farm buildings, late nineteenth century, but older in style, in grace this place empty of me, But inside so many memories, the apple grove and boughs there, gnarled branches, low trunks, rocky ravine trail under them, their branches laden with nearly over - ripe apples on their apple boughs

I so much younger then, walking the windy trail in fall, in winter too, then in mud and snow

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And ice and rain, gray of spring then the grass green eventually, Kelly green, Vermont green, And golden sun breaking above like a yolk over easy, over me, young, green and golden amid white clapboard houses, Mather first seen back in first month among heaps of five feet of snow piled in this polar Eden, before thoughts of her crowded out thoughts of thee,

Oh, “I was young and easy under the apple boughs” in Vermont decades back when my hair had no frost, and I grew no beard until before the end of my years there, a fool out of Hardy pining for his Tess, above a field at dusk, why when I walk in mind amid

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those paths, past those clapboard houses just past those trees, not a soul seen, my eyes fill with tears, welling like a warbling brook below in the woods between the trees, clear cold water running over black and brown rocks, a groundhog or beaver walking above, as the sun breaks through the trees, dappled fallen leaves, and above orange, red, green, yellow golden maples of autumn like candy, like candy of childhood, seen from above.

But I am not there, no one is about in early morning light, just I and a goldfinch On a lone tree beside the road Up, just above Moss Hollow.

(Daniel Picker)

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THE PUBLIC GARDEN

Late in the Summer evening the sky deep steel blue with orange beyond the dark trees, swimming ducks paddling with webbed feet below the rippling water as strollers stroll over the ornate bridge, where my mother stood above my father, she in airy, billowing summer dress, pregnant with my little brother, I unseen in black and white photo taken by father, I somewhere about two.

No recollection of then, only later learned when dad gave me the old photograph; Kennedy still in The White House, here The Public Garden trimmed and perfectly planned.

Of an August evening after I met an old friend from years back.

Another morn I’d strolled past green grass down below in summer sun, past

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the fine hotels, where a young woman lay out in shorts reading; all years back, after absence from here.

(Daniel Picker)

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Close to the Wind

That morning I saw Finn across the living room. I paced back and forth across the room past the open windows. We both stood about the same height as classmates in the same school, Conway Memorial High School, and yet, he seemed more grown up in some ways, yet I had not noticed before this week how similar we seemed, especially when we stood beside one another. This morning we both wore similar navy-blue polo shirts, and both of our fathers had been in the Navy during the war, but as I realized the day before, I had never met his father.

Earlier, after rising and washing and getting dressed in shorts and shortsleeved shirt, socks, and sneakers that morning, as I stood in the quiet house, I could hear seabirds outside and I realized I had never been to the shore overnight before with anyone other than my own family, and I wondered how well I would handle this new independence. I ate some cereal, then stood up from the kitchen table and my schoolmate informed me, “My mom’s dropping us off.”

We both headed out to the front of the house and got in opposite sides of the old Country Squire station wagon; the worn wood panels looked sun faded even under the shadow of the trees near the small front lawn; the green “Save the Whales” bumper sticker with the last “s” torn off still held its own below the back tailgate, but seemed even more tenuous and faded, as Mrs. H. prepared to back out. My friend got in the front passenger seat; I sat behind his mom. She drove in the opposite direction from what seemed usual, heading north on the island. As we soon drove away from the quiet residential neighborhood of small clapboard and shingled cottages with neat lawns below the shade trees and drove into a more open and rural area and then drove down a rustic road parallel to a weather-beaten, grey split-rail fence running along a long empty macadam road that became a gravel road the pale blue morning sky lightened above this road that ran along the bay water glittering 22

with blinding light in the now clear sky.

We came to an open semi-circular slow-curving gravel road that wound in front of a low, white, shingled building with a small sign with black letters: “Yacht Club.” There were no yachts anywhere; not in the water, not in a large open field of scraggly grass and sand, behind a low fence, with dinghies and a few dilapidated wooden boats scattered here and there.

Mrs. H. pulled near one end of the low shingled building with worn white paint, and said, “OK, boys; have a splendid day.”

I had no idea exactly why we had arrived here.

My friend seemed quiet, and he said, “Follow me,” and we walked back across the gravel road toward the wide field or boatyard which I now realized was a sort of oblong and semi-wild oval across from the club house.

The sun shone brightly from the east and the sky stood pale above and the breeze blew cool and brisk. It must’ve been close to 8 AM. Even though summer shone upon us, this place seemed strangely quiet for a usual summer morn. The sun rose warmly in the pale sky and the wind blew fiercely closer to the water behind us and I heard the flags snap and flap crazily when gusts kicked up past the low building from the wide, open sparkling sea.

With his mother gone, we kept walking over the grass and ground toward the boatyard as he uttered, “Come on. It’s over this way.”

I did not know what he meant, but I walked beside him quietly.

He walked across a patch of the worn pale tan earth and withered light brown grass and walked by the low fence that surrounded the oval, which stood some distance from the front of the building and the broad bay which shone beyond.

He opened the gate for me, and we walked further over the worn dry earth. Some more abundant deep green tufts grew around and between the boats far back from the gate. We walked toward the bright sun in the east, burning over and beyond the low houses, with the ocean ahead and with the bay shining at our backs, 23

we walked caught in the morning light with deep shadows under the boats.

I could see a few small sailboats resting on rusty trailers over the ground of this round boatyard, which also held nearby a few boats with outboards, none covered by tarps; some of the sailboats wore grey canvas covers.

“This is it,” he said as he stood beside an uncovered dinghy with its mast up, its sail furled. The boat sat on a low, two-wheeled dolly.

“Here, grab a handle.”

We both held a short bar, he near the bow of the boat and I on the other side near the stern wheeled and pulled her across the dry earth of the yard and then across to the low, open gate. Then we wheeled her while he held the bow, across the curving gravel road I saw in the shadow of the grey, weathered club house an angled launch ramp that plunged sharply into the shadowed choppy water.

While standing beside the sailboat he leaned in and hoisted a triangular sail. Then he pulled a wooden tiller from the cockpit and set it across the stern, and while standing in a foot of grey water he slid the white dinghy further into the grey sea. I walked down into the cold water and we both stood in the shadow of the wooden building in choppy water.

He held the side of the boat as it floated in the water below him and said, “Climb in.”

I stepped into the boat and sat on the broad gunwale, then he got into the boat and sat on the opposite gunwale, then he stretched across the stern to secure the rudder and the tiller; then as we both kneeled and crouched in the boat, he pushed the centerboard halfway down, then pushed the uplifted rudder down into the salty water and soon started waggling the tiller back and forth, using it as a paddle, and we coasted out into the bay, past the side of the club house.

“Push the centerboard further down into that slot,” he commanded.

In a matter of moments, we moved out quickly and quietly beyond the 24

shadow of the club house out into bright sun and open water and he scooted over beside me and pushed the tiller handle a little away from him and as he pulled in a rope he said resolutely, “This is the main sheet.”

“The main sheet,” I repeated.

Right away the wind caught us, and filled the sail, and we quickly sailed quietly out into the broad bright bay.

We sailed further out into the bay pushed by the strong wind. The rippling water broad before us reflected the bright sun. Neither of us wore hats. I had left my floppy white tennis hat back at the house.

“Let’s tack and sail out toward the tall far bridge.”

I could see far away in the distance a curving white bridge which seemed small since it stood so distant in the glare of the sun. But I could tell it towered over the bay in a high long curving arc.

We sat quiet a moment.

“When I push the tiller and you see the sail swinging back toward us, duck under it to the other side.”

“OK,” I nodded.

“Tacking! Coming about!” he called out.

At first, I didn’t understand what he meant, but then I saw the sail swinging toward me I ducked under and kneeled on the other side.

As we sailed along, a strong wind picked up and the vessel headed up wind and the boat heeled up and I could hear the hull cutting through the water below with a “rushing” sound.

“We’re close hauled,” he said.

The sun stood bright above, the sky bright ultramarine blue as the wind kicked up even more and he said, “Hold the main sheet; let it out a little, slowly.”

I did and I could feel the power of the wind pulling the sail; the boat lifted and sailed even more swiftly over the surface of the sea and it lifted me too.

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“We’re planing!” he called out.

No other boats sailed by, no other sounds, just swooshing through air and wind and water.

As the sailboat heeled and lifted and gathered speed from the wind in the sail, I felt part of the sailboat skimming just above the seawater, I felt close to the wind. The wide expanse of water in sun stretched away all around us.

“Hey, do you want to try the tiller too, then you’ll be sailing on your own?”

“Sure.”

He moved the tiller a bit toward me; hold onto it; feel the pressure? When you push the tiller toward the sail, you’re changing the angle of the bow of the boat into the wind and when you pull it back, you’re sailing closer to the wind and you’ll pick up more speed.”

“Oh, I can feel it.”

As we neared the long, tall bridge that towered above, the sea grew choppier. Beyond the bridge when we sailed out the hull dropped in a trough, then rose again with a swell. We kept sailing out on a good clip; the wind had taken us far past the bridge and out to sea. This small craft, as the wind filled the billowing sail, the curved sheet strained. Nothing ebbed; everything flowed, and we rose above the trough in bright sun, then the boat crashed down, and spray hit our brows and faces. We smiled and laughed, and Finn called out, “Woe!” as the spray cooled us.

As we continued to head out across the sea toward the northeast, he said, “We’re getting too far out; we’ve sailed out from the bay; we’re nearly in the ocean; we have to tack back.”

I heard a tremolo in his voice.

“We are in the ocean,” I assented.

“Hand me the tiller,” he commanded. “We need to tack again.”

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“OK, I’m ready.”

“Coming about,” he said, as he pulled the tiller back; the sail slammed toward us fast, and we both dove under the boom again.

“I think we just jibed; the wind shifted,” he said in a tremulous voice.

We sailed back toward the bridge, but the boat dropped in a deep grey trough again as the sea swells fell; it seemed ten feet of water towered grey green above us, the sea the curved green back of Grendel; then we rose again and sailed with speed, sea spray splashing our faces.

Finn turned so quiet, “We’ve got to get back inside the bay, closer to the inlet; we’ve sailed way too far out; we have to sail back toward the bridge,” he said.

He held the tiller and said, “You take the tiller and keep her straight; I’ll handle the mainsheet. I may need to hike out. If she heels up push the tiller toward the sail; if it starts to luff a little, pull the tiller back a bit. Hand me the main sheet.”

He let out more sheet and the sail billowed; we picked up pace; I could feel pressure on the tiller which I held tight in my right hand; then the sail luffed, and we slowed. Then the wind caught in the sail, and we heeled up again and sailed briskly, the water rushing under our hull as we sailed back toward the bridge.

As we sailed under the bridge for the second time a swell dropped us, then this green swell rose again and pushed us sideways, and the wind kicked up sending our starboard gunwale toward the broad white base below the bridge above. For a moment time stood still as the hard pale face of the broad bridge pylon approached. We sailed close; I pulled hard back on the tiller as he pulled the main sheet in taut and leaned way back, hiking out. The base of the broad white concrete pylon stood facing us just a foot from our gunwale. I could see a worried, stunned look on his face. We just cleared the grey-white pylon’s impassive face and sailed free just past it out under the brief shadow line of the bridge. I exhaled quietly after we cleared the base of the bridge which jutted out toward us. We sailed back out from the grey shadow cast by the bridge and into the sun.

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Finn was quiet for a while, then said, “See that dark shaded water rippling and chasing us beyond our stern? The wind is going to pick up again and even more.”

Soon the boat heeled again, and I eased the tiller back toward the sail as he eased out the sheet; in unison we sailed on, a perfect pair working as one in summer sun.

“We’re sailing close to the wind, close hauled, upwind,” Finn said.

He looked back toward the tall bridge, which even far off served as a sort of white mark, but now he saw something floating in the water.

“That’s my father’s tell-tail ribbon he stitched to the sail last summer.”

“Should we sail back for it?”

“No, just forget it; it’s too far away now; that’s a long way offshore.”

“It’s floating out beyond the bridge.”

“Out where we were!”

I saw the bright white bridge arcing far off in the distance, smaller, and left behind, yet still towering, its arms reaching over from the bridge’s shoulders over the sea between the mainland and the island.

I breathed in as the wind lifted us across the gleaming body of wide water.

(Daniel Picker)

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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: Ceinwen E Cariad Haydon Ceinwen E Cariad Haydon (MA, Creative Writing, Newcastle University, 2017) Ceinwen lives near Newcastle upon Tyne, UK and writes short stories and poetry. She is widely published in online magazines and in print anthologies. Her first chapbook is 'Cerddi Bach' [Little Poems], Hedgehog Press, July 2019. She is a Pushcart Prize and Forward Prize nominee. She is developing practice as a participatory arts facilitator and believes everyone’s voice counts.

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Bracing Air She walks, booted, over sand dunes, to the shore.

His words ricochet, clamour through her mind like pebbled coastal drummings. Stones suck and churn in undertows; she tries to find a foothold on rocks, slippery with seaweed and salt foam.

He said he wanted her to trust in him, believe against the testimony of her own senses.

She tried to bat away his half-truths and his lies, crazed by loyalty and love. Brine carried on northeasterlies, stings her shuttered eyes. Sight insists itself, refuses to be defied and she finds she cannot hide.

A crab walks sideways and oystercatchers scratch sounds across the sky. A dead seal decomposes, stinks reality into reluctant recesses in her mind.

Realigned, she decides to trust her injured mind, and put him to one side. She’ll survive, leaving him to sink or swim, live or die, in tides tugged by his own karma. At sea, Coquet Island lighthouse basks in winter sunlight. Cautiously, she plans for next Spring.

(Ceinwen E Cariad Haydon)

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.Water-lust in Time of Drought Under granite skies. I lie in wait, watch in vain, for drops of rain to break the drought.

Dove-grey clouds prompt thoughts of gentle drizzle, thunderstorms, sudden downpours to soften grit and dust. Earth needs to slake her thirst, she, like me, stakes her trust, misguidedly.

Temperatures soar, I can’t ignore this lesson – innate needs often press on unmet. At life’s end entitlement’s worth nothing.

Pride sweats away in rivulets: sticky nights follow arid days.

Green grass scorches, dies as dried-up turf.

(Ceinwen E Cariad Haydon)

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Space to Write My old armchair holds me like a hug, still my cold mind resists. Refuses to release my brain to play with words, ideas and phrases; let alone to write.

My hands, automatons, finger my phone, open news feeds, start doom-scrolling.

My eyes lock onto the screen, blink fast. My stomach churns. My nerves, it seems, are addicted to fear’s twin, adrenaline. Terror. Fight or flight: I’m paralysed. Powerless.

A scream.

Did it come from me? Detached from reality; I just don’t know.

I must have nodded off, spent; waking, I see a robin chick, pert and bright, sitting on my windowsill.

Our stares meet. I stay stock still for many moments.

Then, young thoughts seed, stir within the now, ready for relay. I look outwards. Centred here, freed, I’ll find a way to write today. Sun breaks, warms my old armchair, soothes my tense back.

(Ceinwen E Cariad Haydon)

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She Fails to Write at Winter’s Solstice Dawn-light breaks late, fades earlier each day, hibernation’s hours drug words in her mind.

She seeks for rafts of lines, to displace grey – long shadows throw gloom and darken frost’s rime.

Hibernation’s hours drug words in her mind, what starts as a song transmutes to a dirge.

Long shadows throw gloom and darken frost’s rime; distinctions, seen and imagined, converge.

What starts as a song transmutes to a dirge, rhymes and phrases drift in fog, lose their form.

Distinctions, seen and imagined, converge; She burns garbled drafts, to keep her hands warm.

Rhymes and phrases drift in fog, lose their form – take alien shapes and land faraway.

She burns garbled drafts, to keep her hands warm.

Dawn-light breaks late, fades earlier each day.

(Ceinwen E Cariad Haydon)

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Internal Contradictions I am in love with ideas of fairness, justice, loyalty and empathy. Talking the talk, but stumbling on the walk.

I am patient except when I am not the me I want to be.

I love reason, to listen and debate, to share what I have learnt over six and more decades.

I am a mule, unable to shift in line with interesting times.

I am misunderstood and I misunderstand damned blessings or blessed curses and how to resist temptations to say, Sure, I get it, when I don’t at all.

Daily, I am saved by evidence of absurdity and subsequent laughter. I love to share my bread and lend my ear. It’s receiving I find problematic.

I am guilt and anxiety personified – these barriers to connection hurt – yet I am appalled by excessive introspection (the trait that I exhibit).

So, some believe I’m kind 34

of easy-going, funny – they see me get it wrong and laugh and warm to see self-deprecation.

Inside, I hide how hard I work to swallow praise with grace and not to wallow in mires of deficits and shame.

And yet, against all odds, I find I’m capable of joy.

(Ceinwen E Cariad Haydon)

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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: Bob Eager Bob Eager has spent his time traveling back between Old Town Scottsdale in Arizona and Woodcrest in Riverside, California. He has published a creative exercise Practical Poetry Block book called Flipside of the Familiar as well as a Recovering Narcissist manifesto entitled Darkside Relapsing.

Jumping the Syringe is about confusion during recent COVID pandemic.

Bob Eager has been published in Oddball Magazine, Indiana Voice Journal, Adelaide Magazine and Stray Branch Literary.

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Jumping the Syringe

Jumping the Syringe?

Panic and anxiety more like fatigue sets in enough of this Madness and Quarantine..

Rush to vaccinate?

A slightly unsure Population; Restaurants and bars have been paying a hefty priceLivelihoods have been lost !

Uncertain future of feeding families, Jumpstart our funds...

Could this have long term consequences?

Long term side effects maybe?

Hold it to your head Russian Roulette needle Causes most to ponder: What choice is there bad or more bad?

Hohum It is still worth it!

(Bob Eager)

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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: GEORGE FREEK George Freek's poetry has recently appeared in "The Ottawa Arts Review"; "The Lake"; "Acumen"; "The Whimsical Poet"; "Triggerfish" and "Torrid Literature."

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WRITTEN IN THE DYING AFTERNOON (After Li Po)

An uneasy breeze strengthens with the dying sun.

As I walk the lake’s edge leaves fall silently at my feel.

Nature’s ways are dark and deep.

Like a mortician measuring for a pall, a raven circles above my head.

My thoughts are disconnected like the hands of a mutilated clock.

I walk like a man who is unable to find his home.

Waves moan, breaking against the shore’s stones.

That solitary raven is my lonely companion.

He won’t go away, and he won’t leave me alone.

(George Freek)

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I SEE A CRESCENT MOON (After Mei Yao Chen)

Tonight I see no stars.

The sky is inert.

The night is a closed door.

The moon is like a toothless whore.

In that moment between sleeping and waking, I feel as if my bed were shaking.

I hear a thunderclap like the earth was breaking.

I rise. I wash my teeth.

I comb my hair.

I stare in the mirror.

It’s as if no one is there.

Sixty is an age of dread, Our life hangs by a slowly unraveling thread.

I ask myself what I’ve done with my life, and I hurry back to my bed.

(George Freek)

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MIDNIGHT WITHOUT A MOON (After Li Shangyin)

How can I escape this place I’m in? The sun no longer shines on me. To the sun I’m less than a petrified tree.

And the moon is in hiding like a worm in a pear.

I wish I could tear that worm out.

But what for? I leave it there.

Beetles swarm around my feet.

When I step on them, they quiver in the dust.

Their death is indiscreet.

There’s life in this desert, but it is sullen and black.

And when I turn toward the sun, it remains at my back.

(George Freek)

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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: Saeed Salimi Babamiri Saeed Salimi Babamiri: Kurdish translator and poet. His published books in Iran are Kurdish translations of “Half an Apple” and “The Mouse's Wedding” a play and a story in verse, both for children. He has many other translations waiting to be published. His major long translation from Kurdish into English verse is “Mam and Zeen” by Ahmad Xanee. It is known as “Kurdish Romeo and Juliet” which is ready to be published.

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Law of the jungle

This world which I call cruel, With a settled general rule, In its jungle-like farms, In its very cold arms, It trains some snakes and some beasts, To suck subordinate’s blood at feasts!

Like a one-thousand-mouthed leech, They come to have a party each.

He who has a bit of power, Kills the poor in his tower!

This world for blood-suckers is a good place, Here a heart or some pity you never face.

Clock seconds are nasty nails go in coffins… …of the poor who have no sins!

Ears of hearts are two wings of a steel gate, They are closed to the cries from any unfortunate fate.

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Alas!

In a world full of pain and full of suffer, In a hell which has just horror to offer, The only thing human’s eyes are open to, …is black gold and what its dollar can do!

And what man turns a blind eye to, …is the right any servitor has as true.

This world which I call cruel, With a settled general rule, In its jungle-like farms, In its very cold arms, It trains some snakes and some beasts, To suck subordinate’s blood at feasts!

Oh no!

Such a false claim can never go!

No jungle has such a wrong rule, No beast can be so much cruel.

Poem by: Amin Gardiglani, Kurdish poet.

Translator: Saeed Salimi Babamiri, Kurdish translator and poet.

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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: STRIDER MARCUS JONES Strider Marcus Jones – is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. A member of The Poetry Society, his five published books of poetry https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com/ reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms. He is also the founder, editor and publisher of Lothlorien Poetry Journal https://lothlorienpoetryjournal.blogspot.com/ His poetry has been published in the USA, Canada, Australia, England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, France, Spain, Germany; Serbia; India and Switzerland in numerous publications including: Dreich Magazine; The Racket Journal; Trouvaille Review; dyst Literary Journal; A New Ulster; Impspired Magazine; Literary Yard Journal; Piker Press; oppy Road Review; Cajun Mutt Press; Rusty Truck Magazine; Rye Whiskey Review; Deep Water Literary Journal; The Huffington Post USA; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine; Crack The Spine Literary Magazine; The Lampeter Review; Panoplyzine Poetry Magazine; Dissident Voice.

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CUBIST GHETTOS

I think To shrink The distance Of resistance Inside self To all else-

Knowing Showing Vulnerability In the mystery Leaves what is closed Openly exposed-

To explanation Under examination When there isn’t one That hasn’t gone Until roof floor and sky door Are no more-

Only roulette rubbles

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Of drone troubles Imprisoning Reasoning In cubist ghettos Wearing jazz stilettos-

Flashing flamingo legs To pink paradise harlem heads While new trees grow up mute And ripen with strange fruit Some whites too this time A drowned boy me and mine.

(Strider Marcus Jones)

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THE PORTAL IN THE WOODS

Seeing somnambulist sunrise Through open window Touch your face After love rides On moon tides In ebb and flow At tantric paceLove resides Tasted No asides Wasted Spices of the flesh Soaking rooms in Marrakesh How I ate your truffle in Zanzibar While you smoked my long cigar.

Back homeTribes of bloods And druids roam Seeking out the overgrown Portal in the woods

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Where we hondfast In this present of the past Dance chanting In stone bone circles Like ooparts Practicing Magical arts Settling What chaos hurtlesReconnecting rhythms In living and dead To those algorithms In natures head.

We are rusticRomantic In land and sky The air fire water To warriors who slaughter If Us or Them must die.

We wake For clambake Pleasure In a cauldron lake Of limbs together

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Then cut sods of peat From the bog under our feet Exposing the pasts That never last.

(Strider Marcus Jones)

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CLOUDS OF CHAOTIC CROWDS

SmittenBitten Like FaustusLeave the house dust With fool’s gold Unsold.

This conveyor belt lair A castle in the air For Dante’s dreams of doubt To wander about In, with voices that pretend To be a different friendOh my, what a frame, Too big to blame And beyond a simple say To save and staySo, close the dungeon door To be what you were before And walk away Into the clouds Of chaotic crowds Falling as rain On sterile plain.

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DARK DRAWN MAN

dark drawn man in two - legged sedan, Diogenes least the more i am. a worn down creaseopens like blotched butterfly wings, that drop in tokens on imaginingslost, but living through drought and giving.

dark drawn man of wiccan, glam rock and folkwho likes a smoke; hermit and ham, sometimes a dam for the waterfall of it allbohemian and gothic, romantic, hypnotic,

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un-photographic hates cam.

dark drawn man whose thought beats flam on sticks of words his focus and blurs without tricks of prussian blue and cadmium red the way Modigliani drew his mistress on his bed.

Sophocles was right! the darkest days, catch chinks of lightrunning out of Ram, but love is who i am.

(Strider Marcus Jones)

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DOES HER FAR BEAUTY KNOW

does her far beauty know where my thoughts go without her when i walk in lush rain lashing down-

squatting in enclosed fields of remote wheat and barley around told feudal cities and townsto talk to fate and how it feels to be emptied entirely of hopes sounds-

these evolutions fill rich men's purses and revolutions are poor universes that try to bend the unequal to be equal

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without end.

does her far beauty know where my thoughts go with her when i walk in lush rain lashing down-

soaked in moments come to this paradise and precipice belonging bonding thoughts serendipitous blowing into us-

gives shelter to the self of us and other elseunlike bare rooms we rent to leave behind when change moves us to fit into itwith only our echo and scent of passion and mind.

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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: JORGE LEVIA Jorge Leiva is from South Spain and lived in Ireland for over eight years. Some of his work has appeared in Skylight 47 Magazine, The Galway Advertiser, Drawn to the light press, Headstuff.org, Dodging the Rain, 2 Meter Review, Spilling Cocoa over Martin Amis and The Waxed Lemon. In 2019 he was long listed in the Over the Edge New Writer of the Year competition.

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Single Apartment Like in a doll house, everything is minimal around here.

Yet, large enough for spiders who refuse to share the rent.

A coffee maker that makes one cup at the time.

A chopping board where two carrots are multitude.

The sofa gets crowded when I sit on it.

Items clash with each other in delightful harmony.

The neighbour’s cat sneaks in, through the half opened window, only to run away when he sees me.

When the wind knocks not so gently at the door, I lose my sleep and think of a poem.

On occasions, I forget to lock the door unconsciously.

Hoping you’ll call in unannounced, inviting yourself for late supper.

(Jorge Leiva)

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Vacation Everything measured beforehand.

Our needs estimated in doses and small bottles.

We sleep in borrowed beds with white sheets and harder pillows than our own.

Every morning things are redone by sleight of hand.

Fresh towels folded, beds made without a wrinkle.

The piece of paper that had fallen to the floor the day before now back on the table.

Even the rain sounds different when you are away.

And the sun feels warmer though it’s the same sun.

Back to our apartment, Look! It has shrunk further.

The cracking floor board is still cracking The dripping sink tap keeps on dripping.

The unhinged door has lost another screw.

The wrapping on the floor has stubbornly decided to remain there.

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And the mouldy spot on the bathroom wall taking advantage of master’s absence has grown bigger.

(Jorge Leiva)

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Prayer Dear Lord, We thank you for the war.

For keeping it running, for giving us more.

Bless the acid rain, the fire and the smoke.

Bring us tear gas and the nuclear bomb.

May the rich have bread and the poor a Kalashnikov.

Let us inherit a kingdom of debris. with a cancerous cough.

Dear Lord, we implore, who are we fighting for?

Not that it matters as long as the economy grows.

This is the real nature, after all of the business of the war.

How far things can go till the machine stops?

Dear Lord, we ignore what is right or wrong.

Who is friend and who is foe.

For oh Lord you are a hard one to please, but we blindly believe It is only through the war we will find the peace.

(Jorge Leiva)

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EDITOR’S NOTE This month’s edition features a good range of poetry and prose from around the world a truly cosmopolitan edition. The age of advanced infrastructure and online presence means while our world is technically massive, we can scale it virtually and this is a good thing, Our markets have also expanded beyond domestic borders and we should all aim to be one massive community.

The past few years have been incredibly difficult for everyone what with Covid, travel restrictions, breakdown on transport and infrastructure and now war in Europe it has been stressful, especially we can only hope that a peaceful resolution is found to this crisis sooner rather than later.

I had considered not saying anything about it but I’ve friends working there who are teachers, who went from teaching their children about Math’s, Poetry and Literature to what to pack in the case of an emergency, how to read a map, what direction to travel in to cross the border lessons that most people wouldn’t ever imagine having to learn, yet here we are.

I never dreamt that when I came up with the idea of a literary journal in 2012 that we’d be this far in and this far reaching that’s not bad for someone with Dyscalculia.

Happy reading, good health, and keep creating, Amos Greig (Editor)

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LAPWING PUBLICATIONS ‘IN A CHANGED WORLD’ Over the past number of years technology has transformed poetry publishing: shop closures due to increasing operational costs has had an impact, to put it mildly, shops are releuctant to take ‘slow moving’ genre such as poetry and play-scripts among other minority interest genre.

The figures given a few years ago were: we had 5000 bookshops in the UK-Ireland and at the time of the research that number had dropped to 900 and falling: there was a period when bookshops had the highest rate of ‘High Street’ shop closures.

Lapwing, being a not-for-profit poetry publisher has likewise had to adjust to the new regime.

We had a Google-Books presence until that entity ended its ‘open door’ policy in favour of becoming a publisher itself. During that time with Google, Lapwing attracted hundreds of thousands of sample page ‘hits’.

Amazon also has changed the ‘game’ with its own policies and strategies for publishers and authors.

There are no doubt other on-line factors over which we have no control.

Poetry publishers can also fall foul of ‘on consignment’ practice, which means we supply a seller but don’t get paid until books have been sold and we can expect unsold books to be returned, thus ‘remaindered’ and maybe not sellable, years can pass!

Distributors can also seek as much as 51% of cover-price IF.they choose to handle a poetry book at all, shops too can require say 35% of the cover price, which is ok given floor space can be thousands of £0000s per square foot per annum..In terms of ‘hidden’ costs: preparing a work for publication can cost a few thousand UK £-stg. Lapwing does it as part of our sevice to our suthors.

It has been a well-known fact that many poets will sell more of their own work than the bookshops, Peter Finch of the Welsh Academi noted fact that over forty years ago and Lapwing poets have done so for years.

Due to cost factors Lapwing cannot offered authors ‘complimentary’ copies.

What we do offer is to supply authors with copies at cost price.

We hold very few copies in the knowledge that requests for hard copies are rarely received.

Another important element is our Lapwing Legacy Library which holds all our retained titles since 1988 in PDF at £4.00 per title: the format being ‘front cover page - full content pages - back cover page’.

This format is printable as single pages: either the whole book or a favourite page.

I thank Adam Rudden for the great work he has done over the years creating and managing this web-site.

Thanks also to our authors from ‘home’ and around the world for entrusting Lapwing with their valuable contributions to civilisation.

If you wish to seek publication please send you submission in MW Word docx format.

LAPWING PUBLICATIONS

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POETRY TITLES 2021 All titles are £10.00 stg. plus postage from the authors via their email address.

PDF versions are available from Lapwing at £4.00 a copy, they are printable for private, review and educational purposes.

9781838439804_Halperin Richard W. DALLOWAY IN WISCONSIN Mr.Halperin lives in Paris France Email: halperin8@wanadoo.fr 9781838439811_Halperin Richard W. SUMMER NIGHT 1948 9781838439859_Halperin Richard W. GIRL IN THE RED CAPE 9781838439828_Lennon Finbar NOW Mr Lennon lives in the Republic of Ireland Email: lennonfinbar@hotmail.com 9781838439835_Dillon Paul T WHISPER Mr Dillon lives in the Republic of Ireland Email: ptjdillon@gmail.com 9781838439842_ Brooks Richard WOOD FOR THE TREES Mr Brooks lives in England UK Email:richard.brooks3@btinternet.com 9781838439866_Garvey Alan IN THE WAKE OF HER LIGHT 9781838439873_McManus Kevin THE HAWTHORN TREE Mr McManus lives in the Republic of Ireland Email: kevinmcmanus1@hotmail.com 9781838439880_Dwan Berni ONLY LOOKIN’ Berni Dwan lives in the Republic of Ireland Email: bernidwan@gmail.com 9781838439897_Murbach Esther VIEW ASKEW Esther Murbach lives in Switzerland though she also spends time in Galway Email: esther.murbach@gmx.ch 9781916345751_McGrath Niall SHED Mr McGrath lives in County Antrim Northern Ireland, UK Email: mcgrath.niall@hotmail.com 9781916345775_Somerville-Large GILLIAN LAZY BEDS 9781916345782_Gohorry & Lane COVENTRY CRUCIBLE Mr Lane lives in England-UK and due to the recent death of Mr Gohorry Mr Lane will be the contact for this publication: Email: johnslane@btinternet.com

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