FlightsIssueSix
Flights Issue SeptemberSIX2022 Edited by Flight of the Dragonfly
Editors 2 September
A very warm welcome to the sixth issue of Flights e-Journal.
All the very best Darren J Beaney & Barbara Mercer 2022
IssueFlightsSix
Thank you to all of you who have submitted your work; we are very encouraged by the number of submissions and their sheer scope and quality.You will notice that we publish a great deal more poetry than prose or flash; this is not by design, we would love to receive more prose and flash so if you, or anyone else you know, has some to share, please get submitting. Prose doesn’t need to be fiction either; we’ll consider all well written prose from memoir to essay and beyond.
Since our last publication we have published Take Flight, an anthol ogy of the best of the first four issues of Flights e-Journal and have announced the launch of our own small press. Submissions for the small press are by invitation only and submitting to Flights e-Journal is a great way for your work to come to our attention. We have also had a rebrand and our new logo is featured here as the artwork for this issue of the journal. We think you will agree that our friend Matt Bemment did a fabulous job for us. We hope you enjoy reading issue number six and that you will be in spired to submit to issue seven which will be due in December.
All the way to Poundland and back John McCullough
CONTENTSPoetry
10
International man of mystery Jennie E Owen Rocket at the moon Jennie E Owen
13
15
The intermediate fish Andy Breckenridge 20
The clown service Jennie E Owen
The
Rehearsing the eremocene Matt Gilbert 31 Spalted wood Matt Gilbert 32 Pollarding Matt Gilbert 33 one, red block S Reeson 34 ... and you are...? S Reeson
The incredible shrinking man: A supplication Andy Breckenridge 21 rudiments of palmistry Andy Breckenridge 22
Dividing Berlin Alex Athan Kof 16 The hole Alex Athan Kof 17 War on marble Alex Athan Kof 19
On
11
Late night walks in the garden Charlotte Cosgrove 25
Rising flesh Charlotte Cosgrove 23 the balcony Charlotte Cosgrove 24
35
The cliché of red roses Liberty Price 26 Fortification Liberty Price 27 Backwaters Liberty Price 28 Nella Rose Gaynor Kane 29 Otters Gaynor Kane 30
The
CONTENTS And so it goes S Reeson 36 A new facility Bernard Pearson 37 Possibilities Edward Lee 38 Living, barely Edward Lee 39 Beyond Edward Lee 40 Absence Steve Brisendine 41 Time again Steve Brisendine 42 Entrance/entranced Steve Brisendine 43 The boy in his element John Grey 44 The Earth John Grey 45 Passerby John Grey 46 Nature soothes my soul W Roger Carlise 47 Silence W Roger Carlise 48 Life meeting life Pamela Hobart Carter 49 Reverberations Pamela Hobart Carter 50 Do you play an instrument? Pamela Hobart Carter 51 The poisoned bride Patricia Walsh 52 Recyclable Patricia Walsh 53 The generous gene Patricia Walsh 54 November Jason Ryberg 55 Help us help you Jason Ryberg 56 Climate change Jeff Gallagher 57 Mudussa lip Jeff Gallagher 58
CONTENTS You’re never alone with a Samsung Jeff Gallagher 59 Return visit John Short 61 High summer John Short 62 Doves John Short 63 Encore Heather Sager 64 Mudlarks Lisa Rea Currie 65 Hungry Lisa Rea Currie 66 Scattered Allegra Jostad Silberstein 67 A wish for softness Allegra Jostad Silberstein 68 Celestial body Özge Lena 69 A tale of two cities David Cattanach 70 Talking of boats David Cattanach 71 Holidays away David Cattanach 73 East Anglian sea driven changes through recent agesDeborah Bowkis 75 Gravity(as) Deborah Bowkis 76 Tough love Nigel Kent 77 Doctor of the broken heart Nigel Kent 78 Anniversary Nigel Kent 79 Prose The forest of glass Beate Sigriddaughter 81 “You’ve got his hands” James D Brewer 83 Submission guidlines 89
Poetry
John McCullough All the way to Poundland and back
At the café, small milk jugs on the shelf point in different directions, like ducks on a pond. A chainsaw taken to the elm outside is sobbing. It’s too much for the young plumber who pulls the zip up on his hoodie so it meets his nostrils. There was a tornado in his bathroom last night. He has no memory of it but this morning his toothbrush, scissors, razor lay scattered on tiles. A voice on the street is unforgiving. Don’t tell me about being fucking tired. I’ve walked all the way to Poundland and back. They’d run out of triceratops so I bought him a brachiosaur. Time for luxury breathing, thinks the server on their break. That app with a slow, calm voice: Inhale for 1, 2, 3, 4 and hold . . . We reuse oxygen breathed by dinosaurs, they think, the same molecules going round. They could do with a brachiosaur this week, a herbivore with a heart the size of a pick-up truck who’d lift them, legs dangling, to treetop height. And now exhale – 1, 2, 3, 4 . . . Good. They float again as one more human.
It’s OK, writes the beanie girl in her journal, to stay alive because it’s March and I want to see the next season of Doctor Who. Because the cold blue flames of my succulents would miss me and I want to play BlackPink tonight. On the verge, the triceratops hunter vapes, muscles loosening in her brow. A gust stirs thin branches, a lone crocus swaying. The season experiments with crumbs of colour, seeing how far it can go. 10
Stood like some odd couple, I curtsey blue wig to hassock – I’m working my “business” by honking the nose by twisting my kipper tie. The emcee recites our prayer and I repeat, nod at old “Rickets” spread thin in his tramp, at the back - worked Islington for 30 years.
Jennie E. Owen
“Chins,” appears slack at his side with her cockscomb wobbling jolly red, a tiny pink brolly cuts above her head.
The clown service
11
“Here we go again,” as Grimaldi would say “busting out,” or in, to the Holy Trinity. First grey February of the year and damp London’s asplash with ruffle collars, baggy pants, big shoes that rub and squeak one another like old friends. I’m all a-sweat under the full white face, the one that takes an hour to paint. So little call now for that, the artistry – the tradition.
As always, the audience travels. Small bread and butter faces and hands, giggles and pointing. One lip shakes uncertain and a baker’s dozen strain against the urge to fall ouroverfeet, squirt a flower, whilst producing piles of hankies from sleeves to create a smile, a snort. Then candles are lit against the lilt of Send in the clowns.
12
*Once a year Clown International hold a service at Holy Trinity Church, Dalston Lon don. This is to honour clowns who have passed on and remember Joseph Grimaldi.
Off and out we go, parade into town, one last show toward Camden, peeling away in ones and pairs and bunches. The drizzle adds a final sheen to motley and slap, faces flag and slip off as neat as a banana skin gag.
You were the Mr Benn living cartoon of our childhood usually abroad at some far away store, trying on the revolve-a-door disguises of a hundred different men. You’d return with scars, dangerous toys with glass eyes, secrets in briefcases. You were a veritable man from U.N.C.L.E, back then, one of the Monkeys, Rod Stewart, Freddie Mercury. At home we never knew who you’d be, we’d place bets with buttons and two penny pieces. Some days you’d be Indiana Jones, others James Bond (played by Roger Moore).You might be a sailor; a traveller, a navy man pulling coloured flags out of your sleeves, tapping morse code on the dining table with the tip of a pale fingernail.Perhaps you’d be a professor straight off BBC 2, with half-moon glasses and a pipe, (later gobbled by the thaw of a hungry snowman) Once, you were Acker Bilk although we all agreed you never quite pulled that off. You chameleon’d.
Jennie E Owen International man of mystery
13
Then one day, you encouraged us to try on costumes of our own a teacher, a poet, a painter, a leader a mother, a sister, a daughter. An artist of the miniature moss gardens found in empty outside pools, garnered with beech nuts, spun with stolen petals, sea glass letters snail trail sentences. You taught me about the power of fake moustaches, the changequick-handedofahat.
14
Who cares about the gauzy ball, shivering in its dawn taffeta; it’s all too obvious negligee. Not leastfindwhobillionaires,atbest,itblocks out their pointillist star views, their satellite dot dot dashes. They might argue it hangs, only fodder now for fallen song writers and poets (pity us) or, a spectacle for the last young lovers, when they look up confused and rare from their phones. (No cheese even, up there)
It may stir the tide, rock the last old fishermen to sleep, encased in creaking timber, but who are we, the past to stand in the way of better Wifi?
15
We’ll line up (virtually of course) to buy tickets, ordering telescopes and binoculars, Pulling our infants onto our shoulders to peek through 3D glasses, through screens and phones. The explosion (not to be missed) will be fact replayedchecked relayed on tik-tok youtube,theRemoved.Re-enacted.Redacted.Evenrightstothis,aretheirsalone.
Jennie E Owen Rocket at the moon
16
Alex Athan Kof Dividing Berlin
‘Has Berlin ever been mean to you, man?’ said the smart boy. ‘Well, know this, what a glass is for a pool, localism is for nationalism.’ Insightful little devil, I had to admit.
Over the past five years or so, people around Europe been telling me that Athens is the new Berlin. And I been saying ‘No, bye.’
And then a smart boy told me, ‘Come on, grumpy. Why so salty? Relax! This is no graffiti contest.’ And I said, ‘Well, if it were a graffiti contest, we would admire the Lon doners using silver Montanas for their throw-ups, while los Madrileños would paint funkier, vibrant colours. Then we would both thank a vandal universe of heterogenous styles -not mannerismsfor this holy diversity. Why should my city be defined by your city’s throw-ups? I don’t think Theseus and 2.5k years of history would approve of this.’
Alex Athan Kof The Hole I saw the greatest minds of my generation destroyed by the 40hour-week, slithering towards the office, swollen wrists of tendonitis, aching 90th degree spines, blue-blood daughters of white-collar genealogies, pale-eyed sons of insomnia and whoXanax,left their siblings’ wedding parties before they were over, to rush back home, save their bristles and sleep for a short hour, so that they present themselves as decent and productive for whowork,hid their Black Flag tattoos and their past in autonomy under Vardas suits and gaudy, golden cufflinks, who covered abortions with designer shrouds and suicide attempts under bracelet-handcuffs, who argued with their cyborg spouses about whether SEGA or Nintendo would make the better nanny for their new-born whoandroid,quietly sobbed in fetal position over a lost promotion, partly covered in hyacinth-scented essential oils in four-leggedwhobathtubs,believed in trickle-down economics, monotheistic male divinity and the theory of the two extremes, even though they should have known better, damn, who lived a year of winter and ten days of summer and experienced no climate change between the transient seasons, 17
who spent their BAs in pot ramen and their MAs in overboiled pasta, trying to catch the deadline of fine dining in their Michelin forties, who paid three months of rent in front, as a mortgage of trust and respect to the landlordman who will overcharge them for pre-existing damages at the end of their contract, who sometimes blankly stare at their computer screen, vacant eyed workplace-sleepers, trying to grasp onto a beautiful moment of paused nothingness, who have competitive CVs, drive sunroof SUVs, share concrete STDs, watching a POV of themselves working harder in VR. Bollocks! The kicks and the checks, the brekkies and the shakies. Bollocks! The filthy lavatories and the lonesome slums. Johns and Maries of this world! I’m with you in Tiredsville. Copywriting and copyrighting, content puking, where poets get hired as social-media executives. I’m with you in Laptopland. In plastico! 18
See this Doric column?
It was ordered by an ambitious politician, dedicated to a wise goddess, designed by a skilled architect, built by a punctual slave, butchered by a hate-filled Christian, stolen by a prolific art smuggler, displayed in a showcase, innit?
Another name with his pollutes my shrine’ 1.
1 Lord Byron, ‘The Curse of Minerva’, in Lord Elgin and the Marbles, by William St. Clair (Oxford:Oxford University Press, 1983), p. 261.
Alex Athan Kof War on Marble
19
‘Yet still the gods are just, and crimes are cross’d See here what Elgin won, and what he lost!
Andy Breckenridge The Intermediate Fish We manoeuvred the tank up the stairs to our student flat, set up the pump added water, gravel, a light then the cast. Action. The Siamese fighting fish was a billow of blood. A slew of tetras, transparent extras but for the red and blue neon strips borrowed from the kebab shop’s ‘Open’ sign. A gourami, plain as a dud coin. We called him ‘Intermediate’ and waited for him to develop into something sharper, more colourful, but he remained full of character. The pump whirred all night, the lit tank competed with videos on the screen beside it; Rumble Fish, Betty Blue, Taxi Driver, The Duellists. In time, it was emptied, used to store books and photographs when you moved out. Years later, I remembered the giant circular aquarium in the Sea Life Centre, and a shoal of silver herring spooling round and round, while I followed the direction of the arrows on the floor in IKEA.
20
Pull your bones apart some. I insist and hold your head up, don’t just disappear. Blow those toxins out, disperse this mist, reverse it so you needn’t shrink and list.
The cat is now a giant, hear him hiss and scrabble at the doll’s house where you shelter and rue your breathing in of time’s cold mist. Your body’s lost its snap; please get a grip. Can’t someone pull some strings to lift you higher and halt the force that makes you shrink and list?
The Incredible Shrinking Man: A Supplication
Andy Breckenridge
‘The unbelievably small and the unbelievably vast eventually meet, like the closing of a gigantic circle. I looked up, as if somehow I would grasp the heavens, the universe, worlds beyond number.’ Scott Carey, pesticide inhaling protagonist of 1957 movie, The Incredible Shrinking Man. Why did you inhale those toxins from the mist that let your vertebrae settle year on year?
Admit the gravity that makes you shrink and list?
The elastic at your core slackens and untwists the gap between the sky and your white hair grows, from breathing in some toxins in a mist.
Won’t you fight this fall in altitude, resist the slump of shoulder blades towards the earth, refuse the gravity that makes you shrink and list?
21
22
He presses his palms against the glass and sees the imprint of his heart, head and life lines mapped out in translucent smudges; she covers them over with hers to quiet applause. They fold, wrinkle like sandpaper, cup to weigh up the colours of stones. Shopping bags dig deep gutters on cold, wet Saturdays. She catches him falling backwards again and he slaps his forehead for the times he let her Theirfall. palms press on each others’ sacral dips, two bodies vacuum packed as one.
Andy Breckenridge The Rudiments of Palmistry a haibun
Charlotte Cosgrove Rising flesh I opened my eyes as it pricked my lipA needle in a juicy haystack. My phone was ringing. What for, no one can remember. With that jolt I asked them to stop, Not to put the metal in. I left nearly the same as I went in Except for a Lilliputian sized dot of a hole Upon my face. But actually this is not how it went. In truth I left with a piercing Through my lower lip. It was penetrated, regardless of the ringing, Through gristle. Later, I put a ring through Like a wedding band that married The in to the out. One day I bit down, too hard. The circular gold puncturing into Fatty flesh that swelled Until it folded around, eclipsing the goldRising like yeast to dough. Sometimes we don’t know a warning is a warning Until it is too late.
23
From the balcony I see you - Peek-a-Boo
24
You’re not there. I know that really. But I think that man with that jacket could be you.
And then search the streets below with my gaze
Maybe you walked into that coffee shop on the cornerRight now they’re serving you. You’re getting out your wallet
The one that used to hold my photograph. And as I’m standing on the balcony thinking this now Will you rub your finger, ever so delicately, Across the clear pouch where my face used to smile up at you And remember.
Charlotte Cosgrove On the balcony
Or I think I do, or I want to. I close my eyes, breathe in (Like they do in the movies)
Where the trees and bushes have overgrown, I ignore the sides, fenced up, fenced in. I want to keep walking away, Keep going beyond.
I have a habit Of unlocking the back door late at night
Walking barefoot Letting the grass soften under my skin. He always shouts me back in from the window. But I can drown him out now, I’ve had practice. I look straight ahead in the soft darkness
Charlotte Cosgrove Late night walks in the garden
25
26
In which you are a bouquet of red roses: Trimmed so no thorns mar her hands.
Liberty Price The Cliché of Red Roses
You’re in the desperate clutches of a woman Who’s never held stems as tightly before –And never wants to again, since When they wither and dry and curl at the edges, It will hurt as much as appendicitis. She will howl until you’re removed Under the guise of betterment… And her surgery scar? WillThat Longerremainthan your scent.
Liberty Price Fortification
When I found it, the mildew Had already pervaded The wooden beams of the thing, Turning the walls fuzzy with moss. It was an old playhouse, or a hideout, Or a castle, or a kitchen –Whatever it was belonged to the woods now. A ragged old flag, Presumedly once blue Had surrendered almost completely, but still flapped. The ladder had broken in three places, And the windows were dark with grime –But the faraway cries of pirates and cowboys Echoes through the rafters.
27
She loves you especially if The burnt edges of your surprise breakfast Fill the kitchen with smoke and Your throat gets scratched by cat claws Of cloying crumbs that catch: She loves you when the bath She ran for you and filled with soap Is too hot and too full and Too bubbly and too fragrant And too unwelcoming.
She loves you even if she Overfills the hot water bottle, Sending scalding droplets Directly washing over your sensitive fingertips, And the smell of warm rubber coats everything –
Liberty Price Backwaters
28
29
Gaynor Kane Nella Rose
She’s looking ahead, down Market Street, and all she sees are walking palms in a dessert and what she wants is to be a resurrection plant, always thirsty, primitive, desiccated, but still alive. All these flowers that dissolve in the rain— around every corner is a threat: of lust, of love, of hate. She wishes for a mate; someone made of clouds. At the top of Mount Temptation, she would kiss his misty lips, hydrate herself with just one long hug, unfurl her mossy tendrils, bright and green and fresh; once more a rose in Jericho.
30
Gaynor Kane Otters In the lilo dip of a decade-old mattress, gliding, dozing off; the rumble of rhythmic snores like poolside chatter. I’m sandman caught, soaring, whirling now to fall furiously, a bolt back to berth. Hypnic jerk and ghostly impact leaves me awake and frightened. He does not wake, but even in his sleep can sense my distress. He reaches out and holds my hand and then we are floating away, otters drifting downstream, with their little paws linked for fear of separation. He leaves briefly to return with a pebble to stave winter hunger—blue-grey, white veined and heart-shaped. I gnaw on it as the sounds of another world creep in, the beeps, whirr of engines, a maintenance crew carrying out checks. Prising my hand from his, I smooth his whiskers, wake him gently to roll on his back and wriggle a scratch. Later, walking alone along the towpath, watching white egret and long-legged heron fishing, I catch a flash of bronze fur ripple the river. Hand in pocket, I hold his heart.
Too early for the school run, I went the long way round, via an accidental field, hemmed between two housing blocks, where by the bins, a mangy fox was heckled by a pair of ink-sketch crows, tetchily intent on never sharing the dappled promise of a small round patch of sun
Matt Gilbert Rehearsing the eremocene
31
I arrived and all the other creatures turned, gave me the wild cold-shoulder, quit the scene together, with a knowing roll of eyes, leaving me to face the longest lonely, at least till three o’ clock, when I’d be relieved by a tumble of screeching children, frothing out of iron gates, like liquid from a shaken can, then briefly re-united, with a single still small hand.
Matt Gilbert Spalted wood Had to take it, didn’t I? Have it, remove that slice of tree heart, revealed when clearing space for light in the woods, blood-red stripe shining through the middle, wordless seaside rock.
Back home, I flashed my trophy, earning praise for craft I’d had no part in, shelved my wooden lump, leaving it to sit unvarnished, as the bright colour faded, dulled to pink, until almost unremarkable.
Strange to find such beauty, born of fighting fungi, ascomycetes, or unsexed imperfecti, dyeing the insides with lines of pigment, expanding as they battle over territory, unseen, until the tree dies, or is cut open.
32
Matt Gilbert Pollarding These surgeons do not wear white gowns or aprons, hair tied back, their patients will not be anaesthetised, standing tall through all incisions, signalled with mechanic roars, preludes for the buzz, whine, thump, to come, as bark skin, sapwood, heartwood, feel the bite of metal teeth, gnawing on over-reaching limbs, scraping passing buses, or threatening to snap, to slap a dog, or one of us, back into the ground - yet high regard is there, beneath hard hats and headsets, lofty departing branches caressed by dangled legs, before the cutter brings them down, like patting a broken horse before a shot, admitting sentience through touch, as the violence of the noise becomes the act: a shout, a keening, released to confess the size of sacrifice, from each shorn tree, each street-bound concrete forest soul, brought before the knife.
33
six seconds before, all of this glorious block puzzle, memories of green stacked in threes, built in opposition piled so that this time it was impossible to bring the structure down, is toast, as Critical finds one, red block, tugging pushing, forcing fucker out, because why should they be allowed to live in peace have, eat nice things or even just exist when no-one else must build as well as everythem time they hide a block, somebody comes with roasts and ignorance before attempt is made to feed them to the mob all they want, quiet moments of aplomb not idiots to stand, abuse, then bomb bored now, Critical pockets the block walks away, and so begins a tower’s slow, considered reconstruction, hoping as the fight is one meal lighter it might stay, remain intact with calm… or simply left alone
The one, red block dust settles, over carnage, as a protagonist weeps, without a sound, just the water: tears the size of petit-pois, pooling round their ankles, barefoot yet bound every contradiction of an unsound mindtwenty
34
S Reeson
Sometimes, lucky draw, protagonist first up, whilst everyone’s still sober might pay some attention to your cause: except, of course, the folk they’d like to notice are still there, propping up the bar, waiting for their mate, the headliner.
In time, every performance becomes test less about what they consider fine and more around exhaling validation: other poets smile, assure it’s coming that moment soon to celebrate and shine; protagonist waits, still, without a rhyme.
S Reeson ...and you are...?
The silence in this Zoom room chat so deafening, it is time to check making sure connection has not dropped: perhaps it was stupendously amazing that clearly is the reason no-one ‘spoke’, whole room summarily stunned into shock.
35
TERFdeviationwill call me rude because of the acceptance that nothing here must aggravate already Different situation or else all hands are lost and so it went as the bank was broken my punctuation was the first thing spent
36
S Reeson And so it goes considered rude because of a refusal to engage within the rules when those were made by her own kind and none of them provide opportunity to stack a deck in any manner but to benefit those who made the cards and so it goes every moment where a pattern shows even the faintest
37 Bernard Pearson A new facility I’ve noticed that When I close my eyes The lids have become thinner Like paper walls In a tea house I often now See two worlds one still in shadow, an under study If you will.
Not all the stories begun when I was born are still being told, but some are, some still are; that is why I can still rise in the morning, the endings still unknowable, everything, almost, still possible.
38
Edward Lee Possibilities
39 Edward Lee Living, barely In a dream my skin wasIayouofaaandoftheWhenandexposingmelted,wetorgansdrybones.Iwokebedwasanoceanfailedflesh,youweregone,noteonyourdrypillowconfessionthedeceithadmademepartof,andthenameknewyoubynotyourown.
Edward Lee Beyond She washed her hair in the moisture present in the air, and danced to the music of stars colliding in distances beyond sight. I almost had the chance to love her, but failed in some way I did not entirely understand, her heart speaking in languages I could not grasp, though the words were decipherable, the emotions recognizable. Decades have passed since I last saw her, a distance of time more felt than seen, and I wonder where I fit in her memory, if I fit anywhere at all, this man who wished to love her but could not, for reasons he still cannot understand.
40
Steve Brisendine Absence wild wingshearingIpointsas(Idaybutcockbirdsamongstrawberriesclover;come,land,headsandfeedthisisonemorewithoutbeesdreadedthemachild,pastallofpain–nowsit,wait,broodoveronlyfeatheredaroundme) 41
42
Steve Brisendine Time again Three years since your last breath, and still I hear echoes of the word gone, of the silence after.
Steve Brisendine entrance/entranced a
fromslippingofsuddennessfullmoonbehind high Seleneclouds; downsleep,Endymion,beguiled(andasideherlatebeautifullyfashionablycomesandtonight,silversetforgoldIamtootoplayfeigndrawhertome)
43
44
All the time in the world existed back then, in a field of white clover, or a forest, so dense, it could make me believe that the sun was the moon. Air drunk on wild fruit, I could escape to a rock at the edge of a pond, toss my shoes to one side, dip ten toes in blue resin.
John Grey The boy in his element
All the time in the world laid claim to my birthplace, the slow beat of summer, and a garden half-way wild. It was there in the grass-tips, in the stalks, in the lilies. It didn’t require an intelligent face.
I’d rather live on a planet that made more sense. But, without my knowledge, sperm fertilized an egg in the ampulla of a fallopian tube. After that, my choices were limited.
John Grey The Earth
45
The flat is round. And the still is moving.
What begins as astronomy ends up as skewed perspective.
John Grey Passerby You do not live here. You know nothing about what goes on.
You’ve never lain on the lawn. Nor rubbed the bark of the trees. You’ve never heard my father say “yes” or “no” to anything. Or found my mother sobbing or totally mute or chuckling to herself.
I’ve done it myself all these years, without a thought of abdicating. You can only guess at how soft my pillow is, or the color of the rugs in the living room. But guessing is what strangers do, people walking by, who might spy someone or something but go no further, who, if they make connection, do it only with themselves, as a fillip for the moment, as a mystery to me.
You’re ignorant of everything this side of the gate, the front door. You haven’t sat behind the wheel of the car pretending you could drive it. When did you ever sweep the stairs or play toy ferries in the bathtub, or hear the humming of the wind through the busted attic slats?
And you haven’t lived my life. You couldn’t.
When I opened the door
I found the trees whispering among themselves in a harmonious rhythm, saw branches bowing to one another, smelled pheromones signaling danger, heard roots reaching and crackling underground. My abrupt entrance made them hush their emerald breaths, the way a homeless man disrupts a church service, everyone acting as if they were in a superior tribe, as if the sermon had ended just before he arrived.
Next time I’ll move like a cautious sunbeam, open the door by inches, stand silently in awe, listen.
W Roger Carlisle Nature soothes my soul
47
I love the glimpse I had of their natural caring spirits, the electricity I felt in their wise community, the silent sound of their shared energy.
48
Bewilderment engulfed our words, discontent became permanent, the marriage approached death or years of painful growth.
W Roger Carlisle Silence
We sat in stony silence in the restaurant, unable to find words for darkness, conflict, and arguments we were living in. Not even the weather was discussed. Our exchanges came from rivers of dreams from different sources, no sharing of feelings, just angry repetitions of our unimaginative lives. We drifted apart slowly, over time, in a snowballing pattern of blame. Each focused on what the other one was doing wrong, justifying our own ways of doing things.
Actually, we had great wealth buried in our longing and need; we began a new journey by going inside, finding separate Selves, grieving vast continents of loss.
49
Pamela Hobart Carter Life meeting life
Before them, briefly, an insect—winged, enormous, noisy—hovers in their faces, reminds them of prehistoric dragonflies that spanned two feet, recorded in Carboniferous-era coal.
Years after, when the child works, say, at Microsoft as a software engineer, they remember the encounter as a suspension of ordinary time, an intersection with truth. Life meeting life.
How is it she—let’s just accept the parent is a mother, the child, a man now— is tearless, sun heating her back, as their sweet dog, deaf to the mail carrier, rests his unmoving head against the iron table leg during the phone call to bring the animal doctor who will end the sweet dog’s life? Why, in the sweet dog’s last hours, isn’t she lying beside him, encircling him in her arms, wetting his fur with her crying? She is now. She is now beside him on the floor. In a text she tells her son, We are saying goodbye at noon, and he writes back, He is a good dog, say goodbye for me. She does. And she kisses his soft fur head.
The father with his daughter—or maybe it’s a woman with her son— stop in their rain forest walk, say, in Costa Rica, at this buzzing blocking their way. Glad for a corroborating witness, more for self-belief than for recounting later, the parent’s eyes meet the child’s when the creature leaves them in the silent moist heat.
Pamela Hobart Carter Reverberations
Yesterday, kyanite blue and black, a Leviathan — at least five inches long — flew over the rail, buzzed and bumped and bumped against the balcony glass before escaping again while I spoke on the phone to Aunt Bee who had just told me about her resident snapping turtle, her morning’s hawk sighting, the new legs on her pool’s pollywogs. The reverberation of her voice in my life since my tadpole days, in my body’s smallest bones, amplifies our history of love, our longing to catalog wonders we witness, to make her imagination mine, to make mine hers. Of course, I tell her of the dragonfly, and the dragonfly buzzes permanently into her own intimate experience.
50
With my fingers, my self quavers suspended chords. 51
Pamela Hobart Carter Do you play an instrument?
I am jealous of the syrinx, the ability / to sing two notes at once, / to harmonize with the self. Rebecca Hart Olander, “Avian Envy” from Hedge Apple I take piano lessons to scare myself and I am scared of the music today, also jealous of the 12-year-old at the recital, the girl who sits so straight on her bench and smiles through everything. Syrinx pleaded with the river nymphs to assist her escape. Their ability limited, they transposed her from flesh to reed— no longer fleet. But they let her sing like two women—or a choir, even— in synchronous notes when winds visit at water’s edge. Her rhizomes journey through damp mud, once rock, carried from upstream. To Pan, who stalked her, her hollowness a gift, to harmonize with breezes in nearby thickets, with mountain gusts. The Bach, does it only look tough?
Working into disturbances, feeling pretty good Scribbling at night to uncover the righteous flaw.
Patricia Walsh
The catchcry of failure blaming others.
The poisoned bride Reciting the riot act, its first step backwards
Philosophical retirement won’t do a disservice
Crying out the emperor, rolling in the fresh Loving where none right, rummaging in malice
Longing for deliverance, meted all year round Corrosive dissention rises above the acrostic Stalling at preference, marriage co-starred
Needing feelings too, or at least, some sentiment Fighting for a full name is certainly not the answer
Rummaging into debt a time rescinded
The impression of punishment lingers fine Rotted in money, the keepsakes infernal Occupation in hearsay, having heard enough
Rubbed in till it bleeds, ambidextrous argument Holding the nerve until absent notice Wanting too much, resigned to the shelf.
The next violin swings on its hallowed hours Music for the denouement, a cause less likely.
52
Aborting for convenience a whistled right Feelings on both sides unwon, defeated.
The blinded pantomime, growing into a better shape Parking the likelihood of a matrimonial disease
More plastic than fish a scourged reality Minding nets, waiting for the Lord to assuage them None being indispensable, got up and left A rock on the church to stand on gracefully
Revealed by the gift, you strain at intellect Slipping through frosted windows from the outside Desperate hours covering a multitude of sins.
Not able to, screeching the brakes supreme
Patricia Walsh Recyclable
The bated anticipation goes forth like a lamb. Growing into spite the innumerable cashier
Looking back not fit for glory, as advised.
The employed self-esteem runs foul of tenacity
The average bolt-hole on a capsized entity.
The solemn sunlight courses through wind-ups
53
Wanting to be caught out, not helping itself
Where the next meal is coming from, cannibalised for food
Gotten away to the bitter end, joyously sick, The unnerved flirting over extreme drinks
Looking out for signs, close cousin of information
The pet-name riots through speed and efficiency
Stripped of this privilege, fitting in obscurity
The settled matter relieved of its costly duties
The world is already on fire, solitarily said A song for the deaf in an attentive episode
54
What to give for another leeway! This substance abuse, Flying in your own hands above a universal slob, To cease and desist from the potential snowflakes
Lies and conjectures roving through desertion Falling in hate a growth more than cancer burns Not returning ever, evermore aged and foolish.
Growing in stately fear, a port in a storm Home truths of hell measuring precious deeds Expelled at midnight through the wedding feast.
This mark is good for you, like it or otherwise Picking ou husband’s on a father’s free will, The essential bowing down to the break of dusk
A place for the self-absorbed, true, it is, Right time for repentance, paying through the nose,
The hungry minion basis in its own cold
Patricia Walsh
Cracked for marrow, siphoning the bone
Hitting gibes at the less fortunate, a date sealed.
The generous gene Not always writing, at the end of a smart phone
Inferno in a heart wiping out transgression.
Rippling through good, the stately mansions bleating Gone through sarcasm in a classroom brawl
Future queens of content, poisoning conversation
Crying out scandal, at least before time
Cutting through silk, mumbling on the quiet.
Hijacking the email at a diffident time
55
Jason Ryberg November Though not the first or last in the order of the circular march of the musical chairs of the months, through the slowly whirling carousel of the seasons, still, November just may be the oldest of them all, with the most dense and complicated lineage, the most pure but most ofmisinterpretedmotivations and the deepest, most valid reasons to drink too much whiskey and sing the blues late into the night.
56
Jason Ryberg Help us help you
A wish that grew from egg to tadpole to bird to the story behind the bigger story with the opposable thumbs and opposing truths, and all the lights on in its caves like a hive where even your phone or a very old map won’t help you locate a clue or footnote, even, concerning what you may have done or not done to help us help you to decipher the dreams that you say -quote- “you barely remember dreaming.”
57
It was strange weather for the time of year. There was no chance to store provisions for the winter Or make good repairs for the short cold days. There were pallid grey clouds hiding the sun. A warm wind shook the rhododendron bushes.
Darkness fell and we thought it was time to sleep. Then the earth seemed to uproot itself Vomiting gravel and worms and dead roots And everything we had carefully planted. Weeds flew by their coat tails on lifted clods Landing clumsily, randomly, like overfed magpies. We patrolled our familiar boundaries, mad sentries Besieged on all sides by the sky’s artillery.
After the storm came the unfamiliar rumble Of deep-throated birdsong and the distant glow Of something erupting on a far horizon. We hurried to a temporary shelter, and waited.
Jeff Gallagher Climate change
Later the sun emerged from behind a new mountain. Then we saw the Virgin in a yellow shroud, With head bowed, speaking into her heart.
58
Jeff Gallagher Medusa lip It rested like a tear upon the rim Of your sour frown, a blank grey eye observing A kingdom of fools: those who sought to win Your cold hand, but found themselves deserving Only your spite, your icy gaze, each word A laser aimed at every so-called friend. Then something froze in you, and nothing stirred Except your eyes that willed our lives to end. Now, in your stroke-bound silent cave, you wait For demigod or hero to arrive And break the spell, releasing all the hate And jealousy that keeps your heart alive. I see your old mute features full of fear. But rest in peace.Your Perseus is here.
You’re
59
This is the guy in the next cell one of your captive audience speaking from within the walls where he has recently retired to spend some time in solitary where the south wall pounds to the generator throbbing and banshee thrash of guitars caressed by those giant lovers towering over the crowds and the orient streams images of a photoshopped sunrise red lava tumbling to the edge of my outstretched feet and oceans impossibly blue to the north I can see pictures beamed live from galaxies thirteen billion years old sitting at my right hand to be snuffed out by the remote as big bang and hand of god are seen in slow motion loops while the lava becomes an ice rink for murder victims resurrected as applicants for equity release
Jeff Gallagher never alone with a Samsung
60
I mute the tattooed inarticulate footballers and the pop stars with their post car crash makeovers as zombies in suits are misquoted by comically inaccurate subtitles
I can blind hare-lipped children and fill their faces with flies or with a drone’s precision take out a terrorist or land a ball in the beer of a random sports fan and soon I will be my own host on a virtual desert island or advertise myself for myself with every tech tonic around me personalised to fit my environment
I look to the west to a brand new innovation in home entertainment beyond these walls to an old world waiting for me to decide what I should do with it
61 John Short Return visit Lagos
The more exists of things, importance seems diminished. So, when you disappear into that vastness from whence you came it will be hard to contemplate your lack of value there. Numerous as forest leaves, the city heaving with a mass of uncharted souls, now you, a leaf on the forest floor; an ear of wheat in a field but in my tiny scrap of universe always and forever a jewel.
John Short High summer Gascony Faceless dots on maps upon closer inspection reveal bridges, houses, churches. Road signs suggest other places but it’s high summer and the crop needs a hand. Midnight café, cicada chorus unexpected friendships, a one-armed war veteran pedalling old lanes at dawn, the chance discovery: fresh bread and chocolate as elements to combine and how random dots on maps, at first of no significance, create allegiances over time, compel a life off course until one day the paths unchosen might return as speculation.
62
63
John Short Doves
The dove looks alarmed as its mate goes flying off the sideboard’s edge when you fling a door. Forty years, same place, you used to tell me how instalments ensured the pair were yours. Now you sit in this pool of senseless oblivion and don’t even shed a tear as I brush up fragments, dream miraculous repairs like those lost vases jigsaw-pieced to live again impossibly from earth.
64
Heather Sager Encore The thief sets foot at my door, he runs and skips on the front lawn. A paper dragon curls in the corner. A rubber ball lies buried in tall grass. Clouds race in blue sky over the worn fence. A spectral being chases the horizon over an infinite, rolling landscape. You sprint ahead. Play whilegames,inthe spectroscope of your mind making movies. Now the clock shifts and ticks, the indoors here eerily calm. Yet your world is grand as a vast cartouche full of puffing dragon clouds.
The creeping waves return to reclaim the undiscovered, scouring precious patterns paler with sand and salt.
Lisa Rea Currie
Plucked from between rocks, shells and the seaweed, that makes us all wary of what else lies hidden.
The delicate pink and red flowers on the tiny shard of long-lost best china.
More prizes uncovered: a glass bottle, almost perfect, shells with unexpected colours.
Mudlarks
Gathered into a backpack, nestled among a flask of half-drunk tea and just-in-case sunscreen.
I cast my expert eye over unearthed treasure. ‘What a great find, it looks old!’
65
Pushing us higher onto the rocks, towards home where our hoard will nestle in bed-side boxes of childhood joy.
The1878cart rattles by the front door carrying milk she can’t afford. Hunger drowned out by children playing on the cobbles. She pours day old madness from the tea pot. Closing her eyes by the cold hearth, when she wakes it will be Friday. She1995tries not to look too long, taunted by the full-length mirror. Breathing in flattens her stomach, hip bones jut painfully against jeans that cost the earth. Three more pounds will make the difference. Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels. There2022 is one packet left in the cupboard, not enough to split between two children. She could cook from scratch, she could earn more, shop
Shebudgetsmarter,better.wouldstill be hungry.
66
Lisa Rea Currie Hungry
67
Allegra Jostad Silberstein
Scattered Brothers and sisters farm to midwestcitytoeast, to west~ spider threads on the autumn breeze. Family and friends here and around the globe heart-gardens holding them~ wild lupins and poppies color spring. Fallen brushedleavesbythe wind into crevices and crannies~ wanderers far from home. Poems scattered in my unknowing wait for their spelling~ words lost, the search goes on.
Night mist does not close off a full moon~ light reflected in a large circle above trees that sketch the sky with dark ink. Footnotes carry me in inches of time to you. In my rooted heaviness I hear your voice ~ chance the memory of hands recording passage in this night. There was a period after your name in the last letter you wrote. Evening sunset turns reflects in the eastern sky This is not a memorial chant about the ache of loss ~ rather a remembrance and wish for softness for one who found this life too hard.
Allegra Jostad Silberstein A wish for softness
68
Özge Lena Celestial body what I want is a whole galaxy a whole galaxy of sleek sentences itonda, yildun, sleek sentences sizzling in the airscape the scape goat I’m of your leaving veritate, ankaa, your leaving splits open my tongue my tongue begging for a drop lerna, belenos, a drop of white ink white ink fills in your mouth dziban, mira, your mouth watering loneliness loneliness of counting black birds taika, canopus, black birds on the windowsill tapping tapping to catch my breath flegetonte, vega, my breath flowers on the frosty glass frosty glass wearing the galaxy horna, polaris, the galaxy that I kissed to name to name after luscious stars sirius, capella luscious stars of your freckled body your freckled body is what I want
David Cattanach A Tale of two cities Marble columns, high grade fascias, marks the street where wealth resides. Modern concrete blast, without window freesias, marks where the poor stalk.
70
So to our pocket some might balk. But too right they would not talk for each world was a stranger to the other. Even at the market counter there is a feverish hand, we cannot avoid to notice among the bastard brands. Those that can add wealth at random, by an accident of the kingdom. wait with fear for expected cure. Efforts press the heart many suffer, emotions run through the body to the mind causing a faint tick in the thoughts of the bluffer. It is said the heart grows fonder but for some it is a bind for their passion cannot be bound, striking out when they are constrained by keys. Wealth passes by unconcerned with unseeing eyes. Privilege is marked by secluded access not the open stall of table-top wares. In secret vaults everything is excess, those with not much are weary at supper, even best laid plans can be subject to rupture. To wander forever is the scripture but not everyone has to hold up the cross.
On another boat a man pulled the net, which had landed fruits of the sea into an ordered pile of yellow thread, aside red buoys marked eyes, scales, fins and blood Swaying, face in shade another dealt with knots in the yellow net re-stringing for future voyage. I waded deeper among the bright colours, wood and lanyards’ ringing..
A boat moved taking a chartered line. I watched. My toes filtered the sand at the shore’s edge.
I walked further out, the sea rolled about my knees, screeching seagulls attacked the harbour quay.
David Cattanach Talking of boats Today a flat sea reached to the horizon projecting a glass light, on morning calm.
A mariner shouted ‘Take hold of the rope’. Others pulled the boat, crunching pebbles, on board I sighted flapping fish, gasping.
71
72
Over the side went the captain his crew shouted hard. But he was already in the blue chasing dolphins. His necklace glinting in the sun. The waves came on, becoming fierce, he turned his head.
I saw his eyes - red bitten by salt. Did I want to swim down to his deep locker? Unaware a speedboat came by pulling a skier, in its wake the captain disappeared. All became quiet again, seahorses drifted, then the pedaloes came bobbing back.
73
David Cattanach Holidays away
It’s close company like fetching a cup of coffee or applying the lotion, or just talking. It’s when the phones come out that things really kick off; he’s staring at it - his partner is waiting not for the news but wanting to go out - NOW.
Anger rises she storms off later we see them apart on different sides of the street trying to look discreet but you know there is upset. When does it turn to disappointment the sadness of silence.
We are lucky there are no guns just large spaces between the recliners. Women are bright - neon clothes at night the men accept the right to be ignored ! Is it the place that does it with no job or gym to run too? Is it the cats around the pool mothers with kittens, jumping about all at play, approaching tables, brushing legs? It could be the water of the pool seeding sunlight?
Another ice-cream please, they ask in unison. From behind the dunes a woman appears alone
I saw another unreconciled handing on a plastic bag of ice not for her head but for a sprained ankle which she may have used to press him down into the pavement, when he had called work again on his mobile phone - they were on holiday after all.
Wearing a sea-blue bikini - he’s not there could he be Mr. Big - we’ll never know for in the last days they make up. Maybe, they had a photo-shoot his smile and warm words won her back.
Anyway, something is not right kids are figuring out if it is divorce this time. Which adult do they want ?
74
Exhibit: Deben Estuary 2020. Tumbled trees shrouded in sand, rising seas sieved the soil through their exposed roots. They cannot stand.
Exhibit: Cambridge Spires Rise from Sea 2050. Punts, crawling with crabs, tethered in college courts. This silent seat of learning, its spires mired in salty sediment, is flooded with ancient memories. (Drone tours available). Catalogued from the Earth Collection: 2060. 75
Deborah Bowkis East Anglian Sea Driven Changes Through Recent Ages
Exhibit: The Last Salt Marsh Norfolk 2040. Marshland seen from platform - born 10,000 years B.C. now Compareentombed.today’s close horizon line to another time, thirty years and a mile distant.
Exhibit: Lynn Minster and Tide Clock 2030. The dragon’s tongue licks salt from the face of time as the sea laps the Minster’s towers; old tide marks swallowed by brine.
Gravity(as) The glue between galaxies, keeps us spinning round the sun sinks all roots into the soil makes all rivers run. The black hole at our centre is drawing out the light, it’s the greatest force in nature not our belief we’re right.
76
Deborah Bowkis
Nigel Kent Tough Love
He lies out flat along the bench; his head lost in her lap, feet touchingbarelythe ground. She leans over, wanting to plant her lips on his, rouse him, like a princess might in a modern fairy tale, release him from the spell of sleep, but he’s no princethere’s engine oil beneath his fingernails –and though his eyes are tightly shut, he’s not asleep; he’s hiding, like the child who thinks he can’t be found by those he cannot see. He’s hiding from that busybody, Time, who’s intruded every day since their first sight, and who, despite his pleas, declines to stop.
77
78
.” The perfect match! He need look no further; he liked his women rich and damaged, so he could heal their pain with his placebo love sugared with flattery and rose-petal fantasies that they would swallow whole, and marvel at the magic of his medicine theuntilday they had to pay the bill.
Nigel Kent Doctor of the Broken Heart “Claudine, 31, slim, andforseeksanddoublebusiness-owning,divorceeincurableromantic,soulmatewininganddiningromanticeveningsin
79
Nigel Kent Anniversary I said he could have anything for our anniversary; he asked for space. I grudgingly agreed, believing when stretched we’d snap back together, closer than before, but the gap kept growing filling with drifts of bitterness much too treacherous to navigate and the thaw I waited for did not come: there were no warm words to melt the silence, no spring flowers to mark his return, and hope stayed low on the horizon refusing to rise. Yet still I find myself in the kitchen listening for his key turning in the door, and making enough tea for two.
Prose
Each time she saw the forest of glass again, her soul would flutter. She recognized it from ancient days. It had seemed brighter, though, back in those days. Before she lost her heart. She really did. It wasn’t a matter of giving it away or anything like that. She simply lost it. Couldn’t find it anywhere.She
Each time she saw the forest of glass again, her soul would flutter. She recognized it from ancient days. It had seemed brighter, though, back in those days. Before she lost her heart. She really did. It wasn’t a matter of giving it away or anything like that. She simply lost it. Couldn’t find it anywhere.She
couldn’t find it in the wine she drank. She couldn’t find it in the fairy tales she read. It wasn’t in the mountain paths she walked. It wasn’t in the ocean waves she touched with expectant feet. She couldn’t believe how easy it was to lose one’s heart in this dazzling world. She wondered if others had lost theirs too. It seemed likely. She noticed many people looking sad, especially the gentle ones. Nobody wanted to admit this of course. Everyone conducted business as usual, smiled, buttered bread, folded laundry. A friend once asked her for love, and she ached because she had none to give. She wanted to hug her friend, partly in apology, partly in consolation. She decided it was best to keep quiet and act as though nothing troublesome was happening.
Beate Sigriddaughter The Forest of Glass
couldn’t find it in the wine she drank. She couldn’t find it in the fairy tales she read. It wasn’t in the mountain paths she walked. It wasn’t in the ocean waves she touched with expectant feet. She couldn’t believe how easy it was to lose one’s heart in this dazzling world. She wondered if others had lost theirs too. It seemed likely. She noticed many people looking sad, especially the gentle ones. Nobody wanted to admit this of course. Everyone conducted business as usual, smiled, buttered bread, folded laundry. 81
A friend once asked her for love, and she ached because she had none to give. She wanted to hug her friend, partly in apology, partly in conso lation. She decided it was best to keep quiet and act as though nothing troublesome was happening.
Once, too, she stood by a swimming pool watching young girls, especially a bight-eyed, dark-haired one. Every move this girl made, she checked if anyone was watching, and if they did, she gave them the sweetest of smiles. Meanwhile the boys were busy playing with their ball, whether anyone watched them or not.
Better to be cautious then, for always around the next cor ner, there beckoned the wispy promise of her heart, finally to be found, finally hers to keep. She walked sure-footed, counting squares on the sidewalk, or sometimes cobblestones, to keep herself entertained while marching forward, limping a bit on occasion.
Someone told her she was too intelligent for her own good. At first, she took this as a compliment. Then she noticed the shadows on the edge of the words. What was her own good? To go to work, of course. She had to eat. She earned her bread, she earned her butter, she worked hard for those who could afford her. She had become a ragged creature, rushing with her disappointments in her briefcase, getting on the bus each morning just in time. When she was obedient, it went well enough for everyone, including her. She slept in inexpensive lodgings, sometimes sharing them with spiders, and on occasion a mouse. Around midnight, she often claimed a few minutes just before falling asleep to walk once again in the forest of glass with its relentless beauty. That’s where she found reflections of her heart in the shimmer ing, whispering leaves, before preparing for the next day’s exacting reality.
Obey, obey, obey, insistent voices called to her. And when she did, she felt all the remaining leaves of memory tremble, dangerously close to breaking.
82
In the mid-1990s I was traveling in Tennessee to research an upcoming novel when a long-delayed confrontation tested my spirit. I had recently discovered that my absentee father was living in a small town near the route of the day’s research. I slowed my car as I approached a fork in the highway ahead. A right turn would take me perhaps 30 or 45 minutes out of the way to the town where my father was living. If I continued straight ahead, I would remain on-task for my day’s work. Something told me that after more than 40 years I needed to make that turn. As a retired Army officer, I had the skills to find him, so I figured it was time to confront him. After all, he had mistreated me and my mother, such that she threw him out when I was only a few months old. He had abandoned her to raise me by herself. The man was a worthless drunk and he had it coming. Throughout my life, my only contact with my father had been an occasional phone call at Christmas, perhaps three or four times, during my youth. He was usually drunk when calling, and mother resisted putting me on the phone with him, but I suppose she felt she had to. I clearly recall one or two of those conversations filled with promises of things he was never go ing to do, visits he would never make, and toys or gifts that he would never deliver. He promised me a bicycle one Christmas, and I became convinced he would show up with it. Mother, unable to stand the disappointment I was certain to face, went out and bought a bicycle. Of course, she had to finance it, given we were broke much of the time. And as she often did, she worked overtime hours at the telephone company, sold sandwiches in the break-room, and made and sold crafts to put together the extra money. And on Christmas Day I had a new bicycle. I only found out years later that my worthless father had nothing to do with my joy that day. So here I was, laying aside my plans for the morning to seek some justice. And the further I drove the angrier I got. Oh, trust me, I had been plenty angry over the years. Several of my friends’ fathers had kindly includ ed me in some of their family activities. I so envied that they had a father present and active in their life. But the more I recalled, and the closer I got
83 James D Brewer “You’ve got his hands”
84 to the town, the more disgusted I became. He had never seen me play a Little League game. Never been around for advice on a prom date. Never taught me to drive a car. Never saw me graduate from any school. Never met my wife. Never saw his grandchildren. Never saw me successful in my job. I was not exactly sure what I was going to do when I found him, but I had some ideas. Maybe I would verbally rip him a new one. I would tell him how his actions and lack of caring had hurt me and made it so hard on mother. Maybe I would curse him. Maybe I would toss him across the room, slap him around a little, and demand to know what kind of worthless, uncaring, demented, booze-guzzling fool would treat his son this way. After perhaps an hour of detective work, I located where he lived. It was late morning when I parked my vehicle across the street from his house. I sat there for several minutes, calculating my play and eyeing the dilapidated, subsidized, government housing unit that bore the beast. Part of me hoped he would give me some crap. Part of me hoped he say or do something to give me the excuse to exact some pain from him like he had exacted from me for all those years. The disappointment of my youth, which had boiled into anger as an adolescent, had cooked down into apathy-soup for the better part of my adult life. But this morning that rage was palpable. I sat there for several moments. Do you really want to do this? Do you really want to open this can of worms? I told myself I could drive away right now and no one would be the wiser. Instead, I began taking several deep breaths, dug deep for some resolve, opened the car door, walked across the street, and stepped up on the shallow porch. You can still turn around right now and leave. Who knows, maybe he’s not even home. I knocked on the door. First, I heard some shuffling about inside, and then the door opened only a few inches. I struggled to see into the room. “Excuse me,” I said. “Can you help me find someone that lives in this area?”
“I’m looking for a Mister … uh, … who are you, Sir? “Brewer,” he replied. It was go-time. I knew I had the right man, and now I had the chance to “I’mact.looking
85 Releasing the chain latch and cautiously opening the door, a gray haired, frail-looking, old man, wearing a housecoat and sporting a two day growth of beard stood in front me. He appeared weak in his eyes like he had been recently ill, and in those eyes was not a hint of recognition of who was standing before him.
for a Mister … Caldwell,” I told him, fiddling with some papers I had brought along with me as a prop.” He shook his head without speaking. “Have you lived here long?” I asked. “About two years,” he said. His voice was weak, and yet I searched my mind for some, or any, familiarity in it. “Well, I was told he moved in here a few weeks ago,” I said, maintaining anonymity. I guess part of me, somewhere deep inside, hoped he would suddenly say ‘don’t I know you,’ or he might somehow miraculously realize who I was. But there was nothing. “I don’t know a Caldwell.” he said, staring at me impatiently. I glanced into the room and could see behind him a small table that held three or four prescription medicine bottles. Now was the time for me to tell him who I was. I should announce in grand fashion that I was his long-lost son. I should demand he talk to me. After all, I deserved to know how in the world he could have been so mean and uncaring. He would now, finally, tell me why he preferred alcohol over me and my mother. Seconds crawled by like minutes as I gathered myself for the confrontation. But a voice inside me said, “Wait.” You see, I needed him to be an ogre. I needed him to be loud, demanding, threatening, or maybe even drunk – any kind of trigger that would launch my long-awaited tirade. Instead, what I saw in front of me was a tired, sick, weak, old man living alone. I was observing a man who had run off just about everyone in his life that cared anything about him. His behavioral choices had destroyed his body, and now his life was
devoid of anyone or anything that mattered. How could it possibly help me or anyone else to launch into a man who was sitting around alone waiting to die? After all, he’s the one who missed out, not me. He missed my childhood. He missed the baseball and the football and the growing up. He missed the prom. He missed my wedding. He missed his grandchildren. I was there for all of it. If anyone was the loser here, the loser was standing in front of me.
“Nothing,” I replied. “There’s absolutely nothing you can do for me.”
I turned around, stepped off the porch, and walked to my car without looking back. I drove away that day, my mind a jumble of thoughts, not the least of which was whether I had done the right thing. Maybe I should have dressed him down. Maybe I should have kicked his ass. Many years have now passed, and I am since satisfied with my choice that day.
Three half-sisters by my father’s later re-marriage showed up, along with my father’s brother. I tried to be gracious to those in attendance, but I spoke very little. After some generic remarks by the minister, I walked up to the casket with my wife by my side. Digging deep for my own indomi table spirit, I studied his face as he lay in repose, thinking to myself that this will, at last, close a sad chapter in my life.
I heard that my father died about a year after that encounter, and at my wife’s urging I attended the funeral. Maybe I was seeking the ev er-popular word “closure.” No more than a handful of people showed up, and it appeared that the minister had been the on-call chaplain or some thing because he seemed to know very little about anyone gathered there.
A tear crept down my cheek. I wiped it away quickly and that was that.
I had been staring at him now for several moments when he finally said, “What else can I do for you?”
Then my wife leaned over to me, pointed to the body, and said, “Look, Jim, you’ve got his hands.”
86
Please try to submit previously unpublished work. We will occasionally accept previously published work if we really like it, please tell us when submitting where and when the piece was first published - if we use it we will credit the original publication
For poetry, please send no more than 3 poems each to be no more than 50 Forlinesflash fiction, please send no more than 3 pieces each to be no more than 500 words For prose, please send no more than 2500 words
should include a third-person bio (no more than 150 words) we will use it if we publish your work. Please include any social media handles so the we can promote your work upon publication
Flights e-Journal is open for submissions for ISSUE SEVEN until 18.00 on 12 November 2022. We accept submissions of poetry, flash fiction and prose. We have no preferred genre, form or style but will never consider work that is sexist, homophobic or racist
Unfortunately, we do not accept simultaneous submissions as we do not have the time to read work that may be withdrawn to be published
Allelsewheresubmissions
Please send us your finished work as we do not have time for revisions. We will send you a proof of your work before we publish it and we will be happy to correct any errors that we may have made, but will not make any revisions that you may wish to make 89
Flights submission guidlines - Issue Seven, December 2022
We aim to publish our journal quarterly (March, June, September and December) and all work submitted will be considered for the next issue that has available space
You also agree that if the work is subsequently published elsewhere (online or in print), you will credit Flights as the original publisher of the work Flights does not generate any income, so we are not in a position to offer any payment for published work
We aim to nominate for literature prizes (Pushcart and Best of the Net) Send your submissions to: flightsdragonflyjournal@gmail.com 90
We are now a small publishing press and hope to publish an annual selec tion of poetry in a pamphlet - Take Flight. Publication in Flights may lead to an invitation to be published by our small press
Please note we not be able to replicate your choice of font and may not be able to replicate your formatting - but will try Your submission should be attached to your email in a single WORD. docx - please do not submit using any other format. Submissions in any other format will not be read
We aim to reply within a 4 to 10 weeks of receiving your submission; feel free to get in touch and give us a friendly nudge if we have been longer than 10 weeks You are the owner of the work submitted and retain copyright upon publication, but, by submitting to Flights you agree to grant Flights first serial and electronic rights, as well as electronic archival rights (for ever).
You will also be able to read back issues of Flights. Explore our website to find out about the other exciting things that Flight of the Dragonfly are involved in.
To find out about each contributor go to www.flightofthedragonfly.com/flights-2/
www.flightofthedragonfly.comBeaney
Flight of the Dragonfly are Barbara Mercer & Darren J
