July 2017

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NOTES FROM NEW DELHI

On Writing a Poem For poetry makes nothing happen...

W

H Auden famously wrote in his elegy ‘In Memory of WB Yeats’ in 1939.

For a while now, I have been using this line to initiate debates over the relevance of poetry in our time. Every time, I arrive at the same conclusion: Poetry doesn’t need to make things happen. It’s enough that it exists.

In a consumerist world where everything exists for a reason (to make something happen, as Auden would argue), the existence of poetry signifies that we are still in touch with the emotional core that makes us human.

In India, particularly, in the last couple of years, we have seen a resurgence of poetry, in all Indian languages, including English. For this, the credit must go to the internet. This is the thing about poetry — it needs readers to thrive. The internet, first the blogs, then the social media sites, offered poetry a platform denied by the traditional publishing setup.

Seriously, there is so much poetry in my immediate vicinity, sometimes I wonder if there’s enough readership for the amount of poetry being produced. This is not a good question. The good question is, are these poems any good? Frankly, I don’t know the answer. I can only offer my views on what makes a good poem.

I have seen a lot of poets embrace Wordsworth’s adage about poetry as ‘spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings’, without bothering to listen to the next part of his argument that poetry is ‘emotions recollected in tranquillity.’ Since I studied EngLit, I prefer to listen to Eliot, though selectively.

For me, poetry is an act of letting go, a conscious exercise in erasure. You start like Wordsworth. You remember a powerful experience and jot it down. Here begins the craft of poetry. You start deleting everything that’s superfluous, word after word, sentence after sentence. Finally, you will have some stray phrases perhaps. Imagine painting. These stray phrases are your outline. Now, start filling them The Wagon Magazine JULY 2017

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with colours. Follow Eliot. Make the references indirect, make them obscure. Create a colourful maze and hide the ‘powerful feeling’ which prompted you to start this exercise inside it. Let your readers find it; or let them reflect their own ‘powerful feeling’ inside the maze.

In parting, allow me to share a poem which I have been erasing for the last three years. From 2,054 words, I have managed to trim it to 976 words. The goal is to keep the word count under 500.

Happy reading!

Dibyajyoti Sarma New Delhi, July 2017

In which we are born Hiranyagarbhah samavartatagre bhutasya jatah patirekesita Sa dadhara prthvim dhyamutemam kasmai devayahavisa vidhema 1.

‘Ex nihilo nihil fit: Out of nothing comes nothing.’

‘Were they created by nothing?

Or were they themselves the creators?’

2.

‘Who created the world?’

‘I have no idea. It was long before my time.’

3.

We do not remember our first cries.

The blinding light; the first touches.

Someone severed the umbilical cord.

Who? The Wagon Magazine JULY 2017

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Our divine Mother, who was she?

Who was her consort?

Whose seed did she nurture?

This is the search for the umbilical cord.

4.

Who was the existence before the golden embryo?

Someone was there; this much is certain, but who?

5.

The beginning was a void. The sky did not exist.

There was no existence; there was no nonexistence. Nothing.

Then something happened. What?

Something stirred? Where?

In the beginning, there was no death; so no birth.

There was no night, or day. Everything was liquid, malleable, like molten gold, like melting ice.

Someone drew a breath? Who? The beginning was measureless water.

It was dark, though darkness itself did not exist.

There was nothing to compare one with another.

Then something warm appeared. Where?

6.

This is all but a conjecture.

Who can tell what ensued in the dark void?

Who could see through the dark void beneath measureless water?

Who could claim to have witnessed the creation?

Who could have known the one who created?

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7.

Everything came afterwards, even the gods, with this creation.

So it was not them, they with powers, they with immortality.

8.

In the beginning, the Earth was vast, empty and silent — like space, like eternity, like death. From this evolved two forms — a man and a woman.

There was no forbidden fruit, and they copulated without guilt. Aeon passed.

The woman gave birth to seven eggs. From the first two appeared the gods. The kings came from the third and men from the other three. The last egg to hatch was the largest and what came forth was ugly and evil — our despised twin.

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No, they were not human, but two birds Aham Guru created, which produced three eggs. Aeon passed and the eggs would not hatch. In desperation, the mother bird broke one egg and lo, it was empty. Aham Guru wasn’t pleased. He was busy and could not decide what to put inside the shell. He asked the birds to take a flight and wait, for god’s sake, before he made up his mind. The birds carried the broken shells of the empty egg and scattered them over the empty earth. From these were born trees, worms and insects and the evil spirits who would hound us until eternity, for we are their kin. The trees covered the Earth and one day, the eggs hatched. Form one appeared a man and from the other a woman — our primal parents, an evolution from feathers to skin.

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Much before that, there was only water. It impregnated itself and gave birth to a pair of boys, who floated and drifted. When hungry, they drank water and they peed and pooped in water. The poop gathered and created the earth. They were bored and they doodled on the sky, a sun, a moon, and numerous stars. They were bored, and they created a man and a woman and they were bored no more.

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The two brothers were the masters of the sky and the only possession they had was a lotus plant. They threw the lotus stem down to the Earth and as the lotus bloomed, they created air to ferry the scent everywhere. With the scent, the air carried dust particles and spread it; land emerged.

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12.

Then emerged the golden embryo, like the yellow sun, like kitchen fire during winter nights, like our indomitable desire to live.

It was the moment time started to tick; it was the moment gods were made.

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There was a beginning; there was the golden instrument.

And there was something else besides — someone.

A man? A woman?

Or someone with indefinite gender?

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Brahma appeared old. He opened his mouth, to cry, to suckle on his nonexistent mother’s breasts. A word left his oesophagus — bhuh, and land emerged. He was surprised; another word came forth — bhuvah, and there was air. Then another word — suvar, and there was the sky; as if someone switched on a light in a dark cell. Surprised, the old man with four heads opened his four mouths, and gods stepped forth, one after another, from the sea of his saliva, crossing the hurdles of his old, yellowed, broken teeth.

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And the gods, they left to live out their lives and forgot Brahma, as children do. And no one asked how exactly did Brahma come into being. And no one asked what exactly was this golden embryo?

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And there she is, the Mother, the Absolute.

She with ten thousand names, none of which she needs, because every name is her, everything you notice is her, everything you imagine is her, everything you cannot imagine is her.

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LETTER FROM LONDON 8

JOHN LOOKER

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ear Readers, Well, my wife and I are temporarily here in New Zealand. In mid-winter while England enjoys a very warm summer!

We are visiting two daughters and their families. Fortunately, they live close by each other, in Dunedin, far to the south – a city of grey stone

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founded in the nineteenth century by Scots, carried forward by a short-lived gold rush, and today a regional capital with a port in one of the world’s most beautiful natural harbours.

It is also designated a City of Literature.

I feel very much at home here. Among other things, I have visited the offices of Landfall, New Zealand’s oldest and best known literary journal which has just published its seventieth anniversary edition. It offers poems, stories, articles and reviews – the same balance as in The Wagon Magazine.

The poem below celebrates sign language and the way in which this liberates deaf people.

Sign language is far more than a set of gestures that correspond to spoken words. It is a language with its own grammar as well as vocabulary – a grammar composed of physical movements in time and space.

At the same time, I feel that the poem celebrates the invention of language – and writing – generally: any language and at any time and place. What could be more suitable for a transnational literary journal with writers whose first languages are highly varied?

One of our daughters is a teacher of deaf schoolchildren.

Not deaf herself, she became very interested in the condition and took a university degree in linguistics and deaf studies before going on to take an additional qualification as a teacher.

My wife and I remember watching her as she entered an English pub to meet friends who were deaf. We could see the crowded bar through the window, and watched as immediately she engaged her friends in conversation over the heads of all the people there. That memory stuck in my mind and, years later, became the prompt for this poem.

So, after this introduction, here is the poem:

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The Makers of Language Under his hand the hieroglyphs emerge:

bird and serpent, eye. Into the stone

he chisels miniature pictures of his thoughts.

Another time, another place, and the pale scholar

sits, in silks, his mind moving with the brush.

Now today and here: Friday night in the city

and a crowded bar. In fact, it’s packed.

Open the door and push yourself into the crush.

From end to end they’re sitting, standing, squeezing.

Leaning closer. Lips working.

Seeing your friends at the far side of the crowd

and seeing that they’ve seen you, it’s hi! how are you,

it’s I had trouble parking but now that I’m here what’s yours? your hands and arms inscribing signs in the air,

pictograms, ideograms, flowing from mind to mind.

John Looker lives with his wife in Surrey, south-east England. His first collection of poetry, The Human Hive, was published in 2015 by Bennison Books (through Amazon) and was selected by the Poetry Library for the UK’s national collection. His poems have appeared in print and in online journals, on local radio and in When Time and Space Conspire, an anthology commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Austin International Poetry Festival. His blog, Poetry from John Looker, is at https://johnstevensjs.wordpress.com The Wagon Magazine JULY 2017

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PROVERBS & PROVIDENCE

By a lamp-post corner of cobblestone streets, December trick-or-treats, And unsung heroes of unfought wars In classic slapstick shows, Run icy streams of melted winter-rooftop snows; Past tea parties and Disneyland parades, Moonlight serenades, Teenage lawyers, Bobby socks, And dancing bears on San Francisco sidewalks; To Elysian Fields Colored mint green Whose annual yields Play ducks and drakes With bulls and bears While drawing stares From passersby whose hearts and minds Are left behind Until they come to the end of the line.

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But the muted lamp light in the street And the sounds of running feet, Icicles shattering, Dinner plates clattering, And stray cats tipping garbage cans Up and down the alleyways of Life (To be cleaned up by my Wife, If she’s still here tomorrow) Are like the Eagles on the Jukebox At the White Hart Pub Or a steaming tub On a Rugby Sunday afternoon.

April raindrops fall and echo Pierce the night and splinter the dark; Sparrows return to the park, And the Sun returns from the South.

I’ll lie on my back and count the clouds, Sipping cool spring air, With a foxtail straw in my mouth.

Rabbi Yonason Goldson, keynote speaker with 3,000 years’ experience, lives with his wife in St. Louis, Missouri. He is a former hitchhiker, circumnavigator, newspaper columnist, and high school teacher. His latest book, Proverbial Beauty: Secrets for Success and Happiness from the Wisdom of the Ages, is available on Amazon. Visit him at yonasongoldson.com The Wagon Magazine JULY 2017

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THE WANDERER

Your faith was strong but you needed proof You saw her bathing on the roof Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew ya She tied you to a kitchen chair She broke your throne, and she cut your hair And from your lips she drew the hallelujah

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o sang Leonard Cohen in one of the most popular songs of the last twenty years or so, a karaoke standby, commercial radio favourite and X Factor standard, Hallelujah. Seeing and hearing some of the cover versions brought out in recent years, I wonder how closely a lot of the singers listened to the song: one on the radio pronounced ‘overthrew ya’ as ‘overthrew you;’ perhaps he thought he was cleaning up Cohen’s diction, and apparently not noticing that the those words, in one of Cohen’s beguiling blends of the sacred and the profane, was meant to rhyme with ‘hallelujah.’ One X Factor contestant sang the song with his fists The Wagon Magazine JULY 2017

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clenched, looking to the sky as if he were singing gospel or Christian rock. Whatever else the song is, it ain’t that.

Cohen was a poet before he was a song-writer, and his songs are full of religious and historical references, but he also had the knack of writing a catchy tune, which is why so many people now find themselves singing along to a song that blends Cohen’s own romantic misadventures with those of a three thousand year old Hebrew King.

According to the Book of Samuel, King David walked on the roof of his palace and from there saw Bathsheba bathing. He seduced her and made her pregnant, and to avoid her husband finding out, called back from the wars so that her husband could sleep with her and imagine himself the father. The soldier, Uriah, would not sleep with her as the law forbade soldiers from sexual activity while on duty, so the king sent Uriah to the front line where he was killed in action, allowing the king to marry his widow, though not without tragic consequences.

Cohen uses the powerful imagery of the David and Bathsheba story to evoke those first, guilty stirring of lust in a relationship. In the 20th century sexual guilt and divine punishment were fast going out of fashion, but Cohen’s lust was apparently not without consequence: the following lines seem to suggest a relationship that led to a loss of dignity on the man’s part, and perhaps outright humiliation, alongside whatever sexual satisfaction it brought.

In the late 16th century, the very same biblical story inspired one of the most sensuous lyrics in the English language, George Peele’s Bethsabe’s Song, actually a lyric from his play David and Fair Bethsabe. This song is what she is singing as she is being viewed by the King: Hot sun, cool fire, tempered with sweet air, Black shade, fair nurse, shadow my white hair.

Shine, sun; burn fire; breathe, air, and ease me; Black shade, fair nurse, shroud me and please me; Shadow, my sweet nurse, keep me from burning, Make not my glad cause cause of mourning.

Let not my beauty’s fire Inflame unstaid desire, Nor pierce any bright eye That wand’reth lightly.

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Peele’s poem is full of contrasts – the hot sun and the cool sweet airs of the outdoors, the whiteness of Bathsheba and the black shade she calls from her maid. In European literature, while darkness signifies evil, whiteness often signifies purity and innocence, but it is clear to the reader that Bathsheba’s thoughts and feelings are hardly pure – her calling for ‘black shade’ from her maid may represent a subconscious desire to spot her purity with sin. Her wishes seem to contradict each other, as she asks at the very same time for the sun to shine and to be kept from burning, as if she is simultaneously relishing and resisting her own desire, and they even, with the ‘cool fire’ turn to paradox, a poetic symptom of the confusions of love since Petrarch employed them in 14th century Italy. This Bathsheba, far from an innocent, seems to be aware of the observer – the line ‘shroud me and please me’ is as much a come on to the king as an instruction to her maid. The sixth line ‘make not my glad cause of mourning,’ too, is best interpreted as directed at the king, asking that the cause of his desire – her beauty, not also be the cause of tragedy, which of course it would be.

The ‘mourning’ refers not to the death of Bathsheba’s husband Uriah, but rather the death of the child conceived as a result of David and Bathsheba’s affair. That, according to the Bible, was God’s punishment for David’s sin. But the couple’s second son went on to become the great King Solomon, known for his wisdom, which has become proverbial, and also for a great love affair of his own. The story of his great affair with the queen of Sheba has little grounding in the Bible, but has become a rich source of extraBiblical tradition for not just for Jews, but for Muslims and for Ethiopian Christians: Sheba, it is thought, was an ancient kingdom that straddled both The Wagon Magazine JULY 2017

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sides of the Red Sea in what is now Yemen and the Horn of Africa. The figure of Sheba has also been a source of fascination to poets, most notably the Irish poet WB Yeats. Here is the first stanza of one of two poems he wrote about the couple, Solomon to Sheba: Sang Solomon to Sheba, And kissed her dusky face, ‘All day from long mid-day We have talked in the one place, All day long from shadowless noon We have gone round and round In the narrow theme of love Like an old horse in a pound.’

The relationship between Sheba and Solomon is sometimes treated as a kind of synecdoche for the meeting of east and west, and one could certainly try an ‘Orientalist’ critique of poems such as Yeats’, if one were that way inclined – many people, for example, would be a little uncomfortable with the description of Sheba’s face as ‘dusky’ at the offset of the poem. But Yeats wrote in less racially sensitive times, and his theme in this poem is not race, nor the meeting of civilizations, but the meeting of souls – that is, love.

If David and Bathsheba’s love became a symbol of a transgressive

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love that brings disaster, Solomon and Sheba’s somehow became symbolic of a love that can bring people from two disparate cultures into a unity. Throughout the three stanzas of the poem, Yeats circles around the same words, the same image and the same idea: that love can shrink our worlds down to the size and nature of a pound, in which a horse goes round and round. There’s something of a wry joke in there, I suspect, which I will come back to in just a moment.

Sheba wasn’t Solomon’s only conquest. Solomon was famous for his many lovers as much as for his wisdom. This is why that great long ode to erotic love that somehow made it into the Bible, the Song of Songs, was often attributed to him, and is sometimes known as the Song of Solomon. Jewish and Christian theologians have had to come up with some far-fetched ideas to justify the inclusion of the Song of Songs in the Bible, with Christians, for example, making of it a metaphor for the love between Jesus and his church.

But laymen have been free to enjoy it for what it most obviously is – love poetry. The Song of Songs is probably a mix of several poems by different authors rather than one but the most memorable parts concern two lovers who praise each other in strikingly pastoral terms, evocative of the landscape of the valleys, vineyards and orchards of the land around Jerusalem. Pastoral beauty aside, the poem is quite striking for its frank near-eroticism and for the very equal relationship of the male and female lover, both wooers and both wooed. Here is the woman singing of the man: (2.3) As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste.

And here is the man singing to the woman: (7. 2, 6-7) Thy navel is like a round goblet, which wanteth not liquor: thy belly is like an heap of wheat set about with lilies…How fair and how pleasant art thou, O love, for delights! This thy stature is like to a palm tree, and thy breasts to clusters of grapes.

The poet borrows the sensuousness of the surrounding countryside for the attractive features of the lovers, and that is one of the most characteristic and influential poetic techniques of the poem– I can’t imagine, for example, Neruda’s best-selling Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair would read as it does without the enduring influence of Song of Songs in Western culture, The Wagon Magazine JULY 2017

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even if his conflation of the fruits of the nature and the body of the lover is, although if anything, more sensuous, a little less direct: Girl lithe and tawny, the sun that forms the fruits, that plumps the grains, that curls seaweeds filled your body with joy, and your luminous eyes and your mouth that has the smile of water.

I also wondered whether Yeats, who must have been aware of the association between Solomon and the Song of Songs, was having a bit of a joke within his poem: the central image of the poem, that of a horse wandering a pound lacks the exoticism we expect from a poem about a Israeli king bedding an Afro-Arabian queen – it is much more evocative of his own native Dublin than of the ancient Middle East. But I digress. It’s no more absurd for Yeats to put a bit of Dublin into Jerusalem than for Cohen to imagine himself King David in 20th Century New York. For Westerners, Jew and Gentile alike, much of our language of desire, as much as our spirituality, can be traced back to the Holy Land.

Andrew Fleck, who has been a secondary school teacher, proof reader and EFL teacher, among other things, writes on poetry and history at sweettenorbull.com. Currently, he is working on a historical fiction set in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, a project that he hopes will come to fruition at some point in 2017.

Originally from the north east of England, he currently lives in South Korea with his wife and two small children The Wagon Magazine JULY 2017

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Ah! Of iridescent gems of time the heavenly road you paved light In a kingdom of stars, I found my home in the golden cities.

I opened the gates to the sun, to behold the Godly giants.

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At the royal jewel palace I read of prehistoric wonderful poems the enormous, gorgeous, ancient books.

Carved with the golden words The amazing strange mystery tales, made my eyes drunk.

Into a full new world I went, To witness the seat of the holy kingdom: even before the earth was born – the erstwhile home of human history.

In the crystal garden I saw a crowd of youthful giants.

Their eyes were bright and glittering in the aura of the sparkling body.

Across Time and Space in crystalline glitter stood that moment, a platinum city – A ship drifted leisurely, like a bird, resplendent in variegated hues.

They sang happy songs They danced a wonderful dance Lanky boys and girls in pairs as if to celebrate the splendid carnival.

I saw a circular edifice high above the city giving out white-bright lights elevated ground to fly into the quiet space.

A frame of platinum edifice creating a beautiful pattern.

The whole city was a circle.

Finely arranged structure.

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Into a bright hall I went.

A strange instrument there I saw.

A huge screen hanging on the wall, displaying a golden space. like bits of colourful crystal gemstones!

Resplendent with dappled colours of the city!

Those beautiful high-rise buildings A sight better than all the myths of the world.

I saw lines of strange letters.

On one side of the screen flashed swiftly numerous young and strong giants.

It was an effort to concentrate on the changing images.

Their gaze was quiet and peaceful.

The learned flame flashed in their eyes.

In a flash of clothes The next was a whole.

Their stature, unusually tall.

Each one was well nigh seven meters high.

Both men and women look dignified almost no age difference apparent.

Their skin was white With a faint flashy shine Bright eyes as naïve as an infant’s Kindled with a strange flame.

They manipulated the magic of the instrument.

A picture of the changing space.

Their language was artless and plane.

Like an ordinary bell, but pleasant.

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As I surveyed the length and breadth of the bright hall I felt powerful, Energy suffused with bliss and delight.

As if I too am a giant in body and mind I seemed to understand their language.

They were exploring the mysteries of the universe.

There was a planet peopled with their various partners.

Their mind they used to manipulate the instrument Also could transfer data Even thousands of miles apart Also to talk free to the heart.

Many lines of text on the screen was but a message from afar.

The whole universe was their home.

They built cities in space.

They used the spaceships to transport you to far distant other spaces.

Into a lightning, in a moment, and you vanished into thin air, without a trace.

I sensed the new civilization.

They had magical eyes.

They seemed to be able to see the future And could enter diverse times and spaces.

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Men and women were holy and loving superior to our world’s so-called love They didn’t understand ageing neither did they know about war.

Time seemed not to exist Science was exactly a wonderful art Their happiness came from the creation of a universe full of divine love.

I saw a young giant Opening the door of a platinum – a round, magnificent hall packed with rows of men and women.

I saw a crystal stage gyrating at the center of the hall where a dignified and beautiful girl was playing a huge musical instrument.

A bunch of golden rays, Shifting with all kinds of brilliant graphics A mysterious and beautiful music Like the Dragon leisurely crowing.

Thence I saw an enormous giant jump out of the dance onto the stage.

His hands held a huge ball which flashed many colourful pictures.

I saw a group of young girls wearing white dress seemed to float lightly Like many giant cranes.

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The huge circular hall was resplendent with clear, transparent decoration like a full set of bizarre gems scintillating brilliantly in the light.

I saw a young singer about the golden flame The sound was strange and striking Akin to a chanting.

Their music was at once mysterious and blissful that shifted randomly like the lightning as though many planets of the universe shining bright and light in space.

The crystal city, aloft in space looked resplendent, magnificent Countless wonderful golden flowers bloom and blush in that flawless space.

I saw an image of a transparent smiling face, as if it were a colourful garden The golden light from the sky Turned it into a city of gold.

I strode out of the circular hall Came to a wide street with a smooth pavement covered with precious stones and in line with the platinum edifice.

There were no terrestrial trees there, but they were in full bloom. sparkling with rich incense, impression a garden at the center of the street.

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Some strange flowers were there.

The branches as transparent crystal Flashing all kinds of brilliant colours; and bunches of round golden fruits.

I saw a huge statue.

It was like a spaceship.

Clustered around by shining stars, high above the centre of the street.

I saw the column of a dazzling fountain In a huge circle in the square; An elegantly modelled statue of a holy giant.

A soaring magnificent edifice ran round the circle square.

There were some garden villas There was a platinum steeple.

I saw a wide river Girdling this huge city The bottom sparkled with transparent gold dust, amidst scattered brilliant gems.

The tall trees on shore And a long crystal corridor A big multi-coloured bird floated on the surface of the water.

I saw a vast forest The swaying tree, a tree of gold The trees with towering spires And a platinum pavilion.

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I saw some giants along the walk, some male and female bodybuilders at the water’s brink in the forest like birds carefree and relaxed.

The wonderful space as bright as crystal embraced this platinum city; a giant, white and bright ball flashing boundless light into the air.

It resembled a huge sun And like man-made planets The whole city was shining too, weaving a rare sort of magic.

A strange speeding train circled the city back and forth; There seemed to be a kind of track in the sky Like a shiny silver curve.

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With white buildings it was a dreamlike maze This huge city was unusually quiet, could not even hear the sound of the wind.

I bade goodbye to the platinum city.

Near a golden space stands another city here a huge city of Gold.

The building here is also huge.

But it is of another beautiful shape.

The whole city is glittering golden edifice as beautiful as a sculpture.

Here live some other giants as if from another space they have boundless wisdom like a golden, holy civilization.

Hongri Yuan, born in China in 1962, is a poet and philosopher interested particularly in creation.

Representative works include Platinum City, Gold City, Golden Paradise, Gold Sun and Golden Giant.

His poetry has been published in the UK, USA, India, New Zealand, Canada and Nigeria

Manu Mangattu teaches English at St George’s College, Aruvithura, Kerala. Besides translating from Chinese and Sanskrit, he also writes poetry in English and Malayalam. He is the chief editor of Aesthetique Journal for International Literary Enterprises The Wagon Magazine JULY 2017

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POETRY

CHAITALI GAWADE

Indelible In each line I sketch, each memory I draw, each word that mars my page you seep through. A bent curve, like old smiles, like poems pinned to the moon. The hazy shadow of an ear, a finger, the outline of a knee peep through. I twist and turn, rinse and wring words to wash you out. You remain a stubborn stain while my words fall away.

The Loved Ones Caring can be grateful, warm as a thick blanket in cold weather. It can choke and smother and burn, leaving you gasping for air in a room filled with it. A empty scream floating in your mouth. How much is enough? A pinch, a teaspoon, the amount that fits in a closed fist?

How many seconds, hours, days of caring are needed to measure it as love? Sometimes love leaves a body without limbs.

Agni You walked around me with silence and a body stripped of shadow. It was raining that day. The torrents became one with the grieving house.

It fell in different degrees, like the tears, soft and harsh and loud. The windshield wipers cry against the glass. They place you strategically on wooden logs to make sure the fire reaches every inch of you. You are coated with flowers their fragrance lost to you. The warmth from your shirt still surrounds me even as I try to get rid of the cold in my fingers from the dead embers.

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Baby Shoes You come upon those baby shoes wrapped in soft cloth. You trace the pink velvet and the thick edge of fur lining its mouth. You feel its shallow depth trying to reach for answers in the tiny grooves, remember the adorable warm lemon kisses, those garlands of tiny arms scented with baby powder around your neck, the taste of rice softened with ghee, every hollow and bend of her skin, the shifting moods in her voice and wonder what things you would have done differently if you knew all these gifts had come with a deadline.

Happy Anniversary Your indifference leaps across our bed and crawls all over my body. It seeps into those wet cemented places that haven’t hardened yet. We use in love. My touch isn’t enough and yours sours by the time it reaches for me. We come to each other on borrowed words. I feel the sharp edge of misery in my mouth, dancing on my tongue. And I want to make you feel it, taste it, fill you with tears. It’s the only way to stop my own.

Chaitali Gawade writerly musings are fuelled by tea and coffee. Her work has been published by Unbroken Journal, Duckbill Anthology and Vagabondage Press, among others. She blogs at chaitaligawade.com The Wagon Magazine JULY 2017

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FLASH FICTION

Jerry Vilhotti

Tommy Tom Tom Y

ears ago, my older brother Tommy Tom Tom, a future doctor in psychology who would make house calls too, analyzing most of the people as latent homosexuals and lesbians, brought his college friend Raja Bombay up for the weekend. My older sister, Alice in Wonderland, who would pronounce our last name Sanque in such a way that would hide our ‘race’ as the people of the town not very far from Salem where people were hung as witches for their property called one’s ethnicity, got the message confused. So she called the newspaper, The Burywater Simpleton to notify them that the Indian ambassador was visiting us and needless to say we kept getting calls from them to see if ‘Christian Guy, Nehru or Gandhi’ or was it ‘Geronimo’ or some other redskin chief had arrived? Alice finally had to confess that she had gotten it all wrong; it was only a college friend of her brother’s, who worked at the United Nations part time. They still kept calling, thinking we were hiding the truth from them. As they believed a rich, rich guy from New York City who was telling the truth about all the bad immigrants killing great Americans, who was ready to take our democracy and republic, which were hiding in the closet, not yet ready to come out and be killed by the truth saying, as the guy himself who would often say, ‘What de ya gotta lose?’

Jerry Vilhotti (jvilhotti@optimum.net) has had two collections of works accepted by a publisher: Gods Depicting Pastime which has the Greek gods discovering a game once played by people; a collection called Specs in the Eyes of Seeing that follows a little boy’s journey from childhood to manhood The Wagon Magazine JULY 2017

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BIO-FICTION

B

en stepped out the south door of the little cabin just to take a quick look outside. He hadn’t yet put on his coat and the cool air felt refreshing, he was glad there was no wind this morning or it would really be cold. Ben could see his breath in the cool crisp air and the frost covered the ground. It was quite this morning except for the occasional crow of the roosters. He started to turn to go back in, but he just then caught something out of the corner of his eye. Slipping back in he grasped his colt that hung in its holster by the door then eased on out. Taking cover behind the nearest tree. It looked to him as if they had planned to ambush him when he came out this morning. It was a good thing he always expected the worse and kept his eyes open for trouble.

His precautions had saved him countless times. Being a lawman and just supporting law and order could make you some enemies.

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They must not have expected him this early or they would have seen him. Most outlaws were cowards and they would have shot him as he relieved himself off the edge of the porch this morning.

What he had seen was someone’s or something’s breath float out from behind one of the out buildings. This was a lot like hunting and evolved patents. Ben shivered in the cool air. He hoped that they would grow impatient and make their move. He waited until they stepped out to move in close. They would probably be right next to him before they knew he was there. Ben had been right and once they were standing in the open he said ‘ drop your guns and put your hands up’ both men shot in the direction of his voice, but didn’t live long enough to pull the trigger again, both died thinking they had hit their target. They had come close both had knocked splinters of bark from the cedar tree he stood behind.

Sheriff Ben Josephs had just been elected a few months ago. He had been first a soldier. After that he became a deputy and had been for years. He planned to run for sheriff, but the last sheriff had gotten wind of it and let him go. Most of the citizens of the county liked him so when he put himself on the ballot he became a land slid win.

He was bringing law and order to the county and the outlaws didn’t like it. The bootleggers were getting run out of the county.

They were unhappy and starting to fight back. He recognized these two they were bootleggers. The outlaws in this county were more than making shine. This was an organized gang. The leader was now pushing up daisy and a fight was going on among those in the gang for control. The leader had been recently killed when he made a brutal attack on an armed citizen. He had been so full of himself he never considered someone would fight back. His name had been Pat Hughes.

Ben now looked down on the two dead men there was no joy in killing. He had seen it in others the social pathetic type. He had arrested several most tried to manipulate you with wit and charm. When they found that wouldn’t work that’s when they would get ugly and there true colors would show. That’s the way it had been with Pat Hughes the last time he had arrested him.

These two smelled of alcohol they had probably drank their self The Wagon Magazine JULY 2017

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into having courage. That was one thing a lot of those sum bags did dip into there on product. Ben left the bodies and went in and got a cup of coffee and made breakfast. He cracked a couple of eggs, fried them and some bacon. Once he had finished he put his plates in the sink he would clean up later.

He washed up and grabbed his coat and headed out. He walked to the barn and got the horses that had been lift there by the two dead men. Leading them up to the hitching rack by the cabin. ‘Whoa there boys’ Ben said in a quiet voice. He put both men across their horse.

Then walked out to saddle his own.

Gregory Doc Patton was born in Parsons Kansas on a farm. His parents have always had horses and it was just a natural thing for him to become a cowboy. Although he does not work as a cowboy full time, it is the cowboy code and lifestyle he loves. He is a graduate of Parsons High School and Labette Community College. He has raised and rode horses all of his life. He and his wife Debbie live on a small ranch the South Branch Ranch east of Parsons The Wagon Magazine JULY 2017

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TALESPIN

I

t all started at the school master Arumugam’s house.

Early in the morning, Arumugam Master’s wife opened the door at the backyard of the house to throw away the malodorous water after rinsing the fish taken for cooking. It was then her elderly neighbour Bangaru entered with an empty tin pot.

‘May I have your kitchen leftovers for feeding my buffaloes? They relish your cooking, it appears’. Bangaru said in a shrill tone sounding like at a feeble attempt at flattery.

Arumugam Master’s wife would never tolerate a show of insolence of being called a cook for satiating the bovine taste buds, indirectly though. Yet she remained composed as she said in a sonorous voice, ‘Bangaru, your lost calf will return home in an hour’s time from now’.

Bangaru was rearing cattle at the backyard of her house. Sometimes they were tethered to the pegs on the pavement at the front, off the busy thoroughfare. Four buffaloes and a pair of calves constituted her dairy that mainly catered to the requirements of the tea shops around. Her clientele would include the establishment in the bus stand, that opposite to the veterinary hospital and the one on the railway feeder road. She would often think of expanding her dairy with acquiring a cow but was not sure whether buffaloes and the cows could be herded and maintained together. Moreover, the tea shop owners were demanding a delivery of only buffalo’s milk as it is highly viscous and can freely be diluted yielding more cups of tea, than with cow’s milk. A dash of diluted milk, a spoonful of jaggery laced Demerara sugar, a tea filter made of thick cloth that never went through any washing and a process to have the concoction served piping hot did the trick to keep the demand high for ever.

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Any remaining milk after delivering to the tea shops was usually made available by Bangaru to her neighbours, in exchange of their kitchen throwaway that included discarded vegetable slices and the draff strained off the cooked rice. Though strictly not a win-win arrangement of barter for both the parties, it somehow worked, perhaps with the exchange of neighbourhood gossip also bundled with the transaction.

Thus it was a happy co-existence of the buffaloes, Bangaru and her neighbours with a collateral felicity for the customers of the tea shops, prevailing for quite long. The happiness quotient went for a toss a couple of days ago, with a calf Bangaru owned that went for gracing, going astray.

Nothing was heard of it from then on. The mother of the calf stubbornly resisted all attempts by Bangaru to milk it and the milk supply to the tea shops was considerably reduced, thereby inducing the vendors to add a little more water to the tea they vended, to tide over the situation.

‘Four tall, heavily built middle aged men with blue bandanas tied to their head came from the northwest quadrant and have driven the calf away. It will be extremely difficult to retrieve it’.

Iyer, the astrologer threw a fistful of cowrie shells on the floor and after carefully studying the pattern they formed, shared a piece of astrological information privy to him, with Bangaru.

Bangaru was pained to listen to that prediction. A calf lost once for all would eventually result in a steep loss of revenue accruing from the tea shops. That would have a cascading effect on the maintenance of Bangaru’s tiny dairy which again would make a still heavier dent in her income. She did not want to analyse that any further lest it would present a gloomy picture of her own future that would soon constitute the final few years of her existence. Of course, she was not reluctant to pay Iyer, the astrologer for his services, though his prediction was not of the kind that would bring her cheer.

Nonetheless, she visited a few nearby villages in the north east in an attempt to elicit information about a buffalo calf and four well built middle aged men wearing blue bandanas travelling with it. Her efforts were of no avail, though.

And now Arumugam Master’s wife is offering Bangaru the hitherto elusive solace quoting her kerosene stove, free of cost.

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‘Our stove is also like Iyer, the astrologer with its acquired astrological prowess. It can’t stand the smell of meat or mutton. If you try using it to make fish curry, on its own it will be extinguished and will not light up again. Since the past two days, this stove of ours is giving me predictions like Iyer, the astrologer. It communicates with me while I am cooking. The stove only prophesied that your calf would return. Go home. It will be there’.

When Bangaru reached her home with trepidation, she saw the mother buffalo feeding the calf that came back, with a soft grunt, shaking its enormous body in a fit of ecstasy.

It was at that very moment the kerosene stove in Arumugam Master’s house became a business competitor of Iyer, the astrologer.

The astrological sessions of the stove would normally take place in the afternoon, after Arumugam Master’s wife had her lunch followed by a brief siesta. She would have reclaimed by then all washed clothes left on the cloth lines for drying, neatly folding them up. Arumugam Master would be at school then teaching the students in Class Seven about the properties of oxygen and the process to make it in the classroom using peeled potatoes, hydrogen peroxide and jars of clean water.

The kerosene stove based astrological sessions became a regular feature soon. It became a daily occurrence with a break on Sundays, when Arumugam Master would be at home availing complete rest after elaborate oil massage and a hot water bath. Also, there would not be any sessions for three consecutive days in a month, when the Master’s wife was having her periods, as she herself was keen to keep the environment ‘unpolluted’. She was a little embarrassed to indirectly make a public disclosure of the onset of her periods every month though, but with the menopause creeping in, she was confident that the three day off could soon become a thing of the past.

As the session begins, all women from the neighbourhood would sit in a circle around the kerosene stove in the front hall of Arumugam Master’s house. Near the stove without blocking the view would be seated, the wife of Arumugam Master. Sitting erect with both her hands stretched out and the fingers touching the outer rim of the stove, she would appear to be in complete command.

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To counterbalance her hold on the stove from the opposite direction, a neighbourhood woman would be selected on a daily basis, as per the discretion of the Master’s wife.

Anyone would be welcome to pose a question to the kerosene stove and anything under the Sun can be asked about. However questions of the following nature constitute a different lot altogether: ‘When will the lass Pushpa at the corner house down the street attain puberty?’

‘Ranganayaki ammal’s daughter even after completing four years of married life is yet to be blessed with a child; is there a problem with her reproductive system or does it relate to her husband’s potency?’

‘Did the youngest daughter of the bank cashier elope with the cowherd Gopalan or the lawyer’s clerk Kuppusamy’s son, the one with a persistent stutter?’

Arumugam master’s wife as a proud owner of the stove decreed such questions are ethically wrong and are strictly unwelcome. It was true that the bank cashier’s family was related to her by marriage, which could explain the ban on rising questions about an elopement in the family. However in the case of other queries in the banned items list no such conclusion could be arrived at as the families involved were remotely connected with Arumugam master.

Whatever it is, Arumugam master’s wife was not expected to explain the rationale behind her decision. The stove belonged to her.

The right to decide upon what to ask and what not to ask the stove would entirely be hers. The neighbourhood women grudgingly acknowledged this and were content to be the participants in the sessions with minimum privileges.

When will my son get a job?

This would be a permitted question. The mother of the boy sitting at the far end of the crowded hall would ask this in a trembling voice. The query would be relayed loud with the details about the person rising the question added. As everyone knew everyone else, the question would be sufficiently enriched with additional details even without asking, with the sole purpose of keeping the stove appropriately informed to enable it to respond: The Wagon Magazine JULY 2017

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Dhana Textile Shop proprietor’s wife Ganga from the third house to the left of the radio repairer’s shop asks when her eldest son will be gainfully employed. Her son Jagan is 20 years old this February and has completed his Bachelor of Science graduation in the third attempt.

Arumugam Master’s wife would be taking the final decision about how the question should be framed and conveyed to the stove to enable it to come out with an appropriate astrological prediction. She would in a soft voice full of pride and affection whisper the question to the stove, looking at it with all affection and pride like a breastfeeding young mother glancing at the new-born, She would smile at the stove immediately after asking the question.

The stove then would lift one of the four legs of the overall frame and bring it down on the cemented floor of the hall. For this question about the boy getting employed, it would gently tap on the floor, once or more than once. The woman facing the Master’s wife and holding the stove with her hands would count the number of taps the stove would make as well would ensure that it would not tumble down while in action.

‘The stove has struck two. That means the boy will be employed in two months’, Arumugam Master’s wife would announce solemnly, a little louder for the benefit of the anxious mother at the far end of the room.

‘Amma, will it be two months or two years’?

The visitor would be anxious to get a precise answer. The supplementary question would be phrased appropriately by the master’s wife and would be posed next ‘If two years, strike once; if two months, strike twice’, she would cajole the stove and after a minute apparently of deliberation within, it would raise its leg to strike one or two.

‘The stove has now struck twice. That means it would be two months from now, the boy will be employed’, the Master’s wife would announce majestically being the harbinger of good news.

In the case of the lost buffalo calf, the Master’s wife was able to coax out additional information also from the stove. She asked, ‘from which direction the calf would come back walking’. The stove lifted the leg to the east and came down smooth on the smooth cemented floor. The calf indeed reappeared from the East.

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When Arumugam Master would be back home at five in the evening, riding his rickety old bicycle, the hall would have become vacant after the session for the day ending a few minutes before his arrival.

He had decided upon to address the captive audience who would assemble in his house, about the necessity to have a scientific outlook.

He should return home at least half an hour earlier one of the days, he reckoned. Many nights he was tossing in his bed thinking about what he had to speak to win over the neighbouring crowd against the unscientific and illogical occurrences like that of the kerosene stove making astrological predictions. On Sundays, he would stand in the empty hall rehearsing his speech diligently. However, as it always happened, he had had to conduct the last session for the day at school always and as such, he could not put his plans to practice. He necessarily had to postpone his lecture until the vacation, it occurred to him.

The Master while cycling homewards made a reckoning in his mind about how long he would have to wait for the annual school holidays to commence. It was barely a fortnight away, he was happy to reckon. Reaching home, as he locked the bicycle feeling contended, his wife restored the stove to the kitchen to prepare the cup of piping hot coffee for the fatigued Master.

One afternoon, the sessions had a new visitor – Iyer, the astrologer. Arumugam master’s wife had all along held the stove sessions strictly as a women-only participatory programme. Once in a while, when men accompanying their wives or sisters would show signs of staying back for the session, she gently goaded them to leave. But she would not like to mete out that treatment to Iyer, the astrologer, as he was an elderly person and quite learned too.

As Iyer, the astrologer arrived somewhat earlier, the Master’s wife took the clean stove she brought to the hall for the session, back to the kitchen to prepare coffee for him. The stove appeared keen on being present in the hall for the session rather than beating a retreat to the kitchen at that juncture. It showed its impatience by lifting one leg almost tripping the pot of milk on it being heated. It was then the master’s wife admonished the stove for showing bad manners. She categorically told the stove that it had to confine its intelligent interactions to the The Wagon Magazine JULY 2017

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hall and should behave in the kitchen as a stove would behave.

Iyer the astrologer watched the Master’s neighbourhood woman bringing a cup of coffee for him closely followed by the Master’s wife carrying the stove on her arms like an infant fresh from the bathtub.

He told the Master’s wife that it would be pertinent that she should always face East while interacting with the stove and that the place where the stove is placed should be sanitised with a fresh mix of cow’s urine, cow dung, milk, curd and ghee, before it is seated there. He also suggested that decorative geometrical patterns using rice floor (kolam) should be drawn on the floor before the stove arrives at the hall. All the suggestions were immediately implemented by the Master’s wife.

When the stove was in session, Iyer the astrologer, for each of its astrological predictions, was taking a handful of cowries out of his handbag and was casting them on the floor to arrive at his own predictions through reading the pattern the cowries formed on ground.

Comparing his predictions with those of the kerosene stove, he appeared satisfied as they were in concordance with one another.

When he bid farewell at the end of the session, he did not forget to ask the Master’s wife where the stove was bought and when. He also asked whether the kerosene was filled up to the brim in the storage compartment or was it partially filled up. He took a few steps homewards only to return and ask the final question – where were the wigs for the stove purchased. The Master’s wife was happy to make him fully knowledgeable of all the facts about her prestigious possession.

The street folk to one person lauded the professional honesty and good-at-the-heart nobility of Iyer the astrologer for his providing suggestions to the Master’s wife on enhancing the efficacy of the stove sessions, even if that would amount to helping his business competitors out, leading to a loss of revenue for him from his regular customers who might have switched over their allegiance to the stove. They all wished he should be blessed with many more years of healthy life.

When someone attempted to pose a question to the stove as to how long he will survive, it was immediately vetoed by the Master’s wife.

The questioner profusely apologised to the stove holding both her ear lobes with her hands and executing ceremonial push-ups in the proxThe Wagon Magazine JULY 2017

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imity of the stove, begging for divine forgiven.

In that atmosphere of overall goodwill the stove commenced maintaining a stoic silence while at the kitchen and confined its interaction only to the hall, that too on being asked more than once.

Close on the heels of Iyer, the astrologer, other old men like the retired post master, the retired railway station master, retired sub inspector of police and all other men who retired from Government services started to troop in for the stove sessions. Arumugam Master’s wife was in a predicament by their visit. She would never send them back or would welcome them wholeheartedly though.

However, she and the neighbourhood women did not like one bit these cranky old ones posing questions about the general political environment in the country, the polling forecast, global terrorism, political sanctions and protectionism, though the stove appeared to savour those queries.

‘Don’t they have the newspapers discussing this dull and drab matter for pages together? These pensioners read all those local broadsheets from beginning to end right from early morning, hold parleys among themselves to discuss for hours together and would visit the library in the evenings to read those newspapers published elsewhere to keep themselves updated on all the insignificant subjects. How are we to tell them the stove sessions are to be utilised for very important purposes only?’ The Master’s wife and other women of the street lamented, thoroughly disgusted.

It was then the reputation of the stove sessions reached the adjoining Temple Street, the Canal Street, the Cathedral lane, Grove Street, Grave Street and other areas. Men and women from all these streets and even a few from the adjoining town taking the town bus started gathering for the stove sessions at Arumugam Master’s house.

The Master’s wife began to look worried as this was gradually becoming a major inconvenience to her and the family.

‘Shall I collect an entry fee for the sessions?’ she enquired the stove in the privacy of the kitchen when she was making coffee for Arumugam Master in the evening. The stove however made a point not to provide a response.

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The Master’s wife became more irritated to find a huge crowd blocking the entrance and spreading onto the street with the tailenders trying to push their way in. One afternoon, a pumpkin from her garden was stolen by someone who came for the sessions. On another day, her sari washed and left for drying on the cloth line in the front yard vanished without trace. The next day the betel nut cutter performed the vanishing trick.

She could have posed a few queries to the stove to find out whose handiwork this could be but she felt embarrassed to ask in front of a large audience about the missing pumpkin and betel nut cutter. It could be quite possible this might be taken as wasting the quality time of the stove on trivia like international politics.

Arumugam Master looked with content at the large crowd going back from his house after the stove sessions, as he alighted from his bicycle. In another six days time, the annual examinations in the school would be over and the summer vacation would commence. He would be at home throughout, all days. He would be explaining in detail to this huge mass of humanity who throngs his house for the stove session on the necessity to have a scientific outlook and would wean them away from everything illogical. He would as a grand finale demonstrate to them how to produce oxygen using peeled potatoes and Hydrogen Peroxide. There could be a remote possibility that his wife would also get sufficiently enlightened and shun her unscientific outlook in all earnestness.

As he was tossing in bed late at night trying to give a final shape to his discourse to the masses that would visit for the stove sessions, his wife nearby was having a sleepless night attempting to find a way out of the stove sessions. Both being at their late forties, would not have done anything better, together that night, they knew.

A day before the summer vacation commenced, the stove became totally silent. It stopped lifting its leg whatever be the question posed to it. No amount of cajoling by the Master’s wife would bring it out of its ascetic trance.

When Arumugam Master alighted from his bicycle conducting in his mind the final rehearsal of the lecture he would be delivering the next day, the house and even the street was looking awfully empty.

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which made him feel sad. Such an important and interesting lecture he prepared would be of no use to humanity. He thought of the positive outcome of this sudden turn of events. He was relieved to observe the stove would then on be a stove and would fully be utilised for the purpose it was procured, namely cooking. His wife had a smile radiating in her face, as she was making coffee for her husband. She was happy with the thought there would not be any mob at her house and the pumpkins, drumsticks, brinjals, sarees and betel cutters would not disappear.

‘Have you heard the news, Master’s wife? The kerosene stove in the house of Iyer the astrologer has commenced making astrological predictions. He and his wife are sitting in the central hall of their house with their stove cleaned and decked with chrysanthemum flowers, kept beside.

Iyer, the astrologer has blessed their stove with a few divine chants and had broken a coconut in its proximity to ward off any evil. They are charging two rupees for a single question posed to the stove. If three questions are asked together, there would be a concession. It is enough you pay only five rupees’, Bangaru said, when she entered the Master’s house the very next morning through the back door looking for draff for her buffaloes.

‘Is it not a steep tariff to charge five rupees for three questions?’.

The Master’s wife was trying to obtain her stove’s opinion about its peer in Iyer the astrologer’s house. Her stove said absolutely nothing.

It was emitting a low flame as the fish fry was getting golden brown in the frying pan, on it.

Arumugam Master stood at the patio of his house on a wooden stool, facing the house of Iyer, the astrologer. He commenced reciting in his mind, his grand address on the need for scientific temper.

Murugan Ramasami is a techno banker and project management professional heading large banking IT projects in UK, Thailand and USA. As a novelist, short story writer, poet, techtravel-humor columnist (in Tamil and English), he has 28 books to his credit. Ramasami has also written plays and movie script, dialogue in Tamil and has translated from Malayalam and English to Tamil The Wagon Magazine JULY 2017

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POETRY

GAYATRI MAJUMDAR

Twin Flame My twin flame lives on a floor above mine.

We are not on talking terms anymore.

Moreover, he does not know this yet – this conspiracy of mine half-aware of my existence or of earthly matters and creatures.

Anyway, he sleeps all day and plots my murder through nights disregarding all my pleasantries and attempts at cleansing his godforsaken corrupt soul, with scorn and inane mutterings.

The wind from the bay and gold-rust play with his hair and forgetfulness piercing his airs in a blue universe His body map unnamed constellations all day hemmed in formlessness inside airless four walls with peeling paint.

I leave little notes for him dabbed with musk and patchouli.

He will not read them.

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His will be tomes, you see – written across his broadening forehead Turning pain and callousness into lotus he tears at with utter scorn.

My twin flame flickers separating the darkness groping for the light million years away swallowing stars and stuffed veg pockets, his ears strain to hear the big dippers’ drumbeats and the rhythm of my march past his longings and atrophied hours.

We spent so many nights arriving and leaving vestiges of pain and other unmarked territories settling for no less no more.

I gaze with utter love at the fading light in his dull eye as he looks away towards faraway ships sailing in his white reckless sea following one evening star and sea creatures.

He will not return all that I offer to take back.

He often forgets he lives on a floor above mine and that I wait for him to raise the dead And flood my heart sink my ship The Wagon Magazine JULY 2017

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water flowers dance in the rain For my twin flame only will set my body alight with the fire of his infinite sadness and sagacity.

Several storms brew inside me lashing streets, bazars, and stories, but he will remain unmoved; a gentle giant playing the flute and tugging at the strings of my consciousness.

My Burning Heart

(L’amour Feu) – Readings from Satprem by Norman I found myself at this place still hoping to find a spark when the light on Norman dimmed; the auditorium turned chilly with sea-thoughts lashing incessantly as backdrop.

I followed and completely lost the trail across oceans, deserts, and savannas where snakes and mermaids sleep undisturbed.

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at the white sheets from which he explores his several beings keeping pace with naked sadhus and ochre-clad sadhaks discarding all this and that garments arriving by the sea above board declaring, ‘I do not believe in any religion!’ Extricating from this gaze and that and from other concentration camps, intent upon losing all.

I hold on tight to the conditioned-cold seat, lest the swaying ship sinks.

After all, these are some very rough waters.

Norman politely denies he’s Satprem incarnate holding firmly on to his crutch and his other beliefs.

The auditorium lifts off the ground away from pebbled minds; nothing, he said, nothing will erode with time.

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Dolphine’s Nose, Kodai Following endless pine forests, blue misty mountains, and waterfalls I arrived At unmarked territory on the way to the trekking-trial of Dolphin’s nose, a trek I didn’t take or was it the other way round.

The April sun beat down on a patch of a few rhododendrons, an abandoned bath tub brimming with yesterday’s rain and a still-smouldering burnt log, Kingfisher cardboard boxes and a large tree trunk with ‘Boom Shiva’ etched across it.

Outside the locked ‘hut’ Birds of Paradise squabble and I am momentarily lulled to sleep on the steps to heaven; In the misty view of the blue mountains and birdsongs, I’m hoping all this is as real as it gets.

A black-and-white cat appears as if from nowhere mewing for affection and food; let’s me rub her neck and just like that, disappears!

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to arrive at a better view of whatever that is out there.

I remain rooted to where I am chasing yellow-lemon butterflies with my eyes; they rise and fall suckling honey, fluttering to the conversations between swaying Casurina and the wind.

An Ode to Emily & Dylan All day we play this cat-and-cat game The rolling over, whistling and pawing.

When all else darkens and the flowers cannot be heard, Emily emerges from under the brambles, her large green eyes heralding possibilities.

Emily and Dylan jump in and out of make-shift blue screens for mouthful of Whiskies and occasional petting; narrating tales of horror and hope from another world.

Only in their cat-hearts they know how to break down walls and defences, banish all demons from the soul, manifest rats and fish from nothing – make magic!

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At the heart’s clockwork hour, the game resumes with great vigour and breathless anticipation.

Dylan, the much-maligned, and with the indomitable spirit of another furry world, will wait, sleep-pretending – with his ear twitching, and half-slit blue Brando eyes and his ginger tom ways watching tailing my every step.

At other times, he will paw my face and sing a song (or recite a poem; I can’t tell).

Only they know the way to all that aches my heart and to the food bowls and tricks to discipline my unkempt hours.

It’s a new day all over again and Emily and Dylan know, nothing is ever lost and as long as we work in tandem, play this game of belonging – we can make this dysfunctional world, our home.

Since 1995, Gayatri Majumdar has been running the critically acclaimed Brown Critique, a literary quarterly and a blog. She worked as a journalist at PTI, The Independent, and Debonair (editor, Poetry Page) in Mumbai. In Delhi, she managed teams of copyeditors at Macmillan and Cenveo. Her first book of poems Shout was published

by Sampark. You can reach her at browncritique@gmail com The Wagon Magazine JULY 2017

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FICTION

ROBERT KIRKENDALL

Fault Lines SILICON VALLEY, LATE 1980s

Y

ou really want to move out there?’ Gina asked.

‘I think it’s a good idea,’ Craig asserted. ‘It’s a great idea when you think about it.’

Gina felt unconvinced. ‘But it’s so far away.’

‘Aren’t you tired of renting?’ Craig asked rhetorically. ‘We’re throwing money away.’

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Gina looked away from the dining area table and out the front window of their apartment. ‘The commute is going to be at least two hours each way. I can’t do that.’

‘And you won’t have to,’ Craig reassured. ‘With the affordable prices of houses out there, we’ll only need one paycheck. And if you want to keep on working, I’m sure there are offices out there as well.’

Gina continued to look out the window at the central courtyard of the complex. She was noticing its familiarity for the first time, with the apprehension of possibly leaving it. ‘But there aren’t any jobs out there for what you do.’

‘The programming jobs are over here, but I’m willing to make that sacrifice.’

Gina looked back at Craig. ‘But will I do all day in that boring valley?’

‘At least you’ll have nothing to do in our own house. Won’t that be an improvement?’

‘Yeah, but Modesto?’

‘With all the people who are going to move out there, it might end up being a boomtown,’ Craig added positively.

Gina felt uneasy. ‘Can’t we find somewhere closer?’

‘I’ve looked. Gilroy, Santa Cruz, East Bay, real estate prices are rising everywhere that’s nearby.’

‘I don’t know. It feels like we’re going to be refugees.’

‘I know this is asking a lot, but we don’t have a future here except as renters. I don’t want that. It’s so affordable out there we could be homeowners out there right now,’ Craig emphasized.

The sudden pressure got to Gina. She stood up and paced around the dining and kitchen area. ‘Maybe housing prices will come back down eventually.’

‘I seriously doubt it, things just don’t work that way. Land value just keeps going up, at least around here.’

‘And everything that goes up must come down,’ Gina pointed out.

‘Not in our lifetime. Technology always expands, and this valley is one of its centers, maybe the most important one.’

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her. ‘You would think that such an important economic powerhouse would be affordable to those whose work makes it happen.’

‘It’s affordable for the top executives and engineers.’

‘But not everybody else,’ Gina said a bit angrily as she paced around some more. ‘Our parents had no trouble making it here, and they weren’t executives or engineers. Is buying a house becoming a privilege?’

Craig looked as if he heard something unexpected. ‘I don’t know.

Maybe it’s survival of the fittest now,’ he shrugged.

Gina slowly went to the front window toward the courtyard at the center of their complex. ‘We’ll have to leave everyone we know.’

‘It’s not like we’re moving cross country,’ Craig resumed his argument. ‘And we’ll come back and visit everyone, or they can come and see us.’

Gina continued to look out the window to all the other units. A couple of the neighbors were talking and laughing. ‘It won’t be the same. We won’t be a regular part of each other’s lives.’

‘But if we stay we’ll never be able to afford a house, not even with both of us working.’

‘This is not an easy decision for me to make.’

‘Everyone will be a phone call away,’ Craig said cheerfully, ‘and a hundred miles away really isn’t that far.’

‘It isn’t that near either.’ Gina sauntered away from the window and back into the dining area. ‘No more dropping by at the spur of the moment, no more regular get-togethers.’ She sat back down at the table. ‘We’ll have to plan when we see each other, like visiting far away relatives.’

‘A big event to look forward to!’ Craig added happily. ‘And wouldn’t you rather people visit us in a house? Of our own? We’ll be able to have more people over, even for an entire weekend.’

‘What, like a slumber party?’

‘Sure, why not?’

Gina laughed a little.

‘I thought you liked slumber parties.’

‘Sure,’ Gina said, ‘when I was in middle school.’

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‘But you see I’m trying to say.’

‘Which is?’

‘That we can finally entertain people properly,’ Craig highlighted.

‘But what do we do with ourselves the rest of the time?’

‘Enjoy the open space. A lot of agriculture in the central valley, small town life, slower pace, like this valley used to be.’

‘I don’t know. I really don’t think it’ll be the same.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because things happen in the Bay Area. This is where the excitement is.’

‘We can create our own excitement,’ Craig smiled suggestively.

Gina laughed a little. ‘You just want to do it in more rooms.’

‘Is that so wrong?’

‘Well, it’s not going to be all fun and games,’ Gina reminded. ‘I mean, think about your commute. It’s going to be at least two hours each way, that’s four, maybe five hours a day behind the wheel.’

‘At that hour I’ll be able to floor it. That’ll shave off some time.’

‘Well I don’t want you getting in a wreck,’ Gina said with concern.

‘C’mon, you know I’m a safe driver.’

‘But what if you dozed off for a few seconds? Or what if someone else did?’

‘You worry too much. There won’t be that much traffic that early, no way it’s going to be like 101 during the morning commute. No other cars to get in the way.’

‘I can’t help but worry.’ Gina looked downward. ‘I just don’t know about this.’

Craig leaned forward across table. ‘Look, hon, I know this is a big step, and I understand why it bothers you, but I’ve thought this through. We’ll be building up equity and I’ll be getting raises as I keep working, and at some point we’ll be able to afford to move back here.’

Gina looked up at him as he relaxed back into his chair. ‘Or maybe we’ll both end up liking it out there and want to stay.’

‘But if real estate prices do keep rising over here like you’re saying, we’ll be stuck over there whether we like it or not.’

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some more raises,’ Craig restated. ‘At least I’m working in the right place for that.’

‘Yes, that’s true,’ Gina said, then new thoughts entered her mind.

‘But another thing to consider is how quick technology can change.

Remember the 8-track? Every advancement eventually becomes obsolete, which usually leads to layoffs.’

‘Another thing not to worry about,’ Craig said with a little exasperation. ‘Every new advancement leads to new opportunities at a rate that far outpaces the lost, no longer needed jobs. The fact that people keep flooding into Silicon Valley proves that there are opportunities here. And they more than replace the people that leave.’

‘Just like lemmings,’ Gina said resignedly. ‘I suppose it would take a massive earthquake to get people to move away from here.’

‘You mean like the California coast falling into the Pacific? That could turn Modesto into ocean front property!’ Craig said excitedly.

‘That’s a happy thought.’

‘Serious. The farther we are from the San Andreas, the safer we’ll be when the big one finally hits.’

‘But what if Modesto ends up under water?’ Gina posed.

‘Then we’ll move to Nevada and their new beach front casinos!’

Craig said still excited. ‘Just think about what a golden opportunity this is. The northern San Joaquin Valley is going to be the next boom area, because that’s where the population is going to expand into.

And,’ his eyes brightened, ‘we’ll be in on the ground floor.’

Gina considered all the promises to her perception of the realities.

‘Gotta admit, I’m having a hard time seeing that happening.’

‘Why not?’

Gina felt her tact lessening. ‘There’s nothing to do out there.’

‘There’s a lot to do out there! Open space everywhere, no traffic jams, slower pace of life. We’ll be out in the country.’

‘But where can you see a concert?’

‘They’ve got things out here that we don’t have here, like rodeos, and gun shows.’

‘A gun show?’ Gina said with alarm.

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wistfully.

‘Didn’t know we were moving out to the wild west.’

‘Don’t worry, I won’t turn our house into an armory.’

Gina had new ominous feelings. ‘I still have to think about it.’

‘Okay, but I don’t think there’s much to think about.’

‘This move will upend our lives,’ Gina said seriously.

‘It will improve our lives,’ Craig responded equally serious. ‘Imagine having our place.’

‘Location is everything.’

‘Which is what real estate agents say when they want to sell you some overpriced mini-mansion. Modesto is a fine place. George Lucas is from there.’

‘He doesn’t live there now.’

‘It’s a true, old fashion American city, like Mayberry.’

Gina felt she was hitting a wall. ‘Sure seems like you have your mind made up.’

Craig’s excitement finally calmed down. ‘Maybe this all seems sudden,’ he admitted, ‘but I did consider everything about this. And I really believe that the positives outweigh the negatives.’

Gina had of a new idea.

‘How about we stay for a while and try to save up some more money? We’re still young enough, and I’m certainly willing to work some overtime. I’d even be willing to buy a townhouse,’ she said trying to be persuasive, ‘that’s good enough for me.’

‘Sure, we could do that, but the house in Modesto is something we can do now. And why settle for half a house with no yard?’

Gina gazed over to the living room. She noticed all the pictures arranged around the television and stereo. The still images of loved ones and life’s important events stirred memories inside of her. ‘What you say makes sense, but I never counted on leaving my hometown, or the Bay Area at least.’

‘This move will pay off in the end.’

‘This is a lot more than just an economic decision.’

‘Understood,’ Craig relented.

‘So can we at least sleep on it tonight?’

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d Gina laid upright in bed under the covers while reading a magazine.

‘Now one last thing and I swear I’ll stop bugging you about this,’ Craig said from the bathroom sink. ‘With our own house, you’d have your own room to do whatever you want with. Think about it.’ He went back to brushing his teeth.

Gina looked up from her magazine. ‘Like what?’

Craig stopped brushing.

‘Like some of the things you like to do, or talk about doing, sewing, art projects, things like that. Maybe you can turn it into a library.’

He started brushing again.

Gina thought about having an extra room.

She found the idea of a room she could design in her own image appealing. My own little corner of the world, she contemplated. The possibility of more space brought about a new yearning. Sure wouldn’t miss this closet of an apartment, she thought, three fifty a month for a one bedroom, and another rent increase probably on the way. She also anticipated how much better open space would be if they had children.

Gina speculated further into the future. The possibilities unfurled in her mind, and her dreams grew bright. Then the brightness began to dim, the open space became engulfing, the move an exile, the room a cell.

Craig finished brushing, rinsed, and came to bed. He got under the covers and sidled up to Gina. ‘What are you reading?’

‘Oh, nothing.’ Gina closed the magazine and set it on the nightstand. ‘You know, I was thinking about what’s happening in the world lately, about how things are thawing out between us and Russia. That’s going to change things here in the valley.’

‘How so?’

‘Well, it was defense that drove technology and created most of the jobs here. If things change, and it looks like they are, that’s going to have to change the job market around here. Booms don’t last forever.’

‘And you think it’s going to affect my job?’

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‘It might.’

‘I thought you didn’t want to talk about this anymore tonight,’ Craig kidded.

‘It just occurred to me right now, must have been something I read.’

‘Well let me put your mind at ease. There are many uses for technology other than defense. I mean, technology is everywhere these days. Ten years ago there were no ATM’s or VCR’s, now they’re everywhere. The future is very bright for the computer.’

‘What if it’s not a smooth transition?’

‘It’ll transition.’

Gina tried to consider all possibilities. ‘You know, these changes could mean more pay.’

‘I sure hope so.’

‘So why not wait to make a decision until after what happens happens?’

Craig seemed intrigued. ‘But what if this opportunity passes by and real estate prices rise over in Modesto?’

‘What if we go there and die of boredom?’

‘Boredom is a state of mind,’ Craig reminded. ‘And we are not boring people.’ He relaxed under the covers. ‘Right?’

‘Of course, it’s the surroundings I worry about. And that long drive five days a week, won’t that make you crazy?’

‘All I need are my tapes, or I can listen to the sports chat on KNBR. And other Silicon Valley people are moving out there, maybe we can start a carpool.’

Gina pondered. ‘Guess I always look at the glass as half empty.’

‘Nah, you just need to sleep on it.’ d As Gina drifted toward sleep, she remembered something from her childhood, when she was ten or eleven. Her family was going to go to downtown San Jose for the annual Cinco de Mayo parade. When they got into the car to leave, her father wasn’t with them. She and her siblings had asked their mother why their father wasn’t going. Mother The Wagon Magazine JULY 2017

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said that father had some things to take care of. They kept asking their mother what their father was doing as they drove to downtown. She said their father was working on a project around the house he had been meaning to get to and didn’t want to put it off any longer. They finally arrived at downtown and walked to the parade. Gina remembered it was a clear, sunny day, the parade was colorful, musical, and festive, and they all had a fun time.

When they returned home after the parade, father was in the backyard laying down bricks and mortar for a new walkway. He was very intent on his work, and appeared unusually tense. Gina and her siblings tried to talk to him, but he was too focused on his task.

Mother stayed in the house, and when father came in the house they didn’t say much to each other. A new tension was filling the house.

Within a day or two the tension eased back into calmness. Everything was seemingly normal again, but her parents interests began to go in different directions, and the light of unity in which she always saw them was changed forever. She had never known what first caused the rift, but she thought back to that past as if she were seeing it for the first time.

Robert Kirkendall is from San Jose, California, attended San Jose State University, and lives in Santa Cruz, California. He is currently developing a live televised drama anthology show for CTV Santa Cruz and writing the final draft of his novel Redwood Summer The Wagon Magazine JULY 2017

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Threaded Back what of this hole in the skin something about the sun cracking in the blue below the horizon the threads scarlet have nowhere to go back but to dark that dried yesterday all over the tundra the needle made of day could ever be like yesterday a shade on the stitch figuring out figuring out The Wagon Magazine JULY 2017

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Oblivious i was not a bad poet then the cut on my forehead would still sing with the moon as though untying the knot of a man of chance returning to the last line of Kafka’s spot — like a dog, like a dog — a fish knife in his eye as bare as the moon wailing for a pantomime & a cluster of sheep surfacing to my poems humming that’s fine, that’s fine life, no billowing i was not maladroit enough to think of a metaphor to travel into with my fate i would just sing along that’s fine, that’s fine mi luna mi tierra i was not a bad poet then flaked off the borage blue of the night the moon kept waning in my heart with gored sides that could still cleave a path through the darkness i knew feeling full of purpose before the brumal blade or trying to unfold a crease that life holds as jarred were to impede The Trial not worth trying The Wagon Magazine JULY 2017

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‘with twenty hands’ how much longer could i then behold the smile of the summoners in opera hats like relics of a long gone love everything in the dulling parable was beckoning me nearer to the spleen at the back of my throat as quiet as the night laboring in that page & pages, pages, pages, pages that would come into being to become blotched with an estranged sour touch of the words i tried dead & alive years to come & drift past them when prowling in that moonlit quarry they all would learn to lament: oh poor frog, your heart is still beating! what are you K.?

Indian Journal New Delhi: to get more than the dawn a red tulle body flaring up. the mosquito net white & whooshing at times & this foundry of wings of mosquitoes now ready for the spilled over blood.

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here sun. somewhere birds crack the sky dawn what I fear has never been so late kid’s head buried in my chest. do I know what’s to cry like a bleating sheep broken lines unfurls K’s poems in my thoughts obliterating the bleeding sun dissolving into now a distant hum very soon a cacophonous mix what’s K to make of it in his poems I think of the young poet of Kolkata. somewhere the oblique overpasses ask for boundless love slogging through memories snuffing out the first azan of the day & the litanies of the stray dogs kid’s skull rolls on my chest his eyes waking to dawn what’s that poet to make of it kid’s eyes etched on his notebook page which is perhaps whiter than the mosquito net now emptied like times when I used to live in this land & never had to step inside. tomorrow I would be again in Kolkata brushing dust from a palimpsest today I would just pass the day Kipling Sahib gazing hatefully on New Delhi the breeze stirring a tattered liana of madhabilata high up among the colonial columns dust on dust to creep through Kolkata: the waterboarding K’s poems are now bowing lower than this plane bleeding off its speed The Wagon Magazine JULY 2017

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the cinnamon colored brick kilns look plastered by a green that feels so unwanted in a blood brick telecast on BBC years of rising smoke have gnawed the moulded bricks but the green green green so green that I turn to Lorca’s ballad & cry like a fool unheeded for the girl of bitterness until the touchdown when I hear K whispering I leave you alone for the eve now you would be too blind to trust my poems begin me only when you end your quick days & nights in Kolkata when you are left again to think that you are still stuck like an albino bone in its craw made of loose scoria these long years these long years were not so imminent in my mother’s dream of me becoming a Caliph one fine day seven thousand miles away. these long years were not a life book that rustles inside memories dying in the throat. for a crown of light she has been counting a thousand & one nights. every morning kneeling to the earth she tries to find me again amongst the sprouts. ha the world has to pass mutters my father sparrows cluster in the back of his throat. & here we are home, kid hello hello I say opening the gates of shadows of the crows aloft & aground. the long-spiked coconut tree leaves dance across K’s sun-blazed notebook page capturing kid’s fingers making a ghost with a lump of earth mine tearing the sword-shaped leaves only to reminisce all afternoon The Wagon Magazine JULY 2017

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upon a palm frond hat from my school days maybe everything might have been... everything like your face in my hands dark eyes glistening in the folds like malaria now & then those love vomit & rum stained clothes moving under the coal iron in the neighborhood coming back laundered the following afternoon only to redeem truth & to rehearse a hundred summers of solitude... to think I’m going to see you again tonight a conjurer had his time on earth this is the place where I can sing I am your man a place that has no place in time or maybe it’s always just half passed like this late afternoon sun on water in K’s notebook page like this fish put out to crawl through a hologram never failing kid fish eyes always give him thrills processions pass the foreheads of the deceased pressed against the cobwebbed evening feel the reference point that had rattled so hard in life now the queue in the burning ghats souls reassured once oxidized flake after flake & then beguiled by the creeping waters. placid slumbers the Ganges like the night at the bottom of the root this is the country where cicadas chase every evening the crackling stars of each cast & class. my friend sings taking my breath away the dead to become boats floating downward the rim of the dark skies drifting anew in the city alleys in search of hearts that had no refuge from any versions of hearts.

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processions pass shouts drawling a tribute to dawn poppy red flags a street full of scars you ask me how I feel now with my eyes peeled K’s poems stopped to bleed into the evening so wet & claiming now again mouth into mouth we keep frisking & gamboling round the night we come & coming on like a hemorrhage like Fidel Castro floating belly up dying of his own death I need not watch for the moon I close my eyes to get more than the dawn more than its billow & spray more than K’s love poems glittering like war their curl of waves that come rolling in & I say Kolkata, my tin soldier the waterboarding is all yours

Debasis Mukhopadhyay holds a PhD in literary studies and lives and writes in Montreal, Canada. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Curly Mind, After the Pause, Posit, Mannequin Haus, Yellow Chair Review, Thirteen Myna Birds, Of/With, I am not a silent poet, New Verse News, Scarlet Leaf Review, With Painted Words, Silver Birch Press, and elsewhere. Follow him at debasismukhopadhyay.wordpress.com The Wagon Magazine JULY 2017

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POETRY

RESHMA RAMESH

Mace I unbutton your poems word by word not as a tourist but as a traveller the one who sits on roof tops of buses not pictures, the one who likes to cycle through stanzas stopping at bus stops not to ask directions from strangers but to find out their names and where they came from, I draw them out of camel tracks, eerie havelis, a bangle maker’s hands wrinkled like a used unstarched cotton dhoti.

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Your poems are like drum beaters, chest thumpers, fire handlers and acrobats, loud and obnoxious the kind I do not want to read.

I like stories that have thick walls, a court yard, a priest, pot holes, a manganiyar singing while his tired wife looks on, eagles flying over forts, opium clad deserts, stranded couple, a bird on the roof and some warm milk.

Stories where you meet your father’s teacher, where wind mills have lost their way and have blue painted houses that do not look spectacular but only ordinary, stories that have pitch darkness. Silence.

I slip my hands between your words to caress golden sand dunes, temple bells, like one would worship a family deity.

I want to have arguments with your verbs, with their carved windows and narrow lanes.

I want to meet them midway between being written and heard.

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Window Sill You break me up into descending rain, listen to me as you listen to nothing when you enter your empty house, arbitrarily, condensed and very conscious.

You climb up my sleeves A quarter of me is below your poised poem as you reach for my eyes to look into faded pages from a book.

A book that was written when you did not know we existed, While you unstitched the noise of a train and I stitched air Far away from each other closing and opening doors Yet always standing by the window just hoping hoping that someday a sparrow would arrive and place a summer on our sill.

Reshma Ramesh is a prominent voice in Kavya Sanje, a popular poetry platform in Bangalore and has presented her poem for Handloom Movement, Swachh Bharat campaign, Flamingo Festival, etc, and attended PULARA7 International Poetry and Folk Song Festival in Pangkor Island Malaysia. Her collection of poems, Reflection of Illusions was published by Writer’s Workshop. Also a photography degree holder, Reshma practices dental surgery in Bangalore The Wagon Magazine JULY 2017

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POETRY

SUE ANN OWENS

Photo Session with Street Orphans Stop everything!

Don’t give me your young look.

What drama is there in simple smiles or tears?

When this camera’s shutter snaps Please, no more faces frozen in masks of innocence We must start again — in focus.

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Give me your crocodile grin, your hawk keen gleam.

Show me your buzzard brutality or your ‘Who done it?’ look.

All together-again.

Pose, home sweet homeless.

Unveil your scorpion tails and the red serpents housed in your heartless scowls.

Show the world your feigned ferocity.

Street Scars You wear them like war paint each with its specific complaint and glee Children, must you carve your names like epitaphs into your arms into the very heart of me.

Bolivar, you do have a yen to profess to your handiwork wounds from jagged bottle glass on your ex-best friend How crass! Jose, you show and tell the razor’s gash on Raphael that barely missed his smile.

Jose Luis, should I admire The Wagon Magazine JULY 2017

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all seven stitches from Martin’s machete that nearly split your scull in half like a coconut. Dare you laugh.

And Eddie, on your neck the row of cigarette burns that your dear father once blessed are no less than Que Mado’s knife wounds where hematomas have raised little ant hills around his heart.

To the Deaf-Mute Street Orphan Your harpist fingers sing make music with air paintings twisting your wrists with love circles you tell me the same time tomorrow you will be waiting I hear the voice of your dimples your script of scars tell stories and the brief storminess of your tears on the verge of spilling stirs even the hearts of goats The Wagon Magazine JULY 2017

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do not try to say, ‘I love you.’ words are now superfluous child of the unstrung instrument your speech of violets surpass

The Parting Goodbye with your faces of flushed amethyst sweet pickle ears and persimmon kisses I will miss the clown suit of your laughter your voices rising and falling with death’s shortness of breath will frequent my dreams forever forever your faces will confront me in catacombs of sleep decomposing faces that bloom up at me from out of the temple ruins where grow the dead roses of your cheeks

Sue Ann Owens is an author and nonprofit activist on issues pertaining to homeless and abandoned children. Her work with Children of the Americas in Santo Domingo and throughout the Dominican Republic, providing care and assistance on the street to street orphans inspired her poetry and forthcoming novel. She lives in Tucson, Arizona The Wagon Magazine JULY 2017

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INTERVIEW WITH AMITAV GHOSH

MURALI KAMMA

A Planet in Peril T

he 2016 presidential contenders barely discussed climate change, although Donald Trump—whose stunning victory dismayed environmentalists, among many others—has made no secret of his deep skepticism. The timing couldn’t be worse for the world, because the progress we’re making is now in jeopardy. Author Amitav Ghosh explains why global warming is such a potent threat.

Every now and then, we’ve come across a book or a film whose timing was so uncanny that we wondered how the author or the auteur knew their topic would be, well, trending. Amitav Ghosh’s The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable, published by the

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University of Chicago Press this year, is one such example.

Of course, the alarm over climate change and its consequences is not new; what’s been newsworthy is the heartening resolve so many nations have shown in tackling the issue. And that included the United States, which supported the Paris and Kigali Agreements, each signed by close to 200 nations.

However, after President Trump walked out of the recent Paris climate meet, all bets are off. In fact, President Trump—who once tweeted that human-created global warming was a hoax—thinks using financial resources for climate change policies is a waste of money.

Why are there so many skeptics? Does economic growth at any cost trump everything else? Perhaps the message is not getting across because it’s hard to envision a transformed planet. Even the terms (‘climate change; and ‘global warming’) are not scary. They may even sound benign to some people. Maybe they don’t induce panic because the science is complicated, although the impact of human actions is not easy to miss. Denialism can be a way to avoid responsibility.

‘I don’t think messaging is the problem, really,’ Ghosh says. ‘The reality is that it’s almost impossible for most of us to take adaptive measures as individuals.’

In his book, Ghosh writes that recognition of the problem is not the same as comprehension—and, invariably, we want to maintain the status quo. But that’s increasingly untenable in the face of stark, observable scientific findings. So is there hope for the earth?

‘Whether or not it’s too late to reverse climate change is a question best answered by scientists,’ he says.’The consensus seems to be that some very serious impacts are inevitable—and indeed we’re seeing them unfold around us already.’

The statistics are chilling. To give an idea, according to the International Energy Agency, air pollution accounts for about 6.5 million deaths every year, and according to the UN, around 300 million children—the majority being South Asian—breathe extremely toxic air.

On one occasion recently, the pollution level in Delhi was so high that over 1800 schools were closed—not a comforting thought for parents. Rising affluence cannot insulate people from such dangers. With The Wagon Magazine JULY 2017

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about 24 percent of India’s arable land gradually turning into desert, a two-degree Celsius increase in global average temperature would slash the nation’s food supply by a quarter.

The Paris Agreement aspires to limit the rise of the global mean temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius—but even that’s widely thought to be out of reach, Ghosh points out. This year’s average temperatures, almost certainly the highest on record, are said to be about 1.2 degrees Celsius above what the world experienced before the Industrial Revolution. In this century, according to the World Meteorological Organization, we’ve had 16 of the 17 hottest years on record. Another study shows that rising sea levels could lead to the migration of up to 50 million Indians and 75 million Bangladeshis. Another example, to stay with the subcontinent, is the impending water crisis. The water stored in the Himalayan ice sustains 47 percent of the world’s population; ‘in 2008 it was found that the Himalayan glaciers had already lost all the ice formed since the mid-1940s.’ A third may disappear by 2050.

Grim predictions, indeed. Will we have a ‘9/11 moment,’ in the not-too-distant future, when the reality of climate change hits us with such force that we’ll never forget it? Saying that we’re already ‘reaching some sort of inflection point,’ Ghosh adds, ‘The other day on the New York subway, I heard five separate conversations on Hurricane Sandy.’

In an Antique Land, Ghosh’s highly praised nonfiction debut, will endure. But he is mostly known for his novels, which range from The Circle of Reason and The Shadow Lines, in the early period, to the more recent Ibis Trilogy. He is also the author of The Glass Palace and The Hungry Tide, and it was the latter novel—set in the dense Sundarbans of eastern India—that made him a passionate environmentalist.

The novel was released in 2004, just a few months before an undersea earthquake measuring 9.0 on the Richter scale triggered an epic tsunami in the Indian Ocean, causing horrific death and destruction.

That was Ghosh’s 9/11 moment.

‘The news had a deeply unsettling effect on me: the images that had been implanted in my mind by the writing of The Hungry Tide merged with live television footage of the tsunami in a way that was almost overwhelming,’ he writes. ‘I became frantic; I could not focus on anything.’

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Now, over a decade later, Ghosh points out that India’s west coast— which has long been less vulnerable—may experience even more devastation than the east coast. Citing long-term projections that show cyclonic activity increasing by 46 percent in the Arabian Sea, while falling by 31 percent in the Bay of Bengal, he says, ‘These developments will have very serious implications for India because so much of our industrial and commercial infrastructure is concentrated on the west coast.’

Does that mean living by the water will no longer be prized? It’s a sign of affluence, after all. A beautiful home with a gorgeous view may be the ultimate status symbol for the aspiring class.

Ghosh notes that the allure of beach front properties wasn’t—or isn’t—universal. ‘In India, and in most other Asian countries, people were hesitant to build near the sea until quite recently. Nor are ‘sea views’ prized everywhere. In, Indonesia, in most traditional communities, people build their houses facing away from the sea.’

What’s clear is that, regardless of our preferences, the price of living near the water is going up—and it has little to do with real estate values. Global warming will raise sea levels and wreak havoc in coastal communities. Already, we’re seeing the effects of super storms— whether you want to call them hurricanes, cyclones, or typhoons— which can be at least partly attributed to climate change. Does that mean more and more people will have to move inland?

‘People living on the coast, or close to flood-prone rivers, will certainly need to act to protect themselves,’ Ghosh says. ‘Unfortunately, for most people, moving presents many practical obstacles. How do they dispose of their houses? What do they do about their mortgages?

And so on.’Besides, moving inland presents its own challenges if we don’t seriously tackle the real problem. ‘Many inland communities are already having to deal with drought, ‘rain bombs,’ flooding, intensifying wildfires, and so on.’

In his book, Ghosh examines climate change from three angles— literary, historical, and political. Considering works from various cultures, in the first section, Ghosh takes issue with the contemporary stance that novels work best when they focus exclusively on individuals and their stories. What about the collective—and what about the The Wagon Magazine JULY 2017

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great dramas of nature, which may become more ‘deranged’ as climate change accelerates? What about other creatures? Perhaps we’re too detached to sense the urgency of the challenges facing us.

John Steinbeck may seem a little old-fashioned today, but in his work, ‘what we see, rather, is a visionary placement of the human within the nonhuman; we see a form, an approach that grapples with climate change avant la lettre.’ That’s not all. ‘Around the world, too, there are many writers—not all of them realists—from whose work neither the aggregate nor the nonhuman have ever been absent,’ Ghosh notes. ‘To cite only a few examples from India: in Bengali, there is the work of Adwaita Mallabarman and Mahasweta Devi; in Kannada, Sivarama Karanth; in Oriya, Gopinath Mohanty; in Marathi, Vishwas Patil.’

A stinging assessment of colonialism’s impact is given in the second section of Ghosh’s book: how the promotion of fossil-fuel economies in the West forestalled more sustainable models of development, as articulated by Gandhi and other dissenters. Moreover, as a supplier of raw materials that fueled Britain’s rise, India for a long time had to put off building its own carbon-based economy. And now, as Indians (and others) play catch-up by replicating the same kind of modernity, and seek the same kind of prosperity in rising numbers, we’ve realized that ‘every family in the world cannot have two cars, a washing machine, and a refrigerator—not because of technical or economic limitations but because humanity would asphyxiate in the process.’

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Though we’re seeing the effects of climate change, India and other developing countries have been more focused on their economic objectives, perhaps understandably. They no longer have that luxury—all other goals become moot when your very existence is under threat. Because the political establishment tends to focus on the narrow concerns of citizens, it needs other allies to tackle global threats like climate change, even when nation-states come together. The allies Ghosh has in mind may surprise some people.

‘If religious groupings around the world can join hands with popular movements, they may well be able to provide the momentum that is needed for the world to move forward on drastically reducing emissions without sacrificing considerations of equity,’ he writes.

But in the modern world, where we turn to science and technology for sophisticated solutions, this approach may seem antiquated.

Ghosh disagrees, noting that ‘religious world views are not subject to the limitations that have made climate change such a challenge for our existing institutions of governance: they transcend nation-states, and they all acknowledge intergenerational, long-term responsibilities; they do not partake of economistic ways of thinking and are therefore capable of imagining nonlinear change…in ways that are perhaps closed to the forms of reason deployed by contemporary nation-states.’

While it’s understandable that growth without equality or environmental awareness is morally bankrupt, isn’t it true that religious beliefs can be a barrier when they’re at odds with scientific views?

Climate change denialists come in all stripes.

‘I think Pope Francis’s encyclical is perhaps the single most important development on the climate change frontier,’ he responds. ‘We can only hope that other religious groups and figures will start waking up to this issue.’ As he notes in his book, ‘Finally, it is impossible to see any way out of this crisis without an acceptance of limits and limitations, and this, in turn, is, I think, intimately related to the idea of the sacred, however one may wish to conceive of it.’

The biggest impediment for making changes as individuals, Ghosh points out, is that we don’t get how the crisis is also a crisis of culture. Is it the culture of consumption, specifically?

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‘Yes,’ he says, ‘consumption and culture have been very closely linked for some time now. Consider the romance with the automobile that has long been a feature of American life. Today it is very much a feature of Indian and Chinese life as well.’

What, then, can we do at the micro level? At the macro level, as he makes clear, the distribution of power in the world lies at the core of the climate crisis. But at the individual level, what choices should we make? What can we do to make a difference?

‘There are many things that we can and should do as individuals,’ Ghosh says. ‘Some of them are obvious, like cutting back on consumption, wasting less, being careful with water usage, etc. But it’s perhaps even more important to try to bring these issues to the attention of politicians and leaders at the municipal, state, and national levels. At the same time, at a personal level, we can also examine our own priorities and prepare for the unexpected.’

The interview first appeared in Atlanta, US-based Khabar.com.

Murali Kamma is the managing editor of an Atlanta-based features magazine Khabar. com. His fiction has appeared in Lakeview International Journal of Literature and Arts, Rosebud, Asian Pacific American Journal, South Asian Review, India Currents, The Missing Slate, America’s Intercultural Magazine, India Abroad, Trikone Magazine, Muse India, and is forthcoming in Eastlit The Wagon Magazine JULY 2017

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BIO-FICTION

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t’s stormy and raining. A flash penetrates the room through cracks near the roof. ‘Turn off the radio!’ Dad shouts to beat the sound of trees flapping in the wind outside. He’s always told me lightning interferes with radio waves. I hesitate a little. He thinks I haven’t heard him. He says it again, this time rolling his fist with the thumb pressed against the index to signal a turn off. I nod. The crack in the wall behind the stool scares me. I turn the radio off and rush back to where I have been sitting the whole afternoon.

Night is creeping in.

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‘Let’s run to aunt’s house.’

Nobody responds. I look at dad. He hasn’t heard me. He keeps wandering from room to room moving plates and pots to trap rainwater from leaks. When he is still, he gazes at the roof. His face glows before he’s interrupted by another thunderbolt. I glance at mum. She turns her face away.

‘People, let’s go to aunt’s…’

‘I will stay,’ dad cuts me short. ‘We will find you,’ mum says. They are releasing me. They share 132 years between them. They aren’t leaving each other. For some minutes, we all quietly stare at the candle burning out. It struggles in the winds blowing through cracks near the roof and the broken windows. Then, the house starts howling. I want to ask mum and dad to run. Again. But they have been blunt about their intent to stay just some moments ago. After this, my elder sister will check on us at dawn.

The roof shakes violently. The winds want to tear it off. They have started throwing debris inside. Through the window. Everyone notices but we all remain silent. I take a long gaze at dad and mum. And try closing my eyes. That’s even scarier. I reminisce 2010. At a house dad’s eldest son had constructed for us.

I had returned from Zomba to join the rest of the family having completed my first year in university. I hadn’t been in regular contact with my parents now that Desmond, my other brother, had relocated to near where he was teaching. I would just call and ask him to pass my regards to mum and dad. And our only sister in the village.

That December, I was anticipating a fabulous vacation. My twin sister would be back from town. We were a little unsure about our other two little sisters who were residing in the capital. I arrived in my hometown some days before schools closed but I didn’t go straight home. I rested at Desmond’s place because he told me he had also taken some days off to join us.

I finally reached home with my brother in the very first days of December. We were welcomed by Chuck’s wagging tail. And dad on a chair behind the house where he always sat listening to the BBC. ‘Welcome home brothers.’

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He grinned as he moved the radio from his lap to the chair to help us with our luggage. Mum had gone out but she would be back before dusk. We returned the grin.

‘We are here. A nice place isn’t it?’

‘Yeah, very quiet,’ I chipped in.

My brother was already moving around inspecting the house, whistling throughout. Unlike the old one, it was very spacious and located at the very end of our clan compound. Dad liked privacy and our old house had forced him into a position of compromise. But it was still good because being the oldest brother to our aunts he was the clan head. Everyone was obliged to pass through him, which wasn’t easy with the relocation.

‘It’s almost finished. We’re just waiting for panes and we will be good to go.’

Mum joined in the celebration of our arrival when she returned that evening. She was happy that we were five now: dad, herself, Desmond, I and Chuck.

‘You just left us with Chuck you guys. The good thing is he doesn’t wander a lot.’

We laughed.

Mum was a very different person. She still is. She always thought farming. That’s what I dreaded.

‘Now that you are here and the rains are also almost here, we will have enough manpower for the fields.’

We just laughed it off and discussed about voluntary construction work that was going on at our local church and other stories until night came.

In the coming days, we spent our mornings in the fields ridging and the afternoons at home playing draughts. And listening to snarls about skyrocketing corn and sugar prices from regular church visitors.

Mum had a soft spot for friends complaining about the rising cost of living. It made her a terrible church treasurer, but very loved by everyone - from the pastor to those that attended service for just enough Sundays to earn her trust.

Sunday, December 10th 2010, Desmond and I woke up late after The Wagon Magazine JULY 2017

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a village football match the previous day. From our window, we could see clouds threatening with rains, but they disappeared at the first sight of the sun over the plateau east. Since late November, the days had been like that. We were starting to long for rains with chiefs and other village elders organizing rain prayers. As I left our room to sweep around the compound, the sun was already burning my bare feet from under.

‘Seems you aren’t ready for church again today. See you when we are back.’

‘See you,’ I responded.

As mum and dad returned in the afternoon, the clouds that had vanished early that morning had started reemerging.

‘It will rain today,’ dad said, with an air of satisfaction. Mum prepared lunch quickly and moved all kitchen utensils into the house.

Clouds kept forming until around 3pm when showers started.

The rattling sounds on the roof became louder each passing moment.

‘This must be Chiperone,’ dad said, sending us around to check if all doors and windows had been sealed.

The winds were forcing the rains into the sitting room through the windows. We had nailed sacks to frames for protection against winds and rains but Chiperone was proving stronger.

‘Let’s go to our rooms. They are much safer than here.’

We all left for our bedrooms.

We were on our beds when tragedy struck. Without warning, the winds ripped the siding from the house’s exterior walls and at one go lifted the entire roof away. Before we could even react, we heard a crushing sound from the living room. Without talking to each other, Desmond and I sprang up from where we stood and darted for the corridor. Rains whipped us in the few seconds we dashed across the living room and trod over the collapsed wall to outside. We were wrestling with the rains and the wind in the open when Desmond stopped.

Mum and dad. They just stood still in the rains watching the whole house crumble. We rushed back. We grabbed them by the hands and ran. When the rains stopped at around 5pm, we slowly padded to where our house had stood just that very afternoon. Mum cried.

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Soon, a crowd gathered. Everyone looked scared. They helped us pull out what was left under the rubble. Then, mum heard Chuck yelp.

The living room wall had fallen over him. A group of boys tried lifting the block as the yelps subsided into whimpers. When they finally lifted it, he ran.

‘This whole block fell over him,’ I explained to my in-law when he arrived about half an hour later.

‘You’re lucky. When a building collapses, and the wall falls on a pet, you’re very lucky.’

I looked into his eyes.

‘It was supposed to be one of you under that block,’ he sneezed, before joining the crowd in the search for more property.

We could’ve died that afternoon.

Now, we’re even snapping questions at each other on whether we should run. Another thunderbolt. The whizzes get louder. I look at dad and mum once more. Then, the roof lifts up but the wires tying it to the wall hold it back. It falls with rumbles, sending some debris down. I don’t want to die. Without a word, I sprint to the door. A few minutes later, am not even in the rains. I have escaped to aunt’s house.

I rush straight to the bedroom I borrow when I’m home. As I roll the curtains to check on our house, I see mum and dad in the rains.

Beaton Galafa holds a Bachelor’s degree in Education from the University of Malawi.

His works have appeared in The Maynard, South 85 Journal, Birds Piled Loosely, The Voices Project, Bhashabandhan Literary Review and Betrayal: a collection of poetry and prose on betraying and being betrayed

by Robin Barratt. He is the current chairperson for Pen Avenue Malawi and the Founding Editor of nthandareview.com, a Malawian online literary magazine The Wagon Magazine JULY 2017

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FICTION

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hen them pupils go demon-dime and the numbs begin ta tingle, that’s when I know I’m back. If I lie still enough, I’ll feel myself takin flight and I’ll hear momma whisperin ta me ta have a good night and then I’ll smile big and wide and breathe deep and think bout how momma dresses me and how she sometimes likes ta leave the tag on jus in case I don’t like it none, but I always love it.

Papa tells me I’s special. Papa tells me that I’s conceived from jus a kiss and he tells me it all started with him beggin pretty momma for jus one little kiss, and when she did, he slipped her me, right onta her tongue and she saw my colors beginnin ta bloom and she knew some’n truly special was brewin.

Papa told me I’s born that very same night, up there at that Eastside Tulsa Vet, right across the street from the El Chico restaurant. I sure love hearin the story cause it make me smile every time papa tells it, but I suppose everybody loves hearin bout how they came abouts. Papa was jus originally gonna stop by there ta let momma pet on them homeless kitties and Papa said momma was so tripped up she kept tellin em that the walls

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looked like the floors and the floors looked like the walls.

Papa was good buddies with the doggy doc there, who was jus so happenin ta be workin on this big pooch that he had all propped up and on the tall table, and this big doggy was hurtin and bleedin and looked like he’d been shot by a farmers two barrel, and the doggy was pantin and in pain and was havin a hard time breathin and momma kept sayin that watchin that hurtin doggy was makin her numbs tingle a bit and she started gettin anzy from a sting she’d never felt before, and when that doggy doc said he was gonna have ta put em down, papa asked momma if she wanted ta test out those new feels a hers, and she told Papa that the doggy’s cries a pain was makin her feel sad and she’d never felt this way before and it was doublin her over like they’s labor pains or somein, and Papa told momma ta breathe. The doctor already had an IV line in the doggy and a syringe full a some frothy, milk lookin stuff and papa said his assistant, some gangly chinaman pushed in that syringe and fed the line and it made the doggy go into a deep sleep.

Papa walked my momma up to the dyin pooch and guided her tremblin hand onto the doggy and placed the heal of her palm onto his chest and Papa said that when the doggy doc nodded ta his assistant, the chinaman quickly unscrewed one syringe and put another one on, a clear one. Then he told momma that they’s pushin in the heart stopper and papa said momma started full body shakin as she began feelin that doggy’s heart race at first, before then breakin rhythm and quiverin and then stoppin, and then she let out a gasp and papa said her eyes started tearin and she made a big, sad smile before laughin nervously and grabbin her chest and sayin she could feel the good in her tryin ta come out. Then she got real dizzy.

And then it happened. I came inta this world and I looked up at Papa for the first time and I’s cold but I wasn’t, and I looked down at that poor dead doggy and I embraced him and we stayed there for hours and Papa held me, and I was so scared but he held me so tight and I felt so safe and even though I didn’t know him, I knew he had ta be my papa by the way he looked at me. The way he treated me.

Papa drove me home and I remember how green the grasses was and how it was as if the world was a picture paint, and I told Papa that when yu drive too fast yu smearin up the world and he laughed and said that The Wagon Magazine JULY 2017

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callin him papa was gonna take some gettin used too, and he said I’s makin him feel like a mad scientist. d Every night before the dawn I’d cry cause I’d get real weak and sleepy and start feelin different. I told Papa that every time I went ta sleep I felt like I’m dyin, like I might not ever come back and he would rub them bangs outta my hair and kiss me on the cheek and tell me you got nothin ta worry bout and I’d look over and see them sheets a stickers. Papa made stickers and stamps and he’d drip stuff on em. He had him all kinds a stickers. Neon stickers, peace sign stickers, horsey stickers, a bunch a happy face stickers. He had set aside some big sheets a baby bee stickers and I asked papa if those are for me and he’d smiled and said they’s actually for momma and he said ‘momma uses em when she misses ya’.

Then I went ta sleep cause I sleep a lot and I saw momma when she was a little girl in the dirt circle, a little girl that didn’t feel the way you or I feel, and she was buildin castles in the Pit dirt and she’s all smiles, and then I see the bird ribbons a blood soarin in the air and then splatterin on that very same dirt, the iron stench, and I smelt it well, as if she’s wavin it right under my nose, the blood mud and the always single, bright light from above, cuttin through that marlboro haze and lookin like a bright moon tryin ta push through a dark, fallen cloud mornin’. I see her grippin a chain link circle cage with blood red fingernail polish, a slick floor concrete pit, the grey floor coated in the smeared crimson, paws slippin, clawin fightin for the traction, in the back a some industrial nowhere. And I see the flickerin a fire light and it paints the side of a barn with quivery, spooky shadows.

The outdoor, cage-less Pits now,... the cheers of a tipsy, blood thirsty crowd, the pig pens and the fasted hogs that wait in the delight ta dine on the loser. Two dogs tied in, the teeth clinch, them whimpers, so loud, and it scared me and I woke up and screamed for papa and he came runnin and I told him that I’m scared a momma’s stuff and he gave me one a momma’s stickers and told me to put in my mouth and then I relaxed a bit and I asked him if momma works with doggy’s and The Wagon Magazine JULY 2017

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he nodded and said that momma is a special kind a doggy trainer, one of the best in the Midwest and I smiled and we had pizza and he took me up ta see one a his newborn nephews at the hospital. I got ta hold him and his smell, his sight, he was so beautiful, it’s like I couldn’t take it and I asked papa if I could have babies someday and he said ‘you can do anything you heart desires.’ d I saw in my dreams a doggy mutt shakin up on that big centennial oak, the one that’s up there on the hill. A stolen family doggy. A retriever mix maybe. His snout ducked taped. He’s tied to a tree. The young girl is my momma and she smiles and touches the doggy as he goes a frightful jump twitch and the doggy fears momma cause the doggy should fear momma and I see momma smile in the sight of his fear, not with a sinister feel, but more of an interestin one, and I feel her feels and her feels, they feel way off course. All that’s in her feels is like, the superficial, the hunger and the thirst, and the cold and the hot and the pain and the feel goods and it’s,..its as if everything else was left out and if I look deep in momma I see neither good nor evil, but instead like this machine glowin on with blinkin buttons.

I see her and the other dog’s coming down the path and she smiles and looks to her papa who stands nearby with rifle in hand, with a happy, proud look, and these doggy’s, they’s comin but they’s ain’t dogs, not no more. They somethin else. They are all steam nosed, and their heads are like watermelons and their ears clipped by chew, and them scars upon their mouths are paper white and they move like demons and the pack races towards her and she stands there with this dull, spark of a roller coaster fear cause this feel, this little bit a rush is all the feel she can muster up. She closes her eyes and smiles and extends her hands in trust and as they come, the packs move around her as if she wasn’t there, or as if these demons from hell recognize her as one of their own. She smiles a bit as they brush by and tickle her finger tips and palms and the wind creates a gust that scatters her pretty blonde bangs and she turns and opens her eyes and watches as the pack moves in on the bound doggy whose life will be sacrificed for practice sake and she looks upon the animals with a satisThe Wagon Magazine JULY 2017

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fied smile as them pits lunge upon the dog with quick, retractin like bites that don’t look natural but instead trained, like technique; the extend, the bite, the pull, the tear, only ta repeat, the extend, the bite, pull, tear, like a boxers jab, a technique not ta kill but ta harm. They test and prod for defenses, defenses that, in this poor animals case didn’t exist none and the crimson colors spray in the air by just these, gentle, probin attacks, that which has already killed the doggy, whose corpse now lies a bloody meat bag, unrecognizable and the practice continues and it twitches on the grass, lifeless but being pushed by the dogs continuous strikes.

I wake and I pet on my kitty and sometimes papa records me on the big camera thingy. Papa shows me the stars and it’s like I remember all this, and yet it all feels so new to me like I’m just an over-sized newborn.

Like they’s someone else memories and i’s feelin em. d I see momma grown up now, tapin up dog snouts with expert speed and I see rows and rows a various house doggies. Labs, Goldens, and a few little nipper dogs and she’s got a thin, jus bout dead, row a duct tape that she finishes off on a big, fat lab mix who fights her a bit but, with experience, she sits on his back and winds the last bit around his mouth, takin a bit of the paper roll with it. These doggies are all scared and shakin as if they know what horrible death is ta come of em, and I see momma walkin a big pit on leash slowly up a steep hill. The dog struggles as he drags a rope tied on his harness, the end of the frayin rope tied ta a loop chain that necklaces a whole clankin cluster a old, rusty barbell plates that drag with dirt markin till, turnin green grass up. The plates, they rattle as this muscular, dog grips the ground with his paws and pulls in with sinewy struggle. Momma reaches the top of the hill and thinks bout me. d Why you cryin?’ I asked Papa while watchin him squish a tear before it rolled into his mouth.

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explain it and he jus shook his head and was all teary eyed.

‘Momma’s hell bent on cookin ya in permanent. Even if it kills her’ he says and I asked him if he misses momma and he nodded and said he loves momma but it was too weird and they couldn’t stay together the same way they used ta be together. Then I asked him about the dreams and about momma and he told me that she was a dog trainer and I asked him what kind a dog trainer? I could see him gulpin a bit and then I asked him again and he told me that I probably already knew and I gulped cause I did know.

‘Does she have trouble doin it?’ and he looked at me.

‘Trouble doin it?’

‘Hurtin em?’

He looked at me and smiled and shook his head with confidence.’Never.’

I got upset and he told me that you momma didn’t want me ta tell you cause momma thinks you’re such a good person but I didn’t really understand how momma could be like that. And papa told me that momma ain’t like me or even him. He said that momma was born with them numbs and that she couldn’t really feel too well.

‘Momma tried ta be a better person...I tried ta help her, we,. tried ta jump start them feels a hers, but,... she got you instead,.and she’s real happy bout that.’ Papa said ta me while flashin me one them lovin papa looks.

I cried a little cause papa cried a little and I went ta sleep cause most of my life is sleep and I saw momma again up on the hill and she was filin down, dullin the canines on a chained bird dog with a grinder file and the dog wrestles her but she knows how ta do it, once again climbin on the docile doggy’s back and pinnin him, preparin the soon ta be live sparrin practice. Her face is pale, cold, with these no sleep swells, stuck in the numbs. She walks over and brings one her latest clients, a young pit pup with a lot of potential, good fightin stock, good genes but too gentle, too kind in his youth. She warms up the cattle prod, her instrument to bring about the beasts, and I yell at her. I screamed at her ta stop, and she looks up. I think she hears me. d Papa laid me out some ugly clothes and said I had ta dress professional The Wagon Magazine JULY 2017

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cause momma took someone else’s meds instead a papa’s, and it was a bad batch. I asked papa if she was poisoned and he shook his head and said that Clay always dunks his sheets instead a drippin em and I didn’t know what that meant but either way papa said it stretched my trip way too long and momma wouldn’t be back till god knows when, so I’s gonna have ta cover. I didn’t want ta have ta watch, but papa said I didn’t have to, that I jus had ta be there.

I took a chair by the big bon fire and jus stared at that illuminatin barn that beakoned with both the artificial light and fire light inside, and you could hear the screamin and shoutin a drunks and I watched as a big man walked over and he was, carrying two dogs by the scruff and they’s weren’t movin and they’s both dead but they’s still locked onta each other in this death clinch.

They’s like a big doggy knot and the man, ...the man, he, ...he didn’t even bother ta break em apart, he didn’t even try ta untangle em, instead he just tossed em on top of the bonfire and, when he did it, it felt, it felt like someone had just stabbed me. Then the man, he waved at me with a smile cause he thought he knew me. I started shakin as I watched them animals burn. I couldn’t get that image outta my noggin and no matter how much I shook it, it wouldn’t go away and then I got real dizzy and felt real sick. d I woke and I looked over and I saw papa standin in the kitchen. Papa came over and brushed my hair and he started askin me stuff that I didn’t understand. Talkin to me like i’s a different person, askin me questions that got me stuck in the headlights a clueless. While waitin for my response he must a caught my blank gaze.

‘Milley?’ he said and when I looked at him strangely again.

‘Bee?’ he said and I told em I’m hungry and his face relaxed and he smiled and kissed me and I asked him how momma was and he said that ‘momma don’t care bout momma no more. She only cares bout you.’ And then I smelt coffee and then I went ta sleep. d Papa woke me up. It was my birthday and I asked him how momma was The Wagon Magazine JULY 2017

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and he said bout the same and he made me my favorite, the spaghetti and the meatballs.

‘Oh... your momma got yu somethin.’ he said pullin out and sliddin me a silver wrapped little present across the dinnin table.

‘From momma?’

‘From momma.’ Papa said I unravel it and open it up and it was a name tag that said Pets-Mart with momma’s name on it and I look at Papa all excited like, and underneath it was a folded up piece a yellow paper and I unfolded it and it was an outline a momma’s hand and I put my hand in her trace around, and it fit like we’s twins and I closed my eyes and smiled and pretended that me and momma were holdin hands.

I looked up ta papa while lettin my tears run inta my mouth.

‘Momma got her a new job?’ I ask.

Papa nods.

‘Momma got a new job..’ he says.

‘She gonna teach doggy’s how ta sit now?’

‘Yeah.’

‘And that’s all?’

‘Yeah,’ Papa said with a smile.

WA Coleman is a freelancer and fiction writer based out of Tulsa, Oklahoma. His work has been featured in Evergreen Review, Houston Literary, 3 AM, Thrice Fiction, Founding Review, Echo Ink, Crack the Spine and many more.

His first collection entitled Wound and Suture (Montag Press) was published last year The Wagon Magazine JULY 2017

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R

ain was spilling out on the pavements. Copper clouds were dancing slowly... Ümit woke up with his mother’s caress on his head. From his dear mother’s eyes, the most timid look of compassion was flowing on this face. Miss Nebiye had already made her prayers and prepared the breakfast.

‘Come on my son, tea is ready.’

‘Hmm, ok mom.’

Mister İbrahim had already got his place at the table. The stressed eyebrows hiding the soft corners of his heart had their shift on the north of his face. Even his wife for 40 years, Miss Nebiye couldn’t see that he laughed bass-baritone. Maybe he smiled a little...When their son was born.

According to Mister İbrahim, a father figure had to be hard. Because he was the king in this small monarchy which he called ‘my family’. His frowning eyebrows and his voice in a high decibel were the shields of this ruling power. After washing and shaving his face, Ümit

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walked towards the desk with sleepy steps.

‘Good morning father.’

‘Good morning,’ murmured the father, not caring to look at Ümit by lifting his eyes from the egg that he was peeling.

Miss Nuriye put the teapot on the table. The teapot was sleepily murmuring it’s vapour. The silent air in the room which expanded with the vapour was forcing the windows. Ümit wanted to hit his heart to the street...

Like every other morning, he kissed his mother’s hands that looked like crippled paper and he went flying down the steps, leaving behind the murmuring prayers. He confronted the rain outside the door. He looked to the sky, pulling his head up.

Sky put little rain kisses on his face. His heart was like a butterfly which came out from it’s cone. Now was the time to fly with the infinite motion of life...

He threw a bashful gaze on the window of the house on the other side from under his eyebrows when he was opening the door of his car.

The sunscreens were not yet opened to the day. The rooms had not started yet to unburden themselves to the city.

Was Zafer awake?... What kind of an expression would be on his face while he was sleeping. All his gazes passed by the windows exterior but his heartbeat in the house for a few seconds.

He hit the road to the Station. He put a cassette on the car’s stereo. The city was trying to reach life’s speed. The shutters were opening with rusty noises; the shop windows were putting on their bright masks with anxiety. The garbage man was sweeping off the tired memories of the night. The sparrows which were afraid of the copper shield of the sky, were hiding the fears under the roofs that were not fitting into their little hearts, postponing to fly.

People were trying to catch buses and ferry boats, dragging their frowning-faces with themselves. Everybody was anxious to open a space, in accordance to their volume. Their anxious footsteps were blending with each other. Nobody was able to catch-up with him. Ümit was someone who ended the mission that he started.

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He had solved every case that he had taken so far, yet he couldn’t have the smallest clue about Broken Ziya’s murderer. He had wandered around every place that Ziya frequently visited, made a search for every possible friend and enemy. They couldn’t gather any information no matter who they questioned.

All of a sudden, Ziya had disappeared. His family never got worried.

They were used to Ziya’s not coming home for days. When he made good money, he ran to the whorehouses and then he ended up in the gambling places in the vicinity. When he came back, he would compensate for the pain of losing, by hitting his wife and children. Everyday the hatred of his family towards Ziya got bigger, but they were obedient to him because of helplessness. Ziya was a life preserver made of fire in the middle of an ocean of hopelessness. Ziya’s wife Selma would compensate for the pain by her skin and insistently filter hope from despair.

Ziya would carelessly roll cigars and get high in front of his children.

At times he would he would even use his nine year old boy as a courier, saying, ‘He’s jut a kid, he wouldn’t draw suspicion.’ At such times Selma found herself one step away from murder. She would have cut Ziya into pieces with a bread knife if only her courage didn’t fall short.

Because of all that Selma never got sad, when she went to the juridical medicine for identification of the body. When she saw the icy death on Ziya’s flesh, all of a sudden the firework show started in her eyes. She hardly surpassed the steps of the gazelle that went down near the lake to drink water. She got scared that the people around would hear the happiness knocking on the door of her heart.

She never turned back to look while she was leaving the morgue.

Now Ziya was a nightmare marathon that had been completed...

As soon as the Police Station had come to sight, Ümit’s heartstrings had been torn off.

He was feeling embarrassed to face Cemal because he couldn’t find any clue about Broken Ziya’s murder. Whenever he saw Cemal, Ümit’s neck had written italics in every language. While he was climbing up the stairs, he passed through the crowds, which increased insistently.

The handcuffs were living the metal tiredness. The typewriter buttons The Wagon Magazine JULY 2017

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were doing overtime to be able to catch up the records.

As soon as Ümit entered to the office and sat down, Cemal appeared. They shared a cold hello reluctantly. A stubborn and transparent wall was still standing between them.

Cemal put the cigarette in his mouth like a gun barrel. His fresh brewed tea accompanied the dance of the smoke with the anxiety of a latecomer cavalier.

The rain that was cold outside and wanted to embrace the room’s warmth, was knocking on the window and asking permission for entry.

‘Which silk road multiplies series of letter.’ ...This sentence coiled in Cemal’s mind like a leach. Cemal was the locomotive of the murder table.

He had solved many cases that looked impossible, and cuffed so many murderer’s ankles. Nonetheless they couldn’t get even the smallest clue this time to save appearances.

While looking at other cases, the obscurity of the beheaded murder was working like a mechanical clock at a corner of his mind.

Guilt was ahead of Punishment on the streets, with its holiday dresses. Death cringed upon the whispers among public. He said to himself: ‘The insiders in the corner must be shaken one more time,’ looking at the cigarette butts resembling a communal cemetery in the ashtray.

A bunch of birds were flapping their wings in Jale’s spirit cage.

The kitchen became narrow for her enthusiasm. Cemal was coming to dine that night. While Jale was busy with preparing to put her favourite dishes on the menu, Julide was also trying to squeeze in her favorites. Saying ‘Cemal loves this more,’ they struggled a great deal, trying to put their favored dishes on top of the list. Pretending that they don’t understand each others intentions was increasing the suspense. As time passed by the shape of all the objects on the counter started creating erotic connotations. Finally, Jale got decisive. She had to whisper her desires to Cemal when she found the right time. Her libido suppressed her pride at the end.

The two sisters were embroidering the table like a canvas. Whatever they added to the table, there were still something missing. The guest cutleries were arranged perfectly; the salads and appetizers were competing with each other.... Cemal left the office.

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His feet found the way automatically and he went down the stairs.

Suddenly, he found himself in the front yard and the question marks in his mind totally dispersed. He thought of walking a little. All day long, he was imprisoned indoors like a lion in it’s cage. Evening was just beginning. Darkness was woven on the city like spider’s web.

The street lamps were illuminating the tiredness on the faces of those who were just leaving their offices.

The metal lightning bugs were passing by the pavements, buzzing.

The sorrow was getting much bigger in the beer houses. The season left the parks disabled. The parks where ghettos of green were pressed between the concrete giants.

Sometimes life stops while passing, in the middle of the untidy symphony of the city...Swings knew silence by heart. The teetertotters couldn’t find their balances for a long while. The ravens which were suppressing the nakedness of branches were agitating each other to prove Hitchcock right.

The cold breath of concrete’s covering zone was expanding on the green space. The more human being’s ego was fed, the more hungry it got... Cemal was strolling along the streets like a letter that has forgotten it’s address. His feet became like stone as he was passing by the district market. The vision that he encountered hit his face like a slap.

Immediately a short autobiographical documentary had been released in his brain: He found himself in his primary school’s garden, with his big uniform, bought intentionally two size bigger to be worn in the future.

Children flew away like sparrows and there was the fatherly image of teacher Kenan. Teacher Kenan passed by Cemal’s childhood with a warm smile.

And he just touched on the shoulder of his black uniform. Cemal was a motherless child and a heavyweight orphan.

They would carry their orphanage with them from the house to school with a group of his friends.

Other children certainly knew this terrible loneliness and ruthlessly bled those open wounds with scoffing razor laughs. There was only teacher Kenan... It was only him that Cemal had compassion from. It was only him who fondled his head when he solved a difficult The Wagon Magazine JULY 2017

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mathematical problem at the blackboard.

Cemal wouldn’t be that happy even if the prune that he loved very much would sour his mouth; neither he would go to the cinema where he made his neck ache by looking at the movie posters that he passed by holding his breath. The pleasure of riding a bicycle should be something like this. The memories that was covered with chalk dust had been exploded like flashlight in Cemal’s memory. He found himself again in the untidiness of the district market.

There was a rusty drill whirling in his heart: the retired teacher Kenan Dülger was collecting crushed fruits... Not knowing what to do, Cemal stood there paralyzed.

He thought maybe the teacher would have remembered him, because he helped him to enter Police Academy...He would rather not show up to him for preventing from his pride be hurt. But how would, coming near and pretending not seeing him and helping him, be explained with his desire of paying the bill. Cemal’s feet went to right and left. He threw himself to the side street. He felt like a runaway soldier at wartime. Should he go back? He walked to the main street with this fire of duality. The concrete giants looked taller. It seemed as if the absence of humans were increased per square metre. The avenue covered him like a Tsunami.

Then, from the crowd, the same decisive and gentle hand found him and pressed on his chest. Cemal put his head up surprised and looked at the owner of the hand. It was him. But this time his eyes were like a lullaby: ‘Hey kid! Never enter the black seas of melancholy; beware of the black hole of hopelessness! Even if life had destroyed your life like a robbed bank, never forget: ‘Hope is most suitable for us.’ ...Never forget boy! Beware of yourself...’ Swirling like a lark, he disappeared into the crowd.

Cemal stood looking behind the old man, looking like sun flowers turning their faces to the sun. He got on the first taxi that he saw.

The further the car drove away, the nearer approached the bitter image in his brain. As soon as he entered the neighbourhood, he remembered that he was invited to dinner tonight. He got off the taxi at the beginning of the street and lit a cigarette. He wanted to pull himself The Wagon Magazine JULY 2017

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together before he went to the landlords. The sisters would be offended from the bitter expression on his face. There was no other way than postponing the sorrow.

The doorbell which thought of itself a canary rang with a feeble voice. Julide popped out from the kitchen and Jale from the living room and headed to the door.

Julide with a swirling body attack, succeeded to pass Jalle and opened the door.

He met Cemal with the spring joy of a university student, saying ‘Welcome dear, come inside’.

‘Hello, thank you...’

He entered inside by organizing his mimics to smiles as much as he could, but at this moment, it was a torture for him to look happy.

His eyes were exposing his endless sorrow. Jale said, ‘Hello Cemal, welcome’, the waves in her voice struck on Cemal’s face. Just like Jülide, she also realized Cemal’s attempt to cover his restlessness with a smile unskillfully fictionalized.

‘Hello Jale.’ ‘Why do you look unhappy!?’

‘Nothing important...I seem to come across something that bothered me that’s all...Whatever... Let’s see what kind of goodies have you prepared for me?..’

‘Come and see for yourself.’

They all passed to the living room as Cemal was a bit confronted.

‘Oh I’d say that only milk and honey is missing at the table, but definitely they are waiting their turn in the kitchen.’

‘Come on we’ve done some bits and pieces that’s all’ said Jale while giggling.

Then the parade of the food carnaval started on the table. Both sisters pushed the appetizers and food they have prepared to Cemal’s nose like a ultimatum, underlining who prepared what. They had sweet conversation; generally on ordinary issues; heavy matters had been slightly touched. Small and big laughters gad about in the living room . The cutlery became tired from heavy work. Then the first after dinner cigarettes were lit. Jale quickly smoked hers and ran to the kitchen to prepare the coffees. She knew that in a while Cemal would The Wagon Magazine JULY 2017

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go to the bathroom to brush his teeth as always. Cemal was one of those who wouldn’t feel comfortable if he didn’t brush his teeth after meals. For this reason a spare toothbrush was ready in the sisters’ bathroom to be used at dinner invitations... Sometimes the sisters had erotic dreams with Cemal’s toothbrush in their mouths, trying not to get caught by each other. Cemal’s going into the bathroom was an opportunity for Jale not to be missed. At that instant she could slowly draw him to the kitchen and whisper to eat the forbidden fruit. She was terribly excited. She hardly put the water, coffee and sugar in the pot. On the one hand she couldn’t believe what she was going to do, and on the other she couldn’t help herself doing it. Her heart leaped to her mouth when she heard Cemal’s footsteps. There was an adrenalin conquest to all her veins. Her ears started withering, her knees trembling. She whispered, ‘Come here a bit,’ as Cemal was passing by the kitchen, by trying to avoid Jülide from hearing it.

Jülide noticed the situation yet she tried to ignore. She already got suspicious when Jale ran to the kitchen to make the coffee. There was something strange with Jale all day long anyway. She should have been definitely hanging on Cemal in the kitchen at this instant. She eliminated Jülide. Nervously she started to bend her fork, meshing her teeth.

She have missed it again... Cemal was startled like a compass that lost it’s north while he left the kitchen and headed for the bathroom. As if he was walking on the water. He put his hands on the sink. He was afraid of meeting of the expression on his face if he put his head up. He didn’t know what to find there. Trying to avoid eye contact with himself, he brushed his teeth. While Jülide started lighting her cigarette with nervous movements, Jale brought the coffees. Right afterwards Cemal entered the living room and sat down. There was a little Bermuda Triangle established at the table. Only the noise of coffee sips were heard.

A sneaky silence was wandering around the table like a flock of vultures.

After the coffee, Cemal asked for permission and left for home.

The Sisters’ home turned into an empty coffin again...

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knew pretty well that jazz was the best to call out to the night. His head and heart were mixed like half used woollen balls that were forgotten in the corner of the drawer.

Cemal was afraid of untying himself. He was a leaf now, which was being dragged in the wild waters of his libido babbling like the Çoruh River. He was waiting for Jale like a seed that was ready to burst out. Outside night was being performed like a cheap vaudeville on the stage that was called the city. Jale pulled the door of their flat slowly not to wake her sister up.

She started going downstairs, caresing the stairs with her fingertips.

Her heart was a self-performing drum with a lopsided rhythm, and her lungs was an old accordion that was trying to accompany a rock group.

Her hips would have cracked the thermometers at this moment.

She was tasting her skin in the form of lust. She was a bullet that had left the barell. When she reached Cemal’s door, she came face to face with the lust that was hidden and chained in a corner. First she gulped, and then took a deep breath. As her meaty hand was pressing on the door bell, waving like a flag, she anxiously controlled her left hand to see if she had taken the vaseline that she was already holding tightly. Jale rang the door of courage...

The clouds in their black uniform were positioned in the sky like the execution team. They were pouring out rain bullets on the city with their automatic rifles. The city was looking for a place to run away. Cemal’s car was moving on the asphalt sheltering just against the rain flood. The capacity of the wiper was insufficient to wipe away the drops covering the windscreen. The car had over flooded outside the city. It exceeded the worry limits of the vacant corners. This was the blue boy of isolation.

A little further a police team came into sight, in a place near the edge of the road. The eyes were directed at him when he reached them and parked the car.

Cemal got off the car in slow motion and headed towards a new knot with iron steps. There was a beheaded body between the Research team and Ümit’s group. The prosecutor was not there yet. ‘Hello chief ’ ‘Hello.’

‘When was it found?’

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‘Around eight o’clock in the morning... One of the inhabitants in the collective housing had seen him when he was morning jogging.’

‘What do we have in our hands?’

‘No clue yet. The team is continuing the research.’ It was a short and brunette male body lying.

‘He was badly beheaded, had bruises and lots of cigarette burns.

An inscription has been carved from his sacrum to his neck: ‘A horse-drawn carriage like a suicidal black rising to the sky with it’s horses’ In the middle of his chest cage, there was a slightly bigger ‘E’ ‘This is getting complicated’ he thought.

His cigarette’s smoke was blending with the smoky air of Cemal’s mind. He was stuck in the folders in front of him. He reluctantly lifted his face up when he heard Ümit calling.

‘Chief, we identified the newly beheaded corpse. He also had criminal record. His name is Adnan Çeltik. One of the old hitmen known as Kotik Adnan. He is a legend among the triggermen. He was caught and imprisoned after his last job. He was discharged after the last pardon.’

‘Did you say pardon?’ ‘Yes chief interesting, ain’t it?’ ‘Whatever, carry on!’

‘According to the legal medicine’s report, it had become certain that the murder was not an imitation. The beheading saw, the bone braking hammer and the knife that has been used were the same with the first corpse.’

‘A DNA sample that belongs to the killer?’

‘Unfortunately no trace... With your permission I will start to make a detailed research on Kotik Adnan.’

‘Ok. Learn specifically if there’s any relation between Broken Ziya and him.’

‘As you command...With your permission.’

The small match flames in Cemal’s mind were beginng to organise towards a torch...

The city was boiling inside, grumbling. Unemployment and hopelessness became greasy ropes around people’s throats. Untying the losers of their hearts from life’s piers, most parents desired to sail on the open seas of death. It wasn’t easy to return home empty handed The Wagon Magazine JULY 2017

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and with their heads down... To see oneself like a hunchback on the ridge of life...

In brief, as if there was not enough trouble, this beheading nightmare had started. Everyone was looking at each other with suspicion.

Maybe the murderer was the person sitting next to you on the bus.

Maybe you were buying bread from the same bakery, or working in the same place. Suspicion was wandering around like a dirty whisper in the heart of dark corridors of the city. Ümit was wandering in his car, splitting the suspicion that was spread on the city like fog.

Another busy day was over. He was feeling dejected for not finding any significant clue of Kotik Adnan’s murder, despite his efforts for days. Kotik Adnan had lived alone. Never married. Never got in touch with her mother at his birthplace. He had few friends and a lot of enemies... But Ümit never found a tie between the enemies and murder.

He too had dissappeared suddenly like Ziya.

His acquaintances in the coffee-shop that he frequently visited got suspicious of his absence. Despite of all his efforts, Ümit never managed to find a relation ship between broken Ziya and Kotik Adnan. He didn’t want to think of anything tonight. He only wanted to go to a ‘gay bar’, drink and get high. Of course, not forgetting to chew a mint gum to suppress the smell of alcohol and avoid being noticed at home.

He parked his car on a street that was close to the avenue. The pavers immediately showed up for their tribute which was disguised as parking fee. But they disappeared as soon as they saw Ümit. Because most of them had criminal records and knew who Ümit was. Ümit rushed into the bar where he spent time before.

As soon as he stepped inside, he felt himself as light as a sparrow escaped from it’s cage. These places were like oxygen tents for people like him. These were places that he got rid of the ‘painted bird’ syndrome and experienced the partial freedom of being with people like him. When coming in and out he never was never afraid of getting caught by his acquaintances. He would get away with it by using his profession - saying that he was here on duty. He silently sat at the bar. It was just getting crowded. At the same hour, Cemal had already brewed his tea after his dinner, and was getting lazy in front The Wagon Magazine JULY 2017

of the television. He wasn’t into what was on TV at all. How could he be anyway: A bunch of robbers, black money man and the like, were showing up on every channel. He got bored and turned off the television. Lighting a cigarette he walked around the house. He was feeling depressed. He opened the wine bottle, sat down at the table, made eye contact with the young girl in the photo for a while. Their love lasted for such a short time - like a haiku, yet so dense. Or Cemal thought so, or wanted it to be. This redheaded girl was the secret subject of his life. Now Cemal never knew, how he would add the possessive suffix to love? ‘Girl you just threw away my heart like a cigarette butt!...’

To Be Continued Socialist Laz-Turk poet and author Serkan Engin was born in 1975 in Izmit, Turkey. His poems and articles on poetry theory have appeared in more than fifty literary journals in Turkey. In 2004, he published a poem manifesto, entitled Imagist Socialist Poetry. He has been trying to launch a new movement in Turkish poetry and to this end has published numerous articles about literary theory

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