Feb 2017

1

The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

2

VOLUME: 1 - ISSUE: 11 - February 15 - 2017

Columns:

Sotto Voce-Indira Parthasarathy 09

Musings Of An Axolotl -C.S.Lakshmi 35

Letter from London-John Looker 12 P&P - Yonason Goldson 15 Talespin - Era.Murukan 69 Flash Fiction: Jeff Coleman 45 Non-Fiction: Essay - Philip Kobylarz 58

Chinwendu Anulika Nwadibia 92 Book Excerpts: Beneath the Lion’s Gaze by Maaza-Mengiste 39 Poetry:

Christopher Barnes 52

Steffen Horstmann 27

Hayden Saunier 29

Alfonso Colasuonno 33

Fabrice B Poussin 47

Darren C Demaree 50 Gregory Doc Patton 54

Fiction:

C.F. Lindsey 17

Peter Ngila 78

Maureen Wambui 90

THE WAGON MAGAZINE KGE TEAM

4/4, FIRST FLOOR, R.R.FLATS, FIRST STREET, VEDHACHALA NAGAR, KODAMBAKKAM, CHENNAI - 600 024 Phone: +91-9382708030 e-mail: thewagonmagazine@gmail.com www.thewagonmagazine.com The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

3

PRASAD'S POST Twentieth century poetry in English made new demands on readers, which require some education in poetry to follow it …

Poetry is to be appreciated rather than understood – this is the informed reaction to modernism, isn’t it?

– JOHN LOOKER

S

ome believe that poetry is slowly losing its place in contemporary literature. On the contrary, the problem is everybody wants to write poetry, but only a few will really take time to read poetry written by others. Furthermore, analysing and appreciating a poem involve factors called ‘time’ and ‘inclination’, which is hard to find in this ‘running behind so many mundane other things’ world.

I say ‘appreciate’, not ‘understand’, for I consider that our objective as readers is not to set a meaning to the feelings, emotions or thoughts expressed by the poet, but rather to relate to the thoughts, to identify with the poet and to appreciate the thoughts, feelings or emotions that the poet has expressed. In a word, I believe that a poem need not necessarily ‘mean’ something; rather, it conveys something and that The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

4 something depends not necessarily on the poet only, but significantly on the reader as well – his/her mental state at the time that he/she is reading the poem. In discussing ‘content’, reader has to recognize what the poem is about and possibly, note the author’s intent, and/or note different interpretations of the poem’s meaning.

Take ‘The Road Not Taken’ by Robert Frost, for example. We all know that that poem deals with the content: ‘choices’, where it has an extended metaphor describing two roads in the woods but as metaphors of ‘choices’ in life. That poem also is ironic, by the way. More analysis on this poem available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5ledSO3Iqk In addition to being ‘ironic’ with an acidic ‘tone’, is the poem ‘On Killing A Tree’ by Gieve Patel. Though the tree is portrayed in this poem as an enemy to humankind, we all aware that the ending proves that tree is not an enemy to the man but man is the enemy to the tree.

In good poetry, similes are used in a much more complex way. In a poem by Amy Lowell called ‘A Decade’, a very effective use of simile features, which reads: When you came you were like red wine and honey, And the taste of you burnt in my mouth like sweetness; Now you are like morning bread, Smooth and pleasant, I hardly taste you at all, for I know your savour, But I am completely nourished.

Here one can notice that the expressions of taste depict a good, lasting relationship in a couple who had fallen in love for the first time.

The excitement and thrilling wonder of their feelings for one another is so excruciating that here, in this poem, ‘wine’ is used since wine is associated with sweetness, intoxication, celebration and ecstasy. The word ‘red’ suggests fervour, vivacity, vigour and passion. And, see the usage of ‘burnt in my mouth’, since the couple is almost as hurt as the intense sensation brought in by the ‘red wine’ and the sweetness of the honey.

The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

5 But as the lovers get to know each other well and their relationship matures, it becomes a condition all but taken for granted, like something as commonplace as bread, though bread, a preservative of life, has a pleasant taste, especially ‘morning’ bread which is fresh and crisp.

Yet, says the poet, the ‘you’ in the poem is as life-sustaining as a staple diet like bread; while wine and honey are delicious, they are luxuries that are not essential for the preservation of life.

A ‘metaphor’ is more complex since it is a condensed simile, in which the words demonstrating comparison are missing. In the words of Michael Roberts, “The new is defined in terms of the old; it is in shorthand which must be learned by patient effort.”

Oh! Who has the patience nowadays, Mr. Michael Roberts!

To quote Aristotle, ‘the greatest thing for a poet is to be a master of metaphor” Louis Simpson says that it is one thing which cannot be learnt from others and it is a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity in dissimilar.

When Dylan Thomas writes, ‘Do not go gentle into that good night,’ ‘Good night’ is a metaphorical expression of ‘death’.

In Hamlet, Act-1,Scene -1 is full of metaphors. For instance, “Doth make the night joint laborer with the day?” - (Line, 77) Marcellus uses this metaphor to explain the difference between day and night that means both work together. In fact, here he is referring to the preparations of warriors for war, which is a twenty-hour operation.

Let us take a poem by Emily Dickinson to examine further: There came a wind like a bugle; It quivered through the grass, And a green chill upon the heat So ominous did pass We barred the windows and the doors As from an emerald ghost The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

6 The doom’s electric moccasin That very instant passed On a strange mob of panting trees, And fences fled away.

And rivers where the houses ran The living looked that day.

The bell within the steeple wild The flying tidings whirled How much can come And much can go, And yet abide the world!

In line seven, we see the word ‘Moccasin’. Lexicon defines the word as ‘a soft leather slipper or shoe, strictly one without a separate heel, having the sole turned up on all sides and sewn to the upper in a simple gathered seam, in a style originating among North American Indians.’ Here, that word ‘Moccasin’ is not used in that connotation.

There is a second definition to that word, which usually goes unnoticed. ‘Moccasin’ also means a highly venomous snake of America.

Undeniably, Emily does not mean the footwear of American Indians.

Forked lightening, moving down the sky, is akin to the long, thin surging snake here. As we can observe both move very swiftly, so that one spots them only transiently, and both can be highly vicious. The word ‘electric’ refers to the power of lightning, which gives it the potent influence to kill defenceless and vulnerable people and animals, just as a deadly snake can kill. Hence, both are perilous and frightening, heightening our dread and trepidation. The ‘emerald ghost’ in line 6 compares the eerie colour of the light, which often takes on a greenish hue when a storm is looming, with that of a ghost.

Pounded by the strong wind and the lashing rain, the trees no longer have diverse shapes, sizes and hues but remind you of one mammoth, bursting at the seams, amorphous mass. These trees in their battering and wild swaying and turmoil appear to be ‘panting’ akin to a mob caught up in a frenzied activity pant with exertion. Here it is a graphic portrayal of the ‘power’.

Then, what happens? : ‘‘fences fled away’, in line 10. As in the case The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

7 of a mob which runs amok in agitated haste from some dreadful fate running in all directions and at diverse speeds in complete confusion, fences are being washed away by the hammering rain and they break and crumble in a disorderly but plodding manner.

In ‘personification’ there is the everlasting illustration in the Sonnets of Donne. “And Death shall be no more, Death thou shalt die.” By humanising ‘Death’, he weakens its ruthless power and, together with his arguments that ‘Death’ is in reality something to be sought-after, he deprives it of the fear and fright interrelated with it. Poets quite often use this figure of speech, and if they are good poets, they do so to great effect. Shakespeare, for example, calls ‘night’ a ‘sober-suited matron, all in black’ (Romeo and Juliet). Symbols, on the other hand, are ‘signs’ pointing to meanings. However, instead of a conventional one, a good poet creates his own symbols. When Yeats writes ’The falcon cannot hear the falconer...’ he actually means ‘The falcon that is man cannot hear God, the falconer’. Anyone can delve deep into this symbol and find layers of interpretations.

While simile and metaphor deal with the comparison in a single aspect, that is common to the things compared, imagery is so much fuller and more complicated where more than one is compared. Therefore, if one ventures to define imagery, in brief, it is an extended metaphor representing something (nonfigurative) in terms of something else (tangible) by an explicit or implicit comparison where all three kinds of imagery-senses, emotions, and intellect-are at work simultaneously. An intellectual imagery invites the reader to think and come to some conclusion about what has been presented in the image, but which does the poet himself not necessarily explicitly state.

The opening lines of Chaucer’s ‘Prologue to The Canterbury Tales’ is a finest example of this.

Three decades back, in an inter-collegiate mono-act competition at the University level, I used Act-1, Scene-1 of Othello in full to perform while all others were doing the famous soliloquies of Shakespeare. Here, the challenge was to bring forth all the three characters – Iago, (Iago’s friend) Roderigo and (Desdemona’s father) Brabantioon stage with proper differentiation in body language, dialogue delivery The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

8 and voice modulation. Iago ‘shouts’: Zounds, sir, you’re robbed, for shame, put on your gown; Your heart is burst, you have lost half your soul, Even now, now, very now, an old black ram Is tupping your white ewe. Arise, arise, Awake the snorting citizens with the bell, Or else the devil will make a grandsire of you. Arise, I say! - (l.i - 86-92) At once, reader could sense that the imagery here is purposely repulsive and Iago’s intention of provoking Brabantio. He wakes him from deep sleep in the middle of the night with great noise and shouting. He welcomes him with a warning of disgrace (‘for shame’). He informs about the elopement of his daughter Desdemona (white ewe) with Othello (an old black ram). Moreover, cautions that if any immediate (Even now, now, very now) action is not taken by Brabantio, he would soon be a grandfather. The image in lines 88 and 89 there is the comparison between the act of love and bestial coupling. Iago’s speech here is permeated with cautioning of imminent catastrophe, a sense of exigency, and a prompting to instant and severe action. Senses, emotion and intellect are all at work here. In fact, a lot more could be said on this.

Recently I was sharing a poem written by a contemporary poet/ friend of mine. The whole poem is full of imagery. I just cite a couple of key lines here to analyse.

Finally when you are in my arms My tongue finds your inner ear My toes find the back of your thigh On a first look, this poem might seem to be an erotic one but it is not.

‘Finally when we are together, my language – my words – my mind through my words (My tongue)- finds your mind (inner ear) and when I am carried on your back (again figurative)- since need your supportthen my toes will be touching the back of your thigh’ I do not think in any other human action or deed, one person’s ‘toes’ would be touching the back thigh of another person.

The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

9 When this intelligent poem was called ‘obscene’, what could I do?

I regretted and apologised for sharing such a wonderful piece of pen … I just walked off. * This edition could as well be called as Poetry Special. Two of our columnists, Yonason Goldson and John Looker, have submitted poems.

And there are plenty of poems, more than usual, to read and enjoy. * Now TWM is available all over the world. DK Agencies (P) Ltd., international booksellers, publishers and Subscription Agents, is entrusted with the job of distributing the magazine all over world except India. Please look for details in TWM web site. Those from outside India who would like to subscribe or buy a copy, please contact DK Agencies: pubrel@dkagencies.com * Development in another front is a collaborative venture to promote literature at National and Transnational level with Open Road Review. https://www.openroadreview.com/ - Founded in 2011 by Kulpreet Yadav, Open Road Review (South Asia’s top Literary Magazine) has published 300+ writers from 23+ countries. The website has been accessed 3 million+ times, has 5000+ subscribers & has conducted two annual writing contests. More announcements to follow soon. * In Delhi, TWM is available in selected outlets by the distributors, Central News Agency, New Delhi. Those who would like to have a copy available in a shop nearby their locality please contact Mr. Deepak Sehgal of the Central News Agency.

Contact: 91-11-41561060/61/62/63 * As per the suggestions of Dibyajyoti Sarma, there are changes in the lay out and presentation of the magazine. Hope you too welcome the change.

Krishna Prasad a. k. a. Chithan The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

10

SOTTO VOCE

INDIRA PARTHASARATHY

Language in Theatre

My maiden venture into writing plays started with ‘Rains’ and it was all about the psychological conflicts in an upper middle-class family, centering round father, daughter and son. There is a fourth character, who is outside the family, a doctor. It is common in such western-educated families in Tamil Nadu, while discussing things or issues English is liberally used in conversation. While writing the play, I wanted to keep the natural flow of arguments and as such, I did not attempt to translate the common English words used on such occasions into Tamil. I thought the dialogue would lose its natural The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

11 stream and look artificial. One of my friends, with his tongue firmly in his cheek, remarked that he liked the play and that he would like to translate it into Tamil.

One thing striking about the ancient Sanskrit theatre is the multi-lingual character, a feature one cannot find in any play in any other language in the world in the past or in the present. Though, for conventional reasons, a play by Kalidasa is classified as a Sanskrit drama, many of the characters may be speaking different dialects befitting their station in the society. There are rules and regulations spelt out in the manual for theatre ‘Natya Sastra’ in regard to the language of the dialogue of the characters, which are in strict relation to their social rank.

Dramatic persons of the higher and middle status such as Kings, Brahmins, officers of royalty, army generals and high-bred persons speak Sanskrit, the language of the elite. The rest of them, including women both of higher and lower birth, irrespective of the fact whether they are queens and princesses, speak Prakrit.

Prakrit (Skt.’Prakrta’) appears to have been derived from ‘prakrti’, which means ‘common folks’. Sanskrit, which means ‘cultivated’ was the language of literature and for theatrical usage spoken by the high and mighty, excluding all women, who apparently did not belong to that classification, according to our ancients. But Queens and royal courtesans could converse in Sanskrit in exceptional circumstances.

As ‘Prakrti’ also means ‘original’, some argue that the spoken language of all sections of the people was Prakrit, which does not denote a single language as such but refers to the various dialects spread over a vast area of the country. But this excludes the dialects ‘Barbaras’ (‘Milechas’), Kiratas, Andhras and Dramidas (Tamil) as ‘Natya Sastra clearly stipulated these languages did not belong to the Prakrit family and as such forbidden to be spoken in a Sanskrit play.

The reason could be, the spectators of a Sanskrit play might be able to understand the kindred dialects (Prakrit) of the Sanskrit family, spoken by the lesser mortals but they would be all at sea, when non-Sanskritic dialogues in tongues belonging to a different group of languages, were delivered.

The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

12 The allocation of Prakrit dialects to females and lower male characters may be regarded as an attempt at giving the drama a realistic touch. But if a spoken language is used in as a literary medium, it cannot evidently retain its volatile character, but needs to be controlled by a code of binding rules’, according to Natya Sastra.

This perhaps has led to stylization of the dialogues in Prakrit in the Sanskrit theatre. We see this reflected also in our own ‘Therukoothu’, where, not only acting styles but also dialogues and their delivery are highly stylized. In this rural form of Tamil theatre, the main male characters may be seen speaking a Sanskritized (mispronounced) form of Tamil, and the rest of them speaking spoken Tamil with an artificial intonation, perhaps, to give them the creditability of a ‘literary stature’.

The first modern Tamil play ‘Pratapachandra Vilasam’ (1879)

by Ramaswamy Raju written for the proscenium stage but never performed, has characters speaking Tamil, Sanskrit, Telugu, English and Urdu, befitting their station and regional nativity. Considering the composition of this play, one can find it strictly conforms to all the rules and regulations spelt out for theatre in ‘Natya Sastra’.

One advantage in Sanskrit theatre is that the acting, miming and improvisation play such a significant part that following the dialogue is not such a big deal. Natya Sastra has allowed a large number of Prakrit dialects, belonging to the Devanagri group in a Sanskrit play, that if one reads a drama by Kalidasa in Sanskrit, the dialects spoken by different characters (according to their social status) in that play, are no distraction. Moreover, Kalidasa like Shakespeare, is a poet of words, which also ‘act’, in the sense, they can be aesthetically and visually experienced.

* Indira Parthasarathy is the pen name of R. Parthasarathy, a noted Tamil writer and playwright. He has published 16 novels,10 plays, anthologies of short stories, and essays.He is best known for his plays, “Aurangzeb”, “Nandan Kathai” and “Ramanujar”.

The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

13

Letter from London - 4 from John Looker

Two London poems

Dear Reader, The past month has been the usual one in my country of Christmas festivities and new year celebrations.

For many this is still a joyous religious season, although for a diminishing number given the advances of secular society and the growth of minority religions. For most it is a time for the family, and that means time together if you can manage it, and poignant phone calls and Skype if some the family are far away, as in our case. There is time off work, often for a full week to bridge with the new year. The new year itself can be a great time of partying, or a slightly shamefaced one of creeping to bed a tiny bit later than usual on your own.

The news media review the past year interminably, and I suppose that is the same throughout the world. Living in the northern hemisphere, it is also the season for coughs and colds, germs and viruses, and gloomy news reports about the queues at doctors’ surgeries and in hospitals.

So for me and my own family this has been a hectic but basically happy month. Much of the news from around the world has been disturbing, and we are apprehensive about 2017, but it has been a season for getting together, for taking time out.

The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

14

I’ve been looking back at some of the poetry I have written – in part because some of my poems are going to pop up in publications over the next few months, but mainly because I wanted to do some stock-taking among my draft poems, chuck some out, refile a few, and take a fresh look at others.

Two of these are firmly rooted in London, and so I thought I would offer them to you in the hope that you enjoy them. Moments of Suspense was written several years ago and posted on my poetry blog; it reflects on an incident many years ago by the River Thames.

The London Taxi is a Thing of Beauty also started out some years ago but it got stuck in draft. At last I saw a way of bringing it to fruition and I have rewritten it for The Wagon.

Here then are two poems from London.

My Christmas presents to you.

Moments Of Suspense

It’s a muscular river, the Thames, marching through London the colour of gun metal.

At times however, at dawn, as the light brushes the sky, it’s tranquil, numinous – Sampson without his hair.

One such morning, at low tide, we might have seen a man wading, waist-deep, bending and scooping, sifting the mud, scooping and sifting, wholly absorbed in his task.

He paused beneath the Houses of Parliament, where lamps still burned, and there on a terrace was a lone figure, watching the dawn, suit buttoned against the chill, face drawn and grey.

The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

15 Two metres apart but not a word exchanged – their lives, their worlds, briefly drifting close, a random sighting.

One then slowly returned inside; the other resumed his search.

And all around the air now seemed to lighten, to quiver on the point of day, while traffic alighted on Westminster Bridge and barges took to the river. ***

The London Taxi is a Thing of Beauty ... ... to no-one. Fat, misshapen, it squats by the side of the road like a toad, waiting. Then with a leap it’s away.

And in flight it’s a bat, faster than thought, avoiding collision only through possession of an alien sixth sense.

To the occupants however it’s a protective shell, a sea-chest, a submarine slicing through currents and tide.

So many lives may rest here briefly, lulled while the cab whirls them from one clear world to another: shoppers and executives, yes; but young lovers too with eyes for each other alone as time speeds on; or the prince cast out from his kingdom embarking on exile; the hero returning home after years away. ***

John Looker lives in southern England. He has written poetry all his life and now, in retirement, draws on the experience of a long career in the British civil service, on family life and on international travel. In his book The Human Hive, available through Amazon, John Looker explores our common humanity, down the ages and round the globe, by looking through the lens of work and human activity.

The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

16 PROVERBS & PROVIDENCE

YONASON GOLDSON

Excuses If I were a tadpole, and you were a fish,

If the South China Sea were a licorice dish, If the King of Siam staged an off-Broadway play, If the Man in the Moon weren’t afraid of the day, If phones were not busy and lines never long, If Fay Wray were a dozen times tall as King Kong, If gators wore shirts with men stitched on the breast, If the head of the pack could escape from the rest, If the dark could be pierced by a single white flame, If Professor Bob Knoll could remember my name, If the sea didn’t swell and the ship didn’t rock, If naive good intentions could turn back the clock,

The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

17 If each moment could stretch to the end of our lives, If bees came in gaggles and geese lived in hives, If the hare beat the tortoise by less than a mile, If the face in the mirror would give me a smile, If the northern lights migrated south with the birds, If my fluttering heart could be calmed by your words, If I’d show you my heart, and you’d show me yours, too, We’d have no more excuses.

Then what would we do? ***

Rabbi Yonason Goldson, a talmudic scholar and former hitchhiker, circumnavigator, a keynote speaker with 3000 years’ experience and newspaper columnist, lives with his wife in St.Louis, Missourie, where he teaches, writes, and lectures.

His latest book, Proverbial Beauty: Secrets for success and happiness from the wisdom of the ages, is available on Amazon.

Visit him at http://proverbsandprovidence.com.

The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

18

FICTION

CAT’S IN THE CRADLE

By C.F. LINDSEY

I always loved that feeling: the constriction of the GoreTex wad-

ers forming to the shape of my legs as they are submerged into frigid water. They are normally a bit bulky, almost hindering when you walk in them, at least until they enter into the element for which they were made, water. I could see my reflection upon the crystalline surface, taking a moment to take stock of the haggard figure staring back at me: eyes black around the edges, face that hasn’t seen a razor in days, and hair that could sure as hell use a bath and a comb. Looks aren’t important out here; they never have been. When in a place where no one cares what you look like, or smell like, one experiences true freedom.

The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

19 My eyes scanned the surface reflecting the last rays of the Ozark mountain sun, going below the water, looking for that flash of white that signals a brown feeding on the slick, rock bottom. Small insects were hatching upon the surface before they buzzed off to join the millions dancing on the breeze. I submerged my hand, scooping a handful of water and bringing it to the rim of my glasses. “Bluewinged olive, size eighteen,” I muttered, wiping my hands on my flannel sleeve before reaching for the pack attached to my chest. The box is worn cracked plastic. I’ve carried the same one since I was six, and still have some of the same flies that were in there when it was given to me. I pulled it out, trying to avoid the hospital envelope stuffed in next to it. My tobacco-stained finger points at each row of the colorful assortment contained within the box before stopping at an intricately tied hook with tiny synthetic wings attached to the curve.

“You just going to stand there, or are you going to put your damn line in the water?” Conner asked, sauntering from the trees with his fly rod held behind him. He made walking in the damn waders look almost graceful, truly surprising for a man of his size. At six foot five, he towered over me by a good four inches. A stylish goatee now covered a strong, square jaw where I remember a pudgy face with acne.

“Just changing up for the hatch,” my fingers worked to tie the hook onto the hair-thin line. “If you hadn’t spent half the damn afternoon on the fire maybe you wouldn’t rely on me for supper.”

I could see the finger raised in answer as he unhooked the line from the guide, stepping into the water and beginning his cast, ten o’clock to one o’clock. I watched as I snipped the excess line from the knot I had been tying, his line floated freely in the air, straightening on the backswing of the false cast before shooting forward to be lain on the surface of the water. His arm jerked to the side as he executed the mend to put the line upstream from the indicator. I stuck the stem of my filled pipe between my teeth and lit up, “Good to see that all these years swinging a bat hasn’t made you forget your roots, kid.”

“You have no faith in me, brother,” his eyes never left the indicator bobbing downstream, “it’s called,” he stopped mid-sentence as the The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

20 indicator plopped beneath the surface. He swept the rod back in a fluid motion, the nine feet of fiberglass bending with the tension, “muscle memory,” he finished with a laugh.

I began my cast to the sound of the slapping and splashing of the trout fighting the tugging of Conner’s line. The line slipped through my fingers and all was lost, the world faded to nothing. It was nothing. There was just the bend and strain of the Sage rod and the movement of the line between my thumb and forefinger. My eyes caught a group of rising fish about ten yards to my left. I began pointing the line ahead of them, found the right length, and let it lay flat on the surface to begin the drift. I puffed furiously on my pipe with concentration, my eyes trailing the bobbing indicator.

“Least I won’t starve tonight,” Conner quipped taking hold of the wriggling rainbow at his side. He unhooked it with a smile and tossed it over his head towards the bank.

The comment was lost with the current as the orange foam attached to my line dipped down below the surface. The bend in the fiberglass was ecstasy. I had honestly forgotten the feeling. It had been far too long. I looked up to the quivering tip of the rod, felt the flex down into my arm; nothing bent like fiberglass.

“Damn, looks like a nice one,” Conner was watching the fight as he recast back into the pool of rising rainbows.

“Feels like a brown.”

The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

21 “You’re sharing if that’s the case.”

The fish went air-born as he finished, thrashing and fighting with gravity—as if it could fly away and escape—before plopping back into the water, resuming its insistent tugging.

“Hell yeah, Hank!” Conner exclaimed. “Solid brownie.”

The fish finally gave up its fight, accepting the fate that awaited him with the net. The golden belly heaved up and down against the rubber cage as it gave one last flop of defiance before settling. My eyes lost themselves in the colors, remembering fishing trips past, remembering the first time I pulled a brown from these waters. The ghost of a smile brushed my face with the memory.

Conner trudged to my side, peering at the prize looking up at us from the net. “Almost makes you rethink eating ‘em, doesn’t it?”

“I have half a mind to let him go.”

A massive fist smacked my arm playfully, but still knocking me back a step. “Quit the humanitarian crap,” his finger pointed at the net, “That’s dinner.” He trudged back to his spot as I removed the hook with my hemostats. His eyes glanced back as he roll-casted his line back into position, catching the sorrowful look as I tossed the brown onto the banks. “Poets,” he muttered with a smirk.

“Go to hell,” I threw back trying to hide the grin behind my pipe stem. The laughter busted through for the both of us, booming across the shoal, echoing against the mountainsides. The afternoon faded to evening with the thrill of brotherly competition: catching fish, laughing, and reliving the past that both of us had seemed to have forgotten.

I bent to release the last fish of the evening—a fourteen-inch brook trout—as the last rays of the sun sank below the tree line, covering the wooded riverbank in dusk. The fire had burned to a soft glow as we both returned with two fish each, one for supper and the other for the following morning. We stripped off the waders and returned to the comfort of faded blue jeans before preparing supper: trout cut into thirds, dipped in meal and hot sauce, and pan fried in bacon grease; A Davis family recipe that our old man taught us as kids. Conner sat across the glowing embers, atop the pile of fresh cut firewood.

The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

22 “Smells pretty damn good.”

“I can almost taste it. Hey, go over to the Yeti. Got a surprise in there.”

Conner’s eyebrow rose in skepticism, but strolled to the cooler the same, opening the lid and peering in. “Holy shit.” He held the bottle of Hiram Walker with a smile. “Blackberry brandy.”

“Dad’s brand.”

He unscrewed the cap and took a swig as I flipped the pieces of fish in the skillet. “Ahh. Tastes like home.”

“You remember the first time we drank that?”

He tossed the open bottle over the flames my way.

“How could I forget, I got so drunk I threw my guts up right in that spot I was fishing today.”

I chuckled before taking a swig, “Yeah, you were a major pussy.”

“You’re a dick.”

“It’s in my job description as your older sibling.”

We laughed as I tossed the bottle back over the flames, Conner catching it with far more grace than my attempt.

“How’s the preseason going?”

He shrugged as he turned the bottle up. “You know, it’s alright, I suppose. Ready to be done with the farm team bullshit.”

“You’ve only been in the minors two years, not much room to start complaining.”

“Yeah, the day can’t come soon enough though.”

“Maybe Memphis has just grown fond of you,” I laughed. “You won’t be a Red Bird forever.” His smile at the remark hinted at more than he was letting on. “You’re not telling me something.”

“News for later, I’m starving. Plus, you apparently have news too, asking me to come all the way out here. I know it wasn’t just for Pops. You could have done this yourself.”

I could feel the mirth leave my face as my eyes shot towards my pack and the diagnosis it contained. “News for later just the same.

Plus you know I couldn’t do this without you. Dad would have wanted you to be here.”

“Why did you want to do this now anyway? It’s been almost two years.”

The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

23 I plastered the smile back on as I speared the fish onto a waiting paper plate, “Gave me a chance to harass you again, of course. Seems like I haven’t seen you in ages. How long has it been?”

He scratched his cheek awkwardly, “I guess since Dad’s wake.”

“Damn. Hand me that potato salad out of the cooler, will you?

Toss me a beer too.” He did as I asked. I spooned out two helpings from the Walmart-brand container and placed some fish on each plate before trading his for the beer he held out to me. “You talked to mom any?” I asked as he settled down, already chomping on a mouthful of potato salad.

“Not since after dad. You?” “Last I heard she’d shacked up with that friend of hers soon after the funeral.”

“Fat fucker.”

“Tell me how you really feel about him,” I laughed, pushing the beer to my lips guzzling down half of it with the first drink.

“You know you feel the same. Almost like she was just waiting for Pops to pass.”

“I know what you mean.”

We both ate in silence for a moment, letting the sound of chewing, slurping, and the crack of the fire fill the cool autumn air.

He tore off a slab of meat with his teeth. “How’s the teaching gig going, professor?” he asked between his mouthful.

“Oh, you know, it pays the bills.”

“Written anything lately?”

“Not in a long while.”

He looked over at me from across the fire. “Since Dad?” “Yeah I guess so.”

“He was always proud of you.”

I laughed, almost spitting the food and beer mixture I was working on swallowing. “Yeah, the degenerate writer son who fished too much.

He was super proud.” We locked eyes from across the fire. “You were always the golden boy. He was ecstatic when you got the letter for the minors. Carrying on the athletic tradition, remember?”

“Yeah, I guess we’re just a family of dreamers.”

The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

24 “At least you’re going somewhere with yours.”

“How ‘bout we change the subject?”

“Sounds good.”

I let my eyes wander away from him, chewing food and listening to the night air. We finished the meal in silence. When the plates were thrown away and the pans washed out with river water, I pulled out the old Martin stashed underneath my hammock and strummed a few chords before picking out a familiar melody.

Conner smiled drunkenly before filling the night with his baritone voice. “He’d say I’m going to be like you, Dad. You know I’m going to be like you...”

My voice joined with his for the chorus. We belted it out for the night to hear our out-of-tune voices, laughing when one of us slurred the words a bit. I finished with a flourish and a smile while raising my hand, forefinger and pinky pointed high. “Hell yeah, we suck.”

“Dad used to love hearing us play that though.”

“Yeah,” with a half-hearted chuckle, “always was his favorite.”

“Pretty fitting, don’t you think?”

“Like it was written for us,” I said raising my beer. “To our old man.”

He leaned forward and met my glass with a clink, “Hopefully God went easy on him for unleashing us onto the world.”

We both drank down the last dregs of our beers. The fire had dwindled to coals as the night had passed. I stood, a bit unsteadily at first. “Let’s get a bit of shut-eye. Tomorrow’s the big day.”

He stood after me, swaying just as I had, but regaining his athletic balance quickly, “What about what you brought me out here for? The news for later?”

I could feel my back go rigid but regained my composure quickly enough, hoping that he hadn’t noticed. “I guess we both forgot about what we wanted to say. It can wait ‘till morning.”

He yawned and stretched out his long arms, apparently shrugging off the unanswered questions.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right.” He swung his muscular frame into The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

25 his hammock a few feet from the dying fire. “It can wait ‘till morning.”

I could see his body relax almost immediately, and the night was soon filled with his snoring. I swung my legs into my hammock opposite his and rummaged through my pack hanging from one of the straps, searching for the pack of cheap cigars I kept there. My hand found the paper of the envelope, causing me to freeze. My eyes closed with the knowledge it held. Slowly I shoved it back and found the pack of Optimo peach cigars. I slipped one out with my teeth and took out the lighter from my pocket.

I inhaled, sucking in the nicotine while listening to the sound of my brother sleeping close by. I could feel sleep coming on with each puff, slowly taking hold of my limbs. With one last drag, and a racking cough that shook me in the hammock, I crushed it out and blew smoke as I rolled on my side, falling to sleep to the night and the familiarity in the air. ...

The next morning the camp was packed and carried to the individual cars. Conner had traded his blue jeans and canvas shirt for a stylish sports coat with button-up shirt- the top three buttons undone-, black slacks, expensive shoes, and a Memphis Red Birds flat bill hiding the tousled mop of hair beneath. I saw the change in his attitude with the change in clothes; he was back to the hotshot ball player, selling himself and his skills to the highest bidder. He approached me as I stood close to the water’s edge, holding the urn with the remains of our father.

The contrast was apparent now, him in his fancy clothes and confident attitude compared with my flannel long sleeve and blue jeans. We had both let go of ourselves and relived the past for a short time, but now life called.

“You ready?” he asked as he joined me on the bank. “I gotta The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

26 catch a plane to St. Louis in a couple hours.”

“St. Louis?”

He slipped back into the brother I remembered with that goofy grin of his. “Yeah, that was the news. Cards are calling me up.”

I smiled in return and laughed with excitement. “That’s great news, kid. I never doubted you.”

“Yeah. I thought if I waited ‘till it was time for this,” he said pointing to the urn, “it might help lighten the situation.”

“Congratulations, little brother.” I could tell his smile was forced as he tried to nonchalantly glance down at his watch, pressed for time as usual. “Alright, let’s get it done.” I opened the top of the jar.

“You wanna say anything?”

“He knows.”

“Yeah, I guess he does.”

His hand reached out and took one side of the urn. Together we let the remains fall into the moving water. We watched for a moment as what was left of our father drifted downstream.

The moment was soon over as Conner glanced back at his watch.

“Bro, I hate to just run off, but I have to be in Little Rock to catch that plane.”

I faced him and forced a smile. “Of course, get out of here. The Majors are waiting.” I pressed him into an awkward hug, my head bumping his chin, which lasted only a second before we pulled away and looked each over one last time. His bear-of-a-hand slapped my shoulder as he turned towards his rental car. I turned back to the water, looking to the past. My father, brother, and I standing on that very shoal, casting and laughing. My father and I cheering Conner on as he pulled in his first fish on the fly.

“Oh yeah,” Conner had turned around and was facing me, “I almost forgot. What was your news you had?”

I hid the pain in my face before turning to face him. “Nothing important, I guess. I forgot myself to be honest.”

He smiled, oblivious. “Forgetful old shit, already,” he said with a laugh. “Well maybe you can come up to a game this season, you know you have box seats whenever you want them.”

The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

27 “Yeah, I’ll do that,” I said.

“Good deal. Call me soon.” He turned with a wave and climbed into the car, checking his emails and missed calls on the phone he had left in the vehicle before starting it up and driving off.

We both knew I wouldn’t call. It was just out of habit that he even said it. That’s just not how life worked these days. I took one last look at the rippling water before turning towards my black Tacoma waiting in the spot next to where Conner’s rental had been.

I climbed in and slammed the door, plugging in my iPod and pressing play. Cat’s in the Cradle came over the speakers as a tear slid into my beard. I reached into the pack in my passenger seat, and pulled out the envelope I had avoided all weekend. The hospital stamp glared back at me. I pulled the letter from the inside containing the regretful message from the doctor.

“Stage four... Not much we can do... terribly sorry...”

As the chorus came over the speakers, I tore the letter in two, and two again, before dropping it out the driver’s side window. I looked back at the stream thinking how much I’d love to come to rest here, just like my dad. I threw the truck into gear, “See you soon, Pops,” and put the Little Red in my rearview and started singing.

“When you coming home, son. I don’t know when, but we’ll get together then. I know we’ll have a good time then.” ***

After shirking a promising law career, C.F. Lindsey hopped a train before landing on a riverbank where he began writing.

An Arkansas native, he now resides in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan with his wife and two dogs.

The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

28

POEMS - Ghazals

Steffen Horstmann

Tonight The wind’s voice whispers of desert springs tonight, Where the shadows of nomads sprout wings tonight.

Djinns guard sacred tombs where a holy chalice Emits the voices of dead kings tonight.

Jewels lace Ithaka’s sands like shattered glass, Where light streams in rays from diamond rings tonight.

The screeches of wraiths echo in gales that pass Through wastes where whistling sand stings tonight.

Smoke smudges quicksilver clouds as ashes Are shaken from the phoenix’s wings tonight.

Glowing mist shrouds Eurydice’s tomb, From where the Inca dove sings tonight.

The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

29

Eurydice Sparks seethed in mist as chimeras rose behind her, In the roaring wind laced with echoes behind her.

Like shadows of flying birds, winged wraiths Swarm in the fog that glows behind her.

Torch flames gasp as the shrieks of harpies echo Through the whipping gale that blows behind her.

Thick cobwebs sway like silk mist in the labyrinth Where flames dance in writhing shadows behind her.

Now she is choked by a glistening necklace of tears.

Now all the doors of the underworld close behind her.

The wind’s breath is famished sighs along the Styx, Sheened in silver light as it flows behind her.

Orpheus dreams of phoenixes soaring through clouds Where the sky blossoms with rainbows behind her. *** As Agha Shahid Ali’s student, Steffen Horstmann studied the history of the ghazal form and began writing his own ghazals in English. Horstmann’s poems and book reviews have appeared in publications throughout the world, including Baltimore Review, Free State Review, Istanbul Literary Review, Louisiana Literature, Oyez Review, Texas Poetry Journal and Tiferet. In 2016 Horstmann published a book of English ghazals, Jalsaghar.

The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

30

POEMS

Hayden Saunier

AT THE STRAW MARKET Under two battered trees, I bought the first basket offered, paid what was asked.

I did not hold it to the light, check stitch or yoke or seams or weave, fret its simple design.

I hadnot been taught what to seek.

And yet just today, the basket cradled three sweet cantaloupes and ten small limes, mixed their perfumes with a woody bottom note of dried palmetto, its strong handles looped over my bad shoulder, eleven years later and the whole way home.

The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

31

LIP BALM In order to venture into this poem, I’ve applied a beeswax lip balm containing pomegranate, lanolin and rosemary oil given me by a friend— although the cheapest chap stick works— but why not juice it up with carmine when you can?

It’s just a poem. Anything can happen.

High winds and sudden drops in barometric pressure have been reported in some lines where hidden doors swing open, drop me seaside, roadside, or fly off, ripped from hinge straps by a hurricane to leave me crouched down with my family in the howling northwest corner of a cellar making promises to gods of wind and shrapnel, my house above me gone. Or sometimes a poem takes a sunny turn into July, mid-summer wheat and mint up to my fingertips, air pungent, sweeter for my having walked that field and when I see my mother sitting outside, sunlit, head gently bent above some task, exactly as she was when I was ten, I ask you, where else would I be? Lip balm helps me lick my lips and feel the words inside my mouth, the words becoming rooms and doorways opening into where I do and do not start and where I do and do not end. It helps me mend.

The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

32

Dear T—, Who Overdosed Thanks for the bone dry slice of bread. The one I found deep in the pocket of my good wool coat as I walked into church for a wedding which I pretty much missed as I sat in a hard backed Protestant pew trying to remember why on earth I had bread in my good coat pocket until I remembered your funeral lunch, three months ago, was it, or two?

No appetite then, for sure, but I took the bread because I knew my body would knock on its own door later, demand to be fed, and so it all comes back: how no one knew to look for you so four days passed, that part so bad all else seemed comic, the way the undertakers never get the mouth right on a corpse, or how they spun your coffin in a circle like the build-up to a magic trick before they rolled you out, how your ex-wife in her stupid hat sobbed in an empty row, and no, I never ate the bread and who the hell gets married in the dead of winter when we drag bitterness inside with us, our bodies buttoned tight against the cold? But thanks, old friend, for the inedible madeleine I threw out for the birds and for reminding me this: to wear my body and this same black coat to funerals and wedding feasts, to leave its satin-lined weight slumped across a chair, as I rise to dance in stockinged feet and fill my mouth with wine and pure white sugar cake.

The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

33

SMALL WISH FOR YOUR LAST BREATHS May the rag-scraps that scour those halfcollapsed passageways burnish and polish the last of your light into shine

STILL LIFE WITH MOVING BOXES Nothing is where it should be

inside these foreign rooms but the new dog and the old cat sprawl side-by-side contentedly in their slanted squares of sunlit air.

Hayden Saunier is the author of three poetry collections: Tips for Domestic Travel, Say Luck, which won the 2013 Gell Poetry Prize, and Field Trip to the Underworld, winner of the Keystone Chapbook Award. She has been published in a wide variety of journals including 5 a.m., Bellevue Literary Review, Drunken Boat, Nimrod, Rattle, Smartish Pace, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Tar River Poetry, and Verse Daily, among others. Her work has been awarded the Pablo Neruda Prize, the Rattle Poetry Prize and the Robert Fraser Award. She lives on a farm outside Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (www.haydensaunier.com) The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

34

POEMS Alfonso Colasuonno

Swan Lake She remembers the lake, a swan, a cigarette its ash hitting the water the ripple, the swing and the boy she was with at the time.

She remembers the floor, the black and white tiles, the spin cycle of the washing machine, the scattered dimes.

She remembers her husband, her partner, the father of her boy, the graceful twists of the swan, the boats in the water, the year past 30, the boy growing older, and the boy she was with at the time. * The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

35

Spanish Tourists The Spanish tourists Look like models Vibrant and tan No lines, blemishes or bags around their eyes Not a single hair out of place The Spanish tourists On the downtown line They look alive The contrast remarkable Shall I pack for Spain And become a Spanish tourist too?

Alfonso Colasuonno is a Baltimore, MD based author and entrepreneur. His poetry has appeared in Vintage Poetry, The Eunoia Review, The Galway Review, and many other fine journals. He is the co-founder of Beautiful Losers Magazine (beautifullosersmag.com) The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

36 MUSINGS OF AN AXOLOTL

C.S.LAKSHMI

Blood and Sand

Around 1995 I was in Madrid and although I did not want to

do the tourist act I was curious about the many posters outside arenas advertising bull fights and crowds thronging to get in. I asked a friend of mine if I should go and watch a bull fight, since it was the national sport of Spain. My friend got extremely agitated and told me, “Please don’t think of this as a part of our culture. We have rejected this part of our culture a long time ago. This is just to attract The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

37

tourists.” “Would you like me to think of India as a land of snake charmers and lions and elephants?” she asked. She then explained to me that flamenco dance and bull fighting which are seen by the world as Spanish cultural elements are actually regional aspects and that there are some seventeen autonomous communities in Spain and that bull fighting and flamenco dance originate from Andalucia and that bull fight is actually banned in Catalonia. She also told me that the bull itself is an important part of their culture and in some places they have fiestas where there is running of the bulls with flares attached to their horns. Traditional flamenco is not dead but there is also contemporary flamenco dance. “Let me show you the galleries in Madrid and show you some Goya, Picasso, El Greco and Dali and read some Lorca to you. You will know Spain then,” she said. And that is how I got to know Spain. She would have also told me all about football but I told her I did not enjoy sports so much and that I did not even know much about cricket which was a craze in India.

She looked a bit shocked but since I had agreed with her on bull fighting she did not force football on me.

It was on one of those days when I was in the room after doing the rounds of galleries that I remembered the novel Blood and Sand.

I had forgotten the name of the author but remembered some parts of it very vividly. The novel is by Vicente Blasco Ibanez, written in 1908 and it was translated into English around 1919 or so.

I must have been around sixteen or seventeen when I read it for that is when I had slowly begun to read some novels in English. I don’t know how it had come to our family book shelf. My father, elder brother and elder sister were all voracious readers of English books. I suspect the book must have been the selection of my elder sister Rajeswari who was an eclectic kind of reader who read books ranging from Mrs. Henry Wood to Hemingway.

But I clearly remember the impact the book, which was about bull The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

38 fighting, had on me. The recent Jallikattu controversy in Tamil Nadu and the protest against its ban and claiming it as a symbol of Tamil culture, its pride and identity, made me go back to Blood and Sand even though I fully understood that taming of the bull which is what Jallikattu is, and bull fighting are two different things. But what can symbolise a culture, its pride and identity, and if such symbols can stand the test of time and should retrogressive symbols which carry with them all the strains of casteism, misogyny, violence and a false notion of machismo in the name of valour, should ever be revived as symbols of a culture were questions that made me search for Blood and Sand and read it again. And the original Spanish title Sangre y Arena brought back the time I had spent with my friend in Spain discussing bull fighting.

In his introduction Issac Goldberg, American journalist, author and translator, says that in Sangre y Arena, Vicente Blasco Ibanez attacks the Spanish national sport, “with characteristic thoroughness, approaching his subject from the psychological, the historical, the national, the humane, the dramatic and narrative standpoint...” The novel skillfully details the arena as a place that is filled with both gore and glory. At the end of it the hero is dead so is the bull that has been tortured with smoking banderillas, darts that are stuck in the neck of bulls. The bull dies with its neck burnt and its flesh hanging loose. The entrails of the bull and the bull fighter are torn out but the crowd is cheering on for the next bull fight to start. With characteristic understatement the novel ends with the crowd roaring for more and with the lines: “It was the roaring of the wild beast, the true and only one.” The beast, in the final analysis is the human crowd that can watch such a sport.

Subduing a bull in Jallikattu which is seen as an ancient sport and also seen as an exhibition sport for popularising and sustaining the breeds of bulls which belong to the soil, may seem milder in comparison. It has been a part of ancient and modern literature and films and written into it is the pride of the community, and what is seen as the Tamil valour of the tamer. In fact, Si. Su. Chellappa’s Vaadi Vaasal which also I sought out to read again, excellently translated The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

39

by N. Kalyan Raman as The Arena, is able to see pride of the animal and the man pitched against each other. Apart from what the animal is subjected to, to be part of the sport, and the definitions of valour imposed on the man, what seems dangerous is the cultural memory of valour, manliness, the feminine and caste hierarchy that the symbol carries with it. Intricately entwined within the symbol is also the Purananuru mother whose womb is the lair from which emerge only sons who are lions. She is the mother who would cut off her breasts which gave suck to a boy who dies with an arrow on his back symbolising a cowardly act of his turning back from battle.

Symbols are necessary for unifying a disparate set of people of a land all of whom may no longer reside in that geographical space but in a geographical space they carry in their memory. But what is contained in the symbols has to be carefully studied and cannot be seen in a simplistic one to one equation of national or local symbol of resistance versus the powers of globalisation or a universalising central agency. It has taken several decades for women in Tamil Nadu and India to fight symbolisations that limit women’s life and activity.

Reviving symbols that are fraught with everything we fought against will definitely be a retrogressive step. To be nurturers and protectors taking on the role of Shakthi, would mean going back several decades and it would liberate neither the women nor the men but put them in a patriarchal and schizophrenic bind of living in the present but bound to an imagined glorious cultural past. To say that the Tamil race was there before stone and sand and other matter got formed is good rhetoric but it is wise to see rhetoric for what it is; just rhetoric. ***

C S Lakshmi is a researcher and a writer

who writes in the pen name - Ambai. She is one of the founder trustees of SPARROW (Sound & Picture Archives for Research on Women) and currently its director.

The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

40

BOOK EXCERPT

BENEATH THE LION’S GAZE Maaza Mengiste

Maaza Mengiste is a novelist and essayist. Her debut novel, Beneath the Lion’s Gaze, was selected by the Guardian as one of the 10 best contemporary African books. Her fiction and nonfiction can be found in The New Yorker, Granta, the Guardian, the New York Times, and BBC Radio, among other places.

Maaza writes fiction and nonfiction dealing with conflict, migration, and the relationship between photography and violence.

She was a writer on the documentary projects, GIRL RISING and THE INVISIBLE CITY, and sits on the boards of Words Without Borders and Warscapes. Her second novel is forthcoming.

The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

41 The emperor wasn’t sure how these soldiers had crept into his meetings. Somehow they’d managed to crawl out of their barracks and into Menelik Palace, their distaste for educated and cultured men clear in their haughty glares. They had been meeting at the Fourth Division headquarters when one day a few of their select had driven in their jeeps onto his grounds, pushed past his startled guards, and settled themselves around his table. This defiance brought Endalkachew’s already-dwindling cabinet to stunned paralysis.

Endalkachew, stripped of all semblance of power, most of his ministers jailed, was forced to resign, and then was arrested himself. These low-level officers selected another one of his men, Mikael Imru, as prime minister, all the while bowing in deference and murmuring their unending loyalty.

He’d become confused by how many they were, these men in dark green fatigues who now cradled his elbow in palace meetings and whispered that he must remember their demands, he must remember his people. He no longer knew their numbers. Did not know which of these earnest soldiers had taken control of his radio station and breathed these words into every home and restaurant in his city: “We do not believe in an eye for an eye. We will bring to trial all those who misused their power. There can be justice without bloodshed.” And was it only the wind or had his people sent joyous shouts into the night sky? In the whirl and speed of so much happening so fast, the bodies of these men had disintegrated into mere voices in his ear.

They seemed molded out of the shadows that clung to dark corners of his palace, drifting in and out of his line of vision, leaving traces of smoke and the scent of burning wood in their wake. They talked to him in his sleep, their words nestling against his head and burrowing into his brain. The emperor slid through his days shaking the noises loose from his ears, trying to bat the prodding requests away. Let us help you lead the country, you are old and we are young, you are one, we are many. We will do everything you ask.

The pressure built in Emperor Haile Selassie’s head, drilling behind his eyes. Thoughts collapsed into a hundred scattered words floating in front of his face, pinned onto pages that were shoved under The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

42 his pen. He found himself numbed by the honeyed smiles that sliced his resistance more than their hard, sharp eyes. Your name here. And here, these officers he’d never known before said. Sign this and dissolve your ministry and the Crown Council, we have a new and better way for you to rule. They were mere men instructing God’s chosen, the monarch with blood that could be traced to wise King Solomon of the Bible. Soon, the voices floated from the radio and called his best men to submit to the wishes of all and go to jail. There will be no bloodshed, the radio said, only justice. His senators and judges, cabinet members and ministers, his noblemen, began to leave their posts and walk with grim confidence to turn themselves in. Sign here, and here, no time to read, we must hurry, trust us. Don’t sit, there is no rest. We must show that change is coming. Don’t you hear your people?

The emperor stood. The emperor walked. The emperor followed the backs of the uniformed men from one meeting into another. What has become of us? he asked himself. When will angels lead us out of this fray? Emperor Haile Selassie tried his best to become immobile.

To stand rigid without following. To sit without signing. To watch without nodding, without expression, without revealing the panic that fluttered through him. But things kept moving forward. We must not be anything other than what we are, here minded himself.

We are and so we will be. We are here, in these days of locusts and noise, but it has been written that this shall pass, and so it will. * There was no one in Jubilee Palace today. No footsteps approached his room in the hallway, no shuffle of servants’ slippers moved through cavernous rooms. There was only the scent of overdried wood dying into ash, pungent and strong. A faithful servant shifted restlessly in front of him, waiting for his next orders. Emperor Haile Selassie held a crisp white piece of paper and extended it to the man. Write this, he said to his servant, and heard his own voice drift back to him. Write this, it said, floating to him, fading. They must remember, my subjects must be reminded that I was once in exile in a country beyond these borders and even from afar, I ruled victorious. Remind them of those terrible days of Mussolini’s musThe Wagon Magazine - February 2017

43 tard gas and tanks, when I stood before nations and battled bigotry with truth. Write. Write, the echo returned, softer and less insistent.

Emperor Haile Selassie handed a pen to the old servant and watched the man tremble. Write, he ordered. Write so they are reminded, so that they know the Conquering Lion of Judah still sits on his throne.

Tell them I have not left my people, that I rule still, over eighty years old and wise, kin to God’s most blessed of kings. The emperor looked outside his window at his lions pacing in their cages, their growls like far-off thunder. We have not finished our time. The servant, eyes cast low, bowed. Call the minister of the pen, the emperor said, looking to the red sun falling in the distance. He will write for us. Call him here.

The servant whispered: He is gone. Where is he? The emperor asked.

Where are they all? Where are my people? *** There were five of them and they smelled of fresh sweat and gunpowder. They came to him in the dead hours of the morning, speaking in whispered tones. He was waiting, his back to the door, a Bible under his pillow, prayers for the hungry spilling from his lips.

He didn’t move when the doorknob twisted, pliant and well oiled.

He pretended not to hear the first shuffle of hesitant feet into his bedroom.

“Emperor Haile Selassie,” one of them said, his tone as solemn as a prayer, “please get up.”

The emperor forced his legs straight and smoothed his military uniform, the rows of shining medals swaying against his chest. He held out his hand for his coat and waited calmly. The day had finally come.

The man who spoke coughed softly. “Get your coat and come with us, please. Your Highness.”

The emperor squared his shoulders and raised his eyes to look into the shadowed faces of the five. His advisors. Fully molded bodies in army fatigues, with sharp eyes and teeth, strong hands and firm feet.

They could not meet his gaze, and he realized he could not remember their names. Only the man furthest to the left, shorter and darker The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

44 than the rest, dared to glance in his direction once. An unfamiliar face, the emperor thought, but the look of him, that haughty defiance of a caged animal, he’d seen in some of his fiercest generals, and it was then that the emperor understood.

“Our era is over,” he said. “Yes.” He stared into the dark, his back rigid. He let his eyes linger on each of the officers until they shifted uncomfortably and one of them sneezed. He noticed that all of them kept their heads bowed, maintained a respectful distance from him, his subjects once more. “There’s no use fighting the Almighty. Let us go,” he said, and led them out of his room and into the wide marble hallway, their footsteps echoing like a volley of gunfire.

A perfect triangle of light crawled from under his library door and the emperor stepped into its path and out of the shadows as he entered his last day as the King of Kings. In his library, two groups of noblemen and soldiers, pressed into their chairs like windblown birds, rose and bowed deeply as he sat down at his desk.

A trembling police officer dressed in shabby trousers stumbled in his haste to stand at attention. Sweat dripped freely from his temple into the neck of his ill-fitting shirt. The tallest of the five men shoved a document in his chest and instructed him to read. The officer took the paper, gripping it so hard it doubled into sloppy folds in his shaking hands. Another soldier held the policeman’s wrists to keep them still so the frightened man could read.

“Recognizing that the present system is undemocratic; that Parliament has been serving not the people but its members and the ruling and aristocratic classes; and that its existence is contrary to the motto ‘Ethiopia Tikdem,’ Ethiopia First; Haile Selassie I is hereby deposed as of today, September 12, 1974.”

The emperor felt the heat of a thousand eyes fall on him, and he looked from one minister to another, from one nobleman and relative to the next, and he folded his hands in front of him, index fingers and thumbs touching, an unbroken trinity. He remained seated, refusing to believe the end would be so undignified and without ceremony, announced by a man who carried traces of dirt under his fingernails.

He said, “We have raised you up. Have you forgotten?”

The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

45 From the back of the room seeped the sound of tears breaking into uneven sobs.

One of the noblemen walked to him and tenderly kissed his cheek. “Go,” he whispered. “Don’t make this more difficult.” He led him to the door, that simple gesture releasing chair scrapes and whispers, sending the noises crashing against the emperor, who found himself spiraling in the deafening cacophony.

Dazed, the emperor trailed the five men outside and waited for his Mercedes. One of them motioned him to the back of a blue Volkswagen, and Emperor Haile Selassie needed no words to convey his contempt for the order, for the officers, for the treasonous plot. The shortest of the men, his movements spare and tightly coiled, pointed towards the car and swung the door wider, his skittish eyes the only evidence of his impatience. Under a rising sun furiously beating its way through clouds, the five stood, neatly ordered and stiff, sweating, waiting, then waiting some more until the old man finally slumped, defeated, and squeezed into the back of the small car.

Despite the onlookers who cheered as the Volkswagen drove past, despite the ringing in his head and the chorus of shouts that greeted him through the thick glass, despite the deep thud of drumbeats from hands as fast as wings, nothing could have convinced the emperor that heaven had not fallen into a sudden hush at this betrayal of his kingdom, and he knew that it would be in this absence of sound that God would hear the prayers of his Chosen One and heed his call.

Overhead, the first crack of thunder rolled through the Ethiopian sky and then the rain. The emperor watched his beloved city blur and grow dim, and then everywhere, the quiet. ### Originally published: January 1, 2011 Author: Maaza Mengiste Nominations: NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work - Debut Author Published by: W. W. Norton Paperback : January 2011 ISBN 978-0-393-33888-1 // 5.5 × 8.2 in / 308 pages/$14.95 https://www.amazon.com/Beneath-Lions-Gaze-Maaza-Mengiste/dp/0393338886/ The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

46

FLASH FICTION

JEFF COLEMAN

The Stone “Psst, boy.”

Adrian glanced toward the alley, where an old man stood hunched against a stone wall.

“Boy,” he repeated. “Come here. I have something for you.”

Curious, heedless of the potential danger, Adrian did as he was told. When he was close enough to get a good look at his soiled rags, and to smell that he hadn’t bathed in weeks, the man glanced sideways, as if nervous he was being watched.

“Take this.”

Adrian looked down at the man’s closed fist.

“A gift,” he said, shoving a smooth round object into Adrian’s The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

47 left hand. A moment later, he darted off into the shadows and out of sight.

Adrian examined his prize.

A stone.

Brow furrowed, he continued home and placed it atop a shelf.

He did not think about it anymore that day.

Meanwhile, the stone waited.

That night, when Adrian returned to his room to sleep, he found the stone where he had left it. He picked it up and carried it with him to bed. Beneath the moonlight spilling through the window, the stone seemed almost to glow. Suddenly his imagination went wild, and he was certain this simple object could reveal the universe’s deepest secrets.

When exhaustion overtook him and he finally fell asleep, the stone was still clutched between his fingers.

He dreamt that night.

He was tumbling through the stars, falling, floating, and jets like cosmic sparks shooting through space. Galaxies spiralled in the distance, galaxies of every shape and size, whirling, colliding, and bursting in blinding coruscating flashes.

Adrian felt lost, but he was not afraid because he held the stone.

“The cosmos are yours now,” said the voice of the man he had met in the alley. The universe shook with the force of it. The words were a binding, the oldest and most powerful kind.

Then he was opening his eyes, and all he could see or hear was the pale light of the moon and the chirping of crickets outside. He glanced at the ordinary-looking stone, still firmly grasped in his left hand. It felt warm.

Adrian smiled.

Jeff Coleman is Modern Literary Fantasy Author He writes modern literary fantasy for children and adults. He is from California.

He blogs @ http://blog.jeffcolemanwrites.com./ The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

48

POEMS

Fabrice B. Poussin

Farewell Do I want to see you again, you who tortured my soul so, who desired it seems, only my end?

Could this be my punishment, in all eternity to meet your gaze again, you whose eyes are empty sockets?

Will I choose my friends thereafter, find the warmth of their hearts eternal, or be forced to feel your glacial presence?

Is rest to be the lot of an old frame, to retain the image precious of a life made of the mere glory of modest days?

May I be allowed to expel the aching fibers, spew them out as they wish to only rot an old carcass, and rebuild the temple,sole home to a mortal self, finding peace at last with all other departed, who relentlessly follow the eternal path of an Angelique destiny?

The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

49

Hopes The nameless temple still in time, is alive yet, made of numberless hearts of heavy accents, on the slope of a slippery mountain, its walls like rags of dying flesh, loose.

So many days, setting moons and raising suns, and the foundation of quick sand and traitorous undertow, cries, screams, agony and deep voices in unison, sing a lost past, a future still in the womb.

Tearing at the gut of a people prisoner of fate, the shackles squeeze the remaining crimson drops, on the rocks of highways to nowhere, eyes in terror wonder to the vanishing point.

Fire devours all around, shaken only by the thumps of bass conflagrations beyond the known present; brick by brick the establishment falters, gray matter, sole cement to warrant a civilization.

The ground is soaked with the bleedings Heavens, no safe land remains as the new temple must arise amongst the ruins and into the sinking soil, in a night where light prevails fed of a billion souls.

Dim dots in space shiver, whimper, blink, accomplice to the unfathomable abyss of a new creation; the temple will rise, out of sight, a quiet giant, soon it will pounce, mighty conquering panther.

It is time for the body to stand tall, a Gulliver in a known island where it remained ignored, free from fetters of gold, steel, and good graces, the temple is, the temple feels, the temple lives.

The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

50

Solemn He fit the image of an expectation, such simplicity, slender, barely smiling, walking, constantly walking and it seemed aimlessly, but untrue, always purposeful.

So weak it appeared, a child almost, fragile, often eyes closed, he seemed tired of being; so few words uttered form those charming lips; a touch, a brush of a palm, and a cure.

On worn out knees, sneakers of thinning tips, the shirt of old days, torn here, ripped there, holy of holies, and a bicep not made for lifting; the veins on a nape pulsate with simple energy.

Another heart beats now, while a soul sails in space, glides gleeful, watching over the blind man, who now sees between lines, and particles; his image humble, and she smiles, the pain now gone.

Skin thin, feels, touches, and gives from everything he is; blood flows again, and the host hears a song; on his feet once again, not a word pronounced.

Through a brilliant door he disappears, and all is well. ***

Fabrice Poussin teaches French and English at Shorter University, Rome, Georgia. Author of novels and poetry, his work has appeared in Kestrel, Symposium, The Chimes, and more than two dozens other magazines. His photography has been published in The Front Porch Review, the San Pedro River Review and more than ninety other publications.

The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

51

POEMS

Darren C. Demaree

REPLACING THE MONUMENT #43 The sky holds no blade.

That is a problem if we are to ever tend to the dirt without hurting our necks.

The worship of the silo can only be replaced by the worship of the cornstalk & that gradual process can save us. The corn rises to the height of the common man. The corn brings us face to face with each other.

The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

52

REPLACING THE MONUMENT #44 In the pinnacle of the right season there is no crop, there is only a sparrow going from shoulder to shoulder, singing through our tired silence.

It’s fucking beautiful when it works like this.

REPLACING THE MONUMENT #45 The water in the hoses drips to chase &small-river down the grass driveway.

Follow it to the dust. Root for a reason.

Poems by Darren C Demaree have appeared, or are scheduled to appear in numerous magazines / journals, including the South Dakota Review, Meridian, New Letters, Diagram, and the Colorado Review.

He is the author of six poetry collections, most recently “Many Full Hands Applauding Inelegantly” (2016, 8th House Publishing). He is the Managing Editor of the Best of the Net Anthology and Ovenbird Poetry.

The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

53

POEMS

BYRON SLANG POEMS

By Christopher Barnes

Lord Byron Picks Up A Cold Call Oh could I feel Or weep As springs in deserts So midst the withere’d

the mersh kiping my resolve mad-narky elapsings till white flags tin-cup a lifeboat’s porousness el cheapo’s scrounging burr I hang

Glossary of Slang: Mersh – Commercial; Kiping – Stealing

***

Lord Byron On Instagram One shade themouth-breather’s dosser garmed Had half impair’deasy meat that moon-stare Which wavesof gigglewater perked Or softly lightens exposure on these geeze bag features Where thoughts snagged, carnaged, not howlingly emotive How pure, and gruise morning belches up its sun Glossary of Slang: Mouth-Breather – Brute; Garmed – Dressed; Easy Meat -Loose; Gigglewater – Booze; Geeze Bag – Old Man; Gruise – Repellent.

The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

54

Lord Byron i-Plays A Documentary Of His Life Alas! It is The future cheats Nor can we Nor dare we

no virtue proceeds from jumping-salty a plook on an airs-and-graces blush rah it out all chronic-sauny blooter every crap-ass dereliction

Glossary of Slang: Jumping Salty – Getting Angry; Plook – Pimple; Rah – Posh; Sauny – Insincere; Blooter – Mess, Wreck.

*** Lord Byron Smirks At A Meme

Yet was not To lead the guilty His soul was changed Him forth to war Warped by the world

Blair once choirboy faked clang into a swingeing Midas touch with rubberheaded MPs tut-tutting butinsky, all that carnage that news crews subvert unreal

Glossary of Slang: Rubberhead – Idiot; Butinsky – Interfere

*** Lord Byron Rescripts A Password

None are all evil One softer feeling Oft could he sneer By passions worthy And even in him

yet oblivion-sunk when D&D izzit? The enigma isn’t blates when cronies fish reasoning’s pickle jar a feline’s tag is unpacked, decipherable metre shores a rafted hint

Glossary of Slang: D&D – Drunk & Disorderly; Izzit –Like ‘Innit’ But Doubtful; Blates – Blatantly

*** A Northern Arts writers’ award winner in the year 1998, Poet Christopher Barnes reads for Proudwords lesbian and gay writing festival and partake in workshops. His collections LOVEBITES got published in the year 2005. He made a digital film with artists Kate Sweeney and Julie Ballands at a film making workshop called ‘Out Of The Picture’ which was shown at the festival party for Proudwords. He worked on a collaborative art and literature project called ‘How Gay Are Your Genes’, facilitated by Lisa Mathews (poet) which was exhibited at The Hatton Gallery, Newcastle University, including a film piece by the artist Predrag Pajdic.

The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

55

COWBOY POEMS

by Gregory Doc Patton

Mark Blumer He wasn’t mean but, most men He could whip, Always carried a hid out gun and one on his hip.

Was out fishing or hunting every day, If he wasn’t with us gathering up strays.

Could make a mean Bloody Mary or a rabbit stew, Sometimes he would build a fire and cook for the whole crew.

Rode a few paint horses or maybe a bay, Out across the river he rode almost every day.

He had a voice and he could sing, Played guitar and could make it ring.

Always had some folks around an open fire, Everyone sang as there will did desire.

But that’s just a small part of his life, He worked hard despite the strife.

A couple of good kids a running around, Those children for him no truer love had he found.

The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

56

Early Darkness The early darkness came on to that cowgirl all to soon, She had rode out this morning hoping to be back by early afternoon.

It was just a little chilly when that cowgirl grabbed her kack and saddle to ride out, She had thought she was ready didn’t think the weather would turn about.

She was well seasoned knew what she was doing had been kicking her own behind, She unfastened her coat put it on pulled the collar up known everything would be fine.

Caught out with it dark and beginning to storm, It came up on her suddenly she hadn’t been fair warned.

This was so much different than those long summer days, And that Indian summer that seemed it would stay.

The unseasonably weather had left her off her gard, And she knew she wouldn’t be happy until she rode into the yard.

The wind was blowing and she had a chill so she shoved her hat down tight.

Tighten the stamped string, You could hear the wind whistle you could feel it’s sting.

She kept riding knew she would soon be home saw the lights glowing in the yard, He came out took her pony gave her a cup of coffee and patted her behind kinda hard.

She’d made it home safely and they had both been a little worried, But when he came back in into his chest her head she bury.

The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

57

Under the Moonlight She sat in the moonlight her head bent in prayer, For years life had been going nowhere.

The cowgirl felt like she kept coming up against a wall, Her feelings were melancholy like a cloudy day in the fall.

Her relationships had ended badly, Tears fell down her face sadly.

True love was wanted a friend to hold on to, A dream she had to love a man and wonderful things to do.

Dear Lord do I ask for too much?

To long for true loves touch.

She was about to give up she knew what to do, The Angel came and said let’t see if your dreams will come true.

She had met the cowboy years before she had almost forgot, The cowgirl had really like that cowboy a lot.

But when she saw him again her heart stirs as if it had never, The Angel that had come he was so clever.

The cowgirls dreams were answered and she lives with her man, Thank you God for giving her the strength to make this last stand

The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

58

Autumn Morning Rain Rain woke her as it fell upon the old tin roof at the beginning of the day, She reached beside her, felt his warmth glad there he still lay She got up feeling the coolness of the morning air as it blew gently through the cracks, Raising her pretty head from her pillow looked over as he still lay there sleeping on his back.

The old cabin was still dark so she lit the lamp on the table by their bed, Remembering this morning his warm embrace and the kind words he had said.

She knew she was fortunate to have him in her cowgirls life, That cowboy laying there had asked her to be his wife.

These two had been sharing this cabin together since early spring, Met him at the café where she worked she hadn’t expected a wedding ring.

She was glad he had asked her and she had accepted, The feeling of nausea this morning she knew it was not what he expected.

She knew he would be happy with the news she had to give, These two would grow old together in this life they chose to live.

*** “I have a thought of myself as a cowboy, my poetry started with telling stories to my friends, around the fire, or when we rode horses on trial rides and during the times we worked cattle. My friends have enjoyed my stories; they have encouraged me in many ways. They would say ‘another good one Doc.’” Greg was born in Parsons Kansas on a farm just northeast of town.

He and his wife Debbie live on a small ranch the South Branch Ranch east of Parsons. They both share the love of horses and the ranch life.

Debbie encourages Greg’s writing and has been the inspiration for many of his poems.

The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

59 NON-FICTION FROM THE BOOK-LENGTH ESSAY

ALL ROADS LEAD FROM MASSILIA

By

Philip Kobylarz

TO THE ARCHIPELAGO INCONNU BUSES OF MASSILIA If there’s a way to best experience the hypercomplex, difficult to get to know, and deeply secretive city, it must be on the buses and entwined métro lines.

Coming into the city from the south, as not many people do, from the sleepy hamlet of Les Goudes, it is the rare 20 that ambles along the winding coast. This bus runs a fraction of the time the others do and is mostly used by hikers and pleasure seekers leaving the confines of the city. When on the 20, a smaller than usual bus made mostly of windows, its passengers “ooooh” and “aahhhh” most of the way and can’t help but stand up to participate in the mountain, cliff, island, and sea views. It ends in Callelongue, where the road also The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

60 ends. In this tiny calanque village, hemmed in by cliff side and pine, there is an excellent pizzeria, a bay and tiny beach, and trail heads that take one on many routes to the great uninhabited beyond.

The 20 originates at Madrague– a bus stop in front of an ancient chapel. Inside the chapel that is always open and normally unvisited, there is a huge aquarium of exotic fish. This is the fisherman’s house of prayer, although one hasn’t been under its crosstopped roof probably in decades, where prayers are logged in for the men out on the seas earning a living. It is a most elegant and odd relic of the past built into the hillside of Mount Rose. One can wait for the bus in the chapel’s rock-carpeted courtyard overhung with scent rich pines. Probably it’s the best bus stop in the world.

And then the 19 arrives. What is distinct about it is that it is an intimate line. It is always manned or womanned by a Marseillais(e) with golden skin, dark hair, facial features of unusual attractiveness. The bus driver, who will often have but a few riders will engage any or all of them in conversation. It is a lonely, windswept route lined by foothills and mountains, unbelievable views of rocks and waves just beyond the coast, initially with a stretch of lower income cabin like houses built on a cliffside– looking like a community of people who worship paranormal roofs. What a gig for a city worker to get, driving this line.

The driver will be interested where in the city you are going because he or she will have family there or friends. The driver will tell you of recent out of the ordinary passengers. When the bus is waiting its precise minute of departure (by which you as rider should set your watch) he or she will enjoy an illegal on the bus cigarette or even sip at a beverage concealed under the spacious dashboard.

Paper bus tickets are no longer used because they would be stamped with such an invisible amount of ink that they could easily be used again and again. The change to an electronically charged card/scanning system hasn’t curbed the insidious arrival, at any time, of the team of RTM monitors. Usually it’s a collection of three men, women, or combination, wearing their characteristic blue windbreakers. They are dropped off near any given bus stop by car, and The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

61 they emerge, out of the blue, at the bus stop too soon for any free rider perpetrator to get off the bus. When they’re picked up, only the front doors on the bus are opened, thus foiling any attempt at quick escape. A rolling venus fly trap.

It is either a terrifying, embarrassing, or annoying interruption that is never gladly welcomed especially in the hot, un-air-conditioned summer months. One has to reproduce one’s card and be subjected to this personal questioning of integrity. The process is always met with a lowering of the shoulders, the general bodily portrayal of the motif of “a sinking feeling”, and a loud, forceful exhalation of breath. This gesture is expected by everyone involved. Wouldn’t be the same without it. phhhffffffffffooooooooooooooooooooo . . .

This minor inconvenience soon becomes an investigative foray when one is caught. The rest of the riders are treated to the drama of the violators barrage of excuses for not having a paid-up card.

Technical malfunction on the card’s part, or the scanning machine’s accuracy, is the most popular wheedling. If caught, it results not only in the ignominy of being caught in public, having your feathers ruffled in stuffy plein air, but a weighty fine of two hundred and fifty francs.

The trip from Madrague to its first point of connection, Rond Point du Prado, is a sensual dream voyage. One passes the Italianate alleys of La Madrague de Montredon without a hint of the tiny port and restaurant just behind its cluttered rues.

On the other side of the street there is government housing that produces often the strangest and most exotic passangers waiting outside of the many storied shoebox of a building. Perhaps there is migration from the poor dwellings across it, resembling those of

The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

62 Mexico’s Pacific coast. Surely, the seaside homes, though looking dangerous and forlorn, must be more habitable.

Continuing past the park that is the Pastré, a château once owned by a wealthy Russian émigré, now housing a ceramic museum. Even if faïence doesn’t at all sound interesting, it’s worth the few franc entry fee just to walk around the stately mansion, to walk up its stone stairways, and to peer at the see and pine top view from its small upstairs windows.

After winding through quaint, newer neighborhoods, you arrive at Pointe Rouge. It’s a secret seaside (not to locals) destination that features some of the city’s best dessert shops, bakeries, and beachside haunts that are slightly overpriced but well worth the views and atmospheres of blue neon. The beach of Pointe Rouge is populated by a large crowd of those who actually use its waters for sports and frolicking. A very young crowd is attracted by its bay-like location and cafés and glaceries where the main dish featured is ice cream. Needless to say, it also attracts a host of people watching people.

The beach is bordered by a walkway and wall that rises some thirty feet above the sand. Men like soldiers guarding the coast gaze at lunchtime fantasies below. At beach level, there is also a row of The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

63 cabanons built in to the retaining wall, two bona fide restaurants, and a major wind surfing port of departure. The beach itself is pure, finely eroded sand with an uncharacteristically lack of urchin filled rocks in the shallow water.

All the temptations that make life worth living in such a small spot on an unassuming stretch of coast. It’s a great place to be human.

NOTES ON BUS ETIQUETTE 1) The young man who jumps on the bus without inserting a payment card, adorned with blaring walkman, cigarette butt tucked into mouth corner, avoiding eye contact with anyone except himself in the window’s reflection should be both tolerated and ignored. Especially when the older woman who lives to correct others’ behavior begins speaking.

2) If there is a lack of empty seats, one immediately evacuates his or her seat when an older rider mounts. The older rider chooses or declines the invitation to sit. The evacué(e) is respected by all evinced by an irregular ripple of nodding heads and requisite smiles.

3) The presence of the bus driver should be acknowledged by a bonjour or bonsoir. If the prospective rider ran to the busstop, causing the driver to halt acceleration, or, in the most egregious case,a halt and re-opening of the doors, the tardy rider must thank the driver repeatedly while voicing a vous êtes gentil(lle). ` 4) That the plastic seating is arranged 2 X 2 in rows of two, if one is seated on the outside of such a configuration, he or she is always expected to offer the inside seat to a rider of female persuasion.

5) On crowded buses bodily contact is allowable especially between attractive members of the opposite sex. To a degree.

INCIDENTAL French doors, in France, are porte-fenêtres– door-windows, and this conceptual rendering means more than it could anywhere else. If one is so lucky to have them opening onto a terrace, these limninal beings dictate one’s life. That is to say, in the morning or evening– the outside world– its temperature, smells, sounds, is a constant entity worth visiting/ meditating on.

The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

64 To open them, their handles must be first twisted, then raised, which is akin to the sacramental opening of a large secular tabernacle. They close, aligning top and bottom hooks to meeting catches, above, below, and in the middle. They are escape hatches into the realms of pigeons and marauding magpies, gardens of potted plants, and Islamic renderings of tiled floors and cool, shady places lit by sunlight or stars.

French doors are usually paned with ancient wavy glass that when closed reflects light in oceanic currents and provides a skewed view of what is beyond. They are ever so romantic when hung with curtains, stately when adorned with peeling paint, and in their larger than people statures, reminds us that what occurs outside of them is much more relevant than the human machinations that unfold within their view.

UN-EASY ACCESS In America, it is so simple to get anything whenever it is desired. Even if it isn’t wanted, it can still be attained, and usually this is the case. Pancakes for dinner. Twenty four hours a day hamburgers cooking. There was once even a breakfast soda marketed. Generally speaking, this modus operandi makes life easier, not better, and people get confused about the two.

In France, there is no grocery shopping to be done on a Sunday. There aren’t any open. Acquisitions must be planned and the daily routine is determined by what needs to be done based on a culturally developed window of availability. One must know exactly which pâtisserie to go to exactly when to get the freshest bread within a four block accumulation of local, family run bakeries. It is the same with the boucherie, the corner fruit markets, and the myriad small groceries, named Casino. It’s a constant gamble.

There is no all-night anything, except for roads. The evening is a sacred time more for taking strolls along the beach or settling into giant tables of many-course meals and unplugged and respiring wine bottles. Sometimes dinner isn’t served until nine p.m. And there’s always the sport of people watching because the French do not lock themselves up at night. It is when they truly begin to be alive.

The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

65 Nights, and even non-siesta hours, are geared to the ultimate enjoyment of every minute. One proof might be the fact that video stores close at eight p.m. There are natural, timed quotas of temptation. There would never be anything as preposterous as a drive-in liquor store.

One ritualistic way to celebrate the unraveling of evening’s cloak in Marseille is to bring a freshly wood oven fired pizza to the city’s rocky coastline and enjoy it with a bottle or two of wine. Alcohol is not prohibited in public places– the French couldn’t maintain such a hypocrisy. Consequently, there isn’t an abuse of the freedom.

Unlike the dwelling place of liberty that is the U.S., the French enjoy greater freedoms of not a libertine vein, but those of the art of intoxicating the brain with the best life has to offer.

Waves hugging the warm, sandy shoulder of la plage du Prado, stars overhead, lovers in an isolated cove of stone, fish observable in the clear blue water meditating into sleep, the yap of a dog free of any concept of a leash as the city tucks itself into a highly bearable numbness of yet another perfect sunset as the mountains that surround eerily glow standing sentinel over this divine form of day’s end. An enchantment known in very few other dreamworlds.

RêVERIE In a dream, the city awakens. Pigeons coo in abandoned storied buildings that will in no time considering the surrounding geology open into new restaurants featuring tapas, or maybe morph into summer abodes of the rich and totally infamous, or they’ll become artist studios without the luxury of hot running water. Their shutters are painted in archaic green and aren’t at the least concerned about their flaked, dilapidated, shaggy personal appearance. It’s good enough that they even open and ever so rarely close. Yellowness seeps into streets that will be washed clean come dawn by men in brightly colored, orange or green or blue, jumpsuits who have not found anything better to do with their lives but smoke and talk and walk through these canyons of history and human inhabitants who think nothing of emptying old dishwater or recently filled ashtrays onto the people streaming sidewalks below, whenever a purifying urge The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

66 comes along. In evening’s silence it is never quiet. Always a lonely mo-ped blurting home. A stray deux chevaux lost among dark, drunken roads. The pigeons dropping an afternoon’s spoils of tossed out breads, oversee that paradise is a quotidian thing. Pigeons, who’ll never leave their self-made, self-claimed rooks and nooks of buildings, try to find a convincing reason to leave. Rather, they preen.

DESTINATION ARCHIPELAGO This rocky point and beach of polished stones is a little south of Pointe Rouge, hidden in a more remote nook of the coast. It features long stretches of reefs that jut into the sea. They can be traversed when the tide allows. The rocky beach is backed by an even steeper staircase and higher wall and another walkway for the lonely to pause on bicycle rides to peer at those sunning themselves below. Perhaps this place is a bike riding/viewing destination.

South of the tiny crescent shaped beach there are staircases built into rock that lead to large houses that straddle the overhanging

plateau. Beyond these often gated staircases of concrete is a rocky calanque that is for the most part impassable, or looks too dangerous for the faint of heart to cross, especially so when the mistral is blowing three foot waves. After the gorge, there is another world of pure rock and sea, a stone and mineral embankment of torturous landscape pitted with secret caves.

The texture of this larger archipelago resembles the topogThe Wagon Magazine - February 2017

67 raphy of a distant planet. There are small, pointed mountain ranges of spikes, blades of limestone sea teeth that can shred any type of footwear, or at least do great damage. There are pools that form and sometimes contain sea snails, tiny crabs, and bizarre crystallizations of salt.

On the hidden archipelago, one is sheltered from any signs of civilization. It’s a strange continuity of rock and water, desolate but inviting. Fishermen wearing hip boots sometimes fish its shores.

Caves formed by consuming forces of wind and wave offer a little shelter from the midday sun. Like columns of a fallen temple, this place is nature in spectacular ruin. No plant life even attempts to stay for too long.

Swimming off the archipelago offers the snorkeler and underwater city of rocks, sunken column like structures and accretions of dead sea life, schools of curious fish, all kinds and sizes of hermit crabs, a type of crab that wears a wig of seaweed which is startling on first encounter as it appears from nowhere with its claws as big as a human fist. There are purple green anemones and sandy stretches of submerged beach that encompassed with sea grass and piles of cliff fallen stone suggest the outskirts of Atlantis.

The remoteness, within the city, of this forgotten, singular niche offers one a pure, simple, easy escape from the civilization that has endured around it for eons. Of course, when the waves kick up, the sea urchin bedecked reefs and rocks can be very unsettling, as I

The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

68 found myself pin cushioned on them in one strong current of bad judgment. They are a delicacy to eat but are treacherous to pet, greet, or touch in any way.

The sting of an urchin is closest to, in my experience, the prick of being attacked by a jumping cholla cactus of the Sonoran desert.

The urchin’s needles, like those of the cactus, lodge in the skin and remain there visibly in the form of tiny dots, long after contact has ceased. Soon after the skin swells a little and a speckled bruise tattoos the inflicted body part. Sometimes a single urchin needle makes its way into the flesh like a most excruciating splinter. It sinks in further if you attempt to pry it out. The lingering pain is only unbearable if pressure is applied to the area lodged with épines. If a swimmer is so unlucky to step on one, his or her gait will assuredly change for the next month or so.

Dredging oneself up from the sea after hours of shell collecting, marine life observation, and the hopeful search for sea caverns, the beach of the archipelago offers an audience of sun baked, glistening bodies wholly uninterested in your arrival. The sea closes the parting that spew you forth, quietly, behind.

Past the sandwich shop l’Américano which is the moniker for a type of ham and cheese sandwich with tomatoes with mustard on french bread, Michealangelo’s, or rather Cantini’s reproduction of, David beckons you down the corniche.

Marseille’s David is regularly vandalized, though that’s too harsh a word. He has been spotted wearing a cloth fig leaf; once even a thong swimsuit. He has proudly worn the hometown soccer team’s jersey in the form of it spray painted on his upper body. He once wore a gigantic styrofoam ten-gallon hat. Occasionally there are messages, or tattoos, decorating his butt cheeks. It is never quite known The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

69 how his stark, stoic appearance will be altered by the youth of the day.

His looming presence provides a weird juxtaposition that somehow makes sense overlooking the beach of the Prado where men and women congregate around open air showers to bathe their bodies free of salt in front of a well-mannered, interested public. The greens surrounding the outdoor showers are popular picnic spots.

Bus 19 then veers eastward up a Parisian boulevard lined by old mansions of old money and French banks. There are pushcart oyster bars under the shade of plane trees on the way to the city’s southerly hub.

Rond Point du Prado is a rowdy bus and underground métro stop due to its location adjacent to the soccer stadium, recently renovated for the World Cup. Behind the escalator and bus drop off point, there is a pleasant park. Around the circle, the rond of the point, there are cafés and sandwich carts (one featuring Greek fare) and many benches and trees. It’s a place to stop for a moment and re-vitalize before entering the traffic-filled, exuberantly alive centre ville.

The underground métro connection (there are above ground ones in the northeastern section of the city) here is host to fast foodlike patisseries that make its confines smell of freshly baked croissants. This fringe benefit keeps the RTM guard dogs always alert and a little hungry. There’s a hungry dreaminess in their eyes.

***

Philip Kobylarz is a teacher and writer of fiction, poetry, book reviews,

and essays. He has worked as a journalist and film critic for newspapers in Memphis, TN. His work appears in such publications as Paris Review, Poetry, and The Best American Poetry series. He is the author of a book of poems concerning life in the south of France and a short story collection titled Now Leaving Nowheresville. His creative non-fiction collection All Roads Lead from Massilia is forthcoming from Everytime Press of Adelaide, Australia and he has a collection forthcoming from Brooklyn’s Lit Riot Press titled A Miscellany of Diverse Things.

The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

70

TALESPIN

Era.Murukan

Mailophile ‘Words not yet uttered are sweet. Sentences yet to be written are pregnant with meaning. Letters unwritten are perennial sources of unadulterated bliss. This came in Whats-app last week and I sincerely believe this to be a Zen saying. Even If it were not, it would be one by now through repeated sharing on the social media.

If awaiting the delivery of letters being written is an act providing immense thrill and delight, hunting for old mail is equally so.

Pursuit of vintage correspondence sent and received aeons ago with entities at both ends long since dead qualifies to be categorized as a The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

71 feat of the same noble kind. The single-minded pursuit often provides Satori to the seeker. It is an enlightenment of a different kind.

I was rummaging through the attic at my ancestral house, years ago. The house was one constructed when attics were must-to-have unlike the ‘attached bathroom with a shower’ and ‘Bombay latrine with a commode’, both being novelties and were nice-to-have then.

There was no standard procedure to define what all could be stored in the attic. One could find for sure old earthen pots, brass tumblers, wooden ladles, lyric books of movies released sixty years ago when Indian talkies were ‘sing-ies’ with more songs and less dialogues.

To a fortune hunter with a missionary zeal and monk like patience, the attic would also yield treasures of the unexpected kind like late Victorian erotica in chaste English, with the characters addressing each other ‘sir’ and ‘madam’ and profusely thanking each other on completion of the intended amorous act, strictly according to the book.

I chanced upon a closed antique casket in the attic. My father who was alive then immediately identified it as the one he used to carry surreptitiously pieces of sweetmeats to school, as a kid. When he was in class three, aged seven, he lost the casket on the day fresh laddus were prepared at home for the ensuing festival of lights, Deepavali.

‘The laddu may still be there inside’, my gentle father said as he snatched the apparently hermetically sealed box away from me, with a little force, we never associated with him. He made no attempt to open the casket though. He had it in his proud possession until he breathed his last many years afterwards.

Another gift of the attic was old mail. This was of the vintage post cards kind. Many such yellowish brown rectangular cards were there, all addressed to my grandfather who was the head of a large joint family living together in peace at our ancestral home. The cards were all covered in a coat of dust that somehow acted as a deterrent against their getting decimated and devoured by pests. Fifty odd antique mail were there, impaled on an evil looking steel spike with a flat cast iron bottom.

The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

72 All the letters I retrieved were written by a single person; perhaps the first writer in our family. I was given to understand this one was a great grand cousin of mine.

It appears there prevailed some unwritten code of conduct which would have dictated that at least one person, male only that is, from each middle class joint family at some point of time in his life should renounce the family ties and walk out unannounced of the household, mostly by night. He would in all probability be taking such an un-ceremonial leave of his close relatives that included his wife and children as well, only to return after a decade or more. My great grand cousin (GGC in short) was found to abide by this, by and large.

The most interesting thing about this GGC is that he was a confirmed bachelor who went out at noon on a hot summer day, never to return. He left in a huff after someone hinted half playfully at lunch time that he did not make any attempt to settle down in a job even three months after passing his school final examinations but was settling down to a life of lunch – siesta – dinner - slumber. The immediate provocation I learn was that there was a job vacancy for a bookkeeper in a hotel that sprang up near our place. The GGC was deeply hurt that he was expected to take up the demeaning job of a hotel clerk doubling up as a cashier and in all possibility as one waiting at tables downstairs, when the occasion demanded. All these happened in early 1940s and the letters were penned by him to my grandfather, the fugitive’s uncle who brought him up, being orphaned at a very young age.

I removed the bunch of letters from the spike and pulled out an epistle from the collapsing card pack. It was dated 1st April 1941.

‘I am not fine but am suffering, here, in Alappuzha’.

The letter writer began with an ominous note, quite unlike the conventional letter writers. Having set a wailing tone, he proceeded to elaborate upon his hardships. These prima facie were the cascading effects of his unscheduled jaunt to the neighbouring state of Kerala from Madras presidency, though not appropriately acknowledged by the writer. Having arrived at Alappuzha, the coastal Kerala town by The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

73 train that reached the destination late by a full ten hours, he attempted to procure a decent boarding and lodging. As luck would have it, all he could get was a bed bug infested lodgement to stay at a very high tariff and insipid, stale food that had grounded coconut added to all food items, even to fish and chicken, as the GGC claimed.

He blamed my grandfather squarely for his plight. The latter, he accused, did not arrange for his study in college but wanted him to be an accountant in a wayside hotel and that was the source of all the GGC’s misery. The patriarch was requested to send at least twenty rupees by Telegraphic Money Order to the GGC’s hotel address immediately on receiving the letter, to tide over the crisis.

The next letter I pulled out did not open on similar lines. Rather, like a post-modernistic work of fiction, it began – ‘Kelu Nair’s eatery worst…in the entire world …and beyond…serves lentils under-cooked; steamed rice a lump of coal… soup with foul smell … like a stagnant sewage stream. My hardships … getting still worse.

I hereby lay the blame squarely at your doorsteps. Please send me Rupees Twenty immediately for the last time’.

I would assume that such stern language and stucco sentences would well constitute a parting shot and perhaps would have marked the last of the unfortunate correspondence between the family letter writer and the patriarch. Interestingly that was not the case to be, I found.

The fugitive continued his tragic monologue on his painful existence, from Kochi, Hubli, Puna, Agra, Hardwar, Delhi and Kolkata. All these post cards had the photograph of King George VI of England solemnly looking at the reader, perhaps in total sympathy with the writer. He would have set the grievances for redressal had he been addressed to directly in any of these post cards, he appeared suggesting.

Another post card started with a matter of fact information sharing – Annapoorna finds it difficult to cook south Indian food though she can prepare Bengali fish curry very well. I married in June and am trying to like Bengali fish curry. I taught her how to prepare tomato in lentil soup. Though she could prepare it, she is careThe Wagon Magazine - February 2017

74 less in adding salt and always adds much more than adequate. It is my destiny to eat salty food day-in and day-out. I find it too difficult to adjust my tastes now at my twenty-eighth year of existence. I commute to office in a crowded slow moving tramcar. Everyone speaks Bengali here and I cannot understand even a word of it. Annapoorna speaks Assamese at home, which also I cannot fully understand. Her English is faulty yet we communicate in that language only. As she is in the family way and this is the commencement of pregnancy, I am forced to do all domestic chores. Working hard at office and working at home make me fatigued. All these troubles I have to experience are because of you, my uncle. If any of your friends or relatives is on a visit to Kolkata, send through him lime and mango pickles. I have not tasted even a small piece of homemade south Indian pickle in the last 8 months. Life is tedious and is not worth living. All because of..

I came down the attic after glancing through a few more letters randomly retrieved from the spike, again, by this much-suffered great grand uncle. One of these listed complaints about the rickshaw puller who, looking always inebriated, taking Partho, GGC’s ten year old son to school and about the school teachers who could not impart education to him properly as they themselves were ignoramus but were always demanding tuition fee payment for extra classes. So much hard-earned money and time went down the drain, all because of‌(Well, you know who is to be blamed).

With an excuse of being mildly reprimanded at home, the GGC left home and had an extensive Great India - Bharath Darshan tour before settling down in Kolkata with wife, family and a job. The last letter from him complained about his new house leaking on the terrace and the resultant seepage of water in the ceiling making him lose sleep and wander in wild search for masons to address the problem, when it continued pouring cats and dogs all day.

As his Himalayan hardships that never showed any sign of getting melted down stood rock study and went on multiplying, the world was experiencing a minor misery that affected most of the global population, namely World War II. Yet, compared to what GGC experienced, the bombing, concentration camps, death and The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

75 destruction, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Indian war of independence under Mahatma Gandhi’s leadership et al paled into insignificance. My GGC never made a mention of these, in any of the agony letters he wrote home.

Receiving letters is more a fulfilling experience than reading them. The very act someone somewhere has sat down with a singular purpose to contactsomeone elsethrough correspondence is gratifying immensely as the craving to be noticed is addressed by such an act. As a schoolchild, it was my permanent lament, ‘No one writes to me’. This being the common complaint of all the students at Class 8 A, we ensured we received our letters regularly and in plenty.

Those were the days in which, the embassies of most countries were working overtime to enlighten the people of the nations where they function, on their culture, history and regular diplomatic happenings. We boys obtained most embassy addresses through a wide variety of contacts and wrote each embassy a post card. With 20 odd boys writing individually to each of the 50 odd embassies in New Delhi, the financial outlay at the rate of 15 paise per card was quite formidable as cash inflow was always sporadic and was in a trickle.

This problem was more or less resolved brilliantly with aggregation becoming the pure play strategy to be employed. Each of us wrote to the same embassy on pieces of paper torn from our notebooks (never a mathematics notebook with its odd size). The format of the letter would be the same. Commencing with promises of eternal friendship and best wishes to their nation, sharing our delight at the fast growth of that country in all respects, mentioning about our keen desire to know more about the country and people and then, in the last part, placing a request to send us books and periodicals about the country so that we would be kept consistently enlightened and finally wishing them more growth and prosperity. The postal address of the letter writer would be furnished in all these letters prominently.

All the correspondence would be placed in a large sized thick envelope and sent to Ghana embassy or American Consulate or any particular country we fancied at that time. The expenses for forwardThe Wagon Magazine - February 2017

76 ing would be shared among the participants, which would be only a fraction of individual correspondence cost.

The thrill in receiving huge parcels from most of these embassies and consulates in response to our letters is something that begs adequate description and could not be comprehended; unless you too have experienced it. Most of us received those brown paper parcels from the post-man at totally unexpected moments. The post-man for our area was more dutiful than the honourable minister of posts and telegraph in the central government. He would strive to deliver even if the address was inadequate, based on logical presumptions and with a thorough knowledge of the micro history of the streets under his command and the inhabitants. Thus, he knocked at the backyard door one afternoon and delivered me a thick brown paper envelope from the Hungarian embassy.

The ambassadorial gift consisted of books printed in the best quality paper with a soft smooth silky texture and the fragrance of the printing ink hinting at the greatness of country it was printed.

There were lot of photographs in each book showing the people happy wherever they were and whatever they were doing. In all those books, old women would recline in armchairs sipping fruit juice while elderly men would sit relaxed along riverbeds with their fishing gear in full display. The fish sometimes would be seen diving out apparently eager to get in sync with the hook, line and sinker. Everyone including the fish would be smiling.

The African countries preferred sending regular newsletters than forwarding books, which was mostly the practice of the European nations, and were strict one off deliveries. Chinese and Japanese embassies never replied to us, as they would have expected mail in their native languages. The USA was another chronic defaulter, perhaps thinking it was well beneath their dignity to engage in correspondence with schoolchildren.

Ghana Newsletter, Uganda Review, Benghazi Journal and numerous other African newsletters were regularly sent to us mostly every month. Without fail, all these newsletters would sport in the first page the photograph of the president or prime minister of the The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

77 country smiling and addressing a crowd partially shown in the photograph. The same gentleman would be seen playing a huge drum in the fourth page and holding the hand of a child in the sixth, which would the last page. Sometimes the photographs would be replaced with those of someone else playing the drum, addressing, or kissing the infants. We understood that a change of guard had taken place with the previous drumbeater already been shot dead or escaped to another nation seeking refuge. Of course it all made little difference to us.

Some of us were more ambitious and requested information to be sent not only to them but to their close relatives as well. Thus, Jewel of Africa Newsletter was sent by a tiny African country, every month without fail, to a friend’s grandmother, for ten long years. She used to sit in the front yard of the house, with a persistent cough. The tiny African nation thought it was their top priority duty to keep the old Indian lady, hard of hearing and partially blind notwithstanding, updated with the latest happenings in their tiny nation. The senior citizen, perhaps energized by the Jewel of Africa Newsletter correspondence had a hale and healthy existence until she was 92. She breathed her last a month after the embassy pulled the plug on despatching the Jewel mail to her.

That is about the delight and thrill in receiving letters, mostly unexpected, when the information technology revolution was yet to happen. We seldom write or receive those conventional mailsnowadays. Instead, we are into emailing and internet based chatting for information sharing. The frontiers of correspondence have extended to include video and audio touch basing with almost everyone armed with a smart phone. It is zero delay correspondence as things stand.

The charm of old world correspondence is passĂŠ with most of the technology driven correspondence turning to be a source of trouble, especially unsolicited mail. All sorts of entities shoot emails to me to induce me try their product to make my nose one full centimetre long or reduce my waist by five inches in two days. Or it is to increase my height by two inches in three months. Sometimes it arrives with promises of happy sexual life with cheap and effective The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

78 Viagra clones. I just delete these mails having been perfectly satisfied with my nose or whatever-it-is, in its present status and form. As regards to height increase, I have absolutely no agenda to walk tall, having ordered three pairs of trousers and shirts at the drapers only last month. They would be rendered useless and so, no, thank you, my tall, unknown friend.

Another type of unsolicited correspondence solemnly declare that my close relative in an African country has passed away in an accident and has bequeathed me an estate of a few million dollars which I can claim by making a payment of the equivalent of 10 US dollars to the person emailing me.

I do not intend spending 10 USD to claim that inheritance in an African country. I have all the old issues of Jewel of Africa newsletter I received as a boy, safe in the attic. I shall gladly part with these with the lettpoer writer in exchange for the African treasure.

***

Murugan Ramasami

• Techno banker and project management profes-

sional heading large banking IT projects in UK, Thailand and USA • An author with 28 books to his credit, novelist, short story writer, poet, tech-travel-humor columnist (Tamil and English) • Playwright in Tamil • Movie script - dialogue writer • Translator from Malayalam, English to Tamil The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

79 SOME MORE AFRICAN LITERARY PAGES

FICTION

South Sudanese Colours

By Peter Ngila

That white boy snatched your girlfriend, my grandson.

Let me fix this black, red, green and white-coloured band to your wrist. These colours will turn you into a fighter. The whites should be comfortable with what they grabbed from Africa, long time ago. My grandson, fight for what is yours!

Your name is Natty. The thin hair on your head is not long enough to be fixable with locks. Your girlfriend’s twisted words reach you as you splash water on your back. Stopping shortly, you place your white gunia scrubber on the toilet sink. Cocking your ears on one side as if listening for the second coming of Christ, you wonder whether your speaking style of your girlfriend is similar to the white guy. Are the two having an affair? She has come back to the house too quickly. She said she went to check on her friend in Riverside.

Picking the blue towel from the metallic hanger, you wipe the remaining foam on your back, your armpits. When you wrap The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

80 yourself with the blue towel, it soaks in the remaining foam along your waist. You are expecting to find your girlfriend relaxed on the sofa set, only to realize that the twisted words are coming from a Selena Gomez ringtone in your phone. Your girlfriend’s voice resemble a phone ringtone’s and when you learnt that she might have been seeing the white guy, ‘Selena’ was the only amended name you could find. Your girl didn’t come back.

Now as you wear your cologne, your girlfriend comes along.

She is dressed all black as if going to a funeral. When she opens her mouth to talk you realize her tongue is also black – pitch black. You close the door as she slumps onto the red sofa set.

“Darling, you look unhappy,” you say when she refuses to hug you.

“You have refused to grow up!” Her words are fire. You cock your head on one side and try to think of any instance you might have ever hurt her. You are angry that she called you a child while you are twenty-six years. Looking outside the window, your anger cools down. From the fourth floor you are in, children in Fly Emirates jerseys are playing soccer in the pitch.

You turn to face Selena. But she is no longer there. Soon, she comes in from the bedroom carrying the huge mirror, which is always near the bed. You are out of words. Why would she bring this mirror instead of using the small one placed behind the flat screen TV? Beside the TV is a doll, a doll that once prompted your friend Chelel to ask if you guys got married. You became friends with your girlfriend after Chelel introduced you to each other. Presently your girlfriend points at you. Passing a hand over your face, you cannot understand what she is pointing at.

“Natty, you have pimples all over your face.”

“I know. What’s wrong with them?”

She doesn’t answer. She walks over to the already switched on TV and inserts a flash disk into a side port. Then she picks a remote control from the table and plays a clip about AIDS patients at Kenyatta Hospital.

“Your skin is against our relationship.”

The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

81 “How can you say that, darling?”

“You are not infecting me with AIDS, Natty.” You are sure she is not joking. You look at her, and she spits with her mouth turned away like a Bell’s palsy survivor. You have never thought that your girlfriend could say such things. Sometimes she likens you to darkness. You knew she would always joke about you being the brother of darkness. But to talk of AIDS! You know your skin is black, pitch black. A feeling of rejection sweeps over you and you know you have to do something. Now your girlfriend is standing by the door, threatening to slip away into the afternoon sun.

“Babe, wait. Let’s fix whatever is troubling you.”

She stares at you with deride. She might go out anytime; you are convinced.

“Natty, there is nothing to fix.” She does not give you time to say anything.

“What do you mean?”

“Everything is already fixed, I’m sorry. I have my own man.”

“Real?”

“A real man with the skin of money!”

“Wait, are you talking about Jack?”

You are confused. Jack is the white manager of the company in which you work. Despite being ten years older than you are, he is like your brother and father. You have never questioned who your parents were. Now you think, might be, that they died of AIDS. The AIDS your girlfriend has just talked about. You are confident Jack cannot have an affair with Selena. He is fifteen years older than she is.

If the two walked holding hands, they would either get angry stares from people or get arrested by the police for a dad spoiling a schoolgirl.

“I’m glad you know.”

“This is a joke, right?

“You are the joke.” Her voice has gone higher.

“Jack cannot do such a thing.”

“And why do you think so?”

“He is Chelel’s boyfriend.”

The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

82 “Look at you! Chelel and Jack are just business partners.”

“That’s impossible!”

You are now heaving.

“Watch me!”

Digging into her brown handbag, she fishes out a passport.

You have never seen her with a passport before. You gaze at it. Shards of your memory try to capture your dream last week. You cannot remember the old man’s face. You shudder when you imagine he might have called you by name.

Your Selena, now standing across the dusty path, flags a boda boda. People are gazing at the two of you, their eyes wide with curiosity. The motorbike breaks sharply, dust rising from beneath the tires like a billow of smoke, forcing Selena to clamp a palm over her nose. You gaze at her as she hops onto the motorbike. Standing with your hands delved into your pockets, you wonder why Selena’s focus is no longer on you. You sigh and turn back towards the house as the motorbike speeds off. The tips of your red slippers get into the dirty puddle flowing down the narrow ridge.

What did Selena see in Jack? That you do not know. You plan to check out yourself on the huge mirror whether you lack anything.

You will first look at your reflection with your clothes on. Then you will undress, place another mirror behind you and circle round and round like a model. Then you will open your mouth, wide like a convict’s during an inspection, to see whether all your teeth are intact.

Then, then you will take a hot shower. You will put on your favourite Nivea cologne. You will shave your beard, leaving shards of it untouched on the sides of your cheeks to give you a handsome look.

You have everything a woman like Selena would want. You will even visit the VCT for AIDS testing, and take back the results to her. Perhaps she thinks a white man must be rich. Still, perhaps she learnt the tongue twisting shit from him. She thinks she can speak English through the nose!

Jack is taking your girlfriend to England.  You still think this is a dream. I’m a spirit send from the The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

83 world of the dead. My grandson, I don’t like the colour of your skin.

Where is the blackness of Riek? Do you know that they changed your name to Natty just because your hair appeared curled? I will plant back your skin once your mission is over. Your boss has eloped with your girlfriend. Do something better than being stressed. I’m not telling you to kill Selena. But go for her friend. This sounds weird but you need to preserve our country’s dignity. Go to Chelel’s chemist and see what to do with your skin. Your skin can be changed into something more attractive. I’m not saying your black is evil. But you have to free yourself from colonialists. Now my grandson, wake up and do what you should. Go and fight for your country’s justice, liberty and prosperity!

Your girlfriend has been gone for two weeks now, outside the country. You are furious to imagine that Jack grabbed her from you. He knew about your affair. You are now the stand-in manager in your company. One Sunday when mass is on at St. Veronica you decide to sort yourself out. You want to prove to Selena that your skin is as good as Jack’s is. Strapping your rucksack to your back, you walk down the stairs towards the stage and then board a Forward Matatu.

You are off to see Chelel, Selena’s friend – Jack’s girlfriend. You still cannot understand why Selena is too blind to discover the affair of Jack and Chelel.

In thirty minutes, you get down at the roundabout. You pick a matatu number 42 plying the Alsops route, and before long, you get down at Riverside. Here is where Chelel’s chemist is located and you wonder what had happened to the open leisure field. Now where it used to be just near the river, there is a garage, a car wash, and a furniture mart. You walk upwards until you get to Chelel’s place.

There she is, as beautiful as ever. Dressed in a Beyond Zero Campaign T-shirt; Margaret Kenyatta drawn on it, smiling.

“What’s up, Natty.”

“I need your help, Chelel. Jack has eloped with Selena.”

She is no longer smiling. You know that she is hurt.

“Excuse me. Jack told me … he was going for some drugs in England.”

The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

84

“Seems he went for them and escaped with my girlfriend.”

“Or perhaps he asked her for help.”

Chelel motions you to a bench just near the door of her Rosil Chemist. Outside, a young man is doing welding; sparks fly from his welding machine and you look the other way. Few yards up is an ATM milk shop; Mauma Agencies – Chelel’s flat caretaker – at the opposite side. Chelel says that Selena was being selfish. How can her friend snatch her boyfriend, when she has a nice guy in you? Before leaving Chelel’s chemist, you have bought Caro Light. She assures you that your skin will soon become lighter than Jack’s will. But she warns you to follow the instructions she gives you.

Two weeks later, you and Chelel are dating. You convince yourself she is worthy than Selena because she advises you on how to handle things. You sense Chelel’s desperation. That she only wants to avenge Selena. But who cares?

You apply Caro light every morning. After the bath, you apply it all over your body. In the evening you take another shower and apply more of the skin lightener. Your skin is dry and when you walk out, you are always shining like brand new iron sheets. Chelel is in love! She complements your skin and jokes that she has transformed you. You counter that she doesn’t buy you Caro Light. You have sex a few times and she says ‘oh my God’. Selena has never commented anything after you two had sex. She would just wake up; yawn and The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

85 life would go on.

You ignore the vitamin E facial oil tube, which Chelel said you should mix with Caro Light. Until one day in your house while she is relaxing on your lap. Fishing a green facial oil tube from her handbag, she stretches towards the cupboard and picks a pair of scissors. She slits the tube’s tip and pours the oil into a full Caro Light tin, and the oil dissolves. She hands it over to you and explains that the Vitamin E in the oil would strengthen your skin’s melanin.

A week later, you realize Chelel was not lying. Every time your skin comes into contact with the sun rays, you feel burnt. You resolve to be carrying an umbrella around as well as using the facial oil. Presently in your house, you bathe and decide against applying Caro Light all over your body. The big tin goes for three hundred bob and nowadays you cannot afford it every week. Dressing up, you are glad that you will apply the skin lightener only on your visible parts.

Therefore, you do it on your hands, face, legs – because you are in shorts.

Selena and Jack come back to Nairobi in a stormy evening.

Weather People predicted that the storm could result to rain. Selena has changed. She looks like a Hollywood actor. Her red dress is sweeping the ground and you imagine a maid rushing to hold it before it gets soiled. Selena’s eyes are a clear bush. She winks at you the following day in town, with her arms fixed into Jack’s – like models’ on a runway. You greet Jack and he smiles. He seems not concerned about what he did to you. Perhaps he thinks you don’t deserve to have Selena.

Three days later, Selena notices your new look. She runs her palm along your face and withdraws as if she has touched fire.

“Natty, what happened?”

“Life happened.” You smile at her.

“How?” “When you dumped me, someone else better replaced you.”

“Who?” “MYOB.” “What?”

The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

86 “Mind your own business.”

Her mood changing, she bites her lower lip and barks at you.

“Natty you are fake… I know you did something to your skin. I’m disappointed …you spoiled yourself for love. People like you won’t enter heaven with spoilt skins… enjoy life with your new fake girlfriend.”

She does not give you time to reply, because her rant seems to go on forever.

Walking away, she blows you a fake kiss.

Later, Selena discovers your affair with Chelel. You know that she doesn’t deserve to be mad at Chelel. But she barks at her; calls her a man snatcher – telling her their friendship is over. You are shocked that Chelel responds. She has always been a meek girl. She tells Selena go to hell; how can you dump your boyfriend for a fairer skin. You hug your dear Chelel tight as Selena walks away.

You are glad to have someone on your side. You are glad that Chelel is here to make you happy. At times you feel like you are using Chelel to avenge at Selena. You want to make things better, to assure yourself that you are in love. You still feel that Chelel is using you to avenge Selena for snatching her person. However, you convince yourself that Chelel couldn’t have transformed your skin to seek revenge. She is better than that.

You don’t understand why Jack would cheat on Chelel; a Chelel, who looks normal, while you know she is hurting from the inside, because her boyfriend was snatched by her best friend. Despite that quarrel they had sometimes back, Chelel had never attacked Selena. You always suppress the urge of punching Jack on the forehead. But he looks harmless. Every time you meet, you laugh and joke as usual. Perhaps that is why they say that white people are decent. But white or black or yellow or anything, he is not staying with your girlfriend while you watch.

Getting back at the house in the evening, you go straight to the bathroom. Nowadays you usually shower twice. You want to maintain your skin. As always, you apply Caro Light after the shower and get dressed on black shorts. You call Chelel and she picks at the The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

87 third ring. Bring me more Caro Light tomorrow, Chelel dear. Nowadays Chelel gives you an extra Caro Light tin when you buy one. She says that she gives them to you as gifts.

Seven in the evening, you watch news. Cook ugali, eat and sleep.

My grandson, today I have a lot to tell you. That’s why I have come at 2am. I’m your grandfather; a typical Dinka. I was sad when they stole you from home all those years ago…. But I will finish this story before the year ends. Let me tell you a love story: Chelel and Jack met when Chelel was a second year student at Mount Kenya University, Nairobi Campus. Jack had gone there to guide the students on pharmaceutical development. Later they met at Kaldis Coffee shop, sipping cappuccino. Chelel confessed how she had changed her course from law to pharmacy due to Jack’s influential talk, back in campus. Jack, my father is a lawyer and he persuaded me to do law. Chelel, did you love law from the beginning? No, Jack, A big no; I have always been fascinated by public health and when you came to school and talked about pharmacy, I knew that I needed to change my course. Later, much later they fell in love. They were inseparable and Chelel’s father was happy; he knew a white man for his daughter meant riches. So my grandson, kiss the band I put into your wrist the first day I appeared to you and realize that Chelel is after something bigger than love. She will change with time. Your skin will also change one more time. Now go back to sleep. See you later. Cheers!  Two months later, your skin has turned against you. Chelel notices brown pimples on your face, the one on your beard oozing pus. Your house is spacious and Chelel shifts to the long sofa set in the centre of the living room. Standing up, you adjust your trousers.

Chelel was sitting on your lap.

“Your beard,” she says. You touch your chin and feel the pus.

“Just pus. Bring me the tissue paper.” Chelel doesn’t move from the sofa, where she is curled up in the shape of a question mark.

You repeat. She points at the toilet and stands up as if she had been sitting on hot coals. Bangs the door shut as she goes out. You are The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

88 surprised. Why is my girl behaving so weirdly? Entering into the bedroom, you switch the lights on. You look at your reflection in the giant mirror. You spot more pimples.

They must be the effects of Caro Light, and you are shocked why Chelel – who is the expert with these things – couldn’t have given you a solution.

Last month Selena visited you. You were shocked to see her.

She called you my baby, and said Oh my Gosh you look so cute!

About to hug you while you moved aside. Her face twisted as if she wanted to cry. Then she told you baby I need you back please. She said Jack had dumped her and had made his work- his new girlfriend. You told her that you were not desperate and that you were satisfied with Chelel. When you said the word Chelel, Selena inserted a finger deep in her throat and threw up. Then, as she began belching and you were rushing to pick a duster, you realized that she was getting more serious. You fished a handkerchief from your hind trousers pocket, held her by the nape of her neck and began wiping the sides of her mouth clean.

The vomit’s crude smell was replaced by her Sweet Flowers

By Kenzol perfume and you hugged her tight. Soon, you broke off from the embrace and noticed she was no longer vomiting, no longer belching. Her lips transformed into streams of smiles. You realized that you had been tricked. You were about to chase her out when she laughed like a mad person.

“Nothing is funny, but you need to go.”

“R…Riek, we are made to be.” You shuddered. She sounded unsure when she called you Riek. Memories of dreams of long time ago came flooding back at you. Where did she hear that name? Is all this real? You composed yourself. But Selena didn’t seem shaken.

The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

89 “Riek, Riek. I have a get-back-together gift for you.” She called again. Her voice sounded like an echo, like she was a dream.

“I don’t know which Riek you are talking about.”

She let out dry laughter.

“Riek Machar has been leading the rebels in Sudan.”

“So?” “Calling you so, likens you to a rebel leader.”

“How?” “You rebelled against my love and went for my best friend.”

“You turned me into a rebel. Out!” You pointed at the door.

“Not so far, madea. Come closer.”

In your confusion, you closed the door. Near Selena, she took hold of your palm, and stared directly at your face; her eyes the sullen red colour of sex. She fixed a band with the colours of South Sudan on your wrist and you shuddered. Like when she had called you Riek, she changed. To your blurred eyesight, she was fatter. Thirty-ish. Her hair appeared greyish. Then she told you that she picked it from Chelel’s chemist in Riverside. Again, you convinced yourself that was just a gift from your ex. You however couldn’t guess where Chelel got the band from. Had Selena sneaked into the chemist and stole the band, now that they were enemies?

Nowadays you smell of Caro Light. You don’t care because your goal is achieved. You will maintain that shape. You usually buy a bottle of facial oil every month. You are glad the ninety capsules contained in the bottle are enough to push you for long.

Chelel has dumped you. You have lost your job. Jack told you that he will give you time to sort out your issues. You had begun to skip work. Eighty percent of your savings was deducted from your account to compensate for the loss realized during your absent. You had no more money to buy Caro Light with. Chelel doesn’t want to see you anywhere near her. No more free Caro Lights. You notice Selena’s hips nowadays are as curved as Vera Sidika’s – like those of the Caro Light tin.

You are death. Your wrinkled face is full of sores. Even Selena doesn’t want to see you. She decided to live a single life. Caro Light The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

90 could not lighten your black knuckles. Now they look like a porcupine’s. Your eyelids appear scrubbed half-clean with something hard.

Your landlord is no longer friendly. You used to buy him Heineken at Harmony Pub. No more outings and he commands you to pack out next month.

My grandson, you lost the fight! You were born a Sudanese – so now in February 2011 you should have been a South Sudanese because our SPLM broke away from the North. We have secured the South from the Muslim Northerners. Are you aware we are celebrating Independence Day on 9 July this year? Your father – my son, succumbed to pneumonia once he stepped on the Kenyan border, the little you strapped to his back. You were running from the last Sudanese civil war, which lead to us being granted freedom at last.

My grandson, you have failed your country! But Selena is already pregnant with your daughter. Perhaps she will go back home to build our nation. We will keep fighting the North until they stop trying to grab our land. May your daughter strive for justice, and prosperity in a free land! I will guide her. See you soon, grandson.

You are daydreaming as you sit on the stairs leading to your former house. Nowadays you are staying with your friend in Mathare North. Shaking your head, you wonder whether your dead relatives – relatives you were not sure once existed – have been talking to you.

You remember the yellow colour of Caro Light. You hate its faint smell. Perhaps Chelel, the pharmacist is passing by. ***

Peter Ngila is a 2016 Iceland Writers Retreat Alumnus Award recipient.

His short fiction has appeared in Jalada Africa and elsewhere. He lives in Nairobi.

The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

91

FICTION

THE FESTIVITIES

By Maureen Wambui

‘Twas the night before Christmas, and not a soul stirred in the house. On the outside, fairy lights had been strung along the eaves of the house and over the leaves of the two trees in the yard. A life like Santa figurine stood at the edge of the lawn, with his large belly and jolly grin.

The two occupants of the house were at home with their thoughts for the moment. They had had a whole lot to tell each other once, years worth of stories in minutes, but as with a fire that starts too strong, they burned themselves out.

Alone in the bedroom, the woman lay on her side of the bed. She could have sprawled across the whole bed if she felt like it, but she felt more comfortable sleeping with her back to the wall. The other side of the bed had been colder for longer than it had been warm.

How many years now? She wondered. How many years had they been together in this tragic play of a marriage? Were they still together because of the children? As she took a sip from the cup of cocoa The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

92

on her nightstand, all the excuses they’d made over the years blurred together, and she couldn’t for the life of her remember the handy one they’d chosen to use this year.

It was the day after Christmas and outside the lights still glowed, Santa’s warm smile welcomed you in and appearances were kept. Inside the house a man sat at an armchair, a book in his hands. He got up to look outside the window, and then sat down again. He was stalling and gave up the pretence of reading after looking at the same word for five minutes. Had she opened her present yet? Didn’t she have anything at all to say about it? Had their relationship degenerated into this, just a big silent house, after all these years?

He couldn’t take it anymore. He got up with the intention of confronting her and provoking a reaction, any reaction, from her. He was so tired of the cold.

They met at the staircase.

“Is it time?” She asked.

“It’s time.” He said.

She heaved a sigh of relief and clutched the divorce papers against her chest. A piece of tape and wrapping paper clung to one end of the papers, a testament to how nervous he’d been while wrapping her present. They might not be talking, but he knew she enjoyed the rituals of Christmas, and was always excited about opening her presents. She didn’t seem surprised or particularly sad about his present this year. She knew, as he did, that they hadn’t been a ‘we’ for years.

They both went our separate ways after that. He didn’t know what was on her mind, but he was wondering if there was any starting over for a seventy five year old man, or if he was destined to spend his life alone.

Maureen Wambui is 25 years old.

She is from Nairobi, Kenya.

The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

93

NON-FICTION

MISS PERFECT

By Chinwendu Anulika Nwadibia

My mother once said, “Life is a drama, the earth is the stage, we are the actors and the celestial bodies are the spotlights.� She never said who the audience was, not like I cared anyway. Here I stand, wishing I had cared a long time ago. Maybe I would have acted differently.

I clenched my fists, closed my eyes, took a deep breath and tried to recall every single scene I had with my Miss Perfect.

The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

94 I stole a glance at Miss Perfect, she was writing in her purple fine hard cover note book. I hissed silently. My issue with her was not that she was writing in her book, of course, I am not nuts. The issue I had with her was that she had that smile on her face. She always had that smile on her face as if she was a statue and the smile was carved on her face. I have never really figured out why I disliked the smile.

Maybe it was because the smile seemed to give an impression that her life was perfect unlike mine.

My father is a plumber and my mother is a seamstress. Their income is just enough to ensure that my younger brother and I together with them survive in this heated up economy. Her father is a lawyer and her mother is a lecturer, I found out during the last Parent Teacher Association Meeting. Her two siblings are married and well to do. One is a Doctor who finished from a topnotch medical school in Ukraine and resides in Britain with her husband. The other is an engineer who finished from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and resides in Japan with his wife, please do not ask me how I found out.

Her parents are wealthy so she had anything she asked for. I would not have been so envious of her if that was the only thing beautiful about her life. After all, she is not the only child in the world born with a silver spoon in her mouth. Miss Perfect had the skin and figure every fifteen year old girl wished for, a smooth skin and a tall, slim hour glass figure. I was barely thirteen years old when there was an epidemic outbreak of pimples on my skin. The epidemic left its mark on my skin against my wish as a constant reminder of its occurrence.

I also inherited a funny figure from my mother amongst a million and one other unwanted things, but who am I to question my genes.

Miss Perfect was beautiful with her “skin” hair cut. Once, I had told my mum that I wanted to cut my hair like that. My mother had chastised me and had said that females do not cut their hair that way. “It is not feminine”, she said. I did not believe that, Miss Perfect looked more feminine than I did.

Miss Perfect was also Miss Goody Two-shoes. She was every teacher’s favorite. They all seemed to dote over her and I have been unable to pinpoint why. Maybe it was because she was rich, it could The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

95 not have been because of her academic performance. Do not get me wrong, she was brilliant but she missed classes a lot. That therefore made her an average student in class. Sometimes she missed tests and examinations too but she always got makeup examinations and tests. I wonder why they gave her makeup tests and examinations. I mean, you can not eat your cake and have it right? She can not choose traveling all around the globe over her education and still get to write exams. I do not think it is fair or do you? One particular time she was away for a whole month and her seat partner Rita said she had traveled to India. She returned looking all beautiful and stress free unlike me although she was feigning tiredness and flu symptoms so that she would not partake in the annual school inter-house sports.

She never played or talked idly and made me feel like a baby playing at the age of fifteen. When ever we were playing games like ten ten and police and thief she only sat at a distance to watch. She was too perfect to play, run around and get bruised. She did not have many friends. She was nice to everyone but was not close to anyone, it was not as if she really talked to people. She was ninety eight percent always on her own in class. One thing everyone that talked to her can testify about was that she always said, “Life is good”. Of course life would definitely be good, when everything was perfect for her.

We resumed September for our ultimate class, Senior Secondary three (SS 3). This was the class that determined if I moved to the university or I stayed back at home with my parents to become a kingpin in the tailoring industry. This was the session for Senior School Certificate Examination (SSCE) and the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examinations (UTME). These two examinations in Nigeria qualified a candidate to proceed to the university as long as the candidate’s results are satisfactory. Every student had to be serious.

It was this same session that students began to guard their books jealously for fear of the students who had never held a pen in class since they entered school. Miss Perfect was nowhere to be found in school. Her seat partner said she had travelled to Columbia. “How would she travel in a time such as this? Hope she knows there is no makeup UTME and SSCE”, I said to Rita out of jealousy than concern.

The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

96 Why could I not be the one traveling round the globe? I wondered how Rita got all the information since no student had an idea of how to communicate with Miss Perfect outside school. She was dropped and picked up at school by her driver and no one knew her house even though I had an image in my head of what I thought her house would look like. She has to be living in a cream coloured duplex that had eight rooms and each room had its toilet. The compound must be really big with a swimming pool and a large garden. No student had her phone number not even Bode Phillip , the most handsome and brilliant guy in class, who had tried for four years to get really close to her. I think he really liked her. Not that I cared anyway. Maybe I did care a little because Bode has been my crush for five years.

He had never smiled at me even when he comes to ask for my chemistry note because I am sort of the only one able to see the chemistry teacher’s writing clearly. September strolled by and Miss Perfect was still in Columbia. October had packed its baggage and November was almost drawing the curtains and she was still not in school. I was beginning to think she had changed school or had decided to stay in Columbia to further her education till the news spread like wildfire.

Right now, I really can not pinpoint the source of the news. But it was a secondary school where even the walls spoke and the floor had ears. My Miss Perfect was dead. She died few days back in a Nigerian hospital after fighting fiercely with leukemia for ten years. The bone marrow transplant had failed and so did chemotherapy and radiotherapy. News flash! My Miss Perfect was not perfect after all.

I clenched my fists even tighter till my palms began to plead for mercy. My Miss Perfect was done with her role in this movie titled “Life”. She has taken a bow and was lying perfectly still in front of us all. Tears ran down my cheeks as I recalled of how I had spent four years trying to exchange roles with her. The more I cried, the more the tears washed away my view of life. Now I know why the smile stung me so bad. The smile did not reflect a perfect life, how could I have thought it did. It only reflected a life that did not take circumstances as a shackle. It reflected a life that chose to cherish what she had and not hold on to what she did not. It reflected a life that was The Wagon Magazine - February 2017

97 thankful for the good and bad. It was a life that showed me the fault in mine. Miss Perfect and I obviously saw life in different lights. I guess her life was more perfect than mine not because of what she had or her stature but because of her view of life. But how could I have known, viewing my life from an imperfect standpoint. As we said our farewells and walked away from the grave, I left my faded view of life by her grave.

***

Chinwendu Anulika Nwadibia is from Mbaitoli LGA, Imo State, Nigeria. She is currently an undergraduate student of the Department of Physiotherapy, College of Medicine, University of Ibadan. A pen to her is a sword that cuts the strongest of objects and a balm that heals the deepest of wounds. Her fields of writing include poetry and flash fiction.

She is a member of the Sprinng Literary Movement and one of the Pioneers of the Physiotherapy Initiative.

NUANCES A Journal of Humanistic Enquiry An International Peer Reviewed Biannual (June-January) Editor in Chief: P K Panda Address: Manager Qtr. at VT, Opp. Dept. of Journalism, BHU,

Varanasi, 221005

Email: intellectualnuances@gmail.com Blog: www.humanisticnuances.blogspot.in

(M) 9616255612

Advt

FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION ONLY Published by Vel.Kathiravan, K G E TEAM, Chennai, India - 600024 Printed by Print Process, Chennai- 600014 / Phone: +949176991885 The Wagon Magazine - February 2017