Oct 2018 RCLAS Wordplay at Work Issue 57

6th Annual RCLAS Write On! Contest 2018 Non-Fiction Winners & Honourable Mentions

6th Annual RCLAS Write On! Contest 2018 First Place Winner Non-Fiction

In A Laundry Room On Virgin Gorda © Jennifer M. Smith I was on Virgin Gorda, ashore at 8:00 a.m. doing my last loads of laundry before the trip south. Out of the wash and into the dryers, I was waiting to start folding. In came the cleaning lady, an older black woman, local, probably in her late sixties.

“Good morning”, I said.

“Good morning”, she replied, her speech thick with an island accent. “What’s your name?” she asked.

“Jennifer,” I said. “What’s your name?”

“Ariel,” she said.

Her childlike directness and something about her mannerism, a slight slur in her speech, a limping eyelid, had me wondering if she might be slightly handicapped. A laundry room cleaner at a little beach hotel, a Sunday morning, mopping up the floor around the leaky washing machines, who wants that job?

“You on a boat?” she continued with her frank queries.

“Yes” I said.

“How many?”

“Two.” “Your husband?”

“Yes,” I said elaborating, “my husband and I are here on our boat, we’re anchored just out there.”

“Where are your children?” she demanded to know.

“I don’t have children,” I answered. “It’s just me and my husband on the boat, just the two of us.”

“No children?” She peered into my face. What kind of woman has no children? she seemed to be thinking. I was shaking my head. She paused. Maybe she had misunderstood. Maybe I had children but they were somewhere else. She felt the need to double check. “No children?” she asked again with a note of incredulity.

“No, I don’t have any children,” I answered.

She stared, sizing up the wrinkles around my eyes, my skin damage, my hair, natural or colored? I suspected she was trying to determine my age, maybe there was still time for me. Maybe there was hope.

“No babies?” she asked a third time just to be sure.

I never want to answer that question. It brings back too much. If I answer at all I keep it short and move the conversation along. But sometimes I just blurt it out - a blunt answer to a blunt question.

She plunged the mop head into the wringer.

“No babies,” I said. “I had one baby but the baby died. After that no more babies.”

This was final. She stopped mopping. She looked me in the eyes.

“One baby? Baby died?” she asked stunned.

“Baby died,” I said.

Her head dropped a little and shook from side to side. No. This news was not okay.

“Baby born dead?” she asked bluntly. She needed to understand this.

“Yes, I said,” simplifying.

“At hospital? Baby dead at hospital?”

“Yes,” I said again. This was not the whole story, and not exactly the truth, but I was not going to try to explain. It was complicated.

“Baby born dead and no more babies?”

“The baby died at the hospital and after that I had no more babies,” I said as a matter of fact. This was all true. Paralyzed, she tried to take it in. Sensitive to her discomfort I summed it up for her, “It was a very sad time,” I said.

“Very sad,” she agreed.

Slowly she resumed her work, moving her mop in semi-circles over the smooth cement floor. “Very sad,” she said again before shuffling out of the laundry room to continue her chores on the porch.

In a moment she was back.

“Your baby, boy?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said, “a boy.” Again, not the whole story but not having answers is so difficult. I know. So, I gave her the answers she needed.

“Boy baby, born dead,” she summarized. She was picturing it now and looking at me, hard, searching my face, questioning my eyes. How had I survived this? How had I gotten up every morning and lived each day after this, after a baby died in the hospital? Again, she wandered out muttering to herself, “Boy baby die no more babies.”

The floor by now was perfectly clean, she had mopped up the puddles and emptied the garbage bins. There was no more cleaning to be done, but Ariel kept coming back.

It was as though she couldn’t bear to leave me alone with this news, as if this had all just happened. On this sunny Sunday morning a woman in the laundry room had a dead child. Someone should be with her. She kept swinging back in to check on me.

I was folding the last of my clothes. She could see I would soon be leaving. She had one more question.

“Your son, how old is he?” she asked using the present tense.

“Nineteen,” I said without a moment’s hesitation. “He would be nineteen now. He would be a young man.”

“A young man now,” she repeated, knowing all that I had lost. “Nineteen.”

“It was a long time ago,” I said, jamming the smalls into my laundry bag. “It was a sad time, a long time ago.”

Watch Video HERE https://youtu.be/sqYG1RHBmns

6th Annual RCLAS Write On! Contest 2018 Second Place Winner Non-Fiction

Changing Connections © Angela Post

I strain my eyes to read the blurry text on her phone. I should start bringing my reading glasses. The prescription ones that cost five hundred dollars that I almost never use. At home, it is easy to find a pair with magnifying lenses. My husband hoards them and scatters them in random places around the house. Here at work, all I can do is squint.

I glance out the window for a moment. The air is crisp in my corner office today. The space heater pushes out warmth with all its’ might. The chickadees bounce on the snow and forage for seeds.

I know she is watching me. Watching to see how I will react. Waiting for words of wisdom about what to do. I scroll through. The message is long. This is happening more often lately. I need to remember my reading glasses.

There is a lot of diversity in the university population. I made a list once and realized I had sat with students from at least forty different countries. Now, if I made the same list again, I’m sure that it would be over fifty or even sixty. Mongolia, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Egypt…just a few of the new ones added to my invisible list over the past months. Some students have been through war, some have been kidnapped or have lived through years of abuse, and some have come from privilege. The cultural backgrounds vary, but the increasing connection through texting and messaging is the same. It is a red thread that unites students across cultures.

University students keep me informed of the latest technological developments. Many years ago, one of my regular clients asked, “Have you heard of Facebook?”

“No,” I said.

He showed me his screen. I signed up at home in an effort to keep up with the interests of my clients.

Years later, a female student asked, “Have you heard of Tinder?”

“Um, I think I have,” I said.

She proceeded to show me as she scrolled through her account.

“Oh,” I said… sometimes keeping up with the latest developments provides more information than I had needed.

Most of the students living on their own don’t have landlines and don’t see a need for one. When the landline rings in my office, my nineteen year old client says, “You can answer that.”

I shoot him a confused look, “No, I don’t need to. Thank you.”

The shared understanding that phones are to be ignored while in a meeting is no longer there. His cell rings.

I ask, “Do you want to answer that?”

He looks down. Sends a quick text.

Sometimes, in the middle of a session, a client’s phone buzzes. We are discussing her family situation. She looks down and starts to text.

I ask, “Is that important?”

She says, “My friend had a question.”

“Oh,” I say. I wait, unsure whether to let it go or to question the choice to text at this moment.

Occasionally, if a student is momentarily distracted by a message on a smart phone, I may glance over at my shelves with all the sand tray items. I have been complemented on my collection by students who don’t realize that these are working items. They help people make sense of issues. Just like art therapy, these shelves are rich with metaphors and images that are waiting to be understood, waiting to be selected and placed in a tray of sand. To be reflected on and integrated as a tool to work through issues. Maybe I need to place an old smart phone on the shelf as a working item, since it is a new constant in people’s lives.

Text increasingly trumps face-to-face contact for the late teens and twenty somethings that sit across from me in session.

A student pulls out her phone, “Can you believe my friend said this!”

She hands the phone to me to read. There is a large crack running across the screen.

She probably doesn’t have money to replace it. I read through the texts.

She said… he said… she said… he said… Tone. Body language. So much information is missing. It is like viewing a piece of art in one dimension.

“What did you get from the things he said?” I ask.

She spews out anger and hurt.

I learn to work with smart phones brought into session. They are always making themselves known. Ringing in someone’s purse. Buzzing in a pocket. Playing the samba from a corner in the room in someone’s bag. Chirping like a cricket. Forever interrupting the client.

“What if you text him now?” I say, knowing that she sent a message two weeks ago and has been waiting every day for a response.

“Now?” “Yes. Avoidance makes anxiety worse. Text now and let’s see what he says.”

There is no script for this. Do I need informed consent from the other person if he or she is being beamed into a session without realizing that it was the therapists’ idea and that the therapist is present while the return text is being received? I am here to clean up the pieces for my client. It is better to receive a painful return text in a psychologists’ office, where Kleenex is plentiful.

People have arguments over text. They end relationships over text. They ignore and neglect each other through text. They propose marriage through text.

I heard Neil Postman speak many years ago…long before smart phones. It was a time when there was still a shared understanding that when the phone rings in the middle of therapy, we do not pick up. He had said that technology is always unpredictable. He had used the example of the automobile. That it was grand to drive the first cars but in the early days no-one could have predicted issues of pollution due to car exhaust, drunk driving, serious accidents, and traffic congestion.

As a psychologist, I can adapt. I know that when my mother texts me using a mix of capital and lowercase letters, that she is not yelling at me. She is 79 years old and it is wonderful that she has embraced the newer technology. She has discovered emoji’s recently and uses them frequently. I’m not sure why she responded the other day with three guitars but I think she simply thought they were cute.

Maybe it’s okay to notice in the middle of a therapy session that my phone has buzzed and that my twelve year old daughter is trying to reach me. She has a hand-me-down smart phone and I realize that I had forgotten to tell her something important about what the plan is after school today while I am at work. The changing culture of phone technology has relaxed social norms, and maybe this is reciprocal.

“Do you mind if I send a quick text to my daughter?” I ask my client.

“Sure, go ahead,” her tone is sincere.

As I text, I am aware that my student has also picked up her phone to check the latest developments in her world. We are plugged into the grid, a temporary distraction, a brief connection, and then back to the business of therapy.

Watch Video HERE

https://youtu.be/R9HZTdXyOqs

6th Annual RCLAS Write On! Contest 2018 Third Place Winner Non-Fiction

Kind-Hearted Woman © Bryant Ross I only remember ever seeing my father drunk once.

I was six or seven years old and all I really remember about it was being scared of this big angry man who I suddenly didn’t recognize. Then pain and ringing in my ears, the taste of blood as he backhanded me across the face, dizziness as I lay on the floor, and terror as I saw him coming for me again.

Then my mother, all chunky five feet of fury, her fists clenched and her voice, a hoarse snarl of rapid-fire Sicillian standing between him and I, and that huge man stopping, standing with a hand raised and her standing her ground, glaring.

They went to their bedroom then, and spoke for awhile. My father came out, pale as winter. My mother came and held me while I whimpered and sniffled.

“He won’t hurt you again” she said, calmly, with conviction.

“How do you know?” I asked “I know” she said, “We talked” “What did you say to him?”

“I told him a story” she said “and we won’t talk about it anymore” When my first child was born, my mother sat at my kitchen table. She held that tiny baby in her arms, close and safe, warm and fresh with new life. She said “Do you remember when your father beat you when you were seven?”

I said “I don’t think I’ll ever forget that” She told me then that when she was a girl of nine years old, during the great depression, her family eked out what living they could in a cabin on the banks of the Fraser River in the wilderness up past Hope, in Othello.

She told me about how the river roared and thundered non-stop. The current was so strong that it rolled boulders along with it. She said you could hear them rumble along past, clattering and crashing with the other rocks as the water swept them

downstream. Her mother warned her never to set foot in that river. She said that if a person fell in, they’d be gone in an instant and their body pulverized in minutes by those rolling balls of stone and no trace would ever be found.

She told me that during the spring of her eleventh year, while that river rushed and rumbled by the cabin, she had gone to sleep one night listening to the boulders clattering and grinding along a hundred feet or so beyond her bedroom window.

She had woken up suddenly though, in the darkness, terrified, with a hand pressing over her mouth, the stink of whiskey and tobacco in her nostrils, and her father’s voice whispering to her to stay quiet or he’d kill her.

It wasn’t the first time, though, and she closed her eyes tightly, waiting for it to start, waiting for it to be over. Trying to wish it all away, but his hands pulled down the blankets, and pulled up her nightshirt.

And then they stopped.

They stopped, and there was silence. She opened her eyes, just a crack, wondering why he waited.

There stood her father, bolt upright, his eyes held wide, his teeth bared in a snarl, his hands shaking.

Her mother… My tiny grandmother stood behind him, holding his own proud possession, an ebony handled straight-razor tight against his throat.

“Stay where you are” my grandmother said, “Don’t come out till morning no matter what” Then she turned her husband around, and walked him out the front door.

She lay in her bed, her eyes pressed shut, the blankets over her head, weeping. All she could hear was the thunder of the water, and the boulders grinding in the riverbed. She wished that river would reach up and drag her in, taking her far away.

In the morning she found her mother in the kitchen, as always, doing the work that never ended in those days of hand-powered water pumps, and wood stoves. Her father was nowhere to be seen.

“Where’s Papa?” She asked. “”He went away” her mother said. “He will never hurt you again. He won’t be back” “Where did he go?”

“He went away” her mother replied, a bit louder now. “And we will never speak of this again”

The only thing my grandmother kept of his, my mother told me, was his ebony handled straight razor, and for her whole life, my mother said, my grandmother kept it tucked inside her brassiere. The one time my mother asked her about it she said “I keep it, in case it’s ever needed again” Sitting at the table, then, holding my newborn son with an ease brought on by raising four children of her own, she looked at me long and hard. She said “That’s the story I told your father” she said “That time he beat you” “Now you have a son of your own. You inherited a lot from your father. You have his size and strength, and, god help you, you have his temper.”

She transferred my infant son from one hand to the other without waking him, with that black magic that only grandmothers seem to have.

She reached inside her blouse.

She pulled her hand back, and lay the ebony and steel straight razor open on my kitchen table. It was smooth, its handle was black, and it shone. Its blade was silver and it gleamed. I could tell just by looking at it, that it was sharper than evil itself.

She turned her eyes to me then. I had never seen them like this in my life.

They were flat black, and cold as the Sicilian mountains that she came from. They were merciless, and pitiless. They were as protective as a she-wolf.

“I’ll tell you now, that I told your father then, in case you ever think of hurting this child.”

Those eyes bored into me then, like murderous icicles.

“Now I keep it…”

“In case it’s ever needed again”

6th Annual RCLAS Write On! Contest 2018 Honourable Mention Non-Fiction

House Jacks © Bryant Ross

“Steps are for climbing, not for children” was something my granddaddy told me.

House jacks, or screw jacks as some people call them, are big, cast-iron monstrosities. They’re cone-shaped and weigh forty pounds or so. They’ve been used for the last century or more for lifting houses. Their design goes back to ancient Greece.

Moving houses is miserable man-killing filthy sweaty work. You crawl under a building with these iron bastards and set them in place, then you take a steel bar and crawl from one to another of them, putting the bar in and pulling, twisting and sweating. The screw moves upward. The house lifts, a fraction of an inch by a fraction of an inch while big wooden timbers are place strategically to keep it from slipping off and crushing you into paste.

Some fun, but it’s one of the ways my grandfather made a living for himself. My father worked for him too, and learned the trade. As a child, as soon as I could lift them, I spent my share of time under houses too, crawling, dragging these big metal sons-of-bitches in tiny spaces, standing them up and pulling that goddamned jack bar A fraction of an inch, by a fraction of an inch.

Today I remembered that.

Today I saw those jacks. I saw them stored where they’ve been for ten years or so since the day I brought them home from my father’s farm after he died.

I was ashamed. They had been tossed under my shed for a decade and forgotten. Left in the dirt like junk.

Forgotten.

At damn near fifty, and a much bigger guy than I had been when I was a kid I had one hell of a time stuffing myself under that shed.

My ten-year-old daughter said “Can I help?”

That little gal wriggled herself under the shed, grabbed the big handles on those iron demons and dragged them, heaving and sweating one by one out into the light of day. Fourteen of them, forty pounds or more each. Not a word of complaint, a grin on her face the whole time.

We took them to my workshop, and spent the afternoon unscrewing the lifting shafts, cleaning, greasing and ensuring that they all worked. All the while, through the long, boring process I told her about them, I told her that me, her father, her grandfather, and her great-grandfather had each held those, and worked with them. They made a living with them. I told her that the caked-in hardened grease that we were scraping out had been placed there by her great-grandfather himself. I told her that they had done their part, and we had to do our part to keep them working.

We owed it to them.

They may never lift another house, I told her, but they had to be able to.

“Why?” she asked.

I thought for a long minute, trying to find some way to explain it. Some way to explain a feeling in my heart, to try to explain our responsibility to our ancestors.

“Go over to our house, grab onto it and lift a corner” I said.

She laughed. “I can’t” She said.

“Is it impossible?” I said “Yes” “Well with one of these it’s not. You can lift this, and carry it. You already proved that. If you ever wanted to, for some reason, you could take this big piece of iron and you could put it under that house and with the strength that you have in your own body right now you could take that steel bar and screw that jack.

Before long that house would lift. With that thing your granddaddy and your great-granddaddy left for you, you could do the impossible right now. A fraction of an inch, by a fraction of an inch, you could do what you believe is impossible.

We keep need to them working, we keep them oiled and working to remember those men, our ancestors, and to remind us, that with the tools they left us, with hard work, and with the strength we have that we can accomplish the impossible” She went into the house then, and got an old pill bottle, and very solemnly put some of that dried, flaked grease in there to keep. “I wish I had known them” she said.

Her mother came into the shop then, and saw the two of us, greasy, dirty, working at our jobs. “What are you doing?” she said.

“I’m learning our family history” my daughter said.

Tonight there’s an old, rusty House Jack sitting in the corner of her bedroom. She put it there. It’s well greased and ready for work.

“To help me remember” she said.

My daughter and I share everything. I try to teach her all I can about our family.

The only thing we don’t share, her and I, is matching DNA. She shares that with her other father.

But if any man uses the word “Step” when he refers to my daughter, he won’t be conscious long enough to say anything else.

Steps are for climbing, not for children.

My granddaddy taught me that.

And I remember.

Watch Video HERE https://youtu.be/1QMaEFq0RDA

6th Annual RCLAS Write On! Contest 2018 Honourable Mention Non-Fiction

Baby Pool Gangstas © (SheLa) Nefertiti Morrison

I smile. The day’s stresses melt away as I slide my body deeper under the warm, whirling water in the local public pool and recreational centre.

At 9 PM, I am gloriously alone in the tot pool - except for a seventy-ish couple at the other end, by a yellow kiddie slide. They caress each other, possibly playing more than footsie.

Above me, are the exercise machines. A long row of people – skinny; fit; fat; one, very pregnant – work out, hard .

Isn’t vicarious fitness great?

In the game pool on my right, teens are smashing around a ball.

Behind me, on the highest platform, I turn to see a taut-bodied diver crack the deep end. On the lower boards, the brave swan-dive, belly-flop, and tremble for ages before going splash!

I am doing starfish-moves in the “baby pool”. (Starfish are little-known for their…vigourousness).

Anyway, at some point during my personally-noble modified exercise routine, a quartet of tween boys arrive next to me. They hang out a couple of jet streams to my left.

Their subdued laughter and gossip becomes one drone with the ordered tranquility of my scissor kicks as I count: 50, 51, 52…so, I barely notice a third boy who jumps in and joins the pair - until I overhear “Last night I f*cked that ho Kirsty-Lynn McWhirther. Man, her cooch was SKANKY, but her BOOBS made it worth it.”

The second kid says, “yeah THIRSTY-KIRSTY, man!” They laugh joylessly, monotone.

I turn my eyes for a surreptitious look - at the voices.

My ears perk...how many Kirsty-Lynn McWhirthers can there be? All the more, “Native” ones, as these White and Yellow and Dark Brown boys made particular mention of?

When the school’s names comes up, I know this Kirsty is my often-absent two-job-hardworking neighbor's daughter – Kirsty-Lynn - a shy, sensitive, “differently smart” and (no one could argue) - cute girl, who just started a new school, (after having to repeat grade seven,) who loves to come by and spend quality time with my pets.)

The pool boast continues, centered on twelve-year-old Kirsty-Lynn’s anatomy grinding against that of #1’s.

The other two make muffled chortles. (Anyone who has heard the adultish cartoon Beavis and Butthead, will know the sound). #1 has knee-length, concealing black shorts on, and, as I look more closely, at this White-Brown-Yellow-whatever child’s face, he sports unsurprising braces and a surprising smatter of zits.

I turn away. Where was I? 50…54?

Through my earplugs, I hear #1 now regaling them with tales of the tentative, cautious (physically more developed) child I recognize as the girl I know. #2 and #3 are eager wing-“men”. #4 keeps nervously dunking his head.

Loser guys are confirmed by 1, 2, and 3 as “flab-tits, gimps, c*m-eaters, and gaylord-faggots”.

Ah, hell.

How can I not have words with these kids?

Not (yet) a parent myself, I decide - to hope to sound the kind of motherly that is authoritative but also easygoing - (not the kind I had experienced - but the kind of mothering and parenting I have read about in magazines and seen on Korean [subtitled] soap operas – firm, but concerned.)

I mean to say calmly, but I snap: “Before you mouth off in public, think about who may be listening. I KNOW the girl you’re talking about. Don’t talk like that here...”

There.

That ought to stop it.

Instead, he says: “Oh, yeah? PROVE you know her!”

He sneers and turns away from me; and keeps talking to his (presumable) schoolmates.

I bark at the kid: “I don’t need to prove it.”

“Yeah? What the f**k are you going to do about it?” he challenges.

You – g*ddamn punk…” #1 seems pleased he got a rise.

His buddies laugh nervously.

A veritable Red Tide of “vulgaris publicus” spreads like an introduced species of social algae. (#3 has dunked, moving underwater towards the shallowest end – and, I hope for all of passive decency – for the lockers, and the exit).

Yes! (I am sad that I am happy about a boy that did not speak up for the girl.)

Then, more boys plunk in, and #1 repeats the tale. #2 repeats the snickering.

My chest pounds.

Now, it’s “personal” - I remember, as a virginal thirteen-year-old, seeing (my name) “...is a SLUT” spray-painted on the outside of high-school.

Shaking, I rise from the pool.

Kids died over this stuff before social media.

I trip on an amorphous squeaky toy, which causes me to almost fall onto #1.

He “retaliation splashes” my face.

Despite our twenty-plus-years age difference, the sensible thing - would have been to call for an adult.

Did I actually say, “Oh, it is ON, punk!”?

I guess so, because he growls out, “Nah. You’ve got a fat c*nt.”

Who cares? I think.

Yet, over my shoulder, I (think I) yell, “I’d rather have a fat c*nt, then a penis the size of -” I wiggle my pinkie in the air – “this”!

Ah, my finest moment.

(Not).

Now, cold and dripping, I stand at the front desk, pointing at the doors to the pool, and tell the assistant manager: “They’re lying about a kid I know!

There’s a bunch of them, saying all this sexual slander stuff about her!”

When the a.m. seems unmoved, I add, “I’m a member here. I was… meditating...in the baby pool…and…it’s all…ruined…”

The a.m. says dismissively, “they’re probably just a bunch of…wannabe gangstas.”

Through the glass door, I see #1 laying back against my jet-stream, looking in our direction.

He sticks out his tongue - not in a juvenile “No! I won’t eat my vegetables!” way – more like in a way that his C- in life-sciences comes from porn instead of homework.

The assistant manager hands me a tiny pencil, and a post-it pad, to “leave a note for the manager”.

“Ok, ok,” I say, cold bathing suit-irritably, as I wrestle with these thoughts: is this a kid himself, an abuse victim, acting out? If so, that doesn’t protect Kirsty…why not call his parents? No kid is “hopeless…? Or, is he just a “hopelessly unrepentant” little sh*t?”

I write my barely legible screed in wet lead on six crinkling post-its, with arrows to the next “page”.

Now, I am naked at my locker, toweling off jiggling parts, when I am approached by a lifeguard.

She clears her throat and jostles her keys. She asks if “I’m the complainant”…(to which I’d rather lie about) – in the naked light of view.

“Uh…likely…I am”.

She smiles fakely, and says, “I don’t think they bothered anybody else.”

The young lifeguard adds. “…Better in here - controlled environment, than out there, you know?”

“Well…sort of…maybe…could we ‘do this’ with…uh, my clothes on?”

She concludes our interaction with this blend of decisiveness and ennui: “Like, no one got hurt – so, like, we’re all fine.” She nods, and leaves.

Leaving, as I pass by, the assistant manager casually says to me, like it’s a foregone comfort: “it’s all over now.”

Spent, I just shook my head to myself. Walking home, my thoughts are: Is Kirsty-Lynn “fine”…are those boys “fine”? Am I “fine”…? Is anything about this “fine”?

Now, that kids have smart-phones and endless social media avenues to spread the love, or lack of, I worry about gentle Kirsty – (already bullied for not having a phone) – going back to school on Monday. (Plus, I think about the boy who wordlessly swam away) - and I wonder.

Is it already all over…?

What if we had all glided away, and had left #1, with only the words, “Hey! Why is everyone leaving?”

NOTE: Any name presented here is fictional. “Baby Pool Gangstas” has since been largely reworked. Nefertiti Morrison has requested that her story be published as submitted.

6th Annual RCLAS Write On! Contest 2018 Honourable Mention Non-Fiction

A Journey Home © Joyce Goodwin

“This is where it all began” said the young American President, John Fitzgerald Kennedy. He was referring to Dunganstown County Wexford Ireland, the ancestral home of the Kennedy family.

In June 1963 JFK made a four day visit to Ireland. Those of us who were there, will never forget it. At age seventeen my friends and I had just completed our secondary education at the local Loreto convent school. We felt we were on the brink of discovering the world and could not wait to go out and explore it.

One of our own was President of America, anything was possible. The world came to us that summer with the President, along with a large entourage of diplomats, bodyguards and reporters.

A few days earlier he had been in Germany and declared himself a Berliner.

“Ich bin ein Berliner” he said.

In Ireland he became Irish again, one of our own. This was a journey home to the land of his ancestors. He came to visit family and to see the stone cottage where his great grandfather Patrick Kennedy had lived. Patrick left Ireland by ship from the quay in New Ross County Wexford in 1848 during a time of famine and poverty and headed for America. He settled in Boston, worked as a cooper and started a family dynasty.

“He brought nothing with him other than a strong religious faith and a desire for liberty” the President said.

Wherever JFK went, people lined the streets to welcome this handsome descendant of an Irish emigrant. So many emigrants had never returned. He was treated like a returning son, a hero, a God almost. In Galway cathedral his image rendered in a mosaic was placed at the side of a church altar. The reception he received on his arrival in Dublin was rapturous. “Cead Mile Failte”

the signs said. “A hundred thousand welcomes.” He stood up in the open car as it drove through the streets waving and smiling. Flags and banners greeted him and in homes and pubs throughout the land, pictures of JFK hung on walls, often side by side with images of the Virgin Mary or the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

At Dunganstown fifteen cousins greeted him, including Mary Ryan who gave him a kiss on the cheek and made him a cup of tea. A banner in the garden read, “Welcome home Mr. President”.

“I want to drink a cup of tea to all those Kennedys who went and all those Kennedys who stayed”, he said.

In Wexford three hundred boys sang a song about the 1798 rebellion against the British, called “The boys of Wexford”. The president walked away from his bodyguards and joined the boys for the second chorus. One American photographer was seen to burst into tears.

Later in a speech the President would say “We need men who can dream of things and say why not.” In Ireland the dream has always been of freedom.

“It matters not how small a nation is that seeks world peace and freedom, for the humblest nation of all the world when clad in the armour of a righteous cause is stronger than all the hosts of error”.

For four days we followed the Presidents journey around Ireland. He said they were four of the best days of his life. When it was time for him to leave we were reluctant to let him go, we wanted to hold onto him a little longer.

“This is where we all say goodbye. You send us home with the warmest memories of you and your country” he said.

A radio commentator spoke of the wish of the whole country as he took his leave that “he should go safely and return soon.”

President John Fitzgerald Kennedy promised he would return some day. It was not to be. He was assassinated five months later.

2018 RCLAS Write On! Contest BIOS: Non-Fiction Winners & Honourable Mentions Jennifer M. Smith is an author and an adventurer.

Together with her husband she has sailed over 40,000 nautical miles around the world on their sailboat Green Ghost and she has plenty of stories to tell. Her novellength memoir about her ocean voyages is currently in the beta-read stage. She also writes essays and nonfiction short stories.

Her work has been published in print in The Globe and Mail and Canadian Stories and on line on Feminine Collective, CommuterLit, Scottish Book Trust, Quick Brown Fox and 50-Word Stories. She currently lives a land-life in Burlington, Ontario.

Angela Post grew up in a Yukon mining town with a Brazilian mother and Latvian father. She is a psychologist by day. Angela enjoys writing young adult and children’s stories. She has been longlisted for the Canada Writes Creative Nonfiction prize. She has been a regular attender at Surrey International Writers’ Conference. One of her fiction stories was chosen as a winner in the SIWC Story Tellers contest and has been published in Pulp Literature magazine. She is currently completing a Young Adult book.

Bryant Ross is the host of Vancouver Story Slam, Vancouver’s longest-running monthly storytelling event.

Bryant was the Vancouver Story Slam champion in both 2009 and 2014, and has featured at numerous literary events including the Under the Volcano Festival of Art and Social Change, the Vancouver International Storytelling Festival, and the Main Street Car Free Day. He is a father, an artist, a thirty-five-year veteran of the Township of Langley Fire Department, and a damn fine baker of pies.

2018 RCLAS Write On! Contest BIOS: Non-Fiction Winners & Honourable Mentions (SheLa) Nefertiti Morrison has a Post-Graduate Diploma in Creative Writing, and has been published in four differently-themed international best-selling anthologies in the Smarter Than Jack series; had poetry and truestories on animal themes/subjects published in various magazines and literary journals, such as Reader’s Digest, and ROOM literary journal.

Joyce Goodwin who was born in Dublin and immigrated from Ireland in 1989 with her family, is a retired government social worker. She has lived in North Vancouver for almost thirty years. An award winning writer her work has been included in numerous publications including with the North Shore Writers Association, the Canadian Authors Association, the Royal City Literary Arts Society, the Vancouver Tagore Society, WS Immigrant and Multicultural Services Society and The Ontario Poetry Society; her words are etched in glass at the Lynn Valley library. Co-founder of literary salon Dare To Be Heard, Joyce has been involved with literary and visual arts organizations for many years as both artist,writer, judge and trustee. Joyce paints with several artist groups and exhibits with the North Shore Artists Guild, Hycroft artists and the Parkgate Friday painters.

2018 WRITE ON! CONTEST COMMENTS FROM OUR NON-FICTION JUDGE GRAYSON SMITH

2018 Non-Fiction Contest Winners First Place: Jennifer M. Smith– In A Laundry Room On Virgin Gorda Second Place: Angela Post – Changing Connections Third Place: Bryant Ross – Kind-Hearted Woman 2018 Non-Fiction Honourable Mentions Bryant Ross – House Jacks (SheLa) Nefertiti Morrison – Baby Pool Gangstas Joyce Goodwin – A Journey Home

First Place In A Laundry Room On Virgin Gorda by Jennifer M. Smith This story is as rich as it is simple. With the details of what would seem a typical discussion on a typical day, the author invites warmth, heartache, and intrigue.

This story, and the unspoken story behind it, will stay with you for a while, as it did with me.

Second Place Changing Connections by Angela Post Changing Connections is a thoughtful commentary on how technology affects us in ways we might not recognize. The author weaves narrative and intuition with refreshing insight.

Third Place Kind-Hearted Woman by Bryant Ross Haunting, grim, and well-written. This is the type of family history that makes for good reading.

“I very much enjoyed reading all these stories. Thanks again for the opportunity.”

- Grayson Smith

2018 Write on! Contest Awards event held June 9 at Anvil Centre.

Left to Right: Place Fiction: Chelsea Comeau, Place Poetry: Angela Rebrec, Fiction HM: Tatjana Mirkov-Popovicki, 2nd Place Non-Fiction: Angela Post, 1st Place Poetry: Jude Goodwin, Fiction HM: H.W. Bryce, Non-Fiction HM: (SheLa) Nefertiti Morrison, Non-Fiction HM: Joyce Goodwin, Fiction Judge: Clara Cristofaro, Host: Janet Kvammen, RCLAS Vice-President, Host: Nasreen Pejvack, RCLAS President, Poetry Judge: Sylvia Symons.

2nd

3rd

Left: Brenda Sawatzky-Girling accepting for first place winner Jennifer M. Smith.

Right: 2nd place winner Angela Post.

Honourable Mentions (SheLa) Nefertiti Morrison and Joyce Goodwin holding certificates.

Thanks to everyone who submitted!

Make sure to watch out for details of our 7th Annual Write on! Contest opening early 2019.

RCLAS WRITER OF THE MONTH

Candice James Poet Laureate Emerita, City of New Westminster, BC

Candice James,

a professional writer, poet, visual artist, musician, singer/songwriter, workshop facilitator and book reviewer for a variety of Publishing Houses, Canadian Poetry Review and Pacific Rim Review of Books, completed her 2nd three year term as Poet Laureate of The City of New Westminster, BC CANADA in June 2016 and was appointed Poet Laureate Emerita in November 2016. Her credentials are: Director of the Pacific Festival of the Book; Founder of: Poetry New Westminster; Poetry In The Park; Poetic Justice, Slam Central and Royal City Literary Arts Society; Past President of Royal City Literary Arts Society; Federation of British Columbia Writers; and Past Director of SpoCan. She has been keynote speaker at “Word On The Street”, “Black Dot Roots Cultural Collective”, “Write On The Beach” and has judged the League of Canadian Poets “Pat Lowther Memorial Award” and “Jessamy Stursberg Youth Poet Award”. She received Pandora’s Collective Vancouver Citizenship Award; and the Bernie Legge Artist/Cultural award.

As of October 2018, Candice authored fourteen books of poetry with 5 different publishers: “A Split In The Water” (Fiddlehead 1979); “Inner Heart – A Journey” (Silver Bow 2010); “Bridges and Clouds”(Silver Bow 2011); “Midnight Embers – a Book of Sonnets” (Libros Libertad 2012); “Shorelines – a Book of Villanelles” (Silver Bow 2013); “Ekphrasticism – Painted Words” (Silver Bow 2013); “Purple Haze” (Libros Libertad 2014) “A Silence of Echoes” (Silver Bow 2014); “Merging Dimensions” (Ekstasis Editions 2015); “Short Shots” (Silver Bow 2016) and “Colours of India” (Xpress Publisher, India 2016; “City of Dreams - the New Westminster Poems“ (Silver Bow 2016); “The Water Poems” (Ekstasis Editions 2017); “The 13th Cusp” (Silver Bow Publishing 2018); and her 15th book “The Path of Loneliness” (Inanna Publications) will be released in Spring 2019.

Candice has featured at many venues both civic and public and appeared on television and radio. She has presented workshops, mentored writers; written prefaces and reviews, published articles, and short stories. Her poetry has been translated into Arabic, Italian, German, Bengali and Farsi. Her artwork has appeared in Duende Magazine and “Spotlight” Goddard College of Fine Arts, Vermont, USA and her poetry has appeared in and artwork (“Unmasked”) on the cover of Survision Magazine, Dublin, Ireland and her poetry and artwork have appeared in Wax Poetry Art Magazine, Canada.

The

Last Train from Avignon © Candice James

My name is Memphis Andromanya. I stand deep inside the parallax flux between yesterday and tomorrow. It is the day after yesterday. It is today. It is the day before tomorrow. It is today. Time moves in static shadows cast forevermore against the solid statue of upward mobility’s downcast eyes. This is the universe I live in. This is a world of torn tears caught in the treacherous jaws of a barbed wire riptide. I stand unzipping the sky, loosing lost demons, carving my voice onto the black of the night in the parallel flux between yesterday and tomorrow. Ear to the hard edge of the wind, I listen for the hollow whistle of the approaching train to nowhere. I am Memphis Andromanya.

A drooping, pale-yellow horizon melts into the surreal train tracks. A bright navy-blue ribbon of twilight falls lazily across a fading summer field of wheat.

Gray butterfingers of dusk slowly spread dark honey onto this moment in time.

There is a face in the train window. A lonely face stained with teardrops, etched with a deep sorrow, grooved into a memory the soul can’t recall and the heart can’t forget.

In the window of the train there is a lonely face that looks like mine; that has witnessed a million miles of melting surreal train tracks slowly disappear into a fading tear stained horizon.

~ I board eternity’s train. The zipper of time breaks. The groin of the world is exposed. Darkness seeps out; sweet, cloyed, lurid, tempting. It snakes through watery canyons gathering tears for alms; sliding, slinking toward the pending chaos. The shadow people emerge to drink from the darkness and caress its slake. They are battered bowling pins strewn down life’s lanes. They harbour and hold fast to their needles of iniquity, piercing the eye of midnight, slaying the moon, sun and stars to become one with the darkness they’ve become. They are daylight dragons hiding in the corners of this continuous night, ready to clip the nails of life to the quick, threatening to sew the groin of the world to the broken zipper of time.

I sit at the edge of darkness on the last train from Avignon. The flickering overhead lights are dim, covered in caked-on dust from another century. I am trying to flail off this feeling of dank trepidation that rests on my shoulders and creeps into my mind like gritty sand pushing into an empty shell. I am so weary, so tired; but my nemesis, sleep, continues to evade me along the hazy steeplechase we travel on. Ghosts come out to play with my mind throwing up jagged images to impede my journey into unconsciousness.

In a darkened corner of my mind I hear disembodied voices, tangled in broken vines and fractured veins of sound, chanting their shrill incantations; hurling them at me like poisoned spears. They hang from broken branches protruding from my heart. Somewhere in my freefall into darkness, a spark of sentience bursts forth, jarring me into a state of semi-consciousness; and in this haze I wonder: “Am I awake? Am I asleep?” and then in horror, “Am I dead?” I grope for a tissue to wipe the sweat from my forehead. I try to settle myself as the train lurches and groans through the ebony edge of this endless night.

Inside this speeding metal cocoon, I am lashed to the cross of frailty, stoned with barbed-wire words and crucified with sordid deeds from my past.

These rabid ghosts of the fourth kind snake through my spirit, lacerating my soul with their rusty spears and arrows pillaged from yesterday’s ill-fated battles. In my nightmares, I have seen the blood of lovers running rampant over broken hearts.

I have seen the scarred aftermath of love’s most treacherous wars; and more of these atrocities will be perpetrated in the name of the dark angel, turned ghostly, sitting beside me tonight.

The drooling black lips of night whisper my name in a babble of muted incoherence. The dark angel that knows no mercy takes my hand and leads me away from everything I’ve ever held dear yet, at the same time, never held near. He leads me away from everything I’ve ever known as we travel in tandem alone yet together on the last train from Avignon.

~ A fading train whistle invades my consciousness. I awake on the other side of time and place in a land where everything looks the same but is totally different. Windows are doors; doors are windows, and people are people but they are a race of another ilk. I see them but they do not see me. I am an invisible, interloper; an interdimensional observer unable to interact. I simply watch. I don’t know how long I have been here, but it seems like forever. I crave conversation, touch, sleep but none of them come; none of them come.

I am totally alone, trapped in a bubble of insanity it seems, suspended between heaven and hell. I am the ghostly residue of the millions of dreams these strangers in this strange world dream. I quantum leap in their space for awhile

and them am shunted like ghostly boxcar to another line, another life, another dreamer’s dream.

~ The dark side of night is fading, burying slices of moonbeams in its damp sticky pockets. A reluctant sun pokes its eye through fading beads of sweat on the sky’s forehead. In the cool wet damp of an ebbing rainfall I hover at the edge of Charlie Usher’s dream. He stands casually staring at the mist covered horizon. Here there is a cool wet damp expanding beneath a drunken sun riding broken bicycle dreams down a lost highway to nowhere. Charlie is daydreaming of a shimmering beach, tanned bodies walking, running, splashing and laughing. He stands casually waiting to hitch a ride to anywhere.

Charlie is running away from cardboard creatures and lost souls. He’s tired of candling the night down to the core and weaving phantom dreams that won’t come true. Under the vapid eyes of a paling twilight, he breathes in the foggy remnants of second hand wishes. He churns them and burns them to ash beneath the hot buttered sparks of train wheels grinding the tracks of his tears to dust.

He drinks in the horizon, gulping it like wine. On this hot thirsty night of no reprisals, he sways in drunken repose and mind-chases his shadow down the path of better days gone by. His soul, weather beaten, hangs in pockets of leather chafing the edge of night, opening his wounded dreams to the scalpel of his own home-grown terror. His face is wet, but he hasn’t been crying. The sky is crying. He doesn’t remember when the rain started but he’s certain it shows no sign of letting up soon. Each random drop, whipped by the want of its own need, relentlessly pursues the razor’s edge of the one in front of it. He’s trapped in a never-ending circle game of never win.

Charlie broke his mirror of truth years ago; lives in a fantasy world; thinks he’s still handsome. His torn mouth twitches, groans into a grin showing yellowed and cracked teeth that glint in the broken bits of moonlight that decorate the one shoe he wears; the other foot bleeding and scarred. This damaged Prince Charming limps along these railway tracks searching for his broken Cinderella, knowing full well he will not find her.

Wasted chants and wishes, unanswered prayers and rituals, shattered hopes and dreams and broken Cinderellas and damaged Prince Charmings are living and dying in obscurity; and I am forced to bear witness to their pain and live through their sorrow. The story, told through the scarred black lips of night, is always the same, only the faces and names change.

~

The walls narrow; the floorboards fly away and I fall through the ceiling of an unmanned, runaway, pump-car trolley traversing the tracks of Jenny Chalmers vibrant and dangerous dream. White time cracks building to black.

Raindrops unstack. Clouds come untacked from the frayed fabric of a weakened sky. Jenny’s secrets and lies lure the ghouls of a demon train into her lair of lust. One touches her gossamer nightgown as she throws her crown of thorns onto the devil’s throne, becoming a satin doll, falling, barely alive in this altered atmosphere she has been transported to. She’s spent a lifetime polishing her tears to a shiny gloss with the mist from her wine scented breath. She rides the rails of karma seeking expiation from this deep black chasm where the hands of time hold court every night. She sees a tunnel too narrow looming in the distance. She and the train are hurtling toward it; toward their destruction.

The night squeezes the light into lost works of art painted for her dark demise.

Now, back to the wall Jenny’s rose-coloured glasses shatter and she is blinded by the light. Slowly she regains her focus and sees a bony, accusatory finger pointing to her blood-stained portrait. She bears silent witness to the depth of her fall. Crash! The charcoal smoke lingers then fades. Death! The train wreckage shape-shifts into a cracked and broken tombstone bearing her name which is unreadable; leaving not trace of her at all. I am her pain, her sorrow and her death. It’s all too much, but still not enough.

Winter’s soul exits this mad masquerade ball and throws off it’s tattered disguise. I keep trying to climb out of this unblessed hell hole that keeps sucking me deeper into it’s depth. Torn dreams on parade mimic and ape the dreaded moment of truth approaching in thundering of engines and grinding wheels. I am ripped from this universe into the dining car of an antique steam engine train.

~ I’ve been catapulted into another dream. There is no rest for me. No reprieve. No respite. I am standing on a railway platform. I see a newspaper. It is the Transylvania news. The date is 1871 and I am one of a handful of people waiting at the Cluj-Napoca train station. Beside me on the slick, gun-metal gray platform, a snowy woman stands, hand in hand, with a midnight man packing a small child on his back. The child is crying, his sobs growing louder. The snowy woman reaches for him, gently caresses his fevered forehead, pressing her cold cracked lips to his burning cheek. They are the lost souls written onto the dogeared pages of eternity.

Rain streaks down the cracked, dusty windows of the stations facade, fighting the dirt in a paned wrestling match. The black, sweating train pulls up to the platform and belches out a pale gray column of steam into the thick atmosphere. I board the train with the dreamers I am escorting: The Snowy

Woman, The Midnight Man and The Small Child. We sit in silence. They cannot see me or interact with me, but I am a part of them. I feel each of their emotions, worries, sorrows, pains. There is no end… no end to this hell I am trapped in. The train leaves the station and continues its journey. The dreamers fall asleep. I stare out the train window. Damaged landscapes, scrap metal yards and broken buildings scar the dark side of the cities we pass.

Finally, the train stops. The Snowy Woman, Midnight Man and Child debark the railcar. Danger and death shadow these lost orphans of a lesser God as they stumble toward the skid row alleys they call home. Unmasked, and stripped of all disguises, they’re ghostly apparitions, caught in the cold clutch of an icy hand, trapped in the harsh hold of a strangled scream. The last thing I see before the train departs is the lost souls shuffling like worn out cards into the wounded deck of night.

~ The last train from Avignon stops at its final destination. A wayward star glistens on the whetted lips of an outlaw breeze. Across a pale-yellow sky a rising moon sits astride twilight’s fading coat tails, spinning haphazardly, riding slices of shadow and shimmer. I, too, spin haphazardly on a torn and tossed renegade wind, dissolving in the misty tears of a dying sun under the half-mast eyelids of a pale-yellow disintegrating sky; the sky and I, both old beyond our years. The scarred black lips of night whisper my name, in tones growing louder, as I step down from the train. The dark angel that knows no mercy lets go of my hand and leaves me back in the warm hold of everything I’ve ever known. Finally, the nightmare is over. I am home; in my own time and place.

My name is Memphis Andromanya. I held hands with the devil on the last Train from Avignon and lived to tell the tale.

The Last Train from Avignon Copyright Candice James

Mind Maze © Candice James, Poet Laureate Emerita New Westminster, BC CANADA There is no other entrance.

Where you stand is where it’s at A dimly lit sign flickers off and on “Enter at your own risk.”

There is no charge, no fee The danger and prizes are free.

You stand at the edge of you mind And enter the dark of the maze Searching for something… maybe yourself.

Ungainly wretches parade by in multi-coloured blindfolds Carrying risks and rewards Disguised as hopes and dreams .

Some teeter close to the edge of the abyss Some fall screaming to an untimely demise And some race to the sound of the screams Jumping, kamikaze style into the surreal suicide They’ve been chasing so long.

Now you start to second guess yourself You think you’ve taken a wrong turn You know Nirvana can’t be found in this Hell And heaven has long since flown away In search of a saner universe.

Panic sets in. You search madly Between the beads of sweat on your forehead For a way out…

Your eyebrows now drooping with the heavy waters of fear Arch in astonishment as you approach the exit And see the bright neon sign “NO EXIT” Where you stand is where it’s at….

Where you’re at And you realize…

There is no other exit

The Ladder © Candice James, Poet Laureate Emerita New Westminster, BC CANADA I climb the ladder of dreams’ insurrections Meditating on my loss of directions I’ve lost myself to my nemesis and don’t know what I’m headed for Sleep has become the Nirvanic prize of this never ending tug of war the pull of love rebellion of hate below and above we can’t escape fate on questionable answers and unanswered questions on a rap sheet of crime and dishonourable mentions More than halfway up the ladder there are missing rungs.

I hear wagging tongues, fog horn collapsed lungs a reformed smoker’s paradise an alcoholic’s sure demise Breathing is sometimes laboured and other times it’s favoured.

Do I continue or turn back?

Do I tighten my life line or let it go slack?

The waxing sun’s growing hotter and hotter The rungs are dissolving and turning to water.

I never should have climbed into this dream It’s crumbling and tearing apart at the seam.

In a cacophony of voices and menagerie of memes Nobody can hear my strangulated screams.

As I fall toward the hole in my soul There’s an evil imp and a disgruntled troll Clapping and laughing in a faraway clearing And the last thing I see is the ladder disappearing.

Website to purchase “The 13th Cusp” and see video poem excerpts http://www.silverbowpublishing.com/13.html

Wikipedia: Website YouTube Social Media Pages: Personal Poet Laureate Emerita Artist Musician Twitter

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candice_James www.candicejames.com www.youtube/saddlestone11 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUtcuIOHpxmCrGRJd-y5H3A https://www.facebook.com/candice.james77 https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=candice%20james%20%20poet%20laureate%20emerita https://www.facebook.com/CandiceJamesArtist?fref=ts https://www.facebook.com/pages/Candice-James-Songwriter-BassGuitarist/156859754352277?fref=ts @NWPoLoEmerita and candicejames777 and @candice23809987

The Monster in the Forest

by Jerena Tobiasen

“Run!” Jake screamed.

On his command, Martin and David, his two best friends, and his younger sister, Teresa, bolted into the dark forest ahead of him. Jake raced to catch up with them, following the twisting path they’d walked since their first day at school. They kept their pace swift for another five minutes, until the initial injection of adrenaline began to wane and breathing became difficult. David staggered and stopped, bending forward to catch his breath. Martin ran a few paces beyond and tripped over the gnarled root of an old tree.

When his three friends jogged to his rescue, the smell of forest decay and rotting fall leaves filled their senses.

“You okay?” Jake asked, stretching his arm toward Martin.

“I think so,” Martin said, grabbing Jake’s hand and pulling himself up.

“What was that sound?” David asked.

“I’ve never heard anything like it,” Teresa said, wrapping her arms across her chest and peering over her shoulder along the path they’d just run. In response to her shuddered, Jake wrapped his arm around her.

“Thanks,” she said, shuddering again.

“Cold?” he asked.

“No.” She shook her head. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

“Come on, guys,” David said. “Let’s go home. I think we’ve had enough excitement tonight!”

A few yards further along, the path burst into the school yard and a sensor light fastened to the side of the school lit their way in blinding light.

“See ya tomorrow,” they each said before splitting off in the direction of their respective homes. ~ At school the following day, the four friends met for lunch in the cafeteria.

“So,” Martin said before taking a bite of his ham sandwich. He chewed and swallowed, then continued. “What do you think that was?”

“I heard howling,” David said, “like it was far away.” He sipped his soup and winced.

“Too hot,” he mumbled, setting the spoon on his tray.

“Me too,” Teresa said. “It sounded like a wild animal, crying for help.” Her eyes widened and she appeared concerned.

“What about the screeching afterward?” Martin asked.

“That must have been an owl!” David said with confidence.

“Naw,” Martin said. “Owls don’t screech like that. They sound more like –” He held his mouth rigid and emitted a high-pitched noise. “That’s what an owl sounds like.”

“What about the thumping?” Jake asked.

“Animals, scurrying in the brush?” Martin asked his own question.

“Nope,” Jake said. “It had to be a big animal to make that kind of noise. Scurrying little animals don’t make big thumps.”

“I think we should go back into the forest tonight,” David said, “to see whether we can find out.” He sat taller in his chair.

“I-I don’t know,” Teresa said. “We have homework to do. Can’t we wait for the weekend?” Tomorrow is Halloween, and –” “It could be gone by the weekend,” David said. “We need to go tonight. After we’ve done our homework, of course.” He grinned at his friends. “Agreed?”

“Agreed!” Martin and Jake said together.

“A-agreed,” Teresa said sounding reluctant.

“7:30 tonight, then,” David confirmed, “at the entrance to the forest.” ~ The night was chilled with damp. When Jake and Teresa arrived at the designated meeting point, David and Martin were flapping their arms as if to generate body heat.

Droplets of moisture glistened in David’s hair and made Martin’s cap sparkle in the school’s bright light.

“Shall we go?” Jake asked. A puff of moisture carried his words into the dark.

The others nodded, and followed as he led them into the forest in single file. They walked with stealth along the spongy path, each step encircling them in the fragrance of autumn. Occasionally, a small twig snapped under a foot. Treetops rustled in the evening breeze, allowing occasional shafts of moonlight to illuminate the way.

“Shhh,” Jake turned to warn them, his finger to his lips.

Ten minutes into the hike, Jake came to an abrupt halt, and braced himself as the others, unseeing in the dark, crashed into him.

“Did you hear that?” he asked.

“Hear what?” Martin asked in response.

Teresa turned in a circle, slowly, listening for the sound that her brother had heard.

“I think I heard something,” David said, “like a soft howling.”

In that moment the trees began to rattle and dance, their leaves vibrating together.

“There it is again!” Jake said.

“I heard it this time!” Martin said.

“Me to,” Teresa said, sidling next to her brother.

The next howl was long and plaintive. David spun around, bumping into Martin, causing Martin to slip on rotting leaves dampened by the mist that seeped through the tree tops.

Screech, screech.

“Oh, no!” Jake’s voice sounded apprehensive. “This is starting to sound more like last night!”

Thump, thump. The velocity of the wind blew the tree tops hard and the trees began to sway. Thump, thump. The noise grew louder, closer.

“Run!” Jake screamed.

The four friends ran as if their lives depended on it, not stopping until they burst into the bright school light again. They stood in a circle, leaning forward with hands on their knees, breathing heavily.

“Do you think,” Martin gasped, “that it’s looking for us. Waiting for us?”

“What is?” David asked.

“A monster! Maybe we’re trespassing on its territory!” Martin said, peering into the dark forest.

“Don’t be silly,” Jake said. “Monsters don’t live around here.”

“What do you think it is, then?” Martin asked.

As they regained a regular breathing pattern, each teen stood upright.

“I don’t know,” Jake said, “but there has to be a logical explanation.”

“I think it’s a monster,” David said, agreeing with Martin.

They walked toward the end of the school yard, each deep in thought.

“Should we tell our parents?” Teresa asked.

“Naw,” Jake said. “They’d just laugh at us and tell us we shouldn’t be out after dark. I don’t know about you guys, but I want to solve this mystery. I’m going back in there, but this time, I’ll be better prepared. Who’s coming with me?” He rubbed his hands together, as if to warm them.

“I will,” David said, “but I’m bringing a baseball bat. If I get caught, I want to be able to defend myself.”

“I’ll bring my rescue whistle,” Teresa said, her voice small as if uncertain she wanted to go at all. “But I think we should tell mom and dad, just in case . . .”

“Just in case?” Jake asked.

“Yeah,” Teresa said. “You know. Just in case we don’t return.”

Jake laughed softly and tousled his sister’s short auburn hair.

“Let’s meet back here in –” Jake lifted his arm, shirking his sleeve to reveal his watch.

The time illuminated the face. “Fifteen minutes. Be back here by 9:00.” He tugged his sleeve back into place.

In agreement with Jake’s plan, David and Martin set off to their respective homes.

“Come on,” Jake said, taking Teresa’s arm. Together, they set off at a jog, discussing what they would need for their next venture into the woods. ~ “What took you so long?” Jake asked Martin, who arrived minutes after the other three had assembled.

“Mom was all for tucking me into bed,” Martin replied. “I had to convince her that I was old enough to go to bed without help. Thank goodness I have a door knob that locks!”

He shook his head. “Then I had to climb down the trellis qui-et-ly!”

“Ready?” Jake asked, putting an end to further chatter, then strode toward the entrance of the forest.

The wind had picked up during their respite, and rain had begun to fall, making the dark evening darker and glossy. Teresa pulled her toque lower, and tightened the scarf around her neck. Two of the boys raised their hoodies, and Jake lifted the collar of his jacket, fastening a snap to keep it secure around his ears. The wind ripped through the trees that swayed in time with the blustery currents.

Jake led the way again, taking small furtive steps. He held his flashlight low, trying to illuminate only where they stepped. Soon, beneath the roar of the wind-driven trees, they heard the soft howl they’d heard earlier.

“It’s close,” David whispered.

“What’s close?” Martin asked, sounding alarmed.

“The monster!” David replied.

Teresa’s eyes widened in the pale beam of the flashlight. Her mouth gaped as she searched for a retort.

“Stop it you two!” Jake snapped. “You’re frightening Teresa.”

“Sorry Teresa,” David said.

“Listen!” Martin said. “The screeching –” Thump, thump, thump. In the beam of light, Jake saw his friends turn as if to run.

“Wait!” he snapped. David and Martin stopped mid-step and turned around. “We’re here to solve a mystery, that’s all. There’s no monster!”

The soft howl turned to a groan, and the screeching increased.

“Follow me, you idiots!” Jake demanded, and they did.

As the teens neared the far side of the forest, the howling and screeching reached a feverish pitch, and the floor of the forest vibrated with the furious thumping. Suddenly, a loud boom overrode the chaos around them. Jake raised the flashlight beam in the direction of the sound. Before the teens could respond, a massive, dead branch fell, pinning David to the forest floor. Teresa screamed.

Jake scrambled to his knees and crawled toward his friend.

“David!” he shouted over the din of the forest. He gently slapped David’s cheeks, but David lay motionless, pinned under the heavy branch. “Help me lift this branch,” he shouted above the din.

Together, the three tried to lift the branch, but its smaller branches were buried deep into the soft mulch. It wouldn’t budge.

“One of you needs to go for help,” Jake panted. “David’s hurt.” He shone the flashlight on David’s pale face. A smear of blood trickled from his forehead. Then he looked at Teresa. Her eyes were wide with terror. “Martin, will you go?”

“Great! Mom thinks I’m in bed and now I have to ask her for help!”

“Martin!” Jake snapped, as if his patience had run out.

Martin scrambled to his feet.

“Here, take the flashlight,” Jake said, “and Martin –“ “Yeah?”

“Run!” Jake and Teresa listened as Martin’s racing steps disappeared into the forest.

“Teresa, give me your scarf.”

Teresa unravelled her scarf and handed it to Jake. Jake made a pillow of it and gently placed it under David’s head. Teresa searched for David’s hand and held it fast as if she hoped that her touch would wake him up and heal him.

“I wish I could see his face,” Jake said, “but without the flashlight –“ “Wait!” Teresa exclaimed. “Where’s his cell phone? David always carries a cell phone.”

Jake gently patted David’s pockets, searching for the phone.

“Found it!”

Jake tugged the phone out and turned on the flashlight. Scanning David’s face, he satisfied himself that his friend’s condition had not changed, then turned off the power to save the battery.

Above them, the storm that had settled around the forest whipped the forest into a frenzied dance. The howling and screeching amplified.

“Jake, I’m scared,” Teresa said. “What if there really is a monster?”

“There’s no monster,” Jake assured her. He flipped on the cell phone’s beam. “See.” He panned the forest around them, showing her the whirling tree tops, the water trickling down ancient tree trunks and the shiny decay on which they knelt.

“Can we keep the light on,” Teresa asked.

“Sure,” Jake replied, peering at the phone. “There’s enough cell power to last until help arrives.”

“My head hurts!” David groaned. “What happened?”

“David!”

As the brother and sister explained to their friend what had happened, they heard the quiet sound of sirens in the distance. Soon the alarms of rescue vehicles broke the roar of the storm, and search lights led help to the small gathering on the forest floor.

David’s mother pushed passed burly firemen and dropped to her knees by her son’s head.

“David!” she cried. “Oh David!”

“Excuse me, ma’am,” the fire chief said. “If you step out of the way, we can free your son and send him on his way to the hospital.” ~ “So,” David asked, a smirk marring his face, “did you find the monster?”

“I told you,” Jake said, with emphasis, “there was no monster!”

Jake and Martin stood at the foot of David’s hospital bed, while Teresa stood at David’s side, timidly holding his hand.

“Then what was the cause of all that noise?” David insisted.

Teresa laughed, turning her gaze toward Martin, whose pink face expressed his embarrassment.

“Martin’s mother made him tell her why we were in the forest,” she said, “and, of course, she had to tell the fire department. Once you were on your way here by ambulance, the firemen searched the forest.” She giggled again, sneaking a peek at Martin. “The howling that we heard was probably the most curious of all. Someone had stuck a soda bottle in the gnarled joint of a tree at the edge of the forest opposite to where we entered. It was placed in such a way that, every time the wind blew, the passage of air over the mouth created a howl.”

David leaned back, resting his bandaged head on a pillow.

“The screeching,” Martin said, “was caused by a bush rubbing against the side of that purple garden shed, just across from the forest.”

“I’d screech too, if I was planned next to that purple eye-sore!” David groaned. “And the thumping?”

“Ah, well,” Jake said. “You ended that. Apparently, the huge branch that pinned you had been dead for quite some time, but it was wedged high in the trees and couldn’t fall. The storm last night finally freed it. Unfortunately, you happened to be standing under it when it fell.”

Jake crossed his arms, and smiled broadly at his friends.

“And there you have it! Three odd noises occurring simultaneously equals –” Jake leaned toward Martin, arms raised as if to attack, “one very loud monster! Rrrrr!”

Thanks to Marylee for a fabulous workshop!

Travel Writing – Around the World and From Your Own Backyard with Marylee Stephenson, Sept 29, 2018 at Anvil Centre

“What‘s the HOOK?” “What is your story?”

“Who is your audience?”

You are the creator!

Upcoming Events – Fall 2018 Info: secretary@rclas.com

2018 FRED COGSWELL AWARD Shortlist Oct 15 https://rclas.com/awards-contests/fred-cogswell-award/

Winners Announced NOV 1: https://rclas.com/awards-contests/fred-cogswell-award/

Save the Date: RCLAS presents “Fred Cogswell Award for Excellence in Poetry Awards Presentation” (Watch for more details to be announced) Date: Saturday November 24, 2018 Location: Anvil Centre Room #417 Time: 2:30pm - 4:30pm Featuring 2018 Judge Miranda Pearson and MORE!

Mark Your Calendars: Please watch for event updates and news via our website, and social media accounts (Facebook, Twitter and Instagram) RCLAS presents “Tellers of Short Tales” All Open Mic “Halloween” Edition Date: Thursday October 18, 2018.

Time: 6:00pm – 8:00pm, Free admission.

Location: Anvil Centre, Rm 417 Description: A program of monthly readings designed to engage fans of the short story genre with emerging and published short story writers.

Come listen! Bring a friend!

Bring a short story to scare on Open Mic. (Any story will do BUT if you have something a little spooky, even better!)

Hosted by Lozan Yamolky and Janet Kvammen

RCLAS Writing Workshop: “Using Tarot in Your Writing” Facilitator: Isabella Mori Date: Saturday October 27, 2018 Time: 1:30pm – 3:30pm Location: Anvil Centre, Rm #413A Pre-register at secretary@rclas.com Workshop Fees: RCLAS Members $15/Non-members $25 Pay via Paypal here: https://rclas.com/workshops/ Description: Any image can be a fabulous tool to move you forward in your writing. But there’s something special about Tarot, because it is in its very nature to suggest meaning and to tell a story.

In this workshop, we will use a number of techniques, from using a card as a simple prompt to getting the cards to suggest to you ways to deal with any difficulties you may have in your writing life. You can bring your own tarot cards but don’t have to; Isabella will bring a wide variety of images inspired by her collection of 60+ decks.

Writers of all striped are often looking for ways to jump-start their writing, or to overcome blockages. The rich and symbol-laden imagery of tarot – an intuitive language in itself – can address these issues in many different ways. Isabella will bring a wide variety of tarot images from well-known decks like the Rider-Waite, the Thoth and traditional Marseille-type decks to abstract and obscure ones, like the Langustl (abstract), Amano (Anime) or Tarot of Eden (cryptozoic).

Examples of exercises:  A card as an image for a simple free-write  Using one or more cards (a “spread”) to tell a story  Interviewing a card, spread or deck  Writing a haiku from inspired by a 3-card spread  Using specific cards to better understand a character (e.g. the Justice card to understand a detective in a mystery)  Using tarot to reflect on our writing Discussions will include a short introduction to the Tarot (including revising the somewhat limiting notion that tarot is only for “fortune telling”).

Author’s Bio: Isabella Mori is a mother, grandmother, wife, friend, sister. She also writes: poetry, novels, short stories and non-fiction and has published two books of and about poetry, a bagful of haiku – 87 imperfections, and isabella mori’s teatable book.

She has published and blogged over 1,000 articles online and in traditional media. She lives in Vancouver, Canada, in a way-too-big house, enjoys being surrounded by houseplants, and takes long walks. She grew up in Germany in a chaotic artists’ household and has lived in Paraguay and Chile. Isabella has a Masters Degree in Education and works in the mental health/addiction field. She has been friendly with tarot cards since 1995, when she used them in her first-ever psychology research project.

Poets Wanted: Dead or Alive Hosted by Janet "Lady Raven" Kvammen Featuring Candice James who will be launching her new book, The 13th Cusp!

Date: Sunday Oct 28, 2018 Time: 2:00pm – 4:00pm, Free admission Location: The Heritage Grill, Backstage Room, 447 Columbia St, New West Link to https://www.facebook.com/events/141129280171711/ Join us in the Heritage Grill Back Room for some Spookilicious Halloween Fun! Themed OPEN MIC---Read your own dark, eerie, mysterious poetry OR Poetry by a Dead Poet of your choice Prize for Best Costume.

Come join us, bring a friend, share a poem. Trick or Treat!

RCLAS presents “Wordplay New West” with host Julia Schoennagel Date: November 1, 2018 Time: 7pm – 9pm Location: The Network Hub, Upstairs at The River Market, 810 Quayside Drive, New Westminster.

More info https://rclas.com/recurring/wordplay/ Special Day of the Dead edition featuring Tarot Card Writing Prompts as well as the New West Artists Black & White Art Show for ekphrastic inspiration.

Description: Wordplay is our idea-generating drop-in series for writers of all kinds.

Find new approaches to your writing; unlock that treasure chest in your head!

This group generates some fabulous first drafts; all you need to bring is writing tools, paper, and a ready mind. This is not a critique group; let’s have some fun!

RCLAS presents “Tellers of Short Tales” Featuring Author Chelene Knight Date: Thursday November 8, 2018.

Time: 6:00pm – 8:00pm, Free admission.

Location: Anvil Centre, Rm 411B Description: A program of monthly readings designed to engage fans of the short story genre with emerging and published short story writers.

Author’s Bio: Chelene Knight lives in Vancouver, B.C. and is a graduate of The Writer’s Studio in multiple genres. Chelene is managing editor at Room and the festival director for the Growing Room Literary Festival. Chelene is a manuscript

consultant and creative writing instructor. She has been published in various literary magazines and anthologies. Her second book, Dear Current Occupant, a memoir, was published by Book*hug in 2018, and her first book, Braided Skin, was published by Mother Tongue Publishing in Spring 2015. Chelene is now working on a novel set in the 1940’s in Vancouver’s Hogan’s Alley. cheleneknight.com / @poetchelene

RCLAS presents “In Their Words: A Royal City Reading Series” Date: Thursday, Nov 15, 2018 Time: 6:00pm – 8:00pm, Free admission Location: Anvil Centre, Rm 411B Host: Ruth Kozak If you are interesting in reading at a future installment of In Their Words, please send a note to secretary@rclas.com Featured Readers AND WHO THEY WILL BE READING/DISCUSSING: H.W. Bryce - Robert Service Lavana La Brey – Leonard Cohen Jay Hamburger – a Favourite Playwright Description: In Their Words happens on the 3rd Thursday of every other month.

Feature speakers present their favourite author from any genre in poetry, fiction, non-fiction or drama. Presentations include a brief commentary about the author and a reading of selections that exemplify what the presenter loves about the author’s work. A short Q&A follows each presenter.

RCLAS Writing Workshop: “Developing Creativity by Playing (and Ending the battle with Perfectionism)” Facilitator: Tatiana A. Bobko Date: Saturday November 17, 2018 Time: 1:30pm – 3:30pm Location: Anvil Centre, Room 413A Pre-register at secretary@rclas.com Workshop Fees: RCLAS Members $15/Non-members $25 Description: We are all infinitely creative beings with limitless potential, but there are times when we just don’t feel very creative. Daily tasks and life responsibilities get in the way. Sometimes we have a time allotted to writing or creating something and the creativity is just not there. How do we kick-start it so

we have an opportunity to develop ideas? When does the real flow start? How do we let go and surrender to what wants to come out? If the biggest killer of creativity is perfection then it all starts when we open our minds and hearts, start playing and experiment without expectation and let go of control of how things will turn out. In this workshop we will explore how to help your creativity come out and play when it just doesn’t feel like cooperating. We will use many creativity exercises to open up our minds and spark our imaginations. We are talented, creative humans, it’s just sometimes we need a little inspiration to get the juices flowing. I will provide you with some useful tools and teach you some simple tricks on how to stop procrastinating, accept your limitations (nobody’s perfect!) and play. So let the inner child come out and let’s explore the inner world together. Embarrassments, perfection and writer’s block be gone. Fun, experimentation and flow is what is needed to dissolve writer’s block and battle the endless race for perfection. Writing and creating anything is supposed to be fun, so let’s make it so.

The objectives of this workshop are to play, add to your tool belt some exercises you can use on a regular basis to spark your own creativity, to be surrounded by a learn from a community of writers who are in the same boat as you – we are all flawed no matter how much we strive for perfection and we all go through times when we just don’t feel creative. My hope is you will come out feeling lighter, brighter and feeling more inspired to incorporate play more into your life.

Bio: Tatiana A. Bobko was born in Siberia and immigrated to Canada 23 years ago.

She has been manifesting creative works of art – written word, visual art, performing art since as far back as she can remember. She see’s beauty in the mundane, the random and the discarded. Tatiana notices patterns, reflections and symbolism in everything and records it in poetry and prose or captures it through images - through photography, collage, drawing and painting. She is in awe of the intricacy of nature and all the forms life takes place, life’s fragility and kindness and generosity of this planet’s beings. Tatiana is “uber-creative”, from how she crafts her dinner to how she organizes her day to how she makes art. She believes life is a spontaneous creative flow, and she has many tips she would love to share with others. Come to her workshop and play!

...and a reminder for all you poets and poetry lovers: “Poetic Justice/Poetry New West” Sunday Afternoons (except Holiday Weekends) Time: 2:00pm – 4:00pm, Free admission.

Location: The Heritage Grill, Backstage Room, 447 Columbia St, New West Description: Two Featured poets and Open Mic. Admission is free but donations are welcomed.

For information visit https://www.facebook.com/groups/poeticjusticepnw/ and https://www.facebook.com/groups/215251815176114/ Email poeticjusticepnw@gmail.com

WORDPLAY AT WORK FEEDBACK & E-ZINE SUBMISSIONS

Janet Kvammen, RCLAS Vice-President/E-zine Submit Word documents WITH YOUR NAME and Title on document to janetkvammen@rclas.com General Inquiries: Lozan Yamolky secretary@rclas.com

RCLAS Members Open Call for Submissions No theme required to submit.

November 2018 Issue Deadline Oct 20 Remembrance Day Peace December Themes to consider include: Fraser River Form Poetry Nature Poetry, Short Stories, Book excerpts, articles & lyrics are all welcome for submission.

FOLLOW US ON INSTAGRAM @royalcitylit

Thank you to our Sponsors & Venues 

City of New Westminster



Anvil Centre



Arts Council of New Westminster



New Westminster Public Library



The Network Hub



The Heritage Grill

It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore— Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.”

Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

See upcoming events at www.rclas.com

Facebook

October 2018 Wordplay at work ISSN 2291- 4269 Contact: janetkvammen@rclas.com RCLAS Vice-President/ E-zine

Memphis Andromanya © Candice James, Poet Laureate Emerita New Westminster, BC, CANADA

I still see you, Memphis Andromanya, standing deep inside my mind, carved into the seconds and minutes lingering between yesterday and tomorrow.

I stand in a world of torn tears unzipping the sky, carving my voice onto the purple teeth of twilight in the parallel flux of timeless time.

The fading butterfingers of dusk slowly spread dark honey onto this moment in time.

I am a lonely face watching a million miles of melting dreams and disappearing train tracks slowly fading into a tear-stained horizon.

A water colour painting of your face creeps into the corner of my mind.

I open my eyes for a moment then close them again hoping to erase your image; but I still see you in the shadows of my dark.

I board eternity’s train trying to find you once again.

The zipper of time breaks.

Something in me breaks too.

The past emerges like a thirsty phantom to drink from the pool of memories I’ve untethered from time’s marina of lost days and long nights.

I see them strewn across the waters of our Babylon where we lay down in the arms of the angels; but it’s just a dissolving dream. grains of sand in the crush of an incoming tide.

Do you remember Memphis Andromanya when we walked through a harbour of living wounds unsullied and unscathed while the iniquitous eye of midnight glared menacingly and stared us down, slayed the moon, sun and stars, and zipped us into its darkness.

When did we become one with that darkness?

When did the lights go out in your heart?

When did I stop noticing you or your absences?

I am covered in caked-on dust f rom another century.

I’m still trying like hell to creep into your soul but I feel like shards of rust and gritty sand pushing into an full, yet empty shell.

I escape into a hazy dream of steeplechases, ghosts, broken water and abandoned rowboats.

I’m almost where I want to be surrendering to the dream that’s still chasing me but my mind throws up jagged images of you to stop my journey into unconsciousness.

You still haunt me Memphis Andromanya.

In a darkened corner of my mind I hear disembodied voices, tangled in broken vines and fractured veins.

Above their hushed chanting

I hear your long-lost vows of love echoing through drooping derelict branches protruding from my still beating heart.

Somewhere in my freefall into darkness, a spark of sentience bursts forth, jars me into a state of semi-consciousness I wonder” Am I awake?

Am I asleep? and then in horror, Am I dead?

I must be dead because you are not here and I always said I couldn’t live without you.

Was I lying?

I take a deep breath but don’t seem to be breathing.

I panic.

The pounding of my heart me awake.

Inside this cold, metal cocoon I’ve wrapped myself in, the drooling black lips of night whisper my name in a babble of muted incoherence.

A hooded dark angel that knows no mercy takes my hand and leads me away from everything I’ve ever held dear; from everything I’ve ever known.

He whispers in my ear “I am the ghost of Memphis Andromanya”

I awake on the other side of time and place.

Everything looks the same but totally different.

Windows are doors; doors are windows, and people are strange cardboard cut-outs and lost souls dancing in jerky motions

to loud out of tune instruments.

I see them but they do not see me.

I am an invisible, interloper; unable to interact.

I am the ghostly residue of the millions of dreams these strangers in this strange world dream.

The dark side of night is fading, burying slices of moonbeams in its damp sticky pockets.

A reluctant sun pokes its eye through fading beads of sweat on the sky’s forehead.

I am running away from cardboard creatures and lost souls.

I’m tired of candling the night down to the core and weaving phantom dreams that won’t come true.

In the vapid eyes of a pale twilight, breathing in foggy remnants of second hand wishes, I churn them and burn them to ash under the hot buttered sparks from the wheels of my mind grinding the tracks of my tears.

I drink in the horizon, gulping it like wine.

On this hot thirsty night of no reprisals; the atmosphere hangs in pockets of leather chafing the edge of my requiem.

My face is wet, but I haven’t been crying.

The sky is crying, staining my skin.

I don’t remember when the rain started but it shows no sign of letting up soon.

Each random drop,

whipped by the want of its own need, relentlessly pursues the razor’s edge of the one in front of it.

This relentless rain and I, trapped in a never-ending circle game of tears.

I am a broken Cinderella searching the streets of Nirvana for my damaged Prince Charming.

The streets narrow; the pavement flies away and I fall through the ceiling of an unmanned, runaway, streetcar.

White time cracks building to black.

Raindrops unstack.

Clouds come untacked from the frayed fabric of a weakened sky.

I ride the rails of karma seeking expiation from this deep black chasm as I squeeze the last remnants of light into lost works of art.

Winter’s soul exits a mad masquerade ball and throws off its tattered disguise.

I keep trying to climb out of this unblessed hell hole that keeps sucking me back deeper and deeper into it’s depth.

A bony, accusatory finger points to a blood-stained living portrait that bears silent witness to the depth of my fall.

I am pain, sorrow and death.

It’s all too much, but still not enough.

I am ripped from this universe back into the torn tears of my broken world where I see you standing, Memphis Andromanya.

There is no rest for me.

No reprieve.

No respite.

A wayward star glistens on the whetted lips of an outlaw breeze.

Across a pale, yellow sky a rising moon sits astride twilight’s fading coat tails, riding slices of shadow and shimmer; spinning haphazardly.

I, too, spin haphazardly on a torn and tossed renegade wind, dissolving in the misty tears of a dying sun under the half-mast eyelids of a pale, yellow disintegrating sky; the sky and I… both of us old beyond our years.

The scarred black lips of night whisper my name in tones growing louder.

The light of a rogue moon illuminates your shadowy figure.

I see you approaching me, through the mist, Memphis Andromanya.

Unmasked and stripped of all disguises, we are ghostly apparitions, caught in the cold clutch of an icy hand, trapped in the harsh hold of a strangled scream.

We are the lost souls written onto the dog-eared pages of a restless eternity, shuffling like worn out cards into the wounded deck of night.

I see you, always, Memphis Andromanya, standing deep inside my heart and soul between yesterday and tomorrow. waiting for me to come home.