The Envoy 093 - the news letter of the CCLA - Canada Cuba Literary Alliance

THE ENVOY The official newsletter of the

Canada Cuba Literary Alliance I.S.S.N. – 1911‐0693

November 12, 2019 Issue 093 www.CanadaCubaLiteraryAlliance.org

Hello, dear The Envoy readership!

Here, the tentative schedule for your CCLA 2020 trip!

This may change on the go to suit our possibilities and your interests! Enjoy!

CCLA Trip January-February 2020 Week 1 (Sunday, January 26th through Saturday, February 1st): Gibara Week 2 Workshops at Jorge Alberto´s home (our CCLA Ambassador and The Envoy Editor-in-chief) 2 Poetry Readings (at Jorge´s & Gibara´s Casa de la Cultura) 2 Book launches (at Jorge´s & Gibara´s Casa de la Cultura) A Gibara Tour – Lunch time in La Cueva Restaurant Boat ride & Visit to the Beach Exploring the Gibara Caves Farewell & Prep meeting for the Holguín Week Week 2 (Sunday, February 2nd through Friday, February 7th): Holguín Week 2 Workshops (Mayabe Lookout & at Katharine Beeman´s home, Kat is our CCLA Ambassador in Cuba and The Ambassador Assistant Editor) 3 Poetry Readings (Holguín University, Mayabe Lookout & at Katharine´s) 2 Book launches (Holguín University, Mayabe Lookout) Exchange with the Holguín University´s English Major students, plus the English Major & Canadian Studies Departments A Holguín Tour – Lunch time in one of Holguín´s Restaurants “Cuban meal” and Poetry Session at Adonay´s Visit to Guardalavaca Beach, plus Visit to Banes, the Taino Village Museum and a real farmer´s house Visit to Bayamo, a colonial-looking town, with stopover at Cauto Cristo River Farewell Meeting (Mayabe Lookout)

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NOVEMBER 2019 ENVOY-093 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

pic taken by Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández

Section:

A Word About

A WORD ABOUT CANADIAN POETS

by Miguel Ángel Olivé Iglesias CCLA Cuban President Editor-in-chief of CCLA The Ambassador Assistant Editor of CCLA The Envoy The year 2016 was a landmark – why not say a timemark – in my life: I was introduced to Canada Cuba Literary Alliance (CCLA) Founding President Richard Grove by CCLA Ambassador in Gibara, Jorge Pérez.

From then on I was immersed in an extensive, intense and refreshing exchange with Canadian poets and their craft.

My college studies, Teacher Education English Major, had provided insight of Canada from a bird’s-eyeview cultural-literary approach as part of my curricular pursuits but it fell short of really fanning out for me the wealth, depth, width and prominence of Canadian literature. Richard Grove filled that void with a wonderful host of digital and conventional books coming in from 2016 until today, and also invited

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NOVEMBER 2019 ENVOY-093 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

authors to send their works to me. It turned me into an avid recipient of poetry chiefly, but also prose, essays and research carried out by scholars on outstanding Canadian authors.

His support, along with many other poet friends, was motivation enough to work on and soon publish my book In a Fragile Moment: A Landscape of Canadian Poetry (Hidden Brook Press, 2020), a tribute compilation of thirty-six reviews and essays I wrote about thirty-one Canadian writers. Such a project was immediately supported by Grove, who put love, faith, personal budget, publishing house, and unlimited efforts into seeing it come to fruition. Many other Canadian poets celebrated the idea too.

During the past months, the inflow has gathered spectacular momentum. I have been receiving books from Canadian poets who, encouraged by dear poet friend James Deahl, have generously contributed to my bookshelf, my knowledge of their literary prowess and my further appreciation of Canadian poetdom.

Among the many generalizations I can make out of reading them and all Canadian poets who have entered my life (deep connection to the land; identification with nature and wild life; a rooted sense of belonging to Canadian geography plus social-thought ramifications therefrom; a feeling of proud nationality/nationhood; freshness and versatility in the use of expressive means and images; etc.), some are particularly salient and heart-warming to me: their commitment to family and values – values to champion, besides, what is true and what is moral beyond and above family contexts, and transcend in terms of aesthetics, cognition and axiology to what is loftier and spiritual. In addition are the poets´ reminiscences of childhood and their recollection of friends and friendship.

Both from the very opening dedication pages in their books, poems in general and in-memoriam poems, we are moved by this convergence of leitmotifs which stand the test of time, finely penned and felt by the poets. May this “warm light upon this land and us” (Taken from the title of a poetry book by James Deahl, A Shower of Warm Light Upon this Land and Us, 1993, Moonstone Press. Canada) continue to shine and bless Canadians, Cubans and lit-loving people of good will everywhere.

The A Word About section today features poets I have “met” lately. They kindly sent me their books; I respond with my modest considerations about their poetry. Thank you:

MICHAEL MIROLLA My poet friend James Deahl has been inviting Canadian poets to send their work to me. They have responded with generosity and formidable packages to fill my privileged bookshelf: Ed Woods, Marion Mutala, Elana Wolff (by extension, her dear friend and poet, Malca Litovitz), I. B. Iskov, Michael Mirolla.

In The Envoy 92 we talked about Ed Woods. This time we are pleased to publish poetry by Michael Mirolla. He describes his writings “as a mix of magic, realism, surrealism, speculative fiction and meta-fiction.” After reading and rereading one of his books, Light and Time, I’d describe it as Wow poetry. Entering the book is entering a grid of images, those that may well hand you a key to a post-realm of words and syntax, a semiotic pathfinder that challenged me – and I was hooked! – by. Mirolla does not need formal presentations. He is a well-known author of novels, short stories and poems, co-owner and editor-in-chief of Guernica Editions literary press.

Thank you, Michael, for your poetry and allowing us to publish you!

(Poems taken from Light and Time, Guernica Editions, 2010)

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NOVEMBER 2019 ENVOY-093 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

In the Dark Her face lies beneath a river.

In the half-light, it forms the edges of where I exist.

It rolls smoothly past my mind in search of flowers. In a moment of kisses, it breaks from its cradle, rising through bubbles to greet mine between one breath and the next.

Ice The ice hung heavy in the trees: now bitter angles fall to earth with the thaw.

And giants immovable under glass shake the great tree that dreams the sky.

A moderately definitive way of saying good-bye That mirror I scotch-taped to your forehead no longer reflects me.

I want it back.

Please.

ELANA WOLFF and MALCA LITOVITZ Canadian poet Elana Wolff surprised me from a distance one Friday morning when the postman called out my name: a package from her with seven books and a warm letter! As a privileged soul with my heart leaping out, I chose three poems written by Elana from her book Birdheart, and three more poems written in collaboration with her beloved friend Malca Litovitz, from their book Slow Dancing. It was so hard to leave out other poems, all of which speak decidedly in a voice of artistry and style, of their devotion and love for life, of their joy and constancy above pain. Both are poet-teachers, both poets dedicated to others – unstinting givers who now visit our newsletter and slow-dance for us with their throbbing womanhearts.

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NOVEMBER 2019 ENVOY-093 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

ELANA WOLFF (Poems taken from Birdheart, Guernica Editions, 2001)

Round All the words I sent you are now your words more than mine. Maybe they were your words from the start.

Have you ever heard of getting drunk on paper roses?

Intoxicated by the thought of scent?

Pricked by the tips of stick-on stars?

O subtle sender, we are rounder than a ring.

Birdheart Tenacious as the moss and rocks and water, here I am. In nature such ubiquity is common.

On days like this, heart heavy as a vow, I’d gladly be the yellow finch, pecking at the feeder on the deck.

A birdheart so compact and small, it leaves no room for sorrow.

I Know Too Much I know too much, you say.

Enough for even blackmail, if what I had in mind was treachery.

But what I know is lighter than a speck for me to carry.

And dearer than epiphany to me.

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NOVEMBER 2019 ENVOY-093 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

MALCA LITOVITZ and ELANA WOLFF (Poems taken from Slow Dancing, Guernica Editions, 2008)

Handwritten Letter The same blue fountain pen thirty years later – faded Pandora’s Box. All the incautious gods escaped and made their way on paper.

I closed the letter quickly and shoved it in the bottom drawer.

Hope was left in the pen – a blue future of health and happiness.

Rainbow-maker She placed a rainbow-maker in my window to scatter the light – yellow, disbanded in the den.

Ginger ale sparkled as I took my first magical sip.

I tasted the yellowish rhizome, Later, lemonade, tart on the tongue, refreshes my mind like a prayer: Make me green again, and rosy-pink – a chakra-shimmering heart.

Fill me Stray beauty, clawed up by the sun in the sharp, artful way of the toe of a bird: Find me here and raise me up; I ache to lift and soar.

My body is heavy and weak.

There was a time I was so beautiful you didn’t know how to fill me.

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NOVEMBER 2019 ENVOY-093 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

I. B. ISKOV I am being showered with Canadian poetry and before my eyes is Sapphire Seasons, by I. B. Iskov, a book that she kindly sent to me. Maturely existential and deeply reflective, Iskov addresses her own life in her poetry, her roots, how deep those roots can go and how tall her leaves and flowers can grow into the sun – into the future. I have chosen three pieces that brim with hope, without giving up the veiled/unveiled criticism of ugly truths, as John B. Lee states on the book’s back-cover comment: “… she refuses to shy away from the hard truths…” Iskov molds fresh metaphors that elevate yet do not miss their mark nor forget their down-to-earth duties. Her line “Somewhere / on the other side of sky” in her poem “In the New Year” reveals that hope, that possible re-birth, re-instated in the last stanza when she claims that words – ah, poetry – will be born with the new year. Hope does reside in Iskov, and we can see that in her next poem, “Praying”: “Hope surrounds me…” An intense phrase in the poem is “I want to believe / in institutions; / feel safe amidst broken stars.” The poet has a strong will; she intends to survive, and shares with us one way to do it: “I pray, / remaining close to my faith…” Her poem “Sweet Spring Welcome” is an open, firm position adopted by the poet. She enumerates all that is to be left behind, and ends with a line full of resoluteness and hope, again: “I will expose my icy smile and / welcome spring with a sweet embrace.” Between the lines is a whole fabric of interpretations beyond the natural element described by the poet. This is I. B. Her poetry engages. Read these three poems then go after the book!

(Poems taken from Sapphire Seasons, Aeolus House, 2010)

In the New Year I create possible myths where the sacrificial clouds peek through Somewhere on the other side of sky independent stars merge in soft sunlight paralyzed in my left eye Dust scatters on tarmac Words more composed than I scream to be born in the new year

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NOVEMBER 2019 ENVOY-093 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

Praying A narrow wish on the tip of my tongue divides each time my heart rocks.

Hope surrounds me, like a stole under the hammock heavens – sadness hardens to stone.

I want the clouds to remember the past; heal scars in the sweep of space.

I want to believe in institutions; feel safe amidst broken stars.

I want to believe in light and crowns; in filaments of Mitzvahs.

I pray, remaining close to my faith; muse ancient passages mirrored in English.

Sweet Spring Welcome After howling wolf-winds whip past shivering stars After dark shadows claw the steel horizon After drunken freezing rain pummels my footprints After the chill of murky puddles bathes the barren ground After the trembling moon disappears in the glimmer of morning I will expose my icy smile and welcome spring with a sweet embrace 8

NOVEMBER 2019 ENVOY-093 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

MARION MUTALA Marion Mutala’s book, Ukrainian Daughter’s Dance, arrived home weeks ago. My poet heart quickly picked up a whole world of movement, sound, color in her poetry alongside the deeplyrooted sense of belonging to her traditions, and her will to honor and remember them, floating intensely and wondrously in Marion’s poems. Ukrainian by birth, Canadian by choice, Marion enraptures us with her musical poetry. It is all motion, hues, pain, hope, refuge in nature, close images neatly and sincerely outlined for us. The three poems I chose will show you a poet whose soul is richly gifted and in return it gives us rainbows, winds and snow, depicted with passion and expressive power. The poem “Snow,” for example, is a feat of work in words that reflect the poet’s state of mind and her connection to what she sees, so much so that “Its beauty tricks me / into opening the door / Cold snow.” Enjoy these poems, my friends, as I have.

(Poems taken from Ukrainian Daughter´s Dance, Inanna Publications and Education Inc., 2016)

Rainbow Imagine the rainbow Magnificent colours Subtle, certain tints, like pink hues Moments create soft shades Years blend shadows in space I crave coloured tastes like ice cream, in 1,000 daily flavours Imagine an internal reflection of light Bright, boisterous sensations Coloured jets burst like pop rockets exploding in my mouth A double helix-spiral Yellow, vivid changing auras Today a vibrant boomerang Tomorrow a chameleon I am the rainbow Watch me

Winds Blow How the winds blow Howling Eerie, whistling through windows How the winds blow Bringing Frigid air, mountains of snow “I ain´t going anywhere tonight and maybe even tomorrow” How the north winds blow in Saskatchewan This stormy April night 9

NOVEMBER 2019 ENVOY-093 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

Snow Inside Through the windowpane White, pure, powdery flakes Mesmerizing Magical crystals True essence; glitters and sparkles Its beauty tricks me into opening the door Cold snow

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NOVEMBER 2019 ENVOY-093 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

My homage to end the section is with a personal touch: one of the humble poems I have dedicated to family. Family to help us go on every single day, those for whom we stand and fight and write! I thank John B. Lee and Elana Wolff for their warm comments/suggestions on the poem.

by Miguel Angel Olivé Iglesias

Search In writers block. Ed Woods Words from the start. Elana Wolff All night I sought for words. Their charm to prompt me their shape to grant passage into realms of poetry. All night, my wife asleep beside me – the pause of the righteous – next door my stepdaughter and my one-year-old step-granddaughter gently breathe – the repose of the innocent – on the other side of Holguín my daughter rests too in dreams of castles, heroes, fairytales… a smile upon her lips peaceful sigh.

All night I have searched for these very words.

Angels watch over them lighting stars beneath their sleep-closed eyes to bless our home our lives.

These words I found.

The right ones the best ones.

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NOVEMBER 2019 ENVOY-093 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

POETS WHO VISIT US REGULARLY John B. Lee’s writing gift has made him a recipient of as many awards as it is humanly possible.

He has tirelessly crafted piece after piece in his long, prolific career. He has written nearly about everything with unique perspective and style. He has memorialized his travelling experiences in books about his own and other countries. As well, Lee´s contribution and adherence to the longstanding tradition of celebrating nature – awesome, edifying, unavoidably present, whether we see it or not, whether we want to see it or not, is transcendental. Canada´s formidable scenery owes to poets as much as they owe to its being so glorious: an all‐embracing foundry of beauty and spiritual growth. Lee also celebrates life and turns his language and his style into forging tools leaving us with such poems. No better insight into Lee than my closing quotation: “… a true idiosyncrasy of style is the result of an author´s success in compelling language to conform to his… experience.” Lee´s grace has notably achieved that.

His poem “My Love is Like an All-Day Rain” is one of the many he has sent to me during our email exchanges along with his permission to publish them. It invites the reader to the unique experience of love from an in-depth look at nature in a sustained orchestration of similes and metaphors. Lee eases us into the natural world, the coupling of rain and soil and the chain of unfolding events, revealing the magic of what otherwise might seem like ordinary. The perspective he reveals for us is sweetly magnificent. Amidst this explosion of images capitalizing on the wonders of nature, Lee allows us to anticipate a sensuousness that blossoms – to honor the poet’s chord – in the end-lines: “but keep this rain in mind, my love / these ethers gauzed in grey / were / once the amorous continuum of weather / caught within the petals of your crimson rose.” I have read the poem several times, each taking me nearer to a heaven-on-earth state, each uncovering a fresh path. Thank you, John, for this gift you share with us.

pic taken and edited by Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández

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NOVEMBER 2019 ENVOY-093 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

My Love is Like an All-Day Rain

By John B. Lee my love is like an all-day rain that seeps into the earth and greens the lawn then soaks the humus in the root to feel the world in growth it pools on paths and beads on branches jeweled with shining tears of light the upturned leaf in thirst will drink the welling sky and dampened colours darken as they blush in deeper shades as though from phantom hearts and quickened pulses of reciprocated liquid touch the trace lines of a rivulet on glass become a clear caress meandering in aqueous response to an overburdening descent see where water enters at these healing seams of clay how close that voice to whispering insentient alluvium alive with seed the fracturing creation of fecundities of loam the ditches swell and streams come cooler to the lake from where they’ve met in cloud-sourced hills to where they lose their names I know the night will come as invitation to tomorrow’s sun bring on blue heaven and her vanquished stars her ever-present often absent moon but keep this rain in mind, my love these ethers gauzed in grey were once the amorous continuum of weather caught within the petals of your crimson rose 13

NOVEMBER 2019 ENVOY-093 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

Alina González Serrano Alina González Serrano is a poet featured in the ebook, soon to come out, These Voices Beating in our Hearts: Poems from the Valley, with SandCrab Books. The poem “Singing to the Wind” appears in that collection. Alina wrote poetry for the first time while attending a CCLA Workshop in Gibara in 2017. I quickly realized there was a naïve, fresh, open simplicity in the poems of an evidently family-loving woman, whose poetry was starting to flow like a shy-water stream. Her themes go to joy, gratefulness, endless struggle for life and hope, with a latent religiousness about them that makes her pieces more evocative. She also speaks of her desires and passions, the most emotional ones being about family.

Singing to the Wind In times of trouble I sing to the wind, my husband smiles and looks at me he knows something worries me.

Then the sun rises in our hearts and bad things go away leaving room to joy.

In times of trouble we must sing out loud and smile; then all that is bad will leave our hearts.

James Deahl James Deahl, our prolific poet friend, regales us with artistry at its best. James writes with a style that envelops and snuggles warmly, even when winter is the subject. The first poem is a harmony of cityscape and natural scenery, superbly, sensually blended by James to sing to his beloved Sarnia, suspended in a symphony of blue pulses, evening falling, a girl’s open blouse, a skein of lights, sky, night’s river and starlight giving us a cozy feeling of home, sweet home. The second poem is the poet’s sharp eye capturing beauty in winter and trees. Still connected to the human reference in the poem, James grants the leading role to the quinces´ warmth that “spreads through January’s cold.” He portrays the bright side of things with picturesque expression, this is a writer, who will be our Guest Poet, together with Norma West Linder, in the 16th volume of The Ambassador, the CCLA magazine.

(Poems taken from Travelling the Lost Highway, Guernica Editions, 2019) 14

NOVEMBER 2019 ENVOY-093 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

Sarnia By Starlight Vernal Equinox A slow, blue pulse from cold water.

Call and response of smoke and wind as evening falls.

Must every object that summons desire be beautiful?

An ashplants That girl’s open blouse?

Each feather of the crow tells a story: the lingering fragrance in tangled sheets of black roses.

From the U.S. side Sarnia’s adorned by a skein of lights strung between sky and night’s river.

Starlight enters with ancient airs like a bride, the music dancing on her shy lips.

Quince-bush In Winter A slight snowfall crowns the goldenrod and outlines every purple arc of the raspberries I fed on short months ago.

My neighbour’s quinces have all put on white caps.

She never harvests her quinces so they hang all winter, orange globes lighting my mornings as the sun begins to rise.

She could make chutney, or a sharp jam; instead the fruit shrivels as winter passes and falls, rotten in the spring.

But today, in the new snow, their warmth spreads through January’s cold.

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NOVEMBER 2019 ENVOY-093 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

Norma West Linder A poet to the core who will share with James Deahl the Guest Poets´ section in our next The Ambassador, volume 16, Norma West Linder, wrote these two poems with a deep sigh of lyricism. As in James Deahl´s style, where loss also pulsates, she is able to intertwine love, pain, natural images to create the perfect setting. The beauty of the poem “Total Eclipse” lies in foreplay, lovemaking, afterlove. It is a shifting that honors the title: from “sunshine” to “silver night” to “waning moon” to “no light at all.” The first three stanzas are a “we;” the last one a “you”: from togetherness to solitude. The last stanza might sound sad to some in a first read, yet when I read it again and again comparing it to the previous ones, along with sadness an underlying message of pleasure surfaces: they burned all that light when they were together! In the poem “Maria” the stanzas oppose the ruptured significance of the woman´s experience. “She used to love long shadows” but “the shadows frighten her,” because “now he is gone,” the loss of meaning of the “green late afternoon,” and “five o´clock means nothing” are reflections of the poet´s state of mind.

(Poems taken from Adder´s-tongues, Aeolus House, 2012)

Total Eclipse The day was washed with sunshine when we met the silver night sent starshine when we touched the waning moon waxed golden when we loved there was no light left burning when you left

Maria She used to love long shadows on the lawn black velvet on the green late afternoon Now he is gone the shadows frighten her and five o’clock means nothing 16

NOVEMBER 2019 ENVOY-093 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

With us now, Tai, our CCLA Prez, every inch a poet. He captures the world´s everydayness, eternalizing it for us and for those to come. His visit to China yielded poetry and experience, the universe leaning softly onto his sheet of paper, gently guiding his pen in a poem that echoes “… a gentle whisper of harmony…”

A silent echo heard

By Richard M. Grove From our hotel window we can see a small group gathered in a willow-draped park in slow motion doing Tai Chi. Fifteen or more filling the early morning, swaying in unison, a gentle whisper of harmony ripples across the mist covered lake into the universe.

AUTUMN

by Paul Corman It rains all afternoon and into the evening. I throw a raincoat over a sweater and take the dogs to the park for a walk. They splash and play in the pools of water that form in grassy depressions.

When it starts to rain hard I take shelter under the gazebo. The trees in the park have all changed colour. Some flame with reds and soothing orange. Others stand naked and ready for sleep.

Out on the street, cars splash by throwing waves against the curb. They melt back onto the road and run fiercely along the gutter searching for escape.

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NOVEMBER 2019 ENVOY-093 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

AUTUMN

pic taken and edited by Paul Corman 18

NOVEMBER 2019 ENVOY-093 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

Dear The Envoy readers, We close The Envoy´s poetry-blessed pages to make room for a blessing of prose. Please meet our youngest CCLA member-to-be, Amanda!

Amanda de la Caridad Olivé Finalés (Photo taken by her father)

Amanda is taking her baby steps in creative writing encouraged by her father, our Assistant Editor, Miguel Ángel Olivé Iglesias. He wanted to introduce her “officially”: An introduction to the short story The Blue-Eyed Boy written by Amanda de la Caridad Olivé Finalés, by The Envoy Assistant Editor Miguel Ángel Olivé Iglesias

A Blue-Eyed Story of Many Colors A fourteen-year old, ninth-grade student from Holguín, Cuba, wrote a short story for fun. While still enjoying the writing act, she is not fully aware she might be a writer in the raw, one I modestly discern – or proudly/eagerly wish she were, because that girl is my daughter! – in my experience as a reader/writer myself for more than forty years.

She has been on and off creative writing during her free time. From a movie saga she loves, Descendants (1, 2, 3), a popular Disney production, she is currently trying to carve out a fourth one to honor the tragic death of one of the stars, Cameron Boyce. She argues it is true one of 19

NOVEMBER 2019 ENVOY-093 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

the main characters sadly died, but those still on ought to continue doing what he liked best: acting and giving the public Descendants 4.

Amidst her “busy writing streak” she wrote, in one sit, The Blue-eyed Boy. I was happy to translate it and willing to publish it – with her permission! The plot is very simple; however, well-knit and easy-to-read. What impresses me mostly is that I have never mentored her, nor has she taken any courses, yet she naturally handles text (dialogue and narration) structure and format with ease, does not lose sight of where she is headed to with her story, and exploits, all by her self, language and syntax tools, even humor, suspense and “ruses” to engage the reader, I what I deem as a flowing style.

In addition, I see a multi-layered text metaphorically/symbolically speaking, out of which different interpretations are called for. Without relinquishing the graceful touch of blending fantasy and reality, a teenage feature, the young writer addresses human predicaments, their interests, aspirations, dreams – and the determination to take chances in the name of happiness, so underrated sometimes.

The character, a lonely, sad girl (nothing to do with the author), finds an escape route – a mental/physical exit – most people would want to have: a 180 degree jump in terms of context and distance to be happy. And to that purpose, the character embraces a new life she always fantasized with, without giving it second thoughts. As the story unfolds, I pick romantic influences from another series with which the author deeply identifies, Once Upon a Time.

Whether the story is just a nice, imaginative love story set in the North Pole – written by a naïve, budding writer – or not, is a thing of further debate; and a preliminary approach to it. What the story could be about, in my modest view, can be laid down as: the search for happiness, the will to change, the irrelevance of material things superseded by more substantial possessions at a spiritual level, by peace and values no sun or beach can necessarily grant, and the right to dream and pursue one’s dreams until they come true! Here the author’s welcome input to her work in contrasting dull beach warmth of the character’s previous life against revitalizing, inother-higher-ways-warmer scenario and prospects of a new life.

I remember reading years ago Tina Turner’s autobiography. She said that when we are not happy with the life we have, we must change it. This is what the character did in the story. The author might not be conscious – might even disagree with some of my emotionally-tainted opinions! – of such rainbow of notions underlying her modest story. Therefore, I only invite you to go to the North Pole. Upon returning – if you do! – please let me know what colors you saw.

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NOVEMBER 2019 ENVOY-093 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

Pic taken by Amanda and her father (selfie)

Short story THE BLUE-EYED BOY

by Amanda de la Caridad Olivé Finalés Hey! – I hear a voice – Wake up! – It says.

I slowly open my eyes but I don’t see the bright, warm sun I’m used to. Instead, it is shrouded and grey; and the figure standing before me does not look – how can I put it? – the way I’m used to either (undershirt, flip-flops, sun glasses). No, this person is wearing a big white coat covering even his face.

Are you ok? – He asks me, looking more like a bear than a human.

No, I’m not ok – I reply looking sideways – Where am I? This is the North Pole – He says nonchalantly, and leaves laughing at my “silly” question.

I start walking and all I see ahead of me is snow and more snow and Wow! a real Polar bear – WHAT IS GOING ON HERE? Yesterday I was a girl feeling lonely and detached from the rest of the world. Today I am in this frozen paradise. I don’t get it… Here comes the Eskimo boy with a glass of hot chocolate.

You’re so funny – He adds as he offers the glass to me (I drink it, as I am really cold).

What’s your name? – I ask him trying to spook thoughts away.

What’s your name? – He replies ironically.

I feel like I know him from somewhere, but I can’t remember. Anyway, I am in a desolate, cold place with this strange blue-eyed boy; however, I prefer this to my previous life: I lived alone (at least that’s what I think, right now I am not sure of anything), didn’t have any friends and I had

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NOVEMBER 2019 ENVOY-093 – EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

always wanted to live in a place with perennial snowfall and starry nights (not everything is perfect).

The blue-eyed boy’s name is Luke, and he has spoken about a lot of things I am embarrassed to say I did not listen to.

I think I need some fresh air – I say, stepping away from him… …

Yes, it’s been two years since this happened and I don’t know yet how I ended up in the North Pole; what I can say indeed is that I don’t want to know anymore. I married the blue-eyed boy and we live happily in an igloo. I may have lost my previous life, but I like the happy igloo girl more than the lonesome girl with no beach friends. If there’s something I learned from this whole Polar bear situation… it definitely is that dreams do come true…

Emails: joyph@nauta.cu joyphccla@gmail.com

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