The Envoy #106 – The official newsletter of the CCLA – Canada Cuba Literary Alliance.

THE ENVOY The official newsletter of the

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

January 2021

Issue 106

www.CanadaCubaLiteraryAlliance.org

photo taken and edited by Jorge Alberto Page 1

JANUARY 2021 ISSUE 106 –EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

A WORD ABOUT Canadian Poet Antony Di Nardo Miguel Ángel Olivé Iglesias Author, Poet, Editor, Reviewer The Envoy Assistant Editor Di Nardo came to Cuba in January 2020 and stayed for a month. He and his wife, Ann, were so delighted that they made plans to return January 2021. Unfortunately, COVID dictated differently so now they will have to wait until 2022.

Yet his poetry has been flowing nonstop. I have written about it and presented it in previous Envoy newsletters, in The Ambassador mags and in essays I have published with Hidden Brook Press. You can read more of his poetry in the upcoming books Gone/Missing, The Divinity of Blue and Flying in the Wings of Poetry (Hidden Brook Press and SandCrab Books).

He and Ann fell in love with Gibara, a dreamy town northeast of Holguín province where they spent wonderful days. One of his muses for writing was the mesmeric Gibara sea but his inspiration does not wane back in Canada, where he writes superb pieces like the one we are presenting today. His poetry is intimate, descriptive to the point of making the reader neatly see and vividly feel what he narrates. He makes us relate to the images and hold on to the sensations he carves, the seafaring emotions he ignites in us. Enjoy this poem as much as I did the first time I read it. As he tells us in the first line, we might have meant to turn our eyes away from the visuality he displays but we could not: it is enrapturing, as the sea waves.

The last five lines give us something to remember. A Kodak view, the perfect proposal of sight, sound, hearing, spirituality, inviting us to enter the mystic seascape he paints, then close our eyes and blend into the Zen paths the poet has masterfully opened for us.

Sea

Antony Di Nardo

I meant to turn my eyes away— I had just had them checked— My vision needs a slight correction If I look into an optician’s crystal ball or at A pair of seagulls tearing into a salmon’s flesh, Fresh carcass strewn on a pebble beach Among another crop of algae from the past.

One gull stammering, complaining, Crying out that he’s been born, In syllables of hunger and desperation, The prize denied The sea of Lake Ontario had set for them.

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JANUARY 2021 ISSUE 106 –EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

A fattened salmon, A sift of sand to lightly coat the skin, The soft felt of sage and algae on the shore Stretching the wide web Of patient feet, patient beak.

And further along the beach I see corrected A shrunken carcass, a salmon skull, Reminder of remains After a lifetime of feeding when A turkey vulture cloaked in feathers and attitude Descends in Batman black— One of us with un-satiated curiosity, The other, hunger, food, feast, famine, Another full-time facet of the sea.

Across the isthmus of human habitation, A sandy shore Where pearls of broken shells define the beach, The seagulls there fat and gathering, And I, with a slight adjustment of My yet-to-be corrected eyes, See an open-air concert, the seagulls’ Zen, In lax repose, totally zoned-in and symmetrically Aligned to face easterly into the sun, A cult of the sea, stunned and still, listening To the rapture of the waves.

photo taken and edited by Jorge Alberto Page 3

JANUARY 2021 ISSUE 106 –EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

WORD SMITHING

by Lisa Makarchuk

a writer’s hell is a dry spell nothing to tell ideas won’t gel. sweating brackish blood through cliched phrases searing hackneyed trivia annoying in their banality panning for expressive gems in a sea of literary glut expropriating baubles of phrases to germinate into handiwork to make someone tremble in anticipation, to assault the senses, to nurture with morsels of wordage to delight in insight to contemplate, to find an essence of reality powering engines of discourse.

… and yet behind closed eyes I see him still waiting on the hilltop at the end of day …

by John B. Lee our farm dog Tip would come wilding up out of the ditch when cars came interloping along the road from the village a mile away to the east and it seemed there was no way of curing him of that need he had though he’d be struck

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JANUARY 2021 ISSUE 106 –EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

and sent tumbling like mud from the wheel you’d see him from the hilltop sometimes coming home half-broken kicking up land little whirls of dust in his wake like a visible twist in the breath of weather and it was loving him that made me lock him up as you might a wayward child it was love that made me wish he weren’t wolf dreaming and moonlit I want an ancient fire to keep him close but memory is a long-roped sorrow and earth burns what is sky lost with the shadow vanish of autumn and the smouldering shade that stinks of darkness in the slow extinguishment of scorched rain

An Elegy for the Barns at Leeland Farms

by John B. Lee how voluptuous are the whitewashed field stones of the foundations of the big barn like the round hips of full-bodied women working the earth in a garden chalked in lime Page 5

JANUARY 2021 ISSUE 106 –EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

that almost remembering of the frost float of the field at the fences remembering all the way we sometimes remember the cold rising up from the snow like horse breath those stones to be heaved to a boat and brought here as an old heaviness of a sorrowful heart might sob into place carrying life in a mournful breast and then to be set there for the dry-wall mason’s expert approval at the hitching away of a vanishing view to stay there then a hundred years in the oak-beam darkness until with a final subsidence time slid down in a sandy scree and the gravel sank in at the shoulders like a grave in an untended yard O look to the hill where the ghost of those buildings calls out to the blue-raftered moon there’s a dog at a kind man’s fire with a wolf in his dream running slow

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JANUARY 2021 ISSUE 106 –EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

photo taken and edited by Jorge Alberto

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JANUARY 2021 ISSUE 106 –EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

La Habana

“The Old City”, Havana, Cuba

by K.V.Skene

Overwhelmed by crowded, cobbled streets and a crumbling kaleidoscope of baroque/ neoclassical architecture we barely notice time shortcut a long laneway, encircle a cul-de-sac, switch back corners and kerbs, climb Havana University’s massive stone steps, gaze up and down and around the fountain in Plaza Vieja, tagalong a strolling salsa band to Café Brown, drop in, then out at Plaza de Armas’ green and shady plots … Dreams are what we’re made of, memories are who we are and today we lived our last holiday in Cuba-time.

Following the Malecón

Havana, Cuba, 2020

by K.V.Skene

Rain all night and the city smells of ozone and salt while thunder growls, prowls and lightning’s prehensile claws slashes sky and a cold wind blows away old dreams. Today, under rain-rinsed clouds, we follow the almost deserted Malecón as waves break over a sea wall built to outlast us, as it outlasted the twentieth century, wars, revolution, hurricanes …

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JANUARY 2021 ISSUE 106 –EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

and we are dodging salt spray, navigating clumps of slippery seaweed littering the pitted concrete as pale-morning sunlight caresses the facades of once-magnificent buildings, stately homes imparting a once-upon-a-time romanticism, to that not-so-long-ago Havana we yearn for as we stumble, hang on to each other.

And your hand is still strong, I hold on let the Malecón take us however – wherever our future lies. Here there are hauntings, ghost whisperers lurking behind blind windows. bolted doors and we’ll never know their names only those we have brought with us, those we cannot walk away from.

Necrópolis

for Allyson and Martin

by K.V.Skene Almost pilgrims, almost voyeurs, we pass through the byzantine Door of Peace, replete with theological sculptures, bas-reliefs and stroll Avenida Cristóbal Colon in serious silence as an angel sanctifies the tall firefighters mausoleum and, crowned by the Ascending Holy Heart, the pyramidal Falle-Bonet chapel awaits by the pseudo-renaissance palace of Sociedad Asturiana de Beneficencia still under the protection of the Covadonga Virgin …

Marble and granite, wrought iron and bronze speak softly while time struggles against our fatuous forgetting, tells stories as sweet and solemn as church bells at dawn whispers ancient legends, tall-tales of long ago Page 9

JANUARY 2021 ISSUE 106 –EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

and faraway grass grows greener over memories as death enhances stained-glass heresies and rumours of hate, hostility, heroism, love, loss and martyrdom turns to myth. Pensively we circle the graves of La Habana, mindful of the everlastingness enclosed – but surely their dead will forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them theirs.

Havana Cat

Ave. de Los Presidentes. Havana

by K.V.Skene She’s a cat’s cat an autocrat pre-empting Hotel Presidente’s terrace uncurling at dawn with an over-the-top yawn this makeover tabby takes over the sunniest spot most unladylike lair usurps under-the-table legs to share where that out-of-place chair’s unseated and whose ankles to nudge lazybones to budge shove shift stir unlatch a window go open a door let the day in let time begin tick tick tick tick until Cat outstretches/infolds her claws her universe as it is is as it should be and hightailing round the corner and down the stairs she’s out of sight till twilight

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JANUARY 2021 ISSUE 106 –EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

photo taken and edited by Jorge Alberto

The Chinese Man

by Laurence Hutchman

In the afternoon the old Chinese man kneels in a garden.

The sunlight flickers— a golden tapestry on the red wall.

Jazz from an old film echoes; a broken leaf falls.

He feels for a single nail, sets it on the wood, hammers straight as thought.

Resolute he is, the golden tapestry on the red wall.

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JANUARY 2021 ISSUE 106 –EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

Fox Playing in an Early Twilight

by Laurence Hutchman

He was suddenly here gnawing on a green apple, trying trying to get his teeth into its skin.

The apple rolled away, bounced through the grass as he jumped, seeking to control it, a cat chasing a ball of thread, leaping through the air.

He was moving toward us giving up and letting the apple nestle in the grey dusk’s grass.

This cagey hunter stirring the dust, snapping at crickets caught us in his play.

The Shell

by Laurence Hutchman

You look out at me from brown eyes like an orphan. On your skin were Japanese characters or Arabic script. Now I place you in my palm, shell, sea snail. I feel you smooth as porcelain.

You are round, firm as a breast. I feel the curve of your upper ribs where you are flecked with sand pigment from the beaches where you have lain. When I turn you over you are the shape of a tiger fish. Yet, rubbing my fingers, as over braille, ribs become keys. I hear distant music when my father, long ago on a beach in Port Rush, lifted you to my ear to hear the sea gurgle and swim within your body.

And now, I am shocked, deafened and blinded by the ego of my shell. There is no sea now.

I’m addressing an absence: it is not you, only myself talking. This is your marble grave. As I look within, I see what form you might have taken. I feel your softer brown-moist body, like my own, inside this carapace of being.

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JANUARY 2021 ISSUE 106 –EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

You are not there, only the structure of your form. I feel you in the currents, swimming among the gaudy flowers; the turbid underwater forest your species. I hear the music and taste the delicious brine, luminous, green transparent light falling from upper water—and I am loose and free as your cousin jellyfish, no longer aware of my shell, but moving through the sea so long ago.

You are not Yorick’s skull in Hamlet’s hand. Now you are the creature within me.

Published in Reading the Water, Black Moss Press, 2008 Swimming Toward the Sun Collected Poems: 1968-2020, Guernica Editions, 2020

photo taken and edited by Jorge Alberto

A WORD ABOUT Gail Murray: Holding a Handful of her Poems Miguel Ángel Olivé Iglesias Author, Poet, Editor, Reviewer The Envoy Assistant Editor Today we present you Canadian poet Gail M. Murray. She has a B.A. and a B.Ed. and was an English teacher and teacher-librarian. After retiring, she now has become a free-lance writer.

Like Keats, she seeks to capture the essence of the moment. Gail’s writing is a response to her natural and emotional environment. Her poems have been published in Written Tenfold, Blank Spaces, Wordscape, Arborealis, The Banister, and on CommuterLit.com. Her creative non-fiction has appeared in the Globe and Mail, Trellis, Heartbeats, Renaissance, The Ontario Gardener, NOW Magazine, Blank Spaces, Just Words Volume 2, Stony Bridges, Ottawa Review Page 13

JANUARY 2021 ISSUE 106 –EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

of Books, Historical Fiction Magazine, Our Canada, More of Our Canada and Our Canada, Our Country, Our Stories. She is Writer, Poet, Book Reviewer.

Won over by beauty and the lure of words, her style remains captivatingly simple. Almost any line from her poems can be copied and pasted as an epigram: such is the compactness she achieves. From her piece “Poetry” we can pick “a way of seeing within, responding without” or “beyond this world / of clocks and appointments / simple, true beauty exists.”

Simplicity goes beyond semantics; it enters the poems’ sinews, takes hold of them and returns in fresh, brief stanzas, a happy reminder of Emily Dickinson. Sentences are short, direct within the rich interplay of metaphors.

Themes skip and vary, as much as life skips and varies--from the elegant definition of poetry to evocations of champagne, sparkling in the reader´s eyes in the poem “Romance.” Therefrom emanate the great questions about love in “Romantics” and the endless quest for perfection sketched in the poem. Economy in syntax, concise enumeration as an effective expressive means contribute to the sensations we feel.

Then, the refreshing turn to nature, beauty vibrating in Murray´s “Beach Time” that she shares with us, “lines of blue on blue / hard sand ripples beneath my toes…” Here Murray toys with the senses (sight, touch), capitalizing on the beauty of the monarch: “migrating monarchs fly low / mineral boost from the wet sand / on their long journey” No period after “journey,” as if to insist on duration.

Sweetly delivered poetry in the “wings of angels” is what we feel in “Poet.” Notions approached by many other poets, likening writing poems to painting, are portrayed by Murray in this piece. Filled with tropes, she defines the role of poets, exquisitely put in the last lines: “a poet is destined to create / poems / delivered on the wings of angels.”

“Valentine Promise” is soft and inviting, intimate and provocative. The narrative leads the reader through the experience with key cues, “my martini bright red,” “bodies touching,” “we come alive,” “your pelvic rhythmic,” “you lead I follow,” “the vodka hitting me,” “next morning the bond is gentle” and “we sip tea under the sheets.” The poem´s mood cascades into a laststanza dénouement, last line: “as sunlight fills the room.” It spells ecstasy.

This is Gail Murray to me. She is an acute observer of nature, of social convention, of life. She sails swiftly across the events that prompt her to write and we partake in her will to pass on to us that “intuitive knowledge” she told us about in “Poetry.”

Let´s enjoy six of her poems: Romantics Romantics flit about butterflies afraid to settle seek that great love in love with love

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JANUARY 2021 ISSUE 106 –EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

illusion of perfection beginnings, excitement, promise Do they miss out on being loved?

Poetry a pure response to the world created in the heart filtered through imagination edited by intellect a way of seeing within, responding without home for dreams and reveries close-up lens with muted filter, refined focus intuitive knowledge that beyond this world of clocks and appointments simple, true beauty exists.

Romance Romance an illusion sparkles like champagne gives a high goes flat elation foiled hangover getting over.

Beach Time shining water and sky lines of blue on blue hard sand ripples beneath my toes sun beats down and gentle breezes cool migrating monarchs fly low mineral boost from the wet sand on their long journey

Valentine Promise It’s Valentine’s Day my martini bright red sophisticated just a touch dangerous.

At the Prince amid rattan and plush couches we sip cocktails bodies touching.

On the dance floor Page 15

JANUARY 2021 ISSUE 106 –EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

we come alive your reflection in the glass lithe sultry hot and free you mirror the music your pelvis rhythmic in tune with the Latin and reggae beats You lead I follow.

The vodka hitting me I lean against your shoulder close my eyes and trust we move as one synchronized passion fuelled by the heat of the music.

Next morning the bond is gentle we sip tea content under the sheets as sunlight fills the room.

On Writing Be still the words are there they’ll write themselves it’s knowing what to leave out Writing is not the end but a beginning tapping into something greater A bridge to eternity.

photo taken and edited by Jorge Alberto Page 16

JANUARY 2021 ISSUE 106 –EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

WHITE LILIES (continued from The Envoy 105)

by Miguel Ángel Olivé Iglesias PART 2 What – who – he saw reminded him of the poet, “She walks in beauty like the night of cloudless skies and starry skies and all that´s best of dark and bright meets in her aspect and her eye.” A ravishing woman stood before him. Tall, slender, with blue, piercing eyes and long wavy hair. She was wearing a long dress, a bit passé, tight but apparently comfortable showing stunning curves, vaporous – like dust suspended and rising up the walls when he entered!

She smiled and spoke, “Well, someone finally dares trespass and come up here.” Durrel was speechless. “Who are you and what gave you the fortitude to get this far?”

Somehow, Durrel did not perceive menace in her words. He kept his head together, or tried to, and replied, “My name is Durrel Patson. I am a writer and a poet. I found this place on the Web” – “The Web?” she interrupted – “Is that an accommodation agency?”

Durrel was taken aback. A red flag flapped noisily in his brain. Oh! he thought, Oh!, his brain echoed, and a b/w picture flashed back to him – “Oh, God, you´re that woman!” he shrieked.

He stuttered, “I-I saw your pic-picture on the Web! – er… the Web is a search system, er… hard to explain now… you were dead!” He could not believe his own words. She smiled once more and approached him.

Durell could not avoid cringeing and shuffling backwards. She noticed his move and mumbled persuasively, “Don´t worry, Mr. Patson. I am not exactly a ghost.”

“Exactly a ghost?!” parroted Durrel being emphatic on the word exactly. He gulped down, pondered, let rationality take over and said, “Madam, you are one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen. You´re young, fresh; pardon me, attractive. According to what I read you supposedly died seventy years ago… Care to explain how exactly that works?”

Her face reddened, visibly flattered. He eyes mellowed and shone a divine blue about to melt Durrel. She laughed, ladylike, sat down and gestured him to sit. “Care to listen? Have you got the time and been sufficiently piqued by curiosity to do so?”

Deep down, Durrel sensed he had nothing to lose, except his life, perhaps?! He had told the broker he would be exploring the house for thirty minutes. He glanced at his watch. It had stopped. Yet, spending the remaining time with a woman like this was more than stimulating to him as a mystery writer, as a poet – and, unquestionably, as a man. “Please, I am all ears.”

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JANUARY 2021 ISSUE 106 –EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

“You will need to have an open mind, Mr. Patson. I am alive because I have inhabited a temporal bubble, so to speak, inside this house. Due to phenomena undisclosed to me, time does not flow in here, nor will it as long as we stay indoors… My late husband was a scientist…”

“Come on…” started Durrel – “Open mind, Mr. Patson, please,” she pleaded.

“I am awfully sorry,” Durrel heard himself apologizing, “Proceed, please.”

“You have just checked your watch. Is it ok?”

“No,” he replied, an eerie butterfly-like something fluttered in his stomach.

“There you have it,” she smiled. Her smile was undeniably winning, captivating, sincere…

“And you´ve absolutely not grown any older since you walked in.” Now Durrel felt his spine frost. Could it be…? She caught his train of thought, “Why are you here?”

“I want… wanted… er… I saw the site on the Web, you know, the house on sale – and your picture… dead…”

“Ah, dead,” she giggled, “That wasn´t I. That was someone else; and I did not kill anyone, Mr. Patson, so please don´t give me that scared face! My only sin is using my sister to save my own life.” She waited, then continued, “That was my identical twin. Unfortunately, she did leave our home once. Upon returning, she had a heart attack. It was so devastatingly sad, you know.

They say identical twins have profound affective bonds for life, but it was also a sign that I could remain hidden and safe from the world – and death. I staged it all. The police came, realized she had died of natural causes, took her and sealed the house for future sales arrangements, I guess, that have been continuing for decades...”

“I haven´t asked your name, lady…” Durrel prompted.

“Lily White, a pleasure to meet you…”

Durrel rose to his feet, “The white lilies in the garden!!! They are withering but alive because your halo nurses them!!! – because that is you, your name!!!” Durrel was beyond reasoning, carried away by a string of discoveries, one after another.

“Yes, my lilies…” She changed the subject. “Do you publish? Would you tell me a few lines from one of your poems?” she entreated. “I have occasionally written poetry too, amateurishly, of course. I am a huge follower of the classics, Lord Byron…”

“Byron!” repeated Durrel. “Mrs. White, when I entered this room and saw you, Byron´s ´She Walks in Beauty´ floated through my mind…” Durrel took a long breath. Who was this impressive woman? A kindred spirit God had sent him? “Ok, here´s one. I titled it ‘When They Met.’ ” Page 18

JANUARY 2021 ISSUE 106 –EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

“So auspicious, isn´t it,” she shared.

“Indeed,” he trembled at the notion, and quoted the poem by heart, his look courteously crossing hers: “When they met she filled a space in him longing to be filled eased his pain warm kiss loving whispers to conquer what claimed to be conquered.

Then he opened his book of poems read for her about serene sunrises in a woman’s irises sang to her about promising afterglows and her eyes blinked and set light to the nightfall.”

“Oh…” she leaned closer, “It is lovely! It is absolutely perfect… May I be straightforwardly honest, Durrel?”

She had shifted, to Durrel´s obvious delight, to a first-name basis. “When I saw you, lines from the “Song of Songs” appeared in my mind and my lips.” She blushed, “My beloved is to me a sachet of myrrh resting between my breasts. My beloved is to me a cluster of henna blossoms from the vineyards of En Gedi.”

Durrel´s eyes fought back tears. He cited, “Song of Songs 1:13 and 1:14…”

“Yes,” she murmured. A sacred, defining, promising silence enveloped them. She broke it, “Recite to me more poems, please.”

Durrel could not believe she was interested. “This one´s titled “Poems for You” – auspicious was the word you used, right?” he said. She beamed and he continued.

“I want to reshape the rebel threads of my time mold them, spool them around your own threads, love you faithfully for your offer to share your life with me during the eternity of each and every blink of your eyelashes.

I want to linger there, steal Page 19

JANUARY 2021 ISSUE 106 –EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

– gently – the color of your eyes and hide it, a treasure, in my coffer of words: poems for you.”

She was on the verge of fainting caught in the pleasure of listening. “I have no words to describe how you make me feel after all these years…”

“Well,” said Durrel, “your no-word eloquent sentience is reward enough! Thank you…”

“One more, please, and I promise that´ll be my last request! You have to go and important decisions to make…” Her pleas were honey to Durrel´s ears. He could be quoting poems to her for an eternity… He pleased her. “Here´s more poems, Mrs. White…”

“Lily, please,” she countered.

“Ok, Lily,” he said, “this one is “Fortune”: “Upon you tend the loftiness of the sea and the inexhaustible thrust of salt and water breaking against me, the vulnerable shore, expansive, wet, eager to clash with your seafaring foams.

Upon us tends the elliptical trajectory of the planets aligning auspiciously to build a shelter for you and me to leave an imprint of two people amidst black holes and nascent stars.

We dance with the universe, fortune of a few: you and I the chosen ones.”

Mrs. White´s lips parted, her eyes wet with tenderness.

Durrel continued with “Somewhere”: “She holds seeds of pleasure in her hands scatters them on my skin gently softly humming so they grow cosmic towards a sun

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JANUARY 2021 ISSUE 106 –EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

somewhere in her galaxy.

She keeps secrets in her eyes spills them in my ears sweetly groaning playfully so I spin faithful into her orbit somewhere in her anatomy.

She bleeds desires honed in her lips shoots them into my arteries eagerly unbridled, surrendering/commanding so I live and die willingly under her spell somewhere between my years of ended innocence and my grave…”

And with “Plea”: “I want to have this more often, being with you the warmth of your kiss.

I need the feel of you always on my flesh the ever-growing sense of company to reach the light together or simply be together.

I want this, please, the overwhelming complexity of life made simple thru your sieve, darkness made stars in your irises.

I need all that.

Please tell me what you need.”

Mrs. White quivered and gasped. “I am overwhelmed.”

Durrel managed to reply another “Thank you.”

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JANUARY 2021 ISSUE 106 –EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

They looked at each other, minds clicking, souls bonding. Unexpectedly, she arched her eyebrows. “So, what are you going to do? Will you buy the house with me in it or,” she jokingly winked, “are you going to kill me?” (to be continued in The Envoy 107)

VIENTO de Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández Viento... Viento veleidoso!

Tan pronto arrulla apacible como ruge enfurecido. Él sabe hacerse brisa para acariciar sensual y volverse huracán para azotar despiadado.

Hoy, viento caprichoso, he seguido tu ruta, lejos de la prosa asfáltica de mi leprosa calle.

Te he visto peinar primoroso el cabello azabache de esta niña que contempla celosa los rizos dorados de una mar que se bebe todo el sol deslumbrante de una alborada azul.

Y te he visto embrujar a esa pequeña enmarañando alocado su luenga cabellera.

Te he visto cosquilleando juguetón al heno del terruño y a las hojas de los álamos que sombrean ufanos la mansión carcomida del guajiro curtido.

Pero también te he visto asolar furibundo cuanto encuentras al paso.

Viento amigo o viento hostil, cuál es el que va a soplar Page 22

JANUARY 2021 ISSUE 106 –EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

en mi vida azarosa?

Será el que favorable empuje mi débil barquichuelo hacia el puerto soñado?

O será el que huracanado lo haga zozobrar?

Viento... Viento veleidoso!

WIND

by Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández Wind… fickle wind!

It either coos gently or roars enraged.

It knows how to be a breeze to caress sensually and how to become a hurricane to lash out ruthlessly .

Today, whimsical wind, I have followed your course, far from the channeled prose of my banal street.

I have seen you gracefully comb the jet black hair of this girl who jealously beholds the golden locks of an ocean that drinks deeply of the sun’s dazzle in a blue dawn.

And I have seen you beguile that little one crazily tangling up her long hair.

I have seen you playfully tickle the soil´s fodder and the poplar leaves complacently casting a shade over the bronzed farmer´s decaying home.

But I have also seen you ragingly ravish anything standing on your path.

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JANUARY 2021 ISSUE 106 –EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

Friendly wind or hostile wind, which will blow into my turbulent life?

Will it be the one auspiciously pushing my feeble craft to the dreamt-of port?

Or will it be the tempest-driven one making my boat flounder?

Wind… fickle wind!

photo taken and edited by Jorge Alberto

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JANUARY 2021 ISSUE 106 –EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

YOU LEFT

by Miriam Estrella Vera Delgado You left first Always in a hurry You left me alone Even though it Horrifies me…

Maybe my clumsiness Makes you laugh, Nevertheless I’ll continue forward Maybe God, Seeing me so lonely Unsure and sad Will bring me Comfort…

Maybe someone Who can understand My prose And at the same time Will offer me…

His handkerchief

WHAT DID YOU GIVE ME?

by Miriam Estrella Vera Delgado What did you give me, My Love What did you give me?

Because really faithful…

You were not.

I had so much cold Inside me So much lack of love And content!

Now I feel Page 25

JANUARY 2021 ISSUE 106 –EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

I want to be fair And I’m not afraid To face reality; But I think about The good and the bad And your final balance Is not a praise.

Maybe it will be better To pretend I don’t think about it And will look at my life As if it were a canvas Where one day A painter Drew a lot of strokes…

And forgot warmth And forgot hugs!

OH, my God

by Miriam Estrella Vera Delgado Oh my God, you who have Listened To so many of my Prayers You who knows of my Efforts and shadows…

Covers my wounds With cosmic dust Light me With stars and sparks!

RAINBOW

by Miriam Estrella Vera Delgado I’m looking for Love When I find it I’ll be filled with colours…

My life then Will be a huge rainbow Page 26

JANUARY 2021 ISSUE 106 –EDITOR- Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández – joyphccla@gmail.com

MASTHEAD – Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández, our Cuban CCLA Ambassador as Editor – Miguel Ángel Olivé Iglesias, our Cuban President as Assistant Editor – Adonay Pérez Luengo, our Cuban VP as Reviewing Editor – Lisa Makarchuk, our Canadian VP as Reviewing Editor – Miriam Estrella Vera Delgado, our Cuban Poet Laureate as Reviewing Editor

joyph@nauta.cu joyphccla@gmail.com jorgealbertoph@infomed.sld.cu

CANADA CUBA LITERARY ALLIANCE FROM THE EDITOR: IN OUR UPCOMING ISSUES, WOULD LIKE SUBMISSIONS FROM EVERY CCLA MEMBER SO WE ARE NURTURED BY YOU! IF YOU HAVE BOOKS COMING OUT, A POETRY EVENT, JUST LET US KNOW!

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