PIER AT CANNES seen at a film (fish) marketacross the bay, a string of lights never thought she’d find herself in an Antonioni film yet here she is and so is he— mere witnesses to an abstraction the dark sea and dark sky meet somewhere _________________she thinks, _____directing herself to find a gesture as apt as this moment he stares back in irreflection The sea and sky may kiss at the horizon Why not we? _____________She turns a cartwheel instead _____________to approach him and yet remain distant absurdity strikes at the very heart of the proposition What a child, an American! He is of course a French polygamist with several children by several wives in farmhouses scattered about the French countryside so fated to act out two wholly different scripts, he says _____________Un écrivain a dit… _____________[A writer once said] là où toutes les eaux se mèlent, là où il [...]
Dawn Leas
Prayer for Topaz, 1942 Dear God, Mom said you are busy and don’t have time to listen to a little 8-year-old Negro girl from North Carolina and her foolishness, like praying for a box of candy. That would be selfish. But if it’s really important she said, then I should take it to you in prayer like the preacher says on Sundays. I’m not asking for anything for me. But I’ve been hearing the kids at school talking about some place out west called Topaz. At first I thought they were talking about a spot to get rings and flashy jewelry, but Margaret’s big brother, Ed, who’s in 5th grade, says it’s something like a jail where they put Japanese people. I didn’t believe him because he’s always trying to scare us girls. So I asked my dad, and he said it’s true. The government put them there so that [...]
First Thaw This morning was the first time: all the snow that buried us receding, still in drifts piled high, crusted with ice and yet receding, slowly drawing back—abandoned cars revealed, crushed grass, the shattered road ice-slicked, salt-splashed, slush running downstream, breaking up over the drains, dissolving….All this time I thought the whole world lost, but now the light glances off roofs still cracking with the weight— a little less, today. The second time is now: when I can bear to look around once more and watch this world emerge—old world from which so much is missing still, new world in which so much will, one day soon, appear. ______________________________________________ Ned Balbo’s The Trials of Edgar Poe and Other Poems (Story Line Press) was awarded the 2012 Poets’ Prize and the 2010 Donald Justice Prize. His two previous books are Lives of the Sleepers (Ernest Sandeen Prize and ForeWord Book [...]
At Fifteen I measured time in cigarettes. Underneath the underpass I popped reds and dropped blues next to sucked off Popsicle sticks. I straddled the concrete curb and anointed the night with love. I was alive— snorting coke in abandoned homes where pigeon shit painted the floor white. I ripped off loose wood and climbed to the top of the roof. I wanted to feel the air against my cheeks and fuck. I wanted to break in half. Fold like heaven and hell. I was at war with myself. At fifteen, I hummed paradise, became those streets that tied into other streets, became my own country. How I talked. I could’ve been anyone. I was incurable. _______________________________________ Loren Kleinman‘s poetry has appeared in journals such as Nimrod, Wilderness House Literary Review, Paterson Literary Review, Narrative Northeast and New Jersey Poets. Her interviews appeared in IndieReader, USA Today and The Huffington [...]
There’ll Be Heartache He pulled onto the shoulder, air breaks huffing, stopped and rolled the window down—outside the air was dry but cold, early-autumn evening closing in, and I was eighty miles outside El Paso with a pack across my back heading west, because a friend had died and nothing seemed to fit, the days and nights too long, or short, or just too damned complete— and as the trucker sniffed the wind as if the smell were new to him, and flicked a Camel to the ground and waved me in, I thought I saw a flicker of a smile beneath the shadow of his cap, and so I climbed into the cab, slung the pack into the sleeper in the back then settled in while on the radio a tune by Johnny Cash was blasting, “just around the corner there’ll be heartache.” And as he pulled the rig [...]