The Body The body between the hands — history and music, word and deed — oh, stone limbs and the wall, he said, the wall; horse riders passed outside; the spurs shone in the night gleam, the smell of the horses remained and the air of their leave stirred the corner of the tablecloth a little, and the only flower. We had to find the continuance in things indifferent to us when the colourful lights of the display windows were turned off and if there was something beyond death, it was exactly that slow and pale colour that rose from within death.
SKETCHES FOR A SUMMER A Word For Summer We’ve returned to autumn again, the summer like an exercise book that we are tired of writing in remains filled with deletions, abstract designs and question marks in the margin, we’ve returned to the season of eyes staring into the mirror under the electric light tightened lips and the people strangers in the rooms the streets under the pepper trees while headlights of cars massacre thousands of pale masks. We’ve returned; we always start out to return to loneliness, a fistful of soil, to the empty hands. And yet once I fell in love with Syngrou Avenue the double up and down of the great road leading us as though miraculously to the sea the eternal sea to cleanse us of our sins once I fell in love with some unknown people that I suddenly met at the end of the day talking to themselves like captains of a sunken armada evidence that the world is immense. And yet I loved these roads here, these columns even though I was born on the other shore near reeds and rushes, islands that had water springing out of the sand to quench the thirst of the rower, even though I was born near the sea that I fold and unfold with my fingers when I’m tired—I no longer know where I was born.
In an Old Book In an old book, about a hundred years old, forgotten amid its pages, I found an unsigned watercolour. It must have been the work of a good artist. It had the title, “Presentation of Love.” But a more fitting title would be “Love of the extremely sensual.” Because it was obvious when you looked at the piece (the artist’s idea was easily felt) that the young man in the picture was not meant for those who love in somewhat healthy ways, and within accepted boundaries, with his deep brown eyes, and the extraordinary beauty of his face, the beauty of his deviate attractions, with his ideal lips that grace a beloved body with sensual delight with his ideal lips made for beds common morality calls shameless.
Helena On the first day of spring, I call you ‘Come, let us spread colours to the edge of the plain to the far end of the cosmos a cyclamen deep in the rock fissure of empathy, ‘Come, let us unfold the whitewash of hyacinths unto the hoarfrost of last night perhaps the impulse of blood will turn its icy mirror into the freshest cicada song a new illumination that becomes a fireball like the virgin sun ray that opens a smile on the gardenia white petals exploring the laughter of your emotions and the crystal star blushes in the embrace of the serene firmament
Memory Sandwich The Monroes migrated from nobody-knows-where just as the swallows were turning up famished at our backyard feeder. A van with lilting shocks and unfamiliar licence plates deposited their belongings on the lawn of a neglected two-bedroom. By the time the leaves on the poplars in Falaise Park had begun to coil, just as the wings of the leatherjackets started to sag, the family up and moved away, a memory. Afterwards a succession of temporary tenants occupied the bungalow. There were couples with children and couples without. There were lessees, owners, renters and loners, none of whom were able to do anything about the air of despondency permeating that sullen cedar structure. Fresh paint, a garden — nothing worked. For years it sat empty, victim to vandals, rodents and mould, roof shingles scattered, windows lost to target practice. The day it was bulldozed that house looked much as it did the day the Monroes moved in: unloved. Besides the adults, Nelson and Connie, there were three kids: Gus, the eldest at 16, had a purple birthmark splashed across one eye; Lana, a year younger, was a quiet girl whose attempts to conceal sprouting mammary glands were unsuccessful. Shortly after their arrival the youngest crossed the street to where I was fanning my collection of baseball cards. I had been aware of Freddy observing me from a bedroom window. He introduced himself with the assurance of someone accustomed to the role of stranger. There seemed a precocious savvy in those squinting eyes. – Wanna be friends? he asked. To facilitate camaraderie Freddy faked an interest in baseball. He misused terms like line drives and pop fouls, cannily eschewing…
Unobserved The unobserved specks blow by stay anonymous while drinking coffee in the morning not fathom its meaning like some innocence in your kiss remains unnoticed like hand touching pencil shaft while you write reverently but when you idle mesmerized by a moonlight, distraught sensation arousing stops you on your tracks or refreshes delight of crafting poem
. . . Stathis, Stathis, however did you manage it? Everything is going superbly, just as your fine lad said. It is almost as if all this never . . . A bolt of energy struck through him. Exercise. But at this intersection of hour and mood? To him, morning and exercise are related. Exercise collided with now. The commitment of discipline must not loosen, derange, or unfasten him. As if on command, he rose and stood at attention. His body commanded his mind to command it: a few knee-bends, jumping jacks, and he extended his hands almost to the walls. Inhaled deep, exhaled slow, his breath became cuprous, tarnished, an obese air; but he continued, and his lungs butterflied and collapsed, perhaps in rehearsal for a ritual in which he might never take part. There has been no extraordinary exertion, yet the burden of boredom diminished him to the figure of a junkman’s nag tolling uphill before the overload of relic erudition. Half of a man knew it was war; half of a man insisted it wasn’t. In the confusion, it was difficult to discern which entered the theatre of war with a plowshare. The blunder into the hunt, to discover oneself, was a quarry that dogs followed in all directions of the cosmos, dogs which ran and followed his steps as if ready to bite, to dig deep in his flesh with their teeth. He stopped as abruptly as he started and sat on his bed. His mind flew back to the island.
A sad story, Lona thought. She wondered how many other homes had buried treasure—perhaps the owners didn’t even know it. Back in New York the buyers would be interested in stories like this one. When she got home should she find a buyer for the icon, too? No, she wanted the icon for herself. She would not be turning it over to the businessmen on her return, but somehow, she would have to account for the cash—it had cost $50 U.S. dollars—that she had been given to purchase these items. She would cross that bridge when she came to it. She considered its size, weighing it in her hand like tomatoes at the grocery store. She checked once more that the door was locked, then she carefully unwrapped the distinctive Beryozka wrapping paper from a newly purchased balalaika, a musical instrument with a long narrow neck and a triangular body. There was no mistaking its shape even in wrapping paper. Once the paper was removed from the balalaika she wrapped the icon in her kerchief, then squeezed it into the space between the strings and the body of the instrument. It just fit. She re-wrapped the Beryozka paper around the balalaika, being careful to tape it in exactly the same spots as before, then held it up for inspection. You could hardly tell a thing—just the merest suspicion of something rectangular. She placed the wrapped balalaika into a mesh shopping bag such as the Soviets seemed to carry everywhere. This one she would be taking on the plane with her and stowing in the overhead baggage compartment. That done, she pulled out a kit from her suitcase that contained some acrylic paint such as children use and bottles of powder and Vaseline. The jewellery, a pendant of solid gold and very old, was easy to doctor up; it was not of religious significance, although Krov had tried to tell her otherwise. It would find a buyer who was simply looking for something pretty and special. She considered if she had time to invent a provenance for it—a story about some czar giving it to his mistress, perhaps? The consortium had rapped her knuckles once before for inventing but she couldn’t resist. Who’s to say that it was not true? What Russian peasant before the revolution would own such a rich thing? She removed the elaborate gold chain and put it with her own modern jewellery, then re-hung the locket on a leather strip. She put the locket into a tiny, leather, filigreed sack. She would wear it around her neck. The prayer scrolls were also easy. They would be placed among the pencil sketches of St. Isaac’s Cathedral that she had completed…
The Day Before The Circle H Ranch Willow Springs, Montana It was Saturday. The day before the sale at the Circle H. Joel had toyed with the idea of driving over to the Ramage place, but a part of him was saying that wasn’t right. He knew from his conversations with Roy that the Ramages saw him as competition. This had been the weekend of their production sale for years. For Joel, he had set up a competitive situation by piggybacking on the Ramages’ clients. Joel didn’t like that at all. He had run into Jack Ramage once in town only a week or so earlier and had tried to make pleasant conversation with him. He could tell that Jack was carrying a lot of anger and resentment toward him. At first, he thought that it was all about how Ramage felt about him, but later in the day when he was telling Cindy about the chance meeting, she added another angle to the conversation: the Ramages were advertising that their sale was also a herd reduction sale as a result of the drought. The Ramages had traditionally sold their horse crop as saddle-broke two-year-olds, but this year, in addition to the fifty two-year-olds for sale, they were also selling thirty mares and thirty yearlings. They were really cutting back. The good news for Joel was that the sale of the quality mares and younger horses should draw even more folks into the country for the sale. The bad news was that, with that kind of horseflesh available on the day before his sale, he wondered how many people would have any money left on the Sunday to invest in any…
Manolis Aligizakis 