Poodie James

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excerpt

“What’ll it be?” he said.
“Can of Prince Albert, please.”
Gritzinger walked to the shelves. Sam looked over at the big
man. Something about that voice.
The man glanced at him.
“Pardon me, sir,” Sam said, “is your name Clarkson?”
The stranger turned and looked steadily at him from behind
rimless glasses that imparted an air of orderliness to a man otherwise
in dishevelment.
“Why do you ask?”
“Years ago, I spent time in a courtroom with a lawyer by that
name, one of the best I was ever up against. He whipped me. That
rarely happened. I didn’t forget it.”
The man’s gaze softened a little as he continued to study Sam’s
face.
“Condolences on your loss,” the big man said at last. He handed
Gritizinger a few coins, slipped the can of tobacco into his jacket
pocket, dipped his head and said, “Good evening to you both.”
“Glad to see you after all these years,” Gritzinger said.
“And I you, sir. Good evening.”
Sam watched the man’s back as he walked out of the market and
headed north. He turned to Gritzinger only after the door closed
and the sound of the bell interrupted his musing.
“You know him,” he said.
“Used to”, Gritzinger said. “Haven’t seen him since before the
war. He’d come through here on freight trains and stay in that
hobo camp down by the old Thorp place. Poodie James brought
him around. Did a few odd jobs for me. Spent a day once stacking
two cords of cedar in the woodshed out back. Called himself Fred.”
Fred, Sam thought. Fred Clarkson?
When Darwin Spanger walked into the showroom of Torgerson
Packard, the proprietor was conducting a couple on a tour around a
black sedan. With a nod of his head, Torgerson directed Spanger…

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562868

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08W7SHCMV

Water in the Wilderness

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…and the baby an’ everything, and it was so warm in the stable when they came in.” She frowned. “Was it a dream?”
Tyne shook her head from side to side. “I’m sure it wasn’t a dream, sweetheart.”
For a moment Rachael looked away, then her soulful eyes sought Tyne’s face. “Auntie Tyne?”
“Yes, honey?”
“I lost Shirley. I’m sorry, I left her in the snow.”
Tyne frowned for a moment before she caught on. “Oh, your doll? Your Shirley Temple doll?”
Rachael sniffed as she nodded her head up and down. “An’ Bobby lost his truck. He musta dropped it somewhere.” She began to wail. “I’m sorry, Auntie Tyne. I didn’t wanna lose Shirley an’ she was hurt, she didn’t have eyes anymore.”
“Sweetie, don’t cry, you couldn’t help it if you had to leave her. But what do you mean – she didn’t have eyes anymore?”
“Cause Lyssa poked them out. That’s why I had to run away, Auntie Tyne. I couldn’t stay there anymore. Please don’t let them take us back, and don’t let them send us to an orphanage.”
“Orphanage? No one is going to send you to an orphanage. Why would you think that?”
“Cause Lyssa said they were goin’ to.”
“Oh, Rachael honey, never … never will anyone send you to an orphanage. And you’ll never go back to the Harrison’s either.”
As Tyne gathered the child into her arms again, she whispered a promise to herself. “I’ll go to prison first.”

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562884

https://www.amazon.com/dp/192676319X

The Incidentals

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Kore
Upright, erect, vertical
like a thunderbolt the Kore was
blowing the conch thundering
echoes, a statue declaring victory,
ethereal, insubordinate, eternal
symbol of beauty, revolutionary
volunteer against the banality of
every societal model expected
behavior, barrenness, she
stood to the heights of
transcendental, just in her
twenties with her fiery red lips
she shone like a moist pebble
creaking under the shoe of the
passersby, image of exquisite
natural beauty, recalled by
the old woman on her empty
bed, a woman who was chased
by all handsome youths, back
then, when she was beautiful
Kore and now, a wrinkled spinster
with no heirs, she feels a tear
rolling down her cheek, now
that she has nothing to look for
but the bitter truth, the merciless
triumph of the unerring Hades

https://draft2digital.com/book/3745812#print

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763637

Twelve Narratives of the Gypsy

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THE PROPHET

Cursed country from the heights
to the depths, you sinful land!
None will ever lean to give
you the last kiss of death.
And your fall will reverberate
your mourning will be heard
before it will be smothered
by the whole crying universe.
A new world will appear as
if from your ashes, denier
of all your power and glory
the world will talk badly of you.
A World different than yours
one you have nourished with
your milk will pass over your
lands and a spring will flow
out of each step it’ll take.
And your Soul, oh Polis,
damned sinful as it is and
dead will leave you and
shall wander searching for
a new generation as if sold out
to demons it will cry and
wander in the darkness like
a shadow in the void, like
a craft in the wild abyss…

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D3LP7NW6

The High Window

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Giovanni Pascoli: Five of his poems in versions by Stuart Henson

Jazz with Ella

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excerpt

off a stool lightly for one of her advanced years, and beckoned them. She opened the cage door, then the elevator door, and ushered them in. She waited patiently while Jen, Lona and Maria assembled their baggage. Three persons plus operator appeared to be the elevator’s capacity. Then she closed the doors carefully and pulled a brass lever. Grunting with effort, the box lifted. “Three into seventeen,” Maria calculated as the box jerked upward. “How many trips will this thing make, do you suppose, before we’re all upstairs?”
Ordinarily, I would find this hotel an intriguing anecdote, thought Jennifer, something to tell the folks back home. Right now, I just find it all an intolerable delay. She was becoming quite adept at all the procedures. As she exited at the fifth floor, she went immediately to the dezhurnaya’s desk and rapped smartly on the table. The clerk, another septagenarian, was nodding off in an easy chair. “Key to room 503,” she said briskly in Russian, and proffered her card. This woman could be someone’s grandmother, she thought, and though it’s difficult to view her as the enemy, a nosy floor clerk who noticed that Volodya was Soviet, not Canadian, would be a nuisance or even fatal.
Jennifer opened the door to her room. It was dark and close but not what she would have picked for a briefing session. There was a private bathroom, she discovered with relief, and opened the door thankfully. It held a square, chipped, pedestal basin, a small bath, and gigantic toilet that sat lordly on a dais. Its tank was secured onto the wall above the bowl and there was a chain to pull that worked the flush. Either the last guest had pulled too enthusiastically or the fixture’s age had rendered it incontinent. It had overflowed onto the floor.
“I’d better start working on getting this cleaned up right away,” she muttered. “I don’t want staff in the room while Volodya’s here—that is, if I could even get staff to clean it up.” Once again she was talking to herself—problems, delays. And underneath it all—fear.
Consequently, it was nearly six o’clock by the time Jennifer finally left the hotel, walked briskly along the riverbank, and turned onto the same bridge they had driven across on her way to Red Square. Possibly there was another telegraph office than the one she had already discovered near the east wing of the Hotel Rossiya, but it would save time to head directly toward the familiar one. As she walked, she thought how to word the telegram: “Returned to Moscow. Hotel Bucharest.” That part was easy. Then what? “Jazz with Ella” and maybe she’d better add…

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https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763246

In the Quiet After Slaughter

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Group Tour
Give the little bugger something, Harold said. He won’t leave us
alone ’til you do.
They had just exited the market across from the hotel. Both
wanted to stretch their legs before dinner, which according to the
itinerary was to be served aboard a boat cruise to a pagoda of apparent
significance. The frenzied pace of the market left Winnie feeling
dizzy. Unfamiliar scents always caused her to gag.
Her eyes hadn’t adjusted to the afternoon glare when the boy
touched her on the shoulder. He thrust forward an unwashed
palm.
– Haroo, ’Merican, he said. Straw adhered to his unruly thatch
like dust to a mop.
– Ca-na-di-an! she corrected, hoping louder would somehow
improve the youth’s linguistic skills. It hadn’t worked anywhere else.
– How much should I give him? she asked, but her husband had
wandered ahead.
The boy tugged at her sleeve.
– Hold your horses, sonny, she said.
Coins pooled at the bottom of the handbag she’d purchased in
whatever country they were visiting the previous Tuesday. All she
could recall was that it had been Day 10, halfway through their holiday.
And that Harold had kept her awake most of the night with
gastrointestinal difficulties.
Their tour leader Karen told them not to worry if they forgot how
to convert the currency. Monopoly money, she’d called it.
Winnie handed the boy a coin bearing the profile of an erstwhile
emperor. The youngster appeared disappointed, so she poured the
works into his excited hands. All the countries mixed in together…

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https://www.amazon.com/dp/0980897971

Constantine Cavafy

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To Stay
It must have been one in the morning,
or one thirty.
In one corner of the tavern,
behind the wooden partition.
Except for us two, the place was empty.
Barely lit by a kerosene lamp.
A sleep-deprived waiter was dozing by the door.
No one would see us. And we had
excited ourselves so much,
we were unwilling to be cautious.
Our clothes were half open, and there were not many,
since that divine July was very hot.
Enjoyment of the flesh between
half-open clothes,
a quick glimpse of the memory which
has lasted twenty-six years, and has now come
to stay in this poetry.

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https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763823

Yannis Ritsos – Poems, Volume VI

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THE LIFT OPERATOR

However, the lift operator isn’t surprised; he had seen the same
cloud, though a little darker and deep red in colour, in the mirror
of the elevator, when tiredness and sleep overtake him, pressing
the floor buttons, taking familiar faces of the high-rise offices
or their clients, con-artists, crafty, imaginative or simple-minded
villagers, lawyers with briefcases, tailors, book sellers, cigarette
sellers, unfortunate people who have slowly lost their last virtue
of loneliness, their last dignity of silence, ready to kneel, to beg,
to lie, to flatter, for a little more bread, for half a cigarette, for
a quarter of a kiss, for a thousandth of glory — always unready
for the whole of Eros, for the whole death, for the whole
sacrifice and glory.
And the café man is always there with his tray full of empty or
full cups and glasses
always minding his tray, not seeing the faces and the lift
operator observing nothing, though seen everything
responsible for the ascent or descent
responsible for every stop
responsible for the floor numbers
even the office numbers along the hallways
where the internal telephones are located…

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763785

The Circle

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excerpt

important areas of support for the regime, along with the rest of the surrounding
region called “The Sunni Triangle”. Many inhabitants were Sunni and were
employees and supporters of Saddam’s government. During the same era,
Falluza became an industrial center with many large factories. About half the
houses were destroyed in the war, and most of them have still not been rebuilt.
Indeed, this city still looks like a war zone. A lot of the houses are only
half-standing. Others are leaning against one another as if supporting one other,
yet people sit around in the coffee bars drinking their special tea or coffee, and
one can see they take life in stride. It seems they know this is the way things work
out when you stand up and try to claim who you are, against people who think
they know who you are and insist on telling you so.
So, the inhabitants of this forsaken place sit stoically, with a perseverance that
defies even the strongest of wills, knowing deep in their hearts that what goes
around comes around. They know deep in their hearts that what you throw out
there in the balance of the cosmos comes back and hits you on the head at
another time or place without exceptions. People sit with all the anguish of the
world on their shoulders, a world that has gone wrong, a world that defies their
right to be alive, to be with their flesh and blood, with their wants and dreams
and expectations of life. They sit and don’t care that their homes have been
destroyed, since they know they will rebuild sooner or later. They will deploy all
their efforts again to rebuild what human madness has destroyed.
Rassan goes around and asks for Talal’s family and is told they need to go a
few blocks down the road and turn to the right to find Talal’s grandparents.’
house. Two minutes later they are outside what they expect is the house. Rassan
gets out and yells from the top of the yard door to the inside of the yard; a young
man about fifteen comes to see who is calling. Talal gets out of the car and sees
his younger brother, Abdul Aziz, coming through the gate to the road.
“Abdul, my little brother,” Talal approaches him with open arms. Abdul
looks at him and realizes this man is his brother.
“Talal, what a surprise this is!” he says, and his eyes fill with tears.
Talal is crying as well and among the sobs asks, “Where’s everybody?
Where are Aesha and our grandfather?”
“Grandfather is at the coffee bar for a while; our grandmother died four
months ago. Aesha is here; come in, come inside.” He urges all of them to come
in and leads the way.
Emily and Talal walk together through the gate and Rassan follows; they find
Aesha working in the kitchen. She is so surprised to see Talal after being away for
seven years that she hugs and kisses him, throws herself in his arms sobbing with joy.
Talal introduces Emily.

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https://www.amazon.com/dp/0978186524