An Epistle, Teaching Love Bálint Balassi could have written to Sir Philip Sidney) My lovely brother, you were sent by the Creator to the world in the same year, like me. you began to try life a good month after me. I was a curly-haired, brown boyster, while you – in the typical English style – flower-faced (until your face became ruined by the small-pox!) and your hair reddish. I have not too much right to write all about this things of intimacy, but our almost twin-fate (mortal wound of Zutphen and of Esztergom!) is much more strong, than the demands of courtly behaviour: let me be straightforward: why wasn’t lashing you a stronger desire, ttan your cold Astrophil-longing? My dear Philip, the half of Europe was writing weaker and stronger poems upon your death, while just a handful of laments on mine. But some fresh lettuce-leaves, and some sweet strawberries of late May was always good enough for me to sing the very essence of desire into the viscers of my readers. Shortly: if it could be possible, here, on our emerald meadows, by me, some lectures could have been waiting for you, (and around us plenty of ladies to help!) to teach you for the real notes of Venus, which was melting the bones of dead and living ones.
No One Was There Truly everything took place the heart keeps beating and distancing itself it has travelled far away from its home the world runs to oblivion getting smaller in the light understands only the insignificant incising tattoos to restart for somewhere else. Once I was lost in the timeless dimensions and then somewhere between desire and sound sand under the stars truth and lies that survive and emerge I came from emptiness where I had to but no one was there I belong to the other side whisper of an invisible genocide the ancient wind takes something from existence I’ll die yet I’ll be alive in a hypothetical version of the unachievable where the nameless awaits patiently
Owls He climbed up stairs wearing an empty saucepan on his head he wanted to call the muses over let them spread benevolence and arts to rabble but the gardenias folded up and the finches balked so without any followers he stood looking down as less and less men remained in the plaza until he plied his speech and rats started dancing and the owls who know wisdom shut their eyes in embarrassment
“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…
…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.”
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
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…
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…
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…
Manolis Aligizakis 