The Sleigh-Drawing Horses

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.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/192676384X

Entropy

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

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DPCRLJC6

Wheat Ears

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

https://draft2digital.com/book/3748127#print

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BKHW4B4S

Poodie James

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

excerpt

…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

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

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

Jazz with Ella

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…

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562892

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

In the Quiet After Slaughter

excerpt

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…

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562874

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