Jazz with Ella

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excerpt

“Just close your eyes and think of something else,” he told her.
Paul’s a good buddy, she thought, and he stuck with me through all of the Michael years. She realized she was already thinking of Michael in the past tense and wondered if that was a sign of healing. The last time she had been on a plane she and Michael had flown to California for their first wedding anniversary. That had been just one year ago.
As instructed, she shut out the sight of the storm clouds and retreated into her thoughts. She wondered for about the fifth time why Paul had not been selected to assist Chopyk in leading this Soviet Union trip. It meant prestige and academic advancement. Paul was at least as well educated as she was with all the same qualifications: experience as a teaching assistant and going for his Ph.D. Besides, he was a man and the department favoured men in positions of authority. The graduate women often got no farther up the tenure track than lecturer. Jennifer was a loose cannon; she knew that was her reputation around the department. She was not one to toe the party line—or to sleep with the chairman to improve her grades.
Could it be, as her women’s lib friend had told her, it was because she would accept less money for the job? Just the cost of the trip and a small daily stipend—that was all she was receiving. Paul would have held out for a real salary, she thought uncomfortably. But she had to take this trip. It was ridiculous to think she could continue as a University of Vancouver graduate student in Russian Literature without actual exposure to the Russia of today—the Soviet Union. The department had been trying to organize this language immersion tour, a first for any Canadian university, for years. It was time to damn the expense and go.
This plan had seemed pretty clear until a warm day in May when the departmental chairman, Dr. Hoefert, summoned her to a meeting at Professor Chopyk’s office, and he had hinted to her on the phone that he might have some good news regarding the language tour. It turned out that she had been summoned not so much to Chopyk’s office as to his adjacent waiting room. She spent three quarters of an hour glued to a sticky orange vinyl chair, feeling her hair frizzing wildly in the humidity of the overheated building, one foot bobbing in time to the tapping of the secretary’s typewriter.
Occasionally, Chopyk and Hoefert had glanced through the glass panel as if to determine that she was still there. At first she mentally railed at professors who expected papers to be turned in on time but couldn’t be bothered being punctual for appointments…

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562892

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

Titos Patrikios – Selected Poems

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ΙΙ
From having many things to do
he’s a goffer now
from his endlessly creating mind
he now counts how to make
enough to last to the month end.
The man, who once walked in the village
cobblestone road and the space bloomed,
now feels lucky that he was hired
on a trial basis and without pay.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562972

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08L1TJNNF

The Incidentals

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Emotionless

…the seething angst of lust demands
her body’s contours and dark caves
on the altar of Aphrodite deserving
unemotional dedication, like any
archon sitting up high, like any God
jealous or self-absorbed and relaxed
and truly the hierodule too will
one day sit at the big table
of the selected few, one day
she too will be named the heroine
of the goddess wasn’t she after all another
true believer? Wasn’t she too a true
little unrepentant Christian?

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

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

Antony Fostieris – Selected Poems

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Certain Pain
Beyond the lust of lust
beyond the whirl of secret yearning
and beyond drunkenness, certain pain
strikes the windowpane
of the empty heart
incapable of having any joy.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763653

Prairie Roots

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excerpt

A Day in School
A DAY IN SCHOOL In the preceding chapter I blended the school environment into
the farming community. The blending reflects the reality of
the times, since formal education was not as significant in the
overall process of raising children born to farming parents as it is
now. In the farming community of that era, many a young man
reached his 16th birthday without achieving much formal education,
as he was frequently needed at home to assist in the survival
of the family farm. School was part of the community but secondary
to the immediate needs of the farmers. The first priority was
the welfare of the family, and the teachers and school board members
were well aware of these realities.
I expect that there were certain rules regarding attendance, and
teachers were likely obliged to report to the school board if any
student had a particularly poor attendance record. On the other
hand, attendance did not guarantee educational progress and if
there was obvious negligence on the part of the student, whether
the fault was his or his parents, there was not much a teacher
could do except try and demonstrate to the individual the value of
an education later on in life. Notwithstanding, school was of secondary
importance to many families, as the boys would remain on
the farm when they finished whatever formal education they
were interested in getting.
I have already mentioned that our parents, father in particular,
had a different perspective on education. He enjoyed cerebral activity
and insisted that we attend school regularly and study hard.
Because I did well in school, attendance was a relatively pleasant
part of my life. Sure it interfered with perfect spring or fall days
when the outdoors stared at me through the school window and…

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562900

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0980897920

Hours of the Stars

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Christening
The parents remember
the long faces of grandfather and grandmother
and they feel guilty
how can you call
Adeadatos instead of Theodoros
and Precious instead of Diotima
as if the godparents were
demons and pagans?

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562939

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763408

The Unquiet Land

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excerpt

The old woman knew that Caitlin and Michael had started sleeping together again sometime after the night that Caitlin had not come home, and Padraig had been beaten up in the church. Even if Caitlin had not told Mother Ross the full story of that night, the old woman would have known without any doubt everything that had happened.
Poor Caitlin. There’ll be fingers counting soon and they won’t make it to nine. Respectability holds us all to ransom. And we have to pay something in the end. The dearer we regard respectability, the higher we have to pay. I got off lightly, I suppose. But I can recognise respectability for the blackguard it is. And yet I too paid a price in the end.
Mother Ross sat down on the iron bed. One of the brass knobs shook, fell off with a thud on the floor and rolled under the bed.
“You can stay there,” she said.
She rubbed the finger of her left hand where her ring used to be. It had been her mother’s wedding ring, then her own, and yesterday she had taken it off and given it to Michael. Today Michael would use it to bond the two lives, the two bodies, the two souls, of Caitlin and himself.
And Caitlin. Sick and straining with the baby already unfurling inside her like a sticky little bud in spring. Wearing her white gown like the thorn tree on the hillside. The white gown she had stitched herself in the evenings by the fireside.
Mother Ross heard Caitlin climb slowly up the stairs and go into her room to prepare herself for the wedding. The motor-car would call in a couple of hours: Liam Devlin’s newest Ford. Michael had been proud to hire it for the afternoon to drive his bride to church. Liam was proud to drive it. Half the village would line the road, not just to admire Caitlin, but to marvel at the new miracle of the machine age: Liam Devlin’s Model T Ford. Soon every man in the village would want one, and Liam’s ambition was to open a garage on the Lisnaglass road to sell new motor cars, the petrol that made them go, and all the spare parts that likely would be needed after miles of bumpy travel on the rough and muddy roads of the country hereabouts.
Caitlin left the door of her room open, and Mother Ross could hear her sobbing. So rarely did Caitlin weep that it moved Mother Ross all the more when she did. Like hearing a man cry. Mother Ross sighed a sigh that pulled her heart up with it into her throat. She swallowed it painfully and wanted to cry herself from the agony she felt.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562888

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763203

Wheat Ears

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Synthesis
Cyclical movement of stars
emotional undulation
of our laughter
scar of the saddened skin
and the lone cricket
witness of my hand
searching for moist
deep in your recesses
labyrinthine adventure
moonlight jealousy
over our synthesis
two bodies defining
the shape of a monad

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

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

Fury of the Wind

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excerpt

…and Sarah did not complain. The old house had no insulation,
and the wind found its way in through walls that, in other seasons,
appeared sturdy enough. It was not unusual for them to awaken in
the morning with the flannelette sheet and blankets, where their
breath had dampened the material, frozen against their chins. Each
night Sarah moved the house plants – geraniums and begonias
that Ben said his mother had lovingly tended – to the centre of the
kitchen table where she covered them with a light cloth. She did the
same with the pitchers of milk and cream, carrying them from the
pantry to the kitchen where the cookstove would provide enough
warmth until the early morning hours to keep them from freezing.
The weeks passed slowly. No one came to the house, and Sarah
was unable to ride Flicka or drive the old pickup truck to the Mc-
Neill farm. She spent the days sewing new curtains and knitting
socks and mitts from the wool she had bought on her last trip to
Nimkus in late October. She wrote endless letters to Margaret and
Elizabeth in Ontario, and waited impatiently for the mail that Ben
brought home from his infrequent trips to town with the team and
sleigh.
For the most part they lived by their own resources on the provisions
they had in the house. But Sarah looked forward to the vegetable
garden she planned to plant in the spring. She had searched
out Mrs. Fielding’s canning jars so that she could preserve everything
she could get her hands on through the summer months.
These plans and activities helped to pass the long days and the
even longer evenings. But she missed the companionship of others,
especially Penny. What would she give to be able to sit down to a
cup of tea in Penny’s cheerful kitchen? And how she longed to see
little David who, when she had last seen him, was beginning to take
a few faltering steps around the furniture. By now he would be running
all over the house.
She thought of David when she read Margaret’s latest letter. It
was four pages of the delights of motherhood, along with every
detail of her new daughter’s first two months of life. As she read,
Sarah felt a familiar ache deep inside her where she had been sure
that, by now, new life would be growing. Why wasn’t it? Could there
be something wrong with her? Ben never spoke of a family and,
although she had once casually mentioned that he needed a son to…

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0981073530

In the Quiet After Slaughter

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excerpt

– I guess we better get going, I said. We don’t wanna miss our rendezvous.
Burt didn’t budge. Finally he said, Ain’t gonna be no rendezvous.
He loosened the flaps of his pack and spilled its contents.
River rock. I dumped mine — the same.
– What’s going on, Burt?
– Ain’t no satellite receiver, little brother. Those two buggered off
long ago. And look, he said, fingering the napkin map and peering
over the edge into the ravine. They were hoping we’d have ourselves
a little accident.
– But this cable! And the TV store!
Burt chuckled. The van was leased, he said. The TV store was
rented by the month.
I still wasn’t convinced.
– I was checking on my stash one night when I overheard the two
of them talking. It was all Swanson’s idea. He’s done this before.
Bud’s his stooge.
– And?
– I told the cops everything. Those two are probably in cuffs by
now.
Burt removed a nylon bag from his pack.
– Open it, he said.
It was stuffed with paper money, and plenty of it.
– Explain, Burt . . .
– While Bud was trying to find mine, I was looking for his. A couple
of times we almost bumped into each other. With a little help
from a friend, I found his first. All the share money, his cut of the TV
sales.
My brother separated the money into three piles and pointed to
the tallest. The bills were stacked like a column of Chinese characters.
– I figure we’d turn this in, he said. It belongs to Aunt Peggy and
the others. But this one—he stuffed the second pile into the pack—
is ours. After all, folks have their TVs.
– And the third?
– That’s for cousin Mark. A reward. He’s the one found a couple
of Bud’s chewed-up toothpicks down by the river and suggested we
start digging.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562874

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