Company of Stars
I know it
I come from the night
yet my soul expands in light
to get to the company of stars of the last return
the child comes from the infinite
becomes time and returns
the brightness that showed him the way
shaking
desires and wrinkles in forgetfulness
a dream that slowly also
forgets the notes
of the voyage that didn’t exist
when from the corners of the road
suddenly turning realizes
it is alone and fleetingly
grasps that destiny left him
the footprints of no one
excerpt
He tried to raise up, but they jerked him backward down the
step and onto the ground. The clubbing began. He wrapped his
arms around his head and tucked into a ball.Two of them straightened
his body by pulling his hands and feet while the biggest man
alternated kicks with blows from a length of wood. The clubs and
boots battered his arms and legs, his torso, his shoulders. The pain
was like fire on his skin. The ache went to the center of his bones.
They let him go, then knocked him off his feet when he got up,
laughing at his contortions when he twisted and thrashed to evade
their clubs.Theywere killing him, he thought.Hewas going to die.
Suddenly, the big man was on his back and Engine Fred was on
top of him with a forearm bearing down on his windpipe. Poodie
sat up and saw the other two running down the lane. His head
throbbed. Three more hobos came down along the path from the
jungle. The man on the ground got an arm free, knocked Engine
Fred off balance and was up and running away. He disappeared
into the orchard, headed toward the river. Two of the hobos ran
after him, but came back shaking their heads. It all happened in the
space of a few minutes. The Thorps slept through it, but Engine
Fred told Poodie that he heard a scream. Poodie didn’t know that
he was capable of screaming.
Dan Thorp called the police the next morning. By then, the
hobos had hopped a freight. Poodie could not identify the thugs.
The bruises on his face and body took weeks to heal. Thorp put a
lock on the cabin door. The attack was the worst thing that had
happened to Poodie since his mother died. He lived it over in his
dreams night after night for months. Years later, he still awakened
in fear that the men would come back.
Alice Moore looked up to see Poodie James’s face floating just
above surface of the checkout desk, a stack of books next to it. She
had never seen that face without a smile. She looked at the books;
Howard Carter’s The Discovery of the Tomb of Tutankhamen, three
books about whales, a collection of de Maupassant stories.
Routine
Same path every morning
from the train station to the office
two blocks of a walk, three
newspaper stands and halfway
two beggars
dark sky-lobe drenching them
as they strangely multiply along
with the days going by and the index
down for another day, gold
off the mark, the price of oil dropping
what to do with the need for
exhausts and fumes for
statistics that make you wonder
are we truly making progress or careening
brakeless down off-ramps to Hell?
Manolis Aligizakis 