Hindu
Things of the world I have seen
yet my eyes remain clean
your silence fills my ears
the sun shines and you tell me go to sleep
Hours of the Stars
Day: March 17, 2026
In the Quiet After Slaughter
excerpt
Memory Sandwich
The Monroes migrated from nobody-knows-where just as the
swallows were turning up famished at our backyard feeder. A
van with lilting shocks and unfamiliar licence plates deposited their
belongings on the lawn of a neglected two-bedroom. By the time the
leaves on the poplars in Falaise Park had begun to coil, just as the
wings of the leatherjackets started to sag, the family up and moved
away, a memory.
Afterwards a succession of temporary tenants occupied the bungalow.
There were couples with children and couples without.
There were lessees, owners, renters and loners, none of whom were
able to do anything about the air of despondency permeating that
sullen cedar structure.
Fresh paint, a garden — nothing worked. For years it sat empty,
victim to vandals, rodents and mould, roof shingles scattered, windows
lost to target practice. The day it was bulldozed that house
looked much as it did the day the Monroes moved in: unloved.
Besides the adults, Nelson and Connie, there were three kids:
Gus, the eldest at 16, had a purple birthmark splashed across one
eye; Lana, a year younger, was a quiet girl whose attempts to conceal
sprouting mammary glands were unsuccessful.
Shortly after their arrival the youngest crossed the street to where
I was fanning my collection of baseball cards. I had been aware of
Freddy observing me from a bedroom window. He introduced himself
with the assurance of someone accustomed to the role of
stranger. There seemed a precocious savvy in those squinting eyes.
– Wanna be friends? he asked.
To facilitate camaraderie Freddy faked an interest in baseball. He
misused terms like line drives and pop fouls, cannily eschewing…
Wheat Ears
Unobserved
The unobserved specks blow by
stay anonymous
while drinking coffee in the morning
not fathom its meaning like
some innocence in
your kiss remains unnoticed
like hand touching pencil shaft
while you write reverently
but when you idle mesmerized
by a moonlight, distraught
sensation arousing
stops you on your tracks
or refreshes delight
of crafting poem
Redemption
excerpt
. . . Stathis, Stathis, however did you manage it? Everything is
going superbly, just as your fine lad said. It is almost as if all
this never . . .
A bolt of energy struck through him. Exercise. But at this intersection
of hour and mood? To him, morning and exercise are related.
Exercise collided with now. The commitment of discipline must not
loosen, derange, or unfasten him. As if on command, he rose and
stood at attention. His body commanded his mind to command it: a
few knee-bends, jumping jacks, and he extended his hands almost
to the walls. Inhaled deep, exhaled slow, his breath became cuprous,
tarnished, an obese air; but he continued, and his lungs butterflied
and collapsed, perhaps in rehearsal for a ritual in which he might
never take part.
There has been no extraordinary exertion, yet the burden of
boredom diminished him to the figure of a junkman’s nag tolling
uphill before the overload of relic erudition. Half of a man knew it
was war; half of a man insisted it wasn’t. In the confusion, it was
difficult to discern which entered the theatre of war with a plowshare.
The blunder into the hunt, to discover oneself, was a quarry
that dogs followed in all directions of the cosmos, dogs which ran
and followed his steps as if ready to bite, to dig deep in his flesh
with their teeth.
He stopped as abruptly as he started and sat on his bed. His
mind flew back to the island.
Manolis Aligizakis 