Still Waters

Excerpt

…where are we going to live? Have you even thought about it?”
“Of course I have.” He sounded surprised that she would ask.
“Until I’ve finished my residency, we can live with Mother and Dad.
Goodness knows, the house is big enough. We won’t be able to afford
a home of our own until I have my own practice, and then maybe
not for some time.”
“But we don’t need anything elaborate at first, just as long as we
have our own place. We could get an apartment – like this one that
Moe and I are renting.”
He turned his head to look out of the car window at the houses
along the street, many of which were probably as old as the city itself.
“I don’t think so, Tyne,” he said quietly.
“There are other areas,” she said stiffly, “if you dislike this one so
much.”
He turned to look at her. His tone soft and pleading, he said,
“Please, darling, let’s not argue about it tonight. We’ll talk some other
time. In the meantime, give some serious thought to moving in
with my parents soon.”
Tyne had her hand on the door handle. “I don’t think so,” she said
coldly, echoing his words of a moment before. Before he could move,
she opened the door and jumped out of the car, then fled across the
street to the apartment she gladly shared with Moe.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763068

Constantine Cavafy

Orofernis
He who is handsome, and his delicate
face is smiling on the four-drachma coin,
is Orofernis, son of Ariarathis.
As a child, they ousted him from Cappadocia,
out of his father’s magnificent palace
and sent him to grow up
in Ionia, to be forgotten among strangers.
Oh, those beautiful Ionian nights
when fearlessly, and clearly in a Hellenic way,
he got to know the fullness of carnal pleasure.
In his heart, always an Asian.
But in his manners and in his speech, Greek,
dressed up in turquoise, in a Greek chiton
his body fragrant with jasmine,
among the handsome Ionian youths,
the most handsome, the most ideal.
Later, when the Syrians entered
Cappadocia, and made him a king,
he dedicated himself and his monarchy
to enjoy a new pleasure every day,
to greedily gather gold and silver,
and to delight, and to boast,
watching his riches piling and shining.
As for the care of the place, and governing,
he had no idea what was happening around him.
The Cappadocians quickly removed him.
And he ended up in Syria, in the palace
of Demetrios, where he lazed around partying.
One day, though, his great idleness was
interrupted by unusual thoughts.
He remembered that from his mother, Antiochida
and from the old Stratoniki,
he was connected to the crown
of Syria, almost a Seleucid.
For a while, he got out of the lust and drunkenness,
and ineptly, and half dazed
he felt a longing to scheme something,
to do something, to plan something,
but he failed miserably and got worn out.
His end was written somewhere, but got lost,
or perhaps history passed it by,
and rightfully so, not bothering
to record such a paltry event.
He who on the four-drachma coin
left the charm of his beautiful youth,
the light of his youthful beauty,
an aesthetic memory of that Ionian boy,
is Orofernis, son of Ariarathis.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763823

Chthonian Bodies

Hyperion
Coastal red cedars and
heightened sequoias
hyperboles of nature
scholastic and ambiguous
in their format, antithetic and
polysyllabic in their need
to procreate seeds and buds
growing rhythm in the sea’s
glaucous reflection, lean on it
sweet redwood by the shore
these lands where the sun
basks in aloneness
Hyperion one day you will become

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763424