Category: Uncategorized

Water in the Wilderness

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excerpt

Tyne held her breath, partly from anxiety, partly to avoid breathing in the stale, musty odour coupled with an even stronger smell of cigarette smoke than she had detected in the lobby.
“Here it is,” Arthur said suddenly with a slight tug on her arm, “room 312.” He rapped lightly on the door and waited. When there was no response, he raised his hand and rapped louder and longer.
They heard the creak of bed springs followed by a low groan. Arthur rapped again. A muffled voice from inside the room rasped, “Whatdaya want? Go away.”
“Corky Conrad,” Arthur boomed, “is that you?”
The answer was drowned out by several doors along the corridor opening simultaneously. Tyne swung around to see three grizzled heads peering out. A woman from the room across the hall pulled a threadbare dressing gown around her and whined, “Why don’t you shut up? It’s enough to wake the dead. Whatchadoin’ here, anyway? It’s the middle of the night, and you won’t get any response from old Corky for hours yet.”
Arthur ignored her and banged on the door again. “Come on, Corky, open up. There’s someone here to see you.”
From inside the room they heard a shuffling sound accompanied by angry muttering. “Can’t ya even wait till a man gets his pants on? All right, I’m comin’, I’m coming.”
Tyne felt weak in the knees. She longed to lean against the wall for support, but one glance at the greasy, peeling paint changed her mind. She wanted to yell at Corky to hurry up; she could stand the suspense no longer.
Finally, the door opened a crack, and Tyne saw an unshaven face with bloodshot eyes below rumpled graying hair. Corky Conrad had deteriorated even since she saw him in December. Holding tight to the door with one hand and the waist of his pants with the other, he glared at Arthur, then squinted hard at Tyne.
“Wha … Tyne? What’re ya doing here?”
Tyne started to answer but Arthur took her arm and propelled her through the door. “We’d like to come in if you don’t mind.”

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562884

https://www.amazon.com/dp/192676319X

Tasos Livaditis – Selected Poems

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SIMPLE TALK

…How can one sing
Here, where our lives were eggshells under
their boots
with death so ever close
and from a patch on the hole of your elbow
with the name of the dead comrade
like a fork piercing your tongue?
It’s enough that we speak
in a simple way
as one is hungry in a simple way
as one loves
as we die
in a simple way.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562930

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763831

George Seferis – Collected Poems

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THE SHAPE OF FATE

…Now I don’t know how to read further
because they tied you in chains, cause they pierced you
with the spear,
cause one night in the forest they separated you
from the woman
who looked with her eyes fixated and didn’t know
how to speak,
cause they deprived you of light, the pelagos, the bread.
How did we fall, comrade, in the trap of fear?
It wasn’t in your fate, nor in mine these writings
we never bought or sold such things
who is he who orders and kills behind our backs?
Let it be, don’t ask; three red horses on the threshing floor
circle around human bones and have their eyes covered,
let it be, don’t ask, wait; the blood, the blood
will rise one morning like St George the horse rider
to nail the dragon to the soil with his spear.

https://draft2digital.com/book/4279077#print

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B096TTS37J

Introspection

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ZETA

…I said,
together they fight
the common enemy called hunger,
the endless source of need
for equilibrium
the unhealed wound or
the bleeding scar
of the twentieth century
as always and
I said,
together they define
the meaningful schemata
of the swallow’s flight path
that slices the wind
caressing it with a winged shadow
together they formulate
the essence of the unexpected
soft pain and sweetness
together they constitute
the final, greatest monad.

https://draft2digital.com/book/4118210#print

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763777

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