Poodie James

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excerpt

Sam thought about the trajectory of his own career, the comfort
of his retirement, the adventure of his new work on the bench. He
wasn’t sure that he could trust words to say what he felt. He offered
his hand to the big man sitting in the coppery sunshine on the
stoop of Poodie’s cabin. Engine Fred grasped it and smiled.
“I talk too much,” he said.
As Sam backed his car around and headed down the lane,
Engine Fred shambled up the path through the bunch grass
toward the jungle. Poodie hefted the three boxes of reds into a
stack next to the cabin. He would put them on the wagon and take
them to Ralph Gritzinger at the market. With his apple money,
ten or twelve dollars a week from newspapers and bottles and what
he made stocking shelves and doing odd jobs for Gritzinger, he
was all right, he thought. He had a place to stay and people who
helped him. The YMCA let him swim laps in the indoor pool now
that the city pool was closed for the season. He wondered what
would happen to a man like him in another country, another time.
What would the Egyptians 4000 years ago have done with an
undersized deaf man whose talk was hard to understand, who
walked badly? Would the Pharaoh’s master builders have wanted
him to work on the pyramids? Maybe, he thought, if he was lucky.
Most likely, he would starve. He walked out into the field where
the orchard used to be and turned to face his cabin and trees. If he
was from a nice neighborhood in town, wouldn’t he think the
cabin was too small, too run down and dirty for anyone to live in,
with no running water and no bathroom? If he were an Egyptian
slave from 2680 BC, wouldn’t he think that living in such a place
would be a blessing?
He was blessed, he told himself; a lucky man. He would hate the
jobs the school for the deaf wanted him to take, fixing furniture,
repairing shoes, inside all the time, stuck in a routine. Poodie
thought about how hard most folks in the valley worked to pay for
their houses, buy their cars, raise their children. He thought about
Dan and Ruth Thorp losing their orchard and their house.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562868

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08W7SHCMV

The Unquiet Land

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excerpt

Republican Army, and the British forces. What Sinn Fein calls ‘the forces of occupation.’ Nora is worried sick. The reports of killings, of arson, of intimidation and repression: they terrify her.”
“They’re always talking of war in Dublin,” Michael said.
“It’ll come soon enough, I’m sure,” Caitlin murmured half to herself, “and we’ll all be involved in it.”
“And yet it’s so peaceful here,” Michael said, listening to the silence that enclosed them and watching the lazy drift of turf smoke from the farmhouse chimneys. He let his hands slide down over the sides of Caitlin’s breasts and lowered his lips to the cool flesh of her cheek.
Caitlin shivered with the thrill of his touch.
“Are you cold?” Michael asked. He raised her to her feet, placed both arms around her waist and pulled her to him.
Caitlin circled her arms around his neck and gazed with longing into his eager, blue eyes. “No, I’m not cold,” she whispered. She was frightened. Things Padraig had said were beginning to struggle to the surface of her consciousness.
Michael kissed her lips lightly, then with more and more pressure. She felt his tongue and opened her mouth. She quivered all over.
“Thou shallt not commit adultery.” Padraig’s words sounded distantly in her ears like the echo of waves in a seashell. “One of the ten commandments from God Himself to his servant Moses. You cannot disobey God’s explicit precepts with impunity, Caitlin.”
Michael’s feet shifted as he pressed his body even more tightly against Caitlin’s. His breathing was uneven. His heart pounded.
“A sin is a word, deed or desire contrary to the law of God.” Padraig’s fierce, dark eyes and passionate, white face appeared in Caitlin’s thoughts like a nightmare figure in a child’s uneasy sleep.
Desire. Desire. Desire.
Michael was seized by a passion that tightened every fibre in his body and found release only in the kisses that he pressed on Caitlin’s mouth and face. Caitlin responded with a passion as consuming as his. She pushed her body against his muscular frame with an eagerness that almost fused them into one.
“The flesh lusteth against the spirit.” The priest’s black eyes, bright as coal, burned into her own eyes with the fierce heat of fanaticism. “Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness. These are the works of the flesh. These are the Devil’s works. Not God’s.”

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562888

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

The Circle

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excerpt

“Come in, my son, come in. Let me introduce you to the Minister of Finance,
Omar Salem. Here’s one of my sons from the United States, minister. His name
is Talal Ahem.”
Omar Salem looks at Talal and smiles.
“He’s one of the seven?”
“Yes.”
“I’m very pleased to meet you, sir,” Talal says, and shakes the man’s hand.
“You, too, Talal Ahem,” says the minister. “Should we expect you to return
to your country soon?”
Ibrahim smiles with obvious pleasure as he tells the minister, “He’s a
chemical engineer.”
“A chemical engineer, very good; now, this is a man our country needs, don’t
you think, my good friend, Ibrahim?”
“Yes, of course. Yes, our country needs all her talents to help her in our years
of development.”
“Please tell me, Ibrahim, when your dearest son Hakim will visit us?”
“I hope very soon in the new year, minister.”
Talal shakes the hand of the minister once again and leaves him with Ibrahim
in the study. He finds Emily in the garden and they walk together for a while.
She’s curious to know what happened.
“Who’s meeting with Ibrahim, honey?”
“It’s the Minister of Finance for Iraq.”
“Well, it certainly seems Ibrahim is well-connected here.”
“He’s well-connected all over the world, my love. What surprises me,
though, is that there are seven of us in the United States.”
“What do you mean, seven of you?”
“Hakim and I are in the United States thanks to Ibrahim’s money. Now, I
find out there are another five who have gone to the states for studies, just as
Hakim and I did. I only know Ahmed, in Los Angeles whom I see often, but who
are the other four and where are they?”
“Why did Ibrahim send you if you are not a blood relative?”
“My mission is to be with Hakim and make sure he never feels alone, nor gets
into trouble. To make sure nothing bad happens to him.”
They walk hand in hand, silently, while Talal tries to figure out who the rest
of the seven could be and where they may be now. There must be a reason the old
man sent us all to the United States. Talal knows he needs to find that out before
they return home, so he can brief Hakim before he gets involved with Bevan and
his plans.
“Tomorrow we’re going to the gulf. Are you not excited?” he asks Emily.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562817

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0978186524

Entropy

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Endless Story
How does a lonely man die
how does his soul transcend
into astral genes and
in the hand of God that through
the ages resurrect the youth.
What does his primeval memory
remembers
of cascading colors
of painful rebirths
the whistling wind that hurls
messages in code
to the roots of cells
where life twists
its edge with beaks of birds
that transfer reflection
and whooshing of waves.
What is his identity
or even his destination
as naked as he is and hanging off
the tunnels of time
undisputed reward
of eternity.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DPCRLJC6

Titos Patrikios – Selected Poems

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IV
The drunk men rolled in the muddy road
the old guerilla sang among sobs and saliva
Hail to you ELAS** for Hellas
until the army police took him.
Sophianos was crawling next to me
stinking of ouzo and yelling in the empty room
I turned into a traitor for a 48 hour release
expel me from your company, expel me
and I held his forehead so he could throw up.

  • Leftist guerilla group

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562972

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

Wheat Ears

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Candlestick
Candlestick almost burnt
drips wax over its base
like stalactites turn moments
to eternities you shape
a well formed stanza
a light thanks to
burnt matches in the drawer
with the white napkins
unfolded occasions
one for you one for her
then as if it were a
napkin from inspired
dovetailed drawer rhyme
you fold neatly and place
where ideal
iamb compels
in the middle of the poem

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

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

Constantine Cavafy

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So, They’ll Come
One candle is enough. Its dim light
will be more suitable, hospitable
when the Shadows come, the Shadows of Love.
One candle is enough. Tonight, the room
should not have too much light. Deep in reverie,
in subjection, and in the low light
completely in reverie, I shall envisage
the arrival of the Shadows, the Shadows of Love.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562856

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

Fury of the Wind

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excerpt

…a cut above this one or that one, and two cuts above the people
who lived in the districts. In England not one of them would
have any social standing at all. She wondered what their reaction
would be if they knew that her father was a respected doctor in
the Midlands, and that she had mingled with the town’s leading
citizens before coming to Canada as a war bride. But she had no
intention of telling them. She preferred things the way they were,
and enjoyed her friendships with the other farmers’ wives. Most of
them, however, were older than Penny. She felt a tingle of anticipation
when she realized there would be a younger woman living in
the Colson district, only a mile away.
But then the anticipation gave way to doubt. What sort of woman
would marry the man of whom Penny knew so little from sight,
but so much by reputation? A reputation which painted a picture
of a man whom no self-respecting woman would consider as a husband.
Whether or not this reputation was deserved Penny did not
know. She knew only that it was not wise to get on the wrong side of
the town matrons, and Ben, apparently, had done just that.
Penny kissed her son’s forehead as she ascended the back steps
into the house. “We’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we, sweetheart?”
she said, and laughed as a giggling David reached up to grab
a handful of her hair.

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

Red in Black

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Glass
You raised your glass
looked my way
Ι discerned your lips
through the blonde wine
I blew a kiss your way
diaphanous image
that touched you and
for an answer you sipped
your wine
in such an erotic way
that my skin turned fiery
in its anticipation

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1771713208

Nikos Engonopoulos – Poems

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Orpheus the Xenophobe
the tears stain life
have you cried so much
and now your eyes are dry
oh women
of Hellas?
there where your eyelids fell
cypresses flourish
and always on their tops
a bird

https://draft2digital.com/book/3744799#print

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763734