Arrows

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excerpt

She was scrutinizing me as though willing herself to see
my soul.
Her hand came up to my cheek, and her thumb followed the line of
my cheekbone. An insurrection was taking place inside me. I wanted to
be close to her. Closer. My hands hurt with desire to touch her. My
breathing became jerky, and I felt myself grow hard in the way I knew I
must not, and the urge to satiate that hunger was ruining my
judgment. She said something, but I could only admire the fascinating
movements of her mouth—a ripe fruit, sweet and yielding.
Thank God she buried her face in my neck, though her breath,
warm on my skin, only added to the mayhem inside me, for it gave
me the time I needed to rally my wits about me. I pushed her softly
away. “Noli me tangere,” I breathed in Latin. Do not touch me. Her
big, dark pupils looked up at me, searching my face. I swallowed
awkwardly, conscious of the movement of my throat. “Chi’ka,” No, I
added in Carib. But it came out more like a strangled plea.
She knelt back, her hand on my thigh. I pushed it off, noticing as I
did the stake lifting my frock obscenely. She saw it, too. I pushed my
knees up, giving my privates the only touch and pressure they
would get. I breathed deeply, swaying softly back and forth.
Thoughts of Jesus on the Cross, at Calvary, flooded my mind,
slowing my heart.
Apacuana left me, a bit confused, I dare say, by my pushing her
away as I did. She fumbled for a long time at the entrance, building
some sort of barrier. I found it a sweet demonstration of her care for
me, but then began to worry she might have a more solid reason for
taking such precautions. I was left with a small fire burning and
enough kindling within reach to feed it.
I slept like the dead but woke up suddenly, certain I had heard
something. I tossed a handful of twigs into the glowing embers and,
moving gingerly, poked the fire until a timid flame revived. I
listened with expectation. Had I dreamed it? No, there it was again,
as if someone were shuffling at the entrance. My spirits lifted at the
thought of Apacuana’s return. But why not come in? I called to her.
Was it perhaps a beast instead?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0981073522

Poodie James

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excerpt

The chief reminded himself to be charitable
tonight and think of the A-rabs’ good works for crippled and burned
children when the Shriners and their bottle-fed mischief overflowed
from the hotels into the street. A mass of purple, white and brass, the
high school band and drill team crossed the intersection and the band
broke into “I’ll Be With You In Apple Blossom Time.” The drum
major blew his whistle, strutted and kicked toward the sky. Thirty
batons twirled high and back into the hands of the girls, whose smiles
had yet to reach the pasted-on stage. The parade was off to a good
start, Spanger thought as he watched two youngsters sitting on the
curb wide-eyed and laughing, gripping their popsicles. The first float,
a confection of white, pink and green, bore the festival queen and
princesses in their satin gowns. Princess Marcie Welch, her tiara a
double band of apple blossoms, waved to the crowd. When she saw
Poodie standing beside his wagon, she blew him a kiss. Grinning
broadly, he waved back. Well, Spanger thought, the kids in town do
seem to love that strange little man.
On the side of the blue Packard convertible that followed the
queen’s float, signs with block letters a foot high proclaimed
“Mayor and Mrs. Pete Torgerson.” The mayor perched atop the
backrest of the back seat, turning toward one side of the street then
the other, moving his arm in the way Spanger had seen in the
newsreels when the Pope blessed crowds in St. Peter’s Square.
Sue-Anne Torgerson now and then glanced at the onlookers and
lifted her hand, her head just visible above the side of the convertible.
Torgerson waved the chief to the side of the car.
“Did you see that?” he shouted over the band.
“What, Pete?”
“Poodie James, that’s what.”
Poodie had waved and smiled at the mayor’s car as it went by.
That smile, Torgerson thought, that mocking smile. Sure as hell,
he knows. He remembers.
“He’s watching the parade,” Spanger said, striding alongside the
car. Even with Torgerson sitting on the backrest, the chief’s head
was nearly level with the mayor’s.

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

Impulses

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Flowerpot
A dried up flowerpot
gardenia hungers for moist
table cloth ripped by time
trickling slow creek
its menace to the four white walls
but how to still feelings
undulating penance and relief
when the cicadas a continuum
and the breeze not falter?
Aroma of freshly baked bread
conquers every inch of space
hungry gardenia
hovering dust
no remorse worry but for
poetic eloquence

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0981073565

Entropy

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Indeterminable
Each morning, he would open the window
and sing
to the architecture of uncertainty
dismembered memories of love
that resided in the words
in the sound of a voice that wasn’t heard
he would look beyond time
on the shore
the dream of God always slept
the heart is a library of discarded poems
that never disembarked
the moon flutters inside the myth
he sees further from the forests
the pregnant enigma
who knows whether the world will exist tomorrow
our belongings are reflections
of whom we fell in love with
the one who felt the echo of lust
memory is thin to remember
the shine that each hide
in old pictures
C’est un long chemin
pour la jaunesse des choses
the words shepherds
hideaway of things
they know
nothing belongs to them
they unfurl the sails
before they sink
in the faraway friendliness
The sky is a porter of souls
it remembers
time sows and reaps
immortality

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

In Turbulent Times

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excerpt

‘Oh yes, I knew him well. And admired him. He’s a monk in Loughinish Abbey in south Armagh now. Why do you ask?’
‘He was epileptic too, wasn’t he?’ Nora’s hands rested on the table with the knife and fork still in them. She looked earnestly at Liam. She accepted the fact of her epilepsy with no embarrassment. She had long ago come to terms with it. It meant no more to her than the dark brown of her eyes or the black of her hair. But she wanted others to accept it, to regard it simply as a normal aspect of her being. Most of all, though she could not explain why, she wanted Liam to accept it. So she watched his face and was disappointed. Liam’s mouth twitched, and his eyes looked down at the bacon and eggs on his plate. He reddened a little and then said, ‘Yes, he was;’ but his voice could not hold the nonchalance he tried to charge it with. Internally Liam knew he had failed her. He wished he could kick himself.
Why do I react this way? he repeated to himself while silence extended into a solid barrier between them.
‘Do you believe the gossip that Padraig was my father, Liam?’
Nora’s question exploded in his face. The barrier disintegrated with a crash that reverberated through the house, through the empty schoolrooms.
‘Nora! How could you …? How can you … ?’ Liam struggled to regain his composure. The blast from her gelignite question had hurled him off his feet.
She smiled. The smile leered with malicious sadism. Liam was totally confused, disoriented, unbearably discomfited. He liked to feel solid, familiar ground beneath his feet. He liked the trodden paths of life, however narrow or however straight, and he did not stray from them. He was at one with those whom Grey elegised in his English country churchyard. He was one of the living dead, his life already past, like a swift, irrecoverable dream, his being already buried under a smothering mound of moral precepts, religious commandments, social expectations and private, psychological inhibitions.
‘Some people in the village have hinted that I might be Father Padraig’s bastard, haven’t they?’
Stop it, Nora, stop it, Liam cried silently. He gripped his knife and fork fiercely. He clenched his teeth. He pushed his back hard against the chair till he felt the wood bruise his spine. He drew in a deep breath. ‘Whatever put that silly notion into your head?’ he blurted out, and then realised how weak his question was. ‘I don’t understand you.’
‘You understand me well enough, Liam Dooley.’ Nora’s voice was hard, penetrating, like the bull the stoneworkers pounded into granite to split it. ‘I know what they say. I know that you know also.’

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763270

Troglodytes

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VI
Olive tree sings its hymn to the shredded
shade as the slave’s blood weaves
another sunlit mark in the bird’s
flight path; the achieved fanning
perception of the corn fields that
mysteriously wave their arms laughing
in the purple dusk becomes an apparition.
The poplars keep the last light
from the sharp edge of the knife when
the metal bore spits out fire at the
speed of light. Troglodyte machinates
his enemies and maneuvers his raised fist
against the sparrow’s heart which struggles
at the mirage of evening and at the heat
of the sun at high noon before the arrival
of the shadows. Troglodyte raises his arm
before the clouds and at the sigh
of the pious beasts having their dinner
in the heavenly garden of nature.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0978186583

Kariotakis-Polydouri, The Tragic Love Story

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For Kariotakis
The young men who arrived to the deserted island
one night counted themselves and found you missing.
They looked each other in the eyes and no wonder
they shook their heads in sadness.
Many nights they recalled that from your loneliness
a sign of fire you would send and they knew
the sad welcome of the abyss that lighted the roads
and for this they stayed in their familiar places.
Left in their grief, as if fatefully and sorrowfully
hanging from the “rock” of danger.
And when you said goodbye, you, the forever desperate,
they sang a few verses of a traditional dirge.
The young men arrive to the island every year
and they search for the elegy of life in your vacant spot.
In their eyes two tears they maintain for you
and for the new Epoch you have established.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763459

Swamped

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excerpt

“Sounds good, Eteo.”
“Okay George. How expensive is this going to be?”
“For you, Eteo,” George replied, smiling, “for you, you know …
I could do it for 16,500. I have to cover the prospector’s expenses,
that’s about 2,500, and 8,000 for my office expenses. That leaves a nice
chunk for the good guys.”
“Sounds good to me,” Eteo replied, smiling back. “Go ahead and
prepare the papers and send them to Rebecca.”
“I can have an agreement ready for your lawyer within a week.
Will that work for you?”
“A week sounds fine,” Eteo agreed, and the two men shook hands.
Alone in his office Eteo checked the prices of a few stocks. Platinum shares
were trading nicely, with good volumes and steady buying
slowly driving the price up a few cents a day. A classic case of
what they called “healthy” trading. Eteo hoped it would carry on like
this for a while longer, but he also knew that all good things come to
an end. The key was to know when to get out. As for Golden Veins
the price was stale. Eteo had had a couple of offers, which he was selling
through a different brokerage company so that no one would
know he was the seller, but he didn’t expect anyone to buy them anytime
soon.
At that moment Logan came in to his father’s office with a broad
smile on his face.
“Sam regrets selling some shares the other day,” he announced.
“It never fails, does it? Even when we sell something at a good profit,
if the stock goes up even a little bit after that, Sam regrets selling.
Now he wants to buy it back. What should I do, Dad?”
“Do what he wants. There’ll be some profit in it even at this level,
and he also has some of the cheaper stock, so his average won’t be
that bad. Go ahead and buy it back for him.”
A few minutes later Eteo noticed a buying order of 6,000 shares
bought by his house. Sam’s stock was in hand. On impulse, he dialed
Ariana’s phone and caught her doing her morning errands.
“Hello, sweet baby, want to hook up later?”
Ariana laughed and said, “What a question, but of course I want
to. Come and get me as soon as you’re done.”

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08WP3LMPX

Tasos Livaditis – Selected Poems

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Return

In reality I knew that suddenly something unforeseen would had
cancelled everything and when I heard them talking I felt as if I hadn’t
grown at all so indifferent they were (and I had to protect that and
there wasn’t any safe place anywhere) and as I walked into the street
I, as desolate as ever, stretched my arm to no one because who knows
whether someone would be there waiting; then the doorbell rang “why
you returned?” I asked him; he was an old childhood friend “I still
have something to finish” he said and all night long I heard him
sobbing in the next room because he had died very young and
he had returned to cry so his purpose on earth could be fulfilled.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B087367R7C

Vespers

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Guard
Ethereal spruce stands guarding
our home secrets without
her armour having lonely
eyes, an assuming smile
between arthritic limbs
as if to remind me of duties
that one performs without
being asked, without being
paid, yet nature has a
way of sharing her wisdom
to the open-minded leaving
the blind to stay blind until
his or her depth also comes to conceive of
greatness its meaning by one’s

own eyes and heart

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763033