Tag: love

Arrows

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excerpt

She could barely restrain herself from making a second
public accusation.
“You might get the answer to your question if you asked our
friend, Gregorio,” I replied, looking at Gregorio instead of Josefa.
Gregorio immediately understood. He grabbed Josefa by the arm
to forcibly remove her. I stood rooted to the ground, hoping he
would drag her away and that could be the end of it. But Josefa
remained feisty and broke away from him, running to me with a
pained expression. She leaned forward and whispered devilishly in
my ear, so that only I could hear. “I know what happened at the
river,” she said. “I know everything. I know you let her touch you!”
I jerked back from her, as though she had slapped me in the face.
The servant, she had seen me, and Josefa could barely contain the
power she had over me. There was no point in trying to deny
anything. I walked away, horrified by Josefa’s misplaced jealousy,
and dumbfounded by my inability to eradicate her secret
knowledge.
Right then, I decided I did not want to learn whether Apacuana
had bitten Josefa or not. There was a part of me that hoped she had.

In the morning, when Losada was notified of the incident, he
preferred to dismiss it as mere female hysteria rather than discern
which party was responsible. It was the prudent decision: to
concentrate on completing his negotiations with the cacique Chacao.
After mass, Losada ordered the captives brought to him and untied.
“We want to be your friends. You see we have not harmed you,”
Losada told Chacao. “We can decide to do this in peace, or we can do
it in war. We are powerful. To show you my goodwill, I give you all
your people back.”
Chacao was a middle-aged man with deep lines running down
the sides of his nose to his mouth in a permanent scowl. He did not
answer, just stood there, hands folded in front of him. It was
important for him not to appear grateful for Losada’s benevolence.

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

Still Waters

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man of the board. As she returned to her place, she blinked back
tears. Suddenly, the stress and excitement of the last few days – even
the last few months – overwhelmed her. The culmination of three
years of nurses’ training, the anxiety over her parents’ animosity towards
the man she loved, the disappointment that one of her two
best friends could not be graduating tonight, all gathered into a river
of tears that rose in Tyne’s throat and threatened to gush from her
eyes. Panicked, she darted a glance at Moe, and was saved by another
broad wink and a cheeky grin from her friend.
Good old Moe. Thank you, kid.
As graduate after graduate walked to the podium, Tyne tried not
to think of Carol Ann who should be with the nurses in the last row,
soon going forward to receive the coveted diploma. But, thanks to
Bryce Baldwin, Curly’s dream had died with her unborn child.
Tyne tried to shake the negative thoughts. After all, Bryce had not
acted alone, and Curly must certainly have been a willing partner.
And it was hardly his fault that she had resorted to the measures she
had to get rid of the baby. He had suggested she get an abortion but
he could not make her do it.
Tyne now remembered that a few days after her confrontation
with Dr. Baldwin in the nursery, she had begun to harbour guilt
feelings about the anger she felt towards him. She had finally gone
to confess her uncharitable thoughts to a priest. Father O’Malley
had been stern, and had given her much greater penance than Tyne
thought she deserved. She left the confessional with equally negative
thoughts about the priest, and for a moment she wondered if she
should go back and confess that, too.
However, only hours after her confession, the anger began to surface
again. This time, Tyne told herself she had a right to be angry.
After all, was there not such a thing as righteous anger? Had not Jesus
been angry with the money changers in the temple? So why should
she not be angry with Bryce Baldwin after the way he had treated her
friend?
But she found no peace from holding the grudge, and she recognized
that Morley’s influence was having an impact on her conscience.
Jesus had told his disciples they must forgive. Not seven
times, he had told Peter, but seventy times seven. Tyne finally realized
that she had to forgive Dr. Baldwin.

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

The Circle

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incinerated bodies, and pain. Then she remembers the body of a man next to
hers and she is being violated. Her mind, suddenly feels as if it is exploding when
she realizes what had really happened.
She turns to Matthew and says, “So, you have come to enjoy necrophilia
these days, Matthew Roberts. You must be really desperate. You obviously
couldn’t wait until morning.”
He turns looking at her with a smile.
“You looked so attractive, sweetheart, I couldn’t resist.”
Suddenly the room becomes dark and an explosive anger overtakes her
whole body; her eyes darken and her heart accelerates in a frenetic rhythm as if to
break through her chest and run away, burning everything in its path.
“Of course, you couldn’t resist using your weekend whore. That’s what you
always do, five minutes for your pleasure; five minutes is always enough for you
to find your manhood at its peak. The thought of how you view lovemaking
makes me puke,” she yells.
He’s flabbergasted by her outburst; he has never seen his Emily in this state of
mind. This is not his Emily, the quiet calm person he has known all those years.
She screams from the depths of her larynx and her voice carries such disgust,
such pain, such nausea that his eyes and mouth open wide and he doesn’t know
what to do or say. Suddenly, he interrupts her.
“What is it, sweetheart? Why all this commotion?”
“Don’t sweetheart me! Don’t you ever dare sweetheart me again, Matthew
Roberts. I’ve had enough of that. I have had enough of that, do you hear me? I’m
not your sweetheart or your weekend whore, anymore!”
He ducks down as if expecting her to throw something. He has never seen her
this way. He becomes apologetic.
“What would you like me to do, Emily?”
But her anger is so fierce and unappeased that she can no longer think logically.
She yells out her frustration and pain, “When you come to the point of violating me
when I’m asleep, I don’t know what you want me to say, Matthew. You are
despicable! You make me sick! Yes, my God, how you make me sick! I don’t even
want to look at you anymore.Why the hell do I put up with your crap all the time?
For the stupid salary you earn; for the stupid agency you work for; for the stupid life
you and I lead? It makes me sick to think of all that. Yes, Matthew Roberts, it makes
me sick! You make me sick. I want you out of here. Are you listening to me? I want
you out of here, out of my life! I’m not your weekend whore, anymore. Go, go to
your stupid hotel where you spend every day of the week. You may as well spend
your weekends there. Why did you come here? For your five-minute fuck?” The
tears course down her cheeks, and she wonders why she has not revolted before?

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

Water in the Wilderness

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She sat down on the sofa and stretched her legs out in front of her. Actually, it did feel good to rest. She had been a little tired and weary in the last few weeks, but she knew it was only because her body was going through hormonal changes. Dr. Rosthern had pronounced her perfectly healthy.
Stifling a yawn, she glanced at her husband. “What did your mom say when you told her we won’t be with them for Christmas dinner? Was she very disappointed?”
Morley looked up. “She said she understands, and she figured we’d be going to your folks this year. And Mom and Dad won’t be alone all day. Aunt Peg and her two daughters will be there for dinner.”
“And we’ll go over in the evening after you’ve done the milking?”
“Of course we will, hon. I told Mom that, and she’s okay with it.”
Tyne yawned again, then getting to her feet, she went to stand behind Morley and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. “And you, my dear husband, will be taking me Christmas shopping in Medicine Hat tomorrow, won’t you?”
He tipped his head back to look at her. “Whatever happened to shopping from Eaton’s catalogue like my mom used to do?”
Tyne wrinkled her nose. “In case you haven’t noticed, we’re past the middle of the twentieth century. Besides that, I love the excitement of Christmas shopping in the city, the store windows all decorated, and Santa ringing his bell beside the Salvation Army kettle on the sidewalk.”
His eyes were full of laughter. “I hope you’re not disappointed then. We’re going to Medicine Hat, not Calgary.”
“Same thing – you’ll see.” Tyne bent her head to kiss him lightly on the forehead. “Now I must get my beauty sleep if I’m going to be at my shopping best tomorrow. Don’t be long, dear. Let’s finish the tree tomorrow night.”
Morley smiled as his eyes followed her progress up the stairs.
The town of Medicine Hat almost lived up to Tyne’s expectations. The windows were decorated, carols were playing in the stores as well as on the sidewalks, and a fresh fall of snow during the night had left

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

Ken Kirkby, A Painter’s Quest for Canada

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Then he reached to the side, and turned on the
tap of the small bar sink, and filled a pitcher with water. Lastly, he opened
another cupboard, lifted down two tumblers, poured a goodly measure
of whiskey into both, and splashed water into the glasses.
“This is how you and I are going to do business,” he said. “We’re going
to drink.”
‘In the middle of the day?” Ken asked.
“What’s that got to do with anything? We’re going to drink.”
“Why do we have to drink?” Ken eyed the whiskey with revulsion. “My
guess is it’s to do with, ‘get a man drunk and you’ll find out who he is.’”
“Who told you that?”
“My father.”
“I’d like to meet your father.” He took a large swallow. “So, tell me
about yourself.”
Ken told his story, while he watched Fraser drink until the bottle was
empty. He drank a bottle every day, he said, and he was as proud of that
as the fact that he was a one match a day man. He struck a match in the
morning to light his first cigarette, and every subsequent cigarette, for the
rest of the day, was lit from the stub of the last. “It takes discipline to do
that.”
“I want you to come to the gallery two or three days a week. I want to
hear your story. I want you to tell me your feelings, your thoughts, your
understanding of the universe – everything. I want to listen to you. I want
to hear you.”
For several weeks, Ken visited and talked, while Fraser downed a bottle
of rye and smoked an eternal chain of cigarettes. “You have a passion that
is white-hot and I love it,” he said. “We have all these artists around, and
they’re all limp. I want to see a man with a paintbrush in one hand and a
sword in the other. That’s you.”
One day, Ken asked Fraser why he never saw the paintings he sold to
him. “Where do you put them?”
“I’ve sold them.”
“All of them?”
Yes, all of them.”
“Oh my gosh. Well, that’s terrific.”
“You look surprised.”
“I am.”
“That’s not a very nice thing to say to me. Of course, they’re sold. So,
bring me some more. Go and paint.”
“There’s a limit to my speed.”
“I’m sure there is and I want to find it. I suspect the faster you paint the
better you get. You’re thinking too much. Don’t think. Painting isn’t about
thinking. This is not an intellectual exercise.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0981073573

Nikos Engonopoulos – Poems

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Dyadic Automation
Careful! Cover yourselves! Be careful! The blowing winds have already brought the mysterious messages to our ears. Everything around us is just another threat. There wasn’t any neighbourhood not blanketed by fear, each object hides a soul inside it. Come, let’s go. The time is now. The rusty weathercock calls us wildly in the night. The draw-well stopped and the blind horses became one with the begonia flowers. Let’s go, march! To go far away to Galvana. The saviour plank is hidden from the wind harbour of forgetfulness, peace is there. Sacrificial victims of love, ascetic wanderers of the night, proud dawn walkers light up the sea lamp. Whoever has the strength, whose heart truly dares, let him come. But let us not delay in futile reviews of the past. The time is uncertain. The roads aren’t safe at all and the flood drenched many places. The Caryatid girls have crowded erotically the dark ditches, the lustful maidens of our erotic years. Their famous smile flew away and now it blooms in some abandoned islands. The thunderbolt shows us the way. Let’s go! To the Lycaonian Galvana, there we shall rest. After our kind foreheads are decorated with rose flowers, we offer the libations due to the birds. There, in the graceful wooden temples of the old capital, we shall slaughter the young bull and a fiery column will spring out from its shed blood. There, wrapped around phallic banners, girls are more beautiful than sudden conclusions of dynamite. There lives the Hellene Pantelas among the wild Soudanese. The flowers there are wise and sunlit leftovers of dead beauties. The tears of the shark and the enigmatic prayer of Zacharia are useless there along with the frosty embrace of the penguin.
The erotic spasms of the last emperors and their fiery tears belong to the same person. The offer of the boatswain to the footprints of the hypotenuse of anomalous attractions is accompanied by the angelic harp, and our imposing stature means the spread of freedom and the longing for freedom all over the globe.

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

Jazz with Ella

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“Sit with me here on this bench,” he said, taking her hand gently. “You asked to know about me and my family. So look around you. Except for my mother and aunt, most of my family are here. My father fought the fascists—just outside of the city. He wasn’t a brave man. He had no choice. To serve in the army was better than dying in Leningrad.”
“And your mother?”
“She survived the siege. She had no food except the ration. She didn’t get skinny though. She puffed up, she told me, her legs swollen—and her face, too—with disease.”
At that moment, Jennifer could feel a disease working through her own body in sympathy, a horrible nausea, her head heavy, her arms like lead, then only emptiness.
Volodya went on: “That first winter, 1941, she told me that many people froze to death on the streets. Those who survived were too weak to bury the others. So they just stepped over the dead on their way to stand in the food lines.”
“But she lived?”
“Somehow she lived. When the city was liberated, my father returned and nursed her back to health. He had an army ration; it was only a little more food than the usual ration. He died two years after I was born in 1947. He had been wounded in the chest. He couldn’t breathe.”
“That’s ghastly. So your mother had to raise you by herself?”
“Yes, she and her sister. But I don’t tell you for pity. This is what I want to tell you.” He stood up. “Look around here—at this memorial. All the memorials around town are built in honour of our glorious fallen comrades. So many memorials for the dead.”
Jennifer had a glimmer of understanding now. She shook off the nausea.
“A few years ago I looked at how my mother was living—how damp is her apartment, how she still stands in line for food, and I decide to write to Comrade Brezhnev. I asked him how come so many things are done for the dead and so little for the living.” Jennifer shifted uneasily. “Soon two special men came to my mother’s door. You know what this means, special men?”
“KGB,” she whispered.
“Yes, they question my mother. What is her son doing? Does he make trouble? The neighbours see these men come to the apartment.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763246

He Rode Tall

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stands that were crowded with all kinds of people visiting and
catching-up with each other since the last show. At the canteen,
Joel ordered a large coffee and then found an empty table at the
edge of the eating area to sit at and ponder his dilemma. He sure
didn’t want to sell to that no-good Buck Smith, but maybe that’s
what it would have to come down to. Joel thought that he should
have talked to Tanya sooner about the money problems, but it was
his pride that held it tight inside him. It wasn’t fair to her the way
she found out. She had done an exceptional job training the pretty
little palomino and he knew that she had high hopes for the filly.
There had to be something he could do to fix the situation.
“Joel.” It was Tanya, and her tears had been replaced with a
fresh smile. “I want you to meet my friends Morgan, Jesse, and
Sue Ellen. We are going to head into town and catch a movie or
something. Want to come along?”
Joel was relieved to see that Tanya had recovered so quickly.
She was obviously pleased to have connected with old friends
from the rodeo circuit.
“Well, do you want to come?” Tanya repeated.
“Oh no, you kids go. I want to hang around and make sure that
the horses are all bedded down for the night. But hey, have fun.”
Tanya and her friends hurried out of the arena. Joel couldn’t
help but think what a special person Tanya has become. His feelings
were nothing romantic—now, don’t get silly. She was just a
real good friend who happened to be female and nineteen years
old. Oh yeah, she was one heck of a horsewoman.
They had only been friends for a couple months, but now,
their first meeting seemed so long ago. He still remembered
when she had asked him on her first visit to the ranch, “Are these
horses just pretty, or do they ride too?” He was sure he would
never forget that. Harry and he had been proud of the good
schooling they were giving the three-year-olds, but that afternoon
when he first saw Tanya ride one, then another, and finally a
third horse, he recognized that she was taking them beyond
where he could even dream of, into another dimension.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0980897955

Still Waters

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She felt Morley give her hand an extra squeeze to bring her attention
to the scene before her. People were coming out of the church,
laughing and talking, wishing each other a merry Christmas. Among
them, almost at the bottom of the steps, she saw her mother and
dad. Tyne drew in her breath and waited. Her mother looked in their
direction, and her eyes grew large with disbelief. Then she turned to
speak to her husband.
Jeff swung around. In the light from the doorway Tyne saw his expression
change from surprise to displeasure. Then he walked away
from his wife and came towards them.
Tyne let Morley’s hand go, and took a couple of steps to meet her
father. “Hello, Dad. Merry Christmas.” She lifted her face for his kiss.
It landed, cold and stiff, on her cheek.
“What are you doing here, Tyne? We didn’t know you were coming
home.” He glanced at Morley who had moved to her side. “We
would have met you at the bus depot, you know. You didn’t have to
bring Morley in from the farm. I’m sure he has better things to do
on Christmas Eve.”
“Not at all, sir,” Morley said. “I was only too happy to come. And
I’m pleased Tyne invited me to church with her.”
Jeff cleared his throat but did not reply. He turned back to his
daughter. “Well, I see you’re not afraid of being snowed in, after all. I
only hope, for your sake, that you don’t have to miss any days of your
training this close to the end.”
“I’m sure it will be all right, Dad,” Tyne murmured as she turned
to hug her mother who appeared bewildered and anxious.
Tyne felt her mother’s anxiety, and understood. All her married
life, Emily Milligan had lived in her husband’s shadow, obeying him,
pleasing him, keeping the peace within the family as far as it was in
her power to do so. Tyne knew that whatever her mother said to discourage
her daughter’s relationship with Morley was only a reflection
of her husband’s feelings. She said what she knew he would want her
to say, and felt about it the way she perceived her husband to feel.
Tyne hugged her mother hard as tears stung her eyes. Oh, Mom, I
don’t want to bring you grief. Please try to understand, and be strong
for my sake.

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

The Circle

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Excerpt

Thursday morning Los Angeles opens her eyes, staring at the sun rising steadily
on the eastern horizon, gifting the city with warmth and joy. Even the homeless
smile this morning knowing it will be easier to locate food in the restaurant garbage
bin or the neighborhood pub garbage; there’s always something edible
there. The smog overarches the city touching the taller buildings, sitting lazily on
top of the high-rises. Rush hour is beginning and traffic increases with bottlenecks
in main arteries. One can hear the morning sounds of the commercial,
business center as people slowly reach to their destinations, stores open their
doors and customers rush in.
Ibrahim Hazim Mahdi sips his morning coffee and reads the latest news. He’s
pleased with the way his day went yesterday; he felt pride with Hakim next to
him all along. Sometimes, he remembers having asked Allah why he wasn’t
gifted with a son of his own, yet that was years ago. These days he takes what
comes his way as a gift from the Almighty because he knows the days of each are
counted first by Him and next by His people.
Ibrahim knows deep in his heart that Hakim is going to do just fine with the
money that he’s leaving for him. He also knows that Hakim will take good care of
his Auntie Mara, as long as Allah choses to keep her in this world. Despite all
these positive thoughts there still lingers an unexplained anxiety which has taken
hold of his mind and makes his heart ache; yet he cannot find the reason for it.
He wonders why he feels this now, after has taken care of everything.
The phone rings and he answers to a girl’s voice.
“Good morning, I’m calling from the medical center. Mr. Mahdi, please.”
“This is Ibrahim Mahdi.”
“Sir, I need to arrange an appointment for you with the specialist who
examined you. He has the results from your tests. What would be the best time
for you later today?”
“Any time is fine, young lady.”
“Alright then, is one in the afternoon okay?”
“Yes, that will be fine; I’ll be there at one.”

It’s early evening in Baghdad, and Ibrahim decides to call Mara. He dials his
number at home. The maid gets the phone and calls his wife.
“Hello,” he says, “how are you? I haven’t talked to you for two days.”
He hears Mara weeping on the other end and asks, “Why are you crying, my
beloved? I’ll be home in a couple of days. Is everything alright?”
“Yes, everything is alright,” she manages to say while sobbing. “Are you really
on your way home soon?” She doubts him.

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