The Song of the Flower

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The Song of the Flower

The Linnet's Wings

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In the Garden A bird came down the walk: He did not know I saw; He bit an angle-worm in halves And ate the fellow, raw.

And then he drank a dew From a convenient grass, And then hopped sidewise to the wall To let a beetle pass.

He glanced with rapid eyes That hurried all abroad,-They looked like frightened beads, I thought; He stirred his velvet head Like one in danger; cautious, I offered him a crumb, And he unrolled his feathers And rowed him softer home Than oars divide the ocean, Too silver for a seam, Or butterflies, off banks of noon, Leap, splashless, as they swim.

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THE LINNET'S WINGS (ISSN:2009-2369) Lakepoint, Mullingar, Co Westmeath, ROI

Designed by Marie Lynam Fitzpatrick, 2017

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, mail the publisher at thelinnetswings@gmail.com Ordering Information: Single Copies available from our website: www.thelinnetswings.org Quantity sales. Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, mail the publisher at thelinnetswings@gmail.com ISBN-13: 978-1974662494

Summer 2017 FIRST EDITION 8 /2017 Printed by CS Amazon Frontispiece Art: "Seagull Flight" by Sherry Allyn Norman Poem:"'A Bird came down the Walk" by Emily Dickinson

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Other Publications by The Linnet´s Wings "One Day Tells Its Tale to Another" by Nonnie Augustine ISBN-13: 978-1480186354 "About the Weather-- Spring Trending" by Marie Lynam Fitzpatrick ISBN-13: 978-0993049330 "This Crazy Urge to Live" by Bobby Steve Baker ISBN-13: 978-099304909 "Disabled Monsters" by John C. Mannone ISBN-13:978-1522869504 "Three Pounds of Cells" by Oonah V Joslin ISBN-13: 978-0993049378

Illustrated Books "Purple Kisses" by Priya Prithviraj ISBN-13: 978-1545505069 Classics "The Song of Hiawatha" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ISBN 13: 978-1480176423 "The House that Jack Built" ISBN-13: 978-1483977669

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CONTENTS EDITORS FOR THE ISSUE

MANAGING EDITOR Marie Lynam Fitzpatrick SENIOR EDITOR Bill West FICTION Marie Lynam Fitzpatrick Bill West POETRY Oonah Joslin SPANISH Marie Lynam Fitzpatrick PHOTOGRAPHY Maia Cavelli WEB DATABASE Peter Gilkes Surface offices: Mullingar, Co. Westmeath, Ireland Motril, Granada, Andalusia, Spain Online: Writer's Corne: Zoetrope Virtual Studio

The Linnet´s Wings Submission Office

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FRONT MATTER

Frontispiece: Seagull by Sherry Allyn Norman iv Prologue: Crack'ed xiii

PART ONE

Moon Rising 1 Micro Fiction: Blood of the Stone 4 Flash Fiction: Broken Wings by Sandra Arnold 6 Classic Poetry: Dawn by Ella Wheeler Wilcox 7 CNF: Letter to the Lost by Tom Sheehan 10

PART TWO

Graduations of Shadow 16 Book Review:The Metaphysics of Blindness in Literature by Alisa Velaj Translated from Albanian into English by Arben Latifi 16

Classic Poetry: Song of the Flower XXIII by Khalil Gibran 22 Classic Poetry: Ah! Sun-Flower by William Blake 27 Bonnie Parker, Poet by Dah Helmer 28 Flash Fiction: Meditations on dear Petrov by Susan Tepper 34 Classic Poetry: The Lady of Shalott by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

PART THREE

Poetry: Life 46 Vive La Difference, Editorial by Oonah V Joslin 48 A Hail Mary by Sergia A. Ortiz 51 Absorption Spectrum (for my newly emigrated son) by Ceinwen Haydon 53 After Baptism by Kathleen Cassen Mickelson 55 Born of Clay by Jane Fuller 56 Brother by Daniel Fitzpatrick 59 Mourning Light by Brandon Marlon 61 Maybe Today by Beate Sigriddaughter 63 Sole Survivor by Lesley Timms 65 Drowned by John Grey 66 Purple Haze by Bill West 68 Red Rag by James Graham 69 My Son by Ceinwein E C Haydon 70 Vortex by Dolores Duggan 77 Childhood problems by Alex McMillan 72 Ultra by Robert Nisbet 73 Does She Sing by Mike Jewett 74 Chemotherapy by Mike Jewett 75 We, the poets of the Waka tradition by Sergio Ortiz 76 The Last Stop by Irena Pasvinter 77 Fair to Middlin’ by Jim landwehr 78 ix

SPANISH TRANSLATIONS A Goya by Ruben Dario by Michael Woof 80

CLASSIC ART

Moon Rising at the Staffelalp by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Female Artist by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner 3 Snake Curling Around A Bamboo Stalk With A Sparrow On It by Katsushika Hokusai 3 Ladies Of Arles (Memories Of The Garden At Etten) by Vincent van Gogh 10 A Woman In A Chiton by Kuzma PetrovVodkin 13 Light And Shadow by Franklin Carmichael 15 Illustration by Vilhelm Pedersen for Hans Christian Andersen's The Shadow 18 Seed Catalogue Illustrations 22-24 Flower Illustrations, Biodiversity Heritage Library 26 Moonlight Night by Wassily Kandinsky 28 A Woman In A Chiton by Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin 37 The Lady Of Shalott by John William Waterhouse 38 I Am Half Sick Of Shadows', Said The Lady Of Shalott by John William Waterhouse 40 The Lady Of Shalott by John William Waterhouse 42 The Lady Of Shalott by John Atkinson Grimshaw 45 A Live Wire by Frank Xavier Leyendecker 53 Orana Maria (Hail Maria) by Paul Gauguin 50 Vortex, Space, Form, Giacomo Balla 52 A Boy And A Girl With A Collie Dog Standing By A Stream (Study For 'The Covenanters' Baptism') by George Harvey 61 The Household Gods, John William Waterhouse 56 Sleep And His Half Brother Death, John William Waterhouse 58 Shivering Girl With A Blue Ring, Jozsef Rippl-Ronai 62 Shoemaker, Boris Kustodiev 64 Meandering Landscape With River, Piet Mondrian 66 Red And White, Edvard Munch 69 Otras leyes por el pueblo o Disparate de bestia, Francisco Goya 71 At Home, Boris Kustodiev, 70 The Childhood Of Gargantua, Gustave Dore, 72 Pan Whistling At A Blackbird, Arnold Böcklin, 73 Untitled, Paul Klee, 74 Blossoms in the Night, Paul Klee 77 Fairy Tales, Konstantin Makovsky 78

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Crack'ed Give me the mirror that all wo/men dream at.

Each touch a ghostly dance led by lies.

Enchanted lures that brighten days they work at.

Implied by sprites in jeweled fairy skies.

Waiting are witches or the half bitten apple.

Even Snow White's teeth can't mark as her own.

Beware this Medusa Perseus' battle.

For She bore the horse who guards Poseidon's poems.

This soughing fancy that was once forbidden To folk whose longings might fit larger zones, And every doubt a god could spare ghostwritten; Yet life is drenched in one's own poisoned tones.

An innocent fit till one is cast aside To reflect in mirrors crack'ed from side to side.

Rp Verlaine Marie Fitzpatrick Facebook, March 2015

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The reason why the stone is red is its iron content, which is also why our blood is red.

Andy Goldsworthy

Art: Moon Rising at the Staffelalp Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Date: 1910 Style: Expressionism Genre: portrait Media: oil, canvas Dimensions: 76 x 101 cm Location: Brücke Museum, Berlin, Germany

Part One Moon Rising

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Art:

Female Artist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Date: 1910 Style: Expressionism Genre: portrait Media: oil, canvas Dimensions: 76 x 101 cm Location: Brücke Museum, Berlin, Germany

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SANDRA ARNOLD

Blood of the Stone M

iranda tells them this is how she remembers it.

Alice creeping down the stairs, sliding the bolt from the front door, tip-toeing down the stone steps and standing for a moment listening. Owl hoot. Cat yowl.

Behind the windows, tucked inside their dreams, the murmurings of twenty girls.

Barely enough time before the housekeeper started clattering in the kitchen.

Alice taking off her slippers, rolling her pyjamas above her knees. Waiting. The timing had to be perfect. It had to be the exact moment the ink leached from the sky leaving bleached lawns and smoky shadows, a smudge of stars, a wisp of waxing moon. The air thick with scents of rain and earth and leaf. A shiver of morning light. Rain-slicked spider webs. The first pale notes of birds.

Alice kneeling in the grass washing her face in the dew. Sucking air through her teeth with the first cold shock of it. Alice closing her eyes, spreading her arms and spinning in slow circles across the garden, inhaling the petrichor tang. Rolling the word on her tongue and singing it under her breath, “Petros from stone. Ichor from blood of the gods. Blood of the stone.”

Alice running back up the steps. Miranda shivering at the top, whispering “Hurry up!

Don’t let Pruneface catch you again or you’ll be in deep shit.” Giggling up the stairs. Slipping into their room. Diving into their beds.

“Please say you won’t do it again you silly cow! You’ll catch your death!”

“No need. All finished. But I wish you’d do it too, then we can both have eternal youth.”

“No thanks.”

“You’ll regret it when you’re old and wrinkly, whereas I’ll never grow old. Decades from now you’ll look at me and wish you’d done it.”

“In your dreams.”

This is the story Miranda tells at the reunion dinner.

Someone says, “And thanks to that drunk driver she got her wish.”

Miranda looks over the sea of grey heads and can’t help wondering what Alice would have looked like now. ###

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ART: Snake Curling Around A Bamboo Stalk With A Sparrow On It Katsushika Hokusai Style: Ukiyo-e Genre: animal painting

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Broken Wings

Sandra Arnold by

She watched the house for days until she was certain no one else lived there. Each time she saw them walk out the front door as if they hadn’t a care in the world she wanted to bar their way and ask if they were sorry, if they felt... anything.

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Robyn ran out of the courtroom, across the crowded foyer, through the glass doors and out into the watery sunshine of an ordinary day. She flattened her back against a wall trying to breathe while the traffic edged along the road as usual and people drifted in and out of shops. She saw a cat tracking a sparrow with a broken wing. As the cat got ready to spring she turned away, unable to look. She wanted to press a stop button.

She wanted to scream. She wanted to breathe. A couple of journalists walked down the steps in front of her and paused to light up. They inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly, their faces tilted to the sky. One of them muttered that the sentence was a joke. His face got redder and redder as he stabbed the air between his words with his cigarette. The two girls would be in Juvenile Detention until they were eighteen then they’d be released to a safe house with new identities. It would be done in secret. The family wouldn’t know. He’d seen it all before. His cousin was in the Prison Service so he knew what went on behind closed doors. If the public knew, there’d be riots in the streets. The other man nodded, staring into the distance. They finished their cigarettes, ground them into the concrete with their heels and headed in different directions.

Robyn followed the red-faced one to a cafe and sat down at his table. His face registered surprise then recognition then dismay. He had a two year old himself, he said. A little boy. He couldn’t imagine what she was going through. There was no justice in the bloody legal system in this country, not that she needed him to tell her. If that had happened to his kid he’d track them down and ... “When I found them I’d... I truly would... even if I swung for it, so help me God.” Not that he believed in God. How could anyone, when such things could happen in the world? Since the case hit the papers, his wife refused to use babysitters any more. If they had to go out together they always took the kid with them. He breathed out slowly. Did she have family? Husband?

Brothers? Male cousins? She nodded though she didn’t. He looked over his shoulder and lowered his voice. He had contacts. When he found out when those little tarts were released he’d let her know. She should let her relatives know. He’d want someone to do the same for him in the same circumstances, God forbid. They exchanged phone numbers and said goodbye. She doubted she’d hear from him again.

Six years later her phone rang.

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She wore a wig, assumed a new name, travelled to a different city and booked into a motel not far from the address he’d given her. She turned her phone off.

She watched the house for days until she was certain no one else lived there. Each time she saw them walk out the front door as if they hadn’t a care in the world she wanted to bar their way and ask if they were sorry, if they felt... anything. But she didn’t. She stayed behind the wheel of her hired car and followed them. She shadowed them in and out of the shops in the mall. She watched them trying on dresses and jeans, laughing and joking with the assistants. She learned their routine. She saw that they walked in the park every afternoon, stopping to smell the flowers. Then they sat on a bench near the lake and ate ice cream. Every night they returned to swim in the lake. Neither of them appeared to be strong swimmers, but they liked floating on their backs and splashing each other. She was struck by their youth and beauty.

Their laughter. Their playfulness. Their delight in every day.

She lay awake thinking of her baby’s dark eyelashes, the way they used to feel on her skin as he fell asleep, his cheek against hers. His warm, milky smell. His soft little fist curled around her finger. The Defence had said they’d just tried to stop him crying. After all, what did twelve year olds know about the vulnerability of a child when they were only children themselves?

On the seventh day she was already in the water when they dived in. The sky was studded with stars and the moon hung over the lake like a huge benevolent eye and shone in bright fragments around the girls as they cut through the smooth black water. One of them started singing a song about a bird learning to fly. Robyn’s eyes filled with tears. She breathed slowly to still her pounding heart. When they turned in her direction she waved at them. The singing stopped. The girls clutched each other in alarm. But when they saw it was only a woman swimming they relaxed and waved back. They swam up to her and asked if she was enjoying herself. She said enjoyment wasn’t the right word, but it was an opportunity she couldn’t miss.

In the morning she returned the car, paid her bill and boarded the train for home. She turned her phone back on without checking her messages, leaned back in her seat, closed her eyes and thought about the words she’d need when the news broke, the answers she’d give to the inevitable “So how do you feel?” She thought of the way the girls’ voices skimmed across the lake when they thought they were alone.

She thought of her child’s voice and the way he used to sing to himself in his cot. It took a few seconds before she realised her phone was ringing. The reporter’s voice. “Thank God! I’ve been trying to call you for days. Look, I’m really sorry. It was the right address but wrong date. They’re not being released until next week.” ###

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Dawn by Ella Wheeler Wilcox Day's sweetest moments are at dawn; Refreshed by his long sleep, the Light Kisses the languid lips of Night, Ere she can rise and hasten on.

All glowing from his dreamless rest He holds her closely to his breast, Warm lip to lip and limb to limb, Until she dies for love of him.

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Letter to the Lost by Tom Sheehan

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m t l i the 49th Field Artillery eBattalion, me and all the comrades and all the wars. ign ther s she u I've done for more than 66 years simply begins this way: John o r Every reading ho osp Maciag was all bone, ph knees, elbows and jaw, hated his rifle, proficient at killing, wanted

home so badly it burned his soul. We leaned up that mountain near Yangu, frightened.

War's hurricane tore our ranks, trees of us lifted by roots. I came running down three days later. Like cordwood the bodies were piled between two stakes, all Korean but that jaw of John Maciag I saw, a log of birch among the pine. The sergeant yelled to move on. I said no, maybe never. I am going to sit and think about John Maciag's forever, whose fuel he is, what the flames of him will light. Perhaps he will burn the glory of man or God. When asked to read to celebrate my new book of memoirs, I wanted to let the audience enter the cubicle where the work came from. This is what I told them: I'll celebrate with you by telling you what I know. I'll tell you how it is with me. This is what I know. This is what I am and what has made me: Just behind the retina and a small way back is a little room. It has a secret door and passageways and key words other than Sesame. If you're lucky enough to get inside that room, at the right time, there's ignition, there's light, there's a flare, now and then there is a pure incandescence like a white phosphorous shell at detonation. It's the core room of memories, the memory bank holding everything you've ever known, ever seen, ever felt, ever dislodged spurting with energy. The casual, shadowy and intermittent presences you usually know are microscope-beset, become most immediate. For those glorious moments the splendid people rush back into your life carrying all their baggage, the Silver Streak unloaded, Boston's old South Station alive, bursting seams.

At times I have been so lucky, brilliantly, white phosphorescently lucky; it's when

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10

I apprehend it all. I see the quadrangle of Camp Drake in Yokahama, Japan in February of 1951.

I know the touch and temperature of the breeze on my cheek and the back of my neck; the angle of the sun on me and a host of my comrades, how it has climbed past a chimney of a long, long, gray barracks, and withers on a mountain peak of an unknown horizon flaring at darkness. I know the weight of a rifle on a web strap hanging on my shoulder, the awed knowledge of a ponderous steel helmet on my head, press of a tight lace on one boot, wrap of a leather watch band on one wrist.

I am lucky to know it all again. Pete Leone from McKees Rocks, PA is on my left. Pete Marglioti from McKees Port, PA is on my right. Pete and Re-Pete. Frank Mitman from Bethlehem is there, an arm's length off. Minutes ago, from a standing still position in all his gear, he did a full flip in the air and landed on his feet. John Salazer is behind me. John Maciag, Big John, is in front of me. Oh, how he appears again and again. Behind me, John Salazer is the comrade with two brothers not yet home from some place in World War II, who the captain calls one day and says, "You're going home tomorrow. Get off the hill before dark." "No, sir, I'll spend the last night with my buddies down in the listening post." After darkness settles a Chinese infiltrator hurls a grenade into their bunker.

The count begins again, the eternal count, the odds maker at work, the clash of destinies. On the ship on the way home, on the troop train rushing across America, in all the rooms of sleep since then, there are spaces around me. Memory, at times fragile, becomes at times tenacious. It honors me as a voice, and it is my will to spread that tenacity, your tenacity.

I bring pieces of it with me today, pieces I have captured under white phosphorous as true as a rock in place. They come from the little room with the secret door just behind the retina, just inside a bit deeper.

Knock with me. I share "Milan Carl Liskart, the Coalman," with you, and my grandfather Johnny Igoe, the Yeats' reader, and a few other shining lights that, with tenacity, have found these pages of A Collection of Friends, dedicated 'For those who have passed through Saugus (and every town), those comrades who bravely walked away from home and fell elsewhere, and the frailest imaginable soldier of all, frightened and glassy-eyed and knowing he is hapless, one foot onto the soil at D -Day or a statistical sandy beach of the South Pacific and going down, but not to be forgotten, not here."

I had their attention. We shared. I said: The shells were cannonading when he died in my arms, blood setting the sun down. Night or darkness now and I cannot find his face again. It is lost, I search for it, stumble, and lose my way. September-October is rich again, exploding.

Sixty-six Septembers-Octobers have burst the air. I inhale it all anew, leaves bomb me, sap is still, muttering of the Earth is mute. I remember all the September-Octobers; one tears about me now, but his face is lost. How can I find his face again?

Men of this command would not speak the name of comrade knowing the fragmentation of loss as if bones could dwindle. I cannot speak of time coming, only of time past and the laughter/cries of young voices sounding vibrant horns. I hear only echoes from mountains of years in the quick tumbling. You must hear the same mountain, the uncluttered system of their thoughts, the brass and velvet of young men at thinking sometimes down precipices sharper than truth; they would have twinned this command, yielding neither dreams nor arms, ideas set as hard as Excalibur before King Arthur pulled it from the rock. Now their softness mingles in mind's debris trying to say what they knew and took to grave. John never hurried anyplace but to die. He talked to the mountain and we are listening.

This is what John listened to: The day had gone over hill, but that still, blue light

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remained, cut with a gray edge, catching corners rice paddies lean out of. In the serious blue brilliance of battle they'd become comrades becoming friends, just Walko and Williamson and Sheehan sitting in the night drinking beer cooled by water of a forgotten river in `51 in Korea.

Three men drably clad, but clad in the rags of war.

Stars hung pensive neon. Mountain-cool silences were being earned, hungers absolved, a ponderous god talked to. Above silences, the ponderous god's weighty as clouds, elusive as soot on wind, yields promises. They used church keys to tap cans, lapped up silence rich as missing salt, fused their backbones to good earth in a ritual old as labor itself, these men clad in the rags of war. Such a night gives itself away, tells tales, slays the rose in reeling carnage, murders sleep, sucks moisture out of Mother Earth, fires hardpan, sometimes does not die itself just before dawn, makes strangers in ones' selves, those who wear the rags of war.

They had been strangers beside each other, caught in the crush of tracered night and starred flanks, accidents of men drinking beer cooled in the bloody waters where brothers roam forever, warriors come to that place by fantastic voyages, carried by generations of the persecuted or the adventurous, carried in sperm body, dropped in the spawning, fruiting womb of America, and born to wear the rags of war.

Walko, reincarnate of the Central European, come of land lovers and those who scatter grain seed, bones like logs, wrists strong as axle trees, fair and blue-eyed, prankster, ventriloquist who talked off mountainside, rumormonger for fun, heart of the hunter, hide of the herd, apt killer, born to wear the rags of war. Williamson, faceless in the night, black set on black, only teeth like high piano keys, eyes that captured stars, fine nose got from Rome through rape or slave bed unknown generations back, was cornerback tough, graceful as ballet dancer (Walko's opposite), hands that touched his rifle the way a woman's touched, or a doll, or one's fitful child caught in fever clutch, came sperm-tossed across the cold Atlantic, some elder Virginia-bound bound in chains, the Congo Kid come home, the Congo Kid, alas, alas, born to wear the rags of war.

Sheehan, dreamer, told deep lies with dramatic ease, entertainer who wore shining inward a sum of ghosts forever from the cairns had fled; heard myths and the promises in earth and words of songs he knew he never knew, carried scars vaguely known as his own, shared his self with saint and sinner, proved pregnable to body force, but born to wear the rags of war I came home alone. And they are my brothers. Walko is my brother. Williamson is my brother. God is my brother. I am a brother to all who are dead, we all wear the rags of war.

I can take you back to all the hard places, to the adjectives and verb ends; to the quadrangle in Japan in 1951 and the cool wind coming through Camp Drake and the voice of death talking in it and calling Maciag's name (Body Hunger) and little Salazar (Arab Dagger) and Captain Kay (Memphis Peon) and Billy Pigg (Cowpoke) and Stoney Mason (Pennsy Slateman) and Anadazio (Bread You Can't Imagine) and Dan Bertelsen (AKA The Knife) and you listened and it didn't talk your name and you still felt sad and knew you were the only ear.

In three weeks they were gone, all gone, and their voices went into ground, and all their words, and they built on the word rock and now they still dance sadly... such words that make you cry with music still in them, and they come long and slowly out of another time funnel, like Billy Pigg crying as he rolled over in your arms and Captain Kay saying, "I just want to go home for a little while and tell Merle and Andy I love them. Just for an hour or so."

And I can say to Hughie: You think I don't remember you. Your nose was red, ears outsized, you moved lanky in your lanky way, you had blue eyes, your cheeks red. In front of the State Theater on Saturday matinees you towered over us. But I do remember you, Hughie. I

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do! Your hair was tall in front, dark; your arms were long, your nose English like mine's Irish but mostly for word music. You wore dark blue denim dungarees; once a blue jacket with red sleeves. You didn't skate with us, but I remember your picking leaves, watching the sun fall all the way through the filaments. I saw you Saturdays, later on, watching us play football at the stadium. Then, how Time plays tricks on all of us, we were in Asia, carrying carbines in the Land of the Morning Calm. That far Asia's sun set down on you, Hughie, but I walked free of that hole. Most mornings after, on my way to school or work, old shells echo, shy infiltrator eyes me, cursed land mine sits a maimed turtle in my path, dark clouds grow darker, dread rain becomes yellow madness, deep earth opens its welcome arms, and your name flies its black letters on a gray cast iron sign in East Saugus. Once, when I was late for work, snow on the hillside, flowers rimmed the pole. I keep wondering for you, Hughie, Who put the flowers out in January? Is there a friend with long memory? A girl who dreams? Did you visit?

Or send a letter to Londo 50 years later, after Korea, after finding each other: There was a silence at midnight. Cold leaped in pieces like slate falling. Feathers coming loose. Burned bread tossed three days early is sought. Find the jam in cans. Look in the sump holes. Find the raspberry. The sour strawberry. Find jam and old bread harsh as leather. No milk here. No mother's milk. No sour cream on a bet. No cow's cud. No cow. Just cold. Cold smooth as slates. Cold gray as slate. Cold in thin sheaves, like knives in the wind, or emptiness or worn sleeves. Remember the rain we had. Just days earlier. How warm it was, cleansed us down to our toes, inside out, newness. Remember the rain. How warm it was. In puddles it shone on your face. Showed you, me, in pieces. But warm. How warm it was. How mild. The grass in mountain grips shone. Now it flares cold with light. Draws attention to itself. Freezes. Tells us it freezes. Says don't hold on to us. The mountain talks back. If you listen, you hear me, it, us, and the cold. Tells us it also is cold. Leans inward. Wants the rain more than we do. And knows better, all its storms cashed in.

I think of you in Las Vegas now, the wind across a desert raw as lonely can be, both of us wondering where Jack Slack was hanging his hat all this time, finding him at last at Fort Bliss National Cemetery, Section PG, retired as M/Sgt. John. R. Slack, fifteen years hidden from our grasp, but still in the ranks. John Slack carried a 300 Walkie Talkie for 1st Battalion Commander Young Oak Kim, a heavily awarded hero of the 442nd Nisei Battalion in WW II, in whose honor a school was named in California, who appointed Jack Slack as my substitute to get news of the outfit to regimental and divisional papers and the Stars & Stripes, and whose life story I read a few months ago and all those years ago penned "Kool Kool Kim" in his honor. (Oh, man, was he ever cool under fire!!)

Then, think with me in the first week of October, 2006, after my son was married, my wife and I spent a day and a half with Chuck Rumfola in Avon, NY, not having seen him since February of 1952. I said hello for all of you, to this other brother of ours, and he said it back to all of you not forgotten here, never forgotten.

There is no surrender between comrades this side of the battle. ###

Art: Ladies Of Arles (Memories Of The Garden At Etten) Vincent van Gogh

Date: 1888; Arles, Bouches-duRhône, France * Style: Cloisonnism Genre: genre painting

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Media: oil, canvas Dimensions: 92.5 x 73.5 cm Location: Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia

I got that sunshine in my pocket got that good song at my feet Justin Timberlake

Art: Light And Shadow Franklin Carmichael Date: 1937 Style: Art Nouveau (Modern) Genre: landscape

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Part Two

Graduations of Shadow

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Alisa Velaj THE METAPHYSICS OF BLINDNESS IN LITERATURE ( NIELS HAV AND HIS PALIMPSESTIC POETIC MESSAGE)

T

he allegory of blindness is one of the most preferred literary expedients used by poets and writers of all times. In the 9th song of "The Odyssey", for instance, Homer narrates how, by way of trickery, the hero manages to rid Polyphemus, the Cyclops, blind of eyesight. In verses 410-411, Odysseus identifies under the name of Nobody [Nobody – that's my name./ So my mother and father call me, all my friends]. After Polyphemus' eye is mutilated, verses 454-460 follow with the dialogue between him and his fellow cyclopes who worriedly inquire about his roaring rage: "Nobody, friends, / Nobody's killing me now by fraud and not by force!"/ His friends boomed back at once: "If you are alone,/ and nobody is trying to overpower you now – look,/ it must be a plague sent here by mighty Zeus/ and there is no escape from that./ You'd better pray to your father, Lord Poseidon."1 In this case, the cunning feat gains a positive connotation in that it brings triumph over evil.

The blinded eye turns into a symbol of life for the hero, by ensuring his survival, and into a symbol of death for the source of evil. Prior to getting physically blind, the Cyclops proved his mental blindness as the dimwit who believed Odysseus to be Nobody. Rather than by Odysseus, therefore, the Cyclops was blinded by his own mis/perception of his adversary's fake identity. It is precisely this myopic incapacity that transposes him into a lonely blind individual or, put otherwise, that condemns him to a two-fold sort of loneliness. His friends' abandonment downgrades Polyphemus' social status from all-powerful to that of a nobody, while their distrust reduces him to a tragic protagonist onto himself. He is now ostracized not only by the light of wisdom, but also by his own

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Homer, Odyssey IX; tr. Robert Fagles; Penguin Books, 1997

kin. The first curse befalls him as a punishment for being an inhospitable barbarian and a cruel cannibal to the human race; the second one, for having been blindly fooled by somebody coming from this race.

While the above-mentioned mythical blindness is deliberately inflicted to incapacitate evil, it may occur that goodness, too, be rendered blind, when evil disguises under the garb of goodness and the hero is on the losing end due to his lack of clear vision. In this case, regardless of values being opposites, the cause of blindness remains the same. The latter allegory would be retaken by H. C. Andersen, the Danish fairytale master, in his story-tale "The Shadow". The whole allegorical secret of the message consists in two key points of the story: First, when the learned man tells the Shadow that "I write about the true, and the good, and the beautiful, but no one cares to hear such things; I am quite desperate...". The drama begins precisely with the learned man's weariness on his course towards truth and with his acceptance of the proposal extended by the Shadow. Truth is thus right from the start, allegorically, overpowered by deceit. Second, in the relation of the Shadow to the princess who, when first striking an acquaintance with the future king, "was troubled with seeing too well." Later on, the princess will be blinded by fake love and untruths. The drama behind such blindness is multi-dimensional. The Shadow [the impostor] eventually forges his way to becoming a national leader, whereas the blind crowds are deprived of truth – symbolically expressed through the learned man's execution.

It may be easily perceived that, same as in the mythical narrative where truth is disguised, lack of clear vision to detect untruth or fraud leads the hero towards his demise. In spite of the fact that, unlike the mythical protagonist, Andersen's hero did by no means deserve his defeat, the message is nonetheless one and the same: blindness results because of excessive trust; blindness results because of mental confusion; blindness results even when one can look and, yet, fails to see deep into the phenomena. The Cyclops realizes truth only after losing his eyesight. When blind, he is able to see.

The blindness coming from both mythology and the Danish tale master convincingly takes us to the diversions and disorientations which modern humans have to live through. Apparently, we mortals tend to remain the same through different times. Or, maybe, the notion of different times is also another human ambiguity, for it is the myriad manifestations of human essence through the times that beget the illusion of humans' times being radically different one from the other.

Niels Hav, the Danish poet, appears to lead his readers towards this conclusion by juxtaposing in his allegory of blindness – as the ocassion calls – the present, the past, the learned man, the actual blind person as well as the one who inadvertently is driven to blindness for being able to look, but unable to see. Hav's novelty in his theme of blindness consists in his angle of approaching the genius individual, or learned man, who is not to be deceived because he prefers to focus on self-discovery rather than on the phenomena or outsiders surrounding him. In poetic form, Hav retakes what S. Kierkegaard, the philosopher, used to define as a journey toward personal oneness, for it is on his quest for self-awareness that the genius discovers freedom[2]. The poem “On His Blindness” is dedicated to the Argentine poet Jorge Luis Borges. It is noteworthy that, under an identical title, Borges himself would dedicate a poem to John Milton. The latter also wrote his own “On His Blindness” (perhaps dedicated to himself) – a poem closing with the emblematic verse “They also serve who only stand and wait”. Patience is thus deemed to signify one's faith in God. A consultancy of the Holy Scriptures would reveal verses referring alike to the God's patience with humans and the human patience with God's plans regarding every individual's life: But sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts always being ready to make a defense to everyone who

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Søren Kierkegaard: Koncepti i ankthit [The Concept of Anxiety], Tiranë 2002, p.93.

asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence". (1; Peter 3:15) "Therefore be patient, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. The farmer waits for the precious produce of the soul, being patient about it until it gets the early and late rains".

(James 5:7) God's patience serves salvation, which means that humans, as transitory beings, should likewise be patient, if Illustration by Vilhelm Pedersen for Hans Christian Andersen's The Shadow they would want their lives to benefit from God's services and deserve salvation. There is sufficient ground to affirm that in his poem dedicated to J. L. Borges, as well as in other ones such as “Illumination”, “When I Go Blind”, “Blind Man’s Bluff”, and “The Institute for the Blind”, Niels Hav is inspired by this sort of John Milton's biblical patience.

However, let's single out “When I Go Blind”. Hav simultaneously reveres Borges and Milton in his verses: “Only after going / blind did he make eye-contact with John Milton / in his Paradise Lost”. It appears that, in Hav's consideration, earthly loves are hardly ever profound enough to cause blindness.

Blindness on account of another earthly being could be the kind of bedazzlement which only leaves one dumbstruck and largely distanced from the true essence of existence. In an ironically pointed address, he refers to the persona of an eye-doctor. Wasn't it the eye-doctors who failed to restore Borges's eyesight while he managed to see with perfect clarity, regardless of his physical blindness? Isn't it yet another eye-doctor who closes up his clinic in this poem? “[ ] Borges go blind –/ as blind as Beethoven was deaf/! [ ] Only now did he come eye-level /with Homer, and only now was he able to see deep /into the dark, wide world and into the dizzying /moment that is eternity”.

Hav's darkness, same as Milton's, symbolizes the human world[3] in its condition of imperfect intellect and spirituality; hence his [allegorical] consideration that commonplace human blindness is quite insubstantial in view of the dizzying moment that is eternity. Attaining devine enlightenment – this should be humankind's real mission on their earthly journey. The awareness and ability to head towards such enlightenment is the only empowering source to beat physical blindness and see through darkness, just as Homer, Milton, and Borges did. Right there, in the deepest abyssal obscurity, the aforementioned geniuses [who also represent three historical literary/cultural eras: Antiquity, Renaissance, Modernism] managed to overcome physical blindness and see the ultimate truth, to reach into their innermost self and discover freedom. When phrasing the dizzying moment, Hav seems to imply exactly the same kind of moment that S. Kierkegaard described[4] when the soul settles inside one's being. Homer, Milton, and Borges triumphed over darkness

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thanks to this one possession – the golden key to genuine truth and freedom.

According to Niels Hav, poetry’s first duty is to be an intimate talk with the single reader about the deepest mysteries of existence[5]. One of the mysteries which he tries to uncover is the actual metaphysics of blindness. In the poem “Illumination”, Hav retakes a poet addressee, standing by the city hall window of the Danish town of Odense. The town unfolds in his eyes in dazzling lights, but the poet is unable to enjoy the lightflood and fanfare because of his physical pain. A seemingly trivial pain like a toothache[6], yet one of the most tormenting ones, generates tens of questions about the painful nature of being a poet along with the cause of such pain. Is the poet-prophet envisioning a different world, less illuminated, after a predictably temporary, dazzling light-show and merriment? In this particular context, the artificially bright happiness of the citizens strikes the poet with a negative impression, for it associates in his mind with a flash-in-the-pan excitement of crowds blinded by momentary euphoria; of people lacking the inclination to perceive or go catharsis-deep into enlightening their own souls, so that their "illumination" of joy and happiness be everlasting and not flickering until the torches die out.

Regardless of a likely variety of subjective interpretations, one could very well be that the poet is painfully experiencing the superficial, ephemeral happiness borne of his fellow-beings' mental unclarity.

Could the crowds, delirious with fake lighting, fail to notice the drama of their poet fellow-man? If their fellow-man is in their midst and individual dramas go unnoticed, how can they even think of building collective happiness?! The answer would invoke two individuals from one and the same crowd, akin like two tear-drops, with one suffering his fellow's blindness, unaware that, in the process, he himself is being blinded by his own mindset.

However, maybe, just maybe, the poet is a symbol of superior truths and, like a Mesiah, chooses to suffer in his heart for the sins of the whole mankind, whereas the crowds not only react in irate rejection, but abandon him somewhere in loneliness, while themselves dancing their euphoric dance, under the dazzle of the torches that will soon die out and leave them, yet again, back to darkness. The poet-prophet also appears as a frustrated being in his non-understood mission. The last four verses, which are also the most excrutiating monologue of a poet's soul, are extracted from Andersen's diary: “Instead of properly enjoying the happiness/of these minutes that will never return,/I looked at the song sheet to see how many verses/remained before I could be rid of the torture/the cold air forced me to suffer through my teeth”.

These verses remind the reader of the same atmosphere rendered by the learned man's statement in the story-tale "The Shadow": "I write about the truth, the beautiful, and the good, but no one is interested...I am quite desperate...". Collective blindness may be tiresome to a genius; it may turn a this dark world and wide”, Milton writes in his poem “On His Blindness”. moment is that dubious thing wherein time and eternity merge […]. The essence of impermanence and eternity is no other essence than an affirmation of the former statement, according to which man is a synthesis of brain and body, relying upon soul. Once the soul is established, the moment is also inside ther Søren Kierkegard: Koncepti i ankthit [The Concept of Anxiety], Tiranë 2002, p.94 5 Interview of Niels Hav by Sander de Vaan, published in the “Literary Review”.

6 Rober Burns, "Address to the Toothache", where he sarcastically writes: "Gie a' the faes o' Scotland's weal/ A townmond's toothache!"

3

4A

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H

lonely man into a great man and a tear-shedding man into a tragic one. Even if he is not thoroughly understood by the crowd, the poet or genius should not lose his patience, for otherwise he would end up a man like anybody else. The loss of a poetprophet is equal to a whole collective loss. The drama of collective non-understanding also unfolds in the poem “The Hawthorn”, where eternal beauty and devine truth [symbolized by the fir-tree, whose only season is greenery] are overlooked by human beings who, instead, are amazed by fancy transience, sudden bloom, and spiritual withering [symbolized by the hawthorn]. The life-long greenery of the fir trees may also be interpreted as a symbol of Paradise [Jannah] as described in the Qur'an, the Holy Book of Muslim believers[7]. Whence it would follow that, in their confusion, modern human beings are incessantly abandoning their Paradise. The hawthorn, in this instance, stands as a symbol for temporary blooming or lost paradises.

“The hawthorn is blooming/hysterical /one week in May –/that’s the one /we love”.

In the story-tale "The Shadow", the princess, even though able to see too well, gets blinded by [fake] love, whereas the blind crowd readily subjects to the governance of a blind leader. The road to truth is always full of shady thorns and thistles, Hav warns, hence the need to handle light cautiously. The kind of love that blindfolds the being or transforms him/her into a directionless compass cannot be love, but only some sort of its opposite like e.g. disloyalty. It is a really thin borderline between the capacity to see and the ability to immediately dismiss the tempting game of ambiguity and darkness. The poem "The Blind Man's Bluff" closes with the verses: "He stood bewildered /on the brink of tears, shocked by the light /that for a moment turned him completely blind”. Genuine light, the awakening from lethargic darkness, the shining truth – however distant it may appear – require an eagle's eyesight. The poem “The Institute for the Blind”, an antipode reflection of "Illumination", focuses on real-life, physically blind people who, nonetheless, are able to see through the thick darkness, into the dizzying moment, and to dance a tango just as dizzying, in their resilience to challenge their earthly destiny. A symbolic tango, a blind Al Pacino's "Scent of a Woman"-type of tango, where all times seem to blend in and where, among such wonderful blindmen, one might find many Homers, Miltons or Borgeses! The town illuminated by transient torches or the other town, where blind love-stricken people cannot discern the godly angels as they ascend and descend, along with the Evangelist believer [in “When I Go Blind”], are here replaced by a residence ruled by metaphysics.

Niels Hav, the poet who affirms that "...poetry – the profession – is not for wimps. You have to face yourself and look at reality, God, or whatever it is, straight in the eye”[8], seems to adore this residence illuminated by superior truths, reverberating with music and dancing, same as in the heavenly kingdom where angels sing their praises to God. Only under such a shelter, Hav can dance his brilliant tango, joining his spiritual forefathers, Kierkegaard and Andersen. ###

"Wherever you look, you see bliss, and a vast kingdom". "Upon them are garments of green silk, and satin. And they will be adorned with bracelets of silver. And their Lord will offer them a pure drink".

Qur'an, Chapter 76, verses 20-21;

Translated from Albanian into English; Arben Latifi

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EPIGRAM You can spend an entire life in the company of words not ever finding the right one.

Just like a wretched fish wrapped in Hungarian newspapers.

For one thing it is dead, for another it doesn't understand Hungarian.

BIO

Kopenhag Kadinlari, Yasakmeyve, Turkey 2013.

Niels Hav is a full time poet and short story Grondstof. Poetry translated by Jan Baptist, Holland

writer living in Copenhagen with awards from 'The Danish Arts Council.' In English he has 'We Are Here,' published by Book Thug, and poetry and fiction in numerous magazines. In his native Danish the author of six collections of poetry and three books of short fiction. His works have been translated into several languages including English, Arabic, Turkish, Dutch, Farsi, Serbian, Albanian, Kurdish and Chinese.

Raised on a farm in western Denmark, Niels Hav today resides in the most colourful and multiethnic part of the capital. He has travelled widely in Europe, Asia, North and South America. “…Niels Hav's 'We Are Here,' ... brings to us a selection from the works of one of Denmark's most talented living poets and is all the more welcome for that reason….”

Frank Hugus, The Literary Review

Bibliography Shpirti vallzon në djep,Shtëpia Botuese OMSCA-1, Tirana, Albania 2016. Şî'ri bo trisnokekan nîye (Kurdish translation), Ktebxanai Andesha, Sulaymaniyah, Irak 2016.

Al-Rooh Tarqos Fee Mahdiha, Jordanian Writers Association, Amman, Jordan 2015.

Zan ha dar Kupanha k, Butimar, Tehran, Iran 2015.

2012.

Udate žene u Kopenhagenu, Bosnia 2012.

De Iraanse zomer. Short stories translated by Jan Baptist, Holland 2011. ı na a ı ru a má. Poetry, Arab Scientific Publishers, Beirut 2010.

Als ik blind word. Poetry, Holland 2010 De gifte koner i København. Poetry – Jorinde & Joringel, 2009.

We Are Here. Poetry translated by Patrick Friesen & P.K. Brask, Toronto 2006.

U Odbranu Pesnika. Poetry, Belgrade 2008.

Grundstof. Poetry - Gyldendal, 2004.

Nenadeina Sreka. Poetry, Skopje, Macedonia1997.

Når jeg bliver blind. Poetry - Gyldendal, 1995.

God's blue Morris. Poetry, Crane Editions, Canada 1993.

Den iranske sommer. Short stories - Gyldendal, 1990.

Ildfuglen, okay. Poetry - Hekla, 1987.

Sjælens Geografi. Poetry - Hekla, 1984. Øjeblikket er en åbning. Short stories - Hekla, 1983.

Glæden sidder i kroppen. Poetry – Jorinde & Joringel, 1982 Afmægtighed forbudt. Short stories - Hekla, 1981.

###

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Interview of Niels Hav by Sander de Vaan, published in the “Literary Review”.

Song of the Flower XXIII by Khalil Gibran I am a kind word uttered and repeated By the voice of Nature; I am a star fallen from the Blue tent upon the green carpet.

I am the daughter of the elements With whom Winter conceived; To whom Spring gave birth; I was Reared in the lap of Summer and I Slept in the bed of Autumn.

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At dawn I unite with the breeze To announce the coming of light; At eventide I join the birds In bidding the light farewell.

The plains are decorated with My beautiful colors, and the air Is scented with my fragrance.

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As I embrace Slumber the eyes of Night watch over me, and as I Awaken I stare at the sun, which is The only eye of the day.

I drink dew for wine, and hearken to The voices of the birds, and dance To the rhythmic swaying of the grass.

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I am the lover's gift; I am the wedding wreath; I am the memory of a moment of happiness; I am the last gift of the living to the dead; I am a part of joy and a part of sorrow.

But I look up high to see only the light, And never look down to see my shadow.

This is wisdom which man must learn.

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Ah! Sun-Flower by William Blake Ah Sun-flower! weary of time.

Who countest the steps of the Sun; Seeking after that sweet golden clime Where the travellers journey is done.

Where the Youth pined away with desire, And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow: Arise from their graves and aspire.

Where my Sun-flower wishes to go.

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Bonnie Parker, Poet by

Dah Helmer Besides being one of America’s iconic outlaws, Bonnie Parker was first and foremost an aspiring poet with dreams of being published and famous. Her delivery of story-telling poems with precisely configured external rhymes and structured metering pre-dates Bob Dylan’s guitar-driven story-poems by three decades.

Parker was a consummate artist, talented not only as a poet but as a dancerand an actor. She wanted to become a Hollywood star, longing for beautiful clothes and an adventurous life, like the actors in the “talking pictures”. According to Parker’s writings, her poverty-stricken existence in Depression Era America made it clear to her that she was destined to be dirt-poor for the rest of her life.

What we have from Parker are first-draft, hand-written poems that, like any poet knows of firstdrafts, are usually in need of editing. Parker’s are of no exception. It’s too easy for poetry critics to dismiss Bonnie Parker as anything but a hack-poet, a wannabe, but a closer examination of her work reveals that this twenty-year old was intuitively a creative writer, born with it, in love with it, possessed by it.

Two weeks before her death, Parker gave a prophetic poem to her mother titled, “The Trail’s End” (famously known as, “The Story Of Bonnie and Clyde”) that closes with this perfectly metered stanza: "Some day they’ll go down together and they’ll bury them side by side, –– to a few it’ll be grief –– the law a relief but it’s death for Bonnie and Clyde" Depicted in movies and stories as a gun-wielding, cigar-smoking killer, Bonnie was neither. Barrow gang member W.D. Jones testified in court that he had never seen Parker shoot a law officer. Just for fun, she posed with a cigar in her mouth and a pistol in her hand. There are no eyewitness reports of her as a killer, nor was she a cigar smoker: “It’s the bunk about me smoking cigars, tell them I don’t smoke cigars”

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B

onnie Elizabeth Parker was born on October 1, 1910, in Rowena, Texas. She was the middle child of Henry and Emma Parker. In her youth she was known as a kind and caring girl, and in her school days she excelled at creative writing and penning verses and was an Honor Roll student. Unfortunately, the wrong man entered her life.

“Never go crooked.

It’s for the love of a man that I’m gonna have to die.

I don’t know when but it can’t be long” Her father passed away in 1914 and shortly after her mother packed up the family and moved to the slums of West Dallas, known as Cement City. At an early age Bonnie showed promise as a writer, actor and dancer, performing at school functions. When she entered her teens Bonnie longed for the good life which meant getting out of the slums. At fifteen, and against the advice of her mother, teachers and friends, she dropped out of school and married her high school sweetheart.

The marriage was a disaster but she never divorced and never removed her wedding ring. It was still on her finger at the time of her death. Her married name was Bonnie Thornton. On her thigh she bore a tattoo with intertwined hearts and their names, Bonnie and Roy. When hearing about her death, Roy Thornton commented: “I’m glad that they went out as they did. It’s much better than being caught”.

Dreaming of leaving Cement City and possibly going to Hollywood, Parker earned money as a waitress working in Marco’s Café where, ironically, she became friends with regular customer Ted Hilton, who was part of the posse that gunned her down. In 1930 when she was unemployed she met Clyde Barrow, and her fate sealed.

Parker was dedicated to her family and remained close to them throughout her twenty-five month run as part of the Barrow Gang. It was her predictable pattern of going back to visit her mother and siblings that aided the law into getting the final drop on Bonnie and Clyde. Her mother had this quote from one of Parker’s writings etched into her daughter’s gravestone: “As the flowers are all made sweeter by the sunshine and the dew so this old world is made brighter by the lives of folk like you” Parker was aware of the fate that was looming over her and she often wrote about it with resonating honesty: “They don’t think they’re too smart or desperate.

They know that the law always wins.

They’ve been shot at before but they do not ignore that death is the wages of sin”

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Besides being a writer, Parker was also a lover of “talking pictures”. In her diaries she wrote of her poverty, her loneliness, her impatience with unsophisticated, narrow-minded Dallas, her dream of getting away, and of talking pictures, in which movies momentarily provided the “getting away”. Had Parker made it to 1930’s Hollywood, I believe that her artistic sensibility along with her physical beauty would have opened movie director’s and book publisher’s doors and could have provided her with the life that she wanted.

To my knowledge, the only poetry of Parker’s that has surfaced and continues to circulate are her poems after she became an outlaw: “The Story Of Suicide Sal” was composed while she was doing a short jail-term for a bungled robbery.

It depicts a woman betrayed by her criminal lover and left behind to take the rap.

Here are the first three stanzas from the twenty-stanza poem, which showcases her musical sensibility for meter and rhyme: “We each have a good alibi for being down here in the joint, but few of them really are justified if you get right down to the point.

You've heard of a woman's glory being spent on a downright cur, still you can't always judge the story, as true, being told by her.

As long as I've stayed on this island, and heard confidence tales from each gal, only one seemed interesting and truthful, the story of Suicide Sal.”

Parker’s most famous piece “The Trail’s End” was composed while running with the Barrow Gang and is considered to be her last poem.

These first four stanzas of the sixteen stanzas reveal her innate musicality: “You've read the story of Jesse James of how he lived and died.

If you're still in need, of something to read, here's the story of Bonnie and Clyde.

Now Bonnie and Clyde are the Barrow gang and I'm sure you all have read how they rob and steal, and those who squeal, are usually found dying or dead.

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There's lots of untruths to these write-ups, they're not as ruthless as that, their nature is raw, and they hate all the law, the stool pigeons, spotters and rats.

They call them cold-blooded killers they say they are heartless and mean, but I say this with pride that I once knew Clyde, when he was honest and upright and clean” For some, Parker’s poetry is simple, for others it’s simply beautiful. Her instinctive sensibility for producing cadence and for telling stories by way of rhyming poetry is again evident in her poems “The Street Girl” and “Outlaws”. This precisely metered stanza is from the eight-stanza poem “The Street Girl”: “A man can break every commandment and the world will still lend him a hand, yet a girl that has loved, but un-wisely, is an outcast all over the land” And these two stanzas from the nine-stanza poem “Outlaw”: “Billy rode on a pinto horse Billy the Kid I mean and he met Clyde Barrow riding in a little gray machine Billy drew his bridle rein and Barrow stopped his car and the dead man talked to the living man under the morning star” Ironically, Bonnie Parker reached her dream of fame with several thousand people showing up outside the church and with about one hundred and fifty allowed to attend the burial. It’s reported that her mother refused to let her “little girl” be buried “side by side” with Clyde by making this statement: “He had her in life but I won’t let him have her in death.”

Parker was acutely tuned into her feelings and her surroundings, coupled with her vivid imagination one can speculate at the next level of creative growth Bonnie Parker’s writing may have reached had she not died at the age of twenty-three.

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August 2016 all rights reserved Bibliography: Charles River Editors (2013) “The Lives and Legacies of Bonnie & Clyde” Jan I. Fortune (Wild Horse Press (2013) “The Story Of Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker” Joe Bruno (Knickerbocker Publishing Company (2015) “Bonnie Parker: Mob Molls–Beautiful Broads With Brass Balls”

Documentaries: American Experience (2016) Director John Maggio, “Bonnie and Clyde” Time Watch (2011) Director Chris Wilson, “The Real Bonnie and Clyde”

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Bonnie Parker from Bonnie and Clyde standing in front of a Ford Model 18 (aka Ford V-8).

Restored: this is listed as one of the pictures Bonnie Parker sent to newspapers herself for open publishing, see

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Meditations on dear Petrov

by Susan Tepper Set in 19th Century Russia during a time of war Halo Unleashed Northern Climb

B

Halo

ehind the mountain a halo circles the moon. I want to stand before this criminal act. Removing my dress and stockings.

Taking to my horse in a charge to the top. The way soldiers ride forth in battle. Holding a flag. Screaming out at the unseen enemy. Demanding they show themselves. Sabers gleaming. The lingering echoes. Of course, dear Petrov, you would laugh at this folly. Especially when the chill sets in.

Vicious if the winds are high. Tearing at my hair. My horse’s tail streaming. Our breaths mingling the same frosty puff as I clutch tightly to his mane. Face against face. Snowdrops falling like burned out stars. The altitude. If only you could see the days of my time.

You might understand, dear Petrov. Sympathize. Please realize when we reach the fires I will find you. Weaving through the camp on my horse. I will find you along with your comrades under the haloed moon. Tents pitched like bugs on a summer’s night. I will find you amongst hundreds and more. Squatting. Strutting. Aiming at slithering forms. A gun shot ringing out here and there. Will a spark delight your eyes upon seeing me. Contemplating, I find I am afraid once more. ###

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Unleashed

T

he crack in the world. Unleashed. It was only a matter of circumstances. Timing. While out walking I saw its beginnings.

The dirt road cracking under my step. The weight of carts.

Tiny sprouts pushing up toward the sun. Seemingly indefatigable. Dear Petrov do you sense an unleashing when fighting the enemy. Who is the enemy. Is this a combat that can be resolved. Ever. The little sprouts wage their war for a different purpose. Each time I walk the road I check to find more. They are coming up quickly. Whole armies, dear Petrov. Jubilant. Will they cloak the dirt with their colorful bounty. Or will the dirt continue as master of fate. Swallowing them whole. Pushing them back down. It’s always a struggle to lace my shoes. My corset. I am poor now. Without a woman to help dress me. Soon I may become destitute entirely. There won’t be any fires in the house. The rooms will mold and wither. Food is scarce. Potatoes and root vegetables in the cellar. When finally you arrive there may be only a dark hole. The dirt having swallowed up everything. ###

Art: Moonlight Night Wassily Kandinsky Date: 1907; Munich / Monaco, Germany * Style: Expressionism Genre: landscape Media: linocut Location: Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia

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Northern Climb by Susan Tepper A woman must survive by her wiles. If only you understood.

No one throws rubies at my feet. Or covers me in sable. No one comes to call. It is always winter except for the short span.

My ribcage contracts. A fallen bird no one notices. Some bit of carcass left after snow melt. And then, dear Petrov. The struggle to leave the bed. Pushing off the eiderdown. Crossing the room barefoot. Taking the stairs to the kitchen. Putting on the kettle. Won’t you try dancing alone. My body is the coldest reach of this land. A northern climb. Endless void of waltz music. Dear Petrov. I have tried by every means. Your steps echo and again. All hopeless in the way of the hanging man. Did he feel a drop of hope just before. Did he look up to see what species of tree. But you are tired now. Drinking. Not amused by my silly drippings. I stand before a low fire. My back scarcely warmed. You tell me to put the food away before the rats come stealing. I am careful about the food. Planning.

Stretching the food to match the days of your time. ###

Art: A Woman In A Chiton Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin Original Title: Date: 1910 Style: Symbolism Genre: sketch and study

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The Lady of Shalott

by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Part I On either side the river lie Long fields of barley and of rye, That clothe the wold and meet the sky; And thro' the field the road runs by To many-tower'd Camelot; The yellow-leaved waterlily The green-sheathed daffodilly Tremble in the water chilly Round about Shalott.

Willows whiten, aspens shiver.

The sunbeam showers break and quiver In the stream that runneth ever By the island in the river Flowing down to Camelot.

Four gray walls, and four gray towers Overlook a space of flowers, And the silent isle imbowers The Lady of Shalott.

Underneath the bearded barley, The reaper, reaping late and early, Hears her ever chanting cheerly, Like an angel, singing clearly, O'er the stream of Camelot.

Piling the sheaves in furrows airy, Beneath the moon, the reaper weary Listening whispers, ' 'Tis the fairy, Lady of Shalott.'

The little isle is all inrail'd With a rose-fence, and overtrail'd With roses: by the marge unhail'd The shallop flitteth silken sail'd, Skimming down to Camelot.

A pearl garland winds her head: She leaneth on a velvet bed, Full royally apparelled, The Lady of Shalott.

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Art: The Lady Of Shalott John William Waterhouse Date: 1888 Style: Romanticism Media: oil, canvas Dimensions: 15.24 x 153 cm Location: Tate Britain, London, UK

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Part II No time hath she to sport and play: A charmed web she weaves alway.

A curse is on her, if she stay Her weaving, either night or day, To look down to Camelot.

She knows not what the curse may be; Therefore she weaveth steadily, Therefore no other care hath she, The Lady of Shalott.

She lives with little joy or fear.

Over the water, running near, The sheepbell tinkles in her ear.

Before her hangs a mirror clear, Reflecting tower'd Camelot.

And as the mazy web she whirls, She sees the surly village churls, And the red cloaks of market girls Pass onward from Shalott.

Sometimes a troop of damsels glad, An abbot on an ambling pad, Sometimes a curly shepherd lad, Or long-hair'd page in crimson clad, Goes by to tower'd Camelot: And sometimes thro' the mirror blue The knights come riding two and two: She hath no loyal knight and true, The Lady of Shalott.

But in her web she still delights To weave the mirror's magic sights, For often thro' the silent nights A funeral, with plumes and lights And music, came from Camelot: Or when the moon was overhead Came two young lovers lately wed; 'I am half sick of shadows,' said The Lady of Shalott.

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Art: I Am Half Sick Of Shadows', Said The Lady Of Shalott John William Waterhouse Date: 1915 Style: Romanticism Genre: literary painting Media: oil, canvas Dimensions: 100.3 x 73.7 cm Location: Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), Toronto, Canada

Part III A bow-shot from her bower-eaves, He rode between the barley-sheaves, The sun came dazzling thro' the leaves, And flam'd upon the brazen greaves Of bold Sir Lancelot.

A red-cross knight for ever kneel'd To a lady in his shield, That sparkled on the yellow field, Beside remote Shalott.

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The gemmy bridle glitter'd free, Like to some branch of stars we see Hung in the golden Galaxy.

The bridle bells rang merrily As he rode down from Camelot: And from his blazon'd baldric slung A mighty silver bugle hung, And as he rode his armour rung, Beside remote Shalott.

All in the blue unclouded weather Thick-jewell'd shone the saddle-leather, The helmet and the helmet-feather Burn'd like one burning flame together, As he rode down from Camelot.

As often thro' the purple night, Below the starry clusters bright, Some bearded meteor, trailing light, Moves over green Shalott.

His broad clear brow in sunlight glow'd; On burnish'd hooves his war-horse trode; From underneath his helmet flow'd His coal-black curls as on he rode, As he rode down from Camelot.

From the bank and from the river He flash'd into the crystal mirror, 'Tirra lirra, tirra lirra:' Sang Sir Lancelot.

She left the web, she left the loom She made three paces thro' the room She saw the water-flower bloom, She saw the helmet and the plume, She look'd down to Camelot.

Out flew the web and floated wide; The mirror crack'd from side to side; 'The curse is come upon me,' cried The Lady of Shalott.

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The Lady Of Shalott John William Waterhouse Date: 1894 Style: Romanticism Genre: literary painting Media: oil, canvas Dimensions: 142.2 x 86.3 cm Location: Leeds Art Gallery, Leeds, UK

Part IV In the stormy east-wind straining, The pale yellow woods were waning, The broad stream in his banks complaining, Heavily the low sky raining Over tower'd Camelot; Outside the isle a shallow boat Beneath a willow lay afloat, Below the carven stern she wrote, The Lady of Shalott.

A cloudwhite crown of pearl she dight, All raimented in snowy white That loosely flew (her zone in sight Clasp'd with one blinding diamond bright) Her wide eyes fix'd on Camelot, Though the squally east-wind keenly Blew, with folded arms serenely By the water stood the queenly Lady of Shalott.

With a steady stony glance— Like some bold seer in a trance, Beholding all his own mischance, Mute, with a glassy countenance— She look'd down to Camelot.

It was the closing of the day: She loos'd the chain, and down she lay; The broad stream bore her far away, The Lady of Shalott.

As when to sailors while they roam, By creeks and outfalls far from home, Rising and dropping with the foam, From dying swans wild warblings come, Blown shoreward; so to Camelot Still as the boathead wound along The willowy hills and fields among, They heard her chanting her deathsong, The Lady of Shalott.

A longdrawn carol, mournful, holy, She chanted loudly, chanted lowly, Till her eyes were darken'd wholly, And her smooth face sharpen'd slowly,

Art: The Lady Of Shalott John Atkinson Grimshaw Date: 1878; United Kingdom * Style: Symbolism Genre: literary painting Media: oil, canvas Location: Private Collection

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Turn'd to tower'd Camelot: For ere she reach'd upon the tide The first house by the water-side, Singing in her song she died, The Lady of Shalott.

Under tower and balcony, By garden wall and gallery, A pale, pale corpse she floated by, Deadcold, between the houses high, Dead into tower'd Camelot.

Knight and burgher, lord and dame, To the planked wharfage came: Below the stern they read her name, The Lady of Shalott.

They cross'd themselves, their stars they blest, Knight, minstrel, abbot, squire, and guest.

There lay a parchment on her breast, That puzzled more than all the rest, The wellfed wits at Camelot.

'The web was woven curiously, The charm is broken utterly, Draw near and fear not,—this is I, The Lady of Shalott.'

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Now afterall you're My Wonderwall Liam Gallagher

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Part Three

Art: A Live Wire Frank Xavier Leyendecker Date: 1922 Style: Art Nouveau (Modern), Kitsch Genre: illustration

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Vive La Difference Editorial by Oonah V Joslin Families are strange things. Ideally they protect and nurture. They teach us difference. They teach us to accept and share. But there is no such thing as a standard family and ultimately it is an untidy and random thing, like all else on Earth, that we are thrown together with people of the same genetic make-up, and it guarantees nothing in terms of the relationships that develop – the issues we all face.

The Linnet’s Wings poetry section this time, certainly explores some issues.

I come from such a large family (our ages spanned twenty two years) that we never all inhabited the same space. It was impossible. Three of my seven sisters died before I was born. You can see a poem for them The Bridge Between in the 2017 spring issue Gyroscope Review. I make no apology for advertising another fine magazine. I am sure there is room for us all in the poetry family. http://www.gyroscopereview.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/GR-SPRING-2017-full-version-forwebsite.pdf I had two brothers, now both gone. One, Thomas, I knew as a child, the other, Stuart, I didn’t meet until I was an adult. He died of lung cancer aged 62 (my age now).

And I dedicate this issue to my brother Thomas Arthur Kyle who passed away just as I was beginning to choose these poems and my nephew Eric who passed away on 1st August.

Goodbye My brother passed away today.

We all pass this way once only.

No return journey.

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He left home the day I was born. Always reminded me of that. An unwelcome baby sister. A twenty year age gap. I

sort of took that personally but he didn’t seem to care. And he was a young man after all, in July 1954 and he needed, he wanted to be free.

Only soon, he too would marry, have his own large family who are now, very nearly the same age as me.

We even used to play together, my nephews and niece. Then he took them far away.

Gone. I was at school that day.

I didn’t say goodbye.

I can't say I knew my brother really well. He was more like a distant uncle. Now he's gone, I wish I could recall some happy memory.

Oonah V Joslin June 2017

Thanks to all our contributors for sending such fine poems. I really enjoyed compiling them and I know our audience will appreciate them too. And if your poem wasn’t chosen this time round, don’t worry – I have a few already earmarked for next time.

Oonah

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Art: Orana Maria (Hail Maria) Paul Gauguin Date: 1894; Paris, France * Style: Post-Impressionism Period: Paris period Genre: allegorical painting

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A Hail Mary by Sergio A. Ortiz We buried you yesterday.

We threw dirt on you yesterday.

You were placed in the ground surrounded by earth yesterday.

Generous Mother of the dead, mother earth, mother vagina of frost, arms of weather, lap of wind, nest of night, mother of death, pick him up, strip him, take him, save him, finish him.

I've been watching you at night above the marble, inside your little house.

One day with no eyes, no nose, no ears, another day without a throat, the skin on your forehead cracking, sinking, obscuring the wheat field of your reeds.

All of you submerged in moisture and gases, making your waste, (your disorder, your soul).

Your flesh more wood than your bones more bones than anything else.

Wet land where your mouth was, rotten air, annihilated light.

Bubbles under the leaves of water.

Sunday flowers two meters’ above, they want to kiss you, but nothing happens

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Absorption Spectrum

(for my newly emigrated son)

by Ceinwen Haydon

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I wander within, borrow time from a place no-one can see.

The waves of light call, move, will not stay still, will not remain the same.

Each spectrum, each band of light dances in a different space, diverse suffusions radiate meaning from hazed places.

I see him in his other land, Gone beyond, going to, ties loosened in his unity with new shifts and shapes, domino-ing into the New World Butterfly draughts from earth’s other side waft my hair.

His sentience light-shafts mighty rocky canyons, over there, then whisper deep in my remote ear. Organic disturbance in small bones, hammer and anvil, molten iron rivers of longing to have him near.

Art:

Vortex, Space, Form Giacomo Balla Original Title: Vortice, spazio, forme Date: 1914; Italy * Style: Futurism Genre: abstract

Will I be here when, older, he comes back home?

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After Baptism by Kathleen Cassen Mickelson She knows there was water on her forehead but has no memory of her first sin She does remember saying “I’m sorry” over and over to her mother Did penance for her desires even as they produced the most beautiful baby Now she says “I’m sorry” to her daughter along with “I don’t like your boyfriend” But doesn’t say that’s because he usurped her hard-won parental power At least she has learned not to lie in the face of her own dissipation Did her mother feel invisible in some constant state of atonement?

She considers her lack of faith belied by her love of ritual, knows she prays to no one while her shadow self thirsts for actions that will preserve her

Art:

A Boy And A Girl With A Collie Dog Standing By A Stream (Study For 'The Covenanters' Baptism') George Harvey Date: 1830 Style: Romanticism

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Born of Clay by Jane Fuller The story goes, the creator made us from clay and left a dog to guard us while we dried.

The trickster said ‘Wouldn’t you like a lovely fur coat, dog?’ But when the animal’s guard was down, he spat on the figures and filled them with disease.

The story goes, Nuwa began to sculpt us each from yellow clay but it was so exhausting, she dipped in a rope and flicked it making blobs land everywhere. Some melted in the rain and that’s where disabilities come from.

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The story goes, Amma flung a lump of clay into space where it formed the world, Gond used clay to create a crow that seeded the earth, Solishan rolled clay like a piece of dough to make the planet; And Muskrat travelled to the depths of the river to collect clay to make the world while, at the same time, the Malagasy creator was breathing life into his daughter’s clay dolls.

The story goes, Jivaro produced a child by breathing on a clay figurine but the jealous bird Auhu broke it and the shattered pieces turned into the world.

Where some time later, many miles away, a bunch of tanked up Sumerian gods were waiting to make us from clay as a party dare, which explains why we are so completely ridiculous.

The story goes, clay creation myths prove that extra-terrestrials brought us here from another planet because cave paintings show saucer shaped vessels and the paint was made from (you guessed it).

The story goes, clay allows naturally occurring reactions to form primitive cells, aids RNA formation and allows the genetic material to embed itself.

A bridge of legends stands in crumbling clay, tries to connect non-living molecules with primitive cells, and fathom where on earth we all came from.

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Art: The Household Gods John William Waterhouse Date: 1880 Style: Romanticism Genre: mythological painting Media: oil, canvas Dimensions: 74.3 x 102.55 cm Location: Private Collection

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Brother by Daniel Fitzpatrick You died the day before you were born, left the elder time to me, left our brother to my toddling tyranny.

The day we met was one of those when I was sketching predators, the T. Rex full of curved red teeth, the Great White’s ulcer-blue barrel back.

I found you framed in the foyer after seven years of seeing your face.

I asked our father who you were and he said in the yellow shed torch that you had died.

I asked our mother, caught unaware in the lumber yard at Lowe’s, and she said how do you know.

I did not ask our brother. He has been your answer, chanted against my being born dead to you.

Art: Sleep And His Half Brother Death John William Waterhouse Alternative name: Sleep and his Half-brother Death Date: 1874 Style: Romanticism Genre: mythological painting Media: oil, canvas Dimensions: 90.81 x 69.85 cm Location: Private Collection

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Mourning Light by Brandon Marlon While sitting shivah it dawns on the daughter, lorn and reft of an existential pillar, scalded by misfortune, that the deceased was a fleeting blessing, a foretaste of eternal companionship, and that even the pain she inflicted was better than the pleasure derived from others.

Strange how only in a period of darkness shades of difference come to light.

Garbed in the customary dishabille, she slouches on a lowered chair as the community enters bearing hot platters of food, setting them down on trivets, proffering condolences and prayers lauding life.

When the world finally leaves the home, she notes that the foods are the familiar foods and the aromas the very aromas reminiscent of the dearly departed, who even in death made certain to nourish the family.

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Maybe Today by Beate Sigriddaughter Our dreams shiver under a blanket of winter.

I keep wondering: when will you remember how lovely I am? I think of the princess and her golden road. I even tell you I am sad because nobody has ever loved me like I love you. You hand me a shawl of comfort: how you do love me, just not like that.

So spring will come again, if not for us, at least for others. I dream a memory of water on parched land.

I want to run the same path each day, you want to explore a different path. I want to hold the same lover each day.

I wonder about you.

I want to learn from you. If you don't get what you want one day, you simply wait a day or two and ask again.

You never know. Maybe today will be different.

Maybe today I'll find the ladder that will hold us together.

Art: Shivering Girl With A Blue Ring Jozsef Rippl-Ronai Style: Art Nouveau (Modern) Genre: portrait Previously published in Tuck Magazine, April, 2017

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Sole Survivor by Lesley Timms When my mum popped me out with a scream and a shout Using words that I dare not repeat, She examined me close for the bits she liked most And at once fell in love with my feet.

Adorably perfect with ten tiny toes, Of course they’re the parts my besotted mum chose!

As the seasons flew by in the wink of an eye, I rebelled against wellies and shoes.

Oh! So happy unshod, this boy squelched in the mud And in heavenly soft doggy doos.

Those fragrant, pink tootsies my mum used to lick Now disgusted her so, made her violently sick.

When I morphed into youth, never washed, so uncouth, My feet gasped in old trainers and boots.

Stilton smells now arose from the gaps ‘tween my toes, Toxic fungus sprang forth from nail roots.

Voracious verrucas gouged out weeping holes As they manically chomped their way into my soles.

My heart longed for a mate so I brought home a date, But my socks I too hastily shed.

When I lay there undressed she was clearly impressed Till my toe nails fell off on the bed.

One glance at those hideous feet on display, She went quite insane and was stretchered away.

Now I see out my days through a visible haze, How it chokes as it wafts from my slippers.

Radioactive foot spray keeps the gangrene at bay, Nails are hacked with industrial clippers.

If I reincarnate, Lord, my feet I’ll forsake, And I’d gladly return as a worm or a snake.

Ivor Bunion

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Art: Shoemaker Boris Kustodiev Date: 1924 Style: Realism Genre: portrait

Drowned by John Grey Cops manhandle crowds on the banks of the river.

Rescue drag the dripping boy from the current, wrap him in a sheet and he’s gone.

Mother says he never goes near the river.

She still can’t condemn him to the past tense.

The sheriff's quiet, He could be anyone.

It’s early morning.

He walks toward the sunlight.

The river’s sluggish here, has no interest in getting to the gulf before its time.

And it’s silver and shallow, seemingly as harmless as a dream.

And yet this is not the first time the bottom has been dragged, the divers have gone down.

It’s a mild mannered killer.

Its waters have claimed one more.

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The mob dissipates.

The ambulance screams into the distance.

The cops spread throughout the neighborhood.

People come in ones and twos now, to stare at the surface, to imagine whatever floats on down as another child.

They don’t speak, afraid it could be their own.

Then a car screeches.

The river’s silver glint succumbs to shadow.

It's cool and dark.

A few kids hang outside the old abandoned opera house.

The current communes with the dock, sounds calmer than it’s ever been.

Tragedy dissolves, leaving everything normal.

No more blank eyes.

The motel neon sees to that.

No more lifeless flesh.

Not now that the bars are hopping.

Sure, a little brother stares at an empty bed.

But no one with a lick of sense is drowning in it.

Art: Meandering Landscape With River Piet Mondrian Date: 1906 - 1907 Style: Impressionism Genre: landscape Media: watercolor, paper Dimensions: 65 x 50 cm Location: Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France

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Purple Haze by Bill West

A hot day we had of it

S t u m b l i n g th ro u g h th e b r u s h S u n l i g h t f i l te r i n g , ta re s c l i n g i n g th e l o n g t re k , w i d d e r s h i n s a ro u n d th e Wre k i n .

M y g u i d e , J i m to l d m e h ow H e n d r i x o n c e s ta g ge re d o u t f ro m a l o c a l h ote l a t b re a k o f d ay b e h e l d h e a th e r m a n t l i n g th e Wre k i n’s f l a n k i n a p u r p l e h a z e .

A f te r a n h o u r o r m o re we s t r u ck u p h i l l a n d s c ra b b l e d th ro u g h th i cke t s i n to th e l a p o f th e Wre k i n Yew. No s i n g l e t re e b u t a s a c re d g rove te mp l e to H e c a te w h e re wa r r i o r s o n c e c u t s tave s fo r s p e a r a n d b ow to g u a rd h e l l a n d h e ave n’s ga te a n d w h e re th e h e r m i t G i l b e r t p o n d e re d e te r n i t y.

W h e n d ay wa s d o n e , we t u r n e d to g o b u t n ot th e l o n g to r t u o u s ro u te o f o u r a r r i va l Tu r n e d o u t th a t th e c a r p a rk wa s b u t a hop skip a n d j u mp .

T h a t J i m wa s s u ch a k i d d e r.

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Red Rag by James Graham Along the road from our cottage the farmer kept a bull. One day I found him out of his field, galumphing along the verge.

I broke my own sprint record.

‘Somebody must have waved a red rag at him. Or a red flag,’ my mother said. A little older, A little wiser, I began to follow the Red Flag. The Western Bull snuffled and grunted and often roared.

But the Flag was damp with blood.

Even now, in a new age, in a shadowy corner at the back of the back garden of my mind, offending no-one, a little red rag on a stick still stirs.

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Art: Red And White Edvard Munch Original Title: Rødt og hvitt Date: 1899 - 1900 Style: Expressionism Period: European period Genre: genre painting Media: oil, canvas Dimensions: 129.5 x 93.5 cm Location: Munch Museum, Oslo, Norway

My Son by Ceinwen E C Haydon

His muscled shoulders broad and toned,

the fractured clavicle beneath, well hid.

Strontian’s oakwoods healed his broken bones whilst his lover’s dreams across the oceans slid.

I felt him drift seawards in slight pauses when I asked about their plans for Christmas and his take on Donald Trump’s mad causes or when he’d choose his next evening class?

Secret, pregnant plans bore one-way tickets, Alberquerque called come, it’s time to go.

On Skype, I can’t smell the nape of his neck, he will visit home, only not just yet.

He thought he’d come this year, now he doesn’t know.

Has he changed his mind? If he calls, I’ll check.

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Art: At Home Boris Kustodiev Date: 1914 - 1918 Style: Realism Genre: portrait Media: oil, canvas Dimensions: 106 x 88 cm Location: Belarusian National Museum of Fine Arts, Minsk, Belarus

Vortex by Dolores Duggan So, where are we standing? In the bedroom? In the hall?

Creaking floorboards and a whining dog, add background music To our voices. Hit the heights of soprano and tenor.

With a bit of Miles Davis or John Coltraine. And A hint of Donna Summer with a love session on that Beach in Ibiza. Sunburn and chafing skin and a stupor.

Sex on the beach. Cocktail. I drink Canadian Club.

It’s exclusive. No hangover. Just saffron colour piss.

So, here we are now. In a dusty courthouse. Smells of Mothballs and damp clothes. A hum abounds. Echoes in corners And stairwells. Heavy doors bang in the distance. Everyone jumps.

Except the legals. There is a smell of beeswax and books.

The library is a relation of the courthouse but with books for kids.

I spot you in a corner with your legal and your lover.

I think you smiled but maybe not.

So, there we were. Straining and paining. And frowning and paying.

The man with the large file looks tired. He’s been carrying it a while now.

Fifteen months to be precise. It has made him look old and weary.

You still hold the low ground. I hold the high. I can see your bald spot From the top of the staircase and spot That dirty old backpack with your world inside. You don’t look up.

I don’t look down.

The bailiff calls for case number eleven twenty.

All rise.

Francisco Goya Original Title: Otras leyes por el pueblo o Disparate de bestia Date: 1816 - 1823 Style: Romanticism Series: Disperate Genre: caricature Media: etching, paper

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Childhood problems by Alex McMillan We are making Every Negative Experience A cause for trauma and Telling our kids That every sadness, Every non-smile is a problem That must be Discussed And Dissected And Accounted For And taking Away their freedom to Feel All the things that make them The them they may become Without Our Interfering

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Art: The Childhood Of Gargantua Gustave Dore Style: Romanticism Series: Gargantua and Pantagruel Genre: illustration

Ultra by Robert Nisbet The blackbird’s song has finished now, no more is heard of Orange Beak’s celebrations, and in mid-July, young Morris, released for now from education’s cramp, steps out from parents’ home, past laurel bush, sensing, surely, the shift of twigs and nest and Blackbird’s history.

On up the street, he passes gardens, the odd cat sleeping, senses, beneath the fur, the muscle and sinew flexing, the teeth, discreetly veiled, ready for enemy.

Samantha emerges, with her little ones.

(He pauses to help her latch her gate, steady the push-chair). He catches the scent of a milkiness about her.

Outside the corner shop, in summer grace, are the two girls from the Haven Road, surely the town’s best lookers.

Dare he sense at least, beneath T-shirts and white jeans, the stir of limb and history’s fecundity

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Art: Pan Whistling At A Blackbird Arnold Böcklin Date: 1863 Style: Symbolism Genre: mythological painting

Does She Sing by Mike Jewett

bees arrive in the vicinity & sing the last chords of a bolero it pulls the air down in coffee blankets the air down in smokestacks crying smoke the air down in ports of call & when the coffee air from the roasting plant comes down pretend my own violence shreds itself into ribbons sings every nation's national anthems pretends comprehend this walk, marriage between two legs or more & more & it spills cement for sidewalks the children write their names in it the criminals write their blood in it fishermen write brine & scales in it pearlescent dead float above as goblins her lips heavy heave in the night

the city drains down her eyes two little draculas two little peccadilloes two manhole covers

sparklers shoot out moths we grapple/grovel through sticks sixty of them-

her ovals hold a grudge, seeds, fire, quetzalcoatl, gallons of pink, multicolored corn, hayseed, but oh does she sing

lipgloss dances on them shimmering shine of silver anchovies the riders of her lips are silly people i am silly people

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Art: Untitled Paul Klee Date: 1940

Chemotherapy by Mike Jewett her breasts were the queen of climbing roses when the lump in her throat become a lump in her climbing roses & her baby was due overdue a lump in her shocked belly a planned water birth ocean drips drops down her thighs citgo sign outside her window glass breaks through & in her tears neon from a life left neonatal like a tuesday a jupiter a pink dogwood blossoms cut her open they took care to avoid her tattoo pray to the statues

he wasn't diagnosed bald as chemo as her breast bald both beautiful left breast right left teal eyes eye her her right nipple what is left suckling at the water lily milkwhite poison but not her milk her shaved head a pilgrimage shake your maracas puertorican girls doubleyous on their white shirts brown skins brown heads they shake (shake) maracas for newborns on her flesh on her flesh on her flesh

c-section they scarred her tattoo

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We, the poets of the Waka tradition by Sergio A. Ortiz sometimes get married and when our demanding spouse puts us through the rag we flee from the conjugal house, with the healthy purpose of walking the dog, or filling the kettle with evening water from the river Placid.

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The Last Stop by Irena Pasvinter Red and green patterns entwine your naked arm.

A snake? Or a tail of a dragon?

A gorgeous tattoo, flashing out of the hospital blanket.

Your boyish head, still miraculously full of brown hair, doesn’t move as they roll you out of the elevator.

Welcome to the cancer hospice, the last stop before the end of pain.

The same elevator pulls me down, spits me out into the sunshine to breathe, to move, to enjoy the guilty pleasure of being alive.

I come to the hospice twice a day, but I never see you.

I don’t know if you still linger behind one of the closed doors.

I never see your dragon again, and I never forget you.

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Art: Paul Klee Blossoms in the Night 1930

Art: Fairy Tales Konstantin Makovsky Date: c.1890 Style: Romanticism Genre: genre painting

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Fair to Middlin’ by Jim Landwehr He was a middle child of seven not the oldest smart one nor the youngest wild one just somewhere in the vicinity of the top of the sibling bell curve.

At times even he forgets where in the kid continuum he falls fourth or fifth - doesn’t matter they mean the same thing his mother’s love was carved at the ends leaving the middles with leftovers always enough if we waited our turn.

Blessed with commonsensibilities his was a vanilla experience dictated by a birth order dice roll.

On occasion he still tries to figure out what it meant to be not the first – strong and independent or the last – spoiled and coddled but not the second, third or fourth either all girls.

He spent his life determining whether he was just another potato in the pot.

He was just fair-to-middlin’.

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A Goya

by Michael Wooff Poderoso visionario, raro ingenio temerario, por ti enciendo mi incensario;

Tu pincel asombra, hechiza, ya en sus claros electriza, ya en sus sombras sinfoniza;

Por ti, cuya gran paleta, caprichosa, brusca, inquieta, debe amar todo poeta;

con las manolas amables, los reyes, los miserables, o los cristos lamentables.

por tus lóbregas visiones, tus blancas irradaciones, tus negros y bermellones;

En tu claroscuro brilla la luz muerta y amarilla de la horrenda pesadilla,

por tus colores dantescos, por tus majos pintorescos, y las glorias de tus frescos.

o hace encender tu pincel los rojos labios de miel o la sangre del clavel.

Porque entra en tu gran tesoro el diestro que mata al toro, la niña de rizos de oro,

Tienen ojos asesinos en sus semblantes divinos tus ángeles femeninos.

y con el bravo torero, el infante, el caballero, la mantilla y el pandero.

Tu caprichosa alegría mezclaba la luz del día con la noche oscura y fría:

Tu loca mano dibuja la silueta de la bruja que en la sombra se arrebuja,

Así es de ver y admirar tu misteriosa y sin par pintura crepuscular.

y aprende una abracadabra del diablo patas de cabra que hace una mueca macabra.

De lo que da testimonio: por tus frescos, San Antonio; por tus brujas el demonio.

Musa soberbia y confusa, ángel, espectro, medusa.

Tal aparece tu musa.

RUBÉN DARÍO (1867-1916)

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Visionary shaper and turner, genius, bold and potent learner, for you I light my incense burner.

Your brush amazes, fascinates, in its light tints detonates, in its dark shades resonates:

Your palette could not have been braver, whimsical, abrupt, anxious to savour, a palette every poet should favour;

with small hands that are amiable we see kings, see the miserable, or tortured Christs lamentable.

Be thanked then for your visions gloomy, your emanations white and roomy your blacks and your vermilions truly;

In your chiaroscuro shines a lethal yellow light supine, a nightmare that recalls a crime,

for your Dantean colours too, for your majos quaint to view, the glories of your frescoes few.

or your brush is set on fire and honeyed crimson lips aspire carnations full of blood to sire.

We see because of your great skill the matador who kills the bull, the young girl’s golden curls that thrill,

Your female angels eyes possess more suited to a murderess in faces we should like to bless.

apart from that torero you have seen a horseman, a son of the queen, the lace veil and the tambourine.

Your capricious joy so bright was wont to mingle broad daylight with the dark and cold of night:

Your crazy hand can give us kitsch, the outline of a brazen witch who in shadows finds her niche

We admire you – fearless, mysterious and peerless your twilight world comes near us.

and learns to cast the spells a goat-legged devil tells with grimaces all hell’s.

Saint Anthony can testify that your great frescos death defy.

Your witches yield to demon sly.

Haughty inspiration blurred, angel, spectre, joy deferred, muse of paradise the bird.

RUBÉN DARÍO (1867-1916)

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N

ever was originality more well-defined and never was a Spanish artist more local. Before we come to the appreciation of his work, a short summary of his life may not be out of place. Don Francisco de Goya y Lucientes was born in Aragon of parents who were not particularly affluent, but nevertheless had enough to not hold him back from his artistic endeavours. His taste for drawing and painting developed early. He travelled, studied in Rome for a time and came back to Spain where he rapidly rose to fame at the court of Charles IV who gave him the title of official royal painter. He was received by the queen, by the prince of Benavente and the Duchess of Alba and led the life of a gentleman of leisure, like Rubens, Van Dyck and Velázquez, so conducive to the flowering of artistic talent. He acquired near Madrid a delightful country house where he gave parties and had his studio.

Goya was prolific.

He worked on holy subjects, frescoes, portraits, genre scenes, etchings, aquatints, lithographs and, on whatever he did, even in his most cursory sketches, he left the imprint of a vigorous talent. The latter, though perfectly original, is a singular mixture of Velázquez, Rembrandt and Reynolds. He reminds us, separately or simultaneously, of these three masters, but as the son is reminiscent of his forebears, without servile imitation, or rather more by an innate disposition than an act of will.

In the Prado museum in Madrid we can see the portrait of Charles IV and his queen on horseback. Goya has made a splendid job of their heads which are full of life, finesse and wit.

There is a “Picador” and “El dos de mayo”. The Duke of Osuna possesses several pictures by Goya and there is no great house which does not have some portrait or some sketch by him. The interior of the church of San Antonio de la Florida, in which is held a quite popular feast day, one and a half miles from Madrid, has had frescoes painted in it by Goya with the freedom and boldness characteristic of him. In Toledo, in one of the chapter rooms, we saw a picture by him representing Jesus betrayed by Judas, a night effect worthy of Rembrandt, to whom I should have attributed it at first, if a canon had not shown me the signature of the highly skilled court painter of Charles IV. In the sacristy of the cathedral in Seville there is also a picture by Goya of great merit, Saints Justine and Rufina, virgins and martyrs, both of them daughters of a potter as the jugs and jars lying at their feet indicate.

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Goya’s way of painting was as eccentric as his talent. He took his colours out of tubs, applied them with sponges, brooms, rags and anything that he could lay his hands on. He trowelled and sculpted his tints and shades in a mortar and added finishing touches with thumb strokes. With the help of these peremptory procedures, he could cover in one or two days thirty feet of wall. He executed with a spoon rather than a brush a scene in El dos de mayo in which French soldiers are shooting Spanish prisoners. It’s a work of unbelievable verve and anger. This strange painting has been relegated to the antechamber of the museum of the Prado in Madrid.

This artist’s individuality is so strong it defies comparison. He is not a caricaturist like Hogarth, Bunburry or Cruikshank. Hogarth, who is serious, phlegmatic and as accurate in his attention to detail as a novel by Samuel Richardson, always lets you see the moral in his work. But Bunburry and Cruikshank have nothing in common with the creator of Los Caprichos. Jacques Callot (1592-1635) comes closer, but he is clean, clear, accurate and faithful to reality despite the mannerism of his flights of fancy. His acts of devilry are feasible. His etchings are done in broad daylight and his passion for detail excludes a striving after effect and chiaroscuro, which are only arrived at through the sacrifice of detail. Goya’s compositions are dark nights in which some abrupt ray of light fleetingly illuminates pale outlines and strange phantoms.

He is a composite mixture of Rembrandt and Watteau. His drawings turn into etchings. Nothing is more candid, freer or easier – one brushstroke indicates the whole of a face, a scattering of shadow takes the place of a background or hints at sombre landscapes, but this is rare as backgrounds do not exist with Goya. From time to time there is a piece of wall covered at an angle by shadow, a row of black arches in a prison, a tree-covered walk, and that’s it. You feel you are transported to a world unheard of, impossible and yet real. The tree trunks look like ghosts, the men like hyenas, owls, cats, donkeys or hippopotami. Nails become talons, the cloven feet of goats sport buskins, while that young cavalier is a dead man and his beribboned breeches cover a fleshless femur and two thin tibias. No apparitions more mysteriously sinister were ever seen to come out from behind the stove of Doctor Faustus.

Some of Goya’s caricatures in the Caprichos deal with the fanaticism, the gluttony and the stupidity of monks. Others represent genre subjects or insights into magic and sorcery.

Goya’s portrait serves as a frontispiece to this collection of his works. He is a man of around fifty with a shrewd and slanting eye covered over by a broad eyelid exhibiting a crow’s-foot, his chin like a shovel, his upper lip thin and his lower lip protruding and sensual. His face is framed by Southern sideburns and topped by a Bolivar top hat.

The second plate in this series of eighty represents a marriage of convenience, a poor young girl sacrificed to a doddering and monstrous old man by greedy parents. The bride is charming, for Goya excels in depicting Andalusian and Castilian grace. Her parents are rapacious and hideous. They are a cross between a shark and a crocodile. The girl smiles through her tears like an April shower. Next comes el coco, the bogeyman, to frighten little children and many more besides, for, apart from the shade of Samuel in the picture of The Witch of Endor by Salvator Rosa, we know of nothing more horrific than this awful scarecrow.

The figure of the procuress, first introduced into Spanish literature in 1499 in the tragi-comedy of La Celestina by Fernando de Rojas, has been portrayed with consummate artistry by Goya who, like all Spanish painters, has a lively and profound sense of the ignoble. It would be difficult to imagine anything more grotesque. Each of these shrews is as ugly as all seven cardinal sins rolled into one.

Imagine escarpments of wrinkles, eyes like coals drowned in blood, noses like the beak of a still, spotted with warts, hippopotamus muzzles bristling with stiff hairs, something reminiscent of a spider or a woodlouse that makes you feel the same feeling of repulsion as when you tread on the soft underside of a toad. So much for reality, but Goya is at his most admirable when he abandons himself to his

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demoniac verve. Nobody knows like he does how to have great black clouds rolling overhead in the steamy atmosphere of a hot, stormy night full of vampires and demons and how to make stand out a procession of witches against the background of a sinister horizon.

There is also a plate that is probably the most terrible nightmare we could ever dream entitled: ¡Y aún no se van! (And still they don’t go!). Dante himself did not succeed in creating such suffocating terror.

Imagine a deserted plain and a great stone, a gravestone that an emaciated figure tries to lift that gradually falls back on it. The plate Buen viaje (Bon voyage), in which we see a gang of demons, seminarians from Barahona, in full flight, hastening towards some nameless misdeed, is remarkable for the vivacity and the energy of the movement. The collection finishes with the words: Ya es hora. (It is time.) The cock crows. The phantoms disappear. Light comes out of darkness.

As for the aesthetic and moral significance of this work, we are unable to say what it is. Goya seems to have given his own opinion about it in plate 43 in which a man is shown with his head on his arms around which flutter owls, barn owls and various absurdities. This plate bears the caption: El sueño de la razón produce mónstruos. (The sleep of reason produces monsters.) A true statement, but a challenging one.

The Caprichos are all that the Royal Library in Paris possesses of Goya. He did however produce other works: the Tauromaquia (Bullfighting), a sequence of 33 prints, and Los desastres de la Guerra (The Disasters of War), a series of 82 prints from 1810 to 1820.

The Tauromaquia is a collection of scenes representing various periods in bullfighting, from the time of the Moors onwards. Goya was an inveterate fan and spent a good part of his time with bullfighters.

The bulls and the horses, though sometimes somewhat oddly shaped, have a life and an energy lacking in the work of professional animal portrait painters. The plates of the Tauromaquia, like those of the Caprichos, were done in aquatint and etching.

The Desastres de la Guerra (Disasters of War) offer parallels with Jacques Callot’s 1633 testimonies to the Thirty Years’ War in Lorraine in Les Malheurs de la Guerre (The Misfortunes of War). We see nothing but hanged men, heaps of dead being rifled and robbed, women being raped, wounded transported, prisoners shot, convents pillaged, refugees, families reduced to begging and patriots being garrotted.

Right at the end of his life, which was long, for he died in Bordeaux when he was more than eighty, Goya made some lithographic sketches with the title Diversión de España (Spanish Pastimes) consisting of bullfights. We can still detect in these leaves of paper scrawled on by the hand of an old man who has been deaf for a long time and almost blind, the vigour and the movement of the Caprichos and the Tauromaquia.

The old art of Spain is buried with Goya in his tomb. He came just in time to capture that disappearing world of toreros, majos, manolas, monks, smugglers, thieves, alguaciles and witches, all the local colour of Iberia. He thought that he was only executing caprices, but succeeded in painting the portrait and the history of old Spain while believing that he served the new ideas of the Enlightenment. His caricatures will soon have the status of historical monuments.

[Translated and slightly adapted from the section on Goya in Chapter VIII of “Voyage en Espagne” (“A Journey through Spain”) (1840; 1843; 1848) by Théophile Gautier (1811-1872)]. ###

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Art: The Straw Manikin Francisco Goya Original Title: El maniquí de paja Date: 1791 - 1792 Style: Romanticism Genre: genre painting Media: oil, canvas Dimensions: 160 x 97 cm Location: Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain