‘Swimming Class’, ‘Muscle Memory’, ‘Socrates’, ‘Eventuality’ & ‘Sonography’

Photographer - Tobi Brun

Swimming Class

A tangy taste in the green

water, frogs we caught in our

hands,

floating leaves the teacher would remove

with a net attached to a long pole.

(Our teachers never came into the water

and no one was ever saved from drowning.)

We plucked bright red berries

as we marched single file to the pool,

wondering if they were poisonous.

We walked according to our role numbers,

Ruchika Jhunjhunwala ahead of

me at number seventeen and

Payal Lakhani behind me at number twenty.

Most of the cool girls were at the end,

like Swarna Sinha and Zaharah Sherriff.

They were big and strong unlike the rest of us

who ran the gamut from skinny to fat.

In class, they seated us by height,

the short girls in the front

and the tall girls in the back.

Being skinny and tall, I went into the last row,

between cool girls who made fun of me.

But I fit in after a while.

I was an anomaly—loose-limbed and agile,

good at tennis but terrible at running,

good at floating on the water and dreaming

but terrible at diving, good at poetry

but terrible at remembering dates.

I heard that Lajja, a girl from my class

killed herself after a few years in college.

She’d been like me—loose-limbed and unpopular

but unlike me, she’d been good

at remembering things and taking tests.

When I floated on the water, she sank.

Muscle Memory

We lie on the divan, the drapes drawn.

I take off my dress and wear his singlet.

He shows off his prowess with the gymnastic rings

hanging from a bar, offers me slippers

to go to the bathroom where the floor is wet,

then makes black tea and asks me if it’s

good. I refuse to praise him for something so

simple.

Later, we lie on the ground, and he says,

I can’t move. Can you adjust around me like water?

I don’t want to be the one adjusting,

but my body contours around him on its own.

Socrates

As the frothy liquid comes out of

me, I capture every last drop.

I am in the line of thought—

a philosopher trained to question

why we think the things we think.

But in full view of the balcony,

I refuse to consider

the whys and wherefores of this action.

I study their eager faces looking at me,

wanting to know what happens next.

I can’t tell them the truth,

which is that their sordid lives go on.

I can’t tell them that it’s a joke in bad taste.

So I tell them it’s a tragedy and I will

die. I tell them a bald-faced lie.

Eventuality

when you get

to the end of an event,

when you realize that

what’s important to you

is not so important to the other,

when you get caught up

in otherness,

when you have been othered,

when you realize

you have given away

your whole “I.”

Sonography

At the radiology center, they bare my waist,

and put cold gel on an instrument

which is pressed all over my stomach.

In the dark, the technician doesn’t look at

me, only at the monitor. I sneak a peek, but

everything inside the body seems

featureless.

A wave of sound is released and echoes

back and forth among my organs

which are like hills and mountains around me.

In the valley, I lean up and shout

something, and the sound comes back in

my direction.

What did I shout? It wasn’t any language I know.

It came from the beginning of all language

when I was just an empty center, and the

sound wrapped itself around me like a

bandage.

The sound protected me from predators,

but now, it circles back to me and tells me I

am the only predator here. I am eating

myself.

Ruhi Jiwani's poetry has been published in The Eclectic Muse, The Binnacle, Off the Coast, Muse India, The Four Quarters Magazine, Femina, North Dakota Quarterly, Jubilat, OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters, New York Quarterly Magazine, and others. She has a Master’s degree in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University, and is currently working on her first novel.

‘GIRL NEXT DOOR, These Birds In Winter; The Church On The Hill; Here's To The Yeast Of Us; Late Night Diner’

Photographer - Tobi Brun

GIRL NEXT DOOR

The girl next door

left years ago.

Next door went with her.

In its place,

the government erected

this Federal Nuclear Waste

Disposal and Encasement Facility.

In lieu

of her sunning in her back yard

in a bikini,

I watch workers in

protective coveralls

unload trucks,

roll barrels

into huge underground vaults.

Instead

of the occasional

over-the-fence conversations,

I’m constantly being harassed

by men in dark suits.

As the cliché goes,

she lit up my life.

But she didn’t kill cells.

She didn’t cause

nausea and vomiting.

THESE BIRDS IN WINTER

Bird song is desperate song,

Sparrows chatter endlessly

from the hedge mesh

as if in danger of losing

their voices to the cold.

Chickadee notes jar like

fingers tapping down the scale

on a guitar's rusty strings.

Even the blue-jay’s

sax-like cry

shudders against the

deepening ice.

Trees are bare, branches

nailed to the frozen sky.

Birds sing with beauty’s

dying breath.

Tunes begin to snow

HERE’S TO THE YEAST OF US

I'm brewing beer in the bathtub,

You’re baking bread in the kitchen.

Who would have thought that, years after

we first breathed each other's bodies,

we'd both be sniffing yeast and liking it?

Who would have figured we’d have nothing

more in common now than that fungoid aroma?

I rake my hands through the liquid as

if to stir more of the odor to the surface.

You lower your head into the bread-making machine,

in mute obeisance to the fumes.

This crop of beer, this loaf of bread,

eventually make it to our table.

And so, after a fashion, do we.

THE CHURCH ON THE HILL

The water’s slipped back into the river.

And now the town

is all mud.

The roads are impassable

for all but the heaviest vehicles.

And the entire population

are hunkered down in the church basement,

curled up beneath borrowed blankets.

Even their dogs.

Soon, they will trudge out into mud world,

to the horror of their homes –

the rugs of sludge, grungy chairs,

the smell of foul food.

And the cops will round up

the half-buried dead.

But for now,

there are people,

clinging together,

high and dry.

The mud can’t think of everything.

LATE NIGHT DINER

Two minutes of slow stirring,

and then sip.

Look out the dusty glass window

at the passing patrol car

and then sip.

A glance or two for the fortyish blonde

in twentyish clothes

and then sip.

And a more surreptitious peek ' "~

at the tattooed biker

so he don't know you're staring,

and then another sip.

Maybe a joke with the waitress

can separate a sip or two

and a three-day old newspaper article

will generously split a pair.

Look at your watch and sip.

Scratch your knee and sip.

Before long this coffee

will not only last you the night,

it'll tell you how

that's accomplished.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, North Dakota Quarterly and Lost Pilots. Latest books, ”Between Two Fires”, “Covert” and “Memory Outside The Head” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in California Quarterly, Seventh Quarry, La Presa and Doubly Mad.

Jerry Can Fly

Photographer - Tobi Brun

Jerry Can Fly

Jerry sits, very still, on the balcony of the apartment, wondering what it would be like to be able to fly.

There is a cool breeze wafting down from the mountains off to the west as the sun starts to settle behind them. It’s just chilly enough that he needs his sweater, but all the same there’s a change in the offing, a hint of moisture, a tiny scent of soil coming back to life, a certain thickness to the air that wasn’t present during the dry days of winter. Indeed, he can see a slight shimmer of bright green around the branches of the trees in the neighborhood twenty-five stories below him, they are awakening, loosening their pores, allowing that Spring might at long last be approaching.

Through the open door leading into the apartment, he can hear Ann banging around in the kitchen, rearranging the cabinets yet again. Didn’t she just do that a couple of weeks ago? Well, at least it’s better than the alternative, the times when she just curls up on the bed, staring at the wall, answering his questions in a monotone, unable to make eye contact. But right now, she is making quite a racket in there, deep into the pots and pans by the sound of it, this is a little more enthusiastic than usual, and it’s disturbing his reveries. He has a bit of a headache, and the noise is not helping.

Movement in the sky in front of him catches his eye and he focuses just in time to watch a fat red-tailed hawk soar by, only twenty or thirty feet away and right at eye level. The hawk circles widely and sinks downward toward the trees of the golf course next door. Jerry loses track of it in the deepening dusk, but he knows where it’s headed. There’s a nest high in one of the trees, and soon Jerry will be able to watch through his spotting scope as the hawk and its mate tend to their eggs, he may even have a chance to see the fluffy white fledglings before the leaves of the tree grow too thick and conceal them for the rest of the summer.

Suddenly, he hears a rustle behind him and turns to look. Ann has poked her head out of the door and holds up a small skillet. Her long brown hair hangs loosely around her face, her pale cheeks are flushed. “Hey, do you ever use this pan? I’m running out of room in here, so if you don’t need it, it’s going to Goodwill.” Jerry does most of the cooking, so he appreciates that she’s asking. He thinks about that particular pan…when was the last time he used it?

“Well, I guess I could do without it,” he replies. “It’s a nice size for just one or two eggs, though.”

Mild irritation and impatience flash across her face. She’s in “Getting Things Accomplished” mode and has no time for indecision. He almost smiles. Even when she’s annoying him, she’s still pretty.

“OK, I’ll keep it,” she says, “but you better start using it,” and vanishes back inside.

Jerry turns back to the vista before him. The sun is down, and the sky is darkening, the lights are starting to come on across the city. They picked this apartment just for this view, for the fact that this high-rise, even though it is on the edge of downtown, has a view which faced over the golf course and the low roofs of the residential neighborhood around it. Nothing to block the ever-changing sky, the sweep of clouds, the soaring of the hawks, the clattering honks of migrating geese, the swooping acrobatics of swallows. They are high enough off the ground that the sound of traffic below is only a soft rumble most of the time. It’s peaceful, even in the middle of the city it feels like they are far removed from it all, out in the country somehow.

When they first moved in, they sat out here together, a happy young couple, cocktails in hand, a dish of mixed nuts between them, just enjoying the view, catching up on the day’s events, relaxed and confident in each other’s company. That was before things changed, of course. She hasn’t joined him out here for a long time now.

All the same, it’s nice to be out here himself tonight. It has been a long, cold winter and he was cooped up inside for most of it, unable to get away from the darkness inside his mind, a darkness that seemed to be growing, out of proportion to the season. With spring approaching, he promises himself to come out here as much as possible.

Two sparrows land on the railing of the balcony right in front of Jerry, a mating pair apparently, the male with dark red feathers on his head, and the female, gray mixed with brown. They sit for a moment, heads tilting side to side, bodies twitching back and forth on their tiny black legs, then they are gone in a flutter, off into the night.

And that is the moment that Jerry has the thought for the first time, not only what it would be like to fly, no, that’s not enough . . . he wonders if he can fly.

-----

It’s fully early summer, now, Spring has come and gone, and they are at the doctor’s office.. They do not always attend these appointments together, but Dr. Schmidt has asked that they come as a couple today. Ann has not really accepted the fact that they need the services of a psychiatrist. After the last appointment like this, she told Jerry that she felt like he and Dr. Schmidt were ganging up on her.

Despite that, here they sit again, in Dr. Schmidt’s very neutrally decorated office. A single armchair for Dr. Schmidt, a small couch, another armchair, all around a small glass coffee table with a box of Kleenex in the middle. Bookshelves over there, with a few glass bowls and some brass animal figurines, artfully mixed in with some books; Jerry has never bothered to read the titles, and a desk over in the other corner by the window, a few papers neatly stacked next to the phone. Jerry has never seen Dr. Schmidt use it.

Jerry and Ann sit side-by-side on the couch. Dr. Schmidt is opposite them in his chair. They form a flattened triangle, with Ann at the pivotal corner.

She is crying.

Jerry looks down at his hands, trying not to move, willing his body to exude empathy, sympathy, support, whatever she might need right at this instant. His head hurts, he has more headaches these days.

Dr. Schmidt watches them both quietly. He had only asked one question, and to Jerry it had seemed like a safe opener. “So,” he had said, “how are things going?” That was all it had taken to start the tears flowing.

Dr. Schmidt catches Jerry’s attention silently, gives him a faint, sympathetic smile and raises his eyebrows. There is an unspoken exchange between them.

Things aren’t going well. Not well at all.

-----

Back on the balcony that night, Jerry sits nursing a cocktail . . . a stiff one. It’s warm out tonight and there’s a thunderstorm moving eastward far to the north. Jerry can see the orange flashes in the clouds, but the storm is too far away to hear the thunder.

The apartment is quiet. Ann has gone to bed early; she took one of her sleeping pills at Dr. Schmidt’s insistence. “You need to make sure you get a good night’s sleep, Ann,” he had said. Ann just nodded, her eyes still red from crying.

They had driven home in silence until they were almost to the apartment building, Ann in the passenger seat watching the neighborhoods go by. Finally, she turned to Jerry.

“I’m sorry,” she said softly.

He looked at her and then reached over to take her hand.

“Nothing to be sorry about.”

“I know, but . . .” looked back out the window, “. . . I’m still sorry.”

Out on the balcony, Jerry’s stomach rumbles. He hasn’t had dinner, but he doesn’t want to make any noise in the kitchen that might wake up Ann.

A memory pops into his head, a vacation that they took to Florida right after they got married. They rented that house in the Panhandle, close to the ocean. The water was so blue and the sand so white, it was mesmerizing, magnetic. They didn’t want to go anywhere else, so they just lounged on the beach during the day, made brief trips to the grocery store or the local farmer’s market, and then got comfortably tipsy in the evenings as Jerry tried to create as many variations on fish and shrimp dishes as he could think of. Ann sat on a stool in the kitchen watching him work, keeping their wine glasses full. They made idle, silly conversation, he couldn’t remember what they talked about. After dinner, they made love and got sweaty, and sometimes took a walk in the dark on the beach to cool off, barefoot in the warm Gulf water.

Ann smiled a lot in those days, so long ago now. She joked with him and teased him and snuggled up against him on the couch watching TV.

He takes a gulp from his cocktail and feels it burn going down. He hasn’t seen her smile in a long time. There is a dull ache in his stomach and a heaviness in his chest. He misses her smile deeply.

Just then he hears noise in the sky above him. A flock of geese are heading north in the darkness, honking noisily. He squints but he can’t see them. They are loud, though, can’t be more than a couple hundred feet up.

He wonders how it would feel, soaring through the night like that, steering around the thunderstorm, night wind in your face, cities like patches of sparkling jewels passing below, dark velvet expanses of emptiness between them.

And just like that, abruptly, without any effort . . . he levitates off his chair.

At first, he’s not sure that it’s really happening. But then he looks down to see his feet a foot off the ground and he almost drops his drink. He’s still in the sitting position but his butt is at the level of the arms of the chair.

His heart is thumping hard in his chest, and he realizes he’s holding his breath. Slowly, he lets it out and cautiously refills his lungs.

Still floating. No, not floating . . . he’s flying.

-----

Some weeks later: “I don’t know, Jerry, this is a challenging case, to be honest,” says Dr. Schmidt on the phone. “I think I’m missing something . . .”

“Like what exactly?” Jerry asks, rubbing his aching forehead with his free hand, glad that Dr. Schmidt can’t see him doing it. “Where did this come from? Nothing happened, there’s no personal tragedy, no traumatic event. I didn’t cheat on her . . . there was nothing wrong between us! I don’t understand why we can’t talk anymore. She has pulled away . . . ”

“Like I said, I don’t know. I need to order some more tests, maybe an MRI. I still think it’s something metabolic, but I just don’t know exactly.”

There is a long pause while Jerry tries to calm himself. He feels badly about blaming Ann.

“Jerry, are you there?”

“Yes, I’m here, I just . . . I don’t know what I’m supposed to do here. We’re only twenty-nine! We were going to have kids . . . but now . . . what if this doesn’t get better? She seems to be suffering . . .”

“I know, I know, Jerry.” Dr. Schmidt has his psychiatrist voice working now, “You just have to keep trying to show her that you love her. Support her as best you can. We’ll work through this . . . together. I’m here for you, both of you.”

-----

Jerry gets the hang of flying fairly quickly, faster than he thought possible. Out on the balcony in the evenings, after Ann is asleep, after he processes and catalogues their ups and down through the day, after the first cocktail starts to erase the pain that seems to live behind his eyes most of his waking moments these days, after the sun is all the way down and it’s really dark . . . he just lets his thoughts go to the sky. He imagines what it would be like up there with the hawks, the sparrows, the geese, all that space, up away from it all, above it all, the clean clear air around him, nothing but space, space, space . . . space to move, space to breathe, space to be free . . .

And up off the chair he floats.

Controlling it takes a little longer, a little more concentration. First, the height . . . with a little concentration, he finds that he can make himself go higher. The first time, he goes a little too fast and bumps his head on the balcony of the apartment above. Then he gets nervous, overreacts, and comes down too hard, landing in his chair with a thud that makes the legs creak in protest.

But it gets easier. He slowly gets control. It reminds him, somewhat oddly, of last summer, when he decided that he needed to buy a gun. There had been a spate of muggings downtown, not even really near the apartment, but nevertheless he got it in his head that he needed to be able to protect Ann. So, he went to a sporting goods store and bought a 9 mm Glock on the advice of the salesman. He took it to a shooting range one afternoon and shot up two boxes of bullets. At first the weapon felt like a wild animal in his hand, jumping around, making his whole body flinch every time he pulled the trigger. But after a while, with some focused effort, he settled down. He felt calm. He started hitting the target right in the center. He got control.

So, he takes it slow. One night on the balcony, he tries flying from a standing position and finds himself hovering with the soles of his shoes six inches off the ground. Twenty minutes later, he’s calmly sipping his drink while he turns his body 360 degrees in the air like he’s rotating on a turntable, first toward the apartment and Ann, then toward the warm open night beyond the balcony, then back toward Ann.

The next iteration is horizontal. He rises up out of his chair and wills his body sideways, over the little side table, to Ann’s chair on the other side of it, and then down to a soft landing there. Now he’s sitting where Ann used to sit, looking at his own empty chair three feet away. What would it be like to sit here and see him through her eyes? What kind of a man does she see these days when she looks at him? Does she still love him like she used to, back in the beginning, before . . . well, before?

Eventually he turns his gaze to the railing of the balcony.

That next step will be a doozy.

-----

As late summer approaches, there is the issue of their jobs. As an accountant, he can easily work from home. The senior partner at the firm is understanding, tells Jerry to do whatever he needs to do. Jerry manages to log into the computer long enough each day to keep up with things, but his heart is not in it.

Ann, however, works in commercial real estate, for a big developer who needs her in the office, needs her out in the field to show clients around. So she takes Family Medical Leave, then, when that runs out, the company lets her go.

Jerry crunches the numbers. They’ll be on a pretty tight budget, especially considering the medical bills, and it would probably be better if they moved to a cheaper apartment, maybe even just a little lower in the building. But the thought of giving up his balcony seems intolerable, and for an instant he feels a sudden flash of anger directed at Ann. Almost immediately, he feels guilty and bats it back into whatever dark hole it came out of.

With the extra time at home, she gets more restless, has episodes of agitation, pacing the apartment. She is irritable at times, snapping at Jerry for little things like not hanging up his towel neatly, not asking what she might want for dinner, not getting up early enough in the morning when she wants to get the bed made and tidy up the bedroom. Sometimes she interrupts Jerry when he’s trying to work in the second bedroom, which he has made into his home office. She even comes into the room when he’s on a video conference once or twice, asking questions or needing his attention for some reason, usually something inconsequential that could have waited.

She’s starting to get on his nerves.

-----

It’s after midnight on a muggy late summer evening. Jerry leans over the balcony railing and looks up and down the glass windows of the tower. Most of the lights are off, almost everyone has gone to bed, conveniently including Ann, who he made sure has taken a sleeping pill tonight and is snoring softly in the bedroom behind him. There is hardly any traffic on the streets below, the city is quiet. The moment has come.

He wears dark sweatpants and a hoodie. He takes a deep breath, kicks off his loafers, closes his eyes for a long moment, and then leans forward against the rail, and . . . just floats up and over it and out into space.

He notices his heart is pounding but otherwise he feels calm, his breathing is slow and easy. He dares to look down. Yes, he’s really hanging in midair, twenty-five stories up. There’s no sense of weight pulling him down, nor does he feel like a balloon floating upward. He’s just, well, he’s just flying, that’s what he’s doing.

He wonders how he’s supposed to control this . . . whatever it is. What if, say, he wanted to move left? And just like that, he starts to slowly slip to the left. Stop, he thinks, and he eases to a halt, still hanging in the air but now a good ten feet away from the balcony.

Forward, he thinks, and he glides away from the building. Up, he thinks, and away he goes.

He spends the next half-hour slowly learning how to really fly, first making a circumnavigation of the building, looking in windows as he circles, most of them dark, but a few still lit, with people puttering in their kitchens, or reading in bed, or lying on a couch surfing through channels and bathed in the blue glow of their TVs, all completely unaware of the miracle happening in the darkness outside. Then, feeling bolder, he soars upward and above the building, into the cool night, where he takes a deep breath, feeling a surge of exhilaration.

It doesn’t matter what’s going on below, what new changes are taking place in the mind of the woman he loves, down there asleep in her room. Up here the air is clear, it’s cool and fresh. Up here, he’s free. Up here, he’s just Jerry, the guy who can fly.

-----

Later that very week: “I’m so sorry,” Dr. Schmidt says, “I should have thought of it sooner. I thought it was just depression, or maybe bipolar disorder . . . I should have ordered the scan sooner.” He looks down at his lap.

Jerry looks down at the radiology report in his hand. Ann is next to him on the doctor’s couch again, her eyes closed, hands in her lap.

Jerry tries to focus on the report.

“What does this part mean? Infiltrating?”

Dr. Schmidt clears his throat softly. “It means that the tumor has spread, put off little tendrils, if you will . . .” He pauses, clears his throat again. “Like little roots . . . have you ever seen the way ivy spreads up the side of a house?”

Yes, Jerry has seen that. So has Ann, but she doesn’t react.

“Is surgery an option?”

Another pause. “I’m afraid not. It would cause too much . . . damage.”

“What about, what do you call it . . . chemo . . . chemotherapy? Radiation?”

“No . . .” Dr. Schmidt clearly feels terrible about this. Jerry almost feels sorry for him, but is angry with him, too. Ann has opened her eyes. She is staring out the window behind Dr. Schmidt’s unoccupied desk.

Jerry feels the frustration rise. “There’s got to be something we can do!”

Dr. Schmidt goes back into psychiatrist mode, demonstrates that he knows how to deal with denial and anger, even when they come at the same time.

“Jerry, I can prescribe drugs for the symptoms, but you’re going to have to be strong. For Ann.”

Jerry turns to look at Ann but she’s still staring out the window. He puts his arm around her, but she is stiff. Frozen, almost.

“What kind of symptoms?”

“Well, there will be pain . . .”

-----

Jerry is cooking dinner; it’s going to be a special one. Chicken Piccata like only he can make it, the breasts sliced and pounded thin, floured and sautéed to the perfect shade of golden brown, his own personal lemon caper sauce with just the right amount of grilled onions mixed in, angel hair pasta tossed with quartered tomatoes. It’s always a home run with Ann, her favorite Italian dish.

For her part, Ann has been working in the master bedroom for hours, rearranging all the drawers and the closets. “Getting organized,” she says, “Just getting organized.”

Organized for what, he wonders? But at least she’s up and about, not lying on the bed as has become all too common, not just staring out the window like a mannequin in a storefront.

He’s got the chicken off the stove now; it’s staying warm on a plate tented with foil. He throws the pasta in a pan of boiling water, and adds some chicken broth to the grilled onions, ready to start on the sauce, the final step. He heads to the door of the bedroom and sticks his head in.

“Hey, dinner’s almost ready . . .” He freezes.

The room is a wreck, underwear and socks tossed all over the bed, drawers pulled open on the dresser, half empty but with T-shirts and sweatpants hanging over the edges like icicles, no, like stalactites, fuzzy stalactites.

Ann is sitting on the side of the bed, his side, hands in her lap. His nightstand drawer is open.

She’s staring at a gun lying on the top of the nightstand.

Jerry recognizes it instantly of course. It’s the Glock. His Glock.

“Hey,” he says softly. “Whatcha got there?”

The air in the room feels heavy, almost thick. Everything’s in slow motion. Ann turns her head very slowly to look at him. Her eyes are red, cheeks are wet. She takes a deep breath and lets it out raggedly.

“Oh, Jerry . . . oh . . .”

He opens the door slowly and walks over to ease down on the bed beside her, his hands in his own lap.

Like a slowly falling tree, she leans into him, and he puts his arms around her and pulls her close, feels her start to sob. Out in the kitchen, he hears a hiss as the pasta water boils over the saucepan and onto the burner. The Chicken Piccata will go into the refrigerator later, leftovers for tomorrow . . . if there even is a tomorrow. His head is aching again.

Later, when she’s asleep, he thinks about taking the gun up into the sky with him, up where he can drop it into some pond or creek. But instead, he hides the gun in his closet, behind some sweaters on a high shelf, higher than she can reach.

-----

Oh, but up in the warm August night skies, there’s nothing but Jerry. His senses overflow. He feels the rush of the cool air against his face, making his eyes water if he goes too fast. The thick liquid smells of the night flow through his nostrils . . . the sharp tang of the freshly cut grass over the golf course, the sweet bite of the diesel fumes over the freeways, the warm decay of the algae over the creeks and ponds, even the brief hints of the exhaust vents over the restaurants . . . a burger here, Chinese dumplings there, sweet curry over there. He overhears nonsensical cooing from couples strolling along paths in the parks, rowdy ruckuses from backyard barbecues, arguments and apologies from bedroom windows. He sees the cold white sequential strips of streetlights, the blue glows of swimming pools, the yellow spill of front porch lights, the flickering glare of car headlights on their anonymous journeys along the vast maze of streets and highways.

He learns to relax his arms and legs as he flies, no Superman pose for him, no, he just keeps his body straight but loose. It’s really just floating, he knows that intellectually, but in his heart he’s flying. Without a flapping of wings, yes, without any strain, yes, but he is indeed moving, in whatever direction he desires . . . up, down, left, right . . . over the city, out over the suburbs, across the fields of the eastern plains, up the canyons of the western mountains.

He savors the ignorance of the people below him, who never bother to look up into the night sky to see the rare and special human gliding over them. He is surprised by the awareness of the wild animals who do notice him, the deer grazing in the grassy field who bolts in startled alarm when he swoops overhead, the bear rummaging through berry bushes on a mountainside who growls and swipes a claw above reflexively as Jerry circles overhead.

He is a ghost, a phantom, a wraith, a figment of the imagination. He is alone, free from worry, free from the future, free, free, free . . .

He flies every night that he can, every night that he thinks that Ann will stay asleep in her bed. His cocktails, and there are more of them these days, stronger ones too, are left sitting on the little balcony table, the city street quiet below.

The night air . . . it holds his peace of mind, his salvation, his sanity.

-----

Fall is coming and there is now an experimental medication in their life. It’s a pill, a giant, horse-sized pill, taken four times a day, something called “palliative therapy,” a term that Jerry had never heard before until it spilled from the lips of the oncologist.

“I want to be honest,” said the young female doctor to them both, in a sympathetic yet practiced tone, “this is not going to cure your cancer. I’m pretty sure it will buy you some time, and it should help with your symptoms. But that’s about it . . . just some more time . . .”

After the appointment, they debate the pros and cons of the medication. They both know the end is coming, but they’re not ready. Jerry tries to be strong, but he knows that she can see the fear in his eyes, she can tell he is not ready to let go, that he has never even imagined being without her. So, they agree to try the horse pill. They decide they are willing to endure whatever side effects may come, whatever horrors may await them at the end of this journey. And for that, Jerry feels eternal gratitude . . . and infernal guilt.

He manages a quick run to the grocery store by himself one afternoon but comes home to find her curled up in the fetal position on the couch in the living room, decorative pillows clutched to either side of her head, her eyes scrunched tight. He leaves the grocery bags on the floor of the kitchen, frozen foods melting, pulls her head onto his lap.

“Oh, Ann . . .”

“It’s OK. I’m just so sad.” A tired, weak whisper.

“Me too, baby, me too.”

“I’m so sorry, Jerry. I just want it to be over for both of us.”

He feels the hot tears well up. What can he do? There is nothing. Well, not nothing . . . there is, in fact, something . . .

-----

And so, on this early fall night, there are orange and brown leaves rustling in the trees below the balcony. The . . . what should he call it . . . resolution? . . . has arrived. Jerry stands on the balcony, no drink in his hand this time. Instead, he rests his hands on the railing in front of him, no, that’s not quite right, he grips the railing, his fingers curled and tight.

The sound of the gunshot from behind him, from inside the apartment, still reverberates through the air. It will have been noticed by the neighbors, even though it is a late hour. Phone calls will be made. It was such a sharp crack after all, penetrating through the walls, out through the door of the balcony, out across the glittering lights in front of Jerry, up into the dark, dark blue of the sky.

Jerry relaxes his hands, it’s easy now. His feet leave the ground, he leans forward, and his body floats over the rail and up into the night.

He rises, up past the floors above the apartment, ignoring the yellow-light scenes of domestic life behind him, the living rooms bathed in the blue glow of televisions, the bustle of brightly lit kitchens where dishes are being washed, where leftovers are being tucked away into refrigerators, where bedtime cocktails are being sloppily mixed, teeth being brushed, pajamas donned, and sleepy good-night kisses exchanged.

He rises above the top floor of the building, past the hum of the rooftop air-conditioning units, past the crackly flapping of the American flag on its lonely pole. Onward he goes, up into the low clouds flowing in the crisp autumn air over the city, feeling a tingle of mist on his cheeks, he floats even higher, now above the clouds, higher than he’s ever been before.

And yet . . . he still feels her below him, still feels the stabbing ache in his heart. Down there, down in the apartment, Ann lies on the rug in the living room, a dark red stain slowly spreading from her head across the pale fibers. The Glock lies a few feet away, her right hand reaching toward it.

There will be questions later, he knows. The police will search for him, wondering about odd details. Where could he be? Why are his wallet, his car keys still in the apartment, his car still in the garage? The apartment locked from the inside? There will be questions about fingerprints on the gun, the odd angle that the bullet entered her head, almost from the back. They will eventually make their way out onto the balcony, out at the view of the city which he has enjoyed so much, and then they will look down. Answers will start to form in their heads.

But he will not be there to provides those answers himself. He is still rising, toward the bright stars now, toward the white crescent moon that hangs to the northwest, over the mountains. He will let himself glide toward that bright sliver off in the east, maybe even past it, who knows?

It is quiet up here, just a slight rush of the wind as it flows down off the mountain, getting colder now, chilling the tears on his cheeks. He is far too high for the birds, soon he will be higher even than the airplanes. So quiet, so empty, so peaceful . . . he flies in every sense of the word, toward eternity, toward infinity, toward Ann, wherever she may be, in peace at last. He hopes . . . no, he is sure . . . that he will find her.

-----

A voice behind him.

“Jerry, are you all right?”

He loosens his grip on the balcony rail, and turns toward the door, confused. Ann stands there in her pajamas, her hair a mess, a look of concern on her face.

Where is he? What is this place? The gun? He was flying . . . everything is so fuzzy in his mind . . .

“Are you OK?” she asks. “I wish you wouldn’t lean over the rail like that.”

He doesn’t know what to say. The words won’t come. His head is throbbing.

She takes a step through the door, extends her hand.

“Come to bed. Is your head hurting?”

He nods. It is hurting worse than it ever has. He feels unsteady, his balance is off.

She takes another step, grasps his hand, pulls him to her. He sinks into her embrace, then lets her guide him away from the railing, away from the void, away from the dark night.

“Come on inside,” she says gently, “I’ll get your meds. Let’s go lay down together.”

Behind him, the vast open sky pulls at his heart, but he follows her inside. His flying days are over. It is indeed time to lie down.

John Tynes is a writer, photographer, physician, and traveler living in Denver, Colorado.

‘A Song of Liberty’

Artist - Emmet Moriarty

A Song of Liberty

I

America, resting in the arms of heaven—

Her blinking honking forever-bustling city traffic

sounds serenade me,

Her locomotives and pickup trucks haunt me,

Her beauty and glory torment me,

Her stories and songs are in me,

Her soft lips and glistening fractal-eyes make me

wistful,

She is irresistible, all-consuming, evil.

America, I’m sure you know your power over me.

America, I am kneeling on your velvet

Floor spreading thousands of miles,

My curious fingers caress the exclusive rope beside

And my heart is aching for you to let me in.

Mother, I have your wide smile and crazy laugh.

You raised me good, Mama.

Murder, violence, so horrific!

But what once rattled and shattered earth

Is now banal, normal, embedded

Within the concrete on which we walk, wetted

By the blood of homeless men and women.

See hopeless eyes of starving children,

We pass by, and are forgiven.

Beauty, love, so terrific!

But what once changed, upheaved tradition

Has now grown weary, judgmental, jaded,

The lights of stars and moon have faded

Neither black nor white prevail at present

But grey, grey, so effervescent!

I wish to look away and hide.

I could sit upon a cliff and listen

To the pounding of my heart in rhythm,

And I would hear a sound the same

As the ticking of a clock

Or the flicking of a flame,

But were I then to turn my head,

And close my eyes,

And go to bed,

And listen to my thoughts, unending,

I would hear the sound of my heart rending.

The cries of mothers muffled by

The silence of the night—

The serenity of countryside

Is covering this fright.

The sun is sinking like a ship

The moon is rising slow,

Children wail and wail and wail

With nothing to do

And nowhere to go.

But should I from these truths

Draw false conclusions

Of nations lost

In novel confusions?

Should I, then, embrace the past?

Is that the solution,

Found at last?

No, I shall not bend my principles

For comfort of tradition.

II

America, it is getting hard to live.

My friends are homeless and drifting; going and

going without ever reaching a destination.

My eyes are dry from crying,

My sons are poor and malnourished,

My daughters are overwrought and sick.

My enemies are your friends: pollution,

destruction, death.

You are not who I thought you were.

America, I am becoming fearful of you.

America, I have seen how you treat your own.

I have seen you build dams on sacred waterways

And bulldoze entire neighborhoods.

I have seen you strike your child’s hands

outstretched.

Father, please scatter my ashes over Katahdin!

My soul’s gone all the way to the valley.

The earth is breathing heavily;

She is sickly and pale as a ghost.

We must love her

And care for her.

This question then arises:

“What will be our sacrifices?”

For we cannot live the way we do

If we wish our promises to be true

For our children here to come

And for every living thing

Underneath the sun.

I was awakened by a loud BOOM!

’Twas the dead of night,

And I was confronted by Death,

With whom I fought endlessly—

An infinite struggle arisen and resolved

All within the night.

Tradition is the mode of reproduction of despair.

What is rational of despair?

It is tradition to kill, steal, pollute.

It is uncomfortable to challenge tradition.

But when tradition is not examined,

And by tradition, to no avail,

We try our best to live our lives,

Only reaction can prevail.

The men who subsist on the slop of poorhouses

Are sympathetic to Mother Earth.

III

America, Russia stopped at Berlin;

We kept going, past Louisiana, Texas, New

Mexico, all the way to Eden: California.

We murdered, stole, torched, raped, exterminated.

We displaced millions, forced them to uproot.

We are not natives here, America.

We are Europeans, America. This is no new world.

America, why are we here?

Our love is in vain.

America, I think I hate you.

America, they are saying things about you:

“Your industrial power is fading.”

“Your highways are no longer free.”

America, how will you answer?

Brother, my love of land is dwindling,

I must go to the sea and rest.

War: performance!

Great thief of life!

War, the drums do not cease, the

Sporadic bass and wailing guitar, the

Eccentric frontman and incomprehensible lyrics!

It is beyond horror!

I saw a mother

Weep for her child taken

From her strong arms by an angel,

Death!

But what of the mechanics of war?

What of the indifferent cruelty and the routine?

I am paid time-and-a-half if I do not report

civilian casualties (a nice word for victims).

Even the most radical of us are sentimental about

the innocence of American soldiers—

Righteous killers!

They have no agency!

They have no control!

Prison is far too dismal a fate for our young boys!

The war is evil, but I do not dare criticize those

who fight it;

Many of them had no choice,

They were just following orders.

We are no strangers to struggle.

We must fight endlessly—

An infinite struggle resolved

All within the night.

I cannot smell the stew steaming.

Outside the fire is raging, consuming.

My mother’s face was melted off—

I am a young girl.

IV

America, the atom bomb is always on my mind.

It is nighttime in the east; in Los Angeles the

light is still fading, I see pink!

I was born in Massachusetts,

I am of your kind, your spirit, your history.

I am still here, America.

I arrived on your massive shore, famished, begging

for entrance and shelter.

You took me in, fed me, and gave me home.

America, I will not forgive you.

America, I mourn what should have been.

I weep over the death of this wild land untamed.

Ah, your hunger!

It is endless as your lust!

Sister, take care of Ma.

She is lonesome and tired, like our country.

America, sing for me!

America, I feel my troubles melting away.

America, the fog is lifting.

America, I can see through the haze.

America, when will you collapse?

Close your eyes and go to sleep,

Sweet little angel child.

The light is within you,

As within every tiny pebble

And every great mountain—

The whole world is a manifestation of His love!

Sing me to sleep, sweet angel!

Sing me to sleep tonight!

I may not live another day

But tonight I feel alright!

Sing me to sleep, sweet angel!

Sing me to sleep right now!

I hear the voice of infant Christ

Crying so very loud!

Sorrow is joy!

Death is life!

All is not lost—

There is hope for us!

We were born with the strength to move

mountains,

So we shall move them.

The liberation of humanity is drawing near!

Come to me, lover.

Lie with me and let the poetry wash over us.

Emmet Moriarty is a 19-year-old poet, songwriter, and aspiring filmmaker from southern New Hampshire. They are a recent high school graduate moving to Los Angeles, California to work and pursue a career in literature/music/film. They are influenced by poets such as Allen Ginsberg, Claude McKay, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes, Sylvia Plath, songwriters such as Bob Dylan, Nina Simone, Patti Smith, Neil Young, Gillian Welch, Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, and filmmakers such as Ingmar Bergman, Paul Schrader, Carl Theodor Dreyer, Ousmane Sembène, and Sergei Eisenstein. Emmet has been writing poetry as a passion for many years and has been developing a distinct voice/style.

‘Lucan and the Muse’ & ‘Iqrit’

Photographer - Tobi Brun

Lucan and the Muse

No sweetheart, Rome's epic muse. Only her keen

cold throat could sing a suicidal queen

sublimely burned impaled. With eyes pried shut,

ears can see blood purpling out of the gut

of sworded Dido. Her unstately face

warps a last Punic shriek the flames enchase,

a backspun echo of the bastard day

the children of the One that Got Away

met Hasdrubal and Carthaginian

peace sickened to cliché. Arms of a man

warring through rains of mythos, Virgil lays

lines supple. Even the caesura plays

accents into discant patterns round the line

styling unorthodox with superfine

into immaculate. Put to occasion

new worlds of taste, paced like a good persuasion.

Intuition refined plucks at bane's harp.

Others are much more point-blank. Dark and sharp

with a horrendous sanity between

exquisite gasconades that steal the scene

at court, and history's rumble, Lucan comes

like a revenge of Muses at the drums,

most metal of all music, loud and real

battering, proud like pounding wings of steel,

battering, beating far beyond all doubt,

like something come to beat those tuning out

a mass grave chorus, chorally right and rude

to baritone an ungrieved multitude

with gusts of what it is that really blows

on mountains sanctimonious in snows,

obstreperous on glory, an honest choke

of rhetoric, his godless Music spoke

spring minds that wept at song and knew not why

to tumble in thunder from a shattered sky.

***

So no this Muse is not a gentle one.

Excessive brightness from a summer sun

helps to conceive how dark She gets you. See

a field of daysplashed flowers in Thessaly

beside the woodland where the farmer's boy

runs piping in the green and skips his toy

horse on the streams. Leaves let light trickle on water

from daylight perfect for Her Balkan slaughter

where javelined soldiers wriggle, a boy begs

hacked dad to live and tree-roots snap the legs

of horses who went mad where riders fell.

Her language is the charm of weathering hell

to Man's savannah beast. At her Lucan best,

she's striking as a pilum through the chest

till the heart skips all beats. Gods know where

men got off calling this trick goddess fair.

She is as fair as life has been for most

humans who lived. A sheer Nobody's Ghost,

She stalks in warpaint and a cloak of scalps

to simper Latin as troops hurt on the Alps

in Fate-black humor, redpills you with bodies

dyed in the bright full moon whose face she bloodies.

At Her yoke, feral eras synchronize

under chill stars that scribble on gaped eyes

frosty sharp canticles of humans felled

in dynamos of regimes born, bled & knelled,

till fluent dread of things to come again

is scratched in proverbs on the tender brain.

She strolls to Rome with weird gems on Her fillet,

winks caustic pride at soldiers in the billet,

then trolls at court, bows

crooked, smiles perverse

at Caesars, and haunts docti into verse

singing the victories & aftermaths

with eyes that know the gods are psychopaths.

Of men's deeds, goddeſſe, ſing; of tryumphe ſtrucke

till the heart marvels what the actual fuck

***

To be the Muse's darling, come like Lucan

bemused in the best court a man could puke in,

dream canceling dream. His role unspooled life's roll

for Her. The murderous varier of the soul.

Nero did read him. From the first, it's blood

he wrote in. Flipped out spectacles and gluts

at court churned the grotesque to a lofty mood

for epic where men jagged each other's guts

sans gods or heroes. No such fey disguise

fit his rank Muse in gnarly Thessaly

who paid neronic price for sanity

watching psychosis blow through open eyes.

Art made the artist. Hideously wiser

each day to autocrats' gushes and kinks,

his jiggering plot boiled over in a plot on Caesar

at twenty five. As no throne-squatter thinks

of pardoning the treason of the sane,

he rendered unto Caesar from his vein.

Rome's epic muse is not a poet's wife.

Of Lucan, She asked little. Just his life.

Iqrit

A ruined church upon a hill

lies in today's debris.

I watched an old man praying outside,

with nowhere else to be.

No majesty distracted him.

Only the olive trees

bent as he bent on buried ground

in silence on his knees.

(I'd say "he had unusual eyes,

a voice like an abyss..."

But there is more than poets' lies

to what a person is.)

I had not come to press him for

his life, or even name.

But hearing my ṣabāḥinnūr

he told me all the same.

Much old Arabian verse laments

campsites with nomad love.

Triteness is just the truth of hearts

and homes compelled to move

as men mourn prints in blackrock sand,

weep over stones and roam.

This man had come to mourn his land

without a home at home.

A. Z. Foreman is a literary translator, poet and language teacher currently working on a doctorate in Near Eastern Languages at the Ohio State University. He received his B.A. in Linguistics from the University of Chicago, and his M.A. in Arabic Language from the University of Maryland. His translations from Latin, Arabic, Chinese, Old Irish, Occitan, Russian, Old English, Ukrainian and Yiddish have appeared in sundry anthologies, journals and a BBC radio broadcast. He sometimes writes his own poetry if it really comes to that. He divides his time between the bedroom, the bathroom and the kitchen. If you have a dog, he would very much like to pet it.