January 2011 | back-issues, poetry
Far worse than being unemployed,
in some respects;
Employees with nothing to do.
The Dubai street sweeper polishes his sidewalk,
that is already polished.
His mate pretends to pick up garbage with a pole grabber,
the streets are absolutely empty.
Ana, my hotel tourism saleswoman
sits at her little table by the exit,
tries small talk with the Pakistani bell boy
to no avail.
She stares out the glass door at the rain.
Muhammed at Fish World has fish sandwiches to sell
but no one is biting.
With his blue collared shirt, yellow vest, and sailor’s hat
he scratches his arm,
reads the menu for the thousandth time,
stares out at the rich mall rats who are free.
Wishes he could be beautiful,
like the azure-suited Chinese in Chinese Palace
or at least popular,
like the baseball-capped Filipinas in Burger King.
At last, the fish-eaters have arrived,
he smiles.
Bio note: Brian Briscombe burns wood in Falls Church, Virginia, USA. He’s never been published before unless you count his 60 Facebook Notes or the 600 US Government publications of his economic analysis. Recently Brian edited four painful papers that analyzed the costs and medical benefits of conducting male circumcisions in selected African countries. Although those papers might never be read, at least they paid better than Burning Wood. Brian likes it when strangers email him, so long as they are not Nigerian scam artists.
January 2011 | back-issues, poetry
i. April, 2005
The week before, his hands in the seat of my jeans.
The lake before us is low. The exposed shore reaches
under the beached docks, spread open to coming rain.
He said he’d wait for me here.
Hours after I leave him, he calls.
His voice nods slow through affections.
I never shot the shit. Never saw it,
either. I refused to see he still did.
After five days, the phone rings.
His mother found him, a needle in his arm, seven a.m.
He ran into the woods outside his house, screaming
that he wanted to die. He wants to die.
A Friday night, dark at 4 p.m. I close my window.
Spring ends with him in prison. The air thickens
as the lake is slowly filled. The first waves
splash against the docks, finally afloat.
ii. May, 2007
We sit on the porch of her farmhouse
at her stepdaughter’s college graduation party.
We watch the two dogs roll under stars
on the field of her front yard.
She pours two shots of silver
tequila like a blessing. Salut.
She toasts the lumps in her breasts
as we soothe agave fire with champagne.
I’ve come to this farmhouse since before
my breasts. She sobs as I light
a cigarette, insisting on silence
until a date for surgery is set.
Through the kitchen’s window,
her stepdaughter’s laughter. We hear
the cork shoot from the last bottle
of champagne, a glass shatter on the floor.
iii. August 2005 – November 2007
Six months after she died in the Iraqi desert,
he and I meet. We start against hallway walls.
We build between train stations,
all-night trips up and down the coast.
He leaves Lajeune, moves north. One night,
wrapped in the same blanket, he shows me pictures.
We come to her, naked, the vital parts censored
by an inner tube. Her wet hair. Her laughing face.
I end it shortly after. I watch him
do coke for the first time, watch walls.
I watch the walls, too, to find what he sees.
More blow, booze. Weed to balance.
We still go to bed together. He usually
falls asleep just as dawn seeps through
the window by the ceiling. His length warm
at my side, her memory curled at our feet.
iv. May, 2008
I received the summons, but the addressee’s name was incorrect.
I sent it back. I haven’t checked the mailbox since.
In the morning, they call because I have to be retested,
the initial test positive. I find a ride from a friend, leave
my brother a message. Outside my house, I tug
on my hair, scalp from skull, to know if I feel it.
I get in the car, can’t answer questions requiring
explanation. I twice light the filter of the cigarettes
I quit. Fiberglass sparks, singes in a crackling burn.
I get the third to light, swallow smoke.
In a tiny room, they ask me about drugs about fucking
about where a white suburban girl could pick up HIV.
They say I’m not in the risk group. With my blood,
they close the door. I stare at a Parenting magazine.
When they come back, they don’t shut the door. Negative.
I check they tested the right sample. The doctor nods, slowly.
In the parking lot, my brother waits, weeps into my hair.
A stoplight turns on Main Street, horns blare. No one moves.
Stefanie Botelho is a recent graduate of Western Connecticut’s MFA in Professional and Creative Writing program. She has been published with The New Verse News and has writing in the upcoming Sentence: A Journal of Prose Poetry.”
January 2011 | back-issues, poetry
Old Memories
Between wake and sleep in the hour
Of silent noise of dust and clocks filled space
There are old memories both brittle and tender
Like the fingers of a palm leaf and the shade it spins
On our sunburnt faces, so we bury our cheek on the beach sand
Into another half dream sunk up to our knobby knees
Deep and wet in the riverbed where we collected things
That took shape of arrowheads, or marbles crystallizing planetary nebulas
And sometimes atop the feather-grass knoll we sat cross-legged
To hear the thunder, a sound of steamroll shot from a pistol
Then we’d hear it taper off into the low tides of a cove
Barely whispering into our ears like blown leaves mingling in autumn red
When the day darkened the hour deader than sullen, outside on the curb
The dull warmth of the suburbs, in our throats hummed a Sunday proverb
Imprinting my brain with silent lips
Imprinting my brain with silent lips was only a woman
We casually met in the metropolis
We were together of the nontraditional sense
She was shapely and wan and from her mother’s bath of birth
She was born out of wooded flesh and metal bone
As we strolled along the museum pretending to loiter in profound thoughts
She’d read the veins from leaves of grass pressing a finger against the leaf
It had a pulse and it told her its life story how it lived in the divine soil
The same divine soil grew the pine and oak, the lemon and fig,
The sugar and rice, the white potato and the sweet potato,
The orange orchards where we picked the fruit, and drank its delirious juice
Running from the left corner of her lip, tracing the curve of her bottom lip
Then down, dripping off her pointed chin, and to the moist ground
Her head tilted to the side. Her long neck exposed, darkened by the shadow
She wiped the sweat with a veiny pale hand
The honey odor she radiated surrounded us in a golden and pastoral aureole
Close beside me she clung to me one minute a lasting hour
Stepping over the doorway’s threshold we separated again
Insomnia Cured
When my mother takes her sleeping pills
She thinks she’s drunk
Then like a spinning top ending its spin
Leans over like the tower of Pisa
And topples over me and my brother
Landing on us like we were pillows
Our soft bellies stuffed with feathers and cotton-balls
And stitched up with a gold thread
In her sleep she’s also walking, staring
Talking, stumbling, fumbling
Waking up into a stupor to the infomercials or static of the T.V.
But at 9pm she remembers to go to work from 10pm to 7am
And at 9am, like a shot of liquor, she drinks up the sleeping pills
January 2011 | back-issues, poetry
Paris
Our paths cross as they have before
greetings exchanged upon a hint of recognition
though unable to place when or where
I was thinking French class, or maybe
we were lovers in another lifetime.
Perhaps Paris…
expatriates sharing café au lait
and stories of home.
Strolling down the Champs- Elysees
I remove my chapeau and
bowing deeply, I ask you to dance.
Your cheeks blush, desperately
trying to match the perfectly pink
parasol you twirl above your head
in the sun- splashed boulevard.
Mass
Random thoughts,
like slow- moving, hungry beasts
forage through the meadow of my mind
the tireless shepherd of my consciousness
drives them on lest they consider
this range of gray matter a home
still they graze and consume
every grain- do they not know
they too will perish
when all is gone
can they not see
what fate lies ahead
and the shepherd; tender of the flock
simply walks behind these creatures,
not minding the foreboding clouds
forming a dark malleable mass
not yet raining
but always threatening
January 2011 | back-issues, fiction
by Peter LaBerge
After a while, I got used it. I think the shrill wind’s kicking at my dusty, bloody ankles is the most painful part. I guess you could call it trading one set of parents in for another- the amorous couple in Cadmonic, then the old rickety woman on Lincoln Avenue, and now the newspaper salesman with the clouded cheeks and constantly stuffy nose. The first time, I had to sit for a couple hours at the train tracks across the street from Henry’s Barber Shop. The same boring Broadway and Poland Springs ads keep me company, as I wait to restart my life again and again, each time with a renewed hope echoing in 3.0 circular motions. I recite the words printed below the stoic mountains on the water bottle ad for enjoyment, sometimes even in exotic European accents. Eyes of various colors and shapes pierce into my body as I board the dingy Metro North local bound for Ansonia. I feel the set of needles the nurse at the public health clinic used to give vaccines last month re-puncture my delicate skin as my nerves twist my stomach around like dancing shapes on a chalkboard. Maybe food will help, I think, and I start nibbling away anxiously at the pack of 100 Calorie Oreos that the foster woman put in the CVS bag I always got full of things that are supposed to act as entertainment. The loudspeaker’s rusty voice croaks Ansonia Station and I collect my few belongings. On my way off the train, I hear a little kid lean over to his mother and say, Mommy, why does she look so miserable? I wipe away the tears clinging to my face before the blur of my new family’s car lights get a peek.
Peter LaBerge is currently a sixteen-year-old high school student. His writing and photography are forthcoming or featured in a handful of publications, including Reflections and This Great Society (respectively). When Peter isn’t writing, you can probably find him composing or playing piano music, singing in his a cappella group, practicing his improvisational comedy, or frantically studying.
