Departures
losing CO2 in the Jet2 queue,
staining Carhartt with heartache,
barcodes beep & promises pall
between staff & sightseers
& parents cheering up children
& new lovers arriving
chinos & eyes empty
into a grey tray, passing
Saint Peter with an automatic
& cutting through pictureless clouds
to arrivals, you were waiting,
& you opened your arms, like wings
Villa Diodati
like a leaf, you were ambered,
acquiescent, ambling the grounds –
gravel crunched with Converse
& a tableaux daydream:
Byron sailing, or the Shelleys
in love – & then, the villa doors
unveiled untouched antiques
& portraits eyeing every word
like the porcelain it was spoken over –
& sobering outside, ringtones
revealed Omicron will part you,
for months or more, before
the sun left for another city,
& the stars began to emerge
with the shyness of spiders
Geneviève
there you were: star-crossed
& stark, nipping the neck
of Calvinus, flicking Winstons from windowsill,
scribbled MA sonnets
& scrunched love letters smothered
under feet & frown,
Twelve Carat Toothache
cutting the silence,
your rib cage crushing, lungs
heaving in the June heatwave
with undiagnosed pneumonia
& pleural effusion,
coughing blood
& wheezing cheater
Light Years
another spin around the sun, & since, I’ve learnt that every mirror needs light: if light is c = 1/(e0m0)1/2 = 2.998 X 108m/s (James Clerk Maxwell, circa. 1864), it’s the magnetism keeping us close – if light is electromagnetic radiation (Wikipedia), it’s the life of moths – if light is a wave, it's scattering most from our hearts of silvered sand & limestone – if light is The Dark Side of the Moon (1973), then it’s you refracting all my colours – & if light is a distance, it’s always between us, because I have realised there is not a greater love poem than a blank piece of paper, or the cursor, blinking for us to begin, reflecting me in the screen where you have been waiting for light years
there are sounds everywhere that you will never hear again
*** We’ll die of love We’ll die of AIDS Life bets at their highest Prices for graves are rising I kiss your imaginary portrait Rain washes away memory with transparent watercolor I love you like at the very beginning I’m dying without you before and after you Birds meet the winged dawn Meanwhile the cast-iron night in my heart is growing to burst
***
the bird said it would be quiet and the air was filled with no one’s breath
and in the evening on the corner near the lake birds flocked and were silent
I watched the birds and was also silent, unable to move
meanwhile, somewhere far away, very close, people plucked up the courage
to yell when a stranger with the face of death roars artillery at them through the window
*** God looks like you and also like a section of forest burned under the snow The rusty bones of the snowflakes show me the grinding path I step quietly so as not to wake up the little Jesuses – not yet resurrected flowers Nobody knows what will happen at the end of the road Probably at the end of the journey we will all return home After all the earth is cruelly looped by an ellipsoid But now in front of me is a fork of cast-iron milk of the night Where should I go: forward or into the future? Each step seems like a step into the grave abyss The cemetery stuck like a sticker to a shoe can’t be peeled off A snowstorm begins and the voice of the wind begins Celans aria The ivory of the sky dissolves in the eyes I lose strength and reluctantly fall asleep on chest of the wind I dream about you and it seems to me that now you are even more like God My body is covered with a blanket of snow and I’m burning for the last time
*** white tea of the day sugar time cubes
the powder of my views dissolves in your thick boiling water of silence
red triangles of the walls of the long night You don’t /everything is obvious to everyone/
“Ser·en·dip·i·ty- the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way.”
[Originally published in Fleury’s book “It’s Always Sunrise Somewhere and Other Stories”
Your alarm is going off and you roll over in your bed and turn your back to it all the while cursing it for being so obnoxiously loud and intrusive. It’s 5:30 a.m. and you have to be at work by 8. When you occasionally open your eyes, you can see the sun rise over the nearby lake, hovering patiently waiting for you to wake up and take notice of it. But you went to bed late last night sorting out your bills at the kitchen table before you became totally exasperated, muttered “Fuck it” under your breath and went to bed at 1 a.m.
Once your still hyperactive brain decides to quiet down, you had that dream again. You were dressed in a white tuxedo standing in front of the clergy with your friends and family sitting behind you with seemingly permanent smiles in their faces like the joker. And then their smiles turned to discomfort, embarrassment and their faces express worry when Mark still hasn’t shown up. You two have been together since high school and you’ve been waiting 10 years for this moment, the moment when you’ll marry him and be together until the end of your time on earth. You glance down at your watch and it’s almost 12 p.m. Mark was supposed to be there by 11 a.m. And then you look up into the sky and there is Mark, riding a white winged horse and he looks down at you and smiles, except there is something peculiar about his face. You look closer by squinting your eyes to realize that he has no eyes. His eye sockets are dark and empty and consumed by a hazy rush of fear and distress, you bolt up in bed panting like you were being chased by some horrific looking creature in a sinister forest.
You have tried to figure out what the dream means since Mark has been deceased for about a year now. He died due to complications of pneumonia that went untreated unbeknown to both of you. You did not anticipate this and so there were things that went unspoken because he died so suddenly. And almost every night, you have the same recurring dream and you are feeling persecuted yet don’t feel like you have any control over what happens when you are no longer conscious. You resolve to talk this over with your therapist.
You’ve been seeing him since Mark passed away, for a long time, you were unable to function. You refused to leave the house or get out of bed in the morning. Your sister had to come over and care for you and even helped with paying the bills since you lost your job due to excessive absence. But after 3 months had passed, with the help of your sister and therapy, you managed to get back on your feet, attained another job and started to slowly come out of your former zombie-like state of existence. But your presence of mind is still unconsummated and these days, you are functioning on automatic pilot; just going through daily monotonous routines with no joy, optimism or passion. You’ve isolated yourself from your friends despite how hard they try to reach you by phone or email. You feel angry at Mark for leaving you and so you’ve decided to punish everyone around you, including yourself, because you don’t understand why this had to happen to you. Your once benevolent, sunny disposition has soured into a bitter scowl and an impervious facial expression that conveys indifference.
It is now 6a.m. and you’ve finally decided to get up. Outside, the sun is higher in the sky and you open your bedroom window, stick your head out, close your eyes and take a deep breath of your mountainous surroundings. The sound of the streaming lake uncoils your often convoluted and distorted thoughts and for the first time in months, your usually stoical face breaks into an apprehensive smile. But something in you wants to stay demure and unaffected, so you quickly reverse back to scowling. Yet you feel there is something dissimilar in the air, as if your usual routine is about to take a turn for the best, but you’re not sure you’re prepared for it or even want it.
You make your way into the bathroom and as usual, you avoid looking at yourself in the mirror while you shave and brush your teeth and as usual tears splices down your face. After you’ve downed your carnation instant breakfast, you head out to work at the Blue Blood Department Store, where you are Shift Supervisor.
You like your work, but you don’t welcome the unwanted attention of your female co-workers, who all think you’re a total hottie, even though they all know you’re gay since you used to bring Mark to company picnics and such. You ignore their excessive fawning and just go about your day. And then he walks in. A handsome guy of average height and weight who looks like he may be from Brazil. You practically scurry over to ask him if he needs any assistance. He smiles and says yes and you can see a knowing twinkle in his eyes when he looks at you and as if you two are exchanging secrets codes with one another, you return a knowing smile back at him. And deep inside of you, you know something has changed. You look over his shoulders and outside, you can see the sun setting through the double glass doors seemingly staring at you, knowingly.
Jacques Fleury
Jacques Fleury is a Boston Globe featured Haitian American Poet, Educator, Author of four books and a literary arts student at Harvard University online. His latest publication “You Are Enough: The Journey to Accepting Your Authentic Self” & other titles are available at all Boston Public Libraries, the University of Massachusetts Healey Library, University of Wyoming, Askews and Holts Library Services in the United Kingdom, The Harvard Book Store, The Grolier Poetry Bookshop, Amazon etc… He has been published in prestigious publications such as Wilderness House Literary Review, Muddy River Poetry Review, Litterateur Redefining World anthologies out of India, Poets Reading the News, the Cornell University Press anthology Class Lives: Stories from Our Economic Divide, Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene among others…Visit him at: http://www.authorsden.com/jacquesfleury.
Jacques Fleury’s book You Are Enough: The Journey Towards Understanding Your Authentic Self
In Eleanor Vincent’s latest memoir, she quotes a therapist who describes marriage as a joint project both partners need to look after, like a puppy. The “puppy” becomes a third character in Disconnected. Eleanor and Lars both have individual life stories, but as they interact, the partnership takes on a life of its own.
The story follows her late-in-life relationship: meeting, dating, breaking up with, reconciling with, marrying, and ultimately divorcing Lars. Bits of backstory or asides that inform the present but aren’t quite long or relevant enough for full chapters get combined into “Things I Left Out,” in each of the memoir’s three sections.
These asides, and short chapters, fill out Vincent’s story and reflect her willingness to do self-analysis and examine her background and her relationship in full. Vincent describes where she lives, a “wealth-adjacent” SF Bay Area suburb, near things she likes: trees, order, quiet. She acknowledges that her surroundings might represent the peace she craved growing up in a high-conflict family with an abusive father and parents married to each other to conceal being LGBTQ. On a smaller scale, we see how her psyche and childhood background give her a need for order inside the home. This helps us understand why staying tidy and organized is important to her, and how it becomes a conflict with Lars and his need to feel secure by holding onto things.
She also does some work to understand Lars by talking with him as much as he will allow and reading up and joining support groups for partners of autistic people. She shares information she has read about how many autistic people think and feel and applies that to her husband. Her efforts to understand his point of view and his preferences give the book depth and fill out the story so it’s the tale of a marriage “puppy” rather than a lonely wife’s monologue. Other societal issues, such as age discrimination, further weaken the fragile “puppy,” as they can no longer afford marriage counseling when Lars gets wrongly fired from work.
Vincent varies sentence length and starts chapters at points of dramatic tension, then fills in backstory to catch readers up to that point. The whole book isn’t overly long, but covers an entire relationship’s life cycle. It includes bits of humor amid tragedy, usually through witty after-the-fact observations. For example, Lars would go silent or discuss random scientific facts during moments of tension. Once, desperate to be heard, Vincent beat his chest, then brought them both inside her place so that “the neighbors would not see the spectacle of an old woman beating up Bill the Science Guy.”
Disconnected is one story of one marriage with one autistic person involved. Eleanor and Lars do not represent every mixed-neurotype marriage out there, and Lars is not like every autistic person. While Lars does share some traits with many autistic people, everyone’s experiences will vary. Vincent conveys this through focusing intently on her own life and relationship for the first two-thirds of the book and only bringing in information on autism near the end as part of her desperate journey to understand Lars. This highlights that this is a memoir, not a textbook illustrating the inevitable struggles within all intimate relationships with autistic people.
As Vincent mentions, many experts now say that we should think of autism as a different neurotype with strengths and weaknesses, like a different and equally valid culture, rather than as simply a less able version of the neurotypical brain. And Lars shows some solid strengths: in situations where social expectations are cut and dried, he can navigate a whole room with ease, he is excellent with travel logistics and phone repair, and a gifted zydeco dancer.
Still, while the neurodiversity model may make sense on a broader cultural basis, and a human rights basis, if a particular person is in a situation where they need to do things to function that are difficult for their neurotype, they (and those close to them) can experience autism as a disability. And Vincent underscores how it’s important to honor people’s personal experiences and struggles without judgment, which would apply to autistic people as well as their neurotypical relatives.
As Vincent painfully discovers, sometimes love and the desire to make a relationship work is not enough when varying neurotypes present clashing emotional needs. And sometimes there isn’t much one person can do when their partner has already given up and checked out of the relationship. Sometimes people are just better off apart, and it’s best to separate with dignity and let the “puppy” go to a good home elsewhere.
Burned the houses, trees and all the things around
Fire is not only the fire at all
A ghostly appearance haunts the earth
No time to realize it devours the whole
Fire is raging in body
Fire outside
Leaving thousands of people homeless
And death of twenty nine
The world empowered by heat with carbon dioxide
We are mankind played by
As people play with it
So wavy current flowing on body
In this form of change
People fall in hopelessness
Burning the body of nature
They are running so fast
Fire is chasing from behind like the snakes sparking
O! Fire in Los Angeles!
I always think over.
Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh
10 February, 2025.
Md. Mahbubul Alam is from Bangladesh. His writer name is Mahbub John in Bangladesh. He is a Senior Teacher (English) of Harimohan Government High School, Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh. Chapainawabganj is a district town of Bangladesh. He is an MA in English Literature from Rajshahi College under National University. He has published three books of poems in Bangla. He writes mainly poems but other branches of literature such as prose, article, essay etc. also have been published in national and local newspapers, magazines, little magazines. He has achieved three times the Best Teacher Certificate and Crest in National Education Week in the District Wise Competition in Chapainawabganj District. He has gained many literary awards from home and abroad. His English writings have been published in Synchronized Chaos for seven years.
