Who among us is unfamiliar with the holocaust, forever etched in history and to some, their memory?
In Duane Vorhees’s introductory poem from his latest work Between Holocausts: “A Mind Rewinds” Vorhees captures something indescribable, when he writes:
My psyche is littered with living Its/ Disregarded superegos still whine/ Od and Ob hiss between young green vines/Bony hilltops strain to catch day’s first light/ their bloodguilt insufficiently contrite/My psyche is littered with living Its…” Perhaps he is describing sephardic warriors of yore and in extant …who were “disregarded” [and[ deemed “insufficient”.
I found the book’s neurodivergent style instructive, creative, intuitive, alarming and haunting….as it grapples with a subject matter such as the holocaust with a sort of classic poetic indirectness that reads like a literary puzzle with a cartage of sometimes obscure literary symbolisms and references that compels further investigation.
Take the use of “midnight”, which in literature can symbolize death, despair, hope, a place between life and death. For example in poetic forefather Walt Whitman’s poem “A Clear Midnight” midnight represents death as a peaceful ending of the day. Whereas in contemporary Chinese literature, midnight can suggest despair OR hope, emblematizing the emotional incongruity in the culture.
The repetitious nature of the poems make for a particularly eerie experience, like an ominous cautionary tale emanated from the sagacious tongue of someone GRAND..whether grandfather or grandmother, you want to lean forward in attention and anticipation. The author achieves preternatural phenomena in the way that he presents his writings, which I found quite refreshing.
Scholastic philosopher St. Thomas Aquinas of Sicily– who synthesized Christian theology with Aristotelian philosophy, contended that the “supernatural” comprised of “God’s unmediated actions” while the “natural” is “what happens always or most of the time” and the “preternatural” is “what happens rarely, but nonetheless by the agency of created beings…”
In “WHAT I DID LEARN”, Vorhees goes full throttle for the macabre and melancholy in this “preternatural” self-revelatory poem. I say “preternatural” because having been voraciously reading early 20th century poetry like Robert Frost and E.E. Cummings since the 8th grade, I have never come across a Vorhees-like style and I consider myself as having been around the “poetic block” a few times…in WHAT I DID LEARN, he writes:
“My music group’s hit singles/stopped so many songs ago/I’ve learned my shakes and wrinkles and still I wait for wisdom…”
As I read these words I felt like an exposed viscera on legs, figuratively inside/out vibes…for I too am learning “my shakes and wrinkles” yet still “I wait” to acquire the wisdom that I presumed would come with the drudging accumulation of years.
LIke Frost, Vorhees investigates complex social and philosophical themes with mastery but with a poignant bout of relatable and humbled vulnerability which is the plight and euphoria, conundrum and exaltation of any type of artist.
Could Vorhees be described as an itinerant troubadour, who in the middle ages were the shining knights of poetry?
Troubadour from an old Occitan (an ancient province that stretched from south of France from east to west) word meaning “to compose”? Perhaps. Or maybe he’s just a guy with something to say about some things that matter to him and he conceivably hopes that they matter to you as well.
The poems read like a heuristic and Socratic exercise replete with mythical biblical and literary symbolisms.
While we’re at it, why not add Mimetic Theory to the list? This terminology is described as a theory of human behavior and culture that explains how human desire and imitation lead to conflict and violence:
What better way to exemplify the ideologies of mimetic desire-conflict- and scapegoating than the horrific and fugly HOLOCAUST!
Here is a synopsis of Mimetic Theory, it’s inception and evolution:
Origin The theory was developed by French philosopher, literary critic, and anthropologist René Girard (1923–2015).
Process Mimetic theory moves through four stages:
Mimetic desire: People imitate others and want what other people want.
Conflict: People compete for the same goods, leading to conflict.
Scapegoating: A group singles out an individual or problem as the source of their problems and violently expels or eliminates them.
Cover-up: Human culture springs up around the scapegoating mechanism to cover up the founding murder.
Throughout history, scapegoating has been the instigator of many atrocities. From the inception of slavery, to Adolf Hitler’s holocaust exterminating millions of Jewish people and what he considered “undesirable” people to the Chinese Exclusion Act of the late 19th century and now Haitian immigrants, both having been branded as “dog and cat eaters” which makes it easier to draft laws against them for you must dehumanize to make it easier to vaporize them from the planet, right?
Although the book is replete with an infelicitous subject matter, after reading it, your resistance to transfiguration could conceivably be an exercise in futility; you will emerge from the chrysalis of self-consciousness to a wise sage having been dug up from the darkness of an egregious past and exposed to ebb and flow of a reformatory present through poetic light and historical literary erudition.
Nothing is nugatory, every word, every nuance seems carefully selected. Vorhees is serving fluid paradoxical wordplay and intrigue, cajoling the reader to read on and hopefully decode the cleverly coded script.
Vorhees writes with ingenuity, authenticity and authority. A MUST read for anyone willing to trek a trip down a dark path with a promise of light ahead. The stuff of LIFE! A familiar trope done in an unfamiliar way…a literary TRIUMPH!
Duane Vorhees’ title Between Holocausts will come out later this fall from Hog Press.
Duane Vorhees is an American poet in Thailand. He is the author of THE MANY LOVES OF DUANE VORHEES, HEAVEN, GIFT: GOD RUNS THROUGH ALL THESE ROOMS, MEMORIES ARE LINKED LIKE OASES, A CONSIDERABLE SHARE OF FELICITY, and THE WOMB AND THE BRAIN. Born in Farmersville, Ohio, USA, he graduated from Bowling Green State University with a doctorate in American Culture Studies. He has taught at Seoul National University, Korea University, and the Asian Division of the University of Maryland University College (now the University of Maryland Global Campus).
Jacques Fleury
Jacques Fleury is a Boston Globe featured Haitian-American Poet, Educator, Author of four books and 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 Muddy River Poetry Review, 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.
Festa dei Morti: l’uomo pingue s’accinge a deflagrare
Feast of the Dead — the rotund man sets about exploding
*
a furia di arieggiare s’invola anche la salute
by dint of airing out health has flown away too
*
Dedicato ai plagiatori seriali
l’inferno attende chi giunse in cima con un copia e incolla
Dedicated to serial plagiarists
hell awaits whoever got to the top by copying and pasting
*
nel vicolo la vernice non copre la croce celtica
in the alley the paint doesn’t cover the Celtic cross
*
pellegrinaggio: tutte le forme degli stronzi di cane
pilgrimage — all the shapes of dog turds
*
vita in provincia: nulla di più triste del teppista anziano
life in the province — nothing sadder than the elderly delinquent
*
al quiz serale dopo ogni vincita migliora il look
on the evening quiz show after each victory a better outfit
*
in riverente silenzio per Beethoven tutte le piante
in reverential silence for Beethoven all the plants
Maurizio Brancaleoni lives near Rome, Italy. He holds a master’s degree in Language and Translation Studies from Sapienza University. His haiku and senryu have appeared in Dadakuku, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Under The Bashō, Horror Senryu Journal, Cold Moon Journal, Scarlet Dragonfly, Memorie di una geisha, Rakuen, Haiku Corner, Pure Haiku, Five Fleas, Shadow Pond Journal, Haikuniverse, Asahi Haikuist, Plum Tree Tavern, Wales Haiku Journal, Kokako, Pan Haiku Review, The Wise Owl, Trash Panda, Haikukai, Password, Hedgerow, Fireflies’ Light and Modern Haiku. In 2023 one of his micropoems was nominated for a Touchstone Award, while a horror ku originally featured in the Halloween-themed issue of Scarlet Dragonfly was re-published in this year’s Dwarf Stars anthology. Maurizio manages “Leisure Spot”, a bilingual blog where he posts interviews, reviews and translations: https://leisurespotblog.blogspot.com/p/interviste-e-recensioni-interviews-and.html
The Doorman Cometh
Put it down to the
weather. I was heading
out to the garden when
some lines from John
Donne opened the door
for me. Death be not proud,
though some have called
thee mighty & dreadful.
Heavy shit for such a
mundane activity, a holy
sonnet where what I
wanted was something
more along the lines of
Whistle while you work.
Why I became a painter
Only if they
could also sing
were rhythm
guitarists part
of the bands
of the sixties.
A Crime of Podiatry
My big toe is
bitten off by an
angry word. It
swallows it, then
runs away. I
call the police who
take a statement &
then take me down
to the station to
look at mugshots.
The words they
show me are all
single syllabled.
I tell them that
none of those
could have done
it —to get pur-
chase on my toe
the word would
have to have had
at least two syl-
lables. The police
now realize they
might be dealing
with a master
criminal so send
me off to the major
crimes squad. They
have dictionaries
to look through.
The sight of
seen things going
past in the air. Not
even. The sound
of. Enough. Comp-
rehension is akin to
pregnancy. Not. Either.
No need to know
the exactitudes of
shape, of surface
texture. Half-guessed
sufficient. Why try &
grasp, catch hold of, be
weighed down by?
A game of Pelota
The whiter the light
the higher the
temperature. It was
the proper name
of the Sphinx &
could not be expiated
even though its orbit
lay within that of
the earth. Gods crouched
before it like dogs as the
war dragged on, during
which time the embryo
refused to grow. Finally
transferred to parchment
it was then cut
with a jagged edge
so that the two parts
could be matched later
for authenticity. So true
to nature as to preclude
alternative treatment.
Dr. Jernail Singh Anand is an Indian poet and scholar credited with 170 plus books of English literature, philosophy, and spirituality. He won a great Serbian Award Charter of Morava and his name adorns the Poets’ Rock in Serbia. He was honoured with the Seneca Award LAUDIS CHARTA by the Academy of Arts & Philosophical Sciences, Bari, Italy 2024. He is the Founder and President of the International Academy of Ethics and was conferred a Doctor of Philosophy (Honoris Causa) by Univ of Engg & Mgt, (UEM), Jaipur.
CONTRASTS
Tonight I will wear a lavish dress of modesty,
black, yet still white from purity,
and I will go into warm rooms of ice.
I will dance all night while standing still,
and I will watch you with my eyes closed.
And I will be ideally imperfect,
and I will feel freedom as a captive.
And I will be strongly weak,
here, beside you,
because I love you.
Azemina Krehić was born on October 14, 1992 in Metković, Republic of Croatia. Winner of several international awards for poetry, including: Award of university professors in Trieste, 2019.,„Mak Dizdar“ award, 2020. Award of the Publishing Foundation of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, 2021. „Fra Martin Nedić“ Award, 2022. She is represented in several international anthologies of poetry.
Nadia was the eldest of three sisters, but also the heaviest and the largest. Perhaps that was why her marriage came somewhat late in life. She had only boarded the marriage train when she turned thirty. Her bridegroom was ten years older. Like most soldiers completing mandatory military service in the Iraqi army, he was discharged by an official decree when the Iran-Iraq War ended, eight years after it began.
The only work he could find then was as one of the construction workers who lined the sidewalks each morning with simple hand tools that they carried wherever they went, brandishing a trowel, a large basin, and occasionally a small hatchet. These manual laborers swarmed the sidewalks all day long.
This type of work became hard to find once oppressive international sanctions were imposed on Iraq. Then most people could not afford to repair their houses or to build new homes or shops. Many dwellings and stores looked rickety or about to collapse. Their owners were incapable of restoring them and just used them, expecting them to collapse at any moment for any reason or no reason at all.
For these reasons, a manual laborer was extremely lucky to work four days in a row. Patrons with projects picked the youngest, strongest men who could complete the repairs or new construction in the period of time agreed on by the employer and the worker.
Thus, Ala’, Nadia’s husband, found that his chances of finding work decreased each day, even though he attempted to hide his age by shaving daily, using the same razor till it wore out.
He also dyed his gray hair with cheap, imported, black Indian henna that would only mask his gray hair for a limited number of days. Despite his stratagems, his luck finding employment was poor.
2
The couple did not think seriously of having a child until more than a year after their wedding. They would respond to anyone who asked why they had not had a child with a formula they had agreed on: “We will be blessed with a child when God so wills.” Actually, the wife was concealing with great difficulty the heartache she felt at not having conceived sooner but could not admit this even to her husband. How could they assume responsibility for another person when they lived in dire poverty that they seemed to have no way of escaping?
The couple tried to limit their contacts to their immediate families. If, for example, they were invited to the wedding of a relative, one spouse would feign illness, and the other would take responsibility for informing their families of this malady. Then news of this illness would spread with great speed among their relatives until their prospective hosts would realize that this couple would not be able to attend the ceremonies.
Although the costs associated with attending them were slight, one could not go empty handed. A guest would need to bring something, even if only some fabric for the bride. Finding the money for such a purchase, though, was difficult for this couple.
The only ceremonies that one or both attended were funerals and wakes. Whenever Nadia heard that some relative, friend, or neighbor had died, she would go early in the morning to present her condolences to the surviving spouse. Then she would volunteer to prepare for the women’s wake, cooking whatever she could or preparing tea and serving it to the women mourners as they arrived from various regions. The services she provided would take the place of any financial contribution she would otherwise have been expected to present to the spouse, mother, or sister of the deceased.
Her husband, for his part, at every ceremony of this type, would stand in the men’s tent beside the children or male relatives of the deceased and receive condolences from all those who attended; then people would think he was one of the brothers or the eldest son of the deceased, especially after he allowed his beard to grow longer and let the gray to show in the hair on his head.
Matters proceeded in this way for more than a year until one evening the husband came home from work totally exhausted, his entire body coated with dirt. Then his wife felt certain that he had found work that day and rejoiced to see him return like that. She rushed to heat water over a small kerosene stove she placed in the bathroom. Next, she fetched a large, clean, blue towel, which she hung from a nail hammered into the wall in the bathroom, before retreating.
Once her husband had finished his warm bath, he sat down while she quickly fixed a meal. Then he recounted what had happened that day and situations he had experienced while working. Even though he spoke with evident enthusiasm, his wife had difficulty forcing herself to listen to him, since she was worried about something.
After speaking nonstop for half an hour, her husband noticed his wife’s concern and asked, “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” she replied as she removed the plates from the dinner mat and placed them on the footed tray, which she was about to lift and carry to the kitchen.
This upset Ala’, and he reminded his wife: “You know I don’t like to converse by asking questions.”
“My sister is getting married two days from now, this Thursday,” she replied anxiously.
Then she rose calmly, lifted the tray filled with their plates, and left the room.
“So soon?” Ala’ asked. Then he bowed his head thoughtfully.
4
A few minutes later his wife returned with a small brass tray with two tea glasses on it and placed it before her husband. She sat down facing him. Although the couple were seated in the same area, separated only by that small tray between them, news of this impending wedding plunged them into a raging sea of reflection.
“God is generous,” Ala’ reminded his wife after taking a sip of tea. “Today I will try to buy a secondhand gown for you from the old market. There is no need for you to give your sister a present. Siblings are not expected to give presents—isn’t that so?”
Once she heard her husband would buy a dress for her, one she could wear to this event, Nadia felt slightly relieved, because all her clothes looked worn or frayed. As far as a present was concerned, she had kept six tea glasses that were beautifully decorated on the outside with attractive colors; one of her relatives had given them to her for her wedding. Fortunately, that set of glasses was still in the original box.
All the same, she would keep this present a secret between her and her sister. Her husband had no need to know about it, since he might conclude that his wife was a spendthrift, careless, or not sufficiently concerned with the needs of her own household.
After lunch, the couple chatted about the youngest sister’s engagement, which had been announced only a month earlier. When the husband felt sleepy, he seized the cushion that rested beside him and stretched out almost automatically on the ground with his head on that pillow and sank into a deep slumber.
Approximately an hour later, when the husband woke from his siesta, he found that his wife had completed all her daily household chores and was seated near him, crocheting. “I’ll go to the old market now,” the husband said, rising and beginning to leave the room. His wife smiled and then quickly locked the door behind him before returning to her crocheting.
She spent the afternoon with her normal routine, and before long the sun was setting. The voices of muezzins were raised to call worshipers to pray, amplified by loudspeakers on the roofs of mosques small and large. Houses then turned on their lights after lamps on the main streets and alleyways were illuminated.
After Nadia had performed her prayers, she heard her husband’s fingers tap on the door and she rushed to open it. Ala’ greeted his wife and handed her two plastic bags; the blue one contained potatoes and eggplants. Inside that bag was a clear sack with a few dates. The second bag was black and had tied ribbons around it. She hurried to take both sacks to the kitchen.
When he saw her leaving, her husband remarked, while pointing to the black bag, “I think it’s the right size.”
After unloading the contents of the blue bag into the little refrigerator that occupied a small corner of the kitchen, the wife returned to her husband, carrying the black bag, but found he had spread his prayer rug to perform the sunset prayer and left to perform his ablutions.
After sitting back down in her usual place, she edged the bag toward her. She opened it and drew the dress from it. Once she spread the dress out on her lap, she began to scream in alarm: “lice! lice!”
The husband rushed back into the room with water from his ablutions dripping from his face and arms and found his wife trying haphazardly and with obvious disgust to put the dress back in the bag.
“Burn it,” Ala’ instructed her. “Get rid of it! We have enough problems as it is.” Then he began to perform his prayers.
Nadia had not heard what Ala’ said and understood the exact opposite. So, at midnight, when she was certain that her husband was sound asleep, she slipped from her bed, left the room, removed the bag from its place, opened it, drew the dress from it, and placed it in an old clay pot that sat in a corner of the kitchen. Then she poured kerosene on it till it was saturated, covered the pot, and set it aside.
Finally, she went back to bed, after washing her hands several times with soap and water. The next morning, once her husband had left to find work, Nadia went to the clay pot, opened it, and was horrified to find dozens of black bodies of tiny insects floating on the surface in the pot. She cautiously removed the dress from the pot, spread it on the floor, and then poured the kerosene and the dead vermin down the kitchen drain. She repeatedly washed out the clay pot with a sponge she soaked in soap and water.
The dark red dress seemed to be free of insects but stank of kerosene. Then she thought she would cleanse the dress of the smell by boiling it in hot water. She filled the pot with water, placed the dress inside it, lit the kerosene stove, and placed the pot on top of it. After the dress had boiled for about half an hour, she removed the pot from the stove and left it to cool for a time. Then she removed the dress the pot and repeatedly rubbed it between her fingers with soap and water.
Much of the kerosene’s odor had disappeared, but the red color also had lost some of its former brilliance. After soaking all night in kerosene and then boiling in hot water, the dress had lost its splendid color. Nadia squeezed the water out of it thoroughly with her hands and then climbed to the house’s flat roof to hang the dress on the clothesline there, securing it with two small, wooden clothespins.
Before she began to prepare lunch, Nadia put a lot of Vaseline on her hands to hide how dry they had become and the color their skin had acquired from handling kerosene. After frying the eggplant in olive oil, she prepared to heat water for her husband, who liked to bathe in warm water during the summer.
She filled another pot with water, placed it on the kerosene stove, and lit a match she had removed from its box and tried unsuccessfully to ignite the stove. Nadia made a second attempt but still nothing happened. So, she snuffed out the match and dropped in on the floor. Then she lifted the kerosene stove and found that it was very light—so light that it was certainly empty of kerosene.
At the customary time, her husband returned from his demanding search for physical labor but did not feel a need for a warm bath, because he had not found any. He merely washed his face and hands with water from the tap.
While eating lunch they both discussed the wedding that was scheduled for Thursday and how early they would need to leave for it that day so they could help the hosts however they were asked.
When they both had finished lunch, the husband asked, “Is the tea ready?”
“We no longer have enough kerosene to prepare tea,” the wife admitted, hesitantly, while trying to avoid looking at her husband.
“You need to pray a lot that I get a job tomorrow,” the husband remarked in a tone of voice that sounded more hurt than playful, “or we’ll be obliged to eat raw potatoes!” Then he left the room.
While the couple was busy with the rest of their day, the dress hung on the clothesline even as the sun began to set. As each section dried, its color turned pale pink.
