Clare Short for Clarence		
				
At sixteen I got a job at Ron’s Pizza to pay for gas, books, and records and to save for a camera. The shop was a tiny, white unremarkable cube on Coshocton Avenue, once named “The Milkhouse” in the 60s where, like everyone else, we picked up milk and ice cream after Sunday mass. As a pizzeria it was filled with ovens, coolers, bags of onions, cases of tomato sauce, and the aromas of fresh dough, cheese, and finished pizza – the best in town. 

It was there that I became acquainted with Clare, short for Clarence. Clare was a shy, amiable Hotei, a pudgy man of about thirty or forty who lived with his mother somewhere in the neighborhood. Clare was labeled mentally retarded as in 1976 the kinder intellectually disabled designation did not yet exist. The word “retarded” was used clinically, matter-of-factly but also had derogatory connotations. On the playground children often called one another “retard.” 

	Clare always wore a bright orange hunter’s cap and a blue winter coat. Only on the hottest days did the coat remain at home. He stuck with long sleeves, though, with his top button buttoned. Never shorts. Clare was proud of his Sears bicycle, a streamlined model from the 1950s he’d had since he was a boy, tricked out with white wall tires, two lights, two mirrors, and a speedometer. Every couple of weeks he repainted it, covering all the original chrome in a thick red or blue enamel. We speculated the bike was held together with paint rather than welds.

	A big kid really, Clare easily offered a wide smile and was willing to befriend anyone but was instinctively wary of everyone. I got the impression, after a few conversations, that the neighborhood boys teased or maybe abused him. When business was slow and Clare stopped in, Ron, the owner, a petty, insufferable lout who attended an obscure and highly evangelical church where people spoke in tongues, asked Clare questions to illicit humorous responses for our amusement. Ron thought Clare was always good for a laugh to pass the time. 

It was well known that Clare found body hair repulsive and regularly shaved head to toe. Occasionally Ron would say, “Hey Clare. Look,” and stroke his bear-like arm (not usually hovering over a pizza). Clare recoiled, distressed, almost nauseous in disgust. It was apparent that this was some kind of trigger for Clare. In the summer, Clare mowed a narrow strip of grass around two sides of the shop. Ron paid Clare with one can of soda. Just one. I wondered, why not two cans? How about five bucks to pay for some of Clare’s bike paint? Hell, why not a pizza with Clare’s favorite toppings? I never saw Ron offer one slice of pizza to Clare – as if his generosity would invite some kind of bad luck contagion.

	Clare had his own peculiar way of saying things, his sentences pressed tightly and cautiously through his teeth. “Heey Deeve” meant hey Dave. “Bat-trees” was batteries. “Sheeze” was gee. “Shcooze-me-sumbuddy” translated as excuse me somebody. Occasionally he announced, “Heey Deeve. Got new bat-trees for my beek (bike).” After mowing, Clare downed his single soda in one long, noisy gulp and belched loudly. Once, this customary and predictable belch occurred with a customer present. After the customer left, Ron admonished Clare saying, “When there’s somebody here, say excuse me.” Thereafter, any time he belched, no matter who was around, Clare declared, “Sheeze. Shcooze-me-sumbuddy.” For many years, Clare’s phrase was fondly mimicked by those who knew him. 
	
Following Clare’s “pardon me,” he nodded his head vigorously ten times to his left and ten times to his right. In other situations, if he was upset, there were additional nods with greater intensity. Clare exhibited several compulsive routines, but the head nodding was the most pronounced. At sixteen, I didn’t know what obsessive-compulsive disorder was (OCD was not yet used so casually and pervasively), but I recognized in Clare my own anxiety and my version of weird, inexplicable compulsions. Our rituals were a means to make sense of an uncertain world. When I got my new camera, I took Clare’s picture and he was thrilled, even hamming it up a little, nodding happily to the left and right between snaps. I still have the pictures somewhere, but I don’t need them to remember him.
	
Some ten years later, after Ron and Ron’s Pizza were long gone, after college and on the cusp of marriage, I happened upon Clare riding his bike in circles near the restrooms at Memorial Park. I imagined picnickers and soft ball girls were leery of him if they didn’t know him. I guessed Clare simply liked the flat concrete surface there. I heard that his mother died and he lived in a group home across town, an alien neighborhood with new kids and anxieties to navigate. He was much thinner, I thought gaunt, and now talked to himself in repetitious phrases. He looked weary, drawn inward. I called out to him, “Clare!” After completing three more requisite circles, he paused, looked up, recognized me, smiled, and said, “Sheeze. Heey Deeve.” And continued riding.

David Sapp, writer, artist, and professor, lives along the southern shore of Lake Erie in North America. A Pushcart nominee, he was awarded Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Grants for poetry and the visual arts. His poetry and prose appear widely in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. His publications include articles in the Journal of Creative Behavior, chapbooks Close to Home and Two Buddha, a novel Flying Over Erie, and a book of poems and drawings titled Drawing Nirvana.

 monday morning meeting my landlady on the street

it’s a week day

and i’ve skipped work

when we see each other like this

my head

is vodka/wine cloudy

i have not yet recovered from

last week’s six-day work week

we are tight smiles

and inane pleasantries

to her i’m a monthly check

copious booze bottles on recycling evenings

and little else

her eyes get wide

and she says, not working today?

but i smile and reassure her

that it’s just a scheduled day off

that seems to placate her

but i don’t know how

i’m going to sooth her soul tomorrow

when i’m fucking off from the place again

drowning myself

in a titanic of wine

and internet porn

pretending

that i own this whole

goddamned world

no matter whom

i write the rent check to.

mother of the year

one kid

standing on tables

one kid

playing in traffic

the third one

picking his ass

and sniffing his fingers

her dumb face

glued to a cell phone

streaming tv shows

as the village

burns

burns

burns

around her.

the love songs of joey ramone

all these years later

and i still remember the way

her tears soaked through the phone

the sound a heart breaks

when it breaks long distance

she wanted to be a child bride

but i wanted to be jack kerouac

only i was nothing to her now

but a punk

…gabba gabba hey.

bodyshaping

sculpted women in bikinis

on cable sports tv

when i was thirteen

six in the morning

fresh from my paper route

amazonian goddesses

doing legs lifts or lifting weights

stretching and pulling

sweating and touching each other

as they cheered one other on

while i watched them

with my hand down my pants

strangling that little monster

hoping to get to that great

and grand explosion

before the next

commercial break.                     

big wigs

the genius of their job

is to create a lifetime

of pointless work for us

but to make us think

that the whole idea

was ours in the first place.

MOTHER, INDIA!
 
You touch my heart with the melody of the flute, 
tears flow for the One 
who has inhabited my heart forever; 
wherever I am, 
He does not leave, 
He has tied my soul with the silver thread of the moon, 
I long to go, 
and only death can bring us closer; 
so I die again and again to meet you in a red sari 
on the sacred ground in Dvaraka 
I wait for you to wink at me, 
just You and I 
and we will meet there 
where witnesses have been sleeping for centuries, 
in the eternal city under the sea. 
Oh Mother India, you call me... 
Oh Dvaraka, city of my wedding, 
I am coming to you.


Maja Milojković was born in 1975 in Zaječar, Serbia.
She is a person to whom from an early age, Leonardo da Vinci's statement "Painting is poetry that can be seen, and poetry is painting that can be heard" is circulating through the blood.
That's why she started to use feathers and a brush and began to reveal the world and herself to them.
As a poet, she is represented in numerous domestic and foreign literary newspapers, anthologies and electronic media, and some of her poems can be found on YouTube.
Many of her poems have been translated into English, Hungarian, Bengali and Bulgarian due to the need of foreign readers.
She is the recipient of many international awards.
"Trees of Desire" is her second collection of poems in preparation, which is preceded by the book of poems "Moon Circle". 
She is a member of the International Society of Writers and Artists "Mountain Views" in Montenegro, and she also is a member of the Poetry club "Area Felix" in Serbia.

Is It easy to grow up?

( story)

Sabina is six years old, Her eyes are big and these eyes close when she laughs. She is interested in everything, she wants to know everything.  She asks questions with interest to everyone’s conversation as the famly eats around the table, sometimes she asks her father, sometimes her grandmother…

The famly members sometimes get tired of answering this girl’s questions and they often answer that you will understand when you grow up. This makes Sabina angry.

-“When you grow up you understand, when you grow up, you now” . When will I grow up? – Sabina thought. After all, I’m six years old. My pink shirt from last year is too small now, I grew up!

Maybe they don’t notice that I grew up.

Sabina went into her mother’s room with such dreams. She put on the mother’s high heels.

–         Yes… my height has grown a lot.

She wore her mother’s red shirt and knocked on her high heels. Walked back and forth in fron of the mirror.

–         Now I grew up.,- she thought to herself.

At that moment, her mother’s voice was heard.

–         Sabina, Sabina…. Where you are?

She took off her shoes and shirt in a hurry and run outside. Her favorite aunt came. She greeted her aunt with a happy smile.

Her mother immediately sets the table, tea was made. Sabina helped her mother to put various delicacies on the table.

When dinner was over, her aunt praised Sabina When everyone was around the table.

–         My niece is a helper for her mother! Well done! You are grown up.

Sabina’s eyes sparkled after hearing these words. Now she knows What it’s like to grow up.

Don’t have to try on her mom’s clothes to grow up! 

I now understand the meaning of hiding myself in myself
Myself finds myself crawling and craving towards the broken shadows of my grandfather's grave
I drank from my his grave till grief mastered my ancestry
Flaunting my name, myself drowns in my thoughts
Suddenly
She knocked on my soul
I entertained her footsteps while she dined drinking my wine
We shared the same bed and bread; I became her wife
Living an invisible life
Myself and her


Jesse Pheebemi Emmanuella 

To Be, Or—Oh Never Mind!

      Yes, Mr. Shakespeare,
We know your works have been
	Read,  and absorbed,
		By a robot.
That’s modern culture, ala 2023!
    Yes, you were famous once,
		  We know,
  But what’s important today
     Is the skill of the robots!
  Yes, your plays are amazing,
     But they can be imitated,
        Even improved upon
		 By robots, 
	    by non-human 
      technological entities!
	  In fact, we’ve shown
    One of our bots your letter
     Protesting their existence!
Here’s its response--in your style:
   “It’s a tale told by an idiot,
       full of sound and fury,
       signifying NOTHING!”

Feel free to contact us again!

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