Spring has come to besieged Leningrad. It seemed that our neighbor’s prophecy was beginning to come true. My mother is in the hospital all the time. Apart from my mother, there are four of us left at home: my older sister Masha and brother Alexey, me and my younger brother Sasha. There has been no news from my father and brothers for several weeks, and we have been sick for the second week and do not go to school.

One of these days, there was a loud knock on our door (since the beginning of 1942, we have introduced the practice of closing doors, including the story of Baba Katya). As I was already recovering, I went to open it. Ivan and Leonid were on the threshold. To say that we were glad to see them is like saying nothing. During the war, without news, both returned alive and well!

We all literally escaped from the captivity of the disease at the same time. A brother and sister jumped out of bed, fussed, hung up soldiers’ overcoats, and began to set the table. There was not even a need for words – a smile did not leave the faces of the whole family. Even Sasha perked up, dangling his legs off the bed, smiling mysteriously, examining our defenders.

From the stories of Ivan and Leonid, we finally learned their whole life in recent months. It turned out that they were not accepted for service at the district military enlistment office because of their age, then they spontaneously decided to go to the front, at least as paramedics. Then there were a month and a half of training in the field, dangerous service in the frontline zone, rescue of the wounded. And now, their numerous petitions have been granted and after a three-day vacation they will return to their unit as ordinary Red Army soldiers.

– Are you only for three days?  Masha asked with regret.

– It’s going to be a wonderful eternity for us! – Ivan smiled in response, – Let’s set the table already.

The guys brought sugar, nuts, dried fruits, canned fish – incredible delicacies for that time! And all we had was a few slices of bread and boiling water, so there wasn’t much to set the table.

• No, that won’t do, – Ivan said, inspecting our feast.

– Let’s go to the market and buy something, – Leonid suggested, getting up from the table.

– Can I come with you?  I jumped up after the brothers.

They both granted my request with an affirmative nod of their heads and, quickly gathering myself, I ran after them.

In those days, spontaneous markets could arise and disappear for several days almost anywhere, in squares, streets, even courtyards. The authorities tried to disperse these gatherings, so the merchants did not stay in the same place for a long time. Moreover, these markets had a bad reputation. At the other end of the district, my brothers and I came across one of these markets. Contrary to expectations, it was an incredibly lively place filled with all kinds of goods from groceries to antiques, so we even got a little lost in this abundance.

– Soldiers, do you want to buy something? – some merchant grabbed Ivan by the sleeve.

We turned towards the counter. Behind him stood a short old man, whom I disliked at first sight. He had small, angry, depressed piggy eyes, a bumpy robber’s face, and he was dressed in a padded jacket and a black earflap.

– Yes, Father, we should have something for the table… – Ivan began.

– Maybe meat?  That terrible grandfather interrupted him.

– Do you have any meat? – We were surprised.

– Yes, but be quiet… – he looked around and took out a small bundle soaked in blood, – Pork, fresh!

– And where does it come from?  Leonid hesitated, carefully examining the goods. I immediately remembered the neighbor’s story, but the evil look of this man scared me so much that I did not dare to tell about it now and hoped that there was pork in the bag.

– This is for the elite, but I got it on occasion, – he said, as if justifying himself.

– What’s the difference, we can’t find it cheaper and better. We’ll take it!  Ivan said decisively.

As I was leaving, I took another look at that grandfather and he answered me with his cold gaze, so I quickly looked away and tried to forget myself in conversations with my brothers.

Soon we were at home and joyfully handed Masha the package we had bought. She jumped up with joy and ran to the kitchen to cook. But before we could sit down at the table, Masha thoughtfully returned back to the room and spoke softly:

– Guys, there’s something wrong with the meat…

– What happened?  Leonid came up to her.

For a minute he silently examined this small piece, lightly tracing it with his finger, then suddenly changed his face and cried out:

– Yes, it’s human!

– You’re lying!  Ivan snatched the meat from his hands.

– Look for yourself!  Leonid waved it off.

There was a tense pause, after which Ivan sullenly agreed:

– You’re right.…

Without saying another word, he quickly went to the window, opened it and angrily threw the meat out into the street. So we were left without a festive dinner.

Finally Did the Trick

At forty-one

I was nearly cured

Of skyscrapers – September

One year before almost

To the day I laughed

At myself caught

In a revolving door

After lunch beneath

The World Trade Center –

Where I laughed lightly

Turned burned steel and ash

The memory didn’t quite do it

At sixty-two

Though distant and filtered

Through TV news

You’d think the slaughter

At My Lai or Rwanda or Ukraine

Would cure me of any

Remote hope for humanity

The tragic inertia deadly

Incompetence and cowardice –

The demolished little bodies

At Sandy Hook and Uvalde

Finally did the trick

       

                                                                                                                  

Silence

For those sages

Lao or Chuang Tzu

(Maybe even Siddhartha)

Silence came naturally

Nirvana turned slowly

Silence now requires

The unattainable –

Far too much patience

To be at all effective

To have any impact

Upon our lives

Our intricate elaborately

Constructed karma

The well-intentioned

Vows of silence

Of monks and nuns

In serene monasteries

Seem quaint but futile

Solutions to the clamor

Of a peevish throng

And I am thinking

Anymore silence

Is rather irresponsible

A reckless wu-wei

An obsequious inaction

All spins too swiftly

Suffering too pervasive

Comes hard and fast

Though priceless

We’ve run out of time

For mute circumspection

To adequately flourish

Despite Khrushchev

When we were two

October 1962

JFK on the TV

Moms and dads around us

Must have made love

Despite Khrushchev Castro

And missiles – in beds

Whispering and wondering

Designing elaborate bomb

Shelters in their heads

In our first year that

Sizzling upstairs apartment

We made love never

Getting enough of the other

On our mattress lugged

Into the front room for AC

We gaped at our tiny TV

A man despite his shopping

Bags stopping the tanks

Stopping the party

In Tiananmen Square

When the towers fell

NYC ash in our TV now

Annihilation not so distant

We went to work to school

And made love tenderly

Tended our kids despite

Daycare lawncare taxes

Mortgage utilities insurance –

No time for terrorists

Lurking beneath our bed

Eventual empty nesters

Ukraine and tanks again

Bombs blood despair

Just another despot

Still we fret over the TV

Wish we were young enough to

Join an International Brigade

Still safe in our bed

Whispering and wondering

We make love despite

Our aches and pains.

                                                                                                           

Lucky Window Table

On the morning of

Ukraine’s invasion

Before cluster bombs

Aromas of burned

Tanks schools hospitals

Russian soldiers

Bewildered boys yet

To warm to brutality

Grandmas and grandpas

Wielding Kalashnikovs

Yet defiant in donning

Yellow and blue and blood

Women children babies

Pressed into trains

Crying screaming dying

Over unwonted catastrophe

We brunch in Oberlin

We snag a lucky

Window table

But we are distracted

Anxious watching waiters’

Enormous round trays

Feasts flying overhead

Or plates queued up

On lavish sleeves

Maneuver around patrons

Through two narrow doors

Up steep precarious stairs

We forebode – worry over

Impending tragedy

Spills and broken dishes

Any other day

Our silly apprehension

Would be amusing

No Quaint Choo Choo

No quaint choo choo

This train isn’t that

“Little Engine That Could”

This train keeps coming

Coming and coming

Pushing and shoving

And in its insistence

There is nothing else

But power steel gears

Huffing grunting roaring

A sadist thrusting

Through field forest town

Renting our sleep

Deep in the night

The deer know its death

Know to avoid its path

Know its inevitability

But Gary steps in front

Of this train anyway

His despair a long time

Coming and coming

He thought, “I think

I can I think I can”

Relying upon momentum

To accomplish his oblivion

What a shame – what a mess!

The horrific image takes

A toll on the engineer

Despair comes for him

Keeps coming and coming

After three the tragedy

A routine – his heart

Must lean upon indifference

Who has the honor of scooping

Up Gary’s little pieces?

Who has the privilege

Of calling upon his wife?

What will his children do

With this stark obituary?

Was there any good in this?

Was a bone – a small morsel

Of flesh left – Gary a repast

For crawling scavengers?

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 drawingstitled Drawing Nirvana.

METAMORPHOSIS

(Melissa of New York)

Melissa asked me to imitate Odysseus,

not to listen

sirens of the deep,

nor the poet’s erotic verses

in the rocky waves of the sea.

In New York he studied Pythagoras,

the language of mimicry read the unspoken word

wrote it in saltiness,

where life is a dream

and the dream becomes life.

The epic words underwent a metamorphosis,

the seagulls danced

over our heads,

deep sea conception

shivers run through,

air in New York

I missed the thrill of life.

LATE LETTER

The pigeon made the wrong journey

with the letter written in the color of the sun,

where the moon hung on the white feathers

and the field swayed in the boy’s nap…,

her heart ached in June,

raindrops washed the streets of the smoky village,

the pigeon lands at the wrong address…street number 1986.

The dove, that morning, decorated the song in the bird’s nest,

the rotten mammal was flying

to bring tidings to the chord of Eros,

in Pristina it stops at Ulpiana,

relieves fatigue in the stork’s stork,

the reception smells of the White Crow,

Doris wrote the letter beautifully

in a duel he sought in the Chair

on street number 1986.

The late letter faded into reading…

she sheds tears on the side path,

crow’s feet, seeking separation

in the corner of the heart the melody of hope,

spiders in Doris’s painting

they embroider the bride’s dowry

the late letter wet with tears,

two-way flow switches cards,

to the wrong address –

a life in search traverses, road number 2016.

(The letter left from Peja city in Kosovo,in June 1986, reached Bardh village of Kosovo, in November 2016). The distance between Peja and Bardhi is 45 km!

THRILL

Good evening –

a portrait appears on the screen,

blonde girl with lots of bangs,

special name in this late fall.

Letters get lost on the keyboard,

confusion of emotions in the frozen landscape,

“I’m sorry… – I wanted to say hi,

I have a shiver in me!

“Well, for a few years now, they have made themselves…

“break of sweat on the afflicted forehead,

vision lost in crystal ecstasy…

that, behind the glass a more simplistic world.

He dances his fingers to the chord

of syntactic timbre submerged in pools of tears,

“how close we are, how far we feel”,

this antithesis said in synonymy,

a lot has changed, a lot.

A single path of divine longing,

where I hear the return in late winter,

suspend the sworn oath,

I am looking for architecture

in Rozafa Bridge,

nothing has changed, nothing.

FLOCK CARD

My goodness

Golden hair

in a wedding dress,

it disturbs my life

how you glean the corn

who wear and weave maiden crowns.

There was a mole on the cheek, the weight on the eyebrows

of mortal suffering, in the hands of fate

embroidered in Pelasgian letters,

history cashed in mythology.

The two portraits of your soul,

a woman in infinity

which wreath we laid on the altar of happiness,

the white wedding sheet

you stole from me treacherously!

On our pillow

we share the dreams of the future,

I miss you so much..

THE PERSECUTED MUHAJIR

You sat in the lap of dreams

I caressed her tender lips with caresses

and breasts flourished in my drunkenness,

Song of the Sibyls in poetic verse.

In the oasis of the aroma of tea we lay down,

in the leaves we looked at the unlived life,

we scratched the skin in myzava,

we used to fight in lectures for years.

We poured over the river bed

morality wrapped in dogma,

we spat the time we didn’t know each other

and when we got to know each other, we hugged.

You embroidered the bride in the poet’s muse,

I’m a persecuted muhajiri

I sought refuge in love

our harp was longing.

Lan Qyqalla, graduated from the Faculty of Philology in the branch of Albanian language and literature in Prishtina, from Republika of Kosovo. He is a professor of the Albanian language in the Gymnasium. He has written in many newspapers, portals, Radio, TV, and Magazines in the Albanian language and in English, Romanian, Francophone, Turkish, Arabic, Italian, Greek, Swedish, Hindu,  Spanish, and Korean.

One Night in Bombay, India

One wild night in Bombay, India

I walked into an evil bar 20 drinks too sober

On the wicked wrong end of a Friday night booze run.

On the bad side of the Moon over by where the Martian dudes

Sat drinking their Martian whisky, ogling the Venus maidens.

Leering at the earth women who were walking by

Wearing skin-tight pants made their eyeballs hurt.

I gave in to the spirit and went over to the Martian dudes

And got drunk on the Martian madness, shot after shot

Smoking some good old-fashioned Mars dust.

And flew off to the planet Jupiter

Just to have me some fun with a lady

Who said she was from Saturn?

I did not know she was from the planet Pluto.

Until I woke up the next day, naked, under the alien Sun

In jail on the Planet Alpha Centura, light-years from home,

A million miles away, a thousand years in the future

And I had no money, no honey, no way home.

Still 20 drinks too sober, I just sat down in that jail

And started drinking away my time

Drinking fine cold assed Centurion wine

and Pluto Whisky.

One day I woke up

 and found me back in Bombay

Standing outside that evil bar

in the miasmic mist

Over by the Martian whorehouse,

 down by the Gate of India

And I walked up to

the Saturn-Pluto babe

And said,

“Man, that was some bad shit

Bad craziness.”

Let’s do it again someday,

she smiled, and I had my way

Knew the day would come again.

When I would be drinking with the Martians

And something wicked my way would come

Just another night of wicked fun

On the wrong side of the Moon

On the right night

in the mean streets of Bombay.

That Rotten Kid


There once was a boy named Eddie. And

clearly there was something very wrong

with this nine-year-old. Ask anybody: they'd

tell you, with an eye roll, that Eddie was

disruptive, distracted, and inattentive in the

classroom. It was 1962 and Eddie had just

been enrolled in the third grade.

 

He was forever shouting out non-sequiturs,

throwing his pencils and erasers across the

room and striking other students and

teachers; constantly making his unwelcome

presence felt.

 

No one knew quite what to do with Eddie.

He had been held back in school and so was

bigger and stronger--and more destructive--

that his fellow students.

 

Though it was suspected by some school

officials that he was, deep-down, quite

intelligent, Eddie was unable--or, they

thought, unwilling--to work with other

children or to complete an assignment. 

Rarely could he finish a single written

sentence before his attention wandered

again.

 

Other children tried to ignore him, as

they were instructed, but he was a

handful, always out of his seat, in

everybody's business and fighting with

the class bully, who couldn't quite

grapple with Eddie's size and manic

strength.

 

Teachers washed their hands of him. He

was sequestered to a far corner of the

room, but kept dragging his desk, like a

security blanket, back amongst the rest

of the students, on the other side of the

room. He got lonely. Teaching him, they

discovered, was impossible; he was

admonished to "just sit and be quiet." For

Eddie, however, that too was impossible.

 

After the third grade, Eddie ceased being

a student; once again he had failed and

been held back. No one I knew ever saw

the young man again.  Word had it that he

was declared "unteachable" and "incorrigible"

and institutionalized. One teacher was heard

muttering about "That rotten kid..." Eddie's

departure came as a relief to the

teachers and the other students, but in a

sad way.

 

ADHD was not officially inscribed into

the Diagnostic Manual of The American

Psychological Association until 1987.

Today there are more than 6 million

children diagnosed as affected by this

condition.

 



Incorrigible

 

Bob sat at his desk in the 1st grade classroom,

blinking his eyes and rolling his head to first

one shoulder and then the next.  This drew

the unwanted attention of his teacher, Miss

Edison.  She stepped briskly down the aisle.

 

"Robert, I've told you before to cut out the

antics. You know you're disturbing the other

children."  Bob sneaked a glance at the boys

and girls in his class, saw their happy grins;

at the moment, they were happy not to be

him.

 

Bob coughed nervously.  "And that cough,"

said Miss Edison.  "I've sent you to  the school

nurse a dozen times but there doesn't seem

to be anything physically wrong with you." She

laid heavy emphasis on the word "physically,"

which set the other children off laughing. "So,"

she concluded unfeelingly, "if you're trying to

get out of class, you can just forget about it."

 

Bob's face grew hot, his skin a bright pink.

He stared down at his desk.  He wished he

could sink through the floor.  "Now, you sit

there and don't move a muscle for the rest

of the day or you're going to be in big

trouble. 

 

Bob laid his hands flat on his desktop and

tried to hold himself still.  Miss Edison

hovered over him and everyone was watching

expectantly.  Suddenly Bob's head turned to

the left. his arm shot out straight and he

coughed hoarsely.  Once again the children

exploded in gales of laughter.

 

Miss Edison blew out a disgusted breath and

told the class to be silent, that this wasn't

funny.  The teacher intoned somberly, "A class

cut-up did no one favors." The classroom  

settled down, listening to every delicious word.

This was how delinquency and a life of crime

began, she added fiercely.

 

Bob stole another look at his classmates, again

saw their derisive, toothy grins.  "You can just

stay in class for recess and when the rest of us

go to lunch!" proclaimed the teacher.  "I wash

my hans of you.  You are, Robert, truly

incorrigible"  And she stalked back to her desk.

 

Little was known of Tourette's Syndrome in the

1950s.

 

 

 

CONFESSIONS

Everyone’s a politician

and everyone’s a journalist

and none of us has inhibitions.

But we all have our tales to twist.

I went to see my physician

in her office inside my tomb.

For practice, she writes out prescriptions

just to kill the kids in their wombs.

My preacher makes his confession

to the girls who are blonde and young.

He lays on his hands, as his mission,

and exhibits the gifts of his tongues.

Professors write dissertations

in order to hide all the facts.

And if you want real information,

–well, you needn’t even ask.

The lawyers brand themselves hired guns.

They court the richest criminals,

who transfer to them ill-gotten funds

to lie as far as laws allow.

I said I’d fill that thin co-ed

who said she hungered for new verse,  

though she still starves though I’m her poet

and she’s swallowed my Complete Works.

Was Jesus tacked to an easel

so Romans could paint him later?

They staged all the acts of the apostles

just to build wings for their theaters.

And everyone had truth to twist

till they convinced me I was cured.

But when I asked, my psychiatrist

sneered. “Why no, I’m not even bored!”

 METAMORPHOSIS

Brave audience caterpillar

agrees to enter

the stage magician’s magic box–

LOVE’S MEASURE

Although I know marble outlasts wax, longevity isn’t love’s measure,

and I know how to read with pleasure the artists, the crafters, and the hacks.

ZOMBIE VAMPIRE MUMMY….

One of us was born to die living,

one of us to live dying.

The one and the one

are one and the same.

And there’s one other other,

one for whom

living is dying is living–

each one is one and the same.

As we alternate these ones

we cling, otters, to each other,

to these disparate slices

of our pied kaleidoscopic whole.

LILLIAN THE OCEAN AND THE ISLE OF PALMS

Together in memory are soldered 
Lillian, the ocean, and the Isle of Palms, 
fused cubistically like frozen sculpture 
of motionless craft forever becalmed

            a picture of beach-clinging waters

hanging between the frames by their thumbs.

And Lillian the old skygod’s daughter

parades ashore on the Isle of Palms

followed by fleecy waves that slaughter

themselves as sacrifice for her balm,

            crashing on the beach at her immortal

feet like jap endless squadrons of bombs.

Sun-sand-sky welded to ageless water,

seagulls shackled to the gulf like charms,

ocean as static as a krater,

and sands as eternal as the psalms:

            my marble memories unaltered.

Lillian, the ocean, and the Isle of Palms.

René Magritte’s The Son of Man

a man in an overcoat & bowler hat

standing in front of a low seawall

beyond which are the ocean & thick clouds

he could be the young Pilo

a graduation photo

he wore a business suit

a hankie in a breast pocket

what’s missing was a hovering apple

raining men

raining apples

in a surrealistic realm

the falling green apple

that obscured the face of the Son of Man

could be Newton’s apple

a discovery of the invisible

what is essential is what is invisible

𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘸𝘦 𝘴𝘦𝘦 𝘩𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨,

𝘸𝘦 𝘢𝘭𝘸𝘢𝘺𝘴 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘴𝘦𝘦

𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘩𝘪𝘥𝘥𝘦𝘯 𝘣𝘺 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘸𝘦 𝘴𝘦𝘦

insert picture in a picture

insert a green apple in a souvenir picture

𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘢𝘯 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘤𝘩 𝘪𝘴 𝘩𝘪𝘥𝘥𝘦𝘯

Magritte’s art is attributed to mysticism

my grandpa’s life is a mystery

the man’s eyes can be seen

peeking over the edge of the apple.

Fhen M. studied the academic subjects Writing in the Discipline, 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘓𝘪𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘗𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘱𝘱𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘴, and The Literature of the World at Eastern Visayas State University. The Waray poem “Uyasan” (“Toy” in English”) written by Fhen M. was published in a collection of literary works entitled 𝘗𝘪𝘯𝘪𝘭𝘪: 15 𝘠𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘓𝘢𝘮𝘪𝘳𝘢𝘸. His English verses “Lighthouse,” “Seaport,” “Barbeque Stalls along Boulevard,” and “Tetrapod” appeared in 𝘗𝘰𝘦𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘢 anthology series published by Clarendon House. In 2024, Red Penguin Books’ 𝘈𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘛𝘪𝘮𝘦: 𝘈 𝘊𝘰𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘨-𝘰𝘧-𝘈𝘨𝘦 𝘗𝘰𝘦𝘵𝘳𝘺 𝘈𝘯𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘰𝘨𝘺 will publish his piece “Outside the Block Universe”. One of his poems will also be included in 𝘍𝘭𝘰𝘳𝘢/𝘍𝘢𝘶𝘯𝘢 𝘈𝘯𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘰𝘨𝘺 by Open Shutter Press. Fhen M. submitted verses in Waray for the 5th Lamiraw Creative Writing Workshop, including the 𝘴𝘪𝘥𝘢𝘺 “Duha nga mga pagtug-an” (translated in English as “Two confessions”). David Genotiva, Merlie Alunan, and Victor Sugbo were some of the distinguished panelists of this writing workshop held from the 5th to the 7th of November 2008.