The Krampuslauf in Leavenworth



“As for man, he must be fully investigated and tested, for reason makes him capable of a high degree of dissimulation.” – Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation



The Wenatchee River runs through town

Like a writer of no mean ability. “What news

From Seattle,” I ask the streets. The men

 

In heavy makeup guarantee the total recall

Every day demands. Pickles are hidden

In the trees and memory’s kitchen midden.

 

Snowflakes fill the air with pixels. As winds

Full of empty feelings blow down Front Street,

The fire-breathing scent of roasted chestnuts

 

Guarantees a fait accompli of unsavory gluttony.

“Almost none are good, but most aren’t very

Bad,” I hear a woman sampling cheeses say

 

While people-watching. Some nutcrackers look

So lifelike… “It’s nice work if you can get it,”

Comes from the direction of the Clydesdale’s

 

Manure bag. Airing its dirty laundry in the winds

Of change, autumn’s end sounds like an American

Spouting anti-American sentiments to an ear

 

Warmed by one too many glasses of mulled

Wine. Dying without scars can hardly be called

A death, because what preceded it can hardly be

 

Called a life; so I don’t feel at all bad when I

Trip on the pure natural harmonic series of

The alphorns. Character is conduct, conduct

 

Character; the reindeers’ antlers belabor

This point when I visit their farm to feed them

What hatched out of raindrops. Eagles overhead

 

View what is platted more as a lipogram than

An amabilis insania. Quarrel makes a quarry

For the meanest men; and inquiry, real inquiry,

 

Can never dine with them: tonight, I’ll make

Lasagna in my AirBnB’s vintage oven. Morning’s

Red hoof will hit many a wet roof tomorrow.



 

Picking Freedom’s Lock by the Nestucca River



“Light is the pleasantest and most gladdening of things; it has become the symbol of all that is good and salutary.” Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation

 

There’s no ennui inside the gates

Of dreaming. Brindled voices from

Ball Bearing Hill anticipate

A ligature of light. My fate

 

Will always and forever love

Its special knowledge, like a man

(Religious beast). And goodness can

Forever justify its darkness.

 

This river’s coastal cutthroat trout

Say Haven’t I been good to you?

By swimming in deucedly full moons.

Uncommon as a plant with true –

 

Dare I say – grace, this river’s Abra-

Cadabra mimics the ocean’s Abra

La boca when my heart’s abrasive

And I’m drinking Prosecco and gin.

 

My lingam and catholicon,

I ask the oak tree, “Why MALToma?

What’s the true meaning of Multnomah?”

Multnomah County? I don’t think

 

About it, is her answer. Best

A stain sustained by growing stranger

Be left on something worn by hangers

Most of the time; like history’s dress,

 

The patron saint of windsocks wrecked

My outfit. Walgreens, in a fine-

Tuned universe, is not too far.

In day’s redshift, I’m circumspect.

 

[With eyelids and breathing growing

Heavier by the minute, beauty

Presents a truth he cannot grasp

 

To quiet his unworthy wasp.

Le temps découvre la vérité;

His wrath tells him, Don’t blink, or else!]



 

St. Johns Bridge Gives Portland Leave to Think Itself a Moon Flower
 

“With us everyone’s character is uniformly the same, because they are forced…nothing is heard but the voice of fear, which has only one language, instead of nature, which expresses itself so diversely and appears in so many different forms.” Montesquieu, Persian Letters: L. 63
 

Cathedral Park: they call you a monstrosity,

But what cares you for praise? It’s illusory;

   A noctilucent Extra! Extra!

      Selling like hot cakes: your Gothic knowledge.

You excommunicated the miracle

Of steel-suspension fortitude. Mockery

   Can trick itself when skate parks crumble…

      Northernmost bridge: Is your silence profound?

(The public’s screaming god is anxiety,

But answer there was none.) In a memory,

   Akeldama and earthshine tremble,

      Knowing a crumpled up map is human.

To justice-loving creatures, reality

Refurbished would be nicer than kayakers

   With IPAs, than histologic

      Methods for ballsier trips to Linnton.

 


 


The International Oregon Air Show

 

It’s perfect for a lady on

   The go: this sleepy runway

We set up something shady on

   To watch as shades of progress

   Pour a lemon shandy

For the sun. “Hegira now!”

   The Mustang’s cry for egress

   Cries that light’s too slow.

 

A sportful poem, not now extant,

   A day in ’44 is

Re-enacted. Doggies pant,

   As dogfights can’t fill August

   Skies with February’s

Chill. The Flying Fortress bangs

   A cloud to sling the ugliest

   Rock in David’s sling.

  

My friend: “That job is Stephen King’s”;

   A Dornier spins through wisdom’s

Jury. Rome, its seven kings,

   Would king this Black-eyed Susan

   For old times’ sake, as chasms

Above absorb each ace of spades.

   Let’s drink away a season

   Too drunk to play the odds!

 

The stereo speakers’ Off we go

   Into the wild blue yonder

Shakes my Acura. The glow

   Of accuracy – Moby

   Dick to me – is tinder

In the Raptor’s wake. Its roars –

   No surrogates for Maybe –

   Are Maybe’s gate to stars.

 

A noodle in transparent sauce

   Is less nude than what’s rolling

Above the mackerels’ maker’s moss.

   Blessed are the peacemakers…

   McMinnville hears what’s falling

To escape the memory-hole:

   The Luftwaffe’s ghostly ichor

   Ignites a ghost too pale.

 

Across the street, this plane or that

   Has made the Spruce Goose jealous.

The kids with ear protection chat

   With sugared ears like Dumbo’s.

   Like ultramundane pulleys

Or Peter Pan and Wendy’s flight,

   These frightened, shaking brambles

   Don’t shake for King Canute!

 

With crates of traces, a wind comes

   Into the viewing area.

The trees disguise ammonium’s

   True distance. Ammo’s pep talk,

   Its musical scoria…

¡Vaya con Dios! Thunderbirds

   Will even get what sleepwalks

   To get even with yards.

 



 


Diptych: After John Milton

 

I Caduti


 

Hence childish hopes and dreams,

…You devils that love to oversimplify

And flatter every eye

…That can’t see through you, go where self-esteem’s

A peak to dwell on; ski

…The myriad slopes that from a single spot

Descend through apricot-

…And hubris-scented air. The wise attack

Where the fools bivouac

…By steering clear of inner travesty.

 

That chain of being, being a chain

We call great, shackles the pain

Born in the madly swirling mist

Of each man’s heart. The naturalist

In me prefers to see what lives

Beyond my world; the poet gives

A view. When time began, both prose

And poetry were one. But clothes –

Some empty clothes – broke them apart.

Now the world is dressed in art,

And art is duty bound to bind

Them back together in the mind

Of man, or else it fails. The cup

Of Ganymede is too high up

For me to drink, and I’m not rare

Enough in the right ways to bear

It. What’s the right amount of things

Immeasurable? My inkling clings

To wisdom for the answer, not

Itself. You’ll cauterize what’s caught

By caution? I’ll keep earth between

Two vaster planes. Though too unseen

For some, their border ruffians

With ease deflect our master plans

Before they do us harm. We fell,

Hephaestus-like, but with the whole

Wide world our Lemnos. Moral fractals,

Men behave like pterodactyls

Most of the time. I’ve seen the orf

Virus infect what Nephilim dwarf

On earth. The truth is, paintings muzzle

My inner voices, singers puzzle

Me, swapping strangers’ inner eyes

With mine; I only recognize

What’s true with art. The artist in

The man is proof that with a hin

Of the divine we’re mixed! Each trope

Can be a tightrope and to cope,

Both things can be true. Men make

Allowances for the poor snake

To live in Ireland again:

This man could wash the rainbow’s sin

Away; that man has ass’s ears,

But for myself, the ass’s fears

I fear the most. So very Jan

Van Eyck, the hopeful light I shine

In daydreams under a Tupelo

Fails at twenty-two below;

The temperature at which passions freeze

Is measured, not by man’s degrees,

But rather, distance under God

And His decrees. My lightning rod

Is evidence: we’re less sileni

Than constant moral miscellany,

So flourishing is within reach.

There are no windswept fads, but speech

Is something else. A bagatelle

Can tell me all I need as well

As any bloody chronicles

Or timeless annals. Nothing fills

My day with angels…Promised calm

Has never been the sacred balm

It claims to be. Where metal meets

The wood, I’ve seen the saddest feats

Of sacrifice; a casualty

In fields where they’re too casually

Consumed. Too bright, too brief; our joys

Can seem, when Jesse’s seventh boy’s

The king of Yggdrasil, mere toys

To some. When dignity annoys

You, dawn-ful crimes and dusk-less days

Are coming. (Then mock-noon betrays

True midnight.) See: Aldebaran shares

An eye with me. Its freedom wears

Some falling snow, and wishes freedom

From itself. (It’s to flee Rhadam-

Anthus, I guess.) There is a snow line

Where goodness and love in a slow line

Move about as well. Some clothe

What mental storage units loathe:

“The girl I give all my best kisses,

She always chooses Spanish cheeses,”

Is my best effort; pretty bad.

But I’m no poet, and I’m glad

To know it! My Andersonville

Prison is next to my free will,

Where some corrupt officials, ill

With pride, demolished wisdom’s hill

For to build foolish houses. Girls

(“Daughters of dagger-damage”), pearls

And other influential lights:

Would that I could not see those heights

Where powerfully value is flowing,

Where strongly value flows for knowing.

A fount of idiocy, I’d ask –

‘Who killed perfection?’ – in a mask,

Alcibiades-like, and lisp

So I’m not hated to a crisp.

The clouds have anasarca; spring

Will come again. She’ll always bring

Reminders Notus blows away.

In Buchenwald, our memories say,

‘This isn’t us, and that’s not us.’

To know itself, forgiveness prays

For help. There’s sulfur in that gulf

Between each self and what its Delph-

Ic dreams portend. I mow the lawn

To force equality. To yawn

At beauty’s spontaneity:

It would make the meanest and greenest tree

Plaintive; be the most painless death.

There’s knowledge in the eyes of Seth

That vice won’t let me see. That apple

Eris threw in me; I’ll grapple

With myself until I die.

Sallow was this morning’s eye…

There’s no one free; this semi-scourge

Lives in every demiurge,

And can’t be killed. Don’t look to fate;

None mitigate time’s magistrate.

There’s sucrose in the rose’s red

That I won’t hear until I’m dead.

The Garden of the Hesperides

Appreciates disparities

In peacetime and when bullets fly.

No one here but God knows why.

One small ‘shall’ is no big deal

To some. But when a flaming wheel

Goes by, you’ll seek the special spear

Of Finn MacCool, in case you hear

The goblin singing, “Let me Blow

You (Mostly Peaceful) Kisses.” Go,

Go visit history’s lair, then quarrel

With your friend self-crowned in laurel.

The guillotine’s favorite color mirrors

The shape of deadly nightshade’s ears.

(That’s fire’s word for man.) A king

Getting chased by the rifles of spring

Discovers karma likes a geyser:

Mary’s there; see how dawn eyes her. 

Bitter is the dark and deep

The individual’s right to sleep

In labor’s peace and quiet won.

To lasso the abyss, my gun 

Looks forward to snow, and with good cheer!

The day and I, in Joseph’s gear,

Stay out of trouble telling jokes

To men who know how laughter yokes

Forgiveness, so they never laugh,

Unless my act is wisdom’s gaffe.

(The fool has got the best shot at

Perfection; what is most shot at

By man.) When tempted not to own

Mistakes, quoth goodness, “Get you gone!”

When nachas leaves its seven gates

Wide open, goodness radiates.

With flaming laws, genetic fire,

Some believe what they desire

To be true too readily;

Fanatic genealogy

Won’t admit it’s wrong. We live,

Therefore we sin, and must forgive

The marriage – poetry and prose’s –

For ending. Nothing decomposes

More than hate. Capital Hill

Will try to match that healthy hell

In Menlo Park, and light a match

For gradual eurekas to catch.

In Handel’s Water Music, said

Promoters claim they’ll raise the dead.

Destiny’s resin, in its prime,

Drips from time, rabbinical time.

Stubborn ingratitude befalls

The holy wounded when God calls.

The lord is one, and He’s most high:

I live this truth; for it I’d die.

 

 

 

L’Utopico

 

Hence inborn sinful stain,

…You clear and present flaw that mars each goal

And ought to be in jail,

…Go dwell on Mars; by eminent domain

You’ll grab that planet way

…Before you wrench my target from my aim.

You’ll dye your counterclaim

…With colors none can see, but I’m no fool;

I’ll steel the golden rule

…So none can break it after yesterday.

 

I have no limits! Now I’m free

As God! No incivility

Within, no chains without. This ale

Brims with more knowledge than does Yale.

And yet my cup half-empty stays

Full of injustice, a disgrace

In paradise, whose capital

Perfects what every dream makes whole.

Let’s go there, where love’s artisans

Draw pictures nature’s partisans

Eat up. Let’s go and meet their queen;

I hear her: clean calls unto clean.

She’ll laugh at hell and worldly things;

Be kind to all; abolish kings.

Though some may see the blackest boot

Paint their whole kingdom black as soot

Before they go, what’s fair is fair:

The queen just cares too hard to care

About some pesky incidents.

It’s heavy with experiments;

Her purse, which from the commonwealth

Will unlearn greed. (If greed learns stealth,

She’ll crush it, loving-husband-like.)

She’ll teach each spike how not to spike.

She’ll find that by reversing dawn,

The sky’s Raynaud’s phenomenon

Gives her a wound to heal. She’ll ban

The consequence of a great tan.

And she’ll adopt the child of Mount

Cyllene. The country will lose count

Of all the stars up in Heaven’s lake:

We’ll shake them until they’re half-awake;

Stone, seaside ideas and wood

Encased in silver, gold and good

Misfortune. (That last part is key

To art, but not reality!)

She’ll banish any person “blessed” –

Too sober or too neatly dressed –

Like all true art. She’ll never deal

With any child of Semele

Directly. She’ll claim Tony Hawk’s

A beast on wheels; electroshock’s

Her mode of moving. Acting young –

Reading Ayn Rand and Carl Jung

Will be examples – she’ll make fate

Less glamorous; a fourth estate

Third-party-like in every way.

Mister Non-entity today

Will be tomorrow’s Captain Kidd.

We’ll do what Epimetheus did –

Just the good stuff! A Cambrian

Explosion only queens can plan

Will happen; the majority

Will will it! History’s prophecy

Will vindicate itself and clone

The savior (a complete unknown);

Time’s gal pals will fulfill it! Snugly

In my heart, I’ll bind each ugly

Feeling, so none are ever felt.

Smelters will teach us how to smelt

Society for gold. A pure

And vegetarian allure

Will satisfy mysterious needs.

My nose will find whatever bleeds

For reasons I don’t like, to save

It from an audio-tactile grave.

My chatelaine’s electric eyes

Will never burn out or despise

My happy love’s dictates. Her limb-

Dissolving rays will dissolve time

Eventually. She’ll never be

Sad-mouthed, tough-nosed, rough-eared; you’ll see!

Disasters will fill no more books.

The royal science’s “Gadzooks”

Will lift what’s too terrestrial.

What’s not too intellectual

Will be arriving on three mules.

They’ll plan to break the molecules

In our electric vows: half-men,

Who’ll make the greatest simpleton

The son of Leopold Mozart by

Comparison. She’ll pornify

The drabbest jobs. The queen will dress

My darg in drag, make time confess

To work schmerk in a body bag.

Declaring war on every plague,

She’ll never lose a man, a dime,

Or single battle. Pantomime

Supreme, we’ll kill it. Loneliness

Will only walk in twos and threes.

She’ll bury every blunderbuss

In a mass grave. Oblivious

To dumb implausibility,

The past should pawn its chessboard; he-

Said-she-said only happens there.

“You’ll legislate beyond repair,”

They’d plead. As if our guide is hate,

Or fear. I won’t see them create

Creators like our queen! She’ll sink

Her teeth into groupthink and drink

Its energetic death. “Reform

What you cannot possess”: that warm

And happy phrase knows vanity

Peaks at the height of sanity.

Our glories will be pristine seas

And hearts; the teal and the tall trees

Will be the most pure they’ve ever been.

“A hygge with Hygeia then?”

You joke, but that’s not too far off,

My friend. It’s gone on long enough!

These fields let flowers bully flowers;

These clocks let days oppress the hours.

I still feel hunger’s scaphoid pain;

I still see poverty, its rain

Deferred. I can’t sing Don’t Debunk

My Kisses without getting drunk

On jealousy first. Sir Jealousy, meet

Madam Not-yours. On beauty’s feet,

No more glass slippers; the truth, gloved:

Be loving, lover; you are loved:

The lies we tell, half-jocular,

That slowly slice my jugular.

Some question me, I answer with

This comeback: Knowledge is a myth.

In Delos, Leto’s children will be

Delos’s property. Astilbe

Will grow for everyone. We’ll read

The poetry that can’t succeed

Without great readers, and preserve it.

We’ll argue, ‘This and that deserve it,’

Only for the right reasons! Grass

Will ink our desolation’s mass…

It loves a paradox: our god;

Imagination’s kind of odd!

I’ll leave my natural load behind,

Forgetting vice with all my mind.

(How could we be knee-deep in wrong

And neck-deep in a happy song

At one and the same time? Man was;

Some ran here like a sailor does.)

My dreams will be predictable

As life; my judgment, perfect still.

And here’s the queen: I needn’t kneel;

She knows exactly how I feel.

“My scientists cry Gaia weeps,

Beseechingly, and doomsday creeps

Closer. Tomorrow’s preachy mood 

Will not allow the lassitude

Which has corrupted duty’s soul

In all who came before us. You’ll

Be so content with brotherhood,

Commandments will seem simply rude

If not the majority’s command

Or written in each voter’s hand

On something more alive than stone.”

She loves tomorrow, that I’ll own;

She loves it more than earth and sky,

So for this queen, I’ll gladly die.

EVOLUTION.

In this waltz, I carry you in my mouth;
Between little piano keys that snowflakes wars.
On this floor my body is brass; grief stricken metal and 
A wall is a leaf on fire so my mother looses her throat 
And tried to pronounce requiem, she lifts her right palm
And becomes a lotus, she lurches towards a mirror 
To gather my fate and father’s reflections, she waters her face,
Count periwinkles, colours and the shell of a snail beside a broken pot.
She embodies a fish that drowned of thirst 
And through the wind binoculars; a lapel folds a ladle
Through the kitchen window. A wild flower sprouts
From my mother’s palm and we are two step into evolution;
A wormhole that made my father’s journey to soil 1mile
Away from home; a recapulation of carefully collected snapshots 
Of my father’s bones; his father’s bones; bones and more bones are now
Tree branches transforming into grief.
I dance;you dance;northern hemisphere harbours a hiccup and 
My mother drowns.
I grow; you try to;you fail;schizophuta and rhizopus gather dead organic 
Matter entracellularly and my brother is found identifying himself 
A saprophyte.
I decline; my mother swallow’s earth;she drowns in between a 
Floating microscopic heterotroph and grouped us into a photo album;
Zooplanktons.I name it grief,
She names me son and shades of coat colour counters my decline ;
She names me an x-gene and I pause in between her war-teeth and a
River of thirst rubbing my chest gently.

Face to Face

"Oh my God ... is it really you?"
"... Yes ... I was hoping it was you in that shell."
"It's me, and I remember everything."
"So do I ..."
"So .... like all that nonsense they told us about reincarnation turned out to be true, didn't it?"
"It seems like it now."
"That's a lot to think over, especially when our brains are so small."
"I know, I know ... but what else are we here for?"
“Well, I have to crawl down ... I can't stay here all morning. It’s unbearable when the sun is too bright.”
“I'll meet you here tomorrow morning then. Will you come?”
“It will take me all night to climb up here, but I'll do it.
... because, like how long do we live, in these shapes?”
"I dunno ... a couple weeks for me maybe."
“I think I get a little more. I've grown around this shell a whole turn and a half since Spring.”
“You go, girl! ... you are like, still a girl aren't you? "
“In this form we're all kind of half-and-half. I know it sounds weird.”
"I won't kick you out of the flower bed ..."
* laughs ...
“I’ll see you tomorrow, I hope. You be careful. There's a toad under the third brick in the wall. You would NOT believe how long his tongue is. ”
“Yes I would. I've seen him absolutely shred a bumblebee that didn't know he was there. It was horrible, except that I hate bumblebees. And you might want to step it up and go ... there's a Possum that lives behind the tool shed. ”
“Yeah ... bad news ... I have to keep a low profile around that one. I hunker down and pretend to be a wad of old chewing gum.
But hey! Listen! Maybe you can scout this out for me! I was down by the pond yesterday morning and I saw this BIG Catalpa leaf right
at the water's edge. I think it would hold me like a boat. And if you came and perched on the stem, and fanned your wings a bit, we might sail out to that little Island in the pond. We'd be safe there wouldn't we? No possums or toads, or kitties ...”
"Oh babe ... you don't know about the Bullfrog."
"Oh my Gawd, is that what makes that noise ...?"
“I’m afraid so ... top of the food chain on that island anyway. There are also some
big Bass in that pond. I’ve seen them lurking.”
"Shit ... I was hoping ..."
“I know. But I'll wait for you tomorrow morning, right here.”
"Good ... I still love you, did you know?"
“Yes, it's written on your shell in letters only I can see. And when my wings get really going, they make the sound of your name as I remember it. I will always love you, no matter what.”
“Thanks for that. Wait for me ... It might take me a long time ...”
"Yes, it always did ..."

						Michael Hough short fiction / Christina Chin, art. 

O human life, I pay homage to you

O human life, I pay homage to you
in teary wet eyes
in birth and death
in mosques-temples-synagogues-pagodas and churches.

O human life, I honor you,
in atheism and skepticism
in hunger and starvation, in food and luxury
everywhere, O great life, your very existence.

O human life, I thank you,
you showed me
a dew on the grass
Water hyacinth flower, Flame of the forest and Red silk cotton trees.

And whatever is sacred
baby’s smile mother’s caress and father’s affection
books, pens and ink
generosity-love and forgiveness.

O human life, I thank you
everywhere, O great life, you exist.


At Morges and an afternoon at the bank of Geneva lake

Walking can be a lovely experience
when you are in a new land.
the pictorial landscape
the silence, the raindrops.
The seagulls, the boats and the fisherman
at the port of Morges
at the bank of Geneva lake.
Being alone and loneliness not always crush
when you have water, lakes, mountains and the giant Sequoias
And they whisper! you are not alone
you are among us, you are with us
and we are too.


Tareq Samin is a Bangladeshi Secular Humanist Author. He is the Editor of the bilingual literary journal Sahitto. He is the author of eight books, including five poetry collections, two Short Stories collections and a Novel. Also he has translated into Bengali, two books of Anthology of International poetry of 22 poets from 20 countries. In total he has ten books published. His poems are translated in more than 20 languages including English, Spanish, Chinese, German, French, , Italian etc. Also his poems, short stories and articles are published in more than 25 countries.

Tareq Samin received the ‘International Best Poets Award-2020’ from The International Poetry Translation And Research Centre (IPTRC), China and the Greek Academy of Arts and Writing. Also he has been awarded ‘Honorable Mention’ in Foreign Language Authors category for his poem ‘Another Try’ in ‘The prize il Meleto di Guido Gozzano Agliè’ poetry competition held on 12 September 2020 in Turin, Italy. In July 2021 he won Naji Naaman Literary Prize 2021.

Tareq Samin is a Martin-Roth-Initiative Scholarship Alumni. The Martin Roth-Initiative is a joint program of ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen) and the Goethe-Institut, funded by the German Federal Foreign Office. The Martin Roth-Initiative protects artists who are dedicated to the freedom of the arts, democracy and human rights in their home country. As a Martin-Roth-Initiative Scholarship holder, he was a guest writer in Goethe-Institut, Kolkata, India. And Kathmandu, Nepal. 

In 2021, he was also an International guest writer in Château de Lavigny International writers-in-residence,  Switzerland. 

At My Table

The silent dead sit at my table on Christmas night.
They have been buried a half century of stony time.
Under thick carpets of weeds and grass they sleep now—
Old voices that once were heard within these white walls—
Old faces now departed but still mingling with the vapors.
I can see my dead mother at the end of this long table.
Pauline is young again as she gazes upon her old friends.

My mother died in 2003, but there she is with a red apron,
Haunting me still with culinary aromas from her green kitchen—
Her feast of salt and sugar still on display from distant 1967–
Her dead relatives smiling now for the Polaroid picture.
She says life is a bowl of green beans laced with bacon grease.
The whisper of dry voices say grace under a dim chandelier.
Now I can hear the clanging of forks and knives at my table.


Anti-Poem I Without A Soul

Luscious creamsicles cascading as glacier pedestals
Transfiguring all the remarkable inclinations with pizazz
Luminescent monte carlo dream rhapsodies of tuna silk
Spin and spiral like rabid frosting rockets of glorious goo
Translucent moth girls collide into the shy fires of night
Licking now the smooth verdigris of old copper mornings
Turning and extending their silver lullaby preponderances
To the sipping uncles seated on hungry sofas of leering pleats
Fingering now the electric diamonds of a comatose creamsicle


The Coming Andantes

you are flying on a hazy dream carpet —
floating up there, above these old streets, 
these ancient genuflecting pines and cedars,
rising above the sleeping dead on Broadway, 
soaring now through the white tombstones—
the low walnut branches that flail like hungry cats.
now the sudden rush out of death’s hand we fly,
whirring by faster than blood flow in a silver sieve,
in and out of the shadowed majesties far inside,
these soul itchers that foretell the coming andantes, 
here in this perfumed dreamland with only you, 
as we seep through the spinning pines and cedars,
the long extending blood rivers naked with stones,
of venison death and fish spasms in the final sun.


Nightmare Again

Another loose grind from bedtime to flickering bedtime
The white pills on my bureau sit there like lactose bugs
Lurking silently as sad dogs would, waiting for the door to close
Life is the uneaten fish inside the garbage can out back
The maggots there drink champagne cocktails with their dim wives.
Another nightmare now with hordes of death nurses sucking on syringes 
Their black marble eyes enlarging like stoned puffer fish

Celeste
by
Mehreen Ahmed

The children of the alley made clay dolls. They sat by a rubbish pile and dressed them all. Dolled them up, faceless at first. Then they gave them eyes and nose and curvy mouths. Legs and hands to dance with them at sundown. If this wasn’t enough, they also made tears with Lipids, Lysozyme, Lipocalin, Glucose, and Sodium. Water, made out of H2O. Oxygen to breathe, blood from Iron to carry oxygen to brain; carbohydrates, fats, proteins, and ethanol. Estrogen and so on to trigger pleasures, euphoric. The brain, composed of Cerebrum, Cerebellum, and Brainstem. Skin to cover and protect.

The children were blind. Still, they melded a silken network of chemical medley into this unique creation. Even kindness, generosity, jealousy and cunning—propensities—were inclusions of this concoction. They gave them a name Clay Dolls, who had everything they needed to dance with them—energy, intelligence, sentience. Except, there was one potent component, the children were circumspect—eternity, they reserved only for themselves, which the Clay Dolls found disturbingly lethal. The chemicals they had been tied with were eyewash.

Every dance was long and nuanced; the children took a lot of care to choreograph. In great details they took a butcher’s knife and pierced it through the Dolls’ hearts. They were blind; they didn’t see them die; but they had known it all along; this dancing was thrilling, in which the bodies putrified, not the chemicals. They used the same building blocks to make new dolls in tightly packed chemical knots. In their blindness, the children saw naught, what the Clay Dolls had asked for. They’d never even viewed their own reflections—let alone them—but Clay Dolls had eyes. They saw them—The Makers for who they really were—insensitive, in wanton jouissance.

No matter, the Clay Dolls matured overtime. They developed a foresight, which eluded The Makers. The Dolls thought of a ruse to get even with them. They learned the ropes and progressed. While they danced with The Makers, they’d also begun to tutor themselves in natural herbs, potent in medicinal value. The Makers had taken them for fools—Clay Dolls. Surely, when they tried to butcher them, they realised they couldn’t kill em’ all. Some stood back up while some fell. The Makers comprehended with a sixth sense, but couldn’t do anything preventable.

The Clay Dolls were gradually overpowering them. Knowledge had given them much boost. Still, they continued to dance but far lesser kills, for The Makers to roost. More Clay Dolls survived as their skills exponentially exceeded The Maker’s expectations. However, The Makers found comfort that the ultimate power over the organic world resided in their hands. Only they were eternal, and wise enough to govern these lands. Although, the creepy sixth sense alluded to them that the Clay Dolls were not only dancing in tight compartments under the blue, but had traversed the space as well, who now had the sense of space-time, the gaseous Canopus and the laws of physics.

Why, the Clay Dolls were unstoppable, yet they were fettered? The Makers felt angst and conferred amongst themselves. The Clay Dolls were reaching heights too far in the sky. They needed to be cut down to size. Whoever had the knowledge of immortality would win this war. The Makers found solace that the Clay Dolls would not win because they danced to a mortal tune which they had been attuned to since inception. The Clay Dolls would never know how immortality worked, thereof, The Makers would always dominate.

It rang true, the laws of physics did decree this that in time every organic life would perish. The Makers had made sure that the Clay Dolls were just that—organic, and nothing more. The sixth sense allowed them the light of prediction. However, The Makers had not predicted this. The Clay Dolls persisted. Did they not deduce that immortality was immutable and not bound by any strict parameters? Maybe, The Makers were delusional of galaxies that when they blossomed, they hinged on the laws of physics, alone.

Who made The Makers, any way? The Clay Dolls theorised that The Makers were subjected to the rule of law, too, not all that powerful—astronomical objects galvanised the stars. Where did black holes exist—wholly eating stars and what not? Galaxies could die and another could be born. Also, true to time. Since the big bang, this stretch of the solar system had occurred. It stretched and the stretching continued, theoretically, towards a gravitational collapse—Clay Doll’s collated and observed the true nature of the universe.

The Makers spun out of gasses, far surpassed the lowly masses—immortal creators just their luck, but, no interlocutors by any long shot. Both mute and blind, they made the Clay Dolls in their own image. Albeit, the Clay Dolls were borne out of them but had not turned out eternal, but different—enigmatic and more.

The fate of the Clay Dolls was sealed. Without oxygen, they couldn’t breathe. Without food this variant would be deficient. All designed in blindness, but the same law could be applied to The Makers in reverse—stars, the sun, the rains, the rainbow and all the lovely confection that fell from them. In hindsight, they too died. They too were prone to destruction which the deluded Makers wouldn’t know. The Clay Dolls, figured out the celeste. More lights sparked through their neurons than all the lights sparkled in the milky way.

In this blinding paradox of the sixth sense, The Makers had not marked a proximate magnet—a spiralling blackhole they couldn’t flee; new stars were born, new Dolls were made—locked in a deadly dance—a game without a referee. Much to their delight, this much light the Clay Dolls had perceived. Knowledge that had given them an upper hand that there were more things in heaven or on earth—no one was free from the strict laws of physics. Such choices had not existed. Not to date at least.

Denmark

My grandfather was a first generation Danish American who grew up in a Danish speaking household. But he never taught my father to speak Danish. He wanted to be all American. My mother named me after my Danish great grandmother, Karolina, who died in a tornado. I traveled to Copenhagen and I was struck by all the blonde children in Tivoli Gardens. I stuck out with my dark hair. My mother’s father said we descended from an American Indian scout but it was a myth.

Uruguay

I went to the beach in Punta del Este before I worked as a journalist in Buenos Aires. I took the ferry to Colonia—where Uruguayans sold colorful wool sweaters—to renew my tourist visa every few months. My work papers came through just before I left Argentina.

Mexico

The Israeli soldier I met on the way to Macchu Picchu became my boyfriend. He followed me to New York and we traveled to Mexico City together. We climbed the stone steps of Teotihuacan, pre-Columbia pyramids where men were sacrificed to the gods.

Cayman Islands

We went to the Caribbean for our honeymoon a year after we married. We snorkeled and the fish looked gray in the dark ocean. We read books on the beach and went to bed early like old retirees—worn out by Scud missile attacks during the Gulf War—and we soon separated.

Hong Kong
I had a layover in the Hong Kong airport for twelve hours on my way back from Australia to New York City. I didn’t think I had enough time to tour Hong Kong so I stayed in the airport. I wandered through the posh shops and read a long novel at a café. As a girl, I dug a hole in the backyard with my brother and told my mother, I’m digging to China! My grandfather flew cargo missions over the Hump—the Himalayas—from India to China during World War II. I always wanted big adventure like my grandfather.

Karol Nielsen is the author of the memoirs Black Elephants (Bison Books, 2011) and Walking A&P (Mascot Books, 2018) and the chapbooks This Woman I Thought I’d Be (Finishing Line Press, 2012) and Vietnam Made Me Who I Am (Finishing Line Press, 2020). Her first memoir was shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing in nonfiction in 2012. Excerpts were honored as notable essays in The Best American Essays in 2010 and 2005. Her full poetry collection was longlisted for the Terry J. Cox Poetry Award in 2021 and was a finalist for the Colorado Prize for Poetry in 2007. One poem was a finalist for the Ruth Stone Poetry Prize in 2021. Her work has appeared in Epiphany, Guernica, Lumina, North Dakota Quarterly, Permafrost, RiverSedge, and elsewhere. She teaches creative nonfiction and memoir writing with New York Writers Workshop.