Charity pulled her pistol from her holster, aimed, fired. Her concentration (or was it reluctance?) seemed to require far too much time. Charity, our officer, ordinarily cheery Thalia, one of three Graces, a mom who runs Safety Town, summers on the playground, came when called, came with bullets in her gun.
Inside, my wife governed a raucous birthday party, distracted wild, sticky nine-year-olds with games and cake and kept them clear of windows. Outside, a doe lost all grace, flopped helplessly in our yard beneath the apple tree, her hind leg bent, merely touched by a truck. Usually, her lean, sienna flanks flashed across the lawn, leapt over fences with fawns. Our apples, old, delicious Jonathans, the deer’s delicacy, too near Berlin Road, I’ll cut the tree down.
Inside, kids oblivious, outside, Charity and I shared an intimate glance of regret, this death a loss of elegance. Charity’s gun snapped three times, a jarring, contradictory violence. In her report, Charity accounted for each bullet.
Rod
A neighbor of sorts – office next door, we shared a wall.
A seemingly amiable fellow who lectured on Respiratory Care,
Rod with the Tennessee drawl and folksy anecdotes,
Who drove a pick-up, donned scuffed cowboy boots,
Who voted Republican every damn election – though he wouldn’t fess up,
Whose schizophrenic grandson caused him to see a few things differently,
Rod, the odious, chauvinist, good-ol’-boy bastard who harassed Robin,
Who made her life a living hell until she quit
(I gave her a pill to calm down. Simply listening and nodding was useless. There’s my regret.),
Rod, who, I am unsure why, I treated decently despite our vast differences, didn’t come to work.
A stroke. I sent a card, asked after him. I heard, “Home, therapy, retirement.” That’s that. Though my neighbor, I didn’t pay him a visit, an appalling indifference.
Why needlessly confront mortality with simple courtesy?
It appears my love is not yet unconditional.
David Sapp, writer and artist, 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.
A Lot and A Little: Fragmentation and Tragedy in Denis Emorine’s Broken Identities
In Denis Emorine’s new novella Broken Identities, gifted young Hungarian student Nora writes a paper on the works of main character and writer Dominic Valarcher, which she describes as “a lot and a little at the same time.” That phrase serves to describe the entire novella.
On one level, Broken Identities seems to be an intimate domestic drama about a professor caught in a love triangle. Dominic has a wife of many years, Laetitia, a talented concert pianist whom he genuinely loves and finds extremely attractive, yet he also feels passion for Nora, a younger graduate student who admires his writing. The tale explores his angst and conflicted feelings and appears focused solely on three people.
Yet, through the inclusion of minor characters, we see that this novella draws on these relationships to probe broader historical and psychological themes. Dominic lives haunted by the thought of his mother’s earlier days, as she survived losing her first husband in a concentration camp. Now, as an adult, he seems fascinated by younger women who seek out his care and mentorship. A therapist, with whom he built a close relationship, suggests to him that this might stem from a wish to have protected his mother from heartbreak.
Also, both Nora and Nadja, a young student starting a literary magazine at her school who falls under his spell while seeking his endorsement, are Eastern European, while he and his wife are French. Eastern Europe is tied up in Dominic’s mind with tragedy, death, and the victims of the Holocaust, as what he calls the “Russian” side of his personality. While Eastern Europe is complex and represents much more than tragedy, in Dominic’s mind, it stands in for a shadow, an irreparable loss stemming from his inherited childhood trauma which obsesses him more than he realizes.
It is this “Russian” side that calls to him during the final days of the academic conference he attends with Nora, and that leads him to his final tragedy. Yet, even at the end, he is not totally overcome by this darkness. He calls Laetitia and shares a sensual text exchange suffused with joy and passion, even after meeting up with Nora. And, finally, the novella ends with a rendition of the elegant love poem to Laetitia that he included in a manuscript he shared with Nadja.
Broken Identities is told through poems, diary entries, and letters accompanying the prose, which underscores the theme of fragmentation. There are often things characters will not speak aloud but only scarcely admit to themselves, or which they feel are only expressible through art. The additional use of letters, text messages, and phone calls are forms of communication used when people are separated. When Dominic is with Laetitia, he’s apart from Nora, and vice versa. When he takes refuge in France to write and process his emotions, Laetitia is left alone and communicates her feelings through musical innuendo.
These bits of communication, which average people might overlook as less significant than a novel or symphonic masterwork, highlight characters’ states of mind in Broken Identities. In this way, as Nora says, all of our thoughts and words can mean “both a lot and a little,” and reveal not only inner romantic conflict, but the lingering intergenerational effects of historical traumas.
The market does not support any idea which does not contribute to the further disintegration of the society. – Anand
Dr. Jernail S. Anand
Whatever is administered best, is the best was a highly misleading statement by Pope, but it is considered a gospel truth by the people who have never rested their faith in the best.
Let me first define the best. The unadulterated best of a society are the intellectuals who do not know politics, and who think of a society which is based on the principles of equality, shared affluence, power to each part of the body politic, and finally peace and harmony. But it is no more than a compulsive dream because the people think from the body, not from the mind.
The society moves forward with two basic factors: money and power. Power grows out of the coffers of a rich person. And power has a powerful sense of living with the second best only for whom higher considerations of life matter little. Money is the essential virtue of a society which believes in Power. The best of men, the intellectuals, the thinkers, the visionaries, the people who sit in their ivory towers, sculpting theories yield ground to people who sculpt strategems sitting in the kitchens cabinets. The second and third best, who grab power and the sources of wealth, now have a great responsibility to maintain status quo so that they can stay in power. And, it is here that the worst of the civilization rests.
The society moves forward. If you try to find the crop of the best among teachers, lawyers, professionals, politicians, bureaucrats, business men. you will be disappointed because the best have suicidal tendencies, and we find the second best, the third best, and then, even the worst, in the driving seat.
The society which believes in money and power, soon finds itself lost to the whims of the second best people and their dreams of power. Had the right people been in the driving seat, the world would have been a better place to live in. But because it is driven by insane passions and manipulated by crafty people, we now have a total confusion of values. This world never believed in the best. The best were grounded, ignored and even insulted, simply because they did not believe in pushing forward, or staying in power, by playing foul with their principles.
It is a murderous society, which has lost all sense of the moral and the ethical, and believes in nothing but power, wealth, fame and self-survival. The survival of the fittest means the fittest is the best. We are alive now, among the people who proved themselves the best and the fittest to survive. And it is an amalgam of power, craft and guile which helped people to stay in power, and rule the world. Can we expect joy and happiness in a world in which divine factors of existence were disregarded and disrespected?
The best values of this society are not goodness, kindness, love, compassion, and sacrifice. People are trained not to believe in any such thing, which smacks of medievality. Modernity lies in broken families and broken nerves, and a confusion and chaos, in which your own body parts find themselves in a state of rebellion. If this is not so, you are living in a society, which is not post-modern. As the real life thrust is found in the cities, the virus of postmodernity is spreading fast to the villages also, which believed in peace and tranquility.
What a man by default needs: a house, a wife, a job and an environment which supports life. What a man of wisdom requires: wealth and power. He does not believe in a house or a family. As such, he has no desire for peace either. He wants thrill in his life, even if it kills.
It pains me to think that everywhere, the society is being run by people who are second best. Who are best at their own survival. Who believe that the best men must be consigned to the libraries. The market does not support any idea which does not contribute to the further disintegration of the society. The world’s dadas want more confusion in social ranks, where men fail to find their feet, and their minds are lost in a maze of confusing passions, shorn of ideals. What finally describes this world is: There are no role-models. No examples to be set and followed. No men of character. No people who fight for their principles. The passion with which our elders fought for our freedom, we are fighting with equal passion for dissolution of that dream. The best people found themselves on the gallows, leaving their dreams to their own destiny, in the hands of the second best, who thrive on what they [the best] never thought of. A society minus all scruples. A society which believes in the second best. A society which exalts the worst. And a world which is run by men who possess no faith in essential values of life. By reverse logic, they are promoting the death of the divine, whether it is the divine will, remains to be seen.
[Dr. Jernail Singh Anand, [the Seneca, Charter of Morava, Franz Kafka and Maxim Gorky awards Laureate, with an opus of 180 books, whose name adorns the Poets’ Rock in Serbia]] is a towering literary figure whose work embodies a rare fusion of creativity, intellect, and moral vision. He’s not just an Indian author but a global voice, challenging readers to confront the complexities of existence while offering hope through art and ethics. His legacy seems poised to endure as a beacon of conscience in a turbulent world. If Tagore is the serene sage of a colonial past, Anand is the fiery prophet of a chaotic present. Anand’s genius lies in his relentless ambition and ethical depth. Anand may well be considered as the conscience of the 21st century, carving a unique niche among Indian English writers with a voice that resonates globally while remaining fiercely Indian.]
the night - the eyes - the sea
in the night
the eyes see
the sea of stars
in the night
the waves water
your pure soul
in the night
the tears fall
from high in the sky
in the ocean of feelings
turned into silver mysteries
___________________________________________
clarity
when I arrived
I didn't see you...
you were hiding yourself beyond an eon
when I came back
I saw you in my dream...
you were hiding yourself beyond a moment
when I left
I felt like you've been here...
since the dawn of time
_________________________________________
dreaming
I see in my dream
I fall asleep on a cloud
I see in my dream
I fly to a star
I see in my dream
I breathe like the moon
I see in my dream
I live like the sun
I see in my dream
I get dizzy in the ether
up there, very high
I see in my dream
you haven't gone away
I know in my dream
you are still here
as in any dream of mine
________________________________________
conditional
if only I could
I would lift you up to heaven
if only I could
I would walk you in the ether
if only I could
I'd keep you away from nostalgia
if only I could
I'd put you to sleep on a cloud
if only I could
I would baptize you on a star
if only I could
I would clone your love
if only I could
I would give you a galaxy
if only I could
I would dedicate an astro-poem to you
_____________________________________________
mirror
pure frozen water
silver surface
water-lilies floating on water
reality reincarnated
close distance
imagined reflection
concealed knowledge
spiral depth
faded concentration
radiant symmetry
inverted imagination
apparition - invention?
___________________________________________
OK. OK. This here flows the muspascat-taculan room used for musing up only.
There you go here you are pull that up and sit click down as;
This flows get inside now please yes Mommy yes the muspascat-taculan room used for musing only.
This the muspascat-taculan room used for only. Canada’s the root source of most rotary conversations knuckle-knuckle insert size medium plath cementeriannatipn here and return in ten minutes
This muspascat-taculan room get inside now please dinner’s ready get inside yes Mommy yes used only.
This room click only. (and once in hair-up yes bones oh yes doctor Smith oh yes and oh yes yes yes yes doctor Smith doctor Smith yes yes yes go by that time it’s not hard set up immediately call for heavily armed back up head’s great, great uncle *what’s that spell what’s that spell* why Gregor that spells there’s a Gregor in the house eh get inside now please dinner’s ready why the hell’s heavens s’ you taking o long want a whipping do you must be looking for a whipping get inside yes Mommy yes eh eh e there a—ooooooooo GREGOR IN THE HOUSE A ONCEANDFORALLIAN GREGOR IN THE HOUSE sure it hurts what you think sure it hurts, but we got to do it anyway okay all-rat yer-ass sure sure sure it’s I got to do it anyway you happy now get inside now please dinner’s ready why the hell’s heavens s’ you taking o long want a whipping do you must be looking for a whipping get inside yes Mommy yes Sneezie, it’s not we got to BackWhang! BackWhang! do it it’s just ME got to do it not we but ME ME only and not we but but I can’t see the difference’s a rat anypipe, since we go in they’ll do nothing just watch me do want a whipping a good beating then a whipping do you must be looking for a whipping get inside yes Mommy yes everything Yes I built three new warehouses BackWhang! on time and in budget no no liar liar it was US did it all you just sat-fat, and watched hey hey Yes I built ten thousand approximately little Black Bakelite boxes on time and in budget | buy me a set of size large purplish trousers | no no liar liar it was US did it all you just sat-fat, and watched hey hey we keep the whippings and the beatings in there BackWhang! but be sure to set them down slowly on our universally credited silver-starred pallets Yes I launched thirteen huge hulls at my shipyard on time and in budget click click click no no liar liar it was US did it all using such devices keeps them fresh keeps them holy you just sat-fat, and watched hey hey no no yes yes no no its maybe maybe no no its yes yes yes yes no no no apportion these back there properly please we forgot we forgot but better late than never
tight slacks or tight trousers big sofa or davenport rocker-recliner please we’re here for hats not hose (particuluplarre)
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! there we’re sure that’s enough if there’r spares do not trouble to return to inventory for NO its not yes yes no maybe pay two dollars please ; .. ,, I want to keep them fresh and holy Mommy just like you do I also want to too
1 2 3 4 I pock-mark do not get the gas you need to get the gas I don’t the seals have been broken they can’t be reinventoried so just donate just d. gas you usually do so go get it if we need it that is if you get it when we don’t need it an accident may push out some stem and BLAST’s what may happen so—avoid that at all costs. why is it as I look at you I can actually see your whole brain stem ding!
before eating that one there needs a series of evenly spaced good heavy beatings
h ‘”]{+ GET GAS getting gas’s below me oh yah that there’s way up-top you and looks like they’re getting gas ha ha ha when mother calls and you don’t come in expect a good slap in the face (the bare minimum) Barry swivel! swivel! like this Daddy? “ ., yes like that {behold the McIntyres’ brand new Wok} swivel swivel Wow! Look! Are those fighter planes? do {of which they are so proud} the gauges say we’re full UP yet do day Daddy what do the gauges say ar ne beeo enough in, DADDY? is that you Barry? Is that really, really you?
are we in deep enough now
swivel-pivot
I hope so
no you don’t son hope doesn’t count as a strategy round-about here and environs
Nancy!
What?
Graddieo-o-oooookslaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan. Meestah Bo-Peepula’s windows (yah?) grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr couch glandular couches meest’s glandular couches the name of the {which will in their service serve up all future dishes wonderfully hot} conditions who’s condition why your condition of course you’re the one strapped to the machine not I see I am here and you are there and taken together we may be presumed so | Up there! Look up there! They’re so loud! Must be fighter planes! | but that does not mean it is I with the condition by my God and by my word I had such a terrible condition as you, why—I’d immediately drop everything and go get my head examined eh eh eh eh they say quite often to the deviating in some sometimes every very minor way, crap g’eon shit go get your head examinedDOC we think here quite securely you need your head examined, yes, no indifferently (write this down skoal) there {I got a date w’ a bunny out back o’ the laundromat} yours appears to be still on (write a checkmark under agency name there skoal {Christ, Ross, a checkmark cannot be an agency name reconsider *} while the patient goes on strapped in patiently waiting having faith in DoC Pantunnio’s pock-mark sheepskin “hung on their wall” saying in script this that and ten others this is indeed the son of God Yup, yup; yup yup yup yup yup yupyupyu[pock-mark pock-mark pock-mark pock pyu[yu[ in that paragraph there honey that’s there go read it |split| tgilasr-trinckular-r-r-r-ianne JESUS Christ, my back itches God DAMN God-d-d-DAMN there’s a tree by this here you may rub it ? this here what this here ? Is your name Lillian James? If so, then, I’ve that there this here ? oh oh those this here’s over there wait no I will go I will go I will go o’er there I will get one * say wise in the cemetery by the Louthurralianne’s churchery I will go get one see? See those there? I swear to God it was one of these graves right round here like a record baby round round right round + oh and so I need that large of a surgery Doc? how far out around when one says right round here how right round are we talking? “?. are we talking just one next grave all around ‘vry direction but {excuse me my friend here and I would each like a few more “injections” of that please and/or thi(a)nk you} why the hell’s such a simple condition required that huge of a surgery Doc doublecheck that out please Doc uh oh please this one here ah I {yes almost just almost but this grave here’s where ‘e count needs to start from +oh yah and okay just shut up and stand corrected surgery Doc?shitsurgery Doc? that’s the problem with you and this pack-o-chaps with you, you can’t Navarronned ‘lly just (the guns just the guns) shut the hell up and simply stand corrected o no no n no no now 998&&&$ yes it does matter which grave gets dug in the center ‘cause the anomaly’s there’s that years back in a visit the marker was a quietly unusual wrought iron custom-made cross full of curlicues. See? See? And all painted black in a suit of glossy Rustoleum you know you can picture the kind of black painted wrought iron curlicues what when you rub your finger down them you detect tiny bumps tits and otherwisely defectivities all over the wrought iron, and there was so, so much more to see and to know about it what an interesting grave marker what an interesting on’ BUT it is gone now.
What? My God, no. That is terrible.
Yes, terrible, And, where it is now is, a mystery.
Sure is yes, sure is.
I really want to see it but it seems no longer there.
What a pity.
No longer there.
A pity.
Not there.
Pitiful.
Yes. BackWhang!
Yes.
Yes pitiful Party! Oh, *## simply stand simply stand simply
