P.F.S. Post: January 2024

Adam Fieled (editor, Plymouth Meeting, Pa, USA): Chimes: New Visions: Ice Skating Rink

The weekend nights we went ice skating at the Old York Road Ice Skating Rink, semi-adjacent to Elkins Park Square, also on Old York Road, weren’t much for Ted and I: just something to do. Neither of us could ice skate that much. But there was a DJ playing good music over the PA, and taking requests, and a lot of Cheltenham kids hung out at the rink on weekends, so it was a chance to see and be seen. One uneventful ice skating night, I tumbled onto my ass as usual, and rose to see a girl, sitting in a clump of kids, on the bleachers, staring fixedly at me. My next pass, I got in a good look at her, and saw the spell was holding: she was still staring. She was a dirty blonde, thick-set build, with very full lips, a wide mouth, and wearing a dark green winter hat. I made up my mind: my next pass, I was going to stare as fixedly at her as she was at me. Ted was floating in the environs somewhere, and didn’t know what was going on. So, here I came, looking at the girl in the green winter hat I’d never seen before, who seemed to want a piece of my action. I was close enough to make my presence known to her; we locked eyes; and what I saw in the delicate blue eyes was a sense of being startled, shocked into awareness somehow. Only, there was something so raw, so frank in them that I had to look away. My next, and final pass for the time being, the same thing happened. My eyes were startled, in an animal way, by how startled, how riveted her own eyes were, and I found myself unable to prolong contact. As Ted and I hung in the changing room, which had picnic tables and benches in it and doubled as a hang out space, I relayed to Ted, not without pride, what had happened. Ted was a reasonable, rather than a jealous type, but shy. So, the mysterious dirty blonde sat with her friends still, unmolested by us. Edward, our close acquaintance, a year older than us but kind, and conversant with almost everyone at the rink, was someone I could consult, so I did. I pointed her out, and he said, “Oh, that’s Nicole. Do you know her?” “No, I was just curious. Thanks, Eddie.” He chuckled, and left us alone, close acquaintanceship not guaranteeing me any more than that. I had wild hopes that Nicole would burst dramatically into the hang-out room with her friends, and perhaps propose marriage to me. When the gaggle of kids including Nicole, who had all been bleacher-hounding, left, they walked past us, down the steps and out. Nicole did not venture a final glance. For several months after that, I hoped Ted and I would see Nicole at the rink, but we did not. It was a lesson in the live-wire nature of desire, as it lives between people— how flames both begin to burn and are extinguished, out of nowhere, at the behest of forces no one really understands. Ted, that night, did his rounds, building a solid structure which would enable him to become a popular kid at CHS. I lit somebody on fire, but in such a way that all that could come from it was subsumed beneath implacable surfaces. Somewhere, I felt instinctively, was the key to the mystery I was looking for. Even if finding that key meant riding confusing, misleading, and/or agonizing waves.

.........................................................................................................

What the matrix structure of the Old York Road Ice Skating Rink held for us kiddies— as has been said, a place to see and be seen. Ted and I were sad to watch on the ice. But quirks emerged during our time there— the appearance of strange kids, and strange situations, from other places. Like Nicole. It wasn’t long after Nicole that a new, mini-epoch began at the rink, based on the manifestation of another figurehead, (they said) from Abington. Josie was a pretty, lank-haired blonde with a semi-mottled complexion. Like Nicole, she liked to sit on the bleachers with her Abington buddies. Word reached us that, unlike Nicole, Josie was loose. If you could get her down the stairs, into the parking lot, over past the big misshapen rock which was rather uselessly placed between the rink and the back of Elkins Park Square, into the no-man’s-land area where older kids liked to hang, anything might happen. I wanted a shot at Josie, too. As was de rigueur, Edward was our go-between. I had faith that he could power-broker anything. I called to him, on a night in March getting slightly too warm to still be at the rink, “Eddie, can I talk to you for a minute?” “What’s up, Foley?” “Is this thing about that Josie girl from Abington really true?” “I don’t know. I don’t know her that well.” “You know what people are saying.” “Sure I do, but there’s nothing too definite about what I’ve been told.” I was losing him. I had already semi-crossed a line Edward had set in place about what you (whoever you were, and however he ranked you) were allowed to extort, as precious data, from him. I had to act fast. “I want to meet Josie, Eddie. Can you help me?” “C’mon, Foley. That stuff doesn’t come cheap. Remember, I don’t know you too well, either.” Next gambit: “Alright, listen, Eddie. Didn’t you say earlier that you have a paper to write for Langhorne?” He nodded. “I’ll write it for you. If you’ll introduce me to Josie, I’ll write your Langhorne paper. You know I can.” “Really, Foley?” “That’s right, Eddie.” “Alright, give me half an hour. I’ll see what I can do.” The half hour wait was an itchy one. Ted was on an unstoppable roll. He’d lined up an impressive array of conquests. Mostly guys, mostly about how he was going to be situated. I was neglecting to do that task, because it just wasn’t in me to do it. Whatever was going to happen at CHS, I was ready to wing it. After ending the half hour with ten minutes of stumble-across-the-ice, I walked into the changing room to find Edward sitting there with Josie. “Josie, this is Adam Foley. Foley, call me tomorrow night, I’ll give you the assignment.” “You got it, Eddie.” I got terrible stomach butterflies; I thought I might vomit. I thought meeting Josie would be an ebullient, light-on-it’s-feet kind of production. Josie’s vibe up close was very heavy. I mumbled a few random pleasantries. Josie said, “Are you OK? You seem a little tense.” I was extremely tense. “No, just recovering from falling on my ass out there.” “Do you want to go for a walk?” “OK.” Down the stairs we went, out into the lot. “Here’s what I’m going to help you with, Adam Foley. Here’s what you need. You think you know who girls are— you think you know what girls want. This is not about us being friends or not friends. You sought me out, here I am, but I’m going to give you my diagnosis.” We were behind the big stupid rock— none of the older kids was around. “Here— you get to kiss me one time, no tongue.” As was incredible to me, I found myself momentarily lip-locked with Josie. A group of older kids, twenty yards away, behind Elkins Park Square, were moving towards us. The thing had to end very fast. The kiss was over. “Now, here’s who you are. You’re the guy who always sticks out like a sore thumb wherever you go. You’re the one who wants to do everything your way. You think you’re special. What I have to tell you is this— you are special, Adam, but in this world not everyone likes that. Your friend goes out of his way to make himself not special. You need to learn from us— you can’t always be exactly who you want. Eddie said, you’re a year younger than us. When you get to where we are, you better understand that the more you stick out, the more you’re a target. So, here’s how you pay me back.” We went over to Hillary’s in the Square; I bought her an ice cream cone. She ate it quickly, standing in the Square. Then, she took my hand, led me back to the rink. Even before the top of the stairs, she disappeared into a group of Abington kids. Had I learned my lesson? Sort of. I associated being special with the magic of words and music. I wasn’t a target yet, except maybe with Dad. Who knew? Now, I had an extra paper to write. I would try, for Eddie and Langhorne, to make it a special one.

Susan Wallack (Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia, USA): "Medea's Other Child"

A dozen years in seasons of days
sweeping light across the girl-child's

eyes unaccustomed to the night.
A kind of wisdom. (I dream of her

in the dark, my darkness, a stage.)
Slight, stooped, dusty, bare feet worrying

the roots of tumbleweeds and fruited bramble
growing in spurts, untended. Father

a conquering hero, liar and cheat,
gone for good. Mother spending time

waiting on men, waiting on tables
in a greasy cafe, the sorceress still,

dyed hair piled high as a crown upon
a furrowed brow. Passion spent in a rush

like the nouveau riche spend: all fleece and rubies.
In the end there's nothing for the kid

but spidery afternoons alone
imagining desire, throbbing

and hot as a black widow's bite,
consuming her flesh against her will.

originally published in Mississippi Valley Review, Spring 1994

Steve Halle (Palatine, Illinois, USA): from blackbirds

it smells the same
and is
each time

blind

signs, but
Bernard can’t see
doesn’t even want
to see, any—

more than enough
suffering, glimpsed
in flashes of scent,
or hand on face not his own

around here, something radiates

near the incinerator, an underground
man, his back hunched
disfigurement he could
neither afford to
fix or let fester

words on a transistor
or bracketed tee-vee:
simple information:

this pill, now
that pill, when…

he chews the arm
of left-behind
eyeglasses, nervous
like a phrase out of Nietzsche,
her body lingers here, there
above or down a corridor, in
a ward far off,
a fake-perked nurse untying
gowns and tearing out
sutures and un—

telling her
my sister and i ride
elevators up,
down, declare
secret places
best for assurance

here everything’s going / got to be ok.

Otoliths in print, etc.

Otoliths, retired from publishing new issues, is nonetheless still fluently in print.

Mike Land (Philadelphia, USA): "Fall Hunter"

Tom Brady had two hours left to wait at the Dark Brew Coffee House before the girl he’d arranged a date with would arrive. His empty mug woke him to the uneasiness in his muscles. He begged himself to bring it to the counter for another refill to help him wait. Instead, he continued looking down, aware of that unavoidable decision he would make prior to three o’clock.

In the face of his weakness, he formed his usual scowl that mixed contempt with distrust. Put off by the surroundings he’d found himself in nearly every day, he couldn’t understand why he continued coming back. Why after so much time, he maintained the semi-daily ritual of entering through glass doors, sitting unnoticed by the register, and rereading magazines nobody liked to see him carry. They portrayed the skill of a hunt, and the glory of a woodsman. Part of him wished it wouldn’t occupy every aspect of his interest, but he thought the need too inlaid to change. Photos or articles of dead and stuffed animals served to remind him of his weighty grasp of living. Such a grasp secured the truth he came to know in brutality.

Would-be peers despised his presence, mistook him as some worshipper of savage acts, a carrier of heartless ego. But it was his control. That control was the foundation for what he thought was steady protection. A few had tried to crumble those walls, intrigued by the distance, testing his defense. They brought with them a sense of pity Brady could not stand. He had no problem in making that clear to them, and quickly they’d give up. With each abandonment, his fortress grew more remote. It wouldn’t be long before he accepted his emotions as unchangeable, and his holiest belief, the unavoidability of destruction.

He had been going this direction for years, and truly, he thought himself too weak to care. Within him there was a pride to his resignation. Viewed as a flawless safety in identifying his weakness, he managed to defeat everyone, first of all himself. He was desperate for something more, of that much he was certain, but unwilling to sacrifice the security of his loneliness, he was doomed to remain inside the boundaries of a white-walled prison. He was realizing the sublime plan for Tom Brady. And he shed tears at the thought of the boy who became a man overnight, and the man who stood forever still while the world around him tore itself apart.

He was in the midst of this conclusion when she interrupted him. “How can you support such cruelty?” Annabel Black asked of Brady’s fascination with a stuffed and mounted four-point Buck he’d been poring over in the pages of “Hunter’s Quarterly." Both saddened and entranced by the animal’s reduced glory at once, he was unable to move his focus from the polish of the page. “I don’t.”

“Then why do you have the magazine?” She asked; not to be phased by his listless response. “If you don’t support it, why do you have the magazine?” Riled, but wholly unafraid, Annabel looked down at the six-foot frame of Brady’s filled out body, shoulders curling in on themselves, hands hidden beneath the table. He stared into the gloss of the magazine’s image, silently begging for its lifelessness to save him from his own surrender. He looked up at her, rejoining the pain he’d worked so hard to escape.

"I don’t support it,” he said. “But sometimes it makes sense. When nothing else seems right, it reminds me why it doesn’t. And that’s all I’m looking for.” He saw the hope evident in her approach being brought to the surface. He saw her almond-colored eyes growing larger because of his sincerity.

“Well, I’m glad,” she said with a smile. “I kind of expected something as sad from you.”

Brady nodded at his own notoriety. She embraced a moment of hesitation. An indication of the deeper desire to acquaint with the man she’d seen so sadly self-contained, he could only have loathed companionship. But in that moment of hesitation, that incalculable gap between what’s expected and what’s desired, Brady’s insides begged him to lower the fence he’d so ably constructed for this very reason.

Annabel subtly nodded, preparing to return to her table, once again to rejoin Dylan Thomas in a lonely embrace.

“Wait,” he said. “You should hear how I feel about domesticated animals… I mean that’s really depressing.”

“I’m a dog person,” she said.

“They’re so sad,” replied Brady. “It’s in their eyes. Like the only thing they’re really aware of is that they’re going to die.” He paused. “But I don’t really know, I only ever had an Iguana.” Annabel had a seat in the chair across from Brady, now more animated than she’d ever seen him; more animated than he himself could remember.

“An iguana, Really?” she said.

“No. Not really,” said Brady with a playful smile. Annabel ha-ha’d quietly and closed the magazine that lay open between them. Brady brought his hands out from underneath the table and let them rest close to hers.

They discussed matters Brady hadn’t given thought to since graduating from college. Political beliefs, philosophy, science theory, so many things he turned his back on when each was unable to answer the questions he’d felt plaguing him since he understood what the word plagued meant. When they offered him no relevant explanations as to why he had such difficulty with change, he denied their merit, and was left in the wake of his own recalcitrance. This was three years before he’d met Annabel, and in a matter of hours, she convinced him of the possibilities changing his life could afford.

Throughout the night, their knees would touch beneath the table, and it was more contact than he had known in some time. Brady’s look wouldn’t stray from her eyes, and she held his depth for as long as he desired. He couldn’t resist an almost constant, garish grin that Annabel returned with equal earnest. Suddenly, he began to warm up to the fact that maybe the life he’d devoted to remoteness wasn’t worth its numbing reward.

When Dark Brew closed that night, he didn’t want to let her go. He was shocked by his reaction, astounded at the level of connection he wouldn’t allow himself to deny. As they parted, he pleaded with himself to set up another chance to connect. There was so much more about her he wanted to know. And for once, he wasn’t terrified of letting her know about him. He wanted to tell her about himself, about the fear he never felt strong enough to contend with. It was what he hid from the world, out of the sheer terror of making it worse on him.

Before he could form the words, she was talking about Mark. Annabel told Brady that she’d met him a few months before; and that while she wasn’t sure about what they wanted from each other, she was certain he and Brady would get along as friends. “Yeah, famously, I’m sure,” he said with a sting that wasn’t intentional. “I just thought you should know, before you--” she stopped. “And I don’t even know. It’s just… we know each other.” He fought back the urge to abandon her. He hung on to that faint chance they had of truly finding each other like it was his last shot at bravery. It was enough to keep Brady from giving up, at least for a little while. He would say it was fine, and ask her for another night. All the while he kept in mind the haunting connotations of what exactly ‘we know each other’ means.

He sat at Dark Brew staring at an empty mug, waiting for a girl he thought could tear him away from his stillness. Deep inside him he knew it could not be the case. He recalled the memory of his father, and knew Annabel could never understand. No one could. To even make an attempt would only remind him of the pain he had the power to dull if only he continues to reject the world around him. He stared into the empty mug, pushed it across the table, and walked out of the shop. If she saw him again at the coffee house he would make sure to be short, and snide; he had a gift for showing people the door, and would fake pleasure in telling her he was no longer interested.

As he left Dark Brew he knew exactly what to do. He would walk the few blocks to Barnes & Noble to buy the latest issues of his hunting magazines, the objects that washed away the risk Brady saw in uncertainty. He hated their reaffirmation of his debilitating solitude, but it was all that he could count on. Rejection of everything was what granted him his safety, and for Brady, that safety counted most.

He pushed in the giant glass door that marked the bookstore’s entrance. At the magazine rack labeled “outdoors” he gazed across the unfeeling eyes of hunters as they stood around their prizes. How he hated them. How much they reminded him of his own misery, and how no matter what he thought, nothing inside him could change for the better. He saw it only a moment after looking. Spread across the cover of “Fall Hunter”, there was the weathered figure of a man in a room filled with mounted animals, his eyes grown weary after a life spent devoted to death. His sullen face looked out from the glossy cover, communicating a truly profound guilt. Not for all the life he had taken, but for his own that was wasted. He stood in front of his rewards, and presented only a gap where pride should have lived. The man had beaten everyone, and bitterness was his prize. Distance from humanity was what gave this hunter such a showroom, but the showroom was what sliced him down the middle. He looked two parts now, one in control of his own decisions, and the other, their servant. His soul was stuck between them, attached to neither, a part of nothing. The choice the man had made was to remain there, unwilling to change what he became. And now, the man’s detachment seemed all that there was to protect him from the sadness of his life. Inside his stern and pitiless look, Brady saw distrust for the whole human race. Brady saw himself.

A genuine fear rushed through him, for in that moment he might have forever stayed the same. He saw his life before him, and what he’d gained and lost. He at once saw the memory of his father, Ryan Brady. It was a memory he had tried so long to bury, but now it struck him in a way impossible to ignore. Brady saw his father, laying dead on the soft dirt of a forest. It was their first hunting trip together, and Brady knew, it must have been his fault. It tore him to pieces each time he remembered, ashamed that it happened, ashamed of his reaction, ashamed of himself. But something inside him had changed. His myopic view of the past was diminishing. He began to see the world in front of him, and the static resolution of every situation’s predictable security. It wasn’t possible. Not for him; not for Thomas Brady. He’d allowed his soul to shrink to the point of invisibility, to where he was nothing more than a shell, hardened by cynicism and removed from the world he had once adored. He was more than that. He was always more than that.

Dropping the magazine to the ground, he turned on his heels and ran back to his meeting with Annabel. As he ran, he felt a freedom from the crushing weight his self had strangled him with for so long. He was running from a life that would not catch up with him. At his back there was the past, and he’d spent long enough in its deadening grip; in front of him there was potential, danger, truth. He felt in his muscles a joy he could not remember, his heart pumping through him the beauty of epiphany. All at once he was made aware of how wrong he was, why he’d done it, and how it could be changed. He was running to Annabel. He yanked open the door of the coffee shop and saw her waiting. He crossed the length of the floor to where she sat and plopped down in the chair opposite, not giving a thought to his winded and sweaty presence.

“Jesus,” she said. “Are you okay? I thought you stood me up.” “Annabel, listen to me.” He paused only a moment to catch his breath. In her arched eyebrows he saw a trust he at once admired. “I--” He started. “I-- I lied when I told you my father was a lawyer. He’s not. He died. He dropped dead of a heart attack on our first hunting trip together. It just gave out, he gave out. I don’t tell people that. Ever. But I told you because I want you to know. Because I can see you helping to save me from myself. I want to know you, Annabel. I want to know you.”

She winced at the revelation. “Brady, I’m sorry. I... Last night I told Mark about you. It was what he needed to get serious about us.” Brady felt what was distinctly similar to a punch in the stomach, but nothing could dull his surge of emotion. “Jesus, I’m really sorry, Brady. I mean, it doesn’t mean we can’t still be friends.”

Brady looked across the table with eyes that asked nothing more than understanding. He could for once, begin to understand himself. He saw the past he was prepared to move on from and expected to see the future as securely, but couldn’t. What lay ahead was unclear, it was unknown. And that’s what came to change him. The future’s unpredictability was what would inspire him, not Annabel, not a picture on a magazine, but the promise of a future he would admit was beyond his control.

He looked up at Annabel. Her expression was that of awaiting some explosive rebuff that would have ended her time at the Dark Brew coffee house. “No, it doesn’t,” he said with a smile. “I realized what there’s no getting around.” She looked at him with those eyes, warm enough to melt a hunter.

“I want to know you.”

Adam Fieled (editor, Plymouth Meeting, Pa, USA): from PICC (A Poet in Center City) #50

“Tell me a story…” is what Debbie Blantz chose, quizzically, to open with, after I handed her the cell phone. Larsen Spurn, ensconced in South Philly, was on the other end. It was the middle of the night; maybe 2 am; and a bunch of us were lying, stoned, in an open field directly behind the Contoocook in Henniker. I worked, as always when stoned, on intuition and hunches, and I had a hunch that Larsen would answer his phone. So, Deb decided, still wet from rope-swinging into the river in her bra and panties, and perhaps on a whim, to ditch her customary Brahmin façade and slug Philly in the guts. It was a gutsy time to be there. The confluence of circumstances which brought the poets to Henniker, eighty miles outside Boston (still, arguably, hanging in as a Boston ‘burb, as Henniker, New Hampshire was), was not important to anyone then. We all had blood-and-guts work to take care of. Whoever Wendy Smith thought she was by then, I had my own, semi-heart of darkness version of her, because I knew she would end up famous, and because I wanted us to have a real night together. A few nights later, we were all lounging with drinks in a large living room space, in one of the dormitories we were allowed to use, and I invited her into my room, down the hall, for a smoke. Nothing happened at first— but a wind current somehow slammed the door shut, and the rest, as they say, was history. Even as what happened failed to advance her Virginia family’s Boston interests substantially. I always tried to get her to stick to the poems, stick to the poems. Sometimes, I succeeded. This action was all relayed to John Rind muy rapidamente. He, it would seem, cared more about the action in Philly, but he was planning a surprise for me. So, the penultimate night of the retreat, I was stunned to see Larsen’s silver Toyota Corolla roll into my temporary parking lot, carrying John Rind and Christopher Severin. John emerged from the front seat, not having driven and thus unsurprisingly drunk, with a bottle of Stoli. “Jesus Christ, guys. Nice Corolla, Larsen. Jesus.” “Well, you sounded like you were having so much fun, we thought we’d join you.” Christopher couldn’t resist adding, “I’ve got the camera and I’m ready for action. Where are the suspects?” I laughed, because Wendy, I knew, would hide from a camera. Debbie, who I enjoyed just being buddies with, was more promising. “Wait here, guys. Let me see who I can round up.” Sure enough, Debbie and the whole Jon Arnold crew, were hanging out on an adjacent porch. They gave me the usual quizzical stare and I said, “Some of my friends are here from Philly, guys. We can move you past all that white wine-n-wine cooler crap and into the vodka zone. You in?” Debbie ran her hands through her blonde mane and the soprano sing-song emerged, “Is this the guy I was talking to the other night on the phone?” “Yeah, Larsen, and two other guys.” “I’ll go. Do you guys want to come?” “Uh…we will.” So, the party of five we were, Debbie and I and three pick-ups I only vaguely knew, ambled back to the lot and the Stoli. I was stunned to see Wendy Smith already there. “I met your friends here, Adam. They seem to have more vodka on their hands than you do. John here’s been mighty friendly.” She took a neat, not insubstantial pull of the stuff. Eventually, John, Christopher, and Wendy formed a group to do something obscure— an indoors place in walking distance she thought good fodder for pictures. Oddly, as I couldn’t have called, it was Christopher and her who seemed to click most. Unfortunately, there went our vodka. “Guys, let’s go to Daniel’s, alright?” Larsen was accosted by Debbie, “And you, buster, have a lot of ‘fessing up to do. I think I know your story, indeed.” Things were blurry; we found ourselves seated outside at Daniel’s, and I suddenly remembered that these three weirdos would have to sleep somewhere tonight. “So, y’all can crash in my room, right?” “Yeah. That’s what we thought.” Debbie chirped, “Won’t they be knocking Wendy out of place?” “No, Deb. That’s over. I mean, it’s not over, but we’re not getting married.” Gleeful at my drunkenness, Deb rejoindered, “Thanks, Adam. I can see you’re thinking carefully about what you’re doing, as usual.” Oh what a night, as the song goes. And it did with the three goons crashing on my floor. Christopher got some shots he didn’t expect to get; John found enough action to clean off most of the Stoli; and Larsen met Jon Arnold and made instant business venture plans to connect Henniker and South Philly. When they left the next day, I understood that my life had developed an intense, headlong sense of momentum, and that for the time being, I was just along for the ride. Silver Corolla or not…

Andrew Lundwall (Rockford, Illinois, USA): from Gardening at Night

ALLURE

transparent mattresses gray clouds
stars of sad reunions
sad centers of nectar
frigid with ground below
the spinal cord of
is rotating hum
is splintering
wooden halo
beneath the weight
taken in installments
anything is moon
wear it
whether pills or
metallic sacrament
saharan depressions
the days' dials pursue
robes flowing behind
profound obsessions
stringed instruments
purpose is problem
she'd kicked her habit
i'll admit
that i was hesitant
infested persistent
a leg up her skirt
is motivation
lurking around
the telephone booth
with its sincerest face on
my legs would not and still
last night
the rosary between her knees
her face from east to west
like an echo between poles
it was emotionally close captioned
it read like telepathy as it
struggled from shoulder to shoulder

GOODNESS

she looked so real
i couldn't bring myself
to hold her muster up
the sky is funeral blue
as anxious earth unrolls
before and behind you
a glued face to a window
is where godess
refuses intervention
a glued face to a window
is a face instead of you
unsteady on glossy feet
the city's recycled son
packing an unheard-of heat
in his tight jeans levi's
two neon virgin marys
flashing in his scrambled eyes
or remember when norfordville we'd went
to do when you'd thrown away important
that day way back in her ageless beauty
the clouds pissed all of this passionate intensity

© Andrew Lundwall 2009

Susan Wallack (Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia, USA): "Gone"

1.
You disappear so beautifully.
Eyes wide, perfectly aligned,

as if you could see, as if
Matisse's joy

might be happiness...the azure/
pumpkin/scarlet fields set

lightly inside his penciled outline.

The main star shines, no glare.
And it's possible that

somewhere less frantic
charged particles

rest before they exit.

2.
But blonde light, like a starlet's
hair, sweeps all things

equally: calamity rests,
fallow in the field.

And the north-bred yearling hawk

looms motionless, like a stuffed
& mounted version of himself.

Watching. Shadowless. Red eyes wide
& perfectly aligned. And then,

when it's time, he just disappears.

originally published in the Minnetonka Review

Vlad Pogorelov (California, USA): "No. 113"

So I quit my job,
Came back home,
Had two shots of vodka,
A glass of wine,
And the classical music
On the radio
Was just right
For the time being

A cat sat by me
She looked quite happy too
And, though she never quit
Her job of chasing cockroaches
Around the house,
Somehow both of us
Felt very good.

© Vlad Pogorelov 1997

Threescore and Ten, etc.

Threescore and Ten collects all seventy book covers of Otoliths, from the first issue in 2006 straight through to concluding issue seventy in 2023. Artists vary widely and wildly. Mark Young: editor, curator.

More from the new Chimes: #17 and #37.

Cheers!