Jennifer L. Freed
While My Brother is Having an MRI
to see whether the cancer
has also leapt to his brain,
my husband drives wintery roads,
bringing one daughter
to a gymnastics meet,
and the other gets ready for a party
of teenage girls soon to fill this quiet
house. The dog wags
at the door, eager
for his walk, and the plow
leaves another ridge of icy snow
at the end of the driveway.
Jennifer L. Freed
The Dog and I
It is only for a moment that we stand
on the weed-ruffled shoulder of the narrow road
while the driver whips past,
but when we are safe again
I see, locked in the dog’s quick clamp,
a throb of velvet grey,
dangling paws.
I am already too late.
There is nothing to do but continue
walking with the mystery
beating in the warm, oblivious jaw
that trots beside me.
Gabriel Furmuzachi
Qualm
I bought you big, yellow sunflowers. I brought them home and cut their stalks and left them to soak in a little boiling water for a few minutes – as you taught me.
‘They will last longer like that!’, you said.
I waited for you. I waited until the food I cooked got cold, until the music stopped playing, until it turned dark outside and only the streetlights were glowing, yellow and orange.
I sat there alone, looking out the window, trying to guess where you might be, with whom you might be talking, what you might be thinking, whether you’d be laughing. I miss your laughing.
Each time I’d hear the lift doors I’d prick up my ears, like a hound catching the smell of a rabbit, ready to run and chase you back into my heart. But the metal cage would only spew out strangers who didn’t have the key to our place.
The bed felt vast and uninviting, the sheets – cold, texture like ice on a lake in winter, blown by the wind, piling up on the shore, broken into thin scales.
I miss you.
I fell asleep thinking of the morning sky and of the sun emerging from behind interminable, smug clouds, steeped in red and grey. How long until the flowers will shed their yellow and dry out? How long still? AQ
Samuel W. James
Above the Tobacconist
White blinds, defined by dark mould spots in the corners,
ran back and forth on hollow wire insulator. Selby
town centre, where he moved after the divorce,
above the tobacconist, in his second-storey flat; I woke
to see dawn set to work, followed by the early risers.
The pet-food factory by the bridge, we passed it
on entering and leaving the town, and I guessed
it must be where these weekend workers were going.
When the wind blew a certain way, I could smell it
in summer through the window, like off milk and vinegar,
as I watched the cobbled carpark around which the centre
was built, noting the characters who came into the dingy
early opening shop; the faint ring of the bell below.
Jury S. Judge
Rubble of the Holy
Jury S. Judge writes that: ‘as an artist, I create art to express myself in the pictorial language of light, colour, and linear forms. I enjoy blending traditional and digital mediums within my art because I find this combination to be a versatile method of self-expression. Through my photography, I enjoy capturing the natural beauty of my home state, Arizona, as well as the other destinations where my adventures lead me. Rubble of The Holy features the hexagonal basalt columns of Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland. The camera I shoot with is a Canon. This photograph, however, was taken with a Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge.’
Rubble of the Holy, Jury S. Judge, photograph, 2017
Jayne Marek
Textures of Earth and Water
Jayne Marek feels that her ‘designs should be balanced — not set in the centre, necessarily, but using well-distributed optical elements. I use mostly natural subject matter to achieve visual ambiguities, often through abstraction, to explore how objective reality can be perceived in multiple ways. I also emphasize designs by using bright or unexpected colours and by experimenting with exposures. Readers can take a closer look and enjoy patterns or shapes that might otherwise go unnoticed’. A Nikon Coolpix set at ISO 400 and 64 respectively was used for the first two photos. A Nikon D90 at ISO 200 was used for the last. None used flash.
Birch Oracle, Jayne Marek, photograph, May 2009
Colorblock Reflections, Jayne Marek, photograph, March 2011
Candy Pebbles, Jayne Marek, photograph, March 2012
Carol Parris Krauss
The Fabric of the Heart
If you peel back the pericardium, snap the thick sac, tear
the heart from the ligaments binding it to the spinal cord
and diaphragm, lift the pulsing machine in your hand, and move
to the light for closer inspection, would you find that the fabric
of the heart is parallel to the texture of the owner’s personality?
Would mother be a sensible calico, father burlap knobby like tree bark,
sister cords of corduroy discontent, and the lone duck who sits
in my front yard without his mate, the one he has proudly waddled
around with for a month, his plump mottled gold beauty,
who has suddenly gone missing, would his heart be shredded satin
similar to the material that lines a coffin and blankets a lifeless body?
Or if you peel back the pericardium, snap the thick sac, tear
the heart from the ligaments binding it to the spinal cord
and diaphragm, lift the pulsing machine in your hand, and move
to the light for closer inspection, would you find that you have
simply stopped the heart from beating and it suddenly sits smooth
like the satin grass the lonely male duck rests in waiting for his
missing mate?
Amina Imzine
Zemestan 1836
A Work in progress from the Shahrarah Garden Chronicles
Rumours of war have slowed down as the cold and bitter winter has wrapped Kabul in a thick coat of snow. Katsumi looks up to the pale orange light that flames from the Asmai Lighthouse and feels relieved that the makeshift dispensary there is provided with Aleppo soap, eucalyptus, balsam and Chinese green tea so the guards, mainly Kashmiri Lancers, can safely rest until the next shift. “Welcome in the Zemestan season” would joke Javaad Khan, his friend, born in some remote Srinagar valley and pleased enough with his position, assigned to the Bibi-Mahroo Garrison, where two lighthouses stand above Kabul city.
Sirius heads between the Asmai Height and the Pushta Lighthouse. Curfew will soon start. Katsumi steps down with his snowshoes and quietly treks through the icy Shahrarah Lane. How long lasts friendship when our world is devastated by cholera or plague epidemics, and grief? Lady Alexandrina, whom he’d met in Tehran, passed away as soon as she returned home to St. Petersburg, for her nineteenth birthday celebration. She was his first English teacher, taught him Latin and both shared a passion for Central Asian Herbarium books — dried plants and seeds they collected from Tashkent and Balkh when landslides or sand dunes have not yet fully submerged the fields, orchards and gardens — Katsumi recalls as he tries to cope with the fresh snow that caps his Bactrian camel wool shield.
The rum is warming up his mood. Katsumi couldn’t forget her pale sapphire eyes that brightened up her delicate face, her vivid passion for collecting and editing war veterans’ reports – “I will not teach you French!” she proudly said. At the Shahrarah literary lounge, she loved reading light verse poetry, the modern tales of Alexander Pushkin — and such strong beauty in her calligraphy strokes, first in Russian then in English: As long as there is one heart on Earth where I still live, my memory will not die he received as her farewell gift.
He shakes his head as to remove the fresh flakes that stick to his white silk face mask. Would poetry bring us some kind of relief? He learned a lot with Lady Alexandra too, when she lived in Kabul. She became his second, friendly English teacher, even if she had soon forgotten her cousin Alexandrina. Like the white, petrified Shahrarah trees lane, there is a silence that doesn’t need to be awoken, so Katsumi treks quietly.
The rum will lift up his mind, as Charles Masson promised. Was he too safely back in London? For the nine-month journey is full of unpleasant surprises, as Katsumi recalls Lady Alexandra that pointed out. Far from his British friends and the Thames he would never visit, Katsumi feels safe here in the upper valley of the Kabul River, safer than in any of the European cities. He looks to the bright sky, and silently thanks the tough quarantine that he and the Afghan doctors-in-chief teams have set up. Aldebaran is going to cross the Pushta Height. Katsumi then notices a snowy, soft blanket that wraps the foothills, the crowded worker dormitories and the tent shelters for shepherd communities. How many will be alive tomorrow?
***
Snow showers keep burying Kabul in a bitter silence, while the pervasive fragrance of balsam floods the Hanzalah sanatorium. Katsumi quietly moves in and out of rooms, patients are sleeping. “Kurimoto-jan, tea is served”, whispers the nurse-in-chief. Katsumi frowns his delicate eyebrows, smoothly shakes his long blue cotton dress and heads towards the study.
Carefully, he removes his grey latex face mask, the grey latex gloves, and then washes his large and pale hands with the Aleppo soap. The nurse brings the china cup of qehwa but Katsumi’s face doesn’t smile — by the way no one has ever seen him smile, except perhaps Lady Alexandrina. The nurse is one of the few who copes with his dead, calm, beardless face.
Katsumi’s skilled hands return empty the warm cup. It’s time for the monthly report, in English, as requested by the Colony Police station. Katsumi picks up his favourite slim brush and unrolls a blank, silky sheet of paper. As he writes, his brown eyebrows turn into thin moon bows:
December 1836.
Two hundred casualties of pneumonia — 30 from Bibi-Mahroo foothills, 80 from the Shahrarah Women hospital, including 50 infants, 30 from the Pushta Workers Dormitory… Silently the nurse leaves the quiet coroner alone in the fragrance of balsam now mixed with cardamom.
***
AKaiser
Fireflies
Illuminated around a fire
our cold backs to the night
feet half-buried in cool sand
bird-heads cocked we stare
at lanterns passing.
We wonder why they were launched
why these human-made fireflies
were sent off to wander
the blue black pre-night air
past the still moon.
Papyrus paper
spirited by the lighted candle.
Ancient skin and flame.
The remembrance of someone gone
soul symbol adrift.
With the ashy end of a stick
we attempt to write our names
on the circling stone –
the feeble boundary between us
and burn –
discover that right angles ease
while curves resist
manoeuvring, drawing out
to meaningful loops
on mineral – and sky.
Michael Mingo
Qualia
The eye-searing saturation
of IKB, a liquid blue paint
that’s pigment-intense, spread
over my whole visual plane;
my head throbbing in the absence
of Advil, or a heartache turned
into a panic attack; just what
your lips on mine stimulate:
such qualities have no equal.
Would such squalls of sensation
never cease. My only wish
is for the aesthete’s existence,
though some may judge me
as a hedonist, an uncured
Epicurean. I would take
their derision as medicine.
Most mornings, I get up
so beset with depression
I sense less than that woman
raised in a monochrome room,
who studied nothing but color
as told by textbooks, data sets
from spectrometers. No one
is certain, no one agrees, what
she learned when she emerged.
Were I in Mary’s shoes, or rather,
in Mary’s mind, could I even
begin to tell the difference?