Archives

Sharon M. Carter
Door to Another Universe

Barely a moon
when the truck pulled into Madrid.
I gambled on safety—
the world seemed mine back then,
descended the bar’s damp steps,
their audience of broken
bottles, butt ends.
Doors opened to smoke, men,
a flamenco guitar.
The dancer, dressed as a crimson
sunset strutted on a pocket-sized
stage, her leather heels
drumming a tachycardia.
When rhythmic clapping began
she arched her body,
snapped open castanets—
a duelling conversation
overlaid by insistent feet.
Performers halted
on the same pulse.
She flipped back her hair
creating her own dark galaxy.
And laughed.

Timothy Dodd
Turkish Reunion

An arrival in apricot and chickpea, turnip and cherry
juice; foreign phrases vibrating memory; and names
of bus lines in the old otogar: Amasya, Dogubeyazit,
Trabzon. Two decades changes much: politics, roads,
printed currency—but I’ve returned for the friendship,
Pontic tombs and Hittite ruins, limestone caves and tea
at rusty tables in small towns, whatever the land grows.
Two more decades and it will all pass to the next age
without me, but today is mine, greedy for yogurt sprung
from mountain goats nibbling all day on wispy thyme—
and for the herdsman who smiles at his visitor, shakes
my hand like an old friend speaking common language.

Robin Helweg-Larsen
Raised by Expatriates

When I was young, best thing I’d seen
was Morgan’s fort gone under green
in jungled Panama.
The only flags in forests there
were what leaf-cutting ants could bear:
for planet’s anima.

I touched skulls resting in plain view
in empty deserts in Peru:
mud walls stood rainlessly.
I sailed on seas beyond all land,
stood with a sloth, yes, hand in hand,
saw men drink sugared sea.

I learned to bodysurf in waves;
I climbed cliffs, and saw bats in caves,
saw beaches of pink sand.
Result? I always loved to roam
but nowhere lets me call it home,
All lands are not my land.

Some places I’m a citizen
but never been a denizen;
with others, the reverse:
the places that I’ve lived in most
ignore me like an unseen ghost,
foreign, vague-skinned, perverse.

The wind has blown me since my birth,
my home is nowhere on the earth,
from place to place I roam.
My parentage determined that
my citizenship’s ‘Expatriate’…
so…everywhere is home.

Siobhan Logan
The Pirates of Carcinoma Bay

When they come, their Jack flag
is the red flush of a raging temperature;
your eyes glaze over. We raid stores
for potassium pellets, cold flannels,
a constant barrage of narcotics.
The sea churns with jetsam
and cannon smoke chokes the air
but nothing slows
the looming buccaneer ship.

By the time grappling hooks
are thudding into our deck, you barely
know your maiden name. Mistake
our bowsprit’s sea nymph
for your eldest daughter. We lash you
to the mast in your nightgown,
surround you with cutlasses drawn.
But there’s neither swash

nor buckle from these rovers
in midnight green. One cross skull earring.
Their sunburnt hands dispatch
our flimsy defences with ease, ransack
the ship, looting the rum.
No parlay offered, no prisoners taken
but one hostage. Stretchered
down the gangplank into their hold
you murmur polite assent.

Strung out on the rigging, we debate
furiously what manner of bribe
could win you back. They hoist anchor.
From the crow’s nest, our eyeglass
tracks their black mainsail.
The horizon empties.