Lucien Knoedler – Meneer Tan

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Meneer Tan
van
Lucien Knoedler

Voor Carl

Pais en vree gedompeld in Stille Zuidzeezoetheid. Deze woorden vielen mij in zodra ik twee aquarellen uit Fak-Fak terugvond, verborgen in de olijfgroene hutkoffer waarop in grote witte blokletters mijn vaders naam stond. Op elk prijkt een rieten huisje en een bemande prauw: het ene tafereel in nevelige maneschijn, het andere bij zonsondergang of ochtendgloren, maar aangezien de Arafoerazee zich er ten westen uitstrekt moet het avondrood zijn. Deze idylles zijn gemaakt door meneer Tan. Fak-Fak is gesitueerd in een gebied van 323.000 km² dat voorheen Nederlands Nieuw-Guinea heette. Sinds 50 jaar is dit het meest oostelijke domein van Indonesië, inmiddels onderverdeeld in Papua en West-Papua. Het stadje, nu in West-Papua, lag toentertijd wijd verspreid over de steile hellingen van het Fak-Fakgebergte. Haar ruwe, onverharde wegen stonden gemotoriseerd verkeer nauwelijks toe, behalve dan voor de militaire voertuigen van de kazerne bovenaan de berg. Ik woonde hier van mijn derde tot mijn negende jaar, met in 1955 een onderbreking van zes maanden in Nederland.

Tussen de have en goederen die mijn vader mij naliet, vond ik allerlei etnografica afkomstig uit de zuidelijke gebieden die Mimika en Asmat heten. De mensen in deze contreien leefden destijds nog in het Stenen Tijdperk. Ik haalde amuletten tevoorschijn, een angstaanjagend rieten masker en dolken gemaakt uit de beenderen van wilde zwijnen, kunstig uit been geneden neusstukken. Verder een bijl, een gepolijste steen die met een koord van bamboe aan een gevorkte tak bevestigd is waarmee de nauwelijks voedzame meel uit de stam van sagopalm werd gewonnen, en peniskokers van diverse lengten. Tussen deze voorwerpen, merendeels ingegeven door mannelijk chauvinisme en, zowaar, een soort strooien petticoat van een vrouw, ontdekte ik een olieverfschilderij van meneer Tan. Het stelt een Papoea-erf voor. Op stoffige, roodbruine grond staat een kamponghuis, aan weerszijden daarvan een klapperboom en pisangbomen, elk subtiel gestalte gegeven, en vooraan een oude vrouw met ontbloot bovenlijf. Op de achtergrond is, ruwweg geschilderd, de Arafoerazee te zien en Poeloe Panjang, het kilometers lange beboste eiland voor de kust dat eindigt ter hoogte van de baai van Fak-Fak. Op de achterzijde van het doek staat in elegante kalligrafie geschreven dat het is opgedragen aan mijn moeder. Was getekend K.T. Tan, 1955.

Uit dit schilderij spreekt dan wel geen enkele pretentie, zelfs al is het nog zo verfijnd en geeft het blijk van een voortreffelijk gevoel voor kleur, toch is het niet de vrucht van onschuldig tijdverdrijf. Immers, ontlenen wij mensen ons bewustzijn en empathie niet onwillekeurig aan de training van de coördinatie tussen onze handen, ogen en oren? Terwijl we een muziekinstrument bespelen of schrijven, tekenen, schilderen, houtsnijden, allerlei sculpturen maken, door enkel vrijelijk te spelen, verbinden en verlossen wij de ander en onszelf gelijktijdig. Zo stelde ook meneer Tan zich in staat zich tot zijn omgeving te verhouden, met zorg en smaak, met aandachtige oplettendheid sprak hij zijn verbeelding aan om zo ook de moed te verzamelen in het vooruitzicht van een jarenlang verblijf in een ziekenhuis.

Onwillekeurig denk ik soms terug aan mijn vroege jeugd, juist als het op een hete zomerdag gaat regenen en de atmosfeer opeens vervuld is van een kruidig, hallucinerend aroma dat me haast doet niezen. De poriën van alle organismen open zich dan, heb ik me laten vertellen, om in onstilbare genotzucht het hemelwater te ontvangen. Zijn geurzin en smaak niet de veruit oudste zintuigen? Alle herinnering ligt erin opgetast, om te overleven. Heel functioneel, nietwaar?. Het is pure magie in een ogenblik die zich op afroep nooit laat wekken. Ons geheugen is immers zeer beperkt, in tegenstelling tot wat we doorgaans pretenderen. In het verleden reizen is afhankelijk van onze ingeboren vindingrijkheid kloven en kliffen gemakkelijk te overbruggen of te omzeilen, terwijl we meestal de data en de volgorde van gebeurtenissen verwarren en ondertussen zonder scrupules ook nog inaccurate verhalen van anderen invoegen

Terwijl ik door de paperassen van mijn vader bladerde, ontdekte ik brieven van meneer Tan aan mijn moeder, getypt op luchtpostpapier. Daartussen een handgeschreven briefkaart waarop hij meldt dat hij van lepra genezen is verklaard en per schip naar Sorong gereisd, 250 kilometer noordwaarts, waar hij met succes aan beide voeten was geopereerd. Allengs kon ik me meneer Tan weer voor de geest halen. Ik was zes jaar oud toen ik met hem kennis maakte—ik meen me te herinneren dat dit in januari 1958 was, in het droge seizoen wanneer het kwik ’s middags wel vaker boven de 40°C uit rees.

Het was op zo’n middag dat mijn moeder mij vertelde dat we naar meneer Tan zouden gaan. Zij riep me meteen na de altijd oersaaie siësta die om vier uur voorbij was. Ik heb uit ongeduld de klok in de zitkamer eens een half uur vooruit gezet, maar juist toen ik de deur uit wilde gaan, kwam mijn vader uit de slaapkamer tevoorschijn, verbaasd dat de tijd vloog. Zodra hij mij beteuterd zag kijken, wierp hij mij niet een strenge blik toe waarmee hij zeggen wilde dat ik voor straf binnen moest blijven zoals toen ik een keer te vroeg uit mijn slaapkamerraam geklommen was. Nee, hij schoot in de lach en liet me gaan. Ik was zo opgelucht en besloot ook deze truc niet nog eens uit te halen.

Het leprozenhospitaal waar mijn moeder en ik naartoe gingen stond onder klapperbomen aan zee, even buiten Fak-Fak, aan het einde van de winkelstraat. Deze kota lag langs een hobbelige en stoffige straat van zo’n anderhalve kilometer lang: lage, merendeels stenen gebouwen links langs de rotswand en aan de zeezijde houten huizen en ook winkels waarvan de uiteenlopende bijgebouwen aan de achterkant op een woud van palen in het lager gelegen strand steunden. Daartussen was een grote Chinese santenkraam waarin een schap met een boel speelgoed, goedkoop en gauw stuk, made in Japan, aanlokkelijk toch omdat de meeste door een batterij werden aangedreven: grote vrachtwagens en auto’s, vliegtuigen en ook een UFO opgesierd met kleine kleurige lichtjes. Wie schetst mijn verbazing toen ik het lachende gezicht van de eigenaar van deze winkel vooraan boven de brede stenen trap tevoorschijn zag komen, terwijl ik met mijn vriendjes mijn verjaardag op het gazon voor ons huis vierde. Eenmaal op het bordes staand bleken zijn armen vol van het speelgoed dat ik een paar maanden eerder op zijn terloopse verzoek had aangewezen. “Welke vind je mooi?” vroeg hij. En ik herinner me ook nog goed mijn vaders gezicht toen de man het speelgoed voor mij neerzette, op het gras; eerst toonde hij zich beschaamd, om vervolgens berustend te zuchten. Wilde hij perse niet dat ik op de ene of andere manier voorgetrokken werd om hem, en dit al helemaal niet in bijzijn van mijn leeftijdgenoten, dit speelgoed zou even goed bij smokkelwaar hebben kunnen zitten, legde hij aan mij later uit. En was dit niet een verkapt verzoek om een gunst? Dit gebeurde later inderdaad wel vaker.

De winkelstraat van Fak-Fak, waar het leprozenhospitaal op uitzag, liep uit op de steiger in de baai waar het turkoois zeewater bezaaid was met koraal en kleine kleurige visjes. Aan de overkant van de baaimonding, ruim 500 meter verderop, lag naast de enorme rotswand Danawaria, een kampong verscholen achter mangabomen naast een imposante, wijdvertakte waringin die naar inheems geloof de levensboom wordt genoemd. Lag daar op het witte strand in de verte bij mangrovebossen niet ook een Amerikaans landingsvaartuig al vanaf de Tweede Wereldoorlog weg te rotten, zoals meerdere bij de hoofdstad Hollandia? Eenzelfde schip deed in Fak-Fak nog steeds dienst, het maakte deel uit van de marine.

Mijn moeder bezocht de leprozerie sinds we medio 1954 in Fak-Fak kwamen wonen, en nu mocht ik meneer Tan ontmoeten. Hij had naar mij gevraagd, verklaarde zij onderweg. Vanaf ons huis een kwartier lopen over een steil en pokdalig pad langs het rotsachtige, braakliggend terrein beneden ons huis links en rechts voorbij het algemeen hospitaal en de tennisbanen op een lager plateau, lag verderop naar beneden het leprozenhospitaal, verborgen achter hoge struiken. Voor we de houten trap naar de voordeur betraden, drie treden omhoog, vertelde mijn moeder dat meneer Tan er al jaren woonde. Ik bekeek zijn huis: een barak, een soort loods op palen van zo’n dertig bij vijftien meter in de oorlog op het strand gezet, was me verteld, van binnen een witgekalkte open ruimte met vast nog hetzelfde dak van donkerbruin uitgeslagen zinken platen die onder de middagzon hevig gloeien. Aan weerszijden van de zaal, onder de luikloze, met muskietengaas bespannen kozijnen, stonden wel twintig bedden in twee gelijke rijen opgesteld.

Het leprozendorp bij Merauke, de stad van zo’n 2000 inwoners waar wij nadien woonden – aan de kust van Papua nu, zo’n 1200 km ten zuidoosten van Fak-Fak – was onvergelijkelijk beter voorzien. Bij een centrale kliniek waren privéhuizen en kamers voor families en alleenstaanden neergezet. Mijn moeder verrichtte de officiële opening van dit door de Missie geïnitieerde dorp. Zij was immers de echtgenote van de resident van de op een na grootste provincie van Nederlands Nieuw-Guinea, zoals hij dit voorheen van de kleinere provincie Fak-Fak was. Terwijl mijn moeder, in de brandende zon gadegeslagen door een menigte, het lint doorknipte, stond mijn vader aan haar linkerzijde en rechts naast haar in een wit habijt Mgr. Tillemans, de Bisschop van Berissa gezeteld in Merauke – een zwaarlijvig heerschap met rusteloze blik.
De twee mannen, sinds hun ontmoetingen tijdens de oorlog in Melbourne en Brisbane bekenden van elkaar, waren niet zelden verwikkeld in een soms scherpe competentiestrijd. De prelaat bleek evenwel gesteld op mijn moeder, een domineesdochter, en dat scheen veel goed te maken. Er kwam bij dat mijn vader terdege besefte dat missionarissen en zendelingen van diverse nationaliteit al lang vóór de oorlog begonnen waren met ontwikkelingswerk in Nieuw-Guinea. De Nederlandse overheid vertoonde zich er pas daadwerkelijk na 1949, sinds de erkenning van de onafhankelijkheid van Indonesië. Dit deel van het voormalige Nederlands-Indië moest mettertijd zelf een natie worden (grenzend aan Papua New Guinea dat nu niet meer Australisch is want sinds 1975 een onafhankelijke staat). Maar van boven af gebeurde dit op stiefmoederlijke wijze waarbij de ervaren en toegewijde bestuursambtenaren ter plaatse werden geringschat, marginaal van middelen voorzien en uitermate slecht betaald voor hun veeleisende werk. Het leven van de van godsvrucht vervulde pioniers en later ook de doorgaans hoogopgeleide bestuursambtenaren was niet zonder risico, zo niet ronduit gevaarlijk, diep in dit uitgestrekte, dunbevolkte gebied van grotendeels ontoegankelijke, door grote, meanderende rivieren doorsneden regenwouden en een extreem en ruig centraal bergland waarvan de piek, de Puncak Jaya, een van ’s werelds zeven hoogste toppen is. Erkende mijn vader Tillemans’ autoriteit en antropologisch inzicht, diens onversneden inmenging in bestuurszaken deed zijn ogen dikwijls vuur spuwen. Hier kwam bij dat hij met katholieke gezagsdragers weinig op had. Niet zonder reden: nog pas 11 jaar oud trof hij een priester die verkondigde dat zijn Madoerese moeder geen plaats in de hemel verdiende omdat zij een moslim was. Wèl zijn katholiek gedoopte vader, een Javaan wiens grootvader uit Zuid-Duitsland immigreerde en spoedig na aankomst, maar net 19 jaar oud, met een inlandse, islamitische vrouw ging samenleven. Mijn betbetovergrootouders’ 13 dochters en vier zoons werden niettemin allemaal keurig katholiek gedoopt en elk kreeg ook een Duitse voornaam – tot in de vierde generatie. Mijn vader is evenwel nooit gedoopt (dit interesseerde zijn vader niet, om zijn enige kind wel officieel te erkennen). Hij hing geen enkel geloof aan, beschouwde alle religies als gelijkwaardig, en ook dit zou wel eens een verklaring kunnen zijn voor Mgr. Tillemans’ afwijzende houding jegens hem. Hoe dit zij, in mijn vaders hutkoffer vond ik in een schoenendoos waarin bij allerlei kiekjes een stapeltje handgemaakte uitnodigingen voor Heilige Kerstvieringen en Zalig Nieuwjaarwensen uit het leprozendorp bij Merauke.

Terug naar meneer Tan. Hij was van Chinees-Indonesische afkomst en bleek onderwijzer te zijn geweest, eind veertig destijds, schat ik, ruim tien jaar ouder dan mijn moeder. Ik zie hem nog voor me: de voeten verkrampt, broodmager en een grimas om de mond. Mijn moeder hintte met haar kin, een gebaar dat ik bij de grote, gebiedende ogen die zij dan opzette kende. Het was een teken dat ik me meteen gedeisd moest houden. Een overbodige waarschuwing, als zo vaak. Zonder een vingerwijzing duidde ze mij op de rij bedden ter linker zijde. Ik had meneer Tan al opgemerkt, beantwoordde ik haar blik met mijn ogen. Kom nou, hij is toch de enige patiënt in de zaal! Ter hoogte van het midden lag hij naar de ingang gekeerd, op een met een wit laken overtrokken bed, ineengedoken. Hij staarde voor zich uit, mijmerde, scheen me toe, de gitzwarte ogen wijd open.

Op dit tijdstip van de dag, tegen vijven, zaten de bewoners liever buiten, onder de barak waar kippen en een haan scharrelden. Niet meneer Tan. Verwachtte hij ons? Aan de overzijde van de zaal stonden de dubbele deuren wijd open en erlangs heen zag ik het eiland Poeloe Panjang liggen. Terzijde daarvan fluisterden twee verpleegsters in elkaars oor. Ze droegen – als ik het mij goed herinner – lichtgrijze gewaden tot net over de knie, met lange mouwen. Daaroverheen een wit schort, hun blote voeten in stevige bruine schoenen gestoken. Op het hoofd stond een kapje waaruit een eveneens lichtgrijze hoofddoek tot halverwege de rug hing. Die sluier was aan de voorzijde afgezet met een witte, gesteven rand. Deze missiezusters stonden ons bij de ingang op te wachten; de handen ineen geslagen boven hun middel knikten zij glimlachend en bogen minzaam het hoofd. Ze werden geflankeerd door een jonge leprozenarts, een ontspannen man met zachte, bruine ogen in een smal en bleek gezicht onder zwart sluikhaar. Hij droeg een lange witte jas met korte mouwen, om zijn hals hing een stethoscoop.

Bij het voeteneind van meneer Tans bed wachtte mijn moeder af. Zodra hij ons opmerkte, lichtte zijn blik op, krabbelde hij overeind en ging rechtop zitten, alsof hij, als kinderen in een schoolklas, verheugd op zijn beurt wachtte. In deze houding leek zijn tengere lijf in het open hangend pyjamajasje nog breekbaarder. Hij sprak met een zachte en toch heldere stem, en nu en dan kraaide hij van plezier, de haast tandenloze mond wijd open.

In de laaiende hitte bood de zilte bries nauwelijks verkoeling. Over een uur zou de avond vallen en dan pas daalde het kwik snel, tot zo’n 30°C. Verderop bulderde de branding op het koraalrif. Nu het vloed was schoof onder de vloer over het zand de zee traag zuchtend af en aan. Ik stelde mij voor hoe het er toeging als de fronten van hoge, pikzwarte wolken die in de moessontijd over de roerige Arafoerazee aandrijven, met donderend geraas hun vrachten ook op dit gebouw zouden uitstorten. Deze zware buien veroorzaken dikwijls banjirs die uiteraard ook de diepe, gecementeerde goten langs de overkapte veranda’s rondom ons hoog gelegen huis deden overstromen en vervaarlijk kolken. Een oorverdovend kabaal moest het er onder het zinken dak van dit hospitaal zijn, keer op keer. Was het wel tegen zoveel regen bestand?

Meneer Tan, zo sprak mijn moeder hem steeds aan, kon goed tekenen en schilderen. En “mevrouw”, zo noemde hij haar, stimuleerde hem daarin ook met de potloden, verf en het canvas die zij uit Holland liet sturen. Geen wonder dat zij dit deed, hoorde ik mijn vader vertellen, zij had net als haar grootvader de tekenacademie gevolgd. Ik kan helemaal niet tekenen, vervolgde hij als gewoonlijk, zij wel. Maar heb ik haar ooit zien tekenen? Nauwelijks. In een onbewaakt ogenblik misschien. De materialen voor meneer Tan kwamen met de Kaloekoe, de Karossa of de Kasimbar. Deze in Singapore beladen vrachtschepen van 2000 bruto ton met passagiersaccommodatie van de Koninklijke Pakketvaart Maatschappij lagen met een tussenpoos een paar maanden na elkaar voor anker, in de luwte van Poeloe Panjang ter hoogte van de baai. Vanaf het gazon voor ons huis kon je in de verte van het wijde uitzicht de boot zien liggen. Grote kisten, stapels dozen, zakken rijst en andere etenswaren werden in sloepen geladen en naar de steiger vervoerd. Kwamen de brieven met de Beaver, een eenmotorig watervliegtuig waarmee wij aangekomen waren en weer zouden vertrekken, bij de pakketpost per schip zat altijd wel een cadeautje voor mij van mijn oma: een dinky-toy, of kleurpotloden, een meccanodoos.

Meneer Tans veerkracht verwonderde me, alsof de verminkende lepra hem niet deerde. Tekende hij eenmaal, dan was hij in zijn element en scheen hij alles om zich heen vergeten. Soms vroeg hij mijn moeder om advies en dan leek hij zijn blok tekenpapier voor mij af te schermen – wat ik raar vond, omdat hij hoog op zijn bed zat en ik echt niet zien kon wat hij maakte –, terwijl hij potloden in zijn gehavende knuisten klemde en een paar tussen de lippen. Ik mocht die potloden niet meer aanraken, had mijn moeder mij nog bij de voordeur bezworen. Intussen monsterde meneer Tan mij schielijk en keek vervolgens naar mijn moeder. Het leek of hij goedkeurend knikte. Hij kon glimlachen, of verbeeldde ik me dat maar? Bij haar voelde hij zich senang en dat stemde me tevreden.

Meneer Tan is naar Fak-Fak niet teruggekeerd. Genezen verklaard immers, vond hij werk in Sorong, bij de Missie en was hij er betrokken bij de leprabestrijding. Ons contact ging verloren bij de plotselinge dood van mijn moeder, tien jaar na mijn ontmoeting met hem. Uit zijn brieven rijst een man op van opmerkelijke vastberadenheid en nauwkeurigheid, als ook verfijndheid. Bovendien kon hij goed met een schrijfmachine overweg, zelfs al was hij gehandicapt, miste hij aan beide handen meerdere vingers. Zijn brieven vertonen nauwelijks verschrijvingen, en zijn beheersing van het Nederlands was uitstekend – zoals ook van het Ambonees en Cantonees, vermoed ik.

Na eerst zijn dankbaarheid te uiten voor de brief die mijn moeder hem op 20 december 1965 schreef en te melden dat de goederen hem ongeschonden bereikten, weidt hij in zijn antwoord van 18 januari 1966 uit over het weer in Sorong, om daarna te zeggen dat de Hollandse winter hem veel te koud leek. Hartje winter op het zuidelijk halfrond geeft in Sorong een dagtemperatuur die niet onder de 25°C komt, verklaart hij. Uit de datum van zijn epistel blijkt dat twee jaar en negen maanden eerder het bewind over dit gedeelte van Nieuw-Guinea aan Indonesië overgedragen was. In de volgende passages beschrijft hij de almaar slechter wordende levensomstandigheden na het vertrek van de Nederlanders. Regelmatig is er voedseltekort en zelfs goederen die niet eens een luxe kunnen worden genoemd blijken niet voorhanden of bij aankomst direct gestolen. Het ontbreekt aan gezag, stelt hij, en wie de moed opbrengt zich bij de politie te beklagen over welk vergrijp dan ook, loopt grote kans zelf in het gevang te verdwijnen. Postzendingen waren onbetrouwbaar gebleken, aangezien pakketten vóór aflevering werden geopend of gewoon leeggehaald. Goederen uit Nederland van welke aard dan ook dienen afzonderlijk verpakt en verstuurd te worden, onderstreept hij, waarbij hij veiliger alternatieven aanraadt, zoals in de bagage van missionarissen die naar Irian Barat reizen (zo werd het westelijk deel van Nieuw-Guinea vanaf 1 mei 1963 eerst genoemd). In zijn ijver laat hij niet na hun namen en congregaties te noteren.

Een aanzienlijke deel van zijn brieven bevat uitvoerige lijsten van de apparatuur die hij nodig heeft, zoals een bandrecorder—een Philips EL 3585—als ook een verloopstekker van het type AG 7022, een tussenkabel EL 3768/00 een hulpstuk EL 3768/02. Deze zaken werden alle gefinancierd door zijn weldoensters, onder wie mijn moeder. Hij wijst erop op het oog gelijk materiaal niet te verwarren met het juiste en hoe dit te vermijden, en dat de bandrecorder voor de verbreiding van het evangelie in afgelegen gebieden in Nieuw-Guinea zal worden gebruikt. Het is vermakelijk om te zien hoe meneer Tan nauwgezet details vermeldt. Hij moet een strikte, rechtvaardige schoolmeester zijn geweest die graag alles onder controle wilde houden. Daarnaast leek hij er nu op gebrand nauw contact te onderhouden met mensen van heinde en verre.

Tenslotte vond ik een zwart-wit foto die meneer Tan mijn moeder stuurde. Deze is genomen in Sorong na de operatie aan zijn voeten. Daarop staat, van zijn linkerzijde genomen, een man van klein postuur gestoken in een donker colbert over een overhemd met open kraag en kennelijk een kaki broek. Hij draagt een bril met een licht montuur, in zijn linker hand houdt hij een gedraaide sigaret. Zo te zien is hij behoorlijk dik geworden. Gebruikte hij op de achterzijde van het schilderij dat hij aan mijn moeder opdroeg de voorletters K.T., zijn brieven ondertekende hij met Ch.T. Tan—nu kennelijk Christiaan Tan—in een klein maar zelfbewust handschrift.

Marvin R. Hiemstra – Banana Peel

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Banana Peel
by Marvin R. Hiemstra

Gerard and I trained out of Amsterdam early
while canal ducks, snuggled in the fallen leaves,
dreamed of a day bobbing for bread and berries.

We were off on a keenly anticipated jaunt
to see the luster of Antwerp in the sunlight:
that dazzling day painted Peter Paul Rubens’s

palace, garden pavilion, studio: every color
of delicious with moments of orange veined
marble. Although the day was bright, jovial

ghosts of roly-poly ruddy nudes played hide
and seek and tickle in the corridors. After that
we knew only a lavish lunch would do.

It was Café Panache: a violinist doing a pizzicato
Boccherini, orchids nudging chins at every table,
a solemn dowager in a peacock feather turban

just finishing up. Her dessert arrived, a banana
all alone on a platter, yet deceptively modest
in the peel. We gazed in disbelief as she gently

manipulated knife and fork to render that banana
flawlessly nude before a quick, delicious devour.

Kate Foley – I’M ON THE TRAIN

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I’M ON THE TRAIN
by Kate Foley

bawled as if from the summit of Everest.
Mobile phone spits metal filings
in answer.

Ferret hands dive into pockets
gargling with call tones,
quivering sacks of sound

while the train beats its own
muted tympani, more sympathetic
to the sealed amber, early evening light.

I try to ring out these six o’clock faces,
kicked like an ant-heap
into such frantic stir.

Iconic cows fly silently past the window
of my stockade of defended quiet –
remember? I ask myself,

we heard ash and air
September and summer voices
Shaker simple.

              ‘Take care of the kids.’
‘I love you.’
              ‘Mum, I just wanted to say…’

              Beautiful polyphony,
              dignified as death
              in her used apron of words.

Lou Gaglia – Hiatus

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Hiatus
by Lou Gaglia

After his regular Friday night T’ai Chi lesson at Carnegie Hall, Frank walked down Seventh Avenue for only one block before turning, as usual, down the quieter, less crowded 56th Street on the way to the Sixth Avenue F train. Fifty-Sixth Street was well-lit, quiet but not isolated, and 6th Avenue was more open than the tightly-packed Seventh. On these streets he liked to think about Josephine’s lessons, committing her notes to memory and letting what he learned sink in.

Josephine was almost five feet tall and ninety years old, and she moved like a thirty year old. She was sharp and gentle and demanding and exacting and positive all at the same time. She taught creatively and always delved for meaning and subtlety. Tonight she’d talked about activity and stillness, how important it was for the mind to be aware, during a form, of the parts of the body that were still as well as the parts that were moving.

He thought there was something beautiful about being aware of what was moving and what was still, but he didn’t know why it was beautiful.

When he reached 6th Avenue he almost turned immediately right, but the light turned green so he crossed the street. He liked to walk through the city, liked to walk fast, and didn’t like to stop. Often when he reached a corner he turned right or left rather than wait for a green light, then crossed later when and where he could. If ever his walking route could be mapped out, it may have consisted of almost all green zigs and zags.

A few blocks from the Rockefeller Center train, as he neared the corner of 55th Street, he heard pops—two and then another—from across the street. Figures moved hurriedly behind the glass lobby windows of the Hilton. And then another pop, and a flash. Frank stepped down into a small courtyard in front of an office building and ducked behind a bush growing out of a large cement pot. He saw them move toward the door, and so he ducked his way from cement-potted bush to cement-potted bush and then crossed 55th Street from behind a truck without looking toward the Hilton. He stayed close to the buildings, walking quickly, and his heart raced.

People passed him going in the opposite direction. A man in a long coat, unaware…two women soon after….

He wanted to tell them, but they passed so fast—or maybe he did. His green zig-zag on the map would now be green streak interrupted with large red dots. When he reached the subway stairs he heard the train and ran down, jumping the last few steps as the downtown F came to a stop. He stepped inside just before the door closed and sat down near it, gripping the cold silver pole.

He watched the impassive faces of people all around him, some standing but most sitting, and blew out a huge sigh, feeling safe there underground speeding along a tunnel among strangers.

***

Although East Broadway and Market and Monroe Streets were darker and more solitary, Frank felt safer as he walked home from the subway. In his courtyard, three ladies who always seemed to be sitting on the third bench gave him warm hellos. He stepped into the elevator in his building just before the door closed. Lena from upstairs, his former student in her late teens, was inside leaning into the far corner.

“Hey Lena.”

“Hi.”

He pressed number six and looked at the closed brown door.

“My mutha says hello,” she said.

“Oh! Say hi back. I haven’t seen her.”

“She’s sick.” He turned to look at her. “She thinks she’s sick. She keeps fainting or something.”

“Didn’t she get checked?”

“They don’t know what it is.” She sighed and looked upwards with a frown. “I think she’s faking it.”

The elevator slowed to a halt, and the door swung open. “Well, tell her I miss her laundry room banter.”

“She don’t banter.,” Lena said, moving up to press the close button. “She just yells.”

He smiled. “Tell her I said hi anyway.”

A month earlier a friend of Lena’s had jumped from the roof to her death. She’d jumped on the side of the building opposite the courtyard into the alley used only by maintenance workers. This was the first time he’d seen Lena since, but he’d seen the four Boccia brothers, also former students, sobbing in the courtyard before they went on a several days rampage against any innocent who got in their way—upsetting the shopping carts of older Chinese women, threatening strangers who came into the courtyard, drinking openly, laughing and cursing and daring security to call the cops on them.

At his apartment door, Frank glanced over at Rita’s door across from his before he unlocked. Rita was in her eighties, and the last time he’d seen her, her leg was wrapped up and she walked with difficulty, using a cane. “I’m an old lady,” she’d laughed when he wondered what could be done for it. “There’s no reason to get anything fixed at my age.”

Inside, he locked up, threw his jacket on the couch, and gazed out the window. Lena’s friend would have landed somewhere near the front steps, he thought, where people came and went constantly, even now at 9 P.M. But she’d wanted to be considerate, maybe, or private, or just invisible.

He shuddered, remembering the Hilton shooting, Josephine’s interesting words about paying attention to stillness during activity far away now. Josephine had broken her hip in a fall only a year before, pushed down after a theater production while exiting among a large crowd. Now she was back, at ninety, teaching again, walking easily, speaking and thinking like a thirty year old. She didn’t believe there was no reason to get anything fixed at her age.

He wanted to feel palpably Josephine’s determination and will again. But Rita’s resignation and the girl’s suicide and the Hilton shooting raced through his mind. And then there was that other shooting, six years before. He sat on his windowsill and looked directly below at a young family with two small children sitting on the benches…

On East Broadway as he walked home from work, the thin man in the dungaree jacket appeared next to him, slightly in front, and fired three-four shots quickly a little silver gun and the girl four years old or younger holding her mother’s hand dropped forward and down he wasn’t playing he shot her not playing and she was on the concrete and her mother folded herself down to the falling girl and the man curled back behind Frank into the alley and Frank still hearing shots ducked behind the bakery wall and then jumped inside.

“Call 911!” he shouted.

“You call,” said a voice, so he raced to a back room but heard the sirens before he could dial. The police were already there when he went back outside. The ambulance was on the way. There was absolute silence in the crowd of almost all Chinese people surrounding the woman. She screamed and sobbed over the child.

Frank looked at the sky. “God,” he said.

Uniformed police asked with disgust through the silence who saw it. “I did,” Frank called out and felt the crowd’s eyes on him as the ambulance arrived and police hustled him behind a van. They questioned him and then took him to a car.

“I’m not getting in there,” he said, seeing a young Chinese man in the back seat.

“He’s another witness,” the officer scoffed.

They drove him through the neighborhood, past basketball courts and handball courts and side streets, but all he remembered was the jacket and the small silver gun…

He went into the kitchen and grabbed a few crackers from the pantry, then picked up his jacket from the couch and walked out of the apartment.

***

He intended to walk to the Brooklyn Bridge the long way, past Columbus Park and then the court buildings. On the way he bought The Daily News and tucked it under his arm, thinking briefly of stopping at Rokka’s for a coffee, but he didn’t want to see anyone he knew.

Glancing down East Broadway before crossing Chatham Square, Frank saw the spot in the distance where the little girl had been shot. She had died afterwards, and the shooters were never caught, or he would have been called to be a witness. There were three shooters because the police had told him it was a triangular hit attempt on another gang member who was beyond the little girl on his side, a guy all three shooters missed. Frank could have sworn the man shooting the silver gun had been aiming downward, right at the little girl, not beyond her at some gang member.

So he went the opposite way, to the bridge, and maybe he’d walk all the way to his old neighborhood in Brooklyn, stopping on the way at the diner on Clinton Street where he’d get his coffee, pie and sports section: his cure for the blues.

Frank liked to watch faces, so he glanced in turn at those who came toward him down the wood-slatted incline of the bridge. None of them exchanged looks with him, so he watched freely a large group going out together, dressed up. Men were dressed in suits or in jeans and t-shirts like him, alone. Women were alone walking fast, or in pairs, walking slowly. Some teens walked in large groups, and there were young couples, a few pushing strollers that Frank didn’t look into. An older couple walked slowly while others passed them on both sides. He stopped watching when he reached the center at the top of the incline, and walked fast all the way down into Brooklyn.

The sports section and coffee at the diner helped him think baseball and basketball for a while, but after he finished reading and sat sipping his coffee, the shooting of the little girl and the older girl’s suicide and the Hilton shots flashed into his mind. He tried to shake it all away, wanted to be somewhere else again. Impatiently he left the entire bill, plus tip, on the counter and hurried back to the bridge.

Halfway across again, at the height of the walkway, he decided to sit on one of the benches under the huge arched towers. He faced downtown Manhattan and watched the lights, the projects quiet from where he sat, while below the walkway traffic hummed loudly. Idly he opened the paper again and read from the front this time, having exhausted the sports section.

A few pages in, he scanned an article about an Arkansas man who was forced by some ex-friends to eat his own beard in a dispute over a borrowed lawnmower. At the top of the article was a photo of the man, showing a wild brown scruffy beard still attached (or newly grown). He wore a baseball cap and had a vacant look in his eyes and parted lips.

Frank laughed out loud and shook his head, then read the first two paragraphs. The man’s ex-friends had guns and knives, and they shaved the victim’s beard and forced him to eat it. Frank didn’t read far enough yet to find out how deeply involved the lawnmower was. He rubbed his eyes to keep from laughing again and looked at the Friday night crowd rushing by him on the bridge, not one of them noticing him sitting there.

He read the rest of the article. It was written as though it were a deadly serious crime, and the ex-friends were being sought. No tongue-in-cheek comments from the reporter…nothing about the lawnmower’s involvement in the crime, either as accomplice, victim, or object of jealousy.

Frank chuckled, folding the newspaper tightly and tossing it into the bent steel garbage can beside him. He watched each face as it went by, wondering what was going on in each mind. Was it a swirl of complicated thinking and feeling in this person, or little eddies of thought in that one, or nothing much at all in those?

Did any of them wonder at how perfectly still one T’ai Chi hand could be, while the other turned so slowly and precisely, at the same time as the entire body—legs, arms, waist, and head—moved in tempo, all parts finishing a form at once? Were any of them wondering at their own beating hearts or at their racing minds that felt the present and flashed back to many moments and looked forward, all at once? Did they wonder at the stillness of death and where they went after that? Did any of them think that even a thing like that was at once beautiful and horrible? If he shared this, grabbed one of them by the shoulders and wondered aloud, would any of them think so too and wonder about it with him?

Would any passing person crash into despair too, remembering a little girl dying, or an older one?

He watched their faces, looking intently into as many of them as he could. They were all strangely beautiful in their preoccupation or oblivion, but why did they so intently walk some place if life could end so quickly, if it couldn’t tell them that they would always be someone, or become no one?

He thought of going to the bookstore on Crosby Street, or maybe to Fay Da Bakery on Mott, or maybe just home to sleep, but he didn’t make a move. In the morning he knew the sun would be up and he’d feel like going to a bookstore or a bakery, but now it didn’t matter if he went to any of those places or if he just sat there all night perfectly still.

Raouf Mousaad Basta – Fata morgana in Amsterdam

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Fata morgana in Amsterdam
by Raouf Mousaad Basta

It was after two months in the Camp: the political refugee camp on this island, which is not sure of its name. Then at last I received an invitation from my lawyer to discuss my case.

My case is simple, but my lawyer thinks it is not easy. (I met her only once before. She had been appointed by some ministry.) In this country they think many things are not easy.

However, I told her—my lawyer—“madame lawyer, I do not care about the result of the trial. I care about one thing: going back.”

She asked: “Back where?”

I said: “Back to the desert.”

Of course, she—like all people here—wants to find logical reasons for human behavior. Logical! From the beginning ‘they’ did not know what to do with me. I had come to ask justice but they arrested me to subject me to their own justice.

I told them: “Sorry to have come without visa, just let me go back” but they said: “Sorry. You cannot go back till we subject you to our justice. Then you can go back.”

And so on and so on. It just means they want to punish me.

I know also she wants to wash her hands off me and off my case. I do not blame her. She told me in our first meeting in her expensive office at one of the canals, that my case confused her. Jokingly she said that. I asked her why. She said because I challenged the basis of her convictions as a lawyer. I did not understand it but…I did not comment. I know now that I made a mistake.

*******

If you ask me now what mistake and why this is happening, I can tell you in length the whole story of the journey, which became more important and even more interesting than the reason of the journey itself.

I have no special likening or hatred for the cities and countries and refugee camps I passed through asking justice. They are just places which belong to other people different from me in everything: color of skin, language, habits, even the way they laugh and of course the climate and food of these places.

However, in spite of all that or perhaps because of all that I do not care much about these places, countries, people, language, food, climate, etcetera, because I know I am not going to stay here and live in a small concrete place like my cousin.

And, by the way, I did not come here to look for work or to live or even to visit my cousin who has a shop in Amsterdam. The mistake I mentioned before, was that I came looking for a mirage in concrete buildings around people who have their own way of justice.

*****

For a person like me, born in a tent in the desert with lots of space around, there are many ways of justice. For instance if a camel enters the small farm of my aunt Fatima we do not punch the camel, we give Fatima something instead .But If the camel insists on visiting her farm, we give her the camel and she is free to do what she likes with it. Most probably, she will let him go on eating.

This land here, small and with watery grey rainy mornings, long dark rainy nights, gives me uneasy feelings about myself and the idea of asking help and justice. I was born near the mountain on top of which, according to the popular belief, God spoke to Moses when Moses and his people were looking for refuge. Everybody knows that the desert is the land of refuge.

When somebody comes to us to ask for help and refuge we do not put him in prison (we do not even have one … although the government has many), but we put him in the guest tent, offer him food and water, and after three days we would go to him and ask him what he wants.

My family earned their money and reputation by giving refuge to people and by leading believers to the top of the Mountain, either by mules or by foot (for those who want to suffer more than others). When I was very young, I used to climb the Mountain, waiting for the voice of God to speak to me, because I was stuttering like Moses. I grew out of stuttering and wishing to hear voices from the Mountain.

But then when I became fifty-six, I had to leave the Mountain, the tent, my family and the desert, traveling to other countries, asking for justice, or, because I thought that I should fight for justice I had to travel, leaving behind me the interrogations, torture (and possible death).

But let me tell the story slowly, in my old way of telling things, not in the new quick way people want to hear things from someone like me “please can you hurry up, we do not have all the time in the world ” smiling politely (or so they think), to show “no offence intended”. I am not sure why, as they spend a lot of time sitting in the cafés and bars waiting for someone to speak to them.

However, let me concentrate. Some three years ago, when my youngest daughter was born, I became the leader of my tribe after my father’s death. I inherited it, as eldest son. I got his camels, (and his Japanese four-wheel drive), his sword (there were also modern weapons) and a large piece of land in the desert, which is also part of the common heritage of the tribe.

This land is the prettiest scenery between the Mountain and the sea. It is near the place in the red sea where Moses and his tribe are believed to have crossed when fleeing from the Pharaoh.

I was born in this land, as was my father and his father and all my ancestors.

This piece of land has a history of hiding people fleeing injustice. There are places where one could live in peace and listen to stories beside the fire, where nobody can find you if you do not want to be found.

And, lots of mirages.

Here is the problem I mentioned in the beginning, which started with our mirages. People who do not live in the desert know nothing about mirages, which turn slowly – if you believe and have patience – to things with which one can play.

It would become what you believed you saw.

Are you patient now so I will explain?

They turned to playful things to play with us, the people of the desert. Why? Because they are bored… When you live in the desert you have to do lots of things just to survive, but if you are sure of your survival like the mirages are, you do not have anything to do. They are just there.

That’s how they get bored.

If you having nothing to do, then you are bored…

Then you want to play or you want to kill.

However, because we, the people of the desert, know mirages well enough, we only let them play with us and do not let them kill us.

They—and we—enjoy having games, tricks, and the fun of playing together games and tricks. The funniest game is what we desert people call “catching Mirages”.

The desert is like human beings, she loves tricks and games. She also behaves often like them: angry, moody, deceiving, loving.

Some time self-pity like us.

I could not tell my lawyer or the investigator of the minister of justice about this thing of the desert’s self-pity. Or games. They would think I am crazy. I told them about other things, which are part of reason.

Some of the reasons are like this: Some rich tourist company from across the sea wanted to take the common land of the tribe and build hotels and swimming pools (the sea is so near!) but I refused to sell it for any price.

The other reason that the whole tribe does not want to sell: this land is full of mirage games. I played here “mirage catching” and now my children and their children are playing here.

Even some other tribes ask permission to play mirage catch on our land. We make it in to a great festival.

The games are like this: We all know the perfect time for the mirages to appear. .. So we wait. They always come in time… and than begin to call us to play with them ….One would say, “I see the lost camel of so and so … he is walking beside the tent of so and so.” Somebody else would say “no, it is not the camel you are seeing… I am seeing the four-wheel drive of my brother, which has been stolen. I see it in the oasis of so and so.”

The players divide themselves into two teams. The players of the first team agree with the person leading their team. The second team agrees with the second person. Then we, the elders of the tribe, agree between each other which team should win.

The winner must slaughter a goat or two and offer it to the losers so they can take the best parts and then we all sit together and eat.

Then this tourist company came and with them the money they offered us for the land. Of course, the news spread across the desert and all tribes were angry. I felt that the desert became angry and more hostile and the water in the secret places was disappearing. Palm trees refused to give dates in their time. The desert could hear and listened like human beings.

I asked the elders for a meeting to discuss what was happening. The meeting went on for days. We all agreed not to sell.

*****

This decision was received badly by the tourist company and by the police officers in the desert because they knew how much allowance the company would give them to close their eyes for collecting corals from the sea, or when the tourists go diving in the forbidden areas or shooting eagles.

It happened suddenly: they came with guns and many soldiers to dismiss us from the land of the tribe which belonged to us for thousands of years. They said we do not have papers to prove the ownership of the land. True, we do not have silly papers, because simply our ancestors came here before they came to the valley.

What happened later is a sad and long story; I am not going to bother you with it. The elders of the tribes asked me to travel to the other side of the world and put our complaints in front of the chiefs of the tribes of the world.

So I went to the embassy of the land of America where the nations sit and listen to complaints. They refused to give me visa and laughed at me. They told the local authorities about me.

This is why I fled because they wanted to arrest me.

However, I knew people who take money and help other people to travel. My cousin in Amsterdam said: why go to America… come here to this land because there is a court to do justice around the world. So I decided to go to see and speak with my cousin who lives in the city of Amsterdam city he has a big restaurant. He had met a woman from this country some years ago when she came to climb the Mountain and she took him back with her.

Only once he came back to visit his mother and he told us fantastic stories about this country of his wife and how he eats a lot of halal meat every day, because his mother was worried that he was not eating halal meat.

He told us stories about the important people who came to his restaurant and ask his advice about many things. He said these people like justice so much that they make a special court to put the bad people in front of judges, even if they are big kings or high police officers.

Why I was been chosen to travel? Because I know the tongs of the other two countries at the other side of the sea. I learned their tongs when I used to trade in the town near by the place where tourists come to climb the Mountain.

The Tourist Company did not like that either, so they send somebody after me to put obstacles in front of me, so I would not be able to speak to the court. And of course I did not get visa from their embassy. I was smuggled in after I paid a lot of money.

My cousin in Amsterdam has a small shop selling “Halal shwarma” not a big restaurant as he said. But never mind, he seems happy to see me. He named his shop Fata Morgana. I asked him what it meant. He smiled and told me it means Mirage. He said because he misses the mirages.

Then the police arrest me one day because I have no visa. My cousin brought a good lawyer who said that I came here to ask political refuge, although I told him and the police that I am asking only for justice and would like to return back to my tent and my desert and my mirages as soon as I finished.

*****

That is how I become a refugee in the camp. You see… if you are patient and give me time then you will get to the bottom of my story and may be find a way to help me to go to this big court. If I succeed, then I will bring justice. If not then they will send me back accompanied by soldiers to another prison in my country because the two countries consider me dangerous.

My new lawyer believes me or that is what she tells me; she is asking to meet me today to discuss the case, as she put it. My cousin advises me to drop the whole thing.

I ask him—after I agreed—if he can put me in contact with people who can smuggle me out from here and back to my tent. He looked to me as if I am crazy.

I am sitting now in his mirage shop after he came to collect me from the railway station. I smell the food he is giving to his clients… Not really nice. I ask only for coffee.

I think I would not mind much to return back to the desert or even to a prison in my land where every thing is clear… The mirage is a mirage the injustice is injustice; the prison is called prison and not a camp…

I think he began to like my idea because he looked to me and began to laugh. “People pay a lot of money to come here and you want to pay money to get out… where is the logic?” he asked.

We both laughed. I heard him speaking to some people in his phone asking about a way to smuggle me out.

Michael Cantor – Christmas Morning at the Pueblo

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Christmas Morning at the Pueblo
by Michael Cantor

This handsome Navajo
who stood and watched the line of dancers
was slim and straight as Gary Cooper –
jet-black hair pulled back
and gathered with a silver clip,
black burnished boots of buttered elk,
black well-cut pants, black shirt, a camel
coat draped loosely on his shoulders.
He did not gossip with the pairs
of tribal cops in stained gray uniforms,
or smile at the roaming teen-age girls,
did not fit with this Christmas scene.
We named him Cashmere Overcoat.

     He deals raw cocaine, she said,
     in from LA to visit mom.
     Or maybe he’s a Stanford grad,
     an MBA and poker pro.

The scene was no Nativity:
we were in a Pueblo; crumbly,
dun adobe buildings and some single-wides,
out on a mesa south of Taos;
earth, wind, dust, papers,
cigarette wrappers swirling in the grassless square,
broken chairs in front of houses,
a pair of blackboards and a single hoop.

And Cashmere Overcoat,
who looked right past the tribal elders,
old men with flat haircuts
and VFW faces, zipper jackets,
two in wheelchairs,
centered in a spot of honor
in the dirt courtyard.
He ignored the yipping dogs
and the crazy man on crutches
and the torn magazines blowing between houses
and the junked cars
and the good smell of fried bread and coffee,
and even the anglo tourists,
there to see the dancers
Christmas day at 1:00 PM,
listed in What’s Happening in Santa Fe.

     Coke and meth and crank, I said.
     He’s Al Pacino’s secret twin –
     and then, by day – an orthodontist –
     they call him Man With Braces.

The file of drums and flutes and dancers
kept snaking from a meeting hall,
the older men in front, traditional,
turquoise, silver, buckskin, moccasins,
full feathered headdresses on three or four;
stamping down their legginged feet,
setting up a beat,
and followed by a string of young and old
in every possible attire,
all intimately focused on the sound,
the beating and the rhythm,
and the ground;
precisely navigating every step,
the chanting, and the clap.

     I saw him in a film, she said.
     He played the Chief, the handsome one
     who loved the Colonel’s daughter.

As they came around a second time,
Cashmere Overcoat
meticulously folded up the coat,
placed it on a sprung-back chair
and asked some women there to watch it for him;
spoke briefly to an elder in a leather vest,
then slid into a space that opened in the line between
a thick and buffalo-looking man
and a teen in Keds, a sweatshirt and torn jeans.
Staring tightly at the ground he moved
into the music, danced, expressionless,
his boots in cadence with the beat,
the black pants quickly filmed with dust.

Bryan Monte – Poet in Transit/Dichteres Onderweg

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Poet in Transit
by Bryan Monte

A woman sits in the back of the tram
Black hair, black coat, black boots
Tapping against the black rubber floor
Reading her poems aloud, shaking her head
No one dares sit next to her.

Dichteres Onderweg

Een vrouw zit achter in de tram
Zwart haar, zwarte jas, zwarte laarzen
Tikkend op de zwarte rubberen vloer
Zij leest haar gedichten hardop, schudt haar hoofd
Niemand durft naast haar te zitten.

Scott T. Starbuck – At Lake Absarraca

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At Lake Absarraca
by Scott T. Starbuck

a homeless man
tells me to keep fluoride
out of my Christianity,
or, in other words,
don’t judge him

while another claims
cell towers
are brain forks.

They both
may be right.

On the grassy plain
outside Cheyenne
formerly caged
buffalo and elk
are gone,
and I imagine
something in men
who freed them
was also set free.

Bryan Monte – AQ8 Autumn 2013 Book Reviews

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AQ8 Autumn Book Reviews
by Bryan R. Monte

Fairyland by Alysia Abbott, W.W. Norton and Company, 978-0-393-08252-4, 326 pages
Sylvia is Missing, Flarestack Poets Pamphlet Competition Anthology 2012, 978-1-906480-34-9, 32 pages.
Heartwrecks by Nicolas Destino, Sibling Rivalry Press, 978-1-937420-35-2, 82 pages.
Butcher’s Sugar by Brad Richard, Sibling Rivalry Press, 978-1-937420-25-3, 71 pages.
Little Blue Man, verse by Clive Watkins and photos by Susan de Sola, Seabiscuit Press, 978-9-082081-30-5, 29 pages.

Three publications from my mailbag, one book that caught my eye in the American Book Center, and one which I received personally from an editor this summer are the subject of this issue’s book reviews. The cover of Alysia Abbott’s Fairyland, (by San Francisco photographer Robert Pruzan) caught my eye because it has the same cover photo her father, Steve, used in 1980 for his poetry book, Stretching the Agape Bra, which I received from him when I lived just a block away in Haight-Ashbury. Steve died from HIV AIDS 12 years later, as did two dozen of my friends and acquaintances in the late 80s/early 90s.

Fairyland is a memoir; well, actually two memoirs. The first is of her father captured through commentaries on selected journal entries and poems, and the second, her own record of her psychological and artistic development as she grew up with her gay father in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury in the 1970s and 80s and attended the prestigious French School. Ms Abbott and her father had moved to San Francisco in 1974 after the death of her mother in an automobile accident in Georgia when Alysia was three. During her childhood in San Francisco, Ms. Abbott was entrusted to a series of unconventional baby sisters (drag queens, her father’s boyfriends, neighbours, children of housemates, etc.), some more reliable than others, so that Steve would have time to write. As a result, Alysia virtually ended up raising herself similar to Dharma Finkelstein’s situation in the popular television comedy series, Dharma and Greg. In addition, her domicile shifted annually between the cramped poverty of the one-bedroom, Haight-Ashbury apartment she shared with her father and the relative financial and spatial suburban comfort of her maternal grandparents home in Kankakee, Illinois where she spent her summer holidays. As a result, she became painfully aware at a very young age of how different her family life was compared with that of her classmates and her relatives and of the secrets she needed to keep from both.

Having known both Ms Abbott and her father personally, (I wrote my UC Berkeley honours thesis about the shamanistic tendencies in Robert Duncan’s, Aaron Shurin’s and Steve Abbott’s poetry and published Steve’s work in No Apologies, my literary magazine, in the mid-1980s), I can vouch for the veracity and authenticity of Ms Abbott’s account. In addition, her writing style is clear and concise thus making it a pleasure to read. Her memoir is well-illustrated with photos of Ms Abbott with her father and his poetry and cartoons. Unexpected pleasures for me in her book were her descriptions of her pre- and post-San Francisco years in Atlanta, Georgia and New York and Paris and her journey with her father in 1983 to Paris and Amsterdam where he read at poetry festivals. Even though I thought I knew Steve Abbott fairly well from the information I had gathered for my thesis, I was not aware how great his desire was to live in Paris, (Alysia eventually spread his ashes there), nor of his open relationship with Ms Abbott’s mother. In addition, Ms Abbott’s description of the 1980s AIDS crisis in San Francisco and the illnesses and deaths of her father and many of his friends, shows her ability to merge the personal with the historical and political which, I believe, would have made her father immensely proud of her.

Sylvia is Missing is an anthology of 21 poems selected from those submitted to Flarestack Poets for its 2012 Pamphlet Competition. Flarestack is based in Birmingham, UK and is edited by Meredith Andrea and Jacqui Rowe. Sylvia contains short, imagistic poems of one page or less. These are sometimes presented with a natural/outdoor setting, with characters walking or jogging along canals (typical of the waterways being restored in central England) at the beach or even speculating on the lost meaning of the town place names (i.e. trap grounds in a poem of the same name by Stephen Wilson). Some poems explore the changing relationships with partners and children or how life’s mundane matters hinder or restrain, “our pockets full of things/that hold us down,” (from “Beach Sofa” by Oliver Comins), and, of course, the perennial inadequacy of education or language to prepare one for or to communicate about life’s uncertainties.

One very different poem in Sylvia is Missing is “Aquarium” by Michael Conley about a man whose stomach is an aquarium, and the resulting drama which enfolds. It reminds me of some of Steve Abbott’s surrealist/absurdist poems. A doctor’s advice after examining the man “to drink as much as he pisses/and avoid contact sports” also demonstrates Conley’s sense of humour. “A Stretch of Water” by Gordon Dargie shows the tension involved in arriving late for a delayed ferry, only to find once on onboard, that it has to remain in dock for hours waiting for the tide to come in. It also contains an oblique reference to Psalm 137, “By the waters we sat down and waited//as the name of the river spread on the tide.” The poem, “For the she-ass, Lise”, by Gina Wilson is about a troublesome, barnyard donkey behaving badly whose “two foot pizzel/dangles like liquorice,” and whose shriek “scatters hens,/geese, guinea-fowl” and who at evening, “hooves in the earth” her “folly stands like ebony” against the stars. Wilson has a keen eye for description and this enables her to transform the earthly ordinary into the celestial extraordinary in the space of 17-lines.

The attractive graphic design of Sylvia is Missing and indeed the rest of the Flarestack chapbook series is also worth mentioning. Poems are set in Garamond type on clean, heavy stock, cream-coloured paper. Covers (produced using what editor Meredith Andrea refers to as a “template”) include just the publisher’s and poet’s names and book’s title set in a large, sans serif font on eye catching, delicious background colours such café latte brown, blueberry and lemon lime. The Flarestack poetry chapbooks are a welcome addition to my library of contemporary European anthologies and publishers and I highly recommend this press and its books to my readers.

Heartwrecks by Nicolas Destino is a book of poetry whose style reminds me both of the work of Getrude Stein, especially, Portraits and Prayers, because of its recirculation words and phrases to create new meanings and infuse rhythm into the description of a person and/or a scene. Its style also reminds me of the LANGUAGE Poets project, (whom Ms. Abbott coincidentally mentions in her memoir reviewed above) because the recirculated words are sometimes/somewhat disjunct and the text forces the reader to construct his/her own narrative.

An example of this rhythmic recirculation can be seen in Mr. Destino’s poem “Yet.” “Safe because it may not happen safe/ as in I am safe and we are safe/ in safety for the sake of not being kicked.” An example of creating your own narrative can be found in the first line of “Palimpest” “If today your find yourself deleted from the map drive invisibily toward the office of urban planning despite the centuries of names already established for you.” You need to be quick and nimble to construct a narrative from that. Other poems which travel at a somewhat slower pace are “Resurrection,” the book’s first poem which reminds me of e.e. cummings’ moon poems which usually referred to distant, unobtainable, ridiculous or unbelievable love or “Healing Process:” “My digestive system works better if I eat this type of yogurt/one year after his funeral I don’t bother to use a spoon/just let it reach room temperature and somewhat drink it/ from the cup.” Some of Destino’s images will strike a cord with most renters in poor neighbourhoods such as in The Conductor is Waiting:” “Your apartment comes with fists and oven grease” or urban commuters experience of isolation and exposure to crime.

Destino’s verse is not for lightweights. The reader definitely needs to bring something to the table to be able to make something out of this poetry. (In the spirit of full-disclosure I am within the camp of the San Francisco New Narrative writers and not the Language Poets due to my believe that plot and thematic elements need to be foregrounded and accessible to all readers on at least one level).

Another book from Sibling Rivalry Press which is more “my cup of tea” due to its more conventional narrativity is Brad Richard’s Butcher’s Sugar. This book uses Greek mythological and Christian images to poetically describe (and sometimes eroticize) events/passages in the author’s childhood, teenage and adulthood years. Some of these events/passages (either real or imagined) include being naked in one’s yard and neighbourhood as in “Aubaude, ” and his growing awareness of his alienation from other teenagers due to being gay, as in “A Changeling,” and “The Child and His Monsters.” Richard’s poetry can be sensual, mythological or religious or sometimes a combination of these elements. In Butcher’s Sugar, for example, the book’s title poem, the narrator describes his body’s “candied peristyle and sticky portals.” In “Dead Tongues,” he imagines the god Hermes “Kissing a drowsy boy,” (other poems include Ganymede and Narcissus) and in “Mater Dolorosa,” a church “where I never go.”

The best poem in this collection, “Eye Fucking,” is the artistic recreation of the murder of a gay man, Nicholas West, told through a monologue by one of his murderers, Donald Aldrich. Emotionally, the poem is difficult to read, but on a purely aesthetic level, it describes the murder in vivid detail—how the victim acted and how the two murderers showed no mercy to a man who couldn’t or wouldn’t fight back. Unrepentant at the end of the poem, Aldrich says: “If it happened all over again and I had a choice,/I’d do it all the same.” Perhaps poetry like this, which shows the deadly consequences of intolerance, helped change the political climate in America to the point that same-sex civil rights and marriages were upheld this summer by the US Supreme Court (though most states have decided not to grant rights or perform or recognize marriages at their level of jurisdiction.)

Richard’s poetry believes in “The Body, The Word,” where the body is the door to the spiritual mystery, the ineffable and indescribable: “the body/found itself between words, its image/the unreadable space” is perhaps his strongest and most persistent theme. This sensual transcendence is described again in his last poem, “Envoi” but with a more creative use of line breaks and description of the natural world. “Slowly the rain/thinks : / jamine/ thistle/withered fingers/of the poinsettia/budding—“ This is a type of poetic expression which I hope Mr. Richards will continue to pursue in the future.

Little Blue Man is an artistic collaboration between poet Clive Watkins and photographer, Susan de Sola (AQ5). In this book, the little blue man, (a Thunderbirds’ action figure from the 1960s television series of the same name), is placed in different situations—hanging in a Christmas tree, lying on his side at the bottom of a whiskey bottle, or pushing a silver pram across a mantle. Watkins has written a poem that complements de Sola’s photos. Here is part of what he writes to accompany a photo of the little blue man looking at his reflection in a Christmas tree ornament: “With what rapt attention must he view himself,/ diminutive Narcissus forced by the goddess of this place/ to hang among those faux pine-boughs!” Or his description of the little blue man lying at the bottom of what seems to be a bubble-trapped, hand-blown, glass bowl looking up as if he were right side up and walking towards the viewer: “Dashing homunculus of blue and dauntless eye,/ intrepid fingerling, dainty portable hero,/ stiff little plastic Galahad great of heart, steadfast pocket-deliverer, how did he fetch up here/translated into our world with its pitiless light?…” Little Blue Man is playful yet artistic, something for both adults and children perhaps to read together, children for the photos, adults for the verse.

Don Brennan – Amtrak Overnight

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Amtrak Overnight
by Don Brennan

Whoever pinned stars against the L.A. night holds me captive in a window seat until the desert mountains show their teeth.

Joshuas raise arms like followers of Vodoun performing sacred rites along the tracks. Hunted creatures creep beneath the sage, lying low, drawing unnoticed conclusions about surviving time and space.

Hesitant serpents complain, tongues traversing the four directions, stalking last light through trailer parks. An occasional cloud of dust appears at my window to roll unsettled eyes, then vanishes. A late watch of nightingale sings to us at a rest stop, restoring order in the grip of electric wires.

Sleep, an obsessed thief whose time is running out, interferes with my meditations, and consciousness gets lost attempting astral flight at the faltering speed of a train.

An angry woman, having somehow soaked her only pair of socks in cream soda, rages into my sleep. Unfamiliar men, painfully young and drunk on absurdity, play dominoes ‘til dawn.

Restless children begin to dance with daylight and colouring books on the leading edge of New Mexico. Outside my window, mesquite and mourning dove listen to a steel train cry at sunrise. The scalding surface of a cup of coffee at my touch, trembles through a long curve.