An online journal for small literature
Keith Kennedy lives in Vancouver with his keen, lustrous wife.
The Practise of the Instant
Is that rain?
(Mars on the television)
A racoon? No, nothing to be frightened of.
Just the rain.
(Panning back, a red dot in the blackness)
I like the sound of rain once I’m sure
It’s not someone climbing up my balcony
Coming to kill me.
(Does Mars have rain?)
No. That’s stupid.
(Does Mars have killers?)
It will, says the rain.
Pitter – Patter.
Llewellyn Gannon is a poet, a visual artist, as well as a mother and a wife. She is currently working on a compilation of poems from her experiences in love throughout life. She is calling it, Upon Paper Lips. Taking poems from 20 years to narrate her story. A coming of age and beyond.
Safe From Home
You must feel safe cause I don’t know
where you sleep at night.
Safely tucked in sweet illusion
pretending you were right.
You’re mistake’less in forsake’ness.
Only in your dreams.
With a new twist… My replacement.
No time to cry for me.
You may be safe from my hands.
Slipped away into the night.
Safe in the fact that darkness
steals time and steals your sight.
Don’t you see it crawling towards you?
Creeping up, in your mind?
Lonely, no where to turn to
in the corner of your eye.
Can’t you hear me like a heartbeat
pound on these walls, alone?
Can’t you feel me, like a heartbreak?
Or are you safe from home?
Lindsey Schaffer is a current undergraduate at The College of Saint Benedict. When she is not reading or writing she is running, cooking, or travelling.
A Dance at Midnight
The moon calls her to dance
Igniting a fire in her heart
That can only be extinguished in the heart of the forest
Where, surrounded by the tinder of stinging cicada songs and siphoned starlight
She dances around a bonfire of fever dreams
Her freckles fuze with the silty earth
As fireflies and spotted frogs emerge to join her jovial dance
A spark of calculated movements, extending one arm after the other
The blood in her veins attune to that of invisible violins and ancient drums
Materialized in the friction of a nearby stream and the beating of her heart
Above her the sky smiles, its teeth a cooling translucence of stars and mist
Here she is called to a dance
And so she does.
Alyona Rychkova-Zakablukovskaya is an author from Russia. She was born in Siberia in 1973. She studied Psychology at the Academy of Law, Economics and Management. Her first book of poetry, “In Bogorodsky Garden,” was published in Irkutsk in 2015. Her second book, “The Forty Winters Bird” was published in 2018.
The Baby Pochard
So many days have passed,
but I remember this.
The autumn glass of the chilly Angara.
A sleepy October day had lured us out, to the water beyond the Meget,
and gave us its gifts. We had expected silence,
but there was none: just the voices of birds and wind.
Wading across the rapids, fishing rod in hand,
you saw a moving blob.
An indistinct speck was crossing the river,
propelling itself forward, despite the waves.
At last, it stopped at the big man’s feet.
You picked it up and recognized it.
A duckling, baby pochard, in your hands
was trembling and jerking its legs.
Animated by a funny spirit of struggle,
it was still rushing through the water.
It swam, and swam, and swam.
But soon its eyes got dim – the god of birds
blew the duckling’s conscience out.
The shard of living universe on my bosom
Got warm and fell asleep.
I had already made peace with the idea
that I’d have to catch flies to feed it
and look for a foster family for it.
I was trying to remember someone
who could adopt a duckling,
but soon decided I would love it myself…
But suddenly the tiny thing returned to life and pulled itself together,
aware of the warmth of the hands it didn’t need.
The whole plan of its future captivity
flashed in the beads of its eyes.
An anger and fright started to build up in its body.
“Set me free! Set me free or I’ll die!”
The stubborn duckling, as quick as an athlete
was slipping out of my fingers, testing my strength.
“Set me free! Set me free. I’m feeling bad! Bad! Bad!”
Afraid to break the duckling’s neck,
we carried it to the river.
O, how proudly it swam! How happily it hurried,
splitting the waves like a torpedo!
It was so endlessly alive in this brief moment.
I’m sentimental. I am quick to tears.
Their tart smoke already stings my eyes.
I had no regrets at all,
only admiration and a quiet sorrow.
It was so brave, so certain of its way.
So what if it would probably be eaten by a bored burbot,
by hungry bird flying towards its cheeping.
Or killed by a two-legged beast
who wears a cross or doesn’t wear it…
You may ask me why I relive the past.
I think the truth is simple.
I think that each of us has our own way,
mysterious and strange. And each of us has our own time.
That’s why the baby pochard of my soul
still flies to the hazy river…
(translated by Sergey Gerasimov from Russian)
Jim survived decades as a creative director and writer at two renowned U.S. advertising agencies. He’s now enjoying life as a freelance writer and has a special on Tuesdays, where he offers 50% off on nouns and all words beginning with “Q.”
Riding the Rolling Rain Forest
Riding Chicago’s elevated commuter train (the “el”) back in the ‘60s was more than a ride to work and home again. Back in the Primeval Era, you had to be made of special stuff to survive this rolling rain forest.
Riding the el on a sweltering August day was a near claustrophobic experience. And the further you rode in this heat-encased steel chamber, the hotter and more humid it became. Before long, an entire weather system formed inside. Low-lying clouds stretched from one end to the other. Once, I thought I saw a flamboyance of flamingoes pass through. But I may have been suffering from heat delusions.
At each stop, new people crowded aboard and soon the aisles filled and the windows steamed up, further enhancing that closed-in feeling. Right on cue, the summer rainstorm would begin and each new arrival boarded drenched. One gentleman stood before me in his stylish Burberry raincoat and jaunty brimmed hat. I was reading a newspaper, trying to avoid eye contact with these apparent flood survivors. As the gentleman leaned down to see the Cubs score in my paper, a river of rain streamed from his brim, formed a tributary that ran down me, onto my paper, down my leg, onto my Gold Toe socks and ultimately created a small lagoon in my Florsheims.
The el that ran through my hometown of Evanston had a special kind of torture. The woven straw seats had seen better days. Perhaps first woven from Nile reeds by Egyptian basket makers, the cane on these seats was breaking apart and had many sharp ends. Slide onto a seat and you could find yourself suddenly lanced by an angry cane end. To remove it, you had to slowly slide back the way you came. In today’s terms, this movement was kind of a slow motion seated twerk. To suddenly stand meant that your pants got ripped, the pain intensified and you were left with an unwanted cane implant.
I always felt sorry for out of town visitors or first-time riders listening carefully for their stop to be announced. The speakers for the train’s public address system were so ancient, it became an aural impossibility to correctly hear a simple announcement about an upcoming stop. “Loyola and Sheridan” became “Royalaaaa and Chadwinnnn.” “Howard, end of the line” was garbled into “Allward, Bend Your Mind.” Whoever was on the mike sounded as though he’d been chloroformed and the rag stuffed in his mouth for safekeeping.
Today’s el riders probably ride in cushy comfort with Wi-Fi access, a special designer coffee car and Bluetooth announcements you can actually understand. They’ll never know what we endured back in the day.
And they’ll never know about the survival skills and adroit moves once needed to successfully step through all those flamingo droppings.