Gary LeBel: Curve

.

Today in the North Georgia mountains the sun’s straight up, school’s out—boarded-up shops and broken soda machines, filling stations with no tanks or recent calendars: all wait their turn to disappear under the great sleepy eyelids of kudzu and cicadas.

.

Two young boys are following railroad tracks between mountains, one of them short, the other taller by a foot. It’s all there on four legs, their youth and friendship, the boundless summer stretching out ahead of them somewhere down the tracks as the tall one leans over the shorter who tilts his head to cock an ear.

.

‘Whither do they go,’

...............vanishing side-by-side,

...........................train rails

...............and the bend

...........................of a river?

.

by Gary LeBel

Cumming, Georgia

first published in Abacus (2008)

Sharon Auberle: Summer Passing

.
The sky is filled with terns tonight, their red bills arrowing down into the water. Fishing boats wend their way home to the harbor, while on the dock a small boy runs, heedless of dark and danger. His father scoops him up at the edge. Old men sit alone. Two women wrap shawls about their white shoulders. For a moment, there is silence, all pausing to watch an impossibly pink moon rise up out of the lake. Lights are coming on, one by one, in the deserted streets. Even the corner tavern is quiet, and the wind, thinking of turning northward, stills itself for awhile.
.

from somewhere
on the other side of the world,
autumn approaches

.
by Sharon Auberle
Sister Bay, Wisconsin

Patricia Prime: The Hand Press

.
My fiancé kept a hand printing press in his bedroom. He was a printer by trade and bought the press to make extra money. Two nights a week were spent printing invitations, business cards and letterheads.

.

The moveable metal type was kept in small boxes, each letter taken out individually and arranged into lines to form text, headings, captions. After the type was set and tightened, it was tapped into place. The paper was fed into the machine and rollers spread the ink under the pressure of the press. Several proofs had to be "run off" to ensure even coverage, clean print and correct order of type, which was positioned in a "mirror image"—something a skilled compositor could do in minutes.

.

winter evening

the smell of chemicals

drifts from the window

the cat is stirred

from her sleep on the tiles

.
My task was to clean and "break" the type after the job was completed. Each letter had to be cleaned and placed back in the correct tray which was a lengthy and tedious process.

.
My future mother-in-law kept a wary eye on us. She'd interrupt every half-hour or so, with tea, a plate of biscuits, or a stern warning it was time for me to go. All this subterfuge to mask her worry over what—disguised by the clunk of heavy machinery—might be taking place in the bedroom.

.

up and down the stairs

weathered floorboards

thud beneath the press

as she retrieves

cups and plates

.

After washing with industrial soap it was time to leave the room smelling of chemicals and ink. Cards laid out on the drying stacks. We walked home hand-in-hand.

.
low in the sky

a crescent moon

bright and shiny

like the letter 'C'

in the compositor's tray

.

.
by Patricia Prime
Auckland, New Zealand
first published in Modern English Tanka V3, N1 (Autumn 2008)

Gary LeBel: Moso

.

It’s suddenly evening as you slip out of the bright afternoon and into the bamboo’s dark, luxuriant corridors. With so little light reaching in, you sense the leaves drink deeply of every available ray of sunlight to grow such densely interwoven canopies above. The shaded paths between the clusters of Moso are softly cushioned with years upon years of cast-off leaves, and so your footsteps hardly make a sound.

.

Introduced originally from China, and then via San Francisco in 1893, their provenance adds an unexpected dimension to what at first was merely a name on an exit sign: “Bamboo Farm and Coastal Gardens”, a large hidden tract maintained by the University of Georgia on the outskirts of Savannah.

.

The little bamboo forest enclaves, each autonomous, are strung together over the acreage like a chain of islands. Wandering among them, you move from one country to another rather than merely between species. Part-time resident of the nation of Black Bamboo, an egret lends an exquisitely-wrought tension to the moment as it darts stealthily in slow motion along the grassy shore, its bleary reflection keeping abreast on the mill weed below.

.

a quiet pond . . .

minnows swimming

through my eyes

.

by Gary LeBel

Cumming, Georgia

Giselle Maya: Summer Breeze

.

at noon

it rises out of thin air

and glides

from afar

into the garden

.

through the valley wind sifts pollen

from the vessels of daylilies

and ruffles the cat’s tigered fur

white roses sigh near yellow evening primroses

corn leaves tremble and grow by leaps and bounds

zucchini blossoms of orange-yellow

cradle within green

.

where

does the glaucous

summer breeze

come from

where will it go

.

beans with white and violet blossoms tousled by wind’s fingertips

bow again and again how do they spin tiny beans out of blossoms

.

the tall borage with prickly leaves etches blue stars

the rose called ‘Joseph’s Coat’ is painted in shades

from lemon to wine-red

the feathers of nightingales are brushed

they lift their voices

in the high willow

.

in a hammock

the gardener closes her eyes

soothed

after sifting dark earth

to nourish growing plants

.

blue-green silk

noon wind

ripples water

content

to be alive

.

by Giselle Maya

Saint Martin de Castillon, France

Francis Masat: Everyone’s Going West

.

“Go West, young man!”

—John B. Soule, Horace Greeley, Thomas Fuller and possibly others, ca. 1851.

.

The Midwest: My high school sweet-heart moves to California; other friends move to Colorado and Oregon. My high school drops band, the football team now is eight-man, and the track team is co-ed. The movie theater, two schools, and the variety and drug stores close. The library—my Mecca—struggles to stay open. A local rumor is that we are experiencing progress.

.

empty street—

the rolling cadence

of a beer can

.

So now, where do I go to see theater and opera, to visit history, to live art, or to use gateways to old world cultures? I realize that I must leave too. With everyone going West, I head East.

.

Dad’s workshop—

cobwebs fill the arches

of a child’s castle

.

by Francis Masat

Key West, Florida

Benita Kape: Shoe Shopping

.

Winter school holidays—my two great-grandsons are in town to stay with their Daddy. I take them, as I do every year, to the movies. And then we go shopping—a few clothes and always a pair of brand new shoes.

.

early spring

following a plow barefoot

planting potatoes

.

Times were hard. A large garden plot near the house supported the family. But in order to stretch the budget just that bit further my father grew seasonal crops. If we were big enough to bend and pick up a potato, we were big enough to put it in a sack. Some years we planted onions on the shortest day of the year. On the longest day, we helped our father and siblings harvest them. Another time the crop my father planted would be peas. He would provide much of these harvests to the grocers in the two local townships. But on occasion, he dealt these vegetables to his neighbours for items of use for his family.

.

carried to bed—

new second-hand, toe-worn

shoes and tears

.

.

by Benita Kape

Gisborne, New Zealand

Catherine Mair & Patricia Prime: Chinese Checkers

.

On my arrival the remnants of a party: balloons on the veranda, a piece of chocolate cake in the pantry, birthday cards on the dresser and toys spread over the floor. The children play with cars on the carpet, making roads and roundabouts with coloured clothes pegs. Later I offer to baby-sit the children while my friend and her daughter visit great-grandma. They decide to take the oldest boy with them.

.

wide-eyed she welcomes her visitors

.

The youngest two occupy themselves with the road works, but when they become bored I play "Hangman" with them using simple three- and four-letter words. Next they want to play "Chinese Checkers," which lasts until they realize they are going to be beaten. As we play hide-and-seek in the bedroom, a Selwyn's friend spies us through the window. When the resthome visitors return it's time for dinner.

.

in the bath

four arms, four legs,

a monster

.

Next morning the family packs up leaving the house empty and quiet. Thistledown floats across the rain-drenched sun deck.

.

folding the washing

we find a pair

of boy's socks

.

by Catherine Mair and Patricia Prime
Katikati, Bay of Plenty, New Zealand
and Auckland, New Zealand

Tish Davis: The Family Vitaceae

.

Clusters of grapes are stenciled on a periwinkle watering can in my aunt’s kitchen. Two rusted hand pruners and the old rosewood harvesting shears, tips in the tin, point down.

.

“Do you remember your grandmother’s vineyard?”

.

I remember the weekends . . . . Father took a cotton rag and wiped grease off of the old, red tractor while my uncles gathered tools and loaded everyone onto the trailer. Grandmother, always a few rows ahead of us, trimmed and composted in calico dress and barn boots. My aunts said she brought secrets with her—cuttings from the old country.

.

Grapes, at harvest time, were packed in wooden crates, loaded onto flatbeds with wooden rails. We cousins played a game of chase alongside the procession. Berries jiggled in boxes. I stopped and pulled the beggar-ticks out of my socks.

.

frozen on the vine

the grapes

my father grew

.

by Tish Davis

Dublin, Ohio

first published in Presence #38, May 2009

Tad Wojnicki: Boutique Row

.

Cannery Row is shop-crazy. I skip the trinketry, chocolatery, and gadgetry, and then hop past the batikry, crotchetry, and towelry. A far cry from John Steinbeck. I schlep on. Now, Steinbeck arrives: Steinbeck Golf, Steinbeck Cooking College, and Steinbeck Fold and Fluff. Of course, also a Steinbeck Speakeasy—Steinbeck here, Steinbeck there, Steinbeck everywhere.

.

I schlep down Cannery Row.

.

I don't see a single cannery, much less a row, or hear the famous, ear-splitting whistle calling the fish cutters, staggering out of their tortilla flats. Years ago, by this time of day, all boats would have been in. The stinko gulch would be swarming with minimum-pay workers, Dead fish would make it alive. But today, the fish is gone. Fished out. With the fish, that life is gone, too—no warehouses, no whorehouses, no flophouses. No “reduction” plants around either, baking fish heads, tails, and guts into a fertilizer. When they cleaned the tanks, "the stench was so horrible it would wake one up in the night," Joe Bragdon, who lived here as a young man, told me. Today, no whistles, no stench, no canners --and no fish to can, either. Cannery Row is now a Boutique Row. Sale signs go up left and right. Staffs drag schlock to the sidewalk to trip the walker.

.

antiques shop

in snakeskin shoes

a shiny penny

.

I gulp my gall and join the fun. Fog helps, cottoning rough stuff, fuzzing strife, padding junk. Even the roars and vrooms get muffled, stifled, smothered. Soles smooth sidewalks to sumptuous breakfasts of coffee with bacon, waffles with shrimp, and croissants with chorizo, all treyf stuff.

.

I step into a joint that doesn't reek treyf. It's the Steinbeck Speakeasy. They serve dinner for breakfast. I don’t want anything to eat. No chow, just spirits. I plop down at the bar and get a shot of kosher vodka straight. The barfly next to me is a Kentucky businessman dispossessed by his wife.

.

beach bar

fog engulfs

each stool

.

"Headlights on!" a man at the door yells, tilting his head toward the parking lot. "Who drives a Porsche?" he adds, looking around. No guest is getting up. No one drinking at the bar drives a Porsche.

.

"Our dishwasher," the bartender yells back.

.

The barfly leans over.

.

"Don't you miss the good old days?” he asks.

.

“What ‘good old days’? Days of low pay? Days of indignity? Days of filth, stink, and discomfort? Were those days ‘good days,’ you think?” "I'm not so sure they were," I recall Joe Bragdon, thinking back.

.

weedy wave

the pelican picks

the splash

.

I quit the Steinbeck Speakeasy and join a wedding party at the Lover's Point. Gooseflesh dads and teeth-chattering moms join too, praying the fog would lift. A stretch limo pulls over. The bride gets out, breast-feeding a baby. Suddenly, so honest. So Steinbeck. So Cannery Row.

.

pebbles rattle

crushed under driftwood

beach wedding

.

.

by Tad Wojnicki

US/Taiwan

.

[Previously published as: "Boutique Row: Idiosyncratic Reflections of a Steinbeck Aficionado," in: 2008 NCUE Third Annual Conference on Language Teaching, Literature, Linguistics, Translation, and Interpretation. Chang Hua, Taiwan, 2008.]

Marleen Wenneker-Hulst: King Crabs

.

My husband is glancing through some travel guides when he says: ‘Listen, one of the must-do activities in Honningsvåg is a King Crab Safari’. I can hear the excitement in his voice from the way he pronounces King Crab Safari. ‘During a spectacular three hour long excursion you will go out to sea in a Zodiac and search for the famous king crabs’, he reads out loud. ‘Afterwards, a delicious crab meal is prepared.’

.

His index finger taps on a picture of a lady holding a giant crab above her head.

.

‘These monsters can reach a width of two meters and weigh as much as fifteen kilo’, he continues, as if he wants to impress me. I study the photograph that could easily be a scene from a horror movie, and think of something to say.

.

waking up—

not a spider but a spot

seen through glasses

.

.

by Marleen Wenneker-Hulst

Musselkanaal, the Netherlands

Jeffrey Winke: How It Smells and Feels

.

They create an aesthetically-pleasing, harmonious pattern. Neatly stacked columns. These wooden palettes are tethered tightly to the flatbed heading at a timetable’s ordained speed on this concrete interstate. The palettes are brand new. Direct from the factory where the construction pattern is followed in endless repetition to form their universal shape. The pinewood is so fresh that one can imagine how it smells and feels, the splinters lodging themselves in the top layers of skin, even in tough calloused hands. No scuff marks from forklift drivers fatigued from late night drinking. No grease stains from used machine parts carelessly tossed during quick repairs. No sticky spills from tipped-over Big Gulp-size Mountain Dews, carelessly kicked over as the foreman scatters lounging workers with a “getbacktowork” growl. These pristine, sculpturally perfect palettes are on their way to some company where they will be weighted down with the industrial output of a fair day’s work.

.

fresh scent

in the laundry basket

a cat

.

by Jeffrey Winke

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Ralph Murre: In Apartment 3-B

.

where wall meets ceiling

a gossamer web

on spackled plaster

.

O.K., first off, she wasn’t “Little,” they just called her that to be funny, the way you called the shortest kid in your sophomore phys-ed class “Stretch.” At 398 lbs., when she wasn’t retaining water, Miss Tiffany L. Muffet would not have fit on your average tuffet even if she did have some idea what it was. It is true that she was eating a tub of extra-creamy cottage cheese (technically, curds and whey) and a 32 oz. bag of Doritos with Skippy and was washing it all down with a 7-11 Big Gulp, when a rather demure, grayish spider descended, yes, more or less beside her. But “frightened her away” ??? Please. On the day in question, Tiffany Muffet, barely looking up from a re-run episode of “Conditioning Hints of America’s Biggest Losers Contestants,” grudgingly pushed aside a Double Whopper she was saving for after the show, rolled up a copy of the Enquirer which was close at hand, and splattered that little sumbitch all over the dark-walnut veneer of the pressed-wood headboard that would be hers with just three more payments.

.

.

by Ralph Murre

Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin

Bob Lucky: Missing

“Neil!” she yells from the center of the playground, “Neil!” It’s late afternoon, almost dusk, the swing sets and slides are deserted, all the children home for dinner except this one, Sadie, searching for her brother. “Neil!” she calls out one more time, scanning the playground. “He disappears everywhere,” she explains.

.
deepening shadows a small hand of green bananas

.

.
by Bob Lucky
Hangzhou, China

Ruth Holzer: Pirmasens Caserne

For a year before we found a house to rent near the army base, we stayed in a room in the enlisted men’s barracks. All our household goods were in storage up in Hamburg; we lived out of the suitcases we had brought over on the flight. I relished the freedom from domestic duties; while my husband was at work, I’d explore the valley and the dense surrounding forests of fir and pine. At night we’d drive through the countryside, over the border, into France.

in the dryer
the thump
of combat boots

by Ruth Holzer
Herndon, Virginia

Robert Moyer: Hungarian Pastry Shop

Butterflies and brioche, cinnamon raisin rolls and creamcheese Danish, hammentaschen and croissants, still in patient rows on pans behind the counter, waiting for an Eastern European girl to slip one onto a plate, turning my first name into an inflected query—“Bahb?”—delivering the pastry with a cup of caffeine and whipped cream from an exotic origin—Hungarian, Viennese, Russian. Intellectual crumbs collected at local colleges fall out of conversations around the room, some splayed on the bathroom wall celebrating dead philosophers, excoriating live politicians, all fueled by the bottomless pot of coffee on the burner in the center of the room. Every now and then a blast of cold air makes its way through the door to the back of the room, as the Shop’s legion of customers parades in and out under the red and white striped awning, the lettering faded now.

.
a man and woman
at our old table
not touching

.
by Robert Moyer
Winston-Salem, North Carolina

Katherine Samuelowicz: How Is She I Wonder

.

travelling to work on the dew-washed morning by bus on the route I never take by car I recognise this house now comfortably nesting among grownup trees lush green feeding on the recent rains fitting so well into the neighbourhood that grew around it

.

how is she

I wonder

this other me

living with my ex-husband

in this house we never bought

.

by Katherine Samuelowicz

Brisbane, Qld., Australia

Dru Philippou: Counterpoise

.

oriental boxes of sesame seeds, wild rice, and mung beans

behind the glass of wall-to-wall red lacquer cabinets

.

with Chinese red, minor accents are crucial

a bottle of yellow-green olive oil

............on the black marble countertop

a set of red pearl ginger jars subdued in a corner

a stainless steel stove reflects the random arrangement of lemons

............on the long oak table

.

the kitchen window

which takes up the entire south wall

............pulls the warm interior

to the cool exterior

of ocean blue

.

........................wave after wave

........................on his surfboard

........................a boy

.

.

by Dru Philippou

Taos, New Mexico

Bob Lucky: On a Journey

door open door closed no door wherever I am says Kabir an entry point but I can’t get a handle on it turning this way turning that until turning becomes a circle the circle a trap the trap a door always open always closed

broken clouds
my head against
the bus window

by Bob Lucky
Hangzhou, China

Roger Jones: Old Man

Dad had taken me to have my hair cut short. “He keeps trying to look like a Beatle,” he told the chuckling barber.

Afterwards, in the car, I hid my head under a baseball cap.

Backing out of the slot, Dad slammed his brakes. My cap flew off. A long-haired teenager wheeling past behind him on a bike screamed, “Watch where you’re goin’, old man!”

"Old man?" -- I'd never thought of my father as old.

Forty years ago, and Dad a decade younger than I am now.

day after day
wheeling by—
this same blue sky

by Roger Jones
New Braunfels, Texas
first pubished in Frogpond 29:3 (Autumn 2006)

Ruth Holzer: Bitche

The citadel dominates the town, now as in years past, giving the appearance of protection, if not the reality. The town’s a stony place, catering to soldiers. I came to know several families there. During the war they had fled to Provence, where the Italian occupation forces helped them hide and survive. When they returned, they had to go from house to house to retrieve their furniture from the neighbors.

ghosts in the hills—
swift night descends again
upon Lorraine

by Ruth Holzer
Herndon, Virginia

Garry Eaton: Roach

.

Occasionally, one will launch across an open space, and bury itself in a crack or crevice. Quicker than the eye can see. Almost. But I sense them there, all around me, in their ugly millions.

.

infiltrated and resigned

in the great cities

the porous suburbs

.

Though getting rid of them is hopeless, once in awhile I make a sweep of the neighborhoods, taking down numbers. In a dishwasher's apron that once was white, I get to my knees on the duckboard, and peer under the food prep tables, under the grill, the fridges, the salad bar, and beyond, into the hellish, inaccessible spaces where greasy splatters and half-cooked bits of meat tend to fall when things get hot and heavy in the kitchen. And yes, I can see them there, another population explosion, breeding like cockroaches! However, I am in control here. This extermination will proceed my way, safely and efficiently.

.

I cover all the food trays, dishes, steel tables, grills and sinks. I close the cupboards, clear the runways, turn on the fans, break out the spray bombs, and don the death mask. Hardened by experience, I get down quickly to this necessary and inevitable destruction, and before you can say 'Hank Greenburg,' I have overwhelmed the favorite haunts, dare I say the ghettos, of my enemies with a devastating blitz.

.

the fog of war

no telltale press, no monuments

to the battle

.

At first, they are slow to respond. The weaponized mist spreads unnoticed, while I wait. Some of the largest and apparently strongest are the first to suffer—survivors of past holocausts, I theorize, and weakened, or with an acquired sensitivity. First, they quiver all over, and go rigid for a moment. As the lethal rain continues, nervous systems begin to relay strange messages. Then a shivering chaos vibrates up through ganglia to the insect brain and hence to the extremities. It's like watching plague and hunger strike a beseiged city. One after another, the inmates commence their dance, flipping themselves over and over, wildly out of control and running amok. The little ones stop, seeming to watch in amazement, as the fanatical possession spreads to them as well. Soon it shakes everyone, inducing waves of fear and a simultaneous scramble for the exits, lest their wills, too, fail and are paralyzed by this weakness, this whirling obsession. Panicked, and breathing deeply, they suck in their proper bane, as I move in for the kill.

.

Jewish Avenger

Spider Man of the garbage can—

his deadly dew

.

Most of them escape, but the kill rate is satisfactory. I know, because I've done this before, and every time my impact improves. I ease the pressure slowly to short, reinforcing squirts. I don't need to watch until every wriggle has ceased, either. I can imagine it. Beyond reach, cockroach corpses clog cockroach streets, cockroach subways and apartments. They crowd cockroach windows and doors, lying where they died in a final bid for cockroach freedom. But dried and blackened, in a few days they all will fall to dust, and disappear. Whither, I do not know.

.

I open the doors to the restaurant to air the place out, and in an hour, I remove the CLOSED sign from the window, and again invite in the world. Our little corner is safe once more.

.

today's special

chicken soup with lox

and a bagel

.

by Garry Eaton

Port Moody, British Columbia

Jeffrey Winke: Keeps Hammering the Dull

He tries to kill the flies before most customers arrive. You can hear the thwack, thwack, thwack as he chases a slow-moving fat one that’s on a late autumn suicide mission. The stupid thing keeps hammering the dull, grimy windowpane hell-bent on achieving a deadly concussion before a thwack will splat the life out of it. The bartender clearly isn’t a Buddhist. The broken window pane will never get fixed, because it’s way too big a deal to dismantle the window frame in order to get a clear shot at the pane. The bartender chuckles at his cleverness when he thinks: What a pain this pane would be to fix.

good-ol’-boy bar—
I mess with them,
order a chardonnay

.

..
by Jeffrey Winke
Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Bob Lucky: Bake Sale

The campus is thick with mothers and nannies laden with cupcakes, chocolate chip cookies and cinnamon rolls. Across the quad a woman sees me sitting on a bench, with my hands beneath my legs to keep them warm. She slows her pace, stops, then turns and heads towards me. We make eye contact when she is about thirty feet away. I watch the look of recognition dissolve as she gets closer.

“Oh, it’s not you.”

“But it is,” I reply.
.

an awkward silence
leaves change color
and blow away
.

by Bob Lucky
Hangzhou, China

Announcement: Publication of Modern Haibun & Tanka Prose 1—Summer 2009

.

MET Press is pleased to announce the publication of a new journal. The premiere issue of the biannual journal, Modern Haibun & Tanka Prose, edited by Jeffrey Woodward, has been published in print, in PDF ebook, and in an online digital edition. This Summer 2009 issue is 184 pages in a trade paperback. ISSN 1947-606X.

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Modern Haibun & Tanka Prose, with this inaugural issue, establishes itself as the first and only periodical devoted exclusively to these two mixed prose-and-verse genres. Haibun and tanka prose belong to the ancient and venerable tradition of Japanese poetry and belles-lettres. Their practice has waned in modern Japan but, with the continuing popularity of their respective parent-forms, haiku and tanka, in the West, haibun and tanka prose are experiencing unprecedented growth and diverse experimentation from New York to London, from Berlin to Brisbane, and in small towns and open countryside around the globe. Haibun and tanka prose are busily revising the general literary map and, in doing so, quietly reforming haiku and tanka also. Modern Haibun & Tanka Prose, a biannual journal, faithfully represents the full range of styles and themes adopted by contemporary practitioners and intends to play a vanguard role in charting the rapid evolution of these genres.

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Check out Modern Haibun & Tanka Prose at http://www.themetpress.com/modernhaibunandtankaprose/masthead.html

.

For more information, contact the editor, Jeffrey Woodward, at MHTP.EDITOR@GMAIL.COM

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