Chen-ou Liu: My Bird of Youth Has Left

French dramatist Victor Hugo once said that forty is the old age of youth. I wholeheartedly agree with his words. After passing the age of forty, I have become more anxious about growing old. I used to be the black cloud; now, I'm turning gray. Time slips away, hair whitens, hands age, veins emerge, and wrinkles stamp the brows. The back begins to ache, teeth become loose, and the voice gets hoarse, a charming quality to some and the roughness of age to others. Furthermore, the body grows dry and liable to fracture, and one day it will no longer respond.
.

looking out
bare maple branches
in the breeze—
mortally wounded
waving goodbye

by Chen-ou Liu
Ajax, Ontario, Canada

Gary LeBel: Humpty

I shake it. It makes a feeble sound like an ant’s complaint. I pour it out onto the table where it breaks into a pile of noise, and like Humpty Dumpty, there’s no putting it back together again, with everything jumbled sideways, mixed up, broken, strings merely tuning,

so I let it go and grab a different box,

shake it, spill the contents, look through shards of noise,

choose one,

start writing.

split indifferently
by a seedling
stone

by Gary LeBel
Cumming, Georgia

Bob Lucky: Night Market

The Ningxia Street night market is a jumble of hawkers and customers, the hum of propane burners, the clack-clack of spatulas in woks, and a thousand conversations.

legs dangling
from a plastic stool
a little girl
concentrates on her skewer
of candied tomatoes

Making our way through the crowd, we buy various types of flatbreads, oyster mushrooms breaded and deep-fried, kebabs and sausages.

on the altar
of a local shrine
an egg tart—
at last a god
to my liking

by Bob Lucky
Hangzhou, China

Tish Davis: Refrain

Dusk mutes green and all of green’s variations. Along the path, bare feet press the sheen out of damp clover. White blossoms of blackberries pop-out left and right. Even the oxeye daisies abandon their yellow.

candlelight
the bride’s father
steps back

.

by Tish Davis
Dublin, Ohio

Richard Straw: Stronger Grip

On a Sunday morning, dad's sitting in a private hospital room by a sunlit window. He tells me his doctors have agreed to let him use a chair even though he can't get out of it by himself. He says they haven't decided yet whether to do more cutting or more chemotherapy or nothing at all: "But they'll get paid whatever they do . . ."

I tell him that I have to hurry back to the airport for a midday flight. Then I reach for his hand, and we play an old game: "Who has the stronger grip?" This time, I let him win. I try to smile as I say, "Bye, take care."

Outside his room, a medication nurse listens to me stammer, "Check . . . him . . . make sure . . . doesn't fall . . ." But I can't complete a sentence.

I rush into a bathroom and begin sobbing. I continue to cry in the empty elevator, then in the rental car all the way to the airport, quieting finally on the packed plane.

Easter snapshot
a boy and his dad
cast one shadow

by Richard Straw
Cary, North Carolina
first published in bottle rockets #19, August 2008

Dru Philippou: Nostos

Open the Homeric Hymn to Demeter and enter the Nysian meadow, naming roses, crocuses, and beautiful violets . . . irises too, and hyacinths. Avoid narcissus, that sweet temptation, unless you want a seat at Haides’ banquet. If you have time, pass by the olive-trees bearing their splendid fruits, and you’ll hear Persephone’s echoing cries.

he clasps the maiden
tightly in his chariot
the four black steeds
gallop back to the palace
of dust and ashes

growing used
to his ways, and
his three-headed hound,
she stokes the flickering
fires of oblivion

the dark-haired lord,
on an ebony throne,
polishes his helmet
while Demeter braids
a wreath for his door

the taste
of the seed seals
Persephone’s fate:
misty darkness
and vines of the earth

.

.
Matter in italics is borrowed from “The Homeric Hymns” by A. N. Athanassakis

by Dru Philippou
Taos, New Mexico

Gary LeBel: Marked Down

On one side of it hang small wooden clothes hangers, demure and down-turning like an old maid’s shoulders. On the other half is a row of four drawers, each decorated with a covering of fine silk cloth,

the digs, dents and scratches in its riveted wood exterior, each well-earned, each with a story,

the bristling palms of a sea-windy latitude, a dollop of soft language, silk ties and tailored shirts,

ice in amber liquids, the scent of cardamom in Turkish coffee, the spoon-tinkled china half-filled with milky tea, an intricate lace doily beneath the ‘ever so’ inflections of the young woman above,

a world traveler’s home away from home bouncing up the gangway on a lean coolie’s back,

or the truncheon blows of pistons and the slow grinding argument of wheel and rail,

the vast undifferentiated poor that live between points of interest,

who serve the tea, speak the pretty words, lug the luggage, wash the lavatories, shine the shoes and clear the tables of still-warm food:

the turn-of-the-century steamer trunk and the Old World trapped inside it

just marked down to fifty dollars

in the thrift shop.

whistle-stop—
drinking from a gully
the three-legged dog

by Gary LeBel

Cumming, Georgia

Tish Davis: Gesso

He's an artist, still asleep under the quilt. Last night's shoes and clothes are scattered, leaving a trail back to the kitchen. I've found his robe and with my coffee enter the studio just as the morning light slowly edges along the face of each canvas hanging on the wall.

Definitely talented. I study each painting—oils, abstract, subtle. There’s a common theme including this blank surface now drying on the easel. The staples—notched along the sides—are diagonal, haphazard.

dimming the lights
the bust of Caesar
back on the bookshelf

by Tish Davis
Dublin, Ohio
first published in Contemporary Haibun Online, V4, N1, March 2008

Bob Lucky: The Shuffling Blues

This morning I roll out of bed with sore hips and limp to the toilet. Surely I’m not as old as I feel, though a glance in the mirror is inconclusive.

the older I get
the weaker my sense
of immortality—
the heart carved in the trunk
stretched to the bursting point

No pension to speak of, no money sense, no hope of a hefty inheritance—I will die in harness like an old workhorse. To my wife, I’ll leave a mixed bag of memories; to my son, shoes that I pray do not fit.

by Bob Lucky
Hangzhou, China

Jeffrey Winke: Part of the Grand Design

A short skirt is a promise. Nothing more, nothing less. Guys view promises as sacred trusts; women know promises can easily evaporate, like spilled water in a desert. She wears a short skirt, shear black lacy leggings, and tiny alligator-skin boots that look clunky, but stylish. Her eyes scan the room as she enters. She’s a collector. Her collection: hopeful stares of men. The quartet plays “Eye of the Tornado”—how fitting. Hancock becomes her soundtrack. Scrambled sax and piano—primal brass and sophisticated ivory. There is the usual assortment of guys with dopey, boyish grins. The boyish-grin-thing only works when there’s a bit of mischief in the eyes. Altar boys never get laid, but boys in detention do. She saunters to the bar with hip swivel to shorten a few breaths. Leaning forward as though she were about to whisper a secret to the bartender, she asks for the best cognac. Some guy—nameless and faceless—will pay. She’s an anomaly. Young, attractive women don’t drink top-shelf cognac. And they don’t frequent jazz clubs. She’s part of the grand design. Heaven sent. A holy attempt to spark the spirits of middle-aged men trapped in the mundane. The bottle of booze left at the recovering alcoholic’s door with the anonymous Merry Christmas card—God’s doing. The mailman accidently delivering the neighbor’s copy of Mothering magazine to the couple desperately trying to get pregnant—God did it. All the boxes filled with past expiration date food handed out to the hungry and homeless—yep, God’s work.

scratch off—
one number shy
of the big win

by Jeffrey Winke
Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Stanley Pelter: sonata

mist eases
below a windbreak hawthorn
an alphorn grips air

forest walk. struggle. climb over mutilated trees, snap detached branches, crunch muddied twigs. from inside leaves, lighter than sun dried sounds, we hear a minor key drift of sad adagio notes grow sadder.
.

town based lovers
somewhere lips dedicate
to piccolo thrills

.

by Stanley Pelter

Claypole, Lincolnshire, England

Sharon Auberle: Musca Domestica

When you investigate my juicy plum, when you walk the rim of my Riesling, when you buzz me, gleefully, in the middle of a nap, I try, O fly, to dig deep into the Buddha corners of my heart and find the sanctity of every living thing, though I have great difficulty with mosquitoes as well, not to mention earwigs . . . but I digress. In spite of your fondness for all things revolting, I want to spare you, really I do. You, with your Kafkaesque legs and eyes, even my pen you explore! Is there any place you dare not? But heed this warning, O small one: when you walk about on my paper, rubbing those questionable feet above my fresh poem, then, my inquisitive little friend, you are history.

afternoon
one fly
on the pane

.
by Sharon Auberle
Sister Bay, Wisconsin

Gary LeBel: The Stars Misplaced

.

“...I wanna hear and see / everything...”

Jimi Hendrix, Up from the Skies

.

The rainy scent of the Tennessee Mountains on a May evening floods the interstate—the traffic is light, the pace unhurried and leisurely, a drive I’ve made at least a hundred times.

.

A late eighties station wagon, a Dodge I think, pulls out in front of me. There’s something odd about this car: it’s transporting a body.

.

But the surprise of a body bag in full view doesn’t immediately sink in. What fascinates me even more is the driver.

.

He has a full head of thick white hair, slicked back and shining, not a strand out of place, late middle age, a dapper man, like the one who never talks in film noire. Though his window’s down, the hair doesn’t budge. His hands are long and slender, feminine. His taut pink skin looks shrink-wrapped over his high forehead and prominent cheekbones; his crisp white dress shirt matches his hair. This man doesn’t nail boards together on his days off. I’ll call him Charon, after the Greek underworld’s infamous chauffeur.

.

He looks straight ahead, leaning forward into the steering wheel with a grip that would put the Ancient Mariner’s to shame. The head of the corpse is less than six inches from his lap. To picture this fully you must imagine an old green station wagon, mostly windows. A juryrigged, makeshift stretcher lies in the center where the middle seats should be. I had always thought these kinds of ‘deliveries’ were shielded from the public eye behind pleated gray curtains but every day’s an education.

.

I watch the wind blow eerily through the bag, alternately expanding and deflating, rippling at times from head to toe. When it collapses, the nose and feet protrude.

.

In fact, I’m chasing them, increasing my speed as Charon does, passing when he passes, pulling in again right behind him, though I keep my distance. I can’t take my eyes off that immaculate hair, the resolute, forward gaze or the rippling body bag foreshortening feet-first a few yards in front of me like Mantegna's Dead Christ.

.

But not for a second do I feel the slightest morbidity in this game. To me there’s no one else on the highway; I’m welded to this moment by curiosity alone. It’s death and its business-as-usual aftermath I’m seeing, as plain as a cinderblock: no tears, no flowers, no hearts being weighed by Thoth, just someone’s fate and another’s job. What coin beneath the eyes, I wonder, nickel, peso, drachma?

.

After miles of this close pursuit, Charon shoots abruptly off the interstate toward one of those small Tennessee towns with a Native American name, his taillights swallowed by the exit ramp and the hips of crouching mountains. In truth, I could have turned off and followed him.

.

Their faces tonight

............after thirty odd years in the bellies of ships,

some who met the ‘blue-eyed boy’

............and those

who followed Jonah.

.

by Gary LeBel

Cumming, Georgia

first published in Abacus (2008)

Benita Kape: Unveiling Day

Some months before the full year has passed, the family make plans. The plaque for the grave—this will be kept simple. Two river stones and the plinth on which they stand collect lichen for under these stones our infant son has laid for forty years. All must be spruced up for the occasion; yet in time lichen will return to run over and around the shells that, like an ancient language, inscribe the surface of the stones.

It is the custom of the people that one year following the burial or, at a time suitably close to the first anniversary of that day, a ritual will take place. A plaque will be placed, in this case on the plinth beside our son's. Late in the day, the Stone Mason will complete his work. A cloak will then be reverently arranged and cover all while awaiting the final service.

moonlight
leaves
lightly falling

A year ago, it had been difficult to say goodbye. A circle of a year and the immediate family invite the wider circle of family and friends to gather. There will be prayers and readings; these are a people whose orations are renowned. In the bitter cold of a winter's day, those gathered draw in closer. Kuia nod in respect as the first speaker is motioned forward by the minister. Our surviving son begins in Te Reo. Discreetly given notice earlier by his sisters, "Don't you keep us out here in the cold too long."

near the cemetery
turning back
for a bouquet

And though he forgoes the whakapapa that was recited at the tangi, those present listen intently as he describes a meeting with a clairvoyant over the past few days. Unexpected perhaps, though strangely comforting, as we all gather strength to move on. The forthright eyes of an elder, my husband in air-force uniform, smile back at us from a ceramic photo on the plaque as the cloak is drawn aside. "This was the blanket briefly laid but forever to keep him warm," a niece of Rongowhakatau iwi declares on the minister's final blessing. Leaving the cemetery, we sprinkle water over our heads and rinse our hands at the gate handbasins.

unveiling day
old notes, new notes
in our waiata

Notes

Unveiling = a custom of the Maori people of New Zealand.
Kuia = the women elders.
Te Reo = the Maori language.
whakapapa = the names and relationship of the extended families (whanau).
tangi = funeral
waiata = song
Rongowhakatau = one of many tribes on the East Coast
iwi = tribe

by Benita Kape
Gisborne, New Zealand

Dru Philippou: Hipólito, the Herder

with his crook
he navigates
the rough terrain
early bluegrass
and white clover

villagers liken
the shepherd to
ruddy-limbed Pan
piping to nymphs
nearby a spring

rustic viands
for his fare
and tinkling bells
the heavenly sleep
of the herder

Go down from the trail over the matted dried grass up along the fence; pass the long oblong water trough to the cedar in the distance, shading the grave with a red and yellow tulip. “I planted the bulbs last year!” says a friend. The sheepherder, Hipólito, is buried here. I can still read his name and dates, 1912-1971, carved on the cross. Nothing else is known about him, but hikers are often told, “Go by Hipólito’s grave.”

by Dru Philippou
Tao, New Mexico
first published in Modern English Tanka V3, N 4 (2009)

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.]