The Place of the Living Part 2

 The man sipped his water slowly. 

Wise, Quil thought. Used to the hardships of a salt-water life.

"You will need to eat a little, too" Quil said.

"Yes," the man rasped. 

"Do you know your name?" Quil asked, passing a small piece of dried fish from his ragged pack.

The man ate the fish first, then took another draft of water.

"Elsen," he said. "Elsen of Lacfell." 

He paused a moment, taking another drink from the skin, and passing it back to Quil.

"Thank you for pulling me from the water," he said.

Quil said, "It is nothing. I was here, you washed in with the tide. It was only a moment's work to drag you to my poor fire."

"Then just for the water and fish," Elsen answered.

Quil smiled.

Elsen watched the old man feed the fire with driftwood. The dry fuel brough the campfire to blazing life, and Quil chuckled a little.

The flames threw shadows about the craggy face and made his beard seem longer and darker. The soft cavern of Quil's toothless mouth, made to seem bigger in the dancing light, worked constantly in a soundless, one-sided conversation.

The water and food had done its work and Elsen was standing now, thinking of climbing the grassy berm to see the land beyond. He just didn't feel quite ready yet.

He wore only the breeches and linen shirt he'd washed up in, his boots, hat and longcoat a memory of the sea. Much like his sword, he lamented. He was in a strange land of which he knew little, and who knew if Quil intended to sell him to some bandit or slaver.

Of course, he saw little threat from Quil himself. It was just his own ignorance of the local custom. After all, if someone had washed up outside of Lacfell in his condition, they'd likely have been murdered long since. Especially if it was the hobgoblins who found them.

Quil had settled onto a log and was looking contentedly out to sea. It might have been as if Elsen wasn't even there.

He turned to the berm and began making his barefoot way through the sand.

"Oh don't do that," Quil said, without even changing his expression.

Elsen paused.

"Why not?" he asked.

"The stones in the grass will cut your feet," the old man answered. "I'll make you a pair of sandals in the morning. In the mean time, it will be supper soon."

"Oh? What's for supper, then?" Elsen asked.

Quil lifted and shook his shabby pack.

"Ah," nodded Elsen.

Crossing the Bridge

Here 

BY NICHOLAS GOODLY

There is a moment

on the bridge,

piles of clothes

along the margin.

The pile

is behind you,

the moment is

you looking

in the rearview.

Somewhere,

a clean white

minivan,

a family

gathering

fallen luggage.

You are

the margins.

The moment

is looking

back at you.

The bridge

is between

you and

the moment

you look in

the rearview.

It is only

the bridge,

it is in the shape

of you, the bridge.

The bridge is you,

you a part of it,

somewhere.

The bridge

is nothing,

only

the shape

of

it

now.

It is behind you.

I Love You, But

 BY RICARDO RUIZ

Mi Jefita looks distraught,

oscillating between

her own history and my soul.

Hours, days, months with her knees

bent pidiéndole a la virgin

Que me cuidara as I fought in

Afghanistan.

Now she’s staring into hell's image,

Bouguereau's Dante and Virgil

groping with each spin of the

wooden spoon

as the red paste rises to a boil,

splattering her apron

with my childhood favorite meal.

I love him, he’s my best friend, the

one who slept on my couch

when I wanted to put my AR to

my mouth and be another dead vet.

I would have died for this country

because I believe it’s for me and

him.

I may have to marry him,

I tell the most important women in

my life.

                                 My Fiance

                                 My Mother

I will marry him,

cause we ain’t goin’ nowhere.

2,572 miles separate Moses Lake,

Washington,

my place of birth

and Colima, Mexico, his.

Neither of us had a role in how we

got here.

Here

Crows in a Strong Wind

Here 

Crows in a Strong Wind

BY CORNELIUS EADY

Off go the crows from the roof.

The crows can’t hold on.

They might as well

Be perched on an oil slick.

Such an awkward dance,

These gentlemen

In their spottled-black coats.

Such a tipsy dance,

As if they didn’t know where they were.

Such a humorous dance,

As they try to set things right,

As the wind reduces them.

Such a sorrowful dance.

How embarrassing is love

When it goes wrong

In front of everyone.

The Moon and the Yew Tree

by Sylvia Plath

This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary.
The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue.
The grasses unload their griefs at my feet as if I were God,
Prickling my ankles and murmuring of their humility.
Fumy spiritous mists inhabit this place
Separated from my house by a row of headstones.
I simply cannot see where there is to get to.
The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right,
White as a knuckle and terribly upset.
It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet
With the O-gape of complete despair. I live here.
Twice on Sunday, the bells startle the sky —
Eight great tongues affirming the Resurrection.
At the end, they soberly bong out their names.

The yew tree points up. It has a Gothic shape.
The eyes lift after it and find the moon.
The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary.
Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls.
How I would like to believe in tenderness —
The face of the effigy, gentled by candles,
Bending, on me in particular, its mild eyes.

I have fallen a long way. Clouds are flowering
Blue and mystical over the face of the stars.
Inside the church, the saints will be all blue,
Floating on their delicate feet over cold pews,
Their hands and faces stiff with holiness.
The moon sees nothing of this. She is bald and wild.
And the message of the yew tree is blackness — blackness and silence.

Hunger

 

That sense of spinning, shredding doom you feel when you are hungry and sleepy?

That’s a survival mechanism.

You are in danger.

Take it seriously.

Anyone who tells you otherwise is the danger.

It’s social control.

Don’t accept oppression.

Your anger is yours.

Don’t let anyone take it from you.

 

If you are hungry, only eat if you want to.

(If you can.)

If you are sleepy, only sleep if you want to.

Make your own damn decisions.

---

Did you see that shitty neighborhood under the bridge back there?

The judgement just rolls off you as you speed by.

How do you think it got that way? Bad people live there, right?

Bad people

Who have no money

No grocery store

No car to get to the nice, tree-lined avenue, in the pale, new addition where the store is.

No grocery store, because there is no money, no money, because there are no businesses. No businesses because there is no money. No money, no groceries.

And it spins and it spins.

And they are hungry and sleepy and doomed.

And you want to take away their anger with your condescending bullshit.

You want to talk at them with your deep and beloved ignorance.

Drive on, and fuck you.

The Place of the Living, Part 1

 He drifted for a long time. Days, perhaps, though consciousness was only an occasional companion. He knew the sun, relentless and oppressive, and sometimes the stars. He once heard the stirrings of some great beast beneath his little raft of debris, but hadn't the energy to react. 

Consciousness surfaced once more in the night. The now-familiar swaying of the sea was gone, leaving a heaving in his belly, unaccustomed to stillness. He could feel the cool of the night, though his eyes were crusted shut. Sand at his back, in his clothes, seemingly in his mouth.

He opened his eyes, and the stars above spun wildly. He shut them again, rolled over and heaved the nothing from his guts.

"You'll need more water," came a voice, male-seeming and quivering with age. "And food when you can."

He panted through the end of his spasm, fell back on his shoulders. He wanted to move his mouth, ask questions, but instead he drifted away again.

Quil warmed his hands at the fire, glancing over at the sleeping man. Not a young man, by any means, more of middling years. His face was lightly pocked, likely from a bout of spots in his youth. The nose was heavy, arching low over a thin mouth hidden by the scraggle of beard. Quil could tell the man was used to shaving both face and head, but stubble stood heavy upon his pate.

The paleness of the man's complexion told Quil he likely came from across the water. Not a common thing, but sometimes ships will wreck too far out, and drift will wash upon the beach. 

It's not often that drift breathes, though, Quil chuckled quietly into the salty breeze.

The man woke again, and this time was able to sit up. He extricated himself from beneath a makeshift shelter, made of a ratty cloak and some sticks. Nearby, a driftwood campfire smoked its last, and before him, beach and sea. The sun was high in the sky, but seemed dimmed by a haze. 

He looked behind him. Whoever dragged him here had set up camp near the edge of the beach. Just a few steps away loomed tall brown grass, obscuring whatever land lay beyond. From the position of the sun, he knew that land would not be his home. The sea on the north of him told him that, right enough.

Just as he was turning away from the grass, an old man's face emerged from above it. Gray, bearded and dark of skin, the man was thin and a little stooped. He stopped when he saw that his charge was awake.

"Welcome back to the place of the living," he said.