Blossom Etude

the stems wind round us
and i sun-stunned
see you flower

cherry blossom trunk
petal eyelids

sway together
in a breeze of
scorn--uncaring
daring delight

Les Ruinettes

Contaminated by heaven,
he ascended, parched,
damned if he did,
damned if she didn’t.

Now, Chapstick imprints her lips
on the petal-dented Duralex glass
from which she sips her fendant.
Her sink-washed cutoff shorts
hang drying on the line on the balcony
after their afternoon’s climb to Les Ruinettes.

He followed her up the mountain
like a happy pack mule,
gazing at her firm hams
and the lovely brown calves
planted in hiking boots
and wool socks.
Her sweat entranced him.
The uncertain gravity became her.

The thin air clutched
the hollowed half bowl of greens and browns,
topped by close but distant
crumb boulders of recent avalanche.

“Over there,” he pointed. “That’s Mont Blanc.”

July wild flowers spread
like a skirt below them
to where the cow bells
rang their gentle jests.

“They’re turning that pasture into a golf course.”

“It’s a shame. It’s so beautiful and unkempt now,” she said.

“They need the money. They need it to be
more than a winter resort.
They’re starting a music festival too.”

He sunblocked her shoulders.
He gave her a bandanna to cover
the elegant little part line of her scalp.

“Be careful. You’ll fry in half an hour. It’s powerful.”

Now, after lamb chops and salad,
baguette slices with
shaved Emmental,
then some raspberry cream tarte and tea,
she lays splayed in her jammies across the sofa,
reading a day-old Herald-Tribune.

“The world seems far away,” she says.
“Either it’s not real, or this isn’t.
I don’t want to find out which.”

She smiles sleepily. She burps.

“Excuse me,” she says.

The little boom box plays Wayne Shorter’s Adam’s Apple,
the sax raw and earnest.

“What time does he get in tomorrow?”

“Two-ish. I’m meeting his train in Martigny.
I can’t wait to see him again,” she says.
“It’s only been two months,
but it feels like two lifetimes.”

She rises, stretches, yawns.

“I’m bushed,” she says,
delivering an efficient goodnight kiss on the cheek,
all the less flirtatious for its directness.
“You’re so nice to have us.
I can see why your grandmother loved this place.”

“I’m glad I finally got to show it to you.” he says.

He hears down the narrow hallway
the toilet, her toothbrush.
He hears the irritable whine of her closing bedroom door.

Through his window
a furtive chill.
He pulls the duvet over his fevered neck,
closes his eyes,
and welcomes the sweet, swaddling torment.

bowlegged and furred
madame demurred
she'd had two gimlets
and craved a third

Chrome Dreams

cool
to the
touch with fire
in her taut
tanked belly

roar
to the shore
horizon breathed
from a diesel flat
bed ahead
on split
plains of dusty
lusty bereavement

for days gone
by lovers scraped
off hard
headed denials
of what he
felt she felt
he couldn't
give her

reproach kick
starts his
winded tears the
blast through
helmet
shield not
enough

the noise
too not
enough to drown
out her hurt
sobs her tough
angry
mouth as she
spat and
turned

away but
here riding
blue with
him forever

temptress
fortress
at 93
mph gravel
eroded
regret coming

fast

Tree Man

life like
electronic advisories
does not accommodate
replies

nature by nature is
unnatural turning nothings
into somethings then
back again as
if to see simply
whether it can

you are one with
the wild not
because you're wild but
because the wild toys
with you makes
you this and not
that arbitrarily
beautiful artfully
ugly

gone today here
tomorrow my
sorrow your joy
and then
switch and
then

peel me sprout
blossom whither
given giver
rooted seared
and split by
lightning I was
here I
will
be again

Shadows

Shadows stalk me still.
Never get their fill.
How could you delight
in the morning's light
if the nighttime had no will?

When the evening comes,
our contents under pressure,
antiseptic, screwed on tight,
strictly contained--

will you meet my eyes
and read their urgent message
and confront your demons
when I call your name?

Rock me tender, rock me slow.
There's still time till you must go.
Even if it's just one night,
kiss me long and hold me tight.
Rock me tender, rock me slow.

Long as you're alone,
as your desires roam,
smile as you may,
however bright the day,
you'll face shadows of your own.

Let our palettes merge,
our shadows, light converge
into a panorama rich
as it is bold.

Let the shadows play
and make their cautious way
amid the cool of living's shades
and feeling's folds.

Rock me tender, rock me slow.
Must you leave? Why must you go?
Let the day carry the night.
Kiss me long and hold me tight.
Rock me tender, rock me slow.

(originally published in Quail Bell Web zine)

Pond of Keybed

the pianist rediscovered
her in a pond of keybed

he'd given up hope but
found in felt hammers
her weight, her resistance,
her warm tension

he recalled New England woods
where muffled fugues
ricocheted off pines
and breeze-wafted ballades
sank into sun-splashed lawns

harmony resurges
in a moment's
augmented overtone

then vanishes
into that entreating,
diminished sound
of long ago

Photo by A.C.K. and Anna Morosini
Poem by A.C.K.

Restless Autumn

RESTLESS AUTUMN

bared branches dinosaur
necks arc over drizzled asphalt mist
hugs us in its ambivalent
grace chiding us for our
impatience

you arrive resplendent unseasonably
warm like the day valleyed between
fronts and angle yourself
as though it were preordained

positioned fate your
choreographer you share
your rich moods with our
moodiness looking
to lock onto a visible truth

you frown the air
cools you smile a warmth
of incandescent
surety

dusk brings the ordinary
no ordinary dusk
for you brought light
to setting




_____________________
Photography: Alexander C. Kafka
Copyright (c) 2011; all rights reserved

Model:
Zhanar Jumanova

Producer and Wardrobe:
Maria Esquivel--Photo Hispana

Makeup and Hair:
Josett Valdez--Yana Services

Chet Baker With 50 Italian Strings

Mediterranean pull
taut warmth
strung out on chords

what is the mot juste
for this just note?
just the note
the moment asks for--
just that note
and no note more

a raised seventh
a simple request no
one could deny and
no one could grant--
impossibly beautiful
beautifully impossible

Digitally Remastered

he was unprepared
for the effects
of digitally
remastering himself

his wife
at his touch
sprouted odd
neck hairs
that torqued
toward overhead
space junk

his children clutched
their seats when
he prepared to
speak because they
knew the floor
would shimmy
from his sub
wolfing pumped
up basso

he dreamed of the
microforging of
dangerous plated
conflict minerals
and awoke crying
nitrous tears

he tried to
revert but his
analog self had
been left
in the rain

he played what
was left of
it and it stretched
and spiraled and
tore with one
last crescendoing
static huff

now he is
muted his high
resolution
transparent

Cloud Woman

her quiet was unquiet
her calm was uncalm
her intent was intent
her love like a psalm

she was the proximal zone
where his undevelop meant
to be with her but alone
both caressing and absent

he loved what he saw
but he adored what wasn't there
not her face but its shadows
as she hid it in her hair

when her cool eyes regarded him
he looked back unyearned
but the fires devoured
when her lovely back turned

-Doritt Carroll and Alexander C. Kafka

Photograph by Anna Morosini and Alexander C. Kafka


(Poem and photograph originally published in the Web zine Forty Ounce Bachelors)

Retreat

The sinewy lifeguards strut 'round in their Tevas,
Jantzen-sheathed, brown-skinned barbecue divas.
The elders swim laps while the preachers toss salads
to the strains of capo-necked, four-chord ballads.

The boy in the bath house texts in a panic.
Reception is iffy and his girlfriend's gone manic.
Status updated and passion encrypted,
this wasn't the break-up he'd carefully scripted.

Hungry and tired, the Teen Choir emerges
from bug bites and poker and prayer groups and purges.
They claw at the raft out adrift in the lake,
afraid and alive, with salvation at stake.



(originally published in the Web zine Forty Ounce Bachelors)

Where Are You Tonight?

You're one part invisible,
one part out of my sight.
I search for you within your lair.
Where are you tonight?

Your friends are thin like models,
but ravenous like wolves.
One plays that ol' bad-ass flute,
wears loafers on his hooves.

Of course you blend in
when you’re nowhere to be seen,
but what you’re never wearing
betrays just where you’ve been.

You ache for Bordeau,
but all you drink is port.
You say it’s affectation
from that Alsace resort.

Desired in Crimea,
beloved in South of France.
All this trouble started
when you learned the Nero dance.

You're the light I read by,
but I can't turn you on.
Your switch is on the blink, I think,
and when I blink it's gone.

Where, oh where, are you tonight?

Lo

you are front
and back of
a canvas

economical that
and artful
too in that you
forward
me even
when you
leave me

you broach me
in retrospect
prelude
me in afterthought
our chats on
going
complete by
inference

paint translucent
frugal thin but
definite

i live and
love a
wash in you

Uncritical Affinity

she was parenthetical
peering out from
beyond the tapered curves

nestled comfortably
but melancholically
in the spaces between

vital sentiments

her man was declarative
appositive
her children
interrogative

her mother
ejaculatory

then one day she found
an em-dashed seraph
proudly extraneous and
breathtaking

meaning didn't demand
her but her specifics
lent notions the
wingspan of prophecy
and thoughts were
slender for her
absence

in the pillared shadows
of connotative equinox
they whispered
unnecessaries to each other
ellipsing into
confidantes periods
of pointed pointless
suggestion between
them

Fragile Epiphanies

god's grand tongue
could squeeze the juice
from a thick Montana cloud

it could lick the planet's fur
against its grain
then back again
until it purred to its core

sweet minds
have minds of their own
shuddering earth plates
fragmenting, soldering together
in sticky lava chaos

we worship from our
webbed cages
tangled, hypnotized
by coarse grandeur
then hollowed in our
grave descent
to sullen spent sleep

Cafe Empire

We were expecting you--
about thirty years ago
but your table's still waiting.
Just sweep away the roaches.

The coat-check girl passed out
from the smell. You see,
her predecessor hung himself
and they can't cut down the body
till the coroner comes--
which won't be till the
ticket goes through
and the printer's out of ink.
Could be a while--
so, um, maybe don't check your coat.

The bartender's bringing your port,
but even with his walker
the tray's unsteady and
I see much of it has already spilled.
Didn't help that he had to
get around the bar-back, who
when she should've been cutting moldy lemons,
was juggling soap bubbles from the backed-up sink--
ever so slowly--
and they kept popping
on her eyebrow rings.

The head waitress will read you our specials.
Pay no mind to the blood on her cuffs.
She's a cutter, but it's more or less
under control since her pot-bellied pig returned
and she started shooting up.

We have cold cuts.
That's about it.
We can warm them if you like.

Tip the musicians, won't you?
But don't wake them.
Those fiddles haven't been
tuned in ten months.

Where'd your date go?
Was she put off by that
urchin under the table
gumming your shins?

That's not uncommon here.
Picaresque, we think.
The peasant soul and all that shit.

Enjoy.

The Late Ray
—in loving memory of Ray Lantos, 1924-2007

In his last years with Parkinson’s—
largely immobile—
he’d think he was waiting,
or, more often, late:
late to meet his residents for rounds,
late to get to the airport,
late for the wedding reception
or the sports banquet.
Always polite, but,
you see,
always some other place
he really should be.

We suspect this comforted him.
We know it comforted us.
For surely the Hebrew Home,
and the hospital bed, and the wheelchair,
and the TV lounge,
and the hot little dining room,
were not where he
was meant to be.

The close air.
Good thing
he wasn’t there.
His funeral at Arlington
went like clockwork.
Elegant. Efficient.
Stately in its slow rapidity.
Right.
On time.

I don’t believe in afterlives.
And afterward, early lives meekly retreat.
“If you throw that, I pity your soul,”
he told a would-be snowball assailant
who’d threatened Ray’s little brother.
Was that an initial glimpse
of Ray’s, among all the pitied souls,
on Normandy little more than a decade later?
Childhood shrinks
before the adulthood it births.
Then adulthood shrinks
before the bewildered octogenarian schoolchildren.

Existence is a droopy dreidl.

Ray’s memories and appointments
were kept, like words,
to himself, for others.

The thrice purple-hearted heart specialist
was disinterested in guns.
He had great luck, and awful—
trading the European theater for Broadway,
Omaha Beach for Ogunquit
or the dock at Thompson Lake.
He could do no worse.
He could do no better.

Reading a good biography
with unstroked eyes,
munching his beloved redskin peanuts,
watching a game on TV—
any game, mutedly triggering
his old championship high-school nerve tendrils—
sipping his martini—
Beefeater, dry, straight up.
Glass.
Chilled.
That’s where he is, I reckon.

When we visited,
he was just visiting—
considerate that way.

If we’ll excuse him,
he’s off now.
All is done.
Nothing’s left,
but the sweet rest—
long anticipated,
hard-won.

-Alexander C. Kafka

Shuffleboard

The vantages are riddled with punctures over years
and the sight, the years, and the holes have made
a mooring in his clothes, are no longer his,
or belong to anyone else.

He holds his breath, works, falls out of love or eats
out of its hand, and wonders, then worries a thumbnail
over the flesh edge of his long collected, aging gashes.

The era floods, droughts, and floods again and the man
is hurtled past in the speed of it like a dog's carcass
down the shuffleboard.

Everything else fights dust. They salt the run
to keep it off.

So the howling of baboons wake him, send him out.


—Ray Succre


Ray Succre lives on the southern Oregon coast with his wife and baby son. He has been published in Aesthetica, Laika, and Rock Salt Plum, as well as numerous other outlets across as many countries. He tries hard.

Lightning Bugs

I remember fluid, sticky warm magma
Before the toxic change of seasons
Summer skin to snowsuits I want
To cut the tips off my fingers to
Feel again. We are rats that remember
The junkyard abundance, the days
Of flesh and warm bellies.

We watched them disappear
With the quick sickness of simian
Diseases. One after another
Like fireworks flash and burn.

Looking at pictures, I could
smell you again for one
slippery second, disappearing
like lightning ozone,
a sound too late and prickling
hairs.

Does the moon also call dogs
like cracked glue memories of
a place you've been but can't go
back to? Does your voice slip
from your throat with the breath
of last words, and can I
catch it in a jar, like fireflies?


—Embley Veronica Noechel


Embley Veronica Noechel's work has been published in numerous literary magazines. She lives in Raleigh, North Carolina.