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Cabildo Quarterly 2012-2021

After fifteen print issues and countless online posts, Cabildo Quarterly is no more as of 9/30/2021. 

Thanks to all who read, contributed or helped out during our 9 1/2 year run.

Mike Fournier & Lisa Panepinto

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New Poetry: Angelina Martin

voyeur

you’ve gotten into the habit of slinking out of the room when anything happens if it’s something joyous, you float to the rafters and admire the scene like a refined work of art              look at the energy here! such elated emotion              on the faces of the subjects! there is no doubt              this is a beautiful moment. I would pay top dollar to have this moment hung in my home. if it’s something awful, you rise slow like morning and crawl to the corner to join the rest of the dust where you examine the agony or shame or whatever the air is thick with at the time and your heart breaks briefly in the same way as when you drive past an accident on your way to work             those poor, poor people,             whoever they are. I hope they’re okay             but they probably aren’t. I’m thankful             that’s not happening to me right now. but my dear, you are the poor, poor people! that’s your own wicked body strewn about the wreckage though if you didn’t recognize it when it was all in one piece then you surely wouldn’t be able to pick it out of a line up now at least that makes sense: you’re trying to protect yourself and witnessing pain is easier to swallow than experiencing it but you don’t understand why you must rush off when rare peace comes around when it’s one of those long awaited hours or minutes that you claim to stay alive for just once when you get what you want you wish you could be still enough to savor it

***

Angelina Martin is a poet, comedian, and waitress who lives in Austin, Texas. She has been published in literary magazines such as Sea Foam Mag, Corvus Review, and Okay Donkey Mag as well as in the book Anthology: The Ojai Playwrights Conference Youth Workshop 2006-2016. You can usually find her on Twitter and Instagram (@angelinajmartin) or on the basketball court, trying to become the oldest woman ever drafted by the WNBA.

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New Poetry: Zebulon Huset

Image by Annaliese Jakimides

Skating Curbs All Night

Curbs were never cool, but for those of us without much to skate they were damn fun.

Down the road from where I grew up there was a supermarket- slash-strip mall with painted curbs

and wide sidewalks where we skated runs for hours and hours and hours, balancing one pose long as we could

then skating quick but not hard onto the next curb glinting with a fresh coating of paraffin.

Especially far after all but the 24-hour grocery store had locked up for the night

under the warm yellow eyes of the streetlights buzzing with mosquitos. No cars in the parking lot,

no cameras filming—just the sound of urethane wheels and plastic sliding on concrete

punctuated by claps or the percussion of frames slapping concrete following a solid grind or even a close attempt.

***

Zebulon Huset is a teacher, writer and photographer living in San Diego. He won the Gulf Stream 2020 Summer Poetry Contest and his writing has appeared in Meridian, The Southern Review, Fence, Atlanta Review & Texas Review among others. He publishes the writing blog Notebooking Daily, edits the journals Coastal Shelf and Sparked, and recommends literary journals at TheSubmissionWizard.com.

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New Poetry: Emily Stone

No Longer

He didn’t knock me around (much), that would’ve been too clear. Instead, he used words and demeanor to keep me living in fear. He didn’t throw me down the stairs, or use fists to get his way; That might’ve been easier though, than second guessing everything he would say. He didn’t use traditional weapons; intimidation was his game. Manipulation was used to bludgeon my value, and words to choke me with shame.

He had all the power, and enjoyed reminding me so. He controlled the money because I was in school, and having a career was “no.” He had strength and hate to use against me, and he did. He raged, yelled, and mocked, then taunted and neglected my kid. Some abuse doesn’t leave bruises that the bystander can see; The damage that’s been done took years to diminish me.

Out in the world he was charming, a delight; But at home, you should’ve heard the things he’d say out of spite. That charm was a mask, a lie, a façade. He never allowed people to know he was flawed.

When I tried to rise against him, I had to play the game just right. Or else my belongings would be destroyed, and I’d be blamed for the fight. Once I finally walked away, broken, just a shell; Many people didn’t believe that I had been through so much hell.

Don’t rebuke me for my story, you’ve never walked in my shoes. In life we’re sometimes dealt cards we weren’t allowed to choose. My sister brought me back to church, and my eyes opened to see That protecting my son became everything to me.

Accepting what was happening was no picnic, to be sure; But once I saw the truth in who he was, it was impossible to endure. So I set about the work of letting God prepare my heart. He stretched me, shared His wisdom, and then I had to do my part.

Walk with me as I try to heal, or turn away and let me be. You can’t love me and ignore the very truth that set me free.

When the time was right, and God said it was time to go, I knew all I had been through would pave my freedom road. Now is a new beginning, time to look ahead and dream. No longer a slave to a man who was downright evil and mean.

In all His goodness, God breathed a new life into me. Never again will I allow someone to steal my identity. Any hardship that comes my way, I take it head-on because I can see, that on God’s battlefield, we will profess Victory.

***

Emily Stone is a devoted mother and survivor of Domestic Violence. After finding her voice, she became an advocate for Women and Children in her city, who are currently fleeing their own Domestic Violence situation. This poem is her story.

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Two Poems: Kuo Zhang

Visibility

When I enrolled my son to Lake School, the only public preschool and kindergarten in town,

the principal is happy:

“Thank you for contributing to the diversity of our school!”

My Little Boys Are Crazy about the Woodpecker

The woodpecker pecks the metal top of our chimney every morning.

It sounds like the old bell for class when we were kids.

We ran back everywhere from the playground.

I still fingered a transparent gum from the old peach tree.

My same-desk boy pocketed a green caterpillar.

He colored it red in his cool car pencil box during our Chinese class.

We were waiting for the bell.

But soon, it’s replaced by a piece of music.

They said the bells can make students stressful.

***

Kuo Zhang is a faculty member at Western Colorado University. She has a bilingual book of poetry in Chinese and English, Broadleaves (Shenyang Press). Her poem “One Child Policy” was awarded second place in the 2012 Society for Humanistic Anthropology [SHA] Poetry Competition held by the American Anthropology Association. She served as poetry & arts editor for the Journal of Language & Literacy Education in 2016-2017 and also one of the judges for 2015 & 2016 SHA Poetry Competition. Her poems have appeared in numerous literary magazines, including Gyroscope Review, Coffin Bell Journal, The Roadrunner Review, Lily Poetry Review, Mom Egg Review, Bone Bouquet, K’in, North Dakota Quarterly, Rigorous, Adanna Literary Journal, Raising Mothers, and MUTHA Magazine.

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New Poetry: Kathryn de Leon

Image by Ryan Roderick

YELLOW SWEATER                            early 1960s

My father and his brother went rabbit hunting near my uncle’s ranch in Mexico.

My sister and I came along, (strange we were included) two little girls so small in a big afternoon loud with the men voices of our father and uncle and the echoing crack of rifles though I don’t remember any rabbits.

I remember blue sky and hot sun, brown hills and nopales.

I remember losing my sweater. I’m sure I cried annoying my father no end.

We went back to look for it. There it was spread on the dusty trail its yellow sleeves empty and helpless like crushed wings.

How quickly the sweater had lost the memory of my arms.

I still have it. It’s so small I’m sure it has shrunk.

My arms have forgotten the sweater. But the sweater remembers that day in Mexico. It reminds me of brown hills and a huge sky so far from home.

How amazing that a single day can stay behind in the memory while countless other days in our lives are dropped like that yellow sweater and we are allowed to go back for not even one of them.

***

Kathryn de Leon is from Los Angeles, California but has been living in England for eleven years. Her poems have appeared in several magazines in the US including Aaduna, Calliope, Black Fox, and Trouvaille Review, and in several in the UK, including London Grip, The Blue Nib, and The High Window where she was the Featured American Poet.

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New Poetry: Brigid Hannon

Gloriosa

The daisy was dying. Four dollars for a sad plant, the man at the stand told me she just needed love. I thought of Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree and said “okay.”

Took her home, put her on the porch where plants go to die because I don’t have an awning- they fry like bacon. I guess I thought, perhaps, sunlight would save her. When she bloomed again, I smiled, and took her still shaky stems down to the garden. I planted her across from the peonies.

She shriveled. She died.

A year went by.

Pulling weeds, I see a leaf unlike the others and think “okay.” I leave it be. Three months, and the plant has grown to my knee but still no flower blooms- I wonder if maybe I am cultivating a weed until one day, she buds, and then blooms, in all her yellow and brown beauty. One bloom. Six buds.

Today I go outside and she waves to me in the summer breeze, all seven flowers reaching towards the sun that brought her back to life.

Four dollars,

said the man at the stand. All she needs is a little love.

***

Brigid Hannon is a writer from Buffalo, NY.  Her poetry and short fiction have been featured in various online journals including the San Antonio Review, Ghost City Press Review, Soft Cartel, and Queen Mob’s Teahouse.  Her first collection of poetry, A Lovely Wreckage, is now available on Amazon.

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New Poetry: Izabella Santana

from Where Do The Ghosts Reside

A home away from home. A family of five turned four in 2017. Morir. A brother. I can remember the sound of his voice carrying over breakfast, a family who treated me as their own. Twin sisters. Friends who could wrap themselves around me and I wouldn’t shake. A mother who cooked me Caldo de Verduras on summer days when I stayed. A father who ignored the language barrier and drove me home making jokes I did not always understand but loved to hear. And we used to climb the roof to drink lukewarm coffee and smoke a blunt passed between lips holding secrets. What do you dream of? Stayed up late talking to the moon and stars hoping one would fall into our lap. We needed hope. Drank our mugs until empty, stared into the bottom where coffee grinds stuck wondering what this divination might mean. Laughter spilling into our hands trying to stop us from waking up the parents. This is where we dreamed. A string tied around our fingers, we promised we would never let go. Mi amor por ti es infinito. Mis hermanas. Mis salvadoras.

***

Izabella Santana (She/Her) is a 23 year-old college grad with a Bachelor's in English-Creative Writing, now working on her last semester as an MFA candidate at SFSU. She currently resides in San Francisco, but is originally from Santa Ana, California. While working on her MFA, she’s interning for Omnidawn Publishing as a Marketing Assistant and Fiction Editor.  In her spare time, she enjoys reading, perfecting her coffee-making skills, and collaborating with friends on other art projects. You can follow Izabella on Twitter @izzy_raven_poe

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Two Poems: Howie Good

Image by Harris & Ewing, Public Domain

My American Dream

My old grandmother is being forced by a mob to climb a tree and chirp like a bird, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. I’ve already been expelled from my job and apartment and required to register with the police. People like me are forbidden to go to the cinema or theater or even sit on a park bench. Any moment now an officer will stick a gun in my face and order me to strip naked and crawl on all fours across the grass. Children will point and laugh. Grown-ups will struggle to get a better view.

The Laughing Gull

Because I was watching the waves roll in and not where I was walking, I very nearly stepped with bare feet on a decaying wing, all that drearily remained of a so-called “laughing gull,” dirty white flight feathers flaking off a now-fatuous frame of hollow bones that nature had designed for soaring.

***

Howie Good's latest poetry collections are The Death Row Shuffle (Finishing Line Press, 2020) and The Trouble with Being Born (Ethel Micro-Press, 2020).

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New Prose: Annaliese Jakimides

Images by Annaliese Jakimides

Gratitude Bank

I have been accused of being a Pollyanna. But please don’t dismiss me so lightly here. I see the devastation. My heart is crackling, splintering, over those not just dying or sick, but all the others who are suffering. It’s one thing to be pretty much locked at home in a place with space—multiple bedrooms and a sit-down kitchen. But five or six or seven kids, extended family even, closed up in a one- or two-bedroom apartment with a galley in which you need only pivot turn from sink to stove? The homeless. The jobless. The hungry. I am even anguishing for the drug addicts who cannot go without their fix (my brother was one for almost 50 years, so, trust me, I know). But even in the toughest of times, we can find joy, often in the most unlikely places, if we remain open to the possibility.

In my life, I have lived with only macaroni and butter and pepper, lost my home, worried about housing and work, lost a son to his own hand and many others to health and age, situations of their own making and not. I am, however, made to see—or at least look for—the light in everything. And so today when I went for an early-morning walk in the city I now call home, I headed up deserted Main Street where all our small (almost everything is small in Bangor, Maine) storefronts and restaurants are shuttered, except for the card table outside the bookstore for picking up orders and the few adjusted-to-a-version-of-takeout eateries. I crossed West Broadway, a holdover street of big houses from the sea-captain days, to see the new (and extraordinary) chain-saw sculpture carved from a damaged tree in front of Stephen and Tabitha King’s house. As I approached the corner, peaceful space turned into raucous street construction. Backhoes and diggers, foremen, laborers, and flaggers. The sound of pseudo-normalcy in almost spring—we had snowflakes last night. And then I heard “Hey” shouted over the machinery din and turned to see a smiling woman, wielding the stop/slow flag with one hand and waving her other cigarette-holding one at me.

The last time I had seen her, she was stoned-oblivious, tipping over, hanging outside Dunkin Donuts downtown, but not oblivious enough to not recognize me as someone she vaguely remembered, and so we passed a few words. This is not the first time a shout-out recognition has happened on the outside with someone I met when he or she was an inmate at the local jail and I would explore life with them through the lens of children’s books. I know, it sounds impossible and crazy, but ask any of them, it’s a door opening into a deep interior of our shared lives.

Here she is—Marie, I think, although I’m not good with names—waving and shouting, telling me she’s doing okay. Amongst all this heartache and disruption, she’s working, working for the state, a good job with benefits. “You look great. I’m so happy to see you,” I call back. She nods, smiles through a waft of smoke. I am so happy, so happy that I fairly skip the few remaining blocks to my apartment.

I am adding this exchange, the vision of Marie at work, to my gratitude memory bank of these times, to live beside, among others, my grands, who live in New Jersey with a Covid-19 death toll that has long ago surpassed its Vietnam numbers; my grands, who know someone who died from it; my grands, whose parents are still working; my grands, who, in the midst of it all, are experiencing being children, I would say, for the first time. No daycare. No school. No out-to-eat with the whole extended family. No gatherings for birthdays, holidays, babies, weddings. No sports practices. No wrestling meets or soccer games. No adults organizing the where/when/who/what of everything.

And so, they are now, this just-turned-eleven-year-old boy and his eight-year-old sister, best friends. They must be. There are no others readily available. Some squabbles, but not so much. They have figured out compromise and concessions in ways they couldn’t seem to comprehend before.

“Ama,” my granddaughter says when she calls, “want to see our art?” Some is explosive movement, geometrical shapes, blazing colors; others, Georgia O-Keeffe’y; and still others, penciled cartoon characters. It’s noontime; she explains they are done with the schooling that their amazing mother manages to navigate while setting up a website to sell goods online, potting plants, responding to customers and vendors.

“Done?” I’m incredulous “When did you start?”

“We start at 6:30 so we can have the rest of the day to play.” Play. I love that word. Their dad knew play—out in the fields, the woods, where you go dream up your worlds and interests somewhere inside or outside on the 40 acres of a northern Maine homestead. In their busy, managed lives, these children have not known “play,” the kind that takes a fair amount of unencumbered, idle time, lazily expanding imagination. And so, these days, they are tenting inside magical worlds; painting; dancing and choreographing; building games from discarded Zappo boxes and plastic kitchenware.

Today, my grandson tells me his album (well, maybe I said “album”; he probably had another word) is going to “drop” soon. Recently, he downloaded an app and has been playing around with lyrics, his and others’, making changes, finding connections. Every day, I watch the short video of him singing on my phone and am reminded that there is still much we can find to be grateful for. The phone. The din of machines on the corner. A hand waving. Sneakers on my feet. Voices of people—known and unknown. Breath.

***

Annaliese Jakimides’s poetry and prose have been broadcast on local and national public radio, and published in many journals, magazines and anthologies. Nominated for the Pushcart Prize, she has been a finalist for the Stephen Dunn Poetry Prize and the Maine Literary Awards, in both poetry and nonfiction, among others. She has written about many of Maine’s creatives, including Lois Dodd, Noel Paul Stookey, Melissa Sweet, Ashley Bryan, Clara Neptune Keezer, Alex Katz, Cathie Pelletier, Daniel Minter, and Harold Garde. Her work is rooted in place—inner city and raw, open rural—and people. She now lives in downtown Bangor, Maine.

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New Poetry: Ed Ahern

Leavings

The elderly are good at dropping off. Memories dim and extinguish, dexterity declines into assistance, friends involuntarily depart, houses are left for condos after furniture is carted off.

The old if lucky do acquire an absorption in the moment and enjoyment of the present, to offset a problematic future and a bittersweet past.

***

Ed Ahern resumed writing after forty odd years in foreign intelligence and international sales. He’s had over two hundred fifty stories and poems published so far, and six books. Ed works the other side of writing at Bewildering Stories, where he sits on the review board and manages a posse of six review editors.

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New Poetry: Janelle Cordero

Something Sharp and Cold

I can’t fish anymore. It was hard enough as a kid—I wasn’t squeamish about the worm. The hook was the problem, the hook with its cruel pronged point. I remember sitting on the dock with my brother and praying for the fish to leave. Please God, I’d say to myself, don’t let a fish bite my line. Imagine how my faith shriveled every time my bobber went under. The worst was when a fish swallowed the hook with the worm. I had to hold the squirming trout with one hand and reach into its mouth with the other. There was always blood. If I couldn’t get the hook undone, we had to cut the line. But most of the time I could get the hook undone. Sometimes we kept the trout for our father to grill, and other times we would toss the shocked bodies back into the black water and watch them sink. Swim, I’d pray. Swim, swim away. That was then. I can’t fish anymore, not with what I know about pain. I picture something sharp and cold hooking me from the inside, pulling me against my will towards some impossible and blinding light, towards mystery, towards death.

***

Janelle Cordero is an interdisciplinary artist and educator living in the seventh most hipster city in the U.S. Her writing has been published in dozens of literary journals, including Harpur Palate and The Louisville Review, while her paintings have been featured in venues throughout the Pacific Northwest. Janelle's most recent poetry and art collection, Woke to Birds, was published in October of 2019 through Vegetarian Alcoholic Press. Her debut poetry collection, Two Cups of Tomatoes, was published in 2015, and her chapbook with Black Sand Press was published in April 2018. Janelle published an additional chapbook of poems and paintings with Bottle Cap Press in 2019. Stay connected with Janelle's work at www.janellecordero.com.

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New Poetry: Gary Beck

The Road to Disaster

The President reflects the nature of the people, at least enough to elect him. As we reel under his assaults on the economy creating a bigger and bigger poverty class, insane attacks on the environment poisoning our waters, alienating friends, allies, until they no longer trust us and may not support us in our time of need, as we are victims of greed, stupidity, insanity, betraying our tomorrows.

***

Gary Beck’s published poetry books include:  Dawn in Cities, Assault on Nature, Songs of a Clerk, Civilized Ways, Displays, Perceptions, Fault Lines, Tremors, Perturbations, Rude Awakenings, The Remission of Order, Contusions and Desperate Seeker (Winter Goose Publishing. Forthcoming: Learning Curve and Ignition Point). Earth Links, Too Harsh For Pastels, Severance and Redemption Value (Cyberwit Publishing). His novels include a series ‘Stand to Arms, Marines’: Call to Valor, Crumbling Ramparts and Raise High the Walls (Gnome on Pig Productions) and Extreme Change (Winter Goose Publishing). His short story collections include: A Glimpse of Youth (Sweatshoppe Publications). Now I Accuse and other stories (Winter Goose Publishing) and Dogs Don’t Send Flowers and other stories (Wordcatcher Publishing). The Republic of Dreams and other essays (Gnome on Pig Productions). The Big Match and other one act plays (Wordcatcher Publishing). Collected Plays of Gary Beck Volume 1 and Plays of Aristophanes translated then directed by Gary Beck will be published by Cyberwit Publishing. Gary lives in New York City.

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New Poetry: Alan Cohen

Eventually, Even the Ocean May Provide Us with a History

We all live treacherously imbedded in history Though our watches tell us the time, innocent of any mystery Though our wheat feeds us, and our keys open our doors Each is devoid of context until we trap it and heave it ashore Create for it a place upon our shelves Slide it between two other glistening, stiffening fragments Changing the bloody sense of symmetry

It takes an unwilling suspension of disbelief A long pause To see a real event come to life And it only comes to life for us at flash point Instantaneously Illuminates and annihilates all that has come before So if it weren't for our cherished history, it would make each of us a suicide or bore But our histories must be flexible, must continue to grow and change Because each event is a single work of art, the best By a unique and uncompromising artist Demanding its own milieu A new bedrock As if each wave were the true voice of the entire ocean Like us, building only to destroy

***

Alan Cohen is a Poet first/Then PCMD, teacher, manager/Living a full varied life. To optimize time and influence/Deferred publication, Cohen wrote/Average 3 poems a month/For 60 years/and is Beginning now to share some of these discoveries. Married to Anita 40 years/in Eugene, OR these past 10.

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New Poetry: Oak Morse

Rolling

When I was eight, living in the homeless shelter my aunt brought me rollerblades.

So, I rolled pass the ditch, the crooked-neck mailbox the fire ants marching out the cracks the busted Budweiser scattered on the concrete the stretched-out fence, the backwoods where I got the poison oak made my hands look like those chicken house workers rolled pass that run-down park with the broken swing— those two chains dangling from heaven.

I rolled up the street in the cut where Mama smoked with the white folk, rolled up by that vine tree where I had to hand-pick my own switches then down passed that bloody wrecked table silently yelling for refuge onside the road rolled pass that old station wagon that cries off its color—it seems like being brown always comes with some sort sorrow.

I rolled through the blue and black alleys pass the sewer peering at me, pass the shack where I bunk at night with worldly people who I was told to call family when I have an aunt, who lives acres away trying to make it herself who brought me rollerblades.

Figure I roll my way right up out of here right into a brighter rendezvous.

***

Poet and theater instructor Oak Morse was born and raised in Georgia. He was the winner of the 2017 Magpie Award for Poetry in Pulp Literature as well as a Semi-Finalist for the 2020 Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry. Awarded the 2017 Hambidge Residency, Oak’s work has appeared in Strange Horizons, Indianapolis Review, Star 82 Review, Menacing Hedge, Nonconformist Mag, Gone Lawn, and elsewhere. Oak has a B.A. in Journalism from Georgia State University and he currently lives in Houston, Texas where he teaches creative writing and performance and leads a youth poetry troop, The Phoenix Fire-Spitters. (@oak.morse)

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New Poetry: Hunter Gagnon

Quarantine poem #8 some brief statements from a hutch

Pulled by the country Pulled by the continent and its influx Why does fire live in the throat? Squat there? Why is the heart always infected? Aren’t there measures for this? Dragged by nothing learned A disc of light in my hand goes a long way toward forgetting This slouching of the virus Telling them I’m coming back. Nothing could be further There is nothing further I like the red blanket best. I like the red food No one on this farm has a gun. Could be wrong Sometimes a motor plays at night. I’m worried we hate each other With no shows to watch the dogs become victims Be careful when you come down in the morning. There’s a thin wire on the step In the end a brown bird will flap in the roots The ones like a yelling mouth. The ones ripped away

***

Hunter Gagnon lives in Fort Bragg, California where he has worked as a State Park Seasonal Aide, a bookseller, and as a poetry teacher for local elementary schools (before the pandemic). He holds a degree in Philosophy and has served in AmeriCorps and FemaCorps.

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New Poetry: Roger Johnson

To the Ambiguity of Joy

Freude schöner Götterfunken, Tochter aus Elysium.

Were I a multi-conscious thing and able To set my personalities to divers tasks, I would set one to weeping for the ills of this old world And separate another to celebrate and Contemplate the wonder and the joy that I have known. But I am not so talented or split, just one soul, And I, as alle Menschen, Must bring that joy and sorrow to one ineffable point.

As if of its own volition, my hand Reaches out to pull the refrigerator door. The inside light comes on, surely at its own volition, And I am filled with joy. I do not need to change the bulb and the Emmenthaler is fresh. But there is a synagogue attack at the Festival of Lights, And people are dead and hurt. Not of their own doing. The chocolate buds melt over My molars and seek the places on my tongue To work their magic. I am child-like happy. But refugee children from Guatemala have no chocolate. The roof shields me from rain and snow. My clothes are clean. Whirlpool be praised. Bolognese fills my belly. Brunello warms my heart and Evokes the best of memories. Love was there. Petro-chemicals now seep unchecked Into sacred lands and water, here and there Elysium. The brotherhood of oil, a gift less joyful now, an ambiguity, Providing magic luminosity inside that Kenmore. My pension check arrives on soft wings. The rent is fine. A modest scotch is not beyond my reach, Shipped here by diesels driving ugly freighter ships. The grocery roasted chicken is not bad. I chose it when my time is short. I trust that chicken. There is no stopping or trying to stop The perversion of elections never Perfect but better than what has happened and will again. That trust is gone, its absence now a modish separation. Millions could be embraced, But a sycophantic chorus separates and lies. My one-time joy of service descends to ambiguity. Was it for this I risked my life? U-S-A, U-S-A. A grandchild sends her carefully considered Sketch with me imagined beside a blue house with tilting chimney-- Sweet and satisfying. Cliched birds and a quarter of the yellow sun, Her take on Heaven’s gorgeous plan. A few more children and worshippers go down, Victims to our well-regulated militia. Ho hum. Beethoven’s Ninth resounds from public radio. A lump chokes me and brings on recollection of Vienna. Brackish tears of precious memories. I am happy with the salty residue. My grandson takes up martial arts. And children dwell in cages, at my doing, Because I seem impotent to change even My own mal-nominated democratic construction. U-S-A, U-S-A. Two Arab students greet me. “as-salaam ‘alaykum.” From the back of my brain I manage to respond, “wa ‘alaykum salaam,” knowing that there could be An issue of the plural I did not recollect. Go, brothers, on your way. The exchange brings joy and, yes, a joyful wish for peace, But with irony too hard to transcend the Ambiguity this old world imposes on that joy.

***

Roger Johnson studied mathematics, German, and comparative literature. The recipient of two Fulbright awards (Germany and Egypt), he has lectured also at Huaqiao University, Quanzhou, China. He co-edited and co-translated Elsa Respighi's memoir, Cinquant’anni di vita nella musica and translated Max Meyer’s novel, Jenseits dieser Zeit, published as The Other Side of Now (2016). Recently he authored The History of Ward (2019). His most recent essay, “Everything Changed in Egypt,” appeared in Gaudium Sciendi (2019). Since retirement from higher education, he has taught part-time at Penn State Altoona and Mount Aloysius College, and he has served as consultant at other universities.