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December 2014 Contributors: Ben Nardollili Joshua Greschner Raquel Wasserman George Zamalea
Citation preview
Ataraxia
Vol. 9 • Dec/201 4
selected literature with illustrations
Raku Rare
by Ben Nardoli l l i
Trying to make something out of this moonlight,
Since the orb produces no music l ike a speaker,
I find blue seas, fal len skies, atmospheres
Down on their luck and pending for a renewal,
I notice a halo and see a face in between
The trees unable to show its features over branches.
All I can offer is a knot that bends into itself,
In love with its own dark complications,
A composition reaching out for i l lusions of space
But real ly just making more loops for itself
To keep whatever spirit it possesses
From leaking out through the grand gutter ahead.
Planes of movement are closed off bus routes
Are being carved out of the darkness,
The pearl in the sky gives off enough of a glare
To show me where the sidewalks begin
And where there are spaces to walk with no cars
Trying to shake the asphalt under me into pieces.
The Weaving Woman
by Josh Grechner
When contemplative silence settles among the
wooden desks, among the aging ochre pages, thoughts tingle,
thighs shuffle and silently, galaxies within the empty space of
O’s swim in circles.
Walled within 3 barren slabs of diffidence, but with
her back exposed, she ti lts her head at a studious angle,
draped in wild hair harangued, then negotiated into X’s of
bobby pins l ike slanted crosses. Her fingertips, drifting over
waves of frozen text, have yet to callous l ike the Weaving
Woman’s, a widow of the sea, a master of del icacy and
attentiveness.
Waves whip the coast, and tai ls lash at the sky. “Only
strings,” mutters the Weaving Woman, embroidering detai ls of
her l ife: birth, mid-age and resolution against dying. What
happens when the ship doesn’t ful ly sink, when the line snaps
but stays lodged inside? The knowing don’t speculate. “I t’ l l
wash up,” she says, assuredly, “sure as hell along with
everything.”
Within the l ibrary’s si lence, my gaze lingers. She
gets up, drinks from the fountain. I fol low, hiding among
shelves of towering ruin. She walks back intently, free from
reticence, her arms dangle uncrossed, l ike tranquil ized vines
on a tree sl ipping out of the forest, unnoticed.
She runs bare fingers through matted and ferocious
hair, cuts loose the weak ties and shakes free her head.
Wreckage spins and disintegrates within hurricanes forming
and calming. Ancient history resuscitates, to die within
moments. Bare fingers emerge from rapture l ike blanched
pil lars, uneroded. After fastening shut the ocean, she turns
and looks at me.
I , standing naked in my shameless voyeurism,
droplets diving down my temple, pooling on the indifferent
floor, get a sudden impulse to plunge into the water, to hide
from the tempestuous stare of the shore. She recoils,
gathers her things and leaves. I sit back down. My sweat
dries.
The Weaving Woman bites the final thread of a pall-
thin blanket, with her remaining shards of teeth, without her
cloudy eyes.
Margot Goldbach
by Raquel Wasserman
How she wished he would come back
my man come back please
The sound of Motown on their stereo
Before she birthed anyone or turned 30
Just the two of them, two 1 970’s renegades
She, a writer for the Voice
He, a scientist at CUNY
Dancing in their mustard yellow living room
To Jr Walker’s band
This was Alphabet City, brother
Wine everywhere, beer on the rickety sofa, scotch,
bourbon
Couples in the corner
Can we have more to drink?
And her screeching over the record
Out!! You weirdos!
Yes, she saw now, how she out-scaled Talos
In much the way a grown Alice would leave her mentor
Alice inspired Lewis Carrol l ’s book
Her photos now a misty black and white
Girls made life easy
And in being chosen by Lewis the girls were someone
for a minute or two
Girls in the girly sense
Before he discarded them for their hips and womanhood
Never bitter and never old
Forever an artist’s art
Forever a rose petal dream
Margot was ethereal too
Writing the river blue prose he could never find and she
was paid for
And sti l l Margot crept to Talos’s side at night after a late
party
Like a deceitful t-shirted kitten
A Pretty Lady
and enfolded her paper pale arms into Talos’s perfect
Greek handsomeness
Her Lewis who would never leave her (even if Talos did).
Her looks stood somewhere in the glowing hippie vicinity
of Carol King
The ache of her croaky voice, her pretty frizzy blonde
brown hair
Beautiful hair
But that beak that would never be perfect,
but was in its way adorable
And Talos was the perfect knockout:
strong chin, dark hair, lush caterpil lar eyebrows
the male mold of handsome.
Break me, she thought
The two of them so good looking
And she trusted with the trust of a teenager.
The girls.
He chose them because they were choose-able
Girls al l in row, near the garden hedge
A profundum of teenage girls with pigtai ls and starched
dresses to pale rounded kneecap
Their beauty obvious
Every one nice as pie
Lewis’s ingenues
Fitting Talos would leave her for the raven-haired girl
that watered their plants
Opening l ike the orchid for him, and he opened liked the
rain.
The ache she felt l ike no other ache.
I t bit into Margot unti l she had to close the door.
She wrote one note and posted it by the lock
Goodbye, My Grand Corruptor
You selfish piece of shit
She could not hold back her fury
And wondered why the wicked witch got no words
No nothing
Not next to Snow White or Alice or Lola
Who was always perfectly beautiful
Always, just as they were.
A DOG NAMED 'EVER-AGAIN' RUNS AWAY
by George Zamalea
I saw the eyes of 'Ever-Again' as I was
Passing in front of C. 's house,
Colorless and deep, against the morning of May
Looking left and right, with unwished waves,
A dog named 'Ever-Again', his woeful
Task remained, who runs away.
Arousing at length my curiosities, innocently
Of course, while at the same level,
My heart designed to l ive, learning
He was dying, and 'Ever-Again', who went
To C. 's house, and who starts dying there,
And the people from C. 's house have known him
As 'Ever-Again'.
For none of these gentlemen dared,
Or, busy as they were, to think
For a moment about 'Ever-Again', who went back and
forth
To C. 's house, and who was already
Dead; everybody was astonished at
How this happened to ‘Ever-Again'.
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