Category Archives: Fiction

“Yard Work” – Sarah Maclay

Yard Work

I’ll clear the old, putrid fruit,

the carcasses of bees where oranges have fallen

and the drying turds the dogs have dropped.

I’ll sweep away the fallen avocado leaves

grown snowy with their infestations,

snip the stems of toppled flowers, toss them.

I’ll yank the hose across the grass,

turn the rusty faucet,

let the lawn moisten

to a loose, runny black.

I’ll water the rosemary

till I can smell it on my fingers.

Time to grab the trowel.

Time to dig,

to take off the gloves,

let the handle callous the palm,

fill the fingernails

with dirt.

Time to brush the trickle from the forehead.

Time to plant the bulb,

to fill the hole with loam and water,

covering the roots.

Time to join the soil to soil

until the night is jasmine

and a thickness like a scent of lilies

rises off the bed;

until the stalks of the naked ladies fall to the ground,

twisting on their roots;

until our broken fists lie blooming.

“The Waking” –

The Waking:: Roethke

I wake to sleep and take my waking slow.

I feel my fate in what I cannot fear. 

I learn by going where I have to go.

_______________

We think by feeling. What is there to know?

I hear my being dance from ear to ear.

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

____________

Of those so close beside me, which are you?

God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,

And learn by going where I have to go. 

_____________

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?

The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

_____________

Great Nature has another thing to do

To you and me; so take the lively air,

And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

____________

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.

What falls away is always. And is near. 

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

I learn by going where I have to go. 

Excerpt from The Dharma Bums – Jack Kerouac

The Dharma Bums:: Jack Kerouac

Throughout all these parties I always stole off for a nap under the eucalyptus trees, instead of my rosebush, which was all hot sun all day; in the shade of the trees I rested well. One afternoon as I just gazed at the topmost branches of those immensely tall trees I began to notice that the uppermost twigs and leaves were lyrical happy dancers glad that they had been apportioned the top, with all that rumbling experience of the whole tree swaying beneath them making their dance, their every jiggle, a huge and communal and mysterious necessity dance, and so just floating up there in the void dancing the meaning of the tree. I noticed how the leaves almost looked human the way they bowed and then leaped up and then swayed lyrically side to side. It was a crazy vision in my mind but beautiful. Another time under those trees, I dreamt I saw a purple throne all covered with gold…

Excerpt from The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde

Chapter One:: Oscar Wilde

In the centre of the room, clamped to an upright easel, stood the full-length portrait of a young man of extraordinary personal beauty, and in front of it, some little distance away, was sitting the artist himself, Basil Hallward, whose sudden disappearance some years ago caused, at the time, such public excitement, and gave rise to so many strange conjectures.

As he looked at the gracious and comely form he had so skilfully mirrored in his art, a smile of pleasure passed across his face, and seemed about to linger there. But he suddenly started up, and, closing his eyes, placed his fingers upon the lids, as though he sought to imprison within his brain some curious dream from which he
feared he might awake.

Poem translated from Latin

Happy The Man:: Horace

Happy the man, and happy he alone,

he who can call today his own:

he who, secure within, can say,

Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today.

Be fair or foul, or rain or shine

the joys I have possessed, in spite of fate, are mine.

Not Heaven itself, upon the past has power,

but what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.

“Beat” – Richard Herd

Ginsberg howled in Tompkins Square Park
dogs lifted their legs and listened to Nietsche

Burroughs sat naked eating his lunch
while Corso stood on point

Kerouac danced into the end zone
his Buddha giving high fives
the Giants did not call

Ferlinghetti rode the Coney Island
merry-go-round
dogs trotted freely in the streets

“Cold Reading” – Brendan Constantine

It’s really cold in here now,

easily forty below something,

and half the class is asleep.

Snow dazzles in the windows, 

makes a cake of each desk.

It’s really cold in here now.

I’ve been lecturing on the same

poem for twenty six hours

and half the class is asleep.

I want them to get it. I start

to talk about death again

and it’s really cold in here now.

One student has frozen solid, 

her hair snapping off in the wind

and half the class is asleep.

“See that” I say, “Lisa gets it.”

But it’s so cold in here now

half the class are white dunes

shifting to the sea.

:: Brendan Constantine