Some Night

You might come
some night, some night dizzy
with fireflies singeing black sky
with hot yellow flirtations.

You might come,
but each night, each day,
chances are less.

As I grow older, I miss you more,
the you I wait for, the one
I’ve never met.

Laury A. Egan’s first full-length poetry collection, Snow, Shadows, a Stranger, was released from FootHills Publishing in 2009. Her work has received a Pushcart Prize nomination and has appeared in Atlanta Review, Welter, The Emily Dickinson Awards Anthology, The Ledge Magazine, Centrifugal Eye, Willows Wept Review, Ginosko, Leaf Garden, Diverse Voices Quarterly, Main Channel Voices, Boston Literary Quarterly, Best of Foliate Oak 2010, Lowestoft Chronicle (UK), and forthcoming ina Static Movement Press anthology, Halfway Down the Stairs, and Sephyrus Press’ Afterlife Anthology. In addition, she writes fiction and is a fine arts photographer. Web site: www.lauryaegan.com

The Camino de Santiago de Compostela

    About a year ago, I came across Hape Kerkeling’s memoir about walking the Camino de Santiago de Compostela, a Christian pilgrimage route to the remains of St. James in the city of Santiago. Kerkeling followed the main route, the Camino Frances, which began at the edge of France and continued along northern Spain for approximately 780 km. The ordeal lasted about a month and pilgrims stayed in special accommodations, albergues or refugios, along the way. The albergues were on a first come, first serve basis and pilgrims slept in communal bunk beds for only one night at a time.

    As a child, I had hiked in the mountains surrounding Bogotá with my family, but didn’t commit to the hobby until I lived in Indonesia, where the verdant fecundity of the land had sprouted gentle mountains and volcanoes.

    I continued hiking in Peru, on mountains free of the blight of civilization, where epiphanies proliferated and truth seemed attainable.
Hiking was a form of walking meditation. The simplicity of walking toward a goal and carrying all I ever needed on my back was liberating. Bathing and changing clothes was a luxury. Eating was a reward that lightened the weight on my back, and the only persistent thought I ever had was the level of my water supply. I moved to North Carolina and frequented the state and national parks. I became infatuated with the Appalachian Trail.

    The Camino de Santiago marked a new period in my life. I embarked on the walk with my father the summer before returning to school full-time in an attempt to switch careers.

    The first day on the Camino proved cool and overcast. I was overambitious and carried camping equipment. I felt alive and truly human. I shed worldly worries. Bills, assignments, tests, Monday meetings, and deadlines no longer beleaguered me. The scenery was captivating and desolate. A fog that rolled in halfway through the day and obscured the surroundings stripped the act of walking even further. I cleared my mind to match the white that enveloped me. I walked over 30 km that day across the border and through small Spanish towns.
Halfway through the second day, my right knee began to ache beneath the pressure of an unnecessarily heavy backpack. I lightened my load by dumping my tent on a plank of wood along the trail and hoped that a stronger pilgrim would scoop it up.

    My knee throbbed that night and the pain heightened the next morning until walking along level ground became excruciating. I popped ibuprofen, rubbed anti-inflammatory menthol cream on my knee, and wore a brace before walking the remaining kilometers to one of the few cities along the Camino.
 
    We rested for a few days and the knee pain never completely abated, but I was able to walk. I wore the brace on days with inclines and declines. Various muscle groups would take turns complaining throughout the day. Limbs would swell and change color. We would periodically lose sensation in our legs, shoulders, arms, and hands. Bodily pain soon became chronic. My muscles would continue to ache while I slept and occasionally awaken me during the night, begging for some alleviation when all I could promise was a change in position.

    I began to encounter other injured pilgrims. Many wore knee braces. Some shuffled along in sandals with bandaged bloody ankles. Others had a noticeable limp as they walked, yet they all endured their pain better than I ever could. They never complained. We would greet each other with “Buen camino” and a smile and continue on our way.

    We would wake before sunrise and depart in blue hours when shadows stretched along the path and the air was still. The sun would quietly rise without our notice and brighten our surroundings. We usually stopped in the early afternoon before the summer heat became too oppressive. We lolled for the rest of the day, resting our sore bodies and reveling in the lightness of walking without a backpack. We bathed and washed our clothes and tended to our wounds. Menthol frequently perfumed the air. We consumed large three-course meals that included a full bottle of wine before fitfully sleeping amid the snoring, the occasional shuffle and light of someone entering and leaving the communal bathroom, and the modern beeps of text messages.

    I began to meet the same pilgrims following similar walking schedules. We greeted each other on the trail and slept in the same albergues. We exchanged stories, spoke of universal topics, and blushed when we faced a language barrier. I met very few Americans. Most were European. There were many Germans, a few Australians, and a large contingent of deeply religious Koreans who had also quit their jobs to complete the walk. I wished I could share their enthusiasm. They faced more challenges than I could complain of: bed bugs, wretched knees and injuries, and lack of money.

    They were kind and generous. One French woman offered a bag of fresh cherries when I had propped up my legs to cool my burning feet. An American woman shared her breakfast with us and gave us a bag of almonds after we confessed we had been ill-prepared the day before. These small presents were more for the mind than for the body. I quickly learned that the body was capable of responding to physical demands with low fuel. But long walks with little food and water were still trials of necessity and not of choice.
 
    During pain-free moments, I experienced a fraction of the elation I knew the other pilgrims nurtured. The birds sang sweeter. The rustle of the wind across leaves soothed. The rhythmic sound of hiking poles striking the ground beneath us hypnotized. The wildflowers that bloomed on mountain faces in purple, yellow, and white held the secret to all that was charming and good. I yearned to lounge on a boulder along the trail and learn.
But then the pain would stir. The elderly inhabitants of farming communities we traversed became a portent. Most of them had bad knees and wielded walking sticks. Some elderly farmers had permanently bent backs, but continued to toil in their fields. I recalled a middle-aged woman whose crooked knees prevented her from climbing the steps of a bus I was riding in Peru. I regressed to darker thoughts.

    I entertained the thought of quitting several times, had debates with myself on the merits and losses of continuing. I succumbed to modern thoughts. I pondered whether the physical toll of a month of walking was worth reaching Santiago when neither of us was Christian and we had seemingly chosen to walk on a whim. Financial costs, another worldly worry now that I no longer had a steady income, became unimportant. I imagined spending the remaining weeks bouncing from one beach town to another, sprawling on exceptionally comfortable hotel beds, sleeping in past 6, and joining the ranks of tourists admiring beautiful things.

    Quitting is shameful and unacceptable. How many movies have been made about the underdog succeeding? About the importance of finishing whatever you’ve started despite all obstacles? In my most petulant moments I thought all those screenwriters were fools. I wanted them here with me enduring this trial, but then the sight of another injured pilgrim mollified my selfish thoughts. I gritted my teeth, I cried when no one was around, I cursed my apparently low threshold of pain, and continued.

     Near the end of the walk, as the numbers on the kilometer markers dwindled to two digits, ambivalence replaced the necessity of enduring. Other pilgrims were wistful and lamented that the walk would soon be over. But Santiago remained distant and unreachable even on the last day. As we crossed a bridge into the outskirts of the city, even when I glimpsed the sign proclaiming Santiago, I still could not believe. Those last few hours walking toward the historic center of town became otherworldly. We were suddenly thrust into civilization after weeks of walking in the countryside, through villages, and only a handful of cities. As we neared the center of town, large tour groups divided us from other pilgrims. The lanes narrowed as we dodged pedestrians in our sleepwalk to the end. We followed alleys until we were abruptly expelled onto a large courtyard overlooking the cathedral of Santiago where long tourist lines waited.

     After receiving our compostelas, or certificates of completion, I returned to the cathedral and sat on a pew within its shadowed confines. I had lost sight of the pilgrims. I retreated to the darkness within the cathedral and closed my eyes. I was done. I would no longer have to follow conch shell markers or yellow arrows pointing the way to Santiago across the entire breadth of a country. Yet I was seized by melancholy that overpowered any relief I had at finally reaching the end. I belatedly understood the regret other pilgrims had foreseen.

     Some decided on walking an additional three days to Finisterre, believed to be the historical end of the pilgrimage, prolonging their life as a pilgrim and heeding the simple rhythm of the Camino. I returned home. Weeks passed and the memory of pain rapidly faded. A sense of loss strengthened and I found myself only missing the Camino.


Michelle Ong is a native Texan that lives in North Carolina. She recently finished walking the Camino de Santiago de Compostela.

Oakwood’s Ethan
(1966-1991)

At that moment
I did not know the world
Only the rain came as if the world
Knew of me, kneeling
Where he lay.

“To the Earth, To the Sky
To returning ghosts in springtime -
Give this dear one peace
He was a little crazy
But he was a good bay.”
                                                For Lee

I Ranaway On A Ride Home

The bastard part of me always forgets father's day.  It was the twenty-second day of me running away, and I was on the side of the road, lost, but I had my dirty little homeless hand wrapped around the fifty dollar bill I stole the day before with a magic trick that went wrong. That fifty dollar bill was the biggest thing I ever held in my pocket.  I felt "placed by God" standing at the side of the road with my hand in my pocket, pressing down on my dickhead every time seeing a car drive bye.  I didn't want to go anywhere, so there was no need to have my dumb in the air.  I saved my dumb for the little girls who didn't know any better.  I'd be like those little girls if I was a girl.

My mama missed me, and cried at the fact that I was born to always be hungry and cold, and my daddy cried with his fist over the son who became a bastard on father's day.  I was good at being on the side of the road, any road, any town; the color of the city didn't matter as long as there is a road and a rest-stop that had a sink and toilet for me to work.    

I always made friends in rest-stops, dirty toilets and warm water oozing out of everything reminds me of where I was born.  And I know how to pick up friends in the places I come form.  These rest-stops always have paper for me to clean off my work from the night    before, or as I'm working.

Men come walking into these used bathrooms late at night with their erections pressed against the dollar bills they're willing to get rid of as long as I can say the right words for them to touch me in the wrong way.  I stand in these bathrooms with ready-eyes, and as still as the porcelain inside of them, but I'm the only thing in there for sale.

They sometimes take out their marriages on my young body - my hairless face pressed against cold tile walls that are as cold as the movements they use to get rid of the anger, trying to thrust away the gay on this little boy who knows more tricks than their wives, and who also knows their secrets they hide so deep.

Other's just really like me, almost like a little, professional nephew that they can take in the woods behind these bathrooms for ten minute champing trips.  And there are also those who want to take me to their homes to play "house."  But I always refuse with candy in my mouth, for I am too much of a man for that sort of thing.  Empty belly pressed on top of the sink - dirty hands dragging down the grime from mirrors that hold all our pleasured secrets - touched head turned back with price tags in my eyes, the only discount I may give is a kiss on the lips once done.  And they pay me with shame in the same eyes they bought me with.

I have no need for baseball cards, treasure maps, bicycles, plastic swords, skateboards, slingshots or Band-Aids, for I no longer play with those of my same age, now I play with men, and the only toys I need are already attached to me, as if I were born to do this in these bathrooms on the side of roads, always ready to use what I was taught, with a glass of lemonade in my nervous hand, and my superheroes down at my ankles.

My father sold beds, and for this I'll never get fucked on my back again!
     

Roberto Beltran is a 34 year old goat of a writer - he eats most of what he writes, and he drinks down all the bad things he's done.   Roberto never liked apples, but he loved the five years he lived in New York City, loving all the different colors and the fact that he could only afford to write when he couldn't buy food.  But Roberto stopped being a vegetarian and moved to Buenos Aires where the beef is better than good, and as cheap as Roberto would be if he were a prositute for all the women who hated him.

Roberto knew that he had to leave so could write a novel about that city, and about the only lover he hurt first.  Roberto doesn't read the rules, so he's gonna call this book "I LOVE YOU MORE THAN COCA COLA" Argentinia has been good for Roberto's pen.    (The truth is, that Roberto still drinks too much, and that he can never get over the pain of once hating his mother, who made shoes. Roberto has always had just one pair of shoes.)   Please don't tell any of this truth to Maria Teresa!

Drowning

Yesterday, my mother's sister died in a car crash. Tia Pilar. She was driving down Via Pasito, past the strip mall with the Benihana's, when her '05 Corolla unaccountably careened over the center meridian and into oncoming traffic.
  
I dream that Tia Pilar and I are at a tea party. I'm so happy to see her that I start to cry. She thinks I'm crying over something else. "Carmenita," she says. "Don't cry. No boy is worth your tears." She pours me tea and hands me a galleta. I feel better.
  
But then I realize we're sitting in the bottom of an empty swimming pool. The concrete walls rise up all around us. We're in the deep end. Slowly, the pool fills. Water soaks into my shoes, my socks, the cuffs of my jeans. I try to bite into the cookie, but it's turned to plastic.
  
The water rises up past my knees, my hips. Tia Pilar smiles at me, buttering a plastic muffin. She is wearing the loose red sweater she wore at Christmas, the last time I saw her. Her hair, dyed brown to combat the gray setting in, is cut in a fashionable bob. She and my mother were never particularly close. My mother called Tia Pilar spoiled and vain; Tia Pilar said my mother was jealous of her superior bone structure. I usually only saw Tia Pilar at Christmastime. Except for the summer I turned eight, when I went to stay with her for two weeks as my parents worked out the particulars of their divorce. That was back when Tia Pilar lived in New York City. We went shopping and got pedicures and saw Sesame Street Live. I was too old for Sesame Street but I feigned excitement because Tia Pilar seemed excited. She kept glancing over at me during the show to see if I was smiling. During the final number, shiny streamers fell from the ceiling, imitating rain, and for the briefest of moments I thought the raindrops were real. Tia Pilar must have caught the amazed look on my face, because she squeezed my hand and stuck out her tongue as if to catch a raindrop.

"Don't worry, Carmen," Tia Pilar says now. "You don’t ever have to talk to that pendejo again." Her red lipstick is blurred around the edges – or is that blood? The water is at my shoulders now. I close my eyes. It rises up past my nose, my forehead. It soaks my hair. I'm going to drown.
  
I wake up gasping for breath, my body clammy with sweat, my face damp against the pillowcase.


Dallas Woodburn is the author of two collections of short stories and a forthcoming novel. Her short fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and the Dzanc Books "Best of the Web" anthology. Currently an MFA student at Purdue University, she is also the founder of "Write On! For Literacy," an organization that empowers youth through writing and reading. Projects include writing contests, a Summer Writing Camp, and an annual Holiday Book Drive that has donated more than 11,000 new books to underprivileged kids. Learn more at http://www.writeonbooks.org.
 

*

This plaque and over the fireplace
a waterfall :behind the sky-writing
its banner smoking --everything waves

till all that's left is the blind spot
a barren ache, an iron gong
though you still heat this room

with marksmanship and armor
with gunpowder whose wings
spread across all wings
--in the distance a door closes.

You knock till your name and rank
and knuckles bleed :so much rust
as if some fossil still flying

will escape, your hands barely visible
still on the controls when it happened.

Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, The New Yorker and elsewhere. For more information, including his essay “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities” and a complete bibliography, please visit his website at www.simonperchik.com.

Simeon Responds to Joseph’s Second Dream

Absurd – impossible – not done,
not even kings recite
such audacious, crowing fame:
eleven stars, the moon, the sun
all bowing in the night?
Joseph, what contrary frame
of mind would make you say such things?

Your words, your dreams, your coat all reek
of egotistical rot –
you will not reign over me!
All this attention that you seek
just shows how much you’ve fought
rightful status.  Yield or flee!
Your stinking dreams will not be missed.

Stan Galloway teaches writing and literature at Bridgewater College in Virginia.  His poetry has appeared online at vox poetica.  It has been published in Midnight Zoo, the Burroughs Bulletin, WestWard Quarterly, and most recently, in the book Edgar Rice Burroughs: The Second Century.  His book of literary criticism, The Teenage Tarzan, came out in January 2010.

The Onlooker
 
Her long black hair hung down her back bound in a low ponytail. She was not a particularly attractive Indian woman, but she certainly had a quality that made a passerby look. Maybe it was that traditional long hair, like a girl plucked from her tribe and put in American clothing--jeans and a baggy crimson t-shirt. Or, maybe it was the fact that she rode on the back of a motorcycle with an overweight white man driving. It made the passerby wonder. Are they married? If they are, is she a submissive wife and he an overbearing husband? And, for some reason that onlooker felt sympathy for one of them but he was not sure whom. But what if, just what if, they are like two kids at heart, loving the feel of riding a motorcycle, fishing and hunting together, hitting up bars, or going dancing? What if their hearts match better than their skins? And then that onlooker realized he did not have sympathy for the Indian woman or the white biker. This thought led him to another that he was reluctant to face, for the onlooker’s sympathy was toward himself. He couldn’t figure out why. Maybe it was that he wished he were on the bike or maybe he wished he did not make the assumptions about them. And in some weird way the onlooker felt a desperate need to know their story. But he knew that would never happen, and he nodded at his reflection in his coffee, “For they are outside, and I am in.”

Danielle Spears is a graduate of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences from the University of Washington, Tacoma. She currently resides in Southeast Oklahoma where she teaches high school English, journalism, and speech/drama. You can also look for her work in September's issue of phati'tude Literary Magazine.

My Tree at Night from a Different Window

1. The Second Floor. 

From where she begins two ropes are lashed 
To diverging trunks making washing lines for linens 
Above a riot of weeds. 

She ascends to an atrophied branch finished in a dragonhead, 
From thence to those pinnacle twigs holding their leaves 
Up and away from the sodden soil. 

Her root burrows 'neath this language of stone and brick 
Which forms my room. 
I know her seasons of glory and of work. 

 
2. An Adjoining Room at 3am. 

 
But I must confess that she is a different animal at 3am, 
A static silhouette encumbered by breeze. 

No more the warm bodies of tits flock to choir, 
No more the majestic wood-pigeon haunts her glossy corridors. 

Ach! She is become a dark museum 
Sometimes bearing a wind-wrought shadow caught, 

her light defeated. 
She is existent.