Adelaide Literary Magazine No. 38, July 2020

POETRY



WINDOWSILL

by Geri Gale

A Queer Black November Tuesday, 2004 a vague unresting
aristocratic howl-mind
So, all was frightening crusading fury-red across plumes of grass
overcome by desire farm-depressed heartlands.
missionary wolf-fire they shuttered her out.
Mississippi-deep riverbeds
Her enemies abound houses her locked belly-berth
home-hope gone, innocent-age gone,
Heartsore, metallic armor her flex, her sex, her virgility
lovely seaside girls gone meat, a handmaid’s paw
her copper heart coined love for whom bells sound, matrimony gong.
her barefoot, a mound of succulent
in the attic-mind of royal warriors and smell of youth
spawn her queer-iron black open
But, then the splash running on continents of elephant-grey bark
muse her earth-world color yesterday’s pale war gone
tiny squirrel-feet long splendor sprawled dynasty long..
glimpse of eclipsing moon
life is short, art is long

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Windowsill Adelaide Literary Magazine
Upstairs Bedroom

I place my boss’s head I have never forgotten
on the windowsill my friend’s house
cinematic light shines at the intersection
on his temples. with the traffic light.
I have removed his tongue. His family—a witness
My boss no longer stands to many accidents.
before me no longer lords
over me no longer determines His mother stricken with MS—
my future no longer demeans lying upstairs in bed day after day
me no longer lies to me her thin jaundice-yellowed hands
no longer pretends smoking Camel straights all day
to be my friend. drinking Champagne night and day
her scraggly bone-white hair
skeletal bones protruding
from her fortysomething face
her brilliant mind lucid and free
the Star-Ledger newspaper
sprawled out on her bedsheets.

I sat by her side and she talked to me.
I buoyed her up with conversation
and she anchored my sixteen-year-old
body in my inevitable death.

Four decades later
here I am writing
about death
filling a notebook
of so many death poems.

What we know now
we did not know then.
We did not know this married
woman stricken with MS—
who died leaving a husband
and four children behind—
could be given medicine
and might still be alive.

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The Voice of Dog Revista Literária Adelaide

One day I won’t get up The Shutter and the Stump
nobody will be there
no hand reaching I stand on a tree trunk
for my bony wrist and watch a woman
only my devoted dog at a window dress
shadowing over me and undress, each piece
licking my face of cloth laid out
with his little rough and rolled onto her body
pink tongue. with the utmost care.

The night owl watches
my every move.

I dream this woman
dresses for me.

The hairs on my legs rise
and the smell of the cut pine
sends me into a reverie.
I do not want her to stop—
I want her to keep dressing
and undressing for me.

My grandmother told me
whatever you see, sees you.

I’ve been told to stay away from her—
something unnatural and irreversible
will wrap its claws around my throat and lift
me off the ground into the woman’s spell—
but I cannot help myself from stealing
a glimpse of her forbidden poison.

A woodpecker gnaws in the distance.

I was taught reading books—led by authors
to wait patiently and savor the end.
In school, I learned about the wasp
prying open the belly of a caterpillar
laying her eggs in the cocoon of another.

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She closes the shutter to her window.
I’m left on the stump haunted
out in the cold, alone—
the moment we shared lost, gone—
the tree yanked from the land
dragged to the road
carted away with chains
pilfered from the scene
like a character who dies
too early in a film
hacked with a saw
into smaller pieces
of its whole.

About the Author
Geri Gale’s award-winning books include: Patrice: a poemella (Silver IPPY Award: GLBT
Fiction, Independent Publisher Book) and Alex: The Double-Rescue Dog (National Indie
Excellence Award, Picture Book, Finalist); and Waiting: prosepoems (Dancing Girl Press). She
is also a Moth StorySLAM winner and performed in the Moth Seattle Grand Slam. Currently
she works as a copyeditor and writes and draws at night and on weekends. Her poetry, prose,
and drawings have appeared in ang(st): the feminist body zine, Sinister Wisdom, Neuro
Logical (forthcoming), Poetry Pacific (forthcoming), South Loop Review: Creative Nonfiction
+ Art, Bayou Magazine, Under the Sun, Raven Chronicles, and Canadian Jewish Outlook.

104

CLOCKWORK

by Anannya Uberoi

St. John’s By the Wilderness

Some cathedrals make you whoosh at the ceiling,
some howl with candles dimming for equal light.
In worn-down textures, this patristic curacy
tucked in the woods of McLeod, is neither.

We walk with low lanterns lest the building
throws its ghost upon its bricked walls, we marvel
at the tartar walls with craning candleholders
like chandeliers overlooking nave and broken
imagery on the cream-stewed sanctuary in a soft,
undulating silence creeping its way out the vestibule
into a wild, floral wonderland.

We drop five-rupee coins in the wishing well at the entrance,
no wishes.

McLeod is wonderful, St. John’s is the wonder.
Looking around does not suffice—it is important to press
your ears to the grass and listen to heartbeats of lineages
from British Raj shrouded in the deodar forest. The churchyard
welcomes wayfaring walkers from afar, a quiet repose
bordering the mountain road, cars honking, stocks
fleeing to busier places in the town.

We sit quietly, as the last star rises over the blanket of nothingness
McLeod becomes.

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Clockwork

The clockwork’s clunking cycles—
routine chirrups working with
our own, mechanical metronome
dictating our waking and falling
and drifting in staccato synchrony.
The clockwork’s scissors shard
furibund flowers by the hour,
comb the seasons, change their warmth,
pendulum the wind to blow for
or press against busy workmen
walking up knotted hills,
mourning dead dew,
falling stones
and lines of kingdoms brushed to dust.
With time, landforms are scuttled
and absorbed by the ocean,
traps are redeemed,
lost smoke in the sky
pulled down and tasted in pure dark.

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Revista Literária Adelaide

Driving to the Woods on a Birthday Eve

Candle shots in sandalwood oil mused her since she was
three—

she brought warmth to jars
and camel dusted shoes
when she got inside them.
To be

twenty-four
is to remember the earth is shaking,
the woods are breaking,
that poison is just familiar

broken vanilla flowers
and dismantled antlers with gray shadows painted on temporal jasmine.

She was
twelve

when they paved out the road to harvest timber.

The lorries are retreating to the landlocked city with
woodstacked backs

as she drives past augmented ghosts of guttered deer
pausing to bite on a subway wrap
spitting out the yellowing window
downy bird-legs and

cardamom sticks
and oregano leaves that puckered the autumn of her birth year.

A forest pixie escapes quarter-life’s grave presumptions
and dances,

shoes untied on the midnight grass.

Don’t bother—she’s only
driving by.

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The Writer Adelaide Literary Magazine
Thought Experiment

Years of frost have submitted This time we keep the baby girl.
dense meshes of fibers on We call her Sara after mother’s
beds of clover-green woods. friend’s baby daughter. She
sways in the airstream like
The writer like drooping a veined leaf, milkless, but
terror bandages a dusted book. supple. We buy her tiny shoes
from Spencer’s and read her
The tundra has erratic sights little magazines with pictures
of laughing, just in time of Finnsheep and she mistakes
to make loving peace with their bodies for blobs of cloud.
crimson-flushed mutations. We watch clouds from our ledge
for hours and hours. Some
Discarding the simple muse, are curled up like her fingers,
he pours out hot milk on wood inward, some waved like her
to kindle a vivid incubus, seersucker-lined frock, some
pockets rushed in for vanilla essence. globular like the sockets of her
unblinking eyes. Years hence,
In the distance foghorns squawk, she gets beaded with heavy dew
fog lights search the thickets. and falters off into the curdled grey

Defaced, the writer is a thief just like yesterday.
of strange nightly sightings.
Husks of dry bugs scatter upon
the flowered grit.

Shake the banyan dry and drunk,
vengeful masses lie looking
under its roots for lewd treasure.

About the Author

Anannya Uberoi (she/her) is a full-time software engineer and part-time tea connoisseur
based in Madrid. She is currently poetry editor at The Bookends Review and columnist at The
Remnant Archive. The winner of the 6th Singapore Poetry Contest and a Best of Net nominee,
her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Birmingham Arts Journal, The Bangalore
Review, The Loch Raven Review, and Tipton Poetry Journal. www.anannyauberoi.com

108

BREEZE

by Alan Berger

There is a soft breeze coming from a place I use to be
A sweet gust between the two of us
A truce of sorts if you want to call it that
A sort of cease fire still alive with the friendly fire
Now just because we have not lived our union faithfully
It does not mean that we can not grow old gracefully
You are great to make up with though, and after the pounding
After a million knockdown drag out fights, I stopped counting

Just a winning breeze to make you lose sleep

Just a cool breeze sailing over your seas
A battleship and destroyer of emotion to cross your ocean
An armada of mayhem with an encore of here we go again

Even as we rip the seams
A penny for your thoughts
A million for your dreams

I can’t breathe without you
And with you, you take my breath away
Then there is the appeasement
When we give one another the silent treatments.
My only regret
Being of keen mind and body that is sound
Is the short time we have together
I can certainly go some more rounds

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Adelaide Literary Magazine

About the Author

Alan Berger has written and directed two films on Netflix. Has had over forty short stories
and poems published since 2018. He shares an apartment in West Hollywood with a cat
named Iron.

110

OVERFLOW

by Adam Day

Blurred Boundaries Overflow

Water bottles Judges – spit
haywire dance no polish; wigs
rubber bullet song. out of order –
Hip on hip, clouds hanging
territory arrangement. like wool
Nurse hands slipping on barbed wire.
through the dark. History rush
Roped rain loosens jaws
light, and masks white system
like a cupboard reality rewritten
holding a lost in cities that are
generation. also history.

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Feeling the Self Adelaide Literary Magazine

Below the canopy of trees About the Author
holding in the glow
of streetlight. Resistance Adam Day is the author of Left-Handed
and play; chattering, Wolf (LSU Press, 2020), and of Model of a
nudging, pointing. City in Civil War (Sarabande Books), and
Discovering space the recipient of a Poetry Society of America
and how to use it, Chapbook Fellowship for Badger, Apocrypha,
a mindfield preserved. and of a PEN Award. He is the editor of the
forthcoming anthology, Divine Orphans of
Illuminated Edges the Poetic Project, from 1913 Press, and his
work has appeared in the Australian Poetry
Sky closes Journal, Boston Review, Cordite, Turbine,
on elm trees Mascara Literary Review, Poetry Ireland
and meatal-throated Review, Kenyon Review, London Magazine,
birds above street Takahē, Iowa Review, and elsewhere.
crowd flushed out
like moon rabbits
from woods
into the graffiti
of milkweed plumes.

Waterfalling Generation

Future children
of the present
fire – strange
generation, self-
fashioning within
current colony; love
fury; blood smell
of salt, spit, spruce
smoke; bare
energy bodies.

112

TEN THINGS I HATE
ABOUT YOU AND OTHER

LIES I TELL MYSELF

by Erin Nust

One. You never say thank you or please, and
You hate everything that’s breathing.

I discovered it since day One, of course, and
soon I found out it wasn’t true. You have thanked
me once, though, and even though I know You love me,
let’s say You simply don’t hate me.

Two. You make everything about You. You are the creator
of a world that is surrounded by You and your magnificent superiority.

You have degraded me more than once, underestimated me, and yet,
I never gave a damn. You don’t know me that well, mister, so I
am not interested in your opinion of me.

Three. You play a role for the world. You’re witty, outspoken,
You share every detail about your life, things You shouldn’t
have told a soul, but there You are, exposing yourself,
forcing us to buy an image of You, but not your real self.

Not me, though. I never bought the lies You told others
to push them away. I somehow knew the core of your soul
from the first time we exchanged two words. Familiarity; I hate it.

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Four. I hate You carry symbols of the person that broke you
on your skin forever. I hate it because I can’t stand the
idea that any human being is incapable of becoming better, of healing.
Because if you don’t believe it either, then what about me
and my lectures on self-help?
Five. You are such a baby. You moan and cry to everyone when
things don’t go your way.
Six. And now that we’re halfway through, are there even ten things
I hate about You?

About the Author

Eirini Anastasiadou (Erin Nust) is a fiction writer and editor, and former ESL teacher based
in Nottingham, UK. She has a BA in English Literature and Linguistics and she’s currently
working on her novel.

114

WHY

by Dave Clark

Why Life Gives and Takes Away

Why. Holding his hand, gone much too soon
Who is better off at their final breath? Cradling life that birthed too soon
I cry out. Why the rush?
Why?
First breaths, last breaths
I get no answer. With cries, with peace
There has to be an answer for this. Life and death.
Surely some reason,
Some purpose. Chiselled into the heart’s calendar
Blowing out candles and joy
But what answer Cake, heartache.
Would leave me feeling okay
About their demise?
What answer would satisfy?

Why.
I’m left asking a question
I won’t get an answer to.
But I keep asking it anyway.

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Adelaide Literary Magazine

More of Me

Time fools us
Into believing
It will keep going.
“There will always be more
Of me.”

It tells you to wait, then
Runs away.

About the Author

Dave Clark in an emerging writer-poet who does his living and breathing in Alice Springs. He
works as a counsellor and enjoys reading, photography and giving voice to silenced stories.
His poems have appeared in Verdant and read on 8CCC and ABC Radio.

116

ANGEL OF
BRIDGEPORT

by Linda Barrett

Angel of Bridgeport In A Wendy’s restaurant
On Route 202
August 2018: No one knew where
The County called me up the courthouse was
For Jury Duty because they all lived
I had to report on the 27th in Philadelphia.
To make sure I got there Drove over the bridge
By 8:15 A.M. Into Bridgeport
I took a drive up there An angel in a volleyball court
Mother in tow. Showed us how to get back
The Map Quest’s directions To 202 North
Confused me With directions from his computer
Driving is hard Leaving the sporting complex,
When you have two stapled I bent down and
Papers in your free hand picked up a feather from the floor
and a steering wheel Could it have come
in the other. from this Bridgeport Angel
Traveling through Blue Bell and who gave us
Fort Washington directions back home?
Left me in a tizzy
Asked directions from 117
A guy mowing his lawn
To a harried father
wrestling with his kids in a Norriton
Police Station
Tried to find directions

Adelaide Literary Magazine

Getting to Linda’s House for Ruth Deming Driving to Be Close To You

At Cowbell Road, In the autumn of 1990
Drive in your silver Hyundai Anissa drove up to Dublin, Pa.
Onto a Sleighride Road To meet her birth mother
Slide in a sharp right who lived in an apartment
Onto a Greyhorse street Anissa drove up the Turnpike
With the greyhorse marveling at all the fall colors
Of your Hyundai, on the trees surrounding
You make a left onto Overlook the roads
Edge Hill has a right turn She listened to the new
And left is called Maxi Priest song
The lane known as Acorn “(I just want to be) Close to You”
with acorns falling wondering if she would
on its freshly paved asphalt . grow closer to the woman
My house is at the left who gave her up for adoption
With pale avocado shingles As Maxi Priest crooned,
On the windows Anissa’s mind pondered
At the top of a tall hill. about finding closure
in her life
About the Author after all that searching.
In Dublin,
Linda Barrett’s passion has always been She stepped out of the car
writing. Ever since she was small, she has on that golden sunny day
had a pen in her hand. She lives in Abington, and knocked on the door
A suburb of Philadelphia, Pa. She is involved The woman had Anissa’s features
with two writing groups and her two with the same tawny orange hair
churches. Her work is featured in various but Anissa realized
print and on-line publications. the lines on her birth mother’s face
seemed deep and dour.
“I changed my mind,” the woman said
“I don’t want to see you after all.”
Anissa returned home to Philadelphia
tears falling like the bright leaves
received her husband’s embrace
and her children’s hugs
because they wanted
to be close to her.

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IN THE FLOW OF
THE LIGHT

by Martin Willitts Jr.

In the Flow of the Light How Everything Changes

A warm, comforting light A storm will lose interest,
fringes the window clouds will leave their echoes behind.
with quiet prayers.
Weren’t we all young and reckless, once?
A year or two can pass in a second, Parents warned about their grim, muffled lives.
as noiseless as yellowjackets
sampling daises. We were too busy popping
wheelies on bicycles,
I welcome that silence or letting baseball cards clatter
containing hints of lilacs, against the spokes.
when seasons are still shaping.
We never consider danger a
We are tested to see how much we can take, part of the equation.
and we are stretched to accommodate more We marveled at whitecaps rocking a boat,
brighter, delicious melodies.
we lingered to the edge of darkness,
Nothing bad lasts forever. reluctantly heading back when called.

Our parents tapped impatient toes,
scolding how youth had excluded them.

Now, we wait in autumn as darkness looms,
streaming stars and wanderlust.

Memory is rain tapping on our windows.
Didn’t our lives simmer, once, too?

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The Gifts Adelaide Literary Magazine
I Cannot Stop Pain

Darkening, rapid heartbeats Canada geese are leaving everyone behind
invite me to a home without a hint of what to do next.
waiting to dream. In night’s ocean, We are clueless, emptying like branches.
sea anemone stars
hold shimmering scraps of light. Our future is in the clouds, in the entrails
of the gut-shot deer pulling itself through
I share these with you — blossoms the woods to hide.
of endless love, batting
for a quilt, as I spill seeds of light, There is a way to get lost in all of this.
constellations always expanding Geese keep trying to exit, flying
from whirls on our fingertips, movement blindly into head-
of ecstatic starlings. winds, into the fading yellow,
into the bloody sunset.
This is what I bring to you —

bundles to sway you
and haze from shadow-trees
turning the fretboard of your heart,
making our music in tune.

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Inexplicable Rain

1.

In black raspberry darkness,
we are all the same music,
notes raining fast and slow,

crossing long fields of uncut wheat,
just before harvest,
wheat tips brushing calloused hands.

2.

Inexplicable rain brings conversations:
battens-down fields, a storm of prayers,
someone knocking on a door.

3.

Lightning crackled a bad radio connection,
boundary lines bushes heavy with rain,
tilt the driveway.

About the Author

Martin Willitts Jr has 25 chapbooks including the Turtle Island Quarterly Editor’s Choice
Award, “The Wire Fence Holding Back the World” (Flowstone Press, 2017), plus 20 full-length
collections including the Blue Light Award 2019, “The Temporary World”. His recent book is
“Unfolding Towards Love” (Wipf and Stock, 2020).

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SUPERNOVA

by Alethea Jimison

Alice in Wonderland or Never-Never Land

Dear Alice why don’t you crawl into the rabbit hole with me?
The world has so many mysteries of unlimited possibilities.
Dear Alice aren’t you tired of living a life of repetition?
Dear Alice why are you so afraid of disturbing your reputation?
The secret of the universe is in a verse of unity.
When you know that we are all one, you can come ride with me.
All on board this train of Mystery
Actually, there is no mystery
Life is nothing more than synchronicity.
Dear Alice don’t you get tired of living a lie?
Dear Alice why are you so afraid to fly?
There is no limitation with levitation.
The world cannot take you places that I can.
Dear Alice... Are you really Alice?
When will you say you can?
Or do you want to stay in Never-Never Land?

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Supernova

I wish that I knew to tell her that her laugh is a burst of light,
like a flashing supernova.
Her smile is the warmth of home.
The curve of her femininity goes on into infinity.
The sway of her hips is like the waves of a tsunami.
Woman is the power of creation.
She is a stargate that facilitates the partnership of creation.
Mother of the earth, always remember your self-worth.
You were meant to love somebody, but love yourself first.
You can love many, but know your own self-worth.
Let your walls fall down. Let your heart run free.
You were made for loving, so let it be.

About the Author

Alethea Jimison is a poet and author. The written language has always been a passion of
hers since she was a little girl. She was already writing her first amateur novel and following
her mother around asking her to read all of her stories by the time she was seven years
old. She read the dictionary and thesaurus for fun by hiding it between the cover of her
school books secretly. She posted daily words on the refrigerator to challenge herself as a
future wordsmith. Alethea loves writing stories that challenge the reader to make the world
a better place through personal development and accountability. You can find out more
about Alethea’s work at www.aj-thewordsmith.com.

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DEAR MAMA

by Nikita Bhardwaj

Dear Mama

You told me I was born to be loved. 
That I clawed out of the womb like a wild
thing, slick with my father’s breath 
and the first smell of rain. 

We were alone, you and I, 
woven into one another,
limbs trembling like sky before storm.
At night, you taught me 

that men were mountains 
as we curled up in Everest’s maw. 
Coiled your fingers through mine, 
weathered water on pearl; explained that the grooves 

in my palms were ley lines, my eyes streetlights 
igniting wasteland. 
The valleys of your hips were carved by rivers. 
So, open your mouth, catch the monsoon 

like a lightning bug --
the watered are never broken.
When the rains arrived, 
we danced until we drowned, 

watched as our sisters’ headscarves 
disappeared between pooled lesions. 
Remember the rain, like gunshots, 
bell-tied ankles jangling in the crossfire.

We forget now, in the dim light of dawn, 
how we flinched at thunder, cowered
in mountain’s shadow, wept on the swollen 
tongue of a beast untamed.

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Mama, you watched me grow 
legs and cross an ocean. You swore 
it wouldn’t rain here, but my eyes are smoked 
with water. Mama,

forgive me, as I gaze slack-jawed 
into the mouth of a behemoth. 
You told me I was born to be loved.

because I know he’s lying --

the moon follows me 
to the bridge before 
I leap. she bruises
black water white in her 
image. bathes in god’s 
dusky nectar and croons
from its depths, spangled
siren of small death 
and blasphemy. fog 
stifles drifting water-lilies
under the bridge, 
and I am reminded of
my husband’s 
mouth on mine. stolen
words whispered 
like a promise:
never again.
I can feel the moon’s
baleful gaze
as I embrace her,
water billowing
in my belly, alive.

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warcry Adelaide Literary Magazine
hereditary asphyxiation

my father is a gambling man; my mother eats with her hands,
he rolls dice and my mama rolls out dough  turmeric ribbons winding down her arms to
and together they scream like pool in the crook between 
the drones in the sky hushed saccharine prayers
are sinking kisses in the shoreline, and silver towers borne against asphalt.
furrows in earth like she was eight when her father told her
crescents in my skin, mamas grip unyielding.  to breathe in the ashes of time, to swallow
they say that the mountains the yellow hymnal music, to
are alive and stumbling  shatter the profane and spare the sacred.
through our house. that we live to die, live to I never understood why my mother crushed
knife uranium into the veins of nonbelievers. black cumin seeds between her palms or let
at school my brother learns to shoot tamarind juice seep from her eyelids,
for the stars, tear white from bone, and until she unwound her ribbons and 
I braid tripwire into my hair. day breaks  pulled them taut around my neck.
like flickering candle; this is why  I choke on cinders, rasping dialects 
my father folds cards as the  and clawing crooked ancestral lines. 
men from another sun fold us  the blood on my hands is my own.
into paper planes. we fly high and sing lullabies 
with hell-raisers, knowing silence 
after strike means the village is asleep, 
so pray to the god with no name. 
scream war. spit revenge. because
I can’t see the stars anymore.

About the Author

Nikita Bhardwaj is a high school senior from New Jersey. She is an Iowa Young Writers’ Studio
student whose work has been recognized by NCTE, the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards,
the Pulitzer Center, and others. She enjoys volleyball and long walks in beautiful places.

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PASSING TIME

by John P. Drudge

Dead Ends Passing Time

Beyond the dead town In the vaguely
Through hay fields Haunted
Golden brown Eventless days
With the cart Of wandering aimlessly
On the horizon Over bridges
Empty and waiting From bank to bank
Behind the sweeping hills Past smoky cafes
Of our awakening And cheap hotels
Before the coming of snows High on wine
And our submergence And careless oblivion
In dark frozen waters Putting place
Sheltered And tradition
By the banks Beyond the tangible
Of the little pond Striking
Reflective of nothing Of my tears
But the quiet sway On cobblestones
Of our forgotten As I stumble and stagger
Movements From Notre-Dame
To Sacre-Coeur
About the Author Seeking only salvation
From the city’s endless stream
Of silenced dreams

John P. Drudge is a social worker working in the field of disability management and holds
degrees in social work, rehabilitation services, and psychology. He is the author of two books
of poetry: “March” and “The Seasons of Us” (both published in 2019). His work has appeared
widely in numerous literary journals, magazines, and anthologies internationally. John is also
a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee and lives in Caledon Ontario, Canada with his
wife and two children.

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SLOW MOTION

by Merlin Flower

the co. Slow motion

the morning moved Frozen in the depths
over of the holiday, a horrendous
thought awoke,
with a bump in the and snared.
stomach. are friends
the evening shrugged the real enemies?
moving in. you said you were broke
then as I was waiting for the ‘ever running
late’ bus ruminating on
it the mounting debts and bills. I
shrugged. work for free and see the
facebook picture of the new
The gangly mosquito and wide Audi you had
woke up bought the same day.
with a song on its lips. I took another holiday at the
smelly bus station.
it
craved blood and asked the
evening. It
summoned the
night.

the night sustained
the desire.

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Steady burn Revista Literária Adelaide

us, you, them against About the Author
mind ajar.
the air felt the strain. Merlin Flower is an independent artist and
writer.
convictions prevailed over
confusions.
all applauded.

the deserted street
wished and
the summon
was heard.

a train passed by

a bus passed by

a friend arrived by
riding a bicycle

the awfulness was interrupted
for some time.

129

LOVE GAMES

by Edith Speers

Love Games

Start anywhere Start anywhere
and with tongue or fingertip and discover how little you know
trace on your lover of your beloved’s body and how little you care
the longest possible route to at the loss of youth or beauty.
your favourite place
or your least favourite place Start anywhere
and discover how much or
Start anywhere how little you shared
and imagine the aging of your beloved and how little you care about suffering
detail by detail until there is compared to what you have shared.
nothing recognisable
except what cannot change Start anywhere
and discover how little you will be missed
Start anywhere by those who love you best
and with your memory follow the history and how little it matters
of all you have done together as a team of two compared to the love that exists.
but only the work, not the pleasure
Start anywhere
Start anywhere in the game of love and
and with your anger itemise every hurt consider all these things
and every transgression and every lie and if any of them are true
that your lover has inflicted upon you. then continue

Start anywhere
and list everyone you love and who loves you
and admit it without pain exactly how brief
their grief at your death would endure.

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Cock-a-doodle Dude

You’ve got the smile You’re the man that the women like to chase
You’ve got the style They want your body and your handsome face
You’ve got it all But that’s not all
The women wait at home and hope you’ll call That makes them want to fall
There is nothing they won’t do On broken glass and crawl –
To get their hands on you It’s because you haven’t noticed there’s a race
You’re the proof that life is never fair at all
You have no villa in the south of France
You’re the cock of the walk, it’s true They don’t even care if you can dance
You strut around like roosters always do While other guys are dreaming
But it’s not your hair You’ve got the girlies steaming
Or the clothes that you wear They’re plotting and they’re scheming
That makes the women stare – How to get inside your cock-a-doodle pants
It’s your casual independent attitude
You’ve got the smile
You’re a cock-a-doodle dude alright You’ve got the style
The women line up for you at night You’ve got it all
They wait outside your door You’ve got the women at your beck and call
Just to hear you snore You’re a cock-a-doodle dude
And in the morning light With your careless attitude
They ask, ‘Do you want your And you’re the proof that life is never fair at all
coffee black or white?’

All your life you drive the ladies mad
You don’t even have to treat them bad
Or buy them drinks in bars
Or drive a fancy car
And yet they’d all be glad
For you to break their hearts
and make them sad

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The Bees
(as explained to a vegan friend)

I am not their master, the few jars of honey every year
I am their slave. salvaged when repairing
They are free to come and go rotten boxes and frames
as they please – which they do and gained only by donning
in swarms if I fail to repair rubber garments and a shabby veil
and maintain their housing in stinking hot weather

to a satisfactory standard. then suffer an aching arm
I do not hurt them. as I turn and turn at great speed
I do not fence them or tether them. the handle of the extractor drum
I provide them until meager spittings of amber
with luxury accommodation ooze down its sides
at great cost and inconvenience. and puddle at the bottom.

I do not want to be doing this. But what else am I to do?
I am sick of the worry and the labour For uncountable generations
of assembling and painting this has been their home
new storeys for their because I used to be an idealist
modern blocks of flats. and thought
You can’t even call it rent I should grow my own food.

About the Author

Edith Speers lives on a farm in southern Tasmania. Her poems and short stories have
won many literary awards. Her work has been published in most of the Australian literary
magazines, many anthologies, and several Canadian and American journals. She is the author
of three books of poetry.

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I TOOK IT AS A SIGN
TO START SINGING

by Richard Grove

The Ups and Downs at Pantemonium
A poem for John – anything can be a poem

When I was sixteen-years old, o my gosh, that yesterday was fifty years ago, how time flies
with its ups and downs, for me literally the case as I ran the elevator for the fifth floor teens
clothing store that sold mostly bellbottom pants to long-hair-dope-smoking-cool teens.

The store was called: Pantemonium housed in the narrow Foster Building on King Street,
downtown Hamilton, sandwiched between a bank and a Jewish diamond merchant
building. The patrons from those bookend buildings never entered my elevator.

If my luck was with me I would be fortunate enough to run the elevator with its swinging-brass-
nob controller and get it stuck between floors with a hysterical, bell-bottomed-braless-teenage
girl and hope that she would cling to me for her salvation in this clanging scissor-door deathtrap.

My trickery usually ended with scorn and distain discharged from the flush faced gall I
teased with my elevator flutterings. I did though once get a kiss from an eight-teen-year-old
buxom girl when she discovered the hormone-driven purpose of my prank. One long French
kiss is worth the distain from a hundred scornful girls that just wanted to buy pants.

Now five decades later from a learned friend, John B. Lee, I am told the fact that in Israel,
from sundown Friday until sundown Saturday, during Shabbat, the elevators in Israel stops at
every floor because even the effort of pushing the elevator button is considered labour, and
if you are a devout Jew, you do not labour from sundown Friday until sunset Saturday.

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As the story goes, one Jewish driver was stoned for driving a car during Shabbat even though
the car was doing all the work. All the workers in the hotels on Friday night and all day
Saturday are Palestinians who come in to work on those two days and the supper is serve-
yourself, with Palestinian bus boys who might or might not have worn bell-bottom pants. 
I might have been stoned as an elevator operator every weekend at Pantemonium as
a bell-bottomed scissor-door, swinging-brass-knob-jerking-elevator operator but that
was stoned with a different meaning and yes I wore cool bell-bottomed pants.

I Took it as a Sign to Start Singing
Inspired by Rumi Translated by Coleman Barks
Last night the full moon floated
in the stillness of my cool,
lake-view horizon.
I took it as a sign to start singing*
from my joy filled heart.
My skipped pebble rippled
across star filled sky.
* This line is from the translated poem “The New Rule”

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Catching Up to Her

It seems that mother is not ready to go, Even though I will miss my dear mother
which is joyfully fine with me, even though when the gentle black dog
the longest journey that she currently takes inhales her final breath
clutching I am ok with her passing now.
is walking to the end of her bed and back. I often say that she, I, we all,
are “only” going to pass on.
The black dog of death has been licking After all we are now,
gently at her heels for some time. No pain, as dead as we are ever going to be.
no fear, just a gentle slobbering It is not the worst thing
as if your black lab was licking compared to some of the traumas
the honey of life from her reluctance to leave. of this mortal trapping called life.
She does not even know that she should,
could or would want to leave us to feed Lionel, great grandson, in some
that black dog of mortality. abstract time-veiled way, still
remembers riding on Great Grandma’s scooter
Now, she, the oldest on our family tree beeping the horn of life, filling her
for generations past, I am with joy and there he is smiling at eternity
slowly catching up to her catching up to me. I hope one day
as “I now ache in places that I used to play”, I have a great grandson that I can remind,
as my idol, now passed, Leonard Cohen, man is neither young nor old
said in one of his poems. but lives in eternity.

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Grief Skiing at the Tender Age of Twelve or Thirteen
Thank you Don Gutteridge for your poem “Grief” on the Farm on the Hill in the Back Forty

At 90-plus, On the farm
maybe for the first time ever, father when I was just a young lad
trusted me, and only me, to take him at the tender age of twelve or thirteen
to the hospital and then he begged, I strapped on my mother’s skis, 
pleaded with me to rescue him Curve-tipped wooden slabs
from the confines of his cribbed bed, with spring loaded bindings,
crisp white sheets, shining chrome, antiques in my mind,
nurses fluttering by. fastened to my green lace-up rubber boots.
The tumble to the bottom of the hill
With broken heart I had to listen was a short lived flurry of hilarity.
to his supplications, him weeping,
abandoning him to his choice
of self-imposed incarceration.

On the phone, an eternity between us,
no tender caresses could reach
his furrowed brow. I had to listen
to his dirgical weeping,
tears washing through the phone line
becoming my tears. My universe shattering.
My grief, a living being,
swelled in memories,
floating in my swells of helplessness.

“I love you Dad”
were the last familial words he heard. I wept
with the news of his passing ten minutes later.
I still weep though now only in silence
no longer carrying the burden of anger.

About the Author

Richard M. Grove, otherwise known to friends as Tai, lives in Presqu’ile Provincial Park where
he and his wife run a B&B, where he also runs Hidden Brook Press. He is a Poet, Writer, Editor,
Publisher, Photographer and President of the Canada Cuba Literary Alliance. He is the Poet
Laureate of Brighton, Ontario. He has 15 titles of poetry, fiction and memoir. He is the Editor-
in-chief of Devour: Art and Lit Canada

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EARTH

by Aracelly P. Campo

Earth

It is earth with its majestic dimensions that
Confronts all its creatures with the cruel indifference of
Forgetfulness and the coldness that sleeps in the abyss

Of death

Writer’s Block

Can the gates of hell open and swallow
the source of the power you once called yours?
The staff of magical spells curses your poetic verses

and oblivion is the address you call home.
For the muse that surrounded your creative palette has

excused himself and deserted the banquet.
Frantic thoughts and lyrical ghosts elevate creation

to an unexplained fixation that drives the writer
into becoming a martyr on a forgotten cross.

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Adelaide Literary Magazine Death
No Conclusion?

I live Death is our companion
I die Death is our consort
I breathe Death consoles us
I cry
I bleed Death gives us the will to live
An edge Death gives us a reason to fight
A limb
Darkness Death breathes life
Light Defines mortality for us
Tempo In order to seize life we must embrace death
Silence Capture every moment and revel in its rapture
Absence Ignite your inner fire with passion
Hunger Let it seep through the cracks
Reason
An ending Of your numbness
And feel your life
For death can come at any time
The beginning and the end are always the same
It is in the in between
Where life burns the brightest

About the Author

Aracelly P. Campo, a.ka “Bones” grew up in Miami Florida. An avid reader, she started writing
poetry at the age of nine. She writes in all types of poetic forms, but has a special preference
for dark verse. She enjoys nurturing and collaborating with other poets and writers. She
holds degrees in communication and business from Florida International University. As she
would describe it, “She’s an explorer of darkness, the kind that lurks in our hearts and seeps
through the crack of our numbness.”

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DEAR CUSTOMER

by Idalis Wood

Dear Customer,

I apologize for not being what you want.
I’m sorry I couldn’t be the man you wanted.
It’s not my fault I wasn’t born with a
certain appendage between my legs.

Maybe if I was, my requests of turning your
phone completely off wouldn’t sound like some
mystic code you apparently didn’t have the
gumption to decipher.

Maybe the deeper baritone and the supposed
authority could serve as a personal interpreter.

I hope you were able to understand me when I
requested waiting for a moment to get the
aforementioned supervisor.

I’m sorry, I meant to just say the supervisor.
I apologize if my wording is too advanced.
I bet you would understand me if I were a man.

I sincerely hope you understood when the supervisor
asked you to do the same things I requested you to do:

“turn [your] phone completely off”
and

“may I have your name, please?”

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Because I am a woman, I don’t quite recall
the rest of the conversation.
Since I wasn’t worth your time,
you aren’t worth mine.
Does that make me truly incompetent?
Maybe you convinced yourself I am, since your
chromosomes won’t warrant you to be
disadvantaged in such manner.
I’m honored to see how your generation is holding
onto such old-fashioned values and shows me
how you treat a young woman.
Time truly does stand still.
I hope my male supervisor was able to assist you.
I can’t wait to hear from you again.

Sincerely,
[blank]
(Note: feel free to put whatever you wish in,
because you would never be able to get my name right)

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Through Mirror Eyes

Ashamed. Now,
Scared. the criminals deemed innocent.
Defenseless.
Justice served for them.
Feel the leather sting and flay your
skin while blood further darkens Why are those who do awful things so
your skin and scars rise upon your back. quickly classified as being protected citizens?

Then, How many others are forced
the shooters were pardoned. To remain silent?
Then, To stop resisting?
murderers were exempt from consequence. To stop questioning their presence?
Then, To stop acting suspicious?
the criminals were protected. To stop

I am not blessed with millions Feel the metallic barrel against your head.
our forefathers made for me to gamble away. Cold, unrelenting metal pressing your flesh
Smell its fatal perfume and count down your
Now, final moments.
the shooters walk away.
Now, Someone else has decided your fate.
the murderers stand tall. Would you start a revolution?
Will you stop wanting to adjust?

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INTERVIEWS



TINA EGNOSKI

Author of
BURN DOWN THIS WORLD

1. T ell us a bit about yourself – something that
we will not find in the official author’s bio?

I began writing at a young age. When I was in my teens, I wrote very, very, very bad love po-
etry. In high school, I appeared to be industriously taking notes while my teachers’ lectured,
but really I was writing poetry. Everyone assumed I was a diligent student, but in reality I
was a daydreamer, more interested in the language and structure of poetry than history or
algebra or biology.

2. D o you remember what your first story
(article, essay, or poem) was about and when you wrote it?

The first story I wrote was based on a picture of my mother taken during the mid-1940s. She
was nineteen and dating my father. When he went overseas to fight in WWII, she sent him
this picture. He carried it with him during his three years in China. I found it in an old photo
album and my mother told me its history. In the story, the picture, as it travels from the Unit-
ed States to the other side of the world, is at the emotional heart of the story.

3. What is the title of your latest book and what inspired it?
Burn Down This World is my first novel. It centers on Celeste and Reid Leahy, siblings raised
in a military family who come-of-age in the South in the late 1960s, at the height of social
change and national unrest over the Vietnam War. As students at the University of Florida,
they’re active in antiwar demonstrations. Those activities, which begin as peaceful and soon
turn violent, eventually tear the sister and brother apart. The braided narrative tells the sto-
ry of their history, as well as their reunion after years of estrangement.

The events of the novel were inspired by real demonstrations that took place at the Uni-
versity of Florida in May of 1972. I’m an alumna of the university, although I didn’t attend
during the time of the protests. Still, when I decided to write about student activism against
the Vietnam War, it was a happy accident to discover this connection. It gave me a setting
and a set of facts as a jumping-off point.

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4. H ow long did it take you to write your latest work and how
fast do you write (how many words daily)?

It took me four years to write Burn Down This World. I began my research in 2014 at the
University of Florida archives. I spent three days reading student newspapers, yearbooks,
the University Record, the catalog of courses, and presidential letters. I wanted to get a feel
for both the academic and social life on campus at that time. When I returned home, I spent
weeks sifting through all the notes and copies I made in order to synthesize the material. I
had to let the facts sink in so that my imagination could take over. Slowly, I began creating
characters and developing a narrative structure.

When I begin a new project, I give myself a set number of words to write each day. For
instance, in the first month I’ll write, say, 1000 words five days a week. Then, the next month
I increase the number of words I have to reach each day. By the third month, I’ll be able to
write 2000 words a day. Those words aren’t always “good” words, but they are at least words
on the page and they’re building the story. This is how the first draft gets done. When it’s
time to revise, I mark my progress not by word count, but by the number of hours I work
each day, usually only two to three hours. Revision is tough work for me. I can become ob-
sessed with getting each word in a sentence just right. I often have to say to myself: “Okay,
you’ve revised that sentence twenty times. Move on!”

5. Do you have any unusual writing habits?

I write with loud music on in my studio. Typically, the music relates to the time period I’m
writing about. When I was working on Burn Down This World, I listened to groups from the
late 1960s and early 1970s: The Doors, Buffalo Springfield, The Rolling Stones, Black Sabbath,
and Creedence Clearwater Revival. It was fun and inspiring to be immersed in the sounds of
that era.

6. I s writing the only form of artistic expression that you utilize,
or is there more to your creativity than just writing?

I’m a papermaker and bookbinder. I work with various plant fibers to make unique and lovely
pieces of paper. Then I use that paper to design and create one-of-a-kind journals and note-
books. It’s a creative expression very different from writing, but the two are complementary.
I often joke that I can write the book, make the paper for the book to be printed on, and then
bind the book for publication. Of course, modern printing is much faster. It would probably
take me a year to produce just one copy of my novel!

7. Authors and books that have influenced your writings?

There are number of writers who have influenced my writing. In terms of classics, I love
James Baldwin, the Brontë sisters, Zora Neale Hurston, Fitzgerald, Flaubert, Toni Morrison,
and Edith Wharton. I also write short stories, so I admired short fiction writers like John
Cheever, Lauren Groff, Flannery O’Conner, and Alice Monroe.

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The one book I re-read every few years is Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying. The reason I love
that book so much is because it was one of the first books I read that spoke frankly and from
a feminist point of view about love, sex, family, family dysfunction, politics, psychotherapy,
literature, and religion. In other words—it has it all!

8. W hat are you working on right now?
Anything new cooking in the wordsmith’s kitchen?

I’m working on a collection of short fiction. The stories are historical in nature and focused
on writers who have a connection to Florida. For instance, I read recently about the poet
Edna St. Vincent Millay and a trip she took to South Florida in 1936. After checking into a
hotel on Sanibel Island, she walked down to the beach. Just as she hit the sand, the hotel
caught fire. She lost the only copy of a manuscript she was working on. She was able to re-
write the manuscript from memory and the book, Conversation at Midnight, was published
in 1937. That’s the kind of fact I love to turn into fiction.

9.  Did you ever think about the profile of your readers?
What do you think – who reads and who should read your books?

When I’m writing, I think about my readers in an abstract way—I want to give them a good
story told with evocative language and a strong sense of place. If I can accomplish that, I feel
the work will be accessible to anyone.

10. Do you have any advice for new writers/authors?
Read, read, read. I think reading and writing go hand-in-hand. While in graduate school, I
learned about my strengths and weakness as a writer from teachers and fellow students.
Since then, I’ve continued my literary education by reading: the classics, as well as contem-
porary fiction. I read The Best American Short Stories cover-to-cover each year. When I read
a story, I read it first for the joy and discovery. The second time I read it with an analytical
eye, trying to figure out how the author uses elements like point-of-view, tense, plot, and
character development.

11. What is the best advice (about writing) you have ever heard?
Perfection kills creativity. It’s been said many times, many ways, and it’s true. I have to battle
perfectionism with every piece I write. I’ve also had to learn when to let go and send out a
story. No creative endeavor is ever going to be perfect. When I deem it “good enough”—and
that’s a tricky judgement call—I let it go by submitting it to a journal or press.

12. H ow many books you read annually and what are you reading now?
What is your favorite literary genre?

I love contemporary literary fiction. Authors I read and admire include Chimamanda Ngozi
Adichie, Tracy Chevalier, Karen Joy Fowler, Ian McEwan, Claire Messud, and Zadie Smith.

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I just finished The Snakes by Sadie Jones and The Most Fun We Ever Had by Claire Lombardo.
Two of the best books I read in 2019. Both are well-written, engaging, with meaty family
dysfunction at the center. And what’s better in fiction than a messy family saga?
13. W hat do you deem the most relevant about your writing?

What is the most important to be remembered by readers?
As I mentioned earlier, I want to tell a good story, a story that brings a character or charac-
ters into sharp relief. Along with a good story, I strive to evoke a strong sense of place with
writing that is, hopefully, beautiful and precise. I’m not saying I always accomplish this feat,
but I try.
14. W hat is your opinion about the publishing industry today and

about the ways authors can best fit into the new trends?
The publishing industry is alive and well. I think the abundance of independent publishers
gives writers of all genres an opportunity to get their work out there. Typically, independent
presses are more hands-on. They also allow the author more say in the publishing process.
It’s important for writers, once they have a book in their hands, to advocate for that book;
to organize and attend readings, to create writing communities; to support of independent
bookstores; and to show up on social media. Even though most writers are introverts—I sure
am—I’ve learned that hiding isn’t in the best interest of an author. Getting out there and
meeting writers and readers will strengthen your connections, if not your sales.

Credit Stacey Doyle

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