Adelaide Literary Magazine No.55, November 2022

REVISTA LITERÁRIA ADELAIDE

with more and more leaves.
Then she starts filling her hands with extra leaves.
Becoming sour, we never would know what triggered her electronic
self.
 

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Poppy Seed Payasam(1)

She is told to make this recipe
Carrying true Karnataka’s(2) geography.
Not compromising the alliteration in the name, with the flavors.
Toughness of Carnatic ragas(3) like bhairavi or shuddha saveri.
She speaks less these days, no colour of raisins in her entries.
All beautiful memories of reading for herself, are grounded poppy seeds.
Little drawings of scattered rice, in her notebook.
Evening’s prettiness she fixes
Saucepan in low flame she listens
The word coconut water
While thinking of the word’s origin.
She doesn’t have enough grasp on time.
She is fond of all incomplete things
As jaggery never gets a fine square shape.

1. Payasam: a sweet made with rice and jaggery
2. Karnataka: one of the states in India
3. Raga: tune in Indian classical music

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Revision

Winter is the sicker version of green.
Son copies the darker version of water
As the fire of flowers.
is captured in pieces.
shared version of grass
Light is the thorny version of sand.
flitting the letters
sweet potatoes
correspond
shades of wind.
Darkness is the disfigured version of snow.
A Pseudonymous morning’s moving street
Night queen’s fragrance is the poorer version of sleep.
Monologues make dreams.
Foliage is the romantic version of paintbrushes
Poetry is a glass
with dark stains
Life in a draft
old version of time
makes memories
preserved in
discontinuity.
 

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Learning a Song

We have to listen to the recording With so much care
Like holding a boiling tea cup while walking.
After 1 or 2 sessions of practice,
You think, you’ve learnt the song.
You get this feeling of losing a lot of weight,
When you look at your picture in a tracksuit.
After few days, you understand that, you have to start allover again.

You shouldn’t read from your notes.
Your memory is best for record keeping.
You ask your non Malayali friend to say the word vazhapazham(1)
Imagining the difficulty in the cafeteria.
It was above to rain.
You shift your attention
You make your friend to pronounce mazhai.(2)

1. Vazhapazham: banana in Malayalam language, a language spoken in
Kerala, India
2. Mazhai: rain in Malayalam language, a language spoken in Kerala,
India

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Jyothsna Phanija’s poems have previously appeared in IthacaLit, Melusine,
East Coast Literary Review, The Nervous Breakdown, Foliate Oak, Pool,
Northeast Review, , Café Dissensus, Page & Spine, her short stories
in The Feminist Wire, Thickjam among others. Her first poetry collection
Ceramic Evening (2016) received much critical acclaim. Currently she
teaches English Literature at ARSD College (University of Delhi), India.
She blogs at phanija.wordpress.com

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LIFE NEVER STOPS DANCING
by Russo Shanidze

WHO ARE WE?

Words matter—
Words are powerful—
Words can save or immensely damage us.

But the question is “Which words do we want to choose to embroider
The blank sheets that can last for a lifetime?”
Before the words are etched on paper, there are only the blank pages.

What we reveal we can’t retrieve.
It’s our choice what we write and share,
It’s our decision how we fill out the empty spaces.

But the words can also be useless and powerless and meaningless
If they don’t mirror the truth that emanates from within us,
If they are not followed by action or if they are just simply ignored.

There was a silence before chaos—

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There was peace before war—
There was love before fear—

Where do these poisoning, hurtful lies come from?
Where does this unbearable anger arises from?
They come from our fearful and negative thoughts,
They emerge from our painful ego that cannot survive in peace and

harmony.

Ignorance is a filthy swamp, and it is hard to get out from it once we
fall in.

As deep we are mired down in our own denial, as dark our thoughts
become

And we are unable to see the light neither within us nor inside others.

We are trapped in our unconscious minds and can’t see the truth.
The truth—which is in all of us. But how can we find it?

Let’s ask this question to ourselves,
Who are we? If not the light of this world, than who? Just darkness?
It can’t be, because the moon will always shine through us all.

We are life; therefore we are love and light.
In stillness, when we turn our minds off
We don’t care about our names, status, or things
But only about our breath that keeps us one with life.

Life is all is on Earth that will never fade, unlike everything else

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That we own, see, touch, or smell.
So what’s the point of hoarding and accumulating so much wealth and

possessions
If our bodies, like trees, cannot last forever?
What’s the point to be here if not for each other?
Like trees, we cannot live without one another.
So what’s the point to breathe
If love is defeated by hatred
If peace is replaced by war
If life and being are forgotten and buried by the material things?
Who are we then?
Who are we?
Once again,
Who are we?

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WHO AM I?

“Who am I?”
I asked.

“Am I a song that I sing?
Am I a heartbeat?
Am I water I drink?

Or air that I breathe?
Who am I?

Am I a fragrant flower that blooms each year?
Or a tree that grows here?
Am I a bird that’s free to fly

So high that it can touch the sky?
Maybe a river or a small stream

That flows downhill.”

“Who am I?
I don’t know—
Perhaps a heavy winter snow.
Am I a dream that I dream at night?
Or a pen that loves to write?”

The more I dive deep within
The less I know and the less I need.
The more I listen to my heart and soul

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The more I feel that I’m one with all
That is.

Everywhere I look—I see
I’m part of you

And you’re part of me.
“Who am I?
I don’t know—

I accept that, though.”

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WHERE AM I FROM?

I grew up in the country of Georgia
That has a remarkable history, authentic culture, deep roots,
And is unique in many ways.
I’ve lived in a few countries, in many cities and places (throughout the

world)
Does that mean that I belong to any regions, ethnic groups, or races?
I don’t know.

If you ask a bird where she is from
She will flap her wings and fly away, free
With no answer
Does she care?
Do you care?

Although my native language is Georgian, the second is Russian, and
the third is English.

I live in the US now and I speak, write, think, and dream in English.
Does it matter to you or to anyone?
I don’t know.

When we first meet someone, our most common question is “What
do you do?”

In my case, “Where are you from?” (Because of my accent)

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We crave to label each other.
Maybe it makes it easier to communicate with one another through

those labels
Rather than being there and feel aliveness with them.
Sometimes we even forget to breathe
That’s how much we long to know about each other’s identities?
More than the truth—
More than anything.
We identify ourselves with everything

With names,

nationalities,

cultures,

languages,

religions,

professions,

possessions,

beliefs,

and more.

Where am I from?
Does that matter?

I’m like you—
Need air to survive
Need food to eat to stay alive.
I need a safe place to sleep at night
And a job to pay my bills on time.
But what we all need the most is LOVE.
We yearn for it, yet we hide it from everyone so that we are not judged.

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We fear love—
We think love makes us weak and vulnerable
But the material things can make us mightier and honorable.
I’m from this planet, Earth—
Where are you from?
From the earth as well?
Then we are not different from one another.
Perhaps as Mother Teresa said, We have forgotten that we belong to

each other.
You’re like me, “a human being.”
That is enough—

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LIFE NEVER STOPS DANCING

I wrote what I heard from within
Not what my mind wanted me to write.
I said how I felt in that moment, “the truth”
Not what my ego wanted me to say.
I did what my heart whispered to me in silence
and not what my head dictated me to do.
I looked at you and recognized how much love was
Within you, because it was in me.
It’s still in me, it never died, it never dissolved,
It is eternal.

Poems have no ending
As life never stops dancing
Even if we stop
Our posterity will carry on.
What is left on these pages will continue…

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RIGHT AND WRONG

Sometimes I write and recite poems in my dreams.
I wake up and don’t remember any of them.
But in my dreams, I say, “When I wake up, I will transfer
This poem onto a paper with my pen.
There is no way that I can forget these words.”
Even during a dream, I’m aware that I’m not awake
But who is that “I” that is conscious of that? I wonder—

Once in my dream I recited a poem about “right and wrong.”
I woke up and the only words I remembered were “right and wrong.”

If I say that someone is wrong
How do I know that I’m right?
And if I say that I’m right
How do I know that I’m not wrong?

What was that poem all about?
Let go of attachement?
Perhaps finding the light in these two notions.
Still, I don’t know—

 

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Russo Shanidze has self-published three works to date: her poetry
collection, titled A Hummingbird's Reminder in 2019; a memoir, titled
A Hummingbird's Awakening in 2021; and an audio poetry book titled,
Poems by Russo Shanidze in 2020. She began her passion for writing by
expressing her thoughts, dreams, and goals in her simple childhood diary,
a practice which she has retained to this day. From her youth she became
an adventurer through the written word, taking on different personas and
expressing the heartache and happiness of the human spirit. Russo earned a
BA in Mass Media Studies and Television Broadcasting at the University
of Westminster in London and has worked in international television
broadcasting and production. She established her home in the US seventeen
years ago and currently works as a writer, poetry and creative writing coach,
and voice over artist.

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DIXIE CUP
by Grant Vecera

Summer, Speedway, Indiana 1975

I guess because his dad was a dentist,
Jeff Beverly had a 500 ml syringe—
minus the needle.

Looking back, I understand
why all the grown-ups
said I was disturbed

for many reasons, but mainly

because of that one lovely June evening

that I blasted 500 mls of tap water
reddened with the food coloring
(that we’d used to make Easter eggs
in Jeff’s perfect mom’s pristine kitchen)
out of Jeff’s bedroom window
onto the neighborhood cookout below.

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Aqua-Adventure Fun Park!

Although the pool is deep enough,
it’s too packed and murky
because the designers thought the masses
wouldn’t go for such a static concept.

So, as a naked herd,
we shift our feet
and scratch our ribs
and pretend
we are not devouring
the hideous and erotic details
of one another
as the sleepy lifeguard
repeats,
“Go,”
so that each kid,
teen, and grownup
can burst with delight
for 17 seconds
of whitewater adventure.

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Banana

You sunny mud curve.
You bland yum-yum.

You vertical smile in four bites.

With you I don’t need to chew
because you are the well behaved gut mush.
of a cartwheeling black and yellow spider.

Soon you will hang
with the other limp innards
from the bony fingers
of October’s plucked sapling
below my airtight
office cubicle window
so I may watch you
shrivel more valiantly
than this pretend me
blossoming backwards.

At Wolf Cave, McCormick’s Creek, July 2014

Maria gabbed the whole time
we wriggled through the black—
which was good because,
cool and slimy as it was—
I broke into a sweat
and began to hyperventilate.

Maybe kids love such worming
because kids are Tiktaaliks,
and have tough elbows and knees,
or just know the dank, black home
we can no longer fathom.

REVISTA LITERÁRIA ADELAIDE

Dixie Cup

If Earl Kragiel ever said or did
one fucked up thing to me,
I can’t think of what it was.
That’s a hell of a thing
to say of any old friend.

But I have to take it back.

When we were very young
he splashed & dunked me
In Little Platte Lake
before I could swim
or even go under.

But in miserable junior high,
I was happy on my sleeping bag
on the floor next to his bed
listening to Boston and Elton John
on his AM/FM clock radio
and looking at the magazines
we stole from Mr. Kemp’s tool shed.

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And that’s why I kept it secret,
the time he asked if I knew
what cum looks like,
then said don’t watch.
Grant Vecera teaches writing and inquiry at Indiana University
Indianapolis and at Butler University. His poems have been regularly
appearing in various illustrious literary periodicals for the past thirty years.
He prefers bicycles to automobiles, sandwiches to guns, and cats to people
(except for his wife and daughter).

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SEEK A TRUTH THAT HOLDS
by Mark Vogel

Topography of the Historical Map

Others napped as the Rocky Mountain Sunday snow
drifted thick while we slow touched, increasingly
naked in the living room, gluing ourselves tight,
until together in the spring storm our eyes
grew large living with the surface explosion
seemingly trivial—comically short of official sex.
Only days later did we understand that passion
heats possibility—how unraveling coupled with air
and gentle light fuels a chemistry saying yes, yes, yes,
making us right then pregnant (together), with
a tiny kid waving from a great distance, while
we sat immersed in wonder, amazed, waiting. But
in the next weeks the hovering earth mothers said
no, no, no, this is a mistaken dead end for you
stumbling naïve teens so bent on flunking your future.
Then behind a calm plan, doors painted tropic blue
and orange slammed shut as we acquiesced,
and staggered hand in hand on a straight-line path

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to the freeing Act. Later, smothered into silence,
we woke, knowing only to wound each other,
then drifted two thousand miles apart—along
the way spawning with other lovers in dark/light,
winter/spring, enmeshed in rich enough sagas,
living in our parallel lives. When new children
appeared, we sometimes reminded each other
how our conjoined bodies first chose one quiet
morning to conceive. But time out meditations
are not the same as living, and wildfire smoke
and hurricane winds fill decades, masking
the reality of what might have been, even what is.
Sometimes love on the historical map evolves
into nothing but desert—a bleached undeniable
topography, named, and real enough, like a kid’s
story filled with magic, but increasingly sun-faded,
slowly becoming indecipherable.

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seek a truth that holds

in the crowded language thicket—then strike
at weasel words’ breeding bloat, for really fast is
not faster than fast, and no phase gains strength
smothered in cotton. Watch for chattering cousins
kind of and really that flare so briefly like plastic afire—
then shrink to nothing under the meditative light.
Always fresh morning cringes when really is voiced,
repulsed by the teenage impulse to exaggerate.
See how really clings, like a tick that sucks at essence,
making a phrase deflate, the head buried in blood.
Weak words drag a reader into waves eating away at
the surface, leaving the swimmer coated with salt, and tainted.
Lost in abstraction, sometimes even the professor can’t
articulate, as he struggles into clothes that don’t fit,
then uses the first words that appear. A phrase should fly,
subtle, like how a swallow-tail lifts gently from the zinnia,
then settles like destiny on beebalm. Language best
moves just right to the rhythm attuned to the pulse,
like how the afternoon builds the thunderhead, but
stalls like no drama is possible, then explodes
in a pounding deluge beyond all we imagined.
But even with diligence really and the weasel family
proliferate as an obscene habit—dangerous like
a sixth grader spewing profanity, acting out pretend sex—
so over the top the skin crawls. Look close at habits—

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magnifying a fly into a big-eyed monster to see
its commonness unnatural, bizarre, the moments
we become the silly scientist creating a clone of a clone.
Stare with an awkward ache, embarrassed by what
we have become, knowing a scene is best left spare
and fresh, with God’s palpable gentle touch ready to caress.

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Professor Prufrock Lands on Mars

Both the saint and the fool as he dissects the coed
with her back straight, demure in her tight sweater
so carefully arranged for this moment.
Scribbling again to his prompt, she looks up
excited, straight to him, confessing only for his eyes,
as he blinks, unable to keep the connection,
knowing from her writing the protective web
that sponsors her eager rebellion—feeds her
independence defiantly rejecting those who would judge.
His is a muted joy at being the leader of this crowd,
as he scans the class then returns to her, zeroing
in on how her breasts move, how she licks her lips,
arranges her head to mimic a mature woman’s
provocative intimacy. He sees himself as subtle
as he adjusts his classroom movie, cultivating
in his isolation chamber the jazz that blows
his hair awry, freezes him in youth, when once
upon a time (in his fiction) he would have stalled,
then acted upon these provocative cues—surely
staring straight into her soul—building a private
literature until her story wrapped tightly around his.
But today another script insists as he waits for
the stragglers to finish, so he can clear his throat
and bring them back together as the professional he is,
gesturing without thinking, so naturally tuning

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a bebop rat-a-tap lesson so learning flows
and collects in the shallows. He knows already
that later, he will provoke a back-and-forth exchange,
and release quietly the well-honed anecdote
that brings their time together. But now he
finishes the editing lesson, modeling gentle
pronoun-agreement as she wriggles back into focus,
coloring so much of what he thinks remains
unstated, even as the class as a mood-driven
life force shifts like an ever-moving unstoppable river.
Out of nowhere appears the vivid frozen image,
fragile and still—a white egret on a muddy bank
poised on his scrawny legs. Himself, the teacher,
stares at the flashing multicolored minnow darting in
and around the boundaries he is too timid to cross.

Mark Vogel lives at the back of a Blue Ridge holler with his wife, Susan
Weinberg, an accomplished fiction and creative non-fiction writer, and two
foster sons. He is an Emeritus Professor of English at Appalachian State
University in Boone, North Carolina.

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AT GOULD FARM
by Daniel Senser

The Garden of Eden

There is a song in the wellspring of my being,
a rainbow that shines forth from my eyes.
Like a child’s tears, it is endless, and from my
breath wafts the scent of the rose. Music!
Give me music! I will tell you a tale as old as time.
The man heard a voice and set forth from his home
on a journey to find the holiest of Holies.
He believed! He left everything behind.
On his way he met a stranger who told him
of a cavern in which blew the very breath of God.
Deep in the very center of this cavern
was a flame that never went out.
He had seen it himself, but was too afraid,
and he left, his hair now white.
The man set out for this cavern, and he found it
in the farthest corner of the world.
Shadows haunted him all the way, warning him

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against going within. But the man was eager,
and his mind was set—he would behold the flame
that never died. He entered the cavern and a cold wind
blew forth, in a voice deep like the stirring of echoes.
He went in without a light, trusting that the Holy One
would guide him, and he was right. Long, long he delved
deep into the cavern, hearing the strange winds as they blew.
He could see a light in the distance, and then he knew
he had found the Holiest of Holies. He stood before the flame,
and opened his mouth to speak. He had a thousand questions
on his tongue, but none came out. Finally, a voice spoke from the flame:
No questions. Tell me what it is you see.
“I see a flame,” said the man, “yet, nothing is burning. How can this be?”
No questions, said the voice. Tell me what it is that you see.
The man was confounded. He had already answered, and yet, as he

looked
closer, he saw: A vast and beautiful country, with a river flowing,
filled with sheep and green grass and wildflowers growing.
There were men, and women—beautiful they were—and children
playing in the fields. Everyone seemed enlightened and happy.
This that you see, said the voice, is the true Holiest of Holies.
I am but a messenger. All that you see can be real if you make it so.
Return to your homeland, return to your friends and family and
tell them what you have seen and make it so. This is your birthright.
To live in peace and harmony. And so, the man left, now white of hair,
and he returned to his homeland, where, in accordance with his people,

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he tore down the buildings of iniquity, shattered the false idols that
they had worshipped, tilled the ground and made it fertile again.
There, in that place, he rebuilt the Garden of Eden.

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Of A Woman’s Betrayal

After Po-Chui

She blessed my home and my ancient life
with foot massages and honeyed wine.
She spun jade silk savage dragons and drank from
gold cups ruby jeweled wine and listened
to rain drops with a whimsical smile on her face.
She walked with dew drop lightness of foot
and smelled of lockspur and myrrh. Roses were
her pastime in morning light and by evening
she unlaid diamonds from her leather case.
Tantric spells she weaved over my aged body
which awakened like clam shells upon the touch
that gave birth to fine large white pearls.
She brushed her long dark hair with her jade comb
in moonlight and dashed her dark eyes back and forth
from my naked body like illuminating flame.
Her skin was white like alabaster and her teeth
were white like pure ivory beads. She never slept—
all through the night she recited whisper verses
into my dreaming ear. When I woke she lay naked
like a curved hillock covered in snow. To touch her hip
was to encounter mythical beings and ancient laughing
ghosts. To touch her breast was to light a spark that set
afire my every youthful whim—and I became a child again

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right there and then, laughing and mingling my breath in her
hair. We danced that way for what seemed like endless spans,
lost in the gold tint of her fire. All day long she would tend to me.
Now I am at death’s door, and oh! where has she gone!
She has run off with my son, they are lavished in the gold I earned,
heading over mountains to eastern dawn light, while I fade slowly
toward the darkness of a setting sun. There will be no dawn from
this point on, shadows grip me on all sides. Oh, where is my beloved
who showed me her mighty heart? She is long gone. And the days

darken.

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At Gould Farm

There is a dog in the hay field yapping disaster,
a freshet blown way out of proportion along the road.
Old man Wayne drives the red tractor windward
waking snakes from their slumber slithering sideways.
He smokes, smiling, singing a song in a raspy voice.
The bog nearby is full of toads.
The sound of crickets saturates the trees and the fields,
a sickle moon is there for the reaping, the sunlight
spills as the sun descends, saturating the fields with gold.
In the barn the cows are lowing, munching mealy-mouthed
on hay from the trough. The goats are following Mac up the road
in a line, a retinue of munching Druid gods, made holier even
by this man of the cloth. Red winged blackbirds, wrens and sparrows,
woodpeckers and the hooting owl all reside somewhere here,
they fly over the fields of goldenrod, foam flower, and trout lily.
Apple trees are upon the hillside behind Orchard House.
One can hear the apples thumping to the ground
all night. The brook runs slow in the Autumn light, some late straggler
is crossing the bridge. He’ll have a long haul up the hill back to Main

House.
As the sun goes down the crickets ignite a storm
and the peepers begin to peep from the deep forest along Gould Road.
We sit in Main House in the living room, where old Steve is

tending the fire.

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Bob is there too, reading, and I. The three of us are silent and
we overhear

the tumult from the kitchen, where they are cleaning up after the
last meal of the day.

I am writing a new poem, which I will share at morning meeting
the next day.

In this place where the majority of us are supposedly mentally ill,
I find that the days and nights are usually devoid of any commotion.
Most of us are content to sit back now and reflect on a day well spent
and a life that, serendipitously, has led us here.

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On the Occasion I Was Attacked by an Eagle

A terrible luckless tear of flesh and into bone
that is how I came upon myself when I left for home.
My flesh mangled in discord with the night—
an eagle tore at my sight and roped its talons
across my throat until beyond a curse I couldn’t speak
and it left me broken in a field and mangled all the rest of me.
I crawled to my car and drove home quickly, barely conscious in my seat
as worry took root upon my brow and I wiped it away
stuck my face out the window and put my nostril in a cloud and breathed

deep,
drinking the rose till I arrived home and ran to my homestead clan
and shattered their neon cars such that they could go nowhere.
I licked up the rosewood and tore at my calf till billions of bloodboils

burst
and undoing my name I writhed in pain chaffing the shattering
bones. I couldn’t escape the night or its teeming truants, the bats—
they lived in my skull where my brain was once at.
Now I dipped a blue lozenge into my bath, and baked and buttered

my eyes
till the old cat came near, the blood howling savage ravager of night
came near, and licked my wounds such that I ached no more
and I was soothed by the needly tongue of the cat such that
the heavy burden I carried was replaced and satiated by love.

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I wrinkled my nose and submerged into the bath and bled the fine
blood of my father’s lineage. Taken from the tough errancy of my life
I reclined and looked at the cat’s eyes above peering down all curious
and refined. Then it licked the bath water above me and I laughed and
had to reemerge, taking the poor creature in my bloody wet arms,
it meowed pitifully, but I just smiled.

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Drunk

Swords raised against dementia, victorious
by eschewing time. This and that,
we age and we dine, the moon talks
a blithering spell. I walk the fine line
between heaven and oh fuck that.
I speak with time not knowing the reasons,
but they come, discovered as one discovers
a wakeless shadow, a wakeless night.
Night seems like a velveteen tongue
licking my nuts with a bloated hum.
Such wherewithal required that a man might
die with his own hand bleeding
in the night. That’s how I stand—the Aleutians
call, but worried hands explicate the seemingly
impossible toils with their connivances.
I stick my tongue out at the old ways.
Blood hollers and controls me, my brain
negates my whims. Such control as a mute
fool will extol, silence as a hand-me-down.
I rope the magic money into my abyss,
kiss lightning like a lecherous monk,
I’m waiting. I am drunk.

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Daniel Senser is originally from Cincinnati, Ohio. He attended the
University of Cincinnati where he received a BA in English. He began
writing in elementary school, but started his career as a poet his freshman
year of college after reading The Iliad. He was also greatly influenced by
ancient Eastern poetry, the works of Jorge Louis Borges and other Hispanic
writers, as well as contemporary writers such as Billy Collins and Charles
Simic. Works by Daniel have been featured in such journals as: Adelaide,
Jewish Currents, and California Quarterly, among others. He currently
lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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LESSONS FROM MY FATHER
by Yetta Rose Stein

REGARDING THE END

There is the brink.
It is mostly off in the distance.
It is sometimes very close.
You will stroll up to it.
Some of your friends will hungrily jog.
There will be one or two who leap.
You will look down into a canyon.
There will be yellow.
The yellow will feel soft.
Some of your friends will look across the canyon.
A few will see teeth.
Your mother saw a clover green field.
Your father saw clarity.
You will approach the brink.
You will look up.
You will close your eyes.

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IT’S NOT FAITH IF YOU CAN PLANT IT

I do not long for transcendence. I long for a kind God who spends
Saturdays pretending to be a tree. Pretending because God could never
be a tree, could never be so humble, God who made this blue green
marble so mean and divine. God could never be a willow, not weeping,
the last time God cried was during Prince’s Superbowl performance,
purple rain God exclaimed. If God was a tree, God would be some
species that doesn’t exist yet, perennial creation, gilding the lily, nasty
old habit. God longs to exist, to feel wind bruise through pine needles,
rain on roots, God longs to fall at lightning’s clap.
Me and God could long together, long like the road up Suce Creek in
the Absaroka.
We could drive the road to trip
into some renamed forest
where God would attempt existence,
sit in a tree building a treehouse.
I would attempt faith and beg
for mercy.

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LESSONS FROM MY FATHER

I am maybe seventy years old
There is nothing great to do
The world as it should be is allusive
Am I a good man
What is success anyway
I am alone without desperation
I am unalone with my thoughts
Rage against ambition
I am trying to say
You will never walk alone
Believe me when I say
I only did one great thing
Teach you to sing

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POEM WHEN I LOOK AT THE OCEAN

The onion man at the farmers market rants to me about preventative
medicine.

I am his captive audience. I need an onion for the burger I will make
for dinner tonight.

My pockets are silent, out of loose change, I tell the onion man I will
pay him next week.

I take the onion, small and wilted. The onion is now my captive audience.
I rant to the onion about missing the boat, baggage, and obstructed
views. The onion is wedged in the tote bag

I stole from my mother, next to a collection of poems published in 1994.
The book is preventative medicine. Maybe insurance will cover the

library's late fees.
Careful, my mother says, don’t incur a debt you can’t pay.

At home, I grill the burger, slice the onion, shout to my neighbor and
ask about the day passed.

We rant to each other about emptiness. We are each other’s captive
audience,

accidentally indebted to each other by simple city planning, this
conversation,

preventative medicine against the pull of night, loneliness, and living.

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ADELAIDE LITERARY MAGAZINE

After dinner, I wash the dishes, look out the window. I want to say to
the world: Captivate me. The world spins, I mimic the motion. The
world laughs and calls me dizzy. Careful,

my mother says, reminds me of my motion sickness.

I prevent nausea by losing track of time. I have no captive audience. I
want to say to anyone

who will listen: forgive all my debts, I cannot pay. I spent every cent,
ran out of time preventing my obliteration, I devoured each glimpse

towards the end like it was mine to keep.
I devoured every onion I could, tasted sweet dirt and bitterness like an

old friend and now what? Now what?

Yetta Rose Stein reads and writes in Livingston, Montana. She is a graduate
of Hellgate High School. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Tupelo
Quarterly, Orotone, Rejected Lit, and elsewhere. She is presently pursing
her MFA at the Vermont College of Fine Arts.

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REVISTA LITERÁRIA ADELAIDE

UNDER THE SUN
by Robert Funderburk

Wives of Nightfall

We are the
Wives of nightfall
Maidens of the dark

Our lips smooth as oil
Feather-soft voices
Speaking words of lust
Robed in garments of
Love

Our prey who return
Night upon night
Seem somehow less human
Their bodies shrinking
Their eyes unseeing
Clouded by storms of
Sin

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Some seek us as targets
For regret, failure, loneliness
And their hands become fists
Maces that free them briefly
From their desperate, empty
Lives

Our words are recordings
That mean nothing
We control volume and tone

No one knows us
All is hidden behind
Sequins and pearls
The lace and showcase
Smile

Then came a Man who knew me
Though I had never seen him
And in him was no darkness
“Follow me,” softly he said
And I did

And came to know him and the
Burning darkness that had
Engulfed me for so long
Fled from the presence of
His Shining

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Summer’s End

The paths through the schoolyard
Healed over the summer months
When the doors closed in May
The spring rains brought forth
A startling emerald color
And the hard-packed dirt paths
That the feet of students cut
Into the carpet-like turf
Slowly closed

All summer long the childless yard
Seemed desolate, abandoned by
Its guileless young inmates
The now sedentary equipment
Abandoned by its riders, sliders
And swingers appeared lonely
The swings hanging motionless
In the sweltering, breathless heat
Seesaws pointing toward the sky

All this transformed in September
By seven o’clock the sere blades
Of grass were crushed by the
Screaming hordes destined for

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The elementary school. Silent chains
Began clacking loudly and seesaws
Pounded the dirt, sending up puffs
Of dust like earthbound clouds

This bedlam took place around a
One-story building set off by a
Chain-link fence from the
Three-story red brick structure
That housed the junior high and
High school

The woven metal barrier served
As a sort of social escarpment
For the young people of the town
A demarcation line stronger than
The steel itself

Those on one side were children
But that silent crossing to the
Formerly forbidden ground
Became a rite of passage marking
That first step into the wondrous
Frightening, mysterious world of

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(Fistfights, flat tires, frozen plumbing
Endless taxes, dirty diapers, sadistic
Bosses, loving or caustic wives, and
The best of us, children, whose smiles
And cuddly hugs…) adults.

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Above the Fold

Among the debris were scattered photographs of smiling people.

“The gold or the girls
Get you anything you want,”
You were fond of saying
Over 12-year old bourbon
When the deal went down.
A maxim that served you well
As did those who showered you
With praise and ticker tape smiles.
The elected and elite
Listened when you spoke

But the bright morning
Had no ambition
No amorous intent
No desire but joining
With sun and sky
And would not lift you
In its ethereal arms
As your life sped by
To the scream of engines
Into tomorrow and home where
Photographs of debris were scattered
Among the smiling people.

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