Albemarle Sound
come silent sunset
ten geese honk across the sky
ten backs tinted rose
Your mellow voice makes me think of mashed potatoes loaded with butter and heavy
cream, soft and savory on my tongue. Delicious, like your songs. When it’s just you
on the stage, singing about the arms of a woman and how she takes you home, that
tenderness, that longing, clings to the walls of my heart and reveals yours to me.
Why don’t you come for Thanksgiving dinner? I’ll roast a turkey and you can bring
pumpkin pie. We’ll say what we are grateful for, like the emotional release music
gives us, for one. We’ll get a little drunk on Beaujolais Nouveau, harmonize on my
front porch, our hot breath a showy metronome in the November chill, the stars
flashing their approval.
Please RSVP.
I’ve been swimming
in the lake where they found her
washed up on the shore
in a corroded barrel
from the 80s, same as me,
limbs loose, breath gone.
The water is low now, unlike
that year we arrived with someone,
wondering how the day would go.
Maybe we were both nervous
when we saw the water.
We didn’t want to go in
but eventually we did anyway
and when I was floating,
so was she.
One of my fourth-grade English textbooks
included the tale of a little girl named Ellen
who went for dinner at a girlfriend’s house
for the first time & saw to her horror that
they used paper napkins instead of ones made
of cloth. At Ellen’s own home—or so I imagined,
with the help of pictures I’d pored over in
the Sears catalog—breakfast & lunch were served
with neatly folded napkins made of absorbent
cotton & rolled into cylinders caught at the center
inside napkin holders made of wood or painted
porcelain. At dinner the napkins were linen,
thicker than the best bedsheets but just as
soft, & folded into shapes like little tents pitched
atop the fine china. At the start of a meal,
her father would snap his napkin open
with a flourish, laying it gently across his lap.
Oh what a revelation it was to little Ellen
that paper napkins existed, or that anyone she
knew, let alone a family at whose modest table
she now found herself dabbing her lips & fingers
with what felt like sandpaper, would use such
shabby things! Oh how she pitied her poor
classmate, resolving on the spot to say nothing
about it at home for fear that her parents
might forbid her ever to return. That night
in bed—or so I pictured it—she cried hot tears
for her friend, to whom she swore always
to be kind.
At my own family table that night
I took notice for the first time that there were
no napkins whatsoever. There almost never were,
except for special occasions like the preacher
dropping by for fried chicken & deviled eggs
after church. At best we made do with a paper towel,
or wiped our greasy fingers on the same dishrag
passed among us like a collection plate, or on
our shirtsleeves since after all it was going
in the wash anyhow, sooner or later. I shuddered
to think what Ellen would have made of all this,
but I knew, I knew.
Later, in bed, I didn’t cry for us
the way Ellen would’ve done. As I told myself,
at least the plates were full & we bowed our heads
& thanked the Lord for the bounty we were about
to receive before we dug in, like we always did,
as if we were starving, as if it were our last meal
on earth. But like Ellen I said nothing to my parents
about what I’d learned that day in my fourth-grade
textbook, how it clung to my hands no matter
how hard I wiped them with that dishrag,
how bitter it still tasted on the tip of my tongue.
Early morning, driving
downtown, traffic heavy.
Heron flies alongside
my door, balanced
in the slipstream,
turbulence only
in my hands.
Heron curves over
the windshield, glides
above the roof
like a halo, slips back
to the side
and then gone
into the heavy green,
its gray feathers
an afterglow.
I take a slow deep breath.
The White Peach
Deep-red dashed
with yellow velvet skin
swaddles the palest
yellow-ivory flesh,
drips translucent juices.
I want to call it her
as I savor the sweet
swirl in my mouth
slide down my throat
satisfy my desire for sugar.
Afterwards, longings
linger. I want more,
but she is the last one
ready to be eaten.
Long ago and far away,
after baths, wrapped in flannel
we knelt bedside, folded hands.
“Now I Lay Me,” “Our Father”
recited by rote without
understanding. Then, being
Welsh, we sang our final prayer
the one our Grandma Lewis
taught us, “safe in loving arms.”
Our last words each night–nos da–
good night in the mother tongue
our ancestors gave up when
they landed on this free shore.
It rides along the oval of the neck –
not enlarged, but wide enough
to freely let through
blue skies and green grass,
followed by the breathing of beautiful babies
and blood cloths of eternity.
This shallow vein –
the only jewelry
worthy of you.
Author: Marin Bodakov
Translator: Katerina Stoykova
The water crashes down
like microscopic razor blades
shredding the paper like sheet
encasing my body.
Steam echoes off
as a new shield wraps my open wounds.
Muscles fight every crack
of movement:
no grasping the soap
shampoo cap stays closed,
only the ringing
in my ears to keep me company.
Curtain soon ripped open
freeing the armed
brisk air
waiting to pounce
waiting to leach onto my new shell
returning me to reality
once more.
