Ataraxia

Vol. 9 • Dec/201 4

selected literature with illustrations

Raku Rare

by Ben Nardoli l l i

Trying to make something out of this moonlight,

Since the orb produces no music l ike a speaker,

I find blue seas, fal len skies, atmospheres

Down on their luck and pending for a renewal,

I notice a halo and see a face in between

The trees unable to show its features over branches.

All I can offer is a knot that bends into itself,

In love with its own dark complications,

A composition reaching out for i l lusions of space

But real ly just making more loops for itself

To keep whatever spirit it possesses

From leaking out through the grand gutter ahead.

Planes of movement are closed off bus routes

Are being carved out of the darkness,

The pearl in the sky gives off enough of a glare

To show me where the sidewalks begin

And where there are spaces to walk with no cars

Trying to shake the asphalt under me into pieces.

The Weaving Woman

by Josh Grechner

When contemplative silence settles among the

wooden desks, among the aging ochre pages, thoughts tingle,

thighs shuffle and silently, galaxies within the empty space of

O’s swim in circles.

Walled within 3 barren slabs of diffidence, but with

her back exposed, she ti lts her head at a studious angle,

draped in wild hair harangued, then negotiated into X’s of

bobby pins l ike slanted crosses. Her fingertips, drifting over

waves of frozen text, have yet to callous l ike the Weaving

Woman’s, a widow of the sea, a master of del icacy and

attentiveness.

Waves whip the coast, and tai ls lash at the sky. “Only

strings,” mutters the Weaving Woman, embroidering detai ls of

her l ife: birth, mid-age and resolution against dying. What

happens when the ship doesn’t ful ly sink, when the line snaps

but stays lodged inside? The knowing don’t speculate. “I t’ l l

wash up,” she says, assuredly, “sure as hell along with

everything.”

Within the l ibrary’s si lence, my gaze lingers. She

gets up, drinks from the fountain. I fol low, hiding among

shelves of towering ruin. She walks back intently, free from

reticence, her arms dangle uncrossed, l ike tranquil ized vines

on a tree sl ipping out of the forest, unnoticed.

She runs bare fingers through matted and ferocious

hair, cuts loose the weak ties and shakes free her head.

Wreckage spins and disintegrates within hurricanes forming

and calming. Ancient history resuscitates, to die within

moments. Bare fingers emerge from rapture l ike blanched

pil lars, uneroded. After fastening shut the ocean, she turns

and looks at me.

I , standing naked in my shameless voyeurism,

droplets diving down my temple, pooling on the indifferent

floor, get a sudden impulse to plunge into the water, to hide

from the tempestuous stare of the shore. She recoils,

gathers her things and leaves. I sit back down. My sweat

dries.

The Weaving Woman bites the final thread of a pall-

thin blanket, with her remaining shards of teeth, without her

cloudy eyes.

Margot Goldbach

by Raquel Wasserman

How she wished he would come back

my man come back please

The sound of Motown on their stereo

Before she birthed anyone or turned 30

Just the two of them, two 1 970’s renegades

She, a writer for the Voice

He, a scientist at CUNY

Dancing in their mustard yellow living room

To Jr Walker’s band

This was Alphabet City, brother

Wine everywhere, beer on the rickety sofa, scotch,

bourbon

Couples in the corner

Can we have more to drink?

And her screeching over the record

Out!! You weirdos!

Yes, she saw now, how she out-scaled Talos

In much the way a grown Alice would leave her mentor

Alice inspired Lewis Carrol l ’s book

Her photos now a misty black and white

Girls made life easy

And in being chosen by Lewis the girls were someone

for a minute or two

Girls in the girly sense

Before he discarded them for their hips and womanhood

Never bitter and never old

Forever an artist’s art

Forever a rose petal dream

Margot was ethereal too

Writing the river blue prose he could never find and she

was paid for

And sti l l Margot crept to Talos’s side at night after a late

party

Like a deceitful t-shirted kitten

A Pretty Lady

and enfolded her paper pale arms into Talos’s perfect

Greek handsomeness

Her Lewis who would never leave her (even if Talos did).

Her looks stood somewhere in the glowing hippie vicinity

of Carol King

The ache of her croaky voice, her pretty frizzy blonde

brown hair

Beautiful hair

But that beak that would never be perfect,

but was in its way adorable

And Talos was the perfect knockout:

strong chin, dark hair, lush caterpil lar eyebrows

the male mold of handsome.

Break me, she thought

The two of them so good looking

And she trusted with the trust of a teenager.

The girls.

He chose them because they were choose-able

Girls al l in row, near the garden hedge

A profundum of teenage girls with pigtai ls and starched

dresses to pale rounded kneecap

Their beauty obvious

Every one nice as pie

Lewis’s ingenues

Fitting Talos would leave her for the raven-haired girl

that watered their plants

Opening l ike the orchid for him, and he opened liked the

rain.

The ache she felt l ike no other ache.

I t bit into Margot unti l she had to close the door.

She wrote one note and posted it by the lock

Goodbye, My Grand Corruptor

You selfish piece of shit

She could not hold back her fury

And wondered why the wicked witch got no words

No nothing

Not next to Snow White or Alice or Lola

Who was always perfectly beautiful

Always, just as they were.

A DOG NAMED 'EVER-AGAIN' RUNS AWAY

by George Zamalea

I saw the eyes of 'Ever-Again' as I was

Passing in front of C. 's house,

Colorless and deep, against the morning of May

Looking left and right, with unwished waves,

A dog named 'Ever-Again', his woeful

Task remained, who runs away.

Arousing at length my curiosities, innocently

Of course, while at the same level,

My heart designed to l ive, learning

He was dying, and 'Ever-Again', who went

To C. 's house, and who starts dying there,

And the people from C. 's house have known him

As 'Ever-Again'.

For none of these gentlemen dared,

Or, busy as they were, to think

For a moment about 'Ever-Again', who went back and

forth

To C. 's house, and who was already

Dead; everybody was astonished at

How this happened to ‘Ever-Again'.

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