Saragun

Happening (A Minologue) by Geraint Jonathan

If I hear you say ‘what happens, happens’ just one more time, I’ll be responsible for my actions and it won’t be pretty. What happens happens, what the fuck am I supposed to do with that? What doesn’t happen doesn’t happen, what do you say to that? No don’t, please, don’t answer that, I’m sure there’s a perfectly unreasonable explanation. Things happen, don’t happen, might happen, have happened, will happen, may never happen: I get it. We all just happen along, as you say. But at this precise moment, I happen to be what’s known in the trade as mightily pissed off. Unnervingly so, if I say it myself. That what happens just happens to happen because it happens to happen is no good to me. As to what’s actually happened, it could’ve done with not happening, trust me, its having happened at all being the very thing that shouldn’t have happened. And even though it has happened, I can’t, like you, shrug it off saying ‘these things happen.’ That these things of course do happen is of no consolation at all. They’re not supposed to happen, that’s the whole point. But it’s happened and I’m the one it’s happened to. There’s no getting away from it. Or perhaps there is. Maybe you happen to know what no one else happens to know. Any chance of that? Happening, I mean.

Geraint Jonathan

(Image by CJA)

The Girl Who Tilted the Earth by David Henson

A waitress finds her

wailing and convulsing

‘midst porcelain and tile.

A fighter, she held on

‘til methadone prevailed.

Her history scares

couples wanting to adopt.

She grows up wandering

in a forest of fosters.

When she’s thirteen,

a man sneaks into her room,

puts his hand over her mouth.

She takes to the streets,

her body her coin.

Robbed of innocence

too soon, the child

leaves her own behind

at a storefront.

Tempting fate once

too often,

she imagines floating

high above rooftops

and rickety fire escapes.

She crashes so hard,

the earth’s axis tilts,

imperceptible but real.

Like her life.

(end)

David Henson

(Image provided by DWB)

The Picture on the Phone Pole by Christopher J Ananias

The streets of Marion were one way, even the alleys. If I went past the address, it would be a hassle. My GPS led me with its robotic commands like I was its mindless servant. That’s about the way I felt driving the Medicaid Taxi van, old No. 4, that smelled like a dirty laundry hamper. The so-called clients, “The Riders,” gave me a hard time if I showed up late for their free ride.

“They’re a bunch of deadbeats, Cal.” I said on our daily bullshit call.

Cal, who was always ranting about them, suddenly said, like a big company man, “Hey, don’t talk about our riders like that.” He was a fanatical Trumper too, hounding me to vote for the orange man. I almost did, thinking Trump was for Christian values, what a crock. Now I’m wondering about Biden and his senility.

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Saragun Verse: It’s Like Fentanyl for Lazarus

Plan A

i

I used to be of the night

Never ate, drunk at dawn

Gods be damned, laughter so bright

Not knowing only slaves write songs

ii

Ahab’s lovely light landed on me

On summer staircases, tenement eaves

Below winter stars in wrong skies crossing

Greedy time knew nothing of me

iii

The devil clock chimed one morn’ at three

The deathnight spoke the mind of the Boar

‘Stupid girl, the master marked the cards before you were born,

Innocence is over, come now, find an oar.’

iv

No more nights of putting the wrong key in the lock

Nor philosophies over blasphemy and cigarettes

Nor scorning those who have children as a form or revenge

A strange method of payback for having been born

v

Then comes nothing, and nothing echoing more

‘T is nothing that makes only more

Of its stern self perpetual, redundant, sane

The ugly thing that happens when time remembers your name

Plan B

Re-read Plan A over a good snort of Methadone

Then snarl snarl at the dying of the light

Give your deepest weakness the finger and rise like Lazarus

People were made because the beasts won’t laugh at us

Jane Day (A Minologue) by Geraint Jonathan

Asked whether since last Friday she had heard voices she said yes a myriad. Asked whether when she heard said voices she was able to converse with them she replied yes always. Asked if the voices had faces she answered yes sometimes. Asked if said faces had forms discernible to her bodily eyes she replied yes sometimes. Asked what appearance they had she said words failed her or she failed them. Asked if she’d care to elaborate she said no not really. Asked if she knew what day it was she replied Wednesday. Asked whether she believed she suffered from a mental disorder she replied no she quite enjoyed it. Asked if she thought such levity appropriate in a matter so grave she declined to answer and merely smiled in a manner best described as ‘enigmatic’. Asked if she always did as her voices commanded she said her voices did not command. Asked whether when they spoke to her she grew frightened she said no never. Asked whether she understood the reason for her being here she again declined to answer but this time did not smile neither enigmatically nor in any way discernible to bodily eyes.

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Mime by David Henson

The mime motions for a volunteer.

A young man emerges from the crowd.

The mime tips an imaginary hat.

The young man likewise.

Chuckles mingle among the onlookers.

The mime holds his pretend hat

to his head, leans

against an imaginary wind.

The young man does his best.

The mime nods.

The mime presses his hands

against the walls

of an invisible box,

crouches and pushes

his chin to his chest.

The box is shrinking.

When it appears the mime

is about to be squashed,

he strains his hands above him

and, arms trembling,

struggles to his feet.

The young man tries

to imitate the maneuver,

but the invisible box

continues contracting.

The young man’s mouth opens

in a silent scream until

he disappears.

Someone holds up a phone,

shouts Viral video!

The mime sweeps a bow,

motions for another volunteer.

Twenty hands shoot up.

(end)

David Henson

Ars Longa Vita Brevis

Juan de Valdés Leal was a Catholic,

a devout believer in the four

last things: Death, Judgement,

Heaven and Hell, as illustrated

by his paintings, the postrimerías.

Acutely aware of the brevity of life,

and that Man’s faith and works

would be weighed in the balance

to determine whether he entered

Heaven or was condemned to Hell,

he also adhered to the idea that

Ars longa compensated for Vita Brevis,

so, his canvas entitled In ictu oculi

shows a skeletal, hollow-eyed Death

standing on the right gazing at us.

The fingers of its right hand

are touching the adage In ictu oculi

to snuff out the flame of life.

A coffin is tucked under its left arm,

while its left hand clutches a scythe

that has raked over the baubles

of earthly glory: a tiara, a crown,

books of science, rich vestments,

the accoutrements of high office.

Death’s sinister foot presses on a globe:

mortality is the great leveller.

Life is over in the blink of an eye,

but the art of Valdés Leal lives on.

Tony Dawson

An Imagined Final Conversation at Polhoegda, near Oslo, 1930 by Michael Bloor

On June 17th 1896, a bizarre encounter occurred in Franz Josef Land, in the Arctic wastes. Fridtjof Nansen (1861-1930), the Norwegian scientist and arctic explorer, met Major Frederick Jackson (1860-1938), the leader of a British arctic expedition. Their meeting was an incredible piece of luck: Nansen and his companion, Johansen, had left their ship, the Fram, more than a year previously to try and reach the pole, and were presumed – by Major Jackson and the general public – to have died. They had, in fact, survived an arctic winter on walrus blubber and polar bear meat, but would surely have perished eventually had it not been for that chance meeting. Nansen later wrote that both gentlemen raised their hats and said ‘How do you do?’ Nansen and Jackson each went on to lead extraordinary lives.

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Penned in Blood: A Valentine by Dale Williams Barrigar

William Carlos Williams, famous

local doctor, spark plug

of his landscape, set of wheels

for his community, delivering

babies among sexy

poor people who couldn’t,

or wouldn’t,

always pay, and some of them

I loved a little too well, and one of them

I loved,

much too well.

Herman Melville, harpooneer

of Moby Dick, became an Inspector of Things

with no visible promotions

for nineteen years.

But I was working

by the seashore, near the sailor

who broke my heart, which usually

made me feel better, because,

by now, I was

the mystical mariner, and the sea

was in my eyes

wherever I was.

Miguel de Cervantes, who wrote

and was windmill-tilting

Don Quixote, Sancho Panza, Dapple, Rocinante, and

Dulcinea, gorgeous, beautiful Dulcinea,

the most perfect love,

romantic angel,

with such a long pen,

was a tax collector on horseback

for too many years.

People would throw things at

us.

And I wondered

how I had become

this.

I said to myself,

“How have I become

this

weary, sad-eyed, wine-soaked,

broken-hearted old soldier

with a bad hand from that long-forgotten

sea battle no one seems to remember

but me.

Next, I was a slave,

captured by pirates.

Later writing many

chapters of my only, endless

book while locked up

in their jail.

For something I probably didn’t do

and don’t remember

if I did do it.

Because someone stuck up

was down

on my energy.

As a noble Roman said somewhere, in jail

being where

more than one good book has been

penned.

For love.

In blood.”