Breakup Haiku
Virginie Colline
the intimate words
they should or shouldn’t have heard
the lessons they learn
nothing specific
a minor change in the air
her phantom has left
yet another tear
cracking the rosy façade
demolition ball
suitcase on the mat
his own tabula rasa
in the nascent sun
Girl in “hygge” refugee hut
Ilona Martonfi
In the mountains on the
other side of a fjord
winter solstice, 60 degrees north,
where the sun sets before four
one room timber cabin, attic loft
Magyar refugee family from Budapest
what’s hygge about grandmother’s
homemade lingonberry compote?
hygge at Yuletime
it sounds like “hYOOguh”
–it’s even harder to translate
now that we have a name for it
–warmth, togetherness, family
and in the Nordic darkness unaware
five children, four girls and one boy
we’re hygge’ing right now
around an oak table for a meal:
spiced meatballs. Potatoes, carrots and cabbage.
For all of you to cuddle around the woodstove
on a December evening.
Ah, så koselig –so cozy.
Laced ankle boots, wool mittens
tobogganing on a snowy hill
tucked under sheepskin,
sipping tin cup of hot cocoa,
hygge by curling up on a bench
with a fairy tale book
mother brought from the old country,
teddy bear, a rocking horse
the glow of a log fire
spruce bright with white candles.
Excerpt from the novel Un passage vers l’Occident, by Didier Leclair, translated by Elaine Kennedy with Sheryl Curtis
The small fishing boat taking Africans to the coast of Spain was heaving in high waves. Each time the hull pounded the water, the passengers cried out in panic. None of them was used to being on a boat. For some, it was their first time out on the open water and they vowed it would be their last. Drenched with spray, they clung to their seats and the side of the boat, determined to set foot on Spanish soil. All seven were desperate to reach Europe and escape the poverty and fratricidal wars in their homelands. Some intended to stay in Spain; others hoped to go on to Italy, Germany, France or Belgium. Their final destinations varied, but their goal was the same—to flee to a rich country. Each of them had an infallible plan for disappearing into the night when they arrived. They would join an uncle or a brother who had already settled in the West. They knew the names of cities and streets, along with a few words in several European languages to help them find their way. The bolder ones even imagined meeting another African who would provide information, assistance or shelter. Yet all these schemes were no more than dreams until they managed to cross the Strait of Gibraltar. Their new life could not begin until they had completed this first leg of the journey across fifteen kilometres of water up to three hundred and fifty metres deep. Across a treacherous arm of the sea that can be smooth when it’s supposed to be rough and that can slam the cliffs when it seems to be calm. But then, this gateway to the Mediterranean separates Africa from Europe. A natural divide filled with age-old waters, it marks the boundary between two worlds of growing disparity: Western Europe, capable of providing for its citizens, and Africa, unable to meet the basic needs of the majority. This contrast, spawning envy and hatred, is mirrored in the rough and unpredictable waters of the strait. Continue reading ONE WAY WEST
Bread and Salt: What a Jewish Cemetery in Poland Taught Me about an Arab Cemetery in Israel
© Robert Brym (2014)
Department of Sociology University of Toronto rbrym@chass.utoronto.ca
1977
On a wet spring morning, Marek drove southwest out of Warsaw toward my father’s hometown. During the two semesters he had spent as a postdoctoral student in Canada, he and his wife had rented the basement apartment of my parents’ house in Fredericton. My mother would periodically invite them upstairs for a meal, giving my father an opportunity to recount his youth in Poland and the war years in Russia. The two couples – one Jewish and in their mid-60s, the other Catholic and in their early 30s – liked each other, and when it came time for me to attend my first international conference, in Poland, I had little compunction about contacting Marek and asking him if he might be willing to drive me to Bodzanów, the little town 90 minutes outside Warsaw where my father lived until 1939. When I met Marek and his wife in their Stalin-era apartment bloc an hour before we set out on our trip, I saw immediately why my parents were so fond of them. They offered me bread and salt, a traditional Slavic welcome for a respected guest. Their intelligence and generosity of spirit shone.
The Once That Was
Joe Renzler
Your smile
Slit my throat
From ear to ear
The time it took
Was the brief forever
Of a child on a swing
Just a tick
Not even a tock.
I’ll never feel the joy
Of sadness again.
The fairy tales have sprouted wings
Their pages blind as kites
They now wander among daylight’s invisible stars
As darkness descends with its burning lights
I sit in the slow rush of traffic
From inside my car
The rain’s gallop sounds distant
While windshield wipers wave warily
As if sweeping the glass for mines.
*photo image: Wikimedia Commons
Sedalia, Missouri
by
Jacob Potashnik
Winter, 1990. The walk from the hovercraft to the train station was short but left me wet and thoroughly chilled to the bone. The weather, a mix of wind and pelting rain and snow was an affront. On the quay for the train from Boulogne to Paris, Mr. Six/Four bent low and easily hoisted a limp sack of a young man out of a wheel chair and into his huge arms. A porter folded the chair and lead the way. A woman, grey-haired frail, thin, at least sixty-five, follows.
My seat was across the aisle from theirs and they were quick to smile and nod to me as they settled in. He who I had taken for a young man, was not a young man and his story was very clear. Forty, remarkably thick dark hair falling like a wave over his forehead, thin, gray, gleaming skin, Kaposi’s sarcoma, full blown AIDS.
At the first pass of the car snack service Six/Four ordered coffee.
“Teddy,” the woman stage whispered, “Will you look at that?”
It was the standard French train café filtre, a two stage plastic unit, hot water goes in the top, filtered coffee drains into the bottom. Six/Four was so pleased he was beaming but Teddy has seen it all before.
“Wait till you taste it,” he muttered, smiling gamely.
“Well, I never,” said the woman in admiration. “They make such a fuss.”
“Smells heavenly,” Six/Four agreed. “After the English stuff.”
The Good Air of Buenos Aires
James F. Olwell
The waves of sun shine dance
upon the leaves, under the floss silk tree,
fall in the pond in the Japanese garden ,
given by the Japanese community
to commemorate it’s own founding.
The enormous Koi carp (goldfish) there,
perceiving movement upon the pink arched bridge,
arrive as a multi-colored mob, open mouthed,
Certain there will be food.
While the Plaza Allegmana
presents it’s park, perhaps,
in honor of whom it was permitted
to let in, to keep out.
Elsewhere, even the pigeons seem
to have isolated the weak.
You can recognize the unsleek,
over-scratching, immobilized
while they rot in the corner.
Little green mountains of bags
appear at end of day,
neat and clean upon the sidewalk
‘til they meet a small army
of families or young boys or men,
pregnant women, an inclusive world,
to pick through, pluck any edible
combine into a meal, no
assurance here for open mouths.
No country from which tourists come
gave a park or leafy garden
to honor the hungry, ill begotten,
disrespectable mobs of mouths, worthless
to the great buildings, as of Europe,
great avenues of eleven lanes of cars.
No, no country gave, neither here nor home,
—in honor of the hungry families,
nor Argentina neither that,
oh one of many, one of many,
let in Nazis, didn’t let in Jews.
photo: by Luis Argerich, Buenos Aires, licensed by Wikimedia Commons
In Passing
Violet Neff-Helms
In the quiet moments when you pause above your books,
Lifting slowly your wine glass, casting back your looks at times now gone.
Watching firelight dancing shadows on the hardwood floor,
Smiling slyly, shaded eyelids, savoring Golden Never Mores.
Sifting like sand your memories where Time and Thought are kept,
Will you recall as I shall recall, or will you just forget.
A meeting of minds so long ago in a corner of this Earth,
A sharing of thought in passing there,
A moment of Peace and Mirth.
Brief as the breath of the living,
Quick as the flight of a dart,
I left with a smile and a memory,
You left with the wind and my heart.
She brings you down
Louise Carson
She brings you down to her level,
splits with a flick.
Personally,
I don’t mind her house of moods.
Trumpets swell,
chocolate boxes rattle, full of shells.
Once you’re there, give up;
there won’t be any signals.
And what’s so funny about dipping your knife in tea,
when what you wanted was honey?
The fields begin to sheathe themselves
Louise Carson
The fields begin to sheathe themselves in some
soft metal underfoot as they ripen
into hardness. The air quiets. Except
for Christmas’ three-week hum, traffic thins.
Some life has left the earth, been driven down
and in. The metal spreads its silent hymn
that sings of hardship, night; of frozen beings,
their signals lost; records the broken keen
of almost dogs. They spread out as they run
for meat. Under the trees their lines bisect
the rabbits’ shorter curves. Life joins life:
gray fur, brown fur, metallic scent of blood.
JONAH magazine 