During the day she works at the charity shop next door to Tesco. I don’t know if she gets paid. She likes writing out the tiny price labels by hand. She told me that once. You've got lovely hand-writing, I said.
She does magic on me; strange spells and voodoo, just like in that Roger Moore film. She goes through the charity collection bags when people drop them off and takes all the best glass bowls home. She uses them to make her mix.
We drive a bit further every Sunday.
Sometimes, at night, I can feel it when she starts her mojo on me – it’s like a burning in the pit of my stomach, right down deep in my gut. My skin breaks out in prickly heat: strange red bumps and wheals all over my forearms and chest. She leaves me signs too, subtle ones, but I’ve learnt how to decode them. When the china dog in the shop window faces north stay away. South means come in and browse. West, buy something. It’s never faced east, not yet.
When I meet her from work she smiles and gets me to carry her bags as far as the traffic lights. She wears her hair long and wild.
You should let me take you out one Sunday, somewhere nice, I say.
She laughs and touches my hand as she takes the bags and hangs them on the handles of her bike. I think about her often, up there in her small house on the hill. On summer evenings she stretches out her white legs in the back garden.
We drive a bit further every Sunday, every Sunday a little bit further, past the blackberry bushes and down to the lake. Her skin is cold under the shade of the apple tree.
It’s only after midnight that she weaves her spells. She sits all evening in her garden, inhaling the jasmine and watching the stars. Then she walks barefoot across the grass and into her house and upstairs to the bedroom. She lights all the candles and prepares the ingredients. Her power is growing every night – I can feel her across the city, over the roofs of the small houses. It’s like we’re connected by a thin invisible cord.
When she fills up with it all her hair lifts from her head. Her eyes are dark and bruised. She lies down on the bed and lets it all fill her up. Her nails are bright red against her thighs. I can feel her then, her heart beating faster and faster with mine, across the city, over the roofs of the small houses, our blood crashing against our brains.
In the car she looks so surprised. We drive a bit further, past the blackberry bushes and down to the lake. The heat is intense and the sky, deep blue. Under the apple tree the light is dappled and the grass scratches against our legs.
*
Star Gazing
All throughout that last summer we watched the skies every night. At first we went after school or bunked off when the afternoon grew heavy and still, but once the holidays came we could go whenever we wanted. We had to go far, past the quarry and deep into the woods, where the sunlight slanted and the shadows pooled.
The flower scent was everywhere but underneath the air stank, like something was rotting, maybe a dead fox or badger like we saw on the roads sometimes. In spite of the August heat we shivered and pulled our cardigans tighter.
Sometimes we saw rabbits and deer, and what we thought was a snake turned out to be a slow-worm. One time when the air was stagnant and so thick it folded around us, we heard voices. We hid in a ditch, shielded by bushes with dark shiny leaves. Two men from out of town – not anyone we knew. Probably looking for that Whiteley kid.
It was important to know where to go. We chose the highest vantage points to set it all up. The higher the better; the old water tower was the best. We could spread all our equipment out on the flat surface and wait for the night. The metal was rusted and scraped our knees and elbows. In the morning our hands were always stained red.
We lay on our backs and watched the skies, passing the binoculars round. We knew a lot of the star systems and planets by name: the Pleiades, Jupiter, Orion, the Big Dipper. But sometimes we had to read the charts and maps by torchlight. Once a meteor shower fell. We watched it for the next four nights.
We waited as long as we could. We waited till the night began to lighten and the birds started their chatter and the stars faded into day. And then we walked home, along by the quarry, back through the woods, our eyes on the ground.
There would be a sign soon, there had to be.
We knew it was just a matter of time.
*
Correspondence
We shared the same birthday, you and I. It seemed like it was fate. I saw you that first time in the newspaper; one of the older girls had left it stuffed down the side of the sofa and I was flicking through it, waiting for the next lesson. Sat around the common room arguing over which tape to stick on. Smell of cheap body spray and sweat. I wore my hair centre-parted and refused to have it cut, not even trimmed. You looked at me – a matrix of dots printed into a pattern. Your eyes were so black. It’s funny how it can all start like that sometimes. I ripped your picture out and shoved it into my bag, flattened in between the pages of Tricolore.
Janice thought it was weird when I stuck you up in front of my desk in my bedroom.
"Don’t you think it’s a bit freaky?" she said. "I mean, you’ve got him right by Glenn Medeiros and Corey." She meant Haim. They were on first name terms now.
I shrugged. "It’s just a picture."
-
1988: nearly the end of a decade. We wore Bermuda shorts and decorated our roller-skates with day-glow laces. I came to an agreement with Mum that I’d get my hair cut if I could have a perm. It stuck out in a magnificent triangle from my neck. The ‘90s loomed: unknowable, unformulated, nebulous. We were poised, on the cusp. We wanted it and we didn't. But we knew we couldn't turn back.
I would have put your photo up on the mantelpiece if I’d been allowed, with all the family portraits and pictures of rabbits and cats. Instead I stuck you up on the inside door of my wardrobe. I thought about writing to you but I wasn't sure what to say. Janice and I sat on the bobbly rug Mum had brought back from Tenerife and plotted our futures with pink pens on large sheets of paper. We drew houses and cars and money and clothes. We wrote a list of potential husbands and back-ups if Donnie Wahlberg wasn't interested (Janice was fickle in her affections). We had it all mapped out.
Life without the possibility of parole. That’s how long they gave you. In a way it was reassuring, knowing that wherever I went, no matter how far, you’d always in the same place, charting your time by the angle of the sun and the turn of the seasons. You were there when I left school and we all signed each other’s shirts with fat marker pens, writing good luck. And again when I dropped out of university after six months. You stood in the shadows. When the photo turned yellow and brittle I took it down and kept it in a box full of old cards and gig tickets. I felt relieved somehow. Instead I run this letter to you, that I’ll never send, over in my head. Trying to work out exactly what I mean to say.
One day soon we’ll meet under a harsh Texan sun. The dust rises in a gritty haze, in whirlpools and sudden drifts. A warm wind blows. Some say coyotes roam here and steal babies, pulling them into the night. They gather in circles and drink their blood. We’ll sit on wooden benches bleached almost white in the penitentiary yard. Your face so lined, your feet and hands shackled. And you’ll say, “What took you so long?”
Jonathan Greenhause
Image by Allen Pope
Nowhere People
"Nowhere People" previously appeared in Crannóg
It may have been the rumors of a war or all the bankrupt stores.
Maybe people were tired or sleeping.
Maybe they were dreaming of bustling streets, of sales
& shops selling out their merchandise.
Maybe they moved to other cities & towns.
Maybe the sun grew too close or maybe too far.
Maybe the tides grew too high & swept them all away.
It may have been an odd hour for crowds,
a time when everyone’s inside,
a day when people stay in bed & read & talk
& make love while dreaming of the future’s past.
Maybe we were wrong thinking this could last.
It may have been the dirt, or perhaps it was too clean,
but yesterday people were everywhere
& we didn’t think twice nor wonder if.
We didn’t imagine what the streets could do without us.
Now the sun shines down on nothing,
& signs announce sales for no one.
*
Not A Holocaust Poem
"Not A Holocaust Poem" previously appeared in Sugar House Review
This is about happy thoughts & puppy dogs & golden fields of wheat,
& nothing’s lurking in those fields,
no hidden message threatening to break the peace & quiet,
no murderers stalking in the shadows,
& even the shadows are comforting, their darkness offering
forgetfulness & sleep.
No unexpected illnesses hide here,
no rising fevers incapable of being broken by antibiotics
or by buckets of ice,
& even these buckets of ice
are only used to keep the champagne chilled
or to engage the curiosity
of the previously-mentioned puppy dogs.
No fiancées will disappear, inexplicably taken from us
in the confusion of smoke & fire,
leaving us
to make sense of lives we must now live alone,
since this isn’t that kind of poem,
& in these pages, you’ll meet the love of your life & live happily ever after
because this is not a Holocaust poem,
no matter how much you fear it’ll become one, paranoid the next line
will bring
an unexpected twist,
because around the corner,
there’s just a simple box of puppies, & you smile as you lift each one
& pretend
this is really happening
just as you wish it to.
*
Lesser Wars
"Lesser Wars" previously appeared in Arroyo Literary Review
I.
The War of Blankets:
Battles waged with cotton & wool. No blood or fatal injuries:
just a few near-suffocations.
A few entanglements
& a few MIAs under the covers.
II.
The War of Tin-Cans: Cans of beans & cans of corn.
Cans of sausage & cauliflower.
Cans launched at high-velocity.
Exploding cans & botulism & cans with can-openers still attached.
More casualties than The War of Blankets, but mostly cuts & abrasions,
& never a shortage of food.
III.
The War of Snide Comments, many regarding weight & height
& relative physical attractiveness.
Some relating
to fashion sense or the lack of it. Many made just within earshot,
just loud & soft enough to dig deep inside.
Many close friends lost.
Many grudges held for decades.
IV.
The War of Peace: Agreements on every front, to the point of boredom.
Hands shaken
& flags waved & flags burned
& new unified flags established.
Marches without marching boots: Just sneakers, flip-flops, & dress shoes.
A world where we forget what it was like to attack each other with blankets.
Mark Vanner
Image by Zlyoga
At Low Tide
baby I could have swung for you
when you said that you didn’t want me anymore
then moved me out for a younger model
could have knocked you for six
across the living room floor
or branded my name on your tit with the iron
but I’ve changed, see?
Got all that stuff off my chest
or so I thought until lately
I’ve found myself crying at the smallest of things;
a battery that’s dead
a tire that’s flat
a
match that won't light
and then last Friday
punching the living room wall
driving the coast with a boxing glove fist
to watch the rain on the waves
like a blanket of fog
until I’m no longer aware
if it’s the tide rolling in
or me naked and blue
floating out.
*
Survival
Shipwrecked and starving
an immeasurable distance
from home
you study the stars for direction
calculate the slow movement
of our shadows
for time
You are Ruth England
I am Barney Rubble
You construct hammocks
from soft
strawberry hair
I lay naked and burnt in the sun
you speak of smoke signals
and snares
I wonder how your flesh
will taste
when the time
inevitably comes.
*
Why The Sound Of Your Heart Hurts My Head
Lying here on your left breast
I am counting the falls
between major and minor chords
just this morning
I listened to Bowie’s Aladinsane
played out skillfully
on the muscle of your chest
and I am thinking
it was no Hunky Dory
but there’s no accounting for taste
and what of the girl who was born with two hearts?
destined for a lifetime
of DJing in Manchester’s sweatiest clubs
forever dropping beats
in / out
in / out
a different boy every night
what a terrible heart that must be.