J W Burns ~ Ilhem Issaoui ~ Ron Singer

Trois Contes

 

J W Burns

Civilization

 

He had craved the authentic essence of cherry pie after it had sat under a clear plastic cover long enough for it to acquire that slightly fishy aftertaste.

 

Half dozen sleepy bears at the counter filling with coffee. He had left abruptly two mornings ago after learning the night before that she had ovarian cancer. Outside a dog was barking while he sat at the kitchen table wondering why so many times when something was amiss he had sat at the kitchen table. Many kitchen tables. He walked slowly and deliberately out to get the newspaper, but instead the car started and he drove. Crossed two states, ate three meals though not much of the first one.

 

There was a particular light saturating this diner, no bounce, no flutter, soaking into empty booths, tables and chairs, salt and pepper shakers, napkin holders, hot sauce bottles. He sang while he drove until his throat was hoarse and his chest ached. She had done her homework: less than half of women so afflicted survived for five years; cure was rare, attempts to control the cancer quite invasive and painful. The illumination touched each person at the counter with a tone all his or her own, coaxing its way past the various thresholds of clothing, skin, hair toward some inner quality each one hoped like hell would be discovered and instantly exposed to the world.

 

He had considered a la mode but in the final analysis decided straight up and red satin gooey was the way to go. He could smell his underarms, felt all of a sudden itchy.                                                                              

 

After finishing the pie a motel room, long soapy shower and some sleep would be great. If  he could sleep. Tilt his head away from the wind, close his eyes. As vanilla ice cream melts it creates a runny magma which must be scarfed down to retain a balance between temperature and consistency. Some pies, such as apple, are able to maintain their essential integrity in the face of an ice cream onslaught but cherry isn’t one of these, especially if heated or fresh baked. Chewing, ears cocked, he watched words pile on the counter, glisten and glimmer like sequins.

 

In the car, over and over he’d walked through the delightful disorder of their house. Objects seemed slippery, slid, spoke incoherently. Here a cushion, there a couch, mounds of clothing, a plate painted with flowers standing on its side in a plate holder. Now words from the others at the counter lost their voice but the meaning was clear. Even a creature from a distant star would understand what was said, arms crossed, head heaving like a balloon on a string—sounds gear meshing, separating, straining for silence. A man coughed, coughed until sleepwalking vowels discarded their uniforms completely, became naked combatants in a dripping arctic wasteland.

 

The light currycombing his eyes no longer fought the good fight to keep him awake; brought dizzy conspiracies into view, a nod dancing on a blotched forehead, a thuggish rack of glasses disassembling to surround a short woman high on a stool before entering and exiting her flesh with puzzling immunity, her fluids filling the glasses, disappearing in instant explosions, refilling to overflow over the counter in a mixed liquid forest of dark reds. One more bite of pie and he was on his feet dropping bills on the counter.

 

He chewed magazines from the table in the den. The snobbish print stretched the process into a chore which threatened to gobble up all the pictures on the wall behind the couch. Portraits of them as well as others, all splintering between his teeth. Halfway to the door the window glass clotted with color. Screeching in his eyes brought down the ceiling in a soundless crash. Walls diluted to a muddy blur. After a moment his chin rested in the flour and egg mixture she was preparing to mix. Humming purple portals filled his ears. The outdated newspaper he held wilted over his steaming coffee cup. The fuse of his arm fizzled toward where the door was.

 

 

JW Burns lives in Florida.

 

 

 

Ilhem Issaoui

If Only

 

Closing the eyes to deeply think; a springy morning with blossoming flowers all over the hill, Spring like never seen before warm but tinged with chilling faint waves of winds, a spring that was made for nature to sing, to infuse any passed by with the unbridled bliss and comfort, a spring for an artist to play his sweetest tunes among nature’s affectionate shoulders. Ay that winter won’t come, for sky seems no clearer, and the dews of orb seem no purer than the way it was on that day.

 

He told her, if she were a season she would indeed be the spring for how life would seem if spring won’t come. he told her that she was the finest creature ever seen, that painters ,painters of all time, quintessential ones  were surely blind for they never saw her and instead painted other mundane faces of somehow ladies and that they surely were by then  laying on their coffins and that then surely they were feeling remorseful for not having the chance he had and that he was the most cheerful and most auspicious man of all times, and that she indeed set a crown of admirable distinction upon her gracious head and that nature bestowed upon her an inexplicable gravity that dwells on her cherub-like eyes.

 

He laid her head upon his lap grasped her hands as if to ensure that she would always be there he held her tightly as he would lead her into a journey, a journey on which nothing would disturb nor tarnish its quintessential beauty, there, beyond the reach.

 

But nay, surely would come, the gloomy winter, to encompass us with the gloomy solitude, and remind us with each dew  of its horrendously chilling nights that we deserve this, that sometimes we can be late to reach the unreachable train of the everlasting cheerfulness, that despite the human capacity to innovate and create, despite all this, sometimes, if not most of  the time, we find ourselves unbearably hapless to catch even a ribbon on a cloudy, chaotic, windy day and just like the consuming fire’s effect, nothing would be left except some piecemeal of souvenirs to hurt and torn lavishly deep down.

 

She left him with an eye to seek her freedom, for she thought his love to her would consume her. She left him for she thought loneliness is priceless. But how about aging alone? Who can warm the frigid feeling that lays dormant to hurt relentlessly? Who can? Make the sweetest tunes coming out of the chords of thy heart?

 

Aye that thou shall live to feel remorseful for it thenceforward. While staring at the window and sipping thy tasteless atrociously bitter coffee, the train of souvenirs would crash thee. How strikingly controversial, exceedingly unfathomable is the human been.

 

A trail of dead souvenirs won’t get back to life again, it won’t.

 

 

Ilhem Issaoui is a 22 years old Tunisian translator and writer. She graduated from the faculty of Arts and Humanities of Sousse, Tunisia. She is deeply intrigued by all forms of literary work, especially classics. She currently lives in Sidibouzid, Tunisia with her parents. She is a blogger at ilhemissaoui.blogspot.com and posts her poems at ilhemissaoui.tumblr.com.

 

 

 

Ron Singer

FIRST TRADITIONAL HOLIDAY LETTER FROM “THE” MARTINS

 

December 10, 2014

                                         

Season's Greetings to all our friends/fellow inhabitants of Mother Earth, who are celebrating Christmas, Hanukah, Kwanzaa, Three Kings and brunch. Because so many of you are so distant these days, we are resorting to this "form" greeting, which we are sending to those who reside on other continents and in far-flung countries and different states, cities, boroughs, zip codes, neighborhoods, blocks, and, finally, on other floors of our apartment building. (Just kidding!)

 

Since the writer is not unaware that there are limits to the attention spans even of one’s friends, he vows that this letter will not exceed 3-plus, double-spaced, 12-point pages, although this year’s achievements and amusing anecdotes could easily fill several volumes (and most of you know Dr. Robert “Bob” Martin, Ph.D., serving in this instance as family amanuensis, well enough to readily grasp that "several volumes" is no idle threat).

 

2014 has been an eventful year for The Martins. We have gone to work, to sleep and to play, eaten many dinners and other meals, and heard several new jokes and anecdotes with which we could regale each and every one of you, if space permitted and their tone was more appropriate to the season. As usual, we have also found time to avail ourselves of the incredibly rich cultural and other opportunities of “The Big Apple.” For instance, we have seen four films and twenty-seven movies, and our food shopping has brought us to supermarkets (5), greengrocers, and cheese and liquor stores.

 

The Martins are also faithful devotees of our local farmers market ("greenmarket"), which continues to supply us all with Mother Earth's abundance. Daughter Peg (Margaret), who visited twice, remains an earnest, practicing "veggie," so she is particularly grateful for the proximity of these producers of precious provender, among whom our favorites remain the humorous and rotund purveyor of root vegetables from Chatham and the wholesome young rusticated ex-New York couple who own and operate Red Worm organic orchards. (The less strictly observant two-thirds of the family have, however, ceased buying fish since the tragic disappearance of the bearded "salt" off the South Fork of Long Island.)

 

Fish aside, life goes on. As most of you are aware, for twenty odd years now, Bob has labored in the pedagogical vineyards of an east side Independent school. Annum 2014 has witnessed more telephone calls from excited parents than ever before. As part of the periodic non-scheduled evaluations that the ever-watchful members of the school’s administrative team conduct in the interests of continued excellence and client satisfaction, many of Bob’s classes were closely observed.

 

The writing also proceeds apace. Poetry, fiction, drama, non-fiction of variegated stripe --all remain grist to the literary mill of this productive auteur.  Recently named "major sponsor" by the United States Postal Service, B.M. has sent samples of his ongoing corpus to hundreds of the best magazines in the land. (One vow for 2015 will be to “get the hang of” online submissions, which Martin realizes, are the wave of the present!)  Since a modest success is better than none, he was gratified (in ’14) by his first-ever publication, excerpts from a letter he crafted and sent to one of New York's fine remaining newspapers. Tackling that signally important issue, “quality of life," the main focuses of Citizen Martin’s missive were sidewalk smokers, back-up beepers on trucks, X-rated video stores, unsolicited Chinese take-out menus, cell-phone abuse, construction noise and dirt, pigeon and squirrel-feeding, electronic billboards, litter, jay-walking, traffic congestion, potholes, leaking ear buds, street profanity, and bare midriffs.

 

The demands of his dual career as teacher-writer notwithstanding, "Prof.” Martin also maintains a vigorous regimen at his beloved game of squash racquets. Taking to the hardwoods a minimum of four times a week throughout the year (with the exception of two stints on the injured list, when he, first, strained his left Achilles tendon and, then, herniated two discs in his lower back), Bob is currently ranked number 2,003 on the global men's "3.0" ladder, ages 60 and up.

 

A dual careerist, herself, teacher-visual artist Lucy (Lucinda) Buck-Martin has not lagged far behind her huffing and puffing hubby. Downsized in this time of philistine dog-eat-dog-ism from 3 days a week to .50, Buck-Martin wasted no time in being elected to her co-op’s board of directors, in which capacity she recently spent the M’s 37th wedding anniversary counseling the building's most litigious shareholder and her three large dogs, all of whom were stuck on the elevator.

 

Despite her downsizing, LB-M managed to create in the basement studio of her lovely old landmark school numerous beautiful art projects. These were prominently displayed as the work of her students on bulletin boards both at the school and a local bank, provoking amazement from parents, customers, colleagues, bank personnel, and the putative young artists, themselves. Meanwhile, as usual, the energetic peinteuse worked away in her charming studio overlooking the East river (a constant source of inspiration), turning out scores of works of art on both canvas and paper. As if these pedagogical, artistic and community-service challenges were insufficient, this mother, avaricious reader, housewife and devoted spouse also finds time to jog around Washington Square Park, where she has acquired a large lexicon of sexual, drug and skateboarding argot. Mens sana  ...

 

Enough! In these times of political chicanery, pandemic bloodletting, social injustice, rapid technological change, and ecological disaster, all that remains is for us to wish “All the Best to You and Yours for a Healthy, Happy, Prosperous 2015” and (since we have decided that this is to be the last of our traditional holiday form letters) for 2016, 2017, and so on, as all of us wade ever more deeply into the murky waters of our perilous, still-youngish century (not to mention, millennium)!

 

Peace,

 

“The” Martins

Peg, Lucy, Bob