Poetry
Poems of My Home Roztoky
My Belgrade
Mirage
Umbrella Moon
Getno
Poems of My Home Roztoky
Daniel Lamken
When The Levee Breaks
Not if or your or their or any myth
expecting youth to figure out the sluice,
toe the line, or finger, as the case may be,
we’re in it for eternity: banking what
we can against the thrusts of nature,
swimming lessons in Lake Pontchartrain,
or Bonham’s vodka glass, informing
everything. We have a dike to safeguard
our old town—I walk it with my dog—
and if it ever breaks, folks will flood
to upper ground (maybe to our home),
litmussing some welcome or beat down,
’cause that’s what levees have in mind:
channel danger to another land, whether
storms are known as natural or contrived.
The Tinkerer
I’m thinking of late what it
would take to visit the tinkerer,
a guy down the block who
tangentially sees me and my dog
as he talks with a huge hanger-outer
and ratchets some bolt, sandblasts
a plug, solders some nondescript thing,
hearing the tin-sounding songs
from a transistor lost in the tonsils
of his tiny garage, open for business
it seems. I’ve smiled a hello and
received just a blink at the top of
his wire-rims, slightly below the brim
of a hat that spells ELF, a sponsor of sorts.
I’ll bring in our toaster, its
lever a mess or the coils heat too
fast or—you tell me, after
all, the years you have triaged
something simple as this; I’d wait,
strike up some banter his friends find
so smooth, and finding it hard, I’d resort
to the dog to remind him he’s not to
butt in or bark his advice or mark
this domain as a new claim, however
the visit might go. I’m guessing
some toast would result, maybe a
joke about why folks give up on what
ought to be fixed or tinkered about, at least.
To the Least of These
As if to punctuate the advent of the snow,
migrant ravens perch and pick apart the
remnant walnuts clinging in the breeze,
pelting down like hailstones—lo, a couple
months ago the drunks that wander up
and down our streets would gather these,
grinding nature into nutmeg and maybe
into eggnog, preparing as these ravens for
anything to antidote against the freeze,
mild as it’s become in schemes of global
things. The neighborhood seems numb to
entertain who’d reconnoiter walnut trees,
but coming home I could not abnegate the
clue of ravens clattering above me, carving
nutshells of survival with existential ease.
Apologizing for a Family Tree
She came from nowhere—just across the street,
where Em and I were sweeping up the leaves
and walnut mash that tried to cling to passing wheels,
a slo-mo farrago inching from the parent tree.
„Omlouvám,“ she smiled and frowned, “I’m sorry
for—” the season or the cleanup day, the panoply
of pretty, wrinkled leaves still stemming locally
from her side of the street; we waved ‘don’t worry’
and waited as she ran the corner to catch her bus.
“And that betrays a conscience for the rest of us.”
My daughter wasn’t listening—a spider, likely lost,
was sprinting from our pile, freshly tempest-tossed,
and just as likely bound to be another traffic smear.
Em took a leaf and shoveled up the miniature deer
to place her at the base of some recovery. Fear
will figure out a way back up—if assistance is sincere.
And if not, omlouvám; for what can prep us for a fall?
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost in ways affect us all;
the spider can’t be Christian (a net that saves the small),
and neighbors shy away from saying secret stuff withal.
She gathered soul in scarf-fuls, regardless of the chore.
Matthew chapter twenty-six might challenge us more,
but in the end we’re pawns of neighborhood spore:
our roots being what they are, antennae still explore.
Published in Issue #1, May 2018
My Belgrade
Savo Bojovic
The first time we met,
you were grey and rectangular,
I had a backpack
and shoes that would light up
with every step I'd take
towards the school or the gym,
where I'd play basketball
just like those guys you'd welcome
at your main square
every late summer at the time,
and then we got to know each other better
when I started going to the cinema,
boy did you have many of those, remember?
well one night after seeing a film
I went to the park across the street
and had my first kiss right there,
the president, the mayor, and the parliament
all triangulating the tree
that gave snowflakes a rest
as I touched that girl's lips
and everything turned slippery,
I thought the universe would lose its balance,
but it didn't,
it just pulled on the rope of our friendship,
mine and yours,
a velvet noose that told me
I'd never forget you
no matter how much I wanted to,
which is what happened
when the school got bigger and the world too,
and I wanted them to go together
so I left you for the first time
when you felt as small as most of the people
you pretended to take care of,
you beautiful traitor,
I loved you so much
from so far away
that it seemed like the color
was back in your cheeks every time
I'd see you for a short while,
and you talked me into coming back,
somehow you did,
and you became a home again
with a special space in your concrete heart
made for me only,
and years would go by,
I watched you disintegrate like never before,
I watched you welcome the mediocrities
like they built you,
I watched you become a home
for those who never needed more than a roof
over their heads,
And saw the pink in your cheeks was
from being slapped around, after all,
and I kept thinking you knew
you were better than that, but no,
you kept getting drunk on piss
and the faces and the coats
and the purses and the smartphones
and the headphones and the billboards
and the reality shows
and the fake tits and the fake lips
and the fake words and the fake lights
and the darkness you needed
but never dove into,
you chased me off again,
you told me to go fuck myself
with everything you threw at me,
every once in a while giving me a taste
of what I could dine on
for the rest of my life
if you weren't so quick to feed me the shit
that's gotten into
your every corner and artery
and traffic light and gum stained sidewalk
and transvestite bus station hooker
and the great mind destroyed with cheap drugs,
even the refugees want to leave you now, brother,
and I will listen to you and I'll go,
I'll get the fuck out of here while I can,
25 years, a quarter of a century of lives, laughs and tears
between what you were and what you are,
your glass ceiling is a mirror and I'm breaking it,
I know the victory is mine only if I come back,
and that’s why I will,
because you never taught me how to win
but you did teach me how to fight.
Published in Issue #1, May 2018
Mirage
Umbrella Moon
Gabor Gyukics
mirage
leaning away from the lectern
she watches
still she can’t see
what is before her
her mother buried
the navel cord next to
the only tree in the courtyard
to keep her daughter at bay
on her weather and sun beaten skin
the wind takes a break
in the empty
mile wide space
in the raw air
blameless fog-clouds enshroud
her skyscraper solitude
in the cave deep silence
his may-fly long life
disperses in the mist
if she could
eyes of the thousand tongued wind
she stays alive
as long as she
laughs
amidst the crowd
umbrella moon
you see your double on the water’s surface
you lean closer
your body jostles itself inside the pores of your face
the angle is narrowed down by your glances
the wind won’t dry your skin
in the deepening riverbed
you’re thinking about
a pleasant place
you’ve seen long ago
calming yourself
to get in harmony
with the environment
no need purchasing
a second hand souvenir
from the thug hanging out
in front of the pawnshop
tonight
there are things
a body
with a ripped up abdomen
sinks faster
then the past cajoling
present
Poems were published in Issue # 1, May 2018 in two languages – Hungarian and English.
Getno
Andras Gerevich
Translation - Christopher Whyte
The men, well, I hardly remember them,
just standing in front of the mirror
doing my best to find myself attractive
in the hope that others would desire
my body's knotted muscles.
What I liked was hankering after,
getting the hots on for a stranger,
someone who didn't need me, didn't
deign me with a glance, someone I wouldn't
know what to do with once the repeated
sex, the fucking were over and done
because all I wanted was their body,
face and eyes filled with desire,
all I wanted was them wanting me,
my body, I possessed them that way, at
least so I thought or wanted, and not one,
not a single one was ever mine,
not one man was mine out of so many.
Nobody. Only the longing lived on.
I can remember nothing of myself.
Published in Issue # 1, May 2018 in two languages – Hungarian and English.