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Waterfront, Memorial Day ’88.

December 31, 2024 by Exangel

by Stephen Mead.

“Good Morning Vietnam” the theatre marquee read.
I could see it between these porch beams & our neighbors roofs.
It takes awhile to sink in, twenty years or more back then, to bring the war home,
let the unmentionable surface for what it was, was not & will forever more be: both.

Earlier that day I took a walk to hear a lecture at a downtown museum.
Nobody else came. They locked the doors.
I turned around, went to the library,
got a book, then stood outside to catch a bus.
I waited 38 minutes, thumbing through Snodgrass, W.D.
Occasionally a passerby, once even a carful,
slowed to shout remarks.
Was it the way that I stood, the cut
of my hair, a bird’s nest.
Most likely my shoes were the culprits,
a pair of hand-painted old loafers.
I was told to get new ones yet didn’t have the cash.
Instead, midnight blue brushed
light strokes of white, pale
jade, a clear varnish.
Not exactly wild or overt,
any more than a pigeon is unless
scrutinized, they suddenly became an issue,
my very presence a kind of controversy,
though not to the young street kids
jiggling rows of pay phones.
Back home I put the political footwear
in a closet, & found a sharp piece of glass
in my sock. It had been there right along.
Lucky, wasn’t it, that I didn’t get cut?

Lucky, I said again, aloud to you,
knowing being made fun of by strangers was a flea bite
compared to the front lines in your gaze
or the phantom limb throbbing where your knee cap just stopped.
I touched it there on this porch which became a pier.
A mild rain was falling, the ocean, farther on, drawing surf,
sending it back, a resurgence for us too,
damp & alive in the beach grass,
that Vetch, Campion, Pitchwort, Brome—–
all a language of their own,
immemorial,
fox glove for fox holes the wind has chiseled on flesh.

 

Filed Under: EAP: The Magazine, Winter 2025: Too Much Forgetting. Tagged With: poem, poetry, Stephen Mead, veterans

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In This Issue.

  • Who Was Dorothy?
  • Those Evil Spirits.
  • The Screaming Baboon.
  • Her.
  • A Tale of Persistence.
  • A Conversation with Steve Hugh Westenra.
  • Person Number Twelve.
  • Dream Shapes.
  • Cannon Beach.
  • The Muse.
  • Spring.
  • The Greatness that was Greece.
  • 1966, NYC; nothing like it.
  • Sun Shower.
  • The Withering Weight of Being Perceived.
  • Broken Clock.
  • Confession.
  • Francis Coppola’s Apocalypse.
  • Sometimes you die, I mean that people do.
  • True (from “My Life with Dogs”).
  • Fragmentary musings on birds and bees.
  • 12 Baking Essentials to Always Have in Your Poetry.
  • Broad Street.
  • A Death in Alexandria.
  • My Forked Tongue.
  • Swan Lake.
  • Long Division.
  • Singing against the muses.
  • Aphorisms from “What Remains to Be Said”.

In The News.

That cult classic pirate/sci fi mash up GREENBEARD, by Richard James Bentley, is now a rollicking audiobook, available from Audible.com. Narrated and acted by Colby Elliott of Last Word Audio, you’ll be overwhelmed by the riches and hilarity within.

“Captain Sylvestre de Greybagges is your typical seventeenth-century Cambridge-educated lawyer turned Caribbean pirate, as comfortable debating the virtues of William Shakespeare, Isaac Newton, and compound interest as he is wielding a cutlass, needling archrival Henry Morgan, and parsing rum-soaked gossip for his next target. When a pepper monger’s loose tongue lets out a rumor about a fleet loaded with silver, the Captain sets sail only to find himself in a close encounter of a very different kind.

After escaping with his sanity barely intact and his beard transformed an alarming bright green, Greybagges rallies The Ark de Triomphe crew for a revenge-fueled, thrill-a-minute adventure to the ends of the earth and beyond.

This frolicsome tale of skullduggery, jiggery-pokery, and chicanery upon Ye High Seas is brimming with hilarious puns, masterful historical allusions, and nonstop literary hijinks. Including sly references to Thomas Pynchon, Treasure Island, 1940s cinema, and notable historical figures, this mélange of delights will captivate readers with its rollicking adventure, rich descriptions of food and fashion, and learned asides into scientific, philosophical, and colonial history.”

THE SUPERGIRLS is back, revised and updated!

supergirls-take-1

In The News.

Newport Public Library hosted a three part Zoom series on Visionary Fiction, led by Tod.  

And we love them for it, too.

The first discussion was a lively blast. You can watch it here. The second, Looking Back to Look Forward can be seen here.

The third was the best of all. Visions of the Future, with a cast of characters including poets, audiobook artists, historians, Starhawk, and Mary Shelley. Among others. Link is here.

In the News.

SNOTTY SAVES THE DAY is now an audiobook, narrated by Last Word Audio’s mellifluous Colby Elliott. It launched May 10th, but for a limited time, you can listen for free with an Audible trial membership. So what are you waiting for? Start listening to the wonders of how Arcadia was born from the worst section of the worst neighborhood in the worst empire of all the worlds since the universe began.

In The News.

If you love audio books, don’t miss the new release of REPORT TO MEGALOPOLIS, by Tod Davies, narrated by Colby Elliott of Last Word Audio. The tortured Aspern Grayling tries to rise above the truth of his own story, fighting with reality every step of the way, and Colby’s voice is the perfect match for our modern day Dr. Frankenstein.

In The News.

Mike Madrid dishes on Miss Fury to the BBC . . .

Tod on the Importance of Visionary Fiction

Check out this video of “Beyond Utopia: The Importance of Fantasy,” Tod’s recent talk at the tenth World-Ecology Research Network Conference, June 2019, in San Francisco. She covers everything from Wind in the Willows to the work of Kim Stanley Robinson, with a look at The History of Arcadia along the way. As usual, she’s going on about how visionary fiction has an important place in the formation of a world we want and need to have.

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