Night watch
On some summer nights,
Jemmy and I lay side by side
in my back yard waiting for
the sky to sacrifice a bright rock
or two to the earth.
Mostly we were tucked
into sleeping bags, but
this night was hot and
swarming with stars
and the weatherman had
predicted a meteor shower.
Even the grass where we
rested our hands was warm
as we talked about the slim
redhead we’d watch undress
on lucky evenings when
I was sleeping over. We
were medium-bad boys,
didn’t fight … much, but
got nabbed once at Macy’s
with a Monopoly game
cornering out of Jemmy’s
loose shirt, and one time
in Jem’s room I shot a light
bulb with his BB gun
and we watched the smoke
twirl upward like a black
cobra. But there was also the time
I was alone in my room pushing
my hard penis into the bed when
a feeling so lovely I almost
swooned took me by surprise,
shooting through me like
a star, spreading on my sheets,
changing my life forever.
I dared to tell Jemmy about it
this night under the abundant sky
and flushed so hot when he
didn’t answer and even hotter
when he pulled away a bit on
the bent grass. But a moment
later, when a pair of white meteorites
skied almost simultaneously
down the black heavens I
was relieved as he shouted,
“Look! Two of them!”
God’s Country
Maine is God’s country.
But don’t take my word for it
and don’t listen to the benighted
who claim the title for the Isle of Skye
or Bali or Kakadu or Zimbabwe,
all numinous, all with traces
of the divine, for sure, but
Maine, you see, has the whole
world in its hands. The coast, from
black-browed rocks to grassy sand,
hosts the jingling rich,
private beaches, fungible artists,
meddling beds and breakfasts,
while a half-hour’s drive away, tourists up
from Everett wear their Bruins T-shirts;
and cascading from Canada come
the broad-backed Quebecois,
like sea creatures crawled back to land,
their belt-defying bellies, and chatty,
tribal wives under odd-shaped
tents watching all-shaped children.
And, then, off the long, various coast, the
islands,
from Bailey to Vinalhaven to Little Cranberry,
with their gardens and no-car rules and
sloe gin fizzes.
Go inland and find a thousand new wonders,
awkward, delicate moose, clumsy fawns,
mad loons with dead eyes who cry and laugh
over unspoiled lakes and long woods
dotted with crushed Molson’s cans.
Brown bears diving into dumps, beavers
exploding
onto elastic surfaces of calm and misty
ponds,
rivers and rivulets and brooks, lily pads
and slow
frogs, cedar waxwings skittering for
mosquitos.
Angry lumberjacks, tired timber drivers,
cranky
Customs cops, anxious waitresses,
yellow-eyed
wolves in cages outside broken homes.
Tongue-
lolling deer dangling from pick-ups. The
aurora borealis, mephitic paper mills,
mountains that rise from lakes like fjords,
water freezing down their stony flanks.
The Spillover Motel. Towns called
Dresden, Lisbon, Sidney, and Rome,
miserly farms, unkempt cemeteries, canting
headstones, “Bernadina and Adelaide
Kingsbury, Drowned, June 11, 1918.
‘When you lie down, you will not be afraid,
when you lie down, your sleep will be
sweet.’”
Memory and Pride
Did we have a choice,
abandoning hopes two-by-two,
and left with the grinding
inevitability of the other?
We gather around a table
like an old stove and we smile
real smiles as wine is poured
and dinner is served.
Memory and pride faced
off in the ring and pride
won by a decision.
Alec Solomita is a writer and artist working in the Boston (USA) area. His fiction has appeared in the Southwest Review, The Mississippi Review, Southword Journal, and Peacock, among other publications. He was shortlisted by the Bridport Prize and Southword Journal. His poetry has appeared in Poetica, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Litbreak, Driftwood Press, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Galway Review, The Lake, and elsewhere, including several anthologies. His photographs and drawings can be found in Convivium, Fatal Flaw, Young Ravens Review, Tell-Tale Inklings, and other publications. He took the cover photo and designed the cover of his poetry chapbook, “Do Not Forsake Me,” which was published in 2017. His full-length poetry book “Hard To Be a Hero,” will be coming out this spring.
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