Nostalgia
Martina Rimbaldo
Author: meganrusso
Brill-Building Pop
Brill-Building Pop
Alan Parry
i live for the
songs of teenagers,
close harmonies
that force feet to tap
& tears to run –
romantic ditties
of malt shops &
sock hopsSoft susurrus
Soft susurrus
Athena Melliar
Short interludes of gold sand suffuse blue
like fingers gently strumming string-waves,
humming sea tunes, humming away the blues.Waves furl and unfurl, foam wriggles through you.
Lips — open caves — sing on wave upon wave
short interludes of gold suffused with blue.Let this be — sea insists — let this be you:
skin soft susurrus-laved and soul sun-laved
humming sea tunes, humming away the blues.You are not alone, you belong to
a family of seas swaying to staves —
short interludes of sand that suffuse blue.Which body played which note? You are not new.
Which sea played which note? And you have no grave.
Humming sea tunes, humming away the bluesseas fuse the rhythms of life with joy — you knew.
Sea is your root. Can you unhear a wave?
Short interludes of gold sand suffuse blue
humming sea tunes, humming away the blues.Atlas & The Exact Weight of Calamity in Six Letters
Atlas & The Exact Weight of Calamity in Six Letters
Ariel Moniz
It’s reason that tells me
it could have been any name at all
but it wasn’t—It was always yours.
It was always going to be yours.It was always going to be your name at sunrise
echoing in the cavities created by our tangled sheets,
hushed, breathing fresh sun rays
like expensive perfume or a winter-smothered valley,and it was always going to be your name
that was destined to undo me a dozen times
at half-past you breaking the horizon in two.Your name in my flawed mouth
knotted in my discordant heartstrings
was never fit to be heard by anybody
but still I believe, more than I can carry—it could have been more than this
walk off a desperate cliff, of this—fragile thing—
this thing we call living
and you know it, you always have—
we were never meant for the Atlas-heavy silence
of what comes after the calamity that was us.Record Player
Record Player
Maya Stott
I’m six, listening to dad’s record player
in the garage. It’s a Sunday afternoon
and there’s a fat satsuma sun in the garden.
A band is blowin’ Dixie, double-four time.Bill Haley and His Comets
are in the kitchen.
Little feet glued on bigger feet.
Bluish tiles and high lemon ceilings.
There’s laughing,
So put your glad rags on and join me hon.’Adam and the Ants are marching through
the front room. Striped cheeks and socks
too big charge across the laminate floor.
Cheering, Stand and deliver!West end girls
on long Blackpool drives.
Illuminations by the sea, fingers tracing
lights on the windows, leaving melted
shapes behind.Aretha’s backing girls on grey dressing up boxes,
scribbled lipstick smiles, taking turns on the
hairbrush microphone,
shouting: R-e-s-p-e-c-t!Wake me up before you go go,
with cardboard saxophones,
and mum’s pink leg warmers.Hungry like the wolf in the red Renault Clio,
parked up by the docs, eating French fries
and goofing on Elvis.Lipstick on your collar, told a tale on you,
dad teasing, laughing into her ear,
tells her,
Oh, your hair is beautiful.
She looked atomic.but
he was losing
his religionas she sobbed
in the bathroom,you were always on my mind.
Eleftheriou
Eleftheriou
Anne Rundle
American hard A’s soften to awe’s
as I learn and recite Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon
on an island surrounded by the Aegean. Greek language
entombed under my tongue every morning.
I ask the ancient ones to help me in translation.
At breakfast, I shake the words out.
Kalimera! Hot Tea, Parakalo. Efkaristo!Our Greek teacher, a Cypriot, over-enunciates
as we parrot our best imitation of her intonation.Repeat after me: Yah-soo is hello, and Yiamas is cheers.
Yah-soo, Yiamas.Dark curls behind her ears sway as she writes
ancient characters alongside phonetics on the small whiteboard.
We know less than a Greek five-year-old
which could be why she shows her dimpled smile.What’s the word for lesson?
How do you say beautiful?Lesson is Máthima. MATT- ee- mah.
Beautiful is or-REY-aw, like an Oreo.With dinner, we drink white wine, loosening
our tongues: Lefko Grasee, Parakalo.
Greek dancing, a grapevine with kicks.Everyone joins to move like a Chinese dragon
in a parade, weaving through the tables and chairs,
Lady Eleftheriou leads the spinning circles around a pair of olive trees.
This restaurant has no walls or boundaries, no ceiling,
only a trellis of grapevines, hanging, waiting to be plucked.
The bouzouki plays 15-minute songs, speeding up
to triple time to reveal the best dancers.
A man shouts Den peirazei, when a lady at his table spills her glass.
Sweaty, out of breath, and exhausted we depart
one by one. Kalineichte!What does your last name mean? They said it on the Athens news.
Ah, yes, Eleftheriou Square in Athens is a large gathering area
for protests. Eleftheriou means freedom. El- Eff- ther- REE- oh.Daphne
Daphne
Linda McMullen
Seasickness overtook me on my first voyage, a pleasure-cruise to baptize the Queen’s new ship. I heaved over the side. My bile formed the shape of a mermaid’s tail on the water.
A tall, bearded man in uniform offered me a handkerchief. I looked up; I caught my breath; my heart strings thrummed.
The captain appeared at court that evening. I – like the other debutantes – had curtsied to the Queen in white satin, and, I, like them, took my turn to perform. I caught the captain’s eye… smiled… and glowed as I sang the aria of the queen of the night, imparting her dying wish that her lover would claim her before daybreak. Afterward: golden silence, then rapturous applause.
“You stole the voice of a siren,” the captain murmured in my ear.
You stole my heart from my breast.
The Queen congratulated me, saying she hoped to hear me sing again. My giddy ears could only follow the sounds of the captain’s footsteps as he approached to kiss my hand.
The next day he sought my parents’ permission to squire me about town, to picnics, parties, and balls. They reasoned that his distinguished career atoned amply for his birth, so off we went: he took me everywhere. (Indeed, one night he took me to a discreet hotel, and I joyfully relinquished my maidenhood. After that, as I say, he took me everywhere.)
Except on his ship: the merest rocking rendered me queasy.
Meanwhile, the Queen had not forgotten me.
The Opera Director called on my parents to convey her command. They protested, saying I was a lady, not some mere stage-strumpet. The man returned pointedly that it was the Queen’s particular wish.
Naturally my captain had had to go to sea again. Amidst endless rehearsals, I missed him tenderly. I felt the full force of his absence during my arias, voicing my fathomless longing. But when the applause began… when the Opera’s rafters trembled with the crowd’s adoration… I floated beyond the moon and stars…
My captain returned in time for the final performance, and crowned me with water lilies.
We resumed our previous engagements – chaste and otherwise – in a season of delight. But the weather turned, and the Queen’s thoughts drifted toward her winter residence.
The captain and I sat on the pier, our legs dangling vainly. He was due to leave again on the morrow. The Queen had ordered me to attend her – a thousand miles inland.
“Daphne – marry me, my darling.”
My heart broke upon the waves.
“I love you,” I said, “but you are a marine creature, and I, a terrestrial animal. It is not fair for either of us to pretend otherwise.”
We parted. I surrendered to my anguish.
At the Queen’s court, my grief transfigured my music, giving it a resonant, glorious cadence.
I alternated between the capital and the winter palace, occasionally returning to the opera for public performances.
Once in every great while, I found water lilies in my dressing room.
Pop Song Crush
Pop Song Crush
Jeffrey H. MacLachlan
Organ confetti pirouettes
like it’s prom night ’96. A pairof adolescents swerve home
after assembling at Valentine’sPizza & Deli. One listed hip-hop
and trick bikes as his interests,and she was cut from power
squad when she dropped crystalhooplets. This is a night to be free
and to allow Finger Lake breezeto thumb through magazine haircuts
with fairy dust and glass. Real love.They’re searching for a real love
among angels turned visible —Bailamos, they sing as they muster
courage to twirl the new kids in class.
