Caretakers Blues + Devil’s Bridge

by Michelle Holley

Caretakers Blues

To sing this tale, I should be blind—

like Lemon, or Willie Johnson

singing in the dark, of love and loss just like old Joe Reynolds,

or Reverend Gary Davis, blind at three weeks—

         blind before he could see.

You beg to die before you go blind—

before the disease of old takes over the blue of your Madonna’s robe iris,

ones like we planted in the back garden

that bloom after the crocus has withered and before the final burst of white

peonies.

Some days, I feel strong enough to lift all 98 pounds of you

with one finger pointed to the cloud, the star, the moon

telling gods what to do. Other days, I’m so worn

I take the stethoscope to my own heart and think

surely yours will out-beat mine.

I am dying, not you, I mutter as

I wash your withered body,

little flesh on arms, but swollen feet,

curse of all the doomed and literal

meaning of the word Oedipus,

named by the shepherd who found him,

calling the baby by his affliction

before the action of the play takes place—

like so much of your life I never knew.

I powder what still looks young,

the blossom of a nipple,

the strong jaw line so pronounced

you could be the carved head on the front of a great ship bound for Delphi

to ask the gods our future,

but we already know the Oracle’s message

so I ask instead, should I pray for death now, or later?

Will one more day

make me regret my prayers for life?

As the traveling songster sings, “Death Don’t Have No Mercy,”

his fingerpicking style known throughout Texas

and we fear his wrath before the last heartbeat

until the Grateful Dead sing his words for all to know—

the grateful dead. . . dead, yet grateful,

grateful, yet dead.

Oxymoron to the young,

but what blind poets know everywhere—

that old Greek maxim born in fog—

no man should be considered fortunate until he is dead.


Devil’s Bridge

Sleeping next to me—

you sound like a vaporetto gurgling

through Venetian canals

lungs filling with water.

I touch you

to bring you back.

You mumble you were dreaming of a man who wanted you—

how disappointed you were that he did not have white hair,

and how you broke the unfortunate news that he had come

too late for love making.

I roll over—

eyes open to the darkness

while dawn breaks in Venice—

hours before her last stop

fills with new lovers

riding the white-capped waves of Laguana Veneta to Torchello,

searching for the kiss in the last hour as

I place the obolus in your mouth

to pay Charon, our boatsman,

who divides the living from the dead.

Post Road Magazine
Issue #29 | Fall/Winter 2015

FICTION:

Seeking Advice and/or Assistance re: Mountain Lions — Matt Tompkins
In Her Place — Maria D’Alessandro
Two Tons Of Manure — Libby Flores
Chameleon — Phil Hearn
Greyhounds — Devin Kelly
A Boyfriend, Obamacare, a Cat — David James Poissant
Accompaniment — Gary Sheppard
Lynx — Alice G. Stinetorf
Student Paper — Justin Taylor
How to Sleep with Lions — Wil Weitzel

NONFICTION:

Notes From a Suicide — Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson

CRITICISM:

Thinking about Zadie Smith — Ryan McIlvain

POETRY:

Caretakers Blues + Devil’s Bridge — Michelle Holley
Cento + Saudade — Jim Whiteside

ART:

Figure 8 + 8 Various Artists

THEATRE:

Pathfinders: A Play by Ben Merriman

RECOMMENDATIONS:

John Banville’s Eclipse — Howard Axelrod
Dignifying the Slog — Carlene Bauer
Everyone’s Invited: Homicide Survivors Picnic by Lorraine M. López — J.C. Crucet
The Great Shame of Knausgaard’s My Struggle — Katherine Hill
Listen Up: Aurally Spinning through Zadie Smith’s On Beauty — Tim Horvath
Suicide by Edouard Levé — Jac Jemc

GUEST FOLIO (edited by Paul Mariani):

Forsaken and Foregone — Scott Cairns
Evolution — Robert Cording
Aquarium — Sarah Cortez
Here Begins the Prologue to the Life of Blessed Anthony — David Craig
The Diving Platform — Kate Daniels
Eighth Floor — Nadine Ellsworth-Moran
There But Not There — Martín Espada
Apples — William Heyen
The Conversion of the Vikings — Mark Jarman
Humani Generis — Philip Kolin
Sonnet — Marianna Krejci-Papa
Small Losses — Kathleen Markowitz
Location, Location, Location — Richard Michelson
Reading Crusoe on the Metro North — Angela Alaimo O’Donnell
Clayfeld’s Vampire Fantasy — Robert Pack

CONTRIBUTORS:

Cover Art: Eugenia Loli, “High Priestess”— collage

Student Paper
by Justin Taylor
from Post Road 29

The negation of the negation is based on a correct reading of the wrong books.

 — Donald Barthleme, “The Rise of Capitalism”

Let the reason remain outside of the fact that the world does not involve magic: only chance, intelligence, and skill. There’s this idea of people creating their own stories but in the beginning what they thought was horrible ended up good. It makes sense. I mean let’s say you are a person who hasn’t gotten sick in many years, and then I offer you an opportunity for meaningful exchange, to transform fantasy into a fragment of communication widely spread without visible limits on the scope of being understood. The thing is that you always have these people who support or oppose a situation. My thesis is that a problem is something which is caused by something else.

            As Gladwell points out, events take place. Try to estimate where you stand. A broken window does not allow us to decipher that in fact the culture has taken a detour. A major concern is the anger that each of us holds inside the same ability. Our human thoughts, the normal daily epidemic misdemeanors, stimulate an invitation. People have realizations in the homeless and polluted air.

            Not all religions accept the idea that limitations should not be banned completely. Rather, they should focus, should be conscious. A sense of belonging overwhelms the participants. Without the comprehension of others we are alone in the world. With the rituals and customs of a clear and concisely revealed stimulus, the youth walk hand in hand provided communities symbolize identities that have not yet been discovered to preclude an overall better chance of adaptation or the idea of creating different forms.

            The preoccupation of hunting down pirates is a major epidemic. Underneath the water hid the legal owner of the so-called “catchphrase” and the relevance of this information is just another method expanding on the depiction designed solely for the purpose of staying dependent on the main point. Now let me just explain the advantageous reaction: forces shape ideals. There is a current need to participate in another medium, a small but unmistakable link between opposing views.

            We must all embrace or fall behind a world that doesn’t yet exist and no one knows how to accommodate the traditional commercials. A new form of existence: limitless control of one’s own product. Every year—every year—we see the advancements. The normal is falling apart.

            Through one’s lifetime the exhaustion of traditions are witnessed. Who has as much power as that which rests in the hands of the children we must all become? The harsh cruel truth was exposed to the public and no longer remained a secret for the privacy of the academy. Though it is not necessarily possible for anything of this sort to happen, it is a capable representation of how minds are lived in an environment. The theory points out where to act precisely. There is a vital difference between an individual. This is something that will not be passed without a fight to the dance.

            Consistent attitudes lead to comfort and normality. We are opening our protective plethora and can vouch for the extreme velocity of our country in a bad salutation. Authorities must enforce constructive rules as they play. It is crucial to allow exposure to the main transmitters surrounding the exact root of the motivation to do better and earn a pizza party so we expect a community where guidance is provided for who we are and what we become. In the wild we are empty vessels filled with who we are.

            Choose a new way of enduring the vigorous original knowledge of the false being who claims we have the power to admire a bond we form with the participant. Community can shape amazing features and our surroundings persuade us there are things people might wish to do to prove that they really have the power to do the things they want and become people. This is where lies the true significance of a name.

            Johnson states that different experiences teach people how much they have underestimated different mountains, the mysteries of the forest. Discovery leaves behind questions. With everything that happens one must realize one can not especially dislike the spooky baby because babies are usually symbols. A man steps into fulfilling his needs where they are lost and as an American I define morality as something that provides people with an incentive to make good decisions because of all the silence. I am talking about anything inside us all: a battlefield or a cliff that has no end.

            Wilderness happens to everyone. The reader finds himself choked. He has chosen to open the door and molest the young buffalo. Content cannot be told. There are no such things as stories. The presence of absolute moral indifference allows us to experience life in a whole new way. We want to enter and escape traditional countries; the words a vivid difficulty, a virtuous blur. What is aesthetic is actually fantasy. You figure out that though you see things you don’t have to believe in them. The larger scales of trouble are inevitable to avoid the certain dangers of underlining comfort without order. A city inhabits the creatures of the jungle. The voice and footprint ameliorate functionality, collaborate better. Laws struggle to stray the deeper factors from the facts. Character emerges in the space left over, a beauty inflicted by institutes that get sucked into ascendance toward the dire public void between perfect works.

            The people become subject or “addicted” to their specifics. Growth away from the security net is due to the fact that some of us have healthy relationships, infectious moods, constant recurrence of exuded feelings, terms for achieving cohesion of desires, something on the table, the long chance to be respected, refined alienation in the wilderness of media attention, links between reading and living, an extremely influential tie. Expectations infringe on desire, a situation that in a lot of ways guarantees journal entries, a wealth of susceptible wisdom, a map, and many other things. At the important end of pleasure, we are all different and we are all we have.          

            Some of us may not like what society gives us. Hope suffocates a man intent to join the isolation principle to the unpopular strain of the shining riddle. It is not always easy inside the walls of aversion, the critical lens shaken to show affect brought down to mere presence: a pack of wolves like a bubble. We may now live in a time period. A person can be lonely without being alone.

            The absolute cannot be spoken for. All are strangers before the court. It was never about the travel or the fact this is just a metaphor for primitive truths inside us. Most circumstances incorporate the example of a firefight to beauty, where many have met their deep end. Others, meanwhile, live their whole lives residing in a childhood dream. In some cases animals and keys grow long over the temples: basis enough to live in fear of attitudes portrayed as mystical and full of depth.

            We can do whatever we want whenever we want. Nightmares and abandoned buildings shrouded and reacting as if alive. We are what we are doing. We are satisfied or confused. We find ourselves. We find a little haven in a break we knew before. We are content. We may not yet be able to understand. We as readers suppose that we as readers cannot judge. We were not there. You are looking for characters with the same intentions. The word can be an empty forest. We are truly broken, not acting stripped by the force of wanting. In conclusion, I tried to say something to the maximum degree possible. I have learned that experience is one of the main things we endure.