Subscriber Showcase #4
Sam Aureli & Glyn Matthews
Sam Aureli thrives on working with his hands, a passion rooted in his early blue-collar roles. Sam turned to poetry later in his journey as a refuge from the chaos of daily life and as a way to deepen his connection to nature. His work has recently been accepted in Atlanta Review and Amethyst Review.
Crocus
Sunlight slips past the curtain,
presses warm against my face,
searching for signs of life.
I blink, exhale, something
like steam rises from my chest.
Outside, the trees are listening.
A robin plucks a song
from the wind’s pocket,
scatters it like crumbs on the cold earth.
Little ghosts of winter watch from the shadows.
I run my hand over dampened leaves,
as if searching for a pulse.
A crocus, pale and trembling,
pushes up like a forgotten word,
a murmur of spring’s old promise.
I wait, unmoving.
It speaks first.All That I Am
Something stirs,
slipping through roots,
a shadow bending the grass.
An unseen hand rearranges the dust,
loosening names long buried.
I feel it —
a breath at the back of my neck,
a pulse in the marrow of stone.
The trees lean in, listening.
A river dreams beneath its frozen skin.
This is the language of the old ones:
a hush spun into wind,
watching, remembering.
I am only a trespasser,
fumbling with small words,
turning them over
like bones worn down by silence.
The earth waits,
unraveling time in the curl of a leaf,
in the slow breath of moss,
in the vanishing of my name.Forsythia
It’s not the tulip or the daffodil
that marks the change for me,
nor the crocus
cracking the earth
by the stone wall.
Snow recedes,
revealing what storms forgot —
a glove, a toy,
a rusted nail still clinging.
I look back.
Some losses fresh,
some just outlines now.
Will this year be different?
I’ve stopped asking.
Today, driving home
from nowhere in particular,
I saw the forsythia —
bright, burning yellow
at the field’s edge,
not waiting, just there.
Glyn Matthews is a poet and writer of short fiction, and has won and been placed in various competitions, nationally and internationally.
Devils in the Switchgrass
Around midnight the drumming on the boxcar roof stopped and Walt was woken by the sudden silence. He sat upright and propped his back against the door jamb. Drips were still falling from the curved roof and the air contained aromas that ride the tails of summer storms. The night relaxed and a fox barked off in the switchgrass. Walt listened to his own breath scratching, took the bottle of Jim Beam from his coat and drank.
He gazed at the toe of his busted shoe. The busted toe revealed a sock. The busted sock revealed a toe and he addressed the grey horned nail, “Don’t go givin me that ole Eskimo look.”
“What Eskimo look?”
“Like you got sumthin to say but caint be bothered to say it. Like you know better’n me.”
“Never said that.”
“Didn’t have to. I’ve known yuh long enough.”
“You’ve know’d me all your damn life. Used to lie butt-naked on a towel and suck the face off of me. Couldn’t do that now?”
“Even if I could, I wouldn’t want to. I’ll stick to Bourbon.”
“Where we headed anyway? Don’t seem to be goin no place. This box aint attached to no engine.”
“I figured Sacramento. Maybe join up with the transcontinental. Caint rightly say till we pull out.”
“Reckon this here shit-wagon is headed for California?”
“Maybe.”
“Hope you’re right. Could use a rest.”
“Well, wherever I’m goin, you’re coming with me.”
“That’s true.”
“Might get me another banjo.”
“Now you’re stringin me along.”
“Maybe.”
The fox barked again, nearer this time and clouds parted. A pock-faced moon devoid of natural kindness, spied from lace-fringed velvet folds like a madam in a whorehouse. The rails shone wet. A slab of moonlight crept across the floor toward the back of the wagon. There, wrapped in the dark, a padded ratchet-snore, an invisible turn and dream-borne mutterings.
Drunk or sober, Billy sure knew how to sleep. They’d shared a wagon since Cold Creek, south of Reno, though Walt knew him from before, back in Denver. Riding the rails you meet the same old faces. Might say they was friends, might say they wasn’t. Friendships can be dangerous on the road, leading to places you never meant to be at.
That’s how he lost his banjo, smashed by a bunch of red-necks the worse for shine. He’d teamed up with a son of a slave named Cumberland Smith with a yearning for blueberry hoecakes. The bastards put out his eye, but at least they didn’t leave him swinging in a tree. If they’d been Klan they surely would have and Walt would have suffered worse than a banjo with a busted neck for sharing his company.
He headed back north alone, along the Mississippi to St Louis and then west through Kansas.
“That’s the last time I’m going south,” he told his appendage.
“Yeah. Eight hundred miles for a busted banjo and a pile of pancakes you never got to eat. Not the smartest.”
An owl made a silent pass across the moon. A rabbit squealed. Walt took a swig of Beam and pushed his wrist across his mouth.
Billy emerged from the dark and hunkered down beside him and Walt obliged him with the bottle.
“Who was that you was talkin to, Walt?”
“Nobody.”
“Didn’t sound like nobody.”
“Just an old Eskimo friend of mine.”
“The hell it was.” He passed the bottle back.
“What if I told you I was talkin to my toe?”
“Then I’d know you’d been drinkin.”
“Well, there you go.” He took another slug and passed the bottle.
Billy sat, his legs dangling loose above the roadbed. He tipped the bottle, his throat snake-swallowing a mouse, then passed it back and parked his elbows on his knees.
The darkness stirred with the sounds conjured by the night when the wind dies. The rain excused itself to find the sanctuary of ditches and unseen cuts.
“What made y’all choose to ride the rails?” asked the younger man.
“A million reasons.”
“Try me with one of em.”
“Why?”
“Interested is all.”
“I guess I got plum sick of my Pa beating on Ma and me, and then, when Ma died, I got double helpins.”
“Most kids get a beatin. Don’t mean they cut and run.”
“My Pa got me apprenticed at Smithson’s corrugated tin. There was two of us rookies. Me ’n Jonas Wilson. Jonas was a long streak of piss. ‘Bonus Jonus’ they called him on account of his surplus height. The fruit loop always walked around lookin like he’d lost a dollar, found a dime. So the kids who’d been there a while picked on him. I reckon they’d of got around to me too ’ventually, but he was first.”
“What did they do?”
Walt took another lazy slug and watching the moon drown in amber. “One day I’ll swaller that bastard whole.”
“What bastard?”
“Moonshine, talkin sweet, livin fine,” crooned Walt to himself.
“Will you stop talkin riddles and get on with the story. What happened? What d’ey do?”
“Ringleader, guy called Mack, offered him a smoke.”
“Friendly ’nuff.”
“Well, he didn’t so much offer as force it in his mouth while two of em held him. Then a little rat-faced piece of excrement called Benny Bennett gets a can of thinners and pours it down his front sayin as how it’s good for stain removal. Then Mack gets out his Zippo, fixin to light up. Jonus is shit scared, breaks free and runs for the John ’n bolts himself inside a cubicle. There’s a gap under the door about a hand’s width so Mack flips the Zippo, turns up the flame, says, ‘Hey Bonus, want a light?’ and holds it through the gap. Then… Whump!”
“Whump?”
“Yeah. The air in the cubicle is loaded with thinners, see, the vapours ignite and Jonus burns to death in the locked stall.”
“No shit.”
“That’s almost what Mack said. I don’t think he was evil. They was only kids, little older ’n me.”
“I guess he weren’t too bright, huh?”
“I guess not. But they gave him time to work it out in his cell while he waited on his hangin.”
“Weren’t he too young for stringin up?”
“Apparently the judge couldn’t count too well. I guess enjoyment of arithmetic took second place to a good hangin. Anyways, I refused to go back. My Pa went ape-shit, so I hitched a ride to Mobile, not that I had a particular yearning to taste the Gulf, it’s just that was the end of the line. I turned round, headed north and been ridin ever since.”
The men sat nursing their separate thoughts like they were counting a row of dead moles hanging in the slow twist of the wind. Billy spat tobacco juice to decorate the verge and Walt tossed the empty bottle out into the switchgrass.
Moon shadows stalked the rails. A coyote howled and a red-eyed weasel hunted in the dark.
Wow! Loved both of these writers. So talented in their different ways.
Congratulations, both!
Zanna