by Mark Jabaut
Koulourakia
Last night they found a dead body
on the walking trail behind our house
while I am selfishly concerned about my Muse.
Black crows bring forth angels
but I lose them when my feet hit the ground.
Sometimes the answers
are too dense with the dirt and the flesh
to get to the spirit of things
so I obey the arroyos.
I defer to the violet skies of morning
sifting in the flour
crumbling in the butter.
Today my voice is the poetry of koulourakia:
the Greek sweets,
the gifts of the gods,
the braids and the circles
of our human lives grounding together
this poem-making,
this epic-telling,
this baking of the yiayia-secrets,
these coffee-dunkers,
these psalm-singers,
these worry-beaded old men
in tavernas by the sea.
Living in the Crosshairs
Trust the universe and respect your hair.
–Bob Marley
I confess.
I cut my hair when I am in mourning.
First a little chopping, then whole wheat fields
clog the toilet bowl because
I’m always wrong in the mirror.
I try to make the dead ends disappear.
But this is not Ancient Egypt
where we shave our eyebrows when our cat dies
and let ourselves mourn until the brows grow back.
No. This is not Ancient Egypt, and I am not Bastet.
This is modern America, and Donald Trump is president.
Today I found you–my husband of 42 years–in the garage
fixing my old lamp so I will have good light to read by.
I stood next to you smelling your sweet clove breath
as you struggled with the pliers, weaving wires to connect.
That’s when I knew I am not afraid of living
and I remembered sitting on the patio with my mother
days after her first chemotherapy treatment.
Every time she’d scratch her head
thin shocks of hair would blow into the wind.
Soon small mounds of hair mulched the corners of the garden.
So this is how it happens I thought,
seeing the round bald places transform her face.
This is how it happens I thought the next morning
when I looked out the window at the wren holding
strands of Mother’s hair in her beak building a nest
so her young would be safe for living.
Stephanie K. Merrill lives in Austin, Texas. Selected poems can be found in Broken Bridge Review, The Rise Up Review, and Blue Heron Review. Stephanie K. Merrill is a 2018 Pushcart nominee.
Mark Jabaut is a playwright, author and photographer who lives in Webster, NY with his wife Nancy. Mark’s play IN THE TERRITORIES, originally developed via Geva Theatre’s Regional Writers Workshop and Festival of New Theatre, premiered in May 2014 at The Sea Change Theatre in Beverly, MA. His 2015 Rochester Key Bank Fringe Festival entry, THE BRIDGE CLUB OF DEATH, went on to be featured at an End of Life Symposium at SUNY Broome County and is listed with the National Issues Forum for those who wish to host similar events. Other plays seeing the stage in recent years include THE HATCHET MAN, DAMAGED BEASTS and COLMA! Mark has authored many short plays performed by The Geriactors, a local acting group. Mark’s fiction has been published in a local Rochester magazine, POST, as well as The Ozone Park Journal, SmokeLong Quarterly, Spank the Carp, Defenestration and Ponder Savant. Additional information can be found at www.markjabaut.com.