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a journal of literature & art

The Literary Review

Issue 10         Page 90

Asleep, I Wander

Into the pastures of my dreams I’ve crept

As one untethered from the world that swung

Through orbits of my daily mind, as far

As world will go.  Often, as I’ve slept,

I’ve gone where told and found myself among

Familiar faces, but in a bazaar

I’d seen only in movies as a child,

Or unfamiliar faces that somehow

Were known to me, for I can be beguiled

To recognize the strangest things below

The radar of attentiveness, and yet,

Aroused, I wonder at my sleeping mind,

Which seems to know a world it’s never seen

But which in only minutes I’ll forget. 

I’ve looked into my dreams but do not find

A path through them, for they have always been

In flux, like fields of grain in gusting wind,

And mute.  Anxiously uncertain, rushed

And misdirected, I am determined

To find something I’ve lost, because I must

The Drama Reviewer

For several years I wrote reviews of plays

For a newspaper in Connecticut,

And she would help me in instructive ways

To frame their matter, indicating what

Was most essential for them and what she

Had seen and I had altogether missed

In each performance, because generally

I failed to look behind the forward gist.

I rarely caught the life that she discerned

In slight inflections, the unspoken word,

The way an actress smiled through tears or turned

Her head at some small sound I had not heard.

Provided all this treasure, I would use

The least of it to write my brief reviews

© Bob Heman: The Arrival (XVII) - September 5, 2018

Life Wears Us

The fabric of a life, how soon it tears

Asunder, thins, becoming flimsy rag.

With no condign excuse we reach an age

When a belated love, with brimming tears

And urgent limbs, besieges our lulled heart.

About us, though, we see the bright world’s weave

And feel the strength of it, as we perceive

The ample beauty of each patterned part.

It wants to wear us out, this life, for love,

Renewed, astonishes, betrays, and wracks

Our flesh.  This material we’re made of

Must hold our losses and our pain, must clothe

Bewilderment and shame, withstand attacks

Of anger and despair, suppressing both.

Bandages of Fog

Remembering the bandages of fog

That wrapped your neighborhood at night

And left me with a chastened epilogue

To kisses and the hushed delight

Of touching you, I let the day expire,

Regretting nothing, nothing that

We said or did, and if I tell you what

I’m thinking now, you can’t require

An explanation of what I have done

With all the nights since you have gone.

Children play and scream on pummeled sand

And seem to be as innocent

As people want to believe they must be.

Their innocence, asserted and

Unassailable, is sacrament

To pious fools who will not see

Maliciousness unguarded in their eyes.

Love also is cruel, inflicting

Pain beneath benevolent disguise,

Good intentions soon conflicting. 

A morning in August, humid and cold,

The seacoast is muffled in haze.

My consciousness is slightly out of phase.

Early my larking sons have rolled

Me out of bed and coaxed me to attend

To what they need and have to say

In earnest on this inauspicious day.

The drifting haze seems to suspend

Our severed lives in limbo, distant from

The plangency of what must come. 

How to Appraise a Possible Mate

“When I meet a man I always know

Within a nanosecond whether I

Would ever want to make love with this guy,

And if I wouldn’t, why then should I go

With him to dinner, lunch, or anywhere?”

She has a point: personal attraction

To anyone begins not with abstraction

But with particulars: his voice, his hair,

The stubble on his chin, well dressed or not.

Perhaps his wrist protrudes beyond his cuff;

His voice is high, sounds as if it has been caught

Or snagged on something he has half-forgot,

A voice not smooth, but neither is it rough,

Sincere, perhaps, but that is not enough.

Navasota

In Texas on the Brazos River, you

Found refuge in a store selling antiques,

A family home now consecrated to

The well-wrought past, when things were made of wood,

Beauty blushed on smooth ceramic cheeks,

And workmanship was uniformly good.

The low damp skies of winter were forsaken

Of any sign the weather might improve,

But when we took the road less often taken

And stopped in Navasota for an hour,

You found an unsuspected sacred trove

Of treasure there, including at least four

Elaborate birdcages and roll-top desks,

A dozen dolls with glass-bead eyes that closed,

A smoking jacket’s patchwork arabesques,

And decorated oriental fans,

Along with other items that engrossed

Your eyes and filled you with acquisitory plans.

Your soul was nourished by such things as these:

A wicker chair, Depression glass, a vase

Shaped like a bird, a copse of painted trees.

Texas was unlovely and unsound,

But there in Navasota was a place

Where remnants of a lost world could be found.

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