The Bookends Review

undercover like
the backs of my legs in stockings
black soft in memory

weren’t you just saying
you were afraid?
I should have kept the transcript

I did keep the transcript
but I’m too embarrassed
to tell you

it isn’t normal
to save such little moments
make of chair…

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My wife and I lay in bed, the windows wide open to the Korean summer night. A breeze blows into the dark room, the breath of the mountains and rice fields. We listen to the raucous cacophony of frogs echoing through the countryside, thousands upon thousands of amorous amphibians calling for mates. They’re so loud it seems frankly impossible, like they’re all right outside my window or there’s some kind of hidden surround-sound speaker equipment in the room projecting frogsong at full volume. It’s too hot to close the windows, and I know I’ll have to put in earplugs to sleep. But for a few minutes I just bask in the music of it.

My wife, Hyunju, speaks just loud enough that I can make out her words through the background tangle of croaking.…

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Tom Kirkham is “a 30-something music obsessive and part-time explorer from North West England,” as well as a musician and songwriter in Silent Alliance, among elsewhere. Most recently, his the author of Pop Life – The Story of a Minor Musical Expedition, which finds Kirkham detailing how, after the deaths of David Bowie and Prince, he ‘learned to love music and life again via an intensive, year-long trawl through the back rooms and bars, concert halls and stadiums of the live gig circuit, searching for transcendence, or at the very least, an unobscured view.”

In this episode of Cover to Cover with . . ., Editor-in-Chief Jordan Blum also puts on his music critic hat to talk with Kirkham about his process and motivations for the book, his love for artists like Bowie, Prince, Kate Bush, Steely Dan, coping with anxiety, depression, and the dangers and polarization of modern society, and much more!…

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Some days belong to me more than others.
When I lie spread out across your lap,
the sun sends out sprigs of flowering bliss,
your steady breath ripples notes warm as
deer eyes over my hungry hair.

Slowly, I turn over late thoughts in my hands,
nibble the more sensible choices and wrap
the leftovers in scarves of thyme. (Its green suits
me best).

The sun is standing tall.
Your feet tap yesterday’s warmth.
We will pool all statues and lend them our sounds,
our footprints, even, should they agree
to never tell apart our million needs
and some minor niggling prophecies
in what seems to be our bowl of luck
between the kitchen and the laundry room,
the children, the fickle cars and the ill-fated cats.…

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We thought she was half-baked
from the medication
self-control had become overrun with
madness, forgetfulness
all those little pills to kill
the overbearing cancer
little objects found in odd places
left us wondering
‘Why would she do that?’
a ring hidden on a shelf
no one would ever find
unless they got an itch
to dust a shelf no one ever paid
attention to
an old bus pass underneath a basket
on top of the piano
we have since come to believe
to understand, rather
it was all done with purpose, not madness
as little reminders of her because
she was so afraid we might forget

– Ken Tomaro

Author’s Note: Much of my poetry is grounded in real life. This particular poem is the result of the death of a friend and a small glimpse of what happened afterward…

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My son named his cat Scratch because he’s forever making a fresh start. He is in his forties now, my boy, as thoughtful, generous, droll as ever, but still contending with all sorts of afflictions that have bedeviled him since early childhood. It’s a long story, one that I want to tell for reasons I think valid: composing a memoir would probably help me understand his challenges, my responses, our relationship, and sharing it might help readers in similar circumstances find their own answers.

There may, of course, be other forces at work, frustration verging on rage, perhaps a need to justify myself, to prove that I’ve treated him more lovingly than my folks did me, or at least that I’ve shown him rather more forbearance.…

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I used to climb these steps in a few bounding leaps. Not now. And not in so many years.

The space, the full city block which was converted from an old railroad terminal in the middle of what was known as Hell’s Kitchen, is a post office now, surrounded mostly by near-empty condos and hotels that once reached into the sky with restaurants you needed to make reservations for, months in advance.

And I no longer count the steps, even out of tradition or curiosity. I am too afraid my attention will slip away and I will lose count, or not make it to sixty-six at all. This time, finally, relieved and rewarded, I stood at the top, between a dozen massive Doric columns that faced 8th Avenue.…

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