The Bookends Review

1.

In the canebrake behind the sea
where at night the crickets

become mute when we get close,
there’s a giant hand ruffling

the canes and the canes are
up again in a moment.

It’s wild boars—an entire
family, descended from the hills.

At the village they say the beasts are
confused, that the climate is

changing—but that is not
why the boars have come down here.…

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Absolution ^[1]

when the night winds down beside you,
indifferently, lethargically, like
a cat
and the wonderance pesters you
like a cat
to backtrack
the day’s density,
be it complex or mundane, dense nonetheless,
and makes you replay
every interaction
flip-book style
showing how
your consonants cut
when it should have glided, how your eyes
scoured
when it ought to have gleamed, and how
last night
you said you’d change,
how you’d vowed
to be less harsh
to mother, friend, and cat,
to everyone, really,
but especially
to yourself,
and how,
regrettably,
you’d broken that vow
today
again,

remember that
you can try
     again
tomorrow.
and you can keep trying
again
         and again
            and again.

– Shawn Rampaul

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^[1] “There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us.…

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Taking a deep breath, he placed both chalked hands on the starting jug hold, and then positioned his feet on the wall chips, one after the other.  He gave the signal, exhaled, raised his right leg, pushed himself upwards and reached his left hand to the next handhold, a nice incut, which was solid, then his right hand to the smaller but gripable edge hold.  There was just something really compelling about the first move, a rush of adrenaline when you lifted yourself off the ground.  It was like a rocket launch or a plane taking off.  This was the moment when you realized you could fall.  This was the moment when you realized you could fly. 

*                      *                      *

“How long have you been top rope climbing?” …

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Libby found herself on her son’s street for the third day in a row, this time just after a night shift at the hospital. Her chance of getting any sleep was slipping. A heavy fatigue settled in her eyes and dragged down her thoughts. The haggard face in the mirror startled her, a sad and tired woman: dry skin, swollen cheeks, droopy lips. Her hands on the steering wheel slackened and her head nodded off. She fell into a passive, blank feeling. There was no name for it, this feeling, but it carried her to sleep until the sudden glimpse of a dream. A large bug landed on her neck and bit her skin. She woke in panic and placed her hands on top of her blonde hair.…

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and my mother buried him at the Waynesville cemetery in a double plot with a pair of tombstones, one for him and an unmarked slab waiting for her, and my father became a crow in the red maple behind the house in Hazelwood, and my mother lived another thirty years and waited for the day when she would lay down again with my old man. And sometimes my father would call her and sometimes she would pack a picnic lunch and sit outside sharing a pb & j and a slice of Dad’s favorite cherry pie. And often, she would be scolded with a caw from the telephone line running to the back of the kitchen. And she didn’t mind when my father stole the seeds for the smaller birds she kept in the bird-feeder hanging from the maple all winter long.…

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The latest resolution
composed at 0549 on a Friday
travelling 61 mph on the 405 as
mist from trucks around me
bathes my car in a benevolent
poisonous rinse;
this rain the first since April
& so encumbered
with unreasonable expectations
similar to that of the
first born
to a failing monarchy;
on it I do swear
to refrain from writing anymore
about birds.
Or the moon.…

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My mother comes from a long line of people who left everything behind. It’s impossible to talk about my mother, Angelica DeLaCaridad Gonzalez Bechtold, without talking about this history, all that came before her, and her own mother; Angelica DeLaCaridad Velazquez Gonzalez. From Castilian Spain her ancestors emigrated to the Canary Islands before settling in Cuba. Angie Senior left Cuba for New York and there gave birth to her three daughters, my mother as the first. There is much information I’ve gleaned only from the whispers and rumors of the occasional late-night conversation when even the Cubans forget their tight-lipped nature.

For a people so secretive and so seemingly willing to throw off the shackles of their history, Cubans are very proud of their heritage. When I got married, my wife kept her last name, and it prompted a story from my mother.…

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