The Bookends Review

a hummingbird
sips from
our feeder before
        flying away
   returning

fifteen minutes
later an impatient
diner 
she glides
          tilts

finds a red
lobelia and
goes there

silently

– Kenneth Pobo…

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We’re halfway through the set and my hand is on fire. My white guitar is smeared red with blood. The walls are sweating and the crowd in front of us seems endless. It isn’t, I can see the back staircase, but in my mind we’re at the start of something real here.

I finish my solo at the end of the song and step up to the mic. “I know Georgie said he was inviting everyone he knew, but I didn’t think he had this many friends!”

A soft laughter comes from the crowd and Georgie taps the drums behind me in response.…

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Luke squinted into the darkness and identified his old friend, Orion. There was the hunter’s belt, his broad shoulders, his knees. There were his club and shield, though to Luke, the armaments appeared more like a bow just after release. As his eyes repeatedly traced the points of light—what the ancients believed were pinholes in the firmament—he saw more details: Orion’s matted hair; the sinews of his taut, lean arms; the creases and furs of his pelt; his cruel, heartbroken eyes, as clear and sharp as glass. Luke could see his life, too: Orion the bastard prince, who walked across the Aegean Sea; Orion the libidinous drunk, who raped Princess Merope; Orion the blind, his eyes gouged out by Merope’s father.

Reflexively, Luke turned, trying to find Perseus, but of course, Orion followed him.…

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Landscapers remove
weedy bushes
in smoke
from distant fires.

A dead-looking sky 
inert in a cloud coffin. 

Saws blare.  Branches
heap up.   

The crew leaves us
with more light
that I stand in,
briefly, before
returning to
our closed-up house. 

– Kenneth Pobo…

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Home reeks of lime
and mildew. We hoist
a box spring through the second-
floor window—
dirt beneath creme brulee nails,
tip-toeing around next door’s
double panes, the clatter
of a dead woman’s rose-colored
dresser drawers echoes
in the afternoon.

– Rebecca Ferlotti

Note: This piece was originally published in Mock Orange Magazine (2013, now defunct)…

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This was back when the Greek was still sleeping in his car. The war was in its second or third surge. No one could keep track anymore; we just knew we weren’t going to lose it.

We’d been out of high school for about a year, some of us fast becoming townies. One of us had gone down to college in Austin. We called him Spray Can because it seemed like all he had shaking around in his head was one marble. It was more of an ironic nickname because he had to be the smartest one among us, which wasn’t saying much. He was also—not uncoincidentally—the only virgin.

The Greek would also move to Austin later that year. And this was just before Sam moved up to Portland to follow his brother and another friend, part of the early noughties mass exodus in search of rain because none of it was falling where we were.…

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The prickly pear tea brought him back to Santa Fe — brought him back to her. It had been years since that week in the small adobe brick shack outside of town, nestled amongst the rolling dunes and the looming saguaros. How long ago had it been? Seven years? Ten years? He would have been a younger man then, just turned twenty-one and she, an older woman. She had seen decades of change in the city before he was even born. And still more before he had even stepped foot off the train into her strange land. She fascinated him — in the way she thought, in the way she spoke, in the way her strong-legged silhouette straddled him in the flicker of candlelight. He bowed to her gospel.…

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