Rahil Najafabadi’s “After Midnight”
When the hours stretch after midnight, I look after myself.
Once I am there near the pond–––
The air disappears
When I draft a songbird’s hum
On the wing of guilt.
I sober up and see a couple drunk men and women.
Some out of it, some already meshed into the black of the night.
I feel the man beside me and his feverish sleeve.
The scent of sweat is only tolerable when it belongs to the one you love.
But the one you love won’t be here, or there, in a bad, bad car
On the train,
In Manhattan,
After midnight.
I will always love you.
I won’t always let you know.
Always.
Always.
Always.
Always, always, always.
A familiar pain of thinking the right things,
but saying the wrong words in being crude:
I will define this moment–––
It is drafting a songbird’s hum on the cloud’s rise.
It is opening a letter knowing someone has died.
It is being and knowing that being itself,
is more significant than creating something new.
But I will never understand.
I will never understand.
Why does the air feel bitter now?
The afterhours hear me hum softly–––
It’s our familiar pain,
The sky is watching:
I see my stop, but I know,
I won’t get off the train.
Williamsbridge Reservoir Oval (I)
Curlew Friday Nights - July Twenty-ninth, 2022
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There is a park in the Bronx named Williamsbridge Reservoir Oval. Eight tennis courts, a football field, a track, two playgrounds. Above the track and past the playground there’s an elevated walking path, which is lined by wooden benches (painted green). They’re in front of the path and also behind the path, depending on which way you look. You can get to the Oval by taking the D train to the very last stop, 205-Norwood, then walking a few blocks up Bainbridge.
I like the space up there –––– not around the park, as the surrounding streets are as dense and narrow as most other streets in the city, but within the park, the Oval, the Williamsbridge Reservoir Oval. If you’re walking up from Bainbridge and approaching from the south you walk through a tunnel to enter the park. It’s not a long tunnel, but it holds a dramatic effect all the same, as it’s clear that where you were (Bainbridge) is different from where you’re going (the Oval).
I like all of the different things that people can do there: football practice in full pads (two teams of boys, one in red, the other in black); jump rope, walk and talk; play tennis; ride bikes; smoke; listen to music and dance; play cards. Summer nights up there just keep going ––– well past midnight.
My favorite thing that I’ve seen at the Oval so far happened this past Wednesday night. I was having Chinese takeout on one of the park benches that surrounds the elevated walking path (which surrounds the track) when a teenaged boy in a black t-shirt and black sweatpants raced by on a Citibike. Yes, a royal blue Citibike, which he was really laying into, pedaling with a quickness and lunging forward with intention.
Just after he passed me he stood up on the bike’s pedals as he approached the ridge that separated the walking path from the rest of the park below. It was clear that he had fashioned the Citibike into a BMX bike, not because he made any changes to the bike’s frame, but because of what happened next: he sat back down on the bike’s seat, popped a wheelie, jumped the ridge, hung in the air for a few beats, then rode the bike ––– with force and with speed –––– all the way down the hill to the track below.
- Isaac Myers III
Elizabeth Lerman’s “Railay: Part Three”
Lena led herself down the steep set stairs and sat down on a flat rock that lay above a sand bank where small, strong men were hauling ropes, ready to tie down incoming boats. She watched them as she waited for Sam to sort out their drinks - two big bottles of Chang and two bigger bottles of water. The men worked swiftly and naturally, cigarettes hanging loosely from the corners of their mouths. One of them turned to her and caught her eye. She smiled at him and raised her hand in a wave. He smiled back and called out.
“Boats coming in,” he said, “almost ready.”
He motioned to the turquoise waters and readied his rope like a lasso, preparing to catch a steed. The longboats waded gently into the harbor, shaking in the low waves as their inhabitants rocked and readied themselves for their dismount onto the dock. Dock, Lena decided, was a bold word, because really they were stepping onto a long stream of tied buoys, which bobbed with threatening fervor as bodies and luggage stepped cautiously onto them. The tourists gripped one another as they wobbled along the buoys, bags hoisted onto their backs, making their way quickly to the still shore. Lena took a final drag of her own cigarette before dropping the butt into the sand and stomping it out. She looked at the crushed stub for a moment and though there were several others scattered on the ground, Lena was hit with a wave of guilt that made her pick up the butt and toss it in a nearby trash bag. She saddled up next to Sam who smiled at her and nodded to the trash, “Really doing your part,” she said with sweet sarcasm. Lena laughed. “It’s the literal least I could do.”
The girls walked along the sand padded streets, following signs for the local beach. They watched the boats as they went, eyeing their fellow travelers boarding with uncertain steps, squeezing onto the benches, sitting shoulder to shoulder like sardines, their sweat slippery and spreading. Lena welcomed the small splashes of seawater that landed on her legs as the motor was kicked into gear. As if operating a lawn mower, the young Thai man who had spoken to her on the shore ripped the engine once, twice, three times until it rumbled and emitted a puff of fumes that made Lena’s head go light. The smoke cleared and the girls walked on as the boat slid out of the harbor and into the open water, bobbing roughly in the wake of larger vehicles. Lena thought of the feeling brought on by small, short waves and smiled at the thought of her stomach rising and falling like it did on the deep drop of a rollercoaster. She had forgotten that feeling could be manifested by something physical. It seemed to Lena that, lately, she had felt that drop only through her mind, her emotions, and her unrelenting anxiety. She felt it when the seasons changed, and she felt it when she changed.
“It should be around this bend,” Sam said, looking down at a map of the island as Lena looked up ahead. The cliffs surrounding the peninsula were grandiose and intimidating with their jagged edges and hanging rocks. The girls breathed in when they saw the water, its color an unreal array of greens and blues, but not like any they had seen before, not like any they would see again, save for this spot.
“Jesus.” Sam whispered, neck craning up towards the cliffs Lena knew she was set on climbing.
“Wave to me from the top,” Lena laughed.
“You don’t want to climb?”
“I’m happy down here.” Lena said, spreading a towel over a warm patch of sand. She set a beer between her knees and cracked open the top with a lighter. She took a long, slow sip and smiled at Sam. “Really, I am.”
That night, Sam slept sounder than Lena thought possible, her breath and body heavy and hot. Lena stretched her legs down towards the edge of the bed and heard her knees whisper a soft crack. Her bones ached more than they used to. She glanced at the sleeping body next to her and spent a few more restless moments beneath the thin sheets before slipping out from under the cool linen. She walked quietly to the cabin’s small wooden dresser, her feet padding gently across the floor’s smooth clay tiles. She took a joint from her cigarette pack and snuck back past the bed and out onto the patio. Despite the before-dawn breeze there was still a thickness coating the air and a droplet of sweat ran down her back, trailing past the ridges of her spine, offering some pleasant relief from the persistent warmth that had sat itself down on her skin. The smoke made her breath deep and her eyes heavy and she realized, through the hypnotic heat, clouds falling from her mouth, that the stark silence of the evening did not seem to be mocking her the way quiet dark normally did and she did not feel any desire or desperation to shake the stillness away. Instead, Lena was okay with the nothingness of the night, knowing that Sam was asleep on the other side of the curtains, her hair catching in the same wave of wind.
Annie Lure’s “The Interloper's Tale”
Annie Lure’s “The Interloper's Tale”
Curlew Friday Nights - July Eighth, 2022
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Decked out in a fox fur coat,
I fancy myself the rich publisher
of the hyperlocal magazine.
Do you live in town?
Nation’s Lending agent’s eyes go all rapey.
Yes, in the most transparent house. 64 windows lick my body gold each morning.
The fur was dealt to me by Russian puppet masters.
You have very long, healthy nails.
The fat realtor covets her neighbor.
Yes, they’re filed with Albanian cobblestones.
Frank, he’s the owner, and he’s not here now. Come back after 6.
In the pizzeria’s man’s tone,
I insinuate some Eastern uncle’s lechery.
(An obligatory internalized psycho-babble trauma trope shit.)
You won’t let me sell you ad space. Your ads are bound to aggregate in my magazine like
smuggling migrant trucks.
Why can’t I retrofit my silk, monied, foreignized dress to dumpy Lacey, the furniture artist’s
daughter?
Will the personal injury lawyer clinch my cunt on a mere technicality?
Can I drop my accent at the pawnshop?
This town isn’t mine. Though I live in it, I am not of it. I am somebody’s comprador.
I place the ancient woodsy Ararat elixir on the mahogany table wrought by the previous owner’s
good, hard-working American hands, and I drink its roots in like the baddest, blackest magic.
—- —-
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The line between poetry and fiction is a fine one, always bending and giving equal weight to the beauty of story-telling, along with the pleasures of word-play. Too much story and you’ve got a piece of flash-fiction. Too much rhythm, language and imagery without any narrative, and you’ve created a poem. Both have their gifts and joys, but something special happens when they combine their powers: a la, Annie Lure’s poem, “The Interloper’s Tale.”
I love the small moment ––– just one day out of an endless lifetime –––– that’s captured here. A rich publisher “decked out in a fox fur coat,” checks out a house. But not just any house; one that allows space for “64 windows [to] lick [the publisher’s] body gold each morning.” Clearly, it’s a stunning place. Though not nearly as stunning, I think, as the publisher. Said otherwise, anyone who can speak in “an obligatory internalized psycho-babble trauma trope shit,” has got my vote!
Isaac Myers III,
Editor
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Annie Lure enjoys poetry, erotica, museums, travel, and photography. She edits private clients’ monographs and publishes a hyperlocal lifestyle magazine. Poems of hers have appeared in Slipstream (Issue 36), Odyssey: Mediterranean Poetry, and Cider Press Review. She has read multiple poems at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe.
Cameron Colan’s “Meditations of an Airport Highway”
Fluctuating between a desire to die under a magnolia tree or in manhattan:
we humans always want both yet rarely have the capacity to cradle polarity in our hands.
Dying under a magnolia tree, such a beautiful way to not live.
Its blossom sheltered our souls, its shade smells of home.
Now, if only i had this much to give—
Passing in the grips of my concrete salvation, such a possibility makes the crazed salivate & the
practical hesitate.
Its symphony made up of whatever and whoever chooses to sing at that very moment—
Serendipity manifested as laughter, glass cages, dreams, piss covered streets and the universal
desire to never be alone under a pair of sweat soaked sheets.
Us all junkies, each in our own right, whether you stand behind a pulpit or scavenge the streets in
delight.
Its existence we didn’t consent to but are now fighting,
for just like that we are aware,
fully here with a world screaming at us to go there.
Our time comes and goes—A beautiful twisted bolt of lightning.
Exit here and left at the night,
settled your eyes are on the horizon, breathe out, take on the day’s first light.
Another carolina, not where you are supposed to be. Another missed connection,
one more glorious string, tap tap buzz, embrace the tension.
A magnolia or manhattan,
Why do we have to choose?
If you are where you are,
Is there really anything to lose?
- -
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I first heard this poem in June at “In Spite of Ourselves,” a monthly writer’s round Cameron has co-founded. I heard it out loud before reading it myself, and I was moved by the urgency in tone, and the unknown voice of the persona in Cameron’s poem. Unusual sounds and diction speak to me, and I could see that it spoke to the audience that night too. The writer’s round includes musicians and comedians, and there’s an inviting energy at Ray’s Bar in the Lower East Side, where the round is held each month. But after that poem, there was a moment of quiet, a moment to reflect on the elements of this poem. It’s a different kind of quiet than when everyone just stops talking and waits for the words to enter the air. It’s a chosen quietness.
- Rahil Najafabadi,
Associate Editor
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Cameron Colan is a multidisciplinary artist living and working in the Lower East Side of New York City. Colan is a co-founder of “In Spite of Ourselves”, a monthly New York City writers round that aims to highlight and support the exploration of influential voices of our moment ‘In Spite of Ourselves’; our doubts, our fears, and other oppositional forces that exist within our realities. Colan’s goal is to empower others through his writing, painting, and curated creative spaces in whatever way comes natural to them.
Elizabeth Lerman’s “Railay: Part Two”
“Verdict?” Lena asked when she heard Sam hit the mattress.
“Very sleepable,” Sam confirmed, “better than I expected, actually. What’s the bathroom deal?”
Lena reported her findings, assuring Sam that there was a toilet and shower head.
“It’s a pail flush,” Lena clarified, showing Sam how to scoop the water from an adjacent bucket and pour it rapidly into the toilet, efficiently draining the bowl.
“And what do we do when…?” Sam trailed off.
“Pour faster,” she said, handing Sam the scoop and leaving her the small tin roofed room.
“Should we find the beach?” Sam called from the bathroom as Lena dug through her bag, searching for something fresh to wear. She smelled like plane and people and sweat that wasn’t hers. She pulled her wrinkled shirt up over her head and slipped out of the denim shorts she had hastily put on in the airport bathroom upon arrival.
“Yeah, you want your suit?” Lena asked, locating Sam’s red bikini from her bag.
“Toss it in,” Sam responded, opening the door with her foot as she stuck a toothbrush in her mouth.
“We didn’t get water yet,” Lena said, looking at the toothbrush in Sam’s mouth. Her friend shot her a confused look.
“Are you brushing your teeth with tap water?” Sam’s mouth opened and her eyes went wide.
“Oh shit.”
“Exactly,” Lena said, laughing at her friend’s furiously furrowed brows.
“Is it really bad?” Sam asked, panic washing over her. Lena thought of the time she had accidentally brushed her teeth with tap water from her father’s Bangkok apartment. She had been on the bathroom floor for three days after, stuck on a steady diet of saltines and ginger ale.
“It’ll be fine,” Lena said, not sure if she was lying. “Just use bottled water from now on. We‘ll get some big ones at check in. Here,” she tossed Sam her suit and slipped on her own before stepping out onto the hut’s small porch. Her beer still sat on the plastic table that held a glass ashtray in its center. Lena stared blankly for a moment, contemplating another cigarette. After another breath of the thick summer air she darted back inside to grab her pack. She could tell herself not to worry, that she was allowed to indulge on vacation, but really Lena smoked with the same urgent tendency back home. She could justify her vices anywhere she went and though she hoped she would grow out of it, the years kept passing and her justifications did not. In Los Angeles she had liked to smoke in her car, in traffic to ease the pain of stillness, on the empty suburban streets of Griffith Park, and especially on the Pacific Coast Highway, as she flew up towards Malibu to swim in quiet waters, always less crowded than the beaches of Venice or Santa Monica. She would drive with such eagerness, towards the cliff-ridden stretch of sands, where she would sit and smoke some more, dripping from the ocean and tasting the saltwater on her lips mix with the nicotine in her throat. In college, Lena had like to torture herself during the Vermont winters by seeing how long her body could stand the cold, sitting out on the roof with her pack of Camel Blues and a bottle of red wine, watching her breath dance with the smoke in the pitch black bliss of a freezing night. She would stay up there until the air swayed around her and her head went heavy, wired with wind and wine. Lena had a habit of slipping, very subtly, into states of excess.
She climbed into the hammock and lit her cigarette. Her beer bottle left small, steady drops of condensation on the table and Lena fingered the pool of liquid at its base before dragging the water against the back of her neck, letting the stream saunter down her sweltering spine. She smiled at a young couple who bobbed down the path past her cabin. They waved at her as they talked quickly to one another in a language Lena guessed was Swedish or Swiss. There was a Nordic ring to their voices, a sing-songy sound that Lena liked very much. Both women were tanned and blonde, their muscular bodies accentuated by barely there bikinis, the type of suit Lena did not dare wear herself for fear of over exposing.
As if on cue, Sam sprung from the doorway in the smallest bikini Lena had ever seen.
“Does my ass show too much in this?” She asked, her earnest expression making Lena laugh, because she could see so much of her friend’s rear that the question should have been a joke.
“Isn’t that the point of bottoms like those?” Lena asked, giving Sam’s exposed cheek a light slap. Sam leapt away from her, guarding herself against the railing, tugging at the lack of fabric on her body with notable worry.
“You’re fine,” Lena assured her, “I just saw two women wearing the same thing, and theirs were white.” She raised her eyebrows, emphasizing her point.
“Oh, how daring!” Sam explained, exaggerating her shock.
“Ready to go?” Lena asked, clumsily removing herself from the hammock’s clutches.
“Sunscreen, then we’re good to go.” Lena took the bottle Sam held out and silently thanked her friend for enforcing the rule. Left to her own devices, Lena usually tended to ignore the laws of nature and risk the brutal burn. She breathed in the scent as she rubbed the sun block into Sam’s back, the smell settling into her senses and making her feel light and wonderfully at ease.
“I love this smell,” the girls said, their words landing together in a perfect unison that sent their smiles soaring.
- Elizabeth Lerman
“New York will do what it Wants” - Isaac Myers III
New York will do what it Wants
- Isaac Myers III
Curlew Friday Nights - June Tenth, 2022
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New York will do what it wants. You cannot try to force it, control it, or bend it to your will. If you want to love the city, then you have to learn its rhythm. You’ve got to listen to what it’s telling you; hear its whispers and not be intimidated by its silence. And New York is often silent. Do not confuse the sirens and the construction for anything different than silence. It’s a quiet power, not loud, but resolute ––– determined.
It’s easy to miss things in New York, so if you want to enjoy the city, you’ve got to slow down and rest. The idea that New York is the city that never sleeps is a fiction. This is a place that holds up and supports millions of ideas and dreams. So when do we dream? When we’re sleeping. And when do our best ideas find us? When we’re at rest.
You can look at the city, or you can watch the city. You can hear the city, or you can listen to the city. You can be in the city, or you can be with the city.
This week I spent three afternoons seated in three locations in and around Midtown Manhattan: Monday with a green tea in Central Park, near West 72nd Street; Wednesday with a cappuccino at 7th Avenue, between 38th & 39th; and Thursday with an avocado and kale smoothie, at the corner of 9th Avenue and 33rd Street.
Sometimes I read from Karlfried Graf Dürckheim’s Hara - the Vital Centre of Man, or from Tina Brown’s The Vanity Fair Diaries, two favorites that I keep revisiting. Hara for its eternal wisdom and power; and the Vanity Fair Diaries for Brown’s strong prose, editorial mastery, and boundless bravery.
Each of these afternoons, for a few moments, I set these books aside, pressed record on my iPhone, and just spent three or four minutes listening to the island. Although I didn’t catch everything that happened –––– all of the sounds, sights, and words spoken all around me (how could I?) ––––– there’s still one thing I’m sure of: the city said everything that it wanted to; the city did not leave anything out.
Atlas the MONOLOGUE by Rahil Najafabadi
Places
In the corners of your world, I created my own. I was hoping to bring someone into the corridors where roaming is allowed. Every world has its edges until it merges with the air of another existence. Mine just exists in the unrented spaces of the ordinary world.
My human has become conscious. Self-conscious.
One of those pages slipped into his hands and he began reading. His eyes moved to the end of each line, and with every expression I knew what he was learning about himself.
I think that to write of someone is to be in a dance with someone––But to dance with someone is to fall in place with someone. I fell in place and began with that person, here in this atlas.
Things
My small Earth is structured asymmetrically.
The only things are the dome and the mountain. There’s a moral significance of not knowing which was here
first.
If I were a dome, I’d be a blue, blue dome. Taped with tiles geometrically with odd pointing stars.
I’d be blue and dark blue, and a little white at the bottom. Maybe a small moon at my pointed arch that is
closest to the sky.
If I were a mountain, I’d be blue again and not brown. There’d be white at the top, sugarcoating me.
I know if I was a dome, I’d wish to be a mountain. And I know if I were a mountain, I’d wish I weren’t so blue.
I’d probably let people visit and light a small fire down the hills, and watch them get warm. When I’m a mountain,
I’m neither volcanic, nor a demon-ridden range. I let people come and go. I let fires burn me because there is no tree
but the ones kids carve on.
What they don’t know is that I am the mountain, the tree, and the hill with fires that is left behind.
A Person
Words cannot stay in my mind but feelings can––the feelings given to words.
Another day won’t slip away to the fall and eruption of emotions, or the lack thereof.
Boughs and black branches dropping like sunlight in reverse, waiting for detrimental craving:
They know where the cheetahs and lions hide. They know when the sun makes its return.
Doesn’t it scare the little birds, the birds, how the wooden boughs have been here longer?
The long trail of trust from walking up the mountain from the dome, without knowing
Any moment is a chance that these branches may fall. They do, but who thinks of them,
When there is a blue mountain and a mirroring dome that are replicas of each other?
Cheetahs run from the sun, because they know they cannot trust her or her friend, the lion.
Lions run after the cheetahs, and the sun watches over their game of extinction until it’s dark.
But the branches watch it all, and fall when they fall knowing the sun and the truth,
That tomorrow the animals will run after each other again, and the dome will hold prayers.
Dreams
I’ve awaken mid nightmare to tell you, you were in both the good dream and the bad:
The one with the dome collapsing, and its ancient blue tiles breaking, just like the one with the blue mountain
turning brown before it died.
I’ve come to tell you that branches fall,
And they fall on the flower whose stem you’d never be able to break because its home
Is already broken.
There were two of you, and it seems I’ve returned to dreams instead of dome for a prayer.
In one dream, you saw me and rushed past the hands tilted toward the sky to meet me.
In another, you rushed past me to meet another whose hand you held.
The branches fell on me in both dreams.
My hands were scarred from the rough wood that tore me awake from the good sleep,
And my mind battered from the image I couldn’t escape unconsciously, the boughs truly fell––
Trapping me but leaving just enough space for my eyes to see you somewhere else, even
in the depths of a dark dream.
Nature
The corridors of my world that are printed flat on a paper surface like an atlas have expanded,
and so has the ordinary world with seawater ceasing to land, making room for more of us.
I think ruins are the remains of a cheetah once lived and forever hunted and not a broken dome.
A dome is what we make, but a home is what we create. “Identity is what we create” but how come,
I still have none?
I have a home, a blue dome, a mountain I call a mirror of the dome, but I am still drunk from the barrels of
a dying sun.
Now go to sleep, knowing you are loved.
But know, there are questions awaiting your departure in a place without dreams.
Did you know, if someone had every bit of the sun that died, they would give it to you to become your light.
That someone is me.
I’d trap pieces of the sun, like pieces of your heart in a jar––the sun in the jar for you to see, the pieces of you
for me to keep near you, where you can still feel them.
Although, those pieces of your heart were pieces of you, like tiles of the dome in shape of a star.
Perhaps at a distanced dome, our sun too, looks like the shrine tiled star.
I’d give it to you, and climb the mountain that never dies to reach another dome and another star that is alive––
to bring you another jar of a foreign light.
In these lights, I hide my words meant for you: the words I gave feelings to.
Here in this atlas, there are no lines between us.
There is no prayer unless your poetry becomes a prayer––unless you want your prayer to be a prayer.
Atlas by Rahil Najafabadi, Ink on synthetic paper, 2022.
And in truth,
The awakening is not the atlas,
But knowing there can never be one without light.
-Rahil Najafabadi
Tori Ashley Matos’ “the village and their bohike”
the village and their bohike
call everyone and tell them
the party is off
but the pot is full of gandules—
cometelo.
pour tap water into a glass
bowl under the moon
to soak up the blood.
i am grown now and tonight
for the first time
my Grandmother told me:
No sabia.
Siempre, siempre lo supe.
El bebe de Jessica?
Si. Sabía que era una niña.
Le dije a su esposo
“¿Mi hijo? Te espera una sorpresa.”
she giggles
her eyes close.
Le dije a Sylvia
lo mismo.
“Eso no es una niña, mi hija.”
Pero este?
Son como la luna.
Nunca es una cosa por sí misma.
we talk into the night
about birth as performance.
que scene stealer,
she says.
my grandmother es un aquario
y nací bajo una luna de sangre
a mystery.
Elizabeth Lerman’s “Railay: Part One”
Sam sat at a small table next to the check in while Lena approached the woman behind the desk. She nodded down at her notebook, bookings scribbled on each line, and rummaged in a drawer for a moment before pulling out a large keychain and handing it to Lena.
“Number seven,” the woman told her, and pointed up a small path lined with cabins, each with a large hammock on their deck. Lena thanked her and took the key before motioning to the small refrigerator stocked with Chang beer. She held up two fingers and left 200 baht on the counter before grabbing the beers and placing one in front of Sam. Lena took a seat across from her friend and the women clinked their bottles together and toasted to the cool relief. Sam squealed in delight as a small French bulldog sauntered over to greet them and sniffed, skeptically, at their bags.
“Should we see the room?” Sam asked, draining the last few sips of her beer. Lena nodded, chugging hers as well, before gathering the bags together. The girls walked down the stone path, avoiding roosters and small chickens along the way.
“They’ll be a good alarm,” Lena said, nodding to the roosters. She knew they should try and get some sleep now in order to get ahead of their jet lag but there was too much energy buzzing through them. They had been traveling for a long thirty hours and during the journey they had wanted nothing more than to be here, a bed in sight and rest in reach but now, seeing it all, Lena knew they would not be sleeping until night demanded it.
“What number?” Sam asked, scanning the cabins.
“Seven,” Lena said, pointing to the right, “this one.” With its wicker walls and metal roof Lena could already hear the predicted rain pouring down.
“It’s gonna be loud when it rains,” She told Sam.
“If it rains,” Sam corrected.
“It will rain.” Lena insisted. It was the season for it. It seemed impossible now, in this sun soaked heat, but Lena was certain of it. She knew clouds would come and could already sense the steady downpour that would drench the jungle around them.
- Elizabeth Lerman
“First Thing, we go Bowling ––– Last Thing, we Bowl” - Isaac Myers III
The first thing I did when I got out of bed in the morning was look over at the clock that was hanging above the refrigerator in Gina's apartment. I had heard a few of the birds that would gather on the fire escape outside the window at the end of her bed begin to chirp so I guessed that it must have been around 5:00am, maybe 5:30am, but the clock read 4:30am. The birds were out early and the sun was taking its time to rise and I sat on the end of the bed for a few moments and thought about what I wanted to do next. There were a few options and I let my mind go through each one of them, considering the pros and the cons of each, weighing my options.
One thing I could do next was stand up and walk over to the window and open it a bit more so that we could feel more of the cool April air move through the apartment. I liked this option. It was my favorite so far. Another option was to crawl back into bed and sleep for another hour. The problem with this option was that I knew if I slept for another hour then that one hour would turn into three hours and when I got up again, three hours later, I'd feel a lot less refreshed and not nearly as well-rested as I did in that moment ––– sitting on the bed and looking out the window at dawn. I didn't like that option. The third option made the most sense and I could also go through the third option just after finishing the first: walk over to the stove and put on the kettle and make a cup of tea. I decided on those two, a combination of option 1 and option 3; or better stated: option number 1 immediately followed by option number 3.
By the time I had a cup of earl grey tea in my hand and was taking small sips from the mug I noticed that the first cracks of dawn were making their appearance in the morning's sky. I was glad I hadn't gone back to sleep and even though I thought it might be kind of nice if Gina was awake as well and having a cup of tea with me, it was just as well this way. I was having my quiet time at dawn and she was sleeping and probably dreaming happy dreams and that was all anyone could ever really ask for, to lay peacefully in bed and dream something soothing.
There was just enough light that was coming into the room now that I didn't really need the reading lamp on the desk that I was sitting in front of, but even so, I switched it on and enjoyed the additional warmth of the yellow light against the oak desk and upon the magazine that I was reading. The magazine was an old copy of Time, one from 2007, I think. All of the stories in there were from this era of life that I had kind of forgotten about. I read a short piece about Barack Obama and whether he had a chance to win the Democratic primary. There was also a write-up about the iPhone and whether it was worth its price and what it would mean for all of the other cell phones on the market back then. I didn't read that piece, I just flipped through it and smiled with a knowing nostalgia as I looked over a few photos of the early iPhones.
Then I heard something fall in the apartment next to us. It sounded heavy. It made a giant thumping crash against the wood floors and I actually jumped out of the chair a little bit. Gina woke up and looked out the window and the looked over at me and started rubbing her eyes because she wasn't sure what had happened. She just heard the thud and didn't know where it came from.
She got up out of bed and slipped on a pair of sweatpants that kind of sort of matched the navy blue Giants t-shirt of mine that she was sleeping in. Then without any hesitation she opened the door to the apartment and stepped across the hall and knocked on Frank's door.
"Frank," she said. "Are you in there?"
She knocked again.
"Is everything okay?" There was a long pause before she said, "Are you all right?"
The door to our apartment was still open and she looked back at me as if I might have a suggestion of what to do next but I really didn't have any idea. I didn't know who Frank was and this was only my third time sleeping at Gina's place so the whole thing was pretty bizarre: why was she knocking on this guy's door at five in the morning? That's what I was thinking.
Through the door I heard someone begin to moan. It was a man's voice and it was a long and trying moan and I gathered that it must have been Frank. He didn't use any words, just grunting and sighing and moaning.
"I'm coming in there," Gina said. "Just wait, I'll get you some help."
By this point I had set that copy of the old Time aside and had finished my cup of tea and was kind of just standing around the kitchen by the sink and not really knowing what to do next, if anything at all.
Gina walked back into the apartment and just kind of shook her head in disbelief. She headed back toward the closet and ran her hand across my chest a couple of times as she was walking away.
This was when I wanted to spring into action and do something heroic ––– to rescue the day, but I had no idea what to do so I just kind of kept standing there, lingering in the kitchen. I put on more hot water.
"Do you need any help?" I asked.
"No," Gina said. She was sifting through a couple of jackets in the closet, checking their pockets, looking for something. "It's just Frank."
She turned around and presented a key. "He just does this."
Outside the birds were really chirping now, no –––– the birds were really singing now, they were singing and the sun was coming up in all of its glory and it pretty much looked like daylight (or almost daylight) outside.
As the tea kettle cried out again Gina was standing in front of Frank's door again and holding the key that she pulled from one of the jackets in her closet.
"Frank," she said, "I'm coming in," then knocked.
"Wait," he said. "Just a minute."
"Are you dressed?"
"I said just a minute" ––– that's what Frank had said in that moment.
Gina looked back at me and I glanced over and gave an approving nod. Whatever she was doing it looked like she must have done it before.
"I'm okay," Frank said.
"Are you sure?" Gina asked.
"No," he said through the door. But then Gina didn't move and there was a long silence so he said, "Well, all right, you can come in ––– I guess you can help me."
Gina put the key in the lock and opened the door and looked back at me and gave the nod that meant I want you to come with me, so I set down my newly-poured mug of tea and did.
Frank's place was dreaded. Socks and t-shirts and tea bags (can you blame him) and books and half-opened bags of potato chips and a plate with a chicken bone or two were kind of just everywhere. But there wasn't a stench, just a moderately unpleasant stiffness in the room.
Where was Frank? When Gina and I walked in we didn't see him at first but then as we kept walking into the room we noticed that there was a foot with a red sock that was sticking out from under the bed.
Frank said he wasn't hiding beneath the bed. He wasn't afraid of anything. It was just that his bowling ball had fallen off of the shelf by his bed, bumped up against the wall, and then rolled beneath the bed, so he was down there, reaching for it when we walked in.
He must have been in his late fifties and he had this thick beard and was wearing a white undershirt that was kind of stained in the middle and he was also in his boxers which wasn't that pleasant but Gina was looking past that (and also looking past the mess in his apartment), so I tried my best to do the same.
The bowling ball was bright red and he kept it in a black bag with white stripes and a small pocket on the outside.
“We’ve got a match tonight,” he said.
“Where?” asked Gina.
“At the Lucky Strike, on Tenth Avenue, you know the place?”
Gina and Frank both looked over at me.
“Do you know the place?” Frank asked again.
I didn’t realize that he was talking to me.
“Yeah, yeah,” I said, “I’ve been there, once or twice I think.”
Frank started to get up off the floor and Gina helped him get up. They both sat on the bed and I just kind of stood there by the door for a little while longer.
“You bowl?” he asked
––– and before I could answer:
“With her?” he said.
I hesitated. Then Gina jumped in, “Frank, that’s Gary. We’re friends.”
Friends? I thought.
“That’s not what I asked,” Frank said. “I asked whether you two go bowling together.”
“Well, yes,” Gina said. “Like I said, Frank, we’re friends.”
Frank stood up off of the bed real quick.
“I knew it!” He said; and he let the bowling ball thud against the floor again.
“You’ve been messing around with this guy here –––– this . . . Gary,” or whatever you call yourself.
He gave me a mean look; and I mean, mean. Crazed.
“Look, Frank,” Gina said, “It’s not like that. I already told you, the two of us, you and me, we’re not together, Frank. Remember, what the doctor told you?”
Frank turned away from Gina and started walking toward the window but Gina kept on and followed him.
“I’m not Martha,” Gina said. “She’s gone Frank, remember. She left.”
“Then who the hell are you then?” He looked over at me, “And then who the hell is he?”
Gina gave me a look like I was supposed to move over by the window and join them. I stood still for a while but she gave me the same look again and I was pretty much caught in the moment so what the heck, I walked over and stood by the window as they kept talking.
“Gary,” Gina said, “Tell Frank your name, first and last, and also how you know me.” She looked over at me, assuring me, telling me to go on.
I looked over at Frank and at this point I noticed that he had been crying; there were tears in his eyes and he looked really afraid, like he didn’t know where he was and he didn’t know who he was and the whole thing was a lot to deal with so I just told him: “Hi Frank,” . . . he looked at me right in the eye, “I’m Gary . . . Gina’s friend.”
A silence fell between the three of us and not one of us moved ––– not even a little bit ––– for a good while so I thought Frank had started to calm down, but I was wrong.
“You god-damned liar!” Frank said, really shouting. “You think I’m fucking deranged? Is that what you think, Gary!? Is that what you think!? You don't think I know what’s going on between you and my wife, Gary?! You think I don’t know!?”
“Hey!,” Gina screamed, she was really getting in his face now, “Frank! Frank! Cool it, Frank! Be cool.”
Next thing you know Frank is picking me up and throwing me against the window and getting real close to my face and saying things like, this’ll be the last time; this’ll be the last god-damned time, you hear me?!
And I was friggin shook! Trust me, I was shook.
And then Gina was clawing at Frank’s back, trying to get him to let go of me and I was yelling too ––– get off of me! Get off me!
Then not before long there was a knock on the door followed by the bell and someone kept ringing the bell to the apartment. One of the neighbors started beating on the door, really pounding on the door, mostly because it was six in the morning and we were all yelling and screaming and carrying on and didn’t they know that there were other people in the building who needed to get some sleep for christ’s sake!
So Gina stopped trying to pull me off of Frank and went to open the door; and Frank kept a hold of me real tight; then Gina let the person at the door in. That person was a guy named Donald who turned out to be the building’s super and thank god he knew how to get Frank to get ahold of himself.
“Frankie!” Donald cried out, “Frankie! Stop it! Leave’em alone.”
Donald shot across the room and pretty much tackled Frank onto the bed and then the bowling ball thumped onto the floor again and Donald and Frank started tossing and turning and trying to land punches on each other and pin the other guy down. It was wild.
Then Frank fell onto the floor again and Donald was standing over him, god bless him (Donald). Then Donald took a quiet and soft knee beside Frank, who was breathing very heavy now. And Donald said this so calmly and with so much love and care for Frank, I’ll never forget it: “Frankie, it’s okay. Frankie, it’s okay. It’s okay.”
Rahil Najafabadi’s “The Bridge”
There was a time when I thought the moon followed us.
Then the sun, and the camp of stars thrown like a blanket
trinketed with gold. On many of those nights, I remembered
the daytime blue coloring the page of each bridge you made.
If I spoke another language, I’d still be able to call your name.
If I drove on another bridge, I’d still think of yours and our car.
I’d still imagine the word ‘father’ stretching from the right side
of the page to the left, like the way you’re on the right side
Of the earth’s page, and I am on the left. At night, it is your day.
My day becomes the dark thread of the sea that is tied to the sky—
I wish the bridges could be brought to me by other bridges.
Other pieces of the sky, the day and a string of the night.
— —
“The Bridge” is a visual art collection gifted to my father. My father is a bridge designer behind bridge development and solving technical issues related to them. I was always interested in his work and the way bridges worked. But then as I grew up and traveled and grew apart from friends and family across the world, bridges gained metaphorical significance. The Persian text that is scattered on the page is in shape of my father’s bridges, with the word “father” in Farsi, my mother tongue.
Being excited about bridges changed the way I looked outside the car. I’m always curious about the dynamic of a bridge, and how it makes my stomach feel when the altitude begins to fall. I also have a strange feeling of knowing which part of a familiar bridge I am in the car when I close my eyes. It must be because I remember how the car moves on that specific part of the bridge. It’s like napping on a car ride home and knowing where you are based on the turns of the car. This collection is my little gift to my father, who gave me the gift of appreciating people and places with poetry.
- Rahil Najafabadi
Forthcoming: Curlew Friday Nights
For better or for worse, this photo and literary journal, Curlew, which we founded almost five years ago, is a lot like the city that it calls home: never finished, always reinventing itself, and forever staying in motion. While we have enjoyed the excitement and the creative pressures of offering a Curlew Daily piece for every single day of the week, with the launch of Issue No. 9, we’ve realized that a lot of the efforts that we’ve spent creating the daily entires could be directed toward highlighting the newest issue, planning the next issue, and further-developing the newest facet of the Curlew journey, Curlew’s Professional Copywriting Services (“Curlew PCS”). More details about the Curlew PCS venture can be found through our weekly log, forthcoming, which will share the same name, where we’ll write about tools, reflections, and insights about content marketing, copywriting, and more.
As for the literary journal, we have not given up on offering stellar poems, photographs, stories, reflections, and illustrations in between issues of the printed journal, but instead of daily posts, each week we will offer Curlew Friday Nights, posts from our regular and guests contributors, including but not limited to the work of Elizabeth Lerman, Tori Ashley Matos, and Rahil Najafabadi, as well as photographers including Nic Anselmo, Rene Chandler, and many more. These will be more in-depth meditations & creative works: compilations of poems, rather than just one poem; a short story, rather than a few lines of flash fiction; a series of photographs and/or illustrations, rather than just one image.
Why Friday nights? We like to think there’s no better time or day of the week to enjoy creative work than those few hours from 5pm until 11:59pm on Fridays, when the city’s sprint pauses for a few strides as the weekend approaches. Night falls and collectively, we put another week into the record books, glancing with hope and peace toward the weekend.
Life may not always be easier on Saturday mornings than it is on Friday afternoons, but at least the end of a week creates that possibility, and brings forth a bit of hope and peace as this city, as well as its people, continue to reinvent ourselves and find new ways to enjoy our lives. If nothing else, then we hope the Curlew Friday Nights can help add to those reinventions and that enjoyment each week. The first one will be up on Friday, May Sixth, 2022.
All of our best,
Curlew New York
April 17, 2022 by Elizabeth Lerman
I am tracing a finger over the map in my mind, searching for some specific scene where the beachgrass bends inward and meets in the middle where your legs stand still, stuck ankle deep in sand that, sometimes, seems to keep on rising, but if and when you do pull free, there is a town waiting on the other side of the water, where the ferry runs back and forth, dutifully, all day, so that you could, if you wanted to, spend several summer hours sitting on the small, slow ship, wondering which shore you’ll be left on when the sun sets.
April 11, 2022
notes on the fallout
- tori ashley matos
the night i asked if you’d shield me from the blast
was the night i decided that i’d never be able
to leave you.
this way whatever happens next, it
would be my fault for giving too much of myself—
whatever was left after the bleeding would be yours
to keep, even if you stayed walking away from me
and never turned to ask if i was following.
the museum at 15 was when i decided if i could not
grow up to be a forest i would grow up to kiss
every woman on earth with hair as short as my father’s.
when i turned 12 i learned i could make myself into a
river. at 6 i learned that no water could ever quench
the thirst of the fire i saw and shouldn’t have seen. but
i think now, in the desperation of my missing you, that i
would let you rain paper from the sky which has always been
a most potent omen of death, if it meant i could
gift you with the agony of sewing my skin back together as
it melted from me. even memory has its place in the
present danger. the forest i wanted to become is some
where lush i go when faced with an ending. i was sat
on the train before the end of the world before i knew
the world could end and i would go on living
and in the tunnel a million miles underground
i was still turning pages in my novel in the forest
i planted from the ash of the new world.
this night you were there.
so i’ve decided you will always be there even
when you leave me.
April 10, 2022 by Elizabeth Lerman
I keep myself awake, most nights, nurturing a feeling of fear, a small tickle of terror that isn’t really as bad as it sounds. It’s a familiar relative of the panic I felt as a child, when I would wake in the dark and lay still, thinking about the large window in the living room, the one looking out over a yard that came alive with light if it sensed something treading on it. I thought, if I stood there long enough, and stared at the lamplit street, I would see something I was not supposed to and then it would be too late to turn away. I am back there now, most nights, watching out the window, witnessing a world of bad, wishing I had not looked. I know I am living in two places at once, seeing more than I am meant to. I know someone is walking towards the window and I know that, most nights, I scramble to shut my eyes tight before the lawn lights up and I see something I can’t forget.
April 8, 2022
I Followed a Ladybug
- Alexandra Pauley
Today, I followed a ladybug. This wasn't a planned adventure, scheduled on the Google Calendar, but a spontaneous choice that literally sprang up in front of me. I had just begun a walk through Central Park, inhaling the refreshingly crisp Spring air, while admiring the colorful flowers beginning to bloom, when a ladybug dared to land on my button nose! Stunned as I was, I managed to remain still while crossing my eyes in an effort to bring her into focus.
With a grace I didn't see coming, she spread her vibrant red outer wings, dotted with black spots, then her hind wings, and lifted off my nose like a ballet dancer. She traveled a few feet, then touched down on the lush green grass. The contrasting colors brought a wide smile to my face, and that was it. I was hooked.
Her six tiny legs carried her up, down, beneath and over, blades of vivid grass, and crispy leaves, at a pace I hadn't expected. Like a solider on a mission, she moved forward by some internal compass; ever seeking. A few minutes passed this way when a spunky chocolate lab sprang across her path, sending the grass from which she clung, into a whirlwind!
Once again, her wings sprang open, she drifted upward, and held her position in the breezeless afternoon, like a hovering helicopter. She paused at my eye line, and I kid you not, dipped her head to me, before sailing off into the lush North Woods of the park. I lost track of her before long, but the feeling of companionship lives on. We shared a moment, that ladybug and I. And although we will never see each other again, her kindred spirit resides in my memory.
April 6, 2022
AWP 2022: A New Beginning for Writers, Again
- Rahil Najafabadi
Last month, I was lucky to participate in AWP 22, that was held in Philadelphia, PA. Each year, the Association of Writers and Writer’s programs holds a conference in a different city, where writers, editors, students and faculty unite to celebrate their field. Many panels are held and a graceful book fair ramps up the excitement.
As a poet, I felt quite strange on my way to Philly. To be clearer, I was quite discouraged with my work before leaving. Amid a writer’s (poet’s) block, I wasn’t sure my work informed my identity, or vice versa. I felt confused with how I defined myself, as a poet. As a Persian born poet writing Persian poetry in English. But something changed once I was there; I was in the right place, really.
Being among writers always gives me hope. I’m very young, and therefore many crossroads present themselves to me. It wasn’t until the last day of the conference that I felt confident about pursuing the craft of poetry. I attended a panel about American Sonnets—a poetry form I’m most fluent in writing and reading. I gained a lot of insight, but also a lot of encouragement. I met many poets I admired from states and miles away, and had the chance to see people who cared about a genre, a form, a style I cared for, which is quite profound.
This is why poetry readings are necessary. This is why it is important to be back, to be present, to attend readings in person.
April 5, 2022
Untitled. First Date Meditation. #1
- Tori Ashley Matos
The night before a date, I think about which person I’ll drag out of the closet—don’t laugh—and introduce to tomorrow night’s first kiss. Is it the leopard bodysuit and black heels? Should she throw on a leather blazer or is that just fishing? Is Joy Division and an as yet undecided jean more of a third date kind of nonchalance? Is it the kind of outfit you discuss your anxiety in? Do you discuss anxiety at a bar? Everything about dating is ineloquent and unoriginal, but writers somehow still write.
I’ve checked the weather. It’s supposed to rain. A strappy satin sandal at a 50 degree angle from the body, on the corner of 42nd and 10th at 11pm, under a drizzle that lays just so on a cheek or a lip, just before he puts me—gently, chivalrously—in a taxi is an enticing vignette, but the satin. And maybe that’s really all this is, anyway. A series of daydreams: tableaus and disappointments. I mean, its a first date on a Wednesday for fuck’s sake. I’ll likely splash into an nondescript Uber in boots too big for me and that’ll be another person I’ll shove back onto a hanger with a bad name. Didn’t work, address in post.
There’s nothing stopping tomorrow from making magic. Fuck what you heard, but it can happen. You can let a boy who’s taller than you with a delicious mouthful of a name chase you up a flight of stairs to see Washington Square Park from above. You can let him take you home, stumble his way on top of you, and hear him thank you for the ways your eyes are maybe the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. You can remember, in detail, the first time a man called you beautiful in his bed. When you’ve only ever been 20 and hot, you feel finally like a woman.
So, I hold out a little corner of me for hope. Nothing too crazy. Just a morsel of maybe. Right next to my fear of murder and rape. Somewhere adjacent to just normal, endearing embarrassment at existing in a body. Just underneath a trembling, searing certainty in my own youth—full lips, wet pussy, and eyes that look good from above and below. It might not be love. It usually never is. But daydreams and disappointments can make you fall a little bit closer until you just fucking trip. And there it is.
April 3, 2022 by Elizabeth Lerman
I am thinking about reflection and all the surfaces we spot ourselves in. Uncanny, always, to catch a glimpse of the person you are going through life as, to see your own eyes etching a scene of someone staring back at them and both of you have it now, that feeling of being watched, of being seen from somewhere outside yourself and so when we hung mirrors on the trees it was to say to one of those selves, stay here a second, stand still and look, and I wonder if, when I turned and walked into the woods, someone did stay there, back pressed to brown bark, and kept on watching as I went.