INSIDE THIS ISSUE:
Bilall Maliqi
Duane Locke
Eddie Awusi
Silvia Scheibli
Amit Parmessur
Lyn Lifshin
Juan Hongi
Shutta Crum
Peycho Kanev
Fahredin Shehu
Lana Bella
Laszlo Slomovits
Abdulrahman M Abu- yaman
Elisavietta Ritchie
Michelle Bailat-Jones
Keith Moul
Aneek Chatterjee
Tom Evans
Robert Nisbet
Paul B. Roth
Alex Ferde
Alan Britt
Ali Znaidi
Running Cub
John Grey
Jennifer Burd
Fred Wolven
Helen Gyigya
Ann Arbor Review
is an independent
International Journal & ezine
Copyright (c) 2018
Francis Ferde
All rights revert back to each poet.
--editor / Southeastern Florida
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AAR history note: in print 1967 - 1980. Irregular publications 1980 - 2004. As ezine 2004 - present. Most of 51 years all together....
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staff:
Francis Ferde
Silver Grey Fox
Running Cub
Fred Wolven
Submissions via
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SOMEWHERE IN ITALY
Old palazzo with
windows like wide frightened eyes,
looking over at the sea. The piazza in front of it
is older than a turtle shell and even rounder.
It is morning and the city is still quiet
as a mountain hamlet. The air delivers its words
with darkish ink that gradually lightens.
But at noon, when the sun glides over the clouds,
this town becomes a long shimmering body,
a serpent of time and history.
Blooming trees make the town soar in the cool air;
four winds borne by the leverage of each continent,
running around the stone corners.
The innermost paradox, the passage of time;
cats lying in the heat – this city is a language, but it’s made
of something else, not words.
SIMPLE PHILOSOPHY
The ship inside the bottle
could be saved only
with а heavy hammer
and deep melancholy…
The last one of the seven
Russian nesting dolls
says Mama with an English
accent…
All of the thousands still
unread books
with their heavy silence never allowed me to do that
thing –
and at the end…
…it is just like Li Po
said,
we are here with the mountain,
looking at each other, until
only the mountain
remains.
THE LONG WALK
A garden in Venice with
sculptures licked by time and destruction,
all around them blooming flowers and stone paths.
I’m here for the first time, but I managed to recognize the faces
of Greek and Roman gods - dead so long ago and so close to perfection.
The air smells of salt and small wet creatures, dwelling in the tall grass;
the rain had been falling for two weeks, but now the sky is clear as
a dream of a child. On the branches blue and red and green birds
sing their happy tunes, keeping an eye on me. But I don’t mind,
I love those long walks in gardens, full of green and decaying time.
A rabbit jumped out of the
shrubbery and disappeared among the tall
trees and then – silence. After each step the stillness thickens;
the light darkens with every tick of the clock. The past is just a series
of stolen moments, moving in the right direction, i.e., backwards.
Fence of climbing plants - a murky green fortress. The sunset
is now creeping like a vulture over the city, stone and marble slabs
reflect the last rays of the sun. Clouds with enormous bellies,
coming up from the horizon, dragging the night behind them.
Strange memories of this place sink to the ground’s depths and
harden there to frozen tears; brief moments of sadness whirl through
the leaves, the tree trunks, the sculptures and further.
The night sky is so sprent
with stars that there is almost no space
left for darkness; Ursa Major and Orion slowly travel to infinity.
Under the repost of the constellations the Earth glides. The Earth
plunges ahead and then stops again. The gathering of the night
birds grew. And now their songs are much darker, much heavier;
they fall down like autumn leaves. Who writes their libretto?
An absence of courage makes the writing sloppy. So is life.
Only in death there is some dignity left. But a new begging is near.
Peacefully the breezes cycle through the leafage, bringing salty
dreams from the sea; somewhere a sleeper turns transparent.
Now all the sculptures are set out in the void.
That feeling in the heart
that evokes a child’s memory of loneliness,
dwells in this place like a forest fire. In the distance a dark
and muttersome sea, above – plenty of stars and quartermoons.
Bareness of the mind and full, gothic darkness, that squats behind
the eyes like a beast. Raw musky smell of obscurity, a dream breathed
out in the darkness. We need this kind of nights not to forget,
but to remember. And some people forgive everything, but forget
nothing. And this is your hell, this is your Vergil – the walk continues
until all is here, until everything is clear and the crossroad is reached.
Morning come, the light
seeps through the cracks in the sky. I stand
with raised arms like the central figure in a Communist mural. Welcome,
time, welcome memories, what a long night it has been.
An air flow smacks out of hiding, everything trembles in the musical scale.
Athwart, a shiny and narrow path to the sun. Clouds of white cotton and
milky scents. Everything ends, everything changes; from everywhere
and nowhere a song converges. And I walk, like a broken sculpture, out of
this enormous garden and into the next one, where everything begins anew.
Peycho Kanev, Bulgaria and Chicago, Illinois