Qua Literary and Fine Arts Magazine, Winter 2022

NIGHT IN GETHSEMANE
-The usual adjectives. Quiet, distant, angry. And also, the fact that
we hadn’t slept together in 2 months when she was already starting to show.
And we haven’t slept together again since.
Jimmy made a small half-grimace, half-smile. Suddenly, Quinn
burst into laughter. It came out so loud, the other barflies began to turn their
heads. Jimmy snapped his fingers in front of Quinn’s face to bring him back.
-Y’know who it was don’t you? Quinn said, his breath short and
shallow.
-Who?
-Alex Glazer. That beautiful, blue-eyed, Aryan bastard.
-Is that so? Jimmy brought his glass to his lips and let the liquor
run through. The ashtray between them was overflowing from chainsmoking.
The waitress came to replace it and Quinn simply looked at the
floor. After a while, he stood up, turned out his pockets for his money, rebuffing
Jimmy’s attempt to pay.
Outside there was a shock of air reflected cold off the ground. Quinn
moved to the alleyway leaning a hand against the alley wall, vomiting then
collapsing to the ground.
-Jimmy?
-Yeah?
-I know Elaine was supposed to drive me there tomorrow. But I
need you to do it. His fingers went pink from the cold. He picked up a pebble
and tried to break it.
-Okay.
-College-boy. Get rid of learning and there will be no anxiety. He
tilted his head back against the wall. They awaited in a silence drawn out like
a dagger, with a curious fear, for the rain to become a downpour, but at the
moment it was only a small drizzle. Do you want to know the truth? I never
learned how to compromise… He breathed in and out. Y’know, we should go
slash Alex’s tires.
They sat in a protracted silence for a few minutes more. What
neither could have expected was that in a few months, after finishing basic
training, Quinn would decide to swim with from one side of a lake to the
other with some other newly baptized servicemen, and misjudge the lake’s
diameter, and find he hadn’t the strength to continue to the other side, and
drown.
But for now, they sat in the alley behind Churchill’s. Fading ink-blot
sky, scummy border of polluting city lights in the background. A door opened
down the alley, and into the stains of liquid garbage a baker threw the aged
crullers. A rain-smothered scent of butter and yeast blew down to them in
the breeze as they sat, trying to find the right words.
CHILLY
TERRI WATROUS BERRY
Smoke rises
from the roof
across the way,
and the way the
chimney belches
makes the place
like an engine
stopped and waiting
at the station
for the time to
shriek
and move on
down the line.
Homes pass,
one to another,
walls yawn
indifference,
doors open
as easily for
you or for
just anyone
who has and
comes to hold
the transient key.
Old Eleanor
next door,
not next door
anymore.
Today she lies
face-up
in her last
cupboard out
at Roselawn,
a week ago
her bricks
breathed too
into the frigid
sky, today
they stand cold,
coldly waiting . . .
36 | Prose Poetry | 37