From Víctor Manuel Velázquez

Agradecí la luna mielera del cielo de la tarde, invernal y subida como una geisha silenciosa o un cenizo toro de Miura, ciego, deslumbrante, tonteando sobre el parque del Quijote. Y agradecí, ya oscuro, la bendición de la crema de afeitar, un privilegio que hace años no me visitaba y que hizo de mí un afilado y moreno Santa Claus. Me recordé a Don Pablo, afeitándose el triangular bigote pequeñoburgués con navaja y agua jabonosa, frente al añico de espejo embutido entre la tabla de palma, al pie del pozo de agua salobre. Recordé su despedida, ya sin habla ni razón, ajeno a los dones del vigor, la voluntad y la memoria; y mucho antes el taburete embestido al horcón donde se dejaba mimar por el sueño.

Me despierta, como a él, como a todos ellos, esa lucidez opaca, víspera del alba, ¿herencia de qué Adán?

Nota: La foto que comparto es de un indio de reciente contacto, paciente mío de Jurití.

I was grateful for the honeymoon in the afternoon sky, wintry and soaring like a silent geisha or an ashen Miura bull, blind, dazzling, fooling around in Don Quixote park. And I thanked, already dark, the blessing of shaving cream, a privilege that had not visited me for years and that made me a sharp and dark Santa Claus. I reminded myself of Don Pablo, shaving his petty-bourgeois triangular mustache with a razor and soapy water, in front of the shard of mirror wedged between the palm boards, at the foot of the brackish water well. I remembered his farewell, now without speech or reason, oblivious to the gifts of vigor, will and memory; and much earlier the stool rammed into the post where he allowed himself to be pampered by sleep. I am awakened, like him, like all of them, by that opaque lucidity, the eve of dawn, an inheritance from what Adam?

Note: The photo I share is of an Indian of recent contact, a patient of mine from Jurití.

FAITH, POETRY, FAMILY, FRIENDS: PILLARS FOR LIFE

by Miguel Ángel Olivé Iglesias

Canada Cuba Literary Alliance Prez in Cuba

Author, Poet, Prose Writer, Editor, Lit Essayist, Translator

for the Lord preserves the faithful. Psalms 31:23 In a world full of noise and thunder, poems are a refuge. Katie Hoogendam (Devour. Issue 013, 2022)

… we will always have the warmest beat and the brightest light shining on both sides of life´s tunnel, the one that leads us into, through and out of existence: family. Poetry certainly eases the passage. M. Olivé Now when [Job’s] three friends heard of all this… that was come upon him, they came… to comfort him. Job 2:11

The year 2022 has still been a rough one –to put it mildly– for people around the world. It all began in 2020 with the outburst of COVID, a pandemic which has not been totally controlled yet. I did not escape its grip and was infected in August 2021. I survived, lucky me, yet sequels ensued in the post-COVID months. They ended (actually started a new stage) with doctors discovering a tumor in my body. The news was I had to undergo twenty-five nonstop sessions of radiation and chemo to fight the tumor and was warned of the treatment´s possible awful aftereffects. They did not take long to appear making matters worse, affecting my general health and extending my condition to the present, August 2022.

I won´t elaborate on the abyssal divide opened between the moments before and after I was told what I had. Only those who have been there know how it feels… Fortunately, I am slowly moving on recovery mode now. I must rest for five weeks and be biopsied again to see what remains of the uncomfortable tumor.

The journey has not been easy at all. However, it has been softened by poetry, the support of family and friends (around me and miles up north in Canada) and above all by my faith in God.

Prior to falling ill with COVID, I had been very active writing and publishing mostly poetry and literary essays on Canadian poets, encouraged by Richard Grove (Tai), Canadian publisher, poet, writer, photographer, artist (and an invaluable friend to me), who had been visiting Cuba for the last thirty-something years first as a tourist, later as a friend and promoter of culture, which led him to found in 2004 and preside since then the Canada Cuba Literary Alliance to bridge Canadian and Cuban artistic manifestations thus fostering friendship and cultural exchange between the two nations. It seemed to me, arguably on a personal, subjective level, that COVID first then the tumor decreased my capacity to write. My prolific literary production waned (over fifteen books -plus mags- edited, translated, reviewed and/or authored from 2018 to early 2022 thanks to Richard Grove´s unstinting encouragement), and as much as I wanted to I was not able to put coherent and meaningful words together, or those I did manage to fell short of acceptability. I was on the verge of desperation for creative and lit writing had become fulfilling assets in my life.

Yet, key pillars saw me through my plight. Even when I stopped writing (This piece is my first attempt to resume it), I did not give in to my anxiety thanks to:

One, my turning to God every day in search of fortitude to face the challenge. It has been uplifting. He is the path towards and the threshold into salvation—He is salvation: He is the Savior.

Two, I continued to read poetry. I revisited the classics I have loved all my life and reread Canadian icons I had discovered during my studies of Canadian poetry to write my essays. Poetry was instrumental in my recovery. Poetry caresses our eyes and warms our souls. Poetry complements us and touches both our emotions and our intellect. Poetry helps us express ourselves differently, share the spark glowing inside us and grow personally and socially.

Three, I had (have) family and friends by my side. They came to me offering whatever they had and I could use to cross the bumpy path ahead and come out a victor. My dear next of kin, colleagues, students, acquaintances were there for me. My status as a patient also brought new friends into my inner-circle “radar”: caring students of mine who have accompanied me along the way, doctors, lab techs, nurses. Family and friends did not fail me. I am so grateful. In terms of family and friends, I am closing my piece by acknowledging my wife. During my illness she has been provider and nurse, and has had to cope, most of the times in empathetic silence, with my tantrums and howling when I have lost it and needed to vent my bottled up sensations of loss, helplessness, pessimism, confusion or anger… When challenges threaten to crash us down, faith, poetry, family and friends make a huge difference. They embrace you injecting strength, hope and optimism you cannot find in yourself sometimes and all you see is darkness. God is light. God is our most solid pillar. Poetry soothes and nurtures. Poetry is one of God´s ways of healing our hearts and bodies. Poetry is another pillar. Family and friends are God´s gifts to make life endurable on earth. This is a necessary pillar. Faith, poetry, family, friends are crucial in our passage through life. I was made fully aware of that when I entered an unwelcome period in mine but did welcome the significance they convey and the power they have in lightening our sorrows, unburdening our heavy weights, reshaping our existence and salvaging our souls. I am nothing but deeply thankful and forever indebted to them.

A new poem, something of a Christmas poem I suppose. I've always loved what Dylan Thomas wrote in his Collected Poems in a note by way of introduction: "These poems, with all their crudities, doubts, and confusions, are written for the love of Man and in praise of God, and I'd be a damn' fool if they weren't"

God’s Idea

By John B. Lee

the white-breasted nuthatch circles the trunk of the great wide-thighed two trunk Norwegian maple the one that cools the back deck with a toss of darkness summer’s shadow landing like a widow’s veil skeining the boards in the breath of its weather like the wet soothing of a fever cloth it comes to the glass of the lake room but this is winter and the little blue-grey shouldered bird is seeding the rough bark like the beadwork of close-candled sunlight the kind that young girls learn from their mothers and this it seems is God’s idea

By Jorge Alberto Pérez Hernández