So many songs and poems are written about September. Why? Because it is the beginning and the end of something for all of us. We started school in September. The summer as we knew it was over. But moving on to another grade and toward something that resembled the walking dead or another scratch on the chalkboard was the protocol. We had no choice. We followed lunch lines with our trays and copied homework from that one girl who always got A’s and covered her paper, sneered at us when she caught us wheezing over her shoulder with panic. Or maybe you were that girl? I know I wasn’t. Anyway, I’m going to let us settle into September with some links to music and a W.H. Auden poem I love that I hope will inspire you. Whether the links work or not, then the writers in this issue will. Check it out.
September: Earth, Wind & Fire
Wake Me Up When September Ends: Green Day
September 1, 1939
by W. H. Auden
I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.
Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.
Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.
Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.
Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.
The windiest militant trash Important
Persons shout Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.
From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
"I will be true to the wife,
I'll concentrate more on my work,"
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the deaf,
Who can speak for the dumb?
All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.
Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the
Just Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.
----------
Joe Kapitan is our featured fiction writer for the mid-September issue with his outstanding flash pieces, “The Business-Travel Dining Habits of the Fifty Percent,” “The Time I Traded Neruda Some Slivovitz for Advice on Love,” and “The BeeKeeper.” And Joe has a new collection coming out and more in the works. Find out more about what he has ahead, his process and him in our interview. LOVE JOE!
Kristy Webster quietly racks up our emotions with her three poignant stories, “The Hunchback Shops at Safeway,” “The Sisters,” and “The Guppy Suicides.” So close to the veins and shadows.
T.L. Sherwood makes me wish I had that special compact in “Compact Wings.” She walks an exquisite line between magical realism and the ‘wishing I could fly’ aspect of everyday life. Beautiful!
Natalia Andrievskikh mesmerizes us with her five poetic prose pieces, “Patience,” “As Seen Through a Keyhole,” “No Room For Visitors,” “Just Another Day,” and “Keepsake.” Unforgettable!
Darlene P. Campos delivers a heartbreaking story, “The Burst,” about a couple that have to hide the love that they share.
Kayleigh Buckner takes us back through time with a woman who relives her life in death in, “The Dirt Road.” It’s all a mystery!
Enjoy!
by W. H. Auden
I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.
Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.
Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.
Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.
Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.
The windiest militant trash Important
Persons shout Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.
From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
"I will be true to the wife,
I'll concentrate more on my work,"
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the deaf,
Who can speak for the dumb?
All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.
Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the
Just Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.
----------
Joe Kapitan is our featured fiction writer for the mid-September issue with his outstanding flash pieces, “The Business-Travel Dining Habits of the Fifty Percent,” “The Time I Traded Neruda Some Slivovitz for Advice on Love,” and “The BeeKeeper.” And Joe has a new collection coming out and more in the works. Find out more about what he has ahead, his process and him in our interview. LOVE JOE!
Kristy Webster quietly racks up our emotions with her three poignant stories, “The Hunchback Shops at Safeway,” “The Sisters,” and “The Guppy Suicides.” So close to the veins and shadows.
T.L. Sherwood makes me wish I had that special compact in “Compact Wings.” She walks an exquisite line between magical realism and the ‘wishing I could fly’ aspect of everyday life. Beautiful!
Natalia Andrievskikh mesmerizes us with her five poetic prose pieces, “Patience,” “As Seen Through a Keyhole,” “No Room For Visitors,” “Just Another Day,” and “Keepsake.” Unforgettable!
Darlene P. Campos delivers a heartbreaking story, “The Burst,” about a couple that have to hide the love that they share.
Kayleigh Buckner takes us back through time with a woman who relives her life in death in, “The Dirt Road.” It’s all a mystery!
Enjoy!