NIGHTFALL

by Anton Yakovlev

The Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire

 
She looked like Robin Wright in The Princess Bride.
She was your nurse, but you called her “my muse”
ever since your first check-up.

Your colonel threatened to lead you into harm’s way,
assuming you imagined her in wet dreams,
failing to grasp the meaning of the word “muse.”

This game of alphas was all well and good
until, just halfway into your deployment,
he did let your vehicle get blown up.

You awoke, and many thought you might still return
to active duty, until a routine injection
prompted you to knock your nurse muse unconscious.

For months you shied away from traffic lights.
Thankfully, your aim had gotten so bad
you missed your own temple at point blank range.

Today you spend most evenings in Middle Earth,
imagining you’re at a campfire with hobbit brothers.
The night falls.

For two months of the year
you’re the star of the Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire,
jousting and wooing.

You’ve acquired a handful of Twitter followers.
You balladeer tasteful maxims
about the well-tuned diplomacy of pole dancers.

Your voicemail greeting is a legend.
The chickens in your front yard drive
every local farmer to jealous rage.

When children come trick-or-treating,
you throw a Dracula cape over your chain mail
and shower them with Belgium’s finest chocolate.

But their parents impose strict curfews.
And even the hobbits have their bedtime restrictions;
Thorin the dwarf has to take care of his beard.

You slip back into that night in the hospital.
Your muse in scrubs lies on the floor next to your bed.
If only you could help her up.

An anchor stares at you from the TV screen.
A blast down the street
sends tremors through the hospital windows

and all those people running into your room.


Anton Yakovlev grew up in Moscow, Russia, but moved to the United States in 1996. He studied filmmaking and poetry at Harvard University. Anton lives in Ridgewood, NJ and works as a college textbook editor. His poetry has appeared in The Rutherford Red Wheelbarrow, CityLitRag, The Poet in New York and Instigatorzine, and is forthcoming in The New Yorker, The Raintown Review, and 823 on High. He has also directed several short films.

UNTITLED AMERICA

by Scott Jessop

Pantalone

evicted the widow and roasted her children     his giant proboscis gleeful his lips smacking as lovers parted as he slithered into the marshlands of stories taradiddles flowing from his cup whetting tongues of hopeful ears and disappeared in darkness and memories of cultural gray matter dumping grounds     Cry for our villains     the Joker had an abusive father Lex Luthor was unloved   Dracula was only defending his home   the cop who murders innocent Black boys on empty streets cares for his sick father   the boy stole cigars you know   the terrorist is disaffected    the racists had his cattle confiscated by jackbooted government agents wearing black designer Hollywood costumes    hear the sirens City of Compton nine bullets the investigation was closed before it opened     our poisoned food employs fracking geo-techs belching coal soot to keep Kentucky happy while polar ice caps burn in the San Gabriel Mountains above jungles of Starbucks and trees of In and Outs    but we must understand why the father beat his daughter to forgive the priest who raped his son    why the cop shot that unarmed boy and the 19 bodies in the backyard    Because our hero is a serial killer or meth dealer or convict or Drax the Destroyer    because Hitler made the trains run on time and Mussolini did it for the glory of Italy and Franco did it for himself  and the Glenda mistreated the Wicked Witch
          vigilantes walked through Roman streets with fasces beating Black boys in hoodies with candy in their pockets and Batman is a vigilante and TV cops shoot but cut to commercial before Castle sees the body and the Badoon invade    the panel shows collapsed buildings but the streets are clean   as the Towers fell I saw no bodies    General Zod wiped out half of Metropolis but no bodies were seen    a blood-free massacre as all our massacres are because Marcellus Wallace is cool and Coke is the real thing (never mind the diabetes) I want my

archetypes

sympathy is for the devil and forgiveness is mine sayeth the Lord.
Man plants evil.
           Waters it    weeds the garden and hoes the row    stories myths teach us the night and day of morality so we can see it in the diminishing sun of twilight    the hero understands the hero is compassionate and God-like in his forgiveness    but knows that evil is not marginalized or homogenized or realized    Evil is not ambiguous.

Malus malo est

Pantalone


Image: Pantalone costume design  by Serge Sudeikin (1925) for Stravinsky’s Petrushka at the Metropolitan Opera, NY. Image source: WikiArt


Scott Jessop lives in the 135-year old, haunted Midland Railroad station in Manitou Springs, Colorado with his daughter, Kathleen and his cat, Jack Kerouac. He is a corporate video and TV commercial producer, poet, spoken word performer, and Pushcart Prize nominee for Penduline Press for his short story "Mephisto".