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The Light between the Words
In memorium Ohnmar Thein Karlin
Afterwards he moved through the world not as in a dream
but as a man imitating the movement of a man in a dream.
He constructed a room from memory near a park in Belgrade,
in Beo-grad, in the white city, white light dancing through
yellowed gauze curtains as if through autumn leaves light flickering
like the light of memory like the light in Jerusalem that blushed
blood under the skin of ancient stone like the skin of lovers
bruised by the heavy press of history, brushed by the kiss of time.
He put himself back in the room and he put her back and lived
in a loop run over and over, rewound, paused, he was afraid
if he stopped it would burn, a spot of flame would flare
in the center of the frame from the very place their bodies
were joined and widen swiftly in a fiery circle and he felt that
circle widen in his stomach and chest like the burn of grief the
burn of absence. He was a man of words but in that room they
spoke in look and breath and touch and didn’t know which was
echo and which was source. They spoke in the language of a country
that no longer existed and of a city in that country and of a street
in that city and of a building in that street and of a room in that
building and the words for the world were gone and now he had
to learn to search for her in the light between the words.
but as a man imitating the movement of a man in a dream.
He constructed a room from memory near a park in Belgrade,
in Beo-grad, in the white city, white light dancing through
yellowed gauze curtains as if through autumn leaves light flickering
like the light of memory like the light in Jerusalem that blushed
blood under the skin of ancient stone like the skin of lovers
bruised by the heavy press of history, brushed by the kiss of time.
He put himself back in the room and he put her back and lived
in a loop run over and over, rewound, paused, he was afraid
if he stopped it would burn, a spot of flame would flare
in the center of the frame from the very place their bodies
were joined and widen swiftly in a fiery circle and he felt that
circle widen in his stomach and chest like the burn of grief the
burn of absence. He was a man of words but in that room they
spoke in look and breath and touch and didn’t know which was
echo and which was source. They spoke in the language of a country
that no longer existed and of a city in that country and of a street
in that city and of a building in that street and of a room in that
building and the words for the world were gone and now he had
to learn to search for her in the light between the words.
published in River Heron Review, August, 2024
https://www.riverheronreview.com/issue-72-1#/wayne-karlin
The title comes from a line in the poem “Untitled 2” by Dư Thị Hoàn
Drinking with the Enemy
https://www.passagerbooks.com/2023-passager-poetry-contest-75/
https://www.passagerbooks.com/podcast-burning-bright/
“Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates.”
― Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
I was the only American at the table. We were all veterans.
Christmas evening in Hong Gai. In the war, one of the men said,
you bombed the church here. He laughed uproariously.
It still doesn’t have a roof, he said. A red plastic Santa Claus
and a green plastic Christmas tree stood in the lobby. We played a
drinking game with glasses of beer. At the count of three everyone
had to drain his glass. If he couldn’t he had to drink another glass.
We drank to empty ourselves, a film run in reverse. The man sitting
to my right smiled at me, gently, tentatively. Like many
who had been in in the war his teeth were bad, brown-stained and broken.
His skin was pitted and lined with the years we shared and didn’t share
and he walked slightly hunched over, like a farmer looking down at his earth,
or like a man in a rice field crouching under the sound of my helicopter rotors.
ở đâu? he asked me. Then: Where? It was his only English word. He tapped
his chest with the carapaced fingers of his farmer’s hand, trying to dislodge
the two questions we all asked each other and the two question we didn’t.
When? Where? Did you try to kill me there? Did I try to kill you then?
I took his hand and pushed it against my chest. Quảng Nam, Thừa Thiên Huế,
Quảng Trị, I said. He grabbed my other hand and pushed it against his chest.
I could feel his heart beating hard through the skin of my palm.
Quảng Trị, Quảng Trị, Quảng Trị, he said. One of the other veterans yelled một,
hai, ba, yo! We drained our glasses ten times. Nine of them for the nine years
the man to my right was there longer than I. His eyes grew desperate. His farmer’s
hand was trembling. He pointed at his filled glass, pointed to his mouth, tapped his
forehead hard with his blunt, callused finger. Quảng Trị, Quảng Trị, Quảng Trị, he said,
tapping violently to dislodge the seepage flowing with the beer into his brain, pushing
heavily into the cavities of his heart. I took the glass of the man to my right from him
and I drank it for him, into myself, all of it, for him. It nested in my chest, an icy stone.
MORE POEMS:
“After the War Odysseus Meets Helen,” in The Raven’s Perch, September 2, 2023
https://theravensperch.com/after-the-war-odysseus-falls-in-love-with-helen-by-wayne-karlin/
“Because You Are Not Here” in Vox Populi, October 11,2022
https://voxpopulisphere.com/2022/10/11/wayne-karlin-because-you-are-not-here/
“Butch in Autumn” in Vox Populi, December 6th, 2022 https://voxpopulisphere.com/2022/12/06/wayne-karlin-butch-in-autumn/
“Coming Home” in Collateral, Spring, 2024 https://www.collateraljournal.com/poetry/wkarlin
“Looking at Munch’s The Scream on Memorial Day
https://theravensperch.com/looking-at-munchs-the-scream-on-memorial-day-by-wayne-karlin/
“Mirror” in Connections, Fall, 2021, Volume 29, Number 1 pg. 38
https://www.csmd.edu/student-services/arts/connections-literary-series/ecl_connections_fa21_web.pdf
“Odysseus Descends into the Land of the Dead,” in The Blue Mountain Review, December, 2023, pg. 263
https://issuu.com/collectivemedia/docs/bluemountainreviewdecember2023
“Passing Lane” in WWPH Writes
https://www.washingtonwriters.org/2023/09/23/wwph-writes-issue-58/
https://losangelesreview.org/pornography-1968-by-wayne-karlin/
The Drinking of the Nước Mắm, Dorchester, Massachusetts” Clockhouse, August 15, 2024
“The Lotus Eaters,” in Vox Populii, November 11, 2022.
https://voxpopulisphere.com/2022/11/11/wayne-karlin-the-lotus-eaters/