Román Leão

Category: Stories and Poems

  • Pendulum Flashing [poema]

    You and I
    Wander Telegraph
    Looking for frankincense
    And myth
    While the homeless man six doors
    Down
    Shakes a cup of coins
    (silver against tin)
    To the secret pulse
    (the jingle of bells)
    Six doors down
    (the taste of copper)
    In the focused heat of autumn
    We both know
    A sudden change of direction
    Leaves ripples in the air
    As thick as ropes
    And just as binding

  • Failure to Appear [poema]

    Wednesday, the Sun forgot to come out
    As two million acres goes up in flames
    Smoke scatters the wavelengths of blue light

    From Plumas and Butte, suspended in the fog
    The ghosts of Berry Creek and Feather Falls
    Hang foreboding in a persimmon-colored sky

  • History Lesson [poema]

    In this narrow valley
    We are surrounded
    Smokestacks stand like Indians
    An assembly of whisperers
    Their stories stated and immediately stolen 
    Taken by the relentless wind

    Through the heart of it
    The lifeblood of the land
    Runs out westward to mingle
    Once again with Mother Ocean
    To be subsumed
    To be welcomed home

    Across the straits
    The hills stand silent much as they did
    One hundred years ago
    A thousand?
    Twenty thousand?
    Surely not a million

    On these shores
    The shell mounds of the Karkin are lost
    Covered by condominiums, the latest in a parade of indignities
    From here you could walk out on the water a fair distance
    Keeping those hills in sight, but I wouldn’t
    At least not barefoot

    Was it always like this?
    Do we stand on the mired remains
    Of gentle granite giants
    Washed down from the interior
    Or are we merely caught in an eddy
    Of slack tide and time?

    Photo/Ray Larsen

  • Heebie Jeebies [haicai]

    I don’t hear voices
    But sometimes when it’s quiet
    I hear faint swing jazz

    A radio plays
    Benny Goodman and Chick Webb
    In another room

    A haunting refrain
    A particular madness
    I don’t hear voices

    Photo/Ray Larsen

  • The Inexorable March [ficção]

    Jerome Michael Gonçalo parked his beater Toyota pick-up in the Vallejo Ferry Terminal garage, made the sign of the cross, and hustled off to the kiosk to pay. He always chuckled to himself when the machine asked how many days you wanted to stay; as if he would ever leave the vehicle—beat-up or not—overnight.

    Shit, only thing left would be the paint, he mused before the boat to San Francisco let out a warning blast that carried across the four lanes of Mare Island Way, telling all around that they had better get their asses in gear.

    Parking receipt in hand, Gonçalo checked for traffic—knowing that he, himself, was often coming in hot this time of morning—before sprinting across the expanse of asphalt against the light.

    “Jamoke! You almost missed it, brah,” an African-American ferryman half again his size shouted out from behind the aluminum plinth whose only discernible function was to shore up the man’s bulk as he pointed toward the waiting hydrofoil bobbing on the tide.

    One morning, Gonçalo made the mistake of introducing himself as “J-Mike,” which was immediately misconstrued as “Jamoke,” an appellation that gave the older, and much larger, man no end of amusement.

    “Devánte,” Gonçalo panted, disturbingly out-of-breath, “I knew you’d hold it for me, even if you had to grab that rope!”

    “No way, brah,” the man laughed, “we’re on a schedule. Very tight. Like your mom.”

    “Keep it professional, D.,” Gonçalo half-heartedly protested as he reached for the lanyard that held his transit card, only to realize that he wasn’t wearing it. He glanced toward the now-shuttered ticket windows at the terminal. Closed signs announced the inexorable march toward having every human interaction removed from one’s day. And yet, he silently bemoaned, Devánte persists.

    Gonçalo wondered what the folks that had worked those windows were waking up to today, having been replaced by a phone app. He weighed the odds of rushing back to the house for the card but quickly calculated that he’d never make it back in time for the next boat. That would mean driving into the City, a trip that took two maddening hours just days before.

    He had already come to terms with the fact that he would rather be skinned alive than undergo that ordeal again as he had barely made it to work the last time without pissing himself in traffic. Gonçalo had briefly thought about drinking less coffee in the morning and immediately realized that it would never actually happen. Public urination verses the murder charge that would surely follow going cold turkey was a steep, but manageable, price to pay.

    “Use the app, brah,” Devánte, having astutely read the situation, advised. “Your phone, Jamoke.”

    Gonçalo pivoted to attempting to use the very cell phone application that resulted in the sacking of the station agents and felt badly for a moment. The moment passed as the intended exchange failed with an abrasive electronic bleat.

    “Y-eaz-ou l-eaz-ose,” Devánte intoned, revealing a probable past spent somewhere on the midway. “Jump on, Jamoke. This cross must move.”

    Devánte’s counterpart on board the craft rattled off some half-heard, less-understood, instructions. Gonçalo stared blankly at the black rectangle in his hand as he moved toward an open seat and plopped down with a certain resignation.

    All morning, Cassandras on the local news gleefully warned of power blackouts and the possible closure of outdoor public spaces as an impending heatwave threatened to blanket the entire West. Gonçalo had chosen to wear a leaf-patterned Hawaiian shirt in a light fabric, although now he was feeling that perhaps it was sending the wrong message about his mood.

    As the engines below the craft begin to churn the cold morning waters of the Bay, he thought about stepping outside in the quickly warming air and slipping unseen over the rail, his cell phone dropping from his hand and sinking to the muddy bottom even quicker than he himself would.

  • The Path to Carson Falls [poema]

    I turned off the fire road
    Where I saw two foxes cavorting
    Among the chaparral and metamorphic rocks
    Slipping on schist I dropped

    Into the green, grey, and remaining garnet
    And heard the canyon breathing
    Countless hidden feeder creeks singing
    Along with naked aspens and pines in their breezes

    In the background, ever present
    Growing louder with each now careful step
    The falls crack precipitation
    Into mist, into pieces, into peace

    Photo/Ray Larsen

  • The Brautigan Question [poema]

    Careened on the hand-me-down couch
    Slowly sinking into a misshapen beachhead of cushions
    I was reading a slim volume of early writings of a dead poet
    When my wife came into the room asking,
    “How does it feel to wash your balls with a city?”

    Well now, that’s a question fraught with foam and froth
    One must take into account all sorts of surfactants
    Then I recalled that someone had gifted her
    A soap in the shape of the Emerald City
    All green towers, minarets, and flying buttresses

    I closed the book and put it down, knowing that nothing
    The dead poet had written up to that point in his career
    Was going to measure up to that question
    I thought about it for a second and had to admit
    “It was nice.”

  • The Message [poema]

    Tuesday morning the rain stops.
    Underneath the swinging bridge, the creek
    was awake all night and now

    runs rampant. Cross to the parlor where
    cool hands have built a roaring
    welcome. After endless summer days

    spent steeped in light, oak-bound heat
    is now released and supplants the gray.
    On the porch, the old men speak

    with tongues of fire, both spirited
    and holy. Inside, the wood
    relates the original story—

    an old celestial game of
    telephone. The message started out
    in violence—a roiling

    furnace burning since the sky began.
    Today, sitting by the hearth,
    the word has turned to love—and two hearts

    that were embers—are now suns.

    Photo/Ray Larsen

  • Charges [poema]

    I wandered back to
    the shop, gunpowder
    and cement dust in
    my hair, grabbed a cup
    of burnt coffee and
    listened to old Ben
    Greenwood jaw a while.

    He was tomcattin’
    with some poor fool’s wife
    in Meridian,
    Mississippi, back
    in the tarpapered
    nights of roadhouses
    built on dirt levees.

    I listened awhile
    and nodded in all
    the right places then
    left him still talking
    to grab cartridges.
    Green ones have the punch
    of a .22.

    McElroy, he had
    a partner in ’Nam
    who would collect ears,
    which didn’t bother
    Mac till after work when
    his wine would whisper
    how fucked-up that is.

    Acceptance is part
    of pressing a gun
    up against a rock
    wall and pulling the
    trigger. Sometimes nails
    hit buried rebar
    and come shooting back.

    Or a big charge can
    shatter the concrete
    like a bomb. Most times,
    however, they stick
    in the rock like an
    exclamation point.
    Or a memory.

  • Asylum (Padrão dos Descobrimentos) [poema]

    Even as children, we suspected our world
    was broken—as if our hometown had been lifted
    and dropped from a much higher place.
    Everyday during the long summers we explored
    the edges of the pieces—the spots
    where the pattern no longer matched up.

    Thirty years later, it’s harder to get up
    the motivation to get out and map the world,
    to find the forgotten corners and secret spots.
    The veil of mystery has been lifted,
    and the edge of the continent explored.
    The great unknown now muffled by a sense of place.

    From Yerba Buena to Eureka, I thought I had found the place
    to put down roots—and as many times—I pulled them up.
    A privateer, up and down the coast I wandered,
    only to miss the hidden parts of the world.
    No longer lost, my spirits are still lifted
    when I think about those magic spots.

    Days spent in rapture until our eyes saw spots,
    we rode from place to place.
    As we grew, our dreams were lifted,
    until too soon—we just grew up.
    It’s every man’s destiny to make his way in the world,
    and every boy’s to forget the land he conquered.

    Down in the creeks and ravines we explored,
    searching for those perfect spots
    away from the bustle of the world.
    We were driven to find a mystic place,
    somewhere where the rules were not put up,
    and our pirate banner could be lifted.

    With found bits of lumber are battlements yet lifted
    into treetops no longer noticed or surveyed?
    The old men below don’t bother to look up,
    knowing that gazing into the sun pays nothing but blindness.
    With everything marked and in its proper place,
    wonder fades into the background of the world.

    If only the veil of maturity could be lifted up,
    and we could again see the world as an enchanted place.
    The places we knew as youth could provide asylum
    even for the grown.

    Published in The Hot Air Quarterly, Number Sixteen

    Photo/Ray Larsen