 Arlington Literary Journal an ejournal also known as ArLiJo, is located in Arlington, Virginia and is sponsored by Gival Press. The intent of ArLiJo is to feature a variety of authors/poets/artists from around the globe whose work provokes readers to contemplate issues, etc. The work chosen promotes understanding and sensitivity across borders, even if initially the work may cause one to take a double-take. Staff: Editor-in-Chief, Robert L. Giron Associate Editor, Sarah Fannon ArLiJo has reverted to a publication by invitation only. Any work published shall remain the property of the author/poet/artist and for any previously published work to appear the author/poet/artist must still retain the copyright of the work. Please note that ArLiJo is an ejournal. Payment for publication is a book from a selection of books published by Gival Press. |
Jacqueline Jules Featured in ArLiJo Issue No. 28 Tidal Basin Stroll (April 2003) A woman from Wisconsin washed her hands beside me in the FDR Memorial bathroom, oozing delight to be in Washington "just at this time." I told her I came every year when the local news tells the natives Potomac Park has peaked. We smiled, without exchanging names, and pushed the heavy iron door back to the fragile white clusters cuddling in the wind. A pilgrimage for me since the sixties, when my father drove the family a hundred miles to walk the Tidal Basin concrete and celebrate spring beside thousands of war protestors. Thirteen that year, I found a pair of college students kissing beneath a green blanket as appealing as the cherry blossoms — much as a group of teenagers at the water's edge today, gawking at a large gray fish floating belly-up. It seems almost appropriate, considering the headlines, that the strongest smell here is dead fish. A siren bellows in the distance and I worry over soldiers in Baghdad who may never see these pink blossoms, pride of their nation's capitol, symbol of friendship between two nations who loved and fought and loved again. Low pulpit signs tell the story of Tokyo's gift in 1912 and the festival celebrated yearly (except during World War II). As I read the tale, I wonder if one day the Iraqis will emulate the gracious Japanese, who call us friend after Hiroshima. Tidal Basin Stroll (April 2003) was included on the audio CD 31 Arlington Poets, produced by Paycock Press, 2004. Copyright © 2009 by Jacqueline Jules. September 12th (Arlington, VA) Muscled men with sun-drenched skin were out the next morning at 9 a.m. fighting weeds with gas-powered blades. After hours of watching the smoking rubble of collapsed buildings on my TV screen, it was a comfort to sit at a stoplight and watch men sweat over bushes and green grass in the bright September sun—a comfort to see others resuming jobs as if the lives we led on Monday still mattered. Yesterday's siege of smoke and sirens had not touched this tree-lined street too far from the Pentagon to smell the flames. I drove on familiar roads, flanked by buildings and sidewalks unchanged by the dark voice on the radio reporting the dead and missing. Except for light traffic, the streets appeared to lead back to Monday's office aggravation over a broken copier and missing toilet paper in the ladies— not stories of spouses who saw the plane hit and children who felt the rumble in their classrooms. I drove on, recalling the wide blue eyes of the woman on the lobby couch, silent tears inching down her cheeks while the dark voice on the radio reported smoke at the Pentagon, swallowing the world we knew before. Copyright © 2009 by Jacqueline Jules. Biography: Jacqueline Jules is a poet, librarian, and children's author. Her poems have appeared in Poetic Voices Without Borders, Christian Science Monitor, America, Sow's Ear Poetry Review, Sunstone, Potomac Review, and The Mid-America Poetry Review, among others. She won the Arlington Arts Moving Words Poetry Competition in 1999 and 2007, Best Original Poetry from the Catholic Press Association in 2008, and the SCBWI Magazine Merit Plaque for Poetry in 2009. Lawrence Schimel Featured on www.ArLiJo.com Kristallnacht She wore glass spectacles for her vision was clouded, as if that night her family's home was burned to the ground in a pogrom the smoke had gotten into her eyes and never left them. They named her Cinderella when they pulled her from the ashes, their hearts going soft because she was only three years old. Years later, her stepsisters teased that she was named Cinderella because she was dark as soot. They pinched her bold nose and pulled her black hair and powdered their pale faces to go to parties with the Viennese elite. Cinderella, of course, was never invited to attend these lavish social functions; her foster family happily left her at home, working while they danced, dreaming of the day she was asked to accompany them. She was always certain it would not be long, and therefore worked unfailingly, hoping for approval. While her stepsisters primped and prepped to waltz among princes, Cinderella walked to the market, stepping over sewage in the gutters, dodging the nimble rats that boldly crossed the streets in search of food. A kindly frau who sat beside a cart of squash—yellow gourds and fat pumpkins like lumpy little suns—stopped her. She took Cinderella's hands into her own. "You look so sad, dear. I will help you." The woman drew Cinderella into the shadows of the alleyway, and pulled papers from her pocket. "Take these," she said. "They are mine, but I am old. Go to America instead of me. Find a new life. Send for your family, if any are still alive. I am too old to begin again. But for you, there is still hope for you." Cinderella stared at this woman. "I am no Jew," she said, handing back the papers. She walked away, but the frau's words— the insinuations, the generosity— haunted her. She walked faster, trying to outrun the echoes in her mind. Passing a shop window, Cinderella saw a pair of slippers made of glass. If she had been invited to the ball, she thought, she would love to wear those slippers. She stared at them, longing, and her reflection stared back: swart, square. Semitic. She bought the slippers with the grocery money and hurried back to the now-empty house. Cinderella powdered her face with the stepsister's cosmetics, put on one of their dresses. She tied her dark hair in a knot and hid it beneath a silver scarf. But still her nose betrayed her. She didn't care. She slipped on her glass shoes and made her way across town to the gala event, dreaming of finding a prince who would love her and adore her and take her away to an enchanted life where it did not matter that she looked like a Jew. The party was as dazzling as she had always dreamed. No one stopped her at the door, or paid her any notice at all, it seemed, though some people stared at her. No one spoke to her. And then a shriek made Cinderella the center of attention, as her two stepsisters ran toward her. "You are not fit to be seen here!" they cried. They snatched the spectacles from her face and, in front of the assembled crowd, crushed them underfoot with a delicate twist of the toe, grinding downward. Cinderella's vision blurred without her glasses. Tears burned in her eyes, and then suddenly the smoke that had clouded her sight for as long as she could recall lifted. She saw, at last, what she had always overlooked before: these people had killed her family, had meant to kill her as well. She stood there, numb, as the stepsisters poked and pushed her. They stepped on her toes and broke her glass slippers into hundreds of sharp splinters. Cinderella left the shards of her glass shoes on the dance floor and walked barefoot out of the hall, leaving footprints of blood behind her. She was never seen again. Copyright © 2006 by Lawrence Schimel. Kristallnacht first appeared in the journal Mythic 1, edited by Mike Allen, Mythic Delirium Books, 2006. Most recently it appeared in Poetic Voices Without Borders 2, edited by Robert L. Giron, Gival Press, 2009. Reprinted by permission of the author. Biography: Lawrence Schimel is an author, anthologist, and translator who has published over 90 books, including Fairy Tales for Writers, Best Gay Poetry 2008, Two Boys in Love, First Person Queer, The Future is Queer, Desayuno en la cama, La aventura de Cecilia y el dragón, and ¿Lees un libro conmigo?. He lives in Madrid, Spain. |
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