AN OLD NEIGHBOR FROM LONGUEVILLE INVITES NICOLE KIDMAN
BOSTONIAN STORY
Boston still preserves the tradition of making special suits for deceaseds.
One of such tailors, is an alone guy who will be called Francis.
After the burials, Francis goes at graveyard by night, he recovers the suit and it´s sold to a new customer again.
In one ocassion the beautiful deceased the only daughter of a millionaire. She is named lana, and suffers catalepsy; she wakes up amnesic on the tailor´s arms this one convince her that she is his wife.
They go to live in L.A. and he is planing todo a new identity for her. Many years after lana´s orphan son and Francis, is a nigh guard, who will be called Lazarus who used to be masturbating with a film star´s statue at night in the museum of wax where he works. Some night he is caught for his boss who is dismissed: you can be grateful cause we don´t want charge you for the stained dress.
Lazarus leaves L.A. and after strolling acros the country, he arrives to Boston where he´s get a job as waiter in banquets and feasts.
Lana´s father never got over of her death. He turned into eccentric millionaire and now he is sadly dying and alone in his mansion, and makes a party and he decides to raffles his whole fortune to whom find a concealed key in anywhere at house in vain yhe guests look for all night long, they go away drunks and down in the morning.
Someone ought to clean this mess, mirrors and broken flowers-vase tore cushions, empty drawers, scattered bottles on the floor; finally we know that the key is inside large sculpted ice´s swan, on the table at central living-room (something that never should be missing in a big party).
While he is drying tha table with a dustcloth, Lazarus finds the key and take it to the oldman, who recognizes that Lazarus has won the bet, now he can dies light of baggage, he asks to be buried close by his daughter.
Final scene: Lazarus –the millonaire young—gets married with the movie star who had her statue in that museum of wax. In the middle of his feast ther are two bride and groom of ice are beging to melt.
HÉCTOR LAVOE´S VISION SITTING DOWN
ON A BENCH OF CENTRAL PARK
Your voice falling down like a lightning in the same tree
your songs pealing like bells in the forests of the world.
There´s nostalgia unity in the directory, a call among the things which bore
the last neanderthal, till the end, walking alone in the cold steppe.
Death is more than yellow ribbons in black strokes, color’s light turning, and a chalk drawning our posture on the pavement.
Fearful is a scarecrow through in a cornfield, and the birds must learn to make nests in its bosoms.
Love is the branch that Indians bit while brought out of their bodies the shots of the palefaces.
Loneliness is just a girl in the cold who asks permission in order to sit down on park’s bench and lie down in your bosom.
NEW YORK: CONJECTURE AND DILIGENCE
There are within me places greater than New York
Luis Cardozo y Aragón
For John Miller, Miguel Falquez-Certain
and Gustavo Arango.
The wind sharpens its knives on your hands.
The cold like an ivy on its wall
strips our clothing and buries itself in our bones.
Paradise only then can be a telephone booth on
lexington Avenue
times lets its golden hands fall
on the black earth,
light drink its light on the autumn leaves,
there is only green on the old tombs of St Paul
Chapel, the wind and the rain obliterated
the names on the stones.
The blind, plant-like in their gaze, draw out light
striking their canes on the streets.
women and men change their
shoes in the corners of grand central Station;
they appear to be angels preparing for flight.
The four faces of the station clock
Do not sense a time that is not here or now.
For they do not count the rings on trees.
High windows drink in the moon
under the Brooklyn Bridge the water appears a long
braid flecked with diamonds, woven by
the hand of Hart Crane.
Arrows of strange Cupids enamour me of these streets
of slippery fish,
corners connecting lives and loosening bonds;
provinces of chance, gospels of light on the
walls of Times Square.
A young girl with Florentine eyes on the number 7 subway,
face to face our silence like a rock to be
carved, young girl promise from somewhere else,
a sea which II had never listened to
through your eyes my hand tells me farewell
Tell me, cat from Central Park,
how to live this life
without thinking about the six previous ones,
how to avoid wanting to be air, to save myself from the
membranes and the wax in my ears,
to stick myself in a movie theater
and never more leave.
White background, black words.
The sun hangs on the bosom of the sky
like a medal that keeps moving.
Recovering in the afternoon, captive of my shirt,
swallowed up by my shoes,
pulseless between elbows and umbrellas.
Hearing my nails grow in my pockets.
From the sky and the stars the heralds bring us news
of sleep; its light conquered by the cornices of the high nocturnal tide.
puddles, like interrupted seas, wandering chants and dogs barking
like window panes breaking.
Once again I want to become air,
an on-call television repairman,
ash and urine, an artifact to measure
the depth of the wind…things like that.
He who does not want to cease being a subject
in the rain with flowers in his hands, and a rabbit’s
foot hanging on his chest,
at the entrance to a hotel.
A voice at ground unhurriedly wanting
Places where light does not invent forgetfulness and opens
cracks big enough for a horse.
I shall return to this corner another November,
there will be more missing on the milk cartons,
more empty eye socket looks.
I will no longer be this horse wandering aimlessly
on this agonizing afternoon,
this subject who looks hard at me from the shop windows
of Bloomingdales.
With the wings of my guardian angel I shall have made arrows
to defend me, the dark currency of silence will be minted in me,
and I will go forth to the street, like a hand looking for a song
on the radio, questioning my origin, reading the horoscope that
the breeze between the buildings brings.
Then, life, like a bolt of lightning,
and quickly it thunders.
FAR FROM NEW ENGLAND
Sylvia Plath
distant young woman, yet so near,
I also am this thorn that tells me I am alive
the same one slashed by the scent of orange trees,
the one who only today discover the green of the traffic lights
the one who always seems to get the crusts from the breadbox
Sylvia Plath, young woman from Massachusetts,
the world also strikes me
quite far from New England,
from the isolated houses and barns
where they shelter the animals to protect them from winter
I have inherited the name of a dead man:
From the dark earth of the patio
My brother sobs and lays claim
to that which from the beginning was denied to him.
Sylvia Plath, young woman from Massachusetts
how do I explain to my brother that two men
can not bear the same shade.
MARRAKECH: EPIFANY AND SILENCE
Night envelops day’s light like a carpet
Above Marrakech the stars design old.
They get sleep the mules and olives,
the silence hangs up it´s shield on market’s
kingdom.
You go out at the yard and breath deeply
as askin the air you see the crashes
mountains by the wind on its top and you are
linked and you feel close to this sand in a
relationship closer than blood.
¿ Fer, Chauen, Tanger, Alkazarquivir;
can you hear them ?
More than a murmur of flie’s on live or dead
meet flesh, when the wind throw sparks out,
and sand on the mills,
a beat in the distance a far off
SOMEONE ON THE PHONE
By J. J. Junieles
Before I started working at the newspaper, I had a job in a radio station for six months as conductor of a nocturnal program whose mission was to offer some company to the night's travelers. During the program we broadcast interviews, some music, talk about certain matters, and answer the listeners' calls who wanted to express their opinions about some subject, or tell something interesting about what they want. At the beginning, I didn't like it at all, it was a little boring and heavy, but after some time I accustomed myself.
Sometimes, used to call quite interesting people, like a writer who proposed to read twenty lines of his masterpiece, rejected by twenty editors and ignored in tons of contests. The writer assured that it was a great book, but the lack of understanding in the literary's world is amazing. At last, I allowed him read his twenty first lines that result worst that we ever imagined. That night, I did not say anything, but I made the arrangements to tell it the next night; however, before it, I received a lot of letters and zillions of calls congratulating me for that success.
The reason was the voice, and principally the writer's text had cured a lot of people of the insomnia, and they ask me fervently to I let him continue reading his novel every night. Really, it wasn't ethical at all, because my work was to keep them awake with exciting stories, but those listeners assure me that their radios were going to keep turned on; so, even dough they were not listening, the rating would remain.
That night, I told to the writer that we have a new section in the program: "twenty minutes for dream". It was a huge success. The writer received help from those that he had cured of the insomnia, and he published his novel.
Another story from that time, was one of a guy that had lost his dog and spent many weeks repeating a message for finding it. The amount of sweet and tender things that this man say to his dog praying it to come back, was incredible. One night, we listened a lot of barks from the radio station's entrance. My assistant went to take a look and, of course, he found “Bebé”, a Doberman strong as a fight bull and cheerful as a butterfly. I put the dog on the phone with his master, and I heard how they exchange affection's barks and phrases. The man came for it, he gave me thanks and went away with the biggest smile that I have ever seen in all my life. I remember that the man's wife came for accompany him, but nor him or his dog paid her any attention. The man treat the woman with scorn, he only talk to her giving orders and the dog growled when she tried to touch its face. I had pity on her, I asked myself what makes her carrying on sharing her life with that pair of animals. I never even knew her name.
Sometimes, people called to send love's messages, or gays who wanted to make friends. One night, called a murderer who wanted to send his condolences to one of his victims' relatives, and regards to whose will soon die by his hands. His favorite phrase was:"... You know already, you may put your head up so that you are not going to be bad beheaded." I tried to take him out clues with a detective by my side, but he told me that the curious radio announcers were between his favorite victims. The murder talked with a great style, and he was very learned; here and there, he mentioned Georges Bataille´s sentences, and principally Gilles de Rais'; that infamous holocaust's lord. He were also hurling, threats against the today world; and sometimes, he recited Keats or Shakespeare's poems. My assistant said that the murderer was, just a little crazy man, a simple nerd that surely had not killed anyone and he just made up those things in his fantasies. I insinuated it to the man, and he loosens an outburst of laughter. The next night, they find a priest decapitated twenty steps from the radio station.
But the most interesting story of all, was one of a woman that started to call me every night talking me about her sentimentals troubles; the biggest one, was the indifference of a man which she had been deeply fallen in love. I tried to advice her to start thinking in someone else, as “it was better not force things in love affairs”. The love is colder than death, I told her, remaining Fassbinder, but that woman was completely obsessed.
The object of her affection was a dentist's assistant, a little fat boy of low height, that according to her, has the same John Voight's dreaming eyes in “Midnight Cowboy”. She was an employee in a mall, and splurged the biggest part of her salary giving him gifts that he received without scruples; but he never accepted the girl's pretensions. She described herself as an interesting dark-skinned woman of wide hips, medium breasts and beautiful smile.
One night, after a month of calls, she did not appear, it seems very strange to me, but I knew that people were so; maybe, she had found already another “real love”, maybe, she had decided to spend the rest of her life, like me, watching classical movies on television. But, the next night, she called me and asked my opinion about if I believe that this love of her, was impossible or not. I thought it and I realized that the most convenient for that woman, was forgetting that bad guy. I think that he will never love or respect her, she may forget him and wait with faith and patience for someone who would arrive someday, always someone arrives, she can be sure about that. She told me: "I believe you, you are a sincere person. Bye." I heard the gunshot, and imagined the scene.
Next day, I resigned.
WHEN THE PAST CROSS THE LINE [1]
By: J. J. Junieles
Someone opens the doors to Devil every Saturday at night. David knows about that and he suffers for it. Sometimes, he gets off that shift monthly, when he plans the schedule with others photographers, through an extra bill, or a classical soccer game Ticket at "El Campín"[2]. The die is cast today, however: everybody has left, and someone must take the photos of a traffic accident.
He enlarged the flash. Once, twice, three times. The dead body looks at the watch, as it was interested on knows about the time of its decease exactly. It was a familiar cheek. David got closer to the death body, he got on his kneels and he looked through the blood. Then he got on his feeds, and looked around for something that replaced the flicker on his mind of that image. The distance among the buildings began to increase, and he became smaller. Fifteen, almost twenty years divide him from that face. It was his father’s face.
David seemed to seek some explanation, but he was really looking at himself, he was more concerned about his reaction than about the state of things. He suspected that maybe it was a way to protect himself instinctively, a very authentic and healthy reaction beating deep inside from his soul.
-Any information about the car? –No. Look at those people, some of them are drunk; the others cannot see anymore, they’re too old-. The police officer told that with a bad hide worry about the situation. A taxi driver said that he saw a gray car rounding that corner, and that woman says she knew him. The policeman pointed a lady with his mouth: big eyes, full lips. She says the old man used to eat in that place.
David took his camera again. The best of taking photos to a dead body is that any shot is taken moved. Why didn’t you tell anybody about your relationship with the deceased? David asked it to David inside. No one answers him. The ambulance arrives with its lights like a lighthouse; it paints every red color on the scene with its red light. David, Father, Mother and Sister, the childhood. There was a past to them. There was a house with a few utensils. There was a woman keeping up her husband hot food on the stove. There was an old man saying no more. Mother is crying so quiet in the room, and her shadow which is showed through the curtain. There were not any doors to open, just curtains. I had forgotten that point.
The policeman bent down and took out the wallet from the dead body pants. He looked at the documents very carefully and gave the information to the journalist. David wrote it impassively, he was taking the coldness, the revenge just to hilt. He neither told anything when paramedics put the stretcher and the bag into the ambulance. David came back to the journal just on the publication close time. He gave the pictures and the information to the nightly editor. If there is anything else about that, I will find it on the police station press release tomorrow.
His head seems to be on his feet because he can think well when he walks. He reminded his father, his father’s rows when he was getting so late and drunk at home. The neighbors were asking for quiet. The dogs were barking. Sister was crying under the sheets.
When he visits his mother, something seems to squeeze through their conversation. It’s something made present by, although, when it is not named, because of the fear of his invocation. It’s some domestic habit or routine that makes them tell its name, its marital status: your father, David.
The cold wind made him hold himself. He took a taxi and when he was halfway through his house road, he made a fast wish like a fugitive car. He gave a new address to the driver. There was not any signal of the accident on the street. Even the street seems to be dead. Over the near restaurant, two old men were wearing “ruanas”[3]; they were watching over a Parking door, next to a big cute dog that looked like a sheep. They were not talking each other; they were just listening to the music radio. The dog was listening too. David decided to go into the place.
Although there were free tables in the small place, he decided to sit in the bar. The young lady went close to him with her little girl face. When she asked him what he wanted to order, David realized she also had big teeth; her voice was just the only sad thing on her. She came back with a beer and with her big eyes, which are a little bit red now. There was a fried onion smell in there.
-You are the photographer, aren’t you?
-Yeah, you’re right. I came a few minutes ago, because of the dead body: the man who was run over on the corner. “It was an unnecessary repetition of reason to be there”, he though, “I’m an ass old”.
-Oh, yeah, that’s right; poor man- the girl made a resignation grimace with her mouth that hides her lips up. Who was that sorry for? Was it for him or the dead old man?
-He had to be carefully before-. David told her.
The girl saw him as if she was tired to listen to ironies. David had wanted to take back what he told.
-The street was so dark-. She refutes him. –Every time the lamppost is repaired, the street drug dealers break it again. Maybe the driver could not see him-. The girl turned around and she got concentrate on washing the dishes.
Something got broken between them. David amused himself doing circles with some spilled water on the bar. He wanted to tell her something to calm her spirit. He wanted to attract her attention again. He wanted to close the crack between them. He tried not to be begging even nor complaining. A person who begs for something can never choose.
-I saw you talking with the police officer. Did you know the old man very well?
-He used to come here every single night. He talked too much. I am a little quieter. He always had something to say. He had travel all over the world and he visited to many places. He was a kind of person. Suddenly, the girl stopped washing the dishes and she seemed to remember something. After that, she run through the end of the place, maybe to the kitchen, where something smelled like fire. She came back with her red eyes, again.
He imagined his father having dinner every night, after job, in so many places like this one, and traveling by that long road people used to run, just to find the way to forget themselves. After that, fifteen or twenty years go by, and that counts something. Then, you forget what you were, and you got reborn, and you finally forget about the dust under the rug.
We run as fast as we can, looking for escape from hours of boredom, but after that we look down at our feet and we realize we are still at the same point. It’s simple: Life seems to be that little moments which we join together and finally they mean our complete existence. Someday a careless man decides to cross the street and then he died. Someday, another man has to work an all night long and he is taken by surprise. The rest of the time is just training for those moments when something unexpected happens and things go wrong.
David tried to concentrate on the girl. Maybe she was the last person that saw his father alive. Surely, she knows more who his father was than anybody else. That decent man, who was entertaining people, with his interesting faraway histories. David pushed his thoughts aside like he was pushing aside annoying flies on his head.
He saw her taking the apron off and hanging it up on the wall. She looked like empty and helpless without that occupation, which surely take every hour up in her life. She said something to the cash register guy and then she gave him a handful of keys.
David called her and gave her a bill; then she came back with the change. He saw her wearing a purse, and taking out a bag with some food from the freezer. Soon, He saw a little bit blushes rising up from her cheeks. She became sexy, closer and accessible. She also became a woman. He thought about the good idea that would be to let him coo by the voice and patience of a woman.
-What’s your name, lady?
-Alicia.
-Very nice name. Listen, Alicia, May I come with you tonight?
-No way, Sir. Don’t worry about it. I live just right here, almost two block from here.
-Come on, Alicia, you saw what happened a time ago. Sometimes, you have just to cross a street to make things change.
-Really, Sir, I have no problem. I can go along.
-It’s no a problem to me; you know, at this time, even cats are not along.
***
The hair of Alicia smelled like a cheap shampoo while he was combing it with his fingers. The smell penetrated to him like an own thought. He was thirsty and he felt that unavoidable melancholic feel settled on the spirit after love.
How can those people find beauty at any place?, he asked to his own while he was looking at the sad, almost dirty, white color on the walls, of the only and tiny room in that apartment. He envied that woman, her gold aureole just in the middle of her poor life. The window of the room looked at a wall. That nice girl is very happy with her window which looks to nowhere. The best flowers in the world grow up in the dunghills. He realized of his indolence and he loathed at himself.
-Please, David, don’t think bad about me.
-But, honey, what can I think about you?
-You know what I’m talking about. It’s just a few hours ago we met us and we are right on this. Any time else before, I could tell you I don’t want to, but tonight I was afraid about the death of that guy, it really scared me. You Know, I met him a few months ago, and he asked me to live together yesterday. I was going to tell him I would accept it tonight.
Then, David remembered the policeman: “She says she knows him”, the red and big eyes because of the tears. The smell of onions was impossible. Maybe, there would be still a possibility for a happy end, even to her, who had no change already. He also remembered something read in somewhere: when we are born, we have three hundred bones in the body, and while we grow up, we die with less than two hundred and six bones.
Why did he remember that now?, what sense did it take in this moment, when he has revealed that, in one way or another, he had become in his father, who had taken him, in one way or another, till that bed? Some people dies to remember everybody else they are still alive.
David handled Alicia’s hair like he was cleaning the dust to a dirty doll. Then, he wished somebody took them a picture.
-Tomorrow morning, I will make a mass do for him-. She said.
(Translation by: Rogers Montt )
[1] The original name in spanish is “Una noche oscura el pasado…”. Found it in Con la Luz que me queda basta. Panamericana Editorial. Bogotá, Colombia. 2007
[2] The most famous soccer stadium in Bogotá.
[3] It is a tipical dress for Andeans people.
ABOUT AUTHOR :
By John C. Miller
Professor- University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, USA :
I first met and received the early work of John Jairo Junieles when I was a Fulbright exchange Professor at the University of Cartagena. This young journalist and lawyer shared his work requesting a critical eye on both his poetry and prose. I read his work well and have continued this important task during almost eight years. We continue a serious literary dialogue.
In his early poetry and prose, Junieles showed the marked influences of writers from the United States: the classics, Faulkner and Hemingway as well as the modern, McNerney and Auster. At times his work was clearly reflective and imitative. We discussed his hommage to these writers and the clear necessity to recognize and discover his own voice, to open his literary expression to humor and sensuality.
I write criticism about Latin American and US Latino literature. I see in the work and in the literary trajectory of John Jairo Junieles the emergence of a major writer.
DATES OF AUTHOR:
John J. Junieles.
He was born in 1970 in Sincé, Sucre (a Colombian Caribbean Department). He is a writer and a journalist. He studied Laws and Politic Sciences at Cartagena University and Government and Public Affairs at Universidad del Externado (Bogotá-Colombia) and Columbia University, (N.Y. USA). He coursed journalism at Iberoamerican Foundation for a New Journalism).
He worked as a journalist at El Universal, a newspaper from Cartagena de Indias and at the Financial Newspaper La República. He was also a journalist from the Press Office from the Cartagena International Film Festival for seven years and has been free-lance journalist for different Media (Printed and Virtual) like the magazines Soho and Noventaynueve from Cartagena, Letralia from Venezuela, Babad and El Mundo From Madrid, etc.
He has represented to Colombia in the Zócalo and Guadalajara Book Fair (México D.F.), the Spanish Languages Cities Gathering in Madrid and Valladolid (Spain), the Latin-American Literature Gathering in Banff, Canada, the International Literature Colloquium at the Peru Pontifical Catholic University in Lima, amongst others.
Nowadays he is the Cartagena University Communications Director in Colombia. (www.unicartagena.edu.co)
Books Published:
Enough the light inside of me (Short Stories)
Traveler with a fare to strange land (Poetry)
Lonely men in the cinema line (Novel)
The Kamikaze’s Trembling (Short Stories)
Songs on a border neighborhood (Poetry)
Backyard Metaphysic (Poetry)
I’m afraid for me at the end of these lines (Poetic prose)
Papers to catch fire (Poetry)
Recognitions:
X International Poetry Award Nicolas Guillén in Cuba (University of Quintana Roo (México), the National Union of Artists and Writers of Cuba) for his book:
Backyard Metaphysic. 2007.
Writer's project Bogotá 39: Bogota Book Capital of the World (2007)
Artist Residence award in Banff Center, Canada (2007)
International Alajuela City Poetry Award. Costa Rica (2005)
National Literature Award. Bogotá (2002)
National Scholarship of Novel from Cultural Department. Colombia (2002)
Short story National Award of Metropolitan Barranquilla University (1995)
Short story National Award of University Externado of Colombia (1995)
He has been selected in the anthologies:
Of language I eat a story. Latin-american story anthology. Axial Editions, México D. F. 2009
New Colombian Poets Anthology. Monterrey University. México. Foreword of Juan Manuel Roca. 2009.
Twelves Colombian Poets (1970 - 1981). Point of Start Anthology. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2007.
Colombian Poetry Anthology (1958-2008). Cultural Department of Venezuela, 2008.
Colombian Caribbean Short Story Anthology. Cordoba University. Monteria, 2008. Anthology director: Rubén Darío Otálvaro
In Our Own Words: A Generation Defining Itself (Volume 7, 2007), United States.
I was here and it wasn’t a dream (University Externado of Colombia). El Malpensante Magazine. 2007
Latin-American Short Story Anthology: Bogotá 39 (B Editions, Bogotá, 2007) Twice Good. Latin-American Micro-stories Anthology. Selection and Foreword of Raul Brasca, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1996.
Part of his work has been translated into English, French, and German.
E-mail: john.junieles@gmail.com , johnjairojunieles@yahoo.com
