J.J. STEINFELD
★ ★ ★ ★
POETRY
Intergalactic Alphabet Sounds
Sci-fi films and stories aside,
you wonder where they will first land
centre of a big bustling city
or a corner of a sad small town
where nothing spectacular happens
knowing there are suburbs and deserts
villages and lakeside resorts
skyscraper-vexing cities galore
hills and valleys here and there
congested and sparse habitats
the possibilities abound
but what if they decide to land
in your driveway with no forewarning
luck or unluck of the draw
then it happens, dream or reality
who’s keeping track…
you recently awoke
after a rough day
of everything going wrong
you and the other standing there
two disoriented beings
looking at each other up and down
suspicion flowing everywhere
you’re too shy to speak first
and the other too tired from space travelling
you both say nothing for the longest time
time and history merrily going on
the hustle and bustle, to-ing and fro-ing,
the other being
speaks first in a voice quite soft
and the language, while perplexing,
has some interesting alphabet sounds
or what you assume are letters of an alphabet
intergalactic as they might be
and you seem to hear the words
“This is disappointing”
and you whisper “Your place or mine,”
waiting for redemptive laughter
or something that says
the world is not about to end.
Photo by Brenda Whiteway
Canadian fiction writer, poet, and playwright J. J. Steinfeld lives on Prince Edward Island, where he is patiently waiting for Godot’s arrival and a phone call from Kafka. While waiting, he has published seventeen books, including Should the Word Hell Be Capitalized? (Stories, Gaspereau Press), Would You Hide Me? (Stories, Gaspereau Press), Misshapenness (Poetry, Ekstasis Editions), Identity Dreams and Memory Sounds (Poetry, Ekstasis Editions), Madhouses in Heaven, Castles in Hell (Stories, Ekstasis Editions), and An Unauthorized Biography of Being (110 Short Fictions Hovering Between the Absurd and the Existential, Ekstasis Editions). His short stories and poems have appeared in numerous periodicals and anthologies internationally, and over fifty of his one-act plays and a handful of full-length plays have been performed in North America.
