®© Alternate Route, 2021

ISSN 2767-0317

Summer 2021 (Date of issue: July 31st) 

Editor: Michael Starr

Cover Art: Sadie Maskery (SM)

Contributors: Andre F. Peltier (AFP), Strider Marcus Jones (SMJ), Nwuguru Chidiebere Sullivan (NCS), Elliott Graves (EG), Sadie Maskery (SM), Pramod Subbaraman (PS), Abigail Eckstine  (AE), Michael Starr (MS) 

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Published in California.

Likenesses and similarities to any person, peoples, place, or institution past or present are purely coincidental and do not suggest identity or reference.

Table of Contents

Writing

AFP

Six Feet Under

West of Texarkana

Blind Alleyways of Yesteryear

Sitting Bull in Limbo

The Wild Cannibal

SMJ

HOT ROD

I'M GETTING OLD NOW

THIS WEIGHT OF WATER

WE MOVE THE WHEEL

THE DARKEST FLOWER IS THE EVENING

NCS

A Vessel of Tulips

A Crescendo for The Heart’s Opera that Reads Us as A Mere Phrase

For Brothers Who Rent Tomorrow with Leer Satchels

EG

rage

we must never censor our bodies

SM

New shoes

Marshmallow

Haiku

PS

Another 24 hours

Changed

Realities

Tongues

Tears

AE

An Hour, A Face, A Smile

Atlas Forges For Herself

MS

If You Find the Motor Oil Kissing Me in My Thirties

Art

SM

Triptych 1

Triptych 2

Triptych 3

Six Feet Under

Andre F. Peltier

“All true stories begin in a cemetery” ¹

We played Hide-n-Seek,

Kick the Can, & Bloody Murder

everywhere we went.

Neighborhood games with thirty kids,

in department stores

hiding behind racks of blouses

or bathing suits,

in parking garages

weaving in & out of cars,

pillars, stairways.

Saturday mornings

were soccer mornings.

The field was adjacent to

St. Francis Cemetery.

When the older kids kicked the ball

we kicked the can,

we crouched behind

the tombstones.

The small cedar groves disguised

our eternal souls while we waited

for a twenty count, “ready or not

here I come,” &

“Olly Olly Oxen Free!”

We ran ‘round that graveyard

without a thought to the saintly dead.

Our freedom was true & everlasting.

One October morning,

I found the perfect spot.

A hole in the ground:

right angles, smooth sides & deep.

Who leaves a hole just laying around?

I jumped in; no one could find me.

Perfection six feet down.

I had to call for help

once it was clear that

I couldn’t get out.

The other kids got our parents,

& while shaking his head,

my father pulled up

the post-modern Lazarus  

who left only footprints

upon that hole’s sandy bottom.

The other parents

tried to hide their disgust…

their laughter.

I didn’t understand the concern.

It was just a good hole.

Who doesn’t love

a good hole?

That afternoon,

my mother & I

went grocery shopping.

We drove past the cemetery

& saw a crowd around

my hiding pace.

They were looking down,

probably questioning

the child’s footprints at the bottom.

Probably considering the dirt

kicked down while I attempted to

scramble up.

“Did another kid get

stuck down there?” I asked.

“Not exactly,” mom replied.

“Not exactly.”

Zafon, Carlos Ruiz. The Shadow of the Wind. Translated by Lucia Graves, Penguin Books, 2004. 

West of Texarkana

Andre F. Peltier

In Northeastern Texas,

on the prairie between

Paris and Texarkana,

the sun was setting

on the Year of our Lord

2011.

Lost on a muddy two-track,

we saw an enormous buck

silhouetted against

the rising stars

of New Years dusk.

Abandoned Fords, Buicks,

& Toyotas

rested in an open field

w/ brush and weeds

towering through their trunks

& hoods.

Left ajar by past owners

or forced ajar by time

& rust,

the trunks & hoods revealed

the vacant void of history.

Abandoned trailers,

washing machines, & tires

grew where the rattlesnakes

& rabbits once played

their endless game of tag.

We turned the rental car around

to head back in time

for beer, & fireworks,

hoping to make it through

the soft sand, the deep ruts

when we saw their eyes

flash in the headlights.

Glowing white & hollow,

a dozen spaniels blocked our route.

They’d been left like

the Fords, the Buicks,

& the Toyotas,

like the tires & washing

machines.

Once well-fed & tame,

they lived off the land.

These dogs,

in touch more with

the hidden coyotes

& razorback killers

than with their housebroken

brethren,

were learning the ways

of their wolfen ancestors.

They stood their ground

as if to say:

“This land is ours again.

This North Texas waste

belongs to North Texas

wretchedness.

Like the tires & Toyotas,

we now make the calls.”

Blind Alleyways of Yesteryear

Andre F. Peltier

Day follows day.

Night chases nighttime

down a dead-end street.

Deadened and dirty,

the sun sets on our

midday snooze

as the blind alleyways

of yesteryear

fog the memories

we left behind.

Will you be there

when the highways

turn to dust?

Will you be there

when our empty lungs

burst?

When I call your name,

will you come running?

Lord preserve us

and protect us,

I’m drinking whisky

for breakfast.

The dark silhouettes

of our fabled ancestral

name hide in the corners

of tomorrow’s

tombstone tea.

No one remembers

those Kaiju killers

like you and me.

We drove forty miles

of dirt roads in the

rain.

Mud to the floorboards,

mud to the chassis.

Forty acres of forest wood,

looking for the key

to childhood bliss.

Lord preserve us

and protect us;

we’re drinking whiskey

for breakfast!

Deadened and dirty,

the sun rose over

frigid February mountains.

Cloudland Canyon

obscured by forgotten

cloudland haze.

Who recalls the antagonistic,

b-movie daydreams

and rolling hills of

central Tennessee?

Who recalls the Natchez-Trace?

Lookout Mountain

and Joe Wheeler

lost to nobody.

What he had is gone.

What we made is

broken.

Lord preserve us

and protect us;

we’re drinking

cyanide for breakfast.

Reading Defoe and

Eliot through backseat,

Midwestern hate.

Virginia Woolf never

tried to make the midnight

run through

green Indiana smoke.

The gates came down

and the cops

beat down dogs

in the parking lot.

It must be said,

the toilet bowl tour

flushed lives from its

grasp

as we chased down

one more kick.

Lord preserve us

and protect us,

we’re drinking

arsenic for breakfast.

Clouds explode

from mental

concentration

and the holes they leave

let through limitless light.

When might those

clouds return?

Longing for the return

of the king,

the return of that

cloudless summer peace.

The holes in our skies

rivaled

only by the holes in

our history.

Making our own beds

for all our sleepless tomorrows.

Lord Preserve us

and protect us,

we’re drinking

hemlock for breakfast.

Sitting Bull in Limbo

Andre F. Peltier

In the Somerton District

The police are

confused.

At Standing Rock

the police are

confused.

The police are

misguided.

Red lives matter,

but we sleep and

ignore as the

buffalo roam

through our familiar

costume rom-

ance and

the feather headdresses of our

souls, too tightly,

sit atop our aching brows.

Fear and mediocrity,

ancestors suffering

in the land,

face to face,

fight to the death,

but the fearless Dakotans,

the fearless Sioux

might still be

forgotten.

Like another Wounded Knee,

another Little Bighorn.

And the dream catcher

hanging on our collective

rearview mirror

won’t catch this dream

and the mirror won’t

reflect the

truth.

“However infamous  

the conduct of the Sepoys,

it is only the reflex,

in a concentrated form,

of England’s own conduct in

India.” ¹

So too

our conduct in the Dakotas.

So too

our conduct in these

United States.

King Philip and the

Wabanaki Confederacy

marched through

the frozen north;

they marched

to their doom

in the face of American

Exceptionalism.

It was an undefined

exceptionalism

that turned its back on

Wabanaki families.

Buried in the dust

the hopes and dreams

of Pontiac

and Dragging Canoe

and Red Cloud.

The vision of the Red Stick,

a future aimed to seize

the future so long ignored.  

Sitting Bull stood tall,

eye to eye w/

transgression.

That old battle ground,

The Black Hills,

Devil’s Tower,

that old battle ground

will run red again.

The headwaters of the

Missouri

will run red again.

People stand and take

AIM,

arm in arm,

the long march,

that dream deferred.

And Kyle Kirchmeier  

is to be steeped in

cries for revenge

up to his very ears,

to make him forget

that his Government is

responsible.

The cliff hanger and

the mischief hatched

and the colossal dimensions

it has been allowed to

assume.

Marx, Karl & Friedrich Engels.  “The First Indian War of Independence: 1857-58.” New York Daily 

 Tribune. 18 September 1857.  

The Wild Cannibal

Andre F. Peltier

As Queequeg’s coffin becomes

Ishmael’s raft

and the sign relationship

shifts again and again,

the object loses its

tight hold on reality

and on Melville’s holy page.

Our heroic cannibal

is pulled beneath those

South Pacific seas
and we mourn the fate of

the great man.

The towering giant

and his terrible tattoos

are lost in those turbulent times,

but the cannibal lives on

beyond the waves.

What is a cannibal

but one who eats his own?

One who destroys the future

by devouring the present.

One who looks upon his neighbors

as he looks upon his poultry, his cattle,

his hogs. Who are the raw;

who are the cooked?

To hunt across the frozen waste,

to fell the albatross

and spear the stag in those

jagged highlands,

we sew what we reap

and the Pequod crew sinks

again and again.

And again and again

we rise to hunt anew.

When the harpoon is cast

at the heart of our future,

when the bombs fall

upon distant kingdoms

and lost gods,

the skies tumble

and crash, and

the wild cannibal

is us.

HOT ROD

Strider Marcus Jones

fast and furious

archangel in paint and chrome

brings me home-

purring megaphonious,

combusting with sav and sap

that i glimpse

peeking into warm grill chintz-

then she lifts her corset bonnet

and lets me touch her glinting bones

secreting home spun

pheromones

attracting, like moon and sun-

mysterious

and mnemonic

old senses,

fallow and fenced

soon become drenched

quiller and squirter

in that linguistic converter-

glow mapping,

overlapping,

slowly blown

in the metronome.

I'M GETTING OLD NOW

Strider Marcus Jones

i'm getting old now-

you know,

like that tree in the yard

with those thick cracks

in its skinbark

that tell you

the surface of its lived-in secrets.

my eyes,

have sunk too inward

in sleepless sockets

to playback images

of ghosts-

so make do with words

and hear the sounds

of my years  in yourself.

childhood-

riding a rusty three-wheel bike

to shelled-out houses bombed in the blitz,

then zinging home zapped in mud

to wolf down chicken soup

over lumpy mashed potato for tea-

with bare feet sticking on cold kitchen lino

i shivered watching the candle burn down

racing to finish a book i found in a bin-

before Mam showed me her empty purse

and robbed the gas meter-

the twenty shillings

stained the red formica table

like pieces of the man's brains

splattered all over the back seat

of his symbolic limousine

as i watched history brush out her silent secrets.

THIS WEIGHT OF WATER

Strider Marcus Jones

if i could lose
this weight of water from my shoes,
that follows the place i'm walking-

i know it's not the blues,
or patterns in the grooves
of souls talking-

but the plate of my mistakes
is full and contemplates
what's left to be worth calling.

i change my shoes,
and tune my station
to your chords of conversation,
and in these wired interludes-
i find life's translation.

WE MOVE THE WHEEL

Strider Marcus Jones

we move the wheel

that turns through each mistake,

giving motion

to the roles we chime

until both trickle out of time

like brittle steel

that rusts and breaks

into lapsed devotion.

less, or more,

you imagined it was sure

sharing the road

with you,

treading under dark, grey and blue

sky, wondering where it went going

to unfold

in fates wind blowing

fondling your full face

to some top-to-bottom place.

we have moved the wheel,

only to reveal

our high Metropolis

is still the same Acropolis

of extremes and obscenes

spreading gangrenous genes.

we have separated Dream from Time

and live in mirages

like Bacchus and Libera

duped in an era

condoning crime,

altering the images

of it's illustrious self

stealing the wealth

of massed, divided synergies.

THE DARKEST FLOWER IS THE EVENING

Strider Marcus Jones

again

consensual persuasions

make sensual equations

as we smoke and share a think,

then the same

as she bends over the shingle sink

breasts slapping

on bowl and rim,

peachey buttocks yapping

as i slide in

and out of her velvet purse

each time deeper than the first

two parts making one perfection

of mental physical connection.

outsides

i saw two magpies

in the branches of a tree

barbed tower

watching our sharing eyes

shape fractured liberty

slipping the shackles of feudal power.

in this then,

i know how all of when

you're gone

reduces me to being one

and the darkest flower

is the evening

opened by your scent

giving everything

and receiving

mine in mind and meldings meant.

A Vessel of Tulips 

Nwuguru Chidiebere Sullivan

to expunge grief

on every sign post--- bare its commonality with the

ectopic dusk,

say, storm every intricate part of a loss

& have it begging for the reach of forceps

or a needle to redeem this

pea it singled out from the pod.

you've become a transparent smoke        a rare

response to God's shots. I envy the humble heroes    

of the quiet bubble      of their sincere appetite.

every day, I fraction my prayers into

bread & wine --- atonement for a loss

& needle bits of it into my status

to carry every part of your plans for me

to peddle each of my prayers for you---

a parallel plurality of the thirsty hearts.

I wasn't aware that the hyphen at the end of this

sort of love arrows into a deep void, when moments

suddenly trip us into ages until

we wake up in another person's bones--- an accident

that abandons one in a naked season.

It dupes one of the glimmers, a value, a belief in the

democracy of air.

I assumed this empathy

& waited for you every night to show up at the

parlour & tell me this was just a nightmare, or maybe  

plant a dimple on my cheek as a formal goodnight--- 

look at us still standing at the opposite width of this

ocean, pretending

we'll still meet to part no more.

but in case this is the end or a step closer to reality

may heaven understand that you were a vessel of tulips shaped

into a shade in the form of a father to me,

may they understand that you've always been an angel here

& you'll do better as one over there. 

A Crescendo for The Heart’s Opera that Reads Us as A Mere Phrase

Nwuguru Chidiebere Sullivan

The world waited for the emergence of bloodstains from this search party

  before declaring me emphatic stress to everything beautiful.

it’s a night party when every star swells up with your name

  & your eyes carry a moon that reflects

the photosynthetic gaze from the asymmetric concord reigning in your heart

  & your mood breaks into fireworks in the middle of harmattan.

this means you are a dry field consuming yourself to keep others warm,

  mahogany splitting itself into palpable planks that lure flaming love

to every cold body. But what happens when everyone

  pomades you with formalin immediately you lie comatose

on the sofa of your grief? Do you pronounce love a republic of thorns

  or do you substitute your scents of burns with a nation of regrets that

breaths underneath your lungs?

most times what we sentence our comfort to impress

  reads us halfway as a mere phrase.

most times what we sentence our comfort to impress

  reads us halfway as a mere phrase.

For Brothers Who Rent Tomorrow with Leer Satchels

Nwuguru Chidiebere Sullivan

a parrot lost its mouthpiece to the rattles of my intestines

while I sit side by side with my elder brother, plotting

the gradient of tomorrow on a Cartesian plane;

exactly where we cap a lot of dingy acnes

with periodic haloes on a low budgeted axis. this means

I and my elder brother woo glossy goals with the

tongue of the rich for our tomorrow, even when

today's arithmetic equates us to raggamuffins.

I know the plight of limbless plans; it prides itself around

our bodies as unsolved surds, while we mutter the

eerie squeaks of a heron that lost its wings to the

straps of the squall

& I hope this violent air carries the burns of our heart

to the palms of God

perhaps, he will notice how our dreams become a

burning brush amid a thirsty hinterland.

at nights before we go to bed, we sum up

the quotient of each of our plan & fiddle it

as the highest common factor in our litany;

that is exactly how my mother taught us to

make crescent canons the subject of the formula

in every quadrant of ambition, we etch for tomorrow.

rage

Elliott Graves

i don’t

ever ever ever ever ever

wanna see him again

i can’t even begin to type his name

i know that i am right

by the way my head reacts

to seeing, hearing, smelling him

feeling him in that position again

it’s not real it’s not real

someone save me please

whether in this life

or in the next

i will have my revenge

i will wound him like he wounded me

i’ll fuck him up again

i wish that i could tell myself

that i am fucking right

but my memory can’t be trusted

and my brain is fucking fried

we must never censor our bodies

Elliott Graves

my body is something

to be celebrated not

to be talked about in

hushed voices in a

disapproving tone my

body is mine i am

not a freak for lov

ing it i am a

freak for sure but

i reclaim that for

myself not my body

New shoes

Sadie Maskery

They were in a Sally Army window

and I pressed my nose on the glass.

Smudged snot until a lady tapped

and shooed. "Can I have them?"

I asked, "Can I?" "How much?"

and a hiss, and then "All right but

that's it, they're for school as well,"

and I was so happy I sang back

to the shop and tried them on,

though the lady was doubtful.

"Are you sure they fit", but she was

the shooer and I said "Yeah."

At school I bled, my heels bled

so badly, I bled into the soles

and my feet squelched, my socks

saturated, clotted, sticky with pain.

I limped bleeding left then right,

the shriek held grimly inside

as my classmates stared.

"Tough," said Dad, "You wanted them."

Every day for a term I bled, I bled

and howled at Dad but "Tough."

I couldn't understand how he could

see me bleed until my heels

knotted with scars, mounds

I still have today.

(And now I understand

there was no money for new shoes,

I bled and he bled too but

we were both stubborn. )

One weekend he threw shoes at me.

"Try these." Brand new, proper shop new.

Soft. A dancer's shoes. I danced.

I lost them at school, someone

stole them during gym.

Dad did not speak to me for days.

But it was strange, the kids who'd

watched silently as my heels

left skin and blood in corridors

grabbed me one morning,

"We know who stole your shoes".

dragged me to a skinny girl

with the taint of the bullied,

the aura of the bullied,

"Give her back her shoes" and

she took them off silently,

handed them to me and walked away

in her socks with "You scummy thief"

echoing, she bled, she bled.

Marshmallow

Sadie Maskery

So they show a child

one marshmallow

and say, you can eat it now.

But - if you wait, we will give you

two

tomorrow.

What will she do?

Eat it now, I say, of course.

And he laughed, you have no

self control, impulsive funny lady.

And I said. No. Eat it now.

They will lie. There will be no

marshmallow

   tomorrow. 

There may be

nothing

   tomorrow 

there may be

   no 

   tomorrow. 

I don't even like

marshmallow.

But best eat it so they can't

take it

   away. 

And he said again,

funny lady.

But this time he didn't laugh.

Haiku

Sadie Maskery

Yes my past is dark

But nobody died, as such

Or begged to, that much.

Another 24 hours

Pramod Subbaraman

1. Wake up

2. Ablutions

3. Eat

4. Commute

5. Work

            4.

            6.   Return home

2.

3.

7.    Sleep

7.5   You have nothing

         You are nothing

You can do anything

You can be everything

You have no limits

You live your best life

You live your worst life

You are somebody else

You are fluid

You are done 0.5

Changed

Pramod Subbaraman

Tell me now, is this how you play the game?

Very interesting, the game of life

The more you change, the more you stay the same

I came to you because of your good name

You live with a straight face, this double life

Tell me now, is this how you play the game?

You expect me to fall in line, be tame

But I have emotions, not a non-life

The more you change, the more you stay the same

I am an acronym to you, just BAME

You dehumanise me, such a low-life

Tell me now, is this how you play the game?

You steal from me, guilt-free, have you no shame?

I feel like you have stabbed me with a knife

The more you change, the more you stay the same

Can you do better? These words sound so lame

No can do when corruption is so rife

Tell me now, is this how you play the game?

The more you change, the more you stay the same

Realities

Pramod Subbaraman

School? Done

Pre-University College? Done

And you enter University

It is the done thing, nothing strange about it.

Your father and grandfather have been that route

It is just the way things work and we know it well

You meet the others and boy! Could they be more other?

They speak different languages, not the polished English of your private school

Nor the reasonable English of your pre-university college

Some of them are the first in their families to attend university

Others can read and write English

But can barely speak it

It is a strange environment

But it is a sample of the big world

Out there in your city of Bangalore

A city you grew up in

But a city that you are only now

Getting to know

Hang on!

Is this what privilege really looks like?

Tongues

Pramod Subbaraman

This is my உண்மை

I move between the ಭಾಷೆಗಳು

It is what happens in भारत

Especially when your mother tongue

Is different from the local language

A country with so many languages

Almost a continent

An image of what an integrated EU

Could look like

English?

A colonial remnant

Now a link language

But it can never evoke

My cultural emotions

Like தமிழ் can

It can never remind me

Of my childhood

Like ಕನ್ನಡ can

Nor can it replicate

This new majoritarian colonialism

Like हिन्दी can

Tears

Pramod Subbaraman

Tears, not just mine, but those of

All of our ancestors

Tears in every fibre of our being

When was the last time that we smiled?

Tiers to determine social position

The lowest, reserved for us

An Hour, A Face, A Smile

Abigail Eckstine

give me an hour or a face

tell me if you treated me like one-

of your anxious games

would you be able to read the-

signs painted in lipstick

on my face?

give me an angel or a wide open smile

a dream isn’t an answered prayer its-

a plague of rats

seeping through my blood its-

three outlets at any given moment

drawn in admiration of-

someone’s lost boy

give me heartache over trigonometry any day

saying my business is yours and-

never the other way around.

Atlas Forges For Herself

Abigail Eckstine

All my life

I wanted to walk like I belonged

I couldn’t, life had me head bowed

Skin to Atlas

My shoulders rubbed raw

Now, slowly burden lifting

Like a new world rising out of the sea

Arose beneath me all that was beautiful

The parts of me that were vile

Black burnt the atoms of my bones

insides who were not all that

Embracing

Binding

Healing

The words I’m searching for

The feeling of being strong again

I am all of me

Not fearless

But not hiding anymore.

If You Find the Motor Oil Kissing Me in My Thirties

Michael Starr

Where the 30s are flat

Flat out that that is what it is

There is no consequence

I hum hidden songs in your coat pocket

You find me kissing your mother

Well I just needed the money

For the booze,

Fiona Starling lovedrunk hickneyed

Nevertenderling

We wash ashore twice an autumnal dirge

And sing trance for those who can't hear it

The death of love is nothing new when

You drink to remember how good it felt

The other night

The other night

The other night

Remember your astronaut dance lighting me up

In hidden denouement for the apocalypse

Then some stalling momentum may fear thee weather upward

Happy, so to say

The foreign emotion

But saying it--

No, that's stupid

And you're a dumb fuck idiot, too

Congrats

But we won't end on that note

Don't ding the dong or prick the prong

Maybe belle the weather station vein

Cocka doodle weather toe struck disguise

For a foot long hiker

Never made it to the coast

We all say navy crayons looked the most romantic

That was never an official crayola color

Crayola politics

Crayola dictatorships

Crayola sheep farms

The end of Crayola as we know it

There it goes

Whiff it again

The motorcycle wheel

Never one spins but twice sings the song

We invented it

We did this to you

We are very, very, very sorry

Apologies all around

The sardonic ending

So it seems, to me pleased

Never, so

Hum ho

Triptych 1

Sadie Maskery

Triptych 2

Sadie Maskery

Triptych 3

Sadie Maskery