It was Monday morning, maybe that’s what started the fight over all the pies. Like always, everybody was sitting around the diner having a cup of coffee or a couple of eggs, getting ready for work. And, like always, nobody looked very happy about it.

Rosie was grumbling that her old man, who was out back fixing something, hadn’t cleaned the grill right. She said she wasn’t getting squat for tips that morning and it wasn’t her fault if the eggs were coming out smoky. Joann, who was sitting next to me, was agreeing with that, saying her ex-boyfriend was always a bastard about his eggs. Me, who was throwing my good eye on Joann, was agreeing with her, saying that smoky eggs could be tasty. A couple of truckers who were passing through were sitting up front bitching about the cops on I-95. Harry was hunched over his baseball scores with nothing to say, as the Reds had lost. Down the far end, Big Rick was quiet too, looking thorough his receipts book, scowling and scratching his goatee. Down the other end, as far away from Big Rick as you could sit, Dom, huge and hairy as a buffalo, was plunked down on his stool. Sitting next to Dom was his son, Eddie. The kid’s about 16, and skinny as a beanpole standing sideways. He doesn’t say much, but when he does it’s usually something goofy.

Now, the standard story is that Big Rick and Dom hate each other’s guts on purely business grounds: each guy says the other is a stinking bastard that scrounged him out of customers and so he wants to kill him. Fair enough. Other folks claim that milk had nothing to do with it, and that the bad blood between them is because both were boinking that hot number Sarah Jennings. I mean, why else would she need two milkmen, right? Well, however it was, each guy thought the other guy was plowing his tomato patch, and so finally they locked horns. It was down to ‘world famous’ Charlie-O’s one night, and legend is that sexy Sarah was waitressing. Folks that saw it said it was like a hurricane that started in the bar, flew out onto the sidewalk, then went ripping down Main Street. I suppose that one’s a stretcher, but even the next day’s newspaper said how those two put a whole shift of cops in the hospital. (more…)

How to navigate the river of a son named David
at the hot time of day is what we want to know
and we donít hear the knock.

I dream we are in the bedroom.
We don’t know what to do in Africa
but love each other and walk the beach.

Andrew loves the brown women, lets tide
somersault him in undertow, loves the tormenting market,
sniffs pineapples for the sweetest. (more…)

They met where the south marched north,
where crosses sullenly blaze
and men shoot guns.

We drove in silent marvel down roads
where pigs mutter in front yards
and dead deer hang from the trees.

We were to turn at the town store, easy to miss,
disguised as post office and gas station.
The light was almost out of the day
when we finally found the church.
The glossy brown oak leaves
drained somber like the sky. (more…)

In the dead of night, my hands hit the face of the drum
Every beat tears my skin, calling for my love
While shadows of angels are dancing across the moon
Their hands are stained from the remains of my wounds

Ah, my country was my medicine
Ah, like raindrops on my skin

I kissed The Book three times before I laid to sleep
Said a silent prayer blessing the souls that weep
May each tear from their eyes cover my beaten flesh
The numbness in my body longs for the pain that left (more…)

Translated from Bulgarian by: Ivailo Dagnev

“And what happened in the end?”
No reply.

Silence froze again over their heads like a crystal chandelier, threatening to fall down any second. He had noticed, on evenings like this one, that questions like shark fins surface unexpectedly.

There is something mystic in the hours before the New Year. It is as if we listen for the first time to the whispers of time. We even realize that it robs us, if we perceive it as sand in an hourglass, trickling away incessantly. But time does not move, it has been frozen for quite a while; we are the ones who keep changing. Yet, we donít want to admit it. We are crucified on its frozen face.

Evenings like this one are lustfully predisposed to foul silence. You just sit and watch how questions take you by surprise. In order to answer them you have to turn your pockets inside out, look into every corner of every moment. Actually, are answers possible at all? Spiridon sighed. Arenít they just the other side of questions? (more…)