Cinque

i dadi tirati

su un tavolo in discesa

Cinque

le tue dita

fra il sudore della mia terra

Cinque

i miei battiti

dentro il sale dei tuoi respiri

Cinque

le tue note

all’ombra della mia pelle

Cinque

le lune e i giorni

che rimpiangono i tuoi occhi.

Poesia di Liliana Isella.

Foto di Oriela Medellin Amieiro.

On Benedict Canyon, I get lost.
On a poisoned letter
through a naked chest
under a sunny lie.

Yellow.
The erratic road
to the ledbetter of my memories.

Valentine’s Day.
The key is forever close
and your gate is never coming.

Crimson smiles to soften your iced feel.
The dinner crumbles on the velvet altar
as the candle runs out of its last breath.

Under your porch, I light one.
The deaf wind of your absence
dances the miserable trail
of this famed curse.

Benedict, rock this end
in a dreamy cradle of bitterness
sips from needles through incurable veins
to end a river of stolen violets.

Bless this slumber
on the holy birthday of violence
dying leaves between silks of sacrilege
in a worn-out bed of scarlet photographs.

Waits to be forgiven
agonies to be buried
white flowers falling from blue shutters
into the last night of fire
of my breaking shiny mirrors.

Poem by Liliana Isella.

Photo: Elisa Rebeca Bridges.

Di te

ho raccolto tutte le lettere

messo da parte tutte le parole

nascosto tutti gli indizi.

Di te,

fessura di luce fra pini neri

buio fra pagine sfogliate

vento d’inverno su piste di sole.

Di te

ad una ad una copro le ferite

e do l’ultimo giro di chiave

alle  lame del tuo nome.

Poesia di Liliana Isella.

Foto di Massimo De Candido.

Capiterai

col prossimo pesce d’Aprile

fra i regali di compleanno

nella calza sopra il camino

o sulla lista sotto l’albero.

Capiterai

in un pomeriggio senza nome

in una sera da dimenticare

in un’inverno da finire

o in un’estate appena cominciata.

Capiterai

in un disegno sotto i passi

fra una canzone sulla sabbia

sul cartellone della pubblicita`

o in un caffe` di pagine sfogliate.

Capiterai

come la prima volta

come quella che non sei capitato ancora

e come l’ultima

che mai ti ho detto addio.

Poesia di Liliana Isella.

Foto di Max Furia.

Painting by Cindy Moore

And now my bitter hands
cradle broken glass
of what was everything.
Pearl Jam, Black

Il tuo cuore suda schegge di diamanti e una a una addormenta le tue vene, al buio del tuo ultimo respiro.

Il telefono squilla e corro verso la porta – a chiudere a chiave il peggiore dei nostri sacrilegi, a sbarrare il passaggio alla piú irrimediabile delle illusioni, a sprangare l’entrata ad un diavolo che tanto con noi piú nulla ha da spartire.

La segreteria. Un messaggio. Mani tremolanti di una voce socchiusa che gioca a mosca cieca con la tua vita stesa a terra.
Tua madre. No, non puó essere oggi. Che giorno é oggi. Le pulizie. No, non puó arrivare proprio adesso. No no no no.

Corro in cucina.
Sul tavolo c’é il laccio con cui hai legato la tua ora intorno al polso.
“Una siringa sul tavolo” – giá vedo quello che scriveranno i giornali.
L’hai lasciata nel cartone della pizza.
Mi chiedo se la fetta fredda che hai avanzato é quello che mi serve ora.

No, dev’essere nella stanza delle chitarre.
Per entrare ti scavalco come una libellula senz’ali attraversa un fiume senza sponde.
Mi fermo a fissare il computer, quello schermo su cui tre anni fá mi insegnasti a usare internet.
Tre ore fá, su quel vetro fluorescente mi hai fornito la mappa, la via, l’incrocio, il raccordo esatto delle nostre due vite a perdersi per sempre.

Nella fretta di lasciare il tuo regno di fantasmi inciampo sul tuo silenzio.
Cado in ginocchio e nella quiete del tuo costato cerco di soffocare il mio affanno.
Appoggio le mie labbra sul tuo petto – questa volta, solo per assicurarmi che abbia smesso di battere.

Il telefono. Un’altra volta. La segreteria. Tua madre. Ancora lei. Ancora no.

Me ne devo andare – prima che sia troppo tardi.
In questi casi la veritá non é poi cosí importante, se sei l’unica a saperla.
Nessuno sa che sono qui; nessuno sa che é stato il tuo sorriso, a convincermi a maledirti; nessuno sa che sono state le mie mani, a percorrere il sentiero verso la dimora del tuo boia; nessuno sa che é stato il piú fedele dei tuoi amici, a consegnarmi la tua fine.

Le chiavi. Eccole. Finalmente. Te le trovo addosso e d’addosso te le sfilo.
Io, qui a rubare dalle tasche dei tuoi jeans, dentro a cui avrei infilato la mia vita. Non c’é nemmeno piú dolore, quando poi é cosí tanto.

Se mi sbrigo sono ancora in tempo. A uscire da questa malattia, a voltare le spalle all’errore che non c’é modo di pagare, a lavar via la colpa dal favore che a questo amore é costato la tua vita.

Andare. Andare via. Ma andare dove – con gli occhi bendati di gesso, le mani fasciate di sangue, le lacrime incastrate nel rimorso come vipere in rotoli di paglia.

Non mi volto a guardare quello che di te rimane – sul pavimento, a mezz’aria, nell’alto dei cieli.
Ti accendo la televisione, spengo l’ultima luce e, una volta per sempre, pulisco le mie impronte dal tuo ingresso principale.

Le scale corrono in discesa contro una vita che scappa verso l’alto, lontano dal tuo nome che ieri – e oggi piú di ieri – nel mio seno batte ancor piú forte:  “Massimo, in un cielo di diamanti, tu al sole hai detto no.”

Story by Liliana Isella.

Painting by Cindy Moore.

“Fredda. Come la sua tomba.”
For the last ten minutes. Over and over. Sexier and sexier.
Cold. As his tomb. That’s what it means.

Really?!? Who’s the idiot who wrote this line? Who’s the marketing big shot who bought this shit? Who’s the dummy who’s gonna drink it?

I was picked for the Italian version of this commercial. It’s a new beer. A light one. She is cheering on the tomb of her ex. Cheating ex? I suppose so. Don’t really know.
Well, there’s not much to know anyways. It’s just the beer, the tomb and me.
High heels, red lips and allusive nonsense.

Thank God, it’s done. The hipster teddy bears on the other side of the cameras give me the thumbs up.
As I close the door behind, Melanie reminds me that we’ll be finished in six days. Five after Halloween.

9000 Sunset Boulevard. Los Angeles from the top floor.
I wait for the elevator and can’t wait for the rest to come.
You get this two star town, you get the five star world.

The sliding doors ring. I stare into the hollow they disclose for me.
Him. Him. Him him him.
James. The million dollar pen. The million dollar liar.
The hero. The coward. The father.
The addict. The husband. The Husband.

I drive a few blocks down. Up and down this boulevard of the moon sun. This kingdom of the rock’n’roll nights. This skyless freedom each day harder to dream about.

I turn left into the Starbucks little lot. So little there’s no space.
Well, I’ll park in one of the Hollywood TV’s. I’m Hollywood enough to not be towed, after all.

I sit outside with my latte. The little patio is right across from James’ hotel.
Room 505.
He tried to convince me. On the phone. Last night.
Should I. Should I not. Should I. Should I not.

I was never able to forget her.
Lilly. Lilly. Lilly Lilly Lilly.
James’ muse, his violated Juliet, his million dollar angel.
I desperately fell in love with her in his first book. I missed her to death in the second. Ever after, she’s been following me around.

I take a sip and wonder if she approves James’ wife. His kids. His Manhattan installation.
Probably not. Not really. Schools, meetings, travels, The Hamptons, family, reunions. She chose not to choose those words.
She chose badass. She chose love. She chose sweet boy.
She chose bye.
Her wrists. A cut. Bye.
Bye sweet boy, bye….

Here. Now. She is.
Lilly.
Long black hair, pale soft skin, big blue eyes.
Full red lips. Immaculate heart. Invincible will.

Second, third, fifth floor.
The Sunset Tower.
The golden doors. The ancient walls. The seductive palms.
James. There, he is.

I just look. Look and hold. My latte.
Look and don’t turn.
Don’t. Turn. To her.

I whisper I want to love him.
I want to love him the way she couldn’t.
Love him. Hold him. Heal him.

She grabs my wrist. Empties my hands. Takes my life.
Red. My beats. Into her soul.
Big. Blue. Soul.

-Liliana. Lilly. Lillian… whatever.
I choke. The guy laughs.
-What a sublime, unique name.
-Well… it’s not that unique, around here. Believe me….
-Oh, in Hollywood, you can never be.
Tattoos all over, black nails and a brand new BMW by the patio’s fence.
-Is this your latte, Liliana?
-Ha… sorry. I don’t know how it got that far.
He places it back on my table and sits down.
-Do you often talk by yourself, Lillian?
Laugh. I do.
-I was just… rehearsing. Let’s say.
-Oh, another actress….
-Kind of. Not really. I mean… commercials, so far. Beers, tombs… stuff like that.
Laugh. He does.
Stand up. I do.
-Ok… gotta go…. Happy Halloween, ok?
Three steps.
To James’ tower.
To the other side.
-Lilly….
Stop. Turn. My latte.
-Please don’t leave your lips behind….
His black nails.The white lid. My red lipstick.
-Oh, thank y….
The cup to his chest. He pulls it.
-Don’t leave your reason behind either, Liliana. An unreasonably haunting smile sublimed by an unreasonably beautiful name – too much, to become just unreasonable.

I slowly reach my hand out.
His tattoo jungle, the hot paper, our mirroring Ray-Bans.

Full red lips. Immaculate heart. Invincible will.

Story by Liliana Isella.

Photo by Nic Adler.

Stephanie MacDonald, co-author of the book

Live Through This is a book created by Canadian photographer Tony Fouhse and young heroin addict Stephanie MacDonald. They met in the street before she got clean – before she wrote this book.

LILA: What do you remember of the day you met Steph?

TONY: I remember that day very well. I had been shooting on the block for another project, USER, for an hour or so when Steph came up to me and asked what I was doing. I told her and she asked me if I would take her picture. I set it up, shot a few frames and knew right away that there was something about her. She was intense but open, transparent, able to get in touch with her feelings and brave enough to show them to me. We talked for a while once we were done and I just felt some kind of connection. I met and photographed her a number of times over the next month or so and finally blurted out the words “Is there something I can do to help you?”.

LILA: …she answered she wanted to get clean and your journey together began. Have you ever thought Steph was not going to live enough to complete Live Through This?

TONY: Yes. When Steph left the hospital (3 days after brain surgery, against medical advise) I was told that she had a 50% chance of dying in the first week. Too, about 4 months ago she relapsed (for a while) and called me up from her hospital bed (we live about 1000 miles apart). Because of her renewed drug use her Hepatitis B was acting up and her liver was failing. She straightened out and seems to be doing okay these days. But every day is a struggle and the future is unwritten.

This is an excerpt of Steph’s writing from Live Through This:

On my first day of school my mom took me and i cried when she first had to say good bye but she told me she would wait out in the hallway so i would feel better! when it was time for me to go out for break i didnt see my mom but by that time i was fitting in with my friends and playing so i didnt really care cause i was having so much fun!!:)

My first memorie of being in Ottawa would have to be walking down to King Edward and seeing how easy it was getting the drugs i needed and seeing how many people all had drug problems!! chris new where i could go to find the block so i could get my pills but he was scared to ask anyone. So i went and asked the first person i seen was noddening out and boom i found my fix. i looked at it as a safe place to live and do drugs without going to jail cause i know in halifax if they see you around a drug place you get searched and booked in jail but not here they just see if your alive.

i was sooo unrealibale I was a horrible friend and i only thought about myself!! as i did it i didnt feel bad at all but once it was done i felt like shit! but when ur a junkie you only think about yourself. Once I herd I was ganna start the program I thought to my self “Can I Do It?” but I had you and i didnt want to let you down and tell you no I wasnt ganna do it. so I new I had to do it and I was scared!! cause drugs was alls i new. But i new it had to be done. deep down i did want to get clean

LILA: Tony, who is Steph, beyond the word drug addict?

TONY: Steph is a bright, sparkly person. She likes to get excited but is also about the laziest person I have ever met. You know how you go through life and meet all these people but only 2 or 3 or 4 of them become real friends? Why is that? Probably has to do with things you can’t really verbalize, don’t even want to. You are just happy to have met someone who you feel real and comfortable with. That’s Steph.

Steph, co-author of Live Through This.

LILA: I’ve never been to Canada. Ottawa, the capital, is ranked one of the highest quality of living city of the world. Funny enough, your pictures/stories of addicts paint Ottawa like the equivalent of Skid Row, in my imagination. How do you perceive your own city?

TONY: Ottawa (or, as I like to call it: Kapital City) is quite parochial with an overhanging odour of bureaucracy. It’s mostly pretty, scenic, even, and safe. But like any tight conglomeration of one million people, it has variety. USER, my photographs of addicts were all shot on one 30 metre strip of sidewalk where this particular society of addicts hangs and conducts business. If you walk 2 block from there you are in a totally bourgeoise, tourist-trap area. Life’s like that.

LILA: On your website I saw a few pictures you took here in LA last year. You clearly have a special focus on the people who lives at the margins of society. Have you ever thought of shooting LA addicts who belong to higher social classes? Maybe for another book .

TONY: Never thought about shooting more addicts. I’m done with drugs.

Interview by Liliana Isella.

Photos by Tony Fouhse

from Live Through This.

As I sit alone
in this church

sacred to my heart
is nothing

but your presence.

Poem by Liliana Isella.

Photo by Nikolay Krusser.

Goodbye, the kiss off, written on her rich girl blue stationary with the silver hearts.
Easter Horowitz looked like a Zappa girl, a tall JAP-y Zizmore girl, with a prized closet of size seven Jimmy Choos and long black hair.
Snow White, he had called her, on their first date, in Boston.
They were in Cambridge, walking in their red matching rugby sweaters and bantering, as if it was Love Story. He bought her a coffee and quoted Keats: “a thing of beauty is a joy forever . . . .”

The stripping happened after he left her for his grad student, Wendy Flannigan, all of twenty six. Wendy was bright, competent, sandy haired, and funny. She used to type his reports for him, and then one night, during a thunderstorm the power went out.  When it returned, he found her before him in a state of adorable disarray and he kissed her bare shoulder.

You could count on Charlie’s for the lookers, they said.
 Monday night, he went to see Easter dance.
Charlie’s was a beaten exotic dance joint, in South Jersey. The soundtrack: Bruce Springsteen, Marvin Gaye, Radiohead, “Fool to Cry”, “Wild Horses” and “Angie.” It was aching music that always made you think of what you could never have.
The walls were solid gold mirrors. Red velvet benches stained with beer. It reminded him of a basement, some school boy’s dream of what women were like. Some of the girls were rather beautiful, in their homecoming queen way, and it depressed him to see how far women had fallen.

And then his wife came onstage, the prettiest woman in the room.
She had a move, it was “the toss.” She tossed back that raven mane, and gave a big smile to the strange men, who sat with loosened legs.
Philip knew her well, he knew her smile was totally fake. It pained him to watch her this way. He took out a forty and deposited it in the yellow bikini string of the thin blonde who was perched before him, smiling vacuously. The whole place made him sick. He got up to leave, alone, again.

That’s why he wanted to protect Dacey. She was his only daughter.
She was an exceedingly beautiful girl, not just cute or pretty, but superlatively pretty, like her mother, a head-turner with skin like brown butter and ebony hair. Her stumbling block was talking to people other than her protective father.
Dacey was the one who could see through all his professorial bullshit. He often gazed at the brilliant girls in his class, with their heads over their mythology books. He thought to himself, this very intelligent girl may be Dacey in ten years.

“Hey, Knockout,” he whispered, and Dacey looked up from her artwork that night. She was frowning. He tried not to laugh at the expression. Yet, being a sweet girl at root, she did not hurt him back, and her face broke into a small toothed smile.
He gazed at that jet black hair. Fine and perfect. It was her mother’s hair, which fell below her Indian brown collarbone; she’d given Dacey something at least. Silk. She looked like her mother Easter, he decided, studying her in the lamplight. She was growing into something regal and important. But those eyes were different. Easter’s eyes were blue, robin’s egg in some lights; Dacey’s were the dusk brown of roasted nuts. Those eyes would knock some boy out of town someday, he thought proudly – and with a little paternal jealousy.

His family never liked Easter. One, they were Brahmin snobs, tracing their lineage to the Mayflower, a hook nosed clan with the wintry eyes, the proper dishware patterns, and a family seal. Number two, Easter was a flake. A Buddhist.
There she sat at their Christmas table, the year 1987, crossing and uncrossing her long legs at the ancient mahogany table with the tasteful Swarovski chandelier glittering. Easter ran a sweaty hand over her dangly earrings – a nervous gesture (that charmed Philip at the time). She had long nails too, which his bossy sister meanly commented upon.
Easter drank a lot of Merlot wine, and flirted with his tow haired brother Neil. She was just totally uncomfortable with their Gentile ways. She was from the Texas gutter, they said to him – with that gypsy hair and dark skin, from her Cherokee ancestry.  The parents Clyde and Candy intuited something awful, but Philip was blind and he only knew that he loved her, in that moment.

“I’m reading Dosteovsky for Russian lit.” Wendy said softly, one night, making room for him on the couch. “You should read the line up. I can’t pronounce any of the names. I should have taken an Irish class.”
“You are Irish. That would be predictable.” Wendy wrapped an arm around him, and they began to kiss. He was tangled in her embrace, her short sensible gold hair, the scent of dime store Mary Kay perfume. But, he never judged her cheap perfume, it struck him as wholesome, and he knew she was saving for a car.
Then he heard the rigid click clacking of heels, and he was face to face with Easter, with her tanned hand in Dacey’s. It was a touching portrait, he admitted, and his gut did the same slow burn of nostalgia for Easter. The two dark haired girls, Cher and her half breed Pocahontas. Around Easter’s neck was a brilliant ruby necklace, which heaved above her sleeveless red Marc Jacobs dress. She had not bosom at all, which was odd for a stripper. It leant her a kind of fragility though.

“Out. Easter.” – yelped Philip, straightening his shirt, in a panic.
“A mother is a goddam mother and I will sue you,” hissed Easter, glancing at Wendy with a catty look.
Easter’s eyes were something else. So beautiful, so small though, and venemous as a cat. A spooky look, thought Philip, and he felt a glimmer of fear, for the first time in his life.

They went to court. Philip had a better lawyer, but Easter was the victor.
As Philip looked across the room, Easter was dressed soberly. Black dress jacket and a diamond bracelet. She was driving an Arab’s Jag too. She cleaned up, he thought, grimly.

The court offered him weekend visits.
Dacey ran across the room to hug him. They had this minute at least. Dacey wrapped her olive arms tight around his neck. He wanted to capture this moment and he could feel it fading and dying and going away.
He thought of the time he had told her the Greek myth of Midas. He was a professor, he told those kinds of stories. In his opinion, Easter was King Midas.
He knew what would happen. Dacey would grow up. She would remain gloriously beautiful and be even more so. She would get boyfriends, and bring them home to her place. Tatoos, cell phones, texting, myspace, and boys. She would shop at the mall and grow brittle and shallow as an American teenager girl does.

In the light of the setting sun, Easter reminded him of Cher – glamourous, chain smoking, and over-sexed. He knew by nightfall, the ponytail she wore today would have fallen free. Men would cheer her on, in the dark lights, and she would pick one special man to spend the night with. She always did pick one guy, and they weren’t always rich. What she craved was comfort. She liked the physicality of the male.

He found himself staring at her longer than he had wanted to, puzzling over her resemblance to his Dacey.
Easter Horowitz was the first to walk away, taking the court steps two at time, in her tall, Gucci heels. He thought about the funny part, how he had known every detail of her, her hair and her nose, that perfect Roman nose that could have been on a coin one hundred years before. He lit a Marlboro, and paused, day dreaming about the good old days, living in the past that would never come again.

He looked up and his Wendy waved from the car. Her smile was totally transcendent. Her crooked teeth, the freckles, the blonde hair. He thought of the ending of La Dolce Vita. She was something innocent, at least.
He waved back, even if it meant leaving the best thing that had ever happened to him. You had to know when to fold them, went the song. You had to know when to go, and so finally, with the tear on his threadbare seersucker lawyer sleeve, he had left his Easter.
Goodbye, he thought to himself, Easter Horowitz.  I will remember you every day of my life.  I will remember you even when you forget me.

As he walked to the car, he found himself walking quicker, then running, fleeing for his life, running like a deadbeat professor who lost custody and seduced his grad student. He knew what the world saw, and he knew what he was – Easter’s creep ex and nothing more. He was running for his life, but he hoped he was finally going somewhere.

Story by Elizabeth Dunphey.

The nape of her neck expended tears of anxieties and fears.
Recalling love had and love lost – not so appealing, and yet so enticing.
Dalliances craved to the core of pleasure – few and far between.

Her pensamiento turned to him – the boy next door. She once had a dream in which he beguiled her out of her clothes, and she came (in actuality).
Nothing really happened, ‘twas solely the act of perhaps, the chance of maybe, the mere sound of yes.

He had come over to work on their yard a few times; her flat mates said they knew him from school. And every time he would pull out his grandeur shears – skin so smooth, hair so fine, a countenance of soiled dreams entrapped in perfection.
All she could do was grasp her notebook and coffee whilst she sat on the big beautiful cyclical bay window, her foot dangling.

Her corazon went a flame, when her pensamiento turned to him.
Her sentimiento could only be conveyed as the time of the butterflies.
But, their rustling flaps angered her.
Love did not reside within her, anymore.

All too real – imprecations of past existences have brought her here. To this place of sullied Nirvana. Cobain-ing through life, the misery felt so right. The happiness felt so raw, so transient, so self-important.
She hated that happiness. And it was more clear than the crystal that resides in the tomb of Great Love:  Happiness hated her as well.
And this actualization paralyzed her, breath heavy and oscillating against the big beautiful bay window.
A dream deferred.

Story by Sue Callender.

Photo: Girl and Butterfly.