an old writer and his words

  • TOUCH

    I would reach out in touch you but as it is my fingers barely reach the keyboard. I would take your picture the next time I see you, but it would appear instantly, no waiting for someone to tell me as you were merely a blurred image appearing days later pulled from an envelope. Perhaps…

    Lou Faber

  • GET A ROOM

    In the park the ginkgoes, male and female, separated by the path, are putting on their leaves. Soon the squirrels, eternal voyeurs, will gather on their branches to watch them mating.

    Lou Faber

  • DACHAIGH

    Even when I was briefly in Edinburgh I dreamed of walking the streets of Lisbon or Porto, looking into the faces of older men and wondering if this one was my father, the one I had never seen, never known. the one my Jewish mother described in detail to the social worker who took me…

    Lou Faber

  • STORM FRONT

    I arrive home to the wreckage of the tornado that is a three-year-old. Picking up the pieces scattered about we both think of how soon the next storm will arrive and how we will welcome its coming.

    Lou Faber

  • GLASS HOUSES

    You want to yell at him, tell him to stop, that it is too soon, that he is not ready, cannot be, won’t be for months to come, but you know he will not listen to you standing, gesticulating, imagining a stone in your hand, shattering the glass walls, the crackling gaining his full attention…

    Lou Faber

  • WHISPERED SONG

    “Oh, Woman who walks in beauty like the night I am a friend who is distant and silent.” — Dineh Wind Prayer We always sat on the back bench seat of the Collins Avenue bus, stared out the big window, noses pressed against the cool glass, stared at the procession of stucco hotels, simple neon…

    Lou Faber

  • WINDSOR EVENING

    I sit in the window staring out over the rain slicked streets to the passing of the occasional car and the three men who glance furtively at the door of the “Adult Entertainment” club. The old oak floors are scarred by too many heels. The railing along the window is bolted into the floor, suspending…

    Lou Faber

  • THE CEMETERY, AFTER THE BATTLE

    They come to her in the dark the voices whisper, she hears them from behind half lidded eyes they sound like the children that once ran across the open field chasing the ball, a too slow bird a mortar shell whose fall outpaced them all, left them scattered, shattered, marked by simple wooden crosses that…

    Lou Faber

  • NICE JOB

    It is stall after stall of tomates de Provence, choux wishing to be kale, peches, small and barely containing their juice. Courgettes beckon, pommes de terre call out their aerieal cousins, haricots quietly suggest a citron aussi. Walking along the boulevard a tourist obviously, without bags or cart, I get polite nods that say me…

    Lou Faber

  • ANTWERP

    It is seven in the morning Antwerp arises slowing in winter the small bar along seldom used quays of Schelde is almost empty, one old man tottering on his stool swaying to breath head pressed on the counter. Young couple, she brown haired pale white skin against white sweater, he long blond woven into a…

    Lou Faber