‘He hadn’t seen the old man since’, ‘Six Storey High Car Park’ & ‘We might not be lovers’

Edward Michael Supranowicz is the grandson of Irish and Russian/Ukrainian immigrants. He grew up on a small farm in Appalachia. He has a grad background in painting and printmaking. Some of his artwork has recently or will soon appear in Fish Food, Streetlight, Another Chicago Magazine, Door Is A Jar, The Phoenix, and The Harvard Advocate. Edward is also a published poet.

He hadn’t seen the old man since 

He hadn’t seen 

the old man since the 

papaya split between 

his knuckles and nails in anger, 

toes pressed / hot sand / 

he hadn’t seen the old man 

since the glass toppled and 

spilt white crackling wine 

on his feet, since 

neither moved / since a movement 

was tantamount to 

‘motive,’ was tantamount to 

giving up 

Six Storey High Car Park 

Babe, 

This amphitheatre is dirtier than you’d think. Down in the pit, 

I can see the tooths of both bull and killer, 

bleached by the sun. 

Lucky for me, 

I’m in the box! Passenger seat, shotgun, peering down through the window 

Into a yawning bowl of sweat and blood. I could call to you from here, if you fell, 

But your eyes probably couldn’t see me on the sixth floor 

And my feet eat up the strides so fast nowadays. 

I’m bigger now. All grown-up now. Am I sexy yet? 

So I jump the rope and slide down the banisters so my hands get red and roughed up 

And my knees rise so high and fall so low I feel like I’m sailing more than I’m running: 

Sailing, 

Sailing,

Sailing all the way over to you. 

Did you know 

that this pit was made of quicksand? The bulls and the matadors wrestle 

With jaws gripping arm, hand gripping horn, because they are just trying to hold on. 

Swallowed up fast. Gulp. 

So I am swimming to you now 

And looking at your handblown glass wings and touching them before 

Even looking in your foglight eyes. Which is a whole ’nother thing, yunno, 

Because your face is an open book and in dents and dog-eared abrasions, I can see myself written all over you 

Which is a stupid thing to say. How embarrassing. 

The next thing you know, 

I’ll get all poet-y and mournful because you’ll be swimming away from me or something 

And I’ll be sucked into the bottom of the quicksand pit 

and pop! 

appear right back in my seat. 

I’m in the box! Peering down over the seats below, fingers curled on the edge 

of my seat, slurping my Maccies milkshake only when the clapping starts so 

no one can hear. 

The gladiators and the matadors die and stuff, and cars crash, glass shatters, etc 

I just wanted to see you. You stare at the road even when we’re not moving, grip the wheel, until 

a big yellow sign reads 

B A S E M E N T   E X I T, right next 

to the one that says B A S E M E N T  E N T R A N C E  

between which is just          a long 

low 

strait 

of pave

m

e

n 

t 

So you turn the car, you cross the lines, 

And we sail the ramps all the way back up. 

We might not be lovers 

We might not be lovers But we are two boys scratching our names into trees With dirty coins we stole from the bottom of someone’s wallet 

We might not be lovers But we are two fools at the circus Who catch each other mid-flight Hands to forearms, ankles to knees 

And we are the two swinging trapezes Who have only ever known the root and rigidity of the earth and the trees Before something compelled us into motion And it is all we have known since 

We might not be lovers But we are two boys watching the show Fists full of popcorn, mouths full of words Shoulder to shoulder, knee to knee 

We’re laughing in wild unison So kaleidoscopic, so note-perfect, that it could only ever have been unplanned 

We might not be lovers But what a vision! What a throw! What a drop! What a show! 

Although I wish I had known the taste of your blood in my mouth, Of the skin of your knuckles By the skin of my teeth 

Although I wish we were two boys in the heat of battle, Both of us the dead bird, both of us the housecat’s jaws Sometimes we’re two dogs howling from separate gardens 

On separate streets, whose owners walk in different parks Sometimes we’re two boys whose mums never met in the playground after school, Whose playtimes never lined up 

Sometimes we miss the catch, Wrists get broken, the wave rises up high but seems to swallow itself, It was never there 

One of us looks guiltily from above At the other splayed far below The audience applauds but the popcorn goes uneaten Because Grandpa’s coins were never spent, Trees never carved or chopped or made to dance 

We are not lovers, I remind myself I write it fifty times on a chalkboard, Fifty times on the tree at the end of the garden 

Where Grandpa sits and the dogs roll and one boy overhears another boy playing What feels like very, very far away 

At the apex of its swing, one trapeze says to another, “Swing my way sometime.” It doesn’t matter, though, if he says it or not We always come back around.

Ezra James Fiddimore is a writer, artist, musician and Tourette's Syndrome advocate based in Brighton, the bustling queer capital of England. By day, he is calling in sick to work. Ezra grew up between Germany and England, and holds a BA in English and Drama from Royal Holloway. He been published in Bar Bar, Oscurita and The Orbital. He enjoys a subversive approach to spelling, punctuation and grammar, and is not (where possible) prone to briefishness.