A Thousand Suns
by J. E. Knowles
The light of a thousand suns
beat down on us that summer, cousins
waiting to be respectively [respectably] married
The heat was killing off the old and weak
We tried to sleep in the fan-breeze of a lakefront
window, tried to breathe the heavy, cream-thick air
tried to be cheerful
In a car on the lakefront at night we saw
moon over water
The theatre’s budget didn’t stretch to air
conditioning
so we crowded from the street into its steam bath
atmosphere
to see a play about a thousand suns.
It was hot and dark
except for the light from the stage
the light of a thousand suns
of Hiroshima.
The heat killed off that city
more effectively than our sun, here.
There was no lakefront breeze
The moon was blood.
Afterward we went out with your friend,
the actress, bound for the west,
land of a thousand suns and dreams.
She asked about a friend you both had known:
"Does he have a girlfriend?
A boyfriend, then?"
She didn’t judge, as the sun does not judge,
rising on the evil and on the good
raining fire on the just and on the unjust
a thousand killing times.
At night we drove along the lake
watching the moon
reflected in the water 
J. E. Knowles is a native of East Tennessee, USA, and recently immigrated to Canada. She has also
lived and written in Chicago and Oxford.
by Don J. Reardon
I remember when Benny
stole my baseball glove.
He and the other Yup’ik
boys
ran laughing down the
muddy boardwalk
my old leather mitt
clutched in his hand
they probably had never
seen a baseball glove
before that cool spring day
the irony
didn’t occur to me then
as I choked on blood and tears
- my nose sore and stained red -
I was the only "kas’saq"
in the village
WHITEBOY
the only left hander
too.
Don J. Reardon — poet, author, and tundra philosopher — is currently working on several writing
projects. Bumps on the Tundra, a self-published chapbook of assorted poetry, is just one of his
creative accomplishments in recent years. Other accomplishments include a CD entitled "Stealing Our
Souls" by the Funky Eskimos, 1st place in the National Korea Society Essay Contest, and publication of
several poems in unimportant and rarely read venues.
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