Steve Edwards’ memoir, Breaking into the Backcountry, chronicles the seven months he lived in the Oregon wilderness alone in 2001 and is due out in October, 2010. Steve has published poetry and fiction in The Cream City Review, Cutthroat: A Journal of the Arts, Passages North, and Sou’wester. Having just recently become a father, most of his travels right now are back through time–to his own childhood.
The local tour guide believes in leather boots with wide toes. Sturdy soles. Protein for breakfast.
The young sailor said he would give me a modicum of love if I let him use my body as a harbor.
The ticket seller would prefer to meet the guests outside, order them shortest to tallest, take the most boisterous by the hand.
The skull-like villa lost in a garden of dreams, so seem the isle’s cimitero:
I have fallen in love with winter, / with the day that ends at 3:45 in the afternoon. // with the man striding along the path grasping / a pink plastic bag that glows incandescent / although it only contains dish soap / and the cat food he carries home after work …
...you wonder again about the soul, / Where it hides, where it ventures. / There's always one you have to bring to oblivion...
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