LAZULI LITERARY GROUP
  • ABOUT
    • Our Literary Aesthetic
    • Staff >
      • Writings by Sakina B. Fakhri
    • Contact Us
    • SUBSCRIBE
  • CONTESTS
  • AZURE: A Journal of Literary Thought
    • AZURE Volume 6, Issue 4 >
      • TO THOSE FOUND DEAD IN CHIMNEYS by R.W. Plym
      • WHAT TO EXPECT OF LIFE by Steven G. Kellman
      • IF IT WERE DRAWN by Jessica Reed
      • BLOOD IN THE ORCHIDS by Amanda Kotch
      • CORNELIUS RADHOPPER by Peter Arscott
    • AZURE Volume 6, Issue 3 >
      • ANIMAL INHERITANCE by akhir ali
      • THAT DUDE DERRIDA by Daniel Klawitter
      • FLAT-EARTH FRED by Phil Gallos
      • THE MYSTERY OF THE MISSING SEMICOLON by Orana Loren
      • MY BALDERDASHERY by Eric Paul Shaffer
    • AZURE Volume 6, Issue 2 >
      • MIRROR by Joshua Kepfer
      • CUE FALLING PIANO by D.C. Weaver
      • ANTON AND THE ECHO by Cristina Otero
      • THAT WHICH WE TRULY DON'T KNOW by JOACHIM GLAGE
      • CONGRATULATIONS by Alan Sincic
    • AZURE Volume 6, Issue 1 >
      • NEVER, NEVER LAND, MY SHIP by Mark Pearce
      • THE SMILE OF MONA LISA by Fatima Ijaz
      • OUROBOROS by Esme Sammons
      • THE DEPTHS OF THE SEA by Margaret D. Stetz
      • SNICKER-SNACK by Bruce Meyer
    • AZURE Volume 5, Issue 4 >
      • THE OWLET AND THE TURTLE by Greg Sendi
      • BRACTS and other poems by Nathaniel Calhoun
      • ANSWERS TO NON-EXISTENT QUESTIONS and other poems by Kevin Griffith
      • NEVERENDING KNOT by Jodie Dalgleish
      • LEARNING TO WALK by Jodie Dalgleish
      • OVERSOUL by P.S. Lutz
    • AZURE Volume 5, Issue 3 >
      • MAP OF MEMORY by Jesse Schotter
      • BISMILLAH by Abby Minor
      • MICROMORTS by Veronica Tang
      • LOVE LETTER TO LANGUAGE: AN ABECEDARIAN by Saramanda Swigart
      • IF YOU WERE ALL WATER by M. Ann Reed
    • AZURE Volume 5, Issue 2 >
      • CONTRA FORMALISME by Leland Seese
      • DRUNKEN MAN ON A BICYCLE by Dan Butterworth
      • WOLF TICKETS THROUGH THE FERAL WINTER by Kirk Marshall
      • SYLVANUS, BARD by Marc Lerner
      • THE LOOKING GLASS OF ARTHUR GORDON PYM by Frank Meola
    • AZURE Volume 5, Issue 1 >
      • INTIMATE THINGS by Laylage Courie
      • A SERIES OF PUNCTUATION by Hajar Hussaini
      • ROT AND GLORIANA by Laurel Miram
      • BLUES ON RED by Elie Doubleday
      • MY FICTION: REMEMBERING 50 YEARS OF WORK by Richard Kostelanetz
    • AZURE Volume 4, Issue 4 >
      • ENDNOTES FOR AN ALLOCUTION by Peter Freund
      • UKEMI (and other poems) by Nicole Vento
      • MEMORANDUM ON DESIRE by Laylage Courie
      • THE HOLYWOOD DEUTERONOMY by Jim Shankman
      • AT THE MAD HATTER-MARCH HARE ART GALLERY (and other poems) by M. Ann Reed
    • AZURE Volume 4, Issue 3 >
      • THE MACHINE, STOLEN FIRE, and PERFORMANCE by Vivek Narayan
      • FIRST FRUITS by Stephen Massimilla
      • ONCE UPON A TOMORROW-TIME by Christopher Routheut
      • YIELD LIGHT OF WAY by Ken Goodman
      • SEVEN TALES by Sara Streett
    • AZURE Volume 4, Issue 2 >
      • THE PUNCH-CARD CIPHERS by DF Short
      • SHE WAS THE FIRST TO GIVE A TOAST by Kelli Russell Agodon
      • HABLU L-WARIDI by Jesse Hilson
      • THE KEY TO DREAMS by Sean S. Bentley
      • SOFA, SO GOOD, SORT OF by Remy Ngamije
    • AZURE Volume 4, Issue 1 >
      • STAMPING THE DEAD by Habib Mohana
      • LEGS by A. Joachim Glage
      • I THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX by Heikki Huotari
      • LUŽÁNKY by V.B. Borjen
    • ARCHIVES: VOLUME 3 >
      • AZURE Volume 3, Issue 4 >
        • TALES UNSUITABLE FOR CHILDREN by Devon Ortega
        • WAKE UP by JayJay Conrad
        • AMONG THE MEN IS APRIL by Logo Wei
        • SWEET by Melinda Giordano
        • BLACK ROSES by Osamase Ekhator
        • MEET ME TONIGHT ON METAPHOR STREET by Vivek Narayan
      • AZURE Volume 3, Issue 3 >
        • MENAGE A TROIS, WITH HORSE by Don Dussault
        • THE BLACK by Ben Colandrea
        • BLUE SKY LANGUAGE by Christien Gholson
        • UN DETECTIVE VIEJO by Franco Strong
      • AZURE Volume 3, Issue 2 >
        • THE CLEANSING by Linda Dennard
        • SHUFFLE by Debbie Fox
        • DID YOU FALL OR RISE FROM THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING? by M. Ann Reed
        • THE PHILOSOPHER AND THE PORNQUEEN by Omar Sabbagh
        • KIGALI MEMORIAL by Carlos Andres Gomez
        • PANTOUM OF THE MEAT by Ouita Rogers
      • AZURE Volume 3, Issue 1 >
        • HOW TO WRITE A BIOGRAPHY by Joanne B. Mulcahy
        • PROTOCOL NINE-NINE-NINE-NINE by Kenneth Hanes
        • LESS' MORE by TWIXT
        • POINTLESS MR. PROBST by Beatriz Seelaender
    • ARCHIVES: VOLUME 2 >
      • AZURE Volume 2, Issue 4 >
        • SYLVAN PASSAGES by Dan Wood
        • SISTER ALONE by Janet M Powers
        • CENTURY 2.1 by Alan Flurry
        • CLAIMED BY THE SEA by Sam Reese
      • AZURE Volume 2, Issue 3 >
        • CROSSHATCHING by M.K. Rainey
        • LULLABY by Barbara Daddino
        • HOUSEMOUTH (and other poems) by Anhvu Buchanan and Brent Piller
        • THE RESIDUE IN PUBLIC TEA AND COFFEE CUPS by V.B. Borjen
        • SYZYGY (and other poems) by Malorie Seeley-Sherwood
      • AZURE Volume 2, Issue 2 >
        • DRAGONFLIES: A DISCOURSE ON ANXIETY by Lara Lillibridge
        • AND RICHARD BURBAGE ALSO HAD A SISTER by Freya Shipley
        • THE WATCHERS by M.K. Rainey
        • JAZZ INTERACTION WITH SYMBOLS by Sarah T.
        • SPIDER (and other poems) by Natalie Crick
      • AZURE Volume 2, Issue 1 >
        • ECHOES by Daniel Freeman
        • MAPS by Susan Brennan
        • EDGAR'S FATHER'S MAGIC WORDS by JWM Morgan
        • LOCKJAW: IN TWO ACTS by James Blevins
        • WHAT THE LIVING DO by Susan Wadds
    • Archives: Volume 1 >
      • AZURE Volume 1, Issue 10 >
        • SUSURROS DE RECURRENCIA by Franco Strong
        • THE OLD MAN by Sarah T.
        • PERMUTATIONS by Laura Cesarco Eglin
        • WORLD PEACE 3 by Gustavo Alberto Garcia Vaca
      • AZURE Volume 1, Issue 9 >
        • LITTLE GHOST by Danny Judge
        • THE LAST ALLUSIONIST by Sakina B. Fakhri
        • CHURCH by Diana McClure
      • AZURE Volume 1, Issue 8 >
        • DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS by Nancy Flynn
        • WHAT I COULDN'T SAY by Erika Ranee & Diana McClure
      • AZURE Volume 1, Issue 7 >
        • BRASS TYRANT AND THE AMERICAN THIRST by Kirk Marshall
        • LADY KILLER by Monika Viola
        • THE RIBBONS by Ferguson Williams
      • AZURE Volume 1, Issue 6 >
        • AURELIA: A BALLET IN PROSE (ACT 2 - Part 1) by Sakina B. Fakhri
        • NEW AGE UNCAGED by Frank Light
      • AZURE Volume 1, Issue 5 >
        • THE TRIALS OF TOBIT by Joseph Lisowski
        • LIKE MANY GIANT FOOTPRINTS (and other poems) by William Doreski
        • AURELIA: A BALLET IN PROSE (ACT I) by Sakina B. Fakhri
      • AZURE Volume 1, Issue 4 >
        • WARDENCLIFF by Barbara Daddino
        • BETTER LIVING THROUGH CHEMISTRY by Reg Darling
        • AURELIA: A BALLET IN PROSE (LIBRETTO) by Sakina B. Fakhri
      • AZURE Volume 1, Issue 3 >
        • LAWTON, OKLAHOMA by Mark Lawley
        • TWEETY BIRD'S GRACE by Diana McClure
        • CONTAGION AND THE DINNER GUEST by Sakina B. Fakhri
        • ON POETRY AND PROSE by Sakina B. Fakhri
      • AZURE Volume 1, Issue 2 >
        • TWO MICE IN A BLACK BOX & THE DECONSTRUCTION OF LANGUAGE by Sakina B. Fakhri
      • AZURE Volume 1, Issue 1 >
        • CHARACTER SKETCHES by Diana McClure
        • SEASONS ON A GRAVESTONE by Sakina B. Fakhri
        • COCKTAIL PARTY by Diana McClure
        • DESUETUDE by Sakina B. Fakhri
  • LIBRARY SHOP
  • SUBMISSIONS
  • BLOG
  • Lazuli Reading Series
  • Literary Links
Back to AZURE (Summer/Fall 2016)

Picture

The Old Man (novel excerpt from Deep Rooted Cane)

By Sarah T.

Author's note: The novel excerpted below is a pastiche of Jean Toomer's (1923) "Cane", which was set in the rural Southern community in which the landowners' small cane fields were the setting for all manners of drama and passion and human interaction. My retelling of "Cane" resurrects, among other things, Toomer's many characters who died in the cane and gives life to one very minor, but compelling character most frequently referred to as “the Old Man.” Readers know little of the old man other than what the other characters project on to him during about a dozen conjectures about his life throughout the course of the book. All we really know of the Old Man is that he sits in the corner of the basement of a wheelwright’s shop, and that he is fed by a little girl. He speaks just once, giving a brief but eloquent pronouncement of guilt on the area's plantation elite. He is described as being deaf and blind and immobile, but I don’t know about that last part. He captivated me, and I came to believe in his mobility. I hope you enjoy the way I put him in motion.  
Picture

He is like a bust in black walnut. Gray-bearded. Gray haired. Immobile. … The only word he says is sin.
—Toomer, 1923 
Barlo stood back, knowing that the old man, for the moment, was off again in spirit. He leaned in and tied a blue satin scarf around his neck. He could see that the old man’s face was serene.
​
​The old man, the houngan, was out of his body, free from its humiliations and constraints, flying above the pine and assessing the crossroads, the cotton, and the cane. The town stood small but erect in the midst of the pastoral calm. All was as it usually was at dusk. Deer lay down on soft needles along the pine forest’s edge, or sniffed the wind and ambled along the line of trees. A family of warblers nested in a tree nearby, and a blackbird took to flight from the forest across from the Limons’ break of cane.
Mame Lamkin’s husband had wandered out to the forest’s edge past the animals. The year that had passed between his murder and the moment of the old man’s flight had not seemed to change him at all save for the wispy thinness of a dead-self in limbo that had replaced the manly flesh in which he had once lived. He swayed against the wind current, looking down on his mangled midsection in agonized translucence. His eyes hung down, no longer looking for the vigilantes who had dismembered him, nor his lily-White lover who had sat in her house and chewed her nails—tellingly—while the buzzards plucked at the Black flesh to which she’d once clung.  He sensed the old man, and lifted his empty, invisible eye sockets to the moon. The old man moved beyond the ghost and his sorrow.

At the crossroads, the old man saw Becky, ethereally unearthed from the rubble of her cabin, waiting for her sons to come home.  He saw Bob Stone holding his neck as if he wanted to stop the blood, though the blood had stopped running many months ago, hours after Tom Burwell’s blade had slid across it in Bob’s own patch of cane. Bob and Becky—these prematurely dead in their individual levels of limbo—hovered nearly on top of each other. But neither of them knew that the other was there. They swayed and searched and wondered, only somewhat aware that they existed in a space from which they could neither escape nor return to their lives. A long-tailed weasel burrowed in the earth underneath them.

Too many sorrowful spirits and too much unjust blood hung around the fields and forests of Sempter. When he flew too low, too close to it all, the disembodied old man choked with sorrow, like the fist that is the past will do to a man, and brought the days before the end of slavery up from his core. His memories of the sugar mill and the bell rack and the scent of cane syrup mixed with burnt human flesh were threatening to pull him down, so he lifted high up above it, to the line of tree tops that only the black birds could see. He made a swift but thorough pass through the fields of the Limon family; their land extended as far as the old man could see, over hills and into valleys, beyond the beyond and back.

From the distance at which the old man flew, the earth appeared to be perfect. It was green. Breezy. Free from its history and its reality, the earth was the picture of peace. Besides the stranded spirits and the scattered animals, no one was nearby. Behind him were the pine trees, the road that edged along them, and the wheelwright’s workshop where the ceremony to feed and honor the obviously angry loa would go on.
​

Off to the old man’s side just beyond the limit of his vision was the compound begun by his Barlo, which the old man knew he may not even live to see completed. But that didn’t matter much to him anyway. The compound was Barlo’s project. His was simply getting through this life.

In front of the flying old man was acre upon acre of land, reminding him of time and the place that he’d grown from infancy and slavery into freedom and manhood. He turned and sent himself down the hill toward his right. He passed a bobcat on a rock and came to the Sempter crossroads. To its left was a cluster of Creek family homes—a small community that the Negroes aptly called The Left-Overs. A “half-breed” moved down the road toward the door of one of The Left-Overs homes. The half-breed flinched as though he wanted to acknowledge the old man, but instead covered his head and kept moving. The old man free-fell down the air some to see the man, but stayed a respectful distance away and kept on going his own way. He careened above some sleeping geese in the rotting tree swamp, then turned and emerged in the midst of the cluster of shanties beyond.
The guard of the Negro quarters, whom they no longer called the overseer, oversaw the activities of the cluster of shanties from his raised brick one-room wood house with the rickety porch. He sat there with the lamp on, and he listened.  The Negro yards were empty and quiet, and most of its lamp lights were out. The old man knew that the sheriff had told the guard to keep the Black folk in tonight, so the old man passed the shanties and the shack of the guard as well. He couldn’t stand the scent of the blood on that man’s hands, and so he stayed away from it and thus away from his own rage. He engaged himself in the mission of his flight.

He saw the Sempter chapel, but knew he couldn’t get close. It wasn’t the column of buzzards that kept him away, but the impenetrable protection all around the building that would bounce the man off like a ball. He came across the quarters to the front Big House instead. The audacious antebellum mansion glowed in the red moonlight and appeared to him as a pinkish familiar place. It welcomed him weirdly toward its insides.  The magnolias had just begun to bloom, so he allowed their scent to guide him toward the mansion’s iron gate. He saw its sign, down in front, and knew, from years of working there for free and then for pocket change on the dollar, that the name of the place was painted on the sign’s face. Tempus Plantandi, it said—what the Limon family called their old family home.

Each of the second floor windows above the pillared porch of Plantandi was open just a bit, and he chose the one just to the right of center to go through into the house. Once in, he found the mistress, Young Dave’s wife, unmoving, anesthetized from those of Barlo’s herbs Old Chromo had cooked into her cobbler. Ol’ Massa Dave’s wife, the withered Mistress Limon, slept stone still in her ancient Victorian bedclothes and four-poster Victorian bed in the master bedroom down the stately hall. A servant reclined in a rocking chair in the corner of the room, sleeping lightly and dreaming of 4 different-colored horses. She whispered something and clasped the cross that hung around her neck as the old man passed in spirit and kept on going.
There were vases and chaises and mirrors and bureaus and carpets and cupboards and dishes and silver and doilies and curtains and covers and photos and paintings and gadgets and statues and more of the trappings of particularity and excessive wealth within the mansion around him. The stretched, framed, and hung needlepoint on the wall read, in fancy script, “Reap the harvest of your land. —Leviticus.” But the old man couldn’t read it. His eyes were back in body, they were blind anyhow, and had never beheld the grammar books and readers the Big House children sat on the porch and read. He swept right past the cross-stitched directive and the myriad heirlooms, pleased with how disinterested he was in the meaningless items that mattered so much to this upright old family. He had coveted their stuff in slavery days when he was young himself. But none of it seemed to matter at this moment.  He was freer than emancipated. He had no use for anything, nothing but the fresh food that the girl from the Big House brought him, the rhythm of the drums, his tall wooden staff from the Motherland, the rattle of the ascon, and the prayer chants of his godson and flight and dreams and Mother Africa—his homeland, his ‘Nan Ginee—where he would surely go as soon as his worn-out body gave up on him and released him once and for all. Soon his body wouldn’t matter, and heirlooms and items would be worthless things of the past.
​

Sarah T. is a poet and spoken word performer who has stood before many a mic and podium saying many things. Her first book, "This Past Was Waiting for Me", is a collection of poetry and epistolic prose that explores the manner in which the past—especially America’s colonial past and the race-class hierarchies that it established—plays out in the present. It is due out this Spring. The above excerpt of her novel-in-progress--Deep Rooted Cane—evolved out of work she did as a creative writing fellow at Hambidge Center for the Arts in Rabun Gap, Georgia.

​Sarah T. is also Sarah J. Trembath, a graduate of Temple and Howard universities and an American University writing instructor. Her scholarship has appeared in Everyday Feminism and Radical Teacher.  She lives in Anacostia, SE, DC with her husband and son.

Back to AZURE (Summer/Fall 2016)
© Lazuli Literary Group 2022  |  sakina.lazuliliterary@gmail.com  |  847.970.2506 
​  
Illustrations & Logo by Evgenia Barsheva 


As an affiliate of Bookshop.org, Lazuli Literary Group earns a small commission on sales made via any associated links on our website. 
  • ABOUT
    • Our Literary Aesthetic
    • Staff >
      • Writings by Sakina B. Fakhri
    • Contact Us
    • SUBSCRIBE
  • CONTESTS
  • AZURE: A Journal of Literary Thought
    • AZURE Volume 6, Issue 4 >
      • TO THOSE FOUND DEAD IN CHIMNEYS by R.W. Plym
      • WHAT TO EXPECT OF LIFE by Steven G. Kellman
      • IF IT WERE DRAWN by Jessica Reed
      • BLOOD IN THE ORCHIDS by Amanda Kotch
      • CORNELIUS RADHOPPER by Peter Arscott
    • AZURE Volume 6, Issue 3 >
      • ANIMAL INHERITANCE by akhir ali
      • THAT DUDE DERRIDA by Daniel Klawitter
      • FLAT-EARTH FRED by Phil Gallos
      • THE MYSTERY OF THE MISSING SEMICOLON by Orana Loren
      • MY BALDERDASHERY by Eric Paul Shaffer
    • AZURE Volume 6, Issue 2 >
      • MIRROR by Joshua Kepfer
      • CUE FALLING PIANO by D.C. Weaver
      • ANTON AND THE ECHO by Cristina Otero
      • THAT WHICH WE TRULY DON'T KNOW by JOACHIM GLAGE
      • CONGRATULATIONS by Alan Sincic
    • AZURE Volume 6, Issue 1 >
      • NEVER, NEVER LAND, MY SHIP by Mark Pearce
      • THE SMILE OF MONA LISA by Fatima Ijaz
      • OUROBOROS by Esme Sammons
      • THE DEPTHS OF THE SEA by Margaret D. Stetz
      • SNICKER-SNACK by Bruce Meyer
    • AZURE Volume 5, Issue 4 >
      • THE OWLET AND THE TURTLE by Greg Sendi
      • BRACTS and other poems by Nathaniel Calhoun
      • ANSWERS TO NON-EXISTENT QUESTIONS and other poems by Kevin Griffith
      • NEVERENDING KNOT by Jodie Dalgleish
      • LEARNING TO WALK by Jodie Dalgleish
      • OVERSOUL by P.S. Lutz
    • AZURE Volume 5, Issue 3 >
      • MAP OF MEMORY by Jesse Schotter
      • BISMILLAH by Abby Minor
      • MICROMORTS by Veronica Tang
      • LOVE LETTER TO LANGUAGE: AN ABECEDARIAN by Saramanda Swigart
      • IF YOU WERE ALL WATER by M. Ann Reed
    • AZURE Volume 5, Issue 2 >
      • CONTRA FORMALISME by Leland Seese
      • DRUNKEN MAN ON A BICYCLE by Dan Butterworth
      • WOLF TICKETS THROUGH THE FERAL WINTER by Kirk Marshall
      • SYLVANUS, BARD by Marc Lerner
      • THE LOOKING GLASS OF ARTHUR GORDON PYM by Frank Meola
    • AZURE Volume 5, Issue 1 >
      • INTIMATE THINGS by Laylage Courie
      • A SERIES OF PUNCTUATION by Hajar Hussaini
      • ROT AND GLORIANA by Laurel Miram
      • BLUES ON RED by Elie Doubleday
      • MY FICTION: REMEMBERING 50 YEARS OF WORK by Richard Kostelanetz
    • AZURE Volume 4, Issue 4 >
      • ENDNOTES FOR AN ALLOCUTION by Peter Freund
      • UKEMI (and other poems) by Nicole Vento
      • MEMORANDUM ON DESIRE by Laylage Courie
      • THE HOLYWOOD DEUTERONOMY by Jim Shankman
      • AT THE MAD HATTER-MARCH HARE ART GALLERY (and other poems) by M. Ann Reed
    • AZURE Volume 4, Issue 3 >
      • THE MACHINE, STOLEN FIRE, and PERFORMANCE by Vivek Narayan
      • FIRST FRUITS by Stephen Massimilla
      • ONCE UPON A TOMORROW-TIME by Christopher Routheut
      • YIELD LIGHT OF WAY by Ken Goodman
      • SEVEN TALES by Sara Streett
    • AZURE Volume 4, Issue 2 >
      • THE PUNCH-CARD CIPHERS by DF Short
      • SHE WAS THE FIRST TO GIVE A TOAST by Kelli Russell Agodon
      • HABLU L-WARIDI by Jesse Hilson
      • THE KEY TO DREAMS by Sean S. Bentley
      • SOFA, SO GOOD, SORT OF by Remy Ngamije
    • AZURE Volume 4, Issue 1 >
      • STAMPING THE DEAD by Habib Mohana
      • LEGS by A. Joachim Glage
      • I THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX by Heikki Huotari
      • LUŽÁNKY by V.B. Borjen
    • ARCHIVES: VOLUME 3 >
      • AZURE Volume 3, Issue 4 >
        • TALES UNSUITABLE FOR CHILDREN by Devon Ortega
        • WAKE UP by JayJay Conrad
        • AMONG THE MEN IS APRIL by Logo Wei
        • SWEET by Melinda Giordano
        • BLACK ROSES by Osamase Ekhator
        • MEET ME TONIGHT ON METAPHOR STREET by Vivek Narayan
      • AZURE Volume 3, Issue 3 >
        • MENAGE A TROIS, WITH HORSE by Don Dussault
        • THE BLACK by Ben Colandrea
        • BLUE SKY LANGUAGE by Christien Gholson
        • UN DETECTIVE VIEJO by Franco Strong
      • AZURE Volume 3, Issue 2 >
        • THE CLEANSING by Linda Dennard
        • SHUFFLE by Debbie Fox
        • DID YOU FALL OR RISE FROM THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING? by M. Ann Reed
        • THE PHILOSOPHER AND THE PORNQUEEN by Omar Sabbagh
        • KIGALI MEMORIAL by Carlos Andres Gomez
        • PANTOUM OF THE MEAT by Ouita Rogers
      • AZURE Volume 3, Issue 1 >
        • HOW TO WRITE A BIOGRAPHY by Joanne B. Mulcahy
        • PROTOCOL NINE-NINE-NINE-NINE by Kenneth Hanes
        • LESS' MORE by TWIXT
        • POINTLESS MR. PROBST by Beatriz Seelaender
    • ARCHIVES: VOLUME 2 >
      • AZURE Volume 2, Issue 4 >
        • SYLVAN PASSAGES by Dan Wood
        • SISTER ALONE by Janet M Powers
        • CENTURY 2.1 by Alan Flurry
        • CLAIMED BY THE SEA by Sam Reese
      • AZURE Volume 2, Issue 3 >
        • CROSSHATCHING by M.K. Rainey
        • LULLABY by Barbara Daddino
        • HOUSEMOUTH (and other poems) by Anhvu Buchanan and Brent Piller
        • THE RESIDUE IN PUBLIC TEA AND COFFEE CUPS by V.B. Borjen
        • SYZYGY (and other poems) by Malorie Seeley-Sherwood
      • AZURE Volume 2, Issue 2 >
        • DRAGONFLIES: A DISCOURSE ON ANXIETY by Lara Lillibridge
        • AND RICHARD BURBAGE ALSO HAD A SISTER by Freya Shipley
        • THE WATCHERS by M.K. Rainey
        • JAZZ INTERACTION WITH SYMBOLS by Sarah T.
        • SPIDER (and other poems) by Natalie Crick
      • AZURE Volume 2, Issue 1 >
        • ECHOES by Daniel Freeman
        • MAPS by Susan Brennan
        • EDGAR'S FATHER'S MAGIC WORDS by JWM Morgan
        • LOCKJAW: IN TWO ACTS by James Blevins
        • WHAT THE LIVING DO by Susan Wadds
    • Archives: Volume 1 >
      • AZURE Volume 1, Issue 10 >
        • SUSURROS DE RECURRENCIA by Franco Strong
        • THE OLD MAN by Sarah T.
        • PERMUTATIONS by Laura Cesarco Eglin
        • WORLD PEACE 3 by Gustavo Alberto Garcia Vaca
      • AZURE Volume 1, Issue 9 >
        • LITTLE GHOST by Danny Judge
        • THE LAST ALLUSIONIST by Sakina B. Fakhri
        • CHURCH by Diana McClure
      • AZURE Volume 1, Issue 8 >
        • DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS by Nancy Flynn
        • WHAT I COULDN'T SAY by Erika Ranee & Diana McClure
      • AZURE Volume 1, Issue 7 >
        • BRASS TYRANT AND THE AMERICAN THIRST by Kirk Marshall
        • LADY KILLER by Monika Viola
        • THE RIBBONS by Ferguson Williams
      • AZURE Volume 1, Issue 6 >
        • AURELIA: A BALLET IN PROSE (ACT 2 - Part 1) by Sakina B. Fakhri
        • NEW AGE UNCAGED by Frank Light
      • AZURE Volume 1, Issue 5 >
        • THE TRIALS OF TOBIT by Joseph Lisowski
        • LIKE MANY GIANT FOOTPRINTS (and other poems) by William Doreski
        • AURELIA: A BALLET IN PROSE (ACT I) by Sakina B. Fakhri
      • AZURE Volume 1, Issue 4 >
        • WARDENCLIFF by Barbara Daddino
        • BETTER LIVING THROUGH CHEMISTRY by Reg Darling
        • AURELIA: A BALLET IN PROSE (LIBRETTO) by Sakina B. Fakhri
      • AZURE Volume 1, Issue 3 >
        • LAWTON, OKLAHOMA by Mark Lawley
        • TWEETY BIRD'S GRACE by Diana McClure
        • CONTAGION AND THE DINNER GUEST by Sakina B. Fakhri
        • ON POETRY AND PROSE by Sakina B. Fakhri
      • AZURE Volume 1, Issue 2 >
        • TWO MICE IN A BLACK BOX & THE DECONSTRUCTION OF LANGUAGE by Sakina B. Fakhri
      • AZURE Volume 1, Issue 1 >
        • CHARACTER SKETCHES by Diana McClure
        • SEASONS ON A GRAVESTONE by Sakina B. Fakhri
        • COCKTAIL PARTY by Diana McClure
        • DESUETUDE by Sakina B. Fakhri
  • LIBRARY SHOP
  • SUBMISSIONS
  • BLOG
  • Lazuli Reading Series
  • Literary Links