by Christopher Fried (June 2026)
Heading South (Myrtle Beach, Off-Season)
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Makes sense that travelling means more than “the there”
when heading south on Ocean Boulevard,
in that I have no need to wade through sea,
nor any want to pace along the shore
to stride the bounds of liminality
by trailing back across the drying sand.
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Why bother irritating soles with sand
when what the mind creates reveals “the there”
to be slighter than liminality
imagination makes as boulevards
are driven on across from tiding shore
and tourist-vacant January sea?
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Should I be awed by susurrating sea
that has no hold on me? And what’s that sand
but rock that water hammered past the shore?
Observing this, you’d realize “the there”
adds up to less than Ocean Boulevard
and my mind wrestling liminality,
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for what’s profoundest liminality
but traveling through imagination’s sea
that’s dark as oceans bordering boulevards,
and rougher than the motley note of sand
beneath one’s feet when one had found “the there”
but doesn’t know what comes next but the shore.
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Among the condominium towers, the shore
exists, but fades as liminality
expands out from the beach, which is “the there,”
which is composed of elements of the sea
combined with tangibility of the sand,
which matters less than Ocean Boulevard.
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Back at the hotel, off the boulevard,
I’m poised to leave alone that distanced shore,
and though I haven’t trodden through the sand
of Myrtle Beach or the liminality
differentiating it from ebbing sea,
mood crystalized, I wonder if there’s “there.”
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Ideas’ shores bridge liminality
exposed between symbolic sands and seas
beside a boulevard that may lead there.
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Noir (Shadows in the Neon Rain)
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Her body backed against a wall,
she turned the corner, down
the alley, trusting that this lull
would save despite the sounds—
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footsteps that interrupt a silence
that lasts as fear-inducing
as acts of sudden violence.
Why’s dangerous touch seducing?
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She loitered underneath the signs
reflecting fulgent light
across the browning puddled grime
and yielded to her plight.
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That can’t be your man’s shadow there!
She hoped against what’s clear,
believing that romance plays fair
as passion bedded fear.
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She caught love’s end as there’s no charm
that’s left, and with it dead,
only neon ads will warm
cracked carmine lips that pled.
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Wine Trap
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You shouldn’t waste good port on petty things
no matter how annoying they return
concern about what should’ve left remaining.
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Perhaps it’s me bestowing a last gift,
an offering for your aimless revel past
a face that cares but shouldn’t once I know…
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You’ve drunk your bounty, pest, and I drink too,
rejoicing ends approach as you drown joys
to float a length that’s sweet and suffocates.
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Your vim has slipped to sludge, agile no more,
and a short life withdraws to the sweet end
despite the coming of your brother brood.
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Indulge yourself to fruitful scents that draw
those restless flies to taste your sleep, and I,
with louder sips, will cheer this sacrifice.
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Send these Regards, Shapur
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“Dear sire, I’ve got an empire to rebuild,
and anyways you’ve made a mess between
the East and what remains in Italy.
Although I’m grieved, you’ll have to remain lost.
It could be worse as rumors drip distilled—
they turned you into a scarecrow, demeaned
your dignity, at best, to be a stool
that bows and should’ve cracked, and you’ve been tossed
around, placed under new authority,
yet as your son, a speck of piety…”
These spilled words signed from Gallienus rest
with duties to the empire, all it costs.
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“Post-script, I don’t limp for the Nazarene,
but those edicts of yours will soon be killed.”
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Christopher Fried lives in Richmond, VA and works as an ocean shipping logistics analyst. A poetry collection, All Aboard the Timesphere, was published in 2013 by Alabaster Leaves/Kelsay Books. His novel, Whole Lot of Hullabaloo: A Twenty-First Century Campus Phantasmagoria, was published in 2020. Recently, he was an advisor on the 1980s science fiction film documentary In Search of Tomorrow (2022). His recent poetry has been published in Society of Classical Poets, Snakeskin, and WestWard Quarterly, and a new collection, Analog Synthesis, is planned for publication by White Violet Press/Kelsay Books in Spring 2025.
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