J. J. STEINFELD

Fiction writer, poet, and playwright J. J. Steinfeld lives on Prince Edward Island, where he is patiently waiting for Godot’s arrival and a phone call from Kafka. While waiting, he has published sixteen books, including Our Hero in the Cradle of Confederation (Novel, Pottersfield Press), Disturbing Identities (Stories, Ekstasis Editions), Should the Word Hell Be Capitalized? (Stories, Gaspereau Press), Anton Chekhov Was Never in Charlottetown (Stories, Gaspereau Press), Would You Hide Me? (Stories, Gaspereau Press), An Affection for Precipices (Poetry, Serengeti Press), Misshapenness (Poetry, Ekstasis Editions), Identity Dreams and Memory Sounds (Poetry, Ekstasis Editions), and Madhouses in Heaven, Castles in Hell (Stories, Ekstasis Editions). His short stories and poems have appeared in numerous periodicals and anthologies internationally, and over forty of his one-act plays and a handful of full-length plays have been performed in Canada and the United States.

---

THE STORYTELLER’S EDUCATION by J. J. Steinfeld
​
learning love songs
from a cynic of love

learning immortality
from a forgotten ancestor

learning perfect one-liners
from a tongueless mime

learning time-telling
from a timeless beauty

learning disbelief
from a steadfast believer

learning high-jumping
from a legless dreamer

learning dreaming
from the sleepless coward

learning to count the days
from the fingerless conjurer

learning unscathed escape
from the spider-webbed insect

learning disappearing
from the magician’s sad rabbit

WHAT IS YOUR CONCLUSION?  by J. J. Steinfeld

A man who looks like a woman
perhaps a woman who looks like a man
difficult to tell from this distance
this distorting time of the evening
the light practising deception
this mysterious man or woman
raises both arms toward the sky
and starts to pray in a voice
that sounds neither male nor female
a storm is starting and the sound
is being competed with by self-centred winds
that can upstage the firmest performer.
I listen, attempt to collect words
from the air but the winds
do not relent, envious of those
who pray during storms,
and I am left standing
in confusion and displacement.
Tomorrow, the forecast is less
treacherous, and I will move closer
to those defying the winds.