A Web Chapbook from The Literary Review   

Christian Abouzeid

     It is April 2nd. In the past three months, the Vermont sky has gone through every shade of gray known to man. The streets-sunny and calm and pristine in all the postcards-have been awash in snow and slush and ice, chameleons metamorphosing every hour to hide themselves from Vermont's hideous temper. Today it is raining, a firm spray polishing the mounds of soot-speckled snow. I slip and slide the quarter mile to work and in the raw cold, under the weight of rainclouds fat and leaky as unmilked cows, I feel as if I have been buried, as if an avalanche swept over me long ago and I am waiting for the thaw, waiting to be uncovered. I am not unhappy in this state. Nor am I happy. The question is irrelevant. I am simply frozen. But sometimes I wish for the elemental things: to breathe, to move, to be warm again. And after three months here, I have started to doubt whether this will ever happen.

Christian Abouzeid was born in 1959 in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and showed an aptitude for fiction early on, though mostly in his interactions with adults. As one weary teacher put it: "He is either going to be a writer or a politician, because he makes up everything." Abouzeid’s talents were put to more constructive use in college, where he learned that if lies are put on paper and given a title, they are transformed into a deeper form of the truth (something he had always suspected). After college, Abouzeid received a fellowship to attend Syracuse University, where he earned his Masters degree in creative writing. Fully certified, he went out into the world, only to discover that his skills were in slightly less demand than those of a blind welder.

Abouzeid has since shifted careers many times, becoming first a teacher, then a magazine editor, then a bookkeeper, and finally a software engineer. Along the way he has managed to squeeze in some writing time and his stories and poems have appeared on the Internet and in several literary journals, including The Literary Review, New England Review, Epoch, Other Voices, The Southern Review, Northwest Review, and The Harbor Review. Currently, he is living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with his wife and fellow author, Kathleen Crowley. Poverty is his second novel.

Christian Abouzeid, from Poverty I study the scars on my left wrist, short thick contrails of skin flowing over the veins and tendons, paralleling them. The lines are no longer purple. I take this as a sign that my body has forgiven me, though it could just as easily mean it no longer cares. Sometimes I can feel it-the razor burning through my skin again, the deep cold erupting in my lungs, my stomach, blood bubbling out of my wrist like lava out of frigid stone. It makes me shudder. But sometimes it still seems right to me, sensible. I want to feel something, anything, and this is the way to do it-cut an opening in the body, let love and anger and happiness and sadness enter like ghosts into a temple, let their voices populate the empty halls and chambers of the heart. I want to be a reef, a colony that is both life and structure, family and dwelling. I want to echo with the sounds of a clashing soul. More Selections from Christian Abouzeid's work: Chapter 1, Part 1 Chapter 1, Part 2 Chapter 2, Part 1 Chapter 2, Part 2 Email Christian Abouzeid