David Holper has done a little bit of everything:
taxi driver, fisherman, dishwasher, bus driver,
soldier, house painter, bike mechanic, bike
courier, and teacher.  With all that useful
experience on his resume and a couple of
degrees in English to boot, he has gone on to
publish a number of stories in such journals as
Grand Street, The New Virginia Review, Stories,
Callaloo, Quarterly West, South Carolina Review,
Painted Bride Quarterly.  He also has recently
begun to publish his poems in such journals as
perigee-art.com, Wild Humboldt, Inside English,
and Toyon. He lives in Eureka, California, which
is far enough from the madness of civilization
that he can get some writing done.  Another
thing that helps in this process is that his three
children continually ask him to tell them stories,
and he is learning the art of doing that well for
them.

David Holper

Noise

What bothers me is that
I believe in God
Believe that he abides in everyone--

In the girl across from me in the café
Who sniffles over her laptop,
The editor who just rejected my novel,

My brother who doesn’t want to talk to me
Since I hung up on him six months ago.
I know this

And yet still I pray that He’ll appear,
That he’ll step out of the air,
Sit down at this table,

And explain.
I’ll try to keep it down
To some basic questions:

The Holocaust, the suffering of innocents
What He thinks of the Moral Majority
Perhaps, however, his divinity will suffice

And all my worries about war,
Mass murderers,
Insane asylums

Will fade as I look at the puncture marks
In His hands.
Most of all

Though
I’d simply like Him to explain
What gulf sits

between where I wait
And heaven.
Knowing this, I would to ask Him

to light a fire
That feeds on the dry tinder of my
Self, immolates everything that I cling to

So tenaciously.
Only then, my soul might warm its pale hands
Over the greasy smoke

And He and I can wade out into the waters
Tasting salt, feeling the rush and smack of waves
That will silence forever the clamor of all this noise.




Re(vision)

Start with something simple :
Your senior year in high school, for instance ;
Turning 18 and able to pen your own excuses
Enough so, 8 am chemistry ends in failure,
The one requirement necessary to attend university.

From there, love invites a going over :
That girl who wanted you to move in with her.
How you refused her because
You said you needed to get out of your home town.
Or just as bad, think of all the things you’ve left unsaid to women
Or the careless things you said
Like toads hopping out of your mouth.

Re-examine the insults you’ve received,
Some fool tramping his muddy boots in your psychic house
How you stood there flabbergasted
Only to think of the perfect rejoinder hours later
Still awake and fighting mad.

Cross out these crooked lines
Erasing the fitful starts that life delivers
Too spontaneously.
Imagine the delicious thrill one might relish
In going back and plucking this lost jewel
Right out from under their noses
And sailing on just the iceberg
Of our own foolishness.





Riding Backwards

When I was thirteen, my brother and I learned the magic
Of riding our bikes backwards.
To picture this, you’ll have to imagine

That we were younger than the summer afternoon,
That sitting on the handlebars
Facing the seats and pedaling counterclockwise

We turned back the hands of time,
Held off the evening so that stars could not puncture the cobalt dome.
Unsurprisingly, learning this most necessary skills

We fell until our hands were raw as history,
Pages cupped with pooling blood
Droplets of the pain we insisted upon ourselves.

Looking back now, I realize that this spell I wove
Was as much for him as it was for me.
And on that final day

When we finally learned to balance
--Whoops at the amazingness of being upright and rolling backwards--
I can see the both of us

Laughing, riding in endless circles
Round and round one another
So we could see:

Riding until the summer dark broke through our simple magic
Darkness descending upon us
Yes, we never wanted to leave that

Glorious
Glorious moment
Of childhood behind