Meet Luciana Sullivan

The Curio Cabinet is thrilled to announce our newest member of the editing team, Luciana Sullivan.

“Luciana comes from the swamp of Gainesville, Florida, and was raised in an uncanny suburb south of Disney World. She’s been a radio intern, a barista, a PBS fundraiser, a disappointment, an ice cream scooper and a volunteer poetry editor. She reads, writes and edits things in English and listens to The Mountain Goats more frequently than is advisable.”

Enjoy a poem by Sullivan herself and step into the journey of two travelers on the road.

The Pilgrim and The Highwayman

Once, along an old road full of twists and bends
A gray weary pilgrim met a highwayman. 
        “Halt!” cried the rogue, him wielding his gun,
“Show me your hands, ain’t nowhere to run.”
The bandit laid his lonesome ambush well
On clear open road through a wide grassy dell.
Experienced plans made precise and clean
Tensed, for what danger coming moments might bring.
        “Hello,” said the pilgrim, “No need for dramatics
I’ll give you no trouble, whatever your tactics.”
The pilgrim smiled wide with a soft warm light, 
As fleeting sounds of forest crept into sight. 
The highwayman approached and spoke like cool steel,
        “That’s what they all say, before the loss becomes real.”
        “Okay,” said the pilgrim, “but I’ve not much to lose 
Just a book and some bread and one life of little use.”
        “You’ll not fool me, pilgrim, with that ascetic snare. 
All men of god carry gold stealed aways somewheres.”
        “Alas, my god’s gold I long ago sold seeking what I hope to find.
Yea, sold on this road, before I’d grown old, when fire still shot through my eyes.”
        “Long ago? Before you’d grown old?” said him, criminally disposed,
“Just how long have you been on this godforsaken road?”
The wanderer looked down at the dirt beneath his feet
and thought of now-distant towns and familiar sleeping streets.  
Streets of orange bitter clay. Cobblestones and sprawling lawns.
He thought of faces in flashes and of love long gone,
He thought of a young man’s faith like a glistening sun, 
He thought of the warm familiar feeling of being wrong. 
While the pilgrim had thought what pilgrims might think of, 
The highwayman’s eyes were keen.
They searched and surveilled and pilfered and plundered, 
Till all to be saw had been seen. 
        “I don’t know how long I’ve been walking,”
Said the pilgrim, with nothing in his chest. 
“Yet, I’ve still little time and a long long way. 
Care to join me for a rest?”
        “You’ve really no gold nor silver at all, old man.
Hell, alone on this road? You’re dead where you stand.”
        “Then come rest with me,” the small man of gray replied, 
“Have something good to eat after how hard you tried.”
And so the bandit sat as this stranger built their fire
In the unhurried style of a man without desire. 
The fire soon snapped and crackled to life 
And the pilgrim sliced bread with the killer’s knife. 
        “Who are you, highwayman?” the pilgrim asked, “How did it come to be,
That on this day our paths are crossed and we sit together, you and me?”
        “Red is the name with which I was christened,”
Said the sitting man with a gun 
and open eyes that glistened 
In the waning midday sun.
“But how I came to sit with you today?
That’s a tale suited to drivin’ folks away.”
        The pilgrim laughed, “And where might I go? 
Even further out along our shared road?
Prithee, let those anxieties go from their hold.
Relax, put it out of your mind and let the tale unfold.”
The highwayman stopped for a moment and thought,
Surprised by the calm that the pilgrim had brought. 
        “I was born in a field in the flowers of spring. 
To a man and a woman who beared others’ rings.
She was a lady of great power and wealth; 
He, her mere servant and plagued in poor health. 
Their journey was long. Their loneliness grew
And drew out that act that brought me to you. 
The man, my father, died in the cold of that night.
My mother, alone, could bear me, though not my sight. 
So alone on the road was left baby Red,
Alone in the cold was I left for dead. 
A passing gang found me on the road I was left,
And lo, I was blessed by that first happy theft.
They wrote down the terms of the trade I now practice 
On bodies, in blood, of the men who attacked us. 
Our guns never fired at men without cause; 
Our life was our object, not death nor wrapped gauze.
Yet life’s great hunger reached deep to our bones,
And lo, we were forced to squeeze blood from the stones.
Those small early years of profit and pain; 
The bloody stench of loss. The bloody stench of gain. 
Not long after my gang had showed what they knew,
Some town whipped up a posse and slayed the whole crew. 
In a pile, I lay with them, alive among the dead, 
Hidden from my judges by veils of sanguine red. 
And when I could stand, I wiped the blood from my eyes 
And took to the road and donned a disguise.
I dressed as a man with a home to return to, 
Like a man whose great love has not yet been burned through. 
The people soon came, those poor souls who roam, 
And foolishly offered to carry me home. 
So it would go, in that cold dusty air, 
I’d walk with the people still searching for ‘there’. 
We’d walk past fields pregnant with flowers.
We’d walk past women with money and power.
We’d walk past graveyards on sunny days 
Full of unlucky men who’d died in unlucky ways. 
For years, I walked in our blind procession, 
And no one recovered their long-lost possessions. 
And so it was on a hungry day, 
I remembered the gang and their profitable way. 
Those long wandering bonds of mutual trust 
Were broken by knife in one single thrust. 
When I got up and looked at that man lying dead, 
I saw money for food. I saw blood flowing red. 
On that day I truly took my name,
Took it from friends who’d become my game. 
And lo, I took to the road anew 
And that is the road that brought me to you.”
Red looked up, and saw the gray pilgrim smile 
Then turned his gaze down to the fire awhile.
“That is all pilgrim, the tale has been said. 
Call it what you like, the tale of Highwayman Red.” 
Red then looked up to meet pilgrim’s gaze
And found him with cakes on a pair of wood trays. 
Pilgrim saw a brief smile as Red took his first bite
Before taking his own in the day’s dying light.
He knew it came first that the bread should be broke, 
And after the meal he finally spoke. 
        “Your tale, it is full of hardship and woe,
But drive me away? Certainly no.
This world is abandoned by all but the living,
All stuck in our cycles of taking and giving. 
What good would my efforts to escape you be 
While those same evil spirits live within me?”
        “You speak not like a man who is seeking a god,
Unless he is one,” said Red, “who rules by the rod.”
        “Do I not?” said the pilgrim, not hiding his smile.
“I suppose I’ve been seeking a very long while.”
        “Who are you, pilgrim who does not fear blood?
Who sets down with killers and lets their words flood?”
The pilgrim in quiet and cleaning his pot
Began thinking of things he’d hoped he forgot.
        “Every tale that there is must eventually be told,”
Said the pilgrim, in twilight, looking especially old. 
“You’ll have to forgive me, I don’t like beginnings.
I much prefer middles lying within things. 
But since it is there I must start my tale 
I shall make an exception and to you regale:
On the day of my birth, I was given a name
Long since lost, I now go by James. 
But back in that place where old names have worth,
A place happy fools called ‘Heaven on Earth’,
My parents were priests who prayed at the shrine
Who welcomed the pilgrims who sought the divine. 
Among priests, they were strong and wise and dear.
It was to their surprise when I was gripped by the fear.
Their worshiped god, who loved them so
Had seen in me something not-so-tasteful 
For above my heart appeared his dubious mark 
And his divine wisdom drove my family apart. 
My parents, thrown in prison for the crime they had birthed.
Imposters preaching gospel while bringing sin upon the Earth. 
They left me free to roam, without a single friend,
For my crime could not be judged but rather only cleansed. 
I missed my parents very much, and saw them every day
Yet each day in cold disgust, they turned their son away. 
On the day the trial came, judges perched beyond the banners, 
I stood in view of all I knew. All quiet, mild-mannered. 
The judges read from sheets and papers, and prayed to god above
That they might punish loyal neighbors, but do so with god’s love. 
My parents, for their crimes, were to be strung up and shot
And I, to be cleansed of sin by taking the shooter’s spot. 
Stranger, I cannot tell you the horror in my heart,
The sudden change from fear to anger had found its sorry start. 
You know that change is full of power and hard to keep in check, 
The hot confusion bubbles up and leaves the mind a wreck.
And so I looked my blood and flesh so confidently in the eye
And sought to rip their Earth’s soul out of its peaceful heavenly sky.
To force it out and stamp it down upon the dirt to lay
Beside my own, itself there found, by deceit in their god’s ways. 
Before the gun was handed me, someone asked about remorse. 
‘Yes, I have guilt,’ I said. ‘Though it springs from my own source.
‘The pain I’ve caused these kin of mine,
I shall bear with me for all my time.
But as for this mark and god’s truth divorce? 
Who in good faith could change such course?’
In two mouths were placed last cigarettes,
And from another mouth were final rites read.
A call to fire through the air did resound, 
As my body or me did break what was bound. 
In endless space of shocked disbelief
I stole me away, a life-giving thief. 
I hid in a sewer as they searched and they roamed
And hoped that they’d let my parents go home. 
From that day on, I took to the road to find me a god
Who sees not fit to crush folks down ‘neath the loam and the sod. 
But sees us up beyond our roots in tall and luscious green
For I learned, when they called, ‘shoot!’ each seer must be seen. 
Now I’ve walked for many years and in them I’ve grown old. 
I’ve seen gods of wisdom, gods of fear, gods of the bought and sold. 
I’ve seen more gods than I can count, and there’s one thing that I know.
That whatever men by stones might spout, no one knows where to go.
I’ve been lost so very long, so accustomed to being tired.
All that’s left is to walk on along, and either succeed or expire.”
Red stared at the flames in the quiet of the now-dark night
Across from a man, not wild nor tame, abandoned in unceasing flight. 
“Thus is the tale of a pilgrim called James
Those desperate for love who bade him take aim
Those twisted dreams that we call gods
The endless struggle to grow more than mere sod.”
Now Red spoke in words not-so-sure
To James, across the flame’s hazy blur.
        “You are a man who’s not seen blood, yet felt it’s pregnant air. 
It is like a flower and its bud, the way these two compare. 
To say to see a flower’s beauty, while it truly remains furled,
Is not to understand that beauty, but to chart a smaller world.
As it is with beauty, so it is with pain.
To those that have not known its taste, it’s but an empty name. 
You cannot know, as others know, what things pain has to say;
In this, god’s Earthly drama show, what role pain has to play. 
For those that seek the love of god in pale beyond the real
Will find their hopes and lover’s hearts broken on the wheel.”
The pilgrim smiled broadly at his rugged friend. 
        “Two lost souls waxing godly on one road without end. 
There’s pain that’s left behind us and pain before us still
Yet mere companionship reminds us the power of good will.
Think me old and dumb or old and wise, it really matters not.
There’s rousing talk and laughing eyes and tasty food in the pot.
We need not turn to holy books or deadly weapon’s draw
To each return the other’s looks. To meet a tale with awe. 
The god of us, toward which I’ve stroad, is not without pain. 
For only here on painful road have its subtle traces lain.” 
The highwayman smiled at this little man. 
A man who held hope, and yet not a plan. 
The fire was quiet and its flames licked low,
Ashes pleasantly warm in red ember glow.
Red did the cleaning and returned James’ mess.
They laid down their heads with hearts decompressed.
By morning, after they slept for the night,
Each walked down the road, each fell out of sight.

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