Felix Purat

Felix Purat has been writing as a hobby for many years and currently writes in academia where he seeks a Ph.D. in American Literature at Palacky University. He is regularly on the conference circuit throughout Central Europe. He loves writing for many reasons - the experience, the characters, developing self-knowledge - but most of all, Felix loves the powers literature has to imagine new worlds while uncovering our own secrets through empathy.

Felix’s previous degrees are in International Studies (BA) and Cultural Translation. (MA) He is also the author of several short stories and numerous poems. Before writing, Felix taught English for 6-7 years while cultivating a deep relationship with his native language.

Along with reading, Felix is a serious hobbyist who enjoys traveling, listening to music, craft beer, admiring naive painting, cooking Mexican food, learning foreign languages, and haunting cafes.

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► Felix's microchaps & selected poems are available below.

Origami Microchap	Selected Poem(s)
Leucothea in Le Havre
Click above Title to download microchap Cover collage by JanK •	Leucothea in Le Havre Kind Leucothea greets me Gliding ‘cross the convex æther The Greek giver of advice flew north To give me council in Le Havre Where Francophiles are foreign And the prices near extortion Soon a wedding will commence So do not lecture me on drinks My funds dry up in the Casino named “Earth” Gueule de Bois be maimed and damned No tourists bear witness to Turin’s Shroud Et pas anglais makes van Buren proud Indecisive, how can I ramble forward when This many futures overlap, meshing into tasteless mush; I like the café here along the harbor, where Complementary laziness makes mine benevolent Seagull Leucothea left Grecian lands now barren In no sci-fi story do we actually want to be Terran The breezes waft my maritime home my way: Calafonia, the land of matriarchs and missions With each passing year you are a weirder fiction Whose reality wars with mine as Athens punches Sparta Your ancient land no longer exists, kind Leucothea, In time my land will magnetize the selfie snobs too. - La Favorite Café, Le Havre, 2017	Lively Brasserie Denizens bantering about Braying forth their extroversion Echoing down the gloomy street It’s nice to be somewhere again Where citizens of France still smile Has Leucothea the seagull emigrated? Half the world already has, Sipping overpriced, inorganic beers Half a planet away from their soil; Half the world pours its brain down the drain But the brain sinks aren’t getting any smarter A second pricey Grimbergen awaits me But where banknotes leave a vacuum Pleasantry fills the carbonated void: For as long as the cold ones keep coming My brain won’t be drained by any polity Anytime soon * Felix Purat © 2020
Restaurant Ghosts: The Boleslawiec Ruminations
Click above Title to download microchap Cover: Boleslawiec scene - Boleslawiec —a town located on the Bóbr River in the Lower Silesian Voivodeship in southwestern Poland Ruminations —deep or considered thoughts about something.	Restaurant Ghosts of Sądowa Square A spiritual force brings Calm to Sądowa Square If I had been an automaton Its magnetism wouldn’t let go (Not that flesh is that much less magnetic) They say that ghosts cause a ruckus They pilfer our libraries with their slime Their souls come from passive beings Who wandered through life with hardly a smile to compensate hospitality It is natural then that the restaurant ghosts of Old Silesia, once loud and rowdy with discourse, Have the opposite effect: Now Sądowa Square is calm I hear nothing, even when everything utters I see green in the forefront, not behind And the ghosts of restaurants, of writer-filled cafés Drifting from margin to margin But in this case They are at peace	A Heart of Ceramic In every statue From roundabout to factory Celebrating Bolesławiec pottery I see my heart in folkloric paint Only this time, cracks appear For last winter was trying elements unrelenting They made our rope suffer For being too taut Now the scavengers assemble Seeking out the decorative Come and buy some pottery for your table You might find a heart in your new ceramic flagon • Felix Purat © 2019
Bypassed Bohemia
Click above Title to download microchap Cover: Stock photo These poems are dedicated to Johannes Urzidil, a German-language writer from interwar Czechoslovakia who was a friend of Franz Kafka and also coined the term "hinternational." •	In Urdizil's Woods I First Set Foot In hills heightened with the dignity of mountains Forests do not comply with life’s obligation to end: Endlessness pierced by ore-tinted reservoirs and rivers Krumlovs crown, Přemyslid and regal in spirit Spied upon by bunkers lurking in shadows and crannies Slavdom, diluted, is cautious under their tenacious watch. · Felix Purat © 2019 I Gaze at her Beauty, The Orlice Flowing By Garbed in cerulean and Speckled with beauty It suits me to talk to her But something else Has disintegrated: A Warhol banana is peeled Let her sleep as I fantasize: No one need be unhappy. · Felix Purat © 2019	Chvaletice Power Plant Rumination Bubbling power graces the Elbe Offices peering up into the sky And serenading the fog of war, Ramparts readied for the next invasion Chvaletice is a Czech volcano, Awaiting eruption as the nation Holds its breath so elec- Tricity can flow through cables While skies still simmer in blueness The train propels me forward. · Felix Purat © 2019 Colas Communist colas line the wooden shelf: Kofola, Vita Cola, something or other - From within the bottled, tea-like flavor Sameness lurks in the guise of difference Carbonating pancreas, heart and mind Cascading upon my diffident features Something lost in the cultural void is Screaming to be heard and appreciated All phenomena lost can do nothing but cry Nothing else has ever synced perfectly with ‘vain.’ · Felix Purat © 2019
Twilight Ruminations from Czech Silesia
Click above Title to download microchap Cover: Stock photo of train in Silesia •	Forgotten Industrial Moonscapes When lands lost to memory Showcase nothing but borders An assortment of forgotten limbos Once transferred by treaty For the devils of amnesia - Who wants to remember Those manifest realities? Hangovers hurt too much For the pleasure to matter: While traversing the lunar sector We have buried the hatchets, No memory of where they lie Only moonlight floods puddles Too dim to find the x-marked spot • Felix Purat © 2018 Nominated for Pushcart Prize	A Lull in Český Těšín Bracing the edge of the bilingual margin The whispering Odra runs secrets past my ear All is still in Český Těšín: The train not moving for quite some time – Within my little nook A back is scratched and relieved If concepts of joy are effectively made They run past the censor without delay Tiring is the lull where nations collide Beyond the trees resides Polish Cieszyn One side is home and another is not So much for the working of the mind ● Felix Purat © 2018
Epicurean Ruminations from Turnin & Beyond
Cover: Old Wine Cellar - Every microchap may be downloaded for free from this website.	Flushing Wine, Pt. I Below the horizons of Alpine mountains, evaporations occur inside the nearest wine bar at Aperitivo time, denizens inhaling fumes of Barbaresco, rapidly melting the rough dry ice of the mind before leaking onto the floor, to mix among the loosened drops of wine dripping down from the flushed red faces of divorcee connoisseurs; these Piedmontese peoples feign obliviousness as they swim through the Alpine cold that dwarfishly tunnels through Turinese arcades, grey portraits of urbanity where the twain never met (too far from Verona) but Mark “mustachio” Twain chose not to forsake high culture, the red Barolo dripping down his frowned Missouri features that no travels without Bordeaux try and fail to alleviate so close to where the other mustachio lost his mind. ● Felix Purat © 2018	Flushing Wine, Pt. II I sit in a corner surrounded by enormous objects of rusticity, thinking or drinking, I forget which, until the tourist with the gaping mouth takes a snapshot of me, explaining how well my position in this wooden chair displays the artistry of solitude many care to associate with singular Sartre’s strolling down abandoned cobblestones the labyrinthine ruins of the Old World unending. But St Helena is nothing if not atmospherically soothing in the happy Impressionist fashion, what with these coffee drinking locals too Puritan to drink their own wine smiling from left dimple to right, courtesy of some sort of general happiness I seek by tracking down capable Cabernets ● Felix Purat © 2018

Poets