Infidel

Infidel

Cornflower blue

knives incised

as pomegranate lips

hissed
Betrayal.

…and unavailed of lies…

I witnessed
I watched…

as your circumcised heart
softly ceased

seizing

round a cornflower blue

meadow

trailing petals
tracing tendrils

in the whispering kiss

of

my name.

--Constance Stadler has been writing, publishing, and editing poetry from the prehistoric epoch of print journals to modern e-times. She is currently a contributing editor to the e-zine Eviscerator Heaven. Her most recent work appears in such zines as Ditch, ken*again, Pen Himalaya, Rain Over Bouville, Clockwise Cat, Hanging Moss, Neonbeam, and Gloom Cupboard. As a political anthropologist specializing in North Africa and a violinist, her influences are multiform. Work in formative years with the late poet Gwendolyn Brooks was seminal, but no less so than Sufi Dervish dancers, and the challenges of mastering Bruch's first concerto.

Visible Hand

Visible Hand

Chilblain strides

mock the
purposeful promenade
to cubicle abattoirs

.
In djembe and kalimba
beat

ancient forgotten
fingertips

twist
Windsor

knot

garrotes

to lay way for
prevaricative
deathbed lamentations.

The tower

of Violated
Promise

Immolated Hope
Annhilated Dream

soars

With every skeletal

Clasp.

Bone on bone
Assurances

of newborn niggard
Joy

assuaged by Dow Jones
sylphic acclivous

arcings

Towards

certainty
of golden
coffer
coffin.

--Constance Stadler has been writing, publishing, and editing poetry from the prehistoric epoch of print journals to modern e-times. She is currently a contributing editor to the e-zine Eviscerator Heaven. Her most recent work appears in such zines as Ditch, ken*again, Pen Himalaya, Rain Over Bouville, Clockwise Cat, Hanging Moss, Neonbeam, and Gloom Cupboard. As a political anthropologist specializing in North Africa and a violinist, her influences are multiform. Work in formative years with the late poet Gwendolyn Brooks was seminal, but no less so than Sufi Dervish dancers, and the challenges of mastering Bruch's first concerto.

Smote

Smote

Pregnant

with shatterings

ochre clouds

annul

the scripted wishes
of another starless midnight

Misted trellis
of fresh killed vows
and passions'
particulates
Lift up
new morn
Sobs
into the
billows
of
Cimmerian
shroud.

The inevitable
melding.
Slate sky
aerugo dreams.

The graphite canopy
of immolated soul.

--Constance Stadler has been writing, publishing, and editing poetry from the prehistoric epoch of print journals to modern e-times. She is currently a contributing editor to the e-zine Eviscerator Heaven. Her most recent work appears in such zines as Ditch, ken*again, Pen Himalaya, Rain Over Bouville, Clockwise Cat, Hanging Moss, Neonbeam, and Gloom Cupboard. As a political anthropologist specializing in North Africa and a violinist, her influences are multiform. Work in formative years with the late poet Gwendolyn Brooks was seminal, but no less so than Sufi Dervish dancers, and the challenges of mastering Bruch's first concerto.

Clinic

Clinic

Porcelain fleur-de-lys
Blemish

blue splash archway

of routinized indignity.
Quaking

In
The
Wraith.
Plastic paneled
Calcified,
Barnacled

Inertia
Mocks the scribbled
Pathos of my pain-soaked

Particulars
as

Drops of spit foam
Fleck the shoreline
Of cheap orange lips

With every quavered
Signature

On ream upon ream
Of aborted humanity.

"He will see you now."

White walls, white floors

Dilate

Paper coated nudities
Billowing
In gunmetal gusts
of neglect.
Each script, a phial
Of portioned potent

suppliant
insignificance

Yet to come.

--Constance Stadler has been writing, publishing, and editing poetry from the prehistoric epoch of print journals to modern e-times. She is currently a contributing editor to the e-zine Eviscerator Heaven. Her most recent work appears in such zines as Ditch, ken*again, Pen Himalaya, Rain Over Bouville, Clockwise Cat, Hanging Moss, Neonbeam, and Gloom Cupboard. As a political anthropologist specializing in North Africa and a violinist, her influences are multiform. Work in formative years with the late poet Gwendolyn Brooks was seminal, but no less so than Sufi Dervish dancers, and the challenges of mastering Bruch's first concerto.

...on her blindness

…on her blindness

I visualize raindrops

Undulant trails
Of glycerin prisms
Elongating rectangles
Of rivulet blue thought

I visualize stardust

Migratory puffs
Of transfigured night shafts
Swelling fistulas
Of spectral yellow recollection

I visualize wind

Butterfly ravishings
Of foliated certainties
Spiralling fragments
Of embedded rainbow scabs

I visualize sun
I visualize daybreak
I visualize dew
I visualize the lark
I visualiz…
I vis…

--Constance Stadler has been writing, publishing, and editing poetry from the prehistoric epoch of print journals to modern e-times. She is currently a contributing editor to the e-zine Eviscerator Heaven. Her most recent work appears in such zines as Ditch, ken*again, Pen Himalaya, Rain Over Bouville, Clockwise Cat, Hanging Moss, Neonbeam, and Gloom Cupboard. As a political anthropologist specializing in North Africa and a violinist, her influences are multiform. Work in formative years with the late poet Gwendolyn Brooks was seminal, but no less so than Sufi Dervish dancers, and the challenges of mastering Bruch's first concerto.

Painters' Exahlations 28

Painters’ Exhalations 28

—after Paul Delaroche’s The Young Martyr

The earth is motionless with you. Further
explanation of causation, needed. Maybe
momentary, maybe

a ceaseless symbol stating excavated truths
of why your body, still beautiful, lies
in amoretto likeness, unable to walk
with infant fervor

along the wind’s curving edge: gilded
halo glancing in halted sadness,
perched where your breaths once

sang into silence, creating angled lips
laughing when temptation called your
momentary name.

--Felino Soriano (California) is a philosophy student and case manager working with developmentally and physically disabled adults. He is the author of two chapbooks Exhibits Require Understanding Open Eyes (Trainwreck Press, 2008) and Feeling Through Mirages (Shadow Archer Press, 2008), as well as an e-book Among the Interrogated (BlazeVOX [books], 2008). A chapbook is also forthcoming Abstract Appearance Reaching Toward the Absolute (Trainwreck Press, 2008). The juxtaposition of his philosophical studies with his love of classic and avant-garde jazz explains his poetic stimulation.

Painters' Exhalations 27

Painters’ Exhalations 27

—after James Audubon’s Snowy Heron Or White Egret

Concentration of fabricated cotton, formed
into the captured only through lens,
the hyper-imaginative..
Stalled on path used by creatures
meant to

crawl, ambulate through deserts and
color coded fields, delineated from your flying
faculty, taking you from the walls
of earth’s psychiatric ward. Why

here? Aware of the unorthodox lean
of housemate plants
resembling
the cliché dichotomy
dead/alive, the multitude
of occurrences used
creates a blank chalkboard
awaiting genius’ innovational mathematics

prophesying your next trajectory,
leading into the bosom of air’s
multitudinous angles of
embrace.

--Felino Soriano (California) is a philosophy student and case manager working with developmentally and physically disabled adults. He is the author of two chapbooks Exhibits Require Understanding Open Eyes (Trainwreck Press, 2008) and Feeling Through Mirages (Shadow Archer Press, 2008), as well as an e-book Among the Interrogated (BlazeVOX [books], 2008). A chapbook is also forthcoming Abstract Appearance Reaching Toward the Absolute (Trainwreck Press, 2008). The juxtaposition of his philosophical studies with his love of classic and avant-garde jazz explains his poetic stimulation.

Painters' Exhalations 26

Painters’ Exhalations 26

—after Willard Leroy Metcalf’s Poppy Garden

Inverted earth, firework sky now parallel
with feet finding unaware colors
to the mind’s tabula rasa, the occurrence
earliest as dawn’s yawn exhales
misty breaths of mythical
interpretations.

Controlled flaming
fingers want an intertwining with
the rarest human, an addendum to
the common interaction of
extraction to plant elsewhere:

vase of feminine curves
surrounded by the painted walls
mimicking their scented arrival. Clouds

ride their velvet bikes, an overhead mirror
depicting travel of slow intent,
artistic approach streaking paint
meant to beautify

the founding of manipulating the emaciated
mind, shading in the absent reality
with surrogate colors

depicting landscaped dimensions
forming nascent concepts
augmenting the eyes’ abstract
grabbing of dual intentions.

--Felino Soriano (California) is a philosophy student and case manager working with developmentally and physically disabled adults. He is the author of two chapbooks Exhibits Require Understanding Open Eyes (Trainwreck Press, 2008) and Feeling Through Mirages (Shadow Archer Press, 2008), as well as an e-book Among the Interrogated (BlazeVOX [books], 2008). A chapbook is also forthcoming Abstract Appearance Reaching Toward the Absolute (Trainwreck Press, 2008). The juxtaposition of his philosophical studies with his love of classic and avant-garde jazz explains his poetic stimulation.

Heinlein Heineken with a Pynchon of Kong

Heinlein Heineken with a Pynchon of Kong

A streaming came across my fly
Well quenched thirst
Burst round rusted teeth
As once again, denim, meekly
Brushed against the splattered beast
A pungent mist arose to seek
It's course
It's source
My well-numb gland
While in the dark
I wobbled wood
Like a stranger
With a strange hand

--Scurvy Bastard has been a NYC construction worker, a UK roadie, a stagehand for Saturday Night Live and Eric Clapton, an organizer of Live Aid '85, house painter to The Grateful Dead, an "elephant roadie" for Indian superstar Sridevi, a continuing actor on Japanese television and played a FBI agent on THE INVESTIGATORS. Irish musician Ron Kavana (The Pogues, Shane Magowan and The Popes) wrote in his liner notes for Alien Alert, "Scurvy Bastard, one of the world's great roadies and party animals." In the graphic novel series, The Preacher, he was the model for the character of Si, the serial killer. His work has appeared in Mystery Island Magazine, Zygote In My Coffee, Red Fez, Beat The Dust, The Linnet's Wings, Every Day Fiction, Hard Luck, Ref Fez, and The San Francisco Herald. This piece originally appeared in Calliope Nerve 16: Under Glass, WE.

You can read more about Si in Preacher: Gone to Texas:

Secret Twitter Society

From the Warren Ellis website:

Secret Twitter Society

So, are people rolling their own private microblogging networks yet? And knocking together mobile pages and writing/hacking desktop apps to work with their private microblogging networks yet? It would seem to me to be the obvious outgrowth of the Twitter phenomenon: ambient communication for secret societies.

(Which you can take to mean "gated communities," "dev teams" "people who like their privacy" or "bomb-throwing anarchists.")

Doesn’t replace the gated message-board community, of course, because microblogging is obviously shit for long thoughts. Doesn’t replace Twitter’s old "killer app" of sending & receiving tweets as SMS, either — but I live in Britain, and they turned SMS off for Britain, so I use custom apps like Twibble or mobile pages anyway.

I’d happily run two microblogging desktop apps: one for Twitter, and one for My Spooky Friends Net. And, after a while, I’d probably stop using the Twitter app, I’d imagine.

Just thinking out loud.

--Warren Ellis is the award-winning creator of graphic novels such as FELL, MINISTRY OF SPACE, PLANETARY, and TRANSMETROPOLITAN, and the author of underground classic CROOKED LITTLE VEIN pictured here:

Constance Stadler reviews Pushing Lemmings

The title of David McLean’s new book, pushing lemmings would either seem to be effort wasted or on the cusp of cruelty. But the latter is where McLean’s poetic soul resides; on the barbarity inflicted by daily life, which naturally leads to an equally unremitting examination of its counterpart. McLean rages but with a singular, penetrative, deeply affected full out stare of ritual, nocturnal, and diurnal horrors. One can see this easily in a poem like summer sun:

summer sun children swim in the sea
they imagine they are happy
they imagine this is life

night in me sings a swimming winter shark to them
rises and strikes

What is so clear is that this is an insightful affected man who is lashing out at the certain abduction of innocence.

Often called a “gritty poet of the macabre”, McLean shows most eloquent sensitivities, philosophic knowledge as well as an array of rare poetic gifts. The lyrical, insightful question posed in culture shows all of this:

we are our antiphysis all of us,
like something out of Huysmans
with our being a denial of what
we are not -the animal - is passing
worth noting, the nothing
we are?

Or as in maybe, creation:

but the questions of why have no home
in science, which is poncy ontology
not manly metaphysics that rips gibberish like hair waxed from time’s
private tits

Any simplistic categorization of McLean’s work reveals a lack of immersion and engagement which is required by the reader, but the rewards are great. McLean in all of his passions has a biting wit, as in details about heaven

they often give details about heaven
without admitting to guessing, pretending
that it sounds rather nice, which it doesn’t
unless you actually like a boring life

Yes, this is a poet who has stared Life and Death in the face and all of its aspects. He questions, and challenges and howls, for anyone who has the courage to hear. In my blessed devils he tells us much, particularly why any sentient lover of poetry and, thus, one imbued in the questions that haunt us all ~ many to silence ~ must read this work of rarefied art. They will be changed.

I hope the blessed devils
And accursed bacteria
That live in me scratch ruins
On my hollow sounding bones
That the replete ghouls may read
A lesson of profoundest negativity
When they plow through the meat
Machine me and see nothing
Onside any of us, just death
And insanity dressed in night.

--Constance Stadler author of Tinted Steam (Shadow Archer and Sublunary Curse (Erbacce, forthcoming). Purchase pushing lemmings at David's website.

Music and the Brain

MUSIC AND THE BRAIN

It can be easily observed that music has an effect on the senses. Music effects the body and the brain in various ways.

There has been some scientific research in recent times to find out the relationship between music and intelligence. Even though it seems fairly obvious that music has an effect on the brain cells themselves and that listening some forms of music, especially western and Indian classical can increase intelligence, science, as always has been trying to seek a proof of this phenomenon.

University of California, Irvine, 36 people took standardized intelligence tests after three 10 minute periods of Mozart. Those who listened to Mozart's Sonata for Two Pianos (K448) scored an average 119 - eight points higher than those who listened to a relaxation tape and nine points higher than those who listened to silence. Mozart's music is quite complex and very patterned said neurobiologist Frances H Rauscher, the study's lead author. Rauscher said the complex music may "prime" the brain for mathematics or other analytical work because it triggers the same brain activity. "We predict that music lacking complexity or which is repetitive may interfere with rather than enhance abstract reasoning," the researchers said in the journal Nature. UPI, Deseret News Oct 14 1993 Entire study documented in Nature Vol. 365 14 October 1993.

One might recall how classical Music appears to be tedious, boring or may also give one a headache. I have especially noticed how people just cant stand listening to Bach - it just gets too much to take for them. Why does this happen? First reason might be because one is not used to listening to it; therefore, there is no identification with it as such. Secondly, this might be because the mind needs to be very attentive and swift to follow music - the sounds, the notes, the complexity of the musical architecture - and when one is listening without paying attention there is bound to be a conflict, resistance of some kind. Thirdly, probably because one is accustomed to treat music as something separate, outside of oneself.

According to Steven Gillman, a Brain researcher, Listening to, and participating in music creates new neural pathways in your brain that stimulate creativity. Studies have shown that music actually trains the brain for higher forms of thinking. Music stimulates the mind, encourages creativity and helps to lay a foundation for learning that leads to higher intelligence and aptitude.

GJ Whitrow's quote on Einstein: "He often told me that one of the most important things in his life was music. Whenever he felt that he had come to the end of the road or into a difficult situation in his work he would take refuge in music and that would usually resolve all his difficulties."

"It occurred to me by intuition, and music was the driving force behind that intuition. My discovery was the rest of musical perception." - Albert Einstein on his Theory of Relativity.

Music effects brain cells and can be instrumental in child development.

In recent years much discussion has surrounded the role of music in child development. According to Plato: "...music is a more potent instrument than any other for education..." now scientists know why. Music , they believe, trains the brain for higher forms of thinking. After eight months of musical training, 3 year olds were expert puzzle masters, scoring 80% higher than their playmates did in spatial intelligence-the ability to visualize the world accurately. This skill later translates into mathematical/conceptual and engineering skills. Preschoolers who studied piano performed 34% better in spatial and temporal reasoning ability than preschoolers who spent the same amount of time learning to use computers. (Rauscher & Shaw. As reported in Neurological Research, February 1997)

The very best engineers and technical designers in the Silicon Valley industry are, nearly without exception, practicing musicians. (Grant Venerable, The Center for the Arts in the Basic Curricum, New York, 1989) For the unborn child, classical music, played at a rhythm of 60 beats per minute, equivalent to that of a resting human heart, provides an environment conducive to creative and intellectual development. (Dr.Thomas Veert, The Secret Life of the Unborn Child.)

Researchers believe that certain types of musical actually creates new neural pathways in the brain. That means that the brain can function in a different filed than that of memory alone. After listening to classical music, adults can do certain spatial tasks more quickly, such as putting together a jigsaw puzzle. Why does this happen? The classical music pathways in our brain are similar to the pathways we use for spatial reasoning. When we listen to classical music, the spatial pathways are turned on and ready to be used.

The music most people call classical - works by composers such as Bach, Beethoven, or Mozart - is different from other kinds of music as it has a more complex musical structure. Researchers think the complexity of classical music is what primes the brain to solve spatial problems more quickly. Listening to classical music may have different effects on the brain than listening to other types of music.

--Ashutosh Ghidiyal was born in 1984 in Lucknow, India. He completed his graduate studies in New Delhi and Post Graduate education in Mumbai. He is the author of several short stories, essays and poems. His work has been published in both print and online media extensively. He is currently based in Mumbai.

Autumn Eve

Autumn Eve

Asthmatic wind
On the loose skin
Of an aged neck
On this monochrome

Day of

Abandoned things
Crying out
For Touching

As

Nude stone girls
Blithely
Frolic
In stagnant
Grey water.

Like tumbleweeds
Crenellated newspapers
Flounder in
Yesterday's

Urgencies

Down lonely, sodden
Streets.

While threadbare

Tabby slithers
Between
The remnant chassis.

This cloak of endings
Enfolds in
Dank dusk

Ease
Soft

In want
Of peopled
Dreams.

--Constance Stadler has been writing, publishing, and editing poetry from the prehistoric epoch of print journals to modern e-times. She is currently a contributing editor to the e-zine Eviscerator Heaven. Her most recent work appears in such zines as Ditch, ken*again, Pen Himalaya, Rain Over Bouville, Clockwise Cat, Hanging Moss, Neonbeam, and Gloom Cupboard. As a political anthropologist specializing in North Africa and a violinist, her influences are multiform. Work in formative years with the late poet Gwendolyn Brooks was seminal, but no less so than Sufi Dervish dancers, and the challenges of mastering Bruch's first concerto.

Papernet

Papernet

From the Warren Ellis email list Bad Signal:

The "papernet" -- and I suspect the borders of the definition are already becoming fuzzy -- begins from the stance that paper is still really useful and a nice thing to have. Written language is the original cultural virus, because you can pass that fucker around.

You can read this, for some background:

http://www.warrenellis.com/?p=6670

The Papernet Stance says that sometimes you want the internet to spit out a bit of paper. Not least because it remains a pain in the arse for every given location to spit out a file to every mobile device -- and, even more importantly, because
not everyone has a mobile device.

Why does this even matter? Well, I don't know about you, but I'm in the business of moving ideas around. So if someone I know fired out a PDF of a single
page that was a broadside, a folded four-page pamphlet or even, per Elizabeth Genco, an 8pp minizine.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/elizabethgenco/sets/72157594276405114/

I'd be interested in that. There can be powerful reasons why something needs to be experienced in pages, and there can be useful reasons why I'd want to leave the house with a printed folded sheet of paper in my pocket.

And there will always be people who donate time and toner to running off those things, in locations far distant from the creator, and giving them away.

Of course, one day, we'll be able to print them off at home on indestructible Tyvek, so the only evidence of human life on this planet in a million years' time will
be your minicomic of a hobbit cornholing someone from Battlestar Galactica.

--Warren Ellis is the award-winning creator of graphic novels such as FELL, MINISTRY OF SPACE, PLANETARY, and TRANSMETROPOLITAN, and the author of underground classic CROOKED LITTLE VEIN pictured here:

Quoteable

"...Take a look at books from William T. Vollmann's Co-Tangent Press, which creates extremely limited editions--a dozen copies or so--of Vollmann's works in very custom made formats. Some of the books are cased in marble, others have marker ribbons woven from the hair of prostitutes. They are not only books, but also strange and disturbing works of art..." --Ian C. Ellis

Four pieces by S. P. Flannery

The Exhibit

Mixed-species groups travel
together in confinement,
monkeys, birds, non-conspecific
clichés formed to forage
and watch vigilant for predators
unseen by visitors behind the
unenlightened glass shield,
humans who gawk at this diorama
organically composed to replicate
an ecosystem endemic, foreign
to spectators and the other animals
unaware of imprisonment
and the nature of their display.

Waxing Crescent

My callused hands reach
to pull myself into the cosmos,
the sharp moon edge lacerates,
blood, liquid humor paints
the planet, droplets engorge
to become meteors,
out of gravity's pull I float,
crimson ice specks form a tale
to be recounted over an austral
inferno, cold does not speak
in the vacuum where silence
passes between stars encircled
amongst nothing, my velocity
velocitates as stellar systems pull
and push away from nebulae
and galaxies, eventual fission,
back into new base atoms.

The Hanging

Mist-nets entangle with
passerines, birds suspended in
webs as they descend from
morning canopy perches
to feed after the dawn chorus,
competition with conspecifics
or practice for when mate
competition strangles these migrants
from tropical environs pushed north
through once forests of trees
turned into concrete jungles
by those who will measure
and categorize avian song, subdivide
into species those different
from the choir that was a whole.

Flash Mob

Momentary insanity
texted a message,
"Go to the polls,"
people wake from
self-made hectic
cacophony and run
to their schools, their churches,
their casinos to cast ballots,
their spontaneity curtailed
by registration, bureaucratic
speed bump to youthful
exuberance, they rally
behind a name injected popular
by internet avatars,
binary braggadocios
programmed for charisma
to lead these children
towards a pale fire light.

--S. P. Flannery was born in La Crosse, Wisconsin, and now resides in Madison. His poetry has appeared in Revival, Random Acts of Writing, Poetry Salzburg Review, Straylight, and The Blotter.

And Here is a Longer Walk

And Here is a Longer Walk

draw out torment by the pint ('tis cheaper that way),

a lesson plan
scuttled notes
dishbeat grime novel of epic lamentables you can pick at

(with delicatessen fingers).
(+ weak-jawed women, for shame).
"Wundrin' when you cun git yer duff in mo-shun!"

Ok: git sum b
git sum sun
git sum tune-tale wotnot
git sum candy-ey'd goody,

and I'll meet you on the deck patio.
Yooz kinna jes do therapy wit Cranbereez & fleetwood mac-flash, keed.
draft on, soldjerk, jes draft on.
Me'z gots spoahs on me dun'd flesh

Oralrite, then, git sum RX-ess,
a rill mofopak
'n a rill piss uppa-rope, dick o' de munth klub.

The muse al-billbisseterrr, singaling to the deitty -
sum goodlunchins were had, 'sure ya.
Culturally bereft? Jes fer today, mate. Jes fer nuthin'.
[insert one organ strike of Emaj for 48 sec., then: FIN]

--Kane X. Faucher
FIMS/MIT Instructor
Doctoral Candidate (ABD), Centre for the Study of Theory and Criticism (CSTC)
The University of Western Ontario

Freelance Writer, Scene Magazine.
Co-editor, The Raging Face.
Co-editor, The Drill Press
Co-editor, Sorrowland Press
Interview Editor, Ditch Poetry
- Author of Urdoxa (2004), Codex Obscura (2005,) Fort & Da (2006), Calqueform, Astrozoica, De Incunabliad (2007). Jonkil Dies, The Vicious Circulation of Dr Catastrope (2008).

Quoteable

"...we're still going to be reading print, and people who love books will still want a book--the most perfect piece of technology ever devised.

Think about it: the brilliant mechanics of the turning page; the infinite possibilities of the simple rearrangement of twenty-six letters and a few other symbols; the art of design and typeface. It's the purest monument to the possibilities of the human race." --Ian C. Ellis



"...there is no joy like that of holding a beautiful book in your hands... Because the book is the quintessential combination of form and function, the best ever devised." --Ian C. Ellis

Characters

Characters

Dear Jack
Am with your kind
Roseau city pub drunks the sun
Discordant symphony
of frisco Mexican nostalgia
Somehow………
They found you
without listening!
Are you proud?
of my hipness
I………..
Awoke
Like a desolation angel
with icarus mystic
I did awake with her
A flame
that kills
Jack!
They surround me
Is that what art defines?
Picture a soft creature
blaspheming art
And it won
Independence jello
A backlash
A system of a down

Jack
Oh Jack
We are endangered
Our dreams exist for madness
but are those
Characters for real?

--Billy Jno Hope breathes to impress art. His collection The Thirty Third Witness is available at LuLu.com.

Three Pieces by Kristine Ong Muslim

Arnie Duran, farmhand

Even in my dreams, I smelled cow manure.
I would run away from the stench, and quietly,
the blades of grass stabbed at my feet.

The thread that passed through the hands
of small-town farmers created a wound--
a dormant stigmata. The grain was god, was life
inside a dried husk less than an inch long.

I never questioned the beauty of the fields--
green to amber--and how the wind rustled them.
By harvest season, I could hold the immensity
in my hands--but how this vastness could encroach.

Little Jimmy, my cousin who fled towards the city,
had a friend who once told him that blasphemy
had its own brand of redemption. It was the only way
to arch back in the direction of the universe.
That is why I sometimes took the name of the Devil in vain.

Federico crossing the border

I cannot see the hand that grips
the other side of the leash, but there's

the tuft of grass lining the border.
I must trespass, put my feet flat

on the other side. So strange--that string
of breath in its invisibility and how it

holds my people together but
farther and farther away from me.

Federico crossing the border

I cannot see the hand that grips
the other side of the leash, but there's

the tuft of grass lining the border.
I must trespass, put my feet flat

on the other side. So strange--that string
of breath in its invisibility and how it

holds my people together but
farther and farther away from me.

--Kristine Ong Muslim publication credits and recent acceptances include more than seven hundred poems and stories in over three hundred publications worldwide, such as Adbusters, Bellevue Literary Review, Chronogram, Cordite, Narrative Magazine, New Madrid, The Pedestal Magazine, Riddle Fence, Scrivener Creative Review, and Turnrow. Kristine has been nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize and received several Honorable Mentions in Year's Best in Fantasy and Horror.

Quoteable

"Your life is an occasion. Rise to it!" --Zach Helm (Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium)

Measuring "bedlam" [Except for Yoshiko]

Measuring "bedlam" [Except for Yoshiko]

new-fangled as "bedlam"

a bullet a stone

is how words put it [at hand, mid-20th century]
w/ prosody & improv: with how a tree
is a language action revolves until brkn--

"swell gal" "keen bop"
exclusively-in-the-gym-for-some-after-algebra
w/ prosody & improv: with how a tree

[& wearing the first day in Japan

page 3
except for Yoshiko...]
common usage becomes a vol. X, a no. 1
a fire-eating-hive-mnemonic-rubber-tree-
Politburo-song-ant-de-ville

in walks dominant-marcolina-criteria-schemata
fluent in 4 by 7 by 6 by 9 exclusion-narration
measuring "bedlam" from the fist of its heart
its hinterland-borders barricaded against:
prosody & improv & how a tree doth speak

but who was that bavarian hat or tongue
in town tonight? so odd & on the morrow?

--Raymond Farr is an accomplished poet whose work has been published by Aught, Xstream, Hutt, Zafusy, 88, Dusie, Bird Dog, Otoliths, BlazeVox, and Sidebrow. This piece originally appeared in Calliope Nerve V: The Great Poetry Experiment.

Fucked

--Chris Major has appeared widely in print and online. His free E-chap of visual/concrete work Concrete and Calligram is available at Why Vandalism?

CROWS AND PIGEONS OF MUMBAI

CROWS AND PIGEONS OF MUMBAI

"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation." ~Oscar Wilde

In the city of Mumbai, there was once a rare bird, called Bugun Liocichla. This bird was one of an endangered species, with the only known population estimated to consist of 14 individuals in Mumbai. This bird had two sons who were growing up and had started asking him questions – on life, on conduct, on work, and on wisdom. The bird was reputed for his wisdom among all the birds of Mumbai. He had the reputation of being an ascetic who was not concerned with material riches and was content with whatever little came his way.

One day his two sons, who were about to finish their education, asked him what profession they should choose. They told him about the popular professions that were being pursued by other birds at the time. Of all the professions being pursued by the birds of Mumbai, the professions of crow or pigeon were the most popular. Everybody wanted to become either a crow or a pigeon. It is always safer and more comfortable to do what many people are doing or seemed to want to be doing. The rare bird listened to them and said the following words:

"Two winged creatures are plentiful in the skies and grounds of Mumbai – the crow and the pigeon. The crows scavenge through the garbage and the pigeons make every building and pathway their abode. Crows are noisy and pigeons make sounds like an echoing ghost. Crows and pigeons don't hate each other. Though they have their own interests, their motives converge into one.

"Crows are the kings of garbage and pollute the air; pigeons scavenge food others provide for them – intentionally or unintentionally. Both usually make their living by feeding on and spreading disease amongst birds.

"The crows are the glamorous ones – they easily come to prominence with all the noise they make. Birds like this noise and make a culture out of it. Pigeons are the ones who work stealthily, keep in the background but poison all the same. One crow is enough to generate a lot of attention but birds don't notice pigeons unless they are in large numbers. Crows exalt in the garbage, proclaiming it to be the ultimate, considering it to be the pinnacle of their existence. This they call fame and success. The pigeons follow them, are their fans but feed on them nonetheless. It's a symbiotic relationship. Both need each other, both feed on each other and on others. Nevertheless, popularity and fame rest with the crows for garbage is what all the birds are attracted to these days.

"The faces of these crows haunt one all the time, are ever present in front of one's eyes, their voices always being heard in some form or other from various sources. Their language becomes the language of the birds, their voice becomes the voice of most other birds. Their acts become the acts of other birds and their thoughts become the thoughts of other birds. They act as if acting is real and indeed they proclaim this to be the real. Their followers too become actors and their lives become a series of acts. Their influence is exerted over large domains, across many seas. They attract, seduce, and captivate the minds and hearts of other birds. Their poison spreads effortlessly. They easily, swiftly and most naturally create an army of their clones.

"The pigeons are ever ready to have their fill and nothing is enough for them. Saturation does not exist for them. They want more and more. They didn't want trees, so now they have buildings made all for themselves; carefully and with determination, they have covered all space. They are the marketers – they sell and trade everything. Trade is their natural occupation. They never do anything but trade. They never possess anything that they can't sell. Trade is their religion and selling is their life.

"The skies of Mumbai are full of crows and pigeons. Indeed, they want their kingdom to expand to the farthest shores. Pigeons make tall buildings and crows have their faces painted on them. They are the rulers of the skies and the grounds. They poison, trade and sell and are bestowed with honors and fame. Their names are well known, their voices recognized, they are loaded with honors and fortune and exalt in their happy lot. Is it so surprising then, that all the other birds want to be like a crow or a pigeon?"

The father, the rare bird, then continued, "Are you an ambitious bird? Do you know what ambition is? It is the desire to become somebody, is it not? And do you know what it does? It causes us to be against one another. Everybody is struggling to be rich, to have fame, to be more clever. You want to be greater than the other person and he wants you to be greater than you. So ambition really means trying to be something you are not. And which is important? To be what you are or try to be something you are not? You must first look at yourselves and begin to understand what you are. And then perhaps you'll never ask what you should do.

"Do not compare with what other birds are doing. Don't try to become like them, even if everybody else becomes like them. It is hard for you because comparison is the basis of our so-called education, and of our whole culture. Comparison is the most destructive thing in the world. If you compare yourselves with others then how can you find out what you are interested in, what your capacities are? Don't imitate, don't try to become like anybody else, no matter how great. It is you who are important, not somebody else. Find out who you are."

The two boys understood what their father said. No more did they want to be a crow or a pigeon. No more did they want to become like others. No more did they want to become common. They said to themselves, it is better to be a rare bird than to be a well known crow or a pigeon; it is better to be an unknown than a known poisonous creature; it is better to remain obscure than to shine with artificial light.

--Ashutosh Ghidiyal was born in 1984 in Lucknow, India. He completed his graduate studies in New Delhi and Post Graduate education in Mumbai. He is the author of several short stories, essays and poems. His work has been published in both print and online media extensively. He is currently based in Mumbai. This story was first published in his self published book in Mar 08.

Visitation (My Head)

"I want to be at least as alive as the vulgar." --Frank O'Hara

"Give me a moment." --The Misfits

Visitation (My Head)

Recycling talons
That killing girl
Scratching brain words
Angel.
(side of feathers)

Writer's block
tonight.
Like shooting craps--
A gamble.
Prowling mojo psalms.

Unattainable
Visitation
How to appreciate art.
Bend thy knee!
Frank O'Hara is
god
Never running out of verse.

(My Head)
I'm down
In it
sinking
--Water Margin--
Other poets so
Prolific

But I am facing
the last stanza.

--Nobius Black wears many hats. He’s a father-of-four, husband, Aikido black belt, martial arts school owner/instructor, online book seller, editor, poet, APA Centauri Central Mailer, scrap dealer, gardener, obsessive reader, freight forwarder (by trade), and the creator of Calliope Nerve. He doesn’t sleep enough.

Pop Addict: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

Hot.

Killer.

Robot.

What more could a Pop Fiend want?

J.D. Nelson/OWL BRAIN ATLAS (Four Pieces)

Doktor Toungues

By the Time I get to Feeney's

(Shelby rosin)

American piglet

SPORKing goods

blanket yo pigs, Sizzler!

off to the (A-SIDE)

when we bleed
we bleed Velveeta

I'm awake in a cave

the rainbows are bleeding,
butterfly girl

pig twee' like "U" never!

The frog wrapped in bacon
is grinning because

it's almost over.

The kloned meat is stringy, boys.
Try it w/ some hot sauce.

Apostrophe "X" ain't good English.

I AM THE MECHANISM AROUND THE EYE

special eye

unnecessary,
disembodied

eye

the postulant corpuscle might know:

mascara gark,

wheedle

it's not a knife -- it's a KNIVE.

fetch my blades & fixings;
it's time for my morning sunbleed.

are ten toes as good as two?

--J. D. Nelson (b.1971) experiments with words and sound in his subterranean laboratory. His bizarre poems and experimental texts have appeared in many small press and underground publications. J.D. lives
in Colorado, USA. Visit www.MadVerse.com for more information and links to his published work. His audio experiments, recorded under the name OWL BRAIN ATLAS, can be heard online at www.OwlNoise.com. His video art is online at www.youtube.com/OWLNOISE.

Aided By Fire

"I've been thinking about the future." --Blue Man Group

Aided by Fire

Your thorn of crowns
Like love in Bizarro world
The New Pigs rise
aFRAID to wear shoes.

--Nobius Black wears many hats. He’s a father-of-four, husband, Aikido black belt, martial arts school owner/instructor, online book seller, editor, poet, APA Centauri Central Mailer, scrap dealer, gardener, obsessive reader, freight forwarder (by trade), and the creator of Calliope Nerve. He doesn’t sleep enough.

The Search

THE SEARCH

Searched in vain,
I have,
Grappled after the unknown,
I have,
With the memories of yesterday,
Projected the images of tomorrow,
I have,
Sought to seek,
I have,
The object of my own fancy,
Crafted out of my own wish,
I have,
Many a tantalizing carrots,
Dangled in front of me,
I have,
With promises of another life,
I have,
Deceived myself endlessly,
I have,
In hope of arriving at the unknown
Destination of my own knowledge,
I have,
Blind to the ever near,
Sought after the far away,
I have,
Till the seeker and the sought,
The thinker and the thought,
Vanished into thin air.

--Ashutosh Ghildiyal was born in 1984 in Lucknow, India. His work has appeared or been accepted for publication in the following print and online magazines: Houston Literary Review, Oak Bend Review, Taj Mahal Review, River Poets Journal, The Storyteller, Cantaraville, Fear and Trembling, Calliope, Indite Circle, Mad Swirl, Word Catalyst Magazine, Perpetual Magazine, Cynic Online Magazine, and Calliope Nerve.