AND LOVE, BY EXTENSION

AND LOVE, BY EXTENSION

So love must also include the sofa.
that strange gold emboss to the wall paper
and not forgetting the stack of vinyl

that hasn't graced needle in years

and bronze baby shoes
along with the tiny feet
I must imagine slipping into them.

In parallel to the way we get comfortable,
so does love.

It's not afraid to toss its slippers
anywhere on the floor,
to pile up magazines, read or unread.

Love doesn't even mind
being the stuff that needs doing about the house:
peeling paint on the bathroom ceiling,
leaking taps.

If it becomes more distraction
than passion, no skin off its nose,
just a little sweat to the palms.

Love takes in the rooms,
the whole house, the neighborhood,
even strangers who ring the front door bell.

"Will you get that," a voice intones
from out of the depths
of knees and buckets and furniture polish.

Love's more obedience than opinions these days.
It goes to the door.
Charity, Jehovah’s Witness or can I use the phone,
it loves nothing more than what it finds there

--JOHN GREY: Australian born poet, US resident since the late seventies. Works as a financial systems analyst. Recently published in Connecticut Review, Georgetown Review, Abbey, Calliope Nerve, and REAL with work upcoming in Poetry East, Cape Rock and the Pinch.

Truck Stop

TRUCK STOP

Yet the crowd barely separates
as one concerted noise flirts with one
red-eyed waitress, and one giant rotting
mouth consumes one feast of eggs and bacon

From my booth, I weigh this company
with my eyes, hear them through
the coffee I nurse all night, touch them
with my tongue’s scarred lullaby

This is not a place to be hungry and lonely -
it’s where the rest of life penetrates
until your skin is their tattoo -
it’s where what eats you eats

--JOHN GREY: Australian born poet, US resident since the late seventies. Works as a financial systems analyst. Recently published in Connecticut Review, Georgetown Review, Abbey, Calliope Nerve, and REAL with work upcoming in Poetry East, Cape Rock and the Pinch.

GREAT WHITE HUNTER

GREAT WHITE HUNTER

There’s always one guy at the zoo
who wishes he was the great white hunter.
Not content to enjoy the sight of elephants
splashing in their shallow pool,

be imagines lining the beasts up in his sights,
taking careful aim, bringing one down.
Before he moves on to the gorillas,
he can just see himself being photographed,

foot atop the giant gray beast, elephant gun
in one hand, trophy ivory in the other.
There’s always one gorilla in the zoo
who stares back at the ones staring in at him,

who figures that’s just more great apes
on the other side of the moat.
There’s always one guy, fresh from his
elephant kill, that the ape gets right.

--JOHN GREY: Australian born poet, US resident since the late seventies. Works as a financial systems analyst. Recently published in Connecticut Review, Georgetown Review, Abbey, Calliope Nerve, and REAL with work upcoming in Poetry East, Cape Rock and the Pinch.

APRIL 8, 2009

APRIL 8, 2009

tomorrow,
Life
is what happens,
I want to believe today
in the best thing, and,
at the same time
no one can understand
my sole reason for
feeling better,
(how she sounds laughing)
My recent activity on facebook
wrapping desire in the enigma code
and transmitting in
short,
electric,
bursts.

Joe Dacey works in a library in Frederick, MD and never felt the need to write before he met her.

A SHIP SAILING UP THE COAST AT NIGHT

A SHIP SAILING UP THE COAST AT NIGHT

a ship sailing up the night coast
the lights glowing sharp orange,
silently,
slowly,
flowing towards terrifyingly black water.
the horizon is engorged, continuing to grow
and devour
see how effortlessly the ship’s bow parts the water?
who more than obliges in giving way to the hulking mass
white crests turning over the sea like ruffled sheets
collecting by the edged of my bed,
the ship turning once
majestically blunting the eagerly impatient water
still silent
the light shines brighter broad against the shore
the black nothingness falling
unrelenting,
still terrifying

It is 3am before we make it back to your room

Joe Dacey works in a library in Frederick, MD and never felt the need to write before he met her.

Quoteable

"...violence as a career and as a spectator sport, a behind-the-pageantry glimpse of athletes at the top of their terrifying game, and a dizzying firsthand account of what it's like to reach the peak of finely disciplined aggression, to hit--and be hit." --Dust jacket of Sam Sheridan's A Fighter's Heart

Quoteable

"We will be together and we'll be the resistance. Won't it be glorious?" --Juan Santapau

Crowe Stole Smokes from Dog Breath's Truck

Crowe Stole Smokes from Dog Breath's Truck

Crowe is in the basket
and Dog Breath is blowing
bubbles with his pipe.
Crowe is on the roof,
spitting out bitter seeds.
Everyone's dead,
insane,
or locked up --
except for me.
I'm alive,
mindless,
and free:
a zombie,
a spider-eater,
a clown for hire.
I'm on to you,
goddamn crow --
I've been following you,
old boy.
you're going to
get it

--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. This piece ran in Calliope Nerve XV: Pleasured Hands.

Two Pieces From Zachary C. Bush

While the Wind Tore Tiles off Your Roof

You spun about the living room inside a giant hula-hoop
Beneath the lights that flickered on-and-off in hysterical fits.
I drank
 
And studied the state map through thin grey
Lines waving across the television screen.
The map bled until the entire square was stained red.
 
I listened to your boyfriend, the married one,
Take hits from a cut-glass pipe and slur lines from Mein Kampf
Over the static-crackle of TV warning alarms.
 
“Should we be worried?”
 
I asked.
Your father sighed,
Slapped his knees, and stood. He turned off the TV
and took your mother’s hand.
 
“Should we be worried?”

They walked down the hallway.
You just laughed at me and hummed a tune until
 
I heard their bedroom door shut and I turned.
Your grandmother cursed and rolled her wheelchair
Near the window. She waited there in silence.

The Cripple's Song

I heard echo’s from against the other houses and the sound of children’s bedtime songs coming closer and closer, drowning out the songs of the lord. Hope.
 
I turned to see a toothless man racing a weather-worn wicked witch of a woman bound to a rusted wheel chair. The man raced her against the oncoming darkness, racing against the air, maybe. I hid, watching them from behind a tree. This is when the guilt dropped from my limbs to my gut like a bleeding ulcer, or an exploding tumor.
 
The woman sang crazily, her legs stretched out starched straight, like school house pencils, like a little girl hovering the edge of a black rubber swing, swinging, drooling from cracked lips. The man, her man, rolls her further, howling in laughter. He cocked his head back to the dying sun, holding onto his cap. And the woman sang, slurring fragments of, “hush little baby, don’t say a word,” as if she was having to prove her existence in this world-- a final judgment.
 
They passed by my front yard, in glorious derelict procession. The wheels of her chair bounced between island-tufts of grass and rutted-out sand and I watched her, half in disgust, and half intrigued. Her voice vibrated at “HUSH” as they passed over the edge of my driveway where my yard meets their trash-littered streets.

--Zachary C. Bush, 25, is a writer of poetry. He is the author of ALL AVENUES LEAD TO THE VORTEX[vol.1] and has two collections: AT SWAN DECAPITATION and a book of weird prose poetry, ANGLES OF DISORDER -- forthcoming in 2009, through VOX Press (Oxford, MS) and BlazeVOX books (Buffalo, NY). Some of his new poetry is forthcoming in Elimae, Word Riot, and [out of nothingness]. ZCB lives in Jersey City, and attends the City College of New York's MFA in Creative Writing program. You can find his blog, DECAPSWAN, at http://zacharycbush.blogspot.com. Email him at readezra@yahoo.com. These pieces ran in Calliope Nerve XV: Pleasured Hands.

In Good Health

In Good health

Health: According to the definition set by the WHO: Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.

According to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary: the condition of being sound in body, mind, or spirit.

Whole: According to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary: free of wound or injury, unhurt; free of defect or impairment, intact; physically sound and healthy; free of disease or deformity; mentally or emotionally sound.

We can see that these two words: “health” and “whole” are quite similar in their meaning. To be healthy also means to be whole. It also means to be sane, rational, complete - a total human being.

Human being is a psychosomatic organism. The Body and mind is one unit - interrelated and intertwined. What affects the mind also affects the body and vice versa. Health cannot be said to be exclusively of the mind or of the body. To divide the mind and body as two separate units would be wrong. You are the body and you are the mind.

Health is becoming a problem for most of us because of our daily lifestyle and the environment around us. Pollution and population are on the rise. Stress has become a common thing among both the young and the old. There are prevalent not only many physical illnesses and diseases but also psychological, in many parts of the world. In big cities, the exposure to television and other artificial media, pollution, and a mechanical way of life are one of the major causes of ill health.

Human beings, as other life forms, function on energy. To work you need energy, to think you need energy, to eat and digest you need energy. This energy is mostly wasted due to various forms of psychological conflicts, stress, daily problems, habits and overindulgence. When there is a lack of energy, there is a lack of health. When energy is wasted, blocked or suppressed, there manifest various forms of illnesses and diseases.

The body has its own intelligence. If left to itself, it has a tremendous capacity to heal itself. The mind imposes its own pursuits and desires on the body thereby making it insensitive and lacking of energy. When the mind is not imposing itself on the body, then the body, left to itself, can function most healthily and efficiently. Human beings are a part of this planet and whatever happens in the world, economically, sociologically, and environmentally does affect every human being. There are all kinds of influences, both visible and invisible around us - not spiritually, but environmentally, biologically and psychologically, which have an effect on the overall organism. Human beings, whether they live in America or India or any other place are basically, constitutionally, the same. If one observes a little closely one would find that psychologically, basically, one’s consciousness is the same as another’s - it is shared by all humanity. So, one can say that oneself is the world.

To be healthy means to be whole - psychologically and physically - a total human being. However, we are fragmented individuals. We have divide life into compartments - personal and professional life, religious and social life, and other similar divisions. And we also divide ourselves by giving ourselves, and psychologically sticking to, various labels - Hindu, Muslim, Indian, American, Gujarati, Marathi, Scientist, Musician, and so on. We separate ourselves from another through these various labels and this is reflected in our psyche - which is fragmented, broken up. Fragmentation means conflict and conflict means division - the battle of the opposites - you and me, we and they, and all the other such divisions. Fragmentation exists not only inwardly but outwardly; and where there is fragmentation there must be battle, conflict. Life is one whole movement - it is not to be broken up. Through all these divisions at various levels of our being there manifest various conflicts and contradictions in which fragmentation takes root. This invariably has an effect on the overall organism.

We have lost the relationship, that touch, that contact with nature. In our daily pursuits and problems, we have isolated ourselves. Each considering himself to be different and separate from each other, each seeking his own security. We may go for a walk on a beach or go to a hill station on a holiday and say “how nice’, “how beautiful” but that is just a verbalization, a superficial response. We do not feel related to nature, even though one may profess to be a “nature lover”, as though one is outside of and separate from nature. To have that relationship with nature, to be related, and to be sensitive towards it brings about a healthy state in itself.

Health also implies simplicity and balance. Simplicity is not merely outward simplicity but more so an inward simplicity of being. We have made our minds complicated; we have acquired too much information about everything; we have cultivated the intellect, thereby bringing about an imbalance. Intellect is only a part of our being and has its own place. Whereas, the human structure also includes observation, perception and the senses. When the senses operate as a whole then the intellect has its right place. To be simple means to be free from accumulation in terms of knowledge, experiences and various repetitive pleasures and habits. To be simple means to be able to laugh, to smile, to look at nature and oneself without the quality of separation.

The most important thing in all this is awareness. One needs to be aware of oneself - one’s reactions, responses and sensations. One has to be sensitive. One has to be aware of one’s body, its demands, pursuits and the sensations, the feelings. One has to be able to look at it simply without too much verbalization, which is a distraction. To know about your mind or body by reading about it or by accumulating information about it is different from being actually aware of it. Information is merely words and is not the direct experiencing of one’s own total mechanism. When you are aware, sensitive, then you take care of yourself, then you do not overindulge or eat the wrong foods - not because you have read that it should or should not be done - but because you are aware. When there is intelligence, which comes through sensitivity and awareness, then you do things not out of compulsion but because you understand. Then you have the feeling of responsibility, care. Then you eat the right foods, take the right amount of exercise, drink good amount of water, keep yourself clean, follow hygiene, take right amount of sleep and so on. Then you do it most naturally and instinctively. Without awareness of how one’s body and mind operate, being healthy or whole is not possible. When one is sensitive, aware of oneself - then out of that awareness and sensitivity, the body and mind, as a whole unit can function most simply and intelligently.

--Ashutosh Ghidiyal writes poetry, short fiction and essays. He was born in Lucknow in 1984.

Calliope Ears (Music to Edit By): Dave Matthews Band All Along The Watchtower

"No reason to get excited," the thief, he kindly spoke. --Bob Dylan



When I grow up, I'm going to be a rock star.

Or an Editor.

Not Like the Movies

Not Like the Movies

I went down to see what was going on, as
if I didn’t know, well
maybe more to confirm that
all was as the world goes.
If the faces change,
the people stay the same.
They still know who I am– to
who I am in the scheme of things.
 
J—
J, I said.
you are out of your element, I explained.
yes, yes... she breathed— (through her eyes).
I heard tell of it in the movies, though
never seen it done in real life, and
in a place like this, well
it didn’t seem very wise.
I was afraid the smoke in the air
might vaporize her head.
She touched my face with her
little hands, said
come with me,
then I knew it was bad,
worse than I thought.
I found a bar stool to hide behind,
a key to send her away with.
 
Now and again, in a quiet, empty moment,
I think about her unwearied commitment
to a slow and lonely death.
 
--Michele McDannold has spent most of her life living in rural Illinois surrounded by corn, river rats, and red necks. She likes corn and is the creator of Rural Messangers Press. This piece ran in Calliope Nerve XV: Pleasured Hands.

How I Learn to Love Our Bomb Strange Candy in Six Measures

"She said, 'Tell me are you a Christian child.' And I said, 'Mam, I am tonight...'" --Marc Cohn

How I Learn to Love Our Bomb Strange Candy In Six Measures

1)

Your troubled air
empty ink
infatuate
Me. Jackie Paper.
page soul Calligraphy/
Could be a mess.

2)

THiS iS hOW:
-I-
Learn to love (Our Bomb)
Strange Candy Holocaust
Between Us.
L O V E
dynamite
Complex light balanced
In a nugget center
Mmmhhhmmm...
good pill push
commercial world.

3)

POeT
& previously released p*rn star
remixed
FROM THE DAY I sued
God

the soul vibrates
like angels wayward
flapping.

4)

Apparently,
the
Maker
responds
to
law
suits
when
poems
are
written
with
long
over
bloated
titles
by
long
over
bloated
authors.

Delicate
Ego.

The Nobius Formula:
Evaporate.

5)

Assume identity makes
*TONGUE* telling
Well spoken Poe corpse.
Not even the
magic marker--
Universal Hippie
Can smoke
OPUS.

6)

Arrhythmia desire.

my sides color redemption
Don't know a f*u**ing thing about goodbyes...
So let me love/leave
Exit brain left
With

some-elusively
sought
Forgiveness

Dignity

this nite.

--Nobius Black wears many hats. He’s a father-of-four, husband, Aikido black belt, martial arts school owner/instructor, online bookseller, 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.

Quoteable

"The crown of literature is poetry. It is its end and aim. It is the sublimest activity of the human mind. It is the achievement of beauty and delicacy. The writer of prose can only step aside when the poet passes." --Somerset Maugham

Untitled

Untitled

This girl comes to me in three inches of blood-
Shot cotton, four freckles above her thigh.
She shakes a glass cup twice and hooks
The wick of her mouth to the pluck in her cheek
And sucks in a piece of ice.

She moves her mouth around syllables I
Don't know; I notice her lips are chapped
Petals- She slips a clove between them,
And will love the smell that Hums eternally
In her hair: Her hair, An aphetic nest:
Sitting like brunette Cobwebs on her shoulders.

She swallows the ice slowly and rounds
Her brick lips around no sound; the then
Points to herself with an overcast fingernail,
And gives her sharp hip a stab, left then right.

I tell her I don't know yo quiero, but I know gaunt
Hands quick on my bones; I know her mussy
Midsummer skirts, and dusky unwrinkled skin.
I know thirty times her fingers and the concept
Of this sin.

--Sarah Felder, sixteen years old, lives on the island of Martha's Vineyard. Summer is in her bones, but she’s standing through the springtime currently. She’s in love with a place and in love with the world but only a few of it's perks. Her favorite book is Flush by Virginia Woolf because Woolf is the woman. This piece ran in Calliope Nerve XV: Pleasured Hands.

Salted Cod

Salted Cod

Confronted with the head of a dead salted cod:

the animist pondered his sacrifice,
the beautician wrinkled her nose,
the corporate vice-president claimed ownership of an applicable policy statement,
the Dalai Lama smiled enigmatically,
the eel gulped,
the fanzine editor wrote a worshipful column,
the guardian angel was just a moment too late,
the harpist cut her finger on a string and bled profusely,
the Iberian Peninsula just sat there,
the jurist opened her dusty book and said, “aha”,
the kaffeeklatsch held a moment of uncomfortable silence,
the litigant stammered uncontrollably,
the musicologist revived a popular sea-faring ditty from fifteenth century Basque country,
the number crunchers ran out of ink and panicked,
the optimist drank half a glass and asked for more,
the pessimist brooded,
the quiz master said something really stupid and everyone laughed,
the ringleader swallowed hard and tried to explain it all again,
the sycophant wiped her lips with a linen napkin,
the tyrant looked over the wrong shoulder at precisely the wrong moment,
the union rep made a salient observation,
the virus mutated,
the Walloon language stuck out its chest and began to sing,
the xenophobe refused to leave his room,
the yodeler slipped on a rock and split his head open,
the zither wouldn’t stop playing, but no one cared.

--Jim Benz lives in Minneapolis with his wife and two cats. He hates writing bios. This piece ran in Calliope Nerve XV: Pleasured Hands.

Quoteable

"Never lend books, for no one ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are books that other folks have lent me." --Anatole France

Basra, 2004

Basra, 2004

He doesn’t cry about it
anymore. No tears
in years. On occasion, though,
those who know him

see his good arm fly,
fist up, just above his eye.
So far the sun each time
has backed away,

allowing him to walk,
his good arm ready,
through the village
one more time

where he and others
picked off Shia
on a birdless
summer day.

--Donal Mahoney, a native of Chicago, lives in St. Louis, Missouri. He has worked as an editor for The Chicago Sun-Times, Loyola University Press and Washington University in St. Louis. He has had poems published in or accepted by The Wisconsin Review, The Kansas Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, Commonweal, Orbis (U.K.), Revival (Ireland), The Christian Science Monitor, The Istanbul Literary Review (Turkey), Calliope Nerve, Poetry Super Highway, WOW (Ireland), Public Republic (Bulgaria) and other publications.

The Long, The Wild Parade

The Long, The Wild Parade

tips for a boy back from Basra

First of all, your mind.
The chimes must stop,
the drums, the horns,
as well.
Finally, the long,
the wild parade
of mummers crazed
you must spade off
the way Daddy,
years ago
when I was four,
cursed the British
one more time
then drove his spade,
while Mommy screamed,
through the head
of that garden snake.

--Donal Mahoney, a native of Chicago, lives in St. Louis, Missouri. He has worked as an editor for The Chicago Sun-Times, Loyola University Press and Washington University in St. Louis. He has had poems published in or accepted by The Wisconsin Review, The Kansas Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, Commonweal, Orbis (U.K.), Revival (Ireland), The Christian Science Monitor, The Istanbul Literary Review (Turkey), Calliope Nerve, Poetry Super Highway, WOW (Ireland), Public Republic (Bulgaria) and other publications.

Farting Eternity

farting eternity

as were a summer sun happiness
though that mad star farts its brief eternity past us
while you sleep
and keeps our secrets
somewhere rather warm and deep

--David Mclean is Welsh but has lived in Sweden since 1987. His collection Cadaver’s Dance is available at Amazon.com. He is also the author of both Pushing Lemmings and A Hunger For Mourning. This piece ran in Calliope Nerve XV: Pleasured Hands

water and such

water and such

I am the ship
and you are the mighty
drunk and awful sea.
will your placid eyes lead me home?
where some dead mother never really died
so I snort reality in fine lines,
waiting for the light in my flat,
alone,
and darkness comes over my mad days
and in the streets tramps fight futilely
over God’s last blowjob
or so I see it from my windows
where a dusty indifference trembles with death.

and overdoses from misty hazes could
very well be a lesson in method acting
for life is always in vain.
and vanity never works for me
just closed eyelids over dark waters
and a borderline mother’s
womb is what I crave,
some warm building to jump from
and meet my father.

--Amanda Boschetto is a Swedish poet. This piece ran in Calliope Nerve XV: Pleasured Hands and also appeared in Lit Circus.

my cadaver

my cadaver

the sweetness of death is winter
but the day remains
through the solemn sun
and our placid eyes lie sunken
in God’s grey harbor.
life’s indifference is nature’s medicine
and a coat of drugs is futilely worn.

the womb stays silenced,
I guess some bitch got sterilized
and the water birthed is the tree of life,
some unknowing rain drains the beds
and we all sleep alone,
Cadaver’s rotten cunt feeds mother’s
need for greed.
and we sleep in vain.

--Amanda Boschetto is a Swedish poet. This piece ran in Calliope Nerve XV: Pleasured Hands.

Inkwell Smarty vs. the Crocodile Coca-Cola Monster

Inkwell Smarty vs. the Crocodile Coca-Cola Monster

End of the skid mark at 45 after,
looking (weedly) and fife, a fife, lil' fifer --
here's a moldy sinkhole button.

--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. This piece ran in Calliope Nerve XV: Pleasured Hands.

Funky Dunk

Funky Dunk

Lil' duck with a Mars hat
like the bad kid
on top of the street light,
miles away from Dr. Dundee
& his army of insane ape-dogs --
Little by little, we see
the true nature of the jelly-fist
& the usual eggs & browned hash
won't satisfy this kind of hunger.

--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. This piece ran in Calliope Nerve XV: Pleasured Hands.

Lil' Exxer

Lil' Exxer

Lil' cans of tuna
from the hobgoblin shop
X has crumpled every sheet
of his lemon writing paper
& now he has no way
of thanking his aunt
for the blue socks!

--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. This piece ran in Calliope Nerve XV: Pleasured Hands.

Spirtiual Burn

Spiritual Burn

We were drinking sin. We were smoking redemption. There was no cloud cover. She swept into view behind a flame.

"What do you need?" I asked.

She blinked and rattled in tongues. Her short cropped hair threatened to tickle my vision.

"What do you need?" I repeated with another gulp of sin.

"I thought I heard orgasmic things," she replied.

--This is Billy Jno Hope’s first flash fiction submission to this magazine. Billy is an outstanding writer and tech-head originally from the Island of Dominica, West Indies now living in NYC. This piece appeared in Calliope Nerve Part XIV: THE Queen.

lovers make us want to love

lovers make us want to love

Thursday
modern yet extinct
like silver screen affection
the others mock
our fish habits
your super minty stare
far reaching
the belly
of my love train.

--Melisa Lebruin is a poet and photographer originally from the Island of Dominica, West Indies now living in New York City. This piece appeared in Calliope Nerve Part XIV: THE Queen.

Quoteable

“The best way to make a small fortune in poetry is easy. Start out with a large one.” --Grant Miller

Greek Style Yogurt

Greek Style Yogurt

a cross between
mortal sin
and

sanctifying

grace to
the fifth power

--Sheila Murphy’s vibrant collection of work The Case of The Lost Objective (Case) can be purchased at LuLu.com. This piece ran in Calliope Nerve XV: Pleasured Hands.

Earth Still Riddler

"Reach out and touch faith." --Depeche Mode

Earth Still Riddler

Fill in blanks.

Looking for
_ _ _ _ _ _ _
that
have
none
_ _ _ _ _
sanctum
dry.

Waiting for my HeAD.

Absolution
Cum
Sweet
Boy
Exploding.

Earth still.
Riddler asking.
They found the body.
(Extra.)
In my Lifetime Movie (TM) true life story.

Gort: "Now, now,
Honey child.
You got your
Mamma's EYE,

metal carcass,

and her Death Ray."

Warm up for
Work ahead.

--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.

Empire

Empire

And the night feels better
on fire,
lending light
to frenzy.
And the edge of this orgy
glints like a blade
in its own yellow eye.
And the maw of this murder snarls
and spits
black nails
like the amen of a blasphemy.
And the hands of this betrayal
shake not one shudder but
stop -
stone still -
beneath the bright black
of Heaven.

--Joe Nolan is a Nashville based poet, musician, and free lance writer. This piece appeared in Calliope Nerve Part XIV: THE Queen.

A Cup of Coffee

A Cup of Coffee

arrhythmia

could it be another morning?
ungodly
perhaps I’m dead
 
oh for the climate of dreams
found lacking, found
 
casting aspersion
on daybreak
full of songbirds
full of meaningless
ennui or conflict, snarling
eggs be damned, give me coffee

--Jim Benz lives in Minneapolis with his wife and two cats. He hates writing bios. This piece appeared in Calliope Nerve Part XIV: THE Queen.

Quoteable

"Yet I trust the sanity of my vessel; and
if it sinks, it may well be in answer
to the reasoning of the eternal voices,
the waves which have kept me from reaching you." --Frank O’Hara

Prime Time

Prime Time

Twilight and the hour when men twirl white cellophane packets, swaying off their porches to go meet with cross-eyed men, spilling from the passenger seats of broken down beyond-vintage Chevy Impalas. The junkies are now ready
 
to impale their rotting forearms with sweat-sticky needles, given to them by other's satisfied with their last run to the downtown shooting gallery.
 
--Zachary C. Bush, 25, writing from Georgia, creates poetry, prose, interviews, and reviews. "Prime Time" first appeared in his chap We Swallow(ed) Spiders in our Sleep (Pudding House: Columbus, OH: 2007) and was printed in Calliope Nerve XIV: THE Queen. . He is the author of ALL AVENUES LEAD TO THE VORTEX[vol.1] and has two collections: AT SWAN DECAPITATION and a book of weird prose poetry, ANGLES OF DISORDER -- forthcoming in 2009, through VOX Press (Oxford, MS) and BlazeVOX books (Buffalo, NY). Some of his new poetry is forthcoming in Elimae, Word Riot, and [out of nothingness]. ZCB lives in Jersey City, and attends the City College of New York's MFA in Creative Writing program. You can find his blog, DECAPSWAN, at http://zacharycbush.blogspot.com. Email him at readezra@yahoo.com.

Quoteable

"My wealth is words. And I invested wisely in poetry." --Nobius Black

THE GHOST OF NERUDA

THE GHOST OF NERUDA

Desperate reader
I abhor you.
The ghost of Neruda
Abhors you.

Wherever you are
Your eyes will rot.
And why do I say
Such a thing?

Because you have
Ripped out more
Than twenty pages
From a book

Of Neruda’s poetry.
This book from Los
Feliz Branch Library
In Los Angeles

Has been violated.
You have stolen
From countless readers
By doing this.

The ghost of Neruda
Weeps on your soul.
Desperate reader
I denounce you.

--Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal’s new chapbook Still Human is available from Kendra Steiner Editions. This piece originally appeared in Calliope Nerve XII: A Picture of Her (from the inside.)

Quoteable

"...such fugitive feelings have always been my métier." --Allen Ginsberg

Child

Child

Your name is Energy:
the result of sun
breeding with earth
in-between the cosmic bedclothes
of time without beginning.

You thought your people hailed
from the old sod
and you were assuredly right.
Solar heat broods in the dirt
below the crust. Plants send their tendrils
to test these depths, scouring nourishment
from such an improbable combination of parents.
Sun, the bastard child of heat and light,
your virgin mother, of water and soil.

You are immortal.
Energy cannot be destroyed,
and time is illusory.
Reduced to but an atom, you will still join
some new incarnation of powerful life,
the remainder of you perhaps buried
as dust motes drift into a dune
across the top of some deserted windowsill.

The feathery precipitation builds up
layer after layer
accounting for time through accumulation.
Neither time for beginning,
nor time for the end. But time to continue,
time to replay,
time to remember your noble lineage.

Your name is Energy.

--This beautiful piece by author David Blaine originally appeared in A Gift of Wings in memory of Kristen Biss. Child was also featured in Calliope Nerve XII: A Picture of Her (from the inside.)

Constance Stadler Reviews Blue Rooms, Black Holes, White Lights

Review of Brenda Subraman’s Blue Rooms, Black Holes, White Lights (Unlikely Books)

Belinda Subraman’s Blue Rooms, Black Holes, White Lights is a difficult read. The poetry is of a sublime crafting, but it is imbued with both Buddhist enlightenment and the entire spectrum that is death. The result is a collection of rich heartfelt meditations. Subraman is a hospice nurse; her intimacy with death is multifaceted and wrenching, especially as she copes with the wasting and loss of her father and a dear friend.

We are reading a gifted poet, as illustrated in the beautiful: “Blue Room”:

A tall thin bookcase holds
a Moroccan rug down.
An Italian bed holds up the dog and pillows
Tiny life takes over
A thousand calls of night paint the mood.

But the essence of this book, its uniqueness, and its imperative, is how this poet blends her gifts with that most of us spend our lives negating:

As is so vivid in “Wayward Wind”:

My patient, Paul, wrote in a poem
that he belongs to the wayward wind,…

…My job now is to protect his choice
and later as promised
to collect his ashes
then set him in the wind
where he belongs.

and so reverentially complex in “Issues, Colors”:

My father asks,
“It won’t be long now will it?”
My mother says “Don’t tell me
I can’t think about it.”
I deny denial
and simply see color
where there is none
though we each, in turn,
walk the long white hall
into gray, into black,
into nowhere known.

At times this enmeshment of beauty, wisdom, and suffering overwhelms, as in “In Search of Release”. In this work a nurse brings her father desperately needed morphine, reciting “O death where is thy sting.” This is the poet’s inner colloquy:

I clench my spirit
to approximate peace.
I brace my spine
With an inner will
about to undergo an earthquake.
I excuse myself
to privately unlock my heart
to set the butterflies free.

Towards the end of the book is an amazing, epic work: “River of Life”:

How do I pull them close
then let them go?
How do I deal with the dying?

…Finally I shred, erase let go
allow the emotions to dissipate
into the cosmos
where the non-charged atmosphere
where they have gone wraps me with peace.

I am released as I release
and gratitude overcomes me.
I realize each death
deepens me
in this ethereal 
river of life.

In 1992, I read Sharon Olds’ book “The Father” and was stunned. The reductionism of death to a plaintive child cry in light of body of dazzling work that explored every facet of her dark parental moorings, seemed such a defilement of the meaning of poetry, the complex universe it encompasses and can explore. In reading Subraman’s vast, expansive, deep and achingly sensitive words, there is a restorative and spirituality that is transcendent. We all will deal with death, we all will die. Read this book and this inevitability take on new meanings. You may even see butterflies and the colors of the wind.

--Constance Stadler is the author of Tinted Steam (Shadow Archer) and Sublunary Curse (Erbacce) and the Review Editor for Calliope Nerve. Order Subraman's Blue Rooms, Black Holes, White Lights at Unlikely Books.

Quoteable

"We're on my hands and knees in times of winding
We night it's only when we civilize that worm
For vagrant time we need it
What secret of your knowing is there beginning?" --The Melvins

By Hand: Lines for Mother's Day

"I didn't care about the gift. / It was the note I wanted, / the salt from his hand, / the words," admits a woman awaiting a Mother's Day package from her son away at war, in Frances Richey's poem "Letters."

From Poetry.org: By Hand: Lines for Mother's Day.

Public Library Zines

Zines from a Tennessee Public Library: Or, Stop Being a Wuss and Start a Collection Already!

Halo Overhead/Frequency 35

"Words are meaningless and forgettable." --Depeche Mode

"In our religion, you keep what you kill." --Chronicles of Riddick



Gabcast! White Rabbit - *BLACK HOLE* #8

Halo Overhead/Frequency 35

Lips too thin--
to ask forgiveness.
I close mine;
Stars go out.
Lovely lovely
Skull
sidewise
keeper.
Mother's only
sky.

Happy 35th birthday
(all my grey)
--In Glass--
Brazen mirror
How dare you show me!
(1/2 way to end)
Life expectancy.
not a tick-tock
friend
we will

Antennae sprout.
Frequency of ghosts.
Quick deploy Scarab
Launching.
I don't wanna
(ten, nine, eight...)
count down
die.

Say Grace.
Say, "yourself."
Fire Woman.
Let it go.
Shine Halo
Overhead.

In shape of Ankh
or rejection letter
My parts
bleed.

I librarian
& poet
All day long
(between wadding papers)
to the
Vertical file
Confess,
"Fuck the New Yorker."

--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.

Critique of Pure Reason

Critique of Pure Reason

Dear Mr. Kant,
 
Having finished our initial scan of your most recent ballast froth, I would like to take this opportunity to wiggle your tweezers and, in so doing, offer some bog myrtle of my own.  While I must admit that I’ve rarely seen bean dip of such lucid corrugation (even in these baggy trousers!) I still believe there remains a sub-panel of skeet we need to fluoridate.
 
For instance, when you say “intuitions of space and time constitute one of the factors required for solution of the general problem of Transcendental Aesthetic”, are you really intimating that Jack Squat is not a general concept but rather a pure form of diced pigeon? And if this is so, what is the crossword of tea? Or toe fungus, for that matter. My colleagues have expressed some difficulty concerning the Eye of Horus as well, but that’s just human entrails in a wooden bowl as far as I’m concerned. Even so, please consider appearances, as they cannot exist in themselves, but only in pickle brine.
 
Second, you’ve made the observation that “a singular judgment can be treated like the universal, but in respect to quantity it stands as unity to infinity and is therefore essentially different.” Is this really a matter of syllogism or is it actually more akin to a two-bit bohemian donkey? As concerns unity, the vaginal curd of a wrinkled toad cannot possibly dissemble lest the modalities of time become shrill. And by that I mean wombats tinkle in my fruit loops. This is insupportable.
 
Finally, I know you are merely saying that the “simplicity of substance is intended to be only the schema of this regulative principle” and is not presupposed as being the actual hare lip of a one-eyed dwarf, but my congenital peach dumplings mutate, vociferously, and I’m really thinking you could lather a chimney sweep, at least in the fulcrum. Does this make sense? Further, your categories of Quantity and Quality are entitled mathematic principals. Isn’t this really a case of too many zerks and not enough squid? That said, I look forward to your appendectomy.
 
Grammatically Possible,
 
Rupert Murdoch
 
--Jim Benz lives in Minneapolis with his wife and two cats.  He hates writing bios. This piece was first published in Calliope Nerve XII: A Picture of Her (from the inside.)

Dirt

Dirt

His crime is so great
he cannot return home
to her.
Yet, she is only human

and blows
the white ghetto candle
out
while she visits him
and before she returns
to
where he cannot.

--Jonathan Hayes lives in San Francisco, California. He has taught poetry at 826 Valencia – a writing center for children – located in the Mission District of the City. He is also publisher of the poetry/lit magazine Over the Transom. This piece was first published in Calliope Nerve XII: A Picture of Her (from the inside.)

Quoteable

“You can’t live by some utopian vision in a world of assholes.” –-Kyle Baker

DEAR GERALDINE

DEAR GERALDINE

Remember when we fucked
in the back seat
of that burned up cop car
and danced in the gutter
with the bones of dead writers
while Rock and Roll Suicide played?


You took my heart,
gutted and pulled it flat.
You wore it like a mask,
your eyes the only life on
an otherwise dull face,
the only light in the room.
You drained my blood like
an old Chevy up on the rack-

well
those were the days.

--Jason "Juice" Hardung's work has been published widely through the American underground. Appearing in The New York Quarterly, Zygote In My Coffee, Underground Voices, decomP, Thrasher, Lummox Journal, Heroin Love Songs, Polarity, Up The Staircase just to name a few. He has a chapbook, Breaking The Hearts Of Robots out on Covert Press, and is completing The Broken and the Damned, a chapbook published by Epic Rites Press. He is co-editor of the Front Range Review and Matter Journal. Writing, for him, is something that soothes the savage beast, or whatever it's called. He is on probation for the next two years and hopes to have a novel done by then. He lives in Ft. Collins Colorado and loves it there, but doesn't like all the Subarus with kayaks strapped to the roofs, the earth tone sweaters, Teva sandals, or white kids in Reggae bands.

THE DAY BEFORE EASTER

THE DAY BEFORE EASTER

Sitting in the coffee shop
watching people in love
and some people
by themselves.
I'm trying to think
of people to acknowledge
for my new book
and all that comes to mind
is how a girl I know
has been across town
smoking meth for days
while her kids
are at home
waiting
for the easter bunny.

--Jason "Juice" Hardung's work has been published widely through the American underground. Appearing in The New York Quarterly, Zygote In My Coffee, Underground Voices, decomP, Thrasher, Lummox Journal, Heroin Love Songs, Polarity, Up The Staircase just to name a few. He has a chapbook, Breaking The Hearts Of Robots out on Covert Press, and is completing The Broken and the Damned, a chapbook published by Epic Rites Press. He is co-editor of the Front Range Review and Matter Journal. Writing, for him, is something that soothes the savage beast, or whatever it's called. He is on probation for the next two years and hopes to have a novel done by then. He lives in Ft. Collins Colorado and loves it there, but doesn't like all the Subarus with kayaks strapped to the roofs, the earth tone sweaters, Teva sandals, or white kids in Reggae bands.

Constance Stadler Reviews “Prosthetic Gods” by Jonathan Penton

Review of “Prosthetic Gods” by Jonathan Penton (Winged City Chapbooks)

In the beginning of “Prosthetic Gods”, Jonathan Penton explains the title of his book in an excerpt from Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents:

Man has, as it were, become a kind of Prosthetic God. 
When he puts on all his auxiliary organs he is truly magnificent; 
but those organs have not grown on to him and they still give him 
much trouble at times.

There is much in Penton that evokes the French Symbolists who, in turn, deeply impacted T.S. Eliot, and here we can make many comparisons. The brilliance, the insight, the prosody, nuanced tone are pitch perfect. But Penton is a complex artist. Like Eliot, he is deceptively simple in a voice spoken by a constructed persona, who blithely amalgamates the tributaries of thought into the unity of a single personality. And like the Symbolists, he postulates a transcendental existential realm where one could as Rimbaud put it ‘commune with the innate but inscrutable essences of life.’

In “First Mind Buried” he dismisses the readers assumed notion that, like Ginsberg, she/he/we/you have met the best minds of this generation. Why?

we seek the solution to madness knowing
                 sanity has no answers

The tone is self evidentiary, of course you know, thus a perfect legitimization into a litany of mocking derisions.

          So you think you have a world
          And you think your world has meaning
          But I take your world 
          For spite, for sport
          So what will you do now?

          And you have a little god
          And you pray your god has power
          And I kill your God 
          For spite, for sport
          So what now will you do?

The reader is stunned and shamed. There is no rebuttal of “And who are you?” For we know the truth is being spoken in ferocious knowing bites, with fierce consonantal glottal stoppages, and questions that refract within loneliest alone.

“Sin of the Calf” splays our reverence for the shallow; our cheaply ‘bought’ idolatry.

 Beautiful broken darling
                         Goddess soaked in filth
I dump your shit
On the woman I keep
Just to see what I can make grow.

“Maror” is the bitter herb eaten during the Passover feast, to ensure remembrance.

We begin the lamentation:

                             There are no former poets,
                              There are only poets,
                                                  Failed poets,
                                                           And dead poets
And only those in the final group can be numbered.

It as if the poet is not the keeper of wisdom, but the damned one, the truly ‘Hollow Man.’

He continues to expose the savagery of distorted perception and revoltions of values:

Venus rapes women. She ravages their faces
                                        Destroys their hands
                                        Mutilates their feet
And when she’s ruined      every inch of them save their orifices
She sends a mortal to finish to finish the job.

This is such a vile image it would be impossible to not have a visceral reaction, all the while remembering the cause for ‘maror’: it was, it is.

As Penton is also a highly respected editor of a quality e-zine, there is a bit of whimsy in the title “I’m a Poet Too!” For, as adages go, just as: “those who cannot do, teach”, in the words of many (frequently rejected, embittered writers) “those who cannot write, edit.” However, in light of the uniqueness and strengths of this volume, there is a particularly resonant inappropriateness. The words don’t sound ‘sulking’ or ‘imploring’, but emerge as emanations from a groundswell of delicious black humor.

She asked me how to improve her poetry.

I told her to destroy her lovers, neglect her family, and sit alone 
and lonely until she can’t remember the thrill of beauty, until all
she has left is an empty and fossilized truth that can only destroy
her in her quest to stifle the Quixotian quests of strangers.

In one of the final poems, “Don’t Let Me Give You a Title” the connection to Eliot’s razor-sharp social-damnations virtually assaults, exempting no one:

You move smoothly easily
 Among these discharged minds
 Their walls of blood and puke

(In the room the women come and go     
 Talking of Michelangelo)

 
Platypus women and weasel men 
dressed not fashionably, nor like rejects
dressed like they can’t clothes themselves at all
match sense with socks.

Separate from society they have no need to rebel.

(In the room the women come and go     
 Talking of Michelangelo)

This is a remarkable book, and for all you rejectees passionately wishing his evisceration herein. Jonathan Penton is an extraordinary poet.

Take note.

--Constance Stadler is the author of Tinted Steam (Shadow Archer) and Sublunary Curse (Erbacce) and the Review Editor for Calliope Nerve. Jonathan Penton is the prolific Editor-In-Chief of Unlikely 2.0. Prosthetic Gods is available from Winged City Chapbooks. Constance Stadler is the author of Tinted Steam (Shadow Archer) and Sublunary Curse (Erbacce) and Paper Cuts is the opening salvo from Calliope Nerve Media.

Warren Ellis announces TIMEFRAMES

From the Warren Ellis website:

TIMEFRAMES: Narrative and Sequence in Comics

Sunday 28th June 2009, 11am - 6pm

D’Arcy Thompson Lecture Theatre Tower Building, University of Dundee

Timeframes, the third annual Dundee comics conference will be held in association with the Dundee Literary Festival on Sunday 28th June 2009. It will explore how the medium of comics bends, distorts and manipulates time, and the representation of the past and future in comics, and how the comics form relies on sequence. The speakers include prominent comics writers Warren Ellis and Alan Grant, artists such as Keith Robson and Emma Vieceli, comics editors Bill McLoughlin and David Bishop, and comics scholars Julia Round, Peter Hughes Jachimiak, and Ian Hague. The conference will also feature a workshop on writing for comics and graphic novels, and the opening of an exclusive exhibition of artwork from DC Thomson’s science fiction comic Starblazer. All are welcome. The conference fee is £10, which includes refreshments.

For more information contact Chris Murray (c.murray@dundee.ac.uk), or consult the Dundee Literary Festival webpage.

Session Four:

Keynote Presentation II

5.40pm Warren Ellis, Title TBC

6.20pm Questions

Edited to add: Em’s schedule:

1.50pm Emma Vieceli, Approaching Sequential Art and Adaptation
2.10pm Questions
2.20pm Break/Opening of Exhibition

As the token soft Southern bastards, we will stick together. We will also have knives.

THE WEIGHT

THE WEIGHT

I watch two dogs play in the sun
they tumble and playfully show teeth
as my heart beats heavy in my ears
and remember-

last night
the horizon rested
upon my rib cage; the sky
a blue hospital gown draped
over my naked body,
the weight of a thousand eyes.
She was a lesser know character in my dream,
“Everything happens for a reason,” she said
as she shoved the knife in my back.

When I finally awoke
it hurt something
like a heart attack.


I count my steps to and from work,
read street signs for secrets.
I smoke cigarettes waiting
I write poems waiting
I make love while I wait.

A beautiful woman smiles at me
and the weight of the world lifts,
for a few minutes.


I watch one of the dogs
lick its balls and fall asleep
in the sun
and I'm jealous
I want to be able to do that
but instead
I was born with
opposable thumbs
and the ability to reason.

If life is a trade off,
maybe in the next one
I'll be able to reach
my asshole with
my tongue.

--Jason "Juice" Hardung's work has been published widely through the American underground. Appearing in The New York Quarterly, Zygote In My Coffee, Underground Voices, decomP, Thrasher, Lummox Journal, Heroin Love Songs, Polarity, Up The Staircase just to name a few. He has a chapbook, Breaking The Hearts Of Robots out on Covert Press, and is completing The Broken and the Damned, a chapbook published by Epic Rites Press. He is co-editor of the Front Range Review and Matter Journal. Writing, for him, is something that soothes the savage beast, or whatever it's called. He is on probation for the next two years and hopes to have a novel done by then. He lives in Ft. Collins Colorado and loves it there, but doesn't like all the Subarus with kayaks strapped to the roofs, the earth tone sweaters, Teva sandals, or white kids in Reggae bands.

Painters' Exhalations 196

Painters’ Exhalations 196

—after Arnoldo Coen’s Olor A Lluvia (Scent of Rain)

A baby’s exhale,
bouquet of tiny
globes, white
without mountains or sea
enveloping pulled roses
residing now within a vase’s
contemporary straight lines.

Outside, a cry contains
many emotions. A wanting,
a suicide. A waltz,
an embrace.

After, deluge, tones of lava
interact with nose’s
proper function.

Like mist in rising
formational homes
housing air and birds’
attempts at creating valuable
journey,

perfume
bounces from the garment
of freshly wet gardens
forming a cityscape of
structure, alive
with a population
containing replaceable
invention, gifts presented
to sensory adoration.

--Felino Soriano (California) is a philosophy student and case manager working with developmentally and physically disabled adults. Felino edits the online experimental poetry journal Counterexample Poetics. 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 195

Painters’ Exhalations 195

—after Edna Hibel’s Red Haired Girl with Flowers

Crown of flame,
a watched and well-managed flame
tamed to accept the human
stroke of a brown, thin-bristled
brush and hands cooling
ash with sculpting understanding.

Her hands, touching,
locked in a prison hold
on dichotomous surroundings
of flowers,
flourishing from her embrace
similar to the soil
once giving birth
to these colors now
resting against the bosom
of a human heart.

--Felino Soriano (California) is a philosophy student and case manager working with developmentally and physically disabled adults. Felino edits the online experimental poetry journal Counterexample Poetics. 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 194

Painters’ Exhalations 194

—after Ryan Hayoun’s Black Couch

Her stillness, a bee unthreatened,
not willed to become a small
needle
dangling
in revenge from an unsuspecting
arm, and die.
She, garbed in silence, a
stained-glass window, dual
bouncing, flight with light’s
many feet tapping on a monarch
butterfly’s auspicious wings.
Sitting center, within a couch’s
caress, embrace, not
dissimilar from the humming bird
outside
vibrating silently near the black
center of a sunflower’s open,
greeting mouth.

--Felino Soriano (California) is a philosophy student and case manager working with developmentally and physically disabled adults. Felino edits the online experimental poetry journal Counterexample Poetics. 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 193

Painters’ Exhalations 193

—after Michael John Hill’s Early Morning Mist

The level L’s
forming
               rectangular
               algebra,
their spines a straight path to formed
function
               of
a door’s monotone, commonplace,
bland frame.
                       The wood,
anorexic, a thin paper etched on with
fingerprints
               of a curious
                               or
uncoordinated child
tripping
               into door’s opaque entrance
in the closed facet of
understanding
               privacy.  The Ls’ wood, now straight,
a pencil straight, used to document its current capacity,
cannot remember
                       their idiosyncratic
bending branches
                       leaning, a tired lean
overlooking the straight path
for a horse’s leisurely stroll.
                                       Quite different
than the now-path of the door’s
frame, experiencing a different brand
of darkness, different than dusk’s hands
pulling aggregated shades where light would rather
hide,
               this new darkness
               created
by the flipping down switch
atop a wall’s
                       protective
skin.

--Felino Soriano (California) is a philosophy student and case manager working with developmentally and physically disabled adults. Felino edits the online experimental poetry journal Counterexample Poetics. 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.

Routine

Routine

My ‘to do’ list is a monster.
A herald of inert inept.
Nothing scratched off,
not even the built-in self-delusions
For there is nothing I do
Besides missing you.

I leave the grocery stores with bags in the cart.
For a week I pass mailbox vaingloriously by
Our collie whimpers and strews
I take back streets to avoid cheery do-gooders.
And diligently wash laundry into blotchy pink hues.

It is sunny today, I really should garden.
But there’s danger in birdsong and tulips afresh
All beauty endangers my litany of empty
Stirring memory of once sanctified flesh..

As savage, I have decried higher power
My mouth cannot take form-shape prayer
Yet I know my soul exists, by the ache of this ravage.
And by shell-shocked form moving
                               lifelessly
                                                                 there…

--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.

Brief Encounter

Brief Encounter

Lycaena cupreus
 
I saw you, once
In a California bleach where not even
Saguaros dared
                  A place for parched dying
The amaurotic white of
                      Merciless noon
Made me remember my lips
As they crackled like pork rind.
 
Battery was gone, or maybe,
I should have filled up
Some fifty miles back.
But then again,
                  I was long past
                 Giving a damn.
And huddling in that torment of a cut
In oven-broiled escarpment, I felt the itch to
Walk until
                  well, nowhere to go…                        
 
But I needed a something to spruce
Some grace to my rot
And this sliver slip of yellow
high as my thumb,
                       four petals at best
              seemed more than preacher enough.
                                           
But, damn, through these sand weazened eyes
Such a
                Whoosh!
Hot orange descended
As original fire,
                 beating wild wings
Of Promethean bright.
 
Suddenly, sound.
The nearness of turnpike
Lone Chevy pickup, feint
Beckoning down.
 
I stood and I stumbled while
You flipped and sashayed
Your copper tipped brilliance
and I swear with
              a tight lazy eight
                       soared laughing
                                      sky high.

--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.

freshly wounded

freshly wounded

I have been waiting
                for the heart to heal.

They promised it would.
... bright gladiola circlets, big, fatted
mummed hearts all
                                                wilting
                in the august dust
even as the spare words that certified
                the leaving of your body
                               were done just so.
small wonder
my father, your youngest,
                                                our baby
had to carry me away
                raging and clawing.

This is not the poem of why
                Mamow
That is between us.
                No, these are the words of was,
a telling
a simple recording.

It is the story of the tin rouge box,
all beat up and rose flecked
the ancient pad I stroke
against my cheek
                                on days like this.

It bears fruit in the faithful tending
of a frail african violet
that in your absence
                                never blooms.

It is an image on silkscreen
full-faced and
                claiming her own,
towering over the breakers
deliberately placed
                to kindle and forget

"...a bushel and a peck ,
a bushel and a peck ,

and a hug around the neck."

It is the carving of  twenty five years
                                and the piece I have not found
and the wound that will not close
and the absolute certainty
                                                they lied.

--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.

The Rites of Spring

The Rites of Spring

 On a day such as this

               When I was five

The park was Eden pure

So alive with dandelion bouquets, and

Cornflower brocade, and the

Songs of slight birds, a

Dawn trembling aubade

Oh, running and tumbling

In the soft, in the sheen of fresh rain

 

I thought not of broken glass shards,

Steamy dog waste, the just ended night

of the weep-scream refrain.

 

I was Persephone free, with no

Thought of the Fall.

 

Now on days such as this, I

Sip hot coffee and smile at quark

Starlings and stark glisten bright.

The dandelions abound

Enfold cornflower blues

Titmouse beckons in sashay of flight

… glass grass surrounds.

 

But I feel no compulsion to stroll

Or to touch.

For the palliative of Beauty

Is no longer embedded

                               As such…

 

Give it back to that child,

‘Neath the tree, in the shadow soft gray

Who stands on cusp of

                     Not knowing the gift of
                                                 A day.

--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.

Marksman

Marksman

Holding sweetness in his heart,
he angles out to kill a stranger
in the name if preservation
of animals and wildlife.

He smokes his pipe with grinning teeth,
popping melodies to himself.

Upon spotting his target,
he pulls the shotgun
in front of his shoulder,
gritting his teeth in anticipation
of fury released into a singular shot
delivered.
His target cooperates and is good,
drops immediately in fulfillment
of expectations,
this surrounding of plenty
showing no need to take from it.

He picked a few berries
before calling the officials
to remove this "accident"
from his sight.

Such little resistance from a creature said to be greater
than an animal.

--Joseph Veronneau runs Scintillating Publications, a chapbook press. His own poems have appeared in Locust, Calliope Nerve, Cerebral Catalyst, Ken*Again and Because We Write.

How can I?

How can I?

Sitting in the living room,
window-watching perfect strangers
pass by, firm in their
own grip, not wonder
what they do?

Passing by them
streetwise,
glancing into draped eyes
half-concealed with hats,
long coats proposing hidden motives.

How can I not see
the 6-inch blade underneath,
plunging effectively beyond organs,
tossing tendons and muscle about.

How can I ignore them,
skating past me with glares
ranging from sly to clever to
sheer madness, the fire in
occasional eyes
that hisses and spits
their cobra vibes at me.

I know those looks
like the back of my own hands,
have suppressed such schemes on dark avenues
knowing the havoc of mind
I've resisted myself
is none too pretty.

--Joseph Veronneau runs Scintillating Publications, a chapbook press. His own poems have appeared in Locust, Calliope Nerve, Cerebral Catalyst, Ken*Again and Because We Write.

Memento mori

Memento mori

Macaw

         Cries

 

Kismet

         Sand sylphic

              Silvered sublime

Tangerine dream

               Shatters

                    Soft

Petal

     Death

             Chimes.

 

 

On this very day

This aureate mound

Neath swollen

Mediterranean frond

               

               We promised,

                  We honored

                     We vowed.

 

 

But as your

              Face softly streams

Between dusk’s delicate beam

                           Lambent 

I breathe taste

Hear fingers

Feel haloed eidolon

                                   now…

 

My tabernacle

My altar

My Capricorn

              Tropic

                     Washed Away

                               In

                        Windsong

                            Delight

 

 

I remember each

                             ember

                            of

                                      glow…

 

  …but you go

And below

Is the slaughtering

Paradisiacal abattoir

Of never

           not

             ever

                not…

                                       

                                              no.

--Constance Stadler is the author of Tinted Steam (Shadow Archer) and Sublunary Curse (Erbacce).

Bi-Polar

Bi-Polar

The hinge in his universe
is self-doubt,
carried like a blanket
even in the warmest conditions.

Exploding into unfathomed space,
he occupies the fear of many
encountered, as if to lay
dynamite in the face of
himself, startled in a microcosm
only to return minutes later
to a nauseating serenity
after the thought.

Racing outward fills the palate
as he turns on himself again,
searching for stability in anger,
assurance in the after-shock.

--Joseph Veronneau runs Scintillating Publications, a chapbook press. His own poems have appeared in Locust, Calliope Nerve, Cerebral Catalyst, Ken*Again and Because We Write.

Quoteable

"Everything is perfect.
Everything is sick.
You can't tell me to stop it.
You can't tell me not to play.
And that's it." --Anthrax