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Strawberry Moon

Strawberry Moon

Clementine peels
the ringlets of the aestival hills

light the Mona Lisa smiles
shyly parted

from the virginal
kindred souls-

I admire,

they are letting go-

splayed-
staked,

in the copper sun rays-

hitting windowpanes,
where other lovers lie and daydream

behind the sand, made molten shaped and moulded,
transparent,
nude.

And beneath the loggia
of my lone suite, hidden behind the terra cotta
potter-

is a cluster of-

spotted white brown
quail eggs-

I guarded,

delicate yolky, fragile life-
fertilized, aglow-

it's down spilling out of the cracks, life.

The delicate tweets, late afternoon hatch-
between the setting strawberry sun

were the cracks;
of shell shrapnel

left me alone,

under onyx air-
met the dead hours passing by-

in the distance could hear
adulterated laughter,

and silent moments purified,
over and over,

3 am

pushed the backs of lovers
against stone walls

tied tongues,
not saying what they
ought,

but it's so hard to tie ends neat
with lover's like you-

they must've sweetly thought-

as they turn to what seems to go on forever-
the needless goodbyes-
and why tries.

I imagine The qualia-
the ruddy lies, and the not knowing-

when to reach
or touch again-

not knowing how to retrieve inner purity given frivolously-
away under cigarette smoke and stagnant sheets

to the one who stays
that you loved less-
and less,

and the sliver's of hope-
entering, planting seedlings again-

where-
until his words
I never knew why
lovers carve bark.

I imagine
the illumination
of that fire core-

splitting seeds-

unpitted-
bitten fearlessness-

searing
branding truth after truth
until that's all that's standing-

opaque and naked
wondering-

when will the next time be, that we meet?

Where under
wildflowers, and in pollen cloud
veils-

our seasoned minds'll-

unfurl-
like the gold dust of dry summering hills-

wide
lit,

with bluebell field's for skies.



Candi V. Auchterlonie is a fresh new young up and coming poet, with her full length debut collection- "Eternal Autumn Within" released November 2009 with Erbacce Press behind her, and her second full length collection due this summer 2010, titled "Creation Sandbox" now complete.

Ted Hughes's Birthday Letter from beyond

Ted Hughes's Birthday Letter from beyond

 
Visit me beneath the dark, colored span of wings,
    the feathered gloom, a  Hunter's Moonlit
    plain reveled into silence;
The blanketed fur of lamp lit rows,
    single edged roads rutted into sleep;
A lien of plastered saints, a crush of dried silk
    flowers, the potpourri of martyred brides;
A glaze of trumpet notes, a suicide of breath,
    the hissing gas of harbored flame;
Inside a tampered flue, a coxswain bellows,
    a flute of ash no lips have sipped;
Wintered stars beneath the chambered rook,
    a chaliced hearth, a false cup of simmered tea;
Below the rivered ice, reticulated mirrors image,
     a startle cry,  a face describes a plaintive arc;
These false trees, these barren leaves.

--Alan Catlin's work has appeared just about everywhere. He clones himself to be prolfic. Alan's work can be found at or in: Abbey, Iodine Poetry Journal, ZYX, Brevities, and Origami Condom amongst others.

The Art of RC Miller

--RC Miller lives in Metuchen, New Jersey and maintains a blog at VISION BLUES. His forthcoming chap GORE will be available this summer via Calliope Nerve Media.

Quoteable

"...wrenched out of the hands of the common reader because of the rise of specialists prepared to devote years to the study of its secret codes — parallax, indeterminacy, consciousness-time being among the buzz words... A book which set out to celebrate the common man and woman endured the sad fate of never being read by most of them.

--Declan Kiberd on James Joyce's Ulysses

Found via The Writer's Almanac.

Differentiated Mortality

Differentiated Mortality

Morning is flushed

With the prize of

Cloud’s womb

As hawk

Wings spread wide

A visceral placebo

Prepares to suppe

                        on

                        death’s

                        bounty



-Serena Tome is a poet and humanitarian who enjoys writing about social justice, and personal heritage. In 2009, she launched an international reading series for African children to connect, learn, and participate in literary activity with students from around the world via video conferencing. She has literary work published and/or forthcoming in The Litchfield Review, Foundling Review, The Legendary, Breadcrumb Scabs, Word Riot, Counterexample Poetics, Full of Crow, Boston Literary Magazine, BlazeVox and other publications. You can find out more about Serena at www.serenatome.blogspot.com.  

Commodities

Commodities

Lavender clouds brush

Against ashen space

Running            Kamikaze

Calm—

Scalped for commerce’s sake

Below

Wet streets

Display images

From open air brothels

Children

Sold

In utero

Cling to the cusp

Of their mother’s

Cervix              like skydivers

Praying

For

                                                            Plight

            The                             

                                    Perfect



-Serena Tome is a poet and humanitarian who enjoys writing about social justice, and personal heritage. In 2009, she launched an international reading series for African children to connect, learn, and participate in literary activity with students from around the world via video conferencing. She has literary work published and/or forthcoming in The Litchfield Review, Foundling Review, The Legendary, Breadcrumb Scabs, Word Riot, Counterexample Poetics, Full of Crow, Boston Literary Magazine, BlazeVox and other publications. You can find out more about Serena at www.serenatome.blogspot.com.  

Christmas in a Time of Wolves

Christmas in a Time of Wolves

after Stan Rice

In the clearing, amid
the copse of dead trees,
gestapo in feral clothing,
hair suits and helmets,
sub machine guns resting
on tree stumps, axe handles
in their hands they use to
batter doors and windows
of the chalet, former occupants
near the fire of personal
possessions clutching remnants
of their clothing to beaten
bodies, rings of fire by their
feet, melting snow.

--Alan Catlin's work has appeared just about everywhere. He clones himself to be prolfic. Alan's work can be found at or in: Abbey, Iodine Poetry Journal, ZYX, Brevities, and Origami Condom amongst others.

Guerilla Penetrated by Projectile Clowns

Guerilla Penetrated by Projectile Clowns

Once the surrealists have rediscovered
war nothing is out of bounds: not
the peasant women holding the wrapped-
in-swaddling starving child amid a court-
yard of severed body parts, not the dis-
placed made homeless by search and
destroy missionaries not the t--white
clouds tainted by seedlings dropped as
frozen pellets to produce acid rain, not
bearded killers for hire wrapped in
bandoliers, bullets for broadcasting
messages or peace and the lighter side
of war; clowns as missiles props for
Punch and Judy battlefield performance
Art, new dead removed by hand puppeteers,
three burial rings making a circuit where
the circus tents should be.

--Alan Catlin's work has appeared just about everywhere. This editor suspects he has an army of clones producing work. Alan's work can be found at or in: Abbey, Iodine Poetry Journal, ZYX, Brevities, and Origami Condom amongst others.

The Art of RC Miller

--RC Miller lives in Metuchen, New Jersey and maintains a blog at VISION BLUES. His forthcoming chap GORE will be available this summer via Calliope Nerve Media.

Van Gogh Cup with Walking Skull

Van Gogh Cup with Walking Skull

after Stan Rice

on the out of proportion table,
this work place amid the left-
overs: dinner plates stained by
smeared yolks of eggs, rinds
of bread, stale crusts and a
Museum of Art coffee cup;
Vincent, that blue scene in Paris,
cafe tables and fire lighted stars,
a spilled bottle of India ink on
the yellow cloth, not the Escher
spill unleashing a phalanx of
mobius strips, of dream creatures,
lizards and snails, optically elusive
but of another craftsman, mad maker
of demon figures like a Village
of he damned by a Hieronymous
Bosch, deformed-by-sin peasants
set free from a stomach of a mythical
ox like grotesque human ants to scurry
about the ruined doilies, soiled napkins,
matching condiment shakers, souvenirs
from a furtive War of the Roses,
their false bottoms containing secrets
of miniature worlds so easily lost in
the general confusion of warring elements,
uneasy minds, the undeniable presence
of the small, walking skull, its unhinged
jaw dropping small black pellets
like stones, like birdshot on the table
as it walks.

--Alan Catlin's work has appeared just about everywhere. He clones himself to be prolfic. Alan's work can be found at or in: Abbey, Iodine Poetry Journal, ZYX, Brevities, and Origami Condom amongst others.

John Cage's Full Body MRI Symphonic Rag

John Cage's Full Body MRI Symphonic Rag

 
"Isn't there something by definition obscene
about guided tours of hell-except, of course,
if you're Dante." --Francine Prose
 
Inside this tube  this coffin
   inside the music of magnets coming
together    aleatory music   three minutes  and
fifty eight seconds long and counting down
    pensive purposeful hammering   like strata
shifting  continental drifts   like giant
electric whales in a neon element   like
    the composer in him struggling to describe
a way out   something else    Alive
 
In the intervals between procedures
        in the compounded stillness   these nearly
hallucinatory gaps  inside the clean well
lighted sensory depravation tank   place
This  new age conceptual pod for getting
in touch with your fractured self
 
Lying in state a new sound is conceived
    what is missing in these syncopated magnetic
rags  is the linking of discordant elements
with musical notes  even with mental
woodwinds and strings added   even with
quarter toned and half noted scores
the solo voice remains inside   what is
coming out is    primal screaming
    a claustrophobic letting go
a whine like this impossible to ignore
    a music of disintegrating spheres   planets
spinning out of orbit   universal heat death
in the afternoon

--Alan Catlin's work has appeared just about everywhere. This editor suspects he has an army of clones writing so he can sleep. Alan's work can be found at or in: Abbey, Iodine Poetry Journal, ZYX, Brevities, and Origami Condom amongst others.

The Art of RC Miller

--RC Miller lives in Metuchen, New Jersey and maintains a blog at VISION BLUES. His forthcoming chap GORE will be available this summer via Calliope Nerve Media.

Calliope Nerve Interview Series: Felino Soriano

Felino, tell us about your new chap Artist in Residence. Why is it important? How does it differ and how is it alike in comparison to some of your other works?

Thank you, Nobius. Topographically, Artist in Residence is a poetic interpretation|acknowledgment of Jason Moran’s 2006 album of the same name. Its construct is a delving into examining multiple angles of how this album affects, and has involved me over the past circa four years. Finishing at just over 15 pages, the ten-suite poem is the longest I have completed, and also the poem I have spent the most time creating. I spent about four hours writing, and listened to each of the ten recordings several times.

I cannot proclaim its importance, as I do not view my writing within the spectrum of significance.

The comparisons are multilayered with my other work, being that at its base, metaphysical arrangement is core in its responsibility of spoken definition. An arduous awareness is comprehended, in that feeling the focal delineations within the recording must be examined upon juxtaposition of individual and whole, as unified per the agreement of Moran’s isolated genius. He is indeed a pianistic genius; he overcomes the quotidian labels of “jazz artist”, “pianist” “professional musician”; his improvised and predetermined techniques are bodies of musical belief, asking for the listener to respond and imagine, ponder and examine.

Dating back to 1/9/09 I have been involved in, nearly solely, the interpretation of others’ artistic beauty, which has served for inspiration for various poems. 2009 created my Painters’ Exhalations series, which was an ekphrastic delving into proclaiming my love for paintings. In 2010, I have continued with attempting to understand others’ artistic realities, in writing my Approbations poems, consisting of poetic praise for my preferred genre of musical sentience.

This book differs from my other works in the aspect of elongation. Typically, I write short poems, under one page in length, taking say, five to 15 minutes to complete. As stated earlier, this poem is much longer than my typical aspirations to create accretive evaluations.

Do you consider yourself prolific? How often do you write?

Prolificacy is the determination of several options, including understanding one’s organized effort, proclivity of engagement, and innate comprehension of necessity to create multifarious layers of one’s artistic endeavor(s) of choice.

My answering this question is insignificant, as I write daily, a minimum of three poems; this self-labeling of insignificance is existent because the act of writing a poem is naturalized, rather than a rugged battle consisting of dialogue with struggle and manifested absence. My writing daily has been part of my routine since 7/1/09. In search for the rarified function of elation (which poetry wholly creates) I strive to become insistent on fathoming newness, the newness of uncovering a poem from the presence of absent pre-known manipulation; no other intellectual or artistic interest carries this brand of intense beauty within my current form of existence.

Why do you create?

To form an occurrence of reciprocating understanding, regardless of depth; when I receive a note from someone that has read one of my poems, I become excited for the opportunity of a dialogical paradigm, as it relates to philosophical investigation of poetic discernment.

Believe in writer's block?

No; I have not understood this descriptive term of deprivation; the comprehensive answer I can conjure comes not from myself, but from Rainer Maria Rilke: “If your everyday life seems poor, don't blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is no poverty and no indifferent place.”

How do you approach a write?

2010 has brought forth an understanding merit of interpretative examinations. Here, metaphysically, I have become awakened even more so to my love of jazz music, as I have, outside a collaborative piece with Kane X. Faucher – dedicated all of this year to writing after various jazz recordings. The poem’s consistency is never predetermined, nor related to preconceived directives from wanting a certain style of aggregated purpose to be revealed. The sacred procedure is the unfolding spectrum of uncovering the unseen; the poet’s responsibility is to locate the visually dispersed, and augur an existence of relevant acceptance.

How will the explosion of e-books and other tech (I-Pad, Google books, Smashwords, etc) effect both the future of reading and readers themselves? What about authors and publishers?

Function of ease and widespread availability are aspects of these technological furtherances. They also appeal to variants of learning styles. As a bibliophile, I am intrigued by the relative ease that is evident in using, say, an ebook reader; although, I have many, many books, my ebook reader affords the ability to have access to hundreds of books via portability’s allure.

Many, at one time of what would have been called staples in society’s everyday uses, e.g. movies, books, —are leaning towards dispositions of antiquation. Many publishers, especially within the small press, offer free, electronic publication in lieu of the hardcopy version associated with monetary fulfillment. I feel this will continue, ad infinitum.

Why is the small press important?

Collaboration breeds the small press’ various opportunities. As an active participant in the small press’ process of necessary understanding, from both vantages of poet/editor, there is often a familial sensation experienced. The importance lies within promoting authentic artistry.

Do you feel the small press and large corporate conglomerates like Random House, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble's can co-exist or are we at odds?

Coexistence is already evident. Amazon for example, carries books by both poet laureates, and the poet of extraordinary talent, whose name is not associated with publications of inherent mainstreamism. With the abundance of poets in existence, and the longevity in which both large and small press entities have as realistic goals, the coexistence will continue to reside as topic of debate over the legitimacy of both brands of poetic output.

Tell us about some of your other books?

Since January, 2008, I’ve had 28 collections accepted for publication. During the next year, I have seven of those forthcoming from some wonderful presses, including Wheelhouse Press, NeoPoiesis Press, Bedouin Books, Virgogray Press, Diamond Point Press, Silkworms Ink, and Desperanto. Each of these collections includes poems from my larger series “Painters’ Exhalations” and “Approbations”.

Are you a full time writer? If not, what is your day job?

I am honored to work as a case manager and advocate for developmentally and physically disabled adults. The human services field has proved to be a critical blessing to my dispositional passions of supporting others in various aspects of their lives.

I write every night, but no, not fulltime.

What's the worst job you've ever had?

I’ve held several jobs, ranging from assembling custom computers, to filing for a law office. Retail, however, has proved to be the most challenging for me, as various aspects of this type of environment is conducive to controlled and uncontrolled chaos.

What's on your recommended reading list?

I’ll answer this question with a list of some favorite poets:

Duane Locke, Constance Stadler, Matina Stamatakis, Kane X. Faucher, Gillian Prew, David Wolach, Serena Tome, Pablo Neruda, Octavio Paz. This is a truncated list of genius.

Philosophers whose inspiration transcend that of philosophical vernacular, and have lead my thinking of metaphysical examination:

Nietzsche, Hegel, Camus, Adorno, Heidegger. More exist, but again, a truncated list.

How did you get into jazz? Do you play? Are there other types of music you enjoy while you write?

Circa 2000, I had a conversation with a then coworker whose musical spectrum was extremely vast. He, at the time, possessed over 3,000 cd’s of various musical genres. I cannot recall how, or why, but we began talking about jazz, and I asked if he had any recommendations. The first albums he recommended were Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue and John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme. Later that week, I purchased both recordings, and they remain my two favorite jazz recordings in my collection.

I do not posses the ability to play a musical instrument. In my seventh grade music class, I learned to play Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star on the xylophone, and was content. My mother purchased me a beautiful trumpet for a birthday gift several years ago, but I’ve never attempted to take lessons; perhaps I will, eventually.

I’ve attempted to listen to classical music when writing; it created a disparate affect on my writing, but not the entrancing facet that jazz music provides.

Your vocabulary skills are top notch-bar none. How'd you acquire such a mastery of language?

Language uncovers and dissolves perfunctory, relegated truths; an imperative responsibility of the poet is to provide observations sans the valueless construction of clichés. I study language’s various functions to posit my immanent and isolated vantage of environment, whatever spectrum of this noun that is present when writing a poem.

You are also an accomplished editor. Share some of your experiences.

I am currently a contributing editor for the journal Sugar Mule, and consulting editor for Post: A Journal of Thought and Feeling, which is an honor for me. Individually, I edit and publish Counterexample Poetics, an online journal of experimental artistry, and Differentia Press, which is dedicated to publishing electronic chapbooks of experimental poetry.

I’ve had opportunity and pleasure of publishing some of the finest poets in existence: Duane Locke, Constance Stadler, William Crawford, Matina Stamatakis, Kane X. Faucher, David Wolach, and others. This is a specialized cultivation of relational aspects that I feel the small press offers. The authenticity I search for in publishing poets has created in me a particularized searching for specific writings, that of complete genuineness.

What advice do you have for other writers (new or seasoned)?

Become acclimated with your environment on a level of philosophical exploration; challenge truths that are supposed and advantageous to only the few through their ideological connection. Learn to become a fundamental advocate for language outside the use of cliché, and understand the sacred aspects of poetry, e.g. interpretation, uncovering the unseen, finding beauty in the predetermined, predefined assumptions of what has become outcast from the vernacular of inclusion.

Do you prefer writing or editing? Why?

Editing is enjoyable, as I am able to interact with artistry of various interpretations.

Writing, however, is the sacred aspect of my life of which I have a passion for etching its existence into my daily structural practice.

What does the future hold for Felino A. Soriano?

Artistically, I plan on continuing with my “Approbations” series for the duration of 2010. I also plan on continuing my collaborative work with Kane X. Faucher.

Counterexample Poetics and Differentia Press are fundamental to my happiness, therefore, both will continue to seek and showcase authenticity in artistry.

Calliope Nerve Interview Series: Astor Gravelle

Astor, thanks for your time. Tell us about being a publisher. What did you learn (both good and bad) from running Landswaster Media?

I loved being a publisher in that we controlled the content, the distribution, and the website. I don't like being subject to the arbitrary rules of bigger publishers, particularly when they go bankrupt and sell your book without your permission to another publisher, which is what happened to me. Screw that, I don't like other publishers to control my books. Good experiences: the people. I loved the people we published with, the conventions we did. Those were tons of fun and, of course, getting paid for what we published. I loved those times. We met lots of people who we are friends with today, such as Don Fields, Jason Marcy, Joe Meyer and lots of others. Meeting other professionals was fun.

The unfun things? The crash of the distributors in 1995. Before 1995, it was wide open with 13 different distributors to go through. After 1995, there was just one: Diamond Distributors. They are greedy bloodsuckers and I won't have a thing to do with them. Later on, it was BookSurge. At first, they were great. They dealt with independent publishers, pushed titles. They got bought by Amazon. That ended a great relationship. Lulu as well started okay. But not so much now. They keep raising their prices.

What is the legacy of Landwaster?

Legacy of Landwaster: Queer Empire has evolved out of this, as a webstrip from the graphic novel. The Adventures of Psychotix. Psychotix still lives on in the Queer Empire webstrip. Queer Empire is more of an all-encompassing strip that stars an ensemble of Roman and Celtic characters in the time of Emperor Tiberius. There are still more webstrips in the works. Queer Empire has it's own site: http://queerempire.com/.

With the closure of Landwaster are you still in the publishing business?

Yes, strictly e-books and webstrips. Publishing on paper is getting too expensive. Plus, with the advent of the I Pad, it's all going to e-books. you should see how many books in my library I happily turfed because I can find so much I need in e-book and PDF format.

How do you feel the I-Pad and the advent of the e-reader will effect the future of books and publishing?

I welcome the I Pad and e-reader. At my stage in life, I want to pare down, not continue to acquire. I'm worried about over consumption and the environment too. I think the I Pad is going to make everybody rethink what it means to own stuff. I know its opened my eyes.

As a publisher and creator, how do you market your work? What's worked for you and what hasn't?

What has worked is word of mouth and doing our marketing strictly on line. What hasn't worked, especially in the 21st century is conventions and distributors. Distributors are redundant middle men who are also gatekeepers. Conventions are simply too expensive to do anymore. Nobody should go to a convention and not expect to lose money. They are fun, but not part of a good business model.

You have illustrated, been an author, photographer, edited and done cartooning. Tell use about some of these projects?

I started out with Yendie Wildcritter in 1990. Wow 20 years ago. She still rattles around on my blog but is still a backburner project. Then I did Roger Fnord, a goofy skateboarding time traveler. My favorite one of that series was Roger and the Magic Lamp, which parodied Disney's Aladdin.

My foray into the big time was being published by Carol Publishing Group. That was Underground Office Humor. You know those funny office cartoons that float around. I collected a bunch of those and some funny work stories and that was the essence of Underground Office Humor. Carol Publishing went bankrupt and my book ended up with another publisher. In the contract I was supposed to get the book back. This is why I stay away from big publishers now. Then I began to collaborate with Kerry Griswold to ink Queer Empire, which is what I'm working on now.

Ron has his own projects. He's training himself to be a 3-D artist. 3-D is where it's going.

What or who influences you creatively?

Aubrey Beardsley, Wally Wood, Jack Davis. The Usual Gang of Idiots who wrote and illustrated Mad Magazine in the 60's and 70's, the Zenith of that magazine.

What's on your recommended reading list?

Linchpin by Seth Godin. It's a great book to inspire creativity. Actually, Purple Cow and Tribes, both by Seth Godin are great books for creative people to read. He's my business guru.

Are you prolific?

I'm prolific in spurts. I'm going through another prolific burst. In between operations and procedures, that is!!

Listen to music while you create? Who?

I couldn't create without music. I listen to a lot of Reggae such as Jimmy Cliff, Bob Marley, Sean Paul. I listen to a lot of Satellite Radio: 80's New Wave: DEvo, Dead Milkmen, They Might Be Giants, and a lot of dance, hip hop, funk, such as Ludacris, Immortal Technique, George Clinton, Beastie Boys, Timbaland. I couldn't not mention my favorite band of all time, though: ELO!!! ITunes is my best friend.

Have you received any accolades for your work or your publishing? Do accolades matter to you?

I've received accolades from my readers. Those are the only accolades that matter, really. I've never been influenced to read a book based on whatever award it got. I read them based on if I'm interested in the subject or if I pick it up and like it.

Are you an underground artist?

I certainly started out as one with some of my really risqué titles such as Teen Mutant Sex Scrap Book, starring Yendie Wildcritter in compromising positions, selling zines through Factsheet Five. Mike Gunderloy once described TMSS as a Tijuana Bible for the 90s. I still do some underground stuff, so I guess I am.

Who is your ideal reader?

My ideal reader is a renegade misfit who hated high school and wouldn't go back to a reunion unless to firebomb the fuckers. Oh, and who is smarter than most of the chowder heads he or she works with. Having an ample bit of cynicism and agnosticism helps.

Define success.

Success: Doing what you love to do and making money at it. NOT having to work a gerbil job. Having just enough to be worry free. How much stuff do you actually need? Is bling that important at the end of the day or is living the life you want to live more important? I'd say living the life you want more important. BEING DEBT FREE!! That's success these days. Watching those Dollars4Gold commercials an eye opener on how important acquiring bling is. Really. To be able to sell it at 10¢ on the dollar? Wow, doesn't consumerism get you far in life?

You emigrated from The United States to Canada. Why? How are the two nations different and similar?

I'll never move back to the U.S. Yes, I miss all my friends and family who still live there. I really miss Maryland. The beautiful mountains, the old history of Frederick. My dear friends, ALL my friends, nationwide. I want to visit more when my autistic daughter Alex gets older and more comfortable to travel. I want to do a Stateside tour and visit everybody, including you and your family, I have lots of friends in Ohio and Indiana. Indiana is where I'm originally from.

But I don't miss the horrid interest rates on the credit cards, the thieving banks, the pillaging-looting health insurance system, the skyrocketing property taxes, and the general lunacy of the Glenn Beck-Rush Limbaugh crowd. I just had a septoplasty where my deviated septum on my left nostril was fixed. It was 100% free. I like the free health care. Alex has benefited too, getting her own Educational Assistant and free occupational therapist. Alex is guaranteed a pension when she turns 18. I may get a disability pension because of my arthritis, if it comes to that. But there are more options here. Plenty of grants for artists to get if they do Canadian content. It's damn cold up here, sure, but they payoffs are plenty.

It's Just Summer Coming Again

it’s just summer coming again

the old bitch on the front stoop

playing her hate talk radio

into the humid air and sun

the neighbors talking on and on

about neighborhood gossip and the weather

their ugly dogs barking

into the infinite ugliness of the city

the basketball boys

rapping and laughing

telling basketball stories

about all of the pussy they’re getting

on a thursday night

while i sit in this room

hungry and alone

sick from work

nursing a bad stomach

stress and stale wine

sucking on a diet beer

to pass the time

it’s just summer coming again

like the shits or a bad flu

i tell myself

it’s just summer coming again

the way summers always come

it’s nothing

it’ll be over by september

that’s when the autumn rolls in

like hitler invading poland

with a smile on his face


John Grochalski lives in Brooklyn, New York.

 

Such Trivial Delights

such trivial delights

i watch the young ones

dangle on street corners

girls with tight asses

and black souls

that’ll cause damage

to dumb boys and old men

then i close

the wooden shade

forgetting the world

i pop a blood blister on my toe

the red juice squirting where it will

i can’t think

of what else to do

being home sick from work

so i jack-off to starlets

captured on internet

video freeze frames

nude scenes taken from movies

i’ll never see

because the good parts

just landed on the floor

with a dull splat

and movies are too expensive

these days

for such trivial delights


John Grochalski lives in Brooklyn, New York.

The Art of RC Miller

--RC Miller lives in Metuchen, New Jersey and maintains a blog at VISION BLUES. His forthcoming chap GORE will be available this summer via Calliope Nerve Media.

#4

#4

the slashed teeth of venom, echo into a vault of sky
a blinded fissure, seeps with tearing sharp screams

the dredged night pares down the flesh, to the bare wick
darkness brittle and charred, its wrecked raw embers hissing

the pulse of the cataract skull bleeds to the core of all being
clouds of maggots, writhe through the stiff spinal cortex

the charred breath of grief evaporates like viscid steam
simmers in night air a tar black, leaving a soldered silence

as churlishly the winds gather leaves, scattered by the metallic trees
their chilled arms sweeping, gashed and torn with chromatic torture

bones vibrate the silent logic of agues, as the cracked moon weeps black
blood over fallen stars - nocturnal violence of a bitter universe

I take the taste of the blade from my lips in the air the frozen mists of feel
bitter nerves shoot and burn, from the lacerations of my murderous mouth

I draw the crimson from the teeth of my final venom, unto final darkness
to drift spent into the creeping light of a flaming dawn of looming shadow

--Kevin Reid lives and works as a librarian in Angus, Scotland. He has lived in a various polemic communities in the North East of Scotland. He also lived naked in a tipi community in the Spanish mountains. When not buying or reading books he writes, paints and enjoys the creative magnificence of digital technology. His work has appeared in The Plebian Rag, Eviscerator Heaven, heavy bear, heroin love songs, Carcinogenic Poetry, The Recusant and eleutheria. At present he is working on a collection for his first chapbook.

--Michael McAloran was Belfast born, (1976). His most recent poetic works have appeared/ are forthcoming at Carcinogenic Poetry, Why Vandalism?, 1000th Monkey, Fashion For Collapse, Danse Macabre, Fragile Arts Quarterly, Gloom Cupboard, and Pratishedhak, Graffiti Kolkotta, (India). His art-work has appeared at Calliope Nerve, Bergamot, Fragile Arts Quarterly, Arterialize, and has been used as book covers for several projects at Calliope Nerve Media. He is the author of five short collections of poetry: 'In The Black Cadaver Light', (Poetry Monthly Press), 'The Rapacious Night', (Calliope Nerve Media), 'The Gathered Bones', (Calliope Nerve Media), 'The Redundant Pulse', (Back Pack Press), and 'The Death-Streaked Air', (Virgogray Press-forthcoming). Other pursuits include cigarettes and alcohol...

Quoteable

"...The abstract expressionist idea that the work is a sort of record of its own coming-into-existence ...When I was fresh out of college, abstract expressionism was the most exciting thing in the arts poetry seemed quite conventional in comparison. I guess it still is, in a way. One can accept a Picasso woman with two noses, but an equivalent attempt in poetry baffles the audience." --John Ashberry

I'm Going To Fuck You In A Paris Alleyway

i’m going to fuck you in a paris alleyway

she gets her period today

just over a month before we’re leaving for paris

i tell her let’s count the days

and see when the next one is coming

we flip the calendar and count away to march

shouting out the numbers

like a new year’s eve countdown

she says the next one will come

around the 26^th of the month

we should be fine for paris, she says

i look at her and nod

i pour us more wine while she tends

to the chicken frying in the skillet

i’m going to fuck you in paris, i tell her

you’re going to get fucked real good in paris, i say

she smiles and flips the chicken

i’m going to fuck you in a paris alleyway

up against a wall just like henry fucked june

we’ll scare away all of those french alley cats

we’ll wipe away a thousand years of literary tradition

what do you think about that?

she puts down the tongs and comes over to kiss me

then she gives me some of her wine

because i drank the last of the bottle,

making my grand statements

she goes over to check the chicken again

her face flushed, while i sit down in a chair

goddamned don juan after all of these years 



John Grochalski lives in Brooklyn, New York.                           

#3

#3

black anticipation cracks with the colossal contract of mountainous murders
(the shiv as lover, its vital kiss clefts the reeking flesh of fear)
blood blunt with sliced skin still she shone like a thousand full moons
(the grace of my silken hand, stripped bare the meat and bones of her truths)

the sky hangs with ravenous ravens their callous call my unkind desires
(the shadow of the gallows is the laughter in the violence of my gathering flame)
invisible darkness in my intent licks the ignorant with the sure silence of death
(I breathe violence into their soft designs a taste of cold steel dressed as charity)

seething experience creeps with silence for the strike of another sharp slaughter
(my teeth drip glistening with anticipation the spectral winds tightening my veins)
my razor sharp heart, its soaring swipes, sate with adrenalin and deadly affirmations
(I was born for this, to streak the night with the gilded colours of the final dawn)

his summoned shadow sways as a keen gleam of sunlit slices the pissed long alleyway
(in the depths of my skull the soldering bile birthed like a symphony of black flies)
footsteps, innocent and guilty, saturate the prelude to my stark craving heaven
(I strip the night with the echoing music of my compendium of pared ashen white bones)

my stride begins to burn as he stops for the ominous onset of his last cigarette
(mine eyes roll back in a silver solace, burnt offering of fleshy trophies offered unto...)
ceremonious voices, vitriol and violent, exalt my savage skull with death thirst urges
(to strike is to dreamscape as god unto man the shiv burning black through supple air)

grave parlance follows hand in hand with frenzy, the battle of resistance brutal but weak
( the bones snapping echoing into sky the shrill screams raped from the virginal night)
the utter ugliness of stolen life gurgling like the boiling puss of cauterization
(I breath the carrion of the fading breath the ambrosia of the living breathing deities)

--Michael McAloran was Belfast born, (1976). His most recent poetic works have appeared/ are forthcoming at Carcinogenic Poetry, Why Vandalism?, 1000th Monkey, Fashion For Collapse, Danse Macabre, Fragile Arts Quarterly, Gloom Cupboard, and Pratishedhak, Graffiti Kolkotta, (India). His art-work has appeared at Calliope Nerve, Bergamot, Fragile Arts Quarterly, Arterialize, and has been used as book covers for several projects at Calliope Nerve Media. He is the author of five short collections of poetry: 'In The Black Cadaver Light', (Poetry Monthly Press), 'The Rapacious Night', (Calliope Nerve Media), 'The Gathered Bones', (Calliope Nerve Media), 'The Redundant Pulse', (Back Pack Press), and 'The Death-Streaked Air', (Virgogray Press-forthcoming). Other pursuits include cigarettes and alcohol.

--Kevin Reid lives and works as a librarian in Angus, Scotland. He has lived in a various polemic communities in the North East of Scotland. He also lived naked in a tipi community in the Spanish mountains. When not buying or reading books he writes, paints and enjoys the creative magnificence of digital technology. His work has appeared in The Plebian Rag, Eviscerator Heaven, heavy bear, heroin love songs, Carcinogenic Poetry, The Recusant and eleutheria. At present he is working on a collection for his first chapbook

Quoteable

"How can a mortal heart be so cold?... Why can't you stop hating?" --The Devil to The Saint of Killers (Garth Ennis)

#2

#2

eyes smeared out the teeth illumined vibrating in the echoing darkness
blue tears from bold cries run blind from frozen black anguish

birthed wind carries a blood stricken shroud with violent impotency
broken passions in a torn black cloak of night rips threadbare exposure

dense heart of viscid light the searing flesh in a transparent tomb of tears
lucid skin leers with a stark sense from a carriage of writhing corpses

the burnt atrophic moon skins the nude earth to the bare bones
its eruptive hot core ejaculating molten dreams of flailed evolution

bare teeth spit a defiant grin from the depths of a listless abnegation
stumped rotten they drip acrid spit laced in blood and snarl with lush indulgence

at the blades edge the lick of the steel the cauterized wounds denuded
raw and ripped it gleams with the cruel glare of cranked white noise

exigent flesh jaggers in a fragrant ague scorched by air pregnant with deft whispers
its absent sleek silence parched with odour aborted from fucked bloody soil

skinned animals of endless night bare their screams to the loveless skyline
their howls and hopes grate as they fuck and fail their spattering bloody flesh ablaze

to suck down opiate smoke in the omission of malignant light as the wick slashed out
wiped nebulous memories from sick grey slates leave stricken saviours bastardized

pared flesh wiped clear in the urgency of a vacant death as the trace of the wind
gorges upon this translucent existence like the laughter of a cold vendor

its cold bite raking up the airs of distant foreign music...sharp silence

--Kevin Reid lives and works as a librarian in Angus, Scotland. He has lived in a various polemic communities in the North East of Scotland. He also lived naked in a tipi community in the Spanish mountains. When not buying or reading books he writes, paints and enjoys the creative magnificence of digital technology. His work has appeared in The Plebian Rag, Eviscerator Heaven, heavy bear, heroin love songs, Carcinogenic Poetry, The Recusant and eleutheria. At present he is working on a collection for his first chapbook.

--Michael McAloran was Belfast born, (1976). His most recent poetic works have appeared/ are forthcoming at Carcinogenic Poetry, Why Vandalism?, 1000th Monkey, Fashion For Collapse, Danse Macabre, Fragile Arts Quarterly, Gloom Cupboard, and Pratishedhak, Graffiti Kolkotta, (India). His art-work has appeared at Calliope Nerve, Bergamot, Fragile Arts Quarterly, Arterialize, and has been used as book covers for several projects at Calliope Nerve Media. He is the author of five short collections of poetry: 'In The Black Cadaver Light', (Poetry Monthly Press), 'The Rapacious Night', (Calliope Nerve Media), 'The Gathered Bones', (Calliope Nerve Media), 'The Redundant Pulse', (Back Pack Press), and 'The Death-Streaked Air', (Virgogray Press-forthcoming). Other pursuits include cigarettes and alcohol...

The Art of RC Miller

--RC Miller lives in Metuchen, New Jersey and maintains a blog at VISION BLUES. His forthcoming chap GORE will be available this summer via Calliope Nerve Media.

Quoteable

"It would be a pretty piece of irony if future scholars find books published decades ago, in which the scholarly apparatus was an integral part of the book, more useful than today's hybrids...." --L.D. Mitchell

Calliope Nerve Interview Series: Peter Magliocco

Peter, why do they call you the Mag Man? What is ART:MAG? Why is it important?

In 1984 I basically decreed myself the Mag Man. At present there are many who also call themselves such, but probably time-wise I’m one of the originals, at least in the small press. As for ART:MAG, it was conceived to be an independent underground publication utilizing original artwork inserts and my calligraphically handwritten poems from contributors – each ostensibly complementing the other in some artistic way – but the process, after several beginning issues in the mid-80s, proved too arduous to continue along with other reasons (one being that this conceptual-format was mostly unpopular probably with the prevailing small press Weltanschauung of visual art being secondary to the literary), so the Original Series issues gave way to those of the Reproseries I continue doing on my copier, musing still about the pioneer publishers of Mimeograph, letterpress, desk top, to the present cyberworld online. ART:MAG is not so important but it had the potential to be something relevant, to offer another perspective on what’s considered important for alternative publishing. What’s really important is the collective thrust all ‘zines have on our consciousness as a whole, not a fractiously differentiated bunch competing with each other in negative ways. So whatever ART:MAG was, today it’s been altered and downsized to being the house organ for a select few, still a Xeroxed thing of up to 100 pages featuring poetry, art, color covers, reviews, fiction & whatnot. Truly a helter-skelter publication sustained by a handful of visionary patrons, I might add, with no more extant subscribers. Thus it remains true to its samizdat roots once extolled by Merritt Clifton, to d.a. levy’s blown-out brains on god’s mental canvas, to those who walk the lonely creative roads of a still controversial creativeness downplayed by practitioners of the great small press norm… Actually ART:MAG started as a bad joke, then I got damn pretentious.

Tell us about your new chap Imparadised.

It’s just a black giant termite crawling up a wooden statue of Jesus H. Christ in a sham cathedral of print, with all the visual film images Bergman used to interrupt the narrative flow of his classic 1966 film Persona – i.e., spiders and dripping faucets, little boys and silent film actors scurrying around like goofballs. A train wreck at midnite with a batch of some evocative poems, in other words.

You are a writer, editor, and artist. We’d like to know a little about each.

When sober I write, I edit, I make art, and I’m inclined to see it all as an ongoing interactive process, one element spurring on the other until there’s a positive equilibrium of creativity.

How did you become a writer, etc.?

In Junior High School my home room teacher was a muscled gym coach who coerced me into writing things down on paper for his belly laffs, things I couldn’t easily tell others verbally. So began the scrivener’s suffering. “Me-knows-no-English,” I said, to little effect.

Do you prefer editing or writing?

They are equally difficult, hence no preference. If you re-write as a writer in effect you’re editing your own work to an extent. When you re-write the work of someone else you’re in essence an editor, not a writer who’s re-writing. You begin to integrate both processes in order to become more fully adept at both, sometimes without being conscious of it.

Who is your ideal reader?

Any person who can legitimately read. Sometimes I suspect small press readers are semi-literate, either under-or-overeducated, but the ideal one should be non-judgmental at the start, unafraid of poetry that aspires to be hazardous to bad mental health. The ideal reader would be me becoming you, one who interactively disappears into what’s being read, until any divisive boundaries fall away in the literary suspension of belief. That reader could only be Oprah Winfrey in drag.

Why do you create?

To understand myself more fully as well as others, to explore mysteries of the collective unconscious mind and free up some clues into our human and aboriginal natures. To make art is akin to worshipping some great “taboo” harking back to the primeval sun of creativity, whether via caves or computers, where there’s a darkness at the break of dawn Dylan once sang about…

Listen to music while you create? Who?

I’d rather listen to silence.

With the onslaught of new technology (Lulu, Smashworks, ebooks, I-Pad, etc.) what is the future of reading and readers? Authors and publishers?

The future is conspicuously bright. The new technologies offer greater access to publishing and the written word hitherto undreamed of (except possibly by Leonardo, who got everything else prophetically right). I’m even about to pre-order my Kobo ereader. There’s no turning back, Nobius … Less trees will die. Authors, publishers and readers will have abundant alternatives, more choices, more good & bad everything. We’re ensconced in a bold nu-evermore of digital morphing … to whatever end or beginning.

Are you an underground artist?

Anyone who writes literature and does art subversive to accepted ideas of life and art can be considered an underground artist – but living up to it takes some doing, dedication, commitment and all the rest. Really how many names authentically warrant that distinction in the small press ethers?

Do you write, etc. full time? If not, what is your “day job?”

I do not write full time, being basically a rogue dilettante. I’m a security guard to pay the rent. I’ve written many poems (& bad drafts) along with fiction while actually on the job, during the long midnight hours. I’ve written parts of my novels while in my car at construction sites, for instance, while other guards eat, sleep, smoke, have sex, etc. Not to imply writing morally surpasses these other activities in a world geared to the lowest common denominator of existence.

What’s the worst job you’ve ever had?

That would be KP in the U.S. army at Ford Ord, 1967. One day for hours I was overwhelmed with scraping fried chicken remnants stuck to an endless series of pots & pans that never stopped flowing my way.

Can a small press icon like yourself co-exist with the corporate giants like Amazon, Google Books, and Random House or do you feel you are at odds with them?

Only as part of the conglomerate small press factions united in putting out the best alternative productions possible. We can co-exist positively in that respect while maintaining a cleverly subversive strategy that doesn’t keep us beholden to the almighty dollar as the yardstick for measuring art’s real worth. The small press is still the future of progressive publishing in whatever form, if only in terms of aesthetic profit and evolutionary possibility, until the great divide is lessened between us. So what is the strategy for undertaking this? To offer something better at a more affordable price readers will respond to, perhaps. What’s vis-à-vis between business and art is the real foundation for co-existence, and we have to define new ongoing standards for each that are amenable for their advancement while becoming more effectively pragmatic in the small press grindhouse …

What or what inspires your art?

I’m inspired by a multitude of influences, see my interview at Books-and-Authors.net where I’ve actually listed many, true trivia fan that I am. Some major ones are Faulkner, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Salinger, Flannery O’Connor, Bukowski, Didion, Mailer, Kerouac, Camus, Sartre, Twain, many French poets like Rimbaud and Baudelaire, James Purdy, Tennessee Williams, Sontag, Duchamp (a great philosopher artist), Man Ray, Jasper Johns, Picasso, Beckett, Saramago, Leonardo, Warhol, Michelangelo, Terry Southern, Henry Miller, Vonnegut, Poe, Rod Serling and Ray Bradbury, et al …

Great writing inspires my artful aspirations, corny as that may sound.

Believe in writer’s block?

If I don’t want to believe in something I tell myself it can’t really exist if I can get around it. I believe every writer has some down time and must use whatever personal methods available to cut into it. For me reading others seems to recharge the battery. Picasso once supposedly didn’t paint for a year and wrote plays instead. Then he painted some masterpieces.

Consider yourself prolific?

No. I consider myself persistent, as the late painter Walter Gabrielson might put it. I try to keep at it and do good work.

Define success.

We’re never as good as we think we are, but probably not as bad as some others think we are…

What’s on your recommended reading list?

I’m currently reading Literary House Review published by Victoria Valentine’s Skyline Publications, featuring many good poets, writers, and a fine Mexican artist. I also recommend her A Hudson View Poetry Digest. Other suggestions are Bukowski’s The Continual Condition, Kim Addonizio’s poetry books, Rachel Resnick’s memoir Love Junkie, a new forthcoming anthology of Las Vegas-oriented writers called Dead Neon: Tales of Near-future Las Vegas, Thomas McGuane, James Purdy novels, Jarret Keene’s poetry & writing, Todd James Pierce, K.W. Jeter’s sci-fi novels, Pattern Recognition by William Gibson (& his other novels), poetry chapbooks by Alan Catlin, Philip A. Waterhouse, and John Cantey Knight’s new poetry book, Body Into Earth, and anything that you really want to read yourself ….!

What’s next for Peter Magliocco?

Slowly and gracelessly fading into the sunset with a cat-like glimmer of a smile on aged features time has scarred with zits … As for the writing, besides Dead Neon I have new forthcoming chapbooks like The Heaven of Words from Propaganda Press and The Nude Poetry Garage Sale from Virgogray Press … The Mag Man can be snail-mailed at:

ART:MAG
POB 70896
Las Vegas, NV 89170

LINKS:

Peter Magliocco’s books:

http://books.google.com/books

Imparadised by Peter Magliocco:

http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/imparadised/10920671

Peter Magliocco’s MY SPACE page (for ART:MAG):

http://myspace.com/petermagliocco

Peter Magliocco’s Publish America homepage:

http://www.publishedauthors.net/petermagliocco/

The Burgher of Virtual Eden by Peter Magliocco:

http://www.publishamerica.net/product27072.html

Ex Literotica by Peter Magliocco:

http://www.publishamerica.net/product14792.html

Dead Neon: Tales of Near-future Las Vegas:

http://www.nvbooks.nevada.edu/NewForthcoming/Titles

Discarded Poems (a new PDF e-chapbook) by Peter Magliocco:

http://scars.tv/ccd.htm

Nu-Evermore by Peter Magliocco:

http://www.trafford.com/Bookstore/BookDetail.aspx?Book=174712

Peter Magliocco Interviewed:

http://www.books-and-authors.net/Interviews/PMagliocco.html

Peter Magliocco’s Bio at Literary House Review:

http://www.literaryhouse.com/2007BookBios/2007Bios.htm

Peter Magliocco’s chapbook The Heaven of Words:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Alternating-Current-Arts-Co-op/40336525466

Colossal Destroyer

Colossal Destroyer


In the ether of solitude
Is a crypt of violence
That speaks a brutal truth.
In that sinful sincerity
Is a tableau of hate:

A multitude of inhuman desires.

The plains of Har Megiddo
Salivates within my soul.
I want the heads of people.
Their hearts can burn
In their soulless cavities.

I’m no longer human but a beast
Who only believes in nothing.
These thoughts have been taught
Not by pure evil or hell

But of human beings.

A prophet of impending tombs,
Nurtured by the sickness of man.
No longer am I an idea
But a colossal destroyer -
Humanity all in one vein.


Craig Podmore is from Manchester, U.K. Erbacce Press published his first book, I am a Gun earlier this year. His material has also appeared in many online zines, such as Gloom Cupboard, The Plebian Rag, (in print and online), The Scottish Review, Alabaster & Mercury Vol. 1, Epic Rites, (in print and online), and most recently at Ditch, Poetry and Danse Macabre. His new book, entitled The Abattoir Heavens and The Holy Ghost, is soon to be published by Erbacce Press. Craig is also a photographer and filmmaker.

Misanthrope

Misanthrope


Humans disgust me.
Their smell like that of a lingering death,
A slow decay of homicidal intervention.
Their irrelevant existence,
His impotent mistake –
The so-called almighty.

An ejaculation of a bad idea:
The rape of Eve, the scorn of man.
The bleeding dawns,
The ravenous lusts for ill answers
Incubated, distilled in abattoirs
Of disillusionment.

I foresee their fall
And it is great.
Fornicating cannibals
Are of this modern bulimia,
This hellish madness!

The malformation of burning flesh:
Effigies of brutal truth
Dancing in genocides
Of human behaviour.



Craig Podmore is from Manchester, U.K. Erbacce Press published his first book, I am a Gun earlier this year. His material has also appeared in many online zines, such as Gloom Cupboard, The Plebian Rag, (in print and online), The Scottish Review, Alabaster & Mercury Vol. 1, Epic Rites, (in print and online), and most recently at Ditch, Poetry and Danse Macabre. His new book, entitled The Abattoir Heavens and The Holy Ghost, is soon to be published by Erbacce Press. Craig is also a photographer and filmmaker.

Quoteable

"I'd rather not think about Roger at the moment. I might accidentally remember one of his poems." --Garth Ennis

The Art of Michael McAloran

--Michael Mc Aloran was Belfast born, (1976). His most recent poetic works have appeared/ are forthcoming at Carcinogenic Poetry, Why Vandalism?, 1000th Monkey, Fashion For Collapse, Danse Macabre, Fragile Arts Quarterly, Gloom Cupboard, and Pratishedhak, Graffiti Kolkotta, (India). His art-work has appeared at Calliope Nerve, Bergamot, Fragile Arts Quarterly, Arterialize, and has been used as book covers for several projects at Calliope Nerve Media. He is the author of five short collections of poetry: 'In The Black Cadaver Light', (Poetry Monthly Press), 'The Rapacious Night', (Calliope Nerve Media), 'The Gathered Bones', (Calliope Nerve Media), 'The Redundant Pulse', (Back Pack Press), and 'The Death-Streaked Air', (Virgogray Press-forthcoming). Other pursuits include cigarettes and alcohol...

The Art of Michael McAloran

--Michael Mc Aloran was Belfast born, (1976). His most recent poetic works have appeared/ are forthcoming at Carcinogenic Poetry, Why Vandalism?, 1000th Monkey, Fashion For Collapse, Danse Macabre, Fragile Arts Quarterly, Gloom Cupboard, and Pratishedhak, Graffiti Kolkotta, (India). His art-work has appeared at Calliope Nerve, Bergamot, Fragile Arts Quarterly, Arterialize, and has been used as book covers for several projects at Calliope Nerve Media. He is the author of five short collections of poetry: 'In The Black Cadaver Light', (Poetry Monthly Press), 'The Rapacious Night', (Calliope Nerve Media), 'The Gathered Bones', (Calliope Nerve Media), 'The Redundant Pulse', (Back Pack Press), and 'The Death-Streaked Air', (Virgogray Press-forthcoming). Other pursuits include cigarettes and alcohol...

Quoteable

"His story is a myth. All westerns are. Writing my own was the joy I always knew it would be." --Garth Ennis

The Tremulous Exhiliration of Not Pausing For Breath

The Tremulous Exhilaration of Not Pausing for Breath

Cold-tile mornings shiver, humbled before powerful days,

stretching themselves up broad and high,

looking down through brightly vacant window eyes.

A skill's required to navigate the face of rocky-mountain days;

strength to stand against a vacuous airiness-

blowing Siberian freeze across the bathroom floor.

Language trembles; gentler words disengage,

trampled by the heavyweights that stamp

and pound, exploding inside ears.

Hearts find ways of twitching behind prison-bar ribs;

blood translates  movement to the hands.

Minds rush and swirl, over acres and miles,

kilometres and continents, (searching for a settlement)

tear along scattering pieces of soul

that tumble - trusting - topple through the filter and are lost.

Oceans of syllables and consonants crash on shores of silence;

wash away the peace, and sighing, wave and leave;

wave and leave destruction-

distraction…

spindrift on the shore.

Nothing rests, this hurricane of thought is all encompassing,

sleep approaches shyly, shambling, dreamy, heavy-

just to be sent packing; backing up against the wall.

Time chases fiercely, running, pushing from behind,

whilst memories sink  like glaciers, through history,

falling unrestrained, and fearless in flight.

Just don't look down, don't slow down,

-glory in the movement-

the senseless speed-

glory in the movement-

it will not cease


Sophia Argyris was born in Belgium, spent much of her childhood in Scotland and now lives in London. Her work has been published in several print and online magazines including Inclement, Volume, Argotist, Red Pulp Underground, Silenced Press, The Beat, A Poets Call, Pyramid Magazine, Up the Staircase, Debris and Decanto amongst others. She also has poems in two anthologies published in 2008, 'Scream' published by Edit Red and 'Zygote Abstract' published by Red Pulp Underground. She was a finalist in the Aesthetica Creative Works Competition in 2008.