Sunday, June 1, 2008
Editor's Note:
Welcome to the eighteenth issue of CSR! By now, you regular readers know my baby likes crystal skulls with the eyes intact and hates eating with a bib. It craves rice pudding and makes cute little sounds when it sees a fire truck. Baby has an uncanny ability to turn the words of poets into a mule and forty acres. Issue Eighteen is an excellent example. This month CSR is filled with slender-necked photographs, along with a gangplank of art. Add to that, a group of stunning poets, intriguing music makers and one magical book review and you've got the possibility for real anteater tracks. Trust me, when you finish this issue you'll feel like a valuable coin collection. Or no one could have guessed he was a cross-dresser. Either way, this issue will highjack your interest with delights seldom found in mountain climbing gear. So escape from the mud slinging and get busy...
Welcome to the eighteenth issue of CSR! By now, you regular readers know my baby likes crystal skulls with the eyes intact and hates eating with a bib. It craves rice pudding and makes cute little sounds when it sees a fire truck. Baby has an uncanny ability to turn the words of poets into a mule and forty acres. Issue Eighteen is an excellent example. This month CSR is filled with slender-necked photographs, along with a gangplank of art. Add to that, a group of stunning poets, intriguing music makers and one magical book review and you've got the possibility for real anteater tracks. Trust me, when you finish this issue you'll feel like a valuable coin collection. Or no one could have guessed he was a cross-dresser. Either way, this issue will highjack your interest with delights seldom found in mountain climbing gear. So escape from the mud slinging and get busy...
Padraig Rooney
Wire
Before Houdini diced with death and lost
the final bet which burst his perineum
he stretched a wire from end to end of Pest
above the childhood ghetto in his mind,
and climbed on it, and walked, his steps in tandem
to klezmer music from the synagogue
and canted prayer, a kaddish for the dead;
and smells of poppy seed and almond milk,
sweet liqueurs and fusty gabardine
assailed him from the streets where kids agog
stared up to see the king of magic turned
into a tightrope walker: look! they cried,
it’s Harry Weiss escaped from death to walk
on air and wire across the world he spurned.
The Night Golfer
I stepped onto her fairway
breathless after too much sushi.
Those palpitations again
climbing the steps. She had
no tee, no green, no ball,
not even grass or astroturf,
but a white towel at her feet
as she gazed into the distance.
Moving neither left nor right,
she didn't answer my goodnight,
but placed her spiked shoes
on the towel and a five-iron
angled for a hole-in-one.
I stood on the landing above
and watched her perfect swing.
Landing Craft
What I want to do here, if you’ll bear with me,
is tack along the coast of Siam in a camouflaged junk
and let you off north of the abandoned canal
between the Andaman and China Seas, where the isthmus
is narrowest. From there you can swim in near the base
in the amphibious landing craft I’ve designed for you,
equipped with snap box, thermos of gunpowder tea,
amulets and cling-wrapped sandwiches. The mangrove swamp
is treacherous but I’ve fine-tuned the instruments
so you can float ashore unnoticed just under the surface
where the roots reach down into Pleistocene mud,
shell middens, snake beds and nests of glow worms
that are really tiny plant organisms aspiring to light.
At dawn the root system lifts its salt-encrusted, waterlogged self
out of the slime and advances with the tide, you with it,
and becomes leaf, tree, forest, all of life as we know it.
An Ordinary Morning
That year the forecast typhoon never came.
Instead of wind and rain and darkening sky
our beachfront bamboo bungalow was calm
behind the dunes. The weather doesn’t lie,
you said: it was the calm before the storm.
The bungalow was up on stilts in bowls
to stop the soldier ants from getting in.
We watched them carry eggs and leave their hills
for higher ground behind the marram grass.
Instinctive self-defence protected them.
The dogs, too, retreated inland past
the early surfers making up for time
that seemed to hang suspended in the offing.
Otherwise an ordinary morning.
The Dancer
Somewhere back of Saint Germain des Prës
a party held in Raymond Duncan’s Akadamia.
Seventies punk and rotgut wine and joints
animate the room, when down the stairs
in toga, sandals, braids and fillet of bayleaf
a grey-haired dancer moonwalks on the air
and takes the stage to dance the dance of veils.
Was it Raymond’s son as Dionysius
sending up our terminal bohemia,
or the ‘walking absurdity’ himself,
back from death to haunt the battlements,
or was it Isadora’s curtain call?
Whichever Duncan danced that night away
has left the rented veils, the dance, and us.
Bob Beagrie
Never Again
A paranormal Sunday morning,
the streets all but deserted
save for the wind sprites kicking litter,
pigeons bobbing round the speed bumps
and the Hang-Over Fairy trying
and failing to travel
invisible, dressed in a blamanche pink, lace tutu
with a scalloped hem and goose fleshed
arms and midriff, her plastic tiara grasped
in one mitt, a glitter wand dangling from the other
as she hobbles on high heels that worked fine
last night but don't today.
How she's wishing for a jacket or a cardie,
but fairies don't wear coats in this town.
She's doing the walk of shame under a painful frown
of low cloud and high hunched shoulders
after the fall from the top of a Christmas tree,
too pissed to flap her filigree wings,
all of a sudden too heavy for the bubbling laughter
of Angie's party to keep her afloat
and out of reach of Pete,
whose not a bad looking bloke
after half a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon,
and who snared her with the promise
of a quiet spliff of White Widow together in the spare room
and a sneeky peek of his Prince Albert
underneath a poster of Che Guevara.
Cnoc Na Carraigh
Hiding in a skirt of barbed gorse
its trunk furrowed thick with lichen blooms
and pale hairs of green-grey moss
the ogham from the lost kingdom
of Dalraida has almost worn away;
the still stone still stands, leaning
like a canine tooth upon the mound.
I touch it with an open palm,
try to imagine the life of the carver,
recall stories of the Tuatha De Danaan -
nothing happens;
another squall is sweeping in from Islay,
a black bullock lows,
a gull glides by, climbing the wind
that strokes my cheek,
white mares leap ashore,
brambles ripen, sunlight,
the first few spots of rain.
Nothing mysterious occurs,
no entrance to a Sidh appears.
I breathe with intent.
The world turns.
El Diwan
(The Taste of Arabia)
Hold the manakish of the holy month
Between the parched lips of dawn and dusk
Seek the oasis of spices
In the street of false gods
From a shisha pipe’s gleam in the corner
A nomadic coil of rose-smoke asks ‘Who are you?’
Among minarets and arabesques
I have forgotten my name
Should I wear a fez, spectacles
Grow the grey moustache of a learned man
Become a bird of paradise
Grooming its plumage before morning song
Am I the caterpillar smoking on a mushroom
Dreaming of an emperor-dreaming of a butterfly
I could be the falcon on the glove
Of the Queen of the desert
Loosen my tether, let me fly
Over the jangling line of the caravanserai
Through the drapes, across a bridge of one hair
Kwiksave’s auto-doors yawn bargains-in-trolleys
She has set me circling shared homelands
On the dark wings of a prayer
Obsessive Drawing
(For Gail Henderson)
1. Untitled
To vegetate on the moist earth,
my eyes closed and on the inner lids
floats a new birth - stalk growth,
tears that are the spoor
to some half remembered treasure,
hidden by a hedge of thorns, curled
like lashes of a hundred years:
drop, crumble, decay
grow again with kisses.
Slumber in the spiral of a snail's shell
bleached by salt, its trail a glimmer
in the shadow of a spinning wheel
like unspun thread, Theseus holds
between his teeth in a quiet cave mouth.
2. Clocks
Midsummer and hungover
on endless sunshine.
The wind skims the lake's skin,
bubbles rise, evolving ambitions
of grinning pike to a creamy sky
I would tear apart, rip and score,
make a mosaic of French paper.
Dandelions sway - the marching,
fragile heads of guards in white bearskins.
Seed wishes drift through open windows,
land on pillows, breath in, out.
Lung trees blossom and a small black bird,
about the size of a dust mite,
whistles for autumn berries.
3. A Desire Span
a)
Peacocks watch with their tails.
Their shrill shrieks stretch like catgut
in the night. I am allergic to feathers,
and their screeches lash like a whip.
Their eyes watch my every move,
though I try to vanish chameleon-like
into the background. A hydra waits
with its many heads, in dreams I dare not go.
b)
There's something out there.
Fungal creature in mould and moss,
with external stomachs that digest
motes of dust and small black birds
in forest gloom. Tread lightly
if you pass this way. The woods
are thick, the paths wind back
to where they start.
Fronds unfurl like tongues
to taste the sweat of your fear.
c)
The final frontier, somewhere
in the labyrinth is the treasure.
Here is the self you sought
coiled in the bed of a bud
about to burst, or is there,
after picking away the last layer
with grubby hoof-like hands, nothing
but a pile of shed skins at your feet
and the light beat of a wood pigeon's
wings disappearing in the shade?
Never Again
A paranormal Sunday morning,
the streets all but deserted
save for the wind sprites kicking litter,
pigeons bobbing round the speed bumps
and the Hang-Over Fairy trying
and failing to travel
invisible, dressed in a blamanche pink, lace tutu
with a scalloped hem and goose fleshed
arms and midriff, her plastic tiara grasped
in one mitt, a glitter wand dangling from the other
as she hobbles on high heels that worked fine
last night but don't today.
How she's wishing for a jacket or a cardie,
but fairies don't wear coats in this town.
She's doing the walk of shame under a painful frown
of low cloud and high hunched shoulders
after the fall from the top of a Christmas tree,
too pissed to flap her filigree wings,
all of a sudden too heavy for the bubbling laughter
of Angie's party to keep her afloat
and out of reach of Pete,
whose not a bad looking bloke
after half a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon,
and who snared her with the promise
of a quiet spliff of White Widow together in the spare room
and a sneeky peek of his Prince Albert
underneath a poster of Che Guevara.
Cnoc Na Carraigh
Hiding in a skirt of barbed gorse
its trunk furrowed thick with lichen blooms
and pale hairs of green-grey moss
the ogham from the lost kingdom
of Dalraida has almost worn away;
the still stone still stands, leaning
like a canine tooth upon the mound.
I touch it with an open palm,
try to imagine the life of the carver,
recall stories of the Tuatha De Danaan -
nothing happens;
another squall is sweeping in from Islay,
a black bullock lows,
a gull glides by, climbing the wind
that strokes my cheek,
white mares leap ashore,
brambles ripen, sunlight,
the first few spots of rain.
Nothing mysterious occurs,
no entrance to a Sidh appears.
I breathe with intent.
The world turns.
El Diwan
(The Taste of Arabia)
Hold the manakish of the holy month
Between the parched lips of dawn and dusk
Seek the oasis of spices
In the street of false gods
From a shisha pipe’s gleam in the corner
A nomadic coil of rose-smoke asks ‘Who are you?’
Among minarets and arabesques
I have forgotten my name
Should I wear a fez, spectacles
Grow the grey moustache of a learned man
Become a bird of paradise
Grooming its plumage before morning song
Am I the caterpillar smoking on a mushroom
Dreaming of an emperor-dreaming of a butterfly
I could be the falcon on the glove
Of the Queen of the desert
Loosen my tether, let me fly
Over the jangling line of the caravanserai
Through the drapes, across a bridge of one hair
Kwiksave’s auto-doors yawn bargains-in-trolleys
She has set me circling shared homelands
On the dark wings of a prayer
Obsessive Drawing
(For Gail Henderson)
1. Untitled
To vegetate on the moist earth,
my eyes closed and on the inner lids
floats a new birth - stalk growth,
tears that are the spoor
to some half remembered treasure,
hidden by a hedge of thorns, curled
like lashes of a hundred years:
drop, crumble, decay
grow again with kisses.
Slumber in the spiral of a snail's shell
bleached by salt, its trail a glimmer
in the shadow of a spinning wheel
like unspun thread, Theseus holds
between his teeth in a quiet cave mouth.
2. Clocks
Midsummer and hungover
on endless sunshine.
The wind skims the lake's skin,
bubbles rise, evolving ambitions
of grinning pike to a creamy sky
I would tear apart, rip and score,
make a mosaic of French paper.
Dandelions sway - the marching,
fragile heads of guards in white bearskins.
Seed wishes drift through open windows,
land on pillows, breath in, out.
Lung trees blossom and a small black bird,
about the size of a dust mite,
whistles for autumn berries.
3. A Desire Span
a)
Peacocks watch with their tails.
Their shrill shrieks stretch like catgut
in the night. I am allergic to feathers,
and their screeches lash like a whip.
Their eyes watch my every move,
though I try to vanish chameleon-like
into the background. A hydra waits
with its many heads, in dreams I dare not go.
b)
There's something out there.
Fungal creature in mould and moss,
with external stomachs that digest
motes of dust and small black birds
in forest gloom. Tread lightly
if you pass this way. The woods
are thick, the paths wind back
to where they start.
Fronds unfurl like tongues
to taste the sweat of your fear.
c)
The final frontier, somewhere
in the labyrinth is the treasure.
Here is the self you sought
coiled in the bed of a bud
about to burst, or is there,
after picking away the last layer
with grubby hoof-like hands, nothing
but a pile of shed skins at your feet
and the light beat of a wood pigeon's
wings disappearing in the shade?
Peter Schwartz
a bachelor's death
I am human antique
living red-handed in the
house of winter.
these past few months have been eternal.
I've played wife to the lower part of my heart
and survived in stages:
tea, lunch, bed
I've spread myself like cold sheets over the
couch, table, chairs: because the
untouched, although hollow, is the
easiest form of survival
to swallow
I've dreamt of playgrounds and
graveyards in the same pale light; remembering
away the six year old me
right off the monkey bars
I've pushed a thousand words straight
through the face of my tombstone
then watched them shrink in fetid
puddles by the doghouse
I've dressed and undressed my needs
for summer, spring and fall all the while hoping
some woman might come bring me the tiny
transfusion of a kiss
but she's probably pacing the hallways
of her own haunted house somewhere
probably has bills and a diary
of her own to tend to
her own needs and children
to whisper away in the night.
confetti times
I am locked in the nobody factory
in cold anterooms, it's here the gradual blurs
the already heavily counterfeit
keeping tyrannized appointments with
my citizen past
this perpetual symposium
on what was meant by goodbye
loses its funeral physique
to the mere possibility of later's heart
attack phone call
flattery fails at my window, turned away
soured by the questionable clay involved
in the voodoo insides of my shoulder-length days
and ugly nights when the last animal candle
goes out
this is when the math, left-handed
paints crutches on the moon
when the mercenary silences
even these pinned-back crickets
I covet and pander to
and outlive
they say nothing they know
to cling is to butcher
the center of each experiment
where only the motives change
where sleep is a cheap key; turning over
without pushing in
epistle
every creature suffers some shade of intimacy
knowing the wilderness always was
the better friend, the one so willing
to share a two-man hat
this democracy of thought
shows no bibliography against
my face with odds inside
each feature, the very leather
of responsibility
sinking, seeping
a cold-blooded touchstone-
a featherbone too much
to touch again;
broken at the doorstep
of self-nostalgia
on some inexcusable sunday
of the heart
a mutant voyeur, watched
to death like old toxicology
worried what foreigners might do
to sublet his crowded partnership
from its soft garage of pretty
yet cruel with magic
at last willing to accept
its violent number
on your twisted little abacus.
goodbye valentine
ours is a serial love a breath away from fiction
the very last excuse
crucified beyond valleys
the daily ups and daisies
up, again
for height is owned at the expense of width
maybe more so in the mirror, thus
quicksand shatters the hourglass
of neanderthal nerves still fretting over
pretty things, pretty things....
for every effort has closets; its ringworms
its dead, its delilah
and all these radiant apologies that go bump in the night
they only freckle the darkness
blinking too fast to ever certify as stars
slammed instruments that rattle,
temporary instruments.
effect has little doctors that try in vain to sew the ice
to forget that details
smell like mothballs even as they're happening
as the incense of finality peters
results milk their rewards.
and cry beneath false carpets
petting their oblivions down;
my pretties, my pretties, my pretties
are ugly, but true.
the nowhere glow
I'm a six foot shadow
the death of rhyme
an idea in a raincoat worming through the nights
like gunshots
a sequel to the magic
a stretched immigrant
mispronouncing the needle
in an alley of the distant and lethal
an elaborate servant
playing chameleon by the garbage cans
till the lowest man on the totem pole
can truthfully be called king
I will be him, undone by less than nothing
a gutted actor fishing out his bones
to fashion xylophones to play the night out
one note at a time
an exile from the world
of the paper fed and puckered
an injured guest of the daily minarets
that form like juries over marrow
an untouchable bloodline
dying in the midst
a bachelor's death
I am human antique
living red-handed in the
house of winter.
these past few months have been eternal.
I've played wife to the lower part of my heart
and survived in stages:
tea, lunch, bed
I've spread myself like cold sheets over the
couch, table, chairs: because the
untouched, although hollow, is the
easiest form of survival
to swallow
I've dreamt of playgrounds and
graveyards in the same pale light; remembering
away the six year old me
right off the monkey bars
I've pushed a thousand words straight
through the face of my tombstone
then watched them shrink in fetid
puddles by the doghouse
I've dressed and undressed my needs
for summer, spring and fall all the while hoping
some woman might come bring me the tiny
transfusion of a kiss
but she's probably pacing the hallways
of her own haunted house somewhere
probably has bills and a diary
of her own to tend to
her own needs and children
to whisper away in the night.
confetti times
I am locked in the nobody factory
in cold anterooms, it's here the gradual blurs
the already heavily counterfeit
keeping tyrannized appointments with
my citizen past
this perpetual symposium
on what was meant by goodbye
loses its funeral physique
to the mere possibility of later's heart
attack phone call
flattery fails at my window, turned away
soured by the questionable clay involved
in the voodoo insides of my shoulder-length days
and ugly nights when the last animal candle
goes out
this is when the math, left-handed
paints crutches on the moon
when the mercenary silences
even these pinned-back crickets
I covet and pander to
and outlive
they say nothing they know
to cling is to butcher
the center of each experiment
where only the motives change
where sleep is a cheap key; turning over
without pushing in
epistle
every creature suffers some shade of intimacy
knowing the wilderness always was
the better friend, the one so willing
to share a two-man hat
this democracy of thought
shows no bibliography against
my face with odds inside
each feature, the very leather
of responsibility
sinking, seeping
a cold-blooded touchstone-
a featherbone too much
to touch again;
broken at the doorstep
of self-nostalgia
on some inexcusable sunday
of the heart
a mutant voyeur, watched
to death like old toxicology
worried what foreigners might do
to sublet his crowded partnership
from its soft garage of pretty
yet cruel with magic
at last willing to accept
its violent number
on your twisted little abacus.
goodbye valentine
ours is a serial love a breath away from fiction
the very last excuse
crucified beyond valleys
the daily ups and daisies
up, again
for height is owned at the expense of width
maybe more so in the mirror, thus
quicksand shatters the hourglass
of neanderthal nerves still fretting over
pretty things, pretty things....
for every effort has closets; its ringworms
its dead, its delilah
and all these radiant apologies that go bump in the night
they only freckle the darkness
blinking too fast to ever certify as stars
slammed instruments that rattle,
temporary instruments.
effect has little doctors that try in vain to sew the ice
to forget that details
smell like mothballs even as they're happening
as the incense of finality peters
results milk their rewards.
and cry beneath false carpets
petting their oblivions down;
my pretties, my pretties, my pretties
are ugly, but true.
the nowhere glow
I'm a six foot shadow
the death of rhyme
an idea in a raincoat worming through the nights
like gunshots
a sequel to the magic
a stretched immigrant
mispronouncing the needle
in an alley of the distant and lethal
an elaborate servant
playing chameleon by the garbage cans
till the lowest man on the totem pole
can truthfully be called king
I will be him, undone by less than nothing
a gutted actor fishing out his bones
to fashion xylophones to play the night out
one note at a time
an exile from the world
of the paper fed and puckered
an injured guest of the daily minarets
that form like juries over marrow
an untouchable bloodline
dying in the midst
Jill Jones
Ruins
look at the sun
along the off-white
afternoon over my shoulder
memory
speaks through heroic ideal
shivered beauty
lashed by cold light
your questions
lip air
go out
fall to ruin
walk ordinary matter
Here
Rising with air, breath's desperate agesl
oud music carries all its times
with smoked out clarity as well
Nerves flower out my bare need
knowledge, I found skin, and underneath
day slowly wears, moved by turn
And clouds don’t ‘need to know’
and being moves a new overlay
out here the valley, goes how
2008
I’ve left my attitude with a slew of energy
the dope in me ducks, sure tastes bitter
A familiar song - we shall never part
Remember the verb that got away
Forget your sex, taste then lips
along the off-white, apparel falls away
Petals bruise my hand
after a wave of wild correspondences
No page entirely contains my wandering breath
Even the air is a strange grain
You must slip stealthily into the ventilator
the dollar will be normal after that
But, wait, don’t press my buttons, cast them aside
Let's shut up and dance
Vestiges
poet wanders the page
imprint
chasing a trail through poems
fugitive ghost
phantom presences aura
what is noise in the poem
the subjective relation to others
what is important in a poem
at the edges
And Then The Ongoingness
a trace
at the point
wherea poem
differentiates itself from
flux
of experience
the fragmentary or
incomplete
Ruins
look at the sun
along the off-white
afternoon over my shoulder
memory
speaks through heroic ideal
shivered beauty
lashed by cold light
your questions
lip air
go out
fall to ruin
walk ordinary matter
Here
Rising with air, breath's desperate agesl
oud music carries all its times
with smoked out clarity as well
Nerves flower out my bare need
knowledge, I found skin, and underneath
day slowly wears, moved by turn
And clouds don’t ‘need to know’
and being moves a new overlay
out here the valley, goes how
2008
I’ve left my attitude with a slew of energy
the dope in me ducks, sure tastes bitter
A familiar song - we shall never part
Remember the verb that got away
Forget your sex, taste then lips
along the off-white, apparel falls away
Petals bruise my hand
after a wave of wild correspondences
No page entirely contains my wandering breath
Even the air is a strange grain
You must slip stealthily into the ventilator
the dollar will be normal after that
But, wait, don’t press my buttons, cast them aside
Let's shut up and dance
Vestiges
poet wanders the page
imprint
chasing a trail through poems
fugitive ghost
phantom presences aura
what is noise in the poem
the subjective relation to others
what is important in a poem
at the edges
And Then The Ongoingness
a trace
at the point
wherea poem
differentiates itself from
flux
of experience
the fragmentary or
incomplete
Arlene Ang
She appears
And nothing. The night sky contracts.
I remember adagio because porchlight is perishable.
I remember the submerged palace in her gestures.
The blur deliberate on this lifeline.
Cirrocumulus and ammonia: her favorite trompe l'oeil.
She is drunk on loneliness, precaution.
In a series of optical illusions, the chair is Cézanne.
Static: radio noise from the shipwreck.
I do not ask for paper clips. Or sawdust.
I can lie about what resembles August 16.
This pain is, in part, unfurnished.
She shakes her breasts at trees using both hands.
The sea spray, the alloy, the off-days, the gurney.
I show her the ladder. This last rung.
(fear) of rabbits
it
drifts : and
the sky loses
a contact lens : rabbits panting
as they park themselves on the porch :
the man richard climbs a ladder :
he is recycling his entrails for the christmas decor : from
afar trees appear with octopus suits : the situation is so
that it requires a wife for the interior design : hands
typing an experiment on animals : the old remington with
its missing keys : tic-tac-toe of anxiety of vertigo
of the man richard on the roof : sun
so shrill it makes
the ground
ache
Inventory of Goodbye
The unexplained occasion on this card,
a kidney-shaped basin, something urine.
One morning and the pocket was searched.
Four wall clocks four minutes late,
four walls, four strips of wallpaper playing dead.
Linoleum blue. What is the stone age
if not 28? Tap once for the area code,
tap twice for ice water, iced tea, ice in general.
The vestibule opens a black umbrella
for missing children, the baroque
architecture of pain. Creepers zip the windows shut.
And indoors, under the x-ray lamp,
I feel the hand on the planchette move
across my breasts. Back and forth. Syntax error.
Osmosis
One thing we can always depend on, said Miss D, is the egg.
It takes a mosquito thirty minutes to drown because of a
defective stopwatch. Underwater, its reality is magnified.
Even before we weighed the egg's mass on the fourth day,
we already knew the answer from books. We mismanaged
the measurements and lied in the final report. When you
pull a feather halfway out of a pillow, there's no pushing it
back in. We experimented on this based on the concept that
as the egg changes, it also changes those who witness the
change. Miss D, according to the substitute teacher, won't be
coming to class today. A majority of accidents happen in the
bathroom. No one explained how experiments, like solitude,
could go wrong. Only later did we find out that, if left too
long underwater, it is in the nature of eggs to come apart.
Laptop
Opaque black, charcoal gray
keyboard: it opens like a 12-gauge steel
coffin lid. Sunday morning in bed
lacks the odor of coffee since
he left. Here are definitions of emptiness:
a room without discarded shoes,
milk crust in unwashed cups,
& hung brassieres on the dresser mirror.
Outside---cathedral blue sky,
clouds like snipped feathers,
cats on the roof, hypothermic evergreens.
Today: a game of solitaire
I rarely win, plus the words mutant,
frostbite and shrimp that have no place
in Apollinaire's secret love poems.
She appears
And nothing. The night sky contracts.
I remember adagio because porchlight is perishable.
I remember the submerged palace in her gestures.
The blur deliberate on this lifeline.
Cirrocumulus and ammonia: her favorite trompe l'oeil.
She is drunk on loneliness, precaution.
In a series of optical illusions, the chair is Cézanne.
Static: radio noise from the shipwreck.
I do not ask for paper clips. Or sawdust.
I can lie about what resembles August 16.
This pain is, in part, unfurnished.
She shakes her breasts at trees using both hands.
The sea spray, the alloy, the off-days, the gurney.
I show her the ladder. This last rung.
(fear) of rabbits
it
drifts : and
the sky loses
a contact lens : rabbits panting
as they park themselves on the porch :
the man richard climbs a ladder :
he is recycling his entrails for the christmas decor : from
afar trees appear with octopus suits : the situation is so
that it requires a wife for the interior design : hands
typing an experiment on animals : the old remington with
its missing keys : tic-tac-toe of anxiety of vertigo
of the man richard on the roof : sun
so shrill it makes
the ground
ache
Inventory of Goodbye
The unexplained occasion on this card,
a kidney-shaped basin, something urine.
One morning and the pocket was searched.
Four wall clocks four minutes late,
four walls, four strips of wallpaper playing dead.
Linoleum blue. What is the stone age
if not 28? Tap once for the area code,
tap twice for ice water, iced tea, ice in general.
The vestibule opens a black umbrella
for missing children, the baroque
architecture of pain. Creepers zip the windows shut.
And indoors, under the x-ray lamp,
I feel the hand on the planchette move
across my breasts. Back and forth. Syntax error.
Osmosis
One thing we can always depend on, said Miss D, is the egg.
It takes a mosquito thirty minutes to drown because of a
defective stopwatch. Underwater, its reality is magnified.
Even before we weighed the egg's mass on the fourth day,
we already knew the answer from books. We mismanaged
the measurements and lied in the final report. When you
pull a feather halfway out of a pillow, there's no pushing it
back in. We experimented on this based on the concept that
as the egg changes, it also changes those who witness the
change. Miss D, according to the substitute teacher, won't be
coming to class today. A majority of accidents happen in the
bathroom. No one explained how experiments, like solitude,
could go wrong. Only later did we find out that, if left too
long underwater, it is in the nature of eggs to come apart.
Laptop
Opaque black, charcoal gray
keyboard: it opens like a 12-gauge steel
coffin lid. Sunday morning in bed
lacks the odor of coffee since
he left. Here are definitions of emptiness:
a room without discarded shoes,
milk crust in unwashed cups,
& hung brassieres on the dresser mirror.
Outside---cathedral blue sky,
clouds like snipped feathers,
cats on the roof, hypothermic evergreens.
Today: a game of solitaire
I rarely win, plus the words mutant,
frostbite and shrimp that have no place
in Apollinaire's secret love poems.
Duane Locke
Tampa Cemetery
Underground, the bones of the crooked sheriff
Talks to the bones in the next lot, the bones
Of a pious, Baptist deacon, who raised neurotic children.
The crooked sheriff wants to tell the deacon’s bones
About the success of his grandson, who has a future
In computers, makes a salary in the six figures
The sheriff sees the sad face of the deacon,
Invites the deacon to join him in hymn singing.
They sing together, and the earth around their bones,
Puts its hands over their ears.
The Tide
The tide jammed on its brakes
Before it reached the ex-colonel,
Who was miserable in sunlight,
But obeyed the fashion.
The tide has hands, not heavy wheels.
The tide has the body of a slender girl,
Not the heaviness of a car.
The tide stopped in repulsion
Because the tide has hands.
Sargasso and Sponges
Sargasso and sponges
Stick out their tongues
To touch my ankle.
All the houses on the shore
Put on tuxedoes, went
To the wedding of the tattoo and the dollar.
I stayed here, alone,With Sargasso and sponges.
-all three poems previously published at Jacket Magazine
Wind
A wind of curls that wore a black pants suit
Raced by to flap the flag and chase
The spinning pigeons off the rooftops.
In the bedrooms, the beds put eyeglasses
On their sheets who gazed through the wallpaper
Over the heads of paper roosters
And the stems and curves of red apples
To take notes on the shape of the wind’s legs.
The photographs atop the piano took out
Sketch books and created one-stroke Japanese paintings.
Each stroke duplicated the wrinkles in the wind’s knees.
The wind blew by and the mirrors changed their images
From the wind’s legs to moonlit trap doors.
Footsteps
The footsteps that remained inside the floor’s
Rug-covered wood recalled what last month’s
Footsteps left from when the footsteps
Departed from the curls and scars of city rivers.
The footsteps left a drop of quivering water
On a pigeon‘s, colored like a white orchid, fallen feather,
Drops of paralyzed tears and their crutches
On a flock of gray gravel that had closed their eyes
And wobbled towards broken glass covering grasses.
The footsteps splashed as if the wood were water,
Splashed against the cobwebs on the ceiling and fell
On the bottoms of white chairs and evaporated
To leave long rows of white circles.
-both poems previously published in Wordplay Poetry Blog
Tampa Cemetery
Underground, the bones of the crooked sheriff
Talks to the bones in the next lot, the bones
Of a pious, Baptist deacon, who raised neurotic children.
The crooked sheriff wants to tell the deacon’s bones
About the success of his grandson, who has a future
In computers, makes a salary in the six figures
The sheriff sees the sad face of the deacon,
Invites the deacon to join him in hymn singing.
They sing together, and the earth around their bones,
Puts its hands over their ears.
The Tide
The tide jammed on its brakes
Before it reached the ex-colonel,
Who was miserable in sunlight,
But obeyed the fashion.
The tide has hands, not heavy wheels.
The tide has the body of a slender girl,
Not the heaviness of a car.
The tide stopped in repulsion
Because the tide has hands.
Sargasso and Sponges
Sargasso and sponges
Stick out their tongues
To touch my ankle.
All the houses on the shore
Put on tuxedoes, went
To the wedding of the tattoo and the dollar.
I stayed here, alone,With Sargasso and sponges.
-all three poems previously published at Jacket Magazine
Wind
A wind of curls that wore a black pants suit
Raced by to flap the flag and chase
The spinning pigeons off the rooftops.
In the bedrooms, the beds put eyeglasses
On their sheets who gazed through the wallpaper
Over the heads of paper roosters
And the stems and curves of red apples
To take notes on the shape of the wind’s legs.
The photographs atop the piano took out
Sketch books and created one-stroke Japanese paintings.
Each stroke duplicated the wrinkles in the wind’s knees.
The wind blew by and the mirrors changed their images
From the wind’s legs to moonlit trap doors.
Footsteps
The footsteps that remained inside the floor’s
Rug-covered wood recalled what last month’s
Footsteps left from when the footsteps
Departed from the curls and scars of city rivers.
The footsteps left a drop of quivering water
On a pigeon‘s, colored like a white orchid, fallen feather,
Drops of paralyzed tears and their crutches
On a flock of gray gravel that had closed their eyes
And wobbled towards broken glass covering grasses.
The footsteps splashed as if the wood were water,
Splashed against the cobwebs on the ceiling and fell
On the bottoms of white chairs and evaporated
To leave long rows of white circles.
-both poems previously published in Wordplay Poetry Blog
About Art - Cloud Gate
Cloud Gate is British artist Anish Kapoor's first public outdoor work installed in the United States. The 110-ton elliptical sculpture is forged of a seamless series of highly polished stainless steel plates, which reflect the city's famous skyline and the clouds above. A 12-foot-high arch provides a "gate" to the concave chamber beneath the sculpture, inviting visitors to touch its mirror-like surface and see their image reflected back from a variety of perspectives.
Inspired by liquid mercury, the sculpture is among the largest of its kind in the world, measuring 66-feet long by 33-feet high. Cloud Gate sits upon the At&T Plaza, which was made possible by a gift from AT&T.
What I wanted to do in Millennium Park is make something that would engage the Chicago skyline…so that one will see the clouds kind of floating in, with those very tall buildings reflected in the work. And then, since it is in the form of a gate, the participant, the viewer, will be able to enter into this very deep chamber that does, in a way, the same thing to one's reflection as the exterior of the piece is doing to the reflection of the city around. Find out more about his work at http://wikipdeia.org/wiki/Anish_Kapoor
What I wanted to do in Millennium Park is make something that would engage the Chicago skyline…so that one will see the clouds kind of floating in, with those very tall buildings reflected in the work. And then, since it is in the form of a gate, the participant, the viewer, will be able to enter into this very deep chamber that does, in a way, the same thing to one's reflection as the exterior of the piece is doing to the reflection of the city around. Find out more about his work at http://wikipdeia.org/wiki/Anish_Kapoor
About Books:
Title: Roomful of Navels
Author: Criag Kirchner
Description: In Roomful of Navels Craig removes veils and ceremony as well as labels in acknowledging in very readable poems many of the navels he has known. He finds stories and mystery in ordinary moments extraordinarily told.
Product Details:
Printed: 6"x9" - 116 pages
ISBN: 1434844102 / 9781434844101
Copyright: 2008
Language: English
Country: USA
Publisher's Link: www.createspace.com/3338078
Title: Roomful of Navels
Author: Criag Kirchner
Description: In Roomful of Navels Craig removes veils and ceremony as well as labels in acknowledging in very readable poems many of the navels he has known. He finds stories and mystery in ordinary moments extraordinarily told.
Product Details:
Printed: 6"x9" - 116 pages
ISBN: 1434844102 / 9781434844101
Copyright: 2008
Language: English
Country: USA
Publisher's Link: www.createspace.com/3338078
About Music - MIDIval PunditZ
The musical partnership of two guys from India, Gaurav Raina and Tapan Raj is responsible for the creation of MIDIval PunitZ. The two cemented their acquaintance in grade school, and reunited again in 1994. Both were veterans of India's dance club culture and shared a love of the classical music of their homeland. However, each bring their own unique talents to the music they intended to make.
Gaurav was a student of architecture who moonlighted as a radio DJ. And Tapan, an IT specialist by day, engineered at a New Delhi recording studio where Gaurav's station booked time.
By 1997 they had dedicated themselves to a fusion of their beloved classical ragas with the beats and loops of electronica. PunditZ's love for Indian classical music is obvious from the first notes of the CD. Bansuri flute melodies snake between sequencing, and echoing notes from a santur add depth to the rhythm.
MIDIval PunditZ reflects the extent to which younger generations of Indian music fans have allowed equal time for the past, present, and the future. Imprinted with traditional Indian music, this deep cultural programming somehow coexists with knowledge of the Internet and club culture. Since their Six Degrees Records self-titled debut in 2002—the first Indian electronica band to hit the international scene—the team has ushered in a new era of possibilities for the sound of 21st-century India. Their unique and expansive artistic vision marries the soulful elegance of South Asia's extraordinarily rich traditional and classical music heritage with the exuberance and limitless potential of modern Western electronic music.
One of the tracks from their first, eponymous album, "Fabric", was used on the soundtrack to Mira Nair's hit film "Monsoon Wedding". Now, with their newest Six Degrees release, "Midival Times", the duo, who work as producers, remixers, and club impresarios as well as live artists—document the musical, emotional, and intellectual journey of the past three years. Find out more about them at www.punditz.com
The musical partnership of two guys from India, Gaurav Raina and Tapan Raj is responsible for the creation of MIDIval PunitZ. The two cemented their acquaintance in grade school, and reunited again in 1994. Both were veterans of India's dance club culture and shared a love of the classical music of their homeland. However, each bring their own unique talents to the music they intended to make.
Gaurav was a student of architecture who moonlighted as a radio DJ. And Tapan, an IT specialist by day, engineered at a New Delhi recording studio where Gaurav's station booked time.
By 1997 they had dedicated themselves to a fusion of their beloved classical ragas with the beats and loops of electronica. PunditZ's love for Indian classical music is obvious from the first notes of the CD. Bansuri flute melodies snake between sequencing, and echoing notes from a santur add depth to the rhythm.
MIDIval PunditZ reflects the extent to which younger generations of Indian music fans have allowed equal time for the past, present, and the future. Imprinted with traditional Indian music, this deep cultural programming somehow coexists with knowledge of the Internet and club culture. Since their Six Degrees Records self-titled debut in 2002—the first Indian electronica band to hit the international scene—the team has ushered in a new era of possibilities for the sound of 21st-century India. Their unique and expansive artistic vision marries the soulful elegance of South Asia's extraordinarily rich traditional and classical music heritage with the exuberance and limitless potential of modern Western electronic music.
One of the tracks from their first, eponymous album, "Fabric", was used on the soundtrack to Mira Nair's hit film "Monsoon Wedding". Now, with their newest Six Degrees release, "Midival Times", the duo, who work as producers, remixers, and club impresarios as well as live artists—document the musical, emotional, and intellectual journey of the past three years. Find out more about them at www.punditz.com
Joy Olivia Yourcenar
All The King’s Horses
You remember Humpty Dumpty,
that famous head case,always wall falling,
always scrambling,
and wonder if you misplaced
his displaced noggin
until now jogged gently along,
pure Pysanky, laced with
delicate blue vein tracery,
albumen blown
to be carried by design
in your finest take care spoon.
Resisting the urge
to recount his fingers and toes,
cradle love
and walk fast with him
sunny side up
toward the finish line,
cracking jokes
on his hard shell,
your good egg.
Casa de las sangrientas
Waiters sambaed through the restaurant
discreetly pouring lemon water into iced glasses.
The smell of fresh cilantro was distracting.
I remember whole peaches,
subtle as baby cheeks in a red dish,
and licentious napkins folded into hats.
I stared at the woven tablecloth,
wondered how they got the salsa stains out.
You complained I was not listening
and cut my hand off with your butter knife.
I could not answer,
mesmerized by the contrast
of the fluid red arc on the white linen.
The carnal house band struck up a lush rumba
but, as usual, we did not dance.
Projections
Cars and courier vans glide through the panorama
of my doubled reflection. My daughter pretends
I’m her private video projected on the night.
Sometimes we star together, lit by the supernovenas
of beeswax taper halos, mutable portrait
of Madonna with gap-toothed child grinning.
I am filled with snow and trees, I contain auras of street lights
Framed by sliding glass doors, I drape this winter night
like a shawl around my shoulders, shimmer in the wind
of all that’s common, cold and fine, rejoicing
in the traffic and the bone street, salt bleached.
Handwalking
The nut-laced smell of loam pervades the root cellar;
here, the air is cool, damp, redolent with the scents
of herb bunches hanging on the highest beams.
Miscreant, we pull the whitewashed door closed
from the inside and lie on the chill, dirt floor,
trace our initials in the swept clay, talk in feral whispers.
We are hiding among the bushel baskets of cabbages
and hulking winter squash, tucked behind barrels
brimming with red potatoes and purple onions.
She will not find us here behind the neatly labeled rows
of Ball jars filled with tomatoes, fiddlehead and flat green beans.
She thinks I fear the dark and small places more than her.
We use the time to watch a black and yellow spider
repair her web, to plot impossible escapes to distant lands.
We are hiding from the graphic accusation
of two muddy footprints defiling her virgin white couch,
the pristine carpet we are not allowed to set foot upon.
We are hiding from a dare flung down, my sister's gauntlet
taunting me to cross ten feet of pale temptation,
picked up, only to be dropped again when, handwalking,
gravity betrayed me, barely leaning. I slipped
from line to slope to arc, the slight tilt
touching my silt glazed sneakers to my embossed velvet doom.
She will not care I almost made it.
Nattering On The Sublime
Epiphanies of pyramid stacked Fisher snow plow blades
undulating yellow against a red brick wall
chased me all the way home from the Chevy dealership.
Chest burning, I burst into your kitchen,
and tried to articulate the fury of my after school vision,
to recreate, for you, my red gold glimpse into the sublime.
Through your rippling incomprehension, I heard
the gradual silencing of every gypsy mandolin.
By the time you looked up from doing dishes
to remind me to take off my sneakers in the house,
reticence had grown in me like a corruption of black pearl.
-all poems previously printed in Demeter’s Harvest
All The King’s Horses
You remember Humpty Dumpty,
that famous head case,always wall falling,
always scrambling,
and wonder if you misplaced
his displaced noggin
until now jogged gently along,
pure Pysanky, laced with
delicate blue vein tracery,
albumen blown
to be carried by design
in your finest take care spoon.
Resisting the urge
to recount his fingers and toes,
cradle love
and walk fast with him
sunny side up
toward the finish line,
cracking jokes
on his hard shell,
your good egg.
Casa de las sangrientas
Waiters sambaed through the restaurant
discreetly pouring lemon water into iced glasses.
The smell of fresh cilantro was distracting.
I remember whole peaches,
subtle as baby cheeks in a red dish,
and licentious napkins folded into hats.
I stared at the woven tablecloth,
wondered how they got the salsa stains out.
You complained I was not listening
and cut my hand off with your butter knife.
I could not answer,
mesmerized by the contrast
of the fluid red arc on the white linen.
The carnal house band struck up a lush rumba
but, as usual, we did not dance.
Projections
Cars and courier vans glide through the panorama
of my doubled reflection. My daughter pretends
I’m her private video projected on the night.
Sometimes we star together, lit by the supernovenas
of beeswax taper halos, mutable portrait
of Madonna with gap-toothed child grinning.
I am filled with snow and trees, I contain auras of street lights
Framed by sliding glass doors, I drape this winter night
like a shawl around my shoulders, shimmer in the wind
of all that’s common, cold and fine, rejoicing
in the traffic and the bone street, salt bleached.
Handwalking
The nut-laced smell of loam pervades the root cellar;
here, the air is cool, damp, redolent with the scents
of herb bunches hanging on the highest beams.
Miscreant, we pull the whitewashed door closed
from the inside and lie on the chill, dirt floor,
trace our initials in the swept clay, talk in feral whispers.
We are hiding among the bushel baskets of cabbages
and hulking winter squash, tucked behind barrels
brimming with red potatoes and purple onions.
She will not find us here behind the neatly labeled rows
of Ball jars filled with tomatoes, fiddlehead and flat green beans.
She thinks I fear the dark and small places more than her.
We use the time to watch a black and yellow spider
repair her web, to plot impossible escapes to distant lands.
We are hiding from the graphic accusation
of two muddy footprints defiling her virgin white couch,
the pristine carpet we are not allowed to set foot upon.
We are hiding from a dare flung down, my sister's gauntlet
taunting me to cross ten feet of pale temptation,
picked up, only to be dropped again when, handwalking,
gravity betrayed me, barely leaning. I slipped
from line to slope to arc, the slight tilt
touching my silt glazed sneakers to my embossed velvet doom.
She will not care I almost made it.
Nattering On The Sublime
Epiphanies of pyramid stacked Fisher snow plow blades
undulating yellow against a red brick wall
chased me all the way home from the Chevy dealership.
Chest burning, I burst into your kitchen,
and tried to articulate the fury of my after school vision,
to recreate, for you, my red gold glimpse into the sublime.
Through your rippling incomprehension, I heard
the gradual silencing of every gypsy mandolin.
By the time you looked up from doing dishes
to remind me to take off my sneakers in the house,
reticence had grown in me like a corruption of black pearl.
-all poems previously printed in Demeter’s Harvest
Cristian Andrei
Content
We are two parts of a fluid architecture
(standard movement
for our own translation by each other)
Two little spots from different areas
anticorrosive layer & underlying structure
Or: molecule in the foundation &
thermoinsulating pellicle
Or: wall with elevators gurgling through &
acoustics of the mavericks’ oval room
We telepathic roll out drawing board memories;
we’re genuine & up-to-date
Anxiety
Anxiety swims the right arm along
Exit are fingers
Gets dry in the air
Plunges in the left arm’s waves
Outlining a triumphal arch
Under it, like tame animals under yoke,
pass silence after silenceAnd silence of other hands
gives them lovinglystroke after stroke
Eclipses On Both Sides
Faces in effigy are our legacy
Autumns
on the scarred green of grass, of leaves
A small people of tears passing through us
A morning dedicated to fragile sensibilities
Yearnings’ ghost (wolfskin over it)
with foggy boats is gliding:
The howl is spreading out
along with our shadows
under whim of light, obscure smile
Pretty Faces
Beyond every history
is another one
Breaking of the moment that enchanted us
Echoes are spreading
old flavors on dead languages
the old song & the new one
are chewed together
The second itself is silence’s rhythm
fed up with reincarnated words
Bus station: I’m tasting faces
which have signs of a writing got in oblivion
And each one in the waiting crowd
(mute open pits)
is applying to the others
the same taste procedure:
That’s how a love story starts,
the archaeologist reinventing himself
out of the memory of his findings
The Street
Sumptuous cars of the blood are speeding at full throttle
On each side of the race
feminine buildings are raising
Lipstickroofs got hot
Everything is socked in China ink love
A childcalligraphicallycrosses the street
-all poems previously published at Aha Poetry
Content
We are two parts of a fluid architecture
(standard movement
for our own translation by each other)
Two little spots from different areas
anticorrosive layer & underlying structure
Or: molecule in the foundation &
thermoinsulating pellicle
Or: wall with elevators gurgling through &
acoustics of the mavericks’ oval room
We telepathic roll out drawing board memories;
we’re genuine & up-to-date
Anxiety
Anxiety swims the right arm along
Exit are fingers
Gets dry in the air
Plunges in the left arm’s waves
Outlining a triumphal arch
Under it, like tame animals under yoke,
pass silence after silenceAnd silence of other hands
gives them lovinglystroke after stroke
Eclipses On Both Sides
Faces in effigy are our legacy
Autumns
on the scarred green of grass, of leaves
A small people of tears passing through us
A morning dedicated to fragile sensibilities
Yearnings’ ghost (wolfskin over it)
with foggy boats is gliding:
The howl is spreading out
along with our shadows
under whim of light, obscure smile
Pretty Faces
Beyond every history
is another one
Breaking of the moment that enchanted us
Echoes are spreading
old flavors on dead languages
the old song & the new one
are chewed together
The second itself is silence’s rhythm
fed up with reincarnated words
Bus station: I’m tasting faces
which have signs of a writing got in oblivion
And each one in the waiting crowd
(mute open pits)
is applying to the others
the same taste procedure:
That’s how a love story starts,
the archaeologist reinventing himself
out of the memory of his findings
The Street
Sumptuous cars of the blood are speeding at full throttle
On each side of the race
feminine buildings are raising
Lipstickroofs got hot
Everything is socked in China ink love
A childcalligraphicallycrosses the street
-all poems previously published at Aha Poetry
Contributors Biographies
Padraig Rooney: was born in Ireland and educated at Maynooth and at the Sorbonne. His early stories were published in the Irish Press New Irish Writing page, edited by David Marcus. He has published one novel Oasis (Poolbeg Press) and two collections of poems In The Bonsai Garden (Raven Arts Press) which won the Patrick Kavanagh Award, and The Escape Artist (Smith Doorstop). He is the recipient of two Irish Arts Council bursaries. He has taught abroad for many years and currently lives in Switzerland. Contact him at pribmbis@hotmail.com
Bob Beagrie: he was born in 1967 and has spent much of his adult life involved in lots of writing, reading, publishing and cross art-form projects. His published poetry collections include Gothic Horror (Mudfog 1996), Masque: The Art of the Vampyre (Mudfog 2000), Huginn & Munnin (Biscuit 2002), Endeavour: Newfound Notes (Biscuit 2004), The Isle of St Hild (Hartlepool Borough Council 2004), Perkele a bi-lingual pamphlet in English and Finnish co-written with Kalle Niinikangas (Ek Zuban 2006) and Yoik (Cinnamon Press 2008). He lives in Middlesbrough, England with his wife and daughter. His email address is: bbeagris_ca2@hotmail.com
Peter Schwartz: holds a B.A. in Literature and Creative Writing. He has lived and traveled through Israel, Egypt, and Holland. He plays classical piano by ear. His work has appeared in Curbside Review, Freefall, Poetalk, The Silt Reader and over 100 other print and online journals. He is art editor at the multimedia site Mad Hatter’s Review and lives in a place where it always snows and is usually called Augusta, ME. Find out more about his work at: www.sitrahahra.com
Leigh Perry: he says his aim is to present a view of the world that is at once instantaneous and timeless. A view that isolates a slice of reality in time and space, allowing it to be examined in detail, but also implies an ongoing dynamic. His photography identifies recurring themes and motifs, usually in the context of transitions and contrasts. They may be transitions in space, such as from water to sky, or temporal transitions in the form of light and atmospheric changes. He uses a wooden, large format Ebony 45SU as his primary camera. He is based in Sydney, Australia. Find more images at his website: www.leighperry.com
Jill Jones: her work has been widely published in most of the leading literary periodicals in Australia as well as in a number of print and online magazines in New Zealand, Canada, the USA, Britain and India. Her fifth full-length book, Broken/Open, was published by Salt Publishing in 2005. It was shortlisted for The Age Poetry Book of the Year 2005 and the Kenneth Slessor Poetry Prize 2006. She has been involved in a number of writing groups over the years, including the NSW Poets' Union, No Regrets women writers' group, and the Round Table writers' group. She has been the recipient of two Australia Council grants and has also been involved in literary publishing. The poet and writer lives in Sydney, Australia. Visit her website at http://www.rubystreet.blogspot.com
Arlene Ang: was a former editor for the Italian edition of Poems Niederngasse, Arlene Ang is the author of The Desecration of Doves (2005). She has been nominated five times for the Pushcart Prize. Her poetry has appeared in many journals, including Anon, Diagram, Eclectica, Forklift Ohio, FRiGG, Painted Bride Quarterly, Poetry Ireland, Rattle, Tattoo Highway, and Unpleasant Event Schedule. She lives in Spinea, Italy. For additional information, visit her website: www.leafscape.org/aang
Duane Locke: he is Doctor of Philosophy in Renaissance Literature, Professor Emeritus of the Humanities, Poet in Residence at University of Tampa for over twenty years, and photographer, has had over 2,000 of his own poems published in over 500 print magazines. He is author of fourteen books of poems, including Watching Wisteria. He now lives alone and isolated in the sunny Tampa slums. He lives estranged, he says, and as an alien, not understanding the customs, the costumes, the language, some form of postmodern English, of his surroundings. His recreational activities are drinking wine, listening to old operas, and reading postmodern philosophy. Contact him at duanelocke@netzero.net
Lynne Taetzch: she says that for as long as she can remember she has been making some kind of art, from sculpting play dough to holiday decorations and craft projects. Her creative ideas are made into prints in a Giclee or “spray-on” technique and then sent to a printmaker. Her work hangs in private collections and corporate offices throughout the world and has appeared in both solo and group exhibitions in galleries and museums in New York, California, and elsewhere in the USA. In the summer of 2005 she built a house/studio in Ithaca, NY where she now resides. More of her work can be seen at www.artbylt.com
Joy Olivia Yourcenar: she says that when she was a small child, her father read to her all the time. Everything from Lisel Moak Skorpen’s We Were Tired of Living in a House, to Bruce Catton’s This Hallowed Ground to the back of cereal boxes (Cheerios and Comet share a common ingredient, TCP…really.) She started reading at 3 years of age and became a voracious reader. She still am. She loves to finish a book in one sitting and usually can. She also takes photographs and "Nattering The Sublime," the poem that gives the title to her upcoming book was inspired after seeing a slide show of Miksang images. It's a non-linear art form and is more about the essence of things than a story. She was born in Maine but presently resides in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada. Her website can be found at http://www.ebb.ns.ca/myth
Cristian Audrei: he is the founder of The Institute of Human Relations, whose objectives are to improve human relations by services of psychological counseling and psychotherapy, coaching and organizational training, parenting and educational programs. The projects carried out within the Institute of Human Relations include communication sessions on various topics, targeting the public at large, held in the Institute’s conference hall each Saturday. He writes poetry as a hobby and has been published at other online sites. He lives in Bucharest, Romania. The institute’s website can be found at www.iru.ro/en/home
Closing Notes: The editor would like to thank the contributors for the use of their work. Each contributor reserves their original rights. Look for the next issue of CSR online on July 1st.
Copyright 2008 by Maurice Oliver. All Rights Reserved.
Visit the editor’s personal blog: http://www.copyat5.blogspot.com/
And his music blog: http://www.medleymakersant.blogspot.com/
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