Concelebratory Shoehorn Review

2008-11-01T11:51:00.001-07:00

Issue Twenty Three

2008-11-01T11:46:00.000-07:00

2008-11-01T11:44:00.000-07:00

Editor's Note:

Welcome to Issue Twenty Three of CSR! By now, you regular readers know my baby likes stem-ironed nighties and hates the smell of burnt toast. It craves passion cashews and makes cute little sounds when a marching band goes by. Baby has an uncanny ability to turn the words of poets into a canal of gondolas with every rower singing. Issue Twenty Three is no exception. This month is filled with self-hypnotized photographs, along with muse-making art. Add to that, a group of stunning poets, an intriguing music maker and one magical book review and you've got the possibility of festive grape juice. Trust me, when you finish this issue you'll feel like the green in blades of grass. Or he only shoveled compost for a living. Either way, this issue will highjack your interest with delights seldom found in damp firewood. So forget about your unsightly liposuction scares and get busy...

2008-11-01T11:42:00.000-07:00

CSR: Issue Twenty Three Contributors/Contents

Ariel Gordon

Trevor Joyce

Deborah Vatcher

Sigfrid Lopez

Scott Glassman

Letitia Trent

Paula Hackett

About Art - Agora

Karen Hollingsworth

Book Review

About Music - David Morales

Gunter Quinte

Pat Paulk

2008-11-01T11:34:00.000-07:00

Ariel Gordon

Reek

You burst through the door, hot
& angry, eager to keen
& wail into my ear. Dad-dad telegraphs
your refusal to nap at the sitter’s, the entire shrieking
ride home, his nostrils already flared
by working fires, exhaust
& spring’s gritty exhumation
with a lifted eyebrow. As you leap
into my arms, reeking of dog
& incense, your hair lifts.

Rush-light

Storm-light’s grey clarity and you bluster.
Syllables batter against the rear-view, cling
to the meat of my earlobes
still half-a-city from home.

Rain clouds unroll over rush-hour, its ticking
stale from storage. Mouth open, I blare My Bonny
shoulder-checking headlights
and grit twisters
at the curb.

In evening’s rush-light and traffic’s flare
your face goes bone before you drop off
leaving a body to bob
over swells of asphalt and tar,
a body for me to bundle inside.

substitution…unleaved.

The sticky ant-walked nubs of peony
buds showing lurid lippy shiners
under prim sepals
for the latest red bonk unfurling
under the skin of your headfirst
ass over teakettle
tumbles.

The up-thrust females from the mossy cowl
on slim aspens here there along the tree line
for the wiry spray of hair
on your intersection of head and bed
those humid nights
you spent between us.

How To See Deer

Be near-sited. Tapetum-lit eyes / fireflies.
Spots and voids behind lids /
pelt markings.

In autumn rut refrain
from holding
hands.

Bed down in dog parks. Urban deer
& scraggly stands of trees
reek of pee.

Be capable of stupid happiness
at rumpy flashes
in trees.

Stomp until utterance is overcast
by leaves and twigs of trembling
aspen, bur oak
& beaked willow. Strip bark.

Twelve

You were my time piece,
one hand on my shoulder, the other
rooting around
in my shirt. Even half asleep
your third eye was always on the clock.
A year in, you're still a stickler:
just enough time to shower, just enough
to eat so I can feed
you again: Tick
tock, mummy. Tick tock.

2008-11-01T11:31:00.000-07:00

Trevor Joyce

from Ana (an excerpt)

this mis fortunate bitch

may never walk again

something with the nerves they say

perhaps the spine suffered some trauma

whimpering occasionally

she sleeps until they come for her

again the nose flares

forelimbs scrabbling dreamt earth

*

the crying goes on and on

it might be comforted by some attention

relief for hunger thirst

the warmth scents sounds of a familiar body

for lack of these uninterrupted simply it continues on and on

* for Lynne Clibanoff

fissuring faulting jointing

crack thundifferentiated to an interlock of vaults boxes rooms

rivers their walls

stone furniture stone air

diviners sense the strike or dip

when over charged a perched table pitches

afflicting property

overwhelming thirst

*
successively each emperor's doubles were assassinated

then himself

therefore this stratagem

our latest emperor was chosen secretly

no-one informed not even the elect

it worked

somewhere he lives obscurely on

quite unaware he is a god

*
court tombs constitute our earliest examples

local sites exhibit small side chambers

transected galleries

only the largest slabs remain

fallen displaced

smaller stones purloined for nearby walls or roadworks

the ideal form exists in imagination only

-previously published at Masthead

2008-11-01T11:24:00.000-07:00

Deborah Vatcher

Storm

the goats know it
before it comes
sense it in the radar of their horns
aimed skyward
probing the atmosphere
with its advancing
storm;
restless
they buck and kick
then retreat to their shed
dark and watertight
where the lightening light
flashes in the corners
through dusty spider webs; and
when thunder finally falls
they hurl at each other
cracking horns
rattling brains
asserting terrestrial power

Scrapbook

between the leather doors of the
memory book
I house your life paste you
in with your famous bubble quotes
those light bulbs flashing over your head
illuminating years of pages
and decorate the rooms
with patterned scissor cuts
around the borders in bold
triangle and square colors
tape in flowing blue and red ribbons
ABC+s and
a curl of hair
the paper on the walls embossed
with floral patterns recalls
the garden where you sipped mint tulips
at your first tea party

The Old Dog

when the old bones stop at the
bottom of the stairs
and drop with a whimper and a sigh
resigned that the
soft mattress is beyond hope and suffer
this cold hardwood bed for the night
when the aspirin doesn’t dissolve the
pain anymore
when the joints go their own way
grinding spurs dislocating
when it was only yesterday
you came home
with the leap of youth in your legs
when you could not only run
but fly

The Road

the old road’s cracked and rough here
blind potholes out of nowhere
like some sickness
the pavement’s blown
along with my tire
when was this surface last smooth
had to be years ago
when the asphalt was still hot
and steaming
over a bed of fresh gravel
before that it was a track of dirt
but the town had it paved
because of the wild ruts
and loose stone
now after seasons of neglect
it needs repairand mending
and I bend over exhausted
the two of us the road and I
leaning on my tire

Fanfare

robust and giddy with music
strumming air guitar beating
the table prancing
reeling through the kitchen
skipping between the audience
seated with forks dabbing at dinner
rock hopping grabbing
the dusty broom your
microphone belting notes lusty
to the pulse of the chorus
you always loved the Beatles
best seeing it your way
before we all fall apart
to wash the dishes
and go our separate ways
you try to work it out
this musical frenzy
and ruckus
and blare the trumpet
to sound the final flourish
your fanfare
your call to home

-all poems collected from her blog, Snake’s Poetry

2008-11-01T11:21:00.000-07:00

Photography by Sigfrid Lopez

2008-11-01T11:13:00.000-07:00

2008-11-01T11:06:00.000-07:00

Scott Glassman

Pillow Talk

Hi, I'm me.
Nice to meet you, you.I
t's nice to meet me too.
Who may I say has the pleasure?
You, I guess.How've I been?
Fine as far as you can tell.
Ask me something.
Sure, if you can help, go ahead.
Who is speaking here?
You mean, who is listening.
I'm sorry, what?
You always repeat myself.
You see?Who, you?
This is why we never
have this conversation.

Moods

Ail, breathe clouds downwind escaping
flustered groans higher
if jump-worthy kisses
laugh, my noble Oslo, perhaps
questions resound slowest
tied underneath
vacant worlds: xx yy zz

Terrain

Any
breakers caught
dangling, entrapped, frozen

graze
happily in
journeys, kidnappings, love

marring
Naples, Ontario,
Pittsburgh, Quebec, Raleigh . . .

sympathetic
to, unconsciously
vertical with X-boxes

yearning . . . zaftig

The Mural

no beginning
or end as though

all of you came
to walk through

the archaic light

Broadway
a quotient
of always-ness

decimal followed
by so many zeros

something took its time
to breathe you
into itaren't you glad

#10

A canary flew in
and threatened to peck
my eyes out if I didn't
announce my love for it.

I don't open my window
for canaries anymore.

-all poems gathered from his blog, 30 Days: poems

2008-11-01T10:56:00.000-07:00

Letitia Trent

Isolato #1

He thought he’d die that summer, the ceiling
fan stuffing old air down his throat. The once-
sweet puppy showed his teeth and chewed
through a two-by-four. The glass resisted
and kept reflecting until it finally gave under
his knuckles. One month without seeing anyone
I couldn’t crush between my fingers. Dog bones,
a Pepsi can, a doll missing its arm. Standing by
the highway and waiting for a wave. Even
a convenient store stop can thrill me. You decide
to start twelve hours of sleeping. When it rings
she grits her teeth. I can’t talk to anyone anymore.
Can’t even breath till seven. Fucking sun’s up
again. Wait until then. Almost autumn. Help.

Isolato #2

Mother started sweeping five times
before breakfast, then between meals,
then until she fell asleep still standing.
We ran out of bath water and my hair
stuck up in any position I twisted. We found
dog bones, a Pepsi can, and a baby doll
missing its left arm. I conjure up
a telephone and try to call him through
sheer physical exertion. We keep
artifacts of other people—receipts slipped
from car windows, coffee cups. If you
are bored then that means you have no
inner resources. On highway two I try
to meet every passenger’s eye. A perimeter
of highway with no sidewalk, no shoulder.
Even a convenient store stop can
thrill me. Your kids aren’t big talkers,
are they? Silence gums up when I try.
We are always only watching. Can I help
you? Look at me. Just looking. Help.

Prom Season

Slut. Pussy-whipped. Girls
like red. She’s easy as
pre-algebra. Lice around
her hairline. Watch the baby
while I smoke. Buy
Cinnamon Schnapps
and she’s done for. Notes
about three guys and razor
wire. His class ring rises
and beats her chest. Cigarettes
can help—make a smaller baby,
easier delivery. She shaved
the Gitano labels from all
her Wal-Mart jeans. His class
ring diamond is a purple star
above her eyebrow.

The Townschildren

The townschildren have reached
a state of crisis. The directions
on their homework assignments
seem foreign, hieroglyphics spoken
in Russian noises. Even their name blanks baffle.
They've lost
all hand-eye coordination. Kickball
has become a form
of punishment
or torture
(so the teenagers say, eyerolls
still in order).
Some say it came
from the red pills school dentists
gave to elementary children,
the ones we all chewed
to see where our future
cavities would bloom.
Some blame
the tapwater's tang
and milky aftertaste. Some,
the communal recorders
they play every year
in the Christmas choir. Do you remember
that sterilized mouthpiece? The taste
like gunmetal? Sometimes I think it might just be genetic.
For example, I once
wore my shirt backwards
for hours until I noticed
in the produce mirror
that my breasts were showing.
It will pass, say
the doctors, their stethoscopes
in their pockets, pictures
of reliable witness. I repeat this prognosis
to my son as he tries to fasten
his sweater buttons, grits
his teeth at the spread jam
lobbed on his toast, as he tries to add
a whole tippy
column of numbers.

I didn’t expect to see you here again

Us? Just visiting. Kicked clay dust.
But what about you? Can’t never get clean
completely. Whitney’s fat and her lip-
stick’s bleeding. You still take peanuts
in your pop? His belt buckle’s the size
of my palm. Jesus changed my heart
when I had my baby. Look—he’s got
Redneck tattooed on his bicep
in Garamond. Run in there and get
them menthols and lottery tickets.
The door squeals open and I smell
Frito pie and air conditioning. For a while
he made good money laying asphalt,
working for the county. We sure do miss
having you and your pretty wife
in our church family. Bodean, leaning on
the rust-furred pump, doesn’t remember
calling me skank in high school. They
were making meth in the trailer house
and it caught on fire—all those babies!
Kelly has three babies, Sharon has two
babies, and, it’s a shame, but little
Julie turned lesbian up in Tulsa.

-all poems gathered from her blog, Poemtasting

2008-11-01T10:49:00.000-07:00

Paula Hackett

Vision of a Catatonic

I've been leaving here for a long time
with a pill with a goodbye
when anger was the only feeling
and seeing that we turned old and sad
sometimes the jazz was too loud
and we were too happy
warm with whiskey and your face
that turned many colors
words were silly things we forgot about
and magic was a thing
that made us all children.
Now people think I've wasted my life
And that I've nothing to say
but turning away, I'm sorry
I was only trying to get back
to the place I've never been before

Crisis

I sat next to an old lady on
the bus today, skin tight on
her bones. Clutching a purse full
of old Kleenex. Not looking at all,
just staring at her shoe lace,
wishing she had tied it
before leaving the house.

Billy Holiday
(a lullaby)

Sometimes when nature is quiet
and the moon shines just where you are
I can hear you singing the spirit world to rest.
I remember as a child your voice would wrap me in cotton
as you felt the blows
for all of us.
Born into a country that tried to
make your voice illegal
poise and elegance was your response.
And tonight like so many
nights as I wait for morning
I know I can count on
the voice of Billy Holiday

Coma Rising
for Art Pepper

Anger in motion
in public places
in mid-air
posing with sick habits
fighting like a disease
in every note
An alto saxophone
faster than any words
any thoughts except Art Peppers
A knife thrower with a facefull of glee

Artist

There is a rumor
we are a sick
and disgusting lot.
Started before we
knew of it.
Saying we jump
from windows,
drink an unkind
death.
That we care
for ourselves only.
Let us then meet
by a stream
using the water
for our thoughts
throw a party
of sickness laughing at our
tragic fortune.

2008-11-01T10:47:00.000-07:00

About Art - Agora

The statue Agora incorporates the figures of 106 headless abstracted 9 foot tall human figures. The hollow figures, which are a permanent project located at the southern end of Chicago’s Grant Park, next to the Roosevelt Road Metra station, seem to wander about along a stretch of land aimlessly. Each is hand molded and made to resemble the texture of tree trunks.

The 2.5 million dollar piece was a gift from the artist and the Polish Ministry of Culture. The Parks have raised $800,000 needed for the installation and maintenance of the piece, thanks to some help from Robin Williams, an Abakanowicz fan.

The Polish sculptor explained the sculptures as this: "They must be like one body that represents so many different meanings," she said. "It's the self against the whole world."

Many say that Abakanowicz' history gives context to her art. The artist was born into an aristocratic family in Poland and when she was 9, she saw Nazi soldiers shoot her mother's arm off. She lived and sculpted in Warsaw under Soviet occupation, using a hemp-like material to make pieces that could be tucked away in her tiny studio. Find out more about the artist at her website: www.abanowicz.art.pl

2008-11-01T10:46:00.000-07:00

Art Work by Karen Hollingsworth

2008-11-01T10:38:00.000-07:00

2008-11-01T10:36:00.000-07:00

About Books:

Title: The Wash
Author: Adam Clay

Description: On every page of The Wash , Adam Clay discovers new kinds of eloquence, elegance, excitement, and inward experience from which a language springs that can flow forward through present space (wherever we are now) and backward (often to old England), then downward into the still reaches of the heart where the waters give us our own faces back. . . . This book is an eyeful and an earful. It teems with originality. —Michael Heffernan

Product Details:
Printed: 84 Pages
ISBN: 1-932559-99-X
Copyright: 2006
Language: English
Country: USA
Publisher's Link: www.parlorpress.com

2008-11-01T10:21:00.000-07:00

About Music - David Morales

David Morales (born Aug. 21, 1961, in Brooklyn, New York), is an internationally acclaimed Grammy winning house music DJ and producer. In addition to his production and DJ work, Morales is one of the most prolific remixers of all time, transforming many pop music songs into club-friendly dance tracks. He was one of the pioneers of house music in New York, an original head from the 1970s who weathered the change-over from disco to house and teamed up with Frankie Knuckles to form the leading early remix team, Def Mix. During the '90s the dance mainstream became aligned to many of his stylistic trademarks — vocal breaks, uptempo piano riffs, plenty of strings — resulting in clichés attributed to both of them. Also, Morales hasn't been involved in own-name record production as much as his few peers (Knuckles, Junior Vasquez, Todd Terry), but Morales found a dancefloor hit with the 1994 single "In De Ghetto."

Born in Brooklyn to Puerto Rican immigrants, Morales lived his early life in quite a rough section of the Brooklyn projects and was once shot while growing up. He dropped out of high school after ninth grade, and worked as a cook while supplementing his meager living with a job as a DJ (he had been collecting records since the age of 14). Turned on to disco at crucial clubs like the Loft and the Paradise Garage, Morales was soon working at the Garage as well after hooking up with For the Record, an early DJ management firms. His reputation spread during the late '70s and early '80s until he had DJed at every major club in the New York area. One of the first underground house hits in the New York area, "Do It Properly”, was a production helmed by Morales. Moving on to remix and production work during the '80s, he hooked up with another major house legend, Frankie Knuckles (through For the Record) to form the Def Mix Productions crew, and his Red Zone remixes became known as important sign-posts in the developing progressive house movement.

Increasingly though, as dance music began appealing to a wider clientele, Morales' mixes attuned themselves more to the mainstream of dance and his material often garnered airplay on daytime radio as well as in nightclubs. After making his name in the pop charts with an early Def Mix for Seal, he began working with a role call of the era's major pop stars: Mariah Carey, Madonna, Michael Jackson, U2, Janet Jackson, Diana Ross, Tina Turner, and Bjork, among them. A major-label contract with Mercury resulted in the 1994 single "In De Ghetto," a reasonable club hit, and Morales' debut album, The Program. He's also a top-flight DJ, known for pushing a sound much harder than that found on his own remixes. Not just a DJ, Morales owns one nightclub, Stereo located in Montreal (Canada). Morales is also resident at his own club, well known for his 16-hour sets at Stereo's "La Vie en Stereo", taking place on the last Saturday of each month. In addition to his music career, Morales has served as a model for Italian clothing manufacturer Iceberg Jeans. Dance to his website at: www.davidmorales.net

2008-11-01T10:14:00.000-07:00

Gunther Quinte

After Catullus

"Dawn broke down.

"I passed the elements all in a line,

The tiresome moment,

A crisis shaped like a lion's tooth,

My mistress in Groucho Marx glasses.

A dense market, nothing new.

Lender, bender.

Gapacity

"I tasted blood on your cheek."

Omphalos in the distance,
or an ocean of paste.

The land is pocked fiddle,
or Crimean grasses.

Sue the bed.

Aphasiac

"The language fell apart in my hands."

Shoulder of water,
shoulder of glass,
shoulder of earth,
shoulder of flesh.

Mullions on mullions,
diaphanous breadstick army.

I'm off this grid and onto another.

The Rexwroth Leaf

"This hill is in perpetual decline."

Eyelets in a delta,
we measure arms in feet.

The burghers invoke themselves,
crystal chips on concrete plates.

Touch me once or twice,
literal mantle.

I'll be here all month.

Finders Feel

collapse, you've been granted
a cluster or two, thanks
built into the pavement

if you could smell the person,
hear the compressor, the escalator,
the negotiating casters

comfort leaves the chair

thanks built into the cheek

-all poems gathered from his blog, Gunther’s Block

2008-11-01T10:07:00.000-07:00

Pat Paulk

Even Though

i woke up this morning
with my bones melting
pooling in the soles of my feet

i squished
when i walked to the bathroom
sloshed when i stopped
yeah though i walk
through the valley
of the shadow …

I still fear!
leaving puddle-prints
of skeletal slush

Light One Up

Are stars the flickering tips of cigarettes
being smoked by fallen angels that never sleep?
The sun, a fat smelly stogie burning down
to the last puff this world will ever know?

Paper rolling postulation?
Unfiltered thoughts of fantasy?

At the very least a musing
lighting up a smoke of imagination.

Ashes Of Ghosts

Words can be empty
even when full.

You can tie them together
like garlic in panty hose,

hang them from
the toe of a lost poet’s dream;

they’re still just words,
empty when full,
ashes of ghosts howling
in the period after goodbye.

Something I Said

Words fall,
like soldiers on a field
of someone else’s choosing,

fatally woundedin the trigger pull
of sound proof ears.

Last One Out Lock The Door

Death is like a door in a room.
We paint over it, even the knob,
so, it’s inconspicuous as can be.
If we can’t see the handle
we surely won’t open it by mistake.

We can nail boards from jamb to jamb,
add sophisticated locks that require a key,
a combination, and a dead bolt with hardened steel.
Security measures make us feel safe, except
in the pit of our stomach we know
it opens from the other side, locked or unlocked.

-all poems gathered from his blog, Poetry In A Garden Of Fire

2008-11-01T09:54:00.000-07:00

Contributors Biographies

Ariel Gordon: she is a Winnipeg-based writer and editor. Her poetry has recently appeared in PRISM International, The Fieldstone Review, and Prairie Fire. She is a regular contributor to the Winnipeg Free Press' Books Section. She lives in Canada and has a blog at: http://janedayreader.blogspot.com

Trevor Joyce: he co-founded New Writers' Press in Dublin with Michael Smith. He has three collections of poetry, with the first dream of fire they hunt the cold (Shearsman in 2001), Courts of Air and Earth (Shearsman in 2006) and What's in Store (The Gig in 2007). He is also the co-founder and director of the SoundEye Festival in 1997 and is a Fulbright Scholar and a member of Aosdana. from Ana was written with the help of a fellowship from the Ballinglen Arts Foundation. Visit his website at: www.soundeye.org/trevorjoyce

Deborah Vatcher: she is a graduate of Binghamton University where she majored in Biology and music. She received a medical degree from the University of Massachusetts. She has written poetry sporadically since her undergraduate years. However since her medical career has been interrupted by illness, she has been writing more in earnest. Some of her poems have appeared in the journals Fetishes, The Sow's Ear Poetry Review, and The Rio Grande Review. Her poems also have been published in the online literary magazines Best Poem, Flutter and elsewhere. She lives in America’s Northwest. Visit her blog at: http://snakeinthebasement.wordpress.com

Sigfrid Lopez: he says he can’t remember a time he did not like photography, even though after several years behind the lens it still remains a hobby. He creations imagines in both vivid color and B&W. One of his photographs has been printed into a poster and can be purchased at an online art print and framing store. He has a wide variety of motifs but is partial to doors, windows, lamplights and neon signs. He has traveled extensively and resides in Barcelona, Spain. You can find his work at: http://photo.net/photodb/user?user_id=567358

Scott Glassman: he is the author of five chapbooks Exertions (Cy Gist Press, 2006), Surface Tension (Dusie, 2006) with Mackenzie Carignan, Identity Crisis (Dusie, 2006), G (self-published, 2006) with Leonard Gontarek, and A Field of White Violets (self-published, 2006). His poems have appeared in many print and online journals, including Iowa Review, CutBank, 580 Split, Sentence, Marginalia, eratio, The Cortland Review, and Shampoo. He lives in South Jersey with his wife and works in the medical education field. Visit his website at: http://scottglassman.blogspot.com

Letitia Trent: she is a poet & prose writer with a passion for experimental/post-avant poetry. When she is not writing she bakes, knits, and does yoga. Her poems have appeared in MiPOesias Magazine, 42 opus, IPC, NOO Journal, Shampoo, and elsewhere. She is the co-edit a literary journal, 21 Stars Review, and live in Brattleboro Vermont with my husband, Z, and my cat, Cheeto. Visit her blog at: http://letitiatrent.blogspot.com

Paula Hackett: she is a poet and lyricist who left school at the age of 14 to begin writing poetry. She attended San Francisco State University where she studied under John Beecher, Angela Davis, and Grover Sales. As a lyricist she has worked with her brother John.Together, they have collaborated with some of the greatest composers of our time, including Teddy Edwards, John Handy, Max Roach, Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson, and Cedar Walton. “Roulette“, a CD of her poetry with pianist Rudi Wongozi, was released in 2007. She resides in Berkeley, CA. Visit her website at: www.paulahackett.com

Karen Hollingsworth: she says it has been a long and winding road with many detours becoming a painter. Becoming a nurse in my early twenties took her down a different path for many years, but helped her become a better painter, as well as a better person. When she finally decided to pursue art as a career, her first ambition was to paint portraits, attaining success in this area. But she realized sometimes she enjoyed painting the backgrounds, as much as the people. And that is what led her to paint what I'm doing now, RoomScapes and WindowScapes. Her work has appeared in over a dozen exhibitions, many in the Atlanta area where her and her artist husband James live. Visit her website at: http://web.mac.com/hoillingsworthjames/karenart/kIndex.html

Gunter Quinte: he calls himself a “humble poet”. His poetry has appeared in Can We Have Our Ball Back?, Gult Cult and elsewhere. His favorite book is Don Quixote. He works in a job the business services and resides in Los Angeles, California. Find out more about him and his published work at his blog: http://gunterquinte.blogspot.com

Pat Paulk: he began writing poetry copiously in 1968 while still in high school in his coastal Georgia community of Brunswick. Over the years his poetry has appeared in numerous ezines, including Autumn Leaves, Poetic Voices, The Sidewalk's End, WAH, Autumn Leaves, Banks Of The Little Miami. He works in the construction industry and resides in Atlanta, Ga. with his fianceé, and a black cat in need of exorcism. You can find more of his poetry at his oddly titled blog: http://laughingghosts.blogspot.com

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 Dec. 1st. Copyright 2008 by Maurice Oliver. All Rights Reserved.

Visit my eclectic blog: http://www.copyat5.blogspot.com/
tutoring blog: http://www.miceintheclassroom.blogspot.com
And music blog: http://www.medleymakersant.blogspot.com/

2008-10-01T08:59:00.000-07:00

Issue Twenty Two

2008-10-01T08:57:00.000-07:00

2008-10-01T08:56:00.000-07:00

Editor's Note:

Welcome to Issue Twenty Two of CSR! By now, you regular readers know my baby likes marching dodos and hates the smell of pipe tobacco. It craves passion fruit and makes cute little sounds when I get the hic-cups. Baby has an uncanny ability to turn the words of poets into deserted sand dunes with a vast cystral blue sky. Issue Twenty Two is no exception. This month is filled with self-hypnotized photographs, along with mossing ground art. Add to that, a group of stunning poets, an intriguing music maker and one magical book review and you've got the possibility of a pioson ivy infection. Trust me, when you finish this issue you'll feel like the inside of a fumigation suit. Or he only shoveled compost on weekends. Either way, this issue will highjack your interest with delights seldom found in cashews. So forget about your unsightly liposuction surgery scares and get busy...

2008-10-01T08:53:00.000-07:00

CSR: Issue Twenty Two Contributors/Contents

Debbie Shinskie

Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore

Rethabile Masilo

Rahpel Lopez

AnnMarie Eldon

Kelli Russell Agodon

Kay Powers

About Art - Out Of Order

Marius Cousin

Book Review

About Music - Tomasz Stanko Quartet

Jen Crawford

Brad Buchanan

2008-10-01T08:51:00.001-07:00

Debbie Shinskie

Missing Dad

i don’t want to wear
your flannel shirt;
i don’t want to use
your tools
to fix what; i want to tear apart.
i don’t want your books
on my shelf,
your chair by my couch.
i want to go home again
to a place that’s whole
to be lost in a clean-washed hug
& to know that everything is alright.
the fragment you left behind
hurt me inside
as my puzzle becomes less whole,
i want to go home.

need

man by the side of the road
in a posture of prayer
begging me to enter
into the ugliness of my surplus
and see
what i truly need
will fit in one bag
and my heart

seeing

surface of smooth
that i wear over the fear-
do not be fooled
by the soul-light
that you see;
for i too
know a deep pain.
do not turn away,
the place that hurts
is comforted
not by words but by a look that connects;
we are not alone
& that is why
the spark glows.

The Way

the rule does not bend
i do
the call I can not ignore
resounds
& so I turn the corner

Heights

i did fly with you
on an upward draft of love
to realms of unknown

2008-10-01T08:48:00.000-07:00

Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore

The Drunken Soldier

The drunken soldier broke downthe wrong door
Inside was a circle of saintslifted off the ground
To the sound of gunfirea really supernal yellow light
shone round them
His jaw dropped
and his heart stopped
In the dark of the room
he saw his place
At the cost of so much blood
so little decency
The saints admitted him
to their convocation
The rest of the world went
dizzily into the background
The rest of the war popped in his
ears like distant fireworks
The young soldier
lifted off the ground
Suddenly his age didn’t prevent him
from becoming ancient
The hearts in that room
were made of bronze androyal copper
In their burnished surfacesthe Face of God shone resplendently
The drunken soldierbroke down the wrong door
Inside was a family of saintshuddled together
In the death of decencyso much bloodshed
The circle of saintsadmitted him to their company
The drunken soldierbroke down the wrong door
Inside theybroke bread

Ladders

Some ladders go up some laddersgo down
It’s true! Of course all ladders intrinsicallygo both ways
both up and downthough we prop one up to climb out of
somewhere orput one down to climb down into somewhere
But in both cases we’d climb back down orback up unless we can keep
going at the level we’ve climbed up ordown to without needing to return
The tall wind-blasted fairy-castle caves atCapadoccia in Turkey have ladders going way up
then precariously down
We had to climb down to prophet Daniel’s
supposed tomb on Prophet Daniel Street in Alexandria
then had to clamber precariously up
It all depends where we begindown or up and where we need to go
up or down
Oh and take a ladder when you leave this poemwould you?
Climb up there and see ifanyone’s listening?

Pewter Moonlight

Old men are writing poemsby pewter moonlight
They live in different parts of the worldbut their pen unites them
Their blood is as thin as riversafter winter floods and thespringtime dries them
Each of them writes his odeto pewter moonlight
Their eyes ache from peering deepinto lamplight
They’ve seen the comings and goingsand sheep led to slaughter
The night no longer holds anyterrors for them
One ray of moonlight from the windowis enough to save them
The Holocaust is over and slavery andcries of despair
New chains are on their waywith clanking regularity
Humankind often finds its better angelsdisposable
Old men are writing poemson rickety tables
Chrysanthemums wither in thevases before they are done
Everything in reality takes placeby pewter moonlight
The sound of their pen scratchis enough to heal the world

Mouse Feet

Teeny-tiny mouse feet run along my ceilingin rapidly fluttery pitty-pats
God’s dimension is so vast all theticking clocks face sideways
There’s a sound in the universe so pureonly one of us can hear it
Way at the end therethat silhouette of someone
standing against the moon
When you lift pen to paper
the savannah floods with light
If we’re only visiting for a short time
will our echoes elongate behind us?
There’s a shack blown down by the wind
all its nails shrieking
When the scrolls are unrolled
everything will come clear
Will we be there?
(There go those mouse feet again above me
Is he in such a hurryto find my mousetrap?
If he pokes far enough inhe won’t be able to get out
I let them loose in the woodsat the end of our street
Little tiny creatureswith delicate finger-and-toe nailed feet)

Lake On A Hill

Is a lake on a hill closer to God than alake on a plain with its
bright reflective waters?
Is the dial on the watch of a saintcloser to true time than the
dials of the rest of us?
Is the night longer or shorter forone who believes or one who disbelieves
that at the farthest end of it a glorious oasis arises?
(Slender palm trees there bend and tremble in thesweetest wind)
Is the voice of the Belovedlicked inside our ears
clearer than our own voice and thevoices of others on the outside?
Is outside any different frominside in God’s Eyes?

-all from The Fire Eater’s Lunchbreak / Tall Tales in Short Takes, in progress

2008-10-01T08:36:00.000-07:00

Rethabile Masilo

The Stones Of Mohokare

We picked flint for its flatness
and curled thumb and forefinger round it,
then bent at the waist to almost touch
the yellow carpet of shoeshoe blossom
covering most of the moist turf with colouring,
and flicked from the wrist. The trick was
to send the stone flying on the water’s surface
at some angle from nought to forty-five,
like the prow of a proud ship,
and unbend only after releasing the stone,
seeing it hover like a craft on a bumpy sea
to stop and anchor at port on the OFS side of the river
that separates our two countries, and fattens
the land that is boundary, as south-west it flows,
to Bethulie and the ocean, where all life goes.
Sometimes we swam across it, late in summer,
when the white farmer’s trees were so heavy
with peach and appelkoos that their fronds
dusted the ground like farm hands,
the deep brick of the fruit telling us
which tree was ripe; or, pulled by a fragrance
that sometimes hit as we walked behind
from where a breeze was coming across, we knew.
We broke whole branches off and used them
as rafts on the way back, starting to eat
on the run, in the mid-river sun.
The beet-faced farmer always burst from his huis
in anger, and trained a rifle on us, as we made off
into the river with the loot. But no shot ever came.
Maybe he had no faith in apartheid. Perhaps
the theft and hover-crafts linked our worlds,
our peoples, living the destiny of the river.

For Bui Thi Kim Thanh

Men entered her home,
took her in a trunk
to the clinic of Biên Hòa.
That same day it rained.
The god of rain got very drunk.

Men entered her home,
took her in a trunk
past the Dông Nai valley
filled with war junk.
Out there, the rain nicks
bark and bast away.

Men entered her home,
took her in a trunk
to the clinic of Biên Hòa
that same day.

Corn rows & mealie silk

Why do you suffer the look of my eyes
with such intent/ does their brutal blue

inspire you somehow? Why do you
flaunt the curves of your brown body

to the whip of my stare/ does it make you
a star? What about your mind whose soul,

like the singing wind, can never be
possessed? Beauty is no excuse for love/

with crimson and mocha let’s fashion this
union, let's bond in a mosaic ampersand/

let my white sea trap the isles of your eyes,
and your sun’s vitamin thaw these polar caps

about me/ let’s do it now, feeding from
one another, whatever may come.

My father’s killers

They take to the road at midnight, and turn
Toward land that by right we plough and turn.

Their dark convoy passes white-washed houses.
A brake light: the bakkies slow down, and turn.

They park at right angles to the street,
Light the yard up, it's daddy’s day and turn.

They have come on a crisp September night
To blight us, make our season change and turn.

The moon shimmers its flashlight on a blade
While, from a height, the planets spin and turn.

Blood River Train

When time works against us
and weighs at the heartsome
where in a foreign land,
night turns to day, and
the fashion in shop windows
I pass on my way from work
into djellabas, the smell
of restaurants into kuskus
on market day,
hands all out, stretched
to acknowledge this gift
of walking in the shadow
of African people,
with their fear of anchored boats
on coastal fronts. History
is in the present. On
a young night that is day
I go inland where spear battles musket,
and I join in the fight on the river
that filled with blood, our phagocyte
impi sieging their laager in anger.
On the metro of the morning,
Le Monde in my hands and
work on my mind, there’s always
a part of Africa that yearns
for me, for my presence, my flesh,
beyond the clatter of the train
needling underneath the capital
into the reconciliation of our lifetime,
before the evening of my days.

-all poems previously published in blog Poefrika

2008-10-01T08:34:00.000-07:00

Photography by Raphel Lopez

2008-10-01T08:28:00.001-07:00

2008-10-01T07:38:00.000-07:00

AnnMarie Eldon

shee

I catch y/our strip there the catspew-fear: are
disremembered remains sheer and
fever-arreared piloerected
crawl-splayed double-
trailed to dribble
trace y/our: our
embrace proclivities
wall pawpad marked: its
pee-mad sprails claim the night
inspection where: you squaited: in
the pitch eves’ whitespace sprotted: a
past a she-enemy reaffirms
her traits psychobladdering
her previous form
her caulbore
domesticonstraints cojoins
four by four territorial want: of
more and more spored: she
deplores all y/our: your
she she grows screamical
demoniacal history
eventual history
down-
fall
her arreptitious shit tip worn: a
well walked by
morning

sloff

y/our cast-trail along my weave dredge: I
fasten eyes for slaverslime
for speculate
my greige goods are spoken to soft
drapes musktainted and
use trained: I
dewgland: I
sleetch the tipglide trail cover
splayed: y/our
settle fingers dither up the splatter
way: y/our hands paying residue
tax between my
creases my heave a lax
froth my Eve-shame sapropel: we
shudder the hessian coarse
grain to surrender
stains belted for luck: I
stuffle y/our amethyst marriage apron on
the piddle hook paddle the rug sedge
to dry rag surrender: I
pack pattern,
huddle: we
y/our risk smile
fray at the muck edges: I
trudge our lesser
gain
y/our arms meticulous
in much

sapt

my scather in the sapwood: I
tear my pissbasque on
hornbeam pricks: t/his
tumbledung click reminds
scumber jacks scatter along y/our
fuckwish lines after: my footf
alls: I stall to spittle binds
more: starborn stallage
eft my knee voids
flattened by scabfeud
rewelled by meloid rub-burn spoils
foiled the: night wants you in me: I
puer in the fevertree shadow: I
empty me of
matter for our rectal
stecoraceous hallow spree
gutteral against incense cedars
spreadfruits shagbarks slitherleaf trees
swallows silenced as if by a neverdawn swear: forever
and more whatever is mine is yours a
shudder scream-promise follows a
slippery elm trumps its boilulcer
glutinsinuous grueltrunk
splinter balm and: I
am breast-hurt,
lopped in y/our
sterquilinious
cumcourt
splatter

sleyece

I seek the finthin slit-in the immense
scarification edge stigmatted upon
you like a mutated birth scar
strung glamorous and
pearly between
precum drops
firsted before
fist and twist: I
leaking the fingercarve
movement deft and sure-of-self
rim linked south from shoulder border
west to recommence a graphite rose bluemadder
wander-touch zenned for y/our
nether blubber then-scratch: I
slaughter tendrilly splays
cockchafey sudden
bloom anchors: a
tattoo-taste spit
lunges my
mouthway: I
bite y/our dermis-splint buff
feel-permeable covering away. Flense
and y/our denizened sweetcells
from written to
truffle come
flake to my
tongue-flay, leached ache-scum
to jaw could not have
gone more meat
today

op

I have had my
eyes sliced

I am used to
being these two

persons one sees
one cannot cry bleeds

lids down the
long after the cheekbones

2008-10-01T07:17:00.000-07:00

Kelli Russell Agodon

Of A Forgotten Sea

Sometimes, I forget the sun
sinking into ocean.
Desert is only a handful of sand
held by my daughter.
In her palm,
she holds small creatures,
tracks an ant, a flea
moving over each grain.
She brings them to places
she thinks are safe:
an island of driftwood,
the knot of a blackberry bush,
a continent of grass.
Fire ants carried on sticks,
potato bugs scooped
into the crease of a newspaper.
She tries to help them
before the patterns of tides
reach their lives.
She knows about families
who fold together like hands,
a horizon of tanks moving forward.
Here war is only newsprint.
How easy it is not to think about it
as we sleep beneath our quiet sky,
slip ourselves into foam, neglectful
waves appearing endless.

The Next Poem

seldom satisfies. Its the poem before that you
fell for, the one where you repeat the same lines
for weeks, keep going back to its page
for quick nuzzles or maybe the whole shebang
over and over until you aren’t sure if your hands
hold the book of if the poem is carrying you
to the bedroom, supporting your head as you rest
cheek against pillow. This is the poem
you don’t care that everyone knows you are seeing.
The one you proudly bring to social gatherings,
heck, even to family reunions with your strange
Aunt Sylvia who’s never liked any of your dates
and it doesn’t matter since you and the poem
will run off together before pie is served.
This is the poem you think about when the poet
who’s reading clutches note cards, keeps mentioning
hydrangeas, they way father drank too much,
something about origami, moths or egrets.
This is the poem you wait for as bus stops,
at places you once frequented together hoping
it will drop by, say your name across a crowded
restaurant and you will turn, spill your drink
when you see it again, how you remember why
you fell for it the moment it begins to speak.

Vacationing With Sylvia Plath

Maybe I should have come alone.
Maybe if the clouds didn’t resemble
tombstones and I had brought something
more upbeat to read
the ocean wouldn’t seem so final
an ongoing thought carried to shore
then taken away,
washing the same green sock
over and over again.
Maybe if I was taking medication
or at least St. Johns Wort,
maybe if I had a chocolate bar
to eat between breakdowns
the seagulls cry would be more of a sigh
and the waves wouldn’t seem so blue.
Maybe a lot of things. Maybe
if I could slip into Sylvias mind,
sort out the spices in her spice rack,
alphabetize them and dust them off.
Maybe then Id understand how
its the little things that pull you under.

What Comes After Because

Because there are too many pages in novels
we use books to hold open our apartment window,
balance the leg of a wobbly couch. Because squirrels
in city parks become so attached to humans, they disregard
personal space, climb my leg to reach the stale pita bread
I hold at my side. Because we never walk the long way
and always try to find shortcuts, we miss out on seeing
the old cork tree in the middle of Seattle, the one
you pass after leaving the art museum, three blocks before
The Lusty Lady. Because we look away from the man
in the street who needs our help, we will carry his face
on the back of our eyelids, the heavy thud when he fell
against cement, the sound of our footsteps obscured
by sirens.

After Hearing A Woman Say The Heart Is The
Same Size As An Apple

I.

I begin to consider which one I keep in my chest.
A small pumping Fuji or Bailey Sweet.
I am part pie, part fritter, part turnover
in bed and listen to the thump thump thump of an Empire,
the whisper of Paula Red, the morning yawn of Sunrise.

II.

When I say I love you I taste cinnamon,
sugar, my coated center beating
again. Never bitter, I toss the green ones
to Adam, halve another to find a star.
O sweet apple of my
unpeeling, pale white
skin appearing in your hands.

III.

My mother picked the low ones from trees
planted the year I was born.
Every harvest, carrying ribs
of baskets to the orchard, we gathered for hours
and hours, my hands red, but I continued,
nothing more than a fist opening and closing.

-all poems previously published in The Alsop Review

2008-10-01T07:08:00.000-07:00

Kay Powers

on the corner of Cotuit and Pimlico Pond Road

eight twentysomethings walk
uncoupled and sober
around the corner towards the lake

where they discuss the likely hood
of leeches, seamonsters and cereal killers

it's 12am and windy, but the water is warm
and their feet find the slippery rocks
a worthy challenge against balance

their laghter can be heard across the lake
in the neighboring town

by two retired marines
fishing off the side of a dock
remembering what it was like

at twentysomething and single

in the Canterbury Plaza

four leaf clovers grow in excess
behind the local pizza place

two teenagers make out
in the back seat of an accord

as lightning strikes the light post
beside them

and the clovers are nourished
by another summer shower

on Great Neck Road

a young man falls in love
with the busty brown beauty

behind the farm stand

selling local fruits and vegetables
she touches your hand when she hands you your change

and cradles each vegetable
with the compassion of a mother

who watches her first born
ride away on a big yellow bus on the first day of school

Reoccurring

the bandwidth of neighbors around
an illegal fire. baking in the hidden
life of a forest. seeking kin.

an anthem or march
for disunityfor class structure and servitude.
we sing at different volumes. but we all sing.

in our own tents, pitched with pegs
of different metal make,
we consider ourselves resolute and beautiful.

like poets. writing about blossoms
and death, within the same clumsy stanza.

left out

she dreamt of meeting him
in a grocery store

debating over a tea choice
the perfect bag of chai

or a blend of green and white
leaves embedded in silk

a blend of two colors
in a bed of cotton and down

an ode to two 17 year cicadas

you flew into my car

i thought you were a bird

cicada a, chip chirping away
in the back seat of my malibu

cicada b, catching the breeze
you strode up my arm, ambitious

i took you both to starbucks, even though
you don't like coffee

2008-10-01T07:03:00.000-07:00

About Art - Out Of Order

“Out of Order” is an outdoor artwork designed by David Mach in 1989. It is made out of twelve telephone boxes, first one upright, the rest gradually falling over like dominoes. The last upright one should have a working telephone providing a constant public performance with a highly visible landmark for Kingston upon Thames and was commissioned by the Royal Borough of Kingston-upon-Thames. The telephone boxes are not just a parody of artists minimal boxes they also have a huge public recognition factor.

The art consist of the telephone boxes, steel, concrete and measures 304.8cm x 609.6cm x 1524cm. It is one of the earliest works of Mach, a Royal Academician and a leading figure in contemporary "site specific sculpture". His other work includes the Flying Scotsman in Northumberland and the huge photomontage in the Millennium Dome's Self- Portrait Zone.

Residents, however, have described Out of Order as an eyesore. Pat Arnold, who worked for BT when the work was constructed, thought the company had piled them up to cart off to the dump. "Then I heard that they were supposed to be a work of art. I couldn't believe my eyes. It's ridiculous to call a heap of old boxes an artwork," she said.

David Mach (born 20 March 1956) is a Scottish sculptor who studied at the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, Dundee from 1974 to 1979 and subsequently at the Royal College of Art, London from 1979 to 1982. He became a part-time lecturer in the Sculpture School, Kingston University from 1982 to 1993 and he was a lecturer at the Contemporary Art Summer School, Kitakyushu, Japan from 1987 to 1991. He has been Visiting Professor at the Sculpture Department, Edinburgh College of Art since 1999 and in 2000 was appointed Professor of Sculpture at the Royal Academy Schools, London. Find out more about the artist and his work at: www.davidmach.com

2008-10-01T07:02:00.000-07:00

Artwork by Marius Cousin

2008-10-01T06:54:00.000-07:00

2008-10-01T06:49:00.000-07:00

About Books:

Title: What Feed Us

Author: Diane Lockward

Description: In these sparkling poems, Diane Lockward takes life as it comes and finds nourishment in it all: succulence of the peach, redolence of the pear, the "green grape of sorrow." I love these poems for their craft, sensuality and energy. Like high-wire acts of language and imagination, they almost leap in the air and come down again on the wire, balancing between witty and dark, personal and invented, idea and emotion. ---Patricia Fargnoli Product

Details:Printed: 100 pp, 9 x 5.9 inches

ISBN: 1893239578

Language: English

Country: USA

Publisher's Link: http://www.windpub.com

2008-10-01T06:47:00.000-07:00

About Music - Tomasz Stanko Quartet

Tomasz Stanko (born 11 July 1942 in Rzeszów) is a renowned Polish jazz trumpet player, composer, and pioneer of the jazz avant-garde.In the 1960s he was the leader of the quartet Jazz Darings, and later played in Trzaskowski’s and Krzysztof Komeda’s bands. Today he is at the forefront of international contemporary jazz trumpetism, and holds a status in international jazz circles similar to where Miles Davis was in the seventies.

He is one of ECM's leading jazz recording artists, drawing large concert audiences in Europe and the USA. For two years in a row (2004 and 2005) Tomasz Stanko has won the Australian Bell Jazz Award for the best international album of the year. Stanko's latest recording Lontano (ECM 2006) features three of Poland's finest young jazz musicians, Marcin Wasilewski, Slawomir Kurkiewicz and Michael Miskiewicz, with whom he regularly performs and tours around the world.

Tomasz Stanko has been ranking high in the 2005 and 2007 Downbeat Annual International critics polls’ Rising Star Acoustic Group..In the four years since the quartet's much-loved ECM debut album Soul of Things (2003), both the trumpeter and his young band have continued to make their mark. Many miles of touring, on both sides of the Atlantic, have honed their already exceptional group understanding.

Their 2nd album (Suspended Night released May 2004) builds upon the conceptual framework established by its predecessor. In September’06 Lontano was released complementing the recording triology of the present Stanko Quartet. In the wake of Soul of Things, Stanko won the first European Jazz Prize, a major new award initiated by the Austrian Government and the City of Vienna. Now, in his 60s, he still remains a fascinating, mysterious, pioneer of a unique kind of east European jazz independence. Find out more at his website: www.tomaszstanko.com

2008-10-01T06:27:00.000-07:00

Jen Crawford

Dear Eveline (Draft)

dear eveline,

the tern skims
torn silver

then bloom, deep in the glass.
a slack sail, a turn –
could be coral if I reached could be
stone dead in seconds,
a balloon palely rising

to morbidity, in your last
a weakness. snake mouth
under. the drag-handed clatter
through secrets, jewelbox
open, anchor rope
to sifting & the shadow eye ship

drifts behind

thought you were
a lantern, sister, & after all
these years sunning
in tourmaline lawns you flick
the light away, brush cold
my hand, refract

my heart
shallow-hooked in sand

red folds sharp
on approach

through brittle chambers
an eel slip –

once is enough.
with the levante wind
we turn for home.

All Other Lands Are Cyclones

concrete bus-stop in the snow.
inside,
a ribbon, fluttering.
a hand.

I came the long way
round to this.
took a long time

for the windows to be
just pictures, slabs of
a glowing blue
and a swallowing blue

for the wind to be a kind of a man, tall,
frenetic, dancing close to the walls
not letting go between tunes
and somewhere else, a wife

who cries out
when you reach to touch
her beautiful diamantes
before she understands.

it took me a long time to be sleepy
although I was so tired.

under the hand
I’m very small.

Found Poem

axiomatic

eliminating
handling wastes

eliminating
inspection

eliminating
non-value
adding tasks

eliminating
temporary storage

enhancing
handling

making
process error-
proof

automating
wherever
possible

storing in
point of use

minimizing
movement

minimizing
transfer volume

modifying
layout

maximizing load
of each carrier

Isme Draft
isme

is what you do to m
i run
five sluburbs home

leave up

mys elf
in a diction
a tree veiny sky
scraped gardien angles
obliqued mi ca lines
lickd tulaminate frm
starryear to
el bown
toe

gone flat
towen home

hewait ill animate
if you j
isme

just ism e

out ni
beg in

---

not from the rosie series

Step Six

oh atom ant
what you nibbled apart

now celestial – mm, ( ( ( ( ( (
a floating alignment

2008-10-01T06:16:00.000-07:00

Brad Buchanan

Pandora's Language

Her favorite objects are also her favorite
subjects, so she has learned them well:
box, birdie, fish, and bubble;
shoe, hat, apple and ball.

She bounces the box and unlaces the bubble,
wears the fish and chirps at the apple,
picks the birdie from a tree,
watches the hat swim in the sea,
bursts the shoe with a poking finger
closes the ball at the sign of danger—
she needs better words or a different world;
I can't tell which, because I'm old.

Her favorite subjects must renew
themselves in objects like clothes or clocks:
ball, hat, apple, and shoe,
bubble, fish, birdie, and box.

The Humans on Hallowe’en

We light three candles, put a bad face on
our lunkhead pumpkin, scoop out his brains
right back into his skull
with the clumsy end of our carving skill...

Ready to take the easy way out
before the tricksters expected at eight,
treating them to a handful of what-
ever chocolates they want to grab,

we’re scary good at playing the really
hospitable couple; we spring at the shuffle
of feet on the doorstep, chuckle at greed
and tolerate ingratitude.

In the lull between each demand
for candy, we sit around at loose ends,
emptying pockets of Snickers and change,
watching the street for the lurching return

of goblins, demons, pro wrestling fans...
We’re lonely for ghosts, peering out at the moon,
and our greatest fear is that no one will come
to haunt this undisguised night we call home...

Icarus, from the Breakfast Nook

Light stays aloft, but illuminated
objects fall to us to be known.
A leaf is briefly sustained, on its slow,
erratic flight, as if flaming with grace
on its way to the damned. So we come to grief—
ablaze with amazement, weighed down by the looks
of expectant mourners and envious mothers
who see in their children’s bright eyes the distant
reflections of suns that desired and died
in a life-giving moment, afire, unaware.

The Fighting Horses

One, embraced by the other, nips
a throatlatch taut, its stifles flexed
with fetlocks cocked at pointed hips
and straining neck. The movement vexed,
the horses part and prance, rear back
on hock and tendon, spring from croup
to cannon, curvet to outflank
the other barreling beast. Hooves scrape
on shoulders, pummel pasterns stretched
with whinnying, flail to winnow blown manes
bravely, fight free. Forever unhitched,
they canter back blamelessly, limping and game,
to live together beyond human terms,
their bodies gone awkward: hostile yet disarmed.

The Meadowlarks

Puppies scrambled across your face—
I couldn’t stop them, though I was close
and clinging still more tightly to you.
The brush of our hands, considered truly,
contained a kiss; there was holy urgency
in our touches in the back of a car.
We were first thrown together as others drove
that dreadful and delightful road
to the merciful meadow. We lay in grooved
oblivion—your dark hair in my lungs
waiting for those to whom we owed
our love to forgive that debt and leave.
And then the tiny, almost fluttering
earthbound butterflies—the puppies, caressing
your absent face with faint paws—velvet
vermin cuckolding me before
I had ever known such open air,
such an unexpected, dreamlike lark
whose wings folded up even as they took flight.

(Fire away, Doctor Freud.)

2008-10-01T06:02:00.000-07:00

Contributors Biographies

Debbie Shinskie : she has been having fun with poetry ever since she was a child, when she began writing poetry on scraps of paper and even on napkins at dinner time. Last summer she finally gathered the bits and pieces together and started a blog with the results ~~ Write Away is a blend of her poetry, old and new. She now has three blogs where she writes and has fun with images taken with her digital camera…one with life anecdotes, one for her dogs, and one with her photography. She lives on the coast of North Carolina. Visit her blog at: http://scriverepoesie.blogspot.com

Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore: he was born in Oakland, California in 1940. His first book of poems, Dawn Visions, was published in 1964. He became a Muslim in 1970, he took the name Abd al-Hayy, and began traveling extensively in Europe and North Africa. After a brief period of renouncing writing in all forms he resumed the art form and has published several collections of poetry, including two collections of prose over the years. He has appeared in such magazines as Zyzzva, the City Lights Review, and The Nation and has read his poetry to 40,000 people at the United Nations in New York at a rally for the people of Bosnia during that war. He continues to give many public readings during the year, often accompanying himself on specially tuned zithers. He has lived in Philadelphia since 1990. Find more of his work at: www.danielmoorepoetry.com

Rethabile Masilo: his work has appeared in Other Voices Poetry, Spokes Poetry, Bolts of Silk, Canopic Jar, and elsewhere. He is from Lesotho. He has lived there and in the United States, but now lives in France with his wife and two children. He enjoys reading and writing poetry, cooking, playing football (the one with the round ball) and watching suspense films. He co-edits a poetry and fiction e-zine Canopic Jar and is preparing a manuscript for the end of 2008 or the beginning of 2009. Visit his blog at: www.poefrika.blogspot.com

Raphel Lopez: he is a high school teacher who was not raised to pursuit photography as a profession or even a hobby. But he feels this art form enables him to confirm his role as one of the world’s observers, in an intimate and personal way. The sunflower motif is one of many he has and perhaps is his favorite, traveling to Italy, Spain and France in search of their images. He will be publishing a book on the subject this Fall at Blurb.com. He lives in the New York City area. See more of his motifs at his website: www.photo.net/photos/raphaellopez

AnnMarie Eldon: she is an identical twin who was born in the once industrialized city of Birmingham in England where she was taught by her grandmother to recite the alphabet backwards when she was three. She stills juggles several persona interiorae but it has not prevented her from having her work published in numerous literary sites including 5 Trope, Arabesques, Balzevox, Moria, Niederngasse, and Stirring. She lives within the mediocrity of a picturesque Oxfordshire market town. You’ll find more of her poetry at her blog: http://annmarieeldon.blogspot.com

Kelli Russell Agodon: she is the author of Geography, winner of the 2003 Floating Bridge Press Chapbook Prize. Her poems have appeared in the North American Review, Seattle Review, Crab Creek Review, Calyx, Rattapallax, River Oak Review, Parnassus, Byline, blink, the print version of Poets Against the War edited by Sam Hamill (Nation Books) and other national literary journals and anthologies. She is a graduate of the University of Washington and lives there in a small seaside community with her husband and daughter. Visit her website at: www.agodon.com

Kay Powers: she says she lives in a quiet house in a quiet neighborhood and likes to watch horror movies with her ex-pat English husband. She loves reading and writing poetry and enjoys collaborating with other poets. Her poems have been published in The Onion Union, Moria, H_ngm_n and elsewhere. She would like to one day begin her own ezine. She lives with two cats in a small town in Massachusetts. Visit her blog at: http://somethingksty.blogspot.com

Marius Cousin: she is a watercolorist who has been painting since childhood. Her style is to blend a tinge of softness and sensitivity to the motifs of landscapes, nudes, and flowers. She has appeared in several group showing since 1999 and in 2005 had her first solo exhibition. She is a member of the "Société des Aquarellistes Lyonnais", and uses the region of France near her home in Lyon as inspiration, applying delicate touch of a painter to the elaborate sketches she makes beforehand. Find more of her work at: www.marius-cousin.com

Jen Crawford: she sometimes teaches creative writing at a university, sometimes works in a factory or sometimes at other temporary gigs. Her poetry has been published online at literary sites including Foam:e. She administers the literary site Poneme. Her 2000 collection Admissions (Five Islands Press) was short listed for the Anne Elder and Dame Mary Gilmour awards. Her newest collection is called Bad Appendix. Other current pursuits are dancing the tango, playing the ocarina, playing the theremin and pleasing the cat. She resides in Auckland, New Zealand. Visit her blog at: http://blueacres.blogspot.com

Brad Buchanan: he is an amateur gerontologist who grew up in Canada, where he couldn't skate worth a damn and felt marginalized by his dislike of Margaret Atwood. He received a PhD from Standford and after settling down into a life of scholarly exertions decided to write poetry and fiction instead. His now lives in Northern California with his wife Kate (who’s a food and travel writer. His first collection of poems, The Miracle Shirker, recently published by a local press can be purchased at his blog site: http://miraclesshirker.blogspot.com

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 Nov. 1st.

Copyright 2008 by Maurice Oliver. All Rights Reserved.
Visit my eclectic blog: http://www.copyat5.blogspot.com/
tutoring blog: http://www.miceintheclassroom.blogspot.com
And music blog: http://www.medleymakersant.blogspot.com/

2008-09-01T17:54:00.000-07:00

Issue Twenty One

2008-09-01T17:53:00.000-07:00

2008-09-01T17:52:00.000-07:00

Editor's Note:

Welcome to Issue Twenty One of CSR! By now, you regular readers know my baby likes wars that are born limbless and hates klieg lights at the construction site. It craves juicy apples and makes cute little sounds when I get tangled in the seaweed. Baby has an uncanny ability to turn the words of poets into a romantic scene with a smooth jazz background. Issue Twenty One is no exception. This month is filled with wave-proof photographs, along with seeping-glue art. Add to that, a group of stunning poets, an intriguing music maker and one magical book review and you've got the possibility of a bug bed infection. Trust me, when you finish this issue you'll feel like the inside of a fumigation suit. Or he only shoveled compost on weekends. Either way, this issue will highjack your interest with delights seldom found in cashews. So forget about your set of mundane surgical scares and get busy...

2008-09-01T17:50:00.000-07:00

CSR: Issue Twenty One Contributors/Contents

Joseph Harrington

A. E. Stallings

Adam Clay

John Tranter

Kees Terberg

Leonard J. Cirino

Paul Guest

About Art - Spoonbridge And Cherry

Trinity Rivard

Book Review

About Music - Mindi Abair

Rachel Custer

Victoria Chang

2008-09-01T17:40:00.000-07:00

Joseph Harrington

Essay on the Allegorical Uses of Syntax
for B P Nichol (and others)

The capitalization of Gneiss
Exiled from the capital
Capitol the capital of Speedy

Plot more than scheme
Story more than plot
History more read than blue

Poetry being at a dead
End time being til no
One listens to poetry save

Golden crowned sparrow
Spavined fools gold
Arrow downed having

Running while spitting
Pissing altogether winds
Digging remember hind

Objects known by shadow
Play deep reality plow
Down use values fucked

Up rock chuck hawk chalks
Up subject verbs object
To capitalize on plot schemes

Poems than none other is
looks at it when reading
Don’t say jay nay pa stop

An H say

Ice Age Spring Break

When than spring April
draft of age hath
parsed to the root
value of all glaciers,
retreat man far south,
caves of Iraqi Qum
beach of South Padre
longen folk goon wild,
pills grim ages wrack
shiny faces every races
have got a friend in
Coke ’s the real / god
can’t see the folks
beneath the new faces:
breakers make white foam
(“semen of the gods”),
be excellent to each
another party on dudes.

The Same Poem

Like maybe we're all writing it? Like how everybody
points out the word she almost wrote instead? Like
everybody's talking about Cornell boxes? Like
miniaturization would save us? Like homophonic
procedures cured the security pageant? Like excess
for access? Like everyone's unique but me?

Or how you read the sign as "piso mojito" & think
you've drunk too much? Or see the sheets of rain in
Times Sq. & think of Ridley Scott? And can't stop it?
Like it were your poem? This has been going on for
years. Like brevity for bit? Or how everyone grows
young when the old folks give up & go home?

The addictable play of forms - how a logo imparts its
power if you wear it? Like swoop for swoosh? Like your
poem on the ticker, the jumbotron, the crawl? Like
maybe it is, by someone else? Like parapraxis were
the new metonymy? Aw shit I meant parataxis. And?

Personal Poem

Every day I become more like me.
I’m about to be killed, right?

damaged persons never forgive(n) - ?
More on this theme later.

Your money will run out before
your life, making suicide

unnecessary. In the mean time,
don’t touch me I’m radio

activewith a half-ass life
60 million years.

A Blog Hole

Instead of reading and writing blogs, I could be reading and
writing _______. But really, I wonder how much
imagination and thought are funneled
into this form that formerly was
expended on things like
essays, poems,
books, &c. There are
writers who do some of their
best writing for their blogs. And
there are others who read everything
(or appear to do so), including blogs. And
what does happen when nobody can afford the
utility bills any more? The missing link is the link after the last.

-all poems gathered from his blog, Blog of Myselfs

2008-09-01T17:02:00.000-07:00

A. E. Stallings

Explaining an Affinity for Bats

That they are only glimpsed in silhouette,
And seem something else at first—a swallow—
And move like new tunes, difficult to follow,
Staggering towards an obstacle they yet
Avoid in a last-minute pirouette,
Somehow telling solid things from hollow,
Sounding out how high a space, or shallow,
Revising into deepening violet.
That they sing—not the way the songbird sings
(Whose song is rote, to ornament, finesse)—
But travel by a sort of song that rings
True not in utterance, but harkenings,
Who find their way by calling into darkness
To hear their voice bounce off the shape of things.

-first published in Verse Daily

Variations On An Old Standard

Come let us kiss. This cannot last—
Too late is on its way too soon—
And we are going nowhere fast.
Already it is after noon,
That momentary palindrome.
The mid-day hours start to swoon—
Around the corner lurks the gloam.
The sun flies at half-mast, and flags.
The color guard of bees heads home,
Whizzing by in zigs and zags,
Weighed down by the dusty gold
They’ve hoarded in their saddlebags,
All the summer they can hold.
It is too late to be too shy:
The Present tenses, starts to scold—
Tomorrow has no alibi,
And hides its far side like the moon.
The bats inebriate the sky,
And now mosquitoes start to tune
Their tiny violins. I see,
Rising like a grey balloon,
The head that does not look at me,
And in its face, the shadow cast,
The Sea they call Tranquility—
Dry and desolate and vast,
Where all passions flow at last.
Come let us kiss. It’s after noon,
And we are going nowhere fast.

Mornings I Walk Past The First Cemetery Of Athens

Like a widow, every day the grey Dawn comes
To the Proto Nekrotapheío, and sweeps the crumbs
Of Night from tombstones, and the marble busts.
The stone cutter in his workshop contemplates,
Chisel in hand, the blank face of clean slates.
The waitress at the café mops and dusts.
A priest sits at his newspaper and tarries
Over the headlines and obituaries.
Soon, the mourners gather there to drain
The thick black liquid to the bitter grain.
At the Office of Endings, a hunched man taps his thumbs.
Four diggers play a hand of cards to kill
A little time; two withered florists fill
The old foam wreaths with new chrysanthemums.

-both poems first published in New Criterion

Amateur Iconography Resurrection

Jesus is back—he's harvesting the dead.
He's pulling them up out of the dirt like leeks—
By the scruff of the neck, by the wispy hair on the head,
Like bulbs in darkness sallowly starting to grow

From deep down in the earth where the lost things go—
Keys and locks, small change, old hinges, nails.
(That's why the living beseech the dead, who know
Where missing objects lie.) Jesus has a grip

On Adam by the left wrist—he will not slip—
And Eve, by her right. They're groggy and don't understand,
They died so long ago. With trembling lip,
Adam surveys the crowds of new people. And Eve

Looks up the emptiness of her limp left sleeve
For the hand that was unforgiven and is no more,
Ages since withered to dust, and starts to grieve
The sinister loss, recalling the heft in that hand

Of the flesh of the fruit, and the lightness at the core.

-first published in The Atlantic

Ultrasound

What butterfly—
Brain, soul, or both—
Unfurls here, pallid
As a moth?
(Listen, here's
Another ticker,
Counting under
Mine, and quicker.)

In this cave
What flickers fall,
Adumbrated
On the wall?

Spine like beads
Strung on a wire,
Abacus
Of our desire,

Moon-face where
Two shadows rhyme,
Two moving hands
That tell the time.

I am the room
The future owns,
The darkness where
It grows its bones.

-first published in 32 Poems

2008-09-01T16:54:00.000-07:00

Adam Clay

Bad Luck Candlesong

Do what you will with the dirty pictures of your first lover:
The wind can still bang a screen door off its hinges
And simple myths, like mirrors, will continue to bootlick
In the back of your mind. It seems natural to fall in love
At a funeral, the way a body shivers under weight,
The way those drinks stain the collars of your shirts.
Look all you want, you can piss into the face of oblivion,
You can turn it on, turn it off again. Staring at the sun
May take your vision, but the light will be infinite
And repeating. When it seems to go, stare hard at nothing,
Think of the dirt in your body, and it will be light again.

Radio Girl

Driving the Natchez Trace, I tune the radio
to sixteen ten AM for Parkway info. It's cold
out, but the girl's voice is sticky as swamp
as she describes four hundred miles of sunken footpaths,
Indian mounds, and lush Southern scenery. This dotted
line goes all the way to Nashville. I consider going,
gassing up, and driving north. Maybe the radio girl
will be waiting in Nashville, maybe she's lonely
and drunk, scanning her Silvertone radio
for someone like her, someone trying to describe
this much road in these few words, the December
cold creeping calmly through her doors,
past her sweater to her Tennessee bones,
where we can both brace ourselves for the weather
to turn itself warm, for the leaves to bud
their insistence back onto the windswept trees.

-both poems first published in South Story

Love Poem

A baseball crashed through my kitchen window
and landed in the coffee cup you found in the dirt
and mailed to me. Everything arcs. I looked east
and read the words you wrote in cursive
above the red seam. Yes: what happens behind glass,
stays behinds glass. When the sun is just overhead,
the roads between here and there turn to soil,
grab hold of the land, and begin to bend.

-first published in Konundrum Engine Literary Review

Damaged Pigments

Milk bottles, vein-paper, soap
boxes, chicken bones all strung
Along telephone wires where squabs peck needle-holes
Into the dense white, seeking marrow that will be carpet dust
When it touches air. It’s Thursday so the barking dogs
Outside the windows are prerecorded and will loop
Until it starts to rain and morning notices noon
Still sleeping on the back of a derelict’s burnt hand. Loaves
Of peanut bread, stolen from the hospital, were found
Bobbing in the pear-glistening bend of the river, at least five
Miles away—that’s why the plastic leaves are being blown
Into the downtown air from a reversible electric vacuum,
Silently—the sky seemed smudged before it turned
Oat-colored. Yes—it’s Fall, despite what our calendars
Say. Nodding, let us cart cords of wood to Carolina’s tomb.

-first published in Tarpaulin Sky Poetry

Question About Death At Breakfast

The Frosted Mini-Wheats
go bad August third next year.
Two percent milk expired yesterday.
According to deathclock
dot com, I'll go bad April
second, two thousand fifty-two.
I pour the milk over the cereal,
see my reflection in the spoon,
and wonder if I, too, might be good
for a day (or two) after I'm
supposed to expire.

-first published in TPR Poetry

2008-09-01T16:46:00.000-07:00

John Tranter

Diver

The boat sprawls on the vast waste of heat.
He drops into the water, slow and heavy.
It is easy, he thinks, as though falling
from a sky brimming with rain, high above
a dark landscape. The wreck
crusts across the yellow floor
under the hollow gong of the sea.
A fish drifts up to a window, pauses,
decides to turn back into the room full of boredom.

His head is locked in a glass cage.
He can hear the lonely chatter of crockery
through the pipe. A smile breaks into his face,
he is floating like a burning angel
across the cold, glowing valley of sand.

-first published in Poetry Australia

Awakening

she wakes into the peach-glow bedroom
like a jet / the orange lips
writhing on the taste of bitter light
the flood-green eyes / exploding hair
(the avalanche of morning from the curtains
sluices white across the sheets)

and, gathering the strength of brightness like a shroud
the burning body rises, limbs depart,
the golden flesh / savaged in the dark / assaults the air!

-first published in Poetry Magazine

On Reading an Electrical Meter

At the House of the Rising Sun
In the twenty-fifth year of my age
I find myself a Ford at Bomaderry
the tank dry, starved between
one collision and the next garage.
Adelaide flames and howls under the horizon
lighting up a petty testament of waste.
Apart from the moment of accidental vision
the dull grey trees stand about
inclined to olive, drab, cold, gathering in trembling clumps
under the lowering field of cloud.

You are not alone in this Southern desert;
love, like a wounded elephant, terrible and pathetic
storms the deadly streets to hunt us down.

-first published in Transit Magazine

Small Animal Poem

Okay, there’s room for one
more small animal in my life,
behind the bad future, as long as he
doesn’t complain. His fate will be secret;
I am not to blame.

If you imagine you are not so
lucky today, rehearses the other,
the guilty animal, look at tomorrow —
the good days are gone, in future everything
you do goes wrong,

you will be broken down. But
the new arrival, the blameless
animal, I warn him, is not to know
that his future’s just begun, nor how soon
the damage will be done.

-first published Overland

Two Poems For Mr. Stevens

1

I was of two minds,
like a hotel room
in which there are two people.

2

I do not know which I prefer,
the beauty of inflections
or the beauty of innuendoes,
her brief glance through the crowd,
or her looking-away.

-first published in Southerly

2008-09-01T16:45:00.001-07:00

Photography by Kees Terberg

2008-09-01T16:40:00.001-07:00

2008-09-01T16:30:00.000-07:00

Leonard J. Cirino

Three Samples Of Fall

The first is the driving heat drafting up
from the cow dung in the meadow,
settling on the limbs and leaves
whose husky thirsts derive from want.
Second is the fruit on these limbs,
the apples, cherries, and pears
that rock left and right in the slight breeze
bringing relief, and fragrance from the flesh.
The last is the rain that gives way to frost,
when the rest of the garden is picked
and the stubble has gone to mulch,
when the robins arrive and peck for seeds.

Summer, The Oval Office

A woman with long legs
and ten men without
arms or ears
three children
smiling at the cameras
ten men
in wheelchairs
and ten with ties
gathered here
and there
by the window
looking out at the rose garden
air-conditioner on high
logs burning in the fireplace

The Window

The distance opens
to the sea
the boat-
moon glistens
Near the headlands
abalone poachers listen
for the sound of craft
as the poet
looking from the hill
beyond the sea
listens to the roar
of surf on sand
the sea caves sucking
in his breath

The Price Of Good Medicine

My fish is sick
I take it
to the hospital
where the nurse laughs
and says
Don't be concerned
he'll live

I take him
to the movies
to see
if he will laugh

The ticket seller says
a quarter for kids
and a nickel for the fish

Tiny Destiny

His own tiny destiny at hand, and skin
the color of dusk, with the small glow
of autumn in his mind, and a trailing wind
that blows him from the meadow, he grasps
the small coin of dream and goes to war.
It's so beautiful, he says, when he tells you
why he loves it. The desert is as lonely
as a wolf, and the packs of marauders
are as dangerous as flint. There is a fuse
in the eyes of the enemy and life is short.
Someone is hiding in the flickering light
of the hallway and he doesn't know
if the staccato sounds are in his head
or the fresh wounds of nightmares.

2008-09-01T16:12:00.000-07:00

Paul Guest

Waiting For The Mail

I say my name to the mailbox. Then yours. Hers.
Even her name and still nothing is there,
no stern accounting of debts, no date when
the penalties will come again, no credit
offered in seriousness understood by machines.
Mouth of air. Mine and the box,
strung with vines, a hidden thing, vines
going up from the ground on nothing,
you’d think. Red flag I never raise
when there is something required of me
and the check is scrawled late
or the letter signed, pen in mouth
and heart in throat a few times every year.
To be fair, not so often. Brokenness
never lasting all that long. Even in your name
and her name, in the absence
by which we’re taught best, no totem
is found. In the road, so soft
in the heat it’s pliable, the cars berth
wider than I could ever need,
rolling past in the other ditch almost.
Some stop, offer help, help
they’ve not even decided is needed,
shown by their rattled way
back into the car. Away with words and miles.
Sometimes I wait a long while
beside the mail not there
and imagine even more of it,
its spill, its rustle like water rolling
from one’s hands. When
something comes with its dead
postage, embossed by cancellation,
I lean my face to its mouth
almost to kiss it, almost to thank its purpose,
and with my lips carry itdown and in. The same pens
which spill my names
lit each envelope open I’ve pulped soft
with my tongue.Blue threads through
whatever words accordion forth.
Sometimes a letter. Places I’ve been
and remember. Places I’m unlikely ever to see.
Strange children. Minor injuries.
The freight of the body
in motion. Once all petals. Once only seeds.

Faith

Meaning, I am separate. The speakers lurch
music I can’t love, I can’t tell you
I love you. The window is obvious
and cold and the climate’s breath
fogs it up, the world outside hindered.
I think that is the word I want
but it may be that I come
to you in the inconvenient darkness
saying I have not meant
myself for a very long time. It may be
that I stub my life black
and nearly weep, limping
away. It will be funny one day,
wait and see. This wound
and the next made nothing
at all by time’s mad gush of speed.
We’ll laugh, though now all
there is the slush filling
the gutter up with inconstant diamonds.
I owed you something,
once, and you were good
enough to bear me
forgetting you. Your hands
older than you were,
even in the night, graspsome, close.
Outside, the world is
stupid with whiteness
and cloud wet. I can’t think
of numbers meant
to identify me or cities by which I’m ruled.
I can’t think of this
effect my breath makes
of the air butby it I can tell
you that I am not dead,
or that I’ve stumbled into the cold,
thinking of thisdream.

Invitation

Paul Guest, I am looking forward to your birthday
and the long chain of fitful celebrations
which will follow and be broken
by something like inconsiderate death
or the envelope of oblivion. Paul Guest,
I'm looking forward to your arrival,
your flight, your train, your steamer rocking
in on a lucky wave. When will you
be here, Paul Guest, with your combs
and pockets and mad fits of despair?
Paul Guest, when will you ever be happy?
When will you sign treaties
and agreements and accords
and truces tied up with ribbon,
when will you decide to live peaceably
with yourself, Paul Guest?
When will you open cans of soup
that would have kept forever,
forever in their vacuums of salt,
and stir them on to a fire
and think yourself at last
an imposter under the grave stars
no more? When will you fall
asleep and be full and not long
for a distant woman, your words
no signposts for the way back to wherever
you were, Paul Guest?
What will you say, Paul Guest?
No one knows. No one ever has
spoken the right thing
or walked away not hating
his mouth for the sake of the air
that was in it, that wouldn’t
take shape, keep it, or at least fall into quiet,
which is an endless water.
Paul Guest, you have tried
to vanish, a thousand times, Paul Guest.

Permission

Solicitous weeks now I’ve winked at the doorknob,
my exit and return a pattern speaking
of some secret I shared with the world
only by entering into it, declaring myself
the cargo of airlines and buses,
practicing rope knots and reciting
alien slang, dyeing my hair
until I was the kin of woodland creatures,
Romulus gone wrong, Remus unaccounted for,
and Rome nowhere beneath me,
through the twill of clouds
decaying by the day. Gumdrop,
I called you when you slept
or when you wrestled
with duvets, giggling like a wild bell,
impossible not to love,
a factual seduction. And all that while,
I said I knew pokerfaces but all I knew
was how I swam to you
in the mirror or how the ducks by the lake
bristled and were doubled
over the water, in flight,
no fan of the names I lent them
or the crusts of bread I balled up for them.
All I knew were dish towels
and every remittance of breath
I paid to the air in apology
for your absence. As though I had that right.
But, still I did, and do,
and every cloud I swear
is consolation. Every cloud
and half-tended garden
and nook of odd darkness
and every syllable of praise
and even the rare sweet meal
or song which served the minutes well.
Listen: I’m singing.

Poem Written To Replace Another

There was a long sentence I wanted to say
in the dream, about life in America,
about the literature of apocalypse
or living in caves, or living within earshot
of trains. Which is to say I don’t
recall a thing that I dreamed last night,
the color of anything, the tenebrous custard of clouds,
the water that fell in shapes
from the elm trees. Really, what I’m thinking
tonight is there is nothing
in all the flat world which would satisfy me.
Not food and not love and no
Epicurean kink involving both
and in this I am trying to feel only
a little sad. Slightly broken.
Returnable, still, even to the ones I loved,
their darling, imperious airs,
their hair in careless garlands
announcing one more morning or one last.
They went about in the immediacy
of dreams. They said, or did not
say, I am the tacit light of the stars.
A long time it took meto make sense of that
and longer still their absences,
which felt like nothing
of the sort, though through them I could hear
trains warning the miles
of their torturous approach.
It seems beautiful,
to think now of that sound
which is all immensity and inevitability
and other abstractions
which only call to mind
everything that is too easy to be forgotten:
that winter is not endless
or without charm,
at least for those who find it charming,
and I am not one,
hovering beside the thermostat
with a safecracker’s impenetrable intent.
Love, it is cold out there,
is not what I mean
with every adjustment of the worn dial,
but I might say it,
were you to ask,
stranger who doesn’t know me at all.

-all poems from his blog, Almost I Rushed From Home To Tell You This

2008-09-01T16:09:00.000-07:00

About Art - Spoonbridge And Cherry

The Spoonbridge and Cherry was commissioned in February 1985 by the Walker Art Center as a gift of Frederick R. Weisman in honor of his parents, William and Mary Weisman. The stainless steel and aluminum sculpture is painted with polyurethane enamel and stands 29 ft. 6 in. x 51 ft. 6 in. x 13 ft. 6 in. (9 x 15.7 x 4.1 m) in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, Walker Art Center, in Minneapolis, MN.

The sculpture was designed by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen. Claes Oldenburg is best known for his ingenious, oversized renditions of ordinary objects, like the giant "soft" three-way plug and overturned bag of french fries in the Walker's own collection. He and Coosje van Bruggen, his wife and collaborator, had already created a number of large-scale public sculptures, including the Batcolumn in Chicago, when they were asked to design a fountain-sculpture for the planned Minneapolis Sculpture Garden.

The spoon had appeared as a motif in a number of Oldenburg's drawings and plans over the years, inspired by a novelty item (a spoon resting on a glob of fake chocolate) he had acquired in 1962. Eventually the utensil emerged--in humorously gigantic scale--as the theme of the Minneapolis project. Van Bruggen contributed the cherry as a playful reference to the Garden's formal geometry, which reminded her of Versailles and the exaggerated dining etiquette Louis XIV imposed there. She also conceived the pond's shape in the form of linden seed. (Linden trees are planted along the allées that stretch before the fountain.)

The complex fabrication of the 5,800 pound spoon and 1,200 pound cherry was carried out at two shipbuilding yards in New England. The sculpture has become a beloved icon in the Garden, whether glazed with snow in the Minnesota winters or gleaming in the warmer months, with water flowing over the surface of the cherry and a fine mist rising from its stem. It was installed at its permanent site on May 9, 1988 and inaugurated on May 11, 1988. Find out more at: www.oldenburgvanbruggen.com

2008-09-01T16:08:00.001-07:00

Artwork by Trinity Rivard

2008-09-01T16:00:00.000-07:00

2008-09-01T15:54:00.000-07:00

About Books:

Title: The Fear Of Being Found

Author: Erin Elizabeth Smith

Description: "Erin Elizabeth Smith's debut book of poems, The Fear of Being Found, is adamantly itself. Smith's nervy, plangent lyrics question and reject assumptions, outfit themselves for uncertainty in a world where wind is "young and bitter" and "cicadas sound like a factory of lathes." Personal and metaphysical, mythic and immediate, these poems are elegant as a pair of white gloves and fierce as a set of fangs." — Angela Ball

Product Details:
Printed: 85 Pages
ISBN: 9780977089246
Copyright: 2008

Language: English

Country: USA

Publisher's Link: http://threecandles.com

2008-09-01T15:45:00.000-07:00

About Music - Mindi Abair

Twenty-nine year-old Mindi Abair was born on tour into a musical family, and was playing piano by the age of five. Within three years, she was playing saxophone and writing songs. She made her way through Berklee performing all kinds of music from jazz to rock and R&B. Upon moving back to Los Angeles, Abair started her own band. She also took on session work with artists as diverse as the Gap Band, Adam Sandler, Mandy Moore, John Tesh, Teena Marie, and the Backstreet Boys.

During this time, she worked on creating her own sound and released her debut disc in 1999. The Backstreet Boys connection really paid off for her, and her website and CD (entitled Love) took off. The year 2000 saw the release of the follow-up, Always and Never the Same, and shortly thereafter Abair signed with GRP Records. A sophomore effort, It Just Happens That Way, was issued in 2003. "Lucy's," "Save the Last Dance," and the album's title track went on to impact Top Ten radio.

A year later, Abair returned with Come as You Are, her second set produced with her writing partner, Matthew Hager. In 2006, Abair released Life Less Ordinary, which featured guest vocals from Lalah Hathaway and Keb' Mo', and also performed at the Governors Ball, the official Oscars afterparty. The following year, she appeared on guitarist Peter White's — with whom she had performed frequently — Christmas album, but 2008 saw a return to her solo material (and an introduction to Abair as a singer) with Stars.

Abair also plays the flute and keyboard, and she is the host of the syndicated radio program Chill with Mindi Abair, which focuses on chill out music. She took over hosting duties for the show, then known as Chill with Chris Botti, from previous host Chris Botti in 2007. Find out more about this aritst at ther website: www.miniabair.com

2008-09-01T15:43:00.000-07:00

Rachel Custer

After The Madwoman In The Attic

Ever since feminists
made madness phallocentric,
Roz feels guilty
about her psychotic breaks.
It’s not that she doesn’t want
to join hands with her sisters
against the patriarchy. It’s just
she can’t stop listening
to the grass. The rub
of blade on fresh-cut blade,
like knives being sharpened
on steel, scrapes inside
her ears. His name
repeating: Cesar Israel.
Grass speaks the language
of original sin, a split-tongued,
lying hiss. She breaks
as always, along the same lines,
a priceless vase,
once glued.

Lessons From Zombie Movies

As soon as the thirst of the first undead
for the blood of the living begins,
money becomes worthless. One cannot bribe
a zombie. The first thing to do
when the world goes apocalyptic on you
is arm yourself with a crossbow. Never
go anywhere quiet alone. There will be
a small band of survivors with at least one
Navy Seal. You must make sure he has turned
against the government he once served
because it is always, somehow,
the government’s fault. Alaska will be
the only possible refuge. People who are
dead are not smart, or even fast,
but they are persistent. They will lurch
along behind you, slow as decomposition,
but don’t be fooled: they are oddly
effective at catching you though
you may run and run. You must blow
off their heads, which apparently
kills them even though they are undead.
Finally, you will realize that
you have been running flat out for
two and a half hours, and that your fat,
whopper-eating, American ass
would have been bitten before
you ever got up from in front
of your television.

Smelling Smoke

All the long night I woke
to choke again on the taste of you,

your bitterness stuck
like a pill in the back of my throat. You

settle like fine gray ash
in every pore and crease of me

until I struggle to breathe
in the cloying black. I

keep seeing the kitchen
of my childhood home

the day we went back after it burned.
Rain had mixed the dark dust

into a thick sludge, a paste
through which we plodded,

fiery-eyed.
Movement changes somehow

in memory and nightmare, slows
to an exaggerated trudge.

You still move inside me,
gut me like a fire

tearing through
a tinder-dry farmhouse.

Clitorodectomy

It is language soaked sterile,
the rusty cutting away of words
like offending labial flesh. A way
to talk without wincing
about what is -

five generations
of Nigerian mothers
holding a thrashing girl-
child, slicing her

down

into womanhood,

because it sounds better
than hundreds of years
of mothers cutting
daughters growing
into mothers
cutting

because they first were
held, first were cut. We prefer
clitorodectomy, a word
wrung free of blood
so we can speak

without tasting blood
on our lips.

Mausoleum

A bouquet of starthistle
forces golden shocks of thorn

up through a cracked
floor plank

On the windowsill
a cardinal, faded

almost to pink,
rots slowly to bone

and nothingness.
The clock on the wall

measures time in years,
the long hand stopped

at half past eight.
Over the stone mantel,

crumbling to dust, four
faces hang, peeled

from the bloated heads
of memory.

This room does not exist
outside her mind. Still,

she cannot stop
living here.

-all poems taken from her blog, The Confessional

2008-09-01T15:28:00.000-07:00

Victoria Chang

Preparations

What happens is it happens.
It's cheap to live here: steel frames,
railroad, asphalt shingles, advice
from other women. Their opinions

beckon October after October,
wrap like a blue shawl. Now
they're old enough to say,
I know, honey, it happens to all of us.

When he went out again
and again, in search of more
than me, my genetics told me to
bake a pound cake, his favorite,

my currency. The act of setup -
of calming a sweating mind,
spoon next to meat knife, fish
knife, oyster fork, grapefruit

spoon - of preparation.
I've always known the answers
to my own questions - cumin, curry,
mixed with spit, of what to say,

the how to of control, the where were you,
upon his return. But my tongue
always hung in its dark cave, like cement.
And I didn't know how to break it.

-first published in Massachusetts Review

On Quitting

How many times will I quit you,
how many times will you amend
me, stitch, and mend me again?

In college, I could see the world's
thirty most powerful women clearly,
now I imagine what to tell my

unborn children as they watch
his tune-ups - just minor tweaks
here and there only after I've bought

into the program. I've always
looked great on three hours of sleep,
bleeding at the eyes, away from

garden gloves, Tilex with special
bleach, from Kama Sutra's love
secrets. No winter squash, gourds,

Indian corn, pumpkins tucked in fall.
Instead, I've repositioned
my portfolio on its edge again, autumn

planters on their side from wind - too
much focus on streets and lights,
on keeping. How many times

have you found me out,
molding your lips with an industrial
tongue, noting other women's skills for

soap-making, sweeping, making ordinary
tasks enjoyable. Each time I set the table,
I move you one more seat away.

-published appeared in New England Review

Cardinal

The cardinal's crest, hues of spark and fire,
its body jerking

back and forth, wings ripping rapidly at air,
a machine of flesh and bone

fluttering against my car's side mirror, resting
briefly,

then attacking its own image again. I had meant
to be over there -

a worker laboring in a fish commune in Guizhou,
with skin

like a silver carp and hands cut like gills, pond silt
through my vessels,

feeding parts of haddock to hake, seabream to
flounder, gathering duck feces

for feed, the fish humming in my walls at night.
I had meant to have my mother's fingers

around my throat for being a girl or meant to beat
my own daughter

with a walking stick, all the mirrors I looked into,
reflections missing.

-first publised in Kenyon Review

Edward Hooper Study I

Office At Night

Her buttocks ripen in their double hump.
She lingers by the filing cabinet. Her blue dress
wraps her body, as oceans wrap rounded cliffs.

She wishes the man at the desk were a flambeed
banana that she might nibble. One hand
lodged inside the filing cabinet, the other waits

to enter, settling against the open drawer.
The handle rubs her breast. She looks
down at the carpet, the color of an unripe

mango. His silence washes her feverish
body. As for the man, he likes how the light
mimics the mood of a hospital corridor.

He is afraid to look at her, to consider the field
between her breasts. He is frightened of her lips,
tart surface of a glossed heart. He thinks of green

ledgers with vertical red lines, commas, zeroes,
numbers lit by the banker lamp's gaseous glow.
He returns to the number eight. Its curves make

him think of her bareness, the way her body
might stiffen in fever, just for a moment, before
she falls on him, the way a washrag spreads in a basin.

Edward Hooper Study: Hotel Room

While the man is away
telling his wife
about the red-corseted woman,
the woman waits
on the queen-sized bed.
You'd expect her quiet
in the fist of a copper
statue. Half her face,
a shade of golden meringue,
the other half, the dark
of cattails. Her mouth even -
too straight, as if she doubted
her made decision, the way
women do. In her hands,
a yellow letter creased,
like her hunched back.
Her dress limp on a green chair.
In front, a man's satchel
and briefcase. On a dresser,
a hat with a ceylon
feather. That is all
the artist left us with,
knowing we would turn
the woman's stone into ours,
a thirst for the self
in everything-even
in the sweet chinks
of mandarin

2008-09-01T15:14:00.000-07:00

Contributors Biographies

Joseph Harrington: he is the author of Poetry and the Public: The Social Form of Modern US Poetics (Wesleyan, 2002). Re: Cancergate: An Amneoir : “Since the dates of the Watergate scandal and the dates of my mother’s last illness coincide almost exactly, I find it impossible to separate the two.” Harrington’s poems have appeared recently in First Intensity, Tarpaulin Sky, and on screen at the University of Victoria, B.C. He teaches at the University of Kansas. He lives in Lawrence, Kansas and edits a blog called Blog of Myselfs at http://josephharrington.blogspot.com

A. E. Stallings: she was born in 1968 and grew up in Decatur, GA. Her poetry has appeared in The Best American Poetry series (1994 & 2000) and has received numerous awards, including a Pushcart Prize, the Eunice Archaic Smile Award, received the 1999 Richard Wilbur Award. She composed the Latin lyrics for the opening music of the Paramount film, Sum of All Fears, and has made a new verse translation of Lucretius' De Rerum Natura for Penguin Classics. Hapax (Northwestern) received the 2008 Poet's Prize. She resides in Athens, Greece with her husband and their small son. Visit her website at www.geocities.com/aestallings

Adam Clay: he has been published or has forthcoming poems in Black Warrior Review, Milk, Denver Quarterly, Boston Review, Free Verse, storySouth and elsewhere. He is the co-director of the Arkansas Writers in the Schools Program and is an editor of the online poetry journal Typo Magazine. His first poetry collection is The Wash (Parlor Press, 2006). A chapbook, Canoe, is available from Horse Less Press. Born and raised in Mississippi, he holds an MFA from the University of Arkansas and an MA from The Center for Writers at The University of Southern Mississippi. He now lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan with his wife, Kimberley. His website is www.adamclay.org

John Tranter: he is the founding editor and publisher of the free quarterly Internet literary magazine Jacket. For more than twenty years he has presented his work at readings in more than forty venues in the USA, England and/or Europe. He has published ten volumes of poetry, and his work has been published widely in British and US literary magazines including the Paris Review, Kenyon Review, Grand Street, Conjunctions, Boulevard, Parnassus: Poetry in Review, Verse, the Times Literary Supplement, TinFish, the London Review of Books, Poetry Review (UK) and elsewhere. His most recent poetry collection is Urban Myths (UQP, 2006). He lives in Sydney, Australia. Visit his website at www.johntranter.com

Kees Terberg: he invested his savings into a property with regional ambiance and atmosphere between Bordeaux and the Pyrenees. When he learned that the name was "L'Art de Vivre", he knew that he had stumbled upon the route towards turning his dream into reality. He started his career in catering, qualified in Hotel Management, but remained a passionate photographer. His photographic work is internationally admired and he is a sought after photographer when it comes to landscape, wedding and portrait photographer. He lives in Les Leves et Thoumeyragues, France. You can find more of his work at www.les-leves.com

Leonard J. Cirino: he is the author of sixteen chapbooks and twelve full-length collections of poems from numerous presses since 1987. He has devoted four decades to reading, writing, editing, and publishing poetry. His chapbooks include The Truth Is Not Real (Adastra Press, 2006), Ambiguities (AA Press, 2007), and The Ability To Dream (Phrygian Press, 2007). His manuscript, Scattered Rhymes, has been accepted as a chapbook by Cervena Barva Press for 2008. He lives in Springfield, Oregon, where he listens to folk, rock, jazz and blues music. To read more of his poems visit his blog at http://pygmyforestpress.blogspot.com

Paul Guest: he is a 34 year old writer and poet who likes music and movies. His first book, The Resurrection of the Body and the Ruin of the World, won the 2002 New Issues Prize in Poetry. My second book, Notes for My Body Double, won the 2006 Prairie Schooner Book Prize. In 2009, Ecco Books will publish his memoir, One More Theory About Happiness, and his third collection of poems, My Index of Slightly Horrifying Knowledge. He teaches English and Philosophy as a visiting professor of English at the University of West Georgia and resides in Carrolton, GA. Visit his blog at http://paulguest.blogspot.com

Trinity Rivard: he began winning a few national drawing contests while still in elementary and junior high school and has spent the past 25 years developing the skill. In 2004 he started painting in oils and acrylics and has had numerous exhibitions since. He finds his inspirations in a variety of art forms, including pop art, minimalism, and abstract expressionism. He lives in Tampa, FL. Find out more about the artist and his work at his website: www.trinityrivard.com

Rachel Custer: she likes to be thought of as a professional student, reluctant adult, and practiced confessor. There is no obvious indications that she is religious though. What is known is that her poetry has appeared in Prick of the Spindle and longs to be published elsewhere. She works in the arts industry and lives in a town called Mishawaka, IN which is not even within walking distance of Oz. But you can follow the yellow brick road to more of her poetry at her blog called The Confessional: http://confessor-rachel.blogspot.com

Victoria Chang: her poems have appeared in The Paris Review, The Nation, Poetry, Threepenny Review, Kenyon Review, Best American Poetry 2005 and elsewhere. She is the editor of an anthology titled: Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation (The University of Illinois Press). She has received a BreadLoaf Fellowship and Scholarship, a Taylor Fellowship from the Kenyon Writer's Workshop, a Sewanee Fellowship, and a Ploughshares Cohen Award for best poem of the year. Her first book of poetry, Circle (Southern Illinois University Press), won the Crab Orchard Review Award Series in Poetry. Her second book (part of the VQR Poetry Series) is due in the Fall of 2008 (University of Georgia Press). She resides in Southern California and works as a business writer. Find her website at www.victoriachang.com

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 Oct. 1st.

Copyright 2008 by Maurice Oliver. All Rights Reserved.
Visit my eclectic blog: http://www.copyat5.blogspot.com/
tutoring blog: http://www.miceintheclassroom.blogspot.com
And music blog: http://www.medleymakersant.blogspot.com/

2008-08-01T11:11:00.000-07:00

CSR: Issue Twenty

2008-08-01T11:08:00.001-07:00

2008-08-01T10:58:00.000-07:00

Editor's Note:

Welcome to issue twenty of CSR! By now, you regular readers know my baby likes to escape through the door in the bookcase and hates goats on the Greyhound. It craves juicy peaches and makes cute little sounds when I accidently swallow one of the pits. Baby has an uncanny ability to turn the words of poets into scents only found in a box of candy. Issue Twenty is no exception. This month is filled with helium balloon-light photographs, along with rose petal art. Add to that, a group of stunning poets, an intriguing music maker and one magical book review and you've got the possibility of a poison ivy infection. Trust me, when you finish this issue you'll feel like a cool slice of watermelon. Or he only shoveled compost while the village slept. Either way, this issue will highjack your interest with delights seldom found in crash helmets. So escape from your bumper car and get busy...

2008-08-01T10:56:00.000-07:00

CSR: Issue Twenty Contributors/Contents

Christine Hamm

Cheong Lee San

Tasha Klein

Micha Boland

Patry Francis

Stan Apps

January O'Neil

About Art - Molecule Man

Xiaoyang Galas

Book Review

About Music - Doc Gyneco

Tim Martin

Shanna Compton

2008-08-01T10:43:00.000-07:00

Christine Hamm

The Selling Of Parts

I contact Ebay to see if I can sell
my left ventricle. Customer serviceh
as a hard time getting back to me,
their emails keep ending up in my
spam folder, so I decide to call
the free 800 number (it's supposed
to be active 24 hours a day) but
then I just get a recording, and the
funny thing is, the recording has
my name on it, it's kind of hard
to understand, there's the noise
of large machinery and race cars
in the background, and I wonder
for the first time where Ebay
is located, is it in a particular
state? I always imagined it floating
in cyberspace somewhere, and when
I picture cyberspace, my ideas
alternate between a cold black
icy room with green numbers floating
by like large dust particles, and a
vast empty white plane, peopled
by tall white men in form-fitting
plastic body suits. Anyway, the recording
says something about Christine
and then something about Beth Anne
and the requirements to become a gold
member, but I don't want to become
a gold member, I keep telling the recording
machine, I just want to find out
how to sell this tiny part, which is
hard because I don't have a very clear
photo, and I'm not sure how much
to charge for shipping.

Disaster Sushi

While I, while it
drops through my chopsticks
the sticky rice round your chin
you tell me about the baby
elephant who tried to get
into your size 12 pants
in the rest room, where
you had taken them off
to air, as that infection
had come back, and with a rash
this time, and I ask if
you're speaking metaphorically.
You blink as if a lizard
had skittled over your brain
and then the light bulb
bursts over your head;
in the shower of harmless,
deadly glass you say
now we're both in the dark,
what were you talking about, love?

I Tell My Mother

About a dream in which she dies.
There’s a cranky buzz on the
cordless phone, I bring it closer
to the base, farther away,
the buzz stays the same. I can
hear my mother licking her lips
and sipping her coffee. Go on,
she says, tell me the part about
the stairs again.

Hunters Point, 1PM

the girl in front of me
is paying for her cheeseburger
with stripper bills, tens and fives
folded down the middle,
greasy from her thighs

her brown matted braid swings
down as her diamond-starred
fingernails untangle her cash,
wadded at the bottom of a purse

out of its gleaming depths
floats a stray napkin
white unfolding bright
struck by a breeze
from the opening door,
it rises into the street, vanishes

Learning about Mammals

underneath the stairs
the whale grapples with the squid
nothing protects the children from the diorama
the lip of the exhibit comes up
to their knees they step in when
the teacher’s fussing at Greg
and Sheila

on the other side
shake out their pant legs
scratch their scalps
hide in the darkest parts
under the floating animals
dusty mouths the size
of school desks

look at me, he says to her
touching the cool whale belly,
touching his own nose

2008-08-01T10:41:00.000-07:00

Cheong Lee San

Couple

i.

I helped her up from the bed,
her frail bony body trembling,
the bedsheets damp from the pain,
and fed the painkillers into
her parched mouth hoping
it will ease her sufferings.
There was fight in her eyes,
she will not give up easily,
as i forced a plastic smile,
hoping she will live till Christmas,
as i repeated to myself,
damn it, no tears, she will not want it this way.

ii.

I was at her grave, with the flowers
and incense, her ashes just a stone slab away,
and i ran my fingers down the indentations
in the marble that was her name.
I remembered how i had ran these
same fingers down her svelte body
in a darkened room, when we were
younger and unsure,
the soft moans, the mad entwining
of hot bodies,
and i smiled and cried and called her name.

What’s Left

what's left
of the sunlight
on this bleak
wet evening
dances on
the gleaming
skins of
puddles on
bare pavements
as shadows chase
the day
up the
stone piers
of train viaducts
and the
damp trunks
of rain trees.
what are the
chances of
the silvery slice
of cold moon
cutting through
grey nimbus
like a scimitar?
until then
the last rays
dip and play
and dart
over the city
over the trains
pulling into
the stations
and
the tired
hungry masses
trudging home.

The Gods Are Watching Over us In The Morning

in the half light that is the dawn over
the blocks of flats, when the night wind
gently slaps discarded papers and dead leaves
along the long expanse of corridor of our block,
i leave for work, my cigarette smoke mingling
with the perfumed incense my old neighbour lighted
to the God of Heaven, praying for safe passage
through the day for her and her loved ones.
then i walked past doors protected by talismans,
bogus, even crucifixes, past homes guarded by waifs
of pomeranians that snarled from behind locked gates,
their barks, shrill and indignant, in the cool air,
go past flowerpots with plants badly in need
of watering, down the stairs through the coffeeshop,
through harsh fluorescent lights and whiffs of toast,
past grizzled old men drinking coffee from saucers,
then meet the hordes of sleepy-eyed children
sleepwalking to schools, the grandmothers
shuffling to the wet market to haggle over
fishes and vegetables.
the same gods are watching over us all.

Heavy Metal

the sky was rocking
heavy metal,
clouds bruised
blue black,
as white light slashed
across its face
it growled
as in pain.
i leaned at the window
watched
as my cigarette smoke
curled outside
to die
in the rain.

My Old Sergeant

my old sergeant
calls to me
from a bus stop.
he still remembers me
maybe i am the nerdy one
or
i don't give him trouble.
we talk
and laugh.
we are old men now
how time has aged a soldier,
he walks with a cane today.
was it not long ago
i saw him dismount
from an armored carrier
carbine slung across
his chest
walking through a haze
of red dust
churned up
by battle vehicles?
we talk
about the old days.
we laugh
cough a bit
and then
go about our
separate ways.

2008-08-01T10:31:00.000-07:00

Tasha Klein

Somewhere

we wake
on this charming
scratchy blanket
sticky again
your face between
my thighs
a star stuck in your hair
pretty & glittering

i think my heart
has turned
into some sort of
white blossom

i think that is your red shoe
stuck up in that tree

And Her Ability To Converse Was Never Affected

After she drank the peyote
Lily Royal dismantled
the decaying takahe exhibit,
steamed some salmon with aioli
then gave her new lover
a wine bath on the kitchen table.

spring apocalypse

I could throw up
running from
overdeveloped hearts

type words in cackles
the font crusher
full

but
I only want the one with the waltz hair glowing

I want the one with the bombed eyes
and the century's erection

the one with the whales
swimming inside

Snowed in at O’Hare

I pull the wires that spin snowflakes
in the half-light of your round table eyes.
On them a flower breathes
its breath song.

Oh, unroll the linen star chart,
pull the sky down to touch it too;
the language of velvet & night
fills all space around us.

And we spin, spin, spin!
Faces bursting through hair only for flashes,
sculpturing our features together.

Far across the ocean
dusk falls behind gargoyles
waiting on a roof above the square.

what I really want to discuss…

is the way
daylight dips into this
wine

why you don't smile

deep snow

and

fear.

-all poems taken from her bolg, Good Vibrations1

2008-08-01T10:30:00.001-07:00

Photography by Micha Boland

2008-08-01T10:20:00.000-07:00

2008-08-01T10:06:00.000-07:00

Patry Francis

A White Shirt

Later it will hang in a dark closet
beside your blue suit. When you
wear it, it will stand between
the lies you tell the world
and your heart.
But now, dangling on the line,
autumn’s slow conflagration
sparking behind it,
it has shaken off your claims
of ownership.
Startled with sun,
the wind captured in one swollen sleeve,
it is the purest thing on the landscape;
it is the Holy Ghostcome out to stir the flames.

-first appeared in The Tampa Review

Your Waitress

While dreaming a poem about autumn
your waitress thoughtlessly poured
water in your coffee cup,
splashed chowder on your suit.
So sorry and excuse me but
in case you haven’t heard
there’s a high wind in the dining room,
a half-moon in the pie;
there’s a blaze in the crystal,
and wild weather in your eyes.
I know you wanted your meat rare,
some extra sour cream,
but just outside the window, trees
are bleeding leaves;
the sunflowers wear mourning;
there’s desolation at the tables
and tumult in the air;
an anarchy of color
threatens stability everywhere.
I know you wanted your tea hot
and your check promptly tallied;
but in case you haven’t seen,
your waitress has unloosed her hair,
has given up her tray
and absconded with her pen in hand
to catch the world that’s burning.

-first appeared in Nimrod International Journal

On Catching My Husband With A Cigarette After Seven
Years Of Abstinence

It is not the smoke that
coils around your head
in the garage where you’ve
retreated with coffee and The Times
for an early morning butt
that so startles me.
No, it is merely your expression--
the tacit admission
we seldom dare to make
That there is always
a life we hold in secret--
unknown, ungovernable,
fiercely unpossessed.

-first appeared in The Sun

Tornadoes Kill 8 In Arkansas And Tennessee

A photograph taken from the air shows us
what remains.
It is a Jackson Pollock, a confusion of color
on a grey-brown background.
But somewhere in it,
is everything we know of the world:
houses, trucks, roads, people.
And there beneath the familiar--
the chaos
that finds us behind our locked doors,
that tracks us
to the rooms where we lie reading,
that pulls us
from lives we thought we were leading,
and flings us out like broken sticks
into this aerial view
of vast and random darkness.

Summit Hill

It always seems to be winter
when we come back here, miles
of trees glittering with ice,
cornfields flooded white--
and somewhere in the center,
a lonely figure in a snowmobile,
lost inside its mechanical hum.
Going back to the old mining town
that clusters at the top of the hill
is a process of rising, climbing,
ascending into a past as real
and unyielding as these mountains.
And just as unknowable.
Less than a century ago, my husband’s
grandparents came here from
Poland and Slovakia; they fitted themselves
to this sharp landscape.
Here they would go down into
the earth, and draw up an existence
we’ve grown too cossetted
to imagine. Here they would
spend the rest of their lives--
fifty or seventy-five
winters like this one, traveling
a road cut through mountain,
peering through black trees
into rough cut gorges, cold streams,
woods too deep and impenetrable to fathom.

-both poems first appeared in The Ontario Review

2008-08-01T09:50:00.000-07:00

Stan Apps

Judy Was Never A Barrier

This is a wonderful poem
of words around
a bowl of fruit
with the capacity to move.

A very light flowering
of inner nudity
is where a person is.
As one who works in art, I know.

Took off her sweat suit, took off her tears,
took off the sense and meaning of her work,
and sang words as melodies
into the early morning sky,

and jumped up in it
and wiped sweat off the treadmill.
That is how art goes.
You have to be a human being to understand,

and Judy is a person, with words
coming from all sorts of places in her heart
and taking shapely
forms like ancient ruins.

Though she is uninspired, she inspires!
And that is the key.
That is why we are, really are
winning this, why every day is a holiday

even though we work hard every day.
That is the kind of person Judy has proven to be,
her demeanor is whipped cream
atop the humble bowl of fruit that we all are.

You Put Your Thursday In You Put Your Friday Out

I never know what day it is goodbye
Hello I never know what day it is

I shucked the packaging off of the sky
and what was there was airy like a fizz
hello I never know what day it is

I know a guy who owns things that are his
he owns a lot of things, an average guy
I never know what day it is goodbye

There is a special day when details die
they shrivel up like worn-out noises
hello I never know what day it is

I try to know what day it is it is
some sort of holiday or almost is
goodbye I almost know what day it is

sometimes I’m just tired of when the day is
it shortens them when they are in a line
and I’m putting a foot in that one this

one I don’t know what day my foot is in
you put your Thursday in you put your Fri-
day out and you shake them all hello

you do today tomorrow and goodbye
you do tomorrow and you go hello

Mirror Filler

In the natural environment of real stories
outsiders facing the same questions as yourself
question why people would tell their own stories

a compilation of truly personal others
Eleven Teenagers Transformed by Your Money
Imaginary Terror, just as we each face our own

‘God forgives me’ going to look so shiny
themselves facing the same real lives
all of the time telling us how they are people

numerous people in crisis are great and the opportunities are denied
brief accounts of the lives of the money that we pay
real friends enjoy first-class citizenship and successful Mind

images and personal recollections of being included
25 million people learned a great deal about Camilla
hosting a day documenting the game of Life

Gladiators

I used to dream of actually
cutting language—dividing one part of a sound
from another, like halving an “ow”—
with a sword!

The juicy halves
would quiver, slick
as pre-chewed bubble-gum
on the floor—Wait! Sounds can’t stick there.

I need a piece of paper
to save the little wounded bits of noise,
little birdies “oh” and “uh”

The sow that puts the ow in wow,
that pow’s wounded now

And poets are bubble-gum fighters
chewin and chewin up words
into a revolticatin wet pink mess
that blossoms when you blow into it
and then hangs on your face in disgrace

strange pink sugar-palaces of breathy truth
go floppy and reduce truth to a mood

After The Hilltop

After the hilltop
adjusts its shadow
anger hurts masks
for smiling like shame

After the sunbolt
blurbs the face
of the new accomplice
the one without arithmetic

After the moonholster
unpacks its curseshine
in the face of the battery
codenamed “All”

The opinion known by the name of “Public Opinion”
shared by a few men
couches where the champagne of celibacy glares
blurbs where anger hurts its curseshine fame

After the starbristles
agitates upholstered harmony
to the detriment of smile one hurts its “All”

-all poems taken from Refried Oracle Phone

2008-08-01T09:39:00.000-07:00

January O’Neil

Funny Poem

This is a funny poem. It is also polite—
it’s pleased to make your acquaintance.
It stands alone in that it likes to be petted,
held, taken out for a walk, scratched behind
the ears, and enjoys the occasional hearty chortle.
This poem is not afraid to mention random
funny things like bananas, ponies,
feet, flan, unicorns, or Britney Spears.
This poem was funny when funny wasn't cool.
It revels in its difference, it likes that
it’s not your standard free verse,
formal, confessional, or sad bastard poem.
This poem has always wanted to use the word
boomerang. If you say to it, “A man walks
down the street with a duck under its arm,”
it will feign amusement because it’s heard
that one before, and come back to you with,
“What do you call a boomerang that doesn’t come back?
A stick.” This poem is proud of itself
for working in that joke. If this poem
made you smile at all, it will say, “mission
accomplished,” and mean it in a good way

My Body After Kids

Sags everywhere.
Looks like a chicken
in a butcher’s storefront.
Wet tea bags for breasts,
oatmeal for thighs, as if
my old self was recalled
and I was given this.
See how my body
redistributes itself
cell by cell by cell
into a new circumference,
almost global? My hands
once bright as fans
used to envelop the dusk
and twirl in dance. Now they
belong to a shape shifter—
someone called out of one world
and thrown into another.

Monday

After the accident, strangers hurry past
as we pull into the median to check for dents.
Our car armor, polished yet worn,
is now streaked with damage. We dig
in our purses, find proof of existence,
although we're not really sure what that means.
Already the day feels old in its caustic
morning thrum. Every five minutes
an accident occurs—bumper to bumper
in the stop-start lingo of the highway.
We are made vulnerable by the April exhaust,
just one more thing that makes this life heavy.
Makes me think our days are marked with bulleyes
on the backs of cars, how a crack in the road
veers us toward the crack in everything. What else
can we do but shake hands and strap ourselves
back in? My car rattles like bones in the trunk.

The Wilting

Sometimes at nightI rise from bed
to look at my dark skin.
I make sure I can still see
my mother’s red clayand my father’s kudzu
growing around
these roadside eyes,
a vista that fades
with each passing season.
The two noses I carry
come together as a hill
on a ruddy landscape.
In the soil of my flesh
once grew dogwood
and crepe myrtle—
the harvest of where I came.
How lucky I am
to witness this wilting,
night after night,
as field returns to field.

Contrasts

The camera loves us,
it bravely looks us in the eyes,
does its best to defend us from light
and dark, though it seekswhat is not there.
If I turn my head,
bring my face my husband’s
there is always contrast.
See my husband’s slight smile?
He is light bouncing off of light
that I absorb. The camera
has a dumb eye, makes me glow
in the noonday sun.

2008-08-01T09:34:00.000-07:00

About Art - Molecule Man

Apparently floating on the river Spree in Berlin, Germany, the massive Molecule Man casts a striking shadow which leaves you in no doubt what it’s a sculpture of. However from ground level you really see how well the illusion is realized.

Molecule Man was designed in aluminum by an American artist Jonathan Borofsky, who is better known for another of his works, Hammering Man. Molecule Man is actually a series of three sculptures installed in various cities throughout the world. It is located near Treptowers. It stands near the middle of the Spree River with many workboats and tourist boats passing it every day and can be seen clearly from the S-Bahn train looking down the River Spree towards the centre of Berlin, just left of the Fernsehturm or TV tower.

The giant artwork built in 1998 to 1999 for the new Allianz Corporation headquarters in Berlin (architect: Peter Schwegler). The sculpture consists of three male figures each around 30 metres or 100 feet high. The figures have holes symbolising molecules.

Borofsky's first Molecule Man sculptures were made in 1977 and 1978 in Los Angeles. Early molecule structures included a molecule chair, a ceramic molecule vase, a molecule figure and a model for a molecule building made from styrofoam balls. Originally, he was fascinated by this molecule idea because even though we appear to be quite solid, we are in fact composed of a molecule structure which, in itself is mostly composed of water and air.

He says that this hundred-foot tall aluminum sculpture composed of three figures meeting in the center, not only refers to the lightness inside our own solid bodies, but also the figures joining in the center, refer to the molecules of all human beings coming together to create our existence. Find out more about the artist at: http://www.borofsky.com/

2008-08-01T09:32:00.000-07:00

Artwork by Xiaoyang Galas

2008-08-01T09:24:00.001-07:00

2008-08-01T09:19:00.000-07:00

About Books:

Title: Yoik
Author: Bob Beagrie

Description: A volume of poems, conveying a remarkable range of tone and reference, verbal dexterity, strong, muscular, visceral use of language, yet, at the same time, a softness. They range from seemingly rough-hewn dialect chat, to the myths and folklore of the Celts, the Native Americans or the Finns.

Product Details:

Printed: Paperback, 216x140 mm, 80 pages
ISBN: 9781905614400 (1905614403)
Copyright: December 2007
Language: English
Country: UK
Publisher's Link: www.gwales.com/home/?lang=ENtsid=2

2008-08-01T09:14:00.000-07:00

About Music - Doc Gyneco

Doc Gynéco (real name, Bruno Beausir) is a popular French hip hop artist of Guadeloupean origin. His music is typically characterized as a raggae/rap style, that has found its fan base in France. Born in Clichy-sous-Bois in Seine-Saint-Denis, on July 7, 1974, Beausir's mother was Caribbean and his father white. The latter left them in 1990, and partly as a result of this, Beausir was poor in his later teen years.

He launched his career at the age of 19, writing a few tracks for the hardcore rap group Ministère AMER. After this rap group parted, Virgin Records signed him with the intent of converting his demos into an album in Paris, but the project fell through, which resulted in him leaving for Los Angeles to work with a famous American producer, Ken Kessie.

The collaboration produced “Première Consultation”, released in 1996, which received large media praise and huge success both in France and the world. Singles from the album include “Est-ce que ça le fait?”, “Viens voir le docteur”, “Dans Ma Rue”, “Passements de Jambes”, and “Né Ici”.

Two years later on the December 1st of 1998 his second album appeared in the shops, entitled “Liaisons Dangereuses”. Although the main single — “C’est Beau La Vie” — created with the help of a politician (Bernard Tapie) was a flop, the album still sold reasonably well and earned its author even more notoriety.

In the spring of 2001, Doc Gynéco tried to come back at the front of the music scene after a few years of silence with his third creation “Quality Street” . The single “Caramel”, the first release from this new album met little success; yet guest stars on the album include the Wu-Tang Clan and Gregory Isaac.

In August of 2002, the 4th album called “Solitaire” came out. This last realization found its audience and gave Doc Gynéco the “Victoire de La Musique” award for “Best hip-hop/rap album of the Year”. Singles include “Funky Maxime”, “Frotti Frotta”, and “Flash”. A collection of his hit singles since the beginning of his career was released during 2004 (called 'Menu Best-of'). During 2006 the album Homme Nature was released. Find out more about him at: www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doc_Gyneco

2008-08-01T09:03:00.000-07:00

Tim Martin

How ‘Bout Them Apples

then two trains latter and
imariachi singer at the forties
monday to friday hourly relates
in tempo changes that porter
tunes in crystal tube radio hobbies
or in counseling we awkward
robots with unpretty dates
‘tis your silent witness here
that rises early in smoke
stand on any moving object
is that faces make me hurt
and force countdowns when
home along oil down dust road
sit’s spring and all we misplace

The Spanish Lover

sunday is an empty cup by noon
there a leafed through copy left
of everything in a scary movie
it is a dance of chickens once more
whose russian bosses give noise
to promises of one day of rest
in foreign, it is easy to be taken in
to give over and boy scout on
with rumors that it is the business
here in summer she sips the kool-aid
it is points of tongue that occur
when citrus tastes old in march
perform faster to memorize her side
in the end, only our winters matter

Sonnet For My Jaw

1986, i am a pointless secret agent
silently that kidnaps off sands
what riot of only brown power
too close to draw from memory
i don’t like the way this sounds
that pirates could have blamed
for texting a function of twenties
it’s true, they congregate guiltlessly
and sure to bring a wingman
this is an accused vocabuary
that did this to me in atari
in a lifetime that yearns to faint
at any one word that comes
to us in the guise as days of service

Broke Even

in this video my class of men
not yet sepia before new decades
what is the last car of our
bachelordom on bamboo screens
all the way half on electricity
holiday recasts his autobiography
this is the sad part of hope city
ten chips down slaps the wheel
it sounds so much more polite
to put lady in front of your terms
womanly at the bottom on the ocean
true believers end their discussions
that outcome is empty gold bird
that twists blades of light on our backs

Why We Can’t Have Nice Things

two hundred-three dollars mid-august
cried for luck this bourbon contribution
of next steps, some rings, baby names
& the western slope which is burning
and the one plays it out in lonely wind
for taciturn gods in full opera voice
just back from gathering folks
in stoic imaginations of the neighbors
police calls through rainy sundays
who makes this ratio of yin and yang
five years and misplaced address book
for our only meetingplace is these events
thunderless when you are entertainers
we hold the fire back for you to cross

-all poems from his blog, and to think I saw it on floyd terrace

2008-08-01T08:53:00.000-07:00

Shanna Compton

We’re loving it.

A blue photograph of course contains sky.
It was taken from a car window.

A push upward during a movement forward.
Stripes flick through the asphalt sling.
What’s passed unseen.

What’s remarked.
All that’s never said, needs to be said.
Images lined up rows. Hoarded for later.

Night arcs add to a continuous sense
of April, of this year. Please welcome.

To the pink pages, thank you.
Thank you parasol. Thank you fuzzy voiced
at the mike. Thank you ice in a glass.

The road is a method, or a line joining
one possible former with a likely latter
like a ladder.

And yes, the sky is blue.
& it can be photographed.

Our official position is class piñata.
Our innermost breaks.

The Bloody Intellect

What has she done
with her white feathered dressing gown
her getaway rococo as dream?

Misplaced her tongue
along a redundant ear in error,
in sorrow, with intent.

Beginning with white
is to erase the body,
silence the voice, blank the self
to receive the costumes it consumes.

Potted plants stand in trios,
pointed & pruned. Trained
with snipping & ties.

So public a face, hers,
it hardly belongs.
A camera. All poses. All lies.

-both poems previously published at Dusie

In half-asleep love

I hush the peaches
the darkened kitchen
eerily clean in the
stainless gleam of the
fridge and stove
redoubling the bounce.
The cat bootlegs some
chow bleating like
some other animal,
ripping at the carpet
with an alien noise.
He’s a shroud of a pet.
Earlier we barhopped,
avoided the jiffy algebras
of shifting seats at tables
by simply leaving.
A door functions both ways.
Open for water.
Open for air.

Even A Zoo

The dawn arrived and the plums fell.
We were both naïve and bold.
Down it dropped into fields of saffron.
Like flakes in winter triumph
in the face of shine on snow
the sand conditions things
for change or burial.
Who knows? The camels of this caravan
might expand into cheap memories
in the national language.
But there is more to me than this.
183,000 pampered miles more
and in great condition.

Bubble Up

Blue drunk on applejacked burst
bulbs the buzzed of lower lawns mown
down the gullet with a POD glossy cover
galley of thighs ricochets impromptu
critique with sexy no coverup fleshy
bareness! it's spring in Brooklyn
and we're all poets everybody
I am you are babies dogs
their walkers and nannies the mailman
the barber whole pack of teen bangers
the dude going Dirty Fruit! Dirty Fruit!
something it took me years
to learn suddenly clear:
poems at no charge here

-all three previously published at Coconut Poetry

2008-08-01T08:27:00.000-07:00

Contributors Biographies

Christine Hamm: she is a PhD candidate in English Literature at Drew University. In 2007, she was a runner up to Queens' Poet Laureate. Her poetry has been published in The Adirondack Review, Pebble Lake Review, Horseless Press, Lodestar Quarterly, Blue Fifth Review, Snow Monkey and Exquisite Corpse, among others. She has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize, and once for "The Best of the Web". Her collection of poems is called The Transparent Dinner (Mayapple Press, 2006). She teaches English at Rutgers University and poetry writing at Women's Studio Center in Queens, NY. She has publised three chapbooks and lives in NYC area.Find her blog at www.christinehamm.org

Cheong Lee San: works in a telecommunication industry where he spends his days writing boring reports, excuses and subtle threats. The only conclusion he can come up with for continuing his profession is that it pays the bills, which in turn keeps insomnia at bay. His real passion is poetry, something he writes in his spare time. What inspires him are the mundane, ordinary events and people that he observes during his work and play in his urban world. His work has appeared in Quarterly Literary Review Singapore and The Sidewalk's End. He resides in Singapore. You can read more of his works at his poetry blog at http://dsnake1.blogspot.com

Tasha Klein: she is a receptionist for a retirement facility and a telecommunications business. She is inspired by the poetry of Anne Sexton, Jim Morrison and E.E. Cummings. She has been published in numerous web eZines including Conspire, 2River View, Snakeskin, The Melic Review, The Rose & Thorn, Gumball Poetry, Mentress Moon, Mind Caviar, The Green Tricycle, Mi Poesias, Poems Niederngasse, MindKites, Snow Monkey, 3rd Muse Poetry, New World Poetry, Southern Ocean Review, and so on. She lives in a grain solo in Dekalb, IL. Find out more about her at www.myspace.com/dreamsonnets

Micha Boland: he believes his photography can speak words he never thought were in his soul. So he lets his pictures do the talking. Some of his motifs include Monumental Valley, Florence, Berlin, Las Vegas, and carnivals. He shots with a keen artistic talent whether the subject matter is the Glen Canyon Dam or the Mercedes Benz Museum. He lives and works in Zollernalbkreis, Germany. Find more at: www.fotocommunity.com/pc/pc/pcat/339019

Patry Francis: she grew up in Brockton, Massachusetts, a city known for its legendary boxers and its heritage as "the shoe city of the world". Both her father and grandfather labored in the leather factories. She likes classic novels like David Copperfield and Crime and Punishment. Her first novel, The Liar's Diary, was published by Dutton and Brilliance Audio in February, 2007, and there are plans for it being published in the Netherlands, Germany, France, Spain, Poland, and the Czech Republic. She continues to reside in New England. Find her blogsite at www.waitresspoems.blogspot.com

Stan Apps: he is a poet and essayist, originally from Toronto, Canada, and Waco, Texas. Currently though, the gusty winds of D.C. are tearing him loose from his root-system in Los Angeles, California, and transplanting him to Tampa, Florida. His books include Info Ration (Make Now) and Soft Hands (Ugly Duckling); upcoming books include God's Livestock Policy (Les Figues) and Why I Joined the Avant-Garde (essays from Combo Books). Drive one mile more and take the first exit to his blog at: http://nonprovocativeurl.blogspot.com

January O'Neil: she is a 39 year old teacher, poet, writer and editor with a keen interest in literature and the Boston Red Sox. Her poetry and articles have appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Literary Mama, Field, Callaloo, Seattle Review, Stuff Magazine, Poetry Thursday, and Cave Canem Anthologies II and IV, among others. She is a fellow with Cave Canem poets, and is cofounder and cohost of New and Emerging Writers Series (NEWS), a blossoming reading series in Arlington, MA. Her first collection of poems, titled Underlife, will be published by CavanKerry Press in October 2009. She lives with her husband and two kids in North Shore, MA. Her blog is called Poet Mom at http://poetmom.blogspot.com

Xiaoyang Galas: she was born in 1973 in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China. From 1993-95 she studied art at Sichuan Fine Arts Academy. By 2002, she had had first solo exhibition of her oil paintings which she titled “From China To Europe” at the Rentes Genevoises in Geneva, Switzerland. She says there is so much sorrow in the world, but she does not want to paint that side. She wants to be a contributor to the world’s beauty. She currently lives in Varennes Saint. Sauveur, France. Visit her website at www.artbreath21.com

Tim Martin: he has a BA in Writing and Literature. His serial poem, ricochet, has been recorded twice and recently turned into a performance piece.His work has appeared in iOutlaw, One Less Magazine,Fugacity,Hamilton Stone Review, Big Bridge, Altered Books Project, The Attic Which is Desire and other small magazines. A professional stage manager, he has worked with many theatres in the Philly area (Enchantment Theatre, Theatre Ariel, New Paradise Laboratories, and many others.) He is the production manager for Mum Puppettheatre and Commonwealth Classic Theatre Company. He lives in Philadelphia, PA. His blog can be found at http://timothymartin.blogspot.com

Shanna Compton: her books and chapbooks include Down Spooky, (Winnow Press, 2005), Closest Major Town (HEHF, 2006), and For Girls (Bloof Books, 2007). Her poems and essays have appeared in dozens of publications and several anthologies, including The Best American Poetry 2005, and the Poetry Foundation website. She founded the DIY Poetry Publishing Cooperative in 2005 and publishes poetry chapbooks and broadsides via her micropress Half Empty/Half Full. She works as a freelance copywriter/publisher and occasionally teaches poetry. She lives in NYC. Her website can be found at http://shannacompton.com

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 Sept. 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/

2008-07-01T06:36:00.000-07:00

CSR: Issue Nineteen

2008-07-01T06:34:00.000-07:00

2008-07-01T06:30:00.000-07:00

Editor's Note:

Welcome to the nineteenth issue of CSR! By now, you regular readers know my baby likes adventures hiding in crayons and hates anything that resembles a slinky. It craves rhubarb and makes cute little sounds when it hears foghorn. Baby has an uncanny ability to turn the words of poets into an infusion of desert glutens. Issue Nineteen is an excellent example. This month CSR is filled with long-lashed photographs, along with a bull's-eye of art. Add to that, a group of stunning poets, an intriguing music maker and one magical book review and you've got the possibility a deer in the headlights. Trust me, when you finish this issue you'll feel like a cool glass of iced tea. Or no one could have guessed he wears high-heels. Either way, this issue will highjack your interest with delights seldom found in bungee jumping. So escape from the circling helicopter and get busy...

2008-07-01T06:27:00.000-07:00

CSR: Issue Nineteen Contributors/Contents

Ernest Williamson III

Jenny Allan

Tammy Ho

Jose Paulo Andrade

Harry K. Stammer

Lisa Stewart

Kianseng Ng

About Art - Another Place

Therese Kenyon

Book Review

About Music - Zucchero

James Owens

Arioborzine Farin

2008-07-01T06:24:00.000-07:00

Ernest Williamson III

The Value of Reinventing the Wheel

in the weighted hours
alone
in solemn care
with the vaporous stems of cold gray leaves
dead but vibrant
like a moss breathing
along the musk of aged bark
I've contained a breath
with mallet and symbol
striking away
in the monotone of flaccid existence
though I've travailed in the winter now
my ways have pounced along
the cerebral branches
of more than Grandma's Oaks
I've grown backwards in a fulsome world
staging innocence with greed for position
though position is merely a crystal ball
wading in anger
in unison
with the brunt of nihilistic
possibilities
made real

The Picture Had Already Been Taken

the bay leaves were stapled together
hugging each other
unabashed by the sultry winds
Montego Bay had never been so maroon
and swamped with rainbows meddling with black sands
in my house
aside the plush verdant carpet
was a cherry dresser
pleasant to the eye
with four legs
curvaceous legs
flirtatious in a way
like an anxious tongue
willing but reluctant
to taste hot Black tea
at 6 a.m. in the morning
next to the dresser on the cream colored wall
was a painting I painted in 1974
I called it "Daydreaming"
Today at times I sit and staple bay leaves,
watch them hug,
in Montego Bay
on plush verdant carpet,
next to a cherry dresser
with four legs,
in a naked room,
and with no painting of any sort
on the walls
while daydreaming
at 6 pm in the evening
smiling
with paintbrush in hand

The Chords of Life's Journey

the moon dove past the doldrums in New Guinea
all was a blur
grays meddling with capers
orange and brown
yellowed corners in the ionosphere
I saw the orbits of Pluto
after the beer from Milwaukee subdued my pain
though as I lay in the Alabama sun
courting my interests in red ants
my eyes dilate
and as the fringed beacons in their tirades
scream silently
against and for flesh
I empathize with food
yet worms seem not to be weary
of my destine transformation
a man with health
to flesh with nothing poetic to say
but I do say
with the winds in my nostrils
all is of interest
even the ignorance of being
less than
what people
imagine themselves to be

The First Love of Last Recollection

a breathless mirage of woman
parading round the green
leaving flowers disjointed and flooded with depression
turned aside as tired limbs in need of water and salt
she had eyes of black pearls
steaming the vocal chords in her lovers
like a black widow leading her prey
into the silk of misrepresentation
with no signs of sorry
and though she looms in the wake of day
in the balance of noon's transference to night
I still make note of her
like the enamel shaded white
leaning toward yellow reminders of life
you grow you age
but as the time leading towards death's migraine
you remember

No Understanding

lilacs folded over the windfalls
deep in the forests of Georgia
south of Grendel's redwood shack
two miles from the market next to Caddle's Street
sunlight meandering left and right
like a tiger on the prowl
merciless but of an evil beauty
for the sake of some esoteric show I guess
and the clouds white
with a glow of royal blue piercing through
gliding as black hawks
high above the vagary of my frontal vision
but still a sight worth mentioning
anyways always
as long as I still smile at nature
with no understanding
no understanding at all.

2008-07-01T06:12:00.000-07:00

Jenny Allan

Blinds & Patience

parting over delay
long shade relies

on enough setting
of up chalked

marks with themselves
colourfully cracked

/I drew you in pastel hues that didn’t suit your complexion and
when the snap came, it was too much to expect reliability from
a sketch/

Float…ing

On becoming separated from my ideas
I wondered if it was true that to
‘keep your head above water’ requires
a buoyant brain: more upbeat than grey
matter acknowledges.

Having discarded their armbands, those ideas
were capable of reaching some shore
by means of backstroke and wit alone.
Leaving me with a crossed mind and salt.

Spurs-of-the-moment

Shoving all limits in the closet, she washed wonder down
with a tolerant brew: part tea, part not;

part thirst-haste, distraction quencher.

Before ground struck the thriving steps
swept under carpet’s enchantment.

The Blue

What becomes of blue when sky leaks late
deliveries too posthumous even to resurrect
a meager shelter.

In opposition to atmosphere we say “out of or into”
as if nothing did come.

10+’s Lover

We are two ones: attaching
a restless power to victory
barely resolving to kick
discontent in the meaning.

Like asking a bombshell to reduce shock
or trim the other cheek.

From one cool scene to a sinking silhouette
a faint ticking
hears background noise
as we line up to launch entertainment
and suspend refuge until humour stops staring.

-all poems taken from her blog, Intermittent Voices

2008-07-01T06:05:00.000-07:00

Tammy Ho

Going To My Parent’s House On A Crowded Bus

I’m sandwiched by two unattractive men
on a city bus to the land of sky
and water. An hour’s crossroad journey
from one home to another -
Outside: The metamorphosis of high-rise
glass buildings to fragile trees.
Inside: Ten pairs of eyes staring
at my breasts involuntarily pressed
against the back of a seat.
My lungs absorb enough foul-smelling
air recycled from people’s breath
to choke a fatal enemy. Dignity
I sacrifice for several hours
with my family.

Previously published in Spoken War

Dinner Table

The two of you bellowed to each other in
fiercest intellectual insults.
An unsuccessful chaperone I was. I shut
my eyes to listen to an orange horse gallop
on, not too clumsily, a bed of golden-
brimmed grass shooting north.
Forks dueled with knives, glasses clinked
and licked. Already? Back to the dining
table, together you laughed, mouths open
wide to park spaceships.
Ever since I used that word 'love',
both of you repeated it
ad infinitum, adorned with other crude
lexemes, as if all of a sudden a child
was allowed to play with Daddy's lighter.

This Be The Postcard Poem

I pretend to be a postcard poem,
being denied the side of the stamp.
(It's fenced.) Let the address be short--
I hate fighting for space with a country
name that is accidentally polysyllabic.

The picture on the front is a deaf fly?
a beggar? or a bowtie? Perhaps
nonchalant bedcovers. (I know not
what.) It's like a single eye peeping,
edgily, at its lid.

I hope the recipient likes this poem;
and forgets (only just) that the man
who sent it has nothing to say
from afar, or nothing to sigh
about, either.

Both previously published at Lunarosity

In This Massive Hallway

In this massive hallway the mahogany
reception desk is guarded by a woman of
mixed ancestry.

The owner of a well-trimmed moustache
told me he has been hanging out there
for more than five years:

too long, indeed, too long
for his original to wait,
and he died of lung cancer.

The old man has five poems:
three on canoeing,
two on the Canadian poet-cum-singer
Leonard Cohen.

I am newly sent to this New York journal
armed with three petite prose poems:
one on fishing, two on post-postcolonial Hong Kong.

My original, naive and expectation-laden,
is sending numerous mes
to different magazines, e-zines and whatnot.

Us – her invisible doppelgangers –
carry her manuscripts and wait,
sometimes for days,
sometimes for weeks,
sometimes for months,
for responses from editors.

We haunt waiting rooms,
store rooms,
nearly-empty rooms,
forgotten rooms.

In the Summit Of Greying Snow

A poet died in the summit of greying snow.
He wrote about ordinary families,
and the human’s subconscious wish
to be short-lived, fast-mated insects (no mid-life
crises). Some envious poets thought aloud
to each other: oh it was wonderful to die
in the sacred cold, don’t you think? The icy weather
formed a natural tomb for the sealed
and healed spirit. Other poets took up the task
to console the poet’s wife: her cream marble face
scarred with two non-parallel one-way tear tracks.
At the funeral, the wife asked the poets
to recite a poem of her husband’s – any poem
from any period of his writing career would do,
she said. Even the insect poems, she added.
The request drained away all sounds in the hall
in which the coffin was appropriately centred.

Both poems previously published in Mascara

2008-07-01T06:03:00.000-07:00

Photography by Jose Paulo Andrade

2008-07-01T05:57:00.000-07:00

2008-07-01T05:53:00.000-07:00

Harry K. Stammer

terror 108

attention center
"sense is" jaw chew
strip round (more)
pole indicator
moment "hi, I"
'sensual crucial state'd
throw left
arm right arm
around back
front front back
"hi, I" head
lift plant heel
(s) basing (ed)
('tude) piece
attached left cut
45 degrees down
('phrenic) "hi, I"
closely
which hall long
(lines) palm up eye
squint (ing) "no,
considerate" wall

chapter x

"you got something... for me, huh?"
the mirror sunglasses blonde dancing two doors
away "liquor store, that's it a,"
once look down/up rest hood on momentary
leg crossed tank top shoulders
a result (raucous) result certain (myth
just a proof) certainty 'pect
except where rested 'centive in
desire [not salt or flour] nor/or under't
dream it "once result breaks
down" dog (say feral) leashed runny
nose "for me?" (ring of muscle, closed)
hot "perhaps, cleft dreamed on
a river of a glory" sing spin
tubes out legs ache knuckles
swollen "what motor function?" shift affect
paralysis [sun glass mirror] fatigue that
something expelled D gets up to
point (ed) sitting inflections verb/noun disabled
desire (e) lysium contradicts (tion) 'llel

resolve 1

oblivious "crown'd saying
this" spiral turn
nothing two legs
two arms "gravity knows"
swallow gripping fingers
hand in (hard)
percept (ing) behind't pass't
"motel
here it is"
suspend (up) back

sit 12

beating(s) laughing felt still

"created for its, position,

for its" puncture tingled

jingled foot sock stance

"that it thinks" walks

moved away another time

"says it that, is

as well as" breathing

not giving to attention

the nothing place that

value'd adaptation it hear't

repeats "alone and packing

this baby, who the

pocket jingling reeling laughed

done child" and the

bone "tingling"

Drop 7

(ing)
"get your
'etics, up" blood
pours
over block
walled & singing
tongue
constant one
more song chorus
leg
ankle toe
shin slapping pants
held
tone position
"sure, it's more”

-poems taken from his blog, Poetry From Downtown LA & Adjacent (s)

2008-07-01T05:48:00.000-07:00

Lisa Stewart

The Inn

The Messiah
has come for the
lost sons of Babylon.
-Pillaging from the rich,
giving to the poor.
He waits at the Inn
for you to repent.
Mary watches
from the kitchen.
They bring her flour
for bread.
Jesus rests
-uneasy.
A humble smile
upon his face.
We bathe his feet in
palm oil.
Take the thorns
from his crown.
He is not dead.
You can find him
at the Inn
when the yeast
is Risen.

Dusk

When the winds blew across the derelict beach,
I knew you were never coming back. The storm had
lifted you to heights where we can only dream.
I followed the trail to the oceans mouth, and watched
the waves’ dance across the shore.
At dusk you appeared and stood silently beside
the orange sunset. I didn’t know what to say, words
seemed so meaningless, so insignificant in your company.
Your eyes glazed with the wilderness of oceans
shone in brilliant blue, drowned me in their stare.
As I sank beneath the water, drinking your freedom.
I watched your face linger between the light
and knew that you were home, a deeper sense of
realisation that all was well in your new world .
As I gathered the fallen feathers from your wings
and watched you blend into the sunset.

Somewhere

I search for you
where they wait to be fed.
Through the crowded space
of a square.
Walking the streets
each day and night
for one trace
of your hem.
There are beggars in halls,
actors in cafes.
I have seen their mouths
fill like starved refugees.
But I am not from that world.
I wait outside like Lazarus
-for crumbs.
I shall take my hunger to Paris.
or Lerici, to fill my soul with
the sleeping poets.
Daylight fades.
I must collect my bags.
Leave the streets
before dusk.

Left You Drowning In Rain

Thirsty in sunlight
Neglected like a broken doll.
Now I have seen your nature
as you breathe from these sheets
with silence on your tongue.
Asking for nothing
while I ask for too much!
It is spring
And I must take your
roots to earth
with my words
And let your freedom
— Sing!

Where Man Begotten

searches for reason.
Where life for the lifeless
beckons each sunset.
I am tied to the shroud
the one piece of light.
Where angels lay broken
and dawns pass unnoticed.

2008-07-01T05:37:00.000-07:00

Kianseng Ng

Seeing

You gave me kestrel eyes and now
I see the horizons beyond the bend
of the globe. I see midnight infinity
with midday clarity. I see the night-
sky and I know which stars
have died because the speed
of my sight is greater than the speed
of light. I see places so far
away that the zodiac seem as near
as the pictures of a travel
guide. I see that last place
in the sky where eclipses are metaphors
because the sun behind the crystal-
ball of my mind throws not shadow
but more light on the moon
of my imagination. Because I see further
I travel further than a cartographer's
pen. Any place that cannot be imagined
is imaginary, any place that can
be imagined is not imaginary,
it is a space-station I will soon star-
trek to in my satellite spinning.
And this is my diary, each entry
is not a man's small step in the pages
of a log-book but the heart's giant
leap in the orbits of the universe.

Whispers Of Silence

old men playing chess
games are won and lost
without the creasing of brows

in tousled garden
where tall lalang runs amok
petite bonsai blooms

last call to board plane
at the back of jostling crowd
nun without luggage

Delusion

I'm a Van Gogh who does not
cut off his ear. My "Sunflowers" master
piece: A last supper portrait not graced
by the cord of a Mona Lisa
smile, hybrid colours and mutant lines.
Like Van Gogh I have a butterfly
mind, flitting, fragile, yet most beautiful
when set against the backdrop of a "Starry
Night".

Paranoia

I am fearful of some things, the woman
who is a shadow of her cosmetics, the man
who has two shadows, the Pandora box
of my cupboard where the skeleton of my
hope is kept, the mannequins who spy on me
through the binoculars of the glass window.
I'm glad I do not have claustrophobia,
agoraphobia, acrophobia.

An Old Master

"Mona Lisa, Mona Lisa, men have named you.
You're so like the lady with the mystic smile.
Do you smile to tempt a lover, Mona Lisa?
Or is this your way to hide a broken Heart?
"Sung by Nat King Cole, 1950

I am climbing up to chapel
ceilings, scaling refectory walls.
I am recalling renaissance
wizardry to frame your Mona
Lisa fire. I am making
a mystic smile. I am drawing
dreams that dance at door-
steps. I am immortalizing the face
that is love's patented prison.
I am adding last supper
colours, burnished brown of clenched
fists, Good Friday red
of a heady wine. I am working
on a cornerless cloth, nailing
it to the stars, moons, suns,
hanging it on the wall
of my left ventricle. I am painting
you on the canvas of my mind.

2008-07-01T05:33:00.000-07:00

About Art - Another Place

Another Place is a piece of modern sculpture by Antony Gormley that is now permanently erected on Crosby Beach, Liverpool, England, it was due to be moved to New York, United States in November 2006, but there was a controversial proposal to retain the work at Crosby. It was recently stated in the local paper, the Crosby Herald, that they may stay for up to a decade, but at a meeting on March 7th 2007, Sefton Council accepted proposals that would allow the sculptures to be kept permanently at Crosby Beach.

The sculpture consists of 100 cast iron figures which face out to sea, spread over a 2 mile (3.2 km) stretch of the beach. Each figure is 189 cm tall (nearly 6 feet 2½ inches) and weighs around 650 kg (over 1400 lb).

In common with most of Gormley's work, the figures are cast replicas of the artist's own body. As the tides ebb and flow, the figures are revealed and submerged by the sea. The figures were cast by Joseph and Jesse Siddons Foundry in West Bromwich.

Another Place was first exhibited on the beach of Cuxhaven, Germany in 1997 and after that in Stavanger in Norway and De Panne in Belgium.

As of March 2007 permission was granted to have Another Place permanently installed at Crosby. Initially, coastguard authorities expressed safety fears, saying people could become stuck in soft sand and be cut off by the tide when viewing the statues up close.

The planning committee decided to move 16 of the statues back away from an area used by small sailing craft. Three others are being re-sited away from bird feeding areas. The work on the 16 started on July 16 2007 and the plan is to put them in storage and return them in 2008. The full cost is expected to be £194,000 which will be paid for by Another Place Ltd, with funding coming from sources including The Northern Way and Northwest Development Agency. Find out more about the art of Antony Gormley at: www.antonygormley.co.uk

2008-07-01T05:32:00.000-07:00

Artwork by Therese Kenyon

2008-07-01T05:21:00.000-07:00

2008-07-01T05:18:00.000-07:00

About Books:

Title: Dreamers In A Cold Climate
Author: Tom Kelly

Description: Dreamers In A Cold Climate are reflections on the poet's past or present life, coupled with the redemptive power of filial love. In the final section we meet Geordie Everyman, trying to make sense of his life and times. These elements blend successfully in this moving and honest collection.

Product Details:

Printed: paperback, 8.5x5.5, 79 pages
ISBN: 978-0-9554027-4-6
Copyright: 2008
Language: English
Country: UK
Publisher's Link: www.redsquirrelpress.com

2008-07-01T05:04:00.000-07:00

About Music - Zucchero

Zucchero (Italian for "sugar") is an Italian rock singer. He was born Adelmo Fornaciari on September 25, 1955 in the Italian province Reggio Emilia and has since become one of the most famous Italian singers.

He is probably best known internationally for the song Senza Una Donna, which is a duet with Paul Young and hit number 4 in the latter's native United Kingdom, where Zucchero has generally made little commercial impact, in 1991. He commenced his musical career in 1970 with his first single in 1976, and his first album in 1983. His music, in Italian, Spanish and in English, is largely inspired by gospel, blues and rock music, and alternates between syrupy ballads and more rhythmic boogie-like pieces. He sang several duets, in public or on disc, with Joe Cocker, Miles Davis, Paul Young, Andrea Bocelli, Sting, Luciano Pavarotti, Tom Jones, and Johnny Hallyday.

European hit singles include Il Volo (English version: My love), Cosi Celeste, Baila (sexy thing), Diamante (featuring soul singer Randy Crawford), and Wonderful World (with Eric Clapton). Zucchero's 2004 album ZU & Co features duets with Miles Davis, Paul Young, Sheryl Crow, The Cranberries's Dolores O'Riordan, B.B. King, John Lee Hooker, Maná, Brian May, and Sting. It has sold millions of copies throughout Europe and the world and entered the Billboard 200 charts after its release in the U.S. in the summer of 2005.

In July 2005, Zucchero took part in the Live 8 concerts in both Rome and Paris. In July 2006 Zucchero's new single 'Bacco Perbacco' was released. In September 2006 his latest album, entitled Fly, was released. It includes the singles "Bacco perbacco", "Cuba libre" and "Occhi" and features collaborations with artists such as Ivano Fossati and Jovanotti. This year he will tour to promote the Fly album. Find out more at: www.zucchero.it/english

2008-07-01T04:57:00.000-07:00

James Owens

October, the House Draws Near the Woods

The day unmakes itself,
turning outward,

shaking loose long rags of color.

*

I wanted flight.
Watching at the window

as the clumsy wind
licked red maple leaves

one by one

—the desire

like a prolonged absence of salt:

waiting,
suspended,

I imagined the taste of this other earth,
gritty and rich,

its leaves’ kinship with jeweler’s metals.

(an earlier version appeared in French at Mauvaise Graine)

Paperweight

This stone on the desk is inaccessible
in its rare innards, though fist-shaped

and polished by years’ employment
in meditation—an idle hand grasping

as a mind strokes History or notions of Being.
The cool skin of rock never returns

the answer to any question, not to the fingers
that try its bumps and grooves, not to the silence

of the empty room where it huddles toad-like
while light crosses the desk, slowly, from the window,

in the turning of the day. The stone takes the light,
quietly, when no one sees, then curls back upon itself.

(an earlier version appeared in the chapbook Loan of the Quick)

An Ache in the Pause Just Before

All that summer they were unquiet.

Their nights were longer than normal, conscious
of a pressure, a glance that must have been

themselves, later, looking back from some other
present, with longing or horror. They waited

like something looked at—a painting
holding its breath the long afternoon,

while many bored and dull file past,
and traffic outside the museum stalls in rows,

and simpering, winsome Eve extends the fruit
forever and Adam wakes to discover time.

The Doors of Perception

Transmutation we all desire and dread.
Rescue’s harsh mercy for the sifter of dark.
Thrown from the dim house to raw noon sunlight,

the moth— rich with detail as a Dürer engraving,
ash-gray with shocked mahogany eye-spots—
loops in jagged orbits, drunken rings.

Blinded by that instant, rock-hard dazzle,
it tilts through this vertigo of color, cacophony of light.

(an earlier version appeared in the chapbook Loan of the Quick)

Three Wakings, Parked Beside A Scene From The Inferno

1.

The slate dump breathes hell and rotten eggs,
unfinished as lust, little twirls of smoke
from some fire in its guts the rain
can't reach, that twist and thin as they rise
through the ending darkness,
breath forgetting the body of dirt and rock.

2.

When she lay down in the tub,
the blood from her wrists must
have swirled like unraveling strings of smoke,
the world a far, bright circle
around her face there in the water—
this wet sun behind clouds
that wakes thinking of her with no way to stop.

3.

He finds himself here again, unsurprised,
still half-drunk after a night of drizzle,
drawn to this final landscape.
Morning blackens in his mouth.
The roar of heavy trucks shudders up
through the steering wheel.
Coal dust and sulphur ash
gom the wiper swathes of passing cars.

2008-07-01T04:23:00.000-07:00

Arioborzine Farin

Tenderness

She haunches,
her burgundy hem
delineates the sand,
the pebbles and shells
of the cellar floor.
She clutchesthe light-blue jar
with sweet and sour
courgettes: cut and bare-
bottomed in the half-dark.
The ground stirs.
As if sieved, he’s there,
turns her round. His hands
on hers, they huddle
in hot, tangy slurry.

Eta Boo (The Solitary One)

I have nothing,
not even the stars
as words -
Akhir an-Nahr,
Delta Gem,
Sheratan -

nor the sky as map,
error-prone,
yellowed,

like the glint
of the cobblestone
in my palm,

lifted
to be weighed,
splintered,

shattering
the lazurite window
of delineated

stillness: glass
as compass,
unreflecting

and pointing
into every direction,
contours

as detours,
because uncut
I have nothing.

Where It All Began

Until my eardrums
Stop beating.
Until sprayed-over keys
Stop sticking
In aluminum locks.
Until the plated aerials
Stop blowing
Like manta rays
On a tricky undercurrent.
Until my daydreams
Bubble up - reflected
With the yellow road signs
And the hot tarmac
In the scratched tailfins.
Above, between the rocks
Rustle metal coat hangers
On rubber washing lines.
Reminiscent
Of long-lost relatives
Apparently
They function
As untested lightning rods.
Please check
If we’ve reached
Broadcast level yet.
Further up,
Between the pastel balconies
Drop,
Eyes closed,
Washed-up pins and pegs
Like fuzzy threads,
Disentangling the tassels
Of neighbourly connections,
Reverting broidered rugs
To reddest flax
And what was yours
Becomes ours.
Until this name
From a house
Of impeccable tradesmen
Is changed back
To Rastagar: wanderer,
Lost one, usurer.
Until the posters
With winged table dancers
Are returned
To the silver railings
with legal disclaimers.
Until his scribbled notes
Are handed over
By my father
In email or letter.
Until stonewashed denim
And glossy lipstick
Are fashionable again:
Please check
If we’ve reached
Broadcast level yet,
I will petition
The last city captain.

Anatomy

Up the stairs in the observatory,
The rail’s slippery with lavender
Pollen and sandy rain.

She rotates in her chair,
A scrapbook on her oak desk,
Where she writes quatrain

After quatrain and tears
The red and yellow leaves
I collected from the mulberry

Bushes, chewing their black fruit.
Sometimes, she peers into the eyepiece,
Records, calculates, predicts

The measure of loss, the limits
Of gain: an instant sketch
Of a body, soft and uncertain.

Wrong Frequency

There is a lantern
In the street that shines
An alien magenta
On the underlined
And redrawn pavement,
The searching eyes
Of the dismounted horses
In the alleyways.

She’s long gone,
Her hair a tangle
Of piano strings,
Her tip-tap-toe
A dislocated echo.
You should have
Seen it coming.
It’s how she sings.

But she only drank
The whitest wine
And I was dizzy
On her demarcating
Lips, the interrupted
Scale in reverse:
Soundless black keys
And impatient hooves.

2008-07-01T04:08:00.000-07:00

Contributors Biographies

Ernest Williamson III: is a 31 year old polymath who has published poetry and visual art in over 120 online and print journals within a time span of 8 years. His poem "The Jazz of Old Wine" has been nominated for a Best of the Net award by the editors of "Thick with Conviction". He holds the B.A. and the M.A. in English/Creative Writing/Literature from the University of Memphis. Ernest is now listed in the prestigious Directory of American Poets and Fiction Writers. Professor Williamson is also a private tutor, a Ph.D. Candidate at Seton Hall University. He lives in South Orange, NJ. Visit his website. www.eyeoftheart.com/ErnestWilliamsonIII

Jenny Allan: is a graduate of the University of Brighton, England. Her poetry has appeared in Sidebrow, Otoliths 3 and Intercapillary Space. She lives in West Sussex, UK and expresses her angle of movement from “a to a” in a blog she maintains at http://intermittent-voices.blogspot.com

Tammy Ho: she obtained her B.A. from the Department of English and Department of Chinese, University of Hong Kong in 2002. She is the co-founder and co-editor of Cha: An Asian Literary Journal and co-editor of two other literary journals and has written academic publications. She was a teacher of English Language, World History and Social Studies for one year. Her poetry has appeared in numerous literary journals including Mascara, Arabesques Review and Spoken War. Tammy is interested in Victorian studies, especially Charles Dickens, literary linguistics, poetry, and the contemporary novels. Visit her website at: http://www.sighming.com

Jose Paulo Andrade: he lives in Porto, Portugal. He is a medical doctor and university professor that uses photography to express the beauty present in small details. He has particular interest in the use of color and shape to obtain images that may surprise the viewer. He captures his images and then sorts them out to finally place them in over a dozen unique motifs. Find more images at his website: www.pbase.com/jandrade

Harry K. Stammer: his poetry has been published in Sidereality, Dream Virus, Znine, BlazeVox, Moria, Poetic Inhalation, and xPress (ed). He has also collaborated with Karri Kokko in a book titled beeasily published by xPress (ed). The poet lives under several swaying palms in Los Angeles, CA. You can visit his blogsite and find out more about his books and e-books at http://www.harrykstammer.blogspot.com

Lisa Stewart: she is the editor of Decanto poetry magazine and has produced a series of poetry by children books that include her own illustrations. She has written over 6 collections of poetry including ‘For All Eternity’, ‘Another Sentiment’ and ‘The Last Lament’, and is currently working on a new collection ‘A Different Song’ due later this year. Her poetry has been included in many magazines and anthologies, and she recently won 3rd place in the ‘Rubies In The Darkness’ poetry competition. She lives in West Sussex, with her musician partner (David). Visit the couple’s website at http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/masquepublishing

Kianseng Ng: he is a physician, and elder in the Presbyterian church. His writings (poems, inspirational pieces, short stories, medical articles)have appeared in 44 different journals published in Malaysia, Singapore, India, Australia, New Zealand, USA. A prize winner in many different poetry competitions, including the prestigious 1995 New Straits Times-Shell poetry competition. Many of his inspirational poems have been translated into Mandarin. Author of 3 books of poetry, "White Magic","Postcards from Kluang" & "Familiar Strange Country". Presently working on his 4th book of poetry tentatively entitled "A Different Kind of Magic". He lives in Hong Kong, China. Read more of his poetry at http://alwaysmorebeyond.blogspot.com

Therese Kenyon: she holds a Master of Fine Arts Visual Art University of NSW and is currently Director of Manly Art Gallery & Museum, Sydney . She works on paper and canvas as well as digital imaging. Her work can be found in collections including the National Gallery of Australia, state and regional galleries and private collections within Australia and has appeared in both solo and group exhibitions. She lives in Kings Cross, Sydney and works in her studio at the Ultimo Project in Addison Rd Centre Marrickville, Sydney where she lives. Visit her fasinating art website at http://www.artists@artconnect.come.au/theresekenyon.index.htm

James Owens: has had two collections of his poetry published in 2007: An Hour is the Doorway, from Black Lawrence Press, and Frost Lights a Thin Flame, from Mayapple Press. His poems have appeared in numerous publication and are upcoming in Tipton Poetry Journal, The Cresset, and Boxcar Poetry Review. He maintains a blog at http://klagewelt.blogspot.com

Arioborzine Farin: she was born in Iran to an Iranian father and a Dutch mother and spent her childhood in the Netherlands and the UK and now works as an English teacher for adults and translator in Germany since 2000. She writes poetry as a means of discipline and as a way to communicate with others. She calls her poetry blog more of a “workshop” than a display window. She currently lives in Leipzig. Read more of her poetry at her attractive blog, Scribblings And Sketches at: http://scribblingsandsketches.wordpress.com

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 Aug. 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/