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Vers Magnifique!: Kate Benedict Adrian Boas Derek Brown Chin Jian Xiong George Dickerson Clayton Eshleman Marissa Fox Dylan Garcia-Wahl William Glass Everett Goldner Harvey Goldner Cindra Halm Neil Hester Lynsey Jenkins Dan Masterson Whinza Ndoro Peter Nicholson Maurice Oliver Joel Parrish Gilbert Wesley Purdy Iain James Robb Alex Sheremet Anthony Zanetti MIA Poets: Richard Dana Carlson Greg Clark Leah Cutter Shawn Durrett Angela Haug April Lott Steve Perkins Maggie Sullivan |
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Kate Benedict
Kate Benedict is a New York poet (a Bronxer) who has published since 1980, & lives with her husband on New York Citys ritzy Upper West Side; they surround themselves with totemic objects and thrift-store treasures. She has worked in book publishing and finance, hating every minute. Visit her website, from which these poems are reprinted: http://home.att.net/~leahyshaw/katebenedict.html. Also her online zine is at http://www.umbrellajournal.com/. Atlantic City Idyll Beneath Bronx Singular EL: The Litters Glimpses of the Body.... In The Key.... Into His Hand Itchy Scar Atlantic City IdyllCome bet with me and be my luck Where it sank exactly no expert knows, In the confinement of my solitary childhood Rouge, the tabby who matched my mother's hair, Glimpses of the Body at a City Window Mine is not a building with a river view. In Central Park, you lost our keys, ...cupped in sleep, youd tuck a nickel. Such A faded scar of mine turns garnet red. Adrian Boas was born and grew up in Australia but has lived for the past 35 years in Jerusalem. He was born in 1952. He started writing poetry only recently. He is an archaeologist and university lecturer in the field of medieval archaeology (a field he has published 2 books, & is completing a 3rd in). Down shopping mall or narrow covered suk
But sound and smell are only part of this
Derek Brown lives in Glasgow, Scotland. But for quietude, cementing night a homogeny of bells chime in a place none arrive or depart for the past is the future. By candlelight, revering the motherless sun, you and I, The painted,
cheek of time, in the culture of our eyes, things unresolvable and Zen. The circular now obsolete, to complete everyone else, for they are asleep, our inheritance shuns its offer of a bed. Some pray to a praying mantis, some pray to an infinity.
Not yet begun. With an incriminating sense of structure you and I, from an empty cup, we drink. And though nothingness is something, in itself, we are, no longer curbed by chords of Instance. Through conceiving we are conceived.
And so it is then, we conceive the green, give birth to red A red no more shallow.
Chin Jian Xiong is a poet from Singapore
Chess Against Engine The Scent Of The Rafflesia 1.
Darren Zhang activates
the machine, imitates 2.
a line pondered in a book,
soon regrets the pawn he took 3.
to mean nothing. The machine
suprises with the living thing 4.
arranged discreetly. Zhang was not
aware of when the beast was wrought 5.
against his odds. It calculates
what, in Zhang, was inculcate 6.
by means of man. It overthinks
its maker. Zhang is at the brink 7.
of knowledge. The machine provides
a newer line unfettered, eyes 8.
Zhang’s short circuit. As its pate
steels reflect, it finds a mate. The
Scent Of The Rafflesia George Dickerson George Dickerson is a poet ("The New Yorker," "Mademoiselle," "Pivot," "Rattapallax," "Medicinal Purposes"), fiction writer ("The Best American Short Stories of 1963" and "1966") and actor ("Blue Velvet," "After Dark, My Sweet," etc.). His "Selected Poems 1959-1999" was published by Rattapallax Press, 2000. He is a member of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. A Mist Of White Horses Badinage For "Pepper" Dentistry In War Relativity The Coming On Of Night The Integument Of Dust A Mist of White Horses Badinage for "Pepper" Dentistry in War Outside, I can hear a siren
Speeding towards someone waiting--
Someone who may not know
He is waiting.
On my kitchen table I reach
For a crust of bread
And crumbs I have not yet eaten.
Between the reach
And the waiting
Is the cave of a parabola
Where I can hear Einstein laughing.
Light scatters from the trees
Flutters momentarily,
And seems to die on air.
Night picks up his walking stick.
Jackhammers machine-gunning the streets
Have stopped their persistent yammer.
Only a fragment of an echo
Brought by the restless wind
Chatters the Venetian blind.
In my room a girl trembles
To an emotion as far away
And indecipherable
As the shudder of subways
Through the belly of a building.
It is too late for summer,
But she makes fireflies
In the darkness
With her cigarette,
Insisting on her presence.
In the first night, in the Garden,
Did terror strike our hearts
With the quickness of the tiger? Or was there a sign
To ease the uncertainty--
A surprise of stars Assuring the upturned eyes?
Over the city now,
The stars open bloodshot eyes
In a heavy, sullen neon glow.
The girl snuffs out her light,
Makes a stirring like leaves,
Like grass disturbed by frightened birds,
Then empties out my room
With the closing of the door.
The heart crumples black
As a burned letter
From the half-forgotten past. The Integument of Dust Clayton Eshleman is a poet, translator & editor of Sulfur magazine. He has had many books published by Black Sparrow Press since 1968. Upcoming books include Companion Spider [essays] & a revised translation of Aimé Césaire's Notebook of a Return to the Native Land [both by Wesleyan University Press]. Check out his websites: http://www.webdelsol.com/Sulfur/ & http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/authors/eshleman/ Crematorial sensation in a department store, thousands of suits and dresses without bodies, as if it is always Book 11 of The Odyssey, we are surrounded by speechless souls
Souls trying on souls, the hippo-assed white, the mantis-waisted black, caramel shoulders of a teenager, a pink ankle-length soul for Xmas day
Caryl found some fabulous pants, gold green alligator quills, loose in the crotch, baggy in knee, she put them back, fearful no tailor she could find could fashion them perfectly
(In eternity, Henry Miller is a tailor--
We sashay over to the Santa Center, the old sot in red crumples each wish, sending a beam of hope into the child heart, I can feel the soot already in the childrens' mouths as wishes like elves congregate on their lips, they sit for a moment on the stony gingerbread knee, this realm of sweet deception
Dorothea Tanning's female cloth-like forms blow through, crumpling knots of outwinding femininity
Department
Redesign yourself, step into this angelic armor
Cuddly music, emptiness made cosy
"'Exquisite work, madame, exquisite pleats'
Old man in a pea coat searching for something among womens' suits
Recalls my father searching for my mother after she had died, he'd steal his car keys the Rest Home people had hidden, then drive and drive, 200 miles away one afternoon a housewife found him parked in her driveway--when she asked him what he was doing there he told her he was looking for Gladys
--emptiness keeps coming in,
The terrible animal imprint in perfume departure, the civet cat and the musk deer, crushed like grapes, displayed in tiny gold vases
I help Caryl shop, holding her coat and scarf, pick out clothes, color schemes, purples, lavenders, auburns and deep browns, things for her new silhouette.
Copyright Ó by Clayton Eshleman Marissa Fox is a recent graduate of Barnard College, where she studied Art History. She currently lives in Brooklyn, where she spends her days working on a floating chamber music hall, and her nights contemplating Frank O'Hara. This is her first online publication. A Short Confession Border Town Blues Jamaica Transfer The Excuse The Graduates
Kaikki is hello in Finnish. I found this in your English-Finnish dictionary when you were downstairs using the bathroom. I was going to surprise you with my language skills, but I put down the book quickly (like a thief!) when you returned, so I never got the chance to figure out the correct pronunciation. I have been meaning to say it to you: kaikki when I ring your doorbell, kaikki when we meet by accident in town. In my mind kaikki also means goodbye and I say that, too, though slower, lingering on the ka-i-kki until it means hello again. Listen, I know you have trouble understanding me (save for the instance when we locked eyes, when we held hands furtively in a crowded pub), I just want to tell you that I am working on other words - pussata, suudella, suukko that I will mention one by one when language means less, and the spelling looks right. Copyright Ó by Marissa Fox The heat down south is killing us: I fell for you in a border town, When the shots went off, My eyes were bluer then, Copyright Ó by Marissa Fox The train lights collapse Her dress immaculate She presses her spare keys There are traps In the architecture of unfamiliar faces
Jiri calls with the excuse: we can no longer meet at the flea market at lunchtime. It will be too hot Havent you seen the way the sun descends on the plaza? Hitting the rims of old spectacles, reddening the necks of those digging through the remains of forfeited fiction, the stubborn reminders of chance. We cannot meet here midday, he says over the phone, only later, when the shadows spread across this tired square, when the market shuts down and Marolles becomes a burial ground: Meet me where the vans gather the unsold goods in the wave of exhaust fumes, where pieces of cloth, chains, a shard of glass lie there you will find me, scavenging.
The Graduates Present Their Theses
Concretized, Krauss-esque In both ways, in multiples An appendix or an index: a sign
Hold on, hold fast Less didactic, more romantic
There is a seamlessness to your discussion There is a seamlessness to your dress
Bad graphics, how Benjaminian Adorn[o]ed, their best blouses The blondes always discuss Turner
A pause, applause, 3 missed calls Some misread article in Artforum A re-appropriation of the icon
Their lecterns were invaded, Or worse Poorly articulated. Copyright Ó by Marissa Fox Dylan Garcia-Wahl Dylan came to the UPG a number of times. He has written novels, as well chapbooks of poetry. In addition he has hosted reading series, cable access shows, and is an avid jazz enthusiast. He is married, with two children from a previous marriage. One of his long-term goals is to live in Europe. I have known Dylan since 1993 and we have collaborated on a number of arts projects. His website: http://dgarciawahl.com/ As In Benediction Baptism Filmatic Gates Of Rodin Manikarnika Ghat Quiver For.... Somnolent Verse Song To Whom Is Forbidden Voices Welled You, Madonn of my desires, Copyright Ó by Dylan Garcia-Wahl Baptism Copyright Ó by Dylan Garcia-Wahl Filmatic Copyright Ó by Dylan Garcia-Wahl Whereas Ghirberti had bronzed paradise Copyright Ó by Dylan Garcia-Wahl Manikarnika Ghat Copyright Ó by Dylan Garcia-Wahl Is his life the tune of his human hands Copyright Ó by Dylan Garcia-Wahl Somnolent Verse Copyright Ó by Dylan Garcia-Wahl Song Copyright Ó by Dylan Garcia-Wahl To Whom Is Forbidden Copyright Ó by Dylan Garcia-Wahl Voices Welled Copyright Ó by Dylan Garcia-Wahl William Glass William lives in Gainesville, FL, and works for the state. He graduated from UF, gaining above all a rabid addiction to football. This is the first time his poetry has been published. Guy Fawkes Porcelain On Mama's Emphysema Road Work On I-95 Satellite: A Collect of Astronomy in First Person Sin Speaks Behovely Sonnet, In Advance.... The Department Chair The Instrument Responds... Westminster Abbey
Guy Fawkes Porcelain
Copyright Ó by William Glass On Mama's Emphysema
10,000 years from now no lungs will fill with this difficulty. We will have learned, by then what things we can and cannot burn. And then, as now, to burn will mean to kill. Not that I don't understand why the smoke soothes a guilty lung. Mama had to hear brothers and sister upstairs, when the fear of fathers hands stopped being fear, and took form. She breathed out loud to help her pretend. Age 12: the next day she rolled and lit her failing, pulled its punition, breathed in. After each nights loud breath, there followed her revenge
on this self-defense. In 10,000 years, will they punish only real offenders?
Copyright Ó by William Glass
Road Work On I-95
Copyright Ó by William Glass
Satellite: A Collect of Astronomy in First Person
...consider first, that Great or Bright infers not Excellence: the Earth Though, in comparison of Heav'n, so small, Nor glistering, may of solid good contain More plenty than the Sun, that barren shines, Whose virtue on itself works no effect, But in the fruitful earth. Paradise Lost 8.90-96
Copernicus ~May 24, 1543 (for Bishop Tom Wright)
I study the sun, constrained into a glass of wine, within whose fluttering demesne a shift of wing is seen to pass, transfigure, and remain most truly wing. That is light's effect on things—reveals them most by making them into itself. The luminesced reflect: so things become what we see things by. And if my face is brighter than most, it is because no shade remains to leave a trace of knowing whose engines made the wing in the wineglass and its flight reveal the shadow that reveals the light.
Galileo Before the Inquisitors —Rome, 1633 Save your histrionics! Have you seen How Venus spins in the light of the sun? You insist I undo what I’ve done: to please a jester, shall I jilt a queen— deny her in the rack of the world, and swear she never visits me? She turns her body, whelms my sight in a whirl, Shows me what Anchises could never see!
Jupiter’s queens never quit his face; can I hope to turn from the vast horizon of light, smash my telescope and hope the sight of her will die in me? She, who can never die? It’s more than a lie you bid me tell— why must I quit heaven to stay out of hell?
Sir Isaac, at the Lamb and Flag ~1693
Nicolas, fetch a friend another ale, a glass to shed the cold--but not the dark viscous soup of a beer, I fancy the pale, the froth refracting light in upward arc, the only thing that ever made me doubt gravity--Nicolas, please do hurry back-- For them I endeavored to father out the revolutions of force in the vacuum of fact, to chart the attractions of bodies barely in reach of one another's influence--but I learned awe from the reaching--Oh, so hot in the breach is the grieving, my friend, of love that is not returned-- Damn Leibniz or England, I don't know which!-- Nicolas, why are you leaving!?--You son of a
A Letter from Yuri ~April 12, 1961
Valentina, Never have I been 'til now, so clearly aware of the need for space to open, occasionally, between a man and what centers his motion. There is no choice in gravity--we were anchored to the ground. I labored with the power that cut the string, but now that I've seen it dangling, what do I wrap my ends around? Russia's a ghost that doesn't know it's dead --like you, the earth is blue, not red!--no motherland's cord can tie a man who has gone to bed with the world in his window, small as a hand. No country is worth the tethering to: It's good that I circle, not the world, but you.
One Small Step, or Armstrong to Aldrin, In a Bit of a Hurry ~July 21, 1969 7:56 pm (Houston Time)
close me up tight or I might bleed into the nothing which bends and beckons me as if toward home if home were nothing and maybe we came from there and rockets testify to an uncertainty of return whose only fruit is the act no certainty or its lack can justify how with all our might we dare tempt the titans whose rage alone can salve the wound we surround with air in our breathing I should never have been chosen for this though our times choose us and I will not be found timid in the mirror of my time still I confess near-failure of nerve that I should be first to transgress the pale bride of the universe and know my wound will endure hollowed out in her where nothing always is
. . . .
"I have not as yet been able to discover the reason for these properties of gravity from phenomena, and I do not feign hypotheses. For whatever is not deduced from the phenomena must be called a hypothesis; and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, or based on occult qualities, or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy. In this philosophy particular propositions are inferred from the phenomena, and afterwards rendered general by induction." --Newton (1726). Principia Mathematica Copyright Ó by William Glass I become as though I never wasa fault within them, which cannot reform except by mending the frayed seam, cause of the wound unstitched, into a whole. This harm was not my choice, nor did I choose to tear all that was torn by me. Here I am nothing I was not made to be. And no repair can heal the break in everything I am, since I am the break itself. Of this they are ignorant, but not you: you were the harbinger of something else, something I was unsure of, in that I who was rent by all, found in rending you, myself--fresh-hemmed, with cords that can't untie. Copyright Ó by William Glass Sonnet, in Advance, to an Ex-girlfriend*two months from now, possibly It was your body that I loved most of all bodies, and that most I love to recall. For in each of your features a gist was printed of the rest. What I would leave in turning each page of you would attain in the next. Your eyes could feel like fingers, unfasten in me what I feared to be seen. Your furious waist could roar with anger (I would that it still roared on me). I would watch your breasts flaring, like a hunter's nose, at the scent of what lay hid in my wood: your body was nothing like you supposed! For you were all bodies, each body the crest of the next--of the body that I loved most. Copyright Ó by William Glass The Department Chair Copyright Ó by William Glass
And who knows how I play, how I hold you
to be mysterious as music is,
brief as a summer afternoon, and blue
as Miles Davis was never, how I
am held by you, whose curled melodies sway
in me with new words. If I bend and lie
in that posture, tendering for a curve
this back upright and hollow, who will say
what heaven or hell would have beenor if
any orthodoxy could sustain that beat
of yours, could any bible give of verse
the way you give of your ambitious sweet
improvisation, & breathe into me the riff
of what you hold & only we rehearse? Copyright Ó by William Glass know your feelings were already felt before this cathedral became your world" --Dan Schneider, Refrain of the RCA Building
This is no cathedral, merely a haunt for sinners, where they have cast their stones together, to form a heaven that held angels themselves, fast into architecture. Is this hour the recline of God? Some say he rests in the transept of elements upon a prayer; others that no amount of silver mints a value worth The prayer inhaled the pillars of a faith peasants began. "Silver and gold I do not have, but such" it was said, "as I have..." Not to silver was it given to heal on heaven's high spires, towered in time turned back, but to a boulder burst off of the grave bearing the miracle hid behind. Then is an abbey not miraculous, if not hidden? Is the body just as dust as the stones, and as all things are? What if it were breathed upon? What if England were cast into speech, its tenses woven in one said verb, wreathed in the vow the dust is destined for and cannot escape? Westminster, cloister of its own memory, more dead than living in its fray. What future could purchase a past like this, and who be its pardon? Here all will be pardoned, when the young stone falls on perished arches, and rings the verdict buried beneath these bells, and beckons the past to account for what was done with it. The past that never extinguishes, but carves Kenosis in tablets, stretched high in the testament limestone fills with the frailty of this art, reaching at God by a means so much like kneeling, or if not, like Babel, the tongue fissured in the feint to flirt with godhead. But this abbey is not for talking in, it is for pardon: the permission to elide in the already said, fixing other margins in the mortar of ones own tongue, the remembered English habit of harboring critique in its own taleas if a word could embody what comes after it and ferry it pastward. It remains to do what must be done, what has been done, and is not done easily: to trace the sentence etched in this rock, and mark the martyrs fixed to its walls The acceptance of Abel as they speak. There appears San Romero, rid of the cartridge that cored him, calling birds to sift the supper of his hand, bitter only to those who do not taste, and invisible, but for the blood on the stone. Does it bleed then, the future into the past thought settled, swaddled, made particular, like dust, always is? Does it animate? God knows time's whole conversion as if it were the fall of a sparrow's feather, or a single stone off the vastness of this construction, so when Romero calls the birds, it is not simply The prayer exhaled a tremor in the towers turned out. The rumor of wings accrues in the ear of believing: the words pecked out of his hand will allay the cracked rhyme, of his world and his day. So called birds return to their making home in the hand of a saint. And again that is the habit of the particular, that pretense to permanence. The abbey endures not only to witness the apathy wrung out of such beautiful fashioning; but to breathe in the whence of these towers, raised earth, dirt sculpted, miraculous and seen to be so. Wondrous, how the dead have endured in the etching of them, and how this breath has thrilled their witness into the living Incarnatio Dei speech. And how they are bound to utterance no vision catches all of. Were they without sin, who cast enormity past that which thought promises, forth in sequential definings? These annotations do they read in the body of Englands endurance? A tower is a tower; the breath that fills it names it, the breath of a prayer exhaled, O Lord, refashioned in this writerly purview which is not stone; how then can it rise to you? Copyright Ó by William Glass Everett GoldnerEverett Goldner is a poet and actor living in New York. Heat Sonata Leather, Sketch, Score, Mist Heat Sonata Elastic gong rings in a shivering space: roily dodges wandering, opaque; Out in grace, waiting curious, all origami cascade: while star-felt reelings la deedle de game and moves impatiently, like an unsigned wave at limbo, o scarlet harlequin, bow a sheer A; Harvey Goldner (1942-2007) Harvey Goldner (newpacificboomerang@hotmail.com) lived in Seattle. His three chapbooksHer Bright Bottom, Memphis Jack, and American Flyerare available from Spankstra Press (Seattle). To purchase, contact Chris Dusterhoff at spankstra@hotmail.com or write Chris Dusterhoff, Spankstra Press, PO Box 224, Seattle WA 98111. 19 sonnets from an apple basket
#1
Prominent cheek bones, on the deck of her pastel condo, high up, Claire runs a red comb through her hair, black with just a minor encroachment of gray. From far out, a Pacific breeze ruffles white the Sound water and stirs
some business papers beside her chair. Down there she sees a few trivial gulls and sailboats andvibrant capitalism, three huge ships: a freighter from China stuffed with mattresses for the massive Americans, a ferryboat, passengers bound for Bainbridge and TV,
and the wedding cake Princess, top-heavy, her pleasure sponges no doubt drowsy from a big dose of rigatoni and red wine or something. She dozes and dreams a rustle of rats in the attic, the several stations of the crass, a basket full of death wishes & red
delicious apples, a priestthe beast who scooped her updead in a dim room, a bullet wound in his forehead, oozing blood, red.
#2
She awakens and her trigger finger itches. Claire Black, recently widowed at fifty, leans over the railing of her deck, cold now and in the dark. Should I inject my face with bo-tox? Should I jump? But what if death iseven lonelier?
Maybe I will inject my face with bo-tox and buy a small dog, a Maltese, maybe two Malteses, male and female. I'll call them Tess & D'Urberville, Derby for short. Yes, bo-tox and two Malteses, but both maleLaurel & Hardy. O fuck, all
I need's a stiff drink. From a cabinet above the kitchen sink a tumbler, a fresh fifth of Bombay gin and two tiny bottles of tonic water, Schweppes. Claire struggles unscrewing the Bombay. Hot Christ! I don't need a man to screw: I need a man to unscrew
bottle caps. After a blast of gin, a TV dinner and a hot shower, Claire, in a pink silk kimono, settles down for a family album hour.
#3
Two more gin & tonics and Claire feels like a blathering mother so she first phones her daughter Phoebe's friendly answering machine in Omaha, and Phoebe's friendly answering machine (Claire sees corn stalk or parrot green) cheerfully announces that Phoebe
has gone to church to eat corn on the cob, to sing some hymns and to play a little bingo. Claire informs Phoebe's answering machine the if she should ever return to church she'll be packing a pistol in her Louis Vuitton, to drill a filthy raven between his twisted eyes.
Another blast from the bottle and baby daughter Annie's answering machine (pantie pink) in Miami sings, breathlessly. Seems Annie's fanny's on the back of her photographer fiancé's Harley, and they're touring Gulf Katrina states on assignment for National Geographic.
Claire, now somewhat slurry, sings to Annie's pink machine that she is torn between skydiving in Peru & scuba diving in the Caspian Sea.
#4
Nuclear family business complete, Claire decides to connect with her larger tribe: she flips on the TV. It will take a village to polish off this bottle of gin, she thinks, as she riffles her deck of channels, finally fixing on the Seattle Sonics versus the Phoenix
Suns. All those stunning men in silky shorts, so tall and nimble! But what a waste. If only...if only they could break free, free at lastGod Almighty!from that retarded basketball. She trembles weeping while splashing a tumbler half fullor half empty?
of gin and tonic, then wraps an Indian blanket around her tightly and stumbles out onto the deckthose lights, those harbor lights! Claire's eyes open at dawn. She crawls inside, drinks her last drink. She dumps what remains of the Bombay gin into the kitchen sink
and mumbles: "Time to sell my eagle's nest high above the Sound and live somewhere closer to the ground, maybe even under ground."
#5
In a peachy Hawaiian surfer shirt, Red Featherlong black hair, blue cotton headbandshuffles his homemade cards. He gazes into, and through, Claire Black's eyes, places a card on each of the nine points of an enneagram crudely sketched with a red
magic marker on old cotton, and speaks, amused, hamming it up: "Madam Black, I see shoes, shoes moving back and forth. I see a man in black but not Johnny Cash I see a flash not from a camera I see blood from a head not yours I see your
"photo a theater poster? a postal wanted poster? Now cross my palm with silver. Twenty bucks. I'm in serious need of fresh buffalo meat. Would you like some advice?" Claire swoons and nods. "Record your dreams in this specially blesséd journal.
"A mere twenty bucks. I'm in serious need of a dog for my sled. Mark your place with this red feather. It's free: I like your head."
#6
Claire stands up, dizzy. With a grand theatrical gesture, Red Feather hands her his business cardHave 3 Eyes; Will Travel& a rather filthy paperback copy of Steve LaBerge's Lucid Dreaming. "Brother Steve's a shamancampus tribe, Stanford clan. Sacred smoke of cedar
"fire has purified this copytwenty bucks. My squa needs a new bra." "Where'd you get your red feathers?" Claire stammers. "From a cardinal, but not at Romein Missoula." Claire's fingers now smell like a Cascade Mountain campfire. She exits Red Feather's closet
Red Feather, Registered Psychic on the doorin the back of the Fremont New Age Bookstore (just below the Troll) and browses a bit, buying a hunk of rose quartz and a fresh copy of Lucid Dreaming. Claire wanders Fremont, and before sundown she rents a basement
studio apartment in an old building. Her windowssidewalk level. She sees shoes, shoes moving back & forth. Red Featheryou devil!
#7
Saturday night and neon swirls in a Fremont tavern, The Cars on the jukebox churn cream into butter, the bartendersLars and Lauradraw multiple beers for the boys and girls, Dusty throws a dart that misses the board, Nicole Rococo swats him
on the ass and everybody laughs. Out front, under lights, under summer stars, Leona and the smokers gesture & smoke & pose for the traffic. In back of the tavern, in the dark, Angelo parks his Harley in the weedy lot, and with a big silver key, opens the
back door. Claire Black follows him down dark stairs, and together they light a dozen candles on the long table that stands surrounded by cases of wine and beer. Slowly more ghosts file in and fill up the chairs. It's Claire's first AA meeting: The
Saturday Midnight Fremont Free Monsters. Hanging on the wall their motto: The way up is the way down. Claire feels quite small.
#8
Shadows and candlelight play on his face. "My name is Angelo, ex- con, gypsy, joker, and I .We were out in the yard shooting hoops hard words push & shove. I got stuck in the gut. As I lay dying, blood pooling in the dirt, I sawit's all a big joke. The world, the
"Earthcomedy central. God the father mother joker. I also saw, not that we're all in the same boat, but that we're all parts of one sailor. You, me, everybody, really just one sailor. Sounds corny, I know, like a Beatles song." The meeting over, the ghosts drift up
and out like smoke. Claire declines a ride on Angelo's bike. "Angelo, you're beautiful, and you and your beautiful bike make me feel like seventeen. But I don't want to feel like seventeen. I want to feel seventy, or a hundred & seventy. See you next Saturday." Rarely
have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. Most evenings, Claire reads: Kafka, Sam Beckett and Sylvia Plath.
#9
Claire wakes at dawn, goes to the stove and boils waterAm I dreaming?for a pot of green tea loaded with honey. She records, with words and small sketches, her dream: On a sinking ladder, she tries to climb out of a sunken flower garden. Out her window she
sees shoes moving. Am I dreaming? She puts on her walking shoes and begins her long day's walk towards night. Widdershins, she circles Green Lake, observing the joggers: Some joggers are demons, some are being chased by demons, while othersthe unawakened
dead. Am I dreaming? Claire stops at a Greenlake Starbucks, sits at a sidewalk table. Coming up the sidewalka pair of men, both bald. They are taping posters to poles. One is very old and tall and slow and white; the other, very young and short and quick and black.
A few feet from Claire's table, they stop and tape. The poster reads: WANTED! The Amateur Avant Fremont Freakstar Theater Needs
#10
Actors And Actresses Any Age Or Size, Experience Useful But Not Essential Also, Anyone Willing To Help Backstage With Props, Costumes, Sets, Lighting And Sound Or As Stage Hands, Prompt And So On. Contact . Claire remembers her college
thespian career. Her senior year, she starred as Irene, in Ibsen's When We Dead Awaken. That freshman Gina stole the show as Majabigger tits, bigger hips, bigger lipsthat bitch! May she freeze in Hell or Norway! Sundown, the following Thursday
just a hint of Autumn quince in the airClaire strolls down hill to an old weathered barnthe Fremont Freakstar Theaternear the canal. Waiting to ham for the director, she chats with Troy seventeen, short, genius, blackwho has put down his hammer.
"No, Claire, I didn't drop out: School interfered with my education. I didn't run away: I kissed Mom goodbye at the Greyhound Station."
#11
"It was my 16th birthday, Cinco de Mayo. I tell you, Claire, I was ecstatic to be exiting rust-belt Buffalo. My first day in Seattle, Ocho de Mayo, I explored on Metro, and Fremont feltjust right. I sat under the Troll awhile, then strolled on down to the canal.
"Something drew me to this barn, where I met Stan, that old man over there, hammering. Forget the director, Peter Pan: Stan's the heart and brains of this enterprise. He was a hotshot New York director in the '70s, a rising star, fast. Thought he deserved a little
"Holiday in Poland, big mistake. In Warsaw he looked up mad Jerzy Grotowski, bigger mistake, and joined one of Jerzy's theatrical, uh, experiments. Stan and some other seeker suckers were driven deep into the countryside, and dumped. Stan, distracted by some strange
"Polish flora, became separated from the grouplost, alone. Clear night awhilethen rain, lightning & thunder. I felt like King Lear
#12
"(Act IV, scene 4) at first, and that was theatrically charming, but soon I felt like shit. A Polish farmer out shooting squirrels found me the next morning, shivering under a Polish oak, in shock. I returned to New York and attempted suicide, failed, & then attempted drugs,
"without success. So I moved to Seattle. It seemed like a nice place to sleep. Stan's taught me everything about this monkey business backstage and frontand he gave me a valuable piece of advice: Shun actors. Their brains are like vacant barns in which grotesque
"birds and creeping things come to nest. And I've managed to teach Stan a little about computers. Mom got me a PC when I was six, a gift from a rich lady whose house she was cleaning. At 14, I was considered a prodigy hacker: I could see the cracks in the seams."
When her name is called, Claire tells the director, Mr. Peter Pan: "Cancel my audition. Could I work backstage with Troy & Stan?"
#13
Sunday night, night of the autumn equinox, Claire Black takes a long bubble bath (total immersion) followed by a quick hot shower. Her body covered with a clean cotton sheet, Claire curls up in bed, rehearsing her lucid dreaming script. Sleep. Am I dreaming? Yes!
Claire, small as a sparrow, stretches her wings and ascends to the sun, to the top of the Christ Tower, rose quartz pulsing with light. Standing on the deck of his penthouse condoChrist! He wears Mexican sandals, 501s, a green cotton shirt with pearl buttons and
a dusty gold pinstripe fedora. He smiles and says: "Claire, I know what you're thinking: Christ looks like Crazy Horse. Who'd you expectJim Caviezel? Now about that so-called priest. Go ahead, off the son of a bitch. You've got my green light." His shirt turns
from green to yellow to red, then back to green again, but brighter. Claire wakes at dawn, humming Ave Maria. She feels much lighter.
#14
Claire gives Angelo 500 bucks and a kiss, and he gives her the cold piece. "Yes, Angelo, I know the drill: point and squeeze. When we first got married, my late husband Rusty, afraid of rapists, bought me a .38 and taught me how to shoot it. After we got to know each other
"a little bit better, the pistol disappeared. Rusty wasn't the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree, but he was no fool." Later, at the barn, Claire says to old Stan: "Say, Pops, I'm going to be an old crone at a Halloween party. Can you give me some tips?" Stan, master of
props, gives her a cane from a Noh drama, bits of a crone costume and a ragged wig from a Yeats' play; and, touching her face, says: "A little paint here, Claire, and you'll look like a hundred." Then Claire asks Troy: "Troy, can you find a man? You might have to
"hack the Vatican. Can you hack the Vatican?" "Of course I can. I can hack the Vatican. Tell me his name and I'll find the man."
#15
Thursday, clear and sunny, Claire meets Troy for lunch, Kentucky Fried, crispy, a picnic at the Troll. "I found your Father Yago. He really gets around, to & fro, up & down, slums & jungles, jungles and slums. It's like something's been chasing him for forty years,
"but, surprise, he's back in Seattle; and, next week, Allhallows Eve, he'll be at Blesséd Bingo & the Beatles at his church in Rat City." "Troy, you hacked the Vatican?" "Didn't have to. Yago plays bloggo, has pages at MySpace. Yago likes to keep in touch."
Feeling foxy from the chicken and the rare, crisp autumn weather, Claire strolls from the Troll to the Fremont New Age Bookstore, thinking: I'm coming to get you, Red Feather. But Red Feather isn't there. There's a basket of red delicious apples on a chair, and
on his door, a note: Eat one, in remembrance of me. Don't worry: be happy. Have gone to pick apples with my tribe in Wenatchee.
#16
The bingo basket whirls. Beatles blare. Bending low, poking with her cane, her appearance an amalgam of an ancient Mother Superior & an old Irish-Japanese witch from Macbeth, Claire enters the raucous bingo hall &, with mincing steps, heads straight
for Father Yago, who sits at the children's table slurping a hot fudge sundae, a Notre Dame varsity sweater over his shirt & collar. She croaks in his ear: "Father Yago, I have a bequest for the Holy Church, gold and precious stones." With Claire on his arm, Father
Yago waddles down a dim hallway to an even dimmer room. They sit at opposing desks. Claire looks in his eyesnobody home. Claire thinks: Father, you have sinned. Say half a Hail Mary, quickly, & kiss your ass goodbye, you freak. Claire reaches in her
purse and feels the cold piece. She looks out her exit, the window crescent moon. A flash coincides with Sergeant Pepper's crescendo.
#17
Next day, Mysterious Murder on the evening news. Bud, 300 pound cabdriver, towers over ace reporter, Molly Chen. Scratching his butt, Bud explains: "She was so old. I picked her up at Swedish and she seemed Irish yet oddly Japanese and when we got to the church in
"Rat City she tipped me a quarter, barked, took it back and tipped me a dime and then when I wasn't quick enough getting out to open her door she called me a goddamn fool and poked me with her cane. She must have been a hundred. You see, Molly, to live that long,
"one must be exceptionally mean. That's my theory." Claire, feeling finally even after forty years, returns to the Church and, following a date with jolly Bishop Tucker at Ray's Boat House (Friday, fish), Claire makes arrangements to enter a retreat on the eastside of Lake
Washington (nine months official mourning), a convent for rich lay ladiesflowers, ducks. Without delay, Claire begins writing a play.
#18
Working title: Irene Contra Maja: a Tragedy. After subtracting Ibsen's superfluous male characters from When We Dead Awaken, Claire takes Irene and Maja and sets them in a ski lodge on Mt. Shasta, where they battle for supremacy, day & night, on the slopes
and in the bars. Feverishly, far into the night, Claire Black sits in her cell at her PC, collaborating via e-mail with her co-conspirators, Troy & Stan. They opt for a minimalist approach, but fastSam Beckett fused with Kabuki. The frequent howls of laughter exploding from
Claire's cell disturb the nosy nuns & other inmates, and there is talk of importing a specialist priest from Boston to perform an exorcism. Fortunately, the final curtain drops (Irene, triumphant in a duel fought with ski poles, plants Maja's body in a lodge pot, and sings
a concluding aria, crowing) before the exorcist arrives on the tarmac at Sea-Tac. Claire Black splits the convent and she never looks back.
#19
After an earthquake Fremont Freakstar run, the play's performed on Broadway. Stan, now awakened, declines to return to New York in triumph, saying only: "Ah, fuck New York." Soon, Hollywood buys the title. The movie, now a comedy, ends, not with a duel, but a duet
and a wedding. Jennifer Aniston, gradually looking more and more like Humphrey Bogart, plays Irene with considerable flair. Angelina Jolie as her bo-tox bride, Maja, is sultry enough, but a bit lazy. As bride's maids, Brad Pitt & Tom Cruise star in hooker wigs & skirts.
Jack Black, in Papal drag, performs the Vatican wedding. Critics predict Oscars. Meanwhile, far from the maddening Hollywood hullabaloo, Troy, Stan and Claire are directing Bill Gates and a bunch of jaded Microsoft executives in a Grotowskian theatrical
happening involving skydiving and mountain climbing in Peru. Newsweek headlines it: The Ascension Towards Machu Picchu. Copyright Ó by Harvey Goldner Cindra Halm I met Cindra teaching a poetry class in '93 at a Barnes & Noble. She teaches classes at bookstores, S.A.S.E.- The Write Place, and The Loft. But don't hold that against her! Cindra is an excellent poet who explores connections in sundry ways, and a critic, fiction writer, dancer, and active participant in the local art scene- as well a local grocery co-operative. Had she been a regular attendee of the UPG she might have been described as the yin to Art Durkee's yang. Asking The Kitchen It's August.... Said The Chef The Grove.... When I Walk for work is like bartering with any
Copyright Ó by Cindra Halm
It's August. You'll Be Passing Through Town Soon.
I love the twin guardian angels (not for sale)
The swell of commerce cools as light cools to leave
Copyright Ó by Cindra Halm
Smell, first, to locate, to tease. Release of food's
When I breathe deeply, widely, I am able to find
In the kitchen where it is hot and my body
Copyright Ó by Cindra Halm
The Grove Which Lives Between Matter and Wander: the Heart
Whether this weather abates is not the point,
My bicycle shifts beneath me on ice-rain slipping
A toddler unwinds from her mother; the mother,
Which nesting doll am I, rain above, rain below?
Back to ground, the found child and her mother
From my debate about the weather, on my bicycle
Copyright Ó by Cindra Halm
The Devil talks to me, too. I shake just like anybody
Copyright Ó by Cindra Halm Neil Hester is a Texas poet currently attending college. His blog can be found at http://laevanesce.blogspot.com Advice To The Stout A Reflection On.... A Difficulty In Parenting Every Pop Quiz Half Tragedy Loosely Laced Man And Cat Ou La Mort Painting Poems The Last Visit To those of a fearsome, Goliath descent For power is broader than muscles alone; A Difficulty In Parenting A Reflection On Conversing Mirrors
Intangible glass in tangible glass. They stand In between, the doppelgangers I dreamt last night Our pleasant chatter falls away; She cut the tension with a knife, a gun, and a smile. Whats life in a place like this? Hed miss her, but half-dead love only copes with hell so well, so long, he thought, same knife, same gun, no smile. Whats life
alone? In a place like this, with an all-dead love (still smiling), and all the winds beguiling her hair into an almost-lively flight, a sight he could only bear so well, so long. Copyright Ó by Neil Hester Glassless watching: this and that Even the slums are beautiful Gumul Aziwalla Apollo Schneider
Died March 26, 2012 Died March 9, 2012
My two strange friends: How should I know you in death?
Does your passing pause my breath
Or quicken my heart?
Should my sorrow ever end
Or ever start?
~~~~~~~ I never saw you, faceless friend, You could barely see me, one-eyed friend, But I think that I knew you well. But I think that you knew me well. Better than most: you would always tell Better than most would tell: after all, Exactly what you felt, in damning hyperbole You’re only a cat. Only a cat? I send Nonpareil. “VILLAINOUS CUR!” For me, My love to you (the same I would send These are fond and passionate words. To a woman or man), and think back Some might say I never knew you. Truly, To those dreadful, love-filled nights I have never seen you; no voice utters When I nursed you back to health These spirited cries. But I love you still: And suffered with you, just a kitten then. Mutterings of flesh cannot dissuade me. We shared a wealth of feeling then: Why should I deny what love pervades me? Why should I reserve my love for men? ~~~~~~~
I believe you both are abiding and giving still; I know you both are abiding and giving still. Copyright Ó by Neil Hester I was told to, bar what they sing, God of the civil razor, he laughs My name is on a program. All the petals are in the pond. Hes loved me four times, loved me not three. The fairy tale count is very forgiving; Never and always are very cruel.
At times, we would join, if only to be Just for the sake of feeling, of living. Well, for him, anyhow. Im a fool. To only touch is such a weak bond.
I used to respond to every misgiving That threatened to part me from my jewel. My jewel sure, just a thing to be donned. For awhile, anyhow. Now I numbly let him flee.
Enough with petals. A toad and its stool, For half-love and lust into the pond! Copyright Ó by Neil Hester ~John Singer Sargent Garden Study of the Vickers Children ~~~ Village Children Copyright Ó by Neil Hester [See the paintings and listen to the accompanying music, melody and lyrics by Neil Hester, accompaniment and performance by Sarah Hohstadt, at this Youtube link.] Lynsey Jenkins is a poet living in Central Florida. This is her first publication. A Beautiful Girl Bleeding Channels In The Cup Of Her Mind She Shrank Prose Sonnet To A Plummeting Lover Past reaches her. Not a saint or emblem of well-being, that nonetheless drops, through mind, like a glass nosing floor. Corner eye sees it grip; sifts the cord of consciousness, a long-stirred curtain of her act. Some seem fewer than fact. Less yet are rendered whole. None console woes ordered in time's slant. Thus, can one afford to pick at such, to look and pinch and pluck its flesh? And would the glass stand of its own, or fingers more than irritate the old, mordant fact? Copyright Ó by Lynsey Jenkins The mind is a mirror. You whet your image till it draws nearer. You wipe with your finger till it comes clearer, then press your thumb into that place. You push but when at last a face gleams back, you slowly release the pearl that tremors as in a mirror turning like the sky over a river, of which you are a courier. In The Cup Of Her Mind She Shrank The stream enters with a tenderness the object she holds, off this bank, cracked of sure thankfulness one could offer, over such a drink- cracked and pared like an odd fruit revealing time beneath its flesh; the rift of a mind exuding soon nulled duress. Thus, she sits, filling her thought with long waters till vagueness rise and sift her hands; then releases it back, cold daughter, enchanter of this abstract land. Stupid bird, the air you tire, waiting to be called poetry, though one could snatch you up as easily & call themselves not god or poet, but Gun & wordlessness desire in your dying. Is this what I meant: the glittering pavements rising, the fictions of your breath, my face once arranged, then fleeing away each nostril, each frightened kick returned - now thrashing grip, quaked by clutch nor ardent plea? Is this how wind ravels your vices from me? Or clasps us finite, as a sea veers our ear and turns away? You glide on disarray, your shape mocking: at such pace beyond the now, bending to memory, what lingers of our sleep, when, at last, we wake? Copyright Ó by Lynsey Jenkins Dan Masterson's 4th book of poetry All Things, Seen And Unseen, was published by the University of Arkansas Press (1997). He's a member of PEN & contributing editor to the annual Pushcart Prize Anthology. He teaches at SUNY/Rockland, as well an online graduate poetry course for Manhattanville College, via his Poetry Master website www.poetrymaster.com . His poems have been published in magazines diverse as the New Yorker, Paris Review, Gettysburg Review, among others. A Visit Home Clouds Undisturbed by Human Things Missing in Action The bottom sweater button she should know him, perhaps the young man who brings her groceries or Father Sullivan dressed for a day off. But no. The voice is more comfortable Shed by a flowered bulb in the ceiling She'd like to have a towel He seems familiar, She takes his arm Copyright Ó by Dan Masterson Clouds Undisturbed by Human Things Two geese joined at the neckrefuse to go the other's way and become themselves and then doorkeys in search of locks across the lake. An arrowhead has missed The long-limbed fox is opening Off to the west, far from fox Copyright Ó by Dan Masterson The thud always awakens herwhere she sits at the living room window gathering a shawl tight at her neck, her fist a pale brooch, its veins hard and swollen. She has heard it every night Her cane finds the corner of things At the top step On down the walk she goes She pokes at the bushes and calls him She unbuttons herself to the waist Copyright Ó by Dan Masterson
Whinza (pronounced Windsor) Kingslee Ndoro (the N isn't silent) grew up in Zimbabwe, southern Africa and came to the U.S. more than a decade ago. Cosmoetica is his first online publication.
After All Burials A Lady In Her Power For Ja(zz)mes, For A. Emanuel For Jessica, on Her 8th Birthday II Modes Of Deconstruction Out The Unloved, We Rise Pills In Your Book I Took The Einsteins Of Earthworms
I, for one, am not for burials, or God knows what else occurs down there… onset a new year offsets its searing concern, with us above, the alive, with much grief to lave, yet oblivious to it all duly tender: “Do, rest in peace”… of the holy ghost—the mere thought this tight plot of earth shall, in more ways than one, be bought with new blood, breath, & evermore emancipated bones, further irks me of the whole sordid affair than hades itself. Hell, to create well is how flamed my body went & further went, so cremate me out of this life— who, after all, rests serenely after resurrection?
Copyright Ó by Whinza Ndoro
I admire the queen-like power Some flowers have over a bee, Though no coveted tenure A display by which all decree.
For a bee that sets sight on her Plumage of a cultured pedigree; The bee as if in honor, Dances to her majesty. Copyright Ó by Whinza Ndoro
[June 15, 1921September 28, 2013]
And while blindly, this world over, lovers sidestep [I] the morning shape their bed linen takes, now you lie past conflict, the kisses off your wrist, cordoned off in parenthesis
Now all our lovelooks back in the black, & so damn deep [II] in it, are giftwrapping off lovers musings as a cool JAZZ fuels each souls music, improvisin all thoughts, mirth, or elusive cues but what aint Jazz when every- thing is from streamz, beamz, daydreamz to namez who honor you, dead-ly JAMES?
Still an assorted breadbasket lives as your breakfast of words past whole grains [III] uncollected & though our tears now arent sieved in the but whys? still, we cant dig where you at, man! cool cat & great bard; so as your ashes take on JAZZanatomies beyond interred ways
much kudos to YOU who blew not his Breakaway dues, brief I sweet riffed.
Copyright Ó by Whinza Ndoro
For Jessica, on Her 8th Birthday II
—inspired by a same titled poetic draft in James A. Emanuel’s The Force & The Reckoning
Jess will be eight & soon, as near midnight for the very first time— thinks this voluptuous moon is one huge white balloon— cocooning princes & well-wishes, kisses, as well as grandma’s surprises.
As if to taunt her special dawn, gingerly, she lets out a powerful yawn, imitative of an overblown in her method acting pornstar, which wakes a one-eyed cat nestled at the foot of her bed.
I’d count Sheep, she thinks, no further than 8 though… any further & stealing off my eyes’ light with slow Blinks such Sheep do hide in their Wool I’d soon be tricked asleep! A Fool again I won’t be this year, nor lose a third of my Birthday, part comatose…
Jess will be eight— this close to midnight; this, in itself, is no small feat, certainly not when at eighteen blur by her princes hid who may, or may not, sweep her off her fate— their smiles wishing her days away.
Copyright Ó by Whinza Ndoro
I must disinfect some
with the morning sun—
words cleft then left
bereft as drafts of poems
writ well into my midnights.
Long before the familiar crows
of another dawn, one by one,
as if now to keep these spirits
about them on the run, I’ll cello-
tape my most pressing pages—
as is, on the middle windowpanes.
This way—plain as today—
as the dawn’s premiere light shafts
impeccably through double windows,
I may recall (so wakening again)
what it was I strove to convey?
Copyright Ó by Whinza Ndoro
Off sleep my being anaclisis I wish you Knew the sultry, sunlit redwoods I soar through sometimes
Star-struck witness how a world view Of unloved branches of humanity Are reinvented given words With value your kindly Guises uplift me, And scores More than nations At war apt scabs clad Of splintering hearts harden All inklings towards tender-care: I too rise towards your sequoia-heart.
What rings dispositions cheerful or hope To being a stern-stem is a small anodyne As talk, hugs on a lark, or Eros hub? And so near trees frolicking as your hair, In wind to finger-combed undergrowth, Is subtle precursor of foliage elsewhere; My sensual Woodsman (as all elsewhere) Has faith in your shrouded greenery Cordial as coddle-moods be, he approach With tepid touch all your leaves evergreen. Copyright Ó by Whinza Ndoro Eventually, my (un)dying hope, my wishful loop is a getting together, shoulder to shoulder, in one big festive room, with you, my esteemed grave-clothed heroes, who as far as enlightenment goes I missed meeting in person.
If time prolonged, then I'll thank you when first off even God wasnt enough nor family, friend, or lover too; as life tried boomeranging me above it, you held me aloof as a roof.
Randomly, picking up a dog-eared book, turning the wise pages, there it was in potent hook an understanding of yours, O sages,
when with what ailed me then, fittingly (I got the chills) you prescribed medication of wordy worldly pills. Copyright Ó by Whinza Ndoro
To you, a sir or a mamhow to die? Is the first question we must frame In each generations itch how to live?
How to live begets answer in how to love? The latter massaging relief in how to give? Which in turn, as pattern, is in how to be?
How to be in pure Mobius strip fashion Fastens a return in how to die?... Hence within a lifes encircling mysteries Answer-questions enwomb question-answers,
Except one: where did All This coil from? Id presume by mens theorized forms Our internet is as easily understood By those Einsteins of earthworms Copyright Ó by Whinza Ndoro The Australian poet Peter Nicholson was born in Sydney, New South Wales. He has published three books of poetry, A Temporary Grace 1991, Such Sweet Thunder 1994 and A Dwelling Place 1997. http://peternicholson.com.au/ Kursk Copyright © by Peter Nicholson In 1995 Maurice traveled around the world for eight months, recording his experiences in a journal instead of photos. His poetry has appeared in The Potomac Journal, The MAG, The Surface, Word Riot, Taj Mahal Review (India), Stride (UK), and Retort (Australia). He lives in Portland, Oregon where he is a private tutor. www.bloxster.net/mauriceoliver. Acknowledgements.... And Anything.... Blazing Panache.... I Mean.... Verbs, Lost.... Whispers, Waving....
Every lawn is attached to another lawn.
Then there are times when the day never seems to get around to midnight. Every four thirty flies past my ear and the bottle of gin hidden beneath a bush in the park wishes it were a pair of ordinary bedroom slippers. Venice forgets what a canal looks like and
the San Andreas Fault can no longer do a somersault. My cavities behave like a reflecting pond. The hair on my chest becomes fur-lined and foot-warmed. Sleep is anywhere you can fish legally and rhododendrons make darn good vacuum cleaner bags. Grass grows even in the kitchen drawer. Yellow taxis suddenly have the ability to bloom like daffodils. Crepe myrtle makes great Christmas stocking stuffers and a large dragonfly is elected archbishop of Boston by what is described as an unanimous vote. A soft-eyed oxen is willing to raise me. A farmer stands in the middle of my song. And even though I am honestly very grateful to a number of people for their guidance and support, I never once stop to thank the editors of several journals where some of these optical illusions first appeared.
Copyright © by Maurice Oliver And Anything Else Is A Letdown Then what you're really saying is that it all comes down to this: Everybody ends up here, in a theme park wearing merely a flimsy Pisces throughout the human kingdom by propelling the sun to move towards a frictional Hollywood square pattern with Mars bound to fail or maybe brusque with friends does the harsh scent so love ones will boomerang until every nasty consequence (made more significant by red planet envy) tarzans pass the limp silk strap of desperation and on into the spring-loaded harness of a bottomless abyss hoping against hope but still never waking up in the cold motel room to find the him-or-herself in us cuddled up with Don Rickles.
Blazing Panache.White-Hot Courage. "I've spent the whole day as noir as night", she repeats, as if the audience didn't hear her the first time. We're acting out the stage version of beat up & grown up. In this adaptation I become a short poem about her father who is a traveling salesman of articulate jealousy & desire. He never wears the same pair of socks twice. He eats dinner with his chair facing away from the table. He is near enough to the cardboard props to feel their rage. Elegance is our model. A book our national treasury or maybe our customs studiously sleep in the footnotes. What's important is every mysterious adulthood is but a jagged piece of glass murdered in bed. Nothing is luminous enough to shine at heart and even I something want to be nothing too but the moral of the story is to never forget that even Joe DiMaggio had an Adam's Apple that thought it was too cool to go to school. Oh yeah, and don't worry, the applause will drown out any sounds the curtains make as its being lowered.
OK. I've had it up to here with the notion that an Air France flight could seriously blow through Lily Marlene strong enough to cause anything but a version of life where things happen in reverse. Mask. Ghost. Footprints from a welded impostor. So change the channel already. Find a show where the angel-butch double-agent loses the key to her safety deposit box & turns like a Venetian blind. Or better yet, let's tune-in to an episode of dying for faith where the ever impossible request torches explicitly on the piano top. I want to hear a severe melody try holding its breath under water while life comes and goes in a red dress split up one side. I want to be skull-hung just before the gargoyle in its late-forties with jet black hair & a five o'clock shadow surveys the filth from above then decides to put the whole bar under house arrest just to make a point.
Verbs, Lost In Their Transitive Cases As I remember it, the whole thing begins after a palm branch scars the horizon deep enough to bruise its skin. In turn, that causes a crescendo of lavender scent to leak all along the naked limbs of an apricot wind with its passport at hand. Next, the mirror of white pearls pluses on the way to Lourdes and then takes the wrong turn in dense fog pressed against the hip. Coffee table leather jacket. Golden gate lazy earthquake. Cloak and dagger hillside town. Or a stale box of animal crackers falling out of the vast spree of redemption. Either way, it all adds up to a raspberry beret of colored fingernail polish much too flesh to bread or thoroughly soaked in a railroad crossing where a horseshoe on a dashboard has access to any dusk coupling riddle and can activate it by repeating this narrative in a foreign language as written on a red enamel bedside table or by tenth grade students who say, "Wow, that was an awesome lecture".
Whispers, Waving To An April Dawn It all begins with a scream of wind through the wet hair of willows & then continues to: -One dusty pickup on a highway partial of suspense novels. -A pristine Blue Grotto slightly gold framed & naked in the rain. -All of Costa Rica playing a caprice on a red violin. -A feral garden that eats out of a complete stranger's hand. -Bales of freshly-mowed hay with legs that scissor the air. -A slice of burnt toast with a scab already forming. -Voices used for the audio portion of a soccer match. -Two streetlights watching re-runs of an episode on lunar ellipses. -A hillside terrace that slopes into a cross-dresser's closet. -The blazing gaze and stonewall demeanor of a field of sunflowers. -Life darkened at the edges to make the heart seem more luminous.Copyright © by Maurice Oliver
Joel is a 28-year-old white male, as of 2019, residing in the San Francisco Bay Area, working as a financial professional. Born in Cincinnati, OH, raised in the suburbs of Indianapolis and Detroit. In addition to writing, he is an avid photographer, working primarily with 35mm and medium format film.
There was once a thought (to be unneighbored) which permeated all through Permanence. To own a home, hammer walls unpapered, and, when retired, hide money in the vents. She couldn’t find, though, enough to put down, and couldn’t make the payments, most likely, so settled for a new lease here in town and
rearranged the couches just rightly. Her children lived there, in that little flat, and pounded out ideas by the dozens with pen and paintbrush, with beaker and vat, dramatizing the homes of their cousins. Permanence stalks through Temporary’s gate,
weaves lion from line, and then licks the bait.
Copyright © by Joel Parrish Gilbert Wesley Purdy Mark Hanna Under Starry Skies Poetry 2000 TM The vague stars loom above Mark Hannas head. He stands between two potted palms, A darkie porter holds his coat. The leavings of a modest meal In Lowell, maidens, full of grace, He sees the yarn-guides in those stars: In San Francisco, Chinamen Their grandfolks sit in state upstairs In Pennsylvania coal-mines miners dig; Up those mountains wind the notes They wind past children safe abed The patchwork quilts which keep them warm The miners wives each light a lamp They dot the hills just like those stars He recalls a song his mother sang Before he knows its over him, Its an old song of a simple life, A simple beauty fills the words. He clears his throat and looks askance. Mark Hanna looking vaguely toward the stars Within he holds a brand new dime His hirelings track the Bryan train. His buyers place their orders with The porter thanks him kindly, sir. In particular, it is a language designed expressly for streamlining the writing of novels (or poetry). Hello and welcome to Poetry 2000TM, The System 2000 is simple to use. Just point In seconds your first-draft appears, correct Next simply click the Shakespeare icon. Note Now watch 2000 really show its stuff. Revision is the key to writing well So then, (1) click on File. (2) Click on New. Note The Special Editing Scroll has unfurled now Perhaps youll pick Poetic Nouns. Your menu Choose ice, perhaps, or mirror, salt or moon. Or Botanicals, perhaps: just click the flower And Colors are a poets special tools. Just click the little palette icon. There Choose Adjectives or Place-Names next perhaps. Before you close, consult the Style screen Now click the Muse (see figure 1, above), Warning: product is only meant to be used
For damages which may result (either
The Poetry 2000TM is designed
It respects all rights of property, the laws
WARNING!
The product is designed to be perfectly safe.
Copyright © by Gilbert Wesley Purdy Beneath The Rise.... City Station, Under Arches of Sky Musings On A Lighthouse Near An Eastern Isle Prospect From A Spanish Garden Sapphics The Serial Cheat.... With The Stars....
Beneath the rise and murmur of your voice
there lies a hush more rapid than the silence
meets within your eyes; the ghosts of rainfall
also meet them there. Your tongue has murmurs
more than I can hear just now, for here
my ears are met with something else, the rush
and flutter of the waves that touch the surf
that sides the shore, that other sound of something
silenced thoughts reflect. Tonight, today
I listen to those cadences the air
breathes back upon itself, away from you
who I don't touch or listen to, not now.
My ears are tuned to some place that seems nearer,
the plash of shadowed sands upon the shingle
breathing outward with the waves from westerly,
a glimpse of winging wind that cuts their crescents
as they pass and die and rise reborn with water-
the sounds that will die out before tomorrow
once we've both gone. All gulls have gone, as shawls
of seaweed's fallen fingers on the spray,
save one, that loops and echoes with the eddies
and also veers from calling out your name.
I ride with it and plot its course to nowhere
as I lose myself, fixed by this promenade,
with wind's tongues that outstrip your tongue for murmurs,
with the wraiths that beat and breathe, upon the bay.
A peridot of light sinks down and lingers
upon your iris' blank and guarded cover,
upon its garden-land; with dual voice
it grows and utters, "Leave me now" and "Love".
Our roads will veer to others, though I love you
in the way the gull and breeze both love the sea.
Both play and graze, and leave, and also leave you.
There's nothing more for us, us two, to see.
And beneath the humming words that throng your voice
A chorus comes from somewhere wholly other
From cliffbound coasts whose drums beat dead the day:
a sinking sound that lasts for one swift moment
detaining us, before we pass, to dream.
We sleep, perhaps, to keep us from our grieving:
in sleep no dreams of loves we'll never mourn.
Copyright © by Iain James Robb
City Station, Under Arches of Sky
In the shallows of the silences I hear your voice, In the gaps between the shadows of the city station-
Though I could have chose to turn it, if Id had the choice,
To where blank faces pass as sparrows. To a new negation
Of your face, I flit my thoughts across the barricade sky,
And some fond thought questions purpose but I answer, Die:
For Id rather you were lost now, without variation
Of your face, in faces passing, in a world of Why?
Do you see yourself in these, or care? This mirror-window
Looks to me; Im going northwards; its made bare, and plain-
That theres no land left to search but where a wind-torn willow
Flies, to mark the will and ripple of the whistling rain.
In my head are things that seem to twirl without a reason,
But I think a reasons this, suggesting I stay gone;
Still the birds I never loved much have their singing season:
Still the clown youve left the depths of you may cast his throne.
It mattered much, but doesnt matter now; your face, my fair,
Will not last as long as mine will. Take the easy ride
(To the tame, coast seen to landward from the windward side):
When in earth Ill pass above the banks you claimed were air.
Should we marvel at the stars; I never caught tomorrows
In their aim for us; and still from fates their eyes refrain,
Too blind to cast their anchor in your eyes forged sorrows:
And too senseless to feel sweetness that you made from pain.
In the gaps between their silences I hear your voice,
From some place the shaded faces make no plaints or sigh
(And Id lose it if I chose to but I choose no choice),
To where the train turns under the asunder sky;
And I am northward bound now, at a quarter past six.
Like the drizzle on the lintels of the broken worlds bricks,
The mist upon the window chills the petals of breath:
And the flies still gather round an hour and wend to death,
Like the love I feigned that cut me with a charm and lie.
I shall go somewhere no winds break on a curse, or cry:
And do I leave for sums of years now, do I do or die?
I ask my self, Aside, who goes there?, and it answers, I.
And I shall go up where the bees bud and the linnets still linger
(If I choose, there are more ways to make a chase for pain),
By the pasture of some fallow land that stirs to no finger;
And, My ways are all as narrow, says the raveling rain.
Copyright © by Iain James Robb Musings On A Lighthouse Near An Eastern Isle It is bright tonight; this plain, displaced from place Copyright © by Iain James Robb Prospect From A Spanish Garden Between moments are no doors closed, as their mirrors move; The Vega with its pageantry of thoughtless plains Reflects the space behind my window. Only I reprove The correlations of the silence: mortal time has reins- Still the inanimate has life. And yet I find my zone Way past the point that memories, of hands, refuse; It seems like sacrament these days to be alone, Naked in a world that sheds its subterfuge. As thoughts which vanish, sanded, in a stranded sky, We weave still in the contours of the colourbox, That heaves beyond the dockyards to the rageless rocks, That know no more than I of drowned antiquity- But this we yet have knowledge of: the years wont try Us more than we ourselves, our blanks their pageantry. Copyright © by Iain James Robb
Slumber comes too late to scare awakening;
I know, before, there was a life to bind me.
I cross the streets instead and watch the rainfall
Murmur without ears.
It can know no sound but seems intent on hearing
What it has to say, or what it breathes in being
To my ear that hears not, to myself is listening,
Too restrained for tears.
There lies no mirror of my outward motion
(To lose myself in rarely traveled byways)
In my eyes, turned inward on the crooked highways
Of my downward mind.
Drifting through unstartled streets sans sunlight,
Lost to all those ones Id shed behind me,
I wish there was a place where none might find me,
Wingless, under ground.
There is one place I know, that no roads lead to,
I go to now, towards which shards of moonlight
Shine, from saffron fields of star-blanched concrete,
Cancelling the stars.
The faces there are as the winds behind her,
Distant yet, and too remote to view her:
But if all seemed right, and if they only knew her
Would they mourn that, now?
Though her eyes shed violets under lands of azure,
Though they laughed at blessing or, at rest, an hour,
Would the almsless flowers not redeem their power
At the gates of care?
I do not know how he could conspire her capture:
For it seemed my sense was more attuned, in doses
Of her starless guile, to lips that mocked all roses,
Cinnabars and myrrh.
At a glance I died, before some strained adonic
Could find its place in words I feel deceive me:
Chanelled at the eye of thought to limp out sapphics
In pursuit of you.
It was a blessing beyond benediction,
Some antic state that made me dream Id hold you;
And so my gait drifts in a barren country
Measureless, unblessed.
In the deads of darkening I failed to find you;
And the streetlights, vacant as the starry eyeballs
They cast askance, were as the light that, restless,
Infiltrates my rest.
I can just see darkness where that light is resting;
It is all of yours, and where its lamp is looking
It divides the eye and thought in stormy waters
Too constrained to weep.
Yet within this night none of their faces falling
Were yours; they seemed too cast from stormless waters
To sympathise with mine or all that falters
Cradled into sleep.
There is a wind that drifts against a broken window,
In a room adjacent from the one I drown in,
Every night recalling how my infant fingers
Sifted through the shore:
And thought each grain of sand contained an island
Borne up against this world of petty borders,
But each is gone; I hear the wind retreating
Say, I leave you now.
Shall I sleep, or care enough to leave a relic
Of the daze I dream awake, in ink that whitens,
To expend myself again, at last, in sapphics,
Now, again once more?
I leave you also; now my eyes are bleeding
The face my fancy caught from wakeful minutes
That are lost as sand, that veers in windy motion,
That which holds you now.
Copyright © by Iain James Robb What matters it, this June, if you or I Redeem ourselves in others eyes, as trust, To each our images inside which vaunt to sky? We are our selves: Spring gilds to Autumns rust. You are my pawn; myself, if I should veer Against the captious minion of my sight, Our distances once more will make us near: Our distance now will make us benedight. What matters this if my dull words inspire Your will to lose; my loss will be the same If passion wants, its wontedness to tire In febrile haunts; what innocence to blame? It was just me, but you are also I: Her cunt can not estrange your majesty. Copyright © by Iain James Robb With The Stars That Rob Me, Of A Cloth Of Gold
A hush beats soundly in the rounds of evening, From the reigning lifelessness that clamps the cold; And I stand here, gathered to the weeping season Of this day's forsaken, in its cloaks of gold.
Far across, a ship drifts with the skies as anchor, That bequeath to sod and grass no force of flame, And I, once wearied of the worlds, find harbour; And the eye lies caught by what the clear leaves claim. Before the greyness of the lame air's vastest, To make sense of what to winds the treetops tell, I'd rather lie in blackness with the stars as harvest: Yet the flutes of dusk adrift, adown the dell
Paint of things that dwindle, ere the night has striven
And the sun rebirthed may cross upon its fold,
For which no constellated hives of heaven
Mark the stars that rob me, of a cloth of gold.
Copyright © by Iain James Robb Alex Sheremet Alex Sheremet was born in Belarus and moved to Brooklyn, NYC when he was six. He is an undergraduate studying English Lit and Classics. A Chinese Philosopher.... Cities In Decline: A History Drama: At The Station For Graffiti San Matteo e langelo A Chinese Philosopher Considers The Center
Copyright © by Alex Sheremet
Cities In Decline: A History
Copyright © by Alex Sheremet
Drama: At The Station For Graffiti
Timothy "Spek" Falzone, 1982 - 2001
I. Tim, to Officer
Grip's crooked. I should have been a carpenter: hangnails, caked Krylon, abraded palms on colored hammers, mocking bone.
Alright, imagine: I'd still rot some day, firm-legged, right -- dirt-grown splinters worming through these hands. And I'd still burn glass, refit the speckled subway windows, name (and co.) on bottom. (The crew sticks, the fines don't -- fat caps for fat tickets, unless you smack the third rail, face-down.)
Thick pen, Officer. You scribble knotty names that straddle an imagined line, palms inking through the lettered hoops,
but I'd rather cake 'em -- grip's crooked, see -- high above that record shop, 'cause walls stretch blankly -- inarticulate stares just burning to be read. And think: across the borough, such pangs are the staple of the soul, a strange, rudimentary rehearsal in case the last paint spills, the button-down is finally ironed, the silk bandanas trashed as spiders, walled by the new or the slightly unusual, might casually abandon
an old web.
[Stares.]
You listening? Yeah, niggas aren't meant to be understood.
II. Officer, to Tim
And I plucked the job a changed man! Sure, sure -- I couldn't curb this pompous belly, and Night still drapes the day from lamp to lamp,
hiccups blunts, bad guys, and other artifacts we stretch-still and fossilize into a page, a paragraph, this stuffed police report.
It's hard to blink those ingrained hues -- you scent stiff traces, blowing bubbles at the wall: you see the dumb-brief, separating rock, your ringed initials worn to dust on unborn, bookish hands. They'll chase
your rock-bound annals from the soil. Belly- out, that pussyfoot might even look like me: she'd piece the unmanned, prim-cut specks, and jot your blue-built ingenuity.
I've thumbed your name in each report, each letter compassed horizontally; smudged the crude-cast pencil figures, laminating favorites; taped your files, as twine would pepper-down my manicure to dust.
Still, as I tied your blunt enigma, as I pat your papers busily -- in short, as I buckled to that old routine, I never thought that trust of men, that banded ring of awful stares would find you in its crooked center high above that record shop, tonight.
You snickered, sharpened the enigma with a flint budge --
[He moves sparingly.]
and affirmed it all: the imagined fine, palms pinking through the colored hoops, and there -- your knotted name, just burning to be read. And in case that last paint spills, in case my waning grip -- like star-rent brass, approximately shelved -- docs and draws your rail-smacked figure, evaporates, aborts, and tosses you mid-sentence like an unexpected, grainy cough across those rough iambic freight-lines, in case you're bled into that button-down --
[Points somewhat.]
you're a star-sown actor, dumped and potted into this flawed, sublunary drama. Copyright © by Alex Sheremet
...And thus, the room has changed a little, the wind of a refusing world now fetching shadows on the wall and on the living, worn, and worn. What is Italy to omens, who still reality by the Word, and turn on the eyes axis? It never lets go, even as the final scene blurs open, somehow evading sight, to tear against its own appropriation. Its framed to hide why angels hover to some rube on blowing banners, or split a book across a lap now long from fashion, old and beaten by a cloak. It is a lap not meant for books. He cannot read, nor even trace his name across the hydrogen of skies the city croons to apotheosis. The Saint wont move except when moved, his arm stretched only by another, the quill in fingers not his own, but shifting upon particles of script. They end where Rome ends, fizzling once the book is shut, to white. And the angels face will only re-emerge by the limp of centuries, the same discerning pity, the soft assurance, and the unmoving eyes stilled, down to a rock he must unlearn to fill the cavity with genius, neither birthed nor forged, but pulled from the better branches of some cosmic store. It is more than what is learned by force and reckoning, parts noisily moving through a sphere, the sphere itself whole, and never interrupted. And was Italy ever of this whole, except when wholly in memorials, or in wakes and futures pushing through the mind, its life clinging only to its passing? In that room again, a copy of Caravaggio stares down upon itself, Italian like music in the throat, the vowels dangling in air long after the mouth closes. Italian is a cocky tongue, every Roman boasts in unison, and it will be years before they match in age, in face, and yet the spirit of the age is still entangled with the face. It is an age of great ideas foaming at the prow. It is a face too calm to notice, but intelligent, awake. It is a face too calm to argue -- he seems to riot only from the side as if by mask, with big eyes, all-visioning no book of Matthew bears the imprint of the angel, except whats styled by the steeple. And yet, no cover beats the baring of time, reflecting off the drops clenching at themselves, or the vases of Greeks outdone by richer myths, almost by necessity, in Caravaggio and on. It doesnt leap from rock to rock to well into another cosmos, but waits to burst across its limits, and from one assumption tweaks a cosmos, belligerent and small. It is something he well knows to fear. It is safer than the genius of a nova, which seems to edge into another plane, where watchers gaze from, and dwindles down to an eternity richer than eternity -- a nothing thats not nothingness, but merely empty, and richer than the full. The full is like those mirrors on the wall. It reflects what is only in itself. It does not change from bottom-up. And the angel is that bottom, that burst of hydrogen across the sky the Saint would always look to, thinking more than what was fair to think, chilling him to hallucination, his body left to arbor, stewing in the sun. Another part was still imagining the machinery of skies too high for either dwarf to reach from paintings bounded by their frames, or empiring states -- the language of the spheres, or music of irradiation, far bolder than the newer world that fears its origins, that continuing blue which always seems to stretch far louder than its sound, and reach too far into the present, the searching sense of the discoverer, moving back against itself, in hardened image of the whole. It is what Caravaggio could never mean alone. It is why Caesar leaves the country to the country, in alternating currents, as cities fear their own horizons staring from the paint. Caesar could never give into the curve of things, but warily deny what wasnt of himself, by living change. No budding off the Rubicon could sway him from the war he needed in himself to play, to black at peace, when peace poured. One imagines Matthew at the table writing tales of never-were, of peace and swords, and understanding one no angel could have goaded, rising from its frame to tunnel all into a solitary fetching. Copyright © by Alex Sheremet Dynamite 25 Facade Of A Montreal God I Give Betty Smith.... The Red Desert The Whirlpool The birthday candle unravels its wax A core, immortal, wills pastto its pax; Unpinned from the wick, it bolts and unpacks, No breath from a wish can cool its attack; Lethal: the drop from the sweat on its back, A sizzling blue vine writhes through cold blacks; Copyright © by Anthony Zanetti Façade of a Montreal God Ive stabbed a flag into the Fascist Copyright © by Anthony Zanetti I Give Betty SmithAnd Live In, But Not With Coffee stirs me out of you. Tired But your visage enriches; Through me, she writes you Copyright © by Anthony Zanetti *after Antonioni
There is a mind inside an island. By the brim
Of her shore, a boy culls from the sand; a ship, Unmanned, scores the gulled coast While cormorants repose on the glittering rose.
From the ocean, Poseidon is goading the shore. To attack; his searching turns in; becomes
An internal thing. Friulian lyrics Smooth crests from within. Who sings Dialectic, in dialect unseen?
It is the island; it is everything. Copyright © by Anthony Zanetti You stare from the wire that cuts sky from brine. Currents twist as flesh curls to a fist. Breaks. On the bottom: funnelled Copyright © by Anthony Zanetti MIA Poets: The following are poets of excellent ability whom I have unfortunately lost contact with. RICHARD DANA CARLSON I first met Richard at the old Irish Well Poetry Readings in St. Paul in the early 1990s. In '95 he self-published his ms. POEMS FOR THE PUBLIC, AND SOME NOT. I shall, in time, be posting some of those poems here, however I would much like to know his whereabouts. The last he was heard from he was in San Diego, CA. GREG CLARK Greg is, next to me, the best poet I have ever personally known. I 1st met him at the Garden Crow Poetry Group, but he is wont to losing touch with people. He still has relatives, I believe, in the Coon Rapids, MN area. If I can find some of his older poems- some excellent lyrics- I shall post them. LEAH CUTTER Leah was a UPG regular from late '95 to late '97 when she moved to San Francisco to be with her fiance. She is mainly, however, a sci fi writer (as is her now-husband). They then moved to Arizona where both letters & emails came back empty. FOUND!- Click here for INFO! SHAWN DURRETT Shawn's a multi-talented artist I first met in 1993. She was an intern for The Loft & ran a reading series at the old Susan's Coffeehouse in St. Paul. She had an excellent poetic future ahead of her when she left in 1997 for the University of Michigan. She was planning on going into Social Services. Anyone who can locate her and/or put her in touch with Cosmoetica would get appreciation, as I would love to post some of her poems- old & new! ANGELA HAUG Another multi-talented young woman- poet, dancer, photographer- who was a UPG semi-regular from mid '98-late '99. She may have left the Twin Cities for college but any way to contact her would be appreciated. Her poems deserve notice. APRIL LOTT A young woman who was a UPG semi-regular back in '97 & who had alot of talent. She is still in the Twin Cities area- as of late 2000- & I would like to post some of her poems. STEVE PERKINS I only met him twice- at a reading & once at the UPG. He wrote spare little lyrics that were just charming. He never returned because he got a 2nd shift job- this was about 1996. Anyone who knows his whereabouts please let me know. MAGGIE SULLIVAN I once wrote a Le Bestiaré poem (1st ms.) on her called The Enigma & anyone who met her knows why. I first met her at the old Ophelia's Pale Lilies group & subsequent readings in 1993. She left Minnesota around late '96-early '97 & headed to California- I believe San Francisco. I lost touch with her a year or so later. Her works would find a place here. Calling the Enigmatic One....
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