luzmag

2006-04-12T11:40:00.000+01:00

FOUR POEMS by rob mclennan

Thursday

cut a hole in the drywall & the wind

of paper (stolen) boxes through cold & in the summer nothing

intimation the sincerest form of flattery

sum

(everything)

)else(

peanut

it cant be that hard
, curious

a fly-wheel, flown

of the plant-bath
, company

lovely

all that there is, a spectral
foot long cloud

, amorphous

, hour is

hat on the head

a very thunder clap & claim
, without them

when all the old okeefe centre
on scott

I bet you dont remember

, railroad

Born in Ottawa, rob mclennan currently lives in Ottawa. The author of twelve trade poetry collections including name , an errant (Stride, 2006) and aubade (Broken Jaw Press, 2006), his poetry, fiction and critical work has appeared in a dozen countries and in three languages. A collection of essays will appear in fall 2007 with ECW Press. He regularly posts reviews, essays and other nonsense on his blog

2006-04-06T14:25:00.000+01:00

A POEM by Caroline Conway

Disco Nap

Bauble-chased shiny
bubble divulging a dream
a scene encases me in sudden
convulsive gleam spreads out circling
hot spangle and propulsive stream
a two-step to step through
this dance hustling futures
mirrored sheen & me out of steam
left back try to catch throbbing time
satin-masked beneath the flash
elastic string and plastic red
glass grip of hip and lip so lime
the line, the slip, the line.

Caroline Conway has no story to tell. Sometimes you can catch her loitering here

2006-03-24T13:42:00.000Z

TWO POEMS by David Prater

MAZ

have you heard what they've been saying

about old drug dealers & ex-girlfriends

how it's hard to be quite sure who you'd

rather not run into believe me there's a

choice i'd rather not make at any time

let alone now you're probably a lawyer

that degree having been financed by a

mountain of small deals secreted inside

bread rolls & take-away spaghetti under

kitchen counters due to the cops or were

they also buying once i arrived at the flat

to find some guy there your dealer maybe

although you were sweating it was winter

i guess we each have our own method of

payment but i was jealous of the intimacy

who was i to judge your judgements you

were always there for me never failed to

deliver in a way i was in love with your

cool mobile lifestyle i hadn't seen any of

the movies you told me about we would

meet in the strangest places bars parks

the aforementioned kitchen then you

cut off your grey hair & went bleached

i knew it was a sign of our impending

separation now i do not fear for you &

often wonder whether we will meet in

william street's neon shadows kenneth

slessor never did quite understand the

reasons for our running into strangers

averting eyes like johns with no desire

you remain the anti-flaneur the bright

hope of entire generations still hooked

THREE GENERATIONS

hiding hopes in atlas pines a winter

tale for the dreamer signs away his

last vestige of sleaze to find himself

alone in the veritable canyon of lies

i gathered walnuts waited there for

you to come out & show me the lay

of the frontier land we'd conquered

together little boys did i know then

even now the swollen stream sings

the snow we melted with kisses on

rocks guzzling hot chocolate winds

hobbling towards the stars comfort

collided in two twinkling fireflies

from a psychedelic burn-back drift

across your radar lips attaching to

armour wings defence the blizzard

calls us inside that cave i slowly

defrost grow easy & lethargic safe

meanwhile daughters nurse their

own mothers to death one by one

singed with horses hair pleats sun

flowers a tablecloth to greet her &

free smiles decency sirens tied to

the back of a donkey just spindles

drift a woman & her mother fallen

hard rocks insufficient food remain

standing after sunset burn what is

left of the sticks & leave the coals

to scatter themselves winds arrive
like bird omens black in the glade

David Prater lives in Melbourne, Australia. He edits Cordite Poetry Review . These poems are from a work in progress entitled LoveShipDemos

2006-03-19T23:58:00.000Z

FOUR POEMS by Scott Glassman

requisite life

i am opened by dialogue, butcher's knife. bestsellers. cold proof that i
have no interior to extend around myself. there's a sprig, however.
weakened. pinning us to solitudes, the soft soliloquys. of ebb. of
course. rescinded invitations. across the matted ballroom. earth's

antelope bees curtail
diving elliptically
from garamond heights

i'm joking. in jails. integers jammed. into j-

hammer the notes (home) contiguity is less essential when the
double-piped. concatenation. of nailed-up mezzuzah we kiss. (askew)
menus of chai. as each stands for. hot-keys. & shortcuts. the peeled
egg. unicorns of inkblot: do not enter. stop. one way. U-turn. keep
right

vinegar as "never again". neutralizing. their (other) Cage harmonies.
gold-leafed plaques searing the tree into minds of who. in their own
minds. who in deed comes off as. right minds. think of lasting that
long, won't it be. wiped off in crop-circle. dead of light

sitting will be the conclusion of a life. sitting will beget. sitting. sitting.
is sitting. sittting and sitting and sitting. Sunday to Sunday to Sunday.
to Sunday. we cannot start from the condemned position twice. it's all
right there in the appendix. clotted with white mums

had it

what do you want out of people. what can they give you. that you
can't go out. and distill. on your own. a burr tree that explodes three
months before they usher in your lineage. first-place ribbons
(somebody's ashes) didactic proms (april may june. they line up,
same as last year). i want (not) to. understand. (not) even that badly,
in tasteless grain / proof. photomosaic. an English of all consonants,
even the inappropriate ones. doubled over, cramping. finales

i did not visit Avril 50 today, the most beautiful journals were the
words i read moving backwards / forward on the Hill Field walk (what
used to be). was never there as i recall. the violent femmes played.
new femmes & sayings of the dead. this is not the book i would have
chosen to open. i can't shove the pink cyclamens out of sight. crop of
secrets. they seem to need. a center. all my bones removed, adios.
directing traffic. in fact, i leave before the woman can say what the
woman always says to someone. she will barely remember. when the
time comes. for her to sleep. in that anemic. window

some of the poems he writes. (not the woman— yes, but she is there).
who am i without. are so stunning. i wish i could have been there. i am
embarrassed but. it's possible we all do things. pretending that we
were. if only to launch film embers up spiraling. into the
unsuppressed. thunder of. would they reluctantly take back snow.
deposits itself over Vermont (welcome there). & Boothbay harbor. &
dusting the clean Toronto streets. you could lick the crystals of your
first taste. off of. tongue, lemming-like. & next . . . the life, what is it.
that revolved around. speculating on death. ah, but there's nothing
they can catch up to (latch) onto. dispassionately. after-Ritz. he did a
fantastic job, he did

i don't want you to come into the room yet. cause a breach. on my
best days, we're talking. a rupture as wide. i couldn't. there are more
of them now, who do we thank? or ask, beg practically. to seal it. i'd go
down. i would. promising nothing more than i could promise you. i
began by yelling. am confused, leaving that way. what in god's name
did. i try at. you were. would be. always good at helping me deduce
my fears, leading to. i hope tonight. too surface-prone— he's not
carving. again is he. making the cannibalistic seem somewhat.
(ornate), a kabbalah carving. i don't think i could stay neutral. not
anymore. with all this supposing. where has it gotten us. more precise
than. part-morning. part-you

if it suits you

Take my arms out. measure them with the most sand-flecked satin
string you can procure. visit any five and dime. changing weekly into
Restoration Hardware no one said. Take a deep breath and come to
this world each morning alive with a song or the ghost of one.
Whoever did not consent to. & with this, as though they were my
brother's. aligned i persisted. blood persists. his joints (join)

the amazing thing about morning is the way the sun breaks through
blinds, finds crevices and closets to shed its 118th headache in. then
at the moment you open your eyes, opening doors to the expected,
putting yourself away. you can feasibly go to the market with nothing
but fire engines and mangos in your stomach from the night before.
stars had their pathetic appetites. Held them away from you for fear
that you would catch. the posterior of. dream’s

virus going around (yesterday’s panic). That you would say what
came to mind without regard for what you had been. told to do or not
do as a child. It’s all there in chapter 10 midway through Prague and
Edinburgh. the revelation that he’s only 14, or a year older, was it?

i hear the birds, pigeons or black birds, crows no, they would only
have occured. antifreeze streams in New Hope— beating their wings
like gavels behind dryer vents, breeding, rejoicing (that's how they
sing) in March’s timpani chill. (will let up, won't it). right down to the
automatic snow that amounts to a pile eight inches below your
cervix— faux crest— assuming it’s (mine, it’s mine). mine

all the thoughts in my head at the moment

depraved (-ived) psycho bumb-grotto. goulash & carrots (peeled).
winterhostile. i am fortunate to be breathing. i am fortunate to be
breathing. used glass-pronged teeth. nail- bitten-to-a-nub. dribs /
drabs. good to see you again. good to see. good good good.
personality of a clown fish. it rains minnows. thank manna for the
handout. sure good to see you at the party. later, friend. a toast with
kahlua and cuervo. your shoelaces are shortlaces. untied and ready
for the bridge

Scott Glassman lives in Palmyra, NJ and works for a medical testing company. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Iowa Review, CutBank, Epicenter, Cranky, South Carolina Review, Sentence, The Argotist, and others. He has a poetry blog

2006-03-16T14:00:00.000Z

A POEM by Stephen Vincent

Tenderly #1, or. The Gertrude Improvs

A sweet loss, climb on, get loud or:

Wood splinters, wood breaks, breaks not nearly on liquid:
Wood, wood is not a desert, it is rejected, too facile, it burns money
Smokes one, possibly you, possibly not, right to the face:

Give it up, wood, smooth it, smooth it down who's, who's face
Throat: stop! Reed, to play a reed, a wooden one, incontinuous, the squeak
Bristled, to bristle, jauntily, continue this, this often, one says, will do:

A dream over is cyber solid diminished by waking, to ask
A slow answer responds to slow rise, negates
Puncture, rolls the basketball, prompts one, one says, yes, indeed, hoop:

A dark in the sun, more light one day, the next, not
Nor thereafter, clarity a clue obnoxious: February in shift
Shiftless, hook nor anchor, none, barely, not much, nor:

Swept clear, no notion ever repair, not: such non-illustrious
Punctual, purely, step one, step two, A, B, throw in a Z or an L
A music, emergent; note, one does, a trapezoid, transparent crystal:
One, then two, then necklace, then tickle, then parody: winter no light
Sparse, the dark narrow flush, call it, one will, blooming.

Stephen Vincent - poet, walker, teacher, editor & publisher - lives in San Francisco. Recent Ghost Walks - a series that explores combinations of photographs and texts - appear in Masthead 10. Most recent ebook publications include Triggers, from Shearsman Books and Sleeping With Sappho, from faux. His volume Walking is published by Junction Press. Vincent also maintains a popular blog of commentary, poetry and photographs.

2006-03-05T14:21:00.000Z

THREE POEMS by Snezana Zabic

I Am a Horse

“osiris in / vented the popcorn, the / slow drag & the lindy hop.
he’d rather dance than rule.”
(Ishmael Reed)

I saw a sage in a beige trench coat.
His library card said: Ishmael Reed.
He stood there, an unlikely patron

of the Oakland Library for the Disabled.
I didn’t remember to extend my hand in greeting
a simple “did you find everything

all right, Mr. Reed?” escaped me,
and I muttered something about
an overdue policy, careful not to show

my excitement, mind blank & all I could
think of saying was: “I saw you on TV!”
So I was mute, wishing I could quote

from Conjure. (The word almost
sounds like “horses rushing”
in my language: konji jure.)

That morning, it rained. Outside
the city guttered, its milky lights
mixed with fog. I couldn’t talk

to Mr. Reed because, true, I’d seen him
on TV, but what a thing to say to a writer,
so I busied myself with bar codes, dates,

keyboard, dropped my glasses on the floor
bent down to get them and thought:
“Address him, damn it, are you scared

of controversial black intellectuals?”
But actually I said it all out loud. Or maybe
Ishmael could read my mind. He stood there,

shaking his head slightly. The host (white)
of the TV show the night before seemed
nervous—it goes with greatness.

That’s all I meant. But it was too late.
“Sir, I’d rather dance too,” I said, and:
“Conjure sounds like konji jure. Which

means horses rushing in my language.”
“Toward what, poor Caucasian,” he replied,
“And what for?”

Instincts in Sequels

Instincts, I say, instincts:
dominoes toppling in the DNA spiral
pearly white with spots black
as gun wounds in a 1930’s film.

Whose covetous fingers
what ghost tore me apart
like a placard confiscated at a rally?
I’m learning how (muscles
contract when danger fills the air)
to learn how to fight back.

In the movie of wrong moves
I’ll show off my new skills
blocking even the most devious
enemies who speak
in saccharine registers
to soften me pussycat-like.

To learn how not to repeat
my last mission that
wound up in the abyss:
I jumped from the aircraft
yanked and—nothing!
Parachute all tangled on my back
a bundle of silk
refusing to obey
my master’s voice.

C
songs in quarter notes of rain
explode on the sidewalk
my shoes soaked
with violin clefs
bigger with every step
mouthfuls of hymns
in praise of subway neon
yelling back, echoing
trains clack and clack
swollen city’s throat
gives way to a growing sphere
on a planet-sized high “C”
I fill the day till it bursts

Snezana Zabic currently lives in Chicago, or more precisely in West Humboldt Park. She goes to school at UIC. E-mail her at zxcana@yahoo.com

2006-02-28T22:25:00.000Z

TWO POEMS by Ana Bozicevic-Bowling

Mysteries
(variations on the word "still")

I. Of winter

Abrupt skin of snow
deceptively warm
on two toilet bowls
orphaned, by the trash bins—

Keep still.
This is the season of porcelain.

O vertical voice.

Where do you speak from?

II. Of water

Father
is out in the yard. He shaves
at the bucket. Something still
quieter takes place
than white hands
wavering
in the flat O of water—

on his fingers, he counts
how much he has;
botches the count, then
counts again.

Overturns the bucket.

III. Of breadth

You with a childhood
remember
being mute in many rooms.

In some, silences
were complicit. Tired, almost.

Some couches and chairs
stood out
a fingernail-width
from the wall,

and the split of darkness at their back

drew your eye in, a
negative treasure. You'd turn,
airless, admonished.

Whatever the gaps
opened to fit, you did
not have it
to give, not yet.

Still, you
understood, asked
that same thing of mother—

her eyes when you did

were a wider make of silence.

At Night the Objects Move In
(Paula speaks)

As sudden as when objects
entered my blood again,
you enter, begin to furnish me.

You and they
arrange yourselves silently
in the blood, like hens on white perches.

Soon you'll start to speak
the wooden language.

(I overhear: a stove-idea
asks
the last memory of your voice
how it was to be cold.)

Then you begin a slow unpacking, pull
the tail end of childhood
out of a stiff pale-leather bag.

Your father
is no larger
than this bowl of pomegranates

Ana Bozicevic-Bowling lives in Brooklyn (New York) & has a chapbook, Morning News, forthcoming shortly from Kitchen Press. At times she translates & often edits RealPoetik. She also runs a blog

2006-02-24T13:55:00.000Z

THREE POEMS by Sara Vogt

#1
It seemed we all felt the same way. We all absolutely needed to get out, but oddly enough ,we had done absolutely nothing in our actions that reflected this feeling. We had stayed. For years, in groups that never change. And it can be compared to holding a saturated vomit rag to our mouths. It was warm, but we didn’t like the taste. We were all startled, and it seemed we would stay here forever. Although, there was that one exception to all of this. It was that girl who had those maps falling out of her pockets.

This girl had new eyes, you could just tell. It was never showy, just a general understanding of the way stuff worked. She had pictures and plans and it looked like she could breathe new air in constantly.

On her way up and down the world, she’d meet us in bus stops and airports. And she’d sit us down and tell us how purple the sky could really get under a sun falling. She’d describe the feeling of standing under a tall building, and the way cities lit up made her feel like she could do anything. And we listened and wrote everything she said down. We memorized and studied and it was almost like we were alive too.

Although her trips home were frequent at first, they lessened with time. And I had always expected this. Because it’s just what happens. The other kids gave up completely. They threw away the copies of the pictures and with them, the plans and the feelings of ever getting anything bigger. But I was addicted.

What turned out to be her last visit home, was just her and I in an isolated bus terminal. And I realized then if I could never get it together to take the first big breath it was just going to be this house and these, more or less these twelve streets I knew, and I’d never see anything else for myself. I knew what I needed but wasn’t sure if I could get it. I told her that these blankets stapled in my cheeks were so heavy. I said I wasn’t even positive how they had gotten there in the first place. She said she had no idea what I was talking about, and after some well-mannered conversation, got back onto her bus and gave me a wave through the window as she pulled away. I realized then, you control your own blankets. You have to unstaple yourself.

#2
Some nights you remind me of one of those fighting fish, glued onto a piece of aluminum foil. Others, you live inside walls with your hands glued to stovetops. Your melted skin, a puddle, getting into the gas jets. Your hands look so pretty they way they’re all lit up like that. It’s like you’re almost touching all the spaces between the structures that none can ever get to. You’re halfway in and out of everything. And I just want to hang from your elbows. I want to make you see what this looks like from outside windows.

It’s almost like there’s going to be this night. And it’s coming. You’re going to get hit at the exact angle, and you’re going to fracture all over. The size of your surface area is going to scare everyone away.

Standing over, or behind of, an open window I can picture the way we look on blocks and avenues. The way the buildings make your face show up. I’m melting candles in tin cups over open gas jets. The matchbook is almost through, and I think I am beginning to understand the feelings of putting this whole city right next to your liver. You want to touch and swallow everything.

The wax is liquid now. Before it hardens, I’ll use these feathers I’ve collected. They look nice between your shoulder blades.

The way the skyline looks in your rib cage.

I want to hold your hand while you open up the window, but you tell me, The physics of the matter just won’t have it. And then we bite our lips because it’s a long way down, and somehow its an even longer way up. So lately, you’re trying again, but I’m saying no. I’m saying, we just weren’t built with this ability.

But, maybe if we turn the table upside down, and sit on the underside, we can think less like we have wires behind our eyes. Maybe when the sun goes down, I’ll provide the prospect of another attempt. I understand the way you need this.

#3
It had always been harder to make coffee with gloves on,

but I did it yesterday (only to be able to say I did).

And while pouring the milk into my mug

I took notice of the expiration date

and observed it matched another date,

I thought of you in that moment

And the way your birthday always made me feel

Like half finished experiments saved in tubes,

And how

You looked from behind candles burning.

I wonder whose kitchen you’ll be making wishes from.

I wonder where all the smoke will trail off to, upon blowing the light away;

And how you will look on a street corner in the cold that very same night.

Do you

Still wear that coat?

I am still in these

flypaper gloves.

Sara Vogt is nineteen years old. She is currently a student and has a piece in MiPO

2006-02-21T16:15:00.000Z

FOUR POEMS by Jordan Stempleman

Pans for the Square

and know

somebody is aware of the usual mistakes

could all the forgetting then crown

true and tired

there crawling through the door

as the growth from boundaries

the wisp

from where the cutting pictures

caught the alleged risks

of calling this the darling orange

rather than the darling blue

from the usual source of the final image

Stay Right Here

Doesn’t instance go to great heights
to insist it’s become insistence? But the bar
just happened to be here, while some affection
was there below it, with the talk of fortunate things.

The stalk from proportion reports,
it started from one or what was left from one.
It was the pleasure from strangers
that allowed for the comparisons to lean

away from each other, as if they wanted nothing
but to go on being touched.

Stains

So this spot or dropped assembly is also a member
of the emerging go around. It marks things differently
since it came without knowing its closeness
will somehow cling to its impression. Singly
but to stay defining the redoubtable keepsake
attached to an easy chair or other hilarious things.
The good goes dull with responses. It’s history
caught in the musical stupor of refused sound,
talking to the music rather than skating to the music.
All this in public, still crouched for inspection, attending
to these limits that never rest when noticed long.

Greasy Spoon

Since to mean the watched insurance of the warm morning
expects the pressure to return. There was rarely more than a light
afterward, redistributed, for as long as the bent account
to watch it spread, moves on and shifts the sliding designs
of wanting it to linger. The guest came to us for something,
even as we agreed that the muck wasn’t muck, but the frontier
from coming into production—by the way this was left
here, well worth to take on its close. As to take on
the vacations that hinge revelry to the break of traveling
on a little longer, leavening the glance of a long return.

Jordan Stempleman's poetry has appeared in magazines as New American Writing, Moria, Shampoo, Softblow, MiPoesias, and Milk Magazine. His first book, Their Fields is now available through Moria e-books. Currently, he lives in Mill Valley, California with his wife and daughter where he works as a tobacconist. His daily writing can be found at Growing Nation

2006-02-18T14:50:00.000Z

FOUR POEMS by William Allegrezza

1.
to begin in destruction and
end in an aesthetic

we want freedom less than we think

as though in speaking
to weave a clear future

when i planned to move
no one told me about the
violent storms

everywhere dust collects.

2.
subtle tricks turning over valleys

utterances floating with no true hold

shades weaving battle tales

if i would i would if i

250 opaque boxes

train visions blurred

diaries on the styx

the spoils of fortuna

whispers in the conspiratorial night

take the axe and find your own chaos.

3.
reacting to letters tossed
with alphabets among
rocks washed by lake
water

movement

“i wait for the stars to appear”

while
plants grow over us
covering our brief years
with winter or spring

all things tend towards the core
given time

“i am crazed with light.”

4.
issue three cards to the unmotivated

our goal is the enlargement of the company

this account has been discontinued

we are notifying you for your security

you can trust our oversight mechanisms

our quality is the industry standard

do not trust yourself to be motivated.

William Allegrezza has published poetry, reviews, and articles in many countries, both online and in print. He is the editor of moria and of Cracked Slab Books. He hosts a blog.

2006-02-15T13:40:00.000Z

from THE DICTIONARY OF RESCUED IDEAS (a work in progress) by MTC CRONIN

ABOUT: This.

ACCURACY: Many examples exist, among them: calling a statue of the Buddha, a Buddhist; when you don’t miss; when your prey is drawn to you. Advice when dealing this word: resort to contrast to increase accuracy, eg, in terms of ‘wholeness’, dark is more accurate than light and love is more accurate than hate; in terms of ‘fragmentation’, the opposites are the cases. If desiring to decrease accuracy, desire is enough. Tantamount, then, to ‘enough is enough’.

ADVERTISING: By email: ‘Margie Cronin, Grow Your Penis’. Generally: I didn’t grow my penis: I’m one of the ten percent.

AGAIN AND AGAIN: There’s a lot more to it.

AGE: Behind you are the old, in front of you are the young; you are never either.

ALWAYS: Never true except for the word itself.

AM: Where you always are/were.

AMBITION: Something that would be better described by understanding its opposite (or should that be better understood by describing its opposite?), eg., the voice of silence has no ambition to be heard; the axes have no ambition – though this latter example can be a misleading one because axes can have ambition plural.

ART: Transcription of the bit you possess of what you see (a la Marc Chagall).

AT THE TOP OF THE LIST OF ANYTHING: Sleeping without fear.

ATTRACTIVE: What is able to be destroyed. (Why? Being attracted to the indestructible entails coming to terms with impotence.)

BALANCE: What the moon does.

BEAUTY: The symmetricality of the moment forced to empty itself into the cup of thought.

BEND: A technical term though no less poetic for that.

BLASÉ BEHAVIOUR: My theory for a long time based on nothing.

BODY BUILDERS: People with eel-filled bellies. (At least for the metaphorical.)

BROKEN BIT: The useful part of law.

BYPASS: These days usually triple or quadruple. In times gone, we are consequently without knowledge of what was avoided.

CERTAINTY: In which there is most opportunity and potential for uncertainty.

CHARITY: When we remember. And then forget.

CHILD: Unable to be convinced that we all get old.

COMPARISON: Cul-de-sac of like-un-like. Unlike it is and unlike that isn’t. Highly important territory that is randomly and commonly hijacked by fools for personal gain but only by adding value to the equation.

CONTEMPLATION: Should anything be in a museum? Did anything occur to you?

COVETOUSNOUS: Commendable given the pain.

CREATION: What’s only accomplished with help.

CRITIQUE: What we are all unqualified for.

DADDIES: Aren’t specific (eg, may put a pillow on your bed that isn’t your pillow). Lack of specificity also applies to the daddy itself.

DEATH: Subscription cancelled. (Does not matter who by.)

DECONTEXTUALIZATION: One person doing something and another person doing something else.

DÉJÀ VU: The exposed veins of a nutmeg.

DIFFERENCE: People are different. So is what you learn. [See WISDOM.]

DISINTEREST: Highly respected.

DISTANCE: Where fear and the unknown become scientific. May be casual, great, or covered.

DOES: Takes this example.

DREAM: Being stranded somewhere.

DULLNESS: The inability to be carried away.

ENEMIES: Your truest accomplices.

EDUCATION: Slowly filling the body with pain (so that a full – and useful – bucket can be drawn from the well’s depth and darkness).

EMBARRASSMENT: The world remains the same.

EMPATHY: The ability to make sure both/all are present in each part. (Unfortunately hardwired.)

EVERYTHING: 1. Everything plus nothing; 2. Isn’t real.

EVIDENCE: Both admissible and inadmissible. As if. [See LAW.]

EVOLUTION: The reigning theory of tautology.

EXACTLY: What everything is and what hardly anything is thought to be. The irony is it is recognized in a piecemeal fashion.

EXAMPLES OF PARADOX: When exposed the lie is a lie. When exposed the lie is not a lie.

EXCUSE: Beliefs that are acted upon.

EXTRA: 1. Empty parentheses; 2. What you can only have if you have enough. (However, if what you have is good enough, extra becomes impossible. Some think that enough is enough and is therefore good enough, extra thus always being an impossibility.)

FAIR TRADE: 1.The boy pulling his finger from the dyke; 2. Today for tomorrow (though some believe this shows elements of profit while others see it as blackmail).

FAITH: What is summoned from hiding within humanity and then used as an excuse not to come out. (Assume FEAR.)

FEAR: Getting to safety.

FINISHING: What is still worthwhile.

FLESH-COLOURED: ?

FREEDOM: Knowing the difference between differences. Ie., ‘We are always more free than we feel.’ ‘We feel free but are less so.’

FUTURE: 1. It will come back to you; 2. Involvement with consequences.

GOD: What is defined as God as what remains undefinable. (or 1. What is defined as God; 2. What remains undefinable.)

GOOD IMPRESSION: Putty for holes in the self. (A ‘bad impression’ is not showing your holes – everyone knows you have them – but insisting upon inserting a finger into them in public.)

GOOSEBUMPS: Footprints left by your brain creeping around your body.

GREAT BOOKS: The full story is on every page. Cannot have an index.

HANDPRINTS: Kids or caves.

HAPPINESS: A spontaneous lack of pain. (Always unexpected.) (Without embarrassment.)

HISTORY: What, on a good day, is in charge of the future; on a bad day what gives the past a bad name. It is always wrong. And usually unhelpful, eg., ‘Who were the Egyptians before history?’ This is a problem both of too much specificity and too little.

IDEA: What it’s advisable to have more than one of if you want it to work.

IMPERFECTION: Loving God properly.

JUDGEMENT: A strategy to stop things and take a small rest. Often inflated, indeed boasted, into something much larger, more important and of great significance. The last of these – significance – is not contested here, but the editor would like to point out that exaggerators often choose, and put forward, the wrong reason’s for a judgement’s significance.

JUSTICE: Colloquially, little crumbs the birds didn’t eat. In reality, if all goes well, the growing of the heap.

LAW: What occupies the immensity between tautology and oxymoron (eg., ‘standard of justice’, ‘alienable rights’, ‘appropriate compassion’, ‘alleged fact’, etc). Slang: tautmoron (or jokingly, tortmoron).

LIFE: 1. Mitigating; 2. Unused death.

LIVING: The emotion of passing.

LOGISTICS: Anything that gets in the way of wishes.

LOVE: Pretended collaboration of mortal enemies. Despite such, a union which not thirty ships of barbarians can destroy. (Also known as ‘the heart’sdisease’.)

LUCK: Beating your imagination.

MADNESS: The attempt to define a lack of definition.

MAGIC: Opening your eyes to see it. (Note – where ‘eyes’ is metaphorical.)

MEMORIES: What don’t happen on the day they happen.

MEMORY: Architecture of the present.

MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN: Has her creams. Too poor, she has her pain.

MINUS: Significantly like ‘reverse’ but there is usually something left.

MIRROR: True definition of hanging in (what) space (there is).

MISBORN: Something the moon, bees and anything pushing worry nothing about.

MISTAKE: 1. A lesson you are surprised to have been taught; 2. A mistake that is, itself, a mistake.

MITIGATING FACTORS: Poverty, wealth, stupidity, intelligence, ugliness, beauty, etc.

MOTHERS: People we ask again and again to care again for a new world.

NAME: Tissue through which enters light of the sun (in varying degrees).

NATURE: What extracts itself from interpretation.

NAUGHTINESS: A highly interesting state.

NEGLIGENCE: Not insisting on getting a stronger man to pick you up rather than going on a diet that nearly kills you. [See ROMANTICISM.]

NEVER: Eternity before it starts to do anything. Equal to ‘always’ in mass but not size.

NOOM: With a slight adjustment looking at the moon in a mirror.

NOTHING: Everything’s consolation.

NOTICE: Well there you are.

NOW: What always happens.

ON SECOND THOUGHTS: The first ‘thought’.

OPTION: Restart?

ORIGINAL THOUGHT: One very small one right at the beginning. [Humourous]

OTHER ANIMALS: Humans.

PAIN: The only useful thing.

PANACHE: A hat made of spinach or what you have wearing one.

PARADISE: Living entirely within the dimensions of remorse.

PARENT: Often not wanting them to hurt themselves while often hurting them.

PENIS: Worth only four words, one of which is ‘the’.

POETRY: The part of love you can see.

POETS: Wonderful not careful. Experts on the ordinary.

POSSIBLE DEVOTION: A bird laying an egg in your hand.

POVERTY: A mitigation.

PRIVILEGE: Someone else’s suffering.

PROGRESS: Leaving your dead.

PROOF: What is mistakenly ‘offered’.

PROVOCATION: Come on!

QUESTIONS: What is it called, when you can’t accept that you saved yourself? What are they called, the person you fall in love with in your dreams? Is there someone to keep going? (and not stop)

REAL: Nothing poetic.

REALISM: The literature of repletion.

REALITY: Everything isn’t real.

REALIZATION: Irony; mystery; humour. In essence, an understanding of ignorance without knowing anything extra.

REJECTION: Synonymous with people you don’t meet.

REMORSE: Distinguishing the genuine self. Evidence of remorse is entirely a matter of assertion and therefore always suspect in regards to authenticity.

REVERSE: An idea. It doesn’t really work.

ROMANTICISM: 1. Insisting on getting a stronger man to pick you up rather than going on a diet that nearly kills you. 2. It is the longest day of the year and at dusk the light is still trapped between the trees. You climb a tree. 3. A new scale pattern has developed on the wings of the region’s butterflies and you dream only of the scientist who discovered it.

SACRIFICE: Something you can only do without awareness. To make it more complicated, only what you are prepared to give up for nothing. The trick is therefore in reconciling preparation with ignorance.

SATISFACTION: 1. To be satisfied with nothing, is satisfaction. 2. At least it’s done.

SELF: As I figured from other people.

SLEEP: Stopping consciously wanting.

SOLUTION: Where literature is not literature.

SOON: The smallest possible unit of never. Alternatively, eternity reduced to a minimum.

SOUND: Cures walls of their deafness. (And their hardness.)

SPRINKLE: What is surprisingly still substantively.

SUBSTANTIAL OPINION: No better.

TEARS: How you stop crying.

TERROR: The best person to kill is the person who least deserves it. This person is actually anyone at all but because the ignorant don’t realize this they are able to be terrified.

THOUGHT: 1. An off-hand reconstitution of the last one; 2. Only one that varies.

TIME: Always urgent; sadly the consequence only of observation.

TROUBLE: Facts you can’t rely on.

TRUST: When fear takes a detour.

TRUTH: What happens in the absence of eyewitnesses. (Also explains how things can fit inside things smaller than themselves.)

UNRECOGNIZED: More hidden than the hidden.

USEFUL: A hand with a still-attached arm.

VASE: Not something to hold.

VIRGULE: Where they paused in history.

WANT: Often confused with ‘feel’. Want, however, is a more free-floating enterprise (with enterprise being the operative word).

WAS: A moment of time without duration.

WEALTH: A mitigation.

WHAT CHANGES FOREVER: Yesterday into today. Today into tomorrow.

WISDOM: No difference in things (just less confusion).

WOMAN JUDGE: An adjective.

WOMEN: More only than men. All the same.

WRONG MOMENT: Same as the right moment; vice-versa.

ZOO: Animal larceny.

MTC Cronin’s twelfth book is The Flower, The Thing (UQP, 2006). Her 2001 book, Talking to Neruda’s Questions, has recently appeared in a bilingual Italian/English translation (Braitan, Italy, 2005). A forthcoming collection, Irrigations (of the Human Heart) ~ fictional essays on the poetics of living, art & love will be out with Ravenna Press, USA, in 2006

2006-02-12T13:00:00.000Z

TWO POEMS by Josef Kaplan

Place V

Cars could be
as if there
was nothing to

talk about (walk
about too)
what periods of

traffic punctuate
by dropped com-
ma and rote

shift, what roads
talk about and
cross evenly

between your
lines (let's
talk about cars).
Think about it,

never having to
wear your belts
or walk again.

Agenda

Were, in the
front, for-

getting to
was a

problem
with beginning.

Was a kind
of quote,

that is, "time
sensitive,"

which is the
hardest kind

of quote. Now,
for reaching

the mouth's
arm, ourselves:

there is a
wind-

fulness, and
I am reminded.

Josef Kaplan, for the most part, lives and writes in Santa Cruz, California.

2006-02-09T13:05:00.000Z

THREE POEMS by Alana Madison

"What are the washing instructions?"

There is no waiting in line at your local gassing.

"The word horde"

Is the word lounge horde

lisp an emerging line workshop for itch riders

I speed and this

I divide quail zed ed

It al roach is

Directed by fissional acting writers the result for you

A stack of manuscript pages of the end of

And receive quality editorial fastback fast

Within three days one on one via nomail
The word lounge is for people fiction
Deadline driven by and positive

It will instill focus miss

The weekly deadline and you miss

The weekly deadline the lounge features plus tips

Techniques and recommendations
Most people on earth are those who felt

Felt on up to the big time

"Super P Hairamacy"

Lip lower than a response
To those bites split pressure
Pleasures the language of
The summer drew outside
Its manner wet from April

Lips lust stasis
The summer inserted too please,
If it could in it's clean
Knickerbockers itself

Between the cook
The bodies
Slipped good of a mouthed
Having an escape
Me outside to eat me

Link juices of the summer
That comes strongly
Strikes to him
A harder digging
I am with which one wedges
Almost there licked in summers

Openings flood thick
with heat of good taste

And outside it spoke with its language

Alana Madison lives with her child and has a very limited web presence. This may change.

2006-02-06T14:10:00.000Z

THREE POEMS by Donna Kuhn

SLANTED LEGATO

want to drop a slanted little legato in your naive cube?
warn a lima cloud, horse eyelid, keep a wheel, lima bean

on the seacoast with the same practically, the paper sun is acute
green again, escape a flower with a removable cover, falsehoods

warn a lima the job is hot, your face a responsible stewardess
radioactive water guides, the floor is sauve with its illegal marriage

the rodent is green on tv's hot ecstasy faucets
salad of a flower, rodent of lentils

fabric is an acute ray, the sun is fuel, the fuel
stewardess, dark liar of licorice

long candy of falsehoods, waterbug danger
your birds are leaving, depicted by a drawing

horses feel hunched with nothing
the seacoast is along the shore

the dishwasher feels green
the sun is the loyalty

edible ships run rampant with large bough bending the thinking
a tough cloud understands, anorexic tofu soul, acute corduroy

lift-off, take-off, feel the stewardess tree as gentle escape
in your hunched hands, linger, citrus lineman, tranquil sulfur

the tv was dark and lefthanded

the beret sky, wiley headlights of libido to make texas silence
complete the summer, licensed seriousness, silence of the liar

boxer hat tree bending the shore, return your fraction of lifetime
that is your suave illegal terrace, the queen is mild

the moon is a trembling marriage
a person becomes a person when the water trembles

liberty is indecent, the sky was rodent green
daddy is a mineral, i service your hands

captain on a tree, an escape for europe is used
your face is slipping, your face is slipping of thinking

a tough coo profound in texas
whisper like a shore

RAIN IN YOUR HANDBAG

why bother sleeping in your heart
airport bomb, the queen of the christians is across music

the snow is turning and u have it

tricky snow shampoo rent death skin
i always wouldnt cry rain in your handbag

if u like with the burnt pioneer
u lay down winter

tears for a system that grins blue
like your racoon is in kuwait

bulging all over your flashly enemies dreams

bang the meat moon pudding his tv bees love up

your adhesives are plaid
the evening was arrogant and sunk nagasaki
hissing against blue like the page

again the meadow ice regretted sucking vacuumed dexedrine
sink reasons myself, visit jesus in your horse maze

his rent is singing in the eye mirror
the operator of green bones
red winter winter

when youre in your couch
swallow the luck bees
cool words goose her

whatever licks your botulism
in your head tinkerbell ink
like a curtain job abandonment

december is an eye not big
u offer your eye wihtout eyes

green things collapse
give her back her head
your margaret bug is all chewy

hold your fish branches real

i remember u are a favor in a state u grind

a cow is skipping in a loop text
my hands are from bombay
your teeth commute

RECREATIONAL REINDEER

bone scatters your recreational reindeer
prophet winter slips u a burden party
the excellent abortion had a musical argument

undulating powerlessness excreted by bees
9/11 death face, my ear hurts
the sea, the town seems
stupid at that

i ached but i was so free to steal things that ended
i dont like the stars, theres a whole city
while we sleep i have mirrors of bird dreams

get sultry with your words in a meadow
they move your eye because the dulcimer
was ripped like a rose is a winking coat

trees were boat regions, your marriage was
your face is in my desk, he says too bad
your eye is rude

a skeleton is happy like a pretzel
i cant bear sleeping in the half and half
wisconsin is a spider

your co-workers are captains of the thing
bananas are red and sleep in the sideways moon
the moon snows and vacuums your face

i cant wait for your animal dulcimers
u cant move by enthusiasm
they sink the moon i cant bear

Donna Kuhn is an author, poet, dancer, visual and video artist.

2006-02-03T14:20:00.000Z

HOMEOSTASIS by jeroen nieuwland

homeostasis

why does streetlamp light at night not have its own word;
crayons could be labeled lamppost-yellow.

at the height of its reflection
in an otherwise dark canal,
forget the thought of it.

at a later moment, in the same place
hold still for no particular reason.

Your eyebrows raised against
the night might help you understand.

In the canal
water
streetlamp
light floats;
a giant firefly
flickers, in tune with its original above.
at once brought to life and caught
between two constant ripples,
ceaselessly approaches
the stillness of the light that it extends.

jeroen nieuwland. writing a PhD on social commitment in modern Hindi poetry (in Leiden, Netherlands). editor of poetry magazines and poetry stage Perdu in Amsterdam.

2006-01-31T13:20:00.000Z

TWO POEMS by Kirby Olson

THE RELATIONSHIP OF MAN TO THE CHURCH

Mussolini in polka-dotted undershorts
Sits near the cathedral of Milan.

The river stands next to the city.
The zebra stands next to the barn.

The wife next to the giraffe,
The peacock next to the glove,
The sewing machine next to the umbrella.

YOU ASKED

Us to invite your grandmother to come and join ours.
But last time your grandmother moon-walked into the house,
She was holding an olive in her naked ass sphincter
While chanting a Gregorian hymn to a 4/4 beat.
It is less than enchanting to think of your grandmother
Again joining in as our grandmother takes the Cadillac to play
checkers with the denizens of the Lutheran Home.
There are so many normal games they could play:
Parcheesi, Monopoly, even Twister would be fine.
But unless your grandmother is willing to play such games
& wear suitable attire
She is Unwelcome.

Kirby Olson is the chief spokesperson for the avant-garde literary group Lutheran Surrealism of which there are currently two members. He is the author of three theoretical studies - Andrei Codrescu (McFarland 2005), Gregory Corso (2002) and Comedy after Postmodernism (2001). He is also the author of a novel called Temping (2006) - a voyage into love and/in Finland.

2006-01-28T14:08:00.000Z

FOUR POEMS by Eileen R. Tabios

A CRYSTALLIZATION

The white street
an obscenity

when haloed ascetics
can't remember
a wash in hot water

There must be another light

than this wind stuffing
headless birds
--and spermatozoa--
into fragile craters
of a trapped moon

until even onions
cease to make you cry

BURNING PULPIT

Could our two miseries
copulate
into one opulent being?

Men simplify
before slinking back
to antediluvian burrows

Baby priests
turn away
to cast profiles forsworn to Donatello

But she is clutching lilac print
within a shadow burning
away
salvation's seedlings

TRANS-INSOMNIA

....and passing a poet banging stones against my mountain because lightning is fun to play with, except lightning also hurts....and I still have to roll my own boulder up the mountain.....how to remain standing when one has paused to stop lightning with the left hand, while the right hand props up a boulder so heavy so heavy so heavy....

[.....the towel on your shoulder is sodden now, so I'll go to sleep now....]

…..and cobalt-winged crow slits sky, something wriggling between its beak, black diamonds for eyes….and I still have to roll my own boulder up the mountain…..how to persevere with palms now bleeding from rock shards embedded through the pushing towards cloud-covered sky, even as the valley of men below possess a gravity inserting iron weights in the hem of my skirt….

[.....the towel on your shoulder is sodden now, so I'll go to sleep now....]

... and look, you're all wet as the towel couldn't protect you and I'm sorry your shirt's all wet and your pants are all wet and still you just have to sit there and suffer the flow of more tears more tears more tears more tears and now your room is flooding and, oh dear, all your papers are wet and you have deadlines but your printouts have become tracks for black rivers….

[.....the towel on your shoulder is sodden now, so I'll go to sleep now....]

…..your curls are wet…..I'm sorry your curls are wet…..and I'm glad you'll ignore this too…..but so sorry about your curls…..

[.....the towel on your shoulder is sodden now, so I'll go to sleep now....]

.....and then I thought the flow stopped and for a while I was happy because sunset eyes can't help but hurt but then it's winter here so why would I think the rain would cease and now I'm wet and crawling back for your shoulder and now I'm wetting you again and I'm so sorry and yes please do be careful to make sure I don't harm your printouts or books or other pieces of paper that flood your writing space because I'm so wet and now chilled and….I apologize that you're now sodden because I just couldn't keep peeking out from behind the hair I'd tried so hard to grow as a veil…..and now you're wet too and I'm sorry but I can't leave yet I just need your shoulder just a little bit longer and there, there....

[.....the towel on your shoulder is sodden now, so I'll go to sleep now....]

.....okay I go to sleep now ..... dreams, defer thy selves.....

PYGMALION’S EMBRACE

One man, Pygmalion, who had seen these women
Leading their shameful lives, shocked at the vices
Nature has given the female disposition
Only too often, chose to live alone,
To have no woman in his bed. But meanwhile
He made, with marvelous art, an ivory statue --
from Ovid’s Metamorphoses

1.
These are my last words
before I become stone

the same color as the ivory
virgin known as “Beauty”

defined by crumbling pages
gasping, “Her name is Galatea”

2.
A god stopped playing
(for once) to manifest mercy

A god blinked long lashes
for a statue to step down

from a pedestal also carved
by my withered hands

The statue blinked long lashes
She whispered her name: “Galatea”

3.
Her mother was her father was
my instrument carving her curves

Who could have foretold
she would transcend my grief

over the women she -- that is, I --
emulated through ivory and stone …

4.
She reddened her lips into roses
She revealed her breasts for moons

She opened eyes fearlessly at the sun
She laughed as she spread her thighs

5.
These are my last words
before I sculpt myself into limestone

a chateaux as moonwashed
as the ivory whose purity I formed

into the virgin I desired. But
I accept her departure from my

opened hands as the price for tasting
human lips before they now proclaim

“Poems make stones breathe. Within my eyes
poetry, nature, art and wine converge

for a life beyond stone.” I live beyond
stone by immortalizing her within my fold --

an embrace formed by stone walls
as white as she on a pedestal

mythologized as “the perfect woman”
even as her flesh wrinkles, then cracks,

for living in the world, becoming
of the world, forming the Real.

EILEEN R. TABIOS recently released the multi-genre collection I Take Thee, English, For My Beloved (Marsh Hawk Press, New York) which features poems, an experimental novel, an art monograph, play, and poetics prose. In 2006, she will release a new poetry collection, The Secret Lives of Punctuations, Vol. I (xPressed, Espoo). She performs THE CHATELAINE'S POETICS blog

2006-01-25T12:40:00.000Z

THREE POEMS by Christopher Rizzo

DEAR MARKS

You want to say I want to want and say you
what I is to want and confluence.
A genealogy of the cat's meow, a flossy
before bingo, a jackpot in shorts.
The word you gave me fell apart, Skippy, and now
all is but bling, noggin bloopers
and erasures, sweeps for clashes,
my honey radiator went rabid
and minor, lappers pour squat in quash.
Washington looks confused.
Poppies in ozone glorify O,
shush fens the face, the you there in turn,
lined, a fission code afloat—
prickly the ups in temps, quadrilateral
the pings, crossroads at square,
Cambridge years a cambric for boo.
The Glock is mightier than the Cross?
Who inks, and when?

JITTERBUG ACE

Fracas and blurb, wacko mufflers lingo blah,
claim the lay to aye an I, a wigwam
for a Wookie, wayward soda fizz
shipping grin, green oil in tins,
gilt blazons, chipped cedar for drops,
magnet jumpers, the boxy of box
say reliquary the query what?
Economy rhymes with sodomy.
A lone flapper takes yip and keeps it up
the steeps, boots, mumblings,
joy hangs in the bubble a question,
the wild-man from Borneo back from Pluto
for five card stud in Bayonne.
"Did you understand a word of it?"
Know when to walk away.

BULL

Fandangos at 11 and the Groucho origami,
for the masses the money licks,
work the work that works
in June, all the tapers red at the release,
the Prick of Rochester with his pants down
cardinal flights. Kill your Pater
Noster, Walter in the breaks,
quay yolks on the flats, the hush
laves to face, a well peopled
Zanzibar. Twang husky in shop,
shatters and compounds
the heavies, Orion in cipher,
your nape seized. Juju the squalor
of the horns and pronto.
Maynard G. Krebs.

Christopher Rizzo lives in Albany, New York, where he is working on aPh.D. in English. His poems have appeared in Art New England, Carve, Pettycoat Relaxer, and Shampoo among others. He published a chapbook, Claire Obscure, with Katalanché Press in 2005 and has a new chapbook, Zing, just out from Carve Editions.

2006-01-22T15:20:00.000Z

TWO POEMS by Andy Gricevich

tinny buzz
after factory
music

wages’
meaning,

louder as the pay’s
turned down

where birds fled
from paper mill’s steam,
now empty sky

doubles itself
against the ground:

the silence,
hammered from the ear

the teeming
thin-spread dollar’s

echoing blare

making meaning
far from here

*

the world turns out
to be a tinny buzz at
the edge of poetry. barked

or embarked. teenage
bip-bap in the mouth.
a sheen of spectacles

thrust into the flash
denuding attitude. leans
to “affect modules”

recommended by his
counselor’s daughter
who, he imagined,

seduced him in a
film, reel five, the
one nobody gets to.

he’s paid well in personal
satisfaction, would like to take
your sponsor for a walk,

to wing a world
of noise into stands
of the dead silent.

*

TORTURE EXPORT

wings
a word
over the ivied
wall

sponsors
a gang
of arbor
builders

takes
double
as sheep
cries

film
forms
in witnessed
eye

i.e.
they were in the pay
of homeland security,
operating in voltages
on foreign shores

mirrors all the same

*

a hot dog
of concentration:

bits of roach
concepts

fill out the time

apples
and the news

side by side
they face the onrush
of ongoing days

we don’t know what to make of it
but we’ll make something

not as bad
and worse
than we expected

Generations

Admittedly the shad
wore undergarments to the ball. Premonitions of
the Cenozoic woke the pitcher from his daydream. Tide
but no sea. “It’s dark in the fort,”
cried the pets, in terror or delight we couldn’t tell.
Secretly annoyed, I gave up on the luminous project. On the luminous
edge. Ghosts were unhelpful, or unimpressed. The menu
could barely say “eggs,” faded as it was by
years of mother-complexes, discounted for students.
Fuck! I’m so credentialed I could wash!

The general, a computer programmer, a stern look.
The realization: so much fails to depend
on reason. The retention of reason. The bulbs
underground, showing themselves in phenomena.
The ego, rice cakes, literally talking.
The flames, the prison camp, page B39.
The Beatles, the Stones, the freedom to pass
“defense of marriage” laws.
The sexiness of gangrene, a reversibility. The anti-theory,
the love of ones place, the delicate
catheter of participation by absence.

Poppin’ out babies: the comfy liberal’s caviar. By now the bases are loaded
with soldiers of color held illegally beyond the terms of contract, while time
itself has become a new excuse for resentment. Boats are boats.
We could have asked whether there was anything in particular we wanted
to win. Rather than say what it means, the father confessor casts a stern look
over the rails. Raked but not sown. Belief versus knowledge
versus thinking; still there are these spots in his field of vision, into which
anything could fit. If the mind is a wax, the brain wanes, given the nurture
of habitual speech (“terror,” “responsible,” “justice,” “positive,” “habitual”).
More soup? Body suits or bags that? Identity makes men mean.

Andy Gricevich, a poet, actor, and musician, lives in Madison, Wisconsin. His poems have appeared, or will appear, in Mirage #4/Period(ical), Unlikely Stories, and the Spineless Books Flat Books series.

2006-01-19T13:12:00.000Z

THREE POEMS by Regina Derieva
Translated from the Russian by Frederick Smock

From IMAGES IN BLACK, CONTINUOUS

Black Mirror

1

Polish a piece of hematite,
and the black mirror that emerges
mirrors the window
from which each Chinese emperor watched,
as he borrowed the throne.

2

Polish a piece of hematite
into a black mirror
by which widows
of Chinese emperors watched,
as they borrowed the thrones.

From UNCONDITIONAL RELIANCE

A Difference of Perception

After a number of years
it's not so good to see
and hear. This is not a surprise.
I look on the world
through the eyes of others,
I listen to the world
through the ears of others,
repeating all the time my question.
I'm asking those around me
to explain this or that stain,
and to greet someone on my behalf.
In addition,
I force myself to not answer letters
and to not answer the telephone.
One names my condition
as boorishness, another as wisdom.

Second-Hand

Buying second-hand clothes
is easy and convenient.
You are not responsible for them,
since they already had an owner,
who did with them what he wanted.
These clothes always go out of fashion.
But here's an article
whose price is a bargain:
having a previous smell,
and a previous mood,
this clothing in essence has died,
but has not turned to tatters,
having been renewed,
having been filled by others,
having been forced to live.
As new emigrants are forced to live,
a very old Syrian woman
looking
after their children.

Regina Derieva (1949) has published twenty books of poetry, essays, and prose. Her books in translation include Alien Matter (Spuyten Duyvil, 2005). Derieva's work has appeared in Modern Poetry in Translation, Poetry East, Ars Interpres, Salt, Projected Letters, Notre Dame Review as well as in many Russian magazines. Regina currently lives in Sweden.

Frederick Smock is poet-in-residence at Bellarmine University. He has published three books of poems with Larkspur Press. The Iowa Review,Poetry, Shenandoah, The Southern Review, and The International Quarterly are among the many American journals to have published his poetry. His newest book, Poetry & Compassion: Essays on Art & Craft, is forthcoming this spring.

2006-01-16T12:57:00.000Z

FOUR POEMS by Amy King

The Playground Bandit Plays Back

JFK Atlanta International gives coffee
to tv on the radio's asylum studios
in conjunction with corporate
cooperation completely: comes
apart altogether while the rest remain
blessed buried in Christmas if
my fragmented existence coheres,
especially by the blanket
of soft forgotten
shaved sunsets on purr
makes me want
to see everything
fade: band-aid science.
Breathable ailments lie
beneath this soluble skin;
there's no way out unless
it's useless. An abuse began one way
as concerned instruction
until an end of brilliantly left out.
Bury the cat for future
bones of a spell to cast
by the beat that skipped a heart.

Always an Ant

Lilacs sang where nightingales
stood in tiny rows above the ground

The boy carried with him closely
a bearded toothless body

And claimed we are in a state of nature

He notes the heat of noon in afternoon
rising and puts away his dreaded blessing

His life thus far presents a series of tripping
over fences hardly in the way

Long now he’s had tiny phrases hemmed
into the seams of his undersleeves

Removing one he reads, I’ll be white all winter
and no one will bury my twin

Always an ant looks down from its crystal
chandelier to a world

Where time turns to perpetual relic

Even now we separately read the same book
together, the communion of one story’s person

Just when the boy looks up from the grass

How to Go About the Universe

He sent me a secret I can’t discuss,
so much so it does no good to touch
each other in this condition. The tummy
sags. A bathing suit bag bends with-
in his eyes. An invisible fence surrounds
the still in us. Or opens a door
to handshake gratuities—
like your forever trembling limbs
fall forever-after off. The wind-up
doll-head from moonshine submerges
with drink. Let the salutations begin.
Invite the key grips in. Say we passed all
tests in this next trans-Atlantic franchise.

Love’s Lost Dew

Like someone lost to mercy,
I fail inherited speech.

I am the exit in wound
you meant to execute.

I am the one you attend
in a blue orchid’s sleep.

I am the sepulcher closing,
burying your dreams.

A phoenix burns survival;
I waterfall to rise.

Jesus and the bumblebee,
a solid mass of seaweeds.

The dew extracts, competes
with your eternal outline.

My anemone settles
upon your clasping hand.

You remain incognito
without a friendly need.

Amy King is the author of the poetry collection, Antidotes for an Alibi (Blazevox Books), and the chapbook, The People Instruments (Pavement Saw Press Chapbook Award 2002). She currently teaches Creative Writing and English at Nassau Community College and is also an interview correspondent for miPOradio. Please visit www.amyking.org for more.

2006-01-14T15:10:00.000Z

D by Mark Young

To be ceased being
in the present tense
& fled. Monks beat
their heads in one
last round of ritual &
joined it. To the young
it was the stuff of
nursery rhymes; but
too much for the
superstitious who
took it pluperfectly
& saw in it a sign
that leprosy would up-
load later. They had
no out, could do
nothing more than
encase their seed
within any leaf or
left-wing poet
that was available.
Little came of it — the
appearance money
was deemed too small —
but as a mathematical
technique it was
exemplary abscission.

Mark Young is a New Zealander now living on the Tropic of Capricorn in Australia. He has been publishing poetry for more than 45 years & his work has appeared in many print & electronic journals. He recently co-edited TheFirst Hay(na)ku Anthology with Jean Vengua, & his latest book of poetry, episodes, is due out soon from xPress(ed). He maintains a couple of blogs, pelican dreaming & mark young's Series Magritte.

2006-01-09T20:30:00.000Z

TWO POEMS by adam fieled

"hip"

i didn't say it. that. i wish this thing.
but then. subversion. all conventional
modes. of hip-stroking. there was that
time. it's past. how the something to
decode became ourselves. what. now,
contact. now, disjunct. how i wished
to say it. to "put it out there". that if
you put out. you should. continue
to do so. then came nebraska. with
it, erasure. i was rattling off suburbia.
when we tried again. it was. mixed
like emotions. even. when. the thing
seemed relatively. clear. there was
a dancing around sense. semantics
are endless. there can be infinite
sentences, blazing. insurrected
passages. between.

"red life"

mark rothko
came to me in
a dream and said,
each color chunk is
a way of life,
you must choose.

i'm wearing a red
sweater, that's my choice.
anything not to be
bloodless.

adam fieled is an american poet based in philly. he has work in jacket, rain taxi, great works, argotist, starfish, hutt, boog city, cake train & elsewhere, & edits the blog-journal pfs post

2006-01-04T12:20:00.000Z

WOLVES (REVE(A)LED) by Jonathan Ball

[wolves reveled]
[in the garden of John's Revelation, NAB]
[seeding w o l v e s]

1
which of listen voice Ephesus Smyrna
whose one like voice edged sword
When of last

2
victor eat Smyrna
write once life victor edged sword
where of Likewise victor except Son
whose of

3
left victor erase Spirit
write one left victor ears Spirit
write of lukewarm voice enter sit
with on

4
like

5
voice earth scroll
was open lion voices elders slain
wisdom out Lamb

6
voice earth so
would one living voice earth sword
When open loud voice earth servants
who open like

7
voice every Simeon
were of Lamb voice elders spoke
Who one Lamb

8
voice earth

9
saw
was opened like voice Euphrates So
were of like

10
voice ever sea
when of lies

11
voice enemies Seven
were of loud voices ever sat
worshiped ones lightning violent

12
earth stood
woman of longer voice earth sea
When of

13
like

14
virgins everlasting said
Worship of licentious voice ever sustains
who one looked voice earth's So
who on loud voice earth's So
wine of

15
last victory ever so

16
went out like voice earthquake such
was of Large

17
[silence]

18
voice every spirit
wine of licentious voice enthroned she
will of linen voices ever slain

19
what of living voice established She
was of Lamb voice eat slave
was of

20
locked

21
voice every shall
wailing or life-giving victor every sort
which One last

22
[silence]

Jonathan Ball is a writer, filmmaker, and critic. He lives in Calgary, Canada, where he is working on a PhD and a novel called Kanada. Visit him online at www.jonathanball.com or his blog. He also publishes a weekly humour column at www.haikuhoroscopes.com.

(the one site's down now, but it'll return)

submission guidelines

2006-01-03T18:34:00.000Z

Poetry not demanding formatting beyond the possibilities of blogger, any style or school from one (1) up to ten (10) poems, or one or two sequences.

Translations of living &, most importantly, consenting poets.

Short prose of no more than 2000 words.

Essays on most subjects not exceeding 2000 words.

Brief reviews of small/micro press or online books will also be considered.

All work should be previously unpublished.

Please, NO links to previously OR simultaneously published works.

Put texts & brief bio (three lines or so) in the body of an email & send it to: editordelaluzAThotmailDOTcom

You can expect an answer within a week. Acceptance or rejection here, like everywhere else, isn't a measure of quality but simply depends on if the editor liked it or not. Taste, in other words