Adelaide Literary Magazine No. 52, December 2021

Revista Literária Adelaide

“I froze my ass off,” I replied. “I was pretty We talked about the day I told him I’d
pissed at you.” dropped out of college and joined the Ma-
rines. He had married Mary a week before
He was silent for a moment. “I told you I was to graduate from boot camp, but he
to wear warmer clothes. But you wouldn’t sacrificed his honeymoon to come down
listen to the old man, would you?” to Parris Island for the ceremony. I showed
him my orders for Vietnam, and under the
In a memoir he wrote in the last months South Carolina sun in the chill of a No-
of his life, he tells the story of the time he vember afternoon, 1968, he folded me into
faked being blind so he wouldn’t have to go his arms because he had known cold.
to school. His father, a plate-glass window
salesman, saw through the ruse and cured
his blindness with a spanking.

About the Author
Frank Walters lives and writes in Auburn, Alabama. He has previously published in academic
journals and has recently turned to writing (and in one instance publishing) creative nonfiction.

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POETRY



THREE ZEN DADA
POEMS

by H.A. Sappho

HIDEOUS WINNERS

Stray bits of grammar peck at the sky

Algae with red snouts wins the next track meet
Sea foam and plastic comply with the new climate’s directives
A revised global contract is signed between tidelines and jet streams
Each has agreed to rewrite the brown world
But all this will occur outside your lapsed head
So make peace with your eyelashes
Don’t stalk your hairbrush
Undo the sarcastic confabulator
Let the alarm clock endorse your disgrace
Really there is nothing more to do but kneel
Hope is a shored ark of yesterday’s intentions
Sin is an elixir prescribing no ancestors
Against is a scorpion probing the wrong simulation
Right has become as obsolete as love
Someday will never get here
Forever is never for free
The pall bearer mates with the banister
The hood with strange manners waves the black grapefruit
Brows with sliced eyes raid the most populace cracklands
The last butterfly wrestles the last snowflake
Extravagant scissors snip away history

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The tropics assume pole position
The capacity for insight closes the crypt door
The big funeral says Glad that’s over
Light has finally had enough of your yellow
It no longer needs to consider you at all

THE THIRD OR WAS IT THE SEVENTH PLAGUE

Nineteen years later a cantaloupe will begin to flash nipples
And theocrats will gather their guns
A buyer of toothmarks will break an ancient Chinese vase
While a floor made of white jaws will pile trashed rinds
An epidemic of weeds will stage an epidemic of suffocation
And an epidemic of suffocation will preface an epidemic of drowning
Bicycle sails will dot the civic horizon in your dreams of escape
And luminescence will have nowhere to go but into the primordial savanna
Black and brown rage will renew the borders of violence
Just as kakistocracy becomes the new law of the land
Myths of ascension will mutate into thoughts of such incoherence that
That
That
That will grope for meanings
Words will lose their bottoms
The bottom will collapse to the surface
The surface will screen logorrhea’s descendants
Crowning the social ladder will be a golden toilet
Why you say why pretend
Hope procrastinates
The future leans sideways
Entropy is about to recover its mojo
The sphinx’s answer ricochets off your depleted cerebrum
The sea is mazed with rejected plastic and the skeletons of hurricanes
Irrelevance prepares for the accumulation identity
Eventually you too will shatter into ancient fragments
Neither the Southern Song dynasty in its prime
Nor the fables of karma at your birth can prevent what’s coming
Beads of sweat swivel round your last supper

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The nominal flag flaps the first winds of collective dementia
The woman with the fruit basket drops to her knees
Roosters gathered by the lake stalk the junk heap of mistakes
The Third World runs out of gears
And the First World runs out of numbers
The butterfly yields to the fly
And the fly yields to the locust
Especially its progenitor preposterously named Fred
Watch out for Fred here comes his garden
Who could have known what rot it would grow

EURIPIDES PLUS ONE IN THE BARDO

If I made a bed of moisturizer
Would he read his Cave differently
If I screeched in slow epileptic
Would his sunglasses dim or disappear
If sardines rebel from the holster
Would that be a definition of purple
If morosity and pomposity switched sides
Would the end of times shrink to zero
If my hat were made of lemon grass instead of dry noodles
Would he sleep on a fly or a skunk
If the mountain drowns precipitously
Would the sky be its savior or killer
If tangerines swim in the bloodstream
Would the Buddha test nirvana with the orgasm
Wonder after all only provokes fear
And fear is where it all begins
The dog of fake principles barks at the skylight
The sunlight refuses to be summoned from slumber
The lumber refocuses its leaves to the chainsaw
The silver teeth smile to avoid their decay
The day always begins with a red cape
The red tulip grows a ruined amphitheater
The cracked stage sprouts a ragged Method actor
The performance aims for the audience’s jugular blue

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The blue butterfly juggles cudgels of candlelight and takes a new dive
The swim departs from the swimmer and then rebels from water
And once again he is here in the zero before wetness
Entelechy Aristotle says to Catharsis
Tragedy is thrown off the cliff of dramacide
The systolic heart discovers the birds of parody
Which are thrown off the cliff of comicide
Only to be saved by a chariot dropped from a cloud
The Nameless One massages his fingers before lifting his pen
Arthritis hurts he thinks before thinking of frogs
Something tells me I’ve thought this before

About the Author
H. A. Sappho is native of Los Angeles with expat time spent in
Prague, Berlin, and Hanoi. His baseline interest is archetypal
psychology. His work has appeared in Eunoia, About Place
Journal, and in nine self-published books of poetry and
prose collectively named the Puer Cycle. Currently he is at
work on “Faust, Part 3.”

156

BIRTHING A POEM

by Emalisa Rose

Birthing a poem Swirling in syncope

Two on the high wire They’re not letting me in today.
in exchanging of songery.
No floral designs or palatial
They’re rising the sky with ponies. The unicorns, castles
the voice of the ancients, in and carousels, quiet. Erased of
this ritual reverie. the night sky, those midnight
epiphanies, clairvoyant trilogies.
He bows and she curtseys
through the cloud’s choreography. The tea leaves are swirling in
syncope, unclear of a read. Stone
Somehow, this Saturday faced, they offer no glimpse of
on the wings of the sparrow that peekaboo heaven today.
a poem will be born.

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Mirror of miles Adelaide Literary Magazine
No longer “her”

Stenciling the sky, a wallpaper Of that world, that I left
of branch over branch I return now, haunted by
in remiss of its color scheme remnants of pennings once
draws Winter’s grand still life relevant. I shall shred them
through the mirror of miles, riding to pieces, no longer a chance
longside the 7:09 out of midtown to decipher or rectify.
as the snow’s working overtime.
Even the sparrows went home. Those poems are now
strange to me.

I am no longer “her.”

When rain comes to town

Of each to the other, an
echo, a stir on the skin
a repetitive knock on the
shutters of love and deception.

When rain comes to town
and the heart beats of lonely.

About the Author

When not writing poetry, Emalisa Rose enjoys crafting and
birding. She volunteers in animal rescue. Some of her work
has appeared in Adelaide, Mad Swirl, The Rye Whiskey
Review and other wonderful places. Her latest collection is
“This water paint life,” published by Origami Poem Project.
She can be reached at
[email protected]

158

I SLAM RHYMES

by Jamie Gibbons

I SLAM RHYMES ARMS WAVING WILDLY

Cocoons hang As our feet walk the earth
Caterpillars crawl Our minds flaw
Butterflies have wings So we slam our rhymes SOLID
Yet I’m floor bound Like they’re prison doors
I’m forced to walk Our heads gyratin’
Jamie curves words like they’re baseballs Sanity ailing & frailing
They’re coming faster than gale force nine Arms waving wildly whilst drowning
Ladies and gentlemen Mentally flailing
Distressed Butterfly presents his rhymes
Runnin on crooked tracks, I went off the rails
I’m struggling to get back on course
With tremendous torque
Distressed Butterfly drops rhymes
From high up he sees scenes
Another life irony cos I’m floor bound
What goes around comes round
I was drowning in no sound
Its like I was trying to wisper in a loud crowd
I’m ground down, yet I want to float like clouds
Up high, may Distressed Butterfly rise
I won’t quietly die, thats why I write my lines
I’m lookin for my right course, my true north
So Distressed Butterfly slams rhymes
Like her majesty’s finest slam steel doors
And like I’ve said before
Distressed Butterfly flutters but can’t fly
With mushroom clouds in his eyes
He walks, talks & spits in an apocalypse.

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FLYING SOON

Alone I sit. Me, myself and the night. A deep, empty silence. Everything is here, except the
light. Don’t know what to do with myself, so I’ll rant some poetical lines. To try to get rid
of, the agony in my mind. But I don’t know where to start, with this knotted ball of string. I
wish I could soar like a bird, but I’ve got these broken wings. I want so much to be free, fly
like a bird. So many voices trapped inside from days gone by, that were simply never heard.
So I’m stuck on the ground, I’m afraid to say. But I live in hope, to be free one day.

About the Author

Jamie Gibbons is a writer, poet, verbalizer and photogra-
pher. He has ongoing and lifelong severe mental health dif-
ficulties. His arts keep his head above water in what feels
like a terrible sea with high stress waves coming in from
360 degrees. His pseudonym is, Distressed Butterfly.

160

MORNINGS

by Alan Massey

This Man

He takes aluminum cans from the neighbor’s trash, limps off and walks his bike
down this late morning road, down to the next home

where he hunches down into the green bin, lifts himself back up and holds
another can to his face, considering it like how one considers his options

in this life and possibly the next.

He wears a greenish-yellowish safety vest with torn-out reflectors
and he puts these crushed soda cans

in a rusted child’s wagon, with pallet slats on all the sides,
so the soda cans can pile up and up and up,

while it swivels like a computer chair as he moves. The rope between the bike and wagon
is white, and thin like a shoe string, tied at the wagon’s handle and the bike’s frame.
Attached to this man is this pathetic carrier.

But if that goes, then does he too?

He has been everywhere in this neighborhood of winding roads and oak trees, the oak trees
our roofs, and his, too, in his dirty pants

and blue-holed shoes. He often penetrates our conversations.
“Have you seen this man, lately?” Nothing of note.

But yes I have, at the gas station, where he resembles the pumps, where I tell him,
“Hold on, hold on. I might have something for you.”

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But Those Quarters

Saddened at the Laundromat. the backside of the lid with all the
I had gone out to the car for quarters. orange instructions showing, and
Can’t you tell I didn’t bring enough? my clothes removed.
I brought the basket, and in the basket: Was I really gone that long? That I
soap, dryer sheets, and the clothes of course. had not noticed you emptying my
Everything but a few more quarters. clothes from the washer? Or had seen you
pouring out of the door from the view
I had this moment in the car from my car? I think
while getting those few forgotten quarters. of catching you. “Those are mine,” I
I hovered over the center console, would say. Nothing more. Nothing less.
somewhere between the driver’s side and
the passenger’s side. I stayed there Or you could have taken them by accident.
for a good while, looking in the Now, I can take an accident. An accident is
center console, at the quarters what I can handle. I’ve dealt with accidents
settled at the bottom. How long before. I pray it’s an accident. But
had I been away? It was the I still wonder how it feels to
first time in a long time that I hold in your arms the clothes of some stranger.
felt alone. I even enjoyed the stale Wet clothes nonetheless.
heat of the car. And why not! And then, to leave.
I closed the door. I noticed a few things.
The time on the radio blinked, There was still my basket, and the soap
for example, and stayed at one time. and dryer sheets, too. All that
It needed to be set, and I had still there, thank heavens.
to set it. You see, I just I checked the dryers even though none
had the battery replaced. Then were running. None were full, either. And
it came to me – this what had I expected? For you to have
was once my father’s car, and once thrown my clothes in? Only the washers were
he took me here to do the family’s laundry. running. I lingered in this place. I looked
At this place, around this down in the newly unoccupied washer where
time. He on the driver’s my clothes once churned. Hear me out on this.
side, and me in the passenger’s. I reached for both sides and carried myself
over the bin. What I did expect to see were
What happened when I returned not my clothes, but those
to the laundromat is what got me. quarters. That’s what you did
Whoever you are, wet clothes bandit, to me. What I expected were
I want you to know how you brought those few forgotten
me down. That moment, an eerie quarters. Right at the bottom
moment in the car, mixed itself with the of things, and I was
gut-drop wonder of my open washer, transported back into my father’s car,

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where nothing was ever really mine Mornings
to begin with. Hand-me-downs, you might say.
Even those clothes. And if I This morning a slight rain. My love
had seen you run out is already gone to work. From my room
with my in your arms, I doubt I would I can hear tires slosh on the wet road
have recognized them. and the call of finches at the feeder outside
the window. It comes to me as if
I gave out my name to anyone from a distance, what she said
who might listen, as if it carried before she left. “It’s raining.”
any importance among the wash cycles. The way she says it.
And I’m sure it doesn’t matter to you, either. I love these Sounds. And mornings with rain,
Then, I tried to describe my they make me feel a certain way, too. Like
clothes from memory. I have never had a single thought worthy
Saddened at that, too. of my time. That all that had happened
never did happen.
All of it.

Just how mornings are,
with the smallest aches,
storm clouds opening to a clear noon sky,
and how she is not here. How sore
it is, except for this tiny moment
of restoration from this slight
rain, from this morning, and
the memories of dreams.
It, fading with the rest.

163

PARIS PARK,
OCTOBER

by Laurel Benjamin

The blue moss sings a song of its own
with a line from Toi Derricotte’s poem “I give into an old desire”

I’ve lost so much distracted by hunger
for blue petals serrated and segmented
a fur coat against the roof of the mouth.

I’ve got my eye on the yellow lily as it draws air
to its candle and waves flapper tassels
of its dress, a lemon scent and citrus pucker

as I crawl among the bitter roots
fungus a blur
at the tree where a dead vole lies.

I’ve eaten grasses like tentacles tasting of
almond with finger chopsticks, eaten
the stem until none remain.

I’ve lost, not climbing the mountain or hill
route through pines, shadows
better the flat land, the curve, at the bottom
a hovel inside a log,

where brightness cannot follow,
where the blue moss sings
a song of its own loss.

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Paris Park, October

Each lamp
a giant firefly
reminder of summer
and my light raincoat will not
protect, thin wool skirt against the damp bench. Cool mist
dilutes shapes. I can’t see past the dark outline
of a small building. I don’t even know
the name of this park. Cars rush
past, headlights illuminate
briefly.

I arrived
three months earlier
traveled south to a familiar climate
and now I’m about to fly home. I wonder
about this century, young in the tooth but old enough
for black and white to color pink if it wanted, for something
greater to happen that doesn’t kill millions.

The plum trees have lost their blossoms
and I’m reminded of African violets,
the ones my mother tendered
on our dining room table
though she claimed
no green thumb
back yard pared pack
from the abundance of the last owners.

Somewhere between marriage and children, she decided
to keep her career, or did she pass street lamps
of her own, lonely damp benches,
when she and my father
traveled through here
before I was born,
and she stared
into the same
mist.

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Invasive

Crows untether from pine, let loose in the sky then
land on mud flats at low tide
investigating what the earth offers up.

Where can I feed my grieving mind amid paperwork, legal issues.
Low tide at Tomales Bay where a pattern lingers but
once the tide rises that will be the past.

People in groups marvel at the shipwreck—
fishing boat from another time
rust along bow and sides,

gaping holes, leaning at an angle, subject to poke and prod
tripods in all light. They stay a few minutes
then gone

ignoring the surrounding bay
fingered hills with hairy knuckles
Canada geese picking at the shore.

And how can I go on without you Mother—
with you gone, my childhood
gone, your set of Jane Austen I donated,
except Emma, with notes on self-control versus the heart.

Crows strut along the mud pattern, legs bent back in a military walk
heads jutting forward. And the ice plant’s violet fronds
easily populate, roots networking—

host the sun but will eventually close for the moon.
Oyster and clamshells on the beach,
remnant of past life.

How to navigate
this bay in a shipwreck—
how to find calm in a forceful wind.

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Marbles

We played marbles
on rough blacktop, rules necessary
like friendship for these smooth nibs who could vanish

in a flash,
clear with green and red stripes or dark with yellow curves,
the game, who could get the closest, not outside

the chalk circle drawn.
Keep your shoulder outside, define your rage
to keep from roaming too far, and even sleeves

stay outside. Rules
like playing music, when it’s your turn to enter the conversation,
woodwinds exposed among orchestra players,

and to hear the tones
we had to form a sectional. At music camp
friends dressed me up, a white flare skirt with bright shapes,

platform shoes
as I twirled with the French horn teacher
unable to meet his eyes,

before sneaking out
the side door to the hill, only young thistles
and gopher holes, the site where we’d take our group picture

at the end of two weeks.

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Secret Under the Bridge

The rain is different here, they tell us the same as their parent’s,
and they translate for their mothers a different kind of abandonment,
at the doctor or the lawyer one home for a new one,
and they drive on their streets. leaving fire for water.

I hear the wind in their ears What part America played
as they stand in front of us in their torment is not something
in jeans tight as leggings and striped shirts easily admitted. A long war.
for their presentation, Chemicals dying flowers
as they use the word “naked” a sanguine yellow
describing their mother, their uncle, while men here drank chartreuse.
driven down into the boat And every fall, the leaves.
by waves stories high And the bombs dropped.
as they crossed
an endless ocean. They keep the real secret
of their father, their aunt,
The air conditioner acts up again under the bridge
like a burst of surf where they stood waiting
spray, their loss for the boats.

About the Author

Laurel Benjamin is a professor of English at Laney College
and a native of the San Francisco Bay Area, where she
invented a secret language with her brother. She has work
forthcoming or published in Lily Poetry Review, Black Fox,
Word Poppy Press, Turning a Train of Thought Upside
Down: An Anthology of Women’s Poetry, South Florida
Poetry Journal, Trouvaille Review, One Art, California
Quarterly, Mac Queens Quinterly, among others. Affiliated
with the Bay Area Women’s Poetry Salon and the Port
Townsend Writers, she holds an MFA from Mills College.

168

THE KING’S SPEECH

by Bernadette Dickenson

THE KING’S SPEECH barnacles his only adornment
they hitchhike a free ride for life
The boat skips over the breaking waves a place to live and access food
racing to the sighting of the waterspout
and the waving fin he says to me
“my Kingdom is in danger
whales diving deep into the sea Humankind is
lifting their heaviness destroying our home
with splendor and majesty can you help?”

the leader swims to the boat “but I am only one”
he is within my reach I whispered
the ocean is his Kingdom
I see sadness in his eye he replied
“spread the word in a poem
time stops Poetry is the voice of the
frozen in awe! Universe.”

no ancient regalia to be seen
the finest silk
encrusted with previous gems
no golden ring to kiss

no need to curtesy to a tiara
glittering with diamonds
worn on vulnerable heads
for decades

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AWAKENING

I see a boy on the verge of
manhood
finding the curves of a girl
to his liking
more than the curve
of a cricket ball

climbing out of his bedroom
window
just before midnight
pillows forming an awkward
shape,
the shape of a boy he was
yesterday

today he turned sixteen
suddenly a man
with a man’s desires

his love waits for him
at the local football oval

the sweetness of first love!

170

GOLD TREES

by Carrie Magness Radna

Gold trees The guest house

Remembering you, I liked the tree tattoo on your upper arm
I paint trees as you played volleyball with
that haunt my dreams— Team USA in Tokyo.
the golden light shines Your green eyes were shining too.

No one can hold onto What if we had lunch together?
the sunset forever, Would there be a chance
or recapture for us to be together,
the Holy Grail; swimming in sheets,
having sex as your waves
the trail of immortality crashed down upon my dunes?
is long dead—
family secrets This would never be real,
are found at the stump not in this lifetime—

of the enchanted tree, but what about
now hundreds of years old. in another pocket Universe,
Does its apples where we had a guest house?
taste like wisdom, or gold?
All of our emotions are welcome there:
But you even uncertainty, shame, dark
always had a thoughts & disgust,
golden heart, they will be tolerated
easily illuminated as well as lust and love, light dreaming & bliss.

the prize was We won’t turn them away.
never the goal— Even though most of the house
love & happiness, was painted by loneliness,
by truth, is.
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romance & self-love
was built in the heart of it.

Even when
in this time and Universe
you don’t know my name,
& we have never met,
& the tree on your arm
is not real—

In this guest house,
anything is possible.

I pick the apples growing from your arm.
& I take a bite
as I look in your eyes.

Green (a Ghazal)

I miss the softness of green
grass before it was sprayed with fertilizer.

Now all green
plants I rely on are plastic, except those on

untouched, flowering fields in sparkling crystal houses, those are green!
What happened to realness, to buzzing bees?

Did they fly back to their striped, sharp-tailed, green
planet? Is that why we all buy silk roses,

dreaming of smooth, velveteen petals smelling of rain? We were also green
once, before the planet died off from waste & pollution.

The farmers are trying to feed the world with greens,
but we are force-fed vitamins & freeze-dried food.

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When the hunger’s gone Revista Literária Adelaide
1st year in New York

You took the last train When I first visited New York,
out of Love’s station, I thought the streets were electrified—
leaving me back in Purgatory.
I danced with the Sufis upstate, saw trout
When dogs smell meat, swim, & ate tofu & real Greek moussaka.
they wait feverishly
with their teeth extended, When I moved to New York a few years later,
the streets felt more solid. I was a grain of rice
their tongues hanging out;
you did that or a solitary dried green pea
when I first looked at you. in a deep can of sharp tacks.

Where did your hunger go? It was the coldest Winter.
My love remains strong, I almost froze to Death
but you’ve lost my flavor,
in my basement apartment
my flesh and lips in Gravesend. Nothing happened
are no longer satisfying.
I am still the same woman there; I told people that I lived
in Sheepshead’s Bay. I had nothing
you once craved. But the rails
tempted you to move forward, in common with Lubavitcher Jews,
to find someone new Russians & Italians. Oklahoma so far away—

to love and feed upon. I met someone in Riverdale.
Why can’t you be satisfied 4 months later we were engaged
with me? What did I do wrong?
& 4 months after that we moved
How could I have made you stay? in together, in Manhattan.
You didn’t answer—you left one morning
without warning, without an explanation. But I needed those first 8 months
to become another sharp tack
You were so tired of climbing
the hill on 231st Street. so I could live in this city
You dreamed of Downtown for the rest of my life.

& its pleasures in Manhattan.
You wanted more than me;
your little dreams were too big.

I may be crazy like a hunter,
but I know who I am;
this is where I need to be.

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About the Author

Born in Norman, Oklahoma, Carrie Magness Radna is an audiovisual cataloger at NYPL, an
Associate Editor of Brownstone Poets, a singer and a poet who loves travelling. Her poems
have previously appeared in The Oracular Tree, Muddy River Poetry Review, Poetry Super
Highway, Walt’s Corner, Alien Buddha Press, Cajun Mutt Press, The Rye Whiskey Review and
First Literary Review-East. Her first poetry collection, Hurricanes never apologize (Luchador
Press) was published in 2019, and her latest poetry collection, In the blue hour (Nirala
Publications) was published in February 2021. She lives in NYC with her husband.

174

THE GIFT THAT FALLS
FROM THE SKY

by Mikal Wix

Absinthe, the Serpent The preacher exclaimed
that she was chosen
He watched her die as he sat erect and perspiring
from the back pew high in the back
on absinthe and rye. of the police car,
arrested and intrepid.
Her face was bitten twice
by a rattlesnake The absinthe was from Spain.
heavy
with length and scale. He drinks more
to ward off the serpent,
Maybe it was her perfume and to shake the venom loose
or the preacher’s breath from clutching tight to his chest,
that provoked the strikes. every night since.

She watched him charm
the snakes
and the skinny people
standing close by
singing hymns with briny lips apart.

How could she hear the epiphany coming?

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Divorce in the Eye of the Storm The Gift That Falls from the Sky

The canoe tilts on the water A sudden kiss full of light
around the fish. fell upon my head from above
Reeds sway, crossing themselves. where gentle winds worked the palms
Is it liberation or loss down a crescent beach
that makes the eyes glow pink? dotted with fruits, En-Sof,
bunched high over cool-shaded inlets.
The moon smirks high over her head,
like the clock face on the wall He rose from the sand,
teasing the creatures below a watery embrace
with corpulent futures having braved a storm, crafting waves
unaware of the late hour. into petitions for sleep,
nursing me from dreams to daylight.
The boat leans toward the shore,
a watery dream of shadow, shell, and weeds. He suckled me with virtue
and blew clouds to puzzle my searching eyes.
No mercy seeps from freedom,
no way to sleep faster Then they turned green one day
to avoid the ripples of a fresh disaster. like the plump coconuts overhead,
and he bowed to me,
Someone near has named the storm. a tempest of sandcastles on the air.
Her animals uncaged,
ancient brown waters And the day washed over with slag
rush the levees as he lunged to attack my tongues.
chasing into the rafters
whole families of ever afters, His blade struck me
ensnared airs, to cut deep into the bell roaring above,
and disciples of hushed affairs. I breathed beneath
and fell back to the earth
The divorced are still downstairs, submerged. ready to eat
and be eaten again.
The canoe quivers lopsided
against the winds,
and rogue waves race out
to strike root and rock
with her weary-weak confessions.

Explain how vows drown the willing
in two cups of wine, hers and mine.

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His Tears Convict Me Revista Literária Adelaide
The Worm’s Short Night on the Farm

His tears convict me I hear him rustle
soaking the notes, beneath the pine straw
making them lean over like a monk’s brown reflection,
like injured soldiers. pushing deep to the leafy rot,
and I push it aside to reveal him
His tears make me weak, there at the base of the fountain,
an animal skinned, amid the ferns—
my horns, emblazoned with ink, an age-old, watery inflammation.
now something written, inflamed, And then, he’s gone
torn, and beaten. in a slow-slithering flash
of mature, dark energy.
His tears roll down panes at night
like firefly flashes gone sideways, He is a scar.
wafting into hot headlights alone. A redolent chant into the expanse.
To reach out to him is to trace the past,
Descending, a galactic reckoning
he says they feel like small wishes among all the wounds in the garden.
burning streaks into the flat,
bruised knuckles of my hand. Later, I see him
among the festival barkers—
I try to catch them barn owls screaming,
to restrain their power, having burrowed into their gypsy fetishes,
their noise, their truth and poise; hocking gourds or snapping mandibles.
they are singularities,
witnesses that accuse me He is a warrior among the gods
of perfect wickedness. without his supple, lemony longbow,
unable to defend himself,
His tears barricade me, or hide again amidst the mulch
leaving no exit, to ward off the shadow of descending fall,
like that night, years ago, the sound of clapping wings above—
when I tossed his boots he longs for the depth of
off the foot of my bed, roots, peat, and bones.
naive of the storm outside,
and the other man lying down He feels the flame of the fight go out.
inside me, hidden,
waiting to escape the stale rooms
of sheet music and men.

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About the Author

Mikal Wix was born in Miami, Florida, of green-thumbed, hydrophilic parents. Growing
up among many cultures gave him insight into many outlooks, and later, the visions of a
revenant from the closet. He holds degrees in literature and creative writing and has poems
in or forthcoming in Beyond Queer Words, Tahoma Literary Review, Eunoia Review, and
others. When not chasing storms, he can be found in the woodlot.

Following journalism studies, his short stories and creative nonfiction were published
in The Siren, then Centennial College’s student newspaper, and his articles and features
were published in various local news outlets in Toronto, including community and trade
newspapers like the East York Times, the Beaches Town Crier and Hospital News, where he
interned as an editorial assistant.

Born and raised in Sioux Lookout, Ontario, John is the son of Portuguese immigrants
from the Azores. His education includes graduation from 2-year GAS at Humber College in
Etobicoke with concentration in psychology (1993), 3-year journalism at Centennial College
in East York (1996) and the Specialized Honors BA in English from York University in North
York (2012).

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INTERVIEWS



SARA GELBARD

Author of THE SOUND OF HER
VOICE

1. Tell us a bit about yourself – something that we will not find in the official authors bio?
I have built a successful 25-year career in real estate in NYC selling townhouses to some of
NYC’s most prominent families.

There is a direct parallel to my choice of career and my life-long quest for a home. Grow-
ing up in the children’s house on the kibbutz never felt like a home with a family. Selling
homes, to me, was a reparation.

My career choice of helping other people find a home and witnessing them choosing
their home – and my success – can be traced back to all of the things I longed for on the
kibbutz – as well as the skills I learned in the Israeli army

2. D o you remember what was your first story
(article, essay, or poem) about and when did you write it?

As part of my healing process and as a way for the little girl’s voice inside me to be heard, I start-
ed keeping a journal. I would write in it every day. I never started out to be a writer, but little
by little the daily journal entries started to tell a story which became a cathartic journey for me.

I had suppressed my feelings and inner voice my entire life and the journal helped me to
begin to vocalize the things I needed to heal.

I began writing when I was living in Punta, when my husband retired, and the quiet there
enabled me to hear “her voice.”

The Sound of Her Voice is my first book and the book that grew out of my journaling.

3. What is the title of your latest books and what inspired it?
My book is called “The Sound of Her Voice”

As a child on the kibbutz, I was never encouraged to express my individual voice or show
vulnerability. This book is an expression of what that little girl never got to say.

I wanted to let her have a voice and hear what she went through and what she needed now.

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I was also motivated to tell my story to help others confront their pain and learn how to heal.

The Sound of Her Voice is a story for anyone who has ever felt the need to heal inner
wounds so they will be able to open their hearts and live life more fully. .

4.  How long did it take you to write your latest work and how
fast did you write (how many words daily)?

I started writing the book when I was 70 and it took me 5 years to complete it.

But in some ways, it took a lifetime to be able to write the book because until I could con-
front the pain and the hurt, I could not let the girl’s voice be heard. The healing was a work
in progress as I wrote the book.

In general, I try to write 3 – 5 pages a day

Today I belong to a writing group where we are expected to write 10-page stories that we
need to present to the group. It is a challenge, but one that really encourages me to grow as
a writer. This is like a second career for me.

5. Do you have any unusual writing habits?
For one, I write everything by hand – even in this day and age of computers and laptops. It
helps me to think and tell the story.

I used to think that the best way to write was to do it first thing in the day when my mind
was fresh, but I found that I could not concentrate until I had completed my morning routine
(things like making the bed, walking/feeding the dog, having my own breakfast). In order to
get my mind in order, I had to get my house in order.

I learned from a book on good habits – ATOMIC HABITS by James Clear - to reward myself
once I was finished so there was something to look forward to once I completed my writing.
I always take a walk after I finish writing. The importance of good habits cannot be overesti-
mated. The goal is to stack one good habit on top of another.

When I did the writing for The Sound of Her Voice, I could not write at home, I would go
to a local coffee shop and sit at a table by myself. It helped me to think clearly and without
distractions. Today, because of COVID, I have had to build a writing nook in my apartment
away from the distractions of my family. I built it together with a friend. We created a corner
similar to what the Danish call Hygge which means coziness.

The Danish believe in creating a warm atmosphere at home to enjoy simple pleasures in
simple serene spaces. The spaces have books, warm colors, light natural wood, a nook to
read and write and have a cup of tea. Simplicity. I also added my cozy chair to sit in.

6.  Is writing the only form of artistic expression that you utilize, or
is there more to your creativity than writing?

There is a child psychiatrist (Donald Winnicott) who talks about the importance of “living
creatively.”

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He defines that as the ability to keep surprising yourself – whether by acting sponta-
neously on things or accepting new, daily challenges.

I look at my lifestyle and think I live creatively every day. For example, I read a story in the
Washington Post about Diana Nyad, her love of her dog.. I found myself looking further into
her story and realized she wrote a book about overcoming her obstacles and swimming from
Florida to Cuba called Find A Way. Needless to say, I purchased the book and devoured her
story. Her words and how she overcame so many challenges became an inspiration to me.

I used to dance in Israel, and when I came to America, I joined the Martha Graham Dance
Company. Everyone would think that is a form of creative expression, but for me, it was so
rigid and confining it did the opposite to stifle my creativity.

Today , I still love to dance – but freely and informally. I married Carlos, my husband and
the greatest love of my life, because he is a fabulous dancer.

7. Authors and books that have influenced your writings?
I don’t read fiction – I only read non-fiction. I love books about people who overcame dif-
ficulties against tremendous odds. Those kinds of personal stories really resonate with my
own life’s story. It’s inspiring and cathartic to read about other real-life stories and how peo-
ple have succeeded. I guess that inspiration keeps reinforcing my own story,

There are just so many books to choose from I hardly know where to start!

I read authors in English and Hebrew so there is an enormous diversity of titles.

Authors I love include Thomas Merton, May Sarton, Amos Oz. and Nobel Peace Prize win-
ning poets, Pablo Neruda and Gabriela Mistral.

8. W hat are you working on right now?
Anything new cooking in the wordsmith’s kitchen?

I am working on a second book. It will deal with Little Moments in my life today – giving voice
to the events and moments that make up my life as it is today.

I have written a series of essays on dealing with the Coronavirus called the Corona Trilogy.
It talks about the importance of a new friend I found through a light in the window and how
we forged a friendship that became an anchor during the pandemic.

I am dealing with a way to “renew HER voice” and make the book more personal. At the
moment, it is missing her voice of wonder.

9. D id you ever think about the profile of your readers?
What do you think – who reads and who should read your books?

My books are written for the very common person – everyone who wants to heal and im-
prove their life. Who among us doesn’t have a story buried deep inside that we need to
confront in order to open our hearts further?

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I love when people are able to internalize the stories in my book. For example, a friend
was having a very “off” day where everything was going wrong and she just couldn’t get a grip
on the day and she couldn’t explain why. She finally said that she called on her “manager” to
set her straight. This was so important to me because in my book, I have a “manager” who
is my inner voice and who calls me out when I am off the track and helps push me forward.

I learned that my book and my story really and truly resonated with this friend in a way
that it had become part of her own vernacular.

That is who I want to write for. People who can internalize my story and make it their own
or use it to help them deal with life’s challenges.

10. Do you have any advice for new writers/authors?
Establishing good habits that work for you and that make writing easier are really important.
In some cases, you need to identify bad habits that restrict your writing and eliminate them
in favor of newer, good habits.

Learning how to stack one good habit on top of another will also help keep a young writer
focused.

11. What is the best advice (about writing) you have ever heard?
The best advice I was ever given was to “listen to the page.” Writing is about listening – there
is a lot of listening in writing. You cannot go into it with a preconceived idea. For me, the sto-
ries evolve in a way that gives them authenticity.

Don’t let your inner critic inhibit your writing. Let the story reveal itself.

12.  How many books do you read annually, and what are you
reading now? What is your favorite literary genre?

I often read more than one book at a time. I don’t read fiction – my favorite genre is memoirs
I’ve recently read Obama’s book, The Promised Land and a The Book of Joy by Desmond

Tutu and Dalai Lama about happiness.
I am currently reading The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
I read many political books like It Was All A Lie by Stuart Steven
And a personal victory book Educated by Tara Westover

13.  What do you deem the most relevant about your writing?
What is the most important to be remembered by your readers?

For me the most important take-away is that in order to heal one’s life, you have to confront
the pain. The goal is to come away from the writing like a broken bone that heals well and is
stronger than it was before the break.

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14.  What is your opinion about the publishing industry today and

about the ways authors can best fit into the new trends?
I really am not in a position to comment on the industry. Today the publishing industry is
incredibly broad – there are so many options – it is complicated.

What I think is really important is having a good editor and the freedom to publish in
many ways – whether self-publishing (as in the Spanish and Hebrew versions of my book) or
with many of the other options available that weren’t available in years past.

Overall, books need to make the reader feel like they are hearing something new
15. What is your favorite quote?
One of my favorite quotes is by May Sarton: I have written every poem and every novel, for
the same purpose – to find out what, I think, to know where I stand. That’s what I need.

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LAZAR SARNA

Author of NEW KID DICTIONARY,
BOOK BIN BABY, and TALES OF THE

SPICE MAKERS

1.  Tell us a bit about yourself – something that we will
not find in the official author’s bio?

I have always tried balancing my legal practice with creative writing. Of course, being a pro-
fessional gives me access to characters, stories and situations which I would never have been
able to accept or confront as true or credible.

2.  Do you remember what was your first story
(article, essay, or poem) about and when did you write it?

My first published poem appeared in the Canadian Forum when I was 16 years old. What a
thrill that was: seeing my name in print in a solid independent journal.

3. What is the title of your latest book and what inspired it?
Book Bin Baby is a novel most recently published. It was written however over a period of
five years, permitting me to accumulate color and texture for the text as time went on.

4.  How long did it take you to write your latest work and
how fast do you write (how many words daily)?

Writing exhausts me after 500 words at each session. The blank page or screen is daunting.

5. Do you have any unusual writing habits?
Whether unusual or not, I churn ideas and language in my head like a blender. When it
comes to writing, the idea and language is usual there, like a smoothie.

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6.  Is writing the only form of artistic expression that you utilize,
or is there more to your creativity than just writing?

Being a lecturer on professional topics at the university level, or pleading in court, public
speaking is a creative endeavor. I have also written songs but I am thoroughly embarrassed
to sing them in public except to my family.

7. Authors and books that have influenced your writings?
In the poetry enterprise, I value the book Crow by Ted Hughes.

8. W hat are you working on right now?
Anything new cooking in the wordsmith’s kitchen?

I am working on a new book of poetry, Tales of the Spice Makers.

9. D id you ever think about the profile of your readers?
What do you think – who reads and who should read your books?

Absolutely diverse. I have no mental image of my audience.

10. Do you have any advice for new writers/authors?
Writing is a form of expression that lasts, whether it lasts in an unpublished or published
format. If a writer is prepared to accept that something he or she wrote years before will be
scrutinized or remembered in the present, do it.

11. What is the best advice (about writing) you have ever heard?
From my wife and many children, blessed be they: “We don’t understand what you wrote..
Can you clarify.” On the other hand, they keep repeating a line in one poem that seems to
have gained traction with them over the years: “The cane you walk on is my bone”.

12.  How many books you read annually and what are you
reading now? What is your favorite literary genre?

I read professional and spiritual literature.

13.  What do you deem the most relevant about your writing?
What is the most important to be remembered by readers?

The juxtaposition of words in an unexpected context.

14.  What is your opinion about the publishing industry today and
about the ways authors can best fit into the new trends?

It is no different than marketing, stocking and selling bananas.

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188

ROBERT GIBBONS

Author of LABORS IN THE
VINEYARDS OF DESIRE

1.  Tell us a bit about yourself – something that we will
not find in the official author’s bio?

What comes to mind in this age of COVID-19 for a writer in greater exile than ever, having
lived in four different residences in the past four years, is the importance of correspondence
in my life. In the autobiography I express a wish that I’d kept what I wrote to Guy Davenport to
sustain his interest during our correspondence between 1987-2003, & yet just last year I was
made aware that hundreds of items sent to him, letters, poems, & ephemera are kept in his
archive at the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas, Austin. (The first 350 items from the
first 3 of 5 boxes have been copied & sent to me.) Over the years my dependence on friendship
& creative dialogue via snail mail & email with Peter Anastas in Gloucester; Bill Heyen, Brock-
port, NY; Marilyn Crispell, Woodstock, NY; Bent Sørensen, Denmark; Ben Bollig, Oxford UK,
David Anfam, London; and most recently David C. Driskell, here at his studio in Maine & home
in Maryland, have been indispensable to my life as a writer. But relationships in letters present
their own form of precariousness: Guy passed away in 2005; Peter died on his mentor Charles
Olson’s birthday on December 27th 2019; & the virus took David Driskell from us on April 1st
of this year, making me value the importance of this ongoing correspondence all the more.

2. D o you remember what was your first story
(article, essay, or poem) about and when did you write it?

My first poem of any worth was written by hand while sitting on the back edge of a green
van with doors swung wide open parked down the road in Napa Valley outside one of the
wineries with its gates locked. It’s untitled, yet dated 1971, nearly 50 years ago now. First
poem in my book Below California, Below This. It’s alluded to in this autobiography, La-
bors, citing the title coming from a line in D.H. Lawrence’s, The Plumed Serpent, “They say
the word Mexico means below this!” The gist of it is a complaint that as we rode along up
there, having left Los Angeles a week earlier, in order to secure a spot without reservations
at various campgrounds we’d have to get there early. Wineries along the way didn’t open
back then till afternoon. Hundreds of pairs of doves spoke to us, while it seemed the roads
themselves said nothing. I was forced to say that this nothing to drink quenched our thirst.

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3. What is the title of your latest book and what inspired it?

The title of my autobiography, Labors in Vineyards of Desire, is based on the sole painting
ever sold during Van Gogh’s lifetime, The Red Vineyard. First shown in 1890 at the annual
Les XX exhibition in Brussels & purchased by Anna Bock for 400 francs. I’d already been
enamored of the piece for multiple aesthetic, historical, & personal reasons, when after a
reading of mine at a bookstore in Gloucester, Mass with then Atlantic Monthly Poetry Editor,
Peter Davison, a man named Jim Lynch introduced himself, & invited me to his house two
doors down from Olson’s former apartment on Fort Square. It was there that I met his wife,
Irina Borisova-Morozova Lynch, then Head of the Russian Department at Wellesley College.
She bowled me over with her story that The Red Vineyard ended up on the walls of her
grandfather Sergei Ivanovich Shchukin’s estate, which later became the Pushkin Museum in
Moscow. It seemed like a miraculous dream of coincidence, & every time I visited, or if we
all went to dinner, never failed to ask her to retell the sequence of provenance.

The impetus for writing the book itself must have had numerous underlying causes I’m no
longer aware of, but one thing puzzled me, something I thought perhaps tracing my origins
back to the beginning I might solve. Here I’d been writing & publishing for over forty years,
& never once wrote about my mother. A real enigma. So the book begins with her crying on
the sidewalk in Salem with me in her arms, unconscious again because, according to the doc-
tor in Boston, infant braincase had not closed. However, it takes another almost 200 pages
in the book before I say to my wife, “Today I’m going to write about my mother.” “That’s a
first,” she replied. With Jung’s help, & sudden dream processes I began to peel back layers
to unravel the mystery.

4.  How long did it take you to write your latest work and
how fast do you write (how many words daily)?

It took 14 weeks to write & cobble together Labors in Vineyards of Desire. Method is of great
importance to me. Mine rose out of the difficulty in my twenties to reconcile the balance be-
tween my desire to write & the inability to write. I never took any writing classes other than
a couple of creative writing courses as an undergraduate, where the teacher once comment-
ed on my work that, “These are publishable.” That’s all I needed. I’m self-educated in that
sense. Gary Snyder points out that language is learned at home & in the fields, not school.
Olson, whose work I studied for 20 years harped on method. Kerouac’s spontaneity & Jazz
improvisation are huge influences. I write quickly & a lot! Rarely revise, if ever. In Labors I
allude to the fact that a correspondence burgeoned between then Poetry & Fiction Editor
of the interdisciplinary journal Janus Head, Claire Barbetti & myself, wherein we might have
shared as many as 10 emails daily! I trace that as the habit/root/source of my later published
online Log, in which I wrote, & webmaster posted, work daily for two years & two days, the
first year & a day published in book form as Travels Inside the Archive, 2009.

5. Do you have any unusual writing habits?

I doubt it. But my habit may differ from someone’s need to feel they have to get something
down, or a certain number of words. Back to the relevance of Labors in Vineyards of Desire

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as others see it: say Ben Bollig at Oxford University, who interprets the volume as “the story
of an ethics of writing,” or Richard Hoffman, whom I quote within the text saying that I don’t
write just for the sake of another poem. Those views are crucial to me. It reverts back to the
notion of method. One example is the discovery of the work of Julia Kristeva in Paris in 1986
(I had the pleasure of meeting her at Harvard in 2013) in Desire in Language, where she
outlines the source of the chora, from Plato’s Timaeus, as an internal entity similar to an am-
phoric vessel, or womb, containing nothing other than preverbal reverberations. She goes
on to examine what might lift that silent noise into words. It’s her notion of a cathexion, or
an erotic charge that is the tongue within those enclosures that sounds the bell into words.
I wait for that event with heightened senses, & not until that validation arrives, near electric,
do I trust the phrase or sentence I put down.

6. I s writing the only form of artistic expression that you utilize, or
is there more to your creativity than just writing?

My previous book, Animated Landscape, began as a collage sketchbook. I’d just spent 7 gruel-
ing months writing a long 350-page poem titled, Anatomy & Geography, a work based on the
link between walking & the land itself, or if walking on the treadmill in the cellar back then,
walking & the imagination. I was spent. But needed to do something creative. So not totally un-
like Matisse took scissors to paper & began to fill the grey pages in the Strathmore sketchbook
with images based on a maritime theme: living in Portland at the time; memories of Gloucester
cropping up; Olson’s & Melville’s work in mind. It wasn’t long before the pages begged for lan-
guage. As is my wont, I began to dig. The title poem is based on Dean R. Snow’s observations
in his The Archaeology of New England, that up the Kennebec River from where I live now,
in Solon, Maine, petroglyphs reveal evidence of shamanistic power: birds & phalloi, vulvas &
snakes, canoes & dogs, river transport that revealed an early animated landscape. From there I
went to Altamira, where young Picasso joined Abbé Henri Breuil mapping the newly discovered
contents of the cave. My travels to the cave at Pech Merle in France merged with Olson’s obser-
vations of similar latitudes between Gloucester, Mass & the cave at Castillo in Spain theorizing
that red-painted tectiforms represented wiki-ups that could have traversed ice-floes by early
man between the continents. Other poems examine the landscape of Detroit, then in the midst
of bankruptcy; Thoreau in Old Town, Maine recording Penobscot Governor, Old John Neptune
saying, “Moose was whale once,” as the animal walked up out of the Merrimack River; or listen-
ing to Nina Simone sing at the same time Baltimore blew up with rioting. David C. Driskell later
wrote in response to the poem that, “She grew up in Tyson, NC where my father had a church
and we knew her as Eunice Waymon, the best gospel singer in Polk County.”

The collage sketchbook verges on a work of art to the extent that I recruited a visual artist
to help mount the images as I arranged them onto fabric 80 inches long by 30 wide. We pre-
sented two pieces to an audience at the Press Hotel in Portland. I wanted to turn the hanging
tapestries into a six-column roofless temple. I told him the next piece would be purely erotic.
But my collaborator on the project found my directions too demanding, & abandoned the
project at those two separate, isolated pillars.

Additionally, in 2018, I collaborated with the great jazz pianist Marilyn Crispell, who based
her Leo Records compilation, Dream Libretto, on my poem, Sound of the Downward.

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7. Authors and books that have influenced your writings?

Dostoevsky first & foremost, The Idiot, how at 18-years-old reading it on my own identified
with the utter simplistic naïveté of Prince Myshkin. Symbolic, I imagine of my own ignorance
of the world back then, & potential futility of attempting to transform that lack into art in
language. Much later, reading how his wife observed her husband standing for two days run-
ning in front of Hans Holbein’s The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb speculating that here
in Basel one could lose their faith. Baudelaire’s Paris Spleen. Rimbaud’s lettres du voyant.
Olson’s Archaeologist of Morning. Guy Davenport’s The Geography of the Imagination & A
Balthus Notebook. Ed Dorn’s Geography; North Atlantic Turbine; Idaho Out; From Gloucester
Out; & What I See in the Maximus Poems. Don Allen’s anthology The New American Poetry.
Rothenberg & Quasha’s anthology, America a Prophesy. William Carlos Williams, everything!
Pound, as much as I could take in & try to make my own, but especially his Gaudier-Brzeska:
a Memoir. Joyce’s Dubliners. Miller’s Tropic. Barney Rosset’s Evergreen Review. Genet’s The
Thief’s Journal & The Screens. Proust. Apollinaire. Ponge. Char. Freud. Jung. Benjamin. Read
Rilke, but one is not influenced by such a poet = let him be like Rumi. Károly Kerényi’s Di-
onysos: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life & Eleusis: Archetypal Image of Mother and
Daughter.

Kristeva, all. Cixous’s Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing; Rootprints; & Stigmata: Es-
caping Texts. Duras, all. Akhmatova’s The Complete Poems. Tsvetaeva. Mandelstam. Barthes’
The Pleasure of the Text; Mythologies; & A Lover’s Discourse. Derrida’s Of Grammatology;
The Postcard: from Socrates to Freud and Beyond; & Archive Fever. Hemingway. Kerouac’s
Essentials of Spontaneous Prose; Windblown World: Journals 1947-1954; Book of Sketches:
Proving that sketches ain’t verse, only what is; & On the Road: The Original Scroll. Bergman,
scripts, interviews. Godard, scripts, interviews. Cahiers du Cinéma if only I could read them
all, instead of just watching as much Nouvelle Vague as I can find of the Criterion Channel.
Jean Douchet’s French New Wave. Auteur, Louis Malle. Voyeur, Bernardo Bertolucci. Henry
Miller. Roberto Bolaño’s The Unknown University.

8.  What are you working on right now?
Anything new cooking in the wordsmith’s kitchen?

Right now I’m obsessed with film. Quarantine now isn’t far from my usual existence, but
offers the chance to feel less guilty as I track down Breathless & Le Pierrot Fou. Last year I
tried to make something of Bergman’s Trilogy: Through a Glass Darkly; Winter Light; & The
Silence. It’s currently in manuscript as Interstices of Winter: Notes toward a 2nd Autobiogra-
phy. Incomprehensible, really, at this point, but recently I’ve watched & taken notes on his
Port of Call, 1948; Thirst, 1949; To Joy, 1950; Summer Interlude, 1951; & Summer with Moni-
ka, 1953. Harriet Andersson stares directly into Bergman’s camera just as Jean Seberg will in
Godard’s Breathless after she asks the novelist at Orly Airport what his greatest ambition is,
answering: “To become immortal, then die.” In Truffaut’s The 400 Blows the young, abused
hero tears the photo still of Monika off the theater lobby wall, & runs away with it. Erotic! I
adore that. Image without words.

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9.  Did you ever think about the profile of your readers?
What do you think – who reads and who should read your books?

I don’t think about an audience. Olson speculated that he/we’d be lucky to have five readers.
My cast is similar in number, but I don’t write for them, or anyone, other than the call of the
blank page, my friend.

10. Do you have any advice for new writers/authors?
Read. Practice. Listen to the chorus of your own internal organs Kristeva calls our “Divinities.”

11. What is the best advice (about writing) you have ever heard?
“Start from where I am.” -Charles Olson

12.  How many books do you read annually and what are you
reading now? What is your favorite literary genre?

Just like when after spending 7 months reading & writing the 350-page poem Anatomy &
Geography, I took to scissors to cut out imagery in order to collage a sketchbook, right now
I’m watching more film than reading. Although I recently purchased Tennessee Williams’s
828-page Notebooks in perfect condition for $8 hardcover discarded from Princeton Public
Library, digging his constant bitching bout almost everything everywhere!! I can dig it!! Bill
Heyen’s new book of verse, Vehicles has come in & I’m enjoying it in relation to my own ob-
servations in Labors as the libido & language become vehicles. The above mentioned French
New Wave by Jean Douchet. Godard: A Portrait of the Artist by Colin MacCabe. Godard on
Godard by Tom Milne. Projections: A Forum for Film Makers, edited by John Boorman & Wal-
ter Donahue. The Euro-American Cinema, Peter Lev. Boundaries: Writing and Drawing, Yale
French Studies, #84. I keep Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God translated with a fine
intro by Anita Burrow & Joanna Macy by my bedside table attempting to read a piece to start
the day, along with Bukowski’s The Pleasures of the Damned, which I might pick up at night.
Jacques Réda’s, The Ruins of Paris.

13.  What do you deem the most relevant about your writing? What
is the most important to be remembered by readers?

In Labors somewhere I quote Benjamin quoting Goethe wondering if it’s possible for a writer
to understand himself & his Time at once? I’ve been obsessed with Time. The jury will take
its own good Time deciding.

Remembered by readers, however few? If they can pick it up: subtlety of rhythm.

14.  What is your opinion about the publishing industry today and
about the ways authors can best fit into the new trends?

This is a question fairly out of my league. My league is as an outsider. My most recent man-
uscript of poetry is titled, Citizens of the Other World: Boundary-Crossers & Out-Laws. Title

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Adelaide Literary Magazine
is from Hélène Cixous’s, Guardian of Language: “Literature is a transnational country. The
authors we read have always been citizens of the other world, border-crossers and out-laws.”
If in this interview I can take it back to Labors in Vineyards of Desire, then, the publishing
industry was of no use to me after writing the autobiography. I outreached over a hundred
agents over a period of a year. One agent in Boston asked to see 50 pages, & passed. Oth-
erwise, no takers. Put the manuscript away. Most publishers won’t look at anything like this
without an agent. I wrote other things. Then, in 2018 I decided to skip agents & go directly
to a publisher. Adelaide was the first publishing company I submitted to, & to my surprise
Stevan V. Nikolic asked to read it in its entirety. I don’t follow trends. The “industry” itself
seems to crank out forgettable books.

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