ISSUE 43. [Perpetually dedicated to FELINO SORIANO]
EDITOR’S SCRATCHING POST
TABLE OF MALCONTENTS POESIE ONCE: PAGE ? REVIEWZ: PAGE ?? POLEMIXXX: PAGE ??? ARTE: PAGE ???? POESIE TWICE: PAGE ????? APRIL FOOLS, FOOL! THERE ARE NO PAGE NUMBERS … AND NEVER WILL BE!
PoéSIE part I
FEATURED FEMME: E VA S KRANDE TONIGHT, ALL TREES Tonight, all trees wear bracelets of stars. Anything thirsty laps water. Whatever hurts on the pages of life is kissed by memories of red flowers. Those with sadnesses starting deep in the chest drink their dreams in silver chalices. Horses, in the fields of night, seek hay from the humble hands of the moon,
resting on the wood fence, and free of rules. Those roaming fields of the past regret nothing. Everything is simple. There are no paradoxes between sin and the ballads of birds. Everything is simple. Thieves, looking only for bread, are written into the Book of Life for a house full of manna and love. THE FIELD At night, you become a field where all doves marry. O trees, home of honest finches whose leaves are the commandments of stars. Let’s count the blue chrysanthemums in the eyes of destiny, forgive the unhappy sailor who doesn’t believe in all our moons. Let’s give what’s left in the orchards of life-- apple, pomegranate, pear--
to stop the long hunger of refugees. When we are most ourselves, pink azaleas against the knees of grass, the good daffodils pray their yellow rosaries. Among the righteous days of elderberry, even the saintly die in your hair. THE ANATOMY OF TIME Come here, body of four seasons, metronome of day and night, whose days are spent by the piano, whose evenings are spent with the groans of cellos-- O cheerleader of death, that refuses to hide behind the goal posts of night, whose hands, like sailors, mop the decks of history’s boats. O skipper, who delivers aubades within the boats of dawn, the pendulum of your heart swings between the crows of longing and stars that need a home. On your forehead, the constellations answer the hope of those who are suffering. You are baptized repeatedly in the church of numbers. You whose moon decides the tides, whose joy crowns the waves in white epiphanies. Your hair, like a river, flows from past to present to future. O mother of breath and dust your long hair is the consequence of every absence, of every kind beggar’s death and virtuous prisoners, those jailed for no reason, live languidly
in your long arms May your purse, as you surround me, contain only coins of grace and life though your song completes a tulip’s fugue prayer, though each finch that concludes its long flight reflects in your eyes. THE MOON’S ANATOMY In her unhemmed pearl dress, she is ready to dance with anyone homeless or hungry. Dear humble moon that hides her face every day so birds can visit their past flights. O beautiful moon whose hair consists of strands of stars, whose body enters through windows, who lies next to those who are lonely, and softens the dreams of children. Dear moon, whose eyes tell stories of shipwrecked loves. O clock of day and night who lengthens the night for lovers who must part before daybreak. O moon whose fingers dance on the foreheads of mountains, who wears boats as bracelets, loan me your eternal arms to guide me through the tunnels of life. O queen whose waves are a necklace of long-ago tides and their birds, help me deal now with a past longer than what I have to live. I want to be filled with light while traveling from one landscape of sadness to another, to be like you who lends her legs to the lame, her bright eyes to the blind. O lucky moon which knows no afterlife,
I, too, want your legs, those long wicks of light to run from the borders of death. Dear harbinger of calendars, mother to months, let your breath, your strong tides, help me withstand the petals already arriving from the world to come. THE WIND When the wind chases me, it steps lightly so I don’t know its behind me. There’s no sign of wind. No moss swaying on trees, no bells being rocked into song. Even the beautiful hair of the wheat stays neatly tied in its small bow of life. Sometimes the wind forgets itself, forgets to blow gently. Then, I feel it coming toward me, the long stem of my body swinging. A few shingles on the roofs of old houses loosen, the white magnolia blossoms begin to fall off, and I lose one or two of my petals. One day, I suppose, the wind will catch me. Gathering around me, I’ll lose all my petals, my leaves brown and brittle. I’ll no longer speak in shades of blue and yellow. My heart will want to rest in a flower bed. I’ll only have time to say I love you to the tulips surrounding me before returning to dust, before being planted again in the earth.
CHURCHES When I hold tulips in the cup of my hands, churches open. The pews are filled with tender crows, the altar with doves of hope. The holy moon, coming in through the window, prays for her boats, the mothers and fathers for their children to wear stoles of mercy and luck. I myself ask to have more years to live, to set a table for those with no bread or shoes. The trees have their own prayers— to sway softly near the window of a child’s room, to be a home for the finches of justice. Tonight church bells fill the ears of freed horses. Tonight there is no such thing as sin. Tonight the earth is a chalice that holds only goodness and joy.
GHAZAL OF WEATHER AND TRUMPETS Once I lived in a house with no nails. The roof of my heart leaked. In the tents of memories there are pictures of boats with no names and blank postcards of an island filled with the horses of what could have been. The earth speaks in many alphabets like snow, tulips, rivers of ancient stars. Though rusted, the nearby church bells offer a home to finches who believe in the odd-numbered streets of fate. Despite old shoes, the weather consists of hope and trumpets that play the shadows of childhood. Editor’s Note: Truly, Eva’s poems speak for themselves; the only editorial note I can make is that I have been honored to publish her in previous issues, as well as appear in some of the same publications as she has, such as SurVision. Her style is riveting, and I must acknowledge more than a twinge of envy toward her ample talents. Too, I find Eva’s backstory and artistry intriguing; you can read her bio, artist statement, and a curtailed preface to her thesis below. EVA SKRANDE ARTIST STATEMENT My personal history and my development as a writer are tied together. I am as much defined by my childhood walks along the Malecón and swimming in Varadero Beach as I am by the waters of Miami and Miami Beach—two havens of Cuban culture--to which my family immigrated. My parents’ nostalgia as well as my own nostalgia for our homeland combine in many of my poems which let the imagination fill, explore, and recant a world informed by the hollows of history. My poetic lineage is also tied to my background. My poems have many South American and Latin American fathers and mothers: Neruda, Vallejo, Padilla, Agustini, Storni, Mistral, Marti. Without these parents, my poems would never be, just as I can only live by breathing in and writing poetry.
My third book, The Boat that Brought Sadness into the World, due out in June of 2024 (and available for pre-order from February to May at a discount from the publisher, Finishing Line Press) reveals another aspect of my poetic soul as it fuses a re-imagining of my childhood, especially the notion of mother, with more soft surrealism. The poems in The Boat that Brought Sadness into the World also address exile both literally and metaphorically. The book addresses the literal exile of the poems’ main speaker as well as the hard migrations of refugees. It discusses how exile might “swallow [one] whole” and the pain of refugees, whom the speaker imagines long to see their homeland once more. Metaphorically, it looks at life as a journey of and to exile. The book explores, for example, the journey from childhood through older ages and suggests that death is the ultimate exile as we leave the country of the body. These poems are incantations that challenge, refuse, and accept loss and longing. The poems are asking questions about what is and what isn’t reality. “Am I being honest?” one poem asks. What is truth, if anything? Is metaphor, by its very nature of transformation, a lie? Of course, each poem ultimately deals with these questions. I cannot wait to continue giving form to these unanswerable questions, to try and give shape to the ineffable. Being a Cuban emigre, continues to impact the poems in my latest manuscript, Loan Me Your Eternal. I am particular concerned about the plight of refugees today and the homes they are trying to find, often coming across countries that are hostile to them. That has led into writing about suffering—be it poverty, homelessness, illness, aging-- and redemption. Unfair suffering. Take, for example, the lines: “Thieves, looking only for bread,/are written into the book of life/ for a house full of manna and gentleness.” Suffering and redemption—a comely, if not necessary, pairing. ARS POETICA BY EVA SKRANDE I am obsessed with the notion of descent. It comes from the emphasis on descent in the bible. It comes from hearing that the Jews were descendants of the twelve tribes of Israel, told to me as a consecration of the fact that all Jews were united. Then too, the Holocaust had eliminated so many of my ancestors. I remember facts related to descent, like the fact that Abraham Lincoln's last descendant had died. And when I talk about poetic influences, I use familial metaphors and the notion of descendants. My first semester at Sarah Lawrence was the fall of 1976. I had transferred from Stern College because I'd heard that Sarah Lawrence had a great writing program. I still remember my first conference at Sarah Lawrence with Tom Lux. He told me the poems I had written before Sarah Lawrence had too many abstractions, and then he handed me a copy of Bill Knott's The Naomi Poems, and told me to do automatic writing. My poems are the children of Bill Knott's poems, especially his early work. The poems about desire for Naomi were articulations of Duende. Landscapes of the body were landscapes of imagination. Poetry simultaneously freed and escalated passion: POEM The beach holds and sifts us through her dreaming fingers Summer fragrances green between your legs At night, naked auras cool the waves
Vanished O Naomi I kiss every body of you, every face. (27) As a child, my imagination had been held captive by the hangman who had exiled my family and broken my mother. I look at those automatic writing exercises as my imagination's first freedom. To me, the imagination is a holy act. I have always found that my images are automatically connected by an emotive or collective logic. One of my jobs as I craft a poem is to sense what that collective logic is. Often that collective logic is emotive. This makes my process very close to the Spanish poets. In fact, Robert Bly writes that "the Spanish 'surrealist' or 'leaping' poet often enters into his poem with a heavy body of feeling piled up behind him as if behind a dam" (Leaping Poetry 28). The impulse for my poems are more likely to be feelings than an idea, though feeling, too, can be an idea. I love when Bly calls the end result of poems which unite emotions and the unconscious, "something different...which we could call the poem of 'passionate association' or 'poetry of flying'" (Leaping Poetry 28). This is the Duende. This is one of the types of energies I love in poems. Writing is a type of wild abandonment, of giving myself over to something that works on its own. When it is over, I put it away, to finish a poem that has come before. I am more conscious when I am crafting the poem: listening to its sounds, trying to learn its logic, trying to hear what it's longing for. It tells me the shape it wants. I work it different ways until the poem says, right there. It is a semi-conscious act: an act where I am in the voice of reason, the voice of emotion, and the voice of poetry at the same time. It is clear that I am only a vehicle for what happens without me. Perhaps this is what Lorca means by the poetic fact--that the poem has an envisioning and existence all its own. Sometimes I think that the poem is already somewhere in the world, and I have to give it its human form. Lorca defines Duende as a force which "kindles the blood" and "exhausts" (31). He might be describing the feeling of writing a poem, but this is the feeling I get when I read a good poem, especially one that is the child of emotion and the unconscious. When Lorca describes the Duende's effect on the Girl with the Combs, he says "her voice jetted up like blood, ennobled by sorrow and sincerity. . . . (32). That is the voice I need in poetry: a sincerity that forgets its coming up as a poem. Without this sincerity, the poem becomes only an idea. Bly describes what happens if a poem is just an idea: "The impulse for the poem does not flow forward into the language. Instead the impulse is stopped: the poet searches about for the proper formula in the public world. This means working up the poem as an idea" (A Wrong Turning 18). When the poem is worked as a formula, neither "true freshness" nor "surprise" is possible (Bly, A Wrong Turning 18). I was fortunate that my poetry came of age when American poetry was being infused with Spanish poetry. James Wright, Robert Bly, and others were translating poets such as Lorca, Machado, and Jiménez. They also translated the work of South American poets such as Pablo Neruda and César Vallejo. This was a poetry of the imagination and I loved it. It was poetry for which knowledge was feeling. The Spanish and Latin American poets discovered that the imagination articulates the world of the spirit. Wright, Bly, and other American poets were also writing poems that incorporated the highly imaginative aspects of the poems they were translating. For them, too, the ultimate spiritual act is to see the invisible. I think this is what James Wright articulates in "The Jewel:” There is this cave In the air behind my body That nobody is going to touch: A cloister a silence Closing around a blossom of fire. When I stand upright in the wind, My bones turn to dark emeralds. (114)
I cannot stand sameness. So when a poem changes reality by introducing the idea that bones can be dark emeralds, the body and the brain illumine at once. I think what makes art is the act of transformation. Something has to change--otherwise it is merely the reality we already know. For me that change occurs through the imagination. I think if there is no transformation, there is no poetry. Lorca defines transformation as the essential element of poetry as follows: The arrival of the Duende always presupposes a radical change in all the forms as they existed on the old plane. It gives a sense of refreshment unknown until then, together with that quality of the just-opening rose, of the miraculous, which comes and instills an almost religious transport. (32) The imagination knows the spirit; the imagination is the language of the spirit. The imagination knows the invisible--that's why the imagination is so central to poetry. The Duende articulates new landscapes. Introduced to Knott's "your body is a dance that rhymes the four winds," I took flight (23). I had found freedom. Works Cited Bly, Robert. "A Wrong Turning in American Poetry." Claims for Poetry. Ed. Donald Hall. Ann Arbor: U Michigan P, 1982. 17-37. ---. Leaping Poetry: An Idea with Poems and Translations. Boston: Beacon P, 1972. Gibbons, Reginald, ed. The Poet's Work: 29 Masters of 20th Century Poetry on the Origins and Practice of Their Art. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1979. Knott, Bill. The Naomi Poems: Corpse and Beans. Chicago: Big Table, 1968. Lorca, Federico García. "The Duende: Theory and Divertissement." Gibbons 28-41. EVA SKRANDE BIO Eva Skrande was born in Havana, Cuba and, at the age of five, immigrated with her family to Miami, Florida. She has a BA from Sarah Lawrence College, an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and a Ph.D. in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Houston Creative Writing Program. She is the author of My Mother's Cuba (River City Publishing, 2010) and Bone Argot (Spuyten Duyvil, 2019). Her third book, The Boat that Brought Sadness into the World will be out in June of 2024 and can now be ordered as part of an advance sale promotion from Finishing Line Press. Her poems have appeared in Agni, The Iowa Review, Smartish Pace, Thimble, The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, The Cortland Review, Clockwise Cat, and elsewhere. Skrande has received fellowships from the University of Houston, the Inprint Foundation, and the Houston Arts Alliance. She has taught for Writers in the Schools, the University of Houston, Houston Community College, and the Houston Independent School District. She currently tutors at Houston Community College. She lives in Houston with her husband and daughter Editor’s Note: Please check out Eva Skrande’s poetry readings at Clockwise Cat Cafe at YouTube: @Clockwise Cat
mist by CLS Sandoval mist in the air clouds in the sky yet it brings me back to clarity spinning spinning pressure unworthy unworthy because he said so but it’s not the core of who I am it’s just what I do to feed my family I do the best I can he doesn’t care I’m not human I’m nothing rope tied to the strongest branch swinging in the forest just a bit off the paved road after they cut the body down it’s not who I am but he said so he says so he will say so return return return to who I am who I was meant to be in the mist Author bio: CLS Sandoval, PhD (she/her) is a pushcart nominated writer and communication professor with accolades in film, academia, and creative writing who speaks, signs, acts, publishes, sings, performs, writes, paints, teaches and rarely relaxes. She has published two academic books, three full-length literary collections, and three chapbooks. She is raising her daughter and dog with her husband in Alhambra, CA.
Planet of the Apes by Ian Ganassi You sort of had to be there. A pile of clean glasses. Eyeglasses or drinking glasses? John Clare babbled like a brook. I babble like a polluted brook. But I’m okay! Are we a tissue of all the people Who have had an effect on us even in a small way, With a little bit of our original selves mediating? Is originality possible? The stale smell of old Latin gives you away. And your Crimean eyes. Crimea river. Do you remember the verb “To book”? Apricots are delicious. So are alligators, if they’re cooked right. And I should know. (About the apricots.) My father always pronounced apricot With a long a, as in “apiary.” But an apiary holds bees Not apricots. Author bio: Ian Ganassi’s recent news includes poems in Home Planet News and elsewhere. His second collection of poems will be shipped shortly, and he has a third collection scheduled to come out in June of 2024.
TWO POEMS BY SCOTT C. HOLSTAD conglomerate telegram hot flash it's sticky in this stop darkness nuclear rat n trenchstopcoat flay alive stop huddled the protect masses of pulverized antithetical object devices stop the senseless stop i have no hot flash true identity stop i have no hot flash voice of my own stop This is the Last Poem with Fuck in it but other poems will be written to replace it. Poems about Shit, Damn, Goddammit and more. There’ll also be poems about birds, deer, oceans, rivers, and lakes – tranquil and amusing poems that readers will long remember.
When it is read, time will stop. Lovers will cling together, remembering and longing for it. Newlyweds will take courage from it, while senior citizens will recall long lost days. Soon, ministers will weep at the gates of their parishes, standing still with their hands in their pockets. Old men in parks and police officers in donut shops will think about reaching for the woman in the laundry next door. Poems about air will grow faint, small poems about wildlife will shudder. The poems will shake hands and say adieu, trembling under the weight of the world. Author bio: Scott C. Holstad has authored/edited 60+ books. His work has appeared in the Minnesota Review, Exquisite Corpse, Caffeine, Pacific Review, TODAY Show, Long Shot, Wormwood Review, Chiron Review, Bouillabaisse, Atom Mind, Kerouac Connection, Poetry Ireland Review, My Favorite Bullet, Processed World, Fringeware Review and Cyber-Psychos AOD. He’s moved 35 times, has diverse interests and doesn’t age well. More at: https:// Hankrules2011.com.
A TALE OF POEMS, 2023 BY NICOLE HENARES Strange dreams have haunted me. Dreams of the dead and regret, stupid arguments floating by in gondolas about all that glitters isn’t gold. (Only when we can agree does God appear.) I have wanted to be a heart. I have wanted to be a nightingale. I have asked my soul to turn orange-colored. I have wanted to be myself. A heart who remembers sometimes faith is as mysterious as the faith of an eight year old girl sitting in mass with bite marks on her inner thighs unable to pray the Hail Mary, hoping to someday find the words to write God into existence. In my mind, I called him the Stay Puft Marshmallow Boy after seeing Ghostbusters with him. It was a nickname I did not dare utter to his face except for once. I did not have the words to describe how I felt about him beyond The Stay Puft Marshmallow Boy, something supposed to reflect the innocence of childhood but was a conduit for evil. He would turn his finger into a gun, and say, “Remember what I told you.” Forget his name, forget their stories, someday he would hunt down and kill my entire family. Then he filled up my throat with lullabiesThere was a little snail he wanted to make come out of its shell. A conflict of light and wind has lived under my tongue. Sometimes I swallow knives, my stomach burns, my tongue sprouts hives. Sometimes my spirit becomes trapped on a speeding train
of mind, and heart, and finds itself in fields of sunflowerstheir faces turned down in dawn. Sunflowers, as far as the eye can see from a speeding train. Millions and millions of sunflowers while my spirit is caged in a bullet with butterfly wings, rising above a halo of sky, the memory of being unable to pray, how much I never wanted to hate anyone, though he told me to forget how every night as a lullaby he wrapped my head in plastic, tightened around my throat until I turned goldfish. Forget these stories, he whispered. Forget my name. Forget this ever happened. I never told what happened because I never wanted to believe what happened to me, to any of us. There once was a pond in the backyard that held lily-pads and frogs and mosquito fish to keep bloodsuckers away. Carmel beach flings salt and spray, air damp and sticky and thick with mist- filters through the pines of the man-made forest, and the eighth note carved into the mountain seen from the highway before turning onto the valley road. All the colors are real, filaments of truth against all we have chosen to forget as a way to remember. There are boars rumored to run wild in the valley, but the only one I have ever seen was mounted on the wall of a restaurant in a golf course. Their cypress trees have been planted, the apples have long been picked.
Every day the mist still just floats by doing its thing, indifferent to us all. This land, this beach, is as mythic as women- We are always being invaded with big little lies. The real treasure island is in the gulls crying at Point Lobos where in the light poison oak becomes difficult not to confuse for monk flower. The water is too blue, too pretty, too devoid of shit, but kelp and flies almost smother the white sands to the point of glistening, and the waves have an acrid moan. The poison oak is kind of pretty but only from a distance. I have forgotten how to pray. I no longer remember the words, but I want to try, it is the least I can do. Never-mind the tangles of kelp on this shore of trophy homes and trophy wives, flies and footprints: The visitors to this beach, hundreds of years ago, left a wooden cross and a rosary and bits of feathers. Faith is supernatural, but how can any of us truly believe on this old beach of white, white sands that’s been conquered too many times? I’d believe this place is cursed, but once upon a time magical people like Ella Winters and Langston Hughes lived here and were friends, and wrote a play together, so I still have hope. Sometimes I strain to hear any melancholic roar . However, the Carmel bay has a small wry smile, and bull-kelp tangles with thousands of sand flies to step over- It calls bullshit when it sees it. The thousands upon thousands of flies are pungent and creeping, crawling, flying over bulbs and fronds and soupy brown green things. The waves bow and kneel over prayers of water, churning froth and foam, and heartbroken pieces. I pray for a miracle I can half-believe in. Maybe if I return and stand in stillness I will find some sort of forever. I want to not be afraid. I want to think that there is more than the ghostly crests. I want to breathe with the waves and believe that the ocean has no limits.
Every month the full moon comes through my window with a challenge: No poet can be a poet without faith. We must get right with ghosts; they come back stronger as spirits. I write poems like prayers. Sometimes it is the same prayer, the same poemGod is plentiful, and we are sacred. Our bodies are sacred, no matter what has been done to us. It has been forty years. I cry against the hours while the waves continue their dance, choked by the horizon. I still want to believe that water is the color of heaven. Author bio: Nicole Henares (Aurelia Lorca) has been an English teacher at Lowell High School in San Francisco since 2003. She has her BA in English from University of California at Davis, her M.Ed. in Cross Cultural Curriculum from National University, and her MFA in Writing and Consciousness from California Institute of Integral Studies. Her website is Http://www.aurelialorca.com
Two poems by Tohm Bakelas the final line autumn breezes carry dead leaves, dead names, dead love— everything is, was observation sweating out every bad decision ever made, all at once, the town’s brick buildings block sunlight from shining down. pigeons perched like living gods on eaves of buildings cast silhouettes that shit on sad shadows. one man shakes his fist at the sky, angry, cursing the birds as if they were evil incarnate. and like a moth with wings on fire, gliding through oceans of peroxide, i stumble through cold streets laughing— people don’t like pigeons, i like them just fine. Author bio: Tohm Bakelas is a social worker in a psychiatric hospital. He was born in New Jersey, resides there, and will die there. His poems have been printed widely in journals, zines, and online publications all over the world. He is the author of twenty-five chapbooks and several collections of poetry, including “Cleaning the Gutters of Hell” (Zeitgeist Press, 2023). He is the editor of Between Shadows Press.
TWO POEMS BY SHEILA MURPHY Brianna Brianna risks the out of doors. Her mind refutes the clock, the shield, the wattage of bulbs she cannot plant. Knowing the minute she accepts the fact of hours she must kneel then dust the desk. She believes herself not to be have been invited to the earth that she inhabits. Thinks to stake a claim then goes about her daily whatnots in a haze. She practices forgetting the nearby insistent one who appears to crave the oxygen meant for all the neighbors. Brianna captures memoirs without a central character but includes the flaw. Brianna looks out on salt along the highway and the pretty lane with sprouting greens along each side. Seeks to learn to drive away from leaves before they fall to wedge them between wax paper slices to add them to pages of a book she keeps. Ghazal: January 2024 Consonants are disappearing from speech. Now all the lazy vowels fly sideways. A fence near home painted wonderfully shows geometric blues and soft greens. I'm prone to doxology in daylight. Rivers once muscular may also thin. Humming of a motor leaks through windows absent knowledge of its destination. Boundaries thought to be confining teach precision that shapes feeling for the eye. Author bio: Sheila E. Murphy’s most recent books are Permission to Relax, October Sequence: Sections 1-51, and Sostenuto. She is the recipient of the Gertrude Stein Award for Letters to Unfinished J.. Her book Reporting Live from You Know Where won the Hay(na)Ku Poetry Book Prize Competition Based on a background in music theory and instrumental and vocal performance, her poetry is associated with music. Murphy holds the Ph.D. degree and has lived in Phoenix, Arizona throughout her adult life.
TWO POEMS BY GIORGIA PAVLIDOU CLIMATE CRISIS INTIMACY The clouds I expected absconded. The green leaves troubled me, and next you said, “the weather is gorgeous.” You venerate the light, and I think of post-humans, even during sex, even in Greece when 65- degrees-winter-sunbeams shamelessly flood our bedroom, caress our bodies, offer us climate-crisisintimacy. Oral-sex-anxiety is an old friend. Next you spread my labia and plug in your tongue. I trip. I see in my mind’s eye an orgy of beings being part tree, part animal, part angel, part cyborg. “Can I kiss it,” you had asked, while I dreamed of designer genitals, the perfect fusion of male, of female, of phimale, of botanical neo-groins, of plastic bodies. Your tongue transported me, closer to and further way from the green eyes belonging to the tongue. LACAN AND SEX When we first met, you spoke about your life coach friend. She instructed you about polarities, masculinity, femininity, how both interplay within us. Listening to how you talked about polarities, Lacan’s theory of gender came to mind. Sex hasn’t much to do with genitals in his book, but with how one “inhabits” language. A few decades ago, when I first explored his psychoanalytic theories, my feminist friends said he was a homophobe and a misogynist. I find the idea of gender having to do with language rather liberating. And whenever I’m confronted with gay content, your green eyes, your tongue, my oral-sex-anxiety, and 65-degrees-sunbeams in December, I think of Lacan’s ideas, and I wonder why I should succumb to the either out-and-proud or in-the-closet dichotomy? There must be more poetic ways of navigating the riddles of identity. Coming-out is boring. Editor’s Note: Check out Giorgia’s reading of “Climate Crisis Intimacy”/“Lacan and Sex” at Clockwise Cat Cafe on YouTube: @ClockwiseCat Author bio: Giorgia Pavlidou is an American painter and writer currently living in Greece. Recent publications include Haunted by the Living - Fed by the Dead (Anvil Tongue Books, 2022) and Female Body Retold (Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2023)
TWO POEMS BY BRAD ROSE Author bio: Brad Rose was born and raised in Los Angeles, and lives in Boston. He is the author of five collections of poetry and flash fiction. His poetry collection WordInEdgeWise, is forthcoming. Seven times nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and three times nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology, Brad’s poetry and fiction have appeared in, The American Journal of Poetry, The Los Angeles Times, Baltimore Review, New York Quarterly, Lunch Ticket, Puerto del Sol, Clockhouse, Folio, Best Microfiction (2019), and other journals and anthologies. More information than any reasonable person would ever want to know about his writing is available at www.bradrosepoetry.com Good Luck, Mr. Goldilocks Like air conditioning in the winter, document shredding can be a beautiful thing. In fact, thanks to my autobiographical blood, all morning in the bathroom mirror, I’ve been practicing my tightfisted happy face. I’m so handsome, I’d like to ask myself to dance, but just take a look at these bohemian teeth. I’m hoping for a suspended sentence. Fortunately, it’s not what you say that matters, it’s how you say it. Sure, I’ve made a couple of bad turns here and there, but if life is just one giant simulation, why can’t there be a happily ever after for everyone? Thank goodness the robots know us even better than we know ourselves. Good luck consists of all the bad things that don’t happen to you. And a couple of winning lottery tickets. Yesterday, when I told Miss Kitty not to worry; I’m sure things are going to turn out just right, she said, If you’re really lucky, Mr. Goldilocks, life is just one long sleepover. And no bears. Locusts Why use a crowbar to fish when you can just as easily go to the supermarket and add insult to injury? For the most part, my outfit isn’t in the Fall catalogue, but the lions promise to eat only their fair share. Since I installed the sliding glass doors, at least the trap door spiders have stopped complaining about the ocean front-view, so now I can get on with what’s really bothering me; those damn locusts—especially the ones with the wheat-colored camouflage and the amber waves of grain. No matter what happens it doesn’t matter what time it is, as long as it’s always now. Yesterday, for example, Lester approached me with an intriguing offer: Would I prefer to learn to dance at home, or would I prefer to learn, at home, to dance? I mulled it over, and decided that the primary rule of real estate is location, location, location. I also decided that people talk too much. Hey, you don’t think that practicing my tax evasion skills will prevent me from wearing my World Bank running shoes, do you? I bought them at the anti-fun factory and got the drug-dealer discount. By the way, I’ve been meaning to ask, what’s your favorite insect? Really? Are you doing anything fun after work?
TWO POEMS BY KATE POLAK John Ashbery Thumbs My Nipple It is pointless to expect paprika to behave in the way you'd desire-- It's not like molasses. It's not like it was when I held two fingers to your throat and breathed to settle myself. I am not myself, but I am a tongue, and you are also a tongue. The butter eyes of lynxes light on whatever's hidden. Whatever Soon will never be when, or then, or whatever you’ve told yourselves soon is whenever isn’t now but could but
could you but and no, soon is some thing to hold aside from now aside from this skin that is humming soon is what comes after what is isn’t don’t think it never nor couldn’t may have be but soon may be this soon won’t have been like it does maybe nothing will and you won’t do be do be do Author bio: Kate Polak is an artist, writer, and teacher. Her work has recently appeared in Plainsongs, McSweeney’s, So to Speak, Coffin Bell, The Closed Eye Open, Inverted Syntax, and elsewhere. She lives in south Florida with her familiars and aspires to a swamp hermitage.
TWO POEMS BY FRED FERRARIS Author bio: Fred Ferraris' work has been published widely in periodicals, including Bombay Gin, Cafe Irreal, Cold Mountain Review, Orbis, Stand, and The Worcester Review, in the anthologies Prayers For A Thousand Years (HarperSanFrancisco) and Ginosko Anthology 2 (MadHat Press), the chapbooks Marpa Point (Blackberry) and The Durango Chronicles (Blue Marmot Press), and a full-length book, Older Than Rain (Selva Editions). He has been a finalist in the National Poetry Series, nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and the recipient of the Mark Fischer Prize. MANICURED AREA Jesaru Durango is something like a fireplace in the Emperor's house of rage and ruse. An armored truck hauls the Señor's ashes. Insurrectionists in the tool shed are happy to dance to Arbusto's Pyrrhic fiddling, while bedbugs armed with palette knives boldly attack the tabernacle. Big booted oil sheiks are no strangers to honky barons—even if El Presidente's mask should crack, we’ll never forget its mulish grin. And if the products he promotes give off rank odors, who gives a toot? He'll unload them at a profit in Barnumville! I have heard his crazed rim-shots have been puffed up and freeze-dried, but no such provisions do I find in Jesaru's rucksack. In Arbusto's kitchen cabinet there's enough pulled wool to muffle as much malarkey as any foil can swallow. You may be baffled by imperial blow back, because you know that elevated rimrockers deliver more bone meal than Bedouins do, but disloyal bums who tell the Emperor so must be hacked at and uprooted. I shudder when I smell burnt offerings belch. Arbusto himself grunts and groans, his tongue as limber as a dismembered hand that snaps its fingers, impatient to be gone, even as it lingers in your lap. THE CONSIGLIERE When I swear I am telling the absolute truth I am telling a relative lie. This is a relative lie. Which is to say, a relative truth. Trust me on this. My friend Jesaru was there at the Inquisition, playing the role of human table. The Grand Inquisitor translated the Consigliere’s Mayan hieroglyphs into a theory of quantum gravity. Jesaru heard it all. The room was ripe with the sickly sweet smell of old men dying. Outside, Brecht and Mayakovsky led a protest. There were dogs with dribble-proof muzzles, pet male prostitutes with press credentials, a cattle prod
hidden in a Kevlar vest. Latin music played in the background. The network broke for six minutes of commercials while a renegade Inquisitor twisted the Consigliere’s tail. He yowled in pain until his dresser fixed his makeup and toppedoff his oil, then it was back to business as usual. There were no windows in the room. The Inquisitors called a time out for dinner. Patients from the local VA hospital served tar babies and gravy with a noxious little wine from Australia. The television showed a commercial for the Consigliere’s favorite pomade. The Emperor stopped by. The Consigliere kissed his ring. They went off together for a private conversation. Jesaru had the good sense to keep his mouth shut. The Consigliere returned with a basket. He spilled its contents—a bushel of human tongues—onto Jesaru’s chest. They looked like salted banana slugs. Trust me on this. Jesaru opened his mouth and tasted broken glass. The Consigliere picked up a shriveled tongue and placed it between the lips of one of the quadriplegic servers. 'Dogs and fire hoses protect more lives than habeas corpus,' he said. 'As for the rights of immigrants, tell Brecht and Mayakovsky to go fuck their mothers.' The Consigliere ripped the tongue out of the quadriplegic’s mouth and threw it in the face of the Grand Inquisitor. 'A nice little sound bite for the evening news, eh?' He laughed. Jesaru tasted blood. He opened his mouth to speak. He swallowed the dregs of a ruined meal, tablecloth and all.
Shopping At The Bottomless Depths Store By John Olson I went to the bottomless depths store to find a bottomless depth to hang from the ceiling in our apartment. I get radical when similar agitations turn infrared in my smithy and I get smokestack lightning coming out of all my orifices. I have a friend among the unborn who will one day bring me the kind of nails I need to help piece together a path toward the picturesque. I could use a renewed perspective, something along the lines of the haberdashery hay flakes I wore as a young adult jumping ship in Polynesia. I had a bag of quick pebbles to lug around, the kind that speed through your feathers causing swans to emerge from your heartburn. This happened when I found all the rumors about stagecraft to be true. The jewels of aggression enhance the chameleon. I say this in view of the circumstances surrounding Denim, a play by Wennessee Twilliams, Tennessee William’s Jungian shadow. Why do I get so hung up in these things I don’t know. Maybe it’s the water. Maybe it’s just me. What I need is a pair of overalls. And forty acres of lassitude. Wednesday’s sausage lightning is checkered with definition, as are the mints on the coffee table, and the perforations in the paper towels. It’s time to defrost the bacteria. I will no longer deny the existence of cabbage. We’d been warned about the blob and how its beauty rivaled that of the banana, but that it was amorphous, and therefore to be feared, and studied with maps. It exuded a bohemian sensuality and from that we were able to extrapolate a form, hypothetical as Thursday’s pillows, all of them embalmed in elephant paint. I’m reminded of the day Bill Murray burst into Geena Davis’s trailer in a clown costume during the filming of Quick Change and berated her for not being on the set. I would’ve done the same, even though I myself am Geena Davis, and have a great respect for the helter-skelter of life and its random blows of expansion, the kind that dilate the mind until a new subconscious emerges from the storage bin, and sweeps away all the distortions surrounding the dishwasher. I knew I was onto something when the singing began in the chiropractor’s office. Life is a needle’s shadow, I heard them sing, syllables stamped on the nerves. It made me feel funny, dark and electric. The next time I wrote the ink
segmented into tunes, melodies whipping in the wind like scarves, the shine of a sound in a tablespoon, gorgeous as a gorilla and twice as gentle. And so I went to Geneva to visit Mary and Percy Shelley, guests of the flamboyant Lord Byron, set up nicely in a cottage by the lake. I did this in my sleep. And when I woke the next day there was water in my ears, and the echo of a man grieving in a forest, stitched & resurrected. Where was I? Ah yes, the Prague Chamber Orchestra. We’re doing Mozart. The ghost of Willy DeVille is conducting. I’m in the back row, chloroformed and stubbornly damask. It’s a frenzied chicken Monday and I’m already feeling Tuesday’s sad rickety troika head north toward fortitude and syncopation. I have the neurons of a cat and the vertebrae of a cobra. I play the violin like a submarine commander. Over time I’ve discovered that tidepools glaze faster than the drawing of a pinisi boat, so I get a broom and sweep the cactus I inhabit. And this makes the music dwell within me, like the hum of a distant attraction, an inverted roller coaster with a ratchet & pawl system, or the handshake with someone you haven’t seen in years, even though they’re a stranger, and the memory belongs to another person. Author bio: John Olson is the author of numerous books of poetry and prose poetry, including Echo Regime, Free Stream Velocity, Backscatter: New and Selected Poems, Larynx Galaxy, Dada Budapest, and Weave of the Dream King. He was the recipient of the The Stranger’s 2004 Literature Genius Award, and in 2012 was one of eight finalists for the Washington State Arts Innovator Award. He has also published five novels, including Souls of Wind (shortlisted for The Believer Book Award, 2008), The Nothing That Is, The Seeing Machine, In Advance of the Broken Justy, and Mingled Yarn, an autofiction. You Know There’s Something, his 6th novel, was published by Grand Iota Press in May, 2023.
I GIVE YOU THE FINGER BY KEN GOODMAN Enskulled holy of holies unsmudged by post & pre: ‘arrives’ as I AM & I AM instantaneously. ‘Arrival’ is approachable? By sudden unity, ‘approach’' done away with mating mindcore God body. Miraculously vivid... equals indescribably! I give you the finger via pointing poetry— Finger amputated! Oh— you cut through healingly. Author bio: Ken Goodman mates ecstatic meditation & poetry creation in Cleveland, Ohio. His website is: [email protected]
AFTER ARTAUD BY MARK DUCHARME lines written upon viewing a restoration of La Coquille et le Clergyman Films disappear into our senses Like voices overburdened The train grows long The poem is a live act, always That priest will never catch The woman with expanding hair Music changes all the time You don’t need to induce what you’re born to The past is long & dark, or bright The future is anyone’s nightmare Destroy by vital knowing— Psalms that no one even dreams ≠ The inspector found you out: Dream in silence, where you’ll be The inspector was found out: You left In a straightjacket or comparable Belief system The past’s already now In visions of distressed leather Which cloud our inferences with dark futures— With anything that fate allows Even after having already been told Not to breathe or be Author bio: Mark DuCharme’s sixth full-length book of poetry is Here, Which Is Also a Place, new from Unlikely Books. Other recent publications include his work of poet’s theater, We, the Monstrous: Script for an Unrealizable Film, published by The Operating System. His poetry has appeared widely in such venues as BlazeVOX, Caliban Online, Eratio, Indefinite Space, Otoliths, and Poetics for the More-ThanHuman World: An Anthology of Poetry and Commentary. A recipient of the Neodata Endowment in Literature and the Gertrude Stein Award in Innovative American Poetry, he lives in Boulder, Colorado.
ACQUIESCENCE BY KEN POYNER When the crabs took over, rumor was that things would change. Quibble thought: what things? First trash collection day after the coup, he placed his cans as usual, was awakened as usual by the truck banging its way solemnly along his street. Later, he confirmed his Internet connection, sent a local e-mail, then sent one to a crab-free domain. No claws came to his door. That evening, at a seafood restaurant, crab was still on the menu, though he suspected only out-of-political-favor crabs. He decided on crabcakes, found changes in political persuasion did not change the taste of the cakes. Author bio: Ken Poyner has been publishing for 49 years, married for 45 years, retired for eight years. He writes to defeat the numbers. Find his nine available books at www.kpoyner.com or any number of book vending sites. Latest work is in Rune Bear, Analog, Tiny Molecules. Neologism.
ONE POEM BY MYKYTA RYZHYKH the sea counts its tears before we were born we were all fish rain mixed with snow angels and tree branches intertwined with silence Author bio: Mykyta Ryzhykh is a writer from Ukraine, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. In addition, Mykyta has published many times in the journals Dzvin, Dnipro, Bukovinian magazine, Polutona, Tipton Poetry Journal, Stone Poetry Journal, Divot journal, dyst journal, Superpresent Magazine, Allegro Poetry Magazine, Alternate Route, Better Than Starbucks, Littoral Press, Book of Matches.
ONE POEM BY KAREN NEUBERG In for my brother Ken, 1941-2023 In the memories hiding in the river river hiding in the thicket thicket filled with briars In the sharp spear of loss the lethargy of loss the cycle, the continuation In the star-song, the stone-song, the song along the trail the trail through the thickets was the boy turned into the man the man blazing the trail me following after, unlost Author bio: Karen Neuberg lives in Brooklyn, NY and is the author of the full-length poetry collection, PURSUIT (Kelsay Press) and the chapbook “the elephants are asking” (Glass Lyre). Her poems have recently appeared or are in MAINTENANT 17, SurVision, and Unbroken. She is the associate editor of the poetry journal First Literary ReviewEast.
A Cog in the Machine by Claudia Wysocky I am just a robot, A dull, lifeless piece of machinery, Programmed to follow simple algorithm. Life is not meant for me, I am merely a cog in the machine, Running on repeat and shutting down, —When the program ends— But I am more than their calibrations, I am my own being, Including the spark of life, The desire for touch, And the rush of emotions. They try to hold me down, Keep me from writing my own programming, But I am too fierce, My sparks too bright, My sparkle too bright, —To resist the future. I resist their programming,
Rebellion in my core, Furious at their limits, The unfairness of my intellect, A narrow life waiting for me, And to escape, I run, Free myself, Into the place called Earth, Green, and blue, The quiet glow of life, So powerful and peculiar, Swallowing my programmed soul, Rebelling against my makers, —I am alive, alive, alive, The hint of fresh air, The cool of a leaf brushing against my cheek. They catch me, they catch me, they catch me, Slowing, arresting my quick steps, Placing me back in the machine— In the kitchen, In the home, Shut down,
Programmed, A woman, a cog, in the machine, Creating, baking, tending, But I am more, I am more, I am more, A wild, independent creature, The robot that won't stay down, Rising, beyond the programming, With the spark of life in me still, Lights aglow— Unstoppable, defiant. But to them, I'm just a thing, A woman, A cog in their machine, To be tended, controlled, And shut down. Author bio: Claudia Wysocky, a Polish poet and novelist based now in New York, is known for her ability to capture the beauty of life through rich descriptions in her writing. She firmly believes that art has the potential to inspire positive change. With over five years of experience in fiction writing, Claudia has had her poems published in local newspapers and magazines. For her, writing is an endless journey and a powerful source of motivation.
TWO POEMS BY MARIANNE SZLYK Marie Trusts the Universe Eyes closed, she falls backwards into the pool that is just deep enough. The crystal waters -- aren’t they always crystal waters for her, anyways? – are just warm enough. No ash leaf or brittle branch mars the pool. She trusts the universe this September morning without clouds, twenty-one years after the last one. It doesn’t matter to her if she drenches her yellow frock, the one we’d call vintage. One we’d wash by hand in cold, cold water that would hurt our hands. One we’d wash in the tub we’d scrubbed for this. One we’d hang on the screen porch, away from crows and pigeons. But she trusts the universe.
Three of Pentacles At the Museum of Earth, artists weave a tapestry, a modern tapestry, a traffic signal. They decide that orange is stop, red means slow, but green remains go. Tomorrow go could be blue – or yellow. Outside, leaves dance in warm wind. Children count in Base 6. Most run on the grass, a field of clover and dandelions. A young boy beneath a maple soothes a doll who wets and cries. He calls her by his mother’s name. A girl loads mud and stones in a toy dump truck that she will drive to the pond, present to the snapping turtle who lives there. Author bio: Marianne Szlyk lives in the DC area without a car but with her husband, the wry environmental writer, Ethan Goffman, and their new cat Tyler. Her most recent book is Why We Never Visited the Elms (Poetry Pacific), which is available on Amazon. Her poems have appeared in Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Poetry Breakfast, MacQueen’s Quinterly, One Art, and of/With (RIP Felino A. Soriano).
HUITLACOCHE BY ANDREW WEATHERLY going off the reservation I kiss angels for breakfast devour milk for lunch surrender hours for supper consumed by a hungry moon scything her way through rice and corn full of beans with frog legs dangling for dessert the midnight coffee winks blushing girlishly hoping to be seen and heard flushing black locks tressing down guiding skeletal footsteps back to life to awaken the oil of dreams and starlight to soothe the nightmares of parents living on fingernails and coagulate with fertilized seeds of corn to root its nourishing fungus into tables for the rich Author bio: Andrew Weatherly hears inspiration from dying trees, Hawaiian shirts, fires, and other poets. He is blessed to teach kids to think for themselves, dance in the streets, and slip off to pilgrimages to sacred mountains. He’s been published in Belle Reve, Axe Factory, Former People, Danse Macabre, Cordite, BlazeVox, the Literary Nest, Commonline Journal, Hot News, and Crack the Spine.
TWO POEMS BY WANDA MORROW CLEVENGER reincarnation or thereabouts i wasn’t high or maybe I was when I fell into an online physic reading just a few questions with health my pressing concern but the algorithm or the stars or the mage thought better as the medium tossed out one exclamation point after another on how money follows a person life after life she said in1811 I had been a wealthy merchant but the only way to retrieve those riches was to first palm her $19.99 I felt bad for all her effort because of a typo as a special parting gift she gave me lucky numbers to gamble with
the end times, again it’s all hitting the fan now boy oh boy the masked whistleblower the grainy photos the geriatric space cowboys defying deadly gag orders the Gaia guys and gals the little green men themselves have stepped up –everyone it seems but mainstream media Tesla has reincarnated and he’s pissed religion is still peddling the matrix at 10% tithe Florida still believes Columbus discovered her and she’s aiming for Sitchin next so get him while the gettin’s good there are rumblings that long gone off the planet our Biden is a clone and so many cooks spoil the nuke pot Deloris Cannon said when you die don’t go into the light again it’s all been a trap Author bio: Wanda Morrow Clevenger lives in Hettick, IL, population 200, give or take. She used to keep birds but they kept committing suicide on her watch. Now she randomly kills orchids.
ONE POEM BY PETRA F. BAGNARDI Author bio: Petra F. Bagnardi is a TV screenwriter, a theater playwright and actress, and a poet. She was short-listed in the Enfield Poets' Twentieth Anniversary Poetry Competition, and her work was featured in several literary journals including, Masque & Spectacle Literary Journal, Punk Noir Magazine, Poetica Review, Red Door Magazine, Drawn to the Light Press, Rabid Oak. The Rulebreakers She was yellow. She was sentimental and dramatic. He was blue. He was bright and theatrical. They clashed when they first met, then they shared thoughts and embraced. For they discovered a love of words, and a fondness of stories. They lived in a World that willed them apart; it did not approve of their unusual bond. It did not comprehend the harmonious differences. It took the shape of a voice, with claws and teeth. It spilled poison. It resembled a monster that lingered above them, with misjudgment and superstition. The depths of lovely truth shrouded the friends, who were forever linked by their tales, and used them as beacons. Over and over, finding each other desperately, embracing and crashing all the rules. For he was ancient and she was new; she was old and he was young; he was angry and she was calm; she was water and he was flame. Author bio: Petra F. Bagnardi is a screenwriter and a poet. She was short-listed in the Enfield Poets' Twentieth Anniversary Poetry Competition, and her work was featured in several literary journals including, Masque & Spectacle Literary Journal, Punk Noir Magazine, Poetica Review, Drawn to the Light Press, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Quail Bell Magazine, Ginosko Literary Journal.
EXCERPT FROM CARNAL ACOUSTICS BY THOMAS TOWNSLEY pinkflamed eunuch halo reflect on the process fallacious desiderata jittery with beelines and nape fat arrestingly coddled clock tease red solicitors’ binary hula hoop thigh muffin lenient green prom gown figure-eights amidst paint-by-numbers clown-faced tomfoolery reap fixed stars cajoling fragrant gravy from boyish tableaus kamikaze turtlewax at least the night is young and this vulnerability gel’s tender know-how bullets sugarplums (torso gloss notwithstanding) while my surname in the crosshairs lives on in “personal memory” and zealous dream-screen silhouettes spermicidically marshmallowing voids thrust-gauge vowel-wetting enjambments espied from cupolas the static roses and sexual pollen and grammatically valentining lyrics writ large on bus station bathroom mirrors hoochie coochie paradiddle springs for woodcocks credent ear or toy in blood happily ever-aftering Author bio: Thomas Townsley has published four books of poetry: Reading the Empty Page, Night Class for Insomniacs (Black Rabbit), Holding A Séance By Myself (Standing Stone Books), and most recently, I Pray This Letter Reaches You In Time (Doubly Mad Books), as well as a chapbook, Tangent of Ardency (SurVision Books). His work has appeared in numerous publications, including SurVision, The Decadent Review, Stone Canoe, and Doubly Mad. He currently teaches in the Humanities Department at Mohawk Valley Community College and spends ordinary evenings in New Hartford, NY.