ISSUE 42: THE FELINE TIMES Perpetually dedicated to felino sorian0 STOP COP CITY
EDITOR’S SCRATCHING POST: Grief recycles into love We are still mourning the loss of prolific poet Felino Soriano. I guess we always will be. Please check our archives for more about this outstanding individual (especially our tribute issue) if you are new to Clockwise Cat. One of the best ways to transmute grief back into love is to pay adoring homage, and that is what we did with the tribute issue. We are also still mourning the loss of our previous proofreader and purring expurrt - and Original Clockwise Cat! - Quetzal, who died two years ago, at age 20. She was a captivating force to reckon with, and our heart aches as we remember her. However, we are happy to welcome Zuri, our newest proofreader and purring expurrt, who was born just two years ago. It seems that as one life expires, another emerges. Such is the cycle that we must endure/enjoy, depending on your existential outlook. Zuri, aka ZZ/aka ZZ Cat brings a wealth of talents to Clockwise Cat. Among them: Chewing up the pages (after she has proofread them, of course - too many errors, most likely), puking on the pages (she’s not a fan of poetry - sorry), and playing kitty-soccer with the crumpled up pages. Please join us as we cuddle with our newest Clocky Kitty!
Table of Malcontents ZEN-SURREALIST Art: oops, we forgot to provide page numbers ZEN-SURREALIST Poesie part I: Find it yo’ damn self ZEN-SURREALIST SOCIALISM RANTZ/REVIEWZ: it’s there somewhere ZEN-SURREALIST POESIE PART II: We don’t have page numbers anyway
ZEN-SURREALIST ART
Images of Idiosyncratic eccentricity By Adrian Lincoln Artist bio: Adrian writes: “I studied Art and Design at Bradford University and worked as a Magazine Designer until the ‘Financial Crash’. Since then I have worked as a Care Worker in various care homes. These small, ball-point pen images begin as an idea in my head and are developed on the page using a variety of sources for inspiration which float in and around my imagination.”
Two Images by Jeff Wright Artist bio: Jeffrey Cyphers Wright is an artist, critic, eco-activist, impresario and publisher. He received his MFA in Poetry from Brooklyn College where he studied with Allen Ginsberg. Recently he received a Kathy Acker Award for writing and publishing. Currently, Wright produces literary events in NYC at La Mama ETC, Howl! Happening, and KGB Lit Bar in conjunction with his annual art and poetry journal, LiVE MAG! Bee Have: 5 x , 2017, ink, collage on archival woven paper Dispell: 8 12 x 11", 2019, ink and collage on paper
THE ART OF BACK STABBING Model: Anne Duffy Story: Simone Keane Image: Warren Lilford She knew they'd come for her. They always do, for she had stepped forward into the light again. Word had spread. She was expressing herself again - in public. They thought she'd vanished, was washed up, done in - with no backbone left to carry her grace, but they don't know her very well. There is no doubt she has changed. The most obvious transformation are the three knives stuck in her back, which, although painful at times, are excellent motivators - ghastly propellers. These heavy steel shards remind her of the shit she's waded through to get here. She wears the knives with pride. This beautiful scapegoat reminds the pious, "Jesus will not burden me with a cross that exceeds my strength." For her, the knives are badges of honour. Sometimes she sacrifices herself to protect others. She can rip off an 'upstanding citizen's' disguise with her eyes. She is usually punished and humiliated for this but her conscience is clean. She has no use for sweaty confession boxes. She has outgrown boxes. The knife at the base of her spine was inserted by a few creeps who lust after her but cannot get close. She blocks them. They know nothing about women. Some want to own her which makes her angry. They attempt to punish her for rejecting them and for being angry. They believe women should be gentle like butterflies no matter what. They feel better about rejection when they inflict pain and discomfort upon objects of desire. Rejection from women deserves punishment in their world. They especially like
the collar around her neck. It makes them feel as if they have at least some control over her. She wears collars, studs, stilettos, rope, latex, spandex, toilet seats, tails, feathers, antlers, a big fluffy white bunny head. She makes good money for her poses, her gazes. She's flown across oceans to be photographed - New York, Paris, London. She knows exactly what the photographer wants, requiring little direction. She loves a dare. Anything goes. She is particularly keen to try the new cloven hoof footwear trend. "Giddy up." The middle knife was thrown by saboteurs whose ultimate goal in life is to keep her and others like her on the fringes. They believe this to be a job of great importance, ensuring any opportunities for her are snuffed out as soon as possible. They twist the knife just as they twist the truth, invert facts, invent rude rumours about brooms, brand her 'witch', 'trouble maker', 'tease'. They seek to turn others against her - make them think she cannot be trusted. This usually backfires. Truth surfaces eventually. How were they to know their reflections could be seen in those blades? The knife closest to her neck was thrown by Sweetie and Co. who cannot see that it it is not the fault of a beautiful, artistic woman. It's perfectly natural Sweetie's husband gets aroused over lovely naked artistes. Art can swell the heart too. Still, intense feelings of jealousy can make people do awful things. Whenever Sweetie and her friends learn that this talented beauty has stepped into the light again, their heads get hot and their faces turn tomato red - not at all good for blood pressure. They are hard-wired to 'stop' her at all costs. It is important to them. Life is only worth living if they keep this extraordinary woman away from the spotlight. She does not deserve any opportunities or admiration according to them, so they arrange meetings, make anonymous complaints, leave nasty reviews, book a table for twenty two for one of her shows with no intention of attending. Their faces are also reflected in the blades - distorted. Some of her backstabbers are angry with her because she refuses to forgive. They believe this to be a woman's duty. She knows it's not for others to force an act of forgiveness. It needs to arrive naturally. Nature knows best. She is attentive to sincere apologies but these are as rare as the constellation she was born under - a perfect triangle. Scapegoats rarely receive apologies. It's part of the role society gave them. Somebody needs to wear blame. Somebody needs to wear knives in their back to make the rest feel better about themselves. Apparently. Others are kind, apologising for the cruelty of others. They say things like, "I'm sorry this happened to you." "I'm sorry you have knives stuck in your back." "It must be painful." "You have been through so much."
She is grateful, especially to those who are unafraid, unashamed to be in her presence, to be part of her journey. Some continue to offer her opportunities because they love her work, appreciate her talents and endeavour to give her fans the treats she generously provides. She is giving and gracious to those who seek to do her no harm. Some defend her. They are her champions in chariots carrying cups of compassion and courage. Sometimes they celebrate their collective successes with chalices of champagne. She is their champion too. They know her - what brought her here. Her skin is so flawless now - no signs of injury, just a well hidden scar she bathes in oils of jojoba and calendula. One friend makes the softest, flowery creams to soothe the entry wounds of the knives. It works a treat. Organic. Chemical free. If only all these backstabbers knew the futility of it all. Imagine the extra time and energy there would be to spend on living their own best lives. She gently pulls back her raven coloured hair to show her glowing cheekbones. Her eyebrows look like the wings of birds. There is nobody like her. She is inspiring. She ponders as she prepares for her next pose. Art cannot be contained. It is an everlasting source of inspiration - photographs,, songs, poems, a book, a painting, a tapestry - the alchemy of perpetual creation woven amongst the stars of eternity, propelled throughout galaxies. She sometimes feels sadness for backstabbers because they don't know we are all made of stars. A wise band once sang, "You can't stop the music." That song still exists and people still dance to it. Backstabbers work from behind, in the dark - lurking under bridges, slime under ledges. Trolls. She stands in her soft halo of light for her admirers, her fans. She is actually part angel, a fine-feathered shape-shifting wonder. Her cherub lips give it away. She can remove the knives any time she pleases. Her photographer is a wizard. They chuckle a lot when they work together. She turns her head towards the camera and gazes into our souls.
FOUR COLLAGES BY BOB HEMAN Firing Up the Empty Man The Waiting Chapel
Waiting Inside
The Sacrifice
Dotty Lama Drama By Roxanne Beaugh Raine Artist bio: Roxanne Beaugh Raine is a part time professor of learning and memory and all things mind-science and although she has not yet fully trained her own mind, she has managed to master a few life hacks like always leaving her car keys in the same place to help her locate them. Her middle name is pronounced Bow, so she could veritably be called Roxi Rainbow. She spent most of her adult life in Hawaii but now resides in Austin, Texas growing culinary mushrooms and trying to live a zero emissions life while making art and teaching people brain stuff. Editor’s note: Roxanne says this art piece is “of bubble wrap, Gelli prints, acrylic paint, collage, and marker”
ZEN-SURREALIST POESIE Part I
FEATURED FEMME: MARY NEWELL
Talk in Dark Pulse under Water Perched on the boulder pile, legs dangling toward the funnel where the current slows from flowing brook to log-dammed dip-pool pellucid to its base silt settled last fall’s leaf-drop forced downstream by recent storm Skimmers skate the languid swell. Dragonflies’ toothed jaws snap insects - their weight-full daily the occasional toad comments from clay bank Stretch leg, edge in, rippling chill water-skin, ankles bluing. toad eyes follow no startle Slip in resistless, halfway under, weight-drop immerse-under eardrum muffled timpani brook-throb hone inward
Slope Duo Betula lenta, sweet birch, also called cherry birch for its deep-riven bark, your crushed twigs wintergreen fragrant Out of reach here, hanging off rocky bank - a lean, a crook, an incline near 45 degrees veer vertiginous - but no, leaning toward a fellow birch lower down the slope Your grounded companion, older with dark-rimmed gouges bends too and leans toward branch embrace: together, survivance tendrils entwine in uplift thin network, skyline intersects, while shallow roots entwine across granite, share nurture fresh catkins and leaf-thrusts each spring When was the moment on what timescale when your elder sibling reached too, and who now sustains whom?
A nook a dell a hollow a grove Witch hazel, Hamamelis Virginiana often encountered on north-facing slopes or stream banks, blooming late, its straw-yellow to rust-red bloom-threads blowing scent from low spreading branches as these drop their golding or crimsoning leaves. In spring, dry capsules propel shiny black seeds up to 30 feet. “Witch” slurs from "wych," Anglo-Saxon for "bend." Mohegans showed colonists how Y-shaped witch hazel sticks bend toward underground water: divining rods, “witching sticks.” Widely esteemed, its soothing extract. My tonic, to bend-enter, listen to interval-silences. Some days, I stride past perennial tone-shape harmonies toward bouldered leafy recess carved out by inverse vision, a living alatheia: removal of sapling revealed witch-hazel pair intersect, shading an open grove. I perceived that if it were not, that small sapling - let it be nameless, now gone – there would spring from hiddenness a respite from sun, from seasonal color-form tinkering, from dig-plant-drench and weed-haul A breath-stretch soften-eye chance for far-down-looking to lush self-selected open marsh-woods, un–tramped a grove a hollow a nook a pause
A Skimmer on Open Palm A dragonfly pried from a sticky spider web, where front legs scraped air a common whitetail anisoptera black-striped translucent wing-pairs surround a dragon-glare hair-thin legs bore wet paper dabs while thousands of tiny lenses took in a looming human. resting on damp hand width of wings matching length of palm she dragged her flap-like labrum, a firm nuzzle like tiny horse lips over my palm, sucking water from my timeline. rarefied breathing-with, my ribs expanding as her spiracles pulse. Then she to a cushion of damp moss, me to my nuzzled wording. Later, gone from moss, envision her ‘copter-careening ‘round, that long tail keeping her keel.
The Salvia Prep-talk: how we copulate, populate Let face it, hummers don't need those golden pollen-puffs we use their wings to carry. When we tire of shaking skirts for each other, dropping anther-levers to bare our bloomers, let’s entice those flying whiz-kid hummers Flaunt your stuff like a semaphore, serve them that syrupy sucrose – not insipid fructose like most flirts then, stretch your depth – they’ll focus on a probe so deep a slurp so full, they won’t take note they’re getting crowned, clowned with golden life beads, our pleas to strut our stuff across new fields Nudge them in sooo tight, tickle ‘um with your trapdoor gizmo, and they’ll scrape off the golden fluff, unknowing, cavalier away to flirt with Betty Blue, mélange some violet beads, and soon, we’ll have companions in many hues! View to North (Hudson River)
Gravitous Leap Always in danger of falling, we resist gravity with every step, swerve around encumbrances, leap pot-holes, charge or tiptoe forward. Conceding to gravity in the leap, we hop-scotch high or pirouette, impulses tuning to axis of intent. For all that leaps and lands with a spring, fugueing with gravity and levitation, for all in free fall that rights itself sunny-side up – For all that catches the upswing, absorbs capacious delectation while confirming the green connection, buoyantly poised before entropic tumbling - Remembering ever-present gravity, we sustain our gravitas in moments of elation, pausing to praise, to soak in reams of silence not circumscribed by earth’s deep nurturance. Remembering the etheric call, we savor the starlight nourishment, offer its overflow to others, refrain from straining to possess it.
Chestnut Oak/Monarch sharing buddleia
Mary Newell Artist Statement: I started writing stories in my head at the age of 7, when I was stuck in bed with pneumonia. My influences have been broad and eclectic. Early influences included the Beats, French symbolists and experimental drama, haiku, Rilke, Rimbaud, as well as Eastern spiritual texts; then Rumi, the modernists, many contemporary writers, and Hinge Poetics. Dickinson has provided an ongoing well of refreshment. I’ve been a practitioner of holistic mindbody modalities since college and am currently a practitioner of Feldenkrais. While many people see bodies as chunks of flesh, I visualize neural networks, movement vectors, and plumb lines of gravity moving through a body. I have yet to capture this fully in my writing. “Gravitous Leap” attempts to convey the sense of gravity and antigravity (aka the ground force). My main focus is ecological. I’m learning evermore about my local region, the splendiferous Hudson River Valley. I often do research while writing a poem. Botany and particularly pollination has been a major focus, as have investigations into intelligences of other species, and I’m sliding into fractals via tree branching. One of my current preoccupations is locating the human within a natural environment. To omit human subjects can imply the subject/ object dichotomy we’re trying to see beyond; to include them and not have them be intrusive (as we often are in 3-d interactions), or assumed dominant, is the challenge. Multiple viewpoints, a promising option. Description of Photos/Nature Affinities: A set of pictures shows my interest in tree communication. Two are of the Sweet Birch (“Sweet Birch Conversation”) I wrote about in “Slope Duo.” I am an avid gardener and involved in creating Pollinator Pathways in my community. This is a movement to provide safe corridors for the pollinators that keep our vegetation alive and reproducing – safe from toxic sprays and non-sustainable garden methods. I also enjoy the Hudson Valley through hiking, photography, and occasional kayaking. In my bit of spare time I have been known to dance tango. Editor’s note: Mary has an appealingly peculiar poetic style, as well as a keen love for nature (both of the environmental and human ilk), which is why we chose her to be our Featured Femme for this issue. Her unorthodox phrasings and syntax as well as her infusion of natural topics into her poetry resonate with our intellectual and visceral sensibilities. She is also a very gracious person.
Author bio: Mary Newell authored the poetry chapbooks Re-SURGE and TILT/ HOVER/ VEER (Codhill Press), poems in journals and anthologies, and essays including “When Poetry Rivers” (Interim journal 38.3). The publisher of Re-SURGE closed the press, but the chapbook is available from Mary Newell. Here is some backstory on Re-SURGE: https://snowflakesarise.wordpress.com/2022/01/11/https wordpress-com-postsnowflakesarisewordpress-com-25951re-surge/. Newell teaches creative writing at the University of Connecticut, Stamford and is an online poetry mentor at The Bridge (https:// poetsbridge.org/0newell). She is co-editor of Poetics for the More-than-HumanWorld: An Anthology of Poetry and Commentary and the forthcoming Routledge Companion to Ecopoetics. She presented on “Co-fostering and Cunning between Plants and their Pollinators” at NEMLA (North East Modern Language Association) in March 2022 and organized a panel on Plants and Poetics for Kelly Writers House in 2021. Newell (MA Columbia, BA Berkeley) received a doctorate from Fordham University with a focus on environment and embodiment in contemporary women’s writing. She also has an MA from Teachers College, Columbia University in Biobehavioral Studies. She has participated in a number of creative writing residencies, including Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and Orion’s Environmental Writing retreat. Writing website: https:// manitoulive.wixsite.com/maryn. In addition to writing and teaching creative writing, she is a practitioner of the Feldenkrais Method of Somatic Education. She teaches classes and works with clients to improve balance, coordination, and facility in activities and to reduce tension, discomfort, and restrictive habits. For more information on the Feldenkrais Guild site, go to: feldenkrais.com.
Two Poems By jacklyn henry Author bio: jacklyn henry is a transfeminine genderqueer writer based on the fringe of realty near Los Angeles.when not exploring and searching for an authentic self, jacklyn has been published at: delicate friend, flying dodo, horror sleaze trash, throats to the sky, the inaugural pink disco, and elsewhere. zombies on the sidewalks in the shadows of big cities i see zombies standing near the front doors of 7/Elevens shitting behind dumpsters begging for change on street corners sleeping on sidewalks behind thin polyester curtains walking in circles, wanting to find home and we just keep driving and walking, looking away without comment or consideration we just keep sweeping the refuse under the rugs without realizing we are inches away from being zombies ourselves out past the backdoor of the laundromat she sits on a curb behind a laundromat, mutters to herself, smiles through broken teeth when i glance her way.
she bums a cigarette. i offer a half pack of Marlboro Reds and a tattered twenty, just enough to stave off guilt for one more day. stories fall from her dirty lips. i take long drags from my own cigarette, listen as words echo around the dirty alleyway, bounce off graffiti littered walls. her words are thick with sorrow, but not regret. tales of a family incapable of seeing past her presentation to accept the truth of her soul. i gesture to one of the empty plastic chairs that line the brick wall out past the backdoor of the laundromat her dress dirty, blouse frayed, beard thick, hormones gone. she stubs out her smoke, talks more to herself than anyone else, pushes a shopping cart filled with black plastic bags down and around the corner, and i find myself with nothing to say. i stub out my cigarette, brush ash from my blouse and walk back inside to the warmth and anonymity of a laundromat
THIS PAGE UNINTE NTIONAL LY LEFT _________
TWO POEMS BY EVA SKRANDE THE CHURCHES All day, my hands sway back and forth like the fins of minnows in the fishbowls of memory. I wish it was future already: but my horses and moons disagree. My mother’s last letter said: I am here to tell you what happens to lilies when they no longer have throats: each petal breaks into a million lions. This was the earth’s testament: that churches would open in the fields of daisies, churches where children find sanctuary. Picture this:
and all mothers shall be safe from the teeth of lions, teeth which keep falling out but reappear where crows tell their stories to the river. And the boats, especially the red ones, claimed to be the dresses of fortune. SUNDAY --after Angel Gonzalez Beautiful Sunday, whose arms open to a thousand butterflies, who returns memories of joyful carousels to the minds of old trees and cools the foreheads of fever, who gathers bag ladies to sing alongside those dying alone and loves the bored children in churches. Mother of sparrows, who steers the boats, barely awake, away from eddies, and keeps the feet of refugees from tiring. Even if it’s just for one day
that the homes of the poor fill with bread and honey, even if on Monday the backs of people bend over while carrying suitcases of debt. O Jerusalem of days, even if come Monday we forget we promised you our right hand, even though we go back to climbing hills, and move like donkeys loaded with blankets, we look forward, again, to your pomegranates and pears, vowing not just our hands, but whole bodies filled with a chorus of flowers ready to harmonize with each of your dawns. Author bio: Eva Skrande came to the United States from Cuba. Her publications include My Mother’s Cuba (River City Publishing Poetry Series) and Bone Argot (Spuyten Duyvil Press). Her poems have appeared in Clockwise Cat, SurVision, Visions International, Smartish Pace, among others. Recently she was the feature poet at AlternaCtive PubliCations. More work can be found on her website: https://evaskrande.wordpress.com/. She has taught for Writers in the Schools, the Houston Independent School District where she taught Creative Writing, as well as the University of Houston-Downtown. In her current transfiguration, she is a tutor at Houston Community College.
Three Poems by Bob Heman INFORMATION There was rain in the second chapter. And a machine that belched sparks and smoke. There was a trail that skipped the third chapter and ended up in the ocean. And a man and a woman who never spoke. There was a measuring device that allowed the distance to become real. And a set of instructions that they chose to ignore. They never understood what the sky said but they still repeated it when there was nothing else to do. INFORMATION They all watch as he descends the stairs. They have forgotten how to cook the weasel, how to turn the plants into an edible dessert. The words they found no more an explanation than the road to Suffolk or the weight of the escaping gas. They are removed from the narrative before some other meaning can be discovered. INFORMATION Is able to count using dice or coins or a spinning wheel. Is able to count using the word “hesitate” or the color red. Is able to count using the man and the woman, using the abandoned silo, using the roads on the map that do not cross. Is able to count, and to use those numbers to resist the lure of the mirror. Is able to count until it is no longer his turn.
THE MEANING OF LIFE YOU ALWAYS KNEW BY ROXANNE BEAUGH RAINE The guy who wrote this book about the Dalai Llama promised it would be about forgiveness but really he just keeps talking about himself. (And for that, I forgive him.) The writer is Chinese and mentions that His Holiness liked him anyway, as if a man were his country. As if the Dalai Llama didn’t know that the author couldn’t singlehandedly free Tibet The Dalai Llama keeps talking about emptiness as the key to seeing the karmic connection between everything (or so the author says he says, anyway). But I wish he had said it was the hokey pokey. I think that would resonate better with his readership. Liberals in coffee shops percolating over his books, filling their heads
with ideas about emptiness and holiness on an unending mental pilgrimage toward wholeness. Wouldn’t it be a better use of time to be putting shoulders and feet in and out and turning one’s self around? And if we always knew that’s what it’s all about? Author bio: Roxanne Beaugh Raine is a part time professor of learning and memory and all things mind-science and although she has not yet fully trained her own mind, she has managed to master a few life hacks like always leaving her car keys in the same place to help her locate them. Her middle name is pronounced Bow, so she could veritably be called Roxi Rainbow. She spent most of her adult life in Hawaii but now resides in Austin, Texas growing culinary mushrooms and trying to live a zero emissions life while making art and teaching people brain stuff.
Merry-Go-Round By Marja Hagborg A black jaguar runs and jumps making loops in the air while millions of diamonds fall like rain over the plaza in the sleepy morning sun. No one else seems to see what is happening. Maybe it’s something they are used to, only I, a stranger, am amazed and breathless. The wind is still chilly after a cool night, but the sun warms up the air and my shivering body. Am I shivering because I’m cold, or because the black big cat with its shiny fur takes my breath away? The trees around the plaza bend toward me whispering me to stay. What would it all mean in the old word, the world full of trivialities, empty words and fake forced smiles? Those people are hideous! Don’t they understand that I can see through the plastic film covering their ugly faces? The faces behind the smiling masks belong to liars and gullible slaves of lies! A place like that actually bores me to death. I’m light years away from the gunk of the sinking city and its inhabitants with their programmed heads and rulebooks that can’t be revised. Ever. Do I feel an urge to tell them they are wrong and should leave? No. They wouldn’t listen to me anyway. Suddenly I feel exhilarated and free from my past. For a moment I feel dizzy and the plaza is happily spinning like a merry-go-round. When the spinning stops, the black jaguar makes loops in the air in front of me again and again, and millions of diamonds rain over the plaza. Author bio: M.H. lives in Chicago. Her short story collection, "Orphan Dog," will be published by Chiron Review in December 2023.
POWER EXITS: MARCEL DUCHAMP By TONIA KALOURIA “Uh...gotta run...while I’m gone, make sure you or your mutt DO NOT PISS in, on, under, around or near my FOUNTAIN urinal art masterpiece! I do not want to have to clean it again!” Author bio: Ms. Kalouria has poems on the Classical Poets Society, The 5/2 Crime Poetry, Take5ive, The Lit Vegan,and Lighten Up! among others. Anthologies include Quoth the Raven, Nothing Ever Happens in Fox Hollow, Lifespan: Love, A Glass.
TWO POEMS BY JOHN GRAY Author bio: John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Stand, Washington Square Review and Rathalla Review. Latest books, “Covert” “Memory Outside The Head” and “Guest Of Myself” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in the McNeese Review, Santa Fe Literary Review and Open Ceilings. A BREAKUP LOCKS ITSELF IN THE BATHROOM The beauty you tear out by the roots while the mirror looks on and the comb burrows down deep in your pocket book. Then you smudge its cheeks, its lips, even threaten the eyes that tremble in the shadow. Mascara does a double-take. A pencil rises up like an asp and bites your brow. It’s down to you and the scream. Only one will make it out of there alive.
TIME SPENT STARING AT THE SKY I'm either yielding to external forces or asserting my autonomy. I’m always one way or the other, never both. I'm the geometry of my bone and its related critical thinking or I’m this chaos, thin and light as tissue, floating in quick laughter. When I’m human, I renounce the human element When I’m not myself, I spend my time with me
TWO POEMS By harry k stammer "stop the violence?” rolling little trucks (concrete’d) scraping (once) track tire "since the sense" (attacking him) "that powder on your nose" centered on XZ^& “come on Frank!” (the siege) "what’s where I think you need to find jesus soon…" (does it) waking up early staying inside by the dog (blanket, baby) out in the
yelling "fuck you, though" a barnyard cat whole points (fever) "ten cent" [table keys] "not sainted up" back down the stairs ||: clomp:|| hand in the wet "oh, troubled?" not divide (ing) "a, ah" not moment (for) "but necessary" back young (er) and which that (in it) would "from a working" (in and out) Author bio: harry k stammer is a writer and musician who lives and works in Santa Barbara, CA. His books include every beyond’t nothing (persistencia), tents (Otoliths), and grounds (Otoliths); and tocsin, the third and last in the series about LA’s homeless, following on from tents and grounds, was released in 2019 (Otoliths). His latest books, sidewalkss and walls't's, were published by Concrete Mist Press and Sandy Press, respectively. Recent harry k stammer noise verse/music is posted on https://harrykstammer1.bandcamp.com/.
TWO POEMS BY MARC VINCENZ Author bio: Marc Vincenz is a poet, fiction writer, translator, editor, musician and artist. He has published over 30 books of poetry, fiction and translation. His work has been published in The Nation, Ploughshares, Raritan, Colorado Review, World Literature Today, Notre Dame Review and The Los Angeles Review of Books. He is publisher and editor of MadHat Press and publisher of New American Writing. His newest books are A Brief Conversation with Consciousness (Unlikely Books, 2021), There Might Be a Moon or a Dog (Gazebo, Australia, 2022), 39 Wonders and Other Management Issues (Spuyten Duyvil, 2022) and The Pearl Diver of Irunmani (White Pine Press, forthcoming 2023). Not By the Skin, By the Teeth Caught drunk once more on a wild sailboat ride, staring out into the ocean’s salmon-streaked horizon. Who says it should have been otherwise. You recognize that all this, and all those theories are seductive, bold-handed, voiced precisely; and yet who sent you this message? That poem I read the other night after listening to the woods and you sleeping in the garden with the worms. “It’s all fractal,” you said, almost mockingly, pulling the creatures from your hair. “Watch where the arrow flies on another fine day.”
Spectral Activity Trying to reach out To a point, to a fingerPoint—that helix that cuts Off at the light, Switches on the world, Gives us god-thoughts; All those evenings In cafés staring out; All those soundless steps, Straight ahead into Headlights with That nugget of faith; All those god-thoughts Sprinkled with cinnamon, The firm belief In something else, in someThing spectral, otherWorldly, something Along death’s path In a patch of fog; See all the furrowed Brows on the shore, The great wave of hair.
Two Poems By Amy Barone Dark Shadows The menace coils toward virus-laden air. It shrieks in wild riots and cities aflame. Relentless storms uproot trees and darken streets. An earthquake struck North Carolina after 100 years of calm. Thick noxious smog stifles fresh breezes. I look for refuge in eerie-colored skies that weep. The pest silently divides on Facebook and Twitter. A game of dominoes ends badly. I walk ’round treeless circles touched by clouds, hoping, hunting, but not a cornflower to be found.
Fallen Angels Soaring pronghorn. Splooting squirrels. Surfing sea turtles. Strung oysters. Searing silence. Straining sensations. Sorrowing selves. Author bio: Amy Barone’s poetry collection, Defying Extinction, was published by Broadstone Books in 2022. New York Quarterly Books published her book, We Became Summer. She wrote chapbooks Kamikaze Dance (Finishing Line Press) and Views from the Driveway (Foothills Publishing.) Barone belongs to the Poetry Society of America. She lives in New York City.
“La Petenera In Disguise As Rapunzel In Conversation With A Crocodile Disguised As A Lost Boy” By Nicole Henares I never wanted you to climb up my hair and save me. I never wanted any thimbles in exchange for a kiss, only happy thoughts to flysome memories hurt too much. (A fairy dies whenever someone says they don’t believe in fairies. So, always clap your hands. Keep them alive.) Don’t say you didn’t know that I never needed you to save meYou are the only predator I have ever needed saving from. I am the pure imagination of your damnation. As a child I always wanted long hair, but my mother said not until I was old enough to take care of it. I wear my hair long for the things you did and said as a reckoning for the day when I will at last find the words for all have needed to tell, and will have you writhing under the tip of my pen. You were a crocodile disguised as Captain Hook, disguised as a lost boy who refused to believe in fairies. Choking on words and memories, I rode a bicycle across the moon, turned my heart light on, aimed for the first star to the left, pixie dust and happy thoughts and croc-o-diles, crocodylia, crock o denial.
Crocodile man, sounds not the same as alligator man. (Don’t shit in my hand and call it a cupcake, crocodile man.) Crocodiles and alligators want anything they can get between their teeth. They eat without chewing, swallow their prey whole with physiological tears from a life of hissing and huffing. When they take something in their mouths, they mean it. How much pixie dust does it take to tell the history of a reptile disguised as a man? How much pixie dust does it take to keep happy thoughts forever, until never never? 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