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Poetry, art, and pancakes. So many, many pancakes.

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Published by Fire Agate Press, 2019-01-06 09:18:05

FFR 32

Poetry, art, and pancakes. So many, many pancakes.

Keywords: Your mother figure.

FOWL
FEATHERED

REVIEW

Fowl Feathered Review is the disorderly quarterly published on a consistently sporadic basis by Fowlpox Press. Art and
layout: Pâris Paté. Paintings depict sights and scenes from Sheet Harbour to Antigonish, Nova Scotia. Photos of Aldo
Tambellini: Opening photo of Mr. Tambellini in the 1960’s. Closing photo is of Mr. Tambellini at “Listen” book signing in
Boston 2017. Taken by Wendy Payne. Editor: Virgil Kay. Contributing Editor: Betty Aberlin. ISSN: 1929-7238. Published
with financial assistance from the Ecum Secum Literary Arts Brain Trust. This issue is dedicated to the memory of a great
poet and friend of the people, Felino A. Soriano, who passed away at age 44 on October 17, 2018.



Leila Burgoyne

Artist
1-902-654-2128
Port Dufferin, Nova Scotia, Canada
Facebook page: Leila’s Coastal Art

[email protected]



Poetry by Krithika Shrinivas

immigrants

My parents came to America with 60 dollars,
clutched between their anxious fingers-
the same ones they used to build me my future.

So when you tell me to go back to my country,
I gaze at the beige walls of my house,
built atop their weary bones,
looking at the ceiling as they have,
sleepless in their ambitions.

I stand still.

making love with music

the crook of your elbow fits
snugly against the wooden curve
of my cello body.

resin marks linger
across my sturdy frame;
you dot me in your dusty notes.

metallic knobs shiver,
twisted by nimble fingers;
my music whimpers in cacophony.

a flat, b sharp, c minor

strings jolt in fervor,
plucked by gentle flicks;
staccato gasps echo in your ear.

rest two, three, four

your bow glides across the frets,
harmonies melding with the air,
as you take in my melody.

crescendo e diminuendo

Crescendo: a musical notation suggesting a gradual increase in loudness
Diminuendo: a musical notation suggesting a gradual decrease in loudness

adolescent lullaby

rest your head, my little dearie,
against the crook of my neck,
for one day it will know of
plastered car seats,
darkened alleyways,
and cold beds that bruise your head.

gurgle on your milk, sweet child,
let it draw your eyes shut,
like our sheer curtains,
before your lips are traced in purple,
the way your father’s were.

when your pupils roam the dark,
count sheep in your head, my love,
instead of the crimson dashes
they will etch on your skin one day,
chiseling you into their artwork.

dream a little dream, my angel,
of sunlit meadows,
where your toes dust the earth.
the flowers will dance in greeting,
as you look to the sky,
and the clouds will part for you.

in the morning, my baby,
i will kiss your stray hair,
gently rocking your limp body,
as you wake up.

you must always wake up.

A participant of the prestigious Iowa young writers studio, New Jersey-based Krithika Shrinivas began
writing this manuscript while enrolled in her junior year at High School in 2017. Shrinivas was a finalist
in the National Colorism Healing contest in the Youth poetry division and has written for magazines
such as the Ireland based HEBE.

Poetry by Joseph Hart

The Sea

The tireless repetition of the sea
Sends its wholesome whisper of a hush
Toward, across the everlasting shore
In a rush. Occasional the gulls
Like stars intrude the darkness of the sounds.

The tireless repetition of the sea,
Untrite, unhackneyed, fresh, forever new
As the sempiternal starting of the day
Is ever solemn, joyous and alone.
Abandoned as the swells it casts ashore,

Magnificent in its indifference,
It seems to warm me as if I were known.
There's inspiration in remembering
The ocean that I saw once long ago,
A tender, deep afflatus like the sea
That gives the shore primeval tenderness.

A Fragment

I am cold, but not unkind,
Though caring, not demonstrative.
And now the rusted water pipes
Underneath the sink
Look sinister and sad.
Guilt and fear obsess me.
The colors on the walls accuse me, And the chairs,
The pictures in their frames.

Feeling

Beneath the winter skies,
I sit upon a rock beside the sea
That presages my incipient demise
And gives a sense of immortality.
And by the sea I have been kissed
Upon my body, so my soul.
I feel cold bubbles in the mist
And listen to the shoal.

Alone

When I was a boy of 6 or 7, Grandpa bought me at the 5 & Dime A little plastic
wallet – red and blue - And told me if I kept it, kept it nice He'd buy me another. So I
put
The wallet in a drawer and never touched it. When he came back, I got it and I told him,
“Grandpa see! I kept it very nice.
Now I get another.” And he looked At me with such disgust I went insane.

Joseph Hart has a BA in psychology. A two-time Pushcart nominee, his favorite poets are Keats,
Millay and Robinson.

Poetry by Lou Marin

Listen To The Waves

Listen to the waves call,
whispering to the sea wall.
"May I go a little further?
Do you really hope to deter
me from my goal of landing
where houses are standing
with little hope of withstanding
my crests mighty and tall.
Down where tides occur,
breakers are crash landing.

Magic City

I am wandering my adopted town,
I see what has kept me here.
It is more than sky and air clear,
with no violence or gun shot sounds.

Seldom do I see a grimace or frown,
most smile when strangers draw near.
I am wandering my adopted town,
I see what has kept me here.

We grow while the economy is down,
because corporations drill for oil near.
It looks like another banner year
with crude and wheat in the ground.
I am wandering my adopted town.

Misty Currents

Beauty is in subtlety.
Jet black morning
slowly rolls away.
Eastward early rays
fail to penetrate early gloom.
Low-beamed headlights
illuminate painted road lines
disappearing mere inches ahead.
We low-speed march south
to the Interstate.

I hunch over steering wheel
in the quiet dawn,
fearing moving animals
wandering onto pavement.
True dawn does not come
at six, seven, or eight.

We reach four-lane concrete;
silent, low on traffic.
Vanquishing barely thinning fog,
the early rays
start to reach tired eyes,
as gloom slowly, grudgingly parts.

Green fields and valleys,
Minnesota lakes and farms
are revealed; a curtain
is opened by magic hand.
Gossamer drapes part;
beauty riding a misty current.

Lou Marin is a photographer as well as the author of five poetry anthologies that were available
through PublishAmerica. His poems have been published in such journals as Terrorhouse Magazine,
The Pangolin Review and Harbinger Asylum as well as being featured online at writing.com

Poem by Aldo Tambellini

October 19, 1990

mother
it is the night
they come
with the white van
three strangers
dressed in white
&
I as a decoy
have tricked you
into descending the stairs
in the january snow
falling
with the whitest of white
the white van
with the backdoor opened
parked by
that ancient poplar tree
on james street
in syracuse ny
the three men in white
acting
as a matter of fact
used to a routine
that must be performed
best in a swift way
you mother
suddenly aware of
what is about to happen
hold on to my arm
pleading
don’t
let them take me away
you are my son
don’t do it
they ease you

with assured moves
inside the white van
it all happens
so quickly
the door closes
pulls away
from the spot
under the street lamp
next to the ancient poplar tree
then
I walk around
continuously

‘till the footprints wear out
the fresh snow
to the deeper layers
of frozen ice
the white snow falling
in the white night
of my under seventeen years of life
the footprints deeper
than the roots sinking
god knows
to what depth under the street
near the dark
wood ornate house
from another century
where we rented the darkness
of an apartment
there within months
the madness descended
you desperately
trying to have me enter
the reality
of your tortured visions
wanting to share
the suspicion of everything
pointing to devices
hidden in various places
under floors
behind walls

in ceiling lights
whispering
so no one would hear
cautioning every move
as to protect me
from invisible forces
the endless time
I searched
showing you
there was nothing there
but it was all
so real to you
the war
the foreign country
in the very city
where in another time
you gave birth to me
they took you away
in the whitest night
to the state hospital
in upstate ny

“Aldo Tambellini (born 29 April 1930) is an Italian American artist. He pioneered electronic intermedia, and is a painter,
sculptor, and poet.”--Wikipedia. Thanks to Wendy Payne,Director of Development, Aldo Tambellini Art Foundation, for
assistance in obtaining this poem for this issue. http://aldotambellini.org/

Poem by Stanford J. Searl, Jr.

The Choke Weeds

The Massachusetts General Court said that Quakers burned Bibles,
Denied scriptures and preached heaps of nonsense.
Quakers were parasitic weeds that choked healthy herbs and scrubs,
Attaching to the roots of family and state,
Possessed by Satan as with the Indians.

They were secret Catholics and witches,
Infused by the sin of Pride
Like Quaker Cassandra Southwick of Salem
Who said she was “greater than Moses,
For Moses had seen God but twice,
His bad side only but she had seen him
Three times and face to face.”

Deluded Quakers had abandoned their families
Become heretic vagabonds, roaming and wandering
Without a settled home, tangled up,
Insistent perfectionists, denying original sin itself
Bringing error, anarchy and disorder to the Commonwealth,
Threatening to infect the entire community.

Puritan rulers mutilated, scarred these Quakers
With cuts, bruises, beatings and insults,
Chopping off the ears of some Quaker men,
Stripping and whipping both men and women,
Withholding light and food.

The executioner hanged four Quakers,
Including one woman, Mary Dyer
Because they refused to be permanently banished
And because they were licentious, heretical Quakers.

Stanford J. Searl, Jr. is a member of the Santa Monica Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) and lives
in Culver City, California, with his wife, Rebecca Warren Searl, a birthright Quaker from Whittier, California. Searl has a Ph.D.
in English from Syracuse University and published Homage to the Lady with the Dirty Feet and other Vermont Poems in
2016.









Poems by Gary Beck

School Days

The elevator was out again,
so I couldn’t get downstairs in time
and the school bus never waits.
The bus driver hates picking up
homeless kids at the welfare hotel.
I tried to tell him the first day
that I really wanted to go to school
even though the teacher ignored me
and the nasty kids teased me
about my shabby clothes.
But anyplace is better
then staying in the cold room all day,
with Mom nodding out on the bed,
her boyfriend looking at me with hard eyes,
and the big rats moving around
like they pay rent.
Once a month the social worker comes
and asks all kinds of questions.
When I asked: ‘What I do to deserve this?’
all she said was: ‘Things’ll get better, someday.’

Relocation

We lived in one room,
a roach infested,
South Bronx apartment
in a gang-infested neighborhood,
where we heard more gunfire
than laughter.

But I went to school
and got lunch
and could go outside
to escape Mom’s boyfriend
and his hard fists.

But Child Services insisted
living conditions
were unsuitable for a child,
and moved us to a homeless shelter,
somewhere in Manhattan.

It was too scary
to go outside.
The new boyfriend
kicked and punched me
when I played with my toys
and made too much noise.
He hurts me all the time.

Mom says she’ll get rid of me
if I tell anyone.
Who is there to tell?
I’ve been coughing blood
for the last week.
Mom says it better stop,

or she’ll get rid of me.
Maybe it would be better
if she got rid of me.

Illicit Proceedings

I the abandoned
did not know my mom,
she who left me in a garbage can
discarded trash
accidently recovered
by a chance passerby,
my feeble, fading cries
the last call for life
paused him
summoned him
salvaging me
coincidentally
to squalid existence
doomed from conception,
arbitrarily condemned
without appeal.

Gary Beck has spent most of his adult life as a theater director. His poetry collections include: Days of Destruction (Skive
Press), Expectations (Rogue Scholars Press). Dawn in Cities, Assault on Nature, Songs of a Clerk, Civilized Ways, Displays,
Perceptions, Fault Lines, Tremors, Perturbations, Rude Awakenings and The Remission of Order (Winter Goose Publishing).
Conditioned Response (Nazar Look). Virtual Living (Thurston Howl Publications). Blossoms of Decay, Expectations and Blunt
Force (Wordcatcher Publishing). His novels include: Flawed Connections (Black Rose Writing), Call to Valor and Crumbling
Ramparts (Gnome on Pig Productions). Sudden Conflicts (Lillicat Publishers). Acts of Defiance, Flare Up and Pirate Spring will
be published by Wordcatcher Publishing. His short story collections include, A Glimpse of Youth (Sweatshoppe Publications).
Now I Accuse and other stories (Winter Goose Publishing). Dogs Don’t Send Flowers and other stories (Wordcatcher
Publishing). The Republic of Dreams and other essays (Gnome on Pig Productions). Feast or Famine & other plays will be
published by Wordcatcher Publishing. His original plays and translations of Moliere, Aristophanes and Sophocles have been
produced Off Broadway. His poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in hundreds of literary magazines. He lives in New
York City.

Poems by Robyn Colquhoun









Robyn Colquhoun is a reclusive Australian rhymer, living the dream amongst wild birds.

Interview with Aldo Tambellini

Pioneer of electronic intermedia. Painter. Sculptor. Poet.
He’s all that and did it before anyone else.
I had just set up a crude form of internet service
in my rural, Nova Scotia town using a payphone
at a partly shut down corner gas while a man split wood
and a dog barked, and was able to contact
Mr. Tambellini through the goodwill of Wendy Payne,
Director of Development at the Aldo Tambellini
Art Foundation. By means of email we were able
to have the following conversation.

VK: How did you come to write the poem, October 19,1990?

AT: The poem that is being published, October 19, 1990, written about my Mother, was in my head for a
very long time. In 1990, I started a project of putting together a series of poems written each morning,
just as I woke up. I call this collection “Brainscan” because, in a way, it was the scan of my brain and
the memories that I had stored there put down in poetry form and in prose. The poem which has
been published is one in this collection. “Brainscan” will be the title of my next collection of poetry
that will be published later this year.

I see my Mother as collateral damage of WWII. After our home was bombed during an air raid on my
neighborhood under which 21 of my neighbors died and I miraculously survived, we took refuge in the
countryside of Lucca where my aunt, who was born in Brazil, lived. Soon after we moved there, the
Nazis took over the farm and they set up a cannon camouflaged under the pergola by the drinking well,
waiting for the Allies to come from the mountains that separated Lucca from Pisa. Because they were
building a resistance line, to slow the advancement of the American Troops which were in Sicily, the SS
would conduct nightly raids to gather men to work on this resistance line. My Mother, having two
sons, was in constant fear for our lives and wellbeing. All of this fear, the events of the WAR and the
constant surveillance from the Nazis resulted in a paranoia which was manifested after our arrival in
the United States. She was hospitalized and given the primitive form of electric shock therapy. She
was never the same after that.

VK: How did you come to write poetry?

AT: Soon after World War II, with my mother, I boarded the Marine Carp, a Liberty ship, for the 15 day
trip from Genova, Italy to New York. The Marine Carp was a ship used, after the war, to transport US
citizens and the families of citizens back to the USA. On this long unusual trip I met a young poet from
Rome, Gianni Cappelli, who was born in the USA and was going back to reunite with his father living in
Chicago. He was only a few years older than I. This poet in Italy had been associated with the great
modern Italian Poet, Giuseppe Ungaretti. My background in poetry, at that point , was from the Art
Institute I attended in Lucca and consisted of a knowledge of Greek and Italian classical epic poems.
We memorized passages from Dante’s Inferno and read Ariosto and Boccaccio. For the first time in my
life, I was introduced by Gianni Cappelli to modern poetry. My first experience writing poetry (first in
Italian then in English) began not too long after, at the age of 17. I parted ways with Gianni at the port in
New York. We kept a correspondence for many years in which he used to share his poetry with me

and he analyzed his style and process. At that point I was writing poetry, too, but only sporadically. I
lost his poems and lost contact with Gianni. In 2002, I found Gianni again and we were reunited.

I moved to New York’s Lower East Side, in the late 50s. Across the street from the storefront which I
rented was where the black poets from “UMBRA” (a magazine) used to meet. We lived in that area
because of the cheap rents. The UMBRA poets had just come to the Lower East Side, too, from
Harlem, Bedford Stuyvesant and the South. They represented the kernel of “Black Identity”. They
acknowledged the black ghetto and expressed their feelings in poetry. The Umbra Poets included:
Ishmael Reed, H.N. Pritchard, Calvin Hernton, and Roland Snelling subsequently known as Askia Toure’.
Ishmael Reed and H.N. Pritchard were in my first performance which I called “BLACK” at the
International House, Columbia University, NY. They read their poetry while I projected my hand-painted
slides called Lumagrams on them. There also was a dancer, Carla Blank. Black was my first
performance and it began a “work in progress” which developed and changed with each performance, I
called these performances “Electromedia.”

Don Ross, a journalist, attended a performance of my “Electromedia.” On June 13, 1965, he wrote a
leading article in the “New York Herald Tribune”,“Rebellion in Art Form-Tambellini’s ‘Black 2.” He wrote,
“Aldo Tambellini has survived, thanks to his toughness, his belief in himself and his vision of
life…Tambellini is an artist and a rebel….he’s not only a rebel but a leader of rebels. Last Monday as
producer and director, he put on a hour-and-twenty minute show called “Black 2” at the Bridge Theatre,
4 St. Mark’s Place…..the performance brought into an organic form...the fusion of abstract and social
commitment. Among those associated with Tambellini in this enterprise are Lorraine Boyd, a dancer
(a student of Katherine Dunham and Martha Graham) Cecil McBee (formally with Dinah Washington),
who thumbs a bass, Calvin, C. Hernton (editor of the poetry magazine ‘Umbra’), a poet who reads his
own poems of racial conflict with a flashlight. Tambellini has made what he calls lumagrams…he
projects 200 of them during the performance, sometimes while Ms. Boyd, dressed in black tights, is
dancing in a way that seems to represent the plight of the Negro and while Mr. McBee is thumping and
bowing his bass beautifully.”

Visiting my studio, Don Ross continues, “Tambellini dressed in a black shirt, black pants…the largest of
his paintings (14x7 feet) in the loft studio is a double image of a black circle within a larger white circle
in a vast black space. Black fascinated him. Recently, the double image, or, as he calls it, the echo,
has been reoccurring in his work. ‘This two in one thing appeals to me,’ he said, ‘it seems to be
happening in my work. I have no explanation why this is.’….He is an easy mark for ridicule for those
who don’t know him. Those who do respect him. They may not know what he is doing and they

might even doubt that he does, but they will know that he will not swerve from his path. In a time of
opportunism, they find something splendid in this principled obstinacy.”

During this time, although I kept on writing poetry and expressed many of my political and artistic
views in poetry form in a paper I published and distributed called “The Screw.” I felt that the UMBRA
poets had such a wonderful voice and cadence for reading that I hardly read my poems except at
gatherings in my backyard. Some original recordings have survived of these readings.

VK: Did you ever cross paths with Nam June Paik? I read that you may have done so by at least 1967,
when WHGB-TV in Boston had its Medium is the Medium series.Perhaps you and Mr. Paik had the
same symbiotic relationship as did Picasso and Braque.

AT: Nam June and I were friends. We also supported each other and moved along the same path as
far as video art goes. I don’t believe it would be considered a symbiotic relationship but one of mutual
shared interests and a personal friendship. As described by Woody Wasulka, director of the Kitchen in
New York and video expert, stated that he regarded “Tambellini’s and Paik’s concerns in the sixties as
the true and direct inspiration to our generation of synthesizing artists.”

Nam June Paik and I participated in many seminal exhibits that dealt with video such as: “TV as a
Creative Medium” Howard Wise Gallery; “A Special Video Show” Whitney Museum and “Vision and
Television,” Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA. 1970, 1stmajor museum video
exhibition, to mention a few.

When Otto Piene and I opened the Black Gate, New York’s first performance and installation space
above the Gate Theater in 1967, I invited Nam June to do a performance with Charlotte Moorman
(often his favorite performing partner) which he did.

He and I later prepared pieces for the first broadcast of artists from a television studio at WGBH in
Boston, 1969, “the Medium is the Medium.” This was a year after, Otto Piene and I did the first ever
broadcast from a television studio by artists at WDR, in Cologne, Germany, 1968. We called this event
Black Gate Cologne.












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