Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Issue Forty Four
Editor's Note:

Welcome to Issue Forty Forth of CSR! By now, you regular readers know my child likes paper kites and the smell of fresh sushi. It craves sweet potato pie and makes cute little sounds at the first sight of an orange peel. Baby has an uncanny ability to come up with new ways to sell military hardware to pacifist. We both like gun power in our tutti frutti. This issue examines the strength of the levees. It is filled with a corps of engineers sprinkled in Lake Pontchartrain. Add to that, a group of poets walking over hot coals, music from lamb's wool and catnaps in the book review and you've got the possibility of an old-fashioned cakewalk. Trust me, when you finish this issue you'll never put your trust in mass produced eggs again. Or mosquito repellant wears sunglasses! Either way, you'll take the midnight train to Georgia. So put your ticket in your shoe and get busy...
CSR: Issue 44 Contents/Contributors

Corey Mesler

Glenna Luschei


Ian C. Smith

Jean-Christophe Sartois

Jeff Crouch

Carl Leggo

Roland John

About Art - Urbane Lights

Sandra Duran

About Books

About Music - Maya Beiser

Ed MaKowski

Helen Peterson

Contributors Biographies
Corey Mesler


You Know Her

She took the highlights out of her hair
and turned the corner into town.
The men all wanted her the way men
want things that make noise
and are shiny. Once, in a truck, she gave
the driver the benefit of her
secret studies. Once, in a room, she
fell for a boy who had hair the color of
roast beef. It was a life she finally
had to turn her back on. She turned her
back on and she turned her front on
and she turned toward all the glittery
people and smiled her special smile
and she became famous for things that
most of us love, most of us desire.
You know her name and her face and much
about her past. You know her, now that
I think about it, just about as well as anyone.
Why don’t you help her? Why don’t you
come when she calls? Why is she so alone now?


Our Recent Development

“What a time! What a civilization!”
--Cicero (106-43 B.C.)

We call it a civilization. We
built it with our hands’ hands.
We like to lie in it and watch
the colors carried by. Sometimes
it seems all we can do is lift
an arm to wave to the wretched.
We wave like potentates. We
wave like seas immortal. In the
end we will begin again, as likely
as not to do it all again the same way.


June 21, 2010

Another Father’s Day passed
and they let me keep my head for
one more year. This is the
deal we’ve struck. Perhaps you
remember a day when there
was only peace and generosity.
Perhaps you keep your cage clean.
I am thankful to the vengeful gods
and I walk out into the world a little
head-happy, a little smug, a demiurge.


Aegis

This poem is brought to you by Paxil.
In the evenings
the light weakens and the house grows
still as if it ran on light.
I can lie down with the newspaper and
the only sound will be
the crows gathering for their murder.
This poem is brought to you by Paxil.
Without the way to the
mountain there would be no mountain.
I look into the children’s eyes
and there is water there, a still, blue
surface, concealing a depth like music’s
heart. This poem is brought to you by
Paxil. There is peace here, pax.
Peace and an abiding need to talk to
you while I am calm,
and nameless as the fossarian’s shadow.
Glenna Luschei


Orchard

Morning sun pullls up the guywires.
The early spider
tosses lines
from avocado to berryvine.

I plow up from underground
in time for the seeding.

How could I eat the pomegranate seeds?
Why did I spend my life sleeping?


The Tinder Box

You are far away.

States
are crossing blocks
I must step.
Rivers
dogs with cooper eyes.

My starving mare
eats
her mane.
The coals are watching us.

Bonfires.
Wigwams.


Marrakech

Only their eyes showing,
camel drivers in blue turbans
have driven here with their carpets.
My guilt rides in on golden ponies,
guilds the minarets.
You asked me to make this journey
with you through the garden of Allah
open only on Fridays.
I chose to keep my prior appointment.
You kept your appointment.
Now I steal the memories
from the coins in the market,
from the eyes of the dead.

We would have hired the guide to Shepard us
through the market teeming
with mint, cilantro and roast chicken.

We would have found the herbalist
to cure you
and finally removed our veils
talking over our seperation
which we both healed apart.
As ti was, you rode the camel alone.
I kept the Christmas card.


Standing In Line

I am just waiting my place
behind the others. No shoving.

Will I go gentle like the ones
who went before?

Or will I bolt like the astrologer
who carried his pallet

into the desert on the day
forecast for his death?

Nothing could attack him there
except the swallow that dropped

the fatal pebble on his head.

-all poems from her collection "Witch Death"
Ian C. Smith


Fish Tale

Fishing from the disused bridge
under unseen stars and a V of ducks
pointing away from black storm clouds
our seven yr.-old hooks an eel
this big guy making an S of himself.
The older brothers knew to haul
hand over hand, not using the reel
because his rod bent into a U.
Hoons have crashed through barriers
blocking the bridge, its pylons rotten
below river level where eels lurk
in the belief their watery work
could never lure them to their death.
Some big guys are born to be warriors.

-previously published in Poor Mojo's Poetry


Gone, with the Wind

Like the wind we find a way
past prised planks. It pierces gaps
in the copper roof left by thieves.
The patin a of verdigris was our landmark
the colour of a lime milkshake.
Broken glass stains the aisle, soaked and still
all these years after that day’s excess.
Puffed-up pigeons gossip in the groins.
Before the altar the massive organ
has been overturned in a puddle.

They war, enemies without and within.
They conceive, are bereaved, never cede
victory despite the constant counting.
Sex is one bare luxury, extra rations
on a Saturday night after standing
in the double-decker to The Gaumont
to see Margaret Mitchell’s lurid fable.
‘Frankly, I don’t give a damn’
seems a throw away line to savour
passing the air-raid siren, Dad as Clark Gable.

-previously published at Kipple


Crayfish

We stripped, exposed, wet white flesh.
The primitive sea littered full plates
dribbled tasty through my beard
salt & pepper, glistening
Neptune randy eyeing the ripe moon’s
glitter on water, its allure
like your succulence.

Later, wave-riders of satiation
we lolled abed, spilt, drained
listening to the ocean’s pull & suck.
I thought of fathoms-deep creatures
their primaeval urges, like those crayfish
before we shucked, violated them
pleasured our tongues, licked them raw.


Echidna

Burn-off fires smoulder, a war zone scene
where he parks above the hazy harbour.
The door blows open when he releases it
like a terrified creature escaping.
He climbs out stiffly with the album
reviewing his daughter’s visit, things said.
A song from the C.D. echoes in his mind
..lying down on a cold black table..

An echidna waddles away from him
burrows urgently, spines quivering.
He sits with his thoughts in smoky sea air.
She had tapped her fingers, watching him.
You turn away from the living.
Emotion and memory drain him
the faded pages he begins to turn, clues.
We were a family, once. You were our hero.

His daughter twice said, guilt trip
and, she adored you, three times
masking her accusations with smiles.
He peers closely, sniffing the past

the scents of youth filled with light
a time as unreachable as the horizon.
The echidna has almost buried itself
but its spines are still exposed.

-both poems previously published at Full of Crow Poetry
Photography by Jean-Christohpe Sartoris





Jeff Crouch


no sum-up sun film

the life of what two
hours condensed milk
concentrate on fire
shook her hips


retirement home lilies

wet mold the window floating while
leaking behind the blind

her daughter fresh orange juice
a dress she wore her memory bleached

Sunday the Monet exhibit


bare all sunny unditch her grin

mop dirty hard work and hair
while teeth though missing

in a pool chair with her big plan
to open the door, the A/C on


excavation bucket

while how sun the often rehearse
fairly recent that far down assert

open campfire jawing a fault
together what defenses give up
Carl Leggo
 


Roots

on snowshoes I tramp a trail
up Blow-Me-Down Mountain,
twist amidst ancient dead trees,
gray scrawny lost corpses
like sea-washed driftwood,
still held in the earth, rooted
in stories forgotten long ago,
now illegible lines scratched
in the sky like a polygraph
in vellum, tangled traces
of life almost remembered

with a poet’s steadfast hope
I hold the camera high so
everything is erased except
spindly branches suspended
in the sky, a network of lines
like arms and hands extended
out of a bog, all bony fingers
outstretched, a supplicant,
beseeching hidden gods, and like
these dead trees, resolve I too will
cling to the earth forevermore
 

Intrepid

The doctor tells Skipper, You’re fiddly fit.
At seventy-eight, from May to September, he wants
to fish in the ponds, a lifetime familiar, but most
of his buddies didn’t make it much past seventy.

Because he is living a long life,
a lot longer than many, he is often
called to be a pallbearer, each funeral,
a testimony to the doctor’s diagnosis.

For years he was a warden (not a prison warden
he reminds me) to the local Anglican priest,
happy he was always available, with the key
in his pocket, and no taxing theological issues.

His neighbour planted a pot-bellied stove
in his front yard. Skipper, What do you think?
Skipper didn’t know what to say, so he said,
That’s some pot-bellied stove you’ve got there.

Like a Rubik’s cube and crossword puzzles,
my father is an inscrutable text, indecipherable.
As usual I am trying to know him,
still seeking the cipher to the enigma.

Perhaps this is a son’s plight, wondering
if I will grow old, perhaps even with enough
sense to know that a pot-bellied stove in the front
yard isn’t my idea of art but can be yours.


Ghost

I felt a line
for a poem

like the trace left
by a snow storm

failed to record it
sure I’d remember

always forgetting
I seldom do

now I recall only
a dream’s dust

a ghost’s whisper
in the attic

I wait long for
a faithful return

like I hold my father
and his fishing line

still in the air
each careful cast

a line of poetry
calling its catch

the last August
from the front steps

he waved with
what I thought

was a lackluster show
of resigned civility

but now know
was a last farewell

take care a sigh
that holds me

in the bleak winter
till spring light

if only I can trace
the sinuous line
 

Bogart

when Humphrey Bogart died,
Lauren Bacall said, spring
is a shitty time to die

from the hospital’s third floor
autumn in the Humber Valley
is a cheap Chinese combo

gold silk, mustard pungency,
crimson memories, gelled orange,
nature’s flamboyant dying

I could climb a poplar tree
and fall into the low gray sky
if I had enough faith to trust

the geometry of possibilities
in the countless shapes of trees,
rationality only one way of being

my father stirs, crazy with not
knowing, his brain now owned by
a tumour with a despot’s humour

everything is okay, I lie, wanting
more malleable truth, knowing only
autumn is a shitty season to die
Roland John


Exteriors

Walking amidst failing leaves,
our faint shadows stretched,
we wait for autumn’s passing
and the lean months to come.

Here we have reached our limits,
carelessly redressing past hurts
to display triumphant wounds;
yet no bloodied flesh resolves

drab lives unwisely scattered
amongst the quiet lies we tell
without pardon. The gold leaves
still fall against the settling sun.


Your Reply

Your expected letter makes me consider
your long fingers, your insistence on ink;
a rich paper, you always took such trouble
over the trivial, time was never our problem.

How like you, nine pages to answer
my emailed question, surer perhaps;
though this thick paper will disintegrate,
you will have bought degradable or at least

paper made from sustainable forests;
but that’s hardly the point. What have
you said in all these words that after writing
you turned away from to file your nails?


Sonata

All night I have struggled to find
the right music, thinking something
complex yet melodic appropriate

for this mood I wish to continue;
Chopin, or some deeper rapture,
Beethoven tried, but failed the test.

The voice was possible, spoilt
for choice I play Schubert, Schumann,
lieder, English songs, all wrong.

Somewhere there is a music
to swell this mood, a concord
to end an almost perfect day

and then it comes to me, I was right,
the piano, it carries me away, our lives
suddenly fulfilled by Charles Ives.


The Fell Sergeant

Flicking through these old files
finding evidence, photographs of you,
hotel receipts and travel snaps.
I wonder how we fitted in so much

all those urgent years ago, when youth
held us so splendid and so sure
we were life’s winners. Now alone
I question how it happened, when failure

entered and embraced the plan;
our stratagem to make life work
for us and lead the fell sergeant
from our exceptional estate.

Outdoor Art - Urban Light

"Urban Light" is located outside Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) on Wilshire Blvd and was created by Chris Burden. LACMA's has more than 100,000 objects divided among its numerous departments by region, media, and time period and are spread amongst the various museum buildings.

The Modern Art collection is displayed in the Ahmanson Building which was renovated in 2008 to have a new entrance featuring a large staircase, conceived as a gathering place similar to Rome's Spanish Steps. The outdoor installation stands in LACMA's courtyard of a garden of 100 palm trees, designed by artist Robert Irwin and landscape architect Paul Comstock. Some of the 30 varieties of palms are in the ground, but most are in large wooden boxes above ground.

Commissioned and presented in 2008, Urban Light, is an orderly, multi-tiered installation of 202 antique cast-iron street lights from various cities in and around the Los Angeles area. The street lights are functional, turn on in the evening, and are powered by solar panels on the roof of the BP Grand Entrance. Find out more about Chris Burden at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Burden
Artwork by Sandra Duran





About Books:

Title: Equal to the Earth
Author: Jee Leong Koh

Description: In his first full-length collection, Koh speaks with a range of voices--ancestral, recent and contemporary--and travels a span of ground to investigate the imaginary claims of community and self. At the center of this investigation, as of the book, lies the great question of love. "Koh is a vigorous, physical poet very much captured by the expressive power of rhythm, rhetoric, and the lexicon. He is also, paradoxically, a poet in pursuit of the most elusive and delicate of human emotions. The contradiction is wonderful and compelling, and so are his poems."--Vijay Seshadri  


Product Details:
Printed: 6 x 9 inches, 95 pages
ISBN:
Copyright: 2009
Language: English
Country: USA
Publisher’s Link: http://www.benchpresspoetry.com/

About Music - Maya Beiser

Maya Beiser is an American cellist who lives in New York City. She has an international career as a performer and recording artist. She was raised on a kibbutz in Israel by her French mother and Argentine father, and graduated from Yale University School of Music. The New Yorker magazine described her as a “cello goddess” and the San Francisco Chronicle called her “the queen of contemporary cello”.

Beiser is known for her virtuosity, her unusual concert presentations and her eclectic repertoire. She has collaborated with composers Louis Andriessen, Tan Dun, Brian Eno, Philip Glass, Osvaldo Golijov, Steve Reich, Simon Shaheen, and David Lang among many others. Beiser has toured as the featured cello soloist of Philip Glass’s Naqoygatsi, having appeared at the Sydney Opera House, Lincoln Center Festival, the World Expo in Nagoya, Japan, and in Barcelona, Paris, and San Francisco.

Her multimedia concert “World To Come” premiered in 2004 as part of the inaugural season of Carnegie Hall’s new venue, Zankel Hall. Her “World To Come” solo tour included performances at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, UCLA's Royce Hall, the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia, the Ravinia Festival in Chicago, and the Sydney Festival in Australia.

Her performance of Steve Reich’s "Cello Counterpoint" which was written for her, is featured on the Nonesuch CD “You Are,” which was chosen by The New York Times as one of the top albums of 2005. She is the soloist on the Sony Classical CD release of Tan Dun’s “Water Passion,” and has performed his Academy Award-winning score "Crouching Tiger" Concerto with orchestras around the globe, including the China Philharmonic, Shanghai Symphony, Montreal Symphony, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Utah Symphony, Eos Orchestra, and Sydney Symphony. She was the founding cellist of the new music ensemble, the Bang on a Can All-Stars. Find out more at: http://mayabeiser.com/
Ed Makowski


Memorial Day

Thursday before

about to call a friend
still enlisted Active.
Tour in Iraq

Tour in Afghanistan
Home again from a
tour in Iraq

Wanting to discuss barbecue details
of bratwurst, marinated chicken breasts,
which beer, who has enough chairs, water balloons,
the charcoal. Streamers for the bicycle parade,
if his mother is coming,
swimming trunks-
sparklers?

Then remembering
a 4th Drunk Driving conviction
gets mandatory jail time


Considering Christianity Towards Marriage

agreeing to
something I
didn't believe,
to

acquire
something
I didn't
want


Per Health Code

Wisconsin statutes require
that women's restroom
trash cans
have
lids

but the trash can lid
makes placing things inside
more difficult

so the cleaner
women's rest room
has garbage
all over the floor


State Of The Union

Fifty years ago
television viewers
were allowed only
Elvis Presley's face
his hips
thrusting
Black Music

Today, at the
Young Men's Christian Association
Women in lines
wearing tight clothing

stood, gyrating
all their

hips, thighs,
buttocks, breasts,
sphincter muscles kegels
and labia minora

in the rhythm
of music made by
Actual Black People
Helen Peterson


You Obtund Me

Reduce the edge, circle, cut
as smooth as wire through clay
trim unkind words, learn to bite
the tongue, let go of late nights
alone, learn patience, let it sand
away pain, mistrust, until you shine
with hope, like chrome freshly buffed


Myopic Stipple

The kind that takes a blind man from the dumpster
to the gallery spreading love like sprinkled dots
across canvas bunched in grocery cart corners
the cart that flies into the Mercedes, the art
that passes hands, dirt crusted to manicured
dents forgiven in light of finding the one
outsider artist left on the street, shunning
the paparazzi, TLC calling on a pay phone
but the man refuses the charges


Such A Nannicock

A word so rare even Oxford
Has no definition, Merriam Webster
shrugs it pages, blushing, call
it an extinct bird, a dodo with wings
strong enough for flight
always in the sky never landing
though trees stretch their branches
to brush through feathers, earth cries
out for the touch of a taloned feet


Lay Offs Induce Catalepsy

Rumors fly and the breath goes out
and there is nothing left to go in,
walls close, hands bind invisible
around arms, legs, neck
heart freezes within the chest
and all within the space of a whisper,
the rustle of paper, recoiling behind my back.
Contributors Biographies

Corey Mesler

Bio: he has published in numerous journals and anthologies. He has published four novels, Talk: A Novel in Dialogue (2002), We Are Billion-Year-Old Carbon (2006), The Ballad of the Two Tom Mores (2010) and Following Richard Brautigan (2010), a full length poetry collection, Some Identity Problems (2008), and a book of short stories, Listen: 29 Short Conversations (2009). He has also published a dozen chapbooks and been nominated for the Pushcart Prize numerous times. Two of his poems have been chosen for Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac. He also claims to have written, “Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves.” With his wife, he runs Burke’s Book Store, one of the country’s oldest (1875) and best independent bookstores. He lives in Memphis, Tennessee. Find him at http://www.coreymesler.com/.

Glenna Luschei

Bio: she is a poet, editor, and translator who studied at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and earned her MA in English at the University of Nebraska and her MA in Spanish at the University of California in Santa Barbara. She has worked as the editor-publisher of Solo Press since 1967. Over 20 collections of her work has been published and she has received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in literature. She teaches poetry workshops throughout California has been named Poet Laureate for the San Luis Obispo Poetry Festival in San Luis Obispo where she lives. Find out more about her books at: http://www.presapress.com/

Ian C. Smith

Bio: Bio: his work has appeared in Best Australian Poetry, Descant, Heat, Magma, The Malahat Review, & Meanjin. His latest book is Memory Like Hunger (Ginninderra). He lives with his wife and their four sons in Victoria, Australia. Contact him at: bf@datafast.net.au

Jean-Christope Sartois

Bio: he decided to seriously develope his long-time interest in photography in 2005 and took classes. His images are the mostly saturated colors, and altered black and white shots intended to be temperamental and charismatic, using both digital and silver finishing techniques. The 25 year old lives in France. You can visit him at: http://jcsartoris.com/

Jeff Crouch

Bio: he is both a visual artist and a poet. His graphic work has appeared in various e-zines. His poetry has appeared at Carrot Literary Journal, The Centrifugal Eye, Mad Hatter's Review, Niederngasse, Prose Toad, Red Fez, SCIFAIKUEST, Spoiled Ink, Stirring: A Literary Collection, Thieves Jargon, Triplopia, Twisted Tongue, Underground Window, Unlikely Stories, Unpleasant Event Schedule, Venereal Kittens, Ward 6 Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Grand Prairie, Texas. Contact him at: jmcrouch@msn.com

Carl Leggo

Bio: he is a poet and professor at the University of British Columbia. His books include: Come-By-Chance; Lifewriting as Literary Metissage and an Ethos for Our Times (co-authored with Erika Hasebe-Ludt and Cynthia Chambers); Being with A/r/tography (co-edited with Stephanie Springgay, Rita L. Irwin, and Peter Gouzouasis); Creative Expression, Creative Education (co-edited with Robert Kelly); and Poetic Inquiry: Vibrant Voices in the Social Sciences (co-edited with Monica Prendergast and Pauline Sameshima). He lives in Vancouver, Canada. Find out more at: http://www.heritage.nf.ca/arts/carlleggo.html

Roland John

Bio: after traveling in Europe and the Middle East he returned to the UK where he founded the Hippopotamus Press and edited Outposts Poetry Quarterly for several years. His poetry, criticism and translation has appeared in a wide range of journals in the UK and the USA. He has published four full collections, the latest being A Lament for England (bluechrome). His prose books include his analysis of Pound's The Cantos, A Beginner's Guide to The Cantos of Ezra Pound (University of Salzburg). He left London in 1989 and now lives in rural Somerset in the UK. Contact him at: RJHIPPOPRESS@aol.com

Sundra Duran

Bio: she works in the collage media and has recently published a book with fellow artist Darlene Olivia McElroy called The Image Transfer Workshop where they demonstrate 35 transfer techniques and trouble shoot what may go wrong and how to fix it. She uses gold leaf, gel, plastic heat, water slide decal, gampi tissue, crackle paste, paint and gum arabic transfers and often even lots of glazing to achieve the effect desired. She also recently pruchased an etching press to use in her studio and is having so much fun it should be illegal. She lives in Santa Fe, NM. Visit her at: http://sandraduranwilson.blogspot.com/

Ed Makowski

Bio: is a poet and artist living in Milwaukee, WI. While working as Eddie Kilowatt he released Manifest Density (2006) and Carrying a Knife in to the Gunfight (2007). Ed also makes broadside prints using a combination of typewriters, letterpress, and screen printing. The guy likes to ride motorcycles and go backpacking. More of his work can be found at http://edmakowski.wordpress.com/

Helen Peterson

Bio: she is the managing editor of Chopper Poetry Journal out of New London, Ct, and has previously published in Xelas, Identity Theory, lit chaos, Concelebratory Shoehorn Review, Wilderness House Literary Review, Ken*Again, Juked, Fell Swoop, diddledog, Hiss Quarterly, Right Hand Pointing, Elimae, Haruah, Zygote in My Coffee, Pedestal Magazine (book review), Literary Fever, Debris Magazine, Images Inscript, and Poetrybay. Her work was also featured in an anthology put out by Poet Plant Press last Fall. She says she may be loosing her job soon and has already began to accept dollar donations. For more information about Chopper or to contribute, visit the Myspace page: www.myspace.com/chopperjournal

Closing Note: The editor would like to thank the contributors for the use of their work. Each contributor reserves their original rights. Look for the next issue of CSR online on Oct. 1st. Copyright 2010 by Maurice Oliver. All Rights Reserved.


Visit my eclectic blog: http://www.lipterrain.blogspot.com/
my poetry blog: http://www.chantinghead.blogspot.com/