Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Editor's Note:
Welcome to Issue Forty Seven of CSR! By now, you regular readers know my child likes yo-yo strings and very barry white snowflakes. It craves the ghost of Christmas past in its spy catcher. Baby has an uncanny ability to WikiLeak every hulu skirt, swaying in a tropical breeze. This issue ties the apron's bow then wraps the fish in newspaper. It is filled with spicey curry feel-good. Add a group of pasta-eating poets, music to linoleum floor by and marzipan mixed in the book review and you've got the possibility of an entirely new holiday gift. Trust me, when you finish this issue you'll never want to throw away peach pits again. Or bed bugs to the tea party! Either way, guess who's coming to dinner. Now, add another plate setting and get busy...
Welcome to Issue Forty Seven of CSR! By now, you regular readers know my child likes yo-yo strings and very barry white snowflakes. It craves the ghost of Christmas past in its spy catcher. Baby has an uncanny ability to WikiLeak every hulu skirt, swaying in a tropical breeze. This issue ties the apron's bow then wraps the fish in newspaper. It is filled with spicey curry feel-good. Add a group of pasta-eating poets, music to linoleum floor by and marzipan mixed in the book review and you've got the possibility of an entirely new holiday gift. Trust me, when you finish this issue you'll never want to throw away peach pits again. Or bed bugs to the tea party! Either way, guess who's coming to dinner. Now, add another plate setting and get busy...
Russell Endo
Dream
My name means /progress/ in Japanese,
the “progress” of prosperity and good fortune.
The dust that could cleave
through makeshift barracks in Arizona
whetted my parents'
taste for the American Dream.
But my luck will have to be different.
I want my wheels to skim like blades in the wind
across all ruts.
I want my wheels to spin so fast
we stand still.
Are you with me? Say
it, Susumu.
-previously published in The American Poetry Review
Tocaner
When art is long and we are strong
will we know then that we belong?
When the water is deep and we are weak
what is it that we shall really seek?
Will we know then that we belong --
if all suffering is for all mankind
what is it that we shall really seek
when body leaves and mind goes too?
If all suffering is for all mankind,
spools unraveling thin, silken threads;
when body leaves and mind goes too,
white hairs, strands of genetic imprint?
Spools unraveling thin, silken threads
leaving thin memories to someone else,
white hairs, strands of genetic imprint,.
the little things left getting smaller, smaller,
leaving memories to someone else,
bits and pieces – how small does it get?
The little things left, getting smaller, smaller:
there is a flow blowing through the whole.
Bits and pieces: how small does it get --
when water is deep and we are weak?
There is a flow blowing through the whole
when art is long and we are strong.
-previously published in Poetry
Proximities
The river is flowing without end.
It inches along in arcs and bends.
There may be gurgling in the strata,
there is pulsing along its surface.
It inches along in arcs and bends;
it grinds and wears down rocks to tears:
there is pulsing along its surface
as each moment and its goals merge.
It grinds and wears down rocks to tears.
The river begins to know its banks
as each moment, and its goals, merge,
as particulars flow so much better….
The river begins to know its banks --
it speeds and presses in lesser curves
as particulars flow so much better;
the length of history becomes clearer.
It speeds and presses in lesser curves;
it slows down against harder rock;
the length of history becomes clearer.
It may take patience to learn its path.
It slows down against harder rock,
pondering all obstacles head-on.
It may take patience to learn its path,
looking beyond one’s own future,
pondering all obstacles head-on:
there may be gurgling in the strata,
looking beyond one’s own future:
the river is flowing without end.
Dragonflies
Their lines cleave glowing paths in the air,
so quick, veering in angles and spaces,
iridescences alluring, a summer blur,
latitudes and longitudes of zigzag,
so quick, veering in angles and spaces,
scintillating remembrances, glittering
latitudes and longitudes of zigzag:
past and present refracting in the eyes
scintillating remembrances glittering,
with multitudinous all-seeing eyes--
past and present refracting in the eyes --
shimmering energies from the sun,
with multitudinous all-seeing eyes:
the pond a single expanse of mind
shimmering energies from the sun,
shedding off past experiences,
the pond a single expanse of mind,
incarnations of lustrous time
shedding off past experiences,
unaware of their only season?
Incarnations of lustrous time,
iridescences alluring, a summer blur,
unaware of their only season,
their lines cleave glowing paths in the air.
-both poems previously published in Full Circle Journal
Dream
My name means /progress/ in Japanese,
the “progress” of prosperity and good fortune.
The dust that could cleave
through makeshift barracks in Arizona
whetted my parents'
taste for the American Dream.
But my luck will have to be different.
I want my wheels to skim like blades in the wind
across all ruts.
I want my wheels to spin so fast
we stand still.
Are you with me? Say
it, Susumu.
-previously published in The American Poetry Review
Tocaner
When art is long and we are strong
will we know then that we belong?
When the water is deep and we are weak
what is it that we shall really seek?
Will we know then that we belong --
if all suffering is for all mankind
what is it that we shall really seek
when body leaves and mind goes too?
If all suffering is for all mankind,
spools unraveling thin, silken threads;
when body leaves and mind goes too,
white hairs, strands of genetic imprint?
Spools unraveling thin, silken threads
leaving thin memories to someone else,
white hairs, strands of genetic imprint,.
the little things left getting smaller, smaller,
leaving memories to someone else,
bits and pieces – how small does it get?
The little things left, getting smaller, smaller:
there is a flow blowing through the whole.
Bits and pieces: how small does it get --
when water is deep and we are weak?
There is a flow blowing through the whole
when art is long and we are strong.
-previously published in Poetry
Proximities
The river is flowing without end.
It inches along in arcs and bends.
There may be gurgling in the strata,
there is pulsing along its surface.
It inches along in arcs and bends;
it grinds and wears down rocks to tears:
there is pulsing along its surface
as each moment and its goals merge.
It grinds and wears down rocks to tears.
The river begins to know its banks
as each moment, and its goals, merge,
as particulars flow so much better….
The river begins to know its banks --
it speeds and presses in lesser curves
as particulars flow so much better;
the length of history becomes clearer.
It speeds and presses in lesser curves;
it slows down against harder rock;
the length of history becomes clearer.
It may take patience to learn its path.
It slows down against harder rock,
pondering all obstacles head-on.
It may take patience to learn its path,
looking beyond one’s own future,
pondering all obstacles head-on:
there may be gurgling in the strata,
looking beyond one’s own future:
the river is flowing without end.
Dragonflies
Their lines cleave glowing paths in the air,
so quick, veering in angles and spaces,
iridescences alluring, a summer blur,
latitudes and longitudes of zigzag,
so quick, veering in angles and spaces,
scintillating remembrances, glittering
latitudes and longitudes of zigzag:
past and present refracting in the eyes
scintillating remembrances glittering,
with multitudinous all-seeing eyes--
past and present refracting in the eyes --
shimmering energies from the sun,
with multitudinous all-seeing eyes:
the pond a single expanse of mind
shimmering energies from the sun,
shedding off past experiences,
the pond a single expanse of mind,
incarnations of lustrous time
shedding off past experiences,
unaware of their only season?
Incarnations of lustrous time,
iridescences alluring, a summer blur,
unaware of their only season,
their lines cleave glowing paths in the air.
-both poems previously published in Full Circle Journal
Kelley White
Remember when you took us to that bar?
We’d no idea what lived behind that door;
I drank too much, my fiancé went home,
we went upstairs I don’t remember how
I got home later, just suppose somehow. . .
He never asked me why I didn’t come
home with him and I never asked him more--
like why he left us both behind. I just
remember how his clumsy words shocked me
and opened up my own blind eyes: to live
right over Sporter’s, in the evening give
your time at the Gay Men’s Health Center. . .
Wewere friends. I thought that you controlled your lust
much better than the other boys I’d met.
I would have been your lover. My regret.
The Old Men Presiding
In thick gloves and aprons; the organs
laid out, liver purple on the scales, cirrhotic
lumps boiling the surface, kidneys shriveled,
the yellow plaques on the great vessels, unzipped
and uncoiled, the hypertrophied grey-walled
heart—I might have done it—pathology
until I heard the buzz, that buzz that vibrated
my teeth, the saw cutting through sternum, shrill
burning scraps sinew not sawdust, not even the clean
sizzle of bacon, reports too early in the morning.
I choose another course, no cold basement rooms
and yet, there was, there, a wonder, truly.
Hair Wreath, 1865
--with thanks to Don LaBranche
I have let go my braids. Let there be locks
of the living bound with those of the dead—
yours come coiled, wound tight in the broken watch
the boy carried six months from Shiloh, red
bright as all the Thomases, your brother’s,
our son’s, (now a dozen rosebuds twisted
with the gray I make into leaves—mother’s
nearly white now, thinning.) I have let go
my braids. They will grow back for another
spring’s lambing—or fall—your curls made a rose
with mine, mouse brown, dusty brown, dutiful
brown, easily forgotten, that I wove
with yours once, in our meadow, bountiful
my braids, undone, your whisper, beautiful
Every day someone is standing
She’s fifteen years old, 4’11”,
her baby weighs 27 lbs. (a year and a half),
she weighs 87, he screams on her lap,
fights herfights me—the second seizure was Sunday,
there’s a rash on his shoulder, he twists, wild;
I’m afraid he’ll fling off the exam table,
already there’s a scar on his chin
where his eight year old uncle
dropped him; the mother’s a good student
she’s in tenth grade, like my daughter,
her bird-boned neck is pale as a birthday
candle; he has otitis, we’ll need to do an MRI,
and EEG: she needs a note for missing school:
everyday someone is standing on the edge,
her aunt rescued her once, took her into
foster care, can she be rescued again now?
Can she rescue her baby? And me?
Remember when you took us to that bar?
We’d no idea what lived behind that door;
I drank too much, my fiancé went home,
we went upstairs I don’t remember how
I got home later, just suppose somehow. . .
He never asked me why I didn’t come
home with him and I never asked him more--
like why he left us both behind. I just
remember how his clumsy words shocked me
and opened up my own blind eyes: to live
right over Sporter’s, in the evening give
your time at the Gay Men’s Health Center. . .
Wewere friends. I thought that you controlled your lust
much better than the other boys I’d met.
I would have been your lover. My regret.
The Old Men Presiding
In thick gloves and aprons; the organs
laid out, liver purple on the scales, cirrhotic
lumps boiling the surface, kidneys shriveled,
the yellow plaques on the great vessels, unzipped
and uncoiled, the hypertrophied grey-walled
heart—I might have done it—pathology
until I heard the buzz, that buzz that vibrated
my teeth, the saw cutting through sternum, shrill
burning scraps sinew not sawdust, not even the clean
sizzle of bacon, reports too early in the morning.
I choose another course, no cold basement rooms
and yet, there was, there, a wonder, truly.
Hair Wreath, 1865
--with thanks to Don LaBranche
I have let go my braids. Let there be locks
of the living bound with those of the dead—
yours come coiled, wound tight in the broken watch
the boy carried six months from Shiloh, red
bright as all the Thomases, your brother’s,
our son’s, (now a dozen rosebuds twisted
with the gray I make into leaves—mother’s
nearly white now, thinning.) I have let go
my braids. They will grow back for another
spring’s lambing—or fall—your curls made a rose
with mine, mouse brown, dusty brown, dutiful
brown, easily forgotten, that I wove
with yours once, in our meadow, bountiful
my braids, undone, your whisper, beautiful
Every day someone is standing
She’s fifteen years old, 4’11”,
her baby weighs 27 lbs. (a year and a half),
she weighs 87, he screams on her lap,
fights herfights me—the second seizure was Sunday,
there’s a rash on his shoulder, he twists, wild;
I’m afraid he’ll fling off the exam table,
already there’s a scar on his chin
where his eight year old uncle
dropped him; the mother’s a good student
she’s in tenth grade, like my daughter,
her bird-boned neck is pale as a birthday
candle; he has otitis, we’ll need to do an MRI,
and EEG: she needs a note for missing school:
everyday someone is standing on the edge,
her aunt rescued her once, took her into
foster care, can she be rescued again now?
Can she rescue her baby? And me?
L. Ward Abel
The Business
(To Anita O’Day)
We saw her
at the Paramount.
The drums were thunder.
Krupa
was a force of nature
and when Anita sang,
one of a triumvirate
that included
Ella and Billie, we soared.
A rumble was under the frame
that made up the floor-
boards.
With her later
small bands
she perfected chance.
Each song
was never to happen
again but for tape
and the memories
of drink, needles
and questions like what is jazz,
like what is the other side like?
The Gulf
Things don’t last forever.
Not even these old hills.
The oldest in the world
some say. But even they
will be ghosts someday,
will leave a memory
of heights and drop offs
that only the holy
can translate. I am finding
it more difficult to accept
the necessary view
that I have eroded down
from the young faults sheer
gleaming in an earlier morning
down to what I have become.
It’s ok, though. Because
now I can at least begin
to understand the layers
that have found their way
to a gulf of indescribable
reflection.
Out Of England
Remembering England now
like some variation of a story
I’d writtenedited, revised.
But it was real.
When I lived there
it was still a cripple,
the war smoldered yet
some forty years after the blitz.
Lately I fear her pleasance
is fleeting, green
turned to something that die
snooks and crannies
approaching terminus.
Truthfully I hear her songs
the vibrations
quieted just a little.
I was a receiver
of psalms there
slept soundly one night
in a little town out between
Bath and London,
deeply pillowed, safe,
just a child.
Paris
Thirty years ago in Paris
I was young
sun going down
loaf of bread ham cheese
two--count them--two
bottles of red the river
how I carried my guitar
I don’t recall
but I was happy
without knowing it
No I think I
knew.
The Business
(To Anita O’Day)
We saw her
at the Paramount.
The drums were thunder.
Krupa
was a force of nature
and when Anita sang,
one of a triumvirate
that included
Ella and Billie, we soared.
A rumble was under the frame
that made up the floor-
boards.
With her later
small bands
she perfected chance.
Each song
was never to happen
again but for tape
and the memories
of drink, needles
and questions like what is jazz,
like what is the other side like?
The Gulf
Things don’t last forever.
Not even these old hills.
The oldest in the world
some say. But even they
will be ghosts someday,
will leave a memory
of heights and drop offs
that only the holy
can translate. I am finding
it more difficult to accept
the necessary view
that I have eroded down
from the young faults sheer
gleaming in an earlier morning
down to what I have become.
It’s ok, though. Because
now I can at least begin
to understand the layers
that have found their way
to a gulf of indescribable
reflection.
Out Of England
Remembering England now
like some variation of a story
I’d writtenedited, revised.
But it was real.
When I lived there
it was still a cripple,
the war smoldered yet
some forty years after the blitz.
Lately I fear her pleasance
is fleeting, green
turned to something that die
snooks and crannies
approaching terminus.
Truthfully I hear her songs
the vibrations
quieted just a little.
I was a receiver
of psalms there
slept soundly one night
in a little town out between
Bath and London,
deeply pillowed, safe,
just a child.
Paris
Thirty years ago in Paris
I was young
sun going down
loaf of bread ham cheese
two--count them--two
bottles of red the river
how I carried my guitar
I don’t recall
but I was happy
without knowing it
No I think I
knew.
Arlene Ang
Bullet Hole
Later, we assumed that the shouting
became unbearable. He was eight. His parents
laid out glass shards in the kitchen.
The aquarium shattered its emptiness to the ground.
Listen, when animals die,
they go in hiding, his father said.
He believed him. He hid in the closet
to find the goldfish.
This was how we found his body:
one hand pressed
against the wall as if asking
to be let in, a flashlight clutched in the other.
The bullet was meant for his mother.
And so it happened that we extracted it,
then held up his heart, gleaming and photogenic
against the light,
the hole in the middle
like the mouth of a stillborn fetus.
My Ex-Wife's on the Phone Again
She's supposed to be on a diet.
The coat that used to fit her
now fits the emergency ward.
She's lonely. Someone,
in the background, wants to know
what she wants. Should
she go for another croissant
or shove her head in the gas oven?
She has everything
under control. She repeats
her grocery list aloud
as if it could save the natural world
from herself.
Lipstick smudges
in her voice like alcohol.
She still blames the lack of fiber
in her eating habits
on her parents. The heart of a blue
whale can weigh
up to 450 kilograms.
She tells me this again and again.
She's laughing so hard
I hear milkshake shoot out
her nose and hit
that perfect spot on the wall.
I tell her she got
the wrong number.
So this is how I begin to die---
in one unconscious state, the living
are carved in simulated warfare. Holes
in the newspaper pass out
light from moving cars. Boxes fill up with breakables.
Even now, beer assumes the shape
of a faceless father. A black telephone
smuggles voices through
the party line until I am speechless.
Thud. The rifle on the end table
is a baby picture. As for happier events,
there are tv game shows.
And this glass jar, one prolapsed
uterus in formaldehyde.
Today the Porch Light
The bulb's gray tint is final.
It swings in the wind, like a dead falcon.
In your thumb, a splinter. This bench
was made to carry the burden of ten people---
not one on crutches, studying
the back of his hand and how everything
is reduced to cracks up close.
You have a leg cast with no names
to identify whose friend it is.
A mosquito blazes their hunger
up your left arm. Is it the nature of rain
to mask its fear of heights?
The barks of dogs are wet, organically distant. You throw
your crutches at the dandelions.
The natural world folds itself into shadows.
A garden dwarf lies face down,
licking little deaths from the grass.
Bullet Hole
Later, we assumed that the shouting
became unbearable. He was eight. His parents
laid out glass shards in the kitchen.
The aquarium shattered its emptiness to the ground.
Listen, when animals die,
they go in hiding, his father said.
He believed him. He hid in the closet
to find the goldfish.
This was how we found his body:
one hand pressed
against the wall as if asking
to be let in, a flashlight clutched in the other.
The bullet was meant for his mother.
And so it happened that we extracted it,
then held up his heart, gleaming and photogenic
against the light,
the hole in the middle
like the mouth of a stillborn fetus.
My Ex-Wife's on the Phone Again
She's supposed to be on a diet.
The coat that used to fit her
now fits the emergency ward.
She's lonely. Someone,
in the background, wants to know
what she wants. Should
she go for another croissant
or shove her head in the gas oven?
She has everything
under control. She repeats
her grocery list aloud
as if it could save the natural world
from herself.
Lipstick smudges
in her voice like alcohol.
She still blames the lack of fiber
in her eating habits
on her parents. The heart of a blue
whale can weigh
up to 450 kilograms.
She tells me this again and again.
She's laughing so hard
I hear milkshake shoot out
her nose and hit
that perfect spot on the wall.
I tell her she got
the wrong number.
So this is how I begin to die---
in one unconscious state, the living
are carved in simulated warfare. Holes
in the newspaper pass out
light from moving cars. Boxes fill up with breakables.
Even now, beer assumes the shape
of a faceless father. A black telephone
smuggles voices through
the party line until I am speechless.
Thud. The rifle on the end table
is a baby picture. As for happier events,
there are tv game shows.
And this glass jar, one prolapsed
uterus in formaldehyde.
Today the Porch Light
The bulb's gray tint is final.
It swings in the wind, like a dead falcon.
In your thumb, a splinter. This bench
was made to carry the burden of ten people---
not one on crutches, studying
the back of his hand and how everything
is reduced to cracks up close.
You have a leg cast with no names
to identify whose friend it is.
A mosquito blazes their hunger
up your left arm. Is it the nature of rain
to mask its fear of heights?
The barks of dogs are wet, organically distant. You throw
your crutches at the dandelions.
The natural world folds itself into shadows.
A garden dwarf lies face down,
licking little deaths from the grass.
Forrest Hamer
Grace
This air is flooded with her. I am a boy again, and my mother
and I lie on wet grass, laughing. She startles, turns to
marigolds at my side, saying beautiful, and I can see the red
there is in them.
When she would fall into her thoughts, we'd look for what
distracted her from us.
My mother's gone again as suddenly as ever and, seven months
after the funeral, I go dancing. I am becoming grateful.
Breathing, thinking, marigolds.
Down Bt The Riverside
Ain't goin study war no more
Ain't goin study war no more
Ain't goin study war no more
During the time Daddy was becoming Dad,
the armies and armies of green plastic soldiers
went on with their wars, my empire of the private
grown. Walter Cronkite tallied each day's casualties,
and my soldiers named themselves Americans or Viet Cong;
they zipped themselves up in long full bags or lay about
without their arms and legs. My soldiers bloodied themselves
with our garden's mud, and they did so under orders
from the eight-year-old sergeant whose father
had not been home in months.
And since I had not seen him,
even in the crowds laughing at Bob Hope jokes,
a new crowd each new place, I commanded
that the Army needed chaplains more than sergeants,
and the next Sunday I joined church, begged God
to help me lay down burdens and bring Dad home;
and that day I baptized each of my soldiers
in large garden puddles, blessed the crowd of them at
attention, and studied them not once more.
Charlene-n-Booker 4ever
And the old men, supervising grown grandsons, nephews,
any man a boy given this chance of making
a new sidewalk outside the apartment building where
some of them live, three old men and their wives,
the aging unmarrying children, and the child
who is a cousin, whose mother has sent her here
because she doesn't know what to do with her,
she's out of control, she wants to be a gangsta, and
the old folks talk to her as if she minds them
and already has that respect for their years her mother
finally grew into. The girl who does not look
like them eats and eats and sleeps late, sneaks away
when they are busy, and tonight will write herself
all over the sidewalk while it is still wet but
the old have gone inside, and the grown gone home,
and her mother who is somewhere overseas
of writing her that long long letter, but decides not to.
A dull sound, varying now and again
And then we began eating corn starch,
chalk chewed wet into sirup. We pilfered
Argo boxes stored away to stiffen
my white dress shirt, and my cousin
and I played or watched TV, no longer annoyed
by the din of never cooling afternoons.
On the way home from church one fifth Sunday,
shirt outside my pants, my tie clipped on
its wrinkling collar, I found a new small can of snuff,
packed a chunk inside my cheek, and tripped
from the musky sting making my head ache,
giving me shivers knowing my aunt hid cigarettes
in the drawer under her slips,
that drawer the middle one on the left.
-all poems previously published at Afro Poets
Grace
This air is flooded with her. I am a boy again, and my mother
and I lie on wet grass, laughing. She startles, turns to
marigolds at my side, saying beautiful, and I can see the red
there is in them.
When she would fall into her thoughts, we'd look for what
distracted her from us.
My mother's gone again as suddenly as ever and, seven months
after the funeral, I go dancing. I am becoming grateful.
Breathing, thinking, marigolds.
Down Bt The Riverside
Ain't goin study war no more
Ain't goin study war no more
Ain't goin study war no more
During the time Daddy was becoming Dad,
the armies and armies of green plastic soldiers
went on with their wars, my empire of the private
grown. Walter Cronkite tallied each day's casualties,
and my soldiers named themselves Americans or Viet Cong;
they zipped themselves up in long full bags or lay about
without their arms and legs. My soldiers bloodied themselves
with our garden's mud, and they did so under orders
from the eight-year-old sergeant whose father
had not been home in months.
And since I had not seen him,
even in the crowds laughing at Bob Hope jokes,
a new crowd each new place, I commanded
that the Army needed chaplains more than sergeants,
and the next Sunday I joined church, begged God
to help me lay down burdens and bring Dad home;
and that day I baptized each of my soldiers
in large garden puddles, blessed the crowd of them at
attention, and studied them not once more.
Charlene-n-Booker 4ever
And the old men, supervising grown grandsons, nephews,
any man a boy given this chance of making
a new sidewalk outside the apartment building where
some of them live, three old men and their wives,
the aging unmarrying children, and the child
who is a cousin, whose mother has sent her here
because she doesn't know what to do with her,
she's out of control, she wants to be a gangsta, and
the old folks talk to her as if she minds them
and already has that respect for their years her mother
finally grew into. The girl who does not look
like them eats and eats and sleeps late, sneaks away
when they are busy, and tonight will write herself
all over the sidewalk while it is still wet but
the old have gone inside, and the grown gone home,
and her mother who is somewhere overseas
of writing her that long long letter, but decides not to.
A dull sound, varying now and again
And then we began eating corn starch,
chalk chewed wet into sirup. We pilfered
Argo boxes stored away to stiffen
my white dress shirt, and my cousin
and I played or watched TV, no longer annoyed
by the din of never cooling afternoons.
On the way home from church one fifth Sunday,
shirt outside my pants, my tie clipped on
its wrinkling collar, I found a new small can of snuff,
packed a chunk inside my cheek, and tripped
from the musky sting making my head ache,
giving me shivers knowing my aunt hid cigarettes
in the drawer under her slips,
that drawer the middle one on the left.
-all poems previously published at Afro Poets
Lee Upton
"All The Wrong Numbers"
Isn’t this Linda? he asks.
This is the number I was given, he says.
You can detect his humiliation
emitting a high frequency sound
that, frankly, you’re good at hearing—
like you’re the dog of humiliation.
He repeats the number and repeats her name.
Now you’re an incompetent god
listening to a petition,
and unable to do the smallest thing to relieve
ordinary misery.
And maybe you think you could cooperate for a second
and say, This is Linda,
and then let him figure it out.
Although, face it, the man keeps
repeating the number,
and you say again, Yes,
that is this number,
until he fully realizes
that she’s stiffed him.
And he knows that you know too.
And a needle of pain vibrates
in his breathing.
The phone doesn’t click
as if the man still hopes
you’re Linda playing a trick
and at any moment will say,
in the strange intimacy that phones project,
you’ll say: Of course it’s Linda—I just can’t resist teasing you.
a consequence,
you have to be the first to hang up,
but of course he calls again thinking he misdialed earlier,
and he says, Linda?
and you want to tell the man:
You’ve made more than one mistake.
Dear God, stop bothering me.
Oh, but you won’t say that
because you feel like apologizing for Linda,
but that would be idiotic like
apologizing for Eve.
As if you believed in original sin.
Hasn’t unearned
guilt caused enough suffering?
And then the man
on the other end of the line
says again, Linda?
in this sad little bleat,
and you,
you say,
This isn’t Linda,
but what is your name?
And then he hangs up,
a bit terrified of you.
But that’s all right:
he won’t call again,
and he’s not thinking about Linda;
he’s thinking there’s something
wrong with you,
and evidently
something is.
-previously published in The Best American Poetry 2010
The Fish House
A smell of ammonia or aluminum
and you're here.
You've entered at the side door.
The place seems beaten with a mallet.
A cathedral fish
with weeping gills loiters
among bright things stuck in ice.
And the young person you had been
blinks at a table.
What have we learned since we sat
in just that position, leaning forward?
Now we know enough to leave?
Just saying so can't make that woman
stand from the table,
sick of betraying herself or anyone.
Tell her what we can.
The past is a fish
that cannot swim.
It is mounted on a wall
above a woman's head.
She does not have to admire it.
The Crying Room
The church had a crying room—
up at the opposite side of the altar.
Good for the baby.
It was glass on all sides like a tank.
A microphone brought in the priest’s voice.
From the crying room we could see
how things happened backstage:
someone coming to the priest
with a bell and a napkin.
We weren’t soundproof.
Every time the baby cried
a pewful turned to us.
But then, after a point,
the parishioners were almost used to
the intermittent little shrieks,
the baby wanting down,
wanting up.
This was in a town
with the sea just a block away
and remarkable sea winds,
winds to lift, to accost, to warn.
I was holding the crying baby
behind the glass doors.
I could look out at the parishioners
who had gone to the trouble
to make a place for the smallest
throats among them,
even though they were used
to being pushed by invisible forces.
They were right to put distractions
ahead of them in glass
as if to preserve and in
preserving to distort,
and yet not fail to see
exactly who made trouble for them.
The Table
To rise from the table
he put his hands upon it—
ate and drank
and played cards upon it.
Wrote to his mother,
blessed her,
made politics upon it,
pressed the fly leaf,
let poinsettias yellow upon it,
dropped the bread and killed the crust upon it,
read his Edgar Allan Poe upon it,
sponged the boards and tumblers,
wedged and split
the knife upon it
but when he turned the table over,
its four legs up in the air
like a dead horse,
that's when he ended our bargaining,
that's when he gripped more than the table
and took more than signals from across the table,
more than tappings, rustlings, eye blinks,
negotiation's soft wiring,
that's when he lunged over the legs of the table,
that's when at last—how long do I have to wait—
he turned over the precinct
and drafted his declaration and colonial address,
that's when nothing could go on under the table
and that's when he got the table to work.
-all three poems previously published at Poem Hunter
"All The Wrong Numbers"
Isn’t this Linda? he asks.
This is the number I was given, he says.
You can detect his humiliation
emitting a high frequency sound
that, frankly, you’re good at hearing—
like you’re the dog of humiliation.
He repeats the number and repeats her name.
Now you’re an incompetent god
listening to a petition,
and unable to do the smallest thing to relieve
ordinary misery.
And maybe you think you could cooperate for a second
and say, This is Linda,
and then let him figure it out.
Although, face it, the man keeps
repeating the number,
and you say again, Yes,
that is this number,
until he fully realizes
that she’s stiffed him.
And he knows that you know too.
And a needle of pain vibrates
in his breathing.
The phone doesn’t click
as if the man still hopes
you’re Linda playing a trick
and at any moment will say,
in the strange intimacy that phones project,
you’ll say: Of course it’s Linda—I just can’t resist teasing you.
a consequence,
you have to be the first to hang up,
but of course he calls again thinking he misdialed earlier,
and he says, Linda?
and you want to tell the man:
You’ve made more than one mistake.
Dear God, stop bothering me.
Oh, but you won’t say that
because you feel like apologizing for Linda,
but that would be idiotic like
apologizing for Eve.
As if you believed in original sin.
Hasn’t unearned
guilt caused enough suffering?
And then the man
on the other end of the line
says again, Linda?
in this sad little bleat,
and you,
you say,
This isn’t Linda,
but what is your name?
And then he hangs up,
a bit terrified of you.
But that’s all right:
he won’t call again,
and he’s not thinking about Linda;
he’s thinking there’s something
wrong with you,
and evidently
something is.
-previously published in The Best American Poetry 2010
The Fish House
A smell of ammonia or aluminum
and you're here.
You've entered at the side door.
The place seems beaten with a mallet.
A cathedral fish
with weeping gills loiters
among bright things stuck in ice.
And the young person you had been
blinks at a table.
What have we learned since we sat
in just that position, leaning forward?
Now we know enough to leave?
Just saying so can't make that woman
stand from the table,
sick of betraying herself or anyone.
Tell her what we can.
The past is a fish
that cannot swim.
It is mounted on a wall
above a woman's head.
She does not have to admire it.
The Crying Room
The church had a crying room—
up at the opposite side of the altar.
Good for the baby.
It was glass on all sides like a tank.
A microphone brought in the priest’s voice.
From the crying room we could see
how things happened backstage:
someone coming to the priest
with a bell and a napkin.
We weren’t soundproof.
Every time the baby cried
a pewful turned to us.
But then, after a point,
the parishioners were almost used to
the intermittent little shrieks,
the baby wanting down,
wanting up.
This was in a town
with the sea just a block away
and remarkable sea winds,
winds to lift, to accost, to warn.
I was holding the crying baby
behind the glass doors.
I could look out at the parishioners
who had gone to the trouble
to make a place for the smallest
throats among them,
even though they were used
to being pushed by invisible forces.
They were right to put distractions
ahead of them in glass
as if to preserve and in
preserving to distort,
and yet not fail to see
exactly who made trouble for them.
The Table
To rise from the table
he put his hands upon it—
ate and drank
and played cards upon it.
Wrote to his mother,
blessed her,
made politics upon it,
pressed the fly leaf,
let poinsettias yellow upon it,
dropped the bread and killed the crust upon it,
read his Edgar Allan Poe upon it,
sponged the boards and tumblers,
wedged and split
the knife upon it
but when he turned the table over,
its four legs up in the air
like a dead horse,
that's when he ended our bargaining,
that's when he gripped more than the table
and took more than signals from across the table,
more than tappings, rustlings, eye blinks,
negotiation's soft wiring,
that's when he lunged over the legs of the table,
that's when at last—how long do I have to wait—
he turned over the precinct
and drafted his declaration and colonial address,
that's when nothing could go on under the table
and that's when he got the table to work.
-all three poems previously published at Poem Hunter
Outdoor Art - Rainbow Pieces
Rainbow Piece is an outdoor sculpture that utilizes arched tubular elements with applied color to fiberglass, its dimensions are 2.64 x 8.75 x 6.39 m. Located within a reflecting pool of Scott library at York University in Toronto, Canada, the arcs of Rainbow Piece's colors shift with the movement of the sun.
The structure was created by Montreal born Hugh LeRoy, who studied at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts under Arthur Lismer for five years, and was later elected as a Fellow of the Royal Canadian Academy in 1975. He is most noted for his sculptures, works that are within a constructivist idiom.
LeRoy is presently an Associate Professor of drawing, painting and sculpture in the Faculty of Fine Arts, York University. Rainbow Piece was purchased by York University in 1972. Find out more about the artist at: http://www.yorku.ca/agyu/exhibitions/sculpture_leroy.html
Rainbow Piece is an outdoor sculpture that utilizes arched tubular elements with applied color to fiberglass, its dimensions are 2.64 x 8.75 x 6.39 m. Located within a reflecting pool of Scott library at York University in Toronto, Canada, the arcs of Rainbow Piece's colors shift with the movement of the sun.
The structure was created by Montreal born Hugh LeRoy, who studied at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts under Arthur Lismer for five years, and was later elected as a Fellow of the Royal Canadian Academy in 1975. He is most noted for his sculptures, works that are within a constructivist idiom.
LeRoy is presently an Associate Professor of drawing, painting and sculpture in the Faculty of Fine Arts, York University. Rainbow Piece was purchased by York University in 1972. Find out more about the artist at: http://www.yorku.ca/agyu/exhibitions/sculpture_leroy.html
About Books:Title: Big Bright Sun
Author: Nate Pritts
Description: Nate Pritts’ Big Bright Sun probably feels so thoroughly lived because reading it feels so like living in it. Robert Creeley wrote that for him in poems “the world came true.” In these poems the world comes true. And how! All this sky glued to the trees and the world surface by the resin of sun-soaked American speech! You can feel this book poised listening to itself and all the light, sound, thought and feeling passing through it. Passing through on its way towards all its directly addressed others, us readers included. “Let’s be everlasting today,” this book, at one point early on, proposes. Let’s. -- Anthony McCann
Description: Nate Pritts’ Big Bright Sun probably feels so thoroughly lived because reading it feels so like living in it. Robert Creeley wrote that for him in poems “the world came true.” In these poems the world comes true. And how! All this sky glued to the trees and the world surface by the resin of sun-soaked American speech! You can feel this book poised listening to itself and all the light, sound, thought and feeling passing through it. Passing through on its way towards all its directly addressed others, us readers included. “Let’s be everlasting today,” this book, at one point early on, proposes. Let’s. -- Anthony McCann
Product details: Printed: 6" x 9", 100 pages
ISBN: 978-1-60964-020-0
Copyright: 2010
Language: English
Country: USA
Publisher's link: http://www.blazevox.org/
About Music - k-os
Kevin Brereton (born February 20, 1972), better known by his stage name k-os (pronounced /ˈkeɪ.ɒs/ "chaos"), is a Canadian rapper, singer, songwriter and record producer. The alias "k-os" (spelled with a lower case "k") is an acronym for "Knowledge of Self." His music incorporates a wide variety of music genres including rap, funk, rock, and reggae. The lyrics frequently focus on promoting a "positive message" while at times expressing criticism of mainstream hip hop culture's obsession with money, fame and glorification of violence.
Raised by Jehovah's Witness parents in locales as disparate as Toronto and Trinidad, it was no surprise that Kheaven Brereton, aka k-os (pronounced: chaos) was a bit different than your average MC. A singer as well as a rhymer, and a producer to boot, k-os proved on his debut album, Exit (Astralwerks, 2002), that being preachy didn't have to mean being boring. The LP stood out dramatically with lush, instrument-driven arrangements to go with the traditional hip-hop elements of drum programming, samples, and the like.
Acoustic guitar and piano marked the single "Heaven Only Knows"; dub and reggae influences tinged "Freeze." Many of the tracks found the rapper singing, so much so that an argument could be raised about the genre to which k-os in fact belonged. And that was just the way he liked it. A tour to support Exit stretched from late 2002 through summer 2003; the dates saw k-os performing with such hip-hop luminaries as India.Arie and Floetry. Exit went on to pick up International Album of the Year at the 2003 Source Awards. K-os returned in September 2004 with the equally ambitious Joyful Rebellion, a record whose sales hit almost double-platinum levels. After writing and performing "Burning to Shine" with the CBC Orchestra (a process that was documented on the network) in 2005, k-os released Atlantis: Hymns for Disco the following year. His fourth album, Yes!, was released in 2008.
A musician as well as a producer, k-os has written and produced nearly every part of all four of his albums. k-os usually performs with a live band, something that is uncommon in the hip hop genre. He sometimes plays guitar and keyboard both during live performances and in the studio. Find out more at: http://www.k-osmusic.com/
Kevin Brereton (born February 20, 1972), better known by his stage name k-os (pronounced /ˈkeɪ.ɒs/ "chaos"), is a Canadian rapper, singer, songwriter and record producer. The alias "k-os" (spelled with a lower case "k") is an acronym for "Knowledge of Self." His music incorporates a wide variety of music genres including rap, funk, rock, and reggae. The lyrics frequently focus on promoting a "positive message" while at times expressing criticism of mainstream hip hop culture's obsession with money, fame and glorification of violence.
Raised by Jehovah's Witness parents in locales as disparate as Toronto and Trinidad, it was no surprise that Kheaven Brereton, aka k-os (pronounced: chaos) was a bit different than your average MC. A singer as well as a rhymer, and a producer to boot, k-os proved on his debut album, Exit (Astralwerks, 2002), that being preachy didn't have to mean being boring. The LP stood out dramatically with lush, instrument-driven arrangements to go with the traditional hip-hop elements of drum programming, samples, and the like.
Acoustic guitar and piano marked the single "Heaven Only Knows"; dub and reggae influences tinged "Freeze." Many of the tracks found the rapper singing, so much so that an argument could be raised about the genre to which k-os in fact belonged. And that was just the way he liked it. A tour to support Exit stretched from late 2002 through summer 2003; the dates saw k-os performing with such hip-hop luminaries as India.Arie and Floetry. Exit went on to pick up International Album of the Year at the 2003 Source Awards. K-os returned in September 2004 with the equally ambitious Joyful Rebellion, a record whose sales hit almost double-platinum levels. After writing and performing "Burning to Shine" with the CBC Orchestra (a process that was documented on the network) in 2005, k-os released Atlantis: Hymns for Disco the following year. His fourth album, Yes!, was released in 2008.
A musician as well as a producer, k-os has written and produced nearly every part of all four of his albums. k-os usually performs with a live band, something that is uncommon in the hip hop genre. He sometimes plays guitar and keyboard both during live performances and in the studio. Find out more at: http://www.k-osmusic.com/
Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal
Cofessions Of A Billionaire
When I was 5
I created the Internet.
I left my post
at the White House
to count cards at
casinos in Las Vegas
and Atlantic City .
When I was 6
I met my second wife.
My first wife was
a one night stand
in Atlantic City .
We wed, honeymooned,
and split up the same day.
I left her 5 shares
of stock in eBay and
Google, but she
sold them for blow
and crystal meth.
Now she is a Paranoid
Schizophrenic.
Thirty years later
I have nothing left in the bank.
I gave it all
to the poor. I have been
hopping trains like
a hobo ever since.
I miss hot showers.
Life Rests
The streets
are still.
The garrulous birds
and crows sleep.
Incidents
and accidents
are down this hour.
This hour
life rests.
The lights are red
in the broad streets.
Cars and pedestrians
are home.
You may say
they’re at peace.
There is silence.
Near Sadness
I was near sadness.
I saw your face. I
held your hand. It was
the dream without end.
You walked out the door.
It was morning and
my miserable
heart was somber. I
was near sadness. I
felt strange, near madness,
and singing a song
in a low tone. I
wept and woke up. I
felt perturbed. I heard
a voice. It was yours.
I dropped your ashes.
Waiting On The Rain
Waiting on the rain,
I settle for a bit of wind.
It’s something.
I always say
I love the air with spice.
Some fresh rain,
a bit of wind,
I don’t mind.
Cofessions Of A Billionaire
When I was 5
I created the Internet.
I left my post
at the White House
to count cards at
casinos in Las Vegas
and Atlantic City .
When I was 6
I met my second wife.
My first wife was
a one night stand
in Atlantic City .
We wed, honeymooned,
and split up the same day.
I left her 5 shares
of stock in eBay and
Google, but she
sold them for blow
and crystal meth.
Now she is a Paranoid
Schizophrenic.
Thirty years later
I have nothing left in the bank.
I gave it all
to the poor. I have been
hopping trains like
a hobo ever since.
I miss hot showers.
Life Rests
The streets
are still.
The garrulous birds
and crows sleep.
Incidents
and accidents
are down this hour.
This hour
life rests.
The lights are red
in the broad streets.
Cars and pedestrians
are home.
You may say
they’re at peace.
There is silence.
Near Sadness
I was near sadness.
I saw your face. I
held your hand. It was
the dream without end.
You walked out the door.
It was morning and
my miserable
heart was somber. I
was near sadness. I
felt strange, near madness,
and singing a song
in a low tone. I
wept and woke up. I
felt perturbed. I heard
a voice. It was yours.
I dropped your ashes.
Waiting On The Rain
Waiting on the rain,
I settle for a bit of wind.
It’s something.
I always say
I love the air with spice.
Some fresh rain,
a bit of wind,
I don’t mind.
Christine Hamm
How One Cat Holds The Other
Tongue dipping into an ear, white
paw fixed over the other's neck.
Low growling. Whiskers lifting,
repointed. Black back paw tap-
ping like an impatient tap-dance
rat the door. What serves as an
orange elbow, crooked and in
the air. White fur on red, like a fur
sandwich or a pie made of fur.
The Dad Parade
how they disappeared each morning
in silver or blue cars smelling
of old newspapers
before we had even fought
our way out from under
the heavy dreams of sinking boats
and black lakes, of the family
cat stuck in the oak at the edge
of the park and us wearing
mittens and no pants,
with no way to climb
without falling down and down
Forgetting The Words
the six-inch cardboard city on the left
is overrun with trembling strings of flame,
the rising cotton balls of smoke form horses
and silverware, the wolves, their pink wax
lips curled into slick waves of desire and rage,
are so close to us, to the woman holding a baby
to her chest: her wig of real human hair sprayed stiff
as if whipped by wind across her eyes, barefoot,
though the plaster snow, with its painted crescents
of shadow, is up to her knees
Our Last Big Fight
We are outside, surrounded
by women with empty mouths.
They stand under tents, behind
rows of books. They hand us
little pieces of paper, their eyes
searching our eyes, as if they
might recognize us, as if we
are merely waiting
for the right moment to tell
them we are cousins, to give
them a gift.
I turn towards them;
you walk away.
Darkness approaches like a horrible
dress or a loud, broken train.
How One Cat Holds The Other
Tongue dipping into an ear, white
paw fixed over the other's neck.
Low growling. Whiskers lifting,
repointed. Black back paw tap-
ping like an impatient tap-dance
rat the door. What serves as an
orange elbow, crooked and in
the air. White fur on red, like a fur
sandwich or a pie made of fur.
The Dad Parade
how they disappeared each morning
in silver or blue cars smelling
of old newspapers
before we had even fought
our way out from under
the heavy dreams of sinking boats
and black lakes, of the family
cat stuck in the oak at the edge
of the park and us wearing
mittens and no pants,
with no way to climb
without falling down and down
Forgetting The Words
the six-inch cardboard city on the left
is overrun with trembling strings of flame,
the rising cotton balls of smoke form horses
and silverware, the wolves, their pink wax
lips curled into slick waves of desire and rage,
are so close to us, to the woman holding a baby
to her chest: her wig of real human hair sprayed stiff
as if whipped by wind across her eyes, barefoot,
though the plaster snow, with its painted crescents
of shadow, is up to her knees
Our Last Big Fight
We are outside, surrounded
by women with empty mouths.
They stand under tents, behind
rows of books. They hand us
little pieces of paper, their eyes
searching our eyes, as if they
might recognize us, as if we
are merely waiting
for the right moment to tell
them we are cousins, to give
them a gift.
I turn towards them;
you walk away.
Darkness approaches like a horrible
dress or a loud, broken train.
Contributors Biographies
Russell Endo
Bio: he has published poetry previously in The American Poetry Review, The Antioch Review, Full Circle Journal, Hawa’ii Pacific Review, New Letters, Ploughshares, Poetry, and in other journals. I worked for many years as a lawyer for the City of Philadelphia Solicitor’s Office in Health and Human Services, receiving a Liberty Bell for my services. I reside in Smyrna, Delaware. Contact him at: victoriakong@Comcast.net
Kelly White
Bio: she earned degrees from Dartmouth College and Harvard Medical School and has been a pediatrician in inner city Philadelphia for twenty years. She has had more than two hundred poems accepted for publication since October 1999, including a book, The Patient Presents (People's Press) and a chapbook, "I am going to walk toward the sanctuary," (Via Dolorosa Press/Nepenthe Books). She is the recipient of a 2008 Penn. Council on the Arts grant in poetry. Two Birds In Flame, poems related to the Shaker Community in Canterbury, NH, was published in 2010 by Beech River Books. She has recently returned to her small New Hampshire village and begun work at a rural health center. Contact her at: kelleywhitemd@yahoo.com
L. Ward Abel
Bio: he is a poet, composer of music, lawyer, aspiring teacher and spoken-word performer who has been published at The Reader, The Yale Anglers’ Journal, Versal, The Pedestal, Pale House, Kritya, Ditch, Open Wide, Moloch, Legal Studies Forum, and hundreds of others. Abel has recently been nominated for “Best of the Web” by Dead Mule and The Northville Review (2009). He is the author of Peach Box and Verge (Little Poem Press, 2003), Jonesing For Byzantium (UK Authors Press, 2006), The Heat of Blooming (Pudding House Press, 2008), and the forthcoming American Bruise (Parallel Press). He lives in rural Georgia and can be contacted at: WAABEL@aol.com
Ursula Abresch
Bio: she has been interested in photography since very early in life. As a little girl, she would walk around with her father's brownie camera "pretending" she was making pictures. She found my first camera in a box of discarded items. With money made from odd jobs, she traded the brownie in for her first SLR, a Russian made camera that she used for several years. Her next camera was a Pentax K1000 which she used to record family events and her children growing up. She still has the camera today, but when digital photography came along, she was able to start experimenting. Now I shoot RAW on a Nikon and process the images on a Mac using PSCS4. Her style can loosely be classified as photo-impressionism. I print, mat, and frame my own images. She lives in British Vancouver, Canada. Visit her website at: http://www.ursulasphotos.com/
Arlene Ang
Bio: she is the author of four poetry collections. Her collaborative fiction with Valerie Fox has been published in Admit 2, Defenestration, and qaartsiluni, and they are the authors of a poetry collection, Bundles of Letters Including A, V and Epsilon (Texture Press, 2008). For the last few years she has been staff editor for The Pedestal Magazine and the literary journal Press 1. She currently lives in Spinea, Italy. Visit her at: http://www.leafscape.org/aang/
Forrest Hamer
Bio: he is a poet, psychologist, candidate psychoanalyst, and a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley. He was educated at Yale and Berkeley. He is the author of Call & Response (Alice James, 1995), winner of the Beatrice Hawley Award, and Middle Ear (The Roundhouse Press, 2000), a finalist for the Bay Area Book Reviewers Association Award. His work has appeared in Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, TriQuarterly, ZYZZYVA, Berkeley Poetry Review, Cream City Review, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. His work has been anthologized in 3 editions of Best American Poetry, Poet's Choice: Poems for Everyday Life, The Geography of Home: California's Poetry of Place, and Word of Mouth: An Anthology of Gay American Poetry. Find out more at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forrest_Hamer
Lee Upton
Bio: she is the author of eleven books, a published writer of fiction as well as poetry, and the writer-in-residence at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania. Undid in the Land of Undone is her fifth book of poetry. She is a recipient of the National Poetry Series Award, the Pushcart Prize, and the Georgia Contemporary Poetry Series Award. She is a professor of English and the writer-in-residence at Lafayette College in Eston, PA. Contact her at: uptonlee@lafayette.edu
Marilyn M. King
Bio: she worked as an illustrator for 25 years before retiring, then took a brief hiatus from art while she worked in her family business. But she found she couldn't stay away long and in October of 2007 she returned to her artistic roots to pursue a new career in fine art. The journey now finds her painting in oils on various surfaces and in small formats, in an effort to capture the beauty in everyday life everywhere she looks. Her goal is to make her work visual poetry as defined by Webster: showing the "lyrical quality or structural perfection of an object, act, or experience". Visit her blog and find more of her work at: http://marilynmking.blogspot.com/
Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal
Bio: he was born in Mexico. He works in the mental health field in Los Angeles, CA. Kendra Steiner Editions will publish his latest chapbook, Digging A Grave, in 2010. New Polish Beat published his chapbook, The Book of Absurd Dreams. His poems have appeared in The American Dissident, The Blue Collar Review, and Camel Saloon. He lives in West Covina, CA. Visi him at: http://www.myspace.com/cuatemochi
Christine Hamm
Bio: she is a PhD candidate in English Literature at Drew University. She won the MiPoesias First Annual Chapbook Competition with her manuscript, Children Having Trouble with Meat. Her poetry has been published in The Adirondack Review, Pebble Lake Review, Lodestar Quarterly, Poetry Midwest, Rattle, and many others. She has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize, and she teaches English and poetry writing at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ. Visit her at her blog: http://chamm.blogspot.com/
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 Jan. 1st. Copyright 2010 by Maurice Oliver. All Rights Reserved.
Visit my poetry blog: http://www.chantinghead.blogspot.com/
And my Scribd site: http://www.scribd.com/maurice_oliver_1
Russell Endo
Bio: he has published poetry previously in The American Poetry Review, The Antioch Review, Full Circle Journal, Hawa’ii Pacific Review, New Letters, Ploughshares, Poetry, and in other journals. I worked for many years as a lawyer for the City of Philadelphia Solicitor’s Office in Health and Human Services, receiving a Liberty Bell for my services. I reside in Smyrna, Delaware. Contact him at: victoriakong@Comcast.net
Kelly White
Bio: she earned degrees from Dartmouth College and Harvard Medical School and has been a pediatrician in inner city Philadelphia for twenty years. She has had more than two hundred poems accepted for publication since October 1999, including a book, The Patient Presents (People's Press) and a chapbook, "I am going to walk toward the sanctuary," (Via Dolorosa Press/Nepenthe Books). She is the recipient of a 2008 Penn. Council on the Arts grant in poetry. Two Birds In Flame, poems related to the Shaker Community in Canterbury, NH, was published in 2010 by Beech River Books. She has recently returned to her small New Hampshire village and begun work at a rural health center. Contact her at: kelleywhitemd@yahoo.com
L. Ward Abel
Bio: he is a poet, composer of music, lawyer, aspiring teacher and spoken-word performer who has been published at The Reader, The Yale Anglers’ Journal, Versal, The Pedestal, Pale House, Kritya, Ditch, Open Wide, Moloch, Legal Studies Forum, and hundreds of others. Abel has recently been nominated for “Best of the Web” by Dead Mule and The Northville Review (2009). He is the author of Peach Box and Verge (Little Poem Press, 2003), Jonesing For Byzantium (UK Authors Press, 2006), The Heat of Blooming (Pudding House Press, 2008), and the forthcoming American Bruise (Parallel Press). He lives in rural Georgia and can be contacted at: WAABEL@aol.com
Ursula Abresch
Bio: she has been interested in photography since very early in life. As a little girl, she would walk around with her father's brownie camera "pretending" she was making pictures. She found my first camera in a box of discarded items. With money made from odd jobs, she traded the brownie in for her first SLR, a Russian made camera that she used for several years. Her next camera was a Pentax K1000 which she used to record family events and her children growing up. She still has the camera today, but when digital photography came along, she was able to start experimenting. Now I shoot RAW on a Nikon and process the images on a Mac using PSCS4. Her style can loosely be classified as photo-impressionism. I print, mat, and frame my own images. She lives in British Vancouver, Canada. Visit her website at: http://www.ursulasphotos.com/
Arlene Ang
Bio: she is the author of four poetry collections. Her collaborative fiction with Valerie Fox has been published in Admit 2, Defenestration, and qaartsiluni, and they are the authors of a poetry collection, Bundles of Letters Including A, V and Epsilon (Texture Press, 2008). For the last few years she has been staff editor for The Pedestal Magazine and the literary journal Press 1. She currently lives in Spinea, Italy. Visit her at: http://www.leafscape.org/aang/
Forrest Hamer
Bio: he is a poet, psychologist, candidate psychoanalyst, and a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley. He was educated at Yale and Berkeley. He is the author of Call & Response (Alice James, 1995), winner of the Beatrice Hawley Award, and Middle Ear (The Roundhouse Press, 2000), a finalist for the Bay Area Book Reviewers Association Award. His work has appeared in Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, TriQuarterly, ZYZZYVA, Berkeley Poetry Review, Cream City Review, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. His work has been anthologized in 3 editions of Best American Poetry, Poet's Choice: Poems for Everyday Life, The Geography of Home: California's Poetry of Place, and Word of Mouth: An Anthology of Gay American Poetry. Find out more at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forrest_Hamer
Lee Upton
Bio: she is the author of eleven books, a published writer of fiction as well as poetry, and the writer-in-residence at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania. Undid in the Land of Undone is her fifth book of poetry. She is a recipient of the National Poetry Series Award, the Pushcart Prize, and the Georgia Contemporary Poetry Series Award. She is a professor of English and the writer-in-residence at Lafayette College in Eston, PA. Contact her at: uptonlee@lafayette.edu
Marilyn M. King
Bio: she worked as an illustrator for 25 years before retiring, then took a brief hiatus from art while she worked in her family business. But she found she couldn't stay away long and in October of 2007 she returned to her artistic roots to pursue a new career in fine art. The journey now finds her painting in oils on various surfaces and in small formats, in an effort to capture the beauty in everyday life everywhere she looks. Her goal is to make her work visual poetry as defined by Webster: showing the "lyrical quality or structural perfection of an object, act, or experience". Visit her blog and find more of her work at: http://marilynmking.blogspot.com/
Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal
Bio: he was born in Mexico. He works in the mental health field in Los Angeles, CA. Kendra Steiner Editions will publish his latest chapbook, Digging A Grave, in 2010. New Polish Beat published his chapbook, The Book of Absurd Dreams. His poems have appeared in The American Dissident, The Blue Collar Review, and Camel Saloon. He lives in West Covina, CA. Visi him at: http://www.myspace.com/cuatemochi
Christine Hamm
Bio: she is a PhD candidate in English Literature at Drew University. She won the MiPoesias First Annual Chapbook Competition with her manuscript, Children Having Trouble with Meat. Her poetry has been published in The Adirondack Review, Pebble Lake Review, Lodestar Quarterly, Poetry Midwest, Rattle, and many others. She has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize, and she teaches English and poetry writing at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ. Visit her at her blog: http://chamm.blogspot.com/
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 Jan. 1st. Copyright 2010 by Maurice Oliver. All Rights Reserved.
Visit my poetry blog: http://www.chantinghead.blogspot.com/
And my Scribd site: http://www.scribd.com/maurice_oliver_1
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