Concelebratory Shoehorn Review

2011-04-01T04:51:00.000-07:00

Because of technical problems CSR has been replaced with a new monthly e-zine. You can find it at: http://eyesocketjournal.blogspot.com/ Maurice Oliver, editor

2011-03-01T11:08:00.001-08:00

Issue Fifty

2011-03-01T11:01:00.000-08:00

2011-03-01T10:56:00.000-08:00

Editor's Note:

Welcome to the 50th Issue of CSR! By now, you regular readers know my child likes Apache memorabilia and wild mustangs. It craves yo-yo string in its shoes. Baby has an uncanny ability to find petting zoos, and not just any goat's breath either. This issue flashes red lights at the guardrail. It is filled with a high school play waiting for applause. Add a group of poets sitting on the window sill, music to collect tulip bulbs by and a lion's den in the book review and you've got the possibility of an entirely new generation of roof gargoyles. Trust me, when you finish this issue you'll never want to make plaster molds of the motorcycle tracks again. Or bed bugs long for democracy too! Either way, hip-hop ate the linen. So, put aside that girly mag in the nightstand drawer and get busy...

2011-03-01T10:54:00.000-08:00

CSR: Issue 50 Contents/Contributors

Kelley White

Adrian Matajka

Jon Tribble

Kiyo Murakami

Joseph O. Legaspi

Terry L. Kennedy

Lea Bamks

About Art - Cupid's Bow

Herbie Simmons

About Books

About Music - Esperanza Spalding

James Allen Hall

Tim Pfau

Contributors Biographies

2011-03-01T10:50:00.000-08:00

Kelley White

First Accident

Pulled into the drive at St. Gregory the Illuminator,
my daughter, at seventeen, competent on the cell phone,
insurance, tow trucks, her dad; her boyfriend is walking befuddled in the field
with bits of tire and loops of steel around his arms. I can’t see
the damage to their car. It is shiny new, just one corner lopped off.
What he is finding is ancient history, other people’s forgotten losses. Trash.
I hug my youngest girl, their passenger, gone shaking pale in the brilliant spring sun.

Stifling

Will they restore the slave cabins
at Independence Mall? The Liberty
Bell sits silenced in its glass cage
and remembers them squalled out
muck and charred sticks and sucked
bone where we pretended there were gardens
and no voice crying but the wind.

Grace is

unconscious mathematics
of the highest order
I was cutting the grass

you see the connection

His gentlemanly pleasures

Lil said Uncle Zias
always took his
Saturdays after his bath;
you sir, have been known
to bathe, but you certainly
are no gentleman.

2011-03-01T10:43:00.000-08:00

Adrian Matejka

Battle Royale

Back then, they’d chain a bear
in the middle of the bear garden

& let the dogs loose. Iron chains
around a bear’s neck don’t slow

him too much. A bear will always
make short work of a dog. Shakespeare

said Sackerson did it more than twenty
times to dogs & wildcats alike.

& since most creatures are naturally
afraid of bears, there wouldn’t

always be much of a show in the bear
garden. So the handlers sometimes put

the bear’s eyes out or took his teeth
to make the fight more sporting.

I believe you need eyes
more than you need teeth in a fight,

but losing either makes a bear a little
less mean. Once baiting was against

the law, some smart somebody
figured coloreds would fight just

as hard if hungry enough. So they
rounded up the skinniest of us,

had us strip to trousers, then blindfolded
us before the fight. They turned us

in hard circles a few times on
the ring steps like a motor car engine

before pushing us between the ropes.
When the bell rang, it seemed

like I got hit from eight directions.
I didn’t know where those punches

came from, but I swung so hard
my shoulder hasn’t been right since

because the man said only the last
darky on his feet gets a meal.

—originally published in American Poetry Review

Sporting Life

People always talking about if
& suppose like those words are worth
more than money, more than the crease
a silk stocking makes on a woman’s

thigh. More than the grumble of a Thomas
Flyer engine. So I take the side of my
pleasures. Two small words, if & suppose,
& nobody can explain them. We get

in this world what we’re going to get.
After all, one man can roll out of bed
& be killed, while another man falls
from a scaffold & lives. A man can get

a bullet in the brain & keep his life
while some other poor sap dies
from a shot in the leg. It’s all luck
& perspective: pleasure is both to me.

—originally published in American Poetry Review

White Women: Lola Toy

Woman, you are
as delectable & powdered
as a beignet.

Your skin, white
enough to catch
a bit of sun

in its own sugar
& hold it until
sweat glints

like the jewelry I’ll
buy you. Don’t you
hear me talking,

pretty momma?
I can play the bass fiddle
for you if it’ll make

you feel right.
Or you can keep
on visiting my sparring

exhibitions, keep
covering your mouth,
gloved hand

like a dove’s wing
as you whisper
to your friends.

Did you tell
them the snappy
left that closed

the Kid’s eye
was for you?
Did you whisper

the gut hook
that dropped the man
to his knees

like a sinner
meeting with Death
was for you?

—originally published in America! What’s My Name?

“A Great Maltese Cat Toying with a White Mouse”

What Jack Said to the Reporters:

I had no doubt about the outcome
after the 1st round. The only
surprise was how long
Tommy Burns stayed on his feet.

He was a game man & showed
no inclination whatsoever to quit.
My fists were better in every round
& I landed punches I thought

would bring him down. Like a great
pachyderm, he refused to stop
& because he was so game, I was glad
the police ended the fight.

I wanted to be heavyweight
champion, not injure Burns seriously.

What Jack Really Meant:

That man made me chase him from Texas
to England, then all of the way
to Australia before he would fight me.
Four-flusher. He didn’t win the title,

he just happened to be white & in the right
place, like somebody striking oil. I put him
down, but gently, in the 1st round so he’d
know what was to come when he got a knee

off the canvas. Once he collected himself,
I bruised him with my right & talked
to him all the while. Walk right into them,
Tommy. Left hook to the gut. That’s

a boy, Tommy. Straight right to
the cheek. Take your medicine nicely.

—originally published in Papers on Literature and Language

2011-03-01T10:37:00.000-08:00

Jon Tribble

Guantanamo

The shadowed fists of horizon break
north of the Cuban sunset and Gitmo’s

just a plain of wind and doubt holding
back hungry and tired tides of current

fortune, policy in the making folded
tight as military corners, tighter than

the hard knot of your heart releasing
and compressing need and remembrance,

solitary pain of separation as a wife,
a son or daughter growing, swells

behind the jut of clouds forcing on
night, the flat slick sea listless and

void as that dark standard limp above
this armed camp, descending with each

plaintive note into the automatic motion
and sure hands which know no other way.

Magnolia

Bending back rigid branches, we disappear in the cave of green,
carpet of brittle question-mark leaves crackling with each step
we take toward the thick trunk. We hide together. Squeals and
calls echo around us as brothers and sisters, neighborhood friends

uncover “best” hiding places under bridges, beneath pine needles,
in bone-dry creek beds, secreted among squirrels’ nests in a slippery
elm. We back against gray bark, slick and muscled like skin,
gather leaves, the spiny remains left by blossoms gone to seed,

quilt fallen limbs over our own arms and legs. Wrapped close
in this blanket, we poke and prod each other with the hard fruit
of the magnolia, daring our laughter, our small pains and discomfort
to reveal us. The heavy sweet decay of last month’s white blossoms

fills every breath sneaking past our tight lips. We shiver off
centipedes and grubs twitching on shins and calves, tickling
the backs of thighs, traversing the smooth landscape of our bodies.
In these shadows we almost become one heartbeat, one whisper of lungs.

But we do not touch; we do not join; we do not turn and embrace
anything other than concealment. The magnolia is our cloak and
nothing more. We will slip away from its shadows and come out
when we hear the yell, “All’s free,” and we will forget about that tree.

Testimony Bed

I know the faces of hate that curl
around our passing like shell casings
hickory nuts shed each autumn twist
back into a hard knot of useless wrapping.

Wrecked-car, tar-paper neighborhood
where every other fence held back
a “white dog” nurtured on fury waiting
to unleash on any passing dark face.

Side by side we cannot pass out of sight
in enough of a hurry without these
small Southern towns turning sinister
as our past and present history—

classmates beside me in first grade asked
to pass along notes “encouraging”
their parents to consider “majority-minority
schools” less than a decade after Central High.

The Midwest was a heavy white blanket
we smothered beneath as an invisible novelty,
but in Little Rock the battle lines are as clear
as the faces of the children we pass by,

their small hands clinging to the dark or light
hand of the parent on watch, a mother
or father whose glance passing our direction
carries more knowing than either of us has.

It is not political nor politic, not temporary
nor ever likely to simply pass without some
notice, but when we intertwine our fingers
and walk together we give witness to lives

and a nation where so much depends upon
who you pass each night beside, what truth
lingers each morning in promises that dress
the bed tighter than any white sheet ever could.

Dogwood Creek

Little jesuses on the water,
she says as she kisses the handful
of petals and tosses them
into the slow current.

The crosses hidden in the blossoms
spin and most catch and gather
behind the fallen log
damming the minnow pool.

Later she’ll take my hand,
hold it against her breast.
Count my heartbeats, she says,
and tell me what it means.

2011-03-01T10:35:00.000-08:00

Photography by Kiyo Murakami

2011-03-01T10:30:00.000-08:00

2011-03-01T10:26:00.000-08:00

Joseph O. Legaspi

Poem For My Navel

First mouth,
where my mother
first kissed
me, I offer my finger
to figure the depth
of my separation,
Gulf Divide, terra
incognita, crater
in the Sea of Tranquillity,
a momentary attachment,
a detachment
for the rest of my life, Pangaea
before the continental drift,
an ocean subsided into white
desert, a whirlpool
quieted, my scooped-out
heart, depression,
epicenter of my first
quake, where I heard
my father's baritone
rumbling a folk song: Mynah
Bird, in your dark light
and feathers carry
me off to a castle
made of bamboo.
Navel: my hollowed
reminder, my dried
flower, bird's
nest, peach pit, poached
egg cup, empty
shell, scallop, my oyster
pearl-purse,
you burn along
an equator, my homeland,
my Philippines I
never conceived
of leaving, mother, dear
sustenance, my senses
in the obsidian darkness,
cross-wires of my existence
and non-existence.

Men With Breast

When I see men with breasts,
mammillary, twin elfin mounds
bulging through
shirts, I suppress
the bubbles of emotions
that might burp out of me—a moan,
a giggle. I think: nubile children trapped
in adult men, daughters
hidden in their bodies,
the women in these men
manifesting themselves.
Do their hands make pilgrimages
to these holy places? Do they
gently stroke the knobs
of their areolas to summon
a lover from anywhere across snow banks or Eden fields?
Or do they curse them
for obstructing intimate embrace
with pillows? Do they desire
the armor chests of Greek
heroes, demigods and gods?
At the beach they parade
in front of me like platters
of fruits: Chinese plums,
glossy pink and cup-sized, pale
strawberries, hairy kiwis. My father,
too, possesses a pair of dwarf papayas,
elongated, sagging into cusps
of rosy resin, languid, nestled
on his stomach like the Buddha's.
I know my father's breasts
are empty and my thirst
will remain
unquenched, I can suck
and suckle, work them
like the teats of a newly-birthed sow
or bitch, play the spherical
instrument of his nipples
with my tongue to hear
celestial music, and there will be no
warm, nourishing colostrum.

Dispel the Angel

Lately his loneliness has sprouted wings.
It hovers above his darkened head like a desecrated
angel. It clouds his eyes with the milk of nostalgia.
It is the ghostly geyser effect of the spouting steam
when the kettle boils for his private tea.
In bed, balled up under the sheets
in a cove of darkness, he thinks
of Orpheus: if only he could’ve contained
his forlorn love for Eurydice
and not turn back.
Such gulf, sad bereavement.
Recently he’s gotten into the habit
of talking to himself, at first in front
of the foggy mirror while shaving,
the blade scraping off lather to reveal
his translucent face, but now, often, he talks
in movie theaters, public gardens, on the corner
of Houston and Ludlow. At dinner, he discusses
Magritte and Hopper with his duck l’orange.
The salt and pepper shakers can-can for him.
Later, he says to the lamp, I haven’t been touched
in weeks. He senses he’s transcended
the loneliness of the inanimate: of empty
corridors, of solitary light illuminating a house
on a stretch of highway in daytime,
of wet matches, rotting fruits, and dust.
On a summer’s morning, he then dispels
the sullied angel from his shower, makes
an appointment at his neighborhood salon
where the shampoo girl will shi-atsu his erogenous
scalp with her thin fingers. Soon after, on the subway,
sitting next to a man, their arms touch—heat traveling
by the wires of their hair—then rub slowly against one another
like the first friction of the earth.

The Socks

This pair once belonged to my father,
army green,

golden on the thinning
heels and toes, decades old—

they have disappeared into the dryer-netherworld
only to return repeatedly, wiser than before—

their elastics still grasp my lower calves.
When I slip into them,

I see my father in his footwear, like Mercury,
a copper-eyed young man, like myself,

brewing with stormy promise,
prepared to soar over the dusty world.

Dear socks, don't lead me astray.
Propel me from this dissatisfied life

to places where my father has never been.

2011-03-01T10:23:00.000-08:00

Terry L. Kennedy

The Ways In Which Leave

Cold coffee ringing a mug
and a bill, forgotten, beside it: this
could be the beginning of morning—this
could be the end; these are some things
that confuse: the leaving you now—warm
under quilts, rhythm of your sleeping as light
as the mist as easy as sunrise; and it’s not
that I can’t be there, beside you, tonight,
it’s more this persistence of gravity—it attracts you:
the sag of the clothesline at the edge of its use,
the leaves on the maple near the end of October—
it’s someone else, not you, that I find in the yard,
scattered on the porch, clinging to the dog
as your flooding heart brims & puddles
the chipped cement below your head—
should we call this a state of abundance,
something overwhelming; this untenable frequency
between need & desire: how in fall, we bumper
the parkways embracing the trees at the arc
of their triumph; how when they’re stripped naked, raw
& open, we’re wintered away while the sky
outside is bright & clear.

Clutter

Surprisingly, your name’s still on the list—
first, third, it’s unimportant;
the music has yet to take form but it’s already floating
on the current of chatter, imperceptible, like her side-long glance
from across the room or the dull ring that will sing with your heart
come Sunday morning. But for now, there’s only
anticipation—the wait for that certain light
that no one has shown you but you still understand, like the lilies,
who know when to dig deeper, hold their ground, or frailly rise,
open & flower, which isn’t quite right, you realize,
but that doesn’t matter; this warm cup of beer,
her breath on his neck, is a truth you believe in,
like all of that clutter filling her house: carnival bears,
cheap glass figures, cryptic notes hastily sketched
in bright colored crayon—all of those things she likes to surround her
so that when she is lonely, chosen or otherwise, she can think of the times,
the reasons they loved her.

Those boys, they’ll rip your heart out, she said—

what you’ll always remember is that this night
marked the last time she kissed your lips, said I love you.

Silence

It is not the sand or receding tide,
heavy with salt, that I am thinking of,
my hands rubbing my eyes
as if they were some genie’s lamp,
my wishes with me all along.

No,
I am thinking of rain at the end winter—
what a comfort it is
to find hope in the hopeless—
like repetition, like ice.

I am thinking of the cardinal
who tries to fly through that just-cleaned window,
how good it must feel to finally forget,
resting your head on the cool cement.

I am thinking of Cassandra,
whose story’s so tragic, it could only have come
from a guilty heart.

I am thinking of silence, the silence I hear
when your name is a question,
your absence somehow making this room
quieter than ever before.

"Acony Bell"

And so I’ll sing that yellow bird’s song
For the troubled times will soon be gone.
--Gillian Welch

I.

Spring’s first flowers are pushing through
this lonely wall of winter—
such simplicity: two notes, an Epiphone
and it’s 1935, again.

II.

The highway and the brick house
have vanished with the morning dew,
and the ancient pecan I hid behind as a boy—
I can see my grandmother through its branches.

III.

Such a comfort to know that we will die.
The two stones in the old pasture
will become a hundred. I knew this time with you
could not last forever.

IV.

Fade in the harmonies
so the voice that strummed my heart
moments ago can become a wind
that blows this storm out to sea.

V.

Now I know why I’m so afraid:
the sound of you carries me off
like a newborn forced to make his debut—
full of fear and longing.

VI.

Someone with my name
has been peeking from the gnarled trunk
of the pecan all morning.
Please tell him I’m not ready.

2011-03-01T10:14:00.000-08:00

Lea Banks

Vigil

for my parents, 1979

How beautiful. How beautiful
girlhood’s faded face.

Bright eyes shadowed shut
with glimmering stitches.

O tiny mole. Gleaming
hair with sleeping brain

inside dreaming. Tender
spots. Shine.

I am looking down
from high, high

and I can tell there is nothing
unspeakable, tapped down, or normal anymore.

As you stay beside me,
large houses grow.

Angels nap between the bedposts.
Children chirp from doorways.

Someone laughs.
No one snickers.

Measuring my breath,
jet trails. You’re the pilot kneeling

at the side of my bed.
Your homage is a beacon

in the settle down darkness.
This room is a trance. My body

a traveling fair, a white church.
Who dares to wake me?

-previously published in Diner, Volume 6

A Beautiful Landscape

after Keats “Ode to Apollo”

Cherry stains my heart and mouth
and the boy that calls me Cherry
Bomb is right. Bombing through

life, not the goddess nor goodness
I wish to be. I mar the surface.
Water shivers. He shims yellow

light on paper white fish scales.
The sun gleams righteously upon us.
Apollo is a punchbowl drunk

firefly igniting the air. Superior,
crystalline, he humbles me.
This composure. This godlike light.

His curls, pale cowry shells,
grams of Delphic sand-dust.
Beauty and its landscape immense.

My cherry tree is but a sapling, a sweet
tart. It drinks in as much goodness
as the scenery allows. I lumber

under the weight of his gold coins.
A future in the ashes of a fading fire?
This is the charred gift I desire.

-published in The American Poetry Journal, Vol.4, Issue 1

Thigmotropism

Sleepy tumor of flowers, all comfort and slow
movement: say jewelweed, say sweet pea, say tamarind
melting at a touch to touch-me-not. They explode
into bony air through the slightest slit. The day I lost
you, my bones fell out of my body for love.
The climbing tendril. Concluded cells.
The Jesus hair of your immovable trellis.

A tongue-lash jeremiad, a winged instrument
hacked out of the darking of the morning.
The tongue wriggles and carps; a somite,
an earthworm. Pathologically independent,
you split your legend around the body divided,
deboned; a metameric failure colorblind
to touch. Tropisms of my throat close
from the final grey heat of light. The stimulus
is over. Not here. Not there.

Snow Angel

I am a woman in the middle of my life
lying in my front yard, arms
and legs arcing through snow.

I think of you sometimes
as I make them.
I’m faring quite well.

2011-03-01T10:09:00.002-08:00

About Art - Cupid's Bow

Inspired by San Francisco's reputation as the home port of Eros, Cupid's Bow was designed by Coosje Van Brugge, partner of Claes Oldenburg, who was commissioned to come up with outdoor art for a small park on the Embarcadero along San Francisco Bay. She tried several ideas in drawings but found the tradition position too stiff and literal, so she turned the image upside down: the arrow and the central part of the bow could be buried in the ground, and the tail feathers, usually downplayed, would be the focus of attention.

The result was a the counterpoint to romantic nostalgia, one that evokes the mythological account of Eros shooting his arrow into the earth to make it fertile. The sculpture was designed in stainless steel, structural carbon steel, fiber-reinforced plastic, cast epoxy, polyvinyl chloride foam; painted with polyester gelcoat. It stands at 64 ft. x 143 ft. 9 in. x 17 ft. 3/8 in on a hill, where one can imagine the arrow being sunk under the surface of plants and prairie grasses. By slanting the bow's position, Coosje adds a sense of acceleration to the Cupid's Span.

Seen from its "stern," the bow-as-boat seems to be tacking on its course toward the white tower of the city's Ferry Building. The image becomes metamorphic, looking like both a ship and a tightened version of a suspension bridge, which seemed to us the perfect accompaniment to the site. In addition, the artwork functions as a frame for the highly scenic situation, enclosing either the massed buildings of the city's downtown or the wide vista over the water and the Bay Bridge toward the distant mountains. Cupid's Bow sits in Rincon Park, a two-acre park and public open space on the waterfront, at the foot of Folsom St. Mayor Willie L. Brown, Jr., the San Francisco Port Commission, the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, and Gap Inc. participated in the dedication ceremony in 2001. You can find out more about this San Franciscian landmark at: http://www.bcx.org/photos/places/cities/us/ca/sf/parks/rincon

2011-03-01T10:09:00.001-08:00

Artwork by Herbie Simmons

2011-03-01T10:03:00.000-08:00

2011-03-01T10:00:00.000-08:00

About Books:

Title: Tourist At A Miracle
Author: Mark Statman

Description: “Tourist at a Miracle is a big title to live up to. Mark Statman delivers the tourist’s wonder and distance in spare, deliberate music—American poetry’s grand plain style descended from William Carlos Williams and James Schuyler. His miracles are those we all experience if we have our eyes and feelings open—love, friendship, fatherhood, loss, anxieties, frustrations, fears...the everyday and always. Statman is a head-on poet willing to risk clarity in pursuit of the marvelous we might encounter anywhere.”—William Corbett

Product details:

Printed: 6" x 9", 88 pages
ISBN: 1934909165
Copyright: 2010
Language: English
Country: USA
Publisher's link: http://www.hangingloosepress.com/

2011-03-01T09:59:00.000-08:00

About Music - Esperanza Spalding

Hailed as a prodigy on the acoustic double bass within months of first touching the instrument as a 15-year-old, Esperanza Spalding has emerged as a fine jazz bassist, but has also distinguished herself playing blues, funk, hip-hop, pop fusion, and Brazilian and Afro-Cuban styles as well.

Born in Portland, OR in 1984, she was not well served by the public school system and soon dropped out of classes to be home-schooled. Returning to the public school system at 15, she encountered her first acoustic bass (she had already been playing violin for several years) and immediately took to the instrument. Dropping out of school again, she enrolled in classes at Portland State University as a 16-year-old, and earned her B.A. in just three years and was immediately hired as an instructor in the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston in the spring of 2005.

After touring and playing with a whole host of artists, including Joe Lovano, Patti Austin, M Charlie Haden, Regina Carter, Pat Metheny, Dave Samuels, and many others, in addition to heading her own jazz trio, she recorded and released Junjo on the Barcelona-based Ayva imprint in 2006, following it with 2008's simply named Esperanza (on Heads Up Records), which scored big with critics and listeners alike. The album topped Billboard's contemporary jazz chart and remained on it for over 70 weeks. In addition, it became the best-selling album by a new jazz artist internationally during 2008.

She followed it up with Chamber Music Society in August of 2010. The set was comprised of eight originals and three covers -- including Dimitri Tiomkin and Ned Washington's "Wild Is the Wind" and Antonio Carlos Jobim's "Inutil Paisagem." It was performed by her quartet with guest vocal appearances from Milton Nascimento and Gretchen Parlato, a small string section, and guitarist Ricardo Vogt. Find out more at: http://esperanzaspalding.com/

2011-03-01T09:50:00.000-08:00

James Allen Hall

Safety

The father does not knock on the locked door
gently, as if loving a small hurt thing.

The father does not say please over and over,
until his voice becomes unraw with the not-said.

The mother inside the room
does not hold a gun to her chest.

The mother did not make the father
into what stands knocking: a safety

the mother clicks on and off.
She has not just ended an affair

with a brutal, brutal man.
The mother’s heart is not broken.

The children are not asleep in their rooms.
They will never know how close

the mother comes to the trigger,
they will not grow up

to take the father’s place.
The father is the mask, the terrible delay.

My Mother's Love

My mother feeds the multitudes of abandoned cats
that live in the field behind our office. Every sundown
she untangles fur, feline lineages. She names each one.
And though they are legion, she does not forget.
She administers heartworm medicine to one hundred
feral cats. She cradles them. Imagine her
frenzy, then, the day the bulldozers come,
a sudden god-congress in the air.
The cats hunker in their homes in the ground.
The bulldozers begin their awful roll. My mother,
at field’s edge, waves her arms, a decoy.
She stands in front of the men and their stomachs,
big rollers of flesh. She does not move, she shouts
until their faces dampen with her spit. She hears the earth
fill with mewling. She digs, she saves thirty-two cats that day,
then takes them home, bathes them, speaks to them calmly
even as they claw up and down her arms. I'm her
witness, I'm buried in this story, down in the place
where collapse is inevitable, where love is
only love if it makes you bleed.

Portrait of My Lover Singing in Traffic

Man rushing onto Sunrise Boulevard, singing Disorder
in the Flesh: first threadbare notes, then his trousers

stunning the air—man singing the Jackknifed Torso,
Stabbed Back songs, man jerking between rows of cars,

people locking their doors, their faces ashen
when at last his shirt comes off. Wind carrying the ripped bar

of fabric to the sidewalk where I catch him, fitting fingers
to places his skin had been. Man rushing into traffic

losing his shoes, their holes like something singed.
Then his underwear. Then he's naked, I Ain't Got No Body.

Everyone watching, moving their lips, the train guards
lowering the song of the mechanical flashing arm,

stopping all of us. The muscle of him unstoppable,
uncontrollable song. Sirens reddening air,

a mouth opening back the counterweight song, I Been Rent
By Tougher Men, which becomes so quickly the Gravelmouth,

the Spreadleg, the Ribkicked song, which gives way behind glass
in the police cruiser to the I've Been Your Bulletproof

Piece of Ass, Now Take Me to Where I'll Die
in Shadow song. Inside my shattershot skin I sing

the broken ballads my mother taught me: My Body Severed
in Fogsway, the Derailed Train is My Shepherd,

I Shall Not Want, her voice audible even under all that
copmuscle and metal, singing the Song of Stained

and Never More Beautiful Than Criminal, and the man
is my mother, I'm filled with want. The lyrics are rushing

unbidden out of me, joining the shirtless choir in the street,
all hands locking, webbed behind the head, face between the legs

kicked apart, singing Don't Grieve So Open,
in motherless tones, right on through from the beginning.

A Brief History Of My Mother

My mother, fourteen, makes a girl
eat an entire can of Alpo.
At forty, she leaves her husband
for a man who wears women’s underwear.
Every Friday night of my childhood, she’s criminal.
The door creaks open for the same cop, his broad smile.
Bank of America calls for Marsha Hall.
I’m not in right now, she says.
My mother, thirteen, smokes mentholated cigarettes.
The burn dissolves to a tight hiss on her thigh.
She wakes to her father’s kiss and cannot breathe.
My mother promises, The abuse will stop with me.
She tries to die, once, by swallowing pills, choking
them up as I hold back her hair.
In green pants, orange sash: Miss Safety-Guard,
1982. She blacks out her front teeth, smiles at men
who cat-call to her on the corner, her stop-sign in hand.
Their faces quicken from the slap of her unbeauty.
Tries to die, once, by standing in traffic
on a dirt road at 3 a.m. My mother, desperate for a Mack truck.
My mother asks the doctors to turn off her dying
father’s respirator. She watches him struggle to breathe.
My mother’s tombstone will read,
Gone to see my mother.

-all poems from Now Your'e the Enemy (University of Arkansas Press, 2008)

2011-03-01T09:41:00.000-08:00

Tim Pfau

Marilyn Monroe's Villanelle

Norma Jean B. was the Artichoke Queen
down in the Artichoke Capitol’s world,
That's where our Norma Jean first made the scene,

At their first fest, in forty-eight, nineteen
with curves under blond tresses flowing curled,
Norma Jean B. was the Artichoke Queen.

Our Conductor announced, voice so serene
while through Castroville (see ay) our train hurled,
That's where our Norma Jean first made the scene.

Thistle flowers, eaten in high cuisine,
are cut off and cooked before they’re unfurled.
Norma Jean B. was the Artichoke Queen.

I write to honor her, not to demean.
There, in aroma of flowers, oil swirled,
That's where our Norma Jean first made the scene.

The heat and stink of joy and sin unseen
drifted through Norma’s life, twisted and twirled.
Norma Jean B. was the Artichoke Queen.
That's where our Norma Jean first made the scene.

Traces—2

Wyoming wind’s mean spirit is best seen
when it throws pins of ice into your face.
Nobody wants to look into that pain.

Trace and I turn backs to it and talk,
sitting on our old Fords, Jeeps or Plymouths.
watching words blow away to Nebraska ,
across dark prairie where no one listens.

The words are gone, drifting on snow fences
with random trash, heaped with aged dust from stones
pushed up through crust, riding wind to words’ graves.

Dig them up, brush dirt away. They’re still husks
buzzards wouldn’t eat from, only tight skins
stretched over dead white bone. Real meat, it seems
was just a temporary affliction...

We’re there, under the black-bowl nights, sitting
on unseen flat, but inclined, plains, waiting
to kill fish or deer when we have the light...

Full of the last liquor and a touch of
more exotic fuels, needing little light
because darkness, of some sort, is enough.
Words are too light to stand and face the wind.

Trace goes naked now, bare of words or songs,
only vanishing echoes ride along.

Eighty-Two

Eighty-two, purple bruises
bloom on her ivory skin.
Her thin hair is wisps, dyed straw
mixed in the old snow, melting.

Snow she fluffs and shapes with ten
small, too small, shining red nails.
Her hair is set and combed each
week in the same white salon

where she tips, “the girl”, two bucks
and leaves, both of them happy.

Thin too is her r-curved frame
once full, straight and beckoning
for what she, decent, and not
“that kind”, would refuse, smiling.

Her closet bound steps now strain
to clear life’s litter, lying
between her and the long rack
of, mostly yellow and green,

season-sorted ensembles,
which no longer fit in any way.

Her eyes are blessed now, with clouds
to dim her view of wrinkled
cheeks that carried eroding
tears down to hands for washing.

There are high shelves which those hands
can no longer touch, holding
service for eight. Memories
might come to dinner with friends.

Lower, on shelves still in reach,
wait cups for two, just in case.

Carrying Alfredo Garcia

Here I sit, writing
poetry with the grace of
Warren Oates singing
Guantanamera for tips,
in a dark border-town bar.

Tips enough to buy
a nice piece of a woman who
he knew a little bit,
a seven year drink, more shells
and a few spare magazines,

all accoutrements
for carrying-on with friends.
He did get a head.
Eventually, so will I,
(liquor-clear thinking and luck).

"Everybody sing!
Oh yes, “Guantanamera,
Sing! Guairá, sing!
Guantanamera (bastards.)"

Piano? Not worth a damn.

So instead, I write
poetry, with the grace of
Warren Oates singing
to Alfredo Garcia
while he carries him home and,
overcomes circumstances.

2011-03-01T09:26:00.000-08:00

Contributors Biographies

Kelley White

Bio: her poems have been widely published, in journals including Exquisite Corpse, Rattle and the Journal of the American Medical Association and in chapbooks and books, most recently Toxic Environment (Boston Poet Press) and Two Birds in Flame, poems related to the Shakers in New Hampshire (Beech River Books). She received a 2008 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant and is a member of Germantown Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends. After working as a Inner-city Philadelphia pediatrician she has returned Gilford, New Hampshire, to work at a rural health center. Visit her at: kelleywhitemd@yahoo.com

Adrian Matajka

Bio: he was born in Nuremberg, Germany but grew up in California and Indiana. He is a graduate of Indiana University and the MFA program at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. His first collection of poems, The Devil’s Garden, won the 2002 Kinereth Gensler Award from Alice James Books. His second collection, Mixology, was a winner of the 2008 National Poetry Series and was published by Penguin Books in 2009. Mixology was subsequently nominated for an NAACP Image Award. He teaches at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville where he resides and serves as Poetry Editor for Sou’wester and co-directs the River Styx at Duff’s Reading Series. These poems are from his recently completed collection, The Big Smoke. Visit him at http://www.adrianmatejka.com

Jon Tribble

Bio: his poems have appeared in the anthologies Surreal South and Where We Live: Illinois Poets, and in the Southeast Review, Black Zinnias, and Southern Indiana Review. He teaches at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, where he is the managing editor of Crab Orchard Review and the series editor of the Crab Orchard Award Series in Poetry published by SIU Press. His lives with his poet wife Allison Joseph in Carbondale, IL. Contact him at: j.c.tribble@gmail.com

Kiyo Murakami

Bio: he was born in 1976 in Tokyo, Japan. After graduated from art school, he began to do various art – illustration, design and music, but eventually found that the best way of expressing himself in the world of photography. Two years ago he began a career as a photographer. He says that he gets ideas for many of his photographs from dreams, others from old memories. He is also inspired by old movies and paintings. Several imagines are self portraits. He lives in Tokyo and can be visited at: http://1x.com/member/36210/kiyo-murakami

Joseph O. Legaspi

Bio: he is the author of Imago (CavanKerry Press), winner of a Global Filipino Literary Award. A graduate of New York University’s Creative Writing Program, his poems appeared in American Life in Poetry, World Literature Today, PEN International, North American Review, Callaloo, Bloomsbury Review, Gulf Coast, Gay & Lesbian Review, and the anthologies Language for a New Century (W.W. Norton) and Tilting the Continent (New Rivers Press). A recipient of a poetry fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts, he co-founded Kundiman (www.kundiman.org), a non-profit organization serving Asian American poets. He lives in New York City and works at Columbia University. Visit him at: www.josepholegaspi.com

Terry L. Kennedy

Bio: he is the Assistant Director of the Graduate Program in Creative Writing at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. His work appears in a variety of journals and magazines including Now & Then, The Appalachian Magazine,The Poetry Miscellany, The South Carolina Review, The Southern Humanities Review, and Story South. He lives in the Greensboro area and can be contacted at: terrylkennedy@gmail.com

Lea Banks

Bio: she is the author of All of Me, (Booksmyth Press, 2008). Two poems were nominated for the 2009 Pushcart Prize. Banks is the editor of Oscillation: Poetry in Motion and the founder of the Collected Poets Series in Shelburne Falls, MA. She attended New England College’s MFA program and facilitated stroke survivors’ writing workshops. Banks has published in several journals including Poetry Northwest, Slipstream, and American Poetry Journal. www.leabanks.com

Herbie Simmons

Bio: he is a product of John Muir High School in Pasadena, California, and of Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia. Herbie's artistic endeavors are perpetuated by a boundless, open-minded perspective and a belief that he paints one hundred years ahead of his time, making his artwork truly prophetic. He says he is motivated by a fascination with the unknown future and uses it as his driving force. He paints primarily with acrylics, using a myriad of colors to represent the many different races of the world, suggesting that there is beauty in each color and that all people have the ability to come together and function as one. The Los Angeles based artist can be visited at: http://herbie.artspan.com

James Allen Hall

Bio: he is the author of Now You're the Enemy (University of Arkansas Press, 2008), which has received awards from the Lambda Literary Foundation and the Texas Institute of Letters. He is the recipient of a 2011 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry, and recipients of fellowships from Bread Loaf, Sewanee, and the University of Arizona Poetry Center, he teaches creative writing and literature at the State University of New York-Potsdam, where he lives. Visit him at: http://www.notbeauty.blogspot.com

Tim Pfau

Bio: he retired five years ago to pursue assorted grandchildren, travel, read and write. He writes a political blog for the Salem Statesman Journal, is completing his second “strange, unmarketable novel”, a book- length epic poem of the Conquest, and other poems. His poems have appeared in Canopic Jar, the Salem Statesman Journal and the Portland Oregonian. He has lived the best half of his life Salem, Oregon since 1978. Contact him at: tjpfau@msn.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 April 1st. Copyright 2011 by Maurice Oliver. All Rights Reserved.

Visit my Scribd site: http://www.scribd.com/maurice_oliver_1

2011-02-01T10:06:00.000-08:00

Issue Forty Nine

2011-02-01T10:02:00.000-08:00

2011-02-01T09:59:00.000-08:00

Editor's Note:

Welcome to the 49th Issue of CSR! By now, you regular readers know my child likes alligator soup and party hats. It craves lone ranger with a yo-yo string. Baby has an uncanny ability to wallpaper pedal-pushers, and not just any big ears either. This issue flashes red on penitentiary road. It is filled with a blue rug waiting for applause. Add a group of poets made from rhino’s hide, music to collect acorns by and the engine room of a cruise liner in the book review and you've got the possibility of an entirely new extra terrestrial old-time tent revival. Trust me, when you finish this issue you'll never want to So strike your own pose in the clothing catalog. Or bed bugs buy war bonds! Either way, hip-hop only eats at Greek diners. So, get rid of those chop sticks and get busy...

2011-02-01T09:56:00.000-08:00

CSR: Issue 49 Contents/Contributors

Robert Peake

Sean Hill

Amy King

John Parminter

Allison Joseph

Ira Sadoff

Alicia Hoffman

About Art - Armillary Sphere

Holly Manneck

About Books

About Music - Bruno Mars

Scott Owens

Vicki Thornton

Contributors Biographies

2011-02-01T09:48:00.000-08:00

Robert Peake

The Language Of Birds

She is singing French songs
through the bars of the cage

to the lovebird pecking
the cuttlebone, called Peter,

which, in the Bible, means “rock”—
but he is a clockwork of minuscule bones

draped, like a fog, in feathers.
He preens each day before the glass

and plays games he cannot win—
pin the button to the bars,

tap the code on a piece of horn,
the code no-one can decipher,

tear the newspaper with a toothless
beak, wear down the block of salt.

It is only vowels between them now,
pure vowels, and glass-like trills,

sounds reclaimed from the top of the tower
of Babel. He rings his bell, he strums

the bars, uncurls his wings as though
these sounds could somehow give him lift.

Yellow

The weed has no mind,
except what I lend it, there
between two concrete slabs,
growing flowers so yellow
they burn in my sight, remain
long after I close my eyes,
as if I might see them in death,
smoking torches, sulphurous
beacons, guiding me on their
tough green stalks, lighting
the damp walls of the cave,
itself a borrowed mind, thinking
what stones must think when wet—
thinking sparks from flint,
thoughts about sharpening metal,
thinking what concrete thinks
when tree roots whisper deep down,
conspiring against its underside,
first a crack, then a gap,
a birthing ground for seed dust
to take hold, and rain to fill,
and then a stalk emerges, popping
buds, which become the living
thoughts of yellow beyond yellow.

-both poems previously published in Iota

Matins with Slippers and House Cat

Gumshoe is the sound of no sound.
The squeak of a dress shoe on linoleum rings
distinct from a sneaker on a hardwood court.
The sneak of the squeak is what matters.
I sit here in a squeaky chair, trying not to.
I position myself for zero-gravity effect.
Whole nations are attempting the same:
how to occupy the space between squeak
and no-squeak, that is the question.

My feet find their way into worn slippers.
The toes know to curl up for grip.
I pad through the house, in search of a snack,
some tea, or a book of poems. I glide.
The cat comes in to my office to question me.
She wants to know where I have hidden the dry food.
She wails as though she were starving, or mad.
I tell her that, after the French revolution, churches
were used to store grain. I spin in my chair for effect.

She is unimpressed. She only wants to know if
such an act would have brought mice to the altar.
I argue against utilitarianism. She leaves.
I have seen the sweat of nations bead on the brow
of the common worker. I have pilfered the ash cans
of Democracy, looking for butts. I have told
the priest his collar is guillotine-proof.
I have seen them in the night, rubbing chicken
blood on the rough wounds of the statues.

Small Gestures

Forgive me, rose petals, my fingers
could not resist the habit of plucking.

Some would call it childish, and those
who waggle a shaming finger know best.

I do not own my hands, but slip into them
each morning like a pair of work gloves.

I flex to break up the stiffness, and they crackle
like damp embers stirring back to life.

They are all I have, these slender tongs,
to do what my mind instructs in the tactile world.

Sometimes when they mis-type a word,
I wonder what they are trying to tell me.

Maybe they want to ask about the wartime practice
of soldiers shooting off their trigger fingers—

were they more afraid of dying? Or of killing
someone with a gesture as slight and easy

as curling an index finger into a teacup?
Oh, look what we have done to you now,

little flower. Let us sweep the petals quickly,
from one full-fingered hand into the other.

-both poems previously published in Sugar Mule

2011-02-01T09:44:00.000-08:00

Sean Hill
　

Silas Wright At Age Seven 1914

Silas Wright follows a fish’s wriggle
In the shallows between reeds. He scribes the
Line in his tablet—as much pride in that line
As a man in his son. He almost giggles—
Still he goes on. The next letters come easy.
With this he’ll have more than a mark to bind.
Rambling across the page again and again
In messy rows on it flows until he
Goes a little off the page’s edge. He smiles.
He’s surprised to hear when his mouth opens—
That’s mine.

-previously published in Blood Ties & Brown Liquor
　

Possessed

In a corked jar I keep a vermilion flycatcher, one of my most prized
possessions. Sometimes I rush to look inside and he’s still flashing
from and to his perch—vital as a pulse; that slim branch his baseline;
he charts my heartbeat, unbelievable, the beauty. In another corked
jar I keep four whiskers from my ex-girlfriend’s orange tabby. Funny
how things get shuffled in breakups like cards and pool balls—games
of skill and chance. I also keep a cyclist who makes his way across
Lake Bemidji in winter. In the Guatemalan pouch the size of a coin
purse where I keep a buffalo nickel or is it Indian head and a tiny
skeleton key, something traded me red dust and its chrysalis for the
dreadlock Khari gave me after he cut his hair before leaving the States
on a tour of duty with the Peace Corps in Lesotho. Gone now forever.

-previously published as a madlib in Indiana Review
　

Postcard with Blood Stain

I’ve been carrying this postcard for days, dearheart;
now, I finally get to write you. Today
I admired the local architecture—spires,
stained glass windows.
Don’t mind the stain—paper cut
from this postcard. I know it sounds unlikely.
Beaches here are lovely. Well, I bled
from a machete. Didn’t need stitches.
Tried my hand at cutting open a coconut
like the natives. Actually, while touring
a plantation I helped a local woman
give birth. Didn’t want to make myself
out to be a hero. No, I have to confess,
I got involved with the menses
of a woman I met at this great locals’ bar.
Don’t know why I said that.
Was something mundane; a razor nick.
Well, in fact, in a flare up of civil unrest
a stray bullet winged me.
I’m okay; didn’t want you to worry.
Take this postcard and add it to your papier
mâché. Or is it papier collé?

　
Postcard with Blood Stain Received

It came today with its stain like a postmark,
inkblot, birthmark, spot—and damn,
the dog slipped out when I went to the mailbox.
You named him Spot, concerned with appearances
and, come to think of it, location. You’re always
gone to some locale looking for the locals.
I wanted to call him Fido. This spot’s the whorl
of your thumb—like the trail the dog traces
around the house when you’re away
head down, nose to the floor, before
making tight circles to his tail, loyal
to his nature, finally bedding down.
Sleep well wherever you are.

- both poems previously published in The Tusculum Review

2011-02-01T09:38:00.000-08:00

Amy King

As If A Lantern In Love Led

Like you I have
forgotten everything
spoken so far,
I knew the dinosaurs
in their history
and I have a complex tie
that longs to be subtracted.
All together, we make each other
up. I gave you
a little slice of heartache
to latch onto
& a sixty-pound cumulous cloud
cools her way
straight to the top.
Bashfully enamored eyes
descend as we speak
silently above
the moonlit stove of midnight.

I Too Am Chicken

An author thinks she knows more than
she does. She knows even less.
For example, someone else wrote this.
Thoughts approach in the shower;
she watches them haunt her swirling tides.
That’s the cliché declarative.
She thinks,
Whenever I exist, people name me at the gate;
I trip over my own grass velvet heart
and I am the only person left on this flight.
In the distance, I see no one who can take
off and no perfect landing.
Alas, her red robin eyes to and fro
twitch lightly in their sockets.

A Final Note

There is a deliberate pleasure in watching
someone smoke cigarettes. Even the echo
of that sentence smells like a stolen observation
that the smoker is deeply, darkly thinking.
In books, they brood; on screen, they are the rebel
or daring victim being slowly, unknowingly undone.
I have always wanted to occupy my mouth
in similar fashion and gather great thoughts
from the shadowed glow erasing my face.
I suckle sweet cigar substitutes instead:
savor the proximity of nature we’re taught.
Toast the lung in all its sanctity and encourage
its diverse role within ourselves. As always,
let the credits scroll down your face
before stubbing out the coal.

The Spirit Is Near

Wrapped in personal pity, betrayer sphinx slinks
and eats; he privately shuffles our motivations.
I like the capability of my eyes, the way they
brighten the woman on the curb by the church.
She will burst alive in two minutes. You cannot
believe the wind last night. The things it sells.
The sun buffs the surface of technology across
our city of cracks and cataracts, which in turnig
nores the shoes rubbing my feet from their bones.
Enter some disease where the woman sells
her tears prior to civilization. That moment is now
upon the funeral pyre. In the crumblings & ramblings
of old men seated in tired t-shirts on stoopsever
lasting, they survey remainders of wars over-lived
and fat berries beyond the perimeter ripened
with blood brought back from dust fields
by worms underfoot and pregnant.
We make wine to toast the cross and tender liars.

-All poems previously published at Poetry X

2011-02-01T09:37:00.001-08:00

Photography by John Perminter

2011-02-01T09:33:00.001-08:00

2011-02-01T09:21:00.000-08:00

Allison Joseph

Disobedience

Do I really want it back,
that pen for chipped
furniture, my room the last
stop for the peeling bureau,
the sagging mattresses
my grandmother once slept on?
Do I want to re-live
that shedding green carpet,
my unsteady desk with its
wobbly wooden chair,
the room cold no matter
the season, so clammy
no space heater could
warm it fully? I satin that room, engrossed
in library books, afraid
my father might find
my overdue copy of Fear of Flying,
that I read fitfully in the almost-dark,
astonished over its sex scenes.
Or I pecked at my stolid gray Royal,
striking stiff keys one at a time,
fingers hesitant on the heavy
machine, pressing out poems.
I taught myself new words
from someone's set of vocabulary
records, knitted long scarves
only to rip them apart.
Who wants to know that self
too timid to live beyond books,
too restless to make anything
enduring from yarn, words?
Do I really have to welcome
that girl back, the one
who loved transistor radios,
crochet hooks, who hoarded
pennies in a ripped purse?
I don't want her back
but she's here anyway:
gangly, ashamed,
disobedient daughter
who never seems to leave
her room, sneaking out
only when necessary,
leaving her dinner untouched,
sink of dishes unwashed.

Little Rascals

At ten I only thought of them as cute,
not a metaphor for race relations
or gender dynamics, just resourceful kids
intimate with junkyards, scrap heaps,
full of Busby Berkeley ambitions:
Alfalfa with his strangled singing
and stray cowlick, Spanky with his
fat waddling rear and quick mind,
Buckwheat, whose wild hair never
knew a comb, that mute cherub Porky,
all of them charter members
of the He-Man Woman Haters' Club,
as if they even knew what a woman
was like--how one walked, talked,
smelled. Of course, they had Miss Crabtree,
perfect blond teacher with perfect teeth,
manners, pursued by some stupid beau
the kids just had to foil before
the atrocity of marriage took place.
But I prefer the Rascals no longer
talked about: Mary and Wheezer,
two kids clearly caught
in the fist of the Depression,
Stymie, who pondered life under
a bowler almost as large as he,
Waldo, the scheming nerd
who always wanted to steal Darla
from Alfalfa, Darla herself,
with her sassy song numbers,
snappy comebacks. She
was the real talent, crooning
"I'm In the Mood for Love" better
than Alfalfa ever could, with
seemingly more knowledge
of the future, about what could happen
once the cuteness wore off, the checks
stopped coming. I don't have to tell you
that Alfalfa died tragically,
but it does seem relevant
that not too long ago some man
claimed to be Buckwheat,
though the real actor
had died years before.
Maybe that's what we all want,
one shot at fame, a chance
to be remembered as superior,
greater than our ordinary selves,
our performances captured on film
so that generations to come
could exclaim over how darling
we were, how poised, how young.

-both poems previously published in Word Press: Fine Literary Publishing

Accessible

Come here you slut of a word,
let me lay you down and stroke you
until both of us spin in the joy

of easy access, safe passage,
no stumbling over curbs, no fumbling
over straps and snaps my too-blunt fingers

can’t open—let your flesh bubble free,
rise to the surface to meet sun, rain,
other elements of weather so

occasional as to be erotic: monsoon
surges, liquor-laced Delta storms.
You and I go way back, seventh

grade at least, and I didn’t mind
that you flirted with everyone,
air kisses all around, never hesitant

to flash a silky leg, swell of décolletage.
I’d heard rumors of your promiscuity:
stories that you’d sleep anyone—

and for certain, I saw you tramping it up
in college, making the rounds in the library:
helping the lit majors first, then the science

geeks, then finally the red-eyed math
majors who sat straight up in triumph
when you whispered by, hair levitating

on backs of narrow necks. Some call
you “whore”—too many people get “it”
when you’re around, and there’s a world

of “it” we’re all not supposed to get,
code not to be cracked, safe whose
combination has been eternally lost.

But you don’t care, tearing your shirt
open to reveal that combination tattooed
across your chest in deft calligraphic

script, red numerals I can’t wait
to run my fingers over, a kind of
Braille no one is unworthy of.

’80’s Night at the Casino Boat

We’re all a little fatter than when
we last loved these tunes, some
of us balder, but all of us remember

how to sing along, how to bob our
heads, tucked far from the gaming
floor’s easy neon promises.

The lead singer still sings
in raspy bliss and fury,
as if the same girl who broke

his flimsy heart has kept her
rock star poses, as if he’s still
playing in his stepdad’s garage,

though, from the looks of him,
he is somebody’s stepdad, or
somebody’s uncle, the long-lost

kind, dirty jokes and tour
van tales spinning out every
family reunion. He peers out

at this crowd stuffed in their
chairs, says this is like a high
school reunion, forty years later,

and we laugh with him, our
paunch his paunch, his guitar
slung over his belly as if on its way

to an inevitable decline.
But we can fight that skid
by singing along, proving

we were breathing in the 80’s,
garish decade when radio
still played bands too ugly

for television, British Invasion
only twenty years gone,
long before downloading, viral

videos. The drummer can drum
like anyone—Ringo, Levon,
Bonham—lead guitarist and bassist

riffing young man solos
until we finally break
from our church row seating,

start swaying and shuffling
toward the stage, aging bones
liquid under the spell of songs

stored away somewhere on
cassette, the saddest-looking
groupies ever defying our own

ankles to shake what our
ex-wives left us, losing our
orthopedic brittleness

in these three-minute blasts
from the Smitheerens, bonus time
tonight for the gamblers

and losers, dealers and winners,
all our brilliance glowing
until the final chord thrums.

-both poems previously published at Connotation Press

2011-02-01T09:09:00.000-08:00

Ira Sadoff

In Madrid

When the Lord God went belly-up, out of business,
little brats went shin-kicking through the streets of Lapaloma.
The Watchmaker closed up shop to peel wallpaper off the Vatican.
Neitzsche was in my dream too, in a tedious spat
with Anna Mahler: the syphilis was invisible, so he thought,
these are my thoughts. Sunny, a hundred degrees. Frozen daiquiris.
I wasn’t going to let any sordid affair spill my happiness.
Until the Romanian chipped away at the pieta.
He was driven, bi-polar, mood disordered:
at least they could name him this. As for the dark stuff,
blank page after blank page, motives sail by
like an afternoon cloudburst, and I don’t want to be belabor
the matador, how speared he was, or how she came to me
in a black dress out of Manet and took me in her mouth,
and I’m whispering Dear God,
the way we talk about the old rhymed poetry
with a reverence for clarity and a few simple rules of behavior,
don’t make me feel we’re all drives and cracked hardware,
wired wrong: I want to blame someone, I want to
paint over the underground, where I’m waiting at 3 A.M.
for the train, and yes, I’m sure I’m being followed.

Once I Could Say

Once I could say
my loyal friend, the house wren.

I might even sing to him.
Did I not hear the beatific,

the breathlessness –
a patter shaking the tamarind pod,

the bright green feathery foliage
stammered by a breeze?

Those muttering implosions,
did nothing intend them?

Is the harp, too, obsolete?
When the wren took his awl

to the infested branch
he fed me an idea there.

Revival

I was standing between two screams:
shortcomings the virus I spread through a crowd.
This time the stage was heated and galloping,
and vital life forces were the sheen of a horse’s back
after a run. The water was choppy too
when the nun removed her habit
and waded into the river. Wading into the river
was an act of faith, not a mandate.
This woman, lover of Christ, as I’m
a lover of Christ, wants him to raise us up
past storm warnings and electrical pulses,
past detonating impulses, wants us
to rise above the given flesh. On my knees,
coughing before the mother of Pearl, I’m shoeless
at the shore of the river, dipping my foot in.

-all three poems from the collection True Faith

My Father's Leaving

When I came back, he was gone.
My mother was in the bathroom
crying, my sister in her crib
restless but asleep. The sun
was shining in the bay window,
the grass had not been cut.
No one mentioned the other woman,
nights he spent in that stranger's house.

I sat at my desk and wrote him a note.
When my mother saw his name on the sheet
of paper, she asked me to leave the house.
When she spoke, her voice was like a whisper
to someone else, her hand a weight
on my arm I could not feel.

In the evening, though, I opened the door
and saw a thousand houses just like ours.
I thought I was the one who was leaving,
and behind me I heard my mother's voice
asking me to stay. But I was thirteen
and wishing I were a man I listened
to no one, and no words from a woman
I loved were strong enough to make me stop.

-poem first appeared in "Palm Reading In Winter"

2011-02-01T09:03:00.000-08:00

Alicia Hoffman

This Earth Is A Novel

at all, but small and fine like the lines flowing
from a ball point pen; our lives are being crafted

carefully, the paper we rest upon is more
like a poem about a snow-capped mountain

in Alaska, about how we dance there
on its crags and warm our bodies as characters

light fires that glow near the crevasse, about
how we learn to speak the language

of snow: utvak, pirta, muruaneq — snow carved
in block, light snowstorm, soft deep snow.

And as the snow fades to damp rain,
(kanevvluk) I am ready to be convinced

there will always be more stanzas, that
the poets will continue to master the language

of alder, aster, iris and the flakes will continue
to drift and curve the stems in the vowels of snow.

-previously published in The Centrifugal Eye's

Study

Light, take us beyond
this ordinary day.

In a novel I am reading,
a bone doctor becomes

a photographer, a student
of natural duality—veins

and roots, flesh and earth.
Bodies mirroring universe.

It’s not a far stretch, this dark
room of ourselves. Come,

jump in the bath of the lake,
feel the color rising, there,

at the top corner, a curve
of shoulder, smooth stone.

If you concentrate enough on
the composition we will emerge.

-previously published in Writer's Bloc

Noise

If I told you we are only
so much noise, that when

we are gone our chatter
still soars through seamless

nights towards distant satellites
would you wonder how much

of this talk is worthwhile?
I've always admired the monks

who take the vow of silence.
If I had, would monastic bells

ring clearer? There is so much
noise. Forests know better.

Fern unfurling, speak for me.

Artifice

Your song does not escape me,
though your motions may

move to construe many masks
I am not a fool. Underneath

the stage, the music orchestrates
its magic. Always, what is over –

looked is what is never so easy
to see. There is a full band here,

trumpets and oboes and the snare
of the drum. And there, pitted

beneath the waves of so much sound
is one chord being strummed, alone

in its pitch and sway, a singular
achievement and marvelous in its quiet

intensity, like a low bass beat blooming
from the back row of a noisy auditorium.

When everyone is watching your face,
face forward for the quirks and antics

of your act, I will show you, I will
be the one to turn back and take note.

-both poems previously published in Pirene's Fountain

2011-02-01T08:59:00.000-08:00

About Art - Armillary Sphere

Landscape architects for the company Lovejoy invited sculptor David Harber to create a focal point to enhance the main entrance of this prestigious, luxury development in Kensington known as The Philimores.

As a result, Huber created Armillary Sphere, a sundial that combines a magnificent 1.5 m armillary sphere with an elegant water feature at its base. He wanted to make a sculpture that would command a feeling of great presence without screening the view. David and his team and went on to oversaw the entire installation.

David Harber has earned an international reputation for creating innovative, contemporary designs paying homage to the past, and taking the marking of time as his inspiration. His work has an ethereal quality, drawing integrity from his commitment to using only the finest quality materials; beautiful, sometimes mysterious, always intriguing. Find out more at: http://www.davidharbersundials.com/corporate/zabeel.html

2011-02-01T08:58:00.000-08:00

Artwork by Holly Monneck

2011-02-01T08:54:00.001-08:00

2011-02-01T08:49:00.000-08:00

About Books:

Title: The Last 4 Things

Author: Kate Greenstreet

Description: Kate Greenstreet’s deeply elegiac second full-length poetry book The Last 4 Things is an expansive meditation on a life’s moments and memories flashing before one’s eyes, but very slowly, each one lingering. The tone, wounded without being outraged, urgent but not desperate, gives the sense that what is being described is from the deep past. Some of it may be, but much of it is reflection also of how life should be lived, present tense. While the speaker and the characters drifting through the poems are artistic, they are portrayed also as earnest and industrious. Passages feel like they are pulled from black and white snapshots, yellowed pieces of paper, American rural life. --- Dan Magers

Product details:

Printed: 7.9 x 5.9 x 0.5 inches, 104 pages
ISBN: 1934103098
Copyright: 2009

Language: English

Country: USA

Publisher's link: http://ahsahtapress.boisestate.edu/

2011-02-01T08:47:00.001-08:00

About Music - Bruno Mars

After a string of behind-the-scene jobs -- everything from writing songs for Brandy to impersonating Elvis -- singer/songwriter/producer Bruno Mars put his name on top of the charts in 2010 by collaborating with rapper B.o.B for the single “Nothin’ on You.”

Born Peter Hernandez (born October 8, 1985) in Honolulu, Hawaii, Mars’ kicked off his career at the age of four fronting his uncle’s band as Oahu's youngest Elvis impersonator. Ten years later, he was impersonating the King of Pop, Michael Jackson, with the Legends in Concert show. After graduation, his uncle convinced him to move to the mainland U.S. and follow of his dream of becoming a singer. Months of frustration and going nowhere followed before he met songwriter Phillip Lawrence, the man who would convince him to try his hand at writing songs for other artists. The two would dub themselves the Smeezingtons and co-write “Long Distance,” which would be recorded in 2008 by R&B singer Brandy.

The gigs came in fast after that, and in 2009, when he and Lawrence co-wrote “Right Round” for rapper Flo Rida, they had their first number one hit on their hands. A year later, he would co-write and sing on B.o.B’s number one hit “Nothin’ on You,” and would do the same for Travie McCoy with his cut “Billionaire.” Also in 2010, he released his debut solo EP, It's Better If You Don't Understand, which featured more pop material mixed with the R&B. Later in the year he released a full-length album, Doo-Wops & Hooligans. The first single from the album, "Just the Way You Are," topped the Billboard Singles chart the week before the album's October 5th release. Find out more at: http://www.brunomars.com/

2011-02-01T08:39:00.000-08:00

Scott Owens

Rails

Every child should have one, a pair, really,
a matched set, set apart just the right width
so that one foot pressed against each one
leaves you stretched out about as far
as you can go, unable to move, feeling
almost trapped, almost actually in danger.
And every child should walk them as if
that’s what they were intended for,
leading out of town, around the curve,
along the river, revealing the backsides
of people’s homes, clotheslines and refuse,
the yards you weren’t supposed to see.
And every child should learn to balance
atop the railhead without the constant
unsightly tipping from side to side,
should be able to step exactly the distance
between the ties consistently, almost
marching without kicking up ballast.
And every child should have a bridge
they go under to hide and look
at dirty magazines and smoke cigarettes
and place coins on the rails to flatten
and see if this could be the one
to cause the train to leap the tracks.
And every child should know the lonely
distant sound of late night travel
when bad dreams have kept them awake
wondering where they come from, what
they bring or take, and where when it’s all
done they might return and call home.

Stony Point

Crossroads where boulders rise
between Hodges and Ninety-Six,
Greenwood and Laurens, names
people might recognize, homage
to the quarry that kept three generations
of Garrisons, Harvleys, Hollingsworths,
microcosm of the American South,
Garrisons atop the hill, brick homes,
land left to woods or rented out,
worked by others, reaching
all the way back to the river,
managing schedules and paychecks,
sales and delivery, Harvleys half-way
down, wooden homes, on seven acres
they work to death for chickens and cows,
corn and the best tomatoes in three counties,
driving shovels and buckets, Hollingsworths
along the dusty road, a narrow strip
of land, two-room block homes
or later used trailers, drilling holes,
loading machines, setting charges
to break out proverbial hard places,
homes always half-empty.

Homeplace

From that hill I could see
the asphalt plant choking the sky,
the girl scout camp beneath the pines
that echoed laughter on summer nights,
seven acres of red cows and corn,
the highway’s red clay bank
leading the way to anywhere else.
Only in back the trees rose up,
a pine wall too thick to see
through, too tall to see over,
but quarry sounds kept imagination’s
beasts alive and creeping closer.
Why should this be home,
a place I lived only between
other homes, once a year,
a month at a time at least till 12,
a place where evening sang with voices
of the old, the unambitious,
the not-too-distant wild,
a place where dying had its own season,
and everything smelled like dirt.
A place is just a place,
one as good or bad as the other.
It’s the people you care for,
or hate, who keep you
coming back, or never let you go.

Vacancy

The poems are all asleep now,
bedded down beneath their blanket
of exhaustion, mental fatigue,
satisfaction. No one lives here
anymore, the old man and woman
both gone, children grown up,
caught up in other lives, grandchildren,
married off, moved away.
The hill is still there, of course,
and one house still sits upon it,
the other become a part of the hill
itself. There are still pecan trees
and stray flowers, and new rocks
rising each winter, and the pines have regained
half their height, but the cows
belong to someone else now,
an absent renter, and no garden graces
the hillside, as if the land could only
be used and never again possessed.

-all poems previously published at The Dead Mule

2011-02-01T08:35:00.000-08:00

Vicki Thornton
　

No Black For Monet

beneath this foreign northern sun
we wander the cobbled lanes
of Giverny
buy Spanish oranges and Dutch cheese
from a girlchild on roller skates

we sit in Monet’s garden
while bumble bees
drone like Volkswagens
and try to capture this moment
create an impression
with digital clarity
amongst his palette of pure light

gardens of scorched orange day lilies
roses bursting in salmon pink
cadmium yellow pansies
and cobalt blue Canterbury bells
where black is forbidden
and shadows are merely
the darkest of purples

-previously published in Fly Magazine
　

A Storm At Bay

Clouds rain in from the south, tumble and swirl
reducing the sun to mere memory. Blue-green sea
dissolves to gull-grey while dancing white crests
become frenzied, tossed with salt licked winds.
Corrugated tides tear at the foam spewed breakwater
lash at moored boats that pull at their tethers
aching to be free. Men rush with sand stung skin
squint through the rain beanied heads bent
to claim what’s theirs. Clawed hands
frozen and numb pull at ropes
grapple with the wind as cray pots
skate across watered decks. Stinging rain sweeps
across the bay etching out passageway.
Waves slap the rocks wind cuts through the pines
the world disappears into a monotone mosaic
of sound and vision.

-previously published at PV Review

Louisa May

You were a silent woman
kept a silent house
we intruded
with heavy footsteps
down linoleumed halls
our voices piercing
your stillness.
I remember the picture
of Jesus and his
bleeding heart
the rosary that swayed
above your bed
each time we ran past your room.
The vulnerable pink skin
beneath the white hair
you tumbled into a bun
bleached blue eyes
and lips pursed
in continual disapproval.
Yet at your knitting
there was a beauty
a rhythm
to the pull of yarn
round and over
under and through
the tug of wool
on needle
your hands creating a grace
I never knew existed
in you before.
After
when they asked what of yours
I would like as a memento
I chose your needles.
Tortoiseshell.
I can’t use them
never being as silent
as you were.

-previously published in Land Lines: Anthology of Regional Poets
　

Bliss

is five foot seven
achingly thin
strawberry plump lips and mirror eyes.
She keeps her dreams
in a mahogany chest
by the bed
and casts her thoughts
as easily as dealing cards.
She lives in a palace
of crystal promises
all too aware
of their sharp intent.
At night the mattress
dips and sways beneath her
as her husband’s paws
land on breast and thigh.
Snuffling kisses down her neck
begin his dance of love
his quickstep.

After
as she listens
to his deep breath
turnings of a snore
she decides that happiness
is a state
like Queensland
overrated
and too expensive to live in.

-previously published in Divan

2011-02-01T08:24:00.000-08:00

Contributors Biographies

Robert Peake

Bio: he grew up on the U.S.-Mexico border, in the small desert farming town of El Centro, California. He studied poetry at U.C. Berkeley in the MFA In Writing Program at Pacific University, Oregon. His poems have appeared in California Quarterly, Cider Press Review, North American Review and Rattle. He lives in Ojai, California with his wife and cat. Visit him at: www.robertpeake.com

Sean Hill

Bio: he is the author of Blood Ties & Brown Liquor (UGA Press, 2008), lives in Bemidji, Minnesota. His awards include fellowships from Cave Canem, The MacDowell Colony, the University of Wisconsin, and a Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University. His poems have appeared in Callaloo, Ploughshares, DIAGRAM, Tin House, and numerous journals, and in several anthologies including Black Nature. More information, as well as poems, can be found at his website: www.seanhillpoetry.com.

Amy King

Bio: she grew up in Georgia, received an MA from SUNY Buffalo in 1997, an MFA from Brooklyn College in 2000. She teaches English at Nassau Community College on Long Island and has been writing poems throughout her numerous careers, which have included working for the Department of Defense, managing a popular fast food restaurant, multi-tasking as a medical technician in Labor & Delivery, serving as a residence counselor and advocate for the learning disabled, directing an ESL school in Manhattan and many other positions better left a mystery. She spends much of her time in Brooklyn and Baltimore. Visit her at: http://amyking.org/

John Parminter

Bio: he was born and brought up in a rural community in the English county of Cumbria, home to the Lake District or Lakeland as it's sometimes known. After spending years enjoying the scenery, he decided to try and capture it in images on film, and that's how he became an amateur photographer. He work includes rugged areas of Scotland and Wales. He lives in the UK. Visit his website at: http://www.viewlakeland.com/

Allison Joseph

Bio: she directs the Southern Illinois University Carbondale MFA Program in Creative Writing, serves as editor and poetry editor with Crab Orchard Review, and directs an annual summer writing conference for teen writers. She is the author of seven poetry collections, most recently My Father's Kites (2010 by Steel Toe Books). She was born in London and grew up in Toronto and the Bronx. She presently lives, writes and teaches in Carbondale, Illinois. Visit the review she edits at: http://craborchardreview.siuc.edu/

Ira Sadoff

Bio: he is the author of seven collections of poetry. He has published a novel, Uncoupling, and a collection of poems, stories and essays: The Ira Sadoff Reader. A book of literary criticism, History Matters: Contemporary Poetry on the Margins of American Culture, was published by the University of Iowa Press in 2009. His work is widely anthologized in The Harper American Literature, The New Bread Loaf Anthology of Poetry, and St. Martin's Introduction to Literature, among others. He has received many grants and awards, including from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. His newest collection TRUE FAITH (from BOA) is due in Jan. 2012. He currently teaches in the M.F.A. program at Drew University, and serves as the Arthur Jeremiah Roberts Professor of English at Colby College, in Maine. His email address is: isadoff@colby.edu

Alicia Hoffman

Bio: she is a graduate of the Creative Writing program at SUNY Brockport, lives, writes, and teaches in Rochester, New York. Her poetry has recently appeared in Redactions: Poetry and Poetics, Red Wheelbarrow, Hazmat Literary Review, Poetry MidWest, Umbrella, The Centrifugal Eye, Oak Bend Review, decomP, Pirene’s Fountain and elsewhere. Contact her at: newyorkcatcher@gmail.com

Holly Manneck

Bio: she studied fine art and graphic design at Plymouth State University, Plymouth, NH, and then went on to take part in a painting marathon with Graham Nixon, Dean of New York Studio School, NYC. Then she took part in the University of Vermont, Cultural Immersion Program and stuided abroad in Oslo, Norway. She says her art technique is contemporary 2-D mixed media painting. She uses paint, photography, technology and any other materials that works for her. Her technique is very painterly, where color and space are important. She feels we all share a common humanity which forever binds us,and that's what keeps her painting. Born in Montana, she now resides in Florida. Visit her at: http://www.manneckart.com/home

Scott Owens

Bio: he is the author of five collections of poetry, and the editor of Wild Goose Poetry Review, author of “Musings” (a weekly column on poetry), founder of Poetry Hickory, Vice President of the Poetry Council of North Carolina, and a writer of reviews of contemporary poetry. His work has received awards from the Pushcart Prize Anthology, the Academy of American Poets, the NC Writers’ Network, the NC Poetry Society, and the Poetry Society of SC. Born in Greenwood, SC, he has lived in NC for the past twenty-five years and currently teaches at Catawba Valley Community College. Visit him at: http://redroom.com/author/scott-owens

Vicki Thornton

Bio: her poetry has appeared in a variety of publications including Divan, Page Seventeen, Tamba, Poetrix, Polestar and a poem has been accepted for the APC Dear Dad anthology. She is now dipping her toe into performance poetry. The emerging poet lives in the Dandenong Ranges, Melbourne, Australia. Visit her at: http://vickithornton.weebly.com/index.html
　
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 March 1st. Copyright 2011 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

2011-01-01T10:41:00.000-08:00

Fourth Anniversary Issue

2011-01-01T10:37:00.000-08:00

2011-01-01T10:35:00.000-08:00

Editor's Note:

Welcome to the 4th Anniversary Issue of CSR! By now, you regular readers know my child likes North Pole explorers and mary wells water. It craves lone rangers in its anthill. Baby has an uncanny ability to WikiLeak hulu hoops, and not ask or tell. This issue celebrates battery acid in the fish soup mistaken for an icon. It is filled with dream-speech in the movie projectors cubicle. Add a group of poets soaked in vinegar, music to white river raft by and a tossed salad in the book review and you've got the possibility of an entirely new carnival ride. Trust me, when you finish this issue you'll never want to crop of lice again. Or bed bugs to reality shows! Either way, hip-hop eats Chinese take-out. Now, put those chop sticks aside and get busy...

2011-01-01T10:31:00.000-08:00

CSR: Issue 48 Contents/Contributors

Barry Ballard

Cheong Lee San

Kevin Prufer

Milan Malovich

Corey Cook

John Gallaher

Sandra McPherson

About Art - The Hanging Man

Kathleen Pequignot

About Books

About Music - The Le Boeuf Brothers

Ivy Alvarez

Kelly Norman Ellis

Contributors Biographies

2011-01-01T10:25:00.000-08:00

Barry Ballard

The Soldier, The Man, The Sparrow

As the world shattered after returning
torn from a pointless war, I drank the last
landscapes that I remembered till they halved
themselves and poured out their meanings, the learning,
the thatch and rustling shrill that I always
kept stored. I recited my slow drunken
casualty of words among the jaw-like stems
and leaves falling, always falling, like blades

cutting through the ash and pulp of our soft
deepening grave. And I descended as if I’d
folded all my hope like the dull wings
of a common sparrow, sometimes silent,
sometimes flapping in a muffled whir inside
my chest, reminding me how much a year could cost.

The Given

Concerning Brightman’s bold hypothesis
for the "Given" that you’ve always carried
crumpled up like wax paper in the mis-
fortune hiding in the mind. The thick green reeds
of it still grow in that water circling the pit
of the brain. But there’s no escape for those days
when you say, "Life should be beautiful" (and it
isn’t). Where are we when the heart fades

and finally stalls and that same wax surface
bears our own bootprint, or the print of someone
we love? No simple explaining away
of grief standing over its grave, or the fist
of loose earth dropping on the casket’s drum-
like skin, or the granite’s cold chiseled name.

Sea Of Rains

Whistle at the moon from the deep friction
of that last thought coming undone. Let the seed-l
ike particles of your sound waves connect
(where even the Mare' Imbrium could raise
its walled plains at the back of your tongue).
Fill it with the rains of your life's stories,
the condensation of your steaming breath
beading up the mortality of each day.

Did you ever think its promise could run
in circles so deep, that its fragmented glow
could illuminate a side you haven't seen:
the missing pieces of your world-view (undone
in that swallow of its timeless history, redeemed
past bombardment, the craters, and shadows)?

Rowing

Inside my father is the last vision
of water, a small lake of no consequence
in northern Michigan. His existence
rests somewhere between that place and the numb
reality of a cancer that grows
against his sight. We visit through Chippewa
skies, and warm our feet in bleached sand that crawls
deeper into the Pines and their soft shadows.

And it seems that our memory (our love
and regrets) always evolve to this:
a morning that opens before it has moved,
a mirror of forgiveness we're allowed to touch,
or the reach of our arms through the early mist,
as if everything was new ahead of us.

-All poems previously published at Weber, The Contemporary West

2011-01-01T10:17:00.000-08:00

Cheong Lee San

Quarrel

like a rush
of arctic wind
that scuttles over
a winter pond
dusting hoar
frost on reeds,
we sat, stiff , cold
as strangers

no words, no words pass between us today.
no words, no words she said.

Evening Bus Home

in the bus
we look like
soldiers back
from battle

fatigued
indifferent
some guy massaging
his head

a cough here
a cellphone rings
amidst the drone
of travel

a shuffle of feet
the beeps
of electronic cards
on readers

i try
not to be
distracted
by all these

as the sky
turns
a nasty shade
of grey

i have only
15 stops
or so
before home.

Tombstone

fading gold paint
on her name carved in marble.
September day.

Birthday

again

i look up
from my cup
of noodles,
different time
same space.
outside the house
the city
is awakening
the sun
long-throwing
its beams
through
dusty panes,
light scattering
on the few
extra lines
on my face,
as blackbirds
flutter
their wings
in the dawn.
be thankful
then
that it will
be just
another

day.

-All poems previously published in his blog, Urban Poems

2011-01-01T10:09:00.000-08:00

Kevin Prufer

Death Comes In The Form Of A Pontiac Trans Am

When I have fears that I may cease to be,
I think of death that revs and growls, backfires,
stops for none, is cherry red and sleek,
eats Honda Civics, coughs, and spits out wires.
It doesn't approach, but, boom, it appears,
growling where its muffler ought to be.
It has no sense of sin—but it has gears.
It shifts them when it must, but grudgingly.
It will not purr—it spits its awful stutter,
then roars these words: I want, I will, I am.
It flattens snakes, knocks dogs into the gutter.
It speaks American. It speaks American.

-previously published at Flint Hill Review

Hospital Song

The doctors can’t say, so no one knows
when the brain goes

dead. Toe twitch, grip
in the hand when the pin

slides in. Did an eyelid flutter? Breeze
where the earhole fails and a sea

begins. Surf in the skull. True,
something ate the cortex away. Oh, true —

and the breathpump groaned
so the chest just rose.

When the mind is a muddle of foam
each kind word floats away. Some-

one take the tongue or the body will speak.
Pull the plug so the brain can sink.

Zero where it counts and free —
it should be like a shark asleep in the sea.

-previously published in Jacket

The Mean Boys

The mean boys beneath the Exxon light off Route 64
had quick eyes
and pockets full of dollar bills, like secrets, they’d stolen.

Their pickups on idle, radios going, hands pale in the glare
like moths—at their lips,
at their snowy hair, touching the pickups’ fenders. Mean and thin,

laughter too loud for the highway on a Sunday night, for the snow
like flecks of sad gray paint
peeling down over Glenmont, Ohio, and the rest of town at their televisions.

The moon was a bright wreckage that fell over the rock quarry
where the mean boys’ fathers
worked all day. Fell over the roofs of trailers, over the frozen

river, where no one saw it come down. The mean boys didn’t care.
Their feet were strewn
with broken glass, arms bruised at the shoulders, cigarettes

curled into their sleeves. This was long ago. I pass here some nights
but the lot is always empty.
No quick jab to the arm, or hoot and flung beer bottle. Where are

the mean boys now? The snow has painted the town away,
and I miss the flash
when they opened their mouths to laugh. Their perfect white teeth.

-previously published at Shampoo

In A Beautiful Country

A good way to fall in love
is to turn off the headlights
and drive very fast down dark roads.

Another way to fall in love
is to say they are only mints
and swallow them with a strong drink.

Then it is autumn in the body.
Your hands are cold.
Then it is winter and we are still at war.

The gold-haired girl is singing into your ear
about how we live in a beautiful country.
Snow sifts from the clouds

into your drink. It doesn’t matter about the war.
A good way to fall in love
is to close up the garage and turn the engine on,

then down you’ll fall through lovely mists
as a body might fall early one morning
from a high window into love. Love,

the broken glass. Love, the scissors
and the water basin. A good way to fall
is with a rope to catch you.

A good way is with something to drink
to help you march forward.
The gold-haired girl says, Don’t worry

about the armies, says, We live in a time
full of love. You’re thinking about this too much.
Slow down. Nothing bad will happen.

-previously published at Poetry

2011-01-01T10:07:00.000-08:00

Photography by Milan Malovich

2011-01-01T10:02:00.000-08:00

2011-01-01T09:56:00.000-08:00

Corey Cook

Shoveling

Five inches of snow fell three days ago, two inches
yesterday and three this afternoon. I scoop and heave
as snow-encrusted cars coast by. Scoop and heave

as snowmobiles whir across a patchwork of fields
stitched together by loose stonewalls and scraggy
saplings. Scoop and heave as the neighbors' dog

bounds about their backyard and mouths the snow.
A town truck wielding an orange plow passes by –
scraping and pushing in its own monotonous way.

-previously published at Pig In A Poke

A Final Visit With The Family Dog, For Riley

He waits at the window,smeared with slobber
and whines, the dooropens and he wails,

wags that tail-less rump,you collapse to your
knees, try to peta squirming torso, his rough

tongue rolls out, tries to lapup your laughs, you then
lie down on the oriental rug,he does the same, the two

of you facing, his headrests on your right palm,
his paws perch on your shoulders,you bury your face

in black, that dusty place,that dry place you came
so far to be blinded byand must now embrace.

-previously published in Dance Of My Hands

Jumbo Plastic Baby Face

is what the receipt reads,
the product: oversized

plastic gift bags. My wife,
Rachael, wraps, or bags

a baby gate, a bathtub
and clothes—prepares

to leave for her
friend’s baby shower

in Massachusetts. Before
bagging the clothes though

she holds each outfit up
for me to see, we smile

at each other, then walk hand
in hand to our bedroom.

Mud Season

I walk on the side of the road
as Winter’s sludge chokes
the sidewalk. It is a sunny day,
each warm gust a shove. I am on
my way to visit my grandmother,
on my way as a light blue Toyota
station wagon slows. Stops. It is
the mother of a boy I baby-sit. "Corey,
how is your grandmother?" she asks.
"Well…" I begin. "Oh, she’s well. What
great news" she replies. "She’s dying"
I say as I look down at my grey shoes.

-both poems previously published at ken*again

2011-01-01T09:54:00.000-08:00

John Gallaher

On The Map Of The Folded World

We’re at a great distance.Little specks of things.
We have this hunger.
So let us contemplate the hand. The distanceof the hand.
The grasping of the distance.The hollow of the eye.
Let us say we are walking into a buildingwe’ll not walk out of.
We know we’re all heresomewhere. The table is set.
There are plants along the window.
Out of curiosity. Out of the bodytravel.
We consist of smaller things.The curtains kept swaying.
We’ll tell each other about it.We’ll accuse each other of not caring enough
about what we care about.
As we’re all foldingfrom our houses. Folding into the yards.
Our flaming streets. Our streetsin flame.

-previously published at Anti

Itinnerary For The Surrounding Area

All promises come to this
as these hills keep facing each other
all night. Green and gray. Some brown.

Some act of being there
pushes out onto the landscape, the sad little houses
on a sad little hill. What I was thinking.

How these hills act upon you,
so that you travel a long time to walk there,
and these cheery cottages.

How to get there, we wondered all evening,
over this map, gossamer hills
and dulcimer ocean.
What the pictures say.

We were hoping to be there by the 15th,
but then everyone started coming down
with something.
Three-quarter moon.

Over the view of the ocean, like hearing the whispers
of a story you’ve long wanted to hear,
and realizing
it’s about you.

We stood together
watching the baby sleep
for several minutes, moon over the dark hills
out the window.

We kept asking each other,
and these hills that keep facing each other
all night.

Some hills
we’re welcomed into the next day, like some beginning
we keep dreaming up, or some end.

Some beginning,
where you’ve never seen that green
before. Some end. Some gray original.

A clock tower from some small town
glistening in midday sun
just over this rise.

This frail place, prismatic. The buildings rising
at impossible angles
from these hills.

How Close It Might Come To A Plan

The way the child was the happy childhood
somewhere in the punctuation
of the butterfly garden, the woven glass,
between figures and lit windows
or balancing an orange on my head,
it’s winter. The only birds here
are scraps of birds, and what you believe in people
or choose to believe in people,
dragging the player piano across town, up the steps,
with all the trains going by your head
mumbling.
Named the dust of seepages, the dust
of eggshells and after-dinner mints,
you do the best you can,
the player piano does the rest. You’ll see.
You’ll do some experiments
yourself, with your father’s old coats. Your father’s
old shoes. You just can’t leave them there,
they’re not your size, and even if they were,
you can say, “I have shored my ruins
against these fragments, a landfill
of saying children rolled up
and from the talking trees, these pebbles from a pebble world
singing of pebbles.”

The winter trees. Yes. The frost
up and around the porch, this brittle moment
as if for itself alone, passing its moment,
turning the wind chime to ice.

Right? Something like that, anyway,
from the how and why
page, how, all other things being equal
on occasions such as this, you just stand there
in some human relation,
the whole place becoming some cave,
and how close it might come
to seeming like a plan,
though it wasn’t a plan. It wasn’t anything. It was
just you somewhere deciding to sit down,
and what does this button do,
and suddenly this music erupted.

Public Transportation

A man depicted in plaster watches a TV,
which plays a show depicting a man
riding a bus to a city. We’re worried, perhaps, by that,
that things have started, or otherwise lost more than we imagined,
so we decide to ask someone.

I had no idea there were so many answers floating about,
and so few of them ours, over the fields
and through the subdivisions
on our way to the city. Clouds are ripped things
that get scraped from the sky, for one.
Yes, Ronald, I do, for another.

Something about it all made our group feel a bit jaunty,
almost a merry band,
but for the mild depression and later, maybe,
keeping it kind of general
so everyone can follow.

We were implicated in the plot, we read,
but, luckily for us, it was a plot to support the government
and remain docile and pleasant, so they let us off
with a warning and some flowers, wind from the south,
busses back and forth.

It would have all turned out nearly the same
in any case. We even could have kept the same names
mostly, but for the pagination in the program
and a few items in the footnotes, with mostly the applause sign
to thank, and the formal constructions
the body keeps placing on us
toward evening.

-all three poems previously published at The Releigh Quarterly

2011-01-01T09:38:00.000-08:00

Sandra McPherson

The Bat Of Porch Light

"Night, when I was flying across
the sleep of other lives,
your pet reached out and snagged me
from the balcony, in the web of my cape . . .

This gore lays itself out for your lionheart,
who feels less companionless
nosing over the mousy
bird of me.

I feel, just behind the right shoulder, clean teeth
become my own spare bones,
a synchronous skeleton.

We live together briefly, the tom whispering
in my ear, me tolling
a squeal.

But the arrest weighs on me.
Night’s old neatness mussed. Here I am
indoors, bleeding all over the house-
mistress’s books, everything I knew forever
jounced from place, my slant on things

flattening to the floor. A kind neighbor
drowns me. Phoenix sloshing in a pail.
He drops me on a glacier.

I await the county man
who picks up iced identities.
Death is my address
on the flyway to South America.
And my sound—

like hair after hair uniting on a cat’s back—
migrates among the rabid searchers,
who will find outI was well.
As is, therefore, your treasuredmugger".

-subsequently published in EXPECTATION DAYS, U of Illinois Press, 2007

Discoveries, Mid-Letter

—I can’t translate much,
But I know the symbol for the sun:
Two empty boxes, or the dusty corners
Of a sunporch. Will they never
Tell the weather?
The Iharas left this delicate letter
Crushed behind a desk drawer,
Ballpoint Japanese
On paper thin enough to divide a soul.

Took J. to the place
where you and I saw the rat.
This time was different—my first
Green heron flew under the low trees
And chose a branch
That strawed up winter life
From the blank pure springwater.
Is it gloom if it startles and shifts?
Lovelier yet,
The bird was immature,
Streaked, and unknowledgeably late for this meridian.

Phoebe keeps cutting larger and larger scarlet letters,
Wants to know exact material and style.
Yes, she can translate the A,
Ornate or plain. She stalks me
And suddenly I’ll feel something held against my back.
She tries it there, before I’ll admit
To wearing it face on.
I like it, I say,
I like anything you make for me.

Frail characters!
And they will keep appearing, surreptitious surprises.
We must be unready for them.

-published in PATRON HAPPINESS, Ecco Press, 1983

Poppies

Orange is the single-hearted color. I remember
How I found them in a vein beside the railroad,
A bumble-bee fumbling for a foothold
While the poppies' petals flagged beneath his boot.

I brought three poppies home and two buds still sheathed.
I amputated them above the root. They lived on artlessly
Beside the window for a while, blazing orange, bearing me
No malice. Each four-fanned surface opened

To the light. They were bright as any orange grove.
I watched them day and night stretch open and tuck shut
With no roots to grip, like laboratory frogs' legs twitching
Or like red beheaded hens still hopping on sheer nerves.

On the third afternoon one bud tore off its green glove
And burst out brazen as Baby New Year.
Two other poppies dropped their petals, leaving four
Scribbly yellow streamers on a purple-brimmed and green

Conical cadaver like a New Year's hat.
I'd meant to celebrate with them, but they seemed
So suddenly tired, these aging ladies in crocheted
Shawl leaves. They'd once been golden as the streets

Of heaven, now they were as hollow.
They couldn't pull together for a last good-bye.
I had outlived them and had only their letters to read,
Fallen around the vase, saying they were sorry.

-published in ELEGIES FOR THE HOT SEASON, Indiana U Press, 1970

Eve

Limper and meeker the cheap cottons grow thin.
Heavy with wearing things; nothing I want to be seen in.

I’d rather lean in the window
With my poppled milk-skin and say nakedness

Is our drab uniform. Don’t worry:
Nothing will approach, no one is looking. Only

A white dog like a flashlight across the night.
Father has allowed me to name

The clothes—as I learn to sew. But they
Are boneless. They’re not animals. I can’t support them.

New things: yes, I’ll sit in them for awhile,
A full skirt, ruffles, necklace, watch and rings,

And rub a gardener’s naked back. But when he sleeps
I strip alone, open

The curtains, flatten against the window
I give oil to, pull back

With its dust tracing my sunlessness.
Or I might hold myself like rag and ammonia

To the pane I make worthwhile,
Clarify. My silhouette is clearly tired,

I want to start from here and go on,
With this streaked and strapping,

Purple, pale, okra-blossom bone-clothing,
The body scribbled on by a carried child

And not for young satyrs to grade. I want
The worn clothes torn

To bare the thread,
To pattern what is raw-edged.

This is my body
Stitched for no one else,

With these patchworker’s bloodstains—every quilt
Wears its finger blood

From the needle, this
Is not failure, to be harmed this way,

Thimbles, bodices, all cast off. Lights off, I rest
Here in a nakedness that has the power

To make our daughter
Love women.

Beside the curtain torn by a catclaw
Or chewed through by sun, I am more

Than a glass woman, more than a fabric one.
This skin. The bible-leaves of the labia.

The fever of my forehead. Its
Workmanship. Naming the quilt patterns.

Name clothes, Father says, be ashamed and name the clothes.

I name. Wimple, haik, yashmak. Panties, slip, bra.

-published in STREAMERS, Ecco Press, 1988

2011-01-01T09:36:00.000-08:00

About Art - The Hanging Man

The Hanging man is a sculpture by the Czech sculptor David Černý—whose work tends to be very controversial. The life-size sculpture is of the famous psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. Černý says the work is intended to express the human dilemma of living life or letting go.

Drawing police and fire-crew attention in response to reports of possible suicide attempts, the sculpture was last on display at Open Concept Gallery in Grand Rapids, Michigan, after touring other cities within the U.S. and Europe, and before being reinstalled in Prague’s historic Old Town section.

David Černý (born December 15, 1967) works can be seen in many locations in Prague, the city where he was born. He gained notoriety in 1991 by painting a Soviet tank pink that served as a war memorial in central Prague. As the Monument to Soviet tank crews was still a national cultural monument at that time, his act of civil disobedience was considered "hooliganism" and he was briefly arrested. Find out more about him and his works at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_%C4%8Cern%C3%BD

2011-01-01T09:35:00.000-08:00

Artwork by Kathleen Pequignot

2011-01-01T09:29:00.000-08:00

2011-01-01T09:23:00.000-08:00

About Books:

Title: Slaves To Do These Things

Author: Amy King

Description: Mistress of a mythic surrealism that is laced at times with bawdy language, Amy King combines images like "moldy dark stools in back room encounters" with "Michaelangelo turning crosshairs to sunshine." Unusual juxtapositions like these compel the reader to turn the page, discover more. Divided into five acts, this collection of poetry arcs like a prize-winning drama, a volume that should be in everyone's hands and on everyone's shelf!

Product details: Printed: 6" x 9", 95 pages
ISBN: 1935402315
Copyright: 2009

Language: English

Country: USA

Publisher's link: http://www.blazevox.org/

2011-01-01T09:19:00.000-08:00

About Music - The Le Boeuf Brothers

The Le Boeuf Brothers are a jazz duo based in New York City. Identical twin brothers Remy Le Boeuf (saxophone)and Pascal Le Boeuf (piano) are part of a growing New York jazz scene characterized by odd time signatures, shifting harmonies, and the influences of hip hop, electronica, and alternative rock. The San Francisco Chronicle describes their music as “a rich brand of modern jazz, with performances and compositions that display an impressive level of sophistication. Textured harmonies and shifting time signatures are handled with aplomb.” In the molds of Chris Potter, Geri Allen, and Brian Blade, the Le Boeuf Brothers are on the cutting edge of progressive jazz.

In their short musical career, the Le Boeuf Brothers (pronounced "le buff") have garnered an impressive tally of national and international awards and accomplishments, the most notable being the ASCAP/IAJE Commission honoring Quincy Jones, which premiered at the 2004 IAJE conference and featured tenor saxophonist Chris Potter. The Le Boeuf Brothers have also received awards from Downbeat Magazine, the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts, and dominated the 2006 Independent Music Awards, winning Best Jazz Album and Best Jazz Song for their prior release “Migration”. Most recently, the track "Code Word" from their new album "House Without A Door" received 1st place in the International Songwriting Competition.

Pascal describes ‘House without a Door’ as “an attempt to create the perfect balance between intellect and emotion. After spending time apart working on contemporary classical composition and rock/electronica individually, it made sense for us to combine forces on this album." These influences shine on tracks such as Remy's "Tabula Rasa," a thru-composed maze of colorful saxophone arpeggios, and Pascal's "Wetaskiwin," a dreamlike hymn clearly influenced by Radiohead. "Our hope is that by connecting with our own personal emotions through music, we can connect with our audience." Find out more at their website: http://www.lbjazz.com/

2011-01-01T09:12:00.000-08:00

Ivy Alvarez

auricle, ventricle

sunlight stuns
the drowsy
gritty sand
you depart
or is it me
the flare of my skirt
your open mouth
tell the story
remember the start

that lunar pull
wave motion lulls
shift and sway
my lungs
ninety percent water
breathe in
all the watery years
the blue and the black
the stars

-previously published in Oban

lost flesh

i

here's the bed she lies in
the sheets might as well be snow
she's so cold
the heat disperses above her
the ceiling blankly accepts it
she sinks clean as a stone

ii

when she wakes there's a scar
where a breast used to be
she shows it to me
excoriated and raw
her eyes shine
behind a dam of tears

iii

when we cross the street
she holds onto my hand
as if I was ten again
and things were still to happen

-previously published at MiPoesias

mother, daughter

mother, wife to a beekeeper
treads the path to honey
fat and puffy like pollen
golden legs, intent hands
arms for a cradle
baby in the first year
life at the hive
honey-keeper, memory-hoarder
silver scissors
a little curl between her fingers
a weft of yellow-white silk
on fragile curve of bone
her daughter, unbidden, unlooses for her
curls, locks, braids
takes up the sceptre
of the bee-keeper, her hair
fair, darkens by the year
then lightens, silky pollen
the beekeeper's wife, the gatherer
ribbons, labels each year
reaps gold at the nape of a neck

resurrection

in the morning, in the winter
ice crusts the earth
frost forms on loamy footpaths,
fishbone leaves,
in the shadow of stones.
the cold needles the flesh of cheeks
then the sun turns up, comes around
a heat presses down on the earth ever so lightly
frost beads to water, disperses
lifts in the air, rises
to join the sky
the earth turns, rolls around like a lion caress
edits face directed to the sun
the earth warms
as the temperature rises
by slow degrees

-both poems previously published at The Write Stuff

2011-01-01T08:52:00.000-08:00

Kelly Norman Ellis

Superhero

Lasyrenn’s hair like
a rope
my locks are the new golden lasso,
I am Oya rocking hurricanes.
I am the protector of your dead
my mother is Marie Laveau
my daddy Stagolee
I am the earth shaker
protector of women
do u know me?
I’m your mother
say my name
virago
bitch
shrew
I am the squatting
goddess
Supergirl
not a white girl in tights but
the real one-breasted amazon
riding a black unicorn
protector of all the scribbling women
in attics
the one who comes when you call
me
like Eartha’s Catwoman
flirt, tease, you want me
I don’t have time
I’m into ruining shit
subverter,
transformer,
liberator of
desire.
defender of drag queens, of the butch and the femme
I will come when you whisper
in the dark
when you cry
when you scream like your mother did
I will bring you satisfaction
on a platter
I live in the Chino batmobile
I ride the City of New Orleans
like a bullet between my legs
I am protector of
cornbread
and 28 days of the moon
of bruised
plum women
the lynched
the raped.
on my cape is an SI am the blood
you see when you peel
back skin, the burst of life
in the back of the throat
the forbidden fruit.
my uncle was Sango
so I am protector
of righteous men.
turn down your volume
listen,
I am protector of Black Presidents
of translucent truth.
Steel toe boots, gold tooth
locks hot to the touch
you know me
I am
Sapphire.

-previously published at The Rumpus

Raised By Women

I was raised by
Chitterling eating
Vegetarian cooking
Cornbread so good you want to lay
down and die baking"
Go on baby, get yo’self a plate"
Kind of Women.

Some thick haired
Angela Davis afro styling"
Girl, lay back
and let me scratch yo head"
Sorta Women.

Some big legged
High yellow, mocha brown
Hip shaking
Miniskirt wearing
Hip huggers hugging
Daring debutantes
Groovin"
I know I look good"
Type of Women.

Some tea sipping
White glove wearing
Got married too soon
Divorced
in just the nick of time"
Better say yes ma’
am to me"
Type of sisters.

Some fingerpopping
Boogaloo dancing
Say it loud
I’m black and I’m proud
James Brown listening"
Go on girl shake that thing"
Kind of Sisters.

Some face slapping
Hands on hips"
Don't mess with me,
Pack your bags and
get the hell out of my house"
Sorta women

Some PhD toten
Poetry writing
Portrait painting"
I'll see you in court"
World traveling
Stand back, I'm creating
Type of queens

I was raised by women

Warm

even though it is only march
today is warm like may
so the men have decided to walk home
from the make-a-way-outa-no-way
jobs they do
their blue work shirts
with white name patches over the breast
open
sweat dried to their chest like tears
they saunter toward the simmer
of liver onions rice
cause work is over
and it is warm
like sunday suppertime
it is a warm march tocay
and children run home
from johnson elemetary
winter coats braced abouth their hips
they shout each other's nanes
trey and nay-naylike some long satisfied song
laughs dance with the scent of fried fish
from the cafe down the street
they pretend its summer
and take out their bikes
and pedal like wind
cause school is out
and it is warm
like honey buns in the sun

and the whispering mexican men
turn their cap brims west
while they move east
down the rock of concrete
they keep their cowboy boots on
but lose their jackets
cause it is warm
like morning cheese toast
today
and the guy up the street
the one with the blond streaked wig
puts on hot pants
showing the tina turnerness of his legs
catwalks to the corner
for a diet coke and salems
and nobody calls him a punk
cause it is warm like cinnamon fired apples
today

and i am on my front porch
playing harold melvin and the bluenotes
teddy pendergrass thawing my insides
out
wake up everbody
no more sleeping in bed
no more backwards thinking
time for think ahead
we all trying to defrost
and savor the heat
cause it is only march
but warm like my mama's lap
today

-both poems previously published at Coal Black Voices

Girl

you wore blue peddle pushers and polka dot tops
saturday mornings
when sun still spoke
through a screenless window above the sink
and the radio rested on its ledge
holding the jive of a dj papa
"the sounds of soul w-o-j-k"
girl
rested between some newly womanish hips
your hands submerged in lemon joy and breakfast dishes
while the bottoms of bare feet
slid
slopped and
ponied
to four tops
impressions and
dramatics
you were a girl with dixie peach bangs
hugging pink sponge rollers
and cashmere bouquest sprinkled
in the crease of not long opened breasts
who dreamed of boys
talking in poems
and moving in beauty like marvin gaye
will you remember this girl when you are woman
will you remember to love her whens she dances
across your dreams and kisses you
like a daugther
on your lips?

-previously published in Siprit & Flame

2011-01-01T08:39:00.000-08:00

Contributors Biographies

Barry Ballard

Bio: he wrote poetry from 1998 to 2007. During those years he was fortunate enough to gain many publication opportunities and was nominated for the pushcart prize ten times. In the spring of 2008, He suffered a massive stroke that left him paralyzed and blind and unable to speak. He gained his sight back and the use of his right arm and is reading and researching Hegel for an upcoming book project. He turns the pages with his big nose. He wishes all of his writing friends great hope and good health. He lives in Burleson, Texas. Contact him at: http://us.mc1128.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=abballard@hotmail.com

Cheong Lee San

Bio: he works in telecommunications but says he'd rather have more time playing than working, and would were it not for the stacks of bills to pay. His poems have appeared in the Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, The Sidewalk's End, and The Concelebratory Shoehorn Review. He resides in Singapore. You can read more of his work at his blog "Urban Poems" at: http://dsnake1.blogspot.com/

Kevin Prufer

Bio: he is a native of Ohio and has received degrees from Wesleyan, Hollins and Washington Universities. He is the author of four books of poetry and the editor of four anthologies, the most recent of which is Dunstan Thompson: on the Life and Work of a Lost American Master (Unsung Masters Series, 2010; w/ D. A. Powell). His fifth book of poetry, In a Beautiful Country, is forthcoming from Four Way Books in 2011. He is also Editor-at-Large of Pleiades: A Journal of New Writing and Professor in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston. He lives in Texas. Visit him at: http://www.kevinprufer.com/index.html

Milan Malovich

Bio: he says that photography is his #1 passion. He enjoys seeing the world through the lenses of a camera and has several motifs but perhaps his favorite one is horses. Cemeteries and nature are two other favorites. He lives in Trzic, Slovenia. You can get a better idea of his work by visiting him at: http://1x.com/member/2919/milan-malovrh/

Corey Cook

Bio: he grew up in South Strafford, VT and received a BA from New England College in 2002. His work has appeared in Calliope Nerve, Floyd County Moonshine, Hanging Moss Journal, The Henniker Review, miller's pond, Pig in a Poke, Shoots and Vines, Thunderclap Magazine and Willard and Maple. New work is forthcoming in blackdahlia. His chapbooks include Rhododendron in a Time of War (Scars Publications), and What to Do with a Dying Parakeet (Pudding House Publications). He works for a not for profit and lives in Contoocook, NH with his wife and daughter. He is the editor of The Orange Room Review. Visit him there at: http://theorangeroomreview.webs.com/

John Gallaher

Bio: he is the author of three books of poetry, most recently, The Little Book of Guesses and Map of the Folded World (forthcoming in early 2009). His poems have appeared in Field, New American Writing, and Best American Poetry 2008. He co-edits The Laurel Review and Green Tower Press. Currently he's working on a co-authored manuscript with the poet G.C. Waldrep, titled Your Father on the Train of Ghosts, due out in Spring 2011 from BOA Editions. He lives in rural Missouri. Visit him at his blog: http://jjgallaher.blogspot.com/

Sandra McPherson

Bio: she was raised in California and received her B.A. at San Jose University then studied at the graduate level with Elizabeth Bishop and David Wagoner at the University of Washington. Her poetry collections include, A Visit to Civilization (Wesleyan University Press, 2002), Edge Effect (1996), The Spaces Between Birds (1996), The God of Indeterminancy (1993), and The Year of Our Birth (1978), which was nominated for the National Book Award. She has also published nine chapbooks, including Beauty in Use (1997). Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Yale Review, The Paris Review, Poetry, The Southern Review and TriQuarterly. She has taught at the University of Iowa's Writer's Workshop and her poetry has been featured in the PBS special, The Language of Life, hosted by Bill Moyers. She currently lives in Davis after retiring from teaching 23 years at the University of California at Davis. Contact her at: http://us.mc1128.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=sandyjmc@mindspring.com

Kathleen Pequignot

Bio: she is an artist who enjoys combining watercolors, graphites, and charcoals in one piece of work as well as using them individually. They suit her folk art style which works nicely on the moleskine paper. Her subject matter includes flowers, birds, vegetables, food and fruit. She can sometimes add words and other times just add doodles. Often a whimsical idea can be inspired by the holidays--her happiest moments are when she is playing with lines and colors. She lives with her family in Longwood, FL. You can find more of her work at: http://kathleenpequignot.com/

Ivy Alvarez

Bio: she is the author of Mortal (Red Morning Press, 2006). Her poetry has been featured in anthologies, journals including The First Hay(na)ku Anthology, Famous Reporter and Magma and new media in many countries. She is the recipient of numerous awards, prizes and residencies, including fellowships from MacDowell Colony (USA) and Hawthornden Castle (UK). She also accepted an Arvon Foundation bursary and the honour of Special Poetry Guest to Dublin’s Trinity College/Florida International University poetry summer program in 2004. She lives in Cardiff, Wales. Visit her at: http://twitter.com/ivyalvarez

Kelly Norman Ellis

Bio: she is an associate professor of English and creative writing at Chicago State University. She is also the associate director of the MFA in Creative Writing program as CSU. She is a poet and a recipient of a Kentucky Foundation for Women writer’s grant and is a Cave Canem fellow and founding member of the Affrilachian Poets. Her first collection of poetry Tougaloo Blues was published by Third World Press in 2003 and she is co-editor of The Spaces Between Us: Poetry and Prose on AIDS/HIV published 2010 (Third World Press) She lives on Chicago’s South Side.
Contact her at: conjwoman@gmail.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 Feb. 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

2010-12-01T11:08:00.001-08:00

Issue Forty Seven

2010-12-01T11:06:00.000-08:00

2010-12-01T10:58:00.000-08:00

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...

2010-12-01T10:56:00.000-08:00

CSR: Issue 47 Contents/Contributors

Russell Endo

Kelley White

L. Ward Abel

Ursula Abresch

Arlene Ang

Forrest Hamer

Lee Upton

About Art - Rainbow Piece

Marilyn M. King

About Books

About Music - k-os

Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal

Christine Hamm

Contributors Biographies

2010-12-01T10:52:00.000-08:00

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

2010-12-01T10:47:00.000-08:00

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?

2010-12-01T10:42:00.000-08:00

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.

2010-12-01T10:40:00.000-08:00

Photography by Ursula Aresch

2010-12-01T10:36:00.000-08:00

2010-12-01T10:25:00.000-08:00

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.

2010-12-01T10:16:00.000-08:00

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

2010-12-01T10:02:00.000-08:00

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

2010-12-01T09:59:00.000-08:00

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

2010-12-01T09:58:00.000-08:00

Artwork by Marilyn M. King

2010-12-01T09:53:00.000-08:00

2010-12-01T09:48:00.000-08:00

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

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/

2010-12-01T09:46:00.000-08:00

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/

2010-12-01T09:45:00.000-08:00

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.

2010-12-01T09:38:00.000-08:00

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.

2010-12-01T09:28:00.000-08:00

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

2010-11-01T09:48:00.001-07:00

Issue Forty Six

2010-11-01T09:46:00.001-07:00

2010-11-01T09:37:00.000-07:00

Editor's Note:

Welcome to Issue Forty Six of CSR! By now, you regular readers know my child likes stevie in the wonder and an architect in the angel. It craves collard sunbeams in its stary stary night and makes cute little sounds at the first sight of a box of crayons. Baby has an uncanny ability to Inuits in a hulu skirt. This issue examines the leaky war reports. It is filled with peace plans in the curry. Add to that, a group of poets but no Lay-Z-Boy recliner, music to shag a carpet by and oatmeal in the book review and you've got the possibility of an entirely new species of frogs. Trust me, when you finish this issue you'll never want to watch live election night returns again. Or bed bugs to the recuse! Either way, never buy used furniture without careful examination. Now, blow your nose and get busy...

2010-11-01T09:34:00.000-07:00

CSR: Issue 45 Contents/Contributors

Felino A. Soriano

J. V. Foerster

Joy Helsing

Zeno Chen

Amber Nelson

John Hoppenthaler

Georgia Ann Banks-Martin

About Art - Animaline

Annette Labedzki

About Books

About Music - Hindi Zahra

Babara Jane Reyes

Guy Kettlehack

Contributors Biographies

2010-11-01T09:26:00.000-07:00

Felino A. Soriano

Approbations 502
—after Marcin Wasilewski Trio’s The First Touch

of a Summer hand
heated prisms pointed inward:
humidity
of agape sincerity, skin
bathe, virtuous societal neoteric custom
calls
toward listening anthology of bodies:
walk, tempted relay the heard spines
curving toward emotional stints : smiles
overcome burgundy clouds
squatting before releasing slants of wet
atop those heading toward praise.

Approbations 504
—after Ana Fort’s Lullaby

Hands have their various voices: embrace, twist
reinvent shades of documented chaos. Too
voices have their various hands: embrace, twist
control environmental shades of
the young one’s necessary modes
of interpretative rest.

Approbations 514
—after Noah Howard’s You All

know
among skeletal glances
her face asterisk
denotes italicized semblance
feature forward anger
butterfly drunkard bounce:
glare, yes, the eye of your love
silk at times (pleasurable too; such farness)
now however
shard-blend physical violation,
touché to the forgotten
tongue (yours)
misplacing
anniversary surprises
late, too, yes
wallet non-finite
cannot reclaim smile of yesterday’s
moment of emblematic, enigmatic
prompting.

Approbations 516
---after John Coltrane's and Don Cherry's The Blessing

Resembles silvery stutter of wings, apparitional
hurry,
recalling the name
of illustrative contour
corresponding annex
growth human etching
gilded
as the gliding concept
overwhelming quotidian constructs
famous for clichéd signals foreboding
aggregated sheep. Stilled. Requiring
interpretation’s orchestrated boons
heard
nearest translation of intertwining air
hovering
the lake’s turquoise
construct of rippling ambulation.

2010-11-01T09:17:00.000-07:00

J.V. Foerster

Reversed Shaman

He was spent, left to boil in the sun
a plump snake
in the desert dust
slippery skin
caressing dry death
all around were
stark white bone
she laying between the angry
bones of her husband, the sharp bones
of her dogs,the weeping bones of his ex-lover
looking up in horrorat her swaying
blue white skinhollow skeletal
statue of a ghost woman
rocking their child

-previously published in Eclectica Magazine

Daughter of Enigma

I will pick & choosemy sorrows carefully
call down weather
wind or fog
dance on the mounds
of my dead & lost vices.

I am an unguardedstep daughter
falling from the grace
of a good life
tumbling off the hands
of the creator, a silent
Goddess of small truths
and I am falling
falling
And I tell you
oh poor mother
oh poor father
oh poor poor
waiting family
there is no floor
no foundation
no end for a poet.

-previuosly published in Niederngasse

The Harvest

What's in the length of this poem?
How far in will the roots reach?
How far up will the stalks grow?
Or will it die
as I have allowed
so many things I love
to die before.
It is a seed to me
a tiny oily pod filled with a rich head of harvest dreams.
It carries me this poem
to the stories of my ancestors that I have wrapped my
feet in so I could dance the dance of my people
so that I could breath and
follow a good solid road
to home

The Composer

Two canned lane
Philadelphia
spouting oily dirt
he's looking for anger
to move him
to the right place
sitting for hours
black bitter coffee
buzzing his blood
songs singing soprano
a thousand mosquitoes
whispering in his ear
notes
by 11:00 he'd wave them
away with a beer.

At night fall they became
rich cacophonous symphonies
the crazy rhythm mixed up stanzas trying to
set it up right
get it down right
to play
his rifts into the hollow
night air
ringing loud
on on
for five years he has no sleep
remembering
Beethoven and that there is no peace.

-both poems previously published in Southern Ocean Review

2010-11-01T09:13:00.000-07:00

Joy Helsing
　

Fantasy Tour

Let's take a trip,
Just you and I,
On a Mobius strip.
I'll tell you why:
It's a fun-filled ride
Round and about
On a singular side --
No in, no out.
We'll repeat each day
With never a doubt.
We cannot stray --
Not thereabout.
Whatever we do,
Each fabulous view
We'll see anew
Is deja, deja, deja vu.

-previously published in Mobius

walking on dream feet

down a long dream street
I peer in shop windows
at baubles not there
hear the rattle of dishes
from phantom restaurants
pause to pat
an imaginary dog

-previously published in Brevities
　

UFO

Dropped ice cube
slides across kitchen floor
into corner cobweb
Spider rushes to fix web
pauses perhaps puzzled
by invasion of Unidentified
Frozen Object

-previoulsy published by Poetry Jumps Off the Shelf

Musing in the Museum

Eyeless
tongue-less
the skull in the glass case
reminds us
of our history
and our destiny

-previously published in Poetalk

2010-11-01T09:12:00.000-07:00

Photography by Zeno Chen

2010-11-01T09:07:00.000-07:00

2010-11-01T09:03:00.000-07:00

Amber Nelson

Poem 18

we heft our sails
their pearls
unfurl
like fingers from fists

remember how to breathe
in quiet

Poem 22

These guts are rust-
ridden & ladeled
on the table
for display. Touch

the small intestine.
Then taste your fingers.

Broken & metalled

to steel against
the coming, the burning
the fallout.

Poem 25

listen to
the quiet

trickle of
daylight

into night's
empty room

Poem 27

Try this ride along the highway
in turn stasis ate the bank
and flow tings the pave I meant
to wide sail eat cherries sea,
each wary see these breezy
yesses. Say yes. Seance. Save us.

The wheels will wile us
into heaven. Your will wilts
wildly in two havens.

2010-11-01T08:54:00.000-07:00

John Hoppenthaler 　

Tree House

Take a walk down your block at three
in the morning. Listen to things

obscured by white noise in daytime:
gargle of a gutter at the end

of Limestone Lane; mild groans
from your neighbor’s tree house;

two maples daring just a little
closer to heaven. Vast orchards

of planets spin away into kilter.
Climb the rope ladder hanging there.

Sit in that far corner where high
moons filter through leaves

& over grass clippings, weekend roses
rot on the compost pile. Flickering

bats can barely be glimpsed dipping
darkness. It will be hard to leave

if you do it right. It will be awful
to stand down again on earth.

When Rachel's Father Moved Away

a week ago, she began to sing and still
hasn't stopped. I hear her now,
trilling through leaves, perched high
in the farthest crook of the apple tree.
Her mother's concerned. "Rachel
doesn't sing well," she jokes, forcing
a grin. "It's hard hearing her lullabies
falling asleep at night, and what
about school? Maybe it's just a phase."
Walking over to the gnarled trunk,
She grabs hold of each end of a board
he'd nailed there to serve as a ladder,
peers through the branches. "Rach,
sweetie, how about a sandwich?"
But Rachel isn't hungry. Suddenly
much younger, she's into a sing-a-long
learned years ago from Barney,
that lavender dinosaur on TV:
"I love you, you love me," she chants, picks
a big, green apple. She takes a bite,
and it's bitter; then, she takes another.

-both from his poetry collection, Anticipate the Coming Reservoir

Mirage

―Ibn Batuta, a 14th century Moroccan,
became the Muslim world’s Marco Polo.

He crossed the Sahara expecting wealth
& robes of honor in Timbuktu. His gifts:
"three rounds of bread, a piece of beef
fried in gharti, a calabash with curdled milk."

Later, at a small feast of a root like taro,
all six of his party took ill. One died.
Batuta survived by forcing himself to vomit.

The world was larger than he’d imagined,
& in weakness he thought his dead friend lucky.
On the trip home, Batuta found he’d lost
rapport with the gait of camels but could now

derive a certain comfort by admiring endless
shapes of women lounging along the dunes.
The sand would never again be so forgiving.

-from his poetry collection, Lives of Water

Order To Go

Down on Main Street, the guy who owns Pizza Boutique
has bought out River Antiques
to open a family restaurant. Word in town has it that he's
got designs on Molly's, which
would rankle me―man doesn't smile, never acknowledges
my desire: "easy on the cheese."
Today I order a pie with grilled veggies, "easy on the cheese,"
head to Molly's for a quick pop,
maybe three. The barstool feels fine, like my ass tethers one
world to another, one life to hundreds
who've swiveled this seat, knocked back smoky shot glasses
of bourbon, felt heat course into
their flabby but always-hungry stomachs. Molly's sympathetic,
still easy on my eyes, and my ass
is reluctant; as I spin from the perch, lurch for the door,
it puckers up in an effort at tightness,
tries mightily to overcome the gravity of mozzarella.

-previously in The Innisfree Poetry Journal

2010-11-01T08:48:00.000-07:00

Georgia Ann Banks-Martin

After Seeing Agostina Segatori in the Café du Tambourin

I dropped my robe
checked my thighs,
the stretch marks are still there,
so are those twin freckle-size moles,
dark brown ink spots on my deep tan skin.
I skip my navel, I know the ring is crooked
four years of eating pizza, chips, cheese cake
will do that.
I think. If I go to one more spinning class
pump a little more iron, each week,
by Christmas I will be skinny
a little closer to forty
a little closer
never to being the girl
wearing her dark hair beneath a head rag,
alone at a too-small café table,
cigarette half-smoked
half-smothered away.

Grand Central Station

I am leaning against a wall
watching people disappear
into the tunnels that return them to trains,
familiar beds.

A tall, thin man with a package in his arms
looks like my cousin Seneca
who spent one day of each month,
waiting for trains to carry him from the suburbs
to bring me a sack of nickels, dimes and pennies,
always saying,
“If you put these in the bank you will have money
for college.”
The man in a wheel chair is
reading a crime novel,
like a boy I used to date,
he had Spina Bifida,
he loved to read about serial killers.

A woman wearing a plain white scarf
reminds me of my best friend from high school
who dutifully wore her veil, tunic and pants.
While I sported tight jeans and an occasional
cleavage revealing V cut shirt.

But every morning with outstretched arms,
we greeted each other declaring:
“Darling, you look marvelous!”

Ballet Dancer

My jewelry box plays Swan Lake
while the ballerina turns without noticing
the soda stained sheet music beneath her;
hymns to play Sunday at Mt. Zion,
next week New Hope Baptist,
maybe St. James AME the week after.

Mother insists I play for choirs,
music will give me security,
a skill that will always be needed,
I might even open my own studio,
fill it with students, she says.

Some measures are blurred,
but my fingers know the keys
just as my mind knows a dancer
satin ribbon holding loose braids,
fitted top fastened with fabric buttons
like a bride’s gown,
tulle skirt, milky pink tights,
back arched, arms locked behind her,
feet in fourth position.

Madame X

X, letter, not last name,
a substitute for a name
no longer wanted.
Madame, French for Mrs.
drop the e and in English
she’s a whore.

Sargent dropped the left strap
of shiny gems off her shoulder,
plunged the neck line,
laid bare the full chest,
cinched the already small waist,
had her coyly twist her arm.

When scandal ensued,
he returned the jewels
to their place,
kept the name,
maintained the portrait
was the best he’d ever done.

2010-11-01T08:44:00.000-07:00

About Art - Animaline

A group of pricey sculptures outside the Los Angeles Police Department's new headquarters downtown are turning heads. The statues have also stirred controversy because of their $500,000 price tag, especially because of the city's budget crisis. The sculptures, six ballooning forms held up by two elongated, vaguely quadruped creatures on either end, were created by Peter Shelton, whose well-known work usually abstracts human body parts, distending them in space in ways that make us supremely self-conscious of our own imperfect, slightly ridiculous assemblages of flesh and bone, has here turned his talents toward powerful animals associated with the untamed wilds of Asia, Africa and the Americas.

Cast in bronze and coated with a rich, black patina, the figures create a formal promenade along the Spring Street side of the new edifice. Between the sidewalk and the conventional but imposing new building, their mostly rounded shapes soften the hard edges of the street-scape. The corpulent forms are sheltered beneath a freshly planted alley of London plane trees. As it matures, the bower will further cushion the pedestrian space between the busy traffic artery and the swank architecture.

An alumnus of UCLA’s master of fine arts program, Shelton has had a three-decade career, with works in the permanent collections of three dozen museums, including the Getty, LACMA and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Yet he has completed only a handful of public art projects. As for his first in L.A., Shelton says, “I’m really excited to have a public work in my hometown.” Find out more about the artist at his website: http://petershelton.net/

2010-11-01T08:43:00.000-07:00

Artwork by Annette Labedzki

2010-11-01T08:37:00.000-07:00

2010-11-01T08:34:00.000-07:00

About Books:

Title: The Kongdom of Possibilities

Author: Tim Mayo

Description: Meditative, fierce and direct, these poems explore what constitutes identity in our contemporary society. Mayo takes us on journeys across the globefalling off a motor bike and finding refuge with Italians, honeymooning in Athens, and discovering an ammo belt in St. Jean de Luz. Each of these poems reflect the complications of understanding oneself with charm and wit.　

Product Details:
Printed: 6 x 8 inches, 78 pages
ISBN: 978-0932412-768
Copyright: 2009Language: EnglishCountry: USAPublisher’s Link: http://www.mayapplepress.com/

2010-11-01T08:31:00.000-07:00

About Music - Hindi Zahra

Of Berber origin, Hindi Zahra was born in 1979 in Khouribga, a mining town in southern Morocco. Her father was in the army and her mother a housewife, occasional actress and singer of village repute. Among her uncles were musicians, into the post-psychedelic Moroccan scene of the time. She grew up to the sound of divas, raï and châabi, like Cheikha Rimitti, and the great Egyptian Oum Khalsoum, between traditional Berber music and desert rock’n’roll, with the blues of the great Malian Ali Farka Touré and the sensual folk music of Ismaël Lo in the wings. All this before she set out across the Mediterranean to join her father in Paris. She left school and got her first job at 18 in the Louvre. She passed her baccalaureate and worked in a series of small-time jobs with the sole ambition of developing her song writing skills.

”A fan of “the Afro-American groove”, she singles out Aretha Franklin, James Brown, 2Pac, and Tribe Called Quest, she learned her chops doing backing vocals on hip-hop flavored soul before embarking on her solo career. Starting in 2005, the self-taught composer was soon etching in the contours of the music that would reflect her personality, turning out some fifty songs in just one year. From these, two gems emerge. The first, Oursoul, is a tantalizingly ambiguous word play: what looks like English is in fact a Berber word meaning “bygones”. Against an arrangement evocative of American folk, the song tells the unfulfilled dreams of a young girl destined for marriage. Then came Beautiful Tango, a ballad rich in timeless nostalgia, a hymn to love, a sad thought with the power to pull tender heartstrings. “I had no doubts about the tune, so it was a relief when the words came naturally”, she admits. Beautiful Tango got serious kudos from The Wire, the reference in Britain’s “adventurous music” press, which heralded her as a worthy successor to Billie Holiday, no less. “Jazz is the only place where I can hear notes from my homeland. Jazz equals freedom to create.

She has a tenacious, free-spirited character, allowing her to create her own world through the sheer force of her convictions and intuitions. The result is Hand Made, with its handful of themes, one of which is herself as a "self-made-workin’-woman.” Hence the album title, which she justifies with a touch of humor: “handcrafted, made in Morocco!” Before adding on a more serious note: “The musicians play with their hands, and I play percussion and mess about on bass.” She demonstrates a fine-tuned sense of melody, with a touch of melancholy, but with some swing to it as well. The music serves as a perfect foil for her lyrics. The album reflects her personality: eminently seductive on first listen, and yet subtly fragile under the surface. This born wanderer has an imagination that is solidly anchored in real world, blending a variety of styles: there are jazzy tracks, dashes of Middle Eastern blues, tips of the hat to trip hop, tango, gnaoua rhythms, gypsy guitars. It is adored with her art work, which includes miniature portraits of colorful eccentric characters, part-surreal, part-naïve. Find out more at: http://www.hindi-zahra.com/

2010-11-01T08:26:00.000-07:00

Barbara Jane Reyes

Asking

there is ghazal swimming inside of her, wanting to be born. on
the matter of foretelling, of small miracles, cactus flowers in bloom
on this city fire escape, where inside your tongue touches every
inch of her skin, where you lay your hand on her belly and sleep.
here, she fingers the ornate remains of ancient mosques. here,
some mythic angel will rise from the dust of ancestors’ bones.
this is where you shall worship, at the intersections of distilled
deities and memory’s sharp edges. the country is quite a poetic
place; water and rock contain verse and metaphor, even wild grasses
reply in rhyme. you are not broken. she knows this having captured
a moment of lucidity; summer lightning bugs, sun’s rays in a jelly
jar. this is not a love poem, but a cove to escape the flux, however
momentary. she is still a child, confabulating the fantastic; please
do not erode her wonder for the liquid that is your language. there is
thunderstorm in her chest, wanting to burst through her skin. this is
neither love poem nor plea. this is not river, nor stone.

Going Outside To Find The Sky

It is much higher at high noon, and I have to stand on my tiptoes to
touch it with the tips of my straining fingers. In Chinatown, firecrackers
jumping in sunlight like glinting pistols tell me it is time for old ghosts
to rest. The boy version of me once said he would ride a carabao cross
country because only I know where to place the “h” in him. I am still
waiting for his poem to tell me he is on his way, closer to the Pacific’s
salty embracing roar. I will allow myself a moment of susceptivity and
remember a time when I collected pretty rocks and felt them clicking
against one another in my pockets as I skipped barefoot into the ocean’s
froth like soda fountain root beer floats. Today I sit with knees together,
swinging my legs to and fro. Today I’ll hum a little song, and maybe I’ll be
out of tune.

State of Emergency

To honor movement in crescendos of text, combing through ashes for
fragments of human bone, studying maps drawn for the absurdity of
navigation — what may be so edgy about this state of emergency is my
lack of apology for what I am bound to do. For instance, if I dream the
wetness of your mouth an oyster my tongue searches for the taste of
ocean, if I crave the secret corners of your city on another continent, in
another time, in series of circular coils extending outward, then it is only
because I continue to harbor the swirls of galaxies in the musculature
and viscera of my body. You will appear because I have mouthed your
name in half-wish, reluctant to bring myself to you. You will appear for
me, because you always do, with earthen skin outside the possibility of
human causation.

Tenderly

what is your flow to where inside your body do you recoil during full
moons who will remind you to restore the shards of you to wholeness
when everyone has been driven away and if these shards of you could
speak would they tell you they would rather not be restored in what
fractured language do you dream when you sleep alone i have been
tenderly cautioned memory is retained in my hair now flowing in heavy
black cascades below my diminishing waistline i have been warned i
must take care to worship and guard memory fiercely for even the most
comfortless of these have given me flight

-all poems previously published in From The Fishouse

2010-11-01T08:23:00.000-07:00

Guy Kettelhack
　

Snapped

Sharp absence – drop –
no dream: just blank.
This glass of milk –
this mother’s brew she drank –

less strengthened than effaced her.
What had she ever been?
Where had it gone? –
she felt no blast, no spin –

no remnant quivers of a unity.
Something seemed to steal it.
She had to have had life,
but couldn’t feel it.

Remembering His Alzheimer's

Personify his fractured
bits of thought –
elfishly caught
in cartoonish sticky
fly paper – not quite

breaking through, like
so much daffy taffy –
cute. Make it seem
like it was not
his being going mute.

Impending Impact

Life sits there like a grand poobah,
feather-fanned,
wondering whether to drink

the blue drink.
Too much to think
about. A silent rout

of unconsidered slaves behaves –
enacts the necessary lifts and saves.
Ground is cracked.

Maybe the Day is a Dream

I have to have some Edgar Allan Poe
in my Emerson. I have to have the thing
that patently will never go next to
the thing that always will. I have to have
some bars upon the window sill
through which to see the bluest freedom.
I have to know the worst and best,

and see them. I cannot not transgress
and always will pursue a blessing.
Sexually I am irredeemable: and
in my heart I laugh as lightly as a baby.
Maybe the day is a dream. Blinding
bright to make exciting contrast with its
darkest seam. Look at it gleam!