Corporeal Manifestation
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Transcript of Corporeal Manifestation
2 | C o r p o r e a l M a n i f e s t a t i o n s
3 | C o r p o r e a l M a n i f e s t a t i o n s
Corporeal Manifestations
Differentia Press
Santa Maria, CA
4 | C o r p o r e a l M a n i f e s t a t i o n s
Corporeal Manifestations
Anthology of Experimental Artistry
Copyright © Differentia Press and Respective Artists 2010
All Rights Reserved.
Published by Differentia Press
Book Design by Felino A. Soriano
Cover Art, courtesy of Duane Locke
Except for the sole purpose for use in reviews, no portion of this book may be reproduced in any
form, without the written permission from the publisher.
Differentia Press
Santa Maria, CA 93458
Differentia Press Poetic Collections of the │Experimental Spectrum│
differentiapress.com
5 | C o r p o r e a l M a n i f e s t a t i o n s
6 | C o r p o r e a l M a n i f e s t a t i o n s
Table of Contents
Duane Locke….12
John Swain….15
Constance Stadler….19
William Crawford….20
Melissa Dulaney….27
Caleb Puckett….28
Howie Good….29
Kevin Reid….30
Travis Macdonald….31
Lisa Cole….37
Samuel Hiram Duarte….39
Philip Byron Oakes….40
Luke Johnson….43
Russell Jaffe…..46
Francis Raven….53
Irene Koronas….59
Serena Tome|Michael Mc Aloran….63
Serena Tome….65
Serena Tome|PJ Bach….67
Serena Tome|Ser2….69
Biography Notes….75
7 | C o r p o r e a l M a n i f e s t a t i o n s
8 | C o r p o r e a l M a n i f e s t a t i o n s
9 | C o r p o r e a l M a n i f e s t a t i o n s
For all that supplied gifts of artistic endeavors, thank you.
10 | C o r p o r e a l M a n i f e s t a t i o n s
―An artist is a dreamer consenting to dream of the actual
world.‖
George Santayana
11 | C o r p o r e a l M a n i f e s t a t i o n s
12 | C o r p o r e a l M a n i f e s t a t i o n s
Duane Locke
IN A TINY TOWN
ON OUTSKIRTS IN VIENNA
My eyes were turned
Toward the dark lifelessness behind stars.
She, the indecipherable,
Breathed on the eider down.
I listen for what cannot be heard,
The words spoken by the thin cover
Outlining her shape on the bed.
Will I hear what was never said.
Will I believe words I did not hear.
She had painted her eyelids azure.
13 | C o r p o r e a l M a n i f e s t a t i o n s
IN THE BOBOLI GARDENS
BY A VENUS WHOSE BROKEN OFF ARM
HAD RETURNED PATCHED BY ASPHALT
The girls, their nude backs glowed,
Glowed with a luminous silver
Like the scales of a night-leaping fish,
The girls, their nude backs glowed,
The girls, who had turned their backs.
Silver light with a soprano voice has uttered
A farewell, the backs disappeared into black.
A tiny white curly hair dog pulled
By a leash barked, and his leash‘s barks
Put permanently in front of me a see-through
Curtain to separate my desires from life.
14 | C o r p o r e a l M a n i f e s t a t i o n s
IN GERMANY’S BLACK FOREST
I found myself in the light
Of the oscillating light
And darkness where the German winds
Part the leaves on top of trees
To let light in where
There was darkness from trunk shadows.
So being close to temporary light,
I reached to put my arms
Around this light, but
Before my arms had touched the light,
The light was gone.
15 | C o r p o r e a l M a n i f e s t a t i o n s
John Swain
Dawn
Dawn of oranges,
sun upon sun,
my Jesus.
My body,
my wine
kept in silver ships floating
down a river of waterfalls
into crypt.
Born unknown,
born unfolding into sky
into earth.
Relieve me weeping.
Your embrace liberates
as my spent arms
turn in upon themselves.
16 | C o r p o r e a l M a n i f e s t a t i o n s
Sycamores
Past the trodden fields
sycamores choir to light
around the deer disappearing,
our circle emanates like fire.
Reborn remade in flesh today,
but owing you fortunes
like the ghost of a bird.
I am always afraid
and I hated
the blanket nailed red and heavy
over the windows,
one day I went outside.
I remember we slipped
on a raft of peeled bark
white as the sky
as your lily fingers trail water.
17 | C o r p o r e a l M a n i f e s t a t i o n s
Cairn
Shadows of crows stain the ground
where the mirage of water summons us
like a broken promise.
You lay your hidden face on the cairn,
you cover my burnt face with your hair,
I lie tired lit as skies always waking,
the crows call thrice for the sleeper.
On the hill cedars hold the rising sun
undressed in red like your sorceress,
winds bellow like our breath over shells.
The lake falls gold like ash cathedrals,
we take our new faces in its aching
as your cupped hands become a prism.
Circles of stone convulse like flowers.
Pyramid
A calmer tomorrow
I hope.
Glass on the floor
wine on the ceiling
I woke upside down
in the rain sideways.
Thank you ghost,
thank you my wife
for prayer and shelter.
We are pyramid.
18 | C o r p o r e a l M a n i f e s t a t i o n s
Blackbirds
Blackbird mask
my little girl,
your wings hurt
my teeth tear.
Stitches close
where we drink
where we wash
in red wine
like iodine.
Burnt I am yours
full as solitude
consumed.
19 | C o r p o r e a l M a n i f e s t a t i o n s
Constance Stadler
Eurydice
My life was over.
Aristaeus, my murderer,
Was outflanked
By serpent piquancy.
Your song, my husband
A lamentation, a threnody
Breaching earth
And fire
To the depths of Hades
And weeping Persephone.
So against the Gods
You took my hand
And we rose above
Eternal pyres.
But, sweet, we are
Such mortal coil
In human frailty
You looked at me
Before the threshold‘s crest.
My life was over, Orpheus.
Grieve not, my Love
At Destiny‘s
Behest.
20 | C o r p o r e a l M a n i f e s t a t i o n s
William Crawford
Minor Keys and Places
I.
daguerreotypes on the inside of a purple eyelid
hanging heavy – cockeyed
unattended tenement shade
(they call them efficiencies these days)
there‘s just enough space
a tiny seam
a little light
you can see limpid green
remember the irreversible sadness of that eye
you could bugger a fat unabridged dictionary
for the better part of a lonely night
beneath Waits‘ grapefruit moon and solitary star
and never find the right word
for that sadness, that eye,
a word that would preserve, rather than disfigure,
the moment and its rich discovery.
II.
if you could salvage a well-tuned,
wild blue piano from these beautiful ruins
then play it with your mongoloid fingers
fingers that can‘t seem to do anything right but write
you can paint a scene
not in black and white
rather a dull human gray
see her shitfaced on human kindness
with all the sudden sweetness
and subtle burn of good blended whiskey
she‘s drinking brandy at the bright end of the bar
the same eye, this time without bruise, just like the other
soft and wide open, sailing –
21 | C o r p o r e a l M a n i f e s t a t i o n s
at mach speed towards the unforgiving rocks
eyes of a siren that couldn‘t stop singing
her salty shattered dog tongue, fit to be tied –
and that inevitable crash
it always makes such a beautiful sound.
III.
the same wind that once cried wolf, cried Mary,
now screams her name
this wind once pushed by her dream
her dance, her body –
like frayed white heat,
a trap in the mirage
now it‘s just a pale surrender flag
torn and pathetically flapping
the stupid sound of one hand clapping
soon to be muted and consumed
conquered by this
the sky‘s incestuous gut
howls at the sun for it
the wind can‘t cry anymore
still it remembers her name
but her face cannot be placed
that tiny purple eyelid
all the distended dreams beneath it
like birds trapped indoors
flying into closed windows
(they know no window)
this sensation of glass shattering in chest
some things are better left unsaid
try to forget.
try to forget.
22 | C o r p o r e a l M a n i f e s t a t i o n s
In the Shadow of Arrows
the birds are quick to follow you
crestfallen and songless
for they know how it feels to swallow stone
and this promise is too easily broken
a salt-wound sky
a savage omen
this must end with ignominy
the word sorry –
the sound it makes on a tangled tongue
well, isn‘t it really just
a single hand clapping?
an implacable brat
that spits upwards at the sun
that hisses at snakes
already snapping in the fire
-silence-
and when you finally meet your own eye
take time to survey the hollowed out galaxy
once mistaken for a lost city of gold
fasten your restraints
for this collision of vision and void
mirror martyrs barter breath for paper gods
-numb surprise-
pity poor Aguirre
his beautiful delusions
his spurious map of El Dorado
his tiny raft overrun with barking monkeys
23 | C o r p o r e a l M a n i f e s t a t i o n s
set to sink
anchored to a dream
that rushes into blind depths
deaf to the tragic music
the operatic chorus of goodbyes
brave, sad Aguirre
the blue flame which once danced
quickly fading in his eyes
the hopeless weight of his heart
which continued to beat
all bloody and tribal
a mad, simple rhythm of survival
even in the shadow of arrows
poison dipped and dead aimed.
24 | C o r p o r e a l M a n i f e s t a t i o n s
Sciamachy and Shell Roars
I.
imagining monastic defeat
what it takes to break this hermetic seal
sick of sciamachy
these thalidomide shadows that crutch waltz
on the ceilings fault line
around still bouquets of rust flowers
in and out of cobwebbed corners
malformed and malnourished
like those deep set wolf spider eyes
staring back from fuliginous mirrors
they charm the skin off of a diamondback
then flash fang its exposed throat
II.
you know
it‘s ok
to long for a stained glass worthy scene
a left handed portrait
that wobbles in its frame
that can‘t be explained
in pained, relative terms
or
25 | C o r p o r e a l M a n i f e s t a t i o n s
a woman that blooms and bubble snaps
inside the heat mirage
her foil wings half unfolded
her star and barbed wire
five and dime diadem
could be a luminous nimbus
or a less elusive lucid dream
at first sight
III.
she offers a song
she hustled from a busker
a free avalanche ride
a predicate challenge to the night
with its peanut gallery of howler monkeys
and other shifty penumbral beings
if you wanted
a campfire cricket choir
you came to the wrong venue
this motley audience
eager to turn
eager to boo
eager to bruise
this reticent ingénue
a pregnant pause
a new magnetic ribbon on the trunk of an old cause
then she opens up her sparrow throat
unfurls her feathery tongue
and the voice comes soft,
susurrant,
it disarms
threatens to retard
after just a few silver-white notes
but it‘s just a stage trick
26 | C o r p o r e a l M a n i f e s t a t i o n s
and you bit
the crescendo comes
a clean tsunami crash
turns all bones to glass
shatters all the shallow seals and brittle symbols
you once held sacred
IV.
the hermit shell
was always yours to disown
was always more of a house
than a home
for you
it‘s useless now
but even at this new distance
if you listen close
if you relinquish fealty to the familiar
and fear of the unknown
you can still hear the ocean‘s waves
beating like your own heart
on your ear drum
that roar inside the shell
was always just an echo of your own.
27 | C o r p o r e a l M a n i f e s t a t i o n s
Melissa Dulaney
Faberge Egg
Fragile miniature piece of art
Outside taking years perfecting the tiniest facet
layers cut into sharp relief.
Inside the barrenness,
this shell has been hulled out.
Science demands that reason prevail
yet miracles, gods, mysteries
run rampant through time and space
to rule your heart
Tiny marvel that's slightly cracked.
It is a wonder, is it not?
This Faberge egg I am covered in.
28 | C o r p o r e a l M a n i f e s t a t i o n s
Caleb Puckett
Cradle
The moon pitches low, pushing a final, vital wave across the fuzzy geometry of your shared
blanket. The land accepts the wave running over and then through you before it shudders with
strange hoofbeats. Now you must prepare for a season of difficult retreats and an even more
difficult treaty, guarding the minutes to fashion a cover for a helpless hunter who has been exiled
before enjoying his birthright. You must begin by brain-tanning the elk skin and shaping it into a
sturdy cradle. Next, you must embellish the cradle with the finest ribbons, mirrors and beads as
you have been taught by your knowing sisters since memory first breathed substance into
tradition. Finally, you must collect the hunter‘s navel cord, fashion it into a lizard and drape it on
his cradle for good fortune. Once the cradle is occupied, you come to recognize that the elk
might die in its prime so that the lizard might live forever so that the hunter might survive his
first winter so that he might grow to make sense of humankind‘s desire for baubles, be they
ribbons, mirrors, beads, or bullets. As you head towards a ridge thinking of certain spirits, the
hunter faces backwards thinking only of vague sustenance. Thus, together you negotiate the
difficult lines between the actual and the emblematic while the plains grow thin and the sky
becomes heavy with the smoke of gunfire. In due time, you will be wrapped in a fetal position
within the shattered space of an ancient land bridge on a sliver of tundra well north of your fertile
expanse. The hunter will become a warrior then and there, crying for a land he cannot clearly
remember. A soldier with a red beard will silence him and take his cradle to a frontier town to
trade for liquor. Once the cradle returns on a jet airplane from a goodwill exhibition in Russia,
historians, anthropologists and geneticists might marvel at the justice of an existence come full
circle. The earth will of course recognize their error and carve another yet another notch into the
fossil-bearing strata you now inhabit.
29 | C o r p o r e a l M a n i f e s t a t i o n s
Howie Good
FAMOUS LONG AGO
Habitués of the walk-in clinic!
Aficionados of the cockpit voice recorder!
Nothingness isn‘t something
you sleep off in a doorway.
The buildings
are full of forgotten vaudevillians
and signs that say EXIT,
and every dog demonstrates
the doubtful efficacy of begging.
Out where horse thieves leaned
over the necks of stolen horses,
the sun has gone behind a cloud.
Light slows to a trickle.
It can turn you gray.
30 | C o r p o r e a l M a n i f e s t a t i o n s
Kevin Reid
Black Mirror
I, oval, convex,
curious pierced obsidian,
of sorts hand and carved,
am a watchful void
of vistas sublime,
an intimate screen
of the seen and unseen.
I, a fashioned glass,
a smooth slab,
that seizes artists, with unspeakable
images on my magic surface,
am an Aztec artefact,
a semantic slate,
where spirals swirl mysticism
through an arcane portal,
I, a scrying witch,
with black seductions,
venerated gloom, and
demons in my depths
am the pristine protagonist
with perfect mirrored infinity
who will swallow reflections
of those who dare to face me.
31 | C o r p o r e a l M a n i f e s t a t i o n s
Travis Macdonald
from 3
1415926535
In
view generally entertained by
you
who read this book made
the earth [was] without form, and void, and darkness.
In order
to prevent the confusion of all
the magnificent structure on the
[upon the] face
which you were chased about.
32 | C o r p o r e a l M a n i f e s t a t i o n s
8979323846
Same country could hardly have kept distinct had
they been capable of crossing freely. The importance of
good: and God divided the light from
the most out-of-the-way proposition of this,
the darkness he
called night.
Perhaps this feeling
of proud certainty would leave you immediately if
sterility of hybrids could
not possibly be of any advantage.
33 | C o r p o r e a l M a n i f e s t a t i o n s
06286208998628034825
To have descended from common parents,
the relation
of the ideas involved in it to objects
is, on my theory, of equal
the stars…
Of these ideas among themselves; it is not
of the heaven to give light upon the earth,
feel constrained to call the propositions of geometry ―true,‖
and of their hybrid offspring it is impossible.
Objects in nature, and these last
works of
[and] the evening and the morning were the
ideas. Geometry ought
God said, Let the
waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature, that
high generality
and fowl that may fly.
34 | C o r p o r e a l M a n i f e s t a t i o n s
64462294895493038196442881097566593344612847564823
The sixth day: thus the heavens
on the other hand,
mark off the distance
(S) time after time until we,
by various
circumstances that
his work (which he had made; and he rested
say, where perfect fertility)
is the basis of all measurement of length,
every description of the scene of an event or
two most experienced observers who
had rested from all
his work, which God created and made. These are
the generations of—
of reference with
which that event or object coincides. This applies
compare
only to scientific description…but also to everyday life
if I analyse the place specification:
the field before it
was in the earth.
Forms should
be ranked as species or varieties, with the
specification of place refers; ―Trafalgar Square, London‖ is:
rain.
By the same author, from experiments made during different
years, it can thus be shown that
in space, this primitive method
of place specification deals only with
varieties; but that the evidence from
bodies, and is dependent on
dust of the ground (and breathed into his nostrils)
evidence derived from
other. But we
became a living soul.
both of these limitations
35 | C o r p o r e a l M a n i f e s t a t i o n s
planted a garden eastward in Eden
and
enabled to
rear some hybrids, carefully guarding them from a
―Trafalgar Square.‖ Then we
can determine its position relative to the
tree that is pleasant to
the sight, and good for food;
square, so that it
reaches the cloud. The length of the pole,
the tree,
the standard measuring—
36 | C o r p o r e a l M a n i f e s t a t i o n s
4564586692
We make use of
parent-species, or other allied
toward the east of Assyria and
garden the visits of
designated points of reference, (C). We speak of
season: hence hybrids will generally
garden [of] Eden to dress it
their own individual pollen; and I
by means of optical observations of the cloud from
different positions.
Author‘s Note:
π (pi or 3.141593) is a transcendental number, which suggests, among other things, that no finite
sequence of algebraic operations on integers (powers, roots, sums, etc.) can be equal to its value.
Consequently, its decimal representation never ends or repeats. It divides in endless variation.
The preceding text is composed solely of language borrowed directly and in strict numerical
sequence from The Book of Genesis, The Origin of Species (Chapter 8 - Hybridism) and
Einstein‘s Special Theory of Relativity. Each selection is comprised of individual lines whose
word count corresponds directly with a relative decimal point of pi to its first thousand places.
The line count of each selection (including stanza breaks or 0‘s) is always divisible by ten. When
drawing from each individual source, the author has taken great care to preserve the original
language while never exceeding 3 consecutive lines from any given text and, even then, only in
cases where the process of natural selection demands. Each passage has been subsequently re-
punctuated to facilitate readability.
37 | C o r p o r e a l M a n i f e s t a t i o n s
Lisa Cole
Ferris Wheel
Wheel in stomach// clear metal turning turning turning turning// a windmill// The armadillo has
a mind of its own. // Foot soldiers, the bloody boots// an imprint of a hand, no feet.//Holding the
gospel of John//Goliath is chain smoking//running out into traffic, arms flailing. He needs a
companion//television does nothing for him, not books// not museums.// Dashed off. //He has
only the ravens, words, the wind, hums.
Letters
that you didn‘t love me //knocked flat//love greater than fear//no walls//tear down and conquer.
Do it do it do it//Not enough love//Thinking //Quell love//quell it quell it quell it//drawing the
eye//clover eyes pig eyes, frog eyes zombie eyes//Brick house dreams//digging with a short-
handed hoe//remember when we talked of wedding dresses and white cake? //my mother
cradling my face//Don‘t quit soldier//Don‘t quit don‘t quit don‘t quit.//biding time//driving
driving driving. And she is a white zombie//no voice box//no chords//ships need anchors//
Part III in a Series of Losses
Love the fallow// Love the weeds// the under-roots.//She‘s done the math// One thousand two
hundred and twenty days// in this splintered box// eighty four bare//Listening to translucent skies
and celestial psalms.// Death is not a death is not a death. Slivers of--
38 | C o r p o r e a l M a n i f e s t a t i o n s
What I Carry
I am telling the truth:
I have crossed him out and
I have walked on the Rubicon.
I have sympathy for Medusa:
I too loved Poseidon, but
only for his mastery of water.
After everything, I still
remember the weighted nights,
the shape of his hand.
Fade to Black
It is easier when he is dead.
White like a lemon cake and cream;
dry like the sidewalk in summer.
But instead, I have been dreaming,
mostly momentary scenes, a movie
on grainy film. I‘m putting out fires
with bottles of milk. Then a snake
writhes out of the ashes, hissing.
Then, some phrase like "La Mort" or "Requiem"
appears on the screen and then everything fades to black.
My dreams have an art house edge, I know,
but that‘s what happens when your heart is a rusted fence.
39 | C o r p o r e a l M a n i f e s t a t i o n s
Samuel Hiram Duarte
Lamentations
her graceful
conceptions
coalesced
into fabled
esoteric light
across a magnificent
imaginative sea
magnified through
diminutive dews
she continued
ricocheting fabled embraces
faltered through
advancements
unknown
reconstructing pretenses
run amok
through countless wars
deemed righteous
over our fellow men
Some prefer her that way -
Some prefer those bewilderments
she bestows
over placid expectations
of how things ought to,
but will never be
40 | C o r p o r e a l M a n i f e s t a t i o n s
Philip Byron Oakes
Left of Euclid
The presumed symmetry of alibis in the confessional,
wearing a hunchback to analysis by experts in the
poppy field. A preclusive geometry of prosthetic
angels. Contradictory synonyms smudging the
lipstick of contrarians in full agreement, as to the
disconnect being the binding element of the
communicable by innuendo, in the hysteria the fall of
paradise engenders. The gaping holes in the
ostensibly continuous, from which the world‘s great
flanking manuevers are launched in a fanfare of guilt,
and a rigid etiquette of compliance to the physics of
confetti in falling helplessly under the spell.
Guardian Angels
The fruit flavored puritans of bleak street taming a timid glimmer in the
graying iris of a boldly old man, paraphrasing epiphanies with oohs and
aahs. The other stuff, without which the great majority live in unconceded
acquiescence, to the bluing of the moon over the recalcitrance of others, to
account for where the principles of snow go for the summer. How the
thoroughly illuminated has darkened with the age of the lawnchair pilots,
stymying those impulses to run like a gazelle at the smell of cat fur, across
polite lines drawn auditioning for a reason to be. A demon. A squirrel in
the family tree, barking like a dog that knows its alphabet but little else.
The brooms brandished as scepters in the autumnal confusion of ever
tightening circles, anchored to favorite fears precluding any campfires
melting the thickness of the night away.
41 | C o r p o r e a l M a n i f e s t a t i o n s
The Buzz
The gurgling of gadflies in the ointment translating
the algebra of arrogance for the meek. The
artificial life support given the contiguity of twins,
staring into identical crystal balls, opening
floodgates once sealed by lips blowing carmine
kisses to the crowd. The continental shelf life
declaring the hordes alive and well. The giraffes up
to their old tree trimming tricks and the donkeys
content to make asses of themselves before the
high court of public opinion, dragging the
likeminded to the middle ground of aging in the
womb of reason from premises tested by gales on
the burly North Sea, sudsing the already
immaculate to the razor‘s edge of night.
Ex Officio
Their long distance apology, for what they said to your shitty little god.
Obscure principles of audial acquiescence disarticulated in the static, as a
contingency of the mother fog. A paper aeroplane landing in your hair.
The bunions were gathering recruits in the cornfields of deaf ears turned to
gold. The sky no help at all and the red carpet doing all it can, to stay
grounded in what it came to celebrate. A slow greening in the way of elder
moments, saddled to escort the most disparate points of reference in
blending a virgin cocktail of tomorrows. A cellophane preamble to echo
chambers of commentary on how tall the grass has grown.
42 | C o r p o r e a l M a n i f e s t a t i o n s
Zilch
Obliterative, with an escape clause, allowing only for life as we barely
knew it, in a bubble long ago blown from smithereens. A marginal starlet
flickering in the rectory. And then there‘s morning lying to the choir. An
inebriant in a raincoat getting a little sun from the store. The moon mooing
in a caption to the sky. A glow, hampering search efforts, in the fog it
takes to get home.
43 | C o r p o r e a l M a n i f e s t a t i o n s
Luke Johnson
Third Eye
1.
Inside the eye of god,
monkeys rattle rusted bird cages,
women gird themselves in clip on night gowns,
shooting imbecile giants and motorized birds.
Pink zebra dance in straw colored too-too,
curtsying their way through sleep,
while pin-up girls burst through membrane walls,
spinning the landscapes of boyhood.
2.
Skeletons of twelve mighty men,
blubber through holy recitals;
daybreak of black ghost whistle,
epigrammatic spiritual muses.
Mad alarmist implore absolutes,
riddling through scriptural tides,
inside the eye of god,
a Lego world of psychogenic clouds.
44 | C o r p o r e a l M a n i f e s t a t i o n s
Fragmented Skies
The storm splintered frameworks of trees,
cloaked in tangerine light –
glowed! glowed! glowed!
becoming live miraculous
prisms. Swallow coiled themselves
feverishly, their song becoming the melody
of moments,
passing through clouds;
the heart of earth turning to shadows
cloaked! cloaked! cloaked!
flower bulbs, rioting mice
the phallic balloons of naked ladies,
gossiping squirrel, squabbling bee, insidious crow.
Death--
the marching advance of lightening
Fra gments
the bruised skyline,
the family meal,
whispering spring winds becoming!
live violins, tambourine, cello, and drum
ming
beats! beats! beats!
hands pressing hard against glass.
children swimming in wonder,
awhile,
late evening, laughter inverted to whisper,
breath became the dance of anxious
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souls,
bundled inside
a brick house.
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Russell Jaffe
Jews in space
Afternoons on earth are cobbled together from thick spectacles
and dried crumbs and coconut shavings,
desks that smell like black squares on chess boards
and celebratory wine stains, its always after some epic event
These fortunate orbiters make up memory,
even the unnatural wormhole travelling skin of grandma‘s neck
and the humiliating names grandpa called my
drawings of aliens; that rabbi‘s
dark cloak, there‘s
no air there‘s
memory evaporating like white stars do
appear in my honey nut cheerios
and sink fast—let‘s build ourselves away from this I
look often to stars in lights during temple, I
confess both grandpa and the rabbi are dead
and don‘t ever stop I
say as a jewish boy now man to jewish men whose
flecked skin looked burning and whose
veins bulged blue pulsing nebulas
into this vacuous, oxygen-free memory
we can only speculate the distances of;
in dreams we chosen are
riding rockets of stolen artwork
Torah cabinets and tallis clothes
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into the pastoral nethers to escape
our mortal troubles
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The Blizzard
Celebrate this day with
wet clothes and
a different kind
of feet
that slide on school tiles
and catch the shine of fluorescent lights
the blizzard continues into it‘s third month and
no one dares stop it, they just try to work around it
and the termites are waiting for Spring
when we wish the blizzard would take them out;
Assign; do this that they say
and this condition will go away
nature comes back,
it often does…
The students asked me again about
poems I said
blah blah
blah the only
triplicate worth calling
and the process continues into
the harsh blizzard.
They invented the word harsh to describe pines whipping
and entire forests truncated in white swaths
When I don‘t care I worry
and the winter knows this
the landscape knows just when to buckle
and wood suddenly one day doesn‘t
fit in the door frame. Don‘t look back: termite eggs
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but
often
I am given to this
and prone
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Letter from the birthright trip I wouldn’t take
Years later I never go to temple. Years earlier, I remember fidgeting and looking out at dying
summer plants around the strange tans that rose from the ground to make the synagogue.
Grandma winks at me often. Jews wander, she always says, and I want to tell her to use those eye
drops because her dry eyes wink like sand.
Forty years in the desert, my grandma reminds me when I leave hunks of brisket meat on my
plate. Eyes are watching, wine mystically disappears. And this silverware is new. God is a
luxury—for me, the spelling. Permitted to pace out my sentences, I end up speaking to my
grandma after dinner in the off-beige living room. It‘s always hot as hell in there. This is where I
am going when I‘m alive.
Permitted to ask, this is what I ask you: Did you fault me for not taking my birthright trip? My
friends did and came back with hangovers, with storylines of nightclubs and clay walls, with
messages poked into cracks and tallits draped inches away from the ground—mustn‘t touch.
Also, bags of Israeli Bazooka Joe.
Why didn‘t I go? I didn‘t want to die, simple as that. That‘s what you do, right? You die. You are
the mortar in the wall. You are sweating into white dress shirts and long black pants on a
summer that kills the most dogmatic plants. I‘ve seen movies about chunks of muscle in sand
and pools of blood on doors like Passover. I‘ve only actually seen wine. I was too young for
grandma to share the blood with me. Sorry.
I ask if the dash where the o had been is too long. On sweaty nights I oh lord our god played in
my belly button‘s contours. And did you mind when I felt uncomfortable watching holocaust
movies with my grandma? She looked so fogged out—do you know that the dashes between the
words I write are like those long Israeli stones my grandma says we must preserve. And I always
make fortuitous mistakes: I say O; Not oh, no not board, not wood, but the oldest stone you‘ve
got, O.
My god, my god gadzOOks (those are eyes) a bazooka shooting holy, holy and god? Also, do
you know what else I like?
That same weapon that blows people into thick red chunks is the same as my favorite gum.
Those fortuitous fears are ones my grandma can‘t imagine, and O for one more night my body is
safe. My sides, my long toes.
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And when I read the comics in Israeli I always liked his friend who pulled his shirt over his
mouth and never said anything. In that there was no risk. In the halls of suburban temples I
learned to know this.
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Today is the day everything speaks to me
Greenish blue ink flag tattoos and area rugs—
I‘m staying in again, please think of me as a prone hearth
grumble like grass in tin can rain.
I listen to the empty hum where walls collide in corners, silently and infinitely.
You don‘t have the courage to shut that damn thing off.
Between pauses the phone tells me
bring, bring, bring,
bring.
You don‘t have the courage to call yourself displaced.
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Francis Raven
Machine 10
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Machine 58
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Machine 115
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Machine 169
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Machine 220
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Machine 236
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Irene Koronas
arrangement of atoms
my thighs so much larger than before. drawing lines through grecian figure on unglazed
porcelain the luster on broken surface dull like soil it has a salty taste a slippery feeling between
the legs a giant frog we bonk over the head cook over fire fizzy sparks the frog tastes good try
not to wet the wall there is no wall only mountain chalkboards blackboards and the weight of
thread
17
even in ancient tiny caves the unforgettable inscription far before any one returns with heaps of
theory heaps of pebbles heaps of messages on billboards television screens computer cliff notes
murmur measuring clicks without memories background brilliant red brilliant minds brake tree
branches an unnatural phenomena especially within circles modern civilization people decked
out wearing scanty white flames through thicket a small grove pine absorbs inside instead of
outside beams lean on rock wall up and down exercise always influences robed men sometimes
women creep out of one opening from the shrubbery boys approach the little foundry but what is
found when people outline hands on rock immovable running books show us hugging vision
perfectly but some budding archaeologist asleep in a cave harbors ancestors ascent from mother
(besides) the trail they wait for someone elses bones
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20 (lines) + 10
lackey bluegills
daytime color
beach combs
buttered crabmeat
factious booklet
lightface access
anticipate lightface
aftermath lightface
collateral crag
airplane plasma
parthenon
cherokee coalition crew
brainstorm tourist
backhand calendar
wiggle edge
convulsive picasso
burley glare foil
poignant bilingual recipient
concession stand
comatose luminaries
anti-colony exultant
conduce circumvention
(cereal box expectation)
inclusive chrome
sardine negligees
casual kangaroo
coral bartender
secondhand tricks
nighttime middleman
spoon astonishments
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one grain one breath
grain
rain
ran
gain
grin
in
air
an
na
ni
ng
nr
ra
grain rain cracks open air
his pectoral position
his grin topples
na ning narra
cereal box liberation
silo shelter
iiiissssaa gonna
tie up all those sacks
na ning narra
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word for
love is work is
out
out
being out developed
this switch blade
itch witch
leaves off an s
wit sit it hit
surprising how often
mine eyes have seen electric water
swatches of pink alabaster
love so often switches
listing elbows
counting rice
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Serena Tome (Poet)
Michael Mc Aloran (Painter)
Gun
Re:configured Imagination (for Richard)
A weed: choked out
r
o
u
b
l
e-
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makers black male
Boom
gone to soon
all over the room
u
r
lives S H A T T E R
Buttons
Un-noticed necessities
s
t
r
i
n
g
instruments swaddle
wreathes: archetypical
e
x
p
r
e
s
sions of
decency
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Physiognomy of la Rose
-for Pierre de Ronsard
the lady
leans into
him her breasts full moons
re
vo ing
lv
around his eyes
oh…
acoustic sounds
of the lark fore/play
steam fills her ear
Quand vous serez bien vielle…
Huh? Direz, chantant me vers,
En vous emervellant…
Hmm..
Her teeth
g r i p her
b
o
t
t
o
m
lip (count 4/4)
shh.. Ronsard me…
Standing. her eyes lids
clap as she
walks away
Note: Italic French quotes come directly from Ronsard‘s Sonnet for Helene.
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Serena Tome (Poet)
PJ Bach (Painter)
The Color Red
The Color Red
Heat waves wrestle to get out of the way
as a Latin groove manifests with trembling
legs and hard stop turns,
as the people dance with their ancestors.
Sweat beads hydrate the antiquated floorboards
while Tequila flows like black gold over crystal rocks.
The lead singer strums his guitar passionately as if asking:
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Quieréis bailar comigo.
Softly between breaths, subliminally, I respond: Por favor, tenéis compasión.
The music a consuming fireball,
whips me around the small space like the tongue
when pronouncing the word corazón.
I‘m blinded by the smoky atmosphere
where all I can see are red sequins sparkling
in circles, hypnotizing me to stay for one more set.
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Serena Tome (Poet)
PJ Bach (Painter)
Flaming Sheets
Flaming Sheets (for Miles Davis)
1.
Charcoal feet press deep
into freshly plowed Southern
dirt in a patchwork field
prepared for the manifestations of funk
onyx hands tilt the golden trumpet North
towards the sun, flaming sheets
lick the ground as he bee bops across color lines
leaving footprints on Rock,
Heavy Metal,
Blues, and Rap
A generation
Stands behind him glaring through
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a white mist
clothed in artistic candor, ready to
explore the variables of interpretation
of the groove movement
Selah—
2.
(the remix)
1-2-3-4
bubble
do do
be
boom boom boom BOOM
bubble be
do do dum dum be bop BOP
Wait a one minute. Let’s try this again.
1-2-3-4
diddly diddly diddly
diddly
diddly dum bops bop BOOM
boom boom boom BOOM
FREEZE
Frozen with their arms in the air,
the sign of surrender, music takes
on a distinct flavor, a conglomerate of tones
seasoned with geographic transmissions and
fueled by burning fire from the people who embody it.
Jazz is the international language
of revolution.
This is where you howl.
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Serena Tome (Poet)
Ser2 (Painter)
777
-after wall graffiti located on Five Spot Restaurant (Atlanta, GA)
FEAR
Clothed in armored
Imagination rages
Circumcised heart
Sedates scorched
Memories
Stretch marks crawl
Across crescent womb
Waiting—
The color of Jazz
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Display allegories,
Symbols prognostications
Revealing entry into
The genesis of
Serenity
Why do you fear illusions?
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Biography Notes
Duane Locke, in this month of July 2010, is not certain of where he lives. He has been living in
rural Lakeland for three years by an osprey's nest on a cell phone tower, but the osprey has
moved. So Duane Locke has decided to move. At moment, he thinks he will move back to
Tampa, but where is now indeterminate. He is busily packing. He has had 6,580 poems
published. He is also a photographer of the Sacred, (dragonflies, spiders, sand hill cranes, etc)
and does Sur-Photos.
John Swain lives in Louisville, Kentucky. His work has appeared in Counterexample Poetics,
Rust and Moth, Calliope Nerve, Shoots and Vines, The Plebian Rag, and others.
Constance Stadler has published over 300 poems and three chapbooks in her ‗first
manifestation‘ as a poet twenty years ago, and has released two chaps Tinted Steam (Shadow
Archer Press) Sublunary Curse (Erbacce) and an eBook, Paper Cuts (Calliope Nerve). A new
book Responsorials (with Rich Follett) was released in fall 2009 (Neopoeisis Press).
William Crawford has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize in poetry. His work has appeared in
several publications including, Sugar Mule, Counterexample Poetics, Calliope Nerve, Unlikely
2.0, Gloom Cupboard, decomP, Leaf Garden Press, Troubadour 21, Luciole Press, and Up the
Staircase. His first major collection of poetry, Fire in the Marrow, will be published by
Neopoiesis Press in the Summer of 2010. William lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and is an
animal rights activist.
Melissa Dulaney is a 34 year old, slightly eccentric young woman living in the Southwestern
Desert. By day she is a Corporate Marketeer and by night a mother, friend, and artist. She enjoys
spending time with her son and her two dogs. Her inspiration for writing poetry came from her
dearly loved, and deceased younger brother. He continues to be her silent muse.
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Caleb Puckett lives in Kansas. He has pieces in Counterexample Poetics, Otoliths and
Wheelhouse. His prose collection, Tales from the Hinterland, is available from Otoliths and
Feral Press recently published two of his poems, "Runoff" and "Combatants", as illustrated
chapbooks.
Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, is the
author of 18 print and digital poetry chapbooks and the full-length collection of poetry, Lovesick
(2009). His second full-length collection, Heart With a Dirty Windshield, will be published by
BeWrite Books.
Kevin Reid lives and works as a librarian in Angus, Scotland. He has a first class MA Hons. in
English Literature. He has lived in a various polemic communities in the North East of Scotland.
He also lived naked in a tipi community in the Spanish mountains. When not buying or reading
books he writes, paints and enjoys the creative magnificence of digital technology. His work has
appeared in The Plebian Rag, Eviscerator Heaven, The Recusant, Eleutheria, Heavy Bear,
Carcinogenic Poetry, heroin love songs, and forthcoming at Calliope Nerve and Gutter
Eloquence. At present he is seeking to publish his first chapbook.
Travis Macdonald works in Advertising. In his spare time he co-edits a small independent
literary press. His poetry and prose has appeared in The American Drivel Review, Bombay Gin,
Columbia Poetry Review, ditch, House Press Source: Material, InStereo, Jacket,
Misunderstandings, Otoliths, Requited, Wheelhouse and elsewhere. A collection of experimental
translations is available online from E-ratio. His first full length book, The O Mission Repo is
available from Fact-Simile Editions.
Lisa Cole is a graduate of the University of Arizona's Creative Writing MFA program. She has
previous publication in journals such as Nimble, Slow Trains, Persona, The Albion Review, and
has work forthcoming in Sawbuck.
Samuel Hiram Duarte was born in Nogales, Sonora, Mexico in 1974. Along with his parents
and brothers, he migrated to the United States in 1980, settling in California‘s rich agricultural
valley of San Joaquin and receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology from Fresno State
University. His poetry has been featured in Flies, Cockroaches, and Poets, a yearly journal for
the arts, and has participated in various poetry-reading venues. His work includes a short story
compilation; The Spirit of El Chorumo, and a book of poetry; Seven Standard Roads. Currently,
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he is a Family Advocate in Guadalupe, CA and is working on his first novel; Ofelia and the
Journey of the Monarch Butterflies. He lives in Santa Maria California alongside his wife Jessica
and son, Kael.
Philip Byron Oakes is a poet living in Austin, Texas. His work has appeared in numerous
journals, including Otoliths, Switchback, Cricket Online Review, Sawbuck, Crossing Rivers Into
Twilight, E ratio, Moria and others. He is the author of Cactus Land (77 Rogue Letters), a
volume of poetry. Visit him HERE.
Luke Johnson is an American poet born in Cayucos, CA. He is a graduate from Cal-Poly with a
degree in African-American studies and is the author of ‗Tubas in the Belly of Our Souls,‘ his
first book of poetry which evokes delicate and urgent images of apocalyptic yet optimistic times,
where the mundane becomes the extraordinary, and our human experiences are magnified in
heartfelt bursts of revelation. Johnson is currently working on his second publication. He lives
with his wife, Ciara, and their lovely felines, Lily and Louie in Pismo Beach, California.
Russell Jaffe teaches English at Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids, IA and holds
an MFA in poetry from Columbia College in Chicago. His poems have appeared in Shampoo,
MiPOesias, The Portland Review, Spooky Boyfriend, Writer’s Bloc, and others. Additionally, he
writes a hot sauce review blog called Good Hurts.
Francis Raven is a graduate student in philosophy at Temple University. His books include
Provisions (Interbirth, 2009), 5-Haifun: Of Being Divisible (Blue Lion Books, 2008), Shifting the
Question More Complicated (Otoliths, 2007), Taste: Gastronomic Poems (Blazevox 2005) and
the novel, Inverted Curvatures (Spuyten Duyvil, 2005). Francis lives in Washington DC; you
can check out more of his work at his website.
Irene Koronas is the poetry editor for the Wilderness House Literary Review. She is the author
two full length poetry books, ―self portrait drawn from many,‖ Ibbestson Street Press, 2007, and
―Pentacomo Cyprus‖ Cervena Barva Press, 2009. Her chapbooks, ―Zero Boundaries‖ Cervena
Barva Press, ―flat house― Ordinary Press― and nine more chapbooks. Irene‘s work has been
widely published in numerous literary journals: Lummox, Free Verse, Posey, Arcanam Café,
Spearhead, Index poetry, Unblog, Haiku Hut, Lynx and Clarion 13. anthologies: Bagels with the
Bards 1 and 11, WHLReview Anthology, 2006-09. Articles written about Irene have appeared in
The Boston Globe, What’s Up With Your Words, Sedaca, The Alewife, Spare Change, The
Somerville News, and the Cambridge Chronicle.
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Serena Tome writes from the edge of Atlanta, GA. She is the poetry editor for Leaf Garden
Press. She has literary work published and/or forthcoming in, Ann Arbor Review, BlazeVox,
Word Riot, Calliope Nerve, Word for Word, Moon Milk Review, and many other publications.
You can find out more about Serena at The New Renaissance.
Michael Mc Aloran was Belfast born, (1976). His most recent poetic works have appeared/ are
forthcoming at Carcinogenic Poetry, Why Vandalism?, 1000th Monkey, Fashion For Collapse,
Danse Macabre, Fragile Arts Quarterly, Gloom Cupboard, and Pratishedhak, Graffiti
Kolkotta, (India). His art-work has appeared at Calliope Nerve, Bergamot, Fragile Arts
Quarterly, Arterialize, and has been used as book covers for several projects at Calliope Nerve
Media. He is the author of five short collections of poetry: 'In The Black Cadaver Light', (Poetry
Monthly Press), 'The Rapacious Night', (Calliope Nerve Media), 'The Gathered Bones', (Calliope
Nerve Media), 'The Redundant Pulse', (Back Pack Press), and 'The Death-Streaked Air',
(Virgogray Press-forthcoming)...Other pursuits include cigarettes and alcohol...
PJ Bach‘s website is www.pjsroom.com/
Ser2 is an artist creating in Atlanta, GA.
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