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consciousmess press

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Sun’s Skeleton #2Winter 2011

___ of 200ISSN: 2159-7227

Published by Consciousmess Press210 Humbolt Street, Apt. 22Brooklyn, NY 11206

EditorsDaniel OwenTony IantoscaMarc PaltrineriJan Hammerquist

Layout by Jo Morris.Cover block print by Pareesa Pourian.Cover printing by Eleanor Templeton.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Jan Hammerquist .......................................................................................MA Viszolyi ....................................................................................................Stephanie Gray ............................................................................................Mike Young .................................................................................................Dan Owen ...................................................................................................Tony Iantosca .............................................................................................Melanie Brazzell ........................................................................................Jack Christian .............................................................................................Jamey Jones ...............................................................................................MRB Chelko ................................................................................................Marc Paltrineri ...........................................................................................Naomi Schub .............................................................................................Uche Nduka ................................................................................................Calista Tarnauskas ....................................................................................

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[and now you must follow ah snowfall is]

and now you must follow ah snowfall isgone we no longer need prayers the junkfloating about the ocean yesterdaywhen your mother strolled downto meet us we were lying in the sandin the picture you can see it floatingpast us in the picture you tightenedyour little woman muscles &kissed them i lifted you up & the sun wasbehind you in the picture the questioni never asked i meant to ask your motherto take her shirt off i meant to seewhat your breasts would look likein forty years i may not live that long

MA Vizsolyi

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Looking for frequencies to carry you with,

it’s too hard, looking for the very low, all the vowels, they are underneath the quarry, the synonymous level to gossip beneath our feet, I can’t break through, I know you said you can’t walk there, I need to get the tones that will matter, the pitches that are strong enough, the beats that won’t make you fall or skip when you in fact skip them, when you dance too hard to the records in the trailer, making the frequencies that could’ve flown you out of there, instead, fall to the aluminum siding, shag carpeted floor that you said there’d be no(know) way to fall through, oh but there is, it wasn’t so frequent you visited us and as you see, in threes, we are shaking we asked you to carry us home did you find the silent e yet and the annoying ph that never sounds the way it’s spelled and what about the supremely frustrating ough, who made it so, so clunky so frequent in our language, look did you find the frequencies yet to carry us home, maybe something near the 1000 AM radio dial, yeah I think you should try that, the crackle and spackle just might do it, it’s like little mountains it will carry us, carry us, carry us, us down the pitch and tone and beat and hush that made us lose our balance the first time, first time the frequent round.

Stephanie Gray

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Rule Number One of Everything

This plan to prove the world strange, it reminds me ofshooting people in the feet and shouting Dance! Howdypartner. The world ain’t a stranger, it’s a body. I amafraid of death because I am afraid of death is not whatI mean when I give you all I fear. Now I want to praisetools resistant to innovation, such as the awl. Thanksfor letting me borrow you for a while. Once we arealone together, we are free to say some very startlingshit, but we must get even lonelier for this to matter.Often I throw a tennis ball against the wall and hopethe people downstairs believe more people existabove them than really do. How about let’s referto batteries as—let’s see—wilting, maybe. Notdying. Let’s agree and move on. Let’s move on ouragreement. Now I want to praise unusual sandwichcombinations such as brie and apple because someonethought of them. That was brave. Now they’re ours.Most of all this learning is only dissonance placation.On a bus into Northampton, a kid asked his motherWhy is the Easthampton Bank in the wrong Hampton?Oh here you go, have some paper. Sell me that silkworm.You know the paper is real because it has complicatedflaws under the pyramid. Now I want to praise unusualpartners, such as fear. Thank you for letting me crashwith you. Let us talk of all we think that proves.

Mike Young

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Helicopter

Haunted animals stride the avenue before noon, revving the new day in its Kilimanjaro jumpstart. Silent interiors access the headwaters of delight. Space elegance extends to every bent river remembered. Hovering, I awake to the helicopter in my chest. Veritable electric zones spike luminous bar talk, golden, reminiscing the silence of negritude happenstance, underestimating the chance of window river returns, going through the motions of time travel star blip. Ethereality smoke signals casually drift from the cracked windows of green sedans. People invent themselves as if to light space in new ways, continually moving window to window, geometric shape shifting in place of suicide.

Jamey Jones

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If I came from nothing, will return to nothing,it is hard to believe I am anywhere now.

MRB Chelko

But I see a bookshelflit by a lamp, a tinypotted tree losing its leaves.I wish I lost my armsand grew new ones.Life would be soinspiring then. Butwho would water meif not me? The house plantlives on trust, but leanstoward the window.Like any prisoner, it wants

what’s next. For me,what’s next is sleep.But the plant does not sleep.For me, what’s nextis a shower. But the plantcannot even dreamof a shower. It can’teven seeout the window.Now, all I want isto put my plants outside.But even then, they won’trealize they’re free.

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Divorce: Recalling Trains and Appeasement

Naomi Schub

and maybe I am blessedalone waking and nameless,his shirt tearingfrom the deep underarms and around—but

flesh is a verbI once told him in sleepto flesh: to streamthese bodies so liquid and our saltmay thread themand we lastthrough all of Pet Sounds

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from Any Way You Want

Who swooned first during the study time for chameleons? Who swooned last? One morning, I recall, you knelt down and reached for air, wine and lovebox. You saw doors awhirl. Saw who was talking. Saw who was looking at fantasies sinking into earth. You sought a bouquet of hope but a harmonica thumbed the wind and harvested the seeds of your curiosity where you knelt nodding to a map reader and suddenly said: Turn over, your knees are showing. Surrender your heart and take my mind. Ego sanctioned the war we were worried about. Music sheets burned in Baghdad streets. Rhymes stammered in Tel Aviv. Wrongs bit the hour and the day was not hard to scold. Mementoes were grudges that waited to be licked. Furious farewells to hiss. We fidgeted over the truce that was promised but damned. Fidgeted over the bullying temper of scud missiles. Two dizzy people in a knotty hole, we watched as the morning tailed off in the taillights of a bomber.

Uche Nduka

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Melanie Brazzell lives in Berlin, she has a garden, and you can talk to her at: melanie.brazzell@gmail.com.

MRB Chelko is a recent graduate of The University of New Hampshire and the Assistant Editor of the unbound poetry journal, Tuesday: An Art Project. She has poems in current or forthcoming issues of AGNI Online, Bateau, Forklift, Ohio, The Laurel Review, Washington Square, and others. Chelko’s second chapbook, The World after Czeslaw Milosz (Dream Horse Press, 2011), won the 2010 Dream Horse Press National Chapbook Prize. She lives in Harlem with her husband, Nick.

Jack Christian’s poems have appeared or are soon to appear in Denver Quarterly, Web Conjunctions, H_NGM_N, and The Hat. He is the author of the chapbook, Let’s Collaborate, from Magic Helicopter Press.

Stephanie Gray is a filmmaker and poet. She finds there is a relationship between words forming on the page and images forming on the screen, so she is doing both. Her first book, Heart Stoner Bingo, was published by Straw Gate Books in 2007. Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Aufgabe, Sentence, Brooklyn Paramount, Brooklyn Rail, 2ndAvenuePoetry, BoogCity Reader, Downtown Brooklyn, and others. She’s read her work at the Projections, Segue, Zinc, Frequency, and Poetry Project Friday series in NYC.

It is commonly believed, though not confirmed, that Tony Iantosca was born and raised in Richmond, Virginia. He enjoys poetry, music, cooking, friends, and interplanetary glue guns. He currently lives and teaches in Brooklyn, New York, where he attends the MFA program at Long Island University. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Talisman, EOAGH, Downtown Brooklyn, Zen Monster, and Brooklyn Paramount.

Jamey Jones is from Pensacola, Florida, where he has long been an active proponent of all things poetry. He currently lives in Brooklyn, NY, where he’s pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at Long Island University. His most recent chapbooks are If You See An Ocelot, Please Remove This Letter (brown boke press, 2007), the notebook troubled the sleep door (brown boke

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press, 2008), Blue Rain Morning (Fell Swoop, 2009), and Twelve Windows (brown boke press, 2009). His poems have appeared in Mesachabe, Yawp, Fell Swoop: The All Bohemian Review, The Mundane Egg, Big Bridge, New Orleans Anthology: Sturm und Drang, The Tsatsawassins, and other various journals.

Uche Nduka was born and brought up in Nigeria. Poet, photographer, essayist, dancer, collagist, songwriter, lecturer, his books include Flower Child (1988), Second Act (1994), The Bremen Poems (1995/99), Chiaroscuro (which won the Association of Nigerian Authors Poetry Prize for 1997), If Only The Night (2002), Heart’s Field (2005), eel on reef (2007), and Tracers (2010). His first prose book, Belltime Letters, was published in 2000. Among the online and print journals that his writings have appeared in are Recluse, BoogCity, Beatitude, Other Voices, Drumvoices Revue, Sentinel Poetry, Sun’s Skeleton, Downtown Brooklyn, ANA Review, African Writing, Wasafiri, The Guardian, etc. Some of his writings have been translated into German, Dutch, Serbo-Croatian, and French. Nduka presently studies, works and lives in New York City.

Daniel Owen is a poet and musician who lives in Brooklyn. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in journals such as Helix and Barnstorm. He studies and performs with New York’s premier Javanese gamelan, Gamelan Kusuma Laras. His work is on the webs at http://fixed-explosive.blogspot.com.

Marc Paltrineri has work published or is forthcoming in journals such as Ellipsis, BlazeVOX, Sixth Finch, Many Mountains Moving, and the Green Mountains Review. He is a reader for the online journal, Barnstorm, and he helps edit this one. An MFA candidate at the University of New Hampshire, he lives nearby.

Naomi Schub is a poet and teacher who lives in Brooklyn.

Calista Tarnauskas is a poet, singer, goat behavior specialist, and cheese maker, currently pursuing entrepreneurial fantasies in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont where she lives and works.

M.A. Vizsolyi’s first book of poems, The Lamp with Wings, was

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selected by Ilya Kaminsky for the National Poetry Series, and is forthcoming in the fall 2011. His poems have appeared in many journals including Poetry International, 6x6, Slice Magazine, and BOMB. He teaches ice hockey and ice skating lessons in Central Park and lives in Brooklyn.

Mike Young is the author of Look! Look! Feathers, a story collection, and We Are All Good If They Try Hard Enough, a poetry collection. He co-edits NOÖ Journal, runs Magic Helicopter Press, and writes for HTMLGIANT. Find him online at http://mikeayoung.blogspot.com.

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We are always accepting submissions at the following address:editors@sunsskeleton.com.

Guidelines: In one .doc file, include a reasonable amount of poems with your name and email on the cover. We do not subscribe to any specific aesthetic but our own opinions and gut feelings. Give us about two or three months to respond. We're busy little suns.

All of this information and more can be found on the website:http://www.sunsskeleton.com/

Thanks to:Lynette, Jeff, and the crew at the Jalopy Theater, Ditmas Castle residents, and all of our supporters.