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Nov. 13th, 2009

a dripping dagger held in the fist of a shuddering heart

mood: OK


Ted Kooser

Tattoo


What once was meant to be a statement—

a dripping dagger held in the fist

of a shuddering heart—is now just a bruise

on a bony old shoulder, the spot

where vanity once punched him hard

and the ache lingered on. He looks like

someone you had to reckon with,

strong as a stallion, fast and ornery,

but on this chilly morning, as he walks

between the tables at a yard sale

with the sleeves of his tight black T-shirt

rolled up to show us who he was,

he is only another old man, picking up

broken tools and putting them back,

his heart gone soft and blue with stories.

　
from Delights & Shadows, Copper Canyon Press
　
　
All Good Things - Jobe
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Nov. 12th, 2009

Is the universe an empty mirror?

mood: chipper


Li-Young Lee

Become Becoming
 

Wait for evening.
Then you’ll be alone.
 
Wait for the playground to empty.
Then call out those companions from childhood:
 
The one who closed his eyes
and pretended to be invisible.
The one to whom you told every secret.
The one who made a world of any hiding place.
 
And don’t forget the one who listened in silence
while you wondered out lout:
 
Is the universe an empty mirror?  A flowering tree?
Is the universe the sleep of a woman?
 
Wait for the sky’s last blue
(the color of your homesickness).
Then you’ll know the answer.
 
Wait for the air’s first gold (that color of Amen).
Then you’ll spy the wind’ barefoot steps.
 
Then you’ll recall that story beginning
with a child who strays in the woods.
 
The search for him goes on in the growing
shadow of the clock.
 
And the face behind the clock’s face
is not his father’s face.
 
And the hands behind the clock’s hands
are not his mother’s hands.
 
All of Time began when you first answered
to the names your mother and father gave you.
 
Soon, those names will travel with the leaves.
Then, you can trade places with the wind.
 
Then you’ll remember your life
as a book of candles,
each page read by the light of its own burning.



--from BEHIND MY EYES, W.W. Norton, an excellent book

--




Presents

Dogs of a Feather:

RD “Raindog” Armstrong and Bill Gainer


Monday, Nov. 16, 2009 at 7:30 PM
HQ for the Arts at 1719 25th Street
Host: Rebecca Morrison

RD Armstrong, AKA Raindog, has been published in over 300 journals, magazines, Ezines, blogs and anthologies. He also has fourteen books including Fire and Rain Vols. 1 & 2 Selected Poems – 1993-2007 (Lummox Press - 2008); On/Off the Beaten Path (Lummox Press - 2008) and El Pagano (Short Stories, Lummox Press - 2008). He operates the Lummox Press which has published the Lummox Journal; the Little Red Book series (59 titles); New and Selected Poems by John Yamrus; The Riddle of the Wooden Gun by Todd Moore; The Long Way Home Ten Years of the Little Red Book Series; Down This Crooked Road; and Sea Trails Poems and 1977 Passage Notes by Pris Campbell. All can be viewed at http://www.lummoxpress.com. An itinerant, self-taught writer, RD lives alone in Long Beach, CA USA. He makes a living doing whatever he can.

What Keeps Me Going
 
The fear of madness
Is nothing
It's an academic tease
A ploy
A ruse
A technique
A bluster
That inspires boys and girls to envy
Solitude is a pleasant maze
Another distraction
Solitude is a new coat of paint
On a very old story
It is a world that exists
Outside the box
Outside my skull
Beyond the blade
Laid flat on a pale forearm
Where the party
Never stops
Even as the condemned
Drop
Even as the worms take over
The world decays
And is remade
Constantly falling down
And building back up
Quantum physics meets
Destruction derby
Listen between syllables
You can hear it
The interplay between
Death and life
Life and death
It is a chattering
Animated sound
Lost in the murmur of voices
In the chaos and clamor of desire
It is the simple act of drinking
A cup of tea or breaking bread
Or seeing a cloud unhinged in the
Evening sky as if
For the first time.



Bill Gainer is known for the openness of his confessional poetry and is recognized as one of the founding contributors to the modern movement of "After Hours Poetry." He has contributed to the literary scene as a writer, editor, promoter, publicist, publisher and poet. Gainer considers himself forever influenced by an odd mix of outsiders. He says that early on he was swept away by the boldness, courage and brevity of the works of Richard Brautigan and Michael McClure. Later he found himself enthralled with the story telling talents of the likes of Tom Waits, William Kennedy, Johnny Cash, John Prine and a legion of "Meat Poets," including Bukowski. Gainer has a long standing love of the short poem, but is often more recognized for his longer pieces. He continues to read and work with a wide range of poets and writers. He has read on KUSF radio with Punk-Rocker Patti Smith and performed with California's Poet Laureate, Al Young. Gainer is nationally published and remains a sought after reader. He can be previewed at http://www.billgainer.com. His poetry on magnets project was recently recognized by the Sacramento News and Review as a Best of Sacramento, http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/content?oid=1225398. He just released a Rattlesnake Littlechap chapbook, Joining the Demented.


After the Fire

we’ll sweep the ash,
wash the dogs,
water down the porch,
think about church –
won’t go,
the kids and the neighbors –
won’t call.
We’ll probably throw
a bale of hay out for the deer,
some birdseed
for the wild ones,
wonder when they’re going
to get the power back up
and wait for the smoke to settle.
We’ll think about how quiet it gets
without leaves...
it’s always quiet
without leaves...


--

Raindog & Gainer? I am SO there! Both of these guys old friends of mine, and I've read with both of them before. Expect a fun reading!


All Good Things - Jobe







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how vulgar clarity can be

mood: chipper
Dorine Jennette (aka Dorine Preston) will give a reading at the Avid Reader bookstore in downtown Davis, California, this Saturday the 14th at 7:30 PM with other contributors to Davis's own Blue Moon Literary and Art Review. Food and wine served!



Dorine Jennette

Ode to Doubt

                        —after Neruda



Doubt,

you are

muscular as a boa,

and smooth

as cognac

aged fifty years

in the throat.

You muffle

hard outlines

under your skirts,

offer a grey handkerchief

to each certainty.

Behind the civility of veils—

what manners!

you understand how vulgar

clarity can be.

At your discretion,

the lampshade’s tassels.

Yours, the axe swung wide.

You own the dog

afloat

on the ocean,

the blurred print

on the dog’s sodden collar.

Hands that hold

a cold canary,

burning lungs

that must inhale.

Last child

left in the parking lot.

Dead horse,

middle fork,

gloved hands in hair.



--from the website memorious.org where she is listed as Dorine Preston



I saw/heard Dorine read at the Sacramento Poetry Center recently, and she is an exceptionally talented poet. I'll be at the reading, and I hope you will, too.

All Good Things, Jobe
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Nov. 11th, 2009

I will shutter the windows from light

mood: chipper


Adelaide Crapsey  (1878 - 1914) - 2 poems


November Night


Listen. .

With faint dry sound,

Like steps of passing ghosts,

The leaves, frost-crisp'd, break from the trees

And fall.





The Lonely Death


In the cold I will rise, I will bathe

In waters of ice; myself

Will shiver, and shrive myself,

Alone in the dawn, and anoint

Forehead and feet and hands;

I will shutter the windows from light,

I will place in their sockets the four

Tall candles and set them a-flame

In the grey of the dawn; and myself

Will lay myself straight in my bed,

And draw the sheet under my chin.


--

Women’s Day of Poetry

Saturday November 14, 2009 7:00pm

Come to hear four Bay Area Poets whose poems appeared in the Summer 2009 Issue of Calyx

Rebound Bookstore 1611 4th Street   San Rafael, CA     (415) 482-0550

 
    Featured Poets:

    Dian Duchin Reed               
    Connie Post
    Nancy Cherry                
    Theresa Whitehill
    
About Calyx: Calyx is an independent non profit publisher of contemporary writing and art by women committed to discovering emerging writers and artists from a variety of backgrounds. For more information on Calyx: www.calypress.org
    
For more information contact: Connie Post  Connie@poetrypost.com
    

--


All Good Things - Jobe

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Nov. 10th, 2009

Only the living take things for granted.

mood: chipper
Ralph Angel

The Privilege of Silence



No threats. No the teaser

this time. Finally there is a random God.

And all the filthy laundry we’ve hung out to dry,

all the fingers we’ve grown used to pointing,

sneer, backbite, everything that worked

yesterday, nothing a little

breeze won’t knock down.

 

Even wisdom, the pure heart, the woman

who for six days among impatient nurses

choked on water, who knew a full

life when she saw one, who never asked of anybody,

begged for air, was made

to beg for something

she knew she was en route to.

 

Only the living take things for granted.

The dead don’t leave; some part of us

is missing. And we sense

the echo, the wind in our

veins, faces like thin

curtains that let in the light

and let loose our shadows.

 

Even asleep, in the ancient dance,

we are turning away.

Turning toward the ruckus

of jacarandas. A face in the crowd

that offers itself like early morning,

unknowingly, as we are drawn to it.

More strangely than that.


--

That was in an old American Poetry Review that had fallen behind the bookcase.

All Good Things - Jobe

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poetry event in Sacramento

mood: cheerful

 

For Immediate Release:

The Sacramento Poetry Center, Monday November 16 –

On Monday, November 16 at 7:30 p.m. the Sacramento Poetry Center presents two of the West Coast Literary Scene’s most legendary contributors, poets Bill Gainer and R.D. Armstrong.  K. St. Marie of R.L. Crow Publications says, "These guys touch all possibility. Their work not only entertains, but enlightens.  They remind us what it is to live, love, wish and hope – they remind us what it is to be alive!”

 

Bill Gainer is known for the openness of his confessional poetry and is recognized as one of the founding contributors to the modern movement of "After Hours Poetry." He has contributed to the literary scene as a writer, editor, promoter, publicist, publisher and poet. Gainer considers himself forever influenced by an odd mix of outsiders. He says, early on he was swept away by the clarity, boldness, courage and brevity of the works of Richard Brautigan and Michael McClure. Later he found himself enthralled with the storytelling talents of the likes of Tom Waits, William Kennedy, Johnny Cash, Freddy Fender and a legion of “Meat Poets." Gainer has a long standing love of the short poem, but is often more recognized for his longer pieces. He continues to read and work with a wide range of poets and writers, including readings on KUSF radio with Punk-Rocker Patti Smith and performances with California Poet Laureate, Al Young.  Gainer can be previewed at billgainer.com . 

 

R.D. Armstrong, aka: Raindog, has published 14 chapbooks and four full length collections of poetry, his most recent Fire and Rain Selected Poems, volumes #1 and #2. His poems are widely published and he is a sought after performer on the Southern California poetry scene. With a laugh, Armstrong says of his poems, "No kids, no wife, no house, no new car - I am not exactly living the American dream. That is kind of what I write about."  He is also the editor and publisher of Lummox Press, which produces the online Lummox Journal, the Little Red Book Series (currently at 59 titles) and several stand-alone titles, including: LAST CALL: the Legacy of Charles Bukowski and the recently released anthology, Down this Crooked Road.  Check out www.lummoxpress.com.

 

 

Admission is free! Refreshments and open-mic included, at the Sacramento Poetry Center, 1719 25th Street. Call for information:  (916) 979-9706.

 

 

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Nov. 9th, 2009

giving-suck-to-the-cattle songs

mood: cheerful


Tom Goff

Local Habitation
 

Countries have districts, have states,
departments, or counties, bearers
of local names dipped in legend-honey,
roads bathed in the naming-milk,
each tree, pine, birch, sprinkled as babies
baptized at, if never quite in,
that font of alphabet breath. Why, Nora
grew up singing Latvian songs, dainas, rhyming
lines short, terse verse-feet for a child’s
breath, sticky on that big spoon, memory.
In songs Nora finds Latvia, finds identity: bits
of lore bittersweet: Saulis Maita drowning
herself each winter deeper than Virginia
Woolf, coming back crisper than Christ
each spring. Imants Ziedonis captures,
fractures, refreshes Latvian
butter-churn songs, pagan serpent-
giving-suck-to-the-cattle songs. 
What have Californians to supply such deep,
slow, songful needs? Yesterday, we wove
car-miles into a Sierra refrain: Shingle
Springs, Pollock Pines, Freshpond, Kyburz,
Tahoe, each an artless art-song in a recital
of pioneer bone-rhymes, aboriginal tags,
but all toothsome. Oh, and near Apple Hill,
no bobbing for apples with teeth
in liquid, but apples bobbing from trees
in air that teethes, edging the crisp skins tart,
keeping up the name of the place. Near
Camino Drive, a wondrously misspelled
highway sign: Paul Bunyon Road. Look
down from there into ravine. Behold
swelling, the hair of the hide wind-ruffled,
the back,  haunches, and flanks of Babe
the giant green ox.


--


From Donald R. Anderson, an event for tomorrow:


Hi, poets!

I and Chinetana would like to remind you that the monthly open mic is scheduled for this Tuesday, Nov. 10th (as well as Dec. 8th) at 6:30pm at the Empresso Coffeehouse off the Miracle Mile (1826 Pacific Ave. Stockton, CA) the 2nd block north from Harding Way. Chinetana 'Nana' Phounsavath and I, would like to welcome everyone to enjoy an evening of poetry, essays, music and more.
 
If you are interested in sharing your creative craft or simply need more information, please contact Chinetana via email or cell at (209) 598-0549.  We look forward to seeing everyone there to support this FREE local event.
 
Have a great weekend!
Donald R. Anderson (revised forward from Chinetana 'Nana' Phounsavath)


poetsespresso newsletter editor
Donald R. Anderson
poetsespresso@gmail.com
209.405.4041
1426 Telegraph Ave. #4
Stockton, CA 95204

Arts website:
http://poetsespresso.com

--

All Good Things - Jobe

jamesleejobe@gmail.com

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Nov. 8th, 2009

Let them whisper to each other

mood: chipper


Charles Simic

Against Whatever It Is That’s Encroaching


Best of all is to be idle,

And especially on a Thursday,

And to sip wine while studying the light:

The way it ages, yellows, turns ashen

And then hesitates forever

On the threshold of the night

That could be bringing the first frost.


It’s good to have a woman around just then,

And two is even better.

Let them whisper to each other

And eye you with a smirk.

Let them roll up their sleeves and unbutton their shirts a bit

As this fine old twilight deserves,


And the small schoolboy

Who has come home to a room almost dark

And now watches wide-eyed

The grown-ups raise their glasses to him,

The giddy-headed, red-haired woman

With eyes tightly shut,

As if she were about to cry or sing.



-- from The Voice at 3:00 AM: Selected Late and New Poems


All Good Things - Jobe

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Nov. 7th, 2009

my birthday went up in smoke

mood: chipper


Stanley Kunitz

Passing Through


—on my seventy-ninth birthday


Nobody in the widow’s household

ever celebrated anniversaries.

In the secrecy of my room

I would not admit I cared

that my friends were given parties.

Before I left town for school

my birthday went up in smoke

in a fire at City Hall that gutted

the Department of Vital Statistics.

If it weren’t for a census report

of a five-year-old White Male

sharing my mother’s address

at the Green Street tenement in Worcester

I’d have no documentary proof

that I exist. You are the first,

my dear, to bully me

into these festive occasions.


Sometimes, you say, I wear

an abstracted look that drives you

up the wall, as though it signified

distress or disaffection.

Don’t take it so to heart.

Maybe I enjoy not-being as much

as being who I am. Maybe

it’s time for me to practice

growing old. The way I look

at it, I’m passing through a phase:

gradually I’m changing to a word.

Whatever you choose to claim

of me is always yours;

nothing is truly mine

except my name. I only

borrowed this dust.


--

We had Stanley Kunitz on this earth for a good long time, but even if we had him for another century, it wouldn't be enough. I did some web-searches for birthday poems, as it is my birthday, and this one really touched me. Well, several of them did, in fact, Dylan Thomas' Poem in October also came up in the search, and that's an immortal poem, if art can be immortal. But Brother Stanley really stood out for me today. 'I only borrowed this dust. Maybe it's time for me to practice getting old.' I look at it like that, too. I may have posted Passing Through once before, back when he passed away. It's worth an extra read, don't you think?

Also, I have a hit counter on this blog. I know there are a lot of people who come here everyday, and don't post comments or interact with me in any other way but to read. Thanks. Whoever you are, I'm glad you read these poems.

All Good Things - Jobe

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Nov. 6th, 2009

I like the brier.

mood: chipper

        
Sarah Hannah

Greenbrier (Smilax rotundifolia)



You can scorch it, strip it, tear it down,

Wither it with caustic sprays, call it

Rampant and invasive, or resort


To more emotional descriptors

Such as vicious, invoke

Pathetic fallacy – ‘It chokes’; still,


I like the brier.

All the eaves and complications.


I like how green the grey

Oak trunk grows in its sleeve, how

It insinuates its weave against the sun,


How furtively it fruits in summer –

Turquoise beads among the curling spaces,

Deepening to wine.


I even like the lances –

Runic, every one –

Imprinting oaths across my skin:


I promise always to be contrary,

Creviced;


I promise to be arch, to inch

Among the disregarded –

Chitin, husk, and skull;


And finally, I promise to remain,

To hide and cackle in the great dark,

Fiercely inextricable.


    

SARAH HANNAH was nominated for the 2006 Pushcart Prize in the US and was a semi-finalist in the Yale Younger Poets Prize in 2002. Her first collection, Longing Distance, was published by Tupelo Press in 2004. Her second, Inflorescence, came out in 2007, also from Tupelo Press. She died in June 2007.

--

All Good Things - Jobe

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Nov. 5th, 2009

A neighbor aims in the hole, spits.

mood: Bite me.
   PROSE POEMS



Arthur Rimbaud

Vagabonds


Pitiful brother—the dreadful nights I owed him! "I've got no real involvement in the business. I toyed with his weakness, so—it was my fault—we wound up back in exile and enslavement."

He saw me as a loser, a weird child; he added his own prods.

I answered my satanic doctor, jeering, and made it out the window. All down a landscape crossed by unheard-of music, I spun my dreams of a nighttime wealth to come.

After that more or less healthy pastime, I'd stretch out on a pallet. And almost every night, soon as I slept, my poor brother would rise—dry mouth and bulging eyes (the way he'd dreamt himself!)—and haul me into the room, howling his stupid dream.

Truly convinced, I'd vowed to take him back to his primal state—child of the sun—and so we wandered, fed on wine from the caves and gypsy bread, me bound to find the place itself and the code.




Ilya Kaminsky

from Deaf Republic: 6


Through Vasenka: a herd of boys runs. With their icy hands they haul a policeman and for an apple a look they display the man on the asphalt. Snow falls in his nostrils. I watch him. They circle his eyes with a red pencil. They teach his neighbors to spit in two red holes. I watch the snowflakes melt in their hair. The neighbor aims in the red circle, spits. I stand on a park bench and chew snow. Boys walk west of Tedna, carrying snowflakes in their hair. A neighbor aims in the hole, spits. Walking by night with their arms lifted up from their bodies. As if they were about to leave the earth. And were trying out the wind.




Russell Edson

Antimatter


On the other side of a mirror there’s an inverse world, where the insane go sane; where bones climb out of the earth and recede to the first slime of love.

And in the evening the sun is just rising.

Lovers cry because they are a day younger, and soon childhood robs them of their pleasure.

In such a world there is much sadness which, of course, is joy . . .




Eloise Klein Healy

Asking About You


Instead of having sex all the time I like to hold you and not get into some involved discussion of what life means. I want you to tell me something I don’t know about you. Something about the day before that photograph in which you’re standing on your head. I want to know about softball and the team picture. Why are you so little next to the others? Were you younger? Were you small as a girl? What I want most is to have been a girl with you and played on the opposite team so I could have liked you and competed against you at the same time.



--

from Tim Kahl:



Presents

Jodi Angel, Valerie Fioravanti, Joey Garcia,
Paul Mann and Lynka Adams

Monday, Nov. 9 at 7:30 PM
HQ for the Arts at 1719 25th Street
Host: Bob Stanley

The Farallon Review will host a creative prose reading at the Sacramento Poetry Center. Monday, November 9, gathering at 7:00, reading 7:30 to 8:30. Sacramento Poetry Center, 1719 25th Street (at R Street) in midtown Sacramento. Featuring: Jodi Angel, Valerie Fioravanti, Joey Garcia, Paul Mann, Lynka Adams.  Free admission, with copies of the new issue of The Farallon Review for sale!

www.farallonreview.com

Jodi Angel’s first collection of short stories, The History of Vegas, was published in 2005 by Chronicle Books. The collection was named as a San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of 2005 as well as a LA Times Book Review Discovery. Her short story “Portions” was selected for Special Mention for the 2007 Pushcart Prize and has also been adapted into an independent short film. Her work has appeared in Zoetrope: All-Story, Sycamore Review, and Carve Magazine, among other publications. She currently teaches literature and fiction writing at UC Davis and Sacramento City College. 

Valerie Fioravanti writes fiction, essays, and prose poems. Her story collection, The Brooklyn Shuffle, was recently a finalist for the Tartt First Book Award. Her stories have appeared in North American Review, Cimarron Review, Hunger Mountain, and Green Mountains Review, among others. My stories and prose poems have earned four Pushcart Prize nominations, and special mention in Pushcart Prize XXVIII. I received a Fulbright Fellowship (Italy) to research my novel, Bel Casino, which is one of two novels currently in the works.

Joey Garcia is a certified spiritual direction counselor, but is most widely known for her weekly advice column, “Ask Joey,” which has been firmly entrenched within the pages of the Sacramento News & Review.

Paul Mann is a defense investigator for inmates on California’s death row.

Lynka Adams (aka “Moontrout”) is a writer, sometime antiquarian book dealer, daughter, wife and mother, seeker of Essential Beauty and the spirits in the night from which all creativity springs. She was born in the year of the snake.


--

from Connie Post:


VALONA DELI SECOND SUNDAY POETRY SERIES

SUNDAY November 8th    4 - 6 p.m
1327 Pomona Street Crockett

Hosted by Connie Post
 
Our Featured Poets are
Armando Garcia Davila and Peter Tamases
 
Armado Garcia Davila's poetry has been featured in Spanish and English newspapers and periodicals and he has readhis work on national radio.  A former Healdsburg Literar Laureate, and co founder of the Poetry Slam series at Sonoma County Library, Armando has been and Arts and lecture series Presenter at Santa Rosa Junior College and Sonoma State University. His bilingual poetry book Out of my Heart is in its third printing and his love peoms have been set to music by acclaimed Jazz saxophonist Michael Boliar on Armando's CD YES!

Although Peter Tamases wrote his first poem in 2007 (in his seventieth year) his work has already appeared in a number of literary journals. Peter, who holds degrees from Columbia and Stanford Universities, was a finalist for the Arts & Letters 2008 Rumi competition. A liveley performer at Valona Deli OPen Mics he is currently finishing his first full collection with the intruging title

Waiting for Viagra to Kick in

Remember!

The Valona Deli "Take One Leave One" Lending Library

Bring one Poetry journal to donate and take one from the lending Library.

(please no donations of local poets' books and really "take one, leave one"

For our wonderful open mic: (One of the best open mics in the Bay Area!)

 Please always bring a "back up" short poem (20 lines or less) ! In case we have a very large crowd, everyone can be heard with the "lightening round" open mic if necessary! Otherwise, bring a poem 40 lines or less for open mic.

Remember to stay for the wonderful Terry Henry Trio  Jazz at 6 p.m.!

Please contact me with questions

Connie@poetrypost.com


--

All Good Things - Jobe

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Couldn't I have gobbled her up right there in the jungle?

mood: chipper


AGHA SHAHID ALI

The Wolf's Postcript to 'Little Red Riding Hood'        


First, grant me my sense of history:
I did it for posterity,
for kindergarten teachers
and a clear moral:
Little girls shouldn't wander off
in search of strange flowers,
and they mustn't speak to strangers.

And then grant me my generous sense of plot:
Couldn't I have gobbled her up
right there in the jungle?
Why did I ask her where her grandma lived?
As if I, a forest-dweller,
didn't know of the cottage
under the three oak trees
and the old woman lived there
all alone?
As if I couldn't have swallowed her years before?

And you may call me the Big Bad Wolf,
now my only reputation.
But I was no child-molester
though you'll agree she was pretty.

And the huntsman:
Was I sleeping while he snipped
my thick black fur
and filled me with garbage and stones?
I ran with that weight and fell down,
simply so children could laugh
at the noise of the stones
cutting through my belly,
at the garbage spilling out
with a perfect sense of timing,
just when the tale
should have come to an end.



--

All Good Things - Jobe

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Nov. 4th, 2009

shaved heads, men and women in pajamas

mood: Hmmm.


W. S. Di Piero

Saturday Afternoon


"NOW YAHWEH ORDERED THAT A GREAT FISH SHOULD SWALLOW HIM."


Into my backyard’s six fat squares of concrete rigged with clothesline,
Charlie the Cop swung gunnysacks convulsed with Jersey chickens.
From the open view of other yards, unfolded down the block,
neighbor women watched ours boil tub water; the barechested men,
laying out knives and cleavers, fumbled the animals into daylight,
in the middle of my world, my certain place, not stump roots
on the cold Atlantic floor of mountains I’d imagined,
one week every summer, from the hot Wildwood boardwalk.
But just then Charlie lifted me above his head, saying
“O Billy Boy you've never in your life seen this! Want it?”
The ground gone, steep drag of thinned air, chicken squawk
tingling in my ears with dim human voices. Charlie threw me in the sea.
The underplace, swallowing my heart, opened like a horn of plenty,
blood channels lit blue and red like pinball arteries, flesh-motes,
mucus, sinew, pulsing viscera bits dripping from clothesline.
Missile tracks horned across the ceiling. In the ribcage,
stooped beggars crowded, kicking spongy gouts of something;
deeper in the tunnel, toward the tail, in files winding out of sight,
shaved heads, men and women in pajamas. Spear carriers paced the walls.
Into my vaulted space came words not really words: shades, images
with a worldly shape of meaning, but beyond me, aloof and hysterical.
The silence wrapped me like a prickly woolen sleeve knit
by my women’s voices, shouting, out there, unrecoverable, dense,
while their horny hands plucked and the sweaty men teased,
stuffing tacky down inside their headscarves. Inside,
blood cells combed my walls, unfinished patterns seeped through
as picturegrams that glided across the whale’s belly. A still life
with ginger jar and pomegranates. A flayed, ripening Christ.
An Ohio puddler stirring pigiron mash, whose back is the same one
in Giotto’s Gethsemane that stays the hand slicing off a soldier’s ear.
Mercury, my heart, the sickening beautiful shiftingness of things.
Kettles steamed, tin basins quivered with guts, my dear hell’s bloodglyphs
in things, in me. I’d not be whole in and of the world again.
Quills cracked when Charlie put me down. In my backyard, in my head,
women sang under a pier to the unformed sea, an unvoiced song
I’d heard inside the monster, breezing now through clotheslines.
Men scrubbed their hands at the spigot, the women sighing.
Flies left charcoal scrawls on the air and grazed old stains;
they lighted on my arms, not waiting, but constant, my familiars,
until their manic newsiness went away. Then, in that twilight,
slow, shadowless lightning bugs appeared, going on and off.


--


Saumendra Bajpai

Born to Gilda


Travelling,
through edicts
that merge, 
into her sleeping winters,
Gilda drinks on warmth,
served in saucers,
baked tomorrow night.
 
***
 
With the carousel paused,
romeos turned around
and teased a somersault.
As she goes about now,
straining under throbs
of a restive autumn,
faces emerge
in the little whirlpool
that drowns no one.
 
***
 
At the mouth of rivers,
there abound rocks, gardens
bearing posies
for Gilda’s children.
They sputter like balloons, joyous,
bursting to wild winds
at every summer fair. 
 
*** 
 
When the spiral broke off
from her body, 
it peeled off skin
where rubaiyyat sang,
between rudy finger marks.
Moaning her love
for the last time,
she picked up her favorite child
and bid farewell. 
"They go to bed with Gilda,
they wake up with me", hissed the shadow.
When the lights dimmed in eyes,
we gathered around our embers
and struck a waltz
to the final carnival.


--

All Good Things - Jobe

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