Fall 2014 // VOL 2 // ISSUE 1
EDITOR: ART EDITOR: DESIGN: COVER ART:
Bob Herz Whitney Daniels WRKDesigns, wrkdesigns.com Fletch Crangle, “Whirlwind Thru Cities”
Copyright © 2014 by Nine Mile Magazine. Poetry and artwork copyright of their respective authors and artists. All rights reserved. No poem or artwork may be reproduced in full or in part without prior written permission from its owner. Send submission inquires to: info@ninemile.org ninemile.org
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POETRY 6
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Martin Willitts, Jr. Finding Peonies About David Rigsbee Max and the Promise Strip Search On the House Paradiso, Canto VII About Len Orr Monster’s Gratitude November The Let-Down Reflex About Jennifer H. Fortin That Which Is Both Recurrent & Unprovoked Never Until Now Edgewise About Bill Burtis History At the Fair Adventures in the Time-Space Continuum between the Bank of America parking lot and Ceres Bakery, on a winter afternoon in Portsmouth, New Hampshire About Paul Kocak Litany for Rosamond Gifford Zoo Canticle of the Stone Throwers West Side Recessional About Sam Pereira The Water Washed It Away The Sheer Ice & Fire of It The Maverick Fastdraw Holster Set Twirling Conquests, Pomade, Big City
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Partying with the Dead Thanksgiving in Iowa City, 1973 Love at the Steak ‘n Sin About 51
Kerry-Lee Powel Song for a Sleeping Father Fallowfield Station Florilegia Negative Theology About
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A. N. Irvano I Will Not Say That I’m Droning On, Am I— I Am Your 200th Girlfriend About
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Diana Pinckney The Pawnee Speaks To The Wolf Winged Wolf About
CONTENTS
NINE MILE | FALL 2014 | VOL. 2, ISSUE 1
FEATURES 4
ABout NINE MiLE
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Q&A With Kerry-Lee Powell
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Cherry Valley Bob Herz
ART 24
Fletch Crangle Mixed Media Painting
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Lorraine Goldych Digital
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Whitney Daniels Mixed Media 3
About Nine Mile Nine Mile is an online magazine of literature and art digitally published twice a year, in the Spring and Fall. We take it as our mission to publish the best writing and artwork submitted to us from anywhere, with a special focus on Central New York, which is undergoing something of a poetry, art, and literature explosion. We take our name from a local waterway, Nine Mile Creek, formed by glaciers about 14,000 years ago. The creek runs 25 miles from Otisco Lake, in the town of Marcellus, through Camillus and into Onondaga Lake in the Town of Geddes, with a watershed that covers 10 towns in Onondaga County and two in Cortland County. The creek has different elevations, different turns, different speeds. It has had a long and varied history, sampling, if you will, many different earths and locations. The magazine is also varied, with different writings and arts coming together to form a cohesive whole. As editors we intend to publish the best of those things that we like, without necessarily adhering to any particular ideology of writing, composing, or creating, other than quality. Our views are broad and we’re excited to be able to provide publication and appreciation to our fellow creative types. Nine Mile is a labor of love. We are not supported by outside financial sources or other institutions. At this time we are unable to offer compensation to published submissions other than publication itself, in a quality collection, in the company of others equally accomplished and similarly in love with their art. We hope you enjoy this issue, and all our issues, which are available online. We work hard on them. Please, if you have time and inclination, drop us a line and let us know what you think.
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– Bob Herz, Editor – Whitney Daniels, Art Editor
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By way of background, we both have had some history in editing and publishing various types of publications. Here’s a bit more about us:
ABOUT Bob Herz Bob Herz was editor of Seneca Review as well as the Hobart & William Smith book series, which published essays by Donald Hall, reprinted Robert Bly’s The Fifties, The Sixties, and The Seventies, and Different Fleshes by Albert Goldbarth. Mr. Herz also ran his own small press, W.D. Hoffstadt & Sons, which published such poets as David St. John, Jim Cervantes, Michael Burkard, and others. The Hoffstadt press has just been revived, with the publication of Poems for Lorca by Walt Shepperd (first run sold out), and an expanded version of Some Time in the Winter, by Michael Burkard.
ABOUT Whitney Daniels Whitney Daniels is the owner of a surface pattern and graphic design studio, WRKDesigns and has designed such publications as Poems for Lorca by Walt Shepperd and Welding and Gases Today quarterly trade magazine. She fills a variety of different roles by being a graphic designer, surface pattern designer, crafter, and all around creative chick. As the current NOTES Editor and member of the Junior League of Syracuse, she designs and publishes the monthly newsletter in both print and online formats. She is also a member of the Near Westside Initiative Business Association, Syracuse First, Phi Sigma Sigma, a certified Women’s Business Enterprise, crafter, and soon to be mother of twin girls.
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Martin Willitts, Jr.
Finding Peonies Peonies at dusk; you know everything will be alright. In spite of all the spite in the world, regardless of words rendering us less than we are, no matter the wrongness done to each other and the land, there are peonies finding light at the latest part of the day. When the sun does not know enough to stand still and admire what is opening and what is dying and what finds loss and what finds a reason to continue anyway, there are peonies so in tune with love that they practically tug at the heart. I return home with a basket of green oranges I intend to ripen. Some still have a stem and leaf attached, refusing to let go. We all have to age and let go someday. My skin is already wrinkled and puckered as the rind, however my ambitions are still green as a teen. The wooden basket with wire handle is old as my memory of orange crates and using one to stand in a town square to shout against the war. The crate could hold my weight then, but would snap now. The moon is orange outside. It will be unseasonable hot. Looking at the basket will not make the fruit ripen faster. Impatience has always been my strong suit. Imagine, if you will, what might be my weakness and you will not be any closer. I left the peonies outside where time has its own meaning.
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I am beginning to think I have a hand-me-down life. I have already out-lived so many people. I am losing count how many I still know, and how many are beginning to forget who they are. This is not a contest to see who lives the longest. It should be a contest of who loves the best with intensity. Who could say what will become of nothing?
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When I die, I shall be able to say I looked so long at a peony I memorized it. I stared until well past bedtime, until I forgot what time it was. And it was a different kind of forgetful; not the kind where everything I know ceases to exist. When I die, I shall say I ate oranges until my skin became the same color, spitting pips like we used to with watermelon seeds, seeing how far they go in an arc, trying for distance, getting a mess. When I die, I shall say I never really grew up. It will be an important thing, one to get me into some good graces. I could hang my hat on that if I ever wore a hat. I want to live my life like it was acid-free paper.
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Things might have ended differently. I might not have put on my shoes with the right heel lift, and a drone might not have been launched at a distance with distant eyes watching as everything goes wrong. I might not have gotten dressed for a walk, and some politician might not have declared war although he had no authority to do so. I might not have found my way to the woods to get away from the insanity where no means yes, and someone would have noticed the leaking toxins before they entered the only source of drinkable water. . I might not have bought oranges before hiking, thinking I would take one with me, but they were green. So I left them in the house, and someone shot school kids. If I had watched the news like a basset hound, nose trying to bury sadness, I might not have seen the peonies.
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Some say, there is no such thing as coincidence, everything has a plan even if we do not see it. Today I saw peonies and my heart was healed for a moment. It was like loading a basket with oranges, one at a time, sensing the weight of them, their fullness, their stories of traveling all the way here where I could find them.
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I would like to say I found the peonies because I needed to. I would like to say the peonies found me; the moment was ripe for it. I would like to say, the oranges were fresh as a promise no one intends to keep. The simple fact is that I went to a walk, bought oranges out of season, took them home anyway too ashamed to put them back, went out for no reason, wandered around like a stray animal, my mind went blank, numb, and the next I knew I was in the woods, startled like awakening, and there were white peonies, so natural and so unobtrusive. It was later than I thought, and headed back because I did not want to get lost in the dark, directionless. There were no plans. Sometimes, no plans are the best ones. When I found Peonies at dusk everything was alright.
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About Martin Willitts, Jr. Martin Willitts Jr is a Quaker, organic gardener, and retired Librarian living in Syracuse, NY. Winner of the 2012 Big River Poetry Review’s William K. Hathaway Award; co-winner of the 2013 Bill Holm Witness Poetry Contest; winner of the 2013 “Trees” Poetry Contest; winner of the 2014 Broadsided award; winner of the 2014 Dylan Thomas International Poetry Contest. He has 6 full length poetry collections including national contest for ecological poetry Searching For What Is Not There (Hiraeth Press, 2013), 27 chapbooks including national contest winner William Blake, Not Blessed Angel But Restless Man (Red Ochre Press, 2014), and over 20 anthologies. His poems appeared in Rattle, Blue Fifth, Nine Mile, Stone Canoe, Comstock Review, Poppy Road, and others. _____________________________ I love writing long poems. Long poems Nine Mile • Fall 2014
allow my mind to wander and make connections. As a former Jazz musician, I tend to think thematically within a loose structure. As a Quaker, I am a social activist. The poem Finding Peonies combines these factors in a backwards/forwards time-shifting manner. As soon as I start the stanza about bringing home some oranges, I start talking about aging, the fragile nature of life, my memory of soap-box protesting on orange crates, news articles of things happening elsewhere. The poem escalates, forwards and backwards in time, and towards the end the poem returns to calmness when finding the peonies. We look for inner peace our whole lives, and suddenly, without looking for it, we find something that brings us that inner peace. 9
David Rigsbee Max and the Promise
“I had a dream of purity
and I have lived in the desert ever since.”
— George Garrett
One day, Max Steele called me into his office ostensibly to discuss short fiction, but the news of Mishima’s seppuku had swept through the department earlier that morning. I was a student and as sensitive to literary rumors and gossip as any bumblebee riding the first info-laden spring breeze. Outside, the SDS taunted the Young Republicans, while frat boys in their Madras shorts talked shit to passing hippies. But in far-off Japan, after charging Mt. Fuji in Nutcracker uniforms, the Shield Society had drawn attention to the tiger’s paw. It was not enough to be a writer, even reaching the Nobel stratosphere. Only death would seal the deal, only death reverse the dishonor, heal the emasculation. So he prepared in his Victorian house for years: real death after role-playing, ceremonial oblivion after deep hurt. His last words before disembowelment and beheading: “I don’t think they heard me very well.” Max swung around in his chair and said, “promise me you will never kill yourself!” Startled as I was, I did. I saw Max in Nixon a few years later, when we learned how the President had led Kissinger to the carpet and prayers in the Oval Office. I forgave Nixon when I realized he was human, and I let the gentle Max loosen his grip when I saw how he, unlike his name, fit so snugly in his little patch of ground, a plaque commemorating what forgetfulness routinely undoes. Even Jesus could have failed
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Max’s oath: it’s no wonder such promises hold but for five minutes, no wonder self-destruction mirrors self-creation: how could it not? Max lay long wasting before he died. My niece torched herself in a motel room at 18, prepared and afraid, having made no promise to a teacher, embracing self-immolation as the cure for love. And then there was my brother. I have seen the end of my rope lying in a coil, and you couldn’t tell if it was a snake or a garden hose or just a length of rope. Max and Mishima are dust; the niece I never knew: a picture. My brother, the silence before and after the poem. I know what I was taught. I keep my options open.
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Strip Search
“Words are fleas.”
(The last words of Shakespeare in the dream of my deceased friend, a professor.)
She had heard there were fleas hiding in the grass, so we assembled, at her behest, our forked parts at the foot of a new bed that had not yet taken the imprint of a body. It was the last time I saw her naked, though I did not know it then. I began to inspect the body she presented like a physician, carefully, on the lookout for bites, lesions, discolorations, stipples, skin rimmed with giveaway pink, the smallest moisture sites, toxin-nibbed like the dainty darts of ancient tribal warriors, made from the tincture of garish toads. I looked for it all, reader, taking my time and found none. And yet the ritual made me think of all the things I would defend her from, as once it was my office to do. Even finding nothing, even being certain of nothing, I persevered. Nothing was a quarry, and I mined it well. To her it was business, the business of survival, perhaps, but commerce and protection, just the same, all the way down. For me it was different: hair waterfalling on the broad shoulders, breasts that sought the stay of my chest at night, turned back into mere surface features, only with the spectral beauty of their having once been adored. Then there was what Marvell called “all the rest,” by which he meant the beloved mound. What healing ceremony of words could patch the havoc of celebration?
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Yet as my eyes found the floor I knew I would write it. I knew I would put it out there as the windows darkened, and there was no voice to return mine. And yet for all that, we were sleek and fine, in Carruth’s clinch-all term. We were kicking ass, fleas or no, and taking it to the Muse herself, because nobody would understand how grand we had been in the stark faceoff, including she herself, which you might say, is the point of all my discourse. It was a sendoff too, as were all the verses to which we once were married, that is, the indifferent angle of Parnassus with heaven drooping in its sights. It would be something. Hell, it would be the poem of a lifetime.
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On the House When she told me, across the table over the creme brulée and second specialty drink—Key Lime margarita— there was no hope, she slumped and her mouth clinched, flat-lining. The waiter, much exercised that he had failed in his task to delight her with a signature drink brought out the manager, who clasped his hands before his heart in submission, attentively, and asked what could have been done. She replied, “I don’t know. All I know is that it was just the worst drink of my life.” To which he replied that he needed to know because he had invented that drink and must try harder to earn her trust and at length her approval. It went without saying of both the failed and the future drink: on the house. All the while I sat looming and frozen, and I felt sorry for her that the perfect moment had been upstaged, first by the bitter drink, mixed carelessly, and then by the manager, hiding the small but perfect abjection he felt, taking responsibility for the action of his hires. I knew he was trying hard to be “compact” with her intent, to correct a flaw, the way Metaphysical poets wrote about being “compact for love.” But there she was, so small yet powerful, having closed the door twice, first the small door, the pet door, then the real one, the one that divides heart from fire, the door you lock and whose handle you shake, as you had been taught, just to make sure. 14
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Paradiso, Canto VII “Osanna, sanctus Deus sabaòth, superillustrans claritate tua felices ignes horum malacòth.”* Thus, as he** whirled to his own music I saw that substance sing, above which a doubled light itself doubled and the others moved to their dance and then like a spray of sparks they faded and disappeared in the distance. I hesitated and he said, “Speak! Speak!” And to myself: “Speak to her who quenches thirst with her sweet drops.” But the wonder that overtakes me at the sound of BEA or ICE made me bow my head like one fallen asleep. But Beatrice ended that, as she smiled with such radiance that even a man set aflame would rejoice. “According to my unfailing sense, you don’t yet understand how just vengeance can be avenged justly. But I will quickly settle your doubts, so pay heed: what I have to tell you will bestow a gift of highest truth. Because he wouldn’t suffer a power that would curb his will, the unborn man, in damning himself, damned his progeny. As a result, the human species lay sick for centuries, sunk in error, until it pleased the Word of God to descend
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to the point at which its estranged nature was rejoined to Him in person with the sole act of His eternal love. Now listen closely to my reasoning: joined again to its first cause, this nature as when created, was good and just but by itself alone was expelled from paradise because it veered from the way and the life of truth. If the penalty the cross exacted is measured by the nature it assumed, none has ever been stung with such justice. And none ever suffered so great injustice, considering the person who endured it, with whom the other nature was fused. *** You say, ‘I understand what you are saying, except for this: why God willed this as the only way for our redemption.’ This decree, brother, is kept from the inner eyes of all who have not yet grown to fulness in the flame of love. Nonetheless, though one gazes long at the mark—with scant discernment— I will tell you why this way was fitting. Divine Goodness, that rejects all envy in itself, so sparkles in its burning that it reveals eternal grace. Everything that derives from this Good is boundless because His seal, once imprinted, can never be erased. Whatever then pours forth is unimpeded because it is not subject to the influence of lesser things. 16
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The more it conforms, the better it pleases; the Sacred Ardor shining in all things glows most near those things like itself. The human has the advantages of these things, and if he fails in one, he necessarily plummets from his nobility. Only sin undoes man’s freedom and makes him unlike the Highest Good so that Its light, within his human glow, dims, and his dignity will never return if he doesn’t fill transgression’s void with suitable amends for illicit pleasure. When your nature at the root so grossly sinned, it was exiled from this honor just as it was expelled from Paradise. Nor could man recover what was lost, if you mind my words subtly, by any other way, except by crossing one of two fords: either God alone pardoned through His mercy, or man himself had to offer suitable recompense for his folly. *** Man in his limitation could never satisfy the terms of redress, for no humbling, no obedience offered afterward could go as low as the heights his sin sought to reach; this is the cause for which man was unable to satisfy God by himself. Thus it was up to God in His own ways to give man his life back, as I say, with one way or with both. But just as a deed pleases the doer more, the more it presents the innate benevolence of the heart, its source, Nine Mile • Fall 2014
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so the Divine Goodness that imprints the world, proceeded to move with all His ways to raise you up again. There has not been nor will be between the last night and first day, an act so towering as when He made two ways. For God revealed greater magnanimity in giving Himself so that man might rise than if he had simply pronounced pardon. All other recourse was insufficient for justice, except for the Son of God to humble Himself by becoming incarnate. *** You say, ‘I see that water and fire and air and earth and all their combinations come to corruption and only briefly endure, and if these things, also, were created and if I am to believe what was said before, why should they be subject to decay?’ Brother, the angels and the true country where you are now—these, we say, were created just as they are in their whole being, whereas the elements you spoke of and all the things that proceed from them are informed by things that are themselves created. Matter was created, just as within the stars that fly about us there is a form that has been fashioned and imparted to them. The soul of every brute and plant is pulled forth from a complex potentiality by the motion and sacred light of the stars.
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But the Supreme Good inspires your life immediately to come forth, engendering such love that the self desires Him always. And hence you can infer your resurrection, if you think back on how uniquely human flesh came to be, back
when our first parents appeared.”
* Lines of a hymn combining Latin and Hebrew: “Hosanna, holy God of Hosts, who with your brilliance burn with the blessed fires of these domains.” ** “He” is the Emperor Justinian, who represents land narrates the glory of Rome.
About David Rigsbee David Rigsbee is the author of, most recently, School of the Americas (Black Lawrence Press, 2012) and the forthcoming Not Alone in My Dancing: Essays and Reviews, also from Black Lawrence Press. He was a 2013 recipient of a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and a Pushcart Prize. His work has recently been featured in The Huffington Post. He is currently working, with Clare McPherson, on a translation of Dante’s Paradiso. _____________________________ Since the death of my brother by suicide back in the 1990s, my work has increasingly looked at what it means to have a voice that pits itself against the eventual silence to which we are all headed. I have often thought that the elegy has replaced the epic as the most vertiginous rock on Mt. Olympus. It is a form that has made its way through the centuries by making Nine Mile • Fall 2014
special deliveries of meaning, even as it throws off all consolations, one by one-religion, philosophy, hope, language itself. As a result, it tries a poet’s chops and, at times, gives back a meaning you hadn’t anticipated, that is in fact incapable of anticipation. Because the elegy speaks to the fact of absence, it in some way acknowledges absence as its subject and enabler; including most especially the poet’s own absence. My mentor Joseph Brodsky used to say that every elegy is a self-portrait. Nothing could be more persuasive than words that, as they go about saying truth to power, also bring power to the truth. What truth is that? The truth that our mortality, by bringing us low, brings us in the presence of humility. It is our most fundamental truth: it shows aesthetics to be a moral imperative.
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Len Orr
Monster’s Gratitude You deposited your words inside my enormous ears (so brave of you to place your pink tongue there, to exhale the words into those echoing caverns). After you left, I sealed my ears with tuba-mutes so your words could not escape, so they would stay fresh and sweet, husky and funny. You gave me lessons in forgetting but they did not take. I accept my gnarled and furred monstrousness. In my cave, under the old-growth forest, in all of my hidden retreats, I have terminal, chronic recall of all of our pleasures, every rendezvous, and I am filled with surprise and wonder.
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November My fingers are in mourning; they are encased in the black gloves thick and soft, that loved to feel the heat of your hand through those thin brown gloves you wore. I listened to the radio when I drove and thought of you hearing the same stories, your smile and your gloved hands. You were warm in your white layers and I projected your face on the sky. I picked up a piece of pumpkin loaf to have something sweet to share with you, and I picked up coffee because we might not meet, because we had no more meetings set, because it might be some time. The starlings signaled for you to arrive, they did their air show, turning as one body, as one mind, forming and reforming, landing in this group of bare trees, that patch of ground, flying apart suddenly, coming together suddenly.
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The Let-Down Reflex We were famished for each other and pressed forward as if the goal was to make our cells intermingle. The desert heat that summer day melted the borders of memory. We were delirious with zeal and our fluid molecules splashed in every direction. Your fingers moved from my hair to grasp my ears and drag me away and we collapsed, breathing as if we just finished a marathon. Later you said you felt the let-down reflex for the first time in years. You cried and laughed and hormones rolled and flowed, cells and fluids sorted themselves out so we could return to the world. I hadn’t thought about the phrase until now. Today I found again those few photographs I have of you, taken during a single walk along the rocky beach. I realized how apt this was to explain the gush, the hot and fluid rush, the preparation, memories from rocks and summer light, the never-again, unhealed, the let-down.
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About Leonard Orr Leonard Orr teaches literature and creative writing at Washington State University Vancouver. His poetry has appeared in many journals including Poetry International, Rattle, Black Warrior Review, Poetry East, Rosebud, and Natural Bridge. He has recently published two collections: Why We Have Evening (2010) and Timing Is Everything (2012), both from Cherry Grove/WordTech. _____________________________ Nine Mile • Fall 2014
Around 2000, I assessed the poetry I had written up to that point and decided I needed to change direction completely, dropping the merely competent and impersonal. I resolved to write poetry about which I was passionate, and with a particular reader in mind. I have kept this focus, and the device of direct address, ever since. The poems published here are all about loss and the speaker’s hope for reconnection with the vanished addressee. 23
Fletch Crangle
Epididymit Madness Painted live with Turnip Stampede Dinosaur BBQ in Syracuse, NY. Acrylic on illustration board. 2014.
Whirlwind Thru Cities From the private collection of Damien Schofield. Acrylic on corkboard. 2014. 24
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Rachel Vogueing Painted live at Syracuse Fashion Week. From the private collection of Tim and Lisa Marie Bulter. Acrylic on canvas. 2014.
Dragging in Upon the Dinosaur; Floating Raptor Meat Games Painted live with Count Blastula at Dinosaur BBQ in Syracuse, NY. Acrylic and barbeque sauce. 2013. Nine Mile • Fall 2014
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ABOUT Fletch Crangle Fletch Crangle is a self-taught second generation Syracuse artist. Fletch works in various mediums everything from spray paint to found objects, but mostly works in acrylics. He has been making art his entire life; although Fletch started to refine his artwork in early 2010, when he began performing live paintings with musical acts in the Upstate New York area. Fletch’s graffiti based abstract style provides a perfect conduit with his subconscious, most of the time having no preconceived notion what exactly what he will paint in a given evening. Likened to a one arm trapeze artist without a net; he prefers to allow the lines to come together on the spot to shape various images of nature, decay, and fictional creatures. Fletch hopes the viewer’s imaginations provide their own stories for his paintings, what do you see? 28
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Jennifer H. Fortin
That Which Is Both Recurrent & Unprovoked Ophthalmologists estimate that men cry for between two and four minutes, and women for six. Me, I cry in the afternoon, each afternoon. Your eyes, regardless of the car visor being down, will fill with sun. This from the bottom up, transformative, like vernacular. Hereafter you will recoil and recoil. Phenomenally, there is just no avoiding the sun. You said Hurtful to good morals. You said How did we evolve into those whose customs include wishbone. You said It helps to use giant crystal gestures when discussing giant crystal caves. Lucky numbers are zero, zero, zero, zero, and zero. You said Mimicry. They will later claim you looked blissful as you cried light. French infants favor wailing on a rising note. Germans cry on a falling melody.
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Never Until Now You will rise from your desk to confront injury and death. You will perform an autopsy on yesterday, which has been expertly laid out in front of you. You will meet your uncle to talk about, over tuna, leadership. At the shop he asks if they have birthday cake. The woman tries to please you. At least we don’t use sporks. A draft will blow in just as you’re talking about typical night cooling in June, which will arrive early. June is early, but you can’t own it. June will deafen you. On the way back to work, everything is down to one lane. You will squeeze a drop of blood not from a sugar cube but from the source. You will leave me cavities. Part of it will be the abundance, and how special mercies are involuntary. In the car, you will age significantly. You have aged significantly. It’s not the birthday. I will insert two sheets of paper for tomorrow into the plan. Part of it is that your three-times-great grandfather’s skull, wearing sunglasses and with a cigarette hanging from its mouth, was found by police in a man’s trailer. It, along with many more bones, had been taken from the same crypt. Part of the lesson you have to learn over and over will be that you can’t trust privacy.
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Edgewise There are three reasons why there is pleasure, but then there are challenges. Something important to me isn’t important to you. You won’t let it be. They’re making musicals now of the mundane. Relationship rewards take you places. To the library, the gardens, to the gate. The worldwide web. The Pyramids have blown away. Now try to define wonder. Do you have feelings of guilt? Difficulty remembering details? Fatigue? You may be suffering from post-mortem depression. You may find yourself in a deadlock with the ancients. You will be caught stealing your stadium seat. It’s true, I have overexposed myself to the sun. I have learned that even when shadows are at their minimum, there’s hubris aplenty. The only relevant correction is, in your kitchen, you should slowly collide three plates. This is the leisurely fury that makes eruptions.
About Jennifer Fortin I’m happy to be able to say I’m a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (Bulgaria, 20042006) from Maryland with an M.F.A. in Poetry from The New School (B.A., Goucher College). My first book of poems, Mined Muzzle Velocity, was published by Lowbrow Press in 2011; H_NGM_N Books put out my second, We Lack in Equipment & Control, in 2013. I’m the author of four chapbooks, most recently GIVE OR TAKE from Greying Ghost Press. With three other poets, I founded and continue to Nine Mile • Fall 2014
edit the online poetry journal LEVELER. I’ve been named a Finalist for the Poetry Foundation’s Ruth Lilly Fellowship, and have received an award from the Academy of American Poets. I work now in Public Relations/Communications at the University of Rochester Medical Center. _____________________________ As for aesthetic intent, I’m a big believer in slowing down, responsibility, and deliberation, tempered with wide streaks of wildness and tenuous connections. 31
Bill Burtis
History Of course there are clouds, and birch trees bending deer-like, as if drinking the snow. There are berries as red as if the sky has fallen and skinned a knee, bright as the way the blood beads and glimmers against the scraped-white skin of a snow filled sky. If a dog barks, others howl in a distance made uncertain by the hair rising on the back of your neck as if hair is responsible for perception and there were a way to forget the way my fingers swept the hair from the back of your neck or the way your eyes closed slowly or the way I grew wings just before the treeline or the way there was suddenly a complete absence of clouds or sound or air.
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At the Fair There are lots of things spinning here, imitations of galaxies, universes, mental states. You and I walk the fairway which tomorrow will be a muddied swath through a trampled field, otherwise green. I imagine the whole production whirling, jangling, ringing, flashing rising off the ground, slowly at first then turning deliberately, pivoting on its highest point, the Ferris wheel and then suddenly plunging off into the deep blue-black sky leaving a trail of calliope notes glowing like embers twisting above a bonfire, shrinking to a single point of light and then blink – gone. I turn to tell you this and you hand me an apple as if to say you’re sorry there are no bumper cars and this, sweet serpent, will have to do. I do not touch you, but take a bite watching your eyes all the while like a gentleman kissing a lady’s hand.
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Adventures in the Time-Space Continuum between the Bank of America parking lot and Ceres Bakery, on a winter afternoon in Portsmouth, New Hampshire Stuffing twenties in my pocket, multitasking, opening the door from the ATM pulling on my glove my hat, across the parking lot I see this woman running in knee-high black boots, black tights and a plaid skirt, a young woman, a professional woman, nice coat leather coat, clutched around her in the cold, drawn tight across her back and the way her hair bounces in the pale winter light tells me she is happy to be running across the icy lot in her business clothes as if maybe she is getting away from something or maybe with something, or maybe it’s just that she’s running to the bakery at 4 on a wintery afternoon and she knows there is good coffee and something warm and sweet, and it makes her happy, almost as happy as if she were going home. And it makes me happy to see this and to be going to that bakery with my freshly stuffed twenties to get some coffee and now I think maybe I’ll get a cookie, too, and so I am looking for the bakery case when I walk through the door but I can’t see it because there she is now bent over in front of the case, her skirt pulled tight and slightly higher showing how slender her legs are in those tights and boots, shiny, heels together, peering into the bakery case, trying to decide. I walk over to the coffee, take my cup, turn to the urns to fill it and look at this young woman as she turns to look at me, seeing now your blue eyes your good smile and I am smiling now, my eyes filling with laughter, suddenly back in this world and happy for it.
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About Bill Burtis Bill Burtis is a Boston native who, despite stints in Iowa and the Finger Lakes, seems psychically unable to live apart from the ocean for any significant period of time. He resides currently in Seacoast, NH with the poet Nancy Jean Hill, a dog and a cat. His poems have also appeared in Sou’wester, The Seneca Review, The Paris Review, Chelsea, and other journals and magazines. _____________________________ The longer I’m in love, the more I seem to approach love obliquely. I know that I did not set out to write a love poem on any of these occasions, which span a period Nine Mile • Fall 2014
of about 8 years. Like these three, which happen to be love poems, many of my poems originate from actual experience, often outdoors. The experience serves as a kind of trigger or jumping off point, as the sight of the birches or walking the midway at the fair or seeing this woman in the parking lot do for me in these. Then it’s a process of letting go, letting my mind have the freedom of falling with the images. I think what I look for is something that expresses both the commonality and the richness of human experience and I find that a lot in nature and in just every day occurrences. 35
Lorraine Goldych
Shifting Seasons Digital collage
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Lorraine Goldych is a world walker, has a creative spirit and gives glory to the Lord…she loves traveling, meeting and connecting with people and capturing the moments that were inspired by nature and emotions through photographs. Creating coffee table books has become a passion, giving life to her journey’s mission trips, community service, and inspirational posters. Her work has been published in many media forms and you can see her work locally at galleries, libraries and coffee shops. When she is not us38
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Mirror of Light & Insight Digital collage
About Lorraine Goldych ing her creative outlet with photography she is creating handmade sterling silver jewelry and takes ministry, psychology, and writing classes. She has a BFA from Oswego State, was part of of anthology book called Driftwords in 2012 and is now working on a memoir about her life and healing her heart. _____________________________ Shifting Seasons: This beautiful tree was my parents favorite place on their property along Oneida River in Pennellville. The seasons represents what we go through Nine Mile • Fall 2014
in life and the wisdom that is obtained. In loving memory of my parents. Mirror of Light & Insight: To photograph this perspective/refection of the Gridley building, I had to lay flat in the road (some people thought I had a heart attack), then I saw what a magnificent window it was, and how it could emulate other landmark buildings in downtown Syracuse. a cohesive compliment of photographic applications and history.
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Paul Kocak Litany for Rosamond Gifford Zoo
for Ethan
For golden lion tamarins, O salutaris hostia. With two-toed sloth and blue-tongued skink, Miserére nobis. To barred tiger salamander and leopard gecko, Asperges me, Dómine. Lo, laughing kookaburra and palawan peacock pheasant, Kyrie, eléison. For queen angelfish and Madagascar hissing cockroach, Ora pro nobis. With naked mole rat and Egyptian fruit bat, Christe, exáudi nos. To guanaco and roseate spoonbill, Orate pro nobis. Lo, LaMancha goat and axolotl, Te rogamus, audi nos. From Amur tiger and spectacled bear, Parce nobis, Dómine. With Eastern hellbender and desert chuckwalla, Et cum spíritu tuo. With radiated tortoise and reticulated python, Et clamor meus ad te véniat. Vos omnes sancta animalia, Ut fructus terræ dare et conservare dignéris. All you holy animals, That it may please you to give and preserve to our use the kindly fruits of the earth. Amen.
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Here are English translations for the Latin invocations in “Litany for Rosamond Gifford Zoo.” O salutaris hostia. O saving host. Miserére nobis. Have mercy upon us. Asperges me, Dómine. Sprinkle me, Lord. Kyrie, eléison. Lord, have mercy. Ora pro nobis. Pray for us. Christe, exáudi nos. O Christ, graciously hear us. Orate pro nobis. Pray for us. Te rogamus, audi nos. We beseech you to hear us. Parce nobis, Dómine. Spare us, Lord. Et cum spíritu tuo. And with your spirit. Et clamor meus ad te véniat. And let my cry come unto you. Vos omnes sancta animalia, All you holy animals, Ut fructus terræ dare et conservare dignéris. That it may please you to give and preserve to our use the kindly fruits of the earth.
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Canticle of the Stone Throwers green over red world upside down red under green take that defiance as honor color as code rocks as words take that stop me if you can broken glass for broken lands jagged stone from solid heart take that toil and grit worn on sleeve raveled by rage take that green over red grief unkenneled ancient keening take that from Upperchurch to Thurles in Tipperary from this Hill to the shores of silk or sin take that take this take us
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West Side Recessional Remember the recession in Fairmount a downturn in back of Holy Family a grotto whose cobbled inner recesses reveal a Virgin Mary Remember that recession at Burnet Park with upturns and swerves emeralding in April chill sporting robins and purple finches and flinches in the recesses of golfers Remember a recession on Tipperary Hill caught in the eyes of Mike all-season bottle man asking for nothing, five cents at a time
About Paul Kocak Syracuse resident Paul Kocak is the author of Rounding Third: Zen.Baseball.Poems and Tipp Hill Litanies, from which these poems are excerpted. Four of his haiku poems have been selected for the Syracuse Poster Project, a community art collaborative. _____________________________ “In poetry, I try to incorporate elements of song, liturgy, and reflection. Sometimes I succeed.” Nine Mile • Fall 2014
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Sam Pereira The Water Washed It Away In daylight, it seems like a retrospective. Your mother and father made love, And the result was you. From there, The world sometimes kissed you On the lips over coffee and toast. Sometimes you kissed the world’s ass, And it kissed yours. Nothing is perfect, Except for the water now finding its way Down from the mountains. Nothing washes The intrepid bowel, the scraped soul, Like the waters you remember randomly: The great flood of 1957. You walked across A wet street and never again returned. Your mother and father made love, and The result was always going to be you.
The Sheer Ice & Fire of It I am saying this: I refuse To be batted around each day By people with no regard for sanity And the bliss of trees Minding their own business. Madness has never run In this family. Statement one And statement two are disjointed At best, but true in spite of it. Williams had a wheelbarrow And knew how to use it. Whitman had no use for moving The earth in small increments. Both of them needed something To say in the evenings, over fire And the planet’s fruit. I’m thinking Trees speak in disrespectful tantrums, As they certainly should, Blowing us all away, in cahoots With their father, the wind. 44
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The Maverick Fastdraw Holster Set He broke the spell that day. A large cup of dark roast, While landing his old white ass Onto an outdoor weathered chair. He let the wind roll against him, A sort of natural isometric, Here in the final days of winter. He looked at the dog, who was Not really a dog at all, but The metaphysical embellishment Of everything he had craved As a boy. Speaking of that, All his toys came from Japan In those days: a wooden yo-yo, That would lay there on the string And wait for his command to end it, The Maverick Fastdraw holster set, That he used to kill his sister with Every day, and the crayons, especially Burnt Sienna, that colored his life For the next decade, until He discovered the clarity of gin. Today was his anniversary. Nineteen years of clean living; She made him do it, of course. The bitch. The glorious bitch. Watch, As he kisses her for nourishment And wisdom, and the low tone of Disbelief in both of their tears.
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Twirling I remember when he died. No one came out To say they remembered him falling On the ice that year, and how he stated To police it had been because of following A dream that looked like his ex. In texts, He’d resorted to X when bringing her up, As in X blindsided me, while I was Talking to Y. The mystery seemed inescapable. He fell a lot through the years, and now, It is impossible to fall any more. He’s become A beneficial and sad country song. Nothing More, and no one has come. They are out Watching ice skaters twirl their lovely fantasies. Since he’d passed on the army, the rifles Remain silent. He wants to struggle, to get Out on the cemetery dance floor and swing.
Conquests, Pomade, Big City He was going to get his hair cut this morning, And couldn’t help thinking about the beheadings Going on just east of him. Sure, there were The armored vehicles, just like the killers used, But ours came in bright yellows and greens, And were driven by lunatic housewives, Or by their grandfathers, who enjoyed reliving The conquests of cities. This is America, And beheadings are frowned on In Cincinnati. The President is about to speak. He is going to say take a deep breath And hold it. He is going to say smile, While his official photographer snaps. The pomade at the end of the haircut Is the only reason to go out on Sundays.
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Partying with the Dead In the midst of saying Something like in the mist, He recalled the first time Everyone gathered for a wake. He loved the word, in spite Of all of its antiquated charm And antonymous vulgarity. People took out their beads At a wake. People wore ties, And looked at each other, Wondering which of them, Left breathing in the room, Would be the next to go On display. The smart ones Walked out before the rosary, Preferring a stagger to the box, A gentle reaching out to touch The edge of her curious smile. There was a wee bit of Irish In her, someone says, Lifting a Jameson in the air At Patrick’s Pub—owned By Greeks since the 1990s. She died on Monday. I know I don’t like Mondays, Kevin. B-7. Some Rats once more for the girl.
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Thanksgiving in Iowa City, 1973
for Larry Levis
Being poets, we decided On a goose, instead of That same dumb bird Everyone else seemed bent On conquering. In our case, Women and men and Red wine and Jackson Browne. Not a turkey in the place. The goose was running the show, Choosing to stay just warm enough To not cook, but continue bleeding. Goose blood and red wine was All any of us could hope for. Jackson Sounded like he was leaning Right there with us in our gloom. It remains one of the great Moments in my life. There must Have been one of us who said Something about our goose Not being cooked. We probably Laughed, which is what any gang Of writers, looking out at snow, Would do, just prior to the cluster hug And that wide stagger into moonlight, With our tragic opening farewells.
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Love at the Steak ‘n Sin For what seems decades, She’s been telling me I am the cable car pilot Of her once remarkable life. She laughs when I step Into the bright light surrounding The confessional. Honestly, I have always counted on Listening to the cigarette cough The monsignor flaunts From behind the beige curtain And the badly painted door. I can’t wait to rush into the street, Where she waits in the car, Ready to drive us bothTo the celebrated Steak ‘n Sin, On the shaded corner, next to Forest Grove’s quietest laundromat. I say my dark penance on the way, Staring into her perfectly dangerous eyes. I want to repent repenting, Over martinis and crab cakes. A hack journalist pulls out His cell and clicks on it. No one recalls the monsignor, His cough, or all that stupid Forgiveness, bantered around Just moments before. We are In the glow, about 3000 watts Or so of brightness. The words Flourish and open and give off A scent like the devastating mediocrity Of time-lapsed roses in Portland. Our steaks are ready. This is The word of the lord and gin.
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ABOUT Sam Pereira
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Sam Pereira’s books of poetry include: The Marriage of the Portuguese (L’Epervier Press, 1978), Brittle Water (Abattoir Editions/Penumbra Press, University of Nebraska at Omaha, 1987), A Café in Boca (Tebot Bach, 2007), and the expanded edition of his first book, which was published by Tagus Press at UMass Dartmouth in 2012. His most recent collection, Dusting on Sunday, was released in December, 2012 by Tebot Bach. He has appeared in numerous anthologies, including Piecework: 19 Fresno Poets (Silver Skates Publishing, 1987), The Body Electric: Poems from the American Poetry Review (W. W. Norton, 2000), How Much Earth (Roundhouse Press, 2001), and Blue Arc West (Tebot Bach, 2007). He lives and teaches in the San Joaquin Valley of California and is married to the writer, Susan Graham. _____________________________
ten unaware of.
In looking over this series of poems, I am seeing them from a different perspective than when I was actually writing them. I suppose I understand them more fully now, having the space/time for inquiry that, as the poetry’s constructor, I am of-
These poems take place in that decided gray area between reality and pure selfindulgence, I suspect. It makes me happy. It keeps the juices flowing. It calms the evil spirits for a while.
I see certain unintentional meditations getting delivered repetitively in many of these pieces. Surprisingly, I do not consider this a bad thing. Obsession remains one of those gifts a writer never turns down, especially if that writer is a poet. In much of my work over the past couple of years, I have resorted to dropping myself into personal wildernesses, sometimes with friends I consider pioneers, even today. Rather than keeping them locked inside the mind of this 65 year old relic of two of the goddamnedest decades known to modern man—the 60s and the 70s—I continue to include them in the writing. It allows for a kind of casual coping with the insanity of today’s news cycle.
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Kerry-Lee Powell
Song for a Sleeping Father Animals spoke in the worlds he created. He liked to lose himself beside me in those places, away from his bed, his heart full of holes, his kingdom of cold spaces. They sink their teeth into me later— Shadow-rat, Claw-pig, and the Dark Horsie. I crawl from these dreams to his room on all-fours, and beg him to make them disappear forever. He knows the magic spell, my sleeping father.
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Fallowfield Station The night train spills its ink-blots into the ether. The bundled shapes fog the air, hump bags towards a fluorescent bunker. I peer through the glass past my own ghost into a hushed sea of suburban houses without souls, or so I imagine. Who’s to say they’re not lined with mother-of-pearl, and filled with their own soft murmurings?
Florilegia Spring When the moon is a blade In a meadow of stars Stay curled in your bud Like the wish that you are. Summer Who cares if we’re broke as a drunk Pair of rubs on a park bender? The roses are pink as a starlet’s pout, The trees are billionaires! Fall A blaze of leaves in a sky of ashes. Witches once lived here. And fanatics. Winter The front yards are full of frauds: A coal-eyed battalion with twigs for arms. At first light, with our picks and shovels, We’ll build an ice palace. We’ll make angels.
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Negative Theology She wanted to get away from yes, the horns and traffic, but mostly fingers burrowing beneath her twill capris frisking buttocks, filching wallet and ID. Tearful scenes at the embassy couldn’t restore her to her former self and so she walked among the numberless with neither name nor fixed address, fair game to any Roman with a roving hand. How she kept an open mind was anybody’s guess, viewing the bones of Capuchins in the overcrowded crypt. But this is how it happens: sickened by the oglings and stiffs, the head cranes above a mass of other heads, sees null eternity and welcomes it.
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Q&A With Kerry-Lee Powell Q. You received a burst of international acclaim when your story “There Are Two Pools You May Drink From” won The Boston Review’s 2013 Aura Estrada Prize, judged by Nathan Englander. The story was also selected by Junot Diaz as one of his six favorites of the year, and you have a novel as well as a short story collection forthcoming from HarperCollins. For readers familiar with your stories, how does your approach to poetry differ from your approach to fiction? A. I don’t know if my approach to writing fiction differs substantially from my approach to writing poetry. I don’t consciously sit down to start on a sonnet or a short story, but one or the other may emerge from the mass of scribbles on my desk. Some stories demand the kind of linguistic density normally found in a poem. Some poems need to be stripped to the bone to ring true. The constraints, whether formal or informal, arise from the work. In either genre, I tend to use simple language and spend a great deal of time on sound and word order. To my mind, all sentences must have a specific cadence before I’m through with them. Sometimes I need the effect to be explosive and direct, at other times expansive, melodic. It’s all about voice. I write mostly lyric poetry, and lyricism is one of the most important tools in my fiction-writing arsenal, as a counterpoint to the primitivism and savagery that tends to otherwise dominate my work. Q. Your book of poems Inheritance takes as its inspiration a shipwreck suffered by your father during WWII. The collection deals with a diverse array of inheritances - monetary, ecological, psychic - and the language of disaster, trauma, and violence recur throughout. What is it about PTSD and your father’s experience that you found so compelling? A. Time is warped and buckled by post-traumatic stress disorder. The past comes scarily to life in the present, and to the sufferer shows no signs of ever disappearing in the future. I feel that poetry, more so than other art forms, has the ability to express the music of our deep interiors, where tenses shift and thoughts interlace, resurface and repeat like refrains. The poems in this collection explore the links between PTSD and the ways in which poetry 54
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resurrects human experience. I think that all our stories and myth bears the scars of trauma, but Inheritance is also a personal account. As my father’s physical and mental health declined, his memories of the war resurfaced unbidden, filling our house with anguish and horror. He became obsessed, possessed, lining the walls with books on war. After our mother left, he would sit weeping and open-mouthed for hours, erupting into rages and bouts of physical violence that often ended with him collapsing, strapped onto a gurney and born off in an ambulance. We would have been put into care had anyone known what was going on. Yet we were loyal to him. You can do that as a child, fear someone and feel the utmost compassion, fetch their pills after they’ve exhausted themselves beating you up. At one point he decided to write a novel and sat in the kitchen typing on his red Olivetti every morning. After he died we went through his papers, and like that moment in The Shining, read page after page of violent, misogynistic, schizophrenic text, intermixed with radio jingles and scraps of old songs. It was a glimpse into the void, an epiphany that belonged in a Beckett play. Sometimes I feel as though my work is an attempt to undo that wretched moment and all the wretchedness leading up to it, to make sense of all that terrifying nonsense. Q. You’ve travelled widely--over the years you’ve lived in Antigua, London, Cardiff, and various small villages in Wales, as well as in cities and towns from coast to coast in Canada. How have your experiences abroad informed the settings and sensibility of these poems? A. This collection is centered upon my father’s suicide and experiences during the war, which meant there were more than a few emotional and tonal constraints. The freewheeling, complex flamboyance that I admire in many of my Canadian contemporaries would have felt out of place. The subject demanded a somber palette, cold and violent, leavened with glints of humor. Even the humor had to have a twist and bite to earn its keep. I felt that I could allow moments of grace and light, but that they must be seen fleetingly, or from a distance. As the title suggests, Inheritance is an exploration of the legacies, both cultural and personal, bequeathed to me by my father, the roots and bones of which are British. He had a deep apNine Mile • Fall 2014
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preciation of literature and was of a generation that memorized. He was twenty-seven years older than my mother and immigrated to Canada in the early fifties but never lost his lilting Welsh accent. When lucid, he recited huge chunks of poetry, mainly Shakespeare and the Romantics. I also lived in the UK for fifteen years, studied medieval and renaissance literature at university there, and spent an inordinate amount of time translating Anglo-Saxon poetry and reading Chaucer. I read widely. Contemporary poets on my shelves include the Americans Lynn Emanuel, Paisley Rekdal, Diane Seuss and Louise Gluck. Q. Inheritance contains a multitude of forms and approaches, all of which are united by a kind of ferocious and glittering lyricism. How important is form to you as a poet? Who are some of your biggest influences, contemporary and otherwise? A. My feeling is that poets should learn forms in the same way martial arts students or ballet dancers do. Rhythm and rhyme are part of us, from the rocking cradle to the last doddering walk by the pounding sea, trousers rolled or unrolled. Forms are shells or containers, can be ornate or simple as the glass of water Larkin worshipfully held up to the light. And forms are still very much alive in the ways that we think and shape our thoughts. To my mind a sonnet is the essay’s playful cousin, teasing music out of heavy-handed logic. A sestina is a forgetful uncle repeating the last line of a story to remind him of the next. A villanelle is an obsessive-compulsive’s wet dream. I find it truly puzzling when someone eschews form but seems content to live in the husk of an old idea. Many of the formal poems in this collection are concerned with themes of obedience, rebellion and power. Whose voice speaks through me? What’s left after the old structures and strictures are blasted down? My father’s cruelties, his trauma and his suicide shape my nightmares and the waking words I pen them down with. The questions make me fearful and uneasy, but are nonetheless central to my experience as my father’s daughter, as a survivor, as a female artist in a patriarchal culture.
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Q. In an ideal world, what do you hope a reader will continue to carry with them after finishing Inheritance? A. Poetry has been a lifeline. I’m grateful for whatever sanity and music it has extended to me, and am in equal parts mesmerized and haunted and convinced of its absolute necessariness. I’m happy if I’ve managed to convey a fraction of its power and grace.
About Kerry-Lee Powell Kerry-Lee Powell was born in Montreal and has lived in Antigua, Australia and the United Kingdom, where she received a BA in Medieval and Renaissance Literature and an MA in Writing and Literature from Cardiff University. Her poetry has appeared in The Spectator, Ambit, and MAGMA. Her fiction has been published in The Boston Review, The Malahat Review, and The Virago Press Writing Women Series. She has been nominated for a National Magazine Award and a Pushcart Prize. In 2013 she won The Boston Review fiction contest, The Malahat Review’s Far Horizons award for short fiction and the Alfred G. Bailey manuscript prize. A chapbook entitled ‘The Wreckage’ was published in the United Nine Mile • Fall 2014
Kingdom by Grey Suit Editions in 2013, and a novel and book of short fiction are forthcoming from HarperCollins. Inheritance is her first book. Inspired a shipwreck endured by her father during the Second World War, and by his struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder and eventual suicide, Inheritance explores the legacies, both cultural and personal, bequeathed to us by trauma and war. Note that the poems that appear here are from the book, Inheritance, and the interview was supplied by Ms. Powell’s and her publishers.
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WHITNEY Daniels
Book Page Floral Mixed media on canvas. 5” x 7” 58
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Daily 28 Mixed media on paper. 2.5” x 3.5”
Daily 25 Mixed media on paper. 2.5” x 3.5”
Daily 21 Mixed media on paper. 2.5” x 3.5”
Daily 20 Mixed media on paper. 2.5” x 3.5”
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Abstract Floral Collage Mixed media on canvas. 5” x 7” 60
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Daily 19 Mixed media on paper. 2.5” x 3.5”
About Whitney Daniels Whitney Daniels is a freelance surface pattern and graphic designer in Syracuse, NY. Her design work consists of a wide variety of graphic design services. Her patterns have sold to such companies as Bed Bath and Beyond, Crabtree and Evelyn, Staples, and Sunbury. In her spare time, she also enjoys creating Nine Mile • Fall 2014
mixed media original artwork and sells a variety of handmade recycled wares in her Etsy shop at wrkdesigns.etsy.com. She lives with her husband, 3 cats, 1 dog, and is expecting twin girls in January. She is available for freelance and commission work. 61
A. N. Irvano I Will Not Say That I’m Droning On, Am I—I Am I want to be sleek I want to be like an animal that breaks nothing as it runs over fallen logs and breaks no dry brush as it races in the forest I want to run from this place where I exist The boy on the television said, I am terrified of the blue sky because when the sky is blue the drones fly when the sky is clear the drones fly— I get overly worried small talk about weather— his anxiety is far more valid than mine. I want to be small enough to slip through the crowd I want to be small enough to fall to the ground crawl under their legs crawl away from everybody that likes me the way I am or can’t stand me the way I am everybody especially you because you still exist.
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Grey, cloudy skies, those make him smile —and I am sure it is the most beautiful smile!— because it is too cloudy for drones to see his death. The sea foams on the pebbly brown sand while once-wet bubbles pop open and seethe and scream and sizzle as they evaporate dissipate or, maybe, the word is evanesce. I am terrified of the sky because I am a little girl in a woman’s body he is terrified of the sky because he is a man in a boy’s body Only I watch them as they loudly burst apart because you are still on the beach but walking away from where I am watching the waves make bubbles.
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Children do not have this and we are no longer children,— thank time for that one— we are very very very proud adults, we are adults that means we get to press our bodies. We get to press and drag our bodies from one doorstep to another doorstep then from ocean to ocean. Are we proud to press our bodies?— why am I so proud to press our bodies?
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Your 200th Girlfriend The dream I had is still on my lips it’s two am I’m still afraid to go to sleep just like I was afraid to eat all day because I might push the dream down into my stomach and it will be off of my lips and inside me— inside me is the memory of walking towards the boy I left for you I hope if I slept with him you’d hear about it feeling petty jealousy that stops you from getting hard when you’re with the girl you left me for.
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The dream I have is this: you would text me in the middle of the night like I do asking for help saying the medication isn’t working my mind isn’t working like you say I would say humans change and isn’t that beautiful because you can change and you’ll stay beautiful but instead I look at my screen feel adrenaline —maybe serotonin— as I press send before you say no we can’t talk don’t you know we’re all done.
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The way I think of you when I’m trying to feel happy and the way I think you don’t want me to feel happy remind me you caused my heart to be electrified and any need for sleep was gone, went unrecognized.
If I could find a way to be tender I would curl up at your feet here there is a problem because I am not a good girl not a cup of hot chocolate while it rains outside not a backroad for you to drive you can’t hug my corners going dangerously fast without losing part of your driving force the internal juice I cannot care for anybody so much that what I give becomes love.
About A. N. Irvano A. N. Irvano has forgotten why becoming a writer seemed like a better career than anything else out there, but still holds to the idea that good writing that is both shocking and true can change the world. When not writing she can be found sitting in the same place at the same cafe or going for morning runs. _____________________________
ing with both appalling events and the end of relationships in my life. Creating something tangible out of what has happened is a way to remind myself that I am grateful for every experience I undergo. Making peace with the past startles me out of complacency with the present and drives me towards a relationship with the future.
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Diana Pinckney
The Pawnee Speaks To The Wolf I. Did you see our shadows in firelight, dancing in your fur, black wolf, under the moon? See how we crawled to buffalo, your head on ours, see us on our knees, when Medicine Man worked his skin magic. White Wolf of the north, when sky covers sun and ground with one cloud, will you lead our hunters through earth’s white halls to the chains of caribou, rabbit and mouse. Without you, the people will have only roots, berries and the blue wind’s wail. II. Do you know, a tribesman walks four times around his house when he causes your death? Your sacred flesh is left for coyote, fox, magpie and raven, who calls to all and is also holy. Do you know we sell your pelt to the crazy tannik? When the white man set out the poisoned meat, you lay on the prairie choking as did ferret, eagle and fox. Grass became poison for pony, antelope, for the children of their children. Our fathers wept. 66
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III. Look down on our fires and rivers, Red Star, Wolf of the eastern sky. Guard Evening Star as she guards us from Storm that Comes Out of the West. Look down, Fools the Wolves Star, trick your brothers into howling before Morning Star burns. Great Spirit Talker, when the conversation of death has ended, be my guide, your voice higher and higher until you and I sing no more. Until you are the breath that moves the clouds to open.
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Winged Wolf
after Taryn Rubin’s collage, “Edifice”
See him, cicada-like wings lifting his form. Beside you now, aloft and featherless, he glides past an oak’s branch. The handsome head tilts. Crows caw and flap from trees. Floating over crisp lawns, the gray and white body is transported by shimmers of filament, a chimerical hovercraft, fur and legs swaying above the red bicycle in the drive. Like a hummingbird at the trumpet vine, he dips into hemlocks and the green of dogwoods. Tonight’s dream will ferry him, luminous, high above traps, gunshots, dynamited dens and one sheep, chained and trembling bait, at someone’s fence. Watch as dawn claims him under a scoop of moon, this soaring creature, not Pegasus or Icarus branded by the sun, not held to earth, but Canis Major, fabled glow in the pantheon of stars.
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About Diana Pinckney These poems are a part of a series on wolves that I’m currently working on. My work has been included in such journals as Connotationpress.com, RHINO, Cave Wall, Persimmontree.com, Main Street Rag, and other print and online magazines and anthologies, My poems have been nominated 5 times for a Pushcart and I’m the winner of the 2010 EKPHRASIS Prize and Atlanta Review’s 2012 International Poetry Prize. I have published 4 collections of poetry and have a another full-length forthcoming in 2015. My website is dianapinckney.com. _____________________________ I started this series of wolf poems after reading Barry Lopez’s masterful Of Wolves and Men and hearing him speak at our Central Piedmont Community College annual Literary and Arts Festival. As all of the history of wolves so affected me, I began to keep up with their current status, which has once again become tragic. Nine Mile • Fall 2014
The wolf represents to me the ultimate other in their strangeness, beauty and vulnerability. And I have long been fascinated by persona poems, writing in the voice of others. Finally when I saw the collage with the winged wolf, I knew I had to write about that image. All of this will be included in my next collection of poems that speaks to the art of others and is titled The Beast and The Innocent. My work has appeared in Green Mountains Review, Cave Wall, RHINO, Tar River Poetry, Cream City Review, Pedestal Magazine, Connotation Magazine, Persimmon Tree, and numerous anthologies and publications. I have 4 collections of poetry, including Green Daughters, and a fifth forthcoming in 2015. I was awarded the 2010 EKPHRASIS Prize and Atlanta Review’s 2012 International Poetry Prize, I look forward to seeing my poems in Nine Mile Magazine. 69
Cherry Valley Central New York has some of the most breathtakingly beautiful views in the State and maybe in the country. We wanted to share some of the views of one area. These pictures were taken along the Cherry Valley Turnpike, at various moments and show off its rainbows, and the clouds settling into the valley almost every morning, and its fantastic sunsets. Some mornings the valley can look like one of those older Japanese watercolors, with hills rising out of the mists; other mornings it seems like the hills will go on forever, almost that they are alive, with personalities and philosophies and a language they would speak if only we could understand.
Just below these views is the 47-acre Cherry Valley preserve, in the Town of Lafayette, in Tully Valley at the foot of Bare Mountain and fronts on US 20 west of I-81 near Cardiff. A section Onondaga creek runs through it, and it also contains a small pond. The Cherry Valley Turnpike is now designated as Route 20. It was built at the beginning of the 19th century to connect Albany and what were at the time the important villages of Duanesburg, Cherry Valley, Cazenovia, and Skaneateles. The designation US 20 was assigned in 1926 and became the state’s main east–west route from that time until the Thruway was completed in the 1950s.
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– Bob Herz
Nine Mile • Fall 2014
Nine Mile • Fall 2014
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CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS Be a part of our next issue! Nine Mile is a new online magazine of literature and art. Our mission is to publish the best writing and artwork from across the country, with a special focus on Central New York. If you, or someone you know is a great writer or artist, we encourage you to submit your work. We are currently accepting submissions for: • Poetry: submit 4 - 6 poems in word, text, or pdf format. • Artwork: submit 3 - 5 small jpg files. Submission should be done via email to: info@ninemile.org Include your name and contact information along with a brief paragraph about yourself (background, education, achievements, aesthetic intent, etc) and a link to your website (if available), photo of yourself, and of course your poetry or artwork. We will respond within 2 weeks. If you do not hear from us, reconnect to make sure we received your submission. For now we do not accept essays, reviews, video / motion based art, or Q&A’s without invitation. But if submitted, we will keep your information on file for future reference.
For more information visit us at ninemile.org 72
Nine Mile • Fall 2014