Edgar Allan poet Journal #2 by Edgar & Lenore's Publishing House

EDGAR ALLAN POET JOURNAL #2

Edited by apryl S K I E S

Edgar & Lenore’s Publishing House 13547 Ventura Boulevard Sherman Oaks CA 91423

Edgar & Lenore’s Publishing House © 2014 No part of this collection may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without expressed written permission or consent, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles of review. ISBN-10: 0985471557 ISBN-13: 978-0-9854715-5-2 Printed in the United States of America Editing , Arrangement & Cover Design by apryl S K I E S Cover Art by colleen M C L A U G H L I N

TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION DEATH OF A DREAMER - tomás Ó C Á R T H A I G H NOCTURNE – jesse M I N K E R T POIEPLEGIA – rich F O L L E T T VOICES OF NATURE - catfish M C D A R I S A CLICHÉD REMINDER - debbie L E E SELF PORTRAIT – judith S K I L L M A N AGAINST METAPHOR… - angela consolo M A N K I E W I C Z *STARRY NIGHT - vincent V A N G O G H STARRY NIGHT WITH SOCKS – melissa S T U D D A R D THE POETS – j.r. P H I L L I P S CAPITATIVE KNOWLEDGE – gabor g. G Y U K I C S BEGOTTEN – j.t. W I L L I A M S SAID THE RAVEN – colleen M C L A U G H L I N XXV. CROW & ST. JEROME – b.j. B U C K L E Y WITHOUT THE MAGPIE - annette marie H Y D E R THE CROWS OF SHEFFIELD - emily F E R N A N D E Z I DON’T REMEMBER HIS NAME – rick STEPP- BOLLING *ILLUMINATION - janet S N E L L COME CLOSER - kevin m. H I B S H M A N FOR JANET - lynne B R O N S T E I N CAUGHT. - cristina U M P F E N B A C H - S M Y T H TIME ENSNARED IN VLADIMIR KUSH’S WEBMASTER - leanne H U N T CIRCLE RIDER - jesse M I N K E R T AJAR CASKET, CURIOUSLY EMPTY - leanne H U N T WHILE TALKING WITH SERIAL KILLERS - angel uriel P E R A L E S CANNIBALS & SAXOPHONES - catfish M C D A R I S THE EVENING - emily F E R N A N D E Z A WENCH’S LAMENT FOR THE COUNTY CORONER - heidi D E N K E R S JUMPER - daniel n. F L A N A G A N AT THE EDGE - carolyn Z I E L THIS PARK WITHOUT A PLAYGROUND - david f. M A R S E E DEATH AIN’T NO PLACE FOR WORDS - scott c. K A E S T N E R THE CROSSING - michael F O L D E S *SURVIVOR’S GUILT - alexis rhone F A N C H E R GRIEF - kevin m. H I B S H M A N *MEDUSA SINGS - annette marie H Y D E R SERPENT BONES - cindy W E I N S T E I N OUROBOROS CHARMER - jan S T E C K E L A TRICK OF DELIGHT - thomas K E N T A NATURAL PAINKILLER - francesca C A S T A Ñ O EARLY BREAD: - faith M I N G U S ARCHEOLOGY OF MEMORY - susan m. B O T I C H MAKE BELIEVE - tom P E S C A T O R E BLUE SADNESS - michael wayne H O L L A N D

x 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 28 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 35 38 40 41 42 44 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55

DUSK STARLIGHT - carl S C H A R W A T H *CHURCH RADIANCE - carl S C H A R W A T H FOR JANIS JOPLIN - april michelle B R A T T E N STONED IMMACULATE : JIM MORRISON LIES HERE - adrian ernesto C E P E D A JAKE SAID - bryan S T O R Y HARRY – lois michal U N G E R THE PHLEBOTOMIST - carolyn Z I E L *LOST ANGEL – alexis rhone F A N C H E R DIONYSISIAN TEMPLE - gordon H I L G E R S *DESERT SCRUB & PEYOTE JAZZ IN NERVOUS TICK MAJOR - danny B A K E R SEARCH FOR NEW LAND - william C R A W F O R D THE ART OF UN/KNOWING - leila a. F O R T I E R PHILOSOPHY - debbie L E E VINE SONG SOLLILOQUY OF THE BELOVÉD - felix A L V A R E Z LAYING BARE THE TABLE - tony M A G I S T R A L E *MADAME RÉCAMIER - jacques-louis D A V I D MADAME RÉCAMIER - e. l. F R E I F E L D ORTOLAN EATERS - cristina U M P F E N B A C H – S M Y T H SIR WALTER RALEIGH’S LIE - angel uriel P E R A L E S HONEY IN THE HOLLOW - william C R A W F O R D *TAROT CARD - diane D E H L E R SHE DREAMT - anne T A M M E L THE ALCHEMIST TREE IN WINTER - maja T R O C H I M C Z Y K ROSALEEN NORTON’S ‘THE SÉANCE’– marie L E C R I V A I N GALAHAD - hélène C A R D O N A IMAGO – marian W E B B A SIREN’S CALLING - micheál Ó C O I N N SIBELIUS LETZTEN GEDANKEN - jonathan T A Y L O R THE DREAM OF THE BLIND - rizwan saeed A H M E D THIEF – felix A L V A R E Z *THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT – steven H A R T M A N I CAN NO LONGER WALK AROUND THE SCULPTURE - judith S K I L L M A N AND THEY WILL KNOW US BY THE ECHOES IN OUR WAKE – david M C I N T I R E BLOSSOMING - barbara h. M O O R E GRANDMA’S LULLABIES - barbara h. M O O R E I’M NOT HERE YOU ONLY IMAGINE ME - gabor g. GYUKICS ANSEL ADAMS – april michelle B R A T T E N *THE BISHOP & NUN IN THE GARDEN OF PARROTS – thomas K E N T *GOOD FRIDAY AT CHRIST THE KING… – angela consolo MANKIEWICZ MUST ARTISTS STARVE? – jan S T E C K E L CHILD PRODIGY - eli S P I V A K O V S K Y WHAT IS JUSTICE? - raquel R E Y E S - L O P E Z *A MURDER – colleen M C L A U G H L I N DOUBLE SUNRISE - anne T A M M E L VENETIAN NOCTURNE – terrence S Y K E S DO NOT WAKE - joseph S A L E W H I T H E R A R T – W A V E ? ? ? . . . - rizwan saeed A H M E D INDEX

56 57 58 59 60 61 62 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 78 79 80 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 90 91 92 93 93 94 95 96 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 106 108 109

INTRODUCTION Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, literary critic, storyteller, and poet who left this realm October 07, 1849. Since his tragic and mysterious demise this literary recluse has become an iconic historical figure. Is this because his writing was so remarkable or because the idea of Poe and what he presented to readers is that of intrigue and mystery, or a touch of both? Many readers may say that his storytelling far exceeds the merit of his poetry. Those who are widely familiar with his work would consider that a fair argument. Those less familiar with his extensive collection of work may “Quoth the Raven, Nevermore…”, but then there are poems such as “Alone”, written with such timbre and cadence they become a songful hypnotic. Literature has evolved with its readers, and poetry in particular has swayed from traditional meter, and rhyme, towards a more contemporary free-verse or prose to a great degree. However, the world seems to be gravitating toward a new era, an era of poetic renaissance. It is the intention of the Editor to carry on the celebration of literature, and art as a whole. Poetry exists in all creative mediums, it is the atom of all art. It is the very foundation of inspiration, whether derived from words, images, or music. Once this realization is presented in any form, all things are possible. The literature and art contained within this collective are chosen to present to the reader a wide array of voices and visions based on the themes of music, art, and philosophy. Sincere appreciation is extended to Colleen McLaughlin for the beautiful painting “Cello, my Love”, which truly pulls together these themes with the very emotive expression of the muse and the bold, melodic color palette. In addition, this collection includes poetry, prose, short fiction, and artwork by artists, and writers from all edges of the world. While this collection as a whole is one created in heart-fire, it would not be complete without sincere gratitude to the following individuals: Alexis Fancher, Angel Uriel Perales, Barbara H. Moore, Danny Baker, David McIntire, E. L. Freifeld, Hank Beukema, J.R. Phillips, Lois Michal Unger, Marie Lecrivain, Martin Willitts Jr., Rick Stepp-Bolling, Terrence Sykes, and never lastly, William Crawford. Please visit www.EdgarAllanPoet.com for more on these and other prolific contemporaries.

apryl S K I E S x

DEATH OF A DREAMER

Daguerreotype of Edgar Allan Poe, known as the "Annie" Daguerreotype.

The great masterpiece he sought to write Never made it to paper But it was in the mind somewhere Just seeking to be written Versified, ordered and edited Forwarded, published Launched and acclaimed. They came all right, in their droves And hailed his last performance As the clergyman threw a fistful of clay On the writer’s coffin.

tomás Ó C Á R T H A I G H 11

NOCTURNE Night falls like ash clings to her hair smells like the latest contour for the pencil to follow. Flat down palm knees toes nose hips lips indent the paper. Night spills from her fingers like coins from a shirt pocket. Pencils break their points on the burnished surface of the earth.

jesse M I N K E R T 12

POIEPLEGIA what i want is to be luminous, sweeping; to leave behind verses translated from candlelit palabros de amor. what i fear is that death, when it finds me, will likely find me still pulling shards of art from the feet of my puritan shame (i have never been able to write from the waist down). what i dream is that when i wake up tomorrow the inside of my head will be sexy. what i seek is macchu picchu; what i find is glastonbury. what i hope is that next time â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;round my pen will drip metric love juice onto linen; in this incarnation i am lemon juice on parchment, needing heat and light to bring out my deeper meaning.

rich F O L L E T T 13

VOICES OF NATURE My garden of sixty seasons sings words of fine poetry Orange Chinese-lanterns with voices of Li Po and Tu Fu Purple blue Concord grapes with voices of Dylan Thomas and Edgar Allan Poe Juicy blackberries with voices of Walt Whitman and Longfellow Parsley, sage, and rosemary with voices of Gabeba Baderoon, Gail Dendy, and Mongane Wally Serote Green and red onions with voices of Bukowski and William S. Burroughs Plum and beefsteak tomatoes with voices of Ginsberg, Corso, and Kerouac Dwarf sour cherry tree with voices of Pablo Neruda and Octavio Paz Under the white blanket of snow the poets rest until the spring wind calls, for their magic beauty to fill the air.

catfish M C D A R I S 14

A CLICHÉD REMINDER Would you like a peppermint tea? Your rosewater flesh in my mouth, I recall the first sweet swallow. I'm home, loyal as a landscape. Your rosewater flesh in my mouth, Barry White a clichéd reminder. I'm home, loyal as a landscape. Calmed by the music you create. Barry White a clichéd reminder, I recall the first sweet swallow. Calmed by the music you create. Would you like a peppermint tea?

debbie L E E 15

SELF PORTRAIT I sit with my back to Europe. All the false gods swaddled by women swollen with grapes and flowers, but missing their hands. Before me an avenue full of maidenhairs. In the stink of rotten fruit one room comes to resemble another. Then by reduction a woman can branch and double back, become servant to a more aristocratic version. I sit with my back to Europe. The statuesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; blind eyes stare at suns and moons that pass glittering through skies accustomed to war. In the square, a fountain waters the false appearance of Mallarmeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s present. My letters disappear through chinks in the iron fence surrounding the French Garden. I sit facing west, I let the silence in this room become frozen.

judith S K I L L M A N 16

AGAINST METAPHOR: A CAUTION, A PLEA OR “WHERE’S THE TROPE?” Look around you, I mean look, really look, peer if you have to at that being walking toward you or taking your order, that man whose hip smacked against yours taking the last seat on the bus; Look at her, that woman in the café, look at her child in the playground, look at all these beings in all their poetic and prosaic poses. Look, well, as capably as you can, again and again, before you compare. before you equate one to one other to create the grand metaphor. I warn you, Artist, whether your marks make words or visions – How dare you liken the loss of a city today to the loss of my beloved years from today or the next today or tomorrow How dare you use my terrors to make your art more expressive, more telling. a better painting, a better story, a better poem How dare you sweep me in on a dare and make me look past my blinders. I warn you, Artist: Be gentle and if you can’t, if it must be, know what you do – Look at me. angela consolo M A N K I E W I C Z 17

vincent V A N G O G H (Oil on Canvas) - 1889

S T A R R Y N I G H T, W I T H S O C K S Neruda eats gates and barbed wire, absorbs the nails and exhales a borderless world—language that skips and spins across the ground of flight, syntax that never learned what it can’t do, so does. Van Gogh sees the aura of night. Saw the aura of chair. Of desk. Pipe. Saw thick swirls of angst and relief in the sky, everything pulsing and alive, vibrant with being: the skirt swish of a spiral galaxy, the cypress fingers’ reach, space-time splayed with light and steeple, with neurons firing into the curve of line, a synaptic dance between canvas and paint, landscape and ode. From the poet’s mouth, by the painter’s hand: Simple strokes lead to love. And know now what Neruda saw: A sock can be the microcosm of all things good, knitted by Mara Mori, with glowing strands of twilight and thread, holy as a sacred text placed on that great altar, the foot. Because things are not things alone. They are also that which made them. A sock is a little, woolen god. It is a woman stopping by with a gift. It is the warmth of two hands rubbed together, a fire cradling your heels and soles.

melissa S T U D D A R D 19

THE POETS They stare down from the shelves, Hover over my head, eyes bright as night, Voices ageless and prophetic. They prod me, crawl into my skin. They menace me As I sit, half-asleep, at the typewriter O The poets live here, In this house, in this room. I’ve watched them gather Like gods in great swarms of warm shadows: “I have seen them riding seaward on the waves Combing the white hair of the waves blown back, “The silver mirrors catch the bright stones and flare, “Behold, already on the long parades The crows anoint the statues with their dirt Proclaiming invectives against swans, “Stone-fleshed, nerve-stretched Great bodies ever more beautiful, more heavy with pain, Leading to some unbearable consummation of ecstasy, “The fountains of the boiling stars, the flowers on the foreland, The ever-returning roses of dawn, “I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear. An avalanche of books cover every nook & cranny in the house, Names like rivers running up and down the spines: Emily, Poe, Melville, Whitman: the ground breakers. Eliot, Pound, Stevens and Williams: the word Modern, The phrase: Make it New. Frost, Sandburg, Jeffers, Langston, Crane… Millay, Hilda, Muriel, Bogan, Sylvia and Sexton, Bishop and Brooks… I’ve heard them and felt them And seen them: Their elations and their longings, Their soft radiant tears. I hear America singing, The varied carols I hear.

j.r. P H I L L I P S 20

CAPITATIVE KNOWLEDGE you want to know what something means after you have seen it done it experienced it it inordinately would turn into an allegory it’s not you who is walking by moving your limbs it’s the earth under the foot of your sole that makes you move on the ominous surface avoid the slavery of appearances the counter inductive captions the attenuated infective hyphenated forgotten alphabets for it’s dangerous to be named

gabor G. G Y U K I C S 21

BEGOTTEN â&#x20AC;&#x153;My heart under your foot...â&#x20AC;? ~Sylvia Plath She scatters her meager feelings among her vicious offspring, hundred-handed, many-mouthed. The child-eating husband shatters her with inconsistent rage then pieces her together with unstable glues that she makes do will hold. She thinks only he can do this and make her shine. The ocean tries to soothe her, all water and energy, claims he has some kind of analgesic power. She hates how he touches her feet. Afterwards her brain still burns. She vanishes to sex the night away and be reborn while her moon-lover, the one she says she adores, hangs in patient denial, twisting by the ankle, a man on a tarot card. She leaves him covered in scars, perched forever on some ledge of self-disaster that he never leaps from. His lust is not monstrous. Every night, waiting for the scant embrace of another eclipse, he grows twice as lonely, twice as cold, twice as distant. He can't help but look back.

j.t. Williams 22

S A I D T H E R A V E N â&#x20AC;&#x201C; colleen M C L A U G H L I N

XXV. C R O W & S T. J E R O M E from C O R V I D A E Old man, front teeth stained and ragged, one broken off to a point. Robe rich fabric thin and torn, dirty, Crow nestled in it, warm place near the heart. The saint tells Crow God's secrets. Kisses the small black head. He drinks. And then he sings, sad and cracked and broken, sounds, Crow thinks, like a crow. Voice made of swallowed bones. Doesn't eat, Jerome, much, saves sweet meat for Crow. Smiles at this intermittent gluttony. Crow pays for feasts with baubles: bits of gold foil, lost ribbon, jay feathers blue as Paradise he anchors in the beard. Gaudy nest. The flags of prophecy, the saint mutters, stumbling into sleep. Loves Crow. Puts the cat out, bars the door.

b.j. Buckley 24

WITHOUT THE MAGPIE The tree tops look like black finials that have come alive to twist against the sky like a Sleeping Beauty wall of thorns barring heaven's molten door. No Babylonian hanging gardens here, whose flowers throw themselves wantonly on the air, but the sun this morning touches each sharp point of these November trees, drapes silk and plumps pillows of pink shadow; paints gloriously and with soft sighs something like, and yet without, Monet's Magpie.

annette M A R I E H Y D E R 25

THE CROWS OF SHEFFIELD The autumn cold is upon her now as she pushes her rickety stroller past the street that sounds so sinister: Sheffield – with two f’s like reapers’ sickles – where the crows congregate as though waiting to be summoned. They ground-hop on dark, wiry limbs like those of the black widows that roam, bulbous and bold, in the dead man’s abandoned home. He was shot down on Sheffield, three years ago, an October afternoon. Blood dripped down the curb; bullets pierced the neighbor’s wall. Dead flowers, deflated balloons hung by the lamppost and the stain. They are rarely seen now except this time of year to remind a mother nothing is ever safe, yet everything moves regardless. So she walks her streets pushing her baby towards gentler roads: Windsor, Winchester, Westmont. She feels wealthy there, wiser too. The grass is cut more squarely; the dead leaves are blown away, except for one that alights upon her sleeping son. Maybe it was set loose by the autumn wind or the black crow, caw-less and still, in the shivering branches above.

emily F E R N A N D E Z 26

I DON’T REMEMBER HIS NAME I don’t remember his name. His face, long and thin, Drew attention to his sad eyes And his eyes Drew me briefly into his world. I don’t remember his name But his frail body Struggled to keep balance against a strong wind Or the taunts of the boys With puffed chests And torn jeans. I don’t remember his name But his house was small Barely able to fit His five brothers and sisters Barely able to hold The blood From six slit throats As it seeped under bedroom doors And washed down the hall. I don’t remember his name But I still see The camera lights The newscasters As they went from room to bloody room Looking for my friend With the long, pale face Who struggled to keep his balance in this world.

rick S T E P P - B O L L I N G 27

I L L U M I N A T I O N - janet S N E L L COME CLOSER It is colder The streets seem more uncertain. The Devil more real. kevin m. H I B S H M A N FOR JANET Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s more important to know That a street light is red or green Than to worry that The Devil Is sitting on top of it. lynne B R O N S T E I N

CAUGHT. Panic and fear avoid me. Conquered and done with in bunkers and dungeons. But the other, the one that hides in daylight, the one that muddies the creek drowns my reflection, THAT ONE sends whisper thin fog, obscures clarity, catches with silken threads. A silver cocoon I hang in the web of anxiety.

Cristina U M P F E N B A C H - S M Y T H 29

TIME ENSNARED IN VLADIMIR KUSH’S WEBMASTER Time’s spider hangs suspended in an observatory without a telescope. No eye seeks the heavens. The man-made clock of its abdomen faces the outer web of stars with its silvery spinner in counterpoint. Pinned against the walls, dangle the glider-sized insects whose wings could not fly them beyond repercussion. The orbit of stars and of the moons encircling constellations’ planets is as inescapable as the pause between breaths until an endless cessation resumes. Featureless human figures, tiny below its golden construction, roll a gear, adjust the webbed wires, unspool thread, or stare eyeless into a blank screen. The hand revolving around this modern black widow is motionless in this precise moment. Nature waits on the wires, stilled, for the mechanics of death.

leanne H U N T 30

CIRCLE RIDER Asleep on her sarcophagus dressed in shiny utterances, he calls, 'Yield your doors. Set your bent back your shoulder to the color that smoke turns in street light swim in the uproar toward this summons.' Fibers thread through her follicles tensed against her tangled chords stanchions to their hollows shiver in the interval between dismemberment and breath. Moist in the quiet, accordions' bellows expand like steam, like flood or dust or birds torn from the precipice or lizards clinging to the cleaving rattle, she puts foremost a phrase: The table can do nothing but turn the needle ride in the valley the cones tremble arch flatten or contract. Those heart-shaped voices suspending from the ceiling wake from their interrupted rest.

jesse M I N K E R T 31

AJAR CASKET, CURIOUSLY EMPTY Rare coins, shells, figurines, and action figures. Collectors collect from instinct. Hunting and gathering is hardwired into neural pathways. The trails of caribou and mammoth are engraved in the tracking of our pupils. Archaeologists, the honored collectors of civilizationsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; ashes, paleontologists, the hunters of bones, curators, the searchers and definers of beauty-Museums house their trophies, display each piece. I am no different, though I must hoard my masterpieces in the dark. I dig for treasure buried under layers of time, catalog each item, and resurrect an emotion. I assemble my exhibits, stretch the fingers, pull the wire to tilt the head, accentuating the jaw line, arrange the limbs with rods and stakes. Staples and surgical glue replicate a liveliness. Flesh is an expressive medium for a craftsman, and once preserved, an enduring antique piece.

leanne H U N T 32

WHILE TALKING WITH SERIALS KILLERS Something lodged deep in his amygdala, some famous quote from Nietzsche perhaps or the sharp red corners painted on the smile below the triangular eyes of the killer clown. We do know that he chose June 6th for his death; This in the year of 2006 leaving behind no letter and only the satanic connotation of his final date. He had famously cast himself in vulnerable roles to gain access to the most perplexing of inner thoughts, those that murder compulsively for gratification, for sexual fantasies of control, to escape isolation, for a reprieve of crippling loneliness, a forced bond beyond eternity, forever intimate with innocence and delicacy, a god in the midst, a numen master powerful and no longer beholden to a society that perceives them as inadequate impotents or failures. He told us that his intent was scholarly, a study for his honors thesis, a way to distinguish himself as a job candidate with law enforcement, the FBI. But smoldering beneath that veneer was infatuation, an unhealthy fascination. Notoriety breeds attention even by association, even in his various impersonations, that of disciple, admirer, surrogate, potential gudgeon, he never envisioned himself as the Sweet Pea Girl, the courtroom bride lured by unattainable pied pipers, the unthinkable attraction, forbidden, unforgivable. And so he graduated summa cum laude. And then he published his book. And whether he really laughed off the religious antics of the devil worshipper or believed the cannibal kept seven skulls for quiet uninterrupted confidential conversation or whether his mind was actually if briefly overpowered by the guileful charm of the one that paid the most affection, he did find that obsession, much like fettered love or captivation, wanes and loses luster, and isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t all love determined by restraint? Is that not how we prove how well we love, by the amount of freedom we can afford? Children, destroy the world. angel uriel P E R A L E S 33

CANNIBALS & SAXOPHONES Big Frank, my saxophone pal and I had a music/word gig, $40 for 30 minutes at the old Wisconsin Hotel There were lots of strange characters there, Frank would play Take Five by Dave Brubeck if trouble seemed on the horizon, This blonde intense young man kept giving us the 1,000 yard stare after the gig, I sold a few chapbooks He came up in the crowd, but I paid no attention to who bought what, Frank had my back A year later the cops came by with 3 of my signed chaps, they grilled me on my knowledge of Jeffrey Dahmer they asked if we were pals and wanted to look in my refrigerator I told them I didn’t know him and I just thought the dude had a little eating disorder, they weren’t amused I told Frank about it and said I guess if the freezer had been full of frozen heads, livers, kidneys, and penises They would’ve started playing In A Gadda Da Vida on me with their nightsticks, Frank laughed so hard, he had to run to the loo.

catfish M C D A R I S 34

THE EVENING Driving from El Sereno  on Mission Road  near the bone arches  and red brick  of the Coroner’s office,  I glimpse  how the sunset glows gold  on the otherwise dirty white facade  of our old County Hospital  that rises up like  an ancient mausoleum.  Its sunken windows reflect  silver clouds braised bronze  by bright rays of light.  To the west  the dying sun rests  on the teeth  of the city’s skyline.  I turn and look  too long.  Devoured, blinded  I almost believe  I’m being driven  headlong  toward the afterlife.

emily F E R N A N D E Z 35

A WENCHâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S LAMENT FOR THE COUNTY CORONER A man made of such softness should never have laid hold of me, been for me. The tender drag of his rubber gloves, the whisper of buttons so used to tearing and fumbling hands... I was ready for the end years ago. Life, a hard road, full of scars. I was made and unmade by the hands of men. Hell fires my heaven by comparison, my easy road after the hard ride. But lo, my spirit paused, tethered, I learned what love must be... The exquisitely painful act as he gently undressed my body running his eyes and hands, again and again over each bit, scar, or bauble. He spent hours with me, cataloging all of me. He was not the men tuned inward shrill and grabbing. I was not his tool of simple self-gratification. I was his life's work, his symphony. I should never have felt this, I should never have been left so clean.

heidi D E N K E R S 36

JUMPER “The only way you’d fall is if you jumped.” That’s why you’re afraid of ledges Because a tiny part of you wants to jump And you fear that man inside your head Telling you how easy life would finally be. But I dangle off the ledge, because I’m not afraid. I’m already dead.

daniel n. F L A N A G A N 37

AT THE EDGE sky sits low wraps herself white thick around black clad beings souls that walk the earth haunted by memories of themselves before they stood six feet above and tossed with a thud a handful of dirt onto a pine box i have stood graveside drained of joy tossed dirt extended hollow hugs i mirrored lips that pressed past sorrow’s kiss i listened to voices float towards me mumbled echoes I’m Sorry i watched the words lift into hollow winds drift away i am ghost and in silent hours when sleep and sky sit low hugging the ground grief slices through into morning i wait for breath to fill my lungs it is in the still times when I remember i stand at earth’s edge and plunge head first, arms splayed back arched, into grief’s deep well and swim 38

time may not heal but she will reveal herself and there is always the coming light and the sorrow and my breath

carolyn Z I E L 39

THIS PARK WITHOUT A PLAYGROUND the night is calling me back to the low shadows of the old cemetery by the railroad. only soft moonlight illuminates the smooth granite and marble here. ancient names mark the plots where forgotten faces lie still and deep in the damp soil. entire families

submerged from the sunlight that long ago left their world. they have gone off to other leaving us behind to tend to their

worlds, gardens.

this is not a place to bring your children who have so much life ahead along their paths. they need not know about this place, this park with out a playground.

david f. M A R S E E

DEATH AINâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;T NO PLACE FOR WORDS laying on the veterinarianâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cold floor weeping head on my eternally sleeping best friend feeling not only the death of my dog but also a death of poetry the death of a muse a death of words for there is no metaphor applicable no wordplay appropriate no language that can accurately describe loss, sorrow, emptiness only silence can do that so put the pen down poet cease perceiving philosopher and die too for awhile only silence can soothe a heavy heart only silence can mend a broken spirit only in silence, rebirth.

scott c. K A E S T N E R 41

THE CROSSING I sat on the edge of my chair at the edge of your bed, computer on the stand where you took your meals before you stopped eating, and wondered when you would wake up and talk to me again, ask for a glass of water, smile in that frail way, as if uncertain whether and why one smiles at all. As if asking, “Is it all right to smile?” Now, watching you again, in your morphine sleep, I recall that while you swore a lot, you cried only twice while I knew you, once when the drummer in a jazz band hit a nerve, perhaps something you remembered from another time you’d never experience again, and then when you dropped me off at Smith Hall on campus and we hadn’t even said “Good-bye,” yet. I asked, “Why are you crying, Mom,” and you laughed. It was always easier for you to laugh, or do nothing, than to cry. Don’t ask me why. I still don’t know. Not even when Dad died. I was experiencing an inappropriate satisfaction that I was working while you slept, recalling how upsetting it was to you that Dad, when he was alive and engaged, spent days and nights at the office, in meetings, shuffling papers, and falling asleep in front of the TV while you finished watching your programs. Then the rattle as you breathed your last. And it was over. Your white hands with their blue veins resting alongside your thin body, light as a feather, one might say, as your soul took flight to wherever souls go, if there are souls, if there is somewhere for them to go. I called the others to come see their mother, who had just died; they came to the bed, put ears to her chest where no heart beat any more, put a mirror to her mouth and nose, where no moisture settled on the glass, and their tears flowed for various reasons reflecting personal memories, some of which I shared, and the shock of inevitable loss. I lifted the light, white hand, placed it on your black velvet shawl, and took pictures, trying and failing to replace “what is” with “what was.” One side denies angels and spirits, the afterlife; the other admits existence of the unknown. 42

“Yes, Mom, I can still hear you,” and “Yes, I felt you in the room with me, saw you standing by...” But were these merely metaphysical traces memory makes, easily interrupted by the touch of a hand, or to be interpreted as the sound a solitary makes thinking to himself?

michael F O L D E S 43

alexis rhone F A N C H E R

SURVIVOR’S GUILT When people ask me why the limp, I’ve got it down to this one, essence of car crash sentence: Some asleep-at-the-wheel trucker hit us head-on, 70 mph. My new love had said no. But I wanted to drive to Santa Cruz and flaunt him in my ex’s face. It was Father’s Day. My dad said my mother screamed when they got the call. Here’s the thing: Before we left, my lover transferred money into my account, had the phone put in my name. I’ve lived my life like I’m living it for two. I’ve read this is not uncommon. On the street yesterday, this poem still inside me, a koan 1 decades old: Why did he go if he knew? I walked past an ancient, Asian woman, grey jacket, grey cap. Like Mao. “Forgive yourself,” she said, pointing right at me. “Yes. You.”

alexis rhone F A N C H E R In Zen Buddhism, a koan is a brief paradoxical statement or question used as a discipline in meditation. The effort to solve a koan is designed to exhaust the analytic intellect and the will, leaving the mind open for response on an intuitive level.

GRIEF Goes with this weather. Winter, harsh, unrelenting. One lone tree, bare limbs burdened to breaking with ice and snow. All I need to know is when does it end? Grief, the thief, sneaks into the hallway, Pads over the kitchen tiles. Leaves the refrigerator door open, the oven on. There's not enough hot tea to choke the chill out of my veins. The silence is the worst. I am a stopped bottle so needing to shatter.

kevin m. H I B S H M A N 46

M E D U S A S I N G S - annette marie H Y D E R

SERPENT BONES In a crowded room I heard some say “He’s a fierce poet…” and it made me jealous and sad. I am not fierce. I do not roar or howl or wail; not lion, not wolf, not banshee, not eagle. I am perhaps serpent: Once beautiful and mighty, once the bringer of knowledge, the thief of heaven’s fire whose limbs were severed, whose bones were taken, whose feathers were stolen to adorn an impotent peacock. And now feared or reviled or forgotten, my voice is just a whisper and I am left to search the searing desert and the underground labyrinths for my bones.

cindy W E I N S T E I N 48

OUROBOROS CHARMER When moonlightâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a hole In a sky-wide guitar, the power lines staves, and birds on the wire are notes on a clef, you slumber recumbent humming rum lullabies: saxophones wriggling, regaling, recoiling, beguiling that cobra and charming it deaf.

jan S T E C K E L 49

A TRICK OF DELIGHT

Silver-grey ghost wreathed in chiaroscuro I see you, sweet sylph of the shadowland Dark water cannot contain you You give form to silence. With careful, slow movements You walk invisibly And entrust to me the sharing Of your fugitive soul. I could never understand How your watching of the world is solitary You should be pursued by a retinue of desire Unless it is that such intellect Must have, also, the quality of piercing And you cannot conceal from yourself That you have, in my gender, no equal. How well I know your dark radiance But perhaps it is also that Among all women, you only are the still pool In which I can see My own reflection.

thomas K E N T 2

Bronwen Manger, Australian Poet & photographer. Photo by Thomas Kent

A NATURAL PAINKILLER If love is all there is not mindful of its limits standing on the border tied to a rope of silver air a luminous circle going down amid invisible ovations until it becomes heavy and drops like a theater curtain; still, give me love so I can walk around with a flamboyant heart ready to be swallowed.

francesca C A S T A Ă&#x2018; O 51

EARLY BREAD: iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve detected a bulletproof part of me

wait

where no sounds go to molest me pummel me hush now

in the haste of my self-prophecy a numbing incantation goes in and out of my conscious, unconscious covering up all eyes two, third, four, god - all the eyes along my body covered, uncovered tantalized, emptied by dark light and i see you hovering toward me putting me in the center of the triangle of your eyes within the oval of your face my name like block letters out of your bullet mouth teeth crawling close to the floor

faith M I N G U S 52

ARCHEOLOGY OF MEMORY Long years of tearing opened fissures; tears—moisture of need—formed stalactites, stalagmites, entombed fangs, that bite and cut the air. Here, petrified sorrows, griefs, inherited beliefs. This dark cave of bones, wells of marrow. She grasps another torch of words, its flame long appreciated, and stumbles through passages of embedded remains—those thrashes upon her body and mind, long buried now. This archeology: digging into the flesh of memory, searching for inscriptions. In a far corner of thought, she finds hieroglyphs of angels. She knows they are because they reflect the light, full of color. All the fossils he left behind are nowhere near. To reach the radiant, she must carve her way past his hoard, long-hardened. She must dig deep into layers of hidden tectonics, all those choices he'd made and forced upon her, and unearth them one by one, and carefully—so carefully and patiently— brush each lie from its skeletal impression. She must see all sides of his relics to truly understand. Inside the dark of this, a weight against her shoulders: tresses of thought, entangled, chaotic—all those questions she'd longed to ask as a girl but couldn't for fear of his hard punishment. Under night's heavy stone, a lock grinds, hinges shiver, and bars of tightlipped instructions—his rage, well-aimed— about how not to be, release and shift, as ghosts, standing as stubborn as eunuch guards, only she's the one that's been whittled down.

susan m. B O T I C H 53

MAKE BELIEVE Did this happen yester day or were you standing outside my window under the cool rain of primitive stars of all those years agoâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; and why can't I remember your smile? seemed like such a little thing then, sometimes I wish I'd paid more attentionâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; Back then there were radioactive isotopic lysergic heat flashes and the dawn of time; I kept my head down, I left a secret in the palm of your hand, a burning time capsule-a holy revolver-fired into eternity, Tomorrow you were shifting dust on dreary plains spreading our sigil across time and I am always the liar, typing and achieving nothing, leaving the window closed behind me, playing make believe.

tom P E S C A T O R E 54

BLUE SADNESS That Sunday, bitter night bequeathed a new dawn. Opaque rays splayed against grey walls stale snow melted fractured truth. Muscari peered from underneath plum trees wilting below achromatic clouds, your icy barometer silent, love grown fluctuant, tears staining furious cheeks. There was a disconnect, scar tissue created in membranes that cradled my fragile heart. Winter sank its teeth into feral flesh, blue sadness morphing into yellow grief realization erasing numbness that protected my nucleus. Nothing and everything changed, the absence of you just an empty shell that stored clever lies, shrouded truth, the two mixed like a whiskey sour infectious, mephitic. That Sunday promised another listless night filled with dead passion just a final formality, as crocus braved darkness' chill, perfidyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s direful ally.

michael wayne H O L L A N D 55

DUSK STARLIGHT In a dream I shall feel through splendid cities her sweet madness beautiful as snow that by starlight! star which is melting away! Droops her pale flowerlike cheek slipping - of worlds on a journey, down the long black river To the evening breeze in each soft corner - studded with black where heaven is sleeping We shall travel in, streaked by the heavy waves embroidered with black moss her great veils rising mount in my soul yet endless and forgiving I no longer feel myself, and distances from that time devouring the green azures where realize in antique dramas delirious indigo skies are, down into abysses.

carl S C H A R W A T H 56

C H U R C H R A D I A N C E â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Photography by carl S C H A R W A T H ( Model - jenny F E R N A L D )

FOR JANIS JOPLIN She slithered up the black staircase in a slick rush with her gold in a plastic bag, drew her name with just the tips of her fingers, and found love at the very top in the dark. They said her name was "adrenaline" under stars and other objects that gave light, but it was never midnight in the basement of her voice, only the diamond of pain, the braid of a smart cry, twisted up, haloed, like sunshine in her hair.

april michelle B R A T T E N 58

S T O N E D I M M A C U L A T E : J I M M O R R I SO N L I E S H E R E I was the Lizard King and once I slithered through my microphone cord, my leathers are now stretched to squeeze tighter inside this sonnet. Why did you take me from my palace, where I roamed in Paris, the wisdom from PĂ¨re Lachaise, the cemetery where I once was laid? Cerebrally erected, awakened to feel unburied absolutely alive, want to reopen doors of perception but Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m locked inside this confined rhyme scheme. Want to plan disorder, start a religion of free verse, seducing poetry with my Soft Parade, so much harder to release The End, you knew. Calling on my lines, my dogs of youth; who long to be unzipped and break on through.

adrian ernesto C E P E D A 59

JAKE SAID find me... ... lost in the velvet quiet of my habit looking for the nun who will pray for me if I can find her in the dark I really think it’s going good everything is Jake who said to me I got it figured out what I’m gonna do at last when I’m done when I finally run at last through this last my very goddamn last pile of junk sweet... ... the sweetest quiet dreams with a velvet serenade by Billy Sweet Billy Holiday singing soft and strange “Hush now don’t explain” the needle stuck “Hush now don’t explain” you... ... were my velvet morning 3 you were my kitty cat a satin silk kimono wrapped around a little motor purring quiet on my lap

bryan S T O R Y 3

The two words “velvet morning” from Lee Hazelwood. 60

HARRY Harry played piano on a Saturday nite asked a chorus girl out he's a junky the dance captain said that chorus girl she's afraid she dont wanna walk too close to Harry 'fraid he'd stick her with something an she be a junky too Harry just wanna jam in a niteclub his big hands died along with him in the winter of an overdose

lois michal U N G E R 61

THE PHLEBOTOMIST He pricked my outstretched forearm. I turned forcing myself to watch his chubby phlebotomist fingers massaging my existence from vein to vial. A needle prick to pull plasma for testing of cholesterol, testosterone T3 and T4. Another prick in a different arm pushes a man into sleepless dream-a timelessness I can’t quite imagine. An opiate pierce delivers the finale in the flurry of morning’s snow. News spreads. People mourn and flock to the West Village where a Journey from dark to light begins. They speak well of the man-a true talent an actor’s actor a neighborhood guy-uncombed blonde scruff of a beard a soul who struggled against demons. A woman kneels, places a single red rose on the sidewalk. 62

She doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t notice the thorn, the prick in her finger, the drop of blood she leaves behind.

carolyn Z I E L 63

L O S T A N G E L â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Photography by alexis rhone F A N C H E R

D I O N Y S I S I A N T E M P LE The urban decay had a name like contempt. A block-long contusion of dingy concrete echoing with fuming truck and gridlock rumble sickened you to see it or breathe in the bad under searing sky tattooed gunmetal gray. Then, on a blistered, rust-stained, back-alley wall, as if guardian angels indeed oversee our human despair a mural appeared: a beautiful, winged woman, pastel as spring flowers, haloed and alone softened the sad, senseless scene until even the weeds in the lot beneath her feet seemed to sing. The image you learned, depicted the artistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s wife, Susan Hitchcock. Her reign lasted only a day. For in usurped, machine-choked darkness, vandals paint-bombed the eyelash brushstrokes: orgiastic splatters like blood-bruises dismayed onlookers locked in traffic. So you sat drunk in your apartment that morning, numb as doom: For sunlight then was never to be.

gordon H I L G E R S 65

D E S E R T S C R U B & P E Y O T E J A Z Z I N NE R V O U S T I C K M A J O R

Wiry spindles bristled as dopamine lost its spine. There's a train falling off discourse while record sleeves are turning green with envious banter bordering staccato emanations from a tommy gun taking on the simulacra of ties and spikes driven through speeding passageways unable to slow the rhythm to acceptable levels or take a deep breath. Paranoia is looking for a quick fix when the waters breach creole levees in a repeat performance or last stand at the Alamo. Rental rates are dropping faster than virginity at a pre-combustion Waco sockhop. There's an eastern bird playing Parker with Confucius lyrics. Running against granular substance into a brick wall amalgam of aggregate material which struggles with too much work for the force. Chug chug chug along the line until it goes up in smoke or in caption over the postscript behind the footnote under the last page of a ledger indicating exactly why extraneous effort is wandering aimless to get back to where it started. Morose endeavors are tackling sorrowful exertions but still think they can while staring at a vertical switchback or utter hyperbole getting no attention from any but shock-jocks on college radio. Notes are bouncing off doves on a wing and prayer meeting next Wednesday night. Bats surrounding the landing zone no longer pay belfry rents. Chug chug chug along missing rail which is better than landing on third unless the goal was the second coming or some other such nonsense reeking of next of kin. Red mystic mountains hopping up on peyote buds expectorating too late to avoid green flashes and various other superheroes flying over painted desert gently swaying rhythmic with struggling boxcars thinking so often they no longer think they can. Tripping blipping respiring flora fauna and nettle in sync relegated to outer reaches so not to confuse twelve bars with too much side action. Starting where I finish which is where I started which is what I was starting to say. Cogitating too much to make an easy decision is the Russian scorecard speaking in Byzantine before resolving to a Latin base somewhere near Constantinople. A fiery mist shoots like arc welding on flat planes. Screeching wheels pushing the cars forward. Confucius is raising Cain but having no luck. Off course logistical analysis is taking too fine a comb to unsnarl traffic running its own beat without license. Close captioned for seeing impaired is leaving too much for fill in the blank without superfluous introspection. Cain's working wonders with pen and paper. Plan's drafted though wants a trade. The little train could if it would stop pondering the abstract in obtuse redundancy. Atop the hill is finalizing preparations for arrival. Morose is blue running red hot. At the depot with myriad baggage and no cart but stop horsing around. Are there still payphones anywhere? I wonder because wonder's where the babies come from much as cogito ergo sum if cause and effect or proof in the pudding are taken with a grain of different root. Slide requests for consideration through breaks in the vastly laden scales. Take a number. Take a seat. We're back at zero. Or infinity if flipped on its palindrome all jazzed up with nowhere to go but home.

danny B A K E R 66

SEARCH FOR NEW LAND for Lee Morgan Forget this accordioned portrait, this tragic tableau staring back at you now. A collapsed cat that sees Spring as Mozart retreating in the distance. One last breath rises to push air as dream, soundlessly scatter crumple of ash over gin cured floor. So much thought and malice went into this the heart never honestly had a chance here. Taut yet tender from so many ceremonial skinnings. The bullet a blind lodger, a brute canceller of ballads. He bleeds new lands, new kingdoms and keys, magnesium creeds, one last mass of blue notes, with spark points of gold; huddled orphans severed and silent, timorous on lip of the bell. Just let brass ring one more time, a simple song of freedom, even if the father’s vision has been voided up on the bandstand. Do you see him rising from deep wound as red-winged blackbird over cold brownstones and bruised snow of the inner city freely seeking a new form, a stellar region at peace with itself? He remembers it all in feeling not thought – Mother taking him into the center of the city for the first time. The scent of roasted chestnuts and soft pretzels. A frieze of eyes, a blaze of light, cooling in shadows the buildings poured. All ears as the wizened busker played Fats Navarro for nickels and dimes on a trumpet battered but beautiful. It was that wild blue sound, the spark in the heart, the flutter of the tongue; a wordless religion that found him that day, moved him to play. He knew he was there again. The music was everywhere. The soul old, the eyes infant, the heart re-skinned, the notes weightless yet rich with the beautiful truth of smile formed from sound’s light remainder, felt first as scar in rain’s reminder; mouth blowing original roses. Remember me as feeling, he says, with no words at all. william C R A W F O R D 67

THE ART OF UN/KNOWING Mind you: These words were not meant for your mouth~ This heart not meant for your Hands~ Anything made of such wonder was never meant for keeping~ Kiss insteadWith the breath of lingering departure~ Give the taste of divine leaving~ Whisper the glory of coming absence~ I do not own these words Just as you do not own their meanings~ Partake in the Perpetual joy…that you are…that minuscule~ You are…an atom within the great~ Seek not to solve mysteriesYield instead~ Lean Like stamen Toward The Fruit of Pollination~ Run ramped up the Stream of historical inkThrough the inebriated blood Of consciousness~ You are not a half In search of your other~ Look not with outward Eyes~ The treasures are not outside~ Perhaps our feet Chase stories of our previous lives~ A constant escape toward Reconciliation~ Prophecy comes from both living and dead~ Declared And scribed of fluid and ash~ We are all idols and idolaters~ Even the elements Seek to nourish and destroy each other~ How smoke strangles breath and how water Extinguishes fire~ Yet through the ground all things grow again~ Is this how sky communes with untouched heavens? Galaxy of stars combusting…igniting new worlds~ The sun sets like a pendulum as the tandem moon ascends~ Both kiss the sky in their fevers~ All is exaltation~ And I of my own breed of instinct and reflex~ This delusional thirst for un/knowing~ Spilling words of timelessness too great a concept to come only from the “i” of me~ Escapes my tongue leaving only the taste of silence~

leila a. F O R T I E R 68

PHILOSOPHY Could you be my alpha and omega? Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m so tired of nihilism, search for human altruism, a beginning and ending. And if we must end, why not like a book? Or a graceful haiku? No need for hurtful looks. I once relished reading to you in bed, while you tried to distract me, raking nails longer than mine across my pale and tender legs. In your arms I lost my wariness, addiction to Nietzsche overcome. but I could only believe for a time, before despair rendered me undone.

debbie L E E 69

VINE SONG SOLLILOQUY OF THE BELOVĂ&#x2030;D Master, I filled my mouth with bitter leaves fresh from the hill The lonely widow of my poems, white words that only sweeten Beloved, give me your green herbs, fragrant oils, gems and grapes make me officially the legate of the knowledge only you can give to only me Master, I must confess, having caressed the insect molass hiving on your face: I covered you in slow bee syrup and almonds for a feast. Beloved, hand me a bunch of secret herbs, unbroken flasks of oil, the necklace string of periwinkle shells and colours So for your sake to be a history denier: Refusing evidentiary footage, judicial documents and scattered flowers To bathe these wounds, these hurts, these pains With hands that touch you new, unknown again to what has passed. Make it official, stamp it in red rubber bureaucratic ink: you are my need Now take this moment: at last, yes, also mine to give (no, never mine to give) Not as surrender (yes, as surrender) but as eternal honesty and untruth Which nothing hides and nothing holds, where all things hide and all things hold our fingers vines, twines, crimes! Aside! Let separation fade and only separation die Where life remains and love no longer hides And I, prostrate, your willing scribe. Your willing scribe, your scribe who wills. The man who said I do not lie. The man who lied, The child who grew to be less, not more, The sinner who no blame has borne. The man who said I do not die. The man who dies. Master, you filled my mouth with bitter leaves for I have sinned: Then eat the poison weed and hush, hush quietly the wind.

felix A L V A R E Z 70

LAYING BARE THE TABLE â&#x20AC;&#x153;When correctly viewed, everything is lewd.â&#x20AC;? -Tom Lehrer Long before Marxists defined the concept, the origins of commodity fetishism began in the Dutch golden age, seventeenth-century paintings that celebrated the allure of the laden table in still-life portraits of jewels and baubles, crayfish and lobsters pulled panting from the sea and piled high to overflowing, half blocks of ripened cheeses, succulent grapes and olives, oysters glistening on their half-shells, hams and rare roast beefs promising so much flavor their sheened illusions cause us to salivate four hundred years later. We recognize our own worship at these altars of luxury, but at the risk of appearing impolite when must we eschew the proffered plate and knife to ask, who went hungry to produce this empire of things, whose sweat and violence brought this delectable abundance to table, to this world where even the burgher himself has been displaced by the dazzling bounty of his larder?

tony M A G I S T R A L E 71

M A D A M E R Ă&#x2030; C A M I E R painted by jacques-louis D A V I D, 1800

MADAME RĂ&#x2030;CAMIER after the painting by Jacques-Louis David her leisure demands diversion. each new artist inspires her soul, she is latent, she is bi-sexual her boredom indulged by vast wealth of expedient perversion, her gift of love requires momentary significance. She is incapable of original idea she is cool, beneath the surface burning with the illusion of passion, she cannot resist, she pretends she projects pure fantasy of paradise. What more can one ask of a woman, that she love you, that all her love is only for you that her desire will never reach higher, will embrace you as the last remaining star in the universe. Alas, she proves just another piece of ass incapable of love beyond the moment conceived, she is a corpse of which her son has been bereaved.

e. l. F R E I F E L D 73

ORTOLAN EATE RS (La Belle Epoch.) Fattened birds in gilded cages, blinded, still sing. Blood red roses in crystal vases, Champagne in silver buckets. A feast for Monsieur and his bride. He, prosperous man sans titre, debauched flaneur. She virgin, pauper princess. Carriages arrive, spill ladies and gents, Mademoiselle and her widow mother, Monsieur and his entourage. Heads bow under white linen coverings, silver bowls placed, birds intact, scalded alive in boiling water, sucked, chewed, release their essence of Provence. Mademoiselle, chokes under her cover, reminded that eating ortolans may be the least repulsive event of her nuptials.

cristina U M P F E N B A C H â&#x20AC;&#x201C; S M Y T H 74

SIR WALTER RALEIGH’S LIE The scalding water of the steam bath cannot scour away your lie, nor can the bemused expressions of the arbiters adjudicate the lie, nor can the wrinkled scarlet paper of the begonias or the gently swinging snowflakes over doorways, stringed together and readily forgotten. A prisoner stuck toiling in the Tower of London broods over scuff marks on the kitchen tile, boot scrapes and squashed grapes between table legs, and an empty highchair facing the frozen woods outside. The wooden rafters of the church overheard the piano player’s laugh. The rotten rafters heard his rotten laugh. Within a year, he would put face to your grating lie. By the end of the year, the potentates would know how to dance and how to decree and to decry but I would not know how, I would not know how to reply. The color has drained from the estate, the rutted gravel bleached and raked, and the low fast moving clouds whisper by like the tenuous tendril of a fading lullaby. Sir Walter Raleigh give them all the lie, smile and tell the ingenue you love her, tell her exactly this exactly as you fuck her, bite her on the cheek, sigh into her shoulder, spread her legs and cup her breasts and make her lose herself in epochs of regret. Bend her at the knees, fill her sights unseen, then flip her over, rancorous lover, and relinquish all devotion. Strike, man, strike, and give them all the lie, pound your zeal through the flimsy teal nightgown on the dresser, earrings on the sink, lipstick smeared on the pillow, ah, her matching red heels, scalding water of the shower can’t scour away your lie But neither can any other woman ever judge you until you die.

angel uriel P E R A L E S 75

HONEY IN THE HOLLOW After Edward Hopper’s painting “Summer Interior” Sonny Boy, sorry, another ice cream promise broken. I could smell the fumes, your tears hard on shattered air – an exhausted desire panting behind that locked door. I could hear you pussyfooting; the floorboards taking a breath, as you took a knee and watched. Did I catch your eye and hold it captive for a while? Pale blue, patient, almost placid; bright deciduous sun pouring through black keyhole. Tangled up in its own tender, tragic orbit. Tempered with a white hot flash of wonder – oddly male; I expected a daughter – the frayed heat of this interior brings a weary confusion to the room spinning in and around me. Now, the men are gone. Their daddy slaps and boyish barbaric yawps of motherly whore no longer ring hopeless and hollow off this mute wall lined with ears. A place where honey is hard to summon. And the eye endlessly obsesses on things best left unseen. So, my mind separates and strays beyond the battered shutters – maunders through limpid green thoroughfares dryly hissing, until it finds a pool of light to lay itself down in. Attached to, but not attacking the body as it learns to smile soft honey for you again. 76

Mommie Dearest, Outside, the ice cream truck was thinly playing My Fair Lady through a static speaker – but, it was the steady beat of your blood-song rising, its soar and force pushing air like dream, that touched me from a distance through this guilty/glorious keyhole. Inside, I watched each succulent seduction. Cross-eyed tangos and cash as best laid plan shivering cold atop dressers pledging lemon. Damned to say your movements weren’t flash fire fandangos. Even if you were a bridge in the distance burning inside my own tired eye. And that inflamed kiss of red between your legs alarmed me with a pulsing secret – an insanity I needed to know. Imagining the coolness of your shadow-shade against the pleasure-pain of your tonguing flame. Those men were brief, their passion weak, more ashamed than you could ever be as you slipped down your sleek sheet toward a sudden, soft pool of light – yes, you were its source. Take my eye, it is yours to snatch – to brighten or blacken, as you wish. My father never knew me. william C R A W F O R D 77

TAROT CARD

Photograph by marie L E C R I V A I N Orpheus flung himself into a tarot card where he stayed for centuries. I play with him casually now and sometimes kiss him on the lips. I make love with him on the chariot that goes into battle with a promise of victory. We are crossed on either side by swords, the moon above us. While he penetrates me I can hear the sad music of his flute and I beg him to stop. I alone of earth and the underworld hate the music of Orpheus. He ejaculates and I scream because a fist went through the mirror. Orpheus impregnates me. I freeze and like the wood nymph, Daphne turn into a laurel tree. As my pregnancy advances my wooden belly, stretches and stretches. I can hear myself splinter open and I have given birth to a myth.

diane D E H L E R 78

SHE DREAMT she’d been a sorceress, a healing witch gathering branches alone in dark woods. fusing plants, she’d dwelt like this leaving suburbia in shadowed clouds. muds, flowers, poultices had filled her home, herbs steamed from small pots, bottles lined shelves, odd tinctures healed strangers, even herself: black willow, damiana, angelica, spice... she’d run toward the moon as they turned out their lights, sought the earth and its pattern, night after night— sang with moonlight, fire, sage and mist to bring gifts from the old, summon the wise. in dawn dew, as they woke to yawn about dreams she turned back to her books, to the night, to new schemes.

anne T A M M E L 79

THE ALCHEMIST TREE IN WINTER after two paintings of Vincent Van Gogh at the Norton Simon Museum, “The Mulberry Tree” and “Winter (The Vicarage under Snow)”

I look across the hall at the grey, soft snowflakes at dusk helpless against the weight of overwrought carvings their eighty-million dollar frame just like mine We outshine reality with artifice exploding off the canvas the words – the paint the pen – the paintbrush the swansong I am the mulberry tree ablaze with color before the last day of autumn I came to being in a flurry of brush strokes born of unfinished sky A ballerina before the curtain falls, I’m covered with a blanket of wet snow precariously balanced on the blackened limbs of winter I listen to the song of the old man bent down beneath darkening sky the shovel, the shovel, the shovel, the snow It’s heavy, it’s heavy it’s heavy, it falls A man has to do what he’s told to do to eat, to earn a cot in a cramped room in a soot-covered hut the shovel, the shovel the shovel, the snow Darkness and light – night and day – buds into blossoms, into fruit, into earth to fall– to fall not – to end – to end not – to begin Bright stars, exploding supernovas we shine but for a moment 80

green into chartreuse – into yellow – into gold colors – light – dance earth into leaves – air into blossoms I’m the mulberry tree I’m the alchemist tree See the magic of the world before it disappears capture the transfiguration of time into swirls of awareness crystallizing at the edge of oblivion polish your day until it glows become pure gold with me

maja T R O C H I M C Z Y K 81

INSPIRED BY ROSALEEN NORTON’S THE SEANCE & RECENT ESOTERIC EVENTS We have called you from the wild and dark parts of ourselves. You answered right away, and I wasn’t prepared. From a spark within the flame, my mind slipped as the fey half of me perceived you. For the first time, the two halves of my life converged. In accord, we bond. You, a small star that burns sublime in my heart, and I, enraptured, a sword to rend the veil that blocks my vision. We continue until the heat becomes too much. You release me with an excision exquisitely painful. My heart succumbs to tears, a caustic flow that seals the sign within. A promise: I’m yours, and you’re mine.

marie L E C R I V A I N 82

GALAHAD I took the sword, lay it on the bed and said, I’m walking away. Riding the horse in the rain, I bless the past.

All dragons are beautiful fragments of my life, artwork. A chance encounter in the woods, delicate, potent and violent, the dream is the gift of healing. Oh I am Galahad and don’t need to search.

He carries the falcon on his arm, aims straight for the heart, hits precisely in the center and leaves me

between tears and ecstasy. I scrutinize the waves for answers: they raise themselves like ghosts. Dolphin

jumps out of clouds, guides me among whales, ocean of ever changing energies, God’s

eyes watching over me. Eagle appears and says, fly with me, let the wind take you.

hélène C A R D O N A

IMAGO Out of my mouth I have spun a thread, yolk yellow â&#x20AC;&#x201C; yellow as the sun. Around and around Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve spun the shell that eats the whispered frequencies of light. The blue of night dissolves among my filaments. Trapping and sucking, they change all colours to chrysoprase. Eyes slowed to stone within my sun, I am a spirit burning the white mask I wore. Its loosened seams unstitched, grey veins dissembling flames spread in the crushed ribs of my coiled wings. If wings could see with every sequin in their quilted eye the lilt of flight from earth into the sun, I would be a voice singing the colours of perpetual change from flame to flame among the stars that leave on their rust-red trails and the stars that come hurtling in their shriek of blue.

marian W E B B 84

A SIREN’S CALLING I heard a Siren call my name, once She lured me to the jagged edge Where upon the rocky shards I danced Until my soul was torn asunder, and so profusely bled Blindly I offered her my wary soul To tend the want of flesh’s desire It was a ghostly flame of burning passion That ignited the bewildering flames of my ghastly pyre Haste would speed my dream to end And eternal morose it would bring To shred the life it once freely gave and leave in its barren stead, my epitaph to sing

micheál ó C O I N N 85

SIBELIUS LETZTEN GEDANKEN Widespread they stand, the Northland’s dusky forests, Ancient, mysterious, brooding savage dreams; Within them dwells the Forest’s mighty God, And wood-sprites in the gloom weave magic secrets. -Jean Sibelius, Tapiola ... and for decades after 1926 and your Opus 112 that was you, wasn’t it?, weaving your magic secrets with wood-encased graphite on wood pulp for a forest of bows and gut and ultimately with the burning wood of ’45 when your Eighth Secret which had tantalised conductors, listeners, visitors to Ainola and Kammiokatu – Koussevitsky, Cameron, Paavola – went up with diaries, letters, the whole of Europe, that great musical deforestation leaving only a 1933 bill to copy a silent first movement, and the wood-sprites retreated with their secret and savage dreams to what remained of the wooded glooms, their eyesight cataracted by too-long exposure to fire-light.

jonathan T A Y L O R 86

THE DREAM OF THE BLIND In the murky dawn of conversion The land is still abound with pyromaniacs, Self-congratulatory, self-righteous as ever, Learning nil from the heap of ashes, And the cycle of bloodbath. Bent upon mere personal perpetuation, They play the farce of concurrence On the vault of general hope, Leaving the common lot with The sole subsistence of glory days. Many are maneuvered again into Playing the blind manâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s game, Shrouded eyes Seeking the blind spot of progression. Pledging another novel era of fortification By turning the endemic chaos Into a never-never land, The pecuniary stuntmen hustle around, Their bags teeming with otherworldly stats. The same sordid machine, The same corroding cogs! Evading the blitz of indigence, They preach to the breadless a nirvana, Utterly devoid of peace of mind and bliss. Where autocratic impulse is kept intact At the cost of general concern, Self-seeking aphorisms are Interpolated into the law of the land And the founding ideals at whim. The reeking status quo is bound to persist In such a land governed By the ethos of egotism, Apathy, guile, recklessness and inaction. The self-inflicted oblivion Stifles the spirit of labor, The door to the treasure trove of Nature. A perennial lethargy is enshrined as the principal Ethos in the air subjugated by an agonizing smokiness Then the dreams of many are at stake Along with the grand Founding Dream.

rizwan saeed A H M E D 87

THIEF Whisper softly of blind Beka’a snow. I say: “I take your gift. The gift you have never given. I have waited for it in fairytale disguises” Diamond brakes and gold bleed nipples, black gemstone tyres, helmet of thorn. Red and yellow roses fragrant on a sudden skid. Your hands cupping my head. Neck loose like a strangled chicken. I have stolen your present, that gift. The one you have never given. The one I can never receive. The petalled perfumes I have never smelt. The flower of your embrace. The pallid moons we have never mirrored. The dances stolen in guilt. Unscrupulously untying hard passwords of haema ribbon, practised with thief fingers, I have examined your jewel box, uncovering ashes, coal and christian unguent as I lie down by your foetus sleep, purring the afterbirth like a warm mother cat. I have heard it is time to rest myself in a presentation box, admiring you with the leftovers of my hard bones. But there is cataract light in your eyes, white veils damning the dawn. I fear your optic nerve, it is light to burn. The no entry of two-way mirrors, light of preventions. Promise me: if you gift me, gift me your dead eyes. So you will reveal the Hawkings universe within, as you have always scientifically meant. Yet O! do not inform the enemy, my love. For I will burrow deep as chromosomal code in flesh, implanting my image in your punctured entrails, desperate to devour the Past. This gift you will never give. I know it well. Confess it to the wild almond blossoms on the hill! Spit into the cool mountain springs and fountains! As I, hook in mouth, fish bereft of lake or sea, am word without wind nor will, 88

skeletal spine to feast upon, receive at last what has never been: repeated robbery of a later dance or crime, to hush the crushed kiss of your lips as you say â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;mineâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;.

felix A L V A R E Z 89

T H E R O M A N T I C M O V E M E N T â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Collage by steven H A R T M A N

I CAN NO LONGER WALK AROUND THE SCULPTURE Mosaic of earth and sky. The black rabbits—shadows I pry with paper hands from wet grass, finding in the schedule of appointments a bit of space between bedraggled persona and mud. Woman with marble roses at the center of a square in Seneffe— how the water poured. Thirty other statues, clipped at neck, wrist, shoulder, missing their hands or arms. Massifs beneath the glittering dome of sky. Four days and nights—all of me machined by the god who adored me, my parts working, well-oiled, adorned with jewels. No longer nostalgic? The mind interferes with the body? In sad reversal come chores and maintenance for the woman who lived in a stable facing the restaurant, who spat tea at flower-papered walls and was thrown out of the chateau, much as a rider is thrown from her horse, there to lie paralyzed looking up at the moon.

judith S K I L L M A N 91

AND THEY WILL KNOW US BY THE ECHOES IN OUR WAKE your broken piano your glittering mouth your unhappy wishes your misplaced history all leave you humming the sound of the highway that hard ribbon cutting down through your heart leaving you leaving you leaving you no instrumental soundtrack of arcane misinformation no hieroglyphic road signs pointing you in unknown directions no rain gutters durable enough for the downpour that is coming so look up into that inevitable science listen up to that limping melody dripping from your broken piano moisten your lips with regrets and forgiveness there is no turning back now that the symphony has begun intermission is a myth just play through cling to the genders of your vocabulary to the seniority of dissonance i will be your rhythm section you will be my cacophony crescendo will be our secret word for love

david M C I N T I R E 92

BLOSSOMING In the middle of this rough draft this partial sketch this dormant dance to tune unplayed we search for words color through lines shuffle our feet to sleepy music crescendoing.

GRANDMAâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S LULLABIES The lullabies she throws against the walls of her perimeter land softly as they fill the space unsung between the peel and paint.

barbara M O O R E 93

Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;M NOT HERE YOU ONLY IMAGINE ME I need enough hooks to hang my words on I am hospitable to fleas and once where the air was caged I was an untasted fruit now I carry false papers to cross borders with the one I used to laugh with I can hardly keep up with her slowness the papers contain words that used to be constipated only the shadow of snow was able to perceive what they held inside: acquisitions, gallivanting, consignment, humidity, acceleration, reception, or a wish that whatever you hope to turn around was going to turn around â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the poison on your fingertips seeps into me around the corner waiting for the wind to take us farther away on its own accord

gabor g. G Y U K I C S 94

ANSEL ADAMS Ansel Adams and the whiskers of a snow-covered oak tree were blended inside musk and dead fruit, as black and white as a winter wind. He found the cracked rib fence of a surfaced driftwood, and when that moon rose over Hernandez, he wandered the landscape of adobe walls and white impaled crosses to become human. His motion is felt in stillness. His stubbornness, in mist. With veins as thick as a Redwood, and an avalanche inside his mouth, he became the bridge of light and dark.

april michelle B R A T T E N 95

thomas K E N T

THE BISHOP & NUN ARE IN THE GARDEN OF PARROTS The bishop and the nun Are in the garden of parrots Engulfed in Extravagant voluptuousness Carmine, carthame, cerise, citrine Florid with fantastical bloom And the heavy steam scent of Cyclamen, hyacinth, frangipani, sweet alyssum, They are embarrassed by such florid glory And long for their Sombre high grey halls Their lives of cream marble and dark chiaroscuro. Yet this is only the fashion of today Valid spirit, yes, but only one side: Could you see a millennium ago Your bare cathedral Radiant with triumphal banners Lurid with the splashed outrageousness of gold and lapis Souls multi-hued and singing With the joyous recognition That truth is as much found in multiplicity As in simplicity.

thomas K E N T 97

GOOD FRIDAY AT CHRIST THE KING ON VINE STREET More genuflections than usual and more quiet in this unspectacular sidestreet church where the Catholic version still makes the best case for the yet unrisen Christian god. Here, high altars are stripped of their silks, the gilt tabernacle is open, exposing absence, painted saints mourn under purple draping; the Eternal Flame overhead in its standard red-paned lantern is out, electric votive lights at side altars are unplugged and founts drained of holy water; no incense, no organ, no bells. At 2 in the afternoon, a few devout are following The Way of the Cross, repeating prescribed prayers in quiet but steadfastly audible voices, gathering Indulgences as they pass Renaissance likenesses of their savior’s Passion unto crucifixion. It is dark and cool in the church; sound is blissfully muffled, enough to dull the urban L.A. noise 100 yards away and ease various human griefs for a while; something like the dread silence in the skies and on the streets west of New York, after 9/11 – car horns were rare, radios and tvs were turned down, all tuned to the same words and pictures; our voices were lower and kinder, we couldn’t offer our hands and cash fast enough, sharing a terrible camaraderie; we were all Americans then.

angela consolo M A N K I E W I C Z 98

MUST ARTISTS STARVE? Chandra got evicted from her studio, so I picked through her loot, feeling I was taking parts of her body to eat later at home. I scored a painting of mating skeletons on glass that I had longed for to go with a poem, and a gold lion’s head in a box frame. For my painter friend Deborah, I chose seven skulls, three skeletons, and a nun. Deborah painted the nun standing on a pile of skulls as I knew she would. I haven’t seen the work yet, but I know it’s Calvary, a pile of calvariae, or crania, like broken shells on the edge of history. Deborah and Chandra both turn detritus into beauty, but Chandra’s is power, terror, while Deborah’s is spookily lovely: seven skulls, three skeletons, and a nun. I want to be a poet, but not poor: I want to be willing to give up everything for art, but then not have to. I want to live with my lover, dine with my family, take care of my friends, own my home, have medical insurance with dental and vision. I want a car to drive to Chandra’s studio, so I can choose for my friend Deborah seven skulls, three skeletons, and a nun.

jan S T E C K E L 99

CHILD PRODIGY Child prodigy, performed for royalty at the beginning of the century 1903 Considered the wunderkind considered a gift-given always rehearsing always exciting the criticâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s darling But today He gave his Stradivarius away Gave it to the gypsies. The Romas the people with no home they made you repeat the word 'receipt'. as they gave you the e-string pulled it from the violin and cursed and laughed and played it with horse's hair and played it with singing and all the things it didn't bring for you. Now come with me to the forests of Kiev I'll show you where I buried a book about freedom. We can wait til it blossoms. Or the snow makes it forgotten but your name will live on, no fear without too much attention but still an ascension like the gypsies hired for the hay they do their best then on their way

eli S P I V A K O V S K Y 100

WHAT IS JUSTICE? I killed 50 canaries They bled rainbows spiraling downward apatite skies. It was enough to feed the village of deformed bronze children. 25 mouths The Republic left to die. Will this madness ever come to an end? Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve seen 100 newborns these past days that have not been fortunate to survive exile.

raquel R E Y E S - L O P E Z 101

A M U R D E R â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Photograph by colleen M C L A U G H L I N

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DOUBLE SUNRISE: anne morrow to charles lindbergh I think of you in the sky wings spread vast, ever-present. I, lonely moon shell on land, humming for your advancement. Knowing nothing of those other wives. Only of the words carved into island sands, singing, advancing, signaling: come down, come meet me on level ground. I thought I would fly toward you with wings soft and lonely, struggle to touch the safety of your clouds, the singularity of your flight. Seek the sameness of your breath in what came to be the fragile perfection of our double-sunrise, a soft opaque shell that housed two flawless halves bound together with one single hinge, meeting one another at every pointâ&#x20AC;Ś now nothing except an empty, forgotten world unto itself.

anne T A M M E L 103

VENETIAN NOCTURNE These stones reverb steps echoes the past dust of the future Curtains of the day fading as these walls protect & confine along the way Reflections of silhouettes upon suspended linen & lace tracings of the longing wind clouds clothes pinned to the sky Alchemical weaving dance amongst the laundry waxing & waning as the day journeys Dishes silverware clang & clash delicious aromas drift through shutters Gondolas clatter like reeds upon the narrow canals echoes heard but unseen limboâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d in a labyrinth In Venice - walking on water no miracle - merely at ease stone & brick & sweat once slush & weeds What bones & memories buried in piles & rubble St Mark arises a lotus from an archaic mire Do ancient or modern faithful tabulate the littered churches only bent in blind faith abacus burdens & crosses Stain glass light falls onto grey stones pieces of the puzzles blank as slate Geometric spiralings squares - piazzas triangles - sails circles - globes 104

Setting sun over the Guiddecca orange silver gold spill into canal waters Apparitions abound illuminated texts potent elixirs anchor in the ports Alphabetic echoes languages once spoken forgotten & lost upon the docks Across the lagoon islands glimmer galaxies far away this world consumed

terrence S Y K E S 105

DO NOT WAKE You. Sleeper. Don’t wake. Don’t wake just yet. I have business with your dreams. Yes. Your dreams are very important to me. I used to dream once too. You do not know how lucky you are, sleeper. But I shall change that. Listen. I’m going to tell you how I lost my dreams, and much else besides. How I got my name. Yes. That name they now call me in whispers. I shall tell you even how I got that. I grew up the poor son of a poorer father. I don’t remember mother. Father never spoke of her. As far as I was concerned she wasn’t real. I was alone in childhood and whiled hours away, drawing the things that burned in my mind as I slept. I saw planets no one had disturbed with the touch of their heel and creatures slumbering beyond the belt of stars. I drew them as best as I could – striving to capture the unnameable colours and all their strangeness. Father paid no mind. He had his drink. My tools were primitive then: flower dew, insect blood. Often my canvas was nothing more than shreds of leather I found. But it was not fruitless. My visions became clearer. My hand stronger. At aged thirteen my father keeled over at the dinner table and died – leaking beer. There was no funeral. Few would mourn him. His drinking partners could soon find another in their cups to lay their sorrow on. I buried him in the back garden. I even built a gravestone. From then I lived no different to how I had lived before – alone. I stole for food. But the taste of apples and bread grew sickly to me. I began nourishing myself on the rats and cockroaches nestled in our home. They were harsh on the mouth but so much more real to bite. Where all else failed, my dreams could sustain me. They had grown into hulking things that couldn’t be grappled with. Sometimes they were so vivid I would wake believing I was on the other side. They had changed too. Now it was four faces I saw. They loomed by my bedside with babe-like expressions somehow tainted with wisdom – hushing me to sleep. My paintings grew with my dreams. Many began to offer payment in exchange for my works. I had a reputation. Then, one night an especial dream came to me. I saw thirteen purple trees atop a hill of flesh, punctured with caves weeping like boils. Inside the caves, at the heart of the hill, was a door woven out of the skin of human hearts. Past this door I saw him. He is one of the four and has many names, most of which can only be formed in dreams. Some call him the end-of-things. Some call him the darkness-of-before-and-after. I call him simply Chaos. He has three eyes - dead imploded stars that still stare at the world. When he smiled at me it felt as if my heart had run to quicksilver. He said no words, but I woke with a feeling of joy. That hour I set to work on my masterpiece. When it was finished, it was a match for the dream itself – though no thing of this world can truly equal what lives beyond.

106

The king himself heard of this work, and wanted it. I obliged. I set out with the painting to the kingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s home in the country, but on the way was attacked. Robbers stripped the wagon of all its treasures - not knowing they had already trampled the only thing I valued in it. I lived because they thought me dead. I stumbled away from the wreckage after, alone in the dark in the woods. My dream in tatters. It seemed I walked for days though the sun never lifted its crown over the horizon. Eventually, I found a cave to shelter from the rains. I remember it smelt of old flesh and held an opening that led into depths. That underground woke a fear in me that was like someone elseâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s memory, ancestral, from when unnameable things crawled out from the black spaces. Our dreams recall this time but we do not speak of it. Nonetheless I followed the cavern down into its gullet, into bowels I did not know could have existed. It was cold at first, but then grew hot, as if a vein of life blood pulsed through the earth. I passed chambers made from bitter tree-roots and ruins whose pillars held up the world above. Can you imagine how deep that cavern went? Do not try. I came to a place where a spring ran. There was no light but I heard it gushing as if the soil bled. I was so thirsty I could barely stand. All was darkness and depth and heat. I shall quench my thirst. I drank. But it was not water. It was their power in that fountain. Even as its first sip touched my lips the faces from my dream appeared in the chamber with me. They all were smiling. They said: The four of us shall breathe in you. You shall become The Seed. Now, sow. I never forgot that command. I climbed from the cave and returned to the city of my birth. Men did not see me. Children sometimes thought they did. I had become the Seed, but I give you the seed now, sleeper. Yes. I give it to you and ask nothing in return. Is that not kingly? Wake now, sleeper. Come to the light of day. Come to the light of day and see how dark that truly is. See that it is without colour or substance compared to your dreams. Wake. Yes. Wake and see the four gods and know your purpose. You mutter verses. Yours will be the gift of tongues. Yours will be the black ink of the EndTimes. Wake sleeper. The gods will be with you soon.

joseph S A L E 107

WHITHER ARTâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;WAVE ???... This sound is infinite journey Ever-afloat, rising, never-failing O this is my cloudy condemned consciousness At moments dazzling echo Filling this void of existence Here and there, Leaving all at once. Most likely this much-extolled dream is doomed to be quarry of its Own unquenchable quest being Grappling with Intrinsic conflict Persisting between its Soul and body nothing but One Superabsurdity accentuating action Brooding on everything yet consoling a few, Gazing into interminable abyss of Reality Confining suffering hearts Frantic heads Vale of woe Colour-blind sidestream Barely hearing the Flutter of wings of This colourful ethereal songbird, Falling never below Off with this art for the sake of art ist.

rizwan saeed A H M E D 108

INDEX alexis rhone F A N C H E R adrian ernesto C E P E D A angel uriel P E R A L E S angela consolo M A N K I E W I C Z anne T A M M E L annette marie H Y D E R april michelle B R A T T E N b.j. B U C K L E Y barbara h. M O O R E bryan S T O R Y carl S C H A R W A T H carolyn Z I E L catfish M C D A R I S cindy W E I N S T E I N colleen M C L A U G H L I N cristina U M P F E N B A C H - S M Y T H daniel n. F L A N A G A N danny B A K E R david f. M A R S E E david M C I N T I R E debbie L E E diane D E H L E R e.l. F R E I F E L D eli S P I VAK O V S K Y emily F E R N A N D E Z faith M I N G U S felix A L V A R E Z francesca C A S T A Ă&#x2018; O gabor g. G Y U K I C S gordon H I L G E R S heidi D E N K E R S hĂŠlĂ¨ne C A R DO N A j.r. P H I L L I P S j.t. W I L L I A M S jan S T E C K E L janet S N E L L jesse M I N K E R T jonathan T A Y L OR joseph S A L E judith S K I L L M A N kevin m. H I B S H M A N leanne H U N T leila a. F O R T I E R lois michal U N G E R lynn B R O N S T E I N maja T R O C H I M C Z Y K

44, 45, 64 59 33, 75 17, 98 79, 103 25, 47 58, 95 24 93 60 56, 57 38, 62 14, 34 48 23, 102 29, 74 37 66 40 92 15, 69 78 73 100 26, 35 52 70, 88 51 21, 94 65 36 83 20 22 49, 99 28 12, 31 86 106 16, 91 28, 46 28, 30 68 61 28 80 109

marian W E B B marie L E C R I V A I N melissa S T U D D A R D michael wayne H O L L A N D micheál ó C O I N N michael F O L D E S raquel R E Y E S – L O P E Z rich F O L L E T T rick S T E P P – B O L L I N G rizwan saeed A H M E D scott c. K A E S T N E R steven H A R T M A N susan B O T I C H terrence S Y K E S thomas K E N T tomás ó C Á R T H A I G H tom P E S C A T O R E tony M A G I S T R A L E william C R A W F O R D

84 78, 82 19 55 85 42 101 13 27 87, 108 41 90 53 104 50, 96, 97 11 54 71 67, 76

For more information on these and other fine writers please visit: www.EdgarAllanPoet.com

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I SBN1 3 : 9 7 8 0 9 8 5 4 7 1 5 5 2