Fall 2010 Volume 3 Issue 1
Hard Times by Dan Lavric
Photography Editor
Associate Editor
Amy Westphal
Theresa Bruzese Editor in Chief Anne Hasenstab
The Honey Land Review is a contemporary web journal dedicated to the poetry and photography of both emerging and established artists.We embrace work that pushes the boundaries of art and creativity and applaud risk takers. HLR publishes online bi-annually and welcomes submissions from across the globe.
The Honey Land Review
All Rights Reserved
Copyright 2010/2011
Poetry Page 4 Maureen Kingston On The Bingo Card Page 6 David LaBounty Meat and Potatoes Page 8 Joanne Lowery Mishap of Wild Bird Portends Death Page 10 Sharanya Manivannan The Country In My Hair Page 12 Judith Tate O’Brien So Many Soup-Makers Page 14 Richard L. Provencher Alberta in the Raw Page 16 Barry Spacks Regarding Furniture Page 18 Elizabeth Swados Fireworks Page 20 Changming Yuan Poppies in Fall: A Parallel Poem
Photography Cover, Page 7 Page 5 Page 9 Page 11 Page 13, 17 Page 15, 21 Page 19
Dan Lavric Aaron Morell Don Baird Sally Stevens Hena Tayeb Diana Redman Eleanor Leonne Bennett
Graduate student spotlight Page 22 Page 24
Candice Wuehle University of Minnesota Contributors Biographies
Maureen Kingston On the bingo card I’m boxed in by other people’s numbers, sandwiched between my son’s fidgety bee-beeps and my senile father’s trailing ohs, a prisoner to my age, of middle-age, that airless free space between N 35 and insanity.
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Photography by Aaron Morell
and some will say loneliness is an empty glass one can fill with soft pornography and paperback novels but maybe, she says as she exhales the not so silent smoke into her end of the phone, loneliness is more like the things you’ve decided to put on your plate, not so much meat and potatoes but rather deciding to scrape your plate clean and leaving it empty, having nothing not a thing to stab with a fork not a thing to cut with a knife
David La Bounty
Meat and Potatoes
Due to the unique layout of this poem please use the zoom tool above to enlarge for reading.
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Drifting Away
Photography by Dan Lavric
Joanne Lowery Mishap of Wild Bird Portends Death Eagles, swans, cranes, crows, and tawny wrens fly bam into my window, leaving smears of bad luck. Like me, they had no idea where they were going, or else their birdbrains were busy adoring the landscape below. Simpatico, my forehead aches, my right wing dangles, and my breastbone—my breastbone will never again be the same. Glass is so different from air. The eggs weighing my belly have cracked, whites oozing. Stay away, feathered friends. Windex has cast its evil spell on my cottage. This is the only nest I have, woven of words and scraps of foil. Because you thunked and fell, an old wives’ tale may come true. No more soar and swoop, a drop of blood, the head’s awkward angle.
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Photography by Dan Baird
Sharanya Manivannan The Country In My Hair It is Singapore by the time I wash Larrakeyah country out of my hair. In Cullen Bay I had watched swarms of dragonflies and wondered which of them your son was, and what it meant that I had entered their sphere, so soon before your wedding in the flooded city. At the market, I found one with a bronze body, its tail tapered to the east, its wings angled to the west, and I knew it was for you. The country in my hair accrued from the afternoon I lay my body down in the earth and let it steep into me, like a tea. In the near distance, the voices of people under trees. In the nearer distance, the voices of the trees themselves. The one that unfanned its drapery of leaves above me had a quiet one, like the sound of droplets falling soft into water. I wash my hair and think of the Papunya Tula, rituals painted into dots, the dreamt and dreaming universe a mass of dancing circles. Everything spirals to the same centre. There was water there, and winged things, as there must be where you are.
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Photography by Sally Stevens
Judith Tate O’Brien So Many Soup Makers
- for Jane
Blest be all the makers of soup. Blest be the sky (every earthly thing’s Mother Country), where early cosmic winds whipped up a thin broth then thickened it with chunks of stars cold as uncooked potatoes— the original soup from which planets emerged. Also seas. We, too, eventually. Blest be the ancestor who discovered boiled water and turned water into broth with root or bone. Blest be the friend who carries soup to our house regular as sacrament. Bean, beef, beet, chili and chowder, corn, broccoli, chicken soup for the soul, minestrone, rice, and mushroom. Today she carries it to us in a fruit-jar chalice.
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Photography by Hena Tayeb
Richard L. Provencher Alberta in the Raw Cows are crowding the pasture with magnificent bellowing their simple life of mating cud-chewing & resting under cover of sun seasoned hides not realizing extra weight from good living will cost them, since beef cattle have unexpected endings.
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Photography by Diana Redman
Barry Spacks Regarding Furniture Furniture rises up each morning unchanged (so it seems) though lamps need new bulbs and counters where onions are diced will not last nor telephone tables hang on forever (notice that worm-track squiggle) -- oh all no matter how firm must be eaten away, our four-poster bed that’s seen six generations of sleep and sex and pillow-talk will pass at last like this very desk where I write immortal words.
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Sepia Toned Interior of Steam Train Photography by Hena Tayeb
Elizabeth Swados Fireworks How were fireworks made? Ladles dipped into the Hudson River Tossing stones skipped By crowds of young boys Lined up for centuries In front of black cameras I Turn silver over time and Boys bend over tracks, Hang their ears to rust As train tracks grow older Cogs loosening from rails The hum of vibrations still Thrilling the boys with fear The anticipation of violent iron horses lunging head first As motion gives off sparks And lights up
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Photography by Eleanor Leonne Bennett
Changming Yuan Poppies in the Fall: A Parallel Poem Each is a pair Of round lips Cut right in the middle Bleeding boldly Against the autumn wind Nothing to kiss Nothing to talk about Except some small recollections Of blood-skirted pasts Painted thickly Close to the heart
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Photography by Diana Redman
Graduate
Candice Wuehle Candice Wuehle holds a B.A. with Honors in English from the University of Iowa where she also attended the Summer Graduate Workshop for Poetry in 2010. She is currently working toward her masters degree in English Literature at the University of Minnesota with an emphasis on Romantic drama and fiction.
Spotlight Treck
I’m not the type of person who bothers with Mecca. Just as the cartographer is always the first to get lost when dropped in strange desert or rich forest, I suspect pilgrims cannot pay tribute any better when they have reached the sight and goal of said Pilgrimage. I wonder what the falcon supposes is the meaning of the Falconer’s cry. Humans, who have a thousand different ways of identifying themselves, always assume an echo of their own heart must be love; it is true that I have adored the sound of my own name. But one falcon’s feathers cannot be recognized from another’s, and so is also true of the creature’s cry. Make tracks, soul. Mecca is in the grain of the wood and the yellow light you speed through and the promise that one day you will be the cool hand not the fevered forehead and… Mecca is very beautiful and I will never see it unless I understand you can send one falcon forth and receive another back The honey land review 23
Featured Poets Elizabeth Swados
Is an award winning author ,composer; Tony nominated, Obie award winning theater artist, Guggenheim and Ford Foundation recipient, with a Pen/Faulkner citation. Her latest book, At Play-Teaching Teenagers Theater was published by Faber and Faber. Other recent publications include: My Depression (Hyperion), and The Animal Rescue Store (Scholastic). Theatrical credits span Broadway, off-Broadway, and around the world including Runaways, Missionaries and Jabu. Her poetry has appeared in Meridian Anthology, New American Writing, New York Quarterly, Emory’s Journal, Confrontation, Paterson Literary Review, Speakeasy, Barrow Street, Runes and Home Planet and has a first book of poetry,The One and Only Human Galaxy,
Richard L. Provencher
Is from Rouyn-Noranda, Quebec. His poetry combines the outdoors with contemporary issues. Richard believes writing is an adventure in a land without boarders. He has work in Hudson View, The New Quarterly, Ottawa Arts Review and others. Richard and his wife Esther live in Truro, Nova Scotia.
Judith Tate O’Brien
Judith’s latest book was a mixed-genre memoir, Crossing a Different Bridge (Mongrel Empire Press, 2010). Judith has also published three poetry collections: Everything That Is Is Connected (Village Books Press, 2007), By the Grace of Ghosts, co-authored with Jane Taylor (Village Books Press, 2005), Mythic Places (By Line Press, 2000).
Sharanya Manivannan
Is the author of Witchcraft, a book of poems. Her fiction, poetry and essays have appeared in Drunken Boat, Superstition Review, Killing the Buddha, Full of Crow, Pratilipi and elsewhere.
Featured Poets David LaBounty
David has held jobs as a miner, a mechanic, a reporter and a salesman. His writing has appeared or will soon appear in Rattle, the Los Angeles Review, Night Train, SmokeLong Quartlery, the New Plains Review, Pank and other journals. He is the author of Affluenza.
Joanne Lowery
Joanne Lowery’s poems have appeared in many literary magazines, including Birmingham Poetry Review, Eclipse, roger, and Poetry East.Her most recent collection is the chapbook Scything published by Future Cycle Press. She lives in Michigan.
Maureen Kingston
Maureen lives and works in eastern Nebraska. Her poems are forthcoming in the Blue Collar Review, Blue Earth Review, The Bicycle Review, Boston Literary Magazine, Breadcrumb Scabs, Grey Sparrow Journal, Halfway Down the Stairs, Hobble Creek Review, Pemmican, A Prairie Journal, Rose & Thorn Journal, San Pedro River Review and Tipton Poetry Journal.
Changming Yuan
Author of Chansons of a Chinaman (2009) and Politics and Poetics (2009), is a two-time Pushcart nominee who grew up in a remote village and published several books before emigrating out of China. Currently Yuan works in Vancouver and has had poetry appearing in Barrow Street, Best Canadian Poetry, London Magazine and others.
Barry Spacks
Barry earns his keep teaching writing and literature at UC Santa Barbara, California, after many years of the same at M.I.T. He’s published poems widely in journals paper and pixel, plus stories, two novels, ten poetry collections, and three CDs of selected work.
Featured Photographers Hena Tayeb
Is in her mid-twenties, married and has just celebrated the birth of her first baby. She loves to take pictures but hates to have her own taken. Hena finds joy in discovering the unusual abstracts in places you see everyday and has a special affinity for photographing hands as they tend to tell so much about a person.
Sally Stevens
Is a singer and lyricist/writer living in Studio City, California. She works in film and television music, has had six solo Fine Art Photography exhibits in the Los Angeles area, including an on-going workin-progress exhibit “FILM SCORING: Behind the Scenes”, a series of environmental portraits of film composers currently working on the scoring stages in Hollywood.
Eleanor Leonne Bennett
Is an amateur photographer and mixed media artist. She has won The Nature Detectives art contest three times, The Big Issues photography contest twice and was the only person in the United Kingdom to be placed in National Geographic’s “see the bigger picture” contest. as a result, she has her work “Bug Eyes” exhibited outside of the United Nation’s Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization HQ in Paris. She has also had exhibits in England, Wales, Hamburg, Germany, Italy Spain, theUnited States and Canada.
Featured Photographers Dan Baird
By the 1980’s Don was immersed into photography shooting everything from wild flowers to models, performers, actors and “set” stills for television. He even spent some time shooting pro rodeos. Today his work is often featured at the H Gallery in Burbank, California.
Dan Cristian Lavric
Romanian photographer with works displayed in private and public galleries,collections in Europe and U.S. such as Center for Creative Art , Denver ; Mixed Art , Alabama ; Edwards Gallery, Washington ; Art Photography Gallery , Miami ; Bishoff Art , Berlin ; Ventura Gallery , Paris ; Mozaic , Luxembourg and published to Smithsonian , Masters Of Photography, Blur Magazine, Tag Magazine, Saatchi Gallery, National Geographic, etc
Aaron Morell
Aaron Morell has shot for about twenty years in a wide variety of formats. After dabbling with digital for several years, he is 100 percent committed to film again. He shoots frequently with nature’s filters, offlenses, and old film while underexposing, pushing, pulling, and crossprocessing to find those nice surprises.
Diana Redman
Diana Redman was born in New York where she attended Queens College MFA Program. Becoming a professional athlete at a young age, she found herself living a life of constant international travel and transience. She now finds herself in Tel-Aviv Israel, trying to communicate through the language of photography, the desire to find intimacy within a country that often amplifies feelings of displacement.
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