F R A G I L E A R T S Spring 2010
FRAGILE ARTS / Spring 2010 Moongaze Publishing, Pittsburgh, PA Contact us: moongazepub@myway.com Obtain free PDF back issues at: http://fragilearts.tumblr.com All works in this issue of Fragile Arts are the copyrighted property of the creators of said works and are used by permission. Cover photo by Sid Graves This page photo by Alexander Nero
Alexander Nero
http://www.flickr.com/photos/alexander_nero http://www.redbubble.com/people/alexandernero
Charlotte Self http://bluebutterflyart.deviantart.com http://artfamilia.etsy.com http://paperstreet.etsy.com
there is a space there is a space between you- and i-ness a whirling vortex of ecstasy and pain, a place where fantasies run rampant on the front lawn, where ghosts of past lovers put fear in the hearts of men, and the fertile ground of possibilities make flowers burst in women's breasts. so call the spirits of the un-born in close to have a look, and send the spirits of the newly dead scampering for higher ground, because only with the touch, the kiss, the long embrace, does this resounding ground disappear, and the beating of the lovers heart quiets the buzzing in the others ear.
Brave Revolver Studios
http://www.cafepress.com/BraveRevolver
Prints of original paintings, photography and poetic clothing by Christina Harrington
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Edward Wells II http://www.facebook.com/pages/Edward-Wells-II/70477786302
Cat on a ledge
The body lies down a thin line of raised metal is made innocuous in sight by the fur that works its solid-drape magic. The front half of the body outside of the window, upon the ledge, in the world. The back-body inside, resting on the window's sill.
the rooster
corn tortillas and a banana are waiting I roll over and look at the clock cold night air has leaked in through cracked windows the blanket is wrapped around Me as I lay on the mattress that lies on the floor the rooster I close my eyes in the upstairs room that has no ventilation duct corn tortillas and a banana are waiting on my rolling bag I keep telling myself there is nothing to it to rise, to wait the rooster - but it does this at 2:57 PM and 7:00 AM as well as now
Setting The river stopped being a river before She began to be It is a thick lush green. I muse '...walking on...'. I'm told that when it rains for three days or more the water flows in the river. There is a rainy season here and three days is said as though it isn't a lot. This year is different though, warmer and perhaps dryer. Life is different here: the thick solid green river; for fifteen cents I can get a stack of tortillas to last the day (fresh, warm); if I get my advance tomorrow I will secure my place (one of two I have selected). I look at the breads, the people, the buildings, the sky and I try to see the culture, the collective, the past, the consciousness. I see more individuals. I see individuals, like I did in The United States, like I did in New Zealand. I can see the shaping that a construct creates. Un vaso de RĂo. I see the differences that a construct distinguishes. Un RĂo que establece. We speak in class breaking structures and words, passing something back and forth. I might say that I understand no one here, or that I understand well for lack of a common language. In no time the River has run its course. The rains will likely return and push it away; down; down south of Federal No. 57 at La Cruz, Lomo de Toro; down to nothing, or perhaps underground and further south, south of Pasa de Mata, again perhaps to nothing. We are accumulating a way of understanding.
Michael Mc Aloran
tracesthe eyes are windows of gilded flame through which no thing can be observed the unravelling pulse burst wounds where blood is the unshakeable tide the ploughed earth of the sky the heart breaks its banks upon the ashen sands echo upon echoing the transparent fingers clawing at the stars that have long left their traces behind
nullity-
limbs will crack and the blackened wind will mould the landscape (coughing up blood the garrotted lie) the smoke drifts through the fingers of the sullen whore of night broken the skyline a frugal kiss the wings stretched outwardly cannot see trace of cold fingers across a cadavers smile nullified grace in the desert air tooth of the jackal to cleft the bone to bitter fragments shadow upon shadow upon shadow upon nullity to dress meat bone it is meaningless as the sun echos the voice, to an abyss of sky that is not love
the vacant skywordless our ways sinking in the death of breath the chalice burning in the distance will usurp the breathing wind the collapsed bones of the night will shell the flesh and strip nude our laughter our tears will flee the earth the vacant sky will remain standing
hearth-
whore of the blood avaricious night a lightless hour closing the wound with stitched purpose an expanse of death slowly drawn out beating like no other tomb the heart is a burning pit of excrement sweet amoratta my fading existence the falling rain falls upon my flesh upon my tears the wounds burst beneath a sickly sky of nothingness I am fleshed I am bone I am wretched putrid ice I fling my love to the wolves, as the rains rape the earth There is laughter at the heart of the stricken void
wasteland-
the deadened chambers of the sky’s tomb the unmarked grave of the pulse drifts like glacial dead leaves where the charred throat has caught in a barbed-wire haze where the unseen hand has blossomed into frozen blood. here marks the words at the nape of the throat like a silver blade, its measuring the dead seasons of the wind; the bones race in a fury of cyclonic fission. everything must fade away, the first and the last questions have no longer any place here. the night will garrotte, and smiling its teeth will grip the flesh here where death drips like sweat from a fevered animals hide the fresh tears flooding the landscape will drive the wasteland back the hours sliding from the nudity of the flesh bitten by the scuttling silences of the unceasing winds.
Sid Graves http://www.cemeteryprints.com/
Richard Harteis http://www.vivisphere.com
All She Has "It was definitely time to put him down. He and I stared into each others' eyes as he died. He loved us. We loved him. Simple and simply enough. That's what his eyes said." Letter from Tucker on Cowboy's death
Daisy kisses everyone who comes to the door Twists again like she did last summer, takes a little excited pee, and demands a cookie as though I haven't fed her in a month. "She follows me everywhere and cries and cries if I try to leave the house without her," I complain to mother who insists I bring Daisy to the nursing home whenever I visit. "You're all she has, honey," mother explains, watering the violets I brought at Easter, now a little death valley on her windowsill. "Oh, she's blind" friends will say when they notice the cloudy stone become Daisy's right eye, hidden by a crown of fur the groomer leaves as camouflage. They're sympathetic but find it just a bit distasteful? I look into her eye as though it were a crystal ball, and the other as well, fixed on me with laser love: my present and future in the sibylline face of a little chocolate cocker spaniel. "You're all she has," Daisy tells me when it comes time to say goodbye and, yes, "We must love one another and die."
Busted at Masquamicat State Park I Late in the day, the gatekeeper waves me in, no charge, till Daisy makes a false move and smiles at him, sitting in the shotgun seat, panting. "Sorry guys, no dogs allowed. You'll get arrested." "Oh man, I'm so hot." I plead. "Won't you let us take a dip? We'll leave right away, promise." "Go to the very end," he says. "I haven't seen you. Good luck" II So, Daisy and I ghost our way up the path to the ocean like walking into a furnace or passing through the gates of hell. The air is brown with salt spray and the heat of the day. Thousands lie flattened like air crash victims as far as the horizon and disappear, ocean roar, the only sound.
III We used to roll you out in a dune buggy, yellow wheels as big as umbrellas, like a lunar modular vehicle, straw hat for a space helmet. The water was calm, blue, cool. We drank white wine and left your quad cane at the water's edge, pretended gravity didn't exist, floating in the cold skin of the globe like sea mammals disporting themselves in their blue pleasure. Angels, just hovering, just hovering. Daisy looks at me and contemplates the furious waves crashing on the shore. She agrees: Death it seems has prevailed against us once again. "Let's go home Daisy," I tell her. "We'll try again another day."
Cocktails Little "no-see-em's" like tiny devils begin to fill the night and sting us out of nowhere like guilt or memory. Daisy works the crowd for tidbits from the little feast the guest have brought: prosciuto and melon, moose pate, salmon, and cheese, and eggplant, floating on cucumber barges. She wends her way through the labyrinth of candles we've set out on the deck against the dark. "This is more like it," Daisy says. "Where did you find these guys?" I drone on like a Mourning Dove obsessive: What I did wrong, how I could have saved you. The roses the guests have brought listen with love, carefully, as do the guests. Their beauty comforts. They would console: Absolution and red redemption. The air begins to clear with the luxury of friendship and exorcism.
Des
The rain rusts even steel The pink graves of Heartaches
Accepting autumn shadows I find a moonless peace in old friends calling beyond butterfly dreams weaving strands of memory when we were still golden I do not leave those faces or forget any moments gone to chart the wind I chase that fixes the falling stars then fills the pink graves of heartaches unjust with ash
Empty cup of coffee it isn't even dawn yet where is my home in this still blue menagerie among all these places I never once thought of you know only half the story laying inside me that I take whatever is needed just to survive the wilderness of deed Removing smiles from my face I can't say anything smothering my voice without fear it hurts so much to see you all alone sitting there outside where the rain rusts even steel
Andrew Johnson
Raymond Sapienza http://www.myspace.com/raymondsapienzapoetry http://stores.lulu.com/raymond-sapienza http://alt-current.com/pp/pp_item.html#political_prisoners
after rain i like rain in sudden storm in lightning flash and thunder roar a happy one but mostly quiet afterward
it was not very warm
before birds return
but not too cold
and out come bees
as she strode down the side walk laughing talking singing to
before trees wake
her
from midday naps
self
to stretch their limbs in yawn
she was not very young but not too old
simple moments
to be smiling for
of life alone
no other
on freshly washed paths
reason than whatever it is that makes people smile when they are a lone
dress shirts i bought some dress shirts today. five of them. it took half an hour to remove the packaging which, for each shirt, consisted of approximately nine straight pins, two square feet of cardboard, a half yard of plastic, six inches of string and a fair amount of tissue paper. in total, just about as much construction material as it probably took to build the house where lives the family of the textile worker who made the shirts somewhere in Bangladesh.
back to school shopping money (a true story) i once knew a 10 year old bank robber. she and a friend, with towels around their heads and socks on their hands, gave the teller a note on a paper plate "we want $2000. we have a gun." i was with her mother when the police called. gave her a lift to the bank, but took off when the FBI showed up. didn't need a piece of that action.
Coming, Spring of 2010
Another amazing volume of poetry brought to you by Alabaster & Mercury
http://www.alabasterandmercury.com/In_Hand__Amanda_Joy.html
Gillian Prew
the perpetual eulogy
Are we colours, mother? I ask you even though for too long your eyes were blind fish swimming in the void of Once Was. Now they are still and nothing. Another year passes and we are all closer to the grave where colours don’t matter nor even Being. There is the seeping of self; no bloody conclusion but hollowmouthed atrophy, and I am every road from it.
my tongue; the sun; the cat
The pink stone of my tongue contains memory, hard and dry as a desiccated dream. All around me is the day; the lingering whimper of its birth low down to the floor where living is dangerous ...but almost all living is a risk if done properly. Outside, the sun flaps like a lost canary far from its cage, aching for the mirror and the bell. The dead are complete accomplished, say the stones by the path; a grey spectrum of dead tongues. The cat lacks philosophy overtly but is as accomplished as the dead: its tongue pleasantly rough.
love: the licking fire
The flames are keeping me sane gently. The heat is all - everything, in the arena of inscrutable fear, where night secretes silence save the smooth sound of breath and the warm whisper of the licking fire.
bird brain
accidental fool proof of an indiscreet moment embarks in its burgeoning sagacity upon the primitive creation of infinite nests spelling backward draw ing the sensational weave of word play into picture book poetics in-stall-ing browser version 3.fucked concluding hard drive fast approaching critical point? feathery and inconclusive
seen
The elements do not grieve me - nor the sun, whose keenness is thwarted by the north. All day the bulky sky a cinereous shroud which does not hide heaven and claims nothing on its behalf. The birds sit heavy on the fence. Cat crouches by a damp bush. The path consistently reaches the door but few walk on it.
even the silence is not plump
Thin day too vague to wear. Bird on the garden chair in his red jacket contains time in his little beating breast: a buttoned up bomb. Silent hours falling in white seconds all day forming a bleached buffer to clarity. The animals are sleeping somewhere while lovers trade mock saliva; their ductile tongues coiling loosely in empty ritual. It is a day of dead mothers and inherited failures. Too many faces have gone bad. Ugly is commonplace. Only thought has an arrangement of beauty, but thought has become feral. It pads through the snow in search of a morsel and a warm touch, for it remembers when it was tame enough for love; how it could work out what that meant or at least listen to its speaking. How thought has mistaken wilderness for transcendence. This illumination is only the glare of snow on eyes wishing to be happy as sunflowers not knowing that sunflowers grow and die like everything, and have little claim to happiness, unless happiness is only the fulfilment of modality. This day is too thin: its seconds are starving. Even the silence is not plump.
the difficulty of being
Almost shorn blue, her fat eye seeing all things distorted, yet thinking is not her enemy, nor memory her keeper. How she moves me; as if she is apart; as if she does not know her own mouth – as if its words are diseases; its tongue a dirty parasite. She has imagined the way ears scream when the voice grows silent and all clocks tick together: this is the difficulty of being. We are to be found among ourselves lost in the milieu of commerce and sex. All is for sale – creatures and their pale eruptions are bound to one another. They writhe mostly, for lack of staying still. Their outline is all wrong gesturing like a prayer with no direction. And if prayers work it is magic but usually coincidence. When the clocks stop there is still time. Each death is only one even if it contains the sorrow of many. Her sorrow is only one even if it contains the death of many.
can you hear me now?
Š Raymond Sapienza
Paul Tristram
Circle In The Sand She drew a circle in the sand. Someone pointed and asked “What does that mean?” She stayed silent staring at her circle in the sand. Someone else chipped in “Why don’t you answer, we’d really like to know?” She stayed silent staring at her circle in the sand. This got them argumentative, how dare she sit there in silence staring at that circle in the sand. She was removed, taken safely away from the circle in the sand that they were destroying.
It’s Like This And Will Be Again Some days it’s like a noose hanging over your head. A guillotine waiting to be unlatched. A murder of crows bastardizing your name as they bullyingly blotch the sky from you, ignorant to the suffering you’re trying to ignore. It’s like this and will be again. You don’t get used to it, it gets used to you and jabs its foot into the uncomfortable places which shine like mirrored glass within the cracks of your uncomfortable being.
A Moments Reflection Broken He sat on the embankment throwing stones at a wooden lamppost, someone phoned the police. “What are you doing?” asked an officer. He ignored him carried on throwing stones at the wooden lamppost, aiming for the upside down engraved writing two foot from the floor. “If you do not desist from what you are doing we will have to arrest you. You could have someone’s eyes out!” He sighed and stood up, walked left away from them, up the side of the bridge, down the country lane to the small granite church where they were burying her.
Sculpture by Tim Kaulen
photo Š Raymond Sapienza
Sculpture by Tim Kaulen
photo Š Raymond Sapienza
Sculpture by Tim Kaulen
photo Š Raymond Sapienza
Jim Turner AFTER THE BATTLE THE DEBRIS Of earth now, these twenty-one, drifted here by deadly tides, patiently, at supine attention, dressed right in single rank, turn to follow the turning sky. The silent pines stand watch On dark boughs the wind thrums its dirge.
Only curious flies braille that faded tracery,
No tears fall from the sun's blind eye.
reading no human history, no lore.
The warm kiss of sunlight
Nor will they read this:
nor the soft caress of shadow
Their harmless games of childhood
will quicken their blood
had but lately turned to war,
or tempt them from their post.
that rigid school of pass or fall.
Erased from their faces
Teachers now, in vacant rooms;
at last that fine calligraphy
nowhere on earth will an ear
that spelled their names.
attend their clarion silence or hear the eloquent lesson their obedient postures compose. Already the sentinel pines sprinkle upon them needles they have thrown away.
APOLOGIA FOR DRAGONS, ETC. Old songs and tales of dragons can’t be lies: have I not seen ten thousand dragonflies? And I’m sure they ran here, the unicorns, for I have a boxful of single horns, spiralled like theirs, unearthed along lost streams. So don’t tell me there was no Arthur, king of Britons. Dreaming, I have heard him sing of Camelot and Guinevere and dreams.
Barnyard Paleontology Finding in our big red rooster’s Anger Remembered slow and arrogant strut I kicked one of her tulips. the ponderous, terrible stalking Its broken stem bent double of Tyranosaurus Rex... and its blossom hung as though in pain. My God! Forget it! That was years ago. It was yellow...
Once In A While Master of dimensions, immortal musician, that boy trotted his sidewalk with a quick stick clicked a pizzicato sort of music
He is an old man now.
on a rickety picket fence.
Caught between pickets
played capricious hemidemi--
that stick was broken,
semiquavers for his lyrics,
and his music stopped. The fence,
fractions of his life,
a toy lost, a cello stolen, dead.
deaf to ticking clocks
From his tomb of flesh once
as the world to his song.
in a while, the boy looks out, holds out an empty hand. The motion is a memory. The old man smiles He has nothing else to give. They do not speak. There is nothing to say that sounds like music.
POETRY THAT SLEEPS ON SHELVES That poem, put aside for polishing, forgotten. A lifetime later, unearthed, and praised as masterpiece by scholars who seated me among the great. We do not speak of poems left behind. We look upon a world where they sleep on shelves, where the silenced voices of poets despair that nothing will ever change. Then we understand the tears
ENCOUNTER WITH A MORNING MIRROR
in one another’s eyes.
"You are an ugly brute," I told him to his face. "A surly slob," and dared, to boot, "Now put me in my place." He shrugged, without goodwill-unkempt, ill-natured, hushed-and wouldn’t meet my eye until I’d showered, shaved, and brushed.
First Night in Eden We had no name for night. For darkness we had no name, when the warmth we would call the sun failed and terror taught us to cleave
HUNGER
under the sun’s ghost.
In the village I saw you,
We listened to the storm
man walking on the moon.
screaming in that darkness,
Aiiiee! You have jumped higher
cringed from shuddering earth,
than the green grasshoppers
the air’s blinding fires.
who ate my corn and young squash vines.
Naked, we shivered in its rain,
Hush, my children,
trembled to sinister hissing
you have groaned with hunger
in the grass, stalking pawfalls,
longer than my heart can listen.
the too-close drum of hooves.
Hush! I must speak to Owl,
The storm passed.
who has flown tonight above the moon.
What need had we to count
I will ask Owl to teach us
eyes that became stars?
wings to climb this moonlight.
Morning came and the sun.
We will carry squash seed and corn
On the second night
and garden on the moon.
we began to learn patience, We wished we had given nothing a name.
Š Raymond Sapienza
the ties that bind
Š Raymond Sapienza
Š Raymond Sapienza
Wayne Russell http://www.myspace.com/thezodiacpoet
The Velvet Curtain Pt. 1
Spanish moss dripping from mighty oaks that bloom from the vagueness of obscure childhood memories Ghost haunt velvet curtained madness an Indian riddled mosaic festering deep within pseudo realms long ago forgotten forgiven brushed through and raked over
A Winter Hearts Slow Thaw
a winter hearts slow thaw dry skin on hands return to form to colour emerging from ice ridden tombs slight smell of better days to come rose riddled fragrance permeates chilled air oh dreary day and pouring rain morphing into something more star filled nights and twinkling eyes this childhood lost i'll find it again in the elongated rays of springtime innocence and sunshine a world seen through rose tinted irish eyes barbed wired tears i shall shed no more the gulf of my dreams coming into fruition for this is the age of reinvention dancing within shades of pure hope this is the sound of a hearts slow thaw
Cross Roads
The sky is crying a sad sad song anouther shot for me as the years roll by and tears flow down just passing by friends all long gone by now it's getting late and the whiskey flows
I am facing 40 and cold turkey time to venture back to my sad sad guitar my best friend the pawn shop hussy that became mine for oh so cheap
Š Raymond Sapienza
Approbations 1 —after John Coltrane’s Acknowledgement
Felino A. Soriano http://www.felinoasoriano.info/
Monday morning’s unbiased blessing:
eyes
of the millionth adaptation stretch-surplus contoured widened newness
moans of wind’s trickle, soft, blue blends among mountain’s strong-shoulder stone, unhindered. Width: fractioned wholeness: Familiarity: opened book on hands soil recalls as planting genius: Day’s apparitional advance: Monday’s gone
Tuesday’s revelation:
Rest, rest
soonest recess amongst the walking ignorant, heads in cloudiest danger
inherited congenial generational handouts, finding focus go into absence, dissipating into golden’s finding sacred wings slice with intelligent bearing: neoteric Zen’s most documented recognition.
Approbations 2 —after Miles Davis’ Stella by Starlight
White glove, sequin covering longest, most enticing brand
Touching, we embrace eye against unlocked eye
of tired touch
tempted reaches
in roaming methods finding the face of my lowest shadow.
by the ergonomic moment presented to us infrequently, fitting into the ways of us allowing dislocation from quotidian fragments we’ve wanted to dissolve, permanently.
The slow of us, the fall of moments’ into hands of ground’s vigorous basket holds and holds as our hands holding embracing chests allowing little light to enter softly, as our softest effort rests beneath the ballad of responsive silence:
music of Winter’s fabricated warmth.
Approbations 3 —after Terence Blanchard’s Dear Mom
This moment’s meandering discriminates against my emotional regard. Your gone is the vanish of my youth’s interrogated, methodological dream dashing blood of metaphor’s fear into the mouth of my lacking eloquent speech. The return of you, constantly present, for when the mask of cloudy pain deserves dismantling of proper clarity, the memory works best and legally. Of now, of now’s tomorrow shapes future’s pre-paved and determined smooth or skeleton of thought. It begins, the life of sailing sans wholeness of two, fashioning a new owner, struggling to adapt within newly made shape of distance’s laughing horizon.
Š Raymond Sapienza
Contributors Gabrielle G. also known as Alexander Nero is currently a nineteen year old female film student who is self-taught in photography,drawing,painting and writing. Her interest in film and other forms of art developed at a very young age and she is still working at getting better. She is currently in the midst of filming and directing her first film Doppleganger, a short film which she wrote herself. Her diverse upbringing from living in Japan, coming from a military family with an African, West Indies and French background has led her to explore as many possible outlets in art that she can. She is hoping to one day to be able to do more with her work such as being showcased and getting more noticed by anyone willing to look. Charlotte Self resides in Portland Oregon. She is a self taught artist working in several mediums, designing clothes, writing poetry, dabbling in photography, painting, acrylic on canvas, and making traditional (and occasionally digital) collage art. She considers herself to be a surrealist, using metaphors and odd juxtapositions to make statements about spirituality, life, and womanhood. More of Charlotte’s artwork can be found at: http://bluebutterflyart.deviantart.com http://artfamilia.etsy.com http://paperstreet.etsy.com Edward Wells II lives in Mexico and teaches English as a Foreign Language. His most recent book hawrs was published by Calliope Nerve. You can find his page on Facebook. http://www.facebook.com/pages/Edward-Wells-II/70477786302 Michael Mc Aloran was Belfast born, (1976), his family moved to the south of Ireland due to 'The Troubles'. He has travelled extensivel in Europe, living for brief spells in both Holland and Italy. He elected to study Fine Art & Design, but left after one disillusioned year. He has been writing poetry for almost a decade, but on in the year previous has begun to submit. His work has appeared/ is forthcoming @ Poetry Monthly International, The Recusant, The Delinquent, Finger Dance Festival, (U.K); Counterexample Poetics, The Plebian Rag, The Gloom Cupboard, Full of Crow, The Stray Branch, Why Vandalism?, Writing Raw, Fragile Arts Quarterly, Danse Macabre-#31, Heavy Bear, Carcinogenic, Calliope Nerve, Clockwise Cat, Origami Condom, Gutter Eloquence, amongst others...His first published book of poems, entitled 'In the Black Cadaver Light', was published by Poetry Monthly Press-(U.K-2009)...He also likes to entertain himself with paint, alcohol and cigarettes...
http://www.cemeteryprints.com Since 2007, Richard Harteis has worked as the president of the William Meredith Foundation.Richard Harteis is the author of ten books of poetry and prose, as well as a memoir entitled MARATHON published by W.W. Norton in 1989 to critical acclaim. He has been a world traveler from years spent in the Peace Corps in Tunisia in the late 1960's to a recent year as Fulbright writer-in-residence at the American University in Bulgaria. For his work in Bulgarian culture, including an anthology of poetry he edited entitled WINDOW ON THE BLACK SEA, he was made a Bulgarian citizen by Presidential decree in 1996. Mr. Harteis is a world traveler who takes a particular interest in the Arab world from living in countries such as Morocco, Egypt and Lebanon. He has worked as a health practitioner in world capitols from Beirut to Bamaco to Beijing. Mr. Harteis has taught literature and creative writing at a number of institutions over the years such as The Catholic University of America, Creighton University and Connecticut College. He has received honors and awards for his work including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the D.C. Commission on the Arts, and the Ford Foundation. His most recent publications include a novel, SAPPHIRE DAWN, a new and selected poems, PROVENCE, and the re-issue of a nonfiction work first published by W.W. Norton in 1989 entitled MARATHON. All three works are available through Vivisphere Books (www.Vivisphere.com).
Beo Wolf aka Des I am the wolf of the steppes ... tracing each night, her memory - upon the shores of my soul, where love bruises pride with tenderness. Graduate of the School of hard knocks for incorrigible reprobates and over 50 victims of fate.
Andrew Johnson lives in and photographs Alaska. Raymond Sapienza http://www.myspace.com/raymondsapienzapoetry http://stores.lulu.com/raymond-sapienza http://alt-current.com/pp/pp_item.html#political_prisoners
Currently living in Argyll, Scotland with her partner, two children and a cat, Gillian Prew ditched philosophy in favour of poetry even though the former still haunts her. She has three collections of poems and has been published at Full of Crow, Counterexample Poetics, Gutter Eloquence, Gloom Cupboard and The Glasgow Review among others.
My name's Paul Tristram, I've been writing for many years, had poetry and short stories published around the world in many publications, I'm from the UK and it's raining here.
I, Jim Turner, have been: A barefoot boy; a chopper and picker of cotton; lover of grits, biscuits and gravy, black eyed peas and pinto beans, collard greens, homemade sausage and smokehouse ham, fried chicken and rabbit; fresh-churned buttermilk and other delights; A good student; a messenger on a bicycle for a railroad; backseat driver of Navy dive bombers in WW2; so-so student at Clemson and Univ. of Missouri, BA in 1950; School teacher, cafeteria manager; newspaper reporter, city editor, managing editor; Originator/owner of small city's first bookstore; Played softball until age 56, Real estate broker; owner of used book store; private pilot; Ham radio operator; on-again off-again golfer; Somewhat of a cook and gardener; at 84, waster of what little time is left. Now I think I'm a poet.
Wayne Russell is a poet that originally hails from Florida in the USA, however now resides in New Zealand with his wife and two young children. Wayne has been writing poetry since the age of 18, and does so for both therapy and love of the art. www.myspace.com/thezodiacpoet
Felino A. Soriano (b. 1974, California), is a case manager and advocate for developmentally and physically disabled adults. He has authored 20 collections of poetry, including “Altered Aesthetics” (ungovernable press, 2009), and “Construed Implications” (erbacce-press, 2009). His poems have appeared at Calliope Nerve, Full of Crow, BlazeVOX, Metazen, Heavy Bear, and elsewhere. He edits & publishes Counterexample Poetics, www.counterexamplepoetics.com, an online journal of experimental artistry, and Differentia Press, www.differentiapress.com, dedicated to publishing e-chapbooks of experimental poetry. He is also a contributing editor for Sugar Mule, www.sugarmule.com, and consulting editor for Post: A Journal of Thought and Feeling, www.postjournalofthoughtandfeeling.com. Philosophical studies collocated with his connection to classic and avant-garde jazz explains motivation for poetic occurrences. His website explains further: www.felinoasoriano.info/.