Rem Magazine Volume 2 December 2011 by Rem Magazine

a journal of experimental writing

Volume 2 December 2011

Auckland | Aotearoa

GEIGER COUNTER

EDITOR

Orchid Tierney

SUB-EDITORS Damian Ward Hey Farhad Napibour Howie Good Michael Atkins Tim Gaze COVER ART Rosaire Appel Front: untitled, digital drawings, 2011 Rear: untitled, digital drawings, 2011

WEBSITE www.remmagazine.net EMAIL rem@remmagazine.net ÂŠ Rem Magazine December 2011 All rights to the works printed herein revert to the author or artist upon publication. No individual works may be reproduced without the written permission from the author or artist. online edition

ISSN: 1179-8696 SUBMISSIONS Rem Magazine welcomes submissions of poetry, fiction, essays, reviews and art. For a full list of guidelines, please visit the website.

REM MAGAZINE VOLUME 2 (DECEMBER 2011)

ATOM [CONTENTS] features

castle romeo [editorial] 2 dollars 6, 24, 35, 59, 61, 69, 72 fusion [one on one poet series] marco giovenale 28 isotopes [contributor bios] 74

contributors Appel, Rosaire it came & went 44 Baker, Carlyle untitled 63 Barr, Miriam it’s not me it’s you 66 Bennett, Eleanor Leonne match 17 guitar 53 warmth 68 Bennett, John M. rusty laughter soon upon the corn 42 speeding on the meat’s sword 43 Berton, Michael joan miro tapestry 25 Bucklow, John untitled 26 OH-K. 27 Cano, Valentina a hopeful morning 18 Christie, Stephanie the /ory 46 out of order 47 Dromgool, Barnaby untitled 36 Farr, Raymond fake IDs into the post-historical biker bar 38 Grindley, Carl James all these indefininte blocks 60 Guatteri, Mariangela #01 polaroid 13 #02 polaroid 21 #03 polaroid 41 #04 polaroid 58 4

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ATOM [CONTENTS] Kristina Hard reductio ad absurdum 56 Harris, Amelia lines 10 Holman, Jeffrey the departed 16 Jenson, Kristina fleet rocks 63 Margo, Matt introduction to vispo by billy collins 54 Musso, Joseph car her parents died in 70 Rapatahana, Vaughan angst 8 whetumatarau 9 Prescott-Steed, David beat for violin, no. 1 48 Sanelli, Massimo untitled 7 untitled 19 untitled 37 untitled 55 untitled 73 Sassi, Fabio elastic blue dream 64 hanging around 65 Topel, Andrew sphere 20 Vassilakis, Nico f 14 g 15 Yuan, Changming believe it or not, the 5-agent principle accounts for us all 22 steeper see-saw: another parallel poem (for john hollander) 23

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CASTLE ROMEO [EDITORIAL] 2 dollars

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MASSIMO SANNELLI untitled

virtual drawing, November 2011 REM MAGAZINE VOLUME 2 (DECEMBER 2011)

VAUGHAN RAPATAHANA

angst

gnaws nerve

ends p

u e

shameless.

anxiety. free floats perspire. leaky shower. pre-ego nails chew them selves.

spasms shards. synaptic shards. spasms spasms zombies gut-twist trudge DREAD DREAD DREAD

shards

[it hurts.]

anticipate invisible non-existents. mindâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mess scheming sickness unto death incunabula inside screaming.

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VAUGHAN RAPATAHANA

whetumatarau

the tide CRASHES

onto the couch of sand

far

beneath

this elemental mantle embedded inviolate as can

w i d e eyes

as scan.

REM MAGAZINE VOLUME 2 (DECEMBER 2011)

AMELIA HARRIS lines

he lines stretched out invisibly down the page but we knew they were there. We squished our words into spaces, funnelled them down so the letters queued one after the other teetering on the edge of the line or falling down onto another line. The words were orderly about it, they weren’t trying to jump their place, save their place, they didn’t seem to be unhappy at all that they were in a queue like this one. They stayed in their places as if they recognised that there was some destiny, as if there was some higher order that was in effect looking after them, pairing them up or organising them into groups where they could be most effective, most logical and understood, most beautiful, most looked at. None were lazy, they were only the word they were, joining things together, or being able to describe things positively or negatively, always conditional on other words around them for the meaning that they would make. Letters were the same, not really even realised what word they made up upon the invisible lines, only knowing that they looked like an e or a j, a big P or a small k. Around them other letters seemed fatter or skinnier, o looked at I, and I looked at p and they all wished for something the other had, or hoped they would become something like them, or prayed to god that they would not develop those curves or bumps. In some ways they were so busy with these things that they had no time to even realise what is was they were when they combined. They could not be blamed for the consequences of their existence. Maybe they weren’t interested in big picture thoughts anyway. They looked from left to right at each other, only seeing whoever was next and above them, entertaining themselves with each others looks as if there was nothing more they could do. The words themselves were banking up one after the other as if they were all waiting for something, as if there was something good coming that they needed to be around for, otherwise they may as well be at home. They stuck it out, forming a queue that they weren’t sure they were at the start or the end of. The words were stretching out onto the invisible lines that had been created for them. The lines were waiting for them. It was hard to say whether the words were more like an army, or something gentle. There weren’t many queues that would be this gentle and patient. Even an army would get to a point where they would need a leader, or they would need to rotate on the spot twisting a rifle one way or another, like marching girls for their team. There was no room for these movements. The words and letters were stationary, as if they were mediative, perhaps happy to be a b, or an s, or maybe they weren’t happy, maybe it was irrelevant whether they were anything in particular. Perhaps they weren’t so distinct from one another, those distinctions were us, putting the label of the letter on them. We say ‘p’ but really ‘p’ is an imperfect representation of a sound more complex, a joining of the tender lips of the human and the expelling of air out with force. Yes, it was possible to understand the whole argument of the 10

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AMELIA HARRIS significance of the letter as another stage of development in thinking and theories, which had already been thought. These thoughts were all gripping onto their own lines using their own variations, barely needing to make up new words to communicate new ideas, just rearranging the order. In same some way new words were not needed to represent old things that had been said before, so many times. The same words that were queuing here now were recently queuing in a romance novel, where words were inching to get closer and closer to the action, wanting to not only describe the action but to be part of it. Those same words were then describing obscure battles in the 2nd World War, being spoken in chats filling lines so quickly that the lines would be receding off like film credits never to be seen again. Further and further the lines went, making out their invisible invitations to words that didn’t know where they were going yet. The words were like place names, or name holders on a table. They were where they were meant to be. They were represented in sans serif, how you like, or Helvetica for modernists, there were all the art movements and all the variations in style. The invisible line would be some sort of catwalk for the best looking b, for it to dress itself up a little, take care of itself, make sure the I’s did not become b’s or B’s or P’s, let themselves go. They were different to the vocalised words that had the same meaning. The vocalised words floated off or fell, sat in memories, were forgotten, sung, yelled. These words in the lines pressed on like new roads built out into documents about which nothing was yet known. Some said that the words were lying there in place and the keyboard was like a magic marker that swept across the page revealing the truths that were lurking there to those who could be bothered to make a quick search. It didn’t take much to find more words lurking on lines beneath the lines already completely filled up with words. They were shameless in their occupancy. They weren’t propelling others into position, shuffling over to make room for newcomers in the lecture theatre, neither were they hogging seats on the bus, sitting somewhere where they shouldn’t, sitting when they should stand. It was all very logical, the more you thought about it the more rewarding it became because the logic wanted to be revealed. The sentences each had a kind of semi ruler that would be the capital letter. Every sentence would acknowledge this ruler. Different letters having a turn. None of them doing better or worse than any other letter. Everyone was doing great. It was a kind of triumph. The new sentences were all lying there just out of sight, distinctly there as something specific, depending on a few other little details. They were waiting for the dust to be pushed from their forms, for the cloth to be lifted from their bodies. For it all to be revealed, for the hiding to be found and the unseen seen, for the mysteries to be deduced in the moment, for the futility of it in the big sense, but the utility of it in the short term. We would die and the letters would live on. We did it for the finding out and the probing, the flat out discovery of it, the persistence of REM MAGAZINE VOLUME 2 (DECEMBER 2011)

AMELIA HARRIS being confronted by the thing that looks the same every time but always reveals itself as something different. Those invisible lines are stretching out further. We have come to some peace, some settlement over this activity. We play the seekers while they play the hiders. ‘More’, look I just found ‘more’ back there, urging me on further into all the lines that are below these. They are going on into infinity. Longer than all our lives, more substantial, with more meaning, success, feeling, tragedy, love, feasting, poverty, wealth, crises, with more faith in whatever they have faith in. It is the human attempt, the humble human attempt to uncover a few more lines, to mine or to dust, to polish or to sail forth along the bottomless and infinite seeming horizons, always heading east along the lines, then south, on pages circumnavigating the pages that always seems so simple and clear, sailing the boat that won’t sail on its own on invisible oceans that are always threatening to wash away the end further and further away from your eyes and fingers.

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MARIANGELA GUATTERI #01 polaroid

digital (from drawing and photomanipulation), 2011 REM MAGAZINE VOLUME 2 (DECEMBER 2011)

NICO VASSILAKIS

mobile phone art, 2011 14

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NICO VASSILAKIS g

mobile phone art, 2011 REM MAGAZINE VOLUME 2 (DECEMBER 2011)

JEFFREY HOLMAN

the departed

there are bullet holes in the silence of certain selected homes black and white photographs of departed kamikaze grief for them is hidden deep you cannot see it from the street not even in the cries of the crows is it possible to trace that sound only perhaps in this old woman who passes bent beneath a protein deficiency in her bones shined hollow by a life of rice and fish in one house in particular there will be a portrait of the old emperor and in another wrapped in cloth behind the shrine a ceremonial sword its golden sakura blossoms disguising the blade asleep within the scabbard there are certainly sword strokes and sobbing deep in the night but impossible to tell from where they come

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ELEANOR LEONNE BENNETT match

photograph, 2011 REM MAGAZINE VOLUME 2 (DECEMBER 2011)

VALENTINA CANO a hopeful morning

Sandbags seem to block my view. I struggle to part the tan bundles, pushing the churn of grains, but nothing shifts. With a pull, I slice into them. My hand is covered in seeds that will never bloom, in pieces of stuffing that will never fill anything again. I let out a scream, like opening a gate, horses made of anger and fear pouring out to maim with hooves of sound. I raise a handful of spilled sand. Let it twist to the sky once, then slam it down

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MASSIMO SANNELLI untitled

virtual drawing, 2011 REM MAGAZINE VOLUME 2 (DECEMBER 2011)

ANDREW TOPEL

sphere

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MARIANGELA GUATTERI #02 polaroid

digital (from drawing and photomanipulation), 2011 REM MAGAZINE VOLUME 2 (DECEMBER 2011)

CHANGMING YUAN

believe it or not, the 5-agent principle accounts for us all 1 Metal (born in a year ending in 0 or 1) -helps water but hinders wood; helped by earth but hindered by fire he used to be totally dull-colored because he came from the earthâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s inside now he has become a super-conductor for cold words, hot pictures and light itself all being transmitted through his throat 2 Water (born in a year ending in 2 or 3) -helps wood but hinders fire; helped by metal but hindered by earth with her transparent tenderness coded with colorless violence she is always ready to support or sink the powerful boat sailing south 3 Wood (born in a year ending 4 or 5) -helps fire but hinders earth; helped by water but hindered by metal rings in rings have been opened or broken like echoes that roll from home to home each containing fragments of green trying to tell their tales from the forestâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s depths 4 Fire (born in a year ending 6 or 7) -helps earth but hinders metal; helped by wood but hindered by water your soft power bursting from your ribcage as enthusiastic as a phoenix is supposed to be when you fly your lipless kisses you reach out your hearts until they are all broken 5 Earth (born in a year ending in 8 or 9) -helps metal but hinders water; helped by fire but hindered by wood i think not; therefore, I am not what I am, but I have a color the skin my heart wears inside out tattooed intricately with footprints of history

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CHANGMING YUAN

steeper see-saw: another parallel poem (for john hollander)

The higher the income, the lower the morals The taller the building, the shorter the attention span The bigger the house, the smaller the family The more wealth, the less joy The more conveniences, the less leisure The more knowledge, the less judgment The more medicine, the less health The more protection, the less security The faster the transportation, the slower the communication The closer the network, the looser the relationships The cleaner the environment, the dirtier the mind The wider the highway, the narrower the perspective

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MICHAEL BERTON

joan miro tapestry

Barcelona fractures births

Catalan poetry g anarchy a m

children yelling shit uncle s h i t

fairytales in Parc Guell

firing squads for civil war angels

Barrio Chino sex trade dancing in alleys trolley accident architect’s slumber

chaotic forms r u s h by the snapping lens catching dust in the eye finger rubbing (‘ ‘) la S A G R A D A F A M I L I A s p i r e s nod ding under dreams landscaping a little pleasure u a circling past t i tense o p b

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JOHN BUCKLOW

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JOHN BUCKLOW OH-K

Oh, Kitty, Oh, K. Oh Dorothy. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes yes yes - Yes? What? Are you there Like On the wall Like Mirror Mirror? Well, Kelvin actually. So who is the coolest of them all Kel-vin? Molly Kool. And you are? I am your Vietnam Vet, Honey, Kelvin Nguyen Huỏng Phuong. USMC, ARVN? B.V.Sc actually. And Dorothy, Molly Kool was here after KitKat. “She’s my racemate” she said. ‘KitKat doesn’t care If you’re right Or left handed’, I said. ‘But you can’t go imposing yourself on her Just for the fun of it.’ And like little Audrey We just laughed and laughed and laughed.

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FUSION [ONE ON ONE POET SERIES] marco giovenale

semic scripts are uncontested discursive commentaries about the nature of art and representation. Whether they serve as aesthetic challenges to contemporary natural languages is moot but as forms of unknown writing systems, they shimmer their recognition with cultural influences. In this interview, Marco Giovenale talks to Rem Magazine about the writers who have informed his creative output. Marco is an editor, translator and poet from Rome, Italy. With his work ranging from linear English forms to asemic script, he has widely published on- and offline, in Italy and abroad. His publications include Gunless Tea (Dusie 2007), A Criterion Of Glass (Oedipus 2007) and Shelter (Donzelli, 2010). Marco’s asemic work are intuitive fragments, suggestive of hidden languages and beautiful secrets; invisible cultures are conversing with us through the computer screen.

Tell me about your background. Why did you start writing? I have to say that it was not quite possible for me not to write. I started in the early ‘80s as a student. By the time I went to the university in 1987 I had already covered hundreds of sheets with TSEliotized (-izing) verses. I soon learned (at the time and thereafter, in the ‘90s) that there was a whole world - or a bunch of worlds - outside of the intriguing linear writing planet. I discovered drawing and visual writing too, and asemic writing, which is one of my main activities in the recent years (together with some kind of new brut-drawings with which I’m dealing). But I walk on different ropes at the same time, bringing on different experiments: linear, verbovisual, photographic, asemic, absurdist ones, and nonverbal and verbal installations. Going back to the roots, as a reader, I started wandering through the books of Borges and Cortàzar at first. They have been the very first powerful engines for my imagination. I felt some kind of brotherhood to their twisted super-surreal chaosmos stories. I presume that their pages are still at the foreground of most of my drawings too. As a linear poet, I owe(d) much more than I can express to TSE, as I said, and to Eugenio Montale and Amelia Rosselli too. The masters or fathers and mothers must be deeply ‘absorbed’, to be read and to be consciously put aside and that is what I think I did. So my linear poems in Italian are quite different now from the ones I wrote in the ‘‘90s when I was sometimes no more than a guileless follower of some (neo-Modernist?) path.

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MARCO GIOVENALE My first ‘real’ collection of texts is Curvature, a book of experimental poems with photos by Francesca Vitale. (I like the fact that my first book is not entirely mine: it is a collaborative one). As for the English (& rusty or mad) side of my brain - as an English scribbler - I prefer not to consider my things as ‘poems’: they are proses and strange experiments. Mostly. I’ve experimented every style and genre (in Italian and English) except for the novel. I don’t love that kind of predator. Novels kill many other (nonmainstream) écritures, and I stand on the side of the victims, not with the wolves. Where do you fit yourself in contemporary experimental composition? As an Italian writer, —in poetry— I find myself in a position that I would describe as an attempt to stand on one of the further points of a polygon of forces made once (and now) by the experimental works of Balestrini, Mesa, Cagnone, Zanzotto and Rosselli. It is a peculiar, fragmented constellation of experimental writing which on one side deals with the tragic and not-unspeakable signs of life (in some kind of post-Beckett perspective) and, on the other, does not forget the deranging strength of the formal innovations of the past century, with all its dead ends and lively tricks. My (not so many) English poems try to translate this binary unit, this paradox. On the other hand, I can say about some of my Italian prose and the whole (prolific) production of my English prose, that my mind seems to work like a switcher between the bright shadows of the post-poetry kind of “prose en prose” one can find in Jean-Marie Gleize, and the long path of the cut-up strategies starting from Gysin/Burroughs up to the “sought poetry” of K.S. Mohammad. It is a line that —for me— crosses the lands of Balestrini again (the work Tristano), langpo, conceptual writing (K. Goldsmith), installation texts (J. Leftwich, J.-P. Kervinen, P. Ganick), and many other power stations. I want to mention also the experiments one cannot put under a specific and strictly defined label such as the important (and crucial for me) works of Laura Moriarty, Kate Greenstreet, Jennifer Scappettone. All that I have said seems to have nothing to do with asemic writing. But I think it’s not true. I leave the reader to uncover the links.

REM MAGAZINE VOLUME 2 (DECEMBER 2011)

MARCO GIOVENALE Tell me how you approach your work. What kicks off the writing? Do you know where the work will end up? I can’t say what kicks off a new line or work. I’ve never been capable of focusing on one context or ‘cause’ as the very sparkle for the birth of a new piece. As an asemic writer, I have two main ‘styles’: the almost ‘calligraphic’ one I developed drawriting my asemic sibyls (http://www.nazioneindiana.com/2008/11/19/ sibille-asemantiche/) and the one made by glyphs [see pages 32-34 - Ed]. In both cases, there is not a moment when I can say a text/drawing is ‘done’, accomplished. It occurs to me to pick up an old complex work —or a simple scribble— and to add some lines I find strictly indispensable at the moment. In digitally editing some drawritings, I can also erase lines and fragments, for the same reason. To me, the asemic writing is a strange medium between an aesthetically balanced drawing (full of some kind of nonverbal ‘ripeness’/wholeness of ‘sense’) on one side, and a challenging page of indecipherable yet urgent demi-words on the other. It has to express —in my opinion— both the sides at its best. When it does not work like that, it is because it is falling on only one of the two sides or into pitch black. (Note that: the falling is not necessarily a failing). At the same time, I am constantly attracted by the pure-drawing area of some “art-brut-like works” that I draw (filling them sometimes with glyphs too). So there are pages I work on which resemble the explanation plates of a mad encyclopaedia. (Yes, I know Luigi Serafini and his Codex). But even when the drawings are ‘glyphless’, and they can not count on the writings and scribbles, I feel that there is some kind of (unexpressed) link in them to an asemic state of mind. I mean, some of them may fall into the gravitational field of what I can call ‘action drawing’ (we know the good old action painting: an asemic process in writing may be seen or felt as similar). Here’s a video on a notebook I wrote recently: http://exixtere.blogspot.com/2011/12/action-writing-book-1.html. Here are some pages from interesting works by Peter Ganick and Jim Leftwich: they often express perfectly, it’s my opinion, what one can call action writing: http://www.flickr.com/photos/textimagepoetry/6428052305/in/photostream, http://www.flickr.com/photos/textimagepoetry/6398457879/in/photostream.

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MARCO GIOVENALE Do you perceive your work as Italian? European or Transnational? Well...interesting question. If I think of all of work that I have done and that I am doing, I can say that I am Italian as a linear poet, maybe I am Itenglish (Italian+English!) or stateless as a writer of short proses, and —of course— definitely a citizen of the world(!) as a drawriter or (?)artist. The thing I dislike in the word “artist” is its presumption of what is made under this label still has to keep in itself some kind of holy aura. Neither Baudelaire and Benjamin could not change that fact nor can the world wide web. I feel that some of my interventions and installations try to go further in some kind of everyday/everyone’s territory (and I tried to invent a new practice called “installance”, in order to plain and show that). A non-place ruled by the faint laws of perception and ‘sense’. Under this perspective, all the collaborative works, all the swapped pieces, all the new and old mail art events, all the little or big independent exhibitions, all the free festivals (Dirk Vekeman’s Klebnikov Carnaval, or Jim Leftwich’s Roanoke collaborative fests) bring on a different idea of art (and society), an idea which is immensely, radically different and far from the official glossy rotten art market (almost completely fed with recycled money from mafia and cocaine investors). Free and independent projects, sites and mags, and friendships among new artists, and their results, have a meaning for themselves and the communities they enrich. They feed the context of THE human transmission of shared (new) values, rather than a strictly economic ‘price’, valuation etcetera. In this, they/we are often helped by the very means in use: low-res technology, mail art, e-mail art, handwritten booklets, simple asemic sheets pinned on the wall, collages, découpages, assemblages of poor stuff & materials, photocopies, micro-zines, DIY presses and projects, web posts made of bad pictures and cell shots, etcetera. It is a never ending merzbau of meaningfulness. Or, to steal Jim Leftwich’s bright expression, a pan-semic playhouse. That said, I know this is utopia, but since it is already real, I think I can say I proudly belong to it. (And I like it, of course). To view more of Marco’s work, please visit his web projects: http://slowforward.wordpress.com/ http://gammm.org/ http://differx.blogspot.com/

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MARCO GIOVENALE asemic sibyl 3873

ink on paper & other materials, digital manipulation, 2011 32

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MARCO GIOVENALE asemic sibyl 4001

ink on paper & other materials, digital manipulation, 2011 REM MAGAZINE VOLUME 2 (DECEMBER 2011)

MARCO GIOVENALE asemic sibyl 4002

ink on paper & other materials, digital manipulation, 2011 34

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BARNABY DROMGOOL untitled

I turn up to the open mic in time to hear two ridiculous hipsters singing love songs by other people to other people which they say is their gimmick and so it is their gimmick and they are lovely and very sweet, really and I am ashamed of my cynicism and James Brown slithers into my head, saying that the contemporary voice of New Zealand poetry is talky and laconic and polite and witty and quietly insightful and the performance of the person who gets up next is transformational but I no longer wish to speak plainly to it I will write about this event from the perspective of a chair a square of carpet in flag semaphore using words that remind one more of an experimental dance film than anything else an anti-poem, I should say which blandly states a series of facts and ends up coming across as laconic, ironically and so suddenly my world is dismally pregnant with James Brown declaiming things about our lack of any kind of relationship whatsoever in a language I understand very well as I fall back before his advance, arms flailing into a landscape dominated by any of a class of crystalline metamorphic rocks whose constituent mineral grains have a more or less parallel or foliated arrangement

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MASSIMO SANNELLI untitled

virtual drawing, November 2011 REM MAGAZINE VOLUME 2 (DECEMBER 2011)

RAYMOND FARR

fake IDs into the post-historical biker bar The fourth uphill is a posit of conundrums loading poetry full up with candy Uzzis. & solving for x unwinding a spool we scat propaganda to squeamish Pirandello looking up gerunds we wish we had written. * The crickets of doom go wild at bake sales. The crickets of doom are Chapstick. * This one long night seems eternally grape jelly as Kafka acts broccoli for mustachioed Kurt Vonnegut. * “Jouissance is a nuisance” is never what you think a girl will say. But rather “I am like like the endangered arctic virginia woolf.” * 38

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RAYMOND FARR Y Gassett must answer the egging on of Providence via meaningless sexâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; his big toe a stalk of Red Guard. The mannequins refute him (as anyone would) & this & deathâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s pearl-diving she-hawk in something like a photograph. * A bike is a spoke in a flounder of wonder adores / betrays beyond the possible countryside. & Ma Barker drunk. In a way, no one had ever dreamed of it. * A white Betty Crocker waddles thru graveyards making a poem. Her gaunt little women set rubble on wheels & sweep up the history.

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RAYMOND FARR Her face is a theory dissembles a pie chart dominates with parlor tricks. * & every morning of Psyche’s life as one) a post-historical Anglo or two) a lobster Her violin’s a cake with soul of patent leather.

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MARIANGELA GUATTERI #03 polaroid

digital (from drawing and photomanipulation), 2011 REM MAGAZINE VOLUME 2 (DECEMBER 2011)

JOHN M. BENNETT

rusty laughter soon upon the corn

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JOHN M. BENNETT

speeding on the meat’s sword

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ROSAIRE APPEL it came & went

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ROSAIRE APPEL

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STEPHANIE CHRISTIE the /ory

Form your fingers into a steeple. Think of the one you’ve loved the most so far though who you were as a kid or even just last week is different enough for this to not make sense if only you knew it. Now, put your palms on the floor. Feel the cool and the heat as you regulate your temperature without knowing it. Do you know the names of your grandmothers’ fathers? Do you know where you left your keys? Rehearse, rehearse. Make your marks. On ya. Where did cynicism get you? Where has liberation brought me? What has the floating dollar bought us? I like your shoes. The Rugby World Cup has come home. Please enter into the agreement. It’s a relief to complain, it’s like rain holding us in place, which permits rest. Howl to be heard on the internet as a curiosity far enough away to be praised. The mind’s hungry. It looks for colour and sees music and drinks data late in the evening. It blows me away. It blows me away. Imagine a dull grey gun in a hurricane. But I mean, it amazes me beyond what I can even conceive when I’m able to think about it this rolling minute that each of us lives through so intent and so oblivious. 46

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STEPHANIE CHRISTIE

out of order

These lines are This is my very best dystopic mess. Hold the note while it devalues. We concentrate on deformity on the crass curiosities of decay disfigurement, distortion, chaos. The squalor in your spirit is carelessly tended, which accelerates your character development. The fingertips are gender positions. Some genes persist by lucky powers and chance and well, here you are. Don’t fall for your own charisma - but you have, you have to. The work convinces me of its necessity like a palm to the cheek, either fast or soft depending on how well I’m learning. Precious, ornate terrors await those without real ones. Nobody is starving in our street. Ennui sets the youth reeling. Metaphors attack you in your sleep and you wake thick tongued and blinded with belligerent meanings. All the drugs, the super cool kids on the run from their family mansions make themselves available to the concrete art. The illness, receding, leaves our eyes bright. The world is awash in wasted brilliance. How crazy were we to think this mode of transport would be effective? You’ve finally been imperfected. Anything that gets made in passion stays in the current second, keeps getting invented as long as we both shall live. What I miss most is your early work.

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DAVID PRESCOTT-STEED beat for violin, no. 1

REM MAGAZINE VOLUME 2 (DECEMBER 2011)

DAVID PRESCOTT-STEED

REM MAGAZINE VOLUME 2 (DECEMBER 2011)

DAVID PRESCOTT-STEED

REM MAGAZINE VOLUME 2 (DECEMBER 2011)

DAVID PRESCOTT-STEED

REM MAGAZINE VOLUME 2 (DECEMBER 2011)

DAVID PRESCOTT-STEED

REM MAGAZINE VOLUME 2 (DECEMBER 2011)

ELEANOR LEONNE BENNETT guitar

photograph, 2011 REM MAGAZINE VOLUME 2 (DECEMBER 2011)

MATT MARGO

introduction to vispo by billy collins

REM MAGAZINE VOLUME 2 (DECEMBER 2011)

MASSIMO SANNELLI

untitled

virtual drawing, 2011 REM MAGAZINE VOLUME 2 (DECEMBER 2011)

KRISTINA HARD reductio ad absurdum I am Not good, At this All-not-good idea. It was as if in tongue. I made attempts in trial to be understanding as necessary. It was half past four, I recall, when I became cohesive with it. Here is the base for nonsensical sincerity. I am a writer, signifying procedure¬--where am I thinking out my short design for the paper? Under, inside, outside, over. The old in-the-fashion way of writing proper. We are proud of our history, the ripe years of youth to the green sparkling knowledge of the world. The old looking glass, established into new shiny freedom, or dust, power over us, either awakening under some noisy command, or crushing, reversing its true effect. I of course speak memory, these words say re-mem-ber… The peach tree. The paper is wet with blue, drenched, light, like peaches remembered. That is a declaration, of the incomplete past. A sorted ordered chaos. Others do it, I am following the little imitator, sincere in nonsense yet not wise, I find definite challenge, in the on open chaotic out literary reigned modern age. An analytic field day dream. Can she hear herself over the open doors in her poems, in the back and forth? If interpretation is a small freedom belonging not to the writer, the writer has unlocked the jail, words with endless meaning and interpretation. No solidified end enables chaos, the good kind, and with it comes the consequences, a series of opportunities for connotation, denotation and liberation. Close Closure Closet Bar Shut Stop End. I am looking for natural satisfaction in syntax. It makes me nervous to know that with closure there is no future. To mimic life is to suspend potential syntactic energy. How do we relate to looking glass reality? Interpretation is always coloured by context and culture, it is acutely painfully individual. I am a result of my circumstances, sometimes I want to tip cold glasses of water over people’s heads. The very possibility the very real potential gives rise to, and allows an infinite number of attempts to explore manifestations of alternative realities. The rejection of closure means the embrace of nature. An ordered chaos that mimics reality, a declaration LOUD!, says conscious. 56

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KRISTINA HARD ‘And all the King’s horses and all the King’s men’ Stand against this wall, this static frame of grammar, put together and filled with the highest form of nonsense. ‘Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall Humpty Dumpty had a great fall’. Bind, join, fuse, connect, attach, secure, tie, fasten, fix, link, put back back together again. Games, a paratactic puzzle, sentence compound, sentence simple, sentence complex. Rhetorical question, serious statement, affective flashback. Our weapon, is white. And found at any good stationary store, the way the puzzle fits, the way the glue sticks. The looking glass is broken. Smash a mirror, seven years. Shards show content. Put it together it’s a china egg. Unusual occurrence, a happening that’s unexpected. They can

they can put back.

Where is the freedom in totally comprehending what you read? Cat means Cat, Ocelot means Cat. Moving forward, moving on. It is impossible without i n co m pre hens i on –I mean to say learning would be stunted without a motivation to comprehend. Poetry gives rise to the tools of the imagination, infinite aspects of interpretation, we’re pushed off the wall. Find a congregative narrative here. The poet has the candy box and is handing out freedom flavoured lollipops. Motivation to create comprehension allows flexibility. What is it? It is a star. We are manipulated into activity by the paratactic absurdity of the text. Language is alive, an active energy, impassive matter. Potentialise! Participate! Inspect a small section of the infinite possibilities. Get your seven years.

REM MAGAZINE VOLUME 2 (DECEMBER 2011)

MARIANGELA GUATTERI #04 polaroid

digital (from drawing and photomanipulation), 2011 58

REM MAGAZINE VOLUME 2 (DECEMBER 2011)

CARL JAMES GRINDLEY

all these indefinite blocks

Smack at the mind with breeding strokes, Like a cheap typewriter going Clack clack clack, but only when it wants to. This is a bunch of martyrs, Hanging onto assorted white trash viewpoints, Even though they have been robbed regularly for years, Trading their bones for a little hard cash. So how did you do at your life? Did it turn out okay like you thought, Or are you sort of alone, A little tired of waiting for your latest Virgin Mary To pop up and say boo. Or maybe your brains are a little dull now, Irregular and without expression. Perhaps you stare at the latest lump on the sofa, And ask yourself what happened, Where we went, and when and why We both ended up freed and forgotten and gone: I can only guess how it will all end.

REM MAGAZINE VOLUME 2 (DECEMBER 2011)

CARLYLE BAKER untitled

pen-ink, pencil crayon, water colour, digital manipulation, 2010-2011 62

REM MAGAZINE VOLUME 2 (DECEMBER 2011)

KRISTINA JENSEN fleet rocks

We tried to catch the Fleet Rocks today but they were too vast and fast, subtle and sincere for any shutter eye or digital dial. A stunning scene of rock and sea mist layering itself upon our human eyes: through the camera, the flatness gave nothing to hold on to.

REM MAGAZINE VOLUME 2 (DECEMBER 2011)

FABIO SASSI elastic blue dream

spray acrylic, 2011 64

REM MAGAZINE VOLUME 2 (DECEMBER 2011)

FABIO SASSI

hanging around

spray acrylic, 2011 REM MAGAZINE VOLUME 2 (DECEMBER 2011)

MIRIAM BARR it’s not me it’s you

sometimes this is still a habitat i don’t want to live in this world earthed place of breaking whole selves this world of inconspicuous control consumption this time where shallow material image drives hidden sadness i am wanting too needing connections one

REM MAGAZINE VOLUME 2 (DECEMBER 2011)

MIRIAM BARR freedom living rhythm singing I AM reflections on deepest reservoir surfaces

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ELEANOR LEONNE BENNETT warmth

photograph, 2011 68

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JOSEPH MUSSO car her parents died in

he Plymouth half in the tide half out. Wilma behind wheel cigarette blank stare. Miles and miles of water. Next to her, I. What I wish. But nothing can. Can change or re-arrange certain facts, history, blunt force trauma. A memory, a cave in of the heart. Sinking into the Purgatory Memory where nothing changes but only repeats the worst that has ever. Next to her, I. Happened, over and over. Windshield’s glass shattered but held together still, in hundreds of tiny shapes, each different. That one, Wilma motions. That one’s my mother’s. In front of you. This one in front of me my father’s. See the indentation of his head bigger than the indentation of hers. He was driving. She was talking probably. Or they weren’t saying anything. I don’t remember. I think I was sleeping or practicing being dead. Wilma, she. Tick. While, I. Fingers the glass where father’s head hit. Tock. Fail at trying to. She traces gentle. Wave comes up over hood stops just at, water only trickles into front seats hits my knee small puddle at feet. Smoke blows out, her mouth makes the movement, and then a push from lungs. Seagulls eat cigarette smoke. Seagulls their bellies fill up fast on. While, I, my hands, one the minute, the other the second. Their bellies fill up fast on Time. My clock-face cringes. Mother was petite Look at her small head the indentation hardly, but enough to, blunt force trauma. Wave another comes up over hood and into laps, a little. Puddle on floor more now. She traces her finger along cracks in windshield. Stops. Look she says This one is the day they first met. You can tell by the shape of the cracks how it forms not exactly a square and not exactly a circle, and in the middle two tiny nicks. Traces her history. The jagged edges of personal history. Blood appears, a little, a cut, and glass smeared, runs. Continues running her finger, and stops.

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JOSEPH MUSSO There. The largest piece. The day they got married. Traces, and here. When my brother was born, and when he died, this little part, see? And here, this one, this sliver, thin, nearly unnoticeable, barely there in the world. That one is me. Hiding out in, under the cover of. Bigger events. More tragic lives. Noisier episodes. I like it when buildings collapse around me I can hide from the rescuers in the rubble. Wave and then wave water up to knees cool & suds. Cigarette pass she whispers words I smoke stare out. Her finger replaced, her whole hand on father now, palm to glass, to indentation, the last place his head, the place where, her entire idea of daughter, of dead parents. I she says Think it was necessary for them to die together. One at a time would have been impossible for both of them. Live together die together. Why the fuck not.

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MASSIMO SANNELLI untitled

virtual drawing, November 2011 REM MAGAZINE VOLUME 2 (DECEMBER 2011)

ISOTOPES [CONTRIBUTORS] Amelia Harris (1980) is a writer and filmmaker working between Auckland and Moscow. She has worked for, exhibited or curated shows for many organisations including The NZ Film Archive, The Auckland City Council, The Eclective, George Fraser Gallery & St Paul Street. Her writing has previously been published in Landfall. Andrew Topel is the editor & publisher of avantacular press. Visit the on-line catalog at – http://avantacular-press.blogspot.com/. Also, he has been known to be brief. Barnaby Dromgool has lived in Wellington nearly his whole life and has been writing poetry since he was fourteen. He’s hoping that if he works hard on it for another twenty years he might even marginally improve. To infinity and beyond. When Barnaby is not squandering his life reading and scribbling he likes to get punched in the head, collect urban detritus, and take sneaky photos of strangers in the street. Know him before you judge him. Carl James Grindley grew up on an island off the West Coast of Canada, and studied in the U.S. and Europe. He has taught creative writing at Yale University, and works at The City University of New York. His book Icon was published in 2008 by No Record Press. He has recent work in Anatomy and Etymology, Apocrypha & Abstractions, Anemone Sidecar, A Bad Penny Review, Atticus Review and The Nervous Breakdown. Grindley is a founding editor of The South Bronx Review. Carlyle Baker explores signs, symbols and letterforms. His work has appeared in various art/literary journals such as The Otoliths, word for/word and The Bleed. Changming Yuan, (co-)author of Chansons of a Chinaman (2009) and Three Poets (2011) as well as a 3-time Pushcart nominee who published several monographs before emigrating out of China, teaches independently in Vancouver and has poetry appearing in Barrow Street, Best Canadian Poetry, BestNewPoemsOnline, Cha, London Magazine, Otoliths, Poetry Kanto, Salzburg Review, Taj Mahal Review and nearly 400 other journals/anthologies in 17 countries. David Prescott-Steed resides in Melbourne, Australia, teaching art history and theory at Monash University as well as at the Australian Academy of Design. He is active in a range of artistic forms including improvised music (guitar and violin), photography, and writing (academic and creative). This experimental piece, titled “Beat For Violin, No. 1”, has been extracted from a larger work that has been generated by way of opening a wave file in a word processor—intended to test and explore the intersection of experimental writing and experimental music. It marks an attempt to push the limits of translation between these two modes of expression. 74

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ISOTOPES [CONTRIBUTORS] Eleanor Leonne Bennett is a 15 year old photographer and artist who has won contests with National Geographic,The Woodland Trust, The World Photography Organisation, Winstons Wish, Papworth Trust, Mencap, Big Issue, Wrexham science , Fennel and Fern and Nature’s Best Photography. She has had her photographs published in exhibitions and magazines across the world including the Guardian, RSPB Birds , RSPB Bird Life, Dot Dot Dash, Alabama Coast, Alabama Seaport and NG Kids Magazine (the most popular kids magazine in the world). She was also the only person from the U.K. to have her work displayed in the National Geographic and Airbus run See The Bigger Picture global exhibition tour with the United Nations International Year Of Biodiversity 2010.Only visual artist published in the Taj Mahal Review June 2011. Youngest artist to be displayed in Charnwood Art’s Vision 09 Exhibition and New Mill’s Artlounge Dark Colours Exhibition. Fabio Sassi is a visual artist, making acrylics with stencil on canvas, board, old vinyl records or other media. He uses logos, icons, tiny objects and shades to create weird perspectives. Many of his subjects are inspired by real or imaginery paradoxes. He lives in Bologna, Italy. www.coroflot.com/fabiosassi Jeffrey Paparoa writes poetry,and non-fiction. He is a Senior Adjunct Fellow at the University of Canterbury, and currently Writer-in-Residence at the University of Waikato, where he is writing a memoir and a poetry collection. His most recent book of poetry is Fly Boy (Steele Roberts, 2010); his history of Elsdon Best and Tutakangahau, Best of Both Worlds, was published by Penguin (N.Z.) in 2010. Joe Musso lives at the ocean, where it’s easier to breathe. He’s happiest down at the water where the waves and wind and seagulls make enough noise to slip inside of -- when the fog rolls in he feels safest of all. He has two books published: American Suicide and I Was Never Cool. John Bucklow studied painting, sculpture, and printmaking in London and has worked in product design, marketing, international trade, and publishing. Since 2005 he has focused on building his art practice in Wellington New Zealand. He is the author of Navigator published in the U.K. by Greenwich Exchange and has exhibited his photography and multimedia art in the U.K., Europe and New Zealand. An exhibitor at the founding exhibition of the [British] Computer Art Society in 1969, his work since has included performance, dance, video, motion graphics, photography, installation, sculpture, and writing. His work is included in private collections and at the V&A in London. www.johnbucklow.com. John M. Bennett is the author of over three hundred books and chapbooks of poetry and other writing material including rOlling COMBers (Potes & Poets Press), INSTRUCTION BOOK (Luna Bisonte Prods) and FASTER NIH (Luna REM MAGAZINE VOLUME 2 (DECEMBER 2011)

ISOTOPES [CONTRIBUTORS] Bisonte Prods). He was the editor and publisher of LOST AND FOUND TIMES and is Curator of the Avant Writing Collection at The Ohio State University Libraries. His just-published book, THE GNAT’S WINDOW, available at http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/lunabisonteprods. Visit his website at http:// www.johnmbennett.net/. Kristina Hard is an abstract poet from Auckland, New Zealand. She has a Bachelor of Arts in English and Theatre Studies from the University of Auckland and works as a freelance theatre publicist. Kristina Jensen is a ‘poet afloat’, living on a boat in the Marlborough Sounds with her artist husband and home-schooled son. Her aim is to have a balance of people-time and nature-time and so far, it is about 75/25 in favour of nature. Choosing to live a simple life without many material possessions or financial debts means Kristina and her family devote most of their time to creative pursuits and encourage others to do the same. Matt Margo is the author of When Empurpled (Pteron Press, 2011) and manager of Cormac McCarthy’s Dead Typewriter, a blog that publishes experimental literature and music. His work has appeared in such journals as The Otoliths and Gone Lawn. He studies Creative Writing at Hiram College in Ohio. Mariangela Guatteri (1963) lives on the hills of Reggio Emilia [Albinea] (ITALY) .Her activities and interests include writing and art (video, photography, installation, digital/analog signs). She takes part in the eexxiitt group (art, asemic, experimental writing, flarf, fluxus, found/sought, glitch…)With two asemic artworks she joins the vispo & asemic expo at The Klebnikov Carnaval 2011. Books of poems: Stati di assedio (Anterem Edizioni, 2011) – a part of Due dimensioni poem – as winner of XXV edition of Lorenzo Montano prize. EN (d’if, 2009), Carbon copy [Cc] (Il Foglio, 2005). Other poems/proses are in collective anthologies, magazines, eBooks, lit blogs. Massimo Sannelli was born in 1973. He lives in Genoa, Italy where he works as a linear and visual poet, freelance translator and editor in the field of medieval studies, and as an actor. His most important work for cinema is related to La bocca del lupo, directed by Pietro Marcello (Caligari Preis, Berlin Movie Festival; David di Donatello; Nastro d’Argento), 2009. He has a chapbook, This Is Visual Poetry published by Chapbookpublisher.com (Kingston PA, 2011). His blog: www.massimosannelli.splinder.com. Michael Berton is a performance poet, percussionist, traveler and high school educator. He has had poems published in Megalopsychia, Sin Fronteras Journal, Fireweed, Ouroboros, The Cracked Mirror, Pacific Review, Snow Monkey, Gypsy, Gertrude, Do Hookers Kiss? Liebamour, Night Bomb Review and other small press 76

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ISOTOPES [CONTRIBUTORS] journals/magazines. A micro-chapbook was published by Softspoken Press in 2001. He is former poetry editor of The Cereal Vox Review. He lives in Portland, Oregon, USA. Miriam Barr lives in Auckland, New Zealand where she is a mental health promoter, poet, performer, creative writing tutor, MC and support-group facilitator. Her poetry has been published in such places as Landfall, Poetry NZ, JAAM, Blackmail Press and The Wild Goose Poetry Review. For four years she edited the poetry zine Side Stream. She is one of the founding members of The Literatti and winner of the 2007 Poetry Idol slam. Her academic background is in psychology. Nico Vassilakis works with alphabet both textually and visually. His recent book, staring@poetics, an essay about letters as visual material, is available from Xexoxial Editions: http://xexoxial.org/is/. Raymond Farr lives in Ocala, FL. His poems appear both on line and in print in numerous publications. His sixth book ECSTATIC/.of facts was recently published by Otoliths Books. He is editor of Blue & Yellow Dog - http:// blueyellowdog.weebly.com. Rosaire Appel is a digital artist making visually oriented books which range from limited edition self-printed accordion books to unlimited print-on-demands. She is drawn to abstract comics and asemic writing because of the openness of those forms. She uses the language of suggestion and drawing to indicate and circle around content which resides just under the surface. Her website is www. rosaireappel.com. Stephanie Christie lives in the Waikato. She performs her work and makes it into zines, and has recently been included in Brief and in Landfall. Here is her latest video poetry collaboration: http://vimeo.com/30967191. She is interested in tactile language, abstraction and feelings. Valentina Cano is a student of classical singing who spends whatever free time either writing or reading. Her works have appeared in Exercise Bowler, Blinking Cursor, Theory Train, Magnolia’s Press, Cartier Street Press, Berg Gasse 19, Precious Metals and will appear in the upcoming editions A Handful of Dust, The Scarlet Sound, The Adroit Journal, Perceptions Literary Magazine, Welcome to Wherever, The Corner Club Press, Death Rattle, Danse Macabre, Subliminal Interiors, Generations Literary Journal, Super Poetry Highway, Stream Press, Stone Telling, Popshot and Perhaps I’m Wrong About the World. You can find her here: http://coldbloodedlives.blogspot.com Ko Vaughan Rapatahana taku ingoa. Ko Te Atiawa taku iwi. Ko Te Araroa taku kainga i roto i te whenua o Aotearoa, engari ko te whenua o Hong Kong taku wāhi ināianei. REM MAGAZINE VOLUME 2 (DECEMBER 2011)