issue 1 november 2014
swirl issue 1 editor: lars palm cover design: Petra Palm (aka social photographer)
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in this issue a short note on what & how Pansy Maurer-Alvarez 6 poems Eric Dickey Train 19: Atlanta to Tuscaloosa Eileen R. Tabios I Forgot the Exploded World Coming Down Like Rain lars palm (hastings)
short note on what & how a new online zine. do we really need that? & does the answer to that question really matter? i've edited blog zines before & enjoyed it immensely. the contact with to me previously unknown poets doing cool things. giving some little thing back to a community that is so patient with my scribbles. & yes. we really do need another online zine. swirl will focus mainly, though not exclusively, on poetry, including translations of living & consenting poets. i also welcome comics, vispo, stories (crime is more than welcome), non-academic essays, reviews of newish small press poetry (chap)books & music with a bias toward anarchists, punk in all its permutations & whatnot. Issues will be published when i (your undemocratic editor) deem there is enough good material. & if some ambitious person sends enough good stuff there's the possibility of a single author issue (aka chapbook). send your finest unpublished, in any form, things & keep in mind that the format is A5. &, as usual, if i like it i publish, if i reject i'm only one editor with his own odd taste & not an objective judge on quality. yes. & now invade that inbox at swirleditorATgmailDOTcom our first issue features 3 lovely poets & persons & myself. have fun with it
Pansy Maurer-Alvarez
DEFINITION roll a coconut down the stairs it’s the sound of a word
POEM
a mouth slip noonday view unusual with his hands desire way below because you’re in such a hurry with a full belly belie you will settle for the sky misspells water again and you wanted a noonday view
SONNET (1)
The detachment of the feminine was red & sultry a day gone by Youthfully rounded she laughed & asked It was the kind of rhythm that feels pretty nice What could I do but visualize the sense that each Goodbye & God Bless You would fall into 2 parts 1 of which would pull me down There was no one around the day I heard something drop into my own country, I’m obliged that I must consider her remember now in black & white that look of surprise, those earrings
SONNET (2) to think that the dance in already contained in the presence of our bodies that we are the gesture and the verb the word takes up space the word takes up time the verb, the fall and its recovery song and poetry, balance, dance and circus how fast the key to light and sound can slip away, touch as we might our worldly possessions as if in answer to a wish to not love afterwards, again or anything dance cannot be contained in reason static silence will finish off this space I wince and I feel scared
SONNET (3) O briar rose
here’s your mirror
and my hand
here the flower
and the berries
Sinews of rain
in what tranquil axis
tree
touching morning in a compatible presence for a moment etching a scarce shortage on the filaments
of reason
There was someone lying there unattended in turbulence
in dailyness
in the elegant full circle of the self Meanwhile overheard
a slip of doubt
rises up yet within plate glass enclosures lies the curvature of stillness
THE CABINET OF HUMAN PASSIONS IS MEASURED
show me that case, show me your body first smile smile open your palms, palms up give me the palms up of your ears tango your hands on head hair in the way given the palms up there, no your ears are gone so your eye laughs black in its gold setting there’s someone caught in there smoke and a violin solo breathing pink the rest is fictitious
Eric Dickey
Train 19: Atlanta to Tuscaloosa -after lars palm
the rambling man two seats behind me talks to himself: “when the helicopter crashed the white and black people came out black in Fort Sam Fort Sam Houston the silver bullet was named ‘a penny silver’ a green colored Trojan school the color of my barber the fake cowboy last Monday he gave out $50 then added up to R & K. A, R, T & K and he saved it clean I thought he said ‘the machine’” the rambling man ruffles passengers they ask to move to different seats out the window kudzu over a playground slide and swing trellis linemen in the heat red dirt road speckled sunlight speckled forest
the rambling man still talks but I tune him out train crossing red truck a Ford 1972 the forest floor a speckled leopard cleared fields old white snag pokes out the middle a rock crop with holes we’ve arrived in Alabama the words of the poet the natterings of the rambling man the clattering of the train tracks interpreting the scripture of the landscape through the picture window are one and the same another train startles me when it rushes past my window in the opposite direction just inches from my face a freshly painted fire hydrant half-circle cut around it in the kudzu pine glen shooting range
blue garbage cans rusty red roofs trailers, trailers, trailers a patch of corn there are books in my bag but the landscape reads from left to right like a ticker tape that will only stop at Anniston and Birmingham streaming like the rambling man altogether a more interesting book a culvert circle under the road at noon marks the half way basalt columns lean like clock hands after the stop at Anniston the window scrolls by the history of war since 1941 Abrams tanks Patton tanks transporters Sherman tanks the grounds around war memorials are like the newly shaved heads of new recruits the tanks and jeeps stain the earth with grease spots that darken the red clay
the rambling man: “I used to read to kids when I went to prison they was gonna lie about what I did� after the war machines the forest takes over and the kudzu matted like dreadlocks returns a feeling of calm bounding deer a stag and a doe a white egret hunting the edge of a pond a council of refrigerators canisters of welding gas bales of cardboard stacked like bricks behind a mill Cooks Spring Tunnel the urge to nap takes over like a tunnel I nod off to the zigzag Zs of fire escapes on the old abandoned buildings of Birmingham a waking dream
orange propane pipes rising from the ground will only take a spark and we will surrender to the power of Earth welders dismantle train equipment stacks of train axles piles of scrap rusty springs black mud black water puddles iridesce the rambling man stopped talking and I only just noticed people on porches no longer wave at passing trains their children wave children connect us to the mystery beneath the lawn the stop and start of the train the stop and start of the landscape scripture in the picture window the start and stop of the rambling man:
“that’s why I don’t worry about you all I don’t worry about your daughters what does that have to do with me? if I always look the other way why do I always feel wet?” the train engine howls Ginsberg would approve he rides the engine like a tricycle his black beard furls back in the breeze shows the skin of his chin like a cleave lets us see in the rambling man is quiet again I look back to see he sleeps he drank three beers and now he sleeps and only the slight whispery babbling of giggling children ripples in the current of the great southern myth of the single kudzu vine that grows from Atlanta to New Orleans in one runner it grows along the train tracks it grows along the power lines the linemen try to clear it grows under the red clay just beneath the surface
it grows disconnected like the rambling man it networks and networks and networks until it captures the fish of disbelief that swim in my stomach in my fishbowl stomach the train arrives at my destination I hurry to exit and utter the myth under my breath “Alabama” which means “I’ve cleared the thicket” I am snared in its pile of trimmings that lie like a dark warrior under the train and curl around my ankles demanding my surrender I read the place sign as I step onto the platform summoning Black Warrior himself I breathe his name as if asking for mercy as if crying “uncle” to an uncle: “TUSCALOOSA!”
Eileen R.Tabios
I Forgot the Exploded World Coming Down Like Rain I forgot curtains. I forgot injected air bubbles. I forgot October mornings with their light of gold and blue so stark they resuscitated anyone. I forgot wanting to see sky above her cheekbones instead of a mirror reflecting the killer inside me. I forgot cheekbones so high they were like horizons. I forgot a detective looking at me with encyclopedias as eyes. I forgot brown and yellow grass trapped in mud without evoking a precious stone like amber. I forgot a limp laundry line, almost invisible in the grey air. I forgot the world going up in smoke and coming down like rain. I forgot the musk of a stolen wool coat. I forgot sleeping on a traffic island on a highway near Lyon. I forgot the days when I wished for just a bit of Heaven. I forgot intention is a form of focus, at times control. I forgot a dirty river glittering underneath the false life I created with no intention. I forgot time slowing into a taut agony. I forgot the laughter of weary men as they shared a wicker-covered
bottle. I forgot long lines of Arab workers in cheap suits attached to small bundles. I forgot too many hot and dusty evenings at train stations. I forgot the enchanting glow emanating from a murderer’s eyes. I forgot the tiny woman with huge buckteeth her lover used as a bottle opener. I forgot rain becoming thick. I forgot lighting candles but not saying Grace. I forgot the Frenchman cooking horsemeat in blood, wine and garlic while lecturing on techniques for making plastique. I forgot sighting a bloodied face through a cracked windshield, and moving on. I forgot seeing sky as the sea and sea as the sky. I forgot strolling outside to hear trees murmur. I forgot the row of prone people on the remains of mattresses. I forgot the dank air around a man, belt wrapped around one arm, heating a spoon. I forgot the hollow man in a basement collecting water as it dropped from a corroded hole. I forgot summer clarified by sitting on a stone embankment on an ancient street: suddenly heat rushed out of the evening! I forgot the town where all women possessed supple thighs.
I forgot feeling more far away than the moon over Ferris wheel. I forgot the bare arms that defined “summer browned.� I forgot the stench of spilled wine. I forgot the fair where I learned loud carnies overpower reason.
lars palm
(hastings) continuing the breakfast habits of contemporary europeans we get to the french abroad with one of them removing most of the bread from inside a bun before adding cheese & salami while another one cuts open a water melon with a tableknife last days of april parched streets oblivious of shakespeare & company advising �be not inhospitable to strangers lest they be angels in disguise� mark my words with a red & black marker pen & then forget them & if this is a guide you may shape it yourself & it most certainly isn't about politics this time how about we draw a drinkable cup of coffee for that toothpaste thief sentenced to turn around to face a blood moon iridium flash foaming at the mouth of a laughing dog leaping down a flight of stairs at a kid on an electric skateboard or a burning math book this is how you destroy that which destroys you i hate maths though i like cooking my family & my pets & how to put words on a town so amorphous & a population so difficult to envision anywhere else? this door is a jar of red table wine not to mention those mansions down on millionaires row where those millionaires come & go not thinking of michelangelo whispering i have no god live with it is it the day that's random?
or a car called khaled probably not the same one who planted a large patch of garlic in the park & then spent the night as a bar owner in some small mexican town at the bottom of the drink list �molotov cocktail for outside use� so tell me how does being sentenced to 500 years in prison for a 500 page poem need any more context than that? distill the life that's inside of me serve in a nice glass hold the ice & enjoy out of reach of the surprisingly bright spring sun or these hardcore bosnians on tour having driven from tuzla to paris to watch their national football team beat france in the final european qualifier being slightly less expansive when we returned to the hotel at about 1.30 a.m this plane forced to land in england by farting cows learning fragments of another local language & that public transport system forced karl & friedrich to move a handful of yards to the east & the sweet madness in planning a high speed railway line from north east china to the continental u s loop zero this is how you argue safely this is how your face gets cut into cubes
this is how you barbecue your self your shelf returns seasons seasoned without authority & of course mr. science works with making robots cooperate with humans in factories & of course the studies include violence & time to tune that piano in the corner & steal that guitar for the book is handed out for free & the road side littered with walking dead & her constant paranoia every weapon is a tool & all the people who built that pyramid & oi the punks are with us & the first gang of the day marching from the square & habitats painted red & that tv squeezed into a corner between couch & chair & covered with pillows & blankets & talk of agony & revolution & all cops are bastards & once again they showed that & all these people facing the same book & going left of the roses & what's left of the roses & kangaroos fighting in the street
& a mouth chewing trees in the quiet area no one is allowed to breathe or even scribble in the old fashioned way & my hand became a monster again & he's quite sure he imagines & if his memory serves him well he never saw the rather large banner saying petra ich liebe dich in real (such as it is around here) life be tray meanwhile in istanbul a poet who camped for weeks in ghezi tells a reporter that lemon is good for those tear gas bombs how about that green bulb near the periphery of your vision? waiting in the shade to get in & start making paella waiting in the shadows to turn someone into a paella asking if this is election or erection day the rule of vengeance should you dream of anyone i know, give them my regards the rule of law the various laws of physics & the jungle throwing its legislators to the lions who look disdainfully at them & return them for you to enjoy irresponsibly getting that brogue in order
in my rebellious youth i wait i'm still heading into it we are the soma mine explosion killing upward of 300 workers you must fear your new shoes we are formaldehyde it speaks with forked tongues it uses tongues as forks in the road rather than planting them in the spine of a not fictional dog & we can only speculate how but the sun sent the clouds running but oh the horror hindu fascists win this election in india & northern europe votes their fascists into the european parliament while the south voted left & spain said we can we are everywhere this lady letting her twin daughters run some of their excessive energy off in the sunny square & suddenly they get 15 afghan teenage sons & suddenly they reap the blue lights & go to market & suddenly they don't quite know what to do with the voices down in the streets at 1.30 a.m on a warm thursday night & suddenly they decide to cut the cat in half just be cause they can
instead of opening another can of worms lest they find themselves by a quay fishing & finishing loading that ship with their catch of the day light saving sanity don't try to get out of your face it seems your face wants to keep you through another town with no discernible name on another open road tail lights snake off ahead in to another entertaining day into another mountain pass passing the friday unaware bakunin had his 200th birthday as if he cared yet 2 attentive anarchists celebrated him we are oppositional defiant disorder we are running down that hill & what to do with that piece of string?