Cartier2015 summer by The Cartier Street Review

The Cartier Street Review

Literary and Arts Magazine 1

Cartier Street Review Joy Leftow Principal Editor & Layout New York http://joyleftowsblog.blogspot.com

Thomas Hubbard Editor Puget Sound Website: http://poppathomas.wordpress.com/

Marc Carver Staff London

Brad Eubanks Staff Texas

Bernard Alain Founding Editor Ottawa Website: http://www.bernardalain.blogspot.com/

Contents Regina Walker

cover photo

Christopher Reilley

Jean Noel Vandaele

Anthony Venutolo

Alex Watt

Jean Noel Vandaele

Dorene O’Brien

Jean Noel Vandaele

Larry Lawrence

Jed Myers

Regina Walker

Thomas Hubbard – Book Review

Jean Noel Vandaele

Christopher Reilley

Jean Noel Vandaele

Christopher Reilley – 10 Tips for Writing Poems

Jean Noel Vandale

Harriet White Chapple

Barbara Harroun

Joy Leftow

More Bio’s & Information

Jean Noel Vandaele

Back Cover

Christopher Reilley

I M EMORIZE D YOU It was my fault, I admit it. I knew that you were not really mine to keep, that is why I kissed you a thousand extra times and told you it was just my way. That is why I always gazed a few extra seconds before looking away and why I stayed up all those nights to watch you sleep instead of getting any rest myself. I worked hard to memorize every curve and mark on your body so that when you left I would not forget. I listened extra carefully when you spoke because I knew I would need to replay your voice when I am alone. That is why I told you I loved you so many times and held you as close as I did, pressing your body against my own, because I knew that someday my sheets would smell of you but you would not be there, I would be alone, so I took in your warmth, and looked at you with sadness but never told you why. I watched you dream, because I knew I would not get to watch you change and grow. Sometimes things are only built to break. I cherished you all I could but you still left and Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m starting to wish I never memorized you because now I cannot forget, I have learned you like the lyric to the best song ever and you have been running through my head ever since. 5

Christopher Reilley is the current poet laureate for Dedham, MA, founder of the Dedham Poet Society and author of Grief Tattoos - Poems of Rage and Redemption. He is a contributing editor at Acoustic Ink. His poems have appeared in Boston Literary Magazine, Word Salad Poetry, Carpe Articulum, Frog Croon Compendium, and several other collections. His work can also be found as part of Hot Summer Nights, Moondancers, Blood Rush, and other anthologies.

Anthony Venutolo

I WEAR HIS JACKET The military jacket was crumpled in a sloppy ball on the floor of the antique show that some chickadee dragged me to. After hours and hours and rows upon rows of beat-to-shit furniture, hat pins and jewelry boxes, I saw it, this gorgeously authentic army jacket. Laying there, musty and crinkled, I tried it on and it was a perfect fit. This was the real deal, not some knockoff shit direct from Abercrombie but a coat that evoked history. From the tattered interior stitching I'm guessing the coat was issued during Korea or maybe even Vietnam. The patch had the name 'HALL' and I started to think about him. Wearing it, not a day goes by where I don't have questions like how many offensives had he seen? Was he scared? I think of the mud he crawled through. I think of the horrendous rain this coat must have endured and the cigarettes he must have smoked during those uncertain night patrols. I wear his jacket and I think of the dog he missed and that perfume she used to wear on their dates at the drive in that drove him crazy. I think about his mom's reaction when he told her that he enlisted and how proud his dad secretly was that his boy would finally be made a man by Uncle Sam.

Anthony Venutolo

I think of 'HALL' as I drive to work and I do the math. He must have kids around my age if he were still here. I wonder if they think their dad was a hero? I wear his jacket quite frequently now and every time I get a compliment for it, I think that yes, I wear 'Hall's' jacket, but I could never fill his shoes.

Anthony Venutolo has won five critical writing awards from the New Jersey Press Association and has appeared in such publications as Bikini, Details, POV and Playboy Online. Heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s also written columns for the gambling magazines Chance, Casino Player and Strictly Slots. Online his flash fiction and poems have appeared at Zygote in My Coffee, Red Fez, Deuce Coupe, Gutter Eloquence, Shoots and Vines, Six Sentences and is a Revolutionary Voice at the site Drunken Absurdity. The former features editor at The Star-Ledger, is now a member of the Digital Operations team for the New Jersey Advance Media Group and his first book Front Page Palooka was released in October, 2013 as part of the FIGHT CARD book series. It was nominated for three New Pulp Awards including Best Novella, Best New Writer and Best New Character. "Bourbon & Blondes," his second book, is filled with short stories and flash fiction and is currently available. His web site is at AnthonyVenutolo.com and he blogs from Bukowskiâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Basement.

Alex Watt

eagle risen a torrent of blood swelling into the valley at the far end the girl with the halo and sunken eyes with an ostrich feather she dips into the foamy typhoon making a furze of tiny coloured beads in her belly the seed is sprouting a new arrival in the wigwam he lifts the dragon wing of black hair and whispers there the combination key to every chamber of his heart

Alex Watt lives in rural New South Wales, Australia, writing poetry in between raising flocks of children and ducks, studying attic greek, and working as a speechwriter in government. Alex's poetry is intertwined with his musings on nature and philosophy, and reminiscences of an earlier life spent rambling about the world on a shoestring and a prayer. For Alex, a poem is the recording of an echo that emerges from that deep cavern in the heart, after a stone is cast in to discover if it is bottomless. Alex's experiments suggest that his heart probably isn't bottomless, although it is possible that his bottom is heartless, for which reason poems are never to be sought there.

Dorene O’Brien dorene.obrien@att.net

Behind the Photograph

We’re in the gallery—actually a small café—looking at and pretending to be interested in some silver and platinum photographs a colleague I don’t even know has shot and miraculously convinced a small town proprietor to display. I’m trying to do the right thing: support a fellow teacher who works at the same art school, act like a team player, make an appearance, the news of which I hope will find its way to my department chair, who appreciates loyalty more than stellar evaluations. I’m with my friend Ava, and that doesn’t help. Ava’s face is a map of her inner feelings and desires, and you don’t have to be a top-notch cartographer to read it. She stares at a photo of a mannequin wearing a wedding gown titled Bride. The mannequin has a large gash across its forehead, and I read into it lobotomy. Ava, lip curled and eyes squinting, reads into it bad art. The next photo is a mannequin with a snake, the next a wedding gown with a snake, the next a snake on a chair. There are 15 photos in all, various combinations of the emotional, the functional, the reptilian. I see colleagues whose names I don’t know staring at me; they recognize me from the halls at work, perhaps, but don’t know me since I’m a part-time English teacher with a creative repertoire of excuses to cut meetings. I love my work, but I hate meetings more, so I try to make up for lost time at extracurricular functions where I will not be trapped in the excruciating minutiae of parliamentary procedure. My colleagues and I offer cursory smiles over cheese and crackers, and I turn away. The plan is to make an appearance without taking on the burden of interaction. This is not as easy as it sounds. * * *

Dorene O’Brien The café is really an urban dive in a small town making an aggressive bid to appeal to the hipster crowd. The photos are hung by wires from speakers, light fixtures and pipes running along the walls, which are pitted and holed, the drywall apparently succumbing to the cumulative strain of exhibits. Some of the holes are large enough to accommodate my hand, and I wonder why they don’t cover them with photos. “They probably have more holes than pictures,” Ava says sarcastically, a dark storm crossing the plain of her face. “Although I can’t imagine why. She could have taken ten more of her chair and her snake and her dress. Twenty. How hard could that be? Hell, I could have taken them.” “Yes, but can you develop them?” “The PhotoMat can develop them.” As we stare at a grainy photo of a snake coiled in a wedding gown, a handsome man with thick gray hair and a full beard approaches us. “What do you think?” he asks. “Well,” I say, and turn to Ava, a tactical error, in retrospect. “I think she needs more props,” she says. The man and I laugh, but we can see the topography of disgust on Ava’s face. “Do you work at the Institute?” he asks her. “No,” she says. “I work in the real world.” The man laughs again; everything’s funny to him. I hope he’s drunk and won’t remember. I hope he’s fallen in love with Ava’s marked defiance, her blatant negativity, her utter refusal to buy into pretension. I hope he doesn’t ask again what I think of the photos, because even though I know I will likely launch into an interpretation that will embarrass all present, I also know that I am

powerless to stop myself. “Is that a real snake?” Ava asks, and the man looks confused until she points to Snake in Bridal Gown. He stares at the photo. “It’s got a tongue,” he says, “but it could be rubber.” Precisely something I would have said and regretted. He’s so close to the photo his breath steams the glass, and I imagine the snake coming to life, springing from the frame to sink its fangs into his thick neck. I whisper this to Ava, who says, “Now that would be something.” “What’s that?” says the man. “The snake,” she says, “she wants the snake to jump from the photo and bite you.” He stares at me, and he’s no longer laughing. “Not really,” I say. “I was just thinking about three-dimensional art. You know, Interactive art.” “Of course,” he says. “Excuse me.” He swaggers toward the bar and I pinch the back of Ava’s hand. I imagine breaking the skin and puncturing the vein beneath, and I understand that this is not a healthy thought. “Ow!” she screams, and several people turn to stare. I act as surprised as they are, and Ava laughs. We are tremendously immature when we are together, and I understand the depth of my selfhatred when we are smack-dab in the middle of functions at which reputation enhancement is key. A glass of wine later the thick-necked man materializes with a rail-thin woman wearing granny glasses and a blue velvet bodysuit. “Ladies,” he says, “forgive me. My name is Alfred Coft, and this is the artist, Naomi Sucher-Leone. I’m sure she can answer your question.” The woman’s hand is soft and bony at the same time, all knuckles and joints wrapped in silk, something inhuman in my own fleshy, callused hand. The hand is the least of it, though. The realization that I have to comment on the work, that I have to say something both complimentary enough to satisfy her yet honest enough to keep Ava quiet comes down hard and sudden. 16

Dorene O’Brien I smile brightly. “Congratulations,” I say, and she says “Thank you.” We both know that she hasn’t sold anything, and that at $600 apiece for 5x7 photos she most likely won’t, but congratulations seems like the thing to offer. Ava points to Snake on Chair. “You like that one?” Naomi asks with an optimism surely borne from the head count at the café and the cursory comments of supportive colleagues. “That a real snake?” Ava asks. Although this seems like a question easily answered under the circumstances, the artist walks toward the picture slowly, removes her glasses and squints like someone searching a group photo for a specific person. “Ah,” she says, “this one’s real.” “Does he bite?” asks Ava. She points to me. “She wants him to bite someone.” Naomi shoots me a stern look and I shake my head weakly. Ava points across the room to Snake II. “Is that one real?” “They’re all real,” Naomi says, “but one. One is of a rubber snake I bought because it looked like Ka. An understudy.” “Your snake has an understudy?” Ava asks, eyebrows arcing into incredulous mountains, and Alfred laughs like he’s at the Improv. “He eats mice,” she says, “and looks pregnant afterward. I don’t want to send that message. You know, pregnancy and the wedding dress. That’s not what this is about.” She snaps her bony hand around the room abruptly, as if backhanding someone. “That’s not what’s behind these photographs.” “What’s behind that one?” Ava asks impatiently, pointing to Empty Chair, a blurry photo of a chair with both a snake and a wedding gown draped across it. “That one,” she says, “is about love.”

Dorene O’Brien “Well,” says Ava, a divorcee who’s been batting in the teens in the dating department, “I think it’s about fear.” “Really,” says Naomi, considering. Artists always consider. Or act like they consider. “Are you afraid of snakes?” “No,” says Ava. “I’m afraid of wedding gowns.” Both Naomi and Alfred laugh, Naomi in short, practiced squeaks and Alfred in a full-throated staccato. “Yes,” says Naomi, “the wedding gown is often the site of atrocity, a specter of annihilation, a locus of fear.” Something that would have garnered stares of disbelief if proclaimed by me is met by an “Ah” from Alfred and a head nod from Ava, who I can only surmise acquiesced because she cued in on some latent male bashing. After Naomi’s deep philosophical pronouncement, she glances absently around the café. “Well,” she says with the air of the burdened artist, “thank you so much for coming.” She extends her hand toward me like royalty, fingers bent downward, and I take them briefly in mine as Ava turns away. Naomi and Alfred slip behind the paisley curtain that separates public and private space, and when I turn to Ava she stares at me in wonder. “She’s a trip,” she says. “She really thinks this is art.” “Suddenly you’re an expert on art?” I say. “I may not know what it is, but I know what it’s not.” She points to the blurry photo of the snake and the dress on the chair. “Maybe it’s blurry for a reason,” I say. “Or maybe there’s a reason it’s blurry,” she says loudly, “like she screwed up but they had a big hole to cover.” “Let’s look,” I say in an effort to get her moving so no one can get a fix on just how disgusted she is, how unwilling she is to pretend she gets it, how stupid I am for bringing her.

Dorene O’Brien

“She’s annihilating the snake,” Ava says as we stand before Empty Chair. “She’s denying its existence.” I don’t know if this is a good faith attempt at art interpretation or a symbolic wounding of the enemy with her own sword. “There you go,” I say. “Let’s get out of here.” “Aren’t you going to look?” “At what?” “Underneath.” “Who cares,” I say, suddenly realizing that lifting the photograph will indicate false interest in either the work or a possible defect in the wall. Ava looks exasperated, as if I’m leaving one French fry on my plate or buying two dollars worth of gas. “Here,” she grabs the bottom of the frame, her thumbnail clicking the glass, and I slap her hand away. The photo springs from her grasp, and as it spins toward the floor I am already living the aftermath of this long and venomous night: Naomi’s theatrical outrage, Ava’s righteous disdain, the crowd at the café turning its collective, reptilian eye on me.

* * *

Dorene O'Brien was born and raised in Detroit where she can still be seen taking photos of the UA Theater Building on Bagley or munching hot dogs at Lafayette after researching her latest story. Though she would rather be hanging with her yellow Lab Chloe, her job teaching creative writing at the College for Creative Studies pays for electricity and dog bones. She knows the difference between your and you're but doesn't lord it over people. O’Brien’s work has earned Red Rock Review’s Mark Twain Award for Short Fiction, the New Millennium Writings Fiction Award, the Chicago Tribune Nelson Algren Award and the international Bridport Prize. O’Brien was also awarded a creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and her stories have been published in special Kindle editions. O’Brien’s fiction and poetry have appeared in the Connecticut Review, The Best of Carve Magazine, Short Story Review, Passages North, the Baltimore Review, The Republic of Letters, the Montreal Review, Detroit Noir and others. Her short story collection, Voices of the Lost and Found, won the National Best Book Award in short fiction. Visit her at http://www.doreneobrien.com/

Larry Lawrence

Old Guy With The Nice Pool “I want you to be concerned about your next door neighbor. Do you know your next door neighbor?”- Mother Teresa Red lights splashed into all of our back yards, guessed it was the old guy with the nice pool, but it was his wife, a loud lady I talked to once. She suffered a heart attack and died. He’s been alone for ten or twelve years now and for hours he sits watching TV on the back porch, I’d hear MASH, CNN, John Wayne westerns, war movies. His pool always crystal clear, open Memorial Day, closed on Labor Day, check the calendar and see the trampoline-like green cover perfectly placed. He moved slower, didn’t swim, watched more TV. Had less pool parties with his family and last winter a sign went up on his lawn, the house sold quick, luckier than most who have been trying to leave. Another neighbor says, “His kids got him to sell and moved him to assisted living. On his first night there he got out of bed, tripped on the rug, broke his leg. Doctors find he’s filled with cancer. Three weeks later around Christmas, he’s gone. Dead. Jack was his name.”

Born Larry Fish in South Jersey. Graduated Rutgers University with a degree in Theatre, then earned a Master of Arts in Instruction and Curriculum from Kean University. Currently a Teacher of the Gifted & Talented, his work poems appeared in many fine journals and publications. He travels with his family each summer to Tennessee, Washington, DC and the Outer Banks. Lawrence is an avid fan of all Philadelphia teams and the British Premier League.

Jed Myers

Woods I Never Entered Rough ground, stony, root-ridged— I remember, the shopping center went up later. Woolworth’s, Lord & Taylor, Clem’s barber shop behind Florsheim Shoes— I’m dreaming, while my father dies, I’m walking between the oaks and sycamores, where the Penn Fruit, the record store I haunted for its 45s, the drugstore and its racy magazines, replaced the woods I never did explore before they fell to these. Dreaming a pathless swath, thick with vines— like the golf course margins behind Elliott’s house, where my brother and I slid down to the cliff-bottom creek to search for salamanders. Dad was not going to come on such missions with his kids, nor take us tromping through those woods. Why do I go back to a tract of lost forest where I never walked while his chest decides the worth of hauling the next breath? It’s as if I’d meet him there were I to bushwhack in. I’d find the kid he was, who must’ve stomped home mud-covered from Cobbs Creek once or twice before he grew up, married Mom, and worked his life away. He might still look for me, for us, in there, the woods I never entered, where now and then we’d have dinner at Horn & Hardart’s.

Jed Myers lives in Seattle. Two of his poetry collections, The Nameless (Finishing Line Press) and Watching the Perseids (winner of the 2013 Sacramento Poetry Center Book Award), are 2014 publications. Recent recognitions include Southern Indiana Reviewâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Mary C. Mohr Editorsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Award, the Literal Latte Poetry Award, and a Puchcart Prize nomination. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, Nimrod International Journal, JAMA, Fugue, Atlanta Review, I-70 Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Crab Orchard Review, Blast Furnace, Assisi, The Tusculum Review, and elsewhere. He works as a psychiatrist with a therapy practice and teaches at the University of Washington.

Watching the Perseids by Jed Myers Published by Sacramento Poetry Center Press 1719 25th Street, Sacramento CA 95816 © 2014 paper, 83 pages ISBN-13. 978-0-9831362-9-3 Price USD $15 Available on Amazon, at Sacramento Poetry Center http://www.sacramentopoetrycenter.com/, at Open Books and Third Place Books in Seattle, Granada Books in Santa Barbara. Book review by Thomas Hubbard My stepfather wept often during Mom’s last year. Fear and shock shone way back in her eyes, behind the blank stare. Knowledge of who and where she was had already left her. Dementia had developed in her brain, and after a final year of total helplessness, she passed — Mom was gone and it was finished. Dementia took her away from us, then killed her, and her long dying deeply scarred both my stepfather and myself. If only Jed Myers’ book, Watching the Perseids, could have come twenty years ago, the pain could have been far more bearable. Myers is a bit of a father figure among Seattle’s community of poets — he is a psychiatrist with a solidly established, well respected practice. This collection of his beautifully written poetic observations shows us how with love, respect and dignity he navigated the passing of his father, who died of a brain tumor. In the showing, Myers has given us a master’s collection of poems, all interconnected by themes, by rhythm, and by a son’s strong, quiet love and understanding of his father. He has given us a guidebook and an anthem. A strong theme of inter-generational continuity flows through both of this collection’s two parts, “Until” and “Since.” More subtly, but ever insistent, the reminder that we are each made of the stuff of stars — atoms of our composition being without beginning or end — this suggestion sparkles here and there throughout the book, and as suggested by the title, defines it. In the opening poem, “Cruising Home,” Myers and his already bedridden father reminisce on a winter day about “…evenings playing catch before dinner, / the night his father died….” And farther down in the same poem, “….He couldn’t say if it’s October or March—it’s neither. But this his last February is 27

itself a river of what we, together, happen to remember. He clears his throat, windpipe boggy already since he’s reclined—he tells me, in that gravelly stutter, his feelings have gotten too strong. Oh, he knows they’ve been there, inside his chest all along… since he was the young man he was, cruising home from work in the Buick, becoming and becoming my father— now it’s harder….” In “Selfish Wishes,” Myers admits that the limitations his father’s work made on their times together leave him short of complete satisfaction with their life. “…What about dinner? / I’d ask. He wouldn’t answer….” “…I wanted more. I’m ashamed to come clean. Take the train to Rome, perhaps find the oldest synagogue together. Just look at it still standing— we might not even enter. But work. It came first….” Myers’ mention of “train” in this poem is the first of several scattered through the collection. Trains were an important mode of travel in his father’s life. Also he mentions his father having played clarinet. Music becomes one of several minor themes that run throughout, as does water, also mentioned here. Farther along in “Selfish Wishes,” we see, “…I have to add how I wanted to hear him play that old clarinet— he led a swing band with it in high school! I had the thing fixed, but he wouldn’t pick it up for a minute, even when he was well. I didn’t get it.

But he sings the old hits more and more as his brain’s taken over by the tumor. He laughs and weeps more easily now. I’ll have to let his bed and my chair beside it be where we meet on the shore of that distant water….” These themes, these words, repeat and repeat without being intrusive or their repetition even being obvious. And they give the book, in both of its parts, almost a feeling of being one continuous poem. Myers seems to have designed and assembled this collection so that every detail supports other details, creating beauty, interest and a sense of human proportion. Reading through it brings an almost subliminal pleasure, like the physical comfort one might experience while spending the afternoon in an architect’s house. Even the family’s agreement regarding hospice care lends a sense of grace. The poem, “No IVs in Hospice,” shows us how his father’s comfort in that certainty of his last few days becomes the priority, displacing the family’s wish for more time, more goodbyes. “If we get more water into him he could liven up, enough perhaps to enjoy our visit. No IVs in Hospice. He sips the diet coke he loves from a straw we place between parched lips. But his thirst is almost lost. Hunger’s gone. He hurries, lying there in his pale blue gown, off to a meeting. He’s got to get on that train….” Additionally, this and several later repetitions of “trains” underlines it metaphorically as vehicle for one of the collection’s tenors — Myers’ father’s constant striving, his work ethic. As anyone old enough to have lost someone close has likely experienced, Myers’ sense of his father’s presence lingers even after the funeral, as we see in this book’s second part, Since, where we find the title poem, “Watching the Perseids.” “The broadcast’s breaking up in static— solar flares, snow, ozone fluctuations, I don’t know. 29

Should I care? I can still play the message my phone captured one year back— “No Time for Love” he sings the refrain in that same boyish tone I’d heard come from him over a steak, or climbing the bleachers to our seats my hand in his, before a night game at Connie Mack. Even on his way out in the cold in the dawn to catch the train, singing whatever he said—his brisk See ya lat-er! down the steps. See ya to-night! Singing the tireless dance of his life— he left no time in it for the quiet closeness of watching the Perseids or the river from its banks….” And so the memories shared at his father’s bedside, the observations of the man’s dwindling and final passing, the gradual acceptance of his absence, the going forward — all sprinkled with the themes of his and his father’s life and times, run through Myers’ book even to the very end, where in the last few poems he brings all the parts together, the water, the trains, the music, the stars, atoms, and his tender love for the father who raised him. In the telling of his father’s story, Myers marks the continuity from his grandfather’s father through to the three children he has himself fathered and reared, and in the doing he renders more bearable the pain and sorrow of losing a loved one. This is a book for parents, their children, and those they love. It is a shrine built of profound truths. ——#——

Christopher Reilley THE SHAMELESS FLIRT It does not matter to you That I am married, in love, taken, committed, or otherwise inaccessible. You care nothing for the vagaries of life. No use for conventions, rebel that you are. You speak only of the now. Step out of confused flight to wear a hole in my coat with your tears. I allow only laughter to touch you. My distance a choice of mine not yours. My reflection dances on your wine glass, and in your eyes. Your reflective embrace is free-form jazz in the dark, improvisation, done without ground rules or agenda. It is your default. My vows means less to you than the bar tab you will flirt your way out of, less than the weightless mood you carry along with you like lipstick and a lighter. my desire for her means nothing to you. Yet it is everything to me.

Christopher Reilley

10 Tips for Writing Poems That Editors Will Love Poetry is, of course, very subjective. What tickles my fancy may leave you cold, and vice versa. That is the power of poetry, as well as one of its harshest limitations. Yet, as poets, we strive to communicate ideas in novel ways, using beautiful, embroidered language, or striking through the clutter to pierce your heart with a genuine insight you may not have noticed yourself. Thank god for poets, otherwise language would be a dull and utilitarian thing. But poets, either because of or despite their creative mindsets, are practicing a CRAFT, which means that there are basic rules to be followed, steps that will give a certain result consistently. By learning these steps, a poet can ensure that the work they produce will be of a higher quality, but also be more likely to be accepted by publishers, thereby making it available for the public in the first place. Poetry that is not shared with the world is wasted, so allow me to offers some hard-won insights into what will help your poetry reach the marketplace in the best possible form to be noticed, appreciated, and most of all, published. A brief bit of background – I am not a professional poet. Yes, I have had a couple dozen poems published in various places, like Boston Literary Review, Word Salad, & Frog Croon, I have had a chapbook published, which was well reviewed and well received, and recently published a full-length collection that was well received, and is selling well. But I do not spend all day every day working at being a poet. I have a regular job, and market my poetry in my off hours, so I have learned to do it smarter, rather than harder. This has led me to the following insights. #10 – Write the best poems you can possibly write. Seems obvious, but you would be surprised how many poets have never taken the time to learn the specific elements of their craft. There are poets who do not know assonance from dissonance, could not define a reverse-rhyme to save their life, and think Shakespeare was the last guy to write in pentameter. Take a course, read lots of poems. I highly recommend Mary Oliver’s book “A Poetry Handbook”. Absorbing this small book is better than a dozen poetry workshops. Learn the rules of poetry cold, only then will you be able to transcend them, and raise your craft to the point of Art. #9 – Make them laugh. Not every poem you write should be a knee-slapper, unless you are shooting for Shel Silverstein’s crown, or want to be the next X. J. Kennedy, but inject a little humor, even in a serious poem, because everyone likes a little smile every once in a while. Editors, in particular, love to see a bit of whimsy in your work. Letting in a little laughter lets in the sunshine, so don’t be afraid to go for the joke if you feel like doing so.

Christopher Reilley

#8 – Be brave! Poets are unique in the writing world that they can say ANYTHING! Any insult, rant, opinion, or complaint can be accepted and applauded by your audience if written as poetry. Unlike fiction, not every piece has to be logical, or sound like truth. So be daring. Try something outside of your comfort zone. No explorer had ever been lauded for tip-toeing through dangerous territory. Reach deep within yourself, dig under the rocks of your psyche, and then strap rockets onto your words and let fly. Safe is soft, and soft poems are dull. #7 – Don’t tell us everything. Leave something to the imagination, in fact; leave MOST of it to our imagination. Anything the reader must supply in order to parse your language and read what you are trying to convey is the part of the poem that speaks to them personally. If you want your work to connect with your readers, the best way to do that is to ensure that your readers invest themselves into your work. One of the things that makes poetry magical is what is not said, what is inferred or implied by the words. Resist the urge to ‘explain’ in your poems. #6 – Be succinct. Poetry is all about using the exact right word in the exact right spot to convey your meaning. Therefore it stands to reason that just one perfect word is better than three lines of text, if it conveys what you want. #5 – Think like an editor. If being published is your primary goal, then you will want to tailor your work to fit into the mold that editors are looking for. I’m sorry to say that currently, unless your work is excruciatingly brilliant, rhyming verse is not in favor, and is unlikely to see print. Centered text and pretty fonts, while they can be creatively pleasing, and are sometimes essential to the work, mean that an editor is less likely to take your poetry seriously. Of course, I am not suggesting that you whore yourself out, or lower yourself to the lowest common denominator in order to be published, but if your goal is to be published, keep in mind what is currently sellable. 4# – Think outside the box. This is different from being brave. It means trying things that may or may not work. Write in a style that you have never tried. Take something that works, and then break it, shuffle it around, try putting it back together. Dig out the thesaurus and convert common words to highbrow language, change the perspective, take chances. You will not only grow as a poet, but your work will mature accordingly, and you may surprise yourself pleasantly. #3 – Be unique. Think in ways that nobody has ever thought before. Sure, there are ‘no new ideas under the sun’, but why not take an existing idea and turn it onto its head? Look at old ideas in new ways. If you look at your work and think, “Everyone has felt this way at one time or other,” then it is likely time to rework your approach, try something different. Push yourself to make new, unused connections.

Christopher Reilley

#2 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Be critical of your work. Poets can certainly get too close to their pieces to see the flaws, or want to leap to their own defense when critiqued. But the best way to write good poetry is to recognize good poetry when you see it. The best way to have a good idea is to have a LOT of ideas, so learn to recognize what is good, and what is not. #1 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Read, read, read. The only way to accomplish the above nine is to read every poem you can find, even if it is not to your taste. Look at it critically. What makes it work? What makes it different? What makes it special? Only by comparing and contrasting your work with what has already been written will you be able to come to understand these ideas as they apply to your own poems. Join a forum and talk about poems with other poets, read their works, share your own. It is the best way to improve your poetry.

Harriet White Chapple

Memories For Ralph Waldo Emerson And Ingmar Bergman There is an hour of deadened night, Oh gods, I know it well. It comes when I’m too weak to fight. It’s then that I know hell. It always catches me awake, While memories are mine. Please Hades, come and my soul take. These memories aren’t kind. I can’t recall a moment’s peace through traveled far abroad. No country offered me relief. With me I was at war. I felt myself as fragmented, Hence struggled to be whole Were times I thought I’m demented. I’d be so till I’m old. In foreign clime I said I’d stay Till I had forged a self. I would not put me in fame’s way Nor would I pursue wealth To create me, I ‘ve given pain For that I am not proud When my memories give me blame Forgive I beg aloud The hour of the wolf I choose To review dispassionately, But crying is all I can do Because of memories.

Harriet White Chapple, poet, was born on Hilton Head Island off the coast of South Carolina. She was educated at the Spence School in New York, Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, and Richmond University of Journalism is London. I began writing poetry later and it was never my intention to be a poet. I consider myself autodidactic since I never studied nor received any formal training in poetry. My only influence is Samuel Coleridge and Edgar Allan Poe, both of whom suggested to me that rhyming would be the best vehicle for my self-expression. My milieu leads me to wrote socio politico pieces hoping to teach as well as learn. My Poem Endurance was awarded Editors Choice Award from the World Poetry Movement. Telephone: 347-608-2341

Barbara Harroun

Disembarking The train pulled into the station at 7 o’clock, but it was 7:15 p.m. before Hannah stood on the platform. She had to wait for the man who sat beside her, spilling out of his own chair, to rise slowly and with great effort. He had snored rudely and continuously, his pink head bobbing from side to side and threatening to find respite on her shoulder. To be honest, she had wished him dead eight times during the three hour trip as she watched the shorn fields out the grubby window to her right. To her left was the bald and sweaty (even in sleep), morbidly obese man. He wore a nametag, a paper square edged in blue with the name Larry scrawled in thin, furious script below a cheerful border and the greeting “Hi! My name is…” Disembarking, Larry was in front of her, turning sideways to take the three steps down from the car to the platform. The conductor asked, “Need a hand, sir?” and Hannah watched the back of Larry’s head, grey stubble holding large flakes of dandruff, and three angry, red rolls of neck, shake no. Hannah also saw that the strap of his leather bag was caught on a small metal latch, embedded in the doorframe at the top of the stairs. She could have called out, or reached with her long, pianist fingers and unhooked it easily, but she did neither for reasons she still doesn’t fully understand. Instead she watched as Larry lurched, and at that moment time did something funny for Hannah. It became elastic, and she saw what happened with the sharpened perception she experienced only once before, when she took ecstasy with her first real lover and they stayed in bed for six hours simply touching, murmuring, examining each other’s very pores. Sometimes now, married with children, she closes her eyes and sees his body, stretched out on the canvas of a brown sheet, his face open with wonder. When she opens her eyes, her husband is there, and their children are a cacophony of sound and movement, and she knows such intimacy and 40

intensity can only be pharmaceutically manufactured. Before long, she will think of Larry, and his fall returns to her in its psychedelic clarity. Yes, Larry lurched, caught for one moment by the strap before it gave way, snapped and sent him forward. Larry was in the act of looking back, but as he fell his eyes caught Hannah’s and something in her face held them. Her face was not exceptional and she’d once been told by an algebra teacher that her face was plain until she smiled, and then it became an entirely different entity. In a millisecond’s time, Hannah did just that, holding Larry’s copper eyes. She smiled as though at a lover, with great tenderness and longing, and then Larry was pulled by gravity to the concrete below, the leather strap behind him catching the wind like a ribbon. How was she to know her wish was to be granted, in a way she could not conceive off? Various people were to ask her this in the years to come as she retold this story, turning the events over as if they were marbles she rolled against her palm, examining the way the light hit them, searching for chips or flaws. They hoped to relieve her of a guilt she did not quite feel, but they imagined she must. She heard the weight of his fall, and, (she always asks this as she tells the story), did she really hear a pop, as absurd and pronounced as a child popping his index finger out of his mouth? His neck snapping? Vertebrae separating? She looked to the conductor for an answer, but he was already on his knees beside the dead man. Hannah felt suddenly unmoored, and she reached out to grab hold of something, anything to steady herself. Her fingers found the latch, and she held on, held on as if her life depended upon it.

* Editor’s Note: Credit goes to Bird’s Thumb for first publication of “Disembarking.”

Barbara Harroun is an Assistant Professor of English at Western Illinois University where she teaches creative writing and composition. Her work has previously appeared in the Sycamore Review, issues of Another Chicago Magazine, Buffalo Carp, Friends Journal, In Quire, Bird's Thumb, and Prairie Gold: An Anthology of the American Heartland. It is forthcoming in i70 Review, Sugared Water, Requited Journal, and Per Contra. She lives in Macomb, IL with her favorite creative endeavors, Annaleigh and Jack, and her awesome husband, Bill.

Joy Leftow

Three Women My skin is porcelain tan I’ve been beaten robbed and raped Because I’m not as strong as a man I have wandered the world In search of fulfillment, Can’t find peace anywhere Born and raised in Italy’s ghettos I learned how to play a hand As good as any man Dealt cards in the best casinos In big cities everywhere My plate is bitter, I’ve got constant jitters, not a quitter I’m tough as they come My name is Rosa My skin is rosy Born in a concentration camp I survived I never knew my mother Soldiers came from England Gave me chocolate from their hands Sister Ruth held my hand Said I had blue eyes like my mother I escaped the holocaust but I’ll never be free, I’m slave to fears and misery Afraid to see beauty, afraid to sleep, Toss, turn, trapped in rough seas, refuse to weep, my life in a heap The days run blue mystical, Fast, hard rains fall Blinding like sparkling stars My name is Ruby My ancestors left Spain I’m a woman of color: black hair, black eyes, olive skin My family came to the new world in 1492 Before they slaughtered all us Jews Persecuted for religious beliefs, The new world provides no relief Punished for the sins of my fathers I tell them I’m Jew not Roman Confused they persist in rebuking me, Call me Christ killer My name is Gypsy! 43

Three Women is a tribute to Nina Simone. About Me: Primarily a poet and performance poet, I coined the term, "Bluetry" to define my art. Bluetry grew out of people approaching me after readings to either compliment me or complain my poems were too sad. Born in a small, ethnically diverse neighborhood in Washington Heights, I survived adversity. I wrote my first poem at 4 years old about snowflakes. My striving to thrive and excel has permeated my existence. My drive to write, create and share, defines my art. I am a writer because I have no choice. My performances are an extension of my art, evolving in the same way a child develops in the womb and his mother gives birth to him. I’ve been performing “Bluetry” since December 2008, when I first felt inspired to read with music. Bluetry fell into place in developmental stages, defining itself. A fellow poet and friend, Demetrius Daniel, a trombonist, accompanied me at readings. Simultaneously, before I’d written my first Bluetry, DubbleX told me wanted to play melodica on a stage like back in the day. Naturally, I invited him to accompany me whenever I featured. Thus Bluetry was born. During a private party interim jazz jam period, while waiting for the main performance, the improvised jazz music inspired me to read the first of my Bluetry series to their music, “I Sing The Blues For You.” By the time I’d finished, everyone had returned to the main room to watch. Since our host was still getting ready, I performed another song, thus my “Bluetry” style was born: an outcast poet, outcast Jew, performing “outcast blues, my mother sang them before me,”* Sometimes musically it is disconcerting when I find myself at a club with four or five musicians playing varied instruments, maybe even a drummer. In spite of these and other drawbacks, like mics placed improperly, my Bluetry hit a new note on the poetry scene and garnered attention. Always on the edge, back in the early 90’s, I performed narrative poetry and was often told by other poets that my work was not real poetry. Now, many spout narrative rhyme, and some stick to form and write about nature and God. I’m off to something different. Taking artistic risks defines me. *from Blues Part ll published several times

http://joyleftowsblog.blogspot.com http://youtube.com/violetwrites http://www.reverbnation.com/joydubblex?profile_view_source=header_icon_nav http://issuu.com/violetwrites http://twitter.com/violetwrites

Jean-Noel Vandaele is Artistic Director at Yello Head. Jean-Noel studied at the School of Fine Arts at Dunkirk in the class of Gérard Hennebert. In 1977, Jean-Noel met Louis Oliver Chesnay (1899-1999) former foreman at the Académie de la Grande Chaumiere in Paris, and became his last student. Chesnay introduced Vandaele to abstraction. From there, Vandaele traveled widely abroad in Europe, producing and exhibiting his works. In 2002, Jean-Noel was invited by the Chief Curator of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington. The Chief Curator introduced him to American painter, Winslow Homer. Jean Noel settled in Maryland. He was selected by William Zimmer, art critic for the New York Times, to participate in the International Juried Show at the New Jersey Center for Visual Arts. In 2004, he exhibited at the Washington County Museum of Fine Arts in works on the theater of William Shakespeare and a series devoted to the work of the American painter Winslow Homer . In 2004, he obtained a one-year international artist residency in New York where he made large formats after Winslow Homer. This work, “Yellow Head and the Maritime Adventure,” was exhibited in 2004 at Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art in New York. Later Vandaele was chosen to be guest artist for the education program on the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, Ohio. While there, he finished a large series of drawings in tribute to Winslow Homer. In 2005 he presented a preview in New York, the Art Gallery Caelum, his series “Yellow Head and the Flemish Masters: Bosch, Brueghel and Rubens.” This exhibition traveled to Belgium (Ghent and Brussels). In Paris in 2007, the Franco-Japanese cultural center Bertin-Poirée opened his New York series: “Scarf Dancers.” In 2008, Gilchrist Museum of Arts in Maryland, opened an exhibition devoted to the evolution of his work since 2002: “Tracking Yellow Head.” Vandaele exhibited for the first time in Japan in May 2008, works inspired by Kabuki theater. Following this, in 2008 - 2009, he had several exhibitions in Tokyo, all relating to Japanese art. He then returned to Paris, at the Espace Japan to present its new series: “Yellow Head and Kabuki Actors and Floating Gray.” After working as an abstract painter from 1978 to 1988, he created a new series of imaginative works; “Clarisse's Dream and The Awakening of Clarissa and Dancing Area,” “Head to Head and Show The Other Side.” Then came the series, “Just for fun,” “Gray Time,” “Children's Corner and Funny Heads.” In 2001, his new series “The True Ivory Head,” opened the door to the art world of the United States. After “With the Hand and Oarsmen Series” Jean-Noel Vandaele entered the world of William Shakespeare. Following is an article written about Jean-Noel Vandaele in Villanova University Student Life. The article appears below the link for the article. http://www1.villanova.edu/villanova/studentlife/artgallery/previous/2012/vandaele.html 45

Hello Yello! Villanova, PA â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Some 15 years ago Jean-Noel Vandaele ended his long career as an abstract painter to become a figurative one re-creating paintings of Flemish, Japanese and American master artists. He substituted his own flat, vivid colors; simplified detail, redrew characters, and gave them plain faces. Once into each painting he added a bright yellow head in profile, an open smile its only feature. Purists were scandalized. Some reviewers, however, have come to see Vandaele's work as a re-imagining, with a wry, contemporary sense of humor aided and abetted by his smiling signature "Yello Head" figure. Vandaele's "Yello Head" paintings and drawings have been amusing, bemusing and challenging art exhibition audiences from Paris to Tokyo ever since. The Villanova University Art Gallery is the next stop for the iconoclastic French artist and his exhibit "Hello Yello", which includes his interpretations of masterworks as well as new, original paintings and drawings, with the ubiquitous "Yello Head" attendant in each. The exhibit opens August 23 with a free public reception on Friday, September 7, from 5 to 7 pm. to meet the cheerful, outgoing artist. Featured works include two of Vandaele's large interpretations of Winslow Homer, the artist's favorite American painter; Japanese art in colored pencil, illustrations of Iroquois and Algonquin Indian legends and tales, and six large pieces on the plays of William Shakespeare. In a series called "Veritas", Vandaele has tethered a male and female dancer to a flowing scarf, alternating "Yello Head's" head on one dancer then the other, giving him/her the opportunity to dance in each other's shoes and psyches. In Vandaele's perception, "Yello Head's" appearance in his art serves a dual function: "Yello Head is looking at us, too, discovering our life and our world," he says. That dynamic was picked up on by The Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art in New York, where Vandaele was invited to an artist-in-residency. In announcing his exhibit there, the Center placed "Yello Head" on a metaphysical plane as representing "a parallel universe that exists simultaneously to ours. The yellow character mingles with the other characters from our world and, in the process, redefines their relationships and existences." That two-way effect may be sensed in Vandaele's work in colored pencil on paper titled "Couple of Bathers" a re-creation of Winslow Homer's 1873 "The Bathers" showing two young women strolling on a beach. Typically, Vandaele omits shadows and details of the original wood engraving. The facial features of one bather are simplified, while those of the other are replaced by "Yello Head", the upraised arm in Homer's work supplanted by one in vivid yellow. In the original, the woman's gaze is downward; in Vandaele's, she seems to be looking out beyond the canvas, her wave a hail to a familiar someone. Vandaele emphasizes that all of his re-creations are done with great respect and homage to the originals. He believes that what he is doing signifies "New Realism" in art. Some think he may be on to something: 46

"His work, in the end, is a reappraisal of artistic traditions and standards. In reworking established themes, Vandaele causes us to question traditional artistic concepts and ways of evaluating aesthetic standards," notes Dr. Louis Zona, director of the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, Ohio, which hosted an early Vandaele exhibit in the United States. "By means of flattened, vivid colors, extremely bright and expressive, Jean-Noel Vandaele lets our imagination carry on to a rare and powerful analogic world," poses the C. William Gilchrist Museum of the Arts in Cumberland, MD, another Vandaele venue. Vandaele isn't sure himself of the significance of "Yello Head", although he and others see its effect as helping to serve one of art's primary missions, that of expanding consciousness and awareness of self. "What's important to me is that the presence of "Yello Head" might help people to look at their own lives, that this experiment might help us to be more alive to the gift of life, 'to the beauty of thy days,' as Shakespeare wrote. I'm not really trying to say anything through my work. There's no specific message here," says Vandaele. In his Villanova exhibit, Vandaele for the first time presents "Yello" as a head without a body. He sees the development as a new step in his character's evolution. He also for the first time places words in his work: "Maybe it's paradoxical, but 'Yello Head' seems to be more personified as just a head. It's a step ahead if we consider 'Yello Head' as a concept." When he completes a current and long-standing labor of love, Vandaele will become the first artist to illustrate each of the more than 30 plays of Shakespeare, claims the artist. The daunting task, he says, will encompass some 120 major, original works with "Yello Head" appearing in each scene. While the other characters' reactions to the goings on are indicated by the turn of their mouths and body language, "Yello Head", as always, remains smiling throughout. "Achieving coherence and respect for the plays within the context of invention," is Vandaele's intent. His minimalist style in scene and character depiction allows him, he says, to present Shakespeare "without distortion", trusting that viewers can fill in the nuances and arrive at their own judgments. His admiration for the remarkable color, form and line of Japanese Ukyo-e woodblock prints and paintings led Vandaele to his colored pencil series on the storied Kabuki Theater. Here he shows "Yello Head" as a faceless, always smiling, colorfully-gowned companion to Japanese beauties, and a happily doted-on child of privilege at play in a long ago time in Japanese history. The series, set in the Edo period of Japanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s artistic flowering (1603-1868), illustrates "Yello Head's" transcendent nature, says Vandaele: "Being of no time, space, gender, or even real body, 'Yello Head' transcends all, travelling in the imagination, visiting art throughout the ages." Vandaele's visual editing of Flemish masters from the pioneering 15th century oils of Jan Van Eyck to the extravagant Baroque paintings of Peter Paul Rubens signified, in part, a journey of self discovery. Of Flemish ancestry, his birthplace of Ghyvelde, France, is a stone's throw from the border of Belgium. "Yello Head's roots may be close to home as well. Says the artist: 47

"Each time I draw 'Yello', it seems to be someone very familiar to me, my mother or father, brother or sister, a good friend, or even like me. I suppose the creation of 'Yello' could be similar to a self-portrait process, but it's not. 'Yello' is another self, a spiritual one." The artist's work and other information may be found here. http://meetyello.blogspot.com https://plus.google.com/100735798641325622329/photos/photo/5686737092500061778?pid=568673 7092500061778&oid=100735798641325622329 jean.noel.vandaele@gmail.com Editorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s note: Below is a jpg of Jean-Noel showing two of his Japanese works which I had to include once I had seen.

Editor’s Note: Joy Leftow has been working on The Cartier Street Review since 2009, when she came up with new ideas to help the magazine flourish. Adding art and reviews was her idea. In 2010, Bernard Alain said he could no longer work on the magazine and turned The Cartier Street Review over to her. We at Cartier, keep hoping he will change his mind and return. Alain was truly the best at decision making and getting back to people who had submitted. I have been principal editor since Alain took leave. He founded The Cartier Street Review in 2007.

Regina Walker cswcasac@aol.com

Cover photo and Brooklyn Bridge is by Regina Walker, a writer and photographer in NYC. Both her writing and photography have appeared in various publications and her photos have been in display in a number of galleries in NYC, Florida, NJ and Woodstock, NY. Regina Walker’s first book, “Through My Eyes,” is available at the link below through Amazon.com for $24.95. http://www.amazon.com/dp/0692449000/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_Ii.Kvb070XXZS

Jean Noel Vandaele