the beatnik

The Last Waltz (For Now?)

2012-02-10T02:09:00.000-08:00

Beatnik is taking a long holiday

Sorry, all, but I'm going to have to bow out of BEATNIK production for the foreseeable future, so everybody who's waiting on a poem or poems to appear on this page will have to manfully swallow the disappointment and send the stuff elsewhere. When or whether BEATNIK - or something like it - will return I don't know.

Why the big decision, I hear you ask? Many reasons: time (or lack of it); the need I have to devote my attentions to what seem, at the moment, more pressing things, such as political activity, and earning a living so my girlfriend and I can pay our heating bills; wanting to give more energy to my own writing; and I'll be honest with you, my gradual loss of interest in the project.

The page will stay up until Blogger removes it so if anyone wants to dig out lost copies of old poems or steal someone else's (joking), they've got plenty of time to do it.

satnrose

2012-01-24T03:29:00.000-08:00

TO RESPONSE THE RESPONSE

the mile being level the sharp air
center where you burned the warm
my eye heard the sound of the thing
but only the sound my blade was
made of the thin blue ice mile under
the river it skates by pushing that
in the limit which it maintains and in
regard to response the response
to her whom the rhythm which is
the harmony is where am I where I
am of the feet which move aligning
me without any conscious thought
until I am in you thought simply that
if we make a quick survey of the
river the wood which it pulled
would hide the string which did not be-
long here together and with her eagerly
before me the pain would then
break and each step slide on down
the hill fast enough perhaps as if it
was possible and if I do not need
to go up to the top I just need to try

================================

BEFORE THE TRIAL

the city and you you are there so
your love is the you man and the you
corner of the street is defended you
use the come on to come in and let
someone far cross the time someday
just for the hell of it you lost me
on the stairs I hear the heart ex-
plaining the beat so many years if some-
one was you then you would know
it I was expecting you so use one in
a million what is true someday he’ll
someday do what can be done be-
fore the trial and then you will know
you know and I’ll make your bail

=========================

THE LAST MESSAGE IN THE LAST BOTTLE

being the last message in the last bottle
it was something that I had to
read when obtaining the good ones
ignore the lie of the differential it
is thought that we want entirety
entirely but if or when we get it then
we can’t handle it I was crossing
the garden to watch the fight of the
red ants with the white I was not
unaware of the similarities between
ants and men but for honest sweat
and the promise of the brown earth
you see with one eye more than
half of what you see with two and so
what is chosen is as good as the
land can produce it is no empty small
thing but as big as anything can be big
hard to imagine I listened to the
strange purple flowers who talked to
me I opened the door to the NO
of empty thought but surely no matter
how elevated you get you have
to come down sometime so I be-
lieved in self-reliance but you know at
some point we all need help when
the hot day deserted me I was left in
the cold to find my own way over
the fences topped with broken glass
and barbed wire but the top
of the mountain was up there where I was
going the boundaries made no difference
so ignorant of any aftereffect
I had to steal the where from the
nowhere to wake up and fly right but
moved by the mercy of the salt
like a child who has it easy easy the gun
held to your head and the well full
of your own blood and the so-called
epiphany you got wasn’t what you
hoped for so it’s back to the factory
for you you puppet and next time
you’d better have the proper respect

=============================

THE DRAGONS CAME ROARING OUT

she provided the liquor
and the fire pedestrian lit the room the roses
danced on the table
and the cat insulted me all night which I thought
was hilarious and the
cat just got pisseder and pisseder and so in the
morning the landlord
kicked me out on the street someone came up
to me and spoke a
Spanish I could almost understand and I just kept
nodding and they
went away shaking their three heads the mountains
separated in front
of me so I dragged my carcass up thru the canyons
and sheets of ice
glared back at me a dog wanted to bite at me but it
had a steel wire muzzle
so I grabbed at him and his walker ran away
with the bitch so I
went to ground but didn’t have the technical skill
to put the slug in the slot
and the brakeman pushed me through and
out on the tournament
floor the dragons came roaring out and I had
to step into the belly
to get to where I was going I looked at all this
as if I were my own
ghost and I guess I should have been frightened
but if you must know
to tell the truth I just didn’t know who I was

====================

THE MYTH OF THE WEALTH OF NATIONS

the achievement of wealth is a chimera
you can take the appropriate
expedient and clip its wings whether
grasping at the best straw is a
wise course of action or letting the
mystery play play itself out we do
what little we can to lighten the
damage if the process can go or be
reversed you have to have known
that something would change the
cost is not large in the short-term
but in the long term brutal money
wasted is only time so someone
stabilizes while someone else tries to
get rich quick the rule of law
and legislation won’t stop the process
of erosion but only slow it down
or else speed it up so in light of the
present condition we can either
try to sit stock still or run it into the
ground cause either way y’know
absolute power stupefies absolutely

=====================

Bio: "satnrose is a well-known antiquarian bookseller, and formerly a not-so-secret messenger in the innermost depths of Capitol Hill and K Street. He has been published in a number of literary magazines, but since his reincarnation as 'satnrose' a couple of years ago, he has been published in EVERGREEN REVIEW, ICONOCLAST, DANSE MACABRE, COUNTEREXAMPLE POETICS, wtf.pwm, OYSTERS & CHOCOLATE, APPARATUS, GLOOM CUPBOARD, ESCAPE INTO LIFE, MAD SWIRL, METAZEN, THE NOVEMBER 3RD CLUB, STRAY BRANCH, THE CITRON REVIEW, THE COPPERFIELD REVIEW, THE HELL GATE REVIEW, THE BLUE JEW YORKER, MASTODON DENTIST, FULL OF CROW, FORGE, ROSE & THORN JOURNAL, THE MAYNARD, NEFARIOUS BALLERINA, COUNTERPUNCH, deadpaper, theviewfromhere, MAVERICK, CALLIOPE NERVE, THE BATTERED SUITCASE, PSYCHIC MEATLOAF, HAWK & WHIPPORWILL, etc., etc."

Michaelsun Stonesweat Knapp

2012-01-17T03:23:00.000-08:00

When a poet sends a really good batch, it's hard to say no to any of them. Here's another three by Michaelsun Stonesweat Knapp. For a brief bio of the poet, go to last week's posting.

If Crime Doesn’t Pay Sandwiches Will

There are two reasons
I know of
Why most people
who are missing fingers
lost them in the first place

either they’re a great carpenter
but lost the digit
to a saw blade
while they were distracted

or a Yakuza
who failed their Oyabun
and had the extremity cut off
to teach them a lesson

So when the woman at Quizznos
handed me my two Sammies in their brown bag
and I noticed she only had
one knuckle per finger
my immediate thought was
she had to be the world’s greatest woodworker

but then it occurs to me

why then was she
working the register
at a sandwich joint?

So the only logical
explanation
is that she was
at one point
just a really shitty gangster.

***

Rob and the Birds

Rob is a carpenter
for the county fair;
has been since high school
before either of his kids were born.
He’s the one

who does the work
in the repurposed hanger
with tall wide doors
that lets birds and the wind in.

Every night at closing
he walks between the walls
of the hanger
and the facades
he builds every year,
throughout the year,

looking for people
who went through an access door
to hide. He never finds anyone,
but what he does find
, next to the various wrappers of God knows what
, resting on the sea of kettle corn that he walks on,
are dead birds.

The ones the wind brought in
and left to twist
in the cool air conditioner breeze.

The sparrows starve
and fall, unable to fly or even waddle.

The pidgeons find the corn
back there and their stomaches soon burst.

The hawks are the worst for Rob.
They manage to look so stately
, so immortal,
while trapped in the hanger.
They last the longest
, eating the other birds,
but they too die. And Rob

brings them all out. He
carries them like friends
, wraps them in white newspaper,
and takes them to the dumpster out back
where the birds had wanted to be
from the moment they flew in,
and couldn’t fly out.

***

Sink or Float?

A carrot?
A potato?
A can of tomato paste?
Sink.

A fork?
A rock?
A coke?
Sink.

A Florida orange?
A four by four?
A plastic orange?
Float.

A car?
A scream?
A brother?

Michaelsun Stonesweat Knapp and Natalie Morales

2012-01-07T04:42:00.000-08:00

Michaelsun Stonesweat Knapp

Venice on the Second

it’s twenty eight hours shy of July Fourth,

in Venice, by way of the 10 freeway,

and the sky groans in its sleep

with premature fireworks and

electricity running relay races on telephone wires.

In this city by the sea,

in the parking lot of a Ralphs,

a homeless dog is tied to a shopping cart collector

and alternates saying first, “Save me,”

but then “Go away.

I listen, eating a peanut-butter cup

I’ve gotten for being a good boy;

sit on the hood of mother’s Toyota Sienna,

which both looks and drives like a whale,

and after considering the dog’s requests

I turn to him and reply

“No,”

and he hushes-up and lays down

until he’s picked up by a man

who isn’t a homeowner either.

Bio: I am a 22 year old, Native American, college graduate from the Los Angeles area. I have been published in In Somnis Veritas, Creepy Gnome, and will be in the upcoming editions of Carnivalitmag.com as well as California State University San Bernandino's newpaper The Coyote Chronicle.

NATALIE MORALES

For Kathleen

Some people would rather you stay with the abusive boyfriend

who demanded seventy-five hundred dollars

in return for your life

who bought you birthday gifts with your money

because he’s a chivalrous motherfucker

who put a cigarette out on your face

since the ash tray was full.

God would rather you use your soul

to carry around demons

like an old suitcase

Pastor would rather you batter-ram your emotions

into a sardine can

on the tip of a pinhead.

But let me tell you

—sister—

who you are is fine with me.

And let me tell you

—sister—

the caged bird doesn’t sing.

You’re a peacock, not a parrot

—sister—

so let your wings breathe.

Hello Marylou: Lu Anne Henderson Tells It Like It Was

2012-01-04T02:51:00.000-08:00

“One and Only: The Untold Story of ‘On The Road’”

by Gerald Nicosia and Anne Marie Santos

Viva Editions

ISBN: 978-1-936740-04-8

Cultural and literary studies of the 1950s tend to focus on two things: conformity, and its breakdown. Which is really one thing, of course, in different phases. Along with Marlon Brando, James Dean and Elvis Presley, in the ethnocentric, superficial examination of this cultural stasis that everybody was supposed to be frozen in, the Beat writers and poets are generally credited with shaking the citizenry loose and leading them to the cultural revolution of the Sixties. That’s too shallow, too convenient and too easily-rubbished a theory, but I’m happy to go with it when I’m not feeling pedantic and ready for an argument.

For a long time, how you felt about cultural revolution defined how you felt about the Beats, at least if you were a casual reader or an interested but unaffiliated poet/ novelist in your own right. If you liked rock and roll, cars, drugs, hair, peace and sex – if you were sceptical towards institutional authority – you probably liked the Beats. And if you didn’t like those things, you probably hated the Beats. From the start the Academics had their own snobbish put-down agenda, based on who knows what (the sheer impudence?) and most of the hoary young-old bastards still do. It must drive them nuts that nobody except other Academics or people who wanted to be Academics ever listened to them. You can, after all, get a copy of “On The Road” in almost any decent-sized bookshop in the Western world (not that that’s much of a measure of quality, when I think about it).

But since the Seventies a type of criticism has been developing that Beat aficionados can’t ignore, and that’s the one analysing Beat writing and culture as rooted in deliberate or inadvertent misogyny. The university in my own town, Northampton, teaches to this day that Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady, in the journeys back and forth across America that make up the narrative of “On The Road”, were partaking of a freedom that the women of the time couldn’t; any woman who accompanied them – like Lu Anne Henderson - was brought along as some sort of victim of their terrible sexual machinations, and would be maligned by society as a teenage whore. Jack’s was a boy gang, as the blurb for Joyce Johnson’s 1983 memoir about, among other things, her time as Kerouac’s girlfriend. Women were minor characters at best.

“One and Only: The Untold Story of ‘On The Road’” is a very important book, in that it turns the current critical wisdom about the role of women and the Beat Generation upside down by presenting, at length, the largely unmediated testimony of the one woman who hasn’t really been heard, and – you might argue – the one woman who really saw the Beats up close. The woman is Lu Anne Henderson herself, known to all who’ve read “On The Road” as Dean’s “beautiful little sharp chick Marylou” (Kerouac 4). Lu Anne, who’d been Cassady’s wife and travelled by car and bus across country with him in 1946 when he was heading for New York to fulfil his dream of going to Columbia and learning how to write. Lu Anne, who’d met Kerouac and helped Neal and the reticent Jack form a friendship that would ultimately give birth to the novel. Lu Anne, who in 1948, despite their annulment and Neal’s marriage to Carolyn Robinson, travelled back across America with Cassady and then Kerouac at a later stage of the journey. Lu Anne, who smoked opium with Cassady, Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg to celebrate New Year’s Eve 1948 and then went with Jack and Neal to Algiers, Louisiana to take their friend Helen Hinkle away from the house of William S. Burroughs, where she’d been living on the charity of the man who’d write “Naked Lunch” one day and had finally outstayed her welcome.

I could go on for three more paragraphs about Lu Anne’s counter-cultural adventures, as described so beautifully in her own words in the book from the transcriptions of two interviews Gerald Nicosia did with her in 1978 when he was researching his monumental Kerouac biography Memory Babe; but I think the point is well made. Lu Anne didn’t stay at home in a nice little suburban house venturing out only for Tupperware parties and baby showers and making sure that her husband always had his dinner on the table when he came home from work. That’s one of those Time magazine clichés about Fifties womanhood that have taken hold in the minds of Academics because in the postmodernist age intellectuals can’t tell the difference between the real world and media representations of it. Lu Anne didn’t stay home when her old man, or someone else’s old man, took off across country for a trip either. She went with him. It’s like she says on page 122 of the book: I went on that trip solely as an adventure. […] I loved to go anyway; I was always ready. I was like Neal in that respect – it didn't take very much to move me.

It’s interesting, isn’t it, how inconvenient a view that is of a woman when there are still, thankfully, a few people left in the world who admire such carefree behaviour in a man. Why do male and female commentators (feminist writers have charged the Beats with misogyny for years) prefer to think that the women who travelled and the women who stayed at home in their phoney historical construct weren’t equally responsible for their own decisions? Lu Anne is clear throughout the transcript that she was responsible for hers at every point along the wild, dangerous, thrilling road she travelled. She wasn’t manipulated by anybody; she didn’t miss out on anything – except perhaps the intimate love she might have shared with Jack and Neal at different times, although she saw deeply enough into the souls of both to understand why it never happened – and she definitely wasn’t the loose-moraled “slob” she felt she had been portrayed as by Carolyn Cassady in her book “Off The Road” and in the movie “Heart Beat”. What was so wrong with three people who loved each other sharing a bed at the same time? Lu Anne asks in “One and Only” ( Heart Beat, a rather average movie as I remember, shows Carolyn discovering Lu Anne in bed with Neal and Allen Ginsberg.) Indeed, what is wrong with that? I wouldn’t want to do it myself, but what?

The majority of the narrative in Lu Anne’s interview recalls in detail the same events Kerouac describes it “On The Road”. It’s like the same novel, but from the point of view of Marylou; and she is a wonderful storyteller, with a memory for detail and a gift for the evocation of scene that might have made her a great novelist, if she’d ever attempted to tell her story on the printed page. But we have her great gift memorialised now, thanks to Nicosia, and the form in which it’s presented to us and to Time (that of the interview instead of the novel) doesn’t matter; gas station attendants can be poets, as Bob Dylan says. Or was that farmers?

Later sections of the interview reflect on the precipitate decline of Kerouac when fame arrived – too late for a man already exhausted and disappointed by life, she says. Lu Anne privileges us also with a last glimpse of a weary Neal, with whom she had maintained irregular contact right to the end, heading down to Mexico on that last, fateful trip. “Where do we go from here, babe?” Neal asks her (Henderson in Nicosia 157). It was clear that the answer, for Neal, was nowhere. The railroad tracks in San Miguel de Allende, and a lonely death from exposure, awaited.

“One and Only” concludes with an unsent letter from Lu Anne to Neal, dated 1957, a consideration of her role as an important facilitator of the Beat movement, a biographical section about Al Hinkle, Ed Dunkel in “On The Road” and lifelong friend to Lu Anne, and lastly, a lovely, intimate and very moving 31 page account of her mother’s life by Lu Anne’s daughter Anne Marie Santos. I don’t know whether it was the cumulative impact of the book, or just the post-Christmas mood I was in, or whether Anne Marie’s story had got me thinking unconsciously about my own mother, also gone now and dearly loved, but by the time I reached the last page of her account I was in such a state of heightened emotion I cried. I genuinely can’t think of the last time I cried at a book, other than in the case of Ann Radcliffe’s “The Mysteries of Udolpho”,when I cried in anguish because it was so boring.

My feelings about “One and Only” should be clear by now, after the long weeks we’ve shared together dissecting it. I think it’s a beautifully conceived, edited, and written book, and for the reasons I’ve already outlined, I’m convinced it is the most important addition to Beat scholarship since Nicosia’s “Memory Babe”. Bookshops may not carry it so you could find yourself doing a little work to track it down, but it’s worth it. Failing anything else, or perhaps as your first stop, try visiting the publisher’s website at http://www.vivaeditions.com/. Then come back to BEATNIK and let me know what you think.

Bibliography

Johnson, Joyce. Minor Characters. London: Picador, 1983.

Kerouac, Jack. On The Road. London: Andre Deutsch, 1973.

Nicosia, Gerald and Anne Marie Santos. One and Only: The Untold Story of ‘On The Road’. Berkeley: Viva Editions, 2011.

Charlotte San Juan: Three Poems

2011-12-30T02:25:00.000-08:00

What Drives You Home At 2am

You admit that it is the way

An oncoming train becomes a slow moving

Upside down glowing socket.

A snake whose loud mouth is open wide

And full of light

You admit that it is every stray cat

Huddled beneath parked cars

Hugged together, a tight ball of yarn

Eyes caught by your headlights,

Two illuminated silver coins

Marking the way back home.

California Trash

At times my eyes are

Shooting blanks into the horizon,

Trying to puncture the clouds.

Trying to escape the smog and nicotine,

And the yellow sheets of paper that burgers are wrapped in

That float around in the gutter,

In parking lots and

Sway across the beach sand.

Blackout

You never liked night driving.

And now, on the road

You find yourself a strange,

Lonely vehicle that careens

Up an empty street

Drenched in the pitch black nightgown

Of the devil herself.

It makes you remember the folksy darkness

Of Massachusetts,

How a single pair of headlights

Isolate every passing tree

Like tall nude broads

Exposed and awkwardly branching,

Momentarily bathed in silk light.

And then shrouded safe by

An ink curtain draping over them

As you, with feigned indifference

Leave them untouched, distant figures

To be groped by other lights.

Gerald Nicosia: Press Release on the Kerouac Estate

2011-12-23T02:16:00.000-08:00

Gerald Nicosia, author of the best biography of Jack Kerouac Memory Babe, and editor of a moving account of the life of Kerouac's daughter Jan Kerouac: A Life in Memory, writes about the recent appellate court ruling that the will being used to direct the operations of the Kerouac Estate is a forgery.

In May 1994, Jan Kerouac filed a lawsuit in Pinellas County, Florida, against the Sampas family, alleging that they had forged her grandmother Gabrielle Kerouac’s will. Jack Kerouac had left his entire literary estate to his mother Gabrielle, and when she died, a will was filed leaving all his property to Stella Kerouac, his widow. Jan Kerouac died on June 5, 1996, before the case went to trial; but it was eventually carried on by Jack Kerouac’s nephew, Paul Blake, Jr., son and only child of Jack Kerouac’s late sister Caroline Kerouac Blake. Kerouac, in fact, had written a letter to his nephew Paul the day before he died, telling him that, after his mother passed on, he wanted his entire literary estate to go to Paul.

On July 24, 2009, Judge George Greer in the Probate Court of Pinellas County, Florida, ruled that Jack Kerouac’s mother’s will, leaving his entire estate, including all of his literary properties, to his widow Stella Kerouac was a forgery. In an unusually lengthy and strong decision, Judge Greer wrote that Kerouac’s mother, who was partially paralyzed and bedridden from a stroke, “would have lacked the coordination to affix her signature. The [probate] court is required by law to use a clear and convincing standard in determining these matters. However, even if the criminal standard of beyond all reasonable doubt was the requirement, the result would certainly be the same. Clearly, Gabrielle Kerouac was physically unable to sign the document dated February 13, 1973, and, more importantly, that which appears on the Will dated that date is not her signature.” He “ordered and adjudged that the document bearing date of February 13, 1973 and admitted into probate herein as the last will and testament of Gabrielle Kerouac is a forgery….” He also ordered the probate of Gabrielle’s will, which had given all of her property to Stella, to be revoked.

The Sampas family, the brothers and sisters of Stella who had inherited the Kerouac Estate from her when she died in 1990, immediately took an appeal of Judge Greer’s decision. Co-heir and Literary Executor for the family, John Sampas, told British journalist Stephen Maughan “We do not believe the Will of Gabrielle Kerouac was forged and do believe the Judge based his ruling on fictitious accounts by a doctor who never met Gabrielle Kerouac.” Sampas also lamented that a strong defense of the will had not been put on before Judge Greer. Why he and his family did not mount such a strong defense, he did not explain. “Our lawyers,” Sampas claimed to Maughan, “would have demolished Alan Wagner and his corrupt father Bill Wagner [Paul Blake, Jr.’s attorneys].”

While the appeals process continued, Paul Blake, Jr.’s lawyers were prevented from going after assets of the Kerouac Estate, and even from getting any sort of accounting of those assets. All that is now changed.

On August 10, 2011, the District Court of Appeal of Florida, Second District, ruled against the Sampas family and affirmed Judge Greer’s ruling that Kerouac’s mother’s will was a forgery. The way the decision was written, it is a final decision and cannot be appealed further. That means it is now in the history books that the Kerouac Estate, arguably the most valuable literary estate in recent history, was stolen.

Bill Wagner, Blake’s attorney, stated, “In effect, the war is over. Gabrielle’s will has been determined to be a forgery and now our chore is to see what assets we can trace and still recover or recover rights to.” When Jack Kerouac died, Stella was entitled to only one-third of the estate by a Florida dower’s rights law. The rest should have gone to Jan Kerouac and Paul Blake, Jr. States Wagner: “The Estate of Gabrielle Kerouac is being administered at this time and the Personal Representative [appointed by the Florida court] is collecting information to allow the Estate to benefit as Jack Kerouac intended, subject only to the Widow’s Share awarded at his death to Stella [by Florida state law] ….”

Continues Wagner: “By reason of the above events, the 1/3^rd of the assets of Jack Kerouac which passed by law to Stella became the property of Stella’s siblings. The remaining 2/3^rd of the assets of Jack Kerouac that passed under Jack’s will to Gabrielle belong to her recently re-opened Estate. The beneficiaries of that Estate are Paul Blake, Jr., and the heirs of Jan Kerouac, sharing equally once the Estate is fully administered. The discovery of tangible personal property and the accounting for intangible personal property, including intellectual property and money assets, both past and future, will be the focus of the Personal Representative under the supervision of the Probate Court.”

A.G.Synclair

2011-12-21T02:52:00.000-08:00

WEST REDUX

a raven

the mighty susquehanna
curling inward

caw caw caw.

a breach

the road was never there
was never mine. it was conceived as a ghost.

the earth is turning colder. invisible.
there is a bluster of blinding snow.

she'll insist that I smell like the west
like sun washed trees. like apples.

like a million little aftershocks.

later, she'll brush her teeth in the shower.

Bio:
A.g. Synclair is the editor and publisher of The Montucky Review. He doesn't have an MFA in anything but still manages to publish regularly. He lives, writes, and collaborates in southwestern Montana with his significant other, the artist and poet Heather Brager.

In the Country of Nice Things

2011-12-19T02:15:00.001-08:00

Review

The Accidental Navigator: New and Selected Poems and a Story

by Henry Denander (Lummox Press)

A new book by Henry Denander is always good news. This one isn’t completely new, since I received my review copy in October, but who knows, maybe a few of you won’t have come across it yet. And if I want to keep getting books as good as this mailed to me for free I have to keep up my part of the bargain.

I like Henry Denander. You should know that. My memory isn’t good, but I believe our paths first crossed nearly a decade ago, in a brilliant print magazine run by Bryn Fortey. Outlaw. I could see then that he knew about jazz and he knew about Charles Bukowski, two things that sell a man or woman to me pretty quickly even to this day. When I got to know him better I realised that he had adapted Bukowski’s apparently plain (though technically adept) narrative style to create his own distinctive voice, which is the four-leaved clover in the poetry game; so few of us achieve it you could write all of the names down while the kettle was boiling and still have time to check your Facebook. I also discovered as my familiarity with Henry grew that he was a good painter and a really nice guy.

You would not think that the latter detail mattered very much, but it’s important when it comes to a consideration of his poetry. That voice, the person speaking to us out of the poems in The Accidental Navigator and Henry’s other books, is, to use Gerald Locklin’s word, a ‘congenial’ one. Mature, witty, reasonable, not at all given to the posturing often evident in those who have taken Bukowski as their leader instead of a significant signpost on the road to liberation of style and content. Henry Denander pretends to be nobody and his poems are filled with the matter of his own life.

But then, Henry’s life is not an ordinary one. He described himself somewhere as a ‘bean counter’ in the entertainment industry, and in the course of counting those beans he has met a fair few legends of jazz and other musical forms - one poem in the collection, “Royalty Advances”, concerns his separate dealings with a “fantastic guitar and harmonica player” (we can only wonder who that is) and Chet Baker, who had much more of the Beat spirit about him when receiving his money. Henry also keeps a home on a Greek island, being financially comfortable and unashamed of it – it is usually the done thing for poets to claim they work in a drive-thru’ and have holes in their shoes (I really have, by the way) – so the collection features Mediterranean poems too, suffused with the warmth and simplicity and companionship of his life there. I like these a lot, for whatever the opinion of someone who has never been to Greece might be worth.

A new(ish) development, if I’m not mistaken, is the poetry of ageing. Henry talks about kidney stones in “A Perfect Client” and “Nursing” (they insert something into your Johnson – ouch). In “Modern Times” we read of headache treatments and other parts of the body that might need a cure. But it is jazz and Bukowski to whom he continually returns, musing even on the Wormwood Review and in one poem, on the first name he and Buk share. If he had known about Bukowski as a young man, he says, he would have been proud to be another Henry.

An artist, a thinker, even a human being with no other attachable label, is defined by his or her passions, and it’s an act of generosity for Henry to share his with us. In the prose story that finishes the book, however, he decants into less familiar territory with “The Poetry of Mr. Blue”, a narrative that namechecks an author some might not be familiar with, Paul Auster. Crammed with Auster references and Auster-ish unresolved mysteries and coincidences, it’s an unexpected, skilful and slightly spooky piece. What’s even more spooky is that I’d just started rereading Paul Auster as I was finishing Henry’s book. I know he will appreciate that fact even if nobody else does. Paul Auster, of course, is too safe in the hands of the Academics now to care.

You can buy a copy of The Accidental Navigator from Lummox Press at http://www.lummoxpress.com/ .

Ramona Itule-Patigian: Three Poems

2011-12-14T02:26:00.000-08:00

A Short Dissertation

Sacred pathetic fallacy, here we are

bell and board, bound to brain.

The ghost trains and I searching lights

for more than lanterns. The library romantics

and microscope erotics came for columns and

they’ll leave with nothing less. So

let’s pretend we’re spies and apply band-aids

to flat tires. Let’s go wine tasting at the university

and fish shooting at the mall. Take

me shopping or bar hopping. Tell

the bartender you love Stein and

and we’ll toast Sartre, recite symphonies and

play Dr. Frankenstein and his monster.

Read me gibberish, it’s sexy.

We’ll buy Che T-shirts and berets

as long as there’s an ATM

drink ink till we’re dizzy and bask in composition

I’ve tried baking cakes with tacks and hangers

and I like the sound of my own voice

Apparition

Beginning to imagine my life with the apparition was not hard

starting over tea in a silent parlor

The two of us seated without the bolts of our waking lives

A memory rolls over again, takes a swift gusty inhale

and the cobwebbed body smiles a poker-face smile

Appears over the wire in a startling break, a lost bell tower

that once knew my heart like the map of a hand

Starting to embrace life with the apparition was easy too

beginning with a song on a crackling recorder

The two of us listening without the rolling static of traffic

The memory rises up with a dusty stifled murmur

and my call is finally answered in the death of the dead

At first just a speechless spell that stood and stuttered in silence

I lost my breath and swallowed my twisted stomach with a gulp

trying to find a greeting fit for a talking statue

Preparing to shatter glass, drain the embalmed and remember everything

Then a tumbling spindle, rattling and re-living in constant spilling threads

chattering on to the sound I had buried, to relic lighthouses and dinosaur bones

Now the ghost of a ghost

the apparition and I begin to make plans

Bones

All our finely tuned legacies sprawl out from underneath

Like the swift, seared desert that first choked me into fantasy and form

All these scowling teenage girls I was and swift fits I hailed sacred

And yet I can hardly summon a line for you

Let alone any blazed battle fields or mourned loses

Those are mine to keep

Those that move like stillness and settle unnoticed

Those that bleed through paper like spirits and smoke

Those that have grown within my earth and calcify to bone

Any cliché that I could give you would seem blasphemy

Sold out, grown up, resigned individuality?

You waver like the fight in me

You pace there in the roots

Sifting sand and awakening dust

Reminiscent of angst, but more like rebel lust

Sometimes I forget I loved life first

Ramona Itule-Patigian is from the desert, but now lives in Berkeley, California with her boyfriend and cat. She recently received her MFA from Mills College and loves music and fruit. Her work has appeared in Boston Literary Magazine, Quantum Poetry Magazine, and is forthcoming in Triggerfish Critical Review.

Kevin Cummings: Two Poems

2011-12-05T03:16:00.000-08:00

Failing

I never paid much attention in physics

But after a couple of beers

And remembering that man was capable of the atomic bomb

And landing on the moon

I stumble out the door into the night

Trying my damndest to piss on the stars

Failing Miserably.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

unititled

I left the car on empty

Walking the half mile to the tracks

To watch the boxcars,

Cutting the horizon in two,

I dreamt of places,

Of stories told in miles.

You told me to run from this place

I swear I’m trying,

But I haven’t left;

Afraid there’d be no home

To come back to.

McDougal Street Blues - Jack Kerouac

2011-12-04T05:28:00.000-08:00

Kerouac and the Clones

2011-12-04T02:26:00.001-08:00

A correspondent suggests that Jack Kerouac has no place in the slice-and-dice Penguin anthology even though Ginsberg has, and would have made the cut but for those evil money-grubbers at HarperCollins. I've heard this kind of stupid prejudice against Kerouac many times, but I still can't help wondering what planet people live on. Everybody who isn't looking for the employee of the month badge at McDonald's or next year's £50 000 Anaemic Poetry Prize and the big seat at the English Department table in the University of Clones knows Kerouac is a great poet. Here's Ginsberg's own view on the matter from an old issue of Gargoyle Magazine.
http://www.gargoylemagazine.com/gargoyle/Issues/scanned/issue10/ginsberg.htm

Dove: Digging Deeper

2011-12-03T05:58:00.001-08:00

I've been reading further on Rita Dove's decision to exclude Ginsberg and Kerouac from the new Penguin Anthology of Twentieth Century American Verse and I've unearthed a couple of interesting details. First this old quote from Dove, which demonstrates she has no particular prejudice towards Ginsberg (I'd never heard of her before I read about the anthology, so what did I know?):

Allen Ginsberg's importance was in its twilight for so many years that it took his death to bring it to the front page. He electrified an entire world! And he continues to do so! There are generations who stumble across HOWL and find it speaks to them. Yet it takes a tragedy to make people notice. http://www.math.buffalo.edu/~sww/dove/dove-interview.html

Dove says in her introduction, apparently, that she couldn't afford to blow her whole budget on hefty permission fees from copyright owners. I don't know if she refers specifically to HarperCollins and Rupert Murdoch (I am so out of the political loop in literary matters I didn't know they were owned by the liberal's own antichrist Rupert Murdoch), but I suppose the inference is there even if the declaration isn't. So, then, she simply couldn't afford Ginsberg.

That's a credible argument. Perhaps, then, Dove's mistake was tactical rather than political, in that she has included in her anthology a whole lot of people who could have been excluded so that the most significant American poet of the 1950s - in cultural as well as literary terms - didn't have to be. And if it was a question of late negotiation with HarperCollins when most of the money had already been spent, the same applies. It's bad housekeeping. Blaming the capitalist monster Murdoch and the devils of the Ginsberg estate might be fun but it's too easy.

And I still wonder what really motivated Dove's selections for the book. While including four of her own poems, Dove excludes Sylvia Plath too, and Plath's poetry is taught in every university from here to the other side of Mars. I don't like it personally but even a pig-headed bastard like me has to admit it's technically brilliant. Is Plath owned by the horned Australian one also? Most of the stuff I've read seems to indicate that Dove just hates her poetry, which is fair enough, but not a good basis for the editing of a poetry anthology.

As for Kerouac...well, some of the reviews of the anthology have been kind about his writing while discussing its absence from the book, but prejudice against him is so deep-rooted in 'respectable' circles an editor who could afford to buy Manhattan probably wouldn't include him. The professor of American Literature at Northampton University described Jack's Essentials of Spontaneous Prose as 'hippie shit' in a lecture only last year. I forced him to admit he was wrong in a private discussion in his office a few days later, but I'm sure his submission was only made to prevent me from breaking the furniture.

Ginsberg: The Ugly Spectre of Revisionism

2011-12-02T06:13:00.000-08:00

also published at Suffolk Punch (http://bluefredpress.blogspot.com/)

The rather wonderful Allen Ginsberg blog (http://ginsbergblog.blogspot.com) reminds us that Allen's poetry has been left out of Rita Dove's Penguin Anthology of Twentieth Century American Poetry.

WHAT??? Who the hell is going to represent American poetry at mid-century and into the Sixties then? Robert Lowell?? Kenneth Patchen??

This doesn't warrant a polite "Boo!", Ginsberg people, it warrants a howl, if you'll pardon the pun, of objection. It's philistinism. Absolute philistinism. And an absurd attempt to rewrite history, excluding the only serious challenge to the strangulating dullness of respectable literary life in those times.

I recommend we all write emails and letters of strenuous complaint and refuse to buy any more Penguin books until they correct their ridiculous error

footnote:
Well, I say the ONLY serious attempt, but I find that Kerouac's not in there either. Gary Snyder and Lawrence Ferlinghetti are, which is fine, but by no stretch of the imagination could it be said that they've written work of the same profound, original, epoch-making significance as Ginsberg and Kerouac. And I think they'd probably both tell you that too.

Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal: Three Poems

2011-11-26T03:04:00.000-08:00

WITHOUT LANGUAGE

Without words,

books, and dictionaries,

the silent type might rule.

Without language,

there’d be no use for pens

and ink. Our tangled

nets would fill with fish

and their smell could not

be described. They would

not be fish. On cold nights

we would shiver and cough.

The rotting corpses would

not have names. Home

would be a place and there

would be no word for it. Sound

would fill our ears and

the sky would just be a thing

like the sunset would be something

without a name. Home would

be where we dream and like

everything it could not be

described. The wind would be

soothing like your soft kiss.

There would be no word for love

without language.

THE CRYING WOMAN

I heard the crying woman in the yard last night. She does not come around as often as before. I have never seen her. I only hear her cries. She is an apparition, a ghost. She only appears to some of the neighbors, who describe her as lean, with fair skin, and long hair. I hear she grew up around these parts. She died after she lost her husband in the first World War. She drowned in her bathtub leaving behind a small note. I am going to meet my soldier. She did not sign it. I cannot sleep a wink when I hear her cries. She makes me feel like crying too. It is so infectious. It sounds like she’s pouring out her soul to love long gone. I could not comfort her because I have troubles of my own.

HOMEMADE GRAVE

The invisible woman wept transparent tears.

She sealed her heart away.

She walled her heart and remained at home

inside her homemade grave.

In the airless room the disappeared woman

welcomed no strangers.

She preferred to be alone because she could

not be with her one true love.

The invisible woman believed heaven was

in her room and thought

she was blessed and completely dead

inside her homemade grave.

Luis was born in Mexico. He lives in Los Angeles County and works in the mental health field. His last chapbook, Digging A Grave, was published by

Kendra Steiner Editions. Alternating Current will publish his chapbook, Peering Into The Sun, and Poet's Democracy will publish his chapbook,

Songs For Oblivion.

David Nix: Two Poems

2011-11-19T03:01:00.001-08:00

Midnight Meanderings

Dark and twisty

The ash of a cigarette

Spiraling down to oblivion

Never good enough

Used and tossed away

With the filth

Tired but conscious

The ache of an old scar

Pondering endless nothings

Endless everythings

To only return

Alive but dead

Blazing into silence

I am alone.

So It Goes

Cultural boundaries hide nebulous

quandaries.

All I see are dull people,

arguing dull topics,

with other dull people.

Is it enough to live?

It is enough to die, apparently.

I can’t express my deepest feelings,

but I can ride a mule.

Let’s pick and choose

because it suits our idea of perfection.

Ambitions outweigh our commissions

and omissions.

What even is perfection?

Is it our elitist, exclusive

communities of righteousness?

Letting no one in

and no one out?

Fuck that.

It’s not about you.

It’s about everyone.

And everything.

The meek are on a losing streak, so to

speak.

I’m not arguing the idea,

only the practice.

I have no doubt.

I’m just fed up

with the bullshit.

Cliques reject you,

parents hate you,

job enrages you,

and you’re left with the one

who loves you.

I get it.

No one is mistaken, they just need to

reawaken.

It’s global.

It’s viral.

When devotion becomes zeal,

that’s when you have to watch out.

I just don’t get it.

Live and let live.

Let.

Live.

Is my point.

Because murder is ok

if you’re told to do it.

You know.

I’m comfortable with the

unobservable.

People are going to be petty and vile.

You have to accept it.

I don’t know I’m right.

I don’t know much.

But what I do know

is when that sun chases the moon

around the Earth to bring the night,

it goes on.

And on.

A few words for David Nix midnightmeanderings.tumblr.com.

Hey everyone! My name is David Nix and I am currently a student at George Mason University and an English major with a concentration in Poetry Writing. I started my college career as a physics major, switching to English because I decided I liked the power of words more than the power of numbers. I hope you enjoy my poems!

Editor's Note

2011-11-06T03:34:00.001-08:00

All poets waiting to see their contributions appear on this august page are advised that we will be approximately a week later than planned in publishing them. This couldn't be avoided, but once we get back on schedule we'll let you know. The Beatnik.

Neil Ellman

2011-11-06T03:17:00.000-08:00

In Love

I am in love

with stars, tarantulas and you

porcupines, pyramids

cellophane

and mayonnaise

Picasso and gumbo-limbo trees

the frost on the morning cloak

shredded paper raining down

on streets

crowded with asteroids

and caviar

with you as well

as the smell of lavender

and the touch

of a stranger on the train

no stranger than

the love I have for you.

Snake

Coiled conceit

unraveling

in arms

cold to the touch

the cobra springs

shedding skin

(not yet her own)—

and I trusted you

for what you were.

From Your Side of the Sun

On your side of the sun

insinuations

spread

this & that

secrets

in cold colors

white fireflies

contained in

incandescent jars

it never stops

these rumors

recriminations

age define

dark spots on an old man’s face

suggesting spittle from its mouth

certainty

when there is none.

Vodka

Vodka becomes me

i, it

we are friends

from the playgrounds

of our youth

old lovers

behind a barn

grappling

in the grass

we climbed

Everest

it and I

plunged to the soft

bottom

of the Mariana Trench

where no neighbors

could see us

nothing touch us

we had no shame

where shame itself

was light

no remorse

we grow old

really old

i and it

fulfilling our pledge

till death do us part.

Allison Grayhurst and Douglas Polk

2011-10-23T04:17:00.000-07:00

Alison Grayhurst

Denial

I will not be drawn

into you – mute with treacherous emotions,

shadowy at best in this morose of need and trophies.

Love is not a possible banner to bear. Love is not

this city, painted with greed and the ‘doing anything’ for survival.

It is okay to die, but not okay for my mind to be inebriated

with euphemisms, misty without edge or sharp magic.

I will not be drawn into the giving of roses or waiting

for the things within to confirm connection with what is heavy,

tedious and demanding. I will stay in place, committed to my familiar adventure,

block the gold from clawing on my screen. I will just look

and see nothing new, feel like a shoreline on a day of perfect weather.

I will not be drawn. I will myself concealed

in my mad lagoon, immune to any intoxicating distraction or further

longing.

It Happened

It happened when

the air grew thick

as toffee candy

and love slipped into the cupboard

behind a rack full of old clothes.

That is when the lights broke and a new view

came headlong in – one that feels like

holding hands out, spread and still

under placid waters or

a photo charged with self-contained life.

That is when I stopped speaking, even praying about

the same large dream. That was the day I walked up

the stairs and accepted the marks across the wall, the dents

in the doors and my aging fingernails.

It happened then like a quote upon my door, read and

re-read at each failing moment.

It happened and has not stopped –

less words now

less of everything and less of the burden

of its heavy worth.

A few words from Allison Grayhurst: Over the past twenty years my poems have been published in journals throughout the United States, Canada, and in the United Kingdom, including The Antigonish Review, Dalhousie Review, The New Quarterly, Wascana Review, Poetry Nottingham International, The Cape Rock and White Wall Review. My work was also included in the Insomniac Press anthology Written In The Skin. My book Somewhere Falling was published by Beach Holme Publishers, a Porcepic Book, in Vancouver in 1995. Recent places where my work has appeared or will soon be appearing include: Quantum Poetry Magazine, Indigo Rising and Message in a Bottle Poetry Magazine.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Douglas Polk

Labels

Prevocalic,

Letters in a word,

not all letters,

must first be a consonant,

labeled such by the sound it makes,

like people labeled because of skin color,

Prevocalic,

because of where it stands in relation to other letters,

different letters,

vowels,

whose sound comes forth unobstructed from the mouth,

Labels,

instructive,

but not an end in themselves.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Bio: Polk is a writer of poetry from central Nebraska. Feeling persecuted most of his life he has published three books of poetry; In My Defense, The Defense Rests, and On Appeal. He lives with his wife and two boys and two dogs on the plains of Nebraska

Brittany Fonte: Two Prose Poems

2011-10-16T04:41:00.000-07:00

“Why Prose Poetry?”

When people ask, more thoughtless than not, Why prose poetry? I tell them, Just like basic Algebra, or at least addition and subtraction (and maybe multiplication—which is why we have Sex Ed) there are several solid “real world” applications for such. They balk, of course, and ask how I live off of lines that don’t even rhyme in a time of Dr. Seuss nostalgia and online sales of Beatles’ paraphernalia. Then, because I cannot prove to people who’ve never been moved by a d.a. levy musing, or made love to by a seriously hung sonnet, or cried to the truth of Sapphire in a barred window pane, that education for the sake of education is what separates the scholars from the downtown ballers-for-booze, I am bold as “Bump its” on ‘Shore Snookie. I offer:

Ransom Notes. Surely your average filthy rich parent has an appreciation and often pot-induced remembrance of “Howl” in a hard-hitting Contemporary Lit class—the one with the hot professor who never wore panties and always sat on the desk in front of the class, legs crossed like Sharon Stone when she wasn’t famous enough to wear lingerie in films. The spoken word feel of an appeal for a bank account’s bills must seem more real than the magazine cut-outs from the movies you see on Pay-Per-View (when you’d rather be watching porn.)

Baby Announcements. When you want to detract from the new arrival via your teenaged daughter and some oily guy she met while on vacation in Ocean City, or your “darling” tramp and your (criminal) ex boyfriend who, unfortunately, had a thing for truly younger girls and not just older ones acting a character in a Disney television show in their daughter’s mini skirts, prose poetry is the way to go. Imagine the lyrics to a sexually-charged, yet redundant, pop-song atop an electric blue (that won’t wash the baby out in the pastel wrap against the cheetah-print bra) background. You can even give the baby a symbol—like Prince— and then, if the baby turns out illiterate like its mysterious father (or “Maury” set of fathers), he or she will still be able to sign into rehab, alone.

Dear John letters. Think distraction, here. You don’t want to come off as the flaming bitch in your 100-word sign-off to your one time bed buddy via tweet or status update or emoticon-filled text; he or she might have attractive friends. With jobs. And after all, they were hot enough to make out with in the line at Starbucks (for the heterosexuals), or the check out at Pet Smart (for our lesbian friends), or at the meth party-come-“gym” (for our pretty boys.) This temporary temperature raising (even weeks ago) means you owe it to them to at least craft a lyrical let go…. Besides, these losers will love a “goodbye” akin to a Stevie Nicks song on change and moving on (add image of falling rocks, here).

Notes to your children’s teachers (when they’ve been suspended for cherry bombs in the public toilets, or sending naked pictures of themselves to the new music teacher, or hacking into the computer system to fail all the jocks for the weekly wedgies) can benefit from some poetic license, too. What teacher doesn’t appreciate a well-written note that uses punctuation correctly, then applauds their work with creative similes and metaphysical compliments? If the teacher happens to be an English teacher, this apology for your child’s lethargy or antipathy can, also, double as an extra credit assignment on the intricacies of rhythm and internal rhyme in contemporary American literature.

Finally, and obviously, if you are less attractive than the average A-lister, and you can no longer stand dating the chromosomally abnormal (or accident prone) Subway sandwich maker, prose poems are excellent additives for your 900 number calls. Somehow, the women who answer the phones find comfort in the fact that men (and women) can still string together a line of iambic pentameter in the times of “No Child Left Behind,” and rocketing tuition costs, and parental job loss. It isn’t easy navigating a higher education system in the midst of economic heresy, but one-time hookers whose breasts have fallen to hip level and whose all-nighter tips have been lost altogether, certainly salivate over such work, and may give you their home addresses for some mighty meter; they know.

She sang, ‘The Future’s Not Ours to See…’

If it rains (or we get caught lying on our taxes, taxing our mothers or mothering our spouses), we expect it to unleash an umbrella-full of hail, and we are patients in the way that we undress to the sky, model soaked paper, bend over and expose all there is to know about our fears, inside. We wear galoshes humbly; we wear pleather precipitation hats made for ‘40’s musicals. We watch the torrents on a weather map bleep by, cry, know there will be an end, then make plans for Tahiti next month (with tissues) and buy a skimpy bathing suit with which to woo a new mate. Maybe we meet with our counselor and sigh for one hour. We do not learn: dukkha.

If it’s only cloudy, if there’s just a hint of humidity frizzing our hair and nothing has shown up on the haughty radar yet (we don’t know our boss has been checking our email, our identity’s been stolen, we’ve forgotten who we are), we put our eggs in a generic faith carton, instead, and carry on like we’ve never dropped one before, spilled a yolk, cost a chicken a fortune in fertility drugs and an ugly reputation for being yellow and “easy.” We rage, later, against what seems unfair in that shelled mess and ignore: “What will be, will be.” Silent is samsara.

When it’s sunny—not a cloud in the sky—we imagine what’s around the bend and forget to ferret away this Farenheit phase for another time, when it’s necessary. We cannot stand still and rejoice in the rainless day, because that rain clouds our optimism and those clouds cover rules of karma. We think, only, that sun cannot last, it won’t end our days, it’s solely sentimental, those seasonal rays. This, we cannot accept. So we pout. And we spin on our individual equators, spin away

Brittany Fonte holds an MFA in Creative Writing. She teaches at the university level and works as an assistant editor at Lowbrow Poetry Press. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in journals like Literary Mama, The Wrong Tree Review, Breadcrumb Scabs and Pemmican Journal; she recently published a chapbook with Silkworm Ink (UK). She can be reached at BKAPhilosophy@Hotmail.com for questions, comments, or intellectually stimulating coffee dates.

Sarah Foote

2011-10-08T02:14:00.000-07:00

Proclamation (12/23/2011)

I’m sure I’ll cry more tears for you,

but I’m tired

of mascara-laced saltwater

stinging my eyes,

making me cringe

and swipe furiously

at my raw face.

I’m not gonna cry for you

anymore.

I’m crying for me.

Believe it or not,

this is a proclamation

of strength.

Confessions of a Peeping Tom

“Crash into Me,” lilting, decadent, spilling

from her cracked window with the sheer

curtains, seeping really, as she-

the princess-

gathers her auburn hair.

It tumbles and stumbles down her back and twists,

tantalizing, through her fingers,

quick and deft,

and it is only when she turns

that I see her face, her stony face,

expressionless,

but it is only for one instant

and then her features are eclipsed by the afternoon

sun and her hair explodes

in streaming strings:

rays of gold and red, russet red,

and dirt, dirt brown, and all her hair is gleaming

and her body is glowing,

naked in the now-evening sun.

Sarah Foote and Eve Lyons

2011-10-01T02:40:00.000-07:00

Sarah Foote

A Furious Girl becomes a Woman in One Night

Biggest fight today,

feels like I’ve killed something with my own two bare hands.

Like I caught a fish without a spear, using my nails as talons,

the animal ripping through my human skin and becoming me.

But it consumes me

and I rip both you and me to shreds.

I was so angry I couldn’t see,

cussing, pacing, walking jagged lines,

faking nice, faking mean. Either way, I was faking.

And maybe the struggle won’t end.

And maybe you’ll let me go.

Maybe you’ll piss me off and maybe you won’t.

Okay, there’s no maybe- it’ll happen.

I constantly build myself up, raise this building

just to pull the support beams out night after night.

I’m a hell of a lot of trouble when I want to be.

Tonight I gave you an earful

and I’m not interested in how I’m not as pretty

as that crazy redheaded bitch

cuz I’m so much fucking more than I even realized,

even when I am encased in rage

and fear.

The Shadow Bright

The shadow bright within me hangs

above the headboard of my bed,

encircling me with the fangs

of fear. The stabbing, sweaty dread

of knowing what’s above me will not

leave as I lie, badly stricken.

The visions that I never sought

creep up on me; my terror thickens

as I feel the clawlike hands

of failure close around my throat.

But desperate feelings now disband

as reassuring voices float

around my ears. They’re coming in

the form of complimentary

words and gestures. Shining grins

suggest that, petulant and wary

though I might seem, I am not

as a great a fool as I appear.

The shadow bright within me fought,

receded, dimmed, and disappeared.

A word from Sarah: Hello, my name is Sarah A. Foote, and I am a student at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia. I am a double-major in English and Religious Studies; however, I hope for my future career to be more based on the former than the latter. After I graduate, I want to be an editor for a journal or publishing house, but it is my dream to have some of my own original work published, as well- in particular, I am looking to publish a collection of poems. I have been submitting to online literary sources in hopes that I will someday see my name being sold on a shelf somewhere, or so that I will, at least, have the knowledge that people will get to read my work. I wish, overall, to bring happiness and light into other people's lives, and writing seems to be a good way of doing just that.

(Because they are so damn good, in my opinion, there will be more poems from Sarah next week. Bruce.)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Eve Lyons

"Work, consume, produce"
-- from Jack Kerouac's Dharma Bums

Praise the headache that tells my body
I am dehydrated, tired, or stressed.
Praise the stress which tells me
I am busy, I need to slow down.
Praise the work that keeps me busy,
puts food on the table,
money in the bank account,
and promptly out again to pay the bills.
Praise the food on my table
the raw food breakfast porridge,
the vegan corn chowder
the worker-owned beer.
It costs more money
but it keeps my heart
from crying out in pain.
Praise the pain that tells my body
this can't be all there is.

"Honey, God loves everybody. It's human beings who mess things up."
(Tammy Faye Messner)

Bio:
Eve Lyons is a thirty-something year old poet, fiction writer, and
playwright who is living in Boston, MA. I have been previously
published in Fireweed, Labyrinth, Concho River Review, Barbaric
Yawp, Women’s Words, Woven, Sapphic Ink, Texas Observer, Houston
Literary Review, vox poetry, New Vilna Review, Word Riot,
protestpoems, and two different anthologies. She currently has a poem
pending publication in Lilith and another one in Poetica this fall.

B.D.Feil: Four Poems

2011-09-24T02:22:00.000-07:00

I’m A Fool

It doesn’t matter that I know better

that I know history teaches that history teaches

that history teaches or can feel it undigested

sitting in my bones hollowed out and ignorant

or am graced with the goddamned sense

that God graced a goddamned goose

the itch becomes too great

the death of winter too new

the first green weekend of May too pulling

I dig in slap-happy in rows lost in mulch

wandering amid mounds yet frost teaches

that frost teaches that frost teaches that I’m a fool

Not This God

In my perfecting world

I would release the trees

from the woods

by first cutting the vines

that run up their trunks

and hang to the ground

what god would create the tree

only to slowly strangle it?

not this god

Giblin’s Grove

Set me down in Giblin’s Grove

the corner closest the coming storm

set me down in open wicker

let the wind sow me

beneath the redbuds

suffer me no pretensions

no need to balance the wicker

on heads of bare-breasted virgins

no hanging of black crape

no systemic scattering

only burn me let me blow

let the wind take me where it will

like the first spring light coaxes

the redbuds from wet winter woods

thirsty to be first tight purple nipples

erupting randomly stubborn to go

Korea 1950-1953

I knew the veterans of that conflict to be a bit lost

office managers filling station owners

door-to-door salesmen scoutmasters

brown shoes with drab green suits on Sunday

five o-clock shadow at eleven a.m.

tape on eyeglasses

missing gas caps

neat but incomplete stacks of National Geographic

living rooms hung with the smell of bacon

cement blocks laying around to no good purpose

Blatz Beer

Tab Cola

always the wait for checks to clear and rides to come

maybe a wife maybe not either way

owners of the ugliest dogs in America

dogs that would never come no matter how loudly called

how insistently how pleadingly

they just would not come

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

BD Feil has credits in New Plains Review, Chaffey Review, and Margie. He lives in Michigan with quite the brood.

Robert E. Petras

2011-09-19T02:33:00.000-07:00

THE DESERTED ISLAND

She’s neither Ginger nor Marianne,
has the face and body only a plastic surgeon academy could love,
to ask a personal question:
if stranded upon a deserted island
together, would you play footsies with her?
Not as long as carpel tunnel holds off
would I touch her with ten feet of treated lumber
you tell your office buddies.

It’s been a long day
at the desk and you drift
into a daydream, drift to the ocean,
drift into the uncharted
just you and—let’s call her Aria
because she’s been playing
solo polo for a lifetime.

A week passes in your mind,
your imagination running wild,
your wife spreading more than rumors,
your wife more than humoring the Good Humor Man,
your wife blowing her glass-blowing instructor.
Didn’t she just jack up
the life insurance on you?
Yes, you declare, yes, yes,
I will play footsies
with Aria, if only for spite,
if only for revenge.

Another week passes.
Two weeks.
Then a month blows by with the trade winds
while you consume a steady diet
of only coconuts but they could well be
brass supplements because
you are growing a third ball—
the one that counts—the inner ball.
Once off paradise
you will tell your pseudo-widow
how you and Aria shacked up
under the palm leaf thatches.

Meanwhile, on a strict Deserted Island Diet
Aria is melting away fat like a pig on a spit
and is starting to look like Kirstie Alley—
“Dancing With the Stars” Kirstie
and you and she are doing crazy things together
like making snow angels in the sand.

During the third month
she’s taken up yoga, Pilates and tantric meditation
while you try to catch fish
because you need protein
because the old staff sergeant
has been standing more at ease lately.

Your beard is growing and root black
is no substitute for Grecian Formula 44.
You lost too much weight.
and look like Christian Bale in “The Machinist,”
in need of Colgate,
in need of Old Spice Speed Stick,
in need of counseling
as Aria looks more and more like “Cheers” Kirstie,
the very image and fragrance of Coppertone
while you burn and burn, becoming
redder and redder—as red as a baboon’s butt.
She calls you pet names like my Little Baboo,
worsening your widening red shift.

Five o’clock rescues you from the dream island rescue,
returning you safely to the island of your desk,
your fortress, fortified with new knowledge,
in the now, knowing to watch out what you say
about the unwanted woman,
the one you once wouldn’t touch
with ten feet of treated Scotch pine
because she would well turn out to be a ten,
leaving you and your carpel tunnel clutching
the short end of a very long stick.