Made Fresh Yearly

Made Fresh Yearly
We use only the finest poets in our journal & every precaution has been taken to avoid or legally distance ourselves
from the salmonella outbreaks that followed the release of
last issue. do not read this magazine without first cooking
it for at least two hours at 450 degrees. No lead paint has
been used in this journal except where the cost of not using
lead paint would be prohibitive, as on the cover, ink & in the
paper. If you swallow a portion of this magazine we recommend administering a small amount of turpentine to quickly
dissolve the paint. Lungfull! can not accept responsibility
for personal or cultural loss due to the absorption of the
materials herein. I mean, if you’re reading this, things probably weren’t going so well for you to begin with. Whatever
illusory feelings of great wisdom or unaccountable euphoria you may experience while reading may be followed by a
gradual and profound descent into psychological and physical desolation. To mitigate this “algernon” effect be sure
to write down any information that may be important to you
before reading any further. ie: spouse’s name, home address,
belief systems. you may notice your flexibility improves as
you read. this is due to your body’s normal increase in the
production of elastin, a hormone triggered by undue stress.
do not contort your body while reading lungfull as you may
not be able to undo whatever crazy position you’ve gotten
yourself into. if pressure builds behind your eyes, Pinching
your nose & blowing may return a sense of equilibrium. By
turning this page you give tacit consent for the degradation of everything you hold to be truthful and/or beautiful.
People you believe to be your friends will leave you, your dog
will stare at you like you are made of steak, your cellphone
batteries will go dead, you will develop allergies to delicious pie, you will discover your fly to have been open every
day since eighth grade.
Despite the devastating results of clinical trials, there
are many who continue to fund our efforts to make poetry
somewhat less deleterious. They may be misguided, but we love
the people who put their money where our mouth is. The coins
chip our teeth, but the dollar bills are so moist & tender. We
thank them for their generous grants, donations & willingness to invest in the black-market horse-breeding/insurance
fraud operation we run on the side. “All I ask is the chance
to prove that money can’t make me happy,” said Spike Milligan.
At the top of our list of those who give us that chance are
Kathleen Masterson, Catherine Leahy & everyone at NYSCA who
keep the economics of the 21st century from snuffing the
tenuously eternal flame of genius. Thanks also to Governor
Elliot Spitzer for making their job, and thus ours, somewhat
less daunting this year with a little extra cash in the state
coffers earmarked for the arts. & how about Jamie Schwartz,
Jeffrey Lependorf, Jay Baron Nicorvo & all the literary
swashbucklers of CLMP. Additional vast tracts of appreciation for Adam Forest Huttler, Arwen Lowbridge, Alexandra
Gray & the entire crew at Fractured Atlas for their continued facilitation. Thanks also to the Volunteer Lawyers for
the arts who’s great acumen we will tap very very soon in our
nascent attempt to incorporate & thus, in the eyes of the 14th
amendment, attain immortality. “Money can’t buy friends, but
you can get a better class of enemy,” said Milligan. Believe
it or not, also thanks to the foundations who were *unable*
to support us despite our plaintive cries. Especially to
The Greenwall Foundation who let us know almost before we
even mailed our letter of inquiry. “I’m tired of hearing about
money, money, money, money, money. I just want to play the game,
drink Pepsi, wear Reebok.” said Shaquille O’Neal, son of thaT
well known mid-20th century playwright.
This issue of lungfull previously appeared, in a slightly
different form, as Dom Delillo’s White Noise.
The reanimated corpse of Henry Ward Beecher, Jean Michel
Basquiat & Boss Tweed appear at national Lungfull publicity
events courtesy of the green-wood cemetery.
Our subscribers too fill our hearts with glee even more than
they do our coffers with green.
Our inbox is filled with great soliloquies of those maligned
& by Lungfull!’s editorial choices, people who wanted to make
it clear that their admiration for this journal was contingent on being published by the journal. & despite having
never actually read Lungfull, they want us to know that they
will certainly never read it in the future. Their wild, inspirational screeds are available for viewing by appointment
- or just drop us a line & we’ll forward them on. Don’t get us
wrong, we still like them - even more for their generous revelation of their true nature. They could have fooled us for
years. Thanks for saving us the time!
Do you want to save time? Avail yourself of the fine products
and services advertised in the back of this issue. You’ll
never suffer the frustration of reading the wrong book or
attending the wrong reading again.
& speaking of doing the wrong thing what could be more
wrong than stopping to help someone out – when that person
happens to be the bastard editor of this magazine. Despite
the fact not one of these people invented a time machine,
traveled back to Perry Street circa 1988 & told me not to
become a poet in the first place, I still got nothing but
love for these selfless souls: Stacy, Corrine, Arlo & the former & future bats in the belfry of the Poetry Project, John
Coletti in his infinite sorrow, The Xtine-Kundan Alliance
for their inadvertent InDesign support, Eric Lorberer for
his work serving our Lorb, Al of the Bagel Zone, Howard Zinn,
The Thanksgiving Shade Grown Coffee Company, The Breaktime
Cookie Company, Erik Sweet in Albany, John Fitzroy, John
Trudell, Chris Martin & Puppyflowers, Gino of Chesterton,
Tek Serv despite the money, Jason Catanzariti the CFI, Eric
Hollender, The Wall Street Journal, Dave Brinks & Megan
Burns of New Orleans’ Yawp & Gold Mine Saloon, Kate Johnson,
Rev. Severina, Mary McTague, Nick & Angela, Jim BehrLe & Alex
at Zinc Bar, Abigail, J & Louisa Clarkson, Claudia Lorber &
Bill, Douglass Rothschild, Jackie Sheeler & poetz.com, luckymojo.com, Shardav Industries, Danny J., David Kirshenbaum
& Boog Lit, Bruce Covey, Coconut & Emory University, Mister
Sirius, Eugene Ostashevsky, MacGregor Card, Matvei Y &
Anna M of UDP, Joel Kuszai and Bill Marsh from Factory
School, Aaron Brashear & Mic Holwin & Concerned Citizens of
Greenwood Heights, Green-wood Cemetery, Community Board 7,
Thomas Coghlan, Noam Chomsky, Erica Kaufman, David Cameron,
Holly White & Mr. Bubbles, John Wallingford, Jordan Davis,
CE Putnam & Mo in Seattle, Dick Wolf, Jeffrey Nelson, Paola
Casarini, Brandon Downing & Melissa Cacha, Matt Abramovitz
& pure jazz sirius 72, jess fiorini, christine hamm, Marcella
Durand & Rich O’Russa, Greg Fuchs, Vincent Katz & Vanitas,
Bruce Covey & Coconut, Ram Devineni & Rattapallax & the healing properties of time. advance praise for the Midwives of
Belleview.
Lungfull! should be available at your local bookstore. The
US should not be at war in Iraq. The global economic system should not concentrate the wealth of 1% of the world’s
population at the expense of the other 99%. People should
eat a lot of fruit & vegetables & exercise every day. things
are clearly not as they ought to be. Luckily, even if your
local bookstore opts to carry Chicken Soup for the Militant
Vegetarian’s Soul instead, you can still make your way to the
internet where Lungfull is always available – www.lungfull.
org. Domestic subscriptions are $19.90 for 2 issues & $39.80
for 4 issues. For $595 you get issues for the rest of your
life. Due to the ever increasing cost of production, listen
sometimes its like well, an accident might have to happen to
you after about 25 years, but lets not even concern ourself
with that now.
If the Dixie Chicks are as broadband as you get, you can mail
checks payable to Brendan Lorber, not Lungfull! Send them to
Subscriptions, Lungfull!magazine, 316 23rd Street, Brooklyn,
NY 11215. You may also obtain additional Lungfull Stickers
for a dollar a sticker.
MUDDY BACK GUARANTEE: If at any time you become disenchanted
with the journal we will float down the Mississippi using
you as a raft. JERRY ORBACH GUARANTEE: If you still don’t like
the magazine, Detective Lenny Briscoe will interrupt you at
work & put the cuffs on. “you can’t arrest me here at my job! I’m
very important! people count on me to be here” “they can help
you count over at the station. I’m thinking they can help you
count 20 or maybe 25 years to life.” da-dum!
These offers expire on 12/10/08 unless subsequent notices
rescind or extend them.
Lungfull! is printed, bound & waterproofed by the incredible
team at Sterling Pierce. A better team than them you could
not ask for – they’ve been doing Lungfull since the Quark 2
days. Each issue is sheer laminated perfection & then they
do it even better the next time round. i mean, even this 4pt
type is legible. 4 measly points & they make it look good.
(good to everyone except the venerable editor of stoneboat
who asked me if i needed help with the design of the magazine.
gee thanks mister!)
Lungfull! is distributed around the U.S. & in Europe by Ingram
& Ubiquity. Our other distributors Desert Moon Periodicals
& Bernhard DeBoer have both gone out of business in the past
two years. & they’ve taken with them years of back money they
owe us. How do we get in on a class action lawsuit? We never
expected to make anything off running a literary magazine,
but afraid we can’t wish them the best of luck with their
retirment after they played us for suckers for years. Maybe
Faye Kosmidis will read this sometime & return our many
unanswered phone calls dating back to 2005. A little courtesy goes a long long way, Faye. Operators are standing by!
Lungfull! welcomes submissions of text & visual art from
people of all backgrounds, ethnicities & classes in the US
& internationally. We publish work of emerging & established writers at all stages of their career/anti-career.
All submissions must be accompanied by a cover letter in
which you forsake the self-important grandstanding – if
a technique wouldn’t work picking us up drunk in a bar, it
won’t work in making us feel sympathy for your work. Instead,
why not explain why you want anything to do with Lungfull.
Response time varies and routinely exceeds people’s annoyance threshold. If you enjoy being annoyed or, even better,
have enough going on that a year or so won’t play on your
nerves then we can’t wait to see what you got up your sleeve.
Please do not query us, or complain to others, before one year
has passed. We publish 2% of received submissions, so we send
our apologies in advance. Submissions without sases will
meet an unsatisfying end not unlike the end of the sopranos
finale. The Letters & Poems to the Editor section is, like anti-war
marches, a way of fostering the illusion of democratic participation in a process the people really have no control
over. It’s also fun because, unlike the rest of the magazine
where people are always accosting the editor for having been
rejected, people complain in almost equal numbers for having their letters printed without permission. Send submissions & letters to the editor to 316 23rd Street, Brooklyn,
NY 11215. Anything you send that isn’t money or poems will be
considered a letter to the editor & printed.
Most people start worrying about their eyes about now but I’m
more concerned with your posture – your nose must be almost
resting on top of the page.
The material in this magazine, from headlines to this, the
tiniest of fonts is mere opinion. You may know it’s true. I
know it’s true. But for legal purposes lets just say its all
conjecture. The portions that may leave us open for lawsuits should be read as, you know, satire. Lungfull!magazine,
Disconnecting the dots, The stakes are big, the mistakes
are bigger, wronging the writers, writing the wrongs & all
other materials written or created by the editor are copyright (c)2008 Brendan Lorber. All other writing & visual art
is copyrighted property of their respective creators. in
our experience, all wrongs are deserved and all rights are
reserved.
letters & poems
to the editor
Editorial:
success is failure
Old-fashioned: a puzzle
by Jen Robinson
4
16
22
Heather Green
The Angel is an Amalgam
Let us try for once not to be right
Song for Shoveling under the Moon
52
Shafer Hall
An Otherwise-Pleasant Morning
in Early Autumn
While I Was Demonstrating the
Location of My Kidneys
59
Eileen Myles
[when i think]
My Tree
More Oil
32
Jim BehRle
70
The Borrower, the Finder, the Flame
Adjunct Blues
I Want to Win the War
76
Todd Colby
Heavy Stuff
40
Lauren Ireland
IN ANOTHER COUNTRY YEARS AGO
8.25
Brett Evans
I love this American way of Life
42
David Pemberton
Clandestinely Predestined 82
Sandra Simonds
The America you Learn From
(a poem for Grocery Workers) In a System of Sufficient Complexity
46
Mark Wallace from Party In My Body 86
Liz Colville
“Flat Tendon”
“Poinsettia Order”
“Twentieth Effortlessly”
94
Jessica Fiorini
Tarn
100
Edwin Torres
Bit By Bite
102
Tracey McTague
live feed of cemetery
107
Dave Brinks
108
the caveat onus
the caveat onus
the caveat onus
the caveat onus
:::
:::
:::
:::
one hundred and fifty-seven
one hundred and sixty
one hundred and sixty-two
one hundred and sixty-three
L.S.Asekoff
Degas
Chekhov
Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite:
Snapshots for the Fin de Siecle
126
Cliff Fyman & Bernadette Mayer
The Idle Ladder Max Left
128
Cliff Fyman
Poem in September Before Travel
130
Benjamin Schwalke
Real Randolph
Landmines
133
Alex Galper
Daring Winter Escape
Che Guevara’s Diet
137
Sarah Rosenthal
The animal
You’re Beautiful
140
Scott Hammer
from That or Miasma
145
Ryan Collins
Dear Twin Falls—
Dear Carbondale—
Dear New Lennox—
148
jennifer brown from fresno series
subsolar mornings
west & vassar: how the san
joaquin saved my life
reductive phenomenology
on butler st.
152
Susan Lewis
Light and Dark
Trojan
Incendiary
157
The rundown
160
114
Fred Yannantuono
118
Jigging for Fluke off the North Light
Shira Dentz
7o
Rodney Phillips
Caravaggio and the Pope
120
Visual art
David Borchart & Sharon Mesmer
90
Elizabeth Zechel
122
NIKita MIKROS
15
Silke schöner
39,45,81,105,135,147
Tracey McTague
cover, 24
William Betts
62
Lineup
The
Letters
and Poems to
The Editor
We think secrets ruin friendships & what are we in the literary community if not Best Friends Forever? That’s why we
got with our Official Letter Policy: Anything you send us that is not a submission, a check, the finger of a kidnapped
child or a packet of suspicious powder will be considered a Letter to the Editor and dutifully printed for the world to
see. Please include “don’t you dare print this, you cocksucker” if you are especially eager for everyone to see what’s
on your mind. We’d like to hear your sense of outrage or indignation at what the journal has done to poetry or, more
importantly, to you, your highness. If, for reasons that elude us, you actually like the journal feel free to write that
too so that your loved ones can better plan the intervention. We anticipate most letters of praise will be from people
who are mixing us up with Fence or the tiny — or even more likely with something that isn’t a literary magazine at
all. Like a Waterpik or Moon Sand. Regardless of your agitated state, please be *extremely* concise. As always we may
edit your letter for space or to make ourselves appear smarter/more culturally relevant than we are. We enjoy letters that include: suggestions, drunken outbursts, well-reasoned arguments, praise for some specific writer, praise for
your own work, complaints about Lungfull!, complaints about other magazines, letters to editors of other magazines,
anger at having been rejected, anger at having had poems accepted that, years later, turn out to have been mortifyingly terrible, anger at having had a previous letter to the editor rejected, experimental letters that foreground
the texture/nature of the epistle above its assumed transparent ability to communicate, drunken outbursts cleverly
disguised as experimental letters. We hate letters that try to be funny. There is no try. Send all missives to our world
headquarters: Lungfull!Magazine, 316 23rd St, Brooklyn, NY 11215 or letters@lungfull.org
Lungfull!16
Dear Lungfull!
Attention Editors,
Let’s talk about everything first and then
we’ll talk about the other stuff later.
My wife confessed to me tonite. I just wanted you to know that *I* know what your
magazine has been doing with her. Meeting up at 10th Avenue motels. Dinners at
chain restaurants. Matinees of Broadway
shows. I *know* what’s going on and it’s got
to stop.
Ohokayokay,
Mike Topp
Dear Brendan, Thank you so much for introducing lungfull into
my life—it makes a great coaster! Thanks!!
Yonina Rosenbaum
Dear ________,
Why have you not responded to the submission that I never got around to sending you!?!
Rachael Rakes
Dear Editor:
You never call, you never write. Such a big
shot, too busy to pick up the phone?
Mom
Dear Editors,
What’s with big-name poets in small scale
literary magazines? I can’t help but feel the
poems by established writers in your journal were written in their sleep. Rejected
by your first five choices? There’s always
Lungfull! to slum in. But these lazy poets
aren’t the only guilty ones — your self-aggrandizing use of their weak work might
sell a couple extra copies but not without
lowering yourself below even their depths.
Am I wrong?
I had my suspicions before. When my
daughter was born I was surprised that she
had a shiny, neon waterproof cover. I dismissed my concerns, knowing that my wife
loves me and would not go astray with some
come-once-a-year fancy literary magazine.
But it seems like your rough drafts and poetic crossword puzzles were too much for
her to resist. I could understand if she had
snuggled up to a reputable publication like
POETRY Chicago or APEX OF THE M. But for
her to go rambling with some two-bit woowoo house of whatever like LUNGFULL!—it’s
unthinkable and perverse. After the Sparrow stickers have fallen out, what do you
got? Hunh? Well, you’ve got my sweet Katie. But not for long.
She and I are traveling to Nova Scotia for the
weekend to try to rediscover one another. I
ask you that you control your Lothario publication! Give me and my wife the chance
to work things out. If your magazine has any
honor or sense of decency, it will return my
wife’s love letters and underwear and let
the healing begin.
Sincerely,
James Behrle, Jr.
Alex Cadosia
Letters & Poems to the Editor
Lungfull!16
Dear Lungfull! Editors,
Dear Editor,
I’ve been a reader of Lungfull! since Todd
Colby, my former boss and mentor-in-poetry, bestowed me #15 last fall. We devoured
it at our place of work and recited it to
co¬workers who were afraid of poetry and
didn’t know what it was. It made a couple
of them curious and others more afraid.
We laughed maniacally and kept going. Our
boss boss wasn’t there, so we got through
most of it.
If people don’t read your annual editorial,
they’re fucked.
Most of my published work is in the form
of music reviews; I write weekly album reviews for Pitchfork Media and Stylus and
chat with myself about songs and musicians
on Lizzyville.com, which I pay $10 a year
for. But last fall Lizzyville came to include
poems tagged under the category “Current
Affairs,” to the delight of Todd and possibly
one other person. It was then that I began
to embrace poetry as my mistress—my first
love is fiction and I’m married to writing
that pays. Though I prefer open relationships.
The nature of blogging poetry may lead you
to suspect that I don’t have rough drafts. On
the contrary, I find Microsoft Word’s “Track
Changes” is a delightful way to watch yourself progress or digress, whether your document is a poem, list of containers to buy at
the Container Store, or a Life List of things
will never do. I believe “Track Changes” has
its place in Lungfull!, and that my tome of
small-time Brooklynite suffering and exaltation of e-mail spain might also have their
place therein.
Sincerely,
Liz Colville
Lungfull!16
Letters & Poems to the Editor
concise...
H.H.Horowitz
Dear Brendan,
I had the same dream again last night. Except the servants had all become the first
drafts of our poems. And when the world
was to end, a low, insect-like song mysteriously recuperated it. The lights flickered
against the walls evoking a tiny film. A
woman and an ibex transversing a frozen
lake with issues of Lungfull! acting as their
shoes. When the power failed, the woman
and the ibex were instantly plunged into the
water, her arms tangled in its horns. That’s
when the trouble began. It seemed to be
coming from outside. I went to the window
to peer into the darkness. I stood back and
kicked through the pane, which shattered
silently on the rocks below. Except they
weren’t rocks. Or they were, but they were
covered with Lungfull!. Piles and piles of
it. A whole library of back issues like garish crustaceans taking the shore. Hypnotizing. A sea of covers endlessly lapping. And
you were there. And we bitched about the
scene. And the scene finally saved itself.
In Other Words,
Chris Martin
Dear Lungfull!
Sorry I thought you were a cunt.
Apologies,
Mike Topp
:)
Rodrigo Toscano
Brendan,
Dear Brendan,
Who is this Jaclyn Shove and this Jordan
Schranz? These names ring a little too preposterous to not be you. When did you take
up painting and become a genius? Why all
the subterfuge? I challenge your MC alter ego to a rap battle on Battle Hill. Your
photography alter ego can document it
while your assassin alter ego snipes from
the trees. Holy shit your deity alter ego is
turning everyone into flaming circles! And
your ballerina alter ego has been left to
dance from one to the other weeping all
over her rose-colored leotard! Get a hold
of yourselves man! No, really, I’m talking
a serious rap battle. At least until you can
prove Shove and Schranz to be real. If they
materialize, I will buy them whiskey. Their
paintings are the best.
Thanks for the rejection letter, which I
read with much interest. Unfortunately, it
doesn’t quite fit with my view of myself,
which is as a good writer. I’ve received a
huge number of excellent rejections which
required me to make some very difficult and
low-paying decisions as far as work goes, &
though I enjoyed your form-rejection letter, the others I received didn’t create the
right context for it. I recognize that sending out form-rejection e-mails can be just
about as challenging a task as having an intern write the master key itself & I regret
that I couldn’t just respond to your submission with more tact. I hope you have luck in
placing these rejection letters in the front
of other writers’ minds.
In Other Words,
Chris Martin
Yours,
Dan Gallo
Letters & Poems to the Editor
Lungfull!16
Dear Editor,
My anger at having had a previous letter
to the editor rejected would, if published,
foreground the texture/nature of the epistle above its assumed transparent ability
to communicate a drunken screed cleverly disguised as an experimental letter
well ahead of former New York mayor Rudy
Giuliani, who leads in most national polls.
But Romney’s religious beliefs could pose a
problem; less than half of all Republicans in
the state (45 percent) think the country is
ready to elect a Mormon president (35 percent do not) and continue to harbor anger
at having had poems accepted that, years
later, turned out to have been mortifyingly
terrible. With less than four months to go
before the caucuses, both races still appear
quite fluid. While Romney is the first choice
of 24 percent of likely GOP caucus-goers,
praise for some specific writer in a previous
issue of Lungfulll!magazine comes close to
commanding the support of a majority of
GOP voters surveyed. I will not publish in a
Republican magazine.
Sincerely,
Gilberto Serpentine
Dear Mr. Lorber,
Even though I have never read Lungfull,
I would like to praise the perspicacity of
your editors and the unerring excellence
of almost everything you have ever published. This is not a shabby ploy to flatter
you and induce a muddleheaded state that
would rubberize your impeccable standards
and enable me to slip my work through the
sticky wicket of your admissibles.
Lungfull!16
Letters & Poems to the Editor
Although I have only met you while passing
through the Zinc Bar with a cheap gin drink
in my hand, I know with a laser-like certainty that your integrity is unshakable, built as
it is on the twin foundations of our JudeoChristian/Greco-Roman cultures . . . two
combatants face each other’s fierce and unrelenting gaze across a canvas mat . . . yet
adheres to a strict formalism that neither
shrinks like a hemorrhoid nor expands into
a glowing jellowy mass, but aligns golden
rule with golden mean, as Aristotelian catharsis merges with the tragic crucifixion of
our Lord Jesus Christ on a little known hill
named Golgotha under lowering skies.
I can’t fault you in any way for rejecting
the manuscripts I considered sending you
but didn’t. In fact, on further evaluation,
I see that much of my work is flawed, and
I think you were wise to not print it. Thank
you for not mailing me annoying form letters with specious justifications for the rejection of the work I did not submit.
In closing, let me say that I do have a copy
of Lungfull on my bookshelf. I plan to read
it, and when I do I shall send you a letter
based on inductive reasoning and the empirical process, which while a staple of the
sciences may also be profitably applied to
literature (see Ivor Armstrong Richards,
Practical Criticism).
I trust that we shall never cease exploring
the meaning of meaning as we pass through
the vast cognate storehouse of metaphor,
incipient action, pseudo-statement, and
ambiguity.
Yours in perpetuity,
Phil Johnson
James Lavin
Dear Editor/Muse,
Your dashingly-colored waterproof covers
twist my writing arm into a state of ecstasy
and make me salivate like a possum trapped
in a room full of powdered doughnuts. The
puddle of saliva I have enclosed is both the
rough draft and the glorious final version.
Beginning with its name, LUNGFULL is a
breath of air fresh from --- where? I read
it to find out what’s new in world of 21st
century letters, what’s happening in NYC,
what’s what’s his name (that editor, Brendan!) thinking about now?
Stephen Ratcliffe
Adoringly,
Your Julie
Letters & Poems to the Editor
Lungfull!16
Dear Brendan and friends--Once upon a time there was praise for some
specific writer in a previous issue (of Lungfull!). She lived happily with her wife, complaints about other magazines. After a while
the two of them, gave birth to a lovely son
named Drunken Screeds, but not by them,
so much did they love their little boy, they
called Suggestions. No, it was that wicked
bully, “Anger at Having Been Rejected,” and
his well-heeled thug friends, who heaped that
name on him, and it stuck. One day, Drunken
Screeds (I mean Suggestions) was leaning on
his crutch at the unemployment line when he
caught the eye of Well-Reasoned Arguments,
and it was love at first sight. The feeling was
mutual, so mutual that Well-Reasoned Arguments’ own botched history had vanished in
the strength of Drunken Screeds’ gaze. WellReasoned had come from a broken home.
Her father, Praise For Your own Work In A
Previous Issue, had repeatedly beaten her
mother, Complaints About Lungfull Magazine!, and ran off with some floozy known on
The Bowery as Anger At Having Had Poems
Accepted That, Years Later, Turn Out To Have
Been Mortifyingly Horrible. On hearing this
news, Complaints About Lungfull Magazine!
committed suicide, leaving Well-Reasoned
Arguments both motherless and fatherless.
But all of this was forgotten when she met
Drunken Screed. Together the two of them
gave birth to the most beautiful Letters To
Editors Of Other Magazines. They were soon
the Tony Tost of The Town. When Drunken
Screeds told his parents of his new love and
his plans for marriage, they blessed the marriage, but Well-Reasoned’s stepmother, who
up to this point had never taken any interest in Praise For Your Own Work In A PreviLungfull!16
10
Letters & Poems to the Editor
ous issue’s daughter, decided it was up to
her to play the role of the ‘senex figure’ and
try to prevent any future hope of happiness
for Well-Reasoned. After all, she was the
queen of the land of “texture/nature” and
this marriage of Well-Reasoned and Drunken
was threatening her very kingdom (er, Presidency) that had banned The Assumed Transparent Ability To Communicate in the name
of The Patriot Act or The Politics of Poetic
Form. What happens next, Dear Lungfull!
You tell me. I love you, love you, and praise
you, very very much (oh, and isn’t Dennis
Kucinich pretty damn electible....?)
Love,
Chris Stroffolino
PLEASE DELETE MY EMAIL ADDRESS AND ANYTHING TO DO WITH ME FROM YOUR POETRY
WORLD. I NOW HAVE A LITERARY AGENT AND
A BOOK CONTRACT WITH A MAJOR PUBLISHER IN LONDON. MY FUTURE IS IN PROSE.
Ian Ayres
Dear Lungfull!
Now that a strange insect cleans our house
the bathroom is the first room I show off
when company comes over.
Sincerely,
Mike Topp
Brendan Lorber and/or Lungfull! Editors:
Concision doesn’t regulate the Lungfull! engine. Breviloquence has its place, but certainly not in these pages in which it is held
that the process is the product as much as
the product is the product. Repetition, no
matter how beautiful the cycle, will begin
to bleat upon your face like a desert sun.
Replication, however, often takes the form
of a compound of new discoveries congealed together with beautiful derivatives
whose original qualities are officially maintained and artistically expanded and are
anyway worth the extra space they take up
on the page.
That said, I wish to sequentialize my elation (rather than remake it) from being
published in Lungfull! n. 15 by being published in Lungfull! n. 16. I offer poems that
are, in relation to last years poems, nearly
87% derivative free. I thank you for your
consideration in making this lateral though
nonetheless prestigious move in my writing
career a reality.
Sincerely,
David Pemberton
i like lungfull. it always has work by a number of people i respect. i know you and the
staff put a lot of your own time into each
issue, and I commend you for that. it’s not
an easy task.
Thadd Rutkowski
Dear Brendan,
Thank you for the five-dollar bill stuffed
inside the most recent issue of Lungfull! I
bought my family frozen Vietnamese dumplings. Sonnets can feed!
best,
Anthony Hawley
Hey Brendan,
Wish I could be at the release party. I’ll
make sure to have a martini that Tuesday
in your honor.
I wanted to come up for air to say a major
thanks for the latest issue of Lungfull! It’s
great to be a part of it, and I’m digging on
your poem and a number of others. Please,
keep the rock on high.
Yours,
Kevin Carollo
Dear Brendan,
I can’t remember how up to date I am with
my subscription and being that I don’t want
to miss any Lungfull!s I will be sending you
a new subscription after the New Year—being that I don’t have the right checkbook (in
other words dollars) on me right now and I
am leaving for England tomorrow. It can be
complicated to live in Denmark.
Anyway, the main point of this email is that
I enjoy the website and yr. emails about
Lungfull and poetry, even though they are
addressed to the general poetry Lungfull
population I feel somehow they speak to
me directly. Hopefully, in the future, I will
be able to attend a new Lungfull release
party.
Have a Merry Christmas.
Lynne Hjelmgaard
I ran into Milton Dobrow and he was
soooooooo pissed you ran my letter about
him in the last issue! What a petty tool.
anonymous
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Dear Brendan,
I did not love the magazine.
The other day I was walking around in
Brooklyn and saw a place called America’s
Laundromat. I thought it would be much
bigger.
First of all, where was the cover girl? Why
would I want a magazine that doesn’t have
some hot biddy in next to nothing on the
cover? Perhaps you should consider this before you release your next one. Jessica Alba
would be a good start.
Sincerely,
Mike Topp
Dear Brendan,
I do wish I could be at the launch event on
Dec 10. It was a memorable evening the
year I came to a Lungfull! release. Last
week, one of my students did a report on
Lungfull! You’ll always have a dedicated
cell of Lungfullites in Milwaukee.
Always best wishes,
Susan Firer
hello there Brendan,
I just wanted to thank you again for the
opportunity to read Sunday night. I had a
great time at the launch party! especially
enjoyed the rubber glove bit. Brilliant.
Thanks again, and happy holidays
and new year to you and yours,
Will Edmiston
Dear Brendan.
I purchased a copy of your “magazine” last
year, when I happened to be at a bar with
some type of event for Lungfull. I was accosted by a you, a pushy man in a commie
hat, and you told me I would love the magazine if I bought it.
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Letters & Poems to the Editor
Secondly, poetry is a dead art form. I don’t
know who told you all otherwise, but nobody cares about poems or poetry, except
12 year old girls pining for their older brother’s best friend. “Oh diary, why doesn’t Tim
notice me? Is it because I’m so ugly?”...
That was actually pretty good. You should
publish it.
Lastly, and most importantly. Your magazine
does not include celebrity gossip. No magazine will be worth the paper it’s printed
on without some blurb about Brangelina or
Heath Ledger leaving Brooklyn. If you want
you could paraphrase something out of “US
Weekly” which is a real magazine.
Well, I have to get back to watching “America Can Dance.” Please don’t contact me
again.
John Kingman
Dear Brendan Lorber,
Four years ago, looking through Time Out
for something interesting to do, I came upon
a notice for a party at Zinc Bar celebrating the publication of Issue Number 12 of
a quirky literary magazine. I attended this
party, feeling quite shy and simultaneously
bold, and was impressed by many witty and
clever writers. I was too impressed, in fact,
more like intimidated by just how droll everyone was, especially that Blorber. All the
same, I was inspired, and that very evening
went home and wrote a poem about how
cool everyone was.
You may not realize how significant an event
that was, but up until that point, I’d been
suffering from a drawn out case of writer’s
block that had been going on for nearly ten
years (meaning, I’d been saying since adolescence that I wanted to be a writer, but
wasn’t ever actually writing). Seeing poems
next to first drafts, and also seeing the actual human beings who wrote these works,
somehow dissolved all the mental bondage
straps. I immediately sent you a dorky email, trying to be all post-modernly amusing and somehow impress you by doing a
bad imitation of your own editorial style.
My little way of thanking you for inspiring
me. Luckily, you forgot that lame letter
long ago, I’m sure.
Since then, I’ve been writing copiously
(short stories, a play, a novel, some little
memoir-type vignettes, and lots of poetry)
and have assembled a collection of poems
dubbed Neurotica. Usually I compose on
the laptop so that first drafts have a way
of melding into final drafts, hence I’ve refrained from submitting to you. However,
one day I was sitting at work obsessing over
a party where I saw my ex-boyfriend, just
kind of venting in the margins of a printed
out e-mail, when inspiration struck, and so
I have an interesting first draft and a finished poem that I like very much. Perhaps
this is something you’d publish.
So there you go. Please accept my gratitude for your inspiring magazine. If you
won’t publish me (my work is just too good,
etc.), at least invite me to your next release party.
Humbly yours,
Kat Soleil
Dear Hanson:
Today I was reminded of your old sweet manner
while I ate my waffles at the Star Green Cafe
on Moss Street in the heart of the Shawangunks.
Sweet as they tasted, I couldn’t help but
mull the aftereffect
of your unfortunate confrontation
with my partner, Bondo Glegg
at your last dinner gathering.
What intruded upon your charming manner
and made you turn so sour toward Bondo?
It certainly could not have been the television cameras
as they’d been carted off
long before the first course had been served.
As you well know, Bondo is
a kind man, even on the days
when his skin condition reduces him to tears
Letters & Poems to the Editor
13
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at the mere splatter of oil from the frier.
Oh Hanson, you know in your heart
that Bondo is a fine man, undeserving of your wrath
even if he is a man of great volume.
Allow me to add that I noticed your
your degree certificate
was nailed to the ceiling right above my head
at the dinner table.
I saw it when I leaned back and stretched
after one of your delicious feasts of lemon curd and pheasant.
Your display of hubris dampened my ability to conversate
and made me hate myself and my social standing.
I’m getting over it here in the Shawangunks,
but only with the solace that loneliness
affords. In closing, I’d never stick a thumbtack in your
shoulder blade, nor put ground up glass in your
mashed potatoes, nor stick a hot cube of steel
down your shirt, nor would I ever ambush you
and shave half your head,
but I have thought of doing these things to you
on more than one occasion during my retreat.
NIKita MIKROS
I remain,
Victor Ricketts
Dear Rex:
Subject: they are still pretty to me
& your mother
I am so sorry to hear about you sagging, torn earlobes. I would have called but I know they sometimes get caught on your phone receiver & that
your roommates are tired of having to wipe off
discharge after you call the deli to have them
deliver the cans of cream sauce.
cocooned in concern for your well being,
Rex “Big Red” Redchenko
Emerging Market Analyst TIAA-CREF
Apparently my father contacted you while I was
recovering. He’s a liar. His mentor, Jim Bonner,
is also the master clinician over at McDowell &
Charles.
Let me cut to the quick: my father, should you
ever talk with him again, is in need of new stitching and perhaps a volume pot cleansing as well
because he releases static electricity when you
turn him up or down.
You should also not spray AQUANET in or near him
as he is flammable.
My mother lost her face that way. Please: no
jokes about that (too painful).
Behaving in Paradise,
Pango Diner
Development Associate
Reginald Graves Institute
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Success is Failure>
I try to fail as fast as I can . . . Richard Feynman
“Success is never found. Failure is never fatal. Courage is the only thing . . .Winston Churchill
We are all failures. Ye readers of poetry are all no-good vagrants. Poets themselves?
Losers. The editors of this journal? Bums. Roommates? Coworkers? Friends? Deadbeats.
Castaways. Derelicts. Each of us is more privy to the almost infinite ways in which we
ourselves have degenerated into the charged depths of insolvent never-wasland. But what
we may not realize is the brutal optimism lurking behind total disintegration. To have
nothing left but ruin is a completely propitious point from which to start: our still being
here despite catastrophe means there was nothing to lose in the first place, all our fears
were unfounded. Most people pretend their life is good enough. But you are not most
people. You know that despite everything you’ve been taught, embracing ruin is a necessary first move in the construction of a worthwhile writer and superabundant human.
Despite the dizzying array of downward spirals, there are really only two forms that failure takes. The first aggregates either from your own mistakes, your aggressive, passive,
incompetent manner or from acts of god, society & nature. It renders miserable outcomes
disappointing & shameful to everyone involved. At some point each of us has been rendered a schlemiel of simple private defeat or the schlamozzle behind some monstrous public crisis. But from that duress emerges new ways of going forward, impossible to discover
through any other means. This kind of failure is ultimately generative & evolutionary.
The other, entirely unsalvageable form of failure is what’s generally referred to as success.
The ultimate goal for most logical, sane people is the very thing that will destroy them.
The seductive lure of success, its sweet stink, will lure its victim away from a truly expansive life &, once far enough away, will trap them there forever. Every mode of success in
a corrupt society points to corruption in the successful person himself. It’s simple math: an
investor will make more money with shares of military contractors and private prison corporations than she will with less reprehensible investments. The handful of scientists who
insist cigarettes are healthy & the climate is fine make more than all the others combined.
At best, success corrupts passively: A famous artist diverts energy away from his work in
order to promote himself. At worst, it corrupts actively: A writer chooses to gain traction
by advocating on behalf of already powerful people.
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>
Success is grounds for suspicion but also for
compassion, the compassion you’d have for
a mouse in a trap. If you achieve your goal
— be it money or cheese — you’ve lost the
impetus to continue adapting. This would
spell trouble for anyone especially artists &
writers who claim the provenance of intellectual curiosity and conceptual exploration
as their own. Once your sense of self & the
world around it is absolutely snug, you’d
have to be a little touched to want to challenge it further.
well a person synthesizes occourances into
movement beyond initial limits. Those limits may be the normative traditions imposed
by broader society or by individuals’ own
desire for love & affirmation. It becomes
next to impossible to achieve once enough
members of a group tie off any expansive
development for a cheap fix. How can
poetry be expected to do much when the
overarching goal of a poet is to get readings
& publishing credits or, increasingly in the
past few decades, a nice respectable job.
The erstwhile living source material of
experience atrophies into inanimate scrapbook fetish objects for comfortable people
who no longer need to question contexts &
relationships. Your newfound assets need
protection & demand you stop sticking your
neck out. The need to protect a position, be
it financial or cultural makes you less alive
even as you come to represent the fullest
expression of life in the eyes of others. With
more to lose than to gain, you settle into a
plush, opulent stagnation.
Success brings with it a kind of Stockholm
Syndrome in which you believe your captors to be good & serve their interests above
your own. Your opulent prison, sometimes
lined with cash or decked out in power has
your own ego standing guard. Once locked
up it’s hard to escape, especially having
put so much effort into getting inside. How
many people do you know whose lives are
outwardly marvelous – they have a nice
house, a spouse, a kid, a good job – but
who are inexplicably miserable? I recently
traveled to a city where everyone was radically unhappy despite the high “standard of
living” they all enjoyed. Houses with lawns,
good shopping. Everyone I met there was a
success by any criteria. And if I went back
When enough people internalize established
notions of success as their own, entire communities collapse in a whirlpool of frantic
scrounging. In a healthy community, artistic
or otherwise, a full life is measured by how
Success is Failure
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>
ten years from now I wouldn’t be surprised
to find everyone there exactly as I left them.
Perhaps a little more successful and a little
more resigned. That weary, troubled, ashen
face that bespeaks triumph!
Actual failure on the other hand is libratory, allowing you to shed identities &
explore new directions. The scientists at
Bell Labs used what they called “creative
failure methodology” to arrive at their
greatest breakthroughs. Setting out to create new technologies they would inadvertently discover other things. Occasionally
they would invent new categories, solutions
to problems nobody had yet articulated.
A team assembled to develop a new kind
of transistor completely missed the mark
on their first attempt. But their botched
circuitry unexpectedly opened the field
of semiconductor physics & became the
fundamental architecture of the modern
computer. Had they been successful on
their first try, the team would have gotten
their paycheck & been sent away. & I’d be
writing this essay on a typewriter.
Everyone trips up somewhere. You may
be a visionary whose time has simply not
yet arrived. Or you may be a complete
fuckup. You may be a person who has
made the indecorous decision to live outside the boundaries of what’s proper, or
you may simply be an example to others
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Success is Failure
of what never ever to do. In any case, the
ways in which you have fallen short, be
they intentional or otherwise, reveals more
about yourself, the environment in which
you operate & the techniques to advance
from there than any measly victory. Nowin situations are the most efficient way to
see what you are really made of, be it the
rejection from a magazine, failing calculus,
oversleeping or more adverse afflictions.
You may not change much during the
decades you spend on the planet, but if you
hope to, reaching your all time low is a
prerequisite for hitting the jackpot.
Among his Thirty Essentials, Jack Kerouac
lists “accept loss forever” as a foundational
element. It’s crucial if you are going to use
failure to your advantage. After all, you need
lead in your alchemical retort to end up with
gold.
George Patton said success is how high you
bounce once you hit bottom. Unready for
anything on a three-day trek in the mountains of northern Thailand I didn’t bounce
at all. A herd of cows & calves was blocking our path so we walked one at a time
through the pack, gently nudging each cow
out of our way as we went. I jostled halfway
through before the herd abruptly parted to
reveal an irate bull with a slowly lowering
head. I turned to the rugged manly instincts
I hoped provide me the agility, cleverness
>
& strength to triumph over the bull or, short
of that, would allow me to accept my doom
with noble grace. The enormous animal
lined me up in it’s horns & charged over
rocky earth. I freaked out, ran, lost my footing and screamed in whiney falsetto “It’s
going to kill me!” The bull caught my leg
& lifted me twisting into the air. I landed
ten feet off the path with a bloodied leg &
my weak tremble of a voice ringing in my
ears. My much more brave friends closed
ranks, beating the rocks with their walking
sticks & yelling until the bull backed off
& the entire herd vanished into the jungle.
We continued walking another five hours
that day while I reflected on what had been
revealed about my own cowardice & the
courage of my friends in a moment when
everything went wrong.
Even the writers of Star Trek recognize
impossible adversity as an opportunity for
analysis and growth. In the cadet training
exercise Kobayashi Maru, the commander
of a simulated Enterprise is faced with
an insurmountable situation. No matter
what the captain-in-training attempts, the
Klingons will destroy the ship. After Lt.
Saavak fails she has a conversation with
Admiral Kirk:
Saavik: I don’t think this was a fair test of
my command abilities.
Kirk: And why not?
Saavik: Because there was no way to win.
Kirk: A no-win situation is a possibility
every commander may face. Has that ever
occurred to you?
Saavik: No sir, it has not.
Kirk: How we deal with death is at least
as important as how we deal with life
wouldn’t you say?
Saavik: As I indicated, Admiral, that
thought had not occurred to me.
Kirk: Well now you have something new to
think about. Carry on.
When he himself was a cadet, Kirk reporgrammed the computer in order to beat
the simulation, which might explain his
lack of development as a character. You
and I, faced with the contingencies of life,
don’t have that luxury & so we have to
consider how we will respond to conditions
that thwart the attainment of our needs &
desires.
As the editor of a journal that gets over
1,000 submissions for roughly 30 slots,
I’m directly responsible for the creation of
970 such conditions every year. People’s
responses to being told no depend on many
factors and run an insanely wide range.
Ultimately, we all want to be loved, though
having a poem accepted is perhaps less a
fulfilling embodiment of that love than, say,
going out to dinner with someone who you
like very much. Where the simple desire to
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>
have people read our work becomes a need
that dements our relationships with the very
people reading it, it may be time to reexamine what we think publishing really means.
Response to failure is the truest manifestation of our nature. Were it not for my run
in with the Red Bull logo, I could have
ignored the great mass of fear I carry
around with me. But now, accosted head
on, I can change it. The many times I’ve
had work rejected has led me to reexamine
my writing & the importance I place on
publishing. If the world is unable to fulfill
your desire, either the world is flawed, you
are flawed or your desire is flawed. There’s
nothing stopping you from recasting your
entanglements to each until the unhappiness of frustrated plans can’t touch you.
While some noble souls gauge their success
in terms of square footage, Google hits,
EBITDA or anatomical girth, a more compelling measure of prosperity could be how
many of those very people are “worried”
about you. A nouveau concern, as heartfelt
as our president’s feigned love of poor
children, expressed as “I’m worried about
you.” When people read things I write &
start saying they are worried about me, I
know I’m onto something that jeopardizes
the framework they use to make the lambs
silent. How dare I suggest our emphasis on
creating names for ourselves should be less
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Success is Failure
important than creating selves worthy of a
name.
Inverting the selfless language of Buddhism,
egotistical practitioners of community
infighting have learned to couch their
attacks in hollow tipped bullets of false
concern. Rather than honestly expressing anger at having been challenged, they
invoke drala, the concept of moving above
the fray. They claim their involvement in
the argument extends no further than a
humanistic concern for an adversary who
is clearly insane. Were their code not so
easily hacked it might work, but their earlier behavior usually belies their newfound
altruism. It’s not me they’re worried about.
But people who cannot admit their own
foibles are more than just irritating, they
are doomed. Doomed to live increasingly
myopic lives as they cloister themselves
from all evidence that they are less than
perfect. Doomed also to be unprepared for
moments when destruction overtops whatever defenses they’ve built.
Kali, Hindu goddess of destruction & creation makes new growth possible through
savage obliteration of what had been there.
Often portrayed with blood dripping from
her teeth, this goddess of floods was certainly no friend, say, to the people of
New Orleans & their fundamental desire
to go on living in their homes. But for the
>
people who have struggled to make it back,
new acutely perceptive lives have replaced
the ones that existed before. Gone is the
insulation, stripped away are all illusions.
Through adversity into life.
When the universe won’t provide the necessary collapse, you have to take matters
into your own hands. Because I want to
arrive at someplace better than where these
tracks’ll take me I derail my progress on
purpose. Because it’s unbearable to prosper
in a community where prosperity is kind of
creepy & altogether unreal I’ve impolitely
excused myself from it.
The only kind of failure from which there
is no escape is misunderstanding who you
really are. There are few poets who actually understand their cultural position – the
material limitations of a poem to do anything and its infinite ability to operate
beyond those limitations in crazy, invisible
ways. A poet is not a celebrity. A poet
may have an acute critical eye but is not a
critic. Nor is she a teacher. Those who have
gathered together to amplify their voices to
cultural consumers within the system — as
though they were corporations under the
aegis of the Carlye Group or some political
action committee – such people are missing
the point. America does not want poets to
reform it. There is no place in this system
for poets, but there can be no complete real-
ization of the human psyche without them.
To the extent poets mistake their creations for products to be gathered into
books & sold, they are wasting time that
could be spent making new poems. To the
extent they desire the glorious trappings
that accompany bestsellerdom, they are
forgetting why they ought to be writing.
Poets are born as the embodiment of Kali
but most would like to be somewhere
among Warren Buffet, John Grisham &
Adam Sandler. You know, only angry.
The token dribbling of external affirmation
received from a blog or seepage of praise
for a chapbook could have been so much
more substantial if instead of writing poems
they would pick up some oil stock, write a
pro-torture screenplay about evil terrorists
& star in a heart-warming holiday movie
twinkling with the redemptive qualities of
laughter & love.
To be a poet is to be a failure forever &
through that channel to arrive at greater &
greater liberation. That channel is paved
with impassible boulders, lined with detractors or nobody at all. Precipitous drops &
ludicrous inclines in bad shoes. It’s raining.
You have a slight cold. This sweet magnificent failure, promontory of enduring failure
from which there can be no greater clarity.
Care to join me?
—Brendan Lorber, Brooklyn 2007
Success is Failure
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Old-fashioned
a puzzle by Jen Robinson
“__ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __
__ __ __ __ __ __
__ __
__
__ __ __ __
__ __ __ __ __ __
__ __ __ __ __ __ __.”
Unjumble the anagrams at right to find the correct words and phrases. Then
unscramble the circled letters to find the quote that captions the picture above.
The author and source of the quote are among the anagram answers.
Answers appear in miniscule type on page 172.
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Jen Robinson’
23
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Tracey McTague
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Tracey McTague
25
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Tracey McTague
Tracey McTague
27
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Tracey McTague
Tracey McTague
29
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Tracey McTague
Tracey McTague
31
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Eileen Myles
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Eileen Myles
33
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My Tree
when I think
of it
and everything
crumbles
not stuff
but where
the it would be
and the city
outside me
begins to tap
not so much
tap as
I’ll be contemporary
starts streaming
lucky for me
cause I was
justly thinking
I’ll be in
this process
the one that’s
open to me
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Eileen Myles
now I want to
cry at all
this failure
my ever fading
home
nothing I do
brings me anything
I want
where’s that piece
of cardboard
in this huge huge
microphone
my commodity status
never brought
me something longer
or anything like love
but what is like it?
sweeping up alone
laughing
or something more echoey
being in the moment
when you bumped
into a tree
and remembered
this
something like
the future
Eileen Myles
35
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More Oil
he was dead
and not a particular
rabbit
his legs crossed
like he was asleep
and I hate us
I hate our roads
his little inconsequential
ass
I think of
his nobody
running
we don’t sleep
we get stuck
or burned
we are not
the kindest
of mammals
with our fucking
tar & our bombs
he painted his
driveway blue
& kept us
out
I thought: look
what you did
and she
was sleeping
in my space
no parked
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Eileen Myles
is it less right
to be obsessed
with friendly
fire &
Tillman’s
lying there
a lamb
are you
sure they didn’t
shoot him
cause he was famous
going over the
hill for a
pass
catch this
big guy
sometimes
I don’t run
I just pull over
listening to the fossil
fuel churning
in my guts
I’m leaving
this city for the
dirtier one
with more traffic
I don’t belong
here either
you make me so sad
I’ll stay
I’ll tell you what
makes me sad
Eileen Myles
37
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sun on grass
a beautiful
day
farting in my
car
or watching
a palm
tree do
its galloping
sigh
a bird clucks
and another
box parks
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Eileen Myles
Silke schöner
39
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Todd Colby
Heavy Stuff
You might see me in a totally
deep private video wearing a flannel shirt
soaked in real stage blood
with a hook for an arm
made from a rusty wire hanger —
How did that get into this poem?
You might have to crack open
a pomegranate and fling the seeds on the
damp blue carpet — not out of mischief, but of spite —
that’s the way you roll in your cycle of crispy woe.
You can shave or pluck the unsightly hairs from your
gurgling enemies, you can rake the yard
of glass and offal while casually piercing the bag
of Peaches and Herb. You can even score points
with a machete as you walk through the mall, but you’ll
never ever ever ever ever make friends with
the cool group because they totally kick
ass and they are not afraid of your bullshit.
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Todd Colby
41
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Brett Evans
I love this American way of Life
( USA-dorable ) oui, Eve,
grub around
for that pomme de terre but really
just how many fucking
times can Kids in America be used
as a movie soundtrack — dangit if
aurora borealis didn’t just come
into view
You need a good babysitter look no
farther
I love this American way of Life
Todd, I’ve been thinking about
Easy-Do philosophy
ever since you mentioned it
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Brett Evans
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I love this American way of Life
Silke schöner
tall and [ ] and young and lovely
the girl from Hiroshima goes walking
I love this American dirt nap
I love this American dirt nap
( or, Manically dee or my # 1
daughter is Nadia Eve )
manically delicious but needing
to Quiet Out with my ob
session threads at my fingers
diagnosis was never so hot like
my lover, my mechanic
gives such good hood shampoo
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Brett Evans
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Sandra Simonds
The America you Learn From
(a poem for Grocery Workers)
Walking past the “we’ve got the power workers,”
I say to myself “Metropolis, I’m back”
with my stash of handkerchiefs, magician’s top hat,
stick it to the man smirk, picket sign
between incisors, half synthetic laugh, mouth
full of false starts, I kick
around some ash blue sparks pull my forehead into zigzags
of cracked cement and then I do a jig
on the electric grid, I do a jig
in vermillion heels, my wool scarf woven
from the citric acid saliva of stray dogs.
That the police cracked my arm in half? But I’m the King
of Cuffs, suspended in a three minute breath hold
straightjacket from the San Francisco Bay—I pull
rabbit fat, my own appendix
from an underwater cave of leopard sharks and when my jellyfish brain
undulates, I regurgitate
the keys to unwind these chains.
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Sandra Simonds
*
47
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Enough!
What am I talking about? I have no house.
I am entirely minimum wage. I am one
hundred percent punch in
and out, sandbags under the eyes
live from cage to cage—the ocean tides wet my
hooked to the neck of the moon howls
hey Missy England, it’s all the rage and
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dog leash long esophagus
48
Sandra Simonds
--thumbs up, abu ghraib
Sandra Simonds
49
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In a System of Sufficient Complexity
for Andrew Joron
let these wheels
turn to being
unable to change its C—cannot drift the way wood does,
force with which
an agnostic lute—pleasant at midnight if you are in Marseille on a boat heading
we garner inflection
and hold a shell to a mirror
makes the blood-marrow
to Africa, but unpleasant if you are before me, the way RNA, single-stranded
dwindles to geriatric loops
ashamed of its softness, the animal who left it
around our wrists
making bracelets of
mutating barnacles
so long ago, that salt thing—whistles wind in between cage bars
cannot saw their beaks off
on a red tide
with light.
toward Red Hill
wherein a wave
The other she was a network of carved calcium
goes galactic down crushed
by other revolving waters
she called herself whitewashed
in the “brief chance of snow”
and the “self-organized heterogeneity” of that boat
in sea mucus experiments.
Researchers at the Rand Corporation
held a dozen sea gulls
in their intent: nonlinear, ambiguous
when it falls inconsequentially inside
bubbling sea foam—or is this the romance
their squawks were still theirs
on the air swarm above
there was a convection from a storm
the ‘Battle of Seattle’ cages= the dominant ideology
grows planks poised between light, of course,
of human agency harnessed by brief technicians
of the iris, a world system
metastasizing
in a think tank boxed-in
with recurrent zeros.
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Sandra Simonds
Sandra Simonds
51
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Heather Green
The Angel is an Amalgam
for Ladrea Icaza
In winter he wore a winter beard
He was mile high in the spring his
Head grew light he let down the most
Delicate line he said get in the car
& on the ride a thick red book fell
From his mouth like a lullaby he
Told how you crossed that chalky line
I didn’t sleep I cried I curled to the
Window on the passenger side
& just like that I remembered black I asked him changer or destroyer?
He just narrowed his eyes and said
Forever in a wave like the pushy sound
A seashell makes then he slowed
His hand down the backs of my legs
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Heather Green
53
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Let us try for once not to be right
And you know me I could not
Believe him but I was made smaller
If all of them are right and if all pills are Pink Pills, let us try for once not to be right.
-Tristan Tzara (tr. Robert Motherwell)
For a time by desire I was sorry
Lad I’m sorry because all this time
I never said your name I laughed and clapped
As my dog shat on the
Neighbors’ daffodils I thought
When spring pushes, push back
It thundered and when the angel said
It was March I was still here
Stitching up a small tear
Defenestration he pushed his cupped
In my heart It was hard
Hand out to the side & the arm fell fast Like sewing a button on a shirt
While you wear it
Like ironing a shirt
While you’re wearing it
Using only the steam
When spring pushes push steam
Push pause push the door of the
Bedroom shut and mend
Tzara you were right the pink
pill is ubiquitous is meaningless
is All The pink pill is the tear
pushed from God’s eye as he yelled
Up, whorish daffodils!
Sun, turn snow to rain to steam!
And humans my puppets, laugh & clap!
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Heather Green
Heather Green
55
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Song for Shoveling under the Moon
This one’s the horse, this one holds the spade
This one won’t make it to her wedding day
Like she cared about that anyway
No, this one’s the mother, this one’s the bride
Four black-rimmed eyes in the receiving line Both wear a smile like worry on the mouth
This one, hand to the wall in the silent night
Waits for an echo from past the chalk line
For the hoof-fall that is also the scraping
No, this one’s the mother, this one’s the tide
She reels up the sea for a kiss goodnight but
The sea slips back – she is inconsolable
This one’s the daughter, this one’s the night
Blacknails sliding down her own thighs an
Echo of bathroom light beneath her nightgown
No, this one’s the mother, this one’s the hole
Dug for everything you strain to remember
Throw your love in there, black moss, now
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Heather Green
Heather Green
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Shafer Hall
An Otherwise-Pleasant Morning in Early Autumn
The gun was fired,
but the telescopic sight disappeared
as if it had followed the bullet
toward the target
in a last ditch of vigilance.
Now, your dead
diminutive mustachioed
old man stands, rigorous,
by your bedside,
and your dreams are bricks;
you can’t stand up,
or you would have.
Maybe in a few hours.
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Shafer Hall
59
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While I Was Demonstrating the Location of My Kidneys
While I was demonstrating the location of my kidneys
to no one, something in my back made a satisfying
“pop,” and then the whole world went looseygoosey, and I was free to move all around the front
room of my apartment, where things were staying
exactly where they should’ve stayed, heavy things
like bricks weren’t moving, but even lighter items
like plywood kite frames stayed more or less in their place.
Oh, inspirational inanimation! Oh soaring piles
of stuff! My things do not tie me down, they remind
me of how easily and how often I am able to move. Lungfull!16
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Shafer Hall
Shafer Hall
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William Betts
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William Betts
63
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William Betts
William Betts
65
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William Betts
William Betts
67
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Willliam Betts
William Betts
69
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Jim BehRle
The Borrower, the Finder, the Flame
Among universals blindly visited
the case iron moon on the wall
dear dusty moth, Europe, my sweetie
first love gathering herons
I don’t remember this, the iceberg
just out the door / Lake of souls
Listen, kid – moments, no body, no name
Often I write on the top of
the park / Quitting a job
Robin Blazer the shadow sharp song
to be nowhere as you say
today we both lost horses
under you, over you, on you
Vocabulary waiting for hours
You ask why there is rage in my heart
You can kiss my ass (on the page)
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Jim Behrle
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Adjunct Blues
See why this guy is tingling all over
This is the first humiliating step
in a long journey that will turn me
into something unbearable
And while you were sleeping we ate
your taco / Prose poem gets your rocks off
I got off with a warning
Do a pirouette / Hips out in purple novenas
Makes your ears pop / Semen-flavored Snapple
The brightness no one is relying on
Shake of Corrine / Contempt shall sustain
me all my days / Eviscerated in
afternoon death rays / Wings tangled in
an expulsion from paradise / We’re just
barely hanging on / Musles contracting
I’ll fax my boss, get you those launch codes
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Jim Behrle
Jim Behrle
73
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I Want to Win the War
or at least unfurl all these sutures out
here’s a quivering bulletin: simply declare
victory / I typed the brief phrase
“Bush’s War” at the top of a sheet of white paper
and used it to do further battle
because, unlike most poets, I want to win
the war / I’ve lost so much blood
today at work
or at least replace my guys with feathers
roll tanks up and down your legs
if that’s what you’re into
I helped Voldemort I burned the
meadow / either you want to win or
we’ll let the butterflies take care
of things / hot breath upon all
mothers – pets damages and painted puce
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Jim Behrle
Jim Behrle
75
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Lauren Ireland
IN ANOTHER COUNTRY YEARS AGO
In another country
beloved
oh friend
as fallen.
I dreamed
down
years ago
I am
still unwieldy.
in steady
shining
never coming.
waiting
still
last night
I bled a bedfull
on the sleeping
I rained
men below
atoms.
spring is
it is so terrifying
for the city
to compose itself.
the streets will fill with smoke
swim
rises
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Lauren Ireland
I was
another exotic sea
until I
then the kraken
kraken always do
77
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8.25
I was alone and I was a horror
shadow darker than my dark hand
when you get back the lupine
all shout for sun for sun for sun
for the sum of summer plus fall and
falling always falling back to frosty
old beginning
you are moving through the glories
everyone is crying
it’s a cloud bank!
devil in devil out and the wasp wing
I saw it all through my hair
special in the woods like night
yclept the cloud
yclept the lowering brow
in romantic cities with ugly names 1
chase me
I love what I love and I
love filth
the boiling odors of ginkgo
and piss
ink on my skirt
a
beautiful gesture
o generous sidewalk
rise to meet me again and again
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Lauren Ireland
Lauren Ireland
79
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I am drunk on stares and Byzantine
alleys dirty
Silke schöner
ways of spitting gasps
into your closing fist
which way the office bustles
slatted blinds
I’m steaming I am
as fey as you are laughing
it’s a joke on silk
too loudly
too big and wild
when you get back you
want everything at once
and all all over
westward
fist and cold
everything I know is moving
poisoned sand
and dirty butter
it’s a stain on a map and you in it
scrubbing the little lives all clean and white
like a church like a white church
like a white church in a forest of dead aeroplanes
I am praying
pleased to meet you 1980 you
have nothing to say
this morning
I’m a brown tea rose all dry
and tired
a ghost bills and coos
violent hellos not my bid
I shuffle in the jumpsuit
everyone is dead
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Lauren Ireland
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David Pemberton
Clandestinely Predestined
The Flashing Images of My Future
I watch the nostalgia for a past
in which I never partook move in on me
like weather. Punk rock of the late 1890’s:
that’s when the scene really imploded,
every note struck was sucked
back into the amplifier. Sterile children
squirted yellow mustard into other
kids’ baked beans. Many succumbed
to the gentle narcotic of laziness or
to the grinding amphetamine of perversion.
Me? I want to buy the world but
the lord’s bounty is not for sale, so simply
give me the young asses, the taut twats, the sinkholes of depravity. Gift me. I will wait
for you behind the corral, mooning
after moons, striking claim on the deep pit
of a strange woman’s mouth. “My mother
used to take me to the old silent movies
and nurse me in the darkness while she watched”
the flashing images of my future.
Angus Scrimm (Phantasm’s “Tall Man”) on being asked what in his background
led to his being in the entertainment industry.
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David Pemberton
83
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Apologize preemptively for all
on the knee-jerkiest perversions
which brings me to a cock in mouth conclusion,
The superlative has become a starting
a resolution, a God-fearing summation:
point, a stepping stone. Feel the need
you’re the sustenance to be devoured after
to surpass, to shame, to emasculate
the grueling trials of His practice sessions
with the prowess of a car commercial.
and the bones to be picked at by the
Anticipate the dullest humor:
slack-jawed faces of your daily scrimmage.
“Yeah, it’s that good.” You and I divine
that the end continues, and now it’s perhaps
time to incite suicide in the excess
A monster makes his maker a monster
of celebration. Perhaps kill yourself
off of the series, or someone else, just be
I stand in between a man and his dream
a killer, but make sure that you/he/she
of hoping that sometime, somewhere, someone
are/is/is dead. Do bone up on your
might just notice something that he once did. I
mutilation techniques, don’t turn around
finely comb the quietest crevices,
and look, nor revisit your terror, and do
erase the world’s subtle eternities.
apologize preemptively for all.
I am the anti-librarian, strict and sexy.
Help me enforce two laws of redundancy:
excessive wealth and ineffective effort.
Slack-jawed faces of your daily scrimmage
Deal me in a game with Victor
Frankenstein’s monster, the grim terrorist,
The comped cocktail befriends the big pair of tits,
who was liberated from non-existence,
each reciting the minor notes of their most
abandoned but equipped with monster
Tuesday traditions, telling tall tales
strength for enmity. He was given life
of beating death and quitting addictions.
in its cruelest form, which turned into death.
I shudder with so-be-its, but this resolve
A monster makes his maker a monster.
for abandonment disappears like goose bumps.
The gag-reflex digs its spurs into the
ribs of my basest incentives based
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David Pemberton
David Pemberton
85
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Mark Wallace
from
Party In My Body
Determined to believe that life is adventure, in Chinatown we try new
restaurants. I fall asleep in the most public places. Look hard and you just might
catch urban planning’s human element. Do I wish I could talk myself out of more
things? Perhaps a coherent critique would be better. Cute animals in movies! The
curtains in the building across from mine hang crooked in many cases, but a few are
annoyingly straight. Priority seating for the oblivious. Allow the doctors to focus on
you. It’s a long ride through those grey tunnels to a city stuck above ground.
*
Every year, I feel like more of the past is present. Do you want to be
connected or widely dispersed? With a tall tower and cross-like windows, this fire
station resembles a church. Exciting new careers! A world without categories still
seems a category, so language will have to break down completely. See the fish
people rise from alluvial mud. Art may be better when it doesn’t act important,
but isn’t that also true of money? Do we need to know how many angels can fit
into this Honda hatchback? Today almost everyone carries a bag. Born a monster
in a world of monsters, would one never learn to be scared?
*
Nothing’s missing, but everything’s misplaced. The skin has been so
purposefully slandered that even our hands feel disappeared. I’m sorry just to
show up like this, yet remnants of a tattered magic grant me reassembly. Sure
it’s Wednesday afternoon and price remains the rule. Do you have any laundry
detergent? Does it matter how much you work things over? Strategically
misleading remarks! This sunny day all the leaves have fallen, and I try to make it
a matter of phrasing. The modern world looks like this door.
What would you legislate out of existence?
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Mark Wallace
87
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*
In Georgetown, a woman cleans the parts of her stove while leaning
*
No possible number of categories will ever eliminate “miscellaneous.”
out a window. Giving the names of streets in poems implies a specific local
Nothing that tastes good is good for your health, according to the guy on
attachment that usually I don’t have. The men wanted to seem free-thinking
public TV. I feel younger, stronger, more unnoticed. Sam, are you there?
liberals, but sounded obsessed with property. What does self-interest mean
Do you think the Pentagon is bugging our phones? Get that hog in that river
to you? Bad habits often ignore my principles, and I’m not sure which side
correctly. Uncontrollable urges! Reading about these diseases in books didn’t
I’m on. The slivered moon above the buildings doesn’t have much of an aura.
prepare us to have them. If you’re not scared, we won’t let you work here.
Which patriots owned these colonial houses? Things I’ve never heard of!
It’s not surprising that millions have moved.
There’s always more to be said. There’s always more to keep quiet about.
*
Lately, conversation seems more vertical, as if most people speak to get
*
I used to be secretly sadistic, now I’m more open about it. Hail the Gods
of the clock and the calendar. With decay as a calculated element of products,
above something. If you only knew the punishing habits I keep for my sacred
we’re all fading out of the top of the line. Ecstatic sparrows take a dirt bath
private moments. It would be easy to work if work was wanted; around here
with few concerns about significance. Which crash dummy looks most like
all that’s offered is jobs. Explain the pattern one more time? Distribute free
you? The store is out of dreams, but quite well stocked with fantasy. Making
ecological nightmares? I loved the reference to sharpened teeth, but hunger
weekend plans! The moment one invents McDonald’s, one invents the people
seems most effective enacted. Wasting time in afternoons! There’s cultural
who work there. Too often, games are defined by those who don’t play them.
energy around here, but don’t let the folks in charge find out. Flirtation keeps
It’s great to meet a pigeon with a purpose.
the mind active. Do most evocations of despair fall flat because they lack
convincing detail?
*
Sitting on a sidewalk, celebrating my spleen, I wallowed in invective,
*
People resemble the institutions they marry. It’s a small prank involving
seized by the urge to become grandiose. Relate social rage and selfawareness. We’ll never be able to haul away all this frustrated artistic talent.
the army. Luckily, the mall Santa got there in time. As a case of romantic
Single white male likes apples, long walks in the park, and hostile sensitive
longing, I love to stay up all night; as a worker I go to bed at eleven. One
hilarious anguish. My baby wants to eat, and her little magic trailer becomes
of the best compliments I’ve received was from someone who said I’d
a dinner seat. I read books of horror to feel the horror of books. Release and
undermined everything. Don’t you love that scene where the villain dies
live. If time was a single continuous present. The difficulty of waking up! As
under tons of crashing grain? Stories about common people! Please face the
the fire becomes a sluggish dullness, does music also leave?
audience, speak loudly and clearly. Let me project my own distortions. If
winter light seems sublime in person, you should see it on video.
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Mark Wallace
Mark Wallace
89
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David Borchart and Sharon Mesmer
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David Borchart and Sharon Mesmer
91
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David Borchart and Sharon Mesmer
David Borchart and Sharon Mesmer
93
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Liz Colville
“Flat Tendon”
In sinking sod there’ll be a reluctance,
and another when in October it snows once.
I am an arbor, no, I am a twig, or
I am a painting of Prospect Park when you
wanted a photograph. It was red in pastels,
such as the park never looks, by a dowdy
artist with a cheap pallet and success only in
Vermont tourist centers. If you have to brag––
well, no one’s bragging, because you so much
as sighed on the surface and the forms disappeared.
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Liz Colville
95
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“Poinsettia Order”
Kept getting them in during the Gulf War
when we held violin lessons
in our living room.
We called the pet poison line, they said
get rid of them. The cats seemed sad
but we sort of thought they were ugly, anyway,
so we did.
The cats went back
to breaking lamps and shredding furniture
and we did Suzuki Book Six in the blizzard.
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Liz Colville
Liz Colville
97
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“Twentieth Effortlessly”
Not the same BMI as in the teens, she thinks,
imprinting wet feet on the metal scale,
switching on the sauna, a small
time-lapsed death,
except it took too bloody long for anything
to happen, so she came out again,
boobs flailing, flip-flops squeaking,
a vague awareness of pubes
hovering in the air,
rubdowns and self-massages
as far as the eye can see.
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Liz Colville
Liz Colville
99
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Jessica Fiorini
Tarn
dead lakes tear the dirty ground
malaria trap and I’m known for
sweet blood
willow trees
are beautiful but their ghost ad/dress
gives ‘em a bad wrap
black thorn buried in my palm
remember
awake bog people are
real bog children laugh
like laundromats
lost lollipops
a whiff of when I was young enough
to know everything how exactly
did I forget everything and still recall knowing
midnight crow calls me back bog
again chimera cleared
it’s time to take form
focus
hocus pocus when to awake
my mother tells me
I’ve never been young in darkling
willow arm
embraces
but I recall lounging in still water
stone garden guard asleep and quiet
pregnant with you
born between worlds
I knew you were of a different orbit
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Jessica Fiorini
101
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Edwin Torres
Bit By Bite
fuzz or static
choose one eight hours earlier and I
will live your stream
the sleep you swim in
entire fields of feedback
prophesized as hair
windswept across sierra
plateaus submerged by sandmen
and water saints, Isadora’s virgins
Goya’s Saturn
carnivorous father hands me
clear strokes to behave
as one would if drenched
by howling dunes
across ancient bones
ambient feathers
on daughters the size of fireworks
dormant water bombs
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Edwin Torres
103
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Silke schöner
gathered by feral tomorrows
what’s worse, a nation without a sun
or a moon
that’s easy, no moon
without a sun
you only live in the dark
which is blood
when slammed against
fly or mosquito
penetrate sublimity
through a mask of light
disguised as sweep
what is haze or fuzz to you
will someday ride the bare back
of all your moonlit swims
a silhouette of elegaic serenades
curved along a color
dreamed eight hours ago
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Edwin Torres
105
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Tracey McTague
live feed of cemetery
for Megan & Dave
a shaman faux paux
revealed by freelance wizards
as the exorcist ends his exercise
they say the soothsayer never knew what hit her
a seer signs up for a super bowl pool
salt over a shoulder
where the past and future may mingle
in an empty sky flown
out beyond inert now
a catapult to the fox world
those devils not held to a pack
read the relief fragment in the temple of eyes
whispered instructions in landscape disruptions
Ishtar’s handshake and Kitsunebi’s wink
blister symptoms of this
veiled more or less
with foxy promises
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Tracey McTague
107
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Dave Brinks
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Dave Brinks
109
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the caveat onus ::: one hundred and fifty-seven
the caveat onus ::: one hundred and sixty
for Kemi Osundare
for Helen Hill
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in glimpses between two silent worlds
there are a thousand spectacles
this is clear
in the caves of the jaw
skin fits tight to your bones
the river unravels its tongue between the trees
carrying a torch is a dim shadowy thing
will it be flow or flood
the great killers of history
memory charts a path
have hidden talents
water in your neighbor’s front yard
I chase my light in buckets of black water
shout these tidings
a girl in a blue dress
e jòwó e má ta yèpè si o
climbs a giant sunflower
in the Word was the Beginning
the human silhouette drinks a cup of tea
to utter is to alter
most all of those I love
one silver eye in a magnitude of ripples
are the sound of footsteps
breaking walls walls breaking
here surrounded by an inescapable serene
like a tyrant for his noose
Dave Brinks
Dave Brinks
111
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the caveat onus ::: one hundred and sixty-two
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the caveat onus ::: one hundred and sixty-three
whatever is treason
in an older younger age
but the account of a nation
would the trees praise us
that treats its citizens like pigs & dogs
for our good behavior
those who cannot remember the future
rest your head
are condemned to repeat it
on a bed of feathers
from the scratching of mice
this is your secret hour
to the howler monkey
what you came for
the clock stops at the precise hour
but to disappear entirely
the heartfelt defense of Charlie Chaplin
that is a rare gift
that was the beginning of the word “hope”
passing through this shadow world
fire and water are the same thing
neither living nor dead
eating the noise of grasshoppers
so tell it all
there are no lost steps
there’s much work to do
Dave Brinks
Dave Brinks
113
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L.S.Asekoff
Degas
Stepcoats. Monotypes. Factory chimneys.
There is a lack in the mountains, a wounded landscape.
The sentimentalist follows telltales of smoke to
The blue flux & luminous glow. Fields of flax.
Over breakfast you wonder about “light-fingered thieves,”
Luke Howard (You coward!),
Why honey darkens so in the center of a spoon.
Perhaps the flowers are breathing the oxygen.
Is that why the blind man’s dog goes blind?
“Still what gets me angry is
When they make us ashamed of our feelings,
Turning what we love against us.”
In the dungeon of your dream, a single bulb, a flash.
The tall man holds a child in his arms.
You are fixed by his long pale face, the noble patient brow of a prince.
The ax murderer’s glittering eye.
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L.S. Asekoff
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Chekhov
Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite:
Snapshots for the Fin de Siecle
You know the story. Gothic Germany. Baden Baden.
i. Le Veuve
Delirium. The famished spirit devouring flesh.
Under the sign of Le Lion Rouge, Le Soleil
Bone-rattle at the gates of breath
The sky widens, a V,
& the dark eyes blazing with “fugitive light.”
Then iron walls fall, severing shadows.
All so predictable, really.
As the head flies free of the eighteenth century
The gaunt man wrapped in woolen sheets whispers.
We read its bloody inscription – le plaisir, la liberte.
He cannot wait for laudanum
So the doctors order champagne all around.
ii. La Meduse
Corks pop. A black moth flutters against the pane.
A faint wind disturbs the unraveling tallow rope of smoke & it is gone.
A few days later, at the station,
Smudge pots flame along the rail,
& huddled in a scarf of steam that bitter root, Gorki,
Rages as the freight car shudders to a stop & off-loads
Who does not wish himself more beautiful than he is?
Staring at the marble gaze of the beloved
The young boy marvels at what he has wrought,
Holds by its hair the mirror of manhood.
You have given me nothing but pleasure, it sings.
Crates of salted oysters on ice, the wooden casket.
iii. Eros
Of the death of the libertine-philosopher
There are two versions:
In one, he is not told until the very end
& then spends his last day in bed
Reading Seneca, speaking to no one.
In the other, he is told long before
But choosing to tell no one
Lives out his last weeks in epicurean splendor,
Riotous bliss,
Secretly infecting the host of idolators.
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L.S. Asekoff
L.S. Asekoff
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Fred Yannantuono
Jigging for Fluke off the North Light
The blues and bass are icing in the tank.
Aurora runs her fingers through your hair.
G. Willie idles portside where
The jigs begin to stutter.
We don’t know if they’re biting but
It’s tough to gaff a snook.
He roughs out how to cook them—
You can smell the herbs and butter—
He’s fisheyed, with a tidal kind of look.
Buoyant current: nothing on the hook.
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Fred Yannantuono
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Shira Dentz
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Shira Dentz
121
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Elizabeth Zechel
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Elizabeth Zechel
123
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Elizabeth Zechel
Elizabeth Zechel
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Rodney Phillips
Caravaggio and the Pope
The manual itself, Decryption, they
are beleaguering us, like ormolu. At anywhere
the bandolier. A quintuplet of matter. Diamonda
Galas to the concerto--we re-garnish. The radish
roses, oh portly one, the kinks, the ramage begins,
oh branch to branch we flit. Play the five of clubs,
quinqunx---keep the fascicles alight, flee
with grapes rolling cantankerously around
the plate. Our game supposes a night: a motley
evergreen, a ramble-berry. No, that’s scrabble
and finicky, we are a sensitive plate for radio.
Whiskery bedevilment, cascades up the clink
the cinquefoil patterning is harassing us, cortices
feverish with reclusion: trebling the fistful of plums
the icebox backs off too. We do not like tales
of popes. They fabulate ink.
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Rodney Phillips
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Cliff Fyman
and
Bernadette Mayer
The Idle Ladder Max Left
The first day of autumn is spreading out
evenly beyond the little boxes of time
Cliff might be going to the chop board
with a pocketful of chips of locust limbs
on a day accidentally golden
Let’s walk to the war protest rally
and add to the head count
little things mean a lot in the time space
continuum. It means a lot to return
to talk to you. It means a lot to return
to talk to you too. You could
fool us into thinking it was still summer
or April fool’s day when we walked
to the creek and were awed
by the fossil footprints of faster animals
What are you really thinking, yesterday?
To follow the line of thinking in this
charged space...I am everywhere,
are you with me today?
Yes I’m with you today. Let’s make some
buttery rugelach for Friday night
Let’s step outside the camp for
a minute and raise some sparks!
Like two perfect poached pears
on a day accidentally golden
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Cliff Fyman and Bernadette Mayer
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Cliff Fyman
Poem in September Before Travel
This night verges on decision
Lead me to the right place,
not where I’m planning to go but
further, the hidden place, dark
opening
lightly
Let me be
quiet.
something strong
guides the river—
please let it guide me
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Cliff Fyman
ContributorName
131
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Benjamin Schwalke
Real Randolph
It is impossible for me to write on tea
Leaves. All we have is a hooting
Camera for those flying
Books. You dew goose over there
Among candle scars who am I
To judge another... calf detach
From a piano... pull out the
Pain on the pill for YAWN...
Understanding blossom
Runs to the hill
Me vigilant possum
Peerless
Sea on finding me
You grew through Okinawa
Suns... without dreams
Or hopes for Bonnie when
Clyde saw the money...
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Benjamin Schwalke
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Landmines
Silke schöner
Answers, skeleton hanging on Tesla
We some how got lost together within roses...
Sweet silence of purple night, draw thy gun...
The Ethiopian sun brews coffee for two
Along phrases of ambivalence,
Calling the daggers of
Misfortune through
Landmines...
Understanding faith alone so what I got
Good vibes in Manchester, that doesn’t mean any­Thing... Yeah, I know he sung a Bob Dylan
Song...
Find less among rainbows there
On these starling branches...
Life among seagulls and roses live every
Day...
I forgot she was the kind of
Girl sitting on bleachers
With new cigarettes...
Sometimes creation just rises from the lonely earth...
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Benjamin Schwalke
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Alex Galper
Daring Winter Escape
That December,
Rocking in a chair
And reading Rumi,
I ceased to reflect in a mirror.
You broke into tears:
“How can I trust you ever again?”
In January,
I began to levitate
By the chandelier
Reading Hayam.
It made you nervous.
You learned to
Throw the rope like a cowboy,
Pulling me back into the bed.
And in February,
I went into spontaneous combustion,
But you, ready for contingencies,
Slept with a fire-extinguisher
And put the flames out,
Destroying my plan
Of daring escape
To the 12th century Persia.
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Alex Galper
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Che Guevara’s Diet
The way Guevara attempted to put Latin America on fire of revolution
I try to shed some pounds,
Che counted every bullet before landing in Venezuela,
I count every damn calorie.
he fought his way out of the jungles,
I’ve battled third day in a row
my bloody war with creamy donuts.
Guevara ran surrounded
I’m encircled by blueberry cheesecakes.
it is everywhere,
at work, home, guests’
bad capitalist cheesecakes!
like Guevara was ambushed and captured,
I absolutely coincidentally entered a bakery,
bold revolutionary hollowed:
“you can’t kill me!
I’m the very Che Guevara himself!”
and I screamed:
“you can’t sell me this, this and that one!
I’m Galper!
I should fly after girls,
and not roll like a wheel”.
too bad, execution’s squad’s eyes are emotionless,
and tough honey cake and pitiless cream-Brule
are deaf to great romantic plans
and bee-bullets fly out of the bee-house of rifles,
and Che falls down in nameless pit of Eternal Life
and progressive humanity breaks down in tears,
and weak Galper falls into bed,
snoring, unable to move a finger,
and the Ideal of Womanhood departs cursing and untouched.
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Alex Galper
Alex Galper
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Sarah Rosenthal
The animal
elicits giggles.
Takes place
whatever is thought.
Dead animal on street,
blood on tires.
Animal arm I bit,
nuzzled. Some
have arms
some bear them
procreate etc.
Higher order dreams.
Even aliens are handed
animals. Wear
them, complaining.
Whimper, muscle,
elegy animal.
Thinking break
forms. Scribbles found
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Sarah Rosenthal
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You’re Beautiful
in code manual.
Animals must remember
Letter pressing a poem, each letter by hand, linoleum blocks, made by a
eye exercises
company that’s no longer extant, they did something wrong, told a lie or
back stretches.
mistreated someone, exploited employees, just like the man at the art store
said to do she carved a comma out of a baby red potato that had been lying
A sad lot. Meant
in the crisper untold months, none of the alphabet sets providing one, period,
to say sand.
yes, question mark, exclamation, but no comma, that would lead to discur-
Picking nits, some say.
sive matter, must be the thinking, not what these are used for. Notices, signs,
warnings, yes, narratives no, the comma is bigger relatively than everything,
Give examples say others.
the potato not as refined as linoleum, such accidents in form, shape, the process, unless one takes on linoleum at that point, harder to carve and more
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When locations are wrong
expensive, that’s why he said potato, you’re beautiful, she shook his hand and
they shut down.
rushed out,
Sarah Rosenthal
Sarah Rosenthal
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Scott Hammer
from
That or Miasma
X
Dearest Miasma,
Last night I went to your address.
My tech friend traced your IP
(I kept the reason a secret). The data
displayed a building, reached
only thirty minutes in traffic.
I dove through cavernous rooms
of apartments swathed in discarded
newspaper. Found nothing.
I thought for a second I saw your figure
alone in a room. The lights
flickered from bad wiring, alternately
glowing & screening you.
Instead I found a computer. I already
own one of those. Lungfull!16
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I’d trade my sense of shame
Silke schöner
for any other moment. Coming home
was the hardest thing to do.
But I caught the evening news,
which promised to protect me
from myself. I know, dear, the dangers
of what I do seal the very letter of doom.
I’ve been remiss in relationships.
I’m resolutely unkissed.
If I go gray & shrink
without finding love, send me messages
to think I’m not forsaken.
If I can’t be touched,
I want your words to taste on my tongue
as they come out unscrambled.
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Scott Hammer
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Ryan Collins
Dear Twin Falls—
Your performance under pressure so woven
in & cut off like interstate traffic. Stop & go, the ebbing of
confidence. & apology. When did you do some talkin’ to
the sun? frying someone? It’s hard to be happy it’s not me,
babe. Happy as Dorothy Gale & no dream, no Roy Orbison
remorse to follow my scams. A duplicate key, a winning endorsement hammers out an honest man’s capital. Mea culpa—
addresses forward to the floodplain bridge by bridge. Time to
make that change, man in the mirror. Time to file claims.
Mr. Sunshine On Your Goddamn Shoulders,
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Ryan Collins
Quad Cities
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Dear Carbondale—
Dear New Lennox—
Trust. Don’t expect. Grown-ups take
Goodday! Today’s release party dedicated
advantage when they smell innocents nearby, like
to the whited-out space I’m holding for you & yes, pill-
strangers with candy. Thus arrived our current dil-
ars we remain. Bound to rivers. But what matters virtue?
emma, our going under. You’re going to fuck up—
Slight of hand now apparently too turn-of-the-century,
don’t quit & don’t trust Mapquest to give a direction.
No danger, though— we shan’t be gambled away. Seek
Use stars to map-make. If you never learn to navigate,
contact. The kiln is cooling, I’m heating up & while I’m
you’ll never get anywhere. Be at no mercy except the
thinking of it, do you know the verse of O-HI-O? Given
weather’s. Don’t bottom feed— “We are all the custom-
or the Mouse song? She’s a long drive, indeed. But you
dians of our innocence & let it die at our peril.” The peril
won’t be in need of something to chew on or think about.
of youth can’t compare to old age arriving early. Don’t
She sees thru the scandals, ‘cept between our muddy shoes.
wait. Shove back. Speak clearly into the mic. Hindsight’s
perfection is never worth the cost. Regret. Don’t settle
Your friendly neighborhood,
for satisfying audience expectation. Now it’s in your hands.
Cry after the game. & don’t let anyone tell you different.
Quad Cities
Ollie ollie oxen free,
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Ryan Collins
Daddy
Ryan Collins
151
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jennifer brown
from
fresno series
subsolar mornings
we were watching an unfamous performer in pamela basmajian’s living room
while the sun nailed itself through our heads at madera county. it seemed like
life was going to go on like this forever: incessantly. during what we called the
start of day, a hot smog stretched itself over the valley. everybody was going
to church that summer. they said, make yourselves at home.
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Jennifer Brown
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west & vassar: how the san joaquin saved my life
reductive phenomenology on butler st.
when we show up these songs are already playing. everything is yellow and it is
In a trampled on house across from Latino Liquors when the night sky was
always in the way. some of it is broken and none of it is consequential. we leap
filled with chalky smoke and cirrus clouds my sister stepped out from the
through the house wearing a path between the inner and outer worlds. by daylight
kitchen and yelled, “You’re so stupid!” The freeway was like a town where
it disappears and all the objects are exhausted. the blinds are drawn over an
everyone had died, purposeless and unlit. We waited at the train tracks with
indifferent scene. who says we weren’t tired and lonely? I came to the valley
our infernal music. Nothing came. It was not the worst night of my life.
during its freeze and flew down blackstone high, catching something under the
human heart, that dead and dying space. I’d brought his dumb memory to
the world.
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Jennifer Brown
Jennifer Brown
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Susan Lewis
Light and Dark
On good days, she can not only sing, but fly like an angel. The other one
watches and applauds, or throws her a line, which sometimes looks very
much like a ball and chain, and which her sister has never grabbed or even
acknowledged. This probably has to do with her test scores, which were
decidedly uneven. On the other hand they have more than one father, all
of whom ignore them lovingly. This neglect, along with their dinette set,
represents all you know and all you need to know. Sometimes the one with
the rope wonders why no one else steps up to teach her another skill. Don’t
worry, reassures the angel, that rope will come in handy, one of these days.
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Trojan
Incendiary
First we built the horse. Then we had to decide who it was for. The options
He aimed his remarks like grenades. I tried mightily not to spark or shatter,
were legion. Viewed from the proper point of view, everyone was an enemy.
taking down the baby and the bathwater. Unfortunately, there was quite a bit
We were compelled to build more horses. Secrecy was a problem, until later,
of ricochet and reverb. My ears burned, although no one intended to praise
when we wanted them to know what we were capable of. Then there was the
me. I guess it was the heat of the moment. I guess it was the luck of the draw.
challenge of simultaneous deployment. A festival of gift-giving! We named
I might have been drawn and quartered, but then he would have had to share,
the day something childishly appealing, then boom! There we were, without
and we couldn’t have that. For now, it’s best to draw your own conclusion.
enemies. What we did have was one last horse. On Independence Day we
Mine follows.
wheeled it in.
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Susan Lewis
Susan Lewis
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The Rundown
Contributors discuss themselves & their work
L.S. Asekoff has published two books of poems, Dreams of a Work (1993) and North Star
(1997), both with Orchises Press. He directs
the MFA Poetry Program at Brooklyn College.
Of the three poems published here, “Degas”
& “Chekhov” come from The White Notebook,
an ongoing prose & poetry journal/copybook I
kept from 1992-1997. It exists in its raw daily
state (300 single-spaced pages) & in an edited
version (75 single-spaced pages). “Degas,” for
instance, was written in response to multiple
sources: primarily a Degas exhibition at the
Met, but also a mishearing of “you coward”
for Luke Howard (drawer of cloud shapes,
referred to by Ruskin), a personal response
to how our best instincts are turned against
us by so much popular art (Wallace Stevens:
“sentimentality: a failure of feeling”), & a
terrifying dream I woke from.
Of the third poem published here, “Liberte,
Egalite, Fraternite,” probably all you need to
know is that the “libertine-philosopher” referred to in part iii, Eros, is Foucault who,
rumor has it, knowingly (or unknowingly) infected his idolatrous young lovers/disciples
with AIDS in the days before he died.
Inspired by the writings of Jeremy Bentham
on the Panopticon and Michel Foucault in his
work Discipline & Punish, William Betts’
paintings explore the sociological and philosophical implications of surveillance in contemporary society. Born and raised in New
York City, Betts graduated from Arizona State
University in 1991 with high honors with a
B.A. in Studio Art and a minor in philosophy.
Between 1995 and 2002 he held various executive positions in the technology field. Before
leaving the business world to pursue his painting full time in 2002, he was a senior executive responsible for the European operations
of an international application software company. Betts’ work has been written about and
exhibited extensively throughout the United
States. He lives and works in Houston.
Betts’ work has been featured recently in Texas Paint, Part Two: Abstraction at the Arlington
Museum of Art, SuperVISION at the Foster Gallery, University of Wisconsin, Eau-Claire, and Biennial Southwest, a juried exhibition at the
Albuquerque Museum where he was awarded
best in show by Neal Benezra, Director of the
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Betts’ work is represented in New York by
Margaret Thatcher Projects.
Jim Behrle currently guest curates the Zinc
Talk Reading Series. She’s My Beft Friend
came out in late 2006 from Pressed Wafer. He
lives in Brooklyn, NY.
The poems are all based on my deep research
of myths, using books you’ve never heard of
but would no doubt be impressed by. Lungfull!16
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David Borchart’s serial cartoon, A Prisoner
of Ghoul Island, has appeared in the Miami
New Times, the New Orleans Gambit, the
East Bay Express, and online at ghoulislandcom. His cartoons have also been known to
appear in The New Yorker magazine.
Dave Brinks, born in 1967 and raised in New
Orleans, Brinks lives in the New Orleans with
his wife Megan Burns, also a poet, and their
two children Mina and Blaise. He is the editor
of YAWP: a Journal of Poetry & Art, publisher of Trembling Pillow Press, coordinator of
17 Poets! Literary & Performance Series and
founder of The New Orleans School for the
Imagination. Since 1996 he has locally produced and directed workshops, readings, performances and festivals celebrating the works
of poets, artists, and musicians all over the
New Orleans community. Brinks’ poetry has
been published in dozens of magazines, newspapers, journals and anthologies throughout
the U.S. and abroad including most recently
in Callaloo, Constance, Fell Swoop, Kulture
Vulture, La Reata, Meena, New Laurel Review, New Orleans Review, Not Enough Night,
Now Culture, Origin, SAW, Tool, Xavier Review and Common Ground. His works also
have aired on NPR’s All Things Considered and
PBS’ News Hour with Jim Lehrer, and have
been featured in National Geographic Traveler and Louisiana Cultural Vistas. Brinks’ collections of poetry include The Light on Earth
Street (Ugly Duckling 2008), The Wilderness
of Things (Lavender Ink 2008), The Caveat
Onus, Book One (Lavender Ink 2006), The Caveat Onus, Book Two (Lavender Ink 2006),
The Caveat Onus, Book Three (Lavender Ink
2007), The Treehouse Aquarium Cathedral
Room (with Bernadette Mayer, New Directions
2005), The Snow Poems (Lavender Ink, 2000).
Brinks is also proprietor of the Gold Mine Saloon which not only serves up great ale, but
nationally & internationally renowned poets,
writers and artists who are featured regularly
throughout the year in this multi-disciplinary
art space located in the heart of the French
Quarter.
The technical aspects of my writing process
are no different than the ones used on bathroom mirrors — when the face gets blurry, the
poem appears!
The Caveat Onus trilogy is a cycle of poems
wherein each poem contains thirteen lines,
each section contains thirteen poems, and
there are thirteen sections. One of the operations of the book is that each poem should
work loosely as a hexagram, actually two
hexagrams (the first six lines and the last six
lines). Thus leaving the middle line (the seventh line) to serve as a kind of spine, or as I
would like to think, an axis mundi.
Each section of The Caveat Onus begins with
a totem animal moon. Each totem animal
moon directly corresponds to the Bak’tun Cycle
of the Mayan Calendar. The thirteen line form,
the sonnegram, which appears throughout
this work is a form which I invented, though
I’m more inclined to think that this form already existed, as it seems a natural & organic
framework for the exposition of poesy.
Chance methodologies & shamanistic connections were necessary components in the
realization of this work, with generous attentions given to the moon in all its governing aspects; just as the moon is the guiding
principle of water on earth, so it is with this
book.
Jennifer Brown received her master’s degree in Creative Writing from San Francisco
State University in the “dark nineties” and is
currently completing a second master’s degree at JFK University in Pleasant Hill, CA.
Since 2003, she has been nervously guest
lecturing at SFSU on Sufi poetry and Islamic
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mysticism. Her work appears in various farout mags, Fourteen Hills, and the chapbooks
intimate fixtures and As They Leave the Lily
Place. These three poems have a life of their own
that I can’t completely understand, in that
people seem to enjoy them for some reason.
I haven’t asked why. They all take place in
Fresno, which I refer to as the place where
depression and beauty gave way to love.
That’s what the pieces are about I guess—being strung out in the valley, something unbearable taking on a queerly magical dimension,
being low. The writing process involved reliving these scenes and sensations as completely
as I could. I wrote them (mainly) while working in a photo department issue room, which
is a dark hovel that reeks of toxic chemistry. I
played the same song over and over again. It
really helped.
Todd Colby is the author of several books
of poems all of which were published
by Soft Skull Press. He keeps a blog at:
gleefarm.blogspot.com
I sit at my desk and I write. The words come
to me in fits and starts. I turn around and
there are people dancing, wearing hats, limping into the light. Then I try to find the music,
or the music finds me. I never go continually
from point A to point B I prefer P to Z.
Ryan Collins has read his work on Neighborhood Public Radio’s Poetic License and was
a former editor of Columbia Poetry Review. His work has appeared (in print & online)
or is forthcoming in the following journals:
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The American Drivel Review, Black Clock,
Caffeine Destiny, Columbia Poetry Review,
Cranky, Keep Going, The 2River View, Verse
Daily & Word Riot. He currently works as Literary Arts Administrator for the regional nonprofit arts agency Quad City Arts, where he
is the editor of Buffalo Carp. He also is the
drummer in the rock band Sharks. He lives in
the Iowa Quad Cities.
The places addressed in my “letters” all represent people (via their hometowns or current places of residence). They proceed from
an impetus of a word/line/phrase/thought/
statement directed toward someone & are
improvised line by line (or sentence by sentence) from there. Breaks are as much for
shape as for speak. The improvisation hopefully builds momentum & illuminates the associative logic as it progresses. The dictation
comes from a great many sources: old poems,
fragments, songs.The more popular references make themselves fairly clear, though they
are placed in a new context & made to do different work (many things linger & demand). I
strive to maintain the integrity of these improvisations & change the “letters” as little
as possible. When changes are made, it is
usually for cadence or clarity (more the latter), or at the suggestion of a reader (the “ice
cream capital of the world”) whom I trust.
They keep me (& the work) honest & from being too coded or cryptic. They have a certain
speak that unifies them, but not one (I hope)
the requires a decoder ring. They are letters
& thus should communicate, bear across, give
something not to just the addressee, but anyone who happens to read them. If they don’t,
they aren’t really letters & see themselves revised until done proper. Then they are made
into a mess. None of this is absolute.
LIZ Colville writes: For money, I write music criticism for Pitchfork Media and Stylus
Magazine and spend most of my week starting up the start-up findingDulcinea.com, the
kindest search engine you will ever meet. I
have been having an affair with poetry for
some time and was first outed on my blog,
Lizzyville.com. I run very early each morning
and afterward try to remember the strange
phrases I conjured while moving quickly, half
awake, on an empty stomach. I grew up in
London, Cyprus, Nova Scotia and New Jersey,
and now play a tree in Still Life with Yuppie,
Child and Dog in Park Slope, Brooklyn.
Poetry makes its way from my head, which
hears sound long before it processes meaning, to either a Pilot pen and notebook, a text
message draft to myself, or the entry page of
a blog. I seldom edit poems from their original
appearance or structure, though I really enjoy
Microsoft Word’s “Track Changes” function because it inadvertently complicates things in a
way that is often very rewarding. But editing,
I believe, is a job for short-stories and novels,
and those who write them more thoroughly
than I. I am inspired by other people, including the men I know, strangers, and poets such
as Philip Larkin and Denise Levertov. I like to
talk about sentiments like ambition, love,
self-knowledge; synthetic textures; and landscapes I have seen and lived. Language should
be as poetic as possible, as often as possible.
Oh, and I live in the clouds. That helps. The titles of these poems, part of a series
called Fun with Spam, were derived—verbatim—from the subjects of spam e-mails received circa October 2006, during the height
of the spam movement known as Coercive
Lyricism.
Shira Dentz’s poems have appeared in various journals including American Poetry Review, Western Humanities Review, American Letters and Commentary, Field, Denver
Quarterly, Colorado Review, Barrow Street,
and Seneca Review. She is the recipient of
an Academy of American Poets’ Prize, Poetry
Society of America’s Lyric Poem Award, Electronic Poetry Review’s Discovery Award, and
Painted Bride Quarterly’s Poetry Prize. She
worked as art director at an advertising
agency in New York City for many years, is a
graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, and
currently is a doctoral candidate at the University of Utah.
as often happens, i had “nothing to write,
nothing to write.” i’m in the practice of trying to break out of received ideas of what a
poem is, what an aesthetic composition is,
and what material is appropriate for a poem.
this flexing is what i aspire to, though i find
the accompanying challenge to validate what
i end up with daunting sometimes. formally,
i like to play with asymmetry, to see if i can
make something “artful” from it. as a visual
artist, i’ve applied this same sensibility to
art. i looked around my room, at one of my
paintings: a collage of images, one of which
was a duck’s face that was also a watch face,
and the duck’s bill descended into a flight of
stairs. i remembered how the day i painted
this i “had nothing to paint, nothing to paint.”
at a loss, i drew from my imagination in a way
that felt, at the time, liquid and thin. now i
“drew” the poem, “7°,” in a similar fashion.
one could describe my process as “doodling.”
i wanted to create something geometric on
the page—often I approach writing as a visual
energy as well as conceptual. i had no idea
that at the end the sun would topple out as
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a protractor! i enjoy seeing the unconscious
at work. the way i measured whether something i wrote was indeed “a poem” was if,
at the end, images popped into my head that
clarified some vague notion i had of what i
was writing “about.” the language at the end,
when turned on its sides— its denotations and
connotations—had to be purposeful to the
piece as a whole. given this yardstick, this
ending gave me that deep sense that i had
indeed written “a poem”! still, i couldn’t tell.
this is a frequent outcome when i write, and
possibly this slippage is organic to my work.
aesthetically speaking, i am often drawn to
the cracks between things, the off-kilter.
Brett Evans was born and raised in New
Orleans, Louisiana, spent some time being
schooled by the poetry mavens of the East
Coast, until returning home on the Millenium’s (remember that?!) cusp to rebegin here,
eventually serving the young and young-at at
Delgado Community College, teaching astride
his mentor, poet Joel Dailey. Along with other
post-storm reconstitutions, his band SKIN VERB
has again started playing. Not quite our mantra: WHEN WE DONT SUCK, WE ROCK. Check
out not HIS my lai space page but the myspace
of his (neighborhood collective) back porch at
MALS PORCH. iHip, uHop. Come visit.
The poems herein are from a manuscript
called I LOVE THIS AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE,
which owe their genesis to a dogwalk along
Bayou St. John in my neighborhood, as do
many poetry kernels, wise and ill. Some
thought popped into my head as I was passing
a recently torn-down funeral home and the
IDEAL convenience store, gazed down upon by
the AMERICAN CAN COMPANY wearhouse (sp)
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where I was holed up during the hurricane.
The lil lightning gem did its thing, begging to
fend off memory decay until the front steps
of my house were retaken: in all sincerity
was the closing tag: “I love this American way
of Life,” which, aw-shucks, surprised me. I
decided to go with it for about 700 more of
these postcard-size incisions. Mercifully the
tap has been mostly turned off. Growing up
in New Orleans, even before the storm, one
always was aware of our city as being mostly forsaken by the mainland; of course, the
storm response and aftermath and Jackson
Square photo ops did little to allay this sense,
so yeah, that ol’ black magic irony carpets in.
What I found is that by using that title (I heart
this) for every poem, almost everything that
follows will play out as oddly sincere, absurd,
timely, stupid, or ironic, depending on the
reading, and thus, Voila: always a grace to be
born to be a messenger of the obvious.
CLIFF FYMAN writes: Two self-published books
of my poetry with handmade covers, Nylon
Sunlight and Fever, can be read at the 42nd
Street Library. I had the pleasure this year of
being a guest poet at writing workshops lead
by Stephen Paul Miller and Dorothy Friedman
August. In June I decided it was now or never
to learn to paint using oil colors, and so I wake
up every morning at 7 a.m. after waitering
the night before, bicycle to E89 Street, dodge
the trucks, and study in the popular class of
realist painter Sharon Sprung.
The Idle Ladder Max Left was written at the
edge of a field behind Bernadette’s house. We
alternated lines sometimes picking up in midline where the other poet left off. The poem
was done in one draft. It was composed in ink
on a piece of cardboard primed with gesso.
Poem in September Before Travel was written a few days before I flew to India for three
weeks.
JessICA Fiorini lives in Brooklyn and is currently earning her MFA in poetry at the University of New Orleans. She has recently
published a chapbook called “Sea Monster at
Night.”
A discussion of my intimidating poetic skills—I
write one word at a time. The words don’t
tell me what they want to say until I am done
with one line. That line effects the following. I write poems like kids play dominos. In
“Tarn” the first line is musically akin to a David Bowie song.
Alex Galper is a crazy Russian-American poet
living in the flat overseeing Gravesend Bay in
Bensonhurst. He constantly fights with being
overweight, girls, his mother, dishonest politicians, and traditional poets-academics. He
chronicles his emotions and fears into powerful words of Russian language as poems and
translates it with the help of his devoted friends
into English. In his native Russia, he is considered too marginal and American. (In modern
Russia, nobody writes about corrupted politicians and lives). His works in English has been
published in over 30 magazines. Currently, he
is the subject of UK documentary “Brooklyn
Siberia” (coming out Spring, 2008). His only
bilingual book of poems Fish Du Jour is available on Amazon.com. “Daring Winter Escape” — At the time, I was
reading a lot of ancient Eastern poets like
Rumi, Khayam, Hafiz, and others. Those authors fueled my interest in mystical teaching
of Islam – Sufism. I bought some books on the
subject but still had problems comprehending. Probably, it required more patience - the
virtue which I don’t have. The Persian masters made it sound so simple and plain that
I assumed it would be very ease to get. Unfortunately, it wasn’t so. Much later, I found
out that the above poets spend half of their
lives learning the secrets of Sufism and only
after that they were able to come up with
such wonderful poems. So, there was a lot of
frustration and anger on my part toward that
mysticism for wasted time. Also, at that particular time, I was in a very miserable relationship which I did not have courage to end.
I felt trapped and found a solution in reading
Persian poets.
The entire poem came to me at once. Reading
it over and over, I liked two first stanzas. The
last third stanza gave me really hard time.
Some versions were too moralistic, way too
erotic, or even sadistic. I think there were
about 20 different ending to that poem. It
took me few days to come up with “fire-extinguisher” ending.
“Che Guevara Diet” ­— This poem came after
I discovered the success of my culinary poems. My friends just could not get enough
of my poems about food and loosing weight.
So, I decided to experiment and parallel food
with something nobody usually associates
with food, something completely opposite
like politics or even hero-revolutionary Che
Guevara. The entire poem came to me at
once. I did not have to do a lot of polishing,
just minor rephrasing.
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Heather Green’s work has recently appeared
in or is forthcoming from Pilot, DIAGRAM, and
the Pebble Lake Review. Her chapbook, The
Match Array, will be published by Dancing Girl
Press in 2008. The poem “Let us try for once
not to be right” originally appeared in RealPoetik.
Scott Hammer has been living in Philadelphia
for the past four years. His other poems have
been published in Poet Lore, can we have our
ball back?, and Freefall. Scott has recently
completed a collection of poems entitled Patterns for Writing. He currently teaches English at a high school for International Affairs.
I started out attempting to write about trying out Tzara’s techniques in “How to Write
a Dada Poem,” and I ended up, with a little
help from my dog Sonny, veering off toward
something different, involving the defacing of
flowers. As far as the other two poems go,
I was reading Willam Gass’ Reading Rilke, at
the time, so I kind of had scary angels on the
brain. And I encountered a Frank Stanford
passage that flattened me with its ferocity
and reminded me of my own “girl with the
black,” so that passage is referenced directly in both poems. My memory of “the girl” is
the subject of both poems in a way, but some
current day weddings and funerals made their
way in, too. This is a section of a longer poem called That
or Miasma, which alternates between a computer-generated email persona and a human
being who is susceptible to her digital allure.
The sequence of part X in the narrative and
the narrator’s voice most significantly influenced my writing process. After reading the
first draft I decided the speaker needed to
sound more sufficiently human. To do so, I
imagined justifications to accompany his divulgence of a secret moment; if his actions
are shameful, he at least has very familiar
reasons. Shafer Hall is happy to live in a world where
for the right price he can have reruns of Taxi
on his television at almost any time of day. His first book Never Cry Woof is available from
No Tell Books.
As far as my process goes, I think it’s very
similiar to what Kinky Friedman is talking
about when he talks about ridin’ through the
canyons of the mind; I look for ugly rocks in
there, and I crack them open, and sometimes
they are full of deep purple crystals. I use
an old trick I learned from an oyster: when I
find something inside me that is uncomfortable, I secrete a shiny fluid around it until it is
smooth and pretty.
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Lauren Ireland loves Kendall, don’t get her
wrong. She makes her laugh a lot, but she says
Lauren really needs to start the Botox in about
2 1/2 years. It’s really not a big deal. Kendall
will go with her. Kendall also thinks she should
consider Restylane to fill in the lines around
her mouth. She lives in New York.
Worry for months about not writing. Write a
lot of shit while I’m supposed to be in a meeting, thinking about panties. Throw it all away.
Get really sad. Remember that I have a pink
typewriter and write a poem.
Susan Lewis’ poetry and short fiction has appeared in more than thirty literary journals,
including Raritan, The New Orleans Review,
Seneca Review, The Journal, The Berkeley
Poetry Review, The Sycamore Review, Cimarron Review, and Phoebe. She has also worked
on collaborations with composer Jonathan
Golove, which have been recorded as well as
performed at such places as the Kennedy Center and Carnegie’s Weill Recital Hall.
to be done with it this winter. The poems in
Supernatural are inspired, in part, by the belief in the evil eye, and the worldwide parallel
of land ownership/religion superseding older
animist belief/gatherer cultures. Kind of a
poetry “Guns, Germs and Steel” of magic.
To make poetry I permit my mind and control it, so that it teeters on the edge between
abandon and direction. Not-so-free association is my work-play. “Trojan” grew from
the connection I saw between the famously
deceitful Trojan horse and today’s bullying,
but self-defeating, militarism. I deployed my
idea as they deployed theirs: rolling it in,
then playing it out. “Incendiary” is a narrative which disregards the surface. It could
describe a lover’s quarrel, with its damaging
irruptions of truths and indistinguishably sincere falsehoods, its certainties which should
be doubts. As for “Light and Dark:” the first
line of it came to me with no pedigree. I
worked on it as if it were the exposed corner
of a buried shard, discovering the rest of it
carefully, guiding but not controlling it, preserving its coy promise of secrets kept and
others revealed.
The cover photo of Boom-Boom with a spray
can was taken on Battle Hill four years ago,
before the old factory was torn down. The
photos used in the body of this issue were
all taken one day this past summer, at the
same location. In the intervening years, the
factory was demolished and the construction
site that replaced it was itself abandoned
by the developer. This is a group of children
I have known almost their whole lives, but I
had never asked to take their picture before
that day. Late one afternoon they knocked
on my door to tell me they wanted to show
me their secret hang out. They didn’t mind
me having the camera, and in fact they just
mostly ignored me once we entered the “secret” entrance. They were especially excited
to show me the “pond,” which was the water-filled foundation pit of the abandoned
condo development. They are color photos,
and most couldn’t be used as black and white
images, but the late afternoon light helped
them make the leap. These kids are some of
my favorite people in the world.
Brendan lorber edits this magazine so that
you don’t have to. Please enjoy the free time
he has hereby granted you.
Tracey McTague curates & organizes the Battle Hill Reading Series. She regularly pirates
the Lungfull! email list to send out announcements, so you will be hearing from her.
I wrote this poem in New Orleans when I first
started writing the chapbook, Supernatural. I
am still working on this collection, and hope
Sharon Mesmer is the author of In Ordinary
Time (stories), Ma Vie à Yonago (stories, in
French translation), The Empty Quarter (stories), Half Angel, Half Lunch (poems), and the
forthcoming Annoying Diabetic Bitch (poems,
Combo Books, November 2007) and The Virgin
Formica (poems, Hanging Loose Press, Spring
‘08).
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Nikita Mikros runs “Tiny Mantis Entertainment” a unique game development firm in
the heart of Chinatown, New York City. He
has been creating games professionally for
the last 10 years and unprofessionally since
he was 13. He has taught various game design, multimedia and programming classes at
the MFA Computer Art Department at SVA for
the past 9 years. He has also taught at Sarah
Lawrence College, Seton Hall University, and
Harvestworks.
David Pemberton’s last two publications
were You Are Here: New York City Streets in
Poetry, an anthology published by P&Q Press
and Lungfull! Magazine n. 15 (to which you
can refer for more biographical details). A
word from David: “Live poultry does not have
a place in my Sunset Park, or anywhere else in
a “modern” city. If I have to slip on a slick of
illegally dumped chicken carcass, dung, and
feathers one more time, I’m going to burn
down the motherfucker.”
He received his MFA in Computer Art from the
School of Visual Arts in 1993, and a BA in Fine
Art from Queens College in 1989.
The building of this poem spanned more than
a year as well as multiple notebooks and computer stations. A good deal of the content from
the first section originated out of a note taking session while I was watching Sam Peckinpah’s “Ride the High Country” at the cinema.
From time to time when I go to the movies I
will lay my notebook in my lap and take notes
in the dark which range from descriptions to
misquotes to whatever else is going on in the
theater. Other content came from a pastiche
of lines that I cannibalized from some of my
poems that didn’t quite make it on their own,
but that were trying to get at some of the
same themes that ultimately made up “Clandestinely Predestined.” As my physical sources
were many, and the time lapse long, bringing
them all together hinged on keeping engaged
with the large idea on which all these smaller
pieces hung. Whenever I lost sight of what
that may be, Angus Scrim’s words, or some
other miraculous cue, would reach me over
the airwaves and remind me. As I collected
the words and phrases, I went through several
forming processes in which I tried out short
lined triplets, alcaics, and I don’t know what
else before I settled on sections broken up
and named by lines that I felt carried extra
poignancy or summation qualities. The line
lengths follow no strict limits, just a want to
fit in with one another.
He also draws comix and tells dirty stories.
Eileen Myles lives in Los Angeles with Ernie,
a fine cat. Sorry, Tree is her new book and The
Importance of Being Iceland (essays etc.) will
be out from Semiotext(e)/MIT in fall 08.
It seems I’m offering exactly the poem that
appeared in my notebook and it’s true. One
of the things I love about living in LA is that
there’s something faceless and unmarked
about existence here. You’re in your car having one long thought - not in your house like
San Diego and not in the street like New York
but in your car. My friend from NY who’s here
just referred to it as my pod. We all left from
a parking lot in LA (Cantor’s) and she said
have fun riding home in your pod. I actually
have a truck, a ford ranger. But I know what
she meant. It’s one long mental music, the
lights and the long avenues through neighborhoods and self help tapes. I’m trying to say
my process is a place and this is a new one. A
certain combination of drugs in the seventies
produced a similar state. I can point out those
poems. They felt flat on the page. These feel
flat in the mind.
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Rodney Phillips is the Librarian at the University of Arizona Poetry Center in Tucson. He
is the author, with Steve Clay of A Secret Location on the Lower East Side: Adventures in
Writing, 1960-1980 (Granary Books, 1998).
In general it feels like my writing process is a
matter of channeling. I start off with a line or
a fragment and go from there, usually moving
the poem forward through the use of sound.
After the poem comes to an end, I then do
some minor tinkering and revising in order to
try and create more of a narrative than usually comes with the channeled first version. I
suppose this is all somewhat like Jack Spicer’s
radio.
Jen Robinson is a poet who lives in Queens.
Thanks to Bernard van Maarseveen for taking
the picture in the jumble puzzle.
Sarah Rosenthal is the author of Manhatten
(Spuyten Duyvil, 2007), How I Wrote This Story (Margin to Margin, 2001), sitings (a+bend,
2000), and not-chicago (Melodeon, 1998). Her
poetry and fiction have appeared in numerous
journals and have been anthologized in the
Faux Press Bay Area Anthology (Faux Press,
2005) and hinge: A BOAS Anthology (Crack
Press, 2002). She has taught creative writing
at San Francisco State University and Santa
Clara University. As poetry editor at Citysearch, she published more than 50 profiles of
Bay Area poets over four years. She is editing a collection of interviews with Bay Area
avant-garde writers. She is a recipient of the
Leo Litwak Award for Fiction.
Process Notes for “The animal” and “You’re
Beautiful”: Both of these poems were written in the middle of the night, after I’d slept
for a few hours. I write during the day too,
but night has certain benefits. With daytime
neuroses stripped away, I’m often able to locate deeper questions and a more compelling
music. Compared to my daytime handwriting,
my “night writes” are sometimes hard to
read, because I scribble on a journal lying
across my prone stomach in the dark. That
makes the reading the words later a bit of a
translation act at times.
While I’m always open to new experiments,
there are forms that I return to again and
again. One is the form in which “The animal”
is written—short lines that create a pressurized container in which meanings start doubling and tripling, and sounds ricochet off
each other. I wrote “The animal” without
knowing beforehand what would emerge;
writing it showed me that the issues it addresses were on my mind. Another form I return to often is the prose
poem, partly for its sense of story and partly
because it foregrounds other aspects of language such as punctuation (which I tend to
minimize in lineated work, where I prefer to
lean into the power of line breaks). “You’re
Beautiful” is part of a series I’ve been working on, all of which are feature a rush of language broken up with commas. I got the idea
for this after I’d had a long conversation with
a poet whose spoken language entranced me.
She tends to speak in an excitable rush of
words, and while there’s an overall drive to
explain something, she’s constantly getting
pulled off track by tributaries of thought and
then finding some way back to the main idea.
It’s as if she can’t bear to leave anything out,
and there’s no time for periods, just commas.
It’s interesting to me that the comma also
emerged as the focus of the poem’s content.
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Silke Schöner, painter, was born in 1968 at
Krefeld Germany. She has been working as an
artist in Kassel since 1989. She is married and
lives with her husband and two daughters in
Lohfelden.
The following galleries represent the paintings of hers that appear in this issue: dillon
gallery, New York, USA; Realismus Gallery, Ulrich Gering, Frankfurt, Deutschland; Gallery
Epikur, Peter Nacke, Wuppertal, Deutschland;
Gallery Strenger, Tokyo, Japan (2008).
Benjamin Schwalke writes: I am 32 years old. I was born in Columbus, Nebraska and grew
up in Quincy, Illinois. During high school I was
an outstanding wrestler and football player. I
spent four years in the United States Air Force
and upon recieving an Honerable Discharge
and Achievment medal I enrolled in college at
Butler University, Indianapolis, IN. I left in my
senior year and travelled, working different
jobs, searching for my personal identity. I began writing about 2 years ago. It had been
my dream to be a writer and after writing everyday, trying to write a short story I wrote
one really poetic sentence and found I have a
talent and love for writing poetry. I wrote a
novella called “Rose” and I am looking for a
publisher. I have a beautiful 3 year old daughter named Hannah. Writing poetry is an expression of my inner
self and feelings that are connected to my life
and I usually draw inspiration from nature.
Sandra Simonds is the author of several
chapbooks including the Tar Pit Diatoms (Otoliths, 2006), The Humble Travelogues of Ian
Worthington (Cy Gist, 2006) and Pete, Sorry
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(Cultural Society, 2007). She is the founding
editor of Wildlife, an experimental poetry
magazine. Her first manuscript, Warsaw Bikini, was a finalist this year for the National
Poetry Series. She is a PhD student in Tallahassee, Florida where she lives with her fiancé
and two dogs.
The America you Learn from (a poem for
Grocery Workers): I started writing this poem
when I lived in the Mission area of San Francisco in late 2004 or early 2005. After I had
gotten home from work, I walked to the store
to get some beer and a pack of cigarettes and
I saw a line of grocery workers on strike. I remember being extremely impressed by their
dedication, but, worried for them and what
they were up against as well as confused as to
where I could be placed—on the street—walking by—contextually: inside their argument?
Outside? At the same time, pictures were all
around of Lynndie England and the tortures
she inflicted upon the prisoners of Abu Ghraib.
Perhaps I was interested in the juxtaposition
of these two sides of America. I added the
Houdini imagery much later, probably to aesthetically yoke these two halves of the poem.
I suppose, thematically, if you will permit me
to be broad and sweeping, this is a poem that
attempts to deal with social justice.
In a System of Sufficient Complexity: This is
another political poem. Andrew Joron sent
me his book The Cry at Zero, an amazing
book of essays. I just went though it picking
out phrases that I liked and building a poem
around those phrases. This is why the poem is
for him; much of it is already his.
Edwin Torres’s recent publication, “The
PoPedology of An Ambient Language” is an
inkspot on the darkside of comprehension’s
octamortalia, visible from his newly bucolic
lifestyle in upstate New York. While he misses
the texture of his hometown, he has discovered how sunlight juices garlic tangos just before twilight.
...home, what this one’s about, the shift away
from familiar, to awaken what you think you
want, to clarify present by floating over keyboard, imagistic hallucinations impact placement with territory, south of spain in this case,
my collected screen shots act as ‘draft’ since
this was written directly on laptop inspired by
surroundings, not usual course, i tend to etch
in chicken scratch my collected mumblings on
papyrus or postits and reinterpret what i can’t
decipher into something ‘new’, but then newness has her own skeleton, eh? and that’s process for today, my dear neighbors...
Mark Wallace is the author and editor of
a number of books of poetry, fiction, and
criticism. A collection of his tales, Walking
Dreams, was published in 2007, and forthcoming in 2008 is a book of poems, Feloniesof
Illusion.
All the prose poems in Party In My Body have
ten sentences, at least one of which uses a
question mark and one a “misplaced” exclamation point—the exclamation appears in a
wrong place that’s really the right place. The
subject of each sentence is consciously disconnected from the subject of the previous
sentence, so that central themes, if there are
any, won’t vanish but emerge and re-emerge,
with luck in surprising ways. While working
very consciously within that structure, I let
the play of mood and thought spread across
the collection as haphazardly or connectedly
as it wants. The other key compositional element of the Party In My Body poems is that
I had to write the initial draft of one poem
each work day from September 1998 to May
1999. I missed a few days towards the end
when the one-a-day element began to feel
less essential.
Fred Yannantuono writes: Fired from Hallmark for writing meaningful greeting-card
verse, he once ran twenty straight balls at
pool; finished 183rd (out of about 10,000) at
the 1985 U.S. Open Crossword Puzzle Tournament; won a yodeling contest in a German
restaurant; was bitten by a guard dog in a tattoo parlor; survived a car crash with Sidney
Lumet; Paul Newman once claimed to have
known him for a long time; hasn’t been arrested in 17 months; lives with hillbillies.
I took my son and his pal fishing for the first
time in 20 years. G. Willie Makeit was the
name of the fishing boat. Bluefish, which most
people hate, is my favorite. We caught two
blues and a striper, then Bill, the captain, a
wiry Neptune of a guy who’s also a blues aficionado (pun intended), said that if I liked blues,
I’d love fluke, a kind of flounder. We couldn’t
catch a fluke, though, which is no fluke—they
know how to nibble around a hook. The poem
birthed itself when we chowed down that
night on the blues. Gin chasers greased the
skids. In the poem proper I used snook, a
kind of sergeant fish, instead of fluke, hoping that the poetical licentiousness would not
look fishy to the reader. The penultimate line
was a problem for three weeks. Tried many
variations. Aye aye was too Popeyeish. Then
fisheyed sprang to mind. Later I realized what
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I’d meant to say was walleyed, but fishing’s a
tough life, so I kept fisheyed even though Bill,
the captain, was not particularly suspicious or
unfriendly. His parting words were, as I recall,
“Bon appétite!”
Elizabeth Zechel received her B.F.A. at The
School of the Art Institute of Chicago and
her M.F.A. from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn,
NY. She has had solo shows at A.I.R. Gallery,
(New York, NY, 2004), Atelier Gallery, (Brooklyn, NY, 2004) and the exhibition drawings
for The Chickasaw Cultural Center, (OK City,
OK, 2007). She has also done the covers for
the following poetry books: Mind Instructions,
by poet Tracey McTague, (2006). Late Night
Clanging, by poet Jen Robinson, (2006). The
Poetry Project Newsletter (cover and interior
art, 2006). Tremble and Shine, by poet Todd
Colby, Soft Skull Press, (2004). Cover Art for
book of collaborative poems by Don Cauble,
Byron Coley, Dennis Cooper, Alan Licht, Thurston Moore and Matthew Wascovitch, (2004).
The To Sound, by poet Eric Baus, Verse Press,
(2003) She lives in Brooklyn with her husband
Todd Colby.
Jumble Answers:
1. Anthony Trollope (author)
2. Parliament
3. Fox hunting
4. Queen Victoria
5. Bear grease
6. Steam engine
7. Propriety
8. Can You Forgive Her (title)
9. Disraeli
10. Eighteen Sixty-seven
11. Beef and ale
12. Westminster
13. Gladstone
14. Charabanc
15. Mrs. Grundy
Quote:
“Sometimes I have amused myself by reading.”
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Just
wait ‘
til
next
year!
Writing by
Duane Vorhees
Katheryn Soleil
Craig Cotter
Sean Kilpatrick
Rebecca Loudon
Visual art by
Elizabeth Zechel
Jeff Benjamin
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come if you dare
battle hill reading series
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RIPOFF!
That’s right — rip off this last page & mail it back to us with some cold cash & we’ll set you up with
a bright laminated future of lungfulls. or perhaps you’re embarrassed about some poem of yours
we published years ago? Buy up all the copies of that back issue & get them off the street today!
BACK ISSUES
SUBSCRIPTIONS
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donation amounting to the grand sum of $____
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Printed in limited numbers,
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RETURN THIS PAGE ALONG WITH A SWEET LITTLE CHECK TO: Subscriptions, LUNGFULL! Magazine, 316 23rd Street
Brooklyn, NY 11215. Offer ends 12/16/08. IMPORTANT: in order to honor your request, we ask that you please
make checks payable to Brendan Lorber — not to LUNGFULL! — & indicate which issue you would like yr subscription to begin with. This is issue 16. Include yr email address if you’d like the idea of receiving announcements abt
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Lungfull!16
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